Chapter Text
Unbearable headache. It’s all Tom can think about.
His consciousness flutters, in and out. Something thuds in his ears. It feels a lot like waking up after drinking too much Firewhisky, though after one miscalculated evening, he had decided he’d never do that again. His dorm‑mates may still not have learned their limits, but Tom knows his. And he never crosses them.
Even if his current state heavily suggests that he has.
All he can see is dark, blurred colours. He tries to sit up, but realises his weight is already on his feet. He’s standing, somehow, though his body feels oddly weightless.
The painful thudding slows down, like a dying heartbeat, but the odd, dreamy feeling in his head doesn’t go away. The fuzzy colours around him settle, and his vision sharpens, clarifying his surroundings as the world around him weaves itself together.
He’s not standing in the Slytherin dorms, that much is clear at first glance. It’s not the Chamber of Secrets either. Tom remembers spending his evening there, petting the beautiful scales of the ancient Basilisk and planning how to best announce the return of the Heir of Slytherin. The rest is an impalpable blur of events that now seem more like a distant dream than memories.
He’s wearing his school robes and the green striped tie, but the place he’s currently standing in doesn’t even remotely resemble the castle. It looks like a fancy, albeit neglected, bedroom, with a large window looking over a residential street lit by overly bright lampposts that colour the room a lifeless blue.
When Tom’s legs start to obey him again, he turns around to scan the room. Only then does he realise he’s not alone.
A messy-looking man sits on the edge of the king-size bed. Thirty years old at most, dressed in dreadful, baggy clothes, unlike anything Tom has ever seen. Definitely not a wizard, which makes the situation stranger. While they stare at each other, Tom inconspicuously reaches for the wand pocket sewn into his robes, only to find it empty.
How can it be? He never goes anywhere without it. He swallows and tightens his face to make sure his expression stays neutral, to avoid revealing his disadvantage. Unarmed, in an unknown place, with an unknown man. It’s not the ideal position to find oneself, but at least the man doesn’t look too dangerous.
The Muggle just stares, like some lobotomised loony. Lips parted but silent. Eyes wide, partially hidden behind smudged, round glasses and untidy, overgrown black hair. He looks surprised. Stunned, really.
One of his hands is clenched tightly into a fist. It currently rests non-threateningly on his lap, but crazy people can be unpredictable. Tom is not naive, not like most wizards—he has seen all kinds of people on the streets of London. He knows what those pathetic, magicless vermin can do if they set their simple minds to it.
He glances at a large Victorian dresser next to him, or specifically the ornamented cast-iron candelabrum sitting on top of it. Heavy enough to grab and use as a weapon if the situation escalates. He draws a sharp breath to compose himself and breaks the silence as calmly as he can.
“And who might you be?” he asks with his kindest, most charming voice, which he rarely bothers to waste on some insignificant tramps.
The man blinks. He raises an empty hand, and Tom twitches towards his improvised weapon, but the man only scratches his scruffy stubble. Then he speaks, or rather grumbles: “You’re not Voldemort.”
Tom’s perfectly crafted smile falls off.
It’s about the last sentence he expected to hear. Especially since he has never mentioned that name aloud, except perhaps to his secret diary, which has more protection spells than pages. There’s no way some random Muggle would know about it.
It makes no sense.
“I beg your pardon?” he blurts.
“You’re not—” The man clamps his mouth shut, then shakes his head. “What the fuck?” he suddenly exclaims, his face twisting into a mixture of terror and disbelief.
Is he dangerous? Still hard to tell.
Tom straightens his posture and takes a step back. “I don’t know who you think—”
“Why do you look like that?” the man interrupts.
“I—like what?” Tom asks, flustered by the audacious questions.
Why is he even humouring this stupid Muggle? Tom suddenly remembers he doesn’t need a wand—he might not yet be an expert at wandless magic, but it would be like fighting an ant when the opponent doesn’t even know magic exists. He visualises the first offensive spell that comes to mind and waves his hand to make it happen.
