Archive of Our Own

“Cain slew Abel, and yet the question remains; am I my brother’s keeper?”

- Lord Byron

The new boy was pretty, for sure.

His features were fey-like, though he possessed a touch of the aristocratic beauty purebloods held; nearly patrician. Long lashes beat against lightly tanned skin, kissing at the hollow of his eyes- and what eyes they were. Green, almost unnaturally so. He was slight, but carried a lithe athleticism to him that Tom, for all his own beauty, had never mastered.

Not to mention, transfer students were nearly unheard of. Even as the war burdened on, leaving more and more empty-eyed orphans stalking the castle’s halls, they never showed up at half term. The boy was startling, out of place, and utterly foreign. In a sea of mediocrity and well-established rhythm, this boy was a bull, rattling the delicate china of their daily minutia.

Other than that, however, Tom was disappointed to note that his newest dormmate seemed rather uninspiring. He had performed particularly poorly in Potions, and rarely met Tom’s gaze despite sleeping one bed over from him. A cowardly thing, perhaps; blunted by whatever trauma had led him to the snow-dappled hills of Scotland.

Not to mention, the boy fails to recognize the pecking order. He doesn’t even introduce himself to Tom, which rankles in a way he can’t place. In the end, however, it’s no matter. He’s rarely surprised by anyone, and cannot fathom this deviating from the norm.

So certain of his assumption, of his impression of the boy’s character, Tom hardly spares him another glance. With aplomb, he diverts his attention from this apparition of a boy and his all-too-haunting eyes.

That is, of course, until their first defense class.

Professor Merrythought is an aging woman. There have been whispers circling the halls, like vipers tensed around the gossip mill, that say she’s close to retirement. No one is able to confirm them, of course.

Tom’s peers are mostly useless things. Cosseted and swaddled, they rarely exhibit any real brilliance. Tom has often thought- privately, of course- that the greatest wastes of wands were his own year mates. Slytherins were meant to be a paragon of cunning, and yet the lot of them had been weaned on little more than their own entitlement. They lacked any real ambition beyond what their parents dared to offer them at the cradle.

Perhaps, despite the quiet, unsaid longing Tom felt to be a part of some great and terrible legacy, it was a gift to be an orphan. Unburdened by the expectations of another. Unrestricted by a hand that sought to mold Tom in their image.

Still, if the rumor has any credibility, Tom has entertained the idea of taking her job- of repurposing it for himself, the way he’s pilfered everything he’s owned. He would shape the minds of other stupid children, molding them in his image, and the Wizarding world would thank him for it.

Tom, the prophet. Riddle, the evangelist. Voldemort, their God.

Merrythought was an adept educator. She was skilled enough in the hands-on facets of Defense to be an asset to Tom’s early education. As his final year drags on, however, he finds himself tiring of the schoolboy act.

The Head Boy pin shines from its place on his robes. The golden kiss of sunlight laps at it, glinting amongst his peers, in veritable proof of his own superiority. What a good boy he is, that Tom Riddle.

The sky streams in through the windows, pouring through the classroom and washing them all in warm, melted tones. Tom pays the necessary attention to the lecture, which is to say he spends most of the time plotting; refocusing only as the practical portion of their class overtakes the slow, droning voice at the chalkboard.

“You’ll have to separate into partners,” Merrythought says, silencing the rising din of chatter. “I want everyone practicing their wandless magic- that means I ought to be able to hear myself think for once,” she finishes, with a fine brow arched, silver shot through the curve of it like lightning.

He catches the new boy’s eye- Harry, his mind supplies distantly- and figures now is as good a time as any to find out if he could be useful to Tom. It would be such a shame if he was truly worthless. Still, even if he did turn out to be an idiot, perhaps he’d make a pretty ornament.

Tom always did like collecting shiny things. All the better if they weren’t his to take: forbidden treasures only shone brighter to a magpie like Tom Riddle.

And, regardless of the boy’s talent- or lack thereof- he would prefer to have all his dormmates firmly under his thumb. It had taken a while, but Tom had finally subjugated them all. He would so hate to have to dispose of such a lovely form if the boy continued to refuse heeling to his betters.

“Harry,” he greets the boy warmly, sidling up to him as if it were Tom’s divine right.

The boy in question blinks up at him, eyes the color of death and dying- and then instantly his face is wiped clean, like a blank sheet of parchment. Something lingers there, though, behind his gaze. It’s hot as flint, and it seems just as likely to burn.

Have you got teeth after all, Harry?   

He eyes Tom with distrust. It’s a funny look on this boy, who had hardly met Tom’s eyes in the days since transferring here. Still, his gaze has already grown sharp edges under Tom’s probing.

“If we're going to duel,” Harry murmurs, voice soft but entirely lacking fragility. How exciting- this previously docile creature isn’t looking away from Tom now. He simply retreats the appropriate number of paces, putting distance between them, until the air itself feels like a chasm, chilled and impassable. “You’ve got to bow, Riddle.”

Harry cocks his head as he finishes, in a careless, rakish sort of motion, and Tom can’t help but be amused at his display. This boy doesn’t know better than to tease him yet- he hasn’t felt the penance of Tom’s cruelty.

How lovely it will be to break him. A graduation gift to himself. Tom, who has always been the poorest of his suitemates, learned early that nothing feels sweeter than pain you had to earn.

Money can’t buy everything, he thinks coyly, remember the way his peers had tormented him before learning to cower under his wand.

And then he bows.

It’s a shallow thing- almost mocking, though most would assume he was simply being practical. By the look on Harry’s face, however, he isn’t fooled. He merely returns the motion, a half-formed thing, just as sardonic as Tom’s.

How lovely he’ll look on his knees, Tom muses before casting.

The feeling of Tom’s magic, he’s been told, is oppressive. As thick as the air before a storm, and slicker than the spill of oil. They say it crackles, almost, the pull of it as inescapable as gravity. It’s ozone, lungs full of it, inhaling the exhaust of another man’s dying breath.

This boy doesn’t wilt under Tom’s wand, however. Harry simply meets him where he is. He parries when Tom strikes, and counters when Tom engages. They move in perfect tandem, dancing across the mats. Feinting and then lunging, each of them hungry for the blood and spoils of their own little war.

