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Chapter Text

The exchange happened in a fraction of a moment as sorting hat had just barely covered his neatly combed hair.

“Ohh,” it crooned. “Quite the character Hogwarts has found itself, eh? Plenty of strong traits. Your taste in glory almost rivals your thirst for greatness. And a hunger to know everything about our Wizarding World, no doubt about that. Not one for fairness or trust— oh but who’s that I see?”

Tom gripped the sleeves of his new school robes.

“Harry Potter, now that’s interesting...”

He’s not important.

“Oh but that’s not true at all, you can’t hide that from the sorting hat! In fact, I think he may very well change your way to greatness. Well then, better be SLYTHERIN!”

And without dropping over his eyes, the old piece of leather was swept right off within a second.

Out of the corner of his vision, Tom could feel Dumbledore’s piercing stare as he deftly slipped off the stool. The applause from the Slytherins was unenthusiastic to the point that sparse obligatory applause from other tables stood out to his blood-rushing ears. Dark, clever eyes skimmed the sea of guileless faces lining the long tables as confident, powerful strides carried him to the far right where his new housemates awaited.

If anyone had really been paying attention to this new no-named Slytherin, they might have seen a slight falter in his steps indicating the exact moment that Tom saw him.

Him. Dark hair that always stuck up in the back, round glasses, careless, easy smiles. Him. What was Harry Potter doing, here of all places, sitting at the Gryffindor table, wearing student robes?

Even after Tom tore his eyes away, his mind was so thoroughly consumed by the image of this that he hardly remembered greeting his housemates and taking a seat at the table.

“Rosier, Evan!” called the eccentrically dressed Professor Dumbledore.

The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables vanished between Tom’s wide unblinking stare and the oblivious wizard.

“SLYTHERIN!”

The cheer for Rosier was louder compared to Tom’s reception, but his ears were deaf to everything but the dark-haired wizard’s laughter to the witch beside him.

When he finally blinked, however, all resemblance vanished instantly, and Tom wondered how he ever mistook that person for Harry. Harry’s hair stuck out far more. His glasses were circular, not oval. His jawline was sharp, not rounded. And in all the time that Tom had ever known the man, Harry had the uncanny ability to know when Tom was staring at him and would unfailingly return the stare with blazing green eyes. Those oblivious eyes, on the other side of the Great Hall, were ordinary.

“Spudmore, Randolf!”

Tom scowled inwardly. He had just seen Harry hours prior at Kings Cross station, even if it had possibly been for the last time. And yet… Harry haunted him, invaded his thoughts from the moment the train left the station to the moment he sat on the stool for sorting. It was ridiculous.

“Gryffindor!”

“Riddle, huh?”

Tom tore his eyes away from the Gryffindor table.

The owner of the voice was a weedy older student who put too much attention on the quality of his clothes and not enough on his waxy complexion. “Haven’t heard that name before,” he continued, not meeting Tom’s eyes. “Who are your parents then?”

“Wigginton, Gillian!”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met my father,” Tom lied. “My mother passed away when I was very young, so I lived with a different wizard who knew them.”

“Oh. Must be our kind then.” He smiled crookedly and met Tom’s eyes through his thick spectacles. “That’s good then. I’m Barrett Fay.” He stuck out his spindly hand. “If you ever run into any problems, we Slytherins always help each other.”

His handshake felt as weak as he looked.

By then, all the first years had been sorted and the four tables were filled with students and loud, excited chatter. All quieted, however, when the headmaster, Professor Dippet got to his feet. “Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I do have a few announcements to make before we can enjoy the feast.” His frail unsteady arms reached up to adjust the oversized hat and then lifted a parchment. He smacked his lips. “The forbidden forest is still forbidden. Our caretaker, Mr. Pringle, wants to remind everyone to be mindful of their pets...”

Mr. Pringle, who was sitting at the farthest end near the Gryffindor’s side, glared intensely at every table.

“You don’t want to get on his bad side,” muttered Fay to the nearby first years. “Despite his pretty face, he can be quite foul to troublemakers. Unless you want to lose Slytherin house points, you’d do well to have good pain tolerance.”

Many small heads bobbed attentively, only to be stunned by a soft giggle nearby.

“Of all the things to be engraving in their fresh minds,” whispered a witch with glittering dark eyes, “you talk about his pretty face? Although... he is very handsome.”

“Fuck off, Black.”

“Watch it.” She smiled wickedly, twisting the ends of her raven hair. “He’ll take points for language.” She nodded to each of the new Slytherins. “I’m Lucretia by the way.” She had a playful attitude despite her aristocratic air.

“Mind your own fucking business you damned cunt,” he grumbled much quieter now that Pringle had progressed to scrutinizing their table. “I’m the one teaching them right.”

In a soft exhale, without even moving her mouth, Black answered without a trace of humor, “No. You’re trying to get their respect before anyone else. It’s pathetic. Everyone learns House Expectations in the common rooms, not during the feast, so shut your foul mouth.”

Fay did not shut his mouth. He only carried on muttering a string of profanities under his breath with his head bowed so the caretaker could not see his lips move.

The nearest of Tom’s year began shifting away and lowering their heads as Pringle’s eyes moved toward their end of the table.

The Headmaster continued droning down his list. “Lastly—” the wizened man cleared his throat. “We must welcome two new professors. Professor Kettleburn, who has taken over Care of Magical Creatures after the retirement—“

Only Tom’s head was held high and his eyes clear of conscience. When Pringle saw him, he smiled like an innocent first-year student ought to, even if it wasn’t very effective to the man.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Tom said softly. “You only get in trouble if you get caught.” He met his peers' wide eyes and felt their intrigue in him flutter in his chest. Lips stretched charismatically. “And we’re much too clever for that.”

That end of the table fell silent, even Fay’s muttering had ceased.

Tom felt the stares, felt Black’s little grin, felt the magic of the castle, and felt the magic swirling within him. He would easily have the entire school under his control. Head tilted, his eyes drifted to the high table to memorize every face that would soon be utterly charmed by him.

Bored faces, stern eyes, good-natured smiles, every single—

The smirk slid off Tom’s face.

There, second to the far left, right beside Pringle. Sharp jaw, messy black hair, round glasses, and those unmistakable green eyes. It couldn’t be.

Tom was imagining him again. He who continued to haunt his waking thoughts. Who stumbled through the gates of his orphanage, into his life, in the most recklessly determined manner. Only to leave Tom at Kings Cross Station like it was the easiest thing in the world.

It wasn’t real, Tom told himself, don’t be pathetic.

“…and for our second appointment, I’m pleased to welcome our new flight instructor, Mr. Potter.”

The walls could be crumbling around them and Tom would still be unable to turn his gaze away from the familiar wizard standing, giving a shy little wave, and finally, finally returning Tom’s stare with his own.

It was real.

The world fell away into mere background noise. From across the Great Hall, between the different tables, their eyes found each other.

It should have been too far away to see Harry’s eyes crinkle in amusement but Tom saw it anyway. He saw the way Harry’s eyes seemed to tell Tom to eat because everyone else had already begun piling their plates, and Tom looked weird just sitting there and staring.

Tom’s eyes would not be distracted by any food. How?

Harry held his index finger in front of his smiling lips. Secret.

Tell me.

Harry’s eyes looked away to glance pointedly around the room. Not here.

You didn’t tell me—I thought you’d leave—Why are you here—Tom wasn’t sure how to convey those words with his eyes, but he tried anyway. He could not make sense of Harry’s reply, only that he was immensely amused by whatever Tom’s face was doing.

They were so completely absorbed with each other that they hardly noticed the curious looks from a few professors and students nor did they see the entrance of a great crimson bird. It was only the haunting music of the phoenix that stole Tom’s attention just as the great creature swooped right before him, making the briefest eye contact before gliding toward the high table.

Tom could have sworn he’d seen it before in a dream.

In a flurry of red, it descended gracefully just before Harry’s plate.

The Great Hall fell silent as another professor—professor Dumbledore—introduced the creature. “Fawkes is a phoenix, fascinating creatures, they are.” He stroked his beard. “They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly faithful pets.”

Noises of awe and fascination filled the large room, yet the bird continued to stare at Harry, who awkwardly found nowhere else to look except right back. At length, that was how they carried on, and Tom found himself stabbing a slice of ham very aggressively at the way the animal was monopolizing Harry’s attention.

It was not an issue for much longer because a sudden movement launched over the back of Harry’s chair and pounced on the phoenix. It was all wrinkly albino skin, with a flat face, and blood-red eyes. Harry’s awful pet cat.

Tom's lips curled even further.

“Do you know him?”

Tom looked around and found that although most people were staring at Harry trying to stun the cat off of Dumbledore’s pet bird, a few sets of eyes stayed curiously fixed on him. “He’s the one I live with,” he answered Black.

She seemed to erupt with delight. “We could get a leg up in points then! Perhaps he’ll give us a bit more leniency during the matches this year.” She winked suggestively. She pushed her plate of food over like it disgusted her in comparison to the conversation. “What sort of person is he?”

Tom tilted his head and observed Harry wrangling with the clawing cat in his arms as he apologized profusely to Dumbledore. “He’s the strangest man I’ve ever met,” he answered softly, yet still heard under the commotion. “Half of the things he says are utter nonsense, and he is a walking pile of contradictions. Boring and mysterious, bumbling and graceful, silly and wise, harmless and not, strange yet familiar. I’d go mad trying to understand him.”

∞∞∞

“You really should have seen it!” Harry insisted gleefully as he floated his clothes in his new wardrobe. He glanced at his golden wristwatch where the cover had popped up like a lid to reveal a two-way communication mirror with his friends from the future. “God, his expression was priceless! I’ve already stored it in a pensieve memory!”

There was a box shape at the corner of the room covered by a sheet of linen. It was rattling furiously as though a beast was trying to escape.

“Never mind that,” said Ron impatiently from the little mirror. “Go back to the part with the cat!”

Harry soured and slammed his trunk shut. “I don’t know how it followed me! I swear it, it couldn’t have gotten into my bags.”

Luna, who was barely visible behind Ron’s big head, gasped softly. “The nargles told him. They’re in league with each other.”

Harry nodded gravely, “My thoughts exactly.” He tapped his wand to his large four-posterbed and the drapes rippled from grey to Griffindor red. “But then after I got him under control with some pickled toad, that Pringle prick wanted to ‘dispose’ of it when I said he wasn’t my pet.”

“Oooh,” said Ron. “Mum and Dad hated Pringle in school.”

The covered box thumped against the desk and hissed angrily.

“Harry,” Hermione gasped, horrified. “You didn’t…”

“I don’t know what came over me.” Harry shook his head, climbing into bed. “I claimed that horrible cat.”

Neville blanched. “It’s official?”

He nodded. “I had to name it and everything.”

“And the name?”

More hissing came from the box, accompanied by several thumpings and scratchings.

He sighed, staring at the canopy. “Mortdevol.” Without looking, he could already identify Hermione’s little groan.

“That’s actually kind of brilliant,” Ron exclaimed. “That way, if Riddle ever comes up with the anagram, I am Lord Voldemort, he’ll have to concede the similarity. Ohhh, he’ll hate it!”

“I wasn’t thinking that far, really,” Harry said, with his wrist hovering above him. “I was just panicked when Pringle put me on the spot.”

“You’ll have to get used to that,” Hermione sniffed. “You can’t just keep letting things slip like you did with Tom. Other people might actually take you seriously, and what happens when they do?”

“My cover is blown and the timeline collapses on itself before we can find a way to get me back to the future?” Harry guessed.

Hermione gave a rare nod of approval. “Very good.”

“I guess we’ll just have to send me back to the future before I can mess up that badly then.” He scratched his chin idly. “Any new developments?”

His friends relayed different time travel methods, some of which were extremely outlandish—“No, I’m not going to find a blackhole to launch myself into.”—and some which were just ridiculous—“No, manually turning the hands of Big Ben over and over until I’m fifty-five years into the future will not work.”

Mortdevol had somehow pulled the sheet into his cage and shredded the fabric until it became a mangled mess of a bed.

Well, it didn’t need to happen immediately. Harry didn’t mind killing some time in the past while keeping an eye on Tom Riddle.

Chapter Text

Harry jolted awake, disoriented. A sinking feeling of something very wrong followed him out of his dreams. He blinked the sleep sand from his eyes, fixing his blurry vision on the thick drapes of his Gryffindor four-poster bed. The afternoon sunlight poured in from the sliver of a gap between the curtains. His stomach lurched with the sudden urgency to rush to Potions class before Snape could get the chance to take a hundred points from Gryffindor. When he threw open the curtains, however, he was in a large rectangular stone suite furnished by a tall wardrobe that matched the generously sized oak desk next to a battered cage, home to the most troublesome cat in existence. It was sleeping.

The glint of his golden wristwatch reminded him that he was in 1938, on the most inane mission in his life, and that he’d come back to Hogwarts to teach.

His stomach growled loudly like he had skipped a meal, and he rolled off the bed. Toothbrush in his mouth, he squinted at his wristwatch.

3:30pm. He had missed breakfast and lunch from staying up until dawn with his nose in another thick volume about time travel theory. No wonder his stomach was growling. The hunger stopped mattering soon enough when the pit of his stomach dropped into oblivion.

Monday.

Harry choked and sprayed toothpaste on his bathroom mirror. His reflection gagged in disgust, and off he went out the door with a string of rapid-fire curses trailing from him.

Flying lessons started on Monday this week. And Harry still had classes to be late for. The only words from his mouth that weren’t curses were, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.”

He rushed down the corridor, struggling into his flying instructor uniform, with his broom in one hand and his wand casting a Self-Refreshing Charm in the other.

The portraits called out to him, “Wrong way!”

Harry ignored them. Yes, this way was not the way to the stairs leading to the training grounds. It was, however, the nearest way to the largest window. He slashed his wand at the window when it came into view, and it swung right open. With a final sprint, dodging the students who were making their way to their first classes Harry leaped out of the window of the fifth floor.

They gawked at him, wide eyes and gaping mouth. He heard a distant, “The new professor’s gone mad!” as he mounted his broom midair and took off.

∞∞∞

Tom’s bored eyes observed a Gryffindor student rush onto the field.

With his red-trimmed robes slipping off one of his broad shoulders, he panted heavily, “Oh good… I’m… on time.” He drifted towards his housemates.

Another Gryffindor checked her watch. “Just barely.”

A pair of Slytherins had just returned from the broom shed. “It’s either locked or stuck.”

“We’ll just have to wait for the professor then,” said a Gryffindor to her housemates.

“The really young one at the Welcoming feast right?”

Hearing the Gryffindors mention that, a Slytherin whispered rather loudly to their side, “A seventh-year told me that Hogwarts had never had such a young professor before.”

All at once, the Gryffindors and Slytherins entered conversation about the subject with their respective sides, not once acknowledging each other even if new intel and facts floated between them.

“How old is he?”

“I heard he’s still a student.”

“I heard he’s actually very old, and he uses a non-aging potion. That’s the only reason why Professor Dippet would hire him right?”

“He looks like an idiot,” said Avery, one of Tom’s roommates. “With someone like that as our teacher, I bet Longbottom would land on his head if he can even get in the air at all.”

The boy who had earlier just barely made it to class on time spun around, thick blonde hair bracketing his flushed round face. “You want to say that again?”

In that instance, a dam seemed to break. The Slytherins and Gryffindors were now facing each other.

Avery pulled at his cufflinks in a way that made them glint expensively in the sunlight. “What, are you going to fight me? Not surprising from a Gryffindor brute.”

Longbottom, who was both thicker and taller than Avery, stood at his full height. “Yeah? Well, you’re too much of a cowardly snake to take me anyway.”

Avery’s eyes betrayed how much he realized his slender build dwarfed in comparison, though he continued to raise his pointed nose high. “As if! I would rather not have your filthy hands on me.” Even as he said this, Tom could see his hand snake into his pocket for his wand.

Longbottom’s jaw ticked. “I’ll show you filthy…!” He ripped a patch of dirt and grass from the ground and hurled it at the boy.

The earth splattered mid-air on something invisible, and everyone stared at it falling to the ground midway between the two factions. A soft whooshing sound grew noticeable, drawing the students' eyes skyward in time to see the new Flying Instructor zoom between them, grazing on the grass to a halt.

Tom rolled his eyes. And just when it was getting interesting…

“Sorry for the wait,” Harry shouted as he dismounted. “You can all just call me Harry or whatever you prefer. Let’s start introductions with“ — he pointed with one white-gloved hand at Longbottom — “you.”

The boy straightened, dusting off his dirty hands behind his back. “Algie Longbottom.”

Harry’s eyes flickered with piqued interest. Or perhaps recognition? Either way, Tom glared holes into them both. “I see. Well, Mr. Longbottom, that will be one point from Gryffindor for instigating violence, unless, of course, it was only horseplay…” he trailed off, looking to the Slytherins expectantly.

Gasps and murmurs broke out in the red-and-golds.

Avery stepped forward, chest puffed. “It wasn’t, sir. He was going to hurt me!”

“It’s just dirt, you withering weed!” Longbottom spat at the boy. Then he turned wide eyes on Harry. “He started it! He was insulting me.”

Harry only stared at the boy who was steadily getting redder.

“And he insulted you too! I was defending us.”

Harry raised a brow and turned back to Avery. “What’s your name?”

Avery pursed his lips and shrank a little. “Alfred Avery.”

“Is this true?”

The boy’s blue eyes darted around at everyone who was watching.

All of the other Slytherins shifted uncomfortably while the Gryffindors began smirking down their noses. A number of Tom’s housemates crowded around Avery. “Please sir,” a girl the size of an Algie Longbottom said. “You’re making him uncomfortable.”

Harry turned his gaze on the girl, and her far-setted eyes turned away. “And what’s your name?”

“Elsypeth Warrington, sir.”

Harry studied her for a pause and smiled. “That’s kind of you to stand up for your friend.”

The girl ducked her head further to hide a scowl that did not escape Tom’s vision.

It seemed Harry saw it as well if his widening smile was any indication. To Avery, he said, “You don’t have to repeat what you said if it embarrasses you so much. When I was young and immature, I said loads of things I wish I could forget.” He either did not notice Avery’s tightening fists and deepening scowl or he did not care. He continued in a more obnoxious manner than Tom had ever seen from him, “No need to apologize; I know how hard that can be for someone your age. Your quiet regret is more than enough.”

Avery was shaking in anger and humiliation now, arms stiff as he held himself back. (Tom understood the feeling well.) Avery opened his mouth, teeth bared, and snapped it shut immediately.

Tom looked down and saw Warrington’s foot grinding on his.

Harry carried on with introductions, and Tom privately wondered if antagonizing a student on the first day was the best action for him.

As the self-introduction filled the breezy field, Harry would occasionally narrow his eyes curiously at a student’s name. While this vexed Tom considerably—what was so special about them?—he was pleased that on his turn, the instructor had the strongest reaction.

“Tom Riddle.”

Green eyes crinkled with Harry’s amused grin. “Yes,” he said, even though he hadn’t commented on anyone else.

At last, Harry’s eyes swept the crowd again, and he frowned. “This is only one class? There’s quite a lot of you.” The question must have been rhetorical, because he cut off Warrington’s “Yes,” with, “Alright, if you have any questions about anything, ask. No such thing as a stupid question, only funny ones. If the question is good enough, I might give points.”

Some students perked up at that, and Tom covered up a sneer at how easily manipulated they were.

In a quick sequence of wandwork, Harry had laid the training field with two rows of brooms. “Twenty-two brooms if I counted correctly. Alright, whoever likes dark chocolate more than milk chocolate, step over here. Whoever has a pet, over here. For the ones left, if you have siblings, join the chocolate side. The rest of you to the pets…”

Off he went in the most inane system of categorization that Tom had seen him do yet until there were eleven students on each side. Harry nodded to himself, “Now go stand beside a broom.”

The students scurried about until they all stood along the two rows, facing each other.

A high whistle blew. “What do you notice about these brooms?”

The only sound on the field was the wind and distance owl hooting from the Owlry in the distance. Students looked cluelessly at each other or at the ground. Tom stared at his broom and knew with the greatest conviction of someone who knew Harry that he had done something to it.

Harry had worked at a Quidditch Supply and Repair store before; it would be nothing for him to temper with these.

A Gryffindor boy raised his hand. “Pardon, but what sort of brooms are these? I’ve never seen this kind before.”

“Great question, Mr. Spudmore. One point to Gryffindor.” Several grins broke out. “I understand you’ve seen a lot of brooms from your parent’s business.” The boy nodded, a proud smile splitting his tan face. “These are training brooms with some additional modifications. I would bet ten house points that no one here will be able to fall off one of these. They’re incredibly safe for someone who has never held a broom before.” Some shoulders slumped in relief. “Alright, what else do you notice?”

There was another long silence, and Avery raised his hand. “They’re facing the wrong way?” he drawled with a roll of his eyes.

“One point to Slytherin!” Which startled Avery out of his snotty attitude. He grinned at Lestrange. “You’re on the right track, but it’s not the brooms that are facing the wrong way. Everyone, turn around.” There were collective murmurs before the class proceeded to do so. Harry began pacing up and down the two rows. “You should not mount your brooms backward, firstly because you wouldn’t be able to see anything. And secondly, well, your bottom usually steers towards the ground. Of course, it is certainly possible to fly like that with enough practice.”

Staring at the piece of wood on the ground and imagining Harry mounting a broom backward, Tom was suddenly struck again by the full-body realization that broomstick flying and Quidditch were some of the most pointless creations of all of magic.

Harry continued, “First, stick your wand hand out over the broom. Good. Now, call to it. Try saying, ‘up’ or whatever you feel will command it for you.”

Then, there were twenty-two first years shouting “Up” over each other. No one was successful from the few glances that Tom stole. His own wouldn’t budge at all no matter how much dangerous frustration seeped into his command, “Up”.

He remembered calling “up" one snowed-in December day and getting whacked in the hand by the very eager broom that Harry had gifted him. That Harry messed with the enchantments of these brooms was now beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Tom changed tactics. Seeing as how the useless stick would not obey him, he used his wandless magic to levitate it into his hand. He could feel the gaping amazement from the two classmates beside him, and he let their astonishment bubble in his chest.

When he spun around, he found that Harry was already grinning at him from the head of the rows. The older wizard sent him a rueful headshake and made a flat downward hand motion.

Tom dropped the broom unceremoniously, shrugging in indifference. He hadn’t enjoyed his first experience flying, and he was not eager to try it again anyway. Especially not with what Harry had planned with the brooms.

After a few more minutes of the cacophony of horrible shouting, a high whistle blew. “Turn around!”

The students were a mix of confusion, frustration, and depression.

“Not many of you had much success. That’s fine.”

Someone exclaimed, “These brooms are stupid! I fly all the time at home.”

Harry’s lips quirked up. “One point to Gryffindor for observation. Like I said, they are training brooms. They will only come to you when you are absolutely ready. Even if you know how to fly, that does not mean that you are ready to.”

“How does that make any sense?” someone else muttered.

“One point to Slytherin for asking a question.”

Tom squinted at Harry.

“Here’s what it means: are any of you prepared to fall from ten meters up?” No one raised their hands. “Exactly, you’re not ready for situations like that.” Harry rubbed his gloved right hand around his wristwatch in a wringing motion. “Whether you’re mounting a broom or wielding a wand or some other magical instrument, you have to be ready to face the consequences when things don't go the way you expect them to.”

“I’m not sure if anyone is ready to fall.”

“One point to Slytherin for being skeptical!” And then, before Tom could say, You’re just giving out points for any reason, Harry called “Up” to one of the training brooms.

It fell upwards into his hand, and he mounted on, rising to what was probably ten meters above the ground.

Harry jumped off his broom.

Everyone gasped.

Heart electrocuting his legs into movement, Tom darted out, sending a pulse of raw magic shooting from his outstretched hands. If his magic accomplished anything at all, it must've only stopped time long enough for Tom to stare helplessly at Harry's fearless expression, rippled by the falling wind. His arms were spread out, like the wings of a free but flightless bird. He had his wand gripped in his singular gloved hand.

Tom's magic wasn’t enough. He could pick up a broom but he couldn’t stop the weight of a plunging, fully-grown maniac of a wizard.

“Arresto Momentum!” Harry stopped a foot off the ground and landed with a soft thud. He jumped to his feet and caught the falling broom without missing a beat. He smiled at everyone’s shocked-wide eyes and gaping mouths, and grinned wider at Tom who had frozen in place in between the two rows. “One point to Slytherin for trying to save—“

He did not finish the sentence because Tom had unleashed a crackling shot of magic at his leg, and he dropped to his knee in pain. Tom would have liked to do more, but he was trying to build an image, and they were, unfortunately, in public.

Harry clearly had not learned his lesson, he only wheezed out, “One point from Slytherin for instigating violence.”

Tom should have probably at least pretended to care about losing his house points, but there was little he could care less about as his heart worked its way down. He pointed accusingly. “And you were endangering your life.”

From his curled position, Harry peered up. His amused grin turned apologetically. “Yes, I’m sorry for scaring you. And one point to Slytherin for fair reasoning.” Tom rolled his eyes and returned to his spot in the line.

Harry stood up and dusted off his uniform, his white glove had become stained with dirt. “Now then, I have proven that I am ready to fall. It is not because I am brave,” he stressed the word. “It’s because I knew the spells, and I was confident I wouldn’t get hurt.”

The students nodded along with rapt attention.

“For today, we won’t be flying.”

Groans sounded from every direction, and Harry clicked his tongue. “We will practice ‘getting ready’. I will teach you all the charm ‘Arresto Momentum’.”

The groans turned into excited jumping. Spudmore raised his hand, “But I thought it was very hard to cast spells mid-air.”

“One point to Gryffindor. Yes, you won’t be able to stop yourself from falling.”

“But then how will we get ‘ready’?”

Harry made a sweeping motion. “Look around.” Everyone looked at one other, all sharing the same expression of utter confusion. “You’re stopping each other’s fall.”

Harry spent the next twenty minutes teaching everyone the incantation and wand movement, having them practice the spell on falling brooms, correcting their stances, and giving points away like sweets. “Don’t worry if you can’t stop it completely. Just slowing the fall is a good start.”

Tom was the first to successfully cast it, earning him a house point and a private grin from Harry, but the thrill of the achievement faded when Harry shifted his focus to other less competent students.

Once everyone was able to cast it, Harry blew his whistle. He gathered the students to stand in a circle. “Alright, for the rest of class, we’ll practice on something larger.” He jabbed his thumb into his chest. “Me.”

A great murmur broke out, cut off by a high-pitched whistle. “In the muggle world, this is called a Trust Fall. It’s a test to see how strong the trust is between people. One person falls backward, and the others catch them. Today, I trust both your abilities to catch me and your conscience to not let me fall.”

Tom’s stomach clenched as though he was the one several meters in the air. He grabbed Harry’s uniform when he walked by and stared into his green eyes, trying to claw his way into that simple mind to tell him, ‘Don’t do this.’ Harry dislodged Tom’s hand and squeezed it before moving on to mount his broom.

Tom stared at his hand. His fingers vibrated, knocking against each other, and he could almost see a spark shoot from the tips.

This time, when Harry leaped off his broom, Tom fired the brightest thickest jet of Arresto Momentum at him along with many others.

Frozen in the sky, Harry grinned down at them, the afternoon sun casting a warm light on him like some angel. “Who else wants a try?”

By the end of class, only a handful of Gryffindors and one Slytherin—Avery because Longbottom dared him to—tried the Trust Fall. No one got hurt; on the contrary, they came out of the fall looking windswept and vibrating with a new light in their eyes.

One last whistle pierced the air. “Great work everyone, we’ll try the brooms again next class. My office hours are until five every day if you still feel nervous about flying. Any questions before we end?”

Longbottom’s hand shot up, “How old are you?”

“One point to Gryffindor. I am twenty-three years old this year. Any other questions?”

“What’s your blood status?!”

“One point to Slytherin. I’m o-negative.”

A soft murmur buzzed amongst a few students.

“Are you related to Charlus?!”

“One point to Gryffindor.” Harry tapped his chin thoughtfully. “We might be distant cousins or something. Potter is a very common surname.”

“What kind of chocolate do you like?” someone else asked.

“One point to Gryffindor. Chocolate frogs.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“One point to Slytherin. No,” Harry smiled fondly, “but I have friends who I think of as family.”

“Do you have any pets?”

“One point to Gryffindor. Yes,” he sighed at the sky. “Lord Mortdevol, if you recall from the Welcoming Feast.”

And on they went, milking Harry’s point system while they could.

“Which house were you at Hogwarts?!”

This question in particular seemed to arouse much interest in the class.

“One point to Slytherin. I did not graduate from Hogwarts.”

This answer aroused even more interest.

“Which house would you have been?”

“One point to Gryffindor—“

Tom narrowed his eyes. That was a Slytherin, but no one noticed the misplaced house point.

Harry hummed. “That is an interesting question. How about you lot sort me then?”

There was a buzz in the class and then, “Oh definitely Gryffindor,” one student declared.

Chaos ensued. Students shouted over each other, insisting Slytherin or Gryffindor, using the most idiotic logic. “Look at his messy hair! It’s like a mane. Definitely Gryffindor.” “Have you seen his green eyes? That’s a Slytherin!”

They split into teams, broadly made up of those who thought he would be in Gryffindor or in Slytherin. A few outliers insisted that everyone consider Ravenclaw because of his thick round glasses, and someone else suggested Hufflepuff because Harry seemed like someone who wouldn’t belong in any house (Harry had stared blankly at that student for a while).

Anyone who wasn’t completely absorbed in the debate might have observed that the Gryffindor and Slytherin houses were evenly shuffled between the two sides, just like when they were divided by chocolates, siblings, and pets. Avery and Longbottom were side by side, firing off all of Harry’s superficial Slytherin qualities and grinning at each other.

Harry silently watched on, an amused and somewhat concerned smile curling across his sun-flushed face.

Tom wandered over to Team Gryffindor.

∞

The first-years had all finished showering by the time Lestrange and Avery returned to the common room.

Warrington quickly descended on them, her heavy steps growing dangerously as she neared. “What did he want with you?”

Three other Slytherin boys, who had come down from their room, paused curiously.

“Are you talking about that flying instructor?” asked Rosier.

Lestrange and Avery glanced at each other, matching expressions of bemusement.

Avery answered both of the questions. “Potter only pulled us aside after class to ask us if he could call us by our first names.”

At this, Tom couldn’t help but look up from his history reading from where he sat by the fireplace.

“He said something else too,” Lestrange added. “He told us, ‘You are not defined by your future actions.’ Or something in that way.”

“And what did you say?” Warrington tapped her foot expectantly.

Avery rolled his eyes. “That he could. Obviously. Potter’s handing out of points is too good to get on his bad side.”

Rosier, Mulciber, and Dolohov all lowered their schoolbags on a nearby table, seemingly abandoning whatever they had been about to do in favor of talking over each other.

“Why does he care about your first names?”

“What do you mean about the points?”

“What was his class like?”

At the last question, Warrington, Avery, and Lestrange shared a look. “Strange,” they answered together.

Just then, the door opened and a group of second years poured in from the hall.

“Going somewhere?” asked Walburga Black with her obsidian eyes peering down an upturned aristocratic nose.

“Just talking about how strange the new flying instructor is,” said Dolohov.

Black did not look the least bit interested, but her friend, Winky Crockett, who was a dark scrawny girl with coil-like black hair curtaining one eye, paused at that. “Oh, is he nice at all?”

“He’s very nice or very foolish.” Lestrange shrugged. “He gives points easier than father gives out orders to the servants.”

“Probably foolish,” drawled Black, wishing to leave and tugging at her riveted friend to no avail. “I heard some people say he jumped out a sixth-floor window earlier today.”

“I’d believe that,” exclaimed Avery. “During lessons today, all he did was show us how to fall!”

“Fall?” Mulciber’s nose wrinkled. “But it’s a flying class!”

Rosier, who had been the most excited to show off his flying skills, visibly deflated. “No flying? Is he actually a good teacher?”

“It was an interesting class,” Warrington assured. She went on to retell the events with the help of Avery and Lestrange’s interjections.

By the end of that, even Walbulga Black had stopped trying to pull Crockett away. “But he only asked you two for permission to use your first names?” She was staring at Avery and Lestrange, who shrugged in response.

Everyone had been so absorbed in the conversation that Tom’s dagger glare at the two Slytherins went unnoticed. At least until Lestrange turned around and called, “Riddle! You’re familiar with Potter, aren’t you? Do you know what he meant by that?”

Tom gently shut his history book on the same page it had been since the two returned from Harry’s summons. To say that he did not know what was going through Harry’s head was to lower himself to everyone else’s level despite having lived with the wizard for a year and a half. It was also, unfortunately, the truth.

“Harry is surprisingly clever.” Tom reveled in his natural usage of Harry's first name, which had the added result of his peers widening their eyes. “He must’ve noticed something you did during class… Well, he has a sharp eye for certain things. It’d be smart to watch yourself in the future.”

After all, of all the students Harry could have chosen, he should have asked Tom to stay behind. He must have been desperately craving Tom’s company so much in the past few days upon coming to Hogwarts. Since he didn’t choose Tom, it must’ve been something bad that Tom’s two classmates had done. Harry couldn’t possibly have any reason to prefer their company over Tom’s.

