Work Text:
“Excuse me.”
Harry looks dourly up at Tom fucking Riddle. Slytherin prefect and Hogwarts king. Tom Riddle smiles benignly at him. Without replying, Harry turns back to his perusal of some first year’s Defense essay. He dips his quill in ink and starts to write a correction, and imagines Tom fairly seething as he’s ignored.
His voice, when he speaks again, is as measured and smooth as ever. “Excuse me, Potter. My peers and I find ourselves in need of extra room. If you could relocate—”
“I was here first, Riddle. Shove off.” Harry intones.
If this were 1996, Riddle would waste no time cursing him. If all were right in the world, he and Riddle would be dueling for control of Britain, not having school boy spats in the Slytherin common room. But it's 1943 and Tom Riddle only fixes him with a coolly appraising look. When he flicks his wand, Harry is not put in excruciating pain, but his chair is forced to turn, legs scraping out as it's dragged around to face Riddle completely. “It’s only good manners to look at people when they are addressing you, Potter,” Riddle chides. “I will ask again. Please relocate to accommodate others. You are taking up a lot of space for one person and it's rather inconsiderate.”
“I'll say again. Shove. Off. Riddle.” Facing him, Harry can see the twitch of Riddle’s brow.
“You have a rather uncouth mouth.” Riddle comments after a swift moment tamping down his temper. He flicks his wand again. All of Harry’s books, mostly on magical gateways, vortexes, and time magic, his papers and ink bottles, which were scattered on the floor before the fire, a couple tables and even the elegant emerald green chaise, bundle themselves up neatly and zoom to a table in the far corner of the common room. “You have been moved.”
Harry leaps to his feet and roars, “Don’t touch my shit, you son of a bitch— !" His anger rumbles through him like an earthquake or erupting volcano. His fury at Riddle has been building since he got here. Riddle and his fucking smiles, his fucking handshakes, the careful way he always pauses before he speaks, the way his dark eyes watch everything, the fact that Harry knows what he is. He wishes Hermione were here. Hermione would know how to talk him out of his fury, or at least redirect it. As it stands he’s about to get into a fist fight with Tom fucking Riddle right here on the ancient common room carpet and everyone knows it because they stop what they’re doing to watch.
Tom fucking Riddle merely tips his chin up hautily. Looking down his nose at Harry certainly has a more dramatic effect when he's a head taller than him. “Consider your next words and actions very carefully, Potter,” Riddle says, low and smooth and dangerous as a noose.
Harry doesn't know how he stops himself. A voice that thankfully sounds like Hermione, reminds him he promised himself to keep his head down and keep out of trouble until he could get home. He would kill Voldemort in 1996, and he would relish it. He huffs as he backs down. His anger still buzzes around his head like insects. He stomps over to his books and shoves them viciously into his bookbag, and exits the common room beneath the stares and whispers of all the Slytherins present.
*
“I think perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.” Tom sits down next to Harry Potter at breakfast and offers a smile, one so carefully crafted it has often made girls pause and titter at him.
Potter just shifts away so they aren't touching. “Good.” He grunts, and spoons a large dollop of honey into his oatmeal.
“I’d very much like to know you, Potter.” Tom offers his hand, as he had when he had first introduced himself as Slytherin perfect in Headmaster Dippet’s office. Potter had glowered at him then, a million emotions rushing across his very open face, almost too quick to read. Recognition, fury, resentment, resignation before settling at last on disdain. He hadn’t shaken Tom’s hand then.
Potter ignores the hand now. “I know all I need to about you, thanks.” He eats a spoonful of oatmeal and scribbles at what looks like last minute Potions homework.
Tom, not to be outdone, and not willing to let Harry escape him again, merely grabs Potter’s free left hand, absently noting the raised white scars on the back of his work roughened brown hand, and shakes firmly before Potter can rip his hand away, green eyes glimmering with righteous indignation. “One must observe niceties, Potter,” Tom reminds. “They are after all what make us gentlemen.”
Potter’s lip curls into a snarl. “What makes you think I want to observe niceties with you?” His tone is acidic.
“You've made it fairly clear you haven't, but that's not why niceties exist.” Tom turns to fetch himself a bowl of fruit and a selection of crumpets. He pours some tea, stirs in a single lump of sugar, all practiced movements he’s learned to make graceful, fluid. “And I find your animosity towards myself rather curious.”
