Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Line up, line up. You wretches aren’t getting adopted if you’re all in disarray,” Miss Beld said quietly, her voice softly scolding. “You too, Tom.”

He jerked at an adult acknowledging him. But, then, Beld was new after the last Caregiver got married and moved on. Aside from the bitter Mrs. Cole, they never stayed after they married.

“Tom’s not ‘llowed,” Amy tattled. She was such a tattler. Her girlfriend Susie turned and stuck a tongue out at him but he ignored it. Too childish, really.

“Mrs. Cole said he is now. Come on, Tom. You look sharp today, you do. Come to the end of the line here.”

He lined up, ignoring her fussing as he adjusted his clothing when she asked. Unlike the others, he wasn’t excited about today. He’d been adopted once, when he’d been only a babe, and it hadn’t worked out. Now, at six, he had less chance for real parents. The other sort who came adopting were looking for workers and he had big, big plans, bigger than any factory job.

The people who strolled in were all posh, looking down their noses at the orphans they claimed to want. When it came to his turn the woman, as fair as he was and with hair nearly as dark, crouched down in front of him, touching his chin.

But she spoke to her husband. “Oh, he’s a pretty one, isn’t he, Leonard?” Then, to Beld, “Does he speak well?”

“Very well for his age. Tom’s quite the clever one. He knew his letters and numbers before any of the others, or so I’ve heard.”

“I did. When I was three,” he said very quietly. He wasn’t certain he wanted to go with these people as the woman patted him on the head like a dog. The man’s watch caught the light, glinting with a fine metal. They can afford to feed me. “I’m hoping to learn French next.”

“Swot,” Jerry muttered, elbowing Tom hard in the ribs.

He ignored it and the woman gave him a sweet, approving smile. “Yes, Tom, you said? Tom here seems like a good choice. Would you like to come home with us, Tom? We have a library.”

“Yes. Please.”

And that was how Tom Marvolo Riddle was adopted for a second time.

“I don’t know what keeps happening! It’s quite strange, isn’t it?”

Tom winced from his hiding place under the sofa. He wasn’t supposed to be up so late and Ada (“Mother, Tom. I’m your Mother now.”) would be very cross if she found him, but he needed to hear them talk about the Incident today.

It’d been an accident! He’d been playing and fallen, hitting his chin on the stone fountain in the back garden. He’d slipped his governess again and no one had seen him be injured so he’d… fixed it. The blood, the pain, the split lip, all gone, and that would have been brilliant but now all the grass ‘round the fountain was gone black and ashy. He’d killed it healing himself and he didn’t even know how.

It wasn’t the first accident he’d had since coming here and he knew it could get him sent back. Knew because Mrs. Cole was sure to stumble into his room late at night, on those nights she could barely walk for liquoring up, and slur out awful words about how he’d been sent back from his first adoption for being a freak. Odd things had happened there as well until finally that couple brought him back, a wee thing of less than a year old. He couldn’t let that happen this time, he simply couldn’t!

He’d have to gain control over the strange thing he could do and make certain he never did it again.

Of course, it’s not that easy to stamp the magic out of someone. But, Tom Riddle was a clever boy, as much as advertised, and the Blakeleys only found out his secret when a certain letter showed up in the talons of a plain brown owl.

“He’s only a stupid Mudblood, Wallie, who thinks he’s above his station.”

Tom glared at the floor, holding his arm over his stomach where a wandless shield charm would spread out the furthest if he needed it. But Walburga Black hummed as she stood next to her friend, a stopping hand held over the other girl’s arm. Artemisia Mulciber had ambushed Tom outside of the second floor girls’ bathroom, hitting him with a spell he didn’t recognise.

“Truly, Temi? He’s a firstie.”

“The little Mudblood showed up Daedalus during Charms. He thinks he’s so clever.” She gave him an awful smirk and moved to lift her arm again.

Turning his glare on her, he gave a vicious smile. “I am cleverer than your brother. Protego.” The shield spread quickly, shoving outward at the two of them as he called his wand to him with the holster his father had insisted he get. As soon as he touched the wand the shield spread further, pushing out at the fourth year girls staring down at him. “Or can he do wandless magic already?”

It worked. Hissing under their breaths, promises of retribution (when he’d been attacked!) in their eyes, they left and he collapsed the shield with a sigh, panting. §’Bloody blood purists. If they’d only open their --’§ The slide of stone froze him and he watched, wide eyed, as the sink ground down beneath the floor. It led to a pipe and he eyed it carefully before hissing, hesitantly, §’Close.’§

When it did he smiled. A secret chamber for people who could speak to snakes. Brilliant.

The chamber -- which was actually a series of chambers, each with their own special purposes and strangely different styles -- proved an excellent hiding place when the students of Slytherin grew worse in their bullying. And they did. Not only because he grew better and better at magic, outshining his pureblood housemates, but because he refused to bow to anyone’s wizardly knowledge. He wanted to explore it on his own.

A project of a Muggleborn would have been acceptable. Tom Riddle Blakeley, born stubbornly independent and now more than capable of grasping the pieces he missed growing up Muggle, was not.

§’They would not hiss-bite at you if they knew you were Master’s heir,’§ Cian hissed confidently.

And, oh, yes, he’d considered it; of course he had. Teaching the Slytherins that he was far more than the simple ‘mudblood’ they labeled him would be satisfying. For the moment. But to do it he would have to reveal the Chamber and the basilisk still inside of it. He was certain they wouldn’t believe him without it.

I can’t do that to my first real friend.

§’Really, Cian, I can handle this.’§ He rubbed at his eyes angrily, glad that the basilisk didn’t understand what the gesture meant. She was protective of him, the last Heir, and he didn’t want them to kill her.

§’You are using the grow-life-paste again. The two-tailed caused scale damage to you.’§

He sighed, rubbing the healing paste on the nasty black bruise on his rib. He’d already taken a Bone Mending potion, ever glad to have a functional brewing chamber down here. They’d ambushed him in the bath this time, four-on-one because the last time they’d only brought three and he’d held them off then. “I can handle this.”

Cian rubbed her giant snout against his back gently and hissed wordlessly in discontent. §’Did you go to the two-tailed nest watchers?’§

“Once I’ve applied this. I want to make it clear I had this because I knew I’d need it.” If Horace Slughorn wasn’t such a classist coward Tom’s problem would already be solved but Slughorn valued his business arrangements with Tom’s housemate’s parents more than one Muggleborn, no matter how clever. It wasn’t as if Tom was poor -- as a Blakeley he’d inherit plenty of money someday -- but it was Muggle and that made all the difference.

They’ll pay for this. I’ll make them pay for this myself: every last one of them.

He knew he would have to do it himself, as time and time again, when Tom went to the Mediwitch, there were only tuts and awkward questions about fighting. As if he were the one attacking them. The bullies lied and said he was, of course. And the rage grew.

I can’t risk her. Tom dug his nails into his palms and thought again about Cian and how, if he appeared standing next to her, none of them would dare attack him again. I’ll handle this myself.

“Five on one, really?” Tom scoffed, eyeing the loose collection of fifth years making a semi-circle around him. His third year classmates had already scurried off, not a single one of them willing to stand with a Mudblood. “You’re two years older and you’ve brought five. Well, no one claimed Slytherins weren’t cowards. Some Slytherins, at least.” He gave a nasty smile to Orion Black, the clear ring leader of this little game.

They’re attacking me for grabbing the wrong after at this point. Or, at least, reaching for the same plate at the Leaving Feast was the only interaction Tom could remember having with Orion Black or his gang of Slytherins recently.

“You’ve got a big mouth, Blakeley,” Orion said. “It keeps bringing trouble, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, no, trouble brought itself. You lot simply can’t stand someone raised in the Muggle world who is better at magic than you, can you?” Tom offered a slow, derisive examination of Orion Black’s general appearance and raised an eyebrow. “Well? Cingo.”

The attack hit like a punch in the back of the head, slamming into his shield the moment it rose and continuing as they struck and struck and struck at him. He focused on disarming only, well aware that a single injury on their side would be blamed on him and he’d be the one punished.

