Work Text:
He held a small cardboard box in his hands. Inside lay his gas mask buried beneath a layer of clothing. At the very top was the smooth pebble his mother had given him when they visited the beach a few years prior.
His tag hung from the collar of his shirt. It was hot in the town hall, and he resisted the urge to flap a small hand to fan himself.
The other children were being picked off one by one, and it reminded Harry of the way teams were chosen for football in school. Usually he was picked a little earlier than this, but his teacher had told them all not to worry. There would be places for all of them.
Eventually, they arrived. Sweeping into the hall, old and haughty, they reeked of the kind of old money Harry had never seen before in the inner cities. His only frame of reference was the kindly Mr Brownlow from Dickens. His mother read to him from Oliver Twist most nights.
There was an older woman and what was presumably her husband. They inspected the children with beady eyes. Behind them trailed a younger man. He was handsome, but he seemed to shrink back from other’s gazes.
The woman came to Harry, bending down elegantly to glance at his tag.
“Hm, Harry Potter, yes?”
He nodded.
Her husband seemed uninterested by the whole affair, as though such activities were below him, despite his position as the patriarch. Or, maybe, this woman was the domineering type, and the man had long since learned that his input was neither valued nor heeded.
“Tom?” The young man shuffled out from his father’s shadow. His handsome face was blank. He looked like the men who came back from war with shell shock.
“What do you think, Tom?”
Tom nodded.
*
Harry sat in the left hand seat of the car. Tom walked home. Mary Riddle and Thomas Riddle Sr., as they had introduced themselves, sat in the front seats, with Mr Riddle driving. They asked Harry polite questions about where he lived and what his parents did for a living, but seemed to lose interest when they discovered his home was nothing more than a flat, and that his parents were factory workers. Not that that seemed odd to Harry. Most people were factory workers.
He struggled to think of his parents then, carrying on without him, bombs raining down on them every day. He brushed his fingertips over the smooth pebble and prayed that they would still be there when he came back.
The drive to the Riddle house was short. The place he had ended up in was only a small village, and it would probably only take him half an hour or so to walk from one side to the other.
The house, though as the car approached Harry soon realised it was more like a manor, sat atop a hill like it had been built to survey the whole village. The Riddles clearly must be people of importance, if they had been given a job like that.
A man greeted them upon their return, nodding politely to Harry as he offered to take his coat and hat. Harry had seen men like him before, glimpsed through sparkling windows. They always stood just inside of the door, offering to take the wealthy men’s jackets. They were the step above a maid like his mother.
There was a maid in the parlour, although she wore an old-fashioned hat and frock that he had never seen his mother in. She took over his tour from there, showing him upstairs to the little box room he was set to inhabit until he returned to London.
He placed his cardboard box down on the bed, and unpacked his meager belongings. Gas mask on the desk. Clothes in the dresser. Pebble on the nightstand.
*
He learned a lot about the Riddles. Tom was unmarried and a recluse. He was hardly around, and when he was he only seemed able to sit and stare sadly into the distance. He had big round wet brown eyes like the puppy the Weasley’s owned.
Mr Riddle was a very wealthy man, so wealthy that he didn’t work. Not to Harry’s mind anyway. All he did was sit in his study, smoking fat cigars and flipping through pages of documents. Occasionally he’d pick the dip pen at his side, plop it into the ink pot ahead of him, and scrawl quickly across the page, before leaning back in his chair. Harry had watched him through the window, and, in the comfort of his own room, would sometimes play pretend at being the wealthy man of the house like Mr Riddle.
Mrs Riddle was something of a socialite. There were always other ladies around, and always there could be heard the faint sound of cooing from the parlour. Sometimes Mrs Riddle called for him on these occasions, parading him about in front of the ladies and making him shake their hands. He got the distinct impression that he had only been picked up from the town hall to show the other wealthy people how kind the Riddles were.
Not that they were unkind perse. They just didn’t take much notice of him.
For those short weeks after he had just arrived, and before the summer holidays ended, Harry spent much of his time in the garden, before eventually branching out and exploring the rest of the village.
Little Hangleton was quiet, and so small that it was easy to navigate, especially when he was so used to the winding alleys of London. Most days he just wandered, watching the residents mill about. Strangely, he didn’t see much of the other children he had been evacuated with. His closest friend, Ron, went to a different school to him, so he had been bundled off to another town. The children who he did go to school with weren’t a bad lot, but he had never gotten along awfully well with them.
Harry’s first half-summer in the village was lonely. But it was also quiet, and peaceful. And safe.
He thought of his mother and father every night.
*
When school began, he found it strange to be around so many people his age again. The most social interaction he had had in weeks was from Mavis and Frank, the staff, and so to be suddenly thrust back into everyday life was odd.
