not motj happening

~

Tom could not stop watching after that. It was not even a conscious decision on his part, for his eyes seemed to find the narrow-shouldered figure on their own.

Abraxas had been right, Tom mused as he watched the transfer student move around in potion's class. He did look like a bird: thin bones, bony to the point they seemed fragile, skinny but not in a way that seemed gaunt. A nest full of curls (ha! a nest) that stuck up in every direction when not pulled into a half-up ponytail he seemed to prefer.

The clothes he wore were clearly not his own, slipping past his fingers when he did not roll them up and brushing the floor in a way that told Tom it was not intentional and the boy did not, in fact, know any good re-sizing spells.

(Tom knew a half a dozen, had learned them first year when he found out he could nick the snot-nosed pureblood's fancy clothes and size them up or down until he had a whole wardrobe of pristine looking clothes that were all his).

The boy was a Potter-adjacent find, or so the rumor-mill claimed. (A Potter-bastard, the less-polite undercurrent whispered.)

He did look the part, Tom mused as he watched the boy move around his work-table, working alone since no one in the House wanted the bastard-germs to stick. (Or something).

Tom watched him avidly for two whole hours.

(He could mix a blood replenishing potion in his sleep and with his hands tied, he didn't really need to play such close attention to his own potion).

He watched him the rest of the week, before deciding on Monday that Abraxas was a hazard to work with and walked himself all the way from one corner of the classroom to the other to stand next to not-Potter.

"Hello," Tom said with a charming smile, because first and foremost he was polite, and second of all he always got what he wanted.

Not-Potter turned his head to look at him, green, green eyes as vivid as the most deadly of toxins. Just a shade off from the killing curse, Tom mused.

Pretty, he couldn't help but think.

Pretty, in the way those pale green eyes stood out against golden skin. Pretty, in the way they were nestled between long, dark lashes that made his eyes seem impossibly big.

"Yes?" the boy asked, tilting his head.

"I'll be your partner today," Tom said, not a question mark in sight.

Harry not-Potter looked away from him, all the way to the other side of the classroom where Abraxas was pouting the morning away, sadly stirring the boiling water on his diamond-cauldron with a dejected air.

"Ignore him," Tom cut, before Harry could even begin to form a protest on his pretty lips. "He'll survive."

"I didn't say anything," Harry protested.

Tom smiled benevolently. His eyes, his face, even the flush crawling up his lovely cheeks made him an open book for Tom to read greedily even in the poor lighting of the classroom.

He stood by Harry the entire class, each moving on their own portion of the work table with surprising efficiency. Harry cut the ingredients in thin, even strokes, as Tom, in turn, mixed their potion over the ever-simmering water.

Their hands never collided, never stumbled as they reached their way across the table for one thing or another. They moved in perfect synchrony, like they had done it a thousand times over the years and it just become custom.

Never had Tom had such a joyous morning with no hiccups, without Abraxas messing up their potion or stumbling into Tom in his haste to fix it or chatting his ear off even when all Tom wanted was some piece of mind at eight sharp in the fucking morning.

He could see the way Harry's shoulders relaxed as the minutes dragged on, clearly relieved at Tom's presence in one way or another.

Perhaps he thought Tom was a reliable partner (which he was), or perhaps he was relieved the whispers on his parentage had stopped now that Tom was essentially acting as a human barrier (which he did).

Either way, Harry's tense shoulders had dropped and a sigh left his lips at some point during the first and second hour, and his hands had started moving with a relaxed air that said he was used to precisely cutting away ingredients without much thought.

Perhaps he liked to cook?

Either way, Tom watched as Harry moved.

And as he watched, he noticed… the strangeness.

(Strange-ness, because Harry not-Potter appearing out of the blue in fifth year behind Charlus Potter was already strange enough. That he was sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor was even more strange).

His hands twitched from time to time, slim as the rest of him and small enough that Tom thought his could engulf Harry's without much thought. He kept pulling at his fingers, cracking his knuckles even when no sound was heard and stretching his fingers this way and that like he could relieve some type of pain.

