Literally only thought of the first two sentences when I began writing my new fic. Somehow, it spawned into this thing.
Mucho thankumundo to Bex (DobbyRocksSocks) for being the best beta ever and going through the whole thing in fifteen minutes, even though I murdered her fictional son.
This fic is for the December Assignment for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.
Assignment 8: Global Warming
Task #2: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood: Write about someone who chooses to ignore the warning signs about something or someone.
Disclaimer: I refuse to put one. Y'all know who Harry Potter belongs to. Google it if you don't. (It's not me, by the way. Just so we're clear. Please don't do that to yourselves.)
Word count: 5558 words.
Warnings: toxic relationship, gaslighting, manipulation, dark Tom-Riddle-type stuff, murder. Probably a couple of things I forgot to tag. This fic is where happy endings go to die.
Summary: Harry had had twenty one years to hone his instincts. They'd never led him astray. Until he met Tom.
They warned him.
He ignored them all.
Harry always believed too deeply in his own instincts. They got him through seventeen years with the Dursleys, and three years living in the seediest part of London. They got him through a decade of school while marked as an outcast, and they got him a job at a bakery even with no prior experience in a work kitchen. They got him two wonderful friends in Ron and Hermione, and a chaotic family of redheads that took him in as one of their own.
Harry had had twenty one years to hone his instincts. They'd never led him astray.
Until he met Tom.
It was a fine summer day when he met Tom. Thursdays were his one day off from the bakery, and he liked spending his Thursdays at a nice park near the Weasley house, taking in the sunshine he sorely lacked from long daylight hours huddled over cramped counters in the harshly lit bakery kitchen. He breathed in the fresh air and watched the ducks glide across the water. His bench was luxuriously empty, leaving him enough space to stretch out.
And suddenly, his bench was no longer empty.
"Ducks agitate me," a male voice commented out of the blue, taking a seat beside Harry without his permission. "I rather prefer swans."
Harry turned, and found that the man was beautiful. Dark lashes fanning over delicate cheekbones, black hair that curled ever so gracefully across his forehead, skin so pale it made him look like a vampire. And standing out amongst his ethereal features were knife-sharp eyes the colour of mahogany, a brown so deep they looked red in the direct sunlight. Harry was mesmerised by them.
Later, when Harry mused over this meeting with regret, he surmised that it was those eyes that ruined his instincts. It only stood to reason that what brought about Harry's downfall was the one thing that made Tom otherworldly.
"Well, if the ducks are such a bother, why don't you move your arse somewhere where they won't offend your senses?" Harry retorted, because beautiful or not, he was of the opinion that abject stupidity should never go unpunished.
The beautiful man smirked. A smirk had never looked more natural on anyone's lips. "Because then my senses would be deprived of you, and you seem to be a lot more entertaining than any agitation the ducks may cause me."
Harry stared. "If that's a pick up line, it's the worst one I've ever heard. And I mean that genuinely."
The man didn't seem the least bit insulted by this remark. "I do not use pick up lines. They're demeaning to the speaker. Have you heard the one Americans invented about Tennessee? Appalling."
Harry's stare deepened. "Okay, either you're batshit crazy or a serial killer. Whatever it is, I'm not having it. This is my bench. I'd rather you leave."
Instead of flinching at his accusation, the man laughed. A low, deeply amused laugh. Harry should have known right there to run the hell away.
"I knew you would be amusing. I have a corporate event next weekend that requires a date. Would you like to accompany me?"
Harry was quite sure that at this point his eyes were bulging out of his head. "I don't even know you."
"I can remedy that," the man promptly said. "My name is Tom Riddle, and I own a four-star hotel in Knightsbridge." He smirked again. "And now you know me."
"Okay," Harry said faintly as he tried to process this logic. He conveniently ignored the blaring question that asked what a wealthy hotel-owning bloke was doing talking to him in a park that was as far from Knightsbridge as it could get. "But you don't know anything about me."
