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Albus watched Harry leave with a sad smile on his wizened features. The boy had been far too young for this, far too young for all that relied on him- and Albus felt personally responsible for everything that the young mister Potter had gone through.
It was too big a cross for anyone to bear. Much less a child that had grown up with the knowledge he'd need to general a war.
The train station filled with heavy fog, thick and cloying-it rolled into every crevice and left its dirty print behind on everything.
Albus closed his eyes, he knew that now Harry was gone- the scenery would go back to what it always was for him. A trill made him open his eyes and blink and he smiled as he faced the softly trilling Fawkes. He was back in his Hogwarts office.
“Hello old friend,” he murmured as he stroked the phoenix’s bright coat.
The chair in the corner of the office rattled heavily, it bumped and slithered. The naked, flayed thing underneath it let out a long piteous moan.
Albus smiled and took three steps closer, he crouched closer to the chair and offered a hand “Harry’s gone. You can stop with the dramatics.”
The chair stopped rattling. After a pause, the thing that had looked like a mandrake with human skin stretched over it turned back into an eleven year old Tom Riddle. He was curled into a small ball, arms hugging knobby knees to his skinny chest. He was dressed in the orphanage uniform that Albus had first met him in, the coarse grey wool uniform that made him look even paler than he was.
“Come on,” Albus smiled, “I have your favorite chocolates.”
He knew that it was fairly wrong to bribe the boy with his favorite sweets but he also knew that after wearing the illusion that he so hated- Tom would only be consolable with bribery in the form of chocolates.
Harry needed to feel like there was no redeemable part of Voldemort left in the world, that was why Tom had agreed to the farce- both he and Albus knew that his future self needed to die at Harry Potter's hands. And if Harry had met the young boy, the personification of the last pure shard of Voldemort's soul- then there might have been a problem. Maybe he would have hesitated, maybe Harry would have thought twice about killing the adult Tom Riddle- either way, he would have ended up dead.
There had been no choice for Albus, not really- Harry needed to feel like he was making the only decision available to him. Maybe it was wrong and manipulative, but death had never been hailed as the last frontier of changing a man's life attitudes- and Albus was certainly too old now.
The little boy sitting still under the chair seemed like he was thinking hard about his options. His huge green eyes seemed so like Harry’s at that moment, it almost unnerved Albus to see yet another resemblance between the two young boys. Tom looked wary, defiant and more broken than a boy his age had a right to look.
Albus felt another pang at the thoughts of his biggest failure.
“Is he gone then?” the young boy finally decided to crawl out from underneath his chair. He dusted off his knees with a practiced motion and took a seat, eyeing Albus warily out of the corner of his eye.
“He is,” Albus nodded as he handed over the chocolate.
He stepped back to give Tom some space, Merlin only knew how prickly the young child was regarding boundaries.
Tom unraveled the sweet and stuck a too large piece into his mouth. He had always been like that, too eager to get to the best parts away- terrified that the good things in his life would get taken away. “You think he’ll be able to do it?” his words sounded garbled as he worked his tongue around the large piece of chocolate.
Albus frowned as he picked up a broken Sneakoscope from his desk, he turned it over again and again in his hands as he thought about the future. “We can only hope so.”
“Good,” Tom nodded and re-wrapped the rest of his chocolate for the future. He stashed the sweet in his short pocket and patted it with childlike anticipation for the next time when he would be able to savor it. “Because I don’t fancy having to explain myself to the thousands of people bound to show up if he fails.”
Albus wanted to be able to stroke the young boy’s shoulder, to show some sort of compassion for him, but he knew that Tom would freeze up at any sort of physical contact so he settled for giving the boy a smile. “I doubt that anybody would begrudge a young boy his refuge.”
Tom snorted. He sounded far too cynical for an eleven year old when he did so, “I doubt that they’d be quite as accepting of the last piece of Voldemort’s soul as you are.” He looked around leisurely for something to occupy his time with. Having spotted a deck of Exploding Snap cards stuffed in the corner of an office, Tom gave a small smile and trotted over to get them.
He had never been a particularly enthusiastic child, never one to give physical signs of joy or happiness- the most Tom had ever done was smile and even then it was still a matter of deciphering whether the smile real.
He sidled over to a chair across from Albus and began shuffling the cards “Snap?”
The former headmaster of Hogwarts shrugged “Why not dear boy? It always helps to pass the time.”