Then Tom noticed that Harry not-Potter was never still.

He sat on his chair. Then stood. Sat again. Stood again. Leaned on it, leaned on the table, leaned on one hip and then the other. Lifted one leg on the chair in a way that had to be uncomfortable due to the angle but seemed to momentarily please Harry, then he let it down and did it again.

And again and again in a cycle that seemed never ending.

"Are you uncomfortable?" Tom couldn't help but ask. Harry, as he had watched him for countless days, had never seemed so… jittery.

"Umm? Oh, no. Sorry."

Tom narrowed his eyes at the blatant lie. "If you are uncomfortable with me as a partner…" he started, interrupted by Harry jolting away as if scalded.

"No! It's not that. Um." His eyes scrutinized the classroom, their work-bench, the closest students to them, before settling back on Tom and whispering, as if ashamed: "My bones hurt. Sorta."

"Your bones."

"Hmm-hmm."

"Your bones hurt? Do you need a healer?"

"Oh! No, it's not like that. They always hurt."

"Do you need a healer?" Tom stressed, because his bones always hurting didn't make the situation any better.

"I'm fine. I just need this class to be over so I can sit down."

Tom eyed Harry's chair, which he was actually sitting against right now with a critical eye.

Harry followed Tom's line of thought like a moth to a flame. "There's nothing wrong with this chair. Stop that."

"I didn't say anything," Tom said, echoing Harry's earlier words. Harry seemed to notice too, as he smiled sheepishly.

"There's nothing to fix, Tom Riddle."

~

There was definitely something to fix, Tom thought as he watched Harry walk through the line of trees.

~

Harry's days had always been the same.

Wake up in pain, walk in pain, sit in pain, sleep in pain (when possible) or not sleep at all.

Pain has become a constant, both mental and physical to the point he couldn't live without it. It was weird to think so, but when Harry was without one or both he felt like he was missing something integral to his being.

Being without pain was rare anyhow. Days where he lazed around under the gentle spring sun, before the hot summer days befell them were probably the best approximation of pain-free he could get.

(And that time someone vanished his arm.)

The rest of the time Harry spent being uncomfortable in any and all positions, shifting and stretching and trying to clear an itch that had never quite gone away.

His aunt used to say he was much too undisciplined to stay still, and much too flexible for his well being. Naturally, she had put him into ballet classes.

It started out as a joke between uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia, since Dudley had started up karate classes. They wanted to put him into something that was both humiliating enough and would get him out of the house so they didn't have to watch him squirm and shift in pain every time they walked into a room.

There were free-ballet classes for children in the community center right outside Private Drive, within walking distance but far away from any prying neighbors to spread the rumor mill that Harry Potter, Petunia's nephew, was attending ballet. In a community center, no less.

Harry sort of. Um. Excelled at it.

It started as a joke, sure, and the first class was humiliating for all of one second when Harry had realized he was the only boy there. But then, he discovered the wonders of stretching and moving and dancing, following in a tempo that seemed ingrained into his being that the teachers called 'classical music'.

It was soothing. Everything about it, really. His girl-classmates didn't make fun of him like Dudley and his goons did, his teachers were strict but lovely and the music was calming.

Harry outgrew his age group faster than anyone could have anticipated, but he had no dreams for any grand-spectacles or shows. He simply wanted to dance, and for his joints to not hurt, and going to ballet solved both problems.

His aunt never did pull him out of those classes (or perhaps never realized Harry had started to forge her signature).

Either way, Harry made it to Hogwarts and his classes never really stopped. He kept going during summer breaks, kept practicing in empty-classrooms and later in the forbidden forest when he realized he could enjoy the sun on his sore muscles and the feeling of a good workout without anyone judging or looking over his shoulder to see what the boy-who-fucking-lived was up to.

That was, until Harry accidentally triggered the ritual on Grimmauld Place and landed himself fifty years into the past.

