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The entire thing started on a Monday. Because, of course it was a Monday. Death Eaters were trudging into Malfoy Manor, their movements still sluggish from the weekend's festivities, carrying with them the warm fuzz of celebration.
The house elves scoured the main ballroom with religious vigor, scrubbing away the smudges left by spilled alcohol from yet another ostentatious Death Eater celebration ball. Word had arrived only the previous week that another member from the light side had defected to their cause, prompting the Dark side to launch a full recruitment effort. Large quantities of war funds were now being poured into these elaborate balls, hoping that the defected wizards would be swayed by novelty alone and join their cause.
Lord Voldemort's day had begun as it always did—unremarkable and indifferent to distinctions between Sunday and Monday. He was hardly a man anymore; he was something far closer to a god of his own creation. Human vices scarcely touched him. Whether it was a Sunday or Monday made no difference; such temporal distinctions were beneath his notice, let alone worthy of making him blink.
Thus, when the morning Prophet was presented to him by one of the bumbling house elves—Blink? Twinky?—he could hardly be bothered. His nose wrinkled at the creature's gnarled hands, and he was stopped from cursing the irritating thing only by the tantalizing scent wafting from his cup of moltiff flower tea.
Lord Voldemort took a measured sip from the steaming cup of his treasured moltiff flower tea. He released a sigh—like some common Muggle, though he would eternally deny it—and proceeded to open the Daily Prophet.
And then promptly spat out his prized moltiff flower tea.
Voldemort stared, his eyes nearly bulging from their sockets. He was offended—though, of course, a Lord never displayed such undignified reactions.
But surely he could be forgiven this once. For on the front page of the Daily Prophet was a moving photograph that defied all logic: the-Boy-Who-Refused-to-Stay-Dead and a very much alive, very much flesh-and-blood Tom Riddle. And what in Merlin's name were the two of them doing?
Lord Voldemort stared, completely bewildered, as the two figures faced each other across the photograph—then launched themselves forward across a table at the Three Broomsticks, their faces so grotesquely contorted with rage that any observer would recognize instantly they meant to kill each other.
The motion kept looping, and to one Lord Voldemort, it might have even resembled a near victory. But he felt a shiver run down his spine when he noticed something peculiar: young Tom Riddle's face had split into a barely perceptible smirk before he lunged at Harry Potter. And that expression—he had never made it himself in thirty years. He was almost certain that expression was always a prelude to utter disaster.
"Lucius," Lord Voldemort's voice was so vitriolic that it startled a dozen of his followers awake from their residual sleep.
Lord Voldemort waited for a scant few minutes.
"Yes, Milord." Lucius Malfoy entered with the grace born of generations of refined upbringing.
Any other day, this might have been a pleasant sight to Lord Voldemort's eyes. But today, looking at Lucius's pretentious silver-white locks and uptight posture grated on him.
"Where is my diary?" Voldemort demanded through gritted teeth.
When he saw the dumbfounded expression on Lucius's face and remembered the reverence with which Abraxas had cared for that piece of his soul, he shouted, "Crucio!"
Lucius Malfoy suffered under the curse for just under five minutes. When he finally spat up a strange shock of crimson blood onto the pristine marble floor, he was subjected to another two minutes of agony.
Without understanding what he had done or why he was being punished, Lucius was kicked from the room with precise instructions: "Give me details about the boy fighting Potter in the Prophet."
Lucius limped down the corridor of his own manor, thinking bitterly that this was his own house, dammit—he wanted to cry, but no one was there to hear.
He completed his task nonetheless, gathering details about the boy near Potter. It was almost always about Potter, anyway.
"Milord, his name is Tom Riddle. He joined Potter's year a few months ago and has been a model student, much like Draco—"
Lucius was cut off mid-sentence as a painful cutting jinx seized him.
"Bring me Draco, you fool!"
And with that, Lucius was kicked out again.
Draco stood inches away from Voldemort's chamber doors, shaking reasonably. His hand trembled as he raised it to knock.
"Come in."
Draco jumped at the cold, high voice that spoke from within. He scuttled inside, nervous, sweating like a water-logged imp.
"Tell me everything you know about this..." Lord Voldemort paused, his eyebrows crinkling in what might have been disdain, "...Tom Riddle." He spat out the name as if it were acid.
Lord Voldemort noticed a complicated expression cross Draco's haggard face.
"He... he is one of the finest and most perfect Slytherins I have seen to date, Milord."
Lord Voldemort scoffed, of course.
"He is a perfect specimen at everything. No matter the subject, no matter the challenge."
"I am perfectly aware of how..." Lord Voldemort's voice sounded almost gleeful, "...impressionable he can be to young minds."