Avery and Lestange paled. “I see.” Avery nodded, beginning the glorious mistake of overestimating Harry. “What a cunning man! That whole thing with the cat at the Welcoming Feast must be another one of his acts to look silly!”

It wasn’t.

Tom chewed his lips and drew his brows together perfectly. “Harry can be very stubborn. Whatever it was that he’s targeting you two for…” He paused to let Avery and Lestrange look suitably worried. “I’ll talk to him. If it’s me…” His lips pressed flat with fake confliction. “I’m pretty good with words, so if it’s me, he might listen.”

A thin veil of relief descended over their expressions.

Tom felt a sharp smile grow and quickly nudged it into something closer to kindness. He rubbed his neck the same way Harry tended to do when he was awkward. “We Slytherins help each other out, right?”

The reactions to this were as good as he hoped. Tom almost laughed.

“We’ll be having his class tomorrow,” said Mulciber, invigorated, “so we’ll see for ourselves what he’s like.”

Tom’s housemates had quickly adopted an intrigue for Harry that was far too strong for his liking. They unashamedly asked Tom more about what he liked and disliked, his fears and weaknesses. With every question that Tom did not have an answer for, he grew increasingly annoyed, coming closer to the realization that he did not know Harry as well as he thought.

“I noticed it earlier in class,” said Warrington. “You’re pretty familiar with Potter. You lived with him, right? But you’re not actually family?”

Tom kept the instinctive souring at the notion of ‘family’ to the dark depths of his stomach. “Not at all,” he laughed.

“What exactly is your relationship then?”

His hand fell from his neck much like the smile on his face.

They stared.

Tom could never explain it in a way that they would understand. Not that he didn’t know or lacked the articulation to convey the nature of his and Harry’s bond. It was simply that whatever they had transcended any ordinary relationship.

Harry was too reckless to be a parent and too dependable to be written off as a pet. They argued far too much to be friends and had gone through far too much to be mere acquaintances. Perhaps the best way to put it was to call them life companions, though he felt it was still somehow lacking.

The waiting stares had either grown disinterested or more interested in Tom’s lack of an immediate answer.

“He’s my guardian,” Tom answered simply.

∞∞∞

“Well,” said the old Headmaster at the head of the stone table, “if there’s nothing else to go over, shall we head to dinner?”

The entire staff meeting had been barely half an hour, and Harry felt silly for getting so worked up about it in the days leading up. It was mostly to do with reviewing student performances and progress, delegating prefect tasks, and splitting Hogsmeade chaperone schedules. Harry had gotten to present his schedule for Quidditch tryouts and had offered to repair the broken bludgers and sluggish snitches in the back of the storage closet. Uncharacteristically pleased with himself, he felt he could survive meetings like this happening on the first Friday of every month just fine.

Chairs had just begun scrapping on the stone floor when Pringle raised his hand importantly, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows as though to show off his toned forearms. “I’ve only got a few reports of staff misdemeanors.” He tapped his perfectly straight stack of papers with his perfectly manicured fingers. “Unfortunately, I did not prepare a report for Professor Mopsus regarding his absence in today’s meeting…”

“Perhaps I can save you the trouble,” said Dumbledore pleasantly. Today, he was dressed in gaudy lilac robes. He adjusted his spectacles to better contain his twinkling gaze. “Mopsus had been assisting me with a recent divination puzzle. On the way here, I noticed he was too ill to walk straight, so I urged him to rest.”

Pringle hummed none too happily, remarking that the divination professor would have to provide a written note of this mysterious ailment before the next meeting. He carried on with addressing his papers. “It would seem the learning curve for a new Hogwarts professor has become quite steep this year,” he sneered. “There have been more incidents in this past week than in the past century. Silvanus Kettleburn with four violations. The careless handling of chimeras, endangering the safety of students, missing three consecutive days of classes, and neglecting of pet.”

Harry, who was much too hungry to remember that he was now a faculty member like the other professors who filled the seats of the long table, only startled into attention when his name was spoken.

“For Harry Potter,” Pringle announced with a mean glint in his ocean blue eyes, “seven violations.” He tapped seven sheets of paper loudly on the table. "A new record.”

Harry felt as though he had just crashed into a whomping willow tree, gotten whomped, and was facing expulsion.

Everyone was suddenly looking at him.

“Firstly, flying a broom indoors is strictly prohibited, yet on the first day of classes, a great number of students reported with wide-scale panic that they witnessed Mr. Potter jump out of a window while mounted on a broom.”

Harry thought ‘a great number’ was wildly conflating the narrative. In fact, Pringle was obviously taking much more joy in reading his report on Harry than he had when it was about Kettleburn.

“This brings me to the next violation. The improper treatment of Hogwarts infrastructure, disrespectfully treating the windows as a door.” He glanced above the papers in his hands to shoot a look at him. “An interesting example to set for our impressionable students.”

Harry looked down the length of the table to search for anyone else who noticed that blatant sneering, but it seemed Pringle’s blessed handsomeness made it look somehow nice. He tried to remember what it was he did that earned him such an attack, and he could only think of their first argument over Mortdevol.

“Unauthorized teaching of materials outside of his subject.” He paused again to shoot another nasty look at Harry. “It would seem someone is trying to take over your class, Professor Stitch.”

Harry turned to meet the Charms Professor’s eyes, trying to convey how that was an outrageously untrue accusation.

Violeta Stitch was a boisterous witch who had the nervous tick of bunching her low pigtails in either hand.

“Teaching the slowing charm to all the first year students.” Pringle clicked his tongue.

Stitch let go of her bright purple hair. “Well, that’s less work for me, then. Ta, Potter.” She had a universally friendly smile that currently seemed tinged with tension.

Harry gratefully inclined his head, but Pringle seemed reignited.

“A mere flight instructor is not qualified or authorized to teach first years spells from the core subjects!” he hissed. “He doesn’t know the proper way to correct form or incantation, which will lead to a habit of bad spellcasting over time. To teach first years a second-year spell like that before they’ve learned the responsibility of using magic only brews mischief! First years are the most troublesome of the lot. Just yesterday, I was the victim of three slowing charms by those malicious brats!”

“Sounds like they can cast the charm perfectly fine then,” said Harry before he could help himself. “I’d say they deserved points for creative target practice too.”

A number of professors choked on their own surprise, while the ones who weren’t listening blinked rapidly back into attention. He felt familiar stares boring into him, the younger versions of Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Slughorn, specifically. His shoulders hunched, shrinking on himself self-consciously.

Pringle’s face contorted with rage in a way that still retained his handsome integrity, and Harry hated him more for that. “What they got was good old fashioned punishment to beat the insolence from their heads.”

Harry’s brows furrowed at that. Before he could decide what to make of it, Pringle continued more brightly, “This reminds me of the next violation: abuse of house points.”

Immediately, the neutral to pitying looks along the table turned cold.

Pringle looked exceedingly pleased by this change of tides. “House points are reserved for rewarding exemplary behavior, yet it is clear from the way the points fill up after every flying class that Mr. Potter has been abusing our Hogwarts rewards system, inflating the value of these points to earn favoritism among the students.”

Harry spluttered. “I wasn't!”

“How then would you explain the sudden jumps in the house glasses?” He flipped his brunette waves victoriously. “What could mere first years do that would earn even more points than the studious seventh years?”

Harry’s eyes instinctively searched for Professor Dumbledore, but the wizard was much younger and much too different than the Headmaster that Harry knew. Twinkling eyes beside, he had no reason to come to Harry’s aid. Tongue-bitten, Harry’s eyes dropped to his lap to avoid the hostile stares from the other professors.

A hot flash of embarrassment and anger swept through him as Pringle smugly shuffled his papers and continued. “Indeed, I question much of our flying instructor’s teaching methods. In fact, he demonstrates his Neglect of Duty in his very first classes by not letting any of the students even pick up a broom. He also” — Pringle flipped to the next page — “made unauthorized enchantments on the school brooms.”

Even within the shroud of deep loathing, Harry had to allow himself a moment to wonder how Pringle had managed to investigate all of these offenses.

“And finally, several accounts of destruction of school property due to the neglect of his pet: Lord Mortdevol. A suit of armor missing a gauntlet and in shambles on the first-floor corridor, the paintings of Albertus Magnus and Sir Thomas Browne shredded, the library book Mutus Liber—“

Harry watched his blunted nails press into his palms. “Curiosity…”

Pringle, with his ever-sharp hearing, stopped. “What?”

Harry’s eyes rose from his lap and returned with burning conviction. “Their curiosity.”

The caretaker lowered his papers. When he spoke again, it was a small, flustered, and confused sound. “What?”

“First years have little skill, discipline, and sense of responsibility compared to the older years,” Harry said. “What they do have to make up for it is their sense of curiosity, and they have that in magnitude. It’s what drives their desire to learn and their eagerness to be taught." Beneath the table, his hands were bunching up his robes. Heat prickled up his spine, washing away the chills from the icy stares along the table. 

Harry bravely continued, “It takes bravery to expose your own ignorance in front of people you’ve never met before, and it’s also a display of resourcefulness to seek answers from a more knowledgeable resource. I give the students a house point for that.” He spoke miraculously clearly and steadily, not betraying the fact that he was already thinking of packing his bags and resigning before they could sack him.

Although he had not lowered his eyes from Pringle’s since he began, he also could not bring himself to look at any of his other colleagues. “My other offenses were done of ignorance, not any maliciousness. I can only apologize for not reading the Code of Conduct, but I was only trying to teach my students the importance of trust first and foremost.”

“Trust,” spat Pringle recovering slightly from Harry’s speech, “is not in your lesson objective. You were hired to teach flying. It’s your job to stop your students from falling, not theirs.”

“I taught them to trust me, each other, and themselves,” Harry said steely. “Curiosity, bravery, resourcefulness, and trustworthiness are all valuable traits of Hogwarts. There doesn’t need to be a rule to teach that.”

Pringle’s face was finally screwed up to the point that it turned unbecoming. “Perhaps, but Flying Instructors are not expected to teach such things, and they are certainly not qualified to do so.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. He spoke through his teeth. “I admit I shouldn’t have taught a charms spell without checking first, but I didn’t know—“

“It’s in plain print, all on the Code of—“

“Now, now, Apollyon,” said Professor Dippet, with a feeble little arm raise. “Mr. Potter was not informed about the Code of Conduct when he took the position. He couldn’t be expected—“

“Any respectable teacher doesn’t need to be told how to act appropriately.”

“I wonder,” huffed Harry heatedly, “if any other respectable teacher gets this level of inspection, or if yours is unusually selective.”

“Of course,” Pringle said with a false smile that was quite reminiscent of a certain pink toad Harry once knew, “every professor at Hogwarts is held under the same standard, although I have reason to believe you’re not impartial to favoritism yourself. Don’t think that we will tolerate your inappropriate relationships with your students! Once I have enough evidence…”

Harry stared. “What?”

Pringle turned his nose up, and even from this angle, he looked more handsome than Harry from his best side. “It has come to my attention that only some Slytherin students get the privilege of being called by their first name by you, a teacher. Furthermore, one student from Slytherin in particular seems to have an unnaturally close relationship with you. Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

Harry twitched at the name, and his reaction only helped to support Pringle’s point.

“Such treatment of these students,” Pringle enunciated with so much passion, spittle flew, “is a serious violation of Hogwarts policies. How can you explain your relationship with these students?”

Harry answered. Or, more accurately, he tried to answer, with his mouth soundlessly closing and opening, lips shaping the words, They’re future Death Eaters to me unless I use their first names. How could he explain that, in his attempt to treat those kids separately from their future selves to be less biased against them, he had inadvertently made others think he was biased for them?

Harry couldn’t even begin to explain Tom. Tom’s happiness was Harry’s hope, and his nature was Harry’s despair. With how lowly the boy viewed family, it was honestly an honor that Tom stubbornly refused to call him “father” or something. Not that Harry wanted him to. But if they weren’t family, what were they doing living together all this time?

When his mouth fell motionless with the lack of an answer, the table settled in a silence so thick that the next startling sound came from the head of the table. It was the growling of the Headmaster’s stomach.

Dippet cleared his throat. “Mr. Potter, I’ll show you the appeal process later. For now, let’s break for dinner.”

∞

Harry stabbed his fork into his sausage and visciously mashed the length into a meaty pulp.

“That sounds really horrible, Harry.” Neville frowned and set down his mug next to the ever-towering stacks of research on Grimmauld Place's dining table. "I'm sorry the Trust Fall class ended up like that."

Harry flapped his hand at his friend's dejected expression. "One person, the biggest prick of the school mind you, hated it. The first years all seemed to like it. Your ideas are brilliant, trust me." He was eating dinner in his room because the sight of the other professors nauseated him and the sight of Pringle put out his appetite. He and Neville had been talking about the Quidditch lessons that Neville had helped him plan before the unpleasant Pringle became the main discussion. He shoveled the mash into his mouth and spoke muffled. “So, what about you?”

Neville shook his head. “Not much better, I’m afraid.” He shared the woes of being the youngest member of Hogwarts staff and retold the few instances when the famous war hero was so distracting it had interrupted a few of Professor Sprout’s herbology lessons.

Harry decided, between getting nitpicked by a spiteful caretaker and getting hounded by his own fame and achievements, he much preferred his own situation.

They had been talking about a couple sixth years who had recently taken to stalking the poor Herbology Assistant when the thumping sets of feet announced the arrival of Ron and Hermione.

After ranting to the two and Neville about Pringle for the second time in the span of ten minutes, Harry found himself marginally mollified.

“If it makes you feel any better,” offered Ron, “I found out from Mum and Dad’s old pictures that Pringle turns scarred with patches of baldness.”

“Good,” said Harry vindictively. “That man is unfairly handsome.” He hadn’t thought anyone could look more attractive than Cedric or Tom Riddle from Dumbledore’s memories, but at least Pringle’s personality made up for it.

Theodore Nott, who had been descending the stairs with a stack of papers in hand, drew closer to the two-way mirror. “Oh, have you finally found a new love interest? Draco’s advice finally—“

“No,” Harry growled, stabbing his fork hard into the plate. It was still a sore subject.

He avoided thinking about Ginny’s memory loss if he could help it, much the same way he avoided romantic relationships in general. It was always weird to know that a pretty witch he’d met at a pub was someone's grandma in the future or, if not, she’d turn out to be that crazy old crup lady, or worse yet she’d die a tragic death that Harry couldn’t prevent because of the closed causal effect on his actions. No one really interested Harry anyway, and certainly not Pringle.

“We’ve just gotten back from talking with Headmistress McGonogall,” Hermione said.

Harry quickly pushed his plate aside and drew out his journal. In his most recent entry, they had been testing the time travel device’s effect on memories. As much as Hermione wished for Harry’s existence in the past to be as untraceable as possible, such a thing was simply impossible for his natural disposition.

Ever since Harry saved two kids from a human sacrifice ritual, his watch did something it had never done before. The small meter next to the three subdials moved one tick. His friends had located the grown-up children in their present time, an old witch who owned a muggle antique store and an old wizard who had retired from world travels.

After some vague questioning, Luna found that both still remembered Harry and could recall his physical attributes. Interestingly, both of them seemed incapable of recognizing that the Harry who saved them from the ritual and the Harry who was the boy-who-lived was the same person.

The team then began looking into how Harry was written into history. Because he had never finished the Auror Training Program, his name was erased. His involvement with the Ouroboros Sacrifice Case was kept classified. His quidditch alias had the unfortunate effect of temporarily boosting the popularity of the name ‘Roonil’, but it quickly died out when the Chudley Cannons continued losing every match since Harry quit.

Even the record of Hogwarts Staff in the school year of 1938-1939 mysteriously smudged at all the convenient places. If Harry James Potter ever existed in the 1930s, there was no public record of where he came from and what became of him. (Harry’s friends certainly have gone countless hours looking.)

But memories are alive.

And they had a new lead.

With Neville being at Hogwarts as the Herbology Teaching Assistant, he had the opportunity to ask Professor McGonagall about her memories of a certain flight instructor in 1938.

“It’s as Neville said,” Hermione surmised from her interview notes. “She remembers someone being the flight instructor, but she can’t remember your name or anything else about you. We couldn’t find anything else since she rejected the idea of letting Malfoy perform Legilimency on her…” Hermione's expression crumpled, and her fingers began combing the hair product out of her neat hair until it unraveled the true bushy texture within seconds. “She got really cold when I asked her that. To suggest something so invasive… She must think horribly of me now…”

Harry thought about the time he lost Gryffindor house points and that other time he lost Gryffindor house points, and that time he got permanently banned from playing Quidditch, and that time he and Ron crashed a flying car into the whomping willow, and that time he almost killed Malfoy. He wondered if the fact that McGonagall could still look at him after all that would comfort Hermione. The effort became unnecessary because Ron had already somehow cheered Hermione up in the time Harry spent with his flashbacks of McGonagall’s disappointment.

“If you think about it,” said Hermione, “Professor Dumbledore and McGonagall have met you there already, and they’ve met you again in your boy-who-lived era. Surely they would mention something about a wizard who looks just like you existing before your birth. You didn’t even change your name for crying out loud!”

Harry scratched his chin and wondered if it wasn’t too late to change his name to something like Harry Evans, but it seemed like the wristwatch would magically cover up his existence no matter what name he chose anyway. And all the paperwork he’d have to do… He shook his head and began scribbling in a new entry in his journal. “So this time travel device not only counteracts my actions in the past, it can also erase people’s memories of me?”

“For the most part,” said Nott, leafing through the interview notes. “Forgotten memories don’t actually disappear. They just become harder to access when dormant. That’s why it would have been helpful to have someone else look through Headmistress McGonagall’s memories when she couldn’t recall them on her own. Functionally, it seems the wristwatch will suppress memories of you.” Then he shot a sharp look at him. “So long as you don’t save anyone else’s lives. Such a thing does tend to make it rather difficult for people to forget you.”

Harry tipped the rest of his pumpkin juice down his throat and leaned back on his couch. His eyes ran lazily over the stack of research books he had yet to read. “D’you think Tom remembers me?”

“When he turns into Voldemort?”

Harry nodded.

Hermione’s eyes went pitying. “You're still bothered by that, huh?” When Harry didn’t respond, she continued, “I think it would be very hard to forget someone who you’ve lived with for almost two years.”

“You also saved his life,” Ron reminded him, not looking very pleased by the fact. “Don’t be surprised. You-Know-Who was insane and heartless. Even if he did remember you, he probably didn’t care enough to not murder your parents.”

Harry tried to not take it personally. He wondered what Voldemort was thinking when he saw Harry as a baby. Did he recognize him? Did he realize that he was about to kill Harry’s parents? Did he hesitate?

“So Harry,” Ron began very loudly. “Now that you’re a teacher, which house is the best?”

Harry blinked his focus back on the mirror.

Ron had a faltering smile plastered on his face, and Harry supposed he must’ve been spacing out again.

“Gryffindor, right?”

Harry glanced at Neville, and they shared a long look. “Surprisingly, Slytherin.”

Ron didn’t look like he heard him at first, as though anything that wasn’t ‘Gryffindor’ was filtered out as a non-answer. “Harry, mate,” he said, after finally acknowledging Harry’s words. “If Riddle is manipulating you or corrupting you somehow, you need to learn to recognize it.”

“I’m being serious,” said Harry with an eye roll. “Generally speaking, they are the best behaved.”

“So is Percy,” grumbled Ron, “and nobody liked him.”

“Arthur and Molly like him,” Harry pointed out. “When you actually have to deal with a group of kids, the suck-ups like Hermione are really the best.”

“Hey!” cried Hermione.

Harry sent her an affectionate yet unapologetic look. “The other three houses talk too much, it makes Slytherins look like angels. Whenever professors are looking anyway”

“But you know better,” Ron whinged.

Nott shook his head. “Slytherins have always been the best house if none of the Dark Lord’s propaganda happened. Everyone’s always been biased against us because of it.”

“Biased,” Ron exclaimed. “We must be remembering Snape differently then!”

“Everyone’s biased,” said Nott. “Even McGonagall.”

Hermione, who usually held herself above such pointless debates, swooped into the Headmistress’s defense.

It was during their squabble about who was biased about whom that Harry’s door swung open.

Tom climbed up the stone steps of the entranceway with the self-invitation of someone who lived there. His eyes immediately found Harry reclined on his couch, and his legs carried him to the opposite armchair that he’d more or less claimed as his own.

“Aren’t you supposed to be eating with your house?” Harry asked casually as his insides clenched. If Tom happened to turn his head just slightly, he would be looking right at Harry’s time travel research books. They were already in his peripheral vision.

“You didn’t come to dinner.” Tom settled a look of disdain at Harry’s wristwatch where the two-way mirror was still open. “Who else would stop you from talking to your own reflection all night if I wasn’t here?”

Harry’s seeker eyes latched onto Tom’s mouth the moment he started talking. There was a small reddish something stuck to his cheek.

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Ron called from the mirror.

Hermione praised him for reciting the muggle phrase correctly.

“Does he visit your room like this often?” Neville asked.

“It’s only been this and two other times,” Harry answered, much to Tom’s displeasure.

“Harry,” said Tom in a manner that would have been delicate if anyone else had said it, “Don’t you want to put away the mirror and talk to a real person? It’s the polite thing to do when you have a guest.”

“So he still thinks you’re delusional?” Nott asked, a hint of a smirk forming on his lips.

Harry sighed. To his friends (which, at this point in time, he supposed included Nott), he said, “I’ll call next week.” Upon the snap of the watch lid, he got to his feet to carry a tea tray over, using that as an excuse to relocate the time travel research books under the table. “You know, even if I had been talking to my imaginary friends, it’s still rude to interrupt someone’s conversation.”

Tom still had that smudge of food on his mouth’s edge when he replied, “What could have been so interesting that I interrupted?”

“We were talking about which house is the best.”

“Slytherin then,” Tom said easily. “Not much of a conversation there.”

Harry shrugged. “Why do you suppose that?”

“Because I’m in it of course.” Tom said this plainly, as though it was a matter of fact, not opinion. “Why are you laughing? Most of the professors already adore me, so it must be true.”

“Alright then,” Harry agreed with mirth. He sat back on his couch, not bothering to pour any tea because the teapot had been empty anyway. “So what’s the real reason that the most popular first year in Hogwarts has come to grace me with his presence?”

Tom didn’t visit him without a reason. On the first day, which was the day after the Welcoming Feast, he had effortlessly found Harry’s room to ask him how he had become the Flying Instructor and how long he’d been keeping it a secret. The second time he’d visited him was Tuesday evening, and he had interrogated Harry about his relationship with Avery, Lestrange, Rosier, Mulciber, and Dolohov. Once he was satisfied with Harry’s answers, he left immediately to go back to his work on charming the entire school.

Now that Harry addressed it directly, Tom did not continue the pretense, much the same way the speck of food had not fallen from his face since he’d started talking. “What’s my mother’s name?”

Harry blinked and began instinctively guarding his mind with Occlumency, despite the Occlumency runes now carved on his glasses courtesy of Nott. “…Merope Riddle.”

A flash of disgust crossed Tom’s face, before he continued neutrally, “Her maiden name.”

Eyes narrowing, Harry asked, “Why do you want to know? I thought you had disowned her because she wasn’t ‘worthy’.” He used finger quotes to punctuate the last word.

There was a moment in which they simply stared at each other, and Harry wished he knew Legilimency because he could just tell that thoughts and schemes were flitting about behind Tom’s dark eyes even if he couldn’t read them. He also wished to know what was on Tom’s mouth. Tomato sauce? Pumpkin juice?

The boy’s eyes dropped to his lap where his hands had begun wringing. “People keep asking me where my parents are if I’m living with you. I don’t know what to tell them when they ask me about what kind of people they were. I hate them, but even I want to know a little bit more…”

Harry’s eyes became slits of skepticism. “Her name was Merope Gaunt.”

Tom’s soft and pitiful eyes grew wide and round and still fixed on his lap. His mouth—which still had that little speck of something—opened in a silent repetition of the word, ‘Gaunt’.

Somewhere in the back of Harry’s mind, Malfoy’s voice arose. You fucked up, Potter. He sighed, rubbed his forehead, and jumped when Tom stood up to leave. “Er—“

Tom paused.

Harry flailed his hands. “Erm. I’ve been thinking, hypothetical thoughts, you know. So I wanted to know what you think about something.”

That Tom hadn’t continued to leave was Harry’s permission to continue, “Hypothetically, if you met a baby that looked just like me, you know, hair, eyes, glasses—”

“A baby with glasses?” Tom’s brows rose. “Quite early to ruin your eyesight.”

“No glasses then, whatever,” Harry said waving his hand dismissively. “I mean years from now, if you met a baby that was just like me, even down to the name, what would you do?”

Tom stared.

Harry returned the stare and began imagining that if he was a Legilimens, he would hear Tom’s remorseless murderous thoughts in Voldemort’s dangerously soft voice.

“But it’s not you, is it?” Tom said finally. “It’s all just appearance. The baby wouldn’t have any of your personality traits or characteristics. It wouldn’t have any of your memories, and it wouldn’t know me either. It’s just another random baby, why should I treat it any differently?”

Harry blinked. Rapid fluttering blinking. He had spent countless late nights staring at his curtain drapes, asking himself why the future hadn't changed, why Voldemort would still try to kill him after everything they’d been through. He had tried to keep his mind away from how fruitless and unrewarding Plan F had been, tried not to snap at Tom for a betrayal the boy hadn’t yet committed whenever he saw him.

But Tom’s answer was exactly the same as Harry's feelings towards Ginny now that she lost her memories of their committed romantic relationship. She wasn’t his Ginny, so her betrayal wasn’t real. What was real then? If he returned—When he returned to the future, would all of his relationships be fake except those who had their timethreads? If his parents miraculously came back to life from Plan F, would they be real family even if Harry had no memories of his upbringing?

Harry quietly went to see Tom off at the door and was startled out of his thoughts by a small impatient huff.

“Stop thinking so much, Harry.” Tom's lips ghosted up into a faintly amused grin, which was probably the most genuine smile he’d had all day. “It’s really not good for you.”

It startled a laugh from Harry, bubbling the carefree amusement through his overburdened mind. He pinched Tom’s very real cheek and rubbed that annoying smudge off the corner of his mouth with satisfaction. How surreal it was to be standing with Tom-not-yet-Voldemort-Riddle and finally reach acceptance with the fact that he would inevitably become Voldemort. And it somehow didn't make their time together any less real. “Brat,” he said, finally unreserving in his fondness. 

Chapter Text

An hour or so into the game, Harry looked up at the blinding sun, black hair swept out of thick Quidditch goggles by the wind as he flew around the pitch. Slytherin had scored another goal, and some of the stands roared. The sun rays drawfed the rest of the world in a curtain of light until a far cloud, caught in a fast wind current, floated across its path. He blinked the sun spots away until he was sure that he wasn’t imagining the persistent glint of gold. The snitch. 

The cloud passed, and the sun enveloped the fluttering orb in its light once again.

He took off. The noise from the stands fell away as he neared, closer, closer, and it wasn’t even moving apart from the beating wings, like it was frozen in time. Fingers curled gently around the fluttering ball, and Harry made a sharp turn downwards, fist raised and face flushed in triumph. 

His wide grin lowered when he neared enough to notice the muted reactions from the stands. He looked around—the other players, and everyone too, seemed to be staring at him. He looked at the score count. Gryffindor was still 150 short, as though his capture hadn’t been added. Bewildered, he looked back to the team, met eyes with the Gryffindor Seeker—

The realization hit him like a bludger. His face lit aflame, he curled in on his broomstick. Absolutely mortified, he blew a triple whistle for a marked timeout. 

One by one, the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams joined him on the ground, leaving behind little flag illusions that indicated their game positions.

He couldn’t look at them. He chose instead to search for a nicely sized hole in the pitch to crawl and die in. When he did look at them—because the silence was so painful, he’d rather it be over with—some couldn’t meet his eyes, some were wide-eyed with disbelief, and some were pressing their lips together so tightly that Harry knew they were smiling without even seeing an upturned lip.

Harry groaned internally and buried his hot face in his rough referee gloves. The snitch fluttered unhelpfully between his fingers. Finally, he straightened with the courage of a thousand Gryffindors, willing his voice to project evenly. “I, er, noticed the snitch wasn’t moving, so I’ll have to charm it again” — he ignored the unconvinced snickering — “We’ll do a marked restart, so return to your positions.”

Everyone nodded, some openly grinning, and Harry blew the whistle again. Perhaps a little too hard.

It wasn’t so bad, relatively speaking—he had survived the yule ball after all. The resulting whispering and giggling and teasing from the students at his blunder wouldn’t have been worth more than three mortified nights of unrest if only it didn’t keep happening. 

Whenever he might absently gaze out his window at the tree line where the looming trees of the forbidden forest grazed Hogwarts grounds, he would almost imagine the great Whomping Willow tree rooted on that strangely bare expanse of grass. 

His eyes would stray further, lingering on that little thatched hut for long moments as he struggled to process that the dark, bulking figure who often stalked around the area wasn’t Hagrid. The current Hogwarts Gamekeeper, Ogg, lacked Hagrid’s bubbling speech and love for the absurdly large pumpkins that he kept piled just a bit off of his beloved garden. Harry knew this, logically. 

His own words echoed in his mind, a soft memory coming forward.

There's no Hogwarts without you, Hagrid.

There really wasn’t, not Harry’s Hogwarts anyway, and he needed to stop confusing things.

He needed to stop entering the Great Hall and letting his legs carry him towards the Gryffindor table before his brain woke up to the fact that Ron wasn’t sitting at his usual spot, stuffing his face with the pie, the delayed realization forcing his faltering feet to continue on toward the high table as though that was Harry’s intended destination all along.

Harry seriously needed to stop calling some of the Quidditch equipment dodgy and proclaiming himself absolutely knackered at the end of classes (and using any other future-dated phrases) because his students, who love asking him questions, would latch onto that like devil’s snare. He especially needed to stop calling fouls that weren’t fouls yet and talking about Professional Quidditch players who weren’t playing yet. 

Unlike Tom, these kids took Harry’s words seriously even when Harry didn’t take himself seriously half the time, like forgetting that he was an instructor, not a student (so he really should start calling Dumbledore and McGonagall by their first names). 

His students trusted him well enough to follow to his instructions, ask for advice, and even share their thoughts, but there was a line of professional respect here that was becoming blurred—maybe because Harry was so unused to his own authority or maybe it was the fact that half of his students called him by his first name.

Harry, where do you want us to put the brooms?

Harry, can you see if I’m doing this swivel right?

Harry, what’s your favorite Quidditch Team?

“Harry, what do you think of that idea?”

He was fastening the old padlock on the broomshed with a grinding metal click. Most of his Thursday class students had drifted off the flying lawn, making their trek back to the castle. The browning grass was now bathed in warm light from the low-hanging sun grazing the top of the Quidditch Stadium to the west. 

There were five lingering students waiting on his answer, their eyes sparkling brighter than the sun. 

“Do you like it?”

Harry pinched the hem of his white glove and pulled it back in place. “I think it sounds like a fun idea,” — their faces beamed — “but a first year’s Quidditch game is going to need more than five players.”

“Lots of my housemates are interested,” exclaimed Enid Pettigrew. Her Hufflepuff friend nodded vigorously.

“Mine too!” Jean Hawkworth and her two Ravenclaw friends joined in the enthusiastic nodding.

“And I’m sure some Gryffindors and Slytherins would want to play too.”

“Oh, please, Harry?”

Harry considered them, their sweat-stuck hair, vibrating hands, and blindingly hopeful smiles splitting their flushed faces. “No bludgers,” he said sternly. It didn’t take long for his serious expression to crack with a smile. “If you can get enough players, I’ll ask the headmaster.”

They jumped, whooped, and punched the air before speeding off towards the castle with their arms spanned out like gliding wings. Distantly shouting, “Thanks, Harry!” and “You’re the best!”

Although he had given them permission to call him by his first name so that they didn't focus on his Potter surname, Harry should have probably discouraged their informalities with him. It was already starting to get out of hand. Just a few days ago, a sixth-year Gryffindor student whistled at him when he was going about returning his books to the library.

“Hey there, Professor Handsome!”

Harry was better now at suppressing his outward reaction.

“Are you offering any private lessons tonight?”

He ignored her and carried on walking in the opposite direction down the corridor. The comments had been much tamer in the beginning, something like You’re really fit, Professor, how are you single?

“I need practice riding—“

Because of Harry’s first violently blushing and stuttering reaction, the older year students started taking perverse delight in flustering him.

“I hear your broomstick’s the best in the school!”

“Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Pius,” Harry growled out, trying to sound as unaffected as possible. 

It had taken three more of those progressively worsening comments for Harry to realize the students didn’t actually fancy him, and therefore, they wouldn’t be devastated by his callused reprimand.

Rather than showing remorse at the House points loss, Pius slapped her friend’s hand in triumph. “Worth it!”

Her friend whispered something rather loudly to Pius’s gem-adorned ear, though, from the other end of the corridor, Harry couldn’t make out the words. Pius perked back up, “Do I get detention with you, too?!”

