Archive of Our Own

"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."  - Sun Tzu

They meet in the Astronomy Tower, in the dead of another sleepless night.

See, Tom likes a twist of meaning. Ambiguity has its uses for one who knows how to wield it. It lets him weave significance skillfully into being in ways that suit his purposes. The previous sentence is an example of it. They meet. It’s convenient. It seems to imply either a chance event or a consequence of prearranged agreement, and this, well…

This is neither of those things. The fact no longer stings his pride like it once did.

So they meet in the Astronomy tower.

When Tom arrives, Harry Evans is sitting at the edge of the world.

He’s a lonesome figure against the night sky, the Hogwarts grounds hundreds of feet beneath him. His legs dangle in the air casually, tucked in the wide spaces between the railings, in a way that makes Tom feel vaguely ill. He is a companion to the cluster of stars, an interstellar anomaly. They blink and flicker in his presence, like they’re attempting to reach out.

There’s something, in between the lines, to be said about celestial bodies. Their behavior. The movement.

Harry pretends to not notice his presence at first, but Tom knows better. He ended the disillusionment charm as soon as he reached the very top of the stairs, letting only the silencing one he’d placed on his shoes remain as he closed the distance between them with calculated strides. Tom knows he knows. There’s no room for doubt in him. He knows Harry’s aware of him in the very same way Tom is constantly aware of Harry.

Something, dare he think it, childlike in him says it might be magic. Wonderful, strange magic. Something beyond them they can’t escape. It’s the part of him that used to sit in his cramped room at Wool’s, simmering in powerful disdain and resentment for the inferior beings that surrounded him, hungering, craving something unnamed. The one that lit up in a rush of anticipation once he was presented with the reality of Hogwarts and magic, only to soon look around and come to the conclusion that, no, he would not find that here either.

Tom hasn’t found that now either, exactly. He’s found something inexplicably more. He’s reluctant to name it, even now, so all-encompassing it is. But he knows it like he knows his own magic.

Then again, it might simply be one of the illusions one is more willing to believe in the dark, when the laws of the universe don’t quite seem to apply.

Tom moves to stand parallel to where Harry is sitting on the heightened ledge. He leans gracefully against one of the pillars, facing Harry’s profile. Just slightly behind him, just out of sight enough to keep Harry itching. He does have wonderful instincts, Tom thinks with a strange warmth, and he knows it’s a poor idea not to keep track of a predator’s movements.

It’s like a caress, the way the moonlight touches upon his features. His golden skin is tinted a soft blue, hair as dark and unruly as ever. The angles of his face sharpened by the shadows, the curves softened by the little light there is. Posture casual, thin wrists bent as he leans back, away from the abyss. Lashes thick and dark over striking eyes that stubbornly look away. Tom takes him in slowly, all the dark and light of him, the way an art connoisseur would study a complex painting.

Tom waits. The seconds turn into a minute, and a minute turns into two. He says nothing, doesn’t move an inch. He’s burning to, but he won’t. It’s all about restraint in their little games. Patience. A fine line between human and animal. At least until just the right moment where they can free themselves of it.

When Harry is the first to speak, the victory is small, but Tom basks in it anyways.

He sighs very deeply first, the ever-present tiredness in his every motion.

“Riddle,” he says, still not looking at him, gaze fixed on absolutely nothing. His voice is soft and hoarse. Tom hasn’t seen him since lunch. Not for classes afterwards and not for dinner. He wonders if this is the first time he’s spoken since. “Leave.”

“Such a warm welcome,” Tom says pleasantly, even though he tenses slightly at the way Harry speaks. It’s not unusual for him to get into certain… moods from time to time, withdrawing even from his so-called friends and retreating into his own head. It’s always difficult to persuade him back on these occasions.

“It isn’t one,” Harry says. He turns his head abruptly, and Tom’s breath catches.

His eyes are cold, hard steel. There’s a new expression on his face, one Tom’s never seen. He drinks it in greedily even as apprehension builds in his gut.

“I’m not in the mood, Riddle.” Tom’s eyes narrow slightly at the venomous tone he says his name with. “So you can stop stalking me and fuck right off.”

It fails to infuriate him as much as it did a few months ago, but it does irritate him, which is certainly Harry’s goal. His words aren’t so removed from reality, and even though Tom has somewhat come to terms with their particular… dynamic, he knows Harry is aware that this is a bit of a sore spot for him.

This meaning that Tom followed Harry up here. Not for potential valuable intelligence as he justified at the beginning, not for the practicality of strategy, but simply because he wanted to. Because he can’t help himself.

Like a dog, Harry’s words speak into his mind. Bitterness twists his mouth into a scowl.

He can’t quite pinpoint when it became a regular occurrence, this arrangement of sorts, but it goes like this: Harry gets to delude himself into thinking he’s the victim and that he doesn’t expect or enjoy Tom’s presence, like this is all against his will. Tom gets Harry. Simple as that.

It’s unbecoming, but this is their pattern, and he can barely summon a feeble flicker of indignation before giving in: Harry running, Tom chasing. Only Harry hadn’t been running, not genuinely, for some time now. Until today.

“Oh?” Tom drawls. “Terribly sorry. Should we reschedule?”

Harry turns away from him, face twisting with some unnamed emotion.

“Sure,” he says, letting out a short, bitter huff of laughter, shaking his head at himself. His relaxed posture, clearly feigned, is beginning to melt away, his shoulders tensing. “How does about fifty years from now sound to you?”

Tom gives Harry an indulgent smile even as his insides are set ablaze with frustration. The way he said it… It’s almost like it meant something, like a private joke, and there are few things Tom hates more than not understanding something. It’s forever a battle with this boy, and despite the fact that it’s this very thing that makes it so interesting, Tom wants –

Tom wants.

“Lovely,” Tom says flippantly, and he shifts closer to where Harry’s sitting, hovering almost behind him. Close enough that he can feel the heat of his body, but not quite touching. “I’ll be sure to put it in my schedule.”

“Riddle,” Harry exhales harshly, shoulders crumbling. He runs a hand through his hair. It’s even more of a disaster than usual. “I’m not playing. I don’t want to see your face. Leave.”

Tom coolly considers this for a moment. Then he comes to an easy decision. Snakelike, Tom’s hand darts out to wrap his fingers around Harry’s wrist, eliciting a startled yelp as he turns the boy around and pulls him into Tom with unrestrained violence, making him fall forward out of his previous sitting position to land on his feet so that he’s trapped between the ledge and Tom.

“I’ve been told it’s quite a pleasant face,” Tom says conversationally. He grabs hold of Harry’s other wrist when Harry goes for his wand, pinning both between their chests.

Harry very near growls, struggling against Tom and kicking out his legs with a strength that his thin frame belies. “Let me fucking go, you condescending arsehole!”

“Don’t be difficult, now” Tom chides, just to rub it in. He barely winces as Harry lands a particularly vicious kick to his shin before he traps his legs as well. He could use magic, but then again, this is much more… stimulating.

All at once, Harry goes limp in his arms, muscles relaxing abruptly as he ceases his struggles. Tom doesn’t lower his guard for a second.

Besides, he doesn’t want to cross that particular threshold just yet, or the situation might get out of hand. Harry seems to be somewhat playing by the rules for the moment, reluctant as he may be.

“Let go,” Harry states calmly, eyes narrowed and unyielding. “Now, Riddle.”

“What is it?” Tom asks, not bothering to keep the curiosity out of his voice. He tightens his grip on Harry’s wrists, pulling him closer to his own body. “You’re upset.”

“None of your business,” Harry spits out.

“I know something happened,” Tom muses, ignoring him. “You are being very obvious about it. Why, you even reverted back to the old last name habit. Very mature, Harry. And not at all pointless.”

“Let go.” 

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid we’re at a standstill.”

“Are we?”

There’s the telltale thrum of Harry’s magic, volatile and hot. Tom smiles at the challenge, letting his own reach out. Their magic becomes nearly tangible as they intertwine, twisting and pressing against each other. Tom can feel his body reacting to the proximity, his breaths getting heavier. Harry’s face is so close to his, eyes half-lidded and completely focused on him, equally as affected by the intoxicating feeling of their magic mingling.

“Tom,” Harry starts, voice low and a little bit breathy.

It happens in half an instant, and really, Tom should have expected it. But Harry doesn’t make a habit out of resistance these days. Not usually, anyhow.

Tom loosens his hold on Harry just the slightest as the space between them lessens. It’s all Harry needs. He has him at wandpoint in less than a heartbeat. Tom smiles at him, wide and feral.

