Ellie

Because not only is your boyfriend a nerd who spends nearly every single minute of his free time combing through a massive pile of books and documents, no, he's also a needy freak, contrary to the belief of perhaps… everyone else.

Believe it or not, he enjoys being on top of you more than he enjoys being on top of every class—he said so himself after all, intoxicated by the feeling of your sweet pussy squeezing around him, his mind hazy with lust.

But still, they were his words.

And Tom lives up to them. No matter how tired his eyes are or how much his back aches from being hunched over books all day, he still finds time for you, finds the energy to rut his thick cock into your warm walls, even if gently and awfully slowly so.

Today has been no different. You've been in his dorm for hours while he is preparing for an upcoming Potions project, which he's only aware of because he's Slughorn's favourite student and he let him know. Claiming he needs to be ahead of everyone else if he wanted to score another Outstanding, Tom naturally hasn't rested since.

You do not try to argue with him anymore, try to tell him that even if he started two weeks after everyone else, he'd still receive just the same grade.

Instead, you've been watching him, splayed across his huge bed, which he has the honour of owning as a Prefect and Head Boy, distracting yourself with a novel (non-educational, obviously) until he had enough and joined you. The sun had just started to set at that point, weak rays bathing his dorm in a subtle golden glow. Tom crossed the bed, crawled over you, and fit his body perfectly between your legs, resting his head on your chest.

And now, just a few minutes later—all of his usual innocence has evaporated at last. His hips rut his full-blown erection against your lower tummy, his hot breaths coming fast and laboured as his face stays buried in the crook of your neck.

"So good to me," he whimpers, one of his warm hands on your thigh, holding you open for him, the other interlocked with yours. "So patient."

You hum in agreement, angling your hips upwards so as to encourage him to finally get on with it—and Tom gets the hint, although a little differently than you anticipated.

He flips up your skirt, having it pool around your waist, and then sits back and studies you. His gaze is fixed on the damp spot that has formed on the cotton lining of your panties, swallowing the urge to be inside you.

"So pretty," he murmurs, his thumb brushing along the length of your slick underwear, tracing your slit through the fabric until he reaches what he knows to be your clit—applying gentle pressure, circling slowly with just the tip of his thumb.

Tom observes your every reaction—from the way your lips part for a silent gasp to your hips bucking off the bed, chasing his touch, begging him for more. And if he is being truthful with himself… neither does he have the patience to wait any longer.

He hurriedly tugs his trousers and underwear down his legs, carelessly discarding them somewhere on the floor before he hovers over you again, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips—but as soon as you hook your fingers into your panties, he grabs your wrist and stops you.

"Don't undress," he whispers, looking down at you with his gentle, brown eyes, placing your hand beside you. "I'd like for you to keep them on for now."

You meet his gaze with a confused expression, but you nod nonetheless—anything if he finally lets you feel him.

His head dips to brush kisses down the side of your neck, and the next moment his body lowers to rest on top of yours—his cock perfectly nestled between your thighs, rubbing against your clothed pussy with every slight twitch of his hips.

"Tom, please, I—" you whine, wrapping your legs around his lower back, pressing yourself up against him. "I've been waiting so long, please don't— oh—"

"Shhh," Tom murmurs with a strained voice, nipping at your throat gently, grinding his length along your soaked panties, the head of his cock brushing over your swollen clit with every tender move of his hips. "Need you like this. It'll feel so good, I promise. You trust me, right?"

You nod eagerly, trying your best to concentrate on the blissful, tingly feeling in your core whenever you feel the slightest friction where you desire it most. "Yes, Tommy. Please, more."

He hums lowly in approval, his hands at the back of your head, tilting your head towards his to kiss you thoroughly this time. "Good girl. So perfect, allowing me to have you like this."

You open your mouth to respond, though the only sound that leaves you is a broken moan, thighs trembling as he sets a cruel pace, making sure to give your clit just enough attention to make you soft and pliant beneath him.

Tom continues with this for what feels like an eternity—rutting his hot, thick erection against your pussy, swollen and dripping with need at a cruel, slow pace. Your arousal has long soaked through the thin cotton fabric and inevitably coated his cock in a glistening layer of your combined arousal, his precum adding to the mess where your bodies are tightly connected.

You're so drunk on the feeling of his cock grinding over your pussy, you at first don't even recognise the warmth of your climax building low in your tummy—but he does.

Because it is not solely you whose senses are screaming for more.

Tom craves the feeling of your slick pussy, of your tight heat embracing him, pulsing around him—and so, he gently tugs your panties to the side, watching as his cock disappears between your glistening folds.

He nearly comes then and there just from the sweet, wet warmth of your skin on his, groaning as he slips upwards with ease, his hips stuttering at the increased sensitivity. "Fuck, darling— what on earth are you doing to me?"

His tip reappears to bump against your sensitive bud, having you moan in pleasure, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes, holding his gaze. "Don't— don't stop."

Tom shakes his head, lips parted as his breathing grows heavier with each passing second, and brushes a kiss on your jaw. "I wouldn't dream of it."

And then, a split second later, his pace quickens—he's grinding against you with purpose now, mumbling strings of praises while he makes you watch his swollen cock make a mess of your pussy, gliding between your folds as though it had belonged there all this time.

The room fills with your combined sounds of pleasure, with the slick noises of him gliding between your puffy, sticky folds and his endless praises for you.

When you get too wet, he uses his thumb to keep himself from slipping out, and you nearly lose it at the increased pressure and precision.

If he doesn't stop this soon, you'll lose your damn mind.

"Tom, I need you inside— inside, please," you cry out, your climax approaching fast while you can't do anything but take what he's currently giving you—perfectly angled thrusts right over your clit, which have you seeing stars.

But Tom has different plans.

He sits up just slightly, letting his cock slip free to guide it lower towards your entrance—but instead of pushing inside, he merely lets his tip bump against your drooling hole, with three or four shallow thrusts. Enough to give you an idea of what he'd feel like inside—heavy and leaky, thick veins bulging beneath his skin and stretching across his entire length, yet not to actually push inside.

Damn him.

As hopeful as you were—the feeling is gone as soon as it came.

"I want you to come for me," Tom rasps, grinding against your sloppy folds again. "Just like this. Nothing else—just me, here."

"You're— oh God, you're impossible," you whine, but cannot deny that your orgasm isn't far—and Tom knows it.

With every rough thrust, his hand guides himself to where you need him most, and within minutes he has you right where he wants you—on the very brink of your climax, begging the waves to consume you whole.

Tom too is close, breathlessly whispering praises as his head dips to your neck once more. "So beautiful, sweetheart, so good to me— always so patient and pliant, I— fuck—"

His thrusts falter then, cock twitching between your sticky folds, a throaty groan escaping him when ropes of thick, white cum paint your glistening pussy opaque white. It's so much, you can feel it seeping down the length of your slit, gathering at your neglected hole before it drips onto the silk comforter beneath you.

Tom allows his senses to return to him before he lifts himself off you, appreciating the mess between your thighs—and when you try to close your legs, he stops you.

"Just a little bit longer, darling. Show me how pretty you look," he says, and you obey.

His fingers trace the white residue, smearing it where it belongs—in between your folds and over your clit. You whimper, back arching off the bed at the touch, and just like you've wanted it all along, two of his long, slender fingers gently slip inside your warm walls, using his cum as additional lube—not that you need it, but the mere sight of it has his cock hardening once more.

Tom curls his fingers just right—rubbing over that perfect spot inside you while his other hand takes care of your puffy clit.

"Tommy, mmph— fuck!"

A smirk tugs on his lips at the state of you—all fucked out even though he never let you feel him inside you in the first place, his fingers eliciting the sweetest moans from your bite-swollen lips, teary eyes staring up at him.

Just how he likes you.

"Come for me, pretty girl. Show me how good you can truly be."

thank you so much for reading! <3 feel free to reblog and leave feedback! :3 — masterlist. | oneshots.

©2026 viperify. please do not copy, translate or claim my work as your own.

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yall vs me (ily baby)

With his big brown eyes and wildly curly dark hair that once his father matched during one late night when you’d caught him up, with Mattheo, raiding your cookie stash that you’d hidden from Mattheo as he’d tried to eat 10 in one sitting.

You remembered flicking on the light, catching the lord and the then 3-year-old Mattheo mid cookie swipe, both of them with their curls untamed, matching eyes wide as you stood in the doorway, unimpressed.

Tom was the first to book it, over the years—he’d grown too used to you to be so stiff and professional all the time, and Mattheo began crying at his father for abandoning him in this time of need.

“I said, two cookies, at most, sweet boy,” you said, picking the toddler up as he wandered over to you—arms up with demands to be held and comforted. You put away the cookies, somewhere else this time, and turned, speaking aloud. “You’re not off the hook either! He shouldn’t have too much sugar!” you yelled down the hall, where Tom’s bedroom door closed quickly and locked.

You snorted.

Things were comfortable now.

Just as they should be.

=

“It’s been almost three years, Tom. Have you already given up on finding a suitable wife?” Abraxas asked Tom over brunch one day, the two sitting in the back gardens of the Malfoy estate—their sons playing down below with their mothers watching them.

Tom huffed, rolling his eyes. “May I remind you, the wife thing was your idea, not mine.” Tom snarked, sipping at his ice tea, his dark eyes floating over to (y/n) and Mattheo as Mattheo carefully fed the swans that floated in the Malfoy garden pond.

Abraxas glanced with him, a smile growing as he saw his son and wife playing in the patch of daisies that nearly buried Lucius as he lay down with his mother.

He turned his gaze back to (y/n) and Mattheo, the four-year-old trying to take a dip in the pond, (y/n) tugging him back into her lap, tickling him—the sound of Mattheo’s laughter tugging a smile to Tom’s lips. “How long has it been since your last vacation?”

Abraxas randomly asked, and Tom shrugged. “Never,” Tom said, taking a bite of his strawberry croissant. Abraxas raised his brows. “Never?” Abraxas scoffed, and Tom shrugged again. He never found reason or time to take time off.

“What about (y/n)? has she taken any vacation time yet?” Tom paused, she had her days off—well, when she’d first started, and Tom would have to take care of Mattheo because he hated everyone else. Now Mattheo would pout if Tom tried, so (y/n) hadn’t had a day off in three years now. Tom pursed his lips, and Abraxas laughed.

“Take some weeks off, all three of you, go to the sea-side and enjoy the waves. We both know she’ll never have a proper vacation until Mattheo’s grown up a little more, but let the woman have a solace of freedom,” Abraxas teased, and Tom sighed.

“Who’d cover for me at work? I have far too much to do,” Tom asked and Abraxas gestured to himself, Tom glared, and then sighed. “Fine, I’ll book a place,” he grumbled.

Abraxas nodded, sharing a look with his wife, who nodded back—already planning to ask (y/n) to go summer shopping and find her a swimsuit that would drive Tom wild, and perhaps ignite some jealousy.

Phase two was a go.

=

Tom glared at the gloomy sky—the sun still shining through the clouds. A chair was tucked under his arm, bag hanging off his shoulder as Mattheo steamrolled ahead. You were close behind, wearing a flowing short dress overtop your swimsuit. Tom’s eyes were lingering on your legs as the three of you walked across the sand towards the shore.

“Don’t run off, Mattheo!” you called out to him as he grabbed his sand buckets and raced to the water. He pouted, a sight that almost made you fold, but you shook your head, gesturing him back over to you.

Mattheo groaned and tumbled back over, closing his eyes as you applied another layer of sun protection, and put a life vest on him. “I'll be with you in a second, just wait,” you told Mattheo who stamped his foot, watching with a pout as you helped Tom set up the beach spot before Mattheo grabbed the sun protection—handing it to Tom.

Tom rose his brow at his son, eyes hidden behind a pair of sun-glasses, one of the few solid muggle inventions. “What?” Tom asked, Mattheo had already been lathered in sun protection. But Mattheo pointed at you, sticking the umbrella into the sand and setting it up.

“Help mama put it on!” Mattheo said and Tom froze for a split second while you sat up. “I’m fine Mattheo, I already put it on,” You said, but Mattheo shook his head.

“No no! Daddy has to help you!” Mattheo outright demanded, and you could see the tantrum from a mile away—why over something as simple as this? You didn’t know, but you sighed, getting up, Tom still frozen in place as his son shoved the sun protection into his hand and made sure he had all his toys ready while you awkwardly sat beside Tom where he was sitting in a low beach chair.

You gave an awkward smile, Tom was glad for his sunglasses—hiding his wide eyes. “Where do I have to put it?” He eventually asked, thanking Merlin for the lack of voice break.

“On mama’s back! Hard to reach!” Mattheo demanded, recalling watching Uncle Abraxas apply lotion to his wife's back during a lunch playdate. Tom swallowed, and you sighed, shifting off your beach dress, and Tom’s eyes went right down to your chest, the swimsuit fabric pushing your breasts together, and he had to shift quickly, clearing his throat as you turned—exposing your back and shoulder blades.

Tom swallowed again, pouring the sun protection onto his hands, pausing as Mattheo stumbled up—offering his own hands, and he poured a bit into those tiny palms. Mattheo then went to your front and went up on his toes a teeny bit to copy what you’d done for his face, smearing sun protection all over—making you laugh.

Tom’s eyes were glued to your back, and he hesitated for a moment before reaching out, smoothing the sun protection onto your back and up your neck, rubbing his thumbs into the nape of your neck as Mattheo chaotically rubbed it onto your face.

“Done!” Mattheo cheered and Tom took his hands off you at the same time, his ears burning as the feeling of your skin lingered on his fingers and palms. “Thank you darling,” you cooed to Mattheo and Tom quickly held his tongue from responding, cheeks turning pink as he settled back into the beach chair, watching as you took Mattheo’s hand and went out to the water with him.

Tom picked his book up, but he barely read it—dark eyes flickering between the pages and you, standing in the shallow waves as Mattheo dug his sand buckets into the wet sand—trying to find sand crabs.