Something has come alive in him, this previously waxen boy. Where there had once been a shadow, an echo, there is now fire. He had been so perfectly unassuming. Tom had not even considered it was because he had perfected it- that he had shorn the skin of a sheep and tossed it over his own shoulder so convincingly that not even Tom Riddle had noticed the snarl of a beast underneath his woolen façade.

A breeze drifts through the classroom, spilling over from a different pair of duelists, and Tom watches as it blows across Harry’s face. It lifts his fringe, revealing the most curious scar.

Sowilō, he thinks. For the sun.

The winter sky rises over Harry’s shoulders. It paints him golden, just then, stark against the bleached quilt of snow around them; it shimmers in the background, pressed to the glass like an interloper. For one moment, everything is brilliant: the whole world leached of color, except for the two of them.  

Tom takes in a breath as his heart knocks against his ribs. It beats a funny little tune, an unfamiliar melody. He’s almost excited, trading spells with this nobody cloaked in suspicion and sunlight.

Harry’s eyes take on a certain shine, hot as coal where they meet Tom’s, flickering like a lit match. He looks as though he’d like to burn Tom alive with his gaze alone.

How sharp your teeth, boy of pretense; how clever your disguise. You are burdened by your own lonely image, by your self-crafted cunning- just like me.

His magic is white hot. Tom can feel it, almost, against the back of his teeth. He licks it off his molars, and it tastes like power, in its rawest form. His head feels thick with it, dizzy. It burns the way the sun does, peeling at the outermost layers of his skin- unplucking the very threads of his magic, piece by lovely piece.

They trade spells for a long while, blocking whatever they can. Harry is light and quick, his footwork brilliant. He’s sure Professor Merrythought is in some corner of the classroom weeping at every prodigious step. He’s wholly intuitive, always knowing somehow when to dodge, and what to deflect.

It makes Tom hungry. There’s some insatiable beast inside him, one he’s never met before, who licks its maws at the sight of this boy. It wants this stranger, for whom magic comes when he calls.

Harry’s spells knock against the door of Tom’s chest. He feels the urge to welcome them inside, to make space for this power, so similar in magnitude to his own.

And then Tom casts Serpentsortia, and it's like victory finally melting on his tongue. It tastes like Mars Bars, the same one he’d stolen from Peter Wilonsky in Year Four when he’d called Tom a faggot for refusing to let him copy his maths workbook. It tastes like the soft drip of Billy Stubb’s rabbit, blood melting against the child’s forehead like a leaking tap while the wretched boy slept, leaving his very own scarlet letter.

It tastes like Harry, leaning forward, his hair tangled around his head like a crown of thorns, whispering ‘stop’- in a sibilant, low, threading hiss. In the language of the serpents.

In Tom’s language.

The snakes are only conjured; made of magic, in a much different way than Tom is. They are more echoes than animals, lacking the bite and autonomy of their counterparts, and when Harry tells the snake to stop- it does. It simply lays its head back down, jaw rehinged like a freshly oiled doorframe, and goes to sleep.  

He hardly realizes he’s frozen, slack-jawed like some sort of commoner, as Harry- for Tom will never call him something so common as ‘the boy’ again- disarms him. The rest of the class looks on, similarly statuesque. Their limbs are carved ivory, as still as stone, mouths agape.

Finally, they seem to thaw. Whispers build, the way rumors always do, and Tom can only watch as the world tilts on its axis: refocusing, repurposing, never to be the same.

They start saying he must have been the Heir of Slytherin, though that particular flight of fancy carries little weight. He wasn’t even here when the Chamber had been opened. Still, the whispers about Harry grow more fantastical by the day.

Tom’s followers are the only ones who truly know it couldn’t have been Harry- because it had been him. Regardless, his status is safe. Tom had already clawed his way to the top.

He had spent nearly seven years proving his brilliance and superiority, and it had earned him a reputation as the best. No waif of a boy putting snakes to sleep could shake the fist he has around this castle’s throat, no matter how lovely Harry is. The idiotic sheep he calls classmates already know who the undisputed king of the castle is.

Muggles call it Darwinism, survival of the fittest. Tom doesn’t need some pedantic nomenclature or ridiculous pseudo-science to understand the natural order of things. The weak always bend to the mighty; prey always shudders to predators.

All that to say, Tom is not threatened by Harry. If he had shown up on Tom’s doorstep years ago, like a wisp of smoke threatening to usurp him, well- perhaps he’d have taken his father’s place, dead eyes against cold floors. And what a waste that would be; the loveliest pair of eyes Tom has ever seen, forever unblinking, a dull shadow of their former brilliance.

The sound of Harry’s voice lingers, though. The low rumble of Parseltongue drifts through his mind most nights. He lays there, in his four-poster, under the very opulence of Slytherin himself- Tom’s own predecessor. Drenched in the low light of the lake, the soft hiss rings in his ears in a steady, unbroken loop; only a few feet away from where Harry sleeps. Stop, his mind conjures, recalling the way every letter had dripped like silk and honey off of Harry’s tongue.

Tom had never heard that sound from another person’s mouth. His uncle had bastardized it, a drunken slur of a thing. It hadn’t sounded anything like the way Harry had whispered it; low and dark, like the forbidden fruit it was.

The book had said it was passed down through the Gaunt line. Parseltongue; a noble trait. Tom’s birthright.    

He spent a great many nights like that, flushed and hot, his curtains spelled closed. His mind would trace the curves of his imagination, each note of Harry’s voice burnt into his memory. Stop, he would remember, and his hand would stray under the duvet.

Perhaps more than just Parseltongue was carried down his line. The Black’s had been said to have madness in their blood. And the Gaunt’s, most noble and ancient house that they were, seemed to have a hunger. Not just for power, as is their right- but for each other.

Tom’s wrist would work under the covers, spelled silent, as he ilked out his pleasure. He was starving, gaunt with his own insatiable desire; for the lines of his lineage, wrapped like a cool hand around his throat.

Does it bother Tom that they’re related? Of course not. He’s never cared much for other people’s morals. The uninspired masses would rather bend to other men’s laws than think for themselves.  

