Summary: Tom wonders, where did everything go wrong? AU.

Destiny awaits

"I'm here to study, not play a stupid game," Tom Riddle sneered loftily in all of his would-be-Dark-Lord glory.

The baby tilted his head, his emerald green eyes bright and inquisitive - as it tended to be in babies and bestowed him with his best gummy smile. Then he raised his hands, in the universal gesture of babies wanting to be held.

How he managed to get down from the heavily warded bed to roll on the carpeted ground of the dormitory was beyond him.

Tom would deny doing anything inelegant like groaning, but if there were any witnesses, they would definitely say the contrary. But he did run his hand over his face, the stress of unwanted (and unwarranted) fatherhood getting to him.

"Fine," he ground out at the toddler, the latter's face lighting up as he realized that his request was granted. He immediately waddled to clutch at the older boy's trousers and refused to let go till he was picked up.

"Why are you so troublesome?" Tom hissed, as he was demoted to play along with the whims of a mere baby.

Wonder of wonders, the kid hissed back happily, his pronunciation a bit butchered —thanks to his yet undeveloped tongue.

Tom felt his entire body go rigid. The child who hadn't uttered a single word since he dropped into his life was a Parselmouth? He blinked owlishly at his ward, holding him at an arm's length.

He had possibly heard wrong, right?

He hesitantly hissed at him again. The child hissed back. Again.

At that moment, Tom was immensely grateful that he had been provided a different room to take care of the baby instead of housing in the dormitories.

Thus he could flop down on the floor, gracefully mind you, without anyone but the baby to judge him for his actions.

The toddler hissed some more and tugged at his hair.

This time, Tom did groan.

It had happened three months ago —on just a normal day at The Great Hall, imbeciles were shouting, idiots were laughing, the morons he called his followers were snootily grovelling—the usual. The bright light had come out of nowhere and when everyone was busy shielding their eyes, Tom felt a basket drop in on his plate and break it with a loud thud.

Accompanied by wailing. Of a child.

It took a lot to surprise Tom, but getting delivered a baby at his breakfast made the cut, especially when he couldn't recall engaging in any such lowly activities that people his age generally tended to enjoy, ever.

The always noisy (too noisy) Great Hall fell silent. If he wasn't so inwardly rattled by the sudden appearance of a wailing infant in front of him, he would have appreciated it. Not for long though —oh no, he wasn't ever that lucky —all hell broke loose.

"What just happened — "

"Why is there a baby—"

"How did it bypass the wards?"

"Riddle is sleeping around?"

A loud bang rang out —Tom didn't bother hiding his surprised expression, it would be stranger to not be surprised—and the faculty descended upon the students. Dipper frowned and the others looked suitably flummoxed. Dumbledore ran a diagnostic scan over the still wailing baby (Salazar, did he have a strong set of lungs) and found nothing unusual with his system. He picked the basket, but there was no note to be seen, nothing to identify where he came from.

Dumbledore turned his eyes on him and Tom almost sneered. Of course that old coot would suspect him—even when he hadn't done anything. Yet.

But thankfully, he didn't say anything. He just picked up and held the baby and cooed at it, slowly rocking it from side to side. It did nothing to soothe the baby.

That's when the funniest thing happened. As they professors turned to take the baby away—a few feet away, really—it screamed.

And Tom collapsed.

And so, Tom was stuck with taking care of a baby. The professors couldn't find out anything except the fact that separating the two for more than three meters will result in excruciating pain for Tom and the baby.

And then Dumbledore, the bane of his existence, proposed (ordered) that he take care of the baby.

Did the old coot somehow forget that he himself was raised in an orphanage? How the fuck, pardon his language, would he know anything about raising a baby? Tom had always steered clear of the snot-nosed brats except for the times he had to threaten or terrorize them. What would he know about how to take care of that thing?

Also, he had plans —grand plans that he had already started to implement but his first major step was going to be taken that year.

Maybe, he mused, I can feed it to the Basilisk?

"I understand if it would be too much for you, Tom," Dumbledore prattled on and Tom hated himself for falling for that obvious manipulation.

"I'll take care of—pardon me, is the baby a boy or a girl?" Tom inquired.

"He's a boy," Dumbledore's gentle smile irritated him to no end.

"Fine," he said, inwardly fuming.

After all, he couldn't ruin his charismatic image.

There was also the fact that he had to stay within a three meters radius of the gremlin, his traitorous mind reminded him.

All in all, everything was fine. Perfectly fine and according to his plans.

(Not.)

Dumbledore arranged a separate room for them, something about not bothering their housemates. Tom was positive that he didn't want to pass the chance to keep an eye on him —the room was awfully close to the Professor's quarters, the opportunity must have been heaven sent for the former.

Tom took it as a personal challenge.

