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”I’ll get it, I’ll get it—carry on without me, guys!”
Harry ducked out of his own sixteenth-birthday party—a riot of barely-controlled chaos that, despite several Expansion Charms set up in advance by Lily Potter, had exceeded the capacity of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow and spilled over into the back garden, where Sirius was grilling burgers in midair and the twins had activated a Portable Pool to much delight—and back into the comparably quiet and shady front hall, where he’d heard the distinctive chime of someone requesting entry to the wards. He wondered who it could be; he was pretty sure everyone who’d RSVP’d yes had already shown up with several extra friends in tow, but he’d admittedly lost track a bit after the first five dozen. Hopefully the Silencing Charms had held up, and it wasn’t the Muggle police complaining about the noise…
He threw open the front door and was greeted by a familiar face; one that was much more welcome than a police officer, despite being almost as sharply dressed in pressed trousers, freshly-shined shoes, and a linen button-down. The newcomer was solemn-faced as was his habit, but Harry beamed and threw his arms into the air in happiness.
”Tom! You made it after all—I thought for sure you weren’t coming!”
There, standing somewhat awkwardly on the WIPE YER PAWS! welcome mat that James still thought was hilarious, stood Harry’s yearmate Tom Riddle: Slytherin prefect, model student and, until recently, probably the last person he’d ever have envisioned inviting to a celebratory blowout at his family home during summer hols. But he and Tom had formed an unlikely friendship over the past year, when they’d tied in the vote for captain of the Defense Club and had to work together to set the itinerary, resolve disputes, and offer guidance to the younger years. More often than not their “collaboration” involved dueling each other to determine who would get his way at any given meeting, but that turned out to be a surprisingly decent method of getting to know someone. By the time they both passed their OWLs with flying colors, Harry considered the other boy enough of a friend to track him down on the Hogwarts Express and offer him an invitation to today’s party.
”Don’t be ridiculous,” Riddle had said then, taking the piece of parchment with the date and time and scanning it disinterestedly. “A celebration for the mere fact of being born—what an imbecilic concept, truly something only privileged people with too much leisure time would dream up. Invite me to the gala when you’ve actually accomplished something, perhaps.” And then he’d walked off, slipping the invitation into the pocket of his robes. Oh well, I knew it was a long shot. At least he didn’t chuck it on the ground.
But now he was here, in direct contradiction of his dramatic speech a little over a month ago. And Harry found that he didn’t mind the hypocrisy, not really; Tom had always been a little standoffish, a little slow to warm up compared to even his fellow Slytherins, and a lot averse to anything he even suspected might be ‘charity’. If he’d overcome all that to show up anyway, it meant that he really did want to take a chance on a friendship between them. “I’m really happy you’re here,” he said warmly. “Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much—the party’s still in full swing, we haven’t even done the cake or gifts yet!”
“Party?” Tom coughed, suddenly very interested in staring intently at anything but Harry. “I don’t know what you mean, I…” His gaze halted suddenly on the massive HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY banner that had been hung over the doorframe, his eyes widening, as if he’d apparently just noticed it—and also missed the SWEET 16 yard sign; hired ice cream truck parked out front; and balloon bunches tied to the mailbox, lawn ornaments, and porch lights, all of which he’d surely passed on his way to the door. “Oh, your birthday party? Was that today?”
”Yep,” Harry replied, unperturbed. “‘Born as the seventh month dies’, as my dad likes to say when he’s being embarrassing, ‘cause I actually arrived just a little before midnight—“
”Yes, yes, well, I’m not here for that,” Tom said quickly, mercifully interrupting what was about to become a full-on rambling overshare. “I only came to give you this.” He reached into the bag hung over his shoulder—the same one he carried at school, Harry noticed, and that he’d used since first year, only patching it repeatedly when everyone else bought new ones—and pulled out…a loaf of bread?
It was, Harry noted with approval, a really nice loaf of bread. Big and high—Riddle must have emptied the entire rest of the bag to fit it in—with a thick, golden crust and a perfect crack in the top. It smelled heavenly, and he could feel its warmth even from the meter or so that separated them; a Stasis Charm applied immediately after it came out the oven, maybe? “Oh, um, wow!—“
”It’s a Lammas Loaf,” Tom rushed out. He cradled the baked bounty gently but protectively, as if to defend it from accusations of not being a proper gift. “The High Holiday, that is; celebration of the harvest, sixth festival in the Wheel of the Year, sometimes also known as Lughnasadh. It’s traditional in wixen society to mark the occasion with fresh bread. Based on what you told me over the past year, I gathered your family might be a little…lapsed on the Olde Ways, so I thought I’d bring this by to remind you of your cultural heritage. It actually falls on the first of August, but I happened to be in the area.”