Tom isn’t like anyone else. He isn’t ruled by the laws of men, for he is hardly even one of them. He is something other, something greater. Perhaps it is his blood, passed down from the noble and many. Perhaps it is divinity, like ichor, dripping through his veins.

No matter what it is, Tom possesses no guilt for his urges. It is the Gaunt way, after all. There’s something to be said about tradition. And, well- Tom had always wanted a family.

Eventually, he can’t stop the hungry rot of his mind from straying to the fruit of Harry’s flesh. His very own golden apple, flush with sin. He’s tired of hiding behind fantasies, instead of tasting his inheritance. Tom starts seeking the boy out, unable to help himself.

He finds himself searching every room for the familiar lines of Harry’s body. The curve of his spine, so delicate beneath the frame of his back. The breadth of his shoulders, always held with courage, straight and back.

He finds his eyes turning over every space, tracing every corner, hoping to unearth him. Even classes they don’t share, Tom’s mind would envision him there; hungry, too, for the same great and terrible pleasure as Tom. He grows more restless by the day, seeing the corpse of Harry’s shadow where it wasn’t. Finally, he corners him in the library.

“Harry,” Tom greets him, warmth honeyed in his voice.

It’s barely a manufactured sweetness. He only modulates the croon out of it, the dark and ravenous thing that threatens to creep in. It’s a far too-telling accompaniment to otherwise unsuspecting words.

Harry looks up at him then, those inhuman eyes flickering against Tom’s form- before they dart away, just as quickly. Tom feels a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth, tugging with insolent fists. Look at me, he whines in the comfort of his own mind, like a child begging for its mother’s attention.

He forces his face back into a placid expression, the vision of a mild-mannered schoolboy. Perhaps Harry is holding a grudge. Tom had never introduced himself before, back when he had thought the boy irrelevant. How very wrong I was, he thinks, and the thought is as unfamiliar as it is true.

“Tom Riddle,” he says, finally, extending a hand towards Harry’s.

Harry simply eyes it with distaste, before turning away again. The set of Tom’s brow drags down, indignance tugged over his face like a screen. His anger is a cool shadow against his profile, one he tries to banish.

“I know who you are,” Harry says, without even looking up from his book.

The corners of Tom’s lips twitch. He’s almost amused, even as his temper flickers underneath his skin. People are rarely rude to Tom- Head Boy, Prefect, perfect Tom Riddle.

Harry’s words are dark, though, laced with that self-professed knowing. He seems like he’s telling the truth; like he knows exactly who Tom is. He wonders what Harry sees when he looks at Tom: the skin of a sheep, or the wolf’s canines on display.

All the better to eat you with, my dear.

“I noticed you were having some difficulty in Potions,” he speaks again when the boy fails to acknowledge him further. His voice is tight, and he tries to loosen the strings of his temper with the reminder of his own superiority. Tom has never struggled at anything worth knowing. “I thought perhaps you might like some help.”

It really is rather kind of him. Harry should be very grateful, despite Tom’s self-interest. The cost of his attention is high; the bidders of Hogwarts would likely stake their lives to be considered worthy, to have the privilege of being in Harry’s place.

What his place is, exactly, shifts constantly; the scenes are ever-changing, flipping frame by frame, like stills stitched together in cinema. Harry is usually bent over a workbench or kneeling against the stone floors of the Dungeons. His skin would be raw and pink where it rubbed against the rough belly of the castle. Thank you for tutoring me, Tom, he’d say, so appreciate of his help. Like a good little brother.

“And what is it you want in return?” Harry asks softly, the words ringing with the same sense of knowing; his voice once again low and dark.

It reminds him, as if transported, of the way Parseltongue had fit so neatly in his mouth. The way his tongue had caressed every syllable, laving over each letter. It makes Tom’s mouth water, starving again.

“Whatever do you mean, Harry?” he asks sweetly, beguiling; ever playing the fool.

It seems they both know nothing Tom Riddle offers is for free. Still, based on the warm anger that props itself up against Harry’s face, they have very different ideas about what that price is. Tom thinks again of Harry, of his blood cooling against Tom’s tongue- the very same blood that runs through his own veins.

“Fuck off, Riddle,” Harry croons back, and his smile is a wicked thing; drenched in sacrifice and sin, the lamb and the slaughter, all at once.

He’s cornered Harry here, pressed him against the wall like a fly. He rests there, against the silk-brushed web of Tom’s making, but he doesn’t look trapped. If anything, the set of his eyes is predatory. It seems to imply Tom ought to feel caged.

He crowds in a bit closer, looming over Harry’s figure. He’s sitting now, that porcelain ridge of his spine creased, leaning over the novel he’s reading. Something from the forbidden section, though Tom only catches the word Time on the cover.

Tom already has a few inches on him standing. He ought to lord over this boy rather impressively, but Harry only looks bored.  Mine, something in him croons, with no shortage of pride. My likeness, my own.

“If you insist,” Tom whispers back, like a promise- though he’s sure they both know it won’t last long.

Game on, Harry.

A pattern forms then, one with rules only they know. He starts sitting next to Harry at meals, and the boy valiantly ignores his presence. Tom presses the heat of his thigh tightly against Harry’s and shivers at the warmth of their bodies, finally intertwined.

“Pass me the butter, please, Orion,” Harry requests, eyeing the dish directly in front of Tom.

Tom watches the Black heir, with his delicate wrists and nearly noble blood. He’s always been a bit of a wildcard; a crazed, precocious thing. 'A Black bows to no one,' he had told Tom once.

He watches as the boy laughs- a manic sound, all sharp sharp edges- and reaches right in front of Tom to pass it to Harry. He feels his eye twitch. Though he’d never bowed, he’d also never openly defied Tom before. Not since he’d become the undisputed King of Slytherin. The prodigal, wayward son; leading them all into temptation, delivering them their share of evil.

“Thank you,” Harry says pleasantly, cheerily spreading it along his toast. Black’s answering grin is all teeth.

Power plays are nothing new to Tom. He supposes he has relaxed the reigns a bit too much. Perhaps he ought to remind his Knights of their place.

