Archive of Our Own ^beta

I. Draco Malfoy

Despite what one might think, Tom Riddle did not first hear of Harry Potter from Ginny Weasley’s fruitlessly pathetic ramblings on her crush.

No.

He learned the cursed name, Harry Potter, from Draco Malfoy’s fruitlessly pathetic ramblings on his crush.

But let’s back up a moment. It started like this.

It was three weeks to the start of his second year and Draco was in a mood.

(If any of his dormmates had been consulted, they would argue that Draco was almost always in a Mood, capital “m” intended, and that really you’d be better off saving your breath and counting the times he wasn’t having some sort of a fit.)

Three weeks left of summer hols and Draco was still struggling to fully master his new Nimbus 2001. Which was a necessity if he was going to make Slytherin seeker—and he would, he had to, he had to beat Potter. Potter, who had already been made Gryffindor seeker a whole year ahead. When first years weren’t even supposed to be on the house teams or have their own brooms!

All of which he was dead set on ranting about to his father, if only because Father would sneer and huff about Potter too while Mother would merely hum and say, “Draco dear, if the boy matters so much to you, why don’t you write him?”

Except his father wasn’t in his office when Draco went to check. And he knew his father’s study was supposed to be off limits when he wasn’t home, though the particular reasoning as to why had long been forgotten. But he was just so…so irritated.

And there, sitting on a pile of things father had set aside to take to Borgin & Burke’s in light of the more aggressive dark-artifact raids that had been happening lately, sat a perfectly blank diary. Completely unused.

Rubbish, Draco thought, admiring his father’s cleverness because the scheme was obvious: convince Borgin that the diary was some dark artifact and sell it for a decent sum when in truth it was nothing more than a bit of leatherbound parchment that had once belonged to some…Tom Riddle bloke.

Normally, Draco might’ve been put off in using something that was clearly second-hand, but if he only used it to write about Potter…and if he ripped those pages out afterward and burned them…well, what did it matter? He needed to get the words out somehow and this seemed as good an option as any.

So he took it, the diary that belonged to Tom Riddle. And for the first time in 50 years, magic began to stir within the pages.

“Stupid Potter with his stupid curly hair that’s all dark and soft. And his stupid green eyes, looking like emeralds. How ridiculous. And his stupid little smile, the one that’s all smug and his teeth are stupidly straight. And when he’s riding on his stupid broom doing flips in the air—who stands on a broom to catch a snitch? In his mouth?”

Tom could feel himself losing braincells.

Truly, the only thing stopping Tom from outright murdering the insipid child for using his diary for this drivel was the fact that the magical signature was so clearly a nice dark gray. It would be a shame to kill off a potential ally just because they were young and stupid. With any luck, they’d grow up to be powerful and at least slightly less stupid, and even if this trite crush on the thrice-damned Potter persisted, at least the Potters were a pureblood family who had been known to marry in with the Blacks before.

“That is quite ridiculous,” Tom wrote back, because it was always best to seem in agreement with people you were hoping to manipulate. “My name is Tom Riddle. May I ask how you came upon my diary?”

There was a flicker of surprise, hesitation, considering.

“It was on my father’s desk,” the child wrote eventually. “And I’m Draco Malfoy, heir of the Malfoy family.”

“Ah, a pleasure. I knew Abraxas Malfoy quite well when we were in school.”

“Really? He was my grandfather.”

That was quite a bit more time than Tom had been expecting. At his last true memory, Abraxas had only been 16 himself and it was hard to imagine him older, perhaps graying—not that you’d be able to tell, really, with the Malfoy platinum blond—not only married but with children. With grandchildren, Merlin’s beard. He did the math quickly and estimated it must have been at least 40-50 years since he’d made the diary then.

He wondered where his other self was, if he’d accomplished everything he set out to do. If he’d made more horcruxes, the seven they’d planned on.

“And who’s this boy you’re rambling about then?” Even if the nonsense about the Potter child was useless, it was always good to build rapport, let Draco think Tom was interested in what he had to say, that Tom could be trusted. Then he could ask what he really wanted to know.

“Harry Potter. He’s an arrogant snob who thinks he’s better than everyone just because he was supposed to have defeated the Dark Lord as a baby—”

If Tom had any sense of bodily functions trapped in the diary, he would have just choked. As it was, he felt frozen with dread and fury and confusion all blending together. The Potter boy had done what?

“—if you buy into that. Father says it’s just Dumbledore’s propaganda and that the Dark Lord isn’t really dead, so that means that Potter’s just full of shit I mean he’s not nearly as impressive as he thinks he is. Can you believe he refused to shake my hand? As if he, a half-blood, was better than me.”

Just what the hell had happened while Tom had been trapped away in the diary? Clearly his other self had fallen far if he’d been bested by a baby.

At least it seemed that Abraxas’s son was still loyal if he truly believed Voldemort wasn’t gone. And trusted with guarding a piece of Voldemort’s soul, no less.

Yes, Tom was confident the elder Malfoy would do what was needed to sort this mess out.

II. Ginny Weasley

Tom was most definitely not confident in the elder Malfoy. The man was a moron.

Case in point: he’d given away the diary to miserable little mouse of a first-year named Ginny-not-Ginevra. If he was feeling generous, perhaps he would have allowed that this might be a plan to offer up a life-force for Tom to feed off of, maybe even give him the opportunity to open the Chamber of Secrets again. Tom was not feeling generous, however, and so the elder Malfoy was going to suffer immensely once Tom got out of this damned book.

