Chapter Five
Whatever uneasy truce Riddle and Harry had kept up before that Flying class had been unequivocally shattered.
Miraculously, Harry hadn’t gotten in trouble. Moments after Harry had finally pinned Riddle down, Malfoy had made a noise and let them all know that Madame Hooch was returning. Harry and Riddle had jumped apart and quickly gotten up, pretending to have been doing anything but fighting the past couple of minutes.
It helped that Riddle and his friends already had the Slytherins on a surprisingly effective leash. Some girl—Harry couldn’t remember if she was a Slytherin or Gryffindor, but she had probably been a Slytherin, considering what happened—had tried to speak up when the flying teacher returned to the pitch, but a glare from Malfoy had quickly shut her up.
It was quite interesting to watch Riddle, a muggleborn, try and adjust to life at Hogwarts. His social life in Slytherin house was burgeoning, apparently, or so Harry had heard.
That was surprising—Slytherin was all purebloods and halfbloods. How had a muggleborn become friends with all of them so quickly?
Harry himself thought it was rather hard to become friends with muggleborns; it wasn't like he was separating himself from them on purpose, he was trying to be nice and inclusive, he really was, but he found it rather difficult. The only one in Gryffindor house who could keep up with the rest of the wizard borns was Hermione, and that was because she was constantly reading about wizarding culture. How else were they supposed to explain that it was Yule, not Christmas, and that the best way to take care of a stray bowtruckle was to sing sweet songs to it, not spray it with sickness-inducing chemicals? Muggleborns could have very weird opinions about the correct ways to do things sometimes.
Either way. It wasn’t like Harry went out of his way to be mean or not inclusive, but it just naturally kind of happened. He and Ron would set up a game of Wizard’s Chess, and a Muggleborn would try to play with them, until they’d shriek and go all wide-eyed because in “normal” chess the pieces didn’t crumble to dust when they were captured by the other team. It just got tiring constantly trying to explain magical things Harry took as fact.
Riddle was different. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he was so new to everything.
Even other strong headed people, like Hermione, knew they were functionally in a different universe and opted to learn from people from wizarding families. And usually that was for the best. Wizards knew what they were doing in the wizarding world. Muggles knew what they were doing in the muggle world. You could cross over—his mother had, her parents had been muggles—but it was obviously hard, and finding someone on the other side to act as a guide was probably very useful.
But Riddle didn’t seem to care. He seemed to know quite a lot himself—he was topping the Slytherin intra-house competitive leaderboard by quite the margin, Harry had heard—and didn’t let others school him on the correctness of his assumptions when it came to learning and practising magic. This confidence had spread to other aspects of his life, too—if Malfoy ever protested at doing something, Riddle would just stare at him unimpressed and do whatever he wanted until Malfoy went along with Riddle.
And Malfoy always did. Went along, that was.
It was almost as if Malfoy now followed Riddle’s lead, not the other way around. How was that even possible? Malfoy was a right annoying git in his own way. He’d charmed those two dunderheads, Crabbe and Goyle, into following him around and doing whatever he said; not like anyone with more than two brain cells couldn’t do that.
Yet, Riddle was a different story—he wasn’t an idiot, Harry could see that much. But Malfoy was an heir and a son of one of the Vanquishers; he should have been able to stand up for himself, especially to some random muggleborn.
Harry would have to watch this all play out.
It’d be sort of exciting, he thought. He was weirdly fascinated and repulsed by the Slytherin.
And Harry knew this interest was mutual. Sometimes he felt Riddle’s eyes on the back of his head in Charms—the boy had moved to sit with Blaise Zabini, so he was no longer at Harry’s side—and Riddle would sometimes glare at him from the Slytherin table in the Great Hall. Harry suspected that the few stinging jinxes he’d felt on his back the first few days after the Quidditch incident could be attributed to the sneaky Slytherin.
So Harry returned the favor.
He jinxed and pranked Riddle right back. He wasn’t as practised as Fred and George, but growing up with them meant he did know the best way to stick unflattering notes to someone’s robe or charm their hair to sparkle like Ginny’s sequin dresses when it came in contact with sunlight.
