Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Albus Dumbledore is having an exceptionally peaceful morning on the second of July, 1998. The students and faculty have left, Hagrid and the house-elves are enjoying a rest, and the Scottish sun is shining with undue cheer. How wonderfully warm it is! The heat of the day and sight out of his quarters’ windows are so distracting that he finds it difficult to focus on packing for tomorrow’s research sabbatical to Shanghai (certainly, it does not help that his feelings on multi-portkey travel border on dread). Perhaps a quick pop outside will clear his head, he decides. There’s no one around but Hagrid and the squid to see him roll up his sleeves and bask in the sun, after all, so he needn’t fear traumatising some poor student with his wrinkly elbows.

For not the first time in his tenure on the Hogwarts staff, he laments the anti-Apparition wards that require him to take the long walk in and out of the castle. Spry may he be for his age, but he’s still old as dirt, truth be told, and nothing so starkly reminds him of this fact as stairs.

As he descends, he considers whether it might be worth it to again petition the Ministerial Department of Magical Maintenance to allow Hogwarts to build a lift or two. If only dear Armando hadn’t signed that horrid deal with the Ministry, which surrendered so much of the school’s autonomy. The lift could have been built years ago. At the very least, Albus thinks as he crosses the Entrance Hall, he could have hired someone to fix the trick—

There’s a pop—a flash of light—

And a young man in a student’s robes lies crumpled at his feet. 

“Bloody Grindelwald,” he mutters, as he tries to rise to his feet and Albus struggles to get over his shock of someone simply appearing in his well-warded school. When the boy collapses back to the floor, Albus automatically reaches out to catch his arm; he yelps in pain. The feeling of blood, unmistakably, oozes from a tear between his skin to seep between Albus’ fingers. 

Then the boy raises his head. 

He screams. 

Albus drops him. 

“Professor?” says the visage of the boy who would be, who is, who was, Voldemort, as Albus says, “Mr Riddle?”

“You’re alive,” they say at the same time, equally mystified, and the boy says, alone, “But you’re old.”

They stare at each other. Blood, dirt, and ash wreck the young Voldemort’s face. Yet more blood plasters his hair to forehead. His lips are paler than lips should ever be, as if he’s about to faint. In the sunshine slanting through the high windows, his large brow eyes are so light and clear they’re almost amber. Only one pupil contracts. 

In all Albus’ memories of the Dark Lord, he never looked so disheveled, nor terrified. For truly, he is that. 

“Mr Riddle,” he starts, but the boy cuts him off to ask, “Why are you calling me ‘Mr Riddle?” He sounds just as mystified by that as Albus’ state of being. 

Dumbfounded, Albus answers, “What do I call you ordinarily?”

“Tom,” says the boy. “If you’re some trick of Grindelwald’s, he didn’t do a very good job. Professor Dumbledore’s called me Tom since I was eleven.” 

Abruptly, Albus decides the Tom Riddle half-lying, half-sitting, definitely dying on the floor at his feet is not a threat. The situation is simply too bizarre for anything else to be true. No one knows that Tom Riddle is Voldemort except Albus, and anyone left to remember Tom Riddle is well aware that Albus liked the boy even less than he likes long distance travel. He’ll still need to question him, but that will have to wait; he needs to be cleaned and healed first.

Laboriously, Albus gets onto his knees, so that they’re level. “I can’t say I understand what’s going on, Tom,” he says carefully, “but I’ll ask that you trust me nonetheless. We’ll talk, but only after you’re well enough. I’m going to run a diagnostic spell on you. Please be still.”

It says a lot about whatever relationship this Tom Riddle believes he has with Albus that he does he’s told. Albus runs the wand over the length of his body, which reveals increasingly distressing results: a concussion, compressed nerves in his thoracic outlet, four broken ribs, a sliced open wrist that very narrowly avoided the artery or other major veins caused by a curse Albus has never seen before, one mildly dislocated knee, a fracture in the same wrist, and, unsurprisingly, shock. If the blood loss doesn’t make him faint soon, then the sheer amount of pain he’ll experience once the shock wears off will. 

Albus smiles mechanically and lies that the boy will be right as rain in no time, before Summoning the requisite potions from Poppy’s cupboards. Until he’s a little more put together, Albus fears what additional damage moving him might wrought. 

In the end, Albus does not enjoy the morning’s sunshine, nor does he ever pack for China. He’s no healer, but he knows enough of the art that only the boy’s wrist offers any complication, and even that’s fixable, though not without a scar. Tom Riddle spends the afternoon, evening, and night in a deep, Dreamless sleep in the Hospital Wing, while Albus returns to his rooms to riffle through his private library and correspondence for anything related to time. There’s rather much more than he realised, though the consensus among scholars of chronology is that forward-travel is not doable. It makes little sense, considering that the Tom Riddle currently trying not to die in his sleep mustn’t be more than sixteen. 

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, he stumbles across the burgeoning field of Multi-World Studies, a subset of Time Studies, which hypothesises that there are an incalculable number of worlds, each brushing up against one another, formed at crossroads, when seemingly unimportant decisions alter the course of history. 

Well. That’s certainly an explanation. There are ways to know if it’s the right one before he need speak with the boy. It’s not as if taking a memory for the Pensieve requires permission—and, naturally, he will return it. 

He returns with the Pensieve to the Hospital Wing, where he selects the memory of where they first met. Then he deposits the silver thread in the basin, glances at the boy, and slips in.  

You must be Mrs Riddle, says the younger version of himself. I’m Albus Dumbledore, Professor of Transfiguration and Head of Gryffindor House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I sent you a letter.

His hair is the colour of carrots in the sunshine; his robes are the same periwinkle as the early morning sky. When he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle, though not as much as they one day will. The woman across from him on the townhouse’s doorstep is his age, at guess. Mid-50s. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, and her suit is simple, but stylish. Albus can only see her from behind; he views this memory from the perspective of young Tom, who hovers in the entranceway. He is, as Albus remembered, very small for his age. 

Mrs Mary Riddle folds her arms. Yes, you did, Professor, she says. You must come through, I suppose. Please leave your shoes by the door.

She steps aside. The younger Albus enters. Thank you, Mrs Riddle, he says as he toes off his dragonhide boots. Then he spies the boy. You must be Tom, he says. I’m Professor Dumbledore. I’ll be one of your teachers soon. 

Present-day Albus watches Mary Riddle’s lip curl. She glares at the back of his younger self’s head. When he shakes her grandson’s hand, Present-day Albus is somewhat shocked she has the self-control not to commit an act of violence. 

How very curious. Where is Wool’s Orphanage? How did it come to pass that Mary Riddle, one of Lord Voldemort’s first victims, is, or was, his guardian?

Tom just nods and looks down at his socks. Mary Riddle steps past both versions of Albus in her house slippers, takes her grandson’s small hand in hers, and says, Through here, Professor, before leading them into a remarkably hideous sitting room. Albus has always been partial to lace himself, but this is too much. 

The younger version of Albus sits on the chair, while the Riddles occupy the sofa, with eleven-year-old Tom tucked under Mary’s arm. There’s no sense of cold superiority permeating the memory; instead, Albus would almost call the taste in the air fear.

I see, his younger self says, that you must already know of your magic. Again, the boy nods. Well, then that does make the introduction quite a bit easier. But I do think I would like to speak to your grandmother alone first.

It’s quite all right, Tommy, says Mary, in the same clipped tone she’s used since the memory began. I’ll call for you when we’re done. It shan’t take long.

Though Tom doesn’t like the thought of leaving her alone with the strange man in the funny clothes, he acquiesces, which means Present-day Albus, too, must leave. However, they do not go far. They retreat to the hallway with the staircase leading to the level above, then pull the door mostly, closed, but not all the way. It’s a relief. Albus doesn’t know what he would have done, had this Tom Riddle done nothing but display perfect angelic sweetness. 

Back in the parlour, his grandmother asks, Do you mind terribly if I smoke, Professor?

Undoubtedly, the answer is yes, but his younger self says no. There’s a snick, then the smell of cigarette smoke. 

May I ask where your son is, Mrs Riddle? he says. This is a conversation best had—

He’s dead. As is my husband. 

I’m sorry for your loss. 

There’s a pause. A drag on the cigarette, Albus thinks. Then Mary says, The Gaunts always talked about ‘your world’ and ‘our world.’ Tell me, Professor, what did your world think of the War?

Well, that Albus says politely, we’ve been rather busy with our conflict, I’m afraid. But as the boy’s legal guardian, if you wish for him not to attend, it’s your choice. 

A creak of the sofa. A sharp exhale. I don’t trust your sort, she says, but I don’t much trust mine, either. You have spells that kill a single person effortlessly, if I remember correctly. How quaint. The Americans and the Russians can demolish whole cities with just one bomb. The Nazis nearly destroyed my country through air raids. That’s how my husband died. Outside in the wrong place at the wrong time. My son died in Caen just a day before the battle’s end. And with the cancer, I’m unlikely to live more than another three years. We have no family. I may not like your kind, but I won’t have my grandson left to rot in one of London’s illustrious orphanages. 

I’m sorry, he says again. We’ll take good care of him. 

You best see that you do. He’s exceptional. It’s a miracle, considering what a nasty little bitch his mother was. If he’s even half as good at magic as he is at his ordinary education, I’m certain he’ll be top of his class within the month. 

I am sure. Has he demonstrated magic before?

Of course. He’s exceptional. Several of his teachers are already salivating over the idea of what he’ll achieve one day. We let him experiment. How were we to know there was a magical school? His mother clearly never attended. 

Is his mother the reason you dislike ‘my kind,’ Mrs Riddle?

Oh, yes. It’s the sort of thing you never hear about happening to men, if you understand my meaning. Positively beastly. There was a wedding and all, and by God’s grace, she had the decency to die in childbirth. Broke her curse. Tom was hardly past twenty. The whole village thought he’d leave the baby at some orphanage in London. They all knew he’d been bewitched, you understand. Judged him hard when he chose not to blame his son for his mother’s actions, and judgement’s judgement, so it wasn’t long until they moved to London. And then the Krauts declared war and started dropping bombs, and we allowed the House to become a convalescent home and followed them, but Thomas died in Kensington because the sirens were faulty and he forgot the milk, and the War Office conscripted Tom, despite him raising his son alone, and now the Russians and the Americas both have their fingers on the triggers of weapons that can destroy the world. Yours, mine. Does it matter if we all breathe the same air? But perhaps it does, or your lot would have stepped in and stopped those men from discovering how to split the atom. I used to think magic made people careless. Now I know it’s simply that the human default is wickedness. Forbidden fruit, thy name is Eve and all. Atoms, love spells, apples. Who cares if Tommy has magic? If it offers him even a modicum of protection against nuclear power, then teach him how. Does that answer the question to your satisfaction, Professor?

At this point, Tom Riddle’s face is doing all sorts of interesting things. He ranges, in the course of his grandmother’s rant, between openly confused to anxious to concerned and finally, back to anxious. As a boy of this age, he’s too young to understand her euphemistic approach to discussing the violation of his father, but his intense reaction to any mention of what the Muggles call The Cold War overrides any curiosity. Was it such a concern to him in Wool’s Orphanage? Albus hadn’t even known to ask. Regardless, he does know this: the point of deviation is Tom Riddle Sr’s decision to raise his son. 

That’s enough. Albus exits the memory and returns it to its rightful owner. 

The easiest way to convince Tom Riddle to talk was to always allow him to think he had control. It’s unlikely a change in upbringing shifted that aspect of his character too drastically, so in the morning, Albus allows the boy to choose where they should hold their discussion. To his surprise, the boy who might be the Dark Lord in the making sayings, “Outside.”

“After you eat,” Albus says, then retreats to fabricate an errand for Hagrid. 

Half an hour later, Albus and the boy who’s probably not the Dark Lord in the marking sit on conjured garden furniture beside the lake. “Tom,” Albus says, as the boy adjusts himself so Hogwarts is entirely at his back, “can I surmise for the state of your injuries, mention of Grindelwald, and aversion to the castle that you came here from an active attack on the school?”

“Yes,” Tom says. He blinks a few times, very quickly. “I’m very confused. While I may not be an authority on Death, I suspect you aren’t meant to begin your deathly journey in hospital. But you were quite dead. I was there.” 

“In the attack on the school?” Tom nods. “And this was because of Grindelwald?” Again, Tom confirms. “Tom, were you hit by a curse before you…arrived here?”

“Oh. That.” The boy smiles wanly and sips his tea. The movement reveals the new scar on his arm, a puckered pink, violent thing that hurts to look at. “Well. Yes. I blocked it with a Shield of my own design. I’d say I suppose that could do ‘it,’ but I still don’t know what ‘it’ is.”

“Did you recognise it?” Albus asks, though he suspects he may already know the answer. 

There’s a long, uncomfortable pause, before Tom says, “The Killing Curse.” 

“I see,” Albus says. He sips his own tea. It’s herbal, borderline sweet. 

“I’ve done it before,” the boy says, as if that’s normal. “Blocked the Killing Curse, I mean. I don’t know why this time would have resulted in me appearing in a Hogwarts empty of all but a dead man and some ghosts.” 

Because, Albus thinks, you’ve never blocked such a curse cast by the Elder Wand. “I do see how that could lead you to the conclusion that you’re dead,” he says aloud, “though I assure you, you’re quite alive. What year did you come from?”

To the boy’s credit, the question doesn’t appear to come as a shock. “Nineteen fifty-four,” he says. “It was the second of July.” 

So, he’s seventeen, then, but has not yet finished his Hogwarts education. “It’s now the third of July,” Albus tells him, “nineteen ninety-eight. You come, I believe, from a very different nineteen fifty-four than the one I lived.”

The boy looks a little green around the metaphorical gills. How expressive he is! A teenage Voldemort’s every expression was approximately as real as a Dionysian theatre mask; this Tom Riddle is not overt , perhaps, in advertising his emotional devastation, but the threads of it that he reveals do surely appear to be sincere. 

He sets down his teacup. “I had hoped you wouldn’t say that,” he says. “I concluded that this morning, but it isn’t possible.”

“Recent research indicates it is, I’m afraid.”

“Does recent research indicate how I might return?”

Chagrined, Albus admits he hadn’t found anything of the sort last night. “It may exist,” he says, “though you must leave the discreet inquiries to me. The Unspeakables are very particular about timespace.”

The boy nods distractedly. “And in this…plane of existence,” he says, gesturing vaguely at nothing, “you don’t like me?”

“Didn’t, I’m afraid,” Albus says, as he pours himself more tea, “nor did you particularly like me. Though you’re nothing like your counterpart. It’s quite refreshing, really. Does the ‘Chamber of Secrets’ hold meaning to you?”

“No,” says Tom. “Unless, is that the room on the seventh floor?” 

“That’s the Room of Requirements,” Albus says, startled. He had always assumed Voldemort never learned of the room, but perhaps it might be worth checking it out after all. “It refers to Salazar Slytherin’s hidden chambers. Only his true heir can open it.” 

Tom delicately raises a brow. “With a Parseltongue lock?” he says. “I suppose the Other Me went looking for this place, then. Was he a Slytherin, so he assumed that made him heir?”

 “You weren’t a Slytherin?” It seems prudent not to mention that Voldemort just was the heir, no assumption needed. 

“I’m a Ravenclaw,” he says, with something nearing a smile. “I’m a Prefect. I’ll be—”

He stops. 

For a moment, Albus simply watches the boy stare out across the lake, before he says, “The version of you that I knew lived his entire childhood in an orphanage in London, including the summers between term. Grindelwald never attacked Hogwarts in fifty-four. In fact, I duelled and defeated him in fifty-five. Clearly, I’m very much alive. But before I tell you more, I need to know more about you.” 

Tom looks at him with such guileless, innocent trust that it’s heady. “All right,” the boy says. “I suppose I’ll start at the beginning.”

When Tom was three, the Nazis started dropping bombs on Britain. His grandfather died within the first month. He was not the only magical child in the nation to start exhibiting accidental magic as a direct result of the stress, exhaustion, and abject terror, but he might be the only one who began learning to control it because he feared that should he not be able to protect his family, he’d be shipped off to the country like his schoolmates. He did not want to return to Little Hangleton; Little Hangleton did not want him. 

His father encouraged his learning, and tried—often successfully—to help by extrapolating the latest educational and psychological theories from scholastic texts he purchased with his Oxford connection. The Riddles hadn’t known of Hogwarts, but were aware, however peripherally, of a magical community that they didn’t want finding out about Tom. But then his father died, and his grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the letter came. Do you want to go? his grandmother had asked, after reading over the letter, and he’d answered, Not particularly. Do you think I should? 

She did, which isn’t surprising. She was usually right about these things.

And so Dumbledore came. His visit to the townhouse was uninspiring, but he accompanied them to Diagon Alley, where he introduced Tom to magical books and owl post and potions, as well as his wand, which happens to hold a core from Dumbledore’s own phoenix. He explained about the train and the Sorting and the Houses, but Tom was very disappointed to learn about the qualities of Gryffindor. I won’t be in your House, sir, he said. I’m still scared all the time. It gets inside you, you see, he didn’t say at the time. All that fear—of the sirens, of being trapped underground, of the blackouts. He was afraid of loud noises and tight spaces and the dark and, most of all, of dying. Death, to him, was surely one endless Blitz. 

Dumbledore said that any House was a good house, and that even if Tom wasn’t his, he should feel free to reach out whenever he needed. 

Ultimately, Tom was Sorted in Ravenclaw. He excelled. By the end of the year, several of his results were record-breaking. Sure, there were a pack of Slytherin boys determined to ruin his life because of it, but Slughorn’s blatant favouritism largely forced them to pull their punches, Flea was always ready to throw one of his own in his best friend’s defense, and Mia seemed to like patching up cuts and bruises, so it was manageable. Flea as Fleamont and Mia as in Euphemia. Of the Potters and the Peverells, respectively. Close inter-House relationships are unusual, but they made it work (quite possibly because Dumbledore never minded if Tom spent far too much time in the Gryffindor Common Room). 

They were at the school, too, when Grindelwald attacked, and Grindelwald caught Tom on the outs because the sight of Flea on his knees clutching Mia’s body was distracting, and —

Well, in his third year, his grandmother died. He was allowed a week’s absence to return to London and settle his affairs. Flea’s father came with him. The next summer, Tom spent in the Wye Valley on the Potter estate. He had intended to return for this summer and the summer after that, before following through on a promise to his Muggle family and attending Oxford. It’s as good a plan as any; he knows he wants to teach DADA one day, but Dumbledore says the minimum hiring age at Hogwarts is twenty-four. 

But to return to the topic at hand: it was during his time with the Potters that Grindelwald reappeared on British soil. Bobbit, the Muggle Studies professor, theorised that it had something to do with Stalin’s death, but Tom never saw the connection. Regardless of the reason, the fact remained that he held The Prophet at wand-point and forced them to run a front page article publicly challenging Dumbledore to a duel. For whatever reason (Tom suspects Ministry involvement), Dumbledore ignored it. Months passed when nothing happened. It was even said he had called Grindelwald’s bluff. 

The attack on Hogwarts was ten months later. It started the last day of the term, as the students were leaving and the wards were at their weakest. And rest? Tom’s not ready to talk about it yet, so tit-for-tat, he thinks. He’s told more upfront than he’s used to telling, so he deserves the same in kind. 

Dumbledore indulges Tom with the tale, if the word “indulge” could dare be used for the nightmarish reality the man bears before him. How was Tom, in any version of himself, a hypocritical, anti-Muggle blood purist Dark Wizard who murdered his best friends’ son and daughter-in-law, all because some Muggle orphanage was terrible? It belies belief. Good and bad is a bullshit binary, he’s always thought, but while he knows he’s not a paragon of virtue, he can’t imagine ever becoming the magical version of bloody Hitler with a murder spree that probably began at the age of fourteen. 

Merlin’s pants, he wishes he had some of Flea’s fire whisky just about now. Even war might be preferable to this. “That’s not me” is all he can think to say, once Dumbledore is done. 

“I can see that,” his mentor, who he saw brutally killed just yesterday, answers. Grindelwald hadn’t used Avada Kedavra. In fact, Tom had the impression that the immolation was a mistake, not deliberate irony. “The differences between yourself and Lord Voldemort are nothing short of miraculous. Unfortunately, this does mean we should have a frank discussion about what we need to do. You’re here. There’s a distinct possibility that your continued presence here is permanent, particularly as gaining entry to the Department of Mysteries is inadvisable with your blood record being what it is. But then, you haven’t completed your schooling. Faking OWL scores is remarkably easy, but that’s not so with NEWTs. I can offer you a place for your seventh year at Hogwarts with a clever cover story and a false name, but if you’d like to try your hand with Muggle schooling instead, I’m sure we can find a way to set that up as well. Take a day. Consider your options seriously.”

 So Tom takes the day. 

In the morning, he disappears into the dungeons, where he raids the Potions stores and brews himself a Calming Draught for the first time in a year as he considers how Flea had just draped an arm around his shoulders, saying, don’t be such a git, Riddle, when the doors to the Great Hall burst into splinters. He considers the woman he killed, before she could do in that eleven-year-old, except then the Fiendfyre came and burned up all the injured in the Great Hall anyway. Two days. No one slept for any of it, unless they were dead, just like in Dad’s letters to Grandma about the front, the ones he wasn’t meant to read. Tom considers Dumbledore, caught in the fire, burning, and the Avada Kedavra Grindelwald dodged out of sheer dumb luck, and that Tom still could have won in the end after all, if only the man hadn’t been a cheating prick who broke from their impromptu duel to aim his curse at Flea’s back—

Tom skips lunch. By the early afternoon, he’s staring at his Common Room’s enchanted ceiling as he (calmly) considers the nature of fear. He’s never mastered banishing a boggart—he’s not even the only Muggle-raised student who can claim this is the case—and while he can technically cast a Patronus , he’s always secretly doubted he’d be able to if faced with a real Dementor. What shape, he wonders, would his boggart take now? Perhaps it’s still the very unoriginal form of blown up corpses. His own, his family’s, his friends. But it’s not as if he ever conceived this as a possibility, and it’s certainly worse. To be stuck here (and he is stuck, he knows he is, in the same way he always knows the answers on an exam or that the sky is blue or the Nazi were evil) is like being dead, with his life trapped behind an unseen veil, but at the same time, his body and mind have the audacity to keep living in world where he’s the villain. 

While he’s always wanted fame, he intended it to be for cutting-edge research, like finding the cure to lycanthropy or freeing the house elves or something. Not mass murder. 

By early evening, he’s (calmly) considering known and unknown variables. Inevitably, everything here is, to some degree, an unknown. However, the Muggle world always advances at a much faster rate, as they actually believe in technological innovation. Clearly, the Wixen world still hasn’t even adapted to trousers, so it’s likely not much else has changed, either. 

“I’ll finish at Hogwarts,” he says at sunset, when Dumbledore asks again. They’re in the Ravenclaw Common Room, where Tom will have to sleep tonight. “I suppose I can always continue with the original plan. I imagine transfiguring Hogwarts transcripts into Muggle ones is as simple now as it was in my time.”

“Quite so,” Dumbledore says. He smiles. His eyes twinkle. How he manages that, Tom will never know. “We do need a story to explain your sudden existence and transfer. It wouldn’t do for you to stay here for the summer. Rubeus Hagrid is the gameskeeper, and I have no doubt he’ll remember your face.”

Tom blinks. “The Gryffindor spider boy?” he says. Somehow, this might be one shock too many. “How is he—was he not expelled here?”

“I dare say he was,” says Dumbledore, just as surprised, “after he was framed for a crime he didn’t commit. ‘Spider boy?’”

Repressing a shudder, Tom says, “He’d raised an Acromantula. It escaped. His dormmates suffered for it.” Joey Trent died for it, when the demented creature ate his face, but even Tom has limits on what he can discuss without feeling queasy. 

“Oh” is all Dumbledore says to that and moves on quickly. “Well, I have plans to travel for research this summer. I strongly recommend you come.”

“All right,” Tom says. He’s never been outside of Britain, so that’s nice enough, even if spending weeks for a version of his favourite professor who doesn’t trust him sounds absolutely barmy. “As long as it isn’t Germany. Or the USSR.”

“There is no USSR,” Dumbledore says. “Hasn’t been for several years. No, my research calls me to Shanghai.”

“China? What for?”

There he goes again, twinkling. “Why, Tom,” he says. “Dragons.” 

Dragon pox , specifically, Tom discovers. Western dragons and Eastern dragons are markedly different, so the strains of the disease are different, and lately, a hybrid’s formed that’s immune to all known cures. At seventeen, Tom’s “too young” by the standards of local law to do much by way of assistance, so he spends most of his time exploring the city with a small cohort of local Muggle acquaintances who have no trouble believing he’s an ordinary sixth form student tagging along on his batty grandfather’s research trip. He likes the Bund and French Concession best, because the architecture reminds him of home, and the trees that lose their bark rather than their leaves are fascinating, but the rest is interesting as well. It’s not enough to dull the ache of losing everything, but it’s a nice distraction; he hopes fervently that the Other Him never experienced anything nearly as (dare he say it) fun , because the man didn’t deserve it. 

Dumbledore’s friend generously offered him use of her two-floor flat in Sānlín, the dullest neighbourhood of the city, where they only see each other at breakfast. Part of Tom wants to believe this is a mark of trust, but, frankly, his Dumbledore would never trust any seventeen-year-old to run around a foreign city on his own (not after Longbottom’s malfunctioning wand almost burned down Cairo last summer anyway), and this one keeps watching Tom like he’s waiting for the manifestation of megalomaniac tendencies. 

For once, Tom’s glad to disappoint. 

As a result, though, it’s a month before Dumbledore says, “I’ve discovered a case that may help craft a background for you.” 

“Oh?” Tom says, as he swirls a chopstick around in his ice coffee to integrate the milk. Even with the Cooling Charm working its magic on the balcony, it’s so bloody hot already that the thought of drinking anything colder than freezing is unimaginable. 

“In nineteen fifty-six,” Dumbledore says, “the son of a journalist from London disappeared, last seen in the French Concession, presumed dead because his mother was found dead. Margaret Ryder was a Muggle, but there’s no name listed for the father. An American wizard could work, perhaps. The identity of the murderer was never discovered. I propose that Malcom Ryder becomes Tom Malcom Ryder, a half-blood transfigured into a doll and left in a dollhouse by his private tutor, until I discovered him—you—this summer.”

Tom considers this. It’s the sort of ridiculous untruth that people will accept because no one will believe that a person would try to create a new identity based on a lie that dumb. Moreover, it’s only a couple years off from his own time, so should help explain any confusion he has about the modern world. To say it’s awfully convenient is an understatement, but after being uprooted from his life, he deserves at least this much luck. Probably. 

“It’s acceptable,” he says. “Thank you.”

“That’s good to hear,” Dumbledore says, before pausing, sipping his piping hot Earl Grey, and continuing, “The issue, however, with so directly tying you to me is that I have many enemies. They may seek you out as a means to learn more about me. How are you at Occlumency?”

“If that’s a concern,” Tom says, “you needn’t worry. I’m a—the Other You taught me himself last year.”

Clearly, depressingly shocked, Dumbledore asks, “What prompted that?” 

Tom delays in answering by drinking more coffee at once than is strictly necessary. “Grindelwald’s followers kidnapped a veritable pride of Gryffindors from Hogsmeade,” he says, as he looks across the cityscape toward the river, where barges float by on the brown water. “Visits to the village were banned from then on. There were student petitions. Eventually, Dippet decided that any student who wished to be granted visitation permission again had to achieve an acceptable level of proficiency in Legilimency and Occlumency.” 

“That’s preposterous,” says this Dumbledore, just as his Dumbledore had. “That may protect information, but it surely didn’t protect the students.” Tom shrugs. He found the whole thing a massive overreaction, right until a fragment of the broken doors hit him so hard in the head he collapsed. “Did you perhaps mean to say,” Dumbledore adds, drawing Tom away from memory lane, “that you’re a natural Legilimens?” 

Uncomfortable suddenly, Tom shifts in his seat. “I suppose.”

“And why did you not?”

Again, Tom shrugs. “Well,” he says, “bragging’s rude.”

“Bragging is rude,” Dumbledore says, with an expression Tom can’t read. “Stating a fact is not. The Other You never denied himself the opportunity to do the former, though he couched his self-flattery in calculated humility.” 

“Perhaps he learned social etiquette from a snake,” Tom says. The words leave him with a pang; Mia so recently said he must have learned flirting from  the school’s garden snakes, but she had no right to talk, as she never tried to catch the attention of someone like Kate Lovegood. She was the Head Girl in the year ahead of them, another Ravenclaw, and a pureblood. Speaking with her for more than five minutes always reminded him of his crushing sense of inadequacy. 

It sounds like the Other Him could have used that feeling. Surely, he thinks, something must account for the change beyond their childhood caregivers. 

No sooner does the thought form than he voices it. Dumbledore just stares at him consideringly over his mug for a moment before he says, “I have a theory. We can discuss it when you’re older.”

“I’m of age!” Tom says, offended. “That excuse is invalid.”

“Yet, alas,” Dumbledore says, “there are topics I find I cannot comfortably discuss—”

“So it’s my mother?”

Another pause. “I had hoped you were ignorant of the circumstances of your birth,” he says. “I’m rather sorry that you’re not.”

Tom presses his lips together. “I’ve known the circumstances to varying degrees since primary. It was impossible not to know in which way Dad had been ‘bewitched’ when Professor Merrythought’s practical demonstration of the Imperius Curse failed to elicit a result from me.” 

“Ah,” Dumbledore says, as if all his suspicions were confirmed. It’s insufferable. “Yes, that would account for it. Partly, anyway, I suspect. Here, Merope Gaunt used a love potion.” 

He says this as if he expects Tom to be well-versed in how the myriad of side effects that appear in a child conceived by magical coercion may different depending on method. Of course, he’s aware of his own deficits, from nosedives into interparoxysmal phenomenology if he feels he’s losing control of a situation yet dichotomous suggestibility when stressed to his inconsistent mood to how often he finds himself wrongfooted in social interactions. If Flea and Mia hadn’t decided to bully him into friendship during their first trip on the Hogwarts Express, it’s doubtful he would have developed a relationship with anyone that went deeper than study partner. Certainly, he can be charming, and has always managed to craft a layer of likeability for himself, but there’s probably some truth in Ethel Steward’s drunken claim that no one would even notice him if he “weren’t walking around with the face of a Victorian doll.” Outside of Ravenclaw, where everyone is too obsessed with studying and scores to pay real attention to other people, he would have been fucked. 

For fourteen years, he just assumed he was weird. Then he was a duck and Imperio was water, and he did what he always does: went to the library. 

When it must be clear he has no intention to respond, Dumbledore says, “The effect of a love potion is more…potent. A child conceived under its influence has great difficulty, if not the inability, to feel either empathy or love.” 

Tom snorts. “I’d no idea there was a hierarchy to these things. Glad to know I’m the result of the ‘less bad’ method.” 

“It’s all quite horrendous,” Dumbledore says, suddenly haggard. “This is why by ‘older,’ I admittedly meant never.” 

“I’m meeting friends,” Tom says, standing, before he does anything dumb. With a wave of his hand, his empty mug is once against the other half of the chopstick pair. “We’re going to Suzhou. I’ll be back late.” 

Dumbledore lets him go without more than an obligatory reminder to stay safe. 

Though Tom could Apparate to the railway station, he walks to the metro and hops on the train to allow himself time to think. He can’t actually fault this Dumbledore, he concedes, for wanting to avoid the topic just as much as Tom prefers to ignore it. Dealing with his “oddities” has always been a complicated process, mostly facilitated through Dad and his grandparents’ trial and error in childhood, and, during the chaotic lead-up to OWLs, a brief flirtation with a dual Calming Draught-Wide Wake Potion addiction Mia caught and nipped at the root. Tom couldn’t possibly manage a shop, let alone lead Magical Nazis. It fucks him up a bit to learn the tipping point different is likely his mother’s choice approach to rape. 

Bloody fucking fuck—

He calls on his Occlumency and slams a wall down in front of any thought that formed from this morning’s discussion. These are later worries. 

Today, he has a garden to visit. 

Tom Riddle, Albus decides, is an unexpected, but nevertheless, not unwanted gift. Within a week, he begins to resign his every plan to include the boy. However shall Voldemort survive, if paired against Albus’ wisdom and intellect, the love-protection built into Harry Potter’s blood, and this Tom Riddle’s malleable, yet similarly casual genius? 

A week before term begins, they return to England. Dumbledore grants the boy a generous allowance and organises him a room where he can stay alone in the Leaky Cauldron—a display of trust in return for the faith he shows Albus based on a doppelganger relationship he’s too young to separate—before alerting the Ministry of unusual events leading to the last-minute transfer. Transfers aren’t unheard of, though they are rare, and for it to happen in the student’s seventh year is unprecedented, but Cornelius is so gullible he swallows the lie with the ease Albus anticipated. He thanks the man with ego-stoking platitudes, then moves on with his preparations, which include explaining the situation to the steadily arriving faculty. 

Neither Minerva nor Severus believe him for a minute, but that’s all right. Minerva may recognise Tom’s face, which isn’t quite all right, but she’s discreet enough that it’s doubtful she’ll ever mention her suspicions. 

On the first, the students arrive. Tom stands out among the first years, attracting every eye in the room for his height even before the closest students notice his face. Charlie Weasley sends him a thumbs up and a grin from the Gryffindor table, Albus notes, but as a secondary observation to the Sorting Hat’s uninspiring song. At its end, Minerva starts the roll. 

Tom is Sorted last, after a brief introduction. He walks up the steps with confidence and, right before he turns to sit and face the other students, meets Albus’ eye and graces him with a smile that might be called cheeky. 

Minerva drops the Hat on his hat. There’s a pause. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty. Then:

“Gryffindor!”

Chapter Text

Dumbledore neglected to mention that Flea and Mia had a grandson. 

“Ah, mate,” Charlie says, when he clocks Tom’s surprise over breakfast. It’s the third day of term, which is NEWT students’ first Transfiguration class. That was enough to ruin his morning even before he heard Tonks mention the name Potter. “Sorry. Keep forgetting you’re, uh. Well. That you are. But, yeah. Harry Potter. Boy Who Lived. He’ll be in Hogwarts the year after next.”

Is this another instance of I’ll tell you when you’re older but never? Quite possibly. He sips his coffee and contemplates whether he’s angry about the secrecy. 

No, he decides. He’s too knackered for anger. “Why’s he the Boy Who Lived?”

Several students look over. Tonks, a Hufflepuff who forgets her own House table exists, openly grimaces. Her hair shifts from bubblegum pink to dreary brown. “It’s You-Know-Who,” she says, because of course it is. “He killed the boy’s parents, then turned his wand on Harry. Curse rebounded, killed him instead. Him meaning You-Know-Who. Word is the Curse left Harry with a scar like a lightning bolt on his forehead. Whole thing’s mad, innit? But, nothing much sounds mad to you these days, I reckon.” 

Tom forces himself to smile. “I accepted the world’s mad when I realised we’re all still using quills,” he says, rather than freak out over the list of things worth freaking out over. “That was bonkers enough in the fifties.” 

“And the clothes,” says Joanna Stewart, Tonks’ Muggleborn girlfriend. “Don’t ever forget about the trousers.” 

“True,” he agrees. “We mustn’t forget about those.” 

Charlie wants a head start to Transfiguration, he says, so Tom gladly leaves behind his empty mug and uneaten toast, and flees from the hall. “McGonagall’s right strict,” Charlie says, as he “leads” Tom to the classroom. It’s exhausting, pretending that he doesn’t know this castle intimately, nor that around every corner lurks the memory of death and pain. “Not the sort to play favourites, either. Not like Snape—you’ll meet him later. But she’ll like you.”

“Why?” Tom says, with just a touch of sarcasm. “Because I’m such a lovely case study?” 

“You said it,” Charlie answers, grinning, “not me.”

Thanks to a deliberate information leak, some tabloid journalist published an article about The Dollhouse Boy a few days before the start of term, outing Tom M Ryder’s identity. The resulting fascination his classmates have with him is tiring, but the sensationalising of the story lends it a certain credibility it otherwise lacked. At least the Gryffindors, who are all endearingly stupid regardless of their actual intellect, have the decency to be upfront with their questions; everyone else just whispers behind their hands like they think he can’t hear. 

In a couple years, Harry Potter’s experience will likely be worse. Where is he now? Somewhere nice, Tom hopes. No descendent of Flea and Mia could possibly be a terrible child, even if it happens that he inherited his grandmother’s mischievous streak. Perhaps Tom could check on him at the end of term, before going on to do whatever it is that comes next. Oxford, preferably, or another Muggle uni. He’d like the freedom to choose between worlds, since they are so carefully segregated, and he’d have the summer to catch up on all the schooling he missed. His main deficits are in history and adapting to new technologies, but that’s not hard.

McGonagall enters the room last with a swish of her shimmery robs. Merlin, is she old. Wasn’t she in her forties when Tom started school? It gives him a headache to wonder how these people aren’t retired. Her, Dumbledore. How ancient does a wix need to be before they decide to follow the pensioner way and move to take out holiday shares on the French Riviera?

Roll call passes without incident, likely because she never looks up from her paper—and she’d already done her doubletake at the Sorting, anyway. Twice, even, since she was clearly expecting him to be a Slytherin. He wishes he could tell her that Slytherin hadn’t even been a suggestion, that the Hat claimed he is the truest Ravenclaw, but agreed to a Gryffindor placement regardless because it’s secretly a trickster. If he’s in Gryffindor, Dumbledore will trust him, he’d thought. The Hat just laughed and did it. 

For the first ten minutes, McGonagall lectures, and for the next five, she demonstrates Inanimatus Conjurus, and Conjures a diary, an inkwell, and a quill. They sit in a neat row on her desk, housed in a streak of sunlight falling through the tall windows. “You will practice individually,” she says, as she tucks her wand into her sleeve. “Conjure three inanimate objects of your choosing. The simpler the better, for your first time. Raise your hand if you have questions. Begin.”

Distractedly, wordlessly, Tom Conjures a set of pens, a Gryffindor scarf, and a notebook. As busy as he is watching two red squirrels chase each other up an alder, he doesn’t notice McGonagall until her sudden intake of breath. “Mr…Ri–yder,” she says, in an odd sort of tone that immediately draws everyone’s attention, not just his. “Well done. Did you learn this previously, perhaps?”

What a tactful way to ask if the private tutor who’s meant to have attempted to have murdered him actually taught him anything of use first. “Yes,” he lies, or half-lies, since it’s true this isn’t the first time he’s cast the spell, but he also doubts she’s asking if he taught himself. In truth, he learned it in his fourth year out of sheer boredom. 

She relaxes fractionally, as if reassured that the mysterious boy with the face of her old student isn’t the same person after all. “Five points to Gryffindor,” she says. “You may start on your homework—” She glances at the pens on his desk. “—with any writing implement you see fit to use.” 

That’s certainly an improvement. Or is it pity? He’ll choose to believe it’s progress.

McGonagall avoids looking at him for the rest of class, which he accepts as part of his life now, though he liked when he was her teacher’s pet. Worse, though, is jumping from Transfiguration to Double Potions, which he used to consider fun. Slughorn was one of the few professors who encouraged creative thinking, which meant Tom could do whatever he wanted. In contrast, Snape turns out to be a greasy-haired, by-the-book irritant who’s happy to play the part of the troll in the dungeon. Thank Merlin he was never in charge of Mia’s marks; unlike Slughorn, he doesn’t seem the type to extend a little extra patience to a student just because they’re dyslexic. 

“Why’s he such a bastard?” Tom asks when he, Tonks, and Charlie finally escape the stuffy confines of the Potions classroom and return to the lovely aboveground world for tea. They join Charlie and Tonks’ other friends: Joanna, Iban, and some sixth year everyone calls Toad. “‘Only those with the mental fortitude withstand such stress as the NEWTs and their prep will bring shall succeed.’” It’s like a social experiment for Galton’s theory of genius. 

Charlie removes a couple slices of Welsh rarebit from a nearby tray as he says, “Just the way he is. Professional wankstain. But, you know. Makes complete sense, doesn’t it? Rumour has it he used to be a Death Eater, according to Dad, so ‘course he’d have a Slytherin preference. Anyone explain to you what the Death Eaters are yet, mate?”

“Magical British Nazis?”

“What?”

“Exactly that,” says Joanna, without looking up from her DADA textbook. She’s sitting a few seats down from Charlie, munching on a sausage roll. 

“You’ve lost me,” Tom says, as he stirs milk into his midday coffee. “Why does some professor having a sordid past with a fascist cult mean he’s a massive prick to anyone who’s not sleeping below the lake?”

Iban stops chewing on his custard tart to turn his attention to Tom. “It’s sad how clueless you are, mate,” the other boy says. “Look, the War destroyed Slytherin House. The portraits here all talk about the death of inter-House unity and all, so it’s not hard to date it. Basically, You-Know-Who found his first followers in prominent pureblood families, who tended to get Sorted into Slytherin. Used to be there wasn’t much wrong with that. But then the adults started working on their kids, who could spread the ideology to other kids in the dorms, and there. You got the next generation of obedient little followers to perpetuate their bullshit.”

After a moment of just allowing that to sink in, Tom glances at Joanna, who finally has looked up from her book, and says, “So they’re the Hitler Youth?”

“You got it on the head.”

“And there’s never been a restructuring of the system?”

With a sigh, Tonks ladles out a spoonful of rumbledethumps and dumps it on Tom’s plate. “At least the food is good,” she says. “Eat up. We’ve Defense next. That means practicals.” 

Defense practicals are, as ever, laughably easy, even if he does spend the session distracted with the thought that there must be students here loyal to the idea of the Other Him because they’ve been groomed to develop blood prejudice. It’s distressing. While Lestrange and his posse were undoubtedly not nice people, it was largely because no one likes to be reminded that they’re second-rate, not that Tom was a half-blood. Still, Abraxas Malfoy and Flea could be thrashing each other outside Binns’ room one day and taking bets on whether Aunty So-and-So was going to get sloshed within the first hour at this year’s Yule Party the next. If anything, in his time it was the Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs who had the most significant issues with one another, but that was due to emphasis on individualism vs collectivism inherent in their natures. They were naturally opposed, like some microcosmic example of the Cold War, even if most wixen had little idea as to what that meant. 

Had Grindelwald’s politics begun a process of separation in Tom’s time, in Tom’s world, and he simply hadn’t noticed? No. Impossible. Absolute rubbish. He watched Abraxas burn—

Tom bricks up a wall over the memory. Tucks it away in a file cabinet he cobbled together with Occlumency, never to see the light of day. And when Charlie asks if he wants to join the friend group in the library to study, Tom smiles and agrees, docile as a lamb. 

Between Occlumency and the Calming Draughts Madam Pomfrey so kindly prescribes, Tom survives the first term of his seventh year in daze. Dorothea Clearwater, the year’s previous top-scorer, despises him from the very bottom of her overachieving heart, and neither Snape nor McGonagall trust his ridiculous cover story, but everything is still wonderful. Perfectly fine. Tom is doing great. He manages to eat sometimes without remembering how half the school population, including Professor Dumbledore, burned alive in the Great Hall, nor that he accidentally-on-purpose killed three people or fell out of the Astronomy tower or saw his best friend stab herself under the influence of the Imperius Curse, or about that one time she and he and their best friend were all rat-faced on firewhiskey and lost their virginity to each other in the Room of Requirements. Clearly, he’s managing not to remember any of this very well, because he only stays awake for days occasionally, and hasn’t once missed a class, and all his acquaintances haven’t realised that can’t bring himself to think of them as friends. 

Everything is fine. 

He’s fine. 

No, Professor Dumbledore, he’s not taking the Calming Draught because he feels as if he’s losing control over his own life (and definitely, certainly not making illicit Wide Awake Potions to negate the side effects whenever he has practicals or an assignment due), but just to handle normal NEWT stress, which is obviously why he accepts when Charlie asks if Tom would like to leave for winter holiday. 

Or, not quite. What Charlie originally says: “Want to come home with me for Yule, Tom?” And Tom hesitates. Home is, to him, the Potter estate, now that his family is gone. So Charlie, seeing that reluctance, decides to be a decent bloke, and says, “Or we could invite ourselves along to Iban and Toad’s Lads’ Holiday. Take a wander between Wixen Yule and Muggle Christmas in London. Could be fun.” 

To that, Tom agrees. He might be fine, but he still won’t pass up the chance to escape Hogwarts for a fortnight or so.

Why that means he spends Christmas Eve in the London Zoo, he hasn’t the foggiest idea, other than it involved Charlie and Iban’s introduction to gin. They use Disillusionment Charms to slip in without paying, as the price for admission is so high it’s an insult to socialist principles, and meander along the paved paths without paying much attention to the animals. A cold sun casts its light across the strollers and all the patrons’ shiny winter coats, and there’s a nip in the air like it might soon snow, though Toad insists it won’t. Charlie and Iban are too hungover to contribute much by way of their opinions; they failed the bet about their capacity to hold their liquor, so they’re slumming it like proper, regretful Muggles today, complete with sunglasses.

They lose the last of their dignity around noon and Apparate back to the Leaky Cauldron for a cure while Toad disappears into the gift shop to buy a stuffed toy for his sister. “You don’t need to torture yourself, Ryder,” says Toad, laughing, when Tom’s face pinches at the thought of entering the child-infested nightmare that is a gift shop. “Meet you at the Penguin Beach in a half hour, yeah?”

Yeah, says Tom, which is how he finds himself grousing about a mutual sense of homesickness with a Brazilian boa constrictor. 

“You can understand him too?”

Tom jumps. The boa laughs. When he glances left and down (way down), he finds a bespectacled boy who, apart from the glasses and the Avada Kedavra-green of his eyes, looks stunningly like a miniature version of Tom himself.

“Pardon?” Tom pushes away from the glass he’d been leaning against and takes in more of the boy’s appearance beyond the first glance: whirlwind hair the same jet black as his own, wide-set large eyes, turned-up nose, tapered chin, a scrawny body drowning in too-large, patched-up clothes. He can’t be older than eight. In Morrigan’s name, what is doing by himself? And how did he get past Tom’s Notice Me Not spell? 

The boy glances between him and the boa. “The snake,” he says, in a quiet little voice. “I’ve never met anyone else who can talk with them before. I used to be friends with the one in the garden before Aunt Petunia killed it.”

“Er,” Tom says, “it’s a very rare ability. Do you live with your aunt?”

“Yeah,” says the boy, who should really know not to share that sort of information with strangers. “We’re here for my cousin’s birthday. He was banging on the glass before. I wanted to tell the snake sorry for him.”

“You are not obliged to apologise for the rudeness of others, boy,” hisses the snake, as he slithers over the rocks in his cage. “Two speakers in one day. Are there more of you?”

“Only us two, I’m afraid,” Tom says. “I’ll try to come back this summer.”

The boy looks at him again, just as someone opens and closes the front door. A draught billows through the otherwise warm, still air of the Reptile House and ruffles the boy’s hair, revealing a lightning-shaped scar struck over his brow. 

Too late to stop himself, Tom lets slip, “You’re Harry Potter,” as his perception of the boy’s appearance shifts. It’s not that he looks like Tom. He looks like Mia. By some freak accident of genetics, the two of them could have passed as siblings. It was actually why she decided to talk to him on the train that first day; she wanted to know who this mysterious relative was. After they sorted out that he looked very much like his Muggle family, it became something of a joke. The Peverells, people called them, probably because associating Tom with a pureblood family of good standing made his achievements easier to swallow. It might even be true, to some extent or another. Purebloods do love their incest.

Now, her grandson squints at him. “How do you know?” he asks, finally wary.

“I’m your cousin,” Tom says impulsively. Dumbledore’s going to murder him. 

“I don’t have another cousin,” Harry says, folding his very skinny arms. “Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon said all my other family’s dead.”

“I’ve been very sick for a long time,” Tom lies. “They may not have known of me. But I’m better now.” He sticks out his hand. “Tom Ryder. We’re cousins on your Peverell side.” 

“What’s a Peverell?” Harry says, even as he shakes Tom’s hand. This is too much trust much too fast. Awfully convenient, yes, but he would’ve run straight to his gran if some random person started talking to him like this. 

“Your grandmother’s family,” he says, as he tries to gain his bearings. The clock’s ticking until he needs to rendezvous with Toad and the others. “Euphemia Peverell. She was from Monmouthshire. Where are your guardians, Harry? You really shouldn’t be alone.”

Harry’s bright smile disappears in an instant, which is very, very bad. “In the gift shop,” he says, scrunching his nose. “They’re buying Dudley his last Christmas present.”

With a glance at the snake, Tom asks, “Does ‘Yule’ mean anything to you, Harry?”

“Like the Yule log?” 

Oh no. How’s the child who, apparently, is the most celebrated figure in the Wixen world, ignorant of something as basic as Yule? It’s one thing not to know what Parsletongue is, but entirely another for a descent of the Potters and the Peverells to celebrate Christmas, which means Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are Muggles who either don’t know, or haven’t bothered to tell Harry what he is. He’s also nine, by Tom’s calculations, and alone in a crowded zoo, which is certainly the sort of place where a child-snatcher would look for their next victim. He’s the type of skinny Tom and all his neighbours were when they were living on rations. His clothes are ill-maintained hand-me-downs, and his coat is too thin for the weather. His glasses are held together with tape. When he moves to push them up, his sleeves slide down to reveal a bruise on his wrist the approximate size of a man’s first. 

If Tom wasn’t still in school, he might have kidnapped the boy right there. Unfortunately, he doubts he could hide Harry in the Room of Requirements for long, and anyway, that’s more likely to land him in Azkaban than in a position to offer any real assistance. He’s not a real Gryffindor. He doesn’t need to act like one. 

“Harry,” he says, as he crouches down at the boy’s level. “I would like you to be honest with me. I’ll know if you’re lying. Do you like living with your aunt and uncle?”

For a very long while, Harry simply looks at him, calculating what to say, which is fine, because it allows Tom the time to glean the flashes of the boy’s life that skim on surface level of his thoughts: nights spent on a sleeping bag under the stairs, almost always eating last despite cooking for the others, the constant cleaning and the gardening, his cousin chasing him and his uncle knocking him around. Tom also gets a name. Dursley. Tell the truth, he thinks sternly, so Harry says, “No.”

And that’s that.

“All right,” Tom says with a nod. “I need until July. I’m sorry it can’t be sooner. But I’ll come get you then. For now, as much as I’m loath to say it, let’s find your aunt.”

Bewildered, Harry says, “Come get me? You mean—you mean, you’ll take me away? Forever? Why?”

Why indeed. Tom is good at many things, but he doubts parenting is one of them. “Because we’re cousins,” he says, “and you deserve to be happy. Now say goodbye to the boa constrictor. We can visit him again this summer.” 

Perhaps, Tom thinks wistfully, as Harry does say goodbye and the snake says farewell in return, they can buy their own snake. Theirs, of course, because it’s happening. Somehow. Tom will manage. He isn’t certain how yet, just that he will, because Flea and Mia’s grandchild—nor any child, actually—should be utilised as a real-life Cinderella, sans Prince Charming and the fairy godmother and the ball.

They find the family of three and a tall, willowy boy who can’t possibly be related to any of them exploring zip-up options in, ironically, the reptile section of the gift shop. Harry’s grip on Tom’s hand tightens just a little when he says, in his best imitation of his grandmother and father’s RP, “Mr and Mrs Dursley, is it?”

In perfect unison, a man nearly as wide as he is tall and a scarecrow of a woman turn; the boys, one of whom is the man’s double in width though not in features, follow half a second later. The adults appraise the situation, with that being their unwanted little urchin clinging to the hand of a teenage boy who, undoubtedly, looks every bit as exhausted as he feels. Impeccable hair and neat clothes can only take a person far, especially in winter, when a coat tends to hide one’s button-down. 

After a short pause, Petunia Dursley smiles. The expression is simpering. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you for returning our dear Harrykins to us. We were beside ourselves.” 

“You’re a very bad liar, Mrs Dursley,” Tom says, almost boredly. Harry stiffens. Vernon Dursley’s face flushes an alarming shade of purple. “Oh, calm down. Best you watch your blood pressure. I’m Harry’s cousin.” 

“Harry’s got no family,” Dudley says, like it’s a familiar refrain. He grins. “His whole family died—”

“His parents,” Tom corrects. “Tragically, you’re still here. Pop off, Dudley, Dudley’s friend. The adults are talking.” 

Dudley’s friend gapes. Though Dudley starts rearing up for a tantrum, his father assuages the outburst by removing thirty quid from his wallet and stuffing it in the boy’s impressively large hand. There’s something pig-like about the child, which is fascinating, as his mother so strongly resembles a horse. 

Even with the money in hand, though, he doesn’t leave. “Harry gets to stay,” he says. “That’s not fair.” 