Even stranger was the boy he was sitting next to in lessons.
He had dark hair that was tangled and wild, just as Harry’s had been before Mrs Riddle insisted on regular brushing. His clothes were tattered, with rough fraying hems and faint discolouration. He kept his head down the entire time they sat with each other, until it was break time, and he was forced to look up to navigate out of the classroom.
He raised his head, and the sunlight hit it, and Harry was hit with a wave of confusion.
In front of him, he was certain, was none other than Tom Riddle Jr. Except, it couldn’t possibly be him. The man was, well, a man and the boy in front of him was obviously just that. A boy. Yet, the resemblance was uncanny.
Harry couldn’t help but follow that mop of dark hair outside onto the small playground. In the light of the sun, he could tell it wasn’t jet black as he had first thought, but was in fact threaded with brown.
He had sat down on a small jumble of rocks near the back of the play area, and had picked up a stick, drawing shapes in the soil with it.
Harry puffed up his chest and approached.
“What’s your name?”
The boy ignored him.
Harry deflated just a little bit.
“Uh, hello?”
The other boy finally seemed to realise he had company, and looked up. Then, he shrunk back, and Harry was almost certain he let out a small hissing sound as he did so.
He decided to try again, “My name’s Harry Potter. What’s yours?”
“Tom.” The voice was soft and sibilant.
Harry leant forward, fascinated, “Really?! I know someone called Tom! Well, actually I know two other people called Tom.”
“Who?”
“Mr Riddle and young Mr Riddle. Actually, you look a lot like young Mr Riddle. Do you know him?”
Tom’s dark eyes sparkled in the morning sun. He looked almost hungry.
“I know who they are.”
“Really!”
Harry couldn’t believe he was making such progress on this new mystery. He slumped himself down on a rock beside the interesting boy.
Tom nodded. Then, he straightened himself a little in much the same way Harry had gone about puffing himself up only moments before. Somehow, even in those tattered clothes, he managed to carry an almost aristocratic air.
“Everyone knows who they are. They’re the most important people in the village.”
Harry nodded thoughtfully. That made a lot of sense. No wonder they were so rich.
Tom’s eyes glinted.
“I know a secret about the young Mr Riddle. Do you want to hear it?”
Harry resisted the urge to bounce with excitement, and instead bobbed his head in assent.
“Okay… but you have to promise me not to tell anyone about it.”
The boy extended a pale pinky. Despite the state of his clothes and hair, his fingernails were thankfully clean. Harry placed his own finger on Tom’s. Tom curled them together, squeezing tightly like he was trying to squeeze life from his veins.
“He’s my father.” He whispered.
*
As promised, Harry said nothing to Mr Tom. But that didn’t mean his curiosity was satiated. Neither, it seemed, was young Tom Gaunt’s.
The boy began tailing Harry at school. He already sat next to him during every lesson, but he began doing so at lunch too, and at breaks. He didn’t mind, it was nice to have a friend, even if Tom was more than a little intense.
His dark eyes were always so searching, and not even the fringe that hung over his face could conceal those sharp pools of brown. And, somehow, they were always trained on Harry.
He hoped that this fixation wasn’t simply because Harry happened to live with his father. That was surely part of it. He asked seemingly endless questions about the man, yet he never tired of the topic, even though by this time Harry had realised there wasn’t all that much that was interesting about the young Mr Riddle.
His son on the other hand was an endless source of intrigue to Harry.
Why didn’t he live with the Riddles? Surely they must know of his existence. Was he illegitimate? Possibly, but to his knowledge, Tom Riddle was not married. Who was his mother? Who did he live with? He was bursting with questions.
Unfortunately, getting information out of Tom Gaunt was like drawing blood from a stone.
Other than when he was asking for details about his father, he remained stoically silent, letting Harry rule their conversations. He just sat, watched, and waited.
Finally, after a few weeks of their budding friendship, Tom uttered those fateful words.
“Harry. Would you like to come to mine for dinner?”
*
The Gaunts lived in a small house on the other side of the village from the Riddles. Really, it was more of a shack than anything else. Its walls were mossy and chipped, and roof tiles scattered the perimeter. In more than a few places, wooden foundations showed, and sticks were shoved inside, partially to mask this, and partially as an attempt to improve the structural integrity.
Tom shrunk into himself a little as they approached in what Harry was beginning to recognise as a combination of shame and sadness and seething anger. The shame was unnecessary. Harry had more in common with a place like this than the luxury of the Riddle’s mansion.
He followed the other boy up the path and into the house. Tom diligently wiped his shoes on the doormat, slipping them off and leaving them by the door. Harry followed suit.
A shrill shout came from another room, “Tom! Is that you, dear!?”