“That’s a new one. A little beneath you to resort to such tactics.” He pauses for effect. The tension hasn’t lessened. “Though, then again, maybe not. You do like to fight dirty.” He lets the insinuation hang, enjoying the way Harry bristles at his suggestive tone. He goes to brush a misbehaving strand of hair back when Harry’s wand digs deeper into his jugular.

“Hands off,” he snaps.

“You don’t want to touch me,” Tom says. It’s not a question.

“You really are a prodigy, Tom. How’d you figure?”

He frowns. “Why don’t you want to touch me?”

Harry gapes disbelievingly at him. “Do you want an itemized list?”

“Funny,” Tom deadpans. “I thought we were past this. I don’t recall you having a problem with it yesterday—“

Despite the poor lighting, he can see a pretty flush spreading across Harry’s cheeks. Maybe he can feel it too, because he gets even angrier. “Well, today’s another day, isn’t it? New beginnings and all that.”

Tom hums consideringly. “Then I suppose it would bother you if I did this?” He manages to sneak a hand up his rumpled shirt, against his bare waist.

Harry slaps his hand away before it can do more than brush the skin, eyes flashing indignantly. “And if I said it did? What if I said that your touch makes me sick to my stomach? That I want to get as far away as humanly possible from you and never have to set eyes on you again? Would that hurt your feelings, Tom?” Harry mocks, cruel in the way he only lets himself be around Tom. Tom doesn’t react beyond a raised eyebrow. “Didn’t think so. You can’t hurt what doesn’t exist.”

Tom lets his smile turn just a little cruel. More genuine. “Careful, Harry. One would almost think you’re bitter.”

Harry shakes his head, scoffing and finally lowering his wand. He pushes past Tom and it stings. It feels like a dismissal.

“What about? It’s not like I haven’t made my peace with you being a complete sociopath,” he mutters, coming to a stop before the ledge once again, looking out towards the grounds below.

What the hell is he looking at? Tom follows, frustration mounting.

“And yet here you are,” he says as he settles beside Harry. It’s the right thing to say.

Harry makes an indignant sound in the back of his throat.

“Yeah. Here I am,” Harry spits, turning his head to glare at him. “Because last I checked, I got here first, and this is virtually the farthest away you can get from the dungeons – where you should be – while remaining on Hogwarts grounds. I came here to be alone.”

It might seem like a sound argument if Tom didn’t know what he knows. Harry Evans – half blood, for all purposes foreign, war orphan Harry Evans, who has been in Hogwarts for less than a year – knows the castle like he’d know the body of an old lover. Shortcuts, passageways, moving statues. Places not even Tom knows, he knows. Harry must have known Tom would look for him in the Astronomy Tower. They have met here too many times for Tom not to come at the very least to cross the place off the list.

Harry, on some level, had wanted to be found. 

“Is that why you chose this place?” Tom asks, not saying any of this out loud. “Because it was the farthest you could get from me? A bit predictable, if you ask me.”

A shadow passes over Harry’s face and he looks at Tom with slightly too wide eyes. It's fleeting, but unmistakable. Harry feels so loudly. Tom absorbs it all greedily before his expression settles into distaste once again.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Harry replies sourly, tearing his eyes away from Tom to continue staring off into space. The corners of his lips tug down as he thinks on it. “Nevermind. That’s probably too much to ask from you.”

Liar, Tom thinks, almost fond. Not for the first time, he wishes he could just delve into the other’s mind and rip all its secrets from him forcefully. He has imagined the scene vividly. Perhaps there would be tears in Harry’s pretty eyes as every one of his dirty little secrets was laid bare for Tom. Perhaps hatred too, and defiance, always defiance. 

Except he can’t. He tried, of course, the second his interest was piqued by the strange transfer student. He had never seen such occlumency shields before and hasn’t since in any other person, including the purebloods who were trained in the mind arts since infants. He couldn’t even get a glimpse. It’s curious, because he wouldn’t have guessed Harry to be particularly gifted in the subject. It contradicts his very nature, too brash and straightforward for the subtlety of the mind arts. Then again, he’s since learned the many layers that make Harry Evans, and he is in Slytherin for a reason.

Power is power, a voice hisses in the forefront of his mind.

“I’m glad you know where to draw the line,” he attempts, hoping humor might soften the lines of Harry’s face, the strain in his voice. It works, to an extent. He lets out a tiny huff of dry laughter, shaking his head, but he doesn’t turn to look at Tom.