“Take him with you,” Mr Dursley says. “Now.” 

When Harry hesitates, Tom glances down at him and says very pointedly, “It’s quite all right, Harry. They won’t hurt you.” 

“They would never, ” says Mrs Dursley, lying right through her horsey mouth. 

“Not in such a public place,” Tom answers. No one much likes that answer, but the boys, including Harry, move further down the line of zip-ups. “I’ll come to collect my cousin in July. He’ll be there, healthy and cared for, when I’m ready.”

“How do we know you are who you say you are?” Mr Dursley says, narrowing his eyes. “We can’t simply release our dear nephew to any stranger with black hair—”

Dryly, Tom asks, “Don’t pretend you care. My magic recognised him.” This is complete nonsense, of course, but they’ll never know. 

“If you’re really related,” Mrs Dursley says, as she draws back her shoulders, “then why haven’t you come for him earlier? The letter was quite insistent that we’re his only family.”

“I spent forty-two years as trapped as a doll in a dollhouse,” he says casually. They stare at him, aghast. “Well, I got better. ‘Cousin’ sounds nicer than ‘great-uncle.’ I’ll be back once I complete my schooling. You’re truly awful people, and you’re raising your son to be the same waste of space, but with a bit of willpower, I suspect you can tame your impulses toward cruelty for six months. Now, may I have your address, or should I ask Harry?” 

With a shaking hand (from rage, Tom suspects), Mrs Dursley draws a small address book and a pen out of her purse. She writes the address on a blank page, tears it out, and hands it over. “We never got your name,” she says, as he slides the paper into his pocket. 

 “Oh, right,” he says and smiles. “I’m Tom Riddle.” 

A brief aside: 

Harry Potter is very nearly nine and a half today. It’s his first time at the zoo. He does not like it. 

“The animals are stupid,” Dudley’s saying to Aunt Petunia as they walk toward the exit of the Reptile House. “None of them do anything.”

“Well, dear, it is winter,” Aunt Petunia answers, but not as if she cares. “Perhaps they’re just cold.”

The animals are not stupid, Harry thinks. It might not even be that they’re cold, at least in the Reptile House, which is warm and dark and slightly damp. Maybe, Harry thinks, all the animals are just sick of their cages. 

Aunt Petunia promises Dudley and Pearce more gifts from the shop, as an apology for any disappointment the lazy animals may have caused, while Harry slips back into the Reptile House. While he can’t apologise to the pretty lioness or the very cute red panda, he can say he’s sorry to that one huge snake for Dudley’s behaviour. Dudley’s banged on its glass, just like he bangs on the cupboard door. Harry doesn’t like when his cousin bangs on things, so he doubts the snake much liked it, either. 

But when he reaches the big snake’s display, there’s a dark-haired teenager leaning against the glass with his hands in his pockets, saying, “I’ll be honest, I don’t miss the food a bit,” and the snake answers, “Not so. I miss the hunt.”

Even when Harry creeps up close enough to touch the glass himself, the boy doesn’t notice him. He and the snake are still talking about food, so it takes a moment before Harry gathers the courage to ask, “You can understand him too?”

The older boy jumps. The snake laughs. When he glances down, Harry finds that he’s staring back at a distorted, older image of himself: the same hair, but pin straight and neat, eyes an odd shade of brown, not green, but similarly wide-set and large above high cheekbones. There are freckles on his nose, and he’s pale in that way that the Irish are rather than dark olive, and his coat fits him like it’s meant for someone bigger. He’s also tall, though everyone is tall to Harry, and his age is hard to guess, but Harry is generally bad at guessing ages to begin with. 

“Pardon?” says the boy as he moves away from the glass.

“The snake,” Harry says, looking from the reptilian face to the older boy. “I’ve never met anyone else who can talk with them before. I used to be friends with the one in the garden before Aunt Petunia killed it.” She crushed its head with a stone from the path, then made him bury it, even though he was crying.

“Er,” the boy says awkwardly, “it’s a very rare ability. Do you live with your aunt?”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “We’re here for my cousin’s Christmas present. He was banging on the glass before. I wanted to tell the snake sorry for him.”

“You are not obliged to apologise for the rudeness of others, boy,” hisses the snake, startling Harry. “Two speakers in one day. Are there more of you?”

“Only us two, I’m afraid,” the other boy says, which is disappointing. Harry would’ve liked to meet more people like him, though even one other is exciting. It seems like the snake is excited, too, because it rubs against the glass like a cat. “I’ll try to come back this summer.”

If only he could come back this summer, Harry thinks with no small amount of jealousy, as he glances up at the older boy again. The boy freezes. He stares. His pale face, if possible, goes even whiter. 

“You’re Harry Potter,” he says. 

Shocked, Harry answers, “How do you know?” 

“I’m your cousin,” says the boy, and bursts open Harry’s world. 

The process of Help Adopt Harry Potter begins at a cat pub in Bristol, because Toad and Iban decided their friendly holiday needed a romantic slant, and Charlie chose a change of scenery for him and Tom at random. There are far too many people, but just enough cats, so Tom easily parks himself on a corner seat at the bar, where he can pet the largest monstrosity in the room. Fluffy, pure black, and thrice the size of any cat he’s ever seen, he’s more than convinced that she deserves to be studied in Care of Magical Creatures. When he states this to Charlie, though, the other boy’s answer is to say, “No kidding,” then jump onto the complete non sequitur to ask, “Did something happen at the zoo?”

Tom looks up from the creature’s glowing yellow eyes to focus on the other boy. “What?”

“Look, Tom,” Charlie says, gesturing dangerously with his beer, “you’ve been acting odd. Odder than usual, is what I’m saying. And you’re one odd bloke, so that means a lot.” 

“I’m not odd,” Tom says. 

Charlie looks at Tom as though he’s a particularly gormless dragon hatchling. “I think you might be the smartest person I’ve ever met,” Charlie says, “but then you’ll do weird, dumb shite like only eat toast for a week, and you hate tea. What happened?”

“I met Harry Potter.” 

“What? Where—”

A little numbly, Tom nods. He’s still in shock about the whole ordeal. “He lives with his Muggle aunt and uncle,” he says. “He thinks he’s a Muggle. They hit him.” 

“This was definitely Harry Potter?” Charlie says, clearly struggling to believe it. Tom doesn’t blame him. Even in his head, it sounds made up. 

Again, he nods. “Lightning scar, right? And he looks like M—me. It’s him.” 

“What do you mean, looks like you?” 

“We’re related. Didn’t I say?”

With an indignant squawk, Charlie says, “No, you bloody well did not. How?”

“We’re both Peverells,” Tom says. It’s even true, after a fashion. After some contemplation, he was able to recall Mia’s admittedly uncomfortable explanation about how she and Flea weren’t so closely related that their future marriage could be construed as creepy by Muggle standards in any way. Though it was all very throwaway how she said, there was something about how Cadmus Peverell had a daughter who married into House Gaunt, while Ignotus’ daughter wed a Potter, but all of that was back in the thirteenth century, so what did it matter? Capitalising on a thirteenth century connection is ridiculous even for Tom, but after becoming a case study for the Multi-Worlds Theory, he thinks he might be allowed to finagle time just a bit. 

Charlie leans forward, placing his elbows on the bar, and takes a long, slow sip of his ale. “That’s a lot,” he says after a moment. “Morgana’s left tit, but it is. Okay. Will you tell Dumbledore?” 

“Yeah,” Tom says, then drinks his own beer, too, to steel himself, before continuing, “I may have told him and his aunt and uncle that I would collect him in July.” 

“You’re an idiot.” 

“I know. Utter prat.” Tom cards his fingers through his hair. “I have a scholarship to a Muggle university. Magic is good for faking perfect transcripts. But that won’t cover much, especially for two people, and I’ve no savings in Gringotts at all. But Dumbledore must know a family who can act as real guardians, yeah?” 

“Yeah, I’d imagine so,” Charlie says. “Bet my parents would, but to be honest, my almost family’s too stony-broke to take care of ourselves, let alone anyone else. Mum and Dad like to pretend otherwise, but my great-grandfather pissed away all our money in a game of bridge, so now we’re poorer than the old serfs even if we’re gentry.” He sighs, demonstrating a lifetime of disappointment in that one sound, before adding, “Still, my parents wouldn’t mind if you spent a few weeks with us, til you’re settled. We bring round friends all the time. That’s different.” 

Yes, that is the Wixen way, isn’t it? Hospitality without limits. Seems a bit wrong to take Charlie up on it, though, considering all he just said. “Thanks,” Tom says anyway. “I’ll return to Hogwarts tomorrow to talk to Dumbledore.”

It’s unusual, but not impossible, for students to return to Hogwarts midway through winter holiday, particularly those with the means to Apparate or use a portkey to deliver them to Hogsmeade. He does just that the next day, strolling through the front gates at the time they’re open for upperclassmen like himself to freely come and go from the village, before making his way to Dumbledore’s office on the third floor. He’s been here a couple times this year, so he reaches the gargoyle with ease. “Butterscotch,” he tells its grotesque stone face. “Is the Headmaster in?”

“He is,” says the gargoyle and slides aside to let Tom inside. 

By the time he reaches the top, Dumbledore already knows to expect him. “You may come through,” the headmaster calls when Tom knocks on the office’s main door. “Ah, Tom. You’ve returned earlier than expected. Would you like some tea?” 

Tom accepts the tea, but only because it would be rude to decline. It’s Earl Grey, and he hates Earl Grey, especially without lemon, but he still sits in a proffered upholstered chair and sips the bitter black tea, before he says, “I met Harry Potter.” 

“That must have been quite the shock,” Dumbledore says, as serene as ever. His robes, which are a deep evergreen, seem to glimmer gold when he moves his arms to rest on his desk. Tom, meanwhile, is still dressed like a Muggle. “I imagine you have questions.” 

“Not quite,” says Tom, then proceeds to tell the whole story. Dumbledore, at least, knows he’s a Parslemouth already. 

When he’s done, Dumbledore tilts his head a bit, as if too weary to hold it upright. “Oh, that is a problem,” he says. “I knew Petunia to be the hard sort, but I can’t say I expected that. But, you see, Tom, the issue is that as long as Harry stays there, he’s protected by blood wards. Voldemort, should he return, cannot harm him while he remains in that house.”

“They have him locked in a cupboard most days,” Tom says, incredulous, “deny him food and water, and beat him for displays of accidental magic. He can’t possibly stay there on a chance that a dead man returns. He must be at least loosely related to every pureblood family. Isn’t there anyone else?”

Wearily, Dumbledore says, “Unfortunately, no. The blood wards come from his mother’s side, from whom there’s only Petunia’s to act as a protection. Even if this wasn’t so, his closest blood relations on his father’s side are all known ex-Death Eaters, in the United States, and you.”

“I’m not even from here,” Tom says, before he realises, right, that doesn’t matter in terms of genetic codes. “And anyway, that can’t possibly be true for a connection that hasn’t existed in approximately seven centuries.” 

Far too patiently, Dumbledore says, “Yet, the Gaunts and the Potters spring from the same common ancestor. That’s significant in regard to both inheritance and magical cores. So, as you can see, this complicates matters.”

Later, Tom will definitely blame the Wide Awake Potion for his inability to out-think Dumbledore’s complications. He is not an impulsive person, all in all, despite what the past few days seem determined to prove, so it’s only his lack of sleep combined with the itchy, desperate feeling he’s had since witnessed the View-Master of Harry’s horrible life that Tom says, “Then I’ll do it.”

“You,” Dumbledore says.

The flat way he says you is grating, but Tom balls his hands into fists on his lap and refuses to let himself rise to it. “Yes,” he says shortly. “If he’s to lose the protection of the blood wards, I’m likely the best second choice, am I not?”

Dumbledore lifts one bushy brow. “You’re seventeen,” he says (eighteen in a week, Tom thinks). “As skilled as you are for your age, you have much still to learn. You’ve chosen to attempt two forms of higher education at once, which will severely restrict your time, and you have no savings.”

“I know,” Tom says. The lack of savings is an issue, but not the simultaneous uni/DADA Mastery he’s taken on, particularly since St Andrews, the university he chose, won’t be nearly as difficult as Oxford would have been. The additional requirements for Oxbridge were, unfortunately, too hard to fake. “I can manage. I’ll be of age in the Muggle world, too, by July, and I’ll use a Fidelius Charm. You can be the Secret Keeper.” 

Slowly, Dumbledore leans back in his chair and takes a moment to scrutinise him. “That would be acceptable,” the Headmaster says finally. “Harry’s guardians receive the equivalent to a thousand pounds a month to see to his care. It’s reasonable that the same would apply here. But, Tom, caring for a child isn’t like caring for a pet. You must have a clear head. Always.”

“Of course,” says Tom blankly, because if Dumbledore isn’t openly going to acknowledge that his reasons for seeing this as an unsuitable solution include Tom’s tendency to regulate his mood with artificial assistance, then he won’t either.

They’ll discuss the details during term, Dumbledore promises, so Tom leaves as quickly as is reasonable, and heads to the Owlery, where he sends an update to Charlie. In response, he receives a warm invitation for himself and Harry to stay for the summer, as well as a painfully ugly brown jumper with a T knit on front. A note falls out, written in Charlie’s handwriting: Welcome to the family, Tom.  

Despite Tom’s best efforts, second term passes much the same way as the first, so he doesn’t make an active effort to kick his Calming Draught/Wide Awake dependency until after he finishes his last NEWT. Coincidently, this is also when Dumbledore decides it’s time to discuss those pesky details. 

“Tom,” the man says, as Tom drops into the upholstered chair. “Good afternoon. Congratulations on your results! Remarkable. How are you feeling?”

“Dreadful,” he answers, “but it’s fine.” 

Was it this bad last time? He doesn’t think so. His head throbs. His fingers keep twitching. He can’t sleep one minute, then finds himself nodding off next. His heart randomly palpitates. He’s jumping at shadows and struggling to focus. He can’t eat. Even his skin hurts. 

Dumbledore’s brow knits. “You could have gone to a Muggle school, if it was this difficult for you,” he says with all his kindliness. 

For a moment, Tom might hate him.

“It’s fine,” Tom says again, once the feeling passes. “Doubt I’m the only one who’s coming away from my NEWTs with the shakes. Molly and Arthur Weasley extended an invitation to stay until I find somewhere for myself and Harry, though I’ll need to contact the Bursary first to see if I can get the first installment of my scholarship early.”

“That’s what I wish to discuss,” Dumbledore says. “Funds. When we set up the Fidelius Charm, I’ll deliver Harry’s vault key. With my assistance, we may also be able to grant you access to the Peverell vault. It does still exist and has been gathering interest for several centuries. And, despite what began as a lie, you and Harry are currently the last of the House’s direct descendants, as we’ve discussed.” 

At least it’s not the Gaunt vault, Tom thinks, though he feels sick. He always swore to himself that he’d have nothing to do with his mother’s heritage, but if it means he can rent a place large enough for Harry to have his own bedroom without Tom sleeping on a pull-out, he’ll deal with it. “All right,” he says. “On the first?” Hogwarts ends on the thirtieth. He’ll allow himself a week at most to find a flat before collecting Harry. Any longer than that, and they’ll just have to spend some time at the Weasleys while Tom continues looking. It’ll be overwhelming, but better than the Dursleys.

“Yes,” Dumbledore says. “By then whatever’s in your system should be out. There’s a blood test.” Oh, of course there is. “We will meet on the Gringotts step in the morning. Say ten? That allows time for Molly Weasley to fuss over you to her heart’s content.”

There are many reasons why Tom shouldn’t do this, most of which Dumbledore outlined himself, but he just received straight Os on twelve owls. How hard can childcare be?

Chapter Text

The boy only looks normal, Petunia decides. Dear Lord, he’s even dressed in straight-legged trousers and a very ordinary t-shirt depicting a cityscape with Chinese characters underneath. His hair is neat, if a bit long. It curls at the ends in the suggestion of carelessness. A summer tan and general wiriness emphasises his youth. He’s shorter than Vernon. Yet, whenever he meets her eye, she remembers all her old bedtime tales of fairies and changelings, and some animal instinct tucked deep inside her brain screams at her to run. 

She does not run. “Tea?” she asks as he drops several files on the kitchen island. Upstairs, she can hear Harry’s light footfalls rush around the spare bedroom as packs. 

“No,” he says, without so much as a thank you. “You’ll have to sign everything in duplicate, as we should have our own copies. For the Wixen contract, you’ll require that pen.” He nods to the ordinary black ballpoint pen next to the folder. At least it seems that Lily’s crazy school moved on from quills. “Do you have questions?”

“We should have our solicitor present,” Vernon says, as he leans against the island. The boy crosses his arms. Petunia glances down at the papers. They’re very formal, half from the local courts. Custody forms. “If you were a doll or whatever rubbish it is you claimed, how were you able to sort all this?”

“I know someone in government,” the boy says, folding his arms. “No need to involve anyone else. I’m asking for nothing but my cousin. You will not be given our address nor phone number, but if Harry really wants to, he may contact you. The stipend you received from the Ministry will be cut off, of course. If you feel the lack, that’s because you never bothered to use it for its original purpose. Do you have questions?”

“I believe you have the wrong impression of us,” Petunia says, though she knows it’s pointless. When he narrows his eyes, she forces herself not to shudder. He’s…attractive, yes, in that way that teenagers can be at times. Not as anything to be attracted to , but simply as a fact. The grass is green, Sir Anthony Blair is Prime Minister, Tom Ryder will grow lovelier with age. 

Somehow, that only heightens her sense that he’s dangerous. She’s never met one of his kind that isn’t. 

“I’m rather certain I don’t,” he says. 

“We’ve always treated him as our own,” she answers. He sleeps in the second bedroom! she wants to say, but decides to keep the thought to herself. 

“No,” the boy says. “ My family treated me right, and the world was falling apart. And they didn’t have magic, just like you. Sign. It’s in all our best interests.”  

Carefully, Petunia lifts the first of the stapled packs from the stack and places it in front of it. It’s all so normal. Doesn’t it need to be notarized? Yes, she thinks. This is probably illegal, but as she and Vernon never formally adopted Harry, where does legality end and illegality begin? She never thought about that before, about how the process wasn’t formal. Until this moment, it hadn’t mattered. 

It still doesn’t matter, realistically. She doesn’t want magic in her house. Losing the money is a tragedy, yes, but they can make do without it well enough. Some last vestiges of the love she once had for her sister are the only reason she’s bothering to protest. After all, she knows that they can provide Harry with clothes on his back and roof over his head and the opportunity to continue at a proper school—and they did always intend to treat him better once the deadline for Hogwarts passed and they could prove that the magic had been stamped out—but how can she know that the same is true of this “cousin?”

He sighs suddenly in exasperation and reaches into his messenger bag to extract a wallet. “My ID,” he says, handing it over. Thomas M Ryder , it reads, along with the usual terrible picture. British Citizen , it plainly states. For his place of birth: Cheltenham. “The information’s all fake, of course, except the citizenship, but I do legally exist. If you would also like to see a family tree explaining my relationship to Euphemia and various other Peverells and Potters, it might take some time to conjure, and then be permanently imbedded on your wall, but—”

“This is satisfactory,” Petunia says, as she passes the card back. “It’s all so sudden. And he’s only a little boy. You must see why we’re being cautious.” 

“And we’re not signing these papers,” Vernon says, motioning to the parchment with the inky scrawl. “I won’t touch your fancy pen. I don’t know what it’ll do to us—”

“There’s a spell on it to ensure you keep your oath,” the boy says. “Much more binding than the flimsy council contract. But it won’t be an issue, as you’ve demonstrated no inclination to care for Harry.” 

Petunia signs the council papers. The first copy, the second. Tom Ryder’s signature is picture perfect, like something from period drama. Her own is a blue scribble in comparison. 

When she reaches for the magical contract, Vernon snaps at her to stop. “We’ve signed the real papers,” he says. “The important papers. You can take your magical—”

“Mr Dursley,” Tom Ryder says, “please understand that I will never attack a Muggle with my wand, but I’m not above calling nine-nine-nine. If I expose your abuse of Harry, how long do you think you have before Duddykins is placed in care?”

“Based on what evidence?” Vernon asks, reddening, as Petunia’s heartbeat finds a new home in ears. It’s so loud she can hardly think.

The boy turns his card around between his fingers. “Well,” he answers, before his accent steadily sharpens, condensing syllables and lengthening some vowels while shortening others. “Mrs Dursley never asked for this aloud, did she? Think about it, then consider what else I may be able to do.”

“Lily couldn’t do that,” Petunia says, which sounds utterly ridiculous even to her. 

“Lily couldn’t talk to snakes, either,” he says. “It might be interesting to note that both Harry and I can.” 

Petunia signs the contract. So does Vernon. 

The second Vernon is done, Ryder slides the papers back in the ordinary manila folder and slides it into the messenger bag, followed by the pen. “Thank you,” he says, with terrifying sweetness. “And Mr Dursley? I recommend that you don’t try ordering your wife around now that the whipping boy’s gone. She’s likely to claw your eyes out.”

It’s simply impossible that Vernon could even be considering such treatment, and yet, there he is, growing redder by the minute. “You think you’re so clever, boy,” he says, glaring, “but you’re just the same as the rest of your lot. Can’t even pass yourself off as normal.” 

“You mean my appearance?” says the boy, confused. He seems to take her husband’s meaning as reference to his clothing, because he glances down at his shirt and starts to laugh. “That’s funny,” he says, suddenly sounding like a normal Londoner again. “I bought it at some shop in a mall in Shanghai. They have a lot of those. Merlin, I’m glad we’re past the days of witch-burning. We’ll leave directly from the bedroom. And sorry, but I have to ask: do you even know why Harry’s here with you?”

“There was a letter,” she says, regaining her composure. “My sister and her husband were killed, we know. Got themselves blown up. His fault, naturally. It was one of your lot.” 

Ryder draws his bag over his shoulder. “You’re ridiculous, is what you are,” he says. “Lily and James martyred themselves, dying to end a war spearheaded by a man who sanctioned the hunting of your lot as a blood-sport. And you repaid them by treating their son as the monster under the bed. Remember that.” He smiles again. Sweetly. “I hope it gives you nightmares.” 

There wasn’t much for Harry to pack, other than a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush and a comb, which all fit into the rucksack Aunt Petunia gave him, but Tom (his cousin!) had asked him to stay in his room until he finished, so he waits. He hears voices downstairs, but can’t make out individual words. That’s probably a good thing; he doesn’t really want to know what his aunt and uncle are saying about him. If Tom decides Harry’s too much after all, then that’s only fair, but he’ll feel terrible if has to hear his cousin change his mind. Hopefully, should that happen, they won’t make Harry return to the cupboard, though. He’s beginning to outgrow it.

Eventually, he hears the light tread of footfalls on the stairs, and a second later, someone knocks on the door. Neither his aunt nor uncle ever knock. He springs off the bed, and scurries across the second bedroom, before pulling open the door. And there stands Tom, who smiles at the sight of him, like seeing Harry is a good thing. 

Harry steps aside to let him through. “You’re here,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Tom says. “I promised you would be. Are you all packed? Oh, good—just the backpack, then? All right. I suppose that does make things easier.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asks, as he shuts the door. Tom picks up the backpack before Harry can, even though he already has a bag of his own. 

Holding out his hand, he says, “You won’t have a clue of what I’m talking about, so I need you to trust me for a minute. Just don’t let go.”

That sounds very weird, Harry thinks, but he takes Tom’s hand. It’s warm in his, not ice cold like the last time, and darker too, as if he absorbed the sunshine. “Where are we going?” Harry asks. 

“You’ll see,” Tom answers, and then—

Harry tries to scream, but no sound comes out. His body is falling into itself, thin as paper, but no, it’s stretching apart, or it’s coming together, or—

And then he’s whole, gasping, as he tumbles free of Tom’s grip and falls on hands and knees onto…grass? Definitely grass. Above him, Tom’s saying, “I have something for nausea if you need it. This reaction is perfectly normal, especially for your first time.”

“Where are we?” Harry asks, as he draws enough air into his lungs to fall back onto his knees and look around. They’re on a grassy green hill overlooking a grassy green field dotted with sheep, surrounded by a thick forest cut through with a slow-moving river. “Where—how—”

“It’s called Apparition,” Tom says, crouching down beside him. “We’re in Wales. That’s the Severn down there. This used to be your grandmother’s land. Euphemia. Well, still is, if we’re being technical—no, actually, it’s ours now, I reckon, though the estate’s dust.”

“The estate— ”

“Oh, right. And we’re wizards,” he finishes. Harry stares at him. No, no, no, he wants to say, but he was just in the second bedroom in the Dursley house, and now he’s in Wales, and his body is too achy for this to be a dream. “Sorry, Harry. Should’ve eased you into that better, but I wanted you out of that house quick as I could. We have a flat in Glasgow, but it’s complicated, so I thought we’d talk here first. I brought something for you to eat and drink.” 

As Tom pulls out a whole lunch box and thermos from a seemingly empty bag, Harry manages to gather himself enough to say, “I’m not a wizard. I’m not anything. I’m just—I’m just Harry. You’ve made a mistake.” 

 “I don’t make mistakes,” Tom says. “Sit. Here you are. It’s all for you. Eat however much you want. Anything else can be saved for tomorrow.”

Carefully, Harry sits cross-legged on the grass, settles the box on his lap, and unzips it. Inside are beans on toast, Yorkshire pudding, roasted vegetables, kippers, a slice of treacle tart, and a fork and knife. “Did you make all this?” he says, glancing from the food that logically should not fit inside a lunchbox, but does, to his cousin. 

“Merlin, no,” Tom says. “I won’t touch beans on toast for the life of me, but Mrs Weasley thought it’d be good for you. She’s my friend’s mum. You’ll meet her eventually.” 

“Is she a—witch? Did she make it with magic?” Harry also wants to ask why his cousin doesn’t like beans and toast, but thinks that might be rude.

“Magic helped with the stirring and things, but you can’t conjure food,” says Tom. “Eat. I’ll explain while you do. And you can stop me to ask whatever questions you want.”

Tentatively, Harry nods. He’s never been told he’s allowed to ask questions before, except at school, and teachers never really seem to mean it. Does Tom mean it? It might be better to assume not. Adults don’t like questions, Harry’s learned, though Tom also doesn’t seem like much of one. 

He starts with the beans on toast. It’s so delicious he thinks he might cry, but doesn’t.

“I won’t ever lie to you,” Tom says first, as he settles beside Harry on the hill with his legs loosely bent and his arms around his knees, “but sometimes I’ll say ‘I’ll tell you when I’m older’ or ‘I can’t talk about it,’ and I’ll need you to accept that. I’ll try, though, to answer whatever you ask. It’s only fair, seeing as you were kept in the dark so long. Your parents were James and Lily Potter. They both had magic, like us. Your mother was the first in her family to do so, but the Potters have been an important magical family for, I don’t know. Sometime around the fourteenth century? And then Euphemia was a Peverell, which is how we’re related. There’s probably a better way to do this, but I don’t know what it is, so I’ll just say it upfront: your parents were murdered. Everyone knows. You’re very famous because you survived an unsurvivable Killing Curse, and never should have been raised ignorant of your heritage in a household of people who hate magic. It’s why you have your scar. The Killing Curse, not your relatives, I mean.” 

A tomato drops off of Harry’s fork to splatter on the pudding. “My parents died in a car crash,” he says.

“I highly doubt your parents were ever even in a car after Lily graduated,” Tom says. “I’m very sorry. Someone who knew them should have been the one to tell you.” 

“But why didn’t you know them?” Harry asks. “We’re cousins.” 

Tom curses. “It’s a long story,” he says, “that unfortunately, will mostly have to wait until you’re older. Like with you, everyone knows a version of it, so you’ll hear pieces eventually. To simplify things for now, I suppose you could say I travelled through time. I knew your grandparents. Euphemia, as I said, and then Fleamont was your grandfather. I’m sure I can find pictures of them somewhere. Wait, no. I’m botching this.” He turns completely to Harry, who’s forgotten all about his food in favour of wondering if his new guardian is nutter. Holding out his hand, Tom says, “Let’s try this again. I’m Tom, and I’m apparently your closest living relative on your father’s side. I’m starting at the University of St Andrews this year and hope to teach at Hogwarts, the magical school you’ll begin attending at eleven, should you want. It’s nice to meet you, Harry. Please ask any questions you have. I like answering.”

Warily, Harry shakes the offered hand. “How come you like questions?” he asks. 

“I was taught asking questions was a good thing,” Tom says. “I wasn’t raised by anyone with magic, either, so my family couldn’t ever answer mine at first, so we tried to find out together. Inquiry can be fun. And when they didn’t want to tell me something, they just said I could know when I was older, like I told you.”

 Harry doesn’t know what “inquiry” means, but he can guess. None of that quite makes sense, but he thinks it does mean he can believe Tom won’t be angry with him for asking. “Who killed my parents?” he says, though it seems like an inappropriate question to toss out in a sheepfold on such a nice summer’s day. “Why?”

Though it seems like it’s difficult for him, Tom explains about a war and the “instigating side’s” (the bad side?) leader deciding it would be a great idea to kill a baby, except it didn’t work, so now Harry’s famous. But why? he asks. Why not his parents? Tom sighs. “To be blunt,” he says, “it’s because they’re dead. You’re not. Everyone loves a miracle.” 

“Oh,” Harry says. He doesn’t feel much like a miracle. Miracles are those extraordinary events the priest talks about in the church Uncle Vernon likes to attend on Easter, and they always seem to involve dying, not living. “Why are you attending uni if you want to teach at a magic school?”

Shrugging, Tom says, “I don’t want to be bored. You’ll attend a Muggle—that’s the term for non-magical people or things—a Muggle school too. Community school, unfortunately. My poor gran’ll be rolling over in her grave about me sending a charge of mine anywhere state-funded, but it can’t be helped. We’re near skint. Glasses, clothes, rent, and necessities are more important than public school.” 

He sounds very sad about it.

“Was your family, uh.” Harry stops, because he doesn’t know what to say without it sounding rude. Posh? Aunt Petunia always liked to say that they were middle-class, but Aunt Marge called them Middle England once. Even if Harry doesn’t really understand the difference, he knows that the distinction was important.

“Technically they were peerage,” Tom says, like that’s normal, “but lost most of their money in the Great Slump. What was left went to paying for education and the London mortgage. You have money, though. A lot of it, I imagine, as sole heir to the Potter wealth, though we’ll try to avoid touching it until you’re of age. We both have access to the Peverell account in Gringotts, our bank. I’ll take you there soon to introduce you to the Wixen—to the magical world. Our world.” 

Our. A thrill runs through Harry at word. He’s never belonged anywhere before, but he feels the truth of that. “Will you teach me magic?” he says. “Please.” 

“You can shoot sparks now, if you’d like,” Tom says, reaching for his bag. There’s a scar up his arm Harry hadn’t noticed before, sliced down vertically from the elbow nearly to the wrist. Before Tom catches him looking, he quickly glances away to focus on the sheep munching on the grass near the trees. “Here. It’s my wand, so you mightn’t be able to do much with it, but wave it a bit and something will happen.”

The wand is beautiful. A little under a foot long and skinny, it’s carved of a smooth, light brown wood, with a point at the end thinner than a pencil’s tip. Something inside Harry aches at the sight of it. Mine , that part of him goes as Tom places it in his hand. His fingers curl around the thicker end, spreading a warmth through him that he thinks must be what a mother’s hug feels like it. 

It’s amazing. 

“Give it a wave,” Tom says, so Harry does.

Red and gold sparks shoot out the end, vivid as a firecracker. “I did that?” Harry says as he tries again. More sparks, even brighter. They seem to form a shape this time, something like a bird in flight. 

“The core’s a phoenix feather,” says Tom, pleased. Harry’s never had anyone sound like that for him before. “That’s a bird, the one that’s appearing. I’ve never seen a wand react so well for someone other than its person. Should be easy to teach you the basics, then, til we can buy your own. That’ll be next year.”

“Can I have a wand like yours?” Harry asks, swishing it this way and that, until the image of the phoenix becomes clearer and clearer. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, he thinks, as it flies off toward the sheep, a bright flash of red and gold against a backdrop of green grass and a blue sky.

“I don’t know,” Tom says. “The wand chooses the wix or something like that, but yours will have a phoenix core, I bet. Buying books right now will be too expensive, but I still remember my first-year curriculum. We’ll imitate that.”

Hopefully, Harry thinks, his wand feels even half as right as this one in his hand. “I’m only average at school,” he says, as he reluctantly gives it back. Tom hadn’t asked, but Harry’s afraid he might try to keep it. “I don’t learn very fast.” 

“Things might be different now,” says Tom, sliding the wand back into his back, “and whenever you have trouble, I can help. Well, except maybe for any history after the fifties, but I’ll read up on it. Do you have other questions?”

Just about a thousand, Harry thinks, but he doesn’t want to ask too much, in case his cousin has a limit. He stuffs another tomato in his mouth, chews, and tries to sort through what’s the most important. “Why do Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia hate magic?” he says eventually. 

Again, Tom shrugs. “It happens like that sometimes,” he says. “Rotten luck, really. Maybe Petunia’s a jealous bi—or it could be that they cared for your mum a great deal and blame magic for her death. Wix can be as nasty to Muggles. But there are a lot of Muggles who treat their children right, even if they do burst all the pipes in the building, and Wix who do their best to help their Muggle neighbours. We’re all just people.”  

“Did you burst the pipes?”

“Ah, loads of times. I was a menace.” 

Harry ducks his head down to look at his half-eaten lunch. “I turned my teacher’s hair blue once,” he says, which he’s always known, but never admitted. 

“Brilliant,” Tom says. “Wish I’d done that to batty old Mrs Church. Oh! Hogwarts. Of course. Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. It’s the best magical school in Europe. Still, they never feel the need to teach you maths or anything, so if you want to do what I did and co-exist between worlds, it will involve self-study. I have a book on its history.”

Though Harry dreads the idea of reading a boring history book, he thinks he can do it to make Tom happy. “Thank you,” he says, before glancing down at his food again. “I think I’m done.” He regrets saying it, because there’s still a whole piece of treacle tart, but he doesn’t want to be sick. He’s been sick before at Mrs Figg’s, who likes to feed him her stale cookies until he feels ill. 

“That’s fine,” says Tom, taking back the lunchbox and zipping it up. “This’ll join the rest of the leftovers. Ready to see flat? It’s a prefab, I’ll warn you, so I can’t be held accountable for any of the upholstery.”

“Are we teleporting again?” 

“Apparating. Unfortunately, yes.” 

Tom holds out his hand. Harry, once again, takes it. 

The flat is in, according to Tom, the Southside of Glasgow, located between the Underground (no, Subway, like in America) and what should be Harry’s school, unless there’s a better one. Within walking distance is a park with a duck pond, and somewhere further than that, and an estate-turned-park with horned furry cows. There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms (he suspects magic might be involved in the making of the second), an L-shaped sofa as soft as a cloud, and a kitchen that would make Aunt Petunia weep (there’s very little counter space). Most of the street-facing main room and bedroom walls are windows. If their neighbours are loud, they won’t know, because Tom casts a charm to block the sound out. 

According to Tom, Harry can have access to anything whenever he wants, from the refrigerator to the bathroom, unless it’s labelled as uni-related—those he needs to ask about first. He can lock his bedroom from the inside. He can lock the bathroom from the inside. The shower will always have hot water, unless something happens to the boiler. If Harry breaks something by accident, it doesn’t matter, because he just needs to tell Tom, who can fix it with a spell or call the landlord. Most chores can be solved with magic, so unless Harry wants a pet, he really only needs to worry about fixing himself food if they aren’t eating together. 

He’s really very certain the universe made a mistake. There’s nothing he did to deserve Tom dropping into his life like this and expecting nothing in return. “Helping Wizard Hitler to the grave” as a baby isn’t a good enough reason to suddenly earn him his own whole bedroom and food whenever he wants and no chores and new glasses and clothes that fit and real magic. Eventually, something’s going to notice all this good luck that fell into his lap and rip it away. It’s bound to happen. Like, fate or something. Right?

Well, he’ll enjoy it while it lasts. 

On their first full day together, Tom says they have to go shopping for necessities. “We both need Muggle clothes,” he says over a breakfast of coffee (for him) and buttered toast with tea (for Harry). “It’ll have to be an Oxfam. Sorry. You need robes, too, and it’s harder to buy nice, new-looking ones secondhand, even if you’ll use them less.”

Harry doesn’t care where they’re buying clothes, particularly, or if they’re new or secondhand. What matters is that they’re not Dudley’s.  

An hour later, they ride the subway to the West End, where the buildings are all made of stained stone with pop-out windows. Every other storefront is a coffee shop. Harry holds Tom’s hand as they walk, even if he’s too old for it, but there are just so many people, and his cousin’s legs are long, so it seems like it could be easy for them to be separated. And Tom isn’t complaining, so Harry figures it can’t be too bad. 

“There’s more than just clothes in here,” Tom says when they locate the green Oxfam symbol. He pushes open the door, ushering Harry in first. “If you see a book or, I don’t know, puzzle or something you want, just let me know.”

Doing a puzzle sounds almost as bad as being locked in a cupboard, but Harry still nods along. Not that he has much chance to look, anyway—they don’t separate in the store, except for the changing rooms, even if that would have taken less time, and he’s perfectly fine on his own. He tries to tell Tom this; Tom says, “You’re nine, Harry,” and continues to stick to him like glue. 

It’s nice. 

“We’ll find you glasses in Diagon,” Tom says when they’re done. They sit on the grass in the Botanics, surrounded by flowers and sunbathers, with a massive scone and tea (for Harry) and another coffee (for Tom), and their new clothes and a deck of cards hidden in a magicked rucksack. “Unfortunately, you can’t fix your vision entirely, but it’s possible to buy one-time lenses that will change along with your prescription. We can go tomorrow if you’re up for it. Maybe visit the Weasleys a few days after that. Well, if you’re up for it.”

Of course Harry is “up for it.” It’s important that he sees everything and does everything before Tom realises his mistake and gives him back to the Dursleys, or he wakes up one morning and finds out that he’s been in a coma for months and needs to return to his cupboard. 

Suddenly Tom reaches out and nudges Harry on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “You’re looking a little worried. It’s fine. I’m never giving you away. You’re stuck with me, yeah?”

“Do you promise?” Harry blurts out, even though he shouldn’t, and even as he wonders if his cousin can read minds. He really hopes not.

Tom rubs the side of nose like he has a headache. “I do,” he says, letting his hand drop, “though depending on my courses, you might need a sitter sometimes once term begins. I can’t control when some of the classes are scheduled or if I have group work, and I can’t bring classmates round the flat. There’s a protection spell that makes it difficult.”

“I don’t need a sitter,” Harry says, frowning. 

“Ten-year-olds do. I checked,” Tom says flatly. 

As much as Harry doesn’t like that answer, he decides not to argue. “Do you want half of my scone?” he asks instead, but Tom just shakes his head. 

“Save it for breakfast,” he says. “Want to feed the squirrels? There’re signs everywhere about it.”

“What’s so special about squirrels?” 

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

The answer is that they’re little and red with tufty ears. Harry’s very sad when Tom says no, they can’t take one home and keep it (and if he finds a stuffed animal version of one on his bed later, it’s not something they need to talk about). But a snake, maybe, Tom says, though only long after they get their owl situation sorted, as they’re too far from any public owlery to be convenient. Owls? says Harry, so then Tom, later, spends the time it takes to make dinner to explain about Wixen post. 

By the next morning, Harry’s bubbling with excitement over their visit to Diagon Alley. All right, so  he could do without the impending robe-fitting, but the rest! They’ll visit a bank run by real goblins and the place that sells owls and the often-mentioned bookstore, and Tom promised him ice cream. When his cousin asks if there’s anything else Harry might want to see, he asks if there’s Wixen football—he’s spent his years watching snatches of this game or that from the window above the hydrangeas, after all—and Tom says no, but there is Quidditch. Quidditch? Yes. It’s played on brooms. 

Which is how, twenty-four hours later, Harry finds himself standing in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies, peering at the paraphernalia and the broomstick in the window while Tom chats with a friend from Hogwarts not five feet away. The broom’s handle is crafted of sleek, dark wood. Its brush is long, bristly hay. At the end of the handle, it says Nimbus 2000. Harry’s never seen a magic broom before, but he knows he’s never wanted anything so much in his whole life. It’s per—

“That shouldn’t be on display,” says a voice in a mutter, as if to himself. When Harry glances to the left, he finds a boy nearly a head taller than he is, with hair as white-yellow and soft-looking as candy floss in the sunshine, and a very pointy nose. He’s also frowning. 

“Why not?” Harry asks, looking from the boy to the broom and back. 

Gesturing at the display, the boy says, “It’s not yet finished its tests. Just last week one malfunctioned and crashed into a sacred oak, I heard.” 

“Oh,” Harry says, disappointed. “That’s not good.”

The boy finally turns his attention toward him. His eyes, which are a very clear blue, widen. “You’re,” he says excitedly, then clears his throat and sticks out his hand. “Draco Malfoy. It’s a pleasure.”

“Harry Potter,” Harry says, even though the boy—Draco—already knows. It’s nice of him, though, that he let Harry introduce himself. “Erm, it’s good to meet you too.”

They drop hands. “Do you like Quidditch?” Draco says, peering down at him.

“I don’t know,” says Harry. “I only found out about Quidditch yesterday.”

Draco blinks at him. “How did you only learn about it yesterday? ”

Before Harry has to think of an answer, Tom reappears and drapes an arm around his shoulders. His cousin’s not touchy, so the half-hug is a surprise. “Hi,” he says, the same moment a blonde woman just as tall as Tom appears at Draco’s side. She has his pointy nose. “Harry, do you want to go inside with your—friend?”

“I’m Draco Malfoy,” Draco says again, as he folds his arms. “Aren’t you—”

“The Peverell boy,” his mother finishes, though Harry can guess what Draco was going to say: The Dollhouse Boy. Since entering the Leaky Cauldron, everyone’s noticed Harry first and Tom second. “Narcissa Malfoy. How lovely to meet you both. I was just taking Draco inside to look at brooms.”

Though Tom’s tense, Harry really wants to look at the brooms, so he’s relieved his cousin doesn’t find an excuse to return to the bookshop or something. They enter after the others, as Draco whispers something to Mrs Malfoy, but Harry loses all curiosity about what that might have been when he notices the moving posters on the wall. 

Draco reappears at his side and points to a mostly poster reading Wimbourne Wasps. “That’s my team,” he says. “They’re based in the West Country, and they won the League Cup eighteen times. They’re your team too.”

“Why?” Harry asks, confused. He’s from the South East, and now he’s in Scotland, and the Peverells were Welsh, so the West Country doesn’t matter to him. 

“Because the Potter estate was the Gloustershire,” Tom cuts in. “Is?”

“Is, though it’s currently abandoned,” Mrs Malfoy says. “Mr Peverell—”

“It’s Ryder, actually. I prefer Tom.” 

Mrs Malfoy’s face pinches, so her nose looks even pointier, before her expression smooths, but Draco interrupts anything she might have said to ask, “Why don’t you know anything about Quidditch? Everyone knows about Quidditch.”

“Muggles don’t have Quidditch,” Harry says. “W—they have football.” 

Obviously shocked, the other boy says, “Why do you know about Muggle sports?” 

“My aunt and uncle are Muggles. I’ve only been with Tom a week.”

Draco stares. Mrs Malfoy clears her throat. “Tom,” she says, her voice oddly high all of the sudden, “may I speak to you over there for a minute? Mr Royston can keep an eye on the boys. He runs the shop.”

Glancing at Harry, his cousin asks, “Would you be all right with that?” which is embarrassing, because it’s obviously fine for Draco, but apparently Tom was a doll for forty years or something, so maybe he just doesn’t know what’s normal.

“I’ll be fine,” Harry says, so Mrs Malfoy waves over all the robes at the back of the shop, then leads Tom away. “Are you in Hogwarts?” he adds to Draco quickly, before the other boy can ask any questions about dead parents and dollhouses. 

“No,” Draco says. “I’ll be attending next year. Do you know what your House will be?”

Last night, Tom explained about Houses, and said that everyone’s Sorted, but Harry doesn’t see himself in any of the traits. He’s not brave or clever or smart, and obviously he’s not loyal, because he didn’t stay with Dursleys. But he can’t say any of this to a boy he just met, so he just shrugs and answers, “Maybe Gryffindor? Most of my family’s been in Gryffindor, apparently. What about you?”

Draco’s eyes narrow. “Slytherin,” he says. “It’s the best, no matter what you might have heard from your—what is he to you?”

“We’re cousins,” Harry says. “Why would he say anything bad about Slytherin?”

“All Gryffindors hate Slytherin,” Draco says, as a fact, “and no Slytherin likes a Gryffindor. It’s just the way it is.”

“Oh.” That’s disappointing. And here Harry thought they might be friends. “Well, Tom just said Slytherins were clever, and that their Common Room is probably big, because it’s under the lake and not in a tower, and that it’s really stupid that a first year got in trouble last year for bringing a snake as a pet when that’s their symbol.”

Whatever Draco expected him to say, it clearly wasn’t that. “Slytherin is the House for those of purest blood and a few worthy half-bloods,” he says, whatever that means. “If you would like to schedule a visit, I could teach you how to play Quidditch.” He throws a glance over his shoulder. “On a broom that doesn’t explode, of course.”

Schedule a visit? Harry really hopes not all Wixen talk like that. “Okay,” he says. Even if Draco is strange, Harry really, really wants to learn how to fly. “I could teach you how to play football, if you like.”

“Why would I want to learn to play a Muggle game?” Draco doesn’t bother to hide his disgust.

“Because it’s fun,” Harry answers, then remembers all that stuff Tom said about people imitating their parents’ bad politics, and adds, “You don’t need to tell anyone.” 

“I’ll consider it,” says Draco after a beat, before pointing at the posters. “That’s the Seeker. It’s the best position. I’m going to be a seeker one day, or a chaser if the position isn’t available. Want to know how it works?”

 They stand by the posters until Tom and Mrs Malfoy return, and Draco points to this and that, and explains the positions and the points and the teams. Seekers have to be fast, Draco says at one point, so Harry thinks, I’m fast , and knows, for once, what he wants to do. 

Three days after the fateful meeting outside Quality Quidditch Supplies, Charlie Weasley says, “I can’t believe you became Mom Friends with Narcissa Malfoy.”

“They even came with us to buy Hedwig,” Tom says, falling back onto the grass hill behind the Burrow, where the Weasleys play Quidditch. “She paid for the owl, Charlie. ‘An early birthday present for Harry.’ Why do people know when his birthday is?”

“Because he’s a real Potter, Tom,” Charlie answers, as he extracts the bottled butterbeer from the bag. The weather is back to its usually scheduled overcast today, so his orange hair is the brightest thing around for miles. “Not whatever you are. They were struck from the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but still, they also weren’t a bunch of nutters, so they were more important than some of the families that are on the list. His birth would’ve been in all the society papers.”

If Merope Gaunt wasn’t such a fucking creep and the Americans hadn’t destroyed the global economy, Tom would’ve been in the society papers twice over. Not whatever you are his arse. “Well, I don’t like it,” he says. “Complete invasion of privacy.”

“Why did she decide to talk to you, though?” Charlie says, popping the caps. He passes Tom a bottle. 

“You mean because I’m a halfblood that’s only ever in the ‘society papers’ after some mad scandal?” Tom says, then lets the other boy splutter a bit about how that’s not what he meant at all, before he continues, “Draco had to explain Quidditch to Harry. It took approximately thirty seconds for Narcissa to piece together that Harry wasn’t raised with any familiarity with our world. She wanted to check that I had the ‘necessary support.’” And if he’d finished school. It may have a half-truth to tell her yes. “Why do you look relieved?”

Charlie looks at him the same way he had in the Bristolian pub, right before he called Tom odd. “You pulled a Ravenclaw all last year,” Charlie says, “and they normally don’t start hitting anything until revisions. Wasn’t my place to comment on it, I figured—if you needed some help after the proper shite you went through, I’m not about to judge. But the Draught will mess with your eyes—”

“I’m done with all that,” Tom says, caught somewhere between embarrassed and annoyed. In Ravenclaw, study aids are simply an accepted part of OWLs and NEWTs, but how very Gryffindor of Charlie to try to help. “I do have some idea of what not to do around a child, you know. No, I think she only bothered because Harry’s Harry. The Malfoy family does so like to collect things, whether it’s important people or those beastly peacocks. Motivations aside, she was unfortunately so nice I was contractually obligated to say yes to tea and Quidditch lessons.” 

With something like a laugh, Charlie says, “The horror. That’s your worst nightmare, innit? Tea and heights. You always turned down flying at school.”

“Someone shoved me off a broom once,” he says. “It was my only time in the air. I was eleven.” That was during the tertiary Hogwarts flying lessons, though Charlie doesn’t need to know this. 

Tom leans up on his elbows to look down the path cutting through copse of trees toward the Burrow. Hopefully Harry and Ron are getting along. Ron seems like a good kid, but Harry’s a little coltish when it comes to holding a conversation. Draco hadn’t seemed to mind, at least, but Tom’s always found that Quidditch is a common language that calms all otherwise prickly interactions. 

Thankfully, Charlie lets the matter of Tom’s particular feelings about Quidditch lie. “How’s it been the past week?” he says instead. “With him?”

“Easy enough,” Tom answers. “He doesn’t actually know how to misbehave. Though, I can’t register for school til next month because of the documents I need for Proof of Address. It’s a Muggle thing. Why don’t Wix have birth certificates, by the way?”

“I’d love to tell you, but I’d need to know what that is first.” 

Tom explains. Unsurprisingly, Charlie has no idea. Sighing, Tom says, “Well, it doesn’t matter. I had to Conjure one for me. Won’t be hard to do the same for Harry.”

What follows is a weirdly uncomfortable silence. Tom sips his butterbeer and glances over at the other boy, who seems ready to start squirming. “I’m leaving in August,” he finally says, as if Tom hasn’t already been invited to his goodbye party and congratulated him. Apparently the Dragon-Care Mastery programme he was accepted to is prestigious and everything he’s ever wanted. “You should talk to Mum, I think. In case you need help.”

“I’ll be fine,” Tom says, sitting fully upright. “I have this under control.” And he does. Harry is a good boy who could probably do with being a little worse, while Tom’s not doing too badly about seeing to his material needs. They’ve been getting along swimmingly.

But Charlie still says, “Listen, I can’t be trusted to watch Ron and Gin for an afternoon, and I’m older than you—”

“By a fortnight!”

“—so I’d like to trust you’re getting parenting advice from someone who’s not related to the bloke who tried to snog in your best mate’s broom cupboard.”

“I told you that?” 

“Christmas Eve’s Eve. Gin and the Draught.” Charlie shakes his head. “I still don’t know how you walked away without a hangover.” 

Right. Even if Tom tries his best, he has no clear memories of his night before the zoo. Hopefully he let nothing more damning slip than Abraxas Malfoy’s snogging attempt, which likely only came up because that situation also involved a winter holiday and alcohol and not-quite-illegal substances. “Wide Awake,” he answers. “It’s brilliant. All right. There’s nothing wrong with advice.” 

Charlie claps him on the shoulder. “Good,” he says. “She’d’ve given it anyway. Have I told you yet about the Hungarian Horntail I’ll be working with?”

Though he has, Tom lets the other boy explain again about dragons and the long-term practical project necessary for the Mastery, while he mentally compiles a list of anything he could ask to improve himself. He was everyone’s last choice for this, including his own, but that doesn’t give the right to make mistakes.

Chapter Text

Tom’s experience with footie begins and ends with the impromptu games he and the neighourhood kids played in the streets whenever the weather was decent. He can kick the ball straight and even bounce it on his knee a few times, and he’s always been quick on his feet, but woe be unto him if Draco Malfoy expects him to explain the rules. 

“Why do you think I would know?” he asks the boy, who manages to look haughty even in Harry’s temporarily resized Oxfam clothes. If Narcissa or, Merlin forbid, her husband ever saw their little pureblood terror child dressed like a penniless Muggle, they’d kill him. Him meaning Tom, obviously. At least Narcissa is so eager to engender her family to the Boy Who Lived that she’d probably just kidnap him. “Harry, you—”

“Because you were raised by Muggles,” Draco says, folding his arms. He looks nothing like Abraxas, but has that I Am Better Than You look nailed. The expression is even more ridiculous than usual, considering that they’re surrounded by an uncomfortable number of happy dogs playing fetch with their Muggle owners in the park near Tom and Harry’s flat. Most parkgoers, by virtue of neighbourhood dynamics, are Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi, so Tom and Harry, with their summer tans and dark hair, aren’t worth looking twice at, but Draco, in all his feyish blondeness, sticks out like a lone daffodil in a sea of grass.

