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Tom had cramped up his time with every elective Hogwarts offered— from Arithmency to Ancient Runes. Dark Arts to its counter spells. Healing diagnostics to magical pyromancy. All but Muggle Studies. And what time could not be salvaged through the staff-supervised time turner, he would spend in the library, reading on just about any tome that would satisfy his voracious appetite. The edges of his robes carried the scent of molten wax and dried moonstone ink.
Tom had the compulsive pathology to annotate all of his thoughts onto the margins of his books. A habit he was seeking to rid himself of.
Orion Black had once, unwittingly, discovered his winding, disapproving pontificates on the mandated use of Manticore blood. Suffice to say, the younger Black had tried his hand at acquiring his own vial of the potent blood— only to have been almost lynched by the gruesome creature.
It was hilarious, looking back, the ridiculing jokes his gang had made at the expense of the foolish boy’s twisted arm (Manti-sore and so on), but Tom would rather not feed his underlings— starved with ambition, yet scarcely able in their use of any spell more complex than Reducto — ideas they didn’t earn themselves.
It was a smidge past Midnight, Hogwarts’ winter frosting the enchanted glass in crystalline patterns. Tom had used his head boy privileges to remain in the library well past curfew. He was careful not to abuse his authority, lest Dumbledore’s prying eyes landed him in trouble. Madam Pince, however, was more pliant to his charms. A small smile and a passing comment on the witch-romance she’d been reading last week and lo— extra hours past curfew.
Boredom. It was an emotion Tom often fought to keep at bay. If life were a battle it would be first against the lingering inevitability of demise and then boredom , Tom was certain. He had consumed just about every shelf of the dusty establishment including the restricted section. He had enough permission slips tucked in his satchel to prove that. He could always re-read, he soothed himself, or glean through his own annotations. That was always a treat. He could almost recite those self-assured footnotes and addendums. And recite he did till he felt his nerves fray with the familiar, unwelcome nagging of boredom.
What was left to read? In all his seven years here, he had read every elective– from Arithmancy to Ancient Runes. From Dark Arts to its counter spells. Healing Diagnostics to magical pyromancy. And then the obvious, most repulsive thought wormed its way into his brain. A horrible idea that latched itself like a fat leech. Preposterous, his mind yelled. Unacceptable, worthless, waste of time. Yet, through the turmoil suckled starkly: the fatter leech of boredom .
Muggle Studies.
A means to keep the boredom at bay. An attempt to keep the enemy close. A form of cheap entertainment, the same way he’d toy with those children at Wool’s. He reasoned it all, wrapped each excuse in the crisp logic he trusted more than wandwork. And when the rationales finally smothered his revulsion, he moved toward the Muggle Studies aisle.
Nothing about their culture or the people. It was a firm boundary he had drawn. Some illusion of control to believe he had not yet been vitiated.
His fingers glissaded over several spines. A low nausea curled behind his ribs.
They were bound differently, he noted. Even without the help of magical preservation, the binds were strong, more durable. Clever , he remarked with no shortage of irritation.
He extracted a book entitled “Recent Developments in Scientific Theory”. Eleven years at Wool’s had made him no stranger to pulleys and levers and Newton’s Laws. Even as a kid, and he shall never admit it now, he had been drawn to such muggle theory. It was an acceptable start. The contents might explain the tools of war—of carnage. Every summer, he had returned to Wool’s amid sirens and lit skies. Perhaps now he could make sense of it all.
Two hours had passed, wind rattling against the oriel. Tom had combed through every page, annotating with clinical precision. Stainless steel. Cobalt. Noted in the margins—potential ingredients for future magical weaponry. His tongue pressed hard against the back of his teeth. The session had been useful, Tom concluded neutrally (read: begrudgingly).
The next night, with another sweet toothed smile to Madam Pince, he found himself at the back of the library post patrol hours. He sat as far back as he could, tucked in the crossway between ancient Roman texts and hieroglyphic runes. He knew he was alone, still, the badgering in his head would not allow him to risk being seen around muggle literature. His lips parted to mutter an intruder-warding charm, wand hand twitching once as if in shame. And so he began.
“Muggle Arms of Destruction” was his literary target for the night, followed by “The Muggle World War.” The pages bloomed with spiralling annotations, perfect swirls of ‘g’s and ‘f’s, highlighting the potential of controlling unstable radio-active elements through magical containment wards or the parallels between the Muggle World War and Grindelwald’s tactics.
