"I miss her."

"I don't miss him. I really don't."

"Not even a little?"

"You know what I miss? I miss the idea of him."

"Maybe I only miss the idea of Helen… No, I miss the whole Helen."

- When Harry Met Sally

December, 1942

Harry didn't understand it.

It wasn't that nothing had changed; things had changed in the few weeks remaining, but it hadn't changed enough or in the right direction. Suddenly, people were talking to and about Harry, and Slughorn had called her into his office to ask her when she'd started Seeking and if she'd always been so very good at it. More to the point, why she hadn't tried out for the Slytherin team or told anyone.

"My dear girl," he'd said jovially as he smiled across at her, "It does no one good to hide your talents out of humility."

Harry hadn't known quite what to say to that.

Slytherin hated her more than ever. Before, she was just embarrassing, oh, but now she was a threat. There was the lingering truth in the air that if they could put aside their pride, then Harry could single-handedly lead them to the Quidditch Cup for the next three years. That, perhaps, if their tryouts had not been so masculinity-dominated, if they hadn't sneered at her for her pedigree and lack of money, they could have won.

As it was, Harry was somehow unofficially a member of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, with the captain begging her to come back next semester, and she'd work it out with the referee and Slughorn. She was brought to their table along with Alphard, cheered as an unofficial member, and felt all in all like she was back in Hogwarts again in those periods when suddenly everyone in the world was acting like her friend.

Meanwhile, Slughorn made promises to talk to the Slytherin captain to get Harry a permanent position with her own House as Seeker, and tried to pressure her into committing to trying out next year.

"Nepotism, you know," Slughorn said, looking away from her for a moment pensively, "Truly does only get one so far; not all apples fall close to the tree, so to speak. As fond as I am of my students, I fear that they sometimes forget that there are diamonds in the rough."

Harry hadn't known what to say to that either.

The trouble was, not everything changed. The thing that Harry had intended to change, the reason she had so willingly sacrificed her spot out of the limelight, had not.

Tom Riddle remained the same as before. No, perhaps he was even more hated by the Slytherins than he had ever been. Wherever his marble pedestal was, he was falling far and fast from the very sight of it, and soon he'd hit rock bottom with the likes of Harry Evans.

Alphard had told her while they were studying for their end of term exams in the library, "Of course they're upset, Harry. To them it is betrayal and humiliation."

He looked up from his book, his silver eyes kind but chiding. "I told you that it wouldn't work."

"Humiliation?" Harry asked, leaning towards him over her own haphazard and dismal notes. Alphard, unfortunately, was not like Hermione, in that while he no doubt kept as notes as good or better than hers, he found no great joy in sharing them directly with Harry.

Harry hadn't realized it before, but for all Hermione always lectured Harry and Ron for not studying, she would also do more than help them with their homework and study for exams. Alphard wasn't like that; he'd never directly answer her questions. Instead, he'd ask her questions and force her to parrot back what she'd actually learned, and if she didn't know, he'd tell her to hit the books again and think.

"True magic, Harry, is not simply the clever regurgitation of spells with the right pronunciation," Alphard had said at one point after Harry had threatened to throw a book at his head, asking him why he even bothered tutoring her if he wasn't going to tell her the answers. "There are layers and layers of mathematics and principles underlying every spell we use. And if you do not understand that, the art of magic, then you do not understand it at all."

Hermione, on the other hand, enjoyed showing what she herself had learned to Ron and Harry, as well as lecturing them. Harry loved her, but Hermione had such an ego sometimes, and Harry wouldn't deny that she'd used it to her advantage. Namely, she'd always put off studying until the end of term because chances were good Hermione would tell her exactly what she needed to know to pass the exams.

Alphard would not.

So, for the first time in her Hogwarts career, she really was stuck with her own pitiful collection of notes for each class. May the god of the wizards have mercy on her dimwitted soul and give her a passing grade in Potions.

She shook away the thoughts as Alphard nodded at her question, as if of course humiliation was involved. "Why are they thinking that? Riddle had nothing to do with it."

As Alphard and Riddle both very well knew, and commented as often as they could, it had all been Harry's brilliant scheme.

"Well, they don't know that," Alphard said drily, returning to his book and flipping a page. "Remember what they think of you; to them, you are even less than a pawn. You are… an aberration the likes of which we mortals have never seen before."

Harry asked the only thing she could possibly ask to that sort of question: "What?"

Alphard sighed and gave her a rather flat look, as if she was being purposefully dense. "They think he knew beforehand and set you up to it. They think that his mental breakdown in the Slug Club was a calculated move, whose only possible explanation is the utter embarrassment of the heirs of the great noble and ancient houses of Britain. They think your stint as Ravenclaw Seeker was his way of rubbing their faces in the dirt and proving to them that a talentless muggleborn hack of a woman could effortlessly rip the rug out from under them and steal their beloved sport."

