Chapter 7: Live-Action Romance

The excitement of the morning dwindled rapidly into monotony. Tom sat idly in his cubicle, torn between his work and his preoccupations. But work could not hold his attention, not when Harry had yet to set foot near his office. Had yet to set foot near Tom.

What on earth was going on in this place? Each time Harry drew near, inevitably another 'emergency' would pull him away to another department. Tom was beginning to have his suspicions, only he could not quite pinpoint who was at fault, or why they were interfering so heavily.

First it had been Draco, then Pansy, then Draco again, and then Daphne. Were they conspiring together? To what end? Tom had considered the accounting and marketing departments to be his allies in the workplace. Draco was particularly malleable and eager to please if he was offered the right sort of incentive.

Perhaps his mistake had been to disguise his true intentions. It was not their fault that he had kept his plans to woo Harry under wraps. This would need to be rectified now, of course. It wouldn't do for Harry to be kept excessively busy. Excessive stress was harmful.

Tom tapped his pen on his desk. What he needed was an excuse to walk over to accounting or marketing and find out what was going on. If he could solve whatever this 'emergency' problem was, then Harry would be free from his managerial duties. Harry may even be grateful to Tom for sparing him the stress of dealing with it.

"Harry's been busy all morning!"

Tom's ears perked up. He spun his chair in the direction of the sound. Weasley was talking to Granger again. Maybe they would have some useful information, gossiping hens that they were.

"Well," said Granger, "there's nothing we can do about it. It's nothing to do with us."

Girl-Weasley made a noise of distaste. "Pansy said that Malfoy offered to buy her lunch if she helped keep Harry busy."

Tom's pen clattered onto the desk.

Right. It was high time to visit accounting. Tom snatched a folder at random up off his desk and stood up.

The walk was brief, and once he arrived, he saw that both Harry and Draco were hunched over stacks of printed reports. Though there was a respectable amount of distance between them, the sight of it was enough to make Tom see red.

"Harry, Draco," he greeted. "What seems to be the issue here?"

Draco bolted upright, hand moving to adjust his tie, the picture perfect image of a child with its hand caught in the cookie jar. "Nothing, Tom. Just some... discrepancies in the reports. I felt it, ah, prudent to show these to Mr. Potter as soon as I noticed them."

"There's a lot of paper," Harry joked. He removed his hand from where it was braced on the table and smiled. "Did you need something, Tom?"

"I need to borrow Draco for a moment, if that's alright."

"I don't think—wait. What?" Draco blinked in surprise. "You want to talk to me?"

Tom grinned, shark-like. "Only a few minutes of your time, Draco. Then I promise I'll allow you to return your attention to this..." Tom allowed his gaze to drag slowly over the stacks of paper. "Emergency."

Draco coughed and tugged at his shirt collar. "Can it... can it wait? We're a little, ah, busy. At the moment."

Harry gazed between the two of them, expression now curious. "Nothing that can't wait, Draco. What're you after, Tom? Can I help?"

Tom still had his random folder wedged under his arm, but now that he was staring Draco down, the excuse no longer seemed quite enough.

"It's your cousin, Draco," Tom lied easily. "He said you weren't checking your phone, so he called me instead. Something about Slytherin...? One of his coworkers has been caught up in some scandal. He made it sound very important."

Tom was betting on the fact that Draco had been so distracted all morning that he'd forgotten to check his phone. He was also betting on the fact that the mere mention of Lucius and Slytherin would send Draco into further distraction.

"What?" Draco's jaw dropped. Then he glanced at Harry, who now had both brows raised. "Um. What else did Lucius say? Did he say I should call him? I can go do that right now—" Draco flushed, then looked at Harry again. "Can I? Just—he's my cousin," Draco added hastily. "If he's in trouble, then I need to help him."

It was almost too easy. "He gave me a few more details," Tom continued. "But they're rather sensitive. He is quite busy with the fallout at the moment, but I can tell you what he told me, and then you can decide if you ought to call him back or not."