Tom frowns. He’s getting impatient and more than a little irritated at Harry’s listless, defeated posture. The way he’s just standing there, looking away from Tom as if it’s easy to. At that distant air to him, like he’s lost in his memories and far from here, somewhere Tom can’t touch.

Look at me! He wants to scream, his gaze a scorching imprint on Harry’s profile. Only me. Always me.

The silence continues to hang over them for long moments, filling the empty space between them. He’s about to say something to make him do so, at least with anger if not laughter, when Harry speaks again.

“Magic,” he starts, eyes fixed on the sky, “is a really wonderful thing.” Tom watches, enraptured, as Harry moves his fingers absently and little sparks of light, akin to stars, appear out of thin air and start to encircle his hand. “I don’t know much about muggle science. But I remember they said once at school… Energy can’t be created or destroyed. Only changed or transformed or something.” Tom’s breath catches when Harry finally turns to him, dropping his hand and letting the sparks fizzle out into nothing. “Magic is energy, right? So where does it come from? Why do only we have it?”

“You can no sooner answer that than answer why we're even alive,” Tom says, but it’s something he has pondered himself. He would have liked to say that it was because they were special. Fundamentally superior. But he is surrounded by far too much mediocrity and far too many inbred sycophants to even make that argument for argument's sake.

“Yeah…” Harry drifts off, gaze going unfocused. “Because we’re energy too. Like, the smallest parts of us are nothing until suddenly they are something that can touch and see and feel. Isn’t that odd?”

Tom keeps silent, sensing that he doesn’t want an answer. He’s proven right when he carries on.

“Why does it happen? My… My friend told me about this muggle philosopher. I think he was religious or something. She said that he thought that everything had to be moved by something else and it would go on forever.”

“Aquinas,” Tom says. “The first mover argument. He used it to prove God’s existence,” he drawls, dragging the word out mockingly.

Harry bites his lip, frowning as he thinks this over. Tom’s eyes linger there. “Yeah. That might not be it, but everything else makes sense. Don’t you think there’s something?”

“I didn’t think you would be so interested in philosophical quandaries.”

“Shut up. I’m not. It’s just…”

He stays silent for a few seconds, already retreating back into his own mind.

“It matters little to me,” Tom says, desperate to pull him back. “The world is a place of chaos. If there’s anything resembling a God he’s far removed from it. It only matters what I fashion myself into with what it offers me. And what it doesn’t, I’ll take.”

“But that’s just it,” Harry says ardently. “Everything we do and- and think and want. Something came before it, caused it. It might even be something we ourselves did, but can we even trust that? We were influenced by things outside of us. It’s like everything is written out. Like…”

“Like fate?” He says it like a tease, with an unimpressed tone, not to be taken seriously. It’s clear Harry thinks differently.

He raises his chin, defiant, always defiant. “And if it is? Think. What makes us what we are? Do we truly have any control over it?”

In a way, Tom would always be that penniless orphan, no matter how much he ascended in life. Scrappy and hungry. Fervent eyes locked on that which he did not have, stopping at nothing to obtain it, never loosening his grip once he had it in his grasp.

He thinks of his mother, a pathetic excuse for a witch who couldn’t even survive childbirth. His father, a filthy muggle dead at his own hand. Both small and meaningless. What did it say that Tom existed because of them?

“I am my own maker,” Tom says out loud. He means it, despite and because of it all.

Amazingly, Harry smiles. It is knowing, in a way, and exasperated and also warm. He rolls his eyes, relaxing in a way he hadn’t the entire time Tom had been here. The weight seems to lift off him, leaving him bright-eyed and looking younger. “Of course you are. Trust you to reduce the universe’s mysteries to your narcissism.”

“It hardly classifies as narcissism. It’s the truth.”

Harry scoffs good-naturedly. “You’re delusional.”

“You're a fool.”

“At least I don’t make an arse out of myself every single time I open my mouth.”

Tom bristles. “One day your mouth is going to get you into more trouble than you can handle.”

Harry looks up at him from underneath his lashes, a mockery of subservience. “Is that a promise,” he murmurs, “--my lord?”

Tom wants to wrap his hands around his neck and squeeze. It used to be a recurrent fantasy. It would be a sight for sore eyes, watching life melt away from him, someone so impossibly alive. Lips falling open in a broken plea, eyebrows furrowing in agony, vibrant eyes locked on his own as they slowly become dull… Tom wouldn’t blink once, to take it all in. Harry, his to hurt, to maim, to kill.