Not that the boys seem to notice. “He doesn’t like Quidditch,” Harry says, glancing up through his fringe as he ties the lances on his new trainers. “Why’d you think he likes football?”

“Because it’s on the ground,” Draco says as Harry stands. “There’s a difference, Harry, between disliking Quidditch and not wishing to play because you dislike flying. Everyone likes Quidditch. Even mudbloods—”

“Don’t say that,” Tom snaps. 

“What’s it mean?” Harry asks.

“A Wix born of two Muggles,” Tom answers, before Draco can, “like your mother.” Harry’s lips press together as Draco’s ears flush a pale pink. “There’s nothing wrong with Muggles, Draco, and nothing wrong with Muggleborns. Think: if the Wixen world ever bothered to pay attention to the little things, you wouldn’t be riding a broomstick in robes.”

Draco looks down at his borrowed jeans mournfully. “They do create unnecessary drag,” he says, sighing, before he turns and demands a list of the games’ rules from Harry, who’s so inordinately pleased to be able to explain something that he’s already forgotten about the slur.

Though the list of things Tom would rather do is long, he kicks the ball around with them a few times, as he’s the only one with real practical experience. Once he’s certain his two budding footballers aren’t about to hurt themselves, he sets up the net he borrowed from the neighours, tying it between two trees so the boys can kick the ball and have it bounce back. “I’ll be over there,” he says, pointing to a patch of grass in front of the foxgloves. “Try to catch it before it flies at my head, will you?”

They swear to try their hardest. He doesn’t believe a word of it. 

It’s only luck that he survives that July morning unscathed, he assumes, but they manage not to hit anyone or anything they shouldn’t the time after that, too, or even the one after that. This is particularly noteworthy, because it also happens to be the day Draco and Ron meet. Tom expects disaster—it’s not. Maybe it’s that they’re in Harry’s Muggle clothing playing a Muggle game, or that none of them entirely know what they’re doing, or that it’s Harry’s birthday, but after the two boys throw a few snide comments back and forth, things settle. Draco and Harry teach Ron their mediocre football knowledge; Ron and Draco spend at least half an hour explaining how the different Quidditch leagues work; Ron and Harry delightfully horrify Draco with de-gnoming stories. Tom mostly hovers on the edge, half-listening and entirely terrified that either Molly or Narcissa will Apparate onto the grass in front of him and yell at him for corrupting her child. With Narcissa, it’s a real possibility. Molly might have to take care of her ten thousand other children and their multitudinous friends, but all Narcissa’s doing is delivering a fruit basket to Draco’s “Aunt Bella,” and how long does that take? Forever, according to Draco, but kids have no real concept of time and can’t be trusted.

But it is longer, at least, than it takes to lead three boys, two of whom are dead clueless about all things Muggle, onto the Subway and across the river to the Botanics. “Blimey!” Ron says once Tom crowds them onto the train and makes them sit. “Dad’d go mad to see this.”

Draco actually sneers, the prat, but one sharp look from Tom and he holds his tongue. The boy might be well on his way to becoming a fully indoctrinated member of the Voldemort Youth, but it’s clear he’s not unsalvageable. 

Overall, the day is a success, which does lead to the unfortunate side effect of Tom landing himself with all three boys and no help with increasing frequency. They aren’t bad together—on the contrary, they balance each other out marvellously as playmates, since Draco doesn’t understand about sharing, Harry is the fish who wants to give away all his rainbow scales, and Ron is the perfect mediator—but three ten-year-old boys are naturally chaotic. Tom doesn’t do chaos. All of them have the attention span of a gnat, and it’s not like Tom can ask Narcissa or Molly for help managing the situation when there’s a vaguely unspoken agreement between him and the boys that no one learns that Ron and Draco are here at the same time. While Molly likely wouldn’t care much, Draco’s only really allowed around the flat alone as much as he is because Narcissa has it in her head that Tom will teach him to control his accidental magic. This makes things worse; now, on top of his prep for his Mastery and his constant vigilance during whatever mischief the boys see fit to wrought, he has to devote twenty minutes or so to trying to teach children a skill that comes as naturally to him as breathing. 

It’s different when it’s just Harry, of course. For whatever reason, Harry can use Tom’s wand as if it’s his. 

After July bleeds into August, and August starts winding down toward September, Tom at least gets the first installments of both his St Andrews’ scholarship and the stipend to cover Harry’s care, so day to day expenses become less of a concern (there’s money in the Peverell vault, naturally, but there won’t be anything going into it but the stipend for three years, so it must be budgeted carefully). At the mid-month, Charlie also leaves for Romania; Molly reacts by hoarding all her other children, so Harry spends more afternoons in Wiltshire, and when Draco comes, he’s alone. They play a lot of football. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but is, when a troupe of Muggle boys asks them one Saturday morning if they want to join their makeshift game. 

Tom expects Draco, who always takes charge, to say no. He says yes instead. 

“Did you have fun?” Tom asks Draco later, while Harry’s showering himself clean of summertime’s sweat, grass stains, and mud splatters. He always lets his friend go first, which means now, it’s just him and Tom at the flat’s battered table. 

“Yes,” the boy says, albeit reluctantly. There’s a flash of freckles on his face now, a consequence of so many days spent in the sun. He hesitates, then says, “Quidditch is superior.”

Rolling his eyes, Tom says, “According to you.” 

“It is! It’s elegant. It has history—”

“So does footie.”

“It requires grace—!”

“You can die. ”

Draco draws back his shoulders and, somehow, manages to create the illusion of peering at Tom down his nose. “Only if you’re careless,” he says.

“Or if someone pushes you off your broom,” Tom says mildly. 

A little less confidently, Draco says, “Why did someone push you?”

For a moment, Tom considers using his I’ll tell you when you’re older excuse, or just outright lying, but decides bugger all, this kid is already in some sort of crisis over enjoying Muggle things and having a fun with Muggle children, so he could do with a harder nudge in the right direction. “It was my friend’s Yule party,” he lies, before switching to more or less the truth. “He was a pureblood. I didn’t acknowledge my magical heritage until I was fourteen, and even that wasn’t by choice. Not everyone my age enjoyed being upstaged by a mudblood.”

Did he imagine Draco’s flinch? No, he definitely did not. “Why would you hide what you are?” Draco says, almost angrily. “Why would you prefer your Muggle ancestry? Ancestry—ancestry is everything.”

When Harry appears in the doorway that separates the hall from the main room, Draco doesn’t notice. As if sensing that this moment is delicate, Harry practically floats into the room on silent feet and takes a seat on the sofa, well in Draco’s blindspot. Both boys stare at Tom—Harry imploringly, Draco fearfully—so his desire to snap that it isn’t a story for a ten-year-old melts away. It isn’t, but that doesn’t mean Tom can’t edit the truth to create a child-friendly version. 

“There were details about my background that Skeeter’s article got wrong,” he says finally, “and I’ve not cared to correct them. I was raised by my Muggle father and grandparents. My mother was an awful person. Why should I want to be associated with someone just because she could wave a wand around when my dad’s the one who used to trade his bacon ration for extra sugar so there’d be enough for a cake by the time my birthday came around?”

“Because it’s magic!” Draco says, not quite angrily, but definitely frustrated. His cheeks flush pink. Behind him, Harry’s doing a great imitation of Hedwig. “Everyone knows mu—Muggleborns don’t have the same magical potency as the rest of the us, and that Muggles society isn’t as good—”

“Draco,” Tom says, “magical potency is complete bullshit. A lot of top-scorers tend to be Muggle-raised because a childhood in the Muggle school system teaches them the necessary study skills Wix-raised students lack.” There’s also the issue of all the inbreeding, but he wouldn’t say that even if Draco was an adult. “And I know you don’t believe that Muggle society isn’t as ‘advanced,’ or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“But—but.” Draco stops, seemingly at a loss for words for the first time since Tom’s met him. “But then why does everyone say otherwise?”

“Not everyone does,” he corrects. “Do you want my honest answer?” The boy nods. Behind him, Harry does the same. Vigorously. “All right. But you won’t like it, so I’m asking you to think about it before you start to argue. The truth is, magic’s an equaliser. Muggles have very clear ways of hating each other, by gender and skin colour and who wants to kiss who and which god a person prays to, and all of these differences still exist in our world, but it’s difficult to disparage someone for their appearance when they can blow you up with their wand just as easily as you can blow up them. For Muggles to easily murder each other, there still needs to be a certain amount of effort in actually acquiring the weapon, which not everyone can do. So for our lot, what’s the quantifier, then? The same as the equaliser: magic. It’s the same drivel as Muggle eugenics, an artificial creation of division and classification system based on nothing but the desire of those in power to keep their power. The human capacity to hate, and then to justify that hate, is…well, it borders on admirable, just for how singular it is. Conflict and war and the abstract nature of hatred are probably inherent in our psychology somewhere, but we need to be taught who to hate and who to fear. The answer was very easy for me, growing up. It was war. Britain wasn’t the instigator. My enemies were very clear, because they were trying to kill me, even if it was only as an extension of a much larger population. The real mark of a person’s worth isn’t what they’re born into, I think, but whether they complacently swallow the party line there being an ‘us’ automatically and violently opposed to a ‘them,’ or bother to think for themselves. Divisions are entirely arbitrary until someone starts dropping bombs or rounding populaces, and creates them.”

 A crease forms between Draco’s brows. “But then where does our magic come from,” he asks, “if it’s not about blood?”

Tom shrugs. “That’s one of the great mysteries of magic,” he says. “Maybe if we ever bothered with science, we’d figure it out. Muggles have done brilliantly tracing biological evolution, but Wix are proper shi—proper awful at cooperating and collaborating, so I doubt we’re ever finding out.”

When Narcissa comes for Draco a half hour later, the crease between his brow hasn’t smoothed, but only when his mother isn’t looking. Harry barely waits until they’re gone before he says, “I don’t think he really believes all that rubbish. He admitted he likes coming here so much because the friends his father picked are stupid.”

“I reckoned as much,” Tom says, as he starts pulling out ingredients for tea, “but he has to come to that conclusion on his own. How’s rice and veg sound?”

“Good,” Harry says. “Why was your mum terrible?”

He gazes up at Tom like he anticipates the response, but hopes for a different result. But Tom, ever the disappointment, just ruffles his hair and says, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

Harry starts P7 on the third Monday in September, on a cool morning when the rain is coming down in such a light mist that using an umbrella is a waste. Though the school day starts at 9:00, Tom walks him there at 8:30, so that Harry can have his free breakfast. “Eat something healthy,” Tom says when they reach the doors, “and if you Apparate yourself onto any roofs, try to blame the other kid, all right?”

Before Harry can answer, a woman in slacks and a tweed blazer materialises in the doorway. “Hello,” she says, glancing from Harry to Tom and back, before stepping aside. “I’m Mrs Campbell. I teach P6 maths. If you’re here for breakfast, young man, come through.” She smiles at Tom. “Seeing your little brother off on your way to college, are you, lad?”

“Uni,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ll be out front when you’re done, Harry. Learn something interesting for me, yeah?”

Though they almost never hug, Harry turns abruptly and wraps his arms around Tom’s middle. They haven’t been anywhere without each other, except maybe Tom running to the shop, since he came and collected Harry from the Dursleys. The thought of being separated is suddenly, bizarrely terrifying—and he thinks Tom might feel it too, from the way he squeezes him back—but he’s also not a baby, so he forces himself to let go. “See you later,” he says, and follows Mrs Campbell inside. 

Most of the day passes uneventfully, though the free meals are nice and the Gaelic lesson is unexpected. No one tries to beat him up, which is a vast improvement to his experience in England, but no one tries to befriend him, either, because they’re all friends with each other. This isn’t terrible (he has Ron and Draco, of course), but it is also boring. But then it’s PE, the last class, and he’s paired with Hermione Granger, the only other English kid in his year. 

 “I’m from Lyme Regis,” she informs him, as she ties her hair back in a high ponytail. She’s a little taller than him, but the ponytail adds to her height. “That’s in Dorset. I’m here for just the year. My father accepted a visiting position at the university’s Dental School. What about you?”

“Surrey,” he says. The teacher calls for them to make their way outside, even though it’s certainly raining by this point. “I’m here with my cousin.” 

“What does your cousin do?”

“He’s a student. Uni.” What he’s studying, exactly, Harry still can’t say, other than it involves animals, because whenever Tom starts rambling about academics, he tends to use words no one but very smart adults can understand. He’s better at making himself understood when talking about his magical studies, but that might be because he can demonstrate.

Thankfully, Hermione loses the opportunity to ask them any more questions when the teacher orders them to start running laps in the rain (Harry tucks this away for the list of Muggle School Things he’s compiling to complain about to Ron and Draco). At the very end of the school day, though, she corners him before he can run outside to meet and asks, “Would you like to come over sometime to study together? You must be behind on Gaelic too.”

He doesn’t care overly much about how he does in school this year, since it’s not as if any of his Muggle marks will count at Hogwarts, but he knows it matters to Tom, so he meets her eye and says, “All right. But only Tuesdays or Thursdays.” Tom’s been looking for a sitter; if Harry tells him he found a study partner instead, his cousin will be so pleased he might swoon.

Hermione beams. Even with her buck teeth, her smile is a pretty one.

Of course, Tom’s every bit as pleased as expected. He has Harry spill every detail about his day (Harry’s never had anyone ask about his day at school before), and talks excitedly of his own (“He’s an real boffin, my vertebrate professor, I can’t wait to shock him with a snake” and “Ms Lucille’s looking to have me tested into second-year courses”), before asking if Harry wants to learn some basic Charms. Why wouldn’t he? He thinks he might be in love with magic, just a bit, though that may have to do with the fact that he’s learning everything practically now rather than from books (the only one they have at the moment is Hogwarts: A History , which Tom reads him a chapter of every night). The only subject they never practice is potions; that, Tom says, Harry will just have to learn from his books once it’s time to buy them. 

“You’ll be good at it, I suspect,” Tom says, when Harry broaches the subject that Monday afternoon after his first day of school. The first unit of his science class is chemistry, which reminded him. “You can cook and bake the Muggle way already. The principle is the same. Just follow the directions, and you’ll be all right.” 

At the Dursleys, Harry did most of the cooking and the baking, at least in the part, but he really only does it here if Tom forgets that meals exist. It doesn’t happen often, since, like today, he’ll usually at least remember to order takeaway from the Indian place by the river. “Okay,” Harry says, though he really wants to ask why they don’t even own a cauldron. Even Ron’s family has one. Both he and Draco have called it a Wixen standard, saying it that way they will sometimes, practically at the same time with an identical bob of their heads. Sometimes, Harry thinks they only bicker so much because they think they should, not because they actually disagree on anything important. Well, except about their Quidditch teams, which might be the most important matter of all.

 Over saag paneer and samosas, Harry remembers to tell Tom about Hermione. “That ought to be fine,” he says, after obvious hesitation. “I’ll write a note for the administration. But take my wand tomorrow.”

“Why?” Harry says, surprised. “Won’t you be needing it?”

“I don’t have anything for the Mastery tomorrow,” Tom says, “and I can do magic as easily without a wand as with. Everything will be fine, I reckon, but I’ll feel better if you have it. I’ve not met the Grangers.” 

After ten weeks together, Tom’s desire to keep him safe shouldn’t be so disorienting, but nevertheless is. Harry ducks his head to hide his pleased smile and agrees to hide it in his sleeve, if it makes Tom happy.

The following afternoon isn’t fun, necessarily, but enjoyable. Hermione reminds Harry of Tom, who seems not to understand that anything outside studying is important. They also get much more work done together than Harry ever would on his own, which is probably a good thing, even if he is dreaming about demolishing Draco at Quidditch this weekend by the time Tom arrives to collect him. Whether Hermione notices his drifting attention is debatable.

“Oh,” Harry hears Mrs Granger saying when he and Hermione emerge from her bedroom with his schoolbag packed, “sorry, I was expecting—well, come through. I’m Shay Granger.”

“Tom. It’s nice to meet you,” Tom says, and smiles when Harry slips into view. “Ready to go, Harry?” 

“Yeah,” he says, grabbing his shoes, as Mrs Granger answers, “It’s a pleasure, dear. Harry’s just been lovely. How kind of you to fetch your brother. More responsible than I was at your age. Do you think, though, that I could perhaps meet your parents the next time? Or is there a way I could reach them?”

“Right, sorry,” says Tom. He extracts his new mobile phone from his jacket pocket. “If you add your number, I’ll call you so you have mine. It’s just us, I’m afraid.” 

Harry is on one knee tying his laces, so he can’t see Mrs Granger’s expression when she says, “Just you?” but he imagines it isn’t pleasant from her tone. 

“Just us,” Tom repeats cheerily, which seems to end the exchange. 

Within two days, Harry has a standing invitation to spend every Tuesday and Thursday with the Grangers, including tea. By Thursday, he decides he likes Hermione quite a bit, even if she is something of a know-it-all, but he isn’t as certain that he likes her parents, who ask-without-really-asking where his parents are, and how old Tom is, and how often they eat at home, and if he’s ever left alone. He doesn’t tell Tom any of this—it’s too embarrassing—but he complains to Ron and Draco when they visit on Saturday. It’s raining, so they’re inside his room while Tom writes up something for his Vertebrate Zoology course at the kitchen table. The three of them fit comfortably on his full-sized bed, if they all sit in a triangle facing each other with their knees pulled up. 

Neither of his friends are at all shocked to hear about the Grangers’ weird behaviour. “Look, mate,” Ron says, “Bill lived with us til he finished his Mastery and landed his job with Gringotts. Charlie would’ve, if he hadn’t found the position in Romania, and he only convinced Mum and Dad to let him go cause we’ve family on the Hungarian side of the border. Wix come of age at seventeen, yeah, but no one actually leaves home right when they finish Hogwarts unless there’s a war on or they hate their parents.” 

“I overheard Mother telling Father that this proves Dumbledore’s gone senile,” Draco adds. “Called the situation mad. Mother ticked a whole list of families he or the Ministry might have approached, if they wanted you to stay with a relative.” 

“I have other family?” Tom hadn’t mentioned that, but then again, Tom spent forty years as a doll and only went to Hogwarts for a year, so what did he know?

Ron and Draco nod. “We’re all related,” Ron says, motioning between the three of them. “I can never remember how cousins and removals work, but, er, Septimus Weasley married Cedrella Black back…I don’t know. Ages and ages ago.”

“The twenties,” Draco says, with his usual authority. “Cedrella Black was first cousins with Dorea Black, who’s my great-great-aunt through my mother’s side. She married Charlus Potter, your grandfather’s brother, so she’s your great-great-aunt, as well as Ron’s. The two of you and my mother are all third cousins.” 

“Well, then Tom is still closer,” says Harry, to whom the idea of third cousins sounds like make-believe. More than that, he’s miffed that anyone could question Tom’s right to be his guardian, when they can even share a wand. “He just doesn’t like to talk about it. But we wouldn’t be Parselmouths otherwise. And anyway, the Gringotts blood—”

Draco gasps; Ron chokes. In something like a squeak, Draco says, “You’re a Parselmouth? ” 

“Yeah,” Harry says, confused by the reaction. “Why’s that—”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Draco says. 

“No one,” says Ron. “Ever.”

“It’s said that only heirs of Slytherin are Parselmouths,” continues Draco, before Harry can ask. His friends are more serious than he’s ever seen them. “I suppose—I suppose there’s no reason that must be true, not if other things—but no, even if you’re in Slytherin, best keep it between us.”

Crossly, Ron says, “Harry’s not a Slytherin.”

Draco snorts. “Well, he’s certainly no Hufflepuff.” 

“Fred and George say I’ll be a Hufflepuff,” Ron says, all fears about Harry talking to snakes and what it means forgotten as he throws himself dramatically back on the bed. “The house that ‘takes all the rest.’”

If that’s true, Harry thinks, that it’s where he’ll end up, unless being a Parselmouth is enough to land him Slytherin by default. And that would be much, much better than the alternative, he realises with alarm, when Draco says, “I reckon I’d just leave if I was Sorted into Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw might be acceptable, I suppose, but Father’s likely to strike me from the tree if I was to Sorted into Gryffindor.” 

“Tom doesn’t care where I’m Sorted,” Harry says, which is true, though he’s no less anxious for it, “but I don’t think I want Ravenclaw. You need to solve a riddle to enter the Common Room, Tom says, but at least Gryffindor has a password.”

Mystified, Draco asks, “Why does Tom, the Gryffindor, know how to enter the Ravenclaw Common Room?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says with a shrug, as Ron, for some reason, reddens. “When do we get our letters?” 

“Around our birthdays,” Ron answers, as his face returns to its normal pasty shade. “You’ll probably receive yours before it, since it’s so late, but it’s as at or a couple weeks later, usually, for first years, since you need time to buy your wand and things, then everyone second year and older receives theirs the same day.”

While that does make a certain amount of sense, it’s wretchedly unfair for someone like Harry, with a birthday at the end of July. 

He doesn’t think much of the conversation again, though, until another fortnight passes, and Hermione suddenly drags him over to the chain-linked fence separating the school’s basketball court from the outside payment. “You’re the Harry Potter, aren’t you?” she says, nearly vibrating with excitement as she eyes his lightning scar on his forehead. Her hair is a frizzy brown halo around her head, glowing in the light of the street lamp. “Oh, I knew it. The moment I read—”

“You’re—you’re a witch?” he says, staring at her, wide-eyed. She nods eagerly. “How long’ve you—you’re a Muggleborn?” 

Again, she nods. “A few days ago,” she says. “Professor McGonagall brought my parents and I to Diagon Alley on Saturday, and I’ve been reading ever since. Is Tom—” Now he nods, too shocked for actual words. “Marvellous! I’m so sorry about your parents, Harry. You must tell me everything about—about being one us tomorrow.” 

“I don’t know too much,” he says, as a warning, even as the first spark of excitement starts to take root. He can introduce her to Ron and Draco! Even Draco’s been dead curious about his Muggle friend, though he pretends not to be; the meeting might be easier to swallow if she’s a witch. “I’ve only known who I am myself since July.”

“Do you have your wand yet?” she asks, lowering her voice to barely a whisper. He shakes his head. “I just bought mine. Ten and three fourth inches, vine wood, with a core of a dragon heart’s string. Dragons! Can you believe it?”

“My friend’s brother’s off to study dragons,” Harry says. 

Hermione looks ready to faint from excitement. Frankly, Harry doesn’t blame her. 

Later, when he tells Tom about the new development while levitating gross green peppers in the air, his cousin just says, “Only you, Harry. I mean that. What are the odds? Well, you better ease Draco into it. That’s four of you now, I suppose.”

He sounds tired, like he hasn’t gotten enough sleep, before disappearing into his room to do something for his Mastery practicals. Harry works on his homework at the kitchen table, though he sets aside the maths for when he can ask Tom for help before bed. It won’t be before then; Harry already knows that it will be one of those nights when he’ll be eating the leftover takeaway while Tom forgets everything but his schoolwork.

There are a lot of nights where they eat separately, in the coming weeks. Harry supposes he understands—he finds out over tea with the Grangers that Tom’s skipped a year in both his programmes—though it’s a little lonely doing his homework while eating rather than talking with cousin. Still, he knows, somehow, not to mention it to any other adult. It’s also not something he thinks much of, preoccupied as he is with the impending meeting of his friends, which finally happens the Sunday after Halloween (Samhain).

It’s cold, but not raining, so Harry, Ron, and Draco walk with Tom to the forested area of the estate with the furry horned cows, where they meet the Grangers. Tom, who’s the best, casts a Warming Charm, and politely drags Hermione’s parents away to look at some ducks before they can ask as many questions as their daughter.

“What’s it like?” Hermione asks after they exchange all the awkward introductions and find some logs to sit on at the edge of a ditch. “Growing up in an all-Wixen household?”

Ron and Draco glance at each other, which is good. After a moment, Ron says, “Well, even if you’re doing everything ‘yourself,’ it’s lots easier with magic, except for parts of cooking or gardening, cause that all needs to be done by hand. And it’s quicker to get places once you’re old enough, and you can Apparate or make a portkey, but even at our age you can fly a broom, which is almost as fast as a car, Harry says.”

  “Faster,” Draco says. “The Nimus just finished its testing. That’s nought to eighty with a maximum speed of one hundred twenty.”

“Is your father buying you one?” Harry asks hopefully. If he can’t afford his own broomstick, he’ll feel no shame about using his posh friend’s. 

“Not for another few weeks,” says Draco. “Father wants to be certain the Quidditch League Safety Approval sticks. Has Harry explained Quidditch to you yet, Granger?”

Hermione, who doesn’t care one bit about sports, says, “A little. Will I be terribly far behind when term begins, do you think? You must have practiced spells since you were little.” 

“Magic isn’t really controllable until you’re ten or eleven,” he says, “unless you’re some annoying wandless prodigy, though I do suppose we have the edge over you in potions.”

“Maybe you,” says Harry. “Tom acts like he’s allergic. It’s weird. He received an O on his NEWTs.”

“Not to mention Snape only likes Slytherins,” adds Ron. “Have any idea what House you’ll be in, Hermione?”

“Ravenclaw, maybe,” she says instantly. Harry isn’t surprised; she finished Hogwarts: A History on her own, much faster than he did. “Though I don’t believe I would be opposed to Gryffindor or Slytherin—”

Draco openly cringes. “Not Slytherin,” he says, though he doesn’t sound happy about it. His eyes are firmly on the fallen leaves that blanket the ground. “It doesn’t matter how smart you are. They’ll eat you alive.”

Even Ron is shocked to silence by that, and he’s never without something to say. Offended, Hermione says, “Whyever would they do that?”

“It’s like Eton or something,” Harry says carefully, before Draco can say something stupid and blood purist-sounding and offend everyone here. “Your name is important.”

Hermione seems to understand that this maybe isn’t something she should push. “Do you all have owls?” she asks instead, as she draws her legs to her chest and wraps her arms around her knees. “I’d love an owl or a cat, but Mum says I have to wait until I’m thirteen.”

“I’ll only get an owl if I’m prefect or something,” Ron says, “but better nothing a toad. Why thirteen?” 

“It’s my bat mitzvah,” she says. “I’ll have to self-study during my second year, of course, but my birthday is in September, so I hope I can do it that August.”

Neither Ron nor Draco know what a bat mitzvah is, and Harry only has the faintest idea, so Hermione spends a minute explaining about Jewish coming of age ceremonies that require a year of study, before asking a series of her own questions: do you really have to have robes all time? What sort of careers are there for Wix after Hogwarts? Do Wix adopt and magically adapt Muggle technically, or do they simply have magic replace it? Why are they still using quills? What sort of holidays do Wix celebrate? Why doesn’t Hogwarts have a writing class? 

They’re all very reasonable, Harry thinks, and Ron and Draco do their best to answer, even if their answers are sometimes wildly different. Even if they haven’t outright said that the Malfoys are as rich as the Queen and the Weasleys have the name but not the wealth, Hermione’s smart enough to guess. 

“All right, all right,” Ron says eventually, waving his hand at nothing, or perhaps at all the questions. “What was growing up with Muggles like?”

Hermione cocks her head. “What do you mean?” she says. “Hasn’t Harry told you?”

“Harry’s aunt and uncle are modern witchfinders,” Draco says. Harry pushes him a little. He pushes his back. Just because Draco and Ron know…things doesn’t mean they need to air his business. “So, what’s it really like growing up in the Muggle world?”

To Hermione’s credit, she does think about it rather than immediately turn to Harry and start hammering with questions. “It’s different for everyone, obviously,” she says, “but on a whole, we have far more school we must attend with many more subjects. Some people don’t complete school until they’re thirty. Everything takes an awfully long time, like fixing teeth, and nearly every form of fast travel hurts the earth. The Muggle world has so many things that are wonderful, like films and Shakespeare and algebra, but I’ve never really felt like I belonged to it. Bad enough being Jewish. Making books fly around like in Matilda because Lucy Carpenter cheated off my exams made it worse.”

“That’s accidental magic,” says Ron. “What’s Matilda?”

“A book,” she answers at the same time Harry says, “A film.” It’s one of the few he’s seen, since a teacher played it once at school. They debate for a moment, film vs book, before deciding it didn’t matter much, because the film would be easier to show the other boys, and it would be a shame if they left for Hogwarts without experiencing the Muggle idea of magical children. “We can borrow it from the library,” Hermione says. “Next time, you can all come over. I can show you what an all-Muggle house is like.”

Ron and Harry agree instantly; Draco does a moment later, reluctantly. At some point before then, Harry should probably warn Hermione that his friend is still learning how not to be awful, but now he just says, “Let’s go see some cows.”

“You expressed an interest in snakes, Tom,” Professor Morrison says when Tom joins him for the professor’s last official office hour, by request. The man’s nose is red from the cold, despite the illusion of heat leaking out of the radiator, and his eyebrows are so bushy they stick out like matters of inquiry from his face. “Now, I wouldn’t ordinarily offer this opportunity to a first-year, but since you’ve done direct entry to your second, I believe an exception could be made. Would you be interested in joining my research team in July to investigate the endangered Vipera ursinii in Abruzzo?”

He beams. There’s something so painfully Slughorn-like about him that Tom’s instinctive reaction is to say yes first and ask for the details later. Or maybe that’s the exam-time stress playing tricks on his brain. Yes yes yes, he wants to, Merlin, he wants to, but forces himself to say, “I’m sorry, sir, but I have other obligations.” 

Professor Morrison waves his hand dismissively. “It’s just ten days,” he says. “Any job you have will understand that as a student, you must do what you can to succeed. Think of the future, Tom. It’s a great opportunity. A real waste it would be not to take it.” 

“It’s not a job,” he says, even though he suspects very few employers would be comfortable allowing their employee to escape to Italy for ten days. “I’m responsible for my cousin. Perhaps next year.”

“I’ll make a note of it,” the professor says. “I will be sorry not to have you, Tom. The way that snake responded to you in the Edinburgh labs—if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were talking to it. Do let’s keep in touch about next summer. No, it’ll be winter, a year from now, between terms. There must be something that can be done. Think about how good it will look on a postgrad application. Dr Ryder! Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

The likelihood of Tom ever going on to postgrad is slim, since he hopes that Dumbledore will waive the age minimum and hire him to teach at Hogwarts. “It does,” he says anyway. “Thank you, Professor. I won’t forget it. Winter could work theoretically, but I won’t be able to tell you for certain until September.”

“Excellent,” Professor Morrison says, writing something down on his desk blotter. “Good luck on your exams, Tom. Not that you’ll need it.”

Again, Tom says, “Thank you, Professor,” and leaves the moment he’s dismissed.

Though Tom does not require any well-wishes for his written exam, he still buys a very weak double espresso from the stall outside the library, finds an unoccupied nook, and spends an hour studying all that he can before it’s time. The class is allotted two hours; he finishes in one, after double-checking his responses. Morrigan’s pants, but is he glad to be done with that, he thinks as he turns it in to the proctor, who just stares at him, gobsmacked, as he takes his leave. It’s only noon now; this way, he has three hours, not two, until his end-of-term practicals for his Mastery. And then from there, to the Weasleys to collect Harry, unless he wants to spend the night. Today’s Friday. That will be perfectly acceptable, unless Molly and Arthur try to badger Tom into staying over too. They’re just so fussy, when all he really wants to do is sleep.

But that’s not quite true, is it? What he really wants, he can’t have. He and Flea and Mia had a plan for what they’d do to celebrate the completion of their first Mastery exams, which mostly consisted of portkey-ing to somewhere warm and partaking in unwise decisions on the beach. Flea always said he’d finish his Mastery in something pointless and easy, then become a degenerate man of leisure who cared for the children while Mia was the one who changed the world; Tom never factored into it much, other than the assumption that he would be there, in whatever capacity was required of him. It’s not as though he cared to ask for more—they all knew, even if they never said it, that what they had was never equal. Flea and Mia had been betrothed from infancy, and their friendship with Tom sprouted from (erroneously presumed) mistaken identity, before morphing into a charity case. Nevertheless, his baseline intelligence and their political apathy kept his (presumed) plebeian background from ever becoming a real problem, so while he knew there would come a day when he was less to important to them as they were to him, their friendship was never meant to have an expiry date of seventeen years. 

What would they say, if they knew he had a sole guardianship of Harry? Probably nothing good. Not about him, per se, but at least the situation. He can picture it easily: Flea’d mouth off about this Dumbledore leaving their grandchild with a couple of abusive pricks and no subsequent checks on his well-being, and Mia would offer a list of reasons why the whole thing is daft, sounding remarkably like Charlie. 

Maybe Tom should just ask Molly and Arthur outright if Harry can stay the night. The mirror shard is made for quick communication for a reason, after all, and he doubts they would mind, and Harry certainly wouldn’t, and at this point, Ron spends the night at the flat all the time. With Tom already in London for his practicals, it’ll be easy to run to the apothecary in Diagon Alley. A one-off without Harry there wouldn’t be breaking any promises, and if he has to go another minute pretending to Thomas Ryder because some barmy alternate version of him decided he wanted to rule the country and kill a baby—

No. He needn’t be stupid. Everything is under control, obviously. Harry’s thriving in school and in his extra lessons in spellwork. Tom pays the rent and utilities every month on time, so there’s no threat of losing basic necessities, and there’s always enough food on hand for three meals a day, and Harry is regularly socialising. Sometimes Tom feels like more of a sitter or a tutor when Ron and Draco visit, but that’s fine. He still finishes all his work. He’s still the top of his class in both of his programmes, and on track to graduate at twenty for his Mastery and twenty-one for his BSc. No, he mustn’t surrender to baser impulses. 

It takes longer than it should to Occlumens his way out of those weeds, before he feels calm enough to Apparate to London. 

The second-year DADA Mastery students duel current Aurors for their pre-Yule exams at the Ministry, which is unfortunate, because Tom had hoped to never enter this building in his life—any life. But there’s not, he finds to his relief, any blood test as there is in Gringotts, so his ordinary identification passes without issue. Tom Ryder enters the Auror Training Hall as easily as he entered the classroom at St Andrews, and queues with the rest of his cohort to receive the card with his information, because they couldn’t just use a bloody chalkboard. The whole process could have been at least a quarter hour shorter, he thinks, but all complaints fly from his head once he receives his card. 

His duelling partner is Alastor Moody, current Department Chief, though only for another few weeks. Even at his age and at the verge of retirement, he’s still meant to be the best on force, which Tom only knows because Tonks is obsessed with him. Worse yet, they’re last. 

There are eight candidates in total in the second-year cohort, not including Tom himself, as he’s only here through the programme head’s blatant favouritism and a loophole. He watches the other duels idly, calculating both the students’ and the Aurors’ strengths or weaknesses. Mostly the Aurors win, either by virtue of being significantly more skilled, or because the opposing student chooses peacocking over ending the fight. Far too few, on either side, exclusively use nonverbal magic. None use wandless. Inability, Tom wonders, or lack of creativity? It’s not as if it’s against the rules. 

However, Dark Magic is, ridiculously enough, so Farrell is a git for trying to curse his opponent with Confringo.  

And then it’s Tom’s turn. Coming off the back of that, no one’s particularly paying attention, but he doesn’t care about the audience’s reception as long as he impresses Moody. Though Moody will be a more challenging opponent than, say, Farrell, Tom has certain advantages that his candidates lack and that the Auror won’t expect: his Hogwarts had a very active duelling club, of which he was the Ravenclaw captain, he’s had at least some control over his magic for as long as he could walk, and the only reason Gellert Grindelwald managed to get the better of him is because the man was a filthy cheat. Moody will not be a problem. 

They bow to each other, as is proper, before he strikes out with Locomotor Mortis; Tom angles aside to dodge physically and counters with a Conjunctivitis Curse, followed by the Knockback Jinx, then the Impediment Hex, all too fast for Moody to dodge the last one. The man’s eye swings wildly in its socket, tracking Tom and his rapidfire spells as he moves across the designated duelling space. Tom blocks the man’s Stupefy with an ordinary Shield Charm, and cancels out Moody’s Incendio Trio with a spell of his own creation, as he recalls Professor Merrythought, his head of house, saying, Don’t play with your food, Tom.

Moody tries to hit him with a Chord-Binding Jinx, but Tom just flicks out his fingers with his right hand to cast a localised Shield. At the same moment, before the spell can disconnect, he raises his wand and entombs Moody in ice with a well-placed Glacius Duo.

The stunned silence borders on awkward. Then someone starts clapping, and Tom receives a scattering of applause as he frees Moody with a counter-curse. 

“I heard you’re looking to teach,” says Moody later, cornering Tom after he collects his certification to proceed to next term. 

They’re by the coat room, the last ones there, since Tom was also the final one to receive his results. It’s stuffy and dusty and he’s so fucking tired, but still needs to fetch Harry from the Weasleys, and before that, can’t risk ignoring the famed Mad-Eye Moody. “What of it?” he says, as he dons his winter cloak. It’s only as warm as his anorak thanks to a charm. 

“Just thinking it’s a shame,” Moody says, as he looks Tom over with both eyes. “Consider the Department, Ryder. You could be fast-tracked into the programme. I haven’t had a student beat me since James Potter.”

Aurors’ pay was awe-inspiring enough in the 50s, so Tom can only imagine what it is now. And he probably would like it, truth be told, but he knows already that there are identity and anti-Imperius checks every week. The goblins of Gringotts might not have cared that his name appeared as Tom Marlowe Riddle, but the Aurors will. They’re also likely to care when all those anti-Imperius checks come up blank because Tom’s a natural block. Inevitably someone will ask why, and then he’ll have to tell a version of the truth, and the Aurors are certainly never going to want a member with curse-born behavioural issues. 

Teaching is safer.

“I have an informal agreement in place with Dumbledore,” he says, which isn’t untrue. 

Moody tsks. “Consider it,” he says. “Skill like yours would be wasted on children.” 

High praise, coming from Moody. Tonks has been waiting on a compliment from the man since they met two years ago. “Perhaps,” Tom says, trying not to think about Professor Morrison’s comment on wasted opportunities. He adds, “Thank you, though, Mr Moody,” and takes his leave. 

Winter hols pass without much fanfare. Tom sleeps at nearly every opportunity, Harry hardly ever stops talking about Quidditch, and he, the other boys, and Hermione become an inseparable quartet that will likely take Hogwarts by storm, if House rivalry and blood-purist bullshit don’t tear them asunder. Molly and Arthur find out about Draco, but Narcissa and Lucius do not learn about Ron or Hermione. For Yule, Tom buys Harry The Tales of Beedle the Bard to read to him at night, and for Tom’s birthday, Harry (and the Grangers) use Hermione’s kitchen to bake fairy cakes. Something about it reminds Tom a bit too much of his family’s attempts to circumnavigate rations for the same occasion, but he manages not to throw it back until after his cousin is asleep, so considers it a success. 

In mid-January, school resumes for everyone. By some measure of luck, Tom manages to create a schedule that allows him to be home whenever Harry is, so he no longer needs to feel guilty about relying on the Grangers. Not that Harry’s there any less frequently, though—and that’s good, frankly, as much as Tom wishes it wasn’t, but he has labs this term, as well as papers and projects, and his Mastery requires the creation of a new curse and its counter-curse. Tom’s made several curses, but rarely does he make a specific counter-course, preferring to leave his creations undefendable. It’s also just dumb, how they can’t use Dark Magic. What’s the point of DADA if they can’t transition past the grey areas? 

January fades into February, which fades into March. He regretfully turns down Molly’s invitation to Ron’s birthday celebration, but Harry and the others go. Though Draco and Hermione return within a few hours, Harry stays the weekend and returns before bed Sunday, laden down with the usual Weasley leftovers. They attend school. Tom starts Harry on Transfiguration, and begins reading him the least boring book from History of Magic that he can find. Harry’s marks are high, and Tom’s spells are coming along beautifully, though they’re still in the nonverbal stage. His lab work is impeccable. For his last paper, his professor asked if he could use it as an example in future classes. He only visited the apothecary once, and Harry was at Draco’s, so it doesn’t count.

So everything is just fine, he thinks, until the Thursday after Ron’s party, when Harry knocks on Tom’s bedroom door and slips into the room. “Why are you on the floor?” Harry asks, confused, from where he stands in the doorway. The light catches on his lens, hiding his eyes.

“More space,” Tom says, gesturing at the various Conjured objects spread around him, all meant to practice the effect of his Spellbinding Curse. Each is infused with his magic, which isn’t perfect, but will work well enough. Practicing on a real person would be better, but it’s also unethical. “Do you need help with maths?”

Harry shakes his head. “Er, can I borrow your mobile and ten quid?” he says. “I’ll order us a pizza.” 

“They’re both in my anorak, I think,” Tom says, now confused himself. Harry doesn’t particularly like pizza. Neither does Tom, for that matter. “Why?”

“Ten quid’s all you have in cash,” Harry says, shifting his weight from foot to foot as his hands slide into his pockets. “I found it already. Was just asking permission.” 

“I can just—make something?” says Tom, who doesn’t particularly feel like puttering around the kitchen, but knows it’s his duty as a guardian to a ten-year-old. “Sorry, I thought we still had Molly’s leftovers. Just pick—what?”

 Slowly, Harry shakes his head again. “We can’t,” he says. “I finished it yesterday, and I’ve been eating everything else at school. All we’ve got is a bag of rice. Tom, when’s the last time you ate something?”

“This morning,” he blatantly lies. “Has this happened before?”

“No,” Harry says. A quick poke at his head proves that he’s telling the truth, but also that he’s concerned, maybe a little scared—for Tom, it seems, which is just—well, shite. Food is a basic necessity when it comes to providing for someone, especially Harry, who understands the lack, and a child shouldn’t be worried or afraid for their guardian without a war to coat every relationship in the same veneer, so Tom has no excuse to leave the kitchen or—

As if from a great distance away, he’s aware of Harry saying something about the mirror, of Harry leaving the room. I’m having a paroxysmal manifestation, Tom thinks, with an odd sense of detachment, like it’s happening to someone else other than him. Vaguely, he’s aware that his breathing is shallow, and how his heart palpitates and his hand shakes, and that he maybe could faint, but without urgency, so he doesn’t know how much time passes before the door opens, and Molly says, “Take a breath, love. There you are.”

 She does something with her wand that releases the imaginary band restricting his lungs and slows his heartbeat, until he’s able to focus on her pale round face and the frizzy mane of orange curls that surround and that she’s smiling as if any of this is all right. “Better already,” she says, as she stands. “Up, up. I’m too old to be sitting on the floor, Tom.”

“Where’s Harry?” he asks, forcing himself to his feet. He’s still shaken, but no longer shaking , which is an improvement. “How are you—he used the mirror?”

“That he did,” she says, as she walks out into the main room, where she sits on the sofa and pats the cushion next to her. Carefully, he sits. “So. Harry’s at mine. Brought him there myself, then came back here with the promise to bring you by soon. He told me a bit of what happened before your attack. You’re allowed to make mistakes, Tom. This isn’t even a bad one. Nights like this are why takeaway exists. What else is bothering you?”

“Nothing,” he says, mortified that this conversation is even happening. “The food thing’s just important.” For Harry, whose relatives starved him, and for Tom, who thinks he might’ve been born starving. Close enough, anyway. The first official form he ever filled out on his own was his rations book. He was three.

But Molly’s still looking at him like she expects more. “I know, dear,” she says, “but I also found you sitting on the floor of your bedroom surrounded by floating corn dollies, so it does seem there’s something else.”

“Oh. That.” He hadn’t even noticed. “That was just an assignment. It’s fine.”

“Not overworked, then, are you?”

“No, the work’s easy. It’s just—” He hesitates. Molly assures him that she won’t repeat anything he tells her, so he forces himself to say, “My adviser’s already asking me about continuing at St Andrews for postgrad, and I’ve got the Aurors officially trying to recruit me, so now I have to be better than perfect, but by the time I’m done Apparating everywhere, I only want to sleep, and I can’t. There’s too much to do. There’s Harry.”

Molly lays her hand on his shoulder. “Come round for the weekend, Tom,” she says. “I know you haven’t any classes on Friday, and Harry once said there are no terrible consequences for missing class at a Muggle school. We were going to take the children to Croyde Bay on Saturday. Join us or have a lie-in, but let me and Arthur worry about Harry for a few days. And in the morning, you and I can have a chat. Does that sound good?”

That sounds decidedly not fun, and he should be focusing on his assignment, but he still says, “It does,” before he rises to pack a weekend bag for himself and Harry. Is this admitting failure? Probably. No, undoubtedly. At the moment, though, Tom just can’t see how to fix it.

 He spends most of the weekend sleeping, though Molly does find the time to talk with him about time management, self-care as a form of care for others, and being quicker with that mirror. Other than apologising to Harry, they don’t discuss the incident at all. Things don’t get easier after that, necessarily, but Tom sets an alarm system reminding him to run to Sainsbury’s every time they start running low, so in just a few days, everything is back to normal.

Chapter Text

The acceptance letter from Hogwarts comes on 30 July. Tom responds immediately that yes, Harry James Potter would be delighted to attend. The next morning, on his eleventh birthday, they Apparate to Diagon Alley. 

“Gringotts first,” Tom says, taking Harry’s hand. They’ve been here a few times already, but Tom’s always mildly paranoid that one of the many enamoured Wix will try to steal his cousin from him. “There’s something in your vault we need to collect for your birthday. Your wand’s last. We’re meeting the Weasleys at the Leaky at half four.”

That Narcissa offered a sideways apology about not inviting them to dinner, just as she had about striking Harry from Draco’s birthday’s guest list, was neither a shock, nor anything either he or Tom found terribly offensive. By now, her husband is aware that Harry and Draco are friendly enough to sometimes play Quidditch above the estate’s gardens, but it’s an unspoken agreement amongst all parties involved that he oughtn’t learn the relationship is deeper than that unless the boys are Slytherins. Tom has his doubts for both of them, unfortunately for Draco; they’re both cunning in their own ways, but neither has an ha’porth of real ambition. Maybe Draco did once, before Tom decided lying to a child to preserve family values was a waste of developing critical thinking skills. It’s Hermione, with her desperation to prove herself, who would be a better fit, but Tom rather hopes she begs for any House but.

Harry keeps his eyes pinned to the ground as they make their way from the Apparition point behind Blinkhorn’s to Gringotts (technically you can Apparate anywhere in the Alley, but it’s not exactly polite). It’s not common knowledge that Tom’s his guardian, so if anyone’s on the lookout for the Boy Who Lived, they must be searching for a Hogwarts instructor or obvious Responsible Adult, not what appears to be another student. There are some advantages to regularly being mistaken for sixteen.

“Why’s there only one bank?” Harry asks as they climb the steps. 

“Not a clue,” Tom answers, pausing outside the doors so Harry can read the warning beside the doors. The gold-engraved letters glitter in the sunshine. “Binns probably said it in a lecture once, but I wasn’t paying attention. Supposedly, you’d have to be barking to rob it, but anything’s possible with a little ingenuity.”

As he expected, Harry just rolls his eyes at that and drags him inside by the hand.

The door-goblin directs them to Counter 6, the one without a queue. Griphook the Goblin, according to the name card on the edge of the counter, glances from Tom’s face down to Harry. “I see,” he says, before Tom can even speak. “Do you wish to see the Peverell or Potter vault today, Misters Riddle and Potter?”

Though his real name throws him for a moment, Harry doesn’t notice, attention caught on something behind them. “Both,” Tom says as his cousin. “I’ll be making a monetary withdrawal from the Peverell account. Harry’ll be removing an heirloom from his.”

“Do you have his key?” Griphook says as at Counter 7, another goblin and a familiar, grumbling voice swap introductions. 

Tom stiffens. 

Beside him, Rubeus Hagrid says, “I need to collect you-know-what from vault you-know-which.”

With surprising difficulty, Tom forces himself to move like a normal person as he removes the keys from the pocket of his robe. Griphook verifies both, before telling them to come along at the same moment Hagrid’s goblin tells him the same, so that within minutes, they’re all standing next to each other on the launching platform. Hagrid doesn’t notice them until then, which is a shame. Tom’d been hoping the man wouldn’t notice him at all. 

“Ryder,” the gameskeeper says, peering down at him like he’s a particularly unpleasant slug (or perhaps a fluffy kitten, which, for Hagrid, might be worse), before noticing Harry. “Oi! Now, you wouldn’t be—you are! Harry Potter, can’t say I expected—look at you, all grown. So much like your father, you know, but you’ve your mum’s eyes. And to think, last I saw you, you was just a babe.”

Harry tucks himself closer to Tom, who disconnects their hands to wrap an arm around his shoulders. “Er, I’m sorry,” Harry says, staring up at Hagrid through his hair. “Who are you?”

“Blimey, aye, you wouldn’t—Rubeus Hagrid’s the name,” says Hagrid. His hand twitches like he means to hold it out to shake, but Tom just holds Harry a little tighter, and the movement goes nowhere. Some excitement fading, replaced instead with distinct discomfort, the man continues, “Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. I were the one who, er, rescued you from that and delivered you to your family. How’s it you know Mr Ryder?”

“We’re cousins,” Harry says, suddenly cooler than Tom’s ever heard him. Harry’s always been more empathetic than people give him credit for, though; no doubt he picked up on the way Hagrid said Tom’s name. Of all the non-Dumbledore Hogwarts staff, the only ones who could associate his face with the Other Him were McGonagall and Hagrid. McGonagall got over her reservations soon enough, but the gameskeeper acts like Tom’s about to murder this week’s magical creature every time he sees them. 

Whatever, though. The feeling here is mutual. Every time Tom looks at him, he remembers waking up in Flea’s bed to Joey Trent’s dying shrieks. A wandless Stupefy is the only reason no one in the fifth-year dormitory didn’t join the third-year in death.

Hagrid clears his throat. “Well, I s’pose you must be in Diagon for your school supplies,” he says. 

“We are,” says Tom, eyeing him. “Tell me, why are you here, Hagrid?”

“Official Hogwarts business,” the man says, suddenly taking on an air of self-importance. “Dumbledore sent me himself. He oft does on matters of great concern.” Tom hmms , not really caring, but Hagrid seems to take the sound to be inquisitive. “I’m to collect a parcel to bring to Hogwarts for protection. There’s no safer place in Wixen Britain than Hogwarts, Harry.”

Tom would very, very strongly beg to differ. He has the scars to prove it. 

Before any of them can say anything else, though, the first cart rattles onto the track, which is for Hagrid. The man offers them a brittle sort of smile and wishes Harry a happy birthday, before taking his leave. Though Harry goes to ask what that was all about, presumably, the next cart appears a second later, which ends all talking for the foreseeable future. It’s worse than any funfair ride. Tom’s stomach never roils from it, but he doesn’t enjoy it. 

They reach the Peverell vault first, which is closer to the surface, as it’s older. “This is part of your inheritance,” Tom says when they enter. The light Griphook throws at the ceiling gleams off the metal of the coinage, dazzling them both with all the wealth ever denied to them as children. “We’ll withdraw enough today to cover your school expenses so you can afford everything new.” From experience, he knows Harry won’t want to start out in secondhand robes. 

“There’s so much,” Harry says, gazing at all with his eyes owlishly wide behind his glasses. Even if they aren’t perfectly round anymore, the effect is the same.

“Yes, but there’s not much deposited into it,” Tom says, as he counts out what he needs. He promised Harry honesty, so he won’t pretend this money is endless, but he also won’t say that, as Glasgow is less expensive than the home counties, he receives approximately half of the stipend that the Dursleys did, which doesn’t even cover their rent. The rest comes from his St Andrews scholarship. “We’ll be fine. All right, I have what we need. Are you ready to see your vault, Harry?”

“Why is this ours but that one only mine?” Harry says as they exit back into the slightly less stale air of the tunnel and wait for Griphook to relock the door. He hands Tom the key.

“Because we’re both technically Peverells,” Tom says, “but I’m not Potter.”

They crowd back into the cart and zip along the tracks to the Potter vault, which has even more money than the Peverells. “This is all mine?” Harry says in a small voice when they enter.

“Yes,” says Tom, already weaving around the ridiculous piles of money in search of his particular prize. “You deserve the full amount when you come of age, so this is to be touched during emergencies only. We can manage on the Peverell account just fine. That will default to just yours as well once I have the earnings to open my own. Now, look around for a cloak. It might be folded. It’s not silk, but will be reflective in the way that silk or velvet is in the light, and a silverish colour.”

Though they search and search, they come up empty. He uselessly tries to Summon it, but even if it was here, he knows that it wouldn’t work; it’s always been impervious to spells. After a half hour, they concede defeat. “I’ll write a letter when we’re home,” Tom says when they slide back into the cart, shushing Harry’s insistence that he deserves to know what it is. “I’ll tell you if I find out it’s lost. But it’s always passed down to the firstborn son on his eleventh birthday.”