Because what were the odds of the only two people writing in his diary in the past 50 years both having a crush on the same boy, who also happened to be the person allegedly responsible for killing Tom’s counterpart.

If he had to hear one more word about Harry Potter…

“He’s so nice and sweet and handsome. He said hello to me that morning at breakfast, his smile so warm. And his eyes…they’re so green. Like—”

Let me guess, emeralds, Tom thought to himself, eyes rolling.

“—like a fresh-pickled toad. Oh. That could be a good poem, don’t you think Tom?”

Poetry. Dear God. No.

Was this some sort of cosmic justice for making a horcrux? If so, Tom was almost tempted to wish he could take it back.

“Hm. His eyes are green as a fresh-pickled toad/His hair…hm…his hair is dark as…a blackboard. Yes. I like that. And of course he’s so heroic too, defeating You-Know-Who and ending the war. I wonder if he’s like all the heroes in the stories? You know, romantic and noble.”

“Perhaps if you talked to him, you might find out,” Tom offered, trying to keep the snippiness out of his writing. Regardless of whether it was the elder Malfoy’s intention or not, Tom was going to take advantage of this situation to make his great return. Starting with the terror of opening the Chamber, petrifiying as many mudbloods as possible. Then he’d suck the life out of Ginny-not-Ginevra so that she’d never have to burden another soul with her incessant, inane chatter.

And if he was very, very lucky, he’d get the chance to kill Harry Potter too, and he’d make it hurt.

“Oh no. I could never just talk to Harry. What would I even say? He’s too cool. He’d never even make time for someone like me.”

But in the meantime, perhaps Tom could still have some fun.

“Then you must make him see you. Perhaps once you finish your poem, you could send it to him.”

“That’s a great idea, Tom! You’re the best!”

III. Moaning Myrtle

Somehow, Ginny-not-Ginevra had cottoned onto the fact that Tom was controlling her. A pity, too, since she’d been so very easy to bend to his will. Her mind was weak, feeble, and it had taken next to nothing to possess her.

Perhaps he’d dragged it out too long. If he’d ended her sooner, she wouldn’t have had the chance to throw him into the women’s loo. The indignity of it was unparalleled, and for that, Ginny-not-Ginevra was going to die slowly, painfully, and screaming.

Especially since Myrtle Warren—who had been enough of a blight upon humanity in his own time—was still loitering around the bathroom where she’d died. On the plus side, she was intangible and therefore couldn’t write. That small measure of good news was massively outweighed by the fact that as a spirit with a very strong tie to the mortal realm, Myrtle Warren was capable of projecting her thoughts. Right. Into. Tom’s. Diary.

Not that she knew she was doing it, but still.

“It’s so miserably lonely here. If only Harry would come back. He’s so handsome and so nice. The nicest boy I’ve ever met. Maybe he’ll die and want to share the bathroom with me. Oh! Maybe he’ll drown in the tub—”

There was a lot to unpack there and Tom wasn’t going to touch any of it. Instead, he tried to project his own murderous intent as loudly as possible to get her to shut the hell up, but either it wasn’t a two-way radio or Myrtle’s own whining was too loud to let anything else through.

If I could kill her again, I would, he thought uncharitably when she started scream-sobbing loud enough to wake the dead.

IV. Harry Potter

If it had been anyone else—anyone else—Tom would have been relieved to have been picked up off the floor of the bathroom and laid out to dry on a nice desk somewhere warm. But…

“Hello. My name is Harry Potter.”

He’d fucking had it with Harry fucking Potter.

Yes, the boy was decent enough not to ramble and instead got straight to the point. Blunt, though not rude. Curious, if naïve and too trusting. And when Tom had pulled Harry into his diary, the boy’s magic was not the blinding brightness he’d expected from the light’s savior but dove gray. Balanced and soft and—

And Harry Potter was a disappointingly average, useless boy who Tom would not waste another moment on.

He would lure Ginny-not-Ginevra back to him, use her life force to regain a body of his own, and then…

Then, the world would be his.

“Ginny. Ginny, please wake up—”

“She won’t wake,” Tom said, stepping out of the shadows.

There, finally in front of him in the flesh, stood Harry Potter. Perhaps Tom should have expected it—didn’t everyone say Harry was heroic, self-sacrificing, a fearless savior? Still, he hadn’t really thought…Harry, able to find the Chamber, able to speak the parseltongue to open it, traverse the passageways only to arrive here, alone and woefully unprepared, and yet somehow still fierce.

Dark hair curling against pale skin, smudge with dirt and grime and looking all the more battle-ready for it. Spark-bright eyes; they really were an almost alarming shade of green. Like the killing curse itself. And yet the most compelling element—something which had to be seen in person to be understood, the very thing that had been missing from all of the disgustingly lovelorn descriptions of Harry—was the angry, sharp, vicious something hiding underneath that veneer of goodness.

Tom wanted to dig his fingers into it and bring it to the surface, rip away all the unnecessary heroism and pretense of goodness, carve until all the was left were the shimmering gems of potential buried not-so-deep in the boy. Tom could do it, too. Harry would not be easy to bend to his will, not like Ginny-not-Ginevra, not like his schoolfellows, not like the teachers he wrapped around his fingers.

No. Harry Potter would be a challenge, and—

Oh.

Oh.

Oh no.