Chyapuhtahh Thrayyy

...I was trying to come up with something clever to say for the A/N, but instead I got distracted by how many ways I could say 'Chapter 3' in weird voices. T.T

ooo

Tom returned Abraxas to bed with no complications, the morning still too early for the others to have awoken. He had done well to choose such an unfashionable hour to perform the oath; no consequences would befall him, simply because the scion of Malfoy would have no idea that he should remember anything aside from meaningless dreams.

The day proceeded smoothly from there, Potter more in control of himself than the day prior. He did protest mildly at Malfoy's treatment, but he disliked the blond, although he wouldn't answer Tom's inquiries as to why. Combined with his infatuation his objections lacked enthusiasm. His gaze tended to linger on Tom just a little too long, and he brushed his arm just a little too often, but his behavior certainly improved upon yesterday's unending questions.

His restraint allowed Tom to study the boy himself rather than simply fend off advances.

Instead of growing bored, however, Tom found himself growing puzzled. He had originally written the boy off after seeing his average grades and illegitimate blood status, but now that the boy followed him around, he couldn't help but notice Potter's...oddities.

It was in the way he spoke, his words just a little bit strange, and his mannerisms just a little bit off. He'd make up peculiar words and then dismiss them, like Pigmy Puffs and Whiz-Bangs, and then he'd blink, mildly startled, when someone questioned him. He didn't know things he should, like the head of the Auror department or the recent werewolf legislation, and he knew absolutely none of the pureblood courtesies and customs.

Tom did wonder how Potter had managed to survive for so long without absorbing an ounce of pureblood culture, and his placement in Slytherin piqued his curiosity. He wondered how it had gone unnoticed in the house for so long; the boy had arrived over a month ago. He supposed the boy had kept to himself the past few weeks, rarely speaking to his classmates, and although he lacked wizard conventionality, he also couldn't deny that the boy was extremely polite, in a disgustingly plain, muggle sort of way.

He would have deemed Potter clueless, yet the mysteries didn't end there. Despite being a transfer student, he soon realized that the boy never, ever got lost in the school.

Tom knew, because he had tried to abandon the boy several times throughout the day, and the boy always found him with astounding speed. It made no sense. It had taken Tom seven years to learn the school's secrets, it had taken him six to find the chamber, and yet Potter navigated the halls and passageways with more ease than many of the teachers.

"Tom, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to ditch me," Potter announced reprovingly, this time in a little out-of-the-way window cubby, finding him again regardless of the notice-me-not charm.

Tom didn't understand how, and things that he didn't understand, he wanted to hex. His fingers twitched towards his wand. Reflexively, Potter's hand darted to his own, and then the boy blinked and shook his head as though dazed. Intrigued, Tom watched as his hand fell away.

"I don't think I could if I tried," Tom said lightly, covering up genuine aggravation.

The reflexive action towards his wand suggested practical dueling experience. Tom observed the idiot distrustfully, pondering the fact that he'd yet to see the clumsiness Potter had displayed when he knocked over his potion. He'd almost call him graceful, not in the pureblood, aristocratic manner, but his DADA duels lacked any stumbling, and he easily dodged people as he chased after Tom.

He'd credited Potter's fumbling to his crush, at first, since the idiot had yanked himself out of his grasp, but that didn't make sense either. The love potion made the boy completely infatuated with him, and yet he'd seen no repeats of the first bout of clumsiness. Now Potter seemed to want to touch him; he postulated that perhaps the love potion had lowered his inhibitions.

It was dinner time, and Tom had gone from trying to discretely lose the new student in the dungeons, to taking every secret passageway and indirect route he could think of to find a moment alone. This failure brought the count up to seven unsuccessful attempts for the day. He was not one to admit defeat, but he began to think—rather sourly—that strategically, he'd lost more time than he gained.

Potter plopped down right next to him, and Tom stiffened. When the boy leaned his head against his shoulder, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and he had to resist the urge to shove him off and curse him into oblivion. He disliked being touched, but Potter trapped him against the window, and shoving the boy off would lead to pathetic pleading and heartfelt apologies which he hated even more.