Fed up, Potter shoves his crumpled homework into his pocket, grabs an apple and noisily stands. “I'll say this one more time, Riddle, and I know you're smart enough to get it. Leave me alone.” Then he tromps away like a stampeding beast. Tom watches him until he disappears through the doors of the great hall, and quietly sips his tea. If there's one thing he can't stand, it’s when people do not show him acceptable responses. The only two are admiration or fear or a tantalizing mix of both. Harry Potter’s disdain for him simply will not do.
*
Defense class is ordinarily Harry’s favourite place to be. Professor Merrythought is comfortingly similar to Professor Mcgonagal, a strict no nonsense black woman with sharp black eyes, coily black hair shaved low. Her robes are as no nonsense as her demeanor, burgundy and unadorned. She's a relief to be around, even when She’s stinging Harry with hexes to correct his wand movements. She seemed to have decided that Harry is her new favourite student. While for other professors, like Slughorn, this might mean being lax and easy, she's only harder on him. The challenge is frankly gratifying.
Today, Defense is the worst class ever and Professor Merrythought is the devil herself because today is a practical pop quiz. Which means they’re all paired off and told to duel. And because Merrythought believes only challenges can push a student’s skills higher, she only says “no, Potter,” when Harry moves to the generic Hufflepuff boy Harry had been pairing off with regularly, and points to Riddle.
Her meaning is so clear Harry almost can't find the words to argue. Almost.
“Professor, Sabil’s been doing a lot better and—“
“It's not your job to teach, Potter, it's your job to learn. You have nothing to learn from Sabil. A practical demonstration with Riddle however, will keep you on your toes.” She turns and begins correcting pairs without waiting for him to retort, expecting to be obeyed.
Dueling with Riddle is uncomfortably familiar. He holds his wand delicately, folds forward in a very traditional bow. Harry just glowers at him. “Niceties, potter,” Riddle reminds again when Harry doesn't bow back. Harry’s skin crawls. He remembers that night, he remembers the flood of his own fear like cold water in his veins, he remembers sweat and dirt and scraping his lungs raw as he screams in agony—
He doesn't even notice they're already dueling.
Riddle's dueling stance is solid, he prefers to stand his ground and whip spells away from himself with laughable ease, perfect defense. Harry prefers to move and dodge on his offensives, relying on his speed and nimbleness.
It's all going well until a bang sounds to their right and just behind Riddle. A flare of purple light, spell unidentifiable but remarkably evil looking, blooms too big. Harry doesn't think. He darts forward, shoves Riddle behind him, and waves his wand in one broad circle, funneling the spell until it gets smaller and smaller, and fizzles out. His wand arm stings with the effort, like he's holding a live wire, but he holds the stance until he's certain the spell is no longer a threat, before slumping forward, panting and exhausted.
“Goyle! What kind of spell was that?” Merrythought shrieks, “Potter! What exactly did you think you were doing?” Even furious she starts fussing, casting diagnosing spells all over Harry that flare worryingly.
Harry just shrugs, because as is often the case, he wasn't exactly thinking at all. His shoulders sting. Instinct told him he could redirect the spell before it hit anyone. Instinct told him that whatever happened to someone else if he failed would be ugly. Too ugly to live with if he could have stopped it. He blinks wearily. Other than stinging pain all over, he feels fine. He tries to say so but he can't open his mouth.
“Riddle. Escort Potter to the infirmary and hurry right back. And Goyle when I'm through with you—“
But Harry doesn't get to find out how Merrythought plans on making Goyle suffer, because he blacks out.
*
Tom is thinking. He taps his forefinger rhythmically against the arm of his favourite velvet green chaise, hidden in a shadowed corner of the common room where others know not to bother him, laying out the pieces of what he knows so far before him like raw bits of fabric waiting to become a quilt.
What he knows, he finds, is in question.
First, Harry Potter appeared out of nowhere on the day of the welcome feast, already sorted into Slytherin, glowering at the floor. Refusing to shake Tom’s hand. Scoffed at Tom’s offers to help him get to class and, despite being a new student, found his way around Hogwarts’ labyrinthine halls with ease.
Second, Harry Potter hated him with a petty and irrational fervour, avoiding him when he could, brooding by himself in the corners of classrooms and their dorms. He could mostly be found in the common room helping younger years with their defense homework, or in the library, frowning at a tower of books and mostly making a mess of his hands with ink.
Third, Harry Potter had proven himself to be remarkably unremarkable, performing well enough in all their shared classes, struggling with potions, sleeping through History of Magic, excelling in Defense alone.
And yet, fact number four turns over and over in Tom’s mind like a stone. Harry Potter had saved his life.
