When Harry Riddle thinks of his childhood, what he remembers most is the taste of ash.
His brother, Neville, says it’s the smell of basil. He always was better at focusing on the good. Of course, he can’t eat most Italian food anymore, so Harry thinks he came out ahead.
It’s not what most people would expect of being raised by Consul Riddle. A childhood in the custody of the most powerful man in the British Isles, possibly all of Wizarding Europe, should be fancy parties and spun sugar and Turkish Delight. And it'd been that, too. But there were also robes that stunk of fire and homecooked pasta dinners and death being less something they learned about when they were old enough and more like finally recalling the name of an old childhood friend.
Or, to be less melodramatic about it: the war was more recent than most people liked to pretend.
These are the thoughts kicking around Harry’s head as he sits in the library on the first truly hot day of the year, chair pressed up against the window and books lying long forgotten. He doesn’t know why he bothers acting like he’ll study on a day like this anyway.
“Why you even pretend that you’re going to study, I’ll never know,” Draco says, dropping into the seat across from him and mirroring his thoughts perfectly. “We could be down on the pitch right now, but no, you just have to sit in proximity to homework.”
“Pitch is booked,” Harry says without glancing at the blonde. He can see the bright flashes of yellow robes swooping above the stadium. He hasn’t been watching them, but on a normal day he would’ve been.
“Your point?” Draco drawls, and there’s nothing to say to that. They both know there isn’t one – the pitch is always free for a Riddle.
Rather than come up with something to say, Harry turns away from the window, stretching tense muscles until his shoulders pop. His eyes skitter over the pages on the table, but he honestly can’t even remember what subject the parchment is supposed to be for.
“Have you seen Neville?”
“Why would I? He’s barely left the tower in weeks.” Draco nearly manages to keep his voice casual, but Harry knows him better, catches the faint stress on weeks.
He just hums in response, but Draco knows him better, too, and his eyes soften slightly, a pale hand reaching across the table but stopping short of Harry’s arm. “We can probably get you in there. If you want.”
And for a moment, Harry wants. Wants to finally see that room of red and gold, that home away from home. Wants to finally stick it to the Fat Lady who seems so pleased to keep them apart, whisking his brother away somewhere he can’t follow.
“No,” he says instead, tapping a finger on the back on Draco’s hand before withdrawing. “No, it’s fine. Are you joining the Hogsmeade weekend?”
And Draco's off, waxing poetic about the superior quality of the drinks in the town where his family summers and the sheer indignity of having to have chaperons. It has the intended effect of leaving Harry’s mind to wander. Or, as has become disturbingly common for him the last few weeks, to think.
In fairness, he has a lot to think about, more than if he should stock up on Zonko’s pranks for the summer. The Hogwarts Express leaves for London in just a week, and he has to decide if he’s going to be on it.
Neville’s absence is clear in its message, more articulate than anything he’d say if he were here. He’s not getting on that train.
And Harry gets it. He does. If he thinks about it he can almost still feel the sickening lurch of finding out the truth, and his skin crawls at the thought of another summer spent pretending that everything is just fine. Totally peachy, Tom, of course. But…
But it’s Tom. The only thing more impossible than facing him is leaving him. Potentially forever.
Harry probably should have been surprised to learn, at the age of eleven, that the man posing as his guardian had actually kidnapped him as a baby. But, honestly, it hadn’t been that unexpected. He’d known since he was little that Tom wasn’t his father, and he had trouble picturing Tom as the kind of person who would take in random orphans on impulse or goodwill. Neville had seemed a bit shellshocked, but this was the man who had explained to a five-year-old Harry that torture was sometimes justified. Kidnapping seemed in character.
Rationally, the fact that he can so easily square his childhood with child abduction should be a reason to get away from Tom. Perversely, though, it seems to just make it harder to walk away. For Neville, that moment when Headmistress McGonagall first handed them the baby photos changed everything. It shook his worldview to its core, and he’d had to rebuild everything around the knowledge contained in that scrunched-up newborn face wailing in the arms of a woman with Neville’s own round cheeks.
For Harry, though, Tom is still Tom. Intermittently violent, sometimes chilling. But also the person who’d taught Harry to tie his shoes, and who responded to his questions about how brooms could fly with a weekend spent pouring over flight charms and muggle physics until he had a real answer. He’s the person he knows, with absolute certainty, would kill anyone who hurt Harry. And while that makes Tom terrifying, it also makes him the safest place in the world.
And what would he be leaving that safe place for, exactly?