Harry thought about taking a hundred points from Gryffindor, but Pius’s sudden bubbling cackle reverberating on the castle stones made him pause. The two Gryffindor's plain facial features had turned remarkably implike, and they were almost unrecognizable.

“We’re only joking, Professor! See you around!”

They ran off before he could take the points (he still hadn’t taken any points in the following three days whenever he saw them).

Harry had sighed, thought about a different pair of cackling laughter, mischievous grins, and devilish streaks, and let the irritation transform into something nostalgic. 

These students were very lucky that Harry had a sense of humor. It also worked in their favor that he had a bad habit of comparing people to cope with his homesickness. The self-awareness halted his steps, and gloved fingers pressed to his lidded eyes. His sigh carried far in the quiet moon-lit corridor.

“Password?” 

Harry’s eyes snapped open.

The disgruntled Fat Lady blinked at him. “Wait, it’s you. Lost again, dear?”

Harry couldn’t restrain a groan, and it was a loud noise in the night. Old habits die harder than Gulping Plimpies. He apologized to the Fat Lady for disturbing her sleep for the third time since the start of the year. Each time it happened, it had been because he had stayed up in the library, trying to absorb any book that mentioned time travel. He’d read and reread books on some occassions until his tired eyes started hallucinating Hermione and Ron sitting across from him at their usual table, Hermione telling him off about procrastinating on a paper and Ron trying to distract him with a game of wizard's chess because he didn’t want to be the only one avoiding work. Yeah, Harry needed to stop doing that, too.

It was weird, the way Harry could just walk from Gryffindor tower to his private quarters long past curfew without needing to don his invisibility cloak. He dragged his hand along the walls as he walked, feeling the rough surface try to seep the warmth from his fingers the way the warmth was drained from the air. It was autumn, and although Harry’s soft exhale in the chilly deserted hall didn’t produce a cloud, it wouldn’t be much longer. 

The castle was hauntingly quiet, the air so still that he couldn’t hear the usual howling whistling from a passing gust. His footsteps and steady breathing were almost deafening. Below it all was another sound, a dull thump-thump-thump.

Someone’s heartbeat, maybe. His own, probably; the castle wouldn’t have a pulse.

Like this, it was easy to close his eyes and pretend he was sometime else. In the dead of night, Hogwarts corridors would always feel like this, it seemed. Someone like Malfoy would mutter about the eeriness. Luna would sigh about how serene it was. Ron would groan about how far it was to get to his bed. The moon would continue beaming gently on cloudless nights as always.

Harry would say the castle on a night like this felt a bit lonely.

It was weird how the world went on so unaffected while Harry felt like his life was spiraling. There were a lot of weird things about being a secret time traveler stuck in the past and hiding as a flying instructor. Someone was bound to realize it, sooner or later, realize that he didn’t—

“You don’t belong here.”

Harry almost missed a step, his hand flew out to steady his swaying frame on the cold stone banister. He looked over his shoulder.

Behind him, on the upper landing, hip leaning against the window sill, silver light washing over the figure like an ethereal being, was Apollyon Pringle. He had his perfectly chiseled jaw tilted upwards to look down the length of his straight and proportionate nosebridge at Harry. His steel blue eyes seemed to regard him like a bug under his shoe.

Startled as his sleep-deprived brain was by the sudden encounter, Harry blurted in response, “I know.”

Pringle’s brows furrowed, and he still looked effortlessly better than Harry even when vaguely confused. The caretaker’s crup sat like a statue at his feet, with only its forked tail whipping dangerously like a venomous snake from side to side.

A sigh escaped Harry’s flared nostrils, betraying the constant tension in his shoulders, the exhaustion weighing like shackles on his limbs, the longing for a distant time so palpable that it darkened the skin under his eyes. “What do you want, Pringle?”

Harry probably shouldn’t engage. It was that hour which was simultaneously too late and too early to deal with spiteful pricks who looked better than him. His filter wasn’t on, and it was too tempting to advise Pringle to enjoy looking at the mirror while he still could because, in good time, that luscious head of wavy hair was going to fall apart, and his flawless tanned skin would get turned ugly. Ridiculous. A mean, delirious giggle escaped Harry’s throat, and it grew at the sight of Pringle’s recoil. 

The crup growled low, and it was one of the least threatening things Harry had ever faced, which made him laugh even harder.

Pringle shook his head, and his fringe knew just the right ways to bounce. “You don’t even deserve to be here,” he turned to leave and spat, “freak.” 

The laughter died on Harry’s lips. 

Self-righteous strutting resounded from Pringle’s departure. Before Harry even reached the bottom landing, there was a shriek echoing through the castle, likely from students having been caught out of bed past curfew. 

You don’t belong here.

Harry shook his head. He didn’t need to be told that; it was a fact he lived with every day, so it didn’t bother him at all that Pringle decided to waste everyone’s oxygen to state the obvious. He wasn’t bothered by the way the other professors seemed to ignore him when he was in the room, or that Dumbledore was too busy to twinkle a glance indiscriminately in Harry’s direction because he was off doing something noble. Harry was used to people disliking him for shallow reasons and premature judgment. 

It wasn’t like Harry was staying here much longer anyway. So what if he didn’t belong here? So what if the other professors decided not to like him before even talking with him all because of Pringle’s badmouthing? Harry wasn’t bothered in the least. He didn’t hole himself up in the library on weekends, desperately searching for a way to get his life back, because he was bothered by any of that.

He’d be home soon—as soon as they figured out the solution to time travel—and in his world, Pringle was wasting away at Saint Mungo’s, according to Ron. So in the long run (because Harry’s life was literally in the long run), Pringle didn’t matter, and nothing else mattered.

So Harry wasn’t bothered by that.

“Is something bothering you?”

“No,” he growled. 

“Then why aren’t you paying attention?” Rapid foot tapping conveyed his companion’s annoyance.

Harry resurfaced from his thoughts to the face of Tom Riddle, in his usual seat just opposite of the coffee table. Two thick books sat in between them, and Tom hadn’t touched either, despite having brought them with him. There was something about the titles that tickled Harry’s brain. Tom was staring at him, head tilted.

Harry shrugged. “You know how I get whenever you start monologuing.”

The boy’s nose did a little offended wrinkle. “You get into that mood even when I’m not here to see it.”

Yeah, Harry conceded. He needed to stop doing that. “Sorry, right, you were visiting me this time to talk about…”

Tom looked very unimpressed. 

Harry couldn’t find it in himself to feel too guilty. Tom seemed to love the sound of his own voice so much, he probably enjoyed starting all over. This time, Harry raptly observed the drawling of Tom’s voice, the arch of his brow, and the flick of his fingers illustrating his words. 

It grounded him, weirdly enough. Pulled him away from the past and the future and rooted him right there in the present, with his knee bouncing idly and his mouth tilting up.

∞∞∞

Now that Harry was finally paying attention, Tom told him about the burden he had to carry as the brightest first year at Hogwarts.

The biggest problem was that, although Tom already knew that he was destined to be the best thing that’s ever happened to Hogwarts, none of the other students and professors knew that. This meant he had to take the time to prove something that should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain. And that was extremely tedious.

“Well, you’re only bringing this onto yourself,” said Harry with an unsympathetic grin. “Isn’t it already enough that you know your own greatness?”

Tom’s only response was to warn Harry not to interrupt him.

It had been a delicate balance of being the best first year without also inspiring envy amongst the other students, especially the other Slytherins. This was terribly tempting because Tom loved the envy, loved knowing that they knew that he was better. 

It was unfortunate that he needed as little resistance as possible in raising his House standing. So he modestly redirected all praises, saying some rubbish like, “Oh, I really couldn’t have done it without the constant support from my House” or “I’m just doing my part in representing the best parts of Slytherin!”

Harry’s expression screwed up, and he visibly shuddered. “Does that really work?”

Tom ignored his interruption.

Of course, it worked. House pride forced students to put aside any differences and focus on besting the other Houses. With how many points Tom had consistently earned since the Welcoming Feast, he was easily one of the more respected housemates in their year, even without the benefits of having a well-known family background. 

Although he was capitalizing on the House rivalry to keep a good relationship with his Slytherin peers, he still had to show the other houses that he was harmless and friendly. This meant that he had been running around, performing little favors, and being an overall angel with a benevolent smile plastered on his twitchy face for the better part of the last month.

“They’re not giving you a hard time, right?” Harry’s expression paled, his eyes had grown wide, and he’d begun worrying his lips.

Tom shook his head. It was nothing he couldn’t handle.

Harry didn’t look much relieved. “I know you can take care of yourself, but the other kids are sort of dim, you know? They’re not really thinking, so try not to take it to heart.” There was a strange, frantic quality in his voice. “If anything happens, you can tell me, and I’ll take care of it. Just don’t take it out on them, alright?”

Tom wondered what on earth Harry was getting so worked up about. He had to agree with the wizard on the part that they were all more than a bit dim, but that’s what made it so easy for Tom. Utilizing the House points to improve his reputation. Helping fellow first years of all Houses with the incantion of a particular charms spell—

“It’s Levi-o-sa, not Levios-a.”

Harry burst out laughing for a long while at that, arms around his midsection, tears forming at the corners of his eyes, breath wheezing out of his lungs.

—Memorizing little things about what people liked or disliked so that he could clue Bones in on what sort of present to get for her friend’s birthday. And supporting the first years’ quidditch game. That’s something muggles and wizard-kind had in common: a ridiculous love for sports.

“There’s a lot more interest for the idea than I expected,” Harry interjected thoughtfully. “The majority of the first years from every house.”

Tom scowled. “Don’t remind me.”

He’d had to pretend to be as excited about the idea as the next person just to build that sense of camaraderie. 

It was all of that—the overachieving perfect student act, the free tutoring to actual morons, the memorization of the most useless trivia about the side characters, and the constant pretending.

“You’re wearing yourself out,” Harry hummed, stretching his own arms up over his head until there was an audible pop.

Tom let the mental and physical exhaustion pull him slumped against the plush chair. “This is nothing to me.”

The trouble was worth it, anyway. Tom was now the most generally liked student in school, and he just needed to ween off the new expectations. There were now people coming to him for advice or help with their homework. Some of the professors had started asking him to help deliver things because he was such a “Sweet lad”. If he didn’t earn at least one house point for every class, his reputation would fall just as quickly as it rose.

Not only was his every waking moment filled with a social climb opportunity, but he also had to come back to bed where he shared a room with four other people.

“Stop laughing, Harry!”

Harry did, barely, and only to squeeze out, “Oh no, woe onto you that you have to snore the same air with them!”

He huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning further into the chair. “I don’t snore.”

But his housemates did snore. Tom had been convinced that he was living with actual pigs that first night. He hadn’t been forced to share a room with anyone since he was five. He couldn’t sleep the first night because he’d been so concerned that the pigs would try to go through his possessions when his guard was down, and Tom wouldn’t be able to get away with murder just yet. 

Not only that, Rosier, whose bed was to Tom’s left, used some sort of expensive floral product that left a constant acrid taste in the air. Dolohov, to Tom’s right, was using something that emitted a spicy, pungent smell in their living space. Both smells easily permeated his curtains, mixed in a nauseating combination, and choked him in his sleep. It had even conjured nightmares of flower fields and scented candles on a few nights.

Tom’s sense of smell wasn’t even that good, comparatively speaking. That should be a testament to how unbearable it was.

“You’re just being dramatic. Have you tried talking to them?”

From his school bag, Tom produced a jar of rose-scented hair product and an everlasting scented candle called Nice Spices, setting them down on the table so Harry could see for himself.

“Tom! Did you steal this?!”

“Borrowed,” Tom said with a bored drawl.

“We talked about stealing!”

“I’m giving them back. They don’t even know it’s gone; they just think they’ve misplaced it again.

“'Again'? You’re telling me that this isn’t the first time you’ve done this?”

Instead of admitting to that, Tom diverted. “I’m just letting the smell fade for a day or two. I'll give them back. It’s very hard to air out a room in the dungeons, you know.”

Harry groaned into his hand, scrutinised the two items on the table between the gaps of his fingers, and took tentative sniffs from each. His nose scrunched.

“Now imagine that, all night, every night,” said Tom.

Harry shook his head. “You can ask a house-elf to air out the room if it gets to be too much.”

Tom shrugged. There was a dark and twisted delight he took in watching Rosier and Dolohov scratching their head and turning over all of their things to look for the offending products. Totally unsuspecting of Tom.

He took a deep, appreciative breath of the scentlessness of Harry’s room and exhaled contently. Unbeknownst to either of them, Harry’s living space wasn’t unscented at all. Faint smells mingled from all sorts of things like the breath of fresh grass from Harry’s instructor’s uniform, hanging pots of lilies by the window, the uncapped tube of wood polish, the drying tea leaves sitting at the bottom of his teapot, the plain essential oil he used on his joints sometimes, the shower products that Tom liked to use and that Harry had started getting for himself to make shopping trips simpler, and the pages of old books and new parchment. Even the gross stench of death from the demon cat's cage did its part in simulating the right smells.

Both wizards were so accustomed to the cocooning air of Number 2 Hilltop Cottage Way that they were oblivious to the subconscious draw Tom felt to the Flight Instructor’s room. 

Unaware that his shoulders would relax ever so slightly every time he opened Harry’s door, Tom hardly knew why he began crafting new excuses every time Harry greeted him with, “What brings you here this time?”

This time, he was here to get a break from everyone. He could have gone to anywhere in the whole castle. The Astronomy Tower would have the pleasant effect of making him feel appropriately above everyone else, for example. It was just that nowhere else had a convenient ear that would listen to his troubles. 

Tom needed that ear now more than ever.

Because he had a secret. 

A very big secret, and he could almost kill just to be able to talk about it. But Harry was here, so he didn’t need to go that far.

“Go on then,” said Harry. “You look like you’re going to explode.”

“I have to build up to it!” Tom snapped.

Harry rolled his eyes and muttered something like ‘monologues’.

This was a recent discovery… Something that changed his world. Tangible proof that Tom had always been special all along. He’d never doubted that, but it was like fate, like the stars aligning and pointing at Tom, signalling to the world that he’s the chosen one—

“Wait.” Harry was squinting at the two books that Tom brought with him. “Are you researching the Philosopher’s Stone?”

Tom was just about to snap at him for interrupting at the best part, but Harry’s interest made him pause. “Well, yes, how’d you know?”

“I thought I recognized those books,” he muttered, seemingly to himself. He pinched his nose bridge, knocking his glasses up in the motion, and sighed. “What are you up to?”

Tom shrugged. “It’s a bit of light reading.”

“Light? You could knock someone out with the size of those!”

“And I’ve been interested ever since the Ouroboros thing over the summer.”

“You say ‘thing’ like you weren’t the main cause.”

Tom chose to ignore that. “I just thought the stone was very fascinating.” In truth, Tom was a little bit obsessed with it. He had been so close to getting his hands on one, and it had slipped right through his fingers! But then he learned that he could just make one himself with some alchemy (at least that’s how he understood it from the books), no human sacrifices necessary, not that it would’ve stopped him anyway.

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not a good idea.”

Tom scowled. “Why not?”

Harry raised his brow and crossed one leg over the other as though to mock Tom’s sitting positions. “There’s little you could do with the Philosopher’s Stone anyway. If you’re after the gold, you should know that the current owner of a Philosopher’s Stone is limited in the amount of gold he can make with the stone because of currency inflation concerns. The elixir of life might sound really desirable, too, but it doesn’t slow your body’s aging by much, so you’ll have to constantly be living on other potions if you don’t want your body to be in pain for all of eternity. Not to mention that once people know about your stone, if you can even make one, there’ll be a lot of theft attempts, and it’d be pretty disastrous if that stone fell into the wrong hands. Admittedly, it is a good magic conduit, so—“

Harry stopped with his mouth agape. His widening eyes fell on his golden wristwatch. There was something bright lighting his irises in a way Tom hadn’t seen in a while. Something like hope.

Harry seemed to have already put an inordinate amount of thought into the stone, more thought than Tom expected him capable of, though it would have been better for him to put all that brain power into something more productive.

Tom exhaled harshly through his nose. His dramatic speech was completely ruined, and he briefly considered punishing Harry by not telling him the secret, but that would also mean punishing himself. He snapped his fingers in front of Harry’s distracted face. “Harry, focus. Look at me. Behold. I’m the Heir of Slytherin, Harry.”

That seemed to pull him out of whatever reverie he’d been in. “What?!”

Finally, some recognition. Tom’s lips stretched sharply. Now, at least one person knew who he really was. Basically royalty, really.

“How’d you find out?” Harry asked, recovering a little too quickly from his surprise. Still, Tom was pleased that he didn't doubt his claim.

“I traced my family name,” Tom said, radiating in smugness. Oh, how he had been wanting to brag to someone about this.

“What,” said Harry flatly, “you traced like 50 generations back on a family line in a community where pretty much everyone is related?”

Tom’s power rush quickly died in a burst of fire; annoyance was swiftly rising from the ashes. “No,” he said shortly, “I found records of the Gaunt family line claiming to be the descendants of Slytherin.” Their claim had been approved by ancestry experts, or so the paper article had said.

With Tom’s existence being wholly unknown, a pathetic wizard called Morfin Gaunt was currently claiming his title. He’d reclaim it in due time, of course.

“And when would that be?” Harry asked dryly.

“When I’ve already made a name for myself, of course.” Tom almost smiled at Harry’s simple mind. “People would be less likely to try to challenge me if I wasn’t relying completely on the title.” It sounded all well and fine, except the temptation to shake someone and tell them to bow down to the rightful heir of Slytherin was more than Tom expected.

If Tom had thought that Harry would be looking at him in a new light of awe and reverence, then he would have been sorely mistaken. Harry did look at him differently, though it was with the circles underneath his eyes darkening in real time. 

“Do family roots really matter that much?” grumbled Harry. “It was like a thousand years ago.” He brought his socked feet up and curled into a ball on the couch, not looking like he wanted an answer, and Tom didn’t feel like explaining something as elementary as that.

It was no matter. Tom had finally told someone. He felt weightless and sank back in his chair, unwittingly enveloped in the scent of home.

Chapter Text

The return date of Harry’s latest library book, Magic Conduit Properties and Applications, crept upon him without his realising.  

It was a ratty old book, one hanging by the twine of its worn bindings, that Harry had found in the Reserved Section of the library where many other ancient and fragile tomes found their retirement. Like all other reserved books, the loan period was shorter—two weeks—which was a small detail that might have brought more urgency to him if he had paid attention.  

Returning books on time wasn’t normally a concern for him because he usually borrowed books on one weekend and returned them by the next.  

The first week he borrowed this book, he hadn’t had any time left to read more than four chapters after having to run around, repairing quidditch equipment, inspecting the quidditch stands, and maintaining the pitch and flying lawn.  

He had thought applying for Flying Instructor was an easy excuse to get access to the school’s academic resources. Easier than becoming an Unspeakable to access the Department of Mysteries library anyway. After all, he would only have to teach the first years. That was like a seventh of the whole school give or take. It turned out a full teacher’s salary entailed the full range of responsibilities.  

The four chapters that Harry had managed to read were drier than Percy’s sense of humor, and Harry had only heard the man tell one joke in his lifetime.  

(“Hello, Minister! Did I mention I’m resigning?” 

“You’re joking, Perce! You actually are joking, Perce.... I don’t think I’ve heard you joke since you were —” 

Except in this timeline, Fred was alive. He was alive, and he must have fully celebrated his brother’s spontaneous bout of humor. Harry wished he had been there for that, because his memories were from the original timeline, and he could only remember air exploding and—) 

At the end of the first week, Harry spent his two free days working through the book with his friends in the wristwatch. The others had already made leaps more in comprehensive progress despite each having their own full-time jobs (except Malfoy, who spent his days climbing the social ladder honestly and with the tarnished Malfoy name burdening his shoulders, and Luna, who was gone on another trip to Sweden in search for definitive proof of the Crumple-Headed Snorkack). 

It was mostly thanks to Nott who had embraced Time Travel Researcher as his unofficial career that Harry got through the book’s content in the end.  

Harry’s sloppy notes during that time can be surmised as: 

It’s possible to harness the time-traveling properties of the wristwatch with a compatible magic conduit.  

“Compatible,” said Nott for the third time. He had explained it with his own wand. “If you think about it this way, we’re both conduits of magic. Wandlessly, I use my body as a vessel to channel my magic. By using another compatible conduit, in this example, my wand which chose me, I can easily and reliably channel my magic further. Another’s wand might not respond, and at worst it might fight back. Incompatible conduits can get very volatile, and you don’t want to combine that with Time Travel.” 

It didn’t take leaps and bounds for Harry to conclude, “They must’ve been each other’s conduits, then.” After all, the three time travel devices were literally made for each other.  

Wristwatch, pocket watch, and astrolabe.

Kairos, Aion, and Chronos. 

Harry’s wristwatch had only worked once, and that was when Ron was holding the pocket watch in the same room. “Is that why I got sent to the wrong year then? Because the two watches got separated?” 

Nott shook his head. “It’s impossible to be certain.” 

“But you do think it’s worth looking into.” It was more a confident guess than a question because, after knowing the Slytherin all this time, Harry had learned to spot that subtle pensive expression. His right cheek dipped slightly, a tell that he was biting the inside of his cheek. His brows didn’t furrow, but he had begun blinking a little faster. 

Finally, Nott shrugged. “You’ll have to sign a liability waiver before I admit to anything.” 

His cautious expression had Harry’s lips tugging up. “Is that a yes?” 

The question was answered with a grimace. “I don’t actually want your friends to pulverize me when things start inevitably going wrong, as is typical for all of your plans.” Dare Harry say Nott looked nervous? If not vaguely afraid? He hadn’t even looked concerned back when Harry incapacitated him and Lucius Malfoy in Malfoy Manor. 

“I won’t tell them we talked,” Harry promised quickly. “It’s officially completely my idea.” 

Nott exhaled softly through his nose and shook his head. “They’ll find a way to blame me.” 

“They won’t. We all like you.” 

“Very reassuring,” he deadpanned, although the effect was belied by the corners of his lips as he continued, “Don’t attempt Time Travel until you’re absolutely sure the magic conduit is compatible with your wristwatch.” 

Harry took that to mean “You should absolutely try to find one, but don’t quote me.” 

∞

Four days before his book loan would end, Harry was deeply contemplating what could work with such a fickle wristwatch as he went about the motions of finishing the inventory check and making a brief note about an escaped snitch.  

Maybe he could find a magical pocket watch and trick the wristwatch into thinking it was its brother? Or maybe he could rub various conduits against it until it started shooting off red and gold sparks of approval? Was that how it worked? How else was he supposed to know that his wristwatch approved of something? 

Making one last mental note to stop by a shop the next time he went down to Hogsmeade, Harry wrapped up and took his library book with him to return.  

The door of his office opened before he meant for it to and he walked right into the sharp wooden edge and hard doorknob.  

A small head poked in from behind the door just as Harry valiantly tried to smother his muttered curse. 

“Mr. Potter.” 

“Mr. Diggory,” Harry half wheezed with his arm shielding his midsection. “Why are you, er, what do you need?” 

Gareth Diggory took that as an invitation to come in and take a seat at Harry’s desk. The young Hufflepuff’s sitting posture would have been impeccable if he didn’t look so stiff. “This is a relief. I had hoped to catch you today. I just couldn’t wait until tomorrow you see.” 

Harry slowly rounded his desk and checked his wristwatch to see that it was indeed just 5 pm.  

If Diggory noticed Harry checking his watch at the closing of his office hours, he either didn’t realise his visit was untimely or he didn’t care. “There is a student who wants to partipacate in the First Year’s Quidditch game, but they are worried about their skill.” He frowned. “Partipi—Partica—” 

Like Tom and Percy Weasley, Diggory suffered a horrible case of self-importance and enjoyed using vocabulary out of his age range. Although Tom was a shade more skilled in that area. 

Harry smiled. “Your friend wants to play?”  

Diggory’s ever-honest eyes scrunched. “I do not know if we are friends,” he declared. “But that is indeed their dilenma.” 

Harry briefly wondered if this was his not-subtle way of confessing his own nervousness about the game. “You’re very good at flying.” He gave his best encouraging smile. “And you practice more than anyone else in your year. I think you’ll be more than fine for the game.” 

“I know that.” 

Harry stared. “...Right, so your friend…” 

“Aquantance.” 

Acquaintance, Harry bit back. “Do they know it’s only the First Year’s Game? You’re not really expected to play well.” 

“But they’re not very good at all,” Diggory announced with a bluntness that Harry hoped he would one day grow out of. “I suspect they don’t even like playing Quidditch, but they dislike being left out even more.” 

Harry kind of didn’t want to stay back after five to talk with Diggory about someone else’s problems. “Why don’t you tell this student to come to my office sometime later this week?” 

He rose to let Diggory out the door, but the boy shook his head. “They didn’t want to talk about it, that’s why I came to you instead. I’m not supposed to help other houses though.” 

Harry sat back down. “Why not?” 

“Because they said so. When I offered advice, they said, ‘You’re not supposed to help other houses. We’re fighting for the house cup after all.’ They got really angry.” 

Harry was flabbergasted. “What does the house cup have anything to do with this?” 

Impossibly, Diggory straightened even further in his chair. “We’ll be earning house points during the game, right?” 

It was the first Harry had heard of this. He wasn’t even sure he was allowed to give so many points when Pringle had already gotten on his case about his first flying lesson. “Everyone knows it’s not a real game, right? There’s no cup to win; it’s just for fun.” 

"It's not?" Diggory’s big honey eyes were so expressive that Harry saw the physical manifestation of his young heart breaking. “So… No one will come see it? I thought the school would come to cheer… If there’s no points, then…” 

Harry panicked. “Sure they can! You can invite your friends to come watch—I’ve gotten approval from the headmaster, anyway, so I’m sure it won’t be a stretch to award a few points here and there.” 

The young Hufflepuff’s face cleared up. “Oh, I was a little mistaken, then. I’ll go correct everyone. They think there’s a bigger point reward for winning the First Year's Game.” 

Harry’s stomach twisted and coiled as his student obliviously carried on rambling about how everyone was looking forward to the game, practicing for it, and fighting over positions. He asked Harry again what his acquaintance could do since they weren’t skilled enough to play.  

“They could be the commentator,” Harry suggested, wishing for the boy to leave already. 

It seemed to be the right thing to say because Gareth proceeded to commend Harry for the great idea and rise from his chair. Just before leaving, however, he handed Harry an envelope. “Uncle Cyril wanted me to pass this on.” 

Cyril Diggory’s envelope contained a short letter and five different photographs of his newborn baby and beloved wife. 

Harry, 

It’s been much too long since you last paid us a visit! We’d love to have you and Tom over again. You can meet my young boy, finally! I know I always gush about him, but Amos really is the most brilliant creature I’ve ever laid eyes on! 

He’s still a handful no doubt; I’m afraid I haven’t had any time to complete the legal guardianship papers for Tom. Well, if the boys can get along well, I’m sure Amos would love to have an older brother! 

Amos’s first birthday is coming up and you’re both invited. Do write back! 

Cyril Diggory 

Harry slammed the letter on his desk and fought the urge to tear the page and his own hair. 

Tom hated babies. He would never be able to tolerate Amos Diggory, especially not while being treated as the second favorite. And even if he did pretend to get along, Cyril’s letter had essentially conveyed that he didn’t have the time to take Tom into his care as they had previously agreed. 

Typical. Not only was Harry stuck in the past, but Harry’s designated family for Tom had withdrawn.  

He spent the rest of Monday evening drafting an excuse to Cyril for why he would not be able to attend the party and crafting a letter to the Weasleys to see if they were keen to adopt an eleven-year-old boy so that Harry could have some peace of mind to return to his real home. 

∞

Tuesday afternoon, Harry was making his way to the library and only noticed that he had been walking behind two other professors when he heard his name drift from their conversation. 

Professor Slughorn’s boisterous voice was easy to distinguish. “You really mean you haven’t seen him at all? But it’s almost been two months since the start of the school year!”  

The other wizard was Professor Mopsus, the blind divination professor who was easily recognized by the floating crystal ball he always kept with him as his way of sight. Mopsus grunted. “I already said so, Professor Horace Eugene Flaccus Slughorn.” He clicked his tongue and thunked his head with the heel of his palm. “Bloody headaches... Anyway, Harry Potter, isn’t it? Professor Galatea Merrythought’s brief assistant earlier this year? What’s he like?” 

Harry’s jaw clenched. Of all the professors, Mopsus was the one who avoided him the most. Twice he’d nearly collided with the other wizard because Mopsus didn’t bother to step to the side and Harry didn’t have much room to skirt around. Every time Harry entered a room that he was already occupying, Mopsus would complain about a headache and disappear shortly.  

Mopsus had ignored both the first time Harry greeted him and the second time Harry gave a tentative nod of acknowledgment towards him and his crystal ball of sight. And still, the divination professor persisted with this ridiculous charade! 

Harry cast a glance about for a door to escape through, but they were walking down a straight passageway, and he wasn’t allowed to jump out of Hogwarts windows, apparently. 

“Well, there’s not much else to tell!” Slughorn boomed. “Apollyon’s information is always thorough and to be relied upon.” The potions professor nodded with conviction at the floating crystal ball rather than the person himself. “Although he has managed to dispute most of his violations from the first meeting, he still got another couple in the last meeting. He’s otherwise fairly unsuspecting, but I just can’t dismiss him! It’s his last name, I tell you!"

How have they walked this long without passing a classroom or something? What else was Harry to do? Return back to his room? 

Slughorn continued, "I know he’s said he doesn’t know anything about his family relations, but I know Potter family traits when I see them! Isn’t it a little intriguing, wouldn’t you say? I do have a very good intuition for people, but you’re far better in that field. Do you think he could be hiding something?” 

Harry would now be happy to disappear from the vicinity of the conversation. He could turn back around, but they were already so close to the library that he would have to take the nearest staircase to the next floor and circle around to access the library entrance from the other side of the corridor. 

“What do I know?” Mopsus muttered darkly. “Harry Potter could be fated to wreak havoc throughout all of Hogwarts, and I would be no wiser than you, Professor Horace Eugene Flaccus Slughorn.” 

“Well, Apollyon seems to think as much,” Slughorn chortled. 

The conversation, thankfully, disappeared with the two professors behind the heavy wooden door of the library.  

Harry remained rooted at a distance, staring at the intricate brass barhandle of the double doors. His gloved hand tightened minutely on the tattered spine of his library book. He should start carrying his invisibility cloak around with him. It was with that mental note that he retreated. 

∞

On Wednesday afternoon, Harry went to answer Professor Dippet’s summons before heading to the library. 

The headmaster’s office under Dippet’s occupation was almost as cluttered as Dumbledore’s time, in a more disordered and less charming way. There was a definite lack of silver instruments and their constant whirrings and puffings. The walls were still covered with sleeping portraits, and the sorting hat was sitting where it will always sit.   

Dippet was already sitting behind the enormous claw-footed desk, beckoning Harry to sit down. “Good day, Mr. Potter, I hope.” 

Something in his strained smile set Harry on edge. “Erm, fine, sir. I’ve been training Mortdevol, so, well, he’s getting more behaved around other animals.” As long as you had his favorite snack pickled toad, anyway. “So if this is about that—” 

“Nothing of that sort,” Dippet waved his hand.  

“Then my violation disputes—” 

“Are proceeding well, I assure you.” 

“Oh.” Harry relaxed ever so slightly. 

Dippet twiddled his thumbs a bit. Well, he tried to, anyway. His thumbs kept knocking into each other because his age had robbed him of dexterity and coordination. “After another look at the Hogwarts Compendium," he began gravely, "it was brought to my attention that First Year Students are strictly prohibited from participating in a Quidditch game facilitated at Hogwarts.” He shot a sympathetic look over his rectangular reading glasses and rested one hand on said Compendium. 

Harry’s hands flew to the armrests of his seat, feeling like his stomach, the chair, and the entire floor had fallen out from under him. “But—! How, you said, before—” 

“It’s in very small print, so it completely slipped my notice. I’m very sorry to have prematurely approved of your proposal.” 

Harry’s wide eyes fell to the line, the small print that he was pointing to. Forget small; it was barely legible. How easy and inconsequential would it be if Harry just rubbed the letters out of the book? “But we had a first-year Quidditch player half a century ago, so exceptions have been made before,” he argued. 

Dippet inclined his head. “To be sure. An entire game comprising of first years, however, is too much.” 

How—How arbitrary! Harry breathed slowly. “Headmaster, could we not make another exception here? The students have been so excited for this.” 

“Regrettably, Mr. Potter, rules are rules.” 

Harry stared.  

Dippet had glanced to the clock at least twice; his tapping finger also betrayed his impatience to dismiss Harry quickly. He didn’t seem to care. Certainly, he had barely paid Harry any mind when he first approached the headmaster with the idea of a First Year's Game.  

Armando Dippet was the sort of doddery old wizard who was far too concerned with sorting through his own mess of duties to be rooting through the Hogwarts Compendium for one single barely visible line that would undermine Harry’s entire event proposal. 

“Professor Dippet,” Harry began slowly and with more respect than he had the patience for, “did Pringle give any other reason for why we can’t have the game?” 

