Harry Potter & Blood Traitors
Slytherins. Hufflepuffs. Severus Snape.
Violence.
What's the worst that can happen?
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Harry takes his place in the front of the class. He thinks of it as a stage. When he snaps at Snape -- which he promises Hermione he tries not to do but totally does anyway because fuck that guy, yo -- everyone gets a front row view. Give them something to tell their friends. Give them ideas.
Why the hell not?
Who sits with him changes on what House they're paired with. It's one of the times that having a multi-Housed friend group comes in handy. He never has to sit alone.
For class with the Slytherins, he sits with Blaise. He's really good at Potions and that helps because Harry is... Well, Harry is not. (It's not his fault, memory issues!!! yada, yada, yada).
Harry sets his bag down and begins searching through it for his journal. Someone clunks down beside him and Harry perks up, still searching through his bag. "How was breakfast? I asked Bitsy to make it for you, but me and him aren't that close, so I wasn't sure if you'd like what he made--"
He hears a silky smooth chuckle and Harry's heard jerks toward the sound because, fuck, that isn't Blaise.
"Riddle," says Harry. His grip on his bag tightens and he searches the classroom, trying to find Blaise. He's sitting in the desk behind them, Draco Malfoy at his side. Blaise shrugs, apologetic.
"Yes," Tom says, voice still light. "Which you obviously did not know before."
"I assumed you were Blaise."
"Which is now obvious."
"He usually sits there." Harry grabs his journal, finally having found it, and places it on his desk. "If you didn't know."
"Does he? We can switch, if you'd prefer."
Harry glances at Draco Malfoy. He looks just as unhappy in this predicament. "I'm not sure he'd allow that."
"Shame," says Tom, sounding hallowingly unhappy. "You asked a house elf to make Zabini breakfast," Tom notes after a moment. "Are you usually close to house elfs?"
"Somewhat," Harry says shortly. He flips open his journal. Category: People. Subject: Tom Riddle. Add entry.
It's time to take some fucking notes.
"What is that book you carry around?" Tom asks, twirling a quill in his fingers. He's not even looking at him. His eyes are locked on the door, as if he's waiting for Snape to show up. He means to make himself seem detached from answer.
But.
But Blaise is frowning. He's even glaring.
Blaise, what is wrong?
"It's a journal," Harry says curtly.
"It's fancy. Who got it for you?"
Harry resists the urge to say What's it to you? and instead answers, "I don't know."
"Don't you?" Merlin, Tom can tell he's lying, can't he? The twitch of his eyebrow, the grip of his pen, what gave it away?
"Got it first year," he lies. "Secret admirer, apparently."
"Ah," Tom says. He smiles tightly, and Harry hates that he still finds the fallacious motion attractive. "How wonderful."
Harry leans over his journal, hiding it from Tom's view. Tom Riddle is too pretty for his own good.
He adds, a line below: Blaise doesn't like him.
Tom places a hand on his chin, like he's thinking hard about something. "There's something I don't get about that, though."
Harry wishes he can remember where he slipped up. "Mhm?"
"You've been at Hogwarts for quite some time, haven't you?"
"Having dead parents can result in that." Harry hopes his jab lands.
It doesn't. "I sympathize completely," Tom says. "I never knew my parents. My mother died during childbirth, and my father abandoned me. He, too, died before I ever really got to know him."
"Oh," Harry says, feeling slightly bad. He clears his throat. "Where'd you stay?"
"An orphanage. Wool's." He exhales heavily.
"It wasn't as nice as Hogwarts, huh?"
Tom chuckles. "Not nearly. Though, I do consider Hogwarts my home."
"Yeah?" Harry smiles and tries to fight it, but, try as he might, it's hard to. He's a right git, sure, but he's an orphan, too.
It is not everyday he meets someone just like him.
Tom nods. "Most people in the past decade have spoke of you, even if in passing. You're a bit of a celebrity, don't you know?"
Harry didn't. "I'd say more of an attraction, really. Like the way everyone knows the Fat Lady or the squid in the Great Lake."
"Well, what they call you is fitting."
Harry almost doesn't want to ask. "What's that?"
"The living ghost of Hogwarts."
Harry turns his journal to his own section -- Category: People. Subject: Harry Potter. Add entry -- and starts to write that down, only to realize he had already added that. He frowns. Rereading his previous entry, he stops halfway through.
Fuck.
He's lived here most of his life.
They know shit about him.
