Archive of Our Own

Beyond the perimeter of the fairground, the cicadas erupted in a rhythmic trill. The grass beneath his back was dry, pricking his neck and slipping under the thin fabric of his old shirt. It felt as though an entire army of some hymenopteran family was marching in neat formation beneath his clothes, tickling his ribs and stomach, but Potter could not have cared less — in fact, he could hardly have found the words to express his utter indifference. His fingers fluttered of their own accord over the other boy’s palm; Harry stroked his hand, lazily tracing the pads of his fingers along the back of it, bumping time and again into patches where the skin had become inevitably smooth and warm.

‘You ss-smell of ff-thear,’ a quiet voice murmured from his left.

Harry flinched. For a fraction of a second, his hand stilled, breaking the circles he had been drawing on the other’s wrist.

‘I was just thinking…’ He faltered, swallowing a bitter lump. ‘Just… it’s still going to happen, isn't it? Even if you don't turn anymore?’

Tom remained silent, tightening his fingers around Harry’s just a fraction more, and offered a soft smile.

‘I’m terrified that one morning I’ll wake up and won't hear your voice,’ Harry confessed in a whisper, sniffing in a thoroughly un-adult, almost pathetic manner. ‘I know it’ll still be you. I understand, I really do. But… we… you… I’m terrified of losing you again, snakey. I’ve only just found you.’

Tom shifted slowly, propping himself up on one elbow. In the gloom, his eyes looked like vast, gleaming saucers, involuntarily evoking a resemblance to a cat. Never to a snake.

‘We ssh-shall sst-still be able to k-kommuni-katss,’ Tom exhaled uncertainly after a few minutes of silence.

‘I hate pantomime,’ Harry grimaced, already picturing himself practically doing a song and dance just to explain to a massive serpent that it needed to hide in a bag so they could get onto the Underground.

‘‘I meant the thongue of ss-snakesss.’

Tom looked devastatingly calm, and that only made it hurt all the more. How many years had he had to come to terms with the curse? Twenty, probably, or thereabouts. Would that have been enough time for Potter? Right now, it felt like a resounding no.

‘Will you teach me Parseltongue?’

‘No.’ Tom smiled softly, and for a fleeting moment, the wretched claws scraping at Harry's ribs ceased their clawing. ‘It k-kannot be tha-aught. But it may be ssh-shared.’

Harry sat up abruptly in the grass, pulling his knees to his chest, never letting go of Tom’s hand.

‘I don't understand.’

‘Have you ever heard of h-horr-kruxesss, p-pass-ser?’

× ── ⋆⋅☾⋅⋆ ── ×

The year had passed strangely. It could not be said that Harry spent his days wallowing in misery — a homeless wizard simply lacked the luxury of time for that—but the sense of emptiness refused to budge. It lived somewhere beneath his ribs, flaring up every time he caught sight of a carousel or caught the scent of candy floss.

‘Potter, you’re acting like a child,’ he would think, staring at his own reflection in shop windows. ‘So you met a handsome bloke, so you slept together, so it was brilliant. What now, put a ring on his finger and brew tea in a caravan until you’re old and grey? You’d known each other for a week — for God’s sake! — and look at the castles in the air you’ve built. Wake up, there will be hundreds more encounters like that. Probably.’

What stung the most was not even the fact that Tom had left, but the precise manner in which he had done it. To just pack up and leave nothing behind but a cold bed and a cold trinket as a parting gift. Try as he might, he could not wrap his head around it: was what had happened between them truly not worth waking him up for? A proper goodbye? Even a short note? The silence was humiliating; it made him feel like a stray kitten someone had paused to stroke before walking on. Harry replayed their final evening in his mind over and over, searching for some sort of hint, a warning, but his memory only served up a sickeningly sweet tenderness that now made him feel slightly nauseous.

‘My family name is Potter, what’s yours?’
‘What isss a family name?’
‘Like a surname. The name shared by all members of a family.’
‘I am jussst Tom.’

At first, he had simply wandered aimlessly, barely aware of his route. His thoughts were a tangled mess, his resentment towards Tom souring into a dull, thumping anger directed at himself. He needed to pull himself out of this rut, to find some new purpose, otherwise the loneliness threatened to become absolute. The silence inside his head had grown far too loud, and Harry desperately wanted something to drown it out.

The guitar found him at a London flea market — old, with a deep scratch scored into the body, but possessing a remarkably deep resonance. The instrument looked just as battered and misplaced as Harry felt, so he took it into his hands, brushed the strings, and for the first time in ages felt that some semblance of order could be brought to this chaotic noise.

‘You can’t just not have a surname!’
‘But I don't.’
‘Do you have a passport?’
‘No.’

Potter quickly realised that merely singing on street corners would barely keep him in food, but if he infused the music with a bit of magic, things would take a completely different turn. He didn’t do anything complicated; he merely channeled a spark of intent into the strings. Whenever Harry played something upbeat, the air around him seemed to grow warmer. Passers-by would suddenly feel that the day wasn't quite so dreadful after all, a pleasant warmth blooming in their chests like the comfort of a proper cup of tea. People would involuntarily slow their pace, smiling at their own thoughts, and parted with their coins far more readily.

