Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part I: Moral Outrage is a Poor Deterrent for Persistence

It’s a little pathetic, really, Tom thinks, watching Avery and Malfoy flit around each other. At this point they’ve done more circling than attacking, and Tom half expects their little “duel” to end without a single spell thrown. Five years ago Tom would have been surprised, maybe even a bit disappointed, seeing two Purebloods with all bark and no bite. They certainly made his life properly hellish during his early years at Hogwarts; surely they had the skill to pillar the unsolicited abuse. Looking back, though, it seems rather foolish that he ever gave any of these childish heirs a modicum of consideration. People were unsurprising, no matter the purity of their blood or nobility of their birth, and it was ridiculous to think that a little drop of magic changed any of that. 

The only person who had ever managed to give Tom pause was Dumbledore, and even he was disappointing in his own way, not for the fact that Tom spends the majority of his Transfiguration lessons with the professor imagining him in various stages of painful, bloody demise. 

Tom is hoping that this little display, more a show of peacocks strutting about and stretching their feathers than an actual fight between two wizards, will be over quickly. He’s obliged by social courtesy and the rules of “friendship” to provide the barest hint of interest in the ensuing theatrics - Avery’s rather loud and loutish questioning of the sexual appeal of Malfoy’s fiancée and the state of his virginity demands it - but he would really rather go back to his book. NEWT level potions hasn’t lived up to his expectations like Tom was hoping it would, and he needs to fill in the gaps with the time that he has. 

“You bastard,” Malfoy hisses, blonde hair a cascade down the back of his dark school robes. “At least I have a fiancée.” 

It was a poorly kept secret that Avery’s family was having trouble securing him a spouse, given that he was so Merlin-damned unpleasant. Not even his cousins could be swayed. 

“It doesn’t count for much if she bats her eyelashes at every pretty boy that passes her by, though, does it, Abraxas?” Avery smirks.

A disarming spell is finally thrown his way, which is a marked improvement from when they were simply trading barbs, in Tom’s humble opinion. He would appreciate something with a bit more ferocity - Tom has always been fascinated by how others react to pain and Avery has some notable cutting curses in his arsenal - but it would be a little much to ask two men who consider themselves friends and proper gentlemen to breach the territories of interesting. Anything that dishevels their robes is generally frowned upon.

“You better not introduce her to Tom,” Avery says, voice practically sing-song, as he dodges a weak blasting curse Malfoy throws at him. “She’ll never be able to get her skirt back on.”

The two trade trite insults and weak spells that barely surpass the level of a second-year, and by the time they’ve danced down the empty classroom and back Tom is half-convinced that if one of them doesn’t kill the other soon, he himself will die of boredom. 

“Are you quite done?” He asks, when Malfoy chooses another disarming spell over one of those more entertaining curses he’s undoubtedly learned from his family’s wonderful library full of the most depraved literature. 

The pair immediately freeze, as if a higher power has compelled them to halt all spellfire and slander, and really, that is more or less the case. Tom has considered himself a god to these vapid little purebloods since he was fifteen. 

“Sorry, Tom,” Avery says, having the decency to look sheepish. 

“Yes, sorry, Tom,” Malfoy agrees, tossing a blonde lock of hair that Tom has considered cursing off his head on more than one occasion over his shoulder and taking his seat beside Lestrange again. 

The other boys circling him seem a bit disappointed at the loss of theatrics, but they’ve long since learned that Tom isn’t one for putting up with people that don’t listen to him for very long. He has a knack for the Cruciatus that manages to make the curse more excruciating than it’s already supposed to be. 

“Are you going to teach us another spell tonight?” Nott asks, with such poorly concealed eagerness that it’s practically pathetic. Tom doubts he would receive much protest if he asked the boy to get on his knees and lick his boots right now, in front of all the others. 

He frowns, playing with the facial expression until he gets in just right: the desired blend of irritation and disappointment, like one of their mothers might give them if they were caught doing something not befitting of an heir. He’s liable to terrify them if he lets his face slip far enough to uncover the gleam in his slate eyes that shows he’s legitimately considered disemboweling every one of them at one point or another. As much as he enjoys the terrorizing, it results in less competent subjects. 

“I want to finish my book,” Tom replies, and the others take it for what it means. That this is their punishment for Avery and Malfoy’s little show earlier, for making Tom suffer through their insipid foolishness. Perhaps next week they won’t be so quick to act like children, and maybe then he will teach them. 

The others go back to gossiping, mindful of their volume around Tom, and he tunes them out completely when the conversation shifts away from politics and the state of their families. Any Hogwarts news they have Tom got his hands on practically before it happened, and he hardly needs an exaggerated refresher on the lives of the teenagers that inhabit these ancient stone walls. 

Perhaps Tom himself is being a bit childish, dangling a treat of new spellwork in front of their faces only to snatch it back at the last second, solely for his own amusement, but he can’t help but need a reminder of their devotion. The veritable minefield they’re willing to walk across for just a taste of his knowledge and ambition. He’ll be separating from them soon enough, when their final school year comes to a close, and he needs assurances that they will remain loyal to him even when he isn’t around to ensure their fidelity. 

Tom finishes his book and then goes back to read some of the trickier passages, mindful that Mulciber and Rosier have early classes tomorrow but not caring one bit. They go where he goes, and they’ll stay in this empty classroom with him until the break of dawn, if that’s what Tom desires. 

Lucky for them, though, Tom has always had an excellent grasp of potions and it barely takes him any time to double back to the more technical bits of the text and read through them again, with a level of comprehension that would impress anyone with a mastery in the art. He slips the book back into his bag and makes a mental note to drop by Slughorn’s office tomorrow to thank the man for allowing him to borrow it, tedious as it is to hold any sort of polite conversation with the portly professor. He’s among the list of teachers Tom has imagined murdering while he has attended their class, and he has a rather vivid imagination to fall back on when Slughorn becomes particularly annoying. 

The others practically trip over their feet to get up when they see Tom rise from his seat. It’s late, and his Prefect title can only shield so much when the group of them is out of bed at such an hour, especially if Dumbledore is up lurking the halls. He takes quiet pleasure in these pompous Purebloods falling over themselves to walk at his heels, and leads them out of the classroom and towards the dungeons, shushing them when they become particularly rowdy. 

He has one final year to cement himself in these boys’ lives; one final year to ensure they will make proper allies and followers when the time comes, and Tom is certainly going to make the most of it. 

~*~

Harry Potter, he hears the voice croon curiously in his head. 

Well, at least I remember that bit, Harry thinks, a touch sour, because he can’t seem to remember much else. Like where he is, for example, and what he’s doing here, and given the two men staring at him from across the desk, with expressions ranging in various degrees of disbelief and consternation, he rather imagines he’s a bit of an uninvited guest at the moment. 

You have a very interesting mind, young man, that voice says, bouncing around in his skull. 

Er, thanks, I guess, Harry thinks, and it takes a lot for him not to say it aloud as well, because between the two men staring at him, one of them definitely thinks he’s a bit unhinged, and the other definitely thinks he’s a bit too interesting, and neither is to Harry’s liking. 

The older one has a long beard and tired eyes, portly features suggesting a life well spent happily sitting behind a desk, no doubt managing this large school Harry rather abruptly found himself in front of, with no memories whatsoever, naturally. The other is leaner trimmed, auburn features containing just a touch of grey, hinting that he’s likely older than he looks - most wizards are - with an undoubted twinkle of trouble in his clear eyes. 

It’s odd, Harry thinks, as he hears this old, raggedy hat humming in his mind. He doesn’t have particularly strong emotions towards the older wizard, doesn’t feel any particular way when he looks at him, not quite meeting those wrinkled eyes, but the younger one, with the garish robes and the lean cut and the posture that is just casual enough to suggest he’s the most powerful wizard in this room, makes his heart squeeze. It’s not quite sad, but it’s not quite happy either; rather, a lifetime of emotions and memories that Harry doesn’t currently have access to. The way they’ve interacted thus far suggests that they’ve never met before, but Harry can’t help but feel this deep sense of familiarity with those light eyes that look at him like he’s a puzzle to solve. 

Well, the hat sighs, almost startling Harry, it seems there’s no way around it. I’ll just have to use what’s already here. 

Um, Harry thinks, not really liking any implication from what this hat just said to him, no way around what?

You’re blocked, young man. There’s powerful magic shrouding most of your mind. I can’t get around it, and any attempt to undo it would likely be dangerous. 

Well, that’s a bit concerning, Harry mind-sighs, with the good sense to know he should be more worried about this but the limited mental capacity to actually care at the moment. The office is dead silent, two older wizards are staring at him, and there’s a ragged hat on his head, talking in his mind. In terms of the rather long list of his priorities at the moment, his blocked mental facilities fall well under the fact that these two haven’t summoned any sort of law enforcement authority, likely for the sole fact that they’re at a school and he looks like a student. 

Yes, it is, the hat says, not sounding concerned at all, and then keeps prattling on. Quite a bit of courage, I see. Not a bad mind. A good deal of cunning, too, but with a strong sense of loyalty and duty. You’ve an interesting mind, indeed. 

Er, right, Harry thinks, but in terms of that whole “powerful magic shrouding me” thing, mind if you keep it to yourself, for the time being? 

The hat huffs, huffs of all things (and Harry wasn’t even aware hats could do that), and it feels something like an annoyed breeze tickling against the grooves of his cranium. 

Young man, my sole purpose here is to ensure you are sorted into the proper school house in which you can best grow and thrive. Your current, limited mental capacity means little to me, beyond the fact that I can see you’ve a curious mind but would make a poor Ravenclaw. 

Um, okay then, Harry thinks, not really sure if he should be offended or not. Reduced though his memories may be, he certainly can’t recall a time where he was ever scolded by a hat of all things, but if it’s a hat that’s going to keep his secrets, then he’s not going to complain. So not Ravenclaw. What other options are there? 

Well, certainly not Hufflepuff. You’re too scheming for them. 

I don’t scheme, Harry thinks, a touch offended and just defensive enough that, if he actually had any of his memories, he would probably know that he’s definitely a schemer. 

An odd sensation passes through Harry’s mind, and he has the most uncanny feeling that this hat just rolled its eyes at him (and it doesn’t even have eyes!). 

You have a brave soul, young man, and a strong sense of justice, but you’re sly enough to embrace more Machiavellian strategies when they suit your needs. This is difficult, indeed. 

Harry glances up long enough to see two sets of brows pulled down, almost as if these two wizards have grown a bit concerned, if not even more confused. And Merlin, they’ve been at this almost fifteen minutes Harry sees, looking at one of the clocks adorned about the room. Surely it can’t be that hard to determine where he’s going to sleep tonight, if he ever makes it out of this office before day breaks. 

Just choose either, Harry thinks, a bit desperate. Or flip a galleon. Or, well, I’ll flip a galleon, since you don’t have hands, he mumbles in his own mind, feeling rather sheepish. 

And then there’s that really strong sense that this hat is annoyed with him, again. 

Young man, the hat huffs, and Harry’s getting real sick of being called that, determining if you have more Salazar Slytherin or Godric Gryffindor within you is not a matter of just flipping a galleon, but I can see now how your mind truly thinks. No true Slytherin would make a decision so rash, so it better be

“Gryffindor!”

Harry damn near topples out of his chair when the hat, without any sort of courteous warning, screams into the dead silent room. He sees the older wizard let out something of a relieved sigh, and the younger one looks much too amused by the night’s proceedings. 

“You take after me I see, Harry,” the younger wizard - Dumbledore, he remembers - says, with a wink. “I was a Gryffindor, too.” 

Somehow, that does not make Harry feel better, but he provides the best imitation of a smile that he can. His heart squeezes looking at those twinkling eyes, and it’s making Harry real uncomfortable feeling like he’s on the cusp of a really deep heart-to-heart that he has absolutely no memories of.

“Garbey,” the wizened headmaster - Professor Dippet - calls, and Harry is startled for the second it takes a house elf to pop into existence in the entryway, bowing deeply. 

“Hows can I be of service, Headmaster,” the little creature asks, a deferential note to his tone. 

“Find Miss McGonagall and escort her here. She should be about finished with her Prefect duties.” 

With another bow, the snap of house elf magic cracks in the room, and the little creature is gone again, leaving an awkward silence in his wake. 

“Not to worry, Harry. Minerva will help you get settled in the castle,” Dumbledore says, smiling kindly. “She’s an excellent student, and I’m sure she would be more than willing to assist a - how did you put it - transfer student, such as yourself.”

“Er, right,” Harry says, not really liking the knowing look this wizard is sending his way. 

His brain hadn’t been particularly helpful in supplying a cover story for his unannounced arrival at Hogwarts or his complete lack of memories. It also hadn’t been particularly helpful when Professor Dippet had informed him that - in the most uncanny of circumstances - his name had appeared on the school registry along with his OWL scores, much to the faculty’s surprise and confusion. 

Harry himself had been rather surprised by that little fact - he couldn’t recall receiving any type of previous education, after all, much less examination scores - but he figures that perhaps it has something to do with the powerful magic currently fogging up his head like breath on glass. For the time being, though, that’s all remaining low on Harry’s ever-growing list of priorities. 

It doesn’t take long for Garbey to show up again, this time with a young woman in tow, and Harry is forced to stand through painfully awkward introductions that seem to do nothing but highlight the rather lacking story of how he came to be Hogwarts’ newest student. 

“If you could show Harry to the dorms, please, Minerva,” Dumbledore says, with that same kind smile of his reserved for the young woman, “and help him to his classes tomorrow.” 

“Yes, professor,” the young witch assures, and it’s not difficult to see the respect she holds for this wizard. 

Harry feels his heart do that terrible squeeze again when he turns to look at her fully, but there’s something undeniably warm and fond that fills the pangs of his chest, like he’s come face-to-face with an old friend he hasn't seen in a long time. The emotions are decidedly less complicated than the ones he feels when he looks at Dumbledore, and Harry decides to go with his gut and trust this woman to lead him to a proper sleeping place safely tonight. He’s far too tired and far too confused to be completely on guard anymore. 

Minerva, either because she is entirely incurious or, Harry would reckon, has the tact of a saint, questions him little beyond his name and year. They traverse the halls quietly, a little niggle in Harry’s brain with each corner turnt that he knows these passages and corridors and ancient stone walls far better than his lacking memories would suggest. The thought unsettles him, but there isn’t enough time to tell if these odd feelings hold any weight before Minerva in leading him behind a painting, which is actually a passage into a large room. 

Harry is inundated with red and gold in every cut, trim, and adornment about the room, and he can’t help the grin that tugs at his lips, even if he’s not entirely sure why it’s there to begin with. 

“The boys’ dormitories are to your left,” Minerva says, snapping Harry out of whatever half-obscured memory lane he’s just ventured down. He doesn’t quite know why, but he likes it here already. “You’ll want to be up early enough tomorrow to get breakfast before your morning classes,” Minerva continues prudently. “Make sure you’re here at a decent time so that I can show you to the Great Hall.” 

“Right,” Harry says, trying for a thankful smile that goes mostly unreturned by the witch. She looks rather severe, if he’s being entirely honest, but it does nothing to lessen the warmth filled in his chest when he looks at her. 

It isn’t hard to find the dorm that’s meant for him, and it’s even easier to find his bed, the only one in the room not occupied by a snoring body. Harry creeps in, deciding there’s no need for attempted introductions so late into the night; his new roommates can be startled by his unexpected appearance in the morning. 

He falls into a red-clad bed with a soft thump, mind awash with partial memories and half-thoughts and intonations of an emotion that says he should feel safe and warm here.

Still, it takes Harry a long time to fall asleep. 

~*~

The Great Hall is abuzz with gossip, and for once Tom finds himself, rather irritatingly, not in the know. He takes a seat amongst his housemates, properly groomed and dressed to the nines in a way that only Ravenclaws can palely imitate at such an hour of the morning, the other two houses not standing a chance against Slytherin standards of acceptable breakfast-time appearances. He hears half-snatched rumors of a student, a late appearance, and rather startling bedhead, and finds his analytical mind cannot fit the pieces together in a way that makes any sort of sense. 

It’s with a bitter taste in his mouth that he turns to Malfoy and asks, “what’s happening,” and is practically embarrassed on behalf of the boy for the delighted smile he receives. No, Tom has not forgotten about his little theatre performance with Avery last night, and yes, he will be doing something about it later. 

“Gryffindor got a new student last night,” Malfoy says, likely learnt from his web of in-school contacts as impressive as his father’s Ministry ones. It is why Tom keeps the Malfoy heir around, after all, beyond his general influence and riches. 

Tom is able to piece two of the three together easily enough - a new student making a rather uncouth appearance - and all it takes is one look at the boy to fit the third piece in. He manages enough subtle and tactful glances Gryffindor table’s way to see a young man with a veritable chaos of dark hair swept across his head. He has glasses, and a slight frame, and then Tom’s view is blocked by a first-year that he considers murdering on the spot, just to have his unobstructed view back. 

When it’s clear that his only option for getting another glance at this new student is to leave an eleven-year-old in a pool of her own blood, he turns away, with an air of indifference, and starts to pile his plate with as balanced a diet as he can manage. 

“Why the hell do you reckon he came a week after classes started?” Avery asks, leaning across the table in a boorish way that makes Tom want to cut the fingers off the hand that reaches for a scone. 

“Why the hell do you reckon he didn’t come at eleven?” Rosier retorts, and, despite the foul look Avery shoots his way, has a point. 

It isn’t standard procedure to receive a student - especially an older one, as this boy, slip of a thing that he is, clearly looks - at any point during the school year. Students start their first-year and finish their seventh, with very little variation from that chain of events. Unless something particularly scandalous happens within a pureblood family, students are rarely moved to or from a spot at Hogwarts, prestigious magical establishment that it is. 

“He looks like a Potter,” Malfoy says, with a hint of a sneer, because he’s rarely discussed the Potter family with any sort of kind words. 

“A Potter bastard,” Avery snorts. “There’s no way old Fleamont has hidden an heir for this long.” 

“Maybe his mum’s a Muggle,” Rosier muses, which earns sneers of varying degree from around the group. 

Tom eats quietly through their discussion of the supposed-Potter’s nature of birth, increasingly offensive suggestions flung between the Slytherins that end with the boy being not entirely human, not entirely male, and with completely muddied blood. Tom would care more if this new student were in Slytherin, but as he was sorted into their brashly idiotic counterparts of red and gold he cares little for who this boy is and where he comes from, beyond knowing if he is actually a pureblood descendant or not. 

He ignores the trite gossip flying like spellfire around him, laments that it will likely be a month before people find a new topic of gossip that isn’t the supposed-Potter, and makes his way quietly to Potions with his gaggle of Slytherin lackeys hot on his heels. 

Tom is prepared to spend a class-block scrutinizing Malfoy’s potion-making abilities as his partner for the hour, but he’s rather rudely sidetracked by his duties as the upstanding and model student that he presents himself to be. Because of course slip of a supposed-Potter is a seventh-year, and naturally he would have Potions first thing in the morning with Tom. 

“You wouldn’t mind getting him up to snuff, would you, Tom?” Slughorn beams, and Tom briefly imagines the more creative ways he’s killed this man in his head. 

“Of course not, Professor,” he replies, acquiescent smile that Slughorn just loves to eat up stretching his lips. 

He turns to this intruding newcomer with his charm ratcheted up to its most sickly sweet, anything less and he may actually physically harm this boy for being a nuisance, and receives a response he’s not yet gotten from any witch or wizard that has fallen under his gaze for the first time. Most blush, some stutter, a few have the brain cells to play at being coy when they see how pretty his face is. Never before has he gotten the full body flinch that this boy so clearly gives him. 

And it’s quite something, because supposed-Potter looks like he’s about ready to tuck and roll in the opposite direction of Tom if that’s what keeps him alive long enough to get away, and he looks just about as confused by his own reaction as Tom is. 

“I’m Tom Riddle,” he says, pretending that he didn’t notice the very obvious and unfavorable full-body reaction this boy had to him. 

“Harry,” is all the boy replies, stepping next to Tom to take Malfoy’s former place at their workstation, but staying as physically far away from him as the small counter allows. 

He’s not quite looking at Tom, but still keeping him in his periphery, like he expects Tom to pounce at any moment, and it is having the ironic effect of making Tom want to actually pounce on him and hurt him. 

He observes “Harry” as Slughorn begins his droning lecture about the potion they’re to make today, casting subtle glances to the side every time the boy shifts and squirms, which is quite a lot - he’s a fidgety little thing. He’s slight, but with good bone structure, a comely face and eyes that Tom is willing to admit are pretty, if only to himself. He also seems wholly incapable of holding himself still for more than five seconds at a time, and Tom blames that on the Gryffindor nature this boy must possess in spades. 

“Are you a Potter?” He asks, voice a whisper, and is somewhat disappointed to see “Harry” doesn’t startle at the sound of his question. Rather, he seems ready for anything, even if it means bodily harm in the middle of a classroom. 

“If you mean my last name, then yeah,” the boy answers, in an odd and telling way that makes it more than apparent he doesn’t hold much stock in the fact that he has a notable, pureblood surname tacked on behind “Harry”.  

“Any relation to Fleamont Potter?” Tom asks, and manages to sound casual where others would fail. 

Apparently, Harry Potter isn’t buying it, though, which is really quite a state for Tom to be in. He’s rather used to having most people eat out of the palm of his hand, kneeled at his feet like a dog begging its master for scraps. 

Harry isn’t going to be kneeling any time soon, that much is apparent, and Tom finds himself vaguely annoyed by that. Rather, the young man looks at Tom like he’s a cobra stumbled upon in the jungle, eyes narrowed and brow set in a decidedly suspicious line. He’s keeping his body rigid and distanced, like he’s prepared to bolt if fighting isn’t going to get him through. 

Who hurt you, little lion, Tom thinks, just to be cruel, but really he’s more annoyed that Potter seems to have hit much more on the nose than anyone else, associating him immediately with danger. What instincts he must have, finding an angel and seeing only a devil instead. 

“What’s it to you?” Harry asks, defensive down to the tips of his toes. 

Maybe he is a bastard, then. 

Tom offers a wan smile. “Just curious.” 

He shifts his attention to Slughorn, or pretends to, because Harry is fidgeting again and Tom can’t decide if he’s feeling more offended or homicidal by that. He rather makes it a point to not appear overly-threatening unless it tangibly benefits him in some way. His Knights know not to step out of line, but they’ve also been buttered up enough by his sweet words and charming looks to see him as the reliable confidant and beguiling leader he’s made himself to be. 

There’s only one other Gryffindor on this planet who’s looked at Tom and seen nothing but trouble, and Tom already has rather elaborate plans in place, if just in his mind, to murder him one day. 

