Empathy

Death.

The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

It takes the average human decades to come close enough to merely brush against death. 

For a close call to leave their life flashing before their eyes.

For an illness or an accident or even old age to rip them from the mortal realm into the beyond, into death's clutches.

Tom Riddle had experienced more than the average number of close calls.

Born sickly to a dying mother, a baby that barely had the strength to cry, who never seemed to warm up. Not even when his cradle was placed by the fire.

A bad flu age four, a fever that no one was sure he would ever wake up from. Transferred from a little Orphanage bedroom to a children's hospital, with no one to visit. No one to miss him if he was gone.

A beating from older students age six, burst blood vessels in his eyes and a concussion that left him seeing stars every time he stood up for weeks. A limp that took a year to get rid of, a broken rib.

An attack on the little Slytherin Mudblood from older students. Maybe Slytherin, maybe Gryffindor. The now familiar slur carved into an arm, an arm that would never again remain uncovered, with a cursed blade. Countless potions to rid the poison from a frail, too frail for a boy his height ("Is anyone making sure this boy eats, Horace? You're his Head of House, after all"), body.

A bomb going off ever so close to the shelter he had barely made it into during the Blitz. A few inches of concrete and corrugated metal between a young boy and a certain death.

A potion gone wrong (or, at least that's what he tried to tell the school Matron afterwards), covered in vomited blood in an empty classroom. Losing consciousness, wondering if he'd wake up. If someone would find him. Would he have gone cold by the time someone noticed him gone? Would his limbs have gone stiff by the time they found him? Waking up in the hospital wing, days later, caught between relief and dismay.

At age sixteen, Tom Riddle had few fears. His rather unfortunate life, as short as it has been, had accustomed him to a great deal of things. 

But one thing, one thing he could not move past. Could not bury like a metaphorical skeleton in the back of the closet, hidden beneath a haphazard facade of strength. A mockery of a Pureblood mask, unbreakable.

Death.

The fear of death.

The fear of the unknown that lay beyond it.

Yet, equally as strong as the fear, was the fascination.

He should have died countless times, but he didn't.

What was the limit a mere mortal body could take before it gave up? How far could he push himself? Was death an enemy to defeat, or something to embrace like an old friend?

He needed to know, he had to know, he would know-

—————

"I do not know for sure what he was trying to brew," Slughorn said lowly, shaking his head, "My guess is either the Draught of Living Death or Dreamless Sleep, based on the Wormwood. But the quantity of Wormwood... Tom is an excellent brewer, one of the best in the school. That amount of Wormwood cannot have been an accident... nor could the Belladonna..."

"So you guess it was an attempt at Suicide?" Dippet asked, frowning at the thin, much too thin, boy lying in the hospital wing bed before him.

"The boy who found him, the new Slytherin fifth year, Harrison Peverell, shares a dormitory with Tom. Peverell told me when I arrived that he has issues sleeping himself, but that he's noticed Tom is worse. Tom sleeps a few hours a night at best, and relies on Pepper-up Potions and Wideye Potions to get through the day more often than not. I know it can be easy to mix up ingredients if you're exhausted, but the Belladonna... I'm very much inclined to believe this was intentional."

"Of course it was intentional," Matron Blainey snapped, "He's lucky to be alive. If that boy had found him five minutes later, he'd be dead. I'm keeping him in for monitoring for at least a few days when he wakes up, and calling in a Mind Healer. Horace, you need to brew some potions for the boy."

"Of course, Noreen. Which ones?" Slughorn asked.

"Draught of Peace, a lot of it by the looks of it, nutrition potions, strength potions. Perhaps more, I won't know if there's been many adverse effects until he's awake. This boy has been falling apart at the seams for quite some time, and none of you have noticed. Is it because he's a Muggleborn, or is it because he's the top of his year, hmm?"

"What do you mean, Noreen?" Dumbledore asked, his face unreadable.

The Matron flicked her wand, pushing the boy's sleeves up to his elbows. His pale, thin arms were covered in a criss-cross of silvery scars and scabbed over cuts, the stand-out piece in the whole mess being the word 'MUDBLOOD' carved into his arm, fresh as anything.

"I mean this! Everything but the slur is self-inflicted. That bloody word carved into his arm was done with a cursed blade when the boy was a first year, and he's clearly never applied any of the salves I gave him to try to heal it after I removed the curse itself. None of you noticed?"

Slughorn pulled at his collar, as if the room had suddenly got significantly hotter, "Tom had some issues with his housemates in his first year, but I never knew it had been that bad. He's one of the most popular in the house now, actually, for reasons I am unsure of. He's never shown any outward sign of... this."

"Slytherin house values Tom now because they must know that he's a Parselmouth," Dumbledore said, disgust evident in his voice, "The boy is a descendent of Salazar Slytherin, regardless of what his name is."

"Is he really?" Slughorn said, looking very much as if all his dreams had been answered.

The Matron inhaled sharply, "Right. All of you, get out. Especially you, Albus. Not an ounce of sympathy. Out!"

