Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Written for OTP Boot camp Challenge [Acrid]
And Diagon Alley Challenge [Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour]
And Bookshelf Competition/Challenge [Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl - The Caster Chronicles]
Acrid Tongue
He was Tom Marvolo Riddle. He was the Heir of Slytherin, he did not simply fall for someone else everything he did was carefully planned to benefit him in some way.
He had fallen for someone though.
He could not help it. This was probably how his mother had felt when she had seen the muggle that was his father every day for many years. If his mother had felt as strongly as he now did, he doubted he could blame his mother any longer. The feeling was far too powerful.
Harry Potter had caught his attention and was now unwilling to leave his thoughts.
He had found himself unable to concentrate during the lessons they shared. He always ended up staring covertly at the other male, carefully taking in how that delightfully pink tongue stuck out of his mouth when he was concentrating and how he would run his hand through his hair every time he was frustrated. A few of his Slytherins had noticed but had not been brave enough to question him about it.
His thoughts were filled with the other boy whenever he was not in sight. He had tried to push the boy out of his mind using occlumency but every time he managed to succeed, the other boy would come into sight and all his hard work would be lost.
It was almost frustrating but somehow satisfying.
It was only a defensive mechanism he had crafted within himself from a young age that had made his tongue acrid whenever he spoke to someone who he felt could harm him in some way, in this case it had been Harry Potter.
He had forgotten to calculate the amount of acid in his words though and his words had managed to harm the other boy and pushed Harry away from him.
He noticed that the words had in fact hurt the other boy now, far too late it seemed.
The damage had been done and he was unable to heal years and years of hurt. He was not able to heal the wounds his words had created, he simply did not know how so he did not even bother trying.
Harry was unable to push away the years of anger and hatred that Tom had cultivated within him with his actions despite Tom trying recently to talk to him as he would normally to one of his friends.
He saw green orbs glare at him angrily whenever they caught his. Such an emotion in the eyes of the one he had grown to love hurt but he had brought it upon himself.
Harry always glared at him now and whenever he attempted to talk with the other male, he knew Harry always assumed he was trying to mock him once again. Harry thought that he only wanted to become friends so that Tom could hurt him worse than he had before. Harry did not trust him.
He had tried to keep Harry at arm's length but had pushed too far.
He regretted his past actions but there was no way to undo them.