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If he was in any other alley, the feeling of someone’s hand on Tom’s arse would’ve earned his assailant a trip to the healers at St. Mungos, but Tom was in Knockturn Alley, and this shit was par for the course, unfortunately.
Making a scene here would only mark him as a target, so instead of doing such, Tom flicked his fingers over his shoulder and shot a strong stinging hex at whoever was trying to pickpocket him poorly. He didn’t bother to turn back and look―just rolled his eyes and kept walking, smirking at their rewarding yelp. He watched in disdain out of the corner of his eyes as the scruffy looking guy slunk away with a couple muttered curses, taking a moment to scoff as they went. Once they were out of sight, he rolled his shoulder to rid himself of that prickling feeling of discomfort he always got when someone touched him, and grimaced as his found shoulder stuck to the fabric of his shirt, adhesed there by sweat.
Ew. How dare his body have functions? Didn’t it know that was a waste of time?
Tom puffed another sigh―great, now Harry was going to have an excuse to finagle him into doing laundry with him, thus forcing him to participate in ~friendly conversation~ and other tripe like that. Ugh.
Grumbling low in his throat, Tom kept an eye out as he traversed the alley, cataloging minute changes and noting the people he passed as he cut a path across each layer upon layer of grime that led the way to Borgin and Burkes. He’d only come to the alley to check up on that stupid locket Burke was dangling over his head, and he’d had the perfect excuse once Harry beseeched him to pick up some more dittany from the apothecary.
As he passed by the teeming marketplace, which was riddled with filth as per the usual, he let his eyes rove over the crowd, seeing no out-of-place suspicious figures. No one with any knives glinting in the light, and no one looking at him funny. Good. Hopefully it’d stay that way. As Borgin and Burke’s grew nearer and nearer, Tom did his best to uncurl his lip and soften his face from it’s regular surly state, less for the sake of the wary people around him and more as a preemptive measure to get into Burke’s arbitrary good graces.
Apparently, his face had this unfortunate quality about it that, when left to its own devices, it would twist into an expression that made people less than amicable with him. Or so Harry insisted. Tom was pretty sure he was full of shit, but Harry had a strange knack for being right about some things (damn him) and it was proven accurate enough that, for a situation at... delicate as this, he wasn’t going to take any chances.
The wooden doorstep creaked under his feet as he stood before the door to the shop, and his neck prickled. He was being watched. He grimaced and turned, peering over his shoulder one last time and scanning the far-off crowd for anyone who looked off. He saw nothing, and sighed, walking inside. He suppressed a grimace as the bell tinkled―how he loathed the noise―and waited for Burke to amble into the main room to greet him.
The endeavor, as Tom had expected but had hoped for a different outcome to, was utterly fruitless. Burke was as unhelpful and dickish as ever, and he walked out of the store fuming. All he wanted was the heirloom that rightfully belonged to him, dammit!
So. You can imagine the fury that raced down Tom’s chest the second someone seized his arm. He spun around, fist already crackling with wandless magic―but he stopped dead once he saw who it was.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
There, in all his five foot two glory, stood Harry.
And he looked mad.
Tom swallowed hard.
“Fancy seeing you here,” He said stiffly, wrenching his forearm out of Harry’s death grip and taking several steps backwards.
Harry’s eyes slanted, and he walked towards Tom to refill the distance Tom had put between them―if what he was doing could even be called walking. No, a slow, prowling glide was a better descriptor. Every inch of him bellowed power and danger, and Tom found himself shrinking ever so slightly. And Harry, damn him again, took notice of this action and tilted a dark eyebrow, a frown setting into his grim face.
“See, you know. You know damn well why I’m here. Why I’d be so upset. And you still came here.”
Indignation rose up in Tom and he huffed. “You’re not my keeper, and I’m allowed to go wherever I damn well please, Potter―!”
