Go Gentle

I never found out how he brought you back. How he undid the damage to the bleeding diary and smuggled it back into Hogwarts. How he managed to put it in a place where I had to stumble over it. How he knew I would open it when I recognised it, despite everything. A very... underhanded form of revenge. Very Slytherin. He must have found it in his father's possessions. I had given it back to Lucius, after all. Way back. Before the world fell to pieces.

I found it the very day before we were to leave Hogwarts for good, NEWT results already tucked safely into our travelling trunks, packed up and ready to go. The Dark Lord – destroyed. The Death Eaters – defeated or scattered. All filled with the optimism of new beginnings right around the corner.

And there it was that evening, tucked innocently between my trunk and Hedwig's empty cage. Waiting for me. I recognised it immediately, of course. It's not something one would forget. Battered, black, a bit more splotchy around the edges. I turned it and read your name, familiar as my own. I didn't even think about taking it to Dumbledore. That would have been so sensible, but no, I just opened it. And that was it. No writing this time, only water-stained, empty pages.

And then the maelstrom.

And for the second time I stood in the Chamber of Secrets, only this time it wasn't fully solid - stone, water and statues were shrouded in an eerie fog. Just a mixture of memory and mental construct providing an appropriate background. No monster. No Ginny. But you, of course. You looked exactly as I remembered – dark hair, dark eyes, formal Slytherin robes, a face cold and sharp enough to terrify stone.

I saw your triumphant smile, and knew at the same moment that it had been a plot, and who had engineered it. Almost instinctively I drew my wand.

Your smile just deepened, and you shook your head in mock regret. You snapped your fingers, and my wand disappeared in an eruption of sparks, only to rematerialise in your hand.

"Welcome to my mind, Harry," you greeted. "I'm afraid you have no power here."

I let my hand drop empty at my side. Yes, I admit there was apprehension, and a nervous pressure in my chest. But it wasn't fear.

"Have you defeated me then, Harry?"

I rubbed my temple to relieve the slight pressure that was building there.

"Voldemort... yes."

Your eyes narrowed – you were not happy, I could see, but neither were you surprised.

"I am Lord Voldemort," you insisted, but it wasn't true. You were the embryonic shell of a misdirected life. You were not the man – the creature – I had been condemned by fate to kill. Not yet. Not ever.

"No, you're not," I told you, and saw without surprise the fury igniting in your eyes.

You waved that wand of mine, and the spell threw me backwards several feet and sent me crashing into one of the pillars that lined the hall. The impact felt as if it had shattered my spine. Even if the surroundings were illusion, I could still be hurt.

Of course, you drove home the point forcefully when your Cruciatus Curse hit me there on the ground, sending me down into an abyss of convulsions, tears and pained screams. It felt as if someone hammered nails into my very essence, and then revisited each and every one to bang it even deeper. Enough to drive anyone mad. But you did not want me mad, and neither did you want me dead, so you lifted the curse at last, and after a while, I even noticed. I didn't have the strength to move, though, as if those imaginary nails had tacked me securely to the ground. You stared down at me with a mixture of satisfaction, hatred and contempt, searching my face for something that just wasn't there. No hatred, no anger, no defiance even. The time when I had a right to anger was long gone. It was not what this was about.

And when you failed to find whatever you were looking for in my expression, yours changed. You looked as if victory had been snatched from your grip at the last possible moment. Not the physical fact of victory – the spiritual one.

"Will you not even fight me?" you spat, confusion and contempt mingling in your voice.

I had to smile at you then, painful as it was.

"No, Tom," I answered you, patiently as one would speak to a slow-witted child. "I have already won." And lost at the same time, I knew that well, but it wasn't something you would have understood. I always did what was expected of me and on the few times I failed, people suffered and died. And afterwards, when all that was expected of me was to live happily ever after, I found out that I couldn't. I had let them turn me into a murderer, oh, for the most noble of causes, but that was the one thing I was never meant to be. What I never wanted to be.

"Not against me," you pointed out, fair enough, but still you didn't understand. You didn't understand that I had had a very long time to think about you. About what you would become, about what you had done. I had faced your grown up alter ego, and I beat him because I had to. Not for revenge, not for glory. Because I had to. Not for myself, but against my own better instincts.

"He talked to me a lot, Lucius' son," you said and flopped to the ground, coming to sit next to me with arms tucked around your knees. A pose that would have looked more natural on me, though I'd never been able to execute it with remotely as much elegance. "About what you did to his father. How you took everything he ever wanted. How much he hates you."

You smiled coldly, and I could picture your role in those conversations, encouraging, sympathetic, prompting. I could almost pity Draco Malfoy. He never stood a chance against you. Use and be used. Slytherins all. Although that was not really fair, was it? I had been used like that myself, and not by Salazar's house.

"So he offered you a deal, didn't he?" I could see it easily now, even if I didn't comprehend the magic he had employed.

You nodded, a superior expression on your face.

"A deal, yes. Freedom for me, revenge for him, and for you..." You fell pointedly silent and ran your fingers down my wet cheek very tenderly.

"Death?" I prompted with an utter lack of apprehension.

You smiled at me, the first honest smile I had ever seen on you, and leaned in to kiss me, directly on the mouth and with just as much gentleness as your fingers had shown my face. I almost cried then, because it hurt terribly, a bitter, painful knot of anguish tightening in my chest. Kissing me like that was more cruel than any curse could have been. I had been ready to let go, and you reminded me of what I was losing.

"Far, far worse than death," you murmured against my lips, and brushed the tears from my eyes. So I just let my lids fall shut and let you pull my body into your arms and kiss me again, and again, and just let you drain the life out of me like that, tender, irresistible, and so very, very cruel.

There was one life to gain, or to lose, in that murky, unreal shelter of the diary, one, only one, and in that moment, I understood for the first time the true meaning of the phrase 'love your enemy'. Not as some dogmatic guideline, or religious credo. But I had looked at you, and saw that you loved life so much you would sacrifice anything, anything at all to regain it. You wanted it so much, so much more than I did, that I let you have it. Because you loved life so much.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have let you win the first time round in the Chamber, if it had only been my life at stake instead of Ginny's. Sometimes I wonder if I would have let your alter ego win in our final encounter, if it had been only my life at stake instead of the fate of the wizarding world.

Sometimes I wish you had destroyed the diary after you left it. It is so terribly lonely here. But you knew that best of all. And sometimes I wish nothing more than for you to return, if only to gloat. You, or him, or anyone, no matter who. But mostly you. But then I know you won't. You're Tom Riddle. It would be foolish to expect mercy from you. And unlike me, you're not one to ever look back.