Tom’s hands tightened on his book as over the next mere seven minutes, several men came up to you and blatantly flirted—and you were just friendly enough to make them linger when they weren’t wanted, but eventually you’d straight up decline any sort’ve date offer and return your full attention to Mattheo.

By the 10th man in just 15 minutes, Tom stood. He didn’t know why—didn’t understand why, but he couldn’t bear watching this anymore. Tom emerged from the safety of the umbrella and headed towards the water. Mattheo beamed when he saw his dad coming towards them and waved enthusiastically. “Daddy!” Mattheo cheered, and you looked up, hair catching in the wind that made Tom nearly stumble.

The man standing far too close to you backed off, apologizing to Tom in particular—before leaving. You frowned, huffing a little as Tom waded into the water to stand beside you, Mattheo taking his hand. “Why did he apologize?” you wondered aloud, unaware of what Devin—the mans name—had assumed of you and Tom.

Tom shrugged, resting his other hand on the inside of your arm as Mattheo showed him all the seashells he’d found.

Tom lingered around you for the rest of the time on the beach—never straying too far because the moment he did—some man assumed you were up for grabs and for some reason; Tom couldn’t stand that thought.

Why? He wasn’t sure, but the burning in his chest demanded he keep close enough to ward off any stupid men.

=

Tom stilled as the three of you stepped into the beach house Tom had rented out. Mattheo was asleep against your shoulder—completely conked out and would be out and down for hours. You stepped inside, admiring the space—setting down the beach bag as Tom walked further inside.

It looked fine, up to his standards, but Tom thought it was quite small to have four bedrooms. He quickly walked through the house, finding a child bedroom, for Mattheo, and one master bedroom.

Tom sighed, running his hand down his face. Only three beds in the whole house. ‘Sleeps four’, the advertisement had said. Must’ve meant two children and two adults, assuming the two adults were together.

He checked the couch, but it didn’t pull out, and there was no extra bed in the whole beach house, minus the 2nd child bed, but Tom did not feel like bothering with magic after such a long day in the sun. You were already putting Mattheo in the bath, and Tom was starving.

You’d packed a lunch, but that was hours ago. Tom sighed, rubbing his face and looking over the notes he made earlier that day while going through the town,  having marked town the several restaurants he’d seen for later.

He took a quick shower and changed, heading back out to get dinner.

-

Mattheo was sound asleep by the time you found Tom in the dining room of the beach house with two bags full of Italian food. “Smells good,” you murmured, adjusting the shoulder of your baggy shirt you’d changed into. Tom hummed, eyes glued to you for a moment before continuing to take out the take-out boxes.

Dinner was quiet, sitting besides each other at the small dining table. Tom eventually spoke. “There's only two bedrooms,” he said, awkwardly, staring at the garlic bread in his hand. “Mattheo’s room, and the master bedroom—and it only has a single bed.”

You paused, taking a moment to process what he’d just said—a day at the beach had really tired you out. “Oh,” you finally said, and Tom slowly nodded. “…I can sleep on the couch,” you said after another few moments, and Tom frowned—glancing at the couch.

It looked comfortable to sit on at most, not wide enough to sleep on. “unnecessary; you will share the bed with me, it is big enough.” He paused for a moment. “This is a vacation for all three of us, I will not have you lose sleep.” Tom said sternly, and you were too tired to question the passion behind that answer, and so you nodded.

A mere hour later, after you’d had showered and changed, the two of you lay in the bed—it was a king sized bed, Tom took the side facing the door, you slept beneath the window—the sound of the ocean faintly drifting through the air.

Tom stared at you, you’d already fallen asleep, curled up with your hands tucked beneath your chin. He didn’t know why, but he reached out—gently brushing his knuckle against your cheek—feeling the softness.

He pulled back as the door creaked open, and Mattheo stared at him from the door. Tom sighed, lifting the blanket, and Mattheo quickly stumbled inside, Tom helping him up onto the bed and watching his son snuggle himself right in between you and Tom.

Mattheo looked content, each hand reached out to hold onto both of his parents. Tom sighed lightly, holding Mattheo’s little hand and closing his eyes.

Ignoring how right this felt.

-end of p11! More vacation cuteness to come!-

thank you all so much for reading~ goodness theres so many of you know, and as always--ill happy take suggestions/ideas for scenarios for these three to get into until Tom finally realizes his feelings lmao

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The heavy oak door of the master bedroom clicks shut behind you, the sound echoing in the ornate room. The wedding reception still buzzes downstairs, but up here, it's just you and Tom, husband and wife at last.

Tom's dark eyes sweep over you, intense and possessive as they always are, but tonight there's something more, something deeper. He approaches slowly, his tailored robe immaculate, his movements predatory yet deliberate.

"Mrs. Riddle," he murmurs, his voice a low caress that sends shivers down your spine. "It has a certain ring to it, don't you think?"

You smile, your heart fluttering at the sound of your new name. "I suppose it does."

His fingers find yours, lifting your left hand to admire the diamond and emerald ring that now adorns your finger. "A perfect match," he says, his thumb tracing the precious stones. "Green and silver, just like us."

He brings your hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the ring before turning your hand over to kiss your palm. "This changes everything," he whispers against your skin. "You're mine now. Officially. Forever."

"I've always been yours," you reply softly.

His eyes darken at your words. "Yes, but now everyone knows it. There's no escaping this, no turning back. You belong to me and I belong to you."

Tom releases your hand, his fingers moving to the buttons of your wedding dress. He works slowly, deliberately, his eyes never leaving yours as he reveals the skin beneath inch by inch.

"Perfect," he murmurs as the dress pools at your feet, leaving you in nothing but white lace and your wedding ring.

His hands trace your curves, his touch both reverent and possessive. "Do you have any idea how many times I imagined this? You, here, in our room, wearing my ring?"

He leads you to the large four-poster bed, laying you down gently before shedding his own clothes with practiced efficiency. His body is lean and powerful and you can't help but stare as he joins you on the bed.

Tom positions himself above you, his knees parting your thighs as his hands brace on either side of your head. "Look at you," he says, his voice thick with desire. "All mine to worship, to claim."

He lowers his head, capturing your lips in a deep kiss. His tongue explores your mouth, claiming every corner as his hands begin to explore your body, mapping every curve and dip as if memorizing you all over again.

"You're so beautiful," he murmurs against your lips. "And so responsive. Always so ready for me."

His touch grows bolder, his fingers finding the sensitive flesh between your thighs. You gasp as he circles your clit, your hips rising to meet his touch.

"That's it," he encourages, his voice a low rumble. "Take what I give you. Let me hear you, wife."

His fingers slide inside you, stroking slowly as his thumb continues to work your clit. The pleasure builds quickly, your body arching against his hand.

"Tom," you gasp, your fingers tangling in his hair.

"I know, my love," he whispers, his fingers moving faster, deeper. "I know what you need. And I'll always give it to you."

He brings you to the edge, holding you there with expert precision until you're begging for release. Only then does he allow you to fall, your orgasm crashing over you in waves of pleasure.

As you come down from your high, Tom positions himself at your entrance, his eyes locking with yours. "Ready?" he asks, though it's not really a question.

You nod, your body still humming with pleasure as he pushes inside you slowly. The stretch is exquisite, a perfect fullness that makes you feel complete.

"Fuck," he groans, his head dropping to your shoulder. "You feel incredible."

He begins to move, his strokes slow and deep at first, building gradually in intensity. His eyes remain fixed on your face, watching every expression of pleasure that crosses it.

"Look at us," he says, his voice thick with emotion. "Husband and wife. Joined in every way possible."

His hand finds yours, lacing your fingers together as he continues to move inside you. "This ring," he says, his thumb stroking the band. "It's a promise. A claim. Everyone who sees it will know you belong to me."

His movements grow harder, faster, driving you both toward the edge once more. "Say it," he commands, his voice rough with desire. "Tell me you're mine."

"I'm yours," you gasp, your nails digging into his shoulders. "Always yours."

"Forever," he corrects, his pace becoming almost punishing. "You're mine forever."

The possessiveness in his voice, the ownership in his eyes, the undeniable pleasure of his body moving against yours, it's all too much. Your orgasm builds, more intense than before, your entire body tensing with anticipation.

"Come for me, wife," he commands, his voice a low growl. "Come on my cock while I fill you with my seed. Mark you as mine from the inside out."

His words push you over the edge and you cry out his name as your orgasm crashes over you. Tom follows moments later, his release hot and deep inside you as he groans your name against your neck.

As you lie tangled together in the aftermath, Tom's fingers trace the ring on your finger once more. "Mine," he whispers, his voice soft now, filled with a tenderness reserved only for you.

"Yours," you agree, pressing a soft kiss to his chest.

"And I," he says, tilting your chin up to meet his gaze, "am yours. Completely. Irrevocably. Forever."

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine. 

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones. 

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary. 

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tomes and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly. 

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile? 

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up. 

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about? 

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers. 

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession. 

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary. 

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure? 

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning. 

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with. 

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge. 

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books. 

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls. 

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin. 

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated. 

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again. 

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now. 

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice. 

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all.  You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else. 

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them. 

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten. 

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.) 

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true. 

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer. 

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t. 

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid. 

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless. 

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately. 

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end. 

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight. 

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes. 

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand. 

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain,  a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him. 

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love. 

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock. 

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly. 

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it. 

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.) 

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish. 

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same. 

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much. 

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition. 

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal. 

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it. 

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —” 

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor. 

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “You seen the shite the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a bloody Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? How about you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident. 

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be. 

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop. 

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece. 

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that." 

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval. 

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will." 

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis. 

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain. 

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.” 

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back. 

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake." 

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster. 

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating. 

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself. 

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh. 

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Breathe for me.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses. Maybe you're trying to convince yourself.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s finally him, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Breathe for me, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you like they despised to ever be parted, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet. You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on for a while. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You gasp into his shoulder at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“You would, wouldn't you?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — ah — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you. 

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He brings you to his bed after and you let him, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

And higher than them all, even himself, came forth (y/n). She stepped into the dining room, all heads turned towards her-instantly bowing with respect as she walked forward, black silky robes flowing behind her-Nagini at her heels.

Voldemort stood as she approached-pulling out the tall-backed chair that sat at his right-holding out his hand for her. She smiled, taking his hand and sitting down beside him. He kissed her knuckles and pushed her chair in, taking his seat beside her.

Death eaters averted their eyes at the soft scene-though one stared in near bewilderment, Draco Malfoy-one of the youngest death eaters, only 17; he was unaware Voldemort could even be so…gentle. (y/n) caught Draco’s eyes and tilted her head just slightly and he quickly looked away.

A few moments later-Snape arrived, late, but not unwelcomed. “Severus, I was beginning to worry you lost your way,” Voldemort said, slow, unworried. Snape eyes snapped to the dark lord, away from the woman who was hovering nearby. “Come, we’ve saved you a seat.” Voldemort waved towards the empty seat-two to his left.

Snape stepped forward, sitting down. “You bring news, I trust?” Voldemort asked, his hand finding yours on the table, Nagini curled up in your lap-your free hand gently trailing down her forehead.

“it will happen Saturday next, at nightfall,” Snape said, informing Voldemort of when his nemesis, the boy who lived; Harry Potter, would be moved to a safer location. Another Death Eater spoke up, Yaxley.

“I’ve heard differently, my lord,” Yaxley said in his low gravely tone, drawing Voldemort's eyes to him as the Death Eater leaned forward slightly. “Dawlish, the auror, has let slip the potter boy will not be moved till the 30th of this month, the day before he turns 17.”

Snape spoke once more, silencing Yaxley. “this is a false trail, the auror office no longer plays any part in the protection of Harry Potter. Those closest to him believe we have infiltrated the ministry,” another death eater snorted.

“Well, they’ve got that right, haven’t they?” the man said with a smirk and the Death Eaters chuckled along, as it was true-the ministry had been infiltrated by them. Voldemort turned his eyes to Pius, their ministry implant, the man’s gaze far off as he sat in the middle of the death eater meeting.

“What say you, Pius?” Voldemort asked, Nagini hissing lightly, lifting her head from your lap to look at Pius. The ministry official swallowed, looking at Voldemort, his lips shaking. “one hears many things, my lord. Whether the truth is among them, is unclear.” Pius said, scared but in a clear voice.

Voldemort let out a short laugh, squeeze your hand-looking at you as you smirked lightly. “spoken like a true politician. You will, I think prove most useful Pius,” Voldemort said, still smirking-then turned his gaze back to snape.

“Where will he be taken, the boy?” Voldemort asked and Snape did not hesitate to answer, even if he didn’t have the full answer.

“To a safe house, most likely a home of someone in the order. I've been told it's been given every manner of protection possible. Once there; it will be impractical to attack him.” Voldemort stared, not particularly pleased by such news when Bellatrix clearing her throat caught his attention. The woman leaned forward, reaching out across the table.

“My lord, I’d like to volunteer myself for this task…I want to kill the boy.” She said, softly, pleadingly-a muffled cry of pain interrupted the conversation and before Voldemort could speak-you did.

“Wormtail!” you snapped, everyone straightened up at the sound of your voice-usually quiet, softer. Even Voldemort stiffened. “Do keep our guest quiet. We’re in the middle of a meeting.” You said, voice sharp at the edges, even if you weren't being loud. Wormtail whimpered and rushed off.

“yes-my lady-of course.” Wormtail rushed to the dungeons to take care of the prisoner within. Voldemort glanced at you, heat heavy in his eyes before he turned back to Bellatrix.

“As inspiring as I find your bloodlust Bellatrix,” the woman nodded-eyes glinting at the praise. “I must be the one to kill Harry Potter,” Bellatrix shrunk back, eyes locked onto the dark wood of the table. With this, Voldemort turned to you, lifting your hand to his lips. “Now, what of your thoughts on this, my dear?”

