When he was fifteen, Tom decided that he was going to ask Harriet Potter out on a date to Hogsmeade. Being a Slytherin, Tom had learned from his housemates, aside from 'better a cousin than a mudblood', that every pureblood needed a suitable wife to bolster his reputation and provide him with an appropriate heir.

Now, Tom wasn't a pureblood, and neither was Harriet, and Tom's reputation was impeccable no matter what Dumbledore claimed about him, and he was quite sure he didn't even want children, but all of those details aside, Tom still wanted to ask Harriet out on a date to Hogsmeade.

He wasn't actually sure why.

Harriet Potter was a girl best described as ruffled and rumpled and dishevelled most of the time. Her eyes were green and rather attractive, and her hair was dark and curly and mostly kept in a untidy ponytail with strands escaping every which way. Her face wasn't unattractive, though her nose was covered in freckles and her lips were rather thin and hid slightly uneven teeth. She was neither short nor tall and rather flat-chested, built like an athlete more than a voluptuous woman like her friend Hermione Granger was, who had a full bosom and much wider hips.

And yet, whenever Tom gave the idea of dating any thought, his mind always pulled up the image of Harriet Potter and no one else. Plenty of girls, and boys, Slytherins and Ravenclaws and even the occasional Hufflepuff or Gryffindor wanted to date Tom as he was well aware. Tom knew he was handsome and clever and he cultivated a friendly and helpful persona to the other students while in truth he couldn't care less about almost anyone else on the entire planet.

But Harriet, for reasons that Tom had yet to figure out, was different.

Tom blamed the early exposure he suffered to her in his first years at Hogwarts and it was all his guardian's fault.

Tom was an orphan, or so he thought for most of his life. His mother had died in childbirth at a muggle hospital and since no one knew if his father was still alive or not, or where to find him, Tom had ended up in foster care. He'd been put up for adoption as a baby but he had such active accidental magic that any potential parents ran screaming in the opposite direction the first time he made something fly. Eventually Tom had ended up in the system, marked as a 'difficult case' with 'behavioural issues', moving from foster home to foster home. Tom had given up on ever finding an actual adult who would genuinely care about him long before Remus Lupin walked through the door when he was eleven.

Remus Lupin was the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts and tasked with delivering a few Hogwarts letters to muggleborns. He was also the Head of Gryffindor House, and a werewolf to boot. But aside from all that, Remus was a caring man full of compassion and he'd apparently thought it unacceptable that an intelligent child like Tom was being shipped from muggle foster home to foster home every couple of months and figured he'd be much better off in the wizarding world with a guardian who at the very least could offer him a stable home.

And thus Remus had gone to the ministry of magic and applied for guardianship of Tom himself and was soundly rejected, because of the whole werewolf thing.

But Remus was in a relationship with Severus Snape and had been for many years. And while their relationship was best described as 'living apart together', they were devoted to each other and because he hated seeing his partner heartbroken, Severus had applied for guardianship instead and had been granted it without any issues.

So, on paper Severus was Tom's guardian, but in practice it was Remus who mostly handled raising Tom while Severus observed from the side-lines.

Tom had been wary of these new guardians at first, but at the same time he had been ecstatic to be away from the muggle foster system for good and to be able to spend his time away from Hogwarts in the wizarding world from then on. So he'd given Remus and Severus a chance and while it had been rough going at times, to accept each other, flaws and all, Tom had eventually realized that having two adults around who were there for him wasn't the worst thing to happen.

It also helped that Severus was Head of Slytherin house, where Tom had been sorted.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop the sudden influx of Gryffindors in Tom's life. All of Remus' friends were Gryffindors and thus any socializing they did was inevitably overrun with lions.

Starting in Tom's first year, Remus invited Tom for tea after classes several times a week, to chat and offer support and make sure Tom was adjusting well to living at a magical boarding school.

