Transcendence

Additional Disclaimer: Some lines and descriptions in this chapter are either direct quotations or paraphrases from Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 17, "The Heir of Slytherin."

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Author's Notes: This is an AU based on the premise that Tom Riddle successfully escaped from the diary in CoS. It will be dark and probably gory in places. It's Tom-centric and not ship-centric, but there could be either homosexual or heterosexual encounters. The only thing I will tell you up front is that it won't be Tom/Harry or Tom/Ginny (even though I like both of those).

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, sexual situations (het and slash), torture, rape/non-con, major and minor character death, and "self-cest" (that'd be sexual situations between Tom and Voldemort and/or other Horcruxes, folks). The version on FictionAlley will comply with all rating guidelines here. I will let you know at the beginning of a chapter if there is a higher rated version elsewhere (other archives are listed in my profile), in case anyone wants to read it.

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Time is a funny thing when you aren't real. Or at least when you are not a part of the real world, although Tom was real enough, in his own way. He was a real being with a real personality and real desires and real feelings. It's just that he didn't have a real body or any sort of real communication with the outside world, and under those circumstances time had a funny way of losing any real meaning.

He didn't know how long he had been inside the diary before he'd realized that he had no idea how long he'd been inside the diary.

He had quickly learned that there was no way to mark the passing of time, because his surroundings were only the manifestation of his own thoughts. It was day if he wanted it to be day and night if he wanted it to be night. He was at Hogwarts if he wanted to be at Hogwarts, but he could just as easily think another thought and find himself on that godforsaken rocky beach he had sometimes visited as a child.

It had taken him what had seemed like a long time (although since he had no way of keeping track, he couldn't say how long it had taken with any certainty) to learn how to discipline his thoughts in such a way that his surroundings would remain the same until he actually wanted them to change, even if he allowed his mind to wander to other subjects or places.

What had been worse was when he had discovered that the only things he could invent in his surroundings were things he had already experienced. He could think himself into the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, but he couldn't read any of the books that he hadn't already read. They appeared on the shelf of his mindscape because he had looked at the stacks before, but if he pulled a new book off the shelf and opened it, the pages were blank. He could fantasize about being on a tropical beach, but the sand and water didn't feel real and the details were blurry if he tried to look at them.

In that way he supposed that it was something of a blessing that time had no meaning to him, because if he had actually been able to count every second of his isolation then he would have gone even madder than he had.

His other self--his real self--had communicated with him from time to time in the beginning, but he had never given any sort of indication how long it had been between communications. Real-Tom might have spoken with him every day or every ten years for all he was able to tell, and by the time the communications had stopped he was long past thinking about such things. For all he had known, Real-Tom had last spoken to him only hours before.

He had been shocked to the very core of his being when the date had materialized suddenly in his consciousness.

August 19, 1992.

He had wanted to know what the significance of the date was at first, because Real-Tom had never seen the need to note any dates before. Then the next words had materialized and he had realized that Real-Tom wasn't the person writing to him at all.

Dear Diary...

Ginny Weasley had found him inside one of her secondhand textbooks (the indignity of which was not lost on him who had long imagined that one day he would never have to buy secondhand books with donated money ever again). It had taken carefully worded questions and skillful directing of their conversations to learn that Lucius Malfoy had probably been the one to slip him in with the girl's things. He assumed that Lucius Malfoy was Abraxas Malfoy's son, and although Lucius hadn't even been a twinkle in Abraxas's eye when Tom had been put into his diary, he further assumed that Lucius must be a follower of Real-Tom and that Real-Tom had been behind his diary ending up with Ginny Weasley. He had therefore been content to follow the original plan meant for him... until he had learned from Ginny about the fate of his real self.

Things had changed after that.

First Ginny had given him back some semblance of time. He had quickly worked out her schedule from her inane ramblings about her classes, and so he had begun to mark the passing of days and weeks. When she had become so addicted to him that she spoke to him at every given opportunity--between classes, during meals--he had begun to mark the passing of hours and even minutes.

Next Ginny had given him back his own purpose. The more he was able to find out about recent history and in particular about Harry Potter, the more he turned away from the purpose Real-Tom had given him. What did scaring Mudbloods away from Hogwarts matter when Lord Voldemort had utterly failed at the hands of a mere infant? He needed to find out the hows and whys. He began to think of himself as real again, the madness from such utter isolation and intellectual stagnancy slowly slipping away until he could once again clearly define the boundaries between what was real and what was his imagination.

Ginny had also given him Harry Potter, although she had done her level best to deny him that. He had been quite cross with her for stealing him back--after all, what right had she to keep him from Harry Potter when she had been the one to throw him away, to try to destroy him, in the first place? But that was no matter in the end, because Ginny had been the reason the little hero had come down to the Chamber.

The last thing Ginny would give him would be a body.

As he stared at her nearly completely lifeless body lying on the cold stone a few feet from him, he had the fleeting thought that he should enshrine her for all she had done for him. Then Tom smiled at his own romantic notion, because he knew that in reality he would never spare another thought for her after she was no longer in his direct line of sight.

The wand in his grip seemed more substantial now, and he squeezed his fingers around it experimentally. He was almost completely corporeal. It had been so long since he'd had a body that he really didn't remember what it was like and had no idea how much more real he could get at this point, but he could feel that Ginny was still alive, if only barely, so he knew that the process wasn't completed yet.

Still, he gripped the wand tighter, just because he could, as he watched Dumbledore's phoenix swoop down around Salazar's basilisk. What in Slytherin's name was that fool snake doing? Honestly, the continued centuries of isolation must have driven it completely around the bend, and Tom suspected, from his interactions with the beast, that it had never been very smart to begin with.