Draco blushed slightly at this. Lord Voldemort looked offended.
"Tell me, Draco, how is this perfect specimen when he is with Harry Potter?"
Draco's face did something peculiar—a mix between rage and shame that was decidedly odd.
And Draco started passionately, so lost in his words that he seemed to have forgotten entirely who sat before him.
"Potter, that vile, arrogant Potter. What does he think of himself? Continuously throwing himself at our Head Boy... OUR Head Boy. Does he think everyone will be smitten by his stupid, vividly expressive green eyes? And does he—"
"I have heard enough, Draco." Lord Voldemort had to stop the increasingly bumbling wizard before he could compose sonnets about Harry Potter's eyes.
But honestly, how had this escaped his notice for so long? He would have to remind Lucius to properly discipline his son. Harry Potter was their enemy—that thought needed constant reinforcement for this fool.
"Very well, Draco. Come close. Let your Lord reward you for your honesty."
Draco moved forward, trembling in his boots. He had nearly forgotten in whose presence he stood. He had almost gone completely ballistic—the way he always did whenever Harry Potter was mentioned.
Lord Voldemort looked into Draco's eyes and entered the particular memory where both his nemesis and his younger self were featured. He immediately wished he had never entered that memory.
Harry stormed across the Great Hall toward the Slytherins with the vengeance of a thousand ghosts. "Just because you don't like treacle tart doesn't mean you get to transfigure it into a cauldron cake."
"Oh, is that so? But I prefer cauldron cake," Tom Riddle replied with a rising smirk.
"Oh yeah, and guess how many fucks I give about your preferences. You guessed right—none." Harry bared his teeth, hissing like an angry hedgehog.
"Oh, Harry, but I thought I'd give you a lesson in transfiguration. Look, now you can simply transform your cake back into your tart."
Tom's face was so insufferable and so slappably smug that it screamed benevolence itself.
"If you're this stupid..." Tom continued with a concerned frown, and Harry lunged at him with closed fists, like a common Muggle, ready to beat that intolerable smirk into a pulp.
The two tussled on the floor, and the Great Hall descended into chaos.
Lord Voldemort exited the memory and waved Draco out of the room.
It was shameful. Absolutely embarrassing. To him—a master manipulator who had lived twice as many days reading people—it was painfully obvious that his younger self had developed an unreasonable fondness for his young nemesis. And Harry Potter was chronically oblivious to it all.
Lord Voldemort took action—absolutely reasonable action, of course. He could not allow his younger self to harbor affections for his nemesis.
On the next Hogsmeade outing, Lord Voldemort positioned himself behind the overarching treeline surrounding the Three Broomsticks, his figure hidden by one of the strongest Notice-Me-Not charms known to wizardkind to date.
It was not one of his proudest moments, but some things were best left unspoken, especially when sacrifices were being made for one's own benefit.
He scanned the crowd and caught sight of two rather inconspicuous teens in the back alley of the shop.
They seemed to be arguing heatedly, their expressions contorted in absolute disdain. And then Lord Voldemort watched, rigid, as his younger self suddenly groped Harry Potter's ass—hard.
Potter yelped, turned red, and then bolted after his offender. The two ran in circles, and if Lord Voldemort had been a lesser man, he would have been discovered when they tumbled into the snowy floor directly in front of the tree where he was concealed.
And then the two began to tussle. The younger one—obviously Potter—went shocking red in the face and stopped all movement entirely. The older one, still lying atop him, also froze for a few seconds before grinning in a particularly nasty manner.
"Oh... oh... see who's risen to the occasion. Should I greet it as 'little Potter's virgin treasure'?"
"Tom. Marvolo. Riddle!" Harry shouted so loudly that nearby birds took flight in alarm.
And Lord Voldemort stood behind the treeline, face buried in his hands, dying from secondhand embarrassment. Someone please tell him this was an imposter. This could not be his noble younger self.
Only Lord Voldemort understood how he had managed to return to Malfoy Manor that day. He felt as though even his last remaining Horcrux had abandoned him, leaving him to walk as a hollow, soulless shell.
That night, when he finally closed his eyes for the rare sleep he desperately required, he could not erase the memory of how the two had interacted. The tussle on the ground, his younger self's reaction, and—Merlin forbid—Harry Potter's rather alluring flushed cheeks haunted him.
He turned and tossed throughout the night, and by dawn, he had decided: he would take more assertive steps to ensure the two remained miles apart from each other.
Lord Voldemort had not experienced anything resembling a crisis in a very long time. But this—this he could only describe as an emergency situation. One for which he had no contingency plan.