In those moments when he was drawn to melancholy tunes, the magic obligingly shifted its hue. It was as if an invisible dome of silence materialized around Harry, within which every sound gained an extraordinary, crystal clarity. The listeners would freeze, spellbound by this purity; to them, it felt as though the song were echoing not from the pavement, but from somewhere deep within their own souls. They would stand there, submerged in their own memories, unable to tear themselves away for a long time.

This morning had set the tone for the entire day, and the tone was rotten. Harry woke up with the distinct taste of campfire smoke on his lips — he had been dreaming of his seventeenth birthday again. The blindingly bright sun, the scent of baked grass, and that impossible boy who had promised so confidently never to leave. Such dreams visited him with an enviable regularity, always leaving behind a sour aftertaste and a sharp urge to hurt himself. Or the impossible boy. Or anyone, really.

But since the remnants of his dignity still made themselves known, Potter decided that converting a broken heart into a couple of quid was a far sounder strategy.

‘Believe it or not — it's not a bloody relief,
Neither from this truth, nor from what you achieve.
I am puking words, there's no honour in this art,
Floors beneath my boots will creak and split apart.
You must be so happy — you got a song by heart.’

His voice soared over the pavement, slightly cracked. He tilted his head with practised ease, catching the rhythm, and let his magic gently brush against the onlookers, compelling them to slow their pace.

‘Oh, come off it, princess, you don't read the lines,
You need something better than wasting your time
Staring into the Neva and catching its chime.
Honest but hollow, you trip on your words,
It’d be easier far if we’d braked to a blurred.’

Potter struck an F major chord and gave a theatrical shrug of his shoulder. His mournfully commercial eyes — ‘...but you’ve got your mother’s eyes...’ chimed a chorus of voices in his subconscious — swiftly locked onto a suitable target in the crowd: a pair of schoolgirls who had already stopped dead, pressing their palms to their chests in a touching display. Harry took a step towards them, drawing his brows together in a look of dramatic, yet no less genuine, anguish. His fingers leaped to D sharp.

‘And didn’t spin off the track,
You’re a fence in the snow, while I’m fighting the black, 
Chasing the shape of a thought, spin after spin, 
But without that chance twist, what a bad poet I’d have been.’

His fingers plucked the strings briskly, noting through his peripheral vision that the crowd was growing thick with girls. ‘Can’t I ever write something normal, so that bloke over there might shed a silent tear too?’ the thought flashed through his mind. He could, probably. But he’d dreamt of that impossible boy again last night, so today he was the Taylor Swift of Magical Britain.

‘And therefore — thank you!’

Harry swept into a bow in the finest traditions of Pierrot, never ceasing his playing.

‘I’ll dance out my notes on these feelings tenfold,
I’ll live every line so it doesn’t grow cold.’

His voice trembled treacherously. Harry winced slightly and hastily averted his gaze from the overly enthusiastic girls. His eyes skittered over an elderly couple with a ridiculously colourful string bag, past a bearded man holding a little girl in a blue dress, and brushed over some lads with skateboards.

‘Only fools and buffoons live their lives on the stage,
And I’ve made up my mind — I’m turning the page!’

His gaze slid across a thin lad in a white shirt, narrowing slightly against the glare of the sun reflecting off him, drifted to a woman in a strange headscarf, and immediately snapped back to the thin lad. Had he imagined it?

‘Only fools and buffoons live their lives on the stage,
I’ll d-dance while I’ve st... Tom!’

Potter squinted, trying to get a closer look; his fingers slipped into a plaintive D minor, and, just like in Aunt Petunia’s favourite soap operas, he flung the guitar over his back and bolted forward.

‘Tom!’ he shouted again, bursting onto the exact spot where the lad in the white shirt had been standing a mere second ago.

Harry spun around, utterly bewildered, ran a dozen yards to the right, peered into a narrow alleyway, then lunged in the other direction, jostling past pedestrians. The air in his lungs turned sharp and freezing.

Had he imagined it? No, damn it, he couldn’t have.

‘Maybe Albus knows your full name?’
‘My full name isss Tom.’
‘Tom isn’t even a full name, it’s short for Thomas!’
‘What nonsssenssse. My name isss Tom.’

He returned to his spot, breathing heavily. The world around him carried on as normal, and only Harry felt as though he had been abandoned all over again. Right here, in the middle of a sunny day, for the second time. A wave of anger mixed with yearning washed over him, so suffocating that he wanted to smash his guitar against the nearest lamp post.

One and a half packs of cigarettes, four mugs of coffee, and one sleepless night later, Potter came to the conclusion that he had imagined it. Definitely. His psyche simply hadn't coped with the strain and had conjured up what he wanted to see. ‘Time to find a new hyperfixation,’ he decided, dragging himself out of bed.

He honestly tried. First, he decided to study the history of the towns he passed through, cluttering his brain with dates and other people’s fantasies. Then he threw himself into cooking, attempting to make a shepherd’s pie on a camping stove. He even tried to get serious about collecting rare vinyl records, but he only had enough cash for one and a half LPs, so he decided to put that on the back burner. Nothing helped.

‘We’ll invent a family name for you!’
‘But I'm already usssed to being Tom. I hate changesss.’
You’ll stay Tom. Just with a surname.’
‘I don't underssstand you, passser. I'm not usssed to not underssstanding.’

It wasn't bad enough that Tom used to occasionally wander into his dreams — now something worse began. He started appearing on the streets. Tom would stand at the end of long alleyways, staring with his strange, almost yellow eyes, tilting his head slightly to one side, completely motionless. But every time Harry bolted towards him, Tom vanished. As if dissolving into thin air.