"Go ahead," Harry said, gesturing. "You said it won't be long, and this can wait. I'm sure I'll still be wading through all this once you're back."

Tom smiled at Harry, then walked off, knowing Draco would follow.

"So what is it? What happened to his coworker?" Draco lowered his voice, then added, "Did he do something? Did you do something? Lucius told me—"

"Shut up," Tom said. They entered an empty meeting room, and Tom shut the door behind them.

Draco scowled. "Come on, Tom. You know this is important to me. Not all of us want to stay with this bloody company forever, you know."

"I made that up," Tom said flatly. "There is nothing going on with Lucius or his workplace. I needed an excuse to get you away from Harry."

"What?" Draco's eyes widened almost comically. "What the hell, Tom! That's not alright! I've been looking forward to that—"

"What are you doing with Harry?" Tom demanded, stalking forward. "Why have you been keeping him busy all morning? Surely you aren't so incompetent at your job that you require a babysitter at all hours of the day."

Draco spluttered. "I'm not doing anything! I swear. There's just all these reports that need looking at." He was looking anywhere but at Tom as he said this.

"Lucius needs to teach you to lie better," Tom said scathingly. "What is going on, Draco? This is your last chance to tell me. Or would you like to go the same way Quirrell did? I could make it happen, you know. It's almost laughably easy."

Draco shook his head rapidly.

"I imagine it'd be quite difficult for you to get a job at Slytherin if you were outed for embezzlement. Perhaps I could even implicate you as an associate of Quirrell's. Wouldn't that be delightful?" Tom hummed pleasantly. "Quirrell's court case is in three months, wouldn't you know. How satisfying it would be to see the both of you in court together."

"I'm not—I don't—" Draco struggled for words, backing away from Tom until he bumped into a chair. "It's Lucius! He asked me to do this. He told me you were trying to seduce Potter and that I had to stop you before you got yourself into trouble!"

"So really," Draco added, "I'm trying to help you!"

"Well, don't," Tom said, menace leaking into his voice. "Don't do anything but exit this room and tell Harry you've figured out how to sort this problem on your own, that it was all a mistake, whatever it takes. If I catch you interfering in any of my affairs again, I won't be so kind as to offer you a warning, do you understand?"

"Yes," Draco said, swallowing. "Yes, I'm sorry."

"Good." Tom leant back and regarded Draco with a neutral eye. "I'll be sure to speak kindly of you when I talk to Lucius about this."

Draco's relief was palpable. "Thank you."

"Thank me once you've done as I asked," Tom advised.

"I'll go right now." Draco moved towards the door, then paused. "Um."

Tom raised a brow. "Yes?"

"Since I already went through the trouble of making up an issue, I could—I could maybe figure out a way for him to work on it with you?"

Tom held the surprise back from his face. Draco wasn't completely hopeless after all. When it came to self-preservation, he was remarkably capable of quick thinking. "That would be acceptable."

"Excellent. Really great. So I'll do that," Draco said, sounding hopeful, "and when you go and talk to Lucius... maybe you can wait a while before you do that?"

Tom sighed. He sighed aloud so Draco knew how much of a bother this was, and then he said, "I suppose. Why don't you start by telling me what you've been up to all morning?"

Draco nodded. "Right. Okay, so, first thing was I drew up all the monthly statements from when Quirrell was still the manager here—"

Ginny turned the corner, striding quickly and with purpose. Hermione looked up as she approached, quickly setting aside her day planner so as to give Ginny her full attention.

"Did it work? What happened?"

"I'm not sure exactly what happened. Riddle and Malfoy went off for a while, and when they came back, Malfoy just handed off the entire thing right to Riddle. Now Harry and Riddle are working on whatever it is together in the accounting department."

Hermione made a thoughtful sound. "That's good, then, isn't it? I'm surprised it went over so well. Riddle must have been very convincing."

