Harry Potter and the Time Fluke

Tom's Return

Harry was practically bouncing off the walls. Today was the last day of June and, therefore, the day he would finally be reunited with Tom. It had been an entire year of Harry, alone, by himself, with no one to talk to or chat with. He wished he cared more that the other kids didn't like him. Harry had hoped Tom would come back to the orphanage over Christmas break, but he wasn't surprised when Tom opted to stay at Hogwarts and study some more. He understood Tom's somewhat obsessive need to be top of the class.

Harry waited in his room, looking out over the courtyard. He knew that the Hogwarts Express had pulled into the station a while ago, which meant Tom could be here any minute.

"Tom!" The exclamation slipped from Harry's lips, even though there was no one around to hear it. He saw his best friend come around the corner a block away, and dashed out of his room, through the hall and down the stairs. By the time he was at the bottom, he was completely out of breath–utterly unsightly, as Tom would say. Harry didn't want to appear too excited, so he opted to stay indoors at the bottom of the stairs and catch his breath, sitting down on the lowest step. Tom would probably be at the front gates now, and that would hopefully give Harry just enough time to make it seem as though he hadn't really run down three flights of stairs, just to see his best friend come through the doors.

It really was barley enough time. Right as Harry started breathing normally again, the knob on the front door twisted and the door swung open, revealing a tired, but happy, Tom Riddle. He saw Harry on the stairs and smirked.

"Were you sitting there waiting for me to get back all day?" Tom's familiar voice drawled. "Hmph, you really must've been bored without me."

Harry just stuck out his tongue. "Contrary to your mass, the world does not revolve around you."

Tom let out an indignant yelp. "Hey, I'm not fat! I'm actually quite skinny!"

"Sure, Tommy-boy, sure. You just keep telling yourself that. In fact, you seem to have put on an enormous amount of weight since you've been away. Must have been from all that feasting."

"Fine," Tom crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head to the side, neglecting to comment on Harry using his fowl nickname. "Then I guess you don't want to hear about all my classes or have any of the things I brought back for you."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Hear about your classes? Tom, you wrote me practically every day. It was like I was in your classes with you." Tom pouted, a trait he had subconsciously picked up from Harry. He didn't do it often, and certainly not around other people. Harry giggled. "But," he drawled, "If you brought me presents, I guess I'll have to make an exception and allow you to smother me with your tales of magic." Harry jumped up and began to walk up the stairs towards Tom's room.

"If you weren't my best friend," Tom muttered under his breath. He looked at his trunk, then at the stairs. "Harry."

Harry turned around, half-way up the first flight of stairs. "What?"

"Are you going to help me with this or not?"

Harry sighed before skipping back down the stairs. Though phrased as a question, he knew a command when he heard it. "Geez, Tom. Can't you do anything without me?"

"No, Harry, I can't. Without you I would probably become an empty shell of nothingness, destined to drift about the sands of time, alone, forever."

"Oh, don't be such a dramatic twat-muffin."

Tom laughed. It was a sound Harry hadn't heard in a long time and it brought a smile to his face, something Tom's natural laugh always did.

"Twat-muffin' isn't, and never will be, a word."

"I'd forgotten how much I missed your bottomless pot of knowledge, Tom," Harry sarcastically replied. "How could I have not known my insult wasn't a part of the English language?"

Tom sniffed indignantly and didn't say anything for the rest of their short trip up to his room. They set the trunk down so Tom could open the door, and Harry just walked in like he owned the place, collapsing on the bed when he reached it. "My arms," he groaned, "my poor arms. They were not aware the world could bring such hardships about. They were so young. We shouldn't have shown them, not yet. It was too soon."

Tom shook his head. "You don't make any sense, I hope you know that." His trunk made a scraping noise on the floor as he pushed it into the room with his foot. He kicked the door shut and bent down to undo the lock.

Harry used his body mass as momentum to swing his upper half up into a sitting position. "So? What did you bring me?"

Tom snorted. "You sure bounce back fast." He finished with the lock and opened the lid of the trunk. Harry sat up to see what was inside. Books, robes, wand, candy–
"Candy! Oh, Tom, you shouldn't have."

"I didn't."

"What?"

"Just kidding." Tom laughed when Harry stuck out his bottom lip and crossed his arms over his chest. "Here, Harry, these are Bertie Bott's every flavor beans. They're like jelly-beans, only these come in every flavor imaginable." Harry took the bag happily. He already knew everything Tom had said, but it would be best to humor the other for the time being. He could claim more mastery of the magical world once he actually had a place in it. "And I mean every flavor," Tom continued. "My friend, Abraxas, got a vomit flavored one. It was hysterical watching his face screw up in disgust before spitting it back out. Normally he's very refined–prim and proper, you know the sort–because he was raised in a very high-class aristocratic family. We all had a good laugh watching his dignity go to the dogs."

Harry stuck his hand into the bag and pulled out a bright orange one. Mandarin. "So Malfoy and Black have graduated from acquaintance to friend status?"

Tom nodded. "There aren't a lot of people in Slytherin who will just start talking to you if you don't have power. Blood-status and power's all that matter to them, really. It can be highly annoying. They give me such condescending looks simply because I was raised in an orphanage." If they only knew. "It isn't my fault that I have no clue if both my parents were magical or not. Only Orion and Abraxas don't seem to care that much. Or at least, they don't anymore. We met at dinner on the first night and they seemed alright. Then they found out my name was Riddle and, since they don't know any purebloods named 'Riddle', they started to distance themselves from me. But now we're friends because I've gotten to be quite powerful, for a first-year. It seems that power overrides blood-status on some counts."

"Purebloods?"

"Wizarding folk who don't have an ounce of muggle or magical creature blood in them. They seem to pride themselves on how 'pure' their blood is. It's a bit strange really, but most things wizards do is strange to me"

Harry nodded and grinned gleefully. "I understand–don't give me that look, I do, really! But truthfully, Tom, I'm just glad you're home."