I've come to the disturbing realisation that I'm starting to talk like Tom from writing him so much…one of my friends almost had a heart attack when I suddenly called him darling in the middle of mock bickering…oh dear.
PS: If you recognise it, it's not mine! Though in all honesty, I'm sure JK would be a tad offended if you mistook my writing style (I've been told it's quite distinctive?) with her masterpiece. I used HBP for this one ;)
Chapter 89:
Zevi stared down, intently, at the floor, frightened to draw Tom's attention.
However much Harry and Tom bickered, however much they baited and goaded and struggled for dominance on a near daily basis…they didn't really fight in front of people.
Maybe it was something about being famous, but Harry did go to some effort to keep his private life exactly that - private. So Harry must be rather pissed off to rant at Tom in the middle of the common room…and not just mad, but stressed, exhausted and something Tom did must have hit a nerve somewhere where Harry himself wasn't even sure it had hit, or why.
Tom…Tom had been shockingly lenient on the boy. Of course, the lack of immediate reaction meant nothing, Tom tended to deal with Harry privately too, he always had, because if situations between the two of them were public they escalated quickly.
It was the same old pattern; Harry provoked Tom, Tom proved his dominance, and Harry lashed out to regain his own control and independence…spiralling on and on until they actually talked it out.
He'd suggest a non marital marriage councillor if he thought it would help. It wouldn't, firstly because neither would ever open up in front of anything resembling a psychiatrist or therapist, secondly because they would take his head off if he did suggest it and lastly because no councillor of any sort would be able to stand their rather twisted and complex relationship for too long, because though it would no doubt be the most fascinating case they ever took, those two also tended to freak people out in intensity. Any therapist would give themselves a migraine trying to figure out all the knots and bumps and scars.
Yet…it worked. He couldn't deny that. It did work for them. In an odd way, Harry and Tom were absolutely perfect for each other.
That didn't stop him from keeping his head down and trying not to get into the middle of it though.
He dared a glance up, to see Tom had turned back to his text in the minutes after Harry left, seemingly careless. He wasn't careless.
It was the eyes; frosted violets in the dead of winter, so cold that they chilled everything around them like a Dementor's touch.
He swallowed slightly, hastily averting his gaze again. To stare too long was to tempt a terrible fate onto oneself - it was like staring at an iced sun, beautifully, brilliantly bright, but liable to burn your eyes out. No, this was a story to be heard and felt, not watched directly….
Draco swallowed, eyeing his grandfather in the desperate hopes that the other would provide him with some reassurance or gesture to tell him what he should do.
But he didn't look over his way, mercury eyes shut off from all emotion, attentive only to Riddle and the nuances of his mood. Though it stung, he didn't blame Abraxas in the slightest.
It was plain stupidity to take your gaze off the most dangerous person in the room, even for a second, because he knew the Slytherin Heir could probably kill a man in under that.
Riddle seemed completely at ease though, so he wasn't really sure why all their past relatives were so utterly rigid…except…Riddle just radiated a type of danger right now, like a timed curse that could go off at any given moment without warning or word. It was - disquieting.
He honestly didn't know how Harr-Potter could stand to bait him so, and risk being on the wrong end of this mood. Well, plain stupidity coupled with a wilful defiance and conviction for his own morals probably, but that was besides the point. Riddle wasn't someone you wanted to mess with.
"Tom," a voice began, soothingly, and this time Draco did feel the needed to stiffen. God damn Lestrange.
The man's sway over Slytherin was deteriorating like paper in the rain with every second that he lost favour with Riddle, but that just made him desperate, clinging harder to the fragments and resulting to Riddle pushing him even further away in disgust and disinterest.
Of course, Lestrange was competent despite initial beliefs, so Riddle was liable to have sudden bursts of 'interest' towards the other, specifically when Potter wasn't around, but that's what they were - bursts, mockeries, a cruel reminder of what could be and wouldn't, another mind game.
Lestrange didn't seem to notice that part, or if he did, he directed his emotions regarding it straight at Potter in utter hatred. When Potter was around, Lestrange didn't tend to get so much as a glance from the Slytherin Heir…and Cygnus was pushing his luck to think he could initiate intimacy or favouritism now, when his compatriots stared so fixatedly at anything that wasn't their lord, probably for good reason. Sure, Riddle looked calm but…his grandfather seemed more than a little wary.