They played a few rounds in silence and then Tom spoke up once more. His eyes were firmly on his hand as he asked “Have you heard about Grindelwald?”
Albus had to physically fight down the flush from working its way up his neck. Even though the boy in front of him was in all essence eleven and innocent, he was still the ambitious and conniving Slytherin heir.
Albus would do well to remember that. He cleared his throat “What about him?”
Tom threw down two cards on the table “He’s on the eleventh level apparently, him and the two Lupins have decided to join forces and move up faster together. He keeps talking about making things right with you.”
Albus scanned his hand and sighed quietly under his breath as he extracted the needed cards and covered the ones on the table.
His thoughts though were firmly stuck on the information that Tom had just given to him. “Who told you about this?” he asked.
It was strange, even as much as of an outsider that Tom was- he still knew everything about everybody. Even the people that were currently on different levels than him. It was decidedly Slytherin of him.
Tom looked up with open curiosity “Does it really matter? I just told you that Gellert Grindelwald is making his way up to you and all you can do is ask me where I learned this from?”
Albus felt the tell-tale hitch in his breathing as his physical appearance changed according to the will of some unknown entity. He now looked like his seventeen year old self did, bright blue eyes and curly light auburn hair. He scowled as he saw the wrinkles tightening into smooth, unblemished skin. His back straightened, years of stress falling away from him.
“Huh,” Tom eyed him with disappointment “I guess your time is coming pretty soon.”
Albus hated to think of the little boy having to fend for himself after he left this level. But he also knew that everyone moved up on their own time, people had to learn their lessons before they could take that one step closer to achieving peace. Tom had been moving painstakingly slow through the levels and it was only a matter of luck that Albus found him when he did.
“Even if I have to leave, I promise to make sure to find you,” Albus murmured fiercely. He felt his seventeen year old’s self passion, fire. It had been for far too long that Albus functioned on autopilot, for far too long that he existed without truly living. But maybe, just maybe there was a chance for all of them yet.
His limbs tingled and he swore, startling Tom into a genuine grin. Albus quickly opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out an old broken silver pen, he whispered a few words into it and thrust it across the table.
Tom’s eyes were shining brightly as he looked at him. “Damn it", he whispered, "why does everyone have to leave me?”
Albus mentally prepared himself for whatever was about to happen. First though, he ran around the table, dropped to his knees and pulled Tom into a fierce hug that he never would have allowed himself otherwise.
The little boy felt tiny, unresponsive at first as Albus clutched at him and whispered “Hang on to the pen. When you reach the same level as me, it’ll turn into gold and I’ll know to go looking for you.”
He felt a prickling behind his eyes and knew that he was very close to crying. There were so many things that he still hadn’t told his greatest failure, his greatest student, his greatest enemy- and now he would have to go. His heart thudded against his chest in an uneven rhythm as he felt his soul being pulled into the next stop.
And then, through the fog of the in between place’s magic- Albus felt Tom stick-like arms wrap around him and squeeze with a ferocious sort of tug. “I promise,” the young Tom Riddle whispered into his ear. Tears slipped down Albus’s cheeks as he dissolved in Tom’s arms, the last thing he saw before the world flew apart again was the boy looking stricken as he was left alone again.
+++++
Albus opened his eyes to a sun’s bright glare. He winced and squinted as he tried to figure out where he was.
It looked like a particularly sunny day in the Forbidden Forest. He got to his feet and tried to look for any identifying marks in the area around him, he had spent most of his life in Hogwarts and its territory, he knew the land like the back of his formerly wrinkled hand.
He heard a dog bark in the distance and his breath hitched as he realized why the sound was so familiar. “Sirius?” he whispered to himself. Was he about to meet up with one of his old students again? He listened keenly for the sound to pop up and when it did, Albus set out for that direction.
He marched with a strong sense of purpose.
Even in life, Albus had been somebody that tackled his problems one at a time. Why should death be any different? It killed him that somewhere behind him, there was a young broken hearted boy longing for any sort of parental affection. And the prospect of seeing his old lover again absolutely terrified him. But for now there was only this, the forest and the prospect of seeing Sirius Black again.
Albus set his jaw and kept his feet moving, there was a reason why he was the longest serving Ravenclaw headmaster in Hogwarts history- his unflappability and a certain ‘what the hell?’ attitude even in the face of life’s oddest adventures.
And after all, what was death if not another great adventure for Albus Dumbledore to undertake?