Chapter Text
March 18, 1931
Between the hours of March 17 and March 18, Tommy tries his hand at gathering intel on his latest habit. It goes unexpectedly, and fails in ways he does not understand.
There is no information on parents. No date of birth or place of birth. No schooling records. Nothing that stretches far enough to make sense of her.
Tommy slouches in his chair, thumb and forefinger coming to pinch the bridge of his nose. Papers lie scattered on his table, offering nothing of substance.
The earliest record acknowledging her existence appears in May of ‘29, and not under her name. It comes under the names Nadya and Jon Boswell. Listed as a dependent at their address under the name of Harri. Just Harri. A year later, May 1930, the name changes. Just Harri becomes Harri Potter. Born July 31, 1911, London.
Tommy’s gaze stays hard on the date. Remembers New Year’s Day and Harri saying something about celebrating her birthday.He shakes his head - nothing quite adding up. Perhaps it had been a belated celebration.
Another entry follows beneath Harri’s. Tom Marvolo Riddle. December 31, 1926, London, Wools Orphanage.
Tommy lets out a sigh, slouching further into the chair. For a year, Harri had existed as just Harri. Then suddenly turns up with the basic of basics attached to her name, and a child that is most certainly not hers.
A sibling, perhaps. Lost somewhere in what passes for a system, same way Aunt Polly had once lost her kids. Lost in the echoes of war, famine, poverty - all of it leaving gaps big enough to swallow names whole.
Orphans, by the looks of it. Harri and Tom.
Tommy doesn’t know what to make of it all. People do not appear out of nowhere. It simply does not happen.
She may be a pretty face, but Tommy has always made it a habit to at least know the basic facts of them. Grace had been an error that cost him. One he does not intend to repeat.
Maybe London had the answers to Harri’s past. But for now, London could wait. If there was something to find, he’d find it himself.
By the time he finishes with the ledgers, and estimates this months profits, and sends his men to finalise the bettings for the racetracks, midday arrives.
He puts his coat on, gloves in hand, cigarette between lips as he steps onto the street, boots steady against the ground. He’s got a pub to open, and a pretty lass to oversee and haggle into spilling secrets of her past.
By the time he is halfway down the road, something rolls to a stop, blocking his path in front.
A pram. Tommy stops short, irritation already settling deep. The sort that only siblings, younger sibling can bring forth. His gaze drags up, and for a brief, misplaced second, Tommy hopes it’s Esme - it’s isn’t.
Ada stands smug behind the pram.
“You’re joking,” he says flatly.
“He’s yours till evening,” Ada says, hands already letting the handle go.
Tommy doesn’t touch it, hands firmly planted in his coat pockets, cigarette falling to the floor. “Where’s his father.”
“Working.”
“So am I.”
Ada smiles, mocking. “Yes, and you’re also working my husband.”
Tommy exhales sharply through his nose, irritation plain on his face. “That’s not my problem.”
“It is now.”
She nudges the pram forward with her foot, closing the distance between them. Tommy looks down at Karl. Karl looks back, entirely unbothered.
Tommy glances up again. “Ada…”
Too late, she’s already walking off.
“Oi,” he calls after her, though there’s no real weight behind it, already accepting defeat.
Ada doesn’t turn back. Tommy stands there a moment, staring after her, jaw set. Then he looks back down at the pram. Karl kicks once, small and deliberate. Tommy mutters something under his breath, reaching forward and taking hold of the handle.
“Best behaviour you,” he says, almost absently. “Or straight to the cut.”
March 18, 1931
She is there when he wakes. That, more than anything feels strange. It is a sight she has not seen in a while, and Harri’s heart aches at that. But she is here now. She would be there for morning drop off, today being the first of many.
Tom blinks up at her, caught between sleep and wakefulness.
“Ma’ma’,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
Harri hums, reaching to smooth his hair down where it sticks up at odd angles.
“Morning, love.”
That morning is quiet going as she helps get Tom ready. She fixes him with a shower. Helps him into his shirt, buttons it wrong with shaky hands the first time and fixes it without comment. Finds his socks before he can wander the house without them. Breakfast follows with Nadya and Jon ready for the day, and by the time Harri herself is ready, Tom is waiting with his shoes and jacket on by the door - school bag in hand.
“We have to get Meena,” Tom says, like it is the most obvious thing in the world.
Harri pauses, reaching for her coat.
“Do we?”
Tom nods, already reaching for her hand.
“Yes. We always go together.”
There is no room for argument in it. Harri huffs a quiet laugh, something softer than fondness settling in her chest.
“Alright then,” she says, pulling her coat on. “We’ll get Meena.”
Tom beams , quick and bright, before tugging her towards the door.
“Come on, Mama Harri, we’re going to be late.”
Harri lets herself be pulled. The walk to the Patels’ is short, excruciatingly so. Tom does not let go of her hand. He swings it once, then twice, then settles, feet falling into rhythm with hers. They reach the Patels’ soon enough, the door already open, Mrs Patel and Meena already outside, waiting.
Tom lets go of her hand before Harri can exchange pleasantries with Mrs Patel, already at his friend’s side.