"Well, I know you like to watch the ducks," Tom Riddle pointed out, looking quite self-satisfied at this observation. "That tells me a lot about you."
Harry was sure he had never met anybody like this man. He was just as sure that he never would after this, either.
For some reason, the thought disappointed him. Tom seemed to be a unique kind of perplexing, the sort of enigma that instinctively intrigued him.
Harry always did like a challenge. A moment in Tom's presence was enough to tell him that Tom would be a handful and then some.
"Yes," he found himself saying, surprising even himself. "You've got a date."
Fast forward three weeks, and Harry was seeing Tom every day and texting him goodnights. Tom took the lead in every step of their relationship in his abrupt, direct way—from his "I would like to kiss you now" on their first date, to the first text in what would be an endless string of funny news articles shared back and forth, to the first time Tom saw his rathole flat and decided to spend the night, which lead to their first time. Harry went along with each of Tom's out-of-the-blue propositions feeling bewildered and entertained in equal measure.
It was bliss.
Harry introduced Tom to his friends over drinks one Friday night. Their reception of him was decidedly disheartening.
"Tom seems a bit… weird, doesn't he?" Hermione pulled him aside to the bar and asked, biting her lip in hesitance. "He's so forward with you. I'm not sure about him."
"That's just Tom being Tom," Harry reassured with a laugh. He had no doubts Hermione was referring to the incident earlier when Tom ordered Harry a chocolate martini because of his overwhelming sweet tooth, and because 'aphrodisiacs might only have a placebo effect, but it's still a nice benefit.' He should have warned Tom to dial down his Tom-ness before they walked into the bar, but he didn't think the other man could, even if he tried. And Tom was never one for trying to do something he wasn't inclined to do.
"I don't know, Harry. I just don't think he's right for you." She tucked a lock of bushy brown hair behind her ear. Her nervous tic. "I just… don't get a good vibe off him. He seems off, somehow. Ron thinks so too; he didn't exactly say anything, but I can read him just fine. I know you like Tom, but are you sure you can… trust him?"
"Trust him?" Harry laughed incredulously. He could hardly believe her. "What's he going to do, pull me into a dark alley to stab me and take me for all I'm worth? All I've got is about a hundred and thirty quid, and a Kenwood stand mixer. He's not going to have much luck with me."
She glanced away and nibbled on her lip some more before she met his gaze again. Her face was clearly apologetic. "I'm sorry, Harry. I know you wanted us to like him. I still don't think he's very good for you, but if you still want to keep seeing him, I won't stop you."
Bloody right you won't, Harry almost snapped. Who gave you the right to dictate who I'm with? But he held back the retort. Hermione was well-intentioned—she was always well-intentioned—and Harry made it a point not to let his sharp tongue ever hurt her.
"Just give him a chance," is what he chose to say instead. To plead, really. "Tom's a bit of an acquired taste, but he's a good guy. My gut tells me he's going to stick around for a while."
She took a deep breath and finally nodded. "Okay. I'll give him a chance."
It sounded dubious. Harry ignored it.
"Thank you," he said with a relieved smile, and together, they walked back to their table.
But Hermione's words were on his mind, and so when they neared the private corner their little group were seated in, he carefully observed the way Ron interacted with his boyfriend. Ron's face didn't show signs of disgust—a good indicator, since his best mate didn't make any efforts to hide his distaste for people he didn't like.
But this positive thought was shoved aside when Harry catalogued what was on Ron's face. Slight confusion, and more than a little hesitance. Combined with how stiffly he held himself and his tight grip on his nearing empty whisky, Ron looked distinctly uncomfortable.
That outcome was even worse.
Ron and Hermione's reactions should have given him pause right then. His friends had never hated the people he dated before. Every boyfriend or girlfriend Harry had introduced to them had been welcomed happily into the fold. Why, then, would they single Tom out?
Harry trusted his friends implicitly. But he trusted his instincts more. Once an orphan, always an orphan.
