Chapter Text
Tom spends his life trying to give Harry everything, as he promised. But there are some things he simply can’t do.
Their lives are perfect for years. They do everything they ever wanted to do. Tom becomes something more than just a politician. It doesn’t make him as happy as he always imagined, but it’s nice. Harry stops playing Quidditch and becomes a Curse-Breaker against Tom’s wishes, but it makes him happy so Tom lets it slide.
For a while it’s almost like they get their own happily ever after, but then, after two decades of trying, Walburga Black gives birth to a baby boy and names him after a star. Suddenly Harry stops visiting her. Tom is happy at first—he never liked that girl anyway—but slowly he realizes Harry isn’t himself anymore.
The baby is a connection to his past. Harry starts watching other people he used to know in his previous life, and slowly he becomes obsessed.
He sees his parents, living happily but unable to conceive a child when they were supposed to. Instead it happens much later and it's a redheaded girl. He sees his friends, living their lives without him. Some of them changed, for the better or the worse. Some weren't born at all and Harry blames himself for it.
But it’s the life he would have had if Voldemort hadn’t come and destroyed it all. It’s his perfect life, except he isn’t there. And still, all the people he knows are happy without him. They go on with their lives, never knowing Harry ever existed.
Harry keeps watching them even if it hurts. Slowly he forgets to live his own life. And in the end he doesn't even want to anymore.
It breaks Tom’s heart. He might not be able to feel the misery, he might not understand what it’s like to care so much. But he cares about Harry, and he doesn’t want to watch him suffer anymore.
On Harry’s 80th birthday Tom brings him to the cave. The one where he buried his locket and the Golden Snitch over sixty years ago. These days it’s the most protected place on Earth.
He raises the box from the dark waters of the lake of death. He tells Harry what it contains.
“I know. I have always known,” Harry says.
Harry didn’t stay because Tom held his soul as hostage, he stayed because he wanted to. He let Tom live because he wanted to. And he shared that life with him because he wanted to.
And Tom cries for the second time in his life. Because he thinks he finally truly understands what love feels like. And he thinks he’s finally achieved everything he dreamed of when he was young. He has found the power he was looking for, he was just looking for it in the wrong place.
He feels accepted. He feels his life had a purpose. He feels content.
He was even able to love Harry enough for him to stay.
Tom knows now it’s time to let him die like he wants to. It’s what Harry always wanted—a normal life that ends—and Tom loves him enough to give it to him.
“You can go if you want,” Tom says with a trembling voice and picks up the Snitch. “We can go.”
Harry’s surprised. He looks at him with teary eyes. After a while he nods.
Tom never made more Horcruxes, but he continued his research for decades. Destroying a Horcrux should return the soul piece back to its place. He knows he can make them whole again—he knows he can get them to the afterlife.
And he wants them to go together. He doesn’t want to stay behind. He doesn’t want to be alone.
Tom exhales heavily and picks up the locket too. He throws the Horcruxes into the water. After hesitating just a little, he pulls the ring from his finger and throws it into the lake as well. He uses the raw emotions to summon an enormous Fiendfyre in the shape of a basilisk, that devours the army of inferi, the murky waters, and the last three Horcruxes.
Tom looks at Harry and releases the fiery basilisk from his control. He kisses him for the last time as the flames grow hotter around them.
They don’t feel a thing.
Tom wakes up. Everything is white and he feels like he’s floating, surrounded by glowy mist. Suddenly the surroundings warp, slowly turning into a white room. He panics for a while—it looks exactly what he thought a limbo would look like. He wonders if his research was wrong.
He wonders if they both got stuck.
But then he meets Death, who tells him about the Deathly Hallows.
It says Tom is the Master of Death.
Tom tells him he can’t be. He doesn’t even have the cloak.
Except he does. He still owns it—Harry was just holding onto it for him, like Tom asked all those years ago. It was stolen, so Harry never truly accepted the gift.
Harry ended up giving Tom what he always wanted. True immortality. He made him a god.
Death asks if he wants to return to life.
Tom says he does. Except, he doesn’t want to go back to his old life. He asks if he could start over instead. If he could be reborn in 1980.
Death says yes.
And Tom smiles. This time he’ll finally be able to give Harry everything he wants.