Obliviously, Dippet confirmed Harry’s suspicions. “Hmm, well, he did add that you had too many violations to be able to supervise such a game.” 

Harry’s eye twitched. That prick.  

As though the universe wasn’t done with him, Harry found, upon returning to his room to fetch the library book, that Mortdevol was missing from his cage. Escaped. Again. Harry spent the rest of the day going into a frenzy looking for the demon cat. 

∞

On Thursday, Harry hadn’t even gotten the chance to step out of his office because news traveled faster than bludgers, and every first-year student seemed to stop by Harry’s desk to ask, “Is it true, Harry? Is the game really not happening?” 

There was whinging and tears and screaming. Harry was met with all the stages of grief. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. 

Acceptance was probably the worst because it always came tinged with a betrayed wounded gaze, the trust that Harry had carefully built crumbling before his eyes.  

By seven, Harry had locked his office doors and taken his dinner at his desk, pretending that he was out every time another rapping of knuckles assaulted his door. He really needed to start carrying his invisibility cloak with him. He could hardly step out of his office without being accosted by his students, much less go to the library, which would close in less than an hour, to return his book due tomorrow. 

The soft squeaking of door hinges alerted him to his newest unwelcome visitor. Tired green eyes shot up, bewildered that a first-year student had dismantled his locking spell. 

It was, instead, Professor Merrythought who invited herself in, shutting and locking the door behind her.  

Harry half rose in greeting and in confusion. “Professor?” 

She hobbled over. “I came to check up on you.” Her usual placid expression contorted into a smile intended for his reassurance probably. “Are you really hiding from your students?” 

Harry fell back down and buried his face in his hands. “They hate me now,” he said miserably. He hadn’t cared if none of the professors liked him (just as long as he didn’t hear them talk about him), but to have all of his students look at him with such eyes… “It’s all because of Pringle.” 

Merrythought hummed an acknowledging tune as Harry carried on ranting about how horrible Pringle was to him. It was a lot more satisfying than talking with his friends in the wristwatch because Merrythought actually knew Pringle.

She was one of the few staff members in the school who wasn’t swayed by Pringle’s propaganda against him, though it probably helped that Harry had been her assistant just months prior. 

“I just don’t understand how someone could be so filled with unprompted hate all the time, like doesn’t it get tiring?” 

Merrythought hummed again. 

“He’s horrible,” Harry concluded. “Irredeemably awful.” 

This time, Merrythought spoke. “I do think he has at least one redeemable quality. Something you also share.” 

Harry bristled and sputtered.  

“You both love Hogwarts,” she revealed simply. “I remember when you first came to be my assistant, you kept staring at every wall and window we walked past with glistening eyes. I’d never seen someone so moved by this castle. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’ve loved this place your whole life.” 

Harry flushed deeply, heat prickling uncomfortably beneath his uniform. 

“Apollyon’s love is different but undeniably deep. He knows every painting, sculpture, mural, and suit of armor in the castle by name, and even studied art restoration to maintain them properly. If it wasn't for him, many of Hogwart’s most historic and valuable artifacts would be ruined at the hands of our very precious but very careless students. He takes his job very seriously and the castle shines for it.” 

Harry swallowed. There was a new kind of uncomfortable feeling worming into his chest, and he resisted beating it out with a beater’s bat out of respect for the present company. 

“In my personal experience,” continued Merrythought, “the most hateful people seem to love most intensely. So maybe all we know is his worst side. There are other, deeper sides to everyone.

"On nights when Apollyon has to give the students detention, for example, I’ve heard his singing leaking from his room. It’s a comforting sound. And he has such a lovely voice. That sort of person can’t be completely irredeemable, wouldn't you agree?” 

Harry really didn’t want to agree. Like, he’d kind of rather break his ribs than confront this new uncomfortable possibility. But hell if Merrythought’s optimism wasn’t contagious. 

∞

On Friday evening, he’d finally made it to the library without incident and returned the book with only a fleeting glare from the librarian. Something about the way Harry had, on three occasions, stayed in the library past closing had put him on her bad side. 

He proceeded to borrow a copy of the Hogwarts Compendium, fully intending to leave immediately but paused at the sight of one familiar first year student.

Of their own volition, his feet carried him to Tom Riddle’s table. The young Slytherin had his school bag slumped against the leg of the table, his arms were bracketing the book that he was currently bowing his head over. His eyes were glued on the pages with so much concentration, Harry was half-surprised it hadn’t caught on fire. Was he even aware that he was mumbling to himself? 

It felt like weeks since he’d last seen the boy, (it wasn’t) and it was almost a breath of fresh air until his eyes fell onto the page of Tom’s book. 

∞∞∞

Alchemy. The science of understanding, deconstructing, and reconstructing lasting matter. However, it is not an all-powerful art. It is impossible to create something out of nothing. If one wishes to obtain something, something of equal value must be given. This is the Law of Equivalent Exchange. The basis of all alchemy. 

There is only one known exception to this; an alchemical substance capable of transmuting common elements into precious metals and creating something permanent out of nothing. The universal conduit of magic. The producer of the elixir of life, known by many names: the Fifth Element, the Grand Elixir, the Red Tincture, and its most common name— 

“The Philosopher’s Stone?” 

Tom looked up and met half-lidded green eyes and a flat expression.  

It was a Friday evening, and the rows of tables nestled within the towering bookshelves of the library were sparsely populated.  

Harry dropped into a chair opposite to Tom, his flying instructor uniform was forgone, and a soft red jumper had taken its place. He slid his own book onto the table, the leather binding dragging softly along the wood grain. “Has anyone told you that you can get a bit obsessive?” 

“Ambitious, more like. Maybe you’re content with your own soppy existence,” Tom replied plaintively, “But I’m still brimming with potential." 

Harry stuck his tongue out.  

A light kick jostled Tom's leg beneath the table.  

“Don’t you have homework you need to be doing?” 

“Don’t you have a job?” Tom quipped back. 

Harry’s response was a short huff. “Oh, don’t get me started. The things I do for this school…” He shook his head. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to even get here.” 

Tom shrugged. He made no effort to imagine what ordeals Harry could have possibly faced on his walk from his room to the library, seeing as Harry’s struggles were often incomprehensible. To show that he was not at all inviting Harry to share his woes, he returned his focus to his book. 

On the edge of Tom’s peripheral vision, Harry’s stubbled chin propped on his white-gloved palm while his other fingers drummed on his book. “I’m sure you don’t understand most of that book anyway. It's all advanced alchemy. Do I have to remind you again that you’re only eleven?” 

Tom’s lips pulled back in a sneer. “Since you’ve said so, you must understand this better than me.” He slid his book across the table, knocking Harry’s book out of the way in the process.  

Harry’s brows raised. “I told you before, I’m not interested in the stone. Why should I bother reading this?”  

“See? You won’t even try.” 

Harry’s resulting snort was mostly resigned. He properly scanned the contents as Tom tapped a finger against the wood impatiently. “You know,” he said thoughtfully after a quiet moment, “I never actually took alchemy as a subject.” 

He offered nothing more, and Tom couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised. He dragged the book back and pointed at a particular phrase in the text. “Vague instructions aside, look here.” 

“Prima materia…?” Harry asked slowly, testing the words in his mouth. 

“It’s the main component in creating a Philosopher’s Stone, but nowhere in this entire book” – Tom lifted the book The Magnum Opus and gave it a frustrated shake – “does it explain what the prima materia actually is! It just refers to it as ‘the primitive formless base of all matter’ or ‘chaos’ or some other balderdash!” 

“Well, it wouldn’t be called the Philosopher’s Stone if you get the literal instructions to everything, now would it?” 

Tom’s eye twitched. “Can you be any more unhelpful?” 

A hum emitted from the other wizard’s throat. “Actually, yeah.” And Harry proceeded to open his own book to the table of contents, running his finger down each line. 

Tom stared. 

Harry didn’t spare him another glance. He flipped to somewhere in the middle of the book and continued flipping. It took a kick from Tom’s foot under the table for him to shoot over a glare. 

“This library only has three books on the Philosopher’s Stone,” Tom continued to say while pointedly ignoring Harry’s daggered eyes. “There was another book, Mutus Liber, but it got destroyed. One of the books only briefly mentions the stone and the other two have completely different information! This book, The Magnum Opus, says there are three stages and eight steps, and the other book, The Great Work, says there are four stages and twelve steps. Not only that, the other book keeps referring to it as the ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’. Why in blighty would they call it that?” 

Harry shrugged. “Sounds cooler I guess?” 

Tom hissed out a slow calming breath. 

“You didn’t seriously expect that this would be easy, did you? Like, there’s a reason why there’s only one Philosopher’s Stone in existence.” 

Tom bristled. “I expected theory, technical alchemical knowledge, not—not—” 

“Philosophy?” 

If there had been other sounds in the library before, they had all died away so that it was in perfect tense silence that Tom stared balefully at Harry. 

∞

There were rare occasions when Harry’s offhanded comments or nonsensical remarks actually proved to be useful. Most of the time, he was just infuriating. 

This time, in the intimate quiet company of thousands of books and shelves and tables of empty chairs, Harry had said, “Well, I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m not a philosopher or an alchemy professor, but I do think your fixation is impractical at best and unhealthy at—”  

The rest was irrelevant. It was only the first part that brought Tom to the Alchemy Professor’s office on a Saturday morning.  

Argo Pyrites was like a yellow-haired cyclone, urgently leading Tom towards the chair by his desk when he realized that Tom’s question wasn’t a short answer form. The alchemist’s room appropriately looked like a storm had wrecked it, loose leaf papers everywhere, books strewn on the floor, glass vials and tubes on every flat and relatively stable surface. He moved and talked with the haste of someone who urgently needed to use the loo. “The Philosopher’s Stone? It has many names—”  

Here, he more or less regurgitated everything that Tom had absorbed from his own research. 

“The prima materia? It can be described as chaos. Some compare it with anima mundi, world soul, which gives life and intelligence to the cosmos—" 

The more he talked, the more Tom was convinced that Pyrites had no more experience or expertise on the subject outside of the books. 

“There’s only one known creator of the stone, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore is very fortunate to have such a renowned alchemist as a friend—” 

Tom latched onto that detail, turned it over in his mind, and noted it down as something to look further into. 

“You might be interested in the Hogwarts copy of The Great Work or The Magnum Opus for further reading. I believe there might be an ancient copy of The Emerald Tablet in the Reserved Section.” 

Tom nodded along, satisfied and now searching for an opening to leave.  

Pyrites, hyper-observant and of the same mind, made quick work of dismissing Tom with the most insultingly artificial smile Tom had ever received. And he was raised in an Orphanage. 

∞

Dumbledore was not immediately easy to seek. Rather than being in his office after lunch on a Saturday, Tom found him in the Divination Professor’s office.  

The word ‘found’ was used loosely here because he’d delayed announcing his presence when he overheard their murmured exchange. 

“Thank you for your expertise, Mopsus.” 

“Don’t.” A gloomy sigh. “ I didn’t do anything.” 

“Nothing? You certainly proved that Nicolas’s Crystal Ball didn’t work anywhere in Europe.” 

“I only proved that I couldn’t make Nicolas Flamel's Crystal Ball work.” There was a bitter bite in his voice. “I can’t See any more. I haven’t been able to divine for over two years now, but I can at least predict that I won’t be any help for your future, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.” 

Dumbledore hummed, and Tom could imagine that he was stroking his auburn beard the way he tended to do in Transfiguration classes. “True, true. There is however a distinct lack of assistance from the field of divination. What little help you have offered has been far more than anyone else. Seers typically enter seclusion, such is the case for Cassandra Trelawney. And yet you’re here, teaching and helping even when everything’s predetermined to your eyes. That takes a strong will and a selfless heart.” 

“You’re too kind,” Mopsus choked out.  

“It’s the truth. The only seers I know who aren’t in seclusion are yourself and Gellert Grindelwald. This is definitive proof of your goodness, Mopsus. You chose to use your powers for good.” 

A hollow chuckle. “I guess not being the worst still counts for something.” The miserable cadence dropped from his voice. “That’s why you’re helping Alchemist Nicolas Flamel with his dead Crystal Ball, isn’t it? You believe that something’s happening to Magical Europe. You think this is affecting Dark Lord Gellert Grindelwald.” 

Dumbledore chuckled warmly, and Tom would bet his eyes were twinkling. “You’re ever so sharp, Mopsus. Yes, Gellert has been very quiet since last year. I have had my suspicions, especially after what you’ve confided in me.” 

“If Gellert Grindelwald is as sightless as I, will that change anything? Will you, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, return to the warfront?” 

There was a pause. Tom held his breath and pressed his ear harder on the doorstile. 

Warm and gaily as ever, Dumbledore answered, “It would seem there’s no way for any of us to tell, now, hm?” 

There was a scrape of wood on stone, the sound of someone rising.  

“I thank you, Mopsus. Your help is ever invaluable.” 

Footfalls drew near. 

A ragged inhale— “Proceed cautiously, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. A great disturbance has appeared in our universe. There is no divining what it has in store for us.” 

After a quiet pause, the clicks of boots resumed, followed by the brass doorknob half-turning. Tom quietly stepped back three paces. 

From behind the door, Dumbledore’s voice rang out. “That is the way we all tread, my friend.” 

The transfiguration professor emerged and spotted Tom immediately. “Ah, Mr. Riddle! Is there anything I can do for you?” He swept forward in his glittery magenta robes. 

Tom inclined his head. “Good afternoon, Professor Dumbledore. I was just looking for you.”  

Dumbledore swept his long sleeve by his side in an invitation to join him; Tom easily fell into step.  

Tom’s voice was carefully modulated to fit the image of an excited first year student. “Professor Pyrites was just telling me all about Nicolas Flamel’s accomplishments, sir. I’d very much appreciate the chance to speak with him one day! Is it not true that you’re good friends with him? I was wondering if you’d know whether he ever comes to Hogwarts to visit. I just know he has loads of brilliant ideas, and I really want to hear them!” 

Tom’s perfect persona was rewarded with a warm chuckle although the professor’s eyes were more sharp than twinkling. “I believe Nicolas spends his days indulging in a life of whimsy, but I'm sure no retired man, no matter how great, would be adverse to visiting an old friend. And he certainly has all the time in the world to talk to our young witches and wizards.” 

Tom fixed his eyes straight ahead, trying to keep a steady hold on his act. Trying not to show how much he hated the way Dumbledore talked.  

In all of Hogwarts, there were only a handful of individuals whom Tom could not read.  

There was, of course, Harry, who had figured out Tom’s talent in less than a month and had subsequently shut Tom out of his mind.  

(“No, Tom. I’m not doing that because I’m lying. I’m doing that because you need to be okay with other people’s privacy.”) 

Tom still disagreed with it, but Harry’s hollow words had stopped grating on his ears eventually. At least Tom could still discern his sincerity through his vibrant eyes. 

Professor Merrythought was another one, although Tom had an inkling that he wouldn’t really enjoy her mental transparency.  

There was another Hufflepuff student in his year who was so brainless, he didn’t have any thoughts for Tom to read anyway. 

To an ordinary person, Professor Dumbledore’s words were always sincere if slightly eccentric in nature. To Tom, however, the professor’s words were just words. Neither ringing with purity nor distorted by deception. It was almost intolerable. 

And every time he looked at Tom—like just then!—it was as though he was looking right through him. What was he looking for? What else was there to see? 

Tom was a perfectly behaving student with a strong love for magic. And even if that wasn’t quite all there was, even if there was something more, something extraordinary, what could Dumbledore do about it? 

∞

Later, when Tom turned the handle on Harry’s door and found it locked, he stared at the keyhole and wished really hard for it to unlock. 

If he had just knocked, like a normal person, he would have found that Harry was away without needing to break into the place. As it was, Tom let himself in and seated himself in his chair. He swept another glance around the room just to make sure that Harry really wasn’t there. He had even prepared a reason for his visit this time and everything. 

He carried on as usual, pulling out his half-finished potions essay from his school bag and inking out practiced penmanship with a perfectly normal quill. Occasionally, when he found himself stuck on the wording of a particular sentence, he’d look up and across at the couch, which was of course empty, and then back down to his paper.  

Finally, he was satisfied with his final draft, thoroughly peppered with marks and corrections. The sun had since completely set for a time. Without a single clock on the mostly bare walls, Tom could not accurately gauge how close to curfew it was. He probably had enough time to copy his final draft over into a fresh roll of parchment, but he did not feel inclined to stay any longer. 

He left, not bothering to work out how to lock the door again, partly because he didn't have a considerate bone in his body and also partly because Harry deserved it for not being there.  

The halls were mostly deserted on the journey back to the Slytherin Dungeon, with the exception of some ghosts, a couple of professors, a prefect, and Pringle’s pet crup, who Tom had somehow seen padding up the stairs to the fourth floor at one point and, at another point, on the second floor turning the corner. 

There was also a couple of sixth-year Gryffindors who were lingering at the end of one corridor, quite far from Gryffindor Tower considering the late hour and the fact that they weren’t prefects. 

They were jesting quite animatedly about something, and Tom recognized a voice around the corner as he neared them. 

“This is your last warning, Miss Pius!” 

The Gryffindor witch snickered, and called out, “Aw, but you’re so cute when you get angry, Professor!” She and her friend quickly turned tail, dashing past Tom in her escape, before she could receive any more reprimand. “Only joking!” 

Around the corner, Harry had his arms crossed over his chest, which was expanding deeply to release an irritable huff. He was dressed warmly, as though he’d just been outdoors. When he spotted Tom, however, his surprise was so apparent that he seemed to forget his own ire.  

“What was that about?” Tom asked gesturing behind himself. 

He noticed Harry’s face darken as he approached. “They like to fluster me. It’s mostly silly compliments, but Pius is the worst of them.” 

“You’re bothered by compliments?” Tom did not conceal his bemusement. He rather thought that Harry should appreciate whatever he could get. 

Harry shrugged uncomfortably. “You wouldn’t understand, what with your head so inflated.” 

Dark brown eyes narrowed dangerously. “Whatever do you mean by that, Harry?” 

“Hm? Oh, just that you’re a very smart and clever young wizard. Your big brain fits well in that big head.” 

Tom couldn’t feel completely pleased by this compliment, and he supposed that was Harry’s point.  

Harry eyed him suspiciously. “What are you doing skulking about at this hour?” 

“There are better verbs to use,” Tom grumbled and started to move past him. “I was just by your room, and now I’m going back to Slytherin Dungeon.” Harry fell in step with him. “Where have you been all evening?” 

“Hogsmeade. It was my turn chaperoning today.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and exhaled deliberately so that a mist formed in front of him. “I’m going down to Pringle’s office now, though. It’s sort of on the way, yeah?” 

From Tom’s impression of the castle’s layout, the caretaker’s office was a little tucked away. Tom would have to split ways with Harry on the first floor if he wanted to take the shortest path to Slytherin Dungeon. “Why are you going there?” 

Harry frowned and tucked his chin against the collar of his topcoat. “I’m declaring a truce.” 

Tom’s brows shot up. “I thought you hated him.” 

“I do,” he scowled. His face twitched with conflict before dissolving into uncertainly chewed lips and pinching brows. “But no matter how much I hate him as a person and his ideals and opinions and face and the way he treats me and the way he ruins everything—erm." He coughed. "I figured we could still co-exist.” He looked as unconvincing as he sounded. “I mean, peace is an option.” 

Tom’s self-centered brain could not comprehend such a thing. “Why? Are you worried he’ll get you sacked?” 

Harry seemed to physically bristle. “He can’t get me sacked.” He sighed and rubbed his neck. “I‘m just tired of hating. It just takes so much energy, and it doesn’t even feel good. You know?” 

Tom shrugged. He still nursed a constant and healthy amount of loathing for Mrs. Cole, Billy Stubbs, his father, his mother, the Ouborors, Harry’s ugly cat— 

“I knew a posh condescending prick once, and before you say anything, yes, he’s real. The first time I met him, he insulted my friend. The second time, he insulted my other friend. So when he offered to be my friend, I rejected him.” Harry shrugged. “I guess it also didn’t help that he reminded me of my cousin.” 

Tom didn’t know much about Harry’s cousin except that he was large, mean, and dim. 

“For the next several years, this idiot did everything he could to provoke me, and I was pretty easy to provoke. We hated each other so much it became normal, you know?” Harry scratched his stubbly chin and stared up. “Then one day he needed my help, and I needed his, but it still didn’t make everything okay. He never did apologize for endangering my friends, insulting my parents, and attacking me... but I guess neither did I. So, we’re just kind of” — he shrugged — “co-existing. Peacefully.” 

They were on the first floor, and Tom should take that staircase if he wanted to avoid the extra walk later.  

“It could have made everything easier back then, I think. I mean, we never could have been friends. This prick really used to be very selfish and bigoted, but I didn’t have to be friends with him to not be his enemy.” Harry raised his pointer finger and then tapped in his second finger. “There’s also my cousin; he started being a little nicer to me after I saved his life, and we still talk sometimes.” He raised a third finger. “And there was also a very unpleasant man who kind of hated me and traumatized one of my friends…” 

By the time they reached Pringle’s door, Harry had told Tom all about the unpleasant but brave man who died a selfless death. “He was a Slytherin, you should know.” 

Such a complex character made no sense at all to Tom. He didn’t really understand ‘peace’ in the first place. To him, there were people who were useful and people who weren’t. If someone did not agree with him, there was no point in their existence. 

Still, Harry seemed so resolute in this philosophy. Who was Tom to ruin it for him? Tom didn't really care anyway.

Pringle’s door was locked, but there was a velvety singing voice coming from behind the door, indicating that he was there. 

“Good luck,” Tom offered with a nod before finally finding his own way to the Slytherin Dungeon. 

It wasn’t a horrible detour. The walls were sufficiently illuminated by torchlight and the walk was quiet enough, with the exception of Pringle’s pet crup growling at two first-year Ravenclaw and Gryffindor students who were certainly not supposed to be all the way down here so close to curfew. 

Then, faintly, a pair of shouting voices echoed down the passageway and to his ear. One of the voices belonged to Harry. 

Tom turned on his heel and rushed back without a fully-formed conscious thought. When he rounded the corner, he became witness to the product of Harry’s new philosophy.  

Harry, fists shaking, white, and gripping on Pringle’s red-streaked apron, swung back and socked Pringle square in the face. The soft crunching sound of a broken nose announced the death of peace. 

Chapter Text

Peace was never an option. Well, it had looked like an option for about two minutes. The two minutes that Harry spent waving good night to Tom and shifting his weight from foot to foot while waiting for the caretaker to answer the door. 

Listening to the rhythmic melody emitting from within the room.

Finding himself a little hopeful for the meeting. 

Hearing a sharp crack and a following muffled cry. Of pain.  

So Harry had deluded himself into thinking that peace had been an option up until he forced the door open and found the horrific sight of a half exposed first year—Harry’s student Gareth Diggory—hanging by the ceiling manacles, tears streaming down his red cheeks. 

Standing with one hand cupping a steaming mug and the other hand twirling a riding crop whip in circles was Apollyon Pringle.

At the sight of Harry, Pringle quickly set down his drink on a glass case that held a row of other torture instruments and began shouting.

Harry couldn’t register his words. He was busy trying to process the entirety of the torture dungeon. Cold iron chains and a metal slab with belt restraints and spiked whips and gleaming blades and a fire brazier with an iron stick and dozens of other silver devices hanging on the walls that Harry couldn’t name, much less fathom their usage— 

His blood had somehow run cold and begun boiling simultaneously. Vision turned red. 

Breathe.

Admittedly—and this is a little embarrassing—Harry’s memory got a bit spotty at this part. He was just so consumed in the burning, ferocious rage, vibrating in every cell in his body, and his mind blanked just for a few minutes. There was definitely some shouting, Pringle shoving him roughly out the door, and the satisfying feeling of fleshy cartilage crumpling under his fist, and oh, sweet, sweet calm.

Pringle stumbled back and cupped his face with his hands, allowing Harry to easily push past him. 

“Ugly is a good look on you,” Harry said to Pringle when he just kept blinking away reflexive tears in shock.  

Great Merlin, that felt good. Cathartic. Rejuvenating even.

His knuckles were still throbbing pleasantly even into the next day. Fingers brushed lightly over the vindictively aching skin. Then, his hands stretched out to push open the thick staffroom doors. Time to face the consequences. 

∞∞∞

Armando Dippet wanted to yawn, but he held it back in the presence of his two red-faced staff members. His previous night's rest had been disturbed by the very same professors beating down his door around midnight and demanding the earliest formal hearing on his day off work. 

He glanced at the clock hanging just above the staffroom door---the door which he longed to escape through so that the two young, spritely men could resolve their own issues. The hour clock hand was pointing at ten, and Armando couldn’t remember the last time he’d been awake early enough to see such a depressing sight on a Sunday.  

A stack of papers was thrust into his vision. Behind the pages, Apollyon, with his nose heavily bandaged, cleared his throat. “Your copies to keep, sir,” he explained nasally. “Before you is a total of three Hogwarts violations committed by one person—” he shot a venomous look at Harry Potter— “who seems to think that he is the singular exception to our sacred Hogwarts rules. Also note, Professor, that these offences were committed overnight.” 

The good thing about Apollyon was that he read everything out, so Armando could just let his eyes follow the words on the reports as the caretaker read them passionately. Still, he would have fallen asleep to the drone of it if it wasn’t so entertaining to watch Mr. Potter, who was sitting across the staff table from Apollyon and fumbling with his own papers. 

“Well,” said Armando when Apollyon left a long enough pause, “this is very serious indeed.” He glanced at the pages in front of him. “Hmm. Forcing entry into a staff member’s office, disturbing, preventing, and challenging an assigned detention, and physically assaulting a staff member. This is all very serious indeed.”  

“'Serious'?!” Apollyon exclaimed. “This is unacceptable, Professor Dippet! He attacked Hogwarts staff! He should be fired immediately!” 

“I didn’t attack you,” Mr. Potter huffed. “I was, erm, scared for my own safety. It was definitely self-defense. You had just been whipping a child and singing a merry tune like a bloody lunatic, after all.” 

Armando didn’t want to have to fire Mr. Potter. He was a very diligent Flying Instructor who had miraculously never had a single flying accident in his classes. The paperwork for some of the broom accidents had been quite tedious in the past, but having to review each of Mr. Potter’s violation disputes also didn’t seem to be worth it. Still, it would be troublesome to look for a replacement in the middle of the school year. 

Armando turned very stern. “Be sure to get started on the dispute forms, Mr. Potter. And I want you to understand that we will not tolerate this behaviour any longer.” Satisfied with his reprimand, he rose---

Papers slammed on the stone table, making him jump in his robes. 

“That won’t be necessary, Professor,” Potter smiled. His eyes were bloodshot and lined with dark bags, but the green irises seemed to pin Armando down like a pitchfork. “I have some counterpoints that will nullify those.” He shot a slow grin at Apollyon. “These are your copies to keep, sir.” 

Armando sat back down, limbs heavy like he was being shackled by both sides. 

“On pages 102 to 105 of the Hogwarts Compendium,” Mr. Potter pushed his circular glasses up with unsteady fingers, “it states in three different sections, firstly, that a member of Hogwarts staff cannot be alone with an underaged student behind locked doors without prior notice to relevant parties.” Pages flipped. “Secondly, that a staff member on duty has nothing to hide, and therefore cannot technically have an entry forced on them unless in the case of handling dangerous brewing, projects, or experiments.” More pages shuffled. “Thirdly, detentions deemed to be Cruel and Unusual Punishments are to be immediately revoked and reassigned.” The pages crinkled under his tightening grip. He looked up with wide, blazing eyes. “There is no denying that what Pringle was doing to Gareth Diggory last night was of the cruelest, inhumane nature." 

Armando swallowed and felt heat radiating from his other side. Apollyon had never looked so livid. 

And just like that, it began. 

“All relevant parties had been given prior notice!” 

“As I checked, the detention was assigned and carried out within the same day, which meant any notice given was too soon to be considered ‘prior’.” 

“Very well then,” said Apollyon with a snarl as he tore the first of Mr. Potter’s violations in half. “Your other two violations are still valid because there was nothing cruel or unusual about the punishment assigned to Mr. Diggory.” 

Mr. Potter’s eyes flashed dangerously, and Armando could easily believe that he had been the one to give Apollyon that broken nose. “What could that first-year Hufflepuff have possibly done to deserve getting whipped until his back peeled?!” 

“He attacked me, refused to acknowledge his crime, tried to evade his punishment, and injured my pet when he could not escape.” 

“Gareth wouldn’t!” Such an accusation seemed to rile the Flying Instructor further. “And even if he did, you should have brought that up to his Head of House to decide on the discipline rather than taking it on yourself. Why didn’t you? Think no one else will believe you?” 

“I’m not lying.” 

“Well, you must be. I saw your pet crup just this morning, tailing me throughout the castle. It looked perfectly fine.” 

“Daemon!” Apollyon called.  

From behind a tapestry of the Hogwarts emblem, which hung above the unused podium, a half-hound, half-crup slinked into the staff room, bounding with sharp nails against stone toward its master.  

“Holy hell, you named it Demon?” Mr. Potter exclaimed. “You really are Satan, aren’t you?” 

“It’s DAEMON, you nitwit.” The crup jumped onto its master’s lap and began growling at the Flying Instructor. “As you can see, his tail is injured.” Indeed, one of Daemon’s two tails was bent very oddly and moved gingerly compared to the other. “That’s Mr. Diggory’s doing, unless you’re suggesting that I would do such a horrific thing to my own pet?” 

“I honestly do not put it past you.” 

“Headmaster!” Apollyon turned toward Armando once more. “Do you hear this blasphemy? Spoken by the very same person who unapologetically attacked a Hogarts staff member!” 

“Headmaster!” Mr. Potter turned toward him as well. “No matter what I’ve done, or what Gareth’s done, it’s nothing compared to what Pringle’s been doing. Please believe me, sir, I detailed it all in my report, but you have to know that Pringle’s been abusing the children!” 

“Ah,” said Armando with a clap. “I understand now. This is all a simple misunderstanding. What you’ve seen was merely discipline.” 

“It wasn’t! He was using a—a whip, and his office is a literal torture dungeon. Gareth had deep welts all over his back! He—he was bleeding and crying…” 

Armando waited as he trailed off. “I trust he’s visited the hospital wing?” 

Mr. Potter blinked. “Last night, sir.” 

“And he’s all healed?”  

A nod.  

“I trust Apollyon’s discipline was effective then.” Armando primly tapped the two piles of paper together. “Apollyon, regarding Mr. Potter’s violation reports against you, you’ll only be given a serious warning this time due to your perfect record—” 

“Professor Dippet!” Mr. Potter bellowed. “Our Hogwarts Caretaker is giving Cruel and Unusual Punishment to the children without proper authorization! This is a crime. How are you excusing this? If everyone else knew—” 

“Mr. Potter. Please sit down.” Armando waited patiently until he, unhappily, did so. “Everyone knows.” 

Mr. Potter’s red face quickly drained of color. A greenish hue seeped into his shocked expression.

"I understand that you come from the muggle world, and I can only imagine what must go on over there. Here, at Hogwarts, we take our students’ discipline seriously so that every generation of wizards and witches that we produce are released into our world as disciplined and responsible people.” 

“Produce…” Mr. Potter uttered faintly. 

“That’s exactly right,” Apollyon chimed in with a cheshire grin. “Just as long as the little miscreants get full, post-detention treatment at the hospital wing, I’m well within my rights and duties with whoever deserves it. No exceptions, not even your favorite Riddle.” 

“You’re not touching him,” Mr. Potter growled immediately, hand shooting into his pocket and freezing there. He scowled and slowly placed both hands, clenched tightly, back on the table. The muscles in his jaw were jumping sporatically. “And everyone is aware of this…?” His eyes were fixed on the movement of his fingers tracing the seams of his glove. “You could make them write lines, clean the halls and toilets, do anything, and you think whipping them until they’re bleeding and crying is the best way?” 

Apollyon clicked his tongue impatiently. “Lines? As if that’s going to teach the stubborn brats anything. And I wouldn’t entrust even a toilet of this sacred castle for them to clean. Indeed, pain is the most effective method; that’s the way it’s always been. Every single one of those students are miscreants until I beat it out of them. You have no place here to be challenging tradition!” 

Mr. Potter stared from Armando to Apollyon, green eyes wide and haunting. “You’re all fine with this...” His piercing stare slowly turned to Apollyon. “And you actually enjoy it… You’re sick.” 

Armando dragged in a deep breath. Mr. Potter had a lot of heart; that much was clear. While Armando wasn’t completely apathetic, he also did not foresee a reformation of their disciplinary methods from the Founding of Hogwarts happening during his term as headmaster. It wasn’t pleasant, but he trusted Apollyon to take care of the discipline and of the castle. 

Apollyon had never led him wrong before. The caretaker loved Hogwarts above everything. He’d studied and worked at Hogwarts far longer than Potter and had a perfect record in all that time. “I wish you’d be more understanding, Mr. Potter. You have been a valued member of our staff—” 

Apollyon made a derisive noise. 