That's where Tom first met Harriet, who joined their tea sessions once a week or so. Up until that point Tom hadn't paid much attention to any of the students not in Slytherin, since he was plenty busy surviving in the house of pureblood pride while being a half-blood himself.

But Harriet had been friendly enough, though at times she also appeared a bit shy. She wasn't as interested in academics as Tom was and she had an unhealthy fascination with Quidditch, but she did know plenty of the more mundane details about living in the wizarding world, having grown up in it, and she was happy enough to answer Tom's questions and help him learn about this strange magical world he suddenly got to call home.

And it probably helped that Harriet's mother was a muggleborn who insisted Harriet and her two younger brothers attend a muggle primary school, and thus Harriet knew enough about the muggle world that she wasn't confused whenever Tom made mention of his muggle upbringing.

They weren't friends, exactly, but they also weren't strangers, either. Their houses, especially when they were younger, kept them apart aside from the time spent together in Remus' office or during the summer holidays when they inevitably ran into each other during social gatherings.

And while Tom wasn't in a hurry to start dating anyone, he had noticed that others had started taking an interest in Harriet. The girl herself mostly seemed oblivious with the shift in how many of the boys around her looked at her and treated her, but Tom always noticed everything about Harriet and he certainly hadn't missed it.

So it was time to ask Harriet out and make their relationship official so that others would stay the hell away from her and Tom had her all to himself, just like he wanted.

So on a fine October afternoon in their fifth year, just a week before their first Hogsmeade day that year, Tom caught up with Harriet after transfiguration and slowed his pace while he said, "Harriet, could I talk to you for a moment?"

Harriet's friends, Granger and Weasley, gave Tom suspicious looks which was entirely unfair. Tom never bothered the Gryffindors, that anyone could prove, anyway, but he suspected their slightly hostile attitude had much to do with the unofficial prank war that the Weasley twins had started between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and that the older Slytherins had answered with more and more creative curses over the years.

It probably also didn't help that Harriet's younger brother Edward, a third year Gryffindor, took after his father and uncle Sirius a little too much, according to Remus, and many Slytherins, including those in Tom's year, took great delight in showing Edward Potter why it was a terrible idea to try to bully Slytherins.

"It's fine," Harriet said with a wave to her friends as she stopped beside Tom. "What's going on?"

Tom waited until all the other students were gone and then he raised his hand and pulled a small sunflower out of nowhere. It was a little bit of wandless magic which he'd practised intensively for a few weeks now. He'd chosen a sunflower because he thought a rose might be a bit too much for a first date between teenagers, and he'd heard Harriet mention one time in Sirius Black's garden that she really loved sunflowers.

"Will you do me the honour of accompanying me to Hogsmeade this weekend?" Tom asked with a little bow while offering Harriet the sunflower.

Harriet's face lit up and she accepted the flower while an attractive blush coloured her cheeks. But before she verbally accepted his invitation she looked up at him with a frown. "Crap, Hermione's having a meeting of her new magical LGBTQ support group in Hogsmeade that afternoon. She was talking about handing out flyers and stuff."

Tom wasn't sure what to say to that, since he didn't understand what any of it had to do with their date. "And?"

Harriet's frown turned into something a bit more annoyed than apologetic. "And I told her I'd be there."

"Surely Granger won't mind you cancelling on her latest pet project because you want to go on an actual date," Tom said with an encouraging smile, and when Harriet's frown still hadn't let up, he added, "It's not as though any of that nonsense applies to you, after all."

Harriet's expression changed instantly into something best described as betrayed and she dropped the sunflower, turned on her heels and stormed down the corridor.

"Wait!" Tom called after her, but Harriet rounded a corner and was gone. "What the fuck," Tom muttered to himself. He didn't think he'd ever felt as confused as he did at that moment. Harriet had been pleased with his invitation, he was sure of it. She'd smiled and blushed and accepted his sunflower.

But then Granger and her idiotic crusades had come up and everything had gone to hell for some reason.