The nib of his quill snapped under his grip. He was infuriated. Infuriated that the texts had been so annoyingly, so vexingly useful for his studies and above all, infuriated that he had not had the control in him to put aside his weaker sentimentalities and have sought this knowledge sooner.
Tom put the candle flame out with a harsh puff, retreating to his dormitory.
Despite himself, a ritual had been set in place now. The dirty, private ritual of slipping into the Muggle aisle past his bed-time. He had naught but 2 short months left at Hogwarts and he had only just found a gold-mine. He would ravage it all before graduation.
A month passed, white melting on the dewy grass. His studies and responsibilities mounted on him and yet, every night, a cup of warm darjeeling aiding his sequestering, he would sit behind a wall of Muggle texts. There remained, however, one dust-ridden section he hadn’t touched—philosophy and literature.
Even at Hogwarts, it was never an academic pursuit he’d valued. Why would he? Feeble-minded men with pens and pretensions had nothing to teach him. Every truth worth knowing, he’d already learned—through Wool’s cruelty, through his Knights’ insecurities. He sneered, lips curling as if the very idea of philosophical instruction left a bitter taste. There was nothing about human nature he hadn’t already observed—and exploited. Fear, anger, ambition, envy: the haze that clouded men. All Tom had to do was sit and watch. Avery twitched under disapproval. Nott shrank from obscurity. Lestrange wore his bloodline like a banner, desperate for glory. And Dumbledore—ah, Dumbledore—his calm, didactic airs were nothing but a veil for control. What could philosophy offer him? His eyes and ears were keener than any old man’s musings in an armchair
The closest he’d come to ‘philosophy’ was Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes’s bloated tome on reversing death—an unholy merger of metaphysics and magical theory. Utterly useless. The author concluded, with the finesse of a fourth-year botching a last-minute potions essay: ‘Give it up. It's never going to happen.’ ” Tom’s lip curled. He’d half a mind to burn it there and then.
It had meandered through the supposed costs of cheating death—loneliness, purposelessness. Tom had chuckled. Dryly. We are alone at birth, alone in death, and life—he was certain—is the miserly attempt to convince ourselves otherwise.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The title had crossed his notice many times. The word death always stood out—his mind wasting no time conjuring vivid, unbidden imagery. Bleak scenes flickered up: nurses at Wool’s Home muttering about his mother’s passing; that afternoon in fourth year, standing in Defence Against the Dark Arts, wand raised confidently to yell Riddikulus —only for the Boggart to twist cruelly into a pale, bloated corpse of himself; or that moment when his whispers, low and serpentine, had turned into Myrtle Warren’s petrified screams, echoing endlessly off the tiles of the fifth-floor bathroom. His throat tightened, his fingers pausing on the spine.
Anything about death would register in his mind immediately, whether he wished for it or not. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. He pulled the book off the shelf, blowing away a thin layer of dust. A muggle’s death could not be of consequence to him. No one’s death could be of consequence to him. Yet, if life were a battle it would be first against the lingering inevitability of demise and then boredom, Tom knew. And so, next to his empty cup of darjeeling, lay open Tolstoy’s novella.
The first ten pages were a chore to endure, Tom remarked with no teaspoons of confoundment. “ Banal” , he debated scrawling in the margins, but his quill hovered mid-air, then stilled—deciding even that single word was too generous a donation of effort.
The judge, Ilyich, was dead. His colleagues, with as much delicacy as Avery elbowing through the Hog’s Head after last call, had begun discussing successors. In the event of Tom’s own death, Tom imagined—briefly, involuntarily— (and quickly banished the foolish image it conjured), his Knights doing much the same. Lestrange, no doubt, would be the first to vie for his seat at the head of the table. Tom refilled his darjeeling from his tea pouch. But they wouldn’t succeed. Without him, they’d be scrambling for scraps, licking each other’s boots before ending up at the ministry— the remainder of their power only dangerous to the house elves their families heirloomed. Now that was a pleasant thought.
He wiped the small smile off his face, flipping the pages carelessly. The theme of the book– and Tom was no literary connoisseur– was so naive against the cold reality of indifference, he wondered if Dumbledore had a hand behind the book. Tom downed the darjeeling by page eleven, and not even the pleasant, golden liquid down his throat could convince him of reaching page twelve.
