First Term
September, October, and November passed quickly. After getting used to the verbal and occasional physical incidents of abuse, Tom and Harry fell into the pattern of attending class, acing assignments, and perfecting spellwork. They borrowed as many books from the library as they could, reading late into the night past curfew, trying to enrich themselves and immerse themselves in the new culture. Especially so that they could excel at Transfiguration, their hardest class—not because of the content, but because of the teacher.
However, no matter how they tried to please Professor Dumbledore, it seemed that Dumbledore had written them off completely. Insightful answers to questions were met with clipped one word phrases from Dumbledore. More often than not, Dumbledore would ignore them entirely, focusing only on the Gryffindors. At least in the beginning Dumbledore had given them some attention.
For some reason, Dumbledore never looked at Harry with the same gentleness as he had when they first met; not even when Harry waited patiently with his hand raised for him to inspect his and Tom's flawless transfigurations. No matter how much Harry tried to deny it, it hurt. No matter how much he grew to dislike Dumbledore, he still craved that man's praise. Dumbledore had an entrancing way with words that made Harry want to please him as best he could, unlike Tom, who remained completely unaffected. Harry had somewhat childishly hoped Dumbledore would cut him some slack, but every following dismissal only increased his resentment.
Outside of class, Harry and Tom spent their time learning the unspoken rules and culture associated with being a Slytherin. They were taught the art of crafting a Slytherin scheme through endless experiences: painful pranks, public humiliation, private mockery, and occasionally public mockery.
The never ending feeling that they would never be welcome, that they were undeserving of Slytherin haunted the both of them. The jabs hurt more than Harry cared to admit, and the only reason he got through it at all without becoming too emotionally affected was because of Tom. Tom was his rock, his aloofness and equally disparaging attitude an anchor for Harry to cling to when the schemes became particularly awful.
Both Harry and Tom knew they weren't experiencing the worst of the worst possible treatment. What had saved them from a stronger lashing had been their innate brilliance. Or rather, Tom's innate brilliance that he had forced Harry to foster. Their obviously gifted magical prowess and intelligence equated to perfect schoolwork and spellwork, which was a feature Slytherins could not ignore. Harry was sure that many students, especially the poor Dark Witches and Wizards, eagerly wanted to, their eagerness only curbed by the higher castes.
However, among the widespread verbal and physical abuse hurled at them, two bullies stood out in particular. Marcus Avery and his sidekick, Xavier Selwyn were the worst of the worst due to the frequency and harshness of their attacks.
Marcus Avery was the dirty blonde that couldn't hold Tom's eyes at dinner and Selwyn was his sidekick. In Harry's opinion, the two were quite similar to Billy and his crew; all of them were tactless, overconfident, and overcompensated for their insecurities. Selwyn, unlike Billy's sidekick Eric, was skinny and sickly-looking, the opposite of the hunk that was Eric.
The standoff between them reached the tipping point in mid-December. Harry and Tom had just entered the Slytherin common room after dinner ended, and they were walking to their normal spots in a discreet corner of the room. Harry was conversing quietly with Tom when Marcus Avery approached them, flanked by Xavier Selwyn. Harry ignored them, hoping they would leave soon.
"Too scared to talk to me, mudbloods?"
Many eyes swivelled and ears pricked to take note of this confrontation. In the background, the younger years were making predictions on what was going to happen, all expecting Avery and Selwyn to be victorious.
"Quite the contrary. It was you who could not hold my gaze for longer than a minute," replied Tom coolly.
"I can take you on anytime on my own," Avery threatened.
"Maybe with another person to help you. Why else would Selwyn always follow you around?"
Avery hid his flush better than Selwyn, who had turned a bright red.
Avery sneered, "Wizard's duel tonight! I want wands only, no contact. Although, that's assuming you know what a wizard's duel is."
Tom's lip curled faintly. His face, however, remained blank.
"I do. If you are so eager to duel, then Harry is my second. Who's yours? Selwyn? He's nothing more than a clingy PDW."
Everyone in the room winced, including Harry. It was an audacious move to call Selwyn a slur when Tom himself was no more than a lowly mudblood. PDW—Poor Dark Wizard—was a slur used by the wealthy Sacred Twenty-Eight families against middle class Dark purebloods because the derogatory term painfully highlighted the difference in wealth between the two classes of Dark purebloods.
Selwyn stepped forward, fists hidden in his robes. "At least I'm pure," he sneered. "I would kill myself if I was a mudblood."
Tom's eyes grew colder.
"Who says we're mudbloods? You have no definitive proof," Tom said icily.
Avery scoffed, cocking his head slightly. "We don't need proof."
Harry said, "I thought a true Slytherin always made sure they had cold, hard evidence before acting upon their assumptions, but I suppose I am proven wrong every single day."
Avery glared at them. "I expect to see you both here in the common room to duel at midnight."
"Why not the Trophy Room?" Tom asked. "If we dueled in here, everyone would watch me humiliate your pitiful form."
Avery hesitated, mulling over Tom's suggestion. Tom's taunt was not without merit, as Tom was in the top of his classes, leagues higher than anyone else. Indeed, there was a chance that Tom would beat him, and that chance was far too large for Avery to risk it. But neither did Avery want to concede to a mudblood's demands. After a tense thirty seconds, Avery made up his mind.
"Fine," he spat. "Trophy room at midnight."
