The Houses Competition
House: Ravenclaw
Class: Herbology
Category: Standard
Prompt(s) chosen: [word] Empty, [Dialogue] "I know you." [Dialogue, Multi-line] "No." / "That's not the correct response."
Word Count: 2364 (wordcounter)
Disclaimers/triggers: set during WW2 bombings, fire, death, dead bodies, implied character death, historical inaccuracies probably,
xXx
The door must be magic. Tom remembers the crack sealing itself when Harry slammed it shut, his last promise shouted above carnage and his green eyes red with wreckage dust. A thin line of light had been there one moment and gone the next, and no amount of beating on it had made the door open up. No spells even scratched it. No sound leaked through. Whatever the magic Harry had laid on this spot was, it was not going to be broken by him.
Tom eventually gave up, sank down beside it, and just waited for either Harry to come back, or for the shaking of the ground to stop.
Whichever came first.
Neither came. Eventually adrenaline from the rush left his barely teenage body and he stayed awake without it. He spelled the floor soft and pinched himself to stay awake; thinking about Harry.
When he woke up anyways, the ground was hard again. And it was still.
Harry was not there. But the line of light was.
Tom touches the door, and it crumbles in like dust, its magic spent. Harry was always a powerhouse, and whatever he poured into this impenetrable gate, it is gone now.
The bombs can't have done this, he thinks with disbelief, and steps out of his safehouse into a world of dust and fire.
xXx
No major injuries. Tom makes it out of the debris that was once his city with no major wounds, just bruises, scratches, and burns from stumbling through the rumble, looking for Harry or any other living being.
There are none. But there are a lot of dead.
Their home is splintered. Tom sees broken glass and their furniture on fire. Bricks over books. A body over their broken flower pots.
It isn't Harry. He checks. It's unidentifiable, but it definitely is not Harry.
When eventually another living human sees him, it is a muggle, and Tom spells him into forgetfulness without even thinking of it. He's running on autopilot, too busy watching the dust clouds for Harry to bring him cake and simultaneously looking for a body with dusky Indian skin and black feather-like curls.
When the next human sees him, it is a wizard; Albus Dumbledore looks at him like he is the greatest tragedy in all this tragedy, like him wandering barefoot and bleeding through a field of death and aftermath is somehow a bigger sadness than a thousand lives laying wasted at their feet and under the brick building rubble.
"I can't find my father," Tom chokes out through the dust he's been breathing. There is smoke deep in his lungs now and it is never coming out, he had not spelled the floor soft enough to sleep on and his body is sore, he is in shock, he is in pain, he is numb, he is a thousand things at once and all of them are aching for Harry.
He promised he'd be back, Tom reminds himself, and Harry has never broken a promise since he promised to come back for Tom at Wool's Orphanage.
Harry is coming back, and Tom allows Professor Dumbledore to lead him from the smithereens of his happy life, and to wash away blood he hasn't even noticed is there.
He promised.
xXx
Clothes. A few books. Muggle paintings, mostly in shreds. A few photographs. A stuffed puppy Tom was given when he was nine, and too old for it really, but he kept it anyway, because Harry had given it to him. Harry had had that nervous, eager to please smile at the time, and Tom's heart had melted in possessive, greedy delight for that look ever since he was a child, and he'd snatched the toy like it was treasure.
One of the puppy's black bead eyes is missing, along with fabric from its face. It smells like smoke. There are shards of red brick in it's fur.
They recover these bits and pieces from his home in the night, when muggles have recovered as many bodies as they can and are no longer watching.
Tom hears ringing in his ears as they lead him into Black Cauldron room with a fraction of his and Harry's collective belongings and a pot of tea.
He's been healed. His scratches are gone, his hands are not scarred. There was no way to remove all of the smoke from his lungs, and he will cough up ash for the rest of his life, but he can breathe freely again.
Physically, he is fine. They light the fireplace, ask if he needs anything, ask if he hurts anywhere. They leave him potions to take for sleep, if he needs them.
Eventually they leave him alone. He cries into his cup until it's salty and the fire has gone out.
Physically, he is fine. Inside, he feels empty. There is a shell shock shaped hole in his world, and Harry is still somewhere in it. He has never felt so rattled. He has never felt so unsafe.
The bombs burnt right through every ward of his home. If Magic is Might, then the muggles have conquered it, and Tom does not know what to do with that knowledge.
At some point he falls asleep in the tub. It is the only place that feels even remotely safe: dark and enclosed, like the shelter Harry shoved him into. There is no powerhouse magic shoved into this door, but Tom flings every spell he can think of at it until he is exhausted once again, and falls asleep with the closest semblance to safety he has felt in days.
Of course, he dreams of Harry.
xXx
Harry used to leave him for months at a time, back at the orphanage. He would bring Tom food, love, and gentle touch, and vanish into fog like a magical creature from fairytales, like he had never even been there, like he would never come again. But he always did come back eventually, and Tom was as dependent on Harry's eventual return as his stomach was.
Harry was the only one who fed him enough to actually be full, and always with the most delicious of foods. Fried potatoes, rich breads, cakes and coffees. Strange french foods and chocolate, venison and ham.
Tom only felt full when Harry was around. He was only content with Harry.
He wanted more.
And then he got more. Harry promised he would whisk Tom away from the orphanage eventually, and he had. He'd taken Tom from his bed in the middle of the night like some dark creature, Tom's stolen trinkets shoved into Harry's pockets and no clothes brought along.
Harry had set him down at the steps of a cottage with the moon full above them, three o'clock the witching hour, and told him, "welcome home, Tom Riddle."
