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When Harry rounded the final corner only to find the Dumbledore Pokémon Lab near-deserted—the grass out front littered with discarded FREE POKÉMON TODAY flyers and stamped down by dozens of feet, footprints of young Trainers who’d already left with their new partners—he knew immediately he was too late.
It’s not like you ever really got your hopes up anyway, he told himself firmly, wiping a bead of sweat that had slipped down his forehead into his eye somehow. You knew it was a long shot when the Dursleys wouldn’t give you a ride, or even let you put off your chores till this afternoon…
He pushed through the open front door anyway, hoping to get a free cup of Fresh Water or at least a few minutes in the air-conditioned bliss before trudging the long miles back to Privet Drive on the other end of Pallet Town.
“Oh goodness, my dear boy, are you here for the Pokémon distribution program? I’m afraid I sent my last Squirtle out with a rather eager young lady just over an hour ago now…”
Startled, he looked up in surprise to see Professor Dumbledore himself peering sympathetically at him through half moon glasses.
“Er, yeah, I figured,” Harry replied, trying his hardest not to stare at the man’s attire. Kanto’s preeminent Pokémon authority was dressed in a professional white lab coat, though nearly every inch of its pristine fabric was covered in various pins, patches, stickers and what looked suspiciously like doodles in whiteboard marker. “I was just wondering if I could…um, use the bathroom before I go?”
“Of course, go right ahead. Feel free to take some lemon drops as well, I put them out for the youngsters but they seem rather out of fashion these days…”
Harry took his time in the bathroom, splashing his face with cool water and getting a long drink from the tap while he was at it; it was a safer bet than asking to use the lab’s nice water cooler. When he came out, he was unsurprised to find the professor waiting for him—he probably wanted to make sure his towels weren’t stolen—but utterly dumbfounded by what he said next.
”I must confess, it simply did not sit right with me to send you away empty-handed, especially as you’ve clearly come such a long way to be here. I gave the storage room a good rummage-through while I waited, and discovered one last Pokémon that nobody has claimed. Would you like…”
Harry’s eyes darted instantly down to the man’s wrinkled hands, which were curled gently around—could it be?—a small, slightly scuffed red and white Poke Ball, already wiggling slightly from side to side as if it couldn’t wait to meet its new Trainer. For several long seconds he forgot to breathe, let alone speak, so he only nodded very hard while wondering how he missed a spot while washing his face, since it was wet again.
”It is not a…conventional starter partner,” Dumbledore cautioned, even as he placed the ball in Harry’s palm, some lingering static causing a tiny shock and a spark. “This type can be difficult to raise, it needs extra assistance to evolve—“
”I don’t care.” Difficult to raise? The Dursleys say that about me every day. “I want it.”
”Very well, then. Let me get you a few items to help you get started…”
After he’d been gifted with five empty balls, a pack of potions, and an escape rope for emergencies, all stored in a new red backpack that was just his size (more generosity than he’d ever experienced in his short life), Dumbledore saw him out the door with twinkling eyes and good luck wishes. Harry barely heard anything he said, he was so eager to meet his first friend; but he did catch the old man muttering strangely to himself as he was shutting the door.
”You seem like a good lad—I do wish I could’ve given you a nice dependable Charmander. If only I’d turned away that troublesome Tom Riddle…Ah, well, alas…”
Harry didn’t know who Tom Riddle was and he didn’t care. The moment he was back out on the lawn, he tossed the ball to the ground and shouted in delight when he saw the chubby, long-eared mouse with beautiful yellow fur that sparkled with even more static electricity.
If he hadn’t already been certain this Pokémon was meant for him, it would’ve been confirmed when the creature turned around and around in confusion, revealing a jagged, lightning bolt-shaped tail. He smiled so hard his cheeks were probably turning red and puffy, just like his new partner.
”We match,” he said happily, brushing aside his fringe and fingering his scar. “Pikachu, I choose you.”
*
He was only a few steps onto Route 1–not even into the tall grass—when he found out exactly who Tom Riddle was.
”Our eyes met! We have to fight now, that’s the rules,” declared the tall, almost manic-looking boy who came charging out at Harry like a wild Rattata. “Get ready to lose. I picked Charmander because it’s obviously the best, I walked all the way here from the orph—from home last night and slept on the pavement to get the best one first!”
Harry didn’t even really have time to get ready before he lost, and badly at that. He wasn’t even quite sure how to battle; meanwhile Tom had already been training Charmander in the grass for a good while and learned a full slate of “type-synergized supereffective moves”, as he took great pleasure in explaining while Harry frantically fed Pikachu a potion.
His new rival’s happy mood did not last long, once he discovered that Harry had no pocket money for him to take half of in victory spoils.
*
Of course, of course bloody Riddle would be the only other Trainer besides Harry to make it through the gauntlet of Nugget Bridge. The arrogant boy was good, a year’s worth of training and a trek through Mount Moon only improving his naturally sharp instincts.
Harry was good too now, though. He’d learned to make use of Pikachu’s strengths, using its speed and unpredictability to outwit even opponents resistant to electricity. And for everything else…well, there was always his beloved Pidgey. Once he’d discovered the flying type, appropriately enough, he’d started moving upward and never looked back.
Riddle finished his fifth battle around the same time as Harry, calling his Ekans back to curl around his shoulders instead of putting it in its ball (Harry couldn’t really blame him for that, he let Pidgey and Pikachu run free too whenever humanly possible). Together, they approached the bridge overseer, an older teen dressed in black.
”Pay up,” Tom demanded, before Harry could even make small talk. “We both won all the fights, so you’d better have two Nuggets—I won’t take a half-chunk.”
”Why the rush, boys?” the older boy said, his tone falsely chummy and patronizing, like they were seven-year-olds or something. “Both of you are incredibly talented Trainers. I could give you a Nugget—yes, yes, because I totally have one, two even—but wouldn’t you rather have an opportunity instead?”