For now, he simply leans right into Harry’s space, dipping his knife into the butter dish where it sits. Tom is pressed tight to Harry’s side now, closer than he’s ever been before. He can feel every inch of him, where their bodies are nearly conjoined. Tom feels the urge to yank him by his tie, to press his teeth to the hollow of his throat and bite.

“Yes,” Tom responds. “Thank you, Orion.”

Harry’s skin flushes so pretty that Tom hardly notices the scowl on his face. He's every bit as handsome as Tom in the early morning light. With their dark hair and comely features, they look like brothers.

Point, Tom.

“Are you following me?” Harry asks him, finally, after a week of being followed.

“Of course not,” Tom replies. “Would you like some help carrying your books?”

It’s passing period, and Tom has long since memorized Harry’s schedule. He left Ancient Runes early, citing Head Boy duties. The rearrangement of his own carefully maintained routine was worth it to see the shock on Harry’s face. The boy is staring at him incredulously, in a rare show of unfiltered expression. It makes Tom’s blood race, alight with the thrill of the chase.

“Carrying my- Merlin, Riddle, will you just tell me what you want?”

If I told you, would you startle? You are no colt with trembling limbs, cousin. Still, you are a man of sentiment. I fear you’d break at the seams. 

“Well, you can start by calling me Tom,” he answers, with a genial smile.

Adam was created from dust, they say. He was clay, no more than pottery before life was breathed into him. Eve, however, was fashioned by his rib. His blood and bones built her. She is of his life, of his flesh. Harry looks at him, with fire in his eyes, and Tom knows he put it there.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Harry says, before turning on his heels and- running away.

How quickly your bravery abandons you- where is your spine of steel? Those eyes who wished me stone? My little Medusa, there is no escaping me.

He takes off in the opposite direction. Tom quickly hurries after him, meeting his pace, robes billowing out behind him. Harry is fast, but Tom has longer legs, and he catches up with the smaller boy before long.

I am the monster who lingers at the foot of your bed. I will taste your flesh, even if I must pry it from your bones. Better to lie still and let me savor you, with all the gentleness I can muster.

“Come to Hogsmeade with me,” he says, a slight hitch in his voice.

Tom isn’t used to keeping up with anyone. He had long since disavowed himself of the notion of an equal. Kin, on the other hand, stood inches below his eyeline and steadied its shoulders, as if for battle.

There's no trust hiding in his expression. There’s more than a hint of bewilderment, though. Tom knows he can use this, that he can capitalize on Harry's curiosity.

“Why?” Harry asks.

You were fashioned from my rib, he wants to say.

I wish to take you apart with my tongue, and then remake you in my image, he thinks.

“I think we might be related,” Tom answers.

And like roots unfurling, something sprouts in Harry’s eyes. It’s a sense of understanding, as ancient as oak boughs, their rings as wide as centuries. A family tree, Tom thinks, eyeing the soft curve of Harry’s mouth.

Harry says yes, of course. He was always going to give in. What Tom Riddle wants, he gets.

It’s as crowded as ever in here, the noisy, bumbling progeny of the Wizarding World clambering endlessly around them like an echo chamber. Harry eyes him over his glass, before looking at the butterbeer in front of him like he’s never seen it before. His gaze flickers back and forth, bouncing around the walls of the tavern, and then returning to Tom. Disbelief is splashed across his face, raw and uncensored.

“Why do you think we’re related?” Harry finally asks, and his face is clouded by the hesitancy from their halcyon days. Before they dueled, Tom would have called his expression nervous. Now, he’s less certain.

“It’s the only explanation for why we can both speak Parseltongue,” Tom hisses, leaning forward like a snake poised to strike.

He waits for shock to filter through Harry’s expression, but it never does. Did he know already? He feels disappointed at the thought; betrayed, though he can’t imagine why. His musing runs in puzzled circles, as Harry simply sits, a long moment of silence stretching between them.

“Right,” Harry answers when the quiet has dragged out so long it's tripped over its own feet. He doesn’t meet Tom’s eyes, however. “The only explanation.”

Something doesn’t quite add up. This boy is a riddle, though not in name: lacking the dirty muggle-blooded stain Tom’s father had burdened him with. He is a mystery, a glittering boy awash with secrets. Tom feels the urge to crack him open and split him down the middle. He wants to dig his thumbs into Harry’s flesh and cleave it like an orange halved.

“Where are your parents, Harry?” Tom asks, not without sympathy, artificial though it may be.

“Dead,” the boy responds dully, offering no further information.

There’s no grief in his eyes, though, for all that it must have been rather sudden. He’d shown up on the steps of Hogwarts soaked to the bone if the caretaker’s words were anything to go by. They had ushered him in from the rain, dripping onto the flagstones, and wondered why Harry had been absent from the registry in the first place.

Did they try to keep your legacy from you? Shall I help you reclaim it?

“Mine too,” he says, consolingly. He doesn’t mention that his father’s only dead because he killed him.

Before, he would’ve assumed Harry was too weak, too soft, to handle such a conversation. It was too soon; Tom had not broken him in yet. Now, though, he looks at the distant and abandoned landscape in Harry’s eyes, the barren and fruitless parody of mourning- and he wonders.

Do you take after me in other ways, Harry? Did you kill your parents as I did mine?

He feels no shame about any of it. Tom likes to possess things, to own what is his so thoroughly it can never be taken from him. What could carve the stain of himself into something more thoroughly than destroying it? By chiseling away at it with his fists, he crafts it in his image. By snuffing it out with his own two hands, he becomes God.

What is family if not possession, ownership? What is death if not life taken- the ultimate claim.

To an orphan, family is everything. Tom learned that at a very early age. Perhaps Harry did, too. Or perhaps, like Tom, he excels in self-teaching.  

Either way, it matters little to Tom. What’s done is done. Those insignificant little creatures, already rotting in the ground, are Harry’s past. Tom is his present, his future. He decides then, his whims teetering on the knife’s edge, that he will be everything to this boy: brother, teacher- lover.

“Surely there could be some other explanation-“ Harry counters when they’ve sat in contemplation a beat too long.

“No,” Tom replies, smiling. The sword of Damocles is swinging, and the sound of it cutting through the air is as clear as a funeral march. “There is none.”

