Rating: K+, subject to change as story progresses.

Summary: Quite by accident, much to his chagrin, young Tom Riddle finds himself temporarily flung into the distant future, where he meets an interesting, bushy-haired little girl. Begins Pre-Hogwarts. Eventual TR/HG.

Addendum: He Is Also A Liar

Chapter One: He Is Magic

Wool's Orphanage, London, 1935

In the eight interminably long years of his admittedly short life, Tom Riddle had come to hate many things. He hated the grey uniform and scratchy woolen socks he was forced to wear, hated the bare seven by ten box he lived in that the orphanage had the audacity to call a room. He hated the slimy food and meager portions he received, hated the other children and the simpleminded ways they thought. But more than anything he hated Mrs. Cole.

She did not treat him very different from any of the other children, but he saw the frustration and sometimes even fear in her eyes—she knew he was different. But instead of giving him special allowances as he deserved, she was forever trying to "help" him. However, somewhere in the recesses of her brain the signals had gotten crossed, and rather than seeing Tom for the gifted child he knew he was she seemed to think he was an oddity to be classified. She'd brought in some acquaintance from the other side of the city—a doctor if Tom had ever seen one; the man's posture was ramrod straight and his eyes were sharp and analytical.

Mrs. Cole's only redeeming quality was that she was perpetually harried, and had thus left the boy and the doctor alone as she tended to other business. Which was very fortunate for Tom, otherwise he didn't think he'd be able to do what he was about to.

Tom had long reconciled that he could make no overt moves against the young Matron; there was no reason to make his life more difficult after all, especially when he had nowhere else to go. When he had been younger he'd toyed with the idea of running away, but the gesture had seemed dramatically irresponsible and all the others he'd seen try it had been back within a week. The day he had realized that he could in some way exert his will upon the world around him, it had taken a fair amount of self-restraint not to send Mrs. Cole tumbling down the stairs with a flick of his thoughts. Wool's Orphanage was the closest thing he had to a home, and while he did not like the Matron he certainly didn't want to trade her in for an unknown replacement; he would maintain the status quo with her, if only because she was familiar. Everyone else, though? Fair game, so long as Mrs. Cole wasn't there to witness it.

Her doctor friend was about to make a very hasty exit, whether he wanted to or not.

The man was of a modest build, unassuming, and he wore joviality like a mask—his friendly attitude belied by the sharpness of his smile. With a falsely languid move, he folded himself into the rickety chair that made up a full third of the furniture in the room, making himself at home without permission or invitation. "Hello, Tom. Do you mind if I call you Tom?" He didn't wait for a reply. "My name is Edison," he beamed and held out his hand.

But the doctor was about to find out that Tom could smile sharply too—sharper than anything. The boy let his lips curl into a cruel blade of grin and corrected, "Dr. Edison, you mean."

"There's no need for that tone," Edison replied, dropping his hand and looking briefly taken aback. Perhaps he had never met such a self-possessed eight year old. "I'm just here to talk to you, Tom."

"About what," Tom drawled nastily, patience already preternaturally thin at this intrusion into his life. "The weather? How my lessons are going? How Mrs. Cole seems to think I'd be less trouble if I were locked away in a lunatic asylum?"

The doctor barely held back a flinch at this frigid accusation. He'd likely thought that as long as he didn't mention the reason for his visit, the boy would never know. He was dead wrong about that—Tom had gotten quite good at reading people and he nearly always knew what they were trying to hide from him. But the doctor rallied quickly, attempting to salvage the situation. "Bit of a reach there, my boy. No one said anything about—"

"You are right, though," Tom cut him off. He quieted his thoughts, focusing his will upon one thing. "I will talk to you, and I'll tell you this: when I'm finished you'll follow every word to the letter."

"You're very confrontational for a boy your age," Edison snapped, friendly facade crumbling, "but you'll find that you have precious little leverage in this situation."

Tom pulled at that inner core of something, the well of extra from which he drew on these occasions. It was a deep dive—he had yet to find the bottom—and he clutched at the power, forcing it up and out of him, twining it around a series of deliberate words. When he spoke, his voice was strong and echoing, as though there were a dozen of him speaking. "You're going to sit there silently for a few minutes and then you will leave. On your way out you'll inform Mrs. Cole that there's nothing wrong with me and no matter how she begs you, you will never return here again."

Edison frowned, paling. "Now really, boy—"

Tom dove deeper, pushed harder, snapping out, "Listen to me!" And he began repeating his command, again and again, until Dr. Edison's eyes glazed over. By then Tom had broken out into a sweat; he'd never tried to do something so complicated before and he wasn't really sure if he was going about it correctly. But, really, it wasn't so different from the other little things he'd done—if he could get stray cats to wade through icy street waters of their own volition then there was no reason he couldn't make Dr. Edison obey him. Yet he kept at it, long after the man's eyes went blank and feverish; he had to be sure, after all, that no one was coming to take him away.

There was a terrible pressure building behind his left temple and the harder he pushed to exert his will, the worse the pressure became. The room began to shake, the window rattling in its loose frame as the wardrobe, bed, and chair began to twitch. He was so close, he could feel it—Dr. Edison was his to command, just a little further and this problem would solve itself. But with a final and impatient heave the pressure broke. There was a deafening crack and Tom found himself falling, tumbling downward as though he'd broken through ice.

He landed with a terrible jolt, heels skidding on wet grass until he finally upended and fell, sprawled out on his back.

West London Primary, London, 1987

Hermione Granger had known for some time that she wasn't quite like other children her age. For one thing, she remembered lessons and conversations far better than her peers. For another, she enjoyed her lessons, soaked them up eagerly, even wanted to work ahead, to see how far she could get before something finally stumped her. And sometimes, just sometimes, she almost thought that she could...make things happen, if she wanted it badly enough.