You hummed, looking at Snape, and then tapping your fingers on the table, gaze turning to Draco-who’d kept his eyes averted this whole time. “Draco,” you spoke, calmly, gently. His eyes snapped up to you, afraid. “Tell us what you know about the Potter boy,”

Draco swallowed, his father squeezing his hand beside him.(tell her). “Potter is…brash, self sacrificing. Reckless. He’s…closest with the Weasley’s, their whole clan and then some.” Draco said, picking at his thumb.

You nodded, rolling your ring around your finger. “he’ll be going to the Weasley’s then, most likely they’ll have a whole guard around him to transport him-a plan to keep him hidden.” You said, everyone hanging on your every word, including Voldemort. “Thank you Draco,” Draco’s ears flushed and he nodded, looking down at his hands.

The meeting continued, Voldemort took Lucius’ wand as payment for flubbing up the prophecy mission over a year back, and the ex-professor of muggle studies was killed, devoured by Nagini.

The meeting ended after that and Voldemort withdrew to his quarters-(y/n) at his side as Nagini went to curl up in a warm spot. “That went well,”  (y/n) said, moving to take off her cloak-Voldemort beat her to it, undoing the snake clasp and hanging the black silk cloak up.

“We now know when to strike on Potter, and have means to do so, I say it went splendid,” Voldemort murmured, kissing your bare shoulder as his arms wrapped around you. you only hummed, resting back against him.

“just be careful, he is slippery, and you have a habit of being overzealous,” you murmured. If anyone else said that, they’d be maimed. But not you.

Never you.

as you do this, you ponder about how this boy — who’s parents had been murdered by the same man that also tried to kill him and who left him with this scar — could not recognize the symbol in the sky and what it represented.

“voldemort,” you utter rather calmly and the sound snaps harry out of his daze immediately.

he practically gapes in shock, almost flinching. his best friends do behind him at the sound of that name. harry startles at the sound of it from your lips — but not because he fears it. but because the only other person he knows besides himself who is brave enough to say that name is dumbledore.

so, just who were you, then?

“it is his mark,” you gesture in explanation, letting your hand fall. the boy who lived leans into you as the warmth fades, wanting it back. then, a shot of pain flickers in his head suddenly as if to attack due to the loss before going away as if it were never there. he winces just a bit.

overwhelmed by everything, his mind doesn’t seem to be functioning at the rate he’d like it to. harry blurts out something that doesn’t seem rather intelligent. it was probably rather obvious.

“how do you know—,” he pauses. “—it’s his, i mean?”

with a blink, you stare at him.

“because, i created it.”

“Now, now,” Slughorn drew the attention of students just walking in with barely concealed excitement. “A special lesson, just in time for the season of romance! Today, we’ll be studying the most powerful love potion—,” a ripple of giggles spread across the room, “—in existence,” he finished with a grin.

“Purely academic, of course,” Slughorn had declared, lip twitching along with his mustache in delight as he presented the shimmering contents of his cauldron he had prepared himself before the beginning of class. “One must understand the theory of such things in order to defend against them. Amortentia, my dears — the most powerful love potion in existence. Banned to distribute in Hogwarts, naturally, but perfectly permissible to brew under supervision according to the curriculum.”

As if that was a plausible excuse.

The potion glimmered like liquid mother-of-pearl on the wooden workbench, spirals rising from it in hypnotic coils. One by one, the students (mostly consisting of girls) leaned over to inhale, unable to help but be pulled in — as was the nature of the brew. Amortentia carried a different scent to each person. You watched some of your classmates continue to crowd around it eagerly, faces flushing, expressions turning curious. Some laughed whilst some went oddly quiet in consideration.

You didn’t think much of it personally, staying in your seat, wafts of clean linen and chocolate drifting in your direction. Love potions were rather grotesque things — manufactured obsession masquerading as affection. There was something fundamentally wrong about them, no matter how pretty they looked or how good they smelled. You still felt it was wrong that they weren’t outlawed, or that they were sold in shops at all, making them accessible to the public.

Knowing how reckless some teenagers were and how insidious the minds of some worked, it made itself an easy solution in order to prey on the vulnerable. It was — “naturally” — a recipe for disaster.

Completely and utterly barbaric, in your opinion.

Now, the classroom buzzed with chatter and the scrape of ladles against cauldrons as students got to work. Your peers talked over one another, arguing over measurements or comparing notes in low voices.

The potions professor wandered around the room, observing each student at work and complimenting a few on his way through. His waistcoat strained over his stomach as he waddled between tables. “Observe the pearlescent sheen — yes, exactly! That’s what we’re aiming for. And the steam should rise in spirals. Spirals, Mister Avery, not— oh dear.”

You wiped your hands on a cloth and leaned over your own brew. The cauldron in front of you shimmered faintly, the surface of the Amortentia swirling with a soft, luminous glow. It was beautiful in a way that made your skin crawl. You leaned in closer despite yourself. The steam brushed your face, warm and sweet with notes you were very pleased with.

Decadent and creamy white chocolate, the scent of cleanliness, your favorite perfume, sugar, and obviously more sugar. Your mouth curved slightly, both in satisfaction at your successful potion making skills and amusement at the predictability. You liked simple comforts. You liked things that made you feel safe.

You swallowed and straightened at the insidious prospect of that.

“I bet you smell a candy shop,” your best friend, Cadence, murmured from where she stood beside you, leaning over your shoulder.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’m saying,” she smirked, “that anyone who ends up giving you sweets may have a chance,” she sang.

“Or they could try a conversation,” you shot back lightly, throwing Cadence an unimpressed look and an arch of the brow.

“Ah, yes. Conversation. How revolutionary.”

You rolled your eyes. Around you, students were murmuring and nudging one another. Giggles broke out near the Hufflepuffs. A Ravenclaw boy turned pink to the ears as he stirred quietly. Even a few Slytherins were smirking more than usual as they hovered close near their cauldrons, unable to resist the temptations. No one seemed particularly concerned about the fact that what they were brewing was so dangerous that it was prohibited to use inside of these walls. There were different types of love potions, but Amortentia was the most potent.

“Honestly,” muttered a flushed Gryffindor, stubbornly, in hearing range. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she peered into her cauldron, “what possessed him to teach this now? It’s practically Valentine’s.”

What possessed him indeed. Slughorn was clearly having way too much fun with this lesson, doing rounds and asking each student what they smelled, smiling knowingly at the flustered ones who stumbled over their words as if this all had been a ploy, a gentle nudge to some to confront their feelings for a special someone right before the holiday of love — which he would deny and deem it was for research purposes only, of course.

“I think it’s romantic,” the Gryffindor girl’s seat mate sighed almost dreamily.

You almost snorted. Romantic wasn’t the word you would’ve chosen. Your potion reached completion faster than you expected. You glanced up, searching for Slughorn to signal that you were finished. The man was currently bent over another station, fussing over someone’s “almost adequate” consistency before going to the next batch, circling like a pleased bee.

Your gaze wandered mindlessly now that you were done with your brew, and you knew it’d be a while before Slughorn made his way over here. So, you slowly dragged your eyes over the students around you before they collided directly with another’s.

Across the room, through rising steam and flickering torchlight, a boy stood at his station. His sleeves were neatly rolled to his forearms, revealing pale skin and long, steady fingers guiding the ladle through his potion. His Slytherin tie was perfectly knotted, robes immaculate as always. There wasn’t a single fleck of ingredient out of place near him. Even here, in the damp heat of the dungeon, he looked composed — untouched by the chaos around him.

And he was staring at you.

Tom Riddle was staring at you.

His expression was calm, almost blank, a void that sent shivers down your spine. It was unlike any expression you’ve ever seen him make, completely unnatural on a face as handsome as his — not that you’ve watched him much. His eyes did not falter even when you met his unblinking gaze, not flustered whatsoever at being caught gawking so noticeably.

Riddle didn’t look away. The steam rose between you like a thin veil and still — he held your gaze.

The noise of the classroom seemed to dull, your pulse stuttering. For a moment, you forget to breathe, his dead stare like a hand on your throat.

This look wasn’t one of interest in the way other boys sometimes looked at girls. There was something unnerving there unlike the easy charm he wore so well, the one that he showed professors and students alike.

This felt almost… predatory.

Creepy.

Your fingers tightened and whitened around the edge of your desk, body frozen from the uneasiness that washed over you. Then, just as quickly, his gaze flicked away. Riddle adjusted the flame beneath his cauldron with a smooth, unwavering movement as if he’d merely been lost in thought, face now taut in concentration.

Heat rushed to your cheeks, though you weren’t sure why.

He probably zoned out, you told yourself. People stare without realizing it. It doesn’t mean anything, right? Why would he be looking at you? It was easy to drift in a class like this. And you had never spoken more than a passing word to him. You weren’t one of the girls vying for his attention. You didn’t trail after him in corridors or sigh when he walked into a room.

If anything, you made a point not to. You barely paid him mind beyond the general awareness everyone had of him. It was impossible not to at least notice someone like him. Riddle was top of every class. Professors adored him. Students either worshipped him or resented him for numerous reasons.

And yes — he was handsome. Painfully so. Anyone with functioning eyes could see that. But admiration from afar was one thing; interest was another. You preferred to know someone before you decided how you felt about them.

Even if he had dark hair that fell just slightly yet perfectly over his forehead. Blessed with sharp, aristocratic cheekbones and tiny beauty marks on pale skin that added to his devilish looks. Pink lips that seemed permanently on the verge of a polite, measured smirk that made girls swoon. Riddle was the kind of boy that had them whispering and preening and inventing foolish excuses just to brush arms with him in corridors.

But at that moment, he looked like he was out for your blood. Like you were nothing more than an animal in the wild and he was the hunter, pinning his sights on you.

You had better things to think about. So, you forced your attention back to your station, exhaling slowly and capping the flame beneath your cauldron. You willed your shoulders to relax with the release of breath before you frowned faintly to yourself.

You wondered, annoyingly, how long he had been staring before you had even noticed.

Across the room, Professor Slughorn beamed, hovering near Riddle like always.

“Splendid, Tom! Simply splendid. Textbook perfection. A natural talent, as always. Twenty points to Slytherin!”

Different reactions swept the room — admiration and heart eyes from some, irritation and jealousy from others. Riddle only inclined his head modestly, unbothered by all the attention. “Thank you, sir.”

His voice was smooth, distinct from everyone and anyone else’s, and positively heart throbbing in itself. You risked another glance at Riddle, just to reassure yourself that you’d been mistaken.

He was no longer looking at you, thankfully. Slughorn stood at his side while Riddle wore that soft smile that made people melt. He nodded his head at precisely the right moments, listening attentively as the professor praised the clarity of his brew of Amortentia, how it was the perfect viscosity and shade. He didn’t even seem all that delighted, more so expectant like he was used to it and confidently knew he would’ve had the best one in the room before walking in; like clockwork.

Nothing about his demeanor suggested he had just been staring at you like he wanted to devour you alive. You felt faintly foolish for thinking like that. Perhaps, you hadn’t seen him properly? After all, the abundant amount of steam in the room did make it rather difficult.

Lost in your thoughts, you briefly think about what Riddle must have smelled. Tom Riddle had never shown any interest in dating anyone in all his time at Hogwarts, much to the dismay of many pretty girls. Maybe he had a muggle girlfriend outside of school?

You remembered, faintly, a memory from a few months ago.

A girl you knew, Wendy, had asked him out and like always, he politely let her down. He had declined each and every love confession he had ever received with courtesy. And yet, people still had the audacity to be slighted, as if they were entitled to him and his feelings.

She had regaled to you and a few other girls the story in the library. You were all supposed to be studying, but the topic eventually drifted, like always — to boys.

“And then he said, “Thank you, but I’m afraid I’m occupied.” Occupied with what?!” Wendy scoffed, clearly hurt that she decided it’d be better to gossip badly about Riddle, red in the face.

“Honestly, he acts like he’s above everyone. It’s exhausting. And not natural.” Then, her eyes widened in realization. “You don’t think he’s… you know?”

It had bothered you, what she said.

You don’t know why to this day. Maybe it’s because you imagined a boy talking about you like that just because you didn’t feel the same way, and how it wouldn’t sit right with you, how it wouldn’t be fair for them to speculate. That you shouldn’t be forced to like specific people because that’s what was socially acceptable.

So, you defended him without thought.

“Or maybe he just doesn’t want to go out with you specifically,” you mutter, flipping a page.

Three heads turned toward you.

“That’s not the point,” Wendy scoffed, offended by your words but trying not to show it. “It’s rude. He acts like no one’s good enough for him.”

“Or,” you started, “he isn’t obligated to entertain you.”

“You defending Riddle now?” A familiar voice asked in an amused tone after a moment of silence — your best friend, you realized, when looking up from your book at last.

“I’m just saying, you can’t call someone arrogant for having boundaries.”

“We’re just talking,” another one of them snapped, some girl you didn’t know the name of to this day.

“So talk,” you replied calmly. “Just don’t act like he owes you his attention.”

A few of them exchanged glances. One shrugged. Then, the conversation shifted.

You shook your head faintly, dismissing your thoughts. It wasn’t your concern.

The bell chimed faintly in the corridor beyond the door just in time — five minutes to the end of class. Slughorn clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention. “Time, my dears! Cap your potions, label them, and leave them on this table right here. And remember — no sneaking a sample. I’ll know.”

That resulted in a few groans and bits of laughter.

Students began tidying their stations, including you — corking bottles and wiping spills. Slughorn’s back turned as he hurried to inspect a few remaining students brews of the love potion. In the chaos — with robes swishing, chairs scraping against the floor, chatter rising — no one paid attention to Tom Riddle.

His back was angled toward the class, body shielding his cauldron from view. Slughorn was still preoccupied, none the wiser.

Tom moved with hurried precision, covered by the ruckus and cluster of students. One hand slipped into the inner pocket of his robes. The other lifted his ladle. A small, glass vial appeared between his deft fingers. He tilted the utensil ever so slightly and a thin ribbon of pearlescent liquid slid into the container. Not enough to be obvious and change the level in the cauldron, the right amount for him to take.