Harry sits and sits, unable to meet his eye- and then he takes a sip of his butterbeer, leaning back in his chair, posture screaming defeat. “Fine,” he says, sullenly; almost like a child.  

Cute. Tom will take very good care of him. Everything that he is belongs to Tom anyway. The sooner Harry realizes it, the better it will be for the both of them.

He clings to him like a shadow after their little tête-à-tête. The girls simper over the two of them, for the typically solitary Tom taking Harry ‘under his wing’. The castle grows used to the presence of them, in tandem, stepping over its stones in unison. A perfect pair.

His Knights seem to understand. They know better than anyone the importance of blood- of family and legacy. They can see that Harry is his- that he belongs to Tom, the way every useless galleon in their Gringotts vault belongs to them. By birth and circumstance, the world has been handed to them. Tom has no inheritance other than Harry, and yet it is a thought richer than gold.

They treat Harry with the same simpering devotion as Tom. For all their insidious nature, they value their lives beyond their own vanity and self-importance. Even these incompetents know what that fevered look in Tom’s eyes means. They’ve seen it every time he has wanted something badly enough to take it- and they’ve seen what happens to everyone who’s ever tried to get in his way.

Orion watches with fevered eyes as Tom pulls Harry into his lap one night when the couches are stuffed full of eager students studying for exams. His eyes are knowing, too bright and reeking of deliration, as Tom traces a finger over the shell of Harry’s ear. He feigns a smear of ink against the soft skin there when Harry looks up at him, startled.

Black family madness, he thinks, and recalls their family tree. It’s nearly as cyclical as the Gaunts. Tom remembers the boy’s old adage, and he figures they must have more in common than he’d thought.  We bow to no one.

He’s still Tom Riddle, though; a singular entity, an ever-burning star. He thinks of Lucifer, of the stories the priests would tell the children in the orphanage to warn them against sin.

He fell, they would say, and lived forever, in a cage of his own making.

Tom would live forever, but he wouldn’t ever fall. He’s teetering on the edge of something great, closer than anyone’s ever been. He stands at a precipice no one else has even discovered. And Harry is just where he likes him- inches away from his open, greedy palms. 

He traces the shell of Harry’s ears with his eyes this time, and then he imagines his tongue following the path his fingers had made. Soon. Tom can hardly wait.

He tells his Knights to shun him, of course.

He needs Harry to be dependent on him. He needs to be the only person Harry can turn to. And Tom must be waiting there where he feels it, the brunt of their dismissal, with empty arms for Harry to fill.

“In what world are you the only decent one,” Harry complains, late one night after Abraxas had turned up his nose at him again.

Tom clucks his tongue consolingly, looking at him with sympathy. “Family takes care of each other,” Tom says, and then thinks about undressing him.

The rare shine of gratitude in his eyes is the sweet, ripened fruit of his labor. Harry looks at him, sharp and searching, his gaze assessing. He’s weighing his heart like the scales of Ra with those eyes. Light as a feather? He thinks, and the thought is so funny he nearly dissolves into crooked laughter. There is no hell strong enough to hold a man like Tom Riddle.

“Yeah,” Harry says finally- and then he leans a bit more against Tom’s arms where their bodies are pressed together on the sofa.

Tom holds the weight of him, content to shoulder the both of them to greatness. His spine straightens under this newfound sense of purpose, and it’s a heady thing. Duty, like a family crest, is already branded on his rib.       

They learn to enjoy the privacy of Tom’s dorm, the solitary suite Hogwarts offers to its Head Boy. Harry’s got his feet propped up beside Tom on the couch, and Tom tugs on one of his ankles, dragging it into his lap. He circles the fine bone with his hand, noticing the way his fingers close around it. The familiar heat of wanting no longer shocks him.

“What was your childhood like?” Tom asks him when Harry has grown lax against his body.

“Proper shit,” Harry replies quickly, tone painted perfectly cavalier- though when he meets Tom’s eyes, he seems to fold in on himself a bit. It doesn’t suit him, the posture of prey; though Tom’s teeth do ache to nip at the exposed flesh of his throat, bared just for him. “Though I’m sure you can understand,“ he finishes belatedly, with a bit of shame for having mentioned it.

“Something like that,” Tom murmurs in agreement.

He doesn’t think of the orphanage if he can help it. Dirty, poor, freakish Tom Riddle. He had been so eager to leave that shade of himself behind, to build a future from its bones and rotting corpse.

He had murdered that little boy, that caustic open wound of a child. Left to fester in London, amidst the violence of war, he had sliced open the throat of whatever humanity was left in him. To the tune of air raid sirens and the sky falling, he had euthanized himself; and he had known, for all his cruelty, the depth of it was no greater than what muggles could achieve.

He stands and takes a gentle hand- not imposing, but soft- raking it through the half-curls that tumble around Harry’s neck. His thumbnail catches at the sensitive skin there, and he feels Harry shiver. It heats under his palm, gooseflesh greeting his possessive hold.

Harry looks up at him, when Tom continues to hold him, something hot and unfamiliar in his gaze. The warm touch of his eyes drags down to Tom’s hands, slow and heady. Tom feels it like a caress, the phantom of his desire come to life. He’s warm now too, a matching set, and his pulse thumps erratically in his ears.

Finally, Harry’s gaze tilts back up to Tom’s eyes, and he startles the second they meet. He shakes his head, as if he had forgotten where he was, and draws his body back from Tom swiftly. The retreat rankles, but he merely tucks an errant strand behind Harry’s ear.

Soon. Other people have a rather less flexible view of morality than Tom. Still, that hunger lingers in both of their blood, as inescapable as the very path it follows through their veins.

“Getting a bit long,” Tom says, his voice scratching against both of their ears as he tugs gently at the curl between his fingers. He hears Harry swallow more than he sees it. “Perhaps you’re thinking of growing it out?”

Harry’s mouth opens, his eyes far away as Tom tugs again, harder this time. Harry looks up at him sharply, the stain of pink against his cheeks a still life on temptation. Tom doesn’t tug again, though his fingers itch with longing. He tucks the strand back into place, his fingers soothing over the ache he’d left.

“I could cut it for you,” he says, without thinking, and the sound of his own voice almost startles him.