”What kind of opportunity?” they asked nearly in unison, Tom suspicious and Harry with genuine curiosity.
”Why, only the opportunity of a lifetime! The chance to get in early on the ground floor of the organization that’s going to take over the world—Grindelwald’s Acolytes! The elite team of super Trainers destined to conquer both the battlefield and the business arena—“
”You haven’t got any Nuggets, have you,” Tom hissed, even as Harry shouted “The Acolytes!? You mean those same gits who were stealing the fossils from Mount Moon!?”
”Um,” said the Acolyte.
Tom turned to Harry. “Potter, your team had better not be worn out just from fighting those weaklings on the bridge.”
Harry grinned savagely, thinking of the poor Clefairy colony who’d been so afraid of the noisy digging machines. “Worn out? More like just getting warmed up.”
A fire lizard and a lightning mouse, as it turned out, made an excellent team in a double battle—especially when their opponent was using low-level Rattatas and Zubats that didn’t even belong to him.
*
”What a waste of time,” Riddle said, after the Acolyte had slipped through their fingers with the help of an escape rope and a handful of pocket sand. “Nuggets are worth 5000p, I should’ve known it was too good to be true.”
”Well at least we stopped him bullying anyone else,” Harry pointed out. “And it was pretty fun, too.”
Tom scoffed (though he didn’t deny it). “Must be nice to have those be the only things that matter to you. Some of us might’ve needed the money.”
Harry cocked his head curiously. Over their handful of run-ins in the past year, he’d gathered that Riddle, like him, had no supportive parents willing to wire money to the nearest Pokémon centers to pay for things like extra Repels and upscale lodgings. But he’d also never seen nor heard of the other boy losing a fight. “What are you buying that’s so expensive? I haven’t even spent half the winnings from Hagrid’s gym in Pewter yet.”
Tom only glared at the ground and muttered unintelligibly.
”What?”
“I said,” he snapped, acting like Harry was interrogating him at gunpoint rather than asking a simple question, “that there are certain unscrupulous characters loitering about the Mt. Moon Pokémon Center, who the incompetent authorities have somehow failed to arrest for fraud, false advertising, and Pokémon trafficking—“
Harry’s jaw dropped, incredulous.
”Oh, you did not fall for that guy hawking the Magikarps!”
”He said it was a rare, secret Pokémon—“
He didn’t hear the rest of Tom’s justifications, he was laughing so hard he had to bend double over the side of the bridge just to catch his breath. And then he spotted at least five very-not-rare Magikarps floating listlessly in the water below, and started guffawing all over again.
“Look,” he said when he could stand up properly again, wiping his eyes (Tom, meanwhile, had turned as red as the fish he’d blown all his money on and was clenching his fists hard enough to make cracking sounds). “Look—I’m sorry I laughed, okay, it could’ve happened to anyone. Why don’t I just give you a Nugget, I found a spare one in Mt. Moon and I can’t think of anything I’d need 5000p for.”
”I—you—what about the Bike Shop in town?” Tom insisted. “You can’t tell me you don’t have your eye on those new models, they’d cut traveling time clear in half!”
Harry shrugged. “Yeah, but I got a free Voucher for one off that bloke Slughorn at the Fan Club. Did you know he hugs his Rapidash while he sleeps? How’s that even possible?”
Riddle stared at him for several long moments, seemingly unable to decide whether to punch him or ask him for tips on charming senior citizens.
”You know what, just give me the Nugget,” he said finally, sticking out his hand just like he’d done to the Acolyte earlier. “You clearly owe the universe a tax for your bloody obscene good luck.”
*
By the time Harry finally managed to escape the suffocating press of the crowd out on the deck of the SS Anne, he barely had the energy left to slump against the wall, let alone climb the three sets of stairs to the captain’s quarters (all while the gentle waves of Vermilion Harbor churned the salmon canapés in his gut into a nasty sea squall of their own). But he kept moving anyhow. It was much better than thinking about how he’d snagged an invitation to this floating party in the first place: running into a group of posh people in the city who’d exclaimed over his hair and eyes and glasses, and asked if he could possibly be related to James and Lily Potter, the lovely Ace Trainer couple who’d died tragically in the Cinnabar Lab tragedy thirteen years ago. Such a shame, they’d been such promising talents, would’ve made Elite Four one day for sure if not for being cut down in their prime! But it was nice to see Harry following in their footsteps, they’d be so proud—oh, he’d lost his invitation onto the ship? Don’t worry, he could come as Emmeline’s plus-one…
(The Dursleys had told him his parents were drunks who died in an altercation outside the Game Corner one night. That they’d gambled all their money away first, leaving poor Vernon and Petunia to foot the bill for Harry’s upbringing out of the goodness of their hearts. That if he thought sleeping in a cupboard and doing chores all day was bad, he should imagine being raised by those awful degenerates, it’d be a hundred times worse.)
He shook his head and forced himself to focus. His parents’ true identity had gotten him onboard the Anne, that was the only thing that mattered right now; he could sort out what all this meant for him after he’d completed his mission. He marched down the final white-painted hallway with purpose—
“Ah, bonjour.”
…Only to be so focused that he almost collided with Tom Riddle, who had just sauntered out of the very door Harry was headed for. Unlike Harry, he was dressed for the occasion, in a sharp jacket that accentuated how his chest and shoulders had broadened with another year of travel and training, his hair grown out just enough to curl at the ends but still neatly coiffed.
“…Riddle,” he said just a few beats later than would've sounded natural, shaking his head. “Why am I not surprised to see you here? The real question is, why are you up here and not outside hobnobbing with all the big shots?”
Riddle rolled his eyes. “Please, this whole party is full of nothing but pretentious dilettantes with more money than accomplishments to their names,” he scoffed. “I’m only here for one person.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the brass plaque bolted onto the wall next to the door, inscribed with the captain’s name and title.
Harry nodded grimly. “Karkaroff.”
”Exactly.”
