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It was lucky no one found him until after he was cleaned up from slaughtering the roosters. But none of it—the violence or the luck—made him feel any better.
“Ah, Tom, my dear boy!” Slughorn cried when he stopped him in the corridors outside the Great Hall.
Responding to Slughorn’s enthusiasm was a chore on the best of days, but after scrubbing his fingernails clean for hours, undisturbed, his heart beating so hard and painfully in his chest, Tom was slow to put on his mask.
“Would you mind terribly bringing this parcel to Harry? I believe the poor boy is still holed up in the hospital wing.” His tone was sympathetic and worried, but it was also disappointed.
Tom only pretended sympathy. He took the parcel, a heavy bag of what were surely get-well gifts, all wrapped in a velvet bow. “Of course, Professor. I would be glad to.”
“I know how close you two are,” Slughorn said. Tom’s eyebrow twitched. “After such a… challenging match he should be around friends, don’t you think?”
Tom’s mouth was stiff. “Yes, professor.”
As Harry wrestled out from unconsciousness, he saw Tom Riddle sitting at his bedside. He groaned. “Is that chocolate?” He could smell the rum infusion from here.
Surrounded by torn gift wrap and green ribbon, Tom shrugged. “They’re mine,” he muttered like a child. He did not meet Harry’s eye.
Harry reached for his glasses on the bedside, flinching the whole while at the brutal pain. Ah, now he remembered. He’d been reaching for the snitch when a bludger smashed into his ribs. It had been a long fall.
Just as his glasses were in his grasp Tom leaned forward and slapped the glasses to the ground. They clattered, glass breaking.
Exasperated, Harry fell back into his pillow. “What is it now?”
“You let a Hufflepuff beater shoot you out of the sky. Hufflepuff, Harry.”
“I thought you wanted me to lose.”
Tom took a moment too long to answer, twisting a wrapper between his long fingers. Harry watched as well as he could without his glasses. “You lose and Slytherin loses with you. You’re an embarrassment,” Tom finally said.
Harry’s smile was small. Something he didn’t want to call fond. “Uh-huh. You haven’t eaten all my chocolate, have you?”
“It’s mine!” Tom growled. And in a tantrum the likes of which Harry hadn’t seen in ages, Tom squeezed the box in his hands and stomped the rest of the parcel with all the sweets and gifts inside it with his feet. He huffed in his chair and crossed his arms.
The matron came out from her office with a pointed scowl, but when she saw all the evidence of Tom Riddle, the sweet Slytherin prefect losing it he brow furrowed.
Tom, under his beautiful, undoing hair was fully red. He was cracking. As much as Tom deserved to have his illusory castle crumble around him, Harry couldn’t watch it happen. Maybe in the past he wanted that. But now, he didn’t want to see this gangly, doe-eyed boy burn.
“Sorry, matron. I was upset I lost.”
She turned her warning look to Harry and returned to her office. They were once again alone. Tom exhaled, shaky. He put the crushed box down in the pile.
“Sorry I lost us the Cup.”
Tom tried to look confident. He crossed his arms over his chest, widened his feet, lifted his chin. But his eyes wandered over the obscured glass panes of the window behind Harry’s hospital bed. And his hair was still out of its curl.
“I’m winning, you know. While you were unconscious I eliminated all the cocks on the grounds.” A mean grin started to turn his lips. Even still, it was watery. “There’s nothing to stand before my beast now.”
There’s still me, Harry didn’t say. He closed his eyes, both exhausted and knowing that the little Dark Lord wouldn’t want to be seen like this. He had his persona, he had his lies, but Harry had always seen through them. He reached his arm out blindly until he could hold the sleeve of Tom’s robes.
It was slick. Maybe still from the bird blood. Maybe from soaking it clean in the sink. Maybe from wiping the worry from his eyes while Harry was out. No way of telling.
“You told Slughorn we’re—,” Tom couldn’t finish. His soft, tiny voice choked off.
They’re what? Obsessed with one another? Never without the other? From the instant Harry turned up in this time and sat at the Slytherin table in green robes, Tom had been fixated on him. Growing a fondness for him back through their stupid, dangerous competitions—this stupid, sly, clumsy Tom Riddle—was as easy as flying.
“I didn’t,” Harry said.
“Then…”
Tom could be stuck on anything. Like how did Slughorn notice they were close? Or when did they become like this without Tom noticing?
Harry just said, “Eat some of your chocolate. You’ll feel better.”