"What?" Harry repeated, feeling, if possible, even dumber than before.

How the hell had she gotten sorted into Slytherin again? More, how had Alphard avoided it?

"In short, they believe you're Riddle's agent."

"His agent," Harry barked out with a laugh. "They think I'm working for Riddle? Playing Quidditch for the likes of Riddle?"

"You are, in a sense," Alphard mused. "You did it for his benefit, though not his enjoyment."

"Yeah, but, that's because—" Harry cut herself off, because she didn't know how to explain without blurting out the truth of it. Even then, how did she explain that she was handing Riddle all the advantages he'd need to become something truly monstrous and terrifying? She couldn't even always explain it to herself. Sometimes she was relieved that Tom Riddle was still a loser, because at least she had tried and failed versus tried, succeeded, and lived with the knowledge that she had condemned the wizarding world to his war.

"Well, it's just because," Harry finished lamely, ignoring Alphard's dubiously raised eyebrows and small nod as if to say 'whatever you say, Harry'. "You don't have to believe me, and I don't have to explain myself—"

"You never do," Alphard interjected.

"—But it is important."

Alphard stared at her for a moment, thinking deeply, a small, odd frown on his face, and finally he asked, "Do you like him?"

Harry almost died. It felt as if someone had taken electric cords to her heart and zapped it, leaving her coughing and spluttering as she missed her breath and her heart skipped a beat. "What?"

"It's alright to like him, Harry," he said, but his expression was very subtle and Harry couldn't get a read on it. "Many do—did, rather."

Finally, in a smaller, somehow sadder voice, he said, "He is very handsome."

Harry finally regained her breath. "No! No—no—nope, not a—no. Just—no. Never, even, not even if he was the last man on Earth. Not even if he and Snape were the last men on Earth and a gun was pointed at my head as someone said, 'Well, Harry, for the good of the human race it's one or the other.'"

Alphard started laughing, a hand to his mouth as if he was desperately trying to contain it but couldn't help himself. His face was turning red from the lack of oxygen, and small tears of mirth were gathering at the corners of his eyes.

"Hell wouldn't just freeze over," Harry continued, hands twisting together as she tried to imagine the hellish universe Alphard was describing. "They would call it the second ice age, and there would be woolly mammoths roaming about where once there'd been burning lakes of sulfur. It would—will—can never ever happen. God, just no."

Harry breathed in and out, even while Alphard finally lost it, dropping his hand and bursting out into full blown hysterics. The only thing, as usual, not getting them thrown out of the library being his wards.

"Well," he finally said with that fond smile that begged Harry to never change, "If you feel that strongly."

He stood, packed his things, and smiled down at her. "Ah, Harry, I shall miss you over the holidays. Make sure to write."

He hadn't missed her jerking, her sudden frown, at the thought that if everything went well, Harry would never again have the chance to write.

That was days ago now. The last week of classes were upon them, and Harry and Riddle were sitting in Defense waiting to put on the show that had started this whole mess. To imagine, if Harry had been sitting anywhere else in this room, none of this would have ever happened. She had been so close, so very close, to precious anonymity and hadn't even realized it until it was far too late.

Right now, they were watching Crabbe and Goyle's progenitors putting together what had to be the lamest Defense project Harry had ever seen. First off, it was a basic sort of jinx, the kind Harry had actually been taught by Quirrell (which was a miracle, as the man had made a point to teach them nothing useful) and mastered easily in her first year. Second, they were currently trying and failing to cast both it and the counter on each other.

Harry's Crabbe and Goyle were much the same, thick to an alarming degree, and she always wondered just why Malfoy had them as goons. Sure, they were large and intimidating, but that wasn't supposed to mean anything for a wizard. Wizards and witches were supposed to rely on their magical prowess; punching your enemies in the face was viewed as very muggle, so what good were Crabbe and Goyle supposed to be?

Then again, this was Harry talking about Malfoy, who was comprised of a lineage of ferrets and weasels. She was giving him entirely too much credit.

Something tapped on her desk. Harry glanced down, then glanced again and had to blink once or twice. She looked across at her desk partner, who gave her his patented 'don't be cheeky' look back.

Tom Riddle had just passed her a note.

"What?" Harry mouthed to him, and his unamused look somehow became even more unamused.

He tapped the note again with a quill, eyebrows raising pointedly, wordlessly telling her to read it already.

Harry's eyes dropped to it, and oof, his penmanship. Each time she saw those perfect loops it was like another dagger through her heart. Harry had the penmanship with a quill of an eight-year-old with no fingers; she'd never gotten over the loss of ballpoint pens and pencils.