~

Tom followed Harry into the woods, because of course he did.

Did he have better things to do with his time? Sure, world domination would not come on its own, and O.W.L.s would not study themselves, but also. Harry not-Potter was so very interesting.

So very… not-strange.

Naturally, Tom Riddle followed. He always did love a good mystery.

Harry walked slowly through the undergrowth. He walked over a path he had clearly followed countless times already, skipping over roots and bushes with an ease Tom himself could not find.

They didn't venture deep enough in the forest for it to be dangerous, and in fact, Harry stopped in a small clearing that let the sunlight filter through all the way down to the ground, despite the canopy of trees overhead covering the majority of the sky.

Tom had stopped at the very edge of the clearing, hidden between the creases of a Disillusionment Charm to watch.

Harry… started dancing.

Tom could not stop the way his eyes traced Harry across the clearing even if he tried.

Harry moved, and the plants, the sky, and the wind seemed to move with him. A breeze caught the loose leaves on the trees and they fell around the boy in a cascade of gold and red, sun shining down on him like it was his own spotlight and the forest meadow his stage.

There was no music, none that Tom could hear, and yet Harry moved to a tempo that seemed to shadow his heart, beat after beat.

Harry was lithe, feather-light as he jumped and twisted away from the ground in complicated maneuvers Tom had never had the privilege of seeing with his own two eyes.

Bird-like, Tom couldn't help but think. This boy wouldn't be grounded even if his wings were cut off.

It ended, as things are wont to do, but Harry didn't stop there.

For a moment the boy breathed in under the sunlight, radiant and as beautiful as a deity and just as untouchable. Then, he huffed and sat on the ground and began stretching.

It was… an experience, to say the least, to watch Harry bend in every which direction with little to no difficulty.

Tom was, for a lack of a better word, entranced.

Tom followed him the next day. And the day after that. And everyday that followed, always hidden beneath a charm or another, always watching.

(He started to partner with Harry in every class that allowed it, if only to get close enough to him to smell the sunlight that seemed to be at home in his skin).

Harry noticed, because he wasn't blind.

(Tom really, really ought to have expected it).

Harry was stretching against a tree after his usual ran through what seemed to be a well-loved choreography, one leg on the ground and the other behind him in a split as he tried and failed to scratch the surface of the hurt on his hip-back-hip joints.

(Tom remembered the look on Harry's eyes as he'd said that his bones hurt).

Finally, Harry addressed him for the first time since they'd started this dance.

(Ha! A dance).

"Tom Riddle," Harry said, not turning and not letting go of his leg.

Tom startled, because he didn't know Harry knew he was there.

"Stop pretending to be a tree and come here, I need your help."

And. Tom walked over, because it was Harry sweetly asking something out of him after the countless times Tom had watched him in the privacy of his meadow under the sunlight.

Harry called, and Tom came. It was simple as that.

Tom let the spell hiding him from Harry's eyes fall to his feet, useless now that he knew that Harry knew (Salazar, how did he know) that Tom was there.

"Come here," Harry said, something pained and a little desperate.

Tom's dragon hide boots crunched the undergrowth Harry so gracefully danced over, sounding both too loud and too brutish to his own ears.

When he was but a breath away from the green eyed boy, he stopped.

Harry turned to him, still in a perfect pose even as he impatiently motioned for Tom to come closer.

"Hold me up, would you? I think something's wrong with my hip."

"If something is wrong with your hip you shouldn't–"

"Shut up and hold me," Harry interrupted.

Tom didn't know where to place his hands now that he was within reach.

Hesitantly, his hand went to settle on Harry's left side.

"Oh, for the love of–the other hip, Tom! Do keep up."

Tom flinched away, flushing despite himself and thanking whatever gods were up there that Harry couldn't see him with his back turned.

Tom walked around Harry, settling on his right side and sneaking a hand on his right hip. Harry hummed, seemingly content.

"Hold on, okay? I'll fall if you don't."