Harry stubbornly kept trying to convince himself that it was the real Tom. He came up with a thousand and one reasons why it wasn't a good idea, but by the end of the week, common sense finally prevailed. Harry began to seriously consider the possibility that he was flat-out losing his mind. Hallucinations. And over what? A bloke he’d known for one bloody week! The familiar claws began to scrape at his ribs again.

‘Do you like the circus?’ Ginny slapped her knees briskly, drawing his attention.

‘Actually, I hate it,’ Harry raised an eyebrow, forcing a semblance of a smile.

Ginny’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

‘Blimey. Strange,’ she muttered. ‘Then why is it you never miss a travelling circus? I’ve noticed you doing that three times now.’

Harry gave a vague shrug. He didn't fancy telling Ginny that he was wandering from pillar to post in search of his ex.

In truth, she was his hyperfixation attempt number four. They had met four months and seven towns ago, and the day before yesterday Potter had decided to shift his focus to her ginger ponytail and easy-going nature. It was supposed to be simple, because Ginny was the type of person who was easy to love: she was funny, charismatic, could out-drink him, and knew how to light a fire using a strange stick — Harry didn't know how to use such a stick due to its absence, but he would very much like to learn, because doing magic with it looked far more interesting than just using your fingers.

All in all, she was undeniably wonderful. But she wasn't Tom.

‘Why can I not be Damblindor?’
‘Who?’
‘Dambadur?’
‘…’
Dambudor?’
‘Oh, stop it. That just sounds bizarre.’
‘But if a family name isss ssshared by all membersss of a family, wouldn't it be more logical to take Albusss’s sssurname, sssince he isss the chief?’
‘You can’t even pronounce it!’

‘Long story. Why?’

‘Just that my aunt sorted me out with a bunch of tickets for the Burns Night Fair. Percy said a circus turned up this year with some sort of fantastic beast. I’m dying to see it, but o-’

Harry didn't let her finish. He caught her knee abruptly and gave it a slight squeeze, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘Brilliant idea, I’ll go. When?’

His foolish heart fluttered treacherously in his throat. What if it was them? That circus? The right circus? What if Harry hadn't lost his mind? What if he wasn't actually hallucinating? What if the impossible Tom in the white shirt had been real, and Harry — oh God... — might actually see him again?

☙ ── ⋆⋅☾⋅⋆ ── ☙

The Burns Night Fair was buzzing, glowing, and smelling so intensely that within an hour Harry’s eyes began to glaze over. It had everything: from endless stalls with puffed rice and sticky toffee apples to noisy fairground rides that soared into the darkening sky to the sound of children's shrieks.

Harry honestly tried to be a good companion. He laughed at Ginny’s jokes, hungrily wolfed down hot sausage rolls, and even managed to beat a local shell-game trickster, lining his pocket with a whole six quid. Ginny, for her part, demonstrated such sharp shooting that at the very start of the evening she presented Harry with a ridiculous soft toy. Potter couldn't for the life of him determine what kind of beast this plush lump considered itself to be, so he hazardously dubbed it a hippogriff.

‘Here,’ she laughed, shoving the toy into his hands. ‘It’ll guard your sleep.’

Harry smiled, but his gaze darted to his wristwatch yet again. Half past eight. The anticipation was agonizing! Images from the past kept flashing in his mind: the ring bathed in soft light, Tom in a skin-tight costume that seemed like a second skin, and his incredible, almost otherworldly dance on the trapeze. Back then, it had been about beauty. About how a human being could be perfect.

But when they finally stepped under the main big top, Harry instantly felt a chill of dread.

The smell here felt wrong. His memories of this place smelled of dust and sawdust, but right now the tent carried a heavy, metallic tang of fear and something stagnant. Instead of elegant apparatus, a massive shape stood in the centre of the ring, draped in a thick, dark cloth.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ roared the ringmaster, whose name Harry couldn't recall. ‘Tonight, you will witness not a miracle of nature, but its true curse! A beast in human guise, a monster that has lost its soul!’

The sharp, blinding beam of the spotlights converged in the centre of the ring, and two lads in matching, garish costumes ripped the heavy cover off the cage.

Harry forgot how to breathe. The hippogriff dropped from his hands, straight into the trampled sawdust.

Crouching in the corner was a lad, his shoulders and neck covered in scales that glinted with a poisonous, petrol-like sheen under the lamps. He was pale, his ribs jutting out sharply beneath his skin, but he stared stubbornly at the crowd, baring his teeth in a dark scowl.

‘I have an idea.’
‘For heaven’sss sssake…’
‘Emrys!’
‘Then why not jussst Merlin ssstraight away?’
‘Actually, that is Merlin…’
‘Get out of here.’

The music blared — the brass of the band battered the ears, and the crowd erupted into shouts and whistling. Jerking as if struck by a whip, Tom threw himself against the bars, letting out a sound that possessed nothing human. Those soft, hazel eyes were now burning with a manic fire under the harsh electric light.