Riddle's eyes sliced upwards, onto Lestrange's face, but he didn't respond. Lestrange must have took that for a good sign, for he continued with more boldness.
"Just ignore Potter. He's a disrespectful waste of space. You shouldn't have to listen to him anyway…he's not worth your time."
Riddle's head tilted slightly to one side, expression unreadable.
"I suppose you believe you would be more worth my time, Cygnus?"
Lestrange almost trembled with excitement, and Draco felt an odd pang of jealousy. In current times, the more favour you had with the Slytherin Heir, the more power you had in Slytherin, and the more following, because influence with Riddle meant a possibility of Riddle taking a personal interest if you were mentioned by the one with influence if you followed them…and if that went anywhere, then your 'patron' for want of a better word, who had initially mentioned you to the Slytherin Heir would benefit from having your debt, and you could gain following and power of your own.
Lestrange was still closer to Riddle than he was, though he was probably the closest in terms of any present day Slytherin (barring Potter, and he didn't count) due to his Grandfather's position, and Potter's quasi-favour regarding him ever since the Remembrall incident. Riddle didn't much like him, and the glares he was liable to send was enough to make him shiver, but Riddle did keep an eye on him which only improved his standing because it suggested a level of importance.
"With all due respect, yes," Lestrange said, with a smug albeit nervous glint in his eyes.
Riddle smiled, a twist of the lips and nothing more as he set his book in his lap and surveyed the other with an increased attention. Lestrange seemed about to faint with glee.
"All due respect…" Riddle murmured, thoughtfully.
Draco flicked his gaze around the room; Abraxas was watching neutrally, but his knuckles were bleached with tight-fisted tension if one looked closely enough against the already fair Malfoy skin. Zevi Prince was still as stone, expression hidden with his concentration rather too pointedly on the potion's essay in his hands and Black had contempt visible in his gaze, and a trace of bloodlust in the quirk of his brow.
Draco could feel a horrible squirming, tightening sensation is his gut, and could only wonder how Lestrange appeared so obliviously unaffected as the brunette moved forward, reaching as if to place a comforting hand on the Slytherin Heir's shoulder.
His fingers curled convulsively in his lap against the urge to flinch.
The next second, Lestrange was spluttering, Riddle's hand on his throat, squeezing with a casual callousness.
"You overstep your boundaries, Cygnus," Riddle tisked, mockingly.
"I-I can't-" Lestrange's hands twitched against the urge to claw for air, his eyes bulging, his lips tingeing blue.
"Breathe?" Riddle finished, indifferently. "And yet you still don't shut up. My, at this rate oxygen starvation may actually be an improvement to your brain's capacities."
Riddle held on for another few seconds, a deceptive strength in his slender fingers, watching uncaringly, before he simply dropped the other. Lestrange crumpled to a heap by the Slytherin Heir's feet, gasping for air, eyes streaming. He was trembling all over, hunched.
"Go and find Parkinson, Cygnus. The poor girl looked like she wanted some company," Riddle said, dismissively.
Draco couldn't help but wonder if it had truly been the liberties that Lestrange had taken…as opposed to his words.
He had the feeling that scene would never played if Harry had been there though.
"Professor," Harry greeted, neutrally, surreptitiously looking around himself for some indication as to what these 'lessons' would be about. There was no duelling space cleared.
"Good evening, Harry - do sit down. Lemon drop?" Harry shook his head, not trusting himself to respond more scathingly. "I originally planned to follow things in a different order with you," Dumbledore began, though his benign smile faltered briefly. "But due to unexpected circumstances there's been a change of plan."
"What exactly do these…lessons entail…sir?" Harry asked, feeling marginally curious despite himself. He eyed the Pensieve warily. "That thing?"
"You are not fond of pensieves?" Dumbledore questioned, smiling slightly. "I find them to be rather useful objects myself."
Harry said nothing. His reaction could probably speak for itself. He was sick of memories, lost or found to be honest.
"Not to worry," Dumbledore continued cheerfully, misinterpreting his distaste. "You'll be entering with me this time, and even more unusually, with permission."
"Who's memory are we going into?" he asked, "and regarding what?"
