Tom Riddle & Muggle Pens
Tom slams the book he’d been reading with a loud thud. “It’s silly,” Tom says, quietly and to himself.
Neville, sitting at the library table with him and skimming a tome about herbology, hears him. “Erm -- what is, Riddle?”
“Purebloods,” Tom says breathlessly. Harry had shown him that Muggles are not inferior, that their simple creations are complex, that their ideas are to be considered rather than dismissed, yes, yes, yes. But he is stubborn. “Mainstream Pureblood ideology,” he corrects. Merlin, I sound just like Harry, don’t I? “Muggles have had wars, too.”
“Mhm,” confirms Neville. He already knew this -- of course he did. He is Harry’s friend.
“And they’re -- primitive. But I look at wizard wars and those… Those are feral, Neville. We are brutal. But so are muggles. Have you seen the experiments, the tortue, the rape? The concentration camps? Primitive. Brutal. Feral, just like the wizarding world. Is the only difference magic? Because otherwise,” he looks solemnly at the book he’s closed, “otherwise, we are exactly the same.”
Tom had refused his thoughts at face value. Pens, he said, are just one thing Muggles do better. The list ends there. But he’d refused that thought, too, and after a back and forth with himself lasting three days and making him distracted enough to have ruined four essays, Tom had sat down and started researching.
“Yeah,” Neville says, turning back to his book. “Duh.”
“You are a Pureblood,” states Tom, incredulous. “Had you been raised to believe that you are superior?”
“Uh,” Neville bites his lip. “I wasn’t really raised to believe I was ‘superior,’ point blank period. I don’t know.”
“Oh,” says Tom. “I’m sorry.”
“My family is kinda -- uh… they’re traditional. Mhm. When I was young they…” Neville cleared his throat. “It’s called Squib Hazing.”
“Ah,” Tom nods. “I’ve heard of that.” Magical families forcing their children into dangerous situations to test and see if they have magic -- Draco Malfoy's father threw him off a balcony when he was six. Rather fascinating phenomenon, really. Draco’s hazing made him conform; he is his father’s son, in the end.
But Neville Longbottom’s… What did Neville Longbottom’s do?
“My father pushed me down the stairs. My aunt almost drowned me. I felt..” Neville shrugs. “Alone. And I decided that anyone who makes people feel so alone couldn’t be worthwhile anyway. In no convincing universe did I think Purebloods superior.”
This… this strikes something in Tom, an odd display of familiarity. “I was the same way, too,” Tom admits, and, damn, does it feel weird to say it aloud. “With Muggles. I was surrounded by those worthless. Decided that if there is any other type of person that they are better than what I’d been raised with.” I latched onto them, their ideals, lost track of logic. So childish.
“But not anymore,” Neville says.
“No. Not anymore.”
“Is this because of Harry?” He sounds amused.
“No. Yes. Maybe. This is because of me,” he holds up his book, “because of my research.”
“What’d you find? Besides Muggle wars.”
“Muggles are physically different from wizards. But not better, I don’t think.”
“Mhm. You’re referring to life expectancy?”
“Amongst other things. Muggles have varying life expectancies, too. Some average in their seventies and others are predicted to die in their twenties. Environmental factors are the most influential in these cases, of course, but it does nothing to dictate what the countries and their people are capable of. I suppose I,” Tom sighs, “never considered it this way.”
“Wow. A full turn around.” Neville flips a page. “You’ll be Harry’s right hand man at this rate.”
Tom frowns. “Hardly,” he says, but there is little conviction behind his tone. (Harry’s right hand man… No. His equal. I would like to be his equal… Though not in the context Longbottom speaks of.)
Neville rolls his eyes, smiling.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Tom Riddle wants to tell his Knights of his newfound revelation. Or revelations, at this point, but who’s counting? He wants to enlighten them, show them the Muggle pen he got from harry. Wants to welcome Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors into their group because people -- they are not defined by their Houses, can you believe it? He wants to debate philosophy and he wants to win and he wants to give his changing mindset a physical form through the changing of their plans. He wants to ramble ecstatically because he is so, so tired of keeping all these thoughts to himself, so tired of feeling like he is the one with the slowly slipping sanity rather than Harry. He wants to gift others the realizations he received from Harry, make their little group something Harry might not entirely agree with but might one day agree to rule alongside Tom -- and has he ever wanted that before? To be “alongside” anyone? He cannot remember.
Tom Riddle arrives at their weekly meeting wanting to say a lot of things. But of those, none are voiced. Because Tom Riddle fools himself often that he is the leader of this group, and although he is, he is more of a symbol than a person. Smart, powerful, Pureblood (pseudo-Pureblood, really, because being Slytherin’s heir counts for something more than his mother’s poor choice in prey.) And most importantly; his mindset represents their cause. Or it did. He is changing (and has he ever allowed himself to be changed before, through the will of someone other than himself?) and he wants desperately to tell them that, as the leader, his will dictates morality, and as his will changes, so does morality, so does their plans and so does his Knights.
