This chapter contains references to attempted suicide.
If there was one person of all the Slytherins Tom had gone to school with that he would actually label as his friend, it would be Alexander Nott. Sensible, quiet, quick-witted with a sharp sense of humor, it was truly no wonder the two of them got along so well.
In his first year, it had been Alexander who stubbornly sat across from Tom in the library and it had been Alexander who recommended books on curses and culture and anything else Tom needed to know about the Wizarding World. Of all the ones he had kept in touch with post-graduation, Alexander was the only one who didn't seem to look at Tom and see what could have been. His eyes still held the same regard that they had in school, and Tom was so bloody thankful for it.
"I'd have invited you over for Yule, but," Alexander motioned to his throat as the words croaked out, "what a time of year to fall ill."
He looked horrible too, skin splotchy with the remains of the sores from the magic illness that seemed to resemble measles. Alexander kept scratching his arms insistently when he thought Tom wasn't looking.
"Indeed."
Tom flipped the page in the paper, and took another bite of toast.
The result being that he was midway through swallowing the toast when he turned to the next page and found a half-page picture of Harry in the political section. Dressed in those atrocious purple Wizangamot robes, he was clearly giving an impassioned speech that Tom longed to hear.
Alexander watched him silently. His eyes burned so fiercely, that if Tom hadn't been a better Occlumens, he would have sworn Alexander was trying to use Legilimency on him.
LORD PEVERELL INTRODUCES CONTROVERSIAL MUGGLEBORN BILL TO WIZENGAMOTS
Tom frown. Lord Peverell? Harry had to be younger than him, so how had he become a lord? Scanning down the page, his brow furrowed. The bill appeared to be for Muggleborn rights, and yet, the Progressives had met it with a fair amount of outrage, from the article. Harry also hadn't seemed like one to care about Mudbloods. People like that did not shop in places like Borgin and Burkes.
And yet, the Traditionalists didn't seem any happier with this bill, which seemed like it was all about preserving tradition.
"What do you know about this Lord Peverell?"
Alexander's lips twitched.
"Hadrian Peverell…" He chuckled. "He came out of nowhere a few months ago. Didn't attend Hogwarts. Claimed a seat that hasn't been claimed in three hundred years." He smiled conspiratorially. "I've never seen Dumbledore look quite as red as when he heard the man's name."
"And his politics?"
Alexander shook his head. "No one can get the measure of them. On the surface, he's pro-Muggleborn rights, but that bill talks about bringing Muggleborn and Muggle-raised children into the Wizarding World long before Hogwarts and teaching them to assimilate." He motioned vaguely. "He had all these statistics how every seven out of ten Muggleborns returned back to the Muggle world after Hogwarts."
Tom frowned. He could understand that. After all, upon graduation, had he not contemplated applying to university? One of his greatest disappointments had been discovering that the Wizarding world operated on apprenticeships and internships, both which were more heavily based on nepotism than ability. Only his lack of funds and his fierce desire to change the Wizarding world kept him from stepping too far outside the world he had been a part of since he was eleven.
"The Traditionalists hate any mention of adding new blood, and the Progressives hate the idea of having the Muggleborns assimilate, and yet the wording of the bill is such that neither party can truly object. And then there's the fact of his name."
Tom felt his brow furrow. "What of it?"
Alexander paused. "I forget you weren't raised in the Wizarding world, sometimes." He let out a breath. "The Peverell name is rather, well, infamous. For one, it's the family name of the wizards in The Tale of Three Brothers."
What did some Wizarding fairytale have to do with anything?
"For another, they're known in darker circles as being" —his voice dropped and he leaned in, all but whispering the word— "necromancers."
He could understand why Alexander might not want to say that word, even in the privacy of his own home. Necromancers had been banned in England in the mid-1700s, persecuted long before that, and were downright taboo since Grindelwald's necromantic experiments during the war. Tom had thought about dabbling in it, but found even less information on it than he had horocruxes. It did explain Harry's book selection at Borgin and Burkes, even though Tom had read all of the books himself and knew none of them had anything truly useful.
"You're thinking of collecting him," Alexander observed, leaning back.
Tom's lips twitched, despite himself. "Perhaps."
"He's definitely quite interesting." Alexander cocked his head. "I can arrange a meeting with him, if you're able to get time off to come to the next Wizengamot's session."
Tom nodded.
Twenty-four years old and Alexander already had taken his seat in the Wizengamot. His father had passed away two years ago tragically in a potions accident. Tom knew the truth though, had been Alexander's roommate for seven years. He knew the signs to look for… had lived through enough of them. The way Alexander used to flinch when he would come back from the summer, the hollowness to his eyes… and then, of course, there was Lady Nott's tragic accident during sixth year.
Tom had been the one to find Alexander in the Astronomy Tower after he had returned from her funeral. If the cuts he made had been any deeper, Tom wasn't sure that his healing spells would have worked. They had kept it silent though and he had done everything in his power to make sure Alexander was strong enough to attend classes the next Monday. Few would understand and no one at Hogwarts cared about children in abusive homes, especially not Slytherins in abusive homes.
Truthfully, Tom was always amazed that Alexander made it to twenty-two before killing his father.
"Have you met him, beyond the Wizengamot gossip?"
Alexander shook his head. "He didn't attend the Halloween parties, which isn't surprising considering Samhain and his advocacy of the old holidays. And I hoped to meet him at the Malfoy's Yule Ball, but well." He gestured to his throat.
Tom nodded.
He wished he had gotten Harry's floo address so he could show up without going through all this. But since New Year's, there hadn't been a hint of him in the shop, and while Tom thought he might have been able to apparate to Harry's home, he didn't want to risk splinching himself on wards. He hoped that Harry would come to him, but since he hadn't, this was necessary.
"The Muggleborn and Muggle-Raised Advocacy Bill is an affront to everything this body stands for," Elphias Doge, who in Tom's opinion was entirely too old, shouted from across the room. A Progressive, and yet…
"I disagree," Lord Longbottom spoke clearly, his voice echoing with the use of Sonorus. "We should want to introduce the children to magic when they're young. Most Purebloods beginning Hogwarts do so at an advantage of knowing about magic for years, where most Muggleborms learn mere months before starting school."
Voices rose, fighting over each other as they all tried to argue their point. It was a wonder the Wizengamot ever got anything done at this rate. And rather than take control of the situation, Dumbledore was content to watch it happen. As Chief Warlock, he could have silenced them instantly. Ignatius Tuft, the Minister of Magic, was pretty much useless and Tom was willing to bet that the man wouldn't last the year in office.
Among them, fighting to be heard, was the voice of the Mudblood Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, Nobby Leach. "While I wouldn't have liked to have been taken from my family, I wouldn't have minded attending a magical primary school. I often felt behind most of my peers."
"Noble lords and ladies of the Wizengamot, I did not propose such a thing lightly," Harry spoke and the room quieted instantly. He had more presence than at least half of the aging lords and ladies in the room, most to weak to do anything than squabble and never change a thing. "Our culture, Wizarding culture, is being eradicated. But it's not just a matter of culture. It's a matter of safety."
Whispers rose in a violent storm and Harry lifted his hand and the room grew silent once more.
"Safety from the Muggle world, from being exposed, for one. We all saw what Grindelwald planned to do." That drew another storm. "But how many Muggleborn and Muggle-raised students left Hogwarts and never returned during the war, because they died during the Blitz?"
There were a fair few. Tom knew most of their names. Imogen Andrews, Hufflepuff. Donald Harris, Gryffindor. Teddy Brooks, Gryffindor. Doris Shenton, Ravenclaw. He used to recite the names every night before he fell asleep in the orphanage, a reminder to himself that he could be among them.
"And how many with Muggle guardians have been scorned for their magic? Have had their guardians attempt to beat the magic from them?"
In the gallery, Tom stiffened. He gripped the railing and willed himself not to show anything.
And then, Harry turned to Dumbledore. "Would your sister not still be with us if she had somewhere she could have learned to control her magic before Hogwarts? If she hadn't been in such close proximity to Muggles, would she have still been an Obscurial?"
Dumbledore's face did interesting things in that moment, quickly becoming a memory that Tom would savor for the rest of his life, and a murmur rose again. Dumbledore had a sister? And it sounded like he wasn't alone in that surprise. In all his research to find something, anything, on Dumbledore, how had Tom never come across that? Surely there must be someone that remembered it, and yet…
Dumbledore glared at Harry, but Harry held his ground.
"I'm sure we can all agree that no magical child, regardless of blood, deserves to be treated that way."
Oh, Harry was magnificent. Neither side could disagree with that without looking truly awful. Many of the Traditionalists actually did agree with Grindelwald, hell, Tom agreed with many of Grindelwald's aims. Blood mattered, but the fact that they were magical meant something. It was, after all, the reason why Tom had been accepted by his peers in Slytherin House despite being known as a Mudblood.
And Salazar Slytherin, his glorious ancestor, had always preached that all magical children should be taught, no matter what the history books tried to say of him. Tom had found Slytherin's personal study in the Chamber. After Myrtle's death, he had risked opening it once more to pack all the books in a magically expanded trunk to read at a later time. Besides his horcruxes, it was the most valuable thing he owned.
And the Progressives would never say "Yes, we should let them be treated that way." It went against everything they preached on.
