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He'd considered killing the boy. It'd be simpler; no matter who he became, Tom Riddle was for now a boy. One could argue it was the foolproof option, though nothing was truly foolproof when meddling with time. Does it still count as meddling when he hadn't asked for this?
Albus Dumbledore had died, just another old man with so many regrets he hadn't the time to name them before he found himself once again in 1938. He thinks it should be more jarring than this, but he woke up this morning and he knew where he was and when he was with the surety of someone who'd gone to bed in that same place the night before. He almost wishes he could pretend the sixty-odd extra years in between were just a dream. If it weren't, if he'd lived and came back, why couldn't it be to his youth? Before Ariana, Grindelwald? The hard edge of the memories don't fade as dreams do when one wakes up. He knows it's going to haunt him later. For now, he has a schedule to keep.
He can't imagine killing Tom Riddle. Or rather, he knows intimately that he had killed Tom Riddle once. The same way he killed Harry Potter, from afar and with the ease of righteousness. He'd seen it the second time, two times too late and two boys' blood on his hands. More than that, in the fallout.
He hadn't known then how to change the path he'd started. Even now he doesn't think he could have, he'd dug the graves and they would be filled one way or another. Now he walks briskly towards the orphanage and he sees painfully clearly.
He can't kill Tom Riddle again. He won't, and maybe he can be a good enough man this time around that no one will ever ask it of him.
The orphanage is just as he remembers, a cold, miserable place. He's prepared for it, and less uncomfortable. The signs of war are more obvious to him without the distraction, as is the coldness towards one orphan in particular. He feels the strangest emotion, the same tension he'd felt when he'd first heard about the boy's antics tempered but tempered now with experience. After facing Voldemort, even after being present for the worst of Severus' and Harry's outbursts, the signs he'd been so sure meant nothing good about Tom Riddle all seemed so childish. In this moment, he was perhaps Dumbledore's worst victim. Or, rather, he had been.
“I’m not mad,” Tom says, angry in a way Harry never learned to be until much later. As cold in his rage as Harry had been hot, in the end less different than Dumbledore could have imagined. He remembered being taken aback by it, the first time around. It had reminded him of Gellert, and even himself as loathe as he was to admit it. It’s funny how after sixty extra years of running a school like Hogwarts, he can see it for what it really is: childish.
He and Gellert had hardly been more than boys themselves. Something he’d known in theory but had never understood fully until now. The curiosity and taste for life that children have is so easily turned towards darker things. Has Tom Riddle ever had the chance to experience anything but dark? Certainly not here.
“Hogwarts is not a place for mad people, Tom. It’s a school for magic. You can do things, can’t you? Things other children can’t.”
He goes through familiar motions, and takes in the room. Tidy and fastidious, just as much of a front as he remembered. He still finds it unpleasant, and for a moment he imagines trying to have this conversation with little Harry Potter inside of his cupboard. He has a lot to atone for, starting with listening to this child. At the moment, he’s bragging about hurting people who are mean to him.
He says what he should have said the first time around. “Are people mean to you here?”
Riddle’s expression doesn’t warm, if anything, at the sign of care he shutters himself more firmly behind his flat little expression. “They think I’m crazy. Or a devil.”
“The other children?”
“Mrs. Cole and the nurses too. They brought a priest once, but he wasn’t here long enough to do anything. I’m not possessed, anyway.”
Dumbledore sits forward. “No, you’re not. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m like you, Tom. We’re different.”
The eyes are the hardest thing to face. He refuses to legilimize the child, no matter how much more comfortable he’d be falling back into old habits. On the surface though, they seem so cold. He doesn’t know how he could break through that shell, doesn’t know if it’s even possible. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Frosty reception or not, he will do everything he can to keep from failing Riddle again.
“Prove it.” The test. More hinges on it than the last time.
He thinks of fire, eating up all of a boy’s worldly possessions. They aren’t his, technically. That was the point, last time. A power play seemed like the appropriate way to handle the situation when he was younger and more hotheaded. More hypocritical too, given the number of things he’d found himself in possession of over the years. He decides it’s a nonissue regardless. Even now he has no clue if the boy took the trinkets because he had none of his own or because the owners were antagonizing him, but Dumbledore doesn’t plan on letting either of those points continue.
