Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to Rowling.
AN: Thank you ever so much for the reviews! It's very easy to say I write for the fun of it, which is true, but a display of interest in the writing is always encouraging.
This story is not going to be all that long, maybe ten chapters. It will focus mostly on Tom and Harry's relationship.
The Adoption
OoOoO
Harry stood just outside the orphanage gates, staring at the dingy building.
Two weeks had passed since his arrival, and he'd been unable to get the place out of his mind. Two whole weeks of orienting himself to this time and place, reviewing recent history, beginning to establish himself in the Magical community… and all that time his mind stubbornly refused to leave this rundown Muggle orphanage and the single young wizard who lived here. He could almost swear he was under a compulsion of some sort.
A woman bustled by in front of him, temporarily blocking his view. The child clinging to her hand stared at him as they passed. Harry shifted uncomfortably and adjusted his cap. He'd bought new clothes, Muggle and Magical alike, but from the looks he was getting his 1938 fashion sense was about as accurate as that of the average 1990's wizard's understanding of Muggle attire.
His eyes flickered between the retreating child and the orphanage. The boy looked back over his shoulder once and their eyes locked for a split second before mother and son turned a corner, taking them out of sight. Harry drew a deep breath.
He had killed Tom Riddle once; he could do it again. But he'd be damned if he weren't going to run through every other option he could possibly think up first. Hopefully his luck would hold out long enough to keep this newest bout of Gryffindor impulsiveness from coming back to haunt him.
He stepped forward. The gate squealed loudly as he pushed it open.
OoOoO
"So his school is going to a year round schedule, are they?"
"Yes."
"Odd, that is. Then again, what about that boy isn't?" Mrs. Cole, the orphanage matron, eyed Harry suspiciously. "Why are you taking him now, when he just got back?"
Harry grit his teeth, wishing rather uncharitably that woman would go for her whiskey so her senses would be dulled a bit. Compulsion charms worked better when the person wasn't thinking straight in the first place.
"The timing of it is a bit off, I know. Things weren't finalized until the end of last week." He was lying through his teeth. Harry told himself yet again that it would be worth it if he could prevent Voldemort from ever existing and pushed aside his guilt at this blatant use of magical manipulation. It wasn't as difficult to do as it probably should have been; this woman was quite aggravating.
"Why are you adopting him, again?"
"Because the school board feels it would be better for Tom to have a specific guardian figure aside from his teachers." Lie. Bad lie, at that. Adopting Tom in the Muggle world meant he didn't have to do it in the magical one, where his severe lack of background could not be worked around with nearly so much ease. Easier in this case was most certainly better. Harry poured more of his will into the charm.
Mrs. Cole's eyes glazed a bit. "Well," she said slowly, "This is very odd, you know, but I suppose it's is all in order. I'll just have Mary call Tom in."
Harry nodded, but did not relax. Convincing the orphanage matron was no doubt not the hard part.
Harry fidgeted through the next few minutes while Mrs. Cole yelled for one of her helpers and sent her to fetch Tom. It took an inordinate amount of time for the two to show up in the doorway, time which Harry spent picking at a loose thread on his cuff and taking off his cap and running a hand through his hair and putting his cap back on and twisting it this way and that as it simply would not sit right. Stupid old fashioned Muggle clothes.
Finally, there was a light rap on the door. Twelve year old Tom Riddle entered, looking wary. Harry darted glances at him while Mrs. Cole explained Harry's lie, and did not try to stop him from drawing the obvious conclusion, that the story was untrue and Mrs. Cole's eyes were glazed as though she had been drinking again, though there were no open bottles on the desk.
When Mrs. Cole's prattle tapered off, Harry looked up, meeting Tom stare for stare. He held his hand low, out of the Muggle woman's sight, and let the tip of his wand slip out of his sleeve. Tom's eyes widened and he looked back up sharply.
"Dumbledore sent you."
"No. He doesn't even know me."
"Did Professor Slughorn send you, then?" A hint of smug hope there. How Slytherins managed to pour smugness into an emotion like hope was something Harry did not think he would ever understand.
"No. I'm not here to represent any specific Hogwarts house."
Tom scoffed.
"It's true," Harry insisted, "I never even attended it. I grew up elsewhere, and came here just recently when I learned that no one was living on the family grounds."