He wanted to study and think, but he'd ended up spending most of his time viciously planning this boy's demise, and it was only the second day of the infection. Yet he couldn't dispose of him, not when the boy so obviously attached himself to his side and so many people knew about his predicament.

No matter what he did, Potter seemed to foil him without effort or awareness. Gritting his teeth, he picked up his book again; he'd noticed that Potter held back his questions when he studied, probably still guilty after last night's encounter.

"Cornivus Gaunt," he hissed the password, deliberately heedless of Potter's presence, opening the book as it registered the correct code.

The boy couldn't understand parseltongue, and had sworn to keep his secrets besides. He wanted to test if the boy would dismiss his whisper or recognize it as the noble language of Slytherin. Tom hoped that if so, the whisper would break through the love potion haze and frighten the boy off his shoulder. Tom inched away, but the boy just leaned closer so that their sides completely pressed together, a line of unwanted warmth. Unruly wisps of black hair tickled the side of his face.

"Is that one of your relatives?" Potter asked curiously, adjusting himself so that his head rested more comfortably on his shoulder. Tom froze, the pages he'd been flicking through fluttering to a halt.

"What?" he demanded.

"Cornivus Gaunt," Potter repeated the name with the exact same intonation, and in parseltongue, no less. "It sounds familiar."

And there were so many things wrong with that sentence. The parseltongue, the knowledge that he was related to the Gaunts—these coincidences had gone long past intriguing and alarming, they were inconceivable, too much—how, how, how—

"Tom?" Potter asked curiously, mildly alarmed, and Tom already had his wand at the boy's throat, just like last night.

They stared at each other, Potter confused and Tom breathing too fast, alone in a small abandoned window-cubby in an unused corridor of the seventh floor. The setting sun cast them in soft red, almost orange, shadows deadening their features and obscuring their eyes. Although Tom had enjoyed the location before the other student's arrival, now the space felt too small; even with him now pressed against the opposite wall, their legs tangled together and only a few centimeters separated his wand from Potter's throat.

"How do you know parseltongue?" Tom demanded, his voice hoarse. He hated this boy; this boy that kept making him lose his composure. "Are we related?"

"We're not related," Potter said, blinking in surprise. His hand twitched towards his wand again, but once again he aborted the motion. "And I know parseltongue because...well, because."

"Because why?" he asked sharply, frustrated already. He didn't sense that the boy was lying, but he didn't dismiss the idea of shared blood so readily. They did look alike, and even if he'd checked the records thoroughly, Potter had an inherited trait and recognized the name Gaunt.

Potter set his jaw. "I shouldn't tell you."

"Why?"

"I-" Potter stuttered, his face contorted in apparent emotional anguish, conflicted but stubborn. Tom realized that the boy's instincts must be conflicting strongly with the potion's influence.

Swallowing his disgust, he used his wand to tilt up Potter's chin and leaned forward. He ran his thumb over the boy's cheek, still holding his wand loosely with his other fingers, and pressed close enough so that his lips brushed Potter's ear. He hadn't truly seduced anyone before, thinking it repulsive to lower himself and touch someone so weak and lustful, but this once he decided that practicality won over his loathing. Intellectual manipulation was preferable, but this boy had too many secrets, and the love potion made this course of action the most effective.

"I-" Potter stammered again, flustered this time. "I- What? You-"

"Don't you want to tell me, Harry?" Tom whispered, his lips catching on the lobe of Potter's ear, his breath displacing messy ends of hair. His wand hand trailed down the boy's neck, a barely-there touch that ended with his thumb pressing gently against his windpipe.

It wasn't meant as a threat, but Potter violently flinched away at that. Losing his balance, the boy's eyes widened comically before dropping off the elevated stone and onto the floor, falling out of the fading sunlight in the window's hollow. His hair looked even more tousled that usual, and his eyes looked particularly black without the light.

A clumsy action, at last: he recognized the pattern now. He was clumsy when cringing away from Tom's touch.