What that reason was, Tom had no clue, and he hated not understanding something that affected him so directly.

Tom sighed, vanished the sunflower on the floor with a flick of his wand and made his way down to the dungeon. He had some homework to finish so he might as well get that done while he pondered on the enigma that was Harriet Potter.

Most of his classmates were seated at their usual table in the common room and Tom joined them with a long, deep sigh.

"What happened?" Druella Lestrange asked with an overly concerned arch of her eyebrows. She was the youngest daughter of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, cousin of Draco Malfoy and a vocal admirer of Tom, despite Tom's tainted blood as she loved to point out to him.

Tom barely tolerated her at best.

"Why on earth has Granger started an LGBTQ support group?" Tom asked, ignoring Druella and looking between Draco, Blaise and Theo instead.

"Because she's a mudblood?" Draco guessed without even looking up from his charms book.

Tom rolled his eyes at that entirely unhelpful answer. Everyone knew Granger was a mudblood, but that hardly explained what the fuck had happened with Harriet.

"Because she wants to change our world to suit her muggle ideas," Theo offered with an uninterested shrug.

"Last year she wanted to save the house-elves, and now apparently she wants to save the gays," Blaise said, his smirk entirely too amused.

Tom couldn't stop an unattractive snort from escaping. "I wasn't aware the gays needed saving, at least not in the wizarding world." Same-sex relationships had officially been accepted for at least two hundred years, after all. Yes, there were still certain pureblood families who expected their heirs to marry someone of the opposite sex, but their numbers lessened year after year.

"They don't," Blaise agreed easily. "And neither did the house-elves, but that certainly didn't stop Granger from trying."

"Why are you spending so much time thinking about Granger, Tom? You're far too good for that little mudblood," Druella whined, arching her eyebrows in a way she probably hoped made her look disarming.

Tom repressed a shudder. Compared to Harriet, Druella was an annoying simpleton. But what did it say about Tom, then, that the annoying simpleton regularly threw herself at him while his perfect match stormed off for no reason at all.

Perhaps Tom was too early. Perhaps they were still too young. Perhaps all he had to do was wait and everything would fix itself.

"You should definitely apologize to Harriet," Remus said during their next get together in his office a few days later. There was an obvious lack of Harriet, and the cup of tea Tom had poured for her remained untouched as it slowly grew cold.

"I don't understand what happened," Tom said in all honesty. He hated showing such weakness in front of anyone, even Remus, who was one of the very few adults Tom actually trusted. But he realized that he did need help.

"Tom," Remus said with all the patience in the world while he sipped his second cup of tea. "You dismissed something that's very important to Harriet. That hurt her feelings."

Tom frowned while he gave Remus a dubious look.

"Just because something isn't important to you doesn't mean it's not important to others," Remus pointed out.

"So I should have acknowledged her desire to attend Granger's pet project," Tom guessed.

Remus briefly closed his eyes. "Perhaps start by not referring to it as a pet project."

Tom blinked. "Fine. I should have acknowledged Harriet's desire to partake in Granger's latest crusade."

Remus sighed and poured himself a third cup of tea. "You should have offered to go with her, Tom."

"Oh." Tom drank the last of his own tea while he stared out the window at nothing in particular while he processed that rather important piece of information. "So once I ask her to Hogsmeade I should just let her decide our itinerary for the day. That should solve any mishaps in the future."

"Yes, that's not a bad plan," Remus agreed quickly. "But do start with apologizing. Sincerely."

"I'm sorry," Tom said, all but blocking Harriet's path out of the greenhouse after Herbology the next day. "I was rude and dismissive of your feelings, and I am truly sorry for that."

"Mate, no one's interested in your half-arsed apology," Weasley said while making a very good effort in shouldering Tom to the side. Weasley was almost as tall as Tom and had a much heavier built. But Tom staunchly ignored him and stayed put while he gave Harriet an expectant look.

