Chapter Text
First Year
It's the beautiful boy!
Harry hesitates outside his compartment, not wanting to interrupt. The other boy—Tom, Harry heard him called—sits by the window, The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 propped open on his lap. His appearance is immaculate, from the ironed Muggle clothes he has on, to the dark curls atop his head, styled to look a bit like a cherub's. With his obscenely pale skin and an expression on his face that says he's actually enjoying what he's reading, Harry senses he probably doesn't go outdoors much—might even be a total bookworm.
And though he's only eleven, Harry knows he is in love.
He pokes his head into the compartment. Want some company? rests on the tip of his tongue. Instead, as Tom lifts his head, he gives only a friendly, probably hopeful smile. Those dark eyes pierce straight through him, and his heart flutters.
"'Lo," Harry greets. "May I?"
Tom's answering smile is sweet, almost angelic. "Of course. Come in…?"
"Harry," Harry says, and he gladly enters the compartment, his trunk and owl—Hedwig!—in tow.
"Harry…" Tom says the name slowly, a caress to it, almost, and Harry shivers. That gaze of his is so intense, as if he can see into Harry's heart, and a blush rises to Harry's cheeks. "I'm Tom."
I know.
"Tom," Harry repeats with a bob of his head.
The other boy slips his book closed and holds out his hand for a shake. Harry grasps onto it without hesitation.
"Pleasure to meet you, Harry," Tom says. His voice is so soft, so cultured, yet easily heard. It makes Harry want to curl up in bed with a mug of hot cocoa or a heated blanket.
"The pleasure is all mine." The polite words surprise Harry, but he's glad he said them.
One day, he'll ask Tom to marry him.
"SLYTHERIN!"
Professor McGonagall pulls the Sorting Hat off Harry's head with barely veiled surprise. His heart thumps uncomfortably at his ribs. Potters Sort into Gryffindor. They've always done. His family will be beside themselves.
Yet he ignores the whispering student body and looks at the boy standing behind him, awaiting his turn.
Tom's smile is soft, secretive, but all the more rewarding for how it lights Harry up inside. He leaves the stool to cross to the Slytherin table, seating himself at the end with the other new students. Across the Hall, at the Gryffindor table, Weasley heads are pushed together and whispering. Directly across from Harry, Draco Malfoy stares at him, his gray eyes wide in his pointy face.
He ignores them, too, and turns his attention back to the dark prince. For he must be one, some child of the fey that's come to enthrall them all. Harry knows in his heart that Tom will keep him, will never let him go.
"Riddle!" McGonagall trills.
As the patched hat falls over Tom's head, Harry's heart is filled with an incredible rush. No other sounds are able to penetrate the roar of blood in his ears. He may as well be alone in the Hall, his gaze fixated on the pale face beneath the wide brim of the hat.
Harry's Sorting was almost instant, and so is Tom's. He's declared "SLYTHERIN!" within a handful of heartbeats. After McGonagall removes the hat, Tom comes directly to their House's table. His eyes catch Harry's on the way—his dark gaze is as intense as it's been since he first saw Harry on the train. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.
He slips onto the bench beside Harry. "Seems we're fated to be companions."
"That's just a fancy way of saying friends," Harry retorts, and he grins so hard, his cheeks hurt.
He has no way of knowing that within a week, Tom will make him wish he could take back every word.
Tom Marvolo Riddle is a nightmare.
He looks cute. That's part of his charm. Big, brown eyes. An angelic tumble of curly hair the color of ink. Skin as pale as snow. A sickly Victorian child, really. It's difficult not to want to be around him, to hear each thought that crosses those sweetly turned lips.
Yet it would seem that once Tom considers someone his friend, he deems that it's safe to reveal the monster he hides with polite words and pleasant smiles. He's impulsive, a liar, manipulative, and ruthless. Harry would say that he was cold, but Tom does feel. His eyes are nothing if not expressive.
Kindness, however, he lacks in spades.
At first, Tom only says truly horrific comments, for Harry's ears alone, about their fellow classmates. What he'd like to do to each of them. If it wasn't for the wicked gleam in his eye, the fervor there, Harry would think Tom was trying to creep him out in this sort of weird fashion of bullying. Yet Tom is being completely truthful, and he doesn't seem to care whether or not Harry minds, only that he doesn't tell. He threatened to gut Harry and hang him in the Great Hall by his entrails if he does.