The newly christened Harry (the name was kept after many trials and errors when the child refused to respond to any of the other ones people had suggested, Tom didn't know what to make of his apparent attachment to a ridiculously common name) was an unusually quiet child. He cried only when he was angry or had soiled himself. He mostly slept or stared at him with those large, emerald eyes and thus posed no problem to attend classes with him. In fact, apart from those, he didn't speak.

At all.

Except Parseltongue.

Tom was relieved. His experience with the children at the orphanage was horrendous. They had always screamed, wailed and demanded attention, failing that, they screamed some more. He remembered seeing the haggard looks of the matron and caretakers whenever a newborn came in.

They deserved it.

One night, Tom woke up at the sounds of choked sobs. That didn't sound like something a child could make but when he got up to check, he found the brat curled up on himself—as if desperately trying to shield himself from the outside world. The small child trembled and hissed softly, the word automatically translating to "mama" in his mind.

So, the boy was having a nightmare.

Could a child that young even HAVE nightmare?

Tom shook him awake, ignoring the tear tracks on his cheeks and checked his diapers. Then he levitated one of the toys the boy had received from the professors, a stuffed lion and dropped it on him.

Tom then promptly went back to sleep.

He didn't hear any sobs for the rest of the night. But the boy started a habit of carrying the lion around with him.

So apparently, any hurt on Harry reflected on him but not vice versa.

The school nurse had estimated him to be about a little above one year of age, that annoying period where every toddler thought of themselves as explorers. Harry was no exception.

He had tried to toddle off as Tom was reading under the shades of one of the trees and had tripped and scraped his knees.

Tom had flinched minutely at the injury that had appeared on his knees as well.

Surprisingly, when Tom had cut his hand to test his theory, Harry did not have any mirroring cut.

It was a good thing that he had refrained from dropping the boy from the Moving Staircase, Tomthought grimly.

Clumsy as he was, the boy was a natural on the broomstick even at that age.

If Tom had to hear one more time from Flint about how much of a Quidditch prodigy the runt was going to be, someone was going to die.

Harry detested violence.

Tom figured it out soon enough when he had finished disciplining some of the rebellious members who somehow got the idea that just because Tom had a leech stuck to him, he had weakened. He had to nip the notion at the bud, otherwise more unnecessary work for him later.

No one was any closer to finding the origin of the mysterious boy and since Tom was bound to the boy for the foreseeable amount of time, he had to keep him safe.

So, Harry and violence.

Tom was punishing the people who thought they had a chance to overthrow him when he felt a tremendous burst of magic from his ward.

Tom raised his brow as a shimmery, blue, visible shield erupted in front of the pathetic vermins as the boy frowned at him.

Not one to let an opportunity pass, Tom gleefully rounded on the trembling morons. "The very person you were trying to harm just saved you —remind me again how Life Debts are repaid?"

The worthless sheep paled at the sight of his grin.

Harry came out of that incident with a little bit more value in his eyes.

Harry shared his fondness for Snakes, in fact, he absolutely loved the Basilisk who was named Padfoot promptly.

A. Basilisk. Named. Padfoot.

The monster of Slytherin named Padfoot.

The worst part? The Basilisk liked it.

What irked Tom was the fact that the Basilisk favoured Harry much more than Tom and as a result, refused to hurt the students.

It was here to protect, the Basilisk hissed.

Salazar only meant to protect the wizard-kind, it said.

Blood didn't matter, it said.

It is the last line of defense of Hogwarts, it said.

Harry was enthralled. The snake promptly launched a story of the Founders and their times.

Soon, it became one of Harry's favourite haunts.

"It seems you would require a steady job to support Harry and yourself," Headmaster Dippet said as he rifled through some papers.

Tom looked suspiciously at the Headmaster and his Deputy, the latter's eyes twinkling for the first time in his presence.

Harry happily hissed at the Phoenix and tugged at his feathers. Tom's expression flattened as he saw the bird allowed it.

Ah yes, his trump card, Parselmouth had long been revealed by the raven-haired menace.

His plan of releasing the monster from the Chamber of Secrets had gone down faster than he could say Nox.

It was the end of the year and for the first time in history of Hogwarts, anyone other than a Professor was allowed to stay back. Not when they hadn't budged when he had repeatedly requested ttheming his earlier years.

Now he looked at the hypocrites with wonder as they offered him a job of Teaching Assistant in Hogwarts, starting from his Seventh Year.

Tom wanted to laugh.

As he looked at the hopeful faces of the dunderhead First Years in the room, Harry being one of them (an exception, the boy was finally an official student at Hogwarts) Tom wondered.

Since when did his plan derail so drastically?

THC/The Houses Competition.

House: Slytherin

Class: DADA

Prompts: [Speech] "I'm here to study, not play a stupid game."

Standard.

Word Count. 1955 (By google docs)

Beta. charlotteredmond99