"What are you doing over the holidays?" it read.

Harry stared at it, stared at it some more, and continued to stare at it even as McGonagall and her Gryffindor partner made their way to the front of the class for the demonstration of their end of term project.

She looked back up at Tom, and he nodded, slowly and subtly, down towards the paper. Clearly telling her that he really did expect her to answer.

There were so many things she could say to that. First, when had the likes of Riddle ever slacked off in class? Second, just why?

"What's it to you?" Harry finally wrote down in her typical chicken scratch.

"I am staying in Hogwarts over the holidays," he wrote swiftly and gracefully, even his fingers looking elegant as he wrote on the parchment. "I wish to know if I will be bored."

Well, there was only one thing to say to that, and it was the first time in her life Harry was grateful to say it: "I'm not staying over the holidays."

He gave her a very pointed look, then, something intense that seemed to see through the very heart of her, as if Harry had just made a very grave mistake. After a very long pause, he quietly wrote on the paper again before passing it towards her, looking not at her but at McGonagall and what probably was Bones' great aunt or something.

"I thought you had no family."

Harry felt something cold go through her then. It was as if he'd written more than that, accused her of more than that. She'd mentioned the Dursleys, but she'd also mentioned friends, hadn't she? But in those artful letters Harry read something else: "I know you are lying to me."

"I'm not staying with my uncle," Harry wrote down swiftly, horridly, even as the Gryffindor pair received high praise from Merrythought. "You're right, I hate them and they hate me, and they're very happy to see the back of me. I'm visiting some friends, though, over the break, and I don't want to wait until summer."

He looked at her words critically, and again it was as if he saw straight through to the heart of them, as if they were only the barest pretense. "If you have these friends, Harry, then why did you come to Hogwarts?"

Harry opened her mouth to respond, to scramble and write down some excuse about how they didn't have room for her (they didn't, the Weasleys never had, they had enough mouths to feed and Harry understood that they couldn't take her in even if they wanted to, because she was sure that they wanted to, she had to be sure they wanted to) or how Harry had decided it was time to come to Hogwarts after all, but they were out of time.

"Riddle and Evans," Merrythought called out.

Harry felt as if the ground was disappearing beneath her feet, like she was walking on a crumbling bridge over a great crevasse, and any second now she'd plunge into darkness.

He suspected something, knew something. How much did he suspect and how much had he guessed? That she wasn't really a muggleborn, or at the very least was some strange mix of muggle raised with a wizard's inheritance behind her? Did he know worse than that, that Harry wasn't from this time and place at all but from a future where she knew him? What could he do if he had guessed or suspected? Did that mean he knew who she was fifty years from now, when even Harry didn't? Had he recognized her but never said anything, or acted on it in any way? Or did it mean that it was off track now? Had she done what she was afraid she would, what she had risked with the basilisk but thought could be contained? What would he do to her if he figured all of it out, that Harry was from the future, that she knew bloody everything or close enough to everything?

How was she supposed to cast a Patronus now?

No, she thought as she looked out to her peers, she had always cast a Patronus in situations like this. A Patronus was not born of the easy, simple times when everything fell together and felt purposeful. It was the hope that you would again reach those times, the utter faith and certainty that it waited somewhere for you, if you could find it.

It didn't matter what Tom Riddle did or didn't know, it didn't matter that he'd fallen off his pedestal, because he'd get back up soon enough on his own. Harry was leaving this island, and when she reached the Irish shores, she would find the fair folk and negotiate for herself a miracle.

So, Tom could keep his suspicions to himself, because Harry Evans would disappear from this place as if she'd never existed in the first place.

"Expecto Patronum!"

"Harry, Harry, wait!" Tom rushed to the station, parting through the crowds to find her solemnly facing the train in that Hogwarts uniform, the one that Slughorn had loaned to her all those weeks ago after the Chamber.

He'd made a mistake, he'd moved too quickly in Defense, and whatever good feeling there had been between them had vanished with an impenetrable wall in its place. It was stupid, he'd gotten too curious, too impatient, and as he always did when he'd seen weakness, he'd moved forward to strike.

He'd never cared about the consequences before, he cared less about most of the consequences now, but he'd forgotten that for some reason he cared about consequences regarding her.

No one would call themselves Evans unless they had a reason to hide. No one would make themselves so purposefully unworthy of notice, even under the guise of being muggleborn, unless they wanted absolutely no one in the world looking for them.

And he'd gone and let her know that he knew, just to see what she'd do, when he should have seen it coming miles away.

It was that thought that had him making favors with Slughorn and sprinting to Hogsmeade's station as all the other students departed, part of the mob but returning on his own, escorted only by professors back to Hogwarts for the long, cold winter.