He corked it carefully and quietly before it vanished into his robes. By the time Slughorn turned back around, Tom busied himself with packing up his things unhurriedly; entirely innocent. He gathered his books neatly, cleaned up his area with a flick of his yew wand, and stood waiting for dismissal like the exemplary student everyone believed him to be — even bidding a polite farewell to the Professor like he does at the end of every class, receiving an oblivious smile from the man in return.

Slughorn clearly did not know.

Soon enough, you’re next to step out into the corridor with your friends.

As you walked with them, curling a strand of hair behind your ear whilst complaining about your next class — behind you, footsteps followed at a distance.

Tom Riddle was staring at you again.

And you walked away, unaware.

Valentine’s Day arrived like a fever spreading inside Hogwarts.

The dormitory had been awake before dawn. You awoke to whispers around you and the rustle of tissue paper. The sharp, sweet scent of perfume clouded the air. Ribbons were tied, taken down, and then retied into hair to perfection. Girls were already sitting cross-legged on their beds in silk nightgowns and perfectly brushed hair, opening velvet boxes and parcels tied in satin ribbon. One girl squealed while another flushed and tried to pretend she hadn’t been waiting for this day all week when opening her package. Someone even shrieked when an owl tapped the window with a parcel of sugared candies.

You rolled onto your back with a sigh, lying still for a moment, staring up at the canopy above your bed as you listened to the excitement around you.

It wasn’t that you cared about today or longed for a boy. It was your decision, countless times, to not have a boyfriend. And you wouldn’t want just any boy approaching you today with trembling hands and a rehearsed declaration of love. In fact, the thought of a public decree made your stomach tighten since you would have to gently decline — and that was humiliating enough for one party. You had no desire in entertaining feelings you did not share like some of your acquaintances.

Still.

It would have been… nice. To be chosen.

You smiled when appropriate as other girls showed off their Valentine’s gifts; a small, traitorous pang in your chest. Ridiculous. You weren’t interested in anyone. You shook it off, rising from the mattress to wash up in the restroom and get dressed for classes that day.

Your uniform was pristine like always, white blouse pressed and colored tie straightened. You smoothed your skirt over your thighs, stockings reaching just below the knee, shoes polished. You brushed your hair until it shone and left it down before fastening your cloak. You dabbed a faint touch of your everyday perfume on your wrists because for you, it was just another day.

When you made your way into the common room, you saw girls clutching bouquets of all different types of colors and chocolates wrapped in boxes.

The corridors were no different, buzzing like a beehive. And by the time you reached the staircases, the castle was alive more than it has ever been — even during the Christmas holidays. Enchanted cupids flitted about and abundant laughter echoed against the stone walls of the castle.

You adjusted the strap of your satchel and eventually met up with your friends at your usual spot, walking towards the Great Hall together, their chatter echoing around you about the latest drama: who got what and from who or who hadn’t gotten anything and ended up splitting on today of all days. You tuned them out until a different name cut through the noise.

“Did you see him?” a pair of Slytherin girls hissed in hushed excitement as you passed. “With a whole bouquet of flowers, I swear! And chocolates too — the expensive kind.”

“Who?”

“Tom Riddle.”

Your steps faltered before you could stop yourself.

The other girl gasped. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not! He was coming up from the dungeons. He had them transfigured so it wasn’t obvious, but I know what I saw.”

You didn’t turn your head. You kept walking before you could linger too long and appear obvious. You had no right to be curious. You barely spoke to him. And you most certainly were not one of the girls who trailed after him like moths to a flame.

Tom Riddle with roses.

With chocolates.

It was almost absurd.

It sounded absurd.

You truly hadn’t meant to listen, truly. Riddle had never shown interest in anyone publicly. He seemed the private type and further more, was single to the point he had never even been rumored to have dated anyone because everyone would know it to be untrue in a heartbeat. But, perhaps he did have someone this entire time. Someone worth keeping a secret of.

You found, to your irritation, that you were curious. It must be someone in school, then.

But who? Who had finally stolen his heart and had the Tom Riddle so enamored?

The Great Hall doors opened to an alive spectacle of owls swooping low through the high windows and dropping parcels into waiting hands, charmed doves fluttering between floating hearts that drifted lazily beneath the enchanted ceiling which had been charmed to a pale pink sunrise with pearly light despite the real one outside being dull and grey like it had been for the last few days, anticipating a storm.

The House tables were louder than usual, scattered with unwrapped sweets and floral arrangements that clashed with everything else in a nearby vicinity.

You scanned the Slytherin table without meaning to.

Riddle wasn’t there.

You exhaled harshly through your nose, annoyed with yourself for searching.

You took your usual place at your table — the same bit of bench you had claimed since first year with your friend group, the same place anyone could find you in the mornings. Predictable. Safe. Like everything you choose. You spooned whipped cream onto your waffles, adding sliced strawberries and a drizzle of syrup on them.

Cadence lightly nudged you with her elbow, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “If someone asks you to be their Valentine today — hypothetically — you’re saying yes, aren’t you?”

“I would hypothetically decline,” you retort dryly, cutting through your waffle.

“How cruel you are to every boy who would be lucky to have you.”

You lifted an unimpressed brow. “I have standards.”

She laughed. “You’ll end up alone at this rate.”

“I’m not afraid of being alone.”

That much was true.

You were about to take your first bite when a shadow fell across your plate.

You looked up, pulse jumping.

A Slytherin boy stood there. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him before. Cute, but not your type. And he looked… nervous. His fingers flexed at his sides with a kind of strained urgency. For a fleeting, mortifying second, you imagined him clearing his throat and announcing — loudly — that he would be honored if you would accompany him today. In front of all these people.

Your heart gave one uncomfortable thud.

Please don’t let him do this here.

“Yes?” you asked slowly, lips drawn in a tight line, already preparing the polite apology on your tongue.

He swallowed. “Er— sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s fine,” you said, your fork hovering midair, frozen like a statue as you wait for the inevitable.

“Professor Slughorn would like to see you.”

Relief washed over you instantly, your features softening and shoulders relaxing. Thankfully, it wasn’t a love confession. Still, your brows knit together. “Now?”

“Yes. In the courtyard.”

You glanced instinctively towards the staff table. Slughorn wasn’t there. Though, a flicker of doubt continued to brush against your mind.

“What for?” you asked, turning your head back to the boy.

He hesitated. “I-I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

Your friend chimed in. “That’s odd.”

You agreed.

Still, there was no obvious reason to refuse. You hadn’t done anything wrong. And if it were truly important, you couldn’t very well ignore it. Maybe it was about schoolwork. You set your fork down with visible reluctance, eyeing your plate with mild mourning and a pout. The whipped cream was already softening into the waffle, syrup pooling at the edges.

A waste.

“If I’m not back in ten minutes, eat that,” you told your friend, gesturing with a tilt of your chin.

“So selfless,” one of them replied solemnly.

“I know.”

You rose, smoothing your skirt, adjusting your cloak over your shoulders before leaning down to grab your bag from the wooden seat and hook it around your shoulder. The boy stepped aside at once to let you pass, relief evident in his posture — as if he had been afraid you might refuse. Though, you can’t imagine what was so frightening about Slughorn that made him tremble so.

The corridors beyond the Great Hall were quieter now, the morning frenzy thinning out as you stepped out into them.

Chatter faded behind you, replaced by the echo of your own footsteps against the stone hallways of the castle. Light filtered through the high windows as best it could with dark skies as you walked further down. When you made your way to the courtyard however, your steps slowed at the sight that greeted you.

You stepped through the arched doorway into the open space. The cold bit at you at once, stealing the warmth from your cheeks. The fountain at the center trickled faintly as water spilled over marble into its basin. Grey clouds sagged overhead, heavy with unshed rain, the stones beneath your shoes damp.

It was completely vacant.

There was always a student or two loitering around, but now, it was unnaturally silent. Not like the peaceful kind you preferred. And there was no Professor Slughorn bustling about. You frowned, uneasiness coiled low in your stomach and sliding beneath your ribs. The courtyard was never empty — even on a day like this.

You shifted your satchel higher on your shoulder, glancing toward the archways as if the professor might appear from behind a column.

You found yourself almost turning back. For reasons you couldn’t explain, you wished you were still at your table in the Great Hall, surrounded by your friends, scarfing down sugary waffles. Thunder clapped overhead like a bad omen.

“I’m glad you came.”

You startled violently despite yourself, breath catching, spinning around too quickly. It unsettled you more than you cared to admit that you hadn’t heard him approach at all.

That voice was unmistakable.

Tom Riddle stood a few paces behind you as though he had always been there. Your heart leapt traitorously in your chest.

Riddle looked striking and flawless as always. Dark hair combed neatly with a curl falling deliberately over his forehead. His Slytherin tie was perfectly knotted, robes falling straight and sharp along his lean, slightly muscular frame. The faintest flush from the cold touched his pale skin, but he did not seem to feel it.

In one hand, he held a box of chocolates wrapped in ribbon. In the other — a bouquet.

Your favorite flowers.

Your breath caught.

It could be coincidence, you told yourself. Flowers were flowers. Anyone could like them. Perhaps he had chosen them at random. Perhaps he was waiting for someone else and you had merely wandered into the scene by accident. Your mind scrambled for reasons because you had a feeling this situation was headed a certain direction that you weren’t sure how to deal with.

Riddle held your gaze steadily, as if he could see each frantic thought as it passed through you.

“I’m waiting for Professor Slughorn,” you said too quickly, the words tumbling out before he asked anything. “He sent for me.”

Why were you explaining yourself?

You avoided his eyes, studying instead the collar of his robe, the way his fingers curved around the base of the bouquet. You felt awkward and absurdly aware of how alone you were with him. Riddle’s gaze rested on you, assessing. There was something faintly amused in the curve of his mouth — and not the warm kind. More like, he knew something you didn’t.

“I’m afraid,” he started gently, “that Professor Slughorn will not be joining you.”

The words prickled at your skin like a bite.

You blinked, looking up at that.

“What?”

“I asked Nott to fetch you.” He tilted his head slightly like he had a habit of doing, studying your reaction with dark brown eyes, ones that felt too intense on you. “I wanted a moment alone.”

For a second, you could only stare at him.

“You lied?” The accusation left you before you could soften it.

Riddle did not falter. If anything, that faint amusement deepened on his gorgeous features, dark and unfairly perfect brows lifting a fraction. “Would you have come if I had asked you myself?”

Your lips parted automatically, ready to retort with something sharp or clever, that he didn’t need deception or to intimidate someone enough to do his bidding — but the truth remained stuck in your throat.

Because no. You wouldn’t have.

You didn’t know him. Not really. You had exchanged perhaps a handful of words in passing. If Tom Riddle had approached you openly in the Great Hall, with half the school watching, you would have declined out of instinct alone.

You pressed your lips together in defeat.

Riddle’s smirk deepened with satisfaction.

“I thought not,” he murmured. He stepped closer, not enough to invade your space, but enough that you could feel his intensity.

Then, “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said suddenly.

It wasn’t a stammering confession you had braced yourself for from some nervous boy. His voice was steady, like a statement rather than a request. He extended the bouquet and chocolates toward you, waiting.

The gesture was immaculate, private, considerate. Exactly the sort of confession you would have preferred without a spectacle or an audience.

The courtyard felt even quieter. Somehow, you couldn’t even hear the single chirp of a bird.

You were acutely aware of the space between you. The way Riddle’s eyes did not leave your face, as if he was deciphering your every thought just from your expressions like how a snake would assess its meal before lunging. He seemed entirely certain of himself.

Then, it hits you that he must have been the one to clear the courtyard. Of course. Who else could have that type of power? Your pulse thudded in your ears, heat creeping up your cheeks. He had orchestrated this entire thing.

And he had done everything right.

For a tiny moment, you imagined accepting. You imagined walking back into the castle at his side, flowers in your arms. You imagined the looks. Too many looks. Too many whispers. Because Tom Riddle was always being watched. Either out of admiration or envy. If you stepped into his orbit, you would not be permitted anonymity again. There would be jealous girls, speculation, and endless scrutiny from every direction. The resentment from those who had tried and failed to get close to him. Your life would no longer be quiet at school.

And beneath that practical reasoning, there was something else — the simple truth being that you did not know him.

And under that, the memory of that look in class — the way he had stared at you through the steam as if claiming something that did not yet belong to him.

And Tom Riddle did nothing without purpose.

So, why you?

You were not one of the girls who trailed after him in corridors. You didn’t blush when he entered a room. You didn’t whisper about him.

Perhaps… that was precisely why.

“Tom,” you began carefully, fingers tightening around your bag’s strap like a lifeline as you swallowed. “Riddle, I mean,” once you realized how familiar you sounded unintentionally. You noticed he straightened a little at that. “I-I’m sorry.”

And you truly meant it. But the next few words caught in your throat when you saw the flicker of the same expression from the dungeon — the one that had frozen you in place. His cold eyes sharpened with displeasure and something possessive. A chill shot down your spine. But, then it was gone, vanishing almost instantly — as if it’d never been there. The polite mask slid back into place so seamlessly that you almost doubted you had seen his other face at all.

“I can’t accept this,” you finished softly. “I didn’t know… I mean, we’ve never even—” You huffed, frustrated with yourself. “It wouldn’t be right.”

A silence so deafening stretched between you.

You couldn’t meet his eye. Riddle hadn’t moved at all from your peripheral. But then, he spoke at last, “I see...”

Surprisingly, he hadn’t looked embarrassed or wounded. There was not a hint of a tremor in his voice or a trace of bitterness — and somehow, it unsettled you more than pure anger might have.

“I appreciate your honesty.”

He sounded thoughtful. So, you found your shoulders loosening.

“I hope there aren’t any hard feelings,” you added carefully, brows furrowed.

“None,” he assured you with a flutter of his dark lashes, polite and unbothered as ever like the proper gentleman he was. Then, almost as an afterthought, Riddle lifted the box slightly to you. “At least take these.”

You hesitated.

“I know how fond you are of them,” he continued, tone mild. “It would be a shame to let them go to waste.”

