i. jealous much, tom?

"Avada Kedavra!", someone shouted from behind Harriet, who barely had the time to turn around and raise a shield in time, only to suddenly remember that you can't shield the Unforgivables. The curse went right through Harriet's shield, and the woman in question only got a glimpse of the person's face before getting hit.

—

There was no way this just happened. Absolutely no way was Harriet going to believe that. She did not just get killed by a 12-year-old wanna-be Death Eater named Michael Smythe, a muggle-born wizard.

Harriet blinked, and burst into laughter. It was just simply hilarious how the presumed darkest wizard of all times failed to kill her once as a baby and then six times throughout her time at school at the old age of 60-71, while decades later, a mere 12-year-old boy — a Hufflepuff first year at that — managed to get her from behind with the very same curse Lord Voldemort had failed to hit all those times.

"What the hell are you laughing about?", Harriet heard a voice from behind, so she turned around. "Harriet Potter?! The Girl-Who-Lived? The one I presumably marked as my equal? The prophecy girl?"

Yes, the person — could you even call him that? — she now stood across from was indeed Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Harriet smirked. "The very same."

"But how- you're dead!"

"I know", Harriet said with a straight face. "But so are you, so I guess we're even."

Tom pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" The green light zoomed out of the wand and hit Harriet right in the chest. The woman in question didn't even flinch.

"You can't kill me, Tom. I'm dead. Remember?" She sounded vaguely amused.

"Don't call me that, or else-", Tom started, but was cut off by a smirking Harriet.

"Or else what? You'll kill me?" The words were mocking him, and Tom knew that. But something was off about Harriet Potter. The girl he fought against in 1998 wasn't there anymore. Gone was the weak and malnourished girl who was way too small for her age, and in her place stood a proud woman with black hair going down to her waist in smooth waves (after all those years there was finally a potion able to tame the Potter hair) and startling green eyes that looked like the killing curse. Gone was even the red cut in the shape of a lightning bolt, now clearly showing a skin-coloured scar that had almost faded into not even being there anymore.

"What happened to you? We just fought, and that means I killed you. But- you look different. What happened to Dumbledore's Golden Girl?" He sneered in the end and Harriet laughed.

"Dumbledore's Golden Girl? How did you get that idea? Anyway, you may just have duelled me minutes ago, but for me that day was almost 20 years ago. I'm 36 years old." She smirked again at Tom's gobsmacked expression.

"You outlived me? Me, the greatest Sorcerer the world has ever seen? How was that possible?!"

So he didn't know. All the better, Harriet thought. "Well…", she started slowly. "Remember Halloween '81? You hit me with the killing curse, but instead of killing me, you disappeared. You wanna know why?"

Tom nodded curiously. He really wanted to know how a baby had survived his curse. And if that woman knew it, it was better not to waste time ignoring her.

"The prophecy says, 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives...The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.' You heard the first part because of your oh-so-faithful Death Muncher, Severus Snape. But you didn't hear the 'and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal' part. And you know, initially the prophecy didn't even refer to me."

"What do you mean, you weren't initially the prophecy child? Aren't you born to those who have thrice defied me, born as the seventh month dies?"

"Oh yes, but that doesn't mean anything. Because the next line says will mark him as his equal, clearly referring to a boy. But since you decided that I was the prophecy child, you marked me as your equal instead of Neville."

"I marked you? How does the scar mark you as my equal?" Tom's eyes narrowed dangerously, but since they were both already dead, Harriet didn't move.

"You don't really think a baby — or anyone for that matter — could survive the killing curse?" Harriet laughed. "It wasn't really the killing curse that hit me, but more like a piece of your soul."

Tom's eyes widened as realisation set in. "No…", he whispered.

Harriet nodded, still smirking. "Yes. You made me a horcrux that night. And since you already had five of them, you'd wanted to use my death for the sixth. Your soul, however, was so damaged already that it took my mum's death to make me a horcrux instead. Know what it made possible? The visions during my fourth and fifth year. And it was also how I found out about the diadem."

Tom shook his head. That couldn't be possible. "And the others?"

Harriet lifted an eyebrow. "Well, the diary was destroyed in my second year, completely 'by accident'. I didn't know what it was, just that it was evil, so I stabbed it with a Basilisk Fang. The ring you can thank Dumbledore for. He died because of that weird curse that spread all around his hand. In the end, Snape killed him, but still. Then there was the locket…hm, when I went to the cave with Dumbledore, we found the locket, but it was fake."

"Fake?"

"Remember Regulus Black?"

The next five minutes were spent waiting for Tom's colourful words for Regulus to cease.

"Anyway, we got the locket after Ron, Hermione and I found a note inside the fake locket and figured out who R.A.B. was. We asked Kreacher about it, but unfortunately Mundungus Fletcher stole it and just gave it away to Dolores Umbridge." Harriet scowled. "Do you know how hard it was to break into the Ministry of Magic, just to get that stupid locket? As I was saying, that's how we got the locket. Your precious little cup didn't really escape destruction by sitting in Bellatrix's vault, Tom. We broke into Gringotts — successfully, might I add — and stole that stupid cup. Ah, and then there's the diadem, which I found out by asking the Grey Lady at Hogwarts. And Nagini I kind of…well, I don't even know how I figured that one out, but I guess I just put two and two together after noticing that I could see through her eyes. Neville expertly destroyed that one for me. As for myself." Harriet sighed almost wistfully. "You destroyed your own horcrux. You yourself made it possible for me to kill you."

"So that's how you got back, then. But wait! Narcissa said you were dead."

Harriet smiled wickedly. "She lied."

Another five minutes were wasted by colourful vocabulary.

"What else do you want to know?"

"How did you die, if not by my own hands?", Tom hissed through clenched teeth.

Here, Harriet almost laughed out loud again, but pulled herself together, if only for the expression she expected to see.

"That's why I laughed earlier. I laughed at the ridiculousness of the fact that you — Dark Lord extraordinaire — couldn't kill me seven times, but a 12-year-old Hufflepuff wanna-be Death Eater hit me right in the chest because I was careless. He's younger than youngest child, but he managed to kill me. He was a Hufflepuff. And you know what?" Harriet smirked. "He was a — how would you put it? — filthy little mud-blood."

Tom's blood ran cold. He couldn't believe what he was told. A filthy little mud-blood — from Hufflepuff, too — besting HIM, Lord Voldemort, in killing Harriet Potter! As wrong as that sounded, he couldn't deny it. He might hate the woman in front of him, but lying to him — no, that wasn't something he'd experienced from her. But still…

"You said he was 12 years old?! A — what, second year-"

"First year, actually. Kind of sad on my part, too. I was just discussing the dangers of the Unforgivable's in my Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw DADA class, writing that stuff on the board, when I suddenly heard a curse coming from behind. I forgot for a second that you can't block again an Unforgivable, so I guess it just hit me." Harriet shrugged.

Tom was still scowling at her, so she decided to make the situation a little more entertaining. Lifting a perfect eyebrow, she quirked her lips up and asked, "What is this? Lord Voldemort, jealous of a first year Hufflepuff with muggle heritage?" She shook her head.

Tom's face shook with rage, but couldn't interrupt, because someone else did it for him.

"That is quite enough!", said a voice Harriet didn't recognise.

She turned around and furrowed her brows in confusion. "Who are you?"