Chapter Text
Professor Tom Riddle, Head of Slytherin House, eight-time winner of the Hogwarts Teacher of the Year award, youngest-ever professor and nearly the longest-serving (Slughorn still held that honor, but he seemed to use candied pineapple like a Horcrux or a Philosopher’s Stone and may well be immortal), was worried about a student.
This was not an unfamiliar situation for him. Part of the reason he was so beloved (the other part was that he was a brilliant, engaging, and effective teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts, if he did say so himself) was his unmatched level of care and concern for his pupils. Since the day former Headmaster Dippet, Merlin bless his departed soul, had taken a chance and hired him after graduation at the ludicrous age of eighteen, Tom had vowed to do all in his formidable power to prevent more magical children from suffering as he had. Be they his own Slytherins or Gryffindors, Ravenclaws or yes, even Hufflepuffs, they knew they could come to him at any time of the day or night with their personal and family-related issues, even when they had no one else to turn to.
Over nearly a half-century in the post, he had come to recognize the signs of a troubled home life. The dark circles beneath haunted eyes, the worryingly thin limbs, the defensive posture and flinches at sudden sounds or movements. Each child was unique, of course, but the patterns echoed and repeated themselves.
The strange thing was that they were now appearing in Harry Potter.
For his past five years at Hogwarts, Harry had been a very promising student in Defense, if an insufferably Gryffindor one; the only black marks on his record an impatience with essay writing and a tendency to act before thinking in duels. Just two months ago, he had walked grinning out of the room after his DADA O.W.L and personally thanked Tom for his extra lessons on the Patronus Charm, before heading off for the train laughing loudly with Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger.
But now, as his sixth year began…the brash Gryffindor prefect seemed fearful and withdrawn. He turned up at the Welcoming Feast looking haggard and underweight, eyes darting warily around the Great Hall. All the staff had come to expect a flashy start-of-term prank from him and Weasley, but this year the biggest surprise was his unsettling silence.
Tom had consulted with Minerva and the other teachers, and they agreed that the boy was much changed. But he couldn’t help but feel (unenlightened folks sometimes called this instinct “narcissism”) that the behavior was particularly pronounced when Tom himself was near Harry. He always appeared watchful, but it was only in Defense class that he kept a constant, obvious grip on his wand, even during non-practical work. He refused to meet Tom’s eyes, going so far as to turn and walk in the other direction when they ran into each other in the corridors; and yet, he was near certain that he’d felt the teen’s green eyes watching him several times, only to look away the moment Tom noticed.
But these, too, were things he’d seen before. Many students (especially those from pureblood homes) dealt with a painful internal struggle; they knew of Professor Riddle’s reputation, wanted to ask him for help, but couldn’t help the filial instinct to protect their parents or guardians. He’d become skilled in the art of drawing them out, of giving them opportunities to open up, like a snake waiting out its prey (but in a helpful, nonviolent way, obviously).
Young Regulus Black had memorably taken until his fifth year to admit that he was afraid of his unpredictable parents, begging Tom to find him a new living situation and put the fear of Salazar into Orion and Walburga. That particular day at Grimmauld Place had been very satisfying, entirely out of righteous indignation on Regulus’s behalf, and not at all because Tom never forgave them for calling him “Mudblood” his first three years at school. Thanks to his intervention, Regulus and his brother Sirius were able to get free of their parents, while maintaining ties with their relatively well-adjusted cousins Narcissa and Andromeda.
(The less said about Bellatrix, the better. Tom’s seven years teaching her had been the only time he had crossed over from being afraid for a student to afraid of them.)
And speaking of the irrepressible Sirius, it was he who, in a roundabout way, gave Tom the chance to get some time alone with Harry.
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It was the first day they would actually be dueling one-on-one in class. As he often did, Tom partnered Harry with Draco Malfoy. The boys were a bit like honorary cousins through their shared Black connection, and their fierce but friendly rivalry had spurred them both to greater heights over the years. Plus, he had hoped that Harry might feel more at ease with someone he knew well.
That lasted about two seconds into their partnership, when Draco smiled, drew his wand, and said, “Hey Haz. You get a chance to see Uncle Sirius over the summer?”
Harry promptly went rigid and, without bothering with even a cursory half-bow, pointed his own wand at Draco and bellowed, “REDUCTO!”