Your brows drew together faintly. “How did you—”

He gave the smallest shrug. “It isn’t a secret.”

It wasn’t. You were rarely without something sugary in hand. Anyone observant enough could notice. And Tom Riddle was observant. You studied him one last time before slowly reaching out and accepting the chocolates, the edge of the box cool against your sweaty fingers.

“Thank you,” you said, offering a small, apologetic smile. “Truly.”

His gaze dipped briefly to your hand as it closed fully around the container of chocolates, a small smile on his lips.

“You’re welcome.”

“And… I am sorry,” you added once more for great measure.

Riddle smiled reassuringly. “There’s nothing to forgive.” Then, he adds with a tone that sounded innocently hopeful, “But, if you do happen to change your mind, I’ll be at the Astronomy Tower this evening. I hear the stars will be rather exceptionally beautiful tonight.”

The statement seemed so casual that it hadn’t even hit you that it’ll be storming all week, that the skies wouldn’t be visible for the next few days. But, you nodded anyway just to be nice. You had just rejected his feelings after all…

With a step back, hands folding neatly behind him, the bouquet remained there, hidden from your view. He inclined his head with quiet courtesy. You nodded in return, already turning, eager for the warmth and noise of the Hogwarts corridors. With each step away from him, your lungs seemed to fill more easily. You slipped the chocolates into your satchel and adjusted the strap over your shoulder. By the time you reached the archway, you had almost convinced yourself the entire encounter had been harmless. Unfortunate, perhaps — but civil.

You were lucky Riddle was so understanding.

As you walked off, behind you, Tom did not move. He watched you until the stone walls of the school swallowed you from sight as if he could still see you through them.

The polite expression dissolved the instant you disappeared. His jaw tightened, broad shoulders becoming rigid beneath his robes. And behind his back, his fingers tightened around the stems of the bouquet until his knuckles turned white. They bent and snapped under his unforgiving grip. The pretty flowers blackened at an unnatural pace right at the edges before gradually bleeding inward at an alarming speed. The delicate petals wilted, reduced to something lifeless and small.

Tom’s remained eerily calm other than that. A petal fell soundlessly, and he watched as it reached the wet stone at his feet.

He smiled.

Then, he threw the bouquet to the ground like dirt before turning, his cloak sweeping behind him.

Thankfully, the rest of the day passed by in a haze.

The castle’s Valentine’s fever broke slowly but surely. By afternoon, the romance had dulled. Very few couples still walked too close in the corridors, smiling and holding hands. Girls with broken hearts huddled with blotchy eyes while their friends stroked their hair and whispered assurances. The enchanted decor had long since tired themselves out.

You drifted through it, lost in your own head as your mind wouldn’t stop circling back to him.

Tom Riddle had wanted you.

It still felt crazy, but you knew it now. That in Potions, he must have smelled you.

“Are you even listening?” A friend hissed at you during Transfiguration, nudging your knee under the desk.

You blinked, snapping out of your daze, quill hovering uselessly above parchment, dripping ink from the tip in large blots and ruining your work. “What?”

She stared. “Professor Merrythought just asked you a question.”

Heat flared in your cheeks, eyes darting around the class and then apologetically to the Professor.

“Right. Sorry.” You forced your attention forward, ignoring the low ripple of snickers.

Your mind felt like it was moving through syrup, and you kept it all to yourself. In Arithmancy, you lost track of numbers you usually handled with ease. In History of Magic, you stared through Professor Binns as if he were smoke.

You had never truly noticed how many classes you shared with Tom Riddle before today. Now, it felt excessive. Potions, Transfiguration, Defense, Ancient Runes. He had always been there — but you had never catalogued the frequency of his presence until now. Riddle always sat with his back straight. His quill moved with elegant strokes as he took notes. He answered every question asked of him and was always correct.

And he did not look at you once.

Not even once.

A part of you bristled.

It bothered you more than if he had glared across the room because he was unbothered as ever. It was as if the courtyard had not happened. As if he had not offered you your favorite flowers and waited for your answer. Why ask if he did not care?

You caught yourself watching the side of his face during Transfiguration, tracing the sharp line of his cheekbone, the faint hollow beneath it, the way his long and skillful hands worked his wand. You noticed he liked to fidget with it a lot — running his fingers along the side, caressing, holding it delicately like it was an extension of himself. Riddle suddenly shifted slightly in his seat, and you looked away at once, heart pounding madly in your chest.

You should be grateful. This is what you wanted, you reminded yourself. You would have hated his scorn. You would have hated whispers and pointed stares. This was the better outcome. You didn’t want to be known as the girl who rejected Tom Riddle even when your chest tightened unpleasantly each time he gathered his books without so much as glancing your way.

So, why did it feel like something was terribly wrong?

By the time late afternoon crept in and you finished your classes for the day, you were already making your way to the Hogwarts library.

It was quieter than normal. Valentine’s Day had drained the castle of its usual studious population. Lamps glowed in warm, cozy pools of gold across long wooden tables. The smell of ink and old books welcomed you like an embrace. The tall windows were darker than they were before now. And most of all, it was silent in the way you liked. The library had always been your refuge.

You passed a few stragglers who also had nothing better to do on Valentine’s Day as you made your way to the back of the huge reading area, shrugging off your cloak and draping it over the armrest before sinking into a wooden chair.

As the minutes passed, books started to accumulate around you on the table. You diligently studied for your next exam, burying yourself in the library as evening settled over Hogwarts. The light outside the tall windows dimmed so slowly that you hadn’t even noticed until you took a glance and realized how much time had passed. You rolled your shoulders, flexed your aching fingers, and leaned back over your notes. You read the same line three times, finding yourself unable to focus as hunger gradually gnawed at your stomach.

It hit you that you had not eaten at all today.

Your plate at breakfast had gone unfinished, and you skipped lunch entirely to come here. The dining hall would be closing soon. You considered getting something from the kitchens later. Though in truth, your appetite had vanished after the encounter with Riddle, your mind preoccupied with other things.

Then, you remembered.

The chocolates.

You stilled, hand hovering over parchment. A small feeling of guilt bloomed in your chest. You had nearly forgotten about them.

At least I won’t starve, you thought dryly.

Thanks, Riddle.

When you reached into your satchel, your fingers brushed against something smooth and rigid. After a second of hesitation, you drew out the box. It was elegant, with dark packaging and a perfectly tied ribbon. It felt nice and cool against your warm fingers that had been working for hours.

You set it on the table, undoing the carefully knotted bow, and lifted the lid almost excitedly. You loved chocolate, and you were always curious about the taste of different ones. A container like this would surely hold varying types that you were interested in trying. Some could have a filling of jam, or caramel, or a different flavor chocolate inside. The possibilities were endless.

Where others sought spontaneity in their real lives, you found it in chocolate. Because chocolate was the one thing that could never hurt you.

When you set the top aside, you saw that inside lay neat rows of white chocolates, each one ornate and delicately crafted, faintly glossy under the light. Your breath caught at how stunning they were, and you inhaled. A smile curled onto your lips despite yourself, giddy in your seat like a child.

They smelled exquisitely divine. They looked like the sweet and rich type, very expensive — just as the Slytherin girl from this morning had claimed. Too pretty you didn’t even want to eat them. You didn’t question how he knew of your preference. Because you rarely went a week without white chocolate; anyone paying enough attention could have noticed.

And Tom Riddle paid attention.

Your stomach gave a sudden, sharp pang at the enticing scent.

With the grace of an eager child, you picked one up and brought it to your mouth. The smooth chocolate melted instantly on your tongue, silky and decadent. A soft, pleased moan escaped from your lips before you could stop it. Embarrassed heat rushed to your cheeks, and you glanced around.

Merlin.

You hope no one heard that.

You swallowed quickly, your hunger starting to satiate bit by bit, before your fingers reached for another without thinking. The second tasted even sweeter. A warmth like no other continued to spread in your chest, like something had been wound tight and was now loosening itself. You leaned back slightly in your seat, tilting your head and humming in satisfaction as your eyes shut for just a moment.

Tom’s face suddenly surfaced in your mind with startling clarity, but not with the typical unease that came with it before.

You only remembered the charming curve of his soft, pink lips. The single, adorable curl that always falls over his forehead like it’s dying to be tamed, fixed back into place by your gentle hand. His strong, broad shoulders and the confident, attractive way he carried himself. The way his voice had dipped almost sensually, eyes smoldering when he told you Happy Valentine’s Day.

Your fingers tightened around the edge of the box.

Why had you said no?

You were confused.

Tom had been awfully considerate earlier today. He had known exactly what you would prefer. He had arranged everything so carefully. The lie, the empty courtyard, the timing to give you peace of mind.

Your pulse quickened.

Tom had looked at you like you were the only person in his world.

A soft, almost aching pressure built beneath your ribs. You could picture him so vividly now that it made your breath shallow. He was extraordinary. Brilliant in every class. Admired by professors. Feared, even, by some. There was something absolutely magnetic about him — something no one else had.

And he had chosen you.

A sharp wave of regret washed over you, sudden and consuming. How foolish you must have seemed. How cold. You had rejected him without even trying to understand him. You wanted conversation, you told yourself. You wanted to know someone first.

Tom had been trying to give you that chance.

And you had hurt him.

The realization struck with surprising force.

He had stood there — perfectly composed — while you rejected him. Tom had offered you your favorite flowers and you felt a pang of regret now at not taking them when you had the chance.

Your heart began to race in earnest, a dizzying rhythm that made your fingers tremble slightly. The warmth in your chest deepened, spreading into your throat and then to your limbs like fire. You felt unsteady and lightheaded. The thought of him alone somewhere in the castle, alone because you had sent him away—

No.

The idea of it twisted painfully in your heart like a knife.

“But, if you do happen to change your mind, I’ll be at the Astronomy Tower this evening. I hear the stars will be rather exceptionally beautiful tonight.”

You glanced toward the tall windows of the castle library. The sky outside was darkening rapidly, clouds thick and dark grey. It might storm soon tonight. Tom had said the stars would be beautiful. But perhaps he had only meant it as an excuse. An offering. It didn’t matter.

You had been so careless. Of course you had feelings for him. How could you not? Every glance he’d ever given you now felt charged in retrospect. Potions class — earlier, you figured out he had smelled you. That was why he’d stared. Tom was drawn to you. He hungered for you.

You released a soft gasp, your heart thudding harder.

Better yet, he understood you like no one else did. You were sure of it now. He had watched quietly, learned your preferences and your habits. The thought of him doing just that, of staring at you for long periods of time without you even realizing just to understand you made your heart soar, a flush blooming on your cheeks. Taking his time, he had waited for the right moment to confess. You pressed your fingers lightly to your lips, trying to steady your rapid breathing that sounded almost like panting.

You needed to see him. A need that felt important above all else.

You needed to go. You needed to fix this. Not tomorrow. Now. He must have thought you didn’t care. He must have believed you dismissed him as easily as the other boys who tried.

Standing abruptly, your chair scraped loudly against the floor. A few students glanced up from distant tables, annoyed — you even earned a soft shush from somewhere to your right — but you barely registered it. Your pulse hammered in your ears now, loud enough to drown out reason. Every thought circled back to him — his voice, his eyes, the way he had said your name.

How had you not seen it before?

Tom was perfect.

Handsome. Intelligent. The very idea of him made your stomach flutter and your pulse quicken. Of all the girls who trailed after him, who whispered about him, who would have fallen at his feet if he so much as glanced their way — he had only looked at you.

A soft ache spread beneath your ribs. You had mistaken him. He hadn’t looked unbothered today because he didn’t care. Tom was giving you space.

Your throat tightened.

Tom was waiting for you.

He had said he would be at the Astronomy Tower this evening. It was evening. He might leave. The idea filled you with an unreasonable urgency. What if he thought you truly meant your refusal? What if he decided you were not worth pursuing? What if someone else—

No.

Your stomach twisted at the notion.

Your books and parchment lay forgotten as you close the lid of the chocolate box with careful, trembling hands and slipped it back into your bag, clutching it close as though it were something precious. You didn’t even bother with your cloak. The thought of missing him made your chest constrict. He would understand. He always seemed to understand. Tom was always so understanding.

You loved him.

The realization felt less like a question and more like an admission of truth you had been avoiding. It explained the awareness of him and the irritation at his composure. You had been afraid of wanting him. But he wanted you.

And you wanted— needed to see him desperately. If you didn’t, you think you’d die. You may have wasted the day, but you won’t make the mistake of wasting the night. You belonged with him. And you would not let him slip away.

The staircases seemed endless.

You didn’t remember leaving the library. You barely felt your feet striking stone as you ran, the slap of your shoes against stairs you nearly missed, fingers clutching freezing stone banisters to swing yourself around corners. Students cursed with startled protests as you shoved past without apology; one boy nearly dropped his books.

Someone may have called your name. You weren’t sure. The only thing you were sure of was Tom. Nothing mattered in the moment except him.

The castle was extremely chilly after sunset. Cool wind slipped through narrow slits, raising goosebumps along your bare arms through your thin blouse, yet heat pulsed under your skin — feverish and burning. You had left your cloak draped over the library chair. It did not occur to you to go back for it. So, you had forgotten it. Forgotten your books. Forgotten everything except him.

Tom.

Every minuscule and unimportant thought curved back to him. Your mind whispered his name like a prayer. Your breath tore in and out of your lungs as though you had been running for miles. Up spiral staircases. Through corridors and past suits of armor. The storm had begun outside; you could hear it building — wind battering the windows, distant thunder rolling like a warning.

None of it mattered.

There was only one fixed point in the world, and it was at the top of the Astronomy Tower.

You took the final staircase, breathing shallow in uneven gasps, heart rate frantic and desperate — fingers gripping the metal railing to steady yourself. The tower door loomed ahead, iron latch glinting at you mockingly. You shoved it open with strength you weren’t even aware you possessed just to get to him.

The wind struck you fully at once, brisk and furious, carrying the faint scent of rain washed stone. It whipped your hair around your face, but you paid it no mind. The sky was ominous and frightening, nothing like what he had promised.

