A/N: When I told Wolf Antlers (his more recent stuff is on Ao3, so check him out!) that I'd write him a gift if he made it to 20k words on his October fic collection in our next sprint, I didn't expect him to slam out over 500 words and take me up on it. But I'm sure glad he did, because this little AU has been really fun to write so far while trying to edit chapters for Entwined. I'm thinking 1-2 more chapters after this one, and I hope they're just as fun to write. So thanks Rye! Also, additional thanks to SolAnise for giving this a read-through to make sure it made sense outside of my own head!
Prompt: Same gen - Harry runs a potion greenhouse, Tom works for him because he wants to have access to rare plants and then they fall in love.
The above prompt was the base, and I just kinda ran with it and let it evolve as Tom's voice evolved in my head. Hope you all enjoy, especially you Rye!
Dandelions Growing Between Cracked Pavement
Ch. 1
Days like today made Tom Riddle question if this plan was actually a good idea.
The morning had gotten off to a rough start when he woke to the sunlight streaming in through the window rather than the wand alert he thought he had set last night. Tom had leapt out of his bed, taking a short, steaming hot shower and getting dressed in a flurry. Already running fifteen minutes late, he had rushed off without even his morning cup of tea.
Tom was a nightmare without his morning cup of tea. For all that the eighteen-year old recent graduate had made it his mission to charm anyone and everyone necessary, he lost all ability to utilize his charisma when he had to forego his English Breakfast. So, upon arriving at the LHR Inc. Greenhouses for his shift, Tom was a frowning, frustrated mess. On the inside. Even no morning cuppa couldn't make Tom's high and sharp cheekbones, his wavy brown locks or intense navy eyes look any less handsome. With the exception of this morning's alarm, the former Slytherin King was always prepared, so his dark slacks were pressed, crease sharp as it showcased his lithe musculature, and his dark linen button up was wrinkle-free even with the sleeves rolled past his elbows putting his strong forearms on display.
His fellow caretaker for LHR had been the first to the greenhouses this morning, another change to his routine that put Tom off. Tom preferred being the one to receive the day's intakes and expected outputs from Longbottom, better to keep up the image of the excellent employee, the hard-working plant-lover Tom had been channeling for the past six months.
If Tom hadn't already eradicated his inclination towards nervous motions he'd have run a hand through his hair in frustration. Greengrass herself was always punctual, and her slight smirk at having been the one to report first this morning was pissing him off. Her trimmed nails and long black willowy skirt made her look sharp as ever and complimented her sleek ebony hair braided in that Dutch style he remembered the Rosier girl chattering about in the common room a few years back.
She passed him his piece of parchment detailing what to harvest for the day and which specimens needed specific attention either because it was their day on the rotation or because the supervisor had noticed something off about that particular plant.
Greenglass clucked her tongue before he had a chance to read it. "Particularly poor day for you to be late, Riddle." Her side-eye mocked him, and he loathed this witch more than ever. As if Daphne Greengrass needed a lowly job as a greenhouse caretaker. The woman was the heiress to Greengrass Imports and was widely acknowledged as the successor to her father's trade empire. Tom wasn't sure if she was here for an in with the owners when her father eventually tried to bring LHR into the fold of their many umbrella companies or if she had taken this job on as some sort of small rebellion from her family's expectations. Either way, her smug attitude and –Tom grudgingly admitted—natural affinity with plants grated on him every day they worked beside each other in the pungent mulch of the greenhouses.
"Oh?" Tom affected, appearing unconcerned. "And why is that Greengrass?" He gave his daily task list a glance over, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Nothing seemed amiss with the plants in front of them either.
"Neville wasn't the one who passed our worklists along this morning." She flipped the tail of her braid over her shoulder, feigning nonchalance. Tom straightened. She couldn't mean—"Mr. Potter, or sorry he asked me to call him Harry, oops." Her canines sparkled as she smiled, looking like she was ready to rip Tom's throat out with her teeth. "Harry has recently returned to London after almost a year spent acquiring new samples and cuttings from around the globe. He seems a very worldly man, and he was quite complimentary of my punctuality and eagerness for the work we do here."