He, Flea, and Euphemia found more trouble than was strictly necessary because of the cloak, but thanks to it, they just as readily found a way out of nearly every sticky situation. Tom was never much of a mischief maker himself, but he was the best at scheming, so willingly allowed himself to be dragged along with his friends’ plans if it meant he could save them from detention (that he became a prefect was hilarious). Harry is directly in line to inherit it. Even if it was in the house when his would-be murderer failed to kill him, the cloak’s so bloody indestructible someone should have salvaged it and had it placed back in the vault. 

Maybe Dumbledore knows, Tom tells himself. At the very least, he’s a place to start.

Harry isn’t happy with the response, but he accepts it for what it is, and allows Tom to lead him to buy his new school robes. Within seconds, all thoughts of mysterious missing heirlooms fly out of his little head, thanks to the appearance of Draco and Narcissa. 

“Thank Woden you’re here,” Narcissa says behind her hand when she and Tom settle on the bench by the window. Past the curtains blocking off the fitting area float Draco and Harry’s usual Quidditch-related chatter. “If I had to hear my son pointedly sigh about the first-year broom restriction one more time, I may have requested he be poked with a pin.”

“I understand,” Tom says. Despite her complaints, though, she looks uncharacteristically relaxed. “I let your son create a monster. Harry’s half-hoping he’ll be a Slytherin just so they can play on the same team.” 

“Oh, I know,” she says, daring to smile. “Draco won’t directly say so, of course, but he’s admitted he’ll accept a position as Chaser, since Harry is a prodigy in the air. You should come by after the boys leave. I’ve heard it’s hard to return to an empty house right away.”

As much as Tom would like to protest that after having Harry for a year, he’s unlikely to mope around the flat the way he suspects his gran once did, the words die before they form. He had trouble letting Harry leave for ordinary primary. “As long as you don’t make me drink that tea again,” he says. “Thank you.” 

Narcissa just shakes her head. “And you call yourself English,” she says as the curtains pull back and Draco emerges, a bag with his school robes in his hand. Some of his summer freckles are back in force, which always makes him look healthier. “Ready to buy your wand now, darling?”

“Yes, Mother,” he says, already inching toward the door. “Goodbye, Tom, Harry.” 

Once they’re gone, Harry stops fidgeting enough that it isn’t long before he’s done, too. It’s the bookshop next, then the apothecary, where Tom is very, very good, and make their way through the rest of the shopping list, before heading to Ollivander’s. The same wand is in the window that was there fifty-odd years ago when Tom bought his own, which reminds him far too late that the wandmaker is as likely to recognise his face as Hagrid.

A bell chimes as Tom pushes open the door. Together, he and Harry walk into the forever-gloam of the shop, where long, thin boxes line the wood-panelled walls and dust hangs suspended in the air. Tom remembers how awed he was the first time he walked in here. Now he just wants to sneeze. 

Ollivander materialises as seamlessly as if he’d Apparated, towering above them both with his hands clasped behind his back and his shoulders bowed. “Mr Riddle,” he says, as he meets Tom with his unblinking eyes. Instinctively, Tom’s mind tries to brush against his, but all he finds is an opaque wall. “Ah. Bad habits are ever-lasting, I see. But you, young man, should be neither young nor living.”

“It’s Ryder,” Tom says with his most charming smile, as Harry steps closer to him again. “We’re here to buy a wand for my cousin.”

“Yes,” Ollivander, as his gaze drifts further downward. “How very curious. Riddle, Potter. Not—”

“It’s Ryder, sir.”

“So you say.” Ollivander reaches out as if to touch the scar; Harry jerks back, bumping into Tom, who wraps his arms around him. “I apologise, Mr Potter. I remember every wand I ever sold, you see. Eleven inches, mahogany. Pliable. Excellent for Transfiguration—that was your father. Your mother had a greater aptitude for Charms. Ten and a fourth inches, nice and willowy. And the one who gave you that scar. I do fear I sold that, too. Thirteen and half inches, yew.” Fixing his stare on Tom again, the wandmaker finishes, “May I see yours, Mr Ryder?”

Dizzy with the relief of realising his wand is not the same as the Other Him’s, Tom removes his wand from behind his ear and hands it over. “The core is—” he starts.

“The feather of a phoenix,” Ollivander finishes, raising a shaking hand to his mouth. “Hold this, Mr Ryder. I won’t be a minute.”

He hands back the wand. Harry tips back his head and whispers, “Who’s Riddle?” as Tom just stands there like an idiot, unsure what to do. 

“We’ll discuss it later,” he says, as Ollivander reappears with a slim, extremely dusty box.

Inch by inch, he removes the lid. “Ah,” he says again, once he can see inside. “So it’s not been stolen.” He tips the box forward to reveal Tom’s wand lying innocently on its cushion. “Eleven inches, holly, in possession of a phoenix feather. The phoenix gave two feathers. Just two. I’ve sold the other, though I believe, yes. The core here must be the other feather. Well, try that one, Mr Potter.”

Even before Harry touches the wand, Tom knows it will work. It makes perfect sense that it will. No wonder, he thinks, as Harry swishes out gold and red sparks, that he’s been able to use Tom’s wand with impunity. Why wouldn’t he, if it’s also his? So then, if Tom has the same, then does that mean there is no Harry in the timeline he left behind?

Well, no, obviously. Tom knew that already, didn’t he, having watched Mia die at seventeen, but still. Still. 

He’s suddenly, viciously glad he’s never going back. 

As Tom pays, Harry asks, “Who has the other feather?”

“Why, Mr Potter,” says Ollivander. “Who else, but the man who gave you that scar?”

Tom pops over to the post office while Harry’s with the Weasleys and sends an owl to Dumbledore inquiring about the cloak. To use Hedwig would be better, but Tom already knows that tonight’s inevitable conversation won’t leave him the time or energy to do this at home. 

They last two hours at the Leaky Cauldron before making their excuses to return to Glasgow. Almost the second they disconnect from their side-along hold, Harry asks, “Who’s Riddle, Tom?”

“Me,” Tom says, raising the blinds with a flick of his hand. “It’s why I almost always introduce myself just as ‘Tom.’ Sit. This is going to be a long conversation.”

Harry scrunches himself into the corner of the sofa. Tom sits beside him, leaving notable space between them. As Harry says, “Why did you lie?” Tom tries to figure out how best to approach this conversation, only to decide there is no good option.

He rubs the side of his nose, trying to stave off a headache, before he answers, “I’d been hoping to save this conversation for after you studied timespace magic, but there’s no helping it. There’s—bugger, you’re always better at visuals. Chronology—a timeline, I suppose, linearity—only exists because humans need to make sense of time, the fourth dimension.” With his hand, draws a red streak across the space in front of them, then bursts it, so sparks scatter in a slowly rotating cloud above the coffee table. “This would be more accurate, though. Time is…time is a lake, not a river. A recent theory postulates that there are ‘crossroads’ decisions in life, where splinters can be created.” He reaches out and touches a finger to one of the red sparks, which brightens and splits, with one turning white. As he fades all the others, he enlarges the two remaining to make his point. “These are alternate ‘timelines’ that exist parallel to each other, ever growing and splintering. I know it’s confusing, but that’s me. I’m a splinter.” 

Though he doesn’t know how much his demonstration helped, he waves the lights away without asking for constructive criticism and turns back to Harry, who stares at him. “That makes a lot of sense,” he says, to Tom’s surprise. “You were a Ravenclaw. That’s why you know about the Common Room.” 

“Yes,” he says, “though I did still spend more time in the Gryffindor Common Room than my own. Fleamont Potter and Euphemia Peverell were my best mates. There. The version of me that exists here wasn’t. And we are actually related. I have the Gringotts blood test as proof.”

Harry shifts, drawing his knees up. “The—‘you’ here,” he says haltingly. “Is it the same person who—” He gestures at his forehead. At his scar. 

As Tom was in the process of formulating a ten minute lead-in to that subject, the best he can manage now is “How did you—yes, apparently?”

“Our wands,” Harry says. “What Mr Ollivander said about the cores. If you’re the same but not really, then it makes sense that the wand is also the same but not really, right?”

The logic leaves a lot to be desired, but he’s not wrong, either, so Tom nods. “Does that scare you?”

Shaking his head, Harry says, “A Dark Lord isn’t terrified of flying, I reckon. The man who killed my parents is Voldemort. You’re Tom.”

“Thank you,” Tom says, relieved. Harry’s meeting his eye, so it’s easy to glean that he’s telling the truth. “You must have questions.”

Unlike their first meeting, Harry has no trouble levelling him with questions, beginning with how Tom ended up here. To the best of his ability he explains about Grindelwald’s attack and the Killing Curse and how disconcerting it was to meet a Dumbledore who didn’t trust him, but that’s all fixed now. Is that fight how Tom got the scar on his arm? Yes. How was his life different from the Other Him? Well, he doesn’t know all the details, but the Other Him had the orphanage and was in Slytherin and made all the wrong friends, while Tom had his family and Ravenclaw and Harry’s own grandparents. And what were they like, these grandparents? So Tom entertains Harry a bit with the many misadventures of Potter and the Peverells, who were called that even when no one realised he was a Peverell. He does not point out that they might have been different here. At the very least, they lived long enough to have a son.

Harry asks other questions too, about the multiple wars going on in Tom’s childhood, and if he has any idea why Hagrid seems to hate him, and what’s better, Gryffindor or Ravenclaw? It’s only after Tom answers that every House is good in its own unique way that Harry falls silent, stares out the window a bit, and says, “Was it the orphanage that made Voldemort, do you think? Because they were so awful?”

“The Dursleys were awful to you,” Tom points out, “and you aren’t about to murder anyone. I never decided to start a blood purist cult because the Nazis were dropping bombs or the upstanding citizens of Little Hangleton stole me from my father to have me exorcised. Certainly, the orphanage didn’t help, I imagine, but no, Dumbledore figured out it was something else. And that, Harry, I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“But it’s about me!” Harry says, straightening his posture. “Well, a little. That’s not fair. What’s worse than trying to murder a baby?”

Realistically, not much, but that doesn’t mean Tom’s willing to discuss semi-legal to extremely illegal magical methods of rape and their repercussions with an eleven-year-old. “When you’re fourteen,” he says. “Not that I knew of any of this, but I learned of the root cause when I was fourteen, so that seems reasonable. May I see your wand?”

The request, at least, distracts Harry from pushing against Tom’s refusal. “What do you want with it?” he asks, even as he reaches into the bag on the floor beside the sofa and extracts the box. 

“I’m Breaking the Trace,” Tom says, opening the lid. The replica of his wand, except for the brother feather in its core, lies there, as if to prove that he’s never to become his counterpart. “Keeping track of which is whose will be horrid if I don’t. And I’d feel better if I knew you could defend yourself outside of school without needing to justify your actions to the Ministry. Let me concentrate.” 

During the summer between his first and second year, he received a citation from the Ministry for using unauthorised underaged magic, because he hadn’t known the Trace also picked up wandless spells. The next day, he went to Knockturn Alley, purchased a book on Curse Breaking, and figured out how to crack it by December. He did the same with Flea and Mia’s, but neither of them had a family that watched their every move, nor a thousand siblings. Flea had Charlus, but the brothers stopped talking after taking different sides in their parents’ very scandalous, very messy divorce, so Tom didn’t need to worry about anyone outside the three of them learning about his foray into criminality. 

Breaking the Trace on what is, functionally, his own wand with his own wand is wonderfully simple. Within ten minutes, he’s done, when his first try took him twenty. 

“Dumbledore’s pretty well convinced Voldemort’s not gone for good,” he says bluntly when he hands Harry back the wand, “so even when you’re out in the Muggle world, I’d prefer you had your wand on you. You’re not the sort to wave it around just because you can. I trust you’ll save it for emergencies. Do you want to try it out?”

Harry levitates some pens and draws random shapes with sparks, watching as they swirl out from his wand. “I wonder where ‘Voldemort’ even comes from,” he says as he spells out Harry James Potter and Tom Marlowe Riddle, and sinks further and further down onto the sofa . “I like your name.”

“It’s French,” Tom says, rolling his eyes. “‘Flight of death,’ in translation. Makes perfect sense, seeing as his wand is yew. Holly is known to repel malicious spirits. Yew represents eternal life. But, thanks. I like my name, too. It was my father’s, mostly. And his favourite Elizabethean playwright.”

“Petunia used to say mine was too common,” Harry says, which further fuels Tom’s regret that he hadn’t phoned 999 out of spite. “It’s better than Dudley.”

Dudley is almost as bad a pureblood name. “Flea and Mia decided their first boy would be James from the time they were thirteen,” Tom says. It feels so good to talk about them with Harry, without the layer of lies he’s been maintaining. “Especially Flea. They wanted common.” 

“I wish I’d known them,” Harry says, lowering his wand. “I always wondered about my parents. And I met Aunt Petunia’s mum a few times in a care home when I was little, but I never thought about my dad’s parents. Not really.”

Though Dumbledore would probably call it a bad idea, Tom says, “I could show you a memory. They wouldn’t quite be your grandparents, but I imagine they weren’t dissimilar.”

Harry springs back up into sitting position and blinks. “Really? How?”

“Just look me in the eye,” says Tom, and feeds Harry a memory from that last summer spent together: Mia in her yellow-and-white swimdress and floppy straw hat wrapped around Flea, still in Muggle day clothes, as they leaned against the railing of the Llandudno Pier with the Irish Sea stretched out in a ripple of blue against a grey sky and green cliffs behind them, no, no, Tommy, just charm the bloody thing to take a photo of all of us and Mamá always said the young mustn’t be camera shy, Flea’s laugh then Mia’s in perfect harmony, her head tipping back, the straw hat falling to the waves.

When Tom retreats back into his own mind, his head hurts so badly he can hardly see. “Was that all right?” he asks, as Harry rubs his scar. 

“How did you do that?” he says. “Where was that? What was that?”

“Legilimency. And Wales. It was the last day before our sixth year.” Tom stands. His vision swims. “I’ve never done that before, though, and it was a lot. I need a lie down. Happy birthday, Harry. Be in bed by nine.”

Harry scrambles to his feet and hugs him. “Thanks, Tom,” he says. “I think that’s the best present I’ll ever get.”

A day later, Hedwig returns with a letter addressed and a package. 

Dear Tom, Dumbledore wrote. I fear this has been left too long in my study. James Potter entrusted it to me just days before his death. Between grief and the daily toils of life, it appears I forgot to deliver it to Gringotts. It’s good that you remembered. — Albus

That all sounds entirely plausible, yet Tom remains disquieted. Dumbledore never forgot anything. Could it be old age? A lie?

Whatever it is, Tom is certain it’s more than an honest mistake. 

Even though Harry lives in Scotland now, he needs to travel back to London to catch the Hogwarts Expression. Thankfully, that’s what side-alonging is for.

He and Tom hug goodbye. “Owl whenever you need,” Tom says as, just past him, the Weasleys approach. Hedwig fluffs her wings and hoots softly in her cage. Everywhere, all around them, families see each other off while the red train billows steam across the platform. That Harry has joined the ranks of students with someone to farewell him is still a little unbelievable. “I don’t care if you need to sneak out past curfew and send it in the middle of the night. I’ll respond.”

“You’re not supposed to encourage rule breaking, I don’t think,” Harry says, crossing his arms. “Molly—”

“Right here, dear.” Tom jumps at the sound of her voice. Harry almost laughs. “Sorry, love. How is it? Excited to be leaving, Harry? No, Ron, your nose!”

Though Ron looks ready to die from embarrassment, Molly rubs hard at the side of his nose with a handkerchief, mistaking a popped zit for dirt. It must hurt, but he doesn’t correct her. Ginny clings to her mother’s side, jealously watching the twins board. Percy’s missing, but he’s probably already with the other prefects on the train, or arrived in their special compartment first so he can polish his badge a few more times.

They wait for Hermione before they board themselves, but not Draco, who already said he’d have to ride the train with his officially approved friends. None of them blame him, as insulting as it is; he’ll be living with these people after all.

Tom, the Weasleys, and the Grangers say a final goodbye at the window. For the first time in Harry’s life, he tries to memorise the look of someone, but why wouldn’t he, when he won’t see Tom until next summer? They really do look alike, especially this time of year; it makes sense people are more likely to overlook both of them when we’re together in the Wixen world, or mistake them as brothers in the Muggle one. But Tom’s face will always be longer in shape, probably, and his skin paler, just like Harry’s curls won’t be as loose, and his eyes will always be green, not his cousin’s rusty brown. More than just Hagrid have commented that Harry looks like his father, except for his eyes, but now he can say which parts of himself come from his grandparents. 

He watches the platform until it’s out of sight and finds himself surprisingly grateful that Tom didn’t Apparate away in the meantime. Ever since he learned where his cousin really came from, he’s had a (hopefully irrational) fear that Tom will disappear. 

“Shame Draco isn’t with us,” Ron says as London gives way to sheep-dotted fields. A light drizzle streaks the window, blurring the scene outside the glass. “It’s rude of him to make us wait five hours before letting us know if he sneaked in the Nimbus. ”

“It’s against the rules,” Hermione says, like she expects that to matter much to any of them, including herself. “There’s very little chance his father wouldn’t have caught him trying and stopped the effort before he even finished packing. Do you three talk of anything else?”

With a deliberately careless shrug, Harry says, “There’s always footie.” 

Hermione rolls her eyes. “You’re incorrigible,” she says, whatever that means. It’s a very Tom-like word. “I wonder what our other housemates will be like.” 

“They won’t all be the same, probably,” Ron says. “You’re a Ravenclaw, is what you are, and I know I’m not.”

“It doesn’t have to matter,” says Harry, as Hermione’s face falls. “Tom says people used to sneak into each other’s Common Rooms all the time. No reason we can’t do it, too.”

“Well, of course you could,” she says, crossing her arms. “You’re Harry Potter. If you must deal with all the staring and pointing, even I see no reason why you can’t abuse the privilege that comes with it.”

Ron snorts. “Carefully there, Granger,” he says. “It almost sounds like you’re saying rule-breaking’s acceptable.” 

She flushes and changes the subject. They talk for a while about classes and Quidditch and all the non-British food they’ll miss, before the trolley lady comes past. Free of parental/guardian (and dentists’) influence, Harry and Hermione may purchase too much, but it’s fine, as Ron is more than willing to help them nibble at the horde once they pretend they’ll trade it from the dry corned beef sarnies. Hermione finally starts a chocolate frog card collection, starting with Dumbledore, while Harry can’t help but laugh when he unearths Armando Dippet, much to his friends’ confusion.

It’s as they’re breaking into the Bertie Botts’ Every Flavoured Beans that the cabin opens for the first time, revealing a moon-faced boy on the verge of tears. “Hello,” he says in a small voice. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen a toad, would you?”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione says, lowering her box, “but no. Have you asked a prefect? Percy Weasley would probably be happy to Summon it for you.” 

The boy blinks his wet eyes at her. “Oh,” he says. “That’s—thank you. Thanks. Er, have a good day—thank you.”

He shuts the door on their good lucks . Shaking his head, Ron says, “If I’d a toad, I’d lose it on purpose,” as if he isn’t the one with a rat.

Before Harry can point out that Scabbers isn’t an improvement, the door slides open again, but instead of the teary-eyed boy, it’s Draco. He has it closed behind him so quickly it rattles. “I’ve been looking to escape for the past half hour,” he says, as he picks up and peels open a pumpkin pasty. “Anyone stop by to have a squiz yet, Harry? All anyone can talk about is that Potter’s in this compartment.”

Hermione glances at Harry, one brow raised, as if to say see? Yes, he does see. He doesn’t need Draco’s confirmation. “Just a boy looking for his toad,” he says. “Had nothing to do with me. What happened?”

“The usual,” Draco says, scowling. That can mean a lot, but he doesn’t specify. “I forget, at times, that Crabbe might be dimmer than a niffler, but Goyle and Pansy aren’t actually stupid. Blaise just pretended to sleep, but if I heard the word ‘glory’ one more time, I would have stabbed someone with my wand.”

“How Muggle of you,” Ron says, after spitting out a bean into one of the napkins provided in the box. “Gross. Spinach.”

“The method has merits,” says Draco darkly. “Hermione Granger, are you eating sugar? My, what would your parents say?”

Her smile borders on wicked when she answers, “Nothing nice,” before biting the head off another chocolate frog. “Now, since the boys will ask: did you sneak in the broomstick?”

“No. Mother said no care packages for a month if I tried.”

Ron gasps. “The horror!” 

Draco throws a pumpkin pasty wrapper at him. “Bugger off, Weasley. I’ll have you know that I asked. With permission from our Heads of Houses, we can fly recreationally on weekends with the school brooms. A Cleansweep’s shite in comparison, but better than months grounded.” 

Before conversation can meander back in the Quidditch direction, Hermione says, “What class are you most looking forward to, Draco?”

“Potions, obviously,” he says immediately. “I doubt any class will be difficult, but everyone knows Uncle Sev plays favourites. It is nice to know I have a near guaranteed O.”

Privately, Harry wonders what will happen if Draco isn’t a Slytherin. If he is, Harry might demand the Hat put him in just so his friend isn’t alone—it probably isn’t a good sign that Draco wanted to escape the other compartment. And if it’s really very awful, then they’ll just sneak into whatever House’s Common Rooms the others are Sorted into. Tom managed to have best friends in a different House, so, Harry figures, there’s no reason it should be any different for them.

The world turns black when the Hat slides over Hermione’s eyes. 

What an interesting mind you have, Miss Granger! says a voice in her head. Even though she expected it, she still startles. The Hat chuckles. Yes, yes. You have the Ravenclaw thirst for knowledge, a Slytherin’s drive to improve yourself, a Gryffindor’s brazen courage, and the bone-deep loyalty to your friends required of a Hufflepuff. I see no indecision in you. You are wholly aware who you are, and so, all these traits work in harmony. You’ll be a difficult one for me to place.

She thought the Hat would barely touch her head before declaring Ravenclaw; whether this is better, she isn’t sure. I would rather prefer if I was not in Slytherin, she says. 

Are you quite certain? You could thrive there. I have sat on few heads such as yours and all have achieved great things, Miss Granger. A mind such as yours would find the uphill battle to gain control of those who view themselves as natural leaders a rewarding challenge, I suspect.

Something about that sounds…off. Very off, she thinks. I doubt I could achieve that in a House that, by generalisation, hates me for my blood through any moral means.

The Hat chuckles. Miss Granger, it says. All Houses embody traits that you humans see as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad,’ and you display those just as readily as you demonstrate those traits humanity’s fallible moral compass deems ‘good.’ It’s all a matter of perspective. I learned in my so-called youth to only list the ‘good’ for the sake of your fragile egos.

Unsure if she should be offended, she says, Oh? And what are these ‘bad’ traits?

A Hufflepuff’s traditional loyalty has a tendency to lead to fanaticism—so often the concern here is for the Slytherins, but was blood purity not the main question on the Wixen world’s mind, it would surely be a Hufflepuff leading their followers to death. Slytherin ambition and cunning may lead to a narrow look at the world oneself, based on a desire to reshape it to one’s perceived goal, leaving little room for compromise. Then there are the Ravenclaws, who will destroy themselves in their search for perfection, and the Gryffindors, who would condemn their souls if it meant doing what they believe to be right. Hm. I suppose upon reflection, Miss Granger, that would mean you would be best in—

“Gryffindor!”

The Gryffindor table erupts into cheers as she pulls off the Hat and hands it to Professor McGonagall. Feeling oddly numb, she makes her way to the table, where she finds a seat near the Weasley twins. “Three minutes, Granger!” says the one she thinks might be Fred. “We were taking bets if you’d be a Hatstall. What took so long?”

She smiles weakly. “Couldn’t decide between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw,” she lies. She doesn’t know how to feel about the deciding factor for her house placement being that one day, she might commit some terrible act if it means doing something right. 

Goldstein, Anthony is next, who’s quickly sorted into Ravenclaw, followed by Greengrass, Daphne. She goes to Slytherin. Hermione vaguely remembers Draco mentioning the Greengrass family throwing fancy holiday balls, where they forced all children below the age of eleven to play together in the nursery. There are a fair number of other students, including Longbottom, Neville, the boy with the toad who ends up in Hufflepuff, before Professor McGonagall finally calls, “Malfoy, Draco.”

The Hat slides over his eyes. After two minutes pass, the twin who’s probably George mutters, “Oh, this isn’t good.”

“Why not?” she says just as quietly. Up on the dais, she sees several other first years shifting uncomfortably, and there’s so much whispering from the Slytherin table that the white noise of it blankets the hall.

George glances down at her. “Because even if he is Sorted into Slytherin,” he says, “his House’ll know the Hat came bloody close to sending him somewhere else.”

Another minute passes, then another. At the five minute mark, the other tables have started whispering. Even from here, Hermione can see that Draco’s grip on the stool is so tight his fingers are white. At the six minute mark, finally, the Hat calls out, “Gryffindor!”

Someone at the Slytherin table shrieks. The Gryffindor table cheers. Malfoy, without looking at anyone else, practically shoves the Hat at McGonagall and makes his way over to Hermione, throwing himself into the seat next to her. “Father’s going to kill me,” he says, staring at his empty plate.

Before Hermione can say anything, Fred cuts in, “You’re not a bad bloke, Malfoy. We can’t do anything about your father, but if anyone from Slytherin even looks at you funny, we’ll prank them into next week.”

“Into next year,” George says. “They’ll regret the day they ever accepted their letter.”

Draco laughs like he might cry. Whatever reservations the other Gryffindors around them might have had about an expected Slytherin landing himself in their House seem to melt away at that, because the three older students seated across from them introduce themselves: Angelina Johnson, Katie Bell, and Lee Jordan. Though Draco’s unfailingly polite in his introduction, it’s probably clear to everyone his heart isn’t in it; Hermione squeezes his hand once under the table and releases it as McGonagall calls out, “Potter, Harry!”

At least the arrival of the Boy Who Lived forces everyone to momentarily forget about Draco, though Harry’s Sorting isn’t nearly as dramatic; it’s hardly more than a minute before he joins them. “Guess you’re Chaser after all” is the first thing he says, when he slots himself between Draco and Padma Patil, because of course it is. It’s always Quidditch. 

The rest of the Sorting is uneventful, after Hermione’s almost-Hatstall, Draco’s actual Hatstall, and Harry being Harry. The Hat barely touches Ron’s head before declaring him a Gryffindor. Are they all here because they’re courageous? Hermione wanders, as they all try to cheer up Draco, or is it for the same reason as her, that willingness to do something wrong if it means achieving what’s right? Part of her wants to ask Harry and Draco, who were on the stool long enough for a conversation. More than a bit of her, though, doesn’t want to know.

Chapter Text

Draco receives two letters on his first morning as a Gryffindor from separate owls. The first, from Father, notes his disappointment that Draco hasn’t chosen to continue the Malfoy legacy, as if the Hat gave him much of a choice (he had asked; it soundly ignored him). The second, from Mother, is much longer, with a message that boils down to I’m also disappointed but accept you anyway.

Neither is terribly encouraging. 

Before he can run from the breakfast table, though, Harry shoves a third at him. “It’s for you,” he says, “from Tom.” 

This whole situation, Draco thinks, is entirely Tom’s fault, and yet he can’t find it in himself to be angry as he unfolds the letter. Dear Draco, it says, in Tom’s weirdly perfect cursive. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, but I suspect the following weeks might be difficult for you. There’s no point pretending there won’t be repercussions, based on how you described the other children you associated with. As someone who was bullied relentlessly at your age, my advice is to be above it all. Harry and the others will be angry for you. As long as they don’t do anything too stupid, bite your pride and let them. It’s better you wait until the right moment to strike back (if you even want to do that) than waste your energy and the risk of detention on the little fights. The exception is if it turns physical. Just make sure you curse them with something embarrassing so they’re less likely to snitch. You’re a pretty brilliant kid all on your own, and you have three friends who’ll stand beside you. Don’t forget that. 

Congratulations on being Sorted into Gryffindor, not because it’s Gryffindor, but because you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t belong. — Tom

Tom is, quite possibly, the weirdest person Draco’s ever met. It’s definitely his fault this mess even exists, but it could be worse. He could be in Hufflepuff.

With a sigh, he stuffs the letter in his pocket. “How does the timetable look?” he asks, reaching for the one McGonagall set in front of him. It’s Saturday now, so they have two days to familiarise themselves with the castle and grounds before classes start.

“Potions first,” Harry says, which proves that this situation can get worse. “Don’t look like that. He’s still your godfather, Draco.”

“Yes,” Draco says, frustrated, “and he and parents have been discussing he’ll still be my Head of House since he was promoted to the position.” That was three years ago. Even before that, they talked about how Uncle Sev could be his mentor one Slytherin to another.

“He can still be the main professor you go to,” Hermione says as she pours herself tea. “I’ve read the rules. and nowhere does it say that a student can only communicate their concerns with their Head of House.”

Though that makes sense, there’s always the fear that Uncle Sev won’t want to talk to him anymore. Being Sorted into the wrong House gets people scorched off their family trees. It happened to one of Mother’s cousins precisely because he was Sorted into Gryffindor, and now that’s happened to Draco. Bad enough, he thinks, that he was cavorting with blood-traitors and Muggleborns and Harry Potter. At least his parents weren’t aware of most of that. That his first instinct was also to sit with Hermione and the Weasleys rather than distance himself—well, he doesn’t know how long Mother’s I’m disappointed but accept you anyway will last. 

Still, that doesn’t mean he turns away when Ron clears the last of his eggs and asks if they should make their way down to the lake now. It’s unseasonably warm out for this far north, a full twenty-seven agrees and scorchingly sunny, so if they want to have time without anyone bothering Harry for being Harry Potter or Draco for not being a proper Malfoy, they better get there early.

No, he decides as they make their way out of the hall. It definitely began because of the trousers. Mother’s always going on about the importance of reciprocation and sharing in order to form relationships with the right people, so Draco simply thought that if the Harry Potter would only accept Quidditch lessons in exchange for the lessons in a lesser Muggle sport, then so be it. But football isn’t lesser. Also, trousers are superior to robes. That was the important discovery really. It was all downhill from there, once he started wondering if Muggles had ever invented anything else as useful as trousers, only to discover that the answer was yes. 

There’s a lot about Muggles that are dumb, he knows. He just realised that Wix are pretty stupid, too. Blood has nothing to do with it.

Considering he still believes that, it isn’t much of a surprise he’s a Gryffindor at all.

They spend their morning lazing around the lake, then the rest of the day exploring the expansive grounds. Harry and Ron, who might be daft, lament that they can’t explore the Forbidden Forest, which surrounds most of the grounds in a half-moon of dark green foliage and black shadows. Old-growth , Hermione calls it, also thrilled by the sight but just as unwilling as Draco to risk her neck venturing past the trees. 

“What’s that?” Hermione asks in the mid-afternoon, pointing down the hill to a structure that can best be called a hut at the edge of the wood. 

“That must be the gamekeeper’s gaff,” Ron says as he selects a strawberry from the feast they pilfered from the table in the Great Hall. “Charlie’s mentioned him before. Hagrid, I think.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of him,” says Draco, glancing away from the primitive hut to the selection. “Some sort of savage Dumbledore keeps on a charity case.”

He expects that to be the end of it, but then Harry says, “Apparently he’s the one who took me to the Dursleys,” in that casual tone he’ll use sometimes, like he doesn’t realise he’s about to derail any conversation. “And he’s not savage, I don’t think, just large with a beard and really strong accent, like how a binman might talk.”

Though Draco doesn’t know what a binman is, he can guess his friend’s meaning. It doesn’t disprove his point. “How was the Hogwarts gamekeeper,” he asks, rather than point this out, “trusted with the task of transporting a baby? Is this why you ended up with those people?”

“That was something else,” Harry says, “but I don’t know. We ran into him in Gringotts, me and Tom. He recognised me and said it. But he doesn’t like Tom.”

“Tom was here for a year,” says Ron, incredulous, “and was friends with Charlie. What could he possibly have done to have gotten on the man’s bad side?”

Shrugging, Harry says, “Tom says they barely even interacted.” 

Clearly, that’s just further proof that the man’s not to be trusted. There are plenty of reasons for a person to dislike Harry’s guardian, most which involve corrupting Draco with blood-traitor ideology (his parents) or disliking Quidditch (almost everyone else), but he’s definitely not the sort most people would hate at first glance. Frankly, he’s too pretty. Mother calls that a life less from Aunt Bella: people will always trust a pretty face regardless of who’s behind the smile until given reason to do otherwise. 

Draco lies on his back, heedless of grass stains and all thoughts of what his mother would say at the sight of him, and watches a stretched-out cloud glide across the blue surface of the sky. He’s heard about that one Gryffindor cousin, whoever he was—about how he was one of four Gryffindors who never took anything seriously, until he ruined the Black name. That story was always meant to be a warning. There was never a point where Draco meant to ignore it. Yet, here he is, remaking a family past that isn’t his father’s, as would be proper. Even his mother’s borders on sordid, considering her unspoken, but not-wholly-secret continued correspondence with The Other Black Sister. 

But then Ron says something about felt caps and cats, and Hermione laughs, so the sound peels out across the breeze, and Draco finds he can’t regret the Hat’s decision at all. 

 Draco regrets the Hat’s decision. 

“Mr Potter,” says his uncle, looming over Harry and not paying Draco any mind, despite standing not three feet from his friend, “where would you find me a bezoar?”

Harry’s brow knits, though Draco knows he read the textbook cover to cover. Does Harry not remember? Does he not realise it’s pronounced bee-zhwah , not bey-soar? And why isn’t Uncle Severus calling on either Draco or Hermione? And also, why is it so cold in here?

The dungeons classroom is freezing, despite all the fires lit beneath the cauldrons. In the half-light, Draco’s raised hand is pale it’s ghostly. 

“I don’t know, sir,” Harry says. He isn’t blushing, but Draco’s never seen him blush, so he might be the sort that simply can’t. 

Uncle Severus hrumphs out a noise of contempt. “What would I get, Mr Potter,” he says, “if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?” 

All at once, Harry relaxes. Clearly relieved, he says, “Draught of Living Death, sir.” 

“Yes, Mr Potter,” Uncle Severus says, but not happily. “Mr Malfoy, what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Draco lowers his hand. “They’re the same plant, sir.” 

Without awarding them any points, Uncle Severus sweeps away with a swish of his robes back to the front of the room. Pansy and Daphne snicker. “I expect a respectful atmosphere in my classroom,” he says, as if to the group at large, but his gaze noticeably lingers over the girls. Good. So Draco hasn’t entirely lost his favour. “To answer the first question, Mr Potter, you can find a bezoar in the stomach of a goat.”

He gives the sober version of his tipsy Yule speech about why potions is a wondrous art that far outstripes any that involves silly wand waving (debatable), before splitting them into pairs to concoct their first brew. It’s the Cure for Boils, which Draco practiced this summer. Meanwhile, Harry’s never touched a cauldron. “I did say Tom’s odd about potions,” he says in an undertone, when Draco expresses how flabbergasted he is that Harry only read. “The few times he made the Pepper-up when one of us was sick, he just used an ordinary pot.”

“That’s stupid,” Draco says as he reads over the instructions. “Just follow my lead. It does help that the professor’s been my private tutor since I was seven.”

At the table behind them, he hears Ron and Hermione quietly bickering about how many drops lemongrass extract to add. Hopefully Ron is wise enough to bow to the expertise of the author, if not Hermione’s proven superior intelligence. 

They make it through class with only a minor disaster, as Brown and Patil nearly melt their cauldron. When Uncle Sev dismisses them, it’s three minutes early, and with a sense that they better retreat right this instant. Draco had planned to linger, but it’s clear that won’t happen. Perhaps he’ll visit the faculty room later, or his uncle’s office. Yes, the latter. No one would begrudge a godson visiting his godfather, after all. 

“‘Bee-zhwah,’” Harry says under his breath, jarring Draco out of his thoughts. So it was the pronunciation. “How was I supposed to know? And why does he hate me so much?”

“Because you stole his godson, obviously,” Ron says. Sadly, that might be true. “Charms next. How long do you think until we learn to make things float?”

“Well, that’s in chapter three,” says Hermione, “so likely not until October. It’s all theory until then.”

Draco and the other boys groan. Theory is necessary, he understands, and he’s generally very good at it, but that doesn’t mean he has to enjoy it. At least in Transfiguration, according to the twins, they’ll start with practicals right away. No one can say what Defense will be like, but Quirrell seems like such a stuttering nitwit that Draco’s hopes are low. 

Charms is a boring blur, with its only highlight the moment Flitwick falls off his pedestal upon reading Harry’s name, and Defense is even worse than expected, because the whole room stinks of raw garlic. It’s lunch after that, then the rest of the day free, which already means homework. They try the library first, but some upperclassmen floats a drawing to land in front of Draco depicting a stick-figure version of himself getting eaten by a snake—how Harry then locates the sender accurately enough to mark over and incinerate the paper in front of them is a mystery—so they end up huddled in the corner of the Common Room anyway. Draco thinks he might want to cry, just a little, but he’s already been Sorted into Gryffindor and he can’t imagine disappointing his parents even more by bursting into tears. 

Everything will be fine, he tells himself. Mother will talk Father down the ledge of his anger, Draco’s old friends will grow bored with their fun, and his current ones are sticking by his side. Everything will be fine, he tells himself, so there’s no reason to be upset at all. 

Everything is terrible. 

Tom receives his Year-Long Practical Assignment on the first day of term, only to discover that fucking Mad-Eye Moody personally requested him to assist in solving “a little puzzle,” even though he could have had his pick of students looking to become Aurors. Instead, it’s Tom who’s sitting in the man’s cluttered home office, listening to him say, “The theft was a failed one, you see, so the Aurors can’t investigate it officially.” 

On the desk is a copy of The Prophet , open to the article about the break-in at Gringotts Vault 713 on 31 July. “Did Gringotts ask for your help?” Tom asks, as he glances from the paper back to Moody, who scrunitises him with both eyes. There’s no point in asking why Tom’s here. Moody made it abundantly clear he wants Tom recruited. 

“No,” Moody says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the desk and steeple his fingers. “This is—how did you put it, about teaching?—an informal arrangement with Dumbledore. It involves Hogwarts.” 

A break-in at a Gringotts vault previously emptied that very same day? A Hogwarts involvement? “I see,” says Tom, who, unfortunately, does. “Just out of curiosity, this wouldn’t happen to be about the parcel Rubeus Hagrid collected, would it?” 

“How do you know about that?” says Moody, surprised. At least that’s gratifying. 

“I happened to be at Gringotts at the same time,” Tom says. “He was so excited to see the Harry Potter that he felt the need to tell us he was doing important business for Dumbledore.”

Moody’s lips thin. “That shouldn’t have happened,” he says. “Confidential business, you understand. There are forms you’ll have to sign before I tell you more.” 

Tom mirrors Moody’s pose. “What sort of forms?”

“Confidentiality agreements. Standard procedure.”

“Standard procedure for Aurors, which I’m not.”

They stare at each other. If Tom wasn’t likely to be slammed with a curse, he’d try to peek at what was going on in the man’s head. After a beat, Moody says, “No agreement, no assignment. That’s how it works, boy.” 

For now, Tom lets the boy slide. “Then I’m not doing it, I suppose. I’m certain I can trade with your second choice. Perhaps they’ll have a tutoring position instead.”

“Is that really what you want?” Moody asks, in close to a growl. “To waste your time teaching homeschooled Wix how to curse an opponent in a make-believe duel?”

“Not particularly.” As much as Tom hadn’t minded teaching Harry, he quickly learned to hate doing the same with Draco and, though less often, with Ron and Hermione. The truth of the matter is, he wants the position at Hogwarts for the research opportunities, not teaching. “This involves Hogwarts, sir. A mysterious artefact brought within the walls of the illustrious Wixen school the same year that the Boy Who Lived enters its halls? Regardless of what the gameskeeper seems to believe, a school will never be as safe as Gringotts or, say, the Department of Mysteries. I cannot fathom why, I will admit, but it’s not hard to see that it’s there because of Harry. He’s a curious kid. If someone drops the right hints, it won’t take long for him to start piecing together whatever the situation. I swore not to lie to him. If he asks me a question, I’ll call him an idiot for courting trouble and tell him the answer.”

Moody’s brows steadily rose the longer Tom spoke, until they’re locked in their highest position. “Dumbledore did tell me you were smart,” the man says. “If you want to help Potter, you do it by helping me solve the case. You can’t do that without signing the form.”

Unfortunately, he’s right. Tom hates it, but he is. Smug bastard knows it, too. “Fine,” he says. “But I’ll negotiate the wording as I see it.” 

“It’s a standard—”

“You’re retired, sir,” he cuts in, “and this is an ‘informal favour’ for a headmaster, not a Ministry department. Standard doesn’t count. Considering that I’m also attending Muggle university, I’ll be negotiating hours and pay as well.”

“Any changes will need to pass Dumbledore’s inspection,” Moody says, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed. The hazy, grey light filtering through the windows seems to highlight his every scar.

Tom shrugs. “Let him,” he answers. “I bet he’ll approve any change on the first try.”

In Transfiguration, Harry and Draco turn their matches into needles on the first try. Hermione gets it on the second. The rest of the class, including Ron, doesn’t manage at all.

After class, Professor McGonagall asks Harry and Draco to stay behind. “I must ask,” she says directly, “precisely how much prior practice you’ve had in Transfiguration before entering my class.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean,” Draco says, the picture of innocence. Harry tries very hard to imitate him. “That would be highly illegal.” 

She simply looks at him, unamused. “I’m aware, Mr Malfoy,” she says, “about certain pureblood family’s practice of teaching their children simple spells the moment they receive their wands, though it’s traditionally limited to Charms. And I’ve heard rumour, Mr Potter, that you’ve found yourself under Mr Ryder’s guardianship.” Her pinched look is gone as quick as comes, but still indicates exactly what she thinks of that. “I don’t believe the lad has any priority higher than education, so I do understand that your past month may have involved lessons.”

Dubious, Harry asks, “Are we in trouble, Professor?” He would argue that Tom’s priority is mostly Harry, so much so that he doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge other than try to be worthy of it, but he doubts anyone except Molly or Arthur or Draco’s mother would ever believe that. 

“No,” Professor McGonagall says. “I would simply like an idea of your skill moving forward. It matters particularly for what deserves earned points.”

That seems massively unfair, but at least Hermione is safe, it seems, since it took her two tries. It likely would have taken her one if she was in an all-magical household, so could get around Trace all the time. “Tom gave me lessons,” he admits reluctantly. 

Draco mostly concedes the same, except without admitting that Tom was also his private tutor. When the professor dismisses them, it’s difficult to guess from her expression how she feels about this, but Draco doesn’t bother to keep his opinions to himself once the door closes behind them. “All purebloods start practicing the moment they buy their wand,” he says, fuming. “Some half-bloods too, I might assume. It’s hardly our fault we’re better than the lot.”

Whether Harry is actually better remains to be seen, though he does believe that’s true for Draco and Hermione (especially Hermione). But it’s really not his fault that Tom’s wand is also his, so practicing was easy. “Maybe she won’t tell anyone else,” he says, thinking that the only thing to make this worse would be if Snape believed Harry had a year’s worth of practice to support him. As disappointing as it is that other professors may not award him points, it’s better than the Potions Master deducting points for failing to meet expectations. 

They turn the corner to find Hermione and Ron waiting for them. “What happened?” Hermione asks, pushing away from the wall she was leaning against. Her hair’s come free of her bun in places, so stray curls fall around her face and frizz even more than usual.

When Harry and Draco finish their explanation, it’s hard to say which of their friends is more offended. Hermione argues that preemptive study should be rewarded; Ron scowls. “At least you can do it,” he says, as they start the trek to History of Magic. “I’ve been practicing since March, and couldn’t manage to make a pointy bit.”

“I dare say that’s not your fault,” Hermione says, “considering you’re using a hand-me-down wand. It’s awfully unfair that Hogwarts hasn’t established some sort of social service to provide families below a certain income enough money so their children can at least afford something as necessary as a wand—oh, don’t start, Ron, it’s perfectly normal in the Muggle world. Harry spent the past year receiving free breakfast and lunch credit from our school because Tom barely made enough to afford rent.”

“How do you know that?” Harry says, offended himself, because even he doesn’t know exactly how bad it was. 

“I heard my parents—”

“But you’re a Potter,” Draco says. “Your wealth shouldn’t be quite as substantial as my own—” Harry rolls his eyes. “—oh, come off it. I won’t pretend I lack my own trust fund just because the rest of you lot survive on charity.”

Testily, Hermione says, “My parents are dentists, Draco. We’re not poor.” 

No one particularly knows what to say to that, but naptime in Binns’ cures them of any awkwardness, so everything is back to normal by the time they reach the Common Room and see the notice about flying lessons. Every first year receives one, though it’s four hours long. There are two sessions, divided by alphabetical order, not House; A-K is on Saturday afternoon, followed by L-Z on Sunday, which means Hermione is alone. 

“That’s all right,” she says cheerfully. “I won’t be forced to watch you all showing off.”

“We won’t be showing off,” says Draco, only half glaring. “It’s not our fault if we’re superior to all other first years.”

Hermione rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue. 

It’s a good thing they have flying lessons to look forward to, because the first week dances on odd crossroads between exciting, nerve-wrecking, dull, and miserable. On Wednesday, Snape awards Draco House points, as if to let his godson know there’s not too much bad blood, but deducts the same amount from Harry, who’s working with him, from ruining the mostly adequate potion by not stirring in the porcupine quills fast enough. In Herbology, Harry’s paired with Neville Longbottom, the Hufflepuff with the toad, who tells the story of how his uncle dropped him out a window as a kid to test if he had magic, as if that was acceptable, which he can’t get out of his hand for days. Then on Friday, after a truly disastrous Potions, some upperclassmen calls Draco something Harry doesn’t understand to his face, so Angelina Johnson hits the boy with a Stinging Hex right on the bollox, and quite possibly makes everything worse. 

Harry just knows that won’t go unpunished. He spent enough years as Dudley’s punching bag to understand the way the schoolyard works. Still, he hadn’t thought the repercussions would hit during flying lessons. 

If Neville hadn’t been so clumsy, it might not have happened. As it is, though, the four-hour lesson’s not ten minutes in before Madam Hooch needs to drag the boy to the Hospital Wing, yelling at the rest of them to stay grounded and play nice all the while. Unsurprisingly, she’s only been gone a second or two before Pansy Parkinson picks up something round and shiny from the ground. “Look at this,” she says, showing it off to her fellow Slytherins. “The idiot must’ve dropped it.”

“It’s a Remembrall, I think,” says Goyle, which is shocking. Harry hadn’t known he could talk. “Longass must’ve dropped it.”

More than just the Slytherins laugh at that. Harry grits his teeth. “Give it here, Parkinson,” he snaps. “Didn’t your mum ever teach you not to touch what’s not yours?”

“I don’t know, Potter,” she drawls. “Didn’t yours ever teach you ‘finder’s keepers?’ Oh, whoops. Sorry. How could she? Not when she’s so very dead.”

A year ago, when all he had was the Dursleys, that would have bothered him a lot more than it does now. Now, he just glares and answers, “My mum died because she loved me. How does yours feel, knowing she raised a complete prat?”

Several people gasp, including Draco and Ron. Parkinson snarls, tosses the Remembrall in the air, and catches it. “Well, come on, Potter,” she says, hopping onto her broom. “If you want it so badly, come and get it—and don’t even think of helping, Draco, dear. What would Daddy Dearest have to say?”

Draco freezes, broom in hand. His soft, stuttering breath is enough to push Harry over the edge; without considering the consequences, he mounts the school’s Cleansweep and shoots into the air after Parkinson. 

It’s exhilarating. 

Of course, he knew it would be. There’s a bite of promised rain on the wind, and the clouds are amassing fast on the horizon. Despite the broom’s insistence on drifting to the left and the wind’s strength, it barely takes a thought for Harry to bring it to heel. He sees the moment when Parkinson realises her mistake—it’s when he comes level with her, some hundred or so feet in the air, reaching the point far faster than she did—because her eyes widen and her lips part in a question she never asks. Then her mouth snaps shut and her eyes narrow, and she yells over the wind, “Think you’re so clever, Potter? If you want your friend’s toy, fetch!”

And she chucks it to the ground.

He throws himself after it with the same reckless abandon that had Draco calling him a suicidal git the first time he ever sat on broom. This, he thinks. This is the best feeling in the whole world, and nothing will ever prove him otherwise. 

A foot from the ground, his hand wraps around the ball. He lands on his feet. He turns to his friends, windswept and grinning, but the smile falters as McGonagall’s calls, “Mr Potter!”

Harry drops the broom. He does not drop the Remembrall. 

A chorus of voices ring out at once, all trying to explain what happened, about how it was Parkinson’s fault or it was his, but she ignores them. “You will follow me, Mr Potter,” she says, and pivots back toward the castle. 

On his way past his friends, he shoves the Remembrall into Ron’s hand. If he’s going to be expelled for the thing, Longbottom might as well get it back. 

He follows McGonagall back inside, down corridor after corridor, as she mutters something about wood. Is that a form of punishment? Will she hit him before she expels him? And once he’s expelled, what will Tom say? Will he be so disappointed he gives Harry back to the Dursleys? Will Harry be allowed to stay? Will Tom still let Harry use his wand?  

But none of these questions matter. Wood, apparently, is an older Gryffindor Harry vaguely remembers seeing in the Common Room and in the Great Hall talking to the twins. McGonagall, the second strictest of all professors, withdraws him from class and leads them both to her office, which looks exactly how Harry would expect. “I found you our Seeker, Mr Wood,” she says, all anger melting away as she recounts the story of Harry’s apparently daring dive. 

“That would work?” Wood says, peering down at Harry curiously. “Well, you are built like a Seeker. It’d be grand to beat Slytherin again. Was that your first time on a broom?”

“No,” Harry says, though this doesn’t seem to impress the other two any less, though it realistically should. “Draco taught me. He’s always Chaser. I’m Seeker.” This is not actually true, but if they’re really about to break the rules for him, it would be unfair if the one who introduced him to the sport wasn’t also on the team. 

“Is he now?” says Wood, before glancing pointedly at McGonagall. She looks pointedly back, then excuses them, so they drift to the other side of the admittedly not very big office and have a whispered conversation. Harry catches “Snape” and “could be difficult” and “tryouts.” 

After a minute, they return to Harry. “I will speak with the Headmaster,” McGonagall says. “Perhaps it would be prudent, if we were to seek special permission to see you placed on the team, to open tryouts to all first years for this year and this year only.” 

Harry beams. “Thank you, Professor,” he says. “You won’t regret it.”

Draco definitely does not regret the Hat’s decision. 

Only a Gryffindor, he thinks, would look at the opportunity to gain special treatment in the face, then turn around and demand the same chance be given to someone else. He can’t even claim it’s favouritism; the only professor who doesn’t care about who Harry is one way or another is McGonagall. “You’re mad,” Draco says for possibly the hundredth time, when Harry drags him down to the Quidditch pitch for Gryffindor tryouts. “Draft. Bonkers. You have as much sense as a man attempting to herd cats. How did you even manage this?”

“I said you taught me how,” Harry says, smiling up at him despite the frigid rain. What a horrid day for flying. “Obviously the teacher’s better than the student.”

That’s not true, as much as Draco hates to admit it. He’s known since the moment Harry first took to the air that he was already the best flyer Draco’d ever seen. Practice was pointless; somehow, Harry just wasn’t born to have his feet on the ground. Draco’s good because he stopped practicing with a safety broom long before the recommended age, just like he’s so far ahead in practical and theoretical magic because he spends hours studying. Harry will never understand how frighteningly jealous Draco is over the whole thing.

Neither, for that matter, is Hermione. It’s as if she was dropped into Draco’s life to prove Tom’s every point right.

She and Ron follow them to Quidditch pitch to watch the tryouts, though not to participate (they’re technically closed to spectators, but that’s what the Invisibility Cloak is for). Though Harry suggested Ron try, the other boy cited how hard he needed to fight with his wand as a reason to avoid another distraction. As reasonable as that sounds, Draco still suspects it’s because Ron’s best as a Keeper, and he knows there’s no way he’ll oust Wood.

 In the name of fairness, because Gryffindors seem to believe in nothing but, all the current players try out again. This is how Draco learns they already have three Chasers. It’s so highly unlikely that a captain will replace a current member with a ratty first year who shouldn’t even be in their House that he almost walks away right there. Then, from under the cloak, Ron mutters, “You’re better than any of them, mate. Just think of Parkinson’s face,” and Draco decides there’s no harm in trying. 

He’s fifth, along with two of the current members: Angelina Johnson and Katie Bell. They face off against Alicia Spinnet, the third current Chaser, Cormac McLaggen, a hopeful second year with stupid hair, and some fifth year Muggleborn with a dumb name. Wood is Draco’s mock Keeper; the old Keeper-Captain, a seventh year who quit the team when became Head Boy, acts as the others’. Two non-Weasleys trying out as Beaters are in the air with them, while Harry acts as one Seeker and a third-year Draco doesn’t care about acts as the other. 

