Haunting
Before
“Harry, mate, wait up,” comes a gratingly familiar voice as Professor Merrythought herds the Slytherin and Gryffindor Second Years out of her classroom, “Harry!”
Tom isn’t able to hide his frown as Harry stops in the hallway, his Slytherin robes whipping around his legs as he turns.
“Ron!” Harry says. He laughs when Ron Weasley runs up to him and throws a freckled arm around his shoulders, causing them to stumble. “Woah, watch where you’re waving that thing!”
The redhead’s ash wood wand is practically flailing in the air, dangerously close to Harry’s face. Tom watches as Harry’s friend haphazardly shoves it into his pocket. Tom bites his lip, fighting to stop the scathing comments sitting on the tip of his tongue. He promised Harry that he would be civil with his friends, just as he promised to call them by their given names. Tom hates that he wants so badly to keep his word. For Harry, he reminds himself.
“Hey, Tom,” Ron says, waving awkwardly. Tom tries to smile–he really does–but Harry’s amused expression tells him he’s failed. Ron turns back to the raven-haired boy, “You still coming to the lake tomorrow? Tom, you can come too. Hermione promised to bring the Muggle chess set she was telling us about.”
“Of course, we’ll be there,” Harry answers for them both, “If only to see her brutally beat you.”
Tom sniggers as Ron protests, ruffling the already wild hair on Harry’s short head. They part ways with the Gryffindor as they head towards the library. They are approaching Christmas– no, Yule– and so the halls are filled with bright decorations. Tom would sneer at the frivolity of it if he didn’t treasure it so.
The library is quiet as it always is, and even Harry’s half-hearted protests over Tom’s insistence that they complete their schoolwork can’t disturb its peace. What can, however, is the man who approaches them not minutes after they sit down.
“Harry, my boy,” Dumbledore says warmly. His tone cools only slightly when he looks at Tom, “Tom.”
“Afternoon, Professor,” Harry greets him, nodding, “Is there something you need?”
“Perhaps we might go to my office, where it is more private. You’re not in trouble, but I have something I would like to share with you,”
“And what is that?” Tom is suspicious. Rightfully so, it seems, because it takes more than a moment for the grey-clothed man to respond.
“It’s about your parents, Harry,”
Parents. What a dangerous word to say to an orphan, particularly this one. Tom can see Harry’s walls rise visibly, the sharp edge in his gaze turning lethal. It fills Tom with a sick kind of joy.
“They died, sir,” Harry is carefully polite, his tone lacking inflection. He’s honed this voice to perfection; it’s as close to a shield as he can get. Tom knows this shield well.
“Yes, but they did not simply die,” Dumbledore smiles sadly, “They gave their lives for a cause. They saved a great many people.”
Tom thinks he hates these faceless people. Beneath the table, Tom feels a warm hand wrap around his tightly. He squeezes the hand back.
“Last year, I gifted you your father’s invisibility cloak,” Dumbledore continues when Harry stays silent, “This year, I thought it time I gift you something significantly more important. Their stories.”
This is Dumbledore’s idea of a gift? Looking to his left, Tom drinks in the expression on Harry’s face. The boy is good at hiding his emotions, but not quite good enough. Not yet. There is apprehension there and something resembling fear. But there is also longing, a bone-deep yearning Tom recognises.
“All right,” Harry says softly, reaching to close his books.
Tom is rarely at a loss for what to do, but right now, he is frozen in indecision. This moment belongs to Harry; Tom knows this. But is Harry not his?
The decision is taken from him.
“Excellent,” Dumbledore smiles at him, sky-blue eyes twinkling, “Tom, we will see you later, I’m sure.”
It is hours before Harry returns to him, crawling into Tom’s bed, trembling. Tom wakes immediately, but his wand stays beneath his pillow. Even in sleep, he can recognise Harry’s presence.
“Harry?” Tom is alarmed, sitting up in his bed, “Harry, what’s wrong?”
Tom is already planning how he can kill Albus Dumbledore and how the man will suffer and– oh. Harry crawls into his waiting arms and looks up at him. Gemstone eyes burn.
It is at this moment that Tom learns Harry’s true capacity for rage.
“Grindelwald,” Harry’s voice is a broken snarl, “Grindelwald killed them. My godfathers, too.”
In halting whispers and seething words, Harry tells Tom of how his parents and godfathers fought alongside Dumbledore, wreaking havoc in the Dark Lord Grindelwald’s ranks. Harry tells him of their sacrifice for the greater good, of how they saved so many during Grindelwald’s first foray onto British soil. Harry tells him of how he’s so proud of them.
Harry also tells Tom that he thinks he might just hate them. Tom tells Harry that he does. (These people almost ruined Harry; they abandoned him to a life of utter suffering, and for what? How could Tom not hate them?)
“They left me,” Harry’s voice is full of condemnation, “They left me.”
“They left you,” Tom sneers, “They don’t deserve what love you have left for them.”
Tom has yet to learn how to refine his jagged edges into elegant blades. His temper doesn’t just cut; it shreds.
Harry is far too used to it.
They lie curled up together, taking up as little space as they can. Tom used to sleep beneath his bed at the orphanage, where he wasn’t so exposed, and Harry hasn’t quite outgrown his cupboard. There are some instincts one cannot fight, and theirs is one born of a lifetime of fear.
To sleep in the presence of another is to leave yourself utterly vulnerable. Utterly disarmed.
Tom and Harry fall asleep to the sound of each other’s heartbeats.
~
It is no small matter to desecrate a wixen’s grave. Even in Death, their bodies hold power. Their bodies hold magic. There is a reason their graveyards are so haunting, the gentle caress of the beyond so tangible.
Tom places the wardstones around a non-descript tombstone, ready to encircle it in the spells woven into the charmed stones. The new moon is almost at its zenith; it is almost time. He needs something from this grave; he has gone to worse lengths than this for less.
Tom is preparing. He is gathering what he needs and readying it for a ritual that has invaded his every thought. This ritual will bend Death to his will; he doesn’t think he will sleep through the night until it is done.
“Oh, Tom,”
The wardstones activate without a sound, only the sensation of popping ears. Harry is trapped outside of the spell-circle. He looks on with horrified eyes.
“Why are you here?” Tom asks with venom on his tongue.
“I always know when you’re getting into trouble,”
Harry watches Tom raise his wand with a pale face. With a wave, the earth concealing the grave in front of Tom begins to shake, to loosen. From the tumble of dirt and dust come a pile of lily-white bones. They lay themselves at Tom’s feet.
“Why now?” Harry asks, still standing just outside the wardstones’ perimeter. It is not in his nature to leave Tom to his dubious machinations.
“It’s the new moon,” Tom answers, a feral look in his mahogany eyes, “It means renewal, new purpose.”
“And the bones?”
Tom’s smile is full of teeth, “They will be given new life.”
Harry flinches back. It fills Tom with delight.
“Necromancy, then,” Harry sounds resigned, "How can you come so close to Death and still not understand? Do you think this will fix it?”
There are the stirrings of a cool breeze as Tom laughs. It is a wild, chilling sound, even to his own ears.
“No, this won’t fix anything. Not yet,” Tom walks to the edge of the spell-circle, looking down at Harry. The barriers of the wardstones warp the lines of Harry’s upturned face, the edges of his lithe body. “But soon,” he says.
“You run and run from Death; it won’t be enough,”
“You’re a fool,”
Behind him, the ruined grave is laid bare to the night, and the bones Tom has stolen seem to glow in the starlight. Tom levitates them into a charmed bag carefully, lovingly. With a sharp flick of his wand, the wardstones deactivate.
“Are your Horcruxes not enough?” Harry doesn’t move from where he stands as Tom collects his belongings.
“They were barely enough to save me on Yule,” Tom pockets the now-inactive wardstones, "My healing spell had almost failed by the time the Mediwizards arrived."
Harry is staring at the scar that wraps around Tom's neck.
"I won’t be able to convince you to stop this madness, will I?”
“And no, you won’t," Tom replies, smiling viciously, "But even then, you won’t try to stop me. You never have.”
“I should have,”
The walk back to the castle will be long. A school is no place for a grave, but for this one, there was nowhere else it could go, so it was placed on the far end of the grounds. Away from the prying eyes of students; though much good that did, what with Tom and Harry right there.
“Tom,” Harry starts, hesitant, “I need you to know that–”
Harry follows as Tom begins the trek back to the castle looming in the distance.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what happened on Yule,”
Half of Tom’s heart lurches; the other half seethes. How dare he?
“I nearly died when you left me,” Tom says, not facing the green-eyed young man, “When you chased after Grindelwald like a fool.”
“Is that why you’re doing this? Because a cutting charm that wasn’t even mine slit your throat?” Harry’s voice is tinged with a long-held hurt; it holds the anger Tom is so used to. The weight of regret and remorse could never be heavier than his rage. “He killed my parents.”
“We stood against a group of Grindelwald’s elite, back to back, and you ran,” Tom refuses to acknowledge the pain closing his throat, “You left me alone. It might as well have been your spell.”
“He was right there! Do you know what it feels like, Tom, to have the source of all your pain just standing there, laughing, right in the middle of Diagon Alley?”
The grass is damp, crunching softly beneath Tom’s feet. The weight of the bones hidden away in his bag is heavy.
“I faced Morfin Gaunt and Thomas Riddle,” Tom spits, fighting the way his mind urges him to listen to Harry, to keep him close, to never let him go again.
“And you killed them,” Harry replies, passion heating his voice, “Without a moment of hesitation. And I let you, because I knew I’d do the same. I stood there and let you tear your soul for the second time, no matter the consequences. Could you not do the same for me? Can you not understand why I left you?”
“Not once have I ever abandoned you; not once have I left you to die. How could you do it to me?”
“I had to try and kill Grindelwald; I had to, even if it meant leaving you behind!”
Harry’s words cut at Tom, invisible marks on his skin that burn. Tom has sharp teeth– he files them down to piercing points and lets them shred– but Harry does, too. They grew up together, clawing hand in clawing hand, trading pain back and forth with possessive intent. Steel sharpens steel, and so Tom and Harry have shaped one another.
“I cannot forgive,” Tom hisses as they walk in the shadows of the Forbidden Forest, “I won’t.”
“I know,” Harry’s voice cracks, “But can you understand?”
Tom doesn’t answer.
“Tom–”
He turns to face the young man, eyes blazing red, red, red.
“Stop! You don’t get to haunt me now, not after what you did!”
Harry looks so angry, so broken, as he stares at Tom’s ruined throat. It hurts that Tom is the one who has put this expression on his once-precious face.
“I’m sorry, Tom, you know I am,”
“Apologies can’t change anything,” Tom’s gaze is fevered, “But I can. I will. And I’ll do it without your help.”
~
Reading Secrets of the Darkest Art in the library, and in the middle of the day no less, is likely tempting fate. But Tom can’t bring himself to care. He has cast a light, almost non-detectable glamour charm over the book; no one will even notice.
At least, that’s what he thinks until he catches sight of Harry two tables down, staring at him incredulously. His petal pink mouth is dropped open, and one of his brows is raised. Tom can read his expression easily, an ability born of years of catching each other’s eyes across rooms. This look says, ‘Really? You’re reading that book, right here?’
Tom fights the childish urge to roll his eyes at the young man. He can’t quite stop himself from sneering, though, when Harry drags himself over to Tom’s table and sits across from him as if he has every right to be there.
“I never took you for an idiot, Tom,” Harry drawls and reaches out as if to pluck the book from Tom’s hands.
Tom pulls the book away from Harry’s seeking hands.
“I dislike having to repeat myself,” he says, “I already told you that I don’t want to see you. Go bother Theodore and Abraxas.”
If he could, Tom would ignore Harry. He would keep reading and avoid Harry’s questioning voice, his reproachful eyes. Tom desperately wishes he could ignore him, but he can’t. Something about Harry has always forced him to look, to truly look, and listen.
“They won’t speak to me, you know they won’t,”
“Ron and Hermione, then,” Tom grits his teeth.
“Riddle?” comes a soft voice, causing Tom to whip his head around, “I was told by one of the prefects that you might be able to help me with my Potions essay. But if you’re busy–”
There is a child standing there, robed in Slytherin green. She is staring at the seat across from Tom, looking perplexed, before shaking her head. She turns back to him with a shy, almost embarrassed look. Tom can see how she fights not to look down at his neck. (He refuses to cover up his scar; it is his reminder of why he needs to do the ritual.)
“Please, call me Tom,” he smiles at her, clamping down on the annoyance rising in him; he has a reputation to uphold. Tom pulls out the seat next to him, “I’m not busy. Not busy at all.”
Harry is silent as Tom guides the First Year through her schoolwork. But he watches.
He always watches.
~
Before
Tom has been terrorising his fellow Third Years since they began at Hogwarts, his wand liberal with curses and his tongue whispering vicious words. But slowly, he starts to smile at them, to offer help with school work, to hide his sharp edges.
This is not because the feral thing inside him has been tamed, far from it. No, Tom is planning. Harry would say he was plotting.
Tom knows what power looks like; he has seen it in the Pureblood Heirs that flaunt their influence, and he wants. So, he will take.
First, he has made them fear him, collecting peers with a singular focus that has them pale and shaking. Then, he shows them his favour. His small group, whom he has taken to calling his Knights, are spared his cruelty, given grace where others are cut down. Tom forges himself into such a force that his Mudblood status pales in the face of his cold fury; his Knights learn to forget about his blood.