He’s not prone to idle prattle, nor does he offer himself up for free. Yet, the longer he sits there, his forefinger pressed to the velvet of Harry’s skin, the more appealing the image becomes. His mind rubs at the thought, over and over, like a Galleon left in his pocket.

He moves to stand behind Harry, holding his head in place with a firm hand, long fingers curled around his jaw. He stiffens under Tom’s touch, eyes going a bit glassy as the pads of Tom’s fingertips dig softly into his skin. His pinky is set against his throat, and when Tom angles his head the other way, it digs ever so slightly into his neck.

“Maybe an inch or so- it might look nice if we left it a bit longer on top,” he says, voice like silk as his littlest finger nudges at Harry’s pulse, rabbit-like and thundering under Tom’s touch.

“Yeah, that’s- w-whatever works, I guess.”

Tom looks at their reflection in the mirror, placed gratuitously on the opposite wall, and he catalogs the way his body looms over Harry’s. He stares at his hand, nearly around the boy’s throat. Harry is slotted between his legs, folded into the space there as if it belongs to him.

“What’s family for, Harry?” he murmurs, and it’s not a question.

He trims the ends, mimicking the way the matrons used to cut his own when he was a boy. Harry had tried protesting, insisting his hair didn’t like being cut, but in the end, he had acquiesced. Tom supposes if anyone could grow their hair through sheer force of will, it would be Harry.

“I would’ve kept you safe, you know,” Tom says softly, as his hands tangle back in Harry’s hair, returned at last to their rightful place.

He puts on an air of nonchalance, a cavalier sort of affectation to his words, as if they were nothing more than a passing thought. They are, of course, a carefully planned beast. And yet, Harry has the gall to laugh at them, as if Tom were joking.

“I’m serious,” Tom insists, his voice low and true. “I never let anyone touch what’s mine.”

He feels Harry swallow against his touch, the lines of his throat pressing back into Tom’s fingers. He tightens his hold imperceptibly, returning the pressure. No matter how gentle, however, the subtle possession doesn’t go unnoticed; recognition seems to dawn on Harry’s face, watching the kiss of Tom’s hands as they bury themselves in every available inch of his body.

He thinks of it now, the two of them together, when they had been smaller and weaker. Tom would have protected him. He had always taken excellent care of his things.

Harry would have been his favorite thing. Clever, and quick-witted, he has a sharp sense of humor. Tom would have coveted him, his most prized possession.

He wouldn’t have the older children speak to him, let alone touch him. Tom would never have let anyone get close enough to Harry to hurt him. He would have been safe, in that tight, unyielding grip of Tom’s. Coveted, even, where no other soul was.

He looks at Harry, at the way his eyes- green, like curses and growing things- track his fingers. The touch of his hands against Harry’s hair gentles. He sees the way Harry softens under Tom’s palms, melting when Tom touches him kindly, or moves slowly. He unfurls under Tom’s fingers, like a flower tilting its head towards the sun.

I would have nurtured the goodness in you. You would have given it all to me, and I'd have repaid you with the unforeseen spectacle of Tom Riddle’s generosity.

He thinks Harry would have looked after him too, in his own way. It’s alright, Harry. I’m here now.

I’ll take care of you.

“Pass me that, dear?” Tom asks him, gesturing loosely to the text on the other side of the table, his eyes tilted toward the book in front of him. They’re in their own little corner of the world, tucked into the plush armchairs they’ve claimed as their own in the farthest corner of the library.

Harry doesn’t answer. He barely even seems to hear. He’s been staring at the same empty spot of space, unmoving, blinking silently at a vacant row of shelves. The absence of his usual chatter- quiet enough not to bother Tom and yet filling the space between them with camaraderie- is unsettling.

Tom sets his own book down. He watches him, in that unnerving way of his, entirely unashamed of the way he drinks Harry in. Harry doesn’t even flinch under the weight of his attention, at the way Tom stares, so all-consuming. There’s no playful quip for him, no gripe about his lack of manners, or his painful intensity. There's only a hollow-eyed, thousand-yard stare, wracked with some sort of grief Tom can’t place.

I ought to know everything that keeps you up at night.

Harry says nothing. He doesn’t even seem to hear Tom, no indication that his words were processed, though Tom has a feeling he can. A touch of jealousy licks at his ribs. He’s certainly more interesting than empty shelves, surely.

“Something on your mind, Darling?” he whispers, with just a touch of sharpness.

“Don’t you think the pet names are a bit much?” Harry asks, instead of answering, “You’re the one who said we were related.”

Tom smiles, pleased to be the focus of his attention once again. To have earned it, his laborious ownership over it. He leans forward, towards the other side of the table, and Harry tracks his progress in his peripheral. He looks wary now, a far cry from the dull blankness that had stretched around his features before. There you are my little wolf. Come home to me.  

“Not with the family we come from,” Tom says sweetly, danger lurking in every syllable. “My grandparents were cousins- don’t you know?” He leans even closer, his fingers tracing patterns in the wood of their shared table, crawling forward until they’re inches away from where Harry’s are splayed out before him.

Harry quickly blanches, leaning back as far as he can in his seat. His face is flushed, instantly, spilling wine-dark and russet over his cheeks. The pink of it spreads so prettily down his collar. It leaks underneath the starched fabric, slipping beyond where Tom can see. Harry’s eyes bounce around, never landing on Tom’s face for long.

“But you don’t- I mean, that’s not- obviously you wouldn’t-“

Tom just smiles as Harry babbles, choking on his weak denial. Tom revels in his own composure. He is the cat displaying the canary; caught and still wriggling between his teeth. He flexes his jaw, feeling feral, his teeth bared in some vicious facsimile of a grin. He lets his eyes fall, draping over Harry like a quilt: passed down through generations.

“I wouldn’t- what, dear?”

He tilts his head, like Lucifer falling; like beauty and innocence caught flame. Harry just swallows, shaking his head. He doesn’t bring it up again, but Tom feels certain he understands.

He grows hungrier as the season passes, instead of sated by Harry’s company. He had wondered if the boy would be able to hold his attention, his fascination and growing obsession. None had even managed to snare his focus before Harry, though he had always enjoyed playing with his food.

