Tom Riddle & Stagnance
The Church of Merlin. Approximately thirty percent of the wizarding world believes in it to some extent. Tom had surrounded himself with the children of believers and been polite when discussing it, even amenable when debating it. But truthfully, he had long grown tired of hearing about it.
Merlin was the world’s greatest wizard, yes. But he is no god. What’s next, the Church of Dumbledore?
So Tom has never believed before. He had no reason to. He smiles and laughs and lets the delusions his classmates hold slide right through him. He learned a lot about the Church of Merlin without meaning, nor caring, to and tries to scrub the information from his mind before learning that Merlin’s follows are just so devoted they never shut the fuck up about it.
But, now, he wants to thank them. He might. He might also kiss them breathless next time he sees them.
Merlin, as Draco Malfoy and all the other stupid, delusional fucks who believe what he does, was a Seer. (This led to the belief that all Seers are holy, angel-like and divine in nature, leading to the great respect of them and the shunning of any deemed ‘hacks.’ It was great. Somewhat. Some people believe angels are best in captivity, lest they damage their wings.) Many of his prophecies -- though their true forms are lost to time, no living person having heard them -- shape the wizarding world today. Before Merlin died, he gave, presumably, one last vision:
I will return.
Tom thought this nonsense, of course. (Wrong place, wrong time. It’s that easy. That’s it.) But Tom, now armed with Blaise’s confession, Blaise’s unwitting offering, Tom does not ‘think’ anything.
He knows. He knows that for all the wizarding world brims with idiocy and corruptness, twisting the truth like it is a malleable thing, they are right about this.
Merlin is back. He’s returned.
Tom knows this because (because his classmates never shut up, all yip and yap, it is a mystery why he ever thought Harry worse than them) the legend, the lore, the sermons, all go as follows: Merlin will reincarnate. He will die a few years after the birth of a child. His death will signify that, somewhere out there, a new God has formed. From what Tom’s gathered, there’s not much information about this ‘new God,’ which is odd, considering the entire Church of Merlin is yearning for their arrival. But perhaps that’s the problem. That this new God is not Merlin. Tom suspects they are something else entirely.
But for all that is unknown about this new God, there is one thing, one very important thing, that is well established: the new God will be accompanied by a wizard ‘clairvoyant,’ able to see souls and the future, all wrapped up into one.
Blaise probably didn’t even know that he had doomed himself. By making himself socially separated from his House, he’d tuned out what Tom tires of listening to. A fool. He can hardly be blamed for being one. Between Slytherin and Harry, the choice is obvious. (It is an obvious choice but not a choice Tom can make. There is too much at stake.)
Blaise Zabini is clairvoyant. Blaise Zabini is proof that the Church of Merlin got it right. Blaise Zabini gives the anonymous Hand God a name.
(Tom clicks this together through intuition alone; the hand feels holy. Merlin fits. Merlin’s reincarnation is dead but that’s not to say that any other form of Merlin is, too.)
Tom ponders this for hours. He ponders it while with his Knights. While in class. He writes it down. Hisses about it to Nagini.
But his pondering does not make the questions consuming him any less there, any less of question.
He’s missing pieces.
Why is Merlin, a literal actual God, talking to Lily Potter? Where is the New God Blaise is allegedly tied to? Who was Merlin’s reincarnation before they died?
Tom doesn’t know. And he hates not knowing things.
It’s not like he could just ask Blaise about it, or Harry -- because Harry doesn’t know, doesn’t remember jack shit (Tom loves Harry but he hates that part of him. He considers fixing his memory loss to the benefit of Harry and the relief of himself.)
Harry’s memory loss. Making Harry immortal.
He… Tom frowns to himself. He is rather obsessed (in his nature, so not a surprise. It is just undesirable). He has other things to do, much more important, significant to the wizarding world things to be thinking about.
And yet every thought comes back to him, his ridiculous height and hair and eyes and magic, always his magic. He distracts himself by working on a Charms essay but half an hour through he looks at the margins and notices he’s been writing Tom Riddle-Potter absently. He pushes it away with disgust. He drops to the floor and does push ups but instead of counting the sets under his breath he’s whispering utterly sappy things about Harry’s company.
He rises and throws himself onto the bed with a groan.
This is not ideal.
“Master,” Nagini says, slithering out from under his heated blanket. “You are a hypocrite.”
Tom glares at her. You are nothing like your predecessor. His wand vibrates in its holster and a Dark curse rises on the tip of his tongue. He ignores them both. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You smell different?”
“Am I that in need of a shower?”
“Not that,” she snaps, then pauses. “Well. That, too.”
“But it’s not what you’re referring to?”
“No.”
“Do me the pleasure of enlightenment.”
“And why should I? You will not listen. My voice is not yours. You will not listen because you cannot hear it.”
Tom resists rolling his eyes. “Drop the melodrama, will you?”
Nagini sighs. She settles herself in the crook of Tom’s shoulder. “Fine. You smell smitten.”
“Smitten,” he repeats. She says it like it is a bad thing, something sour and bitter on her tongue. Had he not once done that, too? It feels so forgien now.
“Whipped,” she elaborates. “It is a pungent smell on you, Master. Do you not reject this concept? Did you not spread the idea that love, genuine love, is weakness?” She hisses and it is out of frustration and pain and memories better left forgotten, better left ripped out of the notebook completely, instead of any form of communication. “Did you not beat that into me?”
