Chapter Text
Harry always hated attending these meetings.
Seriously, ever since he'd gotten here all those months ago and subsequently been asked to show up, he hadn't enjoyed a single one. They were stiff and repetitive and everyone sat with their backs so straight it looked painful and the same people said the same things in the same order and nothing ever actually happened. There was truly, genuinely, not one redeeming thing about them.
Okay, fine. Maybe there was one good thing about all this, and that was—
"Noted."
Tom looked at Malfoy with that perfectly composed expression of his, the one that left you wondering whether noted meant well done or you've just wasted thirty seconds of my life and I will remember it. In Harry's experience, it was most often the latter, but one could hardly blame anyone for hoping.
Malfoy, for his part, seemed to be having that same exact bout of wishful thinking, though not for long. Harry watched his face travel the full distance from hopeful and almost proud, the expression everyone got when it was their turn to speak, to a slow dawning uncertainty, as the room collectively held its breath waiting for whatever verdict Tom was about to deliver.
"You may sit."
The room exhaled. It could have gone worse, and Malfoy clearly knew it, because he sat back down without a single unnecessary movement, as if he had no intention of reminding anyone he existed for the remainder of the evening. His face, almost clockwork, settled into something newly determined then. Next week would go differently. He would do better next time. He would definitely bring something worthier than the news that his father had acquired a Romanian Longhorn egg at last Tuesday's auction, which was, judging from the look still fixed on Tom's face, not exactly the geopolitical intelligence he had been waiting for tonight.
One glance at that expression and Harry promptly thought better of it, finding a point on the far wall instead and staring at it with great concentration. He had gotten better at this over the months, after all. Not perfect, but definitely better, so he looked at the wall until he trusted himself again, then finally turned back. Tom Riddle, he had decided some time ago, was genuinely very funny, and the fact that he had absolutely no idea made it considerably worse.
These were sixteen, seventeen year olds at best. They had Charms homework due tomorrow, on top of the stack of remedial notes Slughorn had handed out after today's Potions class that had gone, for most of the room, quite badly. They had curfews and bedtimes and that kind of voice that still cracked at inconvenient moments and at least three of them, Harry knew for a fact, had recently lost points for running in the corridor. They had argued at dinner over who had eaten the last of the bread rolls, right after disagreeing loudly over a Quidditch statistic that none of them could verify, yet here they were now, only one hour later, sitting in a circle in an empty classroom, conducting themselves like they were advising a head of state, all because Tom crooked his finger and every single one of them came. Honestly, Harry found the whole thing both fascinating and slightly disturbing.
As if picking up on that very thought, Tom glanced over at him then, briefly, from where they were sitting side by side. It was unreadable to everyone else in the room, probably, but Harry had accumulated enough of those looks by now to read them without any trouble.
Behave.
Harry pressed his lips together and decidedly found the wall again.
Lestrange went next. He'd clearly been waiting for this, because he stood up a little too quickly and announced that his father, who held a position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, had it on good authority that the Wand Permit Overseas Travel Act was currently under review by the Wizengamot and likely to pass by spring.
Tom considered this for a moment.
"Noted," he said, and the pause was brief this time. "You may sit."
Lestrange, who Harry happened to know had cried twice this week and both times about Defence Against the Dark Arts, now sat down looking like he had just handed over a state secret. Going by Tom's face, which had shifted, albeit slightly, toward something less frozen, Harry gathered this was at least an improvement compared to the egg.
The calm lasted approximately five seconds, however, which was how long it took for Nott to clear his throat.
"My father," he smoothly cut in, "has heard differently. The review is procedural. It won't progress past the initial committee."
"That," Lestrange said, with considerable composure for someone who had visibly not expected this, "is not what my father said."
"Then your father's sources are out of date."
"My father's sources are current as of last Friday."
"My father had lunch with the Minister on Saturday."
"My father," Lestrange countered, his voice climbing in a way he clearly hadn't intended, "has been on intimate terms with the Minister for the better part of a decade."
"As has my—"
"Enough."
Tom said it quietly, final, which was how he said most things, and which was always worse than the alternative. Naturally, there wasn't a single person in the room who didn't understand exactly what it meant.
Nott promptly closed his mouth. Lestrange found something on the floor worth studying. The others, with some foresight, had already taken great care to look like they'd never been involved in the first place.
"The matter is unresolved," Tom added only after a few seconds of complete silence. Nobody argued. "We will revisit it when there is something conclusive to report."
And that was the end of it, at least for now. Unresolved, Harry had learned, was not the same as dropped, because Tom didn't drop things. He simply set them aside while fully intending to pick them back up, sooner rather than later.
Lestrange and Nott knew that, too. They exchanged one last look, brief and loaded, then sat back down without another word, which was arguably the smartest thing either of them had done all evening.
Then Tom moved on, and the room breathed again, and Harry returned his attention to the wall with some urgency.
It was Mulciber's turn.
He stood up and announced that, according to several reliable sources, one of them being his very own mother, someone from the Fletcher family had been seen leaving the same address in Kensington three Tuesday evenings in a row, and that the address in question belonged to a witch who was decidedly not his wife. He paused for effect. His mother, he added then, had found this very suspicious. He personally agreed. He didn't know the witch's name, or which Fletcher specifically, but the point stood.
As always, everyone took a moment with that. Then, collectively, the room shifted. Avery looked pointedly at his nails. Malfoy straightened an already straight piece of parchment in front of him. Orion made a small sound in the back of his throat that, in the complete silence, was extremely loud.
Tom looked at Mulciber for a long moment.
Harry, sitting down right between the two of them, was having a truly terrible time. He could see exactly what was on Mulciber's face and exactly what was on Tom's, and the stark difference between them was almost more than he could manage.