Harry jabbed a finger into Tom’s sternum hard, and when Tom keeled downwards because ow, Harry―in a ballsy move that made Tom desperately want to punch him, took Tom by the ear and dragged him all the way out of the alley, completely ignoring Tom’s spitting and cursing. All the while, he could hear Harry muttering under his breath, “Can’t believe― Potter? Gonna call me Potter? After all this―” and other disgruntled sniping.
The moment Harry let go of his ear―his ear! Tom could not believe the disrespect!―he immediately reared up and tried to tear Harry a new one―just for Harry to cover his mouth. If Tom were any older than fifteen, he was sure he’d have burst a fucking vein right then and there.
“I know you want to yell at me, but this is my time to talk, you inconsiderate, lackadaisical, vacuous, impertinent ARSEHOLE!”
Tom, for the second time in quick succession, froze. Harry was using big boy words. This was not good. Heads turned to look at them, and Tom cringed. Oh, Circe. He backed away from Harry’s hand.
“Wh―”
Harry heaved, and chest puffed up, he hissed with a finger jabbed threateningly into Tom’s chest, “ What is so fucking important that you have to constantly ignore my copious warnings and―and meander down there! I do not think you understand just how dangerous it is in there, for the love of God, Tom, I―!”
And see, they had already been over this, and it wasn’t Tom’s fault that Harry was so incapable of understanding that, “You know I’m trying to get my locket back―the one Burke stole from my family―?”
“A shitty locket is not worth your life!”
But it wasn’t a―a shitty locket, it was― “It’s not shitty, it’s mine, I want it back, and I’m not going to die just standing in there goddamned alley!”
A mother with a coach rolled past quickly, shooting them both a look over her shoulder.
Harry laughed humorlessly. “If you really think that, you should not be down there. You aren’t invincible, Tom.”
They both stared at each other, seething and trying to make the other crack with their eyes alone, before Harry’s stance relaxed slightly and he said, with forced calm,
“I will just buy you the fucking locket, Tom. It’s not that big of a deal, and I am willing to cough up the galleons if only to stop your stupid arse from getting swooped up and―and trafficked or something. It happens down there, you fucking berk.”
Tom twitched at the closing insult, briefly reminded of his recent failure in the man’s store, and breathed out shakily. “It’s not about ―do not buy it for me, I have to―”
“―Buy it yourself. With money you don’t have and will take ages to earn. Because you’re off your shits. I know.” Harry sighed angrily, and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’m going to beat you with a rock one of these days, I swear it. Just―we are getting dittany, some lunch, and then we’re going back. And if you step foot into that alley without me one more time, I swear to God, Tom. ”
Tom looked at Harry long and hard, set his jaw, and stalked towards the apothecary. He didn’t bother to see if Harry was following―and thus did not notice the calculative look on his face.
Tom had all but gotten over his and Harry’s mutual angry-alley-rendezvous by the time they left the orphanage and made their way to Hogwarts for their sixth year. He’d spent much of the summer working odd jobs and making money, and while he’d scrounged up quite a bit, it wasn’t anywhere near enough. As the clock marched on, Tom got steadily more and more worried that some prick would swoop the locket right from under his nose. Such worries had plagued him so heavily that he’d begun to consider taking Harry up on his offer to buy it for him, but he shoved it down back into the corner of his mind stubbornly.
No. He would do this himself, or not at all.
Finally deeming it time to get out of bed and go down to breakfast, Tom rubbed his eyes and yawned, stretching out his back and hearing a satisfying snap as he did so. School that week had been generally uneventful and, if he was honest, not productive in the least. The term was ending, calendar counting down to the Yuletide Break, and since mid-year exams were done, they’d hit a bit of a dead week, which every student who had thus far maintained their sanity was grateful for. Even Tom, brainiac that he was, was glad for the reprieve.
Of his four roommates, only two remained in the room at the moment: Malfoy and Black, both still snoozing away and wasting precious time to eat. Lestrange had fucked off to God knows where, and Harry was likely already downstairs, fraternizing with his Gryffindor friends.