Tom nodded minutely, right hand reaching over to circle stound Harry's waist as the green eyed boy let go of the tree he had been leaning against for balance.

There was a frightening moment where they both tilted too far to the left together, before Tom held them in place.

Harry arched back, both hands reaching for his ankle dangling over above their heads and lunged deeper into the split with a satisfied sigh.

Tom held him, feeling the muscles beneath his arm coil and let go, coil and let go. It was fascinating.

Finally, Harry let go of his leg and Tom helped lower it gently to the ground.

Harry turned to him with a pleased smile, looking him up and down like he was seeing him for the first time.

"Not bad," he finally said.

Tom had not let go of his waist.

~

Tom started… ""helping"", after that.

""Helping"" because it went something along the lines of Harry leaning all his weight on Tom on some shape or another and waiting for Tom to help him into some abominable position that couldn't possibly be comfortable and definitely looked like some sort of torture from an outside perspective.

(Helping in the common room, in the library, after class in the corridors.)

Suddenly Harry was everywhere Tom was, leaning onto him even when he wasn't hurting.

(Evenings in the Commons Room became an spectacle of sorts, with Tom sat regally with a book on his lap on his preferred armchair with Harry's leg on his shoulder or behind his head as Harry himself copied his notes in a position that no one would call safe or sane.)

Mornings too, became a thing.

Before class, before breakfast, and right after waking, Tom found it was the moment where Harry hurt the most. He seemed stiff and uncomfortable to the extreme, face pinched and closed off.

Harry didn't say he needed Tom, because of course he didn't, but Tom came each morning none the less.

The stretching during those moments was less hurried, more gentle and timed. Sometimes Harry didn't want to get out of bed from how much his everything hurt, and Tom would lean over him to help him get ready for the day.

"I think you should really see a healer for this," Tom whispered one morning as Harry laid on his bed on his back, one leg stretched out and the other flexed at the knee.

"There's nothing to be done about it. I just have hyper mobile joints and it sucks and it's sucked forever and there's nothing to do about it."

"I don't believe that," Tom said, contrite. He didn't like the ashy look on Harry's skin each passing morning, specially now that the cold was hitting head on.

"Yeah, well. It just the way the world works, Tom. The earth spins, the sky is blue and Harry Potter is in pain every day for the rest of his life. Boo-hoo."

Tom frowned down at him, gently opening his hip until his left leg laid on the bed, knee bent.

There had to be something, Tom thought. A brace of sorts. A warming charm that would reach deep enough to heat up his joints and promote blood flow. A potion.

There had to be something.

~

There wasn't.

~

Pain potions were addictive, braces where too bulky and warming charms were not designed to reach to one's bones. End of story, no solution found.

(Tom did always love a good mystery).

It started, naturally, with a Phoenix.

Harry (also naturally) didn't want to hear about it.

"Harry, c'mon. Phoenix tears are the perfect answer! They're not additive, they are healing to a degree even when diluted 1/1000, we would just have you–"

"What, Tom? Massage it in everyday for the rest of my life?"

"Well, yes. Until we find a better solution, of course. Heat and massage are the best answer, you know, and I've been working on–"

"Stop! Just. Tom." Harry sighed, turning to look at him with a look that said he was not buying whatever Tom was trying to sell him. "I don't want it."

"Why not?"

"I'm not–" a pause "I don't want you to feel like I'm an invalid just because I'm in pain. If this is some way of you trying to buy me over there's really–"

"I'll stop you right there, darling." Tom covered Harry's mouth with his hand, despite his protests. "I made this because you are in pain. Do you think I walk up every morning into your dorm room because I enjoy seeing you struggle against the cold? Do you think it's pity when I hold you in some of those insane positions you claim take the edge off?" Tom scoffed, guiding Harry until he was sitting on his bed. "I thought you knew me better than that."

The Phoenix-tear cream, meant to be massaged into his sore muscles laid innocently on the bedside table. Harry eyed it for a moment, before looking back to Tom.