”So you heard the rumors too, then,” he said, letting himself get a little excited again. Aggravating as Riddle could be, he was unquestionably brilliant; Harry must be onto something if they’d followed the trail to the same place. “That Karkaroff’s working with the Acolytes, he’s using this voyage as a cover to smuggle stolen goods for them—“
Tom burst out laughing. “You’re still obsessed with those small-time thugs? I thought you’d’ve gone back to actually winning Badges by now.”
Harry scowled. The Acolytes were a lot worse than small-time thugs, which Tom would know if he’d bothered to do half the investigating that Harry had into their growing web of criminal activity. And he had been winning Badges, for the record; good Trainers could do more than one thing at a time if they weren’t one-track-minded knobheads like some people he could name. He was headed to the Gym here in town right after he confronted Karkaroff, the party just happened to be scheduled first!
”I couldn’t care less about what that pathetic seasick excuse for a captain—here’s a secret for you, he makes his underlings do all the work—gets up to in his spare time,” Tom continued with a shrug. “I’m here because he’s rumored to be a Cut master and I want Charmeleon to be deadly with both physical and special attacks.”
Harry crossed his arms and glared. “So you’re comfortable getting move tutoring from a criminal, then? Move out of the way.” He moved to duck around Riddle and reached for the doorknob.
”Ah, ah, ah.” The other boy stepped directly back into his path, his movements irritatingly unhurried and graceful. “Not so fast; maybe you’ll change your mind about the worthiness of Cut after a short demonstration.” His hand went to the collection of Poke Balls at his belt. “Unless you’ve been too busy playing detective to keep up with my team’s levels?”
”Oh, in your dreams.” Harry seized one of his own balls and backed up to make room for a Pokémon or two. He found himself almost embarrassingly eager to battle, to let out some of the aggression that’d been building all day, as he listened to pretentious dilettantes (Riddle really did have the majority of the party attendees pegged) go on and on about his parents, who they’d barely known but still had more memories of than him. Karkaroff couldn’t exactly go anywhere; he had time for a quick distraction. And this would be quick—his well-trained partners would make sure of that.
Tom smirked, clearly laboring under the delusion that it was his goading alone that had wound Harry up. He shot the cuffs of his stupid pratty jacket, revealing toned forearms from all those miles on his shiny new bike (bought with Harry’s Nugget!).
“As the imbeciles downstairs might say—en garde.”
*
The battle was not quick. Or clean, or quiet; which might’ve been the reason that, by the time their Pokémon had fought each other to a stalemate, Harry finally burst through the door to Karkaroff’s quarters to find the room empty, the panoramic window open to the salty breeze, and the man in question in the water three decks below, jetting rapidly away on the back of a Seadra.
“Huh,” Tom said, peering over the railing beside him with his brow furrowed in mild annoyance. “Apparently he’s a Surf master as well. The old coot was holding out on me, I should’ve made him teach me that one too.”
”Damn it!” Harry shouted, all the frustration he’d only just worked off roaring back in an instant. “He was right there, if you hadn’t held me up with all those stupid status effects—“
”Then I wouldn’t have been doing my assigned task very well, because he made it clear he’d need at least twenty minutes to empty his safe before he left.”
He spun around, pieces coming together in his investigatory mind as he processed Riddle’s words and stared into his smug face. “You—you distracted me on purpose!” he accused, jabbing a finger in the other boy’s chest. “You were working with Karkaroff—did you join the Acolytes after all!?” The prospect filled him with an irrational level of betrayal, after their joint beatdown of the recruiter on Nugget Bridge last year.
Tom, at least, seemed to find that idea equally distasteful. “Nothing as demeaning as that; Igor and I merely had a temporary alliance of convenience,” he said with an insouciant shrug. “What, did you think he taught me Cut in exchange for rubbing his back or something?”
Harry gaped at him, speechless. In truth, he had assumed something of the sort; receiving plentiful aid and useful items from strangers, in exchange for a kind favor or simply a listening ear, was how he’d been making his way around Kanto for the last three years, after all.
”You actually did, didn’t you.” Tom's face settled into an expression of genuine amazement, but only after the briefest flash of something suspiciously close to regret in his eyes. He shook his head. “Listen, I’ll tell you what. Karkaroff’s long gone by now, but I can teach you Cut, so at least you won’t have come here for nothing.”
The git actually seemed to believe he was being magnanimous. “I came here to hunt down the Acolytes, not to learn some dodgy HM from a—a—“
”Not a criminal,” Tom said, holding his arms to the sides as if to show off his as-yet-unconvicted of a crime self. “So that’s your one dubious objection out of the way. Come on, you’ll need it for the Vermilion Gym. Leader Moody’s insanely paranoid and you’ll have to Cut his electric tripwires if you don’t fancy digging around in his bins for hours on end.”
”You’re a criminal in spirit,” Harry grumbled, already half-resigned to accepting his own deal with the devil. This was the fifth person who’d told him horror stories about Leader Moody’s bins.
Another fifteen minutes (and a great deal of wanton destruction to Karkaroff’s rooms) later, Harry’s Pokémon had mastered Cut and he was feeling slightly better disposed to Tom again, sitting with the other boy on the slashed-to-ribbons sofa for a quick breather before they parted ways.
”How did you swing an invitation to this, anyway?” Tom asked, gazing out the window at the harbor; when Harry’s face went straight back to thunderous, he only raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Ah. I take it it’s a fair bit more complicated than how I helped Bill Weasley un-transform himself from a Mr. Mime in exchange for a ticket, then?”
*
Harry sat on the cold tile floor, knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them, staring at the simple but high-quality double headstone. Prongs and Periwinkle, the epitaph read, under two pairs of birth and death dates, each around a decade apart. The last opponent to be defeated is death.
He sniffled, only a little ashamed to be weeping over his lost parents when they’d been gone fourteen years. Nobody was here to see him anyway, thanks to the ghost Pokémon swarm.