He shut the book with a decided thud and slipped it back on the shelf. As he turned, the Gaunt ring on his finger seared against his skin—calling him. A meeting. Tom’s brows furrowed. An impromptu meeting at the dead of night wasn't protocol. Something had happened. Tom bid his thanks to Madam Pince before swiftly marching through the corridors, the tip of his wand alight. Filch’s voice, nasal, rang about curfew hours. Tom held up the Head Boy badge mid-stride, not breaking pace. Filch grumbled and slunk back into whatever corner he had crawled out from.
Fiendfyre. His jaw twitched in impatience as he stood in front of the dungeon entrance. The door swung open at the password. Nott, Avery, Black, Lestrange, Mulciber all sat sprawled across the fireplace. He descended. Nott stood too quickly, nearly knocking over his goblet. Black avoided his eyes. Lestrange… Lestrange had taken his time. His eyes narrowed.
“I do hope someone died, or this will be a very disappointing interruption.” Tom stalked towards the fire, eyes roaming, slow and unyielding, “Has Nott mistaken a broken cauldron for an omen again?”
Tom paused. The fire was half-dimmed — they’d been talking for a while. His jaw tightened imperceptibly.
Lestrange spoke first, a smooth calmness to his voice, “Dolohov messed up some orders.”
The fire cast shadows over Lestrange’s cheekbones, but Tom noticed the placement of his seat — closer to the hearth than any of them had ever dared. His jaw ticked.
“Not a big deal,” Lestrange went on.
“And I take it you’ve assumed the unbearable burden of judgment in my absence, Lestrange?” Tom’s tone was acrid, venomous.
The room split into silence. Black shifted uncomfortably, eyes on her oxfords. Mulciber stifled a spluttered grin. Avery fidgeted with the wand in his trouser pocket. The fireplace crackled in the silence. Tom’s eyes remained on Lestrange’s still-warm seat. Unbidden, the putrid thoughts of Tolstoy’s novella slithered in his mind. He hadn’t even died and they were already circling. A muggle, half-witted; easily swayed, had at least kept his post until death. Tom had no such illusions about his followers: petty, ambitious, thieving. But he had granted them a dignity they didn’t deserve—he’d assumed they’d wait until his fall. His death. A fate, unlike Ilyich’s, that he would never permit. Yet here they were, vultures in all his youth and prime of life. He’d miscalculated, worse than Ilyich ever did.
Rage curdled inside him. He turned in a flash, facing his followers all at once. The quiet rage glowered in his slit-like eyes. Mulciber’s amusement fell; Black straightened and looked up. Tom didn’t say anything for a long while, the silence heavy like a murky, bubbling draught.
A thin discomfort pressed at the edges of Tom’s mind — not quite fear, not quite shame. Just something unwelcome. Briefly, he considered whether this rot had started long before any death could touch him. He straightened, and the feeling slipped away.
“Forgive me, my lord.” Lestrange murmured, his voice above a breath, the smooth calmness vanishing. “I simply didn’t want to disturb you with trivial matters.”
Tom smiled. And for a moment, as the fire cast a dancing shadow on his face, he was anything but handsome. Avery looked positively green. It brought a satisfaction to Tom that knew no bounds. He was no Ilyich. No muggle mortal susceptible to death. No unassuming reader enlightened by Tolstoy. He had miscalculated but not anymore. If life were a battle it would be first against the lingering inevitability of demise and then boredom, Tom concurred, but now, it was also a battle against the demise of life’s only goal— control.
“You seem to be itching for more responsibility, mhm Lestrange?” Tom spoke finally, his words a soft lull in rhythm with the fire, “How about I grant that? After all, I reward all those who are motivated.”
It was now Lestrange’s turn to look green.
“You’d be in-charge of rallying the support of the giants and the werewolves.” Tom spoke in faux zeal, clapping his hand on his shoulder, “Everyone, let us congratulate Lestrange on the promotion.”
Mulciber sniggered audibly this time. Black looked relieved to have been passed over. So did Avery. Nott looked almost sympathetic but did not object for his friend. Lestrange managed a sickened smile, jaw tensed. Yes, now that was pleasant. Tom might not have been luckier than Ilyich, not in fate. But he would embrace the indifference Tolstoy condemned— And win anyway. He would triumph over death and indifference.