Harriet chewed on her lip while she glanced up at Tom from behind her curly fringe. Tom curved his eyebrows in his best disarming expression and offered Harriet his most sincere smile. "All right," Harriet finally said with a nod. "Apology accepted. Now move, or we'll be late for Charms."

Tom stepped to the side to let the trio through, more than pleased he was back in Harriet's good graces. That meant that he could seriously start planning for his second attempt at asking Harriet out on a date.

"Did you really just apologize to Potter?" Draco exclaimed behind him with far too much volume. His voice practically echoed all around the greenhouse.

"What?" Druella shrieked as she came rushing forward. "Tom, why?"

Tom ignored the lot of them and marched out of the greenhouse with his head held high. He felt no desire whatsoever explaining himself to a bunch of kids who wouldn't understand or appreciate his motivations anyway.

Tom spent his visit to Hogsmeade two days later alone, for the most part. He did meet up with Severus and Remus for lunch in the Three Broomsticks, which was a pleasant enough affair. As he strolled around Hogsmeade later, he did see Harriet, Granger, Weasley, Longbottom and a few others handing out pamphlets. But when Tom approached Granger to get his hands on one of those she refused to give him one. She did give him a scowl of epic proportions, to which Tom replied with a polite little smile and a curt nod before he moved on as though he hadn't a care in the world.

Now that their first Hogsmeade weekend was behind them, Tom could start planning on asking Harriet out for their second one, halfway through November. But before he could even come up with a solid idea of how to approach Harriet this time, he had a rather unpleasant run-in with Hermione Granger.

After their weekly Prefect meeting with the Head Boy and Head Girl, Granger lingered while giving Tom significant looks as everyone else hurried out of the classroom, eager to spend the rest of their evening relaxing.

"Was there something you wanted?" Tom asked, voice full of both annoyance and curiosity.

Granger huffed as she squared her shoulders. Behind her Longbottom, the male Prefect for the Gryffindor's fifth years, also gave Tom plenty of disgusted looks. "You're a bigot," Granger spat, eyes narrowed.

That genuinely took Tom by surprise. He prided himself on not being a racist, on not judging people by the colour of their skin. But perhaps Granger was the kind of black person who saw racism in everything. "That is absolute codswallop," Tom said with conviction. "I am no racist, I assure you."

Granger's eyes instantly widened as she stared at Tom in disbelief.

That rankled Tom, that Granger looked as though she didn't believe a word he'd just said. "I'll have you know that I have black friends."

Granger made a sound much like a cat would while it was being strangled. "Why do you have to bring race into this and prove without a doubt that you are in fact an enormous racist?"

"Excuse me," Tom said, voice rising as he couldn't believe Granger dared to say those things to him. "You're the one who first brought it up!"

Shaking her head over and over again, Granger looked on the verge of pulling her own hair out in sheer frustration. "I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about Harriet."

"What the fuck does Harriet have to do with this?" Tom threw both hands up in utter confusion. "She's white!"

Longbottom released a type of gurgling sound that might indicate his air-supply had suddenly cut off while Granger looked as though she was three seconds away from slapping Tom across the face.

"You know what, I'm done with this insanity," Tom muttered, pushing past Granger and Longbottom. "Do not talk to me again until you can have a proper conversation."

Once he arrived in the Slytherin common room, Tom threw himself in a chair opposite Blaise. "Girls are absolutely insane."

Two seats over, Druella looked as though she wasn't sure if she should feel insulted or not.

"Granger just accused me of being a racist of all things," Tom said while staring straight at Blaise.

Instantly, Druella's expression relaxed again and she gave Tom her most sympathetic smile. "What a horrid things to say about you, Tom."

Blaise merely curved an eyebrow in response while he gave Tom a searching look.

"I'm no racist," Tom said, giving Blaise a chance to confirm this, but he never did. "I mean, I even reminded Granger I have black friends."

This somehow made Blaise throw his head back and laugh for a solid minute. "One," Blaise said, after he finally managed to calm down again. "You have one black friend, Tom. And pointing that out to someone like Granger is like holding up a sign proclaiming you're a white supremacist."

