Chapter Text
That night was one Tom Riddle would never forget.
Fog and cold air smothered the moonlight entirely, and if one were to look up, they would find a sky weeping endless white— snowflakes drifting down in an unbroken curtain that showed no sign of stopping. At the front of a worn, shabby building, Tom sat hunched over himself, rubbing his hands together in slow, desperate circles. The January chill was far beyond what his threadbare old coat could hope to defend against, and his thin frame shuddered visibly with every gust that cut through the dark. And yet he did not go inside, not to the walls that would shield him from the wind, not to the fireplace that promised warmth. He knew what waited for him in there. Everyone gathered together, laughing and talking, filling the rooms with a noise that somehow made the silence around him feel louder. No matter how brutal the cold was out here, it was still better than sitting among the other children in this orphanage. Even if he retreated to his own room, Mrs. Cole would find him and drag him out. He would rather freeze to death on the doorstep than endure the weight of the eyes that followed him under that shared roof.
Those eyes were sharper than a freshly whetted knife.
They looked at him as though he were a demon. Some kind of monster. He had no desire to sit among them only to be reminded, once again, of just how utterly alone he was.
A tear slipped slowly from his dark brown eyes, only to be stolen by the bitter wind before it could fall, cold and gone, as though it had never been there at all.
Tom didn’t know which hurt more. The cold, or the loneliness.
“Little one, why are you sitting out here like this?”
A pair of shoes entered his line of sight. Short winter boots in warm brown, trimmed with fur along the cuff. Tom had never ventured far from these walls, had never truly known the world beyond them, but even he could tell that those boots had not come cheaply.
He raised his head slowly, and the sight that met him made him forget to breathe for a full moment. Round, brilliant green eyes, glittering like a pair of fine-cut gems. They were the most arrestingly beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
Their owner was a young woman, somewhere in her mid twenties. She had hair as black as a drop of ink, skin as pale as the snow still falling around them, and from the sound of her voice just now, she was English. Like the boots, her black coat and deep red scarf looked expensive, and more importantly, they looked warm.
“I—”
His trembling lips parted, releasing a small breath of cold air, but nothing followed. He didn’t know how to answer her. He wasn’t sure there was an answer. Fortunately, the stranger before him didn’t press him for one.
Instead, she stepped closer.
Tom instinctively shifted back, just slightly, and the moment he did, he caught himself. He knew that was rude. Mrs. Cole had told him so, countless times. Have some manners, Tom. He lowered his head, bracing out of long habit for the reprimand that would surely follow.
But it never came.
Where there had always been coldness, where there had been sharpness and harshness and the particular cruelty of being invisible, this young woman offered him something else entirely. She unwound the scarf from her own neck and wrapped it around his. Then, without pausing, she shrugged off her thick coat and settled it over his shoulders. She was much taller than him; the coat swallowed him completely, falling all the way to his feet.
For a moment, Tom was simply lost. He didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
He only knew one thing with absolute certainty. That for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt warm. His shivering stopped.
“Warmer now,” the young woman said, with a smile.
How long had it been since anyone had looked at him like that? With that particular gentleness — the kind an adult reserves for a child in their care, the kind exchanged between families on an afternoon walk through the park. The kind that, if he had a mother, she might have given him.
“What’s your name, little one?”
“Tom Riddle, miss.”
“Lovely to meet you, Tom Riddle.” She settled herself down beside him on the step.
It was then that he noticed something odd. Despite having given away her coat and scarf, she showed no sign whatsoever of feeling the cold. And stranger still, though snow was falling steadily all around them, not a single flake had settled on her clothes.
“Who are you?” he asked, carefully.
“My name is Harriet. I’m a traveller,” she said, her voice gentle. “Have you ever been anywhere, Tom?”
He shook his head, glancing back at the building behind him. This orphanage was the only place he had ever known. Strangely, Harriet did not look back at him with pity. He didn’t want anyone’s pity — in truth, that kind of look made him feel worse than almost anything. But she didn’t offer it. She simply nodded and carried on, her voice bright and easy.
“I prefer nature to architecture, personally. The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland — the sound of the water against the stones, the smell of the sea. It quiets something in me.” She smiled softly at the memory. “And Japan — God, you would have to see Kyoto. The bamboo forest there would leave you speechless. And then there’s Brazil, which surprised me most of all. The people there are extraordinarily warm.”
Harriet was a gifted storyteller, and a true traveller as she claimed. She had been to more places than Tom could count, and gathered more stories and people along the way than most could dream of. Every place she named, she described with such careful detail that it felt less like listening and more like being taken there himself. He found himself drawn in, further and further, and at some point he couldn’t quite identify, he stopped wanting it to end.
“Is there anywhere you’d like to go, Tom?”
The places in her stories sounded wonderful and full of wonder, but they also felt impossibly distant, like places from a fairy tale, not places that could belong to someone like him. He didn’t think he could ever feel about them the way Harriet did. He didn’t hope for that much. He didn’t want everywhere. He just wanted…
“I want to be somewhere that feels like mine.”
At that, those beautiful green eyes softened even further, as though she had already known that was exactly what he would say.
“I have a secret to tell you, Tom.” She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a murmur near his ear. And it was then he noticed another strangeness. No breath misted the air when Harriet spoke, though the cold should have made it so.