Harry watched this with mounting horror. He had seen Tom just a week ago. There, in the square. And then in the quiet alleyways, and outside cafe windows, and in tube carriages, and at coach stations — Tom had been calm. Exhausted, pale, but quiet. Yet here, in this chaos of spotlights, shouting, and the intrusive rhythm of the drums, he was literally turning feral. The chaos was burning away the remnants of his consciousness, forcing the beast to take over. Every single one of Tom's movements was spasming, aggressive; he was thrashing in agony under the gaze of hundreds of prying eyes.

‘Oh, my God…’ Ginny breathed somewhere beside him, clutching at Harry’s sleeve. ‘He’s in pain.’

Harry couldn't move. Ginny’s hand on his sleeve felt unwanted, but if she hadn't been holding him right now, he probably would have just collapsed right then and there.

Around them, people began to whisper too, a sticky, repulsed anxiety creeping through the rows. The man to Harry’s left frowned and pulled his young son back, shielding him with his shoulder. A freak show in its worst possible manifestation. There was nothing magical happening in the ring — they were simply torturing a human being, and anyone with a shred of empathy left understood that.

And Tom kept thrashing. Due to the crashing drums and the jeering of the ringmaster, he seemed to have completely lost his bearings. The scales on his shoulders seemed to chime in the light as he slammed into the iron bars yet again. Harry saw the skin split on Tom’s cheek, right beneath his left eye, revealing a new cluster of dark, serpentine plates to the world.

‘Harry, let’s get out of here, please,’ Ginny asked quietly, but firmly. Her face had gone pale, making her ginger freckles stand out even brighter. ‘This... this is wrong. Magizoologists should be dealing with him, not these...’

She didn't finish. The band struck a final, deafening chord, and the cage was snapped back under the heavy canvas cover just as abruptly as before. The show was over.

Inside Harry, it felt as though a taut string had snapped.

‘I need to get back there,’ he breathed, throwing off Ginny’s hand.

Potter bolted down the wooden scaffolding of the grandstands, hacking his way through the surge of people. The spectators, hastily evacuating the big top, moved as a solid wall. Harry was shoved by the shoulders, his feet were trampled, and some woman squeaked indignantly into his face as he roughly squeezed past her.

When he literally tumbled onto the sawdust of the ring, panting heavily, his path was blocked by two burly guards in filthy liveries.

‘Can’t come through here, mate, show’s over,’ a sullen brute held out a massive palm.

Harry peered over his shoulder. The lights above the arena had been dimmed, the main beams of the spotlights directed towards the exit doors. The iron cage had already been hooked to a winch and was being swiftly dragged into the passage between the heavy curtains. Only the tail of the canvas flickered in the gloom. Tom was no longer there. Nothing remained in the ring but the heavy, choking stench of fear and malice.

‘Harry!’

Ginny caught up to him, breathing hard. She unceremoniously grabbed the lad by the elbow and yanked him backward, away from the sullen carnies who were already beginning to trade glances, clearly disinclined to repeat themselves.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

Harry complied, barely capable of any reaction at all. His legs could hardly support him, and if not for the Weasley girl’s steady grip, he would have certainly tripped somewhere. On their way out of the tent, he automatically bent down and retrieved the fallen plush monster from the sawdust, brainlessly pressing it to his chest.

They tumbled out into the fresh night air. After the suffocating atmosphere of the big top, the evening chill felt almost painful. Around them, the fair was still buzzing, people were laughing, but to Harry, the sound had morphed into a dull, unintelligible drone.

‘Valois?’
‘Dreadful.’
‘Right, let’s see... De la Poer?’
‘Have you lossst your mind?’
‘Well, there’s something distinctly French about you…’

He stopped against some wooden support beam, hiding in the shadows, and frantically dug into his jacket pocket. His fingers refused to cooperate; they were shaking violently as he tried to pull out a crumpled pack.

‘This is just an absolute nightmare…’ Ginny was already ranting at the top of her lungs, pacing back and forth across the flattened grass and gesturing wildly.

Harry could barely hear her. A dense, cottony hum filled his ears, pierced only by the thumping of the circus drums. He felt sick. Literally sick with horror and a mounting panic.

‘...Where on earth is the Department for Magical Creatures looking? Any sentient or partially sentient being of human origin falls under the jurisdiction of the Being Division, not the Beast Division! It’d be one thing if it were a Nundu or a rabid manticore, but this is a Maledictus! He’s still got his mind left, did you see him? He understands everything that’s happening around him...!’

She spun around sharply on her heels, nearly catching Harry’s shoulder, and angrily tossed her ginger head.

‘...According to international conventions, putting a human in a cage for the crowd’s amusement is a straight-up criminal offence. We need to report this to the Ministry, get them to send Aurors or an inspection crew down here! Because Muggles are bloody useless, they haven’t got the faintest clue...’

‘Idiot,’ the word looped on repeat in his head while he tried to snag a cigarette with his fingernail. The pack slipped, the cigarettes showering onto the trampled grass. He crushed one with the toe of his boot, not even noticing. ‘You useless, blind prick.’

A white shirt in the crowd. A figure at the end of an alleyway. Yellow, frozen serpentine eyes staring at him from the darkness of a hostel. It had always been Tom. He had come. He had looked for him, and then stood there, pale, thin, barely alive, just watching. Was he afraid? Couldn't he bring himself to come closer?

Didn't want to?

‘...probably think it’s just a show, some special effects or conjuring tricks. Sitting there, chewing popcorn, enjoying themselves while a bloke is being broken inside a cage! A proper medieval freak show, I’m just speechless. We can’t just leave it like this, Harry, the owners of this circus ought to be put on trial!’

