A brief interlude...

ooo

The operation went well into the night, and Dippet suggested that Tom return to the school, but as the perfect and compassionate Head Boy, he insisted on remaining. His legs ached from his unmoving watch, and his head throbbed on the right side of his temple, as it often did when he would forego sleep for a more productive enterprise. He sat impassively, showing no sign of his discomfort, and so the Headmaster acquiesced.

Dumbledore volunteered to stay at the hospital so that Slughorn and Dippet could return, although Tom knew the old man likely wanted to keep an eye on him more than he desired that his coworkers were well-rested. The other two men were not nearly as keen as Tom, however, and they accepted with poorly hidden relief.

Tom and Dumbledore spent most of the night and early morning in tense, antagonistic silence, until the first rays of sunlight filtered through the windows. It was a private lounge, used for intensive surgeries such as Harry's. Tasteful, bland furniture sparsely decorated the room, the colours more somber than a muggle hospital. Maroon and dark reds stood in for the white; Tom wondered why they would choose colours so close to blood.

"Are you worried, Tom?" Dumbledore asked quietly from where he sat across the waiting room, his fingers tangled in a willowy tent in front of his nose.

"Of course, Professor," he said carefully. "It's only natural, given that my classmate might have very well been blinded in front of me."

"Indeed," the man agreed easily, while Tom watched him with suspicion. He didn't know where the Professor meant to lead him with this.

"Are you not concerned, Professor?" Tom asked, an edge to his supposedly innocent inquiry.

"Of course," Dumbledore said, his face weary and exhausted. "I am terribly ashamed that my own House would initiate an attack such as this."

"Indeed," said Tom. "I've never seen such an attack done by a Slytherin in any of my years at Hogwarts."

A pointed barb, perhaps, but a satisfying one. The old man always did seem to consider his House above any ill intent, any blame, any rules.

"It is a shame you did not arrive sooner," Dumbledore said sorrowfully, although his blue eyes pierced into Tom's, who kept his mind carefully Occluded. He sensed no intrusion, but tensed warily regardless. "I'm sure with your talent, you could have prevented much undue pain."

"Harry is very talented on his own," Tom said, using his first name deliberately to emphasize their 'friendship'. "I'm afraid I did little in the end, and I doubt a few minutes would have made much of a difference."

The conversation lulled, and a paranoid part of him wondered if Dumbledore somehow knew that Tom had watched impassively while Potter's skin had burned.

"He is indeed very talented," Dumbledore said, his fingers untangling so he could lean forward in his seat, as though he were about to tell Tom a grave secret. "I can see why he's suddenly so popular, and why others might view him so enviously, or why his loyalty might be...coveted."

Tom understood the implication, so he widened his eyes in falsified dismay. "Why, Professor, here I thought you advocated judging one by his character, not by his material value. Harry is quite the dedicated and loyal...friend."

"I worry, Tom," Dumbledore spoke deliberately. "I have no doubt that Harry is a wonderful friend, but I hope you will be understanding when he regains control of himself. When the Mollis Caritate wears off, he might not be so accommodating to your will. I hope you will be patient with him."

Tom watched the professor hatefully, carefully preventing his features from morphing with resentment. He knew Dumbledore was wrong, just like Abraxas, because Tom had noticed that Potter had loved him before he'd spilled the potion; indeed, his crush had made him clumsy enough to spill the potion in the first place. Only a strong emotion would have caused him to flinch and stumble as he did, when normally he moved with rugged grace, coordinated enough to jump off brooms and catch snitches a good few meters out of reach.

He knew Dumbledore was wrong, but somehow he resented the implication that he could not win Potter's loyalty without the love potion. It reminded him unwillingly of his mother, and of how Potter had told him that she'd enthralled his father with one, and her abandonment at the end.

Tom was not his useless witch of a mother, who could not even manipulate the loyalty of his pathetic, muggle father. He had merits of his own, and if Potter refused him, the boy would not survive Tom's wrath long enough to die on the steps of that damned orphanage. He controlled the death of others, and refused to allow his own.

As soon as Potter recovered, Tom would ensure his loyalty, and then return to his study of Horcruxes.

The thought calmed him, enough that he could speak to Dumbledore with light courtesy.

"Of course I'll be patient, Professor," Tom said, offering a charming, toxic smile. "I've found that I quite enjoy Potter's company. I suppose I'll just have to win him over without the potion to assist me."

The words would have sounded like a deprecating joke to anyone else, but Dumbledore's eyes darkened at the implication. He knew of Tom's quiet gathering of supporters and followers. He knew of the name whispered in the Slytherin commons, Lord Voldemort, when they thought no one listened.

He knew that Tom had set his sights on recruiting Harry Potter.

ooo

"Who's there?" Potter asked anxiously, when Tom knocked on the doorframe. The boy had bandages wrapped around his eyes, one of the strips peeling at the edges.

"Tom Riddle," he answered, and watched Potter's lips turn up into a tired but relieved smile.

"Tom," he said, reaching out a hand blindly in the direction of his voice. The fingers trembled slightly, but not nearly as terribly as yesterday, more out of exhaustion than fear and pain.

He walked forward, closing the door softly behind him, coming to a stop by the boy's bed. Potter's pathetic, blind fumbling irritated him, so he offered his hand, which the boy caught and brought to his lips.

Tom had initially felt aggravated when he'd seen the boy, having obtained no sleep in favor of staying at St. Mungo's to maintain his soft-hearted facade. Now he felt something else, a desire, amplified by their solitude. His ill-temper slightly assuaged, he replaced the palm of his hand with his lips.