But it doesn’t happen.
Tom doesn’t feel the surge inside his veins—the soothing flow of magic that gives him his power. He doesn’t feel anything.
He tries again.
Nothing.
Nothing?
“What did you do to me?” he hisses at the man, though he barely hears his own voice as he desperately tries to call forth any magical spark with no results.
Whatever plans he had before get thrown into the backline as he fixates on the new goal: He’s going to kill the man, and right now he feels like he won’t even need any magic to do it—the anger must be blazing in his eyes, making his stare scalding enough to kill.
“I haven’t—” the man starts, raising his voice. He looks at his fist, brows furrowed. “This is not what I had in mind.”
“That much is obvious,” Tom seethes, glancing at the candelabrum again, contemplating whether to knock the man in the head with it now or later. “A stupid Muggle like you wouldn’t be able to do this deliberately even if you tried!”
“I’m not a Muggle, you racist little shit,” the man replies, knocking over empty glass bottles on the floor as he shoots up, both hands clenched into tight fists.
Through the reddish haze of anger, Tom barely notices an emblem depicting crossed wands on the front of the man’s shirt, earlier hidden by the baggy jacket.
Something in his head clicks, and he realises he has seen it before.
And then he realises he might have misjudged the situation, just a little bit. Although, in his defence, this man hardly resembles the other Aurors he’s seen carry the emblem on their uniforms, so it’s not exactly his fault.
The red fog dissipates a little. Tom clears his throat and tries his best to dismiss the whole hitting-the-man-in-the-head idea. Getting in trouble with Aurors could eventually open a whole can of worms—a can that could do terrible things to his reputation as a respectable Hogwarts prefect with a spotless record.
He straightens his posture and clasps his hands, partly to appear calm and proper, partly to keep himself from doing anything he might regret later.
Perhaps there is an explanation for all this, after all.
“I apologise for misspeaking, sir,” he says, forcing a tight, almost pleasant smile, which sharply contradicts the murderous plans his instincts are still supplying him with. “The surprise got the best of me. What exactly is going on here, if I may ask?”
“I think I… summoned you?” the Auror says.
“Why? How?”
“I tried to summon… someone else.”
It doesn’t explain anything, but Tom pretends to accept it. “All right, Mr Auror. We all make mistakes.”
“It’s Potter,” the Auror says with an odd expression. “Harry Potter.”
Tom takes a deep breath. He couldn’t care less about the name of the man right now when there are much more important questions, like: what the hell is happening, or if the plan involving the candelabrum is truly ruled out?
Tom has read about vanishing charms. They seem suitable for evidence removal, though casting one on a dead body requires a powerful spellcaster. Which Tom undoubtedly is, just not right now.
Perhaps murder is not the ideal solution.
They stare at each other for a painfully stretched moment. The Auror seems to expect a reply or something, so Tom grits his teeth and complies.
“Tom Riddle,” Tom introduces himself, because that’s what people do, and takes a better look around the room.
It’s messy. The decor is an odd mix of beautiful antiques and simple geometric boxes pretending to be furniture, all laid over the most tasteless rug he’s ever seen. The photographs on the dresser confirm what he already suspected—this must be the Auror’s home.
“A very beautiful bedroom you have here, Auror Potter,” he says smoothly, wondering why there’s a large, black slab of shiny bakelite hanging on the wall. “Would you mind doing your job and figuring out why I’m in it?”
“Don’t you recognise me?” Auror Potter asks, his brows still deeply furrowed, nicely complementing his look of pained disbelief.
“From… where?”
“From before.”
“When before?” Tom’s voice remains calm, but his patience is beginning to fray.
“How old are you?” Potter asks, abruptly changing the subject.
Tom’s questions go unanswered. He maintains his smile, though it’s starting to feel more like a forced mask, stretching his features to their limits. “I am sixteen, sir. I am in my fifth year at Hogwarts. And I should like to return there as soon as possible. I have responsibilities that require my undivided attention. Such as the exams that could affect my future as the Head Boy, and possibly my future career.”