“—but you must stop your antagonism with Apollyon. You cannot assault him for doing his job.” Armando tucked the rolled-up papers into his sleeve. “This will be your last warn—" 

A throat cleared from the entrance of the staffroom. Standing there in shimmering pink robes was his Deputy Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, perhaps coming to Armando’s rescue? But no because half-hiding behind him was a young Hufflepuff wizard who was probably the Gareth Diggory in question. 

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything important,” said Albus, smiling serenely. “I simply could not help but be drawn to such a discussion.” 

Armando was just about to inform him that the meeting was just wrapping up, but the Deputy Headmaster continued, “I’ve never been fond of corporal punishment myself.” He gently led Diggory to the end of the table, pulling out a chair for the young wizard and then taking his own seat. “Though the worst I’ve ever gotten was a slap on the wrist!”  

There were now four people between Armando and the door. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Albus?” 

“I was just in the Hospital Wing, and I had the most interesting conversation with young Mr. Diggory about yesterday’s events. With all of Hogwarts already speculating about this mysterious staff meeting, I thought it plenty strange that I was the sole audience to Mr. Diggory’s truth on the matter.” He beamed down at the young boy. “And Mr. Diggory agreed to that. He wished to share his side. I was more than happy to escort him.” 

Armando could immediately tell that Gareth was a good child, and it was no wonder that Mr. Potter would defend him with such conviction. The boy sat ramrod straight with his head held high and recounted his experience in a clear and nearly even voice. As he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Potter, and sometimes Professor Dumbledore, who would help him find the right words when he got stuck. 

The young Hufflepuff had approached Apollyon to talk about the First Year’s Quidditch Game, and, after much persistence, he was docked points for challenging the legitimacy of Hogwarts Rules. He continued to protest the point deductions, refusing to acknowledge that he’d done anything wrong, which led to Apollyon dragging him by his robes to the Detention Room. In an attempt to escape the unfair punishment, he pushed Apollyon off and accidentally stepped on the crup’s tail. 

“You have endured your detention very well,” said Armando kindly when the student finished. “I trust you have learned your lesson, and there won’t be a repeat. It’s a shame Hogwarts Rules can’t bend for good lads such as yourself.” 

“That’s it?” Mr. Potter exclaimed, outraged. “Were you listening to him? He got his back shredded for shoving someone.” 

“I beg you once more, Mr. Potter, to calm down, lest I have to put you on suspension for breaking my staff’s nose.” 

To his credit, Mr. Potter did visibly calm in the sense that he leaned back in his chair and stopped shouting. He grumbled quietly,  “I already said that was in self-defense.” 

Apollyon, unfortunately, heard that. “It was clearly unprovoked violence! Headmaster, please dismiss him at once!” 

“Your entire existence is provoking,” said Potter. “But you can’t charge me for assault because it really is self-defense by your own definition. You can check the pensieve. Think, if you're even capable of that, what happened just before you broke your nose?” 

“You broke my nose," Apollyon corrected. "And as I recall, I had been trying to fend off your forced entry into my work space.” 

Mr. Potter’s eyes glittered. “As we established earlier, it didn’t count as ‘forced entry’. This means, as you forcibly shoved me out of your torture dungeon, you committed unprovoked violence against me.” The Flying Instructor waved a violation report at him, flaunting Apollyon’s name and the words ‘Unprovoked Assault’ in the top blanks of the page. “And I had to defend myself.” 

Pringle’s mouth fell open, speechless. Not even anger had penetrated his shocked expression. In all the time Armando had known Apollyon in his employment, he’d never been accused of such a serious offense. 

Mr. Potter seemed to revel in this fact because he had never seemed more pleased while looking at the caretaker. “I’m not sure you can dispute this violation report unless you admit that your punishment to Gareth Diggory was unfair and malicious. And, since you’ve already abused your power over him, I wonder how you can make up for that.” 

Apollyon gnashed his teeth and flipped furiously through his copy of the Hogwarts Compendium, searching, no doubt, for a rule stating that anyone named ‘Harry Potter’ is forbidden from working at Hogwarts. He, of course, found nothing.

Dumbledore’s chair scrapped the floor as he pivoted toward Diggory. “Perhaps a bit of diplomacy is in order, don’t you agree?” 

Diggory nodded slowly, as though gauging to see if that was the correct answer. 

Armando sagged helplessly. This was going to be a long day indeed. 

∞∞∞

The high table at lunch was missing the headmaster, Pringle, Dumbledore, and Harry. The tables were abuzz, half with the usual chatter and half with rumors and speculation about what had transpired. Someone had overheard Pringle talking with the Head of Ravenclaw House, and he had been wearing a bandage over his nose. Someone else had seen Gareth Diggory walking with Dumbledore from the direction of the hospital wing. The portraits were eager to share what they’d spied on in the vicinity of their corridors at the scene of the incident. 

It had cumulated until, by lunch, the school had traded enough information to know that the new Flying Instructor had broken the caretaker’s nose. And there was currently a meeting with the headmaster about it. The entire school was talking about it. And the only true witnesses were four first years, one from each house. 

“They must be sacking him as we speak.” 

“Aw, but we were going to play dodge broom for lessons this week…” 

“I wish I’d been there last night! Pringle’s had it coming for years.” 

“So, Riddle,” said Barrett Fay snidely, “Is it true you’re one of the trouble makers last night? After that shit you said about ‘Not getting caught’, this is very surprising. I really hope you didn’t drag Slytherin down with you.” There was a thud under the table, and Fay jolted on the bench, his smug smile immediately wiped from his face. He whipped around to his right and hissed, “The fuck is your problem, Black?” 

“I should be asking you that,” Lucretia Black said, silver eyes idly tracing the curve of her sparkly bracelet. “Slytherin business stays in Slytherin Dungeons, so quit trying to provoke him to feed your own ego, you pathetic worm.” 

Fay looked murderous. His eyes conveyed how very tempted he was to strangle her, but he managed to restrain himself, at least until they returned to their dormitories. 

Lucretia leaned forward, looking past Fay completely as though he was an annoying fly, and addressed Tom. “I am dying to know, though. Since those two first years who were with you last night won’t say anything about what happened, no one else knows what the situation is with Potter and Pringle. It’s a complete mystery!” 

“Yeah,” said Winky Crockett, “what happened?” 

Tom relished the undivided attention while keenly aware that it was still neutral regard at best. With the rumors growing uncontrollably, he needed to perform some delicate damage control to fan the rumor mill just right. 

He swallowed, lowering the bread roll that he’d nibbled on and biting his lip with a conflicted expression. He shifted a glance around at nothing in particular. He lowered his head, slowly opened his mouth to speak—his audience leaned in—he hesitated, and shook his head. He resumed eating with a shrug. 

Everyone who had been listening expelled a disappointed breath.  

After a beat, he quietly said, “Later.” 

And just like that, they returned to their plates, clearing the food with haste to return to the dormitories. 

Too easy. 

There was a certain finesse needed in getting someone to listen to you. Anyone could just scream for attention and demand to be believed. That’s not what people want to hear. People need curiosity, the kind that makes them hold their breaths and sit on the edge of their seats to better latch onto your every word, even if it’s spoken in whispers.  

Back in the common room, Lucretia had saved him a seat by the fireplace. All the nearby tables were fully occupied with Slytherins who were pretending to be engrossed in their textbooks. 

Tom chose to lean against the warm pilaster beside the sleeping embers. He dragged a deep breath in and spoke, “I haven’t been given permission to talk about this…” 

He also hadn’t been told to keep quiet about it, but people tend to trust secrets far more easily than statements. 

“But I have nothing to hide from my own House, so I’ll tell you what happened last night.” 

The best way to get people to trust you is to have them think you trust them first. 

Some listeners at the tables had dropped the pretense and were openly watching him. 

Waiting. Breaths bated. 

This was it. This was the defining moment in which Tom had to choose who to gamble on. On the one hand, Harry was far more liked than Pringle even after the First Year’s Quidditch game got canceled. On the other hand, Pringle commanded more fear and respect in everyone, faculty included. The caretaker held far more power, and Harry was likely to be fired very soon. 

Still, if there was anything Tom could trust, it was that Harry would never fail to surprise him. Harry, who, mere moments after declaring peace, went on to break his enemy’s nose.  

Harry who charged into Pringle’s Detention Room and shortly emerged just as Tom’s quick strides brought him down the hallway to the door. Harry who had draped his topcoat over a sniffling shirtless student and gently ushered them out.

Harry, who had just noticed Tom in the hallway, was suddenly struck in the face with an orange spell and immediately grew a pumpkin head. 

“Alright Budger, do it!” 

Tom twisted around and saw at the far bend of the hallway the two first year students whom he’d passed earlier on his walk toward Slytherin Dungeons. The brawny Gryffindor threw a round object, which soared down the hall and exploded in a cloud of smoke at their feet. It smelled foul, like a bucket of puke had fermented and was releasing terrible gas. 

Harry cursed loudly as he tried to push the pumpkin off his head. “Tom?! What’s going on?! Why are you here?!” He coughed violently from sucking in the smoke. 

The student who was wearing Harry’s topcoat began retching at the smell. 

Tom covered his face with his sleeve.

“Did it work?” the Ravenclaw asked his friend from the end of the hallway. 

If it was meant to be a smoke bomb, then it missed its mark by a yard. The smoke hung low like a blanket of fog, reaching just above Tom’s waist and leaving most of his vision unobstructed. 

“Eh, not really, but I can see him!” 

“Go on then, I’ll distract Pringle.” And upon saying so, the Ravenclaw fired a spell down the hall.

Tom managed to duck out of its path, but it struck Harry’s head instead, cracking a vertical fissure in the pumpkin in the process. Tom froze in mild horror, but Harry seemed fine.

By the time Harry had gotten his bearings, squinting through the crack in the pumpkin, another spell was leaving the Ravenclaw’s wand.  

Harry brought a shield up, protecting all three of them up until Pringle loudly pushed himself into the hallway. The motion shoved Tom right out of the shield's coverage.

Tom should have moved away or tried protego. He had enough time—he’d already had his wand in his hand—but it was more important for him to spend that time blasting a powerful severing charm he’d learned from Herbology. The red spell cut forward, passing the Ravenclaw’s blue spell, leaving Tom defenseless in his bloodlust as the glowing blue beam neared— 

Strike! 

Tom’s vision was filled with Harry’s broad back and pumpkin head. 

"Harry!" 

“What is the meaning of this!” Pringle howled. 

“Ah bugger,” muttered the Gryffindor when he stopped mid-dash down the hallway. “Hey Greig, that wasn’t Pringle.” 

“What?!” 

“You hit the wrong person!”

Just then, Tom’s spell sliced into the Ravenclaw’s front, which would have disembowled him if there hadn’t been a bag slung over his chest. “Ah, biscuits!” 

The contents of the Ravenclaw’s bag spilled out and exploded in smoke, glitter, and crowing noises. 

The Gryffindor swiveled back and forth before finally running back to his accomplice. “Come on, let’s—” 

"Let’s" nothing because Tom’s following Arresto momentum had finally made it to them, freezing them both to the spot. 

“Is anyone hurt?” Harry asked, still wrestling the pumpkin off his head. When he freed himself, the spell that he’d taken for Tom was revealed. His usually dishevelled black hair had almost completely vanished, leaving behind just a few patches in odd places. That had almost been Tom’s fate. 

No one had been seriously hurt yet, but Tom had full intentions of maiming a couple of first years.

Pringle was still raging on all while cupping his bloody nose. 

The kid wearing Harry’s topcoat was backing away, hiding somewhat behind Harry and Tom.

When the smoke had cleared and the two first-year students had been apprehended, Pringle and Harry were still shouting at each other. 

“How dare you orchestrate this ambush!” 

“Are you blind?” Harry waved at his shaven head. “Does it look like I had any part in this?!”  

“This is assault! An attempt on my life! I’ll have your head for this!” 

“My protego shield protected you, moron!” 

“And your little accomplices will be punished!” Pringle directed a shaking finger to the Ravenclaw, “Gregorius Garlick,” — to the Gryffindor — “Budger Bobaron,” — and to Tom — “and Tom Riddle.” 

Tom blinked.  

“That’s right,” the caretaker crowed. “Attacking Hogwarts staff, desecrating Hogwarts hallways, and—and staying out past curfew!” 

Tom glanced at Harry’s wristwatch—it had only just turned curfew. 

Pringle continued describing all the horrible tools he’d been wanting to use, making the other two first-year students grow quite pale. To Tom, however, his voice began fading away. 

The surrounding stone walls and torches and people seemed to get sucked into the void as Tom became awashed with a visceral feeling that left him quivering from head to toe. He wasn’t shaking from fear for his reputation or dread for his punishment. No, he was shaking with the overwhelming desire to tear a person limb by limb, finger by finger, nail by nail. To slowly peel their skin off by the square inch until they were oozing blood and looking like a flobberworm in hell.  

The first thing that Tom managed to focus back in on was a pair of murderous green eyes that mirrored every emotion that was coursing through Tom’s body. 

Harry held his gaze, blinded by his own fury, and Tom was ecstatic. They could get away with it, it would be so easy, no witnesses, just them. 

Harry’s wrath was so captivatingly breathtaking. Until he blinked and recoiled, anger chilling into horror, and he averted his eyes. 

The world returned, including Pringle’s voice. “Enjoy your last night at Hogwarts, Potter,” he spat with a bit of blood from his nose. “It’ll be good riddance for us yet. As soon as the Headmaster hears of this…” He began stomping towards the staircase at the other end of the hallway. 

Harry scowled at his retreating back. “I’m not letting you touch any of my students!” When the caretaker was out of view, Harry turned to the two first years and instructed them to escort Gareth Diggory to the hospital wing on their way to their rooms. “And no detours!” 

They were more than happy to do so. 

Finally, he turned toward Tom. “Don’t… Just let me take care of this, alright? It’s going to be okay. Please trust me.” 

The Slytherins were waiting for Tom to choose. Finally, he spoke. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone outside of our house…"

Heads nodded quickly.

"Mr. Pringle threatened us with house points and detention if we exposed what he did.” Tom wrapped his arms around himself as a display of self-protection and then let his arms fall to his side as a sign of trust. “Last night, the reason why Harry had gone to confront the caretaker is because Mr. Pringle was the one behind the First Year’s Quidditch Game being cancelled…” 

Tom wove together a distorted version of reality full of twists and action. He described a great duel in which the Heroic Harry placed himself between his students and the Cruel Caretaker. While maintaining concentration on the protego on the first years, Harry easily overpowered his opponent with his combat skills (skills he’d gained from the years he’d worked as an auror before coming to Hogwarts). Tom finished his fabrications with a cliffhanger—would Pringle get Harry sacked to cover up his own corruption? Or would Harry rise above it and be the beacon of hope for all students? 

It was usually important to not exaggerate too much lest his audience pull away, but Tom provided just enough details and made the story entertaining enough that his audience ate it right out of the palm of his hands. 

As predicted, by dinner, the entire school had heard “the truth” of yesterday’s events in one way or another, some more embellished than not.  

Tom was no longer whispered about as the First Year’s Fallen Angel but as a victim caught in the fight against oppression. The high table was now missing each of the Heads of Houses, and the other professors were murmuring among themselves as well. 

Gregorius Garlick, eating at the Ravenclaw table, was briefly bewildered by the story but entertained the gossip without much trouble. 

Budger Bobaron, at the Gryffindor table, had embraced the attention completely. 

Tom was just innocently eating and keeping to himself. 

∞

The next day, Tom’s gamble paid off. 

He, Garlick, and Bobaron were sitting at a circle of radish crates in the kitchen, surrounded by clinking and clanking sounds of the house elves bustling about to serve all the various pies and roasts for the Hallowe’en Feast. An aromatic platter of cinnamon carrot cake bites had just disappeared.

“Seems like there’s a lot of rumors floating around,” Harry said as he set a sad-looking pot of stew in the center. “No, I’m not getting sacked, and yes, you’re all serving detention.” 

Should Tom be surprised that Harry sufficiently justified punching someone in the face? Or should he not be surprised because he always knew that Harry would somehow surprise him? Either way, Garlick and Bobaron, who was not nearly as familiar with the enigmatic Harry Potter outside of classes, were endlessly unprepared for each of his sentences. 

“Harry,” said Bobaron, eyeing skewers of honey-glazed fishsticks that had just disappeared. He was using Harry's name with undeserved ease and familiarity, Tom noted. “Why are we eating here instead of at the feast?” A line of drool was running down his chin.

Harry handed each of them a serving of his home-cooked stew. “Why do you think?” 

Tom took the bowl, absently noting that it'd been a while since he'd had Harry's stew. It mollified him slightly from having to miss the famous Hallowe'en Feast.

“Is this our punishment?” asked Garlick, similarly distracted by a basket of freshly baked steaming buns and garlic dip. He looked disappointedly at Harry's stew.

“No.” Harry snorted. “We have to complete a task for each of the Heads of Houses.” 

“We’re serving detention with you?” 

“Yes,” Harry spoke between spoonfuls. “Any complaints?” 

“Are you kidding me?!” Bobaron’s voice rose even louder than the kitchen noises. “This is great! You’re way better than Pringle, and you’re on our side.” 

“Don’t get too excited,” Harry said in a bad attempt at scolding, “you’re still in trouble.” 

“We were only trying to rescue Gareth!” Garlick said.

“Ah, I get it.” Bobaron winked twice. “We’re still in ‘trouble’.” He made air quotes.

Harry sighed. “Firstly, Professor Slughorn wants us to replenish his potion ingredients. Next, we’ll have to weed all the garden beds in each of the three greenhouses for Professor Beery. Professor Stitch wants us to take inventory of all equipment that needs replacing or torches that need changing. And Professor Dumbledore wants us to do a routine check in all closets for any pests.” 

Complete silence. Even Tom’s mouth fell slightly agape.

Harry smiled. “Shall we get started?” 

∞

“I don’t deserve this,” Tom muttered as the four of them trekked through the Forbidden Forest, led by the lumos beams from their wands. Bobaron and Garlick were a few paces behind, absorbed in their bantering. 

“Hey Greig, did you hear there be werewolves?” 

“Ugh, why would you say that?!” 

“Are you scared?” 

“I wasn’t until you started talking!” 

Harry sighed. “I know. You don’t have to do anything, just as long as you’re present for the detentions, it’s fine.” 

“I’m the Heir of Slytherin,” Tom said indignantly. “I shouldn’t have to serve detention.” He secretly hoped the two behind them were eavesdropping on this very impressive piece of information. 

They weren’t. 

“Hey, Greig. I think I hear some howling.” 

“Ugh, no! Just stop!” 

Harry snorted. “Very special, are you?” 

“Of course.” Tom puffed his chest. “Can you speak Parseltongue?” 

Harry answered him with an unreadable smile. 

“Right, I didn’t think so.” 

Tom's companion kept annoyingly silent, occasionally squatting down to harvest various herbs Tom recognized from his potions classes. It really was time Harry learned to respect the Heir of Slytherin better.

As their steps crushed the crisp autumn leaves along the foraging path, Tom began hissing a chant, “Come to me, snakes.” 

The forest was dimly illuminated by the first quarter moon, alive with the sound of howling winds and scuttling critters. There must be a decent chance of there being snakes sleeping away somewhere under the blankets of leaves.  

Harry glanced at him quizzically. “What are you doing?” 

“Asserting my bloodline,” Tom hissed in reply. He switched back to English in mock realization, “Oh, right, you can only speak one language. Must be limiting.” 

The older wizard snorted, shook his head, and continued looking for herbs by the light of his wand. "Don't wander off, you two!" he called over his shoulder.

"Yessir!"

Tom ambled after him, repeating the summons for his serpentine servants and inserting occasional insults to Harry. Harry wouldn’t understand it, of course, but it was still fun to watch him continuing on so obliviously.

The other two eventually caught up to them, and their baskets were barely filled. 

“What are you doing?” Bobaron asked, invading Tom’s space. 

“Tom can talk to snakes,” Harry replied before Tom could decide if he wanted to divulge that information. 

“Hah! Hear that, Greig? Tom can talk to snakes. I wonder if I can talk to lions too.” Bobaron sidled back up to his friend. “Think you can talk to birds?” 

Garlick shrugged and bent down to pick a half-crushed mushroom. “I can talk to owls.” 

“Well, duh.” The light from their lumos was bright enough to illuminate his eye roll. “So can I. Bet I can talk to snakes too.” And he proceeded to spray spittle with a string of horrible hissing. “Come on, Greig, give it a crack!” 

“I don’t know…” Garlick wrung his hands. “What if snakes do start coming out?” 

Harry found much more amusement in their antics than Tom could. “Right, it’s just Parseltongue,” he said cheekily. “How hard can it be?” 

He joined Bobaron and began making awful hissing noises that grated on Tom’s ears. 

They were so bold in their insolence, not at all worried that the Forbidden Forest was the perfect place for terrible accidents to happen, such as a den of venomous snakes launching an organized attack on the group, only to spare the sole Heir of Slytherin.

“Hasheseth sthesthessssseeeeeth boogies ssaallahe—” 

Tom almost slipped on a wet patch of leaves. “What!” 

Harry paused and turned to stare at him. “Hm?” 

“Just then! You said a word.” 

“Did I?” He tilted his head. “What was it?” 

Boogies. But it must’ve been a fluke, and Tom wouldn’t degrade himself enough to repeat it. “Nothing, nothing. I misheard.” 

They paused at a crooked boulder where mushrooms were growing around the base. Harry and Bobaron continued to hiss nonsense, though Garlick was no longer fearful of attracting snakes. Bobaron sounded increasingly worse and unrecognizable, but it was not nearly as maddening as Harry. 

Tom could sometimes distinguish actual words under the cluster of noises— 

“Shoshoshosheshspotatoshashoshosh—” 

“Ssssssssssssbutterflyssssss…” 

“Serrsssorsshmushroomsssensss…” 

—and it was driving him mad.  

They cleared the boulder area, by which time Bobaron had grown bored and began asking more intrusive questions. “Soooo, are ye two related or something? Family of sorts? What’s going on here?” 

“Er,” said Harry, scratching his ear. “I’m his…" 

Tom sneered away from the light of lumos, but it didn’t seem to escape his guardian’s notice. 

Harry clamped his lips together for a long and unusual pause, given the simple question. Then, he replied tightly. “We’re not really…” 

“Oh,” Bobaron said disinterestedly. “Are you related to Charlus?” 

“Well, I never knew my parents…” Harry trailed off vaguely.

“Why not? Did they die or something?” 

“Erm, yeah—” 

“That must’ve been really sad,” he remarked without inflection.  

Garlick cleared his throat and tugged on his friend’s arm, “Hey, Budger, maybe don’t—" 

“So how’d they die?” 

Harry was growing flustered. “My aunt and uncle said there’d been a car accident—” 

“I know about cars. Was it a messy death?” 

“Budger,” said Garlick, “I really don’t think—” 

“Like,” the obtuse Gryffindor continued, “did you watch them die?” 

Harry cleared his throat. “I was only just a baby so…” 

“Oh.” He plucked a random leaf and threw it in his basket. “So, do you have any other family?” 

Tom had taken a unique interest in a really boring tree, but he could still feel Harry’s annoyingly heavy gaze on him. As though waiting for him to say something. 

“I have some good friends,” Harry answered curtly. “I’m not really close with my aunt’s family.” 

“Hoho, so you’re completely alone then. Like no family… I feel sorry for—Hmp!” 

Garlick had sneaked around and stuffed a cloth in Bobaron’s mouth. “I am so sorry about him.” He pulled his friend to the side and berated him quietly. 

The boring tree had not moved at all, nor did it remotely distract Tom from the many glances Harry stole of him. If Harry was expecting him to say something, then he’d be sorely disappointed. 

And disappointed he was, with his shoulders slumped and his expression shuttered. He was noticeably withdrawn toward Tom when he resumed conversation with Bobaron and Garlick.

“So Harry,” Bobaron began again after having freed his mouth of the cloth. “Did you get Pringle to agree to the First Year’s Quidditch Game?” 

“No,” Harry replied with a suspicious smile. “It’s stated in the rules that first years aren’t allowed to play in a quidditch game at Hogwarts.” 

Almost intelligible by his thick Scottish accent, Bobaron exclaimed, “So ye’re just goin’ ta give up?!” 

“Ah, no—” 

But Bobaron had stopped listening in favor of launching into a passionate speech about the importance of perseverance. “—and that is why I always make my bed in the morning.” He finished after about ten minutes. 

“Right,” said Harry, after a speechless pause. “As I was saying, we can’t have the First Year’s Quidditch Game, but that won’t affect our game.” 

Bobaron stared.  

Garlick waved a hand in front of his friend to no effect. “Mr. Harry sir, does that mean there will be a game or there won’t be?” 

“There will.” 

“But it’s against the rules?” 

“It’s against the rules for first years to play a quidditch game at Hogwarts.” 

“But… we can still have the game?” 

“Yes,” said Harry, grinning with endless amusement. “Because the rules don’t apply to us.” 

“I’m confused!” Bobaron announced. 

Harry chuckled and carefully scraped off the bark of a tree. “What’s a Quidditch game without bludgers, with more than seven players on each team, and with no seeker?” 

Bobaron propped his hands on his hips. “Well, you can’t have a real Quidditch game without those.” 

“Exactly.” Harry rewarded him with an approving smile. “We can’t have a Quidditch game, but we can still have a game.” 

Garlick reached the realization before Bobaron, who was just standing there and staring.  

“That’s really smart, Mr. Harry sir! But then we’ll have to come up with a new name for it! What do you think?” 

They carried on like that, picking ingredients and chattering away, while Tom had to trail along after them, completely forgotten, with nothing to do and no one to talk to. Harry seemed perfectly happy to talk to a kid who kept asking him intrusive questions and another kid who literally turned his head into a pumpkin and shaved his hair. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering all his friends were imaginary.

Harry hummed. “We can call it the Great Hogwart’s Game…?” 

“That’s a shite idea,” Bobaron dismissed immediately and began throwing relatively better ideas at his friend. “Hey Greig, what do you think of calling it the Battle of Hogwarts?”  

The first years went on animately with each other, leaving Harry behind to Tom’s quiet company.  

A gust high overhead rustled the tops of the towering trees, showering the group with gently falling leaves. Neither Tom nor Harry exchanged a word. 

This was ridiculous. Tom didn’t deserve to be here in the first place. If he hadn’t turned around that night—! If he had just minded his own and kept walking to his dormitory—! Tom hadn’t done anything wrong aside from attempting to disembowel another student. And now Harry was expecting something from him, testing him perhaps. Using silence as some sort of incentive or whatever.  

Well, if Harry wanted something, he would have to say it because Tom was not going to yield. 

Harry did speak eventually, but it was to swap baskets with Tom because he had filled his up, and he would do Tom’s share since Tom didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. 

Tom was vividly entertaining the idea of summoning all the snakes in the forest to strangle Harry so that he’d start acting normally again. 

“Do you remember visiting the Diggorys last summer?”  

Tom stumbled over a large root. He straightened and nodded. Somewhat reluctant to speak.

“We were talking about you adopting them, remember?” 

Tom’s memory was perfect, so yes, he did remember. They had looked at a number of family profiles that Harry had drawn up and had gone to visit a few of the ones Tom found acceptable. It was nice being the one to pick the family for a change. 

“Well, the Diggorys aren’t available anymore, so I’ve contacted the Lovegood family for you to stay with after I’ve gone back home.” 

A chilly breeze penetrated the thick of the trees where they walked, and Tom felt it pierce his outdoor robes right to his bones. A part of Tom was surprised that Harry had still been trying to leave because it had been about a year since he had first announced that intention, and he was still here, so surely he’d given up by now. How hard was it to return "home" anyway? They had magic; they could go anywhere on earth if they wanted. 

Tom thought Harry had given up on that and had chosen to stay in Britain, to stay at Hogwarts, to stay… But he was wrong all this time, apparently. 

“The Lovegoods are the eccentric ones, if you remember,” Harry was saying. “You’re pretty used to a bit of eccentricity by now, yeah?” 

Tom did not reply. 

Once the baskets were all relatively filled, Bobaron’s basket being half-filled with random weeds and tree leaves, Harry announced for them to start heading back. They had wandered off the regular foraging path for a bit, but it was easy enough to figure out the direction of the castle.  

When they attempted to cross a large clearing, however, they were stopped by two centaurs and were facing the pointed end of a jagged arrow. 

Garlick and Bobaron began screaming, though the former was trembling with fear while the latter was attempting some sort of intimidation. 

“You dare enter centaur territory?” bellowed the one holding the drawn bow. It had a coat as dark as the night and wide, threatening eyes like a pair of full moons. Despite its lithe androgonous upper body, it was very athletic. Its arms pulled the string of the bow further still, muscles rippling with the exertion. 

The smaller centaur, looking somewhat around Tom’s age with a chestnut gradient over its inky coat, grasped a fistful of the larger one’s fur. “We’re not in centaur territory, though,” it whispered loudly. 

The larger centaur, which looked to be in mid-adolescence, whipped its tail at the other’s head. “Boon, will you learn to shut up?” it growled. “Obviously, they didn’t know that until you said it.” 

“Evening,” Harry stepped up closer to the poised arrow, his hands stuffed casually in his robe pockets. “We’re just trying to get back to Hogwarts. We’ll stay out of your way.” 

“It would be wise to,” the larger one boomed. “You’d be foolish to attempt anything here, where you’re completely surrounded!” 

“But, Skite, we came here by ourselves,” the smaller one, Boon, whispered even louder. 

“Boon, shut up!” Skite lowered its bow and looked skyward. “Stars above, why do I bring you with me?” 

“Because I have better eyes,” Boon chirped. “And I want to see the story about the Snake Man and the Golden Boy!” 

Harry choked on nothing (unsurprising) and coughed. “The what story?” 

Skite glowered down at him. “That is of no relevance to you, lowly wizards. Begone while I am still merciful!” 

Boon leapt away from Skite’s side and trotted up to Harry. Closer now, it became apparent that the young centaur was just a little shorter than him. “It’s my favorite story in the stars! The elders used to read it to us all the time on clear nights.” The young centaur gazed up at where the circle of trees around the clearing opened up to night sky, smile fading and eyes growing distant. “But it’s not there anymore.” 

From behind, Tom saw Harry’s shoulders hitch up and sensed his posture stiffen.  

“Why not?” 

“Boon,” Skite barked. “Get away from that!” 

“The sky’s sick,” Boon replied mournfully, ignoring the older centaur’s ire. “The stars are quiet, and the sky’s been sick for over two years. The stories are gone.” 

Tom wondered if it had anything to do with the Great Disturbance that Mopsus had spoken about. Harry certainly looked greatly disturbed by this information when Tom caught a glimpse of his side profile. He was almost shuddering, in fact.  

Boon frowned up at the sky. “I wanted to know how the story ends. Do you know?” 

Harry took a deep, shaky breath. His eyes roamed up at the sky where little specks of light dotted the obsidian dome. The gaze descended, falling on Tom for an eternity of a second before he answered the young centaur. “I don’t. But we could choose an ending, now, can’t we?” 

Chapter Text

Wooden TOCK-TOCK-TOCK sounds of a small vintage cuckoo clock tapping against a golden wristwatch filled the silence of the massive Room of Hidden Things. When the clock offered nothing more than a hollow sound, it got thrown over a certain time traveler’s shoulder and tumbled down the growing pile of things-that-were-not-conduits. 

Harry ruffled his hair and pulled at the neck of his jumper when yet another vaguely magically-inclined-looking object joined the collection of rejects. On the ground beside him, a thick black notebook lay open on its bent and tattered spine. Corners of foreign papers poked out from its dog-eared pages until it was bulging with time travel content. The page that was currently being scribbled in, however, was a rough sketch of the entire room, with details of the rows of shelves and storage cabinets and piles of nicknacks and junk and treasure alike. 

Over half the sketch was covered in small Xs denoting each evening from the last month that Harry spent digging through that particular section for a possible conduit that would magically activate his wristwatch and take him home. 

There were all sorts of other things that had been hidden over the years, from drained vials of questionable potions to erotica to dark magical items. He had been in the room so often, in fact, that he’d witnessed a house elf—Schmerple from the kitchens—pop in and dump a sack of wrapped presents in section D5 of his grid of the room. She popped away without noticing him. 

Harry did poke around the sack, but only long enough to conclude that they were probably presents, temporarily stashed away, for the handful who hadn’t gone home for the holidays. 

Moving onto section F8, at the far back of the crowded cavern, Harry tried to block out the rest of the room from his vision before the looming mountains of things could swallow him up with their immense presence. 

F8 was an interesting one. He’d found a radish-shaped vase that he was confident Luna would love. There was also a little diary of a house elf named Slurple that Harry thought Hermione would probably enjoy. He’d, at one point, knocked over a pouch of strange beans that were not conduits, but still had a magical quality to them. Neville would probably know more. There was a dusty wardrobe of old frilly petticoats that pulled a chuckle from Harry as he recalled Ron’s yule ball robes.  

He then imagined Tom’s expression if he gifted the boy a set of sparkly pink robes with lace and a ribbon finish. Harry would probably end up strangled by the very same pink ribbon. 