‘I’ve got it all figured out.’
‘I'll push you off the fliesss, and nobody will ever know how you died.’
‘Riddle.’
‘Thisss isss an absolute nightmare.’
‘Well, it sounds mysterious!’

In a cage. Tom, his incredible, impossible Tom, was sitting in an iron cage like a filthy wild animal. He was being displayed for the entertainment of this stupid, chewing crowd, he was being tormented, he was convulsing from the glare of the spotlights, and Harry...

No, this was wrong, it couldn't be. Wasn't the circus Tom’s family? Wasn't that why Tom had left without saying goodbye — because he chose belonging to his family? Why were the people who called themselves a family so cruel?

The Dursleys, his subconscious helpfully whispered, but Harry stubbornly set his jaw. For all the faults of his unrespected relatives, they used to lock Potter away in a tiny cupboard in solitude; they had never brought the neighbours or strangers around to look at the act of his humiliation.

Harry finally fished out two cigarettes, jammed them into his mouth, but the cheap lighter refused to produce a spark. The wheel cut painfully into his thumb, the flame snapping out due to his severe trembling.

‘Did he come to me because he had nowhere else to go? Was he asking for help? No, he’s too proud and independent. Tom wouldn't ask for help.’

Or maybe he just didn't know how?

His thoughts tangled, replacing one another at a breakneck speed. Before his eyes, the petrol-like sheen of the scales on Tom’s shoulders still lingered — in Harry’s memories, it had been spellbinding and magical, bathing him in clumsy tenderness and awe — but the way Tom had flung himself against the iron bars — there was nothing magical about that. He was being forced to play out his own death; his humanity was being stripped from him alive for the sake of a few quid, while Harry had gone on a bloody date wasted a whole week convincing himself that the impossible boy was nothing more than a hallucination.

On the fourth try, the lighter finally produced a flame. Harry hungrily lit both cigarettes at once, taking a deep drag, burning his throat with the bitter, heavy smoke. It didn't make things any better, but the panic inside at least stopped suffocating him, hardening into resolve. He stood there, two smoking cigarettes clamped between his lips, staring into the emptiness before him, his fist tightly clutching the soiled plush toy.

Ginny finally finished her angry tirade, exhaled noisily, and turned to him. Catching sight of his deathly pale face and the bizarre double-drag, the girl faltered. For a couple of seconds, she studied him in silence, catching her breath, and then reached out and, without asking any questions, took one of the cigarettes straight out of his mouth.

‘Smoking is bad for your health, Potter,’ she said quietly, taking a drag and blowing the smoke towards the fairground lights.

𓆙 ｡ ◌ ✧ ◌ ｡ 𓆙

The final hours dragged on with agonizing slowness; Harry could barely wait for midnight, when the fairground finally dissolved into a relative quiet. Sitting in the dark beneath a sprawling tree at the very edge of the encampment, he chain-smoked until there was nothing left in the pack but crumbs of tobacco. An abominable, bitter taste lingered in his mouth, and a wave of nicotine-induced nausea crept up his throat, but Harry stubbornly kept his eyes on the movements of the carnies through the foliage, mindlessly twisting the burnt-out stubs between his fingers.

‘Hey, Riddle!’
‘My name isss Tom.’
‘Tom Riddle.’
‘I don’t know what I did to deserve thisss, but could you kindly fuck off, God?’

At some point, he must have blacked out after all — a week of frantic sleep deprivation finally taking its toll. Harry jolted awake, breathing heavily, just as the footsteps of the last tipsy workers died away somewhere in the direction of the town.

Only when a dead silence settled over the area, broken only by the occasional creak of wooden structures groaning in the wind, did Potter emerge from his hiding place, stretching his stiff legs. The wondrous Invisibility Cloak from Ginny’s childhood fairy tales would have come in bloody handy right now, but he didn't have it. Then again, even without it, Harry — thin and thoroughly accustomed from his years at the Dursleys to being seen and not heard — knew how to dissolve into the dark. He easily vaulted over the low fence and, staying low, slipped into the labyrinth between the tents and ancient caravans.

The familiar trailer was located on the far side of the circus camp, set slightly apart from the rest. Harry’s heart gave a dull thud against his ribs. Suddenly, everything felt utterly pointless to Potter. What if he was wrong? What if he didn't know Tom as well as he wanted to believe? What if this was just a performance, simply a different kind from the ones the impossible boy used to put on a year ago? A gruesome new concept? What if the lad in the white shirt with the yellow eyes had been nothing but a foolish mirage after all? What if Harry were to find Tom right now, lounging carelessly inside, having simply... forgotten? Or perhaps he had never remembered at all?

What if Harry had never been someone worth remembering?

Potter approached, holding his breath, and knocked softly first against the grimy glass of the window, and then on the painted wooden door. No answer. It was absolutely silent inside; only a faint, barely noticeable glow from a nightlight seeped through a gap in the curtains.

‘My name is Harry Potter.’
‘Hello, Harry Potter. I’m Luna Lovegood. And you are...?’
‘His name is Tom.’
‘Tom Riddle.’
‘Pleasure to meet you, Tom Riddle.’

