i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

Epilogue Part II: The Close

Setting: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

A heavy mist rose up, obscuring King's Cross and swallowing Dumbledore entirely beneath a sheet of white. The wispy tendrils curled in closer, crawling up Harry's ankles to engulf him, too. Their unexpected weight came as a comforting heaviness, a blanket blocking out all the ill in the world for one last time before Harry would reawaken in the Forbidden Forest, surrounded on all sides by Death Eaters.

"Wait."

In that fragile instant, the spell broke. The fog receded to smoke off the ground a short distance away, like a tide temporarily held at bay, drawing back to rise again, greater and stronger than before.

Harry'a eyes snapped wide at the voice that was definitely not Dumbledore's gravely tones.  The new voice, although young and soft in comparison, held a similar resolve born of a life aged in the tight grasp of difficulty. She sounded familiar, yet not at all, certainly not enough to deduce an identity just from a single word, so Harry whirled to face her.

"You," he breathed, seeing, but not quite believing. "I know you."

The words came out sounding like a question, though they were not.

Her eyebrows lifted slightly, giving off the impression of mild mannered surprise. "Really? I'm certain we've never met," she said in soothing, assured tones, completely unlike her last dying gasps Harry recalled from Voldemort's memory. She cracked a half smile, adding, "I'm a little before your time. A lot, actually. I may not look it, but I could be your grandmother. Although, on second thought..." she tugged thoughtfully at a strand of her silver-white hair, "maybe I do look like it. I've heard my hair really ages me."

"Er... no. Not at all."

She looked so different now, with life brightening up her cheeks, than she had then— ironic that she'd appear more alive now that she was dead — but Harry was positive she was the same girl he'd seen in Voldemort's memory just a few weeks prior. Her distinct features were unmistakable, almost unique, were it not for her striking resemblance to the picture he had seen of her uncle.

Not for the first time since being struck with that particular instance of peaking into Voldemort's mind, Harry could practically hear her last words echoing through his head. A pained apology. I'm sorry, Tom.

"You're that girl." Harry shifted restlessly from foot to foot. Before, when she'd just been a fleeting fragment of Voldemort's past, it hadn't struck him what an intimate thing he'd witnessed. Being in front of the object of that memory, however, made it feel real in a way it hadn't previously. "That Grindelwald girl I saw in his memory."

"That," she clucked her tongue, holding up a halting finger, "has never been my name. How would you feel feel if I called you 'that Potter boy Voldemort wants pushed off a cliff'? Doesn't feel good, does it? You may call me Ophelia, if that suits you, but I don't go by Grindelwald." Her brisk pace, giving no time for Harry to apologise — should he even apologise, he wondered? — left him feeling like he's been run over by the Night Bus. "Whose memory are you referring to, may I ask?"

"How do you know who I am?" Harry asked abruptly. He grew accustomed long ago to magical folk recognising him on sight, so it shouldn't have surprised him to hear his name out of her lips as much as it did, but she'd been dead since before he was even born.

"I..." She seemed to struggle to find the right words, her mouth mutely opening and closing twice before finally settling on, "I've wanted to meet you for some time."

"Meet... me? Why?"

"I'm a huge fan of your work," she explained glibly. "Love the way you put Tom in his place every year. It does wonders for grounding his ego, and Merlin only knows how much he needs that. Really, I can't thank you enough."