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"I don't get it," Harry said, frowning at his best friend. They're in the garden. Harry has been digging a hole for worms, because Tom wants to go fishing and catch a mermaid.
Tom rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.
"The merfolk don't eat worms," he says imperiously, looking down at Harry like he's an idiot, and Harry's face burns.
"They eat fish, I know!" Harry says, glaring at Tom. "And they'll want fresh fish, Tom!!"
"What?" Tom says, wrinkling his nose. "What does that have to do with worms? You've got one, by the way."
Harry smiles at Tom with his whole face.
"Thanks, Tom!"
That's what Harry likes about his friend. Even though Tom thinks Harry is stupid for digging up worms, he still let him know one was coming up. Harry watches it squirm out of the ground and then picks it up and drops it in the empty jar beside him. When Harry looks back up at Tom, the other boy's cheeks are flushed pink.
"Anyway, when muggles go fishing, they do it with a fishing rod. My Auntie 'Tunia told me so. That's where Dud's at, Uncle V took him fishing for the weekend."
"You still haven't explained the worms, Harry," Tom complains in a put-upon tone, sitting down in the dirt with him and picking up the shovel to dig while he listens. Harry's heart leaps; Tom hates getting dirty in front of most people, and Harry has no idea why he's the exception, but it makes him feel good, makes his heart happy and smug.
"Oh, well that's easy, they put the worms on hooks and the fish come to eat the worms and the hooks get stuck in their mouths."
Tom's jaw drops, and he pauses in his digging to gape at Harry. Harry notices Tom has cut a worm in half by mistake while digging, and he cries out, leaning over the hole and gently poking with his fingers at the earth around the still embedded section of worm to dig it out.
"What is it?" Tom asks, and the mild worry in his voice tells Harry he's truly concerned. Tom is almost always mild, except when it benefits him not to be, and that's how Harry knows this time it's real.
"You chopped a worm in half," Harry says mournfully. "The shovel is too sharp, I stopped using it after I got past the grass since I didn't want this to happen. Oh, the poor thing."
Harry cradles the half-worm in his hands, wishing he could put it back together by magic. But he knows magic can't bring things back to life, so he tries not to think on it too hard. Still, though, his throat tightens, and he chokes out a sob.
"It's just a worm," Tom says, and Harry starts crying in earnest, pawing through the loose pile of dirt for the other half of the worm. "You were going to kill them anyway, Harry, you were going to let fish eat them."
Harry wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand and nods.
"I know," he says. "It's just so sad. I wonder if it hurt."
Tom looks uncertain now, and Harry wonders if it's because he doesn't know what to feel. He's seen Tom's fascination with the pain of other creatures, seen him use a penknife to cut the back half off of an ant to watch it stumble around on four legs until it died. He remembers leading Tom away from a slug on the sidewalk, taking the salt and putting it back in the cupboard, and kicking Dudley off the computer for ten minutes to type in "putting salt onto a slug" on YouTube so Tom could see what would happen if he wanted to know so bad. He remembers the way Tom's mouth fell open at his first real exposure to muggle technology, since Tom's mum, Ms. Gaunt, won't have any of it in the house.
So he smiles at Tom and says,
"It's okay, you don't have to be sad if you don't know how to be. It's part of the dirt now, and that's just how things are. Everyone's gonna be part of the dirt eventually. I just get sad about it sometimes."
Tom bites his lip, but now Harry knows he isn't going to try and pretend to be sad just to please him, and that's good.
"I'm not," Tom says quietly, and Harry's brow furrows. "I'm never going to die."
"But you got to," Harry argues, confused at the words. "We can be part of the dirt together, Tom, just like the worm. The dirt makes the flowers and the grass and the wheat for the bread, and someday we can do it together, you and me. We can be a rosebush, Tom, or a dandelion!"
Tom's nose wrinkles.
"Dandelions are weeds," he says, and Harry gasps, scandalised.
"They are not!" he protests. "Who told you that?"
Tom shrugs, and points at the dirt. Harry sees another worm squiggling its way up out of the ground and squeals in excitement, waiting for it to emerge completely and then dropping it in the jar with its friend.
"I don't want to die," Tom says softly, and Harry doesn't look at him, because the last time Tom talked like this, in that quiet voice, and Harry tried to look at him, Tom ran. Instead, he just keeps watching the dirt, waiting for worms. After a moment, Tom continues. "It sounds just horrible. I don't want to grow old. I don't want my eyes to go, or my skin to droop, or my spine to bend. I don't want my hair to turn grey. I don't believe in heaven, Harry, or hell, and I don't want to stop existing. I like being able to think, and see, and talk to you--"
Tom cuts himself off as his voice shakes, and Harry has no idea what to say, so he hands Tom a worm that just wriggled up into the sunlight.