They were both smart about what they were doing, of course. Harry didn’t want any more detentions; Merlin knew his parents would be on his case even more than he knew they would be come his return home. So Harry was pureblood-perfect in front of every figure of authority, and only deigned to show Riddle any sign of hostility in between classes. And Riddle himself was very careful to only send Harry looks of loathing when he knew no professor was watching.
But as the months went on, the little attention he got from Riddle was so neutral that Harry started to think he’d imagined it all. He and Ron would make sarcastic semi-pointed comments in class or try to grab at the Slytherin’s robes in the hall, and would get nothing back in response—just an irritated look, if they were lucky and the other boy was having an off day.
Really, nothing seemed to perturb the boy until—
“Short,” Harry hissed into his ear one day when they were paired together for Potions.
Riddle had asked him to collect the girdyroot, citing the ingredients cabinet nearby as “a bit high up”.
The other boy's eyes had widened comically, and then narrowed, blazing with what looked like fury. It was the first time Harry had gotten a reaction out of the other boy in months; he was quite proud of himself.
“Shut it,” the Slytherin hissed, almost crushing the stem of staghorn in his hand.
“Careful, your staghorn is about to turn into powder,” Harry responded idly, reaching around Riddle to grab necessary ingredients. “Here’s the girdyroot.”
Riddle took the plant and started cutting it up into methodical pieces, glaring at him with poorly concealed venom.
“Keep working, Potter.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Harry said cheerfully.
Two could play this game. It was almost All Hallow’s Eve, and he still hadn’t gotten over how Riddle had made that irksome remark in Professor McGonnagall’s office back at the very beginning of term.
Harry had tossed and turned, admittedly spending quite a few sleepless nights and long showers thinking on how to get back at Riddle. “I would have asked Malfoy for help if I had seen him, Professor,” had bounced around Harry’s head for an embarrassingly long amount of time—he was no serial eidetic, but it was as if that moment had been seared into Harry’s brain forever, right up there with the time Malfoy had stuck Harry’s cat to his miniature broom and let him drop down from the third story window.
Riddle clenched his jaw and continued chopping at their girdyroot, a little more severely now.
They didn’t speak for the rest of class—not except for Riddle to hiss “Not yet, Potter, you need to wait six more seconds to put in the staghorn,” or “The shrivelfig will end up curdling if you skin it so haphazardly,”—chemical reactions were fourth-year Potions material, how did he know that?—or, his personal favorite—“You’re the most bloody irritating person to work with, I don’t know how you’ve passed any practicals so far,”—that one, Riddle had muttered under his breath.
Harry and Riddle ended up getting an E on the assignment, anyhow. Sure, some of it was probably from Riddle’s precise cutting skills and insistence to do exactly what the directions said—but Harry was quite sure that a lot of it came from practice with his own mother. Lily Potter was a skilled and famous potioneer. She was gifted at the subject, which meant that Harry was probably also gifted at the subject.
What a nice thing it was, to be born to intelligent parents.
— — — — — — — —
Ron and Harry made their way to the quidditch stands on a chilly November evening, shielding themselves from the light sprinkling of rain from up above.
They were both greatly anticipating the first Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match of the season. Not many of their other friends could come along—Dean and Seamus had caught a nasty cold, and were staying in the Hospital Wing, while Hermione insisted she couldn’t give up extra study time before their winter Herbology exam—so they expected to be watching the match alone.
“Oi, Neville,” Ron said, surprised.
As they entered the Gryffindor stands, they spotted Neville, who was sitting as far towards the back of the stands as he possibly could, presumably to avoid the inclement weather. It had been raining on and off for the past couple of days; seeing the weather outside, Ron had expected the match to be cancelled by now.
But it hadn’t, and this lingering feeling had crept up in Ron’s throat, as if he was Ginny and was always bloody anxious.
It hadn’t helped that he kept having bloody dreams. Dreams where Fred and George caught a quaffle during this very match, and had flown to each other, whooping and laughing, until there was a bright flash of light and one of them disappeared.