“Would you like to get the ingredients,” Tom offers, rather benevolently considering he doesn’t let Malfoy touch a single thing without his permission during potions, once Slughorn has finished with the lecture portion of his lesson. 

Harry doesn’t look particularly moved by his generous offer, pulling his shoulders up into a half-shrug before shimmying himself off his stool. Tom doesn’t think he’s imagining things when he sees Harry release a small sigh of relief as soon as a more notable distance is placed between them, and a complete sense of indignation flares within him. 

How dare this little lion. 

Before Harry can even return with an armful of ashwinder eggs and knotgrass, Tom has already determined that he will have this Gryffindor obedient to his whim and pliant in his hands by the end of the lesson. 

~*~

Harry can’t help the small sigh of relief that escapes him the further away he moves from Tom Riddle. The little surges of odd, unexplained emotion had been bubbling all morning, again when he met Minerva in the common room, once when he heard the name Malfoy muttered fouly from a housemate, and then when he walked into his potions lesson and was greeted by a beaming, portly professor who seemed rather convinced Harry was a dull-witted Gryffindor in need of an extra hand of help to get caught up in his class. He’d come to expect these instances of panging and flaring, a little warily but not with great discomfort, determining that they could serve as a means for him to get to the bottom of his lost memories and foggy recollection of his own history. 

That is, until he was introduced to Tom Riddle, and suddenly Harry had the appalling feeling of eat or be eaten play out across every instinct within his body. He half expected the first word’s to leave this boy’s mouth would be the killing curse, and something in the pull of his muscles and the jolt of his magic told him that wasn’t such a far-fetched theory to have. 

He piles all the ingredients for the lesson’s practical assessment in his arms, an odd sense that he’s done this all before, spent countless hours in this stuffy dungeon room heavy with fumes, bent sweaty over bubbling cauldrons. The thought gives Harry little comfort, not with the itch of instinct traveling along the hairs on the back of his neck, telling him he shouldn’t turn his back to Tom Riddle. That doing so is the kind of life-risking thing he’s not too interested in getting into at the moment. 

He takes as much time as he possibly can, one of the last students to arrive back at his workstation, and Harry can practically feel Tom simmering in his seat, waiting for his return with a feigned patience that’s in sharp contrast to the practical buzzing beneath Harry’s skin, screaming that a predator has just bared his teeth. 

“Did you manage to get everything?” Tom asks, a model of civility, and Harry can’t stop the ringing in his head that chants liar liar liar. 

Harry may not know much at the moment - hell, he can barely recall anything about himself beyond his own name - but he does know his instincts, and he knows that they haven’t let him down. If his body can feel the threat that is Tom Riddle, then by Merlin, he’s not going to take that lightly.

“Would you like to do the cutting?” Tom asks, moving the knotgrass to Harry’s side of the table, the awkward distance made clear between them. It’s phrased politely, but Harry has a feeling Riddle is demanding his work more than asking for his assistance. 

“Sure,” he mutters, picking up his knife to have something to hold in his hand, lest he reach for his wand instead. 

He can feel Riddle’s eyes on him, those depthless pools of brutal slate watching his work, assessing his grip, a silent critique of every cut sliced into their wares. 

Harry’s annoyance flares. 

“I can manage a knife, Riddle. You don’t have to stare at me the entire time,” he says, a flash of a memory blinking before his eye, of a rogue smile, and daring eyes, and a blade twirled between clever fingers. His chest pangs. 

Riddle pauses, seems to be on the cusp of something undoubtedly vicious, before he mutters, “Of course, Harry. I didn’t mean to offend you,” and sets to work controlling the flame under their cauldron and combining the liquid ingredients of their potion. 

They work in silence, and Harry almost has the optimism to hope it will stay that way, but he sees Riddle watching him. Even when he’s not looking, he’s watching, dissecting Harry as if he were a potion ingredient himself. 

“Do you like potions?” Riddle asks, when there isn’t much work left for them to do beyond watch their concoction bubble merrily in its cauldron. 

Harry feels his face scrunch, a barrage of emotions he didn’t want slamming into him again. Of sunken skin and billowing robes, of so much hate and even more anger. Of a sadness that could rip out his chest, and a love that could do the very same. It leaves him breathless. 

“I don’t know,” Harry says, almost in pain. Memories lost and breath gone to these things that fester in his heart.  

“You don’t know,” Riddle repeats, slowly like he can’t quite put together if Harry is dim-witted or in need of mediwitch attention. 

Harry rather imagines he looks a bit pale. 

“Can we not talk about this,” he says, practically hisses really, considering the headache building behind his eyes. 

Riddle seems to reassess, a quick glance sweeping across Harry’s peaky skin and sweat-soaked brow before he reaches out a hand, grasping lightly at Harry’s shoulder. 

“Are you okay,” Riddle says, voice low and soothing, and Harry really hopes to be sick just so he can be sick on Riddle. “I can take you to the hospital wing, if you like.”

“I think I’ll manage, thanks,” Harry replies, trying for a smile that ends up more as a baring of teeth.

Riddle’s eyes narrow, but his tact remains in place, making Harry promise to speak up if he starts feeling worse, as if he gave a damn about the state of Harry’s health. And really, Harry doesn’t have the patience for it, because each time he looks at this boy he hears the chant of liar liar liar in his head. He sees the wolf playing at sheep and it awakens something brutal and ancient within him.  

The minute the hour turns, Harry is out the door, feet moving faster than any other student in the room. He thinks he might be sick, he thinks he might cry, and he can feel Tom Riddle’s eyes on his back the entire time he flees. 

~*~

Tom is quietly simmering. He keeps it mostly in check, but he knows his Knights can tell. He’s quicker to anger, quicker to lash out with his more cruel methods to discourage their idiocy. There’s no reason why he should feel so offended by one measly boy, no reason why he should care about a Gryffindor of all people, and yet. 

The gossip doesn’t abate; Harry Potter is the hot topic of discussion among every circle, from the most influential to the most pathetic. Everything from his lineage, to his past, to why he ends up in the hospital wing more days than not, suffering these supposed, debilitating headaches of all things, has the rumor mill turning in a way it never does unless something particularly scandalous happens within the pureblood circles. People are eager to whisper about whether he is a Potter bastard or a mudblood or a war orphan of Grindelwald's, smuggled to Great Britain during the dark lord’s rise. 

The spindly little Gryffindor seems to take it in stride, almost as if he is used to being whispered about so often. He doesn’t seem to particularly care about the outlandish claims being made against him, nor does he attempt to confirm or deny any rumor that spreads like fiendfyre among the student body. In fact, he seems rather tight-lipped about his past and his reasons for showing up at Hogwarts in such an odd manner. 

Tom wouldn’t care, doesn’t care, except for the fact that Harry seems to avoid him like a particularly bad case of dragon pox. He’s about the only person Harry seems to actively avoid, and there’s no logical reason that Tom can piece together for why that would be. He helped Harry on his first day of potions, smiles at him when they pass in the corridors, and even scolded Nott for calling him a mudblood in their History of Magic class. He has provided Hary, a boy so entirely unworthy of his attention, his best, most gracious facade. The damned little lion should be eating out of his hand by now, not anticipating Tom to the point where they can’t even be in a room together without four students and two tables worth of space between them. 

Tom takes to practicing especially dark magic to soothe his frayed nerves, and by the end of Harry’s second week at Hogwarts he’s all but put the matter of the pesky little Gryffindor aside. He teaches his Knights a particularly gruesome variation of the expulso curse at their next meeting and basks in their unabating eagerness and praise. He sits in the Slytherin common room in the evenings, watching the others buckle under the weight of NEWT-level classes, and quietly plans his first steps out of Hogwarts, what he will do to train his magic beyond the limitations of these ancient walls and how he will go about becoming the dark lord he’s always imagined himself to be. 

By the start of Harry’s third week at Hogwarts, Tom hardly registers his presence in a room anymore, and everything goes back to as it should be, rumor mill aside. 

“Ugh,” Malfoy sighs, hunching over the roll of parchment he’s been battling with for the last hour in a rather undignified slump. “How many damned goblin rebellions can there possibly be? You’d think the whole bloody lot would have wiped themselves out by now.”

“Clearly not,” Rosier mumbles, hunched over his own roll of ink-stained parchment, “or else what would Binns have to talk about?”

Tom watches the pair, trying to keep how pathetic he finds them off of his face. He finished his own essay days ago and would have left them to their misery were he not hoping to gain something from his housemates’ procrastination. He’s never felt the same sort of burden that his fellow students do in completing school work, and he’s more than willing to use their weak natures to his advantage. 

He waits until Malfoy looks particularly pitiful before suggesting, “I could write it for you, if you’d like,” with his easy, casual air. 

The other boy, Slytherin that he is, immediately narrows his eyes. “What do you want in return?”

Tom smiles, because he’s more than willing to appreciate a true snake, always dealing in give and take, when he sees one. 

“That book your father mentioned in his last letter, about soul magic. I want to read it.” 

Malfoy is smart enough to pause at the suggestion. His father had uncovered an especially dark text from the twelfth century featuring one of the ancient magicks in the family’s ancestral library. It was the kind of text one kept behind locked doors and didn’t speak about outside of the right circles. Naturally, a Malfoy could appreciate such a book, but they were smart enough not to start delivering such things in the post, handing out their dark family collections to whoever was curious enough to have a look. It would take some real convincing for Malfoy to persuade his father to hand over the book, and Tom knew there wasn’t a better opportunity that would arise for him to get his hands on it. 

After a good deal of brow-scrunching and option-weighing, Malfoy finally mutters, “deal,” and Tom is careful not to let his excitement show too much. It won’t take him long to redraft his own History of Magic essay in a decidedly more Malfoy-style, and he prods the blonde boy to write his father immediately while he gets started on refurbishing his schoolwork. 

Tom is almost through writing Malfoy’s essay when Avery slinks over, looking decidedly sly and somewhat crumpled, falling onto the cushion next to Rosier. 

“Had a nice evening with Isabella, I take it,” Malfoy says, sparing a glance from the letter he’s writing long enough to provide Avery a vaguely-disapproving sneer. 

“Don’t look so jealous, Abraxas. It’s not my fault women find your personality so unappealing.” 

“I don’t think it’s your personality Greengrass likes,” Malfoy mutters, going back to his letter when he catches the stare Tom levels his way, knowing that he’s expected to finish it timely so that they can get to the owelry before curfew. 

Malfoy appears miffed, Avery smells of a particularly foul perfume, and Rosier is looking more pathetic by the minute, still hunched over his Binns essay and making little progress; Tom would like to be out of their company for the night as soon as possible, but he doesn’t trust Malfoy to finish writing his father in a timely manner unless he is there to provide some needed motivation. 

“Isabella did mention a certain rumor going around the fifth-years, if you’re curious,” Avery says, smirk in his voice, and it’s almost ridiculous how much it seems to rile Malfoy. 

Tom is half-ready to throw them in a broom cupboard and lock it until they kill each other or copulate, or better yet he sets it on fire, so he doesn’t have to deal with their pathetic attempts to outdo each other anymore. 

“I didn’t realize you two talked during your little get-togethers.” 

“Among other things,” Avery smirks, looking particularly crass. “She mentioned some of the lower years are planning a little soirée for All Hallows’ Eve.”

Malfoy sneers. “Are we supposed to care about what lowerclassmen do?”

“Aren’t we supposed to care when they don’t ask our permission?” Avery retorts. 

Tom is growing tired of this conversation, tired of being in an environment where he has to care about who throws what party and whether he should have a say, but he understands Avery’s point. As a seventh-year Prefect and leader of the most influential purebloods, Tom essentially owns his house, and Malfoy is all but next in line in that chain of ascension, with his aristocratic name and vast riches and absurdly influential father. It’s a slight against Tom, against all of them, if some younger students are trying to subvert their authority and plan any sort of gathering without their approval. 

“I take it you can deal with this, Avery,” Tom interjects, not interested in hearing anymore bickering between the pair. 

If possible, Avery looks even more satisfied, shooting a gleeful smirk Malfoy’s way as he says quietly, “of course, my lord,” and practically bends over himself to bow to Tom. 

“Good,” Tom nods, rising from his armchair, the green glow from the common room’s fire casting him in ethereal shadows of dancing greys. “Make sure you finish that, Abraxas,” he says to Malfoy, giving the letter in the boy’s hand a pointed look, before turning towards the stairwell and making his way up to their dormitory. 

He ignores the other boys’ biddings of good night, mind already focused on the next chapter of his advanced potions volume he plans to read before retiring for the night. 

Tom wakes the following morning feeling particularly refreshed, already planning to try his hand at brewing the Draught of Despair that he read about last night, and he spends a good deal of breakfast coming up with clever methods to talk his way into Slughorn’s storeroom and keep the professor from noticing the ingredients gone and putting two and two together. The potion’s hallucinatory effect is of particular interest to Tom, and he’s already considering who he can test it on for optimal observation time with a limited chance of being caught. He would use his Knights, but they tend to grow overly-cautious and wary when he utilizes them for his experiments. 

The corridors are crowded and noisy as Tom and his snakes make their way to their first lesson of the day, first-years flitting about without a care in the world and fifth-years already looking stressed by the prospect of their first wizarding-level exams coming up. 

Tom is approximately aware of his surroundings, in the way that he always is, as he lets his mind wander. He could try his potion out on an upperclassmen and pass the ensuing meltdown off as a result of school-induced stress, or he could sneak it to a first-year and pretend the student is overwhelmed from being away from home for so long. Then again, perhaps it’s better to try it on someone a bit older - less likely for parents to be summoned and feathers to be ruffled - if it’s a student a little closer to their majority. 

Tom is considering which of the Slytherins is enough of a social outcast to make a viable candidate when he feels the tingly heat of a spell, what has to be the leg-lock curse, fly past his ear. His reflexes are sharp enough that he has time to follow the spell’s trajectory before it hits, and sees it barreling with true aim straight at Potter, who is a bit more removed from his peers as he hasn’t really made any friends yet. 

Tom has a fraction of a second to think that this ought to be the slightest bit entertaining when something rather unexpected happens. The attack is unprompted and close enough that there is little chance Potter would have time to draw his wand, but he hardly needs to, seeming to act entirely on instinct as he crouches low and shoots his palm out, forcing the magic straight from his hand in what has to be one of the most impressive feat of wandless, nonverbal magic Tom has witnessed.

His shield doesn’t so much as flicker when the leg-lock curse makes contact. In fact, the spell doesn’t even bounce off, but rather seems to shatter completely, like an egg being thrown against a brick wall, as it makes impact with magic that is so much stronger. 

The corridor, once bustling and boisterous, is completely silent in the aftermath, students from every year and house staring wide-eyed between what is a very unfazed Potter and the Slytherin fifth-year who had the gall to throw the curse in a crowded hall, thinking he would be an easy target. 

“Are you kidding me?” Potter huffs, cheeks red with what Tom can only imagine is indignation. “Do you know how dangerous it is to cast a curse in a crowded, narrow space? You could have seriously hurt someone who wasn’t able to dodge.” 

Noble, is the first thing Tom thinks. How can he be so Merlin-damned noble!? How can he be such a Gryffindor?  

(How can he be so powerful?)

And indeed, Harry doesn’t look particularly concerned about his own well-being, but instead spouts off more horror-scenarios of what could have happened if the spell had not stayed on its mark. He manages to cow two green-clad purebloods in the span of two minutes of ranting, and then stalks off in a chivalrous little huff when he’s worn himself out from all that telling-off. 

“What the bloody hell was that?” Nott asks, rather aptly, if Tom is being honest, as the corridor starts to buzz once more, following Harry’s infuriated departure. 

“Did he just cast a wandless, nonverbal shield on a whim?” Avery questions, sounding as mystified as the situation itself is. 

Tom frowns, because Harry did just cast a wandless, nonverbal shield, and he didn’t even look fazed doing it. He practically shattered another wizard’s spell, because the magic was so subpar compared to his own. And that’s quite a bit of magical control, if he can hold all that power underneath his skin and Tom can barely even sense it. 

“Abraxas,” Tom says, in a way that makes his housemates flinch. “Write to your father again. Tell him to give you all the books your library has on genealogy.” 

The blonde boy nods meekly, but Tom barely pays it any mind. 

There’s no way this supposed-Potter is a nobody, mudblood bastard, and Tom’s not going to allow him to scamper around his castle, letting the little lion get away with it. 

~*~ 

Harry is a bit startled and vaguely disturbed when Tom Riddle drops into the seat next to him, thoroughly scaring off the Gryffindor witch who had been eyeing it and him since the leg-lock curse fiasco this morning. Harry hadn’t meant to draw that much attention to himself, was even mostly content with the odd-ball, invalid persona he had unwittingly crafted for himself with all his headache-induced hospital wing visits, but he was as likely to regain his memories as he was to shut off his instincts. Both, at the moment, seemed very unlikely. 

He’s still quietly simmering about that, too. Who possibly has the audacity to cast such a potentially hazardous curse in a hallway full of students, but if there’s anything Harry has learned during his time at Hogwarts, it’s that there is a certain hierarchy that allows you to get away with some things the higher up you are on it. Injustices aside, there are still many other things Harry has to worry about beyond students with a lacking sense of shame - his lost memories, still, and Tom Riddle looking at him like he wants to physically pick him apart, blood, bones and all.

“That was quite an impressive feat of magic you managed this morning, Harry,” Riddle says, in that way that he does. That way that makes it seem like a casual compliment and not the slip of a knife against his ribs to begin the dissection. 

“Thanks,” Harry mutters, not bothering to look over, in the hope that the other boy will take the hint. 

His attempts to avoid Riddle and the nausea-inducing stomach clenching he causes have mostly been successful thus far. Riddle had quickly picked up on Harry's desire to stay as far away from him as possible, and had done little to remedy the situation beyond a few plastic smiles thrown his way in the halls. Harry was more than happy to play the role of social outcast not to be bothered with, content to allow himself to fade into the background of this Slytherin’s self-centered world, but of course his luck has never been so good. Not that he remembers that, though, he just knows. 

“Do you make a habit of casting wandless, nonverbal magic?” Riddle continues, undeterred. 

“Don’t think so,” Harry shrugs, because he’s not entirely sure, and he also doesn’t particularly care how Riddle interprets his odd, amnesia-induced phrasing of things. 

He hasn’t been able to make heads or tails of his situation, hasn’t been able to figure out why McGonagall makes his chest warm and Dumbledore makes his heart clench, and it’s getting exhausting being in a world he has so little information on. 

“Well,” Riddle replies, keeping up that perfect tone of his to hide how annoyed Harry imagines he actually feels by their lackluster conversation, “that’s even more impressive then, Harry. I’d love the chance to duel with you, if you’re up for it. Maybe there’s a thing or two you could teach me.”

Harry glances over to see the kind, open expression filling Riddle’s pretty face, giving him an almost laughable aura of benevolence and good will. He rather imagines he knows how this snake has managed to charm his way across social circles and house lines. There is barely a soul in the castle that has a negative thing to say about the ever-gracious and ever-charming Tom Riddle, always with an answer ready in class and a helping hand for any first-year turned around on the staircases. 

Harry can’t help himself, he snorts, rude and uncouth. “Can you just cut it out, Riddle?”

The pretty boy’s brow furrows. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’m afraid I don’t quite get what you mean. Cut what out?”

“This,” Harry says, gesturing to, well, all of Riddle, “I get that this works for you, and everyone actually believes that you’re kind and helpful and, I don’t know, civil or something, but I know you’re pulling it completely out of your arse, so can you just stop? Just around me, at least?”

The micro-expressions that seem to pass across Tom Riddle’s face appear complicated enough to warrant a sociological study, Harry reckons. He looks somewhat taken aback, and irritated, and also viciously angry, neatly covered by the placid mask of Slytherin house Prefect he’s no doubt spent years crafting for himself. Harry half-expects him to feign ignorance completely, and is set to go back to staring blankly at the front of the classroom, when Riddle’s expression shifts and suddenly he looks like the natural predator he is so clearly meant to be. 

“You’re liable to hurt my feelings, Potter, saying all of that,” Riddle says, voice silky soft the way a snake’s hiss is before it bites you. 

Harry smiles, a bit grim, feeling like he might have just unleashed a monster into his life, and rather willingly too. 

“Nice to meet you, Tom,” he says, and is awarded a somewhat nasty smirk, Riddle easily picking up on the insinuation. 

Hart isn’t entirely sure what to expect now, not from this boy that makes him want to vomit, but Tom focuses his attention on the front of the room when Dumbledore walks in, all smiles and garish robes. He seems to pay careful attention to the professor’s lecture, hand flying across a parchment’s roll of scrupulous notes, and Harry is a bit surprised at his studiousness, if not for the fact that Tom is a natural in all his classes, then certainly for the fact that he seems to hold a well-concealed grudge against the Gryffindor professor. 

Dumbledore is a good teacher, engaging and kind, and Harry enjoys his classes, even if he finds the subject to be less interesting than charms or defense. He never feels particularly enthralled by anything Dumbledore has to teach - indeed, he rather has the feeling he’s done all this before, in one way or another - so Harry allows his mind to wander during most lectures. 

The library was rather sparse in its amnesia-related literature, and Harry is worried that he’s running out of options to rely on to get himself out of this mess, short of just waiting and hoping he eventually remembers everything he’s forgotten. There hadn’t been much mention of magic capable of shrouding a wizard’s mind so completely, and Harry doubts such spell work would be anything other than murky at best, completely dark at worst, and he hasn’t worked out a good enough excuse to approach Dumbledore for a pass to the restricted section yet. 

He has the ever-present and nagging feeling that he knows these halls and passages, that he even knows some of the people within them, so Harry is thinking, increasingly grimly, that time has something to do with why he’s like this. He’s somewhere that he’s been before, around familiar friends and faces, just in a different time. And if there’s anything Harry knows about magic, it’s that you don’t mess with time magic. 

He wonders briefly how he knew Riddle before this fiasco. Surely it wasn’t a very positive relationship, considering how jumpy the Slytherin boy makes him feel. 

“Mr. Potter,” Harry hears, and is snapped out of his meandering thoughts to find a twinkling pair of eyes watching him, amusement in their blue depths. 

“What was that, Professor?” He asks, feeling a little sheepish but not particularly cowed by being so obviously caught with his mind wandering, even as the whole of his Transfiguration class stares on at him.

“I was wondering if you would be able to enlighten us on the difference between an animagus and a metamorphmagus?”

“Oh,” Harry says, a wash of vibrant, bubble-gum pink hair flashing in his mind, and a shaggy, black dog following at his heel, as much a furry companion as he is a, a, “um,” Harry mumbles, brow scrunched, feeling that incessant headache looming again. “A metamorphmagus is born with the ability to change their appearance. An animagus can turn into an animal at will. It’s learned, though, Professor, not something that’s hereditary.” 