And what a surprise that discovery had been. Apparently he'd managed to travel not just through time, but to a parallel dimension, where the Potter family had died off about eighty years ago, leaving the family grounds empty.
There were other differences between his world and this one, once he started to look. World War Two had already ended here, for instance, while he was almost sure that in his home dimension it lasted into the early 1940's. The amount of research he'd done in the past two weeks, looking for other differences he could take advantage of, would have made Hermione proud.
Harry drew a deep breath. He'd have to be careful with his wording, with Mrs. Cole sitting right there. "I'm of the opinion that someone like you should not be in an orphanage, especially now that you've started learning to put your talents into practice. Certain people might not agree with me, but I think you deserve to live with someone who has a bit more insight into the way of life you've inherited. My house isn't huge, but…" he cast a pointed glance around the dingy office, very carefully not looking at the orphanage matron. Hopefully she wouldn't be too insulted since he was trying to get Tom off her hands for good.
Tom looked a bit more interested now, though no less suspicious. "How do I know you're not going to just kidnap me as soon as we're away from the orphanage?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Would I be going to all the trouble of adopting you and leaving an obvious paper trail if I planned on disappearing with you? All they have to do is ask Mrs. Cole to know I've been here, and I've been to Gringott's several times. They have my name and address." He spread his hands sarcastically. "I'd offer to take Veritaserum, but..."
"And what's in it for you?"
"Gives me someone to share the house with. The place is too quiet with just me there."
Tom said nothing, staring at him in exaggerated but unfeigned disbelief. Harry crossed his arms, settling them across his chest with a huff.
"Fine. You're an orphan and you're in Slytherin, which means you've got something to prove and the drive to do it. I'd be an idiot to know that and leave you in a place like this." He cocked a sarcastic eyebrow. "Is that answer more to your liking?"
Tom's shoulders grew a little less tense.
"I'm still going to my school."
"Of course."
"Would I take your name?"
"If you want to. Or you could add it to your own. There's no reason to get rid of the name your mother gave you."
Tom's eyes sharpened at the hint of knowledge about his own family history and he stared at Harry as though the older wizard was dangling a carrot and Tom couldn't see the expected stick.
"The Potters are Pureblood?"
He would want to know that.
"They were, yes."
Either Tom didn't hear Harry's use of past tense or he chose to ignore it. "I don't know of anyone else at school who has two last names."
Harry said nothing. He supposed that in this time having two last names would not be as common as it was back home. Tom nodded sharply. "I'll come with you." Then under his breath, "Tom Marvolo Riddle-Potter." There was a calculating look in his eyes that did nothing to calm Harry's nerves.
OoOoO
They appeared just inside the property gates of the Potter grounds of Godric's Hollow, nothing more than a soft crack heralding their arrival. Harry had gotten quite good at apparation over the last year.
He cast a levitation charm on the trunk resting between them and stepped forward. His feet crunched over the gravel on the long drive and he could easily hear Tom following after him. Thick trees surrounded them, casting dappled shadows and blocking the view of the main property from passers-by on the Muggle road that lay on the other side of the gate behind them.
There were no weeds to trip them up; Harry had spent a good deal of the previous day clearing the overgrown lane. They rounded a bend shortly and the house came in to view.
Harry slanted a glance at the boy following him but there was no expression on Tom's face. Harry shifted his gaze back to the approaching house.
It had stood empty for nearly eighty years. The grounds were a mess, and the exterior needed a new coat of paint, but the interior was in relatively good condition. The last occupant left some excellent semi-permanent housekeeping charms in place. It would have saved Harry a lot of work if they'd kept the exterior in such good condition.
"Welcome to Godrick's Hollow."
They stepped onto the porch, Harry absently reminding himself that it needed to be re-stained. "I haven't been in the house very long so it still needs some work," he explained as he unlocked the door and led Tom inside. The trunk settled to the floor with a slight bang. Harry was still getting used to his new wand. It was much too dangerous to use his old one here, not if he was to live with someone whose wand had a brother core to his own.
Harry hung his coat on a hook by the door, gladly hanging up his hat as well. He didn't like the thing, but it had not taken him long to figure out that in this time a hat was nearly as essential to a public wardrobe, especially in the wizarding world, as shoes.
He turned to his new permanent house guest. Tom had taken off his coat as well. Harry took it from him and hung it by his own. He needn't have bothered; Tom was not all that much shorter than Harry. Harry never did get much taller than the lower end of average, even after the significant growth spurt he had just before sixth year, and Tom had apparently always been tall.