The recurring dream had begun rather innocuously almost a week ago, and it hadn’t really bothered Ron, not until he kept waking up in a cold sweat day after day because the same scene flashed before his eyes each time he tried to sleep. It was bloody irritating, and Ron had half a mind to ask Madame Pomfrey for a batch of dreamless sleep, until he remembered his mother telling him about a small wizard who’d never woken up after drinking dreamless sleep too young.
Ron had shivered and gone about his day then; he valued his life, thank you very much.
But it kept bothering him…the idea that Fred and George could get hurt…so, in a spur of the moment…
“Fred and George shouldn’t fly tomorrow,” Ron had urgently told Lee Jordan last night.
“You don’t want your brothers to play in the match?” the third-year Gryffindor had asked, looking confused.
Then realization had dawned on his face, and he had let out a laugh, saying “That’s genius, Ron, you’re a right genius.”
Ron hadn’t known why Jordan thought he was a genius until he realised that the other boy thought the whole thing was a prank.
The older Gryffindor had then snuck into the school broom closet and swapped out Fred and George’s new personal Cleansweeps for the old, rickety school ones—the ones that tended to curve to the left—promising that Fred and George would forfeit immediately once they realised what was happening.
And Jordan told Ron he had spelled them to look the same—the twins wouldn’t suspect a thing until they were already in the air.
“Can’t believe I never thought of that before,” the notorious prankster had laughed, sending him a wink.
All of this made Ron a bit worried; what if swapping out their new brooms for more volatile ones meant it was more dangerous for them to fly? But it would be all in great fun, Jordan had promised. It was a harmless prank; besides, Hufflepuff was so far behind Gryffindor in house points that it’d hardly move the needle even if the badgers won by a big amount.
So Ron ignored his needling anxious feelings and trusted the plan.
It had all been working out quite well—at breakfast, Ron had overheard the twins weighing whether or not they even wanted to participate in the first place—until Ron spotted his two older brothers walk onto the grassy pitch below, identical brooms in their hands.
“Oh, no,” Ron said slowly, watching as Madame Hooch blew her whistle and the match began.
The effects of Lee Jordan’s prank were quickly apparent.
“What’s going on? Look! Fred and George aren’t flying right!” Harry exclaimed, pointing to the twins.
They each kept swinging from side to side, movements so exaggerated that it couldn’t have been their own flying.
It was because of the old brooms, Ron realised. They couldn’t catch their balance. Ever since they had gotten their new brooms as a birthday gift last April, they hadn’t touched the unstable school ones, declaring them “Flying sticks fit for new firsties, not Quidditch players,” and that had been the end of that.
Fred went after a bludger, diving close to the—practically empty—Slytherin stands. He missed and hit empty air, almost flying into the wooden structure.
It started to pour.
Ron tuned out Harry and Neville, his mind racing.
Blimey, what had he done?
He was a right git for this—now they’d definitely slip up and fall in the rain—at least he could blame Jordan when it was all over—
A bright flash of lightning erupted quite suddenly. Ron watched in horror as George unintentionally flew straight towards it—no, bloody hell, this couldn’t be happening—and heaved a sharp sigh of relief when his brother unexpectedly careened to the left, no doubt due to the faulty Hogwarts broom.
His and Lee Jordan’s prank had saved George, Ron realised in a state of shock, ears deafened from the booming clap of thunder resounding around them.
His dream had saved George.
Ron sat there, unmoving, feeling rather thunderstruck.
The game went on. But his thoughts didn't. All through Hufflepuff’s win and dinner in the Great Hall and a game of Exploding Snap with Harry before bed, Ron wondered what it could mean.
— — — — — — — —
On a winter morning in December. Harry found himself back at home for the week—thank Merlin it was already winter holidays. Next week, he was supposed to visit his great-grandmother’s house, but he would have really rather spent it with just his parents. Or he wished Ron could stay over or something.
But that was later. Today, Harry was about ready to attend the Malfoy’s annual Yule ball—physically, that was. Mentally, he would have rather been anywhere else.
