[The video feed clicks on with a wet, sopping sound. The sound of waterlogged fabric slipping along itself. There's a resounding thud as the figure crashed to the floor. It's hard to see, at first- whirling, obscuring robes, collapsing in on itself, water flung off of fabric and skin and blurring the camera
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Death Eater.
[And Tom narrows his eyes slightly into the feed.]
What is your name?
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He doesn't realize the PCD is what's making the noise, and he's in what he can only assume to be some kind of afterlife. At the first words, his eyes dart fearfully toward his forearm before he covers it up with his sleeve, as if he could hide it from the voice from nowhere.
He answers though, because if it is some kind of reaper or angel or something, he might as well he truthful.]
R-regulus Black.
[His teeth are chattering together, he tries to pull his sopping wet robes about him.]
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But his expression remains level, neutral. He figures it's only a matter of time before someone spills his gig, but he doesn't feel like sharing and caring today.]
Tom Riddle, of the Slytherin house.
What happened?
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-what? [Someone from Slytherin? That didn't make any sense. He was dead.] No, I- where- ?
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[Strict, disciplined, ordered. Stop being a weakling, Regulus. He needs you alive and he can't leave quite yet to go rescue you.]
Your brother or a man known as Severus Snape will be along to fetch you shortly, I'm sure.
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[He swallows hard, wiping at the blood smeared on his chin. Not panicking. It was the only thing he really could force himself to do. Almost dying had made him groggy, sluggish, and so cold that he almost wanted to go back to sleep.
Something told him that this would be a bad idea.]
Severus is coming.
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Excellent.
What year was it, when you left?
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But he doesn't even understand the question at first- thinking it applied to his year in Hogwarts, and he almost blurted out that he'd graduated already before shaking his head, trying to remember the way Tom had worded it.]
Uh- nineteen... nineteen seventy-nine. [That was accurate enough. Nobody would think worse of him for telling the year (why would he even want it, how disconnected was this place from his own world? Tom's quick explanation rattled in his brain for a moment, but he couldn't process it, not with everything else he was trying to come to terms with).]
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Regulus surely must have come here after Voldemort murdered him.
The thought sparks a special kind of pleasure inside of him. But why did he kill him? For what purpose? Surely he must have done something idiotic to warrant the use of his talent, but what? Had he been a failure? A traitor? Why?]
From my future, then.
[Calmly, almost soothingly, to give Regulus something to focus on.]
I'm from the year ninenteen forty-five.
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[He can't think of something else to say to that. He tries to think of a Tom Riddle that he knows- he wracks his brain (maybe someone in the ministry? Maybe extended family?) but he can't think of a single person named Riddle. Certainly not from one of the main blood lines in Europe, he learned his ancestry charts before he could spell his own name. This was, perhaps, one of the few times that Tom's humble beginnings worked to his advantage.]
I don't know you.
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[But Tom moves on relatively quickly.]
You will need to take refuge somewhere safe. I'm certain Severus will arrange it.
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[He knows that, somehow.]
Thank you. [For talking him through the waiting, if nothing else.]
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Of course.
We'll keep in touch.
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