He Doesn't Even Go Here

Jack, 

Something has come up. It’s not all bad, but I don’t know what it means for you and I. 

My dad has won a prize draw! We’re going to be going to Egypt for a month and visiting my brother Bill. We don’t go on trips often, so I am excited. But I also don’t want to just leave you to fizz out. I’m not sure what to do! I just saw you last week but a whole month is a long time. When we get back, we’ll be going to London.

That’s the most important part. Anyways, thank you for sending the candies. They were very good. Ron had some, and then acted like he was dying when I told him they were from you. He is such an idiot. Have you started your summer homework? The second year potions paper is so difficult and the topic is barely in the text. I don’t know why Snape makes his assignments so impossible. 

Mum made us all some new clothes for the trip. They’re cozy. They’ve mostly got sleeves, though, and I’m worried about the heat. Even Scabbers has got a little cap. 

Malfoy’s owl bit me. You should get your own. Preferably one that’s nicer.

PS. Should I cut my hair? I was thinking about a fringe hairstyle and cutting it to my shoulders.

Love, 

Ginny

Ginny,

Lucius is going to arrange a portkey for me. Let me know exactly where you’re staying and I’ll stop by two weeks into your trip. Just come visit again immediately after you return, before you go to London.

Congratulations on the prize money and trip. I saw it in the Prophet. Also, exactly how many brothers do you have?

If the topic for your paper is not in the provided text, I imagine Snape wants you to do some supplemental reading. That’s typical for higher level courses. I am surprised he’s got the babies doing it though.

Don’t worry about the sleeves. They’ll protect your skin from the sun. I have new clothes as well. The Malfoys purchased some for me.

When I can afford it, I’ll think about an owl. I don’t want to encourage anyone to write to me and I’m trying to save up for my own flat. I’ve had some money sent to my Gringotts account already, which is great.

Don’t cut your hair. Every girl your age gets that haircut and hates it because it starts looking too much like a bowl cut. Wait until you’re older - it’ll look like less of an accident then.

Regards,

Jack

Malfoy Manor was by far the loveliest place Jack had ever stayed. That was why Malfoy’s— Draco’s constant whining about missing Hogwarts utterly baffled him. Hogwarts castle was… nice, Jack supposed, if one doesn’t mind four to a bedroom, children everywhere, moving staircases, and the vaguely musky, damp smell of the Slytherin dungeons. But Malfoy Manor was absolutely lovely. The grounds were sprawling and gorgeous, and the inside of the manor was decorated with well styled furniture and trinkets that were far less gaudy than Draco’s bragging and pension for opulence had not led Jack to expect. The lights were always comfortably dim and the manor always smelled like fire and wood polish—so Jack was more than pleased that the Malfoy family had agreed to take him in over the summer. 

In his past life, the nicest place Jack had ever lived was probably his own flat, which was decently large with a modern finish and was in a nice building within walking distance of the company building that he worked in. Before that it was his university dormitories, and before that it was his parents house in Southampton that was perpetually covered in dog fur and had a leak in his bedroom. 

The Malfoy’s themselves were more than pleasant—not Draco, Draco could fling himself into the Floo and disappear in a sketchy wizarding neighborhood for a decade for all Jack cared, but the boy’s parents were particularly likable, especially considering the yapping Chihuahua of a son they’d raised.

Lucius treated Jack as if Jack were his boss that he was sucking up to in hopes of a promotion, which he was more than content with. Jack had done his fair share of embarrassing groveling that might as well have left his knees dick sucking levels of bruised back when he was still a businessman, and though Jack had never been especially high up on the ladder at his old company, he’d had a few people under him that liked to beg for treats like dogs from time to time. But the way Lucius behaved was far more satisfying, because there was a bit of anxiety there as if Lucius half-expected Jack to chop his head off at any given moment, which was more than delightful.