Somehow, the bastard had managed to charm his way into the Lion’s Den and regularly sat with them at breakfast, and since Harry was the only person Tom found tolerable these days, he was often forced to sit there too. Sure enough, once he’d finally wandered into the Great Hall, there sat Harry among all the Gryffindors, chatting Septimus Weasley’s ear off about something. Scoffing under his breath, Tom sat across from Harry, nudged the front of his calve with his moccasin, and loaded his plate with eggs. Harry spared him a glance and small smile, and then turned back to his conversation.
Tom chewed on his eggs robotically as Harry yammered away with his friends, barely noticing anything else. Mid-sentence, Harry took a doughnut from a plate nearby and laughed, barely looking at the thing before trying to take a bite of it.
That was exactly the problem though―he wasn’t looking at it.
Tom watched, in dim interest, as twenty seven seconds came and passed as Harry tried to maneuver his jelly doughnut into his mouth. Tom was invested in this, now―he just couldn’t help it. There was just something incredibly distracting about watching someone try to eat a donut while attempting to engage in their conversation at the same time and utterly fail at one of those tasks. Toast forgotten in his hand, Tom stared at Harry for a while, wondering what on earth was so difficult about shoving a pastry in your mouth and nearly sighed in relief when Harry finally got it in.
Shortly thereafter, Harry made a muffled cheering noise, much to the amusement of the Gryffindors that Harry had forced Tom to sit among. Tom was internally lamenting this for the umpteenth time before, as if suddenly aware of Tom’s gaze on him, Harry turned to look back. They locked eyes for a tense second before Harry bit down particularly hard and jelly all but exploded across his face.
And Harry, bless his little heart, looked so gloriously confused for a bare second before his friends erupted in laughter.
Cute, The word crossed his mind before he could stop it and then—Fuck. Fuck, he thought loudly, hoping to god that it didn’t show on his face. The toast crunched very loudly in Tom’s palm, scattering crumbs across the table cloth. Harry was laughing now too, right with his friends, and his donut had fallen listlessly to the table. He was waving his hands a bit, looking for a napkin just as a great glob of what looked like lemon filling dripped onto the table. Harry paused and made a ‘why’ gesture at it before finally seizing a cloth and wiping his face, only at first succeeding in spreading the filling everywhere a bit more thoroughly and somehow managing to get a fair amount caught in his hair.
Tom, however, was too busy reeling and trying to vanish the toast crumbs in his hand to properly appreciate this idiocy. Normally, watching jelly slide across anyone else’s face would’ve prompted a disgusted reaction from him, perhaps a bored sneer on a good day, but he never would’ve considered such a thing cute until now, apparently. Tom didn’t think things were cute. He had never thought anything was cute—he’d understood what cute things were on a conceptual level, but never quite got it.
Bunnies? He forced a smile. Babies? All he could say on that was Ew, with a very necessary capital E. Tiny furniture? What the hell was that about? Yet somehow, watching Harry fuss across the table and scrub at his face with a napkin, face suspiciously darker than usual and fighting down further laughter was something Tom found heart-wrenchingly endearing. The whole shenanigan was just another notch on the pole that measured how much further this could go on before Harry ruined Tom’s entire life.
Harry Potter was the root of all his problems, Tom was utterly convinced of this.
He wanted to tear his own hair out in frustration. Harry was looking at him right now, and Tom had an absurd urge to shrink in his chair. He instead glared coolly at Harry, and then tried to surreptitiously strangle himself with his tie. God , he wanted to kiss hated this boy. So, you can imagine the panic rage that was stirred up when Harry went under the table―and came sliding next to him, knocking his thigh into his.
“So.” Harry said.
Tom blinked. “What?”
“Were you listening to anything we were talking about?”
Was he supposed to?