And setting free a thousand-year-old basilisk. And figuring out the practical side of the Horcrux creation process.
He might as well have spoken those thoughts aloud, for all the attention the Auror is paying him. “What… year is it now?” Potter asks, his voice as distant as his stare.
Tom blinks. “It’s 1943, sir. Should we send an owl to St Mungo's if you’re experiencing early signs of senile dementia? It’s important to—”
“What the bloody hell,” the demented Auror Potter breathes, covering his hand worriedly. He stands up and starts pacing in front of the bed.
He looks mad.
The atmosphere is shifting into somewhat… threatening again. There’s a pile of dynamite somewhere in Auror Potter’s head with a burning fuse, slowly counting down to the impending explosion, and Tom needs to get out before it happens.
“If that’s all, I’ll… go get help, then,” Tom says quietly.
He locates the door, but the moment he takes a step towards it, Potter halts and starts staring at him again.
“Why do you look… solid?” he asks.
“I am solid, sir,” Tom replies patiently, as if explaining something obvious to a child. It feels like the craziness is contagious and starting to catch him, too. “That is the state in which physical matter generally chooses to manifest, unless manipulated by magic.”
Has Potter tried to cast some kind of spell on him?
“But you can’t be,” Potter says, shaking his head. “No. You can’t be. My parents… Sirius… they weren’t like this.”
Tom gives a thin smile. “I assure you, nobody is like me.”
Potter frowns, rubbing his forehead. He seems to be deep in thought, so it seems like a good moment to slip out.
“In any case, I should fetch help for you. Wait here, if you would…”
Tom takes a step towards the door, and when Potter does nothing to stop him, he keeps going and grabs the golden handle. Touching it feels strange somehow. For a moment, he thinks it’s got some kind of spell or a curse on it, or perhaps the trigger to that pile of dynamite, but the latch clicks, and the door swings open like any ordinary door.
He enters a cramped, dimly lit corridor filled with identical doors, ending in a run-down staircase. Tom descends two flights, but the floors seem endless, each corridor lined with the same dark wooden doors. Halfway down the third set of stairs, he finally spots what looks like a foyer—and likely the way out—but as his foot touches the last stair, everything goes dark.
Quickly, the darkness turns into blurred colours, which then shift into a too-real image of Auror Potter.
Tom finds himself standing in the bedroom he’d just left behind.
“What is this?” he asks, looking around, alarmed.
There must be some kind of spell preventing him from leaving after all. It doesn’t seem like official Auror business, and Tom starts eyeing the candlestick again.
“A containment charm?” he speculates out loud, hoping to get a hint from his kidnapper. “I have committed no crime, but if you intend to accuse me of something, Auror Potter, it would be far more appropriate to escort me to the Ministry than to lock me in your private residence.”
“I’m not doing anything!” Potter sputters defensively. “It’s not me. I—uh—think you might be… What you might not realise is that you’re… deceased.”
“Be that as it may,” Tom says, waving off the man's delusions with a flick of his wrist, “abducting a young wizard of my standing and sequestering him in your bedroom is entirely inappropriate. Unless you release me at once, I shall file an official complaint with—”
“Do you know what this is?” Potter interrupts and opens his clenched hand, revealing a black stone sitting on his palm.
Tom swallows his rising distress with a long inhale and peers closer. It’s a cracked gemstone with a symbol carved into it. He’s certainly never seen it before.
“Should I?” he asks warily, quickly adding, “It’s not mine,” in case it’s the reason why the man is keeping him here.
“It’s a Resurrection Stone,” Potter says, rubbing his stubble again. “It’s supposed to bring back the dead. Or rather, shades of their spirits from the afterlife. But it doesn’t truly resurrect anyone. It only works for as long as it’s held.”