Narcissa didn’t ass-kiss to the same degree that Lucius did—in fact, Jack was quite certain she never had. Narcissa was quiet and far more private than Lucius was, and actually seemed somewhat bothered by the degree of agency Lucius awarded Jack within the manor. But she was serious and disdainful in a way that Jack found funny, and if Jack were to be honest, a bit of a cunt, which was the exact sort of person he liked. 

Jack’s summer had consisted of quite a bit of lounging and no small amount of bitching, so he was having quite a good time. The manor library consisted of many, many books that carried a heavy magical energy that he could only describe as fore-fucking-boding, and so of course he had delved into reading them cover to cover. He’d yet to find anything of significance that resembled his own magically questionable situation to any degree that made further research worthwhile, but he’d been coming to the conclusion as of late that the examples in books that most resembled his own case were held in books about blood and soul magic. When Jack had visited Ginny in Egypt, he’d told her to try and stop in a few bookshops and see if they had anything of note. Perhaps the sort of magic they were looking for could be found outside of European texts—but Ginny’s last letter had suggested she hadn’t really had time to stop in bookshops. She only had so much time in Egypt before she was to return anyways, so Jack had told her to focus on enjoying her trip. 

Jack’s periodic visits to Ginny had left his magic stable and limbs unnoteworthy and human looking, so he wasn’t feeling any particular sense of urgency about that. He’d initially been concerned that his body would grow used to effectively feeding off of Ginny so often at Hogwarts that it would struggle to keep up with occasional visits during summer, but that worry turned out to be unfounded. Whatever magic was at work was consistent and stable, at the very least. In fact, Jack would go as far as to say that he was faring better than he had been at Hogwarts. 

For now, Jack was seated at a stone bench on the grounds of the manor, idly tossing seeds to the flock of gorgeous white peacocks that had come to surround him and yell at him when they saw he had brought them treats. They shook out their feathers, screaming at him and pecking at his toes through his polished shoes, demanding that he litter the ground with more seeds to eat. 

“Dramatic.” he accused, tossing another handful. He watched them cluck and peck at the ground. For such beautiful creatures, they really weren’t very graceful or elegant. 

The sound of heels clicking against the path made Jack glance up. He watched Narcissa approach, gaze cold and trained on him before she glanced down to the gathered birds. Her lips pursed as if she had tasted something sour, and she looked slightly pained by all of their yelling. 

“It looks like rain. I’m surprised you’re not inside. Not concerned about getting your hair wet?” she said. 

“Minorly. But I like the cloudy weather. Chases away the sun and I can not stand when it's both muggy and hot out.” he said. Narcissa hummed, glancing up to watch the dark, heavy clouds roll by. 

“I see. I suppose I don’t like that sort of weather either,” she said. After a moment, “Have you spoken to Lucius today?” 

Jack shook his head as he reached out to scratch the head of a peacock that was nipping at his hand. “I saw him at breakfast but he left early for work.” 

“Hm. I had wondered if he had spoken to you yet of Sirius Black’s prison break. He couldn’t stop speaking of it to me last night.” she said. There was some sort of tension hiding within her words, and Jack had the sense that she was prodding him for something. Jack searched his mind for any instance of a Sirius Black ever being mentioned to him, but he was drawing up a blank. Narcissa was speaking as if Jack was meant to know who the fuck this person was, so Jack narrowed his eyes slightly and pretended that he did. Every day he was beginning to feel a bit more like he should have actually read the Harry Potter books when he was a child. 

“... He hasn’t mentioned it to me,” Jack said, and fumbling for anything to make it sound like he knew what he was talking about, added, “But it is all rather exciting, isn’t it?”

Narcissa stared at him for a moment with a strange look in her eyes before simply nodding. 

“Very,” she said, before glancing back towards the manor. “Tea? Before it rains.”

✦

Knockturn Alley was gross and smelled like shit. 