—————

Tom had been out of the Hospital Wing for all of an hour, and he was already sick of it. A bad case of Wizard's Flu, that's what he told his housemates, when they asked. And they did ask. 

How curious. Do they care? Would they be horrified if they knew the truth? Or do they only ask to sate their curiosity?

How many of them will attend his funeral? Did he mean enough to them? Was a Halfblood pure enough to mourn if he was descended from Salazar Slytherin?

The pitying glances from the Professor's table were making his stomach churn. 

They know. They all know that little Tom Riddle, Slytherin's star student, is sick in the head.

Mrs Cole always wanted to send Tom away to an asylum, when the exorcisms didn’t work.

(“There’s something wrong with that boy, nasty thing that he is. Better off without him here, I’d say.”)

She was right. She was right. She was right. She was-

The worst look of all comes from the new boy. Harrison Peverell, they share a dorm. He looks at Tom with sheer worry, not pity. Concern. As if he actually cares. Tom could scoff, as if.

Unless-

Matron Blainey told him he was found by a student, was it Peverell? It would explain the glances…

Most people would be horrified if they found the boy who sleeps in the bed beside them each night lying on a cold dungeon floor, limp and unconscious, covered in blood and vomit and splashes of an unknown potion...

How curious. Maybe Tom ought to pay more attention to Peverell.

Tom never understood the whole spectrum of human emotions. He feels most of them, he thinks, but maybe not like everyone else.

He cries when he gets overly upset, he laughs when something is funny, smiles when he's happy (less and less), he's well accustomed to the stomach-churning feeling of anxiety (more and more). He thinks he loved the orphaned kitten that he tried to care for when he was eight, the one that the older boys in Wool's broke the neck of when they found Tom holding it. He knows he's never loved a person, no one has ever gotten close enough to him for that, but he's sure he's capable of it.

Everyone else is ruled by emotion. Tom suppresses them. They get in the way.

If emotions ruled him, he’d never get out of bed. The sickly, anxious pit in his stomach was too great to be allowed to fester. Occlumency was key, the walls could come down at night, when his bed was warded and silenced.

The positive emotions are duller these days, Tom feels like he's watching himself go through the motions of his day from an outside perspective. Sometimes, he doesn't feel like any of this is real. That he is real. He's being watched like a hawk by all his professors, like they're seeing him in a new light.

They are.

They’re seeing him as the sick little freak he knows he is.

Even Dumbledore's gaze has turned from something of pure hatred into a disconcerting re-evaluating look, like maybe Tom is more than the evil boy who speaks to snakes and steals things from the other Orphans.

Tom doesn’t like it.

—————

"Your issue with Tom Riddle, Albus," Dippet asked over a glass of whiskey, when they had retreated to his office after leaving the hospital wing, "What is it? When did it start?"

"I was the one who delivered his Hogwarts letter. Something felt... off about him. The Orphanage staff warned me about him, told me he was a sickly child who's mother only lived long enough to name him before she died, that he became a mentally sick child. I know that they performed exorcisms on him. He assumed I was there to take him away to a mental asylum- it must have been a common threat. He didn't seem to have accidental magic, not the way he described it. At eleven years old, he was using wandless magic, to hurt others. He had a box of stolen trinkets from the other orphans. And then he told me he could speak to snakes."

"You deemed an eleven year old boy evil, Albus? Did you consider that, maybe, he was like most other Muggleborn wizards- a bullied outcast, because he didn’t fit in? The use of magic to hurt others, did you think that maybe they hurt him first?”

"He reminds me of Gellert," Dumbledore mumbled, sighing, "Of how he was in our youth. The warnings were there, and I ignored them then. I didn't want to ignore them again."

Dippet took a sip of his whiskey, staring at the crackling fire, "The Parseltongue... did you tell him what it meant for him, at least? Of his heritage?"

"No. I did not. I feared how it would turn out. I saw Merope Gaunt in him, you know- he most definitely looks more like his father, a muggle I assume, but I see her reflection in the structure of his bones and the colour of his eyes. Do you remember her? A little girl pulled out of Hogwarts aged thirteen to be a slave to her father and brother... I still believe we failed her." 

"And just as we failed her, we failed her son. She died, giving him life, and now he is trying to end it by his own hand. None of us kept track of Miss Gaunt, nor sought to bring her back to Hogwarts- and none of us noticed how her son is wasting away. One of the brightest students of his age, Albus, and you labelled him a monster the moment you laid eyes on him. You tried to turn all the staff away from him. Perhaps, what he needed, and needs now, is kindness. Did you consider that?"

Dumbledore had nothing to say to that. He exhaled, slowly, gazing into the fire.

—————

The Mind Healer was driving Tom up the walls. He didn't understand him, Tom was sure of it. He thought he was crazy. He wasn't. He just wanted to know if he could die. He wanted to know what it would take to die. He wasn't crazy, he really wasn't. 

Maybe he was. He could be, really. No one else wanted to know how easily they could die.

Maybe Tom was special.

Maybe Tom was crazy.

