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Albus waited until Harry had disappeared.
He was such a sweet, naïve boy. Albus would miss him.
He turned around and approached the seat beneath which the fragment of Tom still struggled and cried, naked and vulnerable.
Such a pitiful thing, Albus thought, staring down at him coldly. And yet Tom had given him so much trouble while alive.
He had been the best of his boys - prodigiously talented, charming, alluring. And too intelligent for his own good.
For all that Albus had been the only one to see through him, Tom had seen him just as clearly. It had been a valuable lesson: he shouldn't pick people who were too intelligent. No, people like Cornelius, Hagrid, James, Sirius, Remus, Severus, Harry, and Hermione had been much better suited to the tasks he'd had in mind.
“Sixty years,” Albus said gravely, “and yet here we are.”
The remnant of Tom cried louder, squirming beneath the shadow of the seat.
“I must admit, you were more clever and troublesome than the others. Splitting your soul was crude but effective. But you never could quite get rid of your ego - that fierce independence, doing everything yourself.”
Tom's fragment hiccupped, struggling for breath.
“You tried so hard to become more than the mere shell of your body. But in the end, it was that ineluctable humanity that was your downfall.” Albus tilted his head, regarding Tom coolly.
He had tried to teach him - to rid him of those base Muggle instincts. But no matter what grotesque changes Tom eventually made to his body and soul, blood was impossible to eradicate. For all of his intelligence and talent, he'd been regrettably easy to manipulate, too.
“Such a serendipitous thing, that you chose the Potters that night,” Albus went on, and Tom dragged in a weak breath. “Things might have turned out quite differently if you'd gone after the Longbottoms.”
“I did tell you I will win. I always do.”
Albus leaned down and picked Tom up. He squirmed and kicked his legs, increasingly feeble. Albus walked into the mist and disappeared, the sound of humming lingering after him.