In the time since the startling revelations on the SS Anne, he’d managed to gather a fair bit more information on his parents. James and Lily had been Trainers aspiring to conquer the Gym Challenge, just like him. They’d started at the standard age of 11, running into each other regularly over the years—like him and Tom, he supposed, though that felt like a weird comparison to make—until they eventually fell in love, married young at nineteen, and had Harry just a year later. They and some other friends had settled on Cinnabar Island for a while, to save some money working at the lab there until their baby was old enough to travel with them.
And then one night, Cinnabar Labs burned from the inside out, in a mysterious incident no one seemed to have a very good explanation for. It’s a volcanic island, things inevitably catch fire was the general line of thinking, but Harry didn’t think people would build a world-class lab in such a place unless, conversely, they were very confident in their fireproofing measures.
Whatever the cause, it killed Harry’s parents—and all of the people they’d listed in their will as preferred guardians for him. He’d gone to the Dursleys; his parents’ graves were part of a mass memorial on the island. He might not get to visit for a long time, not until he could use Surf himself and had a few more Badges in his case. But as was traditional, their beloved partners—a Nidorino and Nidorina mated pair that had been James and Lily’s very first Pokémon—were buried here, on the fourth floor of Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town. Finally within his reach, once he’d become strong enough for the trek through Rock Tunnel.
Beside him, Pikachu reached out a tiny paw and trailed bright sparks along the engravings. Harry wondered if his little friend would’ve gotten along well with Prongs and Periwinkle. Maybe the two tough horned Pokémon would’ve carried him around on their backs, the same way Harry’s parents carried him…
An earsplitting screech broke the silence, sending him scrambling to his feet and spinning around to find the source. The ghosts had mostly left him alone so far, but it seemed even he couldn’t be lucky forever; a black haze was creeping rapidly from the corners of the room and rows of gravestones, coalescing, just a few feet from him, into a large mass with two red slashes in it like bleeding eyes. It stretched and warped as if contorting in pain, then lunged forward and screamed again, directly in his face this time.
Harry was very rarely truly frightened by things he encountered on his Trainer’s journey, but he’d never seen a ghost Pokemon like this before, wild and unidentifiable and so angry. Add to that his already grim mood from ruminating on his parents’ fate, and instead of instinctively reaching for a Poke Ball or commanding Pikachu to attack, he yelped and shrank away, giving the specter room to advance further. It pressed in on him, the dark miasma of it infiltrating his eyes, his nose and mouth, so he couldn’t see and tasted rot and all he could hear was more screaming—
“Go! I choose you!”
A roar even louder than the spirit’s shrieks sounded from somewhere off to his left, followed immediately by a huge twisting shape flying through the air, its movement causing enough of a disturbance to momentarily disperse the gaseous cloud around Harry. He dropped down to where it was a little clearer and scrabbled along the ground, grabbing a squeaking Pikachu along the way, until he managed to get behind one of the larger headstones; then he stuck his head back up to try and get some idea of what was going on.
At first, he thought the interloper was an even more vengeful ghost, come to fight the first one for territory and a prospective human victim; but then he saw it crashing into the walls and ceiling, breaking real, solid chunks of stone and marble off the headstones, and realized it was a flesh and blood creature, presumably another Pokemon. This was quickly confirmed when an unmistakably human figure rushed in after it, shouting commands in a voice Harry recognized, even though right now it was shaking uncharacteristically—
“Bubblebeam! Fuck, why isn’t it working!? Dragon Rage—nothing’s hitting it, what is this thing?”
The Pokemon—a water type, Harry could feel the spray—roared again in an echo of its Trainer’s frustration, and the ghostly mist swirled faster and faster, whipping itself into a tornado of buzzing black particles.
“Tom?” he shouted over the cacophony, now able to make out the other boy’s familiar tall, lean profile and long strides. “W-what are you doing here!?”
Tom whipped his head around, briefly taking his eyes off the battle to glare daggers at Harry as if he’d done something wrong. “Why are you just sitting there?” he bellowed, his face gone from pale to chalk-white, eyes wide and bloodshot. “I’m trying to distract it, you imbecile! Get out now—RUN!”
He moved to face his incorporeal foe again, but in the few seconds he’d taken to call out to Harry, the spirit had dispersed its body and bypassed Tom’s Pokemon entirely, merging together again and hurling itself at the teen, looking like it was trying to suffocate him, either that or pour itself right down his throat—
“AAAGGGHHH!”
Harry didn’t run.
Instead, he dropped back to his knees and ripped open his pack (a forest green one now, upgraded and expanded many times since that first child-sized bag given to him by Dumbledore), throwing items and medicines out helter-skelter, trying to find that thing, the thing that just might save them…
”Pikaaaa!” Pikachu whined, sparking him with its tail to get his attention, and he jerked upward to find his partner tugging urgently at his sleeve with one paw—and in the other, clutching a bizarre object that was somewhat of a cross between a camera and a pair of binoculars, with three red-and-blue lenses oddly positioned in a triangular shape. In other words, exactly what he was looking for: the “Silph Scope”, given to him by a strange girl named Luna as thanks for saving her Pokemon from an Acolyte hideout in Celadon City. She’d insisted that it would awaken and manifest the power of his third eye; he’d assumed it was completely useless until this very minute, but hadn’t had the heart to chuck it out.
“Hold on, Tom!” he called, and lifted the device to his eyes, over his glasses. Somehow, the image he saw through the monochrome lenses was not only in full color, but clear as well; the shapeless haze choking Tom resolved into the form of a spiky, nightshade-purple Gengar, still terrifying but recognizable as something documented, something that could be countered.
He pressed the button on the top of the scope’s awkwardly-positioned top lens, and a blinding flash filled the room, making him drop the device and clamp his eyes shut. When he could see again through the spots in his vision, the Gengar was visible to the naked eye and seemingly confined to its single shape. Tom’s Pokemon—god, what was that thing, it looked like some kind of massive winged blue snake—could clearly get a bead on it now as well, and proceeded to seize the thing in its jaws, tearing it off Tom and shaking it brutally from side to side until it let out a final shriek and dispersed for good this time, leaving nothing in its wake but fading echoes and the vague stench of a poison marsh.
Tom staggered but stayed on his feet, calling his Pokemon back to him. Just like his Ekans from two years ago, it wound its huge body protectively in the air around him instead of returning to its ball, as if to deter anything else that might dare attack its master. As the room brightened again, Harry could see them both clearly now; the teen standing tall as if he’d never been afraid, the blue water-snake with fangs the length of Harry’s forearm hovering in an S-shape. They…cut an incredibly striking figure, even he had to admit. He felt he was quite justified in staring.
His rival stared back. “You’re still here,” he said, incredulously. “What part of run did you not understand?”
”The part where I’d be leaving you here to get murdered by a poison ghost you can’t even land a hit on, maybe?” Harry retorted, that superior tone snapping him right back into their usual dynamic. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
”I’m welcome? You were the one who looked halfway dead when I first got here. And anyway it wouldn’t have killed me—“
”Bold of you to say in a literal cemetery.”
”It’s a Pokemon cemetery. What are you even doing here, anyway?”
Harry’s eyes dropped down to his feet—where, conveniently, Prongs and Periwinkle’s grave was still resting unscathed, Pikachu sitting on it with its cheeks sparking intermittently. “My parents…I’ve been trying to find out more about them. Their Pokemon, that died with them in the fire…”
Now it was Tom’s turn to look away. “…Oh,” he said, his hands flexing uncomfortably. “I see...”
”How about you?” Harry asked, eager to change the subject.
”Well, from the little I know of my own family, my father despised Pokemon and my mother was too weak to bond with any, so I doubt I’ll find any of their partners here,” he said with forced casualness, making Harry somehow feel even worse. “I came because I heard rumors of a rare species of Pokemon that’s settled here among the ghosts. Apparently it can use tools and fashioned itself a helmet from a skull of its own species, it’s quite fascinating—“
The giant snake-dragon-thing still floating next to him opened up its gaping maw again; Pikachu squeaked and leapt into Harry’s arms, but it only yawned, its teeth easily framing Tom’s head, as if even it was tired of his monologues on obscure Pokemon lore. “Oh, be quiet, you,” he huffed, stroking one of its fins. “You just had a nice exciting battle and we still have three floors to go, take this opportunity to rest.”
”What Pokemon is that, anyway?” Harry asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. Tom smirked; oh god, he’d obviously been waiting for that question, probably since all the way before the Gengar left.
”Let’s just say calling Magikarp a rare and secret Pokemon may not have been as false of a claim as I previously thought.”
Harry laughed at the rather clever joke, then heard his own chuckles faltering as he realized he wasn’t kidding. He looked more carefully into the face of the water dragon, searching for a trace of the vacant-eyed fish Tom had stubbornly carried around for years.
“No way,” he breathed. Tom grinned, and the Pokemon itself practically preened, licking some lingering ectoplasm off a fang with its huge tongue.
”’Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’” the brunette intoned, finally recalling the oversized beast into its ball with a blaze of red light. “Speaking of which—are you also planning to go all the way to the top of the tower? Between that strange scope of yours and my Gyarados’s dark-type moves, we should have no trouble handling anything in this place.” He stepped forward and stretched out one broad hand, offering Harry an assist to his feet. Harry only hesitated a second before taking it.
“C’mon, then.” He stood, Pikachu running nimbly along his arm to perch on his shoulder, and headed past Tom to the next staircase, away from the grave and its cryptic lines about the last opponent. “I wasn’t actually planning on going higher, but now I’m curious about this emo-goth skull mask Pokemon you’re on about—because frankly, it sounds made up…”
*
”She was just a mum,” Tom said pensively when the ghostly Marowak had faded from view. He cradled the still-whimpering Cubone in his arms with surprising gentleness, idly stroking its—yes—skull-fashioned headgear with his long fingers. “A mum who didn’t want to leave her child.”
”A mum who was murdered by the Acolytes,” Harry fumed, his blood boiling at the thought of the despicable poachers who’d been trying to pry the Pokemons’ skulls right off their heads. “I have to stop them for good. I can’t let myself get sidetracked again.”
Tom cocked his head, bemused. “You really do plan to do it, don’t you,” he said. “Take on Grindelwald, bring down his whole mafia empire. You’re serious about this.”
It took every bit of will Harry had not to point out that Tom was only now acknowledging the Acolytes were a mafia empire, not just a group of small-time thugs. “I was always serious.” He set his jaw firmly.
”You know, God help me, I’m actually looking forward to watching you try,” Tom replied. “In the meantime, I’ll be keeping this little fellow”—he patted the Cubone’s rump, where its stubby tail had tentatively begun to wag—“and, if I may be so bold as to ask, could I hold on to that Silph Scope as well? I’d like to examine it better, figure out how it works…I’d say you owe me that much, you’d never have found those poachers if I hadn’t brought you up here,” he added tetchily.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Not everything has to be a transaction, Tom,” he said, easily passing the scope over to the other boy. “It’s not like I need it anymore, I’ve got no plans of ever coming back here.”
”No.” Tom stared idly into the space where the Marowak had been, adjusting the Cubone on his hip almost like it was a human child. “No, I don’t suppose I do either.”
*
Harry stumbled out of yet another bloody teleporter, cursing Silph Co. and its stupid overcomplicated technology and mazelike office layout, which seemed determined to make him so dizzy that he either passed out or puked himself to death—probably in one of the ten thousand identical fake ficus plants around here—before he made it even halfway to where Grindelwald was holding President Fudge hostage. And here he’d thought it could never get worse than the conveyer belts in the Game Corner basement.
