of beggars & bankers

tom riddle jr. & tom riddle sr.

"how to tear apart the ties that bind? perhaps 'fuck off' might be too kind."

A boy with black hair and a devious smile walks alone down the main road of Little Hangleton, gravestones leering at him from behind fences, and streets completely deserted. It's raining and raining and raining, coming down in thick, heavy sheets like blankets sewn from tears. Clasped tight in his hand, is a ring cracked down the middle. He feels the sides of the stone pinch into his surprisingly delicate skin, and smirks to himself. Rain coats Tom's clothes like a gown of hard water, and apathy resonates through the cirrus-like boy. He skulks only slightly, wishing to remain invisible.

And suddenly, before he realises it, he's past the gate that separates rich from poor.

The Riddles from the rest of the imprudent, barbaric Muggles.

Not that they needed separation. No, they were all the same.

One step. Flowers line the house, some of which Tom steps on. Roses lie pulped on the ground beneath large shoes, like splotches of blood.

Two steps. The gate seems laughingly distant behind him now, and not a single soul lines the streets behind it.

Three steps. Light echoes from large front windows, and the house reminds him of the revolting grin found on a jack o' lantern.

Four steps. The door is exactly before him, nothing further than an inch from his body, which had become blatant and cold.

& he's at the front door. His heart batters his ribcage ominously, especially because he's just so committed to the inscrutable lack of feelings he has inside of him. He takes a deep breath to calm himself – he's come oh–so–close – and knocks on the door. He doesn't need to use his wand, there's no need for scheming and ability, no.

There wasn't any point in wasting time, cunning – magic – on a guileless Muggle.

The door swings open sharply and slickly, and before him stands a man with hair just as dark as Tom's own, and a set of chocolate irises to match.

"Yes?" he says, his voice quite like Tom's – contemptible, how dare he ridicule me with such thi – "What do I owe to you, young man?"

"You are Tom Riddle?" he says, with a barefaced frostiness that had put the rain to shame.

The older man in the doorway nods curtly.

"Pleasure." he says, even though you could most certainly tell he felt no such sentiment. "My name is Tom, as well. Tom Riddle. Small world, don't you agree?"

The tall, handsome man in the doorframe looks politely aghast, and turns to look around for some sort of superhero. Rain begins to beat down harder.

"Well?" says the teen, his voice vindictively cloying, "Aren't you going to invite me inside? It's dreadfully cold, and you wouldn't want your only son catching a flu."

Your only son. The remark comes out repellently, like the letters had been formed from vomit.

Tom remains twistingly civil and polite, his appearance laced with nothing like savagery and forcefulness, but his senior cannot not bring himself to close the door on him. Perhaps, he doesn't want to chance it.

The man's mouth remains open and dry, with his head cocked slightly to the side, as if he were bleakly confounded.

"Come in then."

When the older man is turned, the boy's mouth twitches slightly, the spectre of a grin making its rounds in the lines of his face. With his hands down at his sides, fingers feel skittish and bestially agitated at the brush of a wand. He wishes to strike him down, cause him agony, a kind of pain no imbecilic Muggle could ever fathom, destroy him from the inside out and leave him dead – now is not the time.

His mind skittered around in the low-lit caverns of his mind, sharpening talons. The house smelled like perfume, wilted daisies and strong whiskey, with dark walls and creaky floors, and it reminds him brazenly of vile livings in that doomed orphanage. Tom can recall, unfortunately, the few times when families came into the children's home and found the perfect little boy to drink milky café au lait and spoil with toys, and for fathers to piggyback. He feels something immense, more jaded and hateful now, and a question escapes his lips before he truly realises.

"You have remarried?" His voice is only ice.

"No." Tom Sr. looks tense with ambivalent truth.

They turn into the dining room, the only elder looking somewhat apprehensive. They sit at opposite ends of the table with growing resent between them.

Tom removes his wand from his pocket, feeling an almost nauseating glee within him. He flicks it; chandeliers become lit. His father stares, wide-eyed.

"You – you are – ?"

He laughs without humour, though answers with a hazardously gracious façade.

"But of course. You thought I'd end up normal, like yourself?"

The sentence acts out as an old, warped door into a dark room, and Tom Sr. does not answer, only maintaining his distrait mien, and his son smiles judiciously.

"A question has been sitting with me for many years, just as it is now, and seeing as you have a rather compensable sixteen years on your hands, it's within my jurisdiction."

"I will no –"

"What prompted you to leave my mother and her unborn child, Tom?" he inquires, and he is no longer upholding his courteous demeanour.

"She hoodwinked me," hisses the older man, securing foolish courage, "She had bewitched me with her wicked, sinful ways."

"While expectant," he sneers, "Very – how shall I put this politely – magnanimous?"

Tom is on his feet swiftly, as is his father, in almost half a second, but when wand meets the skin of a bare neck, he is still & apprehensive.

"You've been made a beggar of a banker, father." he spits the word out like sick.

"P – please." he chokes, "I'm s – sorry."

Tom lets out a brief screech of cold-blooded laughter – how daft of this despicable waste of life, disgusting Muggle deserves to – and he jabs the tip of his wand into the thin throat of his senior, causing him to let out a gasping wail, and fall backwards to the ground.

"And I don't know if you've heard the phrase," he says, thin face looking spiteful; almost inhuman, "But beggars can't be choosers."

He flicked his wand almost lazily, and said the incantation quietly – filthy man doesn't deserve any more of my words – and an otherworldly green light filled the room, leaving the older double of Tom Marvolo Riddle lying on the ground, a look of childlike fright plastered onto his features.

Pleasurably deceased.

"You've made a beggar of yourself, Riddle."

A/N: Written for ReillyJade's A First Time For Everything: Challenge. If you R&R'd, I would be the happiest person in the world for about two or three minutes, until someone, somewhere was happier.

I don't own Harry Potter , or the song Do Me A Favour by Arctic Monkeys.