The Travelling Cabinet

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/35288989.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Draco Malfoy/Tom Riddle
Character: Draco Malfoy, Tom Riddle
Additional Tags: Time Travel, Domestic, idiots to lovers, Tom Riddle is His Own
Warning, minor internalised homophobia, casual background homicide,
Fluff
Language: English
Series: Part 1 of The Travelling Cabinet
Collections: HP_favorite, Masterpieces That Leave Me Speechless
Stats: Published: 2021-11-23 Words: 11,591 Chapters: 1/1

The Travelling Cabinet

by papermonkey

Summary

Tom Riddle is locking up at Borgin and Burkes for the night when a boy comes tumbling
through the filing cabinet. He claims to have come from 1997.

Notes

Who's in rare pair hell? Me. It's me.

Some fanart by the lovely Corinthian

See the end of the work for more notes

It was six pm on a Tuesday when the boy came tumbling out of the filing cabinet. Tom was
locking up shop but caught sight of him through the grimy window; a flash of white-blond hair, a
bitten-off curse. He opened the door and stepped back inside.

There was parchment spilt everywhere. All of Tom’s neatly organised inventory and financial
ledgers crumpled and scattered. The boy was rubbing his head and wincing, but scrambled to his
feet at the sight of Tom, pulling his wand from his pocket. Tom considered drawing his own but
was confident he could take on a Hogwarts student without it.

“Where’s Borgin?” he snapped.

Abraxas, Tom thought, but that wasn’t quite right. Still, he looked remarkably similar to him—if
Abraxas was taller and skinnier. A Malfoy? But there weren’t any of Hogwarts age, and the boy
was wearing a Slytherin uniform.

“Mr Borgin is in Leningrad,” Tom said pleasantly, “sourcing Soviet antiques. He won’t be back for
a month or two.” He scrutinised the cabinet carefully but could sense no magic from it.

“He’s—there’s no way he’s—” he spluttered. Before he could finish his sentence, he was distracted
by something else, looking around the shop with wild confusion. “Since when was this place
refurbished? Everything—even this bookshelf looks new.” He gawked at the cursed jewellery
display.

“It was there when I started working here last year,” Tom said, eyeing the clock. He didn’t get
paid overtime.

“And where’s Euler’s Ointments?” he asked nonsensically, face pressed to the front window,
peering out at the boarded-up shop across the street.

“I’ve never heard of such a place." Tom wanted to ask the boy what he’d been doing in the
thoroughly non-magical filing cabinet, but before he could say another word, the maybe-Malfoy
had darted out the door and fled down the street.

Well, that was that.

He considered going home, but then he’d have to come in early the next day to fix the filing mess
that had been left behind. Instead, he went about cleaning, reorganising and uncrinkling important
scrolls.

Everything back in order, he straightened up and turned to the door, just in time to see the boy,
back again, skidding to a halt in front of Borgin and Burkes. He’d gone so pale he was almost
grey.

“What’s happened to Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley?” he asked when Tom reluctantly opened
the door to him.

Tom had a quick look down the street. It looked as dingy and decrepit as ever. “I haven’t the
slightest idea what you mean."

“It’s not right,” the boy said. His teeth were chattering. It was days from summer, but a dark
evening, and he was wearing nothing heavier than a school shirt. “None of it’s right.”

Tom had no interest in entertaining a madman, but he also didn’t want to risk offending someone
from an influential family by shutting the door in his face. The boy was obviously an older student
and a Slytherin, but Tom couldn’t place his face. He looked like a Malfoy, if any of the Malfoys
had lived on Muggle war rations or had their sleep disrupted nightly by air raid sirens.

He let him back into the shop.

After some gentle prompting, he revealed that his name was Draco Malfoy and that he was a Sixth
Year Slytherin prefect. Tom knew all the Slytherin prefects, but Draco gave no outward sign that
he was lying. Still, Tom gave a subtle push at his mind and was sharply rebuffed by impenetrable
occlumency shields.

“Perhaps you should go back to school,” Tom said, using his Head Boy voice. Madam Oakley
would surely sort him out in the Hospital Wing. Then Tom would be able to go home and study.
“Professor Dippet forbids students from being out of bounds without permission, and I’d hate for
you to get in trouble.”

“Who’s Professor Dippet?” Draco asked.

Tom frowned, trying to decide whether or not Draco was pulling his leg. “The Headmaster, of
course."

“What?” Draco scoffed. “That’s Dumbledore.”

Draco Malfoy was, if his words were to be believed, a time traveller from 1997. The grandson of
Abraxas Malfoy who had perished from Dragon Pox, of all things, at the pitifully young age of
sixty. He didn’t bother asking after his own future. Draco hadn’t recognised the name ‘Tom
Riddle’, and he would bide his time before asking after the other.

Draco tinkered with the filing cabinet for hours, with increasing desperation. At one point, he
buried his face in his hands and shook.

“Perhaps it might be better to revisit this tomorrow?” Tom said.

“You don’t understand. I’ve got—there’s something I have to do in 1997 or he will—” The words
come out wet and muffled.

“He?” Tom asked, boredom forgotten in an instant.

“The—” Draco paused and turned to frown at him, grey eyes rimmed with red. “I shouldn’t tell
you. I shouldn’t have told you anything about the future.”

Tom thought about how he could take his wand out and Crucio the information from him with no
difficulty at all. It centred him a little, helped him regain his patience. “Perhaps you have a point,”
he said. “However, as enlightening as this evening has been, I’m afraid it’s past nine and I need to
be heading home. I can’t leave you in the shop on your own, so you’ll have to come back
tomorrow.”

“But I’m—” A Malfoy, he supposed he meant to say. But it was the 1940s and he was no one.

Tom locked up the shop and left Draco on the stone steps out front. He didn’t apparate to his flat
because it was only a short walk away and because—

He heard quick, light footsteps hurrying up behind him. “Wait just a minute,” Draco said, in his
blustering pureblood way. “Where are you rushing off to? You aren’t just going to leave me here,
surely?”

“Perhaps you ought to go to Abraxas,” Tom said. “Though the Malfoys don’t take too kindly to
people pretending to be their blood.”

“I’m not pretending!”

“Can you prove it?”

“I—“ Colour was high on his cheeks. “You could tell them.”

“That you were hiding in Mr Borgin’s very un-magical filing cabinet? And why would you assume
I have a close enough relationship with the Malfoys for them to have any hope of believing me?”
He did, but that was beside the point.

“You’re being very unhelpful,” Draco said and followed Tom back to his flat.

Tom rented above Mr Mulpepper’s Apothecary, with access through a narrow alleyway beside the
shop.

Draco had the nerve to wrinkle his nose, standing gingerly on the cobblestones beside him. Tom
was inclined to do the same if he was honest; the alleyway stunk of piss and there was a brothel
right next door. Still, he would consider it astonishingly poor manners if he hadn’t shared a dorm
with a Malfoy and a Black for seven years.

Tom’s flat consisted of a single room just large enough to fit a kitchenette, a spindly-legged table
and a narrow single bed. The bathroom down the hall was about the size of Draco’s ‘magical’
filing cabinet and was shared with two other renters. Compared to what he’d moved into
immediately after leaving Hogwarts without a penny to his name, Tom considered his
accommodation to be luxurious.

He employed his most quelling glare when Draco tried to lay claim to his bed. Then during the
night suffered long hours of Draco tossing, turning and sighing from his spot on the floorboards.
Eventually, he had to decide if he was going to let him onto the bed or murder him. He chose the
former only because he still wanted to interrogate him about the future.