“Precisely, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore smiles. “And can you tell us what the difference is between human transfiguration and animagus transformation?”

A bark of laughter rings in Harry’s ear, like a boisterous dog yipping gleefully. If he flexes his fingers just so he can feel it. A coarse mat of thick, oily fur brushing against his hand, a sign of safety more than it ever could have been an omen of death. 

“Human transfiguration requires spells, whereas an animagus can transform whenever they want, without the need of any incantations,” Harry mutters, feeling like his chest might cave in at any moment. 

He is vaguely aware of Dumbledore’s expression towards him, awash with concern and that persistent, gleaming hint of curiosity that seems to be trying to fit this new puzzle piece in with all the other jagged ones Harry has presented thus far. He’s grown pale and pasty again, Harry has no doubt, and he certainly feels like he’s losing a battle at keeping breakfast down.

“Are you well, Mr. Potter?” Dumbledore asks, and right when Harry is about to suggest he take himself to the infirmary, a warm weight settles on his shoulder, something unyielding in that grip. 

“I can take him to the hospital wing, Professor,” Riddle so charitably suggests. 

Harry is a touch ashamed to admit that the amalgamation of noise that leaves his mouth is a mash of a high-pitched squeak and a muttering of oh hell no, because there is absolutely no way he is willingly placing himself in any situation where he’ll have to be alone with Riddle, no matter how brief. Harry has a bit more self-preservation than that. 

As it happens, a sharp sort of half-groan leaves his lips, and Harry is quick to mutter, “I’m fine, professor, really.”

Dumbledore glances between them, seeming caught between curiosity and concern, eyes lingering on the place where Tom grips onto his shoulder, unnecessarily tightly, Harry might add. He provides a charitable show of making Riddle promise to monitor his condition, and goes back to his lecturing on the intricacies of human transfiguration. 

By the end of the lesson, Harry is glad the hour didn’t include any practical applications of the skill. Human transfiguration is a delicate art, and he doubts he has enough finesse to even turn his hair a shade lighter at the moment, given his current, persisting fight to keep the morning’s eggs in their proper place in his stomach. 

Harry is more than intending to reenact another vanishing act by the time Dumbledore dismisses the class, but Riddle is enough of a bastard to anticipate and counteract this, sweeping around their table to grab onto the back of his robes before Harry can dash. 

“What the hell, Riddle?” he hisses, doing his best to wiggle out of that constrictor grip without looking completely off his rocker. 

“You have a tendency to bolt when left to your own devices, Potter, and I'm not through with you.”

“That’s not ominous at all,” Harry huffs, doing a very good impression of a struggling bug caught in a spider’s silk web. 

He’s about ready to curse Tom off of him, or better yet throw a good, old-fashioned punch to the nose, when Dumbledore calls, “Mind if I have a quick word with you, Mr. Potter?”

Harry freezes, and Riddle right along with him, turning back to see Dumbledore leaning casually against his desk, staring at the pair of them like he isn’t quite sure whether to be entirely amused or profoundly concerned seeing them method-acting a venus fly trap. 

“That is, unless Mr. Riddle is okay with it, of course,” Dumbledore adds in a light tone, but something about it rings hollow to Harry, like his Professor is attempting only a pale mockery of humour. 

Tom’s eyes narrow the smallest bit, almost as if he’s sizing Dumbledore up, before he releases Harry’s robes and takes a step away from the shorter boy, plastic smile stretching his face once more. 

“Of course, Professor,” Tom nods, and then turns to Harry and says, “I’ll see you at lunch.”

Not bloody likely, Harry thinks, warily watching Riddle leave out of the corner of his eye. 

He turns back to Dumbledore and feels like he’s just escaped one fire only to be cast into another. The Professor is looking at Harry like he doesn’t know what to make of him, and Harry can’t really blame him, because he hardly knows what to make of himself either. 

“I’m glad to see you’ve made a friend,” Dumbledore starts off with, and the snort that escapes Harry is truly rude. 

“Er,” he says, backtracking, “Riddle - Tom - and I, we’re not really that close, Professor.” 

“Ah,” is all Dumbledore replies, sweeping around his desk to take a seat and gesturing for Harry to do the same. He provides the obligatory, bribing sweets - lemondrops, of all things - before coming at Harry with a, “I wanted to make sure you were settling in okay.”

Harry truly can’t tell if this is a legitimate check in, or if his curious and somewhat conniving-seeming professor is trying for a different angle. Either way, Harry can’t help but feel a touch amused by it, like he’s sat through countless meetings of double-meaning questions with this man, or one very much like him. 

“It’s been fine, I suppose,” Harry says, keeping his gaze somewhere around the point of his professor’s left ear. 

“I heard you’ve been having trouble with headaches.”

Harry shrugs, deciding to keep his hand close to his chest for now. If there is a point in his life, another point, in which he does or is supposed to know this man, he doesn’t know how wise it would be to reveal too much about what’s happening to him now. Time magic is too fickle to play with, and so is mind magic, and right now Harry seems to be inordinately affected by the both of them. 

“Nothing I can’t manage, Professor,” Harry replies, with a weak smile. 

Dumbledore watches him closely, as if looking for a sign that Harry is about to double over in excruciating pain, which, in all actuality, may not be too far off the mark, considering it happened in History of Magic the other day. 

“As long as you can manage it,” he concedes, that twinkle of trouble returning to his eyes again. Oh boy, Harry thinks, as Dumbledore leans forward a bit and says, almost conspiratorially, “Correct me if I’m wrong, Harry, but I may have also heard a rumor that you got into a particularly short-lived fight with a pair of Slytherins this morning.” 

“Fight is a bit of a strong term, Professor.”

“Perhaps your daring feat of wandless and nonverbal magic was exaggerated as well.” 

“Probably a fluke,” Harry shrugs, not sure if he should feel cornered or sheepish right now. 

Dumbledore laughs, a full-bodied and light sound that brings a surprisingly pleasant warmth to Harry’s chest, as if he knows the truest form of that laugh is hard to come by and should be treasured all the more. 

“I’m not trying to scold you, my boy,” Dumbledore says, beaming, “though I should give you the obligatory warning against fighting with your peers. I’m just wondering if the curriculum we’re providing you is challenging enough for your level of magic.”

“My level of magic?” Harry questions, because he isn’t particularly aware of what his level is at the moment, considering his own wandless shield was a bit of a surprise, even to him.

“You seem to have quite a bit of magic at your disposal, my boy, and quite a good grasp on it. I want to make sure you’re receiving the proper tools to hone and utilize it.” 

Harry is a bit taken aback, because he was almost certain this was going to devolve into an interrogation. Never did he imagine his magical ability would come into play, unless it was to somehow highlight the potential danger that he posed to the school. 

“My classes are great, Professor. Definitely more than enough,” he says, because he can’t imagine having more to do on top of NEWT level school work and a full-time job of library hunting for mind and time magic books. Harry hasn’t even been devoting all that much time to his classes, considering his rather lengthy list of priorities doesn’t currently include receiving an education. 

“If you’re sure,” Dumbledore smiles, acquiescent. “Though perhaps your -ah- budding friendship with Mr. Riddle will serve you well. Tom is also very magically powerful, and has an impressive amount of control over his magic for a wizard his age.” 

“We’re really not that close, Professor,” Harry mumbles. “Tom is a bit, um,” psychotic, “intense for me.” 

Dumbledore releases the smallest of snorts, and suddenly Harry has the rather gut-wrenching feeling that he doesn’t know the half of how intense Tom can be. He’s a little lost as to what Dumbledore is playing at, since he rather got the impression Dumbledore was as wary of Tom as Tom was of him. Encouraging a relationship with a boy who seems to collect followers more than he does friends feels a bit odd to Harry, but he’s too preoccupied by others troubles to deduce whether there’s a hidden agenda behind Dumbledore urging Harry to interact more with his peers. 

They speak a bit more about Harry’s classes and his time in the castle so far, Dumbledore asking mostly innocuous questions yet seeming to pay careful attention to everything Harry says. Despite the need to keep his guard up a bit, Harry can’t say that he’s terribly frustrated or concerned by his professor’s curiosity; the feeling that he’s dealt with this before makes the interaction more sentimental than tedious. 

Dumbledore releases him quickly enough, something of a wry smile on his face as he watches Harry leave in the opposite direction of the Great Hall. There’s no way Harry plans to be anywhere Riddle expects him to be and figures now is as good a time as any to escort himself to the hospital wing. His earlier headache is lingering between his temples and Harry reckons a good lie down and maybe a weak pain potion will put him right as rain again. 

If the hospital wing has the advantage of being the second most Riddle-safe place in the castle for him, after the Gryffindor common room, well then, Harry certainly can’t be blamed for wanting to keep his distance from a boy that looks like he contemplates disemboweling things more days than not. 

~*~

Tom feels a bit thrilled, and it’s honestly such a ridiculous emotion to have that he’s hoping it passes quickly. It had been a rash decision, a practically Gryffindor-like decision, to drop his facade around Harry. No calculation, no careful planning had gone into the choice; he just looked into those green eyes (that he will admit are pretty) and simply chose to act himself, because it was obvious Harry wasn’t and would never buy into his harmless schoolboy routine. 

Tom has the wherewithal to feel annoyed by that. It’s not like Tom has treated Harry any differently from any other student at Hogwarts; in fact, he’s been kinder to him than he has many of his Gryffindor counterparts, and yet the little lion still had the audacity to find Tom lacking and call him out on it. 

Tom is certainly irritated by that, and he’ll get Harry back for it eventually, but for now he can’t help the rush of excitement knowing there’s one person in this bloody castle he can be as vicious to as he would like. And Harry seems, lucky for him, a more worthy candidate than Tom originally assumed. There’s no way he could cast wandless, nonverbal magic without being extremely adept and powerful, even on instinct, and Tom is very much looking forward to testing the limits of this little Gryffindor in his spare time, if just for the amusement of it. Maybe he’ll even slip Harry his Draught of Despair, when he eventually gets around to brewing it, though Tom would have to work out the logistics given that Harry doesn’t share a house or dorm with him. 

He casts furtive glances around the Great Hall, hoping to spot red-adorned robes and a mess of wild, dark hair somewhere in the crowd of students taking lunch before their afternoon classes, but it seems that Dumbledore is keeping Harry longer than expected, or more likely Harry pulled another one of his disappearing acts and skipped on lunch. Tom should have anticipated it, he will next time, and quietly tries to push down the bubble of resentment he feels towards Harry’s rather obvious disinterest in him. 

His fingers twitch when he hears Mulciber clear his throat, and it takes almost everything within Tom not to throw a hex at the boy for interrupting his thoughts. 

“So,” Mulciber begins, eyes darting between their group like he’s hoping to find allies among his other snakes, “are we friends with Potter now?”

“What?” Tom asks, a bit taken aback. He was expecting the boy to beg for assistance on some elementary school assignment and was looking forward to denying him. 

“You sat with Potter in Transfiguration,” Malfoy says, calmly scooping potatoes onto his plate, but Tom can see the tells. His fingers twitch around his spoon, like he’s expecting Tom’s ire and is preparing himself for it. “We didn’t think you bothered with mudbloods is all, so we were a bit curious about it.”

“He’s not a mudblood,” Tom finds himself saying automatically, but can’t really say why he’s defending Potter of all people. It’s not like he actually knows the origins of Potter’s birth and the nature of his lineage. He could be Muggle-born, for all Tom knows, or a half-blood like himself, though Tom never openly admits to that, now that all the other Slytherins know he is a descendant of Salazar himself and have drawn their own conclusions from that.

“He’s at least one-half Potter,” a voice cuts in, and Tom looks over to see Orion Black leaning towards their group, that playfully unhinged look he always has not far from his face. “He has the hair for it,” Black says, pointing to his own head of dark hair. “It’s the eyes that are different. Probably got those from an outside source.”

Orion is younger than them by two years and has expressed little interest in fawning over Tom and falling at his heels like the other purebloods, though he does seem to respect Tom’s authority over the Slytherins easily enough. He’s odd, even for a Black, but has his ancient and noble house to back up any of his more quirky personality traits. Tom has never particularly tried to charm him, considering the Black madness is always a tricky thing to handle, and has allowed Orion to stay largely separate from him as long as he continues to recognize Tom’s influence over their house. 

“I can’t believe Fleamont has a bastard,” Lestrange laughs, in that gruff, rude way that he frequently does. 

“Maybe he’s not Fleamont’s,” Black says, a conspiratory twinkle in his eye. “Then again, it would explain why he wasn’t here for the first six years of his schooling.” 

“In any event,” Tom cuts in, growing tired of their speculation, “we won’t know more until I can do some research. Abraxas, make sure you write to your father tonight.” He provides the boy a particularly dire glower to remind him he expects the letter to be completed and delivered in a timely manner. Tom isn’t interested in speculating over the Gryffindor when he can have clear cut facts on where this little lion originated from. 

“Yes, my Lord,” Abraxas mumbles, and the conversation soon shifts away from Potter. 

Tom finds himself considering how he can next corner the boy. He’s often in the library, somewhat frantically searching through the shelves from what Tom has seen, though he doesn’t know why, and Tom makes tentative plans to find him sometime tonight and maybe force more wandless magic out of him, just so Tom can see what he’s working with. 

But it seems Harry is content to remain hidden, because Tom can’t find him in the library that evening. Nor can Tom find him at breakfast the next morning, and he’s thoroughly surrounded himself with a gaggle of boisterous Gryffindors by the time they have their Defense lesson together. Harry won’t even really look his way, so complete is his avoidance, and Tom is legitimately considering resorting to violence because of it. 

It is with a bit of shame and the most greasy of his sleaze that he slinks into Slughorn’s class early, his Slytherins remaining outside the room while he deals with this tedium, and provides his professor the brightest smile he can muster. 

“Tom, my boy,” Slughorn booms, ruddy cheeks stretched in a wide grin. “How are you?”

“I’m well, professor, thank you,” Tom replies, his politest air about him. 

“NEWT classes not proving too difficult for you, I hope.”

Tom feigns a look crossed between bashfulness and determination. He began working on it back when he’d easily surpassed his year magically but still wanted to make it look like he had to work at the spells he could cast flawlessly, if just to make it less apparent that he’d started dabbling in truly dark magic by the age of twelve. 

“Nothing I can’t handle, professor,” he says, with an equal amount of assurance and boyish cockiness that Slughorn seems to be particularly fond of. 

“Good, good,” Slughorn beams, clapping Tom on the back. “Now, what can I do for you, my boy?”

Tom imagines that he’ll have fond daydreams of cutting Slughorn’s fingers off one-by-one when he’s bored later, as a just reprimand for the offensive touch, but he pushes that thought aside for the more important matters at hand. If Harry wants to play games then Tom will certainly oblige him, and use all the resources at his disposal doing so. 

He dons a look of concern, dropping his voice a touch to really sell it. “It’s Harry, professor. I’m a bit worried about him. We haven’t partnered for the last few classes, and he seems to be struggling a bit with the material. I don’t want him to fall behind just because he wasn’t at Hogwarts his previous years.”

“Ah,” Slughorn says, seeming to share a knowing look with Tom, which is quite frankly a bit ridiculous, because Harry hasn’t really appeared to struggle much in potions at all, beyond being a bit spacey. “That’s very kind of you, my boy. And if you’re willing to help–”

“Oh, yes,” Tom says, “As a Prefect, and as Harry’s friend, I feel a certain responsibility to make sure he’s doing okay.”

And that is how Tom finds himself staring down a murderous looking Harry Potter, grin sharp on his face, as he greets the seething little lion at their workstation. 

“Hello, Harry. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“How did you even manage this?” Harry hisses, and my, Tom has never really appreciated how nice anger looks on him. It makes his pretty eyes especially bright and green. 

“I have my ways, Harry.”

Tom quietly enjoys the almost tangible experience of Harry Potter fuming in the seat next to his, little clouds of discontent practically a bubble around the boy, and allows himself to listen to Slughorn’s lecture with only half an ear, the rest of his attention firmly set on his new and semi-permanent potions partner. 

Harry really is a small slip of a thing, but with a compact sort of power that Tom didn’t give enough consideration to before. He has a good handle on his magic, good enough that it’s difficult to sense just how much of it he has in reserve, but Tom is guessing there’s quite a bit, considering the way his magic practically shattered the spell of a boy only two years younger than him. 

Tom takes the time to set his notes in order once Slughorn has finished with his droning lecture, just for the pleasure of feeling Potter’s exasperation grow, turning to Harry with a bright smile when he’s done. 

“I’ll get our ingredients then, shall I?” He offers. 

Harry, a bit huffy, retorts, “Let me guess, you don’t trust me to get them myself.”

“You do have a tendency to take your sweet time,” Tom says, sliding off his stool and stretching his arms like a lazy cat. “Try not to scamper off while I’m gone.”

The other students very generously move out of Tom’s way when he enters Slughorn’s storeroom, and it is with quick efficiency that Tom selects all of the ingredients they’ll need to brew their antidote for acromantula venom. He returns with a bright smile for the little dark cloud that is Harry Potter sulking on his stool, and carefully places the goods between them. 

“Would you like to do the cutting again?”

“Are you actually offering me a choice?” Harry asks, frown dour. 

“Why would I not be?”

Harry huffs, unimpressed. “I’ve seen all your little lackeys, Riddle. You don’t ask people to do things, you demand them to.” 

Tom smiles, sharp, biting thing that it is, and wonders where this little lion developed such a backbone. He’s not loud and flashy and obnoxious like his other housemates; there’s a quiet maturity to him that adds years to his youthful countenance, that makes him seem more a skilled and adept wizard than a privileged boy parading around with a wand, like so many students are. It lights a fire of curiosity within Tom that has been, rather regrettably, allowed to burn down a bit, ever since he secured his hold over Slytherin house, and killed his father, and started looking towards what he would do outside of Hogwarts rather than within it. 

“I’m asking now, aren’t I, Harry?” Tom says, offering Harry the knife set on their workstation, handle first. 

Harry rolls his eyes and takes the knife from Tom, setting to work chopping and cutting with a precision that is a bit lacking, in Tom’s opinion, but he can scold Harry about that later, preferably in another class he manages to corner him in. 

“So, Harry,” Tom says, beginning to slowly stir the first of their ingredients into their cauldron, “how are you settling into the castle?”

Harry snorts, loud and unimpressed. “Seriously, Riddle?”

“I am a Prefect, Harry,” Tom grins. “It’s my job to make sure you’re getting on okay.” 

“I thought I told you to spare me the bullshit, Riddle.” 

“I take my duties very seriously,” Tom says, a flare of something equal parts amusement and annoyance writhing in his stomach. He can’t remember the last time anyone spoke to him in such a way, not even the adults with supposed authority over him. “And you can call me Tom, by the way.” 

“I’ll pass on that one, thanks.”

It’s just annoyance that writhes in Tom this time, in the face of the incessant reminder that, while Tom may have found a new toy to amuse himself with for a time, Harry seems to care very little about him and wants very little to do with him. It’s practically akin to rejection, and Tom hasn’t been rejected by anyone - academically, socially, sexually, and any other matter of ways - since he was thirteen. There is no reason why Harry shouldn’t be just a bit interested in him, he’s charming and handsome and intelligent, after all, and yet Potter barely even spares a glance his way, and when he does it’s often with a dawning look of nausea. 

Feeling particularly overcome by a, admittedly shameful, bout of childish ire, Tom bats out his hand and knocks one of their vials of sage oil onto the floor, relishing in the sound of shattering glass against a harsh stone floor.

“Oh my, how clumsy of me,” he says, sickly-sweet smile directed right at Harry’s waspish frown. “Would you mind grabbing another vial, Harry?”

The Gryffindor stalks off to the supply closet in a rather impressive little huff, and Tom, anticipating that it will take him an age, slinks after him when he’s sure none of the other students are making their way towards the back of the classroom. 

He’s quick to slip through the door and silently cast a locking charm, because Tom’s nonverbal magic is nothing to scoff at either. 

“Are you a Potter bastard?” Tom asks, reaching out to tap Harry on the shoulder as he would prefer to converse with him face-to-face, and is quickly met with the end of a wand. 

Tom blinks, playing how that happened through his mind once more. He’d barely made a sound before Harry was spun around with his wand to Tom’s neck, set in a stance that very clearly said he wasn’t afraid to attack if he felt it necessary. 

“This is a little excessive, don’t you think, Harry?” Tom asks lightly, even with the wand at his neck, but it’s just to hide that he still can’t quite comprehend how Harry moved as quickly as he did. 

“Did you lock the door?” The Gryffindor asks, indignant, his magic reaching out one careful tendril at a time to feel at the spell Tom cast on the door.

Tom is inundated with the feel of very powerful, very light magic brushing against his senses, flooding him with an odd sense of buoyancy and warmth. It feels almost opposite to his own dark, heedy magic he keeps carefully controlled under his skin, and he finds himself unwittingly reaching for this bright counterpart before it’s suddenly gone, Harry having finished his inspection of the door and drawn his conclusions. 

He steps back with a huff, tucking away his wand and shooting Tom a particularly filthy glare. 

“Unlock the door.”

Tom blinks again, mentally brushing off his shoulders and the odd, lingering sense of Harry’s magic against his skin. He’ll have time to ponder that later, and perhaps interrogate Harry on just how much power he’s keeping locked in that small body of his. 

“Are you a bastard?” He tries again, because Harry is a fool if he thinks he’s getting out of here so easily. 

“I rather thought that was you, Tom,” Harry bites back, and then seems a touch surprised by his own rancor. 

Tom feels his stomach clench for a second, feels his fingers twitch for his bone-white wand, but there’s no way Harry is aware of his parentage, no way he knows what his mother did to his father that resulted in Tom’s birth. It’s a fluke of a comment, meant to rankle and hurt but cut no deeper. 

Tom smiles, sharp as broken glass, leaning down into Harry’s space. “Such a loud roar for such a little lion.”

Harry doesn’t give an inch, arms crossed and body set in a decidedly defensive line. “Do you even hear half the things you say?” He asks, voice thin. 

“Forgive me for trying to get to know you better. You’re not very forthcoming, are you, Harry?”

“By asking if I’m a bastard, Riddle? You have a fucked up sense of what it means to get to know someone.” 

Tom shrugs. “Blood is power,” he says, undoing the locking spell he cast on the door and grabbing an extra bottle of sage oil, in case Harry manages to do anything to the one he sent him in here for. 

Just as he is about to take his leave, the door keeping them safely sequestered away is abruptly pulled open, and the two are met with the sight of a Gryffindor girl giving the door handle an odd look. She immediately blushes when she glances up to find the pair of them in here, and Tom rather imagines they’re a bit of a sight. Cheeks flushed red, from anger on Harry’s part more than anything, tucked together close in this confined little space. 