He likes James and Lily Potter. James is always quick with a joke, and Lily is free with affection in a way that Harry finds both novel and addictive. But while he’s called them Mom and Dad in the handful of afternoons they’d stolen together since Harry found out about them in first year, in his head they’re still Lily and James.
Though Tom is Tom, too, not Dad, so does that really make a difference?
What does it say about him, that he’s weighing the warmth of Lily’s hugs against the certainty that Tom could burn the world down?
But Tom wanted you, a part of his brain hisses. If the Potters had really cared, they would’ve found a way to keep you. Does that voice sound like him?
“Do you love your dad?” He’s said it out loud before his brain catches up.
Draco gapes at him for a moment, ripped from some story involving an ill-fated silk scarf and the giant squid. “Of course,” he says without hesitation once he gets his wits about him. And, because while he might be pompous Draco unfortionatly isn’t stupid, “But this isn’t about my dad.”
“Who else would it be about? I don’t have a dad.”
Draco just gives him a look, but doesn’t say anything. While he’s smart enough to know Riddle family drama when he hears it, he’s also smart enough to stay the hell out of it.
“Let’s go see if the kitchen has any ice mice,” Draco says instead, and that seems like as good a distraction as any.
Maybe he’s just a coward. Maybe this is just the reason the Hat wouldn’t put him in Gryffindor finally showing itself.
Tom always said Harry would be in Gryffindor. He’d say it with his head in his hands, after Harry pulled a particularly daring stunt on his broom, or with his arms thrown wide in expressive exasperation when Harry came home from yet another scuffle. But he’d said it, and so Harry had believed. That he was the brave one. The rebellious one. The special one.
He still remembers the plummeting in his stomach when the hat had said no. That he would be great in Slytherin. When it had ripped out a bit of his identity and handed it to Neville instead.
The way the back of Neville’s head looked, bobbing away through the crowd.
The way James had recoiled, just a little, from his green tie the first time they met.
(The pride shining in Tom’s eyes when Harry stepped off the train that first Yule.)
Maybe if he was brave enough, he’d take McGonagall’s offer in a heartbeat.
But then he wouldn’t be a Slytherin. Or a Gryffindor, for that matter. He’d be leaving everything behind – his friends, Hogwarts, Britain. (Tom.) That’s where Neville is heading. To a new country, a new life as the person he was supposed to be. Neville Longbottom.
It’s a terrible last name. Stupid thing to pick over Riddle.
But Potter wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
He remembers a time, a long time ago, when he was Potter. But he’s been Riddle so much longer.
There are no answers in the next week. Just worried looks from Draco, and extra helping pressed onto his plate by Theo, and hard shoulder checks from Millie. Am I getting on that train? The question eats at him constantly, only going quiet in the soothing green light of the common room, only to reawaken when the fires are banked and everyone else nods off to sleep.
He catches glimpses of Neville in the halls, bolting from class to class, but he’s forever slipping away. Harry could probably catch him, with his seeker reflexes and the superior knowledge of the castle he’d won the hard way with detention time. But he isn’t even sure what he’d say.
Then it’s the Leaving Feast, and suddenly there’s no time left to think.
He doesn’t go, of course. There’s no way he could eat tonight. Theo briefly tries to drag him, but Pansy snaps at him to read the room and pulls him away. So it’s just Harry sitting before one of the grand fireplaces, alone in the murky common room.
Or, he should be alone. He thinks he’s alone, until the couch gives next to him as someone sits down.
“What are you doing here?” It’s not what he meant to say. Nowhere near the first thing he wanted to say to Neville after weeks of silence. But it’s what comes out.
“Seeing you,” Neville says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like he hasn’t broken about a hundred school rules and several basic tenants of his personality just by sitting there. “It’s a nice place you’ve got here,” he says, eyes skimming across wing backed chairs and dully glowing silver. “Roomy.”
“Yeah. The upside of not being stuffed in a tower.”
“It’s warmer than I expected,” Neville says, settling back into the cracked leather couch. “Being in the dungeons and all.”
“Yeah,” Harry repeats.
Silence falls over them, and it could almost be any other night tucked into the old couch at the safehouse, Neville with a book and Harry fiddling with a spell. Only it isn’t. At all. What’s supposed to be a comfortable, companionable coexistence is stilted and heavy, the crackling fire tense instead of soothing.
“You’re not coming.” It’s not a question.
“No.” The word falls out of his mouth like a stone, and Harry hates it with every fiber of his being. Just not enough to change his answer.