Tom gritted his teeth so hard he momentarily feared he had chipped a molar. Of course his alarm failed to go off on the day one of the co-owners of the most lucrative plant and potions ingredient suppliers in the UK returned to oversee their work. Bloody brilliant.
He'd heard about Mr. Potter. Rather young to be the head of a multi-million galleon company, but his business partner was older than him and a family friend. The pair had gone into business together eight years ago, and in less than three years had a sterling reputation amongst British wizards for the quality of their ingredients and specimens as well as the incredibly potent brews made from their ingredients under trademarked recipes. Within five years Potter and Prince had dominated the entire UK, and now they were one of the main suppliers to France, Spain and Italy. Tom had heard rumors that Germany or Belgium would be the next country to come under purview of this company's European empire, and Tom wanted in on all of it.
While the eighteen-year old wouldn't say he enjoyed mucking around in the dirt, he could admit he had already learned more about how to maximize output from magical plants in small ways than he had over the course of seven years at Hogwarts. Neville Longbottom, the greenhouse manager seemed to be able to make plants flourish under his fingertips. The man's entire demeanor changed in the tepid air of the hothouse, and he could make even the most stubborn trimmings bloom under his command, return any blossom from a wilt.
Outside of their work environment however was a different story. Tom had tried to take Longbottom out for a nip after work a few times, ingratiating himself further into the man's good graces, but the older wizard was awkward and stilting in a way opposite to the firm guiding presence he gave off when teaching Tom and Daphne the best ways to harvest moonclover dew or coax creeping ivy into a wall of protection from other more venomous specimens.
What little information Tom had managed to extract from Longbottom during their outings amounted to a few stammered facts about one of the owners with whom Neville had attended Hogwarts. The pair had been Gryffindors together, with Potter being a few years older than the manager, and their mothers had been close friends in their own school days. Harry Potter's parents had been the victims of a string of murders a few years prior to his sorting, so Potter had been raised under the purview of his two godfathers. When Potter had begun making plans to go into the magical ingredient business in their fifth-year, the boy had offered Longbottom a job upon graduation, already familiar with his friend's affinity for herbology.
No matter how much Tom pried, Longbottom had remained rather tight-lipped beyond those basic facts. With the exception of Potter being co-raised by his godfathers, everything Longbottom mentioned had either been common knowledge or something Longbottom chose to reveal about himself. Tom wasn't envious of such loyalty per say. He was more interested in what kind of man, or men if Tom thought about the other co-owner Mr. Prince, inspired such loyalty from his supervisor.
And now Greengrass had met Potter. Before Tom. That twat.
"I'm glad you got the opportunity to impress for once, Greengrass, considering you so rarely have the chance."
It was a weak rejoinder, Tom knew. Greengrass's twitching lips proved she knew she had the upper hand too. "Well, Riddle, let's get to work. Wouldn't want to disappoint Mr. Pot—Harry, now would we?" The arch of her brow made it quite clear she wasn't the one who needed to worry about disappointing the boss. Tom suppressed a scowl and turned on his heel.
He opened and shut the door to Ivy House with more force than usual, the only visible outlet he gave himself for his rage. Tom pulled in a long breath to calm down and let the tensions drain from his shoulders at the earthy smell of the air in the hothouse. Ivy House was one of Tom's preferred workspaces as the crawling namesake had worked its way up the walls, purposefully bathing the space in less light than most of the other greenhouses. The plants growing in Ivy House all thrived in lower or lesser lighting, and Tom had learned a great deal about how light-exposure changed the properties of certain species. He could also admit, if only to himself, that the feeling of being under a rainforest canopy, shady with brilliant sunbeams breaking through in certain spots to illuminate a new corner of the lush greenery, was soothing.
Tom tended to the drampinite flowers first. They were a midnight blue so deep the petals seemed black in the shaded light. The plant stems were thick, smooth to the touch and trisected into heads full of seven petals each, long triangles that curled back to reveal a shiny silver center. When harvested in full bloom during the witching hour, the petals gave off an almost intoxicating scent akin to cherry liquor and were useful in a handful of medicinal numbing potions as well as a battle drought and a lust potion both of which were patented products of LHR Inc.