It’s not fair.

Another hit -- a Bone-Breaking Curse, bloody again -- and the shield fractured. “Cingo protega maxima,” he shot out, throwing magic into the brace. If it held, it had to hold, he had four wands, he needed Black’s. Black dodged and dodged, using people and furniture and his own shield as protection as he called in a reinforcement -- Walburga, the blood purist bitch -- and she hit Tom’s shield with every ounce of magic she could call.

The next Bone-Breaker hit, his dominant arm shattering. He switched his wand over, throwing up a new shield before the pain whited out his mind. In the blankness of that nauseating pain a rage he knew all too well rose up.

No! No no no no no no. Not now, not now, not now. He shoved and he pulled and he tried, tried so hard to yank it back, to press the pain back inside of him as it rose and slammed out in a wave. Eyes closed, panting, he blocked out the moans and shrieks of pain, he blocked out the you little bitch!, he blocked out the stunner headed straight for him, and tried to pull it back inside.

The blackness took him before he knew if he succeeded.

“Mr. Blakeley, we do not tolerate these sort of attacks in our school,” Dippet said, wringing his wrinkled hands. He looked frailer than he had the year before and Tom knew it wouldn’t be long before Albus Dumbledore, who seemed to have a bias against Slytherins (honestly, Tom sympathised), would be Headmaster now. The old man tutted. “You put sixteen of your housemates in the Hospital Wing.”

Tom stopped himself from clenching his jaw or pressing his mouth together in the frown he wanted. “Sir, five of my housemates attacked me. I did some sort of accidental magic, I suppose, and protected myself after one of them used a Bone-Breaking Curse to shatter my arm.” It had been shattered, broken in more than eight places. “I know you did a check on my wand and all I did was defensive spells.”

“Nevertheless, your housemates claim that you started the fight. Who am I to believe here -- a single boy or a dozen? You see why --”

“I see that these bastards keep attacking me because my parents are Muggles, sir. The only place they haven’t attacked me is in my bed and that’s only because only the person assigned to the room can enter it besides your Head of House.”

“And why haven’t you gone to a teacher?”

His magic rose up, rage forcing shakes throughout his body, and he shoved it back down. “I have. Mediwitch Pearson. Professor Flitwick. Professor Merriweather. Horace Slughorn more times than I can count off hand. I’ve even gone to the head of Gryffindor, Albus Dumbledore. At least he believes me!” No. Stay calm. No magic here. Stay calm. Slowly, he pushed the magic back and the slight trembling of the teacup on the desk stilled. “It’s my word against my housemates, children from good families -- pureblood families or, at least, respectable half-bloods.

“I’m not a whinger. I was an orphan until I was six. I’m used to things being hard. All I’ve done is defend myself.”

“There was that incident in second year.”

“And they put me in the Hospital Wing for a week after I did that. I stick to defensive spells now because I can’t fight all of them at once. I’m not starting trouble, Headmaster. I’m only trying to live through Hogwarts.”

“I’ll speak with Professor Slughorn, Mr. Blakeley. Since it’s summer now -- the train will be here any minute -- you’ll write a three foot parchment on possible ways to avoid conflict.”

A spike of hot rage spilled over him but he nodded tightly. “Yes, sir.”

“And a week of detention with Professor Dumbledore first of next year.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright, off you go. I took the liberty of having the house-elves pack up your trunk so you won’t miss the train.”

He fought not to tense up any further than his outrage had taken him. Would the house-elves report what they saw in his room? Hopefully not. No one could know he was a Parselmouth until he was ready. No one.

“Oh, love, you’re hurt.” Mum fussed a hand over his face where a minor bruise still sat there, tattling on what’d happened. Most of the injuries were healed now but the more minor scrapes went last as the potions prioritised the dangerous bits.

“I’m fine.” He tugged away from her hand, grabbing at his quarter-weighted trunk. He worked out an altered Featherlight Charm earlier in the year and, with a little help, he managed to get the trunk out to Alfie who loaded it into a new automobile. “It’s new! Can I ride up front, Mum? Please?”

“Alright.” She smiled, giving him a kiss on the head that he pulled a face at. He was fourteen now, really, and quite a bit too old to be getting kisses from his mum. “Let’s go home.”

Later -- not that night or the next -- Mum and Dad came to him, quite serious faces on, and his heart seized up. “Is it the war? Has another Blitz started?”

“No, no, dear. Nothing quite so dire. We wished to talk to you about your school. We, your father and I, think that maybe it might be time for you to consider going to a grammar school instead. We know you’ve kept up with your studies and you could slot in --”

“I wouldn’t be able to do magic legally.” He bit his lip, head shaking. They couldn’t keep him out of Hogwarts! They couldn’t take him away from magic. “Not ever.”

“Tom, son.” Father sighed, running a hand through his light brown hair as he sat down on the end of Tom’s bed. “You won’t be able to do magic at all if one of your classmates kills you. We know there have been injuries you haven’t written home about, don’t pretend there hasn’t. What if one of these goes beyond even your school’s ability to heal it?”

He scowled. “I can handle my housemates. It’s only two more years and then I do self-study for NEWTs. You have to get at least three OWLs to be allowed to keep your wand. I have to stay.”

“Well. Can we do home tutoring? Hire people and have you take your tests later?”

If only. At the beginning of the year he’d looked into it but -- “Not until after OWLs. I can make it. I promise I’ll be alright.”

“Oh, Tom, you’re the only son we’ve got. We don’t want to lose you because of awful bigotry like the Hitler fellow’s espousing.” Father sighed again, patting at Tom’s knee. “Two years, you say?” He nodded. “Alright.”

“Leonard!”

“Ada, we can’t take Tom’s magic from him. They can’t take Tom’s magic from him either, but it sounds like they can make it illegal when he does it. We both know he can’t stop it. He’s tried.” He darted his head back when Father reached to muse his dark hair.

“I’m too old for that.”

“Yes, yes, you’re very adult now.” Father smiled. “Goodnight, son.”

“Night, Father. Night, Mum.” He couldn’t dart fast enough to avoid his mum’s kisses. “Mum!” They both laughed at his sigh.

Like his promise to gain such good control of his magic that he’d never do it again, however, some promises are not so easy to keep. For when Tom returned to Hogwarts too many of the Slytherins held a grudge, too many enemies at the gates for one fourteen year old boy to hold off on his own forever.

Even though he wasn’t yet aware of it, one good thing would come from this change: he would make his first strong friendship with another human.

“Trouble, Blakeley?” Charlus Potter stepped into the dusty classroom that Tom was in the middle of warding, only a quick hiss keeping him from getting banged up. As a Ravenclaw a year ahead of Tom they rarely had reason to interact beyond their shared clubs of Charms, Runes, and Transfiguration.

Potter presented himself as clever enough and he never made a move to hurt Tom before but Tom kept his wand up regardless. Rumour had it Potter and Dorea Black were courting and, though the least awful of the Blacks, she was still a Black and a Slytherin. He couldn’t trust anyone connected to her.

“What do you want?”

Potter licked his lips, easing a bit further into the room, and tapped his Prefect badge. “I’m a Prefect. I’m supposed to help people who need help and you’re warding yourself into an old classroom.”

Tom fought not to look at the back wall where an invisible door would open with the right password. “I don’t need help, thank you.” Potter’s eyebrow went up to his hairline and drew an aggravated sigh in response. “I won’t get help.”

“I’ll help.” He cleared his throat. “I mean it, Blakeley. You’re a good bloke, you know. You always help the littles with their homework, you do more tutoring in Charms Club than anything else… You’d make a good Prefect.”

“Not in Slytherin, I won’t.”

“What is -- It can’t all be your blood status. I know you’re Muggleborn --”

“I’m half-blood,” Tom blurted out, if only because he wanted to tell someone.

