-Tom Riddle

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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What?" It took all of my self control not to go tearing out of the room screaming at the top of my lungs. "I can't just kill someone! What the hell?!"

"Spare me with the dramatics. You're not even thinking." Tom said over me with a snarl. "You could kill someone, however you've been conditioned like every other damn person in this world to reject the notion."

He looked at me, his dark eyes sharp and searching mine desperate to find some dark emotion he could exploit. I stared back in horror. It was hard to believe the two of us were still at Slughorn's stupid dinner party, the atmosphere felt like I was having a conversation with a Dementor in my own Azkaban cell.

"Have you ever considered why society might have shunned the idea of killing?" I asked delicately. Tom's face was impassive and I felt about as useful as a psychologist probing an dead soul.

"Has it ever for a moment crossed your mind why murdering innocent people isn't an ideal-"

"Actually, I've paid it a lot of thought." Tom cut across me. "And do you know what I've come to realise, Hermione? That the world, like yourself, is afraid. You don't want to kill because you fear the consequences. You fear having blood on your hands."

He leant back until he was partially concealed in shadow, smirking as if this entire conversation about murder was all a joke to him.

"Not all of us have the desire for the mundane lifestyle you have. It's cowardly." His eyes were intense. "You live easily, and no great profit ever came from a path like that."

"If you consider committing evil acts as a lifestyle path then I feel sorry for you." I snapped.

Tom's eyes glinted black. "Evil acts..." He mocked me on a cold laugh. "You should hear yourself. I suggest you drop the childish muggle storybook talk and grow up. And while you're at it is yourself you need to feel sorry for, certainly not me."

"I pity people like you. Brilliant, but caught in the pitfalls of simple and easy." His voice was rough hinting a darkness lurking beneath his exterior that was too cold for comfort.

"I have power, money and influence. You have what? A pile of passed exams? If that is what you call success Granger then I am... shocked."

My jaw basically fell to the ground.

"Hold on. You... pity me?" I said with an incredulous laugh. Tom Riddle, the only wizard in the world stupid enough to sell his entire soul to the darkness pitied me? "Wow."

"You're going to find out sooner or later it isn't enough to be a brilliant student." He looked up at me through his lashes, his head resting on his hand in a contemplative gesture. "Years down the track you're going to be old. Decomposing in your own skin. You're going to wish in that moment you left something better for yourself than all the reapings of that ongoing damsel in distress routine of yours."

"I'm not some damsel in distress!" I exclaimed. "And also I don't wish for the things you want. A life of negativity to me is a life wasted. You're wasting away. And your ideas on killing? Well. You're wrong. Deeply wrong. You speak of it like it's a key to untapped potential when it's not-"

"Wrong again, Hermione." Tom's voice was hard. "It is. In fact, so many branches of the dark arts are only accessible by committing lowly deeds."

His eyes were alight with dark energy, it was impossible to tear my gaze away.

"There is positive magic that is powerful. But there is also negative magic that is powerful, too. More powerful, in fact. Murder is the act I have chosen as the initiation task of a Death Eater, because it is the very key to unleash greater power. The extinguishing of a fellow persons life can magically benefit one to a great degree. If you're brave enough to taste the power for yourself, that is... Then one day I will teach you what it really means to hold that very power in your own hands. I'll let you try to use the rational side of your brain for once and think about what is I am saying to you while I get us something to eat and drinks."

He stood up, towering over my small frame- and the next thing I knew he had disappeared up the two steps to where the party was mainly centred. It was weird how this whole time no one had even come down here to our little nook over by the window. We were all in one open office area after all, right? And then I saw it, shimmering slightly in the air dividing us from the others. A charm?

I leaned back. Tom had cast some type of charm keeping the others from us.

Or I thought bitterly Keeping us from them.

"Firewhisky?" I nearly jumped out of my skin upon the sight of Tom's pale hand extending a generously filled champagne glass. "You can take it. With your hand."

What an asshole. I took the refreshingly cold glass into my sweating palm.

"You like Firewhisky at this time of night?" I said quietly.

"It's a party. It would be a waste of valuable time if we didn't even spare a moment to enjoy ourselves. I went to the trouble of getting a plate of food too, so dig in." His voice was mechanical, like he was just a robot saying words. I took a napkin and grabbed a sausage roll, the whole time watching him as he sat opposite and lifted his own glass in the air in a toast.

"To power." He said softly. "And to the courage to pursue it."

I clenched my jaw.

To the future I thought and returning home in one piece.

Our glasses clinked together, in the reflection of the window I saw us - Tom, tall dark and all in black and myself, so much smaller than him and a vision of white.

Yin and yang. A wolf dining with a lamb.

I took a hasty sip, the burning spark of the liquid searing my throat ruthlessly.

"Just what I needed." I took another sip. If the past was going to be this shitty, then maybe it wouldn't hurt if I had this whole glass. When I finished it, I went and got another. Hell, there was still about 2 hours of this dinner party left I didn't want to be stone cold sober.