He chose to put their doubt out of his mind and pretend the moment never happened.
Tom had the kind of wealth that oozed from his pores. His accent was classy, his diction always perfect. Tom had a big stride, and he speed-walked everywhere he went, because his time literally was money. He wore Burberry coats and three-piece suits from Savile Row, and most of his 'casual' clothes consisted of posh jewel-toned jumpers and fitted trousers. The t-shirts and joggers he wore to sleep were bought from Harrods, and they were of the softest cotton Harry had ever felt.
The reason Harry knew all of this was because he had asked. He needed to know where all the clothes he was secretly stealing for himself were coming from, after all.
Tom never flaunted his wealth in Harry's face. But occasionally, when Harry dwelled on it, the thought made him intensely uncomfortable. Harry had never come from money. He never had a taste of the rich life, not even for a moment, and to him, it was alien. Until he met Tom, he had never even stopped to think about how the other half lived.
Now that he had gotten to take a peek, he knew for certain that he would never belong among them. The clothes were nice once in a while, but that kind of life just wasn't for him.
Sometimes, he wondered whether he was making a mistake to keep seeing Tom. Tom fit naturally within his gilded environment. He seemed like he was born into it. Harry, on the other hand, with his ratty clothes and scrappy attitude, couldn't have been more out of place if he tried. The first time Harry stepped into Tom's penthouse flat, he felt like an ant staring into the abyss of a canyon.
Tom was class and luxury and perfection, while Harry was the suspicious brown stain smudged under Tom's expensive Italian shoes.
But Tom never seemed to see Harry the way he saw himself. As out of place as Harry felt in Tom's world, Tom looked completely at home in his. Tom would lounge around in Harry's tiny flat like it was his own home; he would sleep soundly in Harry's hard-as-rocks bed as if it was fluffed with down feathers. Once, he was forced to wear one of Harry's stretched old school jerseys when his own clothes were soaked from the rain, and while his taller stature made the length of the shirt look a little laughable, Harry's clothes looked as natural on him as one of his fancy all-black suits.
Harry thought of him as a chameleon, always adapting to blend perfectly within the environment he was thrust into. No one who watched Tom would ever know that he didn't belong there.
He wondered where Tom had picked up the skill. It was obvious to him that it was something Tom had learned to perfect, likely through years of practice. Tom adapted naturally, and he certainly did it without thinking, but Harry could see how careful he was with every move he made. Always in control of himself. Tom never so much as twitched without it being planned.
But his curiosity was an afterthought in the face of his relief. Tom had adapted for him, after all. Tom used his skills to make Harry feel comfortable and wanted. How could that be a bad thing?
It was a particularly cold night when Tom told Harry about his past. They were lying facing each other in Tom's bed, toasty under his heavy blankets, while Tom spoke about his childhood in hushed whispers.
Tom had literally built all his wealth from the ground up. Harry was surprised to learn that Tom had been an orphan at a young age, just like him. While Harry was thrown in with the Dursleys and left to rot in Surrey, Tom had been bounced around from orphanage to orphanage all across London.
Seeing Tom in this freshly-educated light fit together a lot of the loose puzzle pieces that lingered in Harry's mind. Tom's razor-edged personality. His perplexing bluntness. His closely guarded trust. His ability to adapt.
We're right together, Harry thought to himself as he drifted off later that night, lulled to sleep by Tom's even breathing. Just two orphans trying to make their way in the world. One had found success, and the other was still scraping by. But at their core, they were the same. They were reflections of each other.
It was no wonder Tom understood him as well as he did. The night Harry learned of the person he used to be was the last night Harry ever doubted him.
That night, Harry chose to put the last of his trust in Tom and let himself take the plunge towards love.
He never looked back.
Molly Weasley pulled him into a rib-crushing hug when he brought Tom around to the Weasley place on Christmas Day.