He’d finally figured out who he came from this summer when he’d used a not-entirely-legal spell and his developing abilities with Parselmagic to track down the only other Parselmouths in the country. One of them, it turned out, was in Azkaban. The other was…

He couldn’t see how any pureblood could think themselves superior if they knew someone like Morfin Gaunt, so riddled up with inbred blood purity that he’d all but been Squibed and was half-mad besides. On the other side, finding out his biological father was alive had been a blow to Tom. Even once he knew the whole story he didn’t see how the man could abandon a child innocent of all Merope Gaunt’s crimes.

Then, if he hadn’t, Tom wouldn’t have his parents now.

“That’s strange. I thought for sure you were a Muggleborn.”

“I was orphaned. The Blakeleys adopted me when I was a babe. They are my parents but my blood relatives were magical.” He scoffed. “Not that it makes any difference to my housemates.”

Potter nodded, dusting off a chair before testing its weight. When he seemed certain it’d hold, he sat and put his hands back in full sight. “If you don’t mind me asking, what is the problem there? Dorea hasn’t been clear on it.”

“You’ve asked?” Tom hopped up on the long-abandoned teachers’ desk as it creaked and settled in to watch the other boy. “It’s not your business, really.”

“The teachers, you say, won’t help?”

“They’re blaming me for the fights.”

Potter’s brow furrowed at that and lips pursed, he said, “Every kid who knows of it knows you’re not the one starting the fights. A lot of Gryffindors’ rooting for you, yeah? My cousin told me so. I’ll talk to Professors Flitwick and Dumbledore about it, assuming Professor Dumbledore’s not so busy he’s unavailable outside of class.” He shook his head. “And, yes, I’ve asked. It can’t only be your blood. Last year another Muggleborn was Sorted Slytherin and it seems they’ve had a rough go of it but nothing like what you have.”

“Katherine Mill is perfectly average. She’s not poor but not well-off. She’s not dumb but not very clever either. She’s not completely uncivilised but she wouldn’t know what to do at a proper dinner party. Most importantly, she’s magically strong enough to justify investment but not so much to be a threat. Like as not some girl in her year will probably decide she’s useful as a lackey and, well, ‘take her in’.” A sneer spread across his face as he spoke, his upper lip twitching by the last word. “I’m well-off. I’m cleverer at lessons. I’ve better control of my magic. I don’t need their charity and I won’t let them treat me like a poor unfortunate who needs a proper wizard to teach me. And they can’t stand it.”

“So you’re at war.”

“So I’m at war.” Tom hopped down from the desk and strode over to the door. “Well, this has been lovely but I think it’s best you go now. I’d like some time alone.”

“Alright.” Potter stood and moved in closer, offering a piece of parchment with a strange stamp. “I give them to Ravenclaw first years. If you rip it, I’ll know you need help. I reckon you’ll only use it if they’re killing you and then, please, do use it. And, Blakeley? If you want to talk, I’m available.”

After a moment Tom pocketed the card -- never quite done with the orphan’s impulse to keep every resource -- and said, “I’ll keep that in mind,” while doubting that he ever would want to talk.

Yet, despite himself, he did. Quite clever and well connected with the other high class half-bloods in the school, Potter proved easy to talk to and, while Tom never told him anything truly private, it eased something inside of Tom to have someone to talk theory with. Potter’s friends proved clever too, for the most part, and after a few months Tom slotted rather easily into their private study group even if he didn’t need the assistance for his marks.

This must be what having friends feels like.

It couldn’t last. The most troublesome Blacks, Walburga and Orion, now both NEWTs students, continued their campaign to make Tom’s life miserable. Abraxas Malfoy, a spoiled brat of a boy and a coward, joined in, trying to demonstrate his superiority to gain the status all Slytherins seemed to covet going into their upper years. Avery vied with him and they regularly fought it out in the Duelling Pit used for conflict resolution and status fights with the older Slytherins.

(Tom declined challenges now. They’d attack him anyway, doing their best for ambush, but the one time he’d taken a challenge and won they’d attacked him relentlessly in the weeks to follow. That’d been back in second year and he didn’t fancy a repeat.)

It all came to a head one night in October when Lewin Avery put a torture curse on the door frame to Tom’s room and Tom, believing all of his private room to be safe, hadn’t caught it.

Even as Tom had screamed (and screamed and screamed, caught so deeply in the neverending pain of mental electrocution) a harsh and growing part of him coddled that rage to his breast, shoved it deep beneath his ribs, and waited. Not yet, not yet, that instinct whispered. Control, control it, his cunning insisted.

What the cruel children of Slytherin House had forgotten or, perhaps, simply didn’t have the grasp of consequences to understand, was that for some people rage lived like a trapped animal, beating its clipped wings against the cage of ribs surrounding it. What Tom Riddle Blakeley failed to understand is that cages, by their nature, open.

Tom blinked against the harsh sunlight from the Hospital Wing windows and closed the curtain next to his bed with a flick of his hand. His hand twitched again with remembered pain and his jaw clenched.

“We simply can’t find anything wrong with your door, Mr. Blakeley,” Horace Slughorn had fretted when he’d come in yesterday, after the Mediwitch had given Tom something that made him feel numb and prescribed bed rest until it did its work. But, then, Slughorn also never quite met Tom’s eyes.

Tom had smiled and asked, quite quietly, “Osbeorn Avery is the patron for Madam Malkins at your recommendation, isn’t he, sir? And, of course, you’ve invested in Malkin’s business.” His hand had touched Slughorn’s arm, who retreated even further. “I’m certain you did your best to find something, sir.”

The man was a coward and an example of the weakness undermining Slytherin’s great potential. They were all so busy fighting for themselves that it never occurred to them that they might be stronger together, the way the Muggle corps were in fighting this awful war.

But, then, they’d agree with Hitler. I'd be dead by now if they ever truly considered working together.

It might well have reached that point if not for a fateful incident in the Common Room late one night in November. As a desperate Tom fell, bleeding and shivering from a spell he couldn’t block, the rage spilled out around and he gasped desperately, drowning in it. No. No! I’ll be blamed. I’ll be blamed again.

He swallowed it all back down, down and down, a shield of lashing black smoke twisting up around him. He stayed there long after the last of Malfoy’s hanger-ons gave up on breaking through it. Near dawn he dragged himself, exhausted, to his bedroom and stayed there, huddled in the bed all of the next day.

I hate them. I hate them all. I’ll make them all pay. School won’t last forever and when it’s through I’ll make them all pay.

§’You smell of scale damage again,’§ Cian hissed with discontent, curling her tail protectively around him while he used it as a backrest. As habit spoke for, he already spent most the day in the Chamber with her, offering her tidbits from the house-elves to supplement her hunting and searching through the library for more fascinating reading.

Some of it was difficult to stomach, of course, but he enjoyed the theory in the books if nothing else. He found himself quite in depth with a tome on ritual curses when Cian brought up her concern.

“My nestmates are bastards.”

§’You are my Master’s heir. They are in the Master's nest. You should talk properly to them.’§

He smiled at the idea that she found Parseltongue the only ‘proper’ speech. Truthfully, he considered it when fourth year began a few months ago but discarded it. At this point they might consider it a final affront to their dignity and arrange for him to have an accident. It’d be difficult -- he was especially cautious around any moving stairs for precisely that reason -- but not impossible if they worked together.

Thus, anything that might motivate them to work together was to be utterly avoided.

“Happy Birthday, Tom.” Charlus held up a butterbeer in a toast, his mouth twitching. “Belatedly, anyway. How was your New Years’?”

“Good. We're still living in the summer home, away from London.” Tom looked around Diagon Alley and the shockingly normal state of business. Outside of the Leaky Cauldron London was still a mess from the Blitz. Now nearly two years earlier, most rebuilding efforts were kept limited by devoting every resource to end the War.

“Right. The Muggle War. Word is there’s some evidence Grindelwald’s forces are moving this way. He might reach Dover by next year.” Charlus grimaced. “Right, on to happier things, this is from me.” He pulled a package off the bench next to him and placed it on the table. A second one joined it. “This is from Dorea -- I checked it for curses, in case her awful cousins got access to it somehow.” And a third. “And this is from Evie Bones.”

Tom’s jaw twitched. “I’m not interested in Evie Bones.”