Harri shakes her head fondly in amusement, sharing a smile with Mrs Patel who says something Harri only half catches, words warm and familiar in the way they always are. Harri nods where needed, offers a quiet reply where it’s expected.
By the time she looks back, Tom and Meena are already a few steps ahead, heads bent close together, speaking in voices that do not carry. Harri watches them.
She finds that she does that often now, watching that is. Not in the way she once had, careful and alert, always waiting for something to go wrong at the drop of a hat. But in a quieter way. In a way that asks for nothing more than the moment in front of her.
Tom gestures animatedly as he speaks, small hands moving with certainty, and Meena listens like it matters. Like Tom matters. Harri feels something in her chest loosen at the sight.
This, she thinks, is what it was meant to be.
Not silence stretched too thin. Not careful words, or the kind of stillness that comes from knowing there is no one to speak to. But this. This noise and movement of another child walking beside him like it’s the easiest thing in the world, which it is.
Harri follows behind them, steps slower, a pace behind theirs. She does not call them out, and lets them be in their own bubble. Because it’s theirs, and it’s something Tom has worked for.
She thinks, distantly, of a different boy. One who had sat apart. Who had watched rather than joined. Who had learned too early that other children were not meant for him, and that he was not meant for them.
She had thought, once, that that was simply who he was. Something fixed, something unchangeable. She knows better now because she’s raising him this time. Raising him something proper with Nadya and Jon.
And then Tom laughs - bright and soft in the way he has learned to do with those he trusts, and Harri holds that sound quietly, has become something she loves hearing, and tucks it somewhere safe, slotted with all things related to her Tom.
She tells herself she will be there for more of it. More mornings. More walks like this. More small things that build into something steady and whole. She will be there. There is no doubt about that.
The Garrison quiets in the way it always does, in pieces that take its time leaving, voices thinning into the outside, chairs scraping once, twice, and the last of the doors swinging shut, a small gust settling into the Garrison.
Tommy stays behind the bar. Glass in hand, cloth looped between his fingers. The motion is steady and repetitive in a way that does not require thought, yet invites it all the same.
This isn’t something he needs to be doing. There are men for that. Her, too.
Still, his hands keep moving, because standing still has never been something he’s taken well to, and because there are times when the mind benefits from something dull enough to anchor it, even if barely at that.
Next to him, she’s doing the same. She slips into work as though it had always been hers to do, and Tommy finds himself noting it without meaning to- the use of her own initiative, the lack of hesitation, the lack of noise, abd the way she doesn’t linger or loiter, just does.
The silence between them stretches, not in a way that demands it to be broken, it simple sits, present and somewhat unassuming, until-
“Thought you had people for this.”
“We do.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
The question sits all wrong, and out of place in a way he can’t quite name, because no one’s ever thought to ask him why he bothers with such menial tasks. For a moment Tommy thinks of responding with a shrug, and letting that be enough of an answer.
Instead, he exhales softly through his nose.
“Like the movement,” he says, and it comes out easier than he would usually allow. “Keeps the hands busy.”
He turns the glass, checks the light against it.“Noise in the head quiets when there’s something to do.”
The words settle before he can decide whether they should have been said at all, and Tommy pauses long enough for him to register the bluntness, the ease of it, the lack of filter, and the way it had simply left him without permission.
He doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t correct his words, doesn’t add on to them either, he just carries on, because making a thing of it would make it worse, and because it is easier to pretend nothing had been said at all.
Beside him, she stills for a second, barely noticeable, before continuing. She doesn’t follow up with questions, or a comment, simply carries on with task at hand, falling into a rhythm that mirrors his own without much effort.
Time passes like that, marked only by the slow line of clean glasses forming along the bar, and the last of the outside noise bleeding into nothing.
He speaks again before he decides to.
“Harri.”
It sits there, unannounced, as though her name was always meant to be said by him. She doesn’t react, just finishes the glass in her hand, sets it down before responding.
“Mhm.”
Tommy’s mouth twitches, faint, almost there and gone.
“That’s a boy’s name,” he says, because it is, and because the thought had been sitting there since New Year’s Day, waiting to be said.
“Doesn’t fit,” he adds on.
She looks at him, emotions wiped clean from her face.
“Couldn’t get that part, could you.” It’s said easy, almost careless, yet it lands all the same.
Tommy lets out a short breath through his nose, something close to a laugh but not quite committing to it.
“No,” he admits.
The silence that follows is not the same as before, lacking the earlier distance, replaced instead with something that sits easier between them, though Tommy would not name it as such.
“What should it be then,” he says, like it’s nothing more than passing thought given voice, “if not Harri.”
He doesn’t look at her this time, which in itself feels like a choice he has not made consciously. Next to him, she turns the glass in her hand, slower this time, huffs something soft, half amusement, half dismissal.
“It’s Harriet, if you insist on knowing.”
Tommy says nothing to that. The name settles somewhere at the back of his mind, longer than what he’d first been given, heavier too, though no less out of place on her - filed with everything else he hasn’t quite decided what to do with.
Harriet.
