Chapter Text
Winter was ending – each day, kilograms of dirtied snow on the palace’s floor would fade into clear water muddied by the earth from the soles of a servant’s shoes. It was a reminder of the cold season that, too, washed away with the sweep of a horse-tail broom.
The royal stables weren’t far from the meeting hall in which Tom had been summoned to. Wrapped in a thick coat lined with feather soft fur, the illegitimate prince had left the doors with a barely discernible frown on his face.
Father was never nearly as pleased with him as he would with another noble’s child. The thought in itself grated on his nerves, and Tom felt anger sludge over his crystal-clear pride.
The king had no right to criticize in which ways he handled his prisoners. In the end, he got the job done, hadn’t he? Tom could only scoff as he saw the servant behind him cower with familiar terror towards his person. The big-eared sod was trembling down to his trousers.
Coward , Tom sneered, but the disdain dropped like gravity exerted threefold when a flash of his past worked against him. You’ve once been in his shoes, the story concluded like a play well done. Have you not?
Considering the fact that it wasn’t incorrect, Tom felt the starting simmers of anger boil. Compared to time wherein he’d mucked about in the slums years ago, perhaps he'd become compliant and spoiled with luxury. It was a disgusting thought.
Dragon-hide boots thumping behind him, the prince angrily strode across the wide corridors. It was in a moment of uncharacteristic impulse that the crimson eyed prince decided to take a stroll down town on his reliable steed to ease his temper.
There was little better than the expressions of the people who’d condemned him as a whore’s son from where he originally stayed. Tom could claim to live to devour their reactions.
He wanted those slovenly men and cruel-mouthed women to understand that he had power now. They’d not make the mistake to talk down or abuse him again – because look at him now, full of wealth and riches and power. The only thing he lacked in his hands was the Kingdom of Slytherin, and that was a task underway.
Tom would have them snivel by his feet like the wretched animals they were. He planned to smile while watching the regret fill their eyes from what they did to him when he was nothing more than an underfed boy with a whore and witch apparent as a mother.
Even though the woman certainly did die shortly after his birth, being stamped as an orphan did nothing to tickle any sense of sympathy from anyone. Not with an attitude like Tom’s, who held his pride and unparalleled intelligence like a sword.
Shield? Not so much. Bastards like them didn’t deserve it, agreed every swine in that horrible town.
It had been since his arrival at the palace had he last went down to the thrice-damned place. Petty as it sounded, Tom wanted to at least have a stable position among the upper-tiers before he crushed the vermin because contrary to popular beliefs, being royalty weren’t all rainbows and unicorns.
Kings and Queens, princes and princesses, have all died with their eyes wide open in the comforts of their palaces one way or another.
“Ready Voldemort,” Tom curtly informed the servant trailing behind him, with a stealth not unlike a mouse’s. Similarly, he scampered away as frantically as one. The fabrics of his clothes caught pouches of air as he ran in the direction of the stables.
Voldemort was a large, temperamental thing that allowed no one but Tom could mount for either a ride or a hunt’s pleasure. She - and didn’t that bring quite the commotion to the palace - had refused fate as a breeding mare despite her excellent genes.
Kicking and stomping wildly, she was even unafraid to use her teeth to bite at the stallion she’d been paired with, Tom fell for her rather quickly.
His advisors cautioned him against Voldemort often, something about risking his reputation by having a female horse as his main choice of transport. They even dared to ramble on how the females were fundamentally weaker than the males, and that they served no better than for meat and to birth foals till they died.
Tom didn’t care, he told the half-wit advisors off. Hexing them with hexes of eternal inconveniences just because he could and let the advice die where it stood. if Voldemort showed no signs of desiring any foals, he’d make damn sure she wouldn’t be getting any.
The mare was normally left to roam within Tom’s palace’s grounds without a leash or handler. She instinctively knew not to leave the palace grounds and to return to her stable by evening, so Tom un-worryingly let her wander about.
The down side of such was that it’d taken quite a while for anyone to find the wayward horse. It made fine entertainment watching the servants run like headless chickens to find Voldemort for Tom.
They didn’t know that he’d trained the prideful thing to come when called already. The silver whistle stringed around his neck felt cold through his underclothes. Smirking smugly, Tom offered a baby carrot and a pat on her speckled ash fur before the two left through grand open gates.
Tom had found the boy amidst pouring rain.
He was soaked to the bones, hair matted worse than a dog’s in the streets. Grime slathered across his terribly skinny splayed arms and legs. He made quite the sight, sitting brokenly by the side of an uncanny alleyway. Tom hummed, patting Voldemort’s neck.
Umbrella rested on his shoulder, Tom unsaddled from his ride, boots causing a forming puddle to splatter. The horse’s ears flickered flat ever so often in irritation. Voldemort should be grateful Tom had an animal’s coat packed up, else the spoiled thing would be freezing to death by now.
As he got closer, it was only by the mercy of the bone-piercing downpour did Tom have the opportunity to spot the alabaster skin underneath. Even then, most of the skin clinging on to the boy’s protruding bones was badly scarred, if not recently bruised.
A discarded pet left to die from the elements.
In his own twisted way, Tom admired how the boy resembled the snakes he so adored. How can he not? For while the pheasant child’s body had shivered strongly in his presence (or the winter’s), he still had the strength to look up and not flee like the usual street urchins. Tom coveted the pair of stunning eyes that looked aglow.
Not to mention the mock scales in which were scattered in mottled patterns of abstract lilac and the chartreuse green of rotting leaves. An urge to pick the sorry thing up suddenly occurred to the prince – perhaps it was the cautious defiance in the boy’s eyes; body all curled up, ready to strike, while his face betrayed nothing. An interesting morph, truly.
Voldemort chortled, a puff of air leaving her mouth and nostrils. Well, no one was stopping him. The prince ran a gloved hand through his flattened hair. “You’re mine now.” He stated, leaving no space to respond otherwise. The boy’s lips parted, a raspy croak leaving his throat. “Uh… Ah…”
Tom figured he’d always wanted a pet snake of his own.