"Harry, dear, you look so thin!" she exclaimed, fussing over him as usual. Harry's chest warmed at the affection, and he was startled to realise how little he had seen of the Weasleys lately. "Oh, dear, it's so good to see you. You don't come by for lunch on Sundays anymore. Is this your special young man? My, you're handsome. Come here, dear, give me a hug. I'm Molly."
Harry winced to himself at the offhand accusation, even as Mrs Weasley directed her attention towards fussing over Tom. Between the long hours he pulled at the bakery and Tom's heavily booked time spent managing his hotel, the moments they scavenged to see each other were precious and rare. For the past few months, Harry had spent the majority of his free hours over the weekends with Tom in one of their flats or the other, lost in a bubble of their own.
It gave him little time to see his friends, and less still to spend with his makeshift family. Harry resolved to do better. He wouldn't be one of those people that ditched his friends and loved ones the second he met someone special.
Arthur slapped his back fondly, and soon, six enthusiastic redheaded siblings crowded around Harry. Ron and Hermione hung back, watching them all fondly. When Harry met Hermione's eyes, however, her gaze back was hesitant. Ron, on the other hand, gave him a cheery wave and simply ignored Tom.
Despite Harry's pleas for them and Tom to get along, Ron and Hermione never quite got used to his boyfriend. Ron remained uncomfortable, and Hermione would analyse Tom with constant suspicion. After a few months of this behaviour, Harry soon got thoroughly fed up of the sticky tension that drummed up between the four of them, and slipped slowly into the habit of avoiding his friends instead.
That's another thing he needed to rectify. He hadn't seen Ron and Hermione in weeks.
Christmas lunch at the Weasley home was as loud and chaotic as it always was. Tom stiffly observed them all interact from his seat beside Harry. He had dialled his charm up to eleven for the sake of Harry's family, but the cracks in his facade were showing. He always waited a beat too long to speak when the Weasleys brought him into their conversations, and his responses were excessively polite.
Harry analysed these anomalies in Tom's behaviour with a quiet, absent frown. Tom's discomfort was subtle, but he knew his boyfriend well enough to read him by now. Harry wasn't used to seeing Tom act anything less than impeccable around another human being. He wondered if the older man was nervous.
Later, when lunch was done and the rest of the Weasleys had piled into the living room, clutching mugs of hot cider and their full stomachs, Harry quietly joined Molly in the kitchen and stood by her side in front of the sink, helping her wash the mountain of empty dishes while she chattered amiably in his ear about Arthur's job and her knitting group. It wasn't long before she switched topics to Tom.
"Your young Mr Riddle is a charming man," she teased. "I can see why you're so taken with him. He's a rather good catch."
Harry flushed at her praise. "He's ten years older than me, Mrs Weasley," he pointed out with a laugh to deflect her gaze from his tell-tale reddened cheeks. "I'd hardly call him a young man."
"You hush, now. He's still a young man to me. Anyone who dates one of my babies will always be a young thing in my eyes."
Harry's cheeks burn hotter at that. Molly had taken to openly referring to him as one of her children ever since she realised how deeply it affected him, and it never failed to pour warmth into his chest.
"Quite odd, though, isn't he?" she continued lightly, scrubbing another dish. "Maybe he just needs time to get comfortable among us. We're a rather rowdy bunch, I know, what with the twins and their constant chaos, Ginny's temper, Arthur's questions, and Bill and Ron's bickering… But I don't know, Tom seems so closed off. He treats you well, doesn't he, Harry dear?"
Harry frowned at this assessment. It wasn't like it wasn't true—Harry had noticed Tom's stiffness himself. But there was something about Mrs Weasley's casual tone that seemed so… forced. As if she was purposely making herself sound as unthreatening as she could so that Harry wouldn't be spooked.
So Tom may have been a little quiet around the family. There was no reason to jump from that to questioning Tom's treatment of him.
"Tom is amazing to me," Harry said firmly, shutting down any further ill talk of his boyfriend before Molly could catch a second wind. He was getting quite tired of being forced to defend Tom to the people he cared about. "I'm happy. That's all that matters, right?"