He throws himself into the mock game with everything he has. With the wind in his face and the need to split his attention between the game’s moving parts, playing Quidditch is the only time he can forget about the rest of his life. 

At the first Quaffle toss, he catches the ball and zips below and past Spinnet and McLaggan. A Bludger comes flying his way, but he spins, feints as if he means to send the Quaffel through the left hoop, and tosses it instead to Johnson, who seamlessly scores through the centre. The grin she sends him as Madam Hooch collects the Quaffle is downright feral. 

Harry shoots into a dive the third time Draco gets his hands on the Quaffle. Barely sparing the action a thought, he tosses it to Bell, cutting a path through the air directly in front of the other Seeker to cut him off in a move that’s somehow not considered a foul. The girl spirals away, shouting curses, as Harry lands, his prize in hand. Bell scores. Wood, practically vibrating from excitement, calls an end to their game and sets up the next one. 

“You and Potter are ours,” Bell whispers on the way to the locker room, a skip in her step. “Slytherin won’t know what hit ‘em.”

A day later, her words prove true. Alicia Spinnet is the reserve Chaser, with Draco, Johnson, and Bell as the starters. Harry is the Seeker. The Weasleys and Wood have retained their old positions. As satisfying as that is, it’s even better when, by the end of the week, they learn that they’re the only first years to make a team, despite tryouts being open to all. 

Naturally, he writes his parents a letter. Father doesn’t answer, but two long packages arrive by owl the following morning, one in front of him and the other to Harry. The letters that accompany them are in Mother’s handwriting. Both read, It might be best if you open this in the privacy of your dormitory.  

“Those are broomsticks,” Theo says, sitting himself down on Draco’s left and snatching a cut of black pudding off Draco’s plate. Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy are all there, but only Pansy sits as well, crowding uncomfortably close to Hermione. “How does it feel, knowing you only received such special privileges because your new ‘best mate’ murdered someone as a baby?”

Draco stares at the boy he used to think was his friend and definitely does not imagine stabbing him in the eye with a fork. “How interesting, Nott,” he says, before the others do something stupid. Possibly the only reason they haven’t yet is because their attention is divided between Theo and Pansy, who just tried to touch Hermione’s hair by saying it’s ever so pretty, if you only did something to it. Understandably, Hermione slapped her hand away. “Are you so jealous you couldn’t make the cut that you resorted to writing to your father for a list of insults?”

Theo lashes out and grips his wrist. Before anyone can reach for their wand, though, the twins materialise from thin air and physically haul Theo off him. “Bugger off, firsties,” Fred says, “or you’ll find yourselves croaking like toads.” 

A threat from the Weasley twins, Draco finds, is remarkably effective, despite their traditional presentation as good-natured pranksters. As much as Draco’s sick of being saved, he can’t help the relief that floods him when his old friends leave him. Daph and Blaise are the only two he thinks he can reasonably consider to be on decent terms with, and even they won’t speak with him if anyone else is around. It hurts more than he’d like to admit. Most of them are his cousins in one respect or another; even when they annoyed each other, he always assumed their days spent dodging etiquette lessons and suffering through private maths was enough to forge unconditional friendships. Perhaps that would have been the case, had he been Sorted into Ravenclaw instead. If Ron bloody Weasley could joke about sneaking into the Slytherin Common Room to nick all the chocolates from Draco’s (nonexistent) care packages, then surely Pansy Parkinson, the girl he once saved from drowning, could avoid being such a bitch. 

She deserves to croak like a toad, frankly. They all do. 

To make matters worse, the Gryffindors and Slytherins have Potions together next period. It’s mostly notetaking today, so between the dim-lighting and Uncle Sev’s lullaby voice, Draco’s struggling to stay awake. Ron actually does fall asleep, unfortunately; Hermione kicks his seat before Uncle Sev can do it for her, but it still results in Gryffindor losing five points. As Pansy’s also taken the opportunity to nap, though, and he blatantly ignores this, Draco finally, painfully admits to himself that he is not counted among his uncle’s favourites. 

At the end of class, Uncle Severus tries to catch his attention, but Draco rushes out with his eyes pinned to the ground, pretending he hasn’t noticed. The quick retreat should have also saved him from dealing with the people who used to be his friends, but somehow, the bastards find a way to head them off halfway to their next class. 

“We believe there’s a more permanent way to settle our petty grievances,” Pansy says, as if Draco ever started a single fight. “I challenge you to a Wixen duel, Malfoy. Potter will be your second. Goyle’s mine. Midnight. The trophy room. I’ll wipe the floor with you surrounded by the accolades of our forefathers.” 

Ron starts to snap something, but cuts off when Draco says, “Don’t bother, Pansy. The answer is no.”

“Really, Malfoy?” Theo says, leaning much too close. “Where’s the famed Gryffindor courage you’re supposed to have?”

“It’s not the same as being stupid,” Draco answers, shoving the other boy away with his elbow. “This is simply a ploy to land us detention. You’ll run to Filch the moment the chance arises, won’t you? It’s what I would do. My, my. None of you have a hope of getting ahead in life if a ‘stupid Gryffindor’ can out-think your schemes. Now, if you do excuse me, my friends and I have Charms.” 

He leaves with his friends, while the Slytherins head to Defense. This, more than any other interaction between there, feels like an ending—a full stop on what could have been, almost was, and now, never will be.

Chapter Text

“What’s Potter been up to?” Moody asks one morning, after nearly an hour of cross-referencing, in various combinations, the Wixen European Commission’s List of Master Thieves, Hogwarts students’ NEWT Arithmancy scores for the past fifty years, and known seekers of the Philosopher’s Stone. The question is not an attempt to break the dead-end monotony; behind it, Tom very clearly hears the real question: has Potter figured anything out?

Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. That doesn’t mean Tom’s going to tell his potentially mad “mentor” about the letter he received the other day telling him about Harry and his band’s merry misadventures under the Invisibility Cloak while everyone else was celebrating the equinox in the Common Room. There was a three-headed dog! A secret entrance! A corridor that’s forbidden with no explanation! It’s the life lesson of “Bluebeard” in action, that nothing is more interesting than a locked door.

But Tom says none of this. “He and his friend made the Gryffindor Quidditch team,” he answers evenly. “Youngest players in nearly a century.” 

“Impressive,” says Moody, but not like he cares.

“I know,” says Tom, who does. He’s so proud of Harry; for Draco, he’s also relieved. 

Still blandly, the other man asks, “Potter hasn’t asked anything, then?”

Tom glances up from Fletcher, Mundungus’ arrest record and meets Moody’s mismatched stare. As usual, his false eye isn’t wandering. “Just about homework,” he says, which is mostly true. He was very careful in how he had the contract worded for a reason. Now, the Anti-Snitch Hex will only activate if he directly and knowingly divulges information related to the case. Does he suspect that when, in Harry’s last letter, he asked about Nicholas Flamel, this had involved the Philosopher’s Stone? Yes. But suspecting and knowing are two different things. It’s Moody’s own damn fault for withholding key components from him, just like it’s Hagrid’s for once again saying more than he ought. It was surprising to read that he invited Harry tea, given their mildly disastrous first meeting, but not shocking at all to learn he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Where’s his Anti-Snitch Hex, Tom wants to ask, but that would admit that Harry’s asking questions, and he’d prefer Moody to stay ignorant about that. 

They turn their attention back to the records. For the past few weeks, every time Tom’s reported for work, they’ve shut themselves in Moody’s horrid, dusty, cluttered home office with boxes upon boxes of archival material some Auror or another sent their way. Though Tom never thought he’d have trouble doing research, this is so mind-numbingly dull that he spends most of the time writing his next lab report in his head. He still has the classes for his BSc and Mastery, inevitably, and he’s taken a job at the Reptile House in the London Zoo to help with the rent, so he’s now doing something approximately sixty hours a week. Most of those hours involve this. 

This being the failed theft of the Philosopher’s Stone. Flamel’s Philosopher’s Stone, specifically, unless there’s an unreported one out there. Why Flamel, a French alchemist still based in Paris, would decide to deposit his and wife’s lifeline in a British bank is a question Moody must know the answer to, but for some reason, he hasn’t felt the need to share.

After another agonising half hour of nothing, Moody suddenly says, “You don’t always need to tell the kid everything just cause he asked. Part of adulthood is lying.”

Tom, who’d migrated to the corner by the window, turns to look at the man, incredulous. “I’m pretty sure you aren’t qualified to give parenting advice,” he says, and adds, “sir,” as an afterthought.

Moody's answering look is not one of approval. “It’s not ‘parenting advice,’” he says. “You want to keep the boy safe. He doesn’t need to know everything.” 

“Sure.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t believe in keeping someone in the dark,” Tom says. “If I can’t tell him something, then I’ll tell him that directly. He’s already involved. Withholding information related to his continued survival seems counter-intuitive.” 

For a long moment, Moody just stares at him with both eyes, gaze considering. How often he focuses on Tom is disconcerting. “You’re speaking from personal experience,” he says eventually.

“Obviously,” says Tom. “If someone had ever bothered to tell me what was going on, then—” He cuts himself off before he can say, Then I wouldn’t be here.

Moody lifts one almost nonexistent brow. “Then you wouldn’t have spent forty years as a doll?” Tom nods jerkily. Let the man draw his own conclusion. “Shite, Ryder. Fine, don’t lie to Potter, but don’t try getting around the Hex, either. He’s not alone with a Muggle and a tutor. The situations aren’t equitable.”

Tom turns to the next file and doesn’t answer. 

The thing is, the situations are equitable. Without drugs to dull everything, or culture shock and Harry to distract him, it’s harder not to think about his old life beyond memories relevant to a particular situation. It was, and still is, so easy to define himself as a sum of his relationships to his others—the spectral curse of his mother, the Riddles, who made the choice to care for him when their abandonment would have been justified, to his friends at Hogwarts—but ultimately, he’s always been different. Ordinary eleven-year-olds don’t master the Patronus just because they’re bored; ordinary eight-year-olds aren’t doing calculus; literally no one else can cast a Shield that blocks an Unforgivable. Tom might have learned early in his life not to brag, but he can still admit to himself what he can do. 

What he can’t understand is how Grindelwald learned what he can do, too. 

No one ever felt the need to tell Tom that Wixen Europe’s greatest enemy was starting to recruit in Britain, so when he received the first letter inviting him to tea, he assumed it was a weird joke and threw it in the fire. It was OWLs season. He was simultaneously too stressed and too high to give it much thought after the flames burned it to ash. There was a second letter. Then there was a third. He started asking around discretely after that, only to discover his usual band of tormentors were all desperately awaiting letters of their own, so would never dare send out a fake one, nor had anyone else. 

When the fourth letter came, Tom finally sent back a politely worded response that amounted to no, fuck off. He told Dumbledore. Dumbledore said matters were well-in-hand. He did not provide details. Whatever he meant by that, he was clearly incorrect, because Grindelwald’s attack a week later was a rousing success. 

So, Tom’s not going to be the one who assures Harry that matters are well-in-hand without explaining what those matters are. If anything goes wrong, his cousin deserves to know how, where, and why. It’s bad enough he spent nearly ten years living a lie so his own family could treat him as a bargain bucket Cinderella just for the sake of some—

“Blood wards!” he says suddenly, looking up from the file he definitely isn’t reading. To his immense satisfaction, Moody jumps. Before the man can ask what he’s on about, Tom goes on, “Do we know how old the vault is?”  

“No,” Moody says, without bothering to check the slim case file. “We can assume, though, that there’s no blood ward, or the thief wouldn’t have gotten through the door.”

Tom stands, too restless to remain cross-legged beside the endless stack of crates (Moody has one chair and refuses to give it up, ever). “Depends on the wards, doesn’t it?” he says. “Any vault older than Gringotts’ official founding uses a physical key. That was fourteen-seventy-four. But any vault established after uses a blood ward—until after they started accepting Muggleborn accounts at the turn of the seventeenth century anyway, yeah? And it’s such a stupid weak point because all you purebloods are related in some way or another, so depending on if the wards are only clued in to direct descendants of the vault’s original founder and any persons allowed access through that descendant, or a looser one that allows anyone with a blood connection regardless of how distantly related unless access is directly revoked, then all the thief really required was some very basic Curse Breaking to get past Gringotts’ normal security and a genetic link. Of course, if the vault required a key, then matters are completely different, and the thief has potentially unrivaled talent in the art of Curse Breaking, but checking if it’s blood-warded is probably a good place to start.”

Amused, Moody says, “Did you put that together because you listened in History of Magic? I never thought I’d see the day when that old ghost’s goblin obsession amounted to something useful.” He sets down his file and levels Tom with that considering look again. “All right. Say you’re right about how the wards vs keys work. How can you be sure vault seven-thirteen belonged to a pureblood?”

“Because Flamel’s a pureblood,” he answers bluntly, “and even when you lot profess to believe in the principle that all human life was created equal, you still default to trusting each other the most. Massive oversight, that. If Harry was a different sort of person and the Weasleys had anything worth stealing, he’d be able to waltz right into that vault unhindered.” Along with a smattering of others, depending on the strength of their wards.

The considering look sharpens, though Moody doesn’t rise to the bait Tom cast when he tossed out Flamel’s name. “But not you?” Moody says.

“Hardly. My Wixen line is far too streamlined.” Let him, again, draw his own conclusions there. It’s not quite that Tom’s Peverell only, but it’s the only line tied to a functional account. The Gaunts had literally nothing, and were too caught up in their incestuous ways to branch out. “Should I check the validity of my hypothesis?”

“No point,” Moody says, returning to his files. “The goblins’ client confidentiality agreements supersede even Aurors’ warrants. Bastards won’t speak to us.”

Tom drops his own file back on the pile, sending up a cloud of dust. “You’re so terribly uncreative, sir,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow with the results of this afternoon’s interview. Can’t come back before then. I have work and a lab report to finish.” 

Moody’s good eye narrows as the other spins in its socket. “And how, Ryder,” he asks, “do you mean to extract these results?” 

“Not the Imperius Curse, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Tom says. “What people who haven’t paid attention in History of Magic tend to forget is that the goblins may have assimilated with their Wixen robes and Wixen bureaucracy, but they’re still fae.”

“Ryder, you can’t bargain—”

“Have a little faith, sir,” he says, and takes his leave. 

Tom reads Harry’s latest letter on the tube, which he takes from Baker Street, where his Mastery is located, to the Leaky, found right outside Charing Cross, to reduce his number of Apparitions. A mountain troll broke in through the dungeon during the feast, the letter reads in Harry’s messy scrawl. We made 20 points for Gryffindor (5 each) for knocking it out in the girl’s bathroom. We weren’t looking for trouble, but Hermione was sick, so she didn’t know what had happened, and we had to find her. Ron knocked it out with its own club. I think someone let it in as a distraction to get whatever it is the dog is guarding. None of us were hurt, but McGonagall still had to take Hermione to the Hospital Wing. 

So much for “there’s no safer place in Wixen Britain than Hogwarts.” Bloody ridiculous. A mountain troll? What’s next, a basilisk? 

When he’s done with Gringotts, Tom will have to find the nearest owlery and gently remind Harry to be more careful. Maybe pointing out that not being careful could result in being benched for Quidditch might finally convince the kids to think things through. 

He exits the Underground on a tide of others doing the same and emerges into a downpour. Wandlessly and wordlessly, he casts an Umbrella Charm, so the Muggles won’t notice, and makes his way to the pub. Without Harry there, no one pays Tom any mind as he walks through out into the back courtyard, and through the wall to the nearly deserted street beyond. Weather-repellent charms save the streets from the absolute squall attacking Muggle London, but leaves behind roiling grey skies and an opaque fog. The few people out and about rush to their destinations, heads down. He doesn’t quite rush, but doesn’t dawdle, either. 

At the entrance to the bank, he dries himself, but doesn’t bother to neaten his windswept hair or transfigure his Muggle jeans and jumper into robes; there’s an advantage in coming across as a little unkempt, a little too Muggleborn. The account manager will expect whoever comes to call about this matter to try to flex their power, but Tom’s never been so crude as all that. A delicate approach is often more effective.

It takes an hour of value homework time before he lands himself in Vault 713’s account manager’s office. The goblin’s name is Flittermist. He looks to be about a thousand years old, and as if in that time, has never once bothered to trim his nose hairs. 

When Tom enters, he smiles. “Thank you for seeing me,” he says, taking the indicated seat across the wide, but low, wooden desk that dominates the room. “I know you’ve already answered questions for the Aurors, Mr Flittermist, but the case has default to private hands, so I’m just here to check some boxes.”

“Of course,” says the goblin, sounding entirely too reasonable. “May I see your identification?”

Tom hands over his Mastery ID and his Gringotts bloodwork. “I’m working with Mr Moody as part of my Mastery,” he explains as Flittermist’s brows rise. Presumably, he reached Account Access: Gaunt, Peverell. Thankfully, it only shows that much, nothing as specific as birthdays or place of birth or ancestry. If it did, the average pureblood’s paperwork would be a nightmare. “Headmaster Dumbledore hired Mr Moody to discover who attempted to steal the Stone. May I have my identification back?”

As the goblin returns the ID and papers, he says, “You must understand, Mr Riddle, that Gringotts holds its clients’ privacy as a matter of paramount importance. The questions I can answer for you are limited.” 

“I’d expected nothing less.” Actually, Tom expects a lot and intends to exploit that misconception. So few Wix ever bother to push because they deem goblins an inferior species with inferior magic, when they’re really cleverer than the average Auror or shopkeeper or student who walks their doors. But their magic, like all magic, has rules, and like all clever people, they’re likely to overestimate their own intelligence. 

They are also highly susceptible to Legilimency. 

Carelessly, Tom says, “You may not be able to answer, Mr Flittermist, but surely, there are no rules against you asking anything of me.”

Flittermist’s answering smile is a sharp thing made of too many teeth. “I see, Mr Riddle,” he says. “You propose a question game.”

“I would never presume to propose something so childish as a game,” Tom says, “but…a test, let’s call it. What would your people say if you turned down the opportunity to prove yourself cleverer than one of mine?” The Question Game is standard fae trickery, structured as a fast-paced back and forth between two parties who can only ask open-ended questions; to hesitate, ask an either-or/yes-or-no, or slip into a statement results in a loss. It’s such a hilariously easy way around confidentiality agreements that anyone who paid attention in Binns’ class could learn to do it. Perhaps, Tom thinks, that’s the real reason no one’s bothered to exorcise the ghost yet: too many people listening in History of Magic would destabilise an already precarious system.

He smiles again. Flittermist’s own grows. 

“Nothing good,” he says. He eyes Tom narrowly. “Begin.”

Tom jumps into it. “Why would Nicolas Flamel use a British bank?”

“Why do you believe the account is Nicolas Flamel’s?”

Oh, good. So the goblin is playing. “Why would Perenelle Flamel use a British bank?”

“Why wouldn’t Perenelle Flamel née Dee use her family account?”

“How is Perenelle Flamel related to Queen Elizabeth’s John Dee?”

“What is your interest in seventeenth-century second account holders?”

Merlin no, second? Seventeenth century? No, it’s John Dee, there’s no way Queen Elizabeth’s pet alchemist and Seer didn’t use blood wards. In a second, Tom runs through everything he ever learned about the man, both in History of Magic and his Muggle schooling, and lands on the best possibility just in time, which is Dee’s sixteenth-century Welsh outlaw cousin. “Why did Twm Siôn Cati choose Gringotts as his bank when he fled to Geneva?” he asks. 

“Why would anyone choose our interior Swiss counterpart over us?” Flittermist snaps, which seems like a genuine question.

 Tom leans forward and meets the goblin’s eye. “How did Twm Siôn Cati, outlaw that he was,” he says, “choose who to key into the blood ward that now guards his account?” 

“That’s enough, Mr Riddle,” Flittermist says, conceding the match, but it’s too late. The second Tom said key into the blood ward, Flittermist so kindly gave up the answer, as it flickered across the surface of his thoughts. Any goblin in Gringotts, apparently, and on the Wixen side, anyone with a genetic ancestral connection. 

“Thank you for your time, sir,” Tom says, standing as Flittermist does. “Shame you couldn’t tell me more, of course, but I understand. Confidentially and all.”

“Always happy to help,” says the goblin, in a tone that suggests he’d much rather tear Tom’s throat out with his teeth, before showing him all the way out to the bank’s front doors. 

Prior to the match, no one was worried for Harry. There was no point. He was good, first year or not, and Fred and George were superior Beaters. Not only that, but their opponent was Slytherin, so Harry and his friends were all concerned for Draco. They were even right to be, given the sheer number of times the Slytherin Beater knocked a bludger at his head, but still, he’s not the one who had his broom cursed. 

“Bad luck, that,” he says later, shaking his head. It’s late, but they’re in a deserted classroom, dodging their own victory celebration to discuss the insane fact that someone just tried to curse Harry to plunge to his death in front of the entire school. “Still, I’m saying it wasn’t Uncle Sev.” 

“But he was maintaining eye contact!” Hermione says, like she’s said it before. 

Startled, Harry says, “No he wasn’t.” 

“Yes, he was,” she says, confused. “We saw him, Ron and me and Hagrid, even. He didn’t stop looking at you once, not even to blink, until I lit the fire.”

“That’s different, I think,” Harry says, glancing at Ron and Draco. “Eye contact is like what you need for Legilimency, right?”

“Legilimency won’t knock a person off a broom,” says Ron. “Awful hard, I’ve heard, fiddling with that sort of magic.”

Though Draco goes to add something, Hermione cuts in, “What’s Legilimency?” 

“Mind-reading?” Harry says, but Draco rolls his eyes and shoves him, so he nearly falls out of his chair. “Hey!”

“There’s no way Tom explained it as mind-reading, Harry,” Ron says, exasperated. “Blimey, say that around the average pureblood, and they’ll skewer you with a fork. You haven’t managed to come across it in any of your ‘light reading’ yet, Hermione?”

Hermione’s mouth tightens, in that way it will when she’s embarrassed about being behind. Harry understands; he feels out of place all the time. “No, Ronald,” she says coolly, “I can’t say it’s come up yet.”

With his usual directness, Draco explains about how Legilimency works, which Harry still says sounds like mind-reading. From the glance Hermione sends his way, he thinks she agrees. Still, she only says, “Well, I suppose if that means the books are really quite so literal about eye contact, then it mustn’t have been Snape after all. But who else? How else?”

No one has an answer for her. At least when it seemed like it was Snape, Harry had someone to pin his fears of retaliation on. In the coming days, it’s much worse realising that it could have been anyone. As the week drags on, he finds himself expecting an attack from every shadow, so is almost irrationally disappointed when he receives a three page apology from Tom over breakfast explaining that he’s sorry, but the plans are finalised for the research trip to Italy, and he really can’t turn it down.

He’ll send a letter back later letting Tom know it’s all right, because it is, obviously, and it’s not like winter hols won’t be fun here. 

When he tells his friends, Draco shifts awkwardly on the bench and says, “Well, it’s not like you’ll be by yourself. I’ll be staying too.”

“And me,” says Ron quickly, which is good, because no one ever knows how to respond to any evidence of Draco’s steadily worsening relationship with his family. “All of us, really. Mum and Dad are visiting Charlie in Romania.” 

“Well, Chanukah corresponds with Christmas and the solstice this year,” Hermione says, “so I’ll be returning. Perhaps not next year, though, depending on when Chanukah is. I’d love to celebrate Yule here.” 

“Food’s probably better than the Greengrass’,” Draco says, sighing. “They sacked the good cook two years back, and the new one’s terrible.” 

Harry catches Ron’s eye, and rolls his when he knows their friend can’t see. Hermione, who sees, represses a smile, and asks, “What’s Tom doing that you can’t come home for?”

Though Harry doesn’t know all the details, he can at least explain that it’s an undergrad research trip involving endangered snakes. In an undertone, when he’s done, Ron says, “And the Muggles will never know your cousin is a total cheater.” 

“Tom’s too much of a swot to cheat,” Draco says, which is probably true. Everything about Tom made sense once Harry found out he used to be Ravenclaw. “Ready for Binns?”

Not even Hermione is ever ready for Binns, but somehow, a ghost still manages to mark papers and dispense detentions for skipped class, so they leave the remains of their breakfasts, shoulder their bags, and head to class. Draco and Ron nod off within ten minutes; Hermione pretends to pay attention; Harry writes his letter to Tom. He vaguely hears something or another about the Goblin Wars, but isn’t it always the Goblin Wars? The textbooks aren’t all about the Goblin Wars; Tom read him three before bed over the past year. Harry, who was never allowed to just sit around with a book when he was younger, isn’t the fastest reader, so it’s probably good they’d did or he’d never have any idea what’s going on in this class at all. 

He tells Tom that Draco and Ron are staying too, so don’t worry, just have fun in Italy and eat lots of spaghetti. What Harry does not do is tell his cousin that he almost died during a Quidditch match. Though he might not know exactly why, he understands that this trip means something more important than just the chance to talk to some vipers. If Tom finds out someone openly attacked Harry, he’ll stay just to be nearby, in case it happens again. It’s weird, having a person who’s willing to do that. 

All he wants is to return the favour in any way he can.

“You want me to Apparate to Albania?” Tom says, when Moody ambushes him at his flat at five in the morning. The sun’s still hours from rising, Tom doesn’t have his exams for another four hours, and he was hoping to sleep for another two. 

Moody kicks out one of the two kitchen chairs with his piratical pegleg and plops down into it. “That’s nothing for you,” he says dismissively. “I checked. The distance between Puglia and Valbona is around the same as here to the Burrow.”

“That’s not the problem,” says Tom, as he spoons coffee into the cafetière and magicks up boiling water. “Want any?”

Apparently Moody would like tea, if Tom has it, which means he has to dig out the oolong that’s migrated to the back of the cabinets since Harry left for school. As Tom sets a teabag to seep, Moody says, “It’s your find, Ryder. I’d’ve sent you after him even if you weren’t in the area already. Just works out that you are.” 

Tom slides the mug with the tea across the table to his mentor, who doesn’t even say thank you. Prick. Moody’s a nightmare to work with, especially because he never shares all the information. Oh really, Puglia and Shebenik are near enough together that he’s not likely to be splinched? And he’s not supposed to question the wild coincidence of his professor suddenly changing research locations from Abruzzo? But it would be satisfying to catch the thief. By calling in favours and tapping into a random connection in Paris, Moody was able to piece together a blood tree for the Dee family, but records out of Russia were spotty. Rather invasively, they couldn’t get names, but the Wixen Kremlin could provide the coordinates for every individual related to the family line. In France, there was Perenelle and three great-something-grandchildren, and two more in the Americas, but Moody didn’t have much trouble calling on yet more connections to verify alibis. 

With all these people accounted for, what was left was the signature in Albania, which vanished in the Valbona Valley this summer. 

But Tom won’t have time to traipse around a forest. “I’m going to be one of ten people on this trip,” he says, as he considers the logistics. “Eight students. We’re all of age, but as undergraduates, we’re under the university’s responsibility. I can't say I’m just sneaking off for a shag with a local and disappear for a day without royally fucking myself.” 

This does not impress upon Moody in the slightest. “All right,” he says. “Then what’s the solution, Ryder?”

“Certainly nothing ethical.” 

“You won’t be on British soil,” he points out. “They’re Muggles. The Italians’ve cared bugger all about Muggles long before Grindelwald’s reign of terror. Just don’t murder anyone, and as long as you don’t tell me, it’s fine.” 

Shaking his head, Tom says, “And you wonder why I don’t want to be an Auror.” He leans back against the counter, arms crossed, and looks down at Moody, who doesn’t display a single ounce of remorse. “Should you really be encouraging your trainees to step outside the bounds of legal action?”

Moody sips his tea. “This is awful,” he says, raising his mug, before taking another sip anyway. “Don’t pretend you have the moral high ground. I don’t think you used Imperio to get us the information about the wards, but you didn’t just ask nicely, either.”

“I did,” Tom says, which is as true as it needs to be. “It’s just a matter of phrasing the question in the right way. A trick I doubt will work on the thief, if they’re even still there. I’ll only have a few hours to search for them.”

“You’ll think of something,” Moody says. “Even if the thief didn’t flee back to Albania, I’ve no doubt you’ll find what you need. Dumbledore wouldn’t have such high praise for you if you didn’t deserve it.”

“Careful, Mad-Eye,” Tom says, as he turns around to push down the press on the coffee. “It almost sounds like you’re fishing for what I did to earn that.” 

As he pours the coffee, Moody admits for the first time, “It was Dumbledore who recommended I take you on.” Though Tom had suspected this for a while, it’s different hearing Moody actually say it. “I didn’t disagree. It’s not everyday someone defeats me in a duel. Rarer still for someone to drag out that duel four moves longer than necessary.”

Don’t play with your food, Tom.

He hides his expression between a sip of coffee and feels out how to proceed. “Interesting point to raise,” he says, “right after you encouraged me to commit morally questionable acts in a foreign country to further your own goals.”

With a sardonic smile that twists all his scars, Moody says, “I didn’t mean it as a recrimination. Nothing wrong with having a little fun. But Dumbledore isn’t appreciative of our type of fun, so I reckon his recommendation had something to do with Potter. Do me a favour, Ryder. Don’t get yourself killed in Albania.” 

Though the recommendation probably is because of Harry, Tom keeps to himself that Dumbledore’s never seen him like that before by design, so wouldn’t know to take any unflattering character traits into account. “I won’t,” he says. “Would be too inconvenient, my dying. All the paperwork you’d all have to do—the admins in London, in St Andrews.” 

 “You’re going to have to make a choice at some point,” says Moody, as he banishes his mostly full mug into the sink with a silent wave of his wand. “This back and forth will be the death of you.” 

“I’m a half-blood, sir,” Tom says. “Last I checked, I’m made for it.”

On the 21st, Hagrid drags a massive tree trunk to act as the Yule log (which started out as the Christmas log, Tom said, but purebloods don’t like to acknowledge that) into the Great Hall, and all the remaining students gather around it on cushions for the holiday feast. Evergreens line the walls to mimic the forest, undecorated for now, though any student who wants can come down tomorrow to help festoon them. Harry isn’t certain he’s going to, not because he has anything against Christmas, but because McGonagall is leading the committee. As good as she is as a teacher and Head of House, she’s so obsessed with keeping to schedule that he can’t possibly imagine decorating Christmas trees under her watch will be fun. 

“Maybe Flitwick will do it next year,” Draco says, after Harry explains his logic for not wanting to join mostly everyone else. “He’s so distractible a person could get away with lighting a fire, and he wouldn’t notice.”

Ron pours himself more pumpkin juice and glances around at all the trees blocking the windows. “You ever decorate with the Dursleys, mate?” he asks. 

“No,” says Harry, trying to imagine what decorating with Dudley would have been like. He takes another bite of his treacle tart to try to burn away the image. “I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. Probably would’ve contaminated it with my un-Christianliness or something, I reckon. And Tom’s pretty anti-Christmas, so we did this.” 

“I thought all Muggles and Muggled-raised Wix were wild about Christmas,” says Draco between delicate bites of his gross figgy pudding, “unless they were like Hermione.” 

Harry shrugs. Tom mentioned almost getting exorcised once, so he assumes that would do it, but that would take way too long to explain. And even Harry really only knows as much as he does because he watched half of The Exorcist through the crack in his cupboard door. 

Before he can think of anything else to say, though, the food vanishes and the ghosts appear. The Bloody Baron rises above the fire, looking even more eerie than usual, and says in his grumbling voice, “Today is the blackest of nights, when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is slim. Tradition dictates that this night is one for ghost stories, so sit tight and listen well, children, while we tell you our tales, until the fire dies.” 

Everyone claps, including the other ghosts, who look a tad more solid than usual, just as they had at the turn of November. Nearly-Headless Nick starts the storytelling off, followed by the Fat Friar, and so on, as the log continues to burn. It’s past midnight when it’s finally ash, and Dumbledore sends them all to bed. Percy herds the Gryffindors back to the Common Room, yawning himself all the while, but Harry’s still buzzing from his sugar rush. He’s not tired—he’s jittery. So it’s disappointing when Draco and Ron fall asleep immediately upon returning to the dormitory. 

For a while, Harry tosses and turns, trying to fall back to sleep. Finally, he throws the blankets off of himself and retrieves his Invisibility Cloak. If lying there isn’t going to exhaust him, he decides, then he’ll just have to walk until he no longer feels so caught in his own head.

It’s a great plan. Mostly. At first anyway. He slips out of the Common Room unseen, meanders through the halls, and is finally starting to feel sleepy when he encounters Mrs Norris. This is a problem, because Mrs Norris still knows he’s there. How, he isn’t certain, but he has little doubt that when Mrs Norris turns her glowing yellow eyes on him, she’s already summoning Filch with the knowledge that there’s a student out of bed.

He dashes around the corner right as Filch appears, ducks under the man’s arm, and slips into an empty classroom. In his panic, it takes him a moment to focus on the oddness of the room itself. All the chairs and desks are pushed against the walls. 

And at the front, propped against the chalkboard, is a mirror.

On the train from Rome to Puglia, Tom reads a letter from Ron Weasley about Harry’s odd behaviour since discovering a mirror in a deserted classroom. The Hogwarts owl assaulted him on the platform, managing to locate that one moment when no one was looking at him, but inevitably flew off before Tom could write a response. Great. What is he supposed to do, tame a wild owl tonight and have it send a reply for him?

Well, actually, he could do that. He does know the spell for it. There’s no one around to chastise him for casting Dark Magic, either. 

As he tucks the letter in his jacket pocket, Fiona Cameron, another undergrad, sighs and says, “It’s so cute that your brother hand writes you those wee letters. I wish my sister and I could be like that.” 

“We’re cousins,” Tom says, glancing at the girl. She sits across the plastic table from him, so the train is moving forward for her rather than back. “Might be a help.” 

She sets her elbows on the table and rests her chin in her hands. “Still sweet,” she says. “How old is he?” 

“Eleven,” he says. “What about your sister?”

“Fifteen,” she says, as the urban landscape transitions to a suburban/rural hybrid landscape. “Terrible age. Everyone’s a monster at fifteen. I always like to tell myself I can’t have been so bad as all that, but I reckon I was. Bet your cousin won’t be hand writing you those sweet letters then.”

The thought of Harry at fifteen is just wrong, as much as it’s inevitable. When he’s fifteen, Tom will be twenty-four. He’ll have been here for seven years. When Harry’s fifteen, he’ll be taking his OWLs. Harry will make far smarter choices than Tom ever did during that year, because Tom won’t let it be otherwise. 

Around three, the train taxis into the station. A couple hired cars collect them, and take them to a whole house the professors were able to rent for a week with their grant money. There are five bedrooms of varying sizes, two beds each, so everyone needs to share. Tom ends up with Gideon, the son of some Tory Minister who wears jackets with elbow patches and decided on St Andrews as an act of rebellion against his Cambridge-aspiring father. For various reasons that largely have to do with his inability to cover his mouth when he yawns, Tom can’t stand him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much say in the matter. At least he won’t have any guilt drugging the boy. Dreamless Sleep, after all, can’t be nearly as bad as what else Gideon does at parties. 

With the exception of Fiona, mostly everyone hates Tom, too, which is all right honestly. He’s understood since he was a first year that people who are used to being on top dislike when they’re suddenly not, particularly when their instructors exacerbate the issue by continuously pointing out what one person in the group did right. It’s not their fault that he can walk out of the trees with the Vipera aspis hugyi draped around his shoulders and all the answers to why this population’s been sick. Even amongst other Wix, he’d have an unfair advantage here. As it is, he can’t explain that he only needs to ask, so it’s hard to turn down the undue praise and fake-angry lecture about safety precautions without also seeming like a git who’s faking humility. 

So he gets it. Really. 

It’s just not fun, is all. 

By the time Christmas Day comes around, he’s bursting with the chance to leave them for a few hours, and feels no remorse about slipping Dreamless Sleep into the morning’s coffee and tea. Carefully, he sends everyone into the room with the tree, so it looks like they feel asleep while doing something Christmasy. He doubts he even needs to modify anyone’s memory; people are wonderful at coming up with stories for themselves when they can’t think of a decent explanation for the inexplicable. 

In a blink, he’s in Albania. Tragically, it’s raining. The first thing he sees is a sign reading in English, CAUTION: BEARS IN AREA.

Lovely. 

He tugs his hood over his head and casts a charm to protect himself from the weather, before removing the paper from the Kremlin with the coordinates. Holding the location firmly in his mind, he sets his wand in his hand, and says, “Point me.”

It spins and points off the trail, so he pushes aside the water-laden branches of a spruce and walks into the wood. 

For the first six years of Tom’s education, he had a bad habit of stealing from the Restricted Section. Hogwarts is a wealth of knowledge for anyone with the drive to seek it, and he was never going to allow a locked door keep him from learning all that he wanted to know. There was never a point where he allowed a silly thing like morality affect his desire to study whatever he could reach. So, in the course of his academic career, he learned about how to create magical owls and the Unforgivables and the unspinning of time and, most relevantly to now, Soul Magic. 

Other than the Unforgivables, there’s really nothing Darker, so he never intended to use the knowledge in the practical sense. But regardless of any intentions he might have had, here he is, kneeling beside a corpse in the slush with a sharp stick in his hand. 

There are different ways to summon a dead soul, which can only be done if there’s still a ghost drifting around with the living—and undoubtedly, a man with a death as unclean as this one is still here. All the nice and polite ways involve spells and runes on the ground and asking if the ghost would like to come and speak, which is why they’re not viable witnesses for murder trials. Too finicky, too likely to agree to something one moment and become irrationally angry about it the next. Still, there are the impolite ways, too. Though, impolite might be trivialising the act. When he slices through his palm with the stick, it’s an act far worse than setting the forks to the right of the plate. 

With his blood, he draws the runic notations for breath, tether, and cycle around the dead man’s heart, then smears the cut over his mouth, before doing the same to own. 

The shadows surrounding him deepen, length. His Warming Charm melts away, leaving him shivering as the sleet pelts down through the canopy. A sigh runs through the clearing, terribly human and disquietingly loud, before grey mist cobbles together into the shape of the dead man above his corpse. 

For a moment, they just appraise each other. Then the ghost says, “You’re looking better than the last time I saw you, even with the blood. You Europeans, man. You’re a fucked up bunch, all of you.” 

He has an accent. American maybe? Native English speaker, but not from Britain or Ireland. Tom files it away as a question to ask. “Apologies?” he says, rising to his feet. The ghost pulls back his shoulders, but is anchored in place, so can’t move away. “Look, uh. Mate. Don’t know you think I am, but we’ve not met—”

“You can’t fool the dead, asshole,” the ghost says. “We don’t just see your body. We see your soul. Yours doesn’t look like someone put through the woodchipper anymore, but I’d recognise your—your nothingness anywhere.”

Tom freefalls. 

What the bloody—no no no—-

He breathes. “Unfortunately,” he says, “we were…made similar ways. We’re not actually the same, though, I assure you. He’s also trying to kill my younger brother, so I’d rather like to catch him, if you don’t mind, and would like your assistance to do it. Who are you?”

To his relief, something in the ghost shifts. Maybe the dead can sense sincerity. “Tyler Owens,” he says. “New Yorker.”

“Ilvermorny graduate?”

“Class of ninety-one. Hogwarts?”

A wizard, as expected. It explains his general ease with the situation. “Yeah,” he answers, without specifying just how recently. “I need to know when you died, who did it, how, and why. As much as you know.”

It was July, the dead man says, though he can’t remember more specifically than that. Why he decided on Albania, he can’t say; he was adopted, but had some vague notion that his original family was Swiss, so meant to hike the traditional Alpine circuit, but something called him here. He can’t say how he managed to Apparate to the valley, nor how why he walked off the path, which every amateur hiker and their grandmother knows not to do. A sort of compulsion, he thinks. It brought him to a knot in a tree, that one, see, right over there, and he stuck his hand in, just as dumb as the cat in the vending machine, and that’s when the spell hit his back. Not the Killing Curse, but something Dark, no doubt, that sent him sprawling, with even his eyes stuck still, open, while in a man in robes with his hood tucked of his face took his blood, yeah. Injected it right in his own veins. The one on the wrist. 

When Tyler died, that’s when he saw it, that whole soul and the tattered nothing one feeding on it, eating it alive. 

Why, though? Who the fuck knows, honestly. Definitely not Tyler Owens. He has no idea why or when they cast a spell preservation on his corpse, either. 

Tom sort of wants to scream by the time the ghost’s done, but doesn’t. “Thank you,” he says, before cleaning them both of the blood with a wave of his hand. “You’re free to go. I won’t keep you here longer than necessary.” 

“You’re a dick for doing this,” Owens says, as he starts to fade, “but still. Kill the guy for me, will you?” 

He’s gone before Tom can say he'll try his best. There’s no point in making promises. No one simply survives with their soul in tatters without reason. 

Sighing, he removes Moody’s mirror fragment from his pocket. “Call in whoever you have here,” Tom says when the man replaces his reflection. “I’m leaving before they arrive. I’m telling you and only you what I learned. In person.”

“Do I want to know what you did?” Moody asks, as if he didn’t suggest Tom resort to unsavoury means himself. 

“Plausible deniability, sir,” he says bluntly. “I suggest you embrace it.”

He taps his wand on the mirror, closing the connection. Then he inhales, exhales, and one painful moment later, passes out on the floor in Puglia.

Chapter Text

Though Ron wrote to Tom about Harry’s odd behaviour, he has no one to write to about Draco’s. Draco, like Ron, doesn’t return for the three consecutive nights that Harry does, but after he’s quiet. Sullen, Ron thinks the word is. Though Draco hadn’t said what he’d seen, he hadn’t questioned Harry’s claim that the mirror showed their families, so it’s easy to guess.

On the day before spring term begins, Ron decides he’s sick of it. There’s Harry, feeling weirdly guilty over something but not saying what, and Draco, who refuses to acknowledge that his family is a bunch of stuck up pricks. He wishes he could talk to Hermione about it, but she wasn’t here, so what does she know? So clearly this is his problem to solve, alone. There’s nothing he can really do about Harry, instinct tells him, but he can damn well corner Draco in the library for a massively uncomfortable talk.

Draco, who got his hands on Snape’s assignment list, is already working on the next essay, though it’s not due for a month. “What do you want?” Draco asks rudely without raising his eyes from his reading. 

“For you not to be a prat,” Ron answers, which at least does force his friend to look at him. His friend. Sometimes he’s still struck by how mad it is that he looks at Draco Malfoy, son of the man who’s reason Dad almost never gets a promotion at the Ministry, and his brain goes best friend. Madder yet is the thought he wouldn’t have felt any different if Draco had been Sorted into Slytherin.

But Draco isn’t in Slytherin. And that’s the whole thing of it, isn’t it?

He narrows his eyes. “You’re the prat,” he says. “If you’re just here to annoy me, then you might as well leave. I won’t let you look at my essay otherwise.”

“We both know that’s not true, mate,” Ron says. Draco scowls and shuts his book. “Look, I just wanted to tell you if it isn’t good with your parents this summer, Mum and Dad’d have you.”

“Everything will be fine,” says Draco, though his grip tightens on his quill. 

“Course it will,” Ron says agreeably. He’s good at being agreeable. It’s a necessary skill one learns as the second youngest of seven. “I’m just saying.”

Draco’s quiet for a beat before he says, “Mother bought Harry and I broomsticks. All’s forgiven.”

Last Ron checked, no one has much of a choice where they’re Sorted, so they shouldn’t be expected to apologise for it. All right, he can’t guess what his parents would do if he’d been Sorted into Slytherin instead, but he can’t imagine they’d blame him for it. They’d even been prepared for the possibility that Percy would be. 

Maybe that’s why the rest of the Sacred 28 consider them blood traitors. Well, among other reasons. Ron’s never cared overly much for the details; Dad always said it was a compliment. 

“Then obviously there’s nothing to worry about,” Ron says, shrugging. 

“And even if there was,” Draco says, setting down the quill, “I wouldn’t take you up on it. You’re too poor to give me my own bedroom. I’d never last a summer subjected to your Chudley Cannon posters.” 

“They’re the best team,” Ron says, offended.

“Don’t be daft, Ronald. You only like them because they’re orange.”

Ron’s gasp of outrage draws Mrs Pince from around the Potions books. “Quiet in the library, young Weasley,” she says, which is stupid, because one, they’re the only ones here, and two, he’s never introduced himself to her before. “You wouldn’t want to follow the example of your brothers, would you?”

“No, Mrs Pince,” he says, as his face grows hot and he pointedly does not look at Draco, who’s biting back his laughter. 

“If you’ve no work,” she says, staring down at him over the frame of her glasses, “then I suggest you leave the premises.”

Bloody ridiculous! He does as he’s told, but curses the old bat all the while. Just because Fred and George have been “a disruptive presence” in the library doesn’t mean he will be. It seems right unfair that she’d kick him out like that, when there was no one else to hear them. He should know. He checked. There wasn’t even Harry skulking around in his cloak, because he’s down with Hagrid attempting to get the man to tell him what Fluffy’s hiding. Whatever it is, it’s obviously of immense value, but if they knew what, then they could guess who was after it.

Frankly, Ron still hopes it’s Snape. That they’re discounting Snape because he wasn’t the git who cursed Harry’s broom and Draco says he’s not evil seems like shoddy reasoning. Draco can’t be trusted to think clearly about anyone associated with his family, not when he hasn’t figured out yet that at least his snotty blood purist, stupidly-rich-and-flashes-the-money-about father is the sort of bloke who probably drowns puppies after tea for fun. 

Draco catches up to Ron a couple corridors away from the Common Room. “Your family can’t possibly handle another child,” he says immediately. “Your parents barely afford the lot of you as it is.”

“Maybe my mum can convince yours to pay ‘child support,’” Ron says, “like how the Muggles do it. Probably solved there, right?”

“So it’s all a trick to access the Malfoy accounts,” says Draco, sounding very serious, but his pointy nose is doing its bunny twitch, so he’s not. “What is it your family would purchase first? New broomsticks? Peacocks, perhaps?”

“Keep those nasty things for yourself,” Ron says. “I’ve heard them before, you know. Do you magic away their screaming or something?”

“They scream?”

Ron rolls his eyes. “Course you bloody do,” he says. “Two of my brothers are gone from the house. And it’s not like how you think, even if we do get everything second hand and can’t go on holiday—the house is all put together with magic, obviously, and we got chickens and grow almost all the food.”

“Then were does it all go?” Draco asks, as they take a corridor away from the Common Room, wordlessly agreeing that perhaps this conversation is best continued outside the earshot of anyone else. 

Shrugging, Ron says, “Mum and Dad try not to talk about money near us.”

“That’s stupid,” his friend says. “Mother and Father saw to it that I understood everything I needed to know about our finances before coming here.”

“Yeah, cause you’re richer than half the Slytherin house put together,” says Ron. It’s a mystery how Draco can be so smart and still such an idiot when it comes to his parents. “If anyone tried, you know, to peacock at you, you could probably just point out that even your house elves could buy them.”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Draco says. Again, Ron rolls his eyes. “Merlin, you’re insufferable. How do you know what peacocks sound like?”

“I went with Harry and Tom to the London Zoo,” he says. “Harry wanted to introduce me to his snake friend.”

“Why wasn’t I invited?”

“You were too busy visiting your evil aunt.”

Draco, at least, does not dispute the fact that Bellatrix Lestrange could never be considered good. “That would do it,” he says as they loop back toward the Common Room. “Think Harry had any luck today?”

With Hagrid, it’s hit or miss, so Ron’s feeling optimistic when he says, “Yeah, I think he probably did.”

Famous last words, these. Harry returns hours later to inform them that Hagrid successfully managed to keep mum on the subject. “But he did tell me that several of the teachers also created enchantments to guard it,” he says, once they’re alone in their dormitory. They sit by the fire that burns in the centre of the room with their quilts wrapped around them, attempting to stay warm. “None of them know how to get past anyone else’s, I don’t know, obstacle? But, let’s see, there’s Hagrid, Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall, Sprout, Flitwick, and Quirrell.”

“Quirrell!” Ron and Draco say at once. Shaking his head, Ron says, “But the man’s useless. What do you think it is, you have to recite something without stuttering to reach McGonagall’s cat den?”

“I don’t think cats live in a den,” says Draco, because he would care about that, before turning back to Harry. “Well, I think we know who it isn’t. I bet it would be easy for someone who worked on the protection to learn how to do the rest. Could it be a student?”

Harry groans. “Don’t even say that,” he answers. “I’ve a hard enough time keeping the professors I’m not taking straight. What about someone from outside?”

Draco shakes his head. “Hogwarts is much too well warded for that,” he says. “It’s impossible for anyone to enter without at least the Headmaster learning of it.”

“You can technically port-key in,” Ron adds, “but it’s dead difficult. You need a special sort, and the only ones who can make it are in the Ministry or the staff. Dad’s confiscated loads of bad Hogwarts port-keys, see. Anytime someone tries to come here without the right authorisation, some curse on the ward bounces them to the Ministry. It’s genius.”

Despite what Ron considers to be very good and interesting information, Harry barely seems to be paying attention. “Yeah, of course,” he says, “but what if they’ve been here all term and are just hiding out. The wards are weaker on the days students are coming or going.”

Glumly, Ron thinks it was better when it was a faculty member. “Maybe it’s Filch,” he says, “or Mrs Norris. Yeah, maybe Mrs Norris is a secret animagus, like McGonagall, and this’s been planned for years.”

“No one could successfully pretend to be an animal for years,” Draco says, which just proves he has no imagination. He sighs. “And it’s not Filch. I’ve it under good authority that he’s a Squib.”

“Isn’t a Squib like the opposite of a Muggleborn?” Harry says. “No wonder he hates all the students. That’s rotten for him.”

“Rotten luck for us, you mean,” says Ron, who spares no sympathy for Filch and his student-hating ways. “Wonder how he got a job here. We’ve a Squib in the family, but he became an accountant. I think. No one really talks about him.”

Frowning, Harry says, “Is that why Neville’s uncle dropped him out the window? To make sure he wasn’t a Squib?”

Draco and Ron exchange a glance. There’s not a lot the Malfoys and the Weasleys and the Longbottoms will all agree on, but the subject of Squibs is universal. “That’s what it sounded like,” Draco says. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing a family’s done in the name of squeezing the magic out of their child, particularly because sometimes the ‘Squib’ is a changeling. You can’t be too careful.”

Harry’s frown stays firmly in place. “Then why not just write to Hogwarts to see if the kid’s on the registry?” 

“Confidentiality,” Ron says, as Draco answers, “But changelings.”

With a groan, Harry falls on his back onto the floor. “We’ll tell Hermione everything tomorrow,” he says. “See what she thinks. But I guess it’s probably not Filch, even if he is bad enough for it.”

“It could be Filch working with someone else,” Ron says. “Maybe the thing Fluffy’s guarding is so dangerous because it gives people magic. Or steals magic. Or something. Why else hide it in Hogwarts?”

“And why under a trapdoor down on the third floor?” Draco adds. “Where does it go? It mustn’t be a crawl space or there wouldn’t be all those other enchantments.”

“Fred and George told me you can get to Hogsmeade through a trapdoor on the fifth floor,” says Ron, “and Dad once said trying to make sense of this place is like taking tea with gnomes. Can’t be done.” 

Scabbers chooses this moment to bark out a shrieking squeal from his place on the end of the bed that almost sounds like disagreement. Draco, glaring at him, says, “You’ve no right to insult the majesty of peacocks when you have that thing on your bed. I swear, I’ll buy you an owl for your birthday. His first snack can be that rat.”

Wisely, Scabbers slinks out of view. He’s taken to sleeping on the same pillow as Ron lately, which he doesn’t much appreciate, but the thing’s so old he can’t very well chuck him off. “You probably shouldn’t,” he says. “It’s like I told Hermione: he’ll just give the owl diseases.”

“Why’d this come up with Hermione?” Harry asks.

“She threatened to feed him to Hedwig,” says Ron. “Dunno how, but he must’ve gotten into her stuff while we were studying and ended up in her room. Scared her half to death. But, if it is someone from outside, what do we do?”

They turn the conversation back to the very important subject at hand, but can’t think up any new ideas. Maybe it’s no one, Ron wants to say, but he also knows it’s not true, so holds his tongue. 

The next time Moody ambushes Tom unexpectedly, it’s in the London Zoo. 

“I work here,” he says, horrified, when Moody casually Apparates into the feeding room at the Reptile House. “You can’t just—”

“You work with me,” says Moody, leaning on his stick. He nods to the snake, who drapes her green and black over Tom’s shoulders to coil in his lap. “That’s not poisonous, is it?”