He’d shoved Tom, stood before him, jaw set in a grim sort of resolution Tom was more familiar with on the faces of muggle soldiers going to war on the mainland. He’d watched him swallow up that incredibly dark spell with nothing more to show for it than lingering muscle pains. Harry Potter had saved his life with remarkable ease for a student who strived to be unremarkable.
Harry Potter is more than he seems, not least of which is powerful.
So Tom is thinking.
He rearranges the pieces in a variety of ways, but he always comes to the same decision. He wants him. He covets him. The thought of all that raw power and sheer skill, bent to his will, loyal to him near makes him salivate.
The pieces come together at last to become his solution: Harry Potter will be his.
But first, Goyle needs to be appropriately chastised for using dark magic in school. Fucking idiot.
*
Harry had hoped, perhaps uncharacteristically optimistically, that saving Tom Riddle in front of everyone would enrage the Slytherin king. Make him avoid Harry so he wouldn't have to do something as humiliating as thanking him or, god forbid, owing him a debt.
That hope is dashed when Tom fucking Riddle himself brings him breakfast the next morning. “I'm told you're expected to make a full recovery, Potter. I'm extremely relieved. If you’d been irreparably heart…” he sighs dramatically. “For my sake? The guilt would have eaten me.”
Harry snorts with as much derision as he can muster, too tired to do more than that. Riddle makes a soft clucking noise. He lays a tray over Harry's lap. There's an omelet, made just the way he likes it with onion and lots of pepper. Tea just the way he likes it, spiced with cardamom, sugary sweet and milky. And a small piece of treacle tart that, when harry looks to tom in question, he only gets a conspiratorial wink. Harry doesn't know what makes him more uncomfortable. That Tom fucking Riddle just winked at him, or that he clearly knows what all his favourite foods are. Fucking creep.
Harry tucks in as Riddle draws up a chair, sitting right at his bedside and watching him uncomfortably closely. “This should signal the start of something new between us Harry.” Tom says after a long moment watching Harry scarf down his treacle tart.
“How'd you figure?” Harry grunts, and realizes he probably really doesn't want to know.
Tom just smiles at him. He has a dimple in his left cheek. His eyes are fixed, dark and unfathomable. Harry looks at his tea and slurps it noisily. “You saved me, Harry. Despite everything that's happened between us before. Surely that means something.” He leans a hand on the starched white hospital bed, a little too close to Harry’s thigh, and leans closer. To an uninformed observer, Tom would look earnest. Sweet. Beautiful.
Harry’s not that.
“Woulda done it for anybody. Didn't even really do it for you, exactly. You’re not special.” He finishes off his tea.
Riddle’s brow twitches. He doesn't lean back, even as he visibly thinks over his next words in that deliberate way he has. His next smile, when it comes, is not earnest or sweet. It's predatory as a snake and full of fangs. “I’ll take great pleasure in persuading you otherwise.”
Harry gets the distinct impression he said exactly the wrong thing when Riddle pats his shoulder when he makes to leave. “Rather if you didn't.” He tried just the same.
Tom Riddle laughs at him, smooth and soft, and leaves.
Harry slumps back in bed, belly full of his favourite foods, and figures this battle of wills will probably be the end of one of them. That too, is uncharacteristically optimistic.
*
Seductions, in Tom’s experience, are not slow processes. His targets find him beautiful, or kind, or powerful, or intelligent. He has something they want, and he dangles the temptation of it before them. They grab, and he strikes. Seductions look a bit like a snake on the hunt.
Seducing Potter is not going that way at all. Tom’s fingers close over the spine of his book, watching Potter patiently adjust the wand arm of a third year like he's been teaching all his life. He's infuriating.
Abraxas sits at his left, leaning his elbow against the arm of Tom’s chaise, pointy chin propped in his hand, crowding into Tom’s space. He's the only one allowed that privilege. Like this, he can follow Tom’s line of sight. His eyes are cool grey and appraising. Potter demonstrates his patronus with ease, to the delight of the third years ringing around him like weeds. “It's unlike you to be so…” Abraxas takes a moment then settles on, “fixated, Tom.”
Tom has had his knights watching Harry, reporting on even the most miniscule detail. He wants to know him better than he knows himself. He wants to have him.
That having him is proving so difficult is the irritating thorn Tom’s fingers keep worrying at.