Dumbledore merely waved for him to approach the bowl. He stared at the Headmaster for a few seconds, before dipping into the bowl and tumbling downwards through darkness, only to land seconds later on the firm ground of a bustling, old-fashioned London street.
Great, two Dumbledore's - and he knew the forms of both with hairs and beards of Auburn and silver on either side of him. And the most…awful suit of a flamboyantly cut plum velvet.
"Nice suit," Harry said dryly, but Dumbledore only chuckled, following after the memory.
They arrived shortly at a grim, square building surrounded by high railings, like a prison. An orphanage. Harry suddenly got a terrible, plunging feeling his stomach. Was this…?
"Good afternoon, I have an appointment with Mrs Cole, who, I believe, is the matron here?"
It was. Tom's orphanage. Damn it to hell.
He looked at the present day Dumbledore, furiously.
"No," he said flatly. "Get me out of this memory. This isn't right."
Dumbledore looked at him with some surprise.
"I thought you wanted to help the light?" the Headmaster questioned. Harry clenched his fists, ignoring the memory swirling around them.
"How is Tom's home life relevant in helping the light?" he snapped. "It isn't even yours to tell me. If you want to do something, teach me where how to cast Fiendfyre of buy me a vial of basilisk venom."
Dumbledore regarded him calmly.
"It is for the Greater good. Trust me."
"Trust you?" Harry scoffed, raising his brows. "I'm not that stupid."
There was a flicker of hurt and disappointment in blue eyes, but it was gone in seconds, and the scene morphed as Dumbledore junior moved away, blurry, before focussing again in an old office, presumably within the Orphanage himself.
This time, there was a skinny, harassed-looking women with a sharp face that on initial impressions seemed more anxious than unkind. Harry sucked in an angry breath.
"I want out of this memory - you can't make me watch this! I won't!"
Dumbledore senior merely watched the scene unfolding before them, leaving Harry little choice but to do the same and silently vow to never enter Dumbledore's pensieve again.
"-I was wondering whether you could tell me anything of Tom Riddle's history? I think he was born here in the orphanage?" young Dumbledore questioned. Harry grit his teeth.
"That's right," Mrs Cole agreed, helping herself to more of something that looked like gin, though her eyes had hardened. "I remember it clear as anything, because I'd just started here myself. New Years's Eve and bitter cold, snowing, you know. Nasty night. And this girl, not much older than I was myself at the time, came staggering up the front steps. Well, she wasn't the first," Cole's nose wrinkled. "We took her in and she had the baby within the hour. And she was dead in another hour."
Jesus. Mrs Cole nodded as if this was some impressive gossip, not a small boy's mother, taking another helping of gin.
"Did she say anything before she died?" Dumbledore asked. "Anything about the boy's father, for instance?"
"Now, as it happen, she did," Mrs Cole said. Harry looked at the older Dumbledore again, his eyes flashing.
"What is the point of this?" he questioned, coldly. "I already knew Tom was a half blood if you're hoping I will go off on some spurt of rage against his hypocrisy….cause, you know, been there, done that."
Dumbledore signalled for him to listen, but his patience seemed less now. Harry huffed, before his ears caught words.
"-He scares the other children."
"You mean he's a bully?"
"I think he must be," Cole frowned, "but it's very hard to catch him at it. There have been incidents…nasty things."
Well, that explained the mystery. He turned to Dumbledore again.
"You're trying to show me what an evil little boy, he was? Clearly unredeemable? Is that it?" Harry demanded, furiously. "By my reckoning, those kids probably deserved it. You have no idea what it's like - you probably had a fantastic childhood! Children are cruel."
"-But even so, it didn't hang itself from the rafters, did it?"
"Sadistic torture of animals," the elder Dumbledore said to him, quietly. "In this case, a rabbit, clear early signs of a psychopath."
"I already knew he was a Psychopath," Harry said stubbornly, even if the thing about the rabbit did turn his insides.
Had this Billy Stubbs been one of the children to bully Tom in turn?
"Try again," he ordered coldly.
"-Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never quite right afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was that they'd gone into a cave with Tom Riddle. He swore they'd just gone exploring, but something happened in there…"
And the memory didn't get any better.