The portkey he and his parents had been holding flashed and transported them to the familiar grounds of Malfoy Manor. The place was a near palace—it was massive, they were standing right in front of the fence and could see for miles and still couldn’t see the far gates.
After smiling and nodding at the Director of Magical Security, who had promptly let them in, his mother leaned down and kissed the top of Harry’s head.
“Off you go now,” she said, steering him towards some of the Weasleys who were huddled near the Malfoy’s quidditch pitch. “Have fun.”
The whole thing was rather dumb; he’d dressed in his finest dress robes, and for what? He knew how these parties went, at least for him: first, he’d play a game of Quidditch with whoever else felt inclined, then, he and Ron would explore Malfoy Manor’s many gardens, and then, they would sneak inside for food before catching the Portkey home.
“We’ll be leaving around 22:00. Be back here around then,” his father called out to him.
“Alright.” Harry raced to find Ron.
They had a game of Quidditch to play.
— — — — — — — —
After a friendly match of Quidditch with some others from Hogwarts—right when the game had ended, Oliver Wood had pulled Harry aside and told him to consider trying out for Gryffindor’s Seeker position next year, he was still buzzing with excitement—Ron and Harry made their way inside.
Once free from the outside crowd, they sped by elaborately charmed architecture and gigantic floating Yule trees in order to reach the main attraction—the refreshments.
Nobody did Yule like the Malfoys; food included. It was possibly the only thing Harry looked forward to every year at the ball: stuffing himself full of Cornish pasties and the best cauldron cakes in the wizarding world—not that he would ever tell his parents that.
After demolishing his first, second, and third plates—
“What’s he doing here?” Harry whispered loudly, pointing at Riddle, who was standing alone near an alcove, arms crossed.
Ron grasped at his friend’s arm. “Put your hand down,” he said. “Don’t be so rude.”
Harry did so sullenly.
“I was just wondering,” he said, looking around for anyone else he knew that wasn’t Riddle.
Malfoy was nowhere in sight; he was probably busy talking to his mother. Harry couldn’t pick out anyone else he recognized—no other Weasleys, no Zabini, no Parkinson, nobody.
He wondered if Dean or Seamus would show up, but blew off the thought—he’d never really seen them at Malfoy parties before. And Harry didn’t think Hermione had been invited—she was a muggleborn, and muggleborns didn’t usually show up at these kinds of events.
So that raised the question. What was Riddle doing here? He wasn’t just a muggleborn—nobody actually knew anything about his blood history, and Harry had paid attention to the rumours—he was also an orphan.
“They’re friends,” Ron realised, answering Harry’s internal monologue. “Malfoy and Riddle are friends.”
He and Ron had been such close friends for so long now that they were practically in sync; Harry didn’t always have to look at Ron to know what he was thinking, and Harry was sure it worked the same way vice versa.
Harry helped himself to a piece of bruschetta from a nearby floating plate.
“And when did that happen?”
“Beginning of term, maybe?”
Right. But Riddle had been rather friendless at the beginning, hadn’t he?
“He’d follow us around then, mate. Remember? I don’t think he had any friends then.”
“I was thinking right before your whole deal on the Quidditch pitch. Malfoy covered for Riddle, remember?”
Harry did remember. Just as he’d pinned Riddle down—and didn’t that feel good, it helped let off that prickly feeling Harry felt whenever he was around the Slytherin—Malfoy had covered for them both. Riddle, the annoying gentleman that he liked to pretend to be, had jumped up even faster than Harry and had offered him a hand, saying “All right there, Potter?”
Harry had rolled his eyes and batted the hand away until Ron had kicked him a little, hissing, “Madame Hooch is almost here, get up,” and then Harry had to act all civil, and that had been the end of that.
So Harry frowned, setting down the remainder of his bruschetta. He had eaten most of the bread, but the crust was too hard and bitter to force himself to finish.
“How did he make Malfoy be his friend, then?”
Harry wasn’t friends with Malfoy, he’d never be, they were too different, but it wasn’t like he didn’t know the other heir. Malfoy didn’t pick friends so willy-nilly; he was always intentional with them—either they’d “make good company”, meaning they were “of the good sort”, usually meaning they were another heir, or “rather useful”, meaning another lackey to add to his collection.