That does leave him short one demonstration though. He doesn’t frown at Tom’s impatient, demanding tone and body language. He smiles instead, and thinks up his happiest memory. The patronus charm is not an easy one for him. Even his best memories are faded with time and bitterness. Now, in the past, he finds himself conjuring images of a happier future instead. According to all known magical theory, it shouldn’t work. It’s been proven time and time over that it must be a real, happy memory to trigger a Patronus. Daydreams won’t cut it.
If it weren’t for the fact that he was never going to be telling a soul that he’s from the future, he could pioneer the investigation on Patroni and time travelers.
Rules of magic or not, the phoenix bursts from the end of his wand with a clamor and Dumbledore can almost hear Fawkes’ song in the back of his mind as it flies around the room, circling carefully around the startled boy. After circling for danger, it seems to realize there’s no threat and instead perches carefully on the back of Tom’s chair before fading away as Albus releases the spell.
“What was that?” The boy slumps in his chair like he hadn’t in all the time Albus knew him, last time around. He seems to be resisting twisting around to stare behind him where the Patronus had last been.
“A Patronus, a guardian of sorts. They’re conjured with happy memories.”
“Do you have lots of happy memories, then? Do all wizards?” The thirst in his voice isn’t as well contained as he seems to think. As greedy as Dumbledore remembered, but he can’t find it in himself now to begrudge a sad child the want of something better.
“I’ll be happier when I leave here,” he says frankly, “and I’ll be happier still if you’ll agree to come with me, Tom.”
For the first time, the boy looks somewhat confused, though he hides it better than the longing in his eyes over the Patronus. “To go to Hogwarts? Of course I’ll go, I have to learn magic.”
“No, Hogwarts isn’t until August. I want you to come live with me until then, in Hogwarts. I’m a professor there, you know. I’ll be teaching you transfiguration when the time comes.”
“Why, sir?” He sits up straighter in his chair, watching Dumbledore with faint suspicion. The ‘sir’ is tacked on like an afterthought, as though in the midst of all the excitement he suddenly remembered he’s trying to make a good impression. It’s unnervingly charming.
Dumbledore smiles, “You don’t seem very happy here either. I don’t think you should have to stay. Hogwarts is safer for people like us.”
The child looks back towards the doorway, as if Mrs. Cole were hovering there this very moment. The cool expression on his face bears the faintest cracks, a fragility that hadn’t revealed itself the first time around. It shocks Albus to his core, even now unable to imagine a vulnerable Tom Riddle. What kind of opportunity had he thrown away when he’d come here and proven the magical world every bit as unwelcoming as the muggle one had been for the boy?
“Are you going to adopt me?” the child asks, his voice carefully void of emotion.
He supposes he should have been prepared for that question, but he’s not. He doesn’t pause, however. He’s thrown himself headlong into this choice, and for once in sixty years he doesn’t have to fight down the growing urge to second guess himself. How could he, hearing the longing well-hidden behind the flat words?
“I would like to, if that’s alright with you,” he says, and there’s a twinkle in his eye that hasn’t been there since three children saved a hippogriff and an escaped convict through particularly unethical use of a time turner.
Unsurprisingly, Tom Riddle jumps at the opportunity to leave permanently. Dumbledore might not have bothered with the paperwork when he could simply confound the matron and be done with it, but two things give him pause. The first being that Tom is technically descended from a wizarding family, which means it will be important to have a legal claim to the boy when that comes to light, and secondly he enjoys adding fuel to the smug expression on Tom’s face as the legalities are handled by a wary Mrs. Cole.
The other children at the orphanage might be just that–children–but the staff should have known better than to treat the boy the way they did. He tries not to judge too harshly considering he fell victim to the same impulse when he was younger, but he allows himself to indulge the child who suffered for their behavior.
It’s not until they’re apparating back to Hogwarts that he realizes he ought to have informed the headmaster of his plans before showing back up to school with a child in tow. Alas, he’s not as repentant as he might be in any other circumstance. In the past decade he’s not felt the sort of excitement he feels now at the prospect of introducing Wizarding Britain to Thomas Dumbledore.