Ideally. In real life it does not matter whether or not he changes because he is a man of the people -- a man of his people -- and they want him stagnant. So stagnant he will be.
Their disapproval would not be outright, naturally, if he did so choose to present the person that he is. He’d keep an uprising down through punishment and rewards and though they would never be wholly obliging, they would be complacent. For some time. But someone -- a group of someones, a coup formed not only of his own people but those they collectively consider adversaries, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- sooner or later, and more sooner than later, all things considered, someone will get the better of him. Even if he has achieved immortality by that time, he will be locked away or disabled or just plain out dethroned. Replaced easily by someone more accommodating to their Pureblood sensibilities. There will be few objections. “Good riddance,” they’ll say.
So Tom Riddle is more a symbol than a person and he’s smart enough to know this, smart enough to play the role he needs to play even if it is a task getting harder day by day. He will do this because he wants power -- a political standing, the Minister’s seat, people cowering at his feet (with Harry by his side, always by his side), and though Harry’s type of power is lovely (intoxicating, irresistible, unique, making Tom envious, envious, envious) it is not a type that Tom has. It’s all Harry’s. Tom will work with the asset he has.
So the meeting passes as normal. He kisses Malfoy on the cheek and Lestrange on the mouth and avoids thinking about how he gets nothing from it, never has, and how he would much rather be doing this to Harry. Earnest, passionate, lovely Harry who now occupies Tom’s every waking thought -- I am obsessive by nature. Who knew falling in love would play into that so horribly?
When he preaches, stepping in the role he is meant, designed himself, to play, every muscle mimicking what he needs it to, he is thinking about Harry Potter’s two boyfriends and four other friends and how he shares himself to the world, heart on his cheek and his sleeve, no after hour shady business, everything on display.
That won’t do, will it? I have never been big on sharing, Harry. I keep what is mine close to my chest.
But Harry’s not “his” -- he knows Harry is too prideful to ever permit it. He is just as much to Blaise and Blaise is to him and just as much to Neville as Neville is to him. All give and no take. It is sickening.
Harry Potter does not own and is not owned. Tom Riddle discerns this.
(That is not to say he respects it. Harry Potter is changing him. Who is to say he will not change Harry Potter, too?)
(But even if he cannot have Harry Potter… he can settle. Equals. He can settle for equals.)
That is a line of thinking for prior-meeting-Tom, though. He narrows his face in a movement that is him but only a version of it that he no longer can align with and pretends he is angry at them for losing against Harry Potter.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Harry takes a deep breath, grips a potion bottle in one hand and his wand in the other, then steps off the ledge of his iron platform.
It’s a joke, at first. Tom knows he will cast a cushioning charm. He is here to make a point and dying would make the wrong one.
But he’s still falling and falling and Tom’s breath catches in his throat and he is sure, so sure, that Harry is going to hit the ground and it will be Nagini all over again. His brain will be splattered through the grass, pink and red and gross, so fucking gross, masking the green with the vibrancy of death. There will be screaming and crying but Tom knows he will continue standing there, watching, his mind alight with denial and anger -- rage -- at Harry for dying and at his knights for letting it happen and at himself, too, for encouraging him to go out onto the field. I should’ve told him to back down. There is no way he could’ve won and now, now he is dead and it’s all my fault and his fault and their fault--
Then Harry drops the fog potion and right when Tom’s magic begins to spasm, electric and wild, certain Harry is to die, Harry casts a cushioning charm and lives on with a ravenous clarity no one else on the field has at the moment.
Harry lives. He is alive. He wins, too, but that seems like the least impressive and least influential thing to happen then.
Tom Riddle is covetous of Harry Potter’s power (something he never thought he’d be saying) but he is also covetous of Harry. He is newly embedded with those seconds, and it was just seconds, ten, max.
One night he has a nightmare. It is of Jimmy falling (being pushed, wrong place, wrong time, and Tom’s curiosity, forever free from the concept of self control) but in Jimmy’s place is Harry and in Tom’s is a total stranger. Harry falls and dies. Instead of imagining himself in that position, it is Harry.
Tom Riddle does not want to die. That much is true. But he does not want Harry Potter to die, either. And that… That is mortifying. But true. It has only been a few weeks and already he does not know what he would do with himself if Harry were to fall victim to someone’s wrath or a Potions accident or “wrong place, wrong time.” Who would Tom be, this extension of himself erased and gone, forever, never to be returned? Who would Tom sit with and banter with and watch from afar and envy and enjoy, revel, in the company of, in the magic of? His mind comes up with many answers. None of them are satisfactory.
So Tom Riddle decides that next time he is looking through old books from the Restricted Section or the Malfoy library, searching for a sure-fire to retain both his sanity and lie Death himself dead, he is not there for just himself. Immorality spent all alone is immorality spent hollow. What good is life without someone to enjoy it alongside you? What good is power with no one to share it with; with no one else to benefit from it? Nothing. It is nothing (how did he not see that before?)
Tom Riddle researches and he does so for himself but for Harry Potter, too. He does so for Harry.