The Last Chance Of Tom Riddle

“I thought the era of your charming little jokes at my expense was already in the past,” Tom replied, sounding a bit offended. Seventy-five years! Why not a whole century at once? This woman was incorrigible… They meet after all this, and she immediately goes back to her old ways. “Oh, yes, in a very distant past indeed!” the Lady snatched the strange mirror he had been fiddling with before her arrival, pressed a button on the side, and thrust it under his nose. “This is a modern telephone. It’s a watch, a calendar, a flashlight, a camera, and a bunch of other useful things. Look… this is today’s date. See?” Tom saw it—September 1, 2018. So what? “One can write many things in many places… well done, you prepared,” he answered, surprised that he was completely unable to get angry at this insufferable girl, not even a little bit. “Now, enough… stop teasing me…” He took advantage of the moment and reached for her plump lips. Mmm, the most magical feeling in the world… a sweet ache immediately stirred in his lower abdomen… Perhaps he wasn’t so weak after all? They hadn’t done this in an eternity… But the Lady gently pulled away, warningly placing her palm against his chest. “Wait, Tommy… Listen to me, please. Look at my hair. Did they cut it like this in 1943? Did they wear clothes like this?” She ran behind a screen, clapping her hands on the way so that all the lamps lit up—it was starting to get dark. She brought out a short little dress, more like a nightgown, and showed it to him. Tom shrugged… who knew where she had been and what new fashions she had picked up? The haircut was amusing, of course, as if the barber had been intoxicated, but it suited her—it made her even more beautiful. And the blonde streaks suited her face, too. “Will you put it on?” he asked playfully. “Otherwise, it’s not very clear.” “Tom!” she said indignantly. “I am not lying, and I am not teasing you! I really was gone for seventy-five years. During that time, you managed to do such things… Such… I can’t bring myself to tell you. And you also managed to die twice.” Aola returned to the bedside, tossing the dress onto the ottoman. She touched his hand. “This is your third body, which was resurrected by a miracle. Thanks to a pure accident, a part of your soul was fused into my locket. And if you don’t come to your senses, you will lose it, and the remnants of your tormented soul, forever!” She moved her finger across the glass of this supposed telephone and again thrust it under her stunned lover’s nose. “And this is what you looked like after your first rebirth. It’s a pity there’s no signal here, or I would show you what they write about you on the Internet… It’s a kind of virtual network for storing information; Muggles invented it.” From the phone, a very unpleasant-looking lizard-man stared back at him—bald, lipless, noseless, and with blood-tinted pupils. The monster grinned crookedly and pointed a wand at Tom that looked remarkably like his own. “Oh, please, Aola, stop!” the teenager pleaded, now genuinely terrified. What nonsense was happening?! And where was his wand, for that matter?! “You will remember everything yourself soon… The remaining part of your soul will find you; that’s what the shaman who returned you to life believes. And then you will stop being my sweet boy… You will become HIM, the Dark Lord. We will have to learn how to live with that, both of us.” She stroked his cheek. “I visited Hagrid; he’s grown so much—almost a full giant! He told me everything. And then I read about all your 'exploits' on the Internet. It was very, very painful, Mr. Riddle… I can show you, if you have the strength, of course. I’m not sure about your magical abilities yet.” Legilimency had always come easily to Tom, but now, no matter how hard he tried, he could not connect to the Lady’s mind. A real panic washed over him. Had he become a Squib?! “What’s wrong with me?! Where is my wand?” “Calm down, please…” Aola took his hands, looking tenderly into eyes filled with panic. “It’s likely a consequence of the transformation. I think all your abilities will gradually return. As for the wand, I don’t know. And besides… I wouldn’t give it to you anyway. I don’t know what to expect from a man who went to kill an infant in a cradle…” “Me?” Tom whispered, shattered. The information had hit him so hard that not a single coherent thought remained in his head—only a wild mess stirred by horror. “I couldn’t kill a child!” “Well, you didn’t spare Billy Stubbs’s rabbit… the bad seeds were dormant in you from the very beginning,” she said with bitterness. Tom jerked as if from an electric shock. How did she know?! God, the shame… “That was a long time ago… I acted badly, I admit… I didn’t know how to control myself then and didn’t understand what I was capable of… I never did anything like that again, I swear to you! Especially, I didn’t kill any infants!” “You simply don’t remember it, my dear. A part of your soul was preserved in the locket in its purity… Fortunately, you didn’t kill him, you only harmed yourself. And then he grew