Tom’s first priority, of course, was to mend the damage done to the Malfoy heir (and his classroom wall), but all the while he noticed that Weasley and Granger seemed to be holding Harry back from charging forward and continuing the attack Muggle-style. Once Malfoy was safely under the watchful eyes of Nott and Zabini, Tom approached Harry, endeavoring to keep his temper in check while determining how best to deal with a teen who was both very out of order and very obviously going through something difficult.
He decided to give Harry a pass for now on his shouted incantation (how many times did Tom have to tell the sixth-years that he expected nonverbal casting in his NEWT-level classes!?), but he couldn’t resist…
”Mr. Potter. You did not even give Mr. Malfoy the courtesy of a bow to open the duel!”
By now the entire class was quiet, anticipating one of Professor Riddle’s legendary dressings-down. But Harry’s reaction was so brazen that it stunned even Tom: he laughed.
Not a bit of nervous laughter either, or a light chuckle. No, while his friends looked on in worry and fear, Harry gave a full-throated cackle with more than a hint of hysteria to it.
”Oh yes, how could I forget?” He spat, speaking to Tom directly for the first time since the start of term. “You’re real big on bowing. Sir.”
Well, Tom was particular about formalities in his classroom, it had been remarked upon before, but the nerve of the boy…
”Detention,” he said without missing a beat, calmly but still loud enough for the whole room to hear, his voice ice on steel. “My office. Two weeks, starting from tonight.”
It was a suitable punishment to deter the rest of the class from further disrespect; Tom was well-known for being difficult to serve detention with. But unbeknownst to anyone but himself, it also served a second, secret purpose: private detentions were one of the most useful tools in his arsenal to speak with a student one-on-one.
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Harry wasn’t sure what to expect in his sixth year after Voldemort had murdered his godfather and dramatically revealed himself to the public, but it certainly wasn’t this.
When he woke up in Ron’s room at the Burrow on September first, his best friend had been looking at him curiously, ginger eyebrows furrowed.
“What’s with that mark on your head, mate, did you fall out of bed last night? Better glamour that thing before we go downstairs, my mum’ll have our heads if she thinks we’ve been roughhousing again. Not to mention your mum! Hell hath no fury like a pair of redheaded women.”
Things had only gotten stranger from there, as he had sat next to a pompous but perfectly friendly Percy at breakfast, received a letter from Hedwig signed by his parents and stating that they were sorry to miss seeing him off but wished him all the best in sixth year, and driven with the Weasleys to a train platform with barely any security.
Then he had seen Professor Tom M. Riddle seated at the high table, and nearly had a heart attack.
In the week since then, Voldemort’s alter ego in this bizarre alternate universe had been all but blatant in his attempts to corner Harry, both in and out of his surprisingly-engaging “Defense” classes. Harry had done his best to remain vigilant and protect himself, while also gathering as much information as possible on what the Dark-Lord-in-disguise was really up to.
But he had slipped up when Malfoy dared to talk about Sirius, and now he was stuck with these “detentions”.
Well, no matter. Harry had survived Umbridge, and even Voldemort would have to put in some work to surpass her methods of punishment.
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At seven o’ clock sharp, Tom sat at his desk with his tools of the trade: a stack of first-year essays, a fresh pot of hot cocoa, and a tin of Snitch Tea biscuits (Tom loathed the name but was hopelessly addicted, and the Potter boy played Seeker). Right on time but not a moment early, there came three knocks on the door, each increasing in strength and assertiveness.
”Come in,” Tom called, keeping his voice casual but still authoritative.
Harry entered the room, his hand predictably clenched in his pocket. He did not shut the door behind him until prompted, and even then with extreme reluctance. Tom had been expecting this: he was informed this afternoon by a bemused Minerva that in the hours since his DADA class, Harry had tried no less than three separate times to have his detention changed, including an offer to scrub cauldrons every night until the Christmas holidays.
He had seen this fearful, avoidant behavior too many times in young witches and wizards who should be focused on nothing but learning at this point in their lives, but it never ceased to pain Tom’s heart.
“Right over here, Mr. Potter,” he said when the door was finally closed. “No need to sit so far away when we’re the only ones here; we can share the cocoa and biscuits.” Despite his numerous extra tutoring sessions and post-class conversations with Harry in the past years, Tom was surprised at how uncomfortable he felt now, almost like speaking with a stranger. He had to remind himself that this was still the same Harry that he considered one of his best students, even if this new version of the boy seemed like a different person entirely. He had been through an as-yet-unknown trauma, not replaced by a doppelgänger from another dimension, for Salazar’s sake.
