As a baby, Harry was found without warning on the steps in a basket with a nonsensical note. Tom knew the story by heart, because he had asked for it many times when he was younger. Harry had stared soundlessly up at the staff when they brought him in, only a year old and turning blue from the cold.
He was taken upstairs to the other babies, and eventually turned mostly pink instead, though the tips of his fingers and ears remained ever so faintly black, the skin there deadened by frostbite. Children on the doorstep weren't unusual at an orphanage in the winter, and no one questioned it, or his place there. The note was stored away in some dusty cabinet, and conveniently forgotten, until Tom had dug it out years later, from the rubble that had once been the orphanage before a bomb had dropped on it.
Magic, it mentioned. James and Lily Potter. Death at the hands of a Dark Lord. A tragedy. Take care of Harry. There was a year mentioned, Harry's supposed date of birth. 1980. No wonder no one had wanted to deal with it. It was clearly written by a madman, and one with no concept of time, at that. They must have only taken the name from it.
Tom had been seven, just by a few days, when he first actually met Harry. Harry was still a toddler at the time, just starting to walk. And he'd been a natural at it. All it had taken was one distracted caretaker looking the other way, and he must have darted out the door, because when Tom found him, there wasn't an adult, or anyone else, in sight and he'd been poised at the stairs, staring contemplatively down at the first step. And Tom had watched as he'd tipped forward, seemingly perfectly content with his free fall. Tom had known that no matter how infamously durable babies were, there was no way one could survive the fall and following landing that this one had just chosen. There were a lot of stairs, and the floor below was hard. He'd watched, almost bored, as the yet unknown infant had headed towards death, and wondered if he would get blamed for this.
Which had made it all the more shocking when Harry hadn't landed. Instead, Tom watched the toddler freeze in the air, as if caught in a bubble, before floating gently downward, until his feet touched the ground again. Seemingly spent by the experience, Harry had just plopped down into the cold floor, and sat there quietly looking around, while behind and above him, Tom Riddle had to rearrange all of his knowledge on the world as he knew it.
There was someone else.
Someone else who could do freakish, unnatural, clearly powerful things.
Tom's shrivelled little heart practically beat itself out of his chest, and that core of what made him him, the part that did the strange things, seemed to be stretching out and reaching for the tiny child on the floor below. Whatever it found, Tom felt it too, warm and bright and sweet, snaking back to him and into his chest, where it settled with a happy hum, as Harry craned around and looked up at Tom.
Tom's world was instantly dyed emerald green, just like those eyes, and not for the first time but by far the most intense, he felt the beginnings of obsession bloom inside of him. He wasn't sure what this feeling was, yet, but he felt like if it ever ended, if this connection was ever severed, he would die of it.
The caretaker who should have been watching Harry that day was rather surprised when she realised he was missing, and even more surprised when he was returned by Tom Riddle, who all of the staff knew was…. abnormal. Her spike of fear was rather obvious on her face, and Tom had resisted the urge to sneer as he'd awkwardly but very carefully handed the baby back to her. When he'd asked if he could visit Harry again, he'd thought for a brief and very satisfying moment that he had given her a heart attack, judging by her abrupt slack expression followed by a sickened one. But she must not have been able to think up an excuse to keep him away, because when he came back the next day to peek into the cradle at the green eyed toddler, no one had stopped him.
No one was able to stop him for the next year. Visiting Harry became Tom's daily ritual, a tribute to their strange connection, as Tom would hunch over Harry's cradle and watch him or attempt to speak with him, sometimes even mustering up a smile, or a snack or two leftover from his own already lacking meals. At some point he started telling Harry everything, random details about his life, all of the things he hated, the things he planned for his future - no, their future. He told Harry that when he left the orphanage, he'd be taking Harry with him. Harry had done other things since the incident with the stairs; broken things by crying, repaired them by laughing, called for Tom without a voice, and he knew he couldn't bear to leave the other now.
He didn't know enough about other children, had barely truly been a child at Harry's age, so he wasn't sure how much the other even understood of what he said. But he said it all anyways, dumped all his thoughts and schemes and half hearted emotions at Harry's tiny black tipped feet, until being away from him made Tom feel like he had no place to store his thoughts without Harry there to listen to them first.
They couldn't stop him the year after that, either. Harry was estimated at three now, almost four, and Tom was eight, almost nine. Four was old enough to be out of the nursery, especially since Harry could already move so well. He was a bit slower in the speaking department, but Tom, who had been visiting him almost daily for nearly two years, could understand him perfectly, even if he didn't often use his mouth to communicate. It was easy enough to read the body language, the tiny gestures that conveyed wants and needs, the emotions swirling in his big green eyes.
Now, as Harry was growing a bit too big for a crib, for the first time in his life, Tom Riddle had to beg for something. He begged that Harry could come be in his room with him, instead of anywhere else.