The pads of Tom's fingers stroked the fragrant petals, releasing a burst of light cherry scented air and giving the flowers a chance to let their accumulated buildup disperse. If tended to now at around 9:30, the perfect amount of resin would remain to make the petals at their most potent when harvested tonight.
This greenhouse was the only spot where drampanite flowers grew on British soil. Nowhere else outside of a handful of other greenhouses across the world and their native Romania could they be harvested. Specimens such as these were one of the reasons Tom had called in every favor to attain this job.
Here, Tom had access to potions ingredients that less than 50 other people in the world could find on the regular. After writing his OWLs, Tom had been searching for career options, but none interested him greatly. The ministry was full of pandering sycophants and blind bigots who couldn't realize that forcing second cousins to procreate just may have been the reason their family had produced three squibs of their seven children in this generation. Slytherin heritage or not, Tom wouldn't get to a position of power in the ministry without having to do some unpleasant things, submit himself to awful people.
He'd thought about staying at Hogwarts, trying for a mastery and making his way to a professor position, but there were no vacancies in the staff and his preferred professors were all committed to apprentices. Even once he was finished with his NEWTS, Slughorn, Merrythought, Kettleburn and Varnicus would all be unable to take on another post-graduate pupil. Dumbledore was out of the question. Tom wasn't being dramatic when he said he'd rather kill himself than apprentice under that sanctimonious old wanker.
If Tom were honest, he was interested in the more esoteric magics anyways. He'd much rather discover forgotten branches of the mystic arts or study under a master who could teach him more specialized topics instead of the regimented curriculum the Hogwarts Masters touted. It was in searching through the various guild registries for the lists of Masters that Tom had first thought about LHR as a possible employer.
Between the two, Potter and Prince had registered seven masteries. Tom had read an article about the pair in Entrepeneur Monthly back at the beginning of his sixth year that had mentioned the pair being the most accredited and knowledgeable business owners in Britain. It would have been the UK if there weren't a niche enchanter operation in Wales run by a trio who had nine masteries between them. Still, Prince carried masteries in Potions, Spell-Creation, Defense and Charms while Potter was a Master of Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures and Runic Magic.
The practices used in LHR's greenhouses were so secretive that Tom and Greengrass had undergone extensive background checks and testing before starting their internships. He had passed through three rounds of interviews and had signed so many pieces of parchment that his hand had cramped. The magical non-disclosures agreement woven throughout the contract had attached to Tom's magic like a leech the instant the final signature touched the page. He and Greengrass had spent a week in isolation as their magics adjusted to the constant weight upon them. Tom had been more impressed than resentful at the constant heaviness in his chest from the spells. Whenever they left their jobs, be it tomorrow or in ten years, the heaviness would follow them, keeping the practices instituted at LHR off the main market. The layers of spells set upon him had been co-created by Potter and Prince within two years of starting their business.
Longbottom had been part of the first wave of employees to undertake the extensive spellwork and had helped the last five classes of interns adjust during the process. "Well, the first year they were in business together, the bosses were still relatively unknown, you know?" Longbottom had mentioned under privacy wards over a beer in the Leaky. "So, when they started putting such high-quality ingredients and potions on the market their competitors got curious. You know that moisturizer that has been all the rage with witches for the last decade?" Tom had given a slow nod in return, how was this relevant to the dumbbell permanently resting on his collarbones? "That was an LHR-exclusive product before Shoshanna's sent someone to intern in the potions-making department." Longbottom confided.
Tom's eyebrows had shot up, and he sat straighter than before at the realization of why Longbottom had chosen to share. "That intern gave Shoshanna's an approximation of the recipe because the bosses only had a light set of spells woven into their employee contacts, and now every potioneer and beauty company sells a variant of that moisturizer. The bosses sued of course, but weren't able to get anywhere close to the full amount returned. Not to mention, Shoshanna's puts their ingredient list on the products." Both men rolled their eyes at that. Neville muttered, "Stupid." and Tom fully agreed. Longbottom concluded the story, "We were all given the choice to undergo the current process or sign even more extensive NDAs and lose our positions less than two months later."