When Tom finally spoke, he skipped straight past the usual noted. "Sit down."
Mulciber promptly sat.
"If anyone else," Tom said then, and his voice had gone even colder, "has come here tonight with nothing more to contribute than neighbourhood gossip." He looked around the room, gaze touching on each of them in turn. "Get out."
Nobody spoke. Instead, one by one, they gathered their things and filed out, making as little noise as possible. Only Orion, at the tail end of the group, caught Harry's eye on the way out and made a face that communicated an entire opinion about Tom Riddle, with no actual words needed and no ambiguity whatsoever. Harry gave him a small wave that meant, approximately, yes I know, then tilted his head slightly toward the corridor, because now wasn't a good time. They would talk later.
Because, of course, Harry stayed. Harry always stayed for what was next, and that was—
"Did you hear what he just said?"
The door had barely clicked shut behind Orion and it was just the two of them now and Tom was visibly furious and Harry had been holding it for the better part of an hour and then he didn't anymore.
He laughed properly, finally, loudly, the full version, the one he'd been sitting on since what felt like forever, and judging by the way Tom stared at him this was not the response he had been looking for. "This is not funny."
"It's rather funny, actually."
"It is not even slightly—" Tom stopped. Exhaled through his nose. Got up and started pacing, long strides, occasionally dragging a hand through his hair in a way that slightly disturbed the curls he normally kept in perfect order, and Harry, of course, noticed it.
Harry noticed several things, in fact, and kept all of them to himself.
"Why does he insist on wasting my time?" Tom went on then, and Harry was very glad he did. "Does he not know how many witches live in Kensington? He did not even have the address. And he also did not even know which Fletcher it was. There are at least four of them."
Harry hadn't quite finished laughing yet. "Maybe five," he managed. "Difficult to keep track."
Tom pointed at him. "Don't."
Harry snorted, then immediately decided he was still not done. "What about his mother, though?"
Tom closed his eyes briefly. "His mother. He is seventeen years old and his most reliable—intelligence source is his mother. If it can even be called that. His mother who was, apparently, standing outside a house in Kensington on three separate Tuesday evenings with nothing better to do than—count how many times a Fletcher came and went." He stopped pacing for a moment. "And he thought this was worth my time."
This time Harry didn't bother. "In fairness," he said, already laughing, "she was rather devoted to the cause."
"Harry."
Harry grinned. He could let that one go, for now, but there was always more where that came from. "What about Lestrange?"
"Do not get me started on Lestrange."
"Please," Harry insisted, "get started on Lestrange."
Tom, predictably, got started on Lestrange. "His father allegedly sat across a table from the Minister and his son came here and reported it as though the fact of the lunch itself was the intelligence. Not what was discussed. Not what was decided. They had lunch. Wonderful." He turned at the end of the room and came back. "The Minister eats lunch. This is what I've learned tonight."
Harry lost it completely. "So do you," he managed. "Quite a lot in common, really."
"Harry."
"What? Common ground is important."
"Stop."
"I'm not doing anything."
Tom looked at him for a moment, something shifting briefly in his expression, then, predictably, he looked away and continued pacing. Harry had noticed, some time ago, that Tom never actually pressed to end these conversations, and had been making quiet use of that ever since.
"And Nott," he added then, as though it had just occurred to him, which it hadn't. "Cutting in like that."
It worked like a charm. "Nott," Tom said, in a tone that Harry recognised and had, if he was being honest, been looking forward to. "He makes every piece of information sound like a personal achievement."
"He does have a certain confidence."
Tom's gaze sharpened. "Nott has failed Transfiguration twice and spent the better part of last semester grovelling at Dumbledore's desk. He has absolutely nothing to be confident about and has somehow failed to notice."
Harry laughed, loud enough that it bounced off the classroom walls, and the thing was, he still wasn't even nearly finished.
"What about the egg?"
Predictably, Tom had quite a few opinions about the egg as well, and Harry, as always, sat back in his chair and listened to each and every one.
It took a while, because it always took a while, and by the end of it Tom's hair was completely ruffled and his face slightly flushed from pacing the length of the classroom for the better part of an hour and he was almost certainly unaware of both. Harry, naturally, was very aware of both.
"It is not funny," Tom said then, for what was probably the twentieth time that evening.
"It is, rather."
"It is not."
"It really is."
Tom looked at him for a moment, then looked away, and Harry thought that probably, if pressed, he still wouldn't admit it out loud, but these meetings weren't so bad after all.
Not that Tom wasn't doing his best to complicate that.
"And another thing," he added, and it was obvious he had been waiting to raise this for a while. "Black."
Harry closed his eyes briefly.
"I notice his expressions, you know," Tom continued, undeterred. "And not just tonight. The faces. The sounds. He does not even bother to hide them. It's constant."
"Really?" Harry said then, glancing over as though trying hard to recall. "I can't say I've seen anything of the sort."
Tom's eyes narrowed slightly. "You are choosing not to."
"Am I?"
Tom looked straight at him. Harry didn't even think about looking away. It stretched out into one of those familiar, wordless arguments they seemed to have far too often, before Tom relented and resumed pacing, back and forth, as if nothing had happened.
Harry filed it under a win, at least provisionally. He knew Tom well enough by now to know that this particular subject had not been dropped so much as postponed, and he would most likely hear about it again before the night was out. Which was fine. Harry would handle it, because he always handled it.
Still, he buried his face in his hands, though only for a short moment. Then he looked up, grinning. Because he couldn't help it, because this was the thing, because for all that there were a few aspects of these evenings that could stand to be refined, Tom's touchiness about Orion at the top of the list, these meetings really weren't so bad.
And he knew they'd be here a while longer, the two of them. He wasn't in any particular hurry, anyway.