The first time Harry sees Tom, he’s only nine years old, skin and bones, pruning the bushes in the backyard. The man appears in a rustle of wind, tall and eerily beautiful, dressed in the finest suit Harry has ever seen. The man's eyes are a deep ruby, his nose carved from marble. He looks like a beautiful mismatched quilt with every square taken from the most opulent textiles the world has to offer.
“You have such beautiful hands,” the man says in opening.
Harry looks down at his pale and bony fingers, dirt in the bed of his fingernails, and says, “No I don’t.” He thinks that maybe he ought to say something to this strange man, like how he won’t talk to people he doesn’t know, but Harry is an odd boy who rarely finds much of anything that bothers him anymore. Dudley would go crying to Aunt Petunia but Dudley is a baby, and frankly, even if Harry went to Aunt Petunia, it’s not like she’d do anything.
The man develops a single crease between his otherwise clear-wrinkle-free brows and says, “You do. They’re a tad dirty right now, sure, but nothing a good wash won’t fix. I’d take very good care of them.”
“My hands?” Harry asks, focusing mostly on the task at hand of finishing the bushes. He’s done a good job so far, and he can’t help the little spark of pride.
The man leans down and grabs one of Harry’s wrists. Harry can’t help but stare at the white gloves that fasten around his wrist, looking like regular hands but feeling far more like claws. When Harry looks up at the face of this strange man, he can see something almost like embarrassment. “I've been collecting all the best pieces to fashion myself but have run in to some trouble. I haven’t yet found the right hands, you see,” the man explains with a light cough, “And I should very much like yours.”
Harry immediately withdraws his wrist from the man’s grasp and crawls back a bit. Cradling his hands to his chest, Harry says, “I’m sorry sir, but I need them.”
The man stands and brushes some dirt from his nice pants with gloved fingers. He gives Harry a winsome grin, “It is no matter. I’ll come back in a bit and see if you change your mind.” Harry does not respond and the man once again leaves in a rustle of the wind.
After a few months, Harry thinks back on the odd afternoon as a dream. He keeps tending to the garden, sleeping in a cupboard, and running from Dudley. He avoids the frying pans his aunt swings and cares each day a little less about whatever adults think he ought to do. He’s made some dinner for his family and he supposes he must have put too much salt in the potatoes. Vernon is going on and on, “You’re ten already, and still muffing this up? You should know better by now, ungrateful maggot.”
Dudley parrots, “Ungrateful maggot!”
Harry snidely remarks, “Shall I just leave some maggots in the roast then, next time? Maybe some grateful ones for you?”
Needless to say, Vernon is not amused and Harry is sent to the cupboard with a cuffed ear and no supper.
It is here, under a single flickering bulb with shadows dancing all around, that Harry sees Tom again. He’s still tall and dressed in a handsome suit, his hair a bit thicker and shinier than when Harry last remembered him. With no preamble, the man grabs Harry's wrist and exclaims, “My, what beautiful hands.”
Harry doesn’t take his hands back this time, tired and wanting the gentle touch. “I still need them.” Harry sees how the man deflates a bit and adds, “I really am sorry. If I didn’t, I’d give them to you.”
The man seems to perk up then. “Well, what do you need them for?”
“To do the dishes in a bit, for one,” Harry says. It is then that the man seems to realize he is sitting in a dingy cupboard.
He goes very still and very quiet, barely pausing to blink as he takes in the slowly falling paint flakes from the ceiling, the subtle creak of the floorboards in the kitchen, the muffled laughter of people eating in the dining room, the spare few spiders scuttling on the dark walls. In a whisper, the man asks, “Where are we, exactly?”
“This is my cupboard,” Harry answers.
“Your cupboard?”
“Where I sleep. My aunt says, ‘Freaks don’t get real rooms like real boys.’”
Maybe Harry imagines it, but he swears that he feels the hand on his wrist tighten. “I see,” the smooth voice bites out cold and angry. “I’ll be back later then.”
And then he is gone and Harry is let out for a few moments to do the dishes and sent right back to his cupboard. The man comes more frequently after that, just for a few moments every now and again to ask Harry for his hands. Harry says no and then the man leaves. Once, after Dudley has pushed Harry down and Harry is bleeding, he sees Tom appear and open his mouth inhumanly wide as if to swallow Dudley whole. Harry screams and runs. He finds Tom later sitting atop a tree branch near tears. “I’m a monster,” Tom says, “But even still, don’t leave me, don’t be afraid.”
Harry squares his shoulders. “I won’t. I’m not.” It changes nothing to have this. It changes everything.
Harry isn’t sure if there’s someone who cares about him for him. But someone, somewhere, or maybe something cares about his hands. And that means something. It must. Harry is fourteen and swinging alone in the park after dark. He’s back from boarding school for the summer and he and his uncle have gotten into a terrible row. The man appears on the swing beside him.