“Why does the mattress sag so much?” Draco complained, rolling over and making a general
nuisance of himself on the narrow bunk. Tom wondered if his thin, lumpy pillow would be
sufficient to smother him.

Tom ran cold, a side effect of splitting his soul. This, combined with the appalling insulation of his
flat—heating charms rapidly dissipating through the cracks in the walls and floor—meant he’d had
to make his peace with waking multiple times through the night, so bitterly cold that it would take
him several tries to use his wand.

Yet that night he slept so well that if it weren’t for two wizards having a potion-induced brawl
outside his flat at eight am, he might’ve slept right through his morning shift.

He was… warm when he woke. Toasty warm in fact, as if he’d fallen asleep in front of the
fireplace in the Slytherin Common Room. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and looked down to
see a head of white-blond hair. During the night Draco had attached himself to Tom; legs tangled
with his, hand clutching onto his nightshirt, head resting on his chest. He was even drooling a little.

Tom grimaced and shoved him off, ignoring his sleepy protests.

Despite waking late, getting ready for work was easier than usual, not having to use heating charms
to remind his extremities that he had not perished during the night. He left Draco asleep in the flat,
not worried that he was going to steal from him because there was nothing of value he could take
without suffering grievous injury.

He had written four letters to potential clients before Draco came stumbling in. He was wearing
Tom’s clothes, he noticed with much displeasure. In the future he would be sure to place fatal
curses on the dresser too.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he said in his posh, imperious voice. Tom felt a headache coming on.
“You looked like you needed the rest.”

“What I need is to get back to my own time,” Draco said, approaching the filing cabinet again,
wand out. He was ridiculously scrawny for a pureblood—particularly for a Malfoy—both Abraxas
and Mr Malfoy having more muscular builds. Draco had the leanness and height of a Black or a
Rosier, and Tom suspected he wasn’t finished growing yet.

He continued to write letters for the next two hours, stopping only to see to the few customers who
wandered in. Around the time when Tom was beginning to think about lunch, Draco curled up in
the cabinet and started to cry.

Tom sighed and set his quill down. He wished Draco had saved the dramatics for after he’d had a
chance to eat. He was always more diplomatic when his stomach was full. The scrolls were spilt all
over the floor again.

He left to boil the kettle in the back room and returned with a cup of tea.

Draco took one watery look at it and said, “Three sugars, please.”

Tom briefly composed a prayer for patience in his mind before remembering that he was no longer
meant to believe in God. He stirred three sugars into the tea and returned with the sickeningly
sweet concoction.

“I think it would help to have someone to talk to about whatever’s worrying you,” he said. “You
can always Obliviate me before you leave if you’re worried it’ll mess up time.” As if he’d let him
do such a thing.

Draco didn’t get out of the cabinet, legs drawn up to his chest. But he turned his attention to Tom,
grey eyes open and trusting, and told him about Voldemort.

It was as if the floodgates had opened after that. Tom learnt so much that he itched to take notes.
He stopped himself only because he knew it would rouse Draco’s suspicions.

“You have no idea how Harry Potter defeated Lord Voldemort that night?” he asked.

“You shouldn’t say his name,” Draco hissed, eyes darting around the room as if he expected the
Dark Lord to jump out from behind the cursed coat stand or enchanted Ming vases. Tom felt an
urge to laugh for the first time in years. It surprised him so much that he wasn’t able to stop his
mouth from twitching up into a smile.

Draco noticed immediately, going from scared to apoplectic in the span of a second. “You don’t
believe me!”

“No, I do,” Tom assured him, getting his face back under control. “I apologise. I hadn’t realised his
name was forbidden.”

Draco sniffed and crossed his arms. “Just don’t forget again.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Now, will you tell me more about this Potter boy?”

Tom decided to end the whole Potter line, but knew he’d be best off biding his time. Names such as
Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty Crouch Jr were carefully noted. He needed to know his most loyal
followers, even if they weren’t yet born.

There were more than enough links in Draco’s story to his own plans that he believed the boy was
telling the truth. Still, he was unable to sense any deception due to Draco’s uncommonly strong
occlumency shields. He was sure he could force himself past them if he truly wished to, but that
was hardly subtle.

“You’re only sixteen years old, why has the Dark Lord entrusted you with something so
important?” Tom asked, dragging the Dumbledore assassination plot from Draco after a long hour
of seemingly innocuous questions, gradually building up the full story in his head. At the age of
nineteen, he found it ridiculous that he would leave something so important to a sixth-year—
despite the vast majority of his followers presently being that age or a couple of years older—and
he couldn’t understand why he’d do such a thing at seventy. He hoped he hadn’t gone senile.

“He wants me to fail,” Draco said flatly. “I didn’t—I didn’t realise at first. I thought he saw
something promising in me, I suppose. I was stupid.”

“He wants you to fail?”

“My Father displeased him.” Draco was fiddling with the cuffs of the shirt that he’d stolen from
Tom. The sleeves were too long for him. “The Dark Lord is punishing him through me and—and if
I fail it will be a simple excuse for him to wipe out the whole Malfoy family.”

The thought that he’d one day have so much power over such an affluent family was heady. Tom
barely remembered to muster up a sufficiently sympathetic expression. “I understand why you’d be
in such a rush to get back to your own time then,” he said. He thought Draco would have a
marginally better chance of killing Dumbledore in 1997 if he stayed in 1946 and spent the next
fifty years preparing for the confrontation.

Draco didn’t find out how to get back to 1997. He also didn’t find himself a different flat.

Tom tolerated him at first because there was so much he still wished to learn about the future. But
even once he’d collected his knowledge on everything from the next Ministers for Magic to the
winner of the 1994 Quidditch World Cup, he still didn’t make him leave. He reasoned that this was
because he never knew when Draco might remember a key detail about the future.

For his part, it didn’t seem to occur to Draco that he could leave. He took a part-time job at Mr
Mulpepper’s as a shop assistant and applied to study his NEWTs through distance learning.

He was reluctant to change his surname to something less recognisable but did seem to be aware
that keeping it would invite unwelcome scrutiny. His mother’s surname was also out; being a
Black in the wizarding world meant you were either of the Sacred 28 family or a mudblood.

“Merlo,” Draco decided. “It means blackbird and has a similar enough sound to my father’s name.
There are Italian purebloods with the name, but half of them migrated to France a century or so
ago, so it’s difficult for them to trace all branches of their bloodline. It will do if I can’t keep my
own.”

Mr Burke arranged the forged papers at a discount since Tom was his highest performing
employee. It worked in his favour that many of Borgin and Burkes' wealthy clients only wished to
do business with Tom.
Lecherous men and women were the same, magical or muggle, Tom thought absently, penning a
letter to Ms Hebizabah Smith.

Once employed, Draco paid half of the rent and groceries. He made breakfast in the morning and
had dinner ready in the evenings when Tom got back from work. On the days that they were both
working on Knockturn, Draco would take his lunch break at the same time as Tom’s and come
down the street with preprepared sandwiches to chatter at him as they sat at the shop counter.

As pampered as his life must have been up to that point, Draco took to hard work with the same
fervour as he had to fixing the cabinet.

Hepzibah had been speaking to him about her Great Aunt’s rare perfume collection for almost an
hour and Tom was starting to feel his smile straining on his face. His negotiation skills had
evidently abandoned him if he’d allowed himself to get caught in an utterly irrelevant conversation
for so long.

