i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

Epilogue Part II: The Close

For a second time, before he could get a word in, an irritated voice spoke up, sending a shiver of icy fear down Harry's spine. "You are getting off track."

Harry instinctively reached for his wand, only to be reminded it wasn't there, probably fallen beside his body wherever it laid back on the other side with the living. With no way to defend himself, he took several quick steps away from the both of them.

How could he be here?

Ophelia closed her eyes in a very aggrieved manner and loosed an exasperated sigh. "Didn't we agree you'd stay away and let me handle this so you wouldn't freak the poor boy out, Tom?"

If anyone else his age had referred to Harry like he was a child, he would have been irritated, but for some reason coming from her it didn't sound quite so demeaning as it should have.

"We did," Riddle agreed, carrying himself smoothly over to Ophelia's side. "But, if you recall, neither of us have ever been particularly adept at keeping our promises, be it me with Horcruxes or you with leaving me."

"You think you're so funny, but you're not. You're petty — and you hold a nasty grudge. Merlin only knows why I bother with you," Ophelia lamented. "It's a mystery."

"What is going on?" Harry demanded. While he was certain nothing could do him harm in this place, Voldemort's was never a welcome face to behold. He pointed angrily at Riddle, who stared at the offending finger the way Harry himself had often stared at Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skewts: a mixture of revulsion, disdain, and reluctant acceptance. "I saw you a few minutes ago, and you looked nothing like this! That creature was pitiful, inhuman – and disgusting."

Nothing like the handsome man before him now. Harry's thoughts first jumped to the phantom Riddle that had popped out of the diary his second year, but that wasn't quite accurate either. He seemed older, more like the Pensieve-memory Harry saw of the young, twenty-something adult Riddle soliciting Hepzibah Smith on the behalf of Borgan and Burke. That still didn't seem right, however, until all of a sudden it struck Harry that the person before him lacked sallow, colourless skin or flashing scarlet eyes, everything that hinted at Voldemort's fractured soul back then.

Riddle's dark — normal — eyes narrowed dangerously. "I don't think I like your tone, boy."

That 'boy' did grate on Harry's nerves.

"Oh, be quiet, Tom." Ophelia playfully batted at his chest with the back of her hand, then looped an arm through his. "What are you going to do, huh? He's killed you — what? — six times? You're outmatched, even if you could follow through with your threats here. Besides, I rather enjoy listening to someone lay into you with something other than praise. It's refreshing."

To Harry's immense surprise, the tension seemed to drain right out of Riddle when he shifted his focus off Harry and onto her. Consciously or unconsciously, Harry didn't know, but Riddle's grasp tightened, until no space separated the two and he slipped his arm free to slide it around her waist, as if it pained him to have any distance at all.

"Outmatched? Who do you think you're talking to?"

"What's going on?" Harry cut in, near the point of bursting. "How is he here? Voldemort isn't dead yet!"

Just as the words left his mouth, however, Harry felt he could hear Hermione's matter of fact tone correcting him. Actually, Harry, she'd say, We destroyed five of his Horcruxes — excluding Harry himself, of course — so if you do the math. Most of him has already been killed.