Tom gives the girl his most gracious smile before turning to Harry and declaring, “after you, darling,” and is met with the wonderful sound of no less than six vials of various essential oils shattering from the sharp outburst of Harry’s magic. 

The Gryffindor is, a bit unfortunately, rather useless in his anger the rest of the hour, and Tom is left to finish their potion on his own, a bit singed given that they were away from it too long, while Harry silently fumes next to him. 

It’s worth it, though, Tom reckons, if he can get Harry’s magic to react to him like that again. 

~*~

Harry startles at the sound of a clearing throat. The Great Hall is a din of buzzing conversation and boisterous laughter all around him, and Harry has mostly tuned it out to focus on his steak and kidney pie. He’s sat at the far end of Gryffindor table, his other housemates seeming to give him a wider berth than usual, though Harry can’t say why that would be. He can’t recall doing anything too scandalous in the last four hours. 

“Mind if I sit here?” That voice asks, and Harry looks up to find blazing red hair and a freckle dotted face. 

He shrugs in a whatever motion, content to eat alone but not entirely against the company either. 

He recognizes this boy - another seventh year like himself - who is popular in their house and adept in the classes they share. Harry hasn’t really taken the initiative to get to know his housemates, unless it’s been to use them as a red-clad shield against Riddle and his tendency to hunt Harry down in classes, so he can’t say he knows what to expect from this boy. He’s not been quite deemed a social outcast yet, people are still gossiping too much for that, but he’s also never had another student seek him out before.

“I thought I’d properly introduce myself,” the freckled boy says with a smile and a hand offered. “Ignatius Prewett, though I'm sure you’ve gathered that by now.”

“Harry Potter,” Harry says, taking that hand in a quick shake, “though I’m sure you’ve gathered that by now.” 

Ignatius laughs, fingers smoothing through his vibrant hair. Harry can’t say for certain whether this boy seems nervous or not, but a quick glance around does tell him the other Gryffindors are not so subtly eyeing them. 

“People are talking about you quite a bit, aren’t they?” Ignatius says, with a Gryffindor boldness, or perhaps brashness, that Harry finds quite amusing. 

“I’m used to it,” he shrugs, and somehow has a feeling that it’s true. That he is, indeed, rather used to having people gossip and slander and whisper about him. 

Ignatius raises a brow, looking caught between amusement and surprise. “Are you?”

“I’m quite blasphemous,” Harry replies, a touch blunt, and it shocks a laugh out of his redhead housemate. 

Harry is vaguely aware that the pair of them are receiving more looks now, from the other houses as well. He’s still a hot topic of gossip, after all, and Prewett is a well regarded pureblood, even if he doesn’t buy into the dogma the way the Slytherins do. 

“Well, blasphemy aside, I wanted to tell you that I was pretty impressed by what you did the other morning. Not a lot of people stick up to the snakes.”

Harry thinks that’s probably a pretty damn good reason why they get away with the stuff that they do, but he keeps that to himself. He won’t fault anyone for having a difficult time sticking up to bullies, and he’s certainly not going to snap at Prewett for making the effort to come over and compliment him. 

“I’m just really not a fan of the leg-lock curse, is all,” Harry says, and given the way Ignatius is smiling at him, wry amusement painted across his bright face, Harry rather imagines he’s earned himself a dinner companion for the evening. 

“That one is a real pain, isn’t it?” Ignatius replies, almost conspiratory, like they’re sharing an inside joke, and starts piling his plate high with roast beef, and mash, and a cornucopia of autumn vegetables. 

They chatter idly, finding quidditch as mutual ground, because Prewett is quite a fan and Harry has that odd sense in his chest that he is too. He feels a certain longing to be on a broom again and happily makes predictions on which house will win the first game of the season, even though he has no idea how good the teams are. 

Harry is almost certain that the whispering around them, buzzing but not quite distinguishable, is becoming more fervent the longer they sit together. Out of sheer annoyance, he finally asks, “what are they whispering about,” and Ignatius looks a bit taken aback. 

“Oh,” the other boy says, shifting in his seat. “You know how people are, can’t mind their own business. Have to start a rumour about everything.”

Harry frowns, wondering if this has something to do with his Potter surname. Riddle certainly seems focused enough on it, so he’s sure everyone else is too, just with less of a spine - or with more shame, perhaps - to ask him about it directly. 

“What rumour?” 

Ignatius looks, for the first time Harry thinks, a touch uncomfortable by the direction of the conversation. Still, he wouldn’t be a Gryffindor if he wasn’t able to go forward boldly, and his eyes only dart around once for an escape before he’s looking at Harry again with something of a sheepish grin on his face. 

“Elspeth McKinnon kind of mentioned that she caught you and Riddle snogging in the potions cupboard this morning.”

“What!?” Harry screeches, and has the decency to feel repentant when an unsuspecting first-year yelps a bit from the noise of it. 

Ignatius looks, if possible, even more uncomfortable, hand going through his hair to scratch at it continuously. 

“I don’t think people would care so much except it’s, you know, Riddle,” Ignatius tries, and upon seeing Harry’s face hastily continues with, “Not that he’s a bad bloke or anything. He’s actually quite decent. It’s just the whole ‘prince of the snakes’ thing, so people are a bit scandalized.” 

Harry isn’t quite sure what he finds most ridiculous about that: Ignatius thinking Riddle is decent, Ignatius willingly referring to Tom as the prince of the snakes, or Ignatius thinking that Harry has willingly chosen to stick his tongue down Riddle’s throat. 

“We weren’t doing anything,” Harry says, gasps really, practically breathless with an odd mix of embarrassment and rage. 

“Oh,” Ignatius says, not really looking convinced, “it’s just that Riddle didn’t really deny it when  Amelia Bulstrode asked him about it, but if you say so.”

“Would you excuse me for a moment,” Harry asks, not bothering to wait for Prewett’s reply before he is up and out of his seat. 

It feels a bit ironic, if Harry will admit it to himself, that he’s now hunting down the boy that has hunted him for days. Because that’s what Riddle does, he hunts things, with an almost single-minded determination. Harry has expended a lot of time and energy avoiding Riddle’s resolute and unwavering efforts to force himself into Harry’s sphere, and he would have been willing to let this go, willing to let people gossip however they wanted, except Riddle didn’t deny it. 

Hell, he was the one that chased after Harry and then locked them in there together. Harry had been closer to cursing him than snogging him. 

He stalks his way over to Slytherin table, enough boldness in his blood to tackle this head on rather than be more discreet in his anger and retaliation against Riddle, because Harry will not let this stand. He will not let Riddle manipulate the dialogue of his life with boldfaced lies. 

Harry stops in front of the opposite bench from where Riddle is sat, at the center of his lackeys like a king directing his court, and watches Riddle’s attention catch on him. Watches, with increasing outrage, as the smirk blooms on the wretched snake’s face. 

“Hello, Harry,” Riddle says, and it goes noticeably quieter around him when he speaks. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“A word, Riddle,” Harry says, through clenched teeth, and when the other boy simply raises a brow, as if inviting Harry to start speaking here and now, he adds, “in private.”

“If you insist,” Riddle smirks, rising from his seat entirely too gracefully and beckoning for Harry to follow him, as if he’s the one in charge here. 

Riddle leads them out of the Great Hall, past the shadowed alcoves, and all the way to an empty classroom, spelling the door closed behind them and hoisting himself up onto the professor’s desk at the front of the room. 

Every nerve of Harry’s being is screaming that a confined space with a closed door is not where he wants to be with this angelically demonic young man, but he knows Riddle is playing this situation so that he feels he has the upper hand. Harry will just have to remind him that is not in fact the case. 

“Something on your mind, Harry?” Riddle asks, leaning back on his hands and regarding Harry with a look that would be quite devastating if he were a man with even a modicum of moral sense. The sharp slope of his jaw and the neat coif of hair falling casually over his face are a particularly arresting sight, and Harry appreciates, for perhaps the first time, that Riddle is really quite handsome. 

“I don’t appreciate you spreading lies about me, Riddle,” Harry says, not giving an inch in the tone of his voice nor the stance of his body.

He doesn’t trust Riddle not to be a bastard, doesn’t trust him not to pull his wand if he feels at all threatened, and is ready to dodge and fight back if that’s how Riddle wants to play this. 

“I’m afraid I’m not quite sure to what you are referring,” Riddle says, head tilting like a lazy lion scoping out his territory, clever eyes sharp on Harry where he stands, unyielding. “Could you be more specific?”

Harry huffs, feeling the slightest touch of heat creep up his cheeks. 

“There’s a rumor going around that we were snogging in the potions storeroom this morning. You didn’t deny it.”

Riddle looks particularly gleeful, hearing Harry admit to that with a hint of red colouring his cheeks. His eyes follow in a slow line up Harry’s body, assessing every dip and curve in the tenacious way Harry holds himself, as if he is not used to backing down and wouldn’t even if placed in a situation that would demand it.

“I believe I didn’t admit to it, Harry. I simply didn’t deny it. The two are different.”

“Semantics–”

“Are very important, wouldn’t you say?”

Harry huffs, thoroughly done with this Slytherin’s word games and power plays and incessant need to feel as if everything is within his control. He isn’t interested in the politics Riddle plays at, and he’s even less interested in whatever odd fascination Riddle has seemed to develop towards him. In his ever-growing list of priorities, Riddle doesn’t even scratch the surface, so uncaring is Harry about whatever facades he upholds to maintain his influence over his house and professors and peers. 

“Keep me out of your bullshit, Riddle,” Harry says, tone as scorching as a desert sun. “I don’t care about you. I want nothing to do with you. Just stay away from me.”

This is, apparently, the wrong thing to say to Riddle, Harry thinks, as he watches the other boy’s face go dark. As he watches the shark-like smirk slip to a practical baring of teeth, as predatory as a wolf defending its territory. 

Riddle is off the desk and looming in the blink of an eye, and Harry barely has a moment to think that, for a posh-looking swot, Riddle is amazingly quick and light on his feet, before the Slytherin is bearing down on him, hand slipped into the hair at the back of Harry’s head and pulling, practically until Harry’s throat is presented to him like an offering. 

“I grow tired of you thinking you can speak to me like that, Potter,” Riddle says, face close, teeth bared, breath a fan of rage across Harry’s face. 

And Harry – Harry is having none of it. 

He’s moving before he can even really think about it, wand drawn, hand raised, hex hissed from between his clenched teeth. 

Riddle dives out of the way with impressive dexterity, his own wand in his hand in a matter of seconds, growling a curse to counter Harry’s attack. 

Harry doesn’t think, he moves, magic swelling from his chest and pouring through his fingertips. He dodges and ducks and casts back as good as he gets, shooting at Riddle a barrage of his most clever hexes and charms, the ones that seem to come deep within that locked place where all his memories reside. He combines spells with wit and nerve in a way that keeps the Slytherin completely on his toes, like Riddle is not used to having an opponent that can match him and hold their own. 

Riddle’s agility is an impressive thing, his proficiency over his magic practically unrivaled. He casts curses and hexes that fly in dangerous colours too close to Harry, that leave a path of destruction across the empty classroom. 

Harry thinks briefly that the magic Riddle is using is really quite dark, and the likelihood that he would be legitimately injured were one of his spells to hit rather high, but he doesn’t let that stop him surging forward. Doesn’t let that stop him charging through every one of Riddle’s attacks until he is forcing Riddle to fight in close quarters. 

It ends abruptly, the two boys forced together because neither is willing to back down, each quick enough to have their wand at the other’s throat the instant they find an opening. 

The silence that comes after is heavy, weighted with tension. Disrupted only by the sounds of a pair of harsh breaths struggling to get back under control. 

“Don’t use pain to manipulate me, Riddle. I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not one of your little lackeys. If you try and bite me, I’ll bite back.”

Riddle smirks, flagrant, egregious, stretched across red cheeks blushed dark from their fight. 

“Please, Harry, call me Tom,” he says, still slightly breathless, and then he does something that really surprises Harry. He moves away first, tucking his wand back into his robes. “We really ought to do that again some time. That was delightful.”

Harry scoffs, tucking away his own wand and turning to survey the scene they’ve left, a half-melted desk giving him particular pause. 

“Yes, you trying to liquify me is quite delightful,” Harry bites back, throwing a glare over his shoulder. “You do realize that your innocent schoolboy routine would have really taken a beating if one of these spells hit me.”

“Good thing you’re so light on your feet then, isn’t it, little lion,” Riddle says, stalking forward in a way that makes Harry rather decidedly feel like he is being hunted. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I don’t know, Tom? Where did you learn to cast such dark magic?”

“Touché, darling,” Riddle replies, with a smirk and a dip of his head. He then turns to survey the damage they’ve caused to the room, pulling out his wand to mend what he can with a quick wave and vanishing the things that are beyond salvageable. 

Harry moves around, ensuring all scorch marks, holes and other rather damning pieces of evidence are fixed and filled in before he walks out of the classroom, hoping that Riddle won’t follow him but already accepting the fact that he will. 

And he does, a few quick, easy strides all it takes for the taller boy to catch up to Harry’s brisk march away from whatever the hell just happened between the two of them. 

“You’re cross,” Riddle notes, tone particularly pleasant as he matches Harry’s stride easily. 

“Of course not, Riddle. Why would I be? I love dodging spells that have the ability to liquify my bones and set my organs on fire. It’s how I prefer to spend my evenings.”

Riddle hums. “You are rather good at it.”

Harry scoffs, picking up his pace to try and shake this boy that’s become something akin to a second shadow for him, but Riddle matches his pace easily, his damned long legs falling into stride no matter how fast Harry moves, looking perfectly pleasant and handsome while doing so. 

“You’re really quite a delight, Harry. I can’t believe I went weeks thinking you were useless and boring,” Riddle comments casually, apropos nothing. 

Harry looks over at him, a cross between pure outrage and disturbed disbelief painted on his face. “You really don’t hear the things that you say,” he mutters, and then says louder, “In case you forgot, Riddle, I want nothing to do with you.”

Riddle smiles, perfectly pleasant. “I didn’t forget, Harry. I’ve simply chosen not to care, because what you want means absolutely nothing to me.”

Merlin have mercy, Harry thinks, because how has this boy, save perhaps Dumbledore, managed to fool an entire staff and student body into thinking he is an upstanding and kind individual? How has he managed to even maintain his charade when his real personality is so sociopathic?

He takes the last flight of stairs practically at a jog, blessedly stopping in front of the painting he’s been hoping to see since the moment Riddle started following him. Perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but Harry can only take so much in an evening, and he has the rather dreadful feeling that, given the opportunity, Riddle will not leave him alone until he’s forced to.

“You can’t follow me in here,” Harry says, turning back to the boy at his heel with a determined set to his brow. 

“Ah, yes,” Riddle smirks, hands tucked behind his back, eyeing the portrait over Harry’s shoulder. “The house of the brave and just.”

“Of which you are neither,” Harry bites back. “Good night, Tom”

Tom steps closer, until they’re toe to toe, grin flagrant on his face, forcing Harry to look up just to see the mocking set to his brow. 

“I’m plenty brave, Harry,” he says, voice dropping low to accommodate the scant few inches between their chests. 

“Shameless audacity doesn’t count,” Harry replies, just as low, far more annoyed, and really dreading the way Tom’s smirk stretches wide. 

“Good night, little lion,” Tom whispers, before turning on his heel and walking away, and Harry swears it sounds as much like a promise as it does a farewell. Like Riddle is declaring very openly that he doesn’t plan to leave Harry undisturbed in any place that he can get to him. 

And Harry really wants to know how the hell he became an object of this burgeoning megalomaniac’s obsession, but first he really needs a drink, and he has a feeling Ignatius Prewett is the man to go to for firewhisky. 

~*~

Tom has decided to make Harry Potter one of his followers. It doesn’t matter if he is a bastard or a mudblood; he is more powerful, more clever and quick-witted and capable, than any of the other boys he surrounds himself with. The boys parading around as men, pretending that the status and titles to be handed to them by their fathers are something that they’ve earned. The fact that he is a Gryffindor is minorly inconvenient; the fact that he is ridiculously noble a little more so, but Tom is nothing if not persistent. Whether it be his power or his mind or his body, there is something that Harry Potter will be attracted to, and Tom will use it and make Harry his. 

He wants to fight Harry again. He wants to feel his magic. He wants to knock him off his feet with a curse that shatters his bones and hear him scream. He wants to watch Harry bleed, and beg, and cry for mercy. He wants to see him be brilliant, and powerful, and untamed like the fire that blazes through his beautiful eyes, green as the killing curse. 

Tom is obsessed. It’s not a shock to him. He’s been obsessed before. With making his first horcruxes, and killing his father, and becoming inseparable from the persona of Lord Voldemort that he is crafting for himself to be. His obsession has allowed him to push the boundaries of thought and magic before; now, it will secure him an ally with a boldness in his blood as burning red as Godric’s own. 

Tom lays the groundwork quietly, meticulously, with a capability and charm that is unrivaled. Because Harry won’t look at him, and Harry is ignoring him, and Harry is starting to make friends with the other Gryffindors and it simply will not do. 

It starts with an innocent suggestion to Professor Merrythought. A simple proposition that they ought to end each week of Defense lessons with something fun in class. Something that will allow the students to loosen up from the stress of their N.E.W.T.-level coursework while still being practical. He tells her, casually as he is leaving class one day, that a little bit of dueling would do them all some good. He mentions it again the next class, and by the third time he lets it slip he’s got her hook, line and sinker. 

She announces it to the class at the beginning of the week, and between the animated chatter and exclamations of excitement there is Harry, looking his way with a mix of anger and dread washed across his pretty little face. Because of course he knows this is Tom’s doing, and it is simply delightful. 

Tom is in the clouds all week, mood high and near untouchable. Not even the idiocy of his Knights can dampen his spirits, and he teaches them new, dark magic at their next meeting, and basks in their praise, and helps them with their schoolwork without asking for too much in return. It’s throwing them, just a touch, because Tom is never this obliging for an extended period of time. 

Around the middle of the week, Malfoy bucks up enough courage to ask, “Are you okay?” like perhaps there is something medically wrong with Tom (there very well could be) and all Tom can do is hum and smirk, a conspiratory gleam in his eyes. 

“He’s lion taming,” Orion Black pipes up, piling sweets high onto his plate, that mad Black glee charming on his young face. 

By the time Tom walks into Defense Against the Dark Arts at the end of the week, he can taste his own anticipation on the back of his tongue, sweet like a promise, radiant like that bright, light magic that rests beneath Harry Potter’s skin. 

The little lion is sitting with Ignatius Prewett towards the center of the room - they’ve gotten closer recently and it makes something ugly writhe in Tom’s chest - but it is no matter. Tom makes his way over with his usual, unabashed confidence, planting himself in front of Prewett like a statue of unyielding stone, smile pleasant on his face. 

“Hi, Ignatius,” Tom says, voice friendly and expression welcoming. 

Prewett glances over at him, the creases of laughter fading from his face as he turns away from Harry and dons a look of mild surprise, unused to as he is being approached by a Slytherin in such a friendly manner. 

“Tom,” Prewett greets, in a mix of amusement and bewilderment. 

Tom leans in a touch, expression going a bit rogue like perhaps they’re about to share an inside joke. 

“Mind if I sit with Harry today?” He asks, watching as the redhead glances at Harry and then back to him, winking when he sees the cogs start to turn in Prewett’s little head. 

He’s one of the, admittedly many, who still believes he and Harry were actually snogging in that potions cupboard, and Tom is more than happy to take on the role of daring lover traversing house lines to sit with his beau, if just to see the way Harry’s face goes dark and bright in equal measure.  

“Sure thing,” Ignatius grins, winking back at Tom, and my, isn’t that ridiculous, but Tom is gleeful nonetheless. 

His ginger counterpart rises from his seat, deaf to Harry’s hissed protests, and claps Tom on the shoulder as he passes by him. 

Tom doesn’t let the touch, offensive and unwanted as it is, ruin his mood. He slides into Prewett’s vacated seat and provides Harry a particularly charming grin. 

“Hello, Harry,” he says, resting his chin in his hand. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“I partner with you every fucking time we have potions,” Harry hisses, and Tom is really quite impressed by how snake-like he sounds. 

“You ignore me every time we have potions, my little lion, and you avoid me in all the other classes we share, and you scamper off to your little tower every night. Quite rude, wouldn’t you say, when I am investing so much time and effort into getting to know you.”

Harry rolls his eyes in a fashion Tom has become quite used to, relishing in the feel of equal parts delight and rage burn through his chest, unsure if he wants to hex this boy where he sits or praise him for having such a spine. 

Harry is audacious in a way that goes beyond the childish I dare you that so many of his Gryffindor counterparts possess in spades. He has wit and skill to buttress his backbone, a focus that is learned and natural in equal measure, and it makes Tom’s fingers itch to unravel him. To pick him apart until every piece of him is raw and exposed, until nothing can hide behind those wire-framed glasses, or sharp lips, or the fact that Harry ignores Tom like he is nothing to him. 

“Perhaps you should take a hint, Riddle, and give up on your little charade of friendship.”

Tom hums, chin in hand, smile lazy on his face. If Harry were anyone else he would be enamored with Tom right now, would see the easy grin and half-lidded eyes and would be stuttering over himself. 

Tom isn’t sure if he is more enraged or delighted by the fact that Harry looks closer to slinging profanity at him than stammering through anything he wants to say to him.

“What could I give you,” he says, slow and deliberate, “to make you call me Tom?”

Harry looks a bit taken aback, like he isn’t used to dealing in interactions that are made up of give and take and bargains and trade. He is likely a proper Gryffindor in this regard and believes friendship comes from a place of equal parts selflessness and benevolence. 

“Give me?” Harry asks, brow furrowing in a way that Tom finds surprisingly charming. 

He is, admittedly, quite delighted by the turn of their conversation. 

“What would you want, in exchange?”

“You would give me something, just so that I’ll call you by your first name?” Harry questions, tone belaying his disbelief. 

My name is the first step, Tom thinks, to you calling me my lord. 

“I would,” Tom confirms, and leans a bit closer, just because he is aware people are watching them and whispering. “Keep in mind that I’m quite open-minded, darling. Don’t hold yourself back in your request.”

Harry blanches and then turns bright red in such a fast sequence of reactions that it is a notable effort for Tom not to start laughing, which is really quite a state for him. He rarely finds amusement outside of the pain of others. 

“You’re abhorrent,” Harry huffs, sliding his body a bit further from Tom’s.

“Guilty,” Tom grins, and is really quite disappointed that their conversation is cut short by the arrival of Professor Merrythought. 