"You don't want to be a rosebush with me?" Harry eventually says, knowing that Tom's curiosity will probably make him wonder what that would be like. "We could be a tree of some sort, I suppose--"
"Rosebushes die too," Tom says. "And so do trees."
"The dirt is alive," Harry assures Tom, turning to face him. "And everything goes back into it."
"What?" Tom says.
"My mum says there's microbes in the dirt," Harry says. "Tiny little creatures you can't see without a microbe-scope, and they're all alive. Like mushrooms are alive, even though they grow out of dead stuff. Everything that's dead is alive too."
Tom's lips are parted. He looks down at the worm in his hand, then back up at Harry, and shuts his mouth. Harry notices a smudge of dirt on his cheek and reaches out automatically to wipe it off, forgetting his hands are filthy too.
"Hey!" Tom protests, and Harry makes a face. The smudge has been expanded into a smear.
"Oops," he says. "I forgot my hands were dirty, you had some dirt on your face and I was gonna--"
Tom grabs Harry's wrist and shoves his hand right into his own face.
"Oops," Tom says, completely deadpan as he drops his worm into the jar. "I thought you were a grindylowe, you had some dirt all over you."
Harry snorts, and they go on collecting worms until the jar is half full of wriggling life, pinkish brown and fragile.
There's no one else at the local pond when Harry and Tom get there. Harry has some extra fishhooks in his pocket, and a length of line, and Tom is great at making things hover, so he doesn't really need a pole, since Tom can just make the line go far out into the middle of the pond.
"How do muggles put the worms on without a sticking charm?"
Harry wrinkles his nose, taking a fishhook out of his pocket and tying it to the end of the fishing line.
"Well, um, they sort of just... they stick the hook through the worm."
Tom's jaw drops, and there's a glint in his eye that makes Harry pretty relieved. He was hoping Tom would be willing to do the worms, he just wasn't sure, because sometimes Tom will just refuse to touch bugs and panic at any sign of dirt.
"Wow, that's pretty cool," Tom says, and Harry has to suppress a giggle, because Tom used to talk so posh when they first met. "Dudley's doing that right now? And Mr. Dursley?"
Harry nods solemnly, and Tom's eyebrows raise. Harry can tell he's impressed.
"Okay, let's catch some fish," Tom says, choosing a worm from the jar and holding out his hand for the hook. Harry hands it to him, averting his eyes while Tom spears the first worm. "What now?"
"Can you hover it out to the middle and then drop the hook in?" Harry asks, lowering his voice, and Tom looks around furtively.
"You should just throw it," Tom says. "I'll make it go far enough, but that'll look more normal."
Harry nods, tying the loose end of the line around his wrist. It's always fun to watch Tom use his magic, because he's so good at it, and this time is no exception. The hook soars when he throws it, and lands in the exact center of the pond with a satisfying ripple.
"Good job," Harry says, and Tom shrugs the compliment off the way he always does. "Now we wait."
They end up waiting the whole afternoon with no results, but despite that, Tom doesn't seem too upset when he helps Harry pour the jar of worms back into their hole and cover them up with dirt.
"We can be a dandelion," Tom says quietly, as they're patting down the dirt. "If you want to."
Harry gives him a smile and watches as his cheeks flush pink again. Tom blushes sometimes when they're alone, and Harry thinks it makes him look very beautiful, like a magnolia petal, with delicate, fragrant pink seeping into the creamy white.
"I don't care what we are, as long as we're together," he says, and that makes Tom's pink darken until it's red to match the sunset and the rhododendron bush three feet to their left.
Tom clears his throat, and stands up stiffly, dusting the dirt off his hands.
"Your Aunt won't be angry you've dug a hole in her garden?" he asks, and Harry shakes his head, standing too to walk Tom back across the street to his house.
"No," he says, unlatching the gate and holding it open for Tom. "She says as long as we leave the front garden alone, it's okay."
"That's good," Tom says, stepping a little closer than usual beside Harry. Their hands brush, and Harry feels his own face heating up.
They walk in silence together until they get to Tom's porch, and Harry smiles at Tom one last time as Tom unlocks his door.
"See you tomorrow!" he says.
Tom nods at him, dropping the lanyard with his key back down the front of his shirt.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Harry."