February 20, 1944

He had to say, the preferential treatment received by Prefects made Harry, a Professor, a little jealous.

"Merlin… Tom, it's so comfortable here!" Harry murmured, unable to resist closing his eyes and sinking into the water again. The surface of the water didn't rise above his Adam's apple, it's pressure making Harry's mouth feel a little dull, but he didn't want to come out at all.

Tom neatly unknotted the tie he always wore and removed his clothes without hesitation; the young man's tall and powerful body was unreservedly on display under the light. The naked Slytherin stepped into the bubble-filled bath. Whether this was due to Tom feeling unbothered by nudity, or to him having ulterior motives, Harry didn't care - they were two men. Exactly what should he be afraid of?

The water wasn't boiling hot, but the head made Harry's skin warm and flushed. The slow rising mist, in addition, made the youth look particularly soft. Harry laid comfortably inside the bath, everything below his shoulder submerged underwater, as he enjoyed the warmth of having temporarily expelled the cold from his bones.

"Harry, are you still cold?" Tom asked softly.

Harry's back was facing Tom, his eyes closed and feeling a little drowsy due to the hypnotic patterns in the rippling water. As he laid by the edge of the bath, he snorted in reply, not too light but not with excess derision, either.

With his back facing the Slytherin, he couldn't see Tom's expression.

The Slytherin's eyes were almost glued to the young man's torso. Although Harry's insides had already begun to deteriorate, at least his skin was still tight and supple.

Look, how beautiful. Tom couldn't help but want to reach out and touch it.

In a situation where it didn't affect his interests, the Slytherin would never suppress his thoughts and *. Tom stood up, interrupting his train of thought, and approached Harry. With the tinkling sounds of water droplets, Tom's greedy fingertips stroked the unsuspecting person's back, slick after being exposed to moisture.

"Merlin!" Harry, who was still napping, yelped, suddenly jerking himself awake, his neck instinctually shying away from the touch. Tom could clearly see the goosebumps that spread rapidly around Harry's neck.

Tom's hand wasn't cold, but the neck was a person's most sensitive area; shivering was just the body's stress response.

Harry hurriedly moved a little to the side, "Stop, it tickles."

Tom suddenly smiled as his abdomen showed itself over rippling water, faint outlines of smooth sculpted abdominal muscles inexplicably exposed

So handsome, Harry objectively evaluated.

Having been disturbed by Tom, there wasn't much drowsiness left.

"When you were younger, I used to help you take your baths." Harry sat up smiling, the water's surface bobbing up and down towards their two heads, pulling the Slytherin's gaze. "At that time, you didn't like to be clean, so I could only press you into the bathtub to wash you and tickle you whenever you were disobedient."

Tom smiled in return, recalling.

Only he knew the truth from that time. The four or five-year-old Tom Riddle that year played the role of a naive child very well; polite and well-behaved with a necessary stubbornness. For example, during the times he wanted to attract Harry's attention. 'The crying children get the candy (1)', he understood this saying very well.

"Yeah," Tom laughed, his eyes narrowed and his dilated pupils just managing to cover the dormant surliness, "in the end, I'd laugh until I was out of breath."

Harry looked at the handsome boy who's grown taller than him, and couldn't help but wonder dreamily with a hint of mischief what a 'Slytherin Prefect who's laughing until he's out of breath' would look like. Out of curiosity (2), he brought his hands about the other boy's waist, just like he did a decade ago to that unhappy-looking child, jokingly and simply just wanting to watch him laugh.

"Hey!"

But it was overturned in the next second. Now it was Harry on the receiving end of the tickling, something he never thought would happen.

"Wait, Tom!" Harry insisted, twisting, still reaching out his hands for Tom without giving up his attempt to 'tickle' him, but his waist had long been caught by Tom standing behind him.

Harry laughed until he was hardly himself. The hands around his waist seemed to be tied to it, no matter how much he fought it he couldn't fight it off, and it was gently stroking, making it feel like feathers were teasing him and provoking the nerves that controlled his laughter.

"Stop it, Tom…" Harry finally managed to squeeze out a complete sentence from his laughter. He arched his back, trying to increase the space between himself and Tom's fingers. So it was really no surprise when his back affixed itself onto the waist and abdomen of the teenager behind.

Tom was unsatisfied, much less willing to stop. The way Harry felt under his fingers was smooth but firm, toned in the way only men were, making Tom wish for both his palms to be completely flush against the expanse of skin, rubbing. Under the stupid, childish excuse of 'tickling', he controlled his *(3) thoughts. But this kind of behaviour was nothing more than drinking poison to quench his thirst; the more he touched, the more his yearning grew.

In a situation where it didn't affect his interests, the Slytherin would never suppress his instincts, but what if it did?

When it came to Harry, the Slytherin wasn't as good at controlling himself and his urges, but everything he did, all that he acted on, was for the long game. For the greater good.

Tom finally stopped moving and pressed back into Harry's torso, his hands caressing the softly protruding bumps of his spine of the person beneath him. Tom's eyes flickered in contemplation, calculating something before he continued with his actions, and began to direct his own script.

Harry finally noticed something was wrong. The skin-to-skin contact, the change in temperature, and the strange atmosphere made Harry feel anything but reassured.

"Harry…" The child who put his head on his shoulder seemed a little stiff, and the hands around his waist refused to let go. "I…"

"What's wrong?"

Tom buried his face in Harry's side, sniffing the wet tips of his hair, and quirked the corners of his lips up as he skillfully played pretend. Embarrassment and helplessness suffused Tom's features. "I'm... Hard."

