"Tell me I'll never have to be out there again."

"You will never have to be out there again."

- When Harry Met Sally

October, 1942

"Holy shit." Harry really couldn't help it, it just slipped out of her mouth, much in the same way that Tom Riddle had just slipped out of the party with the mother of all awkward silences in his wake.

She wasn't much better, though; she and everyone else was staring out the door with their jaws hanging open, as if they were just waiting for him to reappear and say it was all a joke. Or, more likely, for him to have just been standing there the whole time and it was some kind of mass hallucination.

Tom Riddle didn't do that, he wasn't allowed to do that, he wasn't allowed to…

She didn't even know what, but whatever it was that she had just witnessed, he was not allowed to do it. Except he had, and the door was still closed, and Harry was finally able to close her mouth and admit, "I don't think he's coming back."

She had thought…

She didn't know what she'd thought about the young Tom Riddle before coming here. In the diary he'd been so put together, so charming, and in the Chamber he had as well. It'd been easy to imagine that he'd have everyone and their brother eating out of his hands during Hogwarts in a way that Harry would simply never be able to.

And he had, she was sure he had, except he had just…

"Oh, hell," Harry said, because there it was, that warm, uncomfortable churning in her stomach that was crying out that something, somewhere, was wrong and that Harry should go and fix it. Even when it wasn't her problem, even when he was Tom Riddle, because Tom Riddle was sad now and maybe it was Harry's fault?

"Oh, bloody hell," Harry repeated, rubbing at her forehead which, now that she realized it, was starting to get that familiar stabbing pain that came with Voldemort's bottomless rage. Except this time it wasn't just rage; there was a sense of overwhelming despair as well, something she'd never really felt from Voldemort back in the good old days.

"Harry, are you alright?" Alphard was looking at her, not at the door, as if Tom Riddle's grand finale held no interest for him anymore.

Everyone, Harry saw, was picking up the pieces now. Slughorn lost his subdued, shocked look and had now turned to Orion Black and was discussing, as far as Harry could tell, Tom's poor health and what the stress of OWL exams could do to a person. Malfoy and Lucretia Black had turned to sneering in contempt, sniffing, and writing Tom off undoubtedly as a lost cause they never should have bothered with.

Rumors would fly throughout the school, would sound along with his every footstep, and Tom Riddle was about to become infamous for something other than a mysterious service to the school.

And Harry, even without the mother of all migraines, could empathize.

Play it cool, Harry Potter, it's just your saving people thing acting up again. You know, that thing you have that makes you run into certain death about every May because you know nobody else is going to and Dumbledore's always out of the castle. That thing, you just have to learn to ignore it, because the people in this case is Tom Marvolo Riddle, the secret incarnation of evil.

Tom Riddle, who could cast a Patronus, had a personality that wasn't saccharine charming, was actually kind of funny, the only person who seemed to like her even when he hated her, forgave her for murdering his giant snake friend, and while an overdramatic high maintenance diva was not the pure evil concentrate she had been led to believe.

But that didn't make him people worthy of the gut-churning, sweat-inducing saving people thing.

She could do this, she could ignore this, she could ignore this just like she ignored…

"Oh, hell," Harry said, louder this time, ignoring Alphard's more alarmed look as Harry realized that no, she had never ignored it.

That time Dudley had gotten attacked by dementors, yeah, Harry was right there with him and facing expulsion only a few days later. Or that time when, after rescuing Ron from watery death in the second task, she'd decided one wasn't enough and she should go back for Gabrielle too. Or that time in her first time through fifth year when Hermione had voluntold her to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts in a secret rebellion against Umbridge.

Point being, Harry couldn't think of a time she'd actively said, "Nope," and walked away from anyone's problem.

Granted, it had never been Tom Riddle's bullshit problems before, but…

"Harry, why are you grimacing?"

Harry sighed in defeat. "Look, Alphard, I should get going. I have a really bad headache."

"A headache?" he asked, eyebrows raising, and then motioned to Slughorn, "Do you want me to—"

"No, no," Harry said, waving her hands, "It's not that kind of a headache."

Not that Snape had ever offered her potions during one of her weekly epileptic fits following Voldemort's resurrection, but the ones Madame Pomfrey had coughed up had done jack shit. Plus, after Voldemort calmed down (if he calmed down), they would disappear almost as quickly as they came.

"It's not that kind of a headache," Alphard repeated, looking as if he was not sure if he should be fond or just dubious. He was kind of settling for a weird mix of both.

"It's fine, really, I just, I should go," Harry said, motioning to the door, "This isn't my scene anyway, and now that Riddle has gone and upstaged me I can't embarrass anyone with my presence. So… You know… I kind of just want to go and grab some pie."

