Chapter Text
Harry had been pushed into the cupboard again, nothing that he had technically done wrong, he’d just been in the wrong place at the same time as an incident happened and was promptly punished for something he didn’t do.
It was the end of July, he was told by his teacher once when his birthday was, July 31st. Sure, nothing ever happened on his birthday except the usual cleaning, gardening, and abuse that happened to him. And he was sure this birthday was his sixth, as Dudley had turned six a couple of weeks ago and his aunt always said that they were born in the same year because Harry’s parents were trying to copy her sweet duddykins.
Ick. He hoped that’s not why he was born. Speaking of, he looked out through the vents of the cupboard, looking at the clock. He then looked at the calendar, the 30th having been crossed off as his aunt went to bed. So tomorrow was his birthday. Cool. Harry gently smiles, even if the day didn’t mean anything to him, he liked to pretend. He closes his eyes to daydream.
To pretend that his mom and his dad celebrated it. He was always just at a sleepover at the Dursleys and his mom would pick him up in the morning, smiling at him and wishing him a happy birthday. Curling his hair with her hand, touching it.
Harry pauses, feeling sad. He didn’t know what his mom looked like. Sure, he knew that she should look similar to his aunt, but his aunt didn’t have green eyes, and from what he found from asking about his dad, his dad had brown eyes. He couldn’t pretend when he didn’t know who he was pretending about, were they nice? Had they been meaner than the Dursleys?
What had happened to them? Because every time he seemed to ask they either got shot, or they were in a terrible car accident. He opened his eyes and looked at the clock again. Oh, had it been that long? For an hour he’d been thinking about how he never got to meet them. Harry tries to calm himself down. He couldn’t be crying, whimpering, what if one of the Dursleys came downstairs to get a glass of water and then heard him? He remembered what his aunt had said when she locked him in. “Not a word.”
But it hurt, it hurt in a way it shouldn’t. Dudley didn’t cry about things like this, he cried about stupid things, like how he got fewer presents than last year, or that Harry was breathing too loud. He looks at the time, 11:50, almost midnight. Almost time for his birthday. Harry smiles. A happy birthday song.
He’d heard snippets from Dudley’s parties that he was often never invited to, or even shunned from. It kinda went like a repeating verse with, he thinks, the third going a little different.
But he would wait a little. Just for himself to calm down.
-
He closed his eyes at 11:59 and he tried to stay awake, he did try. But, he..just felt so tired.
Then someone started shaking him gently. Then lifted his head, why were they gentle? The Dursleys had never woken him up like this. “Harry, Harry, wake up, it’s your birthday!” What the..? He opened his eyes and he found himself being cradled by a teenage boy. He looked sixteen.
“Who- are you? What are you doing here?” Harry questioned him, touching his face mostly to make sure he was real. This teenager just smiles.
“My name is Tom, and I wanted to wish you a happy birthday,” Tom says. Harry tilted his head at his words.
“Why? How do you even know me?” Harry asks, his aunt tells him that he has no surviving family other than them and Harry is sure that this teen was too young to be friends with his parents when they were alive. The youngest he could have been when they died was 10, and wasn’t sure why his parents would be friends with a child.
“Does it matter? You don’t have any family that seems to care, so Happy Birthday.” Tom says, so matter of factly.
“Thank you, but where did you even come from? The cupboards locked and I would have heard if you knocked on the front door.” Harry asks him, he is a very curious kid. “Magic, Harry. Just trust me on that.”
Harry pauses. “Why should I trust you?” Tom looks hurt.
“Because, we’ve known each other for a long, long time. And on that note, I got you a birthday gift.” Tom says.
A birthday gift? What? Harry pauses. “Thank… you? I still don’t get why you're being nice to me.”
“Shh… just think of it as reimbursement,” Tom says. “Here.” Tom hands Harry a little red box with a green bow around it.
Harry looks at the gift, taking it in his hands. “It’s nothing special, I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with my first gift to you.” Harry pauses. “It’s the first gift anyone has ever gotten me.”
Tom looks at him in astonishment. “I… feel sorry for you.” Tom then hugs Harry, completely unprompted. Harry tries to reply, but he feels tears welling up. “I-?”
“I’m sorry. What you’re going through right now is none of your fault and you need to realize that. You were handed a bad card and these people are not good, they lie to you, and hit you.” Tom says he holds Harry for a little longer. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, Dear Harry…. Happy Birthday to you.” Tom lets him go.
Tom then tries to open the cupboard door to get out, finding it locked. “Oh, that is fucked up.” Tom then does it again, Harry tries to stop him before he makes a loud noise. Tom looked like he was nervous that he couldn’t leave.