“I know, but she’s holding out hope. You’ve your choice of matches from Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff if the way the girls keep fluttering about means anything. There’s at least one bloke in the year below me in Ravenclaw who fancies you something awful, if you’re more inclined to our sex.”

He blinked. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard a more open sentiment about being a queer within the magical world. Cross-breeding with sentient magical creatures might be frowned upon but he’d seen open queer couples. Even in Slytherin.

“I’m not interested in anyone.”

“Regardless, you can’t decline the present. It’d be rude. I’ll help you write an etiquette note that lets Bones down gently.”

Tom smiled.

Yes, this is what having friends feels like.

January passed with surprisingly little conflict with his housemates. Tom spent more time out of the dorms than before with clubs, study sessions in the Ravenclaw Common Room, and learning as much as he could from the Chamber of Secrets.

Through trial and error he’d discovered Salazar Slytherin himself, as well as his early descendants, created many paths to the Chamber of Secrets throughout the school. Not a single floor lacked a point of access and the lower floors, especially the dungeons, held many if you knew what to look for. He’d used these mercilessly since first year to avoid conflict where he could.

Which was why, when he noticed Hagen Rowle shadowing him after the 4th year Slytherins left Merriweather’s class -- when, as a fifth year, Rowle should have been three floors away in Ancient Runes -- Tom slipped towards the same classroom that Charlus Potter once found him warding. A gaggle of girls chattering at each other blocked the path long enough for Rowle to catch up to Tom. The fifth year, oddly alone but at a full head taller with a stone and a half on him, ushered him into a different empty classroom and shut the door behind them.

“One-on-one. Been a tick since anyone’s dared to do that,” Tom said, feeling out the edges of his magic. His wand, tucked against his forearm, thrummed with reassuring readiness.

“I’m not here to attack you, Blakeley.”

He scoffed. “Oh?”

“I’m the reason the others’ve left you alone since term came back in.” Rowle smiled and it might have been charming in a stranger. In a Slytherin, it made Tom’s stomach twist anxiously. “I’ve a… proposition for you.”

“A proposition. Need tutoring for your OWLs, then?” He licked his lips and eased backwards when he found himself uncomfortably close to the tall, sturdy blond boy eyeing him with a familiar glint of interest.

He’d been approached, of course, these two years since his first brush with puberty. Now, recently fifteen and well into his adolescence, his cheeks narrowed into a petite sharpness further marked out by his full mouth that had gained him many appreciative looks. Even hungry ones, like the one Rowle wore now.

“No, not tutoring.” Rowle stepped forward, his Nordic heritage clear in his height. Tom was the tallest boy in his year save one and as the other boy stepped up against him, backing him into the dusty desk behind, he felt dwarfed. The sudden hands on his hips steadying him onto the desk felt huge. But, while he might have found Rowle attractive in other circumstances (he’d certainly found some men to be so before), he couldn’t get past the casual touch long enough to think clearly.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed the hands still on his hips and tried to pry them off physically.

Rowle held, smiling gently. “You’re quite good looking, Tom, as you well know. Don’t be modest. While you don’t have the… pedigree to be a husband, it’s not the only role that could bring you status. A paramour of a well-established heir would have access to funds, resources, and, of course, protection. I’ve the status to protect you.” A thumb rubbed over Tom’s closed lips and he swallowed harshly, barely breathing. “Even the Blacks would leave you alone if you were claimed under my protection, as they have this last month.”

His mind flew over the interactions he’d had in the last month -- the looks, the hesitations, the whispers and decided glances over toward Rowle when usually there would be taunts or even attacks. It tracked and Rowle was promising to keep the peace. All Tom would have to do was…

“What,” he asked, his lips brushing against that thumb until he leaned back the slightest bit, “would my end of this bargain involve, precisely? And why would I believe you’d keep up your end once you had what you wanted?”

I can’t genuinely consider this. He sighed out. But it would be so much easier to do.

“A contract would be drawn up. What you’re owed, what’s expected of you. It’s all very common.” Rowle smiled victoriously. “I brought one with me to give you an example. We all know how cautious you are, Tom.”

I can’t do this. Tom licked his lips. “Let’s see it, then.” I won’t do this.

With a gentle pat on his cheek, Rowle finally eased back to reach for his bag. He must have dropped it when he was herding them towards the desk. He was rummaging in it, distracted, when Tom made a break for the door, slamming forward with an unnatural speed.

A hand clenched around his ankle, halting his progress, his body slammed into the stone floor as he struggled for escape. Dazed, he ineffectually struggled when large hands harshly turned him onto his back and reached for his robe. “Stop.”

“It was a generous offer. Oh, well. If you’re good, I’ll let you sign the contract when I’m done with you. It’s best you’re going to get, as a mudblood.”

“Stop!” Hands pressed down on his shoulders, a knee against his thighs, and a slap across his face hit suddenly, dazing him further. “No.”

Hands tugged at his robe, stripping him of the first layer. He wore Muggle clothing underneath, unlike many of his housemates, and Rowle grumbled in frustration, undoing the trousers. Ripped down, it left Tom bare when strong hands turned him over and he scrambled for purchase against the floor.

Rowle grabbed Tom’s hair and he knew, he knew the other meant to slam his head upon the stones, to force him off of fighting, and magic rose around them like a throbbing heart.

Wave and break, wave and break, faster now, faster now, and he grabbed onto it, twisting it to his will. “No. No. STOP IT.” It stopped. “Get off me.” Rowle pushed himself up, his mechanical reply underlied by the obscenely hard shaft pressing against the bare skin of Tom’s bum. “Get dressed and get out. Never come near me again..”

Tears stung his eyes as he turned over, watching the awkward, jerky movements of Rowle’s thick limbs. It was like a marionette in one of those children’s expositions, a puppet with invisible strings, and as Tom’s heart raced he eased the magic, calming it, forming it into a smoother, stronger casting.

“Tell no one you did this. Tell no one anything about this except that your mates should still do this one thing: leave. me. alone.” He sniffed, tears falling as he pulled up his pants and trousers before scrambling to his feet. “Go. Now.”

Rowle left, leaving his bag behind, and Tom set that on fire. He wanted to set the bastard himself on fire, but he needed the good will of the teachers, needed the friends he was making in other houses, needed not to be marked out.

I can’t let myself lose control.

Somewhere inside of him, even if he couldn’t hear it now in his shock and his resolution to force this all down inside of him to never think of again, the rage screamed.

“Does anyone know how it happened?” Malfoy whispered as they settled into a lesson with Slughorn. The Head of Slytherin House looked unexpectedly pale today and set them to revising a potion they’d finished with this time last year. Then he sat down with a suspiciously amber drink and left them to their own counsel.

The Gryffindors, unsurprisingly, goofed off. The Slytherins, however, gossiped.

“Mulciber swears not, but he’s the only one who could’ve done, isn’t he? It happened in the middle of the night and it’s not Slughorn’s sort of thing. At the least, the Deputy Headmaster thinks so. We all saw him dragging Mulciber off at breakfast.”

Tom kept moving, dividing the ingredients he’d gathered to try an experimental potion (he wasn’t going to waste his time revising a potion that was easy for him a year ago), so as not to give away his interest. He sat the back of the class as usual as, regardless of how unsteady his relationship with the others were, sitting on the Gryffindor side would trigger a level of escalation he didn’t care for.

The other Slytherins ignored him, as was their habit, and kept gossiping. “Something ripped Rowle apart. It must’ve been a spell of some sort and in his bed -- only a roommate could do that. Bloody foolish of Mulciber, though, but he is a hothead.”

Ripped him -- Tom swallowed and rechecked his equipment. It was only a dream. I ripped him -- But it was a dream. Dreams aren’t real.

“I heard they’re still trying to find all the pieces of him.”

Dreams aren’t real.

That wasn’t the last time it happened. Three months later Lewin Avery died in the same way after puncturing Tom’s side with a spell, nearly killing him.

It happened to Artemisia Mulciber the week before she took NEWTs when she said that when Grindelwald ruled Muggles and mudbloods would be in the rightful place as slaves.