“But I’m sure you aren’t interested in all that,” Hepzibah said, with a girlish giggle that twisted her
fleshy face in a ghastly way. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Oh, Tom, you mustn’t let me
prattle on for so long.”

“My apologies,” Tom said, giving her his most charming smile. “I’m afraid I lost track of the time.
It’s rare that I get an opportunity to speak to someone as knowledgable as you.”

This triggered another fit of the giggles. Hepzibah’s beady little eyes hadn’t left him once in the
ninety-three minutes he’d been in her company. Her gaze lingered most frequently on his throat,
where his collar gapped open slightly.

Perhaps she thought she was being subtle, perhaps she didn’t care. Perhaps it was intended to be a
compliment.

“Stop it, you,” she said, batting her clumpy eyelashes. “Now, I know Mr Burke wishes to have you
show me something, and I would hate to get you in trouble, Tom.”

Draco worked six hour shifts three days a week at Mr Mulpepper’s and studied the other four. He
earned enough to contribute his fair share but had little more to spare. Mr Mulpepper allowed him
to practice for his Potions NEWT in the back room of the apothecary and his Herbology NEWT in
their potions ingredients garden. The rest of his NEWTs he prepared for in Tom’s flat.

They would often sit across from each other studying on the spindly little table, books a jumbled
mess between them. Tom was surprised to find that he didn’t mind, despite his space being
encroached upon. It was like being back at Hogwarts.

Draco never batted an eye at the dark and blatantly illegal subject matter of Tom’s research, but
that was hardly surprising. He was a Slytherin.

Tom sometimes took breaks from his Dark Arts research to help Draco with the practical elements
of Defence Against the Dark Arts or Transfiguration.

“You’re brilliant at this,” Draco said one day. “Why aren’t you working as something more
impressive than a shop assistant?” It was spoken with characteristic insensitivity. Draco often made
social blunders not out of a lack of awareness but rather a lack of care for the consequences. Tom
doubted he would be as cavalier if he knew who he was actually speaking to, but for some reason
he never put him in his place.

“The options for someone of questionable birth are limited in Wizarding society,” he said.

“Oh, but not this limited,” Draco said, waving a dismissive hand. “Come on, you were a Slytherin,
prefect and Head Boy. You’ve got twelve NEWTs for Merlin’s sake. Where has that ambition
gone?”

“I like antiques,” Tom said, sipping his tea and making careful notes on bone curses.

Draco scoffed but went back to his Transfiguration practice, muttering something under his breath
that sounded a lot like, ‘A likely story’.

They couldn’t afford nor fit a second bed and Draco didn’t seem to have any particular desire to put
space between them. He clung to Tom like an octopus during the night and in the morning made
fussy little noises, sleepily grabbing at Tom when he extracted himself from his hold. He still
complained about the sagging mattress and lack of second pillow every night, but Tom simply
tuned him out.

He was aware that it wasn’t normal to share his bed so intimately with a boy, but he was also not
someone that had ever cared for social convention. Draco never behaved inappropriately, unless
drooling on Tom’s chest counted as such, and it was useful to have someone to, quite literally,
warm his bed who wasn’t expecting anything from him.

The nightmares were where the only inconvenience lay.

He knew that Draco had them regularly because he would draw back from Tom and curl into a
ball, shivering and muttering to himself. He was usually able to sleep through or ignore those
incidents but for the rare occasions when Draco’s voice would raise with distress as he pleaded for
his mother or father’s life. Tom dealt with those particular nightmares by throwing a silencing spell
on him and rolling onto his side so that he didn’t have to look at him.

His own nightmares were far more disruptive and humiliating. They came rarely, but when they
did, his unconscious response tended toward violence.

Draco shook him awake one night, grim and pale. It was frigid, his breath coming in puffs of white
before his face. Tom sat up abruptly and almost toppled Draco, in his disoriented state not realising
that he’d been straddling his hips, hands bunched in the lapels of his nightshirt. There was a biting
breeze whipping through the room as if he hadn’t closed—

“You broke the window,” Draco said, cranky and tired, barely visible in the gloom. “Fix it.”

Tom turned and saw that he was telling the truth. He repaired it with a flick of his wand and then lit
the room to inspect the damage. It was a plain cedar wand he’d stolen several years ago and taken
to using in Draco’s presence, guessing that he’d recognise the yew wand from Voldemort.

The books were all over the floor, a glass shattered by the sink. He straightened up the room and
fixed the glass, then turned his attention back to Draco.

“Was that everything?” he asked.

“Yeah.” If it weren’t for how brightly he’d lit the room, or had sitting up not deposited Draco in his
lap, he might not have noticed the reddening of the skin around his eye. He reached up and brushed
his thumb over his cheekbone, frowning when Draco flinched and pulled away.

“Did I—?”

“You just flung your arm out in your sleep,” Draco grumbled. “Clumsy gorilla. It caught me by
surprise.”

“I can imagine,” Tom murmured. “Here, let me fix—”

“Absolutely not.” Draco shoved Tom’s wand hand away. “You’re rubbish at healing magic. I’ll get
some bruise cream from Mr Mulpepper tomorrow.”

Tom put his wand back on the bedside table, a little amused. He’d never been told he was rubbish
at magic before.

In the morning, the bruise had darkened to an alarming black. Tom was slightly embarrassed but
mostly fascinated. He’d rarely been one for physical violence, magic having always served him
better.

He made breakfast and brought it to Draco so that he wouldn’t have to get out of bed. From the
way he was carrying on, one would think Tom had deliberately thrown him from a third-story
window rather than having accidentally whacked him in his sleep.

“Let me buy the cream from Mulpepper,” Tom said. “You don’t have work today anyway, and I’d
rather he not think I’m beating you. I prefer my reputation unblemished.” For now.

“Are you sure you can manage the transaction without physically assaulting Mr Mulpepper?”
Draco asked, looking remarkably smug for a boy with a black eye lying on threadbare sheets.
“Why would he assume you were the one to do the damage to me?”

“He already thinks we’re fucking. It’s a logical follow-through, especially for boarders on
Knockturn.”

Draco went pink and looked away. “There’s no need to be so crass,” he muttered.

Tom’s eyes lingered on the colour high on his cheeks for a little too long before he forced himself
to avert his gaze. “I’ll be back in fifteen,” he said.

Draco spent a decent chunk of his spare time with the Knockturn prostitutes. Tom thought it was
for lecherous reasons till he stumbled upon them one evening having a tea party in the hallway
outside his flat.

“Draco does a brilliant impression of Mr Mulpepper,” one girl said. She was wearing a dressing
gown and not much else, hair up in purple rollers. She left a crimson impression of her lips on the
edge of the eggshell-white teacup. “Go on, Draco, show him.”

Draco hunched forward, squinted his eyes, and did an impression of Mr Mulpepper so uncannily
accurate that even Tom had to admit he was impressed.

Raucous laughter filled the hallway and Tom looked up, expecting their neighbours to be yanking
open their doors to yell at them. It took him another moment to realise that they were attending the
tea party too.

Draco was socially needy in a way Tom didn’t understand. He would spend hours chattering away
anyone who would listen, sitting on their front doorstep in the evenings. He never tried to bring
any of his friends into the flat, which was good because Tom would've put his foot down. Tom
didn’t like to spend any time with the prostitutes because they kept trying to offer him a job.