Despite this charming threat, Harry isn't afraid of Tom, and perhaps Tom sees that. The situation escalates to anyone Harry attempts to make friends with. Maybe Tom can't make Harry scared of him, but how would Harry feel if, one by one, his "friends" were injured? Would he be horrified enough, then?
It's these questions that rest in Tom's eyes when he has Ron Weasley climb up a flight of stairs and then hover over the railing at their top, as if he'll throw himself to the floor far below, and all without a word from Tom. It isn't until Harry grips Tom's wrist, his gaze rooted on Ron, that Tom drops whatever spell he'd cast and Ron comes back to himself in time to scramble away from the banister.
The same thing happens to Dean Thomas in Potions, his partner. Tom glares at Harry for daring to ignore the seat he'd saved for him, and later that lesson, Dean suffers a burn on his hand. Harry doesn't know how Tom did it, but the bastard looks so unbearably smug after, it's too suspicious to pretend he didn't.
In Charms, Harry sits by Daphne Greengrass instead of Tom—further determined to avoid him, if he's going to behave so abominably. Nothing happens to her. Or so Harry thinks. That evening, when he's managed to forget all about it, he sees her rise from her chair before the fire and kneel in front of it. It's only as she's going to stick her hand in the open flames that Pansy Parkinson sees her and shrieks, yanking her back from the hearth.
Daphne remains in a daze after, unable to explain what had overcome her.
Tom stays curled up on the couch near Daphne's chair, his face buried in his book—he never looks up except once, to glance Harry's way and smirk at him.
Harry corners Tom before bed, staying with him long after the common room has emptied out. Once he sees that they're alone, he sets aside his textbook, having only pretended to read it, and comes to sit by Tom's feet on the sofa.
He decides to get directly to the point, a quality that others will later tell him is not very Slytherin of him.
"Why are you hurting my friends?" he demands.
"Your friends?" Tom scoffs. "Let's drop pretenses, Harry. I am your friend."
Harry stares at him. Tom can't be serious. Yet as the seconds pass, the other boy's expression never changes. He is serious and painfully so.
"I'm allowed to have more than one friend, Tom," Harry says, slowly, so there can be no possible doubt as to what he means.
He can't believe they're even having this discussion. What sort of spoiled, entitled brat had he shaken hands with on the train?
"No, you're not," Tom replies, that maddening smirk crawling over his lips. "You're mine."
Harry glares at him. "I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anyone. I'm not a thing, and I want you to stop hurting our classmates."
"Or what?" Riddle sneers.
Or I'll tell the headmaster! sounds like something that would just make the other boy laugh at him, so Harry says, "Or I'll curse you. I'll find out what scares you, and I'll make it a nightmare you have every time you fall asleep. You'll never get a proper night's rest again."
Anger, fear, dismissal, amusement—all things Harry anticipates as a response. Yet Riddle's dark eyes flare open wider, excitement burning inside of them. He trembles, his expression twisted into such an unhinged little smile that Harry's chest clenches with dread.
"Very well, my Harry. Since you care so very much about what happens to our classmates, I'll leave them alone," Tom promises.
"You won't touch them?" Harry presses, uneasy at such a display of fervor.
"I won't."
"Well… all right," Harry mutters. He's not sure whether he can believe Tom. And then, bizarrely, as he has no intention to be Tom's friend after the last week and so therefore shouldn't offer advice, "You need to be more careful. What if you got caught? They'll expel you. You're too impulsive."
The fervor on Tom's face is replaced by a furrowed brow and a pout. "I am not!"
"You are," Harry insists, ignoring his petulance, and he rises from the sofa. "Goodnight, Riddle."
"Don't leave," Tom demands, catching Harry's eyes and holding them. "Sit down."
Harry feels… odd… for a moment. He doesn't know what Tom did, but it was definitely something—enough to make him draw his wand, and Tom's fingers dart to his own. He doesn't pull it out yet, his fingers loose around its hilt as he eyes Harry with a burning curiosity.
"What did you do?" Harry demands.
"Nothing," Tom laughs, but the sound isn't nice.
"I don't believe you."
Tom scowls. "I don't want you to go. I'm not finished talking to you."
"Then ask me to stay! Don't do… whatever that was!" Harry has no idea why Riddle seems to lack any common decency, but he's not about to figure it out now. "I'm going to bed. Try that ever again, and I'll hex you."
Tom's scowl deepens. Yet he offers up nothing further, merely watching Harry as he leaves the common room. Harry still feels his gaze on his back long after he's climbed into bed in his dorm and pulled the hangings closed.