She should have just gone and eaten the damn treacle tart to begin with and skipped this whole mess. Still, Harry started edging backwards, away from the punch, food, and Alphard Black, who was just standing there as if he really had no idea what was happening.

"But wait, when should I meet you?" he asked, stepping with her as she slowly made her way out of Slughorn's office.

"Meet me?" she asked, having no idea what the hell he was talking about.

"For the tutoring, remember? Riddle just quit."

Oh, right, that ridiculous thing before he'd done his ridiculous other thing. Had he… Was this somehow because of that? Had he not wanted Harry to just smile and nod? But what had he been expecting? Harry had been trying to quit that garbage since before he started!

God, he was such a hot mess!

"Right, well, I'm here all week?" Harry said, though hesitantly. To tell the truth, she was alarmingly free without Quidditch or DA monopolizing her schedule. "Tuesdays and Thursdays are still good."

"I'll see you Tuesday, then," he said, and he grinned, a full-fledged smile as if he was really looking forward to sitting down with Harry and correcting her mediocre Potions homework and even worse History homework (the terrible thing about Binns being alive was that he was still boring as all hell but now he could actually grade).

And with that, Harry was out the door and shutting it closed with a sense of finality.

"Right, I'm never going to one of those again," she said to herself with a smile. Lord, it really was the worst. Alphard was nice and all, surprisingly so really, but good god, the rest of it. It was like the essence of Draco Ferret Malfoy condensed into a single room. Everything had glittered and shone, everyone had the kind of smarmy accent you could only obtain when you were filthy rich and liked it that way, and it was the kind of place that made you feel like you were covered in dirt and there were holes in your sweater.

It was, in short, everything Harry hated about Slytherin.

Maybe that was what Riddle felt like.

"Oh boy," Harry said with a sigh, slumping against the door. She didn't need to be thinking these kind of thoughts. Couldn't Tom Riddle stay in his own bubble while she stayed in hers? They'd done that for a few weeks; it had been nice. She missed that.

Still, Riddle had been stuck in that place for years, forced to grin and bear it and claw his way to the top. And that could get to anyone; Harry didn't know if she could have lasted as long as he must have.

"Harry, why do you have to do this?!" she cried to the empty hallway, tearing at her hair and stepping forward, "Why can't you just be a normal person?!"

It was too late, though; she was already walking, following her gut instinct that would somehow lead her to a very sad and angry Tom Riddle who was probably sitting on a log and…

"No, he wouldn't."

Would he really go and sit in the exact same spot that Harry herself had stormed off to weeks earlier?

Now, Harry wouldn't say she knew Tom Riddle particularly well (even if she did ruin his evil schemes more than your average person) but she did have this nagging suspicion that he was absolutely sitting his ass down on a log in the middle of the night and staring moodily out towards the lake.

And Harry had really good instincts for this sort of thing.

Well, she might not have an invisibility cloak, but she was pretty good at ducking prefects and professors, so slowly but surely Harry weaved her way through the castle and out onto the grounds. It was pitch black out, the grounds only lit by a smattering of stars and a pale sliver of moon. The bare trees rustled in the wind and there was that soft earthy smell that came with the edge of Fall bleeding into Winter.

As she stepped closer to the lake, squinting, she could make out a silhouette of a boy who was tall enough to be a man.

She couldn't help but smile, almost fondly, at the sight of him sitting where she had been not so long ago.

She hadn't realized that the tables could ever turn, especially not for a pair like them.

"So, funny meeting you here in a place like this."

If ever there was a voice he did not want to hear in any moment ever again, it was this one.

Tom did not move, had not moved since he had come here, had instead sat ramrod straight, staring out towards the lake and wondering what would become of him. He had just destroyed himself—no, he had already been destroying himself inch by inch but had merely written it off, and now he found that he simply could not do it any longer.

What did it matter? What did anything in Tom Riddle's life matter? He was nothing but a poor attempt at a farce anyway. He'd be forgotten soon enough anyway, by his own volition no less. Except what would Voldemort be then? He'd be worse, really. At least Tom Riddle had a history of sorts, even if it was that of a poor orphan.

Voldemort was nothing more than paper-mâché.

She sat down next to him with a quiet thump and a too-loud exhalation. There was nothing graceful in the moment, nothing refined or feminine about the way she just plopped herself down next to him. It would have irritated him, not so long ago. Now he simply couldn't find the energy.

"It's a nice night," she said with a kind of fondness she didn't deserve, a small contented smile, "Cold as hell, but you know, for Halloween it's not too shabby. Usually, in my life anyway, everything goes to hell on Halloween at the level of trolls rampaging through the dungeons. This though, this isn't so bad."

"What do you want?" he asked instead, unable to help the bitterness in his own voice.