Harry isn’t like other people, though. He’s not even like Tom, not exactly. He’s something other, in the same way that Tom is- singular. He grows more fascinated by Harry as the days fall over each other like leaves, winter tilting into spring.

“Will you let me take you somewhere?” Tom asks the boy one day, as March finally bites at their ankles.

It’s gotten warmer, and Harry seems to enjoy dragging him out to the lake. Tom cares very little for the soggy dirt underfoot or the mindless creatures splashing at the surface, but he loves the feeling of being seen together. He knows the entirety of Hogwarts is in agreement now. Harry is Tom’s, in whatever way their simple minds see fit.

“What, like family bonding?” Harry asks wryly, his expression so dry it could peel paint.

“Something like that,” Tom responds, a touch too close. His next exhalation puffs against Harry’s ear, warm air catching against the delicate skin behind it.

He presses his hands to Harry’s eyes and watches the boy flinch. His skin is always so soft under Tom’s fingers. He leads them through the winding halls of the castle, Harry’s feet knowing their way just as intimately as Tom’s do.

He avoids the trick stair, even robbed of his sight as he is. It’s a strange thing for a boy who has only walked these paths for a few short months. Tom, for whom Hogwarts is the only place he has ever called home, feels a touch of unease. He doesn’t press against the feeling any further, though, ignoring the growing bruise of foreboding; he simply rubs his fingers through the spill of Harry’s hair, removing the heel of his palm from Harry’s eyes, and watches as the strands part like silk under his touch.

He lets the boy go, having led them to the right place, but he doesn’t lean back. Harry shivers, watching him with nervous eyes as he glances around the bathroom. They catch on the sink, eventually. Their sink.

“Tom, I do not want to go into your murder dungeon.”

He eyes the faucet with something like recognition in his gaze. He seemed to know of this place already. Tom feels the familiar urge to ask him how, as that steady drip of panic refuses to seal, but he knows Harry won’t answer.

Some things are best kept secret, he told Tom once, for both of our sakes.

Tom feels dissimilar, of course, and he had pushed and prodded. It usually takes very little force before Harry erodes, but he’d been insistent. That uneasy flare of feeling is back, blaring somewhere in his mind.

He calms himself with the thought that someday there will be nothing between them. No secrets, no walls beneath their minds. He imagines dipping into Harry’s thoughts without resistance, and the image is almost as erotic as the bestial remembrance of Harry’s voice, usually so human, lost to the rasping tones of their ancestors.

Harry’s eyes catch on their reflection, flickering back and forth between the separate shapes of their bodies. Eventually, Tom steps forward a bit, closing the gap and cradling the smaller boy in his arms. Harry can’t seem to bear to keep looking. His eyes dart down to their shoes, his so small in comparison, dwarfed by Tom’s own.

Tom’s eyes follow the same path, before settling back on their mirror image. Harry looks so unlike himself, neck bowed to Tom, as if in submission. It makes something in him hum, a low rumbling purr. That persistent hunger is gnawing at his belly, hotter and more eager than ever.

“I would never hurt you, Harry,” Tom murmurs, close to his ear. Harry flinches, eyes darting back up to Tom’s, tracking his reflection as Tom leans in closer.

The lines of Tom’s body press flush against Harry’s back now. He breathes in the smell of him, the sweet scent of his shampoo, the musk of his skin at the juncture of his neck. He feels Harry shivering again, and every inch of Tom feels unbearably alive.

“C’mon, Harry,” he urges, and the boy dares to raise his eyes. They meet Tom’s once more in the mirror, green against brown, like the earth come home to itself.

“Open,” he hisses, and Tom’s cock swells in his pants.

“Good boy.”

If Harry shivers again then, Tom is willing to keep it their little secret. How generous of him.

They study together often, and Harry’s grades quickly improve. He’s rather clever and grasps information quickly. It seems he was lacking quite a bit of theory, of the foundation of things.

“I had a rather shitty teacher in Potions,” he tells Tom when he asks, “he hated me.”

“I could kill him, if you’d like,” he answers simply, turning a page in his book with an unsuspecting flick of his fingers.

Harry eyes him warily, as if he’s not sure whether to believe him or not. Tom just arches a brow at him, and Harry rolls his eyes in response. If he knows Tom means it- and he assumes Harry must- he carefully chooses not to mention it.

“I gave him enough hell, I’m sure. Besides, he’s- gone, anyways. So,” Harry goes shuttered, shrugging, that faraway look in his eyes returning. It’s the same shattered meine he’d had in the library, staring at hollow shelves and presumably thinking of home.

“Does that upset you, Harry?”  Tom asks, sincerity creeping into the menacing lines of his voice.

He’s found he doesn’t want Harry to be unhappy. It’s a novel thought for Tom Riddle, who has only ever cared about himself. He finds himself guarding this boy’s pleasure as viciously as his own.

“That he’s gone? Not really. But I guess I am upset that I’m- that I can never go home.”

He looks lost to time, as if fate had pulled him away by his hair. Tom clacks his nails against the table, the steady drumming of his fingers jarring Harry from his thoughts. When he looks back at Tom, he startles, as if he had forgotten Tom was even there. It’s as unacceptable as it is unpleasant.

“Never?” Tom breathes, his voice treading the line between danger and curiosity. “How can you be certain?

“There’s no home to go back to,” Harry says, and his voice sounds so- so sad, an emotion exceptionally rare and ugly against the lovely shadows of Harry’s face.

Worse, he sounds alone, which is something that he will never be again- not even if he wanted to be. Tom Riddle will live forever, will become as mythic as the gods of old, and Harry will stand eternally at his side. Harry Potter, the king’s consort; the fragile, fraternal strings of his morality.

“I can be your home, Harry,” he hisses, the language of their ancestors dripping like venom off his tongue.

“What if you can’t?” Harry returns reluctantly, exhaustion laced in his voice. “What if I need home to be- kind?”

Slats of sun melt like butter across the walls. The tall windows in the library seem to touch the very lip of the sky, as sprawling and expansive as any ivory tower. A beam falls across Harry’s face, cutting it in half: one side lit by portraiture, the other cast in shadow. He looks like some sort of divine intervention, like the painted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel.

“I can be kind, Harry,” Tom whispers, the dark threads of his voice pulled tight. “To you.”