“Don’t know. Bribed him, maybe.”
“Riddle’s an orphan, you dolt. He hasn’t got any money.”
“Maybe he threatened to steal Malfoy’s soul?” Ron said very seriously. Harry let out a laugh at that.
“Or you could ask Malfoy instead of sitting here and theorising,” a voice behind them pointed out, exasperated.
They turned around. It was Blaise Zabini, a fellow first-year that had been sorted into Slytherin house.
Ron eyed Zabini warily.
“Eavesdropping, were you?”
Zabini shrugged, leaning against a pillar. Harry thought the Malfoys were ridiculous for having pillars in their house. Sure, it was a humongous mansion, but Harry thought it was quite obnoxious. It wasn’t like Potter House wasn’t wealthy or well-known—they were—but no Potter spent their time and hard earned money embellishing their homes with pillars.
“So what if I was?”
“It’s weird. Go and talk to Malfoy,” Harry said.
Zabini waved over the blonde, who had apparently been standing nearby—Harry couldn’t see much past the crowd of adults that were way taller than him.
“Draco. Potter wants to talk to you.”
Ugh. “No, I told you to go talk to him, Zabini.”
Zabini made a face of derision and turned to talk to Ron, asking, “How’s that dingy rat of yours holding up?”
“Hello to you too, Potter,” Malfoy said, crossing his arms.
“My, my, Malfoy. You’ve outdone yourself this year,” Harry simpered, imitating the visage of Lucius Malfoy when the man was obviously sucking up to Ministry officials. Harry had seen it multiple times; mostly at each year’s Ministry luncheon, held in honour of Malfoy and Harry’s Parents and Dumbledore taking down the Dark Lord. “A beautiful event hosted by beautiful people, in heart and physicality.”
“Oh, sod off, Potter,” Draco responded halfheartedly, with no real malice in his voice.
Their rivalry had all but ended after the unfortunate troll incident, and all of their arguments now just stemmed from habit.
But Riddle, on the other hand—
“What’s he doing here?” Harry asked, dropping the sickeningly sweet voice and jerking a thumb towards the Slytherin who was now plucking crudités from a floating platter to his right. Riddle was well within earshot, Harry knew, so he intentionally laced his voice with an edge of meanness.
Getting a reaction from Riddle after months of radio silence had been exhilarating. Harry wanted to do it again. And again. And again.
“Riddle and I are friends.”
“Uh huh.”
“Of course I invited my friends.”
“Uh huh.”
“Not that you’d know the first bit about hospitality.”
Harry made an insulted noise. “I know more than you,” he began, quite ready to bring up the time Malfoy had stolen his father’s wand in an attempt to spell Ginny’s hair blue at last year’s Ministry luncheon.
Really, if Malfoy’s family didn’t have such a long history of sorting into Slytherin, Harry would’ve pinned him as a Gryffindor.
“Hardly seems like it,” Riddle interrupted, voice biting. Harry and Malfoy had unintentionally made their way towards Riddle, and they now stood in front of him, exchanging a surprised glance. “You’ve never shown any indication of being hospitable.”
“Bloody hell, Riddle, I was talking to Malfoy.”
Riddle looked like he wanted to roll his eyes but stopped himself.
“Really quite hospitable of you, Potter, to try and irritate someone for months.”
Ah. So everything he’d done had been getting to him; Harry just hadn’t noticed. Great. He mentally patted himself on the back for that—what a supremely fulfilling thing to know.
His father would be proud. “Make yourself known,” James Potter would say. “No, you’re a Potter. Act like one,” his great-grandfather would interrupt. That reminded him—he needed to start regularly owling his great-grandparents—he had last sent an owl on All Hallow’s Eve, his great-grandmother was probably livid—
Malfoy looked between them both.
“My father’s calling for me. I’ll see you both,” he said, backing away into the crowd.
Nervous git; Malfoy was always like this, unwilling to stand behind Harry for even the simplest of confrontations. It was why Harry had never made a real effort to try and become friends with the boy, despite their long history together. Maybe Malfoy wasn’t really a secret Gryffindor after all.