Maybe Tom just needed the Mind Healer to leave him the fuck alone.

Tom was crazy.

Crazy people needed Mind Healers.

Tom didn’t need a Mind Healer.

Tom wasn’t crazy.

Draught of Peace was an addictive substance, as was Dreamless Sleep. Slughorn had drilled it into his potions class countless times. So why, oh why, was Tom ordered to take them? Draught of Peace every morning, Dreamless sleep every night. Matron Blainey would know if he didn't take them, she'd marched right up to him in the corridor and dragged him straight back to the Hospital Wing after somehow noticing he'd simply poured the potion out.

Was there monitoring charms on him? Surely he'd notice, he was more sensitive to magic than most Wizards. Why can't he feel the monitoring charms? His skin felt itchy, like it was too tight for his body, but maybe that was the nutrition potions beginning to work. He needed to scratch at his skin, he needed rid of his skin, he needed the monitoring charms gone. Could he scratch them off? Would they pick up on that? He needed to scratch them off, he needed to scratch them off, he needed to-

—————

"Hello, Mr Riddle. Thank you for meeting me here. My name is Healer Crouch."

"Hello, Sir. May I ask why you're here?"

"Surely you know, Mr Riddle. I've been informed that you tried to end your life."

"That is untrue. It was a mere potions accident, you see. I was rather sleep deprived, trying to brew Dreamless sleep. I added too much Wormwood, by mistake."

"Yes, I'm aware you added beyond enough Wormwood to overdose. I'm also aware that you added Belladonna, Mr Riddle. I've even been informed that you're the best Potions student in fifth year, and that this was certainly no accident."

"...That still doesn't tell me why you're here."

"I'm simply here for us to talk. I would like you to discuss with me why you did what you did."

"I wasn't trying to die. I wanted to see if I would."

"That is certainly a contradiction of sorts, yes? Can you explain?"

"I want to know how much it takes to die. I like experimenting, this is an experiment."

"I believe there are many books that could describe what it takes to die.”

"It's not the same as seeing it myself, Sir... I believe I need to leave, I have Herbology soon."

"One more question for today, Mr Riddle. The lacerations on your arms, they are self-inflicted. May I ask why?"

"Nothing harmful. I perform a lot of rituals, blood is needed for a ritual."

"Why didn't you heal them?"

"Some books say it's best to heal a ritual cut naturally. My apologies, but I really must be off."

"Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Mr Riddle. You will meet me here at the same time next week."

"Oh, I'm sure that won't be necessary, but if you insist, Sir."

—————

Harrison Peverell had taken to sitting beside Tom in classes for the past week. They didn't talk, much, but Peverell didn't talk much to anyone. Apart from Alphard Black, Eileen Prince and the Rosier twins, Druella and Francis. Tom was surprised that Peverell spent a moment near him, but it all but confirmed his theory that it had been Peverell who found him.

—————

"Riddle?” Peverell asked in Ancient Runes, a week into pairing up with Tom, "Would you mind helping me with this after class? I still haven't a fuckin' clue what a Logogram is..."

The harsh language was refreshing, as was Peverell's voice. Tom hadn't really heard him speak before, not enough for his accent to stand out to him. Tom had a cockney accent when he started Hogwarts, and had quickly learnt to replicate the speech of his housemates. Peverell's accent was something definitely Northern, mixed with possible hints of a Southeast Asian language, at least going off of his complexion.

"Sure," he said, "Would the library after dinner work?"

"Of course, see you at half seven?"

—————

Tom started spending a lot more time with quiet, calculating, intelligent Harrison Peverell.

Harrison, not just Peverell now, was almost as fucked up as Tom was.

He told Tom about his parents being killed by Grindelwald on the continent, how he watched it happen before his emergency Portkey whisked him off to London, how he lived on the streets of London for months before he was able to stumble across Diagon Alley and send a letter to Dippet about enrolling in Hogwarts.

He talked about how he wished he had died with them, how much he wanted to join them, and Tom told him about his fascinations. Harrison didn’t judge him, Harrison understood.

Tom felt something new, he thinks it’s positive. Empathy, possibly?

Tom didn’t feel as fascinated by death any more with Harrison around. Harrison left him with less time to research poisons, and lethal self-inflicted spells, and the concept of immortality. Surprisingly, Tom wasn’t bothered by it. 

Tom liked Harrison, and he thinks Harrison likes him too. Was this attraction? He’d read about that, before.

He got his answer weeks later, as they sat perched on the ledge of the Astronomy Tower after curfew one night- close enough to the edge to satisfy both of their urges. It was cold, and they sat with their shoulders pressed together. Harrison turned, leaned up, and placed a soft hand on Tom’s cheek.

Instinctively, Tom leaned down towards Harrison as the boy leaned up, and their lips brushed in the middle. Softly, just for a moment, but it was enough for now.

Tom wasn’t sure if death was as fascinating as Harrison’s eyes. Killing curse green.

His experiments could wait, so long as he had Harrison.

They were both surely sick in the head, crazy, but they were together. Sick together.

And, for now, that was enough.