Harry caught the look on Tom’s face because he was obnoxiously perceptive like that, and smiled in that one soft, patronizing way. “Right. I always forget your zombie-ness in the morning.” Tom couldn’t begrudge him on that front though―he was right. “ Any way, to recap―there’s a wizarding ice-skating event going on in a couple weeks. Since, y’know, it’s that season. And I just thought I’d mention it to you , because there’s a fairly substantial cash prize for winners, and I dunno, I just seem to recall you mentioning a while back that you knew how to ice skate…” Harry trailed off, checking his nails and flickering his eyes to look up at Tom.
And.
Hm.
Hm.
Tom had come alive at substantial cash prize but withered the moment it registered that it was for ice-skating. And he had mentioned that he was good at it, but. Er. Well. That may have been a (huge) lie. Before you say anything―in his defense, Harry had been crowing about how Tom had one slightly over him in academic but had nothing on him with physical shit, and Tom may have just said he knew how to ice skate to make him shut the fuck up. He’d chosen that in particular because it’d been summer then and Harry wouldn’t have been able to call his bluff, but now…
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“I’d rather not,” Tom said stiffly, hoping against hope that Harry would just let it go.
No such luck: Harry got that one look on his face. “Oh, are you sure? You were pretty confident about your skills and, hey, you’d need a partner. I’d step up for that, since I know how to.” He’d planned this, it occurred to Tom. Harry had found this lucrative offer for him to subtly help him make the money for his locket instead of letting Tom do it by himself.
This made Tom so suddenly and irrationally angry that he did something stupid. “Okay, fine. We’ll do it.” He hissed.
Harry blinked, as if he hadn’t expected this to be so easy. “Really? Alright, then. Meet me on the lake after breakfast, and we can try to brainstorm songs and moves, y’know?”
Then he turned back to Septimus and the guy’s posse, and Tom’s brain caught up with him and informed him of what he’d just agreed to in a spastic fit of wounded pride. He nearly dropped his fork. Oh fuck.
That whole debacle brought Tom to where he was now. Bambi-legged on the frozen Black Lake with Harry curling across the ice in almost mockingly perfect circles, seemingly enjoying himself and getting a feel for the ice while Tom stubbornly tried to make it further than two meters from the bank.
It was cold, he was holding his breath as a focus habit and it was not helping, his nose hurt, and good God, never before had Tom considered how difficult ice skating would be on his calves. He’d assumed it’d be his feet that hurt, given the minimal surface area of the blade and the ice and how much women complained about heels, but the agony in his calves was nothing on his foot pain. Christ.
Honestly. Tom felt like he was doing reasonably well for someone who’d never once ice-skated in their life. He hadn’t slipped the second he’d gotten on, he’d adapted pretty good to the way the skates felt, and he’d imitated how Harry moved just enough to get a decent distance from the shoreline. And Harry had yet to notice anything amiss―though that likely had more to do with how much he was spinning over there, goodness―so Tom didn’t feel like a complete pillock.
So, of course, that was when he immediately fell and ate shit.
The biggest insult is that, for how unavoidably lightning quick it was, it didn’t even hurt. He rolled over onto his back and found it to be a mistake, because instead of being able to sit up like he’d expected, now he was just writhing on his back like an upside down tortoise. He could find zero purchase on the slippery ice, and after a solid half-minute of struggling, Tom just.
He gave up, alright? He was wet, cold, and incredibly angry, and worst of all, at himself. It was his own damn fault he was ice skating, he admitted it. Harry had been nice, looking for an opportunity, and had even taken the time to remember that Tom could supposedly ice skate in the first place. Harry couldn’t have had any idea that he couldn’t, so in a sort of contrived, backways ass manner, a rare sense of personal ownership blipped in his head, slightly misguided as it was. Which was also infuriating.
He tilted his head back to see where Harry was at all, and nearly yelped when he saw Harry coming towards him. Dammit, that looked really fast laying down! For a wild moment, he thought Harry would slide into him.