Jack walked through the narrow passages, leaning away from straining and tilted brick walls and artfully avoiding the gazes of the various beggars and otherwise shady figures lining alcoves and hovering by shop windows. He’d stopped at some point to look at the torn newspaper that was stuck to the wall with…. some substance, gaze tracing the waxy skinned, dark haired, wild eyed man twitching in the crumpled up moving photo. So that was Sirius Black. Jack’s eyes were naturally drawn to his own name written halfway down the article:

-

Despite public concern over the timing of Black's breakout following the news of Hogwarts Student Jack Riddle's supposed relation to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, when pressed for comment, a Ministry spokesperson stated, "We are not investigating any connection between Black and Riddle at this time."

However, some wixen remain skeptical, pointing to the timing of Black's escape coming less than a year after the wizarding public first became aware of Riddle, especially considering an altercation that occurred between Riddle and Harry Potter the previous school year.

"It's too much of a coincidence," insisted one witch who wished to remain anonymous. "The Ministry's got their head in the sand if they're not looking into it."

-

Jack raised a brow and decided to stop reading there. Tacky. He glanced again at the photograph of Black.

‘Almost fit,’ Jack thought, and then continued on his way.

Jack had asked one of the odd little foreskin looking “elves” that populated Malfoy Manor where he could look at books of dubious magical nature, and he’d been recommended “K—Knockturn Alley, sir!” and so he’d set off by Floo expecting a dark and elegant row of quaint little creepy wizard shops only to encounter perhaps the least elegant place he’d ever been. 

People kept grabbing his sleeves and attempting to touch him, and Jack was particularly worried that he was going to contract some sort of tactile wizard illness. Jack heard a fair amount of “Riddle” and “You-Know-Who” being tossed around, but they were being said with a sort of vibe that made Jack anxious that someone would bite him more so than the fearful or awesome tone of voice he’d gotten used to at Hogwarts, so he’d thought about a little personal space bubble and his magic compliantly shimmered around him, just barely visible with little waves in the air, and Jack tried very hard not to snicker when people bounced off the bubble when they stepped to close to him. 

Jack stopped in several stores, glancing over selections of books with vaguely evil sounding titles and authors who sounded as if they were characters out of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Jack was particularly interested in a shop that had an entire section of books that were quite literally chained and bound shut, at least until he’d been informed of the price, even though the concerningly excited shopkeep had offered him a 50% discount on account of the fact that Jack allegedly came from Voldemort’s ballsack. When the same shopkeep had lingered close enough that Jack could feel his breath on the back of his neck as he was looking at the shelves, Jack had promptly summoned his bubble again and left the store.

Jack’s regret surrounding the entire alley was somewhat alleviated when he entered a smaller, literally underground bookstore, one in which he had to venture down a set of rickety stairs to enter. The shelves were all leaning precariously to the side and shook dangerously whenever Jack took a step on the already dubious floorboards, but the books were decently affordable and the portly, one-eyed woman at the front was relatively normal after her initial yelp when she saw his face.

Aside from a spook from a gross fucking beetle waving its antennae at him from the corner of the counter, he made his purchases with relatively little fanfare. Jack bought himself three books that seemed as if they might be even a little worthwhile; The Lifeblood Lexicon, Dread Magicks and Dire Consequences, and Hex Ed: What They Didn't Teach You at Hogwarts. 

Jack took one last stop, though he went to a shop on the fringes of Knockturn and closer to Diagon Alley—he was hungry, and he wasn’t sure if a stop at a Knockturn vendor would wind up with him eating a Muggle Meat Pie: Now 50% Welsh! Or something. 

Jack purchased himself a sandwich, and after a moment of consideration purchased a small box of flavor changing chocolates to give to Ginny when he saw her next. He went and sat with his books and his sandwich on a dubious looking wooden bench that he was half concerned would collapse from wood rot the second he sat down, but it was the only seating that wasn’t basically directly in the foot traffic of Diagon or Knockturn, and Jack didn’t exactly want to be chowing down on a sandwich in public when people still cared enough about him that he was being mentioned briefly in the paper. 

It was just behind the shops on a little neglected pavilion that Jack was sure hadn’t been used in at least half a century. He ate most of his sandwich in peace until he saw a big black shape appear in his peripheral. Already annoyed, he turned to look at whatever it was, only for his lip to curl up in a sneer at the sight of the massive, black, mangy street dog that had approached. 