Harry inched over to the chair as slowly as possible without literally shuffling his feet, as if trying to shave precious minutes off the detention. He kept his body fully angled toward Tom the entire time, and finally sat down on the very edge of the chair. This, however, gave the professor plenty of time to prepare them a mug and plate each while he waited.
Hands under the table and eyes straight ahead (but still not actually looking at Tom), Harry bluntly asked, “What do you want me to do?”
Tom ignored the slight rudeness and answered, “Well, to start I’d like you to drink some of your cocoa before it goes to waste.” He raised his own mug and took a sip to put the boy more at ease.
After a moment in which a thousand calculations flickered in his eyes, Harry imitated Tom, bringing the drink to his lips—
—and, in the moment when Tom looked down to dunk a biscuit, shot his arm to the side and dumped half of it in a nearby potted plant, silent and quick but still obvious as daylight to Tom’s keen eyes. The professor labored to keep a straight face. Merlin. What on earth did the boy think was in his mug, and who had given him reason to suspect such things? Not to mention it was a tad insulting; if Tom had wanted to dose him he could have done it six different ways by now, none of them so plebeian as a spiked cup of cocoa.
“Mm-mmm,” Harry said brazenly, setting the mug back down (and was he deliberately ignoring the coasters? You could never tell with Gryffindors). “Delicious. So, what do you want me to do for the detention?”
This lack of trust was deeply concerning, but Tom knew better than to push a skittish teenager. Harry had always enjoyed practical work; perhaps he was the type who would relax more while engrossed in a task. “I’m glad you like it. As for your assessment, I’d like you to mark these”—he pushed the pile of essays to the center of the desk along with a black-feathered quill—“up for me. You may be currently struggling with respect in class and nonverbal casting, but I trust you to accurately grade first-year work. Do take care not to favor the lions; I will notice.” With that, Tom dropped his gaze to his own stack of fifth-year papers to grade. Sometimes the best way to build rapport was working silently side-by-side.
He was barely a paragraph into a Hufflepuff’s confused parsing of the different varieties of Protego when Harry said, right on cue, “There’s no inkwell, sir.”
Tom frowned. He had been expecting the question—anticipating it, even—but not the almost woeful tone it was spoken in. So far this week, he had seen Harry looking scared, angry, suspicious and strangely blank, but never happy and carefree as he had once been—and never, until this moment, like he was on the verge of tears, especially not over something as small as a missing inkwell. Then again, hadn’t Tom watched time and again as troubled students, already at their limit, toppled over the edge at the tiniest additional stressor? He hadn’t intended this to be such a thing for Harry, though; he had been hoping to get a conversation started.
“Oh no, Mr. Potter, you won’t be needing an inkwell for this quill. It’s a special one of my own invention, you see.”
Tom really was quite proud of the new prototype quill. Maybe it wasn’t as groundbreaking as his treatise on the seven uses of basilisk venom or his creation of a new class of undetectable wards, but in the last few years he’d really grown tired of the Muggleborn students doing their work with ballpoint pens and bragging about the superiority of the ugly little sticks. This summer he had finally carved out the time to create a quill loaded with enough ink to last the average person a full school year, without the complicated self-inking enchantments that cost a small fortune. With any luck, by next year his students could have convenience without sacrificing Hogwarts’ dignified magical aesthetic. Knowing how Harry was intrigued by innovation and novelty, he had hoped getting to be one of the first testers would break the ice and loosen the boy’s tongue a bit.
But instead of asking questions, or even picking up the quill and examining it, Harry just stared at it with drowning eyes like it was a Venomous Tentacula, then took a deep breath and gingerly picked it up. His hand was actually shaking as he brought it to the parchment and made a mark next to a misspelled Flipendo. When it released a smooth line of rich black ink without, presumably, leaping from his fingers and gouging his eye out, the teen seemed legitimately lost, looking back and forth between his hand and the quill before finally lifting it to his face and inspecting the nib and feather.
“…It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Tom asked, taking another drink of cocoa to hide his own bafflement.
“Yes, sir,” Harry said slowly, taking advantage of Tom’s distraction to “surreptitiously” pour the rest of his own drink into the plant. “It really is.”
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It went on like that for the rest of the hour. Harry marking the papers, not speaking expect in monosyllabic answers to Tom’s occasional questions, looking continually surprised that the prototype quill (Tom had yet to come up with an official name for it, but he had several potential taglines in mind, including “The Marvolo-us Neverending Ink Quill” and “Quill-de-Mort—The Ink Never Dies!”) hadn’t tried to harm him yet. At eight o’ clock, Harry bolted to his feet the minute Tom said he could go, then fairly sprinted to the door, or at least as well as he could while doing that strange, awkward side-step to avoid turning his back. His plate of biscuits sat untouched on the desk.
It hadn’t all been a waste, Tom thought grimly, doing his best to siphon hot cocoa out of the plant with his wand. Around the third time Harry had glanced nervously at his hand, Tom had noticed something he’d previously overlooked, not having been up close to the boy until tonight: he was wearing glamours. Two, in fact, one on his hand and another almost directly in the center of his forehead. Tom saw this frequently in his students; he’d had to deliberately turn down his natural sensitivity to magic, to avoid going mad from all the teenagers poorly disguising their acne and love bites. The illusion spells on Harry’s forehead could well be just another inconvenient zit. But on his hand…combined with the fact that the boy seemed to have entirely forgotten the proper way to hold a quill since last June, it painted a disturbing picture. One Tom had seen before: the “traditional” pureblood punishment of breaking the hands of disobedient heirs. When he’d first heard about it from Richard Lestrange at the age of thirteen, it had been one of the few times in Tom’s life that he’d had to admit that sometimes wizards could be just as brutal as Muggles.
He didn’t want to think that James Potter would do such a thing; the elder Potter had been a good student of Tom’s in his own right (if a troublemaker and a showoff) and a noble Gryffindor to the core, going on to become a high-ranking Auror. Not that wizards sworn to uphold the law weren’t also capable of evil, of course, but still…
An Auror.
Yes, James Potter was well-known for his prowess at hunting Dark wizards, wasn’t he? And according to Minerva, Harry had expressed his full-throated enthusiasm for following in his father’s footsteps at his career advice meeting last term. He certainly had the grades for it, too. But the academic requirements were demanding, and the job itself even more so. Plenty of students had thought it looked exciting and prestigious at fifteen, only to choose a different path before their NEWTs or even midway through the Auror Academy. Could Harry have become one of those students? Had he seen or heard something over the summer, in the news or perhaps from his father, about how dangerous his line of work could really be? Had it made him nervous and fearful, but reluctant to admit it lest he disappoint his parents and teachers?
It would explain the wariness (“constant vigilance”, in the words of one Auror who hadn’t retired early but really probably should have), the stressed and sleepless appearance, and his extra apprehension around Defense class and its professor. Maybe not the glamours, but there were any number of marks a teenage boy might want to cover up.
The thought that Harry may be suffering nothing more painful than an identity crisis was a heartening one, but over the next two nights, Tom remained stymied in his efforts to broach the topic. By Sunday, he had caved and given Harry a regular, inefficient quill and inkwell, and was on the verge of calling in Pomona in a last-ditch attempt to save his beleaguered houseplant (the boy was no less suspicious of Butterbeer or chamomile tea). But inspiration struck that afternoon, when Tom was catching up on his correspondence with a few of his prized former pupils. He wasn’t about to go hosting some thrice-damned “Riddle Club”, but there were a handful of exceptional wixen who had managed to clear his high bar and become genuine friends over the years.
He was just finishing a missive advising Regulus Black on a career opportunity in Italy (really, the boy’s hero-worship of Tom had been charming at fifteen but the man was nearly thirty-five now and still consulted him on every decision. There just didn’t seem to be any way to dissuade him, short of maybe murdering his beloved house-elf) when he recalled another young man, a sixth year himself not too long ago, who had nearly buckled under the pressure of his father’s expectations and his peers’ admiration. Who had spent many a not-so-punishing “detention” in Tom’s office, leaning on his professor’s support during one of the most difficult times in his life.
He dashed off a letter to this recent graduate at once, asking permission to share a bit of his story with another student who was struggling similarly. Now a trainee Healer and as dutiful in responding to letters as he was in everything else, the man replied in the affirmative the very next day. On Monday night, Tom came prepared to let Harry know he was not alone in questioning his future.
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It was his fourth detention with Voldemort (Professor Riddle? Harry went back and forth in his mind about how to think of the man. On the one hand, mentally referring to him as Voldemort helped Harry remember his true, monstrous nature, no matter what persona he was putting on. On the other, it was important to always call him Professor Riddle out loud; Godric knew what the man would do to him if he let slip a “Yes, Voldemort” during DADA class.), and Harry had developed a familiar, if not comfortable, routine. So far, he had managed to never turn his back, avoid getting Legilimized, and slyly dispose of all the deceptively aromatic drinks he had been offered with the Dark Lord none the wiser. He wanted to get a sample from one of the mugs at some point, though; he needed to know what was in that stuff. Unlike Umbridge, Voldemort didn’t seem to be using Veritaserum; he never asked invasive questions after Harry took a fake drink, or ever, really. Just occasional queries about how Harry’s summer had been, what his family was up to lately, or how he was handling his courseload. And when Harry gave answers that were barely more than grunts (he couldn’t very well say “Not well after your minions killed my godfather, sir” or “School is much easier when you’re not actively trying to kill me”), he accepted them without pushing. Almost like an ordinary, or daresay even good, teacher. Almost like Lupin, for Merlin’s sake.