Tom knew his old associates were waiting for him to say or do something impressive. To bring
them together and teach them horrific new magic. But between his work at Borgin and Burkes, his
seduction of Hepzibah, his research, and helping Draco prepare for his NEWTs, he had little time
to think of them.

All they knew was that he was immersed in learning more about the Dark Arts and had more
pressing interests than tutoring them in the style of the childish Dark Arts club he’d run in their
Hogwarts days. It would have to be enough for now.

It was past seven but he was still at Hebzibah's house trying to sell her enchanted tea cosies.
Despite not getting paid overtime, the commission percentage made the hours almost tolerable, and
what he wanted from her was nothing related to work.

She put a wrinkled, plump hand on his knee and squeezed. He saw red, but only for a moment. The
windows rattled in their frame, but so subtly she surely would mistake it for the wind. He’d spent
the last decade learning to control himself in such situations.

“Goodness,” she said, “I’ve kept you for much too long again, darling. You must let me know
when I’m boring you.”

“I would if there was any risk of that,” he said, flashing his teeth in a way that he hoped was
flattering rather than violent. With detached acceptance, he realised he'd probably have to fuck her
if he wanted to make any progress.

“Oh, Tom,” she giggled. Her hand slid up till it was on his thigh. His stomach lurched in a way that
was not remotely pleasant. “Why don’t you stay for dinner? It’s late enough already.”

Not this time. “I would love to,” he said, infusing his voice with as much regret as he could muster,
“but unfortunately Mr Burke expects me back soon.” A blatant lie. He was sure Burke had locked
up and was waiting to chew Tom out the following morning for not bringing the tea cosies back
before close. Such was his life.

He stormed back into his flat in a thunderous mood. The window there rattled a lot more
ferociously than Hepzibah’s had, but that was probably because it was more poorly made.

Draco was sitting at the table writing a Potions essay. Dinner was on the stove under a preservation
charm and the dishes were doing themselves in the sink. He saw that Draco had already eaten,
something that irritated him even further.

“Give me that,” he snapped, snatching the essay off him.

“Hey! I wasn’t finished—“

Tom batted his hand away and wandlessly summoned a quill and a bottle of red ink, settling into
making furious corrections to the work. They sat in silence but for the scratch of quill on parchment
for a short while. He filled the margin with particularly rudely phrased corrections.

“Has anyone told you that venting your anger by marking essays is odd?” Draco asked, incapable
of staying quiet or inoffensive for more than five minutes.

“Has anyone told you that the possessive form of ‘it’ has no apostrophe?”

Draco squinted at his essay, trying to read it upside down. “Oh, come on,” he complained.
“I know that. It was probably an ink splatter. Besides, that’s only my first draft and you didn’t even
let me finish it.”

“I wrote better first drafts when I was thirteen,” Tom said.

Draco went pink and sat up, spine ramrod straight, in the way that meant he was properly offended.
Tom recognised it because he did it on a daily basis.

“Just because your day was awful, doesn’t mean you get to take it out on me,” he said haughtily,
standing up as if he meant to storm out of the room. But because there was only the one room, and
he was already in his pyjamas, he stomped over to the bed and threw himself down on it, burying
his face in the pillow.

Once he’d finished marking what was, admittedly, a perfectly sound first draft Potions essay, Tom
marked his Transfiguration essay and Herbology report. He glanced over at Draco who hadn’t
moved from his sulking position.

With nothing else to busy himself with, he went to see what had been made for dinner. It was
Italian spaghetti noodles with a tomato and slow-cooked lamb sauce. Tom didn’t know much about
foreign food, but he had eaten lamb on occasion and knew it took no small amount of work to get it
that tender.

Much later, he crawled into bed beside Draco, who still hadn’t moved. He thought at first that he’d
fallen asleep, but his death grip on the pillow when Tom tried to take it from him readily disproved
that theory. That just wasn’t right. Tom always got the pillow and Draco… Draco used Tom as a
pillow, he supposed.

“Let go,” he ordered in what he fancied might be his Dark Lord voice one day.

“Fuck off,” Draco replied, muffled and grumpy.

Tom sighed and rolled onto his back. They’d used extension charms to expand the bed some
months earlier, but due to the cold, they usually huddled together like penguins anyway. Or rather,
Tom slept however he felt was comfortable and Draco draped himself over him.

He shifted and tried to make himself comfortable. The mattress really did sag terribly.

Draco had turned on his side, back to Tom, and had started to curl up the way he did when he was
having nightmares. Only he was still awake.

Tom turned and flung an arm over his waist, pulling him in closer. Yes, this was good too. Not as
good as their usual way of sleeping, but if they both lay on their side close together they could
share the pillow. Draco hadn’t quite relaxed, but he also hadn’t elbowed Tom in the face. He smelt
vaguely of oranges, sweet and subtle.

Tom rubbed his thumb over Draco’s hipbone absent-mindedly and said, “Dinner was nice.”

“Of course it was, I spent four hours cooking it,” he grumbled. “Father always said not to feed
strawberries to pigs.”

Tom frowned, thinking his older self must have been right to make Lucius Malfoy’s life miserable.
He wanted to ask if the lamb or spaghetti noodles had been pricey, but figured such a question
would only prompt more theatrics.

“Your Transfiguration essay was alright,” he offered, his next olive branch. “But your Herbology
needs work.”

His words didn’t have the intended effect. “You didn’t stop with the Potions essay?” Draco asked,
sounding appalled. “Tom.”

For some reason, it never seemed pressing for either of them to purchase a second pillow or
transfigure something into one.

Later, Draco said that he really did appreciate Tom marking his work for him, but that he ‘thrived
on positive reinforcement’ and did not find value in Tom’s more creative corrections/insults.

In Winter, Hepzibah showed him Slytherin’s Locket and Hufflepuff’s Cup. Tom smiled
mechanically and said everything she wanted to hear. He refused her offer when she told him that
her floo was down but he was welcome to stay the night.

Two days later he murdered her and framed her house elf.

He hadn’t killed anyone since his father and grandparents. It was easier this time.

He had everything he needed: enough money to take him to eastern Europe; the locket, his
birthright; and Hufflepuff’s Cup, his intended third Horcrux vessel. He could disappear, Tom
Riddle finally wiped from the face of the earth, Lord Voldemort rising to take his place.

But first, he had to bind his flayed soul to the Cup.

If Tom had considered Draco, he might have made alternate arrangements. But such was his
unshakable focus on the goal right in front of him, that he did not even think of how he might react
to coming back from Mr Mulpepper’s and seeing the aftermath of the Horcrux ritual.

He knelt on the floor between the kitchenette and the bed and reached inside himself with his
magic, grasping onto the flimsy damaged part of his soul and tearing it away.

The pain was instantaneous and excruciating. His vision went black for a moment and a groan was
torn through his gritted teeth against his will. He persevered, binding his soul fragment to the
golden core of the Cup, reciting the words of the spell in a shaky voice that he could barely hear
over the ringing in his ears.

Ritual completed, he crumpled, shaking uncontrollably, breath coming harsh and wet. He retched
on the floorboards, emptying his stomach twice. There was blood in his sick, as vivid crimson as
the rubies encrusted in the goblet. Inside, his soul was reaching out, desperate, searching for what
he’d taken from it.

It had hurt the first time he’d split his soul, but he’d been strong enough to get out of bed and go to
class the next morning. The second time had hurt more, but he’d thought that was because of
everything else he’d been feeling at the time. Now he knew it was due to the repeated trauma.