Xiaoshe the Mangshan Pit Viper raises her head from his knee and flicks her tongue at Moody. “Oh not at all,” says Tom, “but she does have one of the largest venom yields of any snake in the world. It’s feeding time, but she wanted a cuddle.”

“That’s a pit viper,” Moody says. 

“I know,” Tom says, more viciously than he probably should. It’s not his fault, though, that he was in the middle of a conversation ridiculous enough to stop the panicked thought of Voldemort is alive from running amok in his head. “She’s from China. Hunan. Her name means ‘little snake.’”

“That’s a—” Moody stops. Shakes his head. Gingerly, he sits himself down on the only other chair. “I’ve cast a Muggle-repelling Charm, so don’t worry yourself about your Muggle career choices. You left before we could finish our conversation about Albania, so go put that snake away and let’s talk.”

Tom sighs, but stands, so Xiaoshe coils herself around her torso and arms, and glares at Moody from above his shoulder. “I do not like this one,” she hisses in Tom’s ear. “He smells tricky.”

“He’s allowed to be,” Tom answers, as he walks back toward the habitats, “and he’s allowed to tell me to take you away. But I’ll be back soon.”

Though the viper grumbles about unfair treatment, she deigns to return to her designated habitat. “I will bite him if you require,” she says, before disappearing into the foliage. Her black and green body camouflages beautifully, so she’s invisible on her branch. 

He returns to the feeding room to find Moody still in the chair, staring at the door Tom had left through, pale-faced. “You’re a Parselmouth,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Tom says, as he cautiously retakes his seat. “Pretty useless as a skill, if I’m honest, so it never occurred to me to write it on my job application.”

“You-Know-Who is a Parselmouth,” Moody says. He’s regaining colour in his face, but Tom doesn’t appreciate his expression. It’s guarded. “There hasn’t been another since Slytherin himself.”

With a shrug, Tom says, “Could be a Peverell thing, too. Loads of people have skills they don’t advertise.”

“The Peverells were a Light family,” Moody says severely. “Couldn’t have been through them.”

Exasperated, Tom says, “I don’t know why this is supposedly so Dark if it’s inherent. Snakes are dead useful if you have a mouse infestation and your gran’s allergic to cats, but otherwise? All they talk about is food and heat, unless they’re in somewhere like this. Then it’s just stupid how much they gossip about each other and their handlers. Am I off the team of two because I can understand snakes talking about how excited they are for mating season?”

Moody breathes out harshly and massages his nose. “You’ll be the death of me, boy,” he says, which Tom thinks might be a compliment. “That’s—now, that’s just too weird. Anything else you neglected to tell me?” 

“I’m shite with a boggart,” he answers. “If we encounter one, you’re dealing with it.” 

“What’s it for you? A dollhouse?”

“My grandfather’s body decimated by a bomb. It was a suitably traumatising experience. Any other questions?”

As he’d hoped, the shock factor of the revelation is enough to shut the man up. “Don’t advertise you’re a Parselmouth,” he says instead. “It won’t do you any good.”

Tom wants to scream just a bit. Whether it’s the future or a fact of the splinter universe, he hates how suspicious everyone here is all the time. Of everything. There’s not even an active war on! Back when he was in Hogwarts, his ability to speak Parseltongue was just an interesting fact, like Euphemia’s dyslexia, or how Hattie Wells the Ravenclaw Seeker was double-jointed. Merrythought even asked if he would like a pet snake, as she was certain exceptions could be made, and the only reason he said no was because he shouldn’t be trusted even with a mostly self-sufficient magical pet. There’s a reason he foisted Hedwig off on Harry. 

And now he has Harry himself. Harry, who is, legally, his son. His Parselmouth son. In a world that hates Parselmouths. 

“Thanks for the advice, sir,” he says with a deliberately fake smile. Moody narrows his real eye. “What else do you need to know about Albania?”

“You’ve said all I need to know,” he answers, “but I’ve been thinking. I don’t like that you’re on this case.”

“Excuse me? You wouldn’t know half—”

“Exactly,” Moody says as he crosses his arms, reclines back in his chair, and levels Tom with all his formidable scrutiny. “I’ve been called paranoid before. I like to think of it as cautious. I only trust my friends marginally more than my enemies, and sometimes less. I wasn’t just flattering you when I said I’d have chosen you without anyone else’s input. I stand by that. But what we’ve got right now is you, who won’t lie to Potter, a confidentiality agreement ensuring you can’t breathe a word of warning about what’s coming without collapsing into a coma, and a series of answers you wrangled out of people with, I figure, a fair bit of trickery you didn’t learn during your one year at Hogwarts, so anyone at Hogwarts might not expect you can do it.”

For all that Tom is, as the adults like to say, a smart boy, it takes a long moment to understand what Moody’s implying. “Dumbledore wouldn’t do that,” he says, even if he sees no fault in the man’s logic. 

Moody draws his brows. “I’ve thought about it,” he says, “and thought about it, then thought about it some more. It could just be a coincidence—why in Merlin’s name would anyone suspect You-Know-Who would return as a parasitic possessing spirit?—but I don’t put much faith in those. You aren’t Potter’s professor, so you aren’t expected to keep Hogwarts secrets from him as a matter of professional integrity. You’re his guardian, but you’re not even a decade older, so you don’t feel the need to keep anything from him as a matter of real parental responsibility either. And now you’ve found out about You-Know-Who, and your tongue’s tied up with a neat little bow.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, as Tom struggles to remember how to breathe. “Ryder, I—”

“Riddle.”

“What?”

Tom manages a few even breaths, takes in the sight of Moody with his mad-eye framed by motivational posters reminding kids that science is cool, and says, “My father’s name was Riddle. I prefer it. My mother was bloody awful. But the Riddles were a somewhat infamous Muggle family, so Ryder’s been…easier.” 

Telling the truth is a gamble, but Tom’s sick of his fake name. From the look of it, though, it seems it means nothing to the man. He just nods, accepts it, and says, “All right, Riddle, I need you to listen. I give not one fuck about you did, at any point, to achieve these results. But regardless of ‘plausible deniability,’ I think I need to know after all. Here, in a Muggle setting, is a better place to hear it than your flat. I’m not saying anything will happen, but if it does, we both need to know how to lie for you.”

“Prove it,” Tom says over a sudden rush of dizziness. “I need to know you’re really him.”

“After our duel for your finals,” Moody says, “I told you that you were the first person to beat me since James Potter.”

It’s not the best, but truthfully, they don’t know each other well enough for anything more specific. “Acceptable,” he says. “Fine. In the future, just say ‘little snake.’”

“Good,” Moody says. “And you’ll say boggart. So, ready to explain how the boy who can’t handle a third-year Defense lesson conned a goblin and sweet-talked answers from a dead man?” 

So Tom tells him what he can—leaving out, naturally, that the dead man recognised the apparent void of his soul. He’s been trying hard to think about that, how the ghost of Tyler Owens took one look at him and claimed he was a nothingness. It’s not like Tom hasn’t always been aware there was something wrong with him. He’s an aberration that never should have been born. Nevertheless, hearing someone confirm that his wrongness is as fundamental as it comes wasn’t pleasant. He much preferred when that knowledge was nebulous, and somewhat possible to dismiss under the grounds that someone born as wrong as that would never garner the title of the Brightest Wix to Ever Walk Hogwarts’ Halls. 

Given whom he shares a genetic code with, he can accept that he’s disposable. What he absolutely can’t accept is being done away with before Harry is old enough to take care of himself. 

On the first Potions class of spring term, the room grows so humid that Hermione’s hair puffs up into a perfectly unmanageable storm cloud around her head. Pansy Parkinson, being Pansy Parkinson, slips a finger inside one of Hermione’s curls the moment Snape is busy inspecting Ron and Goyle’s mess, and tugs. 

“Whoops,” she says, dropping her hand. “Sorry. It’s just so tempting.” 

“Don’t touch my hair,” Hermione snaps, but quietly. She doesn’t want to draw Snape’s ire, after all, especially after Ron’s done so. “Call me whatever silly name you want, but—”

“Silly name?” Parkinson hisses back. Her eyes narrow, advertising danger. “Do you have any notion of—”

“How terrible and insulting it is?” Hermione considers rolling her eyes, but refrains, as she needs to pay attention to how many drops of essence of valerian she adds. “Yes, yes. But really, Parkinson, you’re all so unoriginal. If you really want to learn about slurs and soul-sucking insults, make a study of how Muggle groups hate one another instead of parroting your parents. God, I mean, you don’t even have a proper easy-to-imitate hate symbol to carve into my desk.”

On the other side of the room, Snape vanishes Ron and Crabbe’s rancid potion and, shockingly, takes points off from both of them. The fairness of it all is so astounding she almost misses it when Parkinson quietly says, “What could anyone but a pureblood possibly have against you?”

There’s no edge to the question. This, of all things, is what it takes to dumbfound Pansy Parkinson.

A little startled, Hermione says, “That would require an explanation of about a five thousand years of Muggle history. If the name calling helps you make sense of the world, then I won’t stop you, but if you touch my hair again, you will regret it.”

Parkinson doesn’t ask regret it how, probably because everyone knows that Hermione perfectly executed the Bat-Bogey Curse on a fourth year Slytherin who refused to leave Draco alone (she wrote to Tom for instructions, and he, as ever, obliged to give them). Instead, to her continued surprise, Parkinson says, “Not that I care or anything, but, you know. Why?”

Hermione does consider not answering. However, they’re still stirring essence of this and quill of that together, and she’s morbidly curious about how the other girl might react. “A girl grabbed my ponytail when I was ten and tried to cut it off,” she says as she starts her clockwise stirring. “I have the ‘right nose,’ so without my horrid hair, I could look like everyone else! But, can’t do that with the safety scissors. Still, she took a decent chunk. Didn’t even get detention. Dad found a job in Scotland for a year after that.”

“What did you do to her?” Parkinson asks, sounding just as morbidly curious about the incident as Hermione feels about this interaction. Could Snape possibly have decided that for today, everyone must work with someone from the opposite house to promote inter-House unity? No, he’s far too much of a curmudgeon for that. It was clearly just to force Draco to work with his old friends. 

And as she’s just a side effect of one man’s half-hearted attempts to apologise for being a schmuck, she feels no remorse when she blandly answers, “Whyever would you think I did something?” She knows exactly why Parkinson assumes as much, but wants to hear her say it.

With zero sense of self-awareness, Parkinson says, “Well, you are a witch.”

“Yes I am, aren’t I?” Hermione says, beginning on the counter-clockwise turns as Parkinson tips in powdered newt. “It all grew back overnight, and I don’t believe in physical violence, but I may have convinced her that she imagined the whole thing.” 

Parkinson actually giggles. The sound is so unexpected that Hermione jumps. “Shame about what you are, Granger,” she says, but less snidely than before. “You’d have been a good Slytherin.”

“I know,” Hermione says. “The Hat did nearly put there.” 

Across the room, something bangs. Hermione jumps again. This time, so does Parkinson. Thankfully as far from them as possible, but unfortunately not far enough from Draco and Greengrass, Seamus and Nott’s potion just lit itself on fire (obviously Seamus’ fault). Over Snape’s barrage of criticisms reigning down on them, Parkinson says, “Someone’s going to die in this class one day. You know, the thing with your hair for us is that you don’t do anything with it. Only poor witches don’t style their hair, or the very daft ones, and you don’t sound as if you’re working class. And you’re obviously not daft.”

Hermione turns her attention back to Parkinson, who takes over the counter-clockwise stirring. Her hair is straight as a pin, as Mum would say, and as shiny as silk. “Is yours not naturally straight?” Hermione asks. 

“It is,” Parkinson says, “but frizzy. Like yours. Everyone uses Sleekeazy. It’s been all the rage for, like, a century.” 

“Product doesn’t work for me,” Hermione says, as she notes the time and potion’s changing colour in her notebook, “but thank you.” Did she just thank Pansy Parkinson? 

“Sleekeazy will,” says Parkinson as Snape sends off Seamus, Nott, Draco, and Greengrass to the Hospital Wing for burns. “I’ll call a truce for a day if you want to try it out.”

That sounds like a trap.

Unbelievably, Hermione still says yes. 

How Pansy manages to secure the password for the prefects’ bathroom the next day, Hermione doesn’t know, but in the privacy of the literal powder room, the other girl shows her how to comb in the oil. “Your hair is so soft,” she says, sighing, as she teases out one of Hermione’s curls into a sausage ringlet. “I don’t understand. How do you do it?” 

“I don’t know,” Hermione says, watching herself transform into someone who might be called pretty, if only she had better teeth. “Maybe because I’ve never done anything to it, I think. You do this every day? How early do you wake up?” 

“Six?” Pansy says, which is dismal. Why attend a boarding school if you can’t sleep in a bit? She sets down the comb and fluffs out Hermione’s hair like people do in a salon. “What do you think?”

“I like it,” she answers honestly, as she takes in the two girls in the mirror, who really have no good reason not to be friends, other than one of them has been told it’s wrong. “Not every day, though. My mess is a point of pride.” 

Pansy flops down in the chair opposite Hermione. “I don’t know how you do it,” the other girl says. “People make fun of my nose all the time. Piggy Parkinson, they call me. I’ve never been able to make myself like it.”

“That’s awful,” Hermione says, horrified. Pansy is unreasonably pretty for a twelve-year-old, really, with her eyes like a cat and all her willowiness. “Turned-up noses like yours are considered very attractive in Muggle cinema, I’ll have you know, so if it’s just pureblood nonsense, that’s their fault.” 

All cross and morally offended, Pansy says, “There’s nothing about being pureblood that’s nonsense. You’re just jealous.”

Hermione sighs more loudly than necessary. “Of what?” she says. “Your incredible background knowledge? I just think it’s ridiculous, mostly, that anyone Muggle-raised is plopped into this world without so much as a dictionary to explain what Muggle means, when you lot have enough magic around you to get around the Trace during the summer, but I’m not jealous. I might be a Muggleborn, but I’m top in all my classes, and I suspect I can outclass you in maths.” 

Though she expects a rebuttal, none is forthcoming. Pansy just looks at her, as if processing something very complex, before she finally says, “What do you mean, you don’t get so much as a dictionary?” 

“Exactly that,” Hermione says, confused. She would have thought this was common knowledge. Everyone receives the same reading list, after all. “Even Hogwarts, A History isn’t an official reading. Muggleborns and Muggle-raised halfbloods like Harry enter school blind. Well, except we had Draco and Ron and Tom.” 

In a flurry of black robes and sleek hair, Pansy is on her feet. “But that doesn’t make sense!” she says, gesturing at nothing in particular. “Why are we told you’re failing, purposely, to meet the Society’s standards when you’re starting out with a broken broom? Even if most don’t decide to take it, at least there’s the option of a Muggle Studies course.”

“You got that much quicker than Draco,” Hermione says mildly. She always knew girls were smarter, but it’s nice to have proof. “I figured this out ages ago, by the way. Your whole thing about ‘fighting back against the encroachment of Muggleborn Christianity’ is ridiculous, especially when half the things you celebrate are Christian in origin. I’m more pre-Christian than you. Want to know the whole summary of Muggle history?”

The other girl turns heel to face her. “There’s more?” she says, sounding lost. Hermione doesn’t feel even a little bit bad for sending her new friend into an existential crisis. “What?”

“Oh, ‘and then the Christians came,’” she answers. “Pureblood society isn’t at all unique in Christianity’s tendency to ruin everything. Do you know how many times I was told Christmas was non-religious, so Mum shouldn’t be so offended I’m making construction paper cut outs of Christmas trees and learning carols in school? Frankly, short of carving ‘mudblood’ into my skin, there was really never anything you could do to me that would match what my classmates’ parents did long before I came here.” 

“This is so stupid!” Pansy says, which does surprise Hermione. She expected a fight, especially given how relentlessly the girl’s been bullying the boy who used to be her friend. “I didn’t even know there were other Muggle religions. And you’re—I only have an E in Potions, you know, which is really an A, since Professor Snape always gives us Slytherins higher marks, because the book starts talking about weights and measurements, and sometimes I look at numbers and it’s like they’re all wrong, but we’re not meant to have problems, us purebloods, so I’ve never told anyone. So I know, I think, about how awful it is starting out and feeling so clueless. I always assumed the Muggleborns just had more reading and didn’t care to listen, and some of the halfbloods, too. We all do, I think. And there used to be. Grandmother’s mentioned it before, but she’s like a thousand years old.” 

“I bet we could find out when that changed,” says Hermione, who always appreciates a good project. 

“We?” Pansy repeats, suddenly wary. 

With another very loud sigh, Hermione says, “Honestly, Pansy, I have no patience for anyone who would say it’s wrong that you shared hair products with me. I’ll even help you study Potions. But in return, you have to stop being mean to Draco. He’s wretched without you.” 

Pansy shuffles on her feet. Her teeth catch her bottom lip. “Well,” she says haltingly, “he did save me from drowning once, so I do suppose I owe him a life debt, even if it’s bad to associate with blood traitors.”

“That’s very stupid too,” Hermione says, finally sliding from her chair. “We were prepared to be friends with him if he’d been Sorted into Slytherin. We expected it. I don’t see why the reverse needs to be a problem.”

“Because it’s not done!”

“Well, I come from a people who wouldn’t exist,” she says, “if the world had rolled over and said ‘we’ve been murdering them as scapegoats for over two thousand years, that’s just how it’s done,’ so excuse me for not seeing that as an acceptable reason. If you change your mind, I’ll likely be in the library’s school history section around two tomorrow. You’re welcome to join.”

With a straight back and expression like she’s heading into battle, Pansy Parkinson rounds the books bracketing the loneliest section of the library, where Hermione sits with stack upon stack of minutes, syllabi, and reading lists. At the sight of her, Hermione beams. “I was hoping you’d show,” she says. 

“I’ll be nice to Draco,” Pansy says, dropping into the chair Hermione kicks out for her. “I do miss him, I guess. Found anything yet?” 

“I have a working theory,” she answers, as she pushes the last file of reading lists across the round table to her new friend. “I went back to the nineteen tens. Before Grindelwald.”

Pansy raises her brows, hiding them in her fringe. “Oh,” she says, drawing out the sound. “Now that is a thought, isn’t it?” She flips open the file where, Hermione knows, the first one details the two different lists distributed for Muggle-raised and Wixen-raised incoming students. “An Introduction to Modern Muggle History?”

“Isn’t that just fascinating?” Hermione says, pleased with the discovery. “It went both ways. I checked the calling cards. Neither that nor An Introduction to Modern Wizarding History are present in the library. Now what’s very interesting is what shows up in the Board’s minutes from twenty-six.” 

“What are minutes?”

“Records of the meeting. Look!” She slides the file over and indicates where someone only written down as A.B. (everyone is only initialed) argues that both readings are unnecessary; the rest of the Board, including the initials starred as Faculty, shoot down the proposal immediately. 

Breathing out slowly, Pansy says, “All right. This is…it’s not good, is what it is. What are the syllabuses for?”

“Muggle Studies,” Hermione says, “and Political Science. I’ve no idea yet when the school stopped offering that. Or why. Where do you want to start?” 

To her delight, Pansy goes for the Muggle Studies files. Hermione keeps to the minutes. Every once in a while, Pansy interjects with, “Who’s King Edward?” or “What’s a film?” or “What the gods is the Great War?” Hermione, meanwhile, interrupts to point out when the debate about the readings starts to intensify, with the faculty routinely shutting it down, and most of the Board as well, but the Ministry arguing for simplification of transition during this trying time. That’s the turn of the 30s. Though Hermione never considered where Hogwarts received its funding before, she suffers a very rude awakening when, in ‘32, a Board meeting devolves in universal outrage over how to restructure class scheduling in the face of mass budget cuts. 

By 17:00, this is what Hermione and Pansy discover:

1. Students used to receive all their books for free.
2. Binns is likely still a professor because he’s one less faculty member to pay, therefore, presumably, ensuring Hogwarts didn’t need to cut another elective. 
3. The Ministry has never returned Hogwarts’ funding to its original state, despite promising the contrary. 
4. The Muggle Studies curriculum is now functionally worthless, a shift that happened in wake of (presumably) the invention of the atom bomb and the Muggles proving that they’re terrifying. 
5. Two A.D.s, one of whom was probably Dumbledore, lost their temper on a Ministry official working for the Ministry Board of Education, an organisation neither girl knew existed, in ‘36, when said official suggested Hogwarts was using their Introductions to manipulate incoming students into having unsavoury political leanings—this seemed to be the deciding factor for why the books were cut. 
6. Dumbledore definitely left this material to be accessed out of sheer spite. 

Needless to say, it’s all very upsetting. Hermione can’t even determine which part is the worst. Pansy is very quiet. 

“Mother always says the Ministry is composed of nothing but incompetent fools,” she says eventually, as she closes the folder on 1945. “They don’t want us to know.”

“But why?” Hermione says, unable to comprehend the lunacy of a government forcing such a severe division. 

“I don’t know,” Pansy says, “and from all these dates, almost no else alive does, either, I reckon, except maybe Dumbledore and Grandmother, but she’s senile, and it’s not the sort of thing you ask a headmaster.”

Which is, Hermione thinks, a sobering thought. Wixen tend to live longer than Muggles, but two wars back to back did a good job with thinning the already inbred (in Tom’s words) pureblood population. “It’s essential then,” she declares, having come to an important decision. “We have to be friends. We can’t let some person in the thirties say that we can’t because they blocked all the information from us.” 

“I’m a Slytherin,” Pansy says, leaning back in her chair to look at Hermione without the obstruction of the files. “I don’t do social revolutions.”

“You’re a Slytherin,” Hermione says, with a smile. “Ambitious? Cunning? No one could ever do a revolution like you.”

Pansy laughs and holds out her hand. “Shake on it, Gryffindor,” she says. 

Hermione takes the other girl’s hand and shakes it firmly. This time, it feels like a promise. 

“I need an international port-key to Cluj-Napoca,” Tom tells Moody, once he finishes processing the meaning behind the simple sentence scrawled across the unsigned parchment. H has a dragon. 

Moody shifts in his chair to allow himself a better view of Tom, who perches on of the many stacks of old case files in the man’s attic, where he’s been working through treatises on Blood Magic. Draco’s owl roosts on his shoulder, awaiting a response. “I assume that’s from Potter,” Moody says, indicating the note. “What did Potter tell you that’s sending you to Romania?”

“Nothing that involves this,” Tom answers, as he thinks several unflattering thoughts about the groundskeeper. He knew they visited the man for cake after Gryffindor’s last Quidditch victory, and he knows he shouldn’t allow other world biases to colour his view of a person, but he’d also like to remind the four children he somehow he finds himself responsible for that they shouldn’t befriend someone as a ploy to extract information. Hagrid’s not to be trusted around anyone, let alone easy-to-kill students. “I’m asking for a favour.” 

“It’ll have to be nameless,” Moody says, which is a relief. Tom would rather not argue. “I don’t want yours showing up anywhere it shouldn’t.”

“Done,” says Tom, already extracting his pen from his pocket. There’s light enough coming through the window to read by, so there’s light enough to write by too. “As soon as can be managed, preferably. Please.”

Grumbling about impatient kids all the while, Moody lumbers out of his chair and reaches for his walking stick. “Don’t touch anything,” he says, as if Tom really is a child. “I can’t promise it won’t bite.”

With a crack, he Apparatus away. Tom closes the book, flips it and the parchment over, and rests the letter against it to write, I don’t care what promises he might have extracted. Find McGonagall and tell her. Let her know Charlie is going to help manage the situation. Hogwarts protects its own. Remind the others that he’s not getting into real trouble over it. You are the sensible one. 

At least that’s not just some placating remark. Whether the creature was just framed for killing someone or actually killed someone, the incident in Hagrid’s third year resulted in hardly any punishment at all. Yes, his wand was snapped. Yes, he was expelled. And yet, somehow, he’s still working on the grounds, perfectly in position to continue enacting harm to student, staff, and himself by bringing dragons and cerbuses onto campus. 

As Tom ties the letter back onto the barn owl’s leg and sends her off, he tries not to think about how Dumbledore trusts a less-than-average ex-student with a predilection for deadly creatures, but seems to be setting up Tom for…something. He hasn’t quite figured out what. Not to be framed for the theft. Dumbledore holds no great love for the Ministry, so it’s unlikely that the reason involves them somehow. Surely it’s not to expose the truth. The only two possibilities that make sense are that this is a test to see how readily Tom will resort to Dark Magic, or to stop him from warning Harry because of Harry. 

If it’s the first, then Tom failed spectacularly. Then the latter is mad, because the implication there would be Dumbledore wants the boy ignorant, and ignorance is a good way to see someone killed. 

Yes. It’s better not to think on it for long. 

Three quarters of an hour later, Moody returns with a souvenir of Big Ben. He tosses it to Tom, who catches it with an embarrassing fumble. “Password’s ‘Dracula,’” the other man says. “You didn’t say it’s Transylvania.” 

“Is that a problem?” Tom’s still not caught up on all the politics of this time, Wixen or Muggle, but he thought the Cold War was over.

“Not officially,” says Moody. “Just be careful. The organised crime coming out of Transylvania is the worst in Wixen Europe.”

In all his twenty years, Tom has never once considered the existence of a Wixen mob. “Noted,” he says. “I’ll try not to take long.”

“Good,” Moody answers. “I’m cashing in that favour when you return. You’re coming with me to a real Aurors’ meeting. It’s time we make Tyler Owens’ death an official case.”

Moody’s insistence on trying to convert him to what amounts to a Wixen copper is out of hand, but it’s not the worst exchange. “Done,” Tom says. “Dracula.”

Charlie Weasley’s always been a decent sort of bloke. If he’d stuck England around long enough for Tom to work through his sense of guilt at developing connections to anyone other than Flea and Mia, they could have been real friends. 

After he calms down from all his laughing, Charlie finally manages to say, “I always thought I’d be twins I’d have to rescue, if it were any of them, not Ron.”

“He wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for Harry,” Tom says, accepting a bottle of some sort of plum juice with enough alcohol he’s mildly surprised that Charlie’s handing it over. “Apparently Hagrid was friends or something with Harry’s mother, so he feels obliged to offer his, I’ve no idea. Mentorship?”

“Hagrid’s a good one,” says Charlie, as he motions for Tom to sit. They’re in the dragon equivalent to a hayloft, an open-air space made of fireproof, heat-proof material overlooking the region’s forested uplands. “Me, I never could figure what your issues were with each other. I’ve never seen him take against anyone so quick but a Slytherin.”

“That’s very rude to Slytherins,” Tom says. “I mean, most I’ve heard of seem like prigs in the making, but they can’t all be bad.”

“They’re all bad if you play Quidditch,” Charlie says, without a hint of irony. “But, well. During the season, even the badgers are on thin ice.”

Tom rolls his eyes. “You’re bloody ridiculous, is what you are, all of you,” he says, before trying his drink—and immediately coughing it back up. “Oh, that’s rancid. Christ, Weasley—”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use a Muggle curse before,” Charlie says. He’s grinning, as mischievous as the twins. “That’s eighty percent alcohol there. Tradition here to feed it to a guest. Figured you wouldn’t care for it.”

“You’re a right bastard,” says Tom, setting the bottle aside. “So—”

“How’re you doing with that?” Charlie cuts in, because of course, no real Gryffindor can leave any problem well enough alone without poking at it. “It would be a bit shit even without Harry, but, well. There’s Harry, too, so I’ve been wondering.”

To anyone else, Tom would have lied, but Charlie had the decency to wait a year before commenting that his decisions could be better, so he says, “It’s a work in progress. Nothing when Harry’s around.” 

“Suppose that’s better than nothing,” Charlie says, which does not make Tom feel better. He knows perfectly well he’s failing, but really was doing better, having only slipped up once, until Moody came to him and said, by the way, the man you trusted with your cousin’s life just purposely assured your lack of intervention. 

Really. Tom’s allowed his minor—what’s the Muggle word?—relapse.

“How’s all this for you?” he asks, wanting off the subject of himself. He motions out toward the grounds. “Everything you dreamed of?”

“More,” Charlie says. “My supervisor said I’ve a natural gift with the dragons, like he hasn’t seen in decades, and I’m quicker than the average handler, thanks to my time as a Seeker, so I’m better with the close proximity work than most. I’m already doing more than most Mastery students. It’s why I know the man’ll agree when I ask permission to send a team to England. Don’t know if I’ll be on it, mind, since it’s not the sort of work for students to be doing, but the request will go through. Helps that a Norwegian Ridgeback on school grounds in a wooden house counts as an emergency. Blimey, I’d love to know how he got his hands on it. One of the wrangler’s will have to ask. Will you want me to let you know?”

“Please,” Tom says. He just refuses to believe that a dragon fell into Hagrid’s lap like that without repercussions. “I’m glad you’re happy, Charlie. You deserve it.” 

Charlie frowns, creasing his brow. “I hope you are, too, mate. Really. Now sit tight. I’ll find my supervisor and put in the request. Shouldn’t take a minute.”

Ultimately, it takes twenty. Tom spends the time composing a letter to Draco (he doesn’t trust Harry or the others in this), warning him not to be hasty, and glancing up every once in a while to watch a dragon take flight over the forest. The sky is a solid grey above the trees, like a Scottish afternoon in early October, and the sunlight filtering through it casts a hazy glare over the evergreens. He doesn’t know where he is, particularly; he’d arrived in the city, sent a Patronus to Charlie, and waited a half until he received one back with the coordinates for Apparition.

“Three days, midnight,” Charlie says when he returns. He’s flushed from excitement, looking younger than Tom’s ever seen him, and more like his brother than ever. “There’ll be six of them. They’ll have to meet Hagrid in the Astronomy Tower, so McGonagall or someone should probably be there too to make sure he actually does it. Ron and his friends can’t do this on their own. It’s unlikely Hagrid has the right cage for the old boy, and we don’t want anyone getting burned alive.”

“Please never say that again,” Tom says, hurriedly constructing a shield around the unbidden memory that arises of the Great Hall burning with all those classmates and professors and his Dumbledore trapped inside. 

Charlie, reading something in his expression, says, “Sorry, mate. Forgot you, yeah. You’ll let them know? I’ll write to Hagrid. He likes me.”

Tom extracts the souvenir from his pocket. “Let me know when you’re next visiting,” he says. “Thanks for all this. And your supervisor, too.” 

“Hey, it’s literally my pleasure, this,” Charlie says. “Getting to work with a Ridge in the flesh? As a student? That’s the dream.”

Dragon handlers, Tom thinks, are collectively fucking bonkers. “Still, thank you,” he says, then waves his wand over the port-key, and lands once again in Moody’s attic. 

Chapter Text

Tom’s flirtation with that ever so common Ravenclaw malady, the Calming Draught-Wide Awake addiction, began when Avitus Pindlebrook, the then-Head Boy, handed him a vial and said, “There. This should help keep your head.”

It did. In fact, it helped enormously. 

There was always a frenetic sort of energy about studying in the Ravenclaw Common Room, which probably didn’t do Tom any favours. The simple truth is, he very rarely needs to study. He’s never met a spell he hasn’t gotten on his first try, and one read-through is all he needs to memorise and process new information. But in Ravenclaw, studying was an art form. It was performative. The quickest way to lose ground with your peers was to be seen committing the ultimate crime: Slacking Off. He spent as much time as he did in Gryffindor Common Room for more reasons than his closeness to Flea and Mia, but there was no avoiding the hours with his housemates once he was a fifth year. The OWL year, the year he became prefect. 

The studying wasn’t the problem. That he needed to look like he was studying the right way, though, was. 

By the actual OWLs, Mia figured it out. Tom more or less spent the last fortnight or so hiding out in Flea’s bed to avoid anyone offering him anything else (which turned out to be a good thing, given everything that happened with Hagrid and Joey Trent and Tom’s ability to do wandless magic half-asleep). He was very well behaved his sixth year, though this is also, notably, when Slughorn taught his students to make the Draught in class (Tom’s knowledge of Wide Awake, as policed as it is, came from the restricted section). Still, it never occurred to him to start again. He just told himself it was a bad idea and that was that. 

And then he landed himself here. 

The craziest part is that, for the most part, he doesn’t regret that it happened—or he does, but also doesn’t, all at the same time, because the ability to hold two dichotomous thoughts at the same time is part of the human condition. He slipped back into the habit in his seventh year because it was easier than accepting reality at the time, but managed to get himself off again, so there’s no good reason why he should be so relieved Moody didn’t rig the door to the Edinburgh Aurors’ office to detect if anything about the incoming occupants is not what it should be. It’s perfectly reasonable, he told himself earlier, to mix Wide Awake into his coffee after taking a long distance port-key back and forth in under two hours. That seemed like such lovely reasoning when he was actually doing it, but it occurs to him that he wouldn’t need to be relieved that he hasn’t been caught if the excuse he made for himself was true. 

Bloody hell, he realises now, even through the bright bright bright sharp clear bright lens of the potion, which draws his attention to every imperfection in the narrow room’s tile floor and the sandstone walls, and the way the Aurors are all staring at him, like they’re expecting a parlour trick. 

This is not good. 

But it’s not, he quickly assured himself, as if he’s done this on the same day as anything else important lately, except that one time after he woke in front the Christmas tree in Puglia after forcefully calling a ghost and learning that the Other Him is still alive, or that other time when he had the lab report due at the same time as his report on his practical with Moody and hadn’t slept for days, or when McGonagall wrote to say someone cursed Harry’s bloody broom not to worry right before his demonstrative exam, so all right, maybe this work in progress is a little worse than he implied when Charlie asked. Tom’s excellent at blocking this out during the in-between times, at using Occlumency to trick himself out of the worst of it. But maybe showing up to a meeting with literal coppers while sunk deep in the effects of the illegal half of the usual Ravenclaw habit right after telling someone he’s fine is a good indication that he’s not. 

He’ll handle this later. Yeah. Mid-June sounds a good time, he thinks. 

Moody isn’t there yet. Several Aurors stare at Tom when he enters. He doesn’t recognise any of them, except, surprisingly, Tonks. 

She springs from her chair and throws her arms around him, even though he’s never been one for hugging. He returns the gesture with all the enthusiasm of a wet noodle, but she doesn’t seem to care. “I did hear you’d be here,” she says as she backs away. Her bobbed hair is synthetic bubblegum pink today, but her face is what he thinks of as her real one, with her square chin and round cheeks. “Look at you, a real Auror already! And I thought you just wanted to be a teacher.” 

“That’s not a bad thing,” he says, as more than one Auror in the room’s expressions shifts from curious to disinterested. For the life of him, he can’t figure out why they treat a professorship at Hogwarts like a personal failing. “How’d you get here? You skip a year too?”

He doesn’t mean it to be condescending, but her smile slides right off her face. “No,” she says, as her eyes shift from vibrant blue to ordinary brown. “We can’t all be special wunderkinds, Ryder. I just got a job as a note taker.” 

“Oh, that’s nice,” he says, unsure what else there is to say, and finds himself more profoundly relieved than he should be when Moody finally walks through the door.

Everything from that point moves faster than it should, or at least it seems so Tom, but time is such a loose concept on Wide Awake that he could be wrong. It also makes it harder to focus enough to memorise anyone’s name once Moody makes the introductions, but he’s on the man’s right, so at least people are more likely to be addressing him than the other way around. The lights above them are too bright. The scrape of the chairs when people take their seats is too loud. Tom is careful not to blink too much, or not enough, and not to startle when the man who might be called Donovan coughs. 

This is bad. Maybe mixing it with caffeine was just one step too far. Even his heartbeat feels a little funny. 

Eventually, Moody gets around to explaining the mysterious death of Tyler Owens, who he is, and the implications of what the Albanian version of the Aurors discovered—that being exsanguination. Tonks’ hair is red from shock by the end of it, even without mention of the impending return of Lord Voldemort, but the men and women around her are carefully, deliberately unimpressed. It’s all put-upon, like some sort of test. The woman who might be called Pugh turns directly to Tom, as expected, and asks, “And what means did you use to uncover this vital information, boy?”

“Ryder, thank you,” he says. He manages not to snap. The woman must only be ten years older than him at a guess, the youngest of the actual Aurors. “It wasn’t terribly difficult. Flamel was obvious once I knew the object at the centre of this is the Philosopher’s Stone. He and his wife aren’t particularly famous for anything else, except being old and rich, and that’s connected anyway. Goblins can’t directly divulge confidential information, but they can’t actually turn down a Question Game either—it’s how they outsmarted delegates at the end of the last War in oh, the fifteeth century or so, and managed to score Gringotts as the Wixen bank monopoly in Britain. It was just a matter of tricking the account manager into admitting who the account belonged to and how the blood wards worked.” 

“You just asked questions,” says someone else doubtfully. He’s on Tonks’ left. Inevitably Moody said his name, but Tom missed it. 

“Yes,” he says. “I learned the trick from Binns. My teacher.” 

The pause following this statement is awkward and palpable. Moody lets it sit, so it takes all Tom’s self-control not to squirm. 

Abruptly, it occurs to him that Moody might actually like him—a thought that, given the circumstances, only makes him feel worse. Moody compounds the suspicion, though, when he says, “It’s not illegal to trick the system. We should consider looking into this as a matter of financial security in the future. But the fact of the matter is, Owens was not British. He wasn’t killed on British soil. His family hasn’t been in Britain for three generations. But it’s fair to bet that his murder is connected to an attempted theft that did occur on British soil, to British bank account, in connection to a British school for underage Wix. There’s only so much Ryder and I can do about in the capacity of an informal, as-a-favour investigation. So my question is, what are you going to do about it?”

Tom will say this: the meeting begins reasonably. He hasn't the foggiest notion of what Moody is looking for, but he shoots down every idea from “collaborate with the Albanians” (makes sense) to raid Gringotts (Tom is relatively certainly this would start another Goblin War), which wouldn’t be so preposterous if it was any other business. But Moody insists that Albanians don’t collaborate with anyone, and every other idea is just as bad. No, they will not raid the bank. No, they will question every goblin in the bank, nor the Wixen Curse Breakers. Yes, talking to the Hogwarts professors is an excellent fucking idea, but they’ve not allowed to disrupt the inner workings of the school until after the end of term. 

This is news to Tom. He has a list of professors he’d like to sit down with, thanks to Harry passing along the information. But at least any division he previously harboured with the Aurors dissolves at their collective outrage. 

“I’m working on it,” Moody says when he manages to calm everyone down. “That’s a problem for us. There’s only so much you can do on that front without a successful theft or a body dropping over here. So consider the facts again. What can the lot of you do?”

“The Department of Mysteries,” Tom says, remembering Dumbledore’s comment on that first morning on the Hogwarts grounds, about how it would be better to leave the Unspeakables to him. The Unspeakables, in the Department of Mysteries. “That’s the only place it’s actually legal to research Blood Magic, I reckon. Right? So that’s the place to figure out if physically taking the blood from another person should be enough to get through Gringotts’ wards.”

“There’s no way they’d be that weak,” Donovan says. “Any Dark Wix—”

“Why do you assume they’re Dark?” Tom cuts in, baffled, because the culprit assuredly is, but Blood Magic isn’t synonymous with Dark Magic. “Anyone with the wherewithal to be enough of a prick can commit murder. If you only look for suspects with a record—”

“Did you land us with an idealist?” says another woman, an American from the sound of it whose name was probably Sayre or something of the sort. She must be Moody’s age, with a neck like a rooster’s. “Merlin, Alastor, the people you collect. You sound like the Potters, and we all know how that ended.”

Maybe a little too acidly, Tom snaps back, “Well, we are related.”

Tonks whispers something to the woman, who’s on her right. Tom thinks he catches the word “dollhouse” as Moody cuts in, “Every Wix is Dark once they commit a violent crime. Better for public morale, even if they’re a Squib who committed the murdered by suffocating his daughter with her stuffed dragon. Makes it all easier to swallow. Standard practice since the War, you know,” he finishes, and sends the meeting into a tailspin. 

By the time Tom untangles himself from nostalgic talk of the Good Old Days, when the War made everything more present and real and alive—and there is Tonks, through it all, he notes, listening with the solemn air of a student absorbing their elders’ wisdom—the combination of Wide Awake, caffeine, and abject disgust threatens to turn his stomach. Several Aurors try to ask what Hogwarts was like in the 50s, when it’s always be said You-Know-Who was on the rise, and say, does he perhaps have any idea of the man’s real identity, and—and—and—

The fact that he doesn’t slam the door on the way out is a miracle. 

With a crack, he Apparates to the London Zoo a half hour before the start of his shift. He fixes himself tasteless Twinnings camomile tea in the staff room and nearly leaps out of his seat when Marty, one of his coworkers, asks, “What’s up with you, mate?” 

“Jesus,” he says, pressing a hand to his heart like his gran would when it started to palpitation. “Give me a heart attack, will you. I’m all right, thanks.”

Marty looks like he doesn’t believe Tom for a minute, which is fine, since it’s the most transparent lie he’s told in awhile. “Right,” the other man says. He’s maybe twenty-eight, the one responsible for school tours through the Reptile House, and, Tom realises, the person the snakes all refer to as The Long One. “If you need anything—” 

“Actually,” he says, as he remembers the boa making a throwaway comment about The Long One swallowing little round things too small to be eggs, “I know you pop—” He gets the name of his coworker’s head at a glance. “—Xanax like candy. Can I have one?” 

The genuine humour in Marty’s laugh makes everything worse. “Always knew there was a secret behind how fucking perfect you are,” he says, as he crosses the staff room to the wall of lockers. “Just this once, okay?” 

“Yeah,” Tom promises. “Just this once.”

By the following morning, Tom decides that Muggle drugs are the bloody worst, whoever designed Wide Awake clearly did so with the Draught in mind for the two to work together, a fact that is certifiably evil, and that it’s good the snakes behave themselves around him, because he doesn’t know how well he would have done his job otherwise. 

It’s already nine, far later than he usually sleeps. He showers, dresses, and is in the process of pouring himself coffee when Moody, once again, decides to let himself in. “You left early,” he says, dropping into what’s at risk of becoming his usual chair. Pale grey sunlight seeps through the window, illuminating everything just enough that it looks sad, not bright. 

“I had work,” Tom says, sitting in the chair opposite. “Look, my headache’s massive, so if you want tea, you’re getting it yourself.”

“I’m not drinking tea here until you get yourself some real leaves,” Moody says as he rudely sets his stick on the table. “That Muggle shite you have is hogwash. How you let Potter drink when it’s a crime—”

“I’ll ask Narcissa,” Tom says, unable to handle more complaining, no matter how justified he assumes it is. “Are you here to tell me what decision the lot of you came to yesterday, or am I to receive a lecture for my idealism?” 

He sips his coffee, but hardly tastes it. After everything yesterday, he still feels caught in a fog. 

Moody flaps his hand, dismissing any positivity that might stick to him at the word idealism. “I wouldn’t say you have much of that,” he says. “You’re just a pedantic twat who needs the details straight. I was the same way at your age, until I realised that the facts are necessary for a case, but nuance is better left for the courtroom and the crime scene, not the public. Terms fell into place around the midpoint of the War.”

That is not a good excuse for being outright wrong, Tom thinks, but sips his coffee and says nothing. 

After a moment, Moody goes on, “Donovan and Pugh have Unspeakable connections none of the rest of us are supposed to know of it, so obviously, we do. They’ll chase up what they can. Sayre’s going to contact New York for more information about Owens and approach the Albanians. And the others will comb through the Auror Archives to see if there have ever been similar cases.” 

If there is, it’ll be a coincidence. This crime and its purpose are decidedly unique. 

But Tom doesn’t voice that thought either. “I see,” he says and sips his coffee. “And us?” 

“What're you learned from Potter?” Moody asks. “I might not like that a group of children are skulking around in search for answers, but they seem like a precocious sort.”

“We’re not utilising my first-year cousin and his friend as sources,” Tom says bluntly.

Moody doesn't look terribly happy about having asked, but that’s not much consolation. “They’re doing it anyway,” he says, “so there’s no reason not to pass it on. What can you tell me?”

After a moment, Tom explains about the third floor corridor and the professors and the obstacles, and outs Hagrid as their source without a care in the world. “They think they’re very clever,” he finishes, “because they’ve managed to coax all this from a real adult, but Charlie, that’s Charlie Weasley, he wrote yesterday and said the whole reason Hagrid even got the damn dragon—right, the dragon.” So then the needs to pause, and explain about the dragon and Draco’s letter and that’s why Tom went to Romania, see, to stop his cousin from doing anything stupid in the name of Gryffindor goodness. “Anyway, so Charlie’s letter says that the mates of his who went to collect the dragon asked Hagrid where and how he managed to find one, so Hagrid said he got a bit pissed in the Hog’s Head and won it a gamble, though he can remember nothing of what he actually said.”

“Good,” Moody says, knocking his hand on the table, so Tom’s mug rattles. He glares. Moody ignores him. “Up you get, Riddle. Finish your coffee. We’re going to Hogmeade.”

Considering that Tom doesn’t actually dislike Moody, the number of times he idly imagined murdering him is probably concerning. But it’s not Tom’s fault. The egotistical way the man prioritises his needs and desires over all else is infuriating. 

Rather uselessly, Tom tries to hold his ground. “I have class,” he says, but hurriedly drinks half in coffee in one gulp. It burns his throat on the way down. 

“For your Mastery,” Moody says. “Hopewell is your professor, right? I’ll have a talk with her. She won’t mind. You’re already in sensible clothes. The pub will be open. Hurry on.”

At least, Tom thinks, the Hog’s Head doesn’t serve food. After yesterday, the last thing he could possibly imagine is being forced to sit through bangers and mash or something because Moody decides he’s peckish. 

In a minute, his coffee is gone and the cup squeaky clean, resting back in its place on the counter. He Summons his not-as-warm-as-his-coat winter cloak before Moody can grab him and side-along him, and slips it on. Impatiently, the man says, “You’re moving like an invalid. We’ll detour at the apothecary so you can get something for the pain. Meet me out front.” 

He doesn’t give Tom time to react before Apparating away. Despite despairing at his ill-luck and how much he’d just like to sleep, Tom follows. 

It’s snowing in Hogsmeade, because regardless of the weather in the rest of the Scotland, it seems like it’s always at least flurrying in the village this time of year. The Apothecary’s front, which is really Honeyduke’s back, looks the same as did in Tom’s time, as does the rest of the village more or less: picturesque, sketched for the set of a theatre performance, perfectly encapsulating every season. In some ways, it’s even more in stasis than Hogwarts. 

“You took your time,” Moody says, almost like he isn’t kidding, and pushes open the door. 

Tom buys a headache cure, a chewable tablet that tastes like the colour yellow and works instantly, so he feels functional by the time they reached the Hog’s Head. If this has changed at all, he wouldn’t know; the dingy, miserable building on the hill was there in his Hogsmeade, but he never went near it. He didn’t go near it in his seventh year, either, so it’s a new experience when Moody leads them through a rickety door into the dimly lit, least cosy pub in all of Scotland. There’s only one room. It’s straight out of Dad’s stories the thirties: sawdust on the floor to pick up spills, backless benches and few tables and one bar, all of which look sticky, unlabelled liquor on the shelves. The only light comes from a large hearth, though the fire burns so low in the grate it hardly offers any warmth. 

There are two appropriately grisly strangers, both deep in their cups even at this early hour, and one bartender, a man with a bandaged face who sets down the Prophet when they near. His eyes are a sharp, crystalline blue, a colour Tom thought unique to Albus Dumbledore. 

Then Moody says, “Morning, Aberforth,” which can only mean this man has Dumbledore’s eyes because they’re brothers. 

Tom met Aberforth once, just after Gran died. None of the faculty could deliver him to the London, and he hadn’t coordinated anything with Flea’s father yet, but Tom had to arrange the funeral. So Dumbledore called Tom to his office, where a man that looked an awful lot like him stood, and said, This is my brother. He’ll take you to Kensington, and Mr Potter will meet you with there. And then they port-keyed out. 

But inevitably, that never happened here, so it’s a bit of a nasty shock when the man narrows his eye at him and says, “Hagrid said you weren’t dead. Thought he having me on, but Merlin, here you are, walking and talking.”

“I’m really not who Hagrid thinks I am,” Tom says uncomfortably, “and I don’t believe I ever met you, er, Mr Aberforth.” 

“You didn’t,” Aberforth says, “but oh, I’d hear of you—see you, too, walking about with those friends. ‘That Slytherin boy,’ they’d say—”

Moody cackles, sounding as mad as his name. “Ryder?” he says. “A Slytherin? That’s the best joke I’ve heard all year.”

“I was Gryffindor—”

“You should have been a Ravenclaw, you pedantic brat.” 

They glare at each other. Somehow, this seems to convince Aberforth that Tom isn’t the Hagrid’s boogeyman sprung from the grave, as he removes two glasses from under the counter and asks, “So what will you be drinking?”

“It’s ten in the morning,” Tom says as Moody orders a firewhisky for himself and a coffee for the boy. But Tom’s willing to let it go, because thank Merlin, Aberforth actually pours him a mug. 

There’s no dallying around the point. Moody concisely and bluntly explains about Hagrid and the gamble and could they speak in private please? Aberforth just glances past them both and shouts, “Oi, out with you,” to the two patrons who skedaddle, though not without some grumbling. 

“Hagrid had a cerberus in the past, it seems,” Aberforth says once they’re gone. “I only heard pieces, mind, but I assume the man who started with the cards asked how he knew—how Hagrid knew he could handle a dragon, so he had a dragon couldn’t be any harder than a proper cerberus, cause all that really matters is knowing how to calm the beast down. ‘Whaddya mean?’ said the gambler, so Hagrid said ‘something something something like Orpheus.’ Meaning music, I suppose.” 

“Nothing else?” Tom asks. That’s not great, but he could have figured that out when he was six or seven, considering his bedtime stories. At least Harry and Hermione had a unit last year acting as a child-friendly introduction to the Greek myths. And Hermione Granger, the girl who was obsessed with anything mythical and magical long before any of that had anything to do with her, should be able to take one look at the three-headed dog named Fluffy, and know to sing it a song. 

There are other ways around the beast, too, which are not quite so well known, but might be worthwhile information for someone with no musical talent. 

Aberforth motions at large around the empty pub. “I’ve an establishment to run, bauy,” he says. “Doesn’t leave much time left for eavesdropping.”

“Come off it,” Moody says, as he slides his finished glass across the bar. Aberforth doesn’t top it off; Moody doesn’t ask for a refill. “Even your brother knows you’re a sneak, Abe. If anyone else was running a bar this shady so close to hordes of children, the Ministry’d smoke them out so fast they wouldn’t have time to grab their pants before running from the fire. Tell us something else.”

With all appropriate meanness, Dumbledore’s brother says, “And you, of course, would be leading the charge. Sorry to disappoint you. I heard nothing else. Wasn’t much else to hear, though. Man appeared long enough to offer Hagrid a drink, suggest a game, swap him the egg for some bad luck in cards, and was on his way.”

“And that wasn’t suspicious?” Tom says, as Moody asks, “Taliesin’s arse, Aberforth, are you going to tell me was cloaked next, too?”

“Yes, he was cloaked,” says Aberforth. “As you so artfully pointed out, Mad-Eye, it’s a shady place. Perfectly respectably in here, you’ll find, to walk around with your face hid. But he was a tallish fellow, not too tall, but not average. Around your height.” He nods to Tom. “Had a funny sort of accent. Foreign. But foreign in that way London gits like yourself—” A nod again to Tom, who’s well aware that his accent is saturated by the Thames. “—sound when they’re putting on voices. It wasn’t German or French, but anything else is a fair bet.”

“Somewhere in Southeastern Europe, perhaps?” Tom suggests. 

“Perhaps Albania,” says Moody directly. 

Aberforth shrugs. “Don’t think I’ve ever met an Albanian,” he says, “but could be, I reckon. Supposed then it could be real, but I doubt it.”

Though Moody questions him more, Aberforth is as unhelpful as possible without actually committing obstruction of justice, which likely means he hasn’t heard yet that the Head of the Aurors’ position defaulted to some French pureblood who hasn’t seemed to realise yet that he’s going bald. After a truly interminable amount of time, Moody finally declares it’s time to leave, and side-alongs Tom to the attic office in London, because he’s a paranoid bastard who would never dare let slip where they’re heading to anyone, let alone a person they just questioned.  

Moody hobbles over to his desk chair, moving slower than usual—that walk through the Hogsmeade flurries couldn’t have helped his leg—and settles in his chair while Tom sits on his usual stack of files. He leaves on his winter cloak, because it’s freezing. His reading on Mexican studies into Blood Magic is still where he left it, the makeshift bookmark of a Sainsbury’s receipt sticking out halfway through the text. 

He expects some sort of discussion about the impromptu interview. What he does not expect is for Moody to say, “There was a Tom Marvolo Riddle in Hogwarts in the fifties. Top of his class. Slytherin. Raised in a Muggle orphanage. Should’ve had a remarkable life, but ended up working an unremarkable job at this shop in Knockturn Alley for ten years before he disappeared. Brother of yours?”

