A note to readers that this is a side fic to the AU fanfic October so not all the characters mentioned and the events will be readily familiar that being said as this is from the perspective of a more side character in the story it's still fairly comprehensible if you haven't read the original. I recommend reading October first to get a better of the events but you can do what you like.
There had always been something about Tom Riddle.
Even when they were only first years there was something in him that drew the eye away from other tasks and demanded it stayed. He had always had a singular focus, some underlying determination, that made it seem as if every action on his part worked towards achieving some larger and greater task.
That being said Minerva McGonagall did not know very much about Tom Riddle.
He was a Slytherin, for one, and so even though throughout the years they had continued sharing courses so that in their fifth years they were sharing all their OWLs she didn't know him. It wasn't quite taboo to befriend a Slytherin but it was certainly awkward and to do so when it appeared as if Tom Riddle had no interest would be foolhardy at best.
Still, when she thought of Tom though she didn't necessarily think of Slytherin, he was ambitious yes, and quite clever but he was not like Malfoy, the Blacks, or any other prominent Slytherins. Perhaps it was simply because he was a muggleborn Slytherin as opposed to a pureblood one, but then, there were no other muggleborn Slytherins so perhaps it was merely him. There was something about Tom.
He was the head of their class, he always had been since the day they had stepped foot into Hogwarts. For a while she had tried to compete with him and in Transfiguration she had come close but then she had realized that she and the rest were so far beneath his notice that he didn't even comprehend that there was a competition to begin with. Minerva wasn't a rival, she had realized in her second year, she was at best a peer and that was all.
He was also very handsome, she couldn't remember when she had realized this, but by their fourth year every girl in the school had noted Tom. Even those from traditional pureblood families, those who weren't considered light, who had been engaged since they were eleven to some other pureblood heir couldn't help but look at Tom's pale blue eyes and finely sculpted features. There was some muggle expression for what he looked like, the intensity and the symmetry of him, and it had taken her a while to find but one day she had stumbled across it; angel, he looked like an angel.
Still, even with that, even as she watched him in Transfiguration and other courses and saw him in the library with stacks of books that almost towered over him she did not know him.
This realization was more sudden than others, there was a definite moment, and it had left a hollowness she wasn't sure could be filled.
In their fifth year Tom had changed dramatically, everything had changed dramatically but that would not come until later, it was Tom who was the first to be altered.
She supposed it started when the foreign student Azrael, a Hufflepuff in their year, disappeared. In hindsight, after the year had passed, it was assumed that he had been the first unannounced victim to the acromantula (or whatever truly petrified the students and killed Myrtle Stewart). Azrael she had known even less than Tom, and to tell the truth she had not wanted to, if Tom was intense then Azrael was unnerving. He seemed both present and distant in the same moment so that when he turned to look at you it was as if he saw everything. His eyes were too green and she wondered how there could be such a thing of having too much color in one's eyes but his eyes were too green.
Tom, for whatever unfathomable reason, seemed to like Azrael quite a bit. Not at first, for about a year it had seemed as if they didn't even know each other, but sometime during second year Tom and Azrael had appeared in Transfiguration together at the same table and that was the end of it. For the next three years the two were inseparable, and by standing next to Azrael Tom almost made him look human, he never did quite succeed.
Azrael disappeared in December of their fifth year, without explanation, and without warning marking what was to be a disastrous event in Hogwarts' history.
For the first few days where he didn't show in classes Tom had seemed the same as ever, perhaps a bit more annoyed than usual, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. Tom did smile, his smile was very beautiful, and while sometimes it seemed more polite than real it was still a smile. By the end of that week, when Tom seemed to grow truly alarmed, that expression had stopped. It was as if the ability to convey emotion had been sucked out of him and instead all that remained was blankness. His determination, his focus, dissipated in an instant so that when she turned and saw his eyes in Transfiguration one day there had been nothing in them.
These had only been observations then, worried observations, but observations none the less. As it was Minerva had been thinking for some time of asking Tom on a date to Hogsmede, or perhaps merely around the quidditch course. She had realized that he was in some way different than the rest of them, not in that he was intelligent, beautiful, and determined but also for some unknown factor she couldn't name. Tom shined so very brightly and she couldn't help but admire that and imagine them together, his arm in hers, as they walked through the village just outside Hogwarts.
Azrael's presence, that pale dark clad form with too green of eyes staring through her, had always dissuaded her from approaching him. It had seemed wrong to approach Tom when Azrael was nearby, as if she was somehow pulling Tom back into the normal world or else somehow entering into theirs, but odd as it sounded when Azrael disappeared she felt that barrier had been removed.
She hadn't necessarily expected Azrael to disappear, and later thinking back on it she always felt guilty that she had never considered that perhaps he had met some ill fate after all, but he had never truly belonged in Hogwarts. When looking at him she had never thought Hufflepuff or even wizard, but rather just how odd he was, and how much he looked as if he should have been elsewhere. Perhaps he had realized that, she hoped that was the case and that he hadn't met his end in the castle walls to remain forever unfound. She hoped that he had simply left, had found some other corner of the world to lurk in, perhaps even to go back to where he came from.
After years of his absence she wished him the best but at the time he had always been unnerving.
So one day near the middle of their fifth year before the petrifications she found Tom in the library, a single book in his hand, but he was not reading it. His eyes were closed and he leaned against the window perfectly still, looking as if he was not even breathing, and he seemed so terribly far away from her and school and Hogwarts. When she addressed him he barely looked at her, those pale blue eyes sharper and yet more dull than she had ever seen them, and she saw herself reflected as nothing in his pupils.
Gryffindor was the house of bravery, she told herself, of nobility and valor and what was asking a boy to Hogsmede anyway?
She had made it through her planned speech, the speech she had practiced before she had even walked into the room, she had made it through red faced and flustered and feeling like a complete idiot but she had made it. She hadn't waited for the response though, instead had stiffly walked out of the room hoping she didn't seem completely stupid but knowing she did, because when he had looked at her there had been nothing. Not contempt, not anger, not hope, there had been nothing in him but that terrible expression of loss as if she wasn't there at all.
It was after that, breathing heavily in her dorm room and blinking back tears, that she well and truly realized that she had never known Tom. That no one really knew Tom and perhaps the only one who did was that boy Azrael who was now gone.
She hated that year, she would always remember it, but she had hated it all the same.
Things got better the next year, in small increments, they would never be the way they were before her fifth year but they returned to some measure of normalcy. She knew Tom better then, had learned that his humor was both sharp and dry, that he enjoyed poking at things she had always taken for granted, that he liked to think, and that he had such dreams that he couldn't even speak them aloud for their grandeur. She still didn't know him, didn't understand all his expressions, and knew that she had never seen all of his expressions.
She liked to think he was a friend at the very least.
Upon graduation she had insisted he write to her, wherever it was he ended up, and thus far as she had worked under Professor Dumbledore no such letter had arrived but still, she waited, and hoped that not knowing Tom meant knowing him well enough.
One day, she thought to herself with something closer to hope than conviction, I will know him better.
Author's Note: For the 600th review of October by PeacefulMaelstrom who asked for a fic where, people react to Tom reacting to Azrael's removal from Hogwarts, or in this case Minerva McGonagall I suppose. She's a vaguely important side character. Anyway thanks to readers you guys are great and reviews are always appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter