It began—
It began with a dream, with a gust of wind echoing through the trees. The faintest whisper, running through the stone walls and cobbled streets of the town, a whisper of something new.
It began with a boy who had run from London to the countryside, evacuated with all his precious few belongings and a healthy fear of death—a boy that woke up every night screaming from the bomb dropping three houses to the left.
It began with a boy who had grown up rural, who was enchanted by the boy with the too dark hair and too dark eyes.
It began with a meeting. An agreement. A handshake, and a feeling of belonging.
And then it ended.
It ended in blood and fury and men with pitchforks running screaming through the night. It ended with bombs falling unheard and unseen as two creatures found their footing in the ground and began to hunt. It ended with creatures with blood bubbling in their mouth clinging onto each other and being so hungry.
But before all of that, it began with a library book. The pages were rife with rumours of the long-dead Frenchman Nicholas Flamel, his hands buried in alchemy and shaping immortality for the mortal man.
But he died, didn’t he?
And that was the crux of the matter. The centre of the problem. The epicentre of the earthquake that would be known, in whispers and rumours and ancient stories, as Tom Marvolo Riddle, the monster of the night.
He came from London, they’d say. City folk, you know how they are. We didn’t realise until it was too late.
Some would claim that I knew right from the start that there was something inhuman about him. Creepy little fucker, he was, always eyein’ up our rabbits.
These people lied.
When Tom Riddle arrived in Hogsmeade, he was one hundred percent, completely, absolutely, unquestionably human.
That was the problem.
*
“Who are you?” he asked the boy, the one who had come up from London all alone, the curious one they heard screaming and sobbing in the night. “What made you like this?”
“London,” the boy replied. “I’m what they call a monster.”
“Nobody here thinks you’re a monster. I’ve already got that mantle.”
“Then keep your hands on it,” the boy said. “I’m a good thief.”
“I’m Harry. They call me monster, and criminal, and thief, and freak. What do they call you?”
The boy looked at him, a mean smile on his face and a dark look to his eyes. “They don’t call me anything. They’re too scared to do that.”
*
And then the whispers started. They curled through the trees like smoke, growing and gathering with the fierce superstition of villager folk; fuelled by the growing number of disappearances and people staggering back from a night out at the pub with bloody necks and no recollection of what happened to them.
Fuelled by the corpse found pinned to a tree, tear tracks on its face and two perfect puncture wounds on its neck, the one that writhed and burnt when they tried to lay it in holy ground. It had been desecrated, brutalised, torn away from a peaceful ending.
People clutched their silver chains more, then, the cross as the end winking in the light.
*
To The Town,
As decided by the committee, we have discussed the best way to prevent the disappearances. The pub must close before sunset and there will be a mandatory curfew of six p.m. for everyone.
Please attend church on Sunday. We are offering longer prayer hours and pendants are available on the stand outside.
Thank you for your cooperation,
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of the villager’s committee.
*
“This is unfair,” he said, pressed shoulder to shoulder with Tom on the bench. “My aunt just wants to stop me sneaking out at night.”
“We can still sneak out,” Tom replied. “That’s why it’s called sneaking out and not leaving the house with permission.”
“It’s riskier. Too risky.”
“I never pegged you for a coward.”
“Bitch.”
Tom laughed, breaking his too-still vigil that he always held, his marble-like features as still as the stone he was compared to. “Sneaking out is always preferable to nightmares.”
“Aren’t you scared of death? Why do you want to risk everything like that? I’ve already lost Ginny. Don’t make me lose you, too.”
“You won’t lose me. There’s no danger.”
“There is danger, Tom. Aren’t you scared of death?”
*
For a week there were no attacks. Everything was dangerously still—the calm before a storm, perhaps, except this was the tense kind of calm where every step was guarded and people watched each other with wide eyes.
Tom still screamed at night.
He just wasn’t the only one.
*
“Harry, I’ve found a way to cheat death. Do you trust me?”
“Always.”
*
They laced their fingers together, the village darkened and empty, cool night air pressing against their skin.
“Are you sure we’ll be okay?” he asked.
Tom grinned at him, lopsided and endearingly human. “Look at this. Swiped it from Mrs. Malfoy at church this morning.”
“You didn’t,” Harry said, staring in awe at the slim silver bracelet in Tom’s hand.
“Told you I was a good thief.”
“You’re wonderful,” he breathed, voice soft. “But how will that help?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
*
“I’m hungry.”
“We were too hasty,” the elder rumbled, hands combing through her hair. “They caught onto us.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“I know.” There was a gleam to its eyes and when it spoke again, there was something nasty about it. “You haven’t drunk human blood yet, little one. You’re still too human for us.”
“I don’t want to be the one to ruin everything.”
“You won’t be. There’s some out and about tonight. If you can catch them, you can stay.”
*
“Ginny?” Harry said, startled.
Her eyes were red.
“Ginny, I was so worried about you!”
She hissed, then lunged. Harry reared back, horror etched on his face, hands outstretched like that could save him—
And then Tom stepped in, pressing the stolen bracelet to her neck, watching her scream and holding her down as she writhed and thrashed and burnt, sobbing without tears, until she was still.