He hadn’t seen Tom very often since he started spending his evenings in the Room of Hidden Things. The atmosphere had gotten a bit stilted from the first detention, and they’d managed to complete all of the tasks for the Heads of Houses without patching things up—if there was anything to patch up in the first place.  

Harry was pretty sure Tom was annoyed at him over something, though. He wasn’t really too worried about it. He’d be forgiven easily enough if he offered a nice Christmas present. Maybe a novelty quill for laughs. 

Just as the idea of Tom’s Christmas present formed in his head, he spotted a soft object at his feet in the likeness of a cartoon snake. It was a scarf, emerald and dusty. A silvery sheen glowed faintly where the pads of his fingers rubbed dust off the cashmere fabric. The tail end of the snake scarf was firmly clamped under the weight of a tower of ruined caldrons, haphazardly stacked.  

“Wingardium Leviosa!” 

Ominous creaking was the only warning Harry got before the resulting crash, clatter, and clang. That was how he ended up flattened to the cool dusty ground, his legs buried by the weight of thick animal pelts and heavy trunks of clinking objects, and his bruised upper body pressed down by grimy pewter cauldrons. Turning his head to the right, his nose brushed against a cauldron that was melted in such a way that it resembled one of the metal spikes from Pringle’s torture dungeon. The pointy end of the cauldron was impaled into the broken tiled ground. 

Harry looked up at the ceiling and breathed out. I almost died trying to get Tom a present.  

It was a slow and painful process, trying to lift the objects without triggering another avalanche. When he managed to free himself enough to sit up, his eyes zeroed in on a familiar pair of golden clawed feet a few paces to his left. Above the ornate golden base was a large door-like object covered by a sheet of linen.  

Harry pulled his legs out and hobbled over, his pain easily ignored in his magnetic draw to the Mirror of Erised. His hands were already tugging at the fabric before he gave a conscious thought and paused. What was it that Dumbledore had warned him? Men have wasted before it, dwelling on dreams and driven mad. Would he, knowing what the mirror would show him, be captivated like that? 

His fingers slowly released. And paused again. 

Surely not. Harry could resist the Imperius curse. He could resist the Veela’s allure. He had been able to pull himself away from the Pocket Watch Pensieve after every dive he made to watch the past when his parents showered baby Harry with all the love in the world at the Potter’s House in Godric’s Hollow. Only those other times, they were around his age. 

If he looked at the mirror now, they would be even older than he’d seen when he was eleven. They’d be in their forties! Already a third of the way into their long, happy lives with the beginnings of laugh lines etched into their faces. They’d stand behind him as he was presently, twenty-three. They’d look at him and smile at him, not at baby Harry from the pensieve.  

The linen dropped to his feet, kicking up dust. Heart pounding in his ears, Harry forced his eyes up and stared at his reflection.

There was a whole crowd of people standing right behind him, even more than could fit the frame. A tall, thin man appeared, standing behind his right shoulder, only he didn’t wear glasses. Instead of black, his hair was ginger and didn’t stick up the way Harry’s did. 

The pretty woman behind his left shoulder had lighter-colored, thicker hair, except her eyes weren’t like his at all. They were brown and glistening with tears, though she was smiling as wide as he’d seen her do when they’d gone to find her parents in Australia. 

Harry’s vision began blurring. He had to blink and squint to see the other faces behind them. He found Neville, Luna, and Ginny. Hagrid, McGonagall, and Kreacher. Fred, George, Molly, Arthur, Bill, Charlie, and Percy. Andromeada was there, trying to hold Teddy as he courageously wiggled to climb up her head. 

Harry stumbled forward, knees hitting the linen and then crawling closer. 

There were so many people, and not a single one looked like him. He had to lean at another angle just to see the rest of the crowd—next to Andromeda were Tonks and Remus. Leaning further left to see the other side, there was Sirius, smiling proudly, and on his shoulder, Hedwig flapping her wings at him. Somewhere behind the crowd’s legs, Harry was sure there had been a house elf, jumping excitedly with bright socks and little trainers. 

Harry’s unsteady fingers pressed on the cool reflective surface, turning white as he pushed harder. The mirror didn’t move, standing as it was against the wall. It didn’t crack either, despite how hard Harry was now pushing with both hands and all his weight.  

“Come on,” he rasped, voice breaking a little from his constricting throat. “Come on. Let me in, damnit, take me back, I want to—just—please.”  

The thumping sounds of his fist slamming the mirror were swallowed up by the massive room. Trembling and cold and alone. 

His legs folded. He slumped forward, forehead thudding against his miserable reflection and breath clouding the mirror.  

He screamed. Angry, frustrated, lost. The roar ripped out from the pit of his soul. Until fists hurt and his veins popped and his throat scratched itself raw. The sound was easily absorbed by the massive chamber, all the same. 

When he could pry open his eyes again, there were pale freckled arms wrapped around his torso from a figure in the mirror who had come to kneel behind him. He could almost feel Ginny’s kisses on his shoulder. 

Harry tore his eyes away. “I’ll come back,” he promised, more of a mouth movement than sound after screaming his voice off. “I’ll come home.” 

∞ 

“You haven’t shaved in a while,” Tom commented after a sip of his hot apple cider. 

Harry hummed, absently rubbing a salve into the bruises on his shin.  

In the corner of his vision, Tom was leaning an elbow on the armrest of his favorite chair. His leg was crossed over the other, much like elitists did for whatever reason. “You should do that. At least put some effort into your appearance. This is why Pringle looks more reliable than you.” 

The name Pringle made his blood spike, and pain shot up his leg from where his fingers dug too hard on a swollen part of his calf. “Did you just say Pringle looks better than me?” 

Tom shrugged. 

Harry felt something like bile rise to his throat. An irrational sense of betrayal, perhaps. “I’m not trying to compete with him anyway.” He scratched his prickly stubble, which incidentally got the healing salve in his facial hair. “I’m growing it out on purpose so that the students'll take me more seriously.” 

“It doesn’t suit you,” said Tom, not kindly at all. Then a sliver of a crease formed between his brows. “Are you talking about Pius?” 

Harry grunted unhappily and returned to tend to his aching knees from the prolonged kneeling in the Room of Requirement.  

“I heard that she was interested in Rosa Lee from Hufflepuff.” 

Harry hummed, though it sounded more like a grunt. He blamed that on everything wrong in his life presently. His whole body was aching and in pain, especially his chest and throat. His ankle was swelling, his eyes sometimes burned if he let his thoughts roam for too long, and his wrist felt like it was about to get crushed— 

“Ow!” Harry tore Tom’s grip off. “What’s that for?” 

Tom’s eyes flashed, and he batted away Harry’s hand. “You’re doing it again.” 

“What?” 

“Getting that faraway look in your eyes. It’s like you’re not even here.” He clicked his tongue and crossed his arms. “Were you even listening to what I was saying?” 

“No,” said Harry testily, not in the mood to humor him. Tom only looked angrier, and Harry had to bite his tongue. He breathed slowly and rubbed his hands over his face, forgetting again that they were coated in salve. He worked all of his mental functions to reply. “Sorry,” and he meant it, “I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” 

Tom looked startled. Disarmed by the unsolicited honesty, no doubt. 

Harry didn’t feel much better about it himself, but he’d been trying to be a better example, if not for Tom’s benefit then at least his own. Who knows, maybe Voldemort would be marginally less cruel in the future? A relief for his Death Eaters to be sure. “I’m just stressed with all the things preventing me from going home.” 

Tom stared at him with utter confusion, and then his face blanked completely. “Hm, yes, that home,” he said tonelessly. “It’s been over a year now. Strange that you can’t just go there, magic and all.” 

Harry ducked his head away from the scrutiny. He’d always been vague about where 'home' was; there was little he could say without making contradictions. Tom seemed to be waiting for something, so Harry muttered about magic barriers and legal stuff that he hadn’t fulfilled. 

“Still, if you haven’t managed to do anything about it after all this time, it must be impossible.” Tom shrugged. “Just give up.” 

Something in Harry’s gut lurched at the thought. He tried to laugh because Tom was staring at him very carefully despite his casual tone. “I couldn’t. I mean, I have” — his chest squeezed — “I have a family. Waiting for me. So I can’t give up.” Then a real smile broke out because he remembered— “I managed to get you out of that orphanage after all. That seemed impossible, too.” And Harry hadn’t given up then. 

It took months of effort, but he’d done it. It took months of research with his friends to time travel here too, and they’d done it, even if it had been to the wrong year. And it took months and months of effort to hunt down all the horcruxes, to the point that Harry was sure he’d fail everyone, but they’d done it. 

A glimmer of hope began to warm him. 

“I thought you didn’t like your aunt’s family,” muttered Tom. 

“No, not them.” Harry snorted at the very thought. “I’ve got a real family. Not the blood kind, but the I’d-fly-through-a-fire-with-you kind.” As he spoke, a great rush of affection surged in him, warming his insides with giddiness and longing. 

Tom’s eyes were slits of skepticism. “Are they as real as those friends of yours?” He nodded to the wristwatch. 

“They’re not imaginary!” Harry had unrolled his trousers and leant forward. “They’re my family. I’ve got a—a sister sorta, only she doesn’t look like me, but she’s brilliant, Tom. And I’ve basically been adopted into this other family, and there’re so many people, it’s never quiet in the house…” Harry’s eyes widened when another thought jolted in his mind. “And I’ve got a godson! Only I’ve been a terrible godfather, but his grandmother loves to monopolize him anyway. He’s brilliant though, a metamorphmagus, just like his mum. Oh, I’ve got to get back before he forgets me!” 

Tom had looked doubtful at first, but as Harry kept talking, the boy’s face only became colder. When he heard the first mention of Teddy, his expression soured completely. “How are you so sure they want you back?” 

Harry froze. 

“You’ve been gone for almost three years already." He set down his drink. "They must’ve forgotten you by now.” 

Ginny’s oblivious smile flashed in his mind. 

“If they’re as real as you say they are, how come they’ve never once come here to fetch you themselves? Seems a lot like they don’t really care.” Tom might as well have stuck an icy hand right through him. 

“You’re wrong…” 

The boy carried on talking as though he hadn’t said anything. “You don’t really need them either. You might be happier being unattached, like me.” His face lit up then, though the light did not quite reach his eyes. He didn’t seem to see Harry at all. “We’re a lot alike, aren’t we? Our wands have brother cores, for one. Your parents are dead, and I don’t have anyone either. Wouldn't it be nicer to be uncomplicated?” 

“I can’t,” Harry blurted immediately. Tom's genial demeanor dropped. “I can’t live like that, I need my family. All this time, I’ve wanted—they were right there, right beside me like always, and I didn’t even realize—I know you don’t care about that kind of thing, but I do. I want a family.” 

“That’s exactly your problem!” Tom snapped with such abrupt force that Harry flinched. “You’re so desperate for a family, you’re using your friends as substitutes! You're just pretending!” 

Harry almost shrank back from the boy’s withering glare, like he was observing a pathetic flobberworm near his shiny shoes.

“They clearly don’t need you. You’re replaceable to them—” 

“No—” 

“—and when they forget you, you’ll just be happy to keep fooling yourself!” 

“Why are you saying this?” Harry’s voice was hoarse and shaky, still recovering from the shouting he’d done in the Room of Hidden Things.  

Tom clicked his teeth together. His jaw jumped from rapid clenching. 

Harry steeled himself. “Why are you even here?”  

The mean glint faded from Tom’s eyes, and he seemed momentarily shocked. His answer, when he finally found it, was short and slow. “…To get my Christmas present.” 

Something flared up in Harry, because of course. Tom only visited him whenever he wanted something. Whenever Harry had some sort of use for him. “How are you sure I got you something?” he challenged. It was true, but not the point. 

The notion clearly never occurred to Tom, if his stricken expression was anything to go by. “You have to!” 

“Why’s that?” Harry shot back. “You’ve never given me anything. I’ve known you for two years, and if I’m lucky, I might get some strong tea from you. But this past week, you’ve been going around and sending presents to all of your little investments. Even Slughorn was showing off the quill set you got him! Very original, by the way,” he added bitingly. He jabbed his wand in the air, and a sloppily wrapped gift soared through the room and into his hand. He threw it at Tom and grumbled, “There. Risked my life getting that.” 

Tom didn’t seem much impressed by that fact, but Harry hadn't expected him to be. 

“Happy, now? I didn’t have to. Why should I have put that kind of effort out when you don’t even think of me as—as—” family. Harry clamped his mouth shut. 

Tom went quiet. Dangerously quiet. When does he ever not have something to say? Yet there he was, staring blankly at the present that landed in his lap. Harry’s head was starting to cool off with all the time Tom was spending being so quiet. Not reacting violently. 

“You told me something before,” Tom spoke softly and just as coldly. “Something about the capacity to care about someone without expecting a single thing in return.” 

Head cooled off now, Harry couldn’t help the surge of shame twisting up his already jumbled insides. “I do care about you… But I can’t keep giving myself up like this.” 

A veil of silence descended, only interrupted by the deafening crumpling of Tom tucking away the present and his padding footsteps out of Harry’s door.  

Tired eyes tracked the boy's exit on the edge of his vision, and Harry slumped into the couch when the door shut with a resounding slam.  

∞

Harry told his friends everything. Nearly. He may have sped past the description of what he saw in the mirror, feeling Tom’s words echo in his mind, polluting him with dark, persisting insecurity. He wasn’t ashamed of the fact that his closest friends were the world to him. He’d had little else; it was only natural.  

But Ron had plenty of brothers. Where would Harry stand? Or maybe it was like comparing crups and kneazles, and Harry wasn’t even in the picture.

And maybe Hermione was already happy with being an only child. He couldn't just barge in and declare, "By the way, Hermione, you're my family now." Harry wasn’t sure he’d be able to recover if any of his friends found his deepest desires overbearing. 

The group in the wristwatch mirror had huddled around Luna’s bedroom and listened to him recount his argument with Tom. Luna had done some Christmas decorating as well, tinsels all over her walls and streams of cotton added to her murals to replicate snow. The communication mirror was angled in such a way that part of the ceiling was visible, the parts on which Luna had hand-painted pictures of Hermione and Ginny. There was a bit of Harry’s head in the frame, and he recognized that from his messy black hair that covered his forehead, obscuring the famous lightning scar completely. 

He talked and fixed his eyes on the gold chain that connected the ceiling portraits. The writing was too small in the little mirror on his wrist, but Harry knew the chains were still just the one golden word repeated a thousand times, friends… friends… friends… 

When he finished talking, Hermione was flipping aggressively through a book, and Ron was nodding gravely with a thin line of hot chocolate moustache. Neville was trying to pay attention, but was hopelessly distracted by Ron’s moustache. On the bed, Luna hugged her knees to her chest a bit tighter, looking glum in her brightly splashed outfit. Malfoy was away, attending some sort of Christmas event, but Nott was in the room somewhere out of view. 

Hermione eventually lifted her head. “This reaction from Tom is very interesting. It says here that anger can be a secondary emotion.” She tapped on an iceberg drawing in her psychology book, which she had kept on her person even over the holidays for whatever reason. She probably kept a small library on her at all times. “Do you think there was another emotion fueling it?” 

Harry shrugged, rubbing his fingers over the split skin on his knuckles.  

“There’s shame—” 

He snorted. 

“—stress, worry, hurt, humiliation, rejection, sadness, jealousy—” 

“I don’t know.” He didn’t think trying to psycho-analyse Tom would be very productive either, but he wasn’t about to discredit Hermione’s hard work on top of everything else that’s happened. “Jealousy, maybe. I’d been talking about Teddy and his being a metamorphmagus before he started saying all that rubbish and acting that way.”  

“It is cooler than being a Parselmouth,” said Ron, scrubbing his lip clean when he finally noticed Neville’s gestures. “No offense, Harry. And with the way Fred and George keep influencing Teddy, he’ll be a right little devil one day!” 

Harry groaned and dragged calloused hands over his face until he turned pink. “I have to apologize, don’t I? I didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t really want to, but it’s not like Tom did anything wrong apart from being his usual self-centered, insensitive brat self.” 

“Parenting is difficult,” Hermione hummed with a quick glance at Ron. He didn’t notice. “Being considerate is a learned skill in children, but Tom seems proficient in it already, only when it suits his goals. I don’t think you could do much else that isn’t forcing him to act like a completely different person.” 

Something about that idea made Harry squirm on the couch. “I don’t want that. I just wish he’d at least, I dunno, not recoil when people ask if we’re family?” He really wasn’t asking for much. 

Ron started to say something, and then he disappeared. 

The entire image vanished, returning to its reflective appearance. Harry’s reflection blinked dumbly back at him.  

His blood froze with dread. A numbness quickly spread like frost over his body. 

The last time the call cut off so abruptly was when he’d been watching Ginny’s Quidditch game.

He scrambled to his feet, twisting in place in his living room, unsure of where to go, because the last time the call ended so abruptly, he’d reopened the connection and lost Ginny. 

Words ricocheted through his skull and the empty room.

—and when they forget you, you’ll just be happy to keep fooling yourself!

Acid rose to his throat, and he stared in horror at his paling reflection. “This can’t be happening,” he whispered. He couldn’t bring himself to reopen the call. He could only swivel in place, looking for something, anything to fix it. He clipped his leg on the coffee table in his haste to grab his journal and promptly collided with the ground. The fall knocked his watch shut. 

Harry’s heart dropped out of his chest. “Shit.” Now that he had started, a rapid stream of curses spilled from his lips. He leaped to his feet and paced around, hands gripping his scrambled head. He was able to recognize the beginning signs of hyperventilation—breathing really fucking hard—before he completely lost his head.  

Panicking was not productive. Alright, focus. Actions. He could… He could look in his journal. 

Half an hour of frantic searching later, he concluded that there was nothing else for it. With bated breath, he pressed the button on his watch. It popped open.

The image that he was greeted with was Theodore Nott, with a dark purple bruise swelling over his left eyebrow, his usually neat clothes and sandy hair were similarly rumpled, and his breathing was labored. He was no longer in Luna’s room. There was dim light, but Harry recognized the wallpaper from the previous times their group held meetings at Nott’s flat.  

Nott was alone. 

Harry was going to throw up. He gripped the edge of his desk, nails biting into the wood. The edges of his vision were blurring out. It’s over. They’d often joked about it, but Harry had always been half serious when he told them he wouldn’t last a week without them.

He was losing sight of Nott fixing up his own appearance. “What’s wrong?” he asked, furrowing his brows at Harry’s devastated expression. “Are you—Oh. Don't worry. Everyone’s fine.” 

Harry blinked rapidly and could only reply in the smallest voice, “What?” 

“Everyone’s timethreads are fine.” He rubbed the tip of his jutting ear. “I was the one who cut off the call earlier.” 

More rapid blinking. “What?!” 

“I needed to have a private word with you.” 

“You scared me shitless!” Harry raved, but it was with such relief he couldn’t stay mad for very long. “I thought—Oh, thank Merlin. I want to see the others, just to make sure everything’s okay.” He was shaking so hard it's a miracle he was still sitting upright.

Nott inclined his head but held his hand out, palm forward. “After you answer my questions.” He looked serious.

Harry eyed him dubiously before nodding. 

“You wanted Riddle to acknowledge you better or something, but to what purpose? What are you hoping to achieve?”  

“I—" 

“Are you getting attached to him? Getting comfortable in 1938, perhaps?” 

“No!” spluttered Harry. 

“So what then? Are you hoping he’ll think of you more like family? Just until you abandon him to come back here? Do you think that’ll play out very well?” 

Harry blanched. “No, I don’t—”   

“Remind me again, what’s Plan F?” 

Harry took a steadying breath because Nott was finally giving him time to talk. This had become more of an interrogation than a questioning with the way the wizard had carried on. “A year of happiness,” he answered with a little bite. 

“Correct,” spat Nott in a way that reminded him of Snape at the end of particularly interactive lessons. They had always been cordial with each other, and Nott had never looked at him with such a stony expression. “You’re not meant to teach him ‘love’. You can’t ‘fix’ his flaws. You can’t force him to be someone he isn’t, someone ‘good’. You can’t change him.” 

Nott’s eyes were cold as death and piercing, going right through him, as though Harry wasn’t even there. He chewed the inside of his cheek before continuing, “You can wait for something that’s never going to happen. The best that you’ll ever get from this kind of person is the delusion of what you want him to be.” 

Harry’s first instinct was to lash back at him because where does Nott get off telling Harry what he could or couldn’t do? Harry was capable of a surprising range of things, thank you very much. It might take him a while, but he can get things done just with perseverance alone.  

Then Harry begrudgingly recalled Hermione’s words and Merrythought’s wisdom, and he had to bite back the venomous insults he had instinctively readied. He practiced slow breathing, tedious but sometimes effective. Deep drag in, lingering apple cider and glowing Scots pine embers. Calm breath out. He observed Nott. 

There was anger, frustration, and disappointment. But Nott wasn’t really looking at him so much as through him. There was something personal here; Nott rarely disclosed anything personal in his life. He hardly expressed emotional outbursts as it was.

What’s the source of this reaction, then? Not betrayal or jealousy or hurt. No way… Was Nott worried? 

Worried that Harry would repeat someone else’s mistake, perhaps. Possibly the person he had truly been thinking of with his unfocused eyes.  

“I’m not that naïve,” mumbled Harry, which jolted Nott back into focus. “I just miss everyone.” Ugh, he was talking like a needy child. He debated thanking Nott for being worried over him—wow, what a milestone in their friendship(?)—but his cheeks were glowing with embarrassment already. 

Judging by the other wizard’s pink face, Nott probably wouldn’t appreciate it much either. “That’s fine,” he cleared his throat, “to miss everyone, I mean. Just as long as you focus on the research and stop looking for that kind of comfort in Riddle.” 

Harry bobbed his head slowly, eyes fixed down on the crescent indents in his palm. They ended that note like two emotionally repressed men, without another hint of vulnerability. 

∞

Embarrassingly, Harry finally pieced together why Tom had been so angry. It must’ve been that he felt uncomfortable with Harry’s ‘desperation’ as he’d put it. He must’ve felt that Harry was using him to satisfy his longing for any family, and it was no wonder the boy snapped like that.  

Harry wanted to decompose in a hole from the shame of acting that overbearing to an eleven-year-old. Apologizing was the easiest thing in the world now, and it was not a challenge to figure out what he needed to do to make it up to Tom. 

The obsessive little narcissist had frequently expressed his desire to borrow a book from the Reserved Section of the library. His problem was that students needed a teacher’s permission to access those ancient texts and had to have a good reason to loan them at all. First and second year students were forbidden access entirely. 

The book in question was The Emerald Tablet, which, from Harry’s understanding, was about the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. Part of Harry felt frustrated because why couldn’t Tom just calm down for one bloody minute?! He’s eleven for Merlin’s sake! Just eat some chocolate frogs and make some friends! 

Then Harry remembered his own adventures at eleven and had to bite his tongue.  

The other part of him acknowledged that this is a much better alternative to Horcruxes.

Still, he didn’t think it was a particularly good idea, enabling Tom’s world-dominating ambitions and enamoration with immortality. But then again, Tom was unlikely to find any success, being that he was eleven and far too self-centered to philosophize about anything that didn’t involve himself. 

Based on a light skim of the book, The Emerald Tablet looked about as abstract and unhelpful as the other book Tom had ranted about to Harry. So it was probably harmless if he lent this to Tom as an apology birthday present. 

Right? Right. 

Or better yet, Harry could use this opportunity to send Tom on a wild-goose chase. 

∞

On New Year’s Eve, Harry used the Marauder’s Map to ambush Tom on the stairs between the third and fourth floor near the library. In one hand, he held up a small cupcake with a singular candle that produced flames in the shape of the number ‘12’ at the top. In his other hand, he held a very old copy of The Emerald Tablet, which he had just finished thoroughly defacing. Not permanently, of course, Nott would defy time to strangle him.  

He had spent the past week putting together a convincing ‘introductory’ chapter filled entirely with random things that he’d tossed together with his friends’ input. 

Tom’s reaction to Harry leaning against the stone banister was initially shock and then cold indifference. After having the two items presented to him, however, his eyes lit up much like a power-hungry child. He ignored Harry’s awkward “Happy Birthday” and mumbled apology and made a grab at the book. 

Harry pulled back, and Tom’s expression turned murderous. “I have to keep the book with me, otherwise Turner will have my head.” 

The young wizard’s lip pulled into a pout, and it was so much warmer than his first expression that Harry almost relented.  

“You can read it whenever you come to visit my quarters.” Harry flushed and quickly added, “If you have time to, I mean. Not that I expect you to. The book is due in two weeks, though, so…” He cleared his throat and tucked the book in its protective casing. “You’re welcome to visit whenever.” 

Tom looked at him curiously, but proceeded to follow him back to his private quarters without much fuss. His cagey demeanor had melted away. Sitting back in his favorite chair, he hummed and flipped through the book. “I have planned a present for you too.”  

Harry’s face combusted in heat. “Oh, god, you really didn’t need to.” He buried his warm cheeks in his hands. 

“It’s fine.” Tom waved his hand dismissively, eyes still absorbed in the book. “You have been good to me, and you deserve to be rewarded.” 

God, what a condescending prick. “Right…” 

“I don’t have it yet,” he continued, “but once I make it, I’ll let you have as much of the Elixir of Life as you want.” 

Harry had to snort, a sound that drew Tom’s eyes away from the pages instantly. “I’m still not interested, really. I mean, could you even imagine having me around for all of eternity?” He envisioned Voldemort’s expression of despair every time Harry would drop in and foil each of his world-dominating ambitions. He chuckled. 

Tom’s only response to that was a shrug. 

The companionable silence finally returned like a breath of fresh air. Pages flipped and knitting needles danced together, and Harry imagined tolerating Tom’s antics until the rest of time, and vice versa. It was such a ridiculous, impossible image. He couldn’t help but entertain it a little. 

Chapter Text

The Philosopher’s Stone… Coveted by everyone, achieved by one… Look no further on your quest for the Fifth Element. In just this chapter alone, you will be able to craft your very own stone if you follow the directions exactly. 

Finally, Tom rejoiced, something that made sense! 

Step one: (It is essential that you do this part correctly.)

In order to make a Philosopher’s Stone, you have to first be a philosopher.  

Tom’s delight withered away. 

The better you are at Philosophy, the more likely you are to succeed in making the Red Tincture.

To be a good Philosopher means to philosophize about morality, mind, society, fate, existence, and life. This chapter introduces seven of the biggest questions you’ll need to answer in order to become the best Philosopher in the world. 

Tom snorted, which earned a curious glance from Harry, who was trying to knit something with the intention of turning it into a white toy owl. He had skimmed through many other books, through pages and pages of rambling nonsense and convoluted terminology, and this book was far more practical. Philosophy was actually ridiculously easy once people stopped overcomplicating things, and these seven questions would be a cinch.

First is the question of morality: What is the root of all evil? 

Easy, Tom crowed. There is no good or evil. There is only power. He proceeded to read the next line and frowned at once. 

Only really lazy philosophers will say that good and evil don't exist.

Some may say they are opposites. Some say they are relative to the person. Each person has their own truth, which makes this philosophy question almost impossible to answer. 

The question perplexed even Tom. This book must be utter rubbish. To call his answer lazy! He would’ve torn The Emerald Tablet apart if Harry hadn’t been carefully watching him each time he made a new loop with his yarn.  

In the days prior to the start of classes, it became routine for Tom to stop by Harry’s living quarters to copy as much of the book as possible into his notes. There were quills that existed and could magically duplicate written content, but they were very costly. Harry had once gifted one to him, and Tom was now regretting that he had sold it at that secondhand store.  

Thus, he was forced to copy everything by hand. Of the introductory chapter, he captured everything word for word. He condensed the contents of the other chapters and skimmed most of it. The rest of the book was nearly unreadable with its abstractness and wordy sentences. Perhaps once Tom became a full-fledged Philosopher, he would be able to decipher the remainder of the book better.  

Self-assured in that baseless assumption, Tom focused the rest of his efforts on the introductory chapter. 

∞

What is the root of all evil?  

Over the days, he came up with many possible answers, none of which he actually believed. Evil was 'intentional' and 'harmful'. Evil was 'corruption' and 'needless cruelty'. The book suggested that evil was relative to each individual, which meant that the root of evil should be different as well. Money, generally.

But the question was addressing ‘all evil’, so it should account for each person’s definition of evil and culminate in one root source. 

Even after classes resumed, Tom was no closer to the “correct” answer. He spent afternoons staring pensively out windows and wandering thoughtfully through the entire castle without once stumbling across the answer. 

On a few occasions, he had instead crossed paths with Harry, who always seemed to be distracted and searching for something. Tom usually tried to ignore him. Harry’s presence was far too distracting for ideal philosophizing conditions. 

On this afternoon, though, Tom found his contemplation to be half-hearted at best. “What are you doing?”  

Harry jumped with an incriminating squeak. He spun, noisily tucking a thick wad of parchment out of view. “What? Me? I’m just, er, keeping an eye out for any mischief managed.” 

Tom squinted. “What is that you’re holding?” He shoved Harry around and snatched the parchment from his surprisingly yielding grip. 

“Oi! Careful with that!”  

It was just some folded blank paper. Tom turned it over and over in his hand, peaking under some flaps at more blankness. “What is this? Why were you trying to hide it?” 

“It’s a map,” said Harry honestly. 

“It is blank.” 

“I never said it was a good map,” he sniffed. He took it back. 

Tom started to ask about it, started to grab for it, but his eyes fixated on a trail of shiny dark dots on the ground behind him. “Is that blood?” 

The light of the torch fires flickered over Harry’s resulting grimace. “You think so too, huh?” He squeezed the blank parchment into the little moleskin pouch that he always carried with him. It must have an expansion charm because something of that size could not possibly fit all that parchment otherwise. 

He knelt down, letting his uniform robes pool around him in a way that would leave wrinkles. Two fingers swept through the questionable substance and a thumb smeared it about at eye level. He sniffed it, nostrils twitching, brows furrowing. “Yeah, that’s blood.” 

Tom’s nose wrinkled at the display. He wasn’t fussed about blood itself; the deepening color as it dries brought detached satisfaction to him, and the memory of Billy Stubbs sniveling pathetically over his stupid little rabbit still brought a sinister smile to Tom’s face. The way that rabbit’s blood got all over Stubbs’s fingers! And he ended up having to throw away his clothes because the stains wouldn’t completely wash out! 

So yes, Tom liked blood as much as the next person, but the slick mucus-like texture against one’s own skin and the way it crusted and flaked when dry… He couldn’t fathom why Harry would smear that all over his own fingers before even knowing what it was. “What are you doing?” 

Harry, still kneeling, began wiping his fingers with a handkerchief. “I’m looking for Mortdevol. I know he was just on this floor moments ago, but he vanished before I could see him.” 

Tom felt a bit of himself decay at the confirmation that Harry’s ugly cat was still alive. It had gone missing all through the winter. “And you think that’s its blood?” he asked hopefully. 

Harry quirked an eyebrow up at him. “It’s Mortdevol. I’m not even sure he has blood to lose.” He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid it could be another victim, but there hadn’t been an incident like this in months!” 

Tom wondered how such a vile creature was still alive. And then he philosophized about it. “Harry, would you describe your cat as ‘pure evil’?” 

He gave a curious look and got to his feet. “He’s selfish, cruel, violent, and unreasonable,” he answered, patting at his trousers. “He’s never done a single good act in all the time I’ve known him. But calling him pure evil makes it sound like he’s incapable of anything good ever.” He shrugged. “No matter how improbable those chances are, I try not to underestimate the future.” He squinted down at the blood tracks, let out a sigh, and began following them. 

Tom’s lips pursed, but he trailed along. “Almost pure evil, then?” 

“Yeah,” Harry smiled. “Sounds about right.” 

“What do you think is the reason for that?” 

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know anything about his past. Maybe it’s just in his nature to act like that. Maybe he’s never known kindness. Maybe he’s never known happiness.” 

“So the absence of happiness causes evil?” 

Harry laughed. “Not at all. The absence of happiness causes problems. Evilness is just one of them.”  

Tom exhaled noisily. He was foolish to have consulted with Harry. It was clear the older wizard wasn’t philosophically talented in the least. 

No matter how Tom answered it, his truth remained unchanged: there was no such thing as evil. Good and evil are abstract concepts socially constructed. 

The church of Tom’s charity school back in London used the concept of ‘Evil’ to hold power over the people and control their behaviours. 

People used ‘evil’ to label things that were different. Different skin color, like that Tubby Thomas Jones at the Orphanage. Odd behaviors like Amy and Dennis after their cave adventure. Deformed bodies like Cripple Crystal. And freakish natures like Tom. 

If Evil was an imaginary concept by people, Tom supposed that the root of all evil must be the people. 

The blood prints had vanished after several paces, so Harry cast a spell that caused more tracks to illuminate. He explained conversationally that it was one of the spells he had learned in Auror Training.

It continued down the corridor where they were met with Pringle’s crup, its snout rapidly sniffing the end of the blood track. “Daemon?!” 

The crup growled, crouched low, and bared its teeth. 

“But you’re supposed to be near the astronomy tower about three minutes ago!” Harry exclaimed, utterly baffled. “It’s impossible to get down to the second floor in that amount of time!”  