“No,” Tom says, not surprised that Moody looked up the name once he gave it, but still hoping he hadn’t seen a picture. Also, Marvolo? What a stupid name. “Could’ve been a cousin, I suppose, or something, if he was raised in an orphanage. If he had the usual Slytherin behaviourisms, it would explain why Hagrid appears to hate me.”

With a nod of acknowledgement, Moody says, “There wasn’t much about the Riddle family that I found. Yeah, looked them up, too. Where’d you say you were from again?”

“Is this a test?” Tom says, more offended than he should be, as he is actually lying. He shakes his head. “All right. Little Hangleton, if you want to be technical. Cornwall. But my father decided the village wasn’t the greatest place for children, so we left for London to live with his aunt and uncle, who I called my grandparents. He was the second son anyway. Never would have inherited the plot.” That’s mostly still a lie, but at least explains why he doesn’t speak like a member from the Muggle House of Lords. 

Moody scrutinises Tom’s face, but seems to find nothing. Good. It’s more of the truth than the usual story. “By all accounts,” Moody says, reclining back in his chair, “the Riddles were a cantankerous bunch whose reputation would have been worse if their Wixen neighbours weren’t a human pestilence. They were murdered in the summer of fifty-three. By one of their Wixen neighbours.” 

“What?” Tom’s reaction is sincere. Dumbledore never mentioned that. “But that—but that doesn’t—”

“No one bothered to tell you?”

“Clearly not.”

“I wondered if you knew,” Moody says, “seeing as you don’t seem to have nice feelings toward your Wixen half. It would make sense if you were the neighbour’s.”

“I have my reasons,” Tom says, “and I dislike talking about them. I hope you know me well enough by now to respect that.”

Though Moody, thankfully, concedes that much, he still goes on to say, “You don’t like discussing the War,” as a statement, not a question. 

“It did start out with a comparison between Harry’s dead parents and me,” Tom says, defensive. “Why does any of this matter?” 

“Part of my job as your mentor is to measure if you’re trustworthy and emotionally sound enough to graduate,” Moody answers, which is news to Tom, “since most candidates from your programme go on to become Aurors.” The look he sends Tom is accusatory. “You weren’t alive for the War. What’s your problem with it?”

Frustrated, Tom says, “You. All of you. It’s barking, how everyone but Tonks was just blathering on about fighting a war like something nice because the adrenaline was a good knock to the system. I remember refugees from Grindelwald, you know, pouring in through London with illegal port-keys, just in time to get bombed by the fucking Nazis, and die anyway because they didn’t know enough about Muggle warfare to understand the average Shield Charm won’t save your body against the force of a missile striking an open street. One of my first memories is standing at the edge of a crater outside the dairy as my dad covered my eyes, but not before I managed to see my grandfather’s body strewn across the road from the blast. His arm was ten feet away. The bottle of milk was still in his hand, somehow perfectly intact. And the rest of us only survived because my burst of accidental magic fortified the house enough to keep it standing. It went on for months, and then the war was still going on and on, and my father was killed, and there was the treaty, and all those pictures and the footage came out of what the Nazis had done to the Jews, and the Americans dropped their bombs on Japan, which meant the Americans and the Russians decided to having a pissing contest that left the rest of the world trapped between them in fear of their anger for decades, so the thought that anyone could miss that is sickening. No wonder the Aurors were almost entirely made up of bloody purebloods until about ten years ago. No one born earlier would be able to stand it.”

“There was a Muggle war?” Moody says, which is, sadly, not surprising. If Tom wasn’t still maybe a little high, he wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it at all.

“There’s always a Muggle war,” Tom says. “There’s one going on right now. The Americans declared it back in September, and Muggle Britain’s jumped in to help. But they do so love fighting in Afghanistan, so it’s not a surprise. They have already on three other occasions. Have I proved myself yet, or is my overt Muggleness a point against me?” 

Moody’s extant knee jerks. “Oi,” he says in warning, “we’re not the ones who’re anti-Muggle.”

“I’ll believe that the day pureblood Wix start learning Muggle history,” says Tom. “It’s a lot harder to hate what you understand.”

After a moment, during which Moody’s brow furrows and he seems to seriously consider the recommendation, he finally says, “I was born between them, you know. Grindelwald and You-Know-Who. After Grindelwald, everyone said ‘nothing like this will ever happen again,’ but there were always rumours of something going on in the old families. The Weasleys officially cut off ties from the Blacks. Never said why. There was something between Fleamont Potter and his brother Charlus that got Charlus blasted off the tree. Grindelwald never made it to Britain. Not really. So I don’t think anyone was prepared when You-Know-Who suddenly burst onto the seen and took over overnight. All very hush hush. The Ministry was his, but no one could prove it. The Aurors in the office were the few I always knew I could trust. It’s why I picked them. And the men and women who took up arms against the shadow hand controlling the legislation, too many of which are still in place, got younger and younger, until you had Lily and James Potter, a couple of kids barely older than you dead in their homes. But it never reached the sort of violence you described. The Killing Curse doesn’t make for explosions and blood. Death is death, but it’s easier to walk away from without nightmares.”

This is probably the closest Tom will ever get to, in his whole life, to an apology from Moody for maybe not considering that someone raised at least during Grindelwald’s time might dislike war talk. “Hopefully it won’t come to that again,” he says, “if we’re clever about it.” 

“That’s something of an uphill climb, I suspect,” Moody says wryly. “Without magic.”

Tom shrugs. “We’ve both done worse,” he answers, which is as close to a vote of confidence as he’s willing to offer. 

Harry is friends with Draco’s ex-Slytherin friends, who are no longer quite so ex anymore. So is Ron. So is Hermione. Obviously, so is Draco.

Neither of their Houses cares for it.

As January transitions into February, though, their group—eight now, with the Gryffindor four, then Pansy, Blaise, Theo, and Daphne—shore up. They study together in the library. When it’s not too cold, they spend time together outside on the grounds. They don’t talk about the other Slytherin absences, nor that while the Weasley twins have taken this all with good humour, even some of their professors look at them funny, or that last week, the Gryffindor four were kicked out of the Slytherin side of the Quidditch stands during the Slytherin vs Ravenclaw match. It’s ridiculous. Harry hates it. He thought he wouldn’t trust them after all they’d done to Draco, but it only took a couple of sessions in the library to realise at least these four are genuinely upset to discover they’ve been led to believe one thing when really quite the opposite is true.

The real proof, though, is that they find out Hagrid has a dragon’s egg, and lets Harry and them (but mostly Draco) solve it on their own without immediately midging to Snape. There are certain things that guarantee a friendship; pretending not to panic while you watch a dragon egg hatch is one of them.

What all of this results in, though, is Harry asking Tom if he knows anywhere for the eight to meet without dealing with other people. Tom sends back directions for the Room of Requirements, which they all try out the following afternoon. “My cousin told me about it,” Harry’s sure to let the Slytherins know, because he prefers to give credit where credit’s due.

“Wicked,” Ron says, as he takes in the room: a cozy space with plush sofas and table in the middle of them and all their school books on the shelves and large fireplace. “Why couldn’t he have told us this from the beginning?”

“He said it was next year’s birthday present,” Harry says. “He thinks it’s rather stupid we don’t just spend time in each other’s Common Rooms, but I don’t think he really understands how Hogwarts works.” Or this Hogwarts, anyway. He seems completely baffled in his letters if Harry says something like the Slytherins are all bullies or we’re not allowed on the third floor but no one told us why. No adult at Hogwarts is terribly good at dispensing information, Harry finds, but Tom still doesn’t seem to understand that asking a professor a question related to anything outside their subject is about as useful as asking the Dursleys anything at all. 

Pansy drapes herself over a sofa, taking up all of it by herself, so her long hair streams over the side. “I love this school,” she says, sighing. “Mother almost sent me to Durmstrang. Can you imagine anywhere so new having a room this interesting?”

“My mother says Durmstrang is a scam,” Blaise says, shoving her feet out of the way to sit on a now-free cushion, even though all the other sofas are vacant. Harry, Draco, Ron, and Hermione end up on one, squished together, overlapping, closer together than Harry ever was to anyone before he came here, while Theo and Daphne take the other. For the most part, Slytherins aren’t as touchy as Gryffindors. Draco said it was considered improper after Quidditch one day, then fell asleep with his head on Harry’s shoulder anyway. 

“What’s Durmstrang?” Harry asks, distracted, as he makes himself comfortable between Hermione’s pointy elbow and the armrest. 

“The Wixen school in Scandinavia somewhere,” Draco answers. “Father considered sending me there, too, but Mother got all huffy about tradition, so here I am instead.”

“The ‘I told you sos’ must have lasted for weeks,” Daphne says, twisting around to look at the shelves. “Oh, I’d love to study Transfiguration in here. I just hate Millicient’s snide little comments whenever I make a mistake. Do you think this place can conjure rats for us?”

Ron, jumping on the opportunity, says, “It doesn’t have it. I’ve got Scabbers. He’s a rat, completely useless. And me, I’ll practice with you.”

“You wouldn’t need to if you had your own wand,” Hermione mutters, but everyone ignores her for one reason or another, except Ron, who flushes.

Theo rises from the sofa again and crosses to the snow-splattered window, glancing out across the grounds. “Hey,” he says. “This isn’t showing the Quidditch pitch. I can see Hogsmeade from here.”

“Really?” Hermione says, as they all stand in a rush to peer out. In perfect view, there’s Hogsmeade, with its lights sparkling in every window. “How’s the possible? We’re not facing the north end.”

“Well, we asked for somewhere nice, didn’t we?” Pansy says, stepping back. “And the view of the Quidditch pitch isn’t—it’s a bit of an eyesore, really. So if the room can do anything, it makes a bit of sense that it can change the view.”

They’re all quiet for a moment, considering that and all its implications, before Daphne says, “Does that mean its door can open anywhere, too? From the inside.”

“Probably not anywhere,” says Harry, who hasn’t actually discounted the idea that a member of the faculty is the one after the Stone. He doubts there’s anyone on staff who isn’t aware of every secret of the castle, and if this place could open a door anywhere, then the would-be thief wouldn’t need to worry about how to sneak past Fluffy and the enchantments at all. 

“Probably not the Common Rooms,” Draco says, “or anywhere you need a password to enter. They’re guarded against this sort of thing, I reckon. But maybe somewhere nearby.”

“We’d be less likely to be caught after curfew,” Blaise says, sounding as hopeful as one should if they lack an invisibility cloak. Harry still hasn’t mentioned his. Neither have any of the others. 

Ron, a little dreamily, says, “You could steal back anything Filch ever confiscated,” probably considering all the favours the twins might owe him if he delivered them the horde of belongings Filch stole from them over the years. It’s good, Harry’s learned, to have Fred and George in your pocket.

Theo just hmms, arms crossed, staring out across the grounds. “I wonder,” he says, “if you could send a door outside the castle, as long as it’s on the property. Then we’d only need to worry about coming back in.”

“What do you want to leave for?” Ron asks. 

“The start of Hrēþmōnaþ is coming up,” Pansy says, suddenly a little pink in the face herself. “The rest of the House will be in the Common Room, but you can’t be, and anyway, a forest is more traditional, and the Forbidden Forest can’t really be as scary as all that, right, so we thought we’d make a go of it. Harry and Hermione have probably never done it.” 

Harry glances at Hermione, who glances back in question, as if asking if this is true for him. “What is it?” he asks, because no, Tom definitely never did anything called…whatever that is with is him. 

“A springtide celebration,” Daphne says, “at the start of March. You basically just serve cakes to the goddess at midnight and pray for a mild spring. If you’re very lucky, a unicorn will show up to eat the cakes, though I’ve never seen one, living so close to the city and all. But that means she’s blessed your offerings. We’ll have to ask the house elves for the food. Does anyone know where the kitchens are?”

No, they don’t, but undoubtedly the twins do. They know everything, after all. Harry never considered that Hogwarts had kitchens before, even though that’s obvious, just like he never considered that there were house elves. The thought of them always leaves him feeling uncomfortable, as he spent nearly ten years living as a human house elf himself. 

But he knows better than to say that in front of anyone, including Ron. Sometimes Ron and his siblings don’t seem to understand exactly how much they have in common with Draco and the rest, nor vice versa, but Harry and Hermione do. 

They have plenty of time, though, to worry about looking for the kitchens and talking the house elves into making them the right sort of cakes. As of now, Harry and Draco’s biggest concern is Quidditch, as Snape is refereeing the match. Draco and the Slytherin four all insist everything will be quite all right, but Draco’s reassurances have an edge of uncertainty, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione all know the truth, which is that even if Snape isn’t trying to kill him, he still won’t treat them fairly. Even Draco’s existence isn’t enough, it seems, for Snape to jump whatever hurdle necessary to get himself and stop being such a prat when it comes to hating Gryffindor.

Hermione says he must have been bullied as a child. Draco says it can’t possibly be that simple, as most Slytherins are still going out of their way to torment him, and he hasn’t turned down the opportunity to rekindle his old friendships. Surely, Uncle Severus would never have been so immature!

Personally, Harry has his doubts, but at least Draco finally admitted out loud that the way he’s being treated isn’t right.

Still, Draco hasn’t come to terms with the fact that Snape is, in Oliver’s words, a self-righteous prick, so Harry’s determined to finish the game as fast as possible before his friend’s bubble of ignorance can burst. Even with Dumbledore there, he doesn’t trust Snape to be an impartial referee, nor, honestly, for the Headmaster to do anything about it. But Dumbledore is here, so at least Harry won’t also need to worry about someone trying to murder him, and the sun is bright and the sky is clear, and the air just on the better side of cool, so he’s feeling good when he hops on the broom and takes to the air. He feels even better when he notices his new friends sitting with Hermione and Ron, helping hold up a sign cheering the Gryffindor team on. 

Knowing how their House works, it won’t be long before the rest try to adopt the four out of spite. Not out of any real sense of caring, of course, but just so they can say they stole them from the other Slytherins. 

But for now, the game—the Hufflepuff Seeker is Cedric Diggory, a gangly third year taller than most thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds with nice hair and bad acne. He’s new, like Harry, and very good. One of Ron’s neighbours, too, so he and the Weasleys grew up flying around with each other in mock games, and never mentioning that his broom was always infinitely better than theirs. And just like the Slytherin Seeker, he looks at Harry like he expects nothing special. 

During the last game, the fact that Harry almost died really stopped him from proving he can fly. Not this time.

He shoots up high above the stands and stares down at the pitch, taking in everything from an eagle’s perspective. Diggory’s doing something similar, but from below. Snape doesn’t call two obvious fouls against Gryffindor, which Lee Jordan helpfully points out—and McGonagall, usually such a stickler for Lee remaining unbiased, lets this slide—before calling a nonexistent one against Hufflepuff. Oliver contests that. Since there’s no one to act as a secondary judge, Snape is able to claim he’s in the right, and in retaliation, hits Angelina with a double penalty. 

As Harry starts composing his long letter home to Tom about all of this, he finally spots the snitch hovering by the Hufflepuff Keeper’s head. He angles down and to the left, darting toward it, altering Diggory, who’s closer, but Draco does something that tricks one of the Hufflepuff Beaters to hitting a Bludger at her own Seeker. Harry’s fingers curl around the snitch’s little body before it can flit away, as he turns hard to the left, narrowingly avoiding a collision with the Hufflepuff goal posts. 

The game lasted ten minutes. 

The cheers are so loud they nearly knock Harry from his broom. Still mid-air, his team crowds around him, reaching for him, reaching for Draco, who got to him first, so they’re all sort of holding each other up a hundred feet above the ground without any real fear of falling. Harry can’t see the Hufflepuff players, nor Snape, nor the audience, because the force of Fred and Angelina at his back has pushed him into Draco’s side. For the first time, Harry really feels like he deserves this, like did something worth acknowledging for himself, because of himself, not because of an action he can’t remember that was all his parents’ anyway. 

Later, he and his friends steal their other friends into the Common Room. There’s a moment where Oliver pauses, midway through handing Draco and Harry two butterbeers, and he takes a good look at the green and silver on the others’ robes. But the social currency of Harry and Draco’s teamwork seems to have paid off, because their captain just shrugs, hands them their drinks, and nods over to the usual side table. 

“Food’s over there,” he says for the Slytherins’ sake, and leaves them to it. 

Chapter Text

Despite what seemed like grand plans, Ron and Daphne never do practise Transfiguration on Scabbers, because McGonagall starts her first years on changing the colours of inanimate objects. They do, however, practise in the Room of Requirements, where they become the first to experiment with what they can do with the doors. The rest are quick to join in, so that by the end of February, they’ve established that while the room can only be accessed from the seventh floor, it can open to just about anywhere inside or outside the castle, as long as it’s technically on campus and not additionally warded. Moreover, the exit will stay put, as long as they ask the room to keep it there before leaving, but only for an hour, unless someone renews it from the inside. Plenty of time, everyone but Harry and Hermione claim, to set out some cakes and say a prayer or two, but probably not to see a unicorn. 

This is very sad. Who doesn’t want to meet a unicorn?

Harry keeps Tom updated on their progress. Tom seems well pleased to hear it, but something about the letters gradually starts to feel more and more odd. “I think there’s something wrong,” he tells his friends on the second morning of March, the day between Ron’s birthday and Hrēþmōnaþ. They’re in the Great Hall, finishing up their breakfast in the wake of the morning post, before they leave for class. Harry skims through the short (for Tom) letter again, and says, “Been wrong, I mean.”

“Why do you think that?” Hermione says as she butters as toast. She has her Charms textbook open in front of her, rereading the theory behind creating Wixen photographs (practicals to begin next unit), as if she hasn’t had it memorised since August.  

“I don’t know,” says Harry. “I can just tell, is all.” Other than the length, the letters are mostly normal, but something about his cousin’s interest in what they’re doing feels forced. Somehow. He just can’t explain why it’s so obvious to him in written form. But it’s not, he thinks, that Tom is starting to grow bored with him or anything of the sort, because even if that was true, he should still be offering suggestions for what to try next, or proposing theories even Hermione only half-understands, because that’s just how he is. And there’s none of that, or at least very little of it, just like there’s very little information on anything he’s doing at all.

It’s not normal. It’s not entirely new, though, either.

Draco, who’s busy perfecting his already immaculate Potions homework for first period, only shrugs. “Could just be busy,” he says. “Isn’t this Muggle midterms?”

Before Harry can ask how Draco, the purebloodiest of purebloods, managed to remember when Muggle midterms were, Ron knocks him with his elbow. “Want me to write Mum?” he asks. “She’d like the excuse to check in on him, I bet.”

After last year, goes unsaid. A rush of gratitude fills Harry suddenly, just for his friend not trying to say he’s overreacting. He’s aware that there’s something—well, not wrong necessarily, but definitely not right, either, with his cousin, though not exactly what. “Maybe,” he says, though he doesn’t think Tom will thank him for it. But he doesn’t need Tom to be grateful, just to be all right. 

He stuffs the letter in his pocket and follows his friends to Potions, where Snape’s stopped forcing Slytherins and Gryffindors to work together, but Ron still pairs with Daphne and Hermione with Pansy. Harry sticks with Draco. For the first time, though, he notices everyone else maneouver themselves so Crabbe and Seamus—easily the worst in class, since both have a tendency to explode their brews—are stuck together, which leaves Dean with Goyle. Snape does a double-take at that in a way he hadn’t even at the continued Pansy-Hermione partnership, before sneaking a look at Harry and Draco. 

Their mutual air of innocence is not faked. Crabbe and Goyle are still acting like gits, so it can’t be said Harry and his friends are responsible for whatever this is, which is probably just Goyle and Dean’s desire to get the marks they deserve. 

Snape spends most of the lesson hovering around Seamus and Crabbe, averting disaster after disaster, which gives all the Gryffindors a break from him breathing down their necks, so the class almost ends up enjoyable. It’s doubtful Harry will ever like Potions (it’s too similar to cooking, which always reminds him of the Dursleys), but he does like working with Draco, especially when his friend isn’t worried about his godfather being a prat (which is rare). And it’s very nice, Harry, Ron, and Hermione agree at the end of it, to see Snape fuming like that, as if he went through a trial. Maybe now he’ll realise docking points from the rest of them for made up mistakes is unfair when Crabbe and Seamus give him more than enough opportunities to punish both of them. 

Not that their Slytherin friends see it that way, and if Draco does, he’s keeping mum on the matter. “Ten points!” Blaise says when they regroup in the Room of Requirements after tea. “I can’t believe it. Vin lost us ten points.”   

“Seamus lost us twelve,” Hermione says as she wraps the Hrēþmōnaþ cakes in linen cloth with Harry and Theo. “I’m actually surprised it wasn’t more.”

“That’s only because Uncle Sev was too busy explaining the virtues of knowing the difference between clockwise and anti-clockwise to Vincent,” says Draco, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips, as if to rid himself of the memory, “to notice Seamus dump in the whole vial of powdered newt tails.”

“Is that what caused it to start smoking green?” Pansy says, glancing up from the makeshift map of the forest she and Daphne are reviewing. There’s no accurate map of the forest, so deciding on the best place to set the door involves a lot of cross-referencing. 

“I think,” says Draco. “Or that was because Vincent did something with his wand to fix it. I couldn’t tell. Are we ready?”

They are, or ready enough anyway, so they politely ask for a door to deposit them in the place Daphne and Pansy decided on. As a sort of afterthought, as they’re passing through, Hermione adds, “And please don’t allow in anyone who isn’t one of the eight of us.” 

Though they hadn’t discussed it, it seems reasonable. Everyone knows the forest has scary things in it, and if they encounter something other than a friendly unicorn, who knows if it’ll try to follow them through the door they asked to stay behind?

This early in March, nights still have a January bite to them, which sinks through the thick wool of Harry’s winter cloak. It’s also much too dark, though the moon’s a day off from full and there aren’t any clouds to obscure it or the stars. Disquiet prickles at the back of Harry’s neck; the others, he thinks, feel it too, from the way they draw together. But no one recommends turning back.

For the first quarter hour or so, they gather enough twigs and bark and moss and things to build a makeshift altar with some raised roots as a base, then lay their cakes on top. All the purebloods bring out a special family candle, though they’re all the same plain white, just like the ones Professor McGonagall very happily handed over to Harry and Hermione under the assumption that they’d be participating in the Gryffindor celebration. She’d probably murder them if she discovered they’re here instead, but it seems a good risk. Even though they could bring their Slytherin friends along to a Gryffindor event at this point, it all feels a little, what’s the word—disingenuous. Or something. It’s definitely to Draco’s advantage that their House is so protective of him, but Harry has a sense that as a result, half the Gryffindors have decided to accept their Slytherin friends as some sort of competition of better-personness, while the rest are just waiting from them to do something to prove they’re terrible.

Either way, Harry appreciates the privacy tonight.

Daphne leads the prayer, mostly because she’s the only one who actually knows it, since it’s in Old English and all, and nobody else understands a word of that. For all Harry knows, she’s chanting a shopping list, but it certainly sounds right, so he assumes it’s the real thing. They stand huddled around the makeshift altar, each clutching their candles, all of which Pansy, as the youngest girl, lights when Daphne gives her a nod. Then they stick the candles in the indents in the centres of their cakes and take a step back, except for Blaise, as the oldest boy, who removes an “effigy of winter” made of more twigs and bits of white cloth, and sets it on fire. 

If the Dursleys could see this, they’d throw a fit. The idea is delightful.

“And now we can eat snacks and wait for a unicorn,” says Pansy cheerfully. 

“Or something scary,” says Ron, with just as much doom and gloom. “Fred and George told me—”

“You can only believe about fifty percent of anything your brothers say,” says Hermione, sighing. “Let’s sit. I want to see a unicorn, too.”

She produces a picnic blanket from somewhere or another and lays it out on the grass near the door, which is close but not too close to the altar. All the Slytherins bring out traditional foods for the season, mainly what they received from care packages from home. No one mentions that Draco’s offering to the pile, like the other Gryffindors’, comes from the kitchens. 

Really, they’re all very good at Not Mentioning Things by now. 

For what feels like an hour, but is probably less, they talk in hushed voices about how unfair it is to colourblind students like Theo that McGonagall just marked them on the “correctness of shade,” and what ways Snape could maybe improve classroom safety, until an animal shriek interrupts Blaise saying, “Maybe they should just use the pre-H cauldrons—” 

They’re all on their feet in an instant, wands drawn. Harry’s heartbeat is loud in his ears, but when the sound comes again, it’s unmistakable: a nicker. 

Pansy breathes out a swear she definitely didn’t learn in her fancy etiquette lessons. “That’s a unicorn,” she whispers, inching back toward the door. “We need to go—”

“We need to help it!” Hermione says, as she, Harry, Ron, and Draco all step off the blanket towards the sound. “Didn’t Hagrid mention something killing—”

“Bloody Gryffindors,” Daphne says, lashing out to grab Ron’s hand as the pained neighing grows louder. “You’re not going after something murdering unicorns with a hand-me-down wand, Ronald—”

In a crunch of leaves and branches, the unicorn bursts from the underbrush, streaking between them and altar with silver blood streaming from its side to paint the carpet of moss and fall needles. Everyone jumps back; Theo falls backward over the picnic basket and tumbles through the door. Blood, hot and metallic and viscerally real, splatters across Harry’s face—and with the touch of it, a sharp, stabbing agony in his scar blooms. 

He collapses. 

So does the unicorn. 

There’s a moment where he can’t tell who’s making what noise—him or it—before Hermione fires the Bat-Bogey Curse at a shadowy figure in the trees, and Draco drags Harry up and through the door. It seems like just a second before it slams behind Hermione and Ron, and disappears with a pop that takes Harry’s immediate pain away. Echoes of it linger, wracking through his body, so he lies curled on the rug at Draco’s side, vaguely aware of his friend hovering, as if afraid to touch him. That’s more than fair, really; if he tried, Harry thinks he might start screaming again. 

As he slowly comes back to himself, he registers the warmth from the fire, the softness of the carpet, the chatter of anxious voices around him. There's Daphne, crying. “But we must tell Professor Snape,” Pansy says, and Draco cuts in, “No, we bloody well must not, ” to the shock of everyone. 

There’s a lot they haven’t told their new friends, but it seems there’s no avoiding it now that they all saw a unicorn maybe die. Carefully, Harry pushes himself up, which cuts off the argument before it can start. “Why would someone kill a unicorn?” he asks as he rubs his forehead and settles with his back against the sofa next to Draco. Hermione comes to sit on Harry’s other side, tucking herself close enough that their sides touch. 

“Supposedly its blood gives the drinker immortality,” says Theo, “but the cost is ridiculous. I thought anyone trying was a myth.” 

“Immortality,” Ron repeats. 

“Like the Philosopher’s Stone,” says Hermione, finishing the thought.

“The thing that makes gold?” says Blaise, coming to sit cross-legged on the rug across from them. Gradually, the others do as well, so they form a loose circle. Daphne sniffles and tries to wipe away her tears, but they keep falling, “My mother’s obsessed with it. No idea it’d anything to do with immortality.”

Without consulting each other first, Harry and his Gryffindor friends reel off an explanation of what they’ve been dealing with all year: Fluffy, the Philosopher’s Stone, Nicholas Flamel, the professors, that Harry has an Invisibility Cloak. “My cousin knows more than we do,” Harry finishes, “but he’s involved somehow for his Mastery, so he had to sign a confidentiality agreement and can’t tell us anything.”

“And he just told you that?” Theo says, seemingly more taken aback by this than the rest.

“Tom tells Harry anything he asks,” Draco says. “It’s monstrously unfair. Have you heard about this in the Common Room at all?”

Blaise shakes his head. “Never,” he says, “but no one ever tells us first years anything, so that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been word. Still. I doubt there’s a student out there drinking unicorn blood. That’s Darker magic than even the seventh years will play around with.”

“Is that why your scar hurt?” Pansy asks, turning her attention to Harry. “Does it react to Dark Magic?”

With a shrug, he answers, “Hard to say. Tom said some spells are only labelled ‘Dark’ because people are stupid or they don’t have any counters, but that doesn’t make them Dark Dark, whatever that means, so I don’t know? I can’t tell the difference.”

“ Your guardian said that?” Theo says, openly flabbergasted. “Yours? The Harry Potter’s? What, Dumbledore didn’t question him to death to make certain he was the Lightest Wizard to ever live first?”

“Oh, Tom would never get along with our parents’ sort for long,” Draco says. “He just has opinions about proper terminology. It would make sense, though, if a cursed scar hurt because of Dark Magic.”

It would make sense, true, but Harry has a horrible suspicion the pain in his scar is more specific than that. Without definite proof, though, he’s not willing to admit he’s starting to suspect that maybe it only reacts when Voldemort's involved. “Does a person need magic to kill a unicorn?” Harry asks, thinking of the wound on the animal’s side. “Or just something pointy? It looked like it was done with a knife or something.” He's seen his uncle carve a ham before, so he knows what he's talking about.

A book pops into existence in the middle of their circle, making them all jump: Derniers travaux du comte de La Rochefoucauld sur les massacres de licornes. Its cover is a deep brown and depicts the imprint of a unicorn caught in a cage. 

“Count La Rochefoucauld's Final Works on the Killings of Unicorns,” Draco translates as he snatches it up. “I assume I’m the only one who can read French? Let’s see.”

They’re all quiet while he searches through the index than the text, which is a problem, because the silence makes it too easy for Harry to keep replaying the scene in his head—the screams, the white body streaking through the darkness, the blood, the shadow in the trees. How long had the other person been there? Had they been lurking throughout the ceremony, just waiting for a unicorn to come? It wouldn’t be unbelievable; they weren’t the only students who sneaked into the forest tonight, he knows. And that’s just awful, even worse than killing something on a normal night, because tonight’s all about renewal and rebirth, the others said, so the thought of using that ritual as some sort of trap seems evil.

The second the thought comes to him, it also occurs to him that everyone raised with this must have come to this conclusion already. Why haven’t they said anything? Just to avoid freaking him and Hermione out more? Because Daphne's taking it hard enough already?

“You don’t need magic,” Draco says, jarring Harry from his thoughts. “Actually, this might be a point in the Filch theory, Ron. Apparently the main unicorn hunters, before it was outlawed in the eighteenth century, were Squibs who thought the blood could give them magic. But it was about as useful as applying snake oil to a bald spot, so it fell out of favour.”

“There’s no way that was Filch,” says Hermione as everyone else starts talking at once. “Whoever it was blocked my curse with a nonverbal Shield Charm or some other method of redirecting a spell. But I do think we should revisit our theory of the thief being a member of the faculty. Someone who can do that and kill a unicorn easily could have stopped us before we all made it through the door with, might I add, the picnic blanket.” She motions to the blanket, which lies in a crumpled heap beside where the door had been.

There’s a moment where no one speaks, as the truth of that settles, before Daphne clears her throat and says miserably, “Not necessarily. The candles were still burning. Until they stopped, it was a sacred grove. Anyone intending worshippers harm wouldn’t be able to enter or send an attack into where the light touched. So it really could be anyone.”

“Except Filch,” Theo says.

“I still say it’s Mrs Norris,” says Ron. “Who names a cat Mrs Norris? She’s obviously—”

“And I still say,” Draco shoots back, “that no one would stay in their animagus form for years. That’s psychotic.”

Before they can start up their argument again, Blaise says, “We could just hit her with a Transfiguration spell. They don’t work the same on humans as they do on animals, even if the human’s pretending to be one. I nominate Hermione.”

And that settles that. 

They spend an unplanned night together in the Room of Requirements, no one directly stating that they’re unwilling to head their separate ways after whatever it was that they witnessed, but all thinking it nonetheless. They fall asleep in their circle under the picnic blanket on the floor with throw pillows to cushion their heads, with the fire burning low in the hearth that seems to grow in size. Right before they drift off, Draco murmurs, “Are you telling this to Tom?” and Harry answers, “No. He’s enough to worry about.”

And that settles that, too.

Charlie shows up for a week during midterm exams, intent on acquiring some sort of British-specific certification. “I can’t legally work with the Ridge until I have it,” he explains, after he appears at the London Zoo as Tom’s clocking out in order to steal him before he can Apparate home. They end up in a Muggle pub, where Charlie inexplicably pulled out the phrase he’s the driver, before ordering a heavy for himself and a soda water for Tom, like he’s some bratty kid. “I mean, I still am,” his friend says as they claim a high table near the back wall, “but I can’t have my name on any papers without the certs to show for it. Whole thing’s fucking pointless, it is. I can work with rescues from almost any other part of Europe just because I’m part of the programme, but Britain always does need to be special, doesn’t it?”

“To be fair,” says Tom, though he so rarely does want to be fair to the Ministry, “weren’t you the one who told me we have the highest number of endemic species outside of China or Japan or something?”

“Well, yes,” concedes Charlie, as the knot of UCL boys behind him cheer over something a rugger does on the screen above the bar. “Mate, I still can’t believe you went to China and never saw a water dragon.”

Tom shrugs. “It wasn’t for a lack of trying,” he says. “Can’t blame me for the Chinese government deciding the age of majority is eighteen. How long until you get the results?”

A full week, apparently, after the initial exam, which Charlie took this morning. He’ll need to hang around, because if he received lower than one percentile but higher than other, he’s eligible to retake it. “But that won’t be happening,” he says. “The questions were easy enough. A fair number I could answer just by being raised here. It’s really for foreign nationals. How’s your work coming?”

“Which one?” Tom answers. “Course work’s easy. And I can’t tell you about my practicals. I signed a confidentiality agreement.” 

“I know,” Charlie says. “Dad told me. He thinks it’s awfully irresponsible, assigning a student something that requires a confidentiality agreement, so I best not tell him about the five I just signed to work on the Ridge. I can say I’m working with him, sure, but anything we discover can’t come out til my supervisors publish.” 

As most students seeking a Defense Mastery are looking to be Aurors, Tom doubts he’s the only one who signed an agreement, but Arthur can be offended if he likes. It’s nice to have someone else acknowledge the situation is bullshit. “I hope the consequences aren’t too terrible,” he says. “Mine’s ‘standard.’ If I slip up, I drop into a coma.” 

Charlie shakes his head. “Aurors are mad,” he says. “Nah, I just get ‘blacklisted’ written across my cheek or something. But all this said, everyone’s well aware we only have Norbert because of you. And that you have about as much interest in our work as I do in Dad’s. If you decide you want to spend a fortnight or so at my flat at some point, no one’d complain. You know, before the end of June.” 

For a moment, Tom just works through the shameless double-speak before he says, “Molly talked to you.” Molly Apparated to Glasgow out of the blue about a week ago with a basket of food and a sudden need for a chinwag, all to ‘check in’ on him. This is, he assumes, because of his panic attack (the modern term, he finally learned, for interparoxysmal manifestations) this time last year, which is probably fair, but greatly unappreciated after seventy-two sleepless hours of failing to craft a convincing argument for why he thinks Professor Quirinius Quirrell is implicated in Tyler Owens’ murder. 

“Aye,” Charlie says, “though I can’t say she needed to. I’ve heard what working with Moody’s like—Dad thinks he’s a proper bastard for a reason, even if he’ll never outright admit it—and I doubt it’s anything you’re good with. I’d be rubbish at it, I know. There’s a reason I stuck with what I’m doing.”

“He’s really not that bad,” Tom says. “Maybe to other people, but he’s decided he likes me. Really, I’m—”

“If you say you’re all right, I’ll literally punch you.” Charlie sighs and sips his ale. “Be honest this time. How bad?”

Very honestly, Tom says, “I was worse in school,” though this doesn’t mean much. Both the Calming Draught and Wide Awake were designed so the user could function as normal, a feature Muggle drugs, he now knows, definitively lack. So unless someone knows to look, the average NEWT or OWL candidate is unlikely to be caught dosing themselves—potentially to death, as happened to Clarence Yaxley in Tom’s sixth year. He mostly isn’t using the Draught now, which, though the legal one, is also the worst of the two, and he’s parsing out the Wide Awake enough that can at least tell himself it’s not an addiction. 

Except, it is. Tom’s not an idiot, just in self-denial. 

The look Charlie sends his way indicates the other boy knows exactly what he isn’t saying, which isn’t comforting. “I won’t give you the talk about what will happen if anyone else realises what’s going on,” Charlie says, “but enough folk were against you taking in Harry that you shouldn’t prove them right.”

For a long, long moment, Tom stares at his friend, before he finally says, “Moody thinks Dumbledore’s…fucking with me?”

He would like to blame this admission on the Wide Awake in his system. That he’s currently on Wide Awake, though, is not something Charlie needs to know. 

“Repeat that?”

Tom does.

Charlie sets his half-empty glass on the table and slides off the stool. “We’re out,” he says. “You’re bringing us somewhere we can talk.” 

Together, they slip through the growing crowd of rugby fans, out the front door, and into the privacy of an alley, where they Apparate back to the Reptile House’s feeding rooms at the zoo. He charms the CCTV to loop itself and flicks on the light. “This is where Moody felt the need to tell me,” he says, as he transfigures the two folding chairs into something more comfortable. “Whole thing was a bit of a mess really. I’m a Parselmouth, by the way.”

Though Moody said not to advertise it, Charlie’s at least a little crazy, so Tom feels safe in the confession. True to form, after they get over the fact that Tom is not, according to the Gringotts blood test, in any way related to Salazar Slytherin so the old legends must be a lie, Charlie asks, “Is it just snakes? Or all reptiles?” 

“Mostly snakes,” Tom says, “though I can sometimes make out the iguanas griping about how much they hate the cold. Other lizards are hit or miss. But no, I’ve never even attempted to communicate with a dragon, so I can’t say if I can. Perhaps we can try it out when I spend that fortnight with you. A non-fiery one.”

“They’re all fiery, mate,” Charlie says, “but I’ll start you out with a nice one. Blimey, but this is wicked. What does this have to do with Moody and Dumbledore?”

“Moody found out that day,” says Tom, “but otherwise nothing. I just thought you’d be interested. Harry’s one, too, by the way. Ron knows.” 

“Could he understand Norbert?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” He was a little too concerned about whether Hagrid was going to get his cousin in trouble or killed. “But, you know Dumbledore better than I do, at least in the abstract. Is there any reason he’d like Harry in the dark about something that could place him in danger?”

Charlie sprawls out on the armchair and stares, narrow-eyed, at the dotted ceiling tiles, as if they might offer him an answer. “Can’t say I imagine he would,” he says eventually, turning his focus back on Tom, “but I also refuse to believe you’re actually the best option. There’s no way he didn’t know what you were up to when he must have at least some idea of everything that goes on in the castle. Too many portraits for anything else.” 

“Er, he did,” Tom says. Charlie’s eyebrows raise. “‘You must have a clear head. Always.’ That’s what he said. It’s true, of course—”

“What the fuck?” he cuts in, sitting upright. “Tom, you didn’t come to the immediate conclusion that you should be Harry’s guardian. And you know, he’s Dad’s second cousin. By Wixen standards, that’s practically siblings. No matter what I said, my parents would’ve figured something out if Dumbledore approached them, because even if you are first cousins—” 

“We’re not.” 

“What?”

This tell-all was a bad idea, but Tom still finds himself saying, “We have the same common ancestor. I’ve no idea what that actually makes us. That was the thirteenth century.”

Brow creasing, Charlie says, “But you look like you could be brothers.”

Tom laughs. “The worst part of that,” he says, “is my looks all come from my Muggle side. Actually, for that to be my only account access at Gringotts, maybe they were Peverells at some point, too.” That would track for Merope Gaunt, wouldn’t it? 

“How in Merlin’s name,” says Charlie, “did you take one look at him then and realise you were related?”

“Because we could both talk to the boa constrictor,” Tom says, motioning at the door leading to the main Reptile House, “and honestly, he looks like Mia. Euphemia. His gran.” He blinks and says aloud for the first time, “They were my best mates, Euphemia and Fleamont. Sometimes we slept together, and now I’m caring for their grandson, who’s only nine years younger than me, while the man who’s the Secret Keeper for my flat is possibly letting him walk into a dangerous situation blindfolded. It’s a lot. I’m doing the best I can.”

The time Charlie requires to process all of this is excessive, at least to Tom, who wishes he hadn’t said any of it, except the bit about Dumbledore being Secret Keeper to the flat. That’s important. To Tom’s relief, Charlie seems to decide this as well, because he asks, “Was the agreement that Harry would be free of his witch-burning relatives and in your tender care if Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper?” Tom nods. Charlie releases a long, low breath. “Okay. I don’t even know where to start with the rest of that, but try to explain how Moody came to that particular conclusion without triggering the agreement’s curse.”

With no small amount of difficulty, Tom muddles his way through the confidentiality agreement, until he’s able to tell Charlie the basics: the publicly reported failed robbery of Vault 713, Dumbledore recommending Tom’s inclusion for the informal investigation into a definitely not at all connected Hogwarts matter with Moody, except that they aren’t allowed to do anything with Hogwarts’ staff so it’s all pointless, that Tom might have discovered more than anyone anticipated through slightly unconventional means that prove Harry’s in danger, but now can’t so much as warn him about it. “Let’s just say,” he finishes, “that it feels as if Harry’s being, I don’t know. Pointed, I suppose, in the direction of whatever’s going on, largely through Hagrid, who doesn’t have the guile to set any sort of trap. Neither Moody nor I can figure out why we’ve been asked to investigate anything if we’re not allowed to conduct any part of it on campus. It’s clear I’m not being framed for anything, so Moody’s thought is that this is a bizarre, elaborate plot to keep me from offering any real assistance. And I was doing wonderfully, I’ll have you know, until Moody dropped this me on, so blame him.”

“I’m not blaming anyone else for your bad habit,” says Charlie, like the self-righteous Gryffindor he is, before going on, “Moody’s supposed to be a difficult bastard, true, but the way I figure, you don’t become Head Auror by letting your paranoia get the better of you, so I’m inclined to believe him, even if I can’t imagine why. We should tell my parents.”

Jolting upright, Tom says, “Why is that always your answer—”

“One, because I reckon Ron’s involving himself,” Charlie interrupts, “so it’s only fair they have some warning. And Draco, who Mum’s expecting will find his way to the Burrow this summer, with everything Ron’s been saying. But, two, Dad’s in the Ministry. Lucius Malfoy’s guaranteed his position’s a bit shite, but it’s good to have someone in the Ministry on your side when most hate Hogwarts, by and by. Not Dad, course, but that’s cause he can thank Dumbledore for the position’s got—it’s why he and Mum are so quick to agree with him. Merlin, I can’t say I ever thought he’d something like this, either, and don’t like the thought of it, given what he’s done for the family, but if it makes sense to me, it’ll make sense to them, which is better for Harry and Ron and the rest. Right?”

He’s right, but it rankles against the idea that Tom has everything under control. Which, he thinks, is complete bullshit anyway. He has exactly nothing under control, other than his impeccable marks. The world could be ending, and his marks would hardly suffer for it. 

“Not everything,” he says, “but fine. You have a point. And there’s a break between the end of my Mastery and BSc, and when Hogwarts ends. I’ll come to Romania for a week or so then. Thank you for offering.”

Obviously still unhappy, Charlie says, “It should be sooner.”

“Can’t risk it,” says Tom. “I’m less than two months from completing my Mastery. If Moody or anyone gets wind of certain ‘bad habits,’ I’ll destroy my future.”

Even with Legilimency, Tom knows his friend is thinking that he should have considered that before he brewed his first Draught last September. At least Charlie doesn’t recommend Tom stop before he makes it to Romania; even he’s willing to admit that won’t be doable. But that, he finds, would have preferable to what Charlie does instead, which is to ask, “You were really shagging both Harry’s grandparents?”

Tom’s done a remarkably good job of not thinking about this. If there was ever proof he needed to kick his bad habit, it’s probably that he let that slip. “Yes,” he says, focusing on how the dots on the ceiling form the Dionysian tragedy mask. “It’s easy to make poor decisions when the world is at war and even the thir—younger kids drink a mite too much to forget their friends and family are dying. Wixen fifties put Muggle sixties to shame, from what I’ve learned.”

From what he’s managed to gather, that was true here as well, but even if it wasn’t, Mr and Mrs Weasley would be too young to contradict the statement. Charlie’s frowning, though Tom can’t tell if he disapproves because of the implication of drunk sex with a couple, or something else entirely. “Well,” he says eventually, “I guess a secret like that deserves a secret in kind. I slept with Tonks once. While she was dating Joanna.”

“Oh, that’s much worse,” Tom says without remorse.

“I won’t deny it,” says Charlie. “Why do you think we stopped talking by the end of the year? I feel wretched still. But let’s get you home. Sleep off whatever you took. I’ll kip on your sofa or Harry’s bed or something.”

Tom’s never had a house guest above the age of eleven before, so despite the situation, feels strangely accomplished when he says tells Charlie not to worry, the bed will be just fine. 

As Harry and his (Gryffindor) friends start owling Tom complaints about revisions in earnest, he finally secures the evidence he needs to go to Moody and say, “It’s Quirrell.” 

“Quirrell,” Moody repeats. They’re in his back garden, soaking in a rare burst of April sunshine as they read through everything Sayre acquired from the Americans on Tyler Owens. As it happens, he was well on his way to becoming the most celebrated mediwizard in the whole of North America, so his murder has officially been classed as an assassination. “The stuttering nitwit. That Quirrell. Quirinus Quirrell, who used to teach Muggle Studies. Quirrell.”

It sounds unbelievable, but Tom’s certain. He tosses his evidence to Moody, who catches it effortlessly. “There hasn’t been vampiric activity in the Black Forest since the nineteenth century,” Tom says, “so the likelihood that his story about the encounter there is true is slim. There are also rumours he encountered a hag somewhere in Southeastern Europe. Never specified where, so I had Sayre ask her Albanian connections to check immigration. She was well tickled to do any sort of investigating of the faculty, so had no qualms about it. Came back with records of payment for a long distance portkey from Munich to Kukës, the main city in the Valbona Valley.”

Moody studies the receipt carefully before leaning back in his chair. “A judge and jury would call this evidence circumstantial.”

“I’m not showing it to a judge and jury,” says Tom. “I’m showing it to you.” 

With a nod of understanding, Moody says, “I’ll take it to Albus. See what he does.”

He takes it to Dumbledore. Tom remains in the garden and waits. 

There’s no reason, he tries to tell himself as the minutes tick by into an hour, that Dumbledore’s reaction will be unreasonable. Despite what Moody says, and despite what Tom told Charlie and Charlie told his parents, part of Tom still can’t accept that this isn’t all some misunderstanding. His Dumbledore never would have acted like this. No, he hadn’t treated Grindelwald’s letters seriously when Tom brought them to him, but they hadn’t seemed very significant, had they? Otherwise, he was the best mentor anyone could have asked for. Tom went to him as much, if not more, than Merrythought, because he never said things like perhaps you should slow down or there’s no need to take all twelve OWLs and you’re thirteen, Tom, for Morgana’s sake, you don’t need to push yourself to learn as if you plan to take on Grindelwald himself. If Tom wanted to know the answer to a question, Dumbledore usually answered, with the exception being the time he asked why Imperio hadn’t worked, but he found the answer to that in the library regardless. It’s completely understandable that a professor hadn’t wanted to sit down his fourteen-year-old student and explain that he accidentally just discovered the uniquely awful way he was conceived, so Tom can forgive the man his silence on the subject. So if Moody is right, then he’s not the only who’s different from this world’s Other Him, because he can’t imagine his Dumbledore ever keeping a student in the dark about something that might cause them harm. 

Obviously. Because Abraxas Malfoy was definitely wrong when, right before his attempt at drunken snogging in the broom cupboard, he said that the whole of Slytherin knew Tom was going to die if he really faced off Grindelwald like Dumbledore wanted, because he’d never be able to fire off a Killing Curse worth a damn. 

Shows what he knows, really, or knew. No, Tom’s Killing Curse wasn’t worth a damn, but Grindelwald figured out quick enough he was losing. Mia would have lived otherwise. Tom wouldn’t be here, most likely, otherwise. And Dumbledore, who burned alive, had very little to do with it. In the end, Tom’s unethical reversal of the Heart Resuscitation Charm was all his own decision. 

He shakes himself of the thought by the time Moody Apparates back, file in hand. Before Tom can ask, Moody says, “We made a copy. He’s giving it a week to gather stronger evidence, then taking it to the Ministry. Acting on his own or confronting Quirrell on school grounds with students there, while he’s working actively with You-Know-Who, is a recipe for disaster. He hasn’t done anything yet. Dumbledore thinks he’s waiting for the chaos of exams to act. It makes sense. I agree it’s a calculated risk to wait.” 

Though Tom doesn’t, he keeps his reservations to himself. There’s only so much he can argue for as a student, even if he’s only one for another few weeks. “I don’t like it,” he still says, just to get it on record. “Did he say anything about Harry?”

“Apparently a member of the staff is looking out for him,” says Moody dryly, “but you and I know how well that’s going. I made it clear that if anything happens, I’d kick up a fuss if you weren’t allowed on campus immediately. Not the best outcome, but it’s what I could get.” 

For not the first time, Tom thinks he’s fortunate to have Moody on his side. “Thank you,” he says. After a beat, he adds, “This isn’t convincing me to sign on with the Aurors, you know.”

“I’ve accepted the loss,” Moody says with grace. “You’re too good at it for the reason to just be that you want to teach. Don’t have the foggiest as to what, but I reckon there’s something you don’t want showing up on the screening. Can’t be that your name’s not your name, since you admitted that to me readily enough, so I figure it’s either something to do with your Wixen half, or you won’t pass one of soundness checks. Mental or physical.”

All of the above, Tom thinks. “That’s unfair,” he says. “You just listed everything.”

“Hogwarts will be lucky to have you, boy,” Moody says. “Just be sure to give Dumbledore hell.” 

On Mayday, Dumbledore abruptly leaves the castle. The whole school knows it. There are rumours abound about what could be the cause, but for Hermione and her friends, it’s a clear sign that whoever the thief is, they’ll make their move tonight. 

They don’t know who to report the theft to, because they’re still unsure who to trust, so they quickly cobble together a plan. The way they figure, the attempt won’t happen until nightfall, because there are fewer chances for the culprit to be stopped or noticed. Though there’s no way to have eyes on everyone (even if Draco and Pansy do think themselves into knots trying to figure out how to achieve just that), but between the eight of them, they’re more of them than enough to stalk the staff. Not all day, since that would be suspicious (as Blaise points out), but if they trade enough throughout, they might discover someone acting out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, two of them will be in the Room of Requirements with various Dark Detectors that no one’s actually certain how to use, but it does seem rather official and impressive. Hermione, though confused, does approve of the decision, as long as it’s not her responsibility.

The Gryffindor classes today are History of Magic, Herbology, and Double Transfiguration, so at least they can justifiably keep an eye on McGonagall and Sprout during those periods, though Hermione highly doubts either are the prospective thieves. Dumbledore and McGonagall are, as Hermione’s heard, the dearest of friends, while Sprout is just too jolly, too Hufflepuff, to ever betray anyone beyond a venus flytrap. But what of Flitwick? The Slytherins have Double Charms today, as well as History of Magic, albeit after lunch, not before. Flitwick must be calculating, as he’s Head of Ravenclaw, but he hides it. Why? Food for thought, as Mum would say. Still, Hermione’s instinct is that he’s not the one, either. Obviously it’s not Dumbledore, or this whole drama never would have come to pass, and Hagrid is unthinkable. It’s not that the man is stupid; he just lacks a single wile. 

Who’s left, then, are Snape and Quirrell. For Draco’s sake, she cannot believe that it’s Snape, but Quirrell makes even less sense, which means Harry’s suspicion that the culprit is something else entirely might be right. Unfortunately.

Still, they work with what they have. Between and after classes, Hermione starts with Flitwick, then switches with Draco to watch Snape, then McGonagall, and finally Sprout. With the exception of Snape kvetching about a gash on his leg that may have come from helping wrangle Norbert, everyone seemed perfectly ordinary. The others report the same when they regroup in the Room of Requirements, not one of their Common Rooms. Inevitably, someone will notice them missing, but no one will report it. Should anything go wrong, this will be a problem.

Which, Theo explains, is why he has his owl with him. “We don’t know how long this will all take,” he says, as he strokes his small bird’s neck with the back of his finger, “but I think three hours is three hours too long. Dumbledore’s still an old fool, I say, but of everyone, we know the thief isn’t him, so if you’re gone longer than midnight, I’ll send Spot off.” 

“You named your owl Spot?” Draco says, which doesn’t seem important. 