“So affable of you to try and kick me in the side when we were both going for the snitch that one time in Quidditch,” Riddle added, turning back to face Harry again.
Harry went for a carrot that Riddle had been eyeing and bit into it, hoping that the crunch of vegetable in his ears would drown out the sound of the other boy’s annoying voice.
It didn’t.
“Or for you to take my wand and attempt to feed it to Parkinson’s pompion potion.”
Harry remembered that all too well. He was still shocked Professor Snape hadn’t caught him and gave him detention again.
“Such a courteous thing to do.”
“Stop using big words, Riddle,” Harry snapped, mouth still full of carrot. “You don’t have to talk like you’re drafting a bloody essay.” Pretentious git.
“And you don’t have to talk to me. Leave if you'd like,” Riddle said, waving his hand.
Harry chewed and swallowed the remainder of his carrot, and then scoffed.
“I want to talk to you,” he said, mostly out of spite.
Of course he didn’t. Riddle was terrible company.
But there was something so satisfying about riling him up.
Riddle shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Hmm.”
An awkward silence ensued. Harry instinctively picked up a piece of celery and started nibbling on it.
“You’re sure you don’t want to talk to one of your friends instead?”
“There’s not a lot of them here,” Harry confessed.
Speaking freely around Riddle felt like baring himself in front of a hungry tiger—but what was that metaphor Uncle Remus liked to use?—every good lie had a grain of truth to it. If Harry really wanted to get under Riddle’s skin, he couldn’t just use subterfuge and loud yelling—he’d have to actually get to know him to see what ticked him off the most.
And getting to know someone meant talking to them. Sans insults.
Baby steps.
“I noticed. Weasley’s here?”
“He is.”
“What about Thomas and Finnigan?”
“If they are, I haven’t seen them. But they don’t usually come to these kinds of things,” Harry responded, unsure where the conversation was going.
With a sly glance at Abraxas Malfoy, who was sitting in an ornate chair just a few feet away from them—“Hmm. Well, it does make sense that Granger isn’t here. She’s a mudblood, after all,” Riddle said casually, with the air of someone who had decidedly not just uttered a foul profanity.
“Riddle!”
Harry audibly gasped to the point that the adults nearby glanced in his direction. Augusta Longbottom, in particular, sent him a rather severe look—if she was here, Neville must’ve been too, Harry wondered how he’d missed him.
“You can’t say that!”
“I can’t?” Riddle asked lightly. “Didn’t know.”
The Slytherin stole another glance at Abraxas Malfoy; the man was old and ailing, but could definitely still hear them. What, was Riddle trying to get into the good graces of a blood purist?
“You don’t even know what you are,” Harry accused. “For all you know, you could be a muggleborn.”
Harry didn’t say mudblood; he would never say mudblood. It was a nasty way to paint people. His own mother—a Vanquisher of the Dark Lord and probably one of the most accomplished people in her generation, and a famous potioneer in her own right—was technically a mudblood.
Riddle sniffed with an air that felt reminiscent of Percy Weasley.
“I'm no mudblood.”
“Says who?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Riddle said, and pushed past him suddenly, making his way towards Zabini, who was now engrossed in a conversation with both his own mother and a terrified-looking Ron.
Harry just stood there, retort dying on his tongue.
Tom Riddle was so bloody annoying.
— — — — — — — —
Harry was bored out of his mind.
Nothing, and he meant nothing, ever happened in Lavenham Estate.
Fred and George had visited two nights ago—how they knew his great-grandparents, of all people, Harry had no idea—and that had probably been the most interesting thing that had occurred all week.
His parents were in Hogsmeade for the weekend—meeting with a group of other Potioneers, his mother had said—and Harry had just finished eating formal breakfast with his great-grandparents.
He suppressed a groan at the thought of it.