Harry could also feel he was hard; stiff. He felt the unusual heat gathered behind him.

After a moment of silence, Harry reluctantly curled the corners of his mouth in a soft smile, "...Do you have a girlfriend?"

The teenager holding him was silent.

"Don't worry, this is a natural phenomenon; go back and find a girl - o-of course on your own… You could, but…" Harry stuttered as he explained the relationship between the two sexes to Tom, his own face red. The Saviour was surprisingly shy when it came to the relations between a man and a woman; at least when it came to Ginny, he was the densest.

Don't forget that he escaped death for three or four years during the war! Where could he possibly find the extra time and energy to partake in such activities?!

After a moment or two, Harry finished his half baked explanation, at a loss and apprehensive, surrounded by hot water.

The boy behind him finally moved and, with his eyebrows raised, said, "I know all of this."

Harry suddenly felt like he was being played a fool.

Within an instant, the atmosphere between the two became extremely charged.

The water that had previously felt comfortable now felt stifling. Harry shifted from his initial relaxed posture, and rushed to finish his bath quickly. When he got out from the bath, he was sweating all over and his pores felt exposed. Harry was unlikely to wear his coat, so he picked up a trick from Tom, and put his black coat on his arm before stepping out of the Prefect's bathroom.

"Professor Potter?" a voice greeted, surprised.

"Oh, Ovi." Harry replied in return, the tips of his hair wet and sticking to the back of his neck.

Ovi naturally felt it unease creeping up his spine. "Professor Potter, how come you…"

He didn't finish his sentence before he suddenly choked.

"Good evening, Parkinson." The Devil came out from behind the door and stood directly over Harry. He was obviously smiling at him, but he could clearly see the cold fangs beneath; an extremely aggressive threat.

In their first and second year, they were roommates who shared the same bedroom, and although it wasn't secret, they were still quite familiar. But since who-knew-when, he gradually appeared by Abraxas' side, joined the elite, and held the right to who lived and died; he clearly didn't have a pure-blood title, didn't have respectable financial resources, didn't have an influential background, how could he-!

Ovi couldn't express his resentment; compared to his anger, fear held a greater weight.

"Harry, you're not cold anymore, right?"

Ovi watched this demon bow his head low and lean towards Mr Potter, asking in a tone filled with great affection. Tom towered over Harry, and to Ovi, it seemed as if Tom had Harry in his arms.

Ovi watched, pupils dilating. He could still remember the disgusting words that spewed from that beautiful, perfect mouth from a year ago.

"I want to fuck him, fuck him hard, fuck him until he can't get out of bed."

The food he'd just eaten rolled in his stomach, feeling as if it would rush out of his throat in the next second, only to spit itself upon that face of extreme hypocrisy leaving nothing behind.

"Excuse me, I'm going back first." Ovi dropped his gaze and fled.


Harry felt Ovidius Parkinson acted very strange that night.

Harry was no stranger to the surname Parkinson. During those years when he was still at Hogwarts, Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy, together, had caused him a lot of trouble; how could he forget?

If he had to guess the age, Ovidius evidently seemed to be Pansy's grandfather. What he found strange, however, was that he'd never heard of the name Ovidius. Well, he admittedly wasn't as familiar with the Parkinson Family's history as he was with the Malfoys'.

The next day, Ovidius Parkinson was even stranger than usual.

"Mr Potter, do you know what Tom thinks of you?" The question snapped Harry out of his stupor. As soon as he opened his office door, he saw the usually-silent Slytherin open his mouth and proclaim, eyes flickering vaguely with fire and a hint of madness, "Tom, he likes you!"

Ovi could feel his heart beating frantically, even bringing with it sharp tremors. There! He said it!

The sense of vengeful delight was enough to make Ovi feel like flying. No matter how timid the Slytherin was, he was still a Slytherin. Slytherin, a synonym for madness in another shape of a lunatic.

Harry was obviously not clear-headed. "Wha-? What do you mean?"

"It means I like you." The person in question came around the corner of the corridor unceremoniously, his pace steady and graceful. He handed Harry the stack of clothes hanging from his arm, uncaring about the topic of discussion. "You took the wrong cloak yesterday."

"Riddle, you…" Ovi felt his throat cramping closed in shock, making it particularly difficult for him to breathe.

Tom looked at him, swarthy eyes encasing Ovi like an invisible net. The struggling Ovi was completely trapped within it, his throat gradually growing tighter and tighter, lending the feeling of being strangled.

He was suffocating.

Tom's eyes remained like so, yet he had a smile on his face, looking nothing out of the ordinary. "He's my father, of course I like him."

Harry embarrassedly combed his fingers through his haphazard hair, and though he didn't understand what was going on, he was pretty happy.


I've told you before to control your pet's mouth; it's a pity you're unable to discipline him properly. When training pets, there's always a time for punishment, hmm? How about poisoning him mute? Tom happily blew on the note, the ink quickly drying up and printing on the parchment. He rolled up the parchment and tied it to a beautiful snow owl, watching it blend in with the snow as it flew away.

Ovidius Parkinson? From what he remembered, there were two or three illegitimate children in the Parkinson Family, weren't there?

Say, if the successor became mute, who would the inheritance fall on?


(1) 'The crying children get the candy' - This is similar to the American proverb 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'; the more noticeable problems are the ones most likely to get attention.
(2) 'Out of curiousity' - This was originally 神差鬼使地, which is an idiom translating to 'the work of Gods and Devils.
(3) * - lustful