He feared what might happen if Harry was seen being freakish, which hadn't happened yet, and could maybe be prevented if Tom was always, always near him. No one would know it was the little black tipped boy behind any unusual occurrences if Tom, the already known freak, was there too.
Mostly, he feared what might happen if Harry grew out of him, if he was with other children, other boys, enough to decide that Tom just wasn't enough for him.
Once, just once, Tom hadn't been able to meet with Harry for several days because the younger had caught some illness. Tom had been left reeling, terrified and anxious, haunted by nightmares, unable to think about anything else until he was finally able to see those green eyes and blackened fingertips again, nearly a week later. He'd been so overwhelmingly scared, scared that something might happen to either one of them while apart, and scared that maybe they'd never be together again.
If Harry made friends, if he was no longer contained by the bars of his cradle, if he stopped letting Tom see him, Tom couldn't even begin to think of what would happen.
He begged so intensely, for nearly a week, until everyone was quite alarmed and disquieted by the consistency of it, and worried for what such a devil possessed boy could want with dear sweet little Harry. His visits had been accepted some time ago as an oddity, but nothing explicitly harmful, but this was something more. This was a growing monopoly on an innocent child who they worried may not survive the devilish boy whose attention he had somehow attracted.
But more than Harry, people worried about themselves. Of all the terrible things Tom had done in the past with no prior warning, the thought of what he might do if not given something he so desperately wanted was terrifying.
So Harry went to Tom's room.
He didn't seem to mind the move, but the staff doubted he would have said a word even if he had. He silently settled in, a bed next to Tom's and slightly more clothing in the closet, a little boy wordlessly stretching out his hands to his nine year old guardian, who took them and held him like a precious treasure.
Harry's bed wasn't even used for a week before he started to be found in Tom's, the older curled around the younger like some fierce mother cat around her cubs.
By the time another year had passed, leaving Harry four and almost five, Tom ten and almost eleven, they were joined at the hip, or nearly, as Harry was yet too short to properly reach his hip to Tom's. Where Harry went, Tom followed, and vice versa. Harry didn't remember living without their connection, but Tom could, and he told Harry about it sometimes, the horribleness of it embellished to make it sound like living whilst completely empty, so that Harry would never dare risk a separation. When it did occur, when Tom went for school during the summer and fall, when Sunday schools were separated by ages, when their hands slipped apart and they lost one another on the streets where they went to pick pockets, they stumbled through it almost blindly, screaming in their minds for one another and reuniting like long lost family, no matter how many times it happened. The more time they spent together, the less they could bear apart. Tom grew around Harry like a thorn bush around a sapling, and Harry depended on the strength of Tom's thorns to hold him up.
When Tom turned eleven, and got his Hogwarts letter, he was nearly torn in half.
There were others? Others still? The feeling of when Harry had bounced down those stairs and landed intact returned, filling him with a strange sense of euphoria and longing. He felt instantly attached to the idea. He wanted to go.
But the letter only mentioned him. It said nothing about Harry, who watched him read the letter with hazy green eyes and tangled hair, further messed by the way he was playing with it, his little black tipped fingers attempting to braid whatever longer bits he could find. He wanted to go, but he couldn't, not without Harry.
As much as he longed for the idea of others, for this word magic, he knew he would always long for Harry more. The other little boy had transcended being just another magical person. He was Tom's stability, what he had built himself around in a matter of years. He was Tom's personal deity, a little boy with black hair and blackened ears, already the base of a dedicated religion with only one follower.
Tom pens a letter, asking if he can bring Harry with him. When the response comes, no, accompanied by all its reasons and advice, he doesn't even bother to read past the refusal. He picks up his school list, and decides that he'll learn, but not in a school.
He painfully leaves Harry behind and finds the place called Diagon Alley, to buy books and instrument and, most importantly, a wand. Money they've stolen pays for most of it, once Tom finds someone, called a "muggleborn" willing to exchange their money for golden coins. They're probably ripped off horribly, Tom knows this, but once Tom knows what currency they're looking for, he finds some more, in the coats and purses of people passing by. When he returns with his newfound treasures, they spend the rest of the day staunchly at each other's side, curled up and dozing in their room, a few strange candies Tom had bought on his excursion stickying their fingers and mouths. When Tom kisses Harry goodnight, his cheek tastes sweet, and Tom delivers one quick, soft, toffee flavoured kiss to his lips as well. Tom's never kissed Harry like that, and he feels like one day he'll never be able to get enough of it. They sleep under covers and new cloaks, tangled together.
When they wake up, the sun hasn't risen, and Tom packs everything they have in a trunk he bought the day before, which shrinks with a touch and tucks into his pocket. He takes Harry's quietly offered hand, kisses it, and they say goodbye to the room together, before they disappear together, just as without warning as Harry had once appeared.