Yet, amidst it all was your North Star. Your guiding light. Funny, wasn’t it? That he was in the Astronomy Tower of all places.

The clouds hid the heavens, but Tom glowed as he stood in the dark of night at the balcony’s edge, facing the horizon with his back to you, hands resting lightly on the railings. The storm swallowed the sky, but in your vision he was lit from within. The only thing illuminated. The only thing that mattered. His dark robes stirred with the breeze, the fabric clinging and releasing against his lean frame. You could only see the elegant line of his neck and the sharp angle of his jaw. He looked carved from shadow and pale marble, perfectly still against the raging weather.

You could only stare in awe.

He looked like he belonged to the night.

The beauty of what lay in front of your eyes made your breath catch in your throat.

“Tom.”

The name left you with reverence and breathlessness, almost disbelieving — like you had stumbled upon something sacred.

He turned.

At that moment, thunder cracked overhead. Lightning split across the sky in a violent flare of white, bathing Tom in a sudden light. For a heartbeat, your world froze with that flash. He looked like an angel. The light carved his high cheekbones, hollowed shadows beneath them, kissable lips curved in something that was not quite surprise.

His brown eyes found yours instantly before the faintest smile touched his lips — and somehow, you felt like you could breathe again. Like your entire world had rightened itself under your feet. Because Tom looked so happy to see you.

Rain began to mist in the air, cool against your flushed cheeks.

“I wondered how long it would take,” he finally spoke, voice carrying easily through the harsh winds. Your heart trembled at the melodious sound.

The implication in his tone flew right over your head. You only heard his voice, smooth like velvety chocolate on the tongue. It wrapped around you like warmth which you were in desperate need of.

Tom knew you would come. And he waited, so patiently. He knew you better than you knew yourself.

You stepped toward Tom before you even realized you were moving, like he was a magnet. Then again. And again. The distance— the separation between you felt unbearable.

And Tom watched closely the entire time, tracing over you slowly in a way that made you shudder from the intensity. He took note of everything, studied you. The lack of a cloak and your thin blouse which did nothing against the chill as if you had rushed over here. The flushed cheeks and your heaving breasts. The wild shine in your eyes. The way your hands trembled slightly at your sides.

Tom’s gaze darkened with something akin to pleasure.

“You’re cold,” he observed, though his voice carried no real concern.

“I don’t care,” you whispered.

Every step closed the space and yet it was never fast enough. The wind tangled your hair across your face, but you did not brush it away. You could not look anywhere except at him.

“You were right,” you choked out, your voice unsteady. “About the stars.”

Tom paused for a moment, faintly confused before his lips tugged at the corners in amusement at your state of delirium. It was, after all, an effect of the Amortentia he put in the chocolates you took from him this morning. It was also the last thing he had said to you in parting, and so, it wasn’t surprising you would be fixated on it.

“I’m usually right.”

You know that now, down to your marrow.

“You’re beautiful,” you breathed instead, unable to help yourself from commenting on it. Up close, he was overwhelming. And that smile on his face was devilishly handsome. It gave you butterflies. Satisfaction flickered in his eyes — eyes like dark chocolate. You loved chocolate and you loved Tom.

You reached for him to steady yourself as though you had been falling all along. And the second your fingers touched the fabric of his robes, the world narrowed to that single point of contact. He was real. And he was yours. Tom stood at the center of your universe — like the stars, burning and eternal.

“I—” Your voice trembled suddenly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see it,” your words tumbled over one another. “I didn’t understand earlier. I was foolish. I thought— I thought I didn’t know you. But I do. I must. I just— didn’t want to be… like the others.”

A huff of amusement came from Tom.

“You are nothing like the others.”

By the look on Tom’s face, he seemed to be telling the truth, so sure of himself and what he had spoken to you. Of course he was. Tom would never lie to you. He did earlier today, but that was because he knew you’d be too stubborn to listen then. Again, an example of how well he knew you.

Another roll of thunder swallowed your words.

You closed the final, treacherous inch between you and collided into him like a supernova, fingers fisting into the fabric of his robes, pressing yourself against his chest as though proximity alone could steady the storm inside you. Your arms wound around his waist, clutching him tightly as though he might vanish into a black hole.

Tom went rigid beneath your touch.

A subtle tension rippled through him as if your unrestrained contact took him by surprise. But it was gone almost instantly. His arms came around you with one hand settled at your lower back, the other sliding possessively at your nape, fingers threading lightly into your hair.

You melted into his burning touch. His hands felt like a furnace on a cold night. You took advantage of the situation, inhaling the scent off his clean clothes. And God, he was the best thing you ever smelt — better than chocolate. Better than the ones he had given you that tasted sweeter with every bite you took. You wondered if Tom’s lips tasted the same.

“I thought I didn’t need anyone,” you continued, your voice breaking as hot tears streamed down your cheeks. “But when I left you this morning, i-it felt like I couldn’t breathe.” Your fingers tightened in the fabric at his back. “It felt like something was crushing my chest.”

Tom’s hand at your neck flexed with subtle pressure, guiding you closer. His chin lowered slightly — so tall, so tall — resting against the crown of your head. He did not hush you. He only listened. Oh, Tom. He was perfect in every way.

“Did it?” He murmured softly in return, voice near you ear. His thumb brushed upward along your spine in a slow, absent movement. Safe. You felt safe in his arms. You only nodded against him hysterically, fingers clutching at his robes, wrinkling the immaculate fabric.

Tom’s gaze lifted to the stormy, dark horizon in the background as you spoke into his chest. He had known you would come. The amount of love potion he put into the chocolates were enough to tilt you gently in the direction you were meant to face. Toward him.

“I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think. I kept seeing you. And I realized…” Your breath hitched. “I realized I can’t be without you. I don’t want to be. I need you,” you finally confessed, cheeks hot, fisting his shirt. The words trembled as they came out of you, but they were certain. You were afraid for him to leave you, to be alone.

“I need you like I need air, Tom.”

The wind howled faintly around the tower, tugging at your hair and at his cloak with fiercer ferocity. The storm clapped mercilessly above, rain starting to pouring heavily into the balcony which you both stood near at an angle. Tom stepped closer inside to avoid being hit much by it, leading you backwards with him.

You barely noticed, eyes locked on his face like you couldn’t look away; entranced.

Tom tilted your chin up with two fingers. You looked at him through tear blurred vision, cheeks flushed, lashes wet, lips parted and wobbly. Devotion was written plainly across your face. Worship and unwavering loyalty. Tom’s gaze swept over you slowly, drinking you in. He couldn’t help but swallow, pale throat bobbing.

Perfect. You were… perfect like this.

“You want me? You need me?” He repeated very quietly, voice raspy as he cupped your cheek. It sounded like gospel to your ears. You leaned into his hand. Honestly, you could hear Tom speak all day. You almost hated yourself for having to respond because he went silent just to hear you. But Tom wanted you to talk to him, and you would do anything to make him happy.

“Yes,” you gasped, your response immediate and absolute.

Tom’s thumb brushed beneath your eye, catching the edge of a tear as he collected it onto his finger. He examined the moisture on his skin briefly before letting his hand fall.

“I don’t give my attention lightly,” Tom hummed. “You know that.”

“I know.”

“And when I decide something belongs to me…” His eyes held yours, unblinking. You inhaled sharply. “I do not let it go easily.”

A shiver ran down your spine.

“I don’t want you to,” you whispered.

Tom’s hand slid from your jaw to the curve of your waist, fingers spreading there as though testing the shape of you, claiming you. You leaned into him further. He drew you impossibly closer than that, your body pressed against his fully now. You could feel the steady rhythm of his heart beneath your palm. It wasn’t beating erratically like yours.

Your fingers slid higher along his chest, curling near his collar. He doesn’t stop you.

“I want you.”

The statement hung in the air as Tom simply looked down at you.

“You have me,” Tom said at last, and your heart swelled painfully at that. He understood. He always understood. You buried your face against his chest again, tears barely dampening the front of his rain soaked clothes. His hand moved to the back of your neck once more.

“And you won’t run again,” he murmured, and it sounded like seduction.

“No.”

His thumb pressed lightly at the base of your throat, just enough to feel the frantic pulse there, tilting your head back up ever so slightly to meet his eyes.

“Say it.”

You swallowed, and he felt it against his finger. You were completely vulnerable in this position. And yet, your breath shook wildly, eyes dilated.

“I won’t run from you.”

The faintest hum left him, almost content.

“Good girl.”

Your breath hitched at the praise. Good girl. You wanted to hear it again and again until it was etched into your bones. Your lips parted instinctively as if asking for more without words. Lightning flashed again, closer now. The harsh breeze mauled at your damp hair, whipping it across your face again. He reached up and smoothed it back with unsettling gentleness.

“You belong with me,” you practically begged. “Don’t you see? I belong with you.”

“I was hoping,” he started carefully, pausing to look over your expression, “that you would come to that conclusion on your own.”

Your heart seized at that. He had believed in you. He had waited.

“I love you,” you hiccuped, the words tumbling out without hesitation.

Silence followed. Droplets of rain striked the stone around you.

“You couldn’t live without me?” Tom asked.

You shook your head helplessly, enamored with him and hanging onto his every word.

“No.”

A faint exhale left him — almost a laugh, but not quite. For all his contempt of love potions, Tom could not deny their elegance.

He had always despised them — weak little instruments for those too pathetic to command any type of devotion on their own merit. The irony of his own conception had burned that hatred into him early. A foolish girl from a crumbling line, infatuated with a filthy Muggle, desperate enough to drug him into counterfeit affection. A love potion slipped into a drink. A Muggle man ensnared. And from that humiliating farce — him. His mother had begged for love. And when it slipped through her fingers, she had withered.

Lord Voldemort would never wither.

Lord Voldemort would never be weak.

He would never beg a filthy Muggle to stay. He would never cling to someone who did not choose him freely. He would never lose control of himself the way his mother had. Tom did not feed you this potion because he lacked control over you. He brewed it because power — which was neither good nor evil — meant using every bit of magic available.

Tom Riddle was nothing like his stupid mother.

Merope had dosed Tom Riddle Sr because she feared he would leave. Tom had dosed you because you would not have the good sense to stay. Because you were stubborn in that infuriatingly, principled way. Because you required… encouragement.

And now?

His hand tightened subtly at your nape, thumb pressing into the pulse at your neck just beneath your skin as if testing it. You trembled for him. You burned for him. You had run through the castle, abandoned dignity, abandoned sense, abandoned warmth — because you needed him.

A memory flickered through his mind.

It would be months ago from now. He had not meant to linger in that aisle longer than necessary, running a simple errand for a professor before he heard his name. Now, Tom was by far not an uncommon name, he admitted to himself with bitterness. But, he recognized the voice. Out of pure instinct, he peeked through the shelves, curious and silent, gaze sharp through the narrow, emptied out spaces between spines of ancient books in the castle library.

Tom saw one of the girls who he had turned down the day before. Clearly, she was not as okay with it as she had pretended to be and would gladly tear him apart for sport in front of her pathetic friends. Not that he cared about such trivial matters. The concept of love was the least of his concerns. He knew what to expect. Tom could read people like an open book. Resentment and hurt; he had grown accustomed to nurturing it in others every time he said the word no.

But then, he heard you.

Defending him.

You hadn’t known he was listening. You had no idea he stood on the other side of that shelf, watching you. You had simply said what you believed to be true. That he owed no one his affection. That boundaries were not arrogance. You had sounded sincere, not a single trace of want in your tone.

It had stuck with him.

At first, he assumed it was typical teenage girl pettiness. A little rivalry using a clever remark to wound another for competition… until he realized you never once looked at him in class or in corridors. You did not smile at him shyly. You did not linger near in hopes of getting his attention. You did not even seem to care that he existed.

It wasn’t always obsession.

That was when curiosity took root.

Then, curiosity became irritation.

Tom Riddle was accustomed to being watched. To the whispers. To the desire and lust in other people’s eyes. But you — infuriatingly — refused to orbit him. Never preened. Never sought him out. You rejected boys without hesitation, as if their offers were minor inconveniences. Including Tom too, apparently.

What did you want, then? What standard did you hold that so many failed to reach? He couldn’t figure you out as easily as anyone else. And ironically, Tom Riddle hated riddles.

After closely watching you for months, he had figured out plenty about you. You lived quietly, guarding your privacy like treasure. You liked silence, he did too. But not the eerie kind like Tom did. You preferred the type that consisted of at least some natural noise. You disliked spectacles, stiffening at anything that would draw attention to you. Like him, you valued control. In some ways, you and him were not so different.

You tucked your hair behind your ear when irritated. You frowned faintly when concentrating, a look he’s seen many times when you never noticed him staring right at you. You were kind. Tom first saw it in the way you protected his name in conversations that did not concern you and he hasn’t forgotten it since.

And then, there was the chocolate — always white chocolate. It was your weakness. He had catalogued it months ago, when you unwrapped one absentmindedly. The faint smile you wore when you thought no one was looking, how you so easily lost yourself in it, brain going numb — the sight made him hungry in a way he never was growing up as a poor orphan. It made him want to ravish you where you stood. He had been looking. He was always looking at you. And you were blissfully unaware.

Tom had known you would eat what he gave you. Your sweet tooth was abominable. How could something so simple bring you so much joy? You lacked restraint when it came to sugar. He had measured the dosage of Amortentia carefully — enough to turn the tide of your stubbornness, not enough to dull your mind completely. He did not want a puppet. He wanted something that felt real, that sounded real — as real as a love potion can get.

Tom had given you the illusion of choice; in a manner of speaking. And when you still rejected him in the courtyard — just as part of him knew you would — cold fury had flared inside him, bright and violent, beneath his composed exterior. You had dared to believe there was someone better suited to you than him? How dare you find him insufficient? Who could possibly surpass him?

No one.

No one would have you.

He had orchestrated every detail to make you comfortable.

And still, you said no.

How ungrateful you were.

