Work Text:
He hadn't seen her at first, not truly. Just a sense of something behind him, a glimpse of red hair as he turned a corner, a sudden swell of gooseflesh at the base of his neck. It felt like one of his dreams, the ones that felt so real, sliding further from his memory the more he tried to cling to them.
The first time he had truly, truly, seen her had been after one of those dreams. He had woken up gasping, reaching his hands out for something. His hands had tangled in a web of dense red hair laying over him like a shawl. Drowsiness fizzled his brain to start, stop, start like the muggle engines father always complained about.
For a fuzzy moment Harry enjoyed the feeling of the cool strands in his fingers, the lull of his dreams painting the moment with leftover whimsy.
Harry had been raised wrapped in silk and insulated manor walls, he hadn't yet grown to know fear yet.
When the tangle of hair moved and bright green eyes peeked out from behind the curtain he felt the first rush of it. When the woman opened her mouth to whisper his name he tasted it.
And then he screamed.
Tom Riddle hadn't planned to be a father. He was uninterested in extending his legacy through blood, uninterested in preserving a family name. Why bother with contingencies when he planned to outlive the earth itself? Fatherhood felt insignificant in comparison to godhood.
Harry Potter had ruined that, of course.
Nearly eight years later and he still wasn't sure why he had spared the infant or why he had plucked the thing from his dead mother's arms .
Or, why he was playing father to a halfblood in the Highlands of Scotland. His own followers secretly thought him mad, and in this moment he was inclined to agree with them.
What else would explain why he was soothing a boy after a nightmare about ghosts of all things?
“It was just a dream Harry, there is no one here.” Tom’s mouth said, the words pulled from him almost unwillingly. Almost a decade with the insufferable boy and he still didn't understand this …need to soothe and nurture.
“No no no!” The boy wailed, wet gasping sobs that racked his whole body. “She was here! She has bloody hair and she said my name and and and-”
Tom sighed, pushing messy black hair from the boy’s damp face. He was inconsolable.
“And what, dear one?” He rocked Harry gently, like he had seen Narcissa Malfoy do with her brat after a tumble down the stairs. Maybe he needed to get a mother for the boy, they needed those didn't they?
“She looked at me! With my eyes!”
Tom stopped moving. He pulled Harry up by his arms to look at him clearly. Had he had bloody hair, did he mean…red?
“Repeat that, Harry. What do you mean your eyes?” Harry’s lower lip wobbled.
“She had my eyes! They were bright green and they glowed like lanterns!” Harry began wailing again, fear seemingly renewed with Tom’s interest.
Tom pressed Harry against his chest, a spell thought and released, pulling the boy under the lull of sleep again. He could not think with the boys incessant cries.
He lowered the boy back under his covers, tucking him in as he had done mere hours ago. A flourish of his hand sent a gentle ward around the bed, no ghosts or unwelcome guests would disturb the boy again.
Now Tom had to discover why Lily Potter’s ghost was haunting his son.