It happened to Professor Slughorn when, after a private meeting where Tom pleaded, one last time, for the Head of House to intervene with the harassment. (Rowle had been the first and the most aggressive of Tom’s ‘suitors’, but not the last of either gender.) Tom left the meeting feeling only desperate despair on how he’d make it another year until, with OWLs, he could leave this place behind forever.

Each time, Tom dreamed. Each time, they suffered. Mulciber survived, maimed away from the beauty she’d once prided herself on. Slughorn survived but jumped at the shadows, retiring without a word at the end of the year.

After that he slept in the Chamber of Secrets, in a small bedroom that Eskarne Gaunt had put in when she took over teaching Ancient Runes in the 16th century. He knew the Chamber had separate wards from the rest of the school -- it was tradition for the heir to add both a chamber and to the wards on the collective chambers if they discovered an entrance. He only hoped, as he slept that first night, nursing a bruised and healing spleen from a confrontation with Walburga Black, the wards would stop what was happening.

He’d dreamed of the rage breaking free of him, of his body, only to run afoul of a foreign barrier before it found its target. When, at breakfast the next morning, he saw Walburga holding court at the end of the table with the rest of the seventh years, a sneer on her face when she saw him looking, he let out a sigh of relief.

It worked.

It took a conversation with Cian to discover what it looked like from the outside.

He was dreaming again. Dreaming of untethered rage. Dreaming of allowing his primal need to rend, to break, to punish, out into the world, onto his targets, at the people who’d made his life miserable.

He was dreaming, screaming, crying out in pain and release and allowing himself to be, to feel what he felt in truth instead of twisting it down inside of him. He was dreaming when he heard a firm, gentle, piercing:

§’Tom, come back.’§

Cian?

He could sense her presence, could hear her soft hisses, but his skin... as intangible as air. No sense of warmth. No dry, soft slide of scales on skin. No comforting weight of pressure leaned against his tall form.

He tried to hiss, to say he was already there, but he could make no sound. There were no sounds save the pounding of rage like war drums.

Nothing but the desire to destroy, beating in his soundless heart.

§’Come back to me, hatchling. Become two-legged again.’§

Had he stopped? Yes, he couldn’t feel his legs. They, too, were intangible.

How? How had he become -- What had he become?

How did he get back?

He imagined his body, imagined the weight of it and the heat of leaning against his serpent friend, of laughing with Potter and Dorea Black, of flipping through books to learn more complex magics. He imagined what it felt like to walk. To breathe. To be and feel and want more than this unrestrained rage.

In a gasp, he dropped, solid and himself again, watching the final wisps of smoky darkness seep back into his skin. Am I possessed?

§’Cian, do you know what happened? Not what -- what caused it.’§

§’A two-legged magic. This is not a thing for snakes. I thought I lost you.’§

She wrapped her massive tail around his very human body and squeezed a bit too tightly for comfort, not that he dared to tell her so. He could handle it.

I need to find out what’s happening to me. I have to stop it.

Answers proved elusive.

Trial-and-error helped, slowly teaching him the limits of what was happening to him. He learned the more he fought back in the moment, the less likely he would do it in his sleep. The more he fought his own emotions, the more likely he ‘woke’ to Cian’s panicked hisses. Consciously, he could slow the manifestations; they wouldn’t take him in moments he felt controlled or in touch with his physical form. He used that mercilessly when a sudden attack brought the rage painfully, rapidly to the surface, making it to a hidden passage leading to the Chamber in time.

Most of all he learned it could get better -- but only if he never, ever forced his magic down. Quite unintentionally he learned he was good at fighting magics, at tactics, of curses and hexes, of using his magic imaginatively in his defence rather than relying on dodging and skills.

Summer came and, too afraid that if he stopped using magic entirely he’d manifest without limitation, he told his parents nothing about why he felt so afraid. He used his magic wandlessly, quietly in magic-populated neighbourhoods, to relieve the pressure he felt without risk of triggering the trace. And he waited.

Charlus invited him over for a week, to a nice country home with an entire library, and Tom spent every extra moment he could in there looking for an answer. It was in that library that he found his first to his condition in a small description of the black smoke that surrounded him.

Diagon Alley garnered him some further explanation, hunting through used book stores and the questionable safety of Nocturne Alley. There, he found a potential name: Obscurial.

When the fall term began, Tom sought out Albus Dumbledore and argued for a Restriction Section pass on human transfiguration, claiming he held interest in the Animagus transfiguration that transfixed half the Gryffindors with ideas of mischief.

He found the information in a tomb on magical manifestations, bare bones though it was. It only confirmed what he had reasoned or could guess through what he’d done intentionally and otherwise over the last year.

“I only have to keep my darker emotions in check; that should be easy.” He huffed out a despaired laugh and closed the large tomb, the yellow pages crinkling together as he set it aside.

Cian curled the tip of her tail around his shoulders, her closest approximation to a hug as he’d explained them to her, and hissed discontentedly. §’There are other books.§’

“I won’t give up,” he promised.

This was a promise that Tom kept but, of course, not giving up isn’t the only condition necessary for success. Like with controlling his powers, with surviving the various cruelties of school children, with protecting himself, Tom was not the only factor in keeping this promise.

Eventually, determination won out -- or so it would seem. Searching every inch of the Chambers produced a book on bindings that it would seem would solve his problem and he set to executing it with the single-minded devotion he paid to all his studies.

Perhaps a bit of caution would have been warranted. Tom, desperate, certain that it was only a matter of time before he manifested in the middle of the day and destroyed his future, pushed forward regardless. All the binding seemed to require was intent and two parties. So, he created a device that Cian, with magic of her own, could trigger the next time he manifested.

And that was how he became trapped in the Chamber of Secrets for 50 years.

Chapter Text

I’m going to show him. Harry seethed at the letter he’d received from his father, quickly followed by an even berkier one from his godfather, at breakfast. James Potter was of the highly mistaken impression that Harry wasted his time, focused on the wrong things, and was far too Slytherin to be considered a reasonable Potter heir.

Not that the man had much choice unless James finally got over mum, remarried, and had another kid he could name heir instead.

You should be exploring at your age, the letter said. I found out all sorts of Hogwarts’ secrets out by fifth year, the letter said. You’re only young once, the letter said, and you’re wasting it on all that Slytherin nonsense.

Harry growled under his breath. He was, in fact, setting himself up for a nice Mastery post-NEWTs but, then, James Potter never had the ambition to be anything but an Auror. He even left the inventing that the famed (in their own minds) “Marauders” did to Sirius Black, another berk of epic proportions. Harry heard all the stories of what the Marauders did from his mum and Uncle Severus. If having fun meant torturing the students in the rival house Harry would skip it, thanks.

Still, he was on the trail of an ancient Hogwarts secret, one he was certain his father had never discovered: he thought he knew how to find the famed Chamber of Secrets.

He’d been obsessed with it since reading about it when he was nine, knowing that he could speak to snakes as was famed in the Slytherin line. Tracking that once brought him to the Gaunts, who had intermarried with the Potters ten generations back, but he thought it much more likely he got it from Mum’s unknown magical relatives. (She’d tell you all about her studies on the origins of Muggleborns if you asked and sometimes even if you didn’t.)

Now, he thought he knew where to find the entrance: the girls’ second floor loo.

Ironically, only his father passing along the Invisibility Cloak (before Harry got on the train the first time, no doubt he would never have seen it after he was Sorted Slytherin) allowed Harry to go exploring the girls-only sections of the castle.

Now here he was, staring at the snake symbol on the sink, and hesitantly, hopefully, he hissed, §’Open’§.

Three nights later, with everyone exhausted from the Slytherin vs Gryffindor Quidditch match and Slytherin’s after party (Harry never failed to catch the snitch and there were talks of him going pro next year, if he wanted), Harry made his way back to the entrance. Hyped up after a game, as always, he’d slipped away early into the party and gathered provisions.

No one would look for him until Monday lunch. His private room as Prefect and his history of being unavailable the day after a Quidditch game, afforded him that much.