It continued growling, stomping its front paw on the ground pointedly. 

“It’s not my blood. I’m trying to figure whose it is, too, you know.” 

It narrowed its eyes, whipped its double tails threateningly, and backed away. 

The blood trail had ended with nary another clue, so they ambled to the Great Hall together. Harry grumbled about Pringle’s crup and then about Pringle, who was also almost pure evil with that perverse hobby. 

Tom thought of the second question on the Philosophy list.  

What is true happiness? 

Some say that it is maximum pleasure. Some say that it is a state of being or that it comes from within. Some say that only those who know true sadness have true appreciation for happiness.

Tom’s happiness took the form of having others at his mercy. The power rush he experienced from his time at the Orphanage was incomparable to any other pleasure. 

Other students seemed to find joy in the pointless sports and games. His fellow first years would not stop prattling on about the First Year’s game, referring to it by a different name every day. Older students acted like their greatest joy was in winning the House Cup. 

People like Harry would probably say true happiness was being with one’s family and friends, or some similar rubbish. Tom had seen enough at the Orphanage to put any stock in that.

Family was unnecessary. Even Rosier, who possessed one of the disgustingly happiest families, had occasional spats that left him silently sobbing within his bed curtains. Not silently enough for Tom’s preference.

Power had never made Tom upset like that. 

Power had also never been enough for him to form a patronus. 

“Harry,” Tom interrupted his grumbling just before the stairwell. “Make a patronus for me.” 

Harry paused mid-ramble with his mouth open and his green eyes as round as his glasses. “What? Right now? Why?” 

“I want to see what it feels like. Quickly now. Go on.” He flapped his hands impatiently.

Harry fumbled in the act of pulling his wand out. “Just—wait a moment, will you? I need to mentally prepare.” 

Tom raised a brow. “I thought you were supposed to be great at this.”  

“I have to get in the mood!” Harry huffed. “I don’t ever tell you to cry on demand, do I?” 

Tom could make a fairly convincing act of it with all the right sounds and expressions, but he always had difficulties with producing actual tears. He allowed Harry a moment to close his eyes and tighten his mouth in concentration. 

Slowly, the corners lifted into a soft smile. There was a memory behind that, strong enough to fuel a patronus, to which Tom was completely oblivious. “Expecto patronum.” 

A majestic, silvery stag erupted from his wand, pounding its front hooves soundlessly from where it was floating. It stretched its head up, raking its broad antlers through the stone ceiling of the corridor.  

A slumbering portrait at the first landing of the stairwell startled awake to exclaim at the sight. “My word! What a fine creature!” 

It was quite impressive, towering over Harry and filling up the hallway with its bright aura.  

“There,” said Harry. The soft smile was no longer there. In its place was his usual exasperation. “Satisfied?” 

Tom stared at the great stag. Its small silver eyes stared back as though it could see right through him, despite being the one who was translucent. Waiting, it would seem. For something to happen. Waiting for Tom.

“Are you just going to stare at it?” asked Harry, delicate as a drawn-out belch in the fragile silence. 

Tom’s face twitched. He breathed, straightened to his full height, and walked right through the patronus.  

It was his first time doing so, and he felt as though he’d entered a bubble of sunshine. When he sucked in a gasp, his chest cavity was filled at once and quickly overflowing with golden warmth to the point that he felt bursting with it. The swirling rush of emotions was so foreign and jarring. His very being was consumed by tenderness as soft as Harry’s smile, soft enough to make him fall apart with the security of knowing he would be held back together in a gentle embrace. 

Teeth gritted, Tom steeled himself and began pulling away. As his head became less clouded, he saw glimpses of unfamiliar faces from a distant time, just before shaking it all away completely.  

Harry was staring at him when he came back into himself. “So, do you wanna talk about that? I’d like an explanation, personally.” 

“No,” said Tom, breathing deeply. The patronus had faded, and with it went all the warmth, though some continued lingering in his chest. 

Harry looked at him for another moment, clearly tempted to continue pressing, but then an expression half of resignation and half of concern took hold. He sighed. “Are you alright?” 

Tom patted his face—a bit flushed, but not ridiculously contorted. “Why do you ask?” 

“My patronus has decimated several dementors before. Creatures of darkness.” He rubbed his neck. “I figured with you being, you know… Well. Nothing, I guess. Did you get what you wanted?” 

Tom shrugged. Words seemed rather inadequate now. He had an answer, more or less, to the philosophy question at least. 

Whatever true happiness was, mere words were not enough to articulate it. 

∞

February arrived, bringing with it a dampness that combined with the frigid weather which left the air with a vaguely musky smell. Days of fair weather were few and far in between, but clusters of first-year students would always find time to steal at the flying lawn or the Quidditch Pitch for flying practice.  

Flying lessons with Harry had been indoor lectures on bad days and agility trials on good days. The trials involved half the class hovering a couple of yards from the ground while the other half of the class pitched snowballs at them. 

Harry had insisted that a snowball to the face was a far better alternative to flying in the icy high wind currents, though he said this just seconds before hurling another one at Avery, who took it to his chest with such a lack of finesse, he went spinning like a toy top and knocked Prewett out of the air with him.  

Tom continued working on the Philosophy questions.  

Question three: Which came first, the diricawl or the egg? 

Unlike the first two, there was no further elaboration. At this point, Tom was growing familiar with the way philosophers liked to mystify everything. He was certain this question needed a long, abstract answer that was actually a metaphor addressing a larger-than-life issue at the root of humanity. 

So, thought Tom as he leant on a balustrade and casually observed a group of older students down in the bright courtyard, which came first? 

He would have consulted with the Care of Magical Creatures Professor, but it was hard to trust the words of a man who kept getting mauled by his animals every other week.  

Tom propped his chin on his palm, elbow sitting on the stone balustrade of first floor loggia. All diricawls came from diricawl eggs. All diricawl eggs came from diricawls. So, which came first? 

If the egg came first, then what laid it if not a diricawl? If the diricawl came first, then what did it come from if not an egg? It would be simpler to say that diricawls and their eggs have always been around, but it had to have started somewhere. 

He looked down the length of his nose to where a second-year Ravenclaw was being crowded and jostled by older Gryffindor students. 

Let’s say that 'house differences' were the egg, and the 'house rivalry' was the diricawl. Did the Gryffindors throw the Ravenclaw’s sketch book around like a mean parody of Piggy in the Middle because they were from different houses? Or were they in different houses because the Ravenclaw girl was the sort of person who drew unflattering pictures of the Gryffindors whom she disliked in the first place? 

If Hogwarts Houses didn’t exist, would the students’ infighting stop? Or did the Houses come into existence because people naturally divided themselves? 

No one helped the Ravenclaw girl. From any other perspective, it looked like perfectly normal playfighting between children. It was only when the young witch looked dangerously close to angry tears that one of the Gryffindor girls shoved the sketch book into her chest hard enough to knock her over if there hadn’t been another Gryffindor behind her. 

The Ravenclaw girl let out a low snarl, tore out a drawing that looked like the bullies’ leader but with dragon pox and devil horns and tusks, wearing nothing more than a house elf’s pillow case. She held it up to their faces before shredding it into pieces and throwing the paper bits at them as though salting away evil spirits. 

The rest of the castle had gone to lunch by the time the tension snapped and the students were lunging at each other.  

It was like this even at the orphanage, where there was no Ravenclaw or Gryffindor emblem on their clothes. The cycle never started anywhere; it had always been a continuous spiral of evolving hatred. 

This fight would carry on the way all things did, with the strongest standing victorious. 

Without anyone else to bear witness, Tom had nothing to gain from intervening. He pushed himself up straight and pulled out a folded sheet of parchment from his robe pocket.  

Question four: If you hit yourself and you get hurt, are you weak or strong? 

Tom stared at the words. As expected, he still found it as ridiculous as he’d done when he first copied it from the book. 

Like the previous one, there was no elaboration on the deeper meaning behind this question, and he was left to overcomplicate it on his own. 

On the surface, it seemed like a juvenile attempt to trick someone into hitting themselves like an idiot. On a deeper level, however… Tom was at a loss.  

To hurt someone else was strength (Tom was very good at that). To be hurt was the opposite of strength. To combine the two into such a paradox was incomprehensible.

The confused spluttering of a first-year Gryffindor interrupted his contemplation. It was the black haired witch, Agarkar, and while Tom didn’t share any classes with her, he made it a point to learn everyone’s name and one thing about them to maintain his angelic character. 

Agarkar was a polite girl and always very grateful whenever Tom offered to explain a phrase or slowly enunciate an incantation. She was polite even now as another first-year Hufflepuff shiftily pawned off a palmful of crystal marbles. 

“Ahh, pretty sure Pringle was wantin’ to see that,” said the curly-haired boy. Tom recognized him as Ollerton from a few of his classes. He had a giant family down in London or something. “You don’t mind givin’ it to him, do you, Arti?” 

“Hmm, my name is Archi, and hmm…” She seemed to be searching for the words. 

“Charmed.” Ollerton gave a sleazy smile and spoke slowly and loudly. “SMALL BALLS GO TO PRINGLE, alright? P R I N G L E.” He mimicked horns on his head. “Ta!” 

He dashed off with great speed, as though fleeing. Indeed, just seconds later, Pringle’s pet bounded down the gallery, nose engaged with the ground like a pig’s snout. It passed Tom without a second glance. To Agarkar, however, it paused and barked with the volume and consistency of a siren. 

Pringle shortly materialized out from behind a hanging banner. His eyes narrowed to her hands. “You! Thief!” 

“Hain?!” Agarkar squeaked and dropped the marbles, which only had the effect of sending Pringle into a frenzy. “Not me! It was, hmm, Barfonlamyoo!”  

“What did you say?” hissed Pringle dangerously. “You dare threaten to barf on me? The Hogwarts Caretaker?!” He had gripped her tightly by the shoulders.  

She wiped the spittle from her dark brown face with a trembling hand. “No, no. Are! A Hufflepuff! Not me!” 

“Do you think I'm blind?! I know very well which house you're in. That’ll be ten points from Gryffindor on your head! And where are all the other things you stole, hm?” 

This was a better example of the strong and the weak, Tom thought as he observed the scene.  

Agarkar managed, quite valiantly, not to burst into tears, though it was a wonder how she was still holding herself up from all of Pringle’s violent jostling. The more flustered the witch became, the less coherence she offered.

He wished they weren’t blocking the hallway, though.  

“Are you dumb?” shouted Pringle in her stammering face. He hoisted her up by her scruff. “Hold your tongue; you can’t even use it properly. My office. Now.” He turned, giving Tom just enough space to discreetly pass by.  

Just as he was about to slip away, an arm rested on his shoulder, and the invading scent of Lucretia Black’s perfume filled his nose.  

“Mr. Pringle,” she exclaimed brightly. “And the little lady who was keeping my marbles safe!” 

“She’s a thief, Miss Black,” he spat. “But if you’re confessing to being her accomplice, by all means…” 

Tom nudged the arm off his shoulder without much struggle and continued on his way while Lucretia spun a truly convincing tale about how she’d found a number of marbles hidden in the alcoves and nooks of the castle, left, perhaps, by the elves in a fit of whimsy. 

Returning to the question at hand, the obvious answer should be that Tom was strong because it was just a given. Still, it did not feel sufficiently convoluted. 

It was in his good fortune then that he happened upon a fourth-year Slytherin, Blodwyn Bludd, coming out of the bathroom and looking unhealthily pale. Bludd was a recluse even within their house, and Tom had heard from other housemates of the pressure on him, being the only child of his family lineage. 

It was an unspoken fact that everyone knew about Bludd’s ‘worrying habits’, but that suited Tom just fine.  

“Hello, Blodwyn,” said Tom kindly. “Are you feeling well?” 

Bludd jumped and looked much like the skittish rodents that Tom used to catch and ‘play’ with back in London alleyways. “Fine,” he said shortly. He turned to leave. 

“I know what you did in there,” whispered Tom, unleashing his sinister aura instead. He didn’t like to break his angelic persona, but intimidation was usually more effective and more fun. 

Indeed, Bludd froze, resembling a tubby statue from to how pale he was. He stared at Tom in horror. “I don’t know what you mean.” His trembling fingers tugged his robe sleeves down past his wrist. 

Tom turned his eyes round and sincere. “You need help, Blodwyn. You can talk to me. Slytherins help each other out, remember?” 

His beady black eyes widened, somehow looking more frightened, which was starting to give Tom a power rush. “No, they don’t,” Bludd whispered. “I’m not dumb. Everyone already knows, don’t they?” His fingers tightened on his sleeves. “No one really cares.” 

Tom plastered his kind smile on once again. “I care.” The two words felt wrong coming out of his mouth, but Bludd’s resulting face of terror assuaged him. Tom slowly inched closer, not daring to touch him for both their sakes. “I care about why you’re doing this to yourself.”  He stretched a hand out, palm up and open. With a soft and hypnotic cadence, he murmured, “Let me help you. Tell me honestly: do you think hurting yourself makes you weak or strong?” 

Bludd began tearing up, and Tom fought not to grimace. “I know I’m weak,” he wailed. “I know I’m not enough!” He broke down to his knees and sobbed into his hands, letting his sleeves slip down to reveal the scars of his weakness.  

It wasn’t the answer Tom was hoping for, and he wanted to correct Bludd, but the older boy kept switching between howling and sniveling. It was astounding how much water the older boy was capable of conjuring from his eyes. He also had a strong voice, which he utilized to wail on endlessly, enough to attract a crowd if it hadn’t been lunchtime. 

With a subtle incantation, Tom checked the clock. What a great waste of time.

Nothing was getting through the fortified wall of self-loathing, so Tom left him there with a pity pastry that he’d pocketed from his early lunch. 

∞

When he found his housemates during their free time before their first afternoon class, he had already moved on to the next question.  

Question five: Does free will exist, or is everything predetermined? 

Hypothetically, say a prophecy was made about your ultimate demise. 

Trying to change that outcome means you believe in the legitimacy of the prophecy. If you believe in the prophecy, there's no point in trying to change it because you admit you have no control over your future. However, if you ignore the prophecy, you welcome the possibility of free will. 

“Afternoon, Riddle,” drawled Lestrange from the bench of the spacious alcove. “Ready for History of Magic?” 

Tom stared down at the boy for a long, thoughtful moment, which had the unintended effect of unnerving him. He quickly exchanged all the usual pleasantries to keep up appearances even while his mind was mostly fixed on the paper in his pocket. 

He had not given divination much thought prior to this question. He already knew with near certainty what the future looked like for him, which was to say, more or less, total power over all magical people, whether due to respect or fear; he wasn’t picky. 

He’d heard some of the third years in his house complaining about how the divination professor constantly smelled of fire whiskey and pepper-up potion, and that all he talked about was the end of the world.

Presently, divination seemed like a joke subject, so Tom felt the answer ought to be that free will existed. Perhaps not for everyone, he amended as he watched Rosier make a particularly deformed-looking house elf dance. 

The creature looked like something straight out of the bible illustrations of the Devil that the charity school made him read. It was grotesque and asymmetrical. It danced like it had two left feet, which was probably not far from the truth.  

“No, no, no!” said Rosier, lashing the elf with something that looked like it came from Pringle’s Detention Room. “It goes left, left, right, left, you idiot. Once again, from the top!” 

“Oooh! Make it sashay!” Warrington clapped in delight from where she was leaning beside the alcove. 

“Sashay, then, you!” Rosier struck the ground in warning, but had hit the thing’s long, crooked toes anyway.

“Oi,” said Lestrange, snatching the whip-like object from Rosier’s hands and giving it a loud, satisfying whack. “That’s just a wiggle, do it right!” 

The children jeered and poked and taunted and cackled as it continued its clumsy dance. The ugly little elf bore the commands with gritted jagged teeth and an expression of pure loathing. This was a creature with no free will at all. 

“How is it, Riddle?” asked Avery, eyes gleaming. 

Tom looked at the dancing hideous bastard from the top of its green bald head to the tips of its crooked, hairy toes. Weak. “Disgusting.”  

The thing’s ears drooped even lower. 

His company howled with laughter.  

“Merlin! Even muggles can’t be as pathetic as this,” exclaimed Lestrange, knocking his head back against the wall. 

Billy Stubbs’s, Amy Benson's, and Dennis Bishop’s faces all came to mind. Tom snorted.  

Rosier glanced up and finally dismissed the elf. “What was that, Riddle?” 

“Just that I’ve seen many worse muggles. Nasty things.” 

His eyes widened. “Really? Mother won’t let me near one. They carry terrible diseases.” He swept up his school bag and clambered to his feet.

Tom shrugged. He didn’t get sick generally, except that one time at No. 2 Hilltop Cottage Way.  

They all began making their way to the next class.

Avery shuddered, but it looked half put on. “Can you believe we study with their sort?”  

Tom tilted his head. “What do you mean?” 

“You know,” he lowered his voice and leaned over. “Mudbloods.” 

Tom’s eyes narrowed. He’d heard that term floating around here and again, though not to his face. 

“I try not to touch them, myself,” Warrington whispered from behind. “They’re probably all dirty from living with the muggles for so long.” 

Hands fisted, magic stirring, cracking like a whip. 

“Really?” Rosier shot a baffled look over his shoulder. “But what about that fourth year Landral Biathal?” 

“She’s muggleborn?” Warrington shrieked. “But she never mentioned!” 

“She’s ashamed, I think.” Rosier shrugged, turning back around and descending the stairs. “With good reason. If I were like that, I wouldn’t ever show my face around Slytherin either.” 

They all nodded in quick agreement.  

Lestrange shot Tom a friendly grin from Avery’s other side. “It’s such a relief that you’ve at least got some magic blood in you.” 

“And that you grew up in our world,” Avery chirped. “We were all wondering for a while.” 

Rosier nodded, throwing a warm smile over his shoulder. “But it’s clear now you’re one of us.” 

I’m far more than that, Tom seethed. You can’t even begin to compare with me. 

He smiled instead and made some friends.

∞

Question six: Hecate has a broomstick. If he were to replace each bristle with different ones and replace the shaft with a new stick, would it still be Hecate’s broomstick? 

To philosophize the world is to philosophize the self. To forget your origin is to abandon yourself. Think of the values that are the core of your being. Realize that your soul is whole and true, but the moment you take it apart, you lose yourself. 

Breakfast began with singing birds, exploding confetti, and chocolate hearts that throbbed and squirted chocolate filling at the Valentine’s Day recipient. The Slytherin boys who had started boasting and comparing their piles quieted in the wake of several owls swooping by to drop sweets after sweets on Tom’s plate. Tom had received many gifts from all the different Houses owing to his great and hard-earned reputation.

He generously shared his lot, of course, picking out only the ones that he knew the sender wouldn’t mind. It effectively boosted the respect in their eyes more than envy. 

Breakfast concluded with a curious crowd gathering just outside the Great Hall. 

It was no surprise that Harry stood at the center. “Miss Pius, please don’t run away from me.” He awkwardly scratched his scruffy chin and pulled a gaudy pink envelope from his pocket. “I need to talk about your letter.” 

Pius was the Gryffindor sixth year who liked to randomly harass Harry, and therefore running away would be uncharacteristic of her indeed. Pius’s plain face, however, was a flaming shade red, and she looked like she would love to flee if she wasn't so prideful of her house. Instead, she was rooted at the center of attention and only able to shake her head quickly. “It wasn’t me.” She glanced at Rosa Lee, who was among the many other spectators. 

Harry continued on sorrowfully. “I can’t continue to ignore your affections, knowing how much you’re hurting. Please let me answer you once and for all.” 

“Please don’t,” she blurted quietly. “I swear I won’t tease anymore.” 

Harry plowed on, “The way you wrote about my dreamy eyes and fluffy hair and pretty nostrils—” 

Tom's eyes narrowed, recognizing the wizard’s signature nonsense right away. 

“—The two-page poem that you wrote about my shoe size and ankles was, erm, flattering.” 

The crowd erupted in giggles. 

Harry pressed his palm to his chest as though pained, which was utter hogwash. “But I can’t return your burning passion. I’m a professor. It would be inappropriate.” 

Pius was positively steaming with mortification. “I didn’t—It’s a lie—! I—I—” She searched the mass of faces for someone who wasn’t laughing until her desperate eyes once again found Rosa Lee. She paled at the Hufflepuff witch’s giggling and fled at once.  

The crowd dispersed with hyper chatter. Harry was the first to disappear, but Tom was quick to follow him in the direction of the castle entrance hall. 

“You faked it, didn’t you?” Tom asked from behind.  

Harry spun around. “What? Faked what? Why do you say that?” He bit his lip guiltily, eyes shifting to the side, and continued walking faster.

Tom scrutinized his back as they descended the steps. “Did Pius actually write a poem about your ankles?” 

He turned again. A blink. Then another. “You’re talking about the letter.” Harry sighed and pulled out the frilly pink thing.  

“What else could I be talking about?” 

“Yes, it’s fake,” Harry continued, untransfiguring the envelope into a plain napkin. It looked like fairly good magic as well. 

A proud smirk bloomed on Tom’s face, and he praised, “Very cunning of you.” 

Harry snorted and pocketed it. “It was just a bit of tomfoolery as payback. It’s really thanks to you for telling me that she fancied someone else already.” 

“Miss Lee was there, laughing too. Pius looked like she was about to cry,” said Tom, with a Cheshire grin. 

“Teenagers.” Harry rolled his eyes and held the massive front door open for him. “She’ll get over it and hopefully mature.” 

They climbed the outdoor stairs up to Harry’s office. Tom explained that Slughorn had given them a free study period that morning because of some business party he couldn’t miss.  

Harry’s office was a mess of broomsticks, bristle shavings, wood polish, and other tools. He cleared a trunk off a chair for Tom to sit and proceeded to take his own place at his cluttered desk. Various broom-keeping tools slid and shuffled around until a bowl of sweets was revealed. “Mars bar?” 

Tom shook his bag of Valentine’s Day sweets. 

Harry snorted. “Alright then, Mr. Popular.” 

A lot of gifts were too sweet for his liking, so he spent his minutes sorting through the collection while Harry worked on the brooms. “Harry, if you replaced each of the bristles on that broom until none of its original parts were left, stick included, would it be the same broom?” 

There was a thoughtful hum and rustling of twigs. “That’d be a different broom, wouldn’t it?” Something snapped, and Harry muttered a curse. 

Tom went quiet.

“Maybe it would just be a different version,” Harry mused. “If I don’t use bristles or wood from a different type of tree and if I don’t change its design, then it could just be a new version.” 

“But it’d be different.” 

Harry inclined his head, eyes focused on his task. “Being different isn’t a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly unrecognizable. Maybe it’s changing into something better.” He lifted the broom that he was working on and gave it a couple of thunks with his knuckles. “As long as the soul of the broom is here and not, you know, divided into eight pieces scattered about like a scavenger hunt, for example, I’d say it’s the same broom but better.” 

That was an oddly specific example. Tom considered the logic and decided that this question was impossible for him to answer. Whether or not Hecate’s broom remained the same after the transformation was really up to Hecate to decide. Tom truly could not be bothered about the existential crisis of someone else’s broomstick. 

He poured the handful of his rejected candy into Harry’s Mars bar bowl as a reward for being a little helpful for once. Harry only thanked him with an odd look. 

The last question read: 

What is the purpose of life? 

If you want to achieve immortality, you need to be able to picture immortality. You need to know what gives meaning to your everyday. Immortality becomes a curse if you forget the value of living. If you can imagine achieving all your goals, can you imagine what you'll do after that? 

Tom’s current goal was to master all magic and become the most powerful wizard in the world. And after that… 

He popped a chocolate snitch truffle in his mouth and frowned. 

Perhaps he’ll take over Hogwarts and train new generations of loyal servants. That could be a good ongoing project. But it was more likely that he would get his other servants to do that for him so that he wouldn’t have to put up with the youth’s incompetence. 

“Harry, what are your long-term goals?” 

There was a snort. “Plans don’t usually go well for me, so I try not to think too hard about it.” 

Tom should have expected that. 

Harry was probably still trying to go ‘home’ wherever that was. To be with his ‘family’, whoever they were.  

What a ridiculous goal. Tom would outlive all of them anyway, which would leave Harry crawling back to him sooner or later. And then, if he swallowed his pride and begged Tom for the elixir of life, he would probably spend his days teaching at Hogwarts under Tom’s rule. 

But Harry only started working at Hogwarts in the first place to be closer to Tom, so he would probably leave after Tom graduated as well. 

“You’re a bit clingy, aren’t you?” 

Harry whipped his head up. “Excuse me?” 

Tom ignored him and hopped to his feet, pacing around all the broomsticks. Despite how unpredictable the other wizard was, it was far easier to map out an eternity of Harry’s future than his own.  

With all that time on their hands, Tom could teach Harry all the magic that he planned to master from all around the world. In return, Harry would probably try to show him the patronus charm until he could finally cast one. He’d do Quidditch for a while, maybe expand his lily garden, probably argue against Tom’s decision to remodel the cottage into a castle. 

Tom reached a screeching halt in his vision. He had been looking forward to obliterating the Orphanage and everyone inside it with his eventual power, but if Harry was going to be around, he’d most certainly protest that.  

Tom was starting to get a headache from the inevitable arguments they’d have over it and over the rest of time. He massaged his temples. 

“Don’t strain yourself now,” said Harry dryly. “Overthinking is especially dangerous when it comes to you.” 

“It’s only ever because I’m arguing with you,” said Tom irritably. 

Harry’s mouth fell open. “But I haven’t been saying anything!” 

He shushed him.

Tom had to concede that he would become terribly bored after achieving all his goals. A companion would be a good solution to this. Although it wasn’t easy to find someone worthy enough of following Tom for eternity, he supposed Harry was entertaining enough and sometimes helpful. 

Harry squinted. “Were you having imaginary arguments with me in your head just now?” 

“I won.” 

“Of course you did.” Harry rubbed his scruffy chin, his eyes were both grinning and weary. “Should I be worried?” 

“You should be thankful!” Tom plopped back down and scribbled various answers on his parchment of philosophy questions. “I just planned out the rest of our lives for you.” 

Green eyes stared at him with bemusement and disbelief. “The things that go on in your head!” He threw his hands up. “I’ll never understand it.” 

Tom folded the sheet of paper up again, but with an air of finality this time. “It’s called philosophy, Harry.” He tapped the side of his clever head to demonstrate where the superior brain was. “Of course you wouldn’t get it.”  

There was a short inhale, and then Harry erupted in a violent fit of snorting-giggling-laughter, and it was a sound that Tom had resigned himself to for the rest of eternity. 

Chapter Text

The door burst open. “Harry!” 

A grunt came from behind the bundle of freshly polished gloves, helmets, kneepads, and goggles. Within seconds, there was a loud crash when all the equipment in Harry’s arms hit the floor of his office, so that a certain first-year Slytherin could better invade Harry’s vision. All of his preparations were now rolling and scattering about. “Oi.” 

Tom didn’t look apologetic in the least. It was the first time Harry had seen him since the exams ended, and Tom no longer needed a quiet place to do his revisions anymore. When the exam results were being posted, Harry had wanted to ask how he’d done, but Tom was always being flanked by at least three other kids. It was nearly impossible to see him now that Flying classes were over! Harry ended up learning about Tom’s impressive scores from Professor Slughorn’s frequent boasting of his star Slytherin anyway. 

Now, on the last day of term, Tom finally showed his face. 

“Harry.” Tom gripped his wrist, cold like manacles and clammy like the inside of Harry’s gloves after a particularly hard match of Quidditch. “Pull me out of the game.” 

Harry shook his hands off and pointed at the ground. “Pick it up.” 

“Never mind—” 

“Now, Tom.” 

Tom scowled, brought out his wand, and gathered the things as he continued, “You will take me out of the game today, but make up a good excuse. I don’t want the others thinking I’ve left on my own.” 

The equipment was slowly piling at Harry’s feet. “How do you expect me to do that? I’m not responsible for the lineup.” 

Tom stared at him like he’d uttered the singular most idiotic thing he’d heard today. “Just say you need me to help with an errand or something! It’s not spell creation.” He shook his head ruefully. “Sometimes I wonder if there is anything that you’re actually good at.” 

“Yeah,” Harry grunted, hulling up the equipment once again, “Putting up with you.” 

Tom looked as though Harry had just smeared treacle tart all over his robes. Harry exited his office and began descending the stairs before the boy could get the idea to shove everything out of his arms again.  

“I thought you’d been improving well enough in your flying,” Harry called over his shoulder, where he could hear Tom’s following steps. “It’s a very casual game anyway, nothing worth getting nervous about.” 

He felt Tom’s eyes narrow with the same disdain as when he looked at Mortdevol. “Of course I’m not nervous. Haven’t you heard? Nicolas Flamel is at Hogwarts! The creator of the Philosopher’s Stone!” 

“Are you still going on about that?” Harry distinctly recalled Tom’s rants and mutters and borderline tantrums back in April over how he still couldn’t decipher the recipe for the Philosopher’s Stone despite having become a 'full-fledged philosopher'. By May, Tom seemed to have moved his focus back to being the teachers’ favorite and Slytherin politics. Harry had been hopeful that that was the end of it. 

“Obviously, there’s no point in researching books written by people who’ve never made a Philosopher’s Stone before,” Tom explained, huffing, crossing his arms, all but rolling his eyes as though Harry had asked him which end he should hold a wand. “Flamel’s the only one who really knows; everyone else is just guessing.” 

Tom’s face was nearly vibrating with excitement; Harry felt tempted by some sadistic urge (that he must’ve gotten from Tom) to sabotage Tom’s only opportunity to meet the philosopher. Not feeling particularly foolhardy at the moment, however, Harry elected to throw him a bone, or rather half a dozen helmets as they crossed the grassy stretch together. “So you want me to protect your ‘reputation’?” 

He nodded. “I won’t really need it. I’ve already won the House Cup for Slytherin this year. I’ve earned one hundred and eighty-six points; that’s more than if we had won all three Quidditch matches.” His sneer was half covered by a helmet, but easily conveyed his disdain toward the sport.  

“You say ‘won’. The House Points aren’t even all in yet.” 

“Everyone knows that Slytherin is the winning House. Classes are over, all the Quidditch matches are done, clubs have stopped meeting, and the end-of-year feast is tonight. There’s just not enough time or opportunities to earn enough points.” Tom shot a sly look at Harry. “There aren’t any House points awarded to the winner of this silly little first-years' game either, and you’re not allowed to give more than one point at a time to students anymore since the debacle with Pringle. So yes, Slytherin’s won, and it’s because of me.” 

“You’ve actually calculated everything.” Harry shook his head and readjusted his grip on one of the gloves. “I’d expected the others to care this much about the points, not you.” 

Tom turned to look at him again as though he’d said something especially moronic, and it was becoming very irritating now. “I’m Slytherin’s heir. I don’t have to prove anything. I only care because this entire school of mindless sheep cares. Otherwise, what use do I have for this abstract point system built on a small moment of glory?”  

Harry wanted to point out that Tom loved glory, but Tom’s monologue wasn’t over. 

“I’ll allow that it was very close. The Gryffindor house got extra points from Quidditch victories, the Ravenclaw house earned many points from club activities and school projects, and the Hufflepuff house got points from just having more students. But in the end, the Slytherins have me.” 

If Harry had a head as big as Tom’s, he’d have floated away like Aunt Marge. The right thing to do here was probably something like putting a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder and regaling him about the importance of community and humility, but Harry’s hands were already full. “Hogwarts is a big castle,” said Harry as they neared the pitch. “How will you find him?” 

“He’ll be with Dumbledore, I expect. They’re friends.” A brilliant smile, more blinding than the midday sun above, stretched his lively, warm cheeks. “But you’re right. Flamel could be leaving this very second, so I’d better go now.” He dumped the helmets at Harry’s feet and took off, somehow running faster than his usual flying speed. 

When Harry reached where his students were gathered on the grass of the Quidditch pitch, he reached two other realizations as well. 

Firstly, that over half the seats of the viewing stands were filled with people who had come to see the match. There were still more arriving as Harry handed out the equipment to the overexcited first years. The stands might soon become as packed as any other Quidditch match, and perhaps more so now that clubs and classes had ended. Everyone was curious about this never-before-hosted game of the first-year students, the rumored cause behind the conflict between the Flying instructor and the Caretaker of Hogwarts.  

Underneath the cacophony of chatter from the stands, a retching noise reached Harry’s ears. Jackeline Jorkins was doubled over and had just upended the contents of her lunch on the ground next to Harry’s shoes. She straightened, took the gloves and helmet from Harry’s unmoving hands, and flashed him a broad grin. “Here’s to a good game!” And she skipped away, pulling off her Slytherin school robes to don her team outfit. 

The growing number of spectators, staff and students alike, made Harry’s own stomach flop, and he briefly imagined adding to Jorkin’s puddle before vanishing the mess. 

The second realization that Harry reached was that Tom was very popular. Half of the students he checked on asked him where Tom was. When Harry explained that he had gone on an errand to find Nicolas Flamel, they stared at him with no small amount of accusation. The mean urge to tell the full truth and ruin Tom’s reputation was there and very tempting. 

