Alphard often wonders what his housemate is thinking of, when his eyes get so dark you could drown in them. He thinks it might be strange, were it anyone else other than Tom Riddle, to follow up such a look with the brightest, most innocently alluring smile.
He does not know anyone else who smiles like that, and maybe that is why he always finds himself smiling back, Slytherin or no. There is something about this boy that makes almost everyone – even his cousin-once-removed Charis Black, sixth-year extraordinaire – gravitate towards him.
Like right now, as Alphard watches Riddle quietly explain the fourth-year Arithmancy homework to Rex Lestrange (they both ignore the fact that the older boy is getting the highest marks in the class without his help). He grew up a pure-blood, so of course Alphard recognizes the interaction for what it is – a test – but he is not sure that his roommate does.
It is why he began to watch him so carefully in the first place (along with the surreptitious rest of the Common Room), and it is why he caught the darkness of the boy's eyes for just a moment before the murky-blooded first-year began to scratch out calculations on a sheet of parchment.
Lestrange sees the darkness, too.
It is why, three nights later, he makes a point to sit with the younger boy in the Common Room after dinner, sparking a chain reaction of attention. The next day, Tom Riddle finds himself in the midst of a group of highest purebloods – Ivan Dolohov, Alan Rosier, Eovis Mulciber, among others – all with the same predatory look in their eyes, and he knows that he has just been marked.
"Riddle, I heard you were snooping around in the Restricted Section over holidays," Rosier drawls, eyes sweeping over the young wizard's face with an unpleasant glint. He cannot tell if it is because of his innocent beauty (Rosier will never win any contest for pleasing countenance) or because of the rumors of his blood. Perhaps both, if the other boys' expressions are anything to go by.
"How is it your concern?" The cool detachment in his voice contrasts harshly with his open face, and a spark of something like approval lights in Dolohov's eye.
Rosier pulls his wand, eyes narrowed in hair-trigger hate, and Riddle does nothing but close his book with a sigh and finger his own wand under the table, debating the benefits of fighting back.
In the end, the eleven-year-old goes to bed with a shooting pain through his left leg, courtesy of the fourth-year, but there is the sort of look on his face that twists his young features into something ugly.
Alphard stays quiet in his bed when he sees Riddle enter the room, fear trickling down his spine at the expression he wears.
He lies awake for several hours, long enough to hear a harsh hissing sound and, later, a soft scratching against the floor, and then, after the sounds have stopped, the cherubic laugh of a child (the sort that enjoys poking the house-elves with live matches, or pulling the wings from fairy-lights at Yule).
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~ TheAlabasterPhoenyx