A/N: This is what happens after ice cream at 11:00 pm. Enjoy.
"Got one for you, Tom," Avery said, grinning.
"What?" Tom didn't deign to look up from his book. They had been coming up with anagrams for each other, and naturally he didn't need one for himself; he already had devised the most perfect-sounding anagram of all, a name all wizards would come to fear. He just needed an event before he made it public with his friends, if they could be called thusly.
"Immortal Odd Lover." Avery snickered, and exchanged high-fives with the other Slytherin boys in the room.
Tom wasn't paying attention. "Excellent. Really fits me. You're a genius." His voice dripped sarcasm.
Avery prodded him in the side. "Tom. You weren't listening. So whose lover are you?"
Tom looked up. "What?"
"I said, whose lover are you?" Avery persisted. "You said the name fits you. So who is it?"
Tom frowned in confusion, something he was not used to feeling often. "What was the anagram again?"
"Immortal Odd Lover," the boys chorused, this time making no attempt to mask their snickers and smarmy expressions.
"Oh." Tom shrugged. "I'm odd, so I haven't found anyone suitable to my... odd tastes."
"You know, odd is a synonym for 'queer,'" Lestrange pointed out. "Just saying."
Tom picked up his book again. "I'm perfectly content being an immortal odd lover." He returned to reading as the boys fell to mental stagnation, their best anagram creator currently engrossed in something that resembled an encyclopedia. It didn't help that the teasing didn't phase him. How often was that the case with a fifth year among sixth and seventh years? Then again, Tom wasn't a usual case.
"Tom," Lestrange said, trying to revive the joke, "the next person who walks in here is the person, all right?"
"Mmmmfff." Riddle made a dismissive noise without looking up. Minerva McGonagall, Gryffindor prefect and class bitch, walked into the library.
"Looks like it's McGonagall," Nott smirked, frowning quickly when he saw Tom glance up, look in her direction, and back at his book, unfazed. "Tom? Did you hear me?"
"Yes, and I consider myself lucky." Riddle closed the book, a finger holding his place, voice loaded in sarcasm. "Happy now?". And he returned to reading, leaving his friends stunned into silence. "But I think you need to leave the anagrams to me. You've all failed to come up with a really good one."
"I've got one," McGonagall said sweetly, stooping over Riddle, sprawled as he was near the fireplace.
"Oh?"
"Yes. But I need to know if 'Tom' is a nickname, and if your actual name is 'Thomas.'"
Riddle narrowed his eyes. "It's Tom."
McGonagall sighed. "Pity. I had come up with quite a good one. How does 'I am has Lord Voldemort' sound to you?" She left as abruptly as she'd come, and no one thought to question the use of lolspeak some sixty-five years before its invention. Riddle himself was more interested in how she had arrived at the name.
He didn't pay attention to his friends' remarks. Here was someone worth pursuing after all. He'd give Immortal Odd Lover a shot. Perhaps it would be a name he'd live up to.
FIN