Chaos descended on the sitting once more, and Tom watched with a smile as the Minister tried and failed to reign it back in. Tom looked to Alexander, who met his gaze with a smirk. He couldn't have brought him on a better day if he had tried. Had all the sittings been like this since Harry joined the Wizengamot? How he hoped so, because this was just delightful.
After the House adjourned, Tom left the viewing area and made his way to where the Wizengamot members had congregated in the hall. Near the center of the mass, to no one's surprise, was Harry.
"Hello, darling," Tom whispered softly near Harry's ear, low enough that he wouldn't be overheard. He delighted in how a shiver ran down Harry's body. A true shame that the robes hid so much. He would have loved to see how Harry's body reacted with fewer clothes.
Harry finished his sentence, as if he hadn't been interrupted, and turned slowly. A smile spread across his face.
"I was waiting for you to get in touch."
Tom blinked. It was strange to see another person shift as quickly. He knew he could do it, but he never met anyone else who wore both so convincingly that Tom found himself at a loss of which was the mask and which was the real Harry.
"I know it was all kind of, well, a lot, so I figured I'd let you set the pace?"
Where was all the eloquence that had graced him during the sitting? If Tom hadn't seen it for himself, he would have never believed that this was the same man who had cut through Dumbledore so thoroughly.
"How would I have done that? You never gave me your floo address."
Harry's cheeks flushed. "Oh. Oops." A smirk spread across his face. "Guess we'll have to fix that."
Alexander made his way smoothly through the crowd. "Ah, Riddle, there you are." He gave a nod to Harry. "Lord Peverell, today was truly inspired."
Harry bowed his head, and the shift back into Pureblood lord was instantaneous. "I hope that means I can count on your vote."
His friend smiled blandly, but most knew better than to commit to such an answer. "I did have one concern. You mentioned abuse of Muggleborn and Muggle-raised children, who are usually Half-Bloods. But what about abuse in Pureblood families?"
It was a test, Tom knew. Most denied that Pureblood families would ever abuse their children. He had heard more than one comment in the Slytherin common room. It had been what led Alexander to his actions that night, knowing he had so few options that they were near non-existent.
"I did say 'regardless of blood'." Harry's expression was serious, dark even. "Muggleborn children can always leave their homes, though their situation is rarely improved from that. For most Pureblood children leaving means giving up everything, but unless they have somewhere safe to go, there's nothing that will stop their parents from bringing them home."
"Most would disagree with you."
Harry nodded. "They would. But they'd be wrong."
His answer spoke of experience, and Alexander nodded slowly. He smiled, but it was a bit sharp, not unlike it had remained for the rest of sixth year, and he motioned to Tom.
"I see you've met my friend, Tom Riddle."
"I have." It was a wonder he kept the blush from his cheeks this time.
Alexander looked to Tom in askance, but otherwise stayed silent. He knew better than to ever question him in front of others and was more than happy to let Tom lead. But there would be questions later.
"Excuse me, Lord Peverell, a moment of your time," one of the reporters asked and Harry was gone again.
"I can see why you were interested in him," Alexander said dryly. "There's something about him."
"The Wizarding World is stagnant. We need change."
With that, he turned and walked back to the lift to floo home. Alexander was one of the few people who had been to his flat, and since he had the rest of the day off, he intended to make use of it.
"Why do you live here?" Alexander asked as he stepped through.
Tom glanced away, suddenly embarrassed. As a student, he tried to hide how poor he really was. But there was no hiding it anymore.
"Tom." Alexander's voice was soft and that, more than anything drew his gaze back to him. "Come live at the manor. You and Nagini. There's plenty of space, and it would be nice not to have the house so empty."
"I can't just live with you." His pride refused.
"I want you to." Alexander's eyes narrowed. "I bet Nagini would say yes."
She would. In a heartbeat. She deserved to live somewhere nice before she went back to hunting down her next lead. He hoped she could find a cure, but her time was running out and he hated the idea that she might be across the world when that happened.
"I'm not a charity case for you."
"Did I say you were?" His tone was surprisingly sharp and, forgetting himself for a moment, Tom flinched. He never heard Alexander direct such a tone at him.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair.
"You're my friend, Tom. You saved my life. I would be dead if it wasn't for you." Tom flinched again at the reminder, but Alexander continued. "Is it so much to ask that you let me repay the debt I owe you by you moving out of this place? I'm sure Burke would let you floo in if you're that desperate to return." His voice grew soft again. "Please, Tom. Say yes."
He let out a breath. It would be easier to research obscure magics if he could access Alexander's library at any time. And having a bathroom that he didn't have to share with three other flats would free up quite a bit of time in the mornings. Perhaps it was for the best.
"Okay. Yes."
Alexander smiled.