Tom Riddle & Melting Minds
Tom is not an idle waiter. His curiosity overwhelms him too much, too fast -- so every moment spent waiting to figure something out is only another moment to figure something out. And Tom Riddle’s curiosity? It is morbid. Only and always.
This time, it is about Harry Potter’s slow descent into insanity, into eventual death. It is in the little things. Not in the sporadicness of his actions, the erratic nature of his choices -- because that is normal. It has always been normal. Forgetting things, too, has always been normal. But it is getting worse. This is shown in the little things. In too many little things.
Tom is not prone to hero complexes -- mainly because his goals in life align more with a villain; everyone else being secondary, but, in this situation, Harry Potter is not secondary.
Harry Potter is his. Or his equal. Whatever. He is, either way, not secondary.
Tom has taken it upon himself to fix it. Fix him. And then make them both live forever, and together, and separate from Pureblood boyfriends who will never really know what it is like for Tom and Harry, who will never truly get him.
To live forever, Harry must first live.
Harry is awaiting trial, Draco is visiting the greatest Seer of their time, and Tom Riddle wards himself into the library.
He approaches the librarian with a carefully constructed look of concern and alarm. “There’s someone in the back of the library -- two someone’s, actually, and they are -- how to say,” Tom clears his throat. “Fornicating. They’re using books -- don’t ask me how, I am as confused as you -- and I am worried they might be ruining them.”
She looks livid. “Where are they?” she asks, voice tight.
“I don’t know exactly -- but if you listen,” says Tom, “You’ll be able to find them.”
She scurries off, chasing sounds that will keep changing source location and Tom figures he’d feel bad for the wild goose chase if he was a better man. But he is not. So he saunters on to the Restricted Section, casting a silencing charm around the area. He will have a little while before she comes back. Long enough to find the book he is looking for.
He had asked around for something relating to Harry’s illegal medical procedure for some time. During meetings, out of them. TO strangers, to followers. He had traded words and favors and vows of silence and it took a while, too far too long for Harry’s sake, but it was worth it.
Because now he knows. A title and an author and some hope -- and it is not a lot, laid out like that. But it doesn’t have to be a lot. It just has to be enough. And it is.
He grabs the books from the shelf -- Outlawed Mediwizardy; Volume 3 -- rolling his eyes at the shriek it releases.
He, with Harry in mind and heart, as always, starts flipping.
He seeks to answer a few of many burning questions: Why did the procedure that Harry underwent to restore his mind and soul not take effect? Why doesn’t Madame Pomfrey say or do anything about it? And, finally, why is Harry not aware of Lily’s coexistence?
There are many factors at play here. Tom has more than enough theories. But that’s the thing he’s learned from years upon years of academia; theory is useless without practice.
So that’s what he’s doing now, reading this book. Reading about the outlawed medical procedure that apparently was not outlawed enough. He is looking for the practical use of these theories.
He finds it in the fifth chapter.
Five: Squib Misalignment
After the initial procedure, where the soul of the dying is combined with the chipped soul of the living, there is the normal reaction to any type of surgery. The soul and mind, recently broken open and sealed back together, are fragile. They are to be treated with care, delicacy, with a calm, quiet, non-traumatic surrounding.
The words “clinical environment” are used often.
Things that may render the procedure obsolete include, but are not limited to: physical brain injuries, isolation, improper nutrition…
And, Tom’s personal favorite, mind erasing spells.
It ends there, what there is to learn, and Tom slips the book back on the shelf, content and happy. Thrilled. Because it is not a lot, does not seem like it, but. Fuck. It’s so fucking much.
You wanna know what Tom thinks? Tom thinks that Madame Pomfrey has erased, and maybe still is erasing, Harry’s memory. Likely upon the request of Lily Potter.
He thinks this for a lot of reasons. He thinks this because it makes sense. But also because Madame Pomfrey fought to raise Harry, and Harry did not travel far, if at all, from the Medical Wing for years after Lily’s death, where the procedure must have been undergone.
She alone was in control of his ‘so-called’ clinical environment, so she alone could ruin it.
Madame Pomfrey is far more likely to have known about Harry’s condition and have hidden it than she is to not know about it at all. She is not an amateur.
Given also that participants in the surgery know of the person who shares their body, and Harry does not, it can be assumed that the ruining of Harry’s mind was not a solo task. Nor, entirely, a malicious one, but Tom will touch on the nuances of that on a later date. (Then again, he will never understand anything about familiar bonds. The most experience he has in that field is in ending them.)
