Thom's most vivid memories from elementary school center on the glass tank in the corner of the classroom.

During playtime, he would sit by it. His fingers press against the table, mere inches away from the tank. While all the other children play with blocks, or flip through books, or run around shouting, Thom just watches the snake.

It is an ordinary grass snake, a coil of green and brown. Thom watches him slither among the dirt and the rocks, trying to catch snatches of hissing.

"Little snake," he says, quietly. He doesn't call him by the name the teacher uses-he can't even remember it now, it was a silly name-because he is sure that maybe the snake has a name for himself.

Little snake, little snake.

Not once did the snake turn to look at him.

Sometimes Thom dreams of colors. Green and red lights burning into each other and devouring, and a slow rise of power and anger in his chest. He feels it so strongly that his hand trembles, tracing out a zigzag pattern against his bedsheets: I will overcome my destiny.

When he wakes up and sees his reflection in the mirror by his bedside, he finds that he is absolutely disgusted with what he sees.

Thom is running toward something, but he doesn't know what.

He is distant from his mother, who is always at work, a single mother working to pay rent and put food on the table.

He thinks, in theory, that he loves her, letting her kiss him on his forehead when she comes home and starts up small talk. But she feels like a stranger.

He doesn't have any friends at school; he is withdrawn and quiet, lost in reading whatever book he has on hand.

He blazes through tests and assignments and the teachers let him skip a grade.

Science, philosophy, literature, religion, mathematics, history, politics…

Thom reads. There is an itching feeling under his skin that this is nothing.

The world is full of pettiness and dullness. There are politicians and governments and nations squabbling on the news, threats and conflicts and double-edged language, and Thom is...bored.

A world war is about to break out by the time Thom enters university.

The news is full of mentions of government documents leaked, major Internet sites pulled down after server attacks, conflicts across borders, and nuclear weapons being tested and flexed like muscles. It's not the countries that matter in the long run, but the people, and Thom picks criminal justice as his major, pondering over the ugliness of human nature.

He could care less about justice. But there is something practical about this.

He dreams of making people scream and writhe while they're kneeling before him. He dreams of a rising army of corpses at his beck and call. He dreams of ghostly apparitions floating around him, a cold chill touching his skin like a kiss. He dreams of a girl lying dead on a wet bathroom floor, her glasses broken, her hair splayed out behind her, her mouth half-parted in an unspoken scream.

Thom knows what it means to do terrible things.

Terrible, but great.

Thom dreams of the monster while he's lying in bed in his university dorm. The monster is a beast with ghastly yellow eyes, shrouded in the shadows, and Thom thinks he can make out the shape of sharp teeth.

The monster growls.

"What are you?" Thom asks.

The monster blinks its eyes at him. Then it laughs, a coarse and rough sound that sounds like the rattling of chains.

"Shh," a voice says, quietly, from behind the beast. "Not yet. Please."

The voice sounds tired but firm, and somehow it soothes the beast. Somehow, the beast recedes, and there is nothing but darkness.

Thom wakes up.

The beast reminds him of...a memory. It reminds him of confronting a shape-shifting creature that turned into a corpse- his corpse-lying cold and broken on the ground. It reminds him of standing in front a child's crib, and his very being obliterated, dissipating-

And a final battlefield, that same repeating dream again of green and red-

I know that voice, Thom thinks.

After Thom graduates, he's immediately recruited by an intelligence agency to help conduct research for behind the scenes government work.

Thom had published a couple of papers that had caught some higher-ups' attention. Just observations, analyses, about psychology and human behavior.

Predictably, the war finally breaks out, terrorist attacks rippling across countries. Thom's work is more needed than ever.

But what truly shifts the balance of the world is a viral video.

The video is a three minute clip of a little girl being cornered by older boys. The boys are laughing at her, shoving her, calling her a weirdo and a freak. They wonder why she doesn't go to the local school- you think she was in the psycho ward? What meds do they have you on, anyway?

The whole event is being livestreamed by another boy who's laughing and interjecting comments. He's using the camera on his cellphone. The footage is flickering and awkward.

Then the girl reaches into her pocket and takes out a stick. A thin length of wood. She looks at them with dark eyes, and says, Crucio.

Crucio. Crucio. Crucio.

The boys scream. The camera angle lurches, tilts, the boy having dropped his phone.

When Thom sees the video, his fingertips tingle.

Then there's the next video, and the next, and the next. An old man in Russia turning water to ice. A young woman in Australia flickering out of thin air. A boy in Britain streaking across the sky, riding a broomstick.

Magic is real.

Thom's agency has its hands full with the fall-out.

People are scared. There is a war, and there are hidden communities scattered across the globe full of powerful beings. Whose side are they on?

And more importantly: can we use this?

The wizarding government in the United States cooperates. They pull down their wards; they sign treaties; they demonstrate the uses of magic.

Thom works overtime to classify the different forms of it.

Transfiguration, charms, astronomy, divination, potions, herbology...

He is invigorated, fascinated, drawn to the parchments that the wizards have shared. He builds databases cross-referencing how their histories have overlapped, the breadth and the depth of this invisible world.

Thom wonders why people this powerful never stepped forward before.

He thinks: You could conquer.

It only takes a little while for the panic to start.

Nuclear bombing mixed with magic. The devastation is nothing anyone's ever seen before. Dead bodies littering streets, skyscrapers reduced to crumbled ruins, and cancer rippling outward to ruin generations to come.

All sides start using magic. Wizards and witches are weapons. They are tools in every army arsenal.

