Don't Leave Me - A Tom Riddle Backstory

Broken

"Alicia! Why are you avoiding me again?"

Alicia didn't turn around and I'm pretty sure that if I wasn't holding her, she would have continued walking away. I didn't understand it. Things were going so well. Since Hogwarts I tried not to explode every time something happened with her.

I was constantly putting in the effort to make sure she didn't have a reason to leave me. For the last two weeks, she hasn't said anything to me. She had even returned to her muggle family while I wasn't at home one day.

"Alicia..."

"I'm breaking up with you Tom." Alicia said.

I thought I heard her voice crack. She pulled her arm free from my grip and literally ran off. I stood there a bit dumbfounded. The first time in my life I genuinely had no response, and my brain couldn't rationalize what just happened. Was she really serious about what she said?

"Well fuck you too." I grumbled and marched off.

I was born because of a love potion and not because of true love. My father was never around - he left before I was born. I was abandoned in an orphanage - feared and isolated. Love was never something I could fully understand. It was never something I really wanted to understand.

I had allowed my anger and hate to grow and fester for so many years. I had a purpose to fulfill. A goal I was determined to see through to the end. A belief that only certain people should be allowed to live. A desire to destroy the blood that tainted my own. To see my ancestor's dream come true.

But then I met her.

Alicia had wiped away my hate towards my father. The anger against muggles that I had nurtured for years. She made me want to understand what true love was. I even began to care about muggles. People were always still scared of me but not when I was with her - I wasn't as isolated as before. I believed there really was love beyond a stupid potion.

But how stupid was I? How easily had I been tricked? Alicia was a Slytherin. She followed her own ambitions and dreams at the cost of those around her. She had gotten what she wanted from me so it was easy for her to cast me aside. I should have known better than to fall for her tricks.

I didn't know where I was going until I found myself back home and sitting on our bed. My vision was clouded over with red. The leather-bound journal Alicia had gotten me in Hogwarts was sitting on my pillow. I didn't remember putting it there and another wave of anger flooded over me.

I wanted to rip someone's throat out. I wanted to prove that I was so much more superior than these snivelling little maggots Alicia left me for. I was the heir of Salazar Slytherin himself for Merlin's sake! I picked up the journal and tossed it across the room when something fell out.

I hadn't touched the thing since she had given it to me almost 12 years ago. I always kept it with me even though I never wrote a single word in it. Even after we started living together it always stayed in the top drawer of my bedside table.

Yet I had found it on my pillow. I knew I hadn't left it there. I hadn't really been home long enough to notice it after I found out Alicia had left. It only made sense that she had left it there. Which meant she had to... I picked up the page that had fallen.

~*~*~

Dear Tom,

I kind of thought you would have used this journal by now but I'm really glad you haven't. You see it's got something really precious and I've been secretly adding to it every single year. Hopefully this will make some sense if anything happened to me. Or even if something happened between us.

Well, here goes nothing.

Tom, I haven't been very well since Hogwarts. I'm glad just being able to have lived this long with you. I now know why I've been sickly for such a long time. I also know that it won't get any better. You see I've been slowly dying since I was hit by that curse at the end of our 6th year.

I really hope that you see this before you go around destroying the entire wizarding world. I enchanted the journal during that week I avoided you so that I could fill it with memories. My happiest memories of the time I've had with you. Since then, whenever I could I've added to it.

I don't want you to see me getting weak. I don't want you to watch me die. Instead I want you to remember me as I am in the memories of the journal.

I love you Tom and I will forever belong to you.
Alicia Reid

~*~*~

My heart shattered and I read the letter over and over again. I picked up the journal and opened it. It was completely blank. I felt my anger rising once again. It wasn't directed at anyone but myself. I had fallen for it again. I seriously hated the power she had over me. Always making me hope for better things.

I was going to destroy this world. I was going to destroy the filthy mudbloods she loved so fucking much. She didn't deserve to have a happy life or death after what she did. Except... Except she did deserve it. She deserved the very best of everything and that obviously wasn't me. How could such an angel like her even love the devil himself?

I found myself crying. I hadn't cried since Alicia had woken up from that curse. I hadn't shown much positive emotion since then except for my usual. Alicia must have really been fed up to pull such a cruel trick on me.

A tear dropped onto a page of the journal and disappeared. I frowned and grabbed a quill. I wrote like I would normally. The ink disappeared as I finished each word. I continued to write different stuff until the journal responded to me.

"You'll see it through my eyes."

I was pulled into a memory. One I remembered clearly except my feelings felt a little different than what I remembered. They felt certain and I could understand exactly what it was. I didn't feel it towards Alicia but instead towards myself. I figured that this was what the journal had meant.

I watched myself begin to walk away and my face went fuzzy. My heart was aching and I was feeling extremely terrified. What did I do to make him... Me? hate me all of a sudden? The feelings and direction were confusing me.

"I love you." Alicia said out loud.

Yes I really do love him... Me. I felt relief wash over me when I stopped walking away. I was still scared since I hadn't turned around. The memory continued as I tried to differentiate between the me watching the memory and the me inside the memory. In the end I just decided that I was Alicia replaying something that happened in the past.

I'll always belong to you Tom even if I complain about not being an object. I'm yours and only yours forever.

I was kicked out of the memory after the last word. I felt strange. Like I had just walked through Alicia's mind listening to her thoughts. At the same time my own heart started to hurt again. Despite what she said, what she wrote, or what she thought, Alicia had still left me. How was I supposed to believe any of this was actually real?

(1300 Words)