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When Harry Potter is 8 years old, he goes to an orphanage in London. He’s dreaded it all his life, this place that’s hailed as the final chopping block for the children who are wrong, the freaks.
It’s better than he imagined, and yet so much worse. Somehow, in this place built for freaks, he’s still the only one. The younger children flock to him, waiting for him to oblige their pleas for stores. The older ones only see him as new meat, something to peck, prod, and push until he breaks. They’re mean during the day, but it's worse in the night.
After a week straight of getting woken in the wee hours by sharp elbows and fists, the name freak echoing in the dark, the matron takes notice of the situation and brings him to her office.
She sighs and looks him over, muttering how after all he’s been through he should really have his own room and he’s such a sweet boy but there are no openings and they’re reserved for older children.
He says that the common room is fine, and wants to explain to her that the bruises will fade within the day and the kids will get what's coming to them and really, he’s fine, but he can’t, because he knows that it’s freakish, and she can’t know that he’s freakish.
She puts him in a room despite his objections and he’s surprised, because he didn’t think that anyone in an orphanage would care to notice his bruises. He doesn’t realize it’s only because she’s been looking for someone to room with him.
Harry’s room is the third on the right. It’s tiny, barely enough space for a small bed and desk, but it’s his, along with whomever he has to share it with. He prefers the openness of the common room to the claustrophobia of this, it reminds him of other, scarier places.
When he finds out his roommate, he wishes he was still in the common room all the more. Tom Riddle is the only other 8 year old who has his own room. They’re reserved for those with good behavior, but everyone else is so scared of Riddle that they refuse to sleep within 10 meters of him.
Harry is sitting on the corner of the bed when Tom enters, trying to make himself small. He’s heard the stories, and is bracing for the worst, but the boy just stares at him for a moment, expression unreadable, before turning to the desk and ignoring him as he writes in some journal.
Harry is tense, but slowly exhaustion clouds his mind and he lies down, sinking into the bed and enjoying familiar quiet for the first time since- a long time. He’s on the edge of sleep, exhausted from a day of chores when Tom suddenly starts speaking, abruptly waking him up.
“Here’s how this’ll work,” he says simply, sitting on the bed and sounding much older than he’s supposed to, “You stay outta my room during the day. And everything happening in ‘ere stays in ‘ere. I won’ bother you if you don’ bother me. Got it?”
Harry wants to argue, but Tom turns off the light and lies next to him on the bed, the two of them stiff as boards. All traces of sleep are wiped from Harry’s mind. He can’t help but think of how earlier that day the littles had gone quiet with fear as Tom came past, glaring at everyone around him. He’s heard whispers of the strange things Tom can do, and how mean he is. He never does his chores himself but never gets caught. He stole Sally’s doll, and Timmy’s buttons, and a whole host of other things. He lit the kitchen on fire, once, and everybody knows it was him but they’re all too scared to tattle.
Maybe he’s been given a bad rap, Harry tries to reassure himself. Maybe he’s just like Harry, misunderstood and hated. It doesn’t work, he’s seen the cruelty on Tom’s face, different from Billy and the rest’s, but the same in all ways that count.
He resolves to not be scared. Tom is just a boy, like him. Nothing he can do could be worse than the Dursley’s. He’s just a bully like Billy who’ll get put in his place by Harry’s freakishness sooner or later, they all do. That comforts him. Still, he doesn’t sleep for a long time.
Harry wakes the next morning tangled in a pile of limbs. It’s warm, he thinks, and sinks deeper into it before remembering who he shares a bed with and tensing with the realization that he’s probably going to die. Tom Riddle is going to kill him. How did this even happen?
Harry carefully extracts himself from the other boy, removing the arm that’s slung across his chest and uncurling their legs before quietly scooching closer to the wall, which admittedly isn’t very far. It dawns on Harry exactly how this happened when Tom rolls over to him and clamps Harry like a teddy bear, still asleep. Harry sighs and gives up, getting out of bed instead of trying to get Tom to stop following him in his sleep or waiting for him to wake up, and gets ready for his chores.
Still, he’s left wondering if all the rumors about the boy could possibly be true.
Over the next few weeks he learns that the rumors are totally true. He’s careful to not let Tom attach to him like a limpet in his sleep, mainly out of fear, and gets more annoyed each night. Tom Riddle is an arsehole, as the older kids would say. He spends all day bossing people around and reading stolen books.