Harry gently rattled the handle — locked. The door didn't even budge. He frantically rummaged through his jacket pockets until his fingers brushed against thin metal. Ginny’s hairpin. He had appropriated it about a month ago when they first met, and had already put it to use a couple of times to pick the locks of abandoned houses for a night’s sleep. A bit of simple magic and a touch of thief’s knack, and the lock inside the door gave a compliant click.

Potter slipped inside cautiously, shutting the door behind him immediately, and froze. A strange, mingled scent hit his nose at once. It smelled of damp earth, cold metal, and, for some reason, sickeningly sweet toffee apples. Tom was not inside.

Harry looked around in bewilderment, feeling himself instantly pulled under by a heavy, suffocating wave of nostalgia. Yielding to a sudden impulse, he took a few steps deeper into the cramped space and sank onto the edge of the unfamiliar bed. At first glance, almost nothing had changed here over the past year. The same curtains, the same modest belongings neatly arranged on the shelves, the same silhouettes of furniture in the gloom.

The caravan looked exactly the same, but inside, it was hollow. Harry pressed his palm against the bedspread and realized exactly what was missing. Tom’s unique energy — woven from his tenderness, his boyish curiosity, his quiet amusement, and that striking, unfiltered presence — no longer lived within these walls. It no longer smelled of his warmth.

‘Say it again.’
‘You weary me, passser.’
‘...’
‘My name isss Tom Riddle.’
‘I’m going to kiss you right now.’

It no longer smelled of a human being.

Harry bolted up from the bed, his heart hammering like mad. His thoughts raced in circles: Where is he? Where do they keep him at night? Surely they couldn't...

A chill shot through his body as the realization finally dawned on Potter. Ginny had said it out there on the grass. And what he had seen in the ring before the curtains closed... They hadn't let him out of the cage? They left him in there?

Harry flung himself outside, quietly clicking the door shut, and practically ran back toward the main tent. In the darkness, the massive dome resembled a sleeping beast. Potter slipped soundlessly inside through a side slit in the canvas and froze, peering into the thick gloom of the backstage area. He had to circle the ring twice, stumbling over crates and rigging ropes, before he finally collided with a massive, rectangular silhouette. The cage. Covered by that same thick canvas. How could anyone even breathe under there, let alone sleep?!

Harry stepped up close, reached out, and yanked the canvas toward himself, illuminating the cage with the weak moonlight filtering down from the upper dome.

A furious hiss erupted from the shadows. The creature inside lunged forward with such speed that the iron bars rang out in a pitiful wail, causing Harry to involuntarily recoil.

Get a grip, it’s just Tom!

Amber, serpentine eyes stared out at him, their vertical pupils dilated to the absolute limit. Tom was breathing heavily, his hands clawing at the grate. The moonlight softly caught his form: his thighs, visible through the tears in his leggings, were entirely covered in dark scales, which also rose in jagged patches across his shoulders, collarbones, and up his neck to his left cheek, as if caressing his beautiful face. He bared his teeth, exposing unnaturally sharp fangs, and there was nothing human left in that expression.

Harry felt a lump rise in his throat. But he wasn't afraid. The only thing currently burning his soul from the inside out was the freezing horror of the thought that Tom simply didn't remember him. That inside this cage, nothing remained but a wild animal.

‘Hello, my little snake,’ Harry said quietly, trying with all his might to keep his voice from trembling. He took a step forward, closing the distance, and extended his palm toward the bars. ‘Shh, easy now, easy... Do you remember me?’

Tom’s head gave a slight but sharp jerk, tilting to the side — exactly the same way he had done during those strange visions on the streets. His pupils dilated for a fraction of a second, catching the sound of the voice. He drew in a noisy breath through his nose, leaning closer to Harry’s hand, as if catching his scent.

A second. Two. Or perhaps a whole eternity, but the wild, manic glint in his eyes began to slowly recede. Tom stopped trying to wrench the bars apart; he sank to his knees straight onto the floor of the cage and pressed his forehead against the cold iron.

‘P-pass-ser...’ he exhaled hoarsely, barely intelligibly. The serpentine essence was yielding to the human, reluctantly, step by step. ‘Wh-why are you h-here?’

‘Oh, you know, just stopped by to see the main star of the season,’ Harry crouched down directly in front of the grate, shoving his hands into his pockets so Tom wouldn't see how violently he was shaking.

Tom gave a faint, entirely human smirk and leaned his forehead against the cold iron once more.

‘H-how did you f-find me?’

‘Followed the scent of your mystery. I nearly ended up in a psych ward because of you, thought I’d flat-out lost my marbles,’ Harry chuckled, giving a vague wave of his hand.

Those yellow eyes snapped fiercely onto Potter’s raised hand, as if sensing danger. To Harry, it felt as though his heart, which had only just been pieced back together by that hissed ‘p-pass-ser’, had shattered all over again.

‘Why didn't you come to me?’

‘Didn't w-want to h-hurt,’ Tom tore his gaze away from Harry’s hand and returned his attention to Potter’s face. Now, his amber eyes looked almost like they used to, save for the pupil, which remained far too narrow for a mammal — could Tom even be classified as one anymore? ‘During the d-day, I can sst-still th-think ssstrai-ght. I l-like look-king at you. It ssh-sooth-hess me. But I didn't know, wass-st not sssure. Did not w-want to c-cause p-pain,’ Tom tilted his head to the side again, as if inspecting Harry from a different angle. ‘Maledic-ctuss-sesss break like th-that, Harry. The m-more you t-turn, the f-fassster you f-fade away.’