He had even planted the seed with Slughorn weeks before, during a late Slug Club gathering. It was a casual suggestion, an offhand remark about the curriculum timing what with Valentine’s Day approaching. Wouldn’t it be amusing to align love potions with the season? Slughorn had beamed at the brilliance of it, utterly unaware he had been maneuvered.

The pieces had arranged themselves beautifully. As they always did, the stars shone in his name — for he was the universe’s favorite. Everything would work out for Lord Voldemort in the end.

As you clung to him now, pliant, Tom felt no guilt. Only confirmation that you were not like the others — he had been right about that from the beginning. You had defended him when you owed him nothing. You had shown him something dangerously close to loyalty before he had even asked for it.

And loyalty deserved to rewarded.

In all honesty, your trust had always been your flaw. You defended him when you did not know him. You believed in goodness where others would not. You believed in him.

You were too good for your own good.

And goodness, in this world, required protection. He would be that protection. Deep down, even a god like him craved to be seen as a man from time to time. So, you would love him like one. Tom would show you how. And you would never stop.

Tom’s lips crashed onto yours with bruising force, a hand fisting in your damp hair. Deep and claiming, his tongue swept into your mouth like he was starving for the taste of you. Like he’d been starving for weeks, months, years. Like this was his first taste of life and death all at once. You gasped against him, overwhelmed — and Tom took the opportunity by deepening the kiss, your body arching instinctively into his chest, a hand gripping your waist hard enough to bruise.

He backed you against the stone walls of the Astronomy tower, thigh nudged between yours, pressure settling exactly where heat pooled most desperately. You whimpered, a broken sound swallowed by another searing kiss.

Tom’s hands were everywhere — rough, impatient, possessive. He shoved your skirt up past your hips without breaking the kiss, wand calloused fingers dragging over bare skin before finding your panties soaked with slick. He growled into your mouth at the feeling. A dark, satisfied sound that made you even wetter.

Tom didn’t let up, your whimpers going straight to his groin. He fed off every breathless sound you made, every tremble that ran through your frame at his touch. When he finally pulled back an inch, his brown eyes burned down at yours, flashing red almost. They were feral.

“So wet,” he rasped against your lips, tone thick with something between disbelief and satisfaction with you. “For me?”

You could only nod frantically as his thumb circled once over swollen flesh like a loving caress one would absentmindedly give an animal, a slow tease, before taking them away. Before you could complain however, without warning, Tom dropped to his knees before you on those cold stone floors drenched by windblown rainwater pooling near your feet and gently pushed up your soaked skirt once more. The second his cold, powerful fingers brushed your inner thigh, you shivered.

Tom looked up at you through dark lashes. Droplets of rain streaked down his pale face. His hands were steady, skillful— too calm for a prodigy that was about to do something so filthy on a magical tower where anyone could find them.

But then again, Tom had never cared about rules when it came to getting what he wanted.

And right now?

He wanted you.

With deliberate slowness, torturous, he hooked one long finger under your soaked panties before he pulled them aside. A cool gust of wind swept over your exposed heat just as his warm breath ghosted across sensitive skin. A soft gasp left your throat at the sensation before your lips parted further in surprise.

Tom had licked once — a long, slow drag straight up your slit — and groaned like it was honey on his tongue, the sound making you clench around nothing. He was starting to understand why you lost control of yourself when it came to sweet things.

All you could focus on was the mouth suddenly sealing over your core like a man possessed. His tongue worked in ruthless circles, relentless and straight to the point, plunging inside before licking back up again with just the right pressure to make your knees buckle.

You cried out, a high pitched and desperate sound as one hand fisted in his hair while the other braced against damp stone wall behind you. You wanted him. You wanted all of him. Anything he’d give you, you’d take in a heartbeat. The wind continued to howl around you, drowning out your noises, rain slashing sideways onto your faces — but neither of you cared.

All that existed was Tom’s mouth devouring you like ripe fruit offered to a god — the wet sounds obscene as he sucked at your clit between sharp nips of his teeth — a low growl vibrating from his chest and against your folds, sending shocks through the sensitive flesh every time another whimper escaped your lips.

Everything about this was borderline animalistic, something you never expected from Tom.

Tom.

Tom.

“Tom, Tom, Tom—!”

Your voice was a broken melody as you worshipped his name like it was the only word left in your world, dazed and drunk from the love potion’s magic. He was the only thought in your head. It confused you how you could love someone so much so suddenly. But you guess that’s what it meant to love someone so great. Each utterance of his name dripped with reverence, laced with the love potion’s haze and raw pleasure as his tongue worked magic between your thighs. And though he despised that name — Tom Marvolo Riddle — hearing it fall from your lips like this? Like you were praying to him?

It undid something in him. Tom reveled in it.

His eyes stayed locked on yours even as he feasted on you, dark pools of hunger and possession flashing with each clap of lightning outside. Rain slicked every inch of his face. His cheeks dusted faintly pink from exertion — but it hadn’t compared to how utterly wrecked you looked above him.

Fingers tightening further at your hip while the other curled under your thigh, lifting it effortlessly so he had a better angle. Tom was relentless. Every lick, every suck — each one was born to ruin you. His tongue dragged up your slick folds with agonizing slowness, the tip playing with your tiny clit just enough to make you whimper before pulling away completely and doing it again. And again; like he had all night.

It was just them, like it was always meant to be — the breeze whooshing around their bodies that were pressed together — and Tom was worshipping at the altar of your cunt like it truly was sacred ground only meant for him.

Tom groaned against you when you ground down harder onto his mouth, hips rocking helplessly as pleasure coiled tighter in your belly. One hand shot out instinctively to brace against his shoulder while the other still clung desperately to his hair — pushing his face deeper without meaning to.

The vibrations of another low growl rumbled through his lips straight into your throbbing bundle of nerves. You were so close, rutting against his pretty face in tandem.

“Tom,” you whined pitifully. Tom knew. He always knew.

He could feel it, from the way your thighs tensed to how your breaths turned into frantic little gasps that dissolved into moans. From the moment you tilted your head back, baring that delicate throat to the sky, breaking eye contact with him although he knew it pained you to do so. Because all you ever wanted to do was look at him now.

Without breaking rhythm, his tongue circled your clit while two fingers suddenly pushed inside you without warning, long and deft, finding that spongy spot deep within instantly, filling you up deliciously.

“Tom— oh! Oh God—”

Tom smirked up at you. Your back arched off the wall while thighs shook around his invading hand. It burned, stretched you too fast — but god it was good, especially when Tom curled them upwards just right. He sucked hard on your puffy little nub and the combination of everything all at once was too much.

A scream tore from your throat, his name ripping out of you in a sob as the orgasm crashed over you like a tidal wave. You didn’t even recognize your own voice.

Your back arched violently off the wall. Your hips jerked against Tom’s mouth and fingers like a delightful seizure as pleasure washed through every nerve ending in your body. You could see it behind closed eyelids — flashes of light, stars bursting across your vision just like he’d promised.

Tom didn’t stop.

He let you ride out your high, feeling every pulse of your pussy as you clenched tightly around his fingers, slurping gently now to prolong it while his digits kept pumping inside you at an achingly slow pace meant to wring every last drop of ecstasy from your trembling body. You let out a shaky breath, hands carding through Tom’s wet strands endearingly, the wet look making him look even more attractive.

From the rain or your juices, you didn’t know. All you could do was gasp for air and whisper his name again between shuddering gasps as Tom kept going until the last tremor had faded from your body, ignoring the strain in his trousers for now.

Only then did he finally pull his fingers free with a wet pop — lifting them to his lips and licking every drop of you clean without breaking eye contact. Your cheeks grew hotter, eyes glassy and dazed as you peered down at him, pupils dilated and practically the shape of hearts. His expression was pure sin, dark eyes heavy lidded and mouth glistening with your slick and cum.

“Delicious.”

You were still slumped against the wall, legs weak and breath ragged, completely wrecked.

But Tom was far from done with you.

In one fluid motion, he stood up — towering over you again before he yanked off his soaked cloak in one impatient tug. The fabric hit the wet floor with a heavy splash as rain dripped down every sculpted inch of him. His thick cock already painfully hard beneath his pants. Your gaze devoured him, tracking his bulge specifically as he begins to unbuckle his belt without breaking eye contact.

You barely had time to acknowledge how your back ended up on the cold stone floor, or how your clothing now lay torn in shreds, exposing your entire body to him — Tom looming over you like a predator about to claim its prize. His eyes looked wild and free. Your heart skipped a beat.

The cold stone bit into your bare skin but it was nothing compared to the heat radiating off of Tom’s body when he blanketed yours, even when his clothes were soaked and you lay entirely bare in contrast before him. Rain pounded down harsher than before as he positioned himself between your thighs. His cock, his beautiful cock already glistening at the tip from precum, pulled out from between his zipper. It tapped against your soaked entrance before circling it almost teasingly. You don’t remember seeing him taking it out.

One hand gripped your hip tight while the other braced beside your head. Tom’s breath came ragged now too, control fraying at every second spent not inside you.

Tom didn’t give you time to overthink as his hand guided himself between your slick folds already swollen from his earlier attention. His mushroom tip pressed hot and heavy against your hole and you clenched involuntarily, eager to suck him in. It leaked precum onto your sensitive skin. So close. You could feel how big he was, thicker than your wrist, longer than expected — and a pit grew in your gut before it went away like it had never existed.

“Breathe,” he murmured, not unkindly. He must have sensed you were nervous. But, Tom was also impatient as he proceeded to press the tip inside without warning.

As his cock pushed in, stretching you impossibly wide — a groan, deep and guttural, was wrenched from his throat. You were tight. So tight it nearly stole his breath.

“Mmnn—”

You whimpered at the burn. Every inch of him was slowly sheathing itself in your slick heat, gooey walls fluttering around him like a heartbeat. Virgin cunt untouched until now. Until him.

His glorious cock speared into you further like a divine sword until he bottomed out inside you fully. Full. Your lips parted in a silent scream, brows furrowed and eyes fluttered shut. You never felt this good, this full, even though it stung a little in comparison, when you ate chocolate.

You were delirious, lost in your head. On top of you, Tom didn’t move again right away.

Couldn’t.

Just braced above you with trembling arms, your nails digging crescents into his pale skin, drawing a hiss that sounded unnatural for a human to make but it made you clench around him all the same. His forehead pressed to yours as rain dripped from his face onto yours like holy water. His hips twitched involuntarily — a shallow grind that dragged a whimper from your lips.

Then slowly. So. Fucking. Slowly. He pulled back, your head tilting as your eyes rolled back to your skull, toes curling, until just the tip remained before pressing in again.

Thunder and lightning clapped in your ears, splitting the sky in jagged bursts that lit your upturned face for a few seconds. The world above was chaos, black storm clouds swallowing the sky as the heavens raged. Rain hammered down mercilessly, turning the stone floor beneath you into a slick mirror. Your soaked hair splayed across the stone floor like a halo.

You stared up at that upside down horizon with hazy eyes, each thrust from Tom rocking your head back further against wet rock as he rutted into you.

And yet, all you could think about were those stars that you saw behind closed lids whenever pleasure crested too high — the ones only he had shown you.

You smiled dreamily.

Tom was right.

You had seen the stars tonight.

And they were beautiful.

There is a pause until the brave (or foolish) soul, Mulciber, lifts his head a respectful amount, eyes cast downward as he speaks up with hesitance yet still straightforward as ever.

The gruff man gestures vaguely at his own face. “You’ve got something, My Lord… on your mouth.”

Tom stills. And everyone in the room holds a collective breath.

After a moment of uncertain quiet, more excruciating than the cruciatus curse itself, his pale hand lifts ever so slowly. His Death Eaters flinch in unison, awaiting punishment — but Voldemort does not reach for his yew, but to drag his fingers across the curve of his lower lip.

And when he pulls them away — they come with a smear of deep, unmistakable crimson.

He blinks blankly once. Then twice.

Lipstick.

Your lipstick.

. . . Ah.

Their Lord doesn’t speak — just stares at his hand as if to will away the smudged mark left on his skin.

A quiet descends so thick it is suffocating. Not one person dares to move nor breathe. Travers (who had been forced to speak up first) looks like he’s about to faint, or worse — be flayed alive by an ancient spell no one other than the Dark Lord knows of.

But Voldemort simply lowers his hand with eerie calm and rubs his thumb and forefinger together thoughtfully. Then, does something that makes their eyes pop out of their sockets — he does not move to wipe it away. Nor does he summon a handkerchief.

Appearing perfectly unbothered, his long fingers come to fold together in front of him.

“Shall we continue?” as if nothing had happened, crimson still stained across his lips like a brand. But his thoughts weren’t on the map laid out before him or the hushed report from Avery’s mouth — they are somewhere else entirely.

The Death Eaters, however, are spiraling in their theories. Who kissed their Lord? Who dared? But more accurately — who lived?

It doesn’t make sense to them. Not once had they seen him even look in the direction of a woman. This man doesn’t touch, he doesn’t feel. But now, they can’t unsee it — the slight flush of color on his throat, another mark. But this time, very faint and barely there unless one looks closely. And it is peeking beneath the high collar of his black robes.

Someone had kissed him quite passionately and had not lost their tongue for it. Somewhere in the world, there is a woman who kisses him like he is just a man.

And he let her.

The smudged lipstick stays there tauntingly as if he wants them to know, wants them to think about it — about you. About how someone dared kiss Lord Voldemort goodbye before his war meeting — like a housewife sending her husband to the office.

Tom slumps back in his chair, elbow perched on the arm while his cheek rests on his fist, mind flickering back to you from this morning.

On your fingers that curled into the collar of his robes and the way you’d pulled him down by the lapels with a cheeky little grin before that defiant press of your lips — stained crimson — lingered against his and then, the column of his throat.

“For luck, My Lord,” you’d whispered rather innocently as you pulled away (though he didn’t need it), right before he disapparated out of the house.

Looking back, he now knows you did it on purpose, left a mark for all of his followers to see. The realization makes his lips twitch.

