Not a Weed
Martha loved the children, and Ms. Cole tolerated them. Children were messy, reckless, sweet, caring, unconscientious creatures - which made them lovable or barely tolerable, depending which Wool’s orphanage matron you spoke to. But between Ms. Cole, who ran the orphanage, and Martha, who cooked and cleaned, there were two outstanding orphans they could never forget.
Tom Riddle was a handsome, mature child. Ms. Cole loved this one, but Martha was a little afraid of him. There was always something… Off about the way he smiled. Like a snake. The other children didn’t like Tom either and would go out of their way to avoid him. The only one who treated him normally was Harry Potter.
Harry was really something else. He was only a year old when a large, burly man arrived on a motorcycle and left him in Ms. Cole’s care with strict instructions not to give him up for adoption in return for a monthly stipend. In hindsight, Ms. Cole should have thought this an odd arrangement, but in 1931 the world was on the edge of a war and the opening of a depression and the monthly stipend was enough to buy a meal for every single child in Wool’s. Besides, Harry was a sweet kid. He grew up to be fiercely independent and cheeky enough to give Ms. Cole headaches every other day. If Ms. Cole appreciated Tom’s maturity and intellect, she adored Harry (although she would never admit it).
When Tom was 6 and Harry was 5 they had their first big altercation.
Up until that point, Tom and Harry ignored each other. Tom was much better at… Controlling the older kids, and so hung around them more often. Harry seemed to make friends with anybody and everybody out of sheer willpower. It all came to head when Harry received a gift from a girl on his birthday.
Amanza Wilkins was 6 years old, but she thought Harry’s messy black hair and huge green eyes looked a bit princely. She promptly proposed to the younger boy with a Dandelion she found growing between the cracks of the walkway in front of Wool’s Orphanage. Harry was only too happy to accept. He didn’t really know what marriage meant, but it sounded like a lot of fun.
Tom saw Amanza giving Harry the weed from the corner where he was reading. His eyes narrowed. Something dark and bitter flared deep in his gut. Tom had never had a family, and right in front of his eyes this Harry Potter was starting one with no effort at all. Then Amanza leaned forward and gave the green-eyed child a peck on the cheeks. The two of them blushed. Tom saw red.
All of a sudden, the flower in Harry’s hands burst into flames. Harry had to drop it and back away as the surrounding kids screamed in alarm.
Martha rushed forwards to check on the boy’s burns while Ms. Cole herded the kids indoors and away from the withered, ashy dandelion, casting fearful glances upwards the entire way. Tom smiled vindictively at the sight of Amanza crying and snotting all over her grey dress, which started several other children in tears.
But not Harry.
The five-year-old boy was gazing straight at Tom, seeing him as if for the first time. Tom found his smile dropping as he realized that Harry didn’t look scared or cowed. He looked ferocious.
That evening an early bedtime was called at 7:30 and lights were out. There were shared rooms for most of the children, but somehow Tom had managed his own private room with one of the nicest beds. No one liked to think about how he had ended up there, and everyone left him alone. As usual, Tom stayed up reading under the light of the moon from the thin slatted window above his head. It was a peaceful time for him.
He became aware of another presence about half an hour into his reading time, and looked up to see a scrawny kid glaring at him, arms crossed.
“Harry,” Tom greeted with a nasty smile.
Harry glared. “Tom,” He said meanly.
Tom inclined his head to the foot of his bed - an invitation to sit. Harry didn’t. Tom resisted the urge to sigh. If this child thought he could pick a fight with Tom when even the 16-year-olds dared not, Tom would show him how very wrong he was. But to the older boy’s surprise, Harry didn’t move from his position.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Harry said.
“Do what?”
“You know what!” Harry stomped his foot. Hearing the creaking floorboards, Harry winced guiltily and quieted his voice. “You know… Burn Amanza’s gift. If you wanted one, you could’ve just asked.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “I didn’t want the weed. I just wanted…” Tom frowned. What had he wanted? “To make Amanza cry.”