The stairs down were slippery, a bit of a mess and crumbling in places, but as soon as he reached the final locked door protecting the Chamber from non-Parselmouths he saw an immediate increase in quality. The house-elves must maintain this area. Strange they don’t do the steps too.

He examined the two entwined serpents and the solid wall around them, hissing, §’Open’§, once again, more softly than before. Then, as the wall broke open and slid away, he silently began casting diagnostic charms for any traps that might protect the legendary chamber even from Parselmouths. His mum had prepared him well for that, Severus even more so, and only once he’d both exhausted his diagnostics and tossed a Runes-threaded object he’d prepared through the breach did he enter.

He stood at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the green-tinted light filling the space. A few witchlights brightened his path and he saw two things of immediate interest:

A very large statue of a man with a wizened, sharp face and the pillars of the room -- the many, many pillars -- which each framed sections of wall with seams running around them. The same seams in the entrance wall, suggesting that all around him sat more chambers, spreading further and further out. This was the common space, massive though it was.

His blood went cold at the realisation of why one would need a common space this massive. Slytherin was rumoured to have left a guardian and what other guardian would a grand, snake-obsessed mage have if not a Basilisk?

Hands shaking, Harry conjured up mirrored sunglasses, similar to the Muggle pair his mum owned, and grimaced at the shoddy work. They’d suffice, though, and he put them on, adding more witchlight to the massive chamber. At least this explains why there weren’t any other defences.

§’Hello? Is anyone there?’§ He couldn’t have quite told you what he was expecting when he called out for a basilisk to answer but, by the way he jumped when he heard a hissing back, he certainly wasn’t expecting an answer to come.

§’Speaker! You’re a Speaker! You can help!§

“Uhhh.” What the hell does a basilisk need help with?

That question, it turned out, was easier asked than answered. It -- she -- was a basilisk, named Cian, and she was quite excited to meet another speaker, but when he inquired on what she needed help with, as a bloody sixty foot long snake capable of killing someone with a single blink or a drop of venom, she proved amazingly reluctant to answer.

Instead she encouraged him to explore, explaining that neither she nor the rest of the Chamber would hurt a Speaker. Though he remained cautious for that first visit, her words proved true. He explored, noting all the little chambers and what he guessed they did. One particular chamber full of old scrolls and books in different languages took up his attention for most of the night and he marked that on his map in green.

Finally, however, he decided he couldn’t spend the entire night in the Chamber and slipped away to sleep, delighted to discover another door that went only two halls away from the Slytherin dorm's entrance.

The boy came back the next day. Dark haired and bright eyed, sharply dressed in Muggle-inspired clothing, he reminded Tom almost painfully of Charlus. The Slytherin emblem on his robes made Tom hesitate and he hovered at the top of the main chamber’s high roof watching.

Over the years -- most of which he spent incorporeal and only vaguely aware of the passage of time -- he’d gained a great deal of control over his Obscurial form and its instincts to destroy. Cian was safe and, with exhaustive use of control, so was this strange, Speaking boy who explored the Chambers with an enthusiasm that reminded Tom of himself. But despite Cian’s prompting that first night he wasn’t yet willing to put his life in the hands of this stranger with a Slytherin crest on his bag.

So he watched.

Harry kept getting the strange feeling of being watched.

Even when Cian, who spent a great deal of her time lounging in a warmed area of the main chamber’s stones, was nowhere to be found Harry could still feel eyes on him. No portraits explained it. No ghosts came up on any scans. His Homenum Revelio spell came up with the strangest response and proved not at all useful for finding whatever it detected.

But it wasn’t until he’d been exploring the Chamber every weekend for the better part of a month and decided to stay the night in the bedroom he found that the first real clue found him.

The bedroom was occupied. Not that it had once been occupied but that it still was, with a conjured toothbrush and personal belongings of what appeared to be another Hogwarts student settled all around the room.

He still slept there, not wanting whoever was hiding from him to know he’d caught on, and he pressed himself against the woodsy scented sheets with a relaxation that surprised him. Whoever usually slept here smelt good.

He investigated the belongings too, trying to build a picture of this boy -- and he was almost certain they were a boy from the smell and belongings -- in his mind.

The belongings were old-fashioned, like the things Harry took from his granduncle, Charlus, a few years ago. The man died of Dragon Pox when Harry was just a baby and he’d been glad to get a chance to go through the stored belongings when he turned 13. He’d taken the school bag, refitting it with a Slytherin crest, because of the high quality leather and a number of the clothes because he liked the feel of the older, tighter cuts on this narrow frame.

These belongings -- the bag, the clothes, the real bone comb in the bathroom -- held the same feel as Charlus’ things. And they were stylish. He cared about his appearance.

Harry smiled. Game on, mystery boy.

But all the exploration in the word didn’t help him track down another Parselmouth at Hogwarts. He’d found a robe with a Slytherin crest tucked into the back corner of the closet so he’d started there. But there were no students unaccounted for.

Even tracking down the Marauder’s Map with a complicated sympathetic magic equation -- currently in the hands of the 7th year Weasley twins of all people, who were all too happy to hand it over to the son of an original Marauder -- didn’t gain him any answers. No matter who he tracked, of all the people who might have private rooms (which were only common in Slytherin and Ravenclaw to begin with), he couldn’t find a single one who disappeared into the Chamber of Secrets.

By Christmas break he was ready to concede defeat and focus his attention back on his OWLs. He’d decided to stay at the castle for Christmas since his mum had been tapped for chaperoning in this year’s rotation, but he didn’t go down to the Chamber until halfway through the break.

New Years’ had always been a strange day for him because, while the people around him used it as an excuse to celebrate the start of a new calendar year, his parents had broken up after a brutal row during a New Years party. So, a little morose and uninterested in the party his Hufflepuff friends were cooking up (even though Susan Bones must have invited him four separate times), he decided to head back down to the Chamber to raid for a book.

The attractive boy curled up in the curve of the basilisk’s giant tail, holding a cupcake that he glared at like it did personal injury to him, came as a surprise.

Tom cursed to himself as the boy popped out of one of the entrance chambers unexpectedly, finding Tom himself staring at a birthday cupcake with vengeance. He’d stopped asking the house-elves what year it was a long time ago but he hadn’t the heart to ask them to stop leaving him birthday cupcakes in their food packets.

The boy hadn’t been here all week and Tom had assumed, reasonably, that he was gone for the holidays, so his sudden appearance startled them both.

“You! You’re the other Parselmouth,” the boy greeted excitedly, his eyes wide as he took in Tom’s embarrassingly sulky form.

For a moment he felt the tug of incorporeality, the desire to release and become again. After all this time, however long it had been (decades, he knew), the Obscurial felt more natural to him than having a head and body and limbs. He held desperately, closing his eyes to focus, as the sudden yearning to speak to another human being in so long won out.

“Hello. I’m Tom.”

“Tom, I’m Harry. Tom what? I’ve been looking everywhere for you, you know. What House are you in? What year? You look my age, fifth, then, is it?”

He winced. Oh, he had been a fifth year, like this ‘Harry’ when it happened. It’d even happened around his birthday, shortly before he’d have gone home to see his parents. They were dead by now, he was sure, or close to it. They never would have found out what happened to him.

“Harry what?” he countered, to buy himself a bit more time. “You look like a Potter.”

The boy chuckled, a dimple appearing in his left cheek as he eased closer, scritching Cian’s scales in greeting. “Well, reckon I should. Harry Potter Evans. I go by my mum’s name… and you?”

“Tom Riddle Blakeley.” He pressed into Cian a little more firmly, reassured by her protective weight and the feel of her body. He had the strongest urge to touch Harry right this moment, to touch another human being skin to skin, but he resisted.

“Blakeley… That doesn’t sound familiar.” Harry considers him for a long moment before settling down to use Cian as a backrest further down the tail segments. “You knew me for a Potter, but not who I am. Your clothes are out of date, like my Uncle -- granduncle --Charlus.” Tom started at the name and the other boy grinned, working out a further bit of the puzzle. “You’re not a ghost, though. At least, not any I’ve seen.”