Tom felt enormously taken aback by that and it must have shown on his face, because Blaise leaned forward and said, "Tom, I know you're not a person who thinks less of people because of the colour of their skin. But that doesn't mean that the shit that sometimes comes out of your mouth isn't racist, because it is."

A part of Tom, a rather large part, wanted to argue that point because Tom fucking prided himself on not being a fucking racist. But Blaise was giving him a kind of look that brooked no argument so Tom give Blaise a quick nod and let the matter drop.

Unfortunately, others weren't so eager to ignore the whole mess. The next day, a fuming Harriet all but jumped Tom outside Defence Against the Dark Arts.

"What the fuck did you say to Hermione yesterday?" Harriet demanded, green eyes all but glowing while her cheeks were flushed a blotchy red. Tom didn't think she'd ever looked prettier.

"Look," Tom said quickly, holding up a hand. "It was all a big misunderstanding. Granger accused me of something I'm not –"

"So you're not a white bloke who tried to mansplain what or what isn't racist to a black girl?" Harriet all but snarled, backing Tom up further and further until his back hit the wall.

"I…er…" For perhaps the first time in his life Tom was at a loss for words. Most of his brain was currently occupied observing how amazing Harriet looked and how much Tom wanted to run his hands through her hair and touch her lips with his fingers before leaning down and –

"Are you even listening?" Harriet asked, eyes narrowing, adding a whole new layer to her amazing attractiveness.

"Yes. I'm sorry," Tom whispered because he could honestly not come up with anything else to say.

Harriet stepped back, her whole face set in a mulish frown. "Apology not accepted, Tom. I'm not the one who deserves to hear it." And with that, Harriet turned around and all but ran down the hall, leaving Tom an absolute mess of confusion and arousal.

He gave a detailed report on what happened during his next meeting with Remus because he honestly had no clue what the fuck had happened and he desperately needed answers.

"I think Mr Zabini made a rather good point," Remus said in between sips of tea. "Bigotry of any kind can often be the result of ignorance rather than conviction." Remus put down his cup and gave Tom a long look. "And I daresay Miss Granger has a better understanding of racism than you do."

Shrugging, Tom stared out the window again. He could perhaps conceded that point, now that he'd had some time to think about it. "Fine, you make a good point. That still doesn't explain why Granger started yapping about racism when she was walking about Harriet."

"Tom," Remus said in a serious tone and he didn't continue to speak until Tom actually looked at him. "She didn't talk about racism concerning Harriet. She talked about bigotry."

"Oh." Tom frowned for a few seconds before he looked at Remus with wide, confused eyes. "But why?"

Shaking his head, Remus' expression turned almost sad. "There are secrets that are not mine to tell. Nothing bad, nothing to worry about."

Tom sat up at once, curiosity piqued. "So Harriet has a secret?"

"Please," Remus said with a very real sense of urgency in his voice. "If you truly care for her, let her tell you in her own time. Don't go looking and don't expose her."

Tom groaned in frustration. How on earth could Remus think to dangle a fucking secret in front of Tom's face, one that concerned Harriet even and then expect him to not care about it?

"Promise me," Remus said, his voice taking on a hint of a growl, which it always did whenever Remus refused to take no for an answer.

"Fine. I promise. I won't chase after Harriet's secrets," Tom muttered, barely meeting Remus' eyes. He quickly realized that not chasing after Harriet's secrets didn't mean he couldn't chase after Harriet herself, which was ultimately all that mattered. That reminded Tom of something. "And I should probably apologize to Granger, shouldn't I?" Now that was something Tom did not look forward to. At all.

"Oh yes," Remus whispered as he went back to sipping his tea. "If you ever want Harriet to stop being angry with you, that's exactly what you need to do."

Unfortunately, before Tom could find a moment to quietly apologize to Granger out of the vicinity of any other student, Weasley found him.

