Whorecrux
Tom had just finished his tutoring session with the Second Year Hufflepuffs.
Yes, that’s right, the great Tom Riddle, future Dark Lord and Wizard Hitler, now tutors Hufflepuffs. What had started as a rather innocuous weekly check of Haddy’s work to ensure the boy was doing well and that the doodles in the margins of his work only depicted cute animals and love hearts rather than the decapitated heads and festering corpses which Haddy was equally prone to create, turned into thirty minute lectures on what behaviour is appropriate in the classroom.
“No Haddy, you can’t swap the bat spleen for a hippogriff feather, that turns a shrinking solution into a deadly poison… No Haddy, that’s not a good thing!”
From there, Tom usually spent two hours a week helping the frightfully intelligent but easily distracted boy (frightfully is meant in the literal sense), stay focused long enough to understand the syllabus for his classes that week and to finish any outstanding homework. Five weeks into Haddy’s Second Year he began bringing along the rest of the EE’s and ever since then, Tom has spent his Tuesday nights surrounded by yellow and happiness. If Tom was a Christian, he’d believe Tuesday nights were his own personal hell, unfortunately, Haddy loved spending that time with both Tom and his year mates, the Slytherin couldn’t take that joy away from him.
So there he was, the first Tuesday of November, waving goodbye to the female EE’s after finishing a gruelling 2 hour tutoring session. Whilst Haddy continued to pack up his bag (a chicken shaped monstrosity that Tom has begged Haddy to burn), Tom used his pass from Slughorn to enter the restricted section. Despite not returning to Wools Orphanage for the summer, Tom had kept updated on the goings on in the Muggle world and he was scared. Tom doesn’t use that word often, if ever, but the mortality rate of simply living in London had gotten too high for him to risk not taking precautions. He wasn’t ready to die, not as a no name wizard who had not achieved anything of importance, not before he could ensure Haddy was likewise safe from the emerging muggle threat. No, Tom needed a failsafe. Which is why he is currently scouring the shelves of the restricted section for any mention of immortality. Pulling out a couple tomes including ‘Magick Moste Evile’ and ‘Secrets of the Darkest Arts’, Tom gives them both a cursory look, dismantling any hexes placed on the books before taking them back to the table where Haddy is still sat, sucking on a blood pop.
“Watcha got there Tommy?” Haddy questions whilst holding out his blood pop towards Beyoncé. Waving the sweet treat in front of the disinterested snail before shrugging and shoving it back in his mouth.
“Extra credit”, Tom replies, trying his best to ignore the trail of slime that had appeared on his Transfiguration homework since he went to collect the books.
“Ooh, I love extra credit”, Haddy sits up straight wiggling in excitement, seeming to forget that Tom is neither a teacher and thus unable to give extra credit and that the tutoring sessions are not a class so aren’t even graded anyway. Nevertheless, Tom hands Haddy ‘Secrets of the Darkest Arts’ and instructs him to read it through, bookmarking any mention of immortality or invincibility.
They sit in companionable quiet for around half an hour, the silence only broken by the scratching of quills on parchment and brief conversation.
“Haddy, why is your snail munching on one of the darkest tomes known to wizard kind?”
Haddy looks up from the book, which is almost half the size of him and perched on his daintily crossed legs, the only issue with this image of studious bliss is the steadily growing number of bite marks on the top left corner of the book, the perpetrator responsible for the desecration of the priceless artefact being a chewing snail leaving slime trails over the front cover.
Haddy’s eyes go from looking at Tom, towards the snail and back again, the Hufflepuff smiles and strokes Beyoncé’s shell.
“She says the ink makes her feel alive, like the gastropod version of a caffeine rush.” With that completely baffling statement, that implied a) the snail talks and b) snails can get high, the two students return to their research, Tom wondering all the while about when he had gotten so accustomed to listening to absolute nonsense that he barely reacts anymore.
Tom was just about to call an end to their researching for the day, they had already spent two hours looking through the books and even the snail was drooping its body in tiredness, when Haddy’s eyes got wide in excitement.
“A whorecrux? Awesome!”
Haddy looked towards Tom with a pleading expression, “Can I have one for my birthday Tommy?”
Without even raising his eyes from the passage in Magick Moste Evile that was describing an invincibility potion containing the shroud of Dementor, “If that book has the word whore in it, you’re too young to be reading it.”
Haddy sighs and pouts at the older boy, “not a whore Tommy, a horcrux!”
With a small huff, Tom motions for Haddy to pass him the tome, the Hufflepuff passes him the book, Tom balances the heavy tome on his legs, picking up the snail still perched on its edge, passing it towards Haddy who clutches it protectively in his hands. The Younger boy looks at the Slytherin with a confused expression.
“Tommy, what’s a whore?”
Tom’s head snaps up from where he had been reading the section on horcruxes giving the small boy a scrutinising look.
“Ask me again when you’re thirty.”
Haddy gives Tom a petulant expression before going back to stroking the snails shell, hissing at the oblivious snail about how much he loves her and how she’s the sweetest, bestest snail in the universe. Tom carries on reading the tome, going over the section of horcruxes with a fine-tooth comb, finally, after re-reading the section another three times, Tom places the book back in front of Haddy and goes back to reading his own book.
“No Haddy, you can’t have a horcrux.”
Haddy gives Tom a shocked and upset expression, Tom almost never says no to him, ‘I’ll think about it’ or ‘maybe when your older’ are common phrases to hear from him, but never a straight up no.
“but whyyyy?” Haddy pouts up at Tom who obviously wasn’t feeling any guilt over shooting down Haddy, writing down notes on which topics would require further research.
“Check the fine print Haddy, those things rot your soul.”
Tom finally looks up towards Haddy, giving him a soft look that Toms face would never create if it wasn’t for Haddy.
“Your souls too perfect to destroy Haddy.”
Haddy huffs but still nods, faintly blushing at the look the older boy was giving him. Tom packs away his things, takes the books back to the restricted section and pulls Haddy up by the hand when he gets back to the table.
Never letting go of the small boy’s hand as they walk out of the library and towards the Great Hall for dinner, Tom gives in to the urge to kiss the top of his head hoping to put an end to the pout of Haddy’s face.
“Don’t worry”, Tom whispers into the fluffy ebony hair almost hoping Haddy doesn’t hear him, “we’ll find our way to immortality soon, whole, sane and together.”