The way meals went here was so dumb. Who actually needed an overly-formal breakfast greeting when talking to someone in their own family? Why couldn’t he say “Good morning,” and have it be a day? No. Instead it was a bow to his great-grandfather, Charlus Potter, and then a bow to his great-grandmother, Dorea Black-Potter, and then a formal greeting, and then waiting to be seated, and then morning tea, and then having his own first bite after his great-grandparents because they were higher than him in age and rank and title and whatever, and even then, breakfast was always soggy old oats or something completely unappetizing.
Grumbling to himself, he pulled a random book from the dusty old bookshelf to his left, resolving to forget all about wizarding rites and manners until lunch. It was so dark in this room—he’d need to get a house-elf to switch on the lights, first-years hadn’t begun learning light charms at school yet—and he rubbed at his eyes, trying to adjust them to see in the dimly lit room in lieu of actually pulling the curtains to let in some sunlight.
It didn’t matter what he did, he figured; there probably wasn’t even any sunlight outside. He was in bloody Lavenham; it was a cold and dreary place all year long. Harry was quite sure he had never seen the place sunny.
“Nipsy!” Harry called out, thinking of the old house-elf his great-grandparents had set aside just for him.
That was one of the few perks of being at Lavenham; he never needed to do his own chores if he didn’t want to.
“Can you switch the lights on for me?”
A snap of invisible fingers, and all the lights in his room immediately brightened.
Harry winced; not that bright. He rubbed at his eyes again.
He groaned out loud when he finished rubbing his eyes and actually took a look at the book he’d picked out. Of course the first book within reach was Rites and Rituals for Idiots: A Young Wizard’s First Guide to Proper Pureblood Procedures.
The thing was the source of nightmares, really. He thought he had gotten rid of the book months ago. His great-grandmother had given it to him for his 9th birthday as a “gift”; as if Harry cared about reading the same things he had to go to etiquette class for.
Even worse, the book had practical exercises, and would shriek at you like a howler if you didn’t respond correctly and politely enough. Really just horrible.
Harry ignored the book in his lap and started to daydream.
His thoughts turned to Riddle, as they always seemed to nowadays. The boy was so bloody annoying, and for whatever reason, Harry couldn’t stop thinking about him. Ugh, it would be so embarrassing if he ended the year with Riddle having one on him. But the Malfoy ball had already happened—they wouldn’t be back in school until early January; before then, there would be no opportunity to slip a dungbomb or the like into Riddle’s robes—
—Oh.
Oh.
Harry knew exactly to do with his old book.
He’d pack it right up and send it straight to Riddle.
Sending a childish, slightly condescending book on how to act in wizarding society to a muggleborn? This was a perfect prank. The Weasley twins would have been proud.
Riddle desperately needed to read Rites and Rituals, anyhow. After their little conversation at Malfoy’s Yule Ball, Harry and Ron had taken to trailing after Riddle and watching him; it was as if nobody had taught the Slytherin the difference between a slight bow to someone’s parents and a deep bow to an actual Lord. It was common sense, really; Harry was shocked Riddle had messed up so badly. They weren’t the same thing. Anyone could see that.
Yeah, reading all about his own failures would wipe the smug look straight off Riddle's face. With this kind of gift, Harry would give Riddle a taste of his own nasty poison.
And wasn’t that really, really satisfying to think about. Even if Harry wasn’t there to see it for himself.
“Nipsy! Can you do something for me again? I have to send someone a…gift,” he hedged out.
“Nipsy lives to serve Young Master,” the house-elf said as she appeared, shivering slightly.
Harry would have offered her a shirt, but he figured his great-grandmother would be rather mad if one of her house elves were set free.
“Great. Pack up this book and write Blessed Yule, Riddle on the top,” Harry instructed. “No, actually, Blessed Yule, Tom.”
Riddle’s secret benefactor would theoretically know Riddle well enough to call him Tom, right?
“And make sure it can’t be traced back to me. When you’re done, send one of the owls to Tom Riddle. He’s a Slytherin first-year. I think he’s still at Hogwarts right now.”
The house elf gave him a deep bow.
“It will be done,” she squeaked, disappearing.
Harry grinned to himself. Now this, this was perfect.
Sweet revenge would be his very, very soon.