A/N: Hello, I live. This is a random crack oneshot I started years ago and then decided to finish to get back into writing.

TAE

"Tom," she calls, watching him with perpetually wide eyes as he reads some kind of Ancient Runes book while his future Death Eaters interact around him. It's all very boyish and kind of lame as they talk about who they'd like to 'shag' and how they'd go about achieving such a feat. It's a weird form of stuffy, olden aristocrats being boys, she supposes.

"No," he denies, swift and immediate because she's always calling his name to tell him that he might actually be an idiot. Nervous habit; one that he doesn't appreciate because he's very smart and suggesting otherwise is a bad idea. Obviously.

After an absent sniff, she continues with, "Tom, you're not actually going to give them such a visible mark on their arm, are you?" The very thought makes her cringe. "That's so unsubtle, what the fuck? At least, like, put it somewhere where it's less likely to be accidentally seen. Like a tramp stamp or even on their foot. Can you imagine your little minions trying to verify each other and having to deal with the tense, awkward moment of turning around and lifting their shirts? Or robes, which would make everything more absurd."

"Please, Evie, stop talking," Tom sighs, pausing in his whole nerd reading to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I'll put it somewhere inconspicuous if that will silence you for five minutes."

Evie snorts, taking a seat on the couch he's residing on. She faces him, her legs crossed as she leans half against the backrest and half against him. "Can you get rid of the skull, at least? Design isn't really your thing." When he looks over at her with narrowed eyes, she blinks back at him, likely looking half-crazed and wildly out of place. Luckily, no one but him can see her. "No, really. You're not even Mexican."

Tom bestows upon her a slow, impatient blink to indicate his contempt of her existence. "You'll have to explain," he drawls, in such a way that has her thinking he'd roll his eyes if he considered himself an inferior plebeian with no manners.

"Skulls and snakes symbolise, like, the duality of life and death and how people identify with both. It's spiritual and shit, which respects death more than it condemns it. 'Cause, you know, I'm assuming you're condemning death, not accepting it. That's basically what it means in Mexican culture, but I could be wrong since I'm pretty sure this is a parallel universe or something." Scratching the back of her head, she watches him with a squint as he visually seems to absorb her words. "Just stick with snakes. By themselves, they basically mean immortality, rebirth and all the fun jazz that you have in mind. Also, it'd fit your whole snake theme. You fucking weirdo."

He ignores her three entire weeks, but that doesn't change the fact that his minions now have iridescent snakes that can only be seen by other minions winding around their biceps. A subtle call to the ouroboros shit.

. . .

. . .

"Tom."

His eyes close as an exasperated sigh forcefully escapes him. "Evie, please," he murmurs out loud this time, his voice dangerously soft. It'd be a warning for most others, but luckily for her, she can't be touched. Being a weird ghost out of time has its benefits, even if she has to haunt some sociopathic moron that aims to become immortal for the rest of her existence.

"I don't think splitting your soul is the greatest of ideas," she tells him again. He might have selective hearing or something. His brows twitches. "No, really. You're, what, fifteen? Sixteen? And you plan on permanently fucking up your soul in effort to achieve immortality sooner rather than later?" His face remains stony and unyielding. What a fucking idiot. "Your desperation baffles me."

His face shifts as his eyes darken. "Your existence elicits the same response within me," he retorts, all eloquent despite the lack of class this whole plan of his has.

Evie frowns at him with a sure mix of concern and worry over his sanity. "There's a whole world of magic outside of Hogwarts, Tom," she says, and she thinks she might have succeeded in not using a tone that implies that should be obvious. But his expression is murderous, so probably not. "Do you really think all the world's secrets are stored in the library of one magical school in the world, man?"

Three minutes of malicious silence as he glares at her pretty much unblinkingly. But then, finally, he sighs, the tension in his form draining as he runs a hand through his hair and asks, "Then what you have me do?"

She raises her brows at him. This dude is straight trash at looking ahead, she swears. "Seriously? You're going to graduate at some point, aren't you? You can leave the orphanage and, like, travel the world for less soul-destroying methods at immortality, right? Your minions could pay for the expenses, too. You'd even be getting stronger because of your expansion of knowledge, regardless of your mortality." Looking at the egregiously high ceiling, Evie adds, "Dark magic requires complete control over yourself ̶ I think, maybe ̶ but if you split yourself in half, there's only half of you in control. Presumably, but whatever. My point is, don't you think that'd make it easier for that type of magic to corrupt you?"

"I wouldn't lose control," he insists, fists clenched. That sounds like denial to her.