"This is the living room." Obviously. He gestured to the open door on the right. "That's the kitchen." He spun left and pointed at the hallway. "Dining room, library and toilet. There're also stairs down to the basement. It's set up to be a Potions lab but there's nothing much in it right now."
Harry re-levitated the trunk and mounted the stairs. Tom followed. "Storage room and stairs to the owlry." He pointed to the two doors just to the right of the landing. Harry had gone to a good deal of effort to make sure it looked like a storage room and nothing like the nursery that he could equate with nothing but green light and his Mother's pleas.
He stepped off the stairs and turned left, moving down the bare hallway. "The loo. And our rooms. This one is yours." He pushed open the door on their right and stepped back to let Tom go in. The boy took in the simple furnishings without comment. Harry shifted, uncomfortable.
The house was by no means a mansion. Tom's room was not large or small – not elegant, but not as bare as Dudley's second bedroom. It was certainly nicer than the orphanage, but nowhere near as opulent as what a rich Pureblood family would have. It was just an average room, probably deserving little more than a mediocre response. Still, Tom's lack of reaction was a bit disconcerting. He thought he might prefer a derisive comment to the silence.
Harry wanted out of this room, away from this boy. He let Tom's trunk settle to the floor just inside the door, taking a bit more care than normal. "I'll let you get settled in, then. Dinner will be ready in half an hour."
OoOoO
True to his word, Harry was just finishing a simple dinner when Tom strolled into the kitchen half an hour later.
Tom sat down at the mostly set table without a word or offer of help, which Harry ignored in favor of making sure the mashed potatoes were salted just right. Tom eyed his preparations disdainfully. "No house elves?"
Harry pulled two glasses and plates from an overhead cupboard, sending the plates to the table with a flick of his wrist. "No. I guess they went to other relatives. Whatever was left of the family."
The potatoes were done. Rather than bend down to get a serving dish from the bottom cupboard, Harry flipped it open with his foot and stretched a hand toward the minimal pile of dishes within, carefully levitating the one he wanted from the middle of a stack. He set it on the counter and began transferring the potatoes with a large spoon.
"This doesn't look much like a Pureblood manor." Tom sounded accusing, as though Harry had tricked him. He should have asked more specific questions if he wanted to make sure he was being adopted by someone with a ridiculous amount of money to his name, Harry thought but didn't say.
Instead he took a deep breath to control his temper and summoned the milk jug, pouring two glasses full before sending it back. "I told you the house wasn't that large. And there is a manor on the grounds. You can see it from the owlery, over the trees on the other side of the field."
"There is a manor? Why aren't we living in it?"
Harry didn't trust his voice not to betray his anger and so settled for carrying the potatoes the short distance to the table, nabbing the two glasses of milk from the counter with another wandless spell. He set all three carefully onto the table.
"It's too big, and mostly empty. All the furniture left in it is junk." There was one very nice piano. But, as he didn't play, he did not think it was worth the trouble of attempting to undo whatever spell had stuck the thing to the floor. "I figured it was better to just leave it closed up for now."
Harry lowered himself into his chair carefully, keeping a hand on the table edge just in case. Fortunately for his pride he made it down easily, the flare of pain in his knee minimal.
About two months before the so called Final Battle the Golden Trio was caught in one of the Death Eater's more successful ambushes. None of them walked away from that particular confrontation unscathed, though they had managed to destroy a Horcrux so the escapade wasn't a complete loss. Harry had been hit with a dark curse that did some particularly nasty things to the ligaments and tendons in and around his left knee.
The healers gave him two rules for a fast recovery: limit his physical activity and stay as far away from dark magic as possible, and his knee should be good as new inside a few months. The final confrontation with Voldemort was a direct violation of both rules, and the little trip through time hadn't helped things any.
Not that any of that was any excuse for showing weakness in front of Tom Riddle.
"And my family was Pureblood. I think. Like I told you, there was no one living on the grounds. The last known British Potter died about eighty years ago. To my knowledge I'm the only one left. That's probably why you've never heard the name. I don't much care about the whole business beyond the fact that I'm apparently Potter enough to pass Gringott's blood and magical signature tests to claim what's left of the inheritance."
"What's left of it? Couldn't they manage their money properly?"
