Chapter Text
The first light of dawn hits a plain, nondescript office block in south London. Morning commute noises drift into the air—public buses creaking between stops, cars honking, children chattering on their morning walk to school.
Inside one of the drab, low-slung office buildings exists a forgotten, dusty supply cupboard on the second floor.
Inside the supply cupboard, Tom Riddle opens his eyes.
He wakes, clutching his yew wand in his left hand. As he adjusts to his surroundings, the first thing he notices is that he’s been sleeping on a hard cold floor. He’s definitely not in his bed in the Slytherin sixth year boys’ dorm. He sees warm and bright golden light filtering in from a crack under a door.
The last thing Tom remembers is sneaking down to the Chamber after doing Prefect rounds on a stormy January night, the snowfall settling around the Hogwarts grounds in puffy drifts.
Has he been kidnapped? He checks his outer limbs—he’s not restrained and is able to sit up. He’s still wearing the Gaunt family ring that he stole from Morfin last summer, so presumably he hasn’t been strip-searched and robbed.
He listens closely to his surroundings—there’s some faint whirring and buzzing noises coming from outside the door that he doesn’t recognize—nothing that sounds remotely Muggle, but it doesn’t sound magical either.
Tom casts a Lumos and is able to take a look at his surroundings. He’s in some sort of a supply cupboard with lots of cardboard boxes and some mops and buckets stacked in a corner. Nothing that looks like Hogwarts. Where the fuck is he?
He casts a Locus to see where he’s at. The glowing words appear in front of him. 41-43 Vauxhall St, London, UK. He’s back at Wool’s Orphanage? He knows every inch of Wool’s, having plumbed all its secret hiding holes after living there for 17 years, but he does not recognize anything on the inside of this cupboard. And the floor is completely different. He’s currently on a laminated tile floor, not the scratched-up varnished wood that constituted the flooring at Wool’s.
With an increasingly panicked feeling of disbelief, he casts a Tempus to see when he’s at. It’s 7:32 in the morning on May 2, 1998.
What the fuck. The last date he remembers is January 9, 1944.
He feels a bubble of hysteria start to well up. He casts a noise-muffling charm on himself just in time, before he starts breathing in great panicked gasps of air (he refuses to call it something as undignified as hyperventilating).
By the time he calms down, his sharp mind has quickly narrowed down the options. He methodically ticks through the most likely scenarios:
(1) He was a hostage kept under a Statis spell and lost 54 years’ of time (not likely since he’s not restrained and has his own wand);
(2) A time-travel magical accident (also not likely because he’s not a dolt with magic, and the known bounds of time magic should not have been able to move him 54 years into the future);
Or, (3) he got resurrected (he pauses on the last one).
After the mudblood’s death last spring, he suspects Dumbledore has been monitoring him with a combination of surveillance spells tied to his Trace. But since he turned 17 a little over a week ago, the Trace no longer applies, so he had been waiting for a window like this January evening where he could sneak down to the Chamber and create his first Horcrux.
He doesn’t know if he’s succeeded, but being here in 1998 might be some sign that it’s... worked?
Tom has spent the last year and a half reading every scrap he could on Horcruxes... yet... what seems odd is that if he was killed and his soul bound to the earth by a Horcrux, he is supposed to be in spirit form until he finds a physical body to occupy, rather than already fully restored and corporeal.
At the very least, he knows that something pivotal must have happened on January 9 such that he got resurrected with only his memories up through that date.
And then something else pivotal happened on May 2, 1998, such that he was resurrected on this date.
But why here—in the hated Wool’s Orphanage of all places—rather than at Hogwarts which is where he last was? He considers, I was born here, so perhaps it’s appropriate that my rebirth is here. Satisfied with this explanation for now, he starts getting to his feet and decides to venture forth and explore.
--
As Tom stands up, he sees that he’s in his school robes. Wool’s is in the middle of Muggle London, so he takes off his robes and shrinks them down, tucking them into his trousers. He hopes the trousers and button-down shirt that constitutes the rest of his school uniform is passable in present-day London.
He charms the supply cupboard door one-way transparent and sees the morning sunrise filtering in through the windows.
Tom surveys with a calculating gaze this strange place that has replaced Wool’s, the place of his birth and childhood torments and prison until he turned 17. He had been planning to come back a few years after his Hogwarts graduation and burn it down anyway, preferably with some of his tormentors trapped inside.
He does not recognize the surroundings. It’s clearly an office but not anything that he recognizes as an office in 1944. There’s a banner on the wall that proudly proclaims “SiliconTechHubUK.com — Est. 1997, IPO 1998.” He has no idea what those words mean.