By becoming both.
The next two evenings, Tom spent hours prowling through his followers' minds, wielding Legilimency with clinical cruelty. He slithered through their thoughts, glissading with as much pain as he could inflict — not for pleasure, but for principle (okay, perhaps a little bit for pleasure). Only when satisfied with the contents or lack there-of, he’d withdraw.
“Nothing here, Nott.” He remarked cruelly during one particularly painful Legillimency session, “though, at least we all have confirmation of it now.”
It was only when he knew and he knew with all certainty that he shall not be taken for a fool again, that no betrayal simmered too close to boil, he allowed himself to retreat back to his corner of the library. He was chirpier, lighter on his feet— Madam Pince had commented. He had flashed her a rare, pleased grin that had surely earned him extra after-hours in the library.
Dregs stained his cup, his quill nib pressed into the yellowed pages. Muggle Biology was this session’s preoccupation. Mutated Cells— Possible Magical Mutations? His quill scratched briskly in the margins. Could magical ability in Muggle-borns be the result of cellular mutation? The idea was outlandish, unproven—yet deliciously provocative. The pure biological angle of magical inheritance was rarely, if ever, explored. Whether his theory held weight was immaterial. His lips curled. It was politically useful .
Muggle-Born Magic: An Illness to Be Treated.
He could already picture the Ministry in uproar—Pureblood wizards scrambling to endorse him, bolstered by pseudoscientific justification. Mudbloods, doubting their very existence. Questioning their legitimacy. Alienated. (As they should be.)
The brilliance of it lay in its timing: with no Muggle biologists inside the magical world, the damage would be done long before anyone with real knowledge could unravel it.
With precise care, Tom tore the page from the textbook, folding it crisply before pasting it into his private journal.
A self satisfied smirk pinched at the corner of his lips. Two weeks to his graduation and he had nearly swept the entire Muggle Studies aisle. He had, of course, scathingly avoided the poetry, romantic verse and theological texts. They were of meagre value to him.
Only one book still lay partly untouched— Death glaring back at him in bold, gold letters. His quill tapped impatiently on the desk. Boredom, he reasoned. That fat, parasitic leech. Or perhaps the amusement (that itching tick) of proving Tolstoy; and, by extension, every glittering principle Dumbledore held dear utterly wrong, he cogitated. And so, there he was again: the novella spread out before him, unmarked, uncreased, unsullied. He flipped to its heart.
The middle of the book was almost more banal than the first few pages, the author meandering about a man’s life wasted posturing.
Tom scoffed, closing the book with a dry snap. What else had he expected from a Muggle? The entire novella was dripping with moralist hand-wringing and petty, provincial grief. A life “wasted posturing”? No: lived strategically . Ivan Ilyich had simply lacked the spine to see it through to its natural end.
Not even the curiosity of the novella’s ending could stimulate Tom. Predictable. Ilyich would realize through the same, glittering prose that naive, gullible idea of spiritual living . That had to be the conclusion. Tom didn't need to flip to the last page to know. The same fairytale slop the Wool’s nurses fed to him, repackaged in a pathetic, half-posturing, conformist— Ilyich— and his dying regrets. And Gersaim? The fairy godmother in peasant’s clothes. Tom audibly sneered. So predictable.
Still, something gnawed at him, not the sentiment, but the familiarity. The mediocrity Tolstoy described with such scalpel precision... it wasn’t unfamiliar. The banality. The performance. The indifference of peers circling like flies. He had seen it— was seeing it —every day now. Lestrange. Black. Avery. All parading loyalty while sniffing at his throne.
The book sat at the corner of his desk, closed but not put away. His eyes flicked to it once. Then again. He tapped the spine with his knuckles, almost absentmindedly, as if daring it to speak first.
Unlike Ivan, he wasn’t fading. He wasn’t clinging to a bourgeois illusion of safety. He would not deny death in comforting illusion. He would embrace indifference . Make it his weapon. Let others waste themselves in the fear of death— he would become it.
He opened the book, contemplative. Perhaps there was something to learn here after all—not from Ivan’s suffering, but from his failure to wield power properly. That, Tom would not repeat.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more."
He drew in air, stopped at midbreath, stretched out, and died.
Tom was silent. Then, his lips curled. Head tilted back. Eyes to the vaulted ceiling as if some invisible audience hovered above.
And then—he laughed.