‘Are you a complete idiot?’ Harry lunged forward abruptly, his fingers clawing into the bars. Now it was his turn to be glad that a cage separated them. If not for those iron rods, he’d have thrashed him by now! ‘You know it’s killing you, and you still crawl onto that stage? For what, Tom?’

‘Ssstupid p-pass-ser,’ Tom snapped his head up, the petrol scales gleaming on his cheek. ‘Th-thiss isss my n-nesst. I w-want to be h-home when my m-mind goesss.’ The lad offered a jagged smile, as if he didn't know — or couldn't remember? — how to do it properly. ‘It w-won't hurt anymore. Sssnakesss f-feel n-nothing.’

‘And you’re completely fine with that?’

Tom lunged toward him, almost snarling, but instantly deflated, sinking back onto the floor and wrapping his arms around his knees.

‘I’m th-thired, p-pass-ser. I’m al-waysss sss-so angry. I d-don't rem-member how it f-feelss th-without it. Every “no” from Albusss m-makesss me w-want to r-rip out his th-throat. Sss-Severusss’s sss-sudden m-movementsss c-cause n-nos-thing b-but h-hatred. I k-kannot eat an-nything b-but m-meat — and I h-hate m-meat, p-pass-ser!’

The lad awkwardly extended a half-scaled hand through the bars of the cage, and Harry allowed him to touch his hair.

‘I d-don't w-want to b-be angry an-nymore. The sssnake w-won't k-kare.’

Harry remained silent, taking in his sharp shoulders and knees, his gaunt arms and collarbones, the yellow eyes, and the sharpened teeth. This entire year, while he had been nursing a grudge against the whole world and composing bitter monologues in his head, Tom had been slowly losing his mind here, consumed by loneliness and the curse.

‘Right, listen to me,’ Harry touched his cheek to the iron, refusing to let go of this moment. ‘Enough talking utter rubbish. Pack up your snake gear right now, and we’re leaving.’

Tom looked at him in utter bewilderment — as if Harry were the mad one, honestly! — and tilted his head in confusion once more. As though looking straight ahead was no longer comfortable.

‘Where w-would we g-go, p-pass-ser? Out onto the sss-ssstreet? The w-world isss k-kruel. It isss af-fraid of th-thosss-e like usss, it w-will eat usss al-live.’ Tom gently twisted his wrist free from Harry’s grip and crawled backward slightly, ensuring Potter could no longer reach him.

For the umpteenth time this year, Harry wished he could go back in time and give himself a solid clip round the ear—this time for not being careful about what he said, and to whom. A nasty thought had settled somewhere on the periphery of his mind: if not for those words, perhaps Tom would have found him sooner. Maybe if Harry hadn't talked such utter rubbish last summer, Tom would have been free long ago? Free from the cage, from the circus, and from the curse.

Too many ifs and maybes. It was time for Harry to start thinking about whens.

‘I was wrong,’ Potter muttered, staring at his empty palm. ‘The world isn't cruel, Tom. It’s just terribly starved of love. And I’ve got enough of it to last the both of us. I can take care of you, alright? I can love you until you find someone better. You won't ever have to turn again, I’ll be able to look after you, do you hear me?’ Harry realized with a pang of horror that the reason his vision was blurring wasn't due to the complex scents of the circus backstage, but because of bloody tears.

Tom stared at him for a long time, scanning every single line of his face, as if trying to comprehend the sheer absurdity of the offer. To leave the people he called family and the place he considered home for the sake of a ppassser he barely knew?

Harry closed his eyes, forcing the unwanted sobs deep down his throat, and then extended his hand through the bars once more. Not so much in an attempt to reach out, but rather offering Tom to place his palm in his, to try and believe that life could be a little better on the other side of the big top.

‘If you want, we can leave the county. Leave the country altogether, if you like. Or we could stop wandering and find a home. Do you want a nest, Tom? We’ll build our own nest, alright? It’ll be even better than your caravan. You can pick any place you like, okay? If the crowds make you nervous, we could head into the woods. There must be plenty of snakes there, you’ll have someone to talk to if... well, I don't know, if you get tired of me or want a bit more company...’ Potter grimaced slightly, realizing how incredibly stupid that sounded. He might as well have offered to find Tom a snake girlfriend! ‘I can look after you, just come with me.’

Finally, those serpentine pupils flickered slightly, and he gave a hesitant, barely perceptible nod.

Harry let out a breath of relief, feeling as though a ton of invisible weight had suddenly slid off his shoulders. He immediately fished Ginny’s hairpin from his pocket, leaned down to the massive lock, and began frantically picking at the keyhole. The thin metal slid helplessly inside, finding no purchase. No familiar click.

‘Damn it,’ Potter cursed through his teeth.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate and channel that familiar spark of magic into his fingers. This shouldn't be any harder than making a crowd toss a few more quid for a performance than they intended to, right? The magic obediently slid down the hairpin, but the lock merely gave a faint clink, remaining utterly indifferent to his efforts. Surely Ginny’s magical stick could have popped this bloody lock in a second. But what of it? Leave Tom here and come back with her tomorrow? What if this was his last night as a human? What if the circus packed up at dawn and vanished into thin air again, just like last year?