If he’d realised ahead of time, he would have skipped lunch.

Tom slipped in and out of consciousness for two days of feverish madness. In his brief moments of
lucidity, he observed things his rational mind could not explain: a damp cloth gently run over his
sweaty brow, a glass of water pressed to his parched mouth, blankets, heating charms when he
shivered, cooling charms when his temperature rose, a soft voice reading to him as the sun set
outside the window.

On the third day, he woke and knew the worst of it was over.

It was early, light spilling in thin and grey through the window. He was tucked into bed, wrapped
with blankets, though he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Someone had taken him out of
his day clothes and dressed him in his pyjamas.

He propped himself up on his elbows and grimaced, pain shooting through his chest. But any
feelings of discomfort were forgotten when he saw Draco. He was sitting on one of the
uncomfortable wooden dining chairs, dragged over to the side of Tom’s bed. He was slouched
forward, arms folded on the edge of the mattress, head pillowed on them. His hair was striking,
still a silky white-gold even under the colourless morning light.

Tom was seized by fear, head whipping around to where he’d done the ritual. But the locket and
Cup were still exactly where he’d left them. Untouched.

He was in awe of his own foolish recklessness. For the first time, he wondered if the soul splitting
was affecting his mental faculties.

His erratic movement disturbed Draco, who stirred, making a fussy sleepy noise. He sat up slowly,
rubbing his eyes, not yet noticing Tom was awake. Stifling a yawn with his hand, he tiptoed over to
the kitchen to fill a glass of water. Tom realised that he was trying not to wake him.

“Pour me one too, would you?” he said, voice coming out raspy.

Draco jumped about a foot in the air, dropping and shattering the glass.

“Tom!” he exclaimed. “When did you wake up?” He fetched his wand and fixed the glass with a
muttered Reparo; still not any good at wandless magic. He filled another glass and sent it floating
over to Tom.

“Just then,” Tom said, accepting it and taking a careful sip. He didn’t want to embarrass himself by
spilling it all over himself. Not after all the other humiliating things Draco had undoubtedly seen
from him.

For a moment, Draco was so incensed that he simply gaped at Tom, mouth opening and closing
like a fish. Tom settled back in the bed and enjoyed the silence. He knew it wouldn’t last long.

“What did you do, Tom?” His voice was high and upset. It wouldn’t be long before the neighbours
started thumping on their wall to get them to keep it down. “I found you unconscious in a puddle of
your own bloody vomit. You wouldn’t wake up no matter what I did. I thought you were dead.”

“Why didn’t you take me to Mungo’s?” Tom asked, curious rather than accusatory.

“I have no idea what you did to yourself, but I recognise dark magic when I see it. And this is
darker than anything I have ever witnessed.” He gestured at the Cup.

He would have to kill Draco, he realised. He knew too much already. If he somehow managed to
take that information into the future, the results would be catastrophic. Something twinged in his
chest and he lay back, grimacing. Bloody Horcrux.

Seeing that Tom wasn’t going to do anything other than glare at the mouldy ceiling, Draco flopped
back down onto the chair and sighed.

“Your bags were all packed,” he said quietly. “Where were you planning on going?”

“I’ve been saving to go to Albania.”

“Albania? What, for backpacking?“ This time their neighbour did knock on the wall. Draco
ignored it. “You were just going to leave me here?”

“You could come too,” Tom said. He didn’t know why he’d invited him. Draco wouldn’t like
seeing the things he was planning on doing in Albania. He’d cried when Tom had killed a rat in
their kitchen.

Also, Lord Voldemort did not need travel companions.

“I haven’t got any money saved at all,” Draco said. “And I wouldn’t want to go to Albania even if I
did! Why not somewhere pleasant like France or Spain?”

Tom was unsure if war-torn France and fascist Spain were what Draco had in mind. “My research,”
he said simply.

“Your research,” Draco said, looking from the Cup to Tom, bedridden, with a curl to his lip that
made it very clear what he thought of his Dark Arts studies. “Maybe you should research
something less likely to kill you.”

Tom wanted to laugh at the irony, but his throat still felt like he’d gargled glass. He looked at
Draco properly, observing the crease between his brows, the downward turn of his mouth, the dark
circles beneath his eyes. “When was the last time you slept?”

“I was just asleep,” Draco said, gesturing at the place where his head had been resting on the bed.

“I mean properly. Lying down in a bed.”

“The night before you used yourself in a dark magic experiment,” Draco said, in a tone that made it
clear he thought that was obvious.

“You should’ve just left me on the floor,” Tom said reasonably. “I wouldn’t have noticed the
difference.”

Draco threw his arms up in the air and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He
came back a moment later to summon his shoes and then was gone again.

*
Tom spent the rest of the week not strong enough to get out of bed. That didn’t matter because he’d
already quit his job at Borgin and Burkes in anticipation of going to Albania.

Draco studied and worked and cooked and made sure Tom was as comfortable as he could be on
the sagging mattress with the flat pillow. He agreed to sleep in the bed again, but Tom got the
impression he wasn’t doing much sleep at all. Whenever he woke, it was to anxious grey eyes
peering down at him.

Tom was aware he was being coddled and pampered. It was unnecessary but he found that he
didn’t mind. Being cared for so thoughtfully was… nice. Strange, but nice. No one had ever done
anything like that for him before. He also knew that Draco wouldn’t have done any of it if he’d
known Tom was only sick because he’d murdered a woman.

Being bedridden and unemployed meant that he spent a lot more time with Draco. Previously, he
worked 9 to 6, seven days a week, and would only get home in time to eat the steaming hot dinner
put on the table before him. Now he saw the labour put in before dinner each night, the long hours
of NEWTs practice and everything else Draco did through the day while Tom was at work.

Draco dedicated a chunk of each day to researching time travel and inexplicable magical
occurrences. Something Tom was displeased to see. When he expressed this, Draco responded with
little civility.

“You’re abandoning me to go to Albania! Why shouldn’t I look for how to get back to my own
time?” he snapped, slamming the book shut.

If Draco was going to be lonely, that was hardly Tom’s fault. That didn’t mean he should go
running off fifty years into the future.

They didn’t speak of Albania again. Draco continued to read his books on time travel but brought
Tom back any interesting Dark Arts related titles he found at the second-hand bookstore on
Knockturn. In return, Tom marked his essays and offered lazy corrections from the bed. Draco had
forbidden him from using his magic for at least a week and Tom was humouring him.

“Why don’t you become a teacher?” Draco asked one day. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed
beside him and had just finished jotting down a helpful mnemonic for Herbology that Tom had
come up with in Fourth Year. “You’re excellent at explaining things, and you even enjoy
marking.”

Tom scowled. “I did apply, just after my Seventh Year. Professor Dippet rejected me because he
thought I was too young.”

“Then you should apply again. You’re older now.”

“Barely.”

“You’re twenty. That’s plenty old enough,” Draco said, with all the wisdom of a seventeen-year-
old. “Professor Snape was only twenty-two when he started teaching at Hogwarts.”

“Snape?”

“Well, he isn’t born yet. But he was the Potions teacher while I was a student.” Draco was starting
to look melancholic, so Tom hastily redirected him before it developed into a proper sulk.

“What do you want to do once you get your NEWTs?” he asked.