"I didn't think a girl like you was into alcohol." Tom eyed me consideringly and then pulled something out of a inner pocket in his black blazer. My eyes narrowed. What the hell was that? A flask, shining silver in the weak light of the candelabra near us.

He placed his now empty glass of Firewhisky on the small table before us.

"Care to chance a guess as to what this is?" With a sleight of hand he had undone the stopper on the flask and tipped a measured amount of a strangely familiar sunshine yellow potion. He tucked the flask away.

"I'll give you a hint." He said quietly. "It isn't Felix Felicis. Go on. Take a closer look, if you like."

I took the glass with interest, the alluring aroma hitting my senses in a familiar punch, the subtle peppermint giving it away.

"It's an Elixir of Euphoria." I couldn't help the note of surprise. "Where did you get this?"

"I made it. It's rather handy, for all sorts of occasions. Parties, interrogations- all sorts."

"Why not just buy it?" I said. "Why did you go to all of the trouble to make it?"

"Elixir is not for students to purchase or carry around on school premises, in fact this is strictly off limits except to those in a classroom beneath teacher supervision." Tom said somewhat condescendingly. "Considering you know what this potion is, I'm surprised you had missed that crucial little detail.

He took the glass back from me, before I knew it he had topped it with Firewhisky and had taken a sip.

"Muggles have their own recreational narcotics." He said lightly, "However they are do not compare in the slightest to Firewhisky with added Euphoria Elixir."

I was too dumbfounded to speak. Whatever sensation Tom was feeling he wasn't giving any of it away.

"Here." He tapped my empty glass once with his wand, as it refilled itself he passed me the flask. "Put 5 drops in. And you'll see what I mean."

"How long does it last?" I took the flask hesitantly.

"A couple of hours, at least." Tom took another swig, as if proving that it was ok. "Don't be a pussy." He mocked. "Just do it."

Maybe I had already had too much Firewhisky but I could've sworn Tom's voice was lower and more commanding than before. Feeling like an idiot, I opened the flask - or rather, tried. The stopper was jammed.

"Pop!"

The catch finally flicked open and I poured each drop in very carefully.

One

Two

Three

Four...

"Five- hey!"

Tom's hand had reached out and knocked mine causing a bit more than just five drops of Euphoria Elixir to spill into my drink.

"Tom... What...." I blinked twice, sitting back and watching the golden content of my glass swirl and break into almost rainbow colouring.

Completely unaware of his intensive look I took some food off the plate in front of me, eating like I had been starved for days. It didn't bother me at all that his eyes were on me the whole time.

"Look, my cup has rainbows in it." I snatched the glass so that all the contents would've sloshed out if Tom hadn't stood at the speed of light and steadied my hands. "Hermione." His voice was enchanting, "Sit down, and have a drink."

"Is it safe to drink rainbows?" My head was pounding, and I couldn't stop laughing. Tom on the other hand, didn't laugh once.

"I assure you, it's safe. Now drink."

Drink

His words echoed in my mind, splintering into nonsense. I raised the glass to my mouth and took a sip.

An explosion of colour burst behind my eyes, the room lightened shades brighter than it was, and then everything suddenly looked lucid.

"Tom." I looked down at my hand. It was blurred. "I feel weird."

"That's normal." Tom's voice said suddenly. "Keep drinking, and then tell me how you feel."

I placed the glass down. "I've had enough." I lurched to my feet, and then I felt it.

Pure, radiant ecstasy. I could think very clearly, for what felt like the first time in my life.

"How do you feel?" Tom's black eyes swam in and out of my vision. "Great." I beamed. "I haven't felt this good in ages."

"Think about something for me." Tom said from the shadows. "Murder. What does the word mean to you, now?"

"Murder?" The word sounded foreign on my tongue. Unknown. I tried to think about the horror behind that word but just like Pandora's box, my mind was closed off to my former ideas in relation to it.

"Well, it's an act of taking something."

"Go on," Tom's pale hand cut through the air in an impatient manner. "Elaborate."

"Murder is a destruction... That is for a set reason. It's an act, for a profit of sorts." I said slowly. "Murder takes place when someone wants something for themselves."

"Yes." Tom waved his wand at my drink and instantly it emptied, almost instantly filling to the brim with a clear substance. Water?

"Drink it. It's not poison."

I took the glass to my lips, whatever it was made my head clear and my vision stop spinning. "Water?" I said in surprise. "Water is the antidote?"

"It's not water," Tom snapped. "Anyway that's beside the point. Did you enjoy your taste of mental freedom?" He said sardonically. "How does it feel to come back to reality, tethered back to that narrow minded brain of yours?"

"What are you talking about." I snapped. "No one who drinks Firewhisky and Elixir is going to speak in their right mind-"

"But that's my point," Tom cut over me at once. "Your right mind thinks in limitations. Your drunk mind is untethered to its former beliefs and can think clearly without the veil of others opinions."

"What does that have to do with anything?" I blurted out.

"Because that is the very sort of mindset you need to have as a Death Eater. Murder itself is a deep well of power for those who are not scared to take profit for himself alone. I won't ask you to kill anyone, yet." He said, standing up.

"I think I'll wait until you're truly ready."