the cheap mechanics of melodrama




thanatophobia.



Tom is afraid of heights and so naturally he spends all his time climbing onto chairs and desks and the dusty tops of cupboards. He has fallen and has been caught a hundred times by the time he’s eleven, which is when he figures out why his bones never snap.

He falls and the magic catches him.

Later Tom thinks it’s a bit like hanging yourself; falling and being caught. Except hanging yourself is a bit more like reality, a little less simple.

After all, being caught does not mean being saved.




At fourteen, Tom stands on a table and holds a length of rope in his hands like a snake, and it turns his whispered Leviosa into Parseltongue.

The rope presses into his neck and pulls his chin up and he can feel the bruises spread against his jaw.

Anoxia.

Six seconds and his vision clouds.

Seven and it feels as if he is wearing somebody else’s face.

He fumbles with his trousers and his fingers feel cold & painful & exquisite gripped around his cock, sliding into a desperate rhythm as his legs spasm of their own volition.

Eight and he knocks a deck of tarot cards onto the floor and they fall in slow-motion, flock-of-birds style.

Nine and his tongue sticks to the insides of his mouth.

Ten and his body becomes a skin to be shed and the fingers of his left hand claw at the rope of their own volition so desperately that he ends up with his own skin and blood under his nails.

Eleven and he loses count of the seconds.

Eleven and he comes.



All your life you live so close to the truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye.

Death abruptly shifts into focus, and that is the last thing Tom remembers.




So: he dies and is reborn when he wakes in a heap on the floor, rope slack around his neck, shirt stiff and feet twisted in the trousers that have fallen to his ankles.

Tom likes to think of it as rewriting Jesus, of filling his place in the universe.

Of course, other times, he’d like to think he’s making a new one.




Pretension, is what he says later.

Still sixteen but with fifty years of replayed memories: opening the same doors to the same surprises with the same raised eyebrows.

Tom tells her: This is ritual and pretend because I could never really die.

Magic is connected to your consciousness and as Tom’s eyes roll up in his head the Levitation spell flickers and then disappears.



Blood and gasps and falling about against the idea of a disappearance, gathering weight with time until it is heavy with death.

Eventually, actors tire of their roles and venture closer to the truth.

We are all trapeze artists trapped in the bodies of clowns.

Each time Tom wakes up he feels more like a corpse but it is not quick enough.



Ginny nods her head and grows paler, but he is holding her tightly.

Tom has counted each crooked tile on the floor and tells her the number like a cosmic secret, One thousand three hundred and twenty-two.

He tells her the number as they watch his younger self gasp and then fall right through them because in this place they are the ones who are unreal

It is a piece of reality that slipped everyone else by unnoticed but Tom has made it history. Ginny does not hear him; her eyes are shut tightly and Tom’s hands are pressed into the skin of her wrist and then the skin of her neck and even before she registers the solidity of his hands her body melts away with the weight of his secrets welling up inside her.

Her soul escapes from between her lips just like any other breath, and Tom is surprised at what a slip of a thing it is until later when Voldemort pulls him closer and lifts the robe of a Dementor to reveal blackened skin stretched tightly over bones.

He explains, “This is what happens when you try and live on human souls.”




Tom traces the history of his other life through the pages of books and newspapers and sees it for what it is: an extension of the pretence in which it was born.

He walks up to him one day in the middle of a briefing with his Generals gathered like children to his robe-hems and says, “You are nothing but my portrait.”

Bellatrix rushes at him when he says that, but he just points his wand at her stomach and says, “Diffindo! ” and she’s left clutching the edges of her skin to her body as she dies.




Tom’s cock is hard and his mouth is hungry.




He finds Draco Malfoy bending over a scaled map and runs his fingers up his spine and whispers, “I wonder if you are much like your father.”

Without waiting for a response, he pushes himself against his back and he slips his old school tie around Malfoy’s neck. Tom hears his breath hitch as he slowly tightens the knot, watching the green-and-silver glint against his blond hair as Malfoy chokes, chokes and gasps and bucks.

He tires of the game quickly, watching the edge of Malfoy’s face and the flickering of his eyelashes against his skin and the sharp desperation of his breaths when Tom loosens the knot. He sucks and bites from Malfoy’s angular shoulder to the white side of his neck until he can feel the artery beneath his teeth. Carefully and precisely, he places two fingers against the flutter and presses down; the rest is all ritual.

“Tell your Master he knows where to find me.”




