Folie à deux | tom riddle

PART I

In the weeks following your release from the hospital, you're afforded some time off. Not only due to Doctor Smith's recommendations, but because Azkaban itself is undergoing some new security changes. Some of which probably entail further restricting the liberties of its prisoners. Like Tom.

Throughout those weeks, his presence in your mind had been near-constant, like he was always there, just outside of your peripheral view. The image of him covered in blood and looking at you reverently is emblazoned onto the inside of your eyelids. There's no darkness anymore, not for you. There's only him. And all you can think about is the fact that he lied. According to Hermione, he immediately took accountability for Dolohov's murder, simply telling her he did it for fun. But Tom didn't do it for fun. God, he didn't do it at all.

You had killed and he had covered for you.

There was something unnerving about coming to terms with the fact that you had killed somebody. There was a life cut short by your own doing. You expected the guilt to hit you at some point, to bowl you over like a tsunami and drown you in the intensity of it. That never happened. It felt like you were in this broken loop – thinking about that night, about Tom, about the murder. Then, contemplating the guilt.

Good people were meant to feel guilty.

You had always accepted that as a fact. That it was a fundamental lack of empathy that prevented guilt, and establishing empathy was the best way to rehabilitate prisoners. Because it would make them feel guilt. It was horrifying, so truly awful, to discover that you weren't capable of meeting the standards you held others to. Where was that goodness you were meant to have now? Had that too bled out on the floor of cell ninety-one?

The lack of guilt wasn't the only thing that plagued you. There was also the warped reality you were now living.

Every single shred of information you had found stated that Dolohov and Tom had never known each other. The only similarities between the two of them was the insanity and the fact that they were both incarcerated in Azkaban at a similar time, though their cells weren't remotely close.

They shouldn't have known each other. Yet, Tom identified Antonin as one of his Death Eaters. And Antonin recognised Tom as his master.

Which led you to believe there had to be some type of truth in the delusion. What were the chances that two people who supposedly never met shared the same deluded version of reality?

That thought kept you awake at night. The boundary between what was Tom's delusion and what was reality could no longer be distinguished. For hours, you poured over his file, mentally cataloguing and examining every single thing that was documented about his delusions.

Magic. Dementors. The middle of the ocean. Soul-splitting.

It all sounded surreal. In fact, putting it into simple terms made it seem ludicrous. Like some fairy-tale that you would read in a children's book, or hear from your mother in a nursery rhyme. It doesn't sound like something you should be debating. Because it shouldn't be real. It goes against everything you've ever been told, and everything you've ever experienced. But Azkaban has tried you in ways you can't even comprehend.

Instead of sealing it away into the back of your mind, and declaring it the words of a madman, like you should, you decide that it's worth looking into.

Somehow or someway, Azkaban is built of lies. And you're going to tear them apart, one by one, until you find what you're looking for.

Maybe you're no longer looking to seek humanity in Tom Riddle. Maybe you should be looking to find it in yourself.