“I did.” He crucio’d her for growing attached to him in his first year and kept doing it until she took the lesson to heart. It was not fair of him. He imagines someone doing the same to him because of what he feels for Harry and he feels sorry -- and feeling sorry… it is not something he does. Not before Harry. “I was wrong to.”
“Because you are now attached? More than that, truly. You are occupied constantly. Codependent and insane. Is that why the rules have changed? Are you not capable of sympathy? It is cruel to neglect an issue unless it affects you directly.”
“I know,” he admits. It feels gross to admit his follies. At least it is only to Nagini. She can’t tell anyone else. “I know. I ask you have patience with me. It is the only way I can care about issues -- it is the only way I know how. I am trying to be better.” Partially true. He is not trying to but it is happening.
“Me?” she laughs, incredulous. “Me, have patience with you? You are an adult. You have had years to change. I tire of waiting.”
“But those years I spent in static,” Tom explains. “My environment did not change throughout it. What worked, worked. I did what was easiest. Without the prompt to change, why would I?”
“At some point,” she says, wiggling back under the pillow, “You have to prompt yourself.”
Tom stares listlessly at the ceiling.
Prompt himself. How? By putting yourself in other people’s shoes, choosing kindness and openness and doing what is hard? Tom has never been good at that all by himself. Such things are not in his nature -- nor in his nurture.
But he lies in bed and thinks about Harry and decides he doesn’t have to be. He is bad at empathy -- change, really, he is bad at change -- when he must do it on his own. But he has Harry. He does not need to prompt himself.
Harry.
All his thoughts circle back to Harry.
He is overflowing with the idea of Harry because right now, all he has of Harry is that; an idea. Harry is not his. Harry is not his equal. (Harry is not his boyfriend.)
Tom thinks the only logical solution to this is to win Harry over, date him, eventually marry him, and get rid of the extras, sorry not sorry, Blaise and Neville. Then his mind will clear. It’s that simple.
What could go wrong?
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Draco Malfoy watches Tom Riddle write a letter for Harry Potter. He is half way sure that this is a dream. He’s using Draco’s satinaitory -- “You Malfoys have the best of everything,” Tom had explained -- and has been working on it for half an hour.
Draco stares at him blankly. He clears his throat. “You’re, uh…” he clears his throat again. “You’ve been working on that letter for quite some time.”
“I am a perfectionist.” Tom crumbles up another draft and vanishes it. He smooths down another letter. He taps the pen against his lips and begins writing again.
Merlin, Draco thinks sickly. The pen. “It’s for Potter,” Draco argues.
“And?”
And? What do you mean by and? “Your friendship is a tool.” Though what for, you will not say. You keep telling us to trust you. You keep saying you have your reasons. I just wonder what those reasons are. “You needn’t put this much effort into something for him. He won’t be able to tell the difference.” And Potter wouldn’t, surely. Tom’s ‘low effort’ is still exceptional.
But, “Harry would.” Tom is writing when he says it so he is not able to see the look of shock smack itself across Draco’s face.
“It’s Potter,” Draco corrects. “You used to call him Potter.”
Tom stops writing for a moment but he smooths over the falter quickly. “Of course. It is rather rude to call him that to his face, though. I suppose it is force of habit.”
“You’re using the pens he’s handing out.”
Tom looks at his pen, like he forgot he was using it. “Don’t be so prickly, Draco. You do know they were originally a wizard invention before they became popular with the Muggles, don’t you?” They weren’t. Tom’s banking on Draco not knowing any differently. “But, back to what you were saying. He’s been handing out pens?”
“Mhm,” Draco says, eyes still narrowed, not convinced in the slightest. Tom would be proud if it wasn’t such an inconvenience. Draco had always been one of his most clever Knights. He was one of the only few not to take up Harry’s challenge. “I think he’s using them as a marking.”
Tom’s eyebrows furrow. “A marking?”
“I heard he writes down the names of people he gives pens to. It’s a growing list.”
“Ah,” breathes Tom. Harry’s jotting down those who are not anti-Muggle. A precaution, perhaps? A ‘there-people-are-chill’ list? His Harry is undeniably clever. It is a shame Tom has appearances to keep up. “Tell the Knights to ask for a pen from Harry. Only those who did not deul him, though.”
Draco flinches as if physically struck. He gapes.
“Oh, not like that, you imbecile. He knows those who dueled him are his enemy. But there are few of you that did not, of which uncertainty possibly shrouds you. Let him believe that, to some extent, you are not like the others.” The devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t.
Draco lets out a breath of relief. “Okay. Alright. But, Tom…”
“What is it?”
“I just have to make sure… You aren’t -- uh, and I hate to accuse you of this…”
“Draco. I promise to take what you say next as an observation and not an accusation. Drop the anxiety and spit it out, will you?” I have a letter to write.
Draco stands a bit taller. “You’re not getting too close, are you? To Harry.” (Is this pretense of a friendship just a pretense?)
Tom thinks about love and his soul shrinking and wrapping itself around Harry’s and thinks I am a little more than ‘close,’ Draco, and you are little too late. “But of course,” Tom lies. “Harry Potter is bad company.” But he is my company nonetheless.