“If he would just relent I wouldn't need to be so fixated.” Tom hisses. He tears his eyes away from Potter, looking down at the book in his lap. His brows furrow. Why can't Potter be like every other plebeian bottom feeding fool in this school? Why can’t he be easy? “You're going about this the wrong way.” Abraxas announces, plucking Tom’s book away and setting it in a pile with all the others he's already finished.
“Pray, enlighten me, since you’re suddenly an expert,” Tom grumbles, slouching back in his chaise. His eyes drift back to Potter, who has taken off his school robes to allow for easier movement as he regales his new fans with a story of some daring quidditch feat.
“Think of it like a game of romance. Woo him. Be gentle about it. Sincere.” Abraxas fixes his already perfect hair self importantly. Tom doesn't bother telling him approaching Harry that way seems even less likely to work than outright cornering Potter in a dark hallway or empty classroom with a wand to his throat. “He seems the type that likes honesty and fair dealings.”
“I tried that already. And I'm not following him around like a love sick puppy.”
“So you'll have your followers do it instead?” Abraxas lifts a pale haughty eyebrow.
Tom scowls. Potter, damn him, is smiling and, noticeably, has not once looked in his direction. As though ignoring him will be enough to put him off. Rather, curiously, the low simmering want has only grown hotter. He’ll have Potter or he’ll tear him apart, but he will not be denied. Something dark clenches in his belly.
He will not be denied.
*
Harry’s seen Voldemort angry, of course. He’s felt his fury boiling through his own blood, ripping him apart, turning him into an acid tongued fire breathing monster. He’s felt that black out world burning anger searing through him. He knows it as well as Voldemort himself does.
“You!” Tom fucking Riddle corners him to snarl, hand fisted in the collar of shirt, power trembling down his arm like he wants to smash Harry against the wall until he caves his skull in. “You fucking dare—!”
And because Harry hasn’t ever had a lick of self preservation, especially not in the face of Voldemort, Harry gives Riddle a grim smile and says, “S’the matter, Tom? Mad things aren't going your way?”
Riddle’s eyes flash, his face crumpled into a fury so all encompassing Harry doesn't think he would hear Malfoy, who hovers uncertainty nearby, even if he tried to intervene. “I’m sick of your fucking shit Potter,” Riddle near hisses. There's no smooth velvet voice, careful intonation, posh manners. He sounds totally different. Maybe Harry should be concerned, because when Riddle is this angry, he's irrational and homicidal. But he’s not, because he’s just as furious.
“I told you to leave me the fuck alone, Riddle! You don't get to be sick of my shit—!” Harry shoves back at Riddle. He barely budges. His mouth just curls into a more vicious snarl, all fangs.
“I've tried asking nicely.” His eyes are black and hot and glittering. He shakes Harry by the collar, doesn’t mind the scrape of Harry’s nails on his wrists, trying to pry him loose. “But I’m done playing fucking nice. I’ll fuck you up Potter!”
“Like to see you fucking try!”
Then Tom fucking Riddle, budding dark lord, perfect gentleman, Hogwarts hearthrob, does something Voldemort never has.
He rears back and punches him.
*
There’s a hidden room deep in the Hogwarts dungeon that looks like an underwater solarium. It's cool and a little damp, sparsely decorated with wrought iron chairs and tables. Light glows over the room a greyish green, near rippling with shifting water. Not many people know about it, because not many people have ventured so far. Here, Tom skims a book he’s read so often the pages are smudged and the spine cracked. He reads it aloud, carefully, intentionally. The words come to him so easily he doesn't even look at the text. “When meeting a witch for the first time, a polite wizard must bow and take her hand very lightly.”
As he reads, he tries not to think, and fails miserably.
Even though there are no bruises left, the mere memory of his stinging jaw, hot swollen eye and scraped knuckles is humiliating. Tom hasn't been in a graceless brawl like that since he was a child, defending his meager belongings from the bigger kids in the orphanage.
“At a ball, the guest of honour always starts the first dance, followed by the host of the event.”
He doesn't know what part of that encounter is more troubling. That he had ruined any chance of having Potter because of his hot temper and wounded pride? That he’d resorted to violence like a muggle instead of challenging Potter to a duel or, better yet, not fighting at all? Or That he’d been so furious, he’d let his facade drop so completely he'd barely recognized what he found underneath. He’d sounded like a back alley London street rat.
He'd been everything he'd tried so hard to escape.
“Seating arrangements at a dinner party are based on rank and age, with the host at the head, the guest of honor at his right and his spouse at his left.”