There are waist-high beige plastic boxes on the floor and smaller beige plastic boxes with black squares on top of beige plastic desks, all emitting faint mechanical beeps and chimes. He hears soft whirring noises as bright white paper shoots out from one of the large beige boxes. He recognizes what looks like telephones, but smaller than the telephone in Mrs. Cole’s office, on the beige desks.
Muggle innovation, he thinks, wonder prevailing over disgust. He’s a bit spellbound by the extent of all of it. In the last 54 years, they’ve torn down the orphanage and replaced the shabby interior with all these boxy new inventions. He gets a flurry of excitement at what new spells the wizarding world has created, and then a stab of annoyance that he missed out on the creation of any of these new spells. He wonders what’s happened to Tom Riddle in the last 54 years—what he’s achieved and how far he’s gone in his journey to conquer death.
He looks around and only sees 1 person in sight, but she’s more than 30 feet away and not looking at the cupboard door. Good, he wouldn’t need to stun her—he doesn’t want to leave a trail by carelessly assaulting a Muggle that might easily lead back to him.
With empty pockets, he’ll just have to get coin the way he knows best—by nicking Muggle money, and converting it to Galleons. He casts a mild Muggle-repelling spell in his direction and casts Accio money. He’s expecting shillings and pence, and doesn’t recognize the denominations of papers and coins that fly over, the paper bills illustrated with an aged Queen Elizabeth’s face, but he figures he can nick a few handfuls, and then bring it over to Gringotts to see where they convert at.
Tom quickly scans the floor for an exit. He knows the way to wizarding London from Wool’s, having taken the trip by himself dozens of times before. He sees glass doors in front of the woman at the end of the floor.
She stands up to walk over to one of the large beige boxes that’s spitting papers out. With a shock, he realizes she’s wearing trousers (trousers!) like a man, and the trousers are fitted tight to her legs with no room to spare. She’s also wearing a top that looks like a lacy undergarment that leaves her shoulders bare (bared! shoulders!) and the gentle curves of the top of her bosom are left exposed.
Tom is no prude, but he is shocked at how much Muggle fashion has changed. He wonders if wizarding fashion has evolved similarly quickly, and how out of date his current robes might look.
Tom shoots a Confundus spell in the woman’s direction and quickly walks off the floor without her noticing anything strange, and down the stairs, and out the front door.
--
May 2nd is a sunny day in late spring with a warm gentle breeze. London is no longer at war or under siege by the Germans. Yet the once-familiar London streets are still overwhelming with all the changes since the mid-1940s.
Tom quickly walks the well-trod route to the entrance to Knockturn Alley—it’s more discreet than the entrance to Diagon Alley. He is still in information-gathering mode but mostly blocks out the changes to people’s fashions (aside from taking note that both men and women seem to be wearing little more than undergarments these days).
He doesn’t feel the dense weight of war permeating the surroundings—London is different from the war-torn setting of 1944 post-blitz. No rubble and collapsed buildings; sleeker cars; more foreigners.
Before long he notices small clusters of people gathered on the sidewalks who are clearly magical, whispering excitedly to each other. He catches a flash of a wand being tucked away, and the swirl of wizarding robes whipped around following an Apparition. To his relief, wizarding fashions have not changed at all. Has the Statue of Secrecy been loosened? Why are all these people on the streets where Muggles can clearly see them—is the wizarding population no longer afraid of Muggles?
He casually strolls by one of the groups close enough to catch snippets of their conversation.
“—Harry Potter—”
“—yes, that’s right, it all happened at Hogwarts—”
“—defeated You-Know-Who for the second time—”
“—our Savior!—”
Tom is deep in thought trying to piece together the random snatches of conversation that he misses almost getting bowled over by a tiny elderly wizard in a bowler hat. The wizard’s face splits into a grin, and he hugs Tom, declaring in a squeaky voice, “It’s happened again! The Boy Who Lived carried out his legacy and defeated the most evil Dark Lord of our time! You-Know-Who is gone at last!”
Tom freezes. The tiny wizard chuckles, and then squeaks at him, “You look Hogwarts-age yourself, my boy! It’s all over the Prophet’s front page—the second fall of the Dark Lord!”
Tom shakes off the elderly wizard and walks away without responding. Ice fills Tom’s chest. Tom has made it no secret amongst his closest band of followers in Slytherin house that he plans to consolidate power as the next Dark Lord of the wizarding world, and already came up with a title that they’ve started to use in secret amongst themselves—Lord Voldemort.