"You ever talk to Hermione like that again, Riddle, and I will unmake you," Weasley said, wand out and aimed at Tom's chest. They were alone in the corridor as Weasley had apparently followed Tom out the library to deliver some ridiculous threats.

"I have nothing to say to you about any of this," Tom said, and then he tapped the Prefect badge on his chest as a reminder that he and Weasley were not equals and that Tom could take points away at any moment.

"Oh yeah, remind me you have more power," Weasley said in a rather mocking tone. "You're just like any other bigoted Slytherin." Weasley raised his wand a little higher while his cheeks reddened more than they usually were. "You stay away from Hermione and Harriet if you know what's good for you."

"You shouldn't have said that," Tom murmured while he glared at Weasley. If Weasley only had made demands about Granger, Tom would have been fine with it. But here Weasley was trying to dictate Tom's interactions with Harriet and Tom wasn't about to put up with that kind of nonsense. Before Weasley could even get a hex out, Tom drew his wand and cast a mild skin-crawling hex at Weasley. Nothing serious, but still a reminder that Tom could and would curse the fuck out of him if need be.

Weasley cried out in shock and loosed a garbled hex of his own, which Tom easily sidestepped.

"No fighting in the corridors!" Severus came rounding a corner and narrowed his eyes when he saw who were causing such a ruckus. "Weasley, a week of detention with Mr Filch, starting tonight. Riddle, detention with me, tonight at seven. Don't be late." And then Severus waited until Tom stepped up to him and together they left a furious Weasley behind.

"I don't care," Severus said when Tom got ready to explain himself. "I had expected better of you, though. Hexing students in the middle of the corridor is beneath you. Next time you need to retaliate, do it in a way that won't get you caught."

"Yes, Professor," Tom said, unable to hide his smirk. It really was good to be a Slytherin.

Detention that evening consisted of lots of brewing.

"Madam Pomfrey has been demanding a new batch of burn salve for weeks now," Severus muttered while he set up a few cauldrons. "After you're finished with that, start on some pepper-up. I'll get the skele-grow going."

And that is how Tom spent his next hour, quietly brewing potions with his guardian. Tom enjoyed brewing and he didn't mind spending some quiet time with Severus for an evening, so it was time well-spent.

"Remus told me you've been running afoul of a few Gryffindors of late," Severus said once his potion reached the stage where it needed to simmer for half an hour.

Tom was working on his second batch of pepper-up and barely had time to look up from his cauldron. "That's not what I would call it."

"Then how would you call it?" Surprisingly, there was genuine curiosity in Severus' voice as he stared at his wayward charge.

Tom sighed and considered if he should tell Severus the truth or not. He hated sharing his weaknesses, but then again, Severus was a Slytherin who'd managed to snatch up a Gryffindor for himself. Perhaps Severus actually had some valuable advice to share. So after inhaling a deep, fortifying breath, Tom told Severus what had been going on over the past few weeks.

"You're a halfwit," Severus said without mercy once Tom had finished his tale. "As clever as you are, you are this school's biggest halfwit. Trying to date a Gryffindor, and a Potter to boot. You should be ashamed of yourself."

Tom was used to Severus' unrelenting way of dispersing advice of any kind, so he wasn't much fazed by those hard words. If anything, Tom saw them as a challenge to give as good as he got. "Says the man who's been dating a Gryffindor for well over a decade now."

Severus gasped and gave Tom a look that was full of personal offense, as though Tom had just delivered Severus the greatest insult ever spoken out loud. "I'll have you know that Remus is more of a honorary Ravenclaw than a true Gryffindor," Severus said, face a picture of insult while his shoulders were suddenly very square as though Severus had puffed up his chest to the fullest extent.

Snorting, Tom shook his head. "Not to mention your best friend is a Gryffindor and a Potter both."

"By marriage," Severus all but snarled, looking ready to throw a whole jar of shrivel figs right into Tom's face.

