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After Hogwarts, everyone knew that Harry and Tom would go off and live together. They didn't know that they would choose a cottage in the woods, but Harry liked its rustic charm, and Tom liked that there were no neighbours to complain about him practicing illegal magic and keeping an army of inferi in the well.
One day while dropping some cow brains into the well to feed Tom's inferi, and muttering to himself that that man owed him one for this, he was surprised by the sight of an old woman.
"Young man, would you be so good as to get me a drink of water from that well?" she asked in a quavering voice.
"Er… I could get you better water than that…" Harry said, not sure that anyone should be drinking that water.
"No, it must be well water. That well in particular. There aren't any wrackspurts near it. Would you please?"
Harry was not able to resist the magic word, so he ladled out a cup of water for her. That's when the crone transformed into a fairy with pale blonde hair and bulging eyes.
"Thank you. You passed the test," she said. "Time for your treat."
"Wait, what?" Harry said. Then he spluttered, because there were suddenly two gemstones in his mouth. He spit them out. A diamond and an emerald. "What is this?" A sapphire, a garnet, an alexandrite.
"It's good luck!" she said.
"It seems like a choking hazard," he said. A ruby, an amethyst, an aquamarine, a citrine, a topaz, a malachite, a carnelian.
He stalked into the house and ranted to Tom about what had happened to him.
Tom ran a few diagnostic spells over Harry, and said, "Hmm… looks like this curse will lift with the death of the caster. I just need to kill the fairy."
"You can't just kill the fairy! She was… nice…" Gemstones spat out with his words.
"You mean she was pretty," Tom scoffed. "I'll handle it."
He went to the well to look for an old woman or a pretty young fairy. This time she had disguised herself as a noblewoman, but once she asked for water from the well, Tom knew who she was.
"No, bitch," Tom said. He lifted his wand to cast on her.
The noblewoman turned into the fairy.
"You're not very nice. You need a wrackspurt siphon." She cast on him.
Tom said, "What did you do?" and snakes slithered out of his mouth.
Tom imagined the fear and panic on people's faces as he spoke to them, and he changed his mind about killing the fairy. "THANK YOU! BEST GIFT EVER!"
When he ran back in the house, he told Harry, and vipers fell from his mouth with each word. "Score!" Tom shouted. "My gift is better than yours! Rudeness wins!"
"Oh my gods," Harry said. "Where the fuck are we putting all of these snakes?"
"In the vivarium you're building me with all of your riches."
"The fuck I am."
But as the multitude of snakes grew, Harry shoveled a handful of gems at Tom and told him to "Just do something about it already."
It wasn't long before they discovered a worse problem. The next time Tom had Harry in his arms, kissing his throat, he murmured, "I'm going to…"
Only to have Harry shriek… "No! No! No! No! No! I am not doing this with snakes!" Diamonds, sapphires, and rubies scattered as he ranted at Tom. "No snakes in the bed!"
"Snakes are fine! Do you know how awful it is rolling over onto gems?!"
"Gems don't bite!"
"My snakes don't bite unless I tell them too."
Harry pulled off his shirt to show off several bite marks. "Do so!"
"Oh fuck you!" Tom said. "Those gems of yours are worse! They're like legos underfoot!"
"You know what we have to do, right?" Harry asked.
Tom nodded.
"KILL THE FAIRY," they said in unison.