“She’s a spotted little owl!” Theo says. “It—”

“Is singularly uncreative,” Pansy finishes for him, as she removes a skein of red yarn from the end table beside the sofa. “I also had a thought, which is that waiting three hours is stupid. What if you’re injured right away? We’ve no idea what we’re up against, and we already know it makes no sense to all go down. But I just thought, well, if they have a cerberus, then why can’t we borrow something else from the Greeks?” She tosses the skein to Hermione, who fumbles, but catches it. “It’s Ariadne’s String. A String anyway. They’re as easy to come by as sneak-o-scopes these days. I asked the room for it. It only works for girls. If we each tie a side to one of our wrists, I’ll know you’re in trouble if you give it two hard tugs. Intention's important, too.” 

“And I’ll do the singing,” Daphne adds, “since I’m a faster runner than Blaise.” He rolls his eyes, but doesn’t argue the point. “We were discussing it, us and Draco, right, and we thought it makes the most sense to have someone singing long enough for the rest to make through the trap, then scarper back through the door to here before the gamekeeper’s pet wakes.” 

“While I’m on the lookout outside the door to the corridor,” says Blaise, “in case someone tries to enter after you. Under your cloak, preferably, Harry. McGonagall’s the floor up, and she’s just about the only professor who won’t treat it like I’m having her on if I try to get you help.” 

All of this, naturally, leaves the four Gryffindors to be the ones to descend into the hidden depths of the third floor corridor, but none of them offer a word of protest. It seems right; they started this together, so they should end it together. And what their friends are doing is also astoundingly, stupidly brave, which Hermione does hope they realise. The traits of Gryffindors and Slytherins, she’s begun to realise, are not quite so diametrically opposed as the school narrative would lead one to believe, which might be why it’s so hard for them to get along. 

But that’s a thought worth considering another night, not this one, when Harry’s saying, “Sounds good, all that. We can’t plan much on our end, not knowing what we’ll find. I wish we had more time, but why would a thief wait until the end of exams? Draco,” he adds, glancing at their friend, “if I die, tell Oliver I left the Seekerhood to you.”

Draco shoves Harry so hard he falls over, which is precisely what he deserves. “Git,” he says. “I think this is as good as we’re getting. Shall we take our places?”

There’s nothing else for it, so they do. As Pansy ties the string around Hermione’s wrist, a little shiver runs through her, not of fear, but excitement. Logically, she should be terrified, but, she supposes, she wouldn’t be a Gryffindor if she felt any other way. 

Chapter Text

Harry drops into the blackness below the trap door first. For a moment, he’s in freefall, but before his heart can leap much further than his throat, he lands on something soft. 

“It’s safe!” he whisper-shouts to the square of light above him, where he can still hear Daphne’s song drifting through the air. “There’s a net or something.”

Next comes Hermione, then Ron, then Draco. They have no time to say anything before the singing ends, Fluffy growls, and the trap door snaps shut, plunging them into darkness. 

Something dry and flaky slithers up Harry’s leg. Hermione gasps; Ron swears; Draco says, “The net’s alive, oh Merlin—” 

“Lumos,” Hermione says, raising her wand high enough to illuminate the net, which is not a net, but Devil’s Snare. 

Ron squeaks. 

“Death Eaters used to use this for assassinations,” Draco says, voice high enough and rising. “How—”

“Fire!” Harry says. “We need—”

“But we have no wood—”

“Hermione, you’re a witch—”

“Hyacintho ignis!”

Blue fire bursts from the end of her wand, striking the space between all their feet, so the vines wriggle and recoil, releasing them instantly, and dropping them several painful feet to a stone floor below. Ow ow ow, is all Harry can think as he forces himself to stand on shaking legs. His palms are bleeding. So is Draco’s temple. Neither Hermione nor Ron seem hurt, but they’re all dirty and dusty and drained of any usual colour from fear. Beneath their freckles, both Ron and Draco are very, very pale.

Tentatively, Hermione asks, “Are we all okay?” Yes, yes, everyone says, they’re not hurt, but thank you, Hermione, for keeping your head. “Good. Then…that way, I suppose.” She points her lit wand down to the right; to the left, there’s only a dead end. The string connecting her to Pansy glows an eerie red in the darkness, cutting off abruptly a few inches from her wrist.

“What did you mean,” Harry asks Draco, as they start their walk toward the next obstacle, “about the Death Eaters and the assassinations?”

“Just one of those things I wasn’t meant to hear,” he says. He still looks too pale. “It was how they ‘silenced’ people who made it into hospital instead of dying right away the first time.” 

Harry stops. “Draco,” he says, as something obvious clicks into place for the first time. “Will you be in trouble for helping us?” What he’s doing is different than holding open a door in a secret room or sending an owl; there’s no hiding it once it all comes out.

The others stop, too, though they don’t have time for this. “Probably,” Draco says. “At least with Father. But we’re all in trouble if we don’t hurry, so keep on, Potter.”

Though now even more anxious than he was already, Harry heeds the advice and resumes the rush down the corridor. It isn’t long until they reach a plain wooden door, which opens without resistance at Hermione’s touch. That it’s unlocked is not comforting; it either means the culprit is here already, or whatever is inside is so dangerous the professor who designed it decided a lock was unnecessary. 

What they find are—birds?

“Keys,” Ron says as the door slams shut behind them. Hermione tries it. Locked now, of course. “Bloody hell. Flitwick, you think?”

“It could be McGonagall,” Draco says, inching across the room toward the opposite door. The others follow. “Transfigured birds or somesuch.”

At the broomsticks in the centre, Harry stops, though the others continue, never taking their eyes from the keys-that-might-be-birds. As Hermione uselessly tries the Unlocking Charm, he says, “There are two. Why are there two?”

“Maybe it takes two people to catch the key,” Hermione says, clearly having come to the same conclusion as Harry. “It would be very smart if they only suspect one thief to create an obstacle that requires more than one person to complete. And it probably is McGonagall. This is all very Quidditch, and we know she’s rather obsessed.”

While that all sounds right, Harry has a niggling doubt that that it is. There’s something wrong here. Two brooms? Devil’s Snare? Devil’s Snare was their second unit in Herbology. Two brooms. Ron’s a flier, too, but of all Harry’s friends, the only official Quidditch players are him and Draco, so no one would necessarily know Ron has any real experience on a broomstick. A little voice in the back of Harry’s head that sounds a bit like Tom’s asks, If these are meant to stop an adult, why can a first year solve them? 

Maybe the rest get harder, he thinks as he and Draco, without consulting each other, each reach for a broom. Maybe the next one will be so hard it kills them. 

The keys attack the moment their hands wrap around the handles. They hop onto and take off, weaving around the flurry, until Harry spots the most obvious target. “There!” he calls, removing one hand to point. “Big, broken wing!”

Draco spots it instantly. He hurdles upward as Harry shoots after it in a horizontal drive, ignoring the keys nicking at his skin, until they chase theirs into a corner. Like a Seeker to a snitch, Draco lashes out and slams it into the wall, trapping it between his palm and the stone. “Get ready!” he shouts to their friends below, as he and Harry angle their brooms down. When they’re close enough, Draco passes it off to Ron, who jams it into the lock and forces it to turn. Before the door’s even fully open, he and Hermione run through, with Harry and Draco flying through behind them. 

The brooms lose their magic the moment they’re through the door, throwing them off, so land in a painful heap on the floor. Again. 

As Ron helps Harry to his feet and Hermione helps Draco, she says, “Look. Whoever’s after the Stone is already here.” 

On the floor a few yards away is a mountain troll, dead on the floor with its head bashed in and its brains leaking out across the cobbles. Harry nearly throws up the sight. Ron does throw up, which doesn’t help the room smell any nicer. “Whose is that?” he asks when he stops gagging. “Hagrid’s is Fluffy, so it can’t be his.”

“Must be Quirrell’s,” Draco says, “which makes no sense, if you think about Samhain, or Hagrid was wrong, and the Care of Magical Creatures professor was the last person to help. Could’ve gotten inspiration from then, I suppose. Where’s a third broom?” 

 A quick look around proves that the only broomsticks in the room are the two they flew in on. “How did the other thief get the key?” Harry asks.

“Could be loads of ways,” Ron answers, starting to creep along the edge of the room toward the opposite door in an effort to dodge the puddles of blood and other gross grey stuff. The rest of them follow his lead. “This bloke almost robbed Gringotts, right? Must be he has some knowledge of Curse Breaking. Bill could crack that thing with the keys without touching a broom easy.”

That’s not comforting. If these are meant to stop an adult—

Ron tries the opposite door. It’s locked, but opens with a whispered, “Alohomora!”

“Harry,” Draco whispers from behind him as they all slip through, “do you feel like something’s wrong?”

“Yes,” Harry whispers back. Maybe he wouldn’t, if he hadn’t spent the past year with Tom, who isn’t satisfied until he’s questioned everything. 

Before either of them can continue that thought, though, they enter the new room, and are stunned into silence. 

Harry’s never cared much about chess, either of the Wixen or Muggle variety, but he knows instinctively that the magic involved in creating the giant boards and pieces is more exceptional than anything they’ve seen so far. It’s McGonagall’s. He knows this too. With all the shattered stone bits scattered about, he guesses that it’s violent. Odds are, it’s not something that the average first year can beat. 

But Ron is not the average first year. Even Harry, who knows nothing at all about chess, understands that Ron is to chess what Harry is to Quidditch. 

“Wicked,” Ron says, grinning, and immediately takes charge. 

This is fine. Left to Harry alone, he would certainly, definitely be stopped here. Left to Harry and any other combination of his friends that did not include Ron, and they would certainly, definitely be stopped here. So then— no. That can’t be. Even if it was some bonkers test for Harry, why would some be designed with his friends in mind? Only Hermione has the Bluebell Flames spell mastered; Flickwick’s couldn’t have been solved without him and Draco; none of them alone could have handled the mountain troll or Fluffy; maybe the only student ever likely to outsmart McGonagall in chess would be Ron. And then there’s the question of how the thief is managing. What, can they fly without a broom? Are they better at chess than Ron?

The only possible answer is that they’re part of the faculty that designed one of the obstacles. Tom’s complained enough about academic hierarchies at St Andrews before that Harry wouldn’t be surprised if all the professors had casually confessed to each other how to pass their tasks, but left Hagrid out, because he’s staff. There’s probably no loophole in a troll or an evil plant, but there must be in the keys and the chess set. 

Harry’s still freaking out about this, just blindly following wherever Ron tells him to go, when his friend abruptly pulls him out his head by saying, “There’s nothing else for it. I’ll have to sacrifice myself.” 

“But you can’t!” Hermione says. “One hit from these, Ron, and you might die.” 

“I won’t,” Ron says, “but yeah, I’ll be injured. That’s what Pansy’s String is for, right?” 

“Ron,” Draco says, “if you’re thinking that this designed to capture, not kill, I doubt it’s taken in mind suicidal twelve-year-old boys.”

But it has, Harry thinks. It must have, because this is for Ron. “Tell us what we need to do,” Harry says, feeling as awful as he is sure. “Hermione, give Pansy the warning. Draco can start taking Ron back once we’re done. You’re probably the only one tall enough to get him out.” 

He’s the worst friend ever. He must be. But Hermione yanks the glowing string around her wrist twice, and Ron explains how Harry will check the king, and Draco sets his mouth in a look of determination he usually only wears before writing a letter to his parents. Even though they’re about to separate, they’re still a team. Harry doesn’t think he’s ever loved his friends more than he does in this moment. 

Ron’s body hits the ground with a thud and crunch that will haunt Harry’s nightmares for years. Blood seeps from his head to spill across the white stone tile. It’s viciously red. Though Harry’s instinct is to run to him to help, his feet carry him to the D7, where he stands in front of the king and says, “Checkmate.” 

With a clatter, the king’s sword strikes the floor. 

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Hermione says, when they all crowd around Ron’s unconscious body. He’s breathing evenly, but there’s just so much blood. “Head wounds do this. But he can’t be left here either.” 

“Harry’s right,” says Draco, already reaching down to shift Ron into a better position. “Help me get him on my back. Should be easier to carry him.” 

Though Draco’s still shorter than Ron, the height difference isn’t as bad as either of them and Harry or Hermione. Though it’s hard, they manage to get Ron’s arms over Draco’s shoulders. From there, Draco can do the rest, so he’s carrying Ron piggyback. Like this, he won’t be able to go much further than the chamber below the Devil’s Snare, but it’s better than waiting around with the living chess pieces. There’s no way of knowing how they’ll react to a person on the board, even if he is unconscious.

They separate, with Draco and Ron heading back toward the dead troll and Harry and Hermione toward the door to a darkened room. Fire blazes the moment they step over the threshold, burning in a line across both doorways. They jump, bumping into each other, but thankfully not into the table holding the neat line of seven potions and the one notecard. 

Snape’s. 

Hermione squeezes Harry’s hand as she reaches out for the card. “It’s a logic puzzle,” she says after skimming it once, “for which one bottle allows the drinker to move forward or back, respectively. Two are wine. Three are poison. There’s a riddle to explain—”

“That’s it,” he says, pointing to the smallest bottle. “That’s the one I need.” 

“You can’t know that,” she says, looking up from the paper. 

“Only one person is meant to go through,” he says. What he wants to say, but can’t, because he doesn’t know how to explain his reasoning, is that it must be the smallest bottle, because only he’s meant to go through. “All the rest are too big.”

After reading through the card a few more times, she says, “You’re right. It seems the large bottle will bring a person back.” That also makes sense. There’s probably enough in there for three people.

“Then you take that,” he says, turning to her. Her bun, which she’d piled on top of her head at the beginning of this, has started to slip sideways. “Catch up with Ron and Draco. I’ll go on ahead.” 

“I could wait,” she says. “The potion might replenish itself.”

“Or whoever’s in there could run through the fire again and attack you,” he says. “I’ll be all right. See if you can figure out a way to get past the Devil’s Snare and Fluffy. If anyone can, Hermione, it’s you.” 

She doesn’t deny it, but as they reach for their bottles, she surprises him by saying, “You’re a great wizard, Harry.” 

Despite the situation, he laughs. “No I’m not,” he says. “Not like you.” 

“You are,” she says. “I know I’m smarter than most first years, but it’s not about intelligence. It’s something the Hat said to me. Great might even be the wrong word. Or maybe it’s wizard that’s wrong. You’re a great person, Harry, is what it is.”

He doesn’t know about that, but she says it with such finality that he can’t think of arguing. “Thanks,” he says, before they hug, drink their potions, and go their separate ways. 

The first time Harry ever went to Diagon Alley, he met Professor Quirrell. It was in the Leaky Cauldron on the way out, because Tom wanted to introduce Harry to Diagon’s formal entrance. Harry was hungry, so Tom bought him a pasty and himself a coffee; it was while they waiting for the food that one of several random patrons who’d already introduced themselves dragged over a man in purple robes with an out-of-place turban on his head, and said, “This is Professor Quirrell, Harry. He’ll be teaching you Defense Against the Dark Arts this year.” 

By the time they made it home, Harry and Tom had already decided that the new Defense teacher was a bit daft. “But don’t worry,” Tom said cheerfully. “He could dumb as a dormouse for all it matters. You’ve already caught up on the standard second year curriculum.” 

That Quirrell, who was daft and had a stutter and bored his students to tears, should never have been able to stare Harry down from where he stands on a dais beside the Mirror of Erised, and say, “You’re far too curious to live, Potter.” He snaps. Robes spring out of nowhere to truss up Harry. It’s that sort of easy wandless magic he’s only ever seen from Tom. “Now wait, Potter. Quietly. I must figure out how one gets the Stone from the mirror—”

“Where’s your stutter?” Harry asks, just to keep him occupied. There aren’t a lot of ways he can do this; obviously Quirrell let in the troll, obviously Quirrell has been working against Dumbledore, obviously he’s intending to kill Harry, but for some reason, not yet. 

Without looking away from the mirror, Quirrell says, “It’s all been fake, clearly. I needed some way to excuse my extended sabbatical.”

Harry has no idea what a sabbatical is, and doesn’t think it’s worth asking. “How did you get past the keys?” he chess. “And the chess—”

Incredulous, his professor turns around. “My dear boy,” Quirrell says, “I’m trying to focus. If you really must know, we likely did the same thing. They simply reset, except my troll. Now quiet, or I’ll be forced to gag you.” Harry shuts his mouth as Quirrell returns his attention to the mirror. “Yes, I see myself holding the Stone, presenting it to my master. Oh, it would be just like Dumbledore to concoct some scheme like this. But how does one remove it?”

And then another voice says, “With the boy.”

Several thoughts fly through Harry’s head, all of which would give Molly a heart attack. The voice isn’t one he’s ever heard before, but it floods him with ice. 

“Who’s that?” he says, though he already knows. He’s always known, he thinks. He’s known this was coming ever since Tom sat him down and said, Dumbledore’s pretty well convinced Voldemort’s not gone for good.

Quirrell raises an eyebrow. “You mean you haven’t figured it out, Potter?”

“Voldemort,” he says. “Voldemort’s here somehow.”

And then the cold, high voice that sounds nothing like Tom’s says, “Let me see him.”

There is nothing Harry wants less in this world than to see Voldemort. Quirrell seems to agree, for all he tries to argue that his master is too weak, but Voldemort insists, so Quirrell…removes his turban?

It falls away in strips of fabric, so Quirrell’s head seems to shrink and shrink, becoming unbearably small. Though Harry tries to turn aside, wandless magic keeps him rooted in place. Silent. Unable to scream, he’s forced to watch as the last of the turban drops to the floor, revealing, instead of the back of a head, another face. Chalky white with red eyes and slits for a nose, it’s the most horrifying face Harry’s ever seen.

“Come, Harry,” says the snake-like face of Lord Voldemort. The ropes disappear. A force propels Harry forward, dragging him on the tips of his toes. “Fetch the Stone.”

Harry almost thinks to himself that he needs to lie, but then he not-thinks that if Tom, who’s only twenty, can steal a thought from a person’s head as instinctually as breathing, then Voldemort can do the same. Yes, in this moment, he needs to want the Stone more than anything, but also can’t think about how he needs or wants when he sees it, even though he will, because that’s the entire point, isn’t it?

So Harry does the first thing he can think of: distracts. 

“What happened to your face?” he says as he stumbles to a stop in front of the mirror. In it, he sees himself, all dusty and bloody. The scar on his forehead is startlingly white. His reflection winks at him, pulls a red stone from his pocket, and slips it back in. As a weight appears in Harry’s real one, he says, “You used to look like me.”

“The Stone, boy,” says Voldemort, but after just enough of a pause that Harry knows he caught him off guard. 

“I don’t have it,” Harry says, as he forces himself to picture what he saw last time: his parents in the glass, the rest of his biological family behind them. There are nights when the guilt of it still eats at him. Despite how terrified he is, he makes himself turn to look up into Voldemort’s bright red eyes. “We had the same nose,” he says, “and the same hair. And you were never this pale—”

“And how,” asks Voldemort, in the voice that is not at all like Tom’s, “are you so familiar with the face of my youth?”

Tom Riddle has exactly one photograph (that Harry knows of), which is located on the wall of Head Boys and Girls in the Trophy Room’s antechamber. Loudly picturing that and only that, Harry says, “Just happened to see it, Tom.” 

The reaction is what he expected—Voldemort, in rage, reaching out to grab him—but the result is a surprise—Quirrell screaming, peeling away, his hand smoking. 

Not giving himself time to think, Harry makes a run for the door. Quirrell, maybe by instinct, tries to grab him, but that only results in more screaming and blistering and smoking. Harry steps on his foot. Quirrell yelps. Voldemort’s shouting switches from “SEIZE HIM” to “KILL HIM,” which seems par for the course, and so frightening Harry stopped being scared. Again, Quirrell lunges for him; he dodges. When Quirrell tries for his wand, Harry extracts his and shouts, “Expelliarmus!”

The wand flies right into Harry’s hand. Quirrell stares at him like he committed murder. 

“Petrificus Totalus!”

Harry’s curse hits Quirrell, who seems to have slowed down from the pain, right in the chest. Unfortunately, at the last possible second, he also snaps his blistered fingers, and something hard and extraordinarily heavy slams Harry in the back of the head. 

When Harry wakes, it’s to Tom saying, “He’s coming home with me for the weekend.”

“That’s most irregular,” says Dumbledore. “That you were allowed to visit at all—”

“Should be standard, frankly,” Tom interrupts. Harry tries to open his eyes, but can’t quite on his first attempt. “I think if anyone’s allowed a short respite, it’s the boy who took out Voldemort’s host with a Full-Body Locking Curse.”

On Harry’s third try, he manages to open his eyes. Above him is the Hospital Wing’s vaulted ceiling. “Tom?” he says in a croak, turning his head. And then Tom is there, with his loose curls and the scattered freckles on his cheeks and his long nose and his odd-shade-of-brown eyes. 

“Hey, Harry,” he says, grinning at the sight of him, like he’s so, so happy to see him. “It’s good to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Harry doesn’t get a chance to answer; Madam Pomfrey swoops in and bustles him and Dumbledore out. 

After she checks over his aching head and declares him “fit enough” for visitors, she generously allows Dumbledore and Tom to re-enter. Harry has a sense an argument just took place, maybe about Tom being here, given the way he glares as he sits in the chair beside the cot. But Dumbledore just smiles. His eyes twinkle, brighter even the glittery foil on the many, many chocolate frogs surrounding Harry’s bed. 

“All gifts from your friends,” he says, indicating the offerings, “as well as some admirers, I imagine. What occurred between you, your friends, and Professor Quirrell is a secret, so as you can imagine, so the whole school knows.”

“My friends,” Harry says, thinking of all the blood on the chessboard. “Are they okay?”

“Oh quite,” says Dumbledore. “Madam Pomfrey had them cleared up last night, within the hour of the admittance of her Wing. They will wish to see you the moment they’re able. They’re all very worried.”

“But, sir,” Harry says. “How did you—and the Stone—”

“The Stone is quite safe,” Dumbledore says with another eye-twinkling smile. “I received Mr Nott’s owl as I was flying over Stirling and Apparated to assist, though I must say, you are doing very well on your own.”

Tom twitches, but doesn’t say anything. Still, even Harry understands he’s not happy. 

Though Dumbledore must as well, he ignores the tension, and continues, “You must have questions, I imagine.”

“Volde—I mean, You-Know—”

“Voldemort,” Dumbledore says. “Always use the proper names for things, Harry. I believe your cousin will have taught you that.” 

Uncomfortably, Harry nods, and says, “I was only thinking, sir, that Voldemort—how was he, you know. On the back of Professor Quirrell’s face?” 

Dumbledore starts to say he doesn’t know for certain, but—but Tom cuts in, “Soul Magic. The way the Killing Curse works is it severs the soul from the body. It’s permanent death. Logically, for him to become a wraith outwith a body, he had to figure out a way to detach the two while still alive. But a living soul needs a host, so without his own body, his became a possessing spirit. It’s unlikely Quirrell was the first. As he escaped the confines of Quirrell’s body when Dumbledore arrived, Harry, the man’s also unlikely to be his last.” 

Harry glances from Tom, who seems to be staring determinedly at his lap, to Dumbledore. For some reason, the Headmaster looks more disappointed than horrified. “That is a feasible answer,” he says, “but hopefully not one you need concern yourself about, Harry.” 

“There are other things I want to know, sir,” Harry says, twisting his fingers in the blankets. “If that’s all right. The truth, that is.” 

Though Dumbledore says that’s quite all right, it’s with Tom’s usual caveat: he may not be able to answer everything, but if so, he’ll say as much, not lie. 

“Why couldn’t Voldemort touch me?” And it was Voldemort. If Quirrell had just been Quirrell, Harry suspects, it would have been no different than anyone else. 

“Because of your mother,” Dumbledore answers. “She died to save you in an act of pure, selfless love, which Voldemort cannot understand. He’s unable, you see, so—”

“Voldemort can’t love? Why?”

“Oh no. It’s a rather fundamental component of who he is. A physiological and psychological incapability.”

Vaguely, Harry’s aware of Dumbledore saying something about selfless love leaving a mark, but the words don’t quite penetrate past the wall of but what about Tom?

There are other things Harry wants to know, but when Dumbledore asks if he has any other questions, he shakes his head. As he leaves, Harry turns to Tom, who meets his stare blankly. “Save it for when we’re home,” he says before Harry can start. “I’ll fetch us the port-key. Madam Pomfrey will probably let you have a few minutes with your friends.”

Though Harry thinks maybe he should say something, he stays silent as Tom stands from his chair and leaves. 

On the list of shit Tom never wanted to discuss with his eleven-year-old cousin, the topic of Merope fucking Gaunt ranked, perhaps, the highest. He really can’t believe that of everything to force his hand, it was Dumbledore. 

Harry sits on the sofa in the main room of their Glaswegian flat with an uninspiring sunset dying in the sky behind him. Even with the Calming Draught Madam Pomfrey so kindly supplied, Tom can’t quite manage to stay still, so has resorted to pacing. “It probably is true of the person you encounter,” he says, once Harry directly demands if Tom’s admittedly disastrous brain chemistry prohibits him from producing the right combination to experience love, “but I’ve told you before, we’re not the same.”

 “I know you said I had to wait,” Harry says, “but I just saw Voldemort’s face coming out of the back of my professor’s head, which can’t be nearly as bad, and it isn’t fair if I keep—”

“It’s not just about you, Harry,” Tom says, forcing himself to sit on the coffee table, so he and Harry are eye to eye. “It’s hard for me to talk about, which is why it would have been better if he hadn’t mentioned it at all, especially since I doubt it’s connected to anything at all. If one person sacrificing themselves for another was all it took, then the Killing Curse would be virtually useless. It’s more likely it has to do with destined wand cores or some nonsense—”

“Tom!”

Right. His mother. Tom takes a deep breath and grips the coffee table’s edge to stop himself from fidgeting. “I’m going to assume you received the talk in primary about reproduction,” he says. Harry’s eyes widen, which he takes as a yes. “Well, your parents loved each other very much, so everything was nice and neat there, but that’s not always the case. And sometimes the methods the party that wants the relationship—not necessarily a baby—use can have side effects for the baby that comes along as a result. My mother used something called the Imperius Curse, which you should learn about in your fourth year. You’ve probably heard about it by now, though. It’s the excuse the Malfoys used to stay out of Azkaban. The side effects are only detrimental to me, and manageable at that. But Dumbledore explained to me that here, Voldemort’s mother used a love potion. Apparently children born under that can’t feel empathy or love, something that tends to lead to anti-social behaviours. Back in the fifties, that would have been called a character disorder. That’s not me.” 

Harry’s eyes are still very wide. “I’m sorry,” he says, and leans forward to wrap his arms around Tom’s neck. Startled, Tom returns the embrace, though he can’t figure out why his cousin is apologising. “I should’ve—and he shouldn’t ’ve—and I think I’ve just been really scared—”

“That’s fine,” Tom says as Harry starts to cry. “You’re allowed to be scared. But you’re safe now. I’m not letting anything else happen to you.” There will be no more confidentiality agreements with Anti-Snitch Hexes, he decides, rubbing Harry’s back. If Voldemort or Dumbledore or whoever else does anything like this again, Tom will be there to help. He’ll be the first person who discovers how to Apparate onto Hogwarts grounds, if that’s what it takes.

Eventually, Harry cries the tears out, so they talk more about how the obstacles seemed to align far too closely with his and his friends’ various talents, and how he isn’t to worry about Tom’s concerns, because if something is happening at the school, Tom needs to know about it. 

In the morning, things are a little clearer. Tom makes Harry breakfast, then they spend a day in Glasgow doing various local things, before ending with takeaway from the Nepalese place down the street. On Sunday, he brings Harry to work, where all the other workers announce he’s adorable, and Tom has to sign a thousand waivers to let him play with the snakes. “Must run in the family,” says his boss, when their favourite boa coils around both of them in a loose hug. She licks Harry’s ear. “Is your dad secretly Steve Irwin or something?”

Tom has no idea who Steve Irwin is, but Harry must, because he says, “I thought he only liked crocodiles.” 

Which is how Tom gets stuck watching Top Ten Killer Snakes in the Wild with Steve Irwin with his Parselmouth cousin and a group of non-Parselmouth Muggle coworkers. It’s a wonderful documentary for anyone who doesn’t understand what the subjects are saying, he figures, but personally, he’d prefer to cover Harry’s ears and flee. This past week has ripped enough of the boy’s innocence away without him learning snakes’ mating habits.

But over all, it’s still a decent day, and a decent enough weekend. Tom hadn’t realised exactly how much he missed having Harry around, so it feels doubly hard letting him leave again that night. “Write whenever you want,” Tom reminds him when they hug goodbye. “In a fortnight or so, my answers won’t be immediate, but I will always answer.” 

“What’s happening in a fortnight?” Harry asks as he accepts the port-key, which is an ordinary Gryffindor scarf. 

“I’m visiting Charlie,” Tom says. “Won’t be there long.” 

Though Harry looks like he wants to say something else, he just nods. “All right,” he says. “Thanks for bringing me home. See you in June.” 

He disappears with a pop, leaving Tom alone in the empty flat. 

Tom is hopped up on too much Wide Awake when Narcissa swans into his and Molly’s We Hate Dumbledore afternoon tea party. Dressed all in shimmering silk with a fascinator affixed at the ideal angle to highlight both the complicated nature of her braid and her pointy face, she is as opposite the Weasley garden as one might expect. Without waiting for an invitation, she conjures herself a chair more comfortable than padded wrought iron ones Molly has to match her wrought iron table, and settles herself in for a conversation. 

“Molly,” Narcissa says, as she folds her arms, “my husband has disowned our son. As Mr Ryder here can barely handle his own charge alone, I assume Draco will find himself with you.” 

“Oh yes,” Molly says with her kindest smile. “Would you like some tea, Narcissa?” 

Narcissa acquiesces. Molly pours. Watching them is fascinating. Tom hasn’t seen anyone use a tea set so passive aggressively since Gran died. 

Both women sip. As Molly lowers her cup, she says, “Draco’s been stressed, the poor dear. I’ve heard quite a bit about it from my son. So this isn’t much of a shock, you understand. Are you here to ask me to pass the news along to him? Because you can surely do that yourself.”

 “My husband has that well enough in hand,” Narcissa says, her shoulders tensing, “and I’ll see he comes to his senses on the matter soon enough, but that will be impossible if you indoctrinate him as—”

“Narcissa,” Tom says, unwilling to hear anyone accuse Molly Weasley of indoctrination. “That’s awful rich, coming from you.” She turns her glare at him. Unperturbed, he goes on, “Your husband’s angry because Draco helped stop Voldemort—” Both women gasp. “Merlin! You are adults, ” he snaps, looking from one to the other. Their expressions are, somehow, identical. “It’s a silly nom de plume created by someone who thought they were clever, but really just waved about his worst fear for the world to see. Narcissa, do you seriously want your son working for a selfish git who goes around shooting the Killing Curse at babies and severing his soul so he could save himself but no one else from dying?”

The women stare at him. He sips his tasteless tea. Behind his right eye, a headache blooms. His heart palpitates. 

After a beat, Narcissa draws herself upright. “Our politics are our business,” she says, like she isn’t the one who started it. “It’s your fault, I suspect, that we’re in this situation—”

“No,” Tom says, as he sets his tea on the table. “It’s yours. Mostly because you’re not a terrible person, so you saw Harry and decided to help. Not for politics, but out of genuine concern.” He did check before he let her buy that owl. Her Occlumency shields are surprisingly weak, but it could be that she doesn’t consider him a threat. “If you then, I don’t know, didn’t expect me to answer the questions your son asked while I tutored him—for free, mind—that’s your own fault.”

“What questions could my son have asked to have led to this?” she asks, gesturing at the gently rolling hills and the clear blue sky. 

He rubs the side of his nose. “I don’t know,” he says. “This and that. Where did the belief about Wixen superiority come from, why is the term mudblood wrong, where does our magic come from.”

“You should have simply said it was wrong to discuss politics—”

“I wasn’t going to teach Harry that’s acceptable, even implicitly,” he says. “I cannot possibly believe you didn’t predict this was a potential outcome. You left your son with a couple of halfbloods.”  

With unprecedented transparency, Narcissa says, “That means nothing. There were always halfbloods within Death Eaters, worthy ones—”

“Ones who hate themselves, maybe,” he says, “which neither of us do. And it would be proper rubbish if Voldemort didn’t accept halfbloods, seeing as he is one.”

“He is? ” Molly says, as Narcissa says, “The Dark Lord is Heir of Slytherin, a pureblood—”

“He’s the child of the bloody Gaunts, the most incestuous purebloods of the lot, and a random Muggle from Cornwall.” 

“But how do you know that?” asks Molly, reminding Tom, once again, that he should not be allowed to speak when he’s taken enough Wide Awake for the blues and greens around him to appear quite that bright. 

“Well,” he says, to afford himself half a second to think, before he finishes, “he’s after Harry. I did my research. Your parents, Narcissa. Druella and who? No, doesn’t matter. Either of them alive?”

 Clearly surprised, Narcissa says, “My father is—Cygnus Black, he is, and still holding on, just barely, you know, but why in—”

“Ask him,” Tom says. “Ask ‘have you ever known someone related to the Gaunts, Father?’ Might make you reconsider—” 

“None of this matters,” she says, waving her hand. “Listen, we’re facing inquiries from the parents of his friends. Accusations that he’s begun some sort of rebellion amongst them—”

Alarmed, he says, “Will you be all right?”

She stops. Blinks at him. “Yes,” she says, before sneaking a glance at Molly, who’s calmly letting the exchange play out. “As my husband disowned Draco, it removes him from the household.” 

Subsequently, she doesn’t say, both absolving them of blame for his actions and placing him somewhere that he might still be protected. 

“We’ll take good care of him,” Molly says finally. “Now, you are his mother. I won’t stop you coming round to see him. But if he doesn’t want to see you or your husband, I expect you to respect that. I’ll not have that boy more upset than he already will be.” 

Narcissa nods. “I understand,” she says. “When I can, I’ll have money transferred into your account. It may take some time, but my son will have everything new for Hogwarts.” 

“And where will that money come from?” Molly asks. “The account of the husband who disowned your son?”

“No,” Narcissa answers through grit teeth, “but you’ll have the money. In exchange—”

“I’ll take care of your son as my own?”

“—you will not train him to see Albus Dumbledore as this paragon of virtue—”

Tom laughs. Narcissa cuts herself off, looking from him to Molly, who says, “Narcissa, dear, I can promise you this: there will be none of that.” 

“But you’re Molly Weasley,” Narcissa says as Tom’s laughter subsides. “You and Arthur are two of Dumbledore’s most avid supporters.” 

“Yes, well,” Molly says, nodding as if to herself. “Circumstances change.”

“Voldemort’s still the worst,” adds Tom, as Narcissa very clearly tries to get a handle on the change in conversation. “I mean, Gellert Grindelwald was a bastard, but at least he wasn’t a hypocrite. But anyway, way I reckon, Dumbledore knew it was Voldemort after the Philosopher’s Stone all along, and for some ungodly fucking reason, set up my cousin, Hermione, and your sons to stop it. So don’t worry, Narcissa, there will be a fair amount of anti-blood purist rhetoric passed around between the households, but very little support for Dumbledore.”

When Narcissa reaches for the pot to pour herself more tea, it’s clear something shifted. “Why would Dumbledore set up Harry?” she says, all previous animosity dissipated into the violently blue sky. 

“We’ve no idea,” says Molly, pouring both herself and Tom more tea as well, because she’s convinced it will help him feel himself again. He knew he never should have let Charlie tell her about his bad habits. “But there was Quidditch for two and a chess set. Ron could beat most adults at chess.” 

“Is there proof?” Narcissa asks. 

“Only circumstantial,” he answers, “and even that’s locked behind an Anti-Snitch Hex.”

“Oh, your little quest with Mad-Eye Moody,” she says, and blows on her tea. “Congratulations, by the way. Your graduation is next week, isn’t it? Top of your class again, I hear. Full honours. Very impressive. What do you plan to do with the Mastery?”

He catches a flash of a thought from her, just the word Auror, but it’s enough to know this is meant as some sort of test. “Same as I always planned,” he says. “Well, with a minor adjustment. I’ll finish my Muggle BSc, complete my Muggle PhD in three years, and end all that in enough time to accept the inevitably free Defense tenure at Hogwarts.” 

“That will be the boys’ sixth year?” she says. He nods. Though he’ll turn twenty-four midway through their fifth, it’s not as if he can accept a position in the middle of the year. “I’ll tell Severus to keep a closer watch—on all of them. In the meantime.”

 “I’d be careful with that,” he says. “Snape did the last room.”

Narcissa sets down her tea. “Excuse me?”

Between Tom and Molly, they explain what the boys told them, either through letters or in person. At the end, he says, “So if Harry’s right, and the Devil’s Snare was Hermione’s, the chess set Ron’s, and then the keys and the trolls required more than one person, then Snape’s would have been for—”

“Draco,” Narcissa says flatly. “You’ve given me much to think about. I’ll return when I can. It may be wise for us to speak again.” 

“But probably not with your husband,” Molly says as Narcissa stands. 

Something passes between the two of them, where he catches Narcissa’s nauseating guilt and Molly’s determination that Lucius Malfoy will not be allowed to make his son feel inadequate. Still, Narcissa does not try to say her husband deserves an invitation to future tea parties. Instead, right before she Apparates away, she glances down at Tom and says, “Should…Voldemort rise again, it may be prudent of him to be very, very afraid of you, I think. It won’t be long before Dumbledore realises the same about himself. You best take care, Thomas Ryder. It would be a shame for you to die.” 

On the day that Harry returns to Hogwarts, he finds Draco red-eyed from tears, and all his Slytherin friends and every Gryffindor first year piled in his dormitory. Weirdly, they’re also all under a blanket fort. 

He crawls in. “What’s going on?” he asks. 

“Father disowned me,” Draco says, as Lavender answers, “None of the fussy purebloods have ever been in a blanket fort,” which implies she and Ron have. 

Harry hasn’t, but chooses to hug Draco instead of admitting it. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“Mother wrote,” his friend says miserably, “and Arthur. Already knew it’d happen, I suppose, but I got everyone in trouble.”

For a moment, Harry doesn’t understand. Then he realises Daphne’s clearly been crying, too. “How?” he says, releasing Draco. “I thought you all—”

“Spot,” says Theo, just as miserably. “Everyone knows Spot. Flint saw him. Dumbledore showed up with Spot. Wasn’t hard to figure out the rest, even for someone with the observational skills of a faulty bludger.” 

“They’ve been staying with us,” says Dean in an undertone. “Just until things blow over.”

Though Harry knew there would be consequences for his friends if they were found out, he hadn’t expected it to be this bad. “I’m sorry,” he says, but as an apology, not a condolence. 

“None of the rest of us have been disowned,” says Blaise, the most nonchalant of the lot, “and my mother doesn’t care. And the House will stop caring by exams, especially since we got forty points each. Bad it started, well. A conflict, let’s say. Yeah. A conflict in the House.” 

“Seems not everyone in Slytherin agrees with their parents,” Parvati says. She and Lavender must be loving this; they do appreciate drama. 

“Probably doesn’t help that Pansy stirred the pot, so she did,” adds Seamus, beaming at the girl. 

With the faintest blush, she says, “I borrowed the material Hermione and I found in the library and distributed it. Daph helped.”

“Mother sent me a howler, ” Daphne says, before bursting into fresh tears. “It was almost worse than the unicorn.”

“A howler’s a letter that yells at you,” Ron explains for Harry’s benefit. “Automatically raises its voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. Brutal stuff.”

“‘One toe out of line,’” Daphne says, voice choked. “I’ve not been staying here. If my parents even knew I was sneaking out—I don’t have a Mr and Mrs Weasley—”

“I told you,” Hermione says, laying her hand over the other girl’s. “I’d talk to my parents. With it only being summers, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem. There’d be no worry about school enrollment.”

Harry’s so out of his depth his head spins. If only he could rewind and return to the back room of the Reptile House, where he cuddled with the boa and watched Steve Irwin talk about killer snakes, who were themselves talking about things that mortified Tom. “Is there anything we can do?” he says. 

“Don’t write to us over the summer,” Theo says. “Well, except Blaise. Dear Mama will probably think it’s quaint or something, won’t she?” 

“More like she won’t notice,” Blaise says, sighing. “She’s found her next husband.”

Everyone knows what that means, though it’s another thing that Is Not Mentioned. “All right,” Harry says, thinking of how unbearably sad it is that he and his friends aren’t allowed to actually be friends with their other friends. Somehow, the fact that the other Gryffindor first years, most of whom he considers little more than acquaintances, have banded together to help, makes it all the more depressing.

“They’ll come around,” Draco says suddenly, as determined as he was on McGonagall’s chess board. His hands are balled into fists on his crossed knees. “Maybe not everyone, and maybe not the upperclassman, but if we do the same thing Pansy and Daph did but with here, then why shouldn’t people realise that it’s both that the Ministry is the problem and blood status doesn’t matter? If all of us can put that together, then other people can do it, too.” 

Tom would probably call that idealistic. It’s so incredibly idealistic, actually, that Harry sort of wants to hug him again, but then Hermione does, so he doesn’t think he also should. Ron and Dean clap; Lavender and Parvarti seem ready to swoon from the expected drama; none of the Slytherin know how to take it. Then Seamus says, “Guess I shouldn’t’ve blown up that last potion in Crabbe’s face on purpose,” and derails the conversation.

Later, after the girls retreat to their dormitory with Pansy, and Daphne returns to her Common Room, Theo and Blaise fall asleep in Harry’s bed, while Ron, who kicks, takes his own, like Seamus and Dean, and Harry shares with Draco. They lie back to back, so Harry stares at the closed curtains. By morning, neither mentions that the other hadn’t slept a wink, either. It’s just one of things, he knows, that will slip with the rest into silence. 

Two weeks later, Tom finishes his BSc’s term, then spends three days sleeping on a conjured mattress on Charlie’s floor. 

The fourth day is a Saturday, so Charlie has off. They start the morning drinking coffee in front of his open kitchen window, though Tom does not accept the offered toast. “I feel like I’m dying,” he says, tragically not exaggerating, as he rubs his temples. “How is this worse than when I came off it at school?”

“I read up on that,” says Charlie, stirring a little more milk into his already pale coffee. “Guess you weren’t doing much of the Draught by the end, were you?”

“Madam Pomfrey gave me some when I went to get Harry,” Tom says, to Charlie’s horror, “but otherwise no. Please don’t tell me why that matters. I’d rather not know.” 

Thankfully, Charlie accepts that. “This is it,” he says. “Never again, you hear?”

“Honestly, Charlie,” Tom says dully, “I can’t promise that.” 

After a moment, his friend accepts that, too. “We’re connecting mirrors,” he says. “You feel like you want to be stupid, you contact me.”

Tom sips his coffee and struggles against lapsing into the stress-based suggestibility his mother forced upon him before he was born. “I can’t do that to you,” he says as he lowers the mug to the table. “That’s fair. No, don’t argue. I can promise I’ll never let it get this bad again. I won’t do that to Harry.” 

“You let it get this bad this time,” Charlie points out. Logically.

“You realise I didn’t just decide to start in our seventh year, right?” There’s no way Charlie hasn’t figured that out already. “I still took my OWLs. That first time, when I was fifteen, I don’t think I even understood what it was. Not really. But Mia and Flea did, and they helped, and then I was in the place I associate with them forty years in the future without them—still have no idea how I got myself off, honestly, other than I knew I should—and everything was just fine, mostly, until I found out the person here who’s the reason I’m alive fucked me and trapped me, so my only support was an ill-tempered ex-Auror. But none of that is happening again, so this won’t happen again.” 

“You better be telling the truth,” Charlie says, disgruntled and not caring if Tom sees it. “It’s easy to kill yourself on this.”

Yes, but hasn’t he always known that? It was common knowledge. Presumably, it still is. But it’s swapped around Ravenclaw as a study aid anyway. Death by something he associated with being so acceptable never felt real. “I won’t do that to Harry,” he says again. “He already deserves a better guardian. The last thing he needs is another dead one.” 

“Not your fault either of you ended up with this,” Charlie says. “As long as you aren’t stupid, you’ll be at least as all right a guardian to Harry as I am to Besty. That’s the Hungarian Horntail. Still want to try to talk to her?”

“Definitely not today,” Tom says, “but when I can stay awake for more than a couple hours, why not?”

Charlie grins. “Knew I kept you around for a reason,” he says. “Wish you’d told me you were a Parselmouth earlier, though, mate. I’d’ve loved to have known what the snakes on the grounds were saving.”

“Well the few people who knew were pretty clear I shouldn’t air that.”

Shrugging, Charlie says, “Maybe to the average Wix. But I’m better. I see potential. Ever if you were Slytherin’s Heir, whatever. Man’s been dead for like a thousand years. You’re the bloke who doesn’t shut up about how pens are better than quills.”

“And I’m right,” Tom says, “which you’d know if you ever bothered to try one.”

“I’ll stick with my Forever Ink Quills, thanks,” says Charlie, which is ridiculous. They’re just knock off pens anyway. “Quills are classic.”

Tom shakes his head. “How are Arthur’s son?”

“I’m a rebel,” his friend says. Tom sighs in exasperation. “Anyway, I’m out for a wander. Want to see the town? It’s Romanian Hogsmeade. I’ll Apparate you back if you’re tired.”

Though Tom would like to say he’s an adult that doesn’t need his naptime, he still has the shakes, proving he has time yet before he’s free of Wide Awake’s influence. But he feels fine for the moment, so he accepts Charlie’s arm, and side-alongs to main street. 

At Platform 9 ¾, Draco returns to the Burrow with the Weasleys, Hermione heads home to Dorset with her parents, and Harry returns to Glasgow with Tom. None of the four of them acknowledge their Slytherin friends, who don’t acknowledge them, either.

“You don’t need to be so discouraged,” Tom says, as he chops mushrooms for dinner. Though it’s getting on in the day, the night still has a while before drawing in, so the sunshine highlights the kitchen in gold. “Slytherin accepted them back. You said people were already congratulating each other for tying for the House Cup. I mean, considering you’re a bunch of first years—sorry, second— I say your social revolution’s coming along swimmingly. Just give it time for things to settle.”

Objectively, Harry knows his cousin isn’t wrong, but the weirdness happening in Hogwarts’ halls the last few weeks of term hasn’t translated to summer. The day the Gryffindor Quidditch team soundly thrashed Ravenclaw in the final match, the stands were a bit mad, because there were Gryffindors sitting with Slytherins and Slytherins sitting with Gryffindors, apparently, with people refusing to move no matter what the classmates around them said. For the most part, all the professors seemed thrilled, and there were rumours that the Bloody Baron and Nearly-Headless Nick came to a formal truce, but the more their Houses have cooperated, the more the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs have closed ranks or something, like they think Gryffindor and Slytherin are plotting. 

But Daphne sat with the Slytherins at Quidditch. Blaise is still the only one they’re allowed to write to during summer hols. And the second the train alighted at the platform, Gryffindors and Slytherins drifted apart, as if they’d never even met. 

“I didn’t mean to start anything,” says Harry who is, in fact, discouraged. “I mean, Hermione and Pansy did, I guess, and the rest of us’ve tagged along, but still. All we wanted was to hang out with each other.” 

His cousin scrapes the mushrooms into the frying pan. They sizzle. “I don’t have much experience with social revolutions myself,” he says, “but I do imagine that’s how they tend to start. Well, depending on the type, I suppose. The Labour Party didn’t exactly begin its—”

“Tom.” 

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “My point is, inter-House unity apparently went to the dogs in the fifties, and no matter how much Theodore Nott’s dying to understand why you boys are so obsessed with footie, that’s not going to change overnight. Slytherin is really the main obstacle. It’s not their fault, necessarily, but the Common Room’s been a petri dish for churning out baby members of the blood purist supremacy cult since, well. The fifties.”

Harry nods. Over the past few weeks, he saw that, even if he still doesn’t entirely understand what his cousin means. It was one thing to have Draco’s old friends decide the bullying had gotten old, and maybe they should reconsider what they were taught when they were younger, because four people aren’t that many. But Blaise did a count; it’s about a third who are arguing that if they’ve always been told the Ministry is corrupt, why is it so hard to believe they’d withhold information and create fake divisions so no one could ever change anything. It’s different with Gryffindors, because it really just proved that the average opinion around the Common Room is right, but also means The Authority is wrong, which, Harry quickly learned, is maybe his House’s favourite thing ever. 

Mostly, he doesn’t care about any of it. It could be that he’s too young. Really, though, at the moment, he just wants his friends to be allowed to be friends. And maybe to never ever fight Voldemort again, too. 

He’s still having nightmares, something his friends can probably guess at, though they haven’t discussed for certain. They’re never exactly like what happened. Sometimes, it’s Harry touching Quirrell’s human face, so he’s burning and screaming and dying at the touch, and sometimes it’s Voldemort saying that if Lily Potter had only stepped aside, she would have lived. The dreams are so vivid. They make him think of his cousin drawing brightly-coloured lines and dots in the air and saying things like, time is a lake, not a river, and there are ‘crossroads’ decisions in life, where splinters are created. They make him wonder: what decision was it that let Professor Quirrell live, are these dreams peeks into what’s happening somewhere else, how could his mother have lived if she stepped aside to let Voldemort kill Harry when he was just collateral damage.  

There are no real answers to the first two, but there is for the third: that the point all along was just to kill Harry.

Tom sets two bowls of mushroom pasta down. “We’ll have something better tomorrow to celebrate your marks,” he says, “but eat. You’ve had a long day.”

“Did you do anything for graduating?” Harry knew that Tom completed his Mastery, but only learned for certain that he graduated with a slew of fancy titles because Molly told Ron. 

“I went to Romania,” Tom says as he twirls his fork around in the pasta. Harry eats a forkful. It’s delicious. Sadly, they almost never have pasta at Hogwarts. “We can talk to dragons, I learned. Well, as long as they’re closely related to snakes, Iguania, or Anguimorpha.”

“But I couldn’t understand Norbert,” Harry says, offended. He’d like to talk to a dragon. 

“Ridgebacks are closer to Eolacertidae,” Tom says. “Extinct relatives of the Lacertidae, our modern viviparous lizard. Snakes, iguanas, or Anguimorpha are all part of the Taxiofera clade. We’re not speaking to snakes, it seems—though not all of them are actually venomous. What actually connects them, I don’t know, but whyever we can talk to them exists on a molecular level, not just a magical one.”

Harry swallows a piece of disappointing broccoli, which has to eat because he’s a “growing boy,” but still doesn’t like. “Did you decide to study zoology,” he asks, “because you wanted a Muggle explanation for Parseltongue?”

With a roll of one shoulder, Tom says, “Not particularly. I wanted something interesting that wouldn’t require too much additional study while I also caught up on Muggle history and culture. The rest has just been unintended. But it does make a certain amount of sense. Magic can do so much so effortlessly that the explanation of ‘well, it’s magic’ tends to be enough.”

“Do you think Muggles and Wix could ever get along?” 

“Individually, yes,” he says, “but large-scale, no. Not for the usual argument that Muggles would want magic to solve all their problems, but because if governments merged, it would really only take one major war for someone to decide to imbue the atom bomb with a modified Killing Curse and destroy the world. Wow, sorry, that was bleak.” 

“It’s all right,” Harry says, even though to say the statement was bleak would be an understatement. “And I think you’re right and all. Just sucks, I guess, that we can’t have the good from both.” Maybe if they could, his friends’ parents, including the Malfoys, would accept that their children aren’t doing anything wrong by spending time with Hermione. 

Again, Tom shrugs. “That’s what it means to be like us, Harry,” he says. “Muggle-raised Wix. We can choose where we belong, but not without sacrificing something in return. Purebloods and Muggles In the Know won’t understand that. Would you like to go by the Burrow while I’m at work tomorrow? Molly’s also invited Hermione. Thinks it might help Draco adjust to, well.”

“Yes!” Harry says. There was never a point in school where he and his friends grew sick of each other. “Can I come with you to the zoo again?”

Sighing, Tom says, “We’ve no choice. I’ve been ordered to bring you back. I reckon my boss is determined to make a zoologist out of you yet.”

“But that means lab reports,” says Harry, who’s seen of Tom’s to last him a lifetime. “Hey, do you have any pictures from Italy?” 

“Yeah, Professor Morrison sent them,” Tom says, standing, though his bowl of pasta is still mysteriously, mostly full. “I’ll fetch them.”

There’s no need for him to physically fetch them, unless it’s all some excuse to remove his pasta to the counter—though why he’d do that, Harry doesn’t know. When he returns, he’s holding an envelope with T R written on front. “Ignore the Christmas Day ones,” he says as he extracts a stack of photos. “Even the professors were nursing their aching heads.”

They shift through the picture as Harry finishes eating, as Tom explains this or that, in all those fancy academic terms only other academically-inclined adults understand (what the hell is morphology?). But it’s nice. It’s normal. For a time, at least, it’s just Harry and Tom on an ordinary Saturday evening, being their ordinary self.

For the moment, that’s enough.