Harry sighed. “Well it wasn’t nice, and you shouldn’t make the other kids cry.” For some reason, this made Tom unreasonably angry.
“I can do whatever I want,” Tom hissed. “There are people who would like to make me cry, and I hurt them first. There are things that people have that I do not, so I take them.” Tom sneered, cracking his indifferent visage. “They should belong to someone better.”
And then Harry launched himself at Tom.
The resulting struggle was the first and the last physical fist fight Tom had ever been in. It ended in a black eye for Tom, a bloody nose for Harry, and several bruises for the both of them. Martha was called in by one of the older boys and was quick to separate them, hauling Harry into her arms and curling protectively around the child. Ms. Cole strode in soon after, face taught with irritation. She ordered them to their rooms and locked the doors to spend the next day alone without breakfast or lunch. Harry was glaring at Tom as he was pulled away, and he dropped something on the floor.
Tom stayed huddled in his bed, roiling mad. That insignificant, disgusting, undeserving pratt. He would make Harry pay. He would hurt him, really hurt him, as soon as he was let out of his room. And what was that, there, near the door to his room? Some sort of threat, Tom was sure. After several minutes glaring at the floor and nursing his black eye, Tom let his curiosity get the better of him and hopped off his bed. He crept closer to inspect it.
It was a freshly picked Dandelion.
Tom and Harry always fought after that, but in an odd way, it was a good thing. Tom had always been a reserved child. Charming and handsome, the young Riddle could get away from any doubts cast by adults, but kids avoided him like the plague. It was evident that Tom knew he was something other - something better than the children his age. But Harry broke down Tom’s walls with one confusing action after another. Any one moment, the younger boy could be laughing at something Tom said, eyes twinkling and teasing. And the next, Harry was yelling at Tom for some ridiculous reason like “You can’t just take Bethany’s teddy bear, Tom,” or “Stop threatening Brodie into doing your chores, Tom.” But no matter what, Tom couldn’t really hurt or scare Harry away. Not that he hadn’t tried.
When Tom was 8, he figured out that he could see others’ darkest fears in the corners of the mind. It didn’t take much to pull it out of them as they slept, chasing them through the night. He toyed with Brodie at first, a large 12-year-old boy who had tried to mess with Tom on his first night in the orphanage and regretted it ever since. Brodie had nightmares for three horrid nights until he became a blathering, drooling mess and left Tom well alone. Tom tried it on Harry next, eager to take down his fearless opponent.
To his surprise, the next morning, Harry was completely fine. More than fine, actually. He was bright and cheerful and almost addictive in his innocence. As usual, the pests flocked to Harry, asking him questions and giving him gifts and making him laugh in a way that made Tom clench his fists. Tom wondered if he did something wrong.
He tried again the following night, but in the morning Harry seemed as unaffected as could be. On the third night, Tom didn’t leave the room after pulling the nightmare into Harry’s dreams. Instead, he stayed by the boy’s bedside, watching him sleep.
At first, nothing happened. Then, Harry began crying quietly, tears streaming down his face, mouth agape. Tom watched the silent struggle for several minutes as it grew worse and worse until Harry stopped breathing altogether. Then, for another long minute, Tom waited for Harry to wake up.
And waited.
Unable to take it anymore, Tom reached out tentatively to check the pulse on Harry’s wrist. The moment he touched Harry’s skin, Harry woke up from his breathless slumber with a gasp and grabbed Tom’s hand. The two boys looked at each other. In wordless truce, Tom simply crawled into the bed and curled around Harry. Martha found the two of them like that when she came to call them to breakfast.
As it turned out, Tom’s nightmares never hurt Harry because Harry had already had those nightmares every single night since he had arrived in Wool’s orphanage. They didn’t seem to happen as much when Tom was there, though, so Tom stopped sleeping in his room and slept in Harry’s instead - whether they had fought the day before or not.