He would, if he were being smart about this. He won’t.  He doesn’t want to know whether he would even be able to.

Tom scowls. “You are—“ exquisite, beautiful, mine — “a pain.”

This makes Harry smile. It’s a jagged thing, the edges of it deprecating yet enticing all the same. The lightness doesn’t fade, though, a teasing light in his eyes. It’s mean, just how Tom likes him.

“That make you a masochist, then?” Harry asks. He tilts his head to the side tauntingly, and Tom’s eyes flicker to the expanse of his exposed throat.

Yes, he thinks. Yes, it does.

“And you say I think too highly of myself,” Tom drawls.

Harry rolls his eyes, ever undignified. Snorts. “You do.”

“Only because it’s well deserved.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “You’re such a pretentious prick. You sure you wouldn’t rather be having this conversation alone? Back in the dorms? In front of a mirror?”

“Tempting,” Tom says.

“Is it?”

“No.”

The smile Harry gives is private and small. It doesn’t last long. The momentary lull in the conversation is all that’s needed for the displaced weight to come back to rest on Harry’s shoulders. Tom knows distraction is out of the question for now. He might as well damn the subtle approach all the way.

“Are you going to tell me what’s the problem now?” He attempts, aiming for levity.

Harry tenses. “No.”

Tom glares. He’s not used to this. Before Harry, he had never been reduced to this before in his life, poking uselessly at someone and asking about their feelings. He has half a mind to leave and talk to him come morning, once he’s stopped wallowing futilely in his emotions.

The thought evaporates when Harry turns to face him head on, gaze meeting Tom’s.

He looks haunted.

A spike of panic flares in Tom. It places a gravity on this moment that hadn’t been there before. His instincts are telling him that something is happening here, this is important.

“Tom,” he says, and his voice breaks.

“Harry,” he answers, caught off guard. He doesn’t know where this vulnerability came from. He hoards it greedily. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He closes the distance in a second, looking down on Harry closely, taking in every flicker of his expression. The moment builds; a crescendo reaching it's peak before falling apart.

“I’m so tired,” Harry confesses. The words are being ripped out of him, like they’ve had time to simmer and ferment and turn acidic. “And I’m angry. I want to blame… someone. But I can’t. I tried. It’s too complicated. I wish I didn’t understand.”

Tom doesn’t understand, but he responds to the part that he knows like he knows his own name. “If you want to be angry, you should be. The ones who have wronged you should pay.”

Harry sighs. “You don’t understand.“

“I understand that we can do anything we want. Anyone who stands in our way is a fool.”

Harry laughs, sharp and humorless. “Just like you did what you wanted? You killed your family. Because you were angry.”

“They were nothing,” Tom spits.

“They were disappointing,” Harry corrects viciously. “You blamed them because they weren’t what you imagined and because they did not want you.”

Tom seethes. “You cannot think to comprehend–”

“I see you, Tom Riddle. I always have,” Harry hisses, slipping into Parseltongue in an instant. It stops Tom in his tracks, leaves him breathless like every time he hears it, and he comes to the conclusion that he is right. Tom Riddle is seen. “The world isn’t kind to people like us.”

People like us. They are, aren’t they? Birds of a single feather. 

“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters,” Tom says, leaving no room for argument. He has never been as certain. “You and I, we will do great things. Everyone else is small. God is small. The world is small. It’s just you and I.”

Harry shakes his head furiously. “It’s not that simple. You can't just put yourself above everything.”

“I can, and I will. I will lay the world down at your feet,” Tom promises, sealing their fate in the serpent’s tongue. He’s no longer in control here, and he can’t help the words that tumble out of his mouth as if he were under Veritaserum.

Harry looks up at him. His lips are just slightly parted, his eyes full of a stifled kind of heat.  It pulls Tom forward, and Harry places a hand on his chest to keep him from getting too close. It does little. They’re already far too close in every way that matters. There’s no backtracking from this. “I don’t want the world, Tom,” he says, voice thin yet full of conviction, “I just want it to leave me the fuck alone.”

“That’s your heart’s desire, then?” Tom challenges, sneering. “A boring, mediocre life with a little wife and  a couple of little children running around a little house in the suburbs?”