up and sent you to hell. And he was right to do so! You killed, lied, and stole left and right! You didn’t even spare your own father and his parents… I hope that when you remember everything, you will at least try to explain the motives for your actions to me. I fear that my fault in what became of you is not small either…” “Fine… Let’s assume it all happened,” he forced out, trying to calm the nervous trembling that had taken over his body. “Where were you for all seventy-five years?” “With my mother…” Aola looked at him with such guilt. “It turns out she had been watching me… Peris feel when their loved ones are in danger. And then, over the lake, too… She managed to pull me out from right under the bomb’s impact. I lived all these years among my people.” “Why didn’t you at least send a letter?!” he exclaimed, leaning forward. “I couldn’t… I hadn’t been initiated as a peri; Mother left me with Father. I was, and still am, considered human. Peris can only interfere in human affairs by observing many formalities—being married to a human, for example. Otherwise, special permission from the tribal matriarch is required. Mama broke the law, and not just formally. As payment, I was obliged to spend time among the peris equal to one hundred Earth years. I couldn’t leave their dimension. Nor could I send word. And Mama couldn’t do it either… It’s a taboo that could not be transgressed. We both took a vow… Forgive me, Tommy… To wait and wait, knowing that you and Papa were mourning me as dead… it was unbearable.” She looked at him so imploringly, and for the umpteenth time that day, tears burst from her beautiful, moist eyes. And that was when Tom believed. He believed and demanded: “Tell me everything.” When the Lady finished, he turned away, burying his face in the pillow, unable to look at her. It was terrible—to black out as a green youth who had just lost his beloved, to wake up many years later, only to find out you had lived those years like a total beast and had already managed to die a couple of times. And if it weren’t for her return, love, faith, and incredible efforts—you wouldn’t exist at all! How agonizing it was to feel shame for things you don’t even remember! “My boy…” she stroked his shoulder. “Leave me, please…” he mumbled into the pillow, with a convulsive sob. But then he sharply turned and gripped her hand. “No, don’t leave!” Aola lay down beside him, embracing him gently. “Do you really still love me… after all that?” he asked, searching the amber depths of her eyes. His voice trembled. His heart was pounding like crazy and aching in earnest. Not a real heart at all, grown with the help of magic, but it ached like a real one. “Of course,” she answered as if he were asking something foolish. “The you that I know and remember.” “And when it inhabits me? What then?!” “I hope I can love you just the same…” the girl answered honestly. “I hope you won’t let it get the upper hand over you.” More than enough words had been said. Tom would have preferred never to have heard most of them, and the Lady would have preferred never to have spoken them. They lay in a tight embrace, each thinking their own thoughts. Tom prayed silently that the fragment of the Dark Lord’s soul would not find him. That would be perfect! Just to start all over again, as if there hadn’t been seventy-five years of separation, loneliness, and crimes he didn’t remember anyway, to hell with it! How could he have fallen so far and done everything Aola considered the foulest of the foul? How could he have so desecrated her memory? It was mind-boggling, and in his young, innocent soul, he found no answers. Oh, please… God, or whoever else is almighty and watching over this planet, let everything stay as it is! They would just live in this tent somewhere far away from people. Near that pyramid in America, for example. Let her brush dust off bones and skulls and transcribe runes, and he would fish or hunt—basically, do what a man is supposed to do. And in the evenings, they could drink wine on the summit and watch the sun set. Or swim under a waterfall. And then make love. He wouldn’t even resort to magic much, certainly no more than necessary. Aola, like any normal woman who had already spent a great deal of time worrying about the future, was thinking that she ought to feed the “newborn” and move the tent further away from the shaman’s yurt. Tseren-Shulam’s work was finished, and whatever happened next was now her problem and responsibility alone. “How are you feeling, Tommy?” she asked, stroking his ruffled hair. “You must be hungry. Do you want something?” He shook his head. “You need to eat to get back on your feet quickly,” she began to persuade him in the tone of a patient nurse. What Tom wanted had nothing to do with the vulgar process of consuming food. He had missed his beloved terribly, and now, after all the revelations, he was also afraid of being rejected once that damn Voldemort crawled into his head. Therefore, he decisively interrupted the Lady’s lecture on healthy nutrition for the newly resurrected by closing her mouth with a kiss.