“Yes, mother!” He replied, an edge of irritation in his voice. Still, he moved off through the winding halls of the house towards his mother’s voice.
They came upon a small, pokey kitchen that might have been clean, but was still falling apart at the seams. Inside, stood at a stove, was a woman with long dark hair that trailed down her back in wisps. She turned to acknowledge their arrival.
“Tom, why weren’t you- Oh! You must be Harry, yes?”
Her voice was high but blunt, like she was missing some of her vocal cords. Her face was not ugly, moreso plain. It was clear Tom had gotten his beauty from the Riddles, not from the Gaunts.
Harry nodded, “It’s nice to meet you.”
She smiled, “Quite. I’m Merope. Tom did mention he would be having someone over for dinner soon, I must have lost track of the days…”
She trailed off, turning back to the stove.
“Dinner will be a few minutes. Go sit at the table.”
Despite being such a small house, it was strangely labyrinthine, and Harry found himself clueless as to where they were inside it at any given moment. Tom led him along a curled passageway into a small dark dining room.
Merope followed a few minutes later, carrying a large pot of some kind of stew. She doled out all of their portions. It was hot, and Harry had never been picky about flavours, so he graciously began to shovel it into his mouth.
“Where are you from, Harry?”
“Oh, uh, London.” He choked out between spoonfuls.
“Hm. And who are you living with?”
Tom stiffened a little at his side.
“The Riddles.”
Merope froze, spoon halfway to her mouth. Her hand began to shake a little, sending droplets of stew plummeting back down into her bowl. Then her face stretched out into a smile, her small dark eyes lighting up.
“Really? How lovely. So beautiful. Such a beautiful home.”
“Uh, yes, yes, it’s very beautiful.” Harry got the distinct expression she wasn’t just thinking about their home.
“Me and Tom Riddle attended school together, can you believe it? Of course, that’s longer ago than I’d like to.”
She laughed, and it was brittle.
“Oh, uh, did you know him well?”
She nodded sharply, throwing her head back and forth, “Hm, yes, very well. Awfully well, although I haven’t seen him for some time… Say-”
Tom jumped in to cut her off, only to be beaten to it by a shout. “Mother-”
“Merope! Merope!”
It was a man’s voice, oddly slurred.
Merope appeared to snap out of her Tom Riddle induced trance, replying, “Yes, Morfin?”
No reply.
“We’re in the dining room, Morfin!”
Loud footsteps followed, thundering down the winding corridors until the man burst through the door, stumbling to keep upright.
“You’ve made dinner?”
Merope’s voice appeared to come out much more quietly than before, “Yes, it’s on the table, brother.”
He surged towards the table, throwing himself into a chair, and ladling himself a hefty portion with reckless abandon. He didn’t seem to notice Harry’s presence, and if he did he didn’t comment on it. Instead he wittered on and on for the rest of the meal about the state of the village and the village pub and Lord what had Merope put in this stew and on and on. Harry, although not enthused by the conversation, was glad of the distraction so that he wasn’t being constantly questioned about Mr Tom.
When Tom finished his portion, he didn’t ask to be excused, merely slipping away from the table, bowl in hand, towards the kitchen. Harry followed.
The little boy washed his and Harry’s dishes up in the sink staring out the window at the moonless night.
“It’s late.”
“Hm.”
“And it’s dark.”
Harry hummed again.
“You should sleep here tonight. You shouldn’t go walking around at night.”
Harry shivered.
“I don’t mind walking back on my own. Besides, I don’t want Mrs Riddle to worry.”
Tom waved him off.
“My mother wouldn’t let you leave this late,” Harry wasn’t sure Merope would even notice his leaving, “There’s a telephone in the hall you can use to phone Riddle.”
True to his word, Tom led him into the hallway where there was a modern looking phone. It was almost anachronistic inside this dilapidated shack. Harry spun the numbers on the dial, informing Mrs Riddle of his whereabouts, all while Tom watched him carefully.
He led him upstairs to yet another small room. Tom’s room obviously. It was almost barren. There was a bed with a small pile of books by its side, a tiny chest of drawers that couldn’t hold more than a few items of clothing, and a metal tin sat on top of it. There was also a photograph of him and his mother pinned to his wall.
From underneath his bed, Tom pulled a thick piece of fabric that when unravelled formed a sort of makeshift mattress.
“You can have the bed.”
Harry smiled, pulling back the green-grey duvet to slip underneath it into the bed. It wasn’t really that late, only about seven o’clock, but something about the dinner and the room had made him sleepy.
Tom sat on the faux-mattress, watching him as Harry shut his eyes. He didn’t make a move to lay down.
A half an hour passed until Harry heard him move. The boy stood, crossing the room. Harry cracked an eye open, seeing him open the metal tin and remove a small pair of scissors.