Harry watched, mutely—horrified, curious, delighted, disgusted.
Tom dug out a kitchen knife from his pockets, blade wrapped crudely in tissue, and, pulling it free of its bindings, pressed it to her ribcage and cut, bloodlessly, deep into flesh. Over and over again, cutting away at the meat, digging deeper and deeper and the blade coming away clean every time.
“There’s nothing there,” he said, horrified. “There has to be something there.”
“What are you looking for?”
Tom bit his lip, his stone façade cracking and crumbling away in front of him. “Blood. The rumours—you know the book I have on the Philosopher’s Stone?”
He nodded. Of course he knew—Tom’s boundless fascination with not meeting his own death was what glory looked like. He was bathed in sunlight when he did, hands jerking animatedly and a light glowing behind his eyes. He almost looked alive when he did so—almost. He was still haunted by the ghost of himself.
“It references blood from creatures who run through the night endlessly, slipping through time like sand in an hourglass. There’s nothing else it could be.”
Desperation was a look unaccustomed to Tom’s face. It didn’t explain how it fit so neatly there.
“Have you tried the heart?”
Tom cut right into it, cradling it as rivulets of blood trickled over the side, licking at them, tasting them, drinking them.
“Go on.”
He did.
*
(He had seen everything.)
*
His body groaned in protest, heart hammering as it tried to stop. It was a fast acting poison rushing through his veins and the other side—the side where he would slide from mortal to eternal—was dawning.
“We should go back,” Tom said. “We want to be home quickly. The change will leave us vulnerable.”
Harry hugged him, flinging arms around a body he’d never been allowed to touch, dragging Tom closer to him even as Tom remained stiff as a board.
Tom pushed him away. “We should go back,” he repeated.
“Right.”
*
He hesitated on the threshold. It didn’t feel right, entering, but he knew that if Aunt Petunia saw him outside he’d get a scolding and a half. He shouldered his way through the doorway, ignoring the feeling that he was betraying himself.
*
When he woke up, he was cold. He was hungry. Neither was a new experience, but the feeling that he needed to do something about it was.
He sunk his teeth into Petunia’s neck and drank from her, ripping his teeth to the side and slitting her throat. He wasn’t done with her, but he needed to kill the others before they killed him. Dudley opened his mouth to scream and he pinned him down and ripped his tongue right out, then severed his throat as cleanly as his mothers.
Vernon, though, he took his time with. There was no blood left when he was done.
His hands shook, burning, as he closed the curtains. Let them think they were hiding. Every unsavoury whisper was better than being chased through the night, or worse, through the sun that burnt and ached.
He had all day and two more meals to eat. They would be fine.
*
Tom had awoken early, Merope Gaunt had written in her diary the day the village was slaughtered. I think he’s checking all the doors are locked and bolted to keep us safe. He’s such a sweet boy.
The irony of this was that her blood was splattered across the pages.
Tom’s name had been signed underneath it to correct the story.
This is why, the villagers would say, you don’t let city boys stay in your house.
Based on the way blood splashed every wall, either Tom had felt like giving the house a new paint job or he’d chased Marvolo and Morfin until they couldn’t run anymore.
*
When night came, Harry and Tom stepped out the front door in sync, satiated but crueller than before. They set fire to the town and let people choose between baked in their homes or being eaten by creatures that didn’t need to eat anymore.
Being able to run faster than humans had its perks.
Being strong enough to stop people holding them down had its perks.
It was not vengeance and it was not righteous. It was ugly, and bloody, and messy. It was an act of cruelty from two creatures no longer capable of being kind.
This time, Harry didn’t try to hug Tom.
This time, they didn’t stay together. Creatures that don’t have feelings don’t have love, no matter what they had before.
*
It ended in pain.
It could’ve ended another way, perhaps, had Harry kissed Tom that day on the bench, if they had met death together and laughed in its face.
Now they were the conquerors of death.
And they wouldn’t meet again.
*
(Fires were his favourite way to find snacks in already wary villages. It didn’t matter too much to him, though. Not much did.
Afterwards, he smelt garlic. It was repulsive, and he never found the corpse of a vampire lain slaughtered on the floor.
Immortality didn’t last long.)
*
“Aren’t you going to ask who I am?”
“I don’t need to,” it laughed, too dark eyes and marble features cutting an imposing figure. He wasn’t scared, though.
“You should.”
“You’re meaningless,” it said. “I know all that is necessary. I don’t bow, even to death.”
“You are death’s servant,” he said. “And it seems I am, too.”
It stopped, then, and fear echoed through it. It was the closest it had been to a he in centuries. “What are you?”
“I am Death,” he said. “I am from another universe, one where we were bound inescapably. You could’ve had him, you know.”
“He died long ago.”
“Immortality didn’t work, did it?”
“It did for me.”
“It’s a shame, then,” Harry said, “that I will take it from you now. May you meet the other me in the afterlife.”
*
(“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I should’ve stopped you.”
Tom looked at him strangely. “Why are you apologising? We have forever to spend in a limbo of our own creation. If we can never access Heaven, why do we have each other?”
“I think I love you.”
“You think the strangest things.”)