Before this, Harry had been the only student at his side, protected and protecting in turn. Now, Tom’s circle has grown and soon, their power will belong to him. Harry calls them his followers, smirking when Tom urges him to attend their meetings. Tom prefers to call them his companions; it sounds better to the ears in the walls.
“I have my own friends, Tom,” Harry smiles from where he fidgets with a golden snitch on the floor, “You’ll be fine going back to your followers alone; I know you rule them with an iron fist.”
“I would hardly call Ron and Hermione better company than my Knights,” Tom teases, the corners of his deep brown eyes crinkling, “And you would never be a follower. You are my equal.”
“And the others aren’t?”
Tom leans down to brush Harry’s wild hair away from his eyes, “They could never be our equals. There is only you and me.”
~
“There are vials of Grim blood in the Department of Mysteries,” Theodore says, his silken formal robes shining in the bright lights of the ballroom, “Lord Hua has access; he is standing over there with my father.”
“Excellent,” Tom smiles, eyes scanning the groups of people gathered for the Ministry’s Recruiting Ball. As tedious as the event has been, he will not be leaving empty-handed. Smoothing down the front of his brand-new robes, Tom revels at the softness, the novelty of it still filling him with a fierce sense of pride. After he had taken his rightful inheritance from Thomas Riddle’s family, Tom had allowed himself to indulge in small luxuries here and there. Those luxuries have included new books and formal robes for various events he has been invited to since expanding his sphere of influence.
Making his way to where Headmaster Dippet is standing by a floating tray of canapes, Tom puts on his best smile. He is well used to playing the charming Head Boy.
“Tom!” Dippet exclaims, “There you are my boy, I was just looking for you.”
“I apologise,” Tom says, dipping his head slightly, “An old acquaintance caught my attention. She was telling me about some of her work in the Department of Mysteries.” Straightening his collar, Tom adopts an awed look, “I admit to having lost track of time; her stories were simply inspiring.”
“Not a worry at all,” Dippet leads Tom towards a group of wixen dripping in truly obscene amounts of charmed jewellery and robes, “The Depart of Mysteries, eh? Perhaps you should meet an old friend of mine. Do you see that man over there? Lord Hua is his name.”
Before the night's end, Tom has secured an invitation to visit the hidden halls of the Department of Mysteries.
Tom lifts a goblet of deep red wine to his lips, a warm, black ring glittering on his finger.
~
“Tom,” Dumbledore says as he corners Tom after a Quidditch match his Knights had all but forced him to attend, “I have something I must ask of you.”
Tom looks into sky-blue eyes and shields his mind. Only a few stragglers remain on the pitch; there is no danger of being overheard.
“I know you were,” Dumbledore pauses, “Close, with Harry. Would you happen to know anything about his research?”
“Research?” Tom keeps his face blank even as he thinks back to the piles and piles of books and loose parchment sitting in the Room of Requirement.
“I believe it may have been on something called the Deathly Hallows,” Dumbledore seems hesitant to reveal this to Tom. Secretly, Tom is delighted at the man’s concession.
“I may have seen something of the sort,” Tom waves a flippant hand, feigning disinterest, “What do you need with it?”
The auburn-haired wixen sighs.
“I believe it might be the key to defeating Grindelwald. That was the intention behind the research, was it not?”
Tom’s smile is full of teeth.
Later that night, he sits at Harry’s desk, where he can’t distinguish the furniture’s surface from the mountains of parchment covered in scrawling writing.
‘Hallows’, is what Harry’s notes say, crude drawings of Grindelwald’s symbol taking up entire pages. Tom doesn’t understand it yet, thumbing through files he never bothered to read before. Harry had been secretive at the start of this year, and Tom had allowed it, knowing that when he was ready, Harry would reveal some reckless plan doomed from the start.
Tom settles in for a long night, eyes easily passing over the shoddy penmanship he’s been deciphering for years. Harry’s secrets have always belonged to Tom.
~
Before
In Fourth Year, Tom reads a black-bound book he finds hidden in the shadows of the Restricted Section. This is how he learns of Horcruxes. He runs to share his findings with Harry, throwing himself down on the shorter boy’s bed as if he belongs there.
“I found it,” he breathes, eyes alight, “A way to cheat Death.”
Harry is appalled. His eyes sparkle with horror as he learns what Tom wants to do. Both boys are well acquainted with Death; it has loved them since birth and clung to them with clawing hands. But while Harry embraces it, taking the dark presence in stride, Tom runs. Death is a plight, he decides, and he will not let it touch him like it touched his mother, like it touched the too-cold children starving in a worn-down orphanage, like it touched the weak.
Tom is not weak.
