Archive of Our Own

As a young child, Harry was always watching people.

He was always able to tell if someone was having a bad day or close to their breaking point just from the sheer amount of people watching he ended up with Dudley scaring off any potential friends that Harry would have. So he would watch his fellow classmates during lunch breaks while sitting alone, observing how they acted and reacted to daily life and what they did when they were about to shout with joy or burst into tears. In cases of the latter, if he saw that the kid needed a hug, Harry would approach them one on one when he could and tentatively offer them a hug, doing what little he could to help ease their unhappiness.

He also watched adults, learning the more subtle signs that the adults in his life showed, like when his Uncle Vernon was angry at someone from his work, or when Aunt Petunia was about to make a snide remark about the most recent scandalous thing that their neighbors had done. He even got good at watching out for Dudley’s meltdowns so he could scamper out of the room as fast as possible to avoid the incoming storm or so he could run to help with damage control.

When Harry finally received his Hogwarts letter at 11 and headed off to Hogwarts, he also brought this slowly developing skill with him, and he would sit in classes or in the dining hall and watch his fellow witches and wizards, keeping tabs on who was becoming angry over not being able to perform a specific spell (in class) or who had just received a joyful piece of news from their family (in the dining halls). He would generally just try to observe and do his best to stay out of other people’s businesses, but there were some cases where he would just act on old habits and reach out to those he saw that needed a hug and give one to them.

The first example of this was about three weeks after school had started, during a Herbology class that the Gryffindors shared with the Hufflepuffs. He had noticed that a girl, who normally was in a cheerful and jubilant mood during Herbology, was silent and downcast. She had spent the entirety of class shuffling her feet and keeping her head down, looking like Harry’s elementary school classmates had just before they broke down sobbing. Her friends also shot her worrying looks occasionally throughout class, concern clearly written all over their faces, but they kept their distance, not wanting to do something to upset the girl more in the middle of class. Harry had spent that class also occasionally glancing at the girl, debating on whether or not it would be a good idea to go up to her after class and try to comfort her.

Once class had ended, the girl sprinted out of the class, leaving her school bag behind with her friends. Harry had made up his mind, shouted a quick “I’ll meet you for lunch in the Great Hall,” and ran out the door after the girl, hoping that he would be able to catch her before he changed his mind about approaching her. 

Harry found her walking quickly through the hall, away from the Great Hall; evidently she had decided that she wanted to skip lunch that day. He finally caught up to her when she was rounding a corner, and called out to her in hopes of getting her attention.

“Hey, wait up!” Harry said, as he reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, startling the girl. She whipped around to see who had grabbed her and her expression morphed from a sullen one to one of disbelief as she realized who had called out to her.

“H-Harry Potter? What are you doing here?” she asked questioningly, the disbelief on her face leaking out into the tone of her question. 

“Er, well you looked kinda down in class today, like you needed a hug, so I was wondering if you wanted one?” he replied, realizing that as he said it out loud how creepy it sounded that he was watching her in class, and looked away sheepishly.

“I...I mean, not that I was watching you for any particular reason, I just happened to notice how down you looked, and that your friends were also concerned about you… and that you kinda looked like you were about to burst into tears,” he continued, letting go of the girl and slowly raising his hands up near his head.

“But I understand if that seems too weird or creepy to ask that, and you can just ignore me and go on with your da-” Before he finished his sentence, he was cut off by the girl rushing towards him and almost tackling him in the hallway, letting the sobbing out that she had desperately tried to keep in during class.

“M-my bunny M-Mr. Snuffles died this morning. W-well, not this morning, but I g-got a letter from my parent t-this morning telling m-me the awful news.” she sobbed, hugging Harry tightly as he reeled from the shock of suddenly being hugged. He slowly came out of his initial panic and wrapped his hands around the crying girl, rubbing his hand on her back as she cried for her deceased pet.

Eventually she came to her senses, and when she realized people were staring, she bolted back, blushing from the humiliation of breaking down in the middle of the hallway and causing a scene.

“S-sorry, for suddenly hugging you like that. I don’t know what came over me, I just..” she trailed off, sniffling a little bit as she tried to calm herself down.

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry responded, waiving off her concerns. “I’m always happy to give hugs to anyone who looks like they need one.”

He walked the girl back to her dorm in order to be alone for the rest of the day, learning that her name was Hannah Abbott, she was in Hufflepuff, and she was from Ireland. They talked about random topics as they headed to the Hufflepuff dorm, Harry waving Hannah off as he headed down to the Great Hall, hoping he could use the little time he had left to quickly grab a bite to eat before his next class.