Harry refuses to write home about how dismal Slytherin House feels.
His father hasn't been overly enthusiastic at the news that his son was Sorted into a House that has feuded with his own for centuries. He's trying to hide it, but Harry knows him too well. His mum is the same.
Sirius, his godfather, is the only one who truly understands him. He's a Gryffindor from a family of Slytherins. His letters are full of encouragement. He promises Harry in every letter that he is very loved and thought of constantly.
He'll understand if Harry vents about his own House, but it's not his House that is the problem. It's Tom. As the months pass, he fills Harry's head with all sorts of twisted imaginings that don't bear repeating. There are some things, some people, that Harry fears he will never look at the same way again. Tom takes Harry's little joys and corrupts them, a demon on his shoulder who refuses to bugger off.
He does his best not to let such a hateful person color his perception, but it's difficult when the vitriol is endless.
Harry thinks perhaps he should have written to Sirius. His godfather might have counseled him against violent action.
Over breakfast and letters, Tom whispers in Harry's ear that he's better off without a Mudblood for a mother, and Harry's fist slams into his face.
Professor Slughorn, their Head of House, confesses his disappointment in them when he blusters down from the High Table to break them apart. He marches them down to his office, each boy with bloody scrapes on their face and a fuming glare, and assigns them three weeks of detention. Even Tom, one of Slughorn's favorite Potions students, can't sweet talk his way out of it by pointing out that Harry hit him first.
How can Tom be so hypocritical as to spout what the nastier purebloods do? His father is a Muggle! What makes that better than Harry's own mother? Is he trying to fit in with them—the purebloods? Why?
Everything Tom does angers Harry. He wants nothing further to do with him.
Tom is there the next morning, right by Harry's side. As if nothing happened, as if they didn't try to smash each other's faces in, or spend the afternoon in the infirmary while Madam Pomfrey tended to them.
(No one came to see either of them. It's a confirmation that they have no friends, that Tom has handily ensured he has Harry's company to himself.)
Harry writes to Sirius for advice on what to do, but he cages how terrible it really is. The last thing he wants is for Sirius to think that he needs to come to Hogwarts to speak to someone on Harry's behalf. What he does want is advice for how to make an annoying person back off.
Sirius lists a series of pranks that would ensure Tom never messes with him again, each more horrifying than the last. His intent is mischievous and not cruel, however, and that is maybe the only thing that sets him apart from Tom.
Then again, Harry could be giving Sirius too much of a pass. The man is the most protective and impish person that Harry knows. Of course, he'd be willing to harm another student. He's attempted to do so before, when he was a kid. Some of the more malicious pranks that Harry's parents played on some bloke named Snape springs to mind.
Although Harry tosses Sirius' letter into a fire to burn any evidence of potential wrongdoing, he remembers every suggestion. They are with him in his classes, in the library, at meals. A carefully placed hex as they walk up the Astronomy Tower together would topple Tom, and he'd likely bash his head open on the stairs on the way down. A stray ingredient in his next potion—particularly, bubotuber pus—would blow it up in his face. A charm on a piece of food could engorge in his throat and cause him to suffocate, leaving him at Harry's mercy until Harry used the countercharm.
They're all dangerous ideas that Harry fantasizes about when Tom is more difficult than is his usual, but nothing he'll ever enact. If his mum, Lily, had seen Sirius' "pranks," she'd go mental. The idea of disappointing her is a painful one.
Besides, would performing such cruel tricks on Tom even work? Would they win his respect and fear? Or would they only escalate the situation?
Close to Christmas, Tom twists to face Harry where they sit together at breakfast, his expression intense enough that Harry sets down his letter.
"What?" he asks.
"Who are you writing to all the time? Your family?" Tom asks.
Harry narrows his eyes and resumes reading Sirius' salutations for the week.
Tom sighs, a regretful sound. "You're so cruel to me, my Harry, when I am only ever nice to you."
Nice to me? It's a fight not to scoff. "Name one nice thing you've said to me this week."
"I offered to let you look at my notes yesterday."
"You called me daft when you did."
"Pay attention in class more, do your homework on time, and I won't call you daft."
Harry stares at him—the audacity of the other boy never ceases to amaze him—but Tom only twists back around in his seat and resumes buttering his toast.
That marks the beginning of… something. A genuine sort of friendship, perhaps. One uniquely defined within the parameters of what Tom actually understands as such a thing. While Tom still whispers vulgar fantasies in his ears about what he'd like to do to their classmates, or even to some of their professors, the nasty incidents that break out whenever Harry speaks to someone who isn't Tom… they cease.