Before he could even open his mouth with a half-arsed protest, Tom interrupted him again.

"I'll apply it, shut your mouth and lay down."

Harry's mouth shut with a click.

To no one's astonishment, the cream worked.

(To an extent. It took the edge off, but Tom theorized it would he better if Harry let himself be wrangled into some type of magical braces so his joints didn't bend too far, and he really should keep up with some type of training).

The cream, also predictably, had to be applied each morning.

Harry wouldn't have done it for himself, he didn't think. He didn't know if he would have done it for someone else, either.

Tom did it for Harry.

(That, more than anything anyone else had done for him, was an act of love that filled him to the brim with something warm and cozy and safe. All his life people had claimed to love him, then left him when it was convenient or when the School year was over. People claimed to love him and yet they turned their backs on all the issues Harry carried with him).

(Tom had looked at those same issues and had not found flaws, but something worth keeping instead).

On the morning on one of the coldest days of the year, Harry was stretched out of Tom's bed before breakfast, being pampered, cared for, looked after, helped. The phoenix cream was applied with warm hands on tan skin, and Harry almost always fell asleep for the first part of the process.

"Harry," Tom whispered above him, voice rough from sleep but still stubbornly waking up at the crack of dawn to help Harry. "Time for breakfast."

"Nooooo, Toooom." Harry whined, squirming against the warm sheets beneath his cheek. He wanted to sleep, wanted to wrap himself up in Tom's blankets and never leave.

Tom laughed at him, amused, before he started to drag him away from the covers.

Harry wouldn't have it.

Screw Tom Riddle's perfect attendance, he thought as he dragged Tom in with a little bit of magic and a lot of strength (he was strong, okay? dancer's muscles!) until Tom stumbled his way down on the bed on top of Harry.

"What–Harry!"

Harry decision wasn't up for debate, so he planted a sleepy kiss against Tom's mouth, covered them both with a thick blanket and promptly fell asleep.

(Tom, on the other hand, could not fall asleep. He was sure his face had never felt as red and as flushed as it did now, with Harry soundly asleep against his chest, warm and content and pain-free).

~ 

Harry woke an eternity (an hour) later, to a world that had changed fundamentally at his hands.

He had dreamed the kiss. He had to have dreamed the kiss.

Right?

"You did not dream such a thing," Tom Riddle, asshole extraordinaire, said. Because he was an asshole, and asshole's did that kind of thing unprompted.

"I'm so sorry!" Harry mumbled against Tom's chest, even as embarrassed as he felt he was not ready to let go. "I don't know what came over me."

"Oh, I think I know," Tom answered, in that tone that said he was about to get his way no matter how much Harry protested and bucked against it. "I'm being overcome with the same impulse, I fear." He said, before kissing Harry.

Oh, well.

It could've gone worse, he reasoned. In the end, Tom's perfect attendance was not even broken.

~

What followed after that, was madness.

(Or so Tom reasoned).

(Mad-ness, because Harry not-Potter was mad, mad-man, mad-driven, mad–)

Harry was addicted to Tom. It was the only explanation he could think of.

Addicted to kissing him whenever he was near (and no one was looking) addicted to his hands, to his warmth, to his magic.

Addicted in a way Tom could sympathize with, because he was the same.

(Mad, absolutely off his rockers about Harry).

Harry's flexibility had some uses.

Like, for example, when Harry chose to dangle himself from Tom's shoulders during late-nights over the fire, slipping over until he had one knee on each side of Tom's head, hanging over Tom's front with a mischievous smile as he leaned in for a kiss.

(Tom, nonplussed, held him firm as their mouths collided, the sound of their lips smacking together and the sighs leaving their their throats stark against the otherwise silent room).

Or when Harry let himself be bent over in the strangest positions, or that time a cat got stuck on an alcove only Harry could wrangle himself into, or that time–

That time, and all the times that followed, that Harry stretched up like a cat seeking the sun only so he could plant a loud kiss on Tom's lips before they went their own merry way to class.