His actions with Hannah made him realize that his years at Hogwarts were going to be vastly different from his years in primary school (which he realized now was a stupidly obvious thing to think), and that he could finally hug and comfort the people he saw that needed hugs and comfort. So Harry slowly got into a routine; whenever he saw someone reaching their breaking point, whether it be in class trying to do a specific thing, or in a heated argument, or just whenever someone looked down in general, Harry would do his best to get them alone and comfort them by giving them hugs. He hoped that the comforting touch would help either calm them down or cheer them up, whichever they needed more at the moment.

Because of this, students slowly started coming up to him on their own, on top of him seeking out people, mainly out of the need to get a hug from someone but also sometimes because they just wanted to hug the boy-who-lived. People wanting to hug him, and even going so far as to seek out a hug specifically from him, was a strange experience, but Harry learned to embrace his new role as the hug giver. As long as the people receiving hugs were happy, he didn’t particularly care what the hug was for. And it was nice to have so many people willing to hug him, which was a stark contrast to kids from his childhood. 

Therefore, Harry slowly gained the reputation as “the free hug giver” on top of his fame as the boy-who-lived, becoming the designated person to go to whenever someone felt down or upset for a hug. Or even if a person just wanted to hug someone because they felt lonely. 

This reputation only grew as the months went by, with more and more people from all four houses approaching him for hugs. It annoyed Hermione and Ron at first, because sometimes they would end up late to class, or  they would spend half an hour stuck in the hall  due to the onslaught of hugs Harry would receive. But they eventually learned to get used to it as a daily occurrence as the amount of hugs Harry received mellowed out over time, with the initial wave of people wanting to hug slowly fading out and losing interest as getting hugs from Harry became commonplace rather than the once in a lifetime opportunity a lot of students had initially thought his hugs to be.

There was one person, however, that he had failed to hug, and that person was Tom Riddle.

Tom Riddle was a mysterious Slytherin a year ahead of him, and Harry had first met him in all his mystery when they had Care of Magical Creatures together in Harry’s third year. Harry hadn’t noticed the other boy at first, but as soon as he’d laid eyes on him, he could tell that Tom desperately needed a hug. There was nothing obviously noticeable about his outward appearance to point to this conclusion, but Harry had a gut feeling, and his gut feelings were usually right.

(There had been that one awkward interaction during his second year, with a Ravenclaw in his year named Lisa Turpin, who at first Harry had thought had been upset about something, but really just wanted to be alone in the bathroom for other more personal reasons that Harry really didn’t have any business poking his head into, which had resulted in a lot of apologies and a quick dash away from the girl’s bathroom).

So after class, Harry decided to go up to the older Slytherin to try and befriend him enough to get a hug out of him, since the one thing that Harry learned from his previous interactions with the Slytherin house students was that they were very cautious and unwilling to hug Harry a lot of the time, and that he had to befriend and coax them for anywhere from a day or two, to two to three weeks before he was finally able to give them a hug.

Harry slipped past the various Gryffindor and Slytherin students in his year to get to one of the few upperclassmen students that took Care of Magical Creatures. He approached the taller boy, and before he could rethink his actions, he jumped in front of the boy and stuck out his hand.

“Hi, I’m Harry, nice to meet you! What’s your name?” Harry said quickly, trying and somewhat failing to not have his awkward nervousness seep into his voice when speaking.

The teen in front of him stared at him with a look of shock, confusion, and a little bit of disdain on his face, clearly not expecting the younger Gryffindor to have approached him in such a way.

“What’s it to you? What do you want?” he replied coolly, “Why would I give my name to a random stranger who just approached me out of nowhere? And a Gryffindor, no less.”

Harry’s grin faltered a bit at the other boy’s words, but he still pushed on nonetheless, determined to get his name, no matter how much of an asshole Tom ended up being about it.

“Well, first off, even though I’m a Gryffindor, I’m also an honorary Hufflepuff, so you don’t have to get your panties in a twist over the petty Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry thing. Second off, I’m not a stranger, everyone around school knows me for my free hug-giving nature. And third, can’t I just ask for a guy’s name without being accused of having ulterior motives?” Harry finished with a bit of a whining tone, hoping that maybe if he pestered the young wizard enough, Tom would give in to his charm...ing personality, his charming personality.

By the murderous look on the boy’s face however, Harry could tell that it would take a lot more persisting before he got the boy’s name , much less a hug. But Harry was prepared. He had gone through great lengths to get a hug out of Draco Malfoy , the one person in his year that hated him the most. If he could get Draco Malfoy to give him a hug, he could get anyone to.

The older boy gave Harry a calculating and intense stare for what was becoming an increasingly awkward amount of time. But Harry couldn’t back down, because if he did, he knew he wouldn’t be able to work up the nerve to approach the boy again, and that would be a failure to his code of hugging everyone who needed it.

“...Tom Riddle,” Tom reluctantly replied, clearly not happy about having to divulge that information to someone he deemed a complete stranger, but also looking like he was done with whatever shenanigans Harry was currently trying to pull right now.