"Sure. But she is also the mother of Harriet, so you of all people must understand why I have my sights set solely on Harriet," Tom said in his most reasonable tone of voice, though unable to hold back an amused smile. Bickering with Severus really was a ton of fun and Tom didn't get to do it nearly enough.

"Miss Potter takes far more after her father in every single way, I assure you," Severus said and then pursed his lips, as though he'd let slip more than he'd intended to. "But if you want to ruin your entire life by chasing after a Potter then be my guest," Severus added quickly with plenty of feigned nonchalance.

Tom noticed, of course. Tom noticed most things that happened around him. He wondered if this was related to Harriet's secret he wasn't allowed to know about. It rankled him that Severus, Head of Slytherin House, knew this secret about a Gryffindor student, yet Tom was purposefully being kept in the dark.

If only he hadn't made that promise to Remus to not go looking for answers himself.

Wait a moment. Tom was barely able to hold back a smirk since he'd just come up with the perfect solution. Tom himself couldn't go looking for the secret, but Remus hadn't demanded that others couldn't do it for him.

Ah, it really was good to be a Slytherin. Tom enjoyed few things in life as much as finding the loopholes in the all the rules around him to better himself.

After detention ended, Tom returned to the common room and sat down beside Draco, yet he ignored the boy entirely. Instead he looked at Blaise and Theo. "Snape just insinuated that Harriet Potter has some big, dark secret." Tom frowned, as though he was deep in thought. "It's curious, since Lupin insinuated a very similar thing a few weeks ago."

Draco sat up at once, transfiguration homework quickly forgotten. "Did you say secret?"

It was public knowledge in Slytherin House that if you needed information on anyone, you needed to talk to Draco Malfoy. He was the unofficial gossip king of Hogwarts, though few people outside of Slytherin house knew.

The only downside to this was that Draco never worked for free. He demanded payment for his information, and if students couldn't cough up some gold or other valuable goods, he was usually willing to accept favours. Tom refused to be indebted to Draco bloody Malfoy, though, and while he received a small allowance from his guardians every month he wasn't about to hand over any gold to a spoiled little rich boy.

So Tom simply used a different tactic. He threw out some bait.

"Actually, on second thought," Tom said, barely glancing at Draco, "I must have misheard. I doubt a Gryffindor would ever have any interesting skeletons hidden away in their closet. Never mind."

Blaise leaned back in his chair and chuckled, while Theo ducked his head and pretended to be absorbed by the Arithmancy book in his lap. They, of course, knew exactly what Tom was going, but thankfully Draco didn't and that's what mattered most. Draco got a gleam in his grey eyes that told Tom he couldn't wait to discover a secret he could hold over the head of a Gryffindor.

It took Draco two weeks, during which November's day in Hogsmeade came and went. Tom spent it much like he had the previous Hogsmeade weekend, though he did try to approach Harriet. She was handing out pamphlets again with her friends, but she resolutely turned her back on Tom the moment she saw him coming, so Tom took the hint and instead entered a nearby second-hand bookshop.

"You will never believe this," Draco all but crowed the moment Tom stepped inside the common room on a Thursday evening right after dinner. Draco had a letter in his hand, from his father if the luxurious stationary was any indication. "I know Potter's secret. It's fucking mind blowing!"

"I sincerely doubt that," Tom said with a casual shrug. He was burning to know what was going on with Harriet but the last thing he wanted was for Draco to start demanding payment.

"Harriet Potter is really a boy!"

Those words rang through the Slytherin common room and hit Tom right in the chest with all the force of a sledgehammer.

"What?" Blaise asked in stunned disbelief as he slowly sat up from his usual sprawl in his seat.

"Harriet Potter is a boy!" Draco all but jumped up and down on the spot out of sheer joy. "This is the biggest fucking news of the year and we have the scoop!"

Tom's ears were ringing as this news slowly sank in. It couldn't be true.