He gets bullied sometimes, and at first Harry feels bad but then he doesn’t. Bullies of Tom Riddle quickly learn to stop. All of their things disappear. Harry doesn’t even know how Tom does it. He keeps a close eye on him and Tom doesn’t go anywhere near the common rooms, ever.
He has a weird obsession with items overall, Harry notices. Tom steals random objects all the time, usually people’s prized possessions. He has no remorse, and Harry is glad he himself doesn’t own anything of importance. Harry tries to find Tom’s stash, but Tom is ridiculously secretive. He’ll find it eventually. It’s not like their room is that big.
Harry is getting fed up with Tom, and when Harry gets fed up, his freakishness comes out. He doesn’t mean to, but he accidentally makes Billy’s nails disappear when he trips Harry in the hallway. He also shatters a window on the other side of the orphanage when Theo takes his food during lunch. Tom stares at him quizzically, and Harry averts his gaze.
Halfway through the next day, Sarah, a 5 year old with blond ringlets and a partiality for Harry’s retelling of little red riding hood, runs up to him a sobbing, blubbering mess during recess.
“What happened?” Harry asks kindly, leaning down and furrowing his brow. Her face is scrunched up and red, and she’s breathing unevenly.
After a few minutes she’s calm enough to speak, “Tom,” she bursts out and starts in another round of tears. Harry pets her hair and breathes with her again until they’ve stopped coming. The others he was playing hopscotch with are watching, anticipating her explanation.
“Tom!” she mutters angrily, “Took my dress,” she looks at the ground, tears welling up slowly this time, “My mom’s dress,” she makes out before collapsing into the arms of Lucy, a 9 year old who also takes care of the little ones.
Lucy’s face is broken, on the verge of tears herself. They all know Sarah’s dress, it’s beautiful, with criss crossing purple fabrics and laces stitched to perfection. It’s also the only memento she has of her mother. It was always a matter of time before Tom took it. He has to ruin everything.
Lucy and a few others comfort her and apologize to Sarah that they can’t help, a few on the verge of tears themselves, but Harry has anger welling up in him.
He remembers his resolve from his first night in Tom’s room to not be scared of the boy. He remembers this morning and all the others, when Tom made a quivering Leo take over Tom’s laundry shift as well as his own. He remembers James, bawling that everything his favorite blanket was missing. He looks at Sarah's heaving form, and Tom reading calmly under a tree. Rage fills his veins. Before anyone can stop him Harry is marching over to Tom’s tree and yanking his stupid book out of his stupid hands
“Give Sarah back her dress!” He demands, green eyes blazing with fury. Tom’s lips curve in distaste.
“Why?” He asks calmly
“Because…” Harry fumbles, infuriated that he needs to explain such a concept to him, “If you don’… I’ll tear your book to shreds!” he threatens, holding up the book triumphantly. It’s stupid. Tom’s book isn’t worth one hundredth of what that dress meant to Sarah, but it’s all Harry can think of.
Tom stands up and tries to wrench the book from his hands, but Harry’s grip is stronger. “You wouldn’t,” He grits out, but Harry is running away, opening the book and clenching a fist of pages in his hand, preparing to rip out their seams.
Tom trips him, and he goes tumbling to the ground just as the pages start to tear. Tom goes to grab the book but Harry scratches him, “Give Sarah the dress!” he shouts. Tom yelps and goes down too when Harry pulls his leg, and then they’re fighting.
Tom is taller, but Harry is ferocious, kicking and scratching with all his might. The book is tossed to the side as they scramble on the ground, punching and pulling hair and doing all that they can to hurt each other. Someone must call the matron because after a few minutes strong hands are pulling them apart from each other but Harry is still reaching out, yearning to break skin and see blood stream from wounds he inflicted.
Once his vision clears Harry realizes that he already can. Tom is a mess, and Harry must be too. His wavy brown hair is blown every which way and his eyes are feral, blood trickling from his nose and the scratches on his arms. Bruises are blooming everywhere. It makes Harry feel vindicated, which scares him. The ache from his body is nothing compared to the pleasure derived from watching Tom hurt, from seeing how he himself has affected the oh-so-composed boy. His demeanor screams anything but serenity now.
Someone is speaking to him, yelling, probably, but Harry can’t hear over the roar in his ears. He should probably be listening. He’s proven right when he’s yanked from the ground and dragged to a cellar door on the side of the orphanage. The doors are opened and it’s so dark down there that Harry really doesn’t want to go but he’s dropped in, and so he does.
They close the doors.
He’s right. It’s dark in the cellar, and lonely. The high from his fight with Tom wears off quickly down there, and he’s left sad and disappointed in himself. He should have resisted. It was a book for goodness sake, but Tom made him so inexplicably angry with his- everything!
There’s no Tom down here, and the anger fades away, but the cellar closes in. He can’t see the walls of the cellar, what if they close in around him? What if all of the air runs out of Harry is left to suffocate down here alone? What if-
The doors open. Harry is blinded by the light and for a second he thinks that they’ve come to release him, but they only dump another body down with him. In the moment before the doors close Harry can tell that it’s Tom, battered from their fight but also beaten. He slumps defeatedly on the floor. Why did they beat Tom but not him? Tom stole the dress, but Harry started the fight. Didn’t he? Isn’t Tom never punished for his transgressions?
Tom doesn’t move, and Harry can’t tell if he’s awake or not.
“Tom?” He asks quietly. The lump of flesh he can barely make out with his still adjusting eyes groans and Harry reaches for him gently. He feels the slickness of his back, how small he seems in the darkness. His anger has been zapped away, and Harry doesn’t think he can survive this cold place without… someone, so slowly he lets his body curl around his enemy. Tom coils around him in response.
There’s nothing left to do but lie in their silence, and time stretches on.
After a while Tom breaks the silence to croak out to him with a broken voice, “Harry?”
Harry thinks it’s the first time he’s heard him say his name.
“I’m here,” he says gently, and Tom’s arms tighten around him, pulling the small boy closer.
Eventually, the darkness around them fades into sleep, and when the doors to the cellar open in the morning, the matron looks down to find the two boys wrapped together in a little patch of dirt. She frowns down at them as Harry blinks away the light, wondering why he’s slept better than in a long time.
She’d considered changing their sleeping arrangements the night before, like she had so many times before to those rooming with Tom, but seeing them wrapped up in the dirt together changes her mind. They deserve each other.
In their room the next evening, while Tom is reading and Harry is fiddling with a toy car George had gifted him earlier that day, Harry tries to reach out.
“What are you reading?” He asks tentatively.
Tom glances up, cocks his head, “What’s that?”
“You heard what I said” Harry frowns
Tom smiles, “I didn’ think you could read”
Harry scowls, “Of course I read!”
Tom just hums, Harry doesn’t know why he even tried.
After that night in the cellar, Harry stops resisting Tom’s limpet nature. They only have one blanket, and anyways, winter is coming on. What else are they supposed to do? Harry has never had someone to sleep next to. He doesn’t treasure Tom, but he maybe enjoys the feeling of being able to relax into something warm. Besides, nobody can be evil while they’re sleeping.
At 10 years old, Harry Potter and Tom Riddle are infamous across the orphanage for hating each other's guts. If you hear yelling outside, you can safely bet it’s the sound of them tussling, and others cheering on their fight. Not many are brave enough to bother either of them, but they bother each other to make up for it tenfold. They’ve been beaten and put in the cellar more times than anyone can count, and still they fight. Miss. Cole is constantly coming up with new punishments for the two of them, and nobody understands why they still share a room. It’s suspected that Miss. Cole does it just to torture them more.
Harry is well liked, but known for his explosive anger and righteous sense of justice. Younger children flock to him, but the olders are wary of how he either doesn’t notice the social hierarchy or straight up ignores it in favor of doing whatever he thinks is right.
Tom is feared, but respected. He still broods in corners and glares in the hallways, still puts off his work without consequences and sweet talks teachers, and as he’s aged he’s only gotten crueler. Mutilated animals found in the yard, surprise snake attacks in mid-hibernation season, nobody can link it back to Tom, but everyone knows it’s him.
Billy’s bunny in the rafters is the last straw, Harry thinks as he watches blood drip from the ceiling queasily. Anguish is spilling from inside him, not for Billy, who’s the meanest kid in the whole orphanage, second only to Tom, but for the poor bunny, maimed and strung up for all to see. Tears well in his eyes, and Harry has to look up to keep them from falling. Why? Why does Tom have to be so awful? Why does he never learn? Sorrow turns to outrage as he stares at the twin arced around beams in the walls and ending with a sad creature, a life cut short for nothing but petty revenge.