Every other afternoon, Harry spends time in the library, studying with Tom. Occasionally, they are joined by Draco. Tom prefers complete silence when he works, and after a few rough starts, wherein Harry and Draco exchange small talk and Tom berates them, everyone learns not to speak unless it's related to the material at hand.
In those quiet hours, filled only by the turn of a page, or a quill scratching along parchment to take notes, Harry has time to think and reflect on his day. He doesn't absorb half of what he's there for, his textbooks largely unattended, but he's learned that if he at least attempts to look like he's studying, no one will question him.
After dinner, Tom typically confronts Harry in the common room and drags him before the fire to study. It's not a spot that their older Housemates take to kindly if they find the boys in it, but at this time of the evening, no one else is quite ready to settle in.
So much studying isn't fun, and Harry hates it. Yet he can't argue that his marks don't see an improvement.
Tom follows Harry.
He's always there, no matter where Harry is, and some days, it seems like there isn't much that Tom doesn't know about him.
Tom has made Harry his entire world.
It should bother him, his constant shadow. It certainly did in their first term. But after an awkward winter holiday with his family, Harry finds himself grateful to return to Hogwarts and feel the presence of his friend, even if he can't always spot where he is.
Tom accepts him. That's more than he can say for his parents.
"They offered to talk to Dumbledore about re-Sorting me," Harry confesses to Tom in Potions, a week into their new term. He can't hold onto the indignation privately anymore. "I don't understand why it has to be such a big deal, me being in Slytherin. So what? It doesn't change who I am!"
"You're right, Harry. This is who you are." Tom drops three juniper berries into their cauldron. "You wouldn't have been Sorted into Slytherin otherwise."
"Exactly. Hang on, three berries? I thought it was two." Harry gestures to the instructions that Slughorn spelled onto the chalkboard.
"I know what it says," Tom drawls, "and I believe we should use three."
"Fine," Harry sighs.
Tom has top marks in Potions—in all of their classes, at that. If he wants to try three berries instead of two and potentially send their potion sideways, he can be the one to take responsibility when Slughorn demands to know what happened.
"Perhaps it will get better," Tom says.
"What?"
"The situation with your parents."
Harry gives Tom a curious look. "You don't really believe that."
Tom smiles to himself as he sprinkles poppy seed dust onto their mixture. "No. But that is what you wanted to hear, is it not?"
Before Harry has a chance to reply, their potion turns the color of the sky on a particularly cloudless day. He leans closer to Tom to see it better, his breath easing from him in surprise.
"Be honest with me," he murmurs. He lifts his gaze from the potion to Tom's dark eyes. "It's too strange when you're not."
"You don't like it when I'm honest," Tom says, with a suspicious stare.
"I like it when you're honest," Harry protests. "But I do think there's such a thing as too honest."
Tom wrinkles his nose.
"Just think about it," Harry suggests.
Slughorn bustles over to their table to check on their progress and lets out a pleased chortle, his walrus mustache wiggling.
"Well done, boys!" he praises. "I hadn't hoped to see anyone's potion come close to this, but I should have expected it from the two of you!"
Their professor leaves their table to head to the one behind them, where Ron and Hermione Granger are paired together. A quick glance over Harry's shoulder reveals that neither of them looks thrilled about it. The fumes of the potion have made Granger's hair even bushier than usual, and Ron seems bored out of his mind. Granger probably did all the work again.
Harry has known Ron since he was four or five. Neither of them had ever imagined they'd be in any House other than Gryffindor. The thought wasn't inconceivable back then, only difficult to ponder. Gryffindor isn't a choice to the Potters and the Weasleys—it's a way of life.
Seeing Harry staring, Ron lifts a brow in question. Harry shrugs weakly and faces forward. The term has just gotten started, and Tom hasn't troubled him. Why give him the idea to, even if lately he's been better about leaving Harry's "friends" alone?
Slughorn praises Granger and Ron's potion, then moves on to the next set of students. Tom murmurs to Harry about the remaining steps of their potion, but Harry only half-hears him. A sort of wistfulness has overtaken him—a nostalgia for what might have been.
He wouldn't change his House for anything, he decides, even with the racist and cultish behavior among some of the purebloods. Those in Slytherin look out for each other—they present a united front to the school, no matter what's occurring amongst their number.
In a sense, they have become his family away from home.