But the street revelers haven’t used the word “Voldemort” or “Grindelwald” or revealed anything of substance at all. Again, his quick mind has narrowed down the possibilities to 3 options:
(1) Grindelwald is the Dark Lord that’s been twice defeated (but he’s never heard anyone refer to Grindelwald as ‘You-Know-Who’);
(2) A third unknown Dark Lord rose to power in the last 50 years (but that means multiple Dark Lords operating within 1 region within a 50-year span which is... pretty statistically unlikely);
Or... (3) this is too much of a coincidence to not have something to do with Tom.
Tom considers the possibility that he is connected to the Dark Lord who was defeated twice, the latest being this morning. And if that’s what triggered his rebirth in the closet at Wool’s.
He clamps down on the panic that’s now flooding his chest, and forces himself to listen to more of the excited chatter. Harry Potter is cited again by name, along with some hushed whispers about a ‘prophecy’.
He needs to find out who this Harry Potter is.
--
Tom is too agitated to finish the rest of the trip on foot. He takes the risk of being spotted and apparates the rest of the way to the run-down newsagent that marks the entrance to Knockturn Alley. There, he slips behind a stack of boxes and into an alcove that opens up to Knockturn.
Once he’s in Knockturn, he notices that it’s quieter than he remembers.
There’s movement in the shadows—hushed figures under heavy cloaks darting between the dark twists and turns of the alley—skittering sounds echoing along the empty cobblestone streets—and the mood is subdued.
Casting a Disillusionment charm on himself, Tom slips behind a newsstand, and checking for anti-theft alarms, he nicks a copy of the Daily Prophet and tucks himself into a dark alcove off the main street.
Enormous block text fills the entire top half of the front page—THE DARK LORD DEFEATED.
Below the fold, there are 2 hastily-snapped smudgy photos. On the left, a grimy Harry Potter with his arms crossed, bruised and battered and covered in battle dust, glaring defiantly into the camera. On the right, a crumbling Hogwarts, with large chunks missing and ugly black scorch marks marring its turrets.
Tom’s chest twists, seeing his beloved Hogwarts battle-scarred and broken.
Tom scans the accompanying Daily Prophet article quickly. The Prophet has printed a timeline of the invasion of Hogwarts and promises in coming days to publish play-by-play eyewitness accounts of the final battle, culminating in the last confrontation between Harry Potter, hailed as the “Wizarding’s World’s Savior”, and the still anonymous Dark Lord.
Tom flips through the entire May 2 issue with increasing frustration and agitation—this low-budget kindling material that passes for a newspaper is stubbornly refusing to print any identifier or name for who this Dark Lord is (only referring to this person as “The” Dark Lord).
He considers how he can go about finding the identity of this nameless Dark Lord—the uncertainty about what has happened is eating away at him. If this event had nothing to do with Tom, it’s too much of a coincidence that he wakes up 54 years in the future, the morning right after the previous Dark Lord’s downfall.
--
The Daily Prophet has also included a timeline of Harry Potter’s life. Tom is shocked to see that the vanquisher of the Dark Lord (notably, a Dark Lord who’s struck fear into the hearts of the British wizarding community since the late 1960s) is but 17 years old. Tom also sees that Harry Potter allegedly defeated an attack by the same Dark Lord at the age of 1 that left him an orphan and forced the Dark Lord to go underground for the next 10 years.
Just how powerful is this Harry Potter?
Tom imagines—at his current age of 17—taking on Grindelwald who’s been rampaging around the European continent and who even Dumbledore refuses to face. Then forces himself to stop imagining it, not thrilled to admit that his magical abilities at this point could be surpassed by another wizard.
Tom still feels like there’s so much context missing. He has to uncover as much as he can about the unnamed Dark Lord and how powerful Harry Potter is. He mentally puts together a checklist. He needs to acquire recent wizarding history books, back issues of the thus-far useless Daily Prophet, and ideally, Harry Potter’s school, medical, and banking records. Tom considers disguising himself and just asking someone the name of the Dark Lord, and then obliviating them afterwards (but this carries too high of risk, and Tom does not want to draw attention to himself in this new world before he’s ready).
Tom needs information first, then he can properly plan his next steps.
The back issues of all the Daily Prophet editions are located at their headquarters in Diagon Alley, in the records department in the Ministry, and in the library at Hogwarts. The Magical Menagerie might stock unsold issues as pygmy puff cage liners, but those don’t go back more than a few weeks.
Tom doesn’t relish breaking into the Ministry or Hogwarts at this point. Which just leaves the Daily Prophet headquarters. Not for the first time, he bemoans Wizarding Britain’s lack of a public library. If he’s to become Supreme Dictator and Dark Overlord of the Wizarding World, a public library would be one of the first things he’d establish.