Neville scrambles and twists until he’s facing Harry on the couch, eyes intent on his face. “Why? You know you don’t owe him anything, right?”
Where Harry has gone gangly with their newfound teenagerhood, Neville is still rounded edges and baby fat. And that’s wrong. All of this is wrong. Neville looking so young but leaving home. Harry, the rangy rulebreaker, staying. Neville not trying to drag him out the door, and Harry not forcing him to stay. Harry in green and Neville in red. It’s all wrong.
But it’s what’s happening.
“I know. I’m not staying for him.” Is that true? Harry doesn’t know, but it’s what comes out.
Neville doesn’t ask what he’s staying for.
“Do you know when you leave?” Harry asks, even though he shouldn’t. It should all be about damage control now. Plausible deniability.
He really is a terrible Slytherin.
“In the morning. After breakfast, when everyone heads for the train.”
“Is that wise? Shouldn’t you get a bigger…head start?”
“McGonagall says it’ll be enough.”
“And are my-“ Harry’s throat is suddenly dry, “are James and Lily going to be there?”
Neville’s eyes are boundlessly sad when he looks at him. “Yeah, I think so. They were still hoping you’d…”
“Oh. Yeah.”
The silence threatens to take them again, awkward and dragging.
But you know what, screw that.
Harry heaves the biggest sigh he can muster, flopping back against the couch. “This sucks.”
And that startles a laugh out of Neville. It’s a bit wet and a little jagged, but he knocks his shoulder against Harry’s when he says, “Yeah. Yeah it does.”
“I suppose I’m not supposed to write you, then?”
“And when has ‘supposed to’ ever stopped you?” Neville says, and he’s almost smiling when he does. It slides off his face fast. “But, well, no. You won’t be able to. The headmistress says we’ll be spelled against tracking, and that means owls too.”
“Neat magic, that. You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
“No, Harry, I can’t-“ Neville goes to explain, but then catches the glint in Harry’s eye and laughs again. “You’re an idiot.”
“Probably.”
And then there’s not much left to say, so Neville flings himself at Harry instead, arms locking around him in a tight hug.
“I can’t believe this is goodbye.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Harry says, even as he squeezes back.
“I love you.”
“This isn’t goodbye,” Harry replies fiercely, voice muffled by Neville’s shoulder. “It isn’t.”
“I love you,” is all Neville says in reply.
Getting on the train should feel stranger. It should feel like the hardest thing he’s ever done. He’s walking away from his brother, after all.
But it’s been years since he and Neville have gone to the train together, always ending up falling in with their respective houses in the chaos of leaving day. It’s the most natural thing in the world to pile into a cart with Theo, Millicent, Pansy, and Draco, swept along on the energy of their bickering.
It’s not until the candy trolly has come and gone and Neville still hasn’t appeared that the others notice.
“Guess he’s decided he’s too good for us, now that the lions have decided he’s the ‘Good Riddle’,” Pansy sniffs haughtily as she takes a bite of pumpkin pasty.
“I’m sure he’s just gotten caught up in a book or something,” Theo says, but his fingers are drumming a nervous beat on his knee.
Draco doesn’t say anything, just casts a look at Harry and moves the conversation along.
And Harry can go back to his chocolate frogs and pretending this is any other day, any other train ride.
He pretends right up to the moment he’s stepping off onto the platform. Then his eyes meet Tom’s where he’s standing apart from the crowd behind him, and Harry can’t pretend anymore. Because somehow, in the bare second it takes for Tom’s eyes to travel to the empty space at Harry’s right where Neville should be, Tom knows.
It’s eleven steps from the train door to where Tom is standing. Eleven steps, and Tom doesn’t move. His expression doesn’t even change. Somewhere, through the floating feeling that’s taking over his mind, Harry is surprised. If he’d let himself think about it, he would’ve assumed Tom would spring into action right away, striding off to track down whoever made off with what's his.
But Tom doesn’t move.
Eleven steps. It gives Harry time to catalog the expression frozen on his face. Perfectly neutral to the untrained eye, but Harry has an entire childhood of trying to gauge exactly how much trouble he’s in on his side. There’s shock there, in the slightest widening of the eyes. Worry, in the faint puckering of the eyebrows. And something, dark and wounded, inside the eyes. But, strangely, no surprise, no confusion. Like he already knows what happened.
Eleven steps, and then Harry is standing in front of Tom, staring up at this completely irrational choice he’s made. And then Tom does something equally insane. Right there on the platform, in front of everyone, he pulls Harry into a crushing hug.