"It's," Harry clears his throat, "not as bad as I though it'd be."
Tom hums. "It's curious, though. What they say about you."
"That I've always had this journal?"
"Mhm. That is the word of mouth."
Harry sighs. "I do loathe the grapevine."
"Question is, why lie? How, pray tell, have I ever slighted you?"
"You haven't." Harry doesn't look at him. "Not directly, at any rate."
"Whatever do you mean? I try to be kind to everyone, Harry. You are not exception."
"But you don't like Hufflepuffs." The words pill out of his mouth unbidden.
He has the gall to look offended. "What a slanderous accusation, if I might say."
"You don't, do you? You think we're slow or naive or too soft or Light for your taste."
Tom pauses a moment. "Whomever told you this?" Who is the leak?
"Blaise," Harry says. "From what I hear, you're quite open about it. The question is, why lie?"
Tom smiles dryly. "I have yet to lie."
"For some reason, I can't believe you. Is it because you thought I wouldn't remember if I had been told before? Is that it?" Harry turns to Tom's section and adds Ableist.
"Of course not! Do not let yourself fall into absurdities." Harry adds Gaslighter. "I admit, I am not usually fond of Hufflepuffs."
"As you now admit."
"--But I find you, Harry," Harry feels blood rush to his cheeks. His name sounds like velvet in his mouth. "To be more than the usual Hufflepuff."
"Haven't you ever heard that you can't separate the Puff from their Huffle?"
Tom grasps onto this concept. "Perhaps. Meeting you has made me reconsider, actually."
Harry looks at him, trying to hide his disbelief (and, furthermore, his hope). "Really?"
"Your whole case, actually. You truly are a fascinating individual."
"My whole what-now?"
"Your friend group," Tom says. "The way you view the Houses. I've never seen anything like it. Your ideology is essentially unique."
"Thanks." Harry runs the words over in his head a second time. "I think."
Tom ignores him. "You are onto something."
Harry swears he almost dies from shock. "I am?"
"You are," Tom affirms. Never in a million years would he have considered Tom Riddle -- Tom fucking Riddle! -- to have admitted that to him. "I find the idea that rather than a Housemate being defined by their House, it is the other way around, influentially fascinating. The members of a House and how their interact with other Houses and how, even, one interacts with their own Housemates, is not defined by the House itself; but, rather, the individual. Bravery. Cunning. Wisdom. Loyalty. These concepts are what determine our Sorting, but these concepts? Harry, they are fluid. They are subject to change, especially as one grows from a child to a legal wizarding adult.
"Because these concepts are fluid, it can be assumed, too, that the ones who demonstrate them are as well. Rather than giving into the growing divide between Houses, rejecting one or more of these natural aspects of ourselves in the process, we should be open and willing to accept the changes we are sure to undergo, and open and willing to accept those around us who do the same."
Harry is downright astonished. Harry says through a dry mouth, "That's an awful sappy sentiment for someone who doesn't like Hufflepuffs."
Tom smirks. "Someone who used to not like Hufflepuffs, Harry."
Harry hides his smile by ducking his head. "I guess that's true. But," Harry adds, disappointed in both Tom and himself, "there's still so many things about you that I cannot agree with." He cannot like someone who is morally strayed. His heart will not allow it.
"If that's so," Tom says, "then you can work to change them, too, can you not?"
Something in his chest jumps. Hope. Harry clears his throat. "Change only works if you want it to."
"With you to guide me, why would I ever want not to?"
Harry opens his mouth to respond, but before he does, Severus Snape walks in, the very picture of unhappiness. Harry writes, Tom Riddle is prone to flattery. I hope it is also more than that.
Also, he might work as a great buffer. Snape likes him, after all.
Today, they will be brewing a simple sleeping potion. Snape posts the instructions on the board and says pointedly, "This is one of the easiest potions to make to-date. If you fail this, do be aware you will be failing my class. One mistake and it is an automatic Troll. I expect a vial of the potion on my desk before the class's end."
Harry thinks that isn't quite fair but, whatever. "Are you any good at this stuff?" Harry asks nervously.
Tom holds back an offended expression -- he's a prodigy and everyone and their fucking mom knows.. everyone, apparently, except Harry Potter. "Of course," Tom says, trying not to let his irritation show. "I am happy to save your grade, if that is what you're worried about."
Harry lets out a sigh of relief. "Glad to hear."
With Blaise and Draco, things are not going as well. Draco keeps making terse statements. Something about "blood traitors" and "the worst partner one could ask for in such assignment."