He froze at the sight and sound of another person shuffling things about in a nearby cubicle, his hand going to his Poke Ball belt in preparation for yet another battle with Acolyte goons. Good thing the little capsules seemed to be motion-stabilized; if Raichu and the others had to fight in as discombobulated a state as he was in right now, he’d really be screwed. With soft, catlike footsteps, he eased himself around the partition wall, hoping to get the jump on the bastard—
—only to yell in surprise and reveal himself, when he saw an unmistakable tall form and thick head of chestnut curls crouched beside the desk, overturning the drawers and flicking through the files within at a rapid-fire rate. Tom’s head shot up at the sound and he instantly had a ball in his own hand, but he relaxed just the slightest bit when he recognized Harry in turn.
”I knew you’d be here too,” he said, flashing a perfect white grin. “You weren’t scared off by the minions marching around Saffron like they’re a poorly-dressed raiding party, I take it?”
Harry shook his head, lips pressed together in a thin line. Getting to the building itself had been the easiest part, honestly. The gatehouse sentry had been just as desperate for a Fresh Water as Harry was as a tired, demoralized eleven-year-old; inside the city, the Acolytes were too preoccupied with bullying civilians and terrorizing poor Leader Trelawney inside her own Gym to notice when he slipped into the skyscraper between guard shifts. He was starting to think Grindelwald’s entire force was nothing but a weak, paper army meant to make him seem intimidating; the guy had been trying to recruit preteens just a few years back, after all.
He scanned his gaze over Tom; over the ransacked cubicle and the three others just like it down the hall, the documents labeled CLASSIFIED and PROPERTY OF SILPH that the other teen was even now stuffing into his bag, and he felt the stirrings of a familiar betrayal.
”Please tell me you haven’t joined the—“
”And please tell me you don’t still think so low of me as to assume I’d ever sign on with that merry band of idiots,” Tom interrupted him, frowning reproachfully. “Grindelwald is addicted to dramatic gestures and is going to get himself caught by the authorities within six months, even if you don’t trounce him first. Trying to take a huge financial center and leading corporation in broad daylight is insanity, and worse than that it’s unnecessary; everything valuable in this building can, and does, fit in a single bag.” He patted his satchel, tucking in the corner of a thick file stamped TOP SECRET. ”I’m simply taking advantage of all the commotion to…liberate those precious assets while no one’s paying attention.”
Harry couldn’t deny the wave of relief that passed over him at learning that cunning, meticulous Tom hadn’t fallen to the Acolytes’ level of common crime; but he forced himself to maintain a disapproving expression of his own. “So now I do technically have to say I learned Cut from a criminal,” he jibed.
Tom smirked. “Harry, darling, I’m no more a criminal now than I was back then—when I walked off that ship with my pockets absolutely loaded with half the cabins’ safe contents,” he said, practically bursting with pride. “Karkaroff was blamed for it all after his big getaway, of course. Then and now, the difference lies in getting caught.”
How do you know I won’t turn you in for all of it right after this, Harry was tempted to say, but they both knew that was a pointless rhetorical question. Sighing inwardly at the thought that he’d technically abetted Tom’s grand theft aqua by making Karkaroff run in the first place, he instead gestured at the bag and asked, “So what’s your plan for all this then? Ransoming it? Selling it to their competitors?”
”Hardly,” he sniffed, but his face said I’m so glad you asked. “I plan to become the competitor. Silph’s scientists are legitimately brilliant, but Fudge is a terrible CEO who couldn’t properly lead ants to build a dirt hill. He’s holding all his best talent back; the paper-pushers don’t even realize what they have here.” He patted the bag again, this time with an almost sensual possessiveness. “I’m going to study their schematics, reverse-engineer their technology, and take it further than their tiny minds ever dreamed—and become wealthy and renowned in the process.”
Harry looked at him, and was almost overwhelmingly reminded of the thirteen-year-old who managed to fix Bill Weasley’s Pokemon transmogrifier and then wrangled a swish party invite out of it. You really do plan to do it, don’t you?
“God help me, I look forward to seeing you try,” was all he needed to say, and then watched Tom’s eyes spark at the echo of his own words last year at the Tower. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to repay my favor, and come along with me to the top floor? These teleporters are a real bitch.”
Tom rose gracefully to his feet. “They’ve actually been arranged for maximum efficiency based on the average traffic and workflow of the building, if you look at it logically. Yet another sign of how Silph’s ingenious brain trust is being wasted.”
”Sure, I’ll take your word for it; I’d rather ride Pidgeot any day. So…?”
Another gleaming smile. “Why not? I’ve heard rumors of a prototype Master Ball that Fudge keeps locked in his personal suite. Just don’t expect me to go into battle with you—I have a time-stamped receipt here that says I’ve been in the Safari Zone for the past three hours.” He nudged past Harry at the cubicle entrance and, without even the slightest pretense of indecision, led him straight for the third teleporter on the left.
They reached the top floor in a mere two more hops.
*
”What happened to stealth and your fancy alibi?” Harry asked, as he and Tom stood back-to-back, hemmed in by Grindelwald and Vinda Rosier, all four Trainers primed to throw out their first Pokemon.
“I changed my bloody mind when he decided to try and double-team you!”
”Oh, how delightfully rich,” the sharply-dressed mafia boss laughed, his heterochromatic eyes twinkling in a way that was disturbingly reminiscent of Professor Dumbledore. “You two are the only ones permitted to use that tactic, then? I have not forgotten my subordinate’s reports from Nugget Bridge.”
”Shut up, we were kids and either of us could’ve taken your dumb crony one on one,” Harry snapped. “You ready, Tom?”
”I thought you’d never ask. As for my alibi—when the police arrive, I must insist you take all the credit for this impending victory. I have a safari to finish.”
“Bold of you to count your Berries before they sprout, whelps!” Grindelwald roared.
“ARBOK!”
”ARCANINE!”
Harry barely had time to grin at their Pokémon’s similar-sounding names before the furious double battle began in earnest.
*
”Greetings, challenger.”