“I’m a Malfoy. I didn’t plan to do anything after I graduated,” Draco said, wrinkling his nose.
“Except being rich and important and controlling the future Minister, of course.”

It sounded like things hadn’t changed much for the Malfoys.

“But now?”

“Now… I don’t know. It depends on my results.” He looked down, twisting his shirt sleeve
between his fingers.

“You’ll get Outstandings for all of your subjects,” Tom said, folding his arms behind his head.
“You’ve got me helping you.”

“Good to see your dark magic disaster didn’t damage your ego,” Draco sneered. “Besides, you’re
going off to Albania. And I’ll have to pick up more hours so that I can afford rent.”

Tom blinked once, slow and incredulous. “Are you trying to guilt me?”

“Is it working?”

“Certainly not,” Tom said. “I don’t feel guilt.” Anyone who knew him ought to be aware of that.

The next week, Tom was up and walking around again. He was also still unemployed but had
enough savings to pay rent for the foreseeable future. He spent hours repairing cracks in the plaster
and cleaning dust out of the narrowest of nooks and crannies with his wand. His bag remained half
packed.

One afternoon, he apparated out to a field in Wales and helped Draco practice his non-
verbal Protego.

“Can’t you fire anything less deadly at me?” Draco shouted, ducking with a yelp as his shield
shattered under the force of Tom’s curse.

“Your opponent won’t hold back simply because you are incompetent,” Tom said and cast again as
Draco tried to pick himself up out of the mud. He scrambled out of the way with impressive
reflexes, the spell only catching his sleeve, splitting it to the elbow.

“Time out, time out!” he called, scrabbling in the scrubby grass for his wand. He spelled the mud
off his hands and knees, expression sour. Tom crossed the field at a leisurely pace, hands in the
pockets of his trousers.

“What’s this?” he asked, catching Draco by the wrist and pulling him closer, forearm turned up. He
had a tattoo that looked more like a scar; vivid red on ivory skin. It depicted a skull with a twisted
snake spilling from its mouth. Fashioned after the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, he thought,
congratulating himself. It was rather striking.

Though they had been sharing the same room for months, he had never seen it before. Draco had
been hiding it from him, either instinctively or on purpose.

“It’s—it’s his mark.” Draco looked away. He had gone red; embarrassed, or perhaps ashamed.
Tom reached up to touch the tattoo and Draco recoiled, yanking his arm from his grip. “Don’t
touch it,” he snapped. “That’s how—how we summon him. By pressing on it.”
“And what happens when he presses on it?” Tom asked. He couldn’t bring himself to lift his eyes
from the mark.

“It calls all of his Death Eaters to him,” Draco said quietly. His face was still turned away, a
muscle flexing in his jaw.

Tom reached out again and traced the border of the Dark Mark with a featherlight touch. The foul
magic within surged up at his familiar touch, but he willed it back. “There are no other Death
Eaters yet,” he said. “You’re the first.”

In Spring, Professor Dippet found Tom having lunch with Draco near Hogsmeade. They were
eating sandwiches on a grassy hill from which one could see Hogwarts.

At the sight of the headmaster, Tom rose to greet him, slipping back into his Head Boy persona
with practised ease.

“Professor, it’s been too long,” he said, shaking his hand. Privately, he wondered if they were
about to be reprimanded for trespassing in some way.

“Tom,” he exclaimed. “Aberforth told me he saw you come up this way! I’m glad I found you.”

The eyes and ears of Hogwarts were everywhere. Tom vowed not to come back there again; or, at
least to apparate directly to the hill if Draco really wanted to come.

“And who’s your young friend here?” Dippet continued, blissfully unaware of Tom’s less than
charitable thoughts.

“Draco Merlo, sir,” Draco said, shaking Dippet’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Tom’s always
spoken very highly of you.”

Tom could barely remember mentioning Dippet’s name to him.

Dippet chuckled, looking pleased. “I’m sure I’ve got many more wonderful things to say about
Tom than he has about me. A student as brilliant as him comes around once in a hundred years.”

“You flatter me,” Tom murmured, planning his escape.

“And what’ve you been up to recently, Tom? Still working at Borgin and Burkes?” The second
question was asked with forced levity. Tom was well aware of Dippet’s disappointment with him
for working as a shop assistant instead of getting Slughorn to set him up with one of his less
intolerant Ministry connections.

“I resigned a few weeks ago, actually,” Tom said. “I’ve been taking the time to focus on my
research.”

“He’s also been helping me prepare for my NEWTs,” Draco said. “I moved from France recently
and have been continuing my studies via distance learning. I’m not sure how I would’ve managed
without Tom. He’s an excellent teacher.”

Tom reconsidered the merits of picnics. If they were seated at a table, he could have kicked Draco
without being seen.

“You know, it’s funny you should say that,” Dippet said. “Since Professor Merrythought retired,
we’ve been looking for a teacher willing to take on the Defence Against the Dark Arts job on a
long-term basis. Tom, I know you expressed interest in the position in the past, and at the time I
feared you were too young to earn the respect of students who had been your peers only the year
prior. However, I’ve always been convinced you would be a brilliant teacher, and if you’d be
interested in applying for the next school year, the position is yours for the taking. You’re twenty
now, a perfectly normal age to start teaching.”

Tom didn’t need legilimency to sense the smugness radiating from Draco.

“Thank you, Professor,” he said. “I’ll have to give it some thought before I can give you a definite
answer, if that’s acceptable.”

“Of course, my boy. Just let me know by, oh, let’s say the end of May. Are two months
sufficient?”

“It’s very generous, sir.”

They exchanged pleasantries for a little while longer before Dippet remembered he had a school to
run, and mercifully left them to their lunch. Tom cherished the silence for the three seconds it
lasted.

“I told you—“

“Fuck off,” Tom said.

“You aren’t setting a good example for your students with that kind of language,” Draco said,
bumping his shoulder against Tom’s and batting his eyelashes, “Professor Riddle.”

“Never do that again,” Tom said, scowling when Draco broke into delighted peals of laughter.

Tom didn’t unpack his bag, but he also didn’t go to Albania.

“What do you plan to do after you take your NEWTs?” he asked for the second time.

He was expecting to hear Draco waffle on again about not knowing till he got his results but
instead was met with pensive silence. “I want to become a Healer,” Draco said, and then flushed,
glaring at Tom as if he expected him to laugh.

Tom didn’t understand why he would; there were few professions more respected than Healing.
Though he had never considered it before, Healers in the ranks of his Death Eaters would be
valuable.

“I think you would be well suited to it,” he said, thinking of the care he’d received when Draco had
nursed him back to health after he’d made his last Horcrux. “That’s an excellent idea.”

Draco went a darker shade of pink, glaring down at the table before him. “Of course, it depends on
my results—“

“Oh, be quiet,” Tom said. “You’re boring me.”

That shut him up efficiently. Tom filed away the information for future use.

“Why do you ask?” Draco said eventually.

“Because I’m thinking of moving.”

“Oh,” Draco said and started to twist his sleeve. “Oh, okay. I understand.”

Tom frowned, trying to work out why he sounded so devastated. Was he truly that attached to their
Knockturn flat? It didn’t even have a private toilet. “I was thinking Hogsmeade would be best,” he
continued. “I would need to floo or apparate there each day anyway because of Hogwarts’ wards.
Of course, there is free accommodation at Hogwarts for professors, by far the most affordable and
convenient option, but they don’t allow cohabitation for anyone other than married professors.”