But then Tom disappears into thin air. Like he was never there. It made Harry a little nervous.
-
And then he waits, he goes through another year of abuse with the Dursleys and Dudley’s friends. Was what he saw real? Was it a teenage boy coming into his room to wish him a happy birthday? Or was it imaginary?
-
And on his seventh, he waits for him. He waits until midnight and he tries to close his eyes, this time he decides he won’t be so close to him time.
Then he watches it happen. He watches as he just appears. Out of thin air.
“Tom!” And Harry looked at him, he hadn’t aged at all. Like he was frozen in time. “What... the… You haven’t grown or changed your clothes since the last time I saw you?”
Tom looked a little shocked that Harry noticed, but nodded. “Happy Birthday, Harry.” He presents him with a gift. A blue box with a silver bow on it.
“Another? Thank you!” Harry is so happy that someone seems to care for him.
-
And he came every single year. It.. was nice. Yet Tom never grew. Never changed heights, just… stayed as he was.
Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve.
Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-one, Twenty-two.
Or at least that’s how Tom should have been growing up with him.
Harry waits for his twelfth birthday, having been accepted into Hogwarts, getting a new room, and he waits for it to strike twelve. He sits there, waiting and waiting. He then… watches as Tom appears and… he’s crying.
“Mph-” Tom makes a noise as he realizes where he is. “Right, um- Happy Birthday, Harry.”
Harry looks at him. “Tom, why are you crying? What’s wrong?” Harry doesn’t like seeing Tom like this.
“I- won’t be able to see you next year. I.. um.. I can’t.” Tom says. Harry feels shocked.
“What-? What do you mean you won’t be able to?” Harry stands to go touch Tom.
“I.. will be unable to in… the state I will be in. I won’t be the same.” Tom whispers. As if he says it any louder it will hurt more.
“...thank you, then. For these celebrations, we’ve had together in secret.” Harry says, “These.. have been the best few birthdays in my life.”
“Happy Birthday- Harry.” Tom then wraps his arms around Harry tightly. “I love you.”
“As, um my last present, I wanted to give you something that I think you’ll like. A necklace. I didn’t have time to wrap it as… I had just found- I mean bought it. I would like for you to wear it.” Tom says as he pulls out a small gold pendant, the pendant itself being just a normal flat circle. Nothing was in it, just a blank sort of thing.
“Thank you, Tom,” Harry says, for the last time.
-
Harry goes through the rubble that had fallen when Mr. Lockhart shot off a spell with Ron’s broken wand and decommissioned himself, well that’s what Ron said anyway.
Harry goes on to look for Ron’s sister, and he goes into this large room with this grand feel to it. Where he stood he could see a body lying on the ground seemingly asleep. That was Ginny!
He goes to try and run towards her, but then he hears a voice.
“Harry? Is that you?”
How come he knew his face? How was that even imaginably possible? This was weird. His prescription made everything that was far away a little fuzzy. Harry felt confused and scared. He bet that he looked the part too.
“Don’t you recognize me? Recognize my voice?”
Harry pauses, he looks from here like how Tom Riddle did in the diary. In that memory. He nods slowly, gently edging toward Ginny. “You’re Tom Riddle, from the diary, the one I wrote to?”
For some reason, Tom looked like he had been killed emotionally. Harry looks down at Ginny. He heard Tom walk a bit closer to him, he hadn’t looked up.
“Not just from the diary- what about don’t you- remember?” Tom looks away from you. “Sure it’s almost been a year, but I didn’t think that you would forget me so quickly.”
Harry feels confused again. “What-?” Harry looked up and Tom leaned over him and he noticed that Tom began to look a little familiar. “Wait-” Harry’s eyes then went wide and he immediately backed away. “You’re Tom? My Tom?”
He watches as Tom gets the biggest grin and practically leaps at the opportunity to hug him. He lifts him in the air and Harry can swear that he can feel his rips start to crack. Harry then looked between Tom and Ginny. “Tom, what’s happening to her?”
Tom pauses, looking guilty immediately. “She’s um…dying. For me… to come back.” Harry looks at him in disgust. “What the fuck-? Stop it then- she’s my best friend’s sister!”
Tom looked at him. Then at her. “I- wanted to see you. I wanted to know who killed Voldemort.” Harry pauses, possibly reconsidering. “You’re part of the diary, right? Meaning that if I write to you we can talk? Why don’t we do that instead?”
Tom looks at Harry. “But- I want to be able to touch you. To-” Harry looks at him. “Tom, not with her. Find someone else to do… this to. She’s a first-year, she doesn’t deserve this.” Tom’s eyes light up and he nods.
As he disappears, Harry takes the diary from Ginny’s hands as she stirs.