Chapter Text
The hour was early and the air was cold, a smoky, post-dawn chill that smothered and sickened. The stench of clogged gutters, burning coal and ancient, slow-moving Dark magic wafted on the breeze—or what there was of it. The morning fog was as still as a dead body, cloaked in grey and motionless amid the ramshackle rooftops of Knockturn Alley.
The sign hanging inside the glass door of Borgin and Burkes swung as Tom flipped it to say ‘Closed’. The skull on the display case clacked its teeth at him.
Tom’s night shift was finally over. He felt grimy and tired as he always did at the end of his shift, worn thin by hours of pretense, of politeness, of gods-be-damned customer service to those who should be lucky enough to be on the receiving end of his Cruciatus. He had seen every despicable example of so-called ‘humanity’ here, including thieves selling stolen relics, gamblers pawning away ancestral treasures, murderers hunting for untraceable weapons, and men in lust with their adolescent daughters searching for undetectable potions to drug them with. Those last, Tom always did his best to sell cursed items to. They wouldn’t live long enough to commit their chosen sins.
Tom was just about to lock up and leave when a whirlwind blasted through the door and deposited a minion at his feet. The black robes were unmistakable. A Knight of Walpurgis.
At first, Tom thought it was Abraxas, for the pale, bowed head was familiar, but then the Knight raised his head and—
And Tom’s wand was in his hand, pointed at the stranger’s neck. “Who are you?”
“My lord.” Malfoy, for it had to be a Malfoy, held a squirming bundle wrapped in what appeared to be a blue terrycloth towel with a pattern of yellow ducks on it. The contrast between it and the carrion-black robes was surreal. “I will only be here for a few minutes. I am Abraxas Malfoy’s son, Lucius. And this… this is your Horcrux, my lord. Your last Horcrux. I am here to return it to you in the hopes that you may avoid creating it in the future, for in its creation you will die.”
Die? Tom would never die. And yet this unfamiliar Malfoy’s words unsettled him, desperate and genuine as they were. Malfoy was not lying. A sweep of Legilimency confirmed it. “What of my other Horcruxes? Surely I would have had additional insurance.”
Malfoy acquired a hangdog expression. On closer inspection, his frost-pale hair was streaked with silver, and his haggard, once-noble face was stubbled, with the sort of cadaverous thinness more suited to an Azkaban escapee than a Pureblood patriarch. Abraxas would be appalled to see the Malfoy line so fallen. “Yes, my lord. But your body was effectively killed, and it took you a decade to resurrect—a delay that would eventually cost you your life, your Horcruxes, and the war.”
A high price to pay, indeed. What error had Tom’s future self made in the process of creating a Horcrux, for it to backfire so? But no, he didn’t have the luxury to conduct an extended interrogation; Malfoy would soon be gone. The most pressing matter was… “How have you travelled back in time?”
“A specialised Time-Turner, my lord, constructed with painstaking devotion over many, many years. All to prevent your death.” Malfoy pressed a roll of parchment into the folds of the towel. “The details are written here. I may be whisked back at any moment. If only I could—”
But Tom never found out what Malfoy could or could not do, for Malfoy vanished, leaving only the bundle on the floor.
It was at that precise moment that the towel fell open, revealing a wide-awake, green-eyed infant that gazed straight back at Tom.
Tom felt a jolt within him, a shock of recognition.
He knew the soul that stared out at him from those eyes.
Or he knew a part of it.
So Malfoy hadn’t been lying, after all.
Still, a human Horcrux? How extraordinary. And the only human Horcrux in wizarding history, no less; no wonder it was Lord Voldemort who had managed it when nobody else could, although something seemed to have gone awry in its formation.
Tom couldn’t read Malfoy’s love letter from the future within Borgin and Burkes itself, since it was far too valuable a document to be perused hurriedly on such insecure premises. Tom had to return to his flat, which was as heavily warded as a battleship. Only there could he relax enough to go about solving the mystery of his ‘last Horcrux’. Clad in too-large orange pyjamas as it was.
***
Smuggling an infant into his dilapidated, three-storey building of flats on the outskirts of Knockturn Alley was no mean feat. Even with a disillusionment charm and a silencing charm to muffle the babe’s occasional snuffles, there were creatures in Knockturn with senses beyond the merely human, and they lurked around every corner.
A shtriga with glowing eyes and a carnivorous grin looked directly at the baby in Tom’s arms, impervious to mortal trickery. A werewolf in a tattered Muggle coat, searching his pockets for keys outside yet another dilapidated building, lifted his chin and sniffed the air curiously. A hag with a creaking, rotting wooden stand displaying dried organs breathed in shudderingly as Tom passed, her talon-like nails clicking quietly against the bone-white beads she wore.
Tom had never been so painfully aware of just how dangerous this neighbourhood was, although it could hardly be called a ‘neighbourhood’ on account of how distinctly un-neighbourly its denizens were.
Of course, Tom himself was afraid of none of them; he could destroy them all with ease. No, what unnerved him was that he was now hampered by this thing he had to protect, this thing that was vulnerable and small and utterly helpless.
Why had his future self chosen such a helpless vessel? Was it not the height of idiocy to choose a Horcrux that could not defend itself—and that, by virtue of its fragility, could not be secreted away in some distant, well-guarded crypt to be ignored forever?
No, this vessel would have to be fed, and bathed, and… changed, or whatever it was that was done with miniature human gremlins who soiled themselves.
Just as Tom neared the safety of his living quarters—for he would never, in a thousand years, call that hellhole a home, an honour reserved for Hogwarts, and Hogwarts alone—the baby emitted a loud, piercing cry.
And beamed up at Tom smugly as every beast with supernatural hearing within a hundred yards perked up.
“You little cretin,” Tom swore, and sped up until he was nearly running, careening past the front door of his building, racing up the stairs like a man possessed, wandlessly unlocking all the wards on his flat’s door as he approached it, and all but colliding with the hallway wall when he finally barrelled in.
He leaned against the wall, panting, as the door slammed shut behind him and the wards reassembled themselves.
Tom collapsed onto the rickety stool he usually sat on to put on his shoes. He wiped the sweat from his brow one-handedly and glowered down at the bundle of not-at-all joy clutched desperately in his other arm.
The baby gurgled up at him, batted its bloody eyelashes, and grinned.
“Sodding hell,” Tom muttered.
Not only had Tom’s future self selected a deficient vessel, he’d also selected a brat.