"I can't, Tom, please don't ask," he said desperately, and scrambled to his feet. He staggered his first few steps, and then turned and darted away, vanishing around the corner within a few seconds, calling an abrupt halt to their interaction.

Tom watched where he disappeared, expression void of emotion, while internally he felt a range of conflicting thoughts. He noted frustration, most obviously, that he did not receive the answers he wanted. Relief also touched the edge of his thoughts, because he had not wanted to take the game farther, for he was clearly superior to Potter and debasing himself in such a hedonistic manner insulted his own intellect. He was perfectly capable of manipulating people with his mind, even without his superficial charm.

But he felt his irritation directed at another reason, as well. Because even though he had no desire to seduce Potter, the fact that he had tried to do so and had then been rejected, despite his target being under the influence of a love potion...He didn't understand.

He glared down at his book, finally alone after countless attempts of escape, and yet for the entire time he studied, the thought nagged at him that he was only alone because the parasite had run away.

ooo

Tom woke up early the next morning, having successfully avoided Potter since their last encounter. He slipped out a book, idly flipping through the pages, but not truly focusing on the words. What information could possibly be so important that Potter had fought the love potion to keep it from him?

How dare Potter run away from him, when it was he who should have cringed away in disgust? He was the superior one. He was the head boy, impossibly brilliant, and devastatingly handsome. He was the one lowering himself.

Or could it be, a little traitorous voice whispered from the back of his mind. That your seduction was so terrible that you couldn't even charm an infatuated fool?

Potter wasn't particularly attractive. The green eyes were enthralling, perhaps, and his features not displeasing—but overall he was unremarkable, scrawny, and his hair absolutely appalling. He should be begging for Tom's attention.

Seething, he turned the page of his book with too much force, the paper crackling in protest. He reasoned that his failure only proved Potter's secrets all the more important, and that he should focus on discovering exactly how much the boy knew, along with the reasons behind his knowledge.

Rustling from the bed over caused him to raise his head. The light from the lake glowed a pleasant viridian, filtering through the windows and creating bewitching patterns across the room. Tom blinked when he met Potter's now-open eyes, suddenly aware of how the lighting emphasized their electrifyingly green, all the more notable without the boy's glasses distorting them.

"Oh, you're awake, Tom," Potter said, blearily rubbing his eyes. He fumbled sleepily for his hideous glasses; cheap wire and obscenely round, too large for his face.

"You'll wake the other's," he said coldly, irritated at the broken peace.

Except Potter misinterpreted the source of his displeasure, and Tom's former irritation paled in comparison to the downright fury he felt when the boy stumbled out of his bed and plopped into his own.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, his hands whitening as they gripped his book with undue force. Potter's apparent distress increased.

"I'm sorry," he blurted, and before Tom could move away, Potter pressed his lips briefly against his own, dry and soft and fleeting, and then pulled away just as quickly as he'd leaned in.

And once again, Tom found himself with his wand at Potter's throat, and a manic thought flitted through his mind that this was becoming far too regular an occurrence.

"What was that?" he demanded. So many questions, and of course, Potter chose to readily answer this one.

"I thought I'd hurt your feelings, when I pulled away last night," he blathered. "Well, maybe not feelings, because I know you don't care much about other people. But I thought I might've hurt your pride. Is pride a feeling? I didn't mean to reject you. I want to tell you things, even if you don't love me back, because I love you. I can't tell you these things, though, for the same reason. I love you and I don't want to lose you to V-"

He cut off.

"Lose me to what?" Tom snapped, hating how the boy could say these things, love love love, so easily, so nauseatingly, but he listened anyway, searching for the truth hidden in the drunken ramblings.

But he could find hints in what Potter said only if the boy actually said something.

"Um," said Potter, unhelpfully. "I'll bring you up breakfast, okay?"

He scrambled off the bed, ignoring Tom's hiss of "Potter!" and darting for the door, snagging a robe and slipping it right over his sleeping clothes in his haste. He tripped on the threshold, one more clumsy action on a list with a grand total of three.

Tom glared at the door.

That made thrice that Potter had run away from him.

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