He didn't open his eyes when he woke up. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, a small smile crept on his lips.

Babies don't sleep this well.

He snuggled closer to the warmth in front of him contently... A warmth… that was moving. He furrowed his eyebrows and cracked his eyes open. What he saw made his blood run cold as memories from last night flooded his mind. During the night, he had somehow managed to wrap himself around Riddle's form so completely that he was afraid to move an inch, in fear of waking the blessedly still sleeping future Dark Lord in his arms.

Trying to control his panic, he carefully started to assess the situation. Their legs were tangled together in the sheets, his left arm was underneath Riddle's head, and his right arm was draped around Riddle's naked chest. Harry's nose had just been buried against Riddle's neck and Riddle's cheek against Harry's forehead, before he had pulled his head away in panic. Harry thanked his luck a million times that the movement hadn't woken Riddle.

What followed was fifteen minutes of Harry trying to get himself out of another would be disaster, extracting his limbs with surgical precision and trying to not wake Riddle, his heart pumping like a raging Hippogriff all the while. When he finally got himself up from the bed he quickly went to take a shower and then dressed himself, picking up his wand from where he had left it next to his shoes beside the bed. Harry seriously considered hexing himself for the last one. Who in their right mind would go to sleep next to a possibly volatile psychopath without their wand in immediate vicinity? Harry Potter, that's who.

He cast a quick Tempus, thanking Merlin it was Sunday. It was ten past nine. Everybody was probably still asleep. In their dorm, he only saw Dolohov sleeping alone in Malfoy's bed and Nott sleeping in his own, with a plant clutched in his arms. The others were missing, probably sleeping somewhere else.

At least he hoped they had been sleeping somewhere else, because with a sudden jolt he realized that he hadn't drawn the drapes around his bed last night. So, Dolohov and Nott might have seen them wrapped in each other's arms when they came in. Harry dearly hoped they had been too drunk to notice. With full panic mode, he looked at the other's beds. Seeing them perfectly made, he took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart down. The other beds hadn't been slept in. Great. The fewer possible witnesses the better.

He then went to go check on Riddle for the last time, approaching him like one might the gates of Hell. Seeing as he was once again his normal colour, breathing evenly and wasn't coated in perspiration he let out a relieved breath, but decided to cast a few diagnostic charms just in case. He was fine.

Good, time to get the hell out.


It was dinner time. Harry was sitting near the end of the Slytherin table, chatting with a sixth year he had never bothered to notice before. Usually he kept to himself as much as possible, but tonight he needed the distraction. He hadn't gone back to the Common room for the whole day, instead spending it in the kitchens, library, and the Room of Requirement. He wasn't hiding, no, but if Slytherin thought him to be anything, it was wary. And knowing Riddle, he definitely had a reason to be wary.

Tom hadn't shown his face outside Slytherin for the whole day so he would probably be coming to dinner now. And Harry decided it was best to gauge his reaction to waking up in Harry Evans' bed here in the semi-safe environment of the Great Hall. He didn't know whether it would be worse if Riddle remembered how he got in there or not.

Suddenly, with growing numbness, he thought he should have just moved Riddle to somebody else's bed in the morning, before he had woken up. He cut that line of though short, in fear that he might start bashing his head against the table.

Finally, from the corner of his eye, he noticed Riddle entering the Hall with his usual batch of bootlickers. Harry kept his attention directed at his meal, wand ready beneath the table, as Riddle walked past him. He didn't know if it was deliberate or not, but when Riddle passed the spot he was sitting, he could feel the end of his robe brushing against his back, which brought involuntary shivers up his spine.

In about five minutes he deemed it safe to catch a glimpse of Riddle, so he casually raised his eyes and left them drift past everybody, from where he sat to the teen. At first his eyes were drawn to the 'Knights', who all looked worse for wear. The look in Malfoy's eyes could only be described as silent horror, and Harry suppressed a smirk. Then his eyes located Riddle, only to find the dark blue eyes already locked onto his. Or, which used to be dark blue, but now looked purple because of the red bleeding into the irises.

What chilled Harry the most however, was the complete impassiveness he found in his face. Not that he expected to find an emotional rollercoaster there, but the stone-faced blankness was nonetheless unsettling. He tore his gaze away from Riddle's and stood up, dinner forgotten. The way out of the Great Hall seemed to be stretching on forever and the feeling of a hundred pairs of eyes on him never left him, even when he reached the corridor.

Knowing it was only one pair of eyes didn't give him any relief.