He half-heartedly tunes into her lecture on dementors, having already studied the dark creatures thoroughly when he was twelve and had far fewer “friends” and far more time on his hands to let his curiosity run unabated. He is interested in the Patronus charm and is curious to try his hand at it when they begin practical applications, but it is incredibly light magic and Tom has not dabbled much in that particular spectrum of power. He thinks, vaguely, that Harry will probably be very good at it. 

That’s another thing they’ll have to work on - darkening Harry’s repertoire a bit. Though with the way Harry is not so subtly leaning away from him, Tom reckons they’re not quite there yet. 

Towards the last fifteen minutes of class, Professor Merrythought pauses her lecture to allow the class to duel, just as she said she would. Tom is quite disappointed when she doesn’t have them break off into pairs, but rather has the class gather in a wide circle around the room, the center serving as a dueling ring for a single pair of students. 

He follows at Harry’s back like a shadow, even when the shorter boy tries to sneak away from him, and ends up on the left side of the room plastered close to Harry’s side, watching in disinterest as a pair of Gryffindor girls exchange a pathetic arsenal of first-year hexes. 

He focuses his attention on more interesting things - the unruly chaos of Harry’s hair, and the little curls tucked into the sweeping, dark locks, namely - and is only half-interested when Avery gets called to duel Prewett. 

This fight is at least a bit more interesting, Avery with his training from Tom and his own family, and Prewett much the same, likely having spent his whole life being groomed into a decent and capable wizard. The pair exchange a higher level of magic, though Tom notes Avery is obviously holding back from the candidly egregious things he teaches him in their meetings that are as truly one way to Azkaban as the Unforgivables.

He leans in towards Harry, delighted that he has to bend a notable amount to reach his ear.

“What do you want to bet that my snake flays your redhead by the end of this?” He asks, enjoying the way the hairs on Harry’s neck raise from the puffs of his breath. 

Harry scoffs, shifting on his feet like he wants to move further from Tom, or at least put Tom more in his line of sight, and Tom grins. 

He watches the duel continue absentmindedly, watches the two boys grow more out of breath and less precise, vaguely considering looping his finger in a particularly chaotic little curl of Harry’s hair towards the base of his neck, when Avery does something that really throws Tom.

The young heir, likely in an idiotic moment of thought to surprise his opponent, hisses the serpensortia spell, which is not particularly challenging but also not particularly smart unless you have a clear follow-up. Lucky for Avery, though, Prewett seems caught off guard, and frightened, if the way he stumbles back is any indication. 

Unfortunately for Avery, he’s frightened too, and rather than take his advantage and end the fight, steps back from the hissing king cobra rearing its head at his Gryffindor opponent. 

Tom rolls his eyes, put off by the fight, and a touch put off by the cobra hissing excitedly about heels to snap at, too. His gift and lineage aren’t widely known outside of Slytherin and Tom plans to keep it that way for now (and he wouldn’t call off the snake even if he didn’t). He watches with vague amusement as the cobra lunges at Prewett with a playful snap of her jaws. 

Just as he is wondering if Prewett is going to allow himself to be bitten rather than act like a proper wizard and defend himself, or perhaps Professor Merrythought is going to step in, Harry walks forward, a slightly glazed look to his eyes as he stares down the snake, almost as if his Gryffindor daring alone can stop her in her slithering tracks. 

“Don’t do that,” he says, and Tom damn near rears back when he recognizes the smooth hiss of Parseltongue.

The cobra looks over, surprise and interest on her scaled face as she sizes Harry up with slitted eyes. 

“You speak,” she hisses, and Tom is damn near about ready to lose his mind. 

“Um, well, I am speaking to you,” Harry says, confused, like perhaps he hasn’t put together that he’s communicating in a language the entire room save one cannot understand. “You’re freaking Prewett out. Don’t snap at him like that.”

The snake rears back, regarding Harry with narrowed, almost petulant eyes. “But it’s fun to snap at him. He cowers like a rabbit, and I am hungry.”

“Perhaps you ought to go chase after some actual rabbits, then,” Harry replies, a touch sternly. 

Tom cannot allow this to continue. The class is looking at Harry in complete shock, admiration for some and disgust for others, and the boy seems to notice none of it, so singular is his focus. Even Professor Merrythought is caught off guard, regarding Harry with a somewhat dazed expression, like the last thing she was expecting was for a Gryffindor to begin speaking in the language of snakes. 

He hisses the spell to vanish the conjured reptile, mind already flying in a million different directions. There’s no way Harry is a descendant of Salazar as well. The only direct line are the Gaunts, and Tom knows he is the only person with Gaunt blood currently freely walking this earth. He made sure of that when he murdered his father and pinned it on his uncle. 

No, Harry has this gift outside of any true Slytherin blood flowing through his veins. Somehow, impossibly, he can speak the language of the snakes without any direct link to the family so well known for the skill. 

It is impossible. It is ridiculous. It is maddening and Tom wants to pry open Harry’s skull and surf through the contents of his brain, to find where this knowledge resides. To pick it out and learn why it’s there to begin with in a Merlin-damned, red-clad, lion-hearted Gryffindor of all people. 

Professor Merrythought dismisses the class quickly, likely hoping that it will quell the tide of agitation and curiosity swelling through her students, or perhaps just hoping that they’ll take it to the Great Hall instead, and Tom moves to grab his things, keeping a careful eye on Harry so that he can corner him the second they’re out of the room. 

“What the hell, Harry?” He hears Prewett whisper, tone concerned and curious in equal measure. “Why didn’t you tell me you can talk to snakes?”

Harry looks decidedly uncomfortable, like he has been caught in a lie he can no longer keep up, and it makes Tom’s interest grow even more rampant. It suddenly seems like there are so many things Harry is hiding: where he comes from, and why he’s here, and why he seems so comfortable and at ease in these halls that, two months ago, he had supposedly never stepped foot inside. He’s an equation that doesn’t add up, made up of parts that are greater than the whole, and Tom wants to unearth every little secret that he’s hiding until there is nothing left for Harry to lie to him about. 

“It’s really not a big deal,” he hears Harry say to his housemate, voice just as low, because he seems to have picked up on the fact that he’s become the hot topic of gossip yet again. “It’s just something I’ve always been able to do.”

Tom has had enough. He won’t let this stand. If Harry refuses to be forthcoming, then he’s just going to have to take what he wants, his burgeoning plans to manipulate Harry be damned. Harry will come around eventually; Tom will see to it. He’ll get what he wants and spend the rest of the school year coaxing Harry to him, if that’s what it takes. 

“A word, darling,” Tom says, butting into Harry’s hushed conversation with Prewett and grabbing him by the hand. 

He pulls Harry along, out of the classroom and into the hall, and at first Harry seems too bewildered to put up much of a fight. Tom thinks, vaguely, that he likes Harry pliant like this, but it somehow doesn’t lessen how inexplicably fond he is of Harry’s unyielding nature, too. How he doesn’t know if he wants to hurt Harry or reward him for being so intrepid. 

“Tom?” Harry questions, too confused to be callous about using the Slytherin’s first name, and Tom doesn’t allow himself to dwell too much on how he enjoys hearing his own mundane, muggle name on Harry’s lips. 

He thinks he would enjoy hearing Harry call him Lord Voldemort even more. 

He leads them to a shadowed alcove, in the opposite direction of the Great Hall so that they won’t run into anyone from class going to lunch, but not too far away that he has to worry about Harry getting fussy and trying to do something stupid, like get away from him. 

He pushes Harry into the shadows and rounds on him, enjoying the way Harry seems to go still and tense. The way he suddenly seems to be regarding Tom as a predator.  

“What’s up with you, Riddle?” He asks, quiet, cautious, like he expects Tom to be startled into an attack. 

Tom smiles, leaning in a bit, hand finding the wall behind Harry’s head to trap him in. 

“What a curious little thing you are, Harry. You have so many secrets hiding behind those lovely eyes of yours.” 

Harry is immediately defensive, immediately rigid. Like he’s prepared to claw and bite his way out, if that’s what it takes. Like he’s used to fighting for his survival, fighting for the right of his existence. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, defiant, green eyes as dark as the killing curse. 

“No?” Tom questions, taking a leap and switching to Parseltongue, to see if his theory holds. “Surely, darling, you can lie better than that.”

“I’m not lying,” Harry answers, obstinate, hardly aware that he’s switched to the language of serpents. 

“Do you even hear yourself, my little lion?”

Harry’s brow furrows, and it seems to take him a few long, passing moments before recognition widens his eyes, before their conversation runs through his mind in hisses and sibilations rather than the English he was no doubt thinking of it as. 

“How is it, Harry Potter,” Tom says, leaning even closer and taking Harry’s chin between his fingers, “that you are able to use the gift passed down only to the direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin himself?”

Tom doesn’t wait for a reply. He locks eyes and dives in, willing to ravish and plunder Harry’s mind if that’s what it takes to get his hands on all of the Gryffindor’s secrets. 

He’s perfected his legilimency to the point that he can even slip into some of his professor’s minds undetected, sliding around with their thoughts and carefully unpicking their most guarded secrets. Of all the ancient magicks, mind magic is easily his favorite, along with soul magic, of course. And, as with so many other things, Tom is skilled beyond his years in the art.

He breezes past the first barrier of Harry’s mind easily, a thin wall to protect surface thoughts that most if not all wizards in their majority learn to cultivate. It’s not a surprise to Tom and he blazes through, prepared to force his way past any more barriers Harry tries to throw in his way, before he is abruptly hit with the full force of what feels like a brick wall meeting his cranium head on. 

It dazes Tom, for just a moment, and in the next moment he can properly sense the barriers Harry has erected to halt him in place, towering and strong. The moment after, he can feel Harry forcing him out, pushing at him almost as if they are in a hand-to-hand scuffle, fighting each other for dominance. 

Tom is shoved out of Harry’s mind and back into his own, dazed momentarily by a flash of darkness and bright spots before he comes to his full faculties again, staring down at a red-cheeked, fuming, murderous looking Harry Potter. 

“You absolute bastard,” Harry hisses, and Tom thinks that it’s no wonder he sounds so snake-like when he’s angry. “You can’t just break into my head to get what you want, you complete fucking pillock.”

“Well I could if you didn’t fight back,” Tom snaps, in a moment of childish ire. Because how dare Harry Potter resist his legilimency too. How dare he have the occlumency skills to hold Tom at bay. To keep Tom from what he wants. How dare he. 

Harry tries to shove past him, but Tom catches him by the shoulder, unwilling to let him leave yet, not without some sort of answer. 

“Wait,” Tom says when Harry practically growls at him for the touch, “I admit that was rude of me.”

“Rude?” Harry huffs, in disbelief. “You think that was rude, Riddle. Try completely fucking psychotic.” 

“That’s a bit harsh, Harry,” Tom chides, clicking his tongue. “I simply reacted poorly to the surprising revelation that you can speak Parseltongue too. I’m sorry.”

Tom thinks, for a moment, that perhaps he’s about to get punched in the face. It’s a very muggle way for Harry to take out his frustration, but if that’s what he needs to feel better, Tom is willing to spare a cheek bone, just this once. He can practice his healing spells later if he really needs to. 

Harry’s fists clench and his breathing grows harsh, but after a few long, careful exhalations he seems to get himself back under control, providing Tom a particularly impressive glare. 

“Saying you’re sorry doesn’t magically make everything better.”

“That’s exactly the reason I don’t understand why people do it,” Tom notes, and upon seeing Harry’s face is quick to continue with, “Look, I get if you have a hard time realizing when you’re speaking Parseltongue. I was that way too, when I first started using it. I have an idea of how we can better understand why you can even speak it to begin with, but it would be easier if you didn’t look like you wanted to punch me first.”

Tom is mostly lying, and he thinks that some part of Harry likely knows this, but the Gryffindor’s curiosity is, for better or for worse, very obviously piqued. It’s clear that the events in Defense rattled him, and he doesn’t like having limited control over a gift that many would use to instantly label him as a dark and dangerous sorcerer. 

Tom doesn’t need a verbal confirmation to know he has Harry’s attention; it’s obviously caught, and he’ll hold onto it as long as he can, with greedy, stubborn fingers. 

“Come on,” he says, holding out his palm, in an offering of peace if that’s what Harry wants. 

“I’m not holding your bloody hand,” Harry hisses, shoving past Tom in, fortunately, the direction he wants to take them in anyway. 

He catches up to Harry and takes the lead, keeping the right sleeve of the Gryffindor’s robes close in case he needs something to grab onto if Harry makes a run for it. 

Tom leads them down into the bowels of the castle, relishing in the familiar chill to the air and the murky shadows cast upon the stone walls from the eerie, half-bright lighting. He’s vaguely thankful that Harry doesn’t seem to put two and two together on where he’s taking them before it’s practically too late.

“I can’t go in there,” Harry yelps, indignation heavy in his voice, as he stares at the entrance to the Slytherin common room. 

Tom very nearly rolls his eyes. “It’s not illegal, Harry. And you’re with me, so it’s fine.”

Truth be told, if Tom witnessed one of the other snakes bringing a Gryffindor, or anyone from any other house for that matter, into their common room, he would likely do them a great deal of physical harm. But as it happens, Tom is the leader of his house and the prince of the snakes. Anyone wanting to take that title would need to challenge him, and no one is that eager to be sent home in a matchbox. Harry is allowed into the snake’s domain because he says so, and there’s a part of Tom that relishes that. That relishes the claim he has in declaring Harry his companion allowed to traverse through his domain on his say. 

He half-leads, half-pulls Harry through the entrance and into the green and silver adorned room, mostly empty save for some upper years cramming in an extra few minutes of studying during lunch, and a few lower years playing exploding snaps in the corner. 

Still, the room goes silent and the air grows still as the snakes notice the red-clad lion enter their domain. 

Tom rather imagines that he is the only thing standing between Harry and the end of at least seven different wands. He grabs his little lion’s wrist and pulls him along, before Harry has the time to get offended and do something particularly stupid, leading him up the stairs and into his dormitory.

He has the door shut and his wards activated before Harry can even get in a word of protest. 

“Oh, you absolute tosser,” Harry curses, when he seems to realize Tom’s magic is essentially trapping him in here. 

“Be a dear and keep yourself entertained while I research, darling,” Tom mutters, absentminded, as he pulls out the Malfoy family genealogy book Abraxas delivered to him this morning, flipping through the pages until he finds the section devoted to the Potter line. 

He tunes out Harry’s rambling threats and colourful curses, allowing the full of his attention to be occupied by the paragraphs devoted solely to the people who very well may be Harry’s family. He reads about the Potters appearing and disappearing throughout history, as many ancient pureblood families do, and the speculations around a tarnished vein in their blood leaving them less pure than those of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. 

He follows the family tree down from the early Middle Ages, trying to find a root that Harry could fit with. A murky cousin or a wayward bastard that claimed the name, bringing the family into and out of existence throughout time. He finds Fleamont and his wife Euphemia, and the extended Potter family around them, but there’s no obvious place where Harry could have sprung up from, even illicitly, without actually being an unclaimed bastard of Fleamont Potter. 

Tom is thoroughly confused and a bit disheartened. And even less sure than he was before on where Harry could have come from and how he can speak the language of the snakes.

“You can’t be a mudblood,” he mutters, and is met with a sound of mild outrage from across the room. 

“Don’t use that word, Riddle,” Harry says, with the proper amount of righteous anger Tom would have expected him to have. 

Tom looks up, sneer half on his lips before it pauses part-way, met with as he is the sight of Harry Potter and his brilliant, bright magic gently picking at Tom’s wards, one careful tendril at a time. 

Tom tilts his head, watching Harry and knowing that Harry knows it too. He has such careful control over his magic and it’s fascinating to watch, made all the more interesting by the few times he’s so thoroughly lost control of that power, shattering vials and lashing out to attack Tom. 

Tom wonders what it would look like if he really used it; the destruction he could cause and the damage he would do. It would be beautiful.

“We’ll be here an age before you manage to deactivate them,” Tom says, stretching out on his bed like a lazy cat, content to watch Harry’s magic work, content to know that Harry would maybe be able to work through his wards eventually, rather than die trying like Tom has practically guaranteed by the third layer of them.

Harry scoffs, resolutely determined as ever, and continues to work, putting his skills of ignoring Tom that he’s so thoroughly developed to work. 

Tom sighs, laying his head back against his pillows to stare up at the ceiling, contemplating the mystery that is Harry Potter and his puzzle pieces that don’t seem to fit together. His mind loves the challenge, the mystery, but with so little information and such an uncooperative Gryffindor it seems practically unfair. He wishes he could just rip into Harry’s mind and steal what he wants, but apparently Harry is even less obliging with that than he is Tom’s direct attempts to question him. 

Tom glances up at the sound of Harry yelping and the feel of his magic rearing back, met with the sight of Harry shaking out his hand, pain lining his pretty face, before he sticks his thumb in his mouth and licks at the sore he’s no doubt now sporting. 

Tom smirks, basking in the full weight of Harry’s dark glare now directed at him. 

“Give it a rest, will you, darling,” he says, settling back against his pillows, content to have Harry trapped with him, even if he can’t unravel any of his secrets. 

He finds he quite likes having Harry so close, and it really is a shame that he can’t have him here more often. 

“You could just let me out,” Harry huffs, sounding particularly indignant. 

“Not for at least another fifteen minutes. I do have a reputation to maintain, Harry.”

“A reputation?” Harry questions, brow scrunching in that way Tom finds particularly charming. 

Tom makes sure to catch his eye, grin wide and leer bright, sweeping his gaze over Harry’s compact and powerful body, not really allowing himself to imagine much, but imagining that he would like to.

“Harry,” Tom says, practically chiding, “there’s only one reason why I would bring you up here in the middle of the day.”

Tom watches the cogs turn in Harry’s head. He watches the exact moment Harry understands what he’s implying and relishes the moment after when his face colours a fetching, bright red. 

“What,” Harry wheezes, looking caught between outrage and utter mortification.

“You really think the snakes aren’t going to spread the knowledge that I was seen sneaking you into the Slytherin common room?” 

“We weren’t sneaking,” Harry yelps. “You’re the one who said it would be okay!”

“All the people who thought we were snogging before are definitely going to think we’re shagging now,” Tom continues, undeterred, “and there’s no way I’m going to let anyone think it took a grand total of only twenty minutes for me to have my way with you.”

Harry seems beyond words. In fact, Tom is rather convinced he may get a hex thrown at him again, or Harry may use more muggle means and punch Tom in the face like he’s so clearly wanted to for the past hour. Part of him is curious to see Harry rage. To see him so angry that he can’t hold himself back. Another part of him is entirely charmed by Harry’s bright, blushing cheeks and quick, darting eyes, like he’s a bit too embarrassed to even look at Tom right now, sprawled out on his bed as he is. 

Tom is a bit disappointed when all the red-adorned boy does is humph and go back to picking at his wards with careful, precise magic. Apparently, Harry is rather choosy about the times he will be properly goaded into a rage-fueled duel. Tom makes a note to not deny anything to the first person who inevitably asks him about their shag, and even thinks of a few clever innuendos to throw in about what a lovely time it was. Surely that will convince Harry to duel him again. 

Harry, it seems, does have some small notion of when a battle is lost and it’s time to give up. He puts it together eventually that he’ll spend more time undoing Tom’s wards than he will being trapped in here, the demand of afternoon classes and all, and eventually halts all efforts in favor of slumping down on the floor, back pressed against the harsh stone wall and eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling overhead. 

Was that so hard, Tom thinks, eyeing the other boy critically. He ignores the slip of a thought that whispers, my, he really is quite pretty, in favour of more important things. He supposes he can live with Harry’s obscure origins and many secrets, for now at least. Dwelling on them is doing nothing to win the boy to his side, and he certainly can’t steal them from Harry as he would so like to, so the tactical thing would be to put aside what he can’t have for now in favor of focusing on the potential of what he can. Harry may not be easily charmed, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be won. 

Tom has perfected the art of convincing people to overlook many of his more adverse qualities in favor of his most agreeable ones. All he needs to do is find the thing that really wets Harry’s appetite and then use it against him. The little lion with the loud roar is a bit of a mystery, he will admit; usually people are far easier to untangle and unpick, sometimes in a matter of minutes, but Tom enjoys nothing if not a good challenge. And Harry is certainly a good challenge, and a rather delectable one. 

“Say, Harry,” Tom says, eyeing a thick strand of the boy’s chaos he calls hair from his perch on his bed, “don’t you think we’d make much better allies than enemies?”

The little lion snorts. “You’re not my enemy, Riddle. I just don’t like you.”

“See, Harry, that’s a bit of a problem, because if you’re not my ally, then you’re definitely my enemy.” 

Harry looks up long enough to give him a droll look, caught between something amused and scathing, like he finds Tom as simultaneously ridiculous and comical as a boastful child. The rage that burns through Tom is a small and blistering thing, and he can be nothing if not vexingly and inexplicably fond of it. 

“I didn’t realize you thought in such blacks and whites.” 

Tom shrugs. “Not necessarily, but I don’t tolerate people who get in my way, even passively.” 

“And I bet you think the world is divided into good and evil, too.”

Tom smiles, ferocious thing that it is, subjecting Harry to his own droll look mirrored back, tinged in jibing lines of mocking amusement. 

“Don’t be so juvenile, Harry. Good and evil is a concept invented by fairytales. The only categories the world is divided into are the powerful few and the pathetic majority.”

Harry, of all things, rolls his eyes, looking far more unimpressed than Tom’s Knights were when he first spouted such things at them. 

Oh yes, Tom thinks, that’s certainly rage I feel. 

“Pretty sure if there is good and evil, mate, you’re going to end up on the not so favourable side of that.”

A terrible little delight, he is. Tom smiles. 

“Do you favour good, Harry?”

“I favour not having this conversation with you,” the little lion huffs. “If there’s anything I don’t want to do it’s argue philosophy with you of all people.” 

Tom rolls himself off his bed, pleasantly mindful of the way Harry is watching him, practically assessing him for a threat level, and stretches his limbs like a lazy cat before making his way over to the wall Harry is slumped against. He offers a pretty smile and a hand, willing the boy to just hurry up and take it rather than eye his fingers like they might try to pinch him at any moment. 

“No philosophy then, Harry,” he says, extending his hand a little further in invitation. 

Harry, once again, rolls his eyes, a little huff on his breath as he takes the offered assistance and allows Tom to pull him to his feet. 

Yes, Tom thinks, truly a terrible little delight. 

He squeezes Harry’s hand tighter as the boy moves to pull away, deft fingers reeling him in and making it obvious that he won’t be letting go until he wants to. And rather unfortunate for Harry, if he decides he just never wants to.