Avery spun around stiffly and walked briskly to the other end of the common room, Selwyn trailing at his side. Harry watched him go, and only after they had settled down on the couch near the fireplace did Harry resume talking to Tom. Both pretended that the confrontation hadn't just happened and kept the conversation light, as if they couldn't feel the dozens of eyes that bore into them.
The tides of conversation in the common grew to the loudest that Harry had ever heard. Everyone was discussing the outcomes and potential ramifications of this confrontation. This was the turning point: the winner of tonight's confrontation would reap the rewards and rise up the hierarchy while the loser would lower themselves. And everyone was expecting Avery and Selwyn to win.
In the case that Harry and Tom lost, it would prove that Avery and Selwyn were correct in their bigoted opinions.
In the case that Harry and Tom won, their victory would upset the Slytherins, as they held the conventional racist belief that mudbloods were inferior in every manner to purebloods. Moreover, their victory would shake the unshakeable belief that they were mudbloods and generate enough rumor around their unknown blood status that they could rise into the third caste—because the purebloods refused to believe that a mudblood would ever defeat a pureblood, especially Avery, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.
The potential benefits of this outcome were huge: the outward insults and sneering would stop, especially in risky locations like the Great Hall, where the insults skirted the edge of breaking the illusion of Slytherin solidarity, the bullying would abate, and they would earn some grudging respect.
But what Tom and Harry hoped for the most was that a win against a Sacred Twenty-Eight heir would begin their integration into Slytherin. Because once they were fully integrated with the other students, true Slytherin solidarity would apply to them: not only would the bullying, pranks, and insults would stop, but they would also have the protection and sympathy of Slytherin House if something happened to them.
And best yet, if they won, they would finally feel wanted.
Thirty minutes to midnight, Tom said, "We won't go tonight."
"What do you mean, we won't go tonight?" Harry asked.
Tom grinned, teeth bared. "I compelled him while we were talking to fall asleep. He'll wake up a few minutes before the duel and rush to the Trophy Room with Selwyn. But what he doesn't know is that both Filch always makes his turn right around the corner to the dungeon doors."
Harry grinned. "Avery and Selwyn will get detention while we don't even have to get out of bed. And there's no way they could pin their detentions on us."
"Plausible deniability."
A low lick of satisfaction warmed his insides. However effective winning against Avery and Selwyn would be, the benefits of Avery and Selwyn developing reputations as shirkers that could not honor their promises was many times more effective. Because if they got caught, well, there was no way Avery and Selwyn would be able to show up at the duel. It didn't matter if they could not attend due to legitimate reasons (such as being caught by the caretaker) because Slytherin House had the base expectation that Slytherins would weasel themselves out of unfavorable conditions. Slytherin might have been the home of the cunning, but Slytherin always honored sacred promises like a wizard's duel.
Harry snickered. "They're so stupid for letting us change the location from the common room to the Trophy Room. I doubt that such a difference between Magicals and muggles they claim exists if Avery is just as stupid as Billy."
This issue would not have arisen if Avery had stuck with the common room, but Harry supposed that fear was a strong motivator. And quite honestly, even if they had attended, he fully expected Tom to win anyways.
And so, they waited in their beds, hoping to hear the sound of scurrying feet. Many minutes later, he heard shuffling noises that he guessed were coming from Avery and Selwyn. Another minute passed, and he heard the common room door click open.
Harry craned his ears, hoping to hear something, anything that would indicate Avery and Selwyn were caught by Filch. Unable to resist the temptation, Harry crept forward to the door and pressed his ear into the wood, hearing several indistinct noises that could have been it. He liked to believe that it was the blubbering of Avery and Selwyn and the cackles of Filch.
It was sweet music to his ears, sweeter than the lapping waves against the windows, that helped him fall asleep that night.
The next morning, no one dared hurl mudblood at them. News traveled fast, and by then, everyone knew that Avery and Selwyn had been given detention and hadn't shown up to the duel. There was blissful, blessed silence. They had finally breached the glass ceiling—exiting the fourth caste.
But they were not welcomed into the Slytherin House as they had hoped. Slytherins were just as icy as before, except that social convention forced them to hide their disdain better.
And entering the third caste did not come without consequences. Avery got his revenge within the following week after their second astronomy class finished.
They had just finished astronomy class with the rest of the Slytherins, and Harry and Tom were trailing at the back of the group, while the prefect Crabbe was leading them back to their dorms. The Lumos Crabbe had lit was barely enough light to keep the students from tripping over their toes.
Harry and Tom made their way down the precarious stairwell that moved beneath their feet, gripping the railing and trying not to appear as if they were hanging on for dear life. They had reached the bottom of the astronomy stairwell and Crabbe halted. They now waited for the next staircase to link up.
Once the two staircases connected, Crabbe walked over, the other students following his lead. Harry and Tom were the last to do so, quickly hurrying over the connection as it began to separate itself.
Without a warning, a great push on Harry's chest sent him stumbling backwards up onto the higher steps of the staircase. The two staircases disconnected entirely, leaving them stranded on the upper stairwell, the gap growing wider by second. He almost called out for the prefect before he thought better of it.
A brief glance at Avery and Selwyn showed wide smirks that shined through the dim lighting. He heard Tom mutter a curse behind him, who was also falling beside him.
He barely heard the following whispered incantation. "Cadis."
Harry tripped, stumbling forward, falling down the descending stairs, approaching the final steps that hung precariously over open air. As he fell forward, he could see with horrifying clearness the staircase move to a position over open air, all seven floors directly below him, growing larger and larger as he kept tumbling.
If he fell, nothing would