Potter clung to his shoulders, and Tom felt a shiver of satisfaction; the sensations he normally suppressed felt intensified, pleasurable. He felt wide awake, but the sleeplessness must be affecting him more than he thought, that he was actually beginning to enjoy this. Potter's breath aroused him, and he opened his mouth so that their tongues pressed together, wet-

He pulled away first; of course he did, Potter would hardly be the one to stop.

He supposed it was only human. He'd assumed he'd be above such petty desires, and although he normally wished to surpass humanity, he decided that if others enjoyed such things, he deserved it doubly so. He did somewhat resent that a part of him felt such mindless desire, but another part of him justified it, because as long as he controlled the desire and didn't let it rule his decisions, then surely he deserved to satisfy himself.

With Potter's crush, he'd likely be more than willing to continue until Tom grew tired of it. And he had sworn an Unbreakable Vow to keep his secrets, so he wouldn't spread unpleasant rumors; he doubted he would have anyway. From what he'd seen of Potter's personality beneath the potion, the boy hated it when gossip and attention followed him.

Tom knew the boy found him attractive; he doubted the potion would have lasted so long if it hadn't. It would be mutually beneficial; Tom would have a convenient and perfectly willing outlet.

"Tom?" Potter murmured, his hands sliding down from his shoulders to his chest, and then his waist. Tom's eyes flickered back to the boy's lips.

"Yes?" he murmured, leaning in to continue the kiss, Potter unaware of his movement due to the bandages covering his eyes.

"Am I going to be able to see again?" he asked, and Tom halted his action, only a few centimeters between them. "The doctors say that I can take off the bandages in a few hours, and that I have a good chance of being able to see again, but they won't tell me anything else. They won't tell me what a 'good' chance even means. Is it probably? Is it fifty-fifty? One in three? One in ten? I might be blind and they won't even tell me. No one ever tells me anything!"

At the petulant outburst, Tom studied him pensively, reaching out to adjust the loose bandage. He thought it interesting that Potter behaved with more anger than despair at his predicament, although the rage was more likely a defensive mechanism to hide the typical fear. The boy was in denial, but he hid his inner doubt well.

"I believe it's fifty-fifty," Tom said eventually, although from what he'd heard, the odds were actually a bit lower.

Expensive and risky on their own, eyesight corrections were rare enough. To do so with such damaged tissue rated an even higher danger.

With such incredible damage, there had been no point in restoring the eyesight to its original imperfection—Tom had seen the glasses, and seen Potter fumbling in the morning; his eyesight was truly atrocious—and so they'd fixed his vision so that he would have average sight, if he saw at all. The Healers hoped that the complete regrowth of the necessary cells would result in a higher chance of success.

There was always the chance that the eyes would not take to the correctional magic, however, because the focus was different from their original capabilities. The eyes might not acclimate to perfect vision after years of poor sight.

"It's not as bad as if you'd been a muggle," Tom reassured him when Potter didn't reply, his fingers clenching in frustration in his robes. "I've done some research on it before. There's all sorts of magic to help blind wizards. You can use a magical creature to guide you, and magical ones are far more intelligent than muggle guide dogs. You can use your magic to read books out loud to you, and you can always summon the objects you can't find."

Of course, most of this knowledge had been useless until now; he'd only looked it up in the first place when he'd first found the basilisk, and had known he'd need to navigate with his eyes closed until he could order the snake otherwise.

"You're talking like it's already a done deal," Potter snapped shortly, letting go of Tom's robes. He leaned back against the bedframe, drawing his knees to his chest.

"It's not," Tom said easily, tucking back some of Potter's hair behind his ear, the messiness irking him. "But I know you're thinking more about the worst case scenario than the best. It's human nature."

They fell quiet, the boy tapping his fingers nervously, and in under a minute Potter fumbled for his hand again.

"Can you talk?" Potter asked restlessly. "It's too dark and...empty. Just for an hour or two, until I can take these off."

Tom refrained from pointing out that in an hour or two, if the bandages came off and the blindness proved permanent, the darkness and emptiness would still remain.

"What would you like me to talk about?" Tom asked disinterestedly, deciding that if he must remain at St. Mungo's, he might as well fulfill the mundane request and ingratiate himself with the boy further.

He did need to recruit Potter, after all, and while he normally scorned love and attachment, if he could use it for the boy, then he'd be remiss to overlook a tool handed to him so readily. If it fulfilled his more carnal desires as well as the boy's, then that simply created an even more beneficial alliance. The more he received for his efforts, the better for him.

"Anything," Potter said, leaning into his side as Tom sat. "Would you tell me about the orphanage? Or Hogwarts, if you really don't want to."

"My childhood isn't exactly pleasant," Tom said, not particularly wanting to share.

Yet the boy already knew the majority of his important secrets. Sharing insignificant details about the distasteful place might garner him sympathy in the future; normally he would avoid any semblance of pity, but he supposed the boy had already shared about his own dismal past. Sharing similar experiences built a rapport; Tom wouldn't even need to tell true stories, if he was so disinclined.

He wondered when every action of his own had started being taken with the purpose of winning over the boy's trust for after the potion wore off.

He thought again of the Unbreakable Vow.

He might as well tell the truth, just this once. The boy couldn't tell.

So Tom told a story about freaks and snakes and hate.

ooo

Happy spring, everyone! I'd love to hear from you! :D