He stared at the dog. The dog stared back. Its ears pressed back against its skull and it bared its teeth at him, a low growl rumbling from its throat. Jack sniffed in distaste.

“Do you have to bother me ? Surely there’s an orphan sitting on the street somewhere you can steal food off of.” he said. In return the dog’s growling turned into loud, abrasive barking.

“Ugh,” Jack said, and had half a mind to throw it some of Ginny’s chocolate and let that take its course. But he had no desire to waste the gift he’d gotten her, so he tugged a piece of ham from his sandwich and tossed it onto the ground in front of the dog. The ugly thing stopped barking and stared at the ham like it wasn’t sure what ham was. 

“Good fucking lord. It’s food, eat it.” Jack said. The dog smelled wet and musky and it had totally made Jack lose his appetite, so he tossed the rest of the sandwich. The dog cautiously sniffed at the sandwich, but stopped to bark at Jack as he stood up. Jack grimaced at it. 

“Damn mutt.” he murmured, and promptly left the dog behind and made his way back towards civilization. The dog continued to bark at him for a while as he left, but he chanced a glance back when it ceased. The huge dog had its head bowed and was nastily gobbling up the sandwich and getting chunks of bread everywhere. Asshole. Jack was not ever going to do charity again.

✦

“Jack!” Ginny shouted, unable to contain her excitement when she saw his familiar head of brown hair over the throng of students and parents alike. He turned his head, the expression on his face alarmingly close to a grimace, though it shifted into something a little less miserable when he saw who it was. 

“Ginny,” Ron said, voice conspicuously high. Ginny couldn’t tell if he was about to start badly acting or if it was just one of the voice cracks that had begun to plague him recently. “We should board the train before it leaves without us. And quickly. Wouldn't want to miss Hogwarts! Who doesn’t love school?” 

Bad acting, then. Ginny gave him a vaguely horrified look, and was somewhat amused to find Harry doing the same, until she registered Ron, Hermione, and Harry all going a bit ashen as Jack approached. 

Ginny couldn’t help but go a little round eyed at the sight of Jack. The few times she’d visited Malfoy Manor, he was usually dressed to be cozy. When he’d come to briefly visit her in Egypt, he’d been dressed for the weather. When she saw him in London, he’d been in muggle clothes. Apparently, he’d decided to go and dress well for the train.

Though Ginny had slowly been getting over her little crush on him from the diary days, in part because his meanness was amplified by about a thousand in person, seeing him look so nice made her feel a little flustered. 

She remembered him mentioning that the Malfoy’s had purchased him new clothing, and the nice, perfectly tailored clothes nearly made him look like an entirely different boy. It seemed as if he’d maybe learned to mimic the Malfoy's body language as well—he held himself and walked a bit more like someone from a noble family. 

She’d never spoken about it with him, but he’d never really struck him as someone who came from the same sort of near unimaginable wealth that families like the Malfoy’s or the Nott’s did. Though he rarely ever mentioned his mother, Ginny had it in her mind that she likely wasn’t anyone of notable standing. That made sense to her, because it would explain why You-Know-Who’s son could have gone so under the radar—almost as if he were hidden away, a dirty secret. 

But he certainly seemed less casual now, a bit more like the dark and totally evil heir everyone seemed to think of him as. It made him a bit more imposing really, and Ginny thought she might feel wary of this persona if she hadn’t seen him several times over the summer and seen that he hadn’t been carrying himself like this. 

It seemed, to her, like an act. At least Jack was a better actor than Ron. Ginny chanced a glance at Ron, and felt her face pinken in embarrassment at the bug eyed look he was giving Jack. 

Jack reached out to pat Ginny’s head, and she cringed internally. Logically, she knew Jack was probably just touching her out of habit, since she seemed to be the only thing really keeping Jack, er, whole. Literally. And she really didn’t mind it! But the brief touch certainly must have seemed a bit sinister to her brother and his friends. Which wasn’t great, given that they all seemed to think that Jack was a big sinister dark wizard!