He turns it once, idly, as though testing its weight. It sounds different said properly, cleaner, and less careless.
“Harriet,” he says after a moment, like he’s already decided on it.
He doesn’t look at her when he says it, doesn’t need to, because the point of it isn’t her reaction, but the fact that he can. The name sits easier than it should. Better than it has any right to.
Tommy lets it linger for half a beat longer before setting the glass down, cloth still moving between his fingers.
“Doesn’t sound like you’d answer to it,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.
She snorts.
It’s quiet, but loud enough to carry in the stillness of the place all the same, unexpected enough that Tommy’s hand stills mid motion, cloth caught between his fingers as his gaze flicks to her.
It isn’t the sound that catches him off, but the lack of restraint in it. Most would swallow the sound down, and pass it off as a sneeze, or cough, or something just as dismissive.
Tommy huffs a breath that borders on a laugh, more out of reflex than anything else, the sound leaving him before he realises it’s coming from him.
“What’s funny,” he asks, half bothered and not quite curious either, but something in between that doesn’t hurt to indulge in.
She doesn’t answer straight away, but when she does, amusement and something else that doesn’t quite match the tone sits beneath her words. She says it lightly, almost off handedly
“You don’t know how right you are.”
Tommy watches her a second longer than necessary, the words turning once, then again.
“Yeah?”
It’s said low, an acknowledgement dressed as a question, just enough to nudge at the edge of it, to show his curiosity without being too callous.
She doesn’t take the bait, just sets the glass down, reaches for another, like the moment had already passed her by. Tommy lets it sit there for a second longer than he needs to. Then lets it go. She’ll speak when she’s ready, most of them do.
-/
By the end of the week, Tommy finds that the days do not pass in the way they usually do, not slower, not faster either, but marked instead by small repetitions that settle into something resembling routine before he has much say in it.
He notes it only in passing, the way he does most things that do not yet demand his full attention.
Harri no longer asks where things are kept, and it happens without announcement, without any clear point of change he can trace back to, one day hesitating, the next not, moving through the Garrison with a familiarity that had not been there at the start of the week, folding into its rhythm rather than interrupting it, and Tommy finds himself noticing it despite himself.
How she works better than most of his men, and for a moment Tommy has half a mind to have her whip them into shape. He doesn’t.
He learns she’s good with numbers, better than she lets on, better than most of the men he’s had behind the bar, and in the betting shops, which in itself is enough to draw his attention longer than it should, and he tests it more than once over the course of the week, not directly, and not in a way that can be called out for what it is, but in small ways that pass as routine.
A page from the ledger slid across the counter under the guise of convenience, a column of figures left unfinished, totals not yet drawn, profits and losses sitting uneven where they should not, and she takes it without question the first time, glances over it once, then again, before returning it with the numbers settled cleanly where he had left them open.
He tries again, later in the week, something messier this time, figures that do not sit neatly, margins that require more than a passing glanc, and she works through it the same way, quiet, unbothered, as though the work itself is enough to hold her attention without needing anything else.
Tommy says nothing to it, doesn’t acknowledge it outright. But he notes it all the same, the ease of it, the accuracy, the lack of second guessing, and finds himself thinking, briefly, that the ledgers might be better off in her hands than most, provided she proves herself trustworthy enough to warrant it, lest Polly have his head for letting something other than sense guide him.
There are other things he notices, though he does not catalogue them as such, small and consistent in a way that makes them difficult to ignore once seen.
The way she does not flinch at raised voices but does not lean into them either, stepping just out of reach when men linger too long, not in a way that draws attention, but not in a way that invites it either, and it is a balance most do not manage without being taught.
She manages it anyway. Of course she does. She lets things slip, sometimes, not often and never coherently, a word here, a sentence there, enough to suggest something without ever confirming it.
London mentioned once like it had been something more than a place and less than a home, a school brought up in passing, private by the sound of it, expensive too, the kind that does not lead back to places like this unless something has gone wrong along the way, and then nothing after, no elaboration, no attempt to fill the silence she leaves behind.
Tommy does not ask. Not because he isn’t curious, because he is, but because pressing at it would close it off, and he has learnt, over time, that things given freely tend to be worth more than anything pulled out of someone by force.
And Harri, Tommy has learnt, is a skittish thing when probed, and steady when listened to and left alone.
She calls him Thomas now, that too is new. She had tried Tommy once, and promptly pinched her face in disgust before settling on Thomas.
The shift happens gradually enough that he does not mark the moment it changes, only notices it once it has already settled, the lack of formality, the absence of that earlier edge, the name said like it sits easily in her mouth, and he finds that he does not correct it, does not push for anything else, and more often than not answers to it without thinking when it comes from her.
He still calls her Harriet, and finds, without thinking on it too much, that he prefers it, even when she doesn’t respond to it most times.
By the weeks end, the Garrison runs as it should, better than before even, noise where it belongs, quiet where it is needed, and she stands behind the bar like she has always been there, like she had not walked in a week ago and unsettled something he had not realised was capable of shifting.
Tommy notices it, the way he notices most things that do not yet require action, and lets it sit where it is, content with outcome of having her here, despite their beginnings.