Harry cocked his head. Tom was, as it happened, correct about the Potters’ observance of pagan holidays; they’d always been more of a Halloween, Christmas and Easter type of family, even before James married Lily and Harry came along. If bread like this was involved in what he’d assumed were just stuffy pureblood customs, though, he might have to consider converting. “Is the candle on top part of the Lammas ritual too?”
As if in slow motion, Tom’s head tilted down again, taking in the single small, pastel-striped candle—the kind you’d buy at the shops to decorate a birthday cake—poking out of the loaf’s cracked top. He appeared briefly panicked, like he had no idea how it had gotten there; but his face smoothed over again with impressive speed. “This? Oh, yes, absolutely. Fire is an essential part of all the Wheel’s ritual observations, from the Yule log to the Beltane blazes; usually a more formal altar is involved, of course, but in extenuating circumstances…”
”Well, I love it,” Harry said firmly, before his swotty friend could go into his dreaded mini-professor mode. “It’s really perfect timing too, the sandwiches are going like hotcakes out back! Where’d you get it from, my mum’ll definitely want to know the name of the bakery—“
”No!” At this point Riddle almost clutched the bread, stopping only when his fingers started to dent the crust. “No—what I mean is, I didn’t buy this bread,” he continued in a slightly calmer tone. “I baked it myself, from scratch, with my very own hands—not for this specific occasion, of course,” he was starting to sound agitated again, “I actually baked lots of these, because I…ah, I work in a bakery part-time this summer. Yes. A bakery around here; that’s also why I was in your neighborhood today. I was walking back from work.” He nodded vigorously, his eyes now focused somewhere over Harry’s right shoulder.
Harry felt his brow furrow in confusion; from what Tom was saying, it sounded like he should definitely still be able to give the name of the bakery at least, but then a more pressing question occurred to him. “You work around here? But I thought you said you lived in London.”
”I do, obviously.” The other boy rolled his eyes, as he’d always tended to do in the Club when he felt Harry was being particularly stubborn or thick. “Normally, at least. The orph—place I’m staying just isn’t habitable at the moment, because of…termites. A near-lethal infestation, actually. We’ve all decamped to the countryside while the problem’s being taken care of; you know, like how they evacuated people during the Blitz in the ‘40s.”
Harry blinked. He did know—they’d covered that part of British history in his Muggle primary school, before he left for Hogwarts—but he didn’t quite follow what on earth it had to do with Tom being on his doorstep today, in 1996. Not wanting to inadvertently say something stupid again, he decided it was best to change the subject—and also, just maybe, secure the Slytherin’s attendance at today’s party after all. “Yeah, sure, I get it. Hey, by the way—you look really hot, you know.”
Tom took a step backward, a scarlet flush spreading rapidly across his high cheekbones. “Excuse me!?”
”I meant, like, in the temperature sense!” Harry sputtered, realizing too late how that had sounded and internally flagellating himself in mortification. He had meant it that way too—even before he’d gone red, Tom had looked desperately in need of a cooldown, sweat shining on his brow and dressed in those formal clothes that, now that he thought about it, weren’t very appropriate for working in a bakery—but once the idea had been spoken and was hanging between them, he couldn’t stop noticing all the ways the Slytherin prefect really did look impossibly handsome. He always did at Hogwarts too, of course, Harry would’ve had to be blind not to notice it and that was perfectly normal, but there was just something about the way he’d shown up today: seeming almost unsure of himself for once, coiffed curls the slightest bit mussed, holding a gift that he’d made for Harry with his very own hands…hands which were, now that he mentioned it, very large with nice long, slender fingers and just the hint of callouses (souvenirs, perhaps, from a rolling pin?); he wondered how they would feel against his…
Oh no no no what the hell—
He shook his head hard, making his own messy hair fly around his face in a miniature black storm cloud. “I just meant that you seemed very—very warm, like, overheated kind of, probably from the walk here and, um, carrying that hot bread.” He gestured pleadingly at the precious cargo still held against Tom’s (broad, firm, uh oh) chest. “I know you didn’t come for the party, but I thought maybe—if you don’t have any other plans—you might want to come in and cool off for a bit. There’s a Portable Pool, you could strip out of those clothes and—wait, no—“
Briefly, he considered just slamming the door in Tom’s face, setting the cottage’s wards to “war/siege defenses”, and begging his parents for a transfer to Beauxbatons for his sixth and seventh years; but then he would never get to taste that wonderful bread. The bread! Yes. “…and it wouldn’t be right for you to not get to try the bread you made!” he finished, inanely. “You can come and have some of the sandwiches, and cool off with the lemonade. No need to get in the pool if you don’t want to, nope, it’s all good…”
Tom peered at him through slightly narrowed eyes, seemingly trying to work out whether this was just a roundabout scheme to somehow entrap him. Yeah, no, Harry wasn’t Slytherin enough for that, he was just embarrassing himself as usual. When he’d finally run out of steam, his shoulders slumping as he stared down at his feet (which were bare and covered in little grass blades from dipping in and out of the pool all afternoon, Merlin, how had he not noticed that), Tom let the silence stretch to near-Cruciatus levels before responding.