"I'm wondering what blackmail Riddle has over him," Ginny said, snorting. "I'd kill to know what it is."

"I want to know why he felt such a need to interfere in the first place. Surely winning a bet doesn't matter that much to him. He must have spent more money paying for Pansy and Daphne's lunch than he'll win from the betting pool."

"Eh," Ginny said. "Does it matter? Maybe he's just trying to win the bet for bragging rights."

Hermione pressed her lips together, unconvinced. "Maybe."

Ginny was about to respond when she heard the dulcet tones of Riddle's voice floating towards them.

"They're back!" she hissed to Hermione, then scampered back to her desk. In the distance, Riddle and Harry were walking side by side, engrossed in some paper files.

Ginny listened intently as they passed closer, waiting to see if any juice tidbits of information would slip out. The two men were standing... rather close together. Or was that her imagination? She didn't think Riddle was the sort to hesitate, but then again this was quite the spectacular situation. Harry was their manager.

"Hmm," said Riddle. He pulled the files out of Harry's hands, then glanced casually across the room at the large clock nailed to the far wall and did a mild double take. The wide-eyed look on his face was almost convincing, Ginny thought snidely.

"Would you look at that," Riddle commented, "we've gone past lunch hour. I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't mean to keep you so long."

"Oh, it's alright." Harry seemed flustered. "This was important, and I'm glad you had the time to go over it with me."

"You must be hungry," Riddle said smoothly, like Harry had not spoken at all. "How about we take a late lunch? My treat, so I can make it up to you."

"You don't need to do that," Harry said hastily.

"Oh, but I insist." Riddle's smile was ridiculously sweet. Ginny thought that even she would have had a hard time saying no.

Harry lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. "You've already been paying for coffee. I feel like I should be buying you lunch."

"What's a little back and forth between colleagues?" Riddle asked. "You can grab the next one, Harry."

Harry laughed a little. "That's what you said about the coffee."

Riddle's charming smile split into a wide grin. "Did I? I'm afraid I can't quite recall."

Did these two not realize they were standing right in front of Harry's office door, where anyone could hear them? Or were they so caught up in each other that everything else was background noise? Ginny had never imagined their dingy little office space as a fertile ground for romance, but the scene playing out in front of her had to be taken directly from a Hallmark movie.

"Lunch this once," Harry said at last. "And you best let me get the coffee tomorrow."

"Can't say I won't try otherwise." Riddle took a half-step into Harry's office, tossing the folder he'd been holding onto the desk. "Do you need anything in here?"

"No, I've got all I need."

Riddle shut the door with a click. "Then let's depart."

They went for the lifts. Riddle slowed his steps until he was almost half a step behind Harry, and then he raised his hand halfway up, like he was deciding whether to place it on Harry's back. Ginny muffled a giggle with her hand.

"What's going on?" Hermione whispered through the wall. "I can't see anything."

Ginny waited until both men were out of sight before she slid her chair around the cubicle wall, passing Riddle's empty cubicle on her way to Hermione's. When she finally came to a halt, she braced both hands on her knees and exclaimed, "They're going on a date!"

"I heard that part," Hermione said irritably, but she was smiling. "What were they doing?"

"Well, Riddle was all—" Ginny batted her lashes and adopted a dopey smile. "—but as they were leaving he looked like he was going to touch Harry's back."

"That's almost sweet," Hermione mused. "What do you think will happen?"

"I think," Ginny said, "that if they don't kiss by the end of the next week I'll riot."

"You are far too invested in this."

"I am only giving the people what they want, Hermione. You can't fault me for having taste."

A/N:

ayyyy more content! hope you're all doing swell. comments and thoughts are appreciated!

IN OTHER EXCITING NEWS:

Come join 'The Room of Requirement', a community Discord server for fans of the Harry / Tom | Voldemort ship (and characters). The server is 16+ and can be found with invite code: 2suak9y