Tom steels himself for visiting the hubbub of Diagon Alley, where The Daily Prophet and Flourish & Blotts will be his best resources.
He’ll figure out some other way to visit Hogwarts later on.
--
Diagon Alley is in chaos.
One glance across the cheering crowds gathered in the streets in revelry, and he knows his Disillusionment won’t last as someone is bound to bump straight into him. Since he’s removing his Disillusionment charm, he needs to take the extra precaution of altering his appearance. He ducks into a back alley and casts a light Glamour, and unshrinks his school robes and casts a temporary transfiguration to them to look like regular robes.
Then he strides into Diagon Alley straight into the heart of the jovial celebrations, in as bland of a Glamour as he can manage, ears alert to any news about the Dark Lord.
--
Tom catches snippets of conversation from the revelers that cue him into which topics to search for once he’s reached the Daily Prophet.
He knows Harry Potter was a student at Hogwarts up until last year and that the Dark Lord personally killed Potter’s parents. He knows Dumbledore is dead, slayed by the Dark Lord’s forces (Yes!, he internally cheers with a vicious sense of triumph). He knows the Dark Lord’s followers are called the Death Eaters.
But he still, frustratingly, does not know the identity of the Dark Lord.
On the one hand, it’s nerve-wracking to contemplate that his presence here may be connected to the side that lost. But on the other hand, Tom being flesh-and-blood alive, strolling around, is irrefutable proof that one of his immortality schemes worked, and that inference alone buoys his spirits.
--
People in the streets of Diagon Alley are bumping into him and jovially inviting him and everyone within reach to take swigs of Firewhiskey at 9am. Imbeciles, he thinks with disdain. He barely refrains from shooting off a spell to make the revelers trip and fall flat on their faces. That would draw too much attention to him.
In the chaos, he slips unnoticed into the Daily Prophet headquarters. He walks down into the basement rooms where he knows their archives are stored and casts a privacy spell around the dusty archive room.
With a research spell he invented himself—which, amongst other things, he’s used to search for additional books covering Horcruxes after first reading about them in Magick Moste Evile—he can instantly single out which issues contain certain key words. He searches for all issues containing mentions of Dark Lord, You-Know-Who, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Harry Potter, Death Eaters, Grindelwald, First Wizarding War, Second Wizarding War, and Dumbledore Obituary. The issues light up with a blue glow. With a follow-up spell, another one that he invented to aid in his research, he creates copies of all these issues, then shrinks them and sticks them in his pocket. The whole process has taken about 15 minutes.
His next stop is Flourish & Blotts in order to repeat the process in the bookstore. While the books technically have anti-theft wards and alarms on them, the enchantments don’t alert the bookstore proprietors to his browsing and copying of the manuals. He refreshes his Disillusionment charm and heads over to the Recent History section to find history books on all recent wizarding and Muggle wars.
He also copies some books on wizarding cultural trends of the last 50 years (how is Celestina Warbeck still popular, he grimaces to himself) and, a cover story forming in his mind, travel guides on Switzerland. And, with another grimace, recent editions of Witch Weekly and Wizard Enquirer magazines.
He invented the two-part spell out of necessity in his third year and has never shared with anyone else. His little secret for amassing and hoarding an infinite amount of free knowledge as a penniless orphan who had no knowledge of the wizarding world before the age of 11.
--
Tom’s last stop for the day is Gringotts. As he does not have any gold or assets to his name, he does not have a vault to withdraw from. He instead heads to one of the automated Exchange Scales balanced on a counter near the entrance. He digs out the Muggle bills and coins and places them on the left-side bowl—it tips low, and the money vanishes. In an instant, in the other bowl, wizarding coins materialize.
Just 1 Galleon and 12 Knuts appear. He briefly wonders if the conversion rate has stayed pegged to the British shilling or if they’re on a floating exchange rate now. He’ll do the calculations on the conversion rate later.
(Later, he is horrified to discover that Galleon exchange rates are pegged to what’s now considered the global reserve currency—the American Muggle dollar—he’s not sure which part is worse. Full decoupling of the wizarding world’s economy and currency from the Muggle economy will surely be his next agenda item after setting up a public library.)
In any case, he knows that 1 Galleon won’t get him very far in terms of shelter and basic necessities—he’ll have to nick some more coin from the Muggle world.
He’s also coming to the realization that, at least for now, he should find a place to stay in Muggle London, rather than in Knockturn Alley. Tom yearns to be enveloped by and soaked in magic, but he knows the safest place to stay, where no one will track his movements, will be in Muggle London.