When they resurfaced, Harry was fuming, and didn't wait for Dumbledore to say anything before he stormed out the door.
Screw those lessons - if they involved an anti-Tom campaign, he didn't want them.
Sure, Tom was a bloody creepy child, but to be honest he wasn't any less psychopathic as a teenager. God, he noticed the Cole women completely neglected to mention anything about the other children hurting Tom, and Dumbledore - oh, sure, great way to introduce a kid to magic, terrify them with your power because that would really make sure they didn't feel like they were stepping into a battlefield.
"Mr Potter-" Dumbledore called, after him, a hint of impatience in his voice. He ignored it.
This felt wrong. He wanted to know about Tom, and Tom's past, but he didn't want to hear it from anyone who wasn't Tom! No one else had the same true claim to whether or not he deserved to know, or should know.
Hell, if Tom knew he was just taking joy rides through his past with Dumbledore, any trust they'd built up between them would be brutally shot to pieces. He didn't want that. Maybe if he was Harry Potter, it would be okay…but…Tom was his friend. He couldn't betray his trust like that with Dumbledore, without a good reason.
Okay, he was trying to investigate through Parkinson, but that was different! That was them! And this was…this was other people.
No. It was a mistake.
Merlin, his thoughts were a mess.
He entered the common room, exhausted mentally and physically, pausing at the sight of the figure by the fire.
Who else but Tom? The Slytherin Heir was most likely waiting up for him. He paused on the threshold, before sighing and walking over, dropping onto the opposite end of the couch. He didn't know why - it wasn't like almost every other chair wasn't free at this time on a school night, it was more habit than anything else.
"Have fun with your light side stuff?" Tom asked, evenly.
"Not particularly," Harry said flatly, still feeling slightly annoyed with the way that Tom had treated Parkinson with such unnecessary cruelty. Tom smirked, briefly, glancing sideways at him with a wink.
"Dark side's much more fun. You'd enjoy it. Promise."
"I'll take your word for it," Harry said, smiling despite himself. He stared thoughtfully at Tom, causing the other to raise a brow at him. "You seem oddly calm considering I yelled at you in front of your followers," he said, carefully.
"I have impeccable self control," Tom replied, tone a little darker now, "and would probably regret it in the morning if I starting decapitating your body parts."
"I'm wondering if I should be offended by the 'probably' in that statement," Harry returned dryly.
Tom smirked at him, less friendly this time and more like a shark. There was a pause.
"So, what did the old man want?"
Harry opened his mouth to respond, before tilting his head and frowning.
"What counts as baiting?" he questioned, in a mixture between flippancy and caution.
"Smart boy," Tom remarked, eyes glittering with more than a little menace and something else. Amusement? Fondness? Merlin knew. "Though one would think that would have you moving away."
"You've threatened me plenty of times before," Harry shrugged uncomfortably. "And dislocated my fingers, among other things"
"Even more reason that most people would have expected you to run by now."
Harry swallowed, but didn't shift his gaze.
"That a hint?" he asked. "Cause I'm too tired to second guess you right now."
To his surprise, Tom laughed.
"No, it's not a hint….just trying to figure you out is all," Tom murmured.
Harry's mind flashed back to Voldemort.
"What, so you can leave and not have to deal with this?" he questioned, before his mind caught up with him. Tom looked at him sharply. Er. Crap. "That came out wrong…" he tried, before standing up abruptly. "I'm just going to go to bed."
"-Harry-"
"Goodnight, Tom."
No…he didn't run.
He'd talk to Pansy tomorrow.
He sat down on his bed, wearily, half convinced Tom was going to come charging in after him and drag him out into the common room for a little chat. Everything was just so confusing.
Without thinking about it, he picked up the locket horcrux in his hand, finding comfort in turning the smooth gold in his hands.
It had a calming effect. Had Tom really sorted out the visions? For real, this time? Of a month, anyway?
He closed his eyes, sleepy, the chain sliding past his fingers and pooling into his hand.
Tomorrow...tomorrow he'd go looking for answers.
A/N: Whew. That's the longest chapter I've ever wrote for Fanfiction. I hope you guys liked it. And guess who's making another appearance soon? =P
Thanks for the reviews, and for still staying with this story! Much appreciated (and I can't say that enough!)