“And what if it is?” Harry challenges right back, offended at the insult of this nightmarish fantasy.

Tom scoffs. “As if you could ever endure such an existence.”

“You don’t know me, Tom,” he says. “Not really. You don’t know what I want.”

“I know you, Harry Evans.” His words are fast, feverish, conveying the urgency in him. “I would know your eyes blind, your voice deaf. I would know the shape of your very bones if the skin peeled off your body. I may not know all the little secrets you like to keep, but I know your soul.”

Harry is stunned silent for a moment, eyes wide and lips parted. They look at Tom as if they see the core of him, and aren’t sure it’s a pleasant sight. He composes himself a few beats later, scoffing softly and frowning to the side. “Yeah? And what does my soul look like?”

Tom never looks away, not even for a fraction of a second. “Like mine.”

“A mirror.” Harry huffs, tilting his head to the side. The casual, curious gesture belies the intensity in his eyes. “Is that what I am to you?”

“Perhaps,” Tom considers. “But also, more.”

“More,” Harry echoes. Narrows his eyes. “What more?”

Tom feels his eyes grow heavy and lidded the longer he looks. He smiles tauntingly at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Harry’s face falls, just slightly. Tom sees it. “I don’t,” he grits out, starting to push Tom away.

Tom doesn’t let him. He grabs a thin wrist, his grip perhaps too tight, and pulls Harry back to him. He cuts off the beginnings of Harry’s protests before the moment can be shattered.

“Everything.” It’s like cutting open his chest. His heart is a bloody, sinister thing. “Everything,” he says again.

He doesn’t know who moves first. He just sees those green eyes flash like the killing curse, inhuman and beautiful like the explosion of a great star, and it must strike true because one moment he is upright and the next he is falling, falling, falling into him–

Harry’s mouth against his own is like magic made touch. Tom is soon lost to the sensation. They push against each other, taking and taking and giving little. This is one more battlefield for them.

There’s nothing that feels better than this, except doing this while he’s inside Harry. Tom loves sex with Harry, but this falls into a category of its own. There’s something intoxicating about kissing Harry. It feels like connection, like pure, unbridled intimacy. He will never tire of kissing Harry. He’s certain of it.

It doesn’t last long. Tom doesn’t even have time to react when Harry pulls away, so abrupt is the motion. He curses as he pants, immediately putting distance between them.

“Fuck,” Harry says. He runs a hand through his nest of a hair and repeats, “Fuck.”

Tom watches him pace, hands twitching with the need to touch again.

Harry turns to him suddenly, frantic. “You really need to leave.”

“I won’t.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He’s getting tired of their games. He moves closer. Harry doesn’t try to escape again.

Harry’s face twists into a mask of polite confusion, the mockery chafing against something raw and impatient in Tom. “Do I? Do tell, Tom, if you know my own mind better than me, I would absolutely love to h–”

Before the meaningless words can keep falling out of Harry’s impertinent mouth, he cuts him off with a sharp shove. Harry makes a soft startled sound as his back hits the hard surface of a column. Tom’s hand tingles with the accomplished desire to touch where it is splayed against Harry’s chest.

“Don’t,” Tom warns. “I’m not in the mood to play anymore, Harry.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Harry grits out, indignantly grabbing Tom’s wrist and displacing his hand. “I thought it was just me attempting to repel your psychotic stalker tendencies and you persisting. Shockingly.”

“Does it get tiring? Pretending to be so righteous all the time, lying to yourself again and again about your true nature and wants–”

Harry pushes him aside with a single forceful shove, escaping Tom and starting to pace the floors again.

“Stop it! Just stop, shut up.”

“Why?” Tom presses meanly, starting to walk towards him again almost without noticing. “Can’t you stomach the truth? Is it so terrible to fathom that you might not be as noble and–”

“I’m leaving!” Harry yells.

For a long moment, neither says a thing. Tom can’t even form a thought, can’t think beyond the ringing in his ears and the way his blood ran cold at the mere sound of those two words.

“...Excuse me?” Tom says carefully. He doesn’t feel as if he’s the one uttering the words. The world seems very far away.

Harry swallows, but when he speaks his voice is firm. His chin is raised. “I have to leave.”

Tom’s lungs expand and contract mechanically. He stares blankly at the way Harry licks his lips nervously.

“Explain.”