“...Tom?” Harry, thankfully, slid to a stop just paces away from his head, and Tom eyed the blades of his ice skates warily.
“What?”
“Why are you on the ice?”
“...We’re ice skating.” Tom proffered dully, fighting down the pink prickling his cheeks.
Harry, curse him, started to laugh and said, “No shit, Sherlock, but that’s not―that’s not ice skating. You’re just lying down. Why?”
Tom folded his arms and stubbornly refused to answer. Admitting to himself that his own jackassery had put him here was one thing―admitting it out loud to someone else was another entirely.
Unfortunately, Harry seemed to put two and two together, and with a wave of his hand, the blades on his ice skates vanished, and he crouched down slowly. “...Oh my god,” He said. “You don’t know how to ice skate.”
The ice melted just a little under one of Tom’s hands, just enough for his fingers and palm to grow wet. He opened and closed his hand to get the blood flowing again and, when that proved ineffective, merely jammed it into his coat pocket to warm it up. He gave the ice to his side a fiery stare as if his own anger could melt it before tsking and saying, very quickly and just as shortly,
“No.”
Harry put his face in his hands and began to tremble, and Tom almost thought he was crying for a moment before he realized that he was, but not for the reason he was anticipating―he was laughing so hard that no sound was coming out, and tears were leaking from his eyes.
“It is NOT that funny!” He hissed, trying and failing to sit up if only to tower above Harry. “Help―Help me get up, goddammit.”
Harry, after several minutes of just sitting there and giggling, finally got himself together and helped Tom get up. They stood in staunch, tense silence for a while, Harry just barely suppressing more laughter and Tom’s face completely shut down.
“I just―” Harry snorted, mirth still clear as day in his tone. “I cannot believe you lied to me about this, and then had the audacity to agree to doing this with me. Holy shit, Tom.”
Tom didn’t even know how to explain himself, so he didn’t dignify Harry’s words with a proper response and instead just demanded, “Teach me.”
“How to skate?” Harry asked, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye with the meat of his palm.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Tom huffed, tried to turn away to cross his arms, and slipped once more.
And that’s how Tom found himself sliding on the ice for hours a day for the next several weeks, wincing as his skates slipped about and remaining perpetually one wrong move from eating shit for the umpteenth time. Harry had explained a bit ago that there was no way for Tom to learn how to figure skate in time for the competition and was going to use an old knowledge-share spell to help him out when the day came, but until then they still had to be on the ice so Tom was familiar with it so the ritual wouldn’t “be so hard on him.”
“Knowledge is best transferred onto a foundation, idiot.” Harry had said, and then skated off to go do more lazy figure eights like the capable bastard he was. Honestly, Tom was pretty sure that this whole shenanigan was actually just the penance he was meant to pay for being a dirty liar and Harry was just deriving great satisfaction from seeing him fall a lot, but though he hated to admit it, Harry was the expert here so he had to comply.
So. Just a bare day before the tournament, here Tom was, groaning, and trying desperately to keep his balance. He’d gotten significantly better at skating and maneuvering the ice, but that didn’t mean Tom trusted nor enjoyed it one bit. He loathed this thin sheet of unstable frozen water and longed for when he’d no longer have to traverse it, and did not wonder about why he was still doing this in the first place.
He just held his hands out when he felt too close to overbalancing and muttered, “Oh, Harry,” under his breath like it was a curse.
He felt a tap on her shoulder, and jumped a bit, almost falling in the process. Shuffling around, he glanced up, almost swearing when he got a bit too close to slipping.
“You’re doing a lot better than day one,” Harry commented pointlessly, and brushed the hair off of Tom’s head in a loose, affection move that made heat rise to Tom’s cheek. “Well, come on, then,” He said suddenly, forcefully directive, “Let’s get into it. Tomorrow is the tournament, and we’ve only got a few hours til I do that weird knowledge ritual. Let’s make it as easy on you as possible. C’mon.”