“It’s a shame, little lion, that we have to be enemies,” Tom says, smile biting. 

He allows it to be the threat that it is. The promise that he will not be leaving Harry alone, that he will not be making his life easy, that he will in fact go out of his way to make it difficult, until Harry gives him some ground. He allows it to be a threat and a promise and he knows Harry knows this. 

“Perhaps we can be allies one day instead,” Tom says on a murmur, bringing Harry’s hand to his lips and kissing his knuckles in a mockery of chivalry. 

It’s worth the electric jolt that he gets from Harry’s magic, felt through his fingers and tingling down his palm, if just for the way Harry blushes that bright, fetching red of his.

~*~

Harry is rather convinced he is at war with Tom Riddle, which is entirely ridiculous and completely on brand for the boy Harry is starting to dub the most dramatic person he has ever met in his life, a notable feat considering he doesn’t remember much of his life. It was more or less obvious when Tom rather shamelessly declared Harry an enemy in his dormitory; it was completely solidified when the news reached Harry that same evening that Riddle was doing the exact opposite of denying they had taken a tumble in the sheets, a phrase so kindly supplied by one of his house’s jokesters who reminded him of people he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

Harry has the rather unfortunate feeling that was just the first shots in what is likely to become many quasi-battles fought over whatever the ridiculous Slytherin wants, something Harry can admittedly not quite puzzle out. Sure, Riddle has expressed a desire for friendship, a desire to get to know him, but Tom Riddle doesn’t have friends; this Harry knows. He doesn’t believe in those bonds and instead collects people he thinks will be useful to him. The thing is, Harry can’t figure how he’d ever be useful to Riddle. They antagonize each other to the point where it’s practically comical. To the point where Riddle is calling him an enemy and staging a mock war against him comprised of gossip and rumour and social slander. 

Unfortunately for Riddle, though, Harry has gotten rather used to the volume in a room dropping whenever he walks into it, and he can mostly say he finds it more amusing than anything. Of course, he can’t count on Riddle sticking with tamer means to call him out, but he can be thankful that, for the time being, he hasn't taken to hexing Harry in the back. 

As with most nights, Harry finds himself occupying one of the large, squishy armchairs in the Gryffindor common room, stationed right by the fire to stave off the growing autumn chill. It’s something familiar; a warm feeling that makes Harry feel content and safe, like a good cup of spiced cider for his soul, and he imagines somewhere in the chaos of his mind there are fond memories of this gold and maroon room. 

He’s listening idly to his younger housemates chatter on the sofa close to him, outlining an essay for Binns and trying not to fall asleep doing so. Even Ignatius’ little looks can’t dampen his soothed mood, but he does still work up the effort to mutter, “for the last time, nothing happened between me and Riddle,” by the eighth not-so-subtle glance his way. 

“Er, I know that,” Prewett responds, in a way that makes it very apparent he doesn’t believe his own words. “I was just wondering if you could tell me more about the whole, you know, Parseltongue thing?”

Harry sighs a bit, setting aside his quill and parchment, not quite sure if he’s thankful or not to have a distraction from another bloody goblin rebellion. Rather fortunately, or not so fortunate at all, the discovery of his Parseltongue abilities coincided quite spectacularly with the student body believing he and Riddle holed up for a good shag during lunch, and rather than label him a dark and dangerous wizard students were now declaring him a proper match for Slytherin’s very own golden boy, some people even saying they were set to be engaged after graduation. 

It was all a bit absurd for Harry, and he allowed his best unimpressed and unamused expression to speak volumes when students dared saunter up to him and ask about it, but that didn’t seem to be quelling the rumour mill all that much. 

“It’s just something I’ve always been able to do,” Harry shrugs, reiterating what he’s told to various Gryffindors damn near a hundred times now. “It really isn’t a big deal. I hardly ever talk to snakes.”

“You’re not, like, related to Salazar Slytherin at all, are you?” Prewett asks, eyes darting a bit, as if they're talking about something illicit. 

Harry snorts. Not because he’s entirely sure he isn’t related to Salazar Slytherin, he has too few memories for sureties, but it just feels a bit ridiculous. If there’s any great and noble house he’s descended from, he wouldn’t put galleons on it being the Slytherins. 

“No relation to Salazar Slytherin,” Harry says, holding up a hand like he’s taking an oath, “promise.” 

Prewett smiles, his usual sly expression of amusement finding its way naturally on his face, and they take to talking about quidditch and a mutual hatred of Binns essays for the night, instead of Harry’s snake-speaking abilities or, thank Merlin, his supposed engagement to Tom Riddle. 

Harry wakes refreshed enough the next morning to almost not mind that he has potions as his first class of the day. No matter how hard he’s tried, he’s not yet been able to convince Slughorn that Riddle’s continued help in his class is hardly necessary, and thus finds himself a completely begrudging and somewhat permanent partner to the snake. 

Harry arrives to class practically on the hour, hoping to spend as few minutes as possible in Riddle’s company, and is completely vexed to find Slughorn is nowhere in sight and likely still holed up at breakfast, chattering some poor professor’s ear off. He drops into his seat with a scowl he doesn’t bother hiding, taking in the now disturbingly familiar scene of Riddle, with his damn near perfect hair and pretty fucking smile, regarding him with a cheek resting in his hand. 

“Hello, Harry,” the other boy says, his tone low and indulgent. 

“Riddle,” Harry replies curtly, not bothering to look over. He doesn’t trust Tom won’t try to weasel his way into his mind again. 

The click of a reprimanding tongue has Harry balling his hand into a fist, willing himself not to throw a punch so early in the morning. He has the rather disturbing feeling that would amuse Tom far more than it would cow him. 

“Really, Harry. Did no one teach you any manners?”

Rich, Harry thinks, letting out a scoff. “Yes, because lying about kissing someone and then lying again about sleeping with them is the height of etiquette, you hypocrite.”

Harry does his best to pretend he’s not noticed the way Tom Riddle is practically preening next to him, as satisfied and self-possessed as a strutting peacock. He seems to be particularly fond of Harry mentioning their completely fake and non-existent trysts, and Harry is entirely miffed to imagine it’s because he can’t do so without blushing a bit. 

“I don’t get why you’re so upset, Harry. Half the school is envious of you.”

“People think we’re getting married, Tom,” Harry says, slamming his advanced potions textbook down on their workstation, an angry flick of his wrist jolting the poor, tattered copy to the correct page for Slughorn’s lesson. 

“Perhaps we should give the people what they want then,” Tom retorts, sliding the ring that looks to be a family heirloom off his finger and presenting it to Harry, a sly grin on his face. 

Harry splutters as more than one audible squeal can be heard throughout the room. 

Truth be told, it’s sometimes hard to remember other people are around, and watching, when he’s speaking to Riddle, so encompassing is the man’s attention. Harry can grudgingly say that, given enough sweetness and charm, he doesn’t find it at all surprising why people would choose to follow this devilish boy with an angel’s mask. 

“Put that away,” Harry hisses, moving to cover Riddle’s hand with his own and realizing his mistake far too late. Riddle snatches his hand and holds on to it, not nearly as gently and nice as the coos it elicits should warrant. 

Harry splutters expletives that not even he is sure are comprehensible, really hating how Riddle can mimic a boa with his grip alone. Really, he’s not that surprised to find Riddle is a Parselmouth and likely a distant Slytherin, descended directly from the very line known for ambition and cunning. He’s briefly very thankful that the sorting hat thought him too brash for the house of the snakes. He couldn’t imagine dealing with Riddle and sharing a dorm with him. 

“Would you let go,” Harry bites through clenched teeth, trying his damn near hardest to pull his hand free and accidentally letting loose a zap of pure magic that has Tom hissing and pulling his hand back with a glare.

“Honestly, darling,” Riddle says, rubbing at his irritated skin. “You’ve got to stop reacting so dramatically to everything.”

“I’m sorry, Riddle. I thought we were enemies,” Harry hisses, grin a flagrant and decent impression of some of the one’s he’s seen stretch across Riddle’s face. 

Tom smiles back, just as sharp, and leans close enough that Harry is rather convinced the taller boy is going to bite him, before the door slams open and Slughorn walks in with a bellowing greeting to the class who is, unbeknownst to Harry, watching them with bated breath.

Tom looks practically disappointed that he’s forced to move away and focus on Slughorn instead, but Harry decides not to dwell on that. He chooses instead to brood in his seat and allow Tom to be the good student between the two of them, knowing that the other boy will inevitably end up explaining the potion and lecture to him anyway, if just to have something to say to goad Harry into conversation. 

Slughorn’s lesson ends quickly enough and soon the class is up gathering ingredients and lighting fires under cauldrons. 

Harry does his best to parse through the instructions in his textbook but finds it frustratingly difficult to understand without the background that Slughorn provided in his lecture. The very idea of asking Tom for help makes Harry nauseous, and he can feel the boy sitting next to him and lazily watching, that inevitably amused smirk playing at his lips. 

He’s saved from snapping an expletive at Riddle, or worse - caving in and asking him for help, when Slughorn makes his way over to them.

“My, my, Tom,” the portly man beams, looking between the two of them with a disturbingly roguish expression on his face. “When I encouraged you to continue assisting Mr. Potter in class, I had no idea I was playing matchmaker.”

Harry practically groans, maintaining the barest amount of self-control needed to not slump forward on his desk. If the rumours have reached Slughorn, that means at least part of the staff have heard them, which means Dumbledore has definitely heard them, the conniving bastard that he is. Harry has no doubt he’ll be hearing about this during their next little check in. 

Tom’s smile is falsely charming, and Harry practically wants to take Slughorn by the shoulders, shake him and tell him to open his damn eyes already. 

“Honestly, Professor, I had no idea you were playing matchmaker as well. You know how these things are,” Tom says, with a blithe wave of his hand. 

“Ho ho,” Slughorn laughs, looking delighted. “I’m glad to see a little bit of inter-house rivalry can’t get in the way of young love. I expect I’ll be seeing Mr. Potter as your plus one for our little Halloween soiree, no?” 

“Of course, Professor,” Tom replies, taking Harry’s hand and lacing their fingers together before Harry can properly tell Slughorn where he can shove his delight for young love. 

“I’m sorry, where will we be seeing Mr. Potter?” Harry asks, face something of a snarl as he regards Tom’s pleasant, guileless expression and Slughorn’s beaming, ruddy one. 

“Honestly, darling,” Tom clucks his tongue, and oh, Harry wants to curse him. “I already told you about Professor Slughorn’s little get-togethers that I attend.”

“Honestly, darling,” Harry retorts, tone biting as deep as his nails are into Riddle’s hand, “I rather think you didn’t.”

Slughorn laughs, expression sly and eyes darting between the two of them like he’s just caught them in the middle of a lover’s spat. “In any event, my boy, you’ll be very welcome as Tom’s companion in our little group,” he says, leaning in a bit and giving Harry a wink. “And I rather imagine you'll make a fair few jealous.” 

With that, their professor is off, chuckling heartily and declaring to himself, “a Gryffindor of all things. Who would have thought,” as he makes his way between the workstations. 

Harry is considering just giving in and punching Tom Riddle square in his pretty fucking face. He’s fairly certain he could get in at least two good swings before the boy could pull himself together enough to retaliate. Then again, if his dueling is anything to go by, Riddle is not nearly as posh a swot as he looks. He’s more than capable of getting his hands dirty, and indeed seems to enjoy doing so, given the way he utilizes dark magic. 

“What exactly did I just get roped into,” Harry asks, managing to pull his hand out of Riddle’s grip much the way someone pulls their hand out of a bear trap. 

Riddle tsks. “Nothing bad, Harry. Just a little party on Halloween night. I was going to take you anyway.”

Harry isn’t sure if he should feel indignant or outraged. Indignantly outraged, perhaps?

“I’m sorry, you’d already decided to take me?” He asks, and upon receiving Riddle’s affirmative hum continues with, “and do I get a say in this at all, or were you just going to show up outside the Gryffindor common room?”

“Considering you’re rather touchy about your little lion’s den, I was going to show up at the Halloween feast to get you.”

Harry blinks, not entirely sure about which part of that he should be most offended by. Perhaps all of it, considering how completely shameless and unbothered Riddle is sitting there, looking at him with a lazy grin that Harry really hates is as attractive as it is. 

“What about that rot about us being enemies?”

“You know what they say, Harry,” Riddle says, leaning in close enough that for the second time today Harry thinks he’s going to bite him, or maybe kiss him, which is probably worse, “friends close and enemies even closer.”

With that he is gone, sauntering off with that graceful, leisurely walk of his to get their potions ingredients. Harry curses his heart and its infernal stutter. Sure, Riddle is fit, but he isn’t the kind of fit Harry is willing to allow himself to appreciate. The slightly unhinged quality really dampens the attractiveness, or so Harry reminds his heart, as he watches Riddle saunter back over with an easy authority that so naturally draws the eye. 

Merlin damn him. Harry will not fall for Riddle’s tricks because he’s pretty. That’s just too ridiculous. 

With a mental scoff and a self-reprimand to shape up, Harry puts on his best scowl and sets to work chopping ingredients and ignoring Riddle, mimicking what he’s done across hours and weeks of having to deal with this boy in class. 

The lesson passes in peace and Harry is so content to just tune Riddle’s entire presence out that it’s something of a shock when the other boy reaches out and grabs his hand again, always quicker than Harry is anticipating, and slips that damned ring of his onto Harry’s finger.

“Keep this safe for me, won’t you, darling,” Riddle says, no doubt for their crowd of onlookers as much for Harry himself. 

Before Harry can pull back and draw his wand, deciding that now is as good a time as any to give into that little urge, Riddle leans in right against his ear and says in a quiet voice, “I’ve removed all the nasty curses on it for you, but I wouldn’t recommend passing it around for others to wear, my dear.” 

Harry is completely ashamed that he’s practically paralyzed by Riddle’s lips moving against his ear, and he can do nothing more than release a vague sound from the back of his throat as Riddle pulls away and moves past him. He turns to watch the taller boy leave, noting how Riddle’s little posse is throwing him scathing, suspicious looks as they follow out behind their leader. 

He hardly bothers with the near roar of whispers following his back as he walks out with his fellow Gryffindors, thumbing the ring on his finger and wondering just what the hell exactly Riddle is playing at.

~*~

Tom gives himself a cursory once-over in the mirror, tugging his collar into place and then turning away. He ignores the mirror’s coos of delight, exclaiming how dashing and sleek he looks in his formal attire. He hardly needs enchanted objects to tell him he’s handsome; there have been a slew of confessions and love notes and wandering gazes during his time at Hogwarts to thoroughly assure Tom that other people’s priorities are as base and insipid as he’s always believed. 

The dress robes he wears are well-made and finely tailored - cut just right to accentuate his long legs, broad shoulders, and tapered waist. They were a gift from Abraxas for his sixteenth birthday, and it had been almost unbearable for a month after, admitting that the other boy had chosen well and then dealing with his smug satisfaction at the fact. The green of the outer robes is so dark that it is almost black, trimmed with silver lining that highlights Tom’s slate eyes and regal features. Tom rather imagines he looks like a prince in these robes, like the true heir of Slytherin, and it is difficult to suppress the vain surge of satisfaction that brings him.

He looks across the dorm to find his housemates in a similar state - well groomed, finely dressed, and prepared for an evening of schmoozing and elbow rubbing that comes with Slughorn’s ridiculous little parties. 

Truth be told, Tom has always found Slughorn’s club and gatherings to be one of the more tedious social occurrences he has deemed beneficial enough to endure. The man has a collection of, begrudgingly admitted, fascinating and powerful people he manages to bring to his get-togethers, all former students that caught the man’s greedy attention in one way or another during their school days. It’s worth it if just to have the opportunity to make an impression on the influential witches and wizards he plans to entice to his cause one day, and it provides a good enough opportunity to scout potential recruits from his own age group, too. 

“Does anyone have another bottle of Sleekeazy’s,” Mulciber asks the room, receiving the proper derogatory snickers and sneers his ridiculously slicked hair and artificial coif deserve. 

“I don’t think it’s going to help you any,” Avery smirks, tossing his housemate a little bottle of the potion. 

Even the enchanted mirror can’t find anything too pleasant to say when Mulciber steps in front of it for what has to be the sixth time, and the room bursts into laughter and jeering. 

Tom tucks his wand into his robes and slides a silver band with the house logo engraved along its sides onto his right ring finger, rubbing at the absence of his family ring on his left. He’s still not totally parsed through his own decision to give Harry the Gaunt ring - the ring with a fraction of his soul stored safely within it - sans much of a thought or care. It wasn’t trust that led him to hand the heirloom over - not that he doesn’t trust Harry and his delightfully ridiculous Gryffindor honour to keep it safe - but rather a deeper, more inexplicable feeling that it should be Harry’s to have and protect. 

Tom determines not to think about it too much, determines that it was the cause of tedious and inescapable teenage hormones that led him to do something so rash, and comforts himself in the knowledge that he can always take the ring back if he feels the Gryffindor no longer worthy of keeping it safe. 

“I’m going to pick up Harry,” he announces to the dorm, listening to the hush that falls over his housemates. “I’ll meet you at Slughorn’s party.”

He provides the briefest of acknowledgements to the nods and murmurs of agreement that he receives before he is out the door and walking down the staircase, doing his best to curb the swell of excitement that twists in his gut. Harry is terribly fun to badger and annoy, after all, so he can hardly be blamed for these absurd feelings. 

“My lord,” Abraxas calls abruptly, stopping Tom in his tracks. 

He hovers in the stairwell, glancing back at the shuffling boy and doing his utmost to keep the curses poised on his tongue safely locked inside. 

“Yes, Abraxas,” Tom says, impressed himself by how polite and reasonable he’s managed to sound. At the very least, it seems to give his blonde housemate the boost of confidence he needs to stop shuffling and start talking. 

“You and Potter,” Abraxas starts, only to pause as if reconsidering his words and the delicacy with which to phrase them. “Potter is–”

“–Off limits,” Tom supplies, providing the boy a pleasant expression that his snakes have learned is a precursor to far more unpleasant things. “He is mine.”

Abraxas stiffens and straightens, as if he has just been told a vital piece of information. And really, he has. His snakes have reign to do what they want to who they want unless Tom says otherwise, and he has just said otherwise, in regards to Harry Potter at least. He has never claimed another so openly, and Abraxas is intelligent enough to treat that with the importance it warrants. 

“Understood,” his housemate says, bowing slightly.

Tom smiles, easy and charming. “Good. And see to it that the others know, will you,” he says, and receives a dutiful nod in return.

With Abraxas off to inform the snakes Harry is not to be pursued or bothered without his order, Tom easily makes his way out of the Slytherin common room and into the halls of the castle, stopping to greet those that he must and providing the smallest semblance of acknowledgement to those that fawn over how good he looks. Most of the students have already made their way to the Halloween feast, so it is mostly an easy process to slip by the people he’d rather not be around as quickly as possible. 

He finds Harry waiting outside the Gryffindor common room, leaned casually against a stair railing and playing with a snitch hovering around his head. Tom is pleasantly surprised to find Harry looks quite put together, dressed in formal attire dyed a deep burgundy that he no doubt borrowed from Prewett, if the slight shimmer of a shrinking charm is anything to go by. 

The robes highlight the smallness of his waist contrasted nicely with the lithe, strong outline of his body. Tom almost wonders if he was ever an athlete, and watching Harry snatch easily at the little snitch hovering by his head and then releasing it in succession, he thinks he isn’t too far off. Another mystery to add to the growing list. 

As much as Tom would enjoy hanging back and watching Harry for lingering minutes, they have places to be and people to impress, and Tom has no doubt he will have to use half his attention tonight smoothing his little lion's very ruffled feathers over being all but forced into the role of his date for the evening. Still, he makes a show of eyeing Harry up and down as he approaches him from the stairwell. 

“Hello, Harry,” he says, feeling the smirk grow on his lips and doing very little to stop it.

Harry eyes him suspiciously, cautiously, not quite meeting his gaze. It’s a shame that Harry doesn’t trust him enough to meet his eye, but Tom will take any amount of those lovely greens focused solely on him, as they really should be all of the time.

“Riddle,” Harry replies, with a slight nod of his head.

Tom allows the anger to swell and then simmer in his gut, greeting it almost like an old and welcome friend. 

He smiles, sharp as glass. “Really, Harry. If I’m to be your date for the evening, you ought to call me Tom.”

He watches Harry’s face go dark, watches him stand straight from his casual slouch and take to the defensive like he was born to fight. 

“You’re not my date,” Harry hisses, crossing his arms. “I just got roped into this because you’re an evil, lying bastard.”

Tom considers the assessment and finds it to be largely accurate, though he wouldn’t go so far as to call himself evil; more so differently inclined towards morality.

“Being evil, a liar, and a bastard aside, shall we go,” he says, offering out his hand for Harry to take. If he were courting him, perhaps he’d offer his arm, or a kiss to Harry’s knuckles to confirm his intentions. 

“I’m not holding your bloody hand, Riddle,” Harry scoffs, shoving past him to trot down the stairs. And if not for the glint of his ring shining on Harry’s finger, Tom would feel quite offended being so rudely regarded by his date. 

“We really need to work on your manners,” he says, more to himself, but the vaguely annoyed sound that comes from Harry confirms that the other boy heard.

They traverse the long, winding halls in near silence, but Tom can feel nothing but content, basking in the sheer annoyance and frustration radiating from his lovely date. He makes a note to invite Harry to Hogsmead for the next outing; he’d no doubt make the dull little town a touch more exciting, and Tom is a great deal more willing to bear the burden of other people with someone interesting by his side. 

They make it to the sixth floor with relative ease, Tom a touch amused when Harry pauses outside the door to take a long, deep breath. 

“Not a social creature, are we?” He says, smirk very much at his date’s expense.

Harry shoots him a dark look. “You’re one to talk, you tosser. You don’t like other people at all.”

“I like you,” Tom replies, and frowns at Harry’s snort.

“No, you don’t.”

Harry is looking at him with this knowing little smirk, like he’s unraveled all of Tom’s many lies and deceits and secrets, and my, isn’t that a terribly aggravating thing. To be known by another, at least in part. 

Tom has the sudden and strong urge to hurt Harry. It leaves him a little breathless and he basks in it. Basks in the desire to break this little lion, and the even sweeter knowledge that Harry wouldn’t bend an inch, even if Tom doubled him over with a Crucio. 

He leans close, dropping his voice and taking his little lion’s unsuspecting hand in his own. 

“Did I tell you, Harry, that you look lovely tonight,” Tom says quietly, meant only for the two of them, and brings the back of Harry’s hand to his lips to place a chivalrous kiss on his knuckles. 