“Tom,” he says after they swing lazily together for a while. “That’s my name. Some call me Voldemort but Tom -- that's my name, dismal though it may be."
“Harry,” Harry says in response.
“Names have power, Harry,” Tom says, “Don’t go around telling them to everyone you meet.”
“Then why’d you tell me yours, Tom?” Harry asks.
There’s a subtle sigh and a gentle smile Harry gets when he says Tom’s name. The man turns and stares right into Harry’s eyes. Like he’s done many times before, he grabs Harry’s hand with his own gloved claw-like appendage. “Because names have power, and you deserve as much as you can get.”
Harry isn’t sure why, but those words make a single tear fall down his cheek. Tom makes a soft sound and wipes it away. “Oh, don’t cry child. You have such beautiful hands.”
***
Harry is eighteen and sitting outside #4 Privet Drive on the steps. He doesn’t care he’s been locked out, not really, not with Tom beside him and caring enough for the both of them. “What a miserable bunch of humans, worst I’ve ever met, I could just murder them all and eat their toes and the world would be better for it. I would do it too – tell me I can, and I’ll eat their toes and serve you their hearts, my dear.”
“Don’t do that,” Harry says, tiredly. He doesn’t know if Tom really can or can’t –
“I can!”
– but that doesn’t matter. “I don’t want you to.”
Tom has been pacing but he sits down roughly beside Harry. “I hate them,” he says. “Wasting such beautiful hands.”
Harry looks down at his long fingers and bony knuckles. “Still hung up these, huh?” Tom grabs his wrist, a familiar gesture. “Always.”
Harry leans forward and presses his lips, whisper soft to Tom’s. Tom makes a surprised noise but then kisses back, gloved fingers pressing into Harry’s neck and pulling the boy closer, closer, closer.
When they pull away, Harry tugs on one glove. “Why do you always wear these?”
Tom looks embarrassed again, like he did all those years ago. “I’m not beautiful yet, not everywhere. I’d rather you didn’t see.”
Harry nods and stares out toward the street. “It wouldn’t matter to me.” Tom falls still and silent. In the distance, there is a flash of light and the muffled crackle of thunder.
“But I’m never giving you my hands,” Harry confesses into the darkness of night. “I need them too much. It doesn’t matter how many times you come and talk to me, I’m never giving them away.”
Tom sighs and then says, “Remind me what you need them for?”
“Well tonight,” Harry begins, “The laundry. And tomorrow, I’ll need them to carry the groceries and –”
Harry is cut off when violently fast he finds himself pulled up by his shoulders until he is nose-to-nose with Tom. The man's eyes are flashing crimson. “No. If you are not going to give me your beautiful hands,” Tom says, lacing his gloved claw through Harry’s fingers, “Then you are going to use them on yourself. You’re going to live a wonderful life and make everything with your own two hands, do you understand?”
Harry nods, shocked silent. “I need words, Harry,” Tom says, nosing over Harry’s neck and breathing him in. “Promise me.”
Harry shivers and manages to whisper. “I promise.”
Tom brings his face up so he can stare into Harry’s eyes. He leans down and kisses him once more, full of longing. He presses a kiss to each of Harry's wrists and holds them. “Good boy,” he says. “I’ll be back for these eventually, I promise.”
***
Tom doesn’t come back. Harry manages to get a research stipend for Uni and leaves that cursed house on Privet Drive, never to return. And after a decade, Harry learns to stop looking for him in every rustle of the wind. Instead, he focuses on living, spending years in school studying with a pencil in his grasp until his hands have blisters. Those blisters fade to callouses and he uses them to grip scalpels as he goes to the hospital day after day and saves as many lives as he can. He toasts to his friends with condensation of the glasses slick around his fingers. He writes letters to his cousin and manages to have something resembling a relationship with him in their adulthood. He does not write his aunt nor uncle. It isn't an easy life, but it's his and that alone makes him content.
He dies surrounded by loved ones, interested in what happens next.
At first, he thinks it feels rather peaceful. Like he’s been floating for a long time in perfectly warm water. Then he hears a voice, “My, what beautiful hands.”
He sees himself as if from very far away, lying in a funeral casket. Tom is smiling, holding on to one of Harry’s old and wrinkled wrists. “I’ve grown tired of waiting. This time, as promised, I’m going to take your hand.”
Tom removes his gloves, revealing withered, blackened, and sharp claws. Harry feels as if he is young again, and presses his own hands to Tom's claws. They thread their fingers together and walk, side by side, on and on and to whatever awaits them next.
The wind rustles and the air smells sweet when Tom, at last, takes Harry’s hand.