Harry blinks, swallowing again and looking to the side. “I… I couldn’t go back. You know I never even wanted to leave but. I was forced. I wasn’t allowed to return. But now… things are different now. They need me. And Dumbledore–”

Tom hissed a curse at the name. Dumbledore. Of course he did this. Tom would relish the day he killed him.

Harry glared at him as if he could hear the unvoiced thought. “Dumbledore,” he continued purposefully, “relayed a message to me today. I can go back now. I have to.”

Tom considered these words. He was slowly coming back to himself from his initial reaction, keen mind already going through a myriad of strategies and plans. Harry wouldn’t leave. He could not. He just had to think rationally about a way to make him stay.

“In case you have forgotten, there’s a war out there. How could you possibly leave? It’s the most idiotic thing to have ever crossed your mind. Truly, you have outdone yourself.”

“It’s exactly because there’s a war that I have to go back! To–”

“To what, get yourself killed?” Tom interrupts, a sneer on his face.

“To help,” Harry corrects fiercely, scowling.

“Help,” Tom repeats mockingly. “I don’t understand just what you wish to accomplish, but let me assure you–”

“Because you don’t know responsibility! Or what it is to have people depend on you. You don’t know what it is to care about anyone but yourself. How could you understand?”

“And what do you call this?” He says in derision, gesturing between them. “Do you want me to say it? Is that it, Harry? Do you enjoy inflicting this– torture upon me? Do you want me to name it so you can feel better about yourself?”

Harry laughs harshly. “You said it yourself. I’m a mirror. This- this thing isn’t love, Tom. You care about what I have to give you. About possessing me. You don’t care about me. That’s not love.”

“You’re wrong,” Tom hisses vehemently. “Did you develop selective hearing sometime in the last ten minutes? You are everything, Harry Evans.”

Harry is shaking his head before he even finishes the sentence. He looks like he’s trying to convince himself, and Tom has never hated his stubbornness more than now.

“I’m not, though. Do you want me more than you want power? Immortality? Would you give them up?”

Tom doesn’t deign to respond. He will not choose. Not when he’s certain he can have them and Harry. He closes the distance between them in an instant, cradling Harry’s face in his hands, resting their foreheads together in a display of unusual gentleness. Harry lets him, looking abnormally fragile. “You belong with me. Deny it. Tell me you don’t feel it. We’re meant to be together.”

Harry closes his eyes. He looks older at that moment, weary and worn down, when he says quietly: “I know.”

The sound of their breathing is loud.

“You will not leave,” Tom declares.

When Harry opens his eyes, Tom knows the fight isn’t over.

“Which is why we’ll meet again. This isn’t the end.”

He has a refusal at the tip of his tongue, but Harry beats him to it. “Tom,” he says, buries his fingers in his hair and pulls Tom’s mouth to his.

Tom has gone his entire life without this. He will not give it up, not for however long.

They end up against the wall once again, Harry pressed between Tom and the hard stone. He makes soft sounds, little whimpers and low moans, as Tom works his mouth open and thrusts a leg between Harry’s own. He clings to Tom as if he can’t bear the thought of letting go, and returns every bit of violence he receives. They stay there until they are breathing hard against each other, Tom kissing and biting his way down Harry’s neck.

At first, Tom thought he could keep Harry Evans like one of his prized possessions. Somewhere in the transition from interest to obsession to this all-encompassing devotion. Tom had wanted him, as soon as he’d seen his potential. He’d wanted that raw power, that fire all to himself, but couldn’t fathom him being more than a glorified trophy or favored pet. Something to keep. Entertaining, but ultimately irrelevant in the bigger picture of Tom’s grand plans.

He was wrong.

Harry makes the slightest pressure on his shoulders, and Tom immediately knows what he wants.

Tom doesn’t know himself. He will give him anything he wants.

He falls to his knees.

The way Harry looks at him, like he’s dizzy with power– Tom will bring the entire world to its knees before him, including himself. This feels like worship, like religion. It should concern him, such loss of control, but it only serves to make him as feral and ravenous as a bloodhound. He’s always been hungry. He has never been this hungry.

“You will never leave,” Tom says as he works on Harry’s trousers. It’s a fact he will make into existence. “I will kill you before letting you leave.”

“You won’t,” Harry says, almost softly, so certain of himself. His fingers run through his hair somewhat soothingly, somewhat violently. His nails scratch roughly at his scalp. “But maybe after.”