ᴛᴏᴍ ʀɪᴅᴅʟᴇ ᴏɴᴇsʜᴏᴛs

Folie à deux

author: con_fection (on ao3)

summary: Having just earned your doctorate, you decide to work in the Azkaban Secure Facility for the Criminally Insane. There, you encounter inmate Tom Riddle, who is completely delusional, and is under the devastatingly incorrect impression he is a wizard called Lord Voldemort. From there, your life begins to spiral out of control as you learn more and more about Tom's world, until you become a part of it. Perhaps Tom hadn't been so delusional after all.

Breaking Tom out of Azkaban...like would I do it? 😳

________________-

There is a deep longing within you,
To care and to heal.
Here, on vile ground,
Is where you find the most damaged soul of all.
But, perhaps it will be yours that suffers most.

The Azkaban Secure Facility for the Criminally Insane was a foreboding place, to say the least. It stood as a tall, dark and imposing structure in the middle of nowhere, a blight on the British countryside, seemingly infecting the very ground it stood on with its insidious nature. The walls were high, with very few windows, and the ones that were there were small and plastered over with thick iron bars. It was a tower of the highest security, housing the most dangerous and volatile prisoners in England, with a few other criminals from around Europe, coming from countries that simply didn't have the ability to take on such aggressive and challenging prisoners. All of the inmates were both dangerous, and lacking in sanity – completely unable to distinguish between fiction and reality.

The drive up to Azkaban is long, winding, and takes you along a number of tiny backroads that are exceptionally difficult to navigate. The idyllic countryside slowly becomes more sinister the nearer you get to it, changing seamlessly from beautiful trees and fauna to dead, rotting trees with gnarled branches, twisting desperately towards the sky like they were trying fruitlessly to escape from the grounds themselves, and reach towards heaven, to God's salvation.

The driveway is just as long and winding as the rest of the journey. In the very distance, you can see the dark, towering structure casting a shadow over the grounds. Barbed iron gates with 'Azkaban' on them in swirly silvery lettering bar you from driving up. The gates are pasted with warnings, of the dangerous criminals, of CCTV, and of armed guards. The precautions they take to keep guests and faculty safe seemed adequate when you applied for the job, but now, nothing seemed quite enough. Not when you can feel the darkness radiating off it.

To the left of your car stands a few armed guards, hardened and haughty, surveying you with suspicion as you roll down your window, flashing them a smile before quickly realising that they weren't the type to smile back.

"Name and identification." One barks at you, clutching his weapon tightly, lifting the barrel of the gun up, slightly towards you in a manner that is clearly a veiled threat. You swallow, making a choked, panicked sound at the back of your throat. That kind of threat isn't to be taken lightly. Especially not here. None of the guards would have any qualms with putting a piece of lead through your skull for stepping a toe out of line.

You lean over to the passenger seat, rooting around in your handbag before emerging with your driver's license, handing it carefully over to him.

He scrutinises it, his narrowed eyes darting between you and the license. "And what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

You don't even find the remark offensive. Azkaban isn't really the type of place one would typically see a young woman strutting into. Not unless she was insane and a dangerous criminal, of course. But then she probably wouldn't be strutting – she would be being dragged through the halls, her hands cuffed and probably laughing manically because of how out of her mind she is.