Loud. Sardonic. The kind of laughter that rang hollow and full all at once, built from something sharp and joyless. Madam Pince looked up from her dog-eared Witch Weekly , brows pinched. Tom didn’t notice. Or didn’t care.
The bouts came in steepled waves, each one louder, stranger than the last.
“Finished?” he muttered between breaths, amusement dragging across his voice like a dull blade. “That’s all it took to die well?”
He slammed the book shut.
Graduation hung in the air. Three more days. Hogwarts was abuzz with students cheering and drinking their last days away at Hogsmeade. Tom did not. He had his plans and one of them included a late night conversation with Headmaster Armando Dippet.
As the castle emptied out, Tom made his way to the gargoyle. The night smelt like old lavenders and Tom allowed himself to stand by the arch top windows. Two more nights. A place he’d allowed himself to scarcely, meagerly call home. A respite. Two more nights. The sky powdered a deep, ink blue. All the nights he’d holed up here, ink spilling to the skies. His head-boy badge glinted in the faint candlelight. An end. End to something.
“ Death is finished, it is no more.”
Tom’s hands steepled tightly behind his back.
“You’ve been in the library a great deal lately,” Dumbledore said lightly, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes as unreadable as ever. Tom didn’t flinch.
He turned slowly. “Studying death, Professor,” he said with a smirk that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Muggle philosophy. Nothing of consequence.”
Dumbledore’s gaze didn’t falter. “On the contrary. Death tends to be the one thing of consequence.”
The silence that followed felt heavier than Tom expected. Usually, he enjoyed these sparring matches. The chance to catch Dumbledore off guard. Today, he only felt scraped.
Dumbledore took a step closer, but not threateningly. “Tolstoy, I believe?”
Tom’s smirk returned—worn now like a familiar mask. “A man who lived a life of mediocrity and discovered his conscience only when dying. Hardly impressive.”
“And yet you read it to the end.”
Tom didn’t answer.
Dumbledore’s voice dropped slightly. “It’s a curious thing, isn’t it? To be seen at your worst, and not dismissed for it. Ilyich had Gerasim. Few are granted that mercy.”
There it was—too direct, too cutting. Dumbledore’s hand at playing fairy godmother.
Tom straightened. “I don’t need mercy. Or sentiment. And I have no interest in being seen.”
Dumbledore smiled gently. “No. I imagine that’s exactly what he told himself too.”
For a flicker of a moment—one he would never acknowledge—Tom felt it. That terrible, flickering thing the novella left behind. Not guilt. Not grief. But recognition.
He brushed past Dumbledore without another word. The echo of his footsteps bounced off the walls.
Dumbledore’s voice made him halt: “I wonder, Mr. Riddle—will you spend your life avoiding that ending, or ensuring it never applies to you?”
And in all his scarce humility, he allowed himself to wonder— wonder the one thing he avoided with acid and muck. That Boggart in fourth year resurfacing all too soon, too easily. He let the image sit for a moment (a moment longer than he ever did), let himself climb in the meatsuit of his bloated corpse. Cold, unblinking eyes. Lips tinged blue. His eyes shut.
Further back.
Wool’s.
Grey, moody sky; bombs raining for breakfast. Old building rattling. Screams echoing through old lead pipes. He was a mortal man once more, huddled between sobbing children and sewer rats. What had he asked for then? His magic, first, when the planes were whirling. A spell, next, when the blasts were echoing. His mother, last, when the lights went out.
If life were a battle it would be first against the lingering inevitability of demise and then boredom, then control, Tom knew and knew with certainty. But there was no battle now. Only him .
But nothing had come his way.
Not even a Gerasim by his bedside.
And it was dark for him.
No one’s death could be of consequence to him. But his own.
And just as it came— that scarce humility drained. His hand tightened around his wand. His eyes fluttered open.
There was him.
There was Dumbledore.
And all those Ilyich’s: bloated, posturing, deluded. Men who lost, and lost, and dared call it meaning.
He would not die like that.
He would not reach for light.
He would become the dark that swallowed it.
Tom turned away, lips parted as if to speak. There’s nothing to learn from weakness, he wanted to say. Wanted to yell. He had his magic now. His spells. His jaw unclenched.
“If there were light at the end, professor, you would be holding my legs up.” He smiled, amused in all its bitterness and ridicule, “Alas.”