The corridors were quiet as he walked his way down to the dungeons. He was trying to sort his mind on what he was supposed to do. Tell Riddle the truth? Lie? Modify the story? Jump off the Astronomy Tower?

Just when he was about to reach the Common room he felt a bruising grip on his arm and then he was flung inside of an abandoned classroom, a dozen feet from the entrance. He was glad he managed to hold his balance at the rough handling and didn't fall face first down on the cold, stone floor. He turned around with his wand in hand, readying himself for any approach Riddle might take, when he was momentarily stupefied.

It wasn't Riddle who had pulled him inside this seemingly unused room.

"Lestrange?" Harry asked with a rough voice. He composed himself a second later, shooting the other boy with an unimpressed look.

"Disappointed? Were you expecting someone else?" Lestrange asked with a mocking voice.

"What do you want, Lestrange? I have better things to be doing than to play games with you," it came out harsh, but in reality, Harry was getting more and more concerned about where this was going. He hadn't seen Lestrange at dinner as well. He fingered his wand subtly.

"Oh, by all means, I would never even dream of wasting your precious time. No, you will see that what I want will be quite quick and easy for you to follow. See, it all started early this morning, when I found myself sleeping on a couch." His tone was conversational, and he started to pace leisurely around the room. "Now, couches are not good for my back, so I decided to move to the dorm and sleep the rest of my hangover away in silk sheets. Imagine my surprise, however, when upon entering, I saw a naked Tom Riddle sleeping in the arms of Harry Evans, on the latter's bed. I, the poor soul, couldn't help but think that my Lord had been drugged for your little nefarious desires."

Harry bristled at the 'naked' comment and was about to correct the boy, when the other went on casually.

"But, being the self-preservative Slytherin that I am, I didn't want to recklessly run into conclusions that might be wrong. So, I let you two be and decided to do a little investigation instead. It was just my luck that Parkinson happened to be sitting in front of the fire that morning, white-faced and jumpy, throwing glances at the boys' dorms after every few seconds. Being the gentleman that I am, I asked her what was bothering her and, at the same time, got a little glance inside her head, accidentally, of course.

"What I saw there, surprised me greatly, but at the same time disappointed me as well. Imagine how precious it would have been – the boy that holds my Lord's undivided attention for longer than anybody has ever managed to before, the boy who seems to be the only one my Lord is lenient towards-" he chuckled then, bitterly, seeing the other boy's sceptical expression. "Yes, believe it or not, my Lord is, for some reason, different with you. Do you think he would ever let anybody else get away with showing such blatant disrespect towards himself as you do? Naive little boy. You seem to have no idea who Tom Marvolo Riddle is and what he's capable of. Anyway, as I was saying, the only boy who he has ever treated as anything close to his equal, ends up taking advantage of him in the most disgusting way.

"And now it turns out that Parkinson is the scoundrel instead. Quite anticlimactic, don't you think? So, I decided to meddle a bit. A little Obliviate took care of Parkinson's troubled mind and when you left the Common room in haste I went to check on Riddle. You truly did a very good job with him, I must compliment. Healthy as ever. I removed the antidotes from your nightstand and cleaned up any other unwanted evidence of your care. So, when the time was right I finally woke Riddle concernedly and when he asked me if I knew what happened, I, of course, told him everything I knew," here, he sent a Harry a look of mock innocence.

"I must say, I haven't seen him this angry in-... ever," he finished with a wicked smirk on his lips.

Harry stood completely still, the only movement in his entire body being his clenching teeth.

"I-... He won't believe it-" he started weakly, only to be interrupted by Lestrange's sudden laugh.

"Oh, but that is the most ingenious part, isn't it? He will not be able to look inside your head for we all remember how you both ended up in the hospital wing the last time he tried Legilimency on you. And he already skimmed my mind about the events and since I am brilliant with Occlumency, much more sufficient than my Lord would ever expect, he saw only what I wanted him to see," with that, the maliciousness slowly left his face, only to be replaced with a stone-cold look.

"How ironic it would be, to die at his hands after trying to save him, when he first came to you because he was trying to save you," he said softly. There was something inexplicable in his eyes then, like he is privy to a secret that nobody else knew. Harry was just about to demand what he meant by Riddle saving him, when the other boy opened his mouth again

"Prepare to die, Wonder Boy, my Lord's leniency does have limits." With that he stripped the room of the privacy wards and left, leaving Harry to lean heavily against a cold, stone wall.

Well, fuck.