Was Tom being this rude deliberately? Harry eyed the haughtily smooth expression. Of course he was. "I'm sure they managed it just fine and weren't idiots enough to set much aside for an heir that might not even exist."
Harry picked up his fork, from a cheap set bought at a second hand store in Diagon Alley, and began dishing up. The Potter inheritance vault in Gringott's actually contained an expensive looking silver set that he'd taken with him, but he would first have to find out how to remove the finger-biting hex. The box of cutlery nearly took off half his fingers before he managed to subdue the silverware.
He'd actually found several useful things in the inheritance vault, set aside for the traditional Hundred Year Wait just in case an heir bearing the Potter name did turn up. The best find was, by far, the deed to Potter Manor, Godric's Hollow and the grounds surrounding the two houses. The stash of wands left by his ancestors was another useful find. Of course he'd only taken one, leaving his own in its place.
"How old are you, anyway?"
Harry started. They had been eating in silence for several minutes and he'd thought the questions were over for now.
"Er… almost eighteen?"
Tom stared openly. "You look a lot older."
"Thanks," said Harry sarcastically. Then, to keep Tom from growing overly suspicious even though he'd have loved to just make the little brat live with his curiosity, "I was in a magical accident not that long ago. I think it aged me a few years. I'm not really sure how old my body is now. Not that much older than I was, I don't think. Actually it's possible I haven't aged at all. It's probably the gray that makes me look older." He realized he'd begun to babble and hurriedly stuffed another bite of food into his mouth to shut himself up, running a self-conscious hand through his hair.
He'd gotten a shock the first time he looked in a mirror upon his arrival in this place. His hair had gone nearly as grey as Remus Lupin's. It stood out more on his black hair than it had on Remus' sandy brown, too. There was a patch of pure white hair at his left temple, one of the most visible side effects of his efforts in the Final Battle. It made it him look a good five to ten years older. He wasn't sure how long he had stood there gaping at himself. It was a good thing no one else was around as he was sure he'd looked like a complete pillock.
Tom was still staring at him. "What?" Harry snapped, aggravated. His appearance was currently a sore subject.
"You're barely five years older than me."
"So?"
"So, you're not nearly old enough to be my parent!"
That took Harry aback. "I know," he said, gathering a bit of calm, "I… wasn't really expecting you to think of me that way, to be honest." Tom's face was growing no less clouded. Harry took a deep breath. "I was hoping… maybe, you could think of me as, as a brother, or something, in time." He was going to regret that admission. This was Tom Riddle, the epitome of Slytherin. A person did not just up and tell him something like that.
But he needed at least a margin of trust from Tom if his plan, sketchy though it was, would work.
Tom was eyeing him warily, now. "Why?"
"I told you. A Muggle orphanage is no place for a wizard. And because…" He stopped himself. He hadn't really answered the question, but… there was no way he was going to tell Tom what he'd been about to say. That he would give anything for a family, including opening his home to his former worst enemy and the murderer of his parents. Merlin, he was messed up.
He lifted his head, staring Tom in the eye. Being so blunt about this topic went against every instinct he had, but in this, Harry was sure, Tom would pick up on any untruth and Harry couldn't have that. He needed Tom's trust if this was going to work, if this foolishly Gryffindor plan to keep Tom from going bad in the worst way had any chance of succeeding. "I know what it's like live with people who just don't understand magic or magical people. It's a miserable way to grow up." Especially after the taste of freedom Hogwarts offered. His mouth twisted wryly. "There was no way I could leave you to go through the same thing." His first solution to that problem had been to kill Tom, but that was something the kid did not need to know.
Tom sneered. "How touching. I'm a charity case."
Harry jerked. "No you aren't!" No, Tom was anything but that. He couldn't exactly explain his full intentions in this case, though.
"I don't need a family." Tom continued, spitting the last word as if it tasted foul in his mouth, and Harry felt his heart sink a bit. Still, he'd been expecting this. He could deal with it. He had time, for once.
"Well it's not like I'm going to force you to want one."
Tom didn't believe him. Harry was not surprised. He sighed. "Just… give it a chance. Stay the rest of the summer. If you're truly miserable you can always go back after your next year at Hogwarts."
Tom went back to his meal without deigning to reply.
OoOoO
End Chapter
And we have the grand meeting, which perhaps wasn't quite as dramatic as it could have been, but was hopefully interesting none the less.
Edit: Beta version up 11-27-06.