“Beyond that gate, there is a vast world waiting to explore. Great cities to wander, rare knowledge to uncover, mysteries to astonish and wonders to discover. Every last one of them waiting for you, Tom Riddle. For you who are more extraordinary than anyone.” She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. “The only thing you have to do is step forward.”
Harriet rose to her feet. She walked a few steps away from him and held out her hand. She didn’t rush him, and her eyes remained as gentle as they had been from the start. She simply stayed where she was, waiting with quiet patience.
Tom didn’t know why he hesitated. He hated it here. He hated this orphanage, the place where he slept every night, woke every morning, and ate every meal, yet could never bring himself to call home. Wherever this woman might take him, it couldn’t possibly be as bleak and hopeless as this. And yet he hesitated. He was afraid. Afraid that the world beyond these walls, the world he had wanted so desperately to reach, would turn out to be just as cruel as this one. Afraid that no one out there would ever understand him either. Afraid that even beyond that gate, he would still be the wretched, monstrous child that everyone shrank away from. The child who deserved to be alone for the rest of his life.
“It’s alright, Tom. Everything will be alright.”
Just those words, and the gentlest pair of eyes any human being could possess, and every worry and every fear dissolved away. Those eyes made him a promise. They offered him hope that whatever happened, she would be there to keep him safe.
Tom rose slowly, the coat still draped around him. He walked one step at a time. The short distance between them felt like a thousand miles. He lifted his hand, wavered for one last moment, and placed it in hers.
Harriet smiled. She reached up and ruffled his hair with a tenderness that caught him entirely off guard.
“Thank you for trusting me, Tom.”
And then she was gone, as swiftly and silently as a snowflake meeting the ground.
Tom told himself it had all been a dream. Or a hallucination. The cold out there must have done something to his mind, to his body. The scarf and coat he was certain he had been wearing disappeared, just as their owner had, the moment he stepped back inside the building. Perhaps he had been feverish. Perhaps he had simply been exhausted.
Then, one week later, Mrs. Cole summoned him to the main hall.
Inside, Mrs. Cole was standing in conversation with a young woman.
Harriet.
Tom stopped dead in the doorway. The memories of that night came rushing back. It hadn’t been a dream? He hadn’t imagined the whole thing?
“Tom, come in. Come and say hello to Miss Potter, quickly now.”
Mrs. Cole called out to him in her best company voice when she saw him hovering at the entrance. Tom knew that tone well, and the expression that went with it. It was the face she put on for visitors, the one she used to make a good impression and to paper over just how dreary this place truly was.
“Please, just Harriet,” the young woman corrected immediately upon hearing her surname used.
“Hello,” Tom said.
He studied her carefully. She was exactly as he remembered, without a single detail out of place. Black hair, pale skin, and those gem-green eyes.
“Hello, Tom.”
“Tom Riddle is an exceptionally bright boy, if you ask me. Mature far beyond his years. Well-behaved and very easy to manage.”
That was not what Mrs. Cole had ever said to him. He might be clever, and he might keep up appearances well enough, but Mrs. Cole knew perfectly well that every child here was frightened of him. She knew he did things, behind closed doors, even if she couldn’t say what. As far as Mrs. Cole was concerned, he was nothing but trouble.
“I don’t doubt it at all,” Harriet replied smoothly. “Would you mind terribly if I had a few minutes alone with Tom?”
“Of course not. Please, take all the time you need.”
Mrs. Cole said her piece and slipped out of the room. The moment the door clicked shut, Tom turned to his visitor.
“You’re not a hallucination?”
Harriet blinked. It was plain that she hadn’t expected that to be the first thing out of his mouth. A smile spread across her face and she laughed, a short, genuine sound of amusement. “No, Tom. I’m not a hallucination. I’m fairly certain I exist.”
Harriet’s laughter made him acutely aware of how foolish he must have sounded. Heat crept into his cheeks.
“I must apologise for coming later than I intended. There turned out to be considerably more to sort out than I had anticipated. Can you guess why I’m here today?”
When Mrs. Cole received visitors, there was really only ever one kind.
“You’re going to adopt me?”
It seemed the obvious conclusion. Harriet looked young, perhaps too young to be taking in a foster child his age, but she had made it inside, spoken to Mrs. Cole, and asked for him specifically. He couldn’t see what else it could be.
“That’s right. Though I want to be clear that I won’t do anything you don’t want. If you’ve changed your mind about leaving, if you’d rather stay here, I will respect that completely.”
She knelt down in front of him, bringing her face level with his. Both her hands closed around his, holding them firmly, and then she opened her palms to reveal a tiny snow deer standing in the centre of his hand. It leapt from his palm and bounded around the room before springing out through the window and vanishing into the white beyond. He didn’t know how to explain what he had just seen, any more than he could explain why she hadn’t shivered in the freezing cold that night, why not a flake of snow had dampened her clothes, or how she had disappeared right before his eyes.
“But if you come with me, I promise I will help you find the place that belongs to you. A place where you will never have to be afraid again.”
This woman was like him. Both of them could do things beyond the reach of ordinary imagination. She was the only person who had ever looked at him as though she truly understood.
“I’ll go.”
Tom took Harriet’s hand, and this time, he didn’t hesitate at all.