“Blakeley… Blakeley! Uncle Charlus wrote about you in his journals. I read them last year.” He wrote about me? He swallowed around the thickness in his throat and sighed quietly to himself. His grandnephew… Charlus hadn’t even a little sibling when I knew him. It’s been such a long time. “You’re still -- You disappeared. In your fifth year, you disappeared. Have you been here the whole time?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Tom sighed. “I think that’s enough puzzling for today. You should go.”

Harry bit his lip. “How about we both stay, but I stop asking you questions? Do you know anything about Muggle backgammon? I’ve got a set in my bag.”

Reluctantly, Tom found himself saying, “I know how to play.” After all, how long had it been since he played a game?

It’d been a month of meet-ups, once or twice a week, and while Harry had kept his promise not to tell anyone about Tom (so long as he still felt safe with him, Harry wasn’t that foolish) he hadn’t gotten any closer to figuring out the mystery. Tom Riddle (as he’d insisted on going by, again without explanation why he dropped the ‘Blakeley’) still looked only a few years older than he would have when he disappeared in 1943 and was absolutely mum as to why. Neither would Cian answer Harry’s questions, even when Tom wasn’t there, to his frustration.

The mystery aside, spending time with Tom was hardly difficult. They got on, really, with similar interests in school and senses of humour. Tom had a dry, harsh wit about him that left Harry in stitches at stories about Abraxas Malfoy (Draco apparently resembled his grandfather loads) and his toadies. When they discussed theory Tom’s mind impressed Harry to bits, the clever working making him envious and pleased to listen all at once. His own advanced skill at Runes seemed to impress Tom in turns and they rifted off potential designs that could combine Runes and Arithmancy, a subject the older boy was clearly stronger in.

On the mystery side, however, he’d made very little progress. He’d learned the boy was a Slytherin, as Uncle Charlus described, but he didn’t hold many of the nasty beliefs that Harry’s housemates did. He learned that he’d made it halfway through fifth year. That he’d been raised by Muggles through adoption and had nothing kind to say about his maternal line, the Gaunts.

Aside from that, though, Harry learned more of the silences. Tom told stories about all the Slytherin boys in his year except Avery. He wouldn’t touch the Head of Slytherin at the time at all no matter how Harry approached it. He spoke awkwardly about anyone except Charlus, really, and most of his happier Hogwarts’ stories involved Cian.

That was perhaps the only place where Harry and Tom truly differed. Harry wasn’t that friendly with his fellow Slytherins, save Theo Nott and Blaise Zabini, but he made up with it by keeping childhood friends regardless of House. Tom had been lonely, left alone, even.

And then there was the fact that bad things had happened to the people he carefully, subtly, completely failed to ever mention. It felt more and more like that might have been what led to… this.

§’You have to trust him sometime. We need his help,’§ Cian hissed, nudging him gently where he lay stretched out on his bed in the Chamber. Ever since Harry had begun coming around it’d been easier to keep human form at any time Tom wanted, as if the other boy worked as a tether for him to the corporeal plane.

He wanted to keep this and so long as the other boy who -- despite being a Slytherin, did remind him a great deal of his uncle -- kept coming he would. Scaring him off with talk of being an Obscurial would set Tom back, potentially for years and years or decades or worse.

§’I know. Next time he comes down.’§ Tom flipped through a page on a book on Runes Harry brought from the library and settled in. He wanted to finish it by the time the other boy returned.

The next time, however, Harry wanted to talk about his new Runes project using thread to create protective clothing that could stand up to curses.

The time after Tom wanted to test how Parselmagic might work together when cast by two non-direct family members.

And it went on and on like that until they were nearly at OWLs when Harry made the decision for both of them.

“Lewin Avery died badly in his bed the year before you got stuck here. Another boy, a Rowle, died the same way,” Harry said by way of greeting the next time he came down to the Chamber. Catching Tom off guard always gained him more answers, even if the boy angrily told him to go away for a bit afterwards.

This time, to his surprise, the already pale skin went white as a sheet, leached of all blood in a second of terror.

Uneasy guilt settled in Harry’s stomach. He hadn’t meant to hurt his new friend. “Sorry. Uh. That was probably insensitive. You would have known them.”

“You think?" Tom huffed, a catch in his throat and his eyes strangely shiny as he turned away.

“I’m sorry. If they were frien --”

“Those bastards were no friends of mine.” His lip curled up in agitated sneer, wobbly between hurt and vengeful with every minor shift of his extremely expressive face.

The deep anger of it made Harry swallow hard, suddenly anxious at the vehemence of that response. He weighed his words. ‘They hurt you’? No. He’d be insulted if someone said that to him when he looked like that. ‘You hurt them’? Too accusatory. Finally, he went with, “Is that connected to how you ended up here?”

“You could say that. Cian already convinced me I needed to talk to you. Rowle tried to… I said no. I tried to get away. He hit me. I managed to escape, but that night when I went to sleep I manifested for the first time. That’s what I call it. The books say I’m an obscurial. There’s not a lot of information about it and I can’t leave these Chambers any more.”

Perhaps he should have run then, but his mum had taught him that you didn’t run out on a friend even if they’d done something terrible so long as they were sorry. That’s what she regretted most about Hogwarts; that a single, terrible world and concern about Uncle Severus’s choice in friends had led to them losing touch until years after Harry was born.

How could he run out now? It sounded like this Rowle bastard had tried to rape Tom. Tom had every right to defend himself and he hadn’t done what he did later on purpose if he was telling the truth. Harry pursed his lips. §’Let’s switch to Parseltongue.’§

“Ah, yes, it’s much harder to lie in that, isn’t it?” Tom lips twitched up in a bitter smirk.

“I believe you, but I’m a cautious bloke. You say it was an accident? And it’s called ‘Obscurial’?”

He nodded. §’I say I wanted to kill him but I didn’t intend to and, yes, I am an Obscurial. It’s a sort of dark magical manifestation. Sources conflict on whether it’s external or internal.’§ A dark chuckle broke through the hissing, almost layered on top of it. §’They also conflict on what can cause it. Some say you have to suppress all of your magic. Others say it’s a type of suppressive feedback and so long as you’re suppressing your negative§ emotions, well, §it’ll do.’§

Independently, they moved towards the library and the nice armchairs within. This felt like a sitting-down sort of conversation. When they settled in, ordering hot chocolate from the house-elf who Tom knew best, the questioning started up again. “And that’s what happened with Lewin Avery too?”

§’He nearly killed me. The others weren’t as bad and after I started sleeping in the Chamber it stopped reaching anyone.’§ Tom sipped his hot chocolate before rubbing his face tiredly. “I’m not ashamed of being raised by Muggles. It made a difference in Slytherin at the time.”

“I think it’d still make a difference now. They ‘look over’ my mum’s heritage. It’s bollocks. Back then, when Grindelwald was promising to enslave Muggles?” Harry shook his head. He could only imagine how difficult it would have been to be so bright and so Muggle in Slytherin at the time. “This is why Cian said I could help, isn’t it? She was talking about you.”

A deep exhale answered him and he waited, tense, for the answer to a question he’d had for nearly seven months now.

“I’ve been stuck down here, mostly manifested, for a long time, Harry. I don’t age when I’m incorporeal. I don’t feel time. I wasn’t certain I’d ever get out. I…”

§’When Tom first became smoke we looked for a cure. We found a binding that would help, but it went… wrong. Tom thinks it’s because my magic is not two-legged magic.’§ Cian said, shifting to twist her large body around to see them both through her protective eye-lid. §’Tom is bound here now, so long as he’s bound to me.’§

“There was always going to be a proximity limitation on the spell, but magic binds her to the Chamber unless she’s released and so it binds me. I need more books to find a better solution.”

Really, is it that hard for the other boy to say the words? Harry smiled and said it for him: “Okay, I’ll help.”

Helping proved a bit harder than Harry hoped for when he offered. He could, and did, get books from all sorts of sources -- the Potter libraries, his mum’s collection, Uncle Severus’s collection, a second hand bookstore in Hogsmeade, and so on -- but Tom wasn’t wrong when he said there wasn’t that much information about obscurials out there.

