Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Categories:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2025-03-07
Words:
768
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
13
Kudos:
88
Bookmarks:
11
Hits:
876

where silence grows

Summary:

Harry Potter was never quiet. Even when he wasn’t speaking, he filled every space he stepped into, an impossible thing to ignore. But now, there’s only silence. The world is still, wrong in a way Tom refuses to name.

But it’s fine.

Harry will come back.

Any moment now.

…Any moment now.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

 

 

There was a time when silence had been a rare thing in Tom’s life.

Noise, of course, had always followed him. The chatter of children he had never quite fit in with. The rustle of papers and quills as he climbed to the top of his classes. The whispers of his followers, eager and unctuous, thick as honey. The sound of power—his power—sinking into the bones of the world, reshaping it in his image.

Harry had changed all that.

Harry had been many things, but quiet was never one of them. Even in stillness, he had a presence, an unspoken weight in a room, like a candle that flickered but never went out. He was the crackle of a hearth fire on a cold night, the hum of magic under fingertips, the breath between words in a story too good to end. Even when he wasn’t speaking, he was there, pressing against the edges of Tom’s mind like an ink stain that refused to fade.

Now, there was only silence.

Tom found himself waiting for it to break.

Days passed. Or perhaps weeks. Time had never felt real to him, but now it was worse. The hours stretched and collapsed unpredictably, like a dream half-remembered upon waking. He would enter a room and forget why he had come. He would find himself staring at nothing, at the way dust floated in the afternoon light, at the way his own fingers curled against the armrest of his chair, at the empty space across from him.

Waiting.

It was absurd. He was not waiting. He had never waited for anyone in his life.

But then the silence would press in, and he would realize—he was.

The castle was quieter now. That should have been a victory. He had shaped this world with his own hands, bent it to his will, and now there was no one left to challenge him. No defiant laughter in the corridors, no soft footfalls in the study, no infuriating, persistent presence pushing back against him.

No green eyes meeting his across a room, sharp and alive, full of something unnamed.

Tom had never been one for sentiment.

But still, he found himself in the places where Harry had been.

In the greenhouse, where Harry had once trailed his fingers over the petals of a bloom Tom had gifted him, calling it uncharacteristically romantic.

In the dueling hall, where they had fought, circling each other like twin storms, where Harry had grinned even as he bled.

In the library, where books still lay open as if waiting to be read, one of them left on the last page he had turned.

The ink had faded slightly. The dust had gathered in the crease of the spine.

Harry had always had a terrible habit of leaving things unfinished.

Tom pressed his fingers against the pages and traced the words, but they meant nothing.

The silence did not break.

The absurdity of it gnawed at him. How could something so loud be gone? Harry had never been the kind of thing to disappear quietly.

It was a mistake, surely. An illusion. A trick of the mind.

He could almost hear it—his voice, wry and unbothered, calling him dramatic.

Tom’s throat felt tight.

It was in the small things, too.

A single teacup in the cupboard when there should have been two.

A pair of gloves tucked in a drawer, untouched.

A smudge of ink on the edge of the desk that should have been wiped away long ago.

A stray owl landing on the windowsill, looking expectant, waiting for a hand that would not reach out to it.

The silence did not break.

The world did not shift.

Tom had conquered many things. Life, death, fear, fate.

But he could not conquer the empty space where Harry had been.

And he could not quite bring himself to speak the words that would make it real.

So he did what he always did.

He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

For something that would never come.

For green eyes that would never meet his again.

For the silence to break.

But it never did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you realize that you’re waiting,
not for a voice, but for an echo—
for footsteps that will never fall,
for a door that will never open.

When you realize that time moves forward,
but you are standing still,
caught between memory and denial,
between was and could have been.

When you realize that silence has weight,
that absence has shape,
that love, once lost,
does not return—

And yet, you wait.

 

 

Notes:

What do you think happened to Harry? I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Thanks for reading!! :))