“I do not have the proper attire for swimming,” he said, slowly. “And I don’t strictly need to taste this bread. I eat it all the time, actually—leftovers, you know, at the…bakery. Where I definitely work.”
Harry winced internally. ”Oh, right, of course—“
”But some lemonade sounds like it might be…rather nice.”
Warily, he looked up from his toes and glanced through his fringe at Tom; and found, much to his amazement, that the taller boy was…smiling, albeit even more hesitantly than Harry was feeling right now. The expression looked out of place, yet very appealing, on his aristocratic features.
“Yeah?” he checked; and after getting a short, stiff nod in return, he grinned and shuffled to the side a bit, opening the door wider. “Okay, well, come on in then. The drinks’re in the back garden but you can leave your bag in the hall—do bring the bread, though—“
”HARRY, where the hell did you go, we’re making teams to play chicken and our numbers are uneven!”
The yell from back at the party startled them both, Harry whipping his head around and catching only a glimpse of bright red hair and freckled skin dashing away from the sliding glass back door; but when he turned back, Tom had already stepped inside, carefully wiping his too-shiny shoes and slipping the bag off his shoulder to hang on the nearby hooks, and was now looking to Harry expectantly; and so what else was there to do but lead the way further in?
”You know,” the taller boy remarked as they made their way down the hall, shrieks and splashes and the occasional shout of Incendio! from outside growing closer with each step, “perhaps your birthday, in particular, is worthy of celebration after all. It is quite the accomplishment to reach the age of sixteen alive and intact, what with the kind of reckless nonsense you get up to constantly at school.”
”Well, Madame Pomfrey sure thinks so at least,” Harry said, remembering his most recent brush with death this past spring (an absolutely brilliant escapade that had involved six Thestrals, two house-elf co-conspirators, a stolen Bludger and the Whomping Willow) with a fond smile. “But hey,” he nudged Tom playfully with his elbow, a new and only slightly less dangerous idea already forming in his mind. “You do know what this means, right?”
”I haven’t the faintest clue, actually.”
”It means,” he continued, tone casual but with a wicked smirk on his face, “that this year at winter hols, I’ll have to give you a really nice ‘New Year’s Eve present’ to repay your generosity.”
That got the exact reaction he’d hoped for, Tom stopping dead in his tracks and nearly falling behind for a second before he lengthened his stride to catch up with a deadly glare on his face; he probably hadn’t realized Harry even knew his birthday. “Wait, no—that’s absurd, there isn’t any such thing as a ‘New Year’s Eve present’—“
”Really late Yule gift, then,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly before shouldering open the back door. “Here we are—OI, EVERYONE, IT’S SANDWICH TIME!—watch your step, it’s slippery.”
”If you’d be so disrespectful as to give a Yule gift on the thirty-first, you’re even more ignorant than I’d feared; clearly I’ll need to tutor you more extensively in traditional wixen practices…”
”Looking forward to it,” Harry chirped back, as he stepped out into the garden once more. The cool grass felt delicious between his toes, reminding him why he’d shucked his shoes in the first place.
And he genuinely was eager for the prospect of spending more time with Tom in the coming months. Even if he had to put up with a bit of pedantry in the bargain—or if it turned out that none of the other High Holidays involved tasty fresh baked goods.