Harry felt panic and a sticky anxiety hammer with renewed force somewhere in his ears, drowning out all other sounds. Casting a wild look around, he rushed toward a pile of crates in the gloom of the backstage. His fingers grabbed at some rags, filthy ropes, until they finally collided with a heavy, rusty bolt cutter. Potter dragged it over to the cage and, planting his feet firmly into the earthen floor, threw all his weight into the handles, trying to snap the shackle. The metal groaned but didn't even bend.

‘Harry, ev-veryth-thing isss f-fine,’ Tom whispered softly, watching him intently with a strange, unreadable gaze from his corner. ‘M-mayb-be th-thomorr-row I k-kould-’

‘No bloody way!’ Potter cut him off sharply, throwing his entire body weight onto the tool.

No. No way. He had just promised to look after him. And if he had to, Potter would rip this fucking lock out with his bare hands, but Tom was leaving with him tonight. The fear of losing him again, mingled with a burning rage at his own helplessness, filled Harry’s chest to the brim. It felt as though the world around him had blurred into a thick red haze for a few seconds — so fierce was his desire to tear this piece of iron away. It simply had to break. It had to.

The red veil receded just as abruptly as it had appeared when a sharp scent of burnt hay hit his nose.

Harry blinked in bewilderment and looked down at his feet. The heavy padlock was melting from an unnatural temperature, turning into a liquid brew that lazily slithered right into the sawdust. The iron bars around it had turned white-hot, emitting a faint wisp of smoke. Harry waited a couple of seconds and, carefully grasping the unheated part of the latch, pulled the door toward himself. The cage opened.

Potter took a few steps back, clearing the space and allowing Tom to step out on his stiff, buckling legs.

Tom crossed the threshold of his prison, but he was in no hurry to come closer. He froze a couple of metres away, looking fearfully at his scale-covered hands, clearly terrified that the wild, beastly essence would take over again and hurt Harry.

For a while, they both just breathed heavily in the gloom of the empty tent, staring at each other. Of course, the bars of the cage had been wide enough to see Tom fully before this, but seeing him here, free, without an iron barrier... Harry thought that there would likely never be a more beautiful sight in his life.

Potter moved slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements, and stepped closer.

‘Hey, snakey, everything is fine,’ he said quietly, gazing into the amber pupils. ‘I’m not afraid. And you shouldn't be either, do you hear me?’

Harry gently, almost weightlessly, began to kiss every part covered in scales that he could possibly reach. Perhaps it looked foolish from the outside — the way he was mindlessly pressing his lips against the other’s skin, desperately trying to show that he didn't consider these scales a deformity. But God, how long he had dreamed of smelling Tom’s scent again, of touching his hand, his hair, the cool serpentine plates. To feel his presence once more. It was so staggering and acute, as if he were an addict in the throes of withdrawal who had finally been thrown a fix.

Then, their lips met. Harry kissed him first. It worried him a little that Tom froze and didn't respond at all, but Potter stubbornly forced himself to think that it wasn't due to a lack of desire, but simply because Tom was terrified of hurting him with his newly altered, sharp teeth.

‘You’re still breathtaking, my little snake,’ Potter whispered, reluctantly breaking the one-sided kiss.

A kiss without an answer — it was fine. Perhaps he had simply misread Tom, and the boy hadn't meant anything romantic at all. Perhaps the curse had progressed so severely that Tom no longer cared for humans in general? Or maybe he just didn't care for Harry specifically. It was fine. It hurt like hell, of course, somewhere just below his solar plexus, but it was fine. Potter would look after his impossible boy regardless, wouldn't he?

‘Come on. Best we get out of the camp quickly, yeah?’

Potter stepped back slightly, offering a clumsy, blurred smile. He was already turning around to guide Tom toward the slit in the canvas through which he had sneaked into the tent, when a quiet sound finally reached him:

‘Hey, p-pass-ser?’

Potter turned around hesitantly. A second later, thin but perfectly strong arms clamped him into a fierce embrace, and his lips felt that familiar, demanding weight once more. Tom was kissing him. For real this time.

Harry gasped raggedly and responded instantly. He timidly brushed his tongue against the other's lip, tracing the edge of his teeth, and then... then his tongue collided with Tom’s forked tongue. From the sheer unexpectedness and the sudden flood of emotion, Harry let out a soft, pitiful whimper straight into the kiss, deepening it, making it desperate and tender. His palms wandered erratically over Tom’s shoulders and back, smoothing over his chest, losing themselves in the soft hair, before returning to those soothing, stroking motions. Tom let out a deep, guttural purr at the caress, never breaking the kiss. His chest vibrated perceptibly, and it felt to Harry as if the sound were stamping itself onto the inside of his own ribs, entirely filling his lungs, coursing through his veins, and flooding his heart.

‘Tell me what your name is,’ breathing heavily, Harry finally broke the kiss, though he had no intention of pulling away. He held onto Tom so tightly, as if the boy would dissolve into thin air the moment he loosened his grip.

‘Tom Riddle,’ Tom smiled, fondly stroking Harry's cheek.

Harry laughed happily, burying his face into the crook of the other's neck, and affectionately rubbed his nose against it.

‘We’ll have to think of a middle name for you, too.’

‘P-put me back in the k-kage th-thiss insst-tant!’ Tom groaned theatrically.

Yet, in total defiance of his own words, he only pulled Potter even closer, burying his nose deep into Harry’s unruly, messy hair.