"I do not comprehend--"
"Everything? Yes, Zabini, that much is clear."
Blaise holds his breath. "I do not comprehend why you chose to sit with me in the first place," Blaise says evenly.
Draco's jaw tenses. "I have my reasons." Then, his heart does something very interesting. It -- a velvety green orb, glimmering like a well polished ornament -- reaches toward Tom Riddle. It wraps around him, desperate as a starving man is for food.
And Tom Riddle's heart does not recuperate. Blaise did not expect him to.
He stirs the cauldron three times clockwise while Draco chops crow's wings. "What did he promise you?"
Draco almost dices his wings. "Pardon?" he asks, tightly.
"Riddle. You did this for him. Why?"
"He promised me what he promises the rest of his friends. It is merely a favor."
"Sitting with me is a favor to him? How?" He adds the crow's wing into the concoction. When Blaise does not respond, he gets it. "Isn't not about me, is it?"
"No," Draco says. He sound just as upset about it.
"And it's not about you, either."
"No," Draco says again.
"Why does Riddle want to sit with Harry?" It sounds wrong to his ears, the two of them in the same sentence. It's just like the lunch table situation, Blaise realizes. He's slowly worming his way into our lives. (Into Harry's).
"I haven't a clue," says Draco. "But he does have his reasons. He always does. Until whatever he's set out for is accomplished, we'll be spending a lot of time together, I allege. Better get used to it."
"Harry will not allow this."
Harry laughs at something Riddle says, his cheeks blazing red, almost against his will. Blaise's face goes pale. Harry. No. He's trying to get you. Do not let him.
"Will he?" Draco says. "Admit it, blood traitor--"
Harry's head snaps toward him, the red in his cheeks now there for another reason. "Malfoy. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"Sometimes," he says without missing a beat. "Better than kissing no mother at all, wouldn't you agree?"
"I am going to hurt you," Harry growls, his hand reaching for his wand.
"POTTER!" Snape snaps, cutting in only now, how very convenient, "Threatening violence against your fellow students is strictly prohibited. Minus ten points from Hufflepuff."
Harry spins on him, mouth open to spit profanities, hand gripped tightly on his wand, but Tom places a hand on his wrist. "Now, Draco," Tom says, very gently. "That's not very nice, is it?"
"Tom -- I--" Draco sputters.
"Apologize," says Tom.
Draco blanks. "I -- what?"
Tom does not repeat himself. He raises his eyebrows, tilting his head toward Harry, who is still red with rage and bloodthirsty in his glare.
Draco swallows. "Po -- Harry" he says. It looks like it is physically painful to do so. "I sincerely apologize. My words were cruel and thoughtlessly said."
Harry grits his teeth, turning back to the workstation. "Sure, Malfoy," he says. "Whatever you say."
Draco and Blaise resume their work in silence. Harry and Tom try to do the same, but eventually Harry says, angrily, "You've got quite the choice in friends, don't you?"
Tom opens his mouth to respond, but Draco beats him to the punch. "Better than Mudbloods."
Harry's fist acts before he can think not to, hitting his jaw hard.
There is a satisfying crunch.
I'll show you Mudblood.
He grabs Malfoy's collar, pulling him closer, rearing his fist back for more--
"Twenty points from Hufflepuff," drawls Snape. "For violence against a fellow student."
Harry pushes Malfoy, who is clutching his jaw and groaning, away from him. "Oh, put a sock in it!" he snaps.
"Detention," adds Snape. "For back-talking a teacher." There's a murmur of joy throughout the Slytherins.
Harry narrows his eyes, glancing back at Malfoy. Well, he thinks, if I'm already in trouble--
Tom grabs his arm, muttering something needless violence, except Harry rips it out from him because this violence isn't needless -- if violence is the only language Malfoy speaks, then he can very well fucking learn it, can't he?
Snape rolls his eyes. "Hit Malfoy again, I give Zabini detention, too."
"That isn't fair!" Harry yells.
"Do I look like I care, Potter?"
He doesn't. Harry steps away from Tom. He is not too concerned about what happens to him.
Blaise, however...
He will not make those he loves suffer for his misgivings.
Harry sighs. "You ruin all my fun, Snape."
"Professor Snape," Severus corrects. "And I sure do hope so."
The rest of the class passes in silence, save for the scattered exchange of instructions. Throughout all of it, Tom cannot shake the feeling of Blaise's eyes on his back.