But Tom doesn’t address the matter any further.

All they need know is he is a man with many secrets.

And his secret will answer for her shamelessness tonight.

extra:

From the outside, their Lord smirks to himself, clearly distracted by his own amusing thoughts — and it sends shivers down everybody’s spines.

The questions are still written all over his followers’ faces — who is she? Is she mad?

The Death Eaters try not to imagine their Lord with a woman, one brazen enough to brand him with her very own mark — but it is all they can think about for the rest of the day.

She’s obnoxious.

Tom thinks as he watches her laugh the loudest he'd ever heard as her friend face plants into a pile of snow, tumbling over herself as her other friends join in, snickering and laughing as their friend lay in the snow—defeated.

She’s annoying.

Tom thinks as she covers the front and inner cover of her potions notebook with stickers, a flower there, a snake on the other side of that, and then a fairy over here. She offers him a sticker, a skull with a snake curled around it.

She says it suits his aesthetic.

He doesn’t say a word, but the sticker ends up in his bag and then on the back inner cover of his diary.

She’s strangely morbid.

Tom thinks as she oohs and awes as he shows her a dead snake, which had been eaten clean by beetles, and she asks him if he knows how to preserve a skeleton.

He says nothing, and a week later she finds a perfectly preserved snake skeleton at her usual library seat.

She’s overly friendly.

Tom thinks as she tells him they were friends now, he took her sticker, he preserved the snake skeleton, and now he stood before her, letting her hold his hand as she declared no take-backs, returns, or exchanges.

He doesn’t know how to respond to that.

She’s clingy.

Tom thinks as she hugs his arm after catching up with him in the crowded corridor, using his height to get through the other side. Later, she’s sitting next to him in the library, moving from her usual spot to his. She’s shoulder to shoulder with him

 He’s not sure if he hates it or not.

She’s overly friendly.

He’s thought this before, but he thinks it again as she greets everyone with a smile, even those who sneer back or talk about her cruelly when she isn’t around.

They don’t deserve her kindness, he thinks, holding back a smirk as the petrified students are escorted into the hospital wing after being found in a flooded corridor.

She’s such a Hufflepuff.

He thinks, cheeks pink from the cold and so much more as she wraps her black and marigold scarf around his neck—it’s still warm from being around her neck and smells like her perfume.

She smiles at him, and he wonders what the hell he’s done to deserve it.

She’ll devour him alive.

He thinks, his mouth bruising against hers as she pins him to his floor, back to his plush dorm room rug, his wrists pinned down as she moves her mouth against his in a way that makes his head spin.

He’s going to let her.

He thinks as he arches into her, gasping as her hot mouth engulfs him, and he hasn’t had control for the last hour, and he likes it, he thinks foolishly.

She’s going to destroy him.

He thinks, head hazy with pleasure, barely able to moan as she bounces on top of him, hands on either side of his neck—constricting his air, and it makes his head spin and toes curl. She lets go just as he reaches the peak, and he literally blacks out, sucking in air as she gingerly lifts off him and collapses on top of him—his arms wrapping around her tightly.

She’s oddly devious.

He thinks, watching her chew on the stupid pom-pom end of her pen, a green one in his hand because she stole his quill and lied about it, saying if he truly needed to write then he could borrow one of her many pens!

He lies to himself that he hates it. He lies to himself that her grin when he took the pen didn’t make butterflies swarm his stomach.

She’s full of surprises.

He thinks, blinking at the ferret at his feet, familiar eyes staring straight back at him. they have a staring contest for a solid minute before he finally asks if that’s her, and she lets out a stupid sort’ve noise that almost has him laughing and he leans down, opening his sleeve to her and she’s up his sleeve and on his shoulder so quick he barely has time to blink.

She’s clingy.

Once again, he’s stated this before, but since becoming an Animagus, it’s impossible to keep her off him—Not that he minds. She’s in his sleeves, his shirt, his hood, around his neck—she falls asleep easily—soaking up his warmth and trading some of her own back when curled around his neck like a living scarf.

It’s terribly unfair how cute she is as a ferret, and she’d be the only cute one in the world to him.

She can be delightfully protective.

He realizes as she full-on tackles and begins to brawl with Olive Hornby for trying to spike his drink with a love potion, his eyes nearly starry as she beats Olive’s face until it’s bloodied, and as a prefect—he has to pull her off.

As her boyfriend, he wants to let her keep going, but he can't—so he drags her off to an empty classroom and snogs her stupid.

She’s tenderhearted.

He thinks as she stares at him teary-eyed as he tells her about his childhood, about the damp closet he got locked in for ‘looking cruel’, about the forced exorcisms when he ‘spoke in tongues’, about how his mother died giving birth to him, about how the orphanage reached out to his muggle father—yes he even told her that part of him he was ashamed of—and his father had never responded, didn’t even send a single pound to support his son.

She hugs him, nearly knocking him onto his back on his bed—and sobs into his chest; apologizing for things that were not her fault.

He never wants her to cry like this over him ever again.

She’ll abandon her own morals for him.

He realizes with sudden surprise, eyes wide as she does not run as she catches him in the girls' bathroom, where Myrtle Warren's body lies, and the basilisk slinks back into the under-school pipes—he’s terrified she’ll run, that she’ll betray him.

He’s terrified to lose her, terrified for the first time. But she only gives Myrtle a cold, empty look and takes his hand, pulling him out of the bathroom. She stands with him later that night as Myrtle’s body was taken out by aurors, hand in his.

He needs her.

He realizes, hands dripping with pitch-black potion ichor, shaking as he reaches into his chest and pulls out his soul. She sits with him, she does not run, watching as he splits his soul and places it into her body—watching her tremble in pain as the potion stains her skin.

He loves her.

He realizes, holding her close as they sleep the events of the night off, he felt ill; shaking and faint. Her chest ached—feeling thick and heavy, but her face did not leave his chest, holding him just as close as he held her.

He’s going to make sure she never leaves his side.

He thinks as he watches her kill his grandmother, a deranged, pleased smile on his face as his father and grandparents lay dead. He snogs her against the grand table, watches as she splits her own soul mere hours later and places it inside his chest, snug against his own.

He’s going to make her his queen.

He thinks as they lie in their crappy Knockturn alley apartment over a year later, the humid air making their skin sticky and the bed far too warm for comfort.

He’s going to give her the world and more.

He thinks, staring down at her as she sleeps against his side, the gaunt ring on her finger—protecting a fracture of his soul twice over.

He’s going to marry her.

He thinks as they visit the shore side a week later, staring at her as she wears a white sun dress and laughs as the ocean curls around her ankles.

She’s still his Hufflepuff.

He thinks as she grins and hands him a stupid pink pom-pom-topped pen as he does his inventory at work, hiding his quill beneath the desk.

She’s loyal.

He thinks as he tells her they need to leave, the Hufflepuff cup and Slytherin’s locket clutched in his hand. She doesn’t question him and packs her things, taking his hand as he buys the first train tickets out of London within the hour.

He’ll miss her if she ever leaves him.

He thinks, several years into their decade of exploration, searching for dark artifacts—searching for Ravenclaw’s diadem to make another horcrux. They’ve wound up in a forest cabin, she’s cooking dinner and does the laundry; he cant help but imagine her as his perfect little housewife, and he has to stop himself from pinning her against the kitchen counter and putting a baby in her then and there.

She stays even as he begins to change.

Even as his skin pales and flakes, even as his eyes turn blood red, even as his body twists and transforms—she does not leave, she kisses him the same, loves him the same.

She returns with him to London.

She calls him by his chosen name.

She stays.

He kill her if she ever leaves.

She becomes his wife, and then the mother of his child.

She loves him even after he loses his mortal beauty and becomes monstrous.

He regrets very little, sometimes—he mourns the loss of his handsomeness, but he never regrets her.

He thinks, watching her sleep, curled up gently in the soft fabric of their bed, cradling her very pregnant belly. He moved them into a manor, a wedding gift from Abraxas—an old summer family Malfoy home—and he’s given her everything he’d ever wanted for himself.

Power, money, a home.

He leans close, kissing her temple and she mumbles out her affection—he smiles against her skin and tucks her in gently, making sure the cooling charms were working as he stands, returning to his meeting room with his death eaters.

He’s realized many things over the years, and she is his favorite.

-end-

you walked away from the point where you had left a small handful of treats for mrs. norris, a trick you had learnt long ago, and towards the dungeons, the air growing cooler and increasingly intimidating with each step. at this hour, it felt like eyes were on you from all angles, and you fastened your pace despite feeling silly.

you rounded a corner and there stood that familar stone door with faded, cryptic markings of snakes and other sorts. the whispered password left your lips, sounding entirely too loud in the echoed silence of the halls, and you watched as a stone snake slithered up from floor and around the door, opening with a hiss.

you pushed the door open further with a soft nudge, creeping inside before shutting it behind you as softly as possible. the common room was barren except for one or two bleary-eyed stragglers, but you hadn’t expected tom to be there anyways. no, you knew he’d be in his dorm, lost in his studies as he so frequently was, unaware to anything else— even to his own thirst or hunger, at times.

nobody paid you any mind as you steered through the common room and up to the prefect dormitories, settling at the top of the stairs with clammy hands. you paused for a beat, persuading yourself to knock on the door. it’s not that you thought tom would greet you with disdain, never. but tom was… well, tom. intimidating and powerful and seemingly so far out of your reach at times, especially when you got into your own head.

you were being foolish, you knew you were, so you steeled yourself, raised your fist to the aged walnut, and rapped softly against the wood in succession, breath caught in your lungs. nothing. nothing for a moment long enough to convince yourself that this was a terrible idea and that you should turn around and leave at once, but just as you were about to, a voice spoke from the other side.

“come.”

the command was deep and muffled from the hardwood separating you, but compelling nonetheless. your fingers met the cool grain of the handle, and before you could even twist, the door was opening. you stepped in and heard the soft click of the door shutting behind you, locking on its own. there tom was, sat at his desk, posture perfectly straight, quill in hand writing a variety of things you probably couldn’t comprehend, especially this late at night.

“i wondered how long you’d stand there before announcing yourself.” tom stated, not looking up, and you flushed at the realization he knew you were there the whole time, arguing with yourself inanely. you tightened your grip on the plastic container and took a step forwards, heart racing. only then did tom look at you, eyes cold and calculating but softening nearly indecipherably at the image of you, stood there anxiously in a sweater much too big for your frame.

“i, uhm.. i brought you something.” you winced at the way your voice came out, pitchy and teetering on the verge of shakiness. his eyes traced your face and followed your movements as you delicately held out the sweets to him. his brows furrowed together, and in this lighting, you could make out the veiled exhaustion hiding in the planes of his face, shown in the almost unnoticeable discolored circles under his eyes and in the way his cheekbones had slightly sunken.

you could see the confusion lining his features as his hand reached out, slowly— as if the tupperware would bite him— and grasped around the container, taking it gently from your grip. he looked down at the item, and then up at you, and then down again, before finally unclasping the top and placing it to the side with focused precision. the aroma of baked sugar, butter, and cinnamon immediately jumped around the room, almost startling in its haste of seeping into your senses. tom, too, look startled, finally seeming to realize that you had brought him, tom marvolo riddle, cookies at 12:00 in the morning.

“you made these.” it wasn’t a question so much as an asserted recognition, laced with perplexity and practiced aloofness. you answered anyways, a ‘yes’ so quiet it could be swept away by an oncoming breeze. tom hesitated briefly before picking up one of the snickerdoodles, examining it with care as if it was a ancient relic to be studied rather than a sweet you baked with flour coated fingers.

after a thorough inspection, he finally brought it to his lips and took a small, careful bite, his eyes on yours— or rather, on the way your fist tightened on the hem of your sleeve in a restraint to not pick at your nails, a jittery habit you knew tom despised. it was true, he did despise the way speckles of blood appeared in your nails wake, staining your skin in the most unpleasant shade. it looked wrong there, and it stood out much too loudly, so much so that it distracted tom. why, he couldn’t quite comprehend, but he loathed it, and so you made an effort to stop.

your white-knuckled grip on that striped sweater led tom to the fascinating epiphany that you were worried. worried that he wouldn’t like the baked good that you had clearly put effort into, and to his great surprise, you were wrong. tom was never much of a fan of sugar, but the mix of flavors settling on his tongue was actually… good. perhaps it was the subtle tanginess that snickerdoodle was known for combatting the sweetness, or perhaps it was because it was you who had made it, but tom found himself taking another bite unprompted.

at his carefully detached visage, you made a move to explain yourself. “i knew that you’d still be up because of that essay you mentioned yesterday, and you weren’t at dinner, so i thought that maybe you were.. hungry? you don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it, though!” you maundered quickly, jumbled and concerned.

his throat worked as he swallowed, only now recognizing the faint pangs of hunger reverberating through his abdomen. his eyes locked onto yours, dark and captivating, practically holding you hostage in his gaze.

“thank you.”

the sincerity in the syllables startled even tom, who frowned as he reached for another cookie, as if his hand itself was betraying him. you blinked, eyes wide, before you felt your shoulders begin to drop and your limbs begin to relax. a smile crept across your face, slow and soft, and you found your cheeks heating.

“you’re welcome, tom.”

he paused for a moment, as if his name on your lips had rendered him wordless, and then…

“stay.”

it wasn’t a request, but he made it sound like one, gentling his tone in an attempt to assuage you. your mouth opened. closed. opened again.

“i don’t…” you started aimlessly.

“please.” it was a word tom disliked very much, but for you? it had came out almost naturally. he hated that. he hated the thought of you leaving even more.

your lip found its way in between your teeth, getting gnawed on unpleasantly as your eyes darted around, surveying. you looked at tom, wholly focused on you, and sighed, releasing your trapped lip. you nodded.

“okay.”

it was a quiet agreement, whispered like a soft defeat in the quiet of the night. tom nodded as well, satisfied.

“okay.”

yet as he made room for you to curl up in his arms as he worked, he felt better than okay. he felt a word he dare not name.