He swirls around and stalks down the stairs towards their room, eyes aflame. He knows this urge well, now, knows that it won’t help and they’ll end up in the same situation sooner or later. He knows all it’ll get him is a night in the cellar with Tom, but it’ll be worth it just to see Tom unraveled, punished for his actions for once.
Or… for the first time since the last time they argued.
He’s already too late when he gets there. The matron stands in the doorway, arms crossed with a tired look on her face. Inside, Tom’s face is smug, “I’m sorry you think I would do such a thing Miss. Close, but how could I ‘ave possibly gotten up to the rafters?,” He drawls as if it’s ridiculous. It is ridiculous, but it’s true. Harry accepts ridiculous things when they happen around the other boy.
Tom’s been working on his accent, trying to distinguish himself from the rest of them by doing away with cockney, it’s not working all too well.
He keeps going on about how it’s simply impossible that he could have killed Billy’s bunny, and he really thinks that he’s going to get away with it, Harry realizes with a start. The idea that Tom could get away with it again twists around inside his stomach, growing quickly until the uncomfortable image is the only thing Harry can see, marring his vision with hatred. But Miss. Cole doesn’t waver in her resigned expression. Instead she gestures down the hall, waving some sort of signal, and a man in a cassock descends. He’s probably around 30 years old, well kept, but a bit rough around the edges. A patch of choppy hair sits on the side of his face where he missed a spot shaving.
“Reverend Wilson ‘ere ‘as kindly offered to ‘elp you, Tom,” She says gently, with the smile she reserves for new kids and social workers and definitely not Tom or Harry. Anxiety is creeping up Harry’s spine at the sight of the man. He knows he should be glad that Tom is finally getting what’s coming to him by an adult, but he only feels uneasy as Tom purses his lips and slowly stands. The reverend grabs Tom’s arm and squeezes it, almost dragging him towards the door.
Miss. Cole leaves without acknowledging Harry and he stands there for a few minutes before getting ready for bed. He keeps reminding himself that this is good, this should have happened years ago, but can’t help worrying, wondering what’s happening, where Tom is. Maybe he’s having some sense beaten into him. Maybe he’ll finally learn to leave other people's things alone. Maybe he’s alone, and scared, and in pain. Harry hopes it’s one of those things, he hopes it isn’t all of them. Not even Tom deserves that.
He wants to punch someone, preferably Tom, but nobody is there, so Harry punches his pillow and snarls at it, pretending it’s a person. Harry is plenty used to sleeping alone with Tom in the cellar, but something about the bed feels especially cold tonight. He hugs Tom’s pillow as a replacement for the person, but it’s hollow. Pillows can’t hug back.
Tom is gone for a week. In that time, the leaves turn and the air chills, rattling the windows each night and causing Harry to curl in on himself more and more. When he returns, something is different. He’s subdued, moving as if in a blank trance. Harry wants to ask him what happened, but they don’t do that. They don’t speak during the day outside of arguing. Tom doesn’t speak at all that day. He even does his chores without complaint for the first time Harry can think of in… ever.
That night, Tom climbs into their bed with an urgency. Harry, already there, welcomes it. Anything is better than the empty husk he’s been since returning. His nails scratch Harry’s back, pulling him into an embrace. Their legs tangle together, his head settling in the crook of Harry’s neck, breaths quickening and then slowing into an even pace. The boys melt into each other, and Harry is on the brink of sleep when Tom speaks, answering the question Harry’s silently harbored all day,
“He exorcized me” Tom breathes in his ear.
“For a week?” Harry questions through his haze.
“It took a few tries”
“Did It work?”
“What do you think?” Tom responds, before burying his face deeper into Harry’s shoulder. “‘m tired,” he mumbles.
“Me too.” And so they sleep.
3 YEARS LATER
Harry twines into Tom, muscles relaxing fully for the first time in months. He hadn’t realized how much he missed this, being one with the other boy. It doesn’t matter here who’s done what, whether they’re good people or bad. All that matters is sleep, relaxation, and the body in front of him. Harry buries his head in Tom’s neck as Tom caresses his hair.
“I missed you,” he whispers, because it’s true.
“I-” The hand in his hair pauses, resumes, “missed this as well,” Tom admits.
Harry wants to be closer, wants to sink into Tom until he disappears completely. He wants to stay like this forever, wrapped up on their little bed for no reason other than to exist.
He wonders if it should alarm him, how much he’s come to depend on his enemy, but can’t find it in himself to care as the warm body around him lulls him to sleep.