Tom remembered choking on his mouthful of ale at that. "Two months? They came up with all of that in TWO MONTHS?" "Most of it, yeah." Longbottom had confirmed. The interview process you went through was instituted at the next round of hiring. It's only changed slightly over the years. The contracts and spells you underwent though, that's the exact same method I went through six years ago."
As much as he disliked the girl, Tom had shared a great deal of the information he had gathered that night with Greengrass. She deserved to know how vicious their bosses would be if either of them somehow managed to subvert the complex web of charms now bound to their blood.
"They did what?" She had sputtered, when Tom told her that the bosses had somehow blacklisted that former intern to the point no one in magical Europe would hire her. Shoshanna's had mysteriously let her go less than a week after the court case had settled, and the woman had ended up moving to MACUSA where she still wasn't able to work in anything relating to plant or animal based products. One of the current employees had discreetly looked her up a few years back only to discover that she was a journeyman trying for a mastery in Runic Magic. Greengrass's eyes had widened after Tom had given her a minute to put together why the woman was damned in such a future.
"Holy shit. What an idiot. She should have gone for Arithmancy." Tom had let a laugh loose, and she had joined him less than a breath later. Once you signed on to an apprenticeship, you committed yourself to that learning until you became a Master or you died. You could only finish one mastery at a time, and the Runic Magic Mastery involved learning how to inscribe Runes into a variety of surfaces. Including leather during the journeyman stage. A woman somehow bound from interacting magically with animal products was doomed to never pass that stage of her mastery, forever keeping her from a Mastery or the ability to take on another career or academic pathway. Potter and Prince had led her to her own ruin. For stealing a skincare recipe.
The pair had stopped laughing pretty quickly after that. Greengrass had bought them both three fingers of firewhiskey. With a chiming clink of their glasses, Tom and Greengrass had downed the burning liquid in one and silently promised to never piss off Potter or Prince.
The more Tom learned about his bosses, the more Tom desired to meet them in person. Men like that, they were who Tom wanted to study under, learn from, emulate. They made things, and they made things happen. Their abilities to create, to improve, to beat the system and show themselves better, had been the other draw to this company. If two half-bloods could economically imperialize the European potions and creatures ingredient market, then what else could a half-blood do? Tom wanted to find out.
And so he had. His determination along with the recommendations of his professors and his closest friend's parents had gotten him through the interview process, earning him one of the few coveted spots in the LHR internship program. Tom had chosen to apply for one of the coveted Herbology positions for a few reasons, none of which were readily apparent. His professors and friends had been surprised beyond belief when he had first told them, but when he admitted to professor Slughorn that he had read in an interview that the bosses were the most hands on with the Herbology and Potions interns Slughorn had taken on that half-knowing, half-proud look that made some uncomfortable emotion stir in Tom's belly. He wondered if it were gratitude or something else Tom never wanted to feel for another person who had a position of power over him.
Tom had played it off, telling his professor that he felt there was more to learn in such a field and that the opportunity was overlooked because so many witches and wizards found Herbology to be too humble of a specialty and that if Tom one day wanted to attain his potions mastery then he would wait until Slughorn could handle another apprentice. Both of which were true, but he had never forgotten what Professor Slughorn had told him that day. "You may not realize this Tom, but I knew Messers Potter and Prince. They too were students here, excellent ones. Ones I took a keen interest in, due to their talent and due to their mothers. You, who have always wanted to stand out, stand above—you remind me of them. And like the pair of them, I know there's not a chance that you haven't saved and recorded every scrap of information you could find about those lads. So, you know, like I do, what they are, what they came from. You see yourself in them. You've always had a voracious appetite for learning, just as Harry and Severus had. Severus was even a snake, like us. A member of my house," he murmured, falling into his memories. "And young Harry, so like his father in looks but with the mind of his mother, a favorite of mine beyond most others. I always thought he sorted wrong, but with the choices he's made there's no doubt he is a lion as much as he could have been a snake. No Tom, I don't doubt you chose Herbology for any handful of reasons, but there's no better intern position at LHR that affords you the chance to meet and learn from both those men." Slughorn nodded even as Tom stood ramrod straight, trying to give nothing away that Slughorn could use in the future. "A well thought out and underrated choice, my boy. Excellent job."