Harry heats the most fetching red, made all the more apparent by the deep burgundy he wears, and Tom congratulates himself on dragging (because he’s now had to resort to such things) the most delectable companion of his peers into Slughorn’s vibrant party. They turn heads. 

The man of the hour finds them immediately, all ruddy cheeks and boisterous laughter. 

“Tom, my boy,” Slughorn exclaims in delight, obviously more than a little tipsy already. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show, not when Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Avery turned up without you by their side.” 

“I apologize, Professor,” Tom says, with a slight dip of his head and his best air about him. “I had to fetch Harry here, and the walk between the Slytherin and Gryffindor common rooms is practically an excursion.”

Slughorn’s greedy gaze immediately falls to the small boy next to him, looking over Harry with an obvious air of appraisal and, given the satisfied hum he makes no effort to hide, not finding him lacking. Tom would be a touch offended if he did - Harry really does dress up quite well,  even if he does so in bold reds. 

“Harry, my boy, it’s so good to see you,” Slughorn beams, and Tom has to suppress a snort at the entirely flat and unimpressed look Harry doesn’t quite manage to keep off of his face. 

He’s still a little touchy about Slughorn pairing him indefinitely with Tom in potions. 

“Er, likewise, Professor,” Harry mutters, eyes already darting for an escape route, though Slughorn seems to interpret the expression more as a degree of awe in which Harry is taking in their lavish surroundings. 

“Oh, I apologize, my boy. I forgot, you’ve never been to one of our little soirees,” Slughorn laughs, giving Harry a friendly clap on the shoulder that makes Tom want to kill him for a flashing second. “Not to worry, though, Harry - it’s nothing too formal. Just relax and have fun.”

Tom is entirely too amused by the complete lack of excitement Harry is eyeing their surroundings with, no doubt skeptical of Slughorn’s nothing too formal comment. The room is decked in intricate decorations that shimmer with various magics, designed to allure and amuse easily gullible audiences with their rapid and frequent shifts in design and colour. All around them, students and adults alike are dressed in their best formal robes, house elves and waiters flitting between them, offering a blend of festively themed food and drink. 

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Harry replies, a bit skeptical, but their professor seems to deem him more charming than waspish, moving past them with a hearty declaration to enjoy themselves, a wink and a pointed look back to his oblivious date reserved for Tom. 

“Right then,” Tom says, when it becomes apparent that Harry is looking for exits. “Shall we find Malfoy and Avery?”

Harry’s groan is a pitiful thing, the look he shoots up at Tom a mix of irritation and distaste. 

“Can we literally find anyone except Malfoy and Avery?”

Tom tsks, taking Harry lightly by the elbow and steering him further into the room, a pleasant smile hovering on his face as he leans in to speak closer to Harry’s ear.

“Really, Harry, if you’re going to be my date for the evening then you have to get to know my friends.”

“I’m not your date,” Harry hisses, yet again, “and you don’t have friends.”

“Truly, darling, you wound me,” Tom mutters, spying a cascade of ridiculous blonde hair and steering them in that direction.

He watches the way his Knights’ eyes fall to Harry and linger, judging him and drawing their own conclusions, making determinations that have no weight or bearing unless Tom deems it so. Abraxas especially wavers, eyes lingering on the spot where Tom’s fingers rest gently against Harry’s elbow, so close to taking his arm that the traditional pureblood can see it as nothing but a claim. 

Tom does the honour of making formal introductions, though Harry and his Knights know each other in one way or another, from classes and rivalries and the inter-house fights that break out more often than not. They regard each other with a stiff, awkward politeness that Tom internally cackles at, happy to take advantage of his comfortable position as the clear leader of their odd little group. 

“Slughorn’s managed quite the turnout,” Abraxas comments, inspecting his nails in obvious disinterest of his opulent surroundings. 

“I heard even the Minister might make an appearance later,” Nott says, though Tom would doubt it. International Relations were too strained for the Minister to be making such a public appearance at a pretentious and elite party, even one held at a school. 

Avery snorts, casting a skeptical eye around the room. “Not with the number of Grindelwald supporters here, he wouldn’t. Hell, Flint’s whole family is practically in the man’s back pocket. I heard Margaret’s even going to marry some German war general after graduation.”

Tom listens with half an ear as they discuss the foreign Dark Lord, only vaguely interested in the seer shrouded in mystery. He can appreciate the sentiment but is not particularly moved by a cause that isn’t his own. He’s especially not interested in anyone rumoured to have any sort of relation to Albus Dumbledore, whatever that may be. Tom can only hope that perhaps the German wizard will finish off his least favourite professor before Tom throws his hat in for most powerful dark lord in Europe. 

He watches Harry instead, tracking the way his eyes flit about the room, not even attempting to look engaged in the conversation before him. He lingers on a man, clearly a vampire, clinging to the shadows, skin pale as snow, a dark red drink held elegantly between his fingers. 

“Afraid?” Tom asks, low by Harry’s ear, the hiss of Parseltongue playful on his tongue. 

Harry makes a vague noise in the back of his throat, attention caught on the dark creature that has seemed to notice him as well. 

“Not particularly,” Harry hisses back, and Tom is delighted to see he has once again subconsciously switched into the language of the snakes. “Just surprised, is all. Didn’t think Slughorn would invite dark creatures to his party.” 

Tom snickers, more than aware of the shamelessness of his Head of House. “Horace certainly likes to make a splash. It’s what makes him so easy to manipulate,” he says, thumb dragging in slow circles along the back of Harry’s arm.

“Is that how you manipulate people?” Harry asks, delightfully candid. “By making a splash.”

Tom chuckles low in Harry's ear. “I tend to favour subtlety, darling. As you already pointed out, my polite, schoolboy routine would really be in jeopardy if I started using all the curses I wanted to on people,” he says, grin shark-like and predatory, eyes sharp on the other predator watching Harry from across the room. “Shall I tell you what he’s thinking?”

Harry shifts his weight on his feet, as if he is aware of the threat at his back and the threat in front of him, staring him down with eyes an unnatural red and smile a touch too fanged. He doesn’t pull away from Tom and he doesn’t break his gaze from the creature sizing him up from the shadows, a perfect little stone statue prepared to jump into action at any moment. 

Tom takes Harry’s silence as an affirmative, fixing his gaze until he catches the eye of his opponent, wading into the odd mystery of a foreign mind, undead and unprotected in equal measure. He catches snippets of surface thoughts that make his blood boil and sing in equal measure. That lead his hand to finding a secure spot on Harry’s hip, pulling the little Gryffindor closer to his chest. 

“He thinks you look rather lovely. I quite agree, of course,” Tom says, translating the maze of thoughts he traverses in the other’s mind. “He thinks your eyes look like death.”

Harry makes a small noise, blinking as if to dull the shade of indelible green that rings his pupils. It’s all in vain, Tom thinks, but he’s charmed by the attempt, nonetheless. Harry is too noticeable to be dulled; his magic too bright to be anything but a beacon, bound to catch the attention of anything dark and rotten. 

“He also thinks you look quite edible,” Tom says, equal parts offended and amused. He presses in closer, lips a hair’s breadth from brushing against Harry’s small ear. “He wants to hurt you, Harry. Well, that makes two of us.” 

Tom is about to go into detail about the delightful imagination of their vampire friend when an elbow meets his sternum. He can’t help but release a small, pathetic croak as that bony elbow digs in mercilessly, unexpected as it is. He looks down to find Harry twisted around and glaring at him, looking one wrong move away from elbowing Tom in the face as well.

“Cut it out,” Harry snarls, in plain English, and Tom is almost foolish enough to ask him what exactly he should cut out. Knowing Harry, he’s referring to just about everything Tom is doing, saying, and hell, probably even thinking. 

“I apologize, darling,” Tom says, hand to heart, though he imagines the smirk twisting his lips rather lessens the sincerity. 

Harry goes a bit pink when he glances over to find Tom’s Knights poised and watching, as they have been practically since the two of them started hissing in Parseltongue at each other, looks ranging from embarrassed to disbelieving to downright deadly. 

“Er,” Harry mumbles, scratching at the back of his head. “What were we talking about?”

“Avery was making a not so subtle attempt at asking if Grindelwald killed your family and that’s why you started school here,” Malfoy says, without missing a beat. Even Tom has to wrangle in a choke that is equal parts shocked and amused. 

Harry looks downright venomous, and Tom can’t help but feel inexplicably fond of him. 

“What the hell kind of question is that?” He asks, arms crossed and expression dark. 

Avery shrugs, smirk particularly nasty. “Seemed as good an explanation as any. You certainly don’t look like a Grindelwald supporter, and the Dark Lord’s known to be only so fond of mudbloods.”

Harry’s expression goes impossibly darker, his eyes a contrast so bright that Tom can’t blame the vampire for thinking they look like death. 

“Don’t use that word,” he says, words bitten between clenched teeth. 

Avery cackles, viciously amused. “Oh Tom,” he coos, grinning at the taller boy shadowed behind Harry. “He’s precious, really. No wonder you keep him around.”

“Enough, Avery,” Tom says simply, and the other boy is immediately more subdued, though still grinning like he’s hoping to entice Harry into throwing the first hex. 

Harry glances back at him long enough to shoot a particularly unimpressed glare. “I don’t need you of all people to defend me, Riddle.”

Avery laughs like he finds that particularly amusing, leaning closer to Harry with a sharp gleam in his eye.

“You really do, Potter. You couldn’t even begin to imagine the sort of magic I know. I’d boil your dirty fucking blood in your veins before you even had the chance to realize you were dying from the inside out.” 

Tom can’t help the snort that escapes him, or the laugh that follows, and really, he doesn’t try to. Because it’s just ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous to think that Casimir Avery could hold a candle to Harry. Not when Tom has dueled him and drawn even. Not when his magic practically takes Tom’s breath away. 

“Please, Avery,” he sneers, “you’d be dead in a heartbeat.”

Tom is met with a group of wide, surprised eyes, even Harry looking startled behind his wire-frame glasses. To have him declare openly and easily that Harry would wipe the floor with one of his own loyal followers is doubtlessly bewildering to them all, and Avery can’t even seem to articulate a coherent response beyond his shock. 

Tom slides a hand around Harry’s waist - always expecting it to be batted away and always pleasantly surprised when it isn’t - and tugs, suddenly tired of the insipid company of his Knights. 

“Come along, darling,” he says, deaf to Harry’s annoyed huff. “I brought you here to be useful, not to pick fights.”

He leaves behind more than one sharp glare and dumbstruck stare, leading Harry through the crowd with far less direction than he pretends, wearing his mild expression and agreeable smile. He can feel Harry fidgeting under his touch, fidgeting in his fine robes among the throngs of people, and a part of Tom wants to pull him in until it is just the two of them - an amalgamated entity free from the tedium of these high society nonpeople. 

“Thanks,” Harry says eventually, hovering with Tom just close enough to the edge of the crowd to look like they’ve slipped away for a private moment together. 

An amused noise escapes the back of Tom’s throat. “What exactly are you thanking me for, Harry?”

He watches Harry’s eyes dart away, avoiding as they are considering. He watches Harry mull his words and pick through them carefully, as if thanking Tom for anything is a double edged sword with a side a touch too sharp. He certainly isn’t wrong.

“For telling Avery off, I suppose.”

For letting us leave, he doesn’t say, and if Tom were in a bit crueler of a mood he’d find a situation even worse than squabbling with a group of petty Purebloods to force Harry into.

“I was sick of them, anyway,” he shrugs, feeling unusually candid. He rarely chooses to tell the truth, even when it isn’t hard to. 

Harry eyes him in that skeptical way that he does, that way that makes Tom want to smile indulgently and lean close to his ear to whisper something that will offend and embarrass the little Gryffindor in equal measure.

“I thought they were your friends.”

Tom smiles. “I don’t have friends,” he says, parroting Harry’s own words back at him. 

Harry snorts, expression wry and eyes wandering again, like he doesn’t quite trust himself to look at Tom for too long.

“Right, you don’t like anyone.”

“I like you,” Tom corrects, and observes the small shake of Harry’s head, practically declaring the topic too nebulous to argue.

He finds it a touch offensive that Harry practically won’t look at him, even when conversing with him, but Tom supposes it’s a mostly fair reaction to having your mind forcefully torn into. He’s a touch amazed that Harry is here with him now, standing at his side and not making much of an effort to refute the claims of their coupling and companionship. 

It’s cruel, Tom supposes - more cunning than he would have ever given Harry credit for. Here he stands with Tom, one of the two that knows the full truth between them, the full truth of the nothing between them, rubbing it in Tom’s face in a way no flying rumour or false accusation could. Rubbing salt into the wound of the person who cares most. 

And what a terrible thing it is, Tom thinks, to care. 

He loops his finger in an unruly lock of Harry’s hair, allowing the Gryffindor the respite he needs. If Tom were alone, he would have been hours into charming and sweet-talking by now, making connections and judging loyalties, determining who fell where and how open they were to being convinced somewhere else entirely. Harry’s company is slowing his pursuits, but Tom can’t bring himself to view it as a burden. 

Eventually, Harry sighs, head tilting a bit away from the finger playing in his hair. 

“Why did you bring me along?”

“I enjoy your company,” Tom replies, not missing a beat.

Harry glances back - and up, Tom thinks fondly - at him, a stubborn set to his brow that Tom wants to ease away however Harry will allow. 

“I don’t think you’re charming, you know.”

Tom smiles, indulgent, and takes Harry’s hand, tugging him back towards the crowd. “Yes, you do.”

He leads them towards the first interesting pair he spots, easing his way seamlessly into a conversation with two older witches, before he finds himself in a rather splendid debate about recent advances in Runology made by a group of Egyptian wizards. 

There are benefits to Harry’s company, of course, beyond just being enjoyable. He is earnest and intelligent, even if he is not bookish or as widely versed in different areas of magic, and there's something about him that softens Tom when they’re together. That makes him agreeable beyond the facade of intelligent charmer he personifies. People think they’re a handsome couple, and Tom uses it to his advantage, and he knows Harry knows this and is more warily amused by it than anything. 

It’s over an hour later before they get another moment to themselves, the party humming and buzzing with a more jovial air as the hour grows later and the champagne flows longer. Tom, rather unfortunately, couldn’t convince Harry to drink more than a glass, and has to contend himself that the flush to his companion’s cheeks is from the heat of the room and the time spent flitting between new acquaintances and taking delightful offense at half the things Tom says, much to the enjoyment of amused onlookers. 

“Fuck,” Harry sighs, running a hand through his chaotic hair. 

“Indeed,” Tom hums, looking Harry up and down, though he doubts they’re thinking about the same thing. 

“It’s bloody hot in here.” 

“Horace has a rather peculiar aversion to cooling charms at his little parties,” Tom says, and receives an odd look and a raised eyebrow before Harry bursts out laughing, bright and jubilant as a tinkling bell.

“How do you know that?” he asks, still laughing ridiculously at something that, Tom thinks, is not particularly funny. 

“I make a habit of knowing as much as I can about most people I encounter.”

Harry snorts, shaking his head, fondly exasperated if Tom is guessing correctly. “Of course you do, you weirdo.”

Tom makes a small noise in the back of his throat, stepping closer to one of the few who’s dared insult him in years. He killed his own father when he was sixteen for the simple sin of existing and split his soul doing so. His magic is wild and dark and Harry knows this, and yet there he stands, smiling at Tom like he finds him amusing and not utterly terrifying. 

“Would you like to go somewhere else?” Tom suggests, indulgent, enticing. “Somewhere we can cool off.”

“You mean go to a second location,” Harry says, and it really is quite something, being teased by this boy, “with you, Riddle?”

“Is there a problem with that, Harry?” Tom asks, leaning close, grin wide and shark-like. 

Harry shakes his head. “Never go to a second location,” he says simply, wisely, and Tom wants to laugh. “Too dangerous.”

Oh, Tom thinks, eyeing Harry’s daring grin and bright eyes, tracing the curve of his flushed cheeks and parted lips. This must be what it’s like to want to touch. To treasure. 

“I promise not to bite, little lion,” he says, taking Harry’s hand because Harry lets him and pulling him along, pretending the indulgent smile he receives in return isn’t burning through to his core.

I’m in love with him, Tom thinks, and it’s truly a testament to his personality that the first conclusion his mind jumps to is the best way to kill Harry for the offense and keep the memory of him forever as a new horcrux. 

Understanding that this is not a particularly reasonable approach to an emotion Tom has never experienced, nor ever thought he would (nor ever wanted to, but the world works in mysterious ways), Tom’s succeeding thought is to embrace this strange new feeling and, as he does with most things, use it to his advantage. Harry Potter is an alluring creature in his own right - magically powerful and delightfully noble in a way that attracts the attention of those around him. People look to him, whether he realizes it or not, and people look to him more when he is at Tom’s side. 

Yes, Tom thinks, if anything, Harry will make a good political ally in the future, will do wonders for Tom’s own image, even, and that is enough for him to not completely balk at the absurd notion that he is in love with Harry Potter. 

It is not an emotion Tom desired, needed, or sought; he rather thought himself incapable of it, truth be told, when he learned the origins of his artificial birth via love potions and the theorized consequences of that. Tom never felt lacking, never felt that he was missing something, so it is really quite a state he finds himself in now, looking to Harry and suddenly feeling this hole, this want. 

Tom is nothing if not a thief, though, and a lying one at that. He will steal Harry away with any means he can; he will claim him in every way known to man and it will be an entrapment as much as it is a coupling. 

Tom guides them to the corridor just outside Slughorn’s party, and he would lead them further, if he could. He would lead Harry all the way to a place where he could lock the little Gryffindor up and throw out the key for all but him, and it is only the knowledge that Harry would despise him forever that stays Tom’s hand. 

The air is much colder out here, chilled by the season’s turn even with the castle fortified against the elements, the heat of pressed bodies and candle warmth long lost to the hapless din they’ve left behind.

Harry steps up to a nearby window and peers out blankly, mind seemingly lost in a place Tom cannot touch, and not for lack of trying. Tom is a self-centered and vicious creation by nature, and he finds the lack of Harry’s attention on him to be offensive and unacceptable.

“Harry,” he hears himself saying, whining really, unable to remove the imagine of a mewling toddler begging for a toy from his own mind. It’s good to know your weaknesses, Tom supposes.

“Tom,” Harry replies calmly, eyes not straying from their blank stare towards the Forbidden Forest. 

“Pay attention to me.”

Harry’s lips tilt up at the corners. Tom has murdered, and tortured, and lusted for blood near everyday of his life, and yet all Harry Potter can do is stand there and find him mildly amusing. Tom should be angry, the reasonable part of him is, and still the most overwhelming thing he feels is fondness. Inexplicable fondness for a boy he, not three months ago, considered entirely worthless. 

“Harry,” Tom says again, when his lovely date doesn’t deign to reply, switching to Parseltongue just to see Harry tense. “Pay attention to me.”

He presses close to Harry’s back, leaning in to hiss in his small ear; amazed by the muscles that bunch with tension at his proximity and loosen with his touch, his hands come to rest on Harry’s shoulders. 

“You’re ridiculous,” the little Gryffindor huffs, tone demeaning if not for the flush to his cheeks. 

Tom hums, finding the term objectionable but not having any particular desire to argue it. He feels at the sleek robes resting along Harry’s strong shoulders, the fabric soft and fine under the gentle ministrations of his fingers. 

“If you keep this up people are going to think we’re actually dating,” Harry says, the humour falling short where he can’t quite keep the nerve out. He shrugs his shoulders a bit, as if that would rid him of Tom’s touch.

Tom’s nose scrunches. “Dating is such a muggle term.”

“Oh,” Harry huffs out a laugh, and Tom can sense his eye roll as much as he can see it in their reflection in the window, “and what would you prefer?”

“I’m a gentleman, Harry, and a proper wizard,” Tom says, and receives his second eye roll in the space of five seconds, which is perhaps a record for them. “I’m obviously courting you.” 

Harry laughs, and Tom would really think it a lovely sound if he didn’t feel it was very much at his expense. He has to wonder what it is exactly Harry finds so amusing: that Tom considers himself a gentleman (he’s not, murder and bloodlust have disqualified him, but that hardly matters), that Tom considers himself a proper wizard (again, the murder makes it questionable), or that Tom is courting him (this one has become very true in the last twelve minutes, and Tom would be offended at Harry finding it funny). 

Harry turns in his hands to peer up at him, a skeptical eyebrow raised above those lovely greens Tom would really love to wade into, if there weren’t so many damned barriers in the way. He’ll have to investigate how to get Harry into a good enough mood that he would be willing to discuss his Occlumency shields. 

“And what exactly would give people that idea, Tom?” He says, charmingly oblivious to the trap he’s set for himself. “Because I hear talk of my own engagement far more than I’d like, considering I’m not actually engaged.”

Tom smiles his sleek, serpent’s smile, too many teeth and something too mischievous in his eyes to be considered decent. He takes the hand holding his family’s ring and brings it close to his face for inspection, appreciating the way his spells have configured to fit the band to Harry’s slender finger. 

“Well,” he drawls, appreciating the split expression of amusement and exasperation on Harry’s face, “you did accept my family ring, in front of a room of witnesses, I might add. And you do have a tendency to find yourself in private, unoccupied places with me, and you do communicate with me in a secret language no one else can understand.”

Harry makes a noise in the back of his throat, something small and pained that Tom imagines is the sound of his bachelorhood dying a sad little death.

“Merlin,” Harry huffs. “When you put it like that, I half understand where all the rumours come from,” he mutters, and upon seeing Tom’s delighted grin, continues with, “Need I remind you that all of those things are your fault, Tom.”

“It takes two to tango, love,” Tom simpers, sweeping an arm around Harry’s waist and pulling him in close. 

Harry huffs, and elbows him, and then is laughing and trying to wriggle out of Tom’s grasp, because he has the most unreasonable response to danger and is likely an adrenaline junky. 

“Merlin, you’re like a boa constrictor,” Harry huffs, trying to wriggle, and breathe, and laugh all at the same time. “No wonder you got sorted into Slytherin.”

“I’m also cunning and ruthless, thank you very much,” Tom says, doing his best, and failing his best, to bring a bit of romance and allure back into a situation where Harry is now falling over himself and choking on his laughter. 

He’s not sure how the amorous waist-grab turned into a game of keep away with Harry trying to keep himself away, but it’s entirely undignified and juvenile, and yes, Tom is very sexy, and no, he is not laughing. 

“Evil,” Harry says, trying to make a dash for freedom when Tom’s grip loosen from a very well-placed elbow to the abdomen. 

“Efficient,” Tom counters, trying for the waist grab again and not bothering to make it erotic anymore. 

He feels Harry’s belly heaving with laughter against his grip and he can do nothing but squeeze harder. 