He’d spent his first summer after Hogwarts remaking himself from the ground up. He wouldn't be held back by his crude accent, his lack of means, his secondhand robes. He would be better than all of that. He’d stolen pomade to give himself a fetching hairstyle, practiced mimicking Abraxas Malfoy's posh intonations to train away his London drawl, studied pureblood etiquette until no one could call him a poor, ill mannered mudblood.
He’d faced his second year as the perfect little gentleman, who always did the right thing, said the right words, smiled the right way. He endeared himself to the Hogwarts populace with a flash of a dimpled smile and big blinking dark eyes.
“When at a social event one must first greet the host, followed by acquaintances. Wait for the host or an acquaintance to make further introductions, especially to an unfamiliar witch.”
Etiquette had brought him up from nothing and now—
“So this is where you hide out.” A voice says, echoing strangely in the round glass room. Harry Potter’s is the last face Tom expected to see, trying to look cooly appraising and instead his expression is soft, open and curious. Tom narrows his eyes at him suspiciously. Harry just wanders further into the solarium, gazing around himself with awe, twisting to take it all in.
“Did you come for a second round?”
“Relax Riddle. I wasn't looking for you. I was just wandering and stumbled in.” He shrugs, moving over to a pane of glass to study the waving seaweed and schools of tiny silvery fish. “I heard someone speaking so I came to look. That's all.”
Riddle could point out that most people turn and walk to the other direction when cornered by the person with whom they've gotten into a fist fight. And Harry Potter, who has made no secret of disliking him, has never been shy about walking out on their conversations before. But it's Tom’s policy to snap at opportunities presented, like a cobra confronted with a frog. So he says nothing and waits, observing Potter, who looks almost otherworldly and fae in the grey green light.
He wants him. Or he’ll tear him apart.
“So it takes practice to sound that snooty all the time huh?” Potter asks mildly. He doesn't step any closer, but his speaking alone is so strange—
Tom stifles a hot flare of anger. “I always sound like this. Though I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say snooty.”
“Didn’t when we were having it out” Harry smirks at him. It’s infuriating. He wants to knock his teeth in. He wants to make Potter worship him. He idly wonders if Potter told anyone where he is. They're all alone. Potter crosses his arms, totally at ease, like he hasn't already experienced what he's capable of. Like he wants to push him off that edge again just for the pleasure of watching him fall. “Should cuss more often Riddle. Sounds good on you.”
*
No one’s ever accused Harry of being a detail oriented kind of guy. It's been the bane of Hermione's existence for six years. He takes things at face value, rarely analyzes all the evidence laid before him to draw any complex conclusions.
He is unfortunately coming to complex conclusions regarding Tom fucking Riddle.
Somewhere between watching Tom Riddle lick the blood of his split lip, eyes flashing with indignation at Harry’s sheer audacity to hit him back, and catching him reading out loud to himself in that slow careful way he spoke like he was learning a new language, Harry realized maybe there was more than face value. New evidence had been set before his feet like gems for him to examine.
If asked directly, Harry would say Tom fucking Riddle is an asshole, and given time he would grow into an even bigger asshole that called himself Voldemort. In the privacy of his own thoughts, listening to Tom Riddle mumble softly in parseltongue in his sleep in their shared dorms, or watching Abraxas Malfoy playfully smooth the furrow of his brow with his thumbs and laugh, Harry remembers Tom fucking Riddle is sixteen. He has talents, holds grudges, curses, gets in fist fights, practices his snooty accent, hates spinach, sneaks second helpings of any chocolate dessert he can reach, taps his fingers rhythmically when plotting world domination.
In the privacy of his own thoughts, Harry believes Tom fucking Riddle, like any one else, deserves a second chance.
It takes Harry a while to generate a plan without Hermione and Ron around to bounce ideas off, until the Christmas holidays are upon them and the Slytherin dorms are utterly deserted save himself, Tom, and a seventh year student so stressed about her NEWTs Harry’s pretty sure she's going to have a mental break down well before they arrive. He waits until after dinner, and follows Tom out when he starts his prefect rounds. They make it maybe three minutes in silence before Tom rounds on him, wooden smile dimpling his left cheek. “Is there something you needed, Potter?”
And Harry, startled and unsure how to start delicately, just blurts “You’re South Asian right?”
Riddle blinks at him, smile melting from his face, eyes growing dark as coal, sparking already for a fight. “And what of it?” His tone trips into something stone hard and barely restrained.
Harry holds his hands up and gestures at himself. “Nothing bad. It's just,” another gesture, a little more frantic. “Me too, obviously.”