"Yes, of course, dear," Molly agreed, sounding doubtful. "As long as he makes you happy."
New Year's Eve came and went, and Harry and Tom rang in the new year at the stroke of midnight. Tom's lips were soft with the smallest of smiles as he kissed Harry. Harry looked up into the man's mahogany eyes and thought about how good it felt to have been the person Tom trusted the most in the world.
It was only months later that Harry learned that his birthday had come and passed on that final day of the year, and that Tom had been perfectly content to keep it to himself.
When Tom got angry, his gaze would turn cold as ice, and every touch felt like a bruise.
Harry saw this side of Tom on a balmy March morning, when they had their first major fight. It began over something so trivial that Harry couldn't even remember what it was about. He had a feeling that cereal was involved.
But somehow, a petty squabble over breakfast choices turned into a bigger squabble about how rarely they got to spend their mornings together, which grew into a loud row about Harry's less-than-regular shift timings at the bakery. Tom wanted him to take fewer early morning shifts so that he could stop departing from Tom's flat at unreasonable hours. Harry argued that the opening shifts paid more, and that contrary to popular opinion, he liked pounding dough and baking in the 4 AM quiet of the city.
Somehow, it devolved into a dramatic argument about how busy they'd both been in the past month. Harry settled into the rhythm of their fight, not thinking too much of it. When two hotheads decided to begin a relationship, the occasional yelling was only expected.
Harry was used to seeing Tom in a strop. Tom was a bossy bloke, and he would snap and huff when he didn't get his way, turning simple things into a loud argument so that he had an excuse to be riled up. He would draw close to Harry with his jaw jutted and shoulders tense, and his eyes would blaze like wood embers. In all honesty, Harry loved it.
But the fire in those eyes were extinguished the second Harry next opened his mouth, and for the first time, he got to see what Tom was like when he was truly angry.
"You don't own me!" Harry had exclaimed in a fit of anger at a particularly vicious jab from him. "Bloody hell, Tom, I have a right to my own time. I can't cut off my shifts, not even for you. I need the money, and the bakery pays something."
And Tom… Tom's face froze all over.
Abruptly, his shoulders loosened. His body shifted into a predator's stance, unconsciously done yet threatening all the same. His heated expression fell into a blankness so devoid of human emotion that it chilled Harry to his bones. And his eyes—his cold eyes were the most terrifying of all.
"Do you think you are not my possession, Harry?" Tom asked in a mild voice. It almost sounded pleasant. It made Harry shiver. "Because you belong to me. I do own you. My prized possession."
He stepped closer, closer still, till Harry's breath just stopped. Harry was abruptly reminded of just how tall the older man was. Tall enough to loom over him.
Tom clasped his hands behind his back and bent to put his mouth level with Harry's ear. Harry felt every light exhale against his skin.
"Don't you ever imply that you are not in my control, Harry," he hissed, still in that pleasant tone. "I don't like having to teach people lessons." He tilted his head, then, and brushed a feather light kiss against Harry's cheek.
Tom's lips burned.
Harry's body trembled in an effort to stay still. His brain stayed unhelpfully blank. He couldn't think.
Tom paused there for a beat longer, lingering near his cheek, until he finally pulled back. His voice abruptly turned malevolent. "Get out."
Harry swallowed wordlessly and let his feet carry him to the door.
He didn't see hide nor hair of Tom for the next two days.
Two nights later, Tom knocked on the door of his shitty flat with contrite eyes. Tom had always been notoriously proud, but standing on Harry's doorstep, he looked remorseful. He reached out a shaking hand and brushed it against Harry's arm, and he went as far as to say the word sorry.
Tom blamed his reaction on his fear of losing Harry, and on his overwhelming feelings for Harry that he felt were spinning out of his control. Harry could see how it was a justification. Tom had a thing about control.
Tom telegraphed every touch for a week. He bought Harry loads of chocolate every day for the next month, and he never brought up Harry's job ever again.
