They opposed one another in the chamber. Tom’s smile was mean as he twirled Harry’s wand. He could already feel how the wand liked him, though he was not yet whole. Soon he would be reborn; powerful, beta, and deific. And when he was, Harry Potter would die. Tom would prevent a decade of misfortune tonight.
“So your mother died to save you. Yes, that’s a powerful counter-charm. I wondered if you might be special. There are strange likenesses between us, Harry Potter. Even you must have noticed. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Parselmouths. And beta,” Tom said.
Predictably, Harry’s brow furrowed. Most people thought Tom too pretty to be beta.
“Ginny hoped it was a mistake, you know. She believed you’d wake up one morning and be the alpha of her dreams.” Tom laughed his high laugh. “She was so stupid, Harry. She’d be crushed to learn betas can’t love!”
Harry bristled. “Betas can love.”
Tom laughed, fond and pitying. Harry’s misguided courage was a bit cute. “Oh, Harry. You don’t really believe their myth of ‘love’? Betas have evolved above it.”
Betas weren’t like alphas and omegas. They had no sexual senses. They were immune to the hormones, to Amortentia, to the chemical imbalance of love. Betas were the perfect organism, but most were consumed by the lie of love.
“Dumbledore said you’d say that. You've never known love so you don't believe in it. But you're wrong,” Harry insisted, his fist tight.
Tom sneered. “Oh? How did he convince you?”
Harry's cheeks pinked like a mouse’s belly.
“Tell me what he said, Harry.”
“He said… every sock has its pair.”
Tom cackled. “And that’s what will save you? Is that what he sent you in that old hat–socks?” But then it got boring. “There is nothing special about you, after all. It was merely a lucky chance that saved you from me. That’s all I wanted to know.”
Tom called the basilisk, vicious and thirsty, and Harry ran.
‘Everyone has a match’; ludicrous. Like anyone could ‘match’ Tom.
The snake was upon Harry but Dumbledore's bird gored its eyes.
Tom snarled. But he would still win. No one could defeat a basilisk, least of all a twelve year old.
Harry splashed through murky puddles to the hat and unsheathed a sword.
He sparkled with it. Tom was fascinated.
Something was in Tom’s throat. He could nearly taste it. Like skin, lake salt, and… thyme?
Hooked on a fang, Harry pierced the basilisk's skull from inside its mouth–certain death married to certain death–and Tom was bewitched. Horrified, furious, but bewitched. His head, his tongue, his gut and knees, his very heart, quaked.
Harry had been bitten; he should be dying. But he was healed by the phoenix’s admiring tears. He would be alright.
As for Tom…
No one could survive a basilisk. No one would ever match Tom Riddle… Betas couldn’t…
Tom’s shaking fingers grasped Harry's wand like a lifeline–like a hand.