Teaching History (is Old News)
12 - Tension
Potter drops his hands immediately and stands up. "Nope. You didn't see anything. There was no future seeing here. Nope. Okay, you're alive, the rampaging car is blown up, and I'm going to go back to my office to knit cute little hats for my students, bye."
Tom grabs Potter's sleeve and fixes him in place.
"Will you really leave a helpless victim here with broken bones?"
Potter looks away. "You're hardly helpless."
Tom wants those eyes back on him. "Your prediction says otherwise."
"Oh for—" Potter scowls, an alien expression on his usual face, "nowhere did I say that you would be helpless! Now let me go, I've got tests to grade."
"You don't assign tests."
"How would you know? You moved out!"
"I listen to student chatter. Quite useful."
"You must be fine. How you're still so eloquent with all that pain, I have no idea."
"Liar, you knew this would happen."
Potter turns back to the distance. "Oh look! It's a healer! Well, I'll leave you in better hands than mine now—"
He tugs his sleeve away.
The loss of contact makes Tom think of a smaller Potter flinching away from everything after the Incident, walking away from Tom. No. His younger self was blind to Potter's potential use. Never again. Tom grabs Potter, mutters the first wandless spell he can think of and—
Potter yelps.
"Seriously, Riddle?! You put a sticking charm between our hands?!" Potter waves their intertwined hands in the air, "Are you five?!"
Considering Potter regularly watches children's cartoons, eats sugary cereal, and is currently wearing a sweater of a bear named Pooh, Tom would argue that Potter is the five year old.
"You're not leaving until I get confirmation—"
"I'm not a seer—"
"A truthful one—"
"Just the truth that you want—"
"And you give me a prophecy."
Potter gapes at him.
"Oh my god. Tom. Riddle. Whatever name you prefer. I can't just tell prophecies. It doesn't work like that!"
"So you admit you're a seer."
"I. What. You. Urgh!" Potter's hair flies in disarray. It's oddly refreshing to see him this frustrated. "No, I don't! This is just an oddly specific coincidence."
Tom narrows his eyes. "I don't believe in coincidence."
Potter opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Closes it. Then takes a deep breath.
"Undo the sticking charm."
"No."
"Riddle, I swear—"
"Undo it yourself then."
"We both know that your magic's more powerful," but the words feel empty, now, to Tom.
"Do we?"
Slowly, Potter looks at their stuck hands in contemplation.
"...No. I suppose we don't," he admits and Tom wants to bask in triumph. This is the Potter he wants to see, this is the Potter who will give him an answer, finally—
"Is that my car?!" Arthur Weasley shouts, running frantically to the metal heap burning happily in the middle of the road. "Bessie! Who did this to you?!"
Crowds of students and visitors begin to gather around the wreckage. A few begin gesturing wildly to the nifflers chasing witches out of a clothing store and to the crazed llama terrorizing Zonko's. Hagrid, unfortunately, has not been trampled yet and seems to be trying to tame the beast again. But other residents and students begin to point at Tom and Potter, gasping in panic at their positions.
"Professor! What happened?! Should I call a healer?!" Granger asks.
Aurors begin appearing before Potter or Tom can reply. The aurors immediately begin rounding up the animals and interviewing witnesses. They drag Bellatrix and Madame Rosmerta out of the pub, growling about pressing charges for public disturbance.
"Iknownothing," Potter says quickly, upon spotting the head auror at the scene, Regulus Black. "Well then, Ms. Granger, I should get going…"
Regulus Black moves through the crowd, likely watching for suspicious behavior, when his eyes meet Tom's with disinterest. Slowly, Regulus Black turns his head and realizes just who Tom is holding on to.
His face twists. "Riddle, what are you doing to my godson."
Godson. Tom files that information away in his head. Strange for Regulus Black to adopt that title when it belongs to Sirius Black…
"OkayloveyoubyeRegulus," Potter waves both hands, apparating away.
"Wait!" Tom grasps at the air, alone with a silently fuming Regulus Black and confused Granger.
Only later, after being interrogated by Black ("Put your filthy purist hands on my godson again and they will never find your body." A weak threat, as if Tom would be interested in such things) and patched up by Madame Pomphrey, Tom starts to laugh.
Potter broke out of that sticking charm completely wandless.
:
"Tom!" Potter practically squeaks when Tom walks into his office. "Um, what are you doing here?"
Walking past him to the atrocious pikachu beanie-chair, Tom deshrinks the suitcase from his pocket and begins emptying it. "I'm moving back in. My name is still engraved on the door outside after all."
Indeed, true. Dumbledore found an obnoxiously sparkly plaque reading Professors Potter & Riddle with little heart engravings surrounding it. (Unbeknownst to Tom, this is how the Tomarry trend emerged.)
Potter's jaw drops. His paper cranes tweet worriedly into his ear. "But… you hate sharing your space."
"I won't be. I'll take the bedroom back upstairs, unless you foresee a problem with this future arrangement."
Potter and all his little cranes back away. "Did you just… try to pun?"
Tom pauses. "You make ridiculously silly prophecies every day and clever word play bother you?"
"So cringeworthy," Potter wobbles on his feet, deciding to be unnecessarily dramatic, "I can't even… I need to sit down…"
"Surely you foresaw this."
