A Soulmate for Christmas

Chapter 2

A/N: It’s finally here! Yay! It’s been a year but wow look at that the next (and final) part. This part is slightly more serious than the first part, but I think it should still be okay. It kinda got away from me in terms of length. WARNING: one part got more gory than I originally intended, so if you’re not big on gore than skip from when Abraxas re-enters the Come and Go Room to the next separated section.

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Tom’s eyes spend the majority of the day glued to the antique grandfather clock in the Slytherin Common Room. He’d already finished all of his homework, and reading just didn’t appeal to him. He could almost hear it, the ticking inside the old clock. On and on it ticked, fading in and out of the background.

It is Christmas Eve.

This year, he’d been decidedly more appreciative of the upcoming holiday. He’d gone out of his way to be helpful decorating (this meant he didn’t light anything on fire when no one was looking), and had even been particularly kind to the carolers (he’d not hexed a single one!)

Of course, it was all for a purpose. He’d merely been biding his time, waiting for Christmas to roll around again.

He is desperate for answers.

He is desperate to know.

His fist clenches as he remembers.

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“No!” Tom shouts. “No, no! What’s your name? I don’t even know your name!” The girl fades from view, her eyes wide and panicked.

Tom slams his fist against the doorpost, his magic rolling off him in angry waves. He feels something wet drip down his cheek and he freezes. His hand raises up slowly, brushing away the moisture from under his eyes.

Turmoil. That’s the only way to describe how he feels. She is gone. She’s gone. He’d had her. He’d had his soulmate. His soulmate. And now she’s gone.

He yells, voice breaking, and all the windows in the library shatter.

“I will find you,” he vows. “I will find you because you are mine.”

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In the months following he’d done his research. In fact, research was pretty much the only thing he did. It consumed him. The more he learned, the more obsessed he grew, to the point that he had read every single book in the library that so much as mentioned soulmates. It became his foremost goal to talk to her again, to have her.

She’d become something of a prize in his eyes. A gift given to him ever so symbolically on Christmas.

He’d memorized every word she’d said during the time he’d been with her. He’d gone over every possible place she could have come from.

Her Gryffindor robes gave it away, though.

She was from the future.

It had taken him less than three days to figure it out. Everything made so much more sense that way. It would explain why she knew to be afraid of him right away and had attempted to walk away as soon as she heard his name. She knew him in the future, or knew of him. He wasn’t sure which was preferable.

The real question was: how far into the future was she from? He couldn’t be sure. If she knew of him as Tom Riddle she couldn’t be from too far, because he planned on ridding himself of that name completely at the first opportunity. But then, there would likely still be a few, even fifty years in the future, who knew his true name. He scowls at the thought.