“I see,” Tom says, nodding slowly, even though the point of all this remains entirely elusive. He’s always been interested in magical artefacts, and the Resurrection Stone doesn’t sound like just any trinket, even if it looks like a harmless, shiny pebble.
He feels a sudden urge to steal it.
That would be unwise, though. Or would it? Auror Potter wouldn’t dare to report it, because then he would have to confess he likes to kidnap innocent minors in his free time.
“And?” Tom prompts after a while. Perhaps he can use this to acquire more blackmail material.
Potter meets his eyes, looking grim. “I’m holding it. And you’re the shade.”
The Auror keeps rambling nonsense. The conversation isn’t going anywhere. Tom stretches his fingers impatiently and tries to summon forth even a tiny little spark of magic. Nothing happens. The containment charm holding him here must be blocking it as well.
It makes him feel very alone.
Vulnerable, in a way he hasn’t felt in a very long time.
He decides to humour the crazy man. It seems like the best course of action. Perhaps, if he plays along, he can find a suitable moment to snatch the stone and escape.
“I understand,” he says.
“You understand?” Potter asks, dumbfounded.
Tom wishes he knew what the man expects from him. It would make playing this make-believe much easier if he knew his role.
He nods. “I’m sure you wouldn’t lie to me, Auror Potter, so it must be true. I have great respect for our law enforcement. You do such difficult and demanding work to keep us all safe. Could you explain the situation, so we might work together and find a solution to this?”
Potter frowns. “You don’t believe me.”
Tom bites his cheek, barely able to contain his frustration. “I just said I do,” he tries to assure him, but knows his annoyance is starting to seep through the words.
“Doesn’t matter,” Potter mumbles and pushes his glasses onto his forehead to rub his tired eyes. “You’re not what I wanted to see anyway… I’ll just try again.”
The words sound fateful, but before Tom can say or do anything, Potter stretches out his arm over the bed and opens his palm, letting the stone slip onto the pillow.
Suddenly, something is ripped out of Tom’s body. The sensation lasts only a heartbeat before it vanishes—but the fleeting pain takes something with it.
The faint sweet smell of the room disappears, and the colours fade. The sounds become distant, like filtered through a long, echoing pipe.
Tom lifts his hands, staring at them in disbelief. They are translucent, insubstantial. His whole form has thinned into a shade, fainter even than the ghosts at Hogwarts.
It’s a nightmare. The worst nightmare he’s ever had. Tom can’t breathe—not that breathing seems to matter any more. His chest rises and falls, but it feels hollow. There’s no air moving in his lungs. He stares at his ghostly hands in a desperate attempt to will them back into flesh.
Nothing happens.
“No,” he whispers in disbelief. He clenches his fists, but even that simple act feels flimsy. Panic threatens to overtake his thoughts, but he twists it into rage instead.
He turns his eyes to Potter, who is still staring at him with that stupid, dumbfounded expression. “What have you done to me? This isn’t real.”
It’s not happening. His worst fears can’t manifest like this, like an extremely powerful Boggart using his own body to play its tricks.
It must be Potter’s fault. He’s doing something, perhaps in an attempt to manipulate Tom, to make him confess to something. It can’t be accidental, because Potter isn’t even sorry.
“Why are you still here!?” the Auror suddenly shouts, as if Tom is the guilty party in this mess. “I—I dropped the stone!”
Tom is speechless, momentarily incapacitated by terror and the sheer brazenness of Potter’s accusatory tone. But with all the anger boiling in his see-through chest, his silence doesn’t last long.
“Why am I—? I believe we have far more pressing problems,” Tom snaps, barely managing to keep the fear of death from paralysing him completely. “The last thing I remember is Hogwarts. Then I wake in your bedroom, and now I can bloody see through myself. I think you owe me an explanation! And a solution, while you’re at it!”
Potter sighs, exasperated, as though he’s the one trapped in a ghostly body. He ruffles his ugly, overgrown hair and paces back and forth beside the bed. Then he stops by the pillow and, after a moment’s hesitation, picks up the stone he’d dropped a minute ago. He fiddles with it, and suddenly Tom feels something settle inside him.
