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Tom Riddle would have travelled a hundred leagues looking for Harry Potter.
Fair Folk were known for quite a lot of things; their trickery and their passion, but they were known for their hatred most of all. For as long as Tom had been alive—and that had been for more than a thousand years, having lost count after the nine hundred and ninety-ninth—the whispers about the Fair Folk had prevailed; how they could be deceiving, how their passions outranked their sense.
How they could keep a grudge, remember it, for more than centuries.
The village of Hogsmead knew it better than most—there was a reason the forest on the outskirts of the land was called the Forbidden Forest, why there were hushed whispers and sidelong glances at any movement they saw from the corner of their eyes. The village of Hogsmead had always been an outlier in everything; with their insistence on revering the Fair Folk, of not willfully ignoring the words of witches that other villages were more than happy to do. The village of Hogsmeade, unlike other villages, didn't think that magic was dying.
And magic didn't die— it just grew more and more feral, uncontrollable, the more people refused to believe in it, taking a will of its own and determined to assert its dominance. The Fair Folk could have stopped it from happening—there wasn't much Tom's people couldn't do—but they wanted to see the chaos, to see the despair in people's eyes as their plans came crumbling down, as their disbelieving eyes were forcefully exposed to magic as it destroyed anything and everything they held dear.
The Fair Folk were very vindictive when they wanted to be.
But—there was one thing that mortals and the Fair Folk had in common, and it was their passion. The fey, like mortals, were capable of falling in love easily, and the fey, like mortals, were capable of taking something that would have been pure into something destructive, into something more than what the sum of its parts was.
Tom Riddle hadn't meant to fall in love. It hadn't really been a conscious decision—after he had seen how destructive the love - if he could call it that - between his parents had been, and how both his parents hadn't come out of it the same people they had been, he had sworn never to fall in love.
Falling in love with Harry Potter hadn't been a conscious decision. Tom had seen the necessity in the union between him and Harry Potter—Fair Folk were good at manipulation, at trickery, but some people could handle magic better than they could do, and Harry and his mother were one of those people. Having them at their side would be a great advantage for his plans, and Tom was capable of seeing it more than most.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle," The Monarch intoned, their voice tinged with a sense of resignation. "Isn't that a bit… ordinary, don't you think?"
"I never want him to be anything less," Tom Riddle said, his voice, in contrast, laced with disgust as he looked down at the newborn fey in his hands. The mother had died while giving birth, which was a rare occurrence in and of itself in faerieland, which had led a ripple of anxiety throughout the entire kingdom, a hallmark of change to come.
Most feys, when it strikes their fancy, sneak through to the world of mortals, and take one of them in as their own, to love, to cherish, and even destroy if they want to. Merope Gaunt, a fey who existed in the peripherals of society, not making or doing anything noteworthy, was one of them.
It was easy for a fey to charm someone into abandoning their life for you, to give up anything and everything they were doing and follow you into the unknown. But Merope made a mistake—when she died giving birth, the spell wore off, leaving Tom Riddle trapped in faerieland with more self loathing and even more hatred towards his offspring.
"You won't get your wish," a voice said from behind Tom; deep, powerful, with a sense of finality to it. The Monarch raised his head, which had been gazing at the baby with silent contemplation, something unreadable in his gaze. They met with the violet coloured eyes of the oracle, her face set in the serene expression she always wore, but this time with an edge to it, like she didn't expect anyone in the room to like what she was about to say.
"This child," she said, her gaze never leaving The Monarch's. "Whispers have been made about this child for centuries, ever since you became The Monarch, replacing the one before you. No one really sees the end before you're looking at it when it's laying in front of you."
There followed a moment of silence, while everyone tried to gather their thoughts, realisation slowly gathering at the depths of their minds, The Monarch first, Tom Riddle last. The Monarch was the one who broke eye contact with the Oracle first, sighing heavily and looking at the child laying in their arms.
"All things must come to an end," they intoned. Softly. As if there was nothing left for them.
Maybe there never had been.
And so the years passed, with Tom being none the wiser to why the whispers surrounding him got louder and louder day by day, and why he always had the desire to roam the land, take stock of it, take ownership of it, like it was something that he was entitled to.
Wanderlust, some might have called it, but this was different, something primal that he couldn't shake off. And everytime he tried to ask his father, to ask anyone, all he was met with was stone cold silence, harsh words, and occasionally, beatings that his father made sure to leave where they couldn't be seen, enough so that he could remember being punished, but never enough that his fey magic, wild as it was, so the threat to his person and came to his rescue.
And so Tom continued to live, until his curiosity was finally, finally alleviated when The Monarch discovered what his father had been doing, The Monarch that Tom had once though infallible and calm above all else suddenly deadly, cold and ready to strike at any single moment, like a viper that Tom had heard adult mortals caution their children against, with their tales of the secrets in the forest that best remained unseen and unchecked.
The secrets of the forest weren't really secret to the fey, with everything and everyone being at their grasp, too terrified to be otherwise. But Tom had always felt there was something missing in his knowledge, a gap that could only be filled by knowledge, knowledge that anyone at his level never dared to seek, never dared to even ask.
But Tom—Tom wasn't most people. He wasn't most fey, who took their vengeance when it was demanded, who took it in spades without leaving any knowledge of the person left behind. Tom, on the other hand, preferred to bide his time, to make them shiver and scream and beg for release until they finally got what they deserved.
It was what he was planning on doing to his father, until The Monarch intervened, when it seemed like a lifetime ago when The Monarch had realised how his father was treating him.
The Monarch had taken Tom in, after that, until he had turned five hundred years old, as per the custom of the Fair Folk. Now, his father remained a constant recollection in his mind, no matter how much The Monarch doted on him like a prized pet, no matter how much he knew that The Monarch wanted him to fulfil the prophecy, the grand destiny that begged to be fulfilled, and fulfilled only by Tom.
"Would you have preferred for him to keep degrading you? To degrade you into something that even you are ashamed of?" The Monarch asked, and the question didn't seem to be a rhetorical question, for once.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold, sire," Tom responded through his teeth, feeling a deep seated sense of resentment that he couldn't control.
And so the days, months, an eternity passed, with Tom being revered, this time, the whispers following him getting louder and louder with his father clapped in chains and his fate at the hands of The Monarch.
And Tom couldn't help the feeling of resentment that hung over him as The Monarch became closer and closer to him, not causing the feeling to dissipate, merely causing the feeling to increase, to seize The Monarch's power in any way that he could.
If Tom were any other fey, he wouldn't have had these thoughts in the first place. But Tom wasn't any other fey; any other fey wouldn't plan so profusely, any other fey wouldn't realise that he was the one destined to replace The Monarch before anyone else - except The Monarch themself - did.
And no other fey had Harry Potter within their grasp.