Tom shrugged, though he didn't know if Harry even saw it; maybe it was perceived as one of his violent shivers. “I don’t think I’m going to get much more knowledge in a day, Harry. Can we just... not today? Rest up for this stupid ritual of yours?”
“This ‘stupid ritual’ of mine is what’s going to get you some money, Tom.” Harry pierced him with a sharp look. “But if you must...I guess you can go,” He said, false-condescension lacing his tone, and the other shoe dropped as he tacked on, “You’ve never struck me as a quitter, though.”
Dammit.
He watched in mute disgruntlement as Harry skated some normal, compulsory figures―eights and circles. There was a certain looseness to his movements that Tom had yet to understand, an easy relaxation that he’d yet to notice in any other skater―and trust him, there’s been plenty. Perhaps he could understand some of the jealous looks Harry got sometimes.
Ignorant to his stare, Harry skated on, scraping a symphony of sound with each pull of his blades across the ice, the lone occupant of the lake. He was gliding, then, speed ramping up and skates screeching on the white ice, and then, just as Tom expected, he jumped. Took off, even, almost bizarrely similar to a goddamn bird. Because that was the only way Tom could really think to describe it. It was almost inhuman how he seems to blur out of sight, spinning fast enough for Tom to have trouble counting the rotations. Rapid succession, one―two―three―four―
And then Harry landed, and continued to skate, as if for a moment he’d not looked like he was floating.
Tom exhaled. He’d been holding his breath. He always did when he watched Harry skate like this, but...deep breaths. God, something about Harry jumping like that, defying gravity with a scant thought...it made his heart stop, seizing with terror because what if he fell? and then pound like one of those obnoxious bongo drums the small children at the orphanage were so fond of beating.
Truly, Tom was not at all well-versed in the known laws of physics, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t tell that they seemed to bow beneath Harry’s feet, as if friction pretended it did not exist and stayed far away from the ice, not daring to touch him. It was like the air itself cradled him, held him aloft for those scant extra millisecond.
Sometimes Tom wondered if that were truly the case―not just on the ice. Harry had this unique, airy quality to him. Or, perhaps not airy... the word was too weak. No. Harry was a walking gust of wind, if that made sense. Sometimes he billowed like a brisk wintry wind, sometimes he curled lazily around you like a warm summer breeze, sometimes he was as violent and thrilling as a hurricane, and sometimes...sometimes it seemed that he could fly. Put it this way: if Harry were to ever lose his grip of his broom and go tumbling off...Tom wasn’t so sure that he’d fall. And it was no different on the ice. Tom didn’t think Harry could fall on the ice. It just didn’t seem possible, for how at ease he seemed.
Finally, after what felt like an age, Harry appeared to get bored of skating and came back over to harass Tom. “You ready for tomorrow?”
Tom looked to the side and shrugged. “We’ve gotten this far―I’m going to have to be.”
Harry looked at him with a strange look to his eyes before he frowned, and nodded slowly. “Well, high noon is approaching. I think it’s time to set up for this so-called ‘stupid ritual’ of mine, huh. The sunlight’s bound to energize the hell out of it.”
Tom couldn't agree more.
And thus. Where they were now. Tom picked at the weird get-up Harry forced him into as their turn to do their own routine crept ever closer, running through all of the new knowledge in his head from yesterday. It was a bit bizarre, to suddenly have to assimilate all of this foreign info into something understandable, but Tom had managed it for the most part and felt as prepared as he could possibly be for this stupid tournament. The duo before them finished their routine and Tom’s heart stopped. Oh boy. It was time.
“I still can’t believe that you coerced me into this,” Tom mumbled under his breath as they stood, Harry’s hand seized in his as he looked over the crowd nervously.