"You know what," Evie starts, looking to the side as an idea comes to her. "Maybe you should try it out. My soul is tied to yours, somehow, so something's bound to happen if you sever your soul like a fuckwit." Limbo's probably a thing in this world, though, and he'd no doubt be condemning himself to it if he goes through with his plans. Would that also apply to her? Would she be stuck with halves of him for all eternity?

She supposes it doesn't matter. Tom doesn't respond to her, but he does put away his research about horcruxes and leaves it at that.

For now, at least.

. . .

. . .

"Hey, Tom, maybe you should stop petrifying people with your giant snake. Someone's going to die and then your magic school is going to get shut down or something."

Well, that seems like the logical conclusion, anyway. But wizards are fucking whack, she's learned, so she can't really be sure about their countermeasures for the deaths of their students. Petrification appears to be more of a mild worry than a genuine concern because they're used to fuckery, it would seem.

It sort of makes the whole ghost thing more of a pro than a con. Even if Tom is a short-sighted dipshit, he's been doing well enough surviving in this cracked world. Although, she's not really sure why he's going around with a gigantic sewer snake that can literally kill people with its gaze if he's not careful. It's probably some kind of dick-measuring contest against the world because he's an insecure idiot.

Tom ignores her in favour of speaking his weirdo hiss language at a sink. Evie wonders if he realises how lame he looks.

The sink begins to shift, the old porcelain grinding and loud. But, somehow, she manages to hear a small sniffle from one of the bathroom stalls behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she finds one of the stalls fully closed, and it's then that she realises someone is in the fucking bathroom with her power-obsessed anchor.

"Oh, shit, Tom," she gasps, turning back to Tom. He's still ignoring her and doing the hiss hiss bullshit. "You should stop, man. Someone's in the ̶ "

Too late, the snake's massive-ass head pops up from the hole where the sinks used to be. It's still hard to believe that some mystical wizard placed a majestic reptile thing underneath a literal fucking bathroom.

Evie throws her hands up. "Well, I tried." Maybe not enough, but she tried, damn it. It still counts.

"Would you kindly stop acting as though I have no idea what I'm doing?" Tom finally responds after exchanging non-words with the snake. Evie might start calling them Belinda, but she doesn't want to assume their gender like that. Or name assume, holy shit! What if it already has a name? She should ask Tom later.

Right now, though, she has to tell him that he really doesn't have any idea as to what he's doing. Unfortunately, a new, stuffy voice shrieks, "Excuse me!" before she can say anything.

The door of the closed bathroom stall squeaks open as shoes tap against the floor. Of course, when a new sound is introduced to their surroundings, most things turn towards it out of curiosity. It's the same for Evie, Tom and the giant snake who may or may not be a Belinda.

"Would you go away ̶ "

It's a girl with glasses and pigtails, her eyes rimmed with red and looking somewhere much higher than either Tom or Evie.

And then, in less than a second, it's a dead girl with glasses and pigtails, her red-rimmed eyes blank and unseeing.

There's a moment of silence as she crumples to the ground. It's kind of pathetic, really.

Evie turns to Tom, whose form is rigid as he glares unwaveringly at the newly made corpse. "Do not," he warns her, his voice cold and with barely contained restraint. He must've seen her opening her mouth from his peripheral. "Don't you dare, Evie."

To her credit, Evie tries for, like, a second. "I wasn't going to say anything," she replies, modulating her tone so it sounds like she's being falsely accused. His gaze snaps to her, revealing to her that he's not convinced. "You know, except that I told you so." Placing her hands on her hips and casually turning to Belinda, she smiles and acts as though she hasn't said anything.

Tom rapidly destroys all the stalls behind her instead of, you know, her. After that, he proceeds to pace around the bathroom even as water is violently spraying everywhere because of all the broken pipes. He's so absorbed in his insane muttering that he's not even bothering to deal with all the liquid that's getting on his person.

Belinda just looks as confused as a giant snake sticking out of a sewer pipe can look, which is, surprisingly, a lot. Poor thing.

"Hey, maybe Belinda should just, like, eat her."

And, after some aggressive back and forth over who the hell Belinda is and how that's not an appropriate name for a basilisk, Tom feeds the dead, bespectacled girl to Belinda.

. . .

. . .

"Wow, Tom, Dumbledude has it out for you," Evie remarks as she watches said Dumbledude stare intently at the back of Tom's retreating head. "Well, I mean, you are the culprit, but it's kind of weird that he's just zoned in on you, you know?"