“This is unholy,” Harry almost cannot speak, “You can’t–”
“I must,” Tom takes Harry’s shaking hands in his, “I would pick someone deserving of this fate; I swear it.”
“Tom,”
“Harry,” Tom lifts a pale hand to cup Harry’s cheek, “The Muggles are at war just as much as the Wizarding World; they predict there will be bombings in London within the next two years. If I don’t do this… I might not live to see our graduation.”
“But, Tom,” Harry doesn’t pull away even as Tom shifts closer. The bed creaks beneath them as Tom pulls Harry to his chest, “You’re talking about ripping someone’s heart out and–”
“I know,”
It takes the better part of three months to convince Harry of the ritual’s necessity. Even as the green-eyed boy refuses to look at the book Tom is so enamoured with, he somehow understands. He always does.
Harry is Tom’s, and Tom is Harry’s. Tom knows there is nothing he can do that Harry cannot forgive; he has always been unwaveringly loyal.
And Tom could never find fault in any of Harry’s actions.
(Tom thinks himself limitless. He one day finds that it is not his own wrongdoing that begs forgiveness.
He finds that perhaps there is one thing he cannot forgive Harry for… at least not easily.)
At the end of their Fourth Year, Tom approaches his Potions professor and asks in not so many words about the possibility of multiple Horcruxes. Horace Slughorn answers unthinkingly, charmed by his favourite and most promising student.
He quits a month later, right before the NEWT students begin their exams, out of fear of what he has told Tom. Severus Snape arrives the next week as a personal favour to the Deputy Headmaster, temporarily taking stewardship of both Potions and his old Hogwarts house.
He ends up staying, showing up in their Fifth Year with a sigh and a tired smile directed at Tom, who answers questions and brews perfect potions. Harry is met with a truly harrowing glare, which Tom finds amusing.
One day, Dumbledore pulls Snape aside, whispering in his ear. Snape looks at Tom with more caution after that, but he cannot help but see himself in the promising, tragic young boy.
Tom catches Dumbledore’s eye with a pleasant smile after that.
~
“You can’t keep ignoring me,” Harry seethes, storming into their dorm room with a dangerous glint in his gemstone eyes.
“Out,” Tom says to Theodore and Abraxas, “Out!”
“But–” Theodore begins before he is bodily dragged out the door by Abraxas.
Harry comes to stand before Tom’s bed, where he lounges against soft pillows covered in emerald green. Harry is wearing his Hogwarts robes, though his Slytherin tie is missing, and one too many buttons is undone at his throat.
“Try me,” Tom refuses to stand, “See if I can’t.”
“It’s been four months,” Harry’s brows are lowered in fury; such beautiful anguish, all for Tom. He revels in this power. “When will it be enough?”
“When you suffer this life as I do,” Tom snarls, his book snapping shut with a thud, “When you feel pain.”
“Haven’t we both suffered enough?”
“Not nearly,” mahogany eyes bleed red, “You know how I adore suffering.”
Harry stands at the end of Tom’s bed, hands fisted at his sides as folds of black cloth spill between his fingers. Tom meets his eyes for only a second, turning away to stare blankly at a crack in their stone wall.
“You are still acting as if I held my wand to your throat and not some sick sycophants of Grindelwald’s,”
“No, you didn’t hold your wand to my throat; you stabbed it into my back,”
“And yet you’re still here,”
Harry comes closer, leaning down into Tom’s space with such a look on his face.
“I see you, trying desperately to hold everything together,” Harry says in barbed whispers, “I’ve watched you pretending that you aren’t weak, that what happened to you hasn’t just scarred your body.”
“I am not weak,”
“You are,” Harry says waspishly, “You need me.” His pupils are blown, “You need me!”
Tom laughs, sneering as mahogany eyes begin to shine. When Tom was a young child, he hadn't known what it meant to be strong, to be powerful. He hadn’t known how to fight the stinging burn of cruelty. Tom has since learned that if you don’t want someone to hurt you, you must teach them not to hurt you.
“I used to,” he says, “Never again.”
(This is a lie, but it is a painful lie nonetheless.)
“You think you can do your little ritual without me,” Harry spits. Tom knows he is disappointed, “You won’t get anywhere.”
“I don’t need you,” Tom seethes, “Not anymore.”
Harry’s face is too close to his as he leans down further. It is a cruel imitation of their former intimacy.
“I am the only one who has ever mattered to you,” Harry’s breath ghosts over his ear, “Even now.”
Harry always did understand him a bit too well.
“Of course you need me.”
He is gone before Tom’s curse can hit him.
The spell shatters a mirror hanging on the wall.