"If you haven't noticed," she said, finally turning to look directly at him, "I have this saving people thing."

"A what?" he asked, unable to help but turn to look at her as well with incredulously raised eyebrows. She didn't seem to mind, for once, instead just grinned back at him as if she'd thought more or less the same thing herself.

It was an oddly unguarded and free expression, the kind of look he'd thought he'd never get from her, had distantly longed for in odd moments here and there but never truly expected to see on her face. Yet it didn't fade; even as he blinked and felt his own expression dripping away from him, she just kept smiling as if she had no reason in the world not to.

"A saving people thing," Harry repeated as if it was the most normal phrase in the world, "I kind of charge without thinking into battle whenever I think somebody needs it. Or, in this case, I follow you out of the castle and try to find a way to cheer you up even when it isn't really my problem."

"Not your problem," Tom hissed at her, but her grin just grew, as if she'd been hoping he'd go and say that.

It wasn't, truly, her problem. Oh, but he wanted it to be. He wanted to rage at her for turning his world on its head in a matter of months. Not simply for opening the Chamber of Secrets without him, for performing sacrilege in a sanctified place, but for the fact that she had the presumption to stand tall and firm in the face of all opposition. Tom had bent like a reed in the wind because he had been convinced, had known, from the moment he set foot in this place, that it was the only way he would make it in this world.

Harry had dared to instead be a mountain, firm in the course of all howling winds, and he was the one who had crumbled at her feet.

And she didn't even have the decency to realize what she was.

"Nope," she said, before adding with a careless shrug, "Riddle, I barely understand you. How the hell is it my problem what goes on in your pretty little head?"

"This is not making me feel better," he said, before narrowing his eyes and focusing on that last part of her question, "And did you just call me pretty?"

She stared, her eyes growing as wide as saucers, and a light flush dusted her cheeks. "Well, I'm not blind, Riddle."

Tom had nothing to say to that.

Really, what could one say to that?

He wasn't blind either; he knew what he looked like. Although Tom had been born into poverty in muggle London, he had always been attractive, ambitious, and oh so intelligent. He had made use of each of these traits in their turn until he had fashioned himself into more than the wizarding world could ever expect from the likes of him.

Still, for one reason or another he had never expected to hear Harry Evans say it.

Then again, he'd never expect any of this night to have happened.

He had been so careful, so polished, for so many years now. And he'd been so close to graduation, only two more years of this, two more years of enduring Slughorn and the rest of the Slytherins. In the face of the rest of his life, in the face of Voldemort and all his ambitions, what was something like that?

Tonight, it had been enough. So that even now, sitting here, he found that he never wanted to go back inside that place.

He was done. For better or worse, he was done, finished. Whatever Tom Riddle returned to Hogwarts would not be the same Tom Riddle who had walked out here tonight. Even if his dormmates didn't cast him off for this, for his daring to look down upon them rather than vice versa, he simply could not return.

It was over.

He was finished.

"So, you lost your shit in front of all your cool friends," Harry said, her voice breaking into his thoughts with an ease she should not possess, "It happens."

"It happens?" he parroted dully, because it certainly never happened to Tom Riddle. Not even in the orphanage, not even with Dumbledore in that disastrous first meeting, had anything like this happened.

"It happens to me all the bloody time," Harry said, and then continued as if she was the expert at 'losing her shit in front of all her cool friends', "My fif—last year, I'd have these frequent epileptic seizures of doom in front of the whole school all the time. And they were death seizures, there was the shaking, the screaming, my eyes would apparently roll back into my head so you just saw the whites of them, my sca—well, point being, they were really bloody dramatic."

"I don't see what this—"

Harry cut him off before he had a chance to continue, "And this was while the Proph—Um, some really rude people, were spreading rumors about me all the time and how I was this fame-seeking narcissistic compulsive liar. And I'm not going to lie, it sucked, especially since we had this really vindictive professor who—"

"I thought you were homeschooled," Tom cut in.

She stopped, paled, swallowed, then said hoarsely, "Well, me and a couple of other village kids who were also homeschooled had these traveling professors come sometimes."

"Were you a part of a cult?" Tom asked, "Are you from Ireland or Wales?"

"Huh?"

He just felt his eyebrows rising higher, wondering if she really was this stupid or if she somehow thought he was this stupid, "Do you really expect me to believe that a group of magical children, who are not the children of those few sparse druid communities left, were kept from attending Hogwarts?"

"…We called it the golden trio," she said after a very healthy pause, then, flushing brilliantly red even in the dark, she asked, "Are you going to let me finish my story or not?!"

"Did your story have a point?" Tom asked in turn, sarcasm oozing from his tone.

"Yes, it did! A very good point, too!"