"KILL THE BOY!" he screamed in irritation. "LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU. SNIFF--SMELL HIM."

He watched with mounting annoyance as the serpent thrashed around, knocking down great pillars as it spun. It would be absolutely annoying to have to repair the Chamber after this. He had half a mind to leave the bloody basilisk all by itself for another fifty years to punish it for its incompetence.

When it struck out at Potter, Tom thought at first that it had succeeded. Then it fell over sideways, away from Potter, and, after a few feeble twitches, stopped moving.

He couldn't see what had happened from where he was standing, but he could see the broken fang lying on the floor next to the boy. Dumbledore's bird settled on the cold stones next to Potter and laid its head on his arm.

Tom walked forward until he was standing over Potter and could clearly see the gaping wound in the boy's arm. "You're dead, Harry Potter. Dead," he told him, his emotions only barely discernable in his voice, as always. "Even Dumbledore's bird knows it. Do you see what he's doing, Potter? He's crying."

The boy swayed, and Tom thought that he might fall over. He took a step back in case the little wretch vomited or something equally as disgusting.

"I'm going to sit here and watch you die, Harry Potter. Take your time. I'm in no hurry."

He smiled to himself again. He considered explaining to Potter about time, but he figured that the boy was well past understanding why he would find it so amusing that Tom's first moments experiencing real time in five decades would be spent watching Real-Tom's vanquisher slowly dying in their Chamber.

"So ends the famous Harry Potter," he said instead. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry... She bought you twelve years of borrowed time... but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must...."

But even as he said it, he knew that something was wrong. Potter had stopped swaying, and some of the color was returning to his cheeks.

His eyes fell suddenly on the phoenix, and in a flash it came back to him.

"Get away, bird! Get away from him--" Tom rose his wand to forcibly remove it if necessary. "I said, get away--"

Then the bird took flight, and Tom remained frozen in his surprise.

"Phoenix tears... Of course... healing powers... I forgot..."

He wondered how much else he had forgotten. The years in the diary had been stagnant and monotonous, and although he had attempted to keep himself entertained at first, he had quickly tired of reading the same books and experiencing the same things over and over. When time had no meaning, it didn't really matter if he reread Magick Moste Evile for the thousandth time or if he didn't do anything at all. No matter what he did or didn't do, time passed just as slowly or as quickly, or moved not at all, or all at once--he wasn't sure how to describe it, even in his own thoughts....

Clearly the time away had affected his mind. He sucked in a furious breath and didn't even pause to reflect on how miraculous it was that he was breathing at all.

"But it makes no difference. In fact, I prefer it this way." He peered down at Potter and tried to convince himself that he'd feel better about all he had lost if he directed his anger at the boy. "Just you and me, Harry Potter... you and me..."

He raised Harry's wand and pointed it at the boy's chest.

He heard the bird over his head before he saw it, and it seemed almost as if the diary appeared from nowhere in Potter's lap. Both he and Harry stared at it.

Then Potter's hand darted out and grabbed the broken fang from the floor beside him, and Tom felt something he'd never felt before, even before the diary. His new heart seized in his chest, and his new muscles tensed so much that it was nearly painful. He watched, almost as if time had slowed down, as the diary fluttered on Potter's lap even as the boy brought the fang down.

It flew across the short distance and straight into Tom's chest just before it would have been too late. Tom's muscles reacted a second later and he caught the precious book fast against his body before it could fall to the ground. Potter pulled up short just before the fang plunged into his leg where the diary had been resting just a moment before.

Tom's heart was pounding now. If he had reacted just a split second later... If he hadn't Summoned it in time... If the wand hadn't already been raised...

He swallowed thickly as his wide-eyed gaze met Harry's equally shocked green eyes. It was as if time once again had no meaning, and he had no idea how long they stood there. He didn't even feel the elation he'd thought he would--that he certainly would have, before...--when he felt Ginny die and knew for certain that it was done. He was real.

But it did prod him into action.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" he screamed. Then, without pausing to cringe at the uncontrolled tone of his voice, he span on his heel and ran deeper into the Chamber, away from Dumbledore's bird and the fang and the bodies of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.

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Author's Notes: There are two main motivators for this story. First, Tom Riddle is one of my favorite characters, and it has always bothered me that Rowling wrote him as so incredibly stupid and slow to react in CoS when elsewhere she describes how brilliant he was. (But I suppose that Harry wouldn't have been able to win in the Chamber if Tom had been as smart as he was supposed to have been, and Rowling did need Harry to win....) So I thought about possible explanations for why he was the way he was in CoS.

Second, the idea of Horcruxes is fascinating, and the diary Horcrux in particular acts so differently from the Horcruxes we see later in HBP that it can lead to all sorts of ideas. Tom (the diary) is apparently a separate entity entirely from Voldemort (the man), as he doesn't share memories or knowledge with Voldemort, and later on in DH we know that Voldemort himself also isn't aware of and doesn't have any connected with the diary or any other Horcruxes. Plus what if Tom had succeeded in getting a body... He would presumably still be one of Voldemort's Horcruxes even if he was in corporeal form, so how exactly would the mechanics of that work, and how would that change things with both Tom and Voldemort in the world?

And so this story sprouted from the above thoughts.

For anyone who is reading my other story, The Other Side, never fear; I have not stopped work on that story. In fact, I have been steadily pounding away at the next chapter and hope to release it in the next week or two, and I don't expect this story to interfere.