Vera
)2000(
They say that on that day the blood ran down the walls of Hogwarts until the Quidditch field was a swamp of darkness. They are prone to exaggeration for poetic effect. The war at the end was not nearly as simple as rivers of life leaking away into the dark patches of the earth.
Harry had emerged from the final battle covered head to toe in putrid gore. Fluids, pus and curse residue soldered his robes to his skin and dirtied his face beyond recognition. Those that survived watched him with confused eyes as he plodded through the mess. So much of it was his own that when he finally turned himself into the tender hands of the medics, no one was quite sure he would survive. No one was sure they wanted him too. The most powerful wizard in the world might possibly awake completely and utterly mad.
Every friend he had was dead. Hermione, Ron, Neville, Seamus, Dean, Lavender...each had fallen and left little trace behind. The Weasley family was decimated, Remus Lupin, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall....dead. If the Boy-Who-Lived could withstand that, he was far stronger then any estimated him to be.
In truth, had Harry bothered to stay in the Infirmary long enough to hear the full list of fatalities, he might very well have lost his mind. But he did not intend to ever find out what had really happened. Because it had occurred to him, late in the nights before the last battle that there was no reason for any of it to remain the truth. He bounced the plan off Ron and Hermione, his two loyal lieutenants until the last moments. They had listened solemnly, argued with him for endless hours, eventually helped him work out the kinks and prayed that it wouldn't be necessary.
At the very least, if it didn't work, Voldemort was dead and his army in glistening pieces all over the field. That cold comfort drove him to the pre-picked spot and started a chain of spells that would propel him back in the time line.
) 1929 (
The cottage was small and charming. The roses were in full bloom, climbing up the trellis and birds sang merrily in the trees. Harry wanted to burn it to the ground. It had taken him the better part of six months to find his target. His own fault really, Hermione had told him to do better research. At least no one had noticed him. Wizarding traditions change slowly, his robes needed little alteration and his innovative spell work could be side stepped when he claimed to have been privately tutored. The curse scar was ignored. It meant nothing to thirties Hogsmeade, except that he had been to slow in a spectacular wizard dual. People would buy him a round of drinks if he told them, so he made the story increasingly fantastic every time.
A patina of gray surrounded him whenever he went outside. The Depression was an apt name for the hard times that had fallen on the western world. In the wake of the First World War, a general gloom had descended. Harry could practically taste the cynicism in the air.
No longer. Soon his task would be complete, the whole timeline changed and he would fade out of existence, bequeathing life to a happier, safer self. And he would complete his task. By broom he flew from the cottage and landed at a safe distance away from the glowering building. It loomed five stories on a paved yard. Hundreds of boys roved outside, screaming and laughing. They wore a uniform of gray, short pants, jackets and a glimpse of sloppily done tie knots.
The youngest boys clung to the walls in small knots watched over by a single grim matron. Occasionally she would bark at one or another and they would all become quieter for a time. At her side one of the youngest would watch the others play, his green eyes shining with intelligence, his shock of black hair falling messily into his face.
Every once and a while he would cast his glance away from the other boys and solemnly gaze into the bushes where Harry had concealed himself under his cloak. It would take a wizard of immense power to see through the cloak without aid. For a child to do so would make him unprecedented. Harry moved deeper into the under brush. Tom Riddle had made a name for himself doing the unprecedented.
In the dark. In the dark like a thief. No. In the dark like an assassin. What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing... Tiptoe to the bed, tiptoe, on tiptoes, on little cat's feet, like a fog comes in..
Well, Harry had remained mostly sane. Though as he stood over the cot of his great enemy, dagger poised ( a wand might just start the vicious cycle all over again), he wondered if mostly was good enough.
The boy woke.
" 'lo?" The small mouth whispered in the dark. "Who are you?"
Who am I? Harry asked himself. A murderer of children? Is this what I have become? In his mind, Hermione wept and Ron turned from him. As they had done when he proposed this plan in the first place. As they should have.
"I was a friend of your mother." He said suddenly, a plan full borne unfolding in his mind. Carefully, he sheathed the dagger and set it into his belt. "IÍve been away for many years and only learned of your existence yesterday."
"Oh." The small boy sat up in bed and Harry saw that the intelligence in his eyes gleamed even in the dark. But it had no malice yet. At three, Riddle had no conception of what had happened to him, no idea how harsh his life would be. He only knew fear, anger and the stiff cold of his dormitory. The lad shivered in his thin nightshirt and Harry instinctively muttered a spell to thicken the blanket. He was lost here.
"Tomorrow, I am going to take you to live with me. Would you like that?"
The young boy's eyes widened impossibly, then shuttered.
"Liar."