The footsteps returned to his side. Harry slowed his breathing, faking sleep. Only moments before, he had been about to drift off, but he forced himself to remain aware for just a little while longer.
A small hand ghosted over his face, before tugging ever so slightly on a lock of hair. There was a definite snip and a deep sigh before Tom was retreating once again, and Harry was sinking into slumber.
*
From then on, Harry began receiving gifts. Each morning, at school, he’d open his little tray with his name on it to find a snake inside. Dead. Their bodies even colder than they had been in life.
They were only little things, grass snakes rather than enormous pythons. Yet, they understandably unsettled him.
Soon they began appearing on the doorstep of the Riddles’ house.
And then on the sill of his bedroom window.
He’d never caught him, but he knew it was Tom. He wanted to confront him about it, to ask him why he was doing all of these odd things, but he could never seem to bring himself to do it. Partly it was the fact that the more time that passed between that night where he had stayed in the Gaunt, the more the whole incident began to feel like a figment of his imagination. Why would Tom cut a lock of his hair when he was sleeping? What did he want with his hair?
Another part of it was the fact that the few times he actually mustered the courage to say something to Tom about it, it was like his mouth had been sewn shut. He would open it to speak, and then snap his jaw shut. Or, his mouth would remain open and gaping, but his vocal chords would be incapable of sound nor speech.
Yet, he did not stray away from his dark-haired friend. Despite the fearful thoughts that ran through his head every time he sat beside him in lessons or at lunch, he did not move. In fact, if anything, he would shuffle closer, as if on instinct.
It was only weeks later, during a stroll around the village that he would discover the truth of the matter.
He often passed by the graveyard on walks, glancing through the bars of the wrought iron gate into the jumble of headstones and memorials that lay inside. It was almost always deserted, and creepy.
Tom’s hunched form sat on a ruined wall hardly stuck out as odd. He seemed perfectly at home there, long hair falling in his face, mouth twisted in concentration at what he held in his hands.
Harry couldn’t see what it was from that distance. So, more on an impulse than anything else, he slipped through the gate, creeping towards Tom.
His stealthy approach was halted by the snapping of a large twig under his foot, and the boy snapped his head up in alarm. Then, his expression smoothed when he saw it was Harry approaching, his face falling into a pleased look.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
He didn’t look at Tom. Instead, he looked at the object held loosely in his hands. A small straw doll, with a needle on a thread hanging from it. It had little eyes stitched in green thread, and a smile stitched in black. Over the top, in the same red colour that also belonged to the threaded needle, were criss-crossing stitches, almost like it was sewn shut.
On its chest was a half finished mass of red.
“Tom, what’s th-”
He cut himself off. His vocal chords had stopped working again.
“It’s you, Harry.” Tom said, his voice almost reverent.
He tried to question it, but found he couldn’t.
Tom was stepping towards him, reaching up a little hand to touch his face. Harry leaned into it unbidden.
“Don’t try to stop it. I just stopped you from talking about this,” He raised the little doll, “Or from asking questions.”
He tried to choke out a why, but it just came out as a grunt.
Tom understood him just fine.
“Witchcraft has been in my family for generations. That’s how mum seduced handsome young Mr Riddle. That’s what the Gaunts do, Harry. We see something we want, and we take.”
“And you, w-w-w-”
“Yes. At first, it was your life living with the beautiful rich people, but now…” His face scrunched up in confusion at his own feelings. Tom was clever, but he was still young, and unable to express such complex emotions.
Harry said nothing, and he was sure even if he had wanted to, he would be incapable of saying anything. Instead, he let Tom step closer, wrapping a pair of skinny arms around him. The boy tucked his head into his neck, hair tickling his shoulder as he took a deep intake of breath.
Harry wanted to run, yet he also wanted nothing less than to stay with Tom, to merge their very souls together.
Instead, he remained at his side, sitting silently on the ruined wall as Tom finished stitching the red heart onto the chest of the doll.
*
Soon, the evacuees were being sent home. Harry packed his meagre belongings back into his cardboard box, including the snake skins that Tom had now taken to giving him.
He returned on the train to London without another word to the boy, and could feel the connection between them peeling away from the flesh of his brain with each passing mile.
It wasn’t for long. Soon, the bombings resumed, the ‘phoney’ war was over and the real one had begun. Before he knew it, Harry was once more bidding his mother and father goodbye, and returning on the train to the Riddles. They picked him up at the station this time, and young Mr Tom helped him carry his slightly bigger cardboard box to the motor.
When he returned to the little school the next day, Tom was sitting there just as he had always been. His hair was a little shorter, so Harry could clearly see the want in his eyes.
On his desk was the doll, and as Harry looked at it, he felt those hooks sink into his mind again, and all of his worries drifted away on the summer breeze.