Surprisingly, his hands look solid again, and a gust of relief blows away the tight knot that was squeezing his lungs. He touches his chest lightly to make sure it’s there.
It was simply a trick. Tom is not sure if he should be relieved or just angrier.
“Good job, Auror Potter,” Tom says through his perfectly fabricated smile. “Well done. Now, if you would—”
But Potter opens his palm again, and the stone slips onto the pillow, turning Tom back into a shade.
Unpleasant is not nearly a powerful enough word to describe the sensation of being suddenly pushed out of the plane of existence. It’s dreadful. Sickening.
“Would you stop?” Tom snarls.
“This is what I tried to tell you,” Potter says in a hesitant tone. “You’re… well, dead. The Resurrection Stone…”
The end of the sentence drowns beneath a sharp, high-pitched ringing inside Tom’s skull. There it is again, the word that keeps haunting him. It floats on the edge of his mind, trying to break its way through the thick walls around Tom’s consciousness, to force him to acknowledge it.
Dead.
But it sounds so wrong. He wouldn’t suddenly just die—he’s only sixteen years old. Besides, he only remembers going to sleep. Or, well, he doesn’t exactly remember that. It’s more like a collection of hazy images of daily life at Hogwarts. Either way, he’d remember if he died.
Tom decides not to accept it.
He can’t.
He was just about to make a Horcrux to prevent this from happening. There’s no way he died right before accomplishing it. And even if, in theory, he did die, a part of him is somehow still here. So clearly it didn’t quite stick.
Perhaps he managed to create the Horcrux after all, and this is simply how it works. Experimenting with such complicated magic isn’t as straightforward as one could hope, and the books were quite unclear about the details of coming back to life.
It’s not ideal, but it’s a reality Tom can work with.
He takes a deep breath and quickly fixes the unacceptable lapse in his mental defences, forcing all the unpleasant feelings into one of the tiny imaginary boxes he’s been collecting since he was a child. He buries it in the pit where they belong and focuses on the essential.
“The Resurrection Stone,” he repeats, keeping his eyes tightly on Potter to avoid looking at his own translucent limbs. “You wish to resurrect me, then?”
“Absolutely not,” Potter’s reply comes so fast it almost shoots right through Tom’s newly repaired defences.
“Excuse me?”
“And even if I did, I told you—the stone doesn’t really resurrect. It calls forth spirits and keeps them tethered, but only for as long as the stone is held.”
“You’re not holding the stone right now,” Tom points out.
“Yeah,” Potter says, furrowing his brows as he looks at the stone lying on the pillow. “I don’t know what that’s about.”
“When you used it, it did give me back my…” The words get stuck in Tom’s throat, and he has to cough to get them out. “Body.”
“I suppose. It’s never happened with them before,” Potter mumbles. He must be talking about someone else he’d used the stone to see.
“What happened with them?”
“They only appear for a while, and they look like how you look right now. Never quite so… solid. Or quite as…”
He gestures at Tom, whatever it means. But it’s good enough proof against Potter’s clueless theory. Clearly, Tom is not dead if he appears so much stronger than the others. Or he’s just that much better of a ghost than the others. Either way, there’s no reason this situation has to be a permanent one.
The magic of the stone is obviously the key.
“Well, then. We can find a way to make me permanently solid again. It’s the least you can do after—“
“No.”
Tom clamps his mouth shut and blinks.
No??
“You cannot be serious,” he says, barely containing himself. “As an Auror, it’s your duty to help innocent people like—”
“Cut the crap,” Potter interrupts. “I’m not going to bring you back. Not after everything you have done, there’s no way.”
But Tom hasn’t even done anything. The small experiments at the orphanage don’t count—all magical children experience some unfortunate accidental magic. Besides, nobody cares about some worthless Muggles. And all the things he’s done at Hogwarts have been just necessary steps to put him on equal footing with the privileged Pureblood brats. To ensure his future.