Riddle just stares coolly down his nose at him. “I hadn't noticed."
“Don't be like that.” Harry sighs with a roll of his eyes. “Kinda hard not to notice. Aren't a whole lot of South Asian kids here.”
Riddle doesn’t relent. His eyes remain hard, body held cautiously, like he expects Harry to attack him. “Again. What of it?”
At a loss and unsure how things are going so freaking wrong, Harry scrubs his hands through his hair. “Listen I was just… I was heading to the kitchen. Wanted to invite you along. White people food’s all well and good but sometimes I want home food, you know?”
Riddle pauses, relaxes his stance a little, and looks Harry over with new curiosity. “No. I don't know.” He has a birdlike way of examining things, tilted head, pecking at it until he gets the shape of it. “What’s home food?”
Gotcha, Harry thinks triumphantly.
Forty minutes later, Harry sets a plate of roti dripping with butter, a bowl of curry chickpeas and watery yogurt before Tom Riddle, who looks at the fare with barely contained suspicion, afraid Harry poisoned it even though he watched every step of the process.
“Eat it with your fingers. Tear off pieces and dip the roti into the yogurt, or the chickpeas, or both.” Harry instructs, and stuffs his own food into his mouth, licking away a dollop of yogurt from his thumb.
“Bad manners,” Riddle says, even as he follows instructions.
Harry just shrugs. “Not where I'm from.”
*
“You aren't ready for all the things I can show you,” Potter announces confidently with a grin presenting Tom with a bowl of a creamy white substance he calls rasmalai a few days later in the underwater solarium. “I'm a great cook.”
While the boast is certainly true, Tom still takes the bowl slowly and tastes its sweetness just as slowly. It's good, even in its total unfamiliarity.
It hadn't occurred to Tom to appeal to Harry based on their shared heritage. But then, what could he possibly say to him on the subject? Mrs Cole hadn’t had much to say about his mother except that she was brown, and ugly, and he should be grateful he didn't look much like her at all, probably taking after the father he’d been named for. His heritage had never mattered at the orphanage except when it could be used against him.
If Potter weren't such an artless manipulator, and if Tom didn't want to encourage their new budding relationship, Tom would wonder what his plan was.
But then, Harry is so straight forward, perhaps it would be worthwhile to just ask.
He dips his spoon into the rasmalai and stirs and observes Harry from beneath his lashes, feigning coyness. “Why the sudden change, Potter?”
“Huh?”
Tom rolls his eyes. “Calling out to me. Cooking for me.” He gestures at the bowls between them, the quiet, easy atmosphere of their own underwater bubble, a secret between the two of them. “I wasn't exactly… subtle about wanting to be your friend. And you certainly weren’t subtle about rejecting me.”
Potter’s brows furrow. “Let's get one thing straight. You didn't want to be my friend. You wanted to be my owner. That's what you do.” Potter takes a moment to slurp down the last of his rasmalai directly from the bowl, making Tom’s lip curl in disgust, and shrugs. “Anyway I had an epiphany after our fight. And I realized maybe I'd judged you a bit too quickly.” He shrugs. “Don't get me wrong, I still think you’re a slimy untrustworthy bastard, and I'm not joining your freaky little club but.” He shrugs again and looks away, studying a school of small fish that dart to and fro through the reeds. “I dunno. Maybe there's a couple more good things to you, asides from your pretty face.”
Tom swirls his spoon in his empty bowl, a slow smile curling his lips. “So you think I’m pretty?”
*
Harry thinks the Slytherins return to their dorms after the Christmas break expecting to find one or both of them eviscerated on their common room floor. No one expects the easy peace, Harry at one end of the common room, sunk to his nose in fruitless research and Riddle at the other in his armchair, not speaking, but no tension in the air either.
But, the Slytherins are a subtle lot. They read cues as well as Ravenclaws read books. Harry’s odd collection of younger Slytherins encircle his table, wishing him a happy new year, asking how his holidays were. He smiles and sets down his book (Magical Portals and You), and answers each one in turn. They all chirp for his attention like baby birds.
Across the room, Tom gathers his cronies around him, quietly removed from their conversation, but presiding over it like a king at court. He only glances in Harry’s direction once.
No one knows about the note Harry has crumpled in his fist, or Tom has tucked into his notes.
You haven’t lived til you’ve had shahi paneer -- HP
Meet you in the kitchens at midnight? -- TMR
Maybe when (if) Harry gets back to 1996, things will look a little different.