Lily has taken over Harry’s body at least once. Tom suspects dozens upon dozens of times before what Tom’s seen, really, and maybe dozens of times after. There is no way of knowing how many exactly. He is glad that how many times it’s happened does not matter -- just that it happened at all.
That it happened, and Harry does not remember a thing about it. (Tom does not even try and entertain the notion that Harry could be lying. As said, Harry is not fucking shady.)
The answer to How circles back, as it always does, to Madame Pomfrey. She is erasing Harry’s memory of Lily’s takeover, of Lily’s continued existence. It is the only rational, sane solution Tom can come up with and, god damn, it is a good solution, isn’t it? It is fitting and it fits.
His reading of the book stops there but Tom’s questions do not. Of course they don’t. This is Tom Riddle. His mind is fond of constant momentum.
He wants to know why. What does Lily have to gain? What does Madame Pomfrey? Who was the third party who made the procedure happen? Was it Pomfrey? If so, why? If not, then who? What does Merlin have to do with this? If anything at all?
He has so many questions with no answers right now, but that, he decides, is fine. He has all the time in the world to get them.
It is Harry who does not. Insanity and eventual death. He will not live long enough to know the truth. He will not live long enough for it to matter, so Tom’s concerns, his curiosity… is, for the first time in a long time, secondary. Harry’s safety comes first. Only and always. Every time.
Research is currently inconclusive on how to undo the damage that is currently being done and has been done. It is believed impossible. But when has supposed impossibility ever stopped him before?
His next step is decided not by his words, or actions, or research, but by Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger and a conversation about their meeting a few weeks ago. On their way to the kitchen, where Harry would set them upon the sorting through his journal task, something interesting happened.
Harry forgot their names. Them, who he has known for years.
“...so if you know anything,” Hermione continues, ignoring or perhaps just not noticing Tom’s shock, “Do tell. Okay?”
If he knows anything? Merlin. He knows everything! And did he not agree that the consequences, the conversations, the uncomfortable questions with selfish truthful answers or sugarcoated lies -- did he not agree those were secondary? In the face of Harry’s safety, is not everything?
It is the perfect opportunity to tell them what he knows. To tell them the truth, regardless if Harry would be mad at him for hiding it, or if he would be outcasted for his corrupted reasons for sticking around. Regardless. Because with Harry, and the life he deserves to live and isn’t, nothing that happens to Tom matters. As long as Harry is okay, Tom can live with it. He can figure something out.
But… (and, maybe, here, Tom is kidding himself. Maybe, here, he shows that he does not really love Harry, as he is, stand alone, but that he loves Harry as Harry is with him. Harry is changing him. He is teaching him to be better, but his better is still harsh and rough around the edges. In many places, it is not better at all. It has only changed) … it is not that easy.
For one, Tom argues, he does not have proof. He has books and theories and an unbelievable sounding encounter to tell them, but (but what is theory with practice?) even to his own ears, it sounds weak. It sounds like something that could be twisted and used against him under the guise of Tom Is Evil, Tom Is Trying To Sabotage Us. Tom Is Trying To Isolate Harry From His Guardian.
Tom Is Evil. He Has Reason To Lie. And these assumptions are not even completely wrong, but they sure as hell are inconvenient.
So Tom has a million reasons that he does not fess up right then. They are not all good reasons. There might not even be any. But he has his reasons. And that is good enough for him.
“I have some theories,” says Tom, slowly, “But, as of now, I have no way to confirm them. Can I ask something of you, if it is not too much trouble?”
“Sure,” says Ron. “If it ain’t too much trouble, that is.”
Tom forces a chuckle. “It won’t be, I hope… Do not leave Harry alone.”
“Why?” asks Hermione.
Because if I can not undo what has been done I wish to at least prevent more from happening. “I am testing something,” says Tom. “I have many theories. It is high time to start eliminating some of them.”
“Care to share some of these theories with the class?”
No. “In due diligence,” says Tom. “And, by the way -- if you must leave him alone… place a surveillance charm on him.”
“Why?” asks Hermione again.
Because working to gather evidence is always better with three heads instead of one. Because I do not think I can allow myself to save him but… There is nothing stopping you. Nothing at all. “I don’t know,” says Tom.
“But you have some idea?”