Startled Harry nearly fumbled his wand as he slipped it back in its holster.
"No, it's true. I promise."
"So did they."
"They?"
"A pretty lady and her husband. They said they'd take me home."
How many disappointments had already found Riddle? How many more need visiting on a tender mind to form it into the roughest clay?
"I promise."
"On what?"
"Something very important to meƒ" But what was left?
Solemn, confused eyes blinked slowly.
"I promise you on my life. How about that?" He conjured a phrase long ago heard somewhere. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
The little boy nodded and curled into the thicker blanket, not registering the change until the strange man had gone from the room.
The matrons, severe in dress and face, melted like butter when the charming young man in black arrived to take charge of his nephew.
"A terrible mix up," He explained, sad and clean shaven, "they thought I was dead you see."
They rushed over each other to produce the boy, who lit up when he saw that his midnight visitor had indeed kept his promise. A small hand captured his as he signed the papers and held on tight as his guardian smiled, muttered Latin under his breath and got them free of the orphanage faster then any other adoption on record. Which of course it wasn't. Paper trails are so sticky.
)1930(
It was a day like any other. Harry woke up with the first light and set about making eggs and toast. Breakfast was on the table when he went to get Tom out from under his covers. The young boy was cocooned under the animated sprawl of three headed dogs that growled warningly at Harry when he reached over to wake the boy.
"Up now, Tom."
"No. G'way."
Only two months out of the orphanage and he was already forgetting the protocol, the harsh words of the matrons. He knew that Harry wouldn't be mad if grumbled or whined. And the other man would never douse him with cold water to rouse him from his bed like the matrons would.
"If you don't get out of bed, I'll have to call the tickle monster." Harry warned and already Tom could feel cold fingers prying their way under the comforter.
"Noooo!" He shrieked and bounced out of bed, wide-awake and rumpled.
He blinked. Harry was staring at him as he sometimes did. It usually made Tom squirm. There was something cold about that stare, remote. Today it softened quicker then before and Harry was lifting him over one shoulder amid further vocal protests.
They ate breakfast together with the radio on. Harry had carefully explained to Tom the difference between wizards and muggles one night, instead of a bedtime story. Tom preferred the stories, but Harry said he would understand why it was important when he was older. In any case, he liked the radio, the music was pretty and the voices that read the news soothing. Sometimes Harry read a paper that had been delivered by owl or one that the local newsboy had thrown on the step. Tom preferred the owl borne papers because the pictures moved and sometimes made faces at him when Harry wasn't looking.
A quick wash and Tom's favorite time of day was upon them. They would go out to the backyard and Harry would take out a beautiful broom that he called 'a lazy antique' under his breath. With Tom seated before him, they would rise into the sky and the whole town would spread out below them. The whole trip was only seven or eight minutes long, before they landed at The Nursery for Precocious Youth.
Madame Gylan always greeted them with a frown.
"Really, Mr. Drover. " She said every morning as they set down. "I don't think that is suitable transport for a young child."
"Oh, Madame Gylan, a good morning to you too." Then he would wink at Tom, before leaning down to say,
"I'll pick you up at three."
"Promise?" Tom asked everyday though the fear from the first weeks had faded.
"On my life." Up again and already taking to the sky. "And a good day to you Madame!"
"That man." Madame Gylan would always say as she escorted Tom into the small class. "He's incorrigible."
As Harry shopped for dinner, picking up the ready to make dinners he relied on, he realized that he was going to have to find something to do. No one would believe his independently wealthy bachelor story without any past to back it up. It was a fortunate thing that Tom looked so much like him or he probably already would have been closely scrutinized when he enrolled the child in school.
With a frightening chill, Harry understood just how entrenched in this plot he had become. When he had first taken Tom from the orphanage, he had planned on finding a nice family to adopt him and hope that that would be enough of a shift. But Tom was already such a distrusting child and he had fallen asleep on him on the way home from the orphanage, thick black lashes sooty on one thin cheek.
It brought back the memories that never quite stayed buried. Of a cupboard and insubstantial meals and the sick feeling that there was no end in sight. Tom trusted him, counted on him to be there for him at the end of every dayƒHarry tried to remember having any adult he trusted that much and failed. It would be criminal to take it away from the boy. Probably counter productive to saving the boyÍs life in the first place.
That day in the marketplace, Harry said goodbye to his future in his own time and reconciled himself to building a new life out of nothing. No, not nothing. He already had a family. Tom was a good boy, inquisitive, intelligent and much to Harry's surprise, good-natured when shown kindness. It had taken years to turn Tom to Voldemort, years that would now be filled with something besides gray walls and near animal conditions.
Tom never saw Harry staring coldly at him again.
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