"Harry," he said, slowing down as he reached her, "Were you really not going to say goodbye?"

Harry looked at him, her green eyes cold and unusually assessing; they looked for a moment like his own eyes. Yes, he imagined he looked like that quite often, staring through to the heart of people and asking himself who they were, what they wanted, and how it would affect him.

"We're not friends, Riddle," Harry said, as if she was talking about the weather. "We've never been friends."

Tom felt the smile drip from his face, and he felt uncomfortably bare beneath her gaze. "You're my friend."

That seemed to shock her out of her stoicism, her eyes went comically large, and she took a step back from him, but he continued, "You're the only friend I have ever had."

Saying it like that, it was rather pathetic, but nonetheless it was true. Tom Riddle had never had friends, never had time nor the need of them, until of course she had come along and unwittingly forced herself into the position. He still couldn't see anyone else fulfilling that role, even if he wanted to, but being inside Hogwarts without her…

He had known even in October that somehow that would be worse than having no future at all.

She opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to it, "But I'm not stupid, Harry, and I can only keep my patience so long as I keep my indifference. If you wanted me to overlook you, Harry, then you should have been anything other than yourself."

"The bloody hell is that supposed to mean?!" she asked, finally losing her temper and returning to something familiar to the girl he'd met only a few months ago.

"It means that I wish you would stay in Hogwarts over the holidays," he said. "It means that I'm going to miss you. It also means that I know you won't write, and I won't see you again until next term at the earliest."

It meant that he was looking forward to the next semester, to watching the fallout of Harry's Quidditch debacle which she didn't seem to appreciate. Oh, she knew it hadn't gotten her immediately what she wanted, Tom Riddle back in everyone's good books, but she hadn't realized that she had bought herself a ticket to the Slug Club, a spot on the Ravenclaw team, and the rivalry of Slytherin's.

They would actively torment and sabotage her now, if she came back and was pressured into being Ravenclaw's Seeker (which she would be, because they would never give that up). What would that look like, he wondered, especially as they studied for their OWLS and prepared for the summer holidays?

He wondered, darkly for a moment, if she had promised to write to Alphard Black.

"Believe me," Harry said with a small, almost self-deprecating laugh, "You won't even notice I'm gone, I'm sure of it."

"For someone who can't help but say what you like and wear your feelings all over your face," Tom said after a very lengthy pause, taking her in piece by piece, from her messy, chaotic curls down to the worn soles of her shoes, "You have alarmingly low self-confidence."

"Huh?!"

"Harry," he said, offering her a charming and wry smile, the kind she hated so very much, "I never forget anyone, but even if I did, I would never forget you."

With that, she hauled herself onto the train, pulling her trunk after her without a word, ignoring as he stared after her and looked for her in compartments. He walked with her, keeping pace easily, until she reached a compartment on his side of the train.

"Where are you going to be?" he asked as she sat with a sigh in her seat. "I want an address."

"To hell with your address!" Harry said, whipping her head to stare out the window in shock shortly replaced by chagrin as she realized that she should have known he'd follow her. "And don't you have somewhere to be? I didn't think they let you out of the castle if you weren't leaving."

"If you haven't noticed," Tom remarked, "I'm on rather good terms with our Head of House."

"You said he deserved a circle in hell to his face," Harry responded, which just caused Tom to grin harder.

"Yes, but I also said tutoring you caused me to have a mental breakdown," Tom said, before adding with a smile a rather damning consequence Harry likely hadn't foreseen, "And I am now expressly forgiven for having seen your talents in Quidditch before anyone else and taking the initiative to invite you to the Slug Club."

The train began to move, Harry poking her head out of the train window to stare after him open-mouthed while he just grinned back at her. She shouted at him, the expletive covered by the sound of the train's whistle, while he just found himself grinning harder back at her even as she drifted away from the school.

"You're welcome!" he called after her, staring long after her head had become nothing more than a little black dot, a pale face with dark hair staring after him as the train sped south towards London.

And just like that, it was Tom alone once again in the station and at the school, held in stasis until she managed to find her way back from wherever it was she was going.

Well, if she was gone anyway, perhaps it was time to start looking back into his family history. Between Harry Evans, the basilisk, and even more Harry Evans, he'd almost entirely forgotten about it.

Marvolo the parselmouth, yes, that would be a good place to start.

Author's Note: And they're off for the winter holidays and exciting adventures that will no doubt go terribly wrong. It'll be fun. New in the world of "When Harry Met Tom" is "Hogsmeade Abides" where Tom and Harry have a quasi-date in Hogsmeade.

Thanks to GlassGirlCeci for betaing the chapter. Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter