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Vera )1931( "Harry?" Sighing, Harry set down his quill and turned to find ridiculously large green eyes staring up at him. It was dark outside, the pale light of the moon giving everything a silvery glow. He'd put Tom to bed over an hour ago. The money he was putting into the store was more then enough, but he just couldn't decide on an inventory. This wasn't his part of the planning process, but his team was gone now. No Hermione for brains or Ron for motivation and sheer gall. Only Harry. "What's up?" He picked up the little boy and plopped his lap, happy for the surprise companionship. "Harry...where's my daddy?" Oh, so it was time for that conversation. Tom knew his mother was dead, the matrons had told him that much. His father was another story and he'd put off telling it for a long time. "He died. Before you were born." Harry supplied, cursing himself for his own cowardice. But Tom Riddle had murdered his father and grandparents before reaching his majority. "So you're my only family?" "Yes." He lied and held the small body close to his, inhaling the soft scent of his hair and cursing himself. "But I will always, always be there for you." "Promise?" "On my life." )1932( "Are you coming in?" Tom gazed up from the ground, his chest tightening with fear. He hadn't meant to hurt the poor thing. Harry would be angry with him, just as his teacher was always angry with him in school for doing things he didn't mean. Sometimes the teacher would call Harry in, but the older man would only come home shaking his head. "You can't help it, I know." He would tell Tom. "They're only angry because they're afraid. You're very powerful." "And you're not afraid?" He would ask, curled up under his blankets. "I will never fear you." A soft hand on his shoulder would turn him to see Harry's shape in the dark. It was comforting, familiar. "One day you will learn how to control all that power and you will do incredible things. Now it's just like your friend Igon, who trips over his long legs." "He breaks lots of things too." "That he does." Harry smiled. "But one day those long legs will make him fast. He just has to grow into them." But this was worse then a few broken chalkboards and drawings that took on lives of their own. Maybe he should run away. The thought had never crossed his mind before and it filled him with a sick dread. To live away again, without Harry was the worst punishment he could imagine. "Tom?" Too late, a thick shadow fell over him. "I didn't mean to." Harry crouched down. "Didn't mean to what?" Tom opened his hands to show him the bird that he had found. "I think he ran into the window and I was trying to fix him because he limping." The bird was a terrible mess and obviously very dead. Tenderly, Harry took it from Tom's hand and shook his head. "Remember what I told you about fixing things?" "I know..I needed a spell, but he just looked so..." And shamefully, Tom began to cry. He was too big to cry. And he was definitely too big to be taken into Harry's lap and rocked quietly, but that was what happened anyway. "Shh, shh." Soft whispers muttered non-sensically into his ear. "You didn't mean it. It's all right, it's all right." They buried the bird near the tomatoes and the next day, Harry brought home a calico kitten and presented it to Tom. "This is your kitten. I'm going to trust you to feed him and change his litter box." Curiously, Tom held out his hand, the kitten sniffed it and butted at his hands. He scratched at its cheeks and giggled when it began a high-pitched purr. "Thank you." He remembered to say. "What's his name?" "I don't know, what do you think we should call him?" Tom thought for a long moment. "Puck." "Puck?" Harry laughed. "How'd you come up with that?" "Teacher said that I reminded her of Puck. And I asked her what she meant, so she told me the story." "Did she now?" Harry smirked. "Puck, it is then." Better Puck then imperious Oberon. The little calico cat was probably the most spoiled kitten that had ever graced the earth. Not once in the vast adventures of Tom and Puck did the feline ever come into danger. At the slightest sign of sickness, Harry was barraged with questions and concern while he stretched his Care of Magical Creatures training as far as it would go. And when he returned the purring ball of fluff to waiting hands, Tom would smile at him like he had made peace between all the great nations of the world. Every time that smile was turned on him, the shreds of regret that had tethered him to the future became a little more frayed. )1933( The shop Harry had opened in Hogsmeade should not have succeeded. It sold a little bit of everything. Knick-knacks, oddities that ranged from the arcane magical to simple muggle artifacts. Safety pins were jammed in with jaw jamming gum, radios piled next to broken wands. Tom loved it and spent his weekends playing with Puck up and down the musty, crowded aisles while customers browsed. The store stayed open and even thrived. People were attracted to the proprietor and his boisterous son. Women could smell his singleness and hunted him like Puck with a particularly big mouse. Men enjoyed his conversation, he always seemed a step ahead of the newspapers that he read three at a time, every morning without fail. The teachers and students of Hogwarts poured in on their set weekends. One of them, Professor Dumbledore would often linger long after the others had gone on to other shops. He would gaze speculatively into the suddenly hardened face of the owner or glance at the child, who talked solemnly to his cat. "Where did you say you came from, Mr. Dover?" Dumbledore asked one day as the last of his students toddled out the door. "I never did." Harry returned with a cool smile. "Why do you ask?" "I am always curious about my friends, Mr. Dover." They both laughed pleasantly at the small joke, but Harry did not ask him to the backroom for tea as he would have with the other professors and shopkeepers who stayed for long visits. And when he left, Harry let out a long sigh of relief. "Is he a bad man?" Tom asked him when the door clanked shut. "No. You must never think that. Professor Dumbledore is a very good man, but he is also very powerful." "More powerful then you?" Guileless eyes revealed only a child's loyalty to his guardian, but Harry had to wonder. "I don't know. Hopefully, we will never have to find out." )1936( Tom was a careful child in his own way. Other children came home with torn and muddied clothes, their hair mussed and a gaggle of friends with them to their parents despair. Never once had Harry had to repair a ripped shirt or, worse, a broken limb. Clothes remained neat and the thick black hair stayed settled in the style the young man seemed to prefer. If anything, it was Tom who kept Harry out of dangerous situations, not in any deed or word, but by his very presence. Harry found that being a parent made him much less likely to go running bravely ( and blindly) into danger. A part of his thoughts would always be on the boy at home, who depended on him. So it was shock when the emergency mirror all paranoid parents carried around with them flared to life in his pocket. His heart skipped a few beats as he apparated right out of the store, barely remembering to ward the door. He landed in the middle of the schoolyard. A teacher Harry didn't recognize was shepherding the other children into the building while Mrs. Harper stood over a cowering Tom, her face red as a tomato. The moment she laid eyes on Harry, she started to yell. "Mr. Dover! Are you aware that your ward is involved with the DARK ARTS?" Harry eyes went wide and glanced over to Tom, who was trembling and biting his lower lip. "And what leads you to that conclusion?" "He was talking to a snake! Convincing it to bite another child!" "That's a lie!" Tom burst out. "Sstassa was going to bite Greg, I was asking him not too!" "Shut up, you miserable child! Mr. Dover, if you have trained this child in the dark..." "If I were you I would stop talking, right now." Harry's eyes flashed with killing curse darkness and when the woman took a frightened step back, he moved to the child and enfolded him gently in his arms. Tom stiffened briefly as if the thought something harsher was coming and then melted into the embrace. ~Hush now, dear one.~ Harry hissed at him. ~I didn't know...I've never spoken to a snake before, honest!~ It dawned on Tom slowly. ~You...you speak snake too?~ ~Parseltongue. I should have told you, I just...~ He had forgotten. In the intervening years, he had simply forgotten who this little boy had the potential to become. ~I'm not a freak?~ ~No. You're special. Like me.~ Mrs. Harper had made for the safety of the building. Later Harry would talk to her rationally, explain about inherited talents and make her a very good cup of tea in his very comfortable (non-evil) living room. He didn't think she'd ever be quite as warm to Tom again, but the boy never complained about her. ~The other kids are gonna think I am.~ ~No, they're not. Greg knows you saved him, he'll tell everyone else.~ They were quiet for a while, Tom clinging to Harry's robes as he hadn't done in a long time. "You came." Tom said quietly. "I wasn't sure..." "Oh, Tom." Harry pulled back. Could it be that after all this time, Tom still didn't trust him fully? He thought of the knife he had never brought himself to throw out, glistening in the dark over the bed of a child. "Dear boy, I will always be there for you. If you need me, I will come." "You promise?" "On my life." )1938( "It came, it came!" Harry roused from the table to find Tom in the yard, feeding their owl Sal a ridiculous amount of treats. The owl looked slightly queasy both from the overfeeding and sitting on the jittering boy's shoulder. Gently, Harry took the letter from sticky fingers. He'd want to frame it later and hang it in the study. "I told you it would." "I'm going to Hogwarts!" Tom stopped cold. "I'm going to Hogwarts. Will you be all right by yourself?" Harry started to laugh and found he couldn't stop. The earnest look on the young boy's face, the sincerity of his tone, doubled him over. "I think I'll manage." He wheezed and pulled the child into a tight hug. "I'll be just up the road if you need anything." Tom went on, clutching his guardian tightly. In the end, Harry wondered if Tom hadn't had a touch of prophecy. The shop felt empty without the two intrepid explorers and the house echoed his every step. The boy wasn't even gone a day and Harry was already wondering when Christmas hols started. The first owl arrived the next morning, the letter was short, the handwriting sloppy and the punctuation copious. Harry nearly cried over it and felt like a complete twat as he reread it. "Dear Harry, Hogwarts is the best!!! I'm in Slytherin with Avarus Zabini, from down the road. The dungeons are cold and wet!!!! Please send more blankets. Love, Tom." Later, when he was feeling less melancholy, he wondered if he should be concerned about the house placement. He belatedly remembered that as SalazarŐs heir it was highly unlikely that Tom would have been sorted anywhere but. Well, he had given him the best childhood he could. One way or another, he would find out if that were enough. Even later then that, Harry realized with a bolt that he could get a life again. So much time had passed since he had had a real bed companion...He knew other parents managed somehow, but he had always felt a bit dirty taking people home with Tom in the other room and far too guilty to leave Tom with a sitter all night just so he could get his jollies. And to be honest, he had still been in mourning for those he had lost in the war. Nearly a decade had past now and while he missed them all, the pain was not so immediate. It was time for Harry Dover to get into the market and he knew just where to start. )1940( The snow lay thick on the ground as Tom walked into Hogsmeade. Clouds had thickened in the sky, promising more. "It's gonna be three feet at least." Vermillion Parkinson had smirked as she said goodbye to him this morning. She could afford to be smug. The Parkinsons were going to Australia for the holidays. "At least we'll be having a white Christmas." He'd muttered. "Yeah," Avarus jumped in, "you'll just have kangaroos." She'd rolled her eyes at them, before giving them fast, embarrassed hugs and boarded the train. The two boys had stared at each other awkwardly for a minute, before settling on shaking hands. Now Tom was hoping the snow would hold out for him to get the shop. He didn't fancy being stranded out in the wet and cold. Not to mention Puck, who was currently curled up in her carrier, had a long-standing hatred of storms. As usual going home for the hols gave him mixed feelings. On the one hand, being back with Harry, having his own room and the festivities of Christmas were great, but on the other, he really did like being at Hogwarts. It had been scary at first. He was sure the other Slytherins would tear him apart. The shop had lots of dark places and he'd used them to observe the students for years before getting his own letter. He knew all about the warring houses. There were the brave, loud Gryffindors, who would rampage about the store in gales of laughter, heedless of other glaring patrons; the curious, silent Ravenclaws whose sharp eyes found him in his hiding places and who made Harry delirious with all their purchases; the chattering, animated Hufflepuffs, who never stayed long among the brick-a-brack and the cool, calm Slytherins that turned their noses at the shop in groups, but snuck in alone or in pairs to haunt the aisles, always finding the most precious things. They frightened him, these calculating mini-adults. As he'd sat down at the table the first time, the older ones sneered at him. "Isn't he a mudblood?" "Heard he was adopted by some weirdo...""Owns that strange shop.." "That little maggot," Lydia Zabini had interrupted, "is one of my brother's best friends." Not only was Lydia from one of the oldest wizarding families, but she was a sixth year. If Tom was good enough for her family, he was good enough for them. To his shock and pleasure, the conversation was dropped and never returned. At the time Lydia had winked at him and continued with her friends. It taught Tom an important lesson. People were like animals. They'd reject you if you looked or smelled wrong, but if you got on with the leader they'd take you in without a thought. From that day on, Tom made it a point to become friendly with everyone in his House. His motherless status turned usually cool girls hennish and protective around him and his mastery on the broom, thanks to endless hours illegally in the air with Harry, bought the boys' grudging respect. Halfway through his third year now, he was one of the most popular and well-liked boys in his House. Just the week before, he'd interrupted some of the older boys while they talked about some political thing or another and lived to tell about. "There is no reason we should put up with it." Yosef was saying. "Protecting these muggles while our own people are dying." There were dark mutters of agreement. Tom knew, of course, that they were at war. It was hard to miss with the tensions in the hall and the quiet hush during breakfast when the Headmaster read out the current news from the front. Too many had older sisters and brothers, family that was fighting. Harry sent him long letters filled with clippings once he found out how starving the students were for news. "After all," someone else said, "it's not like they're anything like us." "They're exactly like us." Tom startled himself by saying. All eyes turned to him. "Now Tom, we know your guardian's got a soft spot, but you can't go saying they're anything like us." Yosef said. "Everyone knows..." "Well, then everyone's wrong. I mean, I've met lots of them and they're just people. Just because they don't have magic doesn't mean they aren't. I mean, it'd be stupid if I said you all were less then me because I can speak Parseltongue and you couldn't." "That's different. So you can do one thing better, Muggles can't do any magic at all..." "Neither can squibs, and I bet you all have one or two in your families. Should we leave them out to magical attack?" Several of the boys started to look uncomfortable. He didn't know it yet, but it was already clear to anyone with half a brain that Tom was going to be a very powerful wizard. Yosef was no slouch with a wand and this conversation was definitely leaning towards a fight. They might have to choose sides. "Squibs are like the handicapped. You couldn't just kill 'em. That'd be wrong." "So how's a squib different from a muggle?" "Well they grew up with magic, didn't they? Still have house elves and know the culture..." "If we let muggles in then they'd be the same as squibs then." He retorted. "No. Look..." Yosef floundered. The boys started to move towards Tom imperceptibly, ignoring their friend's imploring look. They may be loyal to a point, but they were still Slytherin. "I'm not saying we should let them in." Tom said softly. "But we know more about what's going on then they do and it would be wrong to let them die because they aren't a part of us. It'd be like letting the American wizards get bombed because they don't know what's going on over here. " "You're wrong." Yosef had finally said after a long, tense pause. "It took guts though, to say all those things. I don't think they'll make you very popular Tommy." "Oh, I don't know about that." Yosef glanced at his friends. They were all standing nearly on top of the younger boy, staring defiantly back at him. Without another word, the older boy had stormed out without once reaching for his wand. Tom smiled at the memory. Retribution would probably come eventually, in one form or another. Right now though, he could savor the memory of winning over a group of sixth years. Smiling, he kicked at the snow, watching it fall in soft wet piles. Puck mewed piteously from her carrier as fat flakes started to fall. He approached the shop, step lightening when he saw the familiar golden light spilling out onto the darkening street. No doubt Harry was waiting inside with tea and biscuits. "Hello?" He called as he banged open the shop door the rustle of bells. "Ooooh, little Tom! Let us have a look at you!" Imperceptibly, Tom shuddered. Another con of coming home was dealing with That Woman. She was a newer addition to their household, a beautiful enough twenty something that had followed quickly on the heels of That Man. It wasn't that Tom minded these people floating in and out of his guardian's life. Much. It was more that they were always...so sticky. Loving and clingy, gazing adoringly at Harry and speaking to Tom as if he were hard of hearing or stupid. That Woman wrapped him in an over perfumed hug and he fought not to gag. Suddenly, her embrace was gone and Harry was there, smiling down at him, on hand resting on her waist. "Now, now. Let the boy breathe, darling." Harry winked at him. ~Welcome back, dear boy. Cup of tea and a biscuit?~ ~Yes, please.~ "Oh, Harry," whined That Woman, "you know how I hate that sound." Since Harry only sighed and turned to go into the backroom, Tom happily concluded that That Woman was not long for this family. He'd had some worries when he left for Hogwarts because Harry had been very upset about losing That Man and had intended to correct all his mistakes with That Woman. Not that Harry had told him any of this, but over the years from paranoia that turned to a deep and abiding love, he had learned everything about his guardian. He knew what the slightest gesture meant, the slightest tremor in the glass smooth voice and the most careless phrase. It was comfortable and comforting. That Woman would be gone by spring break and they could go back to it being just the two of them for a while. Until the next person came along. These were the thoughts that ran through his head as he sipped tea and munched a biscuit. Harry quizzed him on school. Outside the snow was falling and That Woman was tinkering with something in the front, far away from them. It was already a perfect Christmas. Lulled by the mood, he told Harry all about the confrontation. "That's my boy." Harry said when he finished. "Bigotry is a plight of the stupid and angry." "I don't think Yosef is stupid. His parents are purebloods and they don't think much of mudbloods." "You think that's what makes people hateful? What their parents tell them?" "I dunno. Maybe. I mean, when you're a kid people can tell you what to do and what to think. Yosef's not stupid, he just doesn't think about what people tell him, especially parents." "Sounds about right to me." Harry cuffed him slightly on the arm. "When'd you get so smart?" "You two are so cute together!" That Woman barged in, fake smile well in place. "Like bookends! The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I suppose." The pair made eye contact and laughed, leaving That Woman confused and gaping like a fish. next part last part << |