It’s equality.
Besides, this random Auror couldn’t possibly know about the orphans. Or his plans. Or anything.
“And what exactly are you accusing me of?” Tom asks.
“Do you not remember anything at all? You really don’t know who I am?”
Tom sighs.
Auror Harry Potter. It truly doesn’t ring a bell. He doesn’t have any acquaintances who are that old, aside from the professors and the orphanage. Making friends with an Auror would have seemed dangerous, though possibly beneficial. He’d remember that.
“No, I don’t know who you are. I apologise if I have forgotten something, but I have met a lot of important people,” he says politely.
“Nothing about the war?”
“The war?” Tom arches a brow. “Which one? The Muggle war? Grindelwald’s?”
It would be kind of hard to forget either of those. He’d been at Hogwarts during the Blitz, but it hadn’t been exactly fun to live in London during wartime. And what kind of wizard would he be if he didn’t know about Gellert Grindelwald?
“No, I mean the wizarding wars in the 1970s and 1990s,” Potter says with a straight face.
Tom’s lips curl into a faint smile. “I don’t know what nonsense you’ve been told, Auror Potter, but even with my extraordinary talents, I’ve never wasted an ounce of effort on Divination. You can’t predict the future with tea leaves and prophecies.”
Potter snorts. “Right. Well. It’s not exactly divination…” he drifts off, looking awkward. “You know, it’s been a while since you were at school. I’m not sure what happened here, but Vol—I mean, you died in 1998.”
“I did not,” Tom argues. Because what else could one say to such a ridiculous claim?
Potter just stares quietly over his glasses. He does it rather convincingly.
Something is wrong. Tom turns his head toward the window, where he remembers seeing the weird lamp posts. He takes a few steps closer to peer into the street below, where the differently shaped vehicles fill the quiet roadside. They look nothing like the automobiles he’s seen the rich people around London drive.
The more he stares at the house on the other side of the street, the more bizarre it looks. From the large, round contraptions attached to the roof to the colourful bins sitting by the doorstep.
“And what year would it be now?” he asks without taking his eyes off the almost indisputable proof.
“It’s… 2006,” Potter replies.
“2006,” Tom repeats in disbelief.
It doesn’t sound right. It’s a made-up number.
He turns around and crosses his arms. It’s strange—he doesn’t even feel his own arms against his chest, so he quickly lets them fall back to his sides.
“If I died in 1998, I’d be over seventy. If I were a ghost right now, I’d look over seventy. Do I look like a seventy-one-year-old to you?” he asks sharply.
“I told you, you aren’t exactly who I wanted to talk to!” Potter tries to defend himself. “I don’t know what happened.”
“So you wanted the older me.” And then something went wrong.
“Kinda.” Potter shrugs and picks up the stone again.
Tom stays as a shade. He hopes it’s because Potter needs to do something to activate the stone, and not because it only worked once.
“We know each other, then?”
Potter shrugs again. “Kinda.”
Tom smirks. He’s starting to understand the situation. He’s always known he would become great and powerful. So remarkable that people still seek him out six years after he’s gone. So irreplaceable, they attempt to bring him back.
“So, what do you need me for?” Tom asks. “The… other me.”
“Information.”
“I didn’t know that Aurors interrogated people who are—” Tom still can’t bring himself to say it.
“Dead?” Potter unhelpfully finishes his sentence.
“Who are temporarily unanchored to the material plane,” Tom corrects.
“Well, I had the stone, so I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”
Potter drops onto the edge of the bed and turns the stone in his hand. Then he turns it again, and suddenly Tom’s senses sharpen, and his limbs lose their transparency. He can feel the floor under his feet again. He can see the colours more vividly again, and smell the hint of rancid whiskey in the stale air.
Potter looks at him with tired eyes and sighs loudly. He doesn’t seem to know what to do.