For some reason, unknown even to himself, Harry forgave him.
Incidentally, for the same reason, he never breathed a word of the incident to a single soul.
It was two months after their fight that Harry lost his job.
"Ahh, I'm sorry about this, mate, but like I said, I've got to let you go," drawled Mundungus Fletcher, the bakery's manager. Even when he was getting fired, Harry still couldn't understand how someone so sleazy could get promoted to the top job at a bakery. The man went by Dung, for fuck's sake.
"I don't understand," Harry rallied again. "What did I do wrong? I've clocked in on time for all my shifts. I put in overtime to clean up. I haven't burned a pastry in eight months."
"It's not you, Harry." Dung's eyes softened in a rare show of compassion. "I like you. You're a hard worker. It's the, ah, the new management. I told the owner that you're my best baker, but he's got something against hiring workers without the right certifications. Wants his chefs to come from some bloody fancy pastry school."
Ahh, yes, the mysterious new owner. The bakery had been owned for years by elderly couple in Sutton, until someone bought it out from them a little over a week ago. The staff's lives—Harry included—had been upended ever since. Harry just didn't think that it would culminate in him being fired.
Dung continued the rant, muttering under his breath, "On the pay we offer? Pah! He's dreaming. But no, let's make old Dung's life harder. Now I'm going to have to find another baker."
Harry choked back the rest of his protests. Any further begging at this point would only cause him humiliation.
"I'm just going to go," Harry mumbled, fumbling with the knot of his apron. He dropped the crumpled ball of cloth in Dung's hands and escaped the confining walls of the cheery bakery, walking down the streets on autopilot. The panic was closing in, fear right on its tail. What would he do without a job? How would he pay his rent?
His autopilot feet took him on three buses and a train ride, leading him right to the private elevator in Tom's fancy hotel. He blinked in surprise when the elevator doors opened and he found himself staring into Tom's expansive penthouse.
"Harry?"
Without a word, his feet carried him the twenty steps to Tom's sofa, where his boyfriend had risen to his feet in worry. With a small shudder, he buried his face into Tom's chest and let strong arms wrap around him.
"I got fired."
"Oh." Tom was silent for a long moment. Harry was too hell bent on hiding from the world to pull away from his chest and evaluate his expression. Finally, the arms around him tightened. "If you're worried about the money, don't. I have more than enough to support you until you find a new job, if that's your wish." He pauses again. "And until then, this frees up your days to do whatever you wish to do. You can relax, explore new options for your future. We'll have more time to spend together."
Harry didn't dare look at Tom's face at that. He could have only dreamed it, but for a second, he imagined that the odd note in Tom's voice sounded… self-satisfied.
Harry's string of bad luck continued. Two weeks later, the landlord surprised him at his flat for a surprise inspection. Someone had tipped him off that the tenant occupying his hazard of a flat wasn't, in fact, Oliver Wood, but someone Oliver had been quietly subletting his flat to.
Harry didn't know who would be privy to this information to begin with. He had made a habit to never discuss the illegalities of his living arrangements to anyone. He didn't want his friends knowing that the ex-captain of their old school football team had been leasing his flat to Harry for cheap for the past three years. It was bad enough to have Oliver pity him. If Ron and Hermione ever found out, they'd be sure to butt in and help him in the most obnoxious way possible.
But concerning himself with who ratted him out was pointless once the landlord slapped him with an eviction notice. He had three days to move out.
With no place to go, he found himself at Tom's penthouse again that night, soaked from walking in the rain and clutching his duffle bag like a lifeline. The rain had long since washed away the lone tear that had spilled down his cheek, but he could still feel the ghost of that tear track like a brand on his skin.
Tom opened his arms again, and without a word, he fell into them.
"You can stay with me, Harry," Tom murmured easily into his wet hair. "Move in with me."
"Thank you," he mumbled back, and he meant it.
He said the words to Tom two weeks into their cohabitation. Three damning words.