"Really? Because it wasn't getting there very quickly," Tom pointed out, unable to help his lips twisting into a sly smile, "I was starting to lose interest."

"Well, that's not my bloody problem, is it?!" she asked, crossing her arms with a humph and clearly wondering why she'd ever bothered to come out here in the first place.

"Certainly not," Tom responded, "You, after all, are hardly responsible for what goes on in my pretty head."

"Damn straight," she agreed, then fell into restless silence, tapping her foot and staring moodily out at the lake while he just continued to smile.

Lord, but he did feel better, didn't he? All it'd taken was her coming down here, after him and not Alphard Black, and it'd been as if one less thing was resting on his shoulders. It wasn't as if anything had changed for the better, it was still as dismal and hopeless and ever, but she was here.

And somehow, that meant more than she would ever know.

"Can I finish?" she asked, pouting over at him, glaring like she was onto whatever evil distracting scheme he'd hatched this time.

"I'm not going to stop you."

"You know, I really dislike you."

"But you don't hate me," he pointed out, and for some reason this gave her pause. She actually considered his words and seemed to look past whatever image she constantly projected onto him.

"No," she said finally, softly, as if she could hardly believe it herself, "I don't hate you."

For a moment they just stared at one another. It was pitch black out, so even sitting right next to her he could barely make out her features, could hardly catch the glow of her unnaturally green eyes. Still, they both stared quietly, as if just by looking they could find whatever it was they were looking for in one another.

"You said something about a particularly vindictive professor of your cult?" he asked.

"Right," Harry said, nodding shortly, "She was there too, and she really was the worst, I mean look at what she did to my hand! And this one's apparently going to be stuck there forever!"

She held up her right hand under his nose so that he had to lean back slightly to see what the hell she was talking about. There, squinting, he realized were words etched into the back of her hand in what looked like it could be her hand writing.

"I must not tell lies."

"Jesus," he breathed out, because who, how, how would something like that get onto the back of her hand? He didn't believe her professor story for a moment, except that Harry was an abysmal liar, but all the same how had words been carved into her skin?

She pulled her hand back before he could touch it, suddenly self-conscious, perhaps realizing that she'd shown him more than she should have. She gave him that awkward smile, the one she used to brush off that which was truly terrible, and said, "That's not really important. The important thing was that it did suck, and everyone did treat me like garbage for the most part, except they also forgot about it."

She looked at him pointedly, "People have their own shit to deal with, their own lives and problems. At the end of things, they don't really have the time or interest to spend caring about yours. Give it time, some large distracting event, and it will be like this one little blip never happened at all and you'll be Hogwarts's personal prince charming again."

She seemed so confident, likely looking for her rainbow connection as always, and when she smiled at him he almost felt confident and hopeful in turn. He didn't think she was wrong; if he chose to he could turn this around in time.

And yet. "What if I don't want to be that anymore?"

"What?" Her jaw fell open and she looked like he'd just slapped her across the face with a herring.

"But that's—" she cut herself off, floundered, hands flying everywhere in gesture as she searched for her words, "I mean—Riddle, that's what you've always wanted."

"You haven't known me very long, Harry," he said with a fondness he no longer had the energy to deny himself, "What do you know about what I do and don't want?"

Her mouth opened, closed, and she did a marvelous impression of a drowning cod fish. Finally, she spluttered out, "I thought I knew a whole bloody lot. I mean, if that lot doesn't like you won't it make it harder for your evil schemes of world domination?"

He laughed. He couldn't help it, he tilted his head back and laughed long and hard while she just stared, blushed, fidgeted, and looked dreadfully uncomfortable. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else in the world but here, but like she just couldn't bring herself to leave.

Because Tom was a soul in need.

He laughed harder.

"Are you done yet?"

"No," he said through chuckles, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, "Not hardly."

"Well," she said with an offended huff, "I'm glad I amuse you, Mr. Riddle."

"Harry," he said looking at her with a smile, "I do believe you have no idea what you do to me."

She stared at him, blinked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion and she said, "Never say that to me ever, and I mean ever, again."

"I'm having an existential crisis," he said, standing from his log and making his way back to the castle, "I can do whatever the bloody hell I feel like."

"After all," he said as he waited for her to scramble to his feet and charge after him, "Last time we were in this position, you decided it'd be a wonderful idea to open the Chamber of Secrets."

"That's— I— You—You are a bastard!" she started, but he was already walking away, smiling to himself as he did so, and thought that at least this much was right with the world.

Author's Note: Ah, so many feels. And thank you to GlassGirlCeci for betaing the chapter. Otherwise new in the world of "When Harry Met Tom" is "All our Grand Ambitions" where we get a glimpse of a hypothetical future Tom and Harry.

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.