“Maybe,” says Tom. “Maybe I am chasing loose ends not relevant.”
“Relevant still enough to check?”
“Only,” says Tom, “if I am right.” And he is.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Professor Trelawney’s classroom smells a little different to everyone who enters it. In a way, it is its own form of Divination. What you smell says something about you. Though not much.
To Draco Malfoy, it smells like how it did at the mansion when it had just finished running. Father had locked the peacocks up in their coup without checking, first, if they were alright in there. He did not want to spend so much time outside, you see, in such nasty weather. Best not to soil his robes.
But when the storm ends and Draco goes out to open the door to the coup, he counts the peacocks as they exit and finds they are down one. The baby. He is two weeks old to the day.
Draco entered the coup and it is the smell that hits him then that hits him now. There is a leak in the shack and the baby had gotten itself stuck in the trough and the leak filled the trough with the baby inside.
It is dead.
It is dead and Draco knows it is the fault of only partly the storm.
Merlin forbid, thought Draco, bitter at the time, his father soil his robes. Don’t they have magic for a reason? They are infinitely proud of it. Why not use it every once in a while?
He had grown up, of course. Realized that saving others is not worth having to inconvenience yourself. The less fortunate are less fortunate for a reason.
Saving others will not put food on the table. Saving others will put less.
And maybe that, too, says something about him. Though not much.
Draco walks into an almost empty classroom smelling of rotting animals and mildew. He is reminded again of why he has never taken Divination. It makes being here regardless of that even more unpleasant. “Professor?” he calls out. “Professor -- are you here?”
“In the back,” he hears.
Draco walks through the slightly creaked open door to her office and finds her, sitting at the table, pouring tea. There are two cups set out. Both are filled. “You were expecting me?” he asks. He is slightly unsettled but not surprised. In Sybill’s classroom, you are prone to discomfort. He has heard that often.
He takes his seat and blows on the tea. “I was,” says Sybill, gently.
“Do you know what I’m after, then?”
“No,” she says. “But I know why.”
Draco scoffs. “You know why? I hardly know myself.”
“I know you are here because,” she says, “you would wound up hurt if you weren’t.”
Draco’s face smooths out and he is reminded of the same gesture, watching it on his father’s face. This is what it means to be a Malfoy. This is what it means to work under Tom Riddle. “A bold claim, Trelawney,” he says, snobbish, “from someone who fell so far from grace. From working under Merlin to Dumbledore -- the mighty, they say, do not trip but stumble. Have you stumbled, Sybill?”
“I haven’t stumbled so much by being me than you have by approaching me.”
“Touche,” he says. It is rude to degrade a server while asking for their service. It is unbecoming. And the Malfoy way is composure, so Draco sobers up. “I need the Merlin-Potter letter,” he says. “If you will.”
She looks into her tea for a while. Just when Draco is sure she will not be answering his question, or has not heard it at all, she says, “I will. But not for him. To protect you. Because from the looks of it… you are someone worth protecting. Or you will be.”
“Thank you,” says Draco. I think?
“The letter I sent was short and simple. It did not have any reason to be long. To whom it may concern, it said. I have found your Merlin. Come and get him. With an attached image of James Potter.”
“What?” What in the world did you just say?
“And then, in the following weeks, they send howlers, and it is far too late, and my warnings -- and I did send warnings, if only he had cared to heed them -- became close to worthless--”
“No, Sybill, I am not sure I heard you right--” No wonder the whole world thinks you a hack.
“--And because he does not listen and did not listen, the Merlin Church did what it has planned to ever since its Tenants had formed--”
They think you a hack… but I know you are not one. “Is he--”
“After a few years of the birth of a child, his child, he will die. People never really say how he will die, do they? It is always this or that and guesses -- but there is no reason for guessing. To me it has always been very obvious. If the death of Merlin’s reincarnation signifies the creation of a New God, then who gains the most from killing him?”
“The -- the,” and words fail him, words try to, “The New Age?”
“Yes,” she says. “Do you want to guess how Harry Potter’s father died? I bet you don’t need to. I bet you know.”
“I know,” says Draco, softly. “I know.”
“Then do you also know who Harry Potter’s father was? Why Tom Riddle has pushed you for this information? Can you guess, if you do not know?”
“Harry Potter’s father is James Potter.”
“Yes.”
“He…”
“Yes?”
“He is also Merlin. James Potter is Merlin.”