“Hello, brat.” Jack said. He pulled back his hand and wiped it off on his trousers. Ginny’s brow furrowed at the sight, and she wanted to complain about how rude that was, but then she was stumbling as she was suddenly tugged back by her arm. She turned her head and watched with wide eyes as Hermione glowered at Jack, holding tightly onto Ginny’s arm. She couldn't be sure, but it felt as if Hermione were shaking slightly.

“We were about to go find a compartment with Ginny. Four’s a bit of a crowd, so you’ll have to find your Slytherin friends to sit with somewhere else.” Hermione said. Ginny opened her mouth to protest, but—

“Maybe you can find a seat on top of the train, Riddle. Maybe then you’ll go flying off when it starts moving and nobody will ever have to see your… stupid… dumb…. git face again. Git.” Ron said. He was very red in the face.

“Clever,” Jack said, dry. He looked back at Ginny. “Anyways, I was going to—”

“We all know you’ve done something to her,” Harry said, voice low and oddly grave. Ginny was startled at how angry he sounded. He was glaring something fierce at Jack, but it was somewhat undermined by his too-big sweater and massive, round glasses. He looked a bit like a bug, really. A bug Ginny found very cute, but a bug nonetheless. “And whatever it is, we’ll find out and make sure everyone knows about it.” 

Ginny could not tell if the face Jack was making at Harry was a poor attempt to fake a smile or an undisguised sneer. But honestly, she didn’t care much. She felt embarrassed—and angry too.

She was used to being the youngest, the silly one, the girl. She was used to her brothers either treating her like the butt of the joke or like a piece of glass they had to protect. Going to Hogwarts excited her because it meant she could finally just exist outside of all of that; but here were Ron and his friends acting like Ginny was a stupid little kid that was too naive to know what people’s intentions were with her. When everyone else gave her a hard time in her first year, it was Jack that was there to talk to her. It was Jack that prioritized being a friend she could talk to over his own well being when he was cursed to be confined to a diary. Ginny knew Jack was mean—she knew he wasn’t even a particularly nice person, and she knew he was borderline a bully sometimes, but Jack also went out of his way to make sure Ginny wasn’t bothered by all of the Slytherins who saw her and her family as poor, imbicilic blood-traitors. Jack sent her gifts in the post and told her not to get haircuts she’d regret. He was her best friend. 

She knew they were just worried about her—if it were Ron constantly at the hip of You-Know-Who’s son, someone older, someone who hasn’t exactly been working hard to redeem themselves from the reputation they’d garnered, someone’s whose intentions, to someone out of the loop, look dubious at best and nefarious at the most-likely, she’d also be protective and nervous and hostile. She’d probably even feel similar if it were Hermione, or Harry. People who, despite her crush on Harry, she really didn’t know very well. 

But that wasn’t what was happening.

It was Ginny who was friends with Jack, and it was everybody else who seemed to think she couldn’t take care of herself. Everyone else who seemed to think that she was too naive and trusting to choose her own friends wisely. It was embarrassing, and she almost wanted to cry. 

“Can’t you three just mind your business for once?” Ginny said, and was slightly humiliated by the near-tearful strain to her voice. Ron, Hermione, and Harry all snapped their heads to look at her with various expressions of concern, and worst of all, pity. “I’m not a stupid little kid like you all clearly think I am. I can make the decision to be friends with who I want without you all deciding that you know better than I do.” 

Ginny sniffled, and with no small amount of embarrassment realized that she was about to cry. She grabbed her trunk and shouldered past her brother and his friends, aware that Jack was trailing after her. Thank Merlin—it would have been way more humiliating if she’d gone off on them only for him to shrug and head off in another direction.

“Well, look at you.” said Jack, smiling, as they stepped onto the train.

“Shut up.” Ginny muttered. 

“Ah. Withdrawn.”