“I’ll help you if you help me,” Tom offers, eyes glued on the small stone which seems to give him his body but also holds him hostage.
“With what?”
“You will help me with whatever this is,” Tom says, vaguely gesturing his body and the stone. “And I’ll help you with whatever you needed the other me for.”
“How? You didn’t even know what year it is—you know nothing!”
“I know plenty.”
“You’re a child.”
“I’m not a child. And perhaps I’ll recover all my knowledge when I’m granted a… more permanent presence.”
“God, I hope not,” Potter mutters and falls on his back on the bed, his body bouncing on the springy mattress a few times before settling among the pillows and bundled duvet.
It doesn’t make much sense, considering his knowledge was the reason Potter was playing with the Resurrection Stone in the first place. The whole situation makes about as much sense as Abraxas Malfoy’s Arithmancy essays, but Potter refuses to give any adequate answers, so Tom doesn’t bother to ask. He can squeeze that information out later, after Potter has agreed to his terms.
“Well,” he tilts his head, voice light. “I’m not going anywhere, even if you drop the stone again. If you refuse to assist me, I might as well haunt you until you die.”
“Maybe I’ll chuck it into a ditch,” Potter says under his breath.
“You wouldn’t,” Tom says quickly. “I’m an innocent child, Auror Potter. You wouldn’t do that to a child.”
“You don’t even know me.”
Tom might not know him, but he knows people. He notices their flaws more easily than most, and he sees the same kindness in Potter’s eyes that he’s seen many times before. He’s learned to take advantage of the compassion and generosity that people like him often show.
Those kinds of sappy pushovers are the easiest to manipulate. Guilt will work for sure.
“As an Auror, you have an obligation to help people.”
But Potter doesn’t answer. He just lies there like a useless Flobberworm. Perhaps he’s not quite as honourable as Tom assumed.
“It’s your fault I’m here,” Tom points out. “I didn’t ask to be transported into the future.”
Nothing.
Tom rolls his eyes, and his gaze lands on the photographs on the dresser. He steps closer and reaches for one of them, half-expecting his hand to go through the wooden frame. But he’s in his solid form now, so it doesn’t, and he picks it up easily. The smiling people in it don’t move at all, but the photograph is much better than any Muggle prints he’s even seen. The colours are so bright that it looks almost alive without any magical assistance.
He recognises one of the people—the round glasses and the unruly hair clearly belong to a slightly younger version of Auror Potter. His arms are wrapped around a red-haired girl dressed in a white gown. Next to them stands another couple, a widely smiling male ginger embracing his own woman.
They look happy. There’s a glint in younger Potter’s eye that didn’t seem to make it to the current version of him.
“Wife?” Tom asks, waving the photo in the air.
Potter stops flobberworming and sits up in an instant. “Don’t touch it,” he hisses, squinting his eyes like he’s defending his territory.
Tom smirks and sets the frame back with the others.
“Perhaps I’ll haunt her instead, if you refuse to help me,” he says lightly, running his fingers along the other frames. “I assume she lives here, too? Perhaps I’ll haunt her until she becomes mad and kills herself.”
Potter lets out a low, animalistic snarl and jumps to his feet. For a second, Tom assumes he’s about to walk over and punch him in his perfectly aristocratic nose, but instead Potter strides past him and out of the room. A moment later, there’s a loud, rhythmic thump-thump-thump as he stomps down the stairs.
Tom’s world jerks violently. His vision goes black for a moment, and when it returns, he finds himself standing outside on the same street he’d glimpsed through the window. The air smells fresh, and it would be a dark night if it weren’t for the absurdly bright lamps scattered along the street.
There’s nobody around except for Potter, who’s briskly walking away from Tom with the Resurrection Stone still tightly inside his fist. Tom starts following him to avoid the unpleasant pull that seems to happen whenever he strays too far from the Stone.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“I already told you,” Potter says, but doesn’t bother to slow down. “I’ll toss you into a ditch.”