“Come here, little rabbit,” Tom hisses in Parseltongue, spinning Harry around and pressing him to his chest, not bothering to hide that his grin is wide and, Merlin help him, probably idiotic. 

He vows then and there that Harry will be all or nothing, because he refuses to do something so ridiculous and awful as fall in love again if Harry leaves, now that he rather unfortunately knows he’s capable of the emotion. 

“I’m not a rabbit in this situation, Tom,” Harry gasps, giggling and pushing on his chest. 

Tom is going to kiss him. He’s a hair’s breadth from doing so, and Merlin, he wants so bad to, until a throat clears and a very clearly amused “Excuse me, gentlemen,” comes from somewhere up the corridor. 

Tom is ashamed to say his first instance of accidental magic since eleven happens with the sound of that voice. The window to their right shatters, and Harry yelps a bit in shock. 

It’s not embarrassment that causes the spark, zip, and shattering of a glass pane probably as ancient as the castle itself; rather, it is pure, unadulterated rage at the fact that Dumbledore interrupted what would have been his first time kissing Harry Potter, the boy he has fifteen minutes ago decided he is now courting. Tom’s magic is dark and spilling, and he has to reign it in with the precision of a potioneer brewing life in a bottle. 

Dumbledore is standing a little ways back from them, hands in pockets, looking amused of all things, which is odd for Tom, considering the professor generally looks a vague shade of concerned whenever their paths cross. He’s regarding the pair of them with the head tilt Tom himself does; the one that says he is observing and reading far more into what is happening in front of him than most anyone else would. 

“Alright there, Harry?” Dumbledore asks, not making any attempt to hide how his eyes linger on Tom’s hands, possessively wrapped around the Gryffindor’s middle, holding Harry close to his chest. 

“Er, yes, Professor,” Harry mutters, pushing away from Tom, and Tom lets him go, only because Dumbledore would have something to say about it if he didn’t. 

He shuffles a few steps to Tom’s right, looking very much like he wants to provide explanation for the situation but doesn’t quite know what the situation actually is. 

“Professor Slughorn was beginning to worry where the pair of you popped off to,” Dumbledore says cheerfully, and Tom thinks that’s pretty rich. 

He’s no doubt Dumbledore was watching them, for far longer than was apparent, maybe from the time Tom started to whine about Harry paying attention to him. The thought makes something dark and ugly writhe in Tom’s gut, and it’s only Harry’s jittery, bright magic buzzing next to him that calms him a bit. 

He puts on his best smile, the one he knows Dumbledore sees right through, and makes it extra sweet. 

“Harry and I stepped out for some air, Professor. It’s terribly warm in there. We were just about to head back in.” 

“Of course, my boy, of course,” Dumbledore replies, looking nearly gleeful, and Tom wants to peel the skin off his face. “Shall we head back then? Wouldn’t want to keep Horace waiting.” 

It takes everything in Tom’s power not to hiss an Avada Kedavra at Dumbledore’s back as he walks in front of them. It’s intentional, he’s sure of it; not to give them privacy, but to show he doesn’t view Tom as a threat. 

It’s a particularly unwelcome sight to see the party still going when they re-enter. Tom is about ready to Crucio anyone that crosses his path, and Harry is a stiff little ball of nerves next to him. What he wouldn’t give to take him aside again and smooth the tense lines of Harry’s shoulders, but Dumbledore is watching them like a hawk and Tom thinks he knows why.

“Tom,” his professor says, looking at him pointedly, “could you get Harry a drink, please. He’s looking a bit parched.” 

Tom’s eyes narrow. 

Dumbledore may be rah rah for inclusivity, but he was raised as a proper English wizard, and there’s no denying those roots, deep as they run. He sees Tom’s claim for what it is, and as much as he might be wanting to get Harry alone to talk with him, this has more to do with Tom himself than anything else. Because the gallantry and chivalry is all a part of the show, and if Tom wants Harry’s hand then he has to prove his worth for it, and that includes providing for his intended’s every need. 

“Of course, professor,” Tom says, acknowledges really, because he’s up to the challenge of proving himself to what is just another traditionalist bastard of a wizard questioning his worth. He’s had years of practice in Slytherin and he’s thrived. 

He leaves Harry looking slightly lost, but he’s anything but helpless, Tom knows, and he doubts Dumbledore would do much to traumatize his own Gryffindor in the two minute span it will take Tom to fetch a glass. 

~*~

Unwittingly, Harry finds himself alone in the company of Albus Dumbledore. A very amused Albus Dumbledore, if the twinkle to his blue eyes is anything to go off of. 

The party swells around them, seeming to have only grown louder and more packed as the hours have passed and the alcohol has flowed freely. Harry almost wonders how Slughorn has been allowed to host such bacchanalian festivities. He’s caught more than one couple snogging in a dark corner and has seen more than one underaged student stumbling in a crooked line across the room, but he supposes that’s the least of his concerns right now. 

The presence of Dumbledore at his side holds most of his attention. He’s dressed in garish robes and a wry smile, and is so casually and easily the most powerful wizard in this room that it makes Harry’s own magic buzz a bit against his skin. Where Tom’s talent is innate and a wizard like Slughorn’s is developed over years of practice, Albus Dumbledore possesses both years and skill that place him in a class of his own. 

It’s not that Harry is afraid of his professor or even particularly concerned by his meddling, but where there’s a powerful wizard there’s always a hidden agenda - Tom Riddle, at the tender age of seventeen, is proof enough of that - and Harry has something of a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that that agenda has a thing or two to do with him. 

“Are you enjoying the party?” Dumbledore asks him, a benign smile on his face. 

He seems to have cast some sort of privacy ward around them, because the noise seems suddenly muted and Harry can hear his professor’s casually spoken words far more easily than he was anticipating. 

“Not particularly,” Harry replies, unabashed by the blunt truth of the statement. 

He feels anxious in the crowd, and the noise has grown too loud. The constraint of pressed bodies makes him dizzy and the heady scent of rich food and expensive liquor gurgles his stomach in an unpleasant manner. His magic is thrumming like ants crawling under his skin. Like it might just try and force itself out from inside his body if he doesn’t do something to calm it. 

Perhaps it’s Dumbledore, perhaps it’s being in a confined space with too many people stumbling about and projecting their magical signatures, but if the looming headache is anything to go off of, it must have more to do with those pesky memories he just can’t seem to remember. 

“It does get to be a bit overwhelming, by this point in the evening,” Dumbledore notes, a trace of sympathy in his voice as he looks out over the raucous crowd. “To tell you the truth, I normally make a quiet exit as soon as Horace starts mistaking the Bloody Baron for Professor Binns,” he says, with a sly wink in Harry’s direction. 

Harry snorts, making a mental note to do everything in his power to avoid an intoxicated Horace Slughorn. Dealing with him sober is a challenge enough. 

“You seem to be getting along quite well with Mr. Riddle,” Dumbledore continues, sliding so casually into what he was likely intending to address all along. 

Harry feels his lips twitch. “We tolerate each other.”

And Harry supposes that’s true, for himself at least. He isn’t sure what Tom does when it comes to him. If anything, the other boy seems to be either somewhat annoyed or vaguely perplexed in his presence, but he still keeps seeking Harry out anyway. It doesn’t make much sense to Harry, but he also figures that the day a person like Tom Riddle starts making a little too much sense is the day Harry’s going to have to do some serious life evaluation. 

If there’s anything that Harry does know, though, it’s that Tom concerns the transfiguration professor. Maybe more than Dumbledore lets on, even. 

Harry doesn’t really blame him; if there’s anyone who could win the “most likely to become a dark lord” title, that would definitely be Tom Riddle, but he can’t help but be curious. Even the defense professor eats out of Riddle’s hand; what could Tom have possibly done to arouse and then sustain Dumbledore’s suspicions? A man who is probably one good deed away from an Order of Merlin and a specially selected spot in the magical British government. 

Suddenly, Harry appreciates, for perhaps the first time, that Tom Riddle may in all actuality be an extremely dangerous individual. And that extremely dangerous individual seems to have an unusual fixation on him. 

“My boy,” Dubmledore says, suddenly sounding serious; he leans in closer to Harry, even though the privacy ward makes it unnecessary, “do you understand what the ring on your finger means? It most certainly implies that you do a bit more than tolerate one another.”

Harry frowns, feeling his brow furrow. He glances down at the unassuming band wrapped around his finger, remembering how Riddle had leaned in close and divulged that he had removed all the dangerous curses he kept on the ring, just so Harry could wear it. Harry had thought it was a joke, and he still thinks that, because Tom Riddle is a peacock, and despite how he seems to feel about people in general, Tom is certainly willing to perform when there’s a crowd to watch him. 

“There are rumours,” Harry replies, hating how his cheeks heat just thinking about what some of that gossip is spreading. “He likes to encourage them. It’s just a bad joke at this point.”

The look that Dumbledore gives him is not especially encouraging. It’s a look that seems to express that his professor is trying to find the kindest way to let him down gently. Like Harry has managed to delude himself into believing Tom Riddle was actually pulling a prank just to be funny. And Merlin help him, now that Harry thinks about it, that seems more and more unlikely. 

He looks down at the ring on his finger again, still unassuming and unobtrusive in equal measure, and suddenly it seems to be much more sinister than he originally thought. 

“Oh shite,” Harry says, staring at the little band in something akin to dawning horror. “It’s not a fucking joke to him. He didn’t do it as a joke.”

Dumbledore makes a vaguely sympathetic noise, but Harry can hardly bother to pay it any mind. Tom had said he was courting him and by Merlin he wasn’t kidding. Harry doesn’t even know what that means. It’s not like he’s some eighteenth century princess trying to find true love. He’s a bloody amnesiac with a bad feeling that he’s somewhere he really shouldn’t be. That doesn’t exactly lend itself to epic romances and quests for true love. And even if it did, Riddle is not exactly a knight in shining armor, but something more like a walking terrorist attack who's barely old enough to be tried as an adult.

“Of course, you always have the option to refuse him, Harry, never forget that,” Dumbledore says, almost like he’s ready to give a lecture on the intricacies of wizarding love affairs. “And you can continue the courtship until you deem Tom has proven himself to you. You don’t have to move into an engagement until you feel ready.” 

Harry watches his professor with baffled astonishment and growing dread as Dumbledore continues, quite knowledgeably, on the intricacies of traditional dating in magical society. In fact, he seems so proficient in the topic that Harry hardly believes this is the same man who, just last week, transfigured his hair bright pink and turned his shoes into rooster feet as a demonstration for their class. And what’s worse, he seems to be oddly… encouraging of the very notion that Tom, after knowing Harry all of a few months, has decided to make him his life partner. 

And then it hits him. 

“Hang on,” Harry interrupts, realization dawning in all its unpleasant glory, “you want me to accept Riddle’s courtship.”

Dumbledore pauses, looking a bit taken aback, before a wry smile curls onto his lips. “Well, I am always on the side of love, my boy,” he says, and when he sees Harry’s rather flat look continues with, “Let’s just say, I think you could be a very positive addition to Tom Riddle’s life, and I’m really quite pleased that he’s finally found someone he can relate to.” 

Harry feels his eye twitch. Merlin damn this bastard, he knows Tom is a stone’s throw from total psychopath and he thinks that Harry can somehow be the one to curb that. That’s why he’s seemed so interested in their “friendship”. He believes that Harry would actually be able to keep Tom from becoming the nightmarish megalomaniac he’s set himself up to be. 

“He’s like, this close to being a bloody dark lord,” Harry hisses, whispering through clenched teeth. He holds his fingers scant inches apart to really drive home the point. 

And really, Harry has a point, if he does say so himself. Riddle has stalked him, and encouraged the rumours spreading about him, and he tried to practically burn Harry alive during their one duel. He hasn’t exactly been boyfriend material, or should he say courtship material, or even bloody worse husband material at any point in their acquaintance. In fact, Harry has found himself wishing on more than one occasion that a hole would open and swallow Riddle up. 

“I wouldn’t say that, Harry,” Dumbledore replies, that terrible twinkle in his eyes. “In fact, I’d say Mr. Riddle is almost the furthest he’s ever been from being a Dark Lord right this moment, considering how much the thought of him being one upsets you.”

Harry feels a touch breathless, but if he’s reading his emotions right then it is almost assuredly entirely from rage and a small sliver of disbelief. Tom may have an… unusual fixation on him, but that doesn’t translate to wanting to get hitched, for most people. 

Then again, Riddle isn’t most people. 

“You’ve got it wrong, professor,” Harry says, shaking his head in equal parts dismissal and disbelief. “Tom doesn’t even like me. He told me himself we’re enemies.” 

An amused huff escapes on Dumbledore’s breath, and even in his state of emotional distress Harry can’t blame his professor for being humored. Tom Riddle is the only seventeen year-old who would openly declare he has enemies and followers rather than rivals and friends. The grandeur to which he holds himself is perhaps a bit delusional, in Harry’s mind at least, but there’s no denying that there’s a distinctly Tom Riddle brand to it.

“Perhaps you’re right, my boy,” Dumbledore concedes, not looking one bit like he thinks Harry actually is right. His gaze catches on something over Harry’s shoulder, and without needing to turn around Harry already knows Riddle is approaching; he can feel the tight, agitated coil of his dark magic buzzing like a hive of bees right next to his ear. “Then again, perhaps Tom will surprise you.”

Dumbledore doesn’t stick around to elaborate, or even allow Harry to splutter out anymore protests. He gives one final twinkle-eyed wink and then makes his quiet escape from Slughorn’s party-turned-circus before Tom can fully reach Harry’s side. 

He isn’t especially surprised by the cup of punch placed into his hands when Tom sidles up to him, but he is a bit surprised by the strong hand that immediately finds his shoulder, latching down hard and pulling him into the taller boy’s side. 

“What did Dumbledore want?” Riddle asks, following their retreating professor with narrowed eyes.

“Doesn’t matter,” Harry grunts, shaking Riddle’s hand off his shoulder. “I’m going to bed.”

He doesn’t bother to stick around for Riddle's reply. He pushes through the crowd at as quick a pace as he can manage, happily willing to throw more than one elbow when the especially drunk patrons don’t take his suggestion to move quickly. 

Harry downs the glass Riddle got him along the way, not particularly surprised to find the sharp sting of alcohol mixed with the saccharine sweet of fruit, considering Tom has been trying to entice him towards drink all evening. He can feel Tom at his back, stalking after him like a wolf tracking prey, and the acute sense of awareness Harry suddenly recognizes for Riddle’s magic and presence makes him move all the faster. 

He never appreciated before just how distinct Riddle’s magical signature is. 

And of course, Harry isn’t usually in favour of intentionally tucking tail and bolting at the first opportunity, but his mounting headache, jittery magic, and desire to erase the words courtship and marriage from his vocabulary are adding a particularly jaunty flair to his step. 

The entryway outside Slughorn’s party practically feels like salvation, when Harry manages to reach it. The air is cool and breathable and all the other lovely things air ought to be, and Harry feels like he can breathe properly for the first time all night. He silently adds “attending a Slug Club party” to the list of things he will never again do in his life, and is about to happily follow in his transfiguration professor’s footsteps and make a quiet exit, when a hand grabs his wrist and pulls him back. 

“Where are you going?” Riddle asks, trying to mask the severity in his voice and for once doing a poor job of it. 

“I told you,” Harry huffs, “bed.” 

He tries to pull his wrist free and has a distinctly difficult time at it. Riddle is doing his best impression of a boa constrictor and Harry is once again imitating rabbit is this little struggle of theirs. 

“What did that bastard say to you?” Tom hisses, certainly not letting up on his grip, a profoundly dark look passing over his pretty features and giving them an especially sharp appearance. 

With one final huff, Harry gives in and goes slack in Riddle’s grip. If his only way closer to getting a decent night’s rest and putting this whole evening behind him is either hexing Riddle or easing his bruised ego, then Harry is willing to try at being a diplomat before he throws some spells. 

“Nothing against you,” Harry sighs, feeling his headache pulse. “He wasn’t even upset by the fact that we showed up together.” 

He conveniently puts the last part in air quotes, and Riddle conveniently ignores them. 

“Now will you please let me go. You’re going to give me bruises.” 

Harry is a little surprised by just how fast Riddle drops his wrist as soon as he mentions being hurt. He never would have guessed asking nicely was a way to get Riddle to listen to him, because the Slytherin certainly hasn’t seemed all that miffed by potentially causing him harm in the past. In fact, given the number of times he’s tried to casually entice Harry into a duel, he’s seemed largely in favor of the idea.

Riddle plasters on that sugary sweet smile of his and leans in closer, looking like he might want to share a secret, though Harry is more inclined to believe the man just may try and bite him. Something about that seems as on brand as the megalomania. 

“He said nothing of consequence, yet you try and bolt at the first opportunity.”

Harry huffs, crossing his arms. “This may come as a shock to you, Riddle, but I don’t like crowds, and I don’t fancy running into an intoxicated Horace Slughorn.”

Riddle makes a small, amused sound that has his lips twitching into something a bit more genuine, and it’s certainly not a bad look on him. Honestly, if this boy tried a little harder to be more sincere, then Harry may actually find him somewhat tolerable. A decent personality certainly wouldn’t detract from the hair, eyes and jawline.

“If the party is not to your liking, darling, then I’m sure we can find a more secluded spot to take the festivities,” Riddle says, voice as smooth and sweet as a bite of honey. 

He tilts his head in a way that makes the coif of his hair fall over his right eye, and it is really, really not fair. Harry is indignant with the injustice of it; if Tom Riddle is going to be an evil bastard, then he could at least look the part every now and then. 

“What part of I’m going to bed did you misunderstand?”

Tom’s smile turns sharp, tilting into a grin that hints he’s about to say something outrageous just to see how Harry will react. Harry is ready for it, but even anticipation can’t always prepare him for Tom Riddle.  

“We could go to the Slytherin common room. I have a bed there.”

Harry is perhaps a touch embarrassed by the somewhat choked sound he makes, but with the way Riddle is looking at him it’s really something of a miracle that he’s not spluttering all over the floor. The indecency of that grin is not meant for polite society.

“I’m not dignifying that with a response,” Harry squawks, turning on his heel and marching away. If his face is splotched a bright, vibrant red, well, then only he and the Hogwarts portraits he rushes past have to know it. 

The fact that he can hear Tom Riddle following at a leisurely pace behind him - damn those long legs - inspires Harry to go faster, moving with an athlete’s dexterity through the halls of the castle. He hardly pays any mind to the almost innate sense he has for finding the fastest path back to the Gryffindor common room, and if Riddle has anything to say about it then he keeps those thoughts to himself. 

“You know,” Tom says, sounding perfectly pleasant and unbothered following along after Harry’s brisk march, “for someone who was sorted into Gryffindor, you certainly have a tendency towards fleeing from situations you don’t want to be in.”

Harry huffs, a touch offended that this snake of a man is calling his lionheart into question. 

“Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is know when to beat a strategic retreat.” 

Riddle hums. “You made that up.”

Harry is a little perturbed that he can practically hear the smile in the man’s voice as he speaks, but he’s even more put off by the fact that he can feel Riddle like a storm cloud behind him. The wizard’s magic is dark and heady, shifting within him like it’s begging to be let loose a little. Harry noticed it before, of course, but the awareness has seemed to only grow with familiarity; the more time he’s spent with Riddle, the more he’s felt it bubbling up and brushing against his own like a curious cat. 

It’s something of a relief when he makes it to the steps of Gryffindor Tower, taking them two at a time just in case Riddle tries to grab him again to keep him from retreating from polite society or the night. 

He turns to face Riddle only when he is practically plastered to the door of his common room. 

“You can’t follow me in here,” Harry says, and he feels a bit like a parrot because he’s pretty sure he’s said that to Riddle before. 

Tom smiles. “Are all the lions going to chase me out with pitchforks?”

“I’m going to chase you out with a pitchfork.”

The threat of bodily harm seems to amuse the boy more than anything, and he takes a step closer until Harry practically feels like he’s being loomed over. Placing a warded door at his back wasn’t exactly his best tactical strategy, and Harry can’t say he feels especially comforted by the slow curl of a smile Riddle gives him. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asks, which is not what Harry was expecting at all.

“Wh-what,” Harry splutters, “why are you asking?”

Riddle frowns. “I deduced that you would prefer it if I asked first,” he replies, sounding almost analytical. “I can just do it though, if that would be more to your liking.”

Harry is vaguely horrified when Riddle then closes the last step of distance between them and leans in, looking stupidly good as that coif of hair falls over his eyes and his tongue darts out to slide across his lower lip.

“No, no, no,” Harry says, in a rush, hands finding Riddle’s chest and pushing back a bit, “definitely ask first.”

Riddle smiles; something that Harry is sure is meant to look genuine and encouraging but comes off a bit too sharkish to him. 

“Okay, Harry,” he replies. “Can I kiss you then?”

“No,” Harry says flatly, and Riddle’s smile falls to a frown. 

Harry is about ready to pull another one of his strategic retreats, but he doesn’t trust that Riddle wouldn’t steal the Gryffindor password and sneak into his common room just to seek him out. Something about the utter shamelessness of that seems on brand for the wizard. 

Harry doesn’t even have time to worry that he’s heating up like a baked potato and that all the portraits around them are chittering and gossiping away, no doubt eager to spread this news for the next round of gossip waiting to come. 

No, his attention is solely for a frowning Tom Riddle, who looks, of all things, somewhat miffed. 

The boy huffs a bit, nostrils flaring. “You’ll say yes eventually,” he says, sounding a bit indignant. 

“Hell will probably freeze over first, mate,” Harry mutters, making a vague away gesture at Riddle like he’s trying to shoo a fly. “If you wouldn’t mind, now, I’d really like to go to bed.”

Riddle looks very much like he does mind, his jaw working like he’s trying very hard not to argue back or maybe spit out a curse or two even, but in the end his poised gentleman act wins out and his lips settle into a congenial smile. 

“In that case, darling, I’ll bid you a good evening,” he says, perfectly polite, and Harry doesn’t bother to hide his eye roll. “I’ll pick you up here before breakfast tomorrow.”

Harry splutters. “You’ll what now,” he says, but Tom is already walking away and looking annoyingly superior while doing so. It isn't long before he is down the stairs and out of sight, and all Harry has left of him is the lingering traces of his pitch magic. 

Oh bloody hell, Harry thinks to himself, leaning in a somewhat pathetic slump against the portrait of the fat lady that serves as the gateway to his house’s quarters. 

“That one’s definitely a keeper,” the portrait woman gushes, and Harry doesn’t bother to dampen the annoyed screech he lets out.

There is no way Tom Riddle is courting him, and if, maybe by the smallest of chances, Tom is, then there is no way Harry would ever say yes.