They meet on the edge of a cliff and watch each other for signs of nervousness, for flickering eyes. They step closer to the edge with each word and each hesitation is underscored with the word coward; closer & closer until there is nothing but distance underneath the soles of their shoes.

The wind steals their words and lashes their robes against their bodies.

Voldemort’s lips thin and he says, “I am your future.”

Tom places his hands on the sides of Voldemort’s face and replies, “To destroy and create are one and the same.”

He pulls him closer and kisses him full on the lips, watching the red eyes widen as Tom bites down.

And he pushes with the taste of Voldemort’s blood filling his mouth.




The wonderful thing about the universe is that everything is always in balance; hunter and hunted, powerful and powerless.

But balances can shift.




Tom is afraid of heights and so he climbs even higher; but falling is the risk.

Voldemort is swinging over the edge with one hand in Tom’s firm grasp and he is reaching for safety, his legs kicking uselessly in the air, wind whistling through his robes.

“You were always so afraid of death.”

Voldemort reaches up & clutches his shirt as he says the words, and cuts his fingers on Tom’s Head Boy badge still polished and pinned to his robes.

Living in memories has left Tom with little idea of free will; he cannot help but feel the weight of the universe against the backs of his teeth when he says, “Avada Kedavra.”




The universe is expanding and shifting and complex, and eventually, all paths overlap.




He burns his school ties and scarves and high-necked sweaters with the pages of his diary.

Being caught does not mean being saved, and falling does not mean dying.

He knocks on Harry Potter’s door and presses Voldemort’s waxy heart into his left hand and places Harry’s right one against the beating in his chest and says, “The universe likes to right its mistakes.”

Like hanging yourself without intending to die, Harry is just a rehearsal and Tom knows he is the opening night.

With the universe, and most other things: it’s third time lucky.

Three hours later, Tom is gone.




Tom grinds his knee into the small of Ron’s back and pulls his chin to the side and whispers, “A message.”

Ron doesn’t even hear the Petrificus Totalus.

He takes out his wand and traces the line of Ron’s jaw and then his hairline right up to a particular spot on the forehead. With his free hand pulls Ron’s trousers down and unzips himself, and he pushes up against Ron’s back desperately as his wand traces a pattern on his forehead harder & harder each time until there is a dark groove in Ron’s skin and then a trace of blood and then Tom just presses down harder and the wand slits open Ron’s skin like a knife.

He breathes out slowly and rolls Ron’s body over like a corpse and looks him in the eyes as he licks the blood from his wand.




This time there is no magic and Tom is swinging from the ceiling of a Muggle hotel room in East London and clawing at the rope at his neck and making little gasping sounds of death and pleasure and maybe both, and there is no pretence about this situation. There is no escape mechanism or flick of the wrist to slip out of the noose and the knowledge fills Tom with a cold perfect dread.

Death shifts into focus, and it has Harry Potter’s face.

Harry cuts down the rope but doesn’t catch Tom when he falls, and his leg knocks against the floor with a wet snap. He slaps his face and avoids looking at Tom’s cock.

He smiles and looks up at his saviour with blank eyes and says, “Don’t you see, now? You were never the point.”

The universe tries to right its mistakes, but it gets things wrong as well and Harry the cat cannot end it. He plays with his prey, watches it stagger to its knees and then bites down until it is quiet but never crossing the edge. Always so far and no further; there is a point beyond which lies only the sun and a few spinning stars.




Tom is an escape artist trapped in the body of a wizard, and like Harry Houdini there is really only one escape.




“Truth,” Tom whispers against his ear and he twists Harry’s wrist until he can hear the splinter of bone. “Come now, Mr. Potter, this is just like your experiments in the bathroom with your Gryffindor tie knotted to one of the rusty drainpipes. Only this time it is not an empty ritual, it is not a fraud. This is real; you are going to die.”

Harry chokes and sinks against Tom’s grip.

“A moment of clarity as the rock rolls down the hill and we stare into the distance.”

Harry’s hands manage to clasp around Tom’s neck and he tries to press down but his wrist is shattered. Tom’s mouth fills the space between intention and action, and in that room, in the space between their hands there is no difference between the two.

“Now, now, Mr. Potter. I am already dead.”

Harry, however, is strangled by a ghost.

His eyes are frozen in fear and perhaps loathing and a stillness. Tom steps squarely on his chest and says, “Coward.”



Sometimes Tom likes to think he’s filling a place in the universe.

Other times, of course, he’d like to think he’s making his own.



The only guarantee is: balance.



Third time’s the charm.



Tom looks in the mirror the next morning and pushes back his hair and sees a lightning shaped scar on his forehead.

End.