Harry had to remind himself repeatedly that they would be living together over the summer (since he still hadn’t found a way to return home), and it would not be wise to do such a thing. 

Making his rounds, he checked that the catchers all knew their positions across the pitch. “And don’t leave your post,” he stressed repeatedly. “You will earn a point for each player that you catch, but not if you leave your spot.” Harry remembered all the times he’d plummeted to the ground in this very pitch, and he was not eager to have his first-year students follow in his flight. Not when Pringle was breathing down his neck at every opportunity to report on him for something as small as dropping a quill. 

To the starting and reserve players, he ran through the rules again, but the responses were largely cold due to Harry’s ‘role’ in Tom’s absence.  

Finally, he took his broomstick and two of his students up to the stands with him. James O’Flaherty, a chatty Gryffindor wizard, had volunteered to help with the commentary, though he looked progressively more ill as they climbed higher and higher. Elindor Truffles, a Slytherin witch, had volunteered to help with scoring the points after she refused to be a player, and then refused to be a reserve player, and then refused to be a catcher. 

Nearly all of the other first-year students had fallen into one of those three categories, though participation was not required in the least. Harry suspected that there was some sort of peer pressure involved. 

By the time he found his commentator seat, the viewing stands were alive with chatter and movement. He settled down at the front of the rows where all the Hogwarts staff sat. Professor McGonagall looked about as critical as ever, Professor Slughorn was loudly chatting in her ear and patting his damp face off with a handkerchief, professor Dippet looked utterly winded, and Pringle, who sat beside him and was pouring a glass of ice water, somehow looked perfect even in the sweltering heat and wild winds.  

His cheeks were dusted pink in a youthful way, and his wavy hair was floating as though gently caressed by a summer breeze, meanwhile Harry’s hair was whipping in his eyes and becoming tousled enough that owls would start flocking over in search of a place to rest and maybe lay their eggs. 

Pringle presented a glass of water to Dippet and looked over at Harry with pure acid. He was likely imagining himself pushing Harry off the tower. 

Harry sat down in front of a wizard who looked more ancient than Dippet and began showing Truffles and O’Flaherty what they needed to do. He was peering down at the pitch and wondering if he should check in with the kids one last time before they finished their stretches when a voice from the seats behind him spoke. 

“Ah, Nicolas, good choice! I’ve found there’s far more leg room in these seats. Lemon drop?” 

Harry swivelled. 

Dumbledore, dressed in sunrise colored robes, was holding out a wrapped lemon drop to the most shriveled, frail, ancient person Harry had ever seen.  

Sir Nicolas Flamel, the great alchemist and creator of the Philosopher’s Stone, was sitting right behind Harry. Tom’s big, inflated head would explode when he heard about this. 

Noticing the sudden movement, Flamel turned to meet Harry’s wide eyes. 

This close, Harry could count his wrinkles, but that would be very rude. “Erm. Hi.” He waved. 

Flamel smiled, and it was fascinating to watch his facial muscles move like that. “Hello. You must be the famous Harry Potter.” 

Harry blanched, stomach plummeting through the seats and stairs of the viewing stand right to the ground. He must have imagined it. Flamel surely didn’t know about the famous boy-who-lived. Hermione would kill Harry if it were true.

He was just about to shake the frail wizard by the shoulders and demand how he knew about his past, but Flamel continued, “I’ve heard much about you from Albus here. You’ve made quite an impact in this school. And this First Year’s Game sounds absolutely delightful. Why, it takes me back to the days when Quidditch was still evolving! I simply had to come watch.” 

Harry flushed and laughed as awkwardly as someone who had been prepared to manhandle the elderly.  

“I wasn’t much of a player myself. I was far more involved in my studies. My son and daughter certainly were! They were both built with the frames of hunters, or seekers, as they’re called now. I remember my daughter went on to play in the bigger games with real Snidgets. That was before the invention of the Golden Snitch, of course.” 

At length, he recounted the various tales of his childhood, of his children’s childhoods, and of his grandchildren’s childhoods. Harry noticed, during the entire time the whizzened man talked, that he had a funny accent. It seemed to swing between French, German, and something like Welsh. 

“I’ve always wanted a big family,” said Harry as he waved down at the first-year students on the grass. One of them, a Hufflepuff, signalled back that they still weren’t ready. The game was supposed to be relaxed and unceremonious; as such, they had never specified a starting time. The waiting stands of people made Harry anxious to begin, nonetheless. “I was usually alone growing up. Your house must’ve been very lively. What are your children and grandchildren doing now?” 

“They’ve all passed away. This was centuries ago…” 

"Oh." Harry was an idiot, it would seem. He fully deserved all of Tom’s sneering and mockery earlier. His face was probably redder than the Philosopher’s Stone, and he could hear Dumbledore lightly chuckling. “I, er, thought,” he stammered, “maybe you shared the elixir of life with them…” 

Flamel smiled in such a manner that lined up with all his deeper wrinkles. It was a soft look. “I created the stone much later in my life, and by then, my daughter had become terminally ill. The elixir helped her escape death, but it was no reprieve from the constant pain. In the end, she liked to rest with her husband… 

“My son had liked the elixir for a few decades, but he soon grew bored and tired of everything. I remember the day of his one hundred and fiftieth birthday when he announced himself done with an immortal life… Perenelle will tell you. He was so lethargic, I looked sprightly in comparison!” 

It was incredibly hard to imagine such a thing, but looking carefully at Flamel now, the brightness in his eyes was distinct. There was a deep love and appreciation for life. “What about your grandchildren, Mr. Flamel?” 

“I do love them deeply, though the stone couldn’t have made enough elixir for all of them. It was still a secret back then; Perenelle and I went into hiding after a century of the elixir. By then, my grandchildren were all too busy with their own lives to visit often.” 

Harry’s eyes lowered thoughtfully. The golden metal of his wristwatch glinted under the sun. He rubbed his fingers across the shimmering rim. “You must miss them a lot…”  

“At times,” he admitted, looking skyward, not at the overhead canopy of the viewing stand but at the memories. “I find that no matter how much time passes or how far apart we are, my love for them is always. And perhaps when I see them again, it will be with open arms.” 

Dumbledore’s genial expression turned a shade more somber, and Harry was all too privy to the reasons behind that. Harry, on the other hand, was speechless. Perhaps he should take up philosophy, too. 

He had questions bubbling up his throat, but before he could voice one, O’Flaherty was tugging at his robes and pointing down at the field where all the players were ready in position. 

“Welcome to the first-ever First Year’s Face-Off! Also known as the Fledgling’s Fray! The Battle of Hogwarts! The Rise and Fall—” 

“That’ll do, Mister O’Flaherty.” 

“Helping me today is Mr. Harry Potter, who will be giving house points for really good flying! Not too many though because then Mr. Pringle will clip him one.” 

“Mister O’Flaherty…” 

“So Gryffindor won’t be able to win the house cup,” — there was a wave of groans from the stands — “but it’s still house points!” 

“Hurry it up,” said Harry, signalling to the players to mount their brooms and kick off. 

“In today’s final game of Hogwarts, we aren’t grouped by Hogwarts Houses. Instead, we have team Sunset on the left and team Sunrise on the right.” 

One of the Hufflepuff witches on team Sunrise cheered loudly. 

Twenty players, ten on each team, rose to their respective sides. Each held their own quaffle beneath their arms.

O’Flaherty went on listing some of the rules off the top of his head—Harry had thought they wouldn’t need a script since it was supposed to be a very casual game, but it was already established that he was a bit of an idiot—and reiterating to no one in particular, “This is not Quidditch. There’s no first-year students playing Quidditch here, Mr. Pringle.” 

There was a bit of laughter at that.

O’Flaherty was starting to trail off in ums, ahhs, and yeahs. “That’s probably all you need to know. Mr. Potter will now release three golden snitches!” 

Harry flicked the balls into the air, and they took off.  

“They’re not worth anything, but catching two of them will end the game!” 

Harry blew his whistle. At once, seventeen of the quaffles deflated, leaving three real quaffles behind. The three lucky players in current possession of the real quaffles were Benny Smith, Daguan Cheng, and Larkin Stu.

“Oh! Er, begin!” 

It became absolute chaos. 

“Benny’s doing spins—Oh, Stevelyn Thorley’s just stole, and now Diggory’s got the bludger. I mean the quaffle. Not bludger, no bludgers here. Oh, a score on Sunset! Theophorus is wrestling Algie for the other quaffle—Gryffindor will have a fun dinner over that tonight. Did Netto just score?” 

Harry was giving points here and there, being mindful that Dippet had only allowed him to give points so long as the other houses didn’t get a higher total than Slytherin, who were twenty-three points in the lead. 

He thought about Tom running around the empty Hogwarts and missing the look on Evan Rosier’s face when Vulcan Mulciber barreled right through him to get the quaffle. 

“Mulciber, you idiot!” he shouted as he fell through the sky.  

“That’s what you get for always being so loud in the mornings!” 

Harry rang a bell and said into his own commentator mic, “One house point to Eugene Aubrey for catching a player!” A reserve player for Sunrise, Rosemary Sue, took Rosier's broom and joined the game. 

He had to remind Truffles to pay attention to the game and add one game point to Sunset when Mulciber scored. 

“Lorelai’s got the quaffle, she throws—Oooh! Hits Stirling right in the nose and misses the goal. Dolohov in possession—”

It would have been hilarious to see Tom flying through all that madness.  

Just as soon as he thought this, in his peripheral vision, Tom was emerging from the stairs, face pink and robes rumpled. His hair was immaculate as ever, and his eyes were wide and slightly manic.  

Harry’s mouth dropped open, and the bell nearly slipped from his fingers. His brain stuttered, and his first coherent response was, “Tom! Look, I met Nicolas Flamel!” 

Tom was already staring right at the alchemist. Harry was no Legilimens, but he could see exactly what was going through Tom’s brain. 

∞∞∞

Old… So old.  

Tom mechanically made his way to the seat beside Harry, nudging Harry’s broomstick out of his way.  

Harry smiled all too knowingly. “This is Tom,” he said to the alchemist. “My, erm, student.” 

Perhaps it was the fact that Harry neglected to add anything flattering to the statement. Perhaps it made Tom appear… unremarkable compared to all of Harry’s other students, when it was Tom whom Harry lived with. Tom didn’t know, but something about that impersonal introduction made him want to shove Harry off the tower. “Mr. Flamel, I’ve been so eager to meet you...” He stuck out his hand. 

Tom’s obsession with the Philosopher’s Stone withered away at once. There was no grip in that handshake. Just skin. And bones. It was a wonder how the strong winds at the top of the tower had not blown the alchemist away. 

Harry was smirking very loudly, as though he could read Tom’s thoughts.  

Tom was not in a good position to glare back at him. He focused on Flamel. “I… really like your…” He struggled. “Crystal ball.”  

There was a bludger-sized glossamer glass orb on his lap that Tom had only just noticed. He had been too distracted by the oldness initially.  

“Thank you.” Flamel raised the ball with both arms, trembling under the effort. “It’s been rather faulty recently. Not even my stone can fix it, and it’s the best conduit known to Wizard-kind!” 

At that, Harry twisted around with the whipping force of someone who’d just been lobbed by a bludger. “The Philosopher’s Stone” — he paused to choke on nothing — “is a universal conduit?”  

The crystal ball in Flamel’s wavering hold began vibrating, almost thrashing around as though it had come to life. They stared. 

“That’s new,” Dumbledore remarked calmly. “Perhaps after the game, we should take this back to Mopsus for another look?” 

Flamel’s twig-like arms gave out, and the ball dropped back into his lap and stilled. 

O’Flaherty announced another student falling off their broom and tugged on Harry’s robes for his attention. From that moment onward, Harry seemed overly distracted and abnormally thoughtful. 

Tom chatted politely with Flamel and Dumbledore, and pretended to be distracted by the nonsensical game to disguise his new disinterest in the very, very old wizard.  

“Sunset has left their goal post completely open! Ollerton’s right there, with one of the three quaffles! He—he misses? Ollerton! How did you miss?! It’s three feet in front of you!” 

“Shut it, O’Flaherty!” 

“Well, that was embarrassing. Oh, Budger’s caught the quaffle—Wait…” 

Bobaron flew up and knocked Ollerton off his broom. 

“You bloody idiot, Budger!” cried Ollerton as he fell. “We’re on the same team!” 

“I’m not mates with no Huffle-duffer!” Bobaron shouted, flying to the wrong goal. 

“They were, in fact, on the same team,” O’Flaherty confirmed. 

Harry awarded one point to Matilda Wormbook for catching Ollerton before he could eat grass.

Eventually, Tom brought up the Philosopher’s Stone again, if only to have something else in common to talk about. 

“Ah, yes, a question I get often.” Nicolas Flamel bobbed his head sagely. Anciently. “The Red Tincture, it's sometimes called. There’s really no easy way to explain it… A lot of the secret is about acceptance…the bigger picture…” 

It was very hard to hear him over the cheering and the laughter of all the stands.  

“…appreciation for things that you may not agree with…” He trailed off, distracted by the lawless game. 

Tom disagreed with that point in particular. 

“I’m glad to see someone so young and so interested in alchemy,” said Flamel after some time. “I haven’t had reason to take on an apprentice in decades, but if you decide to pursue alchemy of the highest level after Hogwarts, I’ll be happy to give you some assistance.” 

Tom smiled politely and answered with deliberate ambiguity.  

Dumbledore and Flamel talked with each other, a little about the Crystal ball, a little about the game, and about other things Tom didn’t care about. 

“Milligan’s scored another point for Sunrise. Mark that down, will you, Truffles? What's this? BUDGER'S CAUGHT THE SNITCH!! No, sorry, that’s Baylin Bobaron. My mistake.”

Tom continued to watch. Not because he had finally taken interest in the match, but because he was deeply reworking his long-term plans. The months of research and philosophical nonsense had truly been a waste of time, but he was somewhat thankful that Harry wasn’t gloating as much as he could have been. 

Instead, Harry was busy muttering to himself and shaking his head. When he wasn’t awarding the occasional house point with his little bell, he was absently tracing his watch. 

Eventually, someone caught the second snitch, and the game was over. Team Sunset had won because the late afternoon sun kept blinding the Sunrise players when they attempted to score. One additional house point was awarded to each Hogwarts House for Sunset’s victory, which was fundamentally pointless, Tom thought, but all the players, catchers, and spectators cheered loudly anyway. 

Tom did his best to match his year-mates' merriment, but the only thing he truly shared with them was a growling stomach. 

∞

At the end-of-year feast, all four tables were bursting with chatter about the game. Many first-year students were sitting at the wrong house, choosing instead to find their catcher friends or their sunset and sunrise teammates. The quiet, withdrawn students had to migrate to the far ends of their tables for some peace away from the deafening outbursts of gaiety. 

Osiris Ollerton had punched Budger Bobaron in the face before the staff even arrived. 

The Great Hall was decorated completely in Slytherin green, but it was difficult to feel proud about it when everyone was far more interested in talking about the game that Tom had played no part in. 

When the staff arrived at the high tables, they too were huddled together in intense, hushed conversation. Pringle was growing increasingly redder as though he had taken a bite out of a pepper and refused to spit it out. Harry was noticeably absent. 

Finally, Professor Dippet drew away and clapped weakly for attention. None of the students paid him any mind.  

“The Headmaster is speaking!” Pringle screamed, and a red vein popped from his red forehead. 

“Thank you, Apollyon. We’ve all worked up quite the appetite from that entertaining match this afternoon, and we’ll soon be able to enjoy the delicious feast. But first, I must announce a small problem in regards to the House Cup…” 

Pringle hissed his extreme displeasure.  

“This morning, Slytherin was the winning house, with twenty-three points in the lead. Due to very recent events, however, more house points have been awarded to our hardworking first-year students. Mr. Potter, the overseer of the match today, was given very specific instructions to moderate his point awards so that no other house would overcome Slytherin for the house cup as they rightly deserve.” He glanced about to gauge the reactions thus far. “There seems to be a minor misunderstanding, however...” 

The tables were buzzing with confusion now. Lucretia shot a questioning look at Tom as though he should have an idea of what’s happening better than anyone else. 

Tom had sat next to Harry throughout most of the game. He knew Harry longer than anyone. He should be very familiar with Harry's antics. And yet, the only thing Tom was certain of was that Harry had done something completely unpredictable. Again. 

“Not to worry,” said Dippet when the unrest grew louder among the Slytherins. “In first place, Slytherin stands with four hundred and eighty-two points.” 

There was a moment of cautious clapping, but the Great Hall was still too plagued with confusion to celebrate. 

“I cannot accept this, Headmaster,” said Pringle, who was ignored. 

Even McGonagall looked disapproving of the proceedings. 

“Next, we have Gryffindor with four hundred and eighty-two points.” 

Hundreds of students seemed to blink at once. How could it be? That was the same number of points as Slytherin. That would mean they were tied!

A storm of exclamations broke out among the tables. Dippet waited for them to quiet before speaking again. “Now then, yes. Hufflepuff is next with another four hundred and eighty-two points, putting them equally in the lead, it would seem. And lastly, in first place as well, Ravenclaw with four hundred and eighty-two points.” 

The Hall was so quiet, Tom could hear Richard Quelhest’s stomach growling from the Hufflepuff table. 

“Hogwarts recognizes that each point is deserved and final. While it vexes me to say, we must acknowledge the new winners of the House Cup with some redecoration.” 

Each of the Heads of Houses moved at once, wands raised, as though previously choreographed. Some of the Slytherin colors changed to Gryffindor red and gold, Hufflepuff yellow and black, and Ravenclaw blue and bronze, until the entire hall was checkered with colors of each house. Rather than working on any more Slytherin colors, Professor Slughorn worked on changing the Slytherin emblems into Hogwarts emblems. 

All the staff members took their seats when the spellwork was completed. Many looked conflicted and still confused. Professor Dumbledore was smiling ear to ear. Pringle looked positively murderous. 

The students remained so quiet in their stupor that when Dippet clapped his hands together, the echoing sound was as affecting as a thunderclap. 

Food popped into existence across the lengths of the four house tables and the high staff table. Piping hot shepherd’s pies, steaming chestnut and red lentils soup, scones and raspberry jam, crumpets, golden roasts, Yorkshire pudding, and treacle tart. 

There was another half second of silence in which the dumbfounded eyes simply stared at the food, and then, from the Hufflepuff table, Breanna Milligan punched the air. “Absobloodylootely brilliant!” 

The dam broke. It was chaos unlike anything Hogwarts had faced in recent centuries. Haggis was being thrown at the Gryffindor table; someone at the Ravenclaw table laughed so hard, he snorted pumpkin juice all over his girlfriend; Milligan had started eating and singing an improvised song, and was choking because she was not very skilled at eating and singing at the same time. 

Every Slytherin in Tom’s vicinity began barraging him with questions. 

Tom calmly served himself a plate of toast and mash and thought.  

Of all the Slytherins during the game today, Catherine Greengrass did not participate due to her being under the weather. Elindor Truffles had volunteered to keep points rather than join. Evan Rosier, one of their better players, had already been taken out of the match by the time Tom arrived. And, most significantly, Tom had not played. 

It was also important to consider that the Slytherin players, already self-assured in their victory of the House Cup, did not put as much effort into the game. And most importantly, Tom had not played. 

He replayed his conversation with Harry just before the game and kept his eyes fixed on the large double doors for Harry’s entrance. The doors did not even budge.

He huffed softly. Months of hard work, of masking, of endurance. Months of collecting those silly points. All undermined by the single most infuriating wizard. 

What a very convenient time for said wizard, the sole cause of all the chaos, to be missing. 

∞∞∞

At that moment, Harry was running through the eerily deserted third-floor corridor, wand in one hand and Maurauder's map in the other. He took the stairs two steps at a time, hurrying to the sixth floor. This time, he was not going to visit the Room of Requirement. He had already searched through the whole Room of Hidden Things without success in finding a magical vessel or conduit that could activate his wristwatch and send him back to the future. 

No, this time, he was going to catch a certain hairless little menace of a half-kneazle.  

As he turned the corner of the fifth-floor landing, however, he came face to face with a familiar crup. Harry stopped and stared. “You’re not supposed to be here.” On the Maurader’s map, the dot beside the name 'Daimon' was furiously clashing with the dot beside the name 'Mortdevol' on the sixth floor. 

The crup in front of Harry bared its teeth and began growing, which was its usual way of greeting Harry.

Harry lifted up a paper flap to examine his own name on the fifth floor by the staircase. Sure enough, a dot beside the name 'Daemon' was right there too. 

He squinted and blinked. His eyes were certainly working properly. “How in Merlin’s name are you in two places at once?!” 

The crup paused its greeting and lowered both its tails guiltily.  

A nearby banner flipped up, and Apollyon Pringle barreled from a secret passageway. “You,” he growled. “Foul troll. Your blatant disrespect ends here. For the peace of the school, for the Hogwarts four founders, I will—”

Harry stared. “Oh my god.” 

“What?” 

“You’re a bloody hypocrite.” 

“What are you—” 

“You have two pets. Hogwarts rules say we're only allowed one. No… That’s not quite right…” He thought over the past months and gasped. “You have three of them at least!” 

Pringle was turning a telling shade of red. “I don’t—You’re speaking nonsense! And what’s that you’re holding? Give it here, I’m confiscating it.” 

Harry hid the map behind himself. “That’s how you can catch so many students. You’ve got at least three guard dogs patrolling the castle. Of all people to be preaching about violations… Are you too good for Hogwarts rules, now?” 

“You know nothing!” 

“I know that you’ve got no grounds to get me sacked,” said Harry giddily. “I know I have enough evidence to expose you. It might not affect your record, but it’ll force you to choose only one dog.” 

Pringle must have loved his pets more deeply than Harry thought, because the very suggestion caused him to let out a scandalized gasp. “You wouldn’t—” 

“Oh, don’t test me.” 

“You can’t! Professor Dippet likes me best! He’ll side with me.” 

Harry’s brow arched up. “Oh, is there favoritism amongst the staff now? I hadn’t realized the extent of the corruption in the school. Whatever will the Hogwarts Board of Governors say?” 

Pringle had lost all rebuttal. “Is this a threat?” 

Harry’s eyes widened innocently. “Oh no. I could never imagine tearing a pet from its owner. I’ll keep your secret.” He smiled, flashing a row of teeth. “And in return, I expect you’ll stay out of my way, hm?” 

Pringle’s lip curled unpleasantly, and it was one of his ugliest expressions to date. “You’ll get yours,” he grumbled, starting to back away. 

Harry shrugged. “So will you.” Of this, he knew for a fact. 

Pringle vanished into a wall in a similar fashion to the magical barrier at King’s Cross Station. Harry hummed at his retreat with all the self-satisfaction of a cat who had drunk a whole barrel of cream. 

When he looked back at the map, however, Mortdevol had vanished from the sixth floor. “Well,” said Harry, scratching his head. “Bugger!” He flipped through the folds, but only the dot with 'Daimon' remained, and it was moving very slowly, as though with a serious limp. 

How did the cat keep doing that? The map did not normally show pets aside from the Caretaker’s, sure, but it still showed Mortdevol’s location for whatever reason! Surely, he wasn’t slinking by in any of the secret passageways, or Pringle would have caught him sooner.  

Another, darker thought rattled through Harry. Would the Maurauder’s map continue to show the name of someone who had just died? What if Mortdevol had lost in that scuffle with Pringle’s crup, as unimaginable as it was. There was an uncomfortable lump in Harry’s throat, and he continued on to the sixth floor anyway. 

There was nothing.  

Just some brown fur, from the crup no doubt, and more traces of blood that vanished after some paces. Harry poured over the map once again, but the only thing that stood out was Tom Riddle’s dot, approaching Harry’s. 

“I thought I’d find you here.” 

Harry looked up from the map. 

Tom was marching rapidly and staring at him like he had a lot he wanted to say. More than usual, anyway. 

“Look, Tom, there’s blood!” said Harry loudly and discreetly tapping his wand on the map. “I’m sure there’s been some mischief managed here.” The ink on the paper faded away. 

Tom sneered. “Don’t try to distract me. You know what you did.” 

“Do I?” 

“How long have you been planning this? Do you enjoy undermining me, Harry?” 

“It’s one of my few favorite pastimes, actually,” said Harry, a little recklessly. He tucked away the map. “Can you be more specific?” 

If looks could kill, Tom would have been a very young murderer. “If you don’t stop this stupid act, I will hex you.” He brandished his wand. 

“Careful!” Harry threw his hands up. “Or you’ll lose points for Slytherin!” His lips trembled—he couldn’t hold it in anymore. A shit-eating smile split his face. “Oh, I guess all the points are in now—” 

Harry ducked the yellow jet of light that shot from Tom’s wand. 

“I was a little worried about counting the points wrong during the game,” Harry continued in his wide defensive stance. “The Headmaster gave me very specific instructions not to award more points than the Slytherins’ total, you know. Also, shouldn’t you still be at the feast? How was it, by the way? Is there still pudding left?” 

“You know very well how it was!” 

“Calm down, Tom,” Harry said, knowing full well how enraged Tom would get every time he said that. “I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up; you should be very pleased with Slytherin’s victory. I was just having a bit of fun. It’s not personal, though I should have known you’d take it that way. Slytherin’s heir and all.” 

“You are the most infuriating wizard—” Another jet of orange light splattered against Harry’s shield charm. 

“That does mean a lot, coming from you.” Harry returned a disarming spell and deftly caught Tom’s yew wand in the air.  

Tom hissed furiously and physically launched himself at him. Harry stepped to the side as though he was dodging away from a particularly hissy garden snake. 

“Let’s go back,” he continued, ignoring Tom’s loud indignation. “I think there was supposed to be treacle tart today. I also want to see what they’ve done with the decoration.” 

“Give me back my wand.” 

“Will you promise not to hex me if I do?” 

Tom paused for a second, visibly calming down. He sighed and nodded. “I promise.” 

“I don’t believe you for a second.” 

The journey to the Great Hall was spent with Harry half jogging ahead and Tom shouting abuse after him at the stretches where the portraits weren’t listening in. Eventually, Harry did return Tom’s wand and received a stinging hex for his troubles. 

“Feel better?” muttered Harry as he rubbed his sternum. 

“I didn’t really care about the points anyway,” Tom said. He ignored Harry’s snort.  

“Sure. You were just working off some steam from meeting the great alchemist Nicolas Flamel.” 

Tom’s expression darkened again.  

Harry was just briefly debating against saying the only thing on his mind, when it slipped out anyway without his permission. “I told you so.” 

“Shut up, Harry.” 

Harry did, smiling as pleased as a niffler with a pouch of someone else’s gold. He wouldn’t tease Tom anymore on that subject simply because Tom had generously offered to let him use the hypothetical stone. If Harry had known then that the Philosopher’s Stone was a universal conduit, one that might activate the time-travel feature on his watch… He probably still would have laughed at Tom’s single-minded obsession.  

It was a nice fantasy, but Harry had no time or patience to craft his own stone, and he wasn’t about to ask Flamel if he could borrow his. He wouldn’t steal it from the old man, either. Not yet, anyway. 

At the landing of the Great Hall, muffled cheers, laughter, and singing from the feast within filled the corridor. Harry hoped that the commotion was so distracting, he’d be able to join the festivities without drawing any notice.  

“You told him I was your student,” Tom said in an unreadable voice. 

Harry gave him a questioning look that went unanswered. “You mean Flamel?” 

“Don’t do that again.”  

It wasn’t an answer, so Harry had to turn his gears harder. “…Why? Did it bother you or something?” It was impossible to tell because Tom was wearing a very blank expression.

“It would give people the wrong impression.” 

“But you are my student!” He rolled his eyes and tugged on the Great Hall door handle, only to let go with a small yelp. 

Tom had just grasped his wrist in his crushing grip. He explained far too casually, “It makes it sound like I’m lesser.” 

It was a struggle to shake his hand off. Harry rubbed his aching skin. “Well, what do you want me to say?” He was helpless to the buildup of frustration that was bleeding into his voice. They probably shouldn’t be having this conversation in the hallway, but it was long overdue. “You don’t like people knowing you're adopted, you hate family, you see friends as tools… Even I’m starting to lose the plot of all this. Just… what am I supposed to be to you?” 

It was clear that Tom had not expected that. “You are my… You’re my…” He scowled like Harry had just told him Mortdevol would be taking his room for the summer. “My… Harry, you are my person, isn’t that enough?” 

“Yeah, no,” said Harry, arms crossing over his chest. “Anyone else would think that’s weird.” 

There was a frustrated noise. “These labels,” Tom hissed. “It’s so limiting, so ordinary! I don’t care for it. You’re my equal, as far as anyone else is concerned.” 

Harry, a twenty-three-year-old war hero, stared at Tom, a twelve-year-old dark lord work in progress. “Equal…” 

“Yes,” Tom said in a condescendingly slow way, which really contradicted his point. “We’re equals. That’s a very big deal, by the way. You should feel honored. I’m far more special than any one student in there.” He gestured at the Great Hall doors. “And you’re special in a… different way too, of course.”  

That was said in an almost delicate tone that made Harry’s eyes narrow. He was well within his rights to snub Tom right here. If Harry, at twelve years old, had proclaimed to Voldemort that they were 'equals', the noseless nutter would’ve tried to kill him. Well, he would have tried to kill Harry regardless, but it might have motivated him a little bit more. 

It wasn’t irritation that Harry felt, though. Inexplicably, in that moment, he helplessly thought, 'I’m going to miss this brat.' It was ridiculous because Tom was right here and commanding his complete attention with his larger-than-life presence. And the fact that after all this time—the numerous arguments, the wrangled compromises, the gross tea, the expensive quills, the teasing, the small moments of quiet company—Tom, who was the worst narcissist Harry had ever met, had actually claimed Harry as an equal. 

Maybe it was a pretty big deal in Tom’s twisted head. The culmination of their time together crested, and despite everything, Harry knew he would miss Tom one day.

It was a warm feeling that Harry didn’t mind treasuring, no matter what the future might bring or how far apart they might grow. In a surge of uncontrollable fondness, Harry ruffled the boy’s neat hair. “Whatever, Tom," he scoffed—maybe choked—and pulled the heavy door handle. They entered the merrily roaring Hall together. 

Chapter Text

They came home.

The summer was hot, and the house was uncomfortably stifling from the warm greeting of their magical fire. Life at the cottage seamlessly slotted back together. Tom unpacked most of his many, many trunks of things. Harry started working on his overgrown garden, idly noting that sheep haven’t been coming around anymore. 

Tom regularly owled his ‘friends’ and learned much about the unspoken Wizarding culture through the correspondence. The more he discovered about this hierarchy system between purebloods and mudbloods, the more opportunities he saw to exploit it.

There were some evenings during which Tom could hear Harry talking to himself from another room, and the murmured, one-sided conversations were so normal at that point that it all became background hums.

Harry did not try to send him to live with the Lovegood family now that they had agreed to take him in; it seemed the thought hadn't even occurred to him yet. Tom did not try to remind him.

Indeed, life appeared to return to the status quo. There was absolutely nothing aberrant, nothing amiss, Tom thought, until two weeks in, when he opened the fridge.

“Harry," Tom called out the kitchen window. “We're out of eggs. The milk is also low. And get some pudding while you're in town.”

Harry stabbed his trowel into the ground and wiped his forehead. He glanced over his shoulder. "No.”

Tom shut the fridge and sighed deeply. "Please get some pudding for me?”

The trowel continued working the soft, damp ground from last night's rain. “No." 

He almost thought he’d misheard Harry’s answer with that loud rush of wind which billowed and flapped the curtains. Tom's brows furrowed. He marched out the back door and stood right before Harry’s squatting position, staring down at his sunhat. “I said 'please'.”

“I said 'no'." 

“But," Tom said, growing warmer in the beating sun. “I said 'please'." 

“And I said ‘no’," Harry replied simply without looking up. There was an audible smile in his voice, however. The telltale signs of Harry’s incoming nonsense. “You go do the shopping this time." 

Tom stared. "What are you on now?”

“I already did the shopping last week and the week before.” Harry planted a sapling in the soil by Tom's foot. “It's your turn to buy it." 

It was probably a pointless question, but it needed to be voiced: “Have you completely lost your mind?" 

At last, Harry tipped his head back. His face was pink from the sun, and his mouth curled in a cheeky grin. "I thought you believed in equality.”

Tom squinted against his radiant glow. "What—" 

“Outside the Great Hall, you said that we were equals. As equals, we should be splitting the—”

Tom pushed Harry's sun hat over his face. "Oh, shut up, Harry. You can't expect me to do that.” He turned and headed back in to the kitchen.

The thump, thump, thump sound of a trowel patting the fresh soil was immediately followed by jogging footsteps. “Are we only equals when it's convenient to you, then?" Harry pouted, pulling off his gloves. “Doesn't sound fair." 

Tom liked the sound of that a lot, actually, but he conceded. “I'll go with you, so stop complaining.” He continued down the hallway.

"Wait, what? Really?" 

At the entrance hall, he pulled Harry's coat off the hanger and threw it to him. “Yes, Harry. But you'll have to buy everything I want." 

"Opportunistic brat,” Harry grumbled. He ruffled his sweat-damp hair and donned the Muggle coat. 

They walked to town together.