Of course, of course bloody Riddle would be the one waiting for Harry in the final room of the stadium complex at Indigo Plateau, after Charlie Weasley had shaken his hand and sheepishly admitted that, okay, the very clear moniker ‘Elite Four’ was actually kind of one of those “4+1 things” situations. How Tom managed to complete a League Challenge between everything else he had going on (if the rumors of extraordinary new ‘Silph-killer’ tech products being sold in select stores were anything to go by) was beyond Harry’s ken.
It seemed that Tom Riddle wasn’t quite the one-track-minded knobhead he’d once assumed. At least not the one-track-minded part, anyway.
“I should’ve known someone as nice as Charlie could never be the actual final Champion,” he sighed, shaking his head in mock sadness.
Tom scoffed from his position in the center of the room, decorated dramatically with upward-pointing spotlights and hastily erected snake pillars. “That man is a joke. Three Dragonites, really? I wiped out half his lineup just having Gyarados spam Ice Beam.”
Harry winced in acknowledgement of this objective truth, but felt the need to stand up for the big-hearted dragon tamer nonetheless. “He sticks with the Pokemon he loves.”
”So do I, but I win with them.”
”That sounds like what you nerds call a paradox, because my team also always wins.”
The other teen—almost a grown man, now, the same as Harry—strode forward, coming close enough that his anticipatory grin was plain as day on his face. “Oh, yes? I heard about your victory over Grindelwald.”
He sobered a bit at the reminder of the events just last month, when his Gym Challenge and personal quest to take down the Acolytes had converged in fairly shocking fashion. “I still can’t believe he was headquartered in Viridian City the whole time—practically down the road from Dumbledore. The Professor must be pretty shaken up…” He shook his head. “Maybe I should pay him a visit while I’m in the area.”
But Tom only laughed, harder than Harry had seen him do in a couple years now. “Oh, Harry,” he crooned, chocolate eyes shining with amusement. “If you think for one minute that Dumbledore didn’t know exactly where Gellert Grindelwald was this entire time—and make excellent use of that knowledge on his regular trips through Viridian Forest—then you’re even more pure and innocent than I thought.”
Harry scrunched his face up in confusion. “‘Make use’—what…?” The penny dropped, followed almost immediately by his jaw. “Oh, no way. You can’t be saying that they were…!”
”’When there’s a will, there’s a way.’ Romantic feelings between two people can be rather obvious, when one isn’t more oblivious than a Confused Psyduck,” Tom said rather archly. “Now, shall we dispense with the gossip and get to the part where I pound you, darling?”
He bristled at the (obviously mocking) endearment, and the tone in Tom’s voice like he was telling a hilarious inside joke to an audience comprised solely of his own pratty self. He shoved past his rival and back into the center of the room, where the traditional Poke Ball-shaped arena pattern was etched into the floor; and put a hand to one of his own, smaller balls secured at his hip, feeling the familiar indentations made over years of throwing and holding and idly rubbing in moments of boredom or anxiety.
”Oh, in your dreams.”
*
In the end, it came down to the simplest of things.
With both Trainers down to their last Pokemon—both of which, ironically, were the first Pokemon they’d ever bonded with—Charizard was well known to have superior stats to Raichu, as well as a broader moveset (its Cut was still devastating as ever) and range of motion. Many experienced trainers would even agree that the literal firebreathing dragon was the best Pokemon overall, bar none.
But Charizard also happened to be a dual flying-type. And flying types were weak to electricity, those mighty wings an easy target for Thunderbolts hurled from a long, lightning-shaped tail.
Harry was a bit surprised that Tom hadn’t guarded against this eventuality. Taught his partner Pokemon an Earthquake Technical Machine, maybe. But then again, the man was just arrogant enough to think he could brute-force his way through anything with devastating Flamethrowers and Fire Spins.
Charizard fainted and swooned in the air; Tom lifted his Poke Ball and called it back, securing it inside before it could hit the ground and injure itself. There was an expression of genuine shock (ha!) and amazement on the no-longer-Champion’s face, but only after the briefest flash of something like—satisfaction? Maybe it was nothing, Harry was exhausted himself after the long battle that made their fight on the SS Anne look like a speed match—in his eyes, mostly obscured by the ball’s flash of red light.
He’d been half-expecting a meltdown, or at the very least a long tirade about all the things Tom would vastly improve upon before coming straight back down Victory Road to reclaim his title; but all he did was step forward to the middle of the arena, six faded-out Poke Balls on his belt, and flash that same dazzling smile. He reached down and gave Raichu, still out of its ball and practically vibrating with the excitement of its victory, a friendly pat between the ears. Surprisingly, the lightning mouse Pokemon allowed it with a pleased chirr—even though he’d never entirely shed his tendency to be a bit difficult with people, notoriously standoffish to anyone who wasn’t Harry or one of the Nurse Joys. Then, one hand still scratching gently at the soft orange fur, Tom extended his other hand to Harry to shake.
”Congrautlations, Champion Potter. Shall I escort you to the Hall of Fame?”
He took the offered hand and followed Tom to the elevator beyond, Raichu bouncing happily on its tail between them as they rode all the way up to the room where (as the other man took great pleasure in intoning dramatically) only Champions were allowed to set foot. Tom approached the computer terminal and entered the team’s data, the pictures of Raichu, Pidgeot, Arcanine and all the others flashing up onscreen one by one, larger than life. Harry gazed up at them in awe, still a little too dazed to say much, blinking to clear the forehead sweat that had somehow trickled into both his eyes.
A long, firm arm looped around his waist, offering support that surprised Harry by just how much he needed it. He let himself sink into Tom a little, tipping his head just slightly onto the other’s perfectly-placed shoulder.
”Wow,” he managed finally. Tom chuckled softly in his ear.
“It gets less overwhelming eventually, don’t worry,” he reassured him. “But until then, why don’t I buy you that dinner I owe you?”