But that idea was foolish, and she was enough of a target without adding more fuel to the fire. Her classmates picked on her relentlessly, teasing her about everything from her hair to her grades. She couldn't help being clever, it came to her naturally, and it certainly shouldn't be something that made other people upset; she was sure that if they just tried, her classmates could easily catch up to her scores.

They never did try, though. Apparently, it was easier to be mean than smart. So she avoided them; Hermione spent all her free time at a small bench that had been sadly lost behind some bushes—no one ever came looking for her there. While the other students ran and climbed over the play equipment, she sat quietly with her library books, absorbed in the only friends she'd ever had.

The early autumn sun beamed around her, dappled as it was by the ancient trees that surrounded the school yard and the passing of earlier rains. Hermione sighed contentedly and opened her borrowed copy of James and the Giant Peach. She'd read it before, but the extraordinary strangeness of James' story called to her. She was just reaching the point where the young orphan met his travel companions when a loud noise drew her attention away from her reading.

Hermione peeked over the edge of her book and saw a curious boy sprawled out on the ground. He was pale, with dark hair and darker eyes, and seemed very tall and gangly, although she was certain that they were about the same age based on the boyish roundness of his face. She considered briefly that he might be a new student, but he was wearing some sort of uniform—a drab grey tunic that was threadbare at the elbows and cuffs—that seemed to suggest he went elsewhere. She took in his silent wince of pain and looked up; there weren't any broken twigs or branches to suggest he'd slipped from the tree above her, but nothing else made sense. Boys didn't just appear out of nowhere.

"You shouldn't climb trees after it's been raining," Hermione admonished, turning her attention back to her book. "You could have broken something."

Peripherally, she noticed the boy jerk to his feet, shedding his discomfort like so much nonsense. He towered over her, frowning as he snapped, "I wasn't climbing anything."

She rolled her eyes and turned a page, snidely asking, "Then how did you fall?"

He was visibly irritated by her lack of attention, and with a thunderous frown he snatched the book straight from her fingers. "Where am I?" He asked imperiously.

But Hermione wasn't listening; all her attention was on the poor hardbound tome that had been so rudely taken away. The boy held it carefully enough—perhaps he enjoyed reading as well—but his hand stretched so far above her that she could never hope to reach it on her own. "Give that back," she snapped with a hint of panic—the book did not belong to her after all; it was the library's, and its safekeeping was her responsibility.

The boy considered her for a moment, then his grip tightened and small smile began to tug to corner of his lips. He waved the little novel tauntingly close, and the words, 'Make me,' sat unspoken between them.

Hermione became alarmed. She liked the library; there were so many different books to read on more subjects than she could even begin to guess about, and the librarian was a grandfatherly gentleman that always set aside something special for her to borrow. He would be so disappointed if she lost this book; perhaps he would never even trust her again. What if she lost all her privileges over this? Could the library ban her over a stolen novel?

She did not wish find out—the library was her haven, and she would not jeopardize her access to it. Daringly, Hermione shot to her feet, standing upon the bench so that she could tower over the boy in turn. He seemed to have anticipated her move though, because his lean arm stretch far behind him and just out of her reach. At her wit's end and now quite angry, she jumped, intending to tackle the bully.

But in the blink of an eye, he had vanished, flashed out of existence as though he'd never been there at all. Hermione stared, dumbfounded, at where he'd stood, but the boy was well and truly gone. With a sinking heart, she realized so was her book.

Wool's Orphanage, London, 1935

A sickly sensation pulled at the edges of Tom's mind—not unlike the feeling of clinging, damp linen sucking at him as it was peeled away—and with a jolt he found himself back in his room. He must not have been gone for very long because Dr. Edison was still there and the eddies of power that had jerked about his furniture were only just settling. He felt drained, his limbs weak and sluggish as if just coming down from a high fever, and he wasn't entirely certain what had just happened. The slim tome in his hands was proof that he hadn't imagined it, though—he'd transported himself to some unknown destination and back with nothing more than the power of his thoughts. It was a bit inconvenient that he hadn't done it on purpose—either the coming or the going—but he was thrilled to add this new trick to his repertoire.

Dr. Edison rose awkwardly to his feet, his movements jerky and mechanical as he left. Tom only kept half an ear to the conversation out in the corridor—Edison's flat tone parroting exactly what Tom had instructed him to say, followed immediately by Mrs. Cole's retreating confusion as she tried to stop the doctor from leaving. Within moments, she was standing at Tom's threshold, holding herself back as if she dared not enter. Tom supposed she was frightened or suspicious; she always was, and he was content to let her stew in her useless panic.

He paid her no mind, his attention once more drawn to the book he'd snatched. Its cover was colorful and glossy, very different from the linen and leather-bound books he was used to. He imagined this copy must have been very expensive, particularly given its previous owner's panic. She'd been something different, too, now that he thought on it—a girl in trousers, her wild hair tumbling free instead of sensibly tied back by ribbons. What sort of tale might an untamed thing like that find interesting?

Curiosity getting the better of him, Tom settled himself comfortably upon his bed and peeled the heavy title page back. He devoured the book, read it cover to cover in record time. It was an engaging story of magic and monstrous creatures. However, what really grabbed his attention was the publishing date.

Awed for perhaps the first time in his life, Tom ran a shaking thumb over those four earth-shattering numbers: 1961.

A/N: I wanted to use Matilda so badly, but it wasn't published until a year later! Anyway, I've uh... started a new story for a ship I've really only recently embraced. I really love time-travel stories but most of the ones I've read have Hermione going back into the past, so I thought I'd write one where Tom goes to the future. Let me know what you all think!

Please Review!

Cross-posted at AO3.