Further complicating this was timing. Friends pulled Harry into OWLs revision in almost every free moment leading up to sitting OWLs and wanted to celebrate surviving them immediately afterward.

What was he supposed to say? ‘No, thanks, I want to go read stuffy books with this incorporeal bloke I think I fancy’? He could only imagine the looks he’d get and he’d have his friends asking awkward questions in a moment if he dodged out on too many fun things. But then everyone else headed back on the Hogwarts Express and his mum, smiling awkwardly, told Harry he should go see his dad now; she needed to stay at Hogwarts for a while to finish research for her new book.

He jumped on the excuse.

“You have me all to yourself,” Harry said as he popped into the library chamber the day the Hogwarts Express left.

Tom pursed his lips, mostly to keep from blurting out, ‘You shouldn’t give me such good openings, darling.’ For however long he needed to rely on Harry for new source material he couldn’t afford to show too much interest.

Instead, he said, “I thought you’d be on the Express.”

“Mum’s staying over to do some research. I told her dad narked me off again and I’d rather stay here.” He raised an eyebrow and Harry grinned. “What? It’d be true eventually. Come on, where are we at?”

Tom smiled back. “I think we have some potential with runic circles.”

But runic circles didn’t pan out and neither did arithmantic siphoners.

They had some success with thread-witchery, enchanting a pair of silver bracelets to hold Tom to his form. Cian tested that behind a shield charm, with Harry’s ears muffled as she reminded Tom of every terrible thing that happened to him. He lost control over Rowle. Of course.

They moved on.

A month lasted that way, Harry disappearing between breakfast and dinner, except during book runs, as he claimed he had a brilliant pre-Mastery project he wanted to work out the kinks on. His mother seemed to believe him for she never tried hunting him down.

June bled into July until finally Harry said, “I have to go away for the next two weeks.” He grimaced. “There’s a joint family birthday where my parents will have to pretend they ever got along. Then, I’ve required father time.”

“Why do you hate him so much?”

“He was a bully and he never apologised to his victims. And…” Harry shrugged. “He tries to act like it’s no big matter, but I think he hates that I'm a slimy Slytherin. He’s an Auror and to hear him tell it there’s no truly dark wizard on the British Isles who wasn’t a Slytherin.”

Tom smirked and said, dryly, “Statistically, that’s unlikely.” It made the other boy laugh and something warm sparked in his chest. I really do fancy him.

“Bye, Tom. See you in two weeks.”

Harry would be a bit embarrassed to admit it, but the two weeks separation felt like eternity and by the end he missed Tom Riddle dearly. Despite having a blast with his mates and even the uneventful week with his father, which might be the longest single period of peace between them since third year, he wanted to go home immensely.

When his mum fussed, he pushed her off. “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you wouldn’t rather spend some more time with your friends? You’ve been working so hard this summer and I know I haven’t been around much.”

“You’ve been finishing your book and I don’t mind. I can spend time this year with my mates. Uninterrupted research time is crucial.”

If he didn’t want to admit what he really wanted to anyone, except in his own head, he could be forgiven. But no matter what else she asked about he insisted he’d truly rather be nowhere else but Hogwarts.

After all, it was true.

Tom kept staring at him. Oh, it wasn’t unusual for the boy, with his intense, brooding man-stare, but it felt more purposeful than before. Intent. Even as he cuddled into Cian with the same focused determination to all but meld with those dark green scales, he stared.

This time it made Harry wonder something. “When’s the last time you touched a human being?”

A grimace answered him but concentrated silence finally garnered a verbal response. “Willingly? I hugged my mother before I boarded the train for Hogwarts fifth year.”

In relative time, that’d been nearly three and a half years ago. “Do you want to... “ ‘Cuddle’? Urgh, no. ‘Touch me’? Too open-ended. “Sit closer?”

”Yes.” An adorable flush started up Tom’s neck, working into his cheeks, at the vehemence in his voice.

“Alright.” Harry slipped over, settling against Cian so that only their sides -- his compact without seeming thin, Tom’s all lanky limbs -- touched. The heat felt nice and an inhale proved it had been his scent on the bed. “It is your bed!”

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten you slept on it.”

Now Harry blushed, looking down at his knees before he opened back up his book. “I didn’t know it was occupied.”

§’Yes? Say that again in Parseltongue.’§ Tom teased, smirking.

Ugh, that stupid smirk is too perfect. I want to kiss it.

“Fine. I thought it might be occupied.”

“Uh-huh.”

Harry broke into laughter. “You’re awful.” But he kept smiling and nudged an arm around his shoulder so that he could press closer. So long as he didn’t call it ‘cuddling’ he could probably get away with it. The tacit permission opened a floodgate and he lost track of the book he was reading as Tom’s long fingers trailed up and down one arm in fascination, making Harry shiver and shift to cover certain inconvenient anatomy. “Sure, Tom, I don’t mind you playing me like an instrument.”

“That is an awful line.”

Not so long as it keeps you doing that, it’s not.

I never want to stop touching him.

Tom couldn’t stop his hand from running up and down the surprisingly soft skin of Harry’s arm, where the coarsely haired upper arm met the more supple flesh of the inner. The play of sensations and of being allowed to touch another person fascinated Tom and he lost track of his research mid-way through the afternoon, no longer willing to take notes if it required him to cede this touch.

I’ll pick it back up tomorrow.

“Tom?”

“Hmm?” He hummed contentedly and closed his eyes.

“The spell you used to bind yourself to Cian. It was designed for a human, wasn’t it?” He hummed agreement and Harry nodded, tucking his cheek against one shoulder. Oh, that weight felt nice. “That’s why it went wrong, right?”

“Right.”

“What if we used me instead?”

He froze. “That would bind us together permanently.”

“Potentially permanently. We could still find a fix. In the meantime, you could go back to classes with me. You’ve mentioned before you were ahead in lessons, yes? So, what if you took the OWLs this summer? The last exams are next week. Then you could join me for sixth year.”

Hunger hit him as if he’d last eaten a year ago, hunger for the normal life stolen from him all this time. “Harry…”

“I mean it.” Harry straightened and it took every inch of self-control not to drag him back down, to keep touching. “I’m going to go get my mum. Hide Cian, unless you want to explain the 1000-year-old basilisk. I think she’ll help us.”

“Harry!”

“I’m doing this.” He darted back, a sudden kiss and a bright red blush. “Even if you don’t feel like that to me, I’m doing this. You deserve a normal life. I’m certain my mum will agree.”

Tom flushed as he pushed himself up to his feet and, more hesitantly, leaned in for another kiss. This one -- slower, softer than the first -- made his stomach fizzle up in excitement and burn through his nerves as he carefully encouraged Harry’s mouth open. Unrestrained, he moaned, the sound vibrating into Tom’s mouth as he pressed his tongue forward and took. Yes. He tugged Harry’s shorter body up against his and wound a hand in that dark hair. Finally.

When Tom let them break apart Harry panted, his skin flush and his eyes bright. “I’ve wanted to do that for months now.”

“Stay.”

“Nope. You’re distracting. You’re not that distracting. I’ll be back, with help. Hide Cian.”

“She can help tomorrow.”

“Hide Cian.” Then he was gone.

Lily Evans smiled as her son entered her cramped, scroll-filled office, a wide smile on his face. “What made you so happy?”

“I want to show you. Come on.”

Because she loved him and she enjoyed his company, even though he no doubt would have been less bored if he’d gone to stay with friends (or even his father) for most of the summer, she agreed, marking her place in her book. He surprised her by taking her down to a girls’ loo, that wide smile still on his face as he explained, “It all started because I wanted to prove to Dad I could find one place he couldn’t here at Hogwarts.”

A girls’ loo led to a strange set of stairs and she kept following, through the large corridor, past the terrifyingly large shedded snake skin (“oops, forgot that was there!”), and through two more doors that only opened to her son’s nearly unique ability with Parseltongue.

The large chamber interested her (though a small voice in her head said ‘definitely large enough for that huge snake’) and she was focused on the architecture when her son grabbed her sleeve and tugged.

“Mum, this is Tom and he needs our help.”