“I didn’t coerce you into shit, you’re just stupid.” Harry muttered through a goofy, overly toothy attempt at a camera-grin, which looked very nervous. He knew, because he was squeezing the hell out of his hand and well. He wasn’t wrong to.
They got onto the ice, the announcer’s voice booming like jargon in Tom’s ears.
Honestly, Tom couldn’t even hear the music Harry had picked for this. It was something slow but with tempo, if that made sense, and it wasn’t registering at all through the rushing in Tom’s own ears. Never before had Tom been particularly shy, but now he was finally beginning to understand some of his classmates’ vitriol for public speaking. He imagined this terror was much the same.
But.
But.
As they went, he slowly got a keen sense of…oneness, of motion. Treating Harry as a mirror, different as he was, was something that Tom suddenly, almost instinctively knew how do. He and Harry weaved circles and stars around the rink like they shared the same mind, spinning around with that same inimitable fluidity Tom had seen in Harry alone so much before. Never once did he falter, never once did he hesitate―it felt very… alive! Exciting!
And so was Harry. He spun around Tom’s hands get onto his waist from behind, and as the song seemed to swell, unthinkingly, Tom lifted him into the air and threw him.
It was the most magnificent thing Tom had ever seen, and the audience seemed to gasp as Harry went up to death defying heights. ‘Like a bird’ Tom thought, fondness suffusing his limbs, and he leaned backwards as Harry came down, snatching him from midair as a crow would a dove. Perhaps that was what they were, for a moment. Birds of a certain regality, at opposing ends, ending where one began and hunting as the other flew, so tantalizingly out of reach. It was intoxicating, the beauty, the splendor, the way Tom’s right hand curled under his partner's delicate back as his left held his shoulder, how they spun around one another freely and with grace.
They drew fully upright, though Tom could not tell you when they’d leant backwards to begin with, and his breath hitched as Harry’s cold, nimble fingers touched lightly beneath his chin. Tom leaned into it, closing his eyes briefly to savor the moment of that touch with all the lights and eyes on them together.
“Perfect,” He could faintly hear Harry’s reverent whisper, and his heart swelled with pride.
They parted from one another then, skating in a wide arc with their right legs straight out behind them, left hands reaching out ahead. As the arc waned, they brought their free leg down again, almost dragging their hands down the front of their necks and chests before reaching both hands up desperately towards the glittering ceiling, and flipped back around with a single jump. They came back around, this time with Tom’s back to Harry’s chest. He dipped a bit in front of him, feeling the boy's hands firm along his forearms.
Spinning, spinning, dizzying circles and roaring crowd, friction-less jumps and heart-pounding twists, Tom understood what it was like to fly.
All the soon the music began to draw to a close, they both held out their hands to lace their fingers together, and slowly circled their way closer together. And they spun, then, ice shards flickering left and right as the speed increased and as if they were the same person, as if they were ineffably combined, Tom took Harry around the middle once more, and placed him into the sky to fly once more, just to catch him and bring him back down to earth with a slow, winding closing twirl. They stopped, faces just bare centimetres from each other, and when they finally stopped, and the music was over, Tom didn’t even think about it.
He bent his face down, tilted Harry’s chin up with his finger, and kissed him.
The crowds disappeared. Everything was silent, and the light shone down at them in a beam of golden light. For a moment, all he could hear was the heaving of his own breaths.
And then the crowd erupted, the roar of their voices enough to make the very ice vibrate with energy.
Harry began to laugh then, incredulously, magnificently, and Tom couldn’t help the way his breath caught when Harry turned his shining veridian eyes on him.
“We definitely won this,” He said, and Tom nodded. “Really good spell, right?”
“Oh yeah, we’re cheating bastards.”
Regardless. In its own funny way, when he slammed down his satchel of galleons on Burke’s stupid counter that very night and got his locket, victory had never felt quite so satisfying. (But not as satisfying as it was to see that same locket glitter on Harry’s neck.)