Harry jerked his head up, confused. “What dinner? What do you mean?”
”Why, the dinner we bet on the battle before we both threw our first balls. Do you not remember?”
He glared suspiciously. “It was only two hours ago, Tom; I don’t not remember, it didn’t happen. We didn’t make any bet on the battle—besides the Champion title, obviously.”
Tom shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t supporting Harry. “Are you sure? I could’ve sworn…ah well. You know it’s rather a standard custom that the loser of a significant match always buys the winner a meal. And for a showdown like that, I’d say rather a fine one is in order. There’s this lovely new place right on the beach in Fuchsia…”
Slightly wary, but honestly extremely hungry, Harry eventually agreed to let Charizard Fly them east, where he was only a little surprised to find that Tom already had a private room booked at the exclusive restaurant. Bloody hell, what did he do, satellite-call them while Harry was in the bathroom? Or maybe he’d made the reservation earlier, planning to stick him with the eye-popping bill if he lost.
Still, the food was excellent. And the conversation and banter—the most they’d had in a long time, especially without some sort of imminent threat or battle or argument to interrupt them—was somehow even better.
So he happily accepted Tom’s offer to repeat the experience the next week, at a different restaurant. And again three days later, at a cozy cafe in Saffron Harry had always loved. Which led to taking a long walk down to the headquarters of Tom’s new ‘Silph-killer’ startup company, which also happened to be right below his new flat, which he really wanted Harry’s advice on decorating.
It wasn’t long—three months, at most—before those decorating suggestions began to include a dedicated drawer in the bureau for the jeans and sweaters Harry brought from home. And a spot for his toothbrush in the bathroom. And a cushion for Raichu, and a perch for Pidgeot, and, and, and…
*
A little over a year later, Harry and Tom sank down onto the king-sized bed in their flat with twin relieved sighs, happy to be home after another of their regular trips to Indigo Plateau so Harry could take on the latest batch of challengers to his still-undefeated title.
“You know,” he said, after a few blissful minutes just twining their hands in each other’s and staring up at the ceiling (which Harry had painted sky blue with fluffy clouds when he first moved in), “it always surprised me, how…chill you were with it when I took your place as Champion after only, what, a week? Wasn’t I the first challenger to even show up, too? You didn’t get to reign at all.”
”Mmm,” Tom hummed. “It honestly didn’t bother me in the slightest, darling. Why would I want to take time out of my busy schedule to regularly mop up opponents who are laughably inferior to me? I know you enjoy mentoring the upstarts, of course,” he added quickly, kissing Harry’s nose. “But you were always the only challenger I was truly looking forward to taking on. It’s just my good luck that you were the first to arrive. You gave me a truly phenomenal fight, you won fair and square, and now I’m free to reign at Morsmordre Co.—which, I can truthfully state in promotional materials, is headed by a former League Champion. It’s the best of all possible worlds.”
There was silence for a little while as Harry contemplated those words, Tom rubbing lazy circles into his palm with his thumb. “I guess you’re right,” he said eventually. And then, a little more slowly: “You got everything you wanted.”
”Indeed. Most of all, you.”
More silence. A tiny, persistently niggling thought began tickle Harry’s brain like one of Raichu’s staticky nuzzles, prickly but strangely tantalizing at the same time.
”…Tom?”
”Yes, darling?”
”You didn’t let me win that Champion’s match, did you?”
Tom, whose eyes had been peacefully closed up until now, lifted his head and opened them wide. Too wide to be truly innocent, maybe? “Why would you think something like that?”
Harry sat bolt upright. ”Oh my god. You did, didn’t you! You let me win so you could ask me to dinner while I was all soppy about being in the Hall of Fame, and then fob off all your Champion duties on me while you ran off and made a pile of money—“
”A pile which I use to liberally pamper and spoil you, I might point out—“
”You’re not denying it!”
”It’s a terrible accusation, unworthy of dignifying with a response!”
”Does your Charizard know Earthquake, Tom!?”
Tom began to slowly edge off the bed, looking spooked, raising his hands in placation. “Dearest, please. Just take some time to think this through, and you’ll realize how silly you’re being. Now, I left some important work down in the office all week while we were out of town and now it really can’t wait another minute, let me just—“
Harry grabbed hold of his wrist before he could get away. But instead of dragging him back down, he used the leverage to pull himself up, frog-marching Tom over to their still-packed suitcases lying against the closet door.
”The only place you’re going is back to Indigo Plateau, to fight me again—with the other Elites monitoring this time!” he declared. Honestly, he was starting to get genuinely excited about this. Tom had a point earlier; most of the challengers he’d had over the years, plucky and inspiring as they were, just weren’t up to the level where they even had a chance of actually beating him. The last time he’d had real fight—one that made his heart pound and his breath quicken, like back when he was a scrappy newcomer himself—was when he’d battled Tom for the title.
To do that again, with an audience—and then maybe a few more times, three out of five maybe, just to make sure Tom was truly giving it his all—well, it had him raring to go right back into the arena.
“And if you win, you’re going straight back to being Champion—and that means fighting every challenger who shows up, even if they’re some nutter doing an all-Caterpie challenge run—“
”Oh, come now—you are the rightful Champion, Harry—“
”And you’ll keep doing that, and fighting me regularly, until I can actually beat you fair and square, at your very best!”
“But you already did! Regardless of the outcome of any trivial match—which you won, for the record—you conquered my heart so thoroughly that the title means nothing to me anymore!”
”Flattery will get you nowhere, Riddle!”
The two men continued to bicker as Harry dragged the suitcases to the balcony, attempting (while Tom struggled mightily to do the exact opposite) to load the luggage right back onto the saddle of a Charizard that may or may not have known Earthquake. Though the presence of the ultra-powerful ground-type move in the Pokémon’s current moveset would be far from bulletproof evidence one way or another.
Tom Riddle, after all, was an expert in the art of not getting caught—and, god help him, that was one of the reasons Harry loved him so much.