“Great, nice to meet you, Tom!” Harry beamed, grabbing Tom’s hand hanging by his side and shaking it enthusiastically.

After that meeting, Harry constantly would find reasons to seek out Tom, going to such lengths as literally learning  Tom's class schedule and showing up when he got out of classes in order to say hi. He was constantly around Tom, talking to him and trying with all his persistence to befriend Tom. It annoyed Tom to no end at first, but eventually Harry noted that Tom stopped telling him to go away every time he was around. Harry decided to interpret that as an acceptance of friendship, much as Tom seemed to detest the idea of friends. 

Once Tom had accepted Harry’s friendship, he constantly found himself being dragged along in the whirlwind that was Harry Potter’s life. He was dragged everywhere by Harry: to sit with Harry at the Gryffindor table for meals, to wait with Harry when someone broke down crying in Harry’s arms while Harry attempted to comfort them with hugs, and even on excursions to Hogsmeade with Harry’s Gryffindor friends. And if there was one thing that Tom learned from being around Harry so much, it was that Harry was a very touchy person. 

Harry would constantly give hugs to all of his friends and to a few of his acquaintances, and would probably do the same to Tom if Tom hadn’t vehemently rejected Harry every time Harry offered a hug. Harry eventually learned to stop asking Tom for hugs, but he was still watching out for the perfect opportunity to give Tom a hug, and that opportunity happened a year later during Harry’s fourth year and Tom’s fifth.

Harry had been wandering the castle one day, looking for Tom in order to ease the bored state that he was currently in. He had checked some of the places where Tom could be (in the Slytherin common room, the Great Hall, and the Black Lake), and was heading to his next destination, the library. 

When Harry arrived at the library, he scanned the faces in his immediate vicinity, and when he didn’t spot Tom, he decided to try looking in the less frequented corners of the library, hoping that Tom would be in one of them. He searched for a couple of minutes before he spotted a familiar head of perfectly-styled hair, which Harry immediately recognized as Tom’s.

Harry was about to call out to Tom in the loud manner that he usually did to embarrass Tom when he froze, seeing the ghastly expression on Tom’s face. Tom looked like he had seen a ghost, his face pale and drained of color. He was also shaking slightly, staring at the piece of paper he was holding in disbelief and horror, like he couldn’t believe what he was reading.

“...Tom?” Harry asked softly, not wanting to set Tom off and cause a scene in the library.

Tom turned to face Harry, a look of disgust and anguish on his face.

“...my mom was a witch,” he said shakily, barely holding in his anger as he spat out the last part of the sentence. “And my dad was a filthy muggle.”

Harry looked at Tom, confused. “Why does that matter? You found out that one of your parents was magical! Isn’t that good?” 

Tom gave him a dirty look. “She was weak and died giving birth to me. I thought that if she were truly magical, she would’ve been able to avoid death,” he seethed angrily, crumpling up the papers in his hand. 

“But I’ve looked, and there’s no trace that my father went to school here. He ended up being the muggle parent, while my weak pathetic mother was the magical one.” Tom looked absolutely livid at this admittance, like he wanted to simultaneously destroy everything and hex everyone in his near vicinity. 

Harry was at a loss for words. He knew how much finding his family meant to Tom, and to have all of his dreams crushed at once like that must’ve been heartbreaking. Harry could only imagine the turmoil that Tom’s mind was in right now.

“...you want a hug?” Harry asked nervously, doubting he’d get a positive result, remembering all the objections that he had received from Tom in the past.

Tom gave him a more intense glare, and if looks could kill Harry would definitely have been dead by now. But suddenly, Tom sighed in defeat, his shoulders and head drooping down in misery.

“...fine” Tom muttered defeatedly, and as soon as the words left his lips, Harry pulled him up out of his chair and wrapped his arms around Tom’s body, pulling him into a tight embrace. Tom tensed for a few seconds before finally relaxing into the hug. He grabbed Harry tightly, holding onto him like a lifeline, shaking. 

Harry and Tom hugged for what seemed like an eternity, with Harry soothingly rubbing his back and whispering comforting words, trying to calm Tom down enough to stop the shaking. Harry wanted the hug to last forever, but eventually Tom’s breaths evened out and the shaking stopped. Harry pulled away, a slight grin on his face.

“Better?” Harry asked in a cheerful tone, looking at the relaxed expression that Tom now wore on his face in place of his normally impassive mask. 

“...the embrace may have had the side effect of easing my mood a little, yes,” Tom reluctantly admitted, not wanting to admit out loud that he had enjoyed the hug, despite how much his body language screamed that he had.

Harry grinned wider, grasping Tom’s hand and pulling him out of the library. “Come on, we can go sneak into the kitchens and get some food, because I know you missed dinner.”

Harry and Tom snuck off to the kitchens, where food was awaiting a famished Tom. And if more hugs came with the food, well, Tom wasn’t going to complain.