Tom's reply of, "Thank you, sir," had been stiff, overly formal in a rather intimate moment, but Tom had always hated feeling so seen. Everyone else Tom had talked to had missed those underlying reasons for his choice. Slughorn seeing right through him made him feel every inch the seventeen-year old he was, and it was not to be born.
Lily House was the largest greenhouse LHR boasted, to the point it had offshoot rooms named for different species of lilies. Tom thought it made sense considering the company's logo contained a lily. He trod into the Calla room, the white bulbs sectioning off the different plant patches more visibly than any other room on the whole property. The plants here all in some way related to purity, and every entrance into the room was preceded by a spell that cleansed the approaching worker of an possible toxins or contaminants as well as a spell that left a light film of magic between the outermost layer of the worker's skin/clothing/gloves and the rest of the atmosphere.
Learning the theory of that spell alone, one created by Potter during his Hogwarts years, was worth six months of toiling under Longbottom. Tom and Daphne had spent two weeks learning how to manifest their magic on their fingertips and then their palms, getting the feel of their own inner power, enough to recognize and manipulate it up and down their arms. Once they grew comfortable, Longbottom taught them the sic vestit magicae spell to push the gathered magic over the rest of their body and hold it in place without having to expend the extraordinary effort that such an endeavor would normally require.
Now, with magic shield covering him, Tom bent to add a fresh layer of mulch to every separating section of calla lilies. It was just the base mulch that Tom, Greengrass and Longbottom put together every Sunday, rather than any of the other more intricate mixes that certain plants needed to flourish. Once Tom had finished retrenching the callas, Tom moved to the Selendrome plants, carrying the two pails of water melted from the arctic ice caps to poor onto the roots.
Like many of the specimens in this room, Selendrome plants require purity to produce purity. If only touched by the purest of ingredients—magic, water, sunlight, moonlight—pure nutrient enriched soil—Selendrome leaves were some of the strongest poison curatives in the world. If a purely-grown leaf were to be placed under the tongue, it could prevent orally-applied poison from activating, and would grow hot enough to warn the person using it that something poisonous had been ingested. That's not even to mention the uses of selendrome plant parts in antidotes and antihistamine creams. Allergic reactions were momentary instead of drawn out thanks to the poultices and pastes created in the LHR labs.
Tom raised a hand to wipe off the sweat that had built up while he watered the entire patch of selendrome plants. After he sanitized and put the pails away, Tom walked the room, just giving the plants a general check before he moved on to his next task for the morning. He slowed as he passed the Chrinite, giving himself an extra moment to look at the pale pink bulbs that belled out at the tops. They were his favorite flower in this room, and had been created by Mr. Potter himself. He crossbred them from a species of tulips and the calla lily. They weren't harvested often—in fact they had yet to be harvested during Tom's internship—but he was told they had very specific uses in potions, and that the experimentation process had been infamous in the R&D department.
Longbottom chuckled when he had first shown Tom and Greengrass the petals that remained silky off the stem without preservation techniques. "Harry, er, Mr. Potter developed these as a gift actually. He thought they were pretty, and he had planned to primarily grow them at his home. However, when Mr. Prince first saw them he demanded a bouquet. You should have seen Potter's face." Longbottom couldn't contain his grin. "He was so caught off guard, stammering out a polite refusal that Prince just waved off like a fluttering ladybug. 'No you dunderhead, don't be disgusting. I gave you The Talk. Focus! Can't you see the research potential here?'" Greengrass and Tom both offered polite smiles while Longbottom guffawed. "Oh, you should have seen his face. Red as the original tulips. Anyway, three months later we planted the full patch here. We only harvest them once a year, so be on the look out for when we finally schedule it. You won't want to miss what becomes a full department event." He finished with a wistful look that made Tom and Greengrass glance at each other with raised brows and skeptical eyes.