…Did he really just think that?
The Blood Quill that was not actually a Blood Quill was still a mystery, and Voldemort had now stopped offering him the ominous writing implement. Harry would’ve liked to get a better look at it, but he still felt he had come out on top in that particular skirmish; Voldemort had seemed to want nothing more than to be asked questions about it, and looked extremely put out when Harry was silent on the matter.
All of which was to say, he had allowed himself to get far too complacent by the time the Dark Lord began the next phase of his mind game.
”Mr. Potter,” Voldemort said on Monday night, taking a bite of one of the extremely tempting-looking golden biscuits he always had lying around, “I wondered if I might tell you a story tonight.”
”Hrrm,” Harry said, glaring down at the second-year pop quiz he was going over. Surely he hadn’t been this clueless at twelve.
”It’s about another talented student of mine,” the ‘Professor’ continued, seeming to take that as the most affirmation he would get. “A young wizard who was adored by his parents and looked up to by his Housemates. Who wanted to live up to all those expectations by working as an Auror or at another prestigious Ministry position. But during his sixth year, he felt like he had gotten in far over his head, and confided in me about his fears and insecurities.”
Harry’s mind raced. What the hell was this, some roundabout pitch to join the Dark side? A kinder, gentler version of Voldemort’s attempt in first year to strong-arm him over the Stone?
”Eventually, he was able to find a new path, one that better suited his natural temperament and inclinations…”
Ah, it seemed Harry had been right on the money. Had the Dark Lord somehow sussed out that the Hat had offered him Slytherin?
“I contacted that student recently, and he kindly agreed to let me share some of his story with you. You might be surprised at his identity; I’m sure you remember him. I am speaking of your fellow Seeker and the Hogwarts Triwizard Champion, Cedric Diggory.”
Every inch of skin on Harry’s body suddenly went numb and cold. The well-appointed office became a chilly graveyard, and “Professor Riddle”’s smooth voice twisted into something high and cold—
Kill the spare.
”W-what?” Harry was proud that his voice, though hoarse, only revealed a fraction of the shock and horror he was feeling.
The monster actually had the gall to smile. “You wouldn’t have guessed, would you? You remind me a lot of him, Harry. Both House prefects, Quidditch captains, only children of parents with prestigious titles—“
Harry heard a loud bang, and it wasn’t until he felt the sting in his palm that he realized he had slammed his hand down onto the mahogany desk. His untouched cup of Earl Grey spilled half its contents without even making it to the plant. The windows rattled in their frames, and several books flew free of the shelves and hit the floor a few meters away with heavy thuds.
”Don’t talk about Cedric,” he snarled, sounding unrecognizable even to himself. “And do not—talk—about—MY PARENTS!”
He drew his wand, and only managed to avoid cursing a “teacher” by channeling all his fury into a Drying Charm on the desk, which came out so overpowered that it made the wood grain peel and curl. As Harry used every last bit of his self-control to stay in his seat and not give the bastard the satisfaction of fleeing, the room gave a final shudder, and a pretentious stone carving of a snake tipped over on the mantelpiece.
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Well. Well.
The Diggory boy was certainly a sore spot, and the family even more so. It seemed that Tom’s suspicions were very close to the mark. Too close; he had far overshot putting Potter at ease, and only succeeded in putting his guard up higher.
Tom sighed as he righted his office with a few flicks of his wand. They had passed the rest of the hour in icy silence. He would undoubtedly have to go over the tests Harry had been grading himself; from the expression on the boy’s face, he was liable to have given half the class automatic T’s for mixing up a hex and a jinx. Even if Tom wasn’t about to let Harry out of his remaining detentions (if anything, he was being uncharacteristically merciful by letting his outburst slide), it was very unlikely they would bear any more fruit as far as trust between them went.
No matter. Tom wouldn’t have been a Professor—or a Slytherin—worth his title if he didn’t have plenty of other methods for gathering information on students in need of his aid. It was time to pay a visit to an old friend.