They are no longer allowed to roam freely. They must stay in designated territories, guarded by armed forces. It's dangerous, after all, what they could be up to, these women and men and children with magic.

One day at work, Thom is led to a dark haired man in a glass prison cell.

"We caught him stirring a rebellion among the other freaks," says Thom's supervisor, with a frown. "He's strange, this one. The freaks said he's powerful. Immortal."

Immortal.

Something in Thom's chest stirs.

"I heard you've violated the Magic Coalition Act," Thom says, taking a seat across the glass cell. "Sedition and treason."

When the prisoner looks up at Thom, Thom notices his green eyes and unruly dark hair. The man looks like he's about twenty-five years old, Thom's age, but there is something about him that seems older.

Perhaps he truly is immortal.

"The U.N.'s law got out of hand," the prisoner says, tightly. He speaks in a low, determined voice, with a slight accent. "It's worse here in America than Britain. I didn't think-I didn't think it would get this bad."

Then, the prisoner stares at him with a sort of frustration. "I didn't expect to see you here, either. Who would have thought you of all people, helping Muggles-"

Thom doesn't understand. He thinks of his dreams, but he just tilts his head to the side and says, "I don't know you."

"No," the prisoner says with a laugh. "No, I suppose you don't."

Scientists take the prisoner's blood and marrow. They take samples from his skin and his hair. They test electric shocks on him, and drowning, and gunshot wounds.

Every time the prisoner dies, he comes back. Gold light flickers through his veins, like sunshine breathing rays of dust on his skin, and he is alive, alive, alive.

Thom watches with hungry eyes.

He has to find a way. The pure loathing Thom feels for himself is like a rush of wind, a storm cloud sending thunder across his bones.

I want. I want. I want.

Being weak is like being dead. There is no difference.

The beast returns to Thom's dreams again. And just like before, it laughs.

For the first time, it speaks to him. It says, "You are cursed. This is the price you pay for tearing your soul to shreds."

The figure from behind the beast sets a careful hand on its head. He looks at Thom with a strained expression.

He is the prisoner in the glass cell.

"Who are you?" Thom asks the prisoner.

There are circles under the prisoner's eyes and his hair is messier than ever. He looks tired from the constant probing of the scientists and the interrogators, but he seems to perk up at Thom's appearance.

"Harry. Just Harry," he says. Quietly, he tells Thom, "You're fine, you know, as you are. You're not weak."

"You know who I was."

You killed me, Thom doesn't say.

"It had to stop," Harry says. "I don't regret it. There was the war and the prophecy."

"You came back to life," Thom says. "And you still can't die."

Harry's shoulders rustle in a half-shrug. "I'm the Master of Death. It doesn't go away. Death is like...a stubborn dog who I hold some measure of control of, but not completely."

"I wish I could crush you," Thom says in a whisper. "You should have died alongside your mother and father. You should've died in that graveyard. You should've died at that last battle. I was always more powerful than you-"

Thom feels his body shake. His vision is obscured by a flash of red-rage-and he wants to bring up a sweep of cleansing green.

"I could have prevented all of this," Thom says. "The Muggles-"

"You're one of them," Harry reminds him. His voice is unexpectedly gentle. "You have a Muggle mother who's still alive. You're surrounded by Muggles here at work. This is your life. You're a part of their war, Tom."

Thom's face twists. He remembers what the beast-what Death-told him. "This is a curse, not a blessing."

Thom looks at the beast in his dream and says, "Let's try again, shall we?"

The beast smiles, showing its razor edged teeth.

Thom feels the darkness prick his skin like needles. His vision is fading and he can taste blood against his tongue.

Suddenly, Harry pushes himself out of the shadows, and there is desperation in his voice when he says, Tom.

"You idiot," Harry says, and he's laughing, a hoarse and empty sound. "This isn't the first time. Death stopped me from telling you, it told me it will always stop me-"

Harry grabs Thom's wrist.

Harry says, "You were reborn in the early morning after the Battle of Hogwarts. After I killed you. You had a degree of Seer ability, but you were magically weak beyond doing basic spell work. You were eighteen when I first saw you, telling prophecies for the Department of Mysteries. But then your Seer capability began to fade."

The traces of memory begin to unfurl in Thom's kind like a burst of flower petals. Thom remembers being able to see the future, blurred images racing through his head. He is young and ambitious, and Auror Harry Potter looks at him with a mix of wariness and hope.

Maybe you're different, the man with green eyes says, and Tom, at the time, frowns in consternation, not comprehending.

He remembers tackling cases with Harry and the other Aurors, working long nights to solve mysteries and murders. Trading banter with Harry over the possible interpretations of his visions.

He remembers Harry saying, Do you believe fate gives people second chances?

Then you don't know me very well, darling.

His visions soon became barely recurring, and his magic could barely levitate a tea cup. His memories of Voldemort were creeping in, choking him like poisonous smoke.

Harry had found him the next morning.

Harry's grip tightens.

"You were sixteen, and you were a Squib. I'd quit being in the Ministry, and I'd gone to teach at Hogwarts. I taught your sister, and one weekend at Hogsmeade, you were there to meet her.

"I knew who you were the moment I saw you. We had less time together, then."

Thom watches the quiet pain in Harry's eyes. His memories surge and recede. The darkness is still eating at his soul.

Death will always take his magic, and Tom Marvolo Riddle will never be able to live with himself.

"We had less time now," Harry notes, with a heavy bitterness.

Tom laughs. He puts his mouth against the palm of Harry's hand.

He says, "So find me again, you lovestruck fool."

The police find Thom with his throat cut from his own pocket knife.