“You’re everything to me, you know that, right?”
One quiet statement. One that could be passed off as a shift in the air, as a whisper of the relentless waves that relentlessly shook the stained glass windows decorating the common room, day in and day out.
A statement that was so, entirely, indubitably not something that would come out of Tom’s perfect mouth.
Harry intended to send Tom a glance, but found his eyes stuck on Tom’s profile. The glow of the hearth cast shadows of Tom’s eyelashes onto his cheeks. This was the face that so many people associated with terror (regardless of whether they knew of Tom’s future or not), and Harry once did too.
Now, the only association he had with Tom’s eyes and cheekbones and mouth was an endless stretch of warm and hazy memories of breathtaking smiles hidden teasingly behind books, so unlike what Tom was expected to act like by his peers and yet exactly how Tom was supposed to act.
How many times had he longed to caress Tom’s face reverently, kiss those maddening beauty marks, and clasp those pale ivory hands in his?
The number must exceed the millions by now, and Harry found a smug contentment in this, for he knew Tom would let him do it all if he so much as reached out.
Tom must have noticed Harry’s staring. He continued to speak, and Harry could hardly focus.
“You were important to me from the moment I laid eyes on you. Last year, in late October, you immediately captured my attention in a way I’d never expected to experience. And as much as I tried, I couldn’t make my dedication to unraveling the mystery of you subtle.”
Harry’s lips tugged into a smile without his assent. Oh, how he remembered.
The first time he had noticed how Tom’s unwavering attention lingered on him, he had nearly jumped out of his skin in the middle of potions class from shock. That very same potions class was when he first noticed how prettily Tom’s hair curled against his forehead and how wickedly stunning his albeit rare smiles were.
From there, their closeness only grew, both of them finding companionship in each other that they could never find anywhere else.
“My fascination with you abruptly switched from wanting to unveil your secrets to wanting to be with you in everything, after that potions class. And I believe that change happened too abruptly for me to want to do something about it,” He continued, now lifting his glance from the fire to Harry’s face. In his eyes, Harry saw a promise. A fragile promise, cultivated through weekends spent hiding in the far corner of the library, whispering and laughing without getting any real work done. A promise that was deeper than anything either of them had ever known before.
He didn’t need to speak of this promise out loud to acknowledge it with Tom. They both knew. They knew this promise was one they’d carry with them their whole lives.
Harry had never seen this side of Tom before. This soft-spoken, devastatingly gentle side of him. Regardless of his wonder at seeing Tom this way, he instinctively knew things were different for Tom when it came to Harry. He sensed the truth in Tom’s words, and he listened to him intently; though he would have known these irreversible truths as intimately as he knew the freckles on his own face even had Tom not said anything at all.
Tom wasn’t confessing this out loud because he thought Harry didn’t know it already.
They both knew.
It was a quiet, loving reassurance. A reassurance as steady as the stars in the heavens and as true as the embracing darkness of the nighttime sky.
Tom was still putting out a steady stream of words into the gentle atmosphere as Harry thought, and when Harry realized this he devoted more effort to listening to what he was saying.
“You mean more to me than anything. I don’t think anything will ever change that. I care about you more than how I would care for a prized possession,” He paused, seemingly searching for the correct words. Harry listened with a quickened heartbeat and a fluttering deep in his stomach.
“I want to make you happy. If you must be sad or angry I want to be the one who makes you feel so. I don’t want to share you with anyone,”
“You’re everything to me, so I want to be your everything in return.”
He spoke the final words with an intentionally blank countenance, and Harry would have been fooled by it if Harry didn’t know Tom.
It was perhaps the most Tom thing he’s said and done in the past few minutes, and even then it was so different than anything Harry would expect Tom to say. The Voldemort he used to know would rather compromise his dedication to immortality and die than admit such personal things.
But this wasn’t Voldemort. This was Tom. Voldemort had been left behind since the first golden grains of sand turned inside the Time Turner all those months ago.
This was Tom. Tom, who was beautiful and caring to him and sarcastic and so intelligent and so graceful it hurt.
Tom, whom he had learned to love.
Tom, who had learned to love him.
This Tom, the Tom whom Harry had fallen so terribly deeply for, was changed by Harry’s arrival in the past. Tom wouldn’t be confessing anything to him right now, wouldn’t have let their connection flourish this profoundly, had that simple fact not been true.
Harry could see the way Tom’s fingers tangled into the material of his perfectly pressed pants, could see the cracks in his mask and the thunder in his eyes, put there by the storm of emotions he was surely feeling.
And all of a sudden, he felt such fervent adoration for Tom, stronger than the blazing heat of a thousand suns.
It nearly took his breath away, this wave of affection. Tom was pouring his heart out to Harry, even with their preexisting mutual understanding of what they meant to each other, just so Harry could receive the happiness from hearing it.
And that burned, and caused Harry’s entire soul to heat with the force of his exaltation of Tom and Tom only.
Harry wanted to pull Tom close to his heart and keep him there, keep him safe and wrapped in his arms for eternity.
The moment Harry looked back at Tom, the rush of warmth that flooded him was almost too much to bear. He tried not to focus on the deep-seated awe in Tom’s perpetually alluring eyes as Harry talked for the first time since their conversation started.
“You don’t have to stay wanting. You are my everything, Tom,”
The embarrassment of speaking such vulnerable words was overpowered instantly seeing Tom’s almost stunned expression. There was so much in his eyes now, even more than there had been before, but above all, there was affection and longing.
Harry couldn’t stand seeing Tom’s lips unbruised, couldn’t stand seeing the unfinished promise on his lips.
Harry wanted to fulfill that longing, that promise, and leave Tom irreplaceable happiness in its wake.
He grabbed Tom’s face with both hands and kissed him.
From there, it was all a blur.
The feeling of Tom’s mouth on his own was unparalleled to anything else in the world. It felt like his soul’s purpose clicked into place the moment their lips touched.
The second he pulled away he wanted to be back on Tom’s lips again where he was meant to be. The endearing look on Tom’s face was too much for him to contain right now. He felt drunk on adoration. Tom was his only pillar of balance and the only thing that he was aware of and knew existed in this lovesick haze.
Tom, winding his fingers in the back of Harry’s hair, kissed him back.
——
There was something almost sacred about Tom. Something that drew Harry in as angels are drawn to their deity. Tom catapulted Harry into himself, Harry’s very own deity, without having to lift a finger.
Tom knew deeply that he felt the same way about Harry. Harry was his everything. Tom would reduce the entire world into nothing but a background hum for his God, his deity.
Tom was Harry’s. And Harry was Tom’s.
And it would stay that way forever.