Tom made sure his fingers were still cloaked in his magic before he reached out to stroke his index finger along the outside of the bulb, tracing the soft lip of the petal that bellowed outward. He straightened and pulled today's parchment out of his back pocket. Ah yes, time to go to Lilac House to tend the herb garden. A much more tedious task, working with ordinary specimens, but a necessary one. Seven years of potions proved how integral herbs were to magical processes.
Once finished in Lilac House, Tom washed up and broke for lunch. Having skipped breakfast, Tom hoped to pop off to the nearby town to grab a heartier meal, but with Mr. Potter being on the property today, he was loathe to take off if the opportunity to meet the boss existed.
Tom looked around, aiming for casualty in his glances to see if Greengrass or Longbottom or Potter were around and also breaking for the midday meal. He saw his fellow intern heading into Daisy House and knew she would be at least another 40 minutes with what she likely had left to do in that section of the greenhouses. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom thought he had seen long raven-colored hair, so he took his shot anyway.
"Greengrass!" The young woman stopped and turned her head slowly, as if to express her disbelief that Tom were speaking to her during working hours when he wasn't expressly made to do so. "Yes, Riddle?" She answered kindly, but her eyes said "what in merlin's bloody blazes do you think you're doing?"
"I'm breaking for lunch and was in the mood for company. I thought I'd see if you wanted to join me." Tom's smile was pleasant, eyes just wide enough to appear innocent to someone who didn't know him well enough. Greengrass did though. Her own eyes flickered to the left and narrowed. Her lips twitched and smoothed out as she stopped herself from scowling. "I can't at the moment, Riddle. I've got to finish pruning the shrivelfigs before I break for my meal, but" here she took a shaky inhale before forcing herself to finish the sentence, "thanks for asking." This time it was Greengrass who may chip a molar.
"Oh, no problem Greengrass, maybe some other day this week then when we finish around the same time." Tom's lips pressed together to prevent him from laughing at her predicament, but he rid himself of any hint of smugness at the sound of a new voice.
"I've just finished up for the morning. I'd be happy to grab a spot of lunch with you, Riddle, is it? Well, as long as you don't mind sharing a meal with someone you haven't yet met that is."
Tom turned to finally get a full look at the man striding towards them. Oh Salazar, he didn't remember Potter looking like this the last time he and Prince had posed for publicity photos. The man was tall, almost as tall as Tom who stood at a commanding 193 cm, and had a deep tan that left his skin a soft golden-brown tone. He had strong features. A square jaw, a long but tapered and straight nose, full eyebrows. His hair was pulled into a low ponytail, wrapped with a piece of leather. The raven locks took on a blue tinge under the bright midday sun, and the ends curled with a subtle elegance. All these things Tom noticed, but none so much as the man's eyes. Molten emeralds starred back at him as he met Potter's friendly gaze. His green irises were flecked with caramel-brown flakes, and his long eyelashes complimented this one soft feature on his face.
Tom, for once, was speechless, but only for a moment. No matter how beautiful this man may be, he was Mr. Potter, and Tom had been planning this meeting in his head for years.
"It's all the same to me, sir!" Tom responded back, amiable and open. "As long as you don't mind sharing a meal with an intern."
"Well, that's settled then." Potter laughed. "Let me just grab my coat, and we can be off! There a pub over in Alfriston that fries up a fantastic fish and chips, and I've been craving it since returning to Britain. Sound alright to you?"
"Sounds great, and may I say, welcome back, Mr. Potter." Tom's smile was a tad too wide, and Potter's cheeks colored a pink so light it was barely noticeable.
"I-thank you Riddle. And please. Call me Harry."
Internally, Tom preened. Fuck you, Greengrass.
Instead, he responded, "Only if you call me Tom, sir."