Draco’s head whipped up. “You want me to move with you?”

“Of course,” Tom said, thinking it obvious. “Healer trainees aren’t paid anything for the first two
years of the program and working significant hours will be difficult on top of coursework, so we
will need to consider our options. I don’t mind covering the majority of the the rent while you’re
studying.”

Draco was looking at him with bright eyes. “We could get married,” he said. “Then no one could
stop us sharing.”

Tom’s mind skidded to a halt. “Married?” he repeated, scandalised. “But we’re men.”

“Oh, stow your silly Muggle sensibilities,” he said. “A magical marriage is legally accepted so
long as both parties can complete the bond. That means no marrying Squibs, Muggles or toads.
Quite simple, really.”

Tom had known that, but it hadn’t ever occurred to him that that meant men could marry men.

“I suppose so,” he said dubiously.

“Tom, free accommodation!”

Put so persuasively, he had to agree.

Once Tom had done his research and was certain there were going to be no inconvenient
consequences, he took Draco to the Ministry and had an official complete the bond. There was a
minor disagreement over what they ought to do with their surnames.

Draco didn’t want to keep Merlo, because it wasn’t his name and he had a very difficult time
remembering to introduce himself with it instead of Malfoy.

Tom didn’t want to keep Riddle because it was his filthy Muggle father’s name and he wanted to
erase it from the world.

“But it was the name your mother gave you.” Draco had been given a brief understanding of the
events surrounding Tom’s birth one night when too much wine had been consumed. “Even if it
was his, you’ve made it yours now. Wouldn’t the best revenge be ensuring the name is
remembered for you rather than him?”

The best revenge would be killing his grandparents in front of his father before killing the man
himself. But Tom had already done that so he was open to other ideas. Still, he was surprised that
Draco was even considering a Muggle name.
“I’m beginning to think some of that blood supremacy business was a bit unnecessary,” Draco said,
his Knockturn Alley social network consisting of many Muggle-borns and half-bloods. “Besides, I
know that I'm a pureblood and that’s all that matters.”

Draco brought a doe-eyed girl named Betty from the brothel to act as witness. She chewed tobacco
endlessly, which had the side-effect of making her smell like a Muggle. It meant witches and
wizards gave her unpleasant looks in the street and at the Ministry but apparently was a strong
selling point for her services at the brothel.

They were directed to a small, windowless room with yellow wallpaper. A bored looking ministry
official had them hold hands and recite their vows while he cast the bonding spell. They were out
with their signed paperwork within fifteen minutes.

It was rather reminiscent of an Unbreakable Vow and just as chaste. Tom expressed this opinion to
Draco, who said, “Of course; it’s a marriage, not a storybook romance.”

“That is the most pureblood thing I’ve ever heard,” Betty said, chewing loudly.

Tom penned a letter to Dippet informing him of his marital status and the need for appropriate
accommodation if he were to accept the position. He received an effusive response within two days
inviting him in to see if the accommodation was suitable for him. He accepted and skipped Draco’s
next tea party to visit Hogwarts.

He was greeted by Dumbledore at the gate.

“Tom,” Dumbledore said, still infuriatingly over-familiar. His eyes weren’t twinkling. “It’s been a
while.”

Tom slid his hand into his pocket, closing his fingers around his wand. “Albus,” he said with false
levity, “I’m glad to be back.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, “I imagine you are.”

They walked up the hill together, the shape of Hogwarts on the horizon looming tall and dark
above them.

“I believe congratulations are in order,” Dumbledore said. “I hear you’ve gotten married.”

“Thank you.”

“Your spouse—Draco Merlo, was it? I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“Draco Riddle,” Tom said, taking an excessive amount of satisfaction from the correction. He
guessed Dumbledore had just assumed Tom would wish to be rid of his Muggle name. It was all
the confirmation he needed that he was right to keep it. “You’ll meet him when we move in.”

They took a path around the back of the school that went through an area rarely used by students
for leisure due to the lack of grass. There was no one around but them and distantly he wondered if
Dumbledore intended to kill him and dump his body in the lake.

He knew he wanted to. It was only foolish Gryffindor values keeping him back. Still, it displeased
Tom that Dumbledore was alive even in 1997. That was a failure on his part.
 *

“How was it?” Draco called when Tom got in. He was in the kitchen, stirring something on the
stove.

Tom came over and leaned over his shoulder, watching him cook. He was making some sort of
vegetable soup. “It’s lovely,” he said truthfully. “Far nicer than what we had in Slytherin unless
things changed drastically by the time you started at Hogwarts.” He thought of the bedroom with
an ensuite as large as their whole current flat, the circular sitting room with a grand fireplace and a
gramophone, and the cozy little study. He’d decided that Draco could have the study as Tom had
his own office on the third floor near the Defence classroom. There was a garden too, just a small
one, but with a wall and repelling charms to keep students away.

Draco hummed thoughtfully and scooped a spoonful of the soup, holding it up for Tom to taste.

“Bit more salt?”

“You always say that,” Draco complained, but added it anyway. “Do you want to take the job?”

“Yes." It was an easy answer, he’d wanted the DADA position since Fifth Year. He had also as
good as told Dumbledore he was taking it, so he wouldn’t be backing down.

“What about Albania?”

“Albania can wait,” Tom said decisively. “When’s dinner?” If he couldn’t quench his bloodlust
with Dumbledore’s corpse at his feet, he could at least fill his stomach.

“Ten minutes? I baked bread; you can cut it if you want something to do.”

Either of them could handle that with magic, but Tom summoned a chopping board and began to
slice it by hand, standing shoulder to shoulder with Draco at the counter.

Draco’s eighteenth birthday went almost unacknowledged, NEWTs looming less than a week
away. He spent June in a haze of anxiety, Tom waking to him muttering potion ingredients in his
sleep on more than one occasion.

Tom went back to Borgin and Burkes and was readily offered his job back. He accepted and did not
tell them he’d be gone again in three months.

At the end of exam week, he came home to find Draco lying on their bed, head buried in the
pillow.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, going over to sit with him.

Draco didn’t respond, so Tom poked him between his ribs till he groaned and pushed him away.

“I just—“ Draco propped himself up on his elbows and looked at Tom. His eyes were red-rimmed,
hair sticking up in wild directions. “It’s been over a year since I came here, but I’ve just been
worrying about NEWTs, or what to have for dinner, or if you—I mean, or just personal
relationships. My parents—if he thinks I’ve run away, then he’ll kill my parents. And yet I haven’t
been making any effort to figure out how to get back to my time, or to—to stop him existing in this
time.”
“He won’t kill your parents,” Tom said.

Draco scoffed. “And how do you know that?”

“Because I’ll stop him. Forewarned is forearmed, no?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Draco said. “He’ll kill you. You—you have no idea what he’s capable of.”

Tom said, “I think I can guess.”

They moved to Hogwarts in mid-August. Their neighbours, Mr Mulpepper, and the girls and boys
at the brothel were all devastated to see Draco go, but most struggled to even remember Tom’s
name. They simply referred to him as ‘Draco’s young man’. Tom was still trying to decide if that
angered him when the thestrals came to pick them up in Hogsmeade.

“And you’ve reinforced your occlumency shields?” he asked for the twelfth time.

“Yes, yes,” Draco said, rolling his eyes. He was slouched against the side of the carriage, watching
Hogwarts approach through the window.