Harry just shakes his head, looking for all the world like Atlas; burdened with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I know that look in your eyes, Tom. You want to make more orphans, not less.”

“Then you should stay with me,” Tom whispers, fisting his hands loosely in Harry’s hair, tangling his fingers there. Harry’s neck arches, baring itself to Tom, making space for him. “You can make sure I don’t hurt anyone-“

He presses his mouth there, then, finally, to the sweetness of Harry’s pulse. He kisses the heavy thrum of his life, sucking the salt off his skin. His mouth leaves a bruise there- marking him, at last, as he’d been so utterly consumed by.

He envisions a collar of them, wrapping like his own fingers around Harry’s throat, and his teeth sink into the mark he had just left. Harry whimpers, looking dazed and confused. His lashes flutter against the pale expanse of his face, the shadows under his eyes. They’re fevered things, though, the green in them swallowed by the pitch of his pupils; flushed with hunger, the same one that rattles in Tom’s stomach.

“-Anyone else, at least,” he whispers into Harry’s skin, drunk on his flesh, as Harry whines and keens underneath him.

Good boy, he thinks again, and then he says it out loud. Harry trembles, panting under Tom’s touch, and he makes his dreams into reality. His mouth fashions a plum-dark collar around the delicate lines of Harry’s throat. Mine. Tom’s never felt more like a king- like a God.

“You can’t possibly think this is okay,” Harry says, as Tom presses him into the soft cotton of his sheets.

His lips brush against every inch of Harry’s skin; skimming across his temples, nudging at the crease of his hip. He sucks at his fingers, nips at them, tracing the pads of them with his tongue. Tom takes them so deep into his mouth that he feels them nudge against his throat.

“Of course not,” he answers, as his mouth trails lower down Harry’s body. “I think this is exceptional.”

He only hears mention of it once. The knights are tucked into the sofa, feet pulled under their bodies. They’ve reclined, fully at home in the opulence of the common room in a way that Tom, for all his playacting, had never truly achieved.

“You don’t think it’s- weird? I mean, for all we know, they could be brothers,” someone hisses, quiet even as they think they’re alone. Someone shushes them, and the eagerness grows in Tom’s belly.

Tom is a predator, licking his teeth for a meal. He’s pleased to see their fear runs so deep. He’ll be even more pleased later, to teach them why it is warranted.

“You know the Gaunts,” someone says. Their tone is timid, wound tight, like a prisoner’s hand wrapped around their own bars- and that’s that.

Everyone murmurs their agreement, clinking glasses dispassionately. It’s never brought up again, not to Tom’s knowledge. Only once, months after they graduate, does Orion clasp him on the shoulder, calling the matter to light.

“We could have a joint wedding- I am engaged to my cousin, after all.”

He takes the Crucio like a Black- never bowing. For now, though, Tom hurries back to his dorm, where Harry is waiting. His boy requires no playacting. Only the comfort family can provide- the hot tunnel of his throat, wrapped sweetly over the weeping head of his cock, making a home of Tom’s mouth.

“What do you want for your birthday?” Harry whispers.

“Fuck me,” Tom hisses before he can even think.

Later, they huddle under a blanket to watch their fireworks. Harry's trained the house elves to do his bidding, apparently, and has managed to smuggle out a bottle of champagne. As 1944 dies, he is wrapped in the velvet cloak of Harry’s arms.

The year tumbles into the next, as the two of them trade drunken kisses at midnight. 1945 stretches its limbs, yawning, joints popping to the tune of a sky full of sparks- and Harry stretches Tom, right there in his own bed.

He takes his time with it, far gentler and more explorative than Tom would’ve had the patience for. He mouths at his thighs, as his fingers hit that spot inside of Tom’s body that feels like oxidizer meeting fuel, like his own personal fireworks. He batters against it, those precise, delicate fingers soothing over it like an ache, as Tom whines against his mouth.

“Happy birthday, Tom,” Harry whispers, his eyes wide as he sinks into the heat of him. Pleasure has expanded all over his face, nearly shocking him with its force.

He fucks into the tight space of Tom’s body, and Tom moans, unable to stop himself. Every nerve in his body is alight with it, this pressure, this sensation. It feels like the universe rearranging itself, somewhere Tom could never reach on his own. It feels like forever, sprawling out before them; home, and family, and the sensation of finally, at last, being full.

“You’re beautiful,” Harry says afterward, and then he looks surprised to have said it.

“I always thought you were rather pretty,” Tom mumbles into the crook of his neck, nails digging into Harry’s back, “it must run in the family.”

It’s not just sex. Perhaps that’s the most shocking part. He’s not just using Harry for his body. He genuinely enjoys him- his company, his quiet humor and open laughter.

It’s terrifying. He wraps shaking fingers around Harry’s wrists in his sleep, late at night, when it feels like they might be the only people left in the universe. Sometimes Harry wakes up with bruises there, manacles caging his palms, and he doesn’t ask any questions.

He just holds Tom down, presses his body into the pillows and the soft down of his mattress- the kind of comfort that life had never afforded Tom before Hogwarts, rest easily acquired- and whispers in his ear, over and over, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Tom thinks about the little things, about Harry and his life before he came to Tom. The things that don’t make sense. When stacked precariously atop each other, they wobble, threatening to crash down around them, to upend the life they’ve been building.

Tom does what is not in his nature. He shackles his own curiosity, and doesn’t ask too many questions. He looks at Harry, in the stillness of the evening, and realizes he might actually feel alive. That this is the happiest he’s ever been.

He resolves not to think about it anymore. Tom will never let him leave, and Harry doesn’t seem eager to try. Perhaps he senses that the kiss of bruises around his wrists would turn to silver if he ever did, pinned to Tom’s bedpost where he belongs.

The hearth is the heart of the home. Harry is the flame that consumes him, who warms the barren edges of his soul. He places a locket against Harry’s rib one day and warns him not to lose it.

Harry just looks at him with that knowing look again- really, Tom? But he keeps it pressed there, against his heart, against Tom’s hearth. If he seems to know what it is, Tom doesn’t question that either.

It’s a family matter.

“We are not bound to each other by blood, but by the curses we share.”

- Sophocles