Harry was exhausted from a full day of job hunting, and as they lay together in Tom's luxurious bed, he took a moment to observe his boyfriend's handsome profile. Vampire pale skin, straight Greek nose, pursed lips. And the sharp dark eyes he fell so hard for, tracking each line of the thriller novel he perused, cutting through each and every word and leaving ashes in its wake. The eyes that could be so cold and hard, but softened so prettily when they sought out Harry. The eyes that stared at him like he was Tom's prize.
"Hey, Tom?"
Tom's eyes met his. "Yes, Harry?"
He'd never said the words before; neither of them did. They weren't 'feelings' people. But Harry thought that if it was ever the right time to say them, it was now—in the quiet oasis of softly-lit darkness, where they could both be their most honest selves. After everything they'd been through, Tom deserved to know.
Harry smiled softly. "I love you."
And Tom's returning smile unfurled so slowly, so beautifully, that Harry was mesmerised. Haloed in the soft yellow glow of the bedroom lamp, his eyes glittered like dark jewels.
"Oh, Harry," he murmured. "I've waited so long to hear you say that."
He didn't tell Harry he loved him back.
All these bad decisions led him to where he lay now, his lax body draped carefully across the bench in the park where they first met. Tom had to have slipped him something in his dinner—his body felt drugged and heavy, and the last thing he could remember was passing out on top of the table.
Tom loomed over him, watching his face with steady eyes. The same cold eyes he wore during their worst fight.
"Rise and shine, sweet Harry," he greeted pleasantly. That awful, casual tone. A small smirk curved his cruel lips.
Lips, Harry could see now, that had only ever longed for his pain.
"Why?" he managed to croak through his lead-heavy tongue. He didn't want to know what was happening, or how it was happening, or to whom it was about to happen. Hazy as his mind was, his instincts were quickly filling in the blanks for him.
He only wanted to know why.
"I like choosing my prizes," Tom murmured, crouching gracefully to be eye level with him. "I make them fall in love with me. It's the headiest thing, being told that you're loved."
A single, gentle finger ran down Harry's cheek, leaving scorching fire in its wake. He followed the line of fire with the steel-sharp edge of his pearl-handled knife. The blade gleamed silver in the moonlight.
"But I don't need to explain it to you, do I, Harry?" Tom continued, smirk softening into a placid little smile. "You understand. You know what it feels like, being in desperate search of love. Any love. Because you're like me. You're a reflection of me."
I'm nothing like you, arsehole, Harry wanted to growl. Nothing. But he found his mouth incapable of forming these words, and the sentiment lodged uselessly in his throat.
"You know, Harry," Tom said conversationally as he raised himself back up, "you may not be my last, but you've by far been my favourite. I enjoyed making you love me. Truly."
He bent over Harry and brushed his unruly hair off his forehead with careful fingers. Bitterly, Harry thought that it was a move far too gentle to belong to a serial killing sociopath.
"You've certainly lasted the longest," Tom added, and that intimate little smile returned. "Almost a year, Harry. I don't think anyone will beat your record."
He gripped his knife tighter, and it flashed silver before Harry again.
Harry desperately wanted to shake his head. This couldn't be the end. He didn't want to die. He had Ron, and Hermione, and the Weasleys. He couldn't leave them.
He tried to move his hands. His fingers. He couldn't move a muscle.
"This next part is my favourite," Tom commented with an anticipatory grin. "Do you know the loveliest part about taking the life of someone who loves you, Harry? It's when they're forced to look you in the eye, knowing that they're about to lose their life at your hand. You can see the way they fear you. And still, even still, they cannot look at you with anything but love."
And finally, Harry understood.
So just to spite him, Harry made sure to keep his gaze level with the gaze of his murderer, hot with a glare.
He glared up at Tom Riddle when his throat grew too tight to scream.
He glared at Tom as the knife slashed in an arc.
And even as his vision blackened and the world fell away, his green eyes blazed only with hate.