“This isn’t something you can be slack about. Dumbledore is incredibly proficient at legilimency
and he’s never held back from using it—“

“I’ve been fending off your mental pokes for over a year,” Draco said. “I can handle Dumbledore.”
His eyes were unusually shrewd, cool grey in the morning sun. Tom looked away.

They had dinner with the full staff body at the Ravenclaw table, similar to Christmas. Slughorn
came waddling down the table to sit across from Tom, engaging him in a boastful conversation
about his younger alumni connections at the Ministry. He peered at Draco with much curiosity and
started along a line of questioning about the Merlo family which risked his fragile false identity.

Tom redirected the conversation smoothly, wishing Draco hadn’t been too prideful to simply take
a Muggle name in the first place.

“House elves,” Draco said with a satisfied sigh, the food appearing on the table before them. “Now
you won’t have to suffer my cooking anymore.”

“I like your cooking,” Tom said, serving them both mashed potatoes.

Draco went pink but smiled. “I can cook on weekends,” he said.

Beside him, Tom saw Dumbledore watching them, listening in to their conversation. He stared the
man down till he looked away.

Once Dippet was satisfied that they were settled in, and Draco had disappeared off to have an
extended bath in their new ensuite, Tom took the opportunity to reacquaint himself with the castle.

His footsteps were loud in the empty halls, students all away for the holidays, even the portraits
slumbering in their frames. He’d wanted so badly to stay over the summer when he was younger,
but he’d been sent back each year with no exceptions. Back to the war.
The first place he visited was the first-floor girls’ bathroom. He hadn’t been there since Fifth Year.

The ghost came floating up from one of the toilets as soon as he shut the door behind him. “You
aren’t meant to be in here,” she said in her angry, high pitched voice. “No boys allowed.” She’d
said something similar before she’d died.

“Do you recognise me, Myrtle?” Tom asked.

She blinked, taken aback by the question. “Well, you’re—you’re that Slytherin prefect aren’t you.”

“I’m a professor now.”

At that, she flew off to cry in one of the toilets, sobs echoing strangely off the porcelain bowl. He
traced the snake scratched on the side of one of the copper taps as he waited for her to compose
herself. Eventually, she came drifting back, peering at him with eyes magnified behind pearly
spectacles.

“You came to visit me,” she said. “Why?”

So she really hadn’t seen him. All the ducking around and avoiding the bathroom for his last two
years at Hogwarts had been for nothing. He felt like laughing.

“We went to school together,” he said. “I wanted to see how you were.”

“Oh,” she said, twisting her lank, transparent hair between her fingers. “You know, my parents
were allowed to come and visit. Even though they’re Muggles. I think Mother is glad I’m a ghost,
though they wish I would haunt their toilet in Bristol rather than Hogwarts. But if I’d done that, I
never would’ve had so many opportunities to scare Olive Hornby.”

“If I were a ghost I’d want to haunt Hogwarts too,” Tom said.

“Well,” she said, batting her silvery eyelashes, “if you die, you’re welcome to share my toilet.”

“Thank you, Myrtle, that’s very kind.” He thumbed over the snake carving one last time before
stepping back. He wondered if Draco would be interested in visiting the Chamber of Secrets.

“Huh,” Alphard said, “so while the Knights thought you were off researching the darkest of magic,
giving us the edge against the mudbloods and blood traitors, you were instead holed up with a
pretty French boy?”

“I can multi-task,” Tom said. It had taken him a moment to remember that he called his followers
the Knights of Walpurgis. Draco had referred to them as Death Eaters so many times that Tom had
begun to think of them as such.

They were seated at a table in the corner at the Three Broomsticks, Alphard drinking ale, Tom
nursing scotch. Late afternoon sun spilt in through the window, casting strange long shadows
across their table.

Alphard glanced at Tom’s hand. He was wearing a metal bottle cap that Draco had transfigured
into a ring some months ago while practising for his NEWT. He knew it wouldn’t pass the
standards of a discerning pureblood, but didn’t much feel that he cared.

“Congratulations then.” Alphard chuckled. “Wally isn’t going to believe it. She’s convinced you’re
frigid.”

Tom had opinions on Walburga Black, but none he wished to share with her brother. “I hope she
isn’t too disappointed she missed the wedding,” he said instead. “It was a small ceremony. Only
family.”

Alphard looked torn between amusement and exasperation. “Are you happy?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” Tom said. He paused, surprised by the truth ringing through his words. He knew
happiness, it was the Basilisk bending to his will, the Gaunt ring in his hand, his father dead at his
feet.

He thought of Draco: the slope of his throat; his quick, gleeful smile; the way that his hair curled
slightly as it dried before he brutalised it with straightening charms. Tom wasn’t sure how he fitted
into anything. But perhaps that didn’t matter.

He found Draco in the garden attached to their rooms. He had a large woven basket under one arm
and was digging up turnips to put in it. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, Dark Mark
exposed in a way he would never allow unless he was sure he was in a private space. There was a
smudge of dirt on his cheek.

Tom leaned in the doorway, watching him.

Eventually, Draco looked up and smiled. “What is it?” he asked in his silly posh accent, standing
and brushing off the knees of his trousers. There were flecks of glittering blue in his grey eyes. The
evening sun caught on his hair and turned it a burnished gold.

Tom crossed the garden at a sedate pace. “I want to try something,” he said and cupped Draco’s
jaw, leaning in.

He hadn’t anticipated how it would feel. He’d never kissed anyone he’d wanted to kiss before.
Draco’s mouth opened with a surprised gasp beneath his, soft and sweet. He was warm from more
than the sun, a flush creeping up his pale cheeks. Tom’s hand moved from his jaw to the back of
his neck, holding him gently.

“Oh,” Draco said when they broke apart. “Oh.” He tangled his fingers in Tom’s hair and pulled
him in again. Turnips tumbled over their feet. “Is this—is this okay?” he asked, as if Tom hadn’t
been the one to kiss him in the first place.

“Obviously,” Tom murmured between kisses, hands slipping down to rest on Draco’s hips, pulling
him in closer. It wasn’t enough; he wasn’t sure it would ever be enough. He wanted to crawl inside
him, sink his teeth in, never let go.

Later, they settled into bed, Tom holding a book that he wasn’t reading because Draco was
chattering away at him in his excitable way. Without conscious thought, he reached up to touch his
hair, running his fingers through the silky strands, feeling out the shape of his scalp. Draco leaned
into his hand like a cat and smiled, slow and soft. His eyelashes were long, shadowed over delicate
cheekbones.

“You won’t go anywhere,” Tom said. He had taken the time travel books and sold them to the
second-hand bookshop back when they’d been packing up their flat. Draco hadn’t said anything
 about it, but he had access to Hogwarts’ library now.

“Neither will you,” Draco replied. It came out more like a question than Tom’s words had.

“I won’t,” Tom said. “Not for some time.” And when he went he would bring Draco.

“Good,” he said, lying down, head on Tom’s chest, arm firmly proprietary over his abdomen, their
legs tangled together. He didn’t complain when Tom continued to play with his hair, simply
sighing and relaxing further against him.

Tom gazed up at the pale blue canopy above their bed, thoughts syrupy slow and warm, unusually
stable.

Draco wriggled around beside him making cranky noises. “The mattress is too soft,” he said.

Tom closed his eyes and smiled.

End Notes

You can find me at the-paper-monkey on tumblr.

For the 3 of you reading this, check out @meerajebt on Twitter. Absolutely brilliant
TomDraco fanart.

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