And they had never been this long apart without contact since. Even at Hogwarts, there were letters.
This is radio silence. This is schrodinger's cat. This is a plague on the other side of the wall.
Tom Riddle is dying like this. He has to know.
Tom's skin itches in his sleep. When he wakes up, he still wants to crawl out of it. There are scratch marks on his collarbone.
He piles up all of their belongings into two piles. Everything of Harry's, he arranges by the fire, like a shrine in his own private religion, an offering to get his god to come back home.
Everything else, he piles in a closet.
xXx
Tom hasn't changed his clothes since he first got out of what he'd worn when London was decimated.
Decimated. At least a tenth must be destroyed. All that was important, he thinks, and realises the lawn he had once stood on for the first time with Harry at the witching hour is now ash. He feels terrified and angry. How dare they? How could they?
He'll kill them all. He'll hide in a hole and never come out.
Tom lays out a nightgown he barely recognises, and crawls into the bathtub to wash, not sleep.
He's heard people describe bathing after a long time as freeing, relaxing, cleansing.
Tom feels like he is drowning under a slide of stone as London blows up and crumbles.
When he puts it on, the nightgown hangs off his frame, clearly for someone more muscled. It smells of Harry lit on fire. He takes it off, then puts it on again, and sleeps in the bed tonight, with a pillow next to him, pretending it's a person.
The pillowcase is satin like Harry's skin, but nowhere near as warm.
He never restarts the fire. He cannot feel the cold. The city is on fire, and he feels like if he casts the spell, it will blow up the wall with all his slowly bubbling fury.
He shivers all the night. He wakes up with blood under his fingernails.
xXx
He doesn't wear his own clothing for a week. He and Harry are similar height, but their builds are different. Tom is slender and gaunt, long fingered and elegant. Harry is thin and strong, muscled and sculpted like Tom imagines statues are. Harry's thin is not the thinner Tom, who eats little and sits around reading, who is still carrying the ghost of a starving, deprived child in the visibility of his ribs. Harry is run around thin, eats healthy and laughs a lot thin, keeps his own garden thin.
Tom feels tiny in Harry's clothing, and he feels surrounded by comfort, a little angry boy protected by a man who is not his father, but his precious family nonetheless.
But Harry is not there. This is just a sweater.
A letter comes from Dumbledore, gently reminding him that the school year will start again eventually, and that help will always come to those who ask.
Tom does not ask. He never has. He does not beg.
Tom Riddle manages quite fine on his own, even though he wishes he didn't have to.
He boards the train glaring. He used floo to get to the station, so he would not have to see a single muggle.
xXx
"I hear you lost someone too."
Tom looks up, and sees some older girl with unfashionably cut milky blonde hair and dark eyes staring down at him, though only slightly. She's not very tall. He recognises her from studying the Dark Arts, from trading Restricted Section passes for family books and favours like the paper slips are a form of currency, and they are. Both money and knowledge are power, and Ravenclaw favours the latter form. He's seen her practicing curses in the hallways and walked past without a word, heard about her fascination with dragons, about how her family has a way with fire.
"I know you," he says, and straightens up in his seat. He doesn't bother closing his book about decapitation rituals. It takes him longer than it used to, placing her name. His head feels full of cotton, hate, and soul magic; there is no room for classmate's names.
She does not introduce herself.
She waits.
Haliastur Kelly, he eventually figures out. She's in sixth year, two years older than him. Diamond drops dangle from her ears, and there is a black taffeta bow pinned to the right side of her head. There's what looks like burn scars on her hands. He doesn't remember those.
"Tom Riddle, Professor Dumbledore said that you know about what happened in London." Haliastur says, setting down her wand and setting down across from him at the library table he is seated at. They are almost completely alone; it is far too early in the morning for even the most studious Ravenclaws to be visiting the library.
Except for him, of course. And apparently her.
Meaning she has deliberately seeked him out.
"I bet you're angry, too."
"No," he says, on autopilot, still high off telling everyone on staff that he is fine for the tenth time that week since school has started. Lies are rolling off his tongue faster than they ever did, as much as they ever did, but he is not bothering to make them convincing anymore.
She stares at him, curious and indulgent. "That is not the correct response," she says, daring to actually call him out on his lie, and if it was before, he would have cursed her. If it was before his world crumbled, beneficial acquaintance or not, he would have skinned her on the library floor, for all the books to watch.
But he is tired, so so tired, and he is still empty. All his anger is directed towards one thing, and he can only bring himself to be annoyed by her arrogance.
Is he angry, too?
When he was a child, he snapped a pet rabbit's neck and hung it from the rafters just to make another child cry after he had skipped in front of him in line. He had stolen precious mementoes of parents lost for insulting him, smashed fingers and toes and sent snakes to hide in bedding.
When he was a child, Tom was a raging tyrant, a terrifying little thing set loose on his tiny world like a curse, that had decided that if he didn't get love, he would give hell.
And Harry was an angel, a peaceful creature that had creeped in like fog and offered him what he so desperately knew he deserved, calming him with offerings of sweets and kisses and soft bedding and books and his whole entire self, until Tom was so content he couldn't rage any longer.
Now he is alone again, and Tom has never felt more angry.
He doesn't know what Heliastur is angry about, what London possibly could have done to affect her when he knows her family is rich in capital and magic alike and not located anywhere near the bomb site, but he nods yes, and she smiles, like something has begun.
He wonders again where those burn scars came from when her family is so good with fire.
xXx
Tom Riddle is starting to doubt that Harry Potter will ever return.