Even though there's no evidence implicating Tom's involvement in Myrtle Warren's disappearance from the ruined girl's bathroom, Dumbledude's got the eyes of a man who knows the truth and condemns it. She would know, after all, since lots of people would often look at her like that. Back when they could actually see her.

"It's always been like this," Tom replies, scathing and bitter. He continues down the corridor, apparently with a destination in mind. Then again, he could be lost as shit and still make it seem like it was on purpose. "Ever since we first met, he's never liked me. And because of what? A few stolen trophies against the muggle children who failed to win against me?"

Well, if she met a kid like baby Tom, she'd probably want to punt it to a church for an exorcism or five, but Evie's never been much of a kid lover, so.

But one would think that Dumbledude, being a teacher for school children, would be able to figure out that orphaned kids are often troubled and need more guidance than most. Especially if they're from an orphanage located in London in the 1930s because some shit goes on in those.

Apparently, though, the proper way to discipline a troubled kid is to set his shit on fire and tell him he's the one who should apologise without context to the situation. That'll do it. Ace guidance, right there. But, you know, Tom does have a way of antagonising people, so it's not entirely their fault.

"Maybe you, like, emit evil murder vibes and Dumbledude has the evil murder sense," she suggests, basically skipping beside Tom because his long-ass strides are hard to keep up with and she can't float like the ghosts she sees about. It makes sense, Evie supposes, since she's not silvery and transparent like them and only Tom can see her. "I'd say it's a good thing that you didn't rip your soul in half, if that was the case. I'm sure he'd be able to feel the difference or something."

Tom heaves a sigh, slowing his strides since he has to direct some energy towards processing her bullshit.

Running a hand through his hair, he wearily asks, "Are you really going to keep referring to him as 'Dumbledude?'" with a mild curl to his lip.

Evie unexpectedly laughs. It sounds weird to hear this purposefully sophisticated cretin say dude. "I think it's got a cool ring to it," she says with a likely manic grin, skipping ahead of him before spinning around to face him. "He'd probably like it if I were around to say it to his face." Well, maybe. If Tom ditched her and left her to her own devices, otherwise Dumbledude would be suspicious of her, too. Otherwise, though, he seems kind of chill.

Tom stops, prompting her to do the same and blink at him in confusion. He's giving her that intense stare again, as if he hasn't failed to stare into her soul and figure out its contents many times before. Sometimes, she turns it into a staring competition because she doesn't need to blink and she'll exploit the shit out of that.

But this time, she lets him think, which she doesn't often let him do. His thought process is mad fucked and then he gets obsessive, so it's kind of a necessity. He gets terrible tunnel vision.

"Evie," he calls her name out loud. She blinks before making a face at him. His gaze becomes calculative as he basically, like, stalks towards her. She looks to the side, wondering if anyone's around to see what a fucking crackhead he's being. No one. Convenient.

"Tom?" she returns, bemused and slightly concerned as she slides her hands into the pockets of her pants. Her attire is far too fucking modern for this quasi-medieval, English wizard era. It'd be better if she was attached to someone from a modern wizard era, right? Technology would be a thing, then, and her anchor could probably leave the TV on while they do other shit. That'd be nice.

He's much closer than he willingly likes to be, being barely a ruler's length away. It's very off-putting that he's still staring at her, his thoughts clearly whirring.

This is why she doesn't usually let him stew in his thoughts. Goddamn.

Reaching out, Tom apparently tries to go for her neck instead of, like, somewhere less sinister because he's a homicidal maniac. But he doesn't get to make contact since his hand goes right through her. Evie glances down at the appendage inside her neck before looking up at him and hopefully wearing an expression that accurately says, 'Bruh, you fucking good?'

He, obviously, ignores it, instead focusing more on his clenching hand with an aggrieved scowl like it's failed him horribly. Honestly, what a diva.

So, just to fuck with him, she reaches out and plants a hand on his chest. Because, unlike him, she can actually touch things. True, she can't affect them at all, but she actually has some sort of corporeality when touching other objects.

His gaze lifts to meet hers after glancing at her hand. It's burning. She resists the urge to poke him in the eyes so he can cool off a bit.

"I despise you," he declares like a sharp, caustic promise. She can't help but laugh, much to his annoyance. If there's one thing that she's learned about Tom Riddle, it's that he's very good at deluding himself.

"I wish I were corporeal, too, buddy."

That way, she could show him how there really are worse things than death.

TAE

A/N: I feel like I could add onto this in the future, but I'll just leave it as it is for now. Tom and Evie are both drama queens and I can see them fumbling their way through world domination together. Anyway, hope you're all staying safe.

Reviews are love. Reviews are life. It's never ogre. Thank you for reading.