Potter groans, deciding to sit right on the middle of the floor. "I'm too tired for this. Just… do me a favour and read a Divination textbook, Tom. Please. For both my sanity and yours."
"Divination is useless if I have a real seer as my roommate."
"Nooooooooooo…" Potter buries his face against the carpet. "Just no, Riddle, no…!"
This is the moment Nagini slithers in, and hisses, [What did you do to my Green Eyes?! He looks broken!]
Tom smirks. [I'm getting confirmation.]
If Nagini were a cat, she'd bristle. [This is not asking. I told you to ask him.]
As usual, Tom ignores her.
[Fine! Don't answer me! I refuse to help when Green Eyes rejects you! I'll run away and live in his suitcase!]
Angrily, Nagini curls up next to Potter and tries to comfort him with promises of revenge that Potter would never understand.
:
At breakfast, each table becomes a sea of Team Tomarry badges. Even Dumbledore has one, pinned to his beard.
"We've resolved our differences," Tom grits out, if only to get rid of the terribly spelled names.
"That's a lie," Potter deadpans, robotically eating his cocoa puffs.
"Yes, I know," Dumbledore hums, even after Potter shoots him a betrayed look. "Hence the badge."
Tom frowns. Is the term 'Tomarry;' a play on both his and Potter's names? A desire to see them in an amicable working relationship again?
Chang snorts behind him. "You don't want to know, Riddle."
Tom feels a stab of annoyance that he shapes into a pleasant smile. "Is this matter worth investigating, Potter?"
"I will say nothing, and keep enjoying my cereal. Mmm. Sugar," Potter stuffs his face.
Fine. Tom will get Potter to say another prophecy. It only takes time.
:
"Ah, I see that the United States of America has officially sworn in a buffoon for their president, I wonder what will happen to the economy and population—"
Potter blanches. "Urgh. Don't talk to me about that man. He's terrible. He's going to do terrible things and we can't even stop him because we're British and the muggle British government is just as terrible."
"Is that a prophecy?"
Potter throws his pillow at him.
"It's called political opinion! O-pin-ion!"
Doesn't stop Tom from writing it down.
:
"One day Snape's going to self-combust because of all the bitter hatred inside him," Potter jokes to Chang when they walk down the corridor.
"Will that be from magical causes or random accident?"
"Wha—Tom, stop writing that down, it was a joke, not everything I say is the future!"
:
By Monday, Potter has stress-baked so much that their shared office might flood from the stacks of biscuits and macaroons.
"You need to stop," Potter points his iced whisk at Tom when he vanishes them all.
"Your pastries will be safe in the kitchens—"
"No, not the vanishing. You do that please. I meant, this whole… 'are you a seer' thing! I'm not a seer. You can't prove it."
Tom narrows his eyes.
Watch me, he thinks.
:
When his Gryffindor and Hufflepuff Fifth Years walk into his Wednesday DADA classroom, some of them have to walk out and recheck the plaque on the door.
"Er… this is DADA, right?" one student asks tentatively.
"Indeed, Ms. Johnson. Take your seat."
"No offense, Professor, but why are there murky glass jars on all of our desks?" Katie Bell asks.
"Pickled eggplants," Tom replies. "Just in case Professor Potter's prophecy from earlier comes true. I would shrink and carry them with you at all times."
The class goes silent.
"No—"
"Way—" the Weasley twins chorus.
"I can't—"
"—Believe—"
"—this is happening!"
Angelina Johnson, grinning from ear to ear, leans back in her chair and says, "See? It's canon, bitches."
:
"Riddle!" Potter yanks him into an empty classroom. "Why are you giving everyone pickled eggplants?!"
"Well," Tom feigns innocence, "you did make that prophecy about flesh eating flamingos, I thought—"
"No, damn it, I just made that up to mess with you!"
"So you create false prophecies to hide your true seer capabilities—"
Potter flinches. "Riddle stop. I'm not a seer. I made it up."
Tom doesn't understand. "That doesn't make sense. The llama—"
"Was an accident!"
"But it came true! It means something, all of it; you have to be a seer, that's the only logical explanation—"
"Why does everything have to make sense?! Follow some greater meaning?! Sometimes," Potter steps forward, eyes wild and direct and burning, "things happen! They just do, even if we can't understand them… and all we can do is get up and decide what to do next."
Tom shakes his head. "No." He can't believe that. He's meant to be the greatest wizard who ever lived. He can feel it. But if he could find out who his enemies are before they appear, he could rise up so easily, so quickly…
Death wouldn't be a problem.
"You control your own destiny, Tom," Potter's voice brings him back down to reality. "Stop looking for futures that don't exist yet."
Not when Tom knows there are ways to destroy horcruxes, not when there are still things Tom can't control like sortings and stubborn, stubborn chance. The dark lord Voldemort killed because of a random llama escape. That's what his legacy would have become if Potter had not interfered.
Tom clenches his fists.
"Not everything can be controlled."
"Not everything is meant to be," Potter counters. "You didn't die, after all."
Tom feels his throat go dry. "Are you admitting to it then? That it was a real prophecy?"
Seconds pass. Quietly, Potter deflates, looking worn as ragged cloth trampled in mud. He refuses to look at Tom.
"…It's like I said to you before, prophecies can be self-fulfilling things. Sometimes, it's best not to know."
EDITED CHAPTER - Nov 15, 2019