"Why on earth would she…er…he pretend to be a girl, though?" Theo asked with a frown, ever the academic who wanted answers to every little question out there. Honestly, if someone was an honorary Ravenclaw it was Theodore Nott.

"It's probably that mudblood mother of hers…his," Druella said with a wrinkled nose as though she was smelling something unexpectedly foul. "Bringing all sorts of strange muggle ideas into our world."

"I have to go," Tom muttered because he couldn't breathe all of a sudden. A heavy weight sat on his chest, restricting his breath. He wanted to deny the news, he wanted to curse Draco for daring to say such ridiculous things about Harriet, but Tom knew Draco was meticulous about gathering information. So that meant Harriet Potter really was a boy.

Tom didn't understand anything anymore.

For an hour, Tom wandered around the castle, even after curfew came and went. He was a Prefect, so he could simply pretend to be patrolling if he ran into a teacher. Tom's head was full of conflicting thoughts about why on earth Harriet would want to pretend to be something she…he was not.

Worse yet, Tom felt a deep, aching sense of betrayal. Here he'd developed feelings for what he thought was a girl, yet he'd been a boy all along. What did that say about Tom? His whole life Tom had been convinced he was straight. He had nothing against gay people, heck, his guardians were two men in a committed relationship, but Tom was attracted to women. Well, what little attraction he had to other people was reserved for those of the opposite sex.

Did this mean that Tom himself was gay? Or bi? Or whatever flavours there were, because honestly, Tom had better things to do that to keep up with however many letters people tried to add to the whole LGBTQ thing every single day.

Voices rose up from the stairwell as Tom approached it. Familiar voices, and at once a huge burst of fury erupted in Tom's chest.

How dare Harriet do this to him. How fucking dare she. Or he.

Harriet had a broom in her hand as she climbed the staircase with Longbottom by her side. She'd probably been out flying late, as was her wont, and now Longbottom, who was a Prefect, was escorting her back to Gryffindor Tower to keep her from running afoul of Filch or Severus.

"Is it true?" Tom demanded, getting right into Harriet's face, giving her no time to avoid him as she'd been doing for weeks now. "Are you really a boy?"

Behind them, Longbottom gasped as though he hadn't drawn in a breath for years.

Harriet's face paled so drastically that the freckles on her nose seemed to darken where she stood.

"Why would you lie about this?" Tom all but snarled, his chest full of righteous anger. "Why would you pretend to be a girl when you're not?"

"I am a girl!" Harriet yelled far louder than she probably meant to, her voice echoing up and down the stone staircase. "I have always been a girl! I was just born in the wrong body!"

"That makes no fucking sense," Tom said through gritted teeth. "How can you be something you're not?"

Before anyone else could say more, Tom suddenly found himself lying on his back halfway down the staircase, his head throbbing. A few steps above him, like a furious avenging angel stood Neville Longbottom with his wand drawn, aiming straight at Tom's head.

Tom wasn't sure if what he was seeing was even real. Had he bumped his head that hard when he fell down the stairs? Because Neville Longbottom had always been the joke of Gryffindor house. Tom's Slytherin's friends liked to say that Longbottom was such an incompetent waste of space even Hufflepuff didn't want him, so Gryffindor was the only place left for him to go. Even after Longbottom was made a Prefect no one took him seriously. In fact, whenever Longbottom tried to take points from a Slytherin student or assign them a detention, the students always simply walked away, leaving Longbottom sputtering after them.

But here, now, stood a young man who was full of conviction and who would, without a doubt, lay down his life for his friend right there and then.

"Who else knows?" Longbottom asked, peering down at Tom over his nose while his wand hand never wavered. Beside him stood Harriet with her face buried in her hands.

Tom didn't even consider not answering truthfully. "Draco has told everyone in the Slytherin common room. So by tomorrow the whole school will know."

"You son of a bitch," Neville snarled and shot a bright red hex at Tom, which hit him straight in the chest and he knew no more.