Happy belated birthday to Tom Marvolo Riddle
The foyer was dingy and dilapidated as foyers in abandoned houses so often were, and through it footsteps reverberated off the walls, empty as it was, rendered unable to filter out the sound. The Riddle House sat in this echo for a while, and Tom stood and listened as the silence fell after it, prepared to settle again as it had been for the past few decades. His eyes met the rug, and he scuffed a foot across it, dust kicking into the air, joining the sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows. They weren’t stained glass the last time he’d been here. An owner from slightly more recent years must have been behind the decision, and Tom was glad that they made it. It suited the place, yes, but it also granted some privacy.
Stood just past the threshold of a place he had never been invited into, he felt like an intruder.
He had been once.
He set his bag down, and the dust that had just begun to settle swam into motion again. He cleared the air with a flick of the wrist, and then the rug too until the color looked warm and untinted.
Softly, there came a knock, and Tom paused, felt a flash of warmfriendwelcome flicker across his awareness, and let the door to the house swing open to reveal the only person that could have known where to find him.
“Harry,” said Tom. He would have been startled many years ago, and then angry. But that was then. Now he felt only a sense of confusion. “What are you doing here?”
Where have you been? he wanted to say. Why now? It felt too much to ask. They had not parted gently. This reappearance was fragile, and Tom refused to be the one to break it, not even to escape a stalemate. There had been a time where Tom was sick of stalemates. They generated boredom generously. It was painful to sit in them for too long, but for this, Tom would.
Harry shrugged. He still hadn’t stepped past the stoop. “I kept thinking you’d cave and I’d wake up to a paper printing about mass murder.”
“I said I wouldn’t,” said Tom.
It didn’t even annoy him anymore, to have to repeat it. The chorus was run. They were at the final bridge.
“I know you did,” said Harry.
They stared at each other, and the quiet felt stronger, less frail, but still Tom waited. He was very good at that, after all this time.
“No more horcruxes?” asked Harry.
“I tried to tell you before you stormed out of this house last time,” said Tom. “I decided I wouldn’t make another one, if it meant you’d stay.”
Even from a distance, Tom could make out how Harry swallowed, blinked, looked away.
“But I left,” said Harry.
This time Tom was the one that shrugged. “I didn’t make one anyway. It didn’t seem…appealing.”
Harry laughed. “That’s… yeah okay, that sounds like you.”
The quiet stretched on, languid now, nearly lavishing.
“Are you going to keep standing there?” asked Tom.
“Are you asking me to leave?”
“I’m asking you to come in.”
Harry did, steps quickening, as if worried Tom would revoke such explicit permission, and closed the door behind him.
“Stained glass,” said Harry.
“I know. Quaint isn’t it?”
“The old ones were drafty as hell.”
Tom snorted, then laughed. “You were barely in here for fifteen minutes and you spent all of that time chewing me out for something I wasn’t even going to make.”
“You’d just committed familicide!”
“Which I still don’t regret,” said Tom, firmly.
Harry made a sharp sound that Tom recognized as a mix of annoyed, fond, and frustrated before it was flattened by a pointedly calming breath.
“Well, you win some and you lose some I guess,” said Harry.
“Is that it?”
A beat.
“Yeah,” said Harry. “Yeah that’s it. Just, you aren’t planning anymore murders, nor are you committing them, are you?”
“No.”
“Well…” said Harry. “Good. History has taught me to take you for your word.”
Tom raised an eyebrow.
“For the things that count, anyway,” said Harry. “I had no reason to believe you before. But I also didn’t have reason to disbelieve you, not here. I’m sorry that I didn’t listen.”
“A miracle. An apology with only one cryptic reference to a vague future.”
Harry shoved him a little, scoffing, and Tom relaxed, because that meant they had reached some level of normalcy.
“You had it all figured out by the end anyway,” said Harry.
“I had,” said Tom. He turned toward the direction where he was pretty sure held the kitchen. “But I think I’d like to hear it from you.” He glanced over his shoulder, and caught Harry being uncertain. He offered a hand. “Over a cup of tea perhaps? And then maybe dinner?”
“Oh,” said Harry. “Okay.”
“I'm planning to fix this place up,” said Tom. “I’ll be spending most of my time here. Would you like to help me?”
Would you like to stay?
He felt a flash of happysurpriselove. Harry took his hand.
Harry nodded, then smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
A/N: It has been an age since I’ve posted any writing here! This is just something short I whipped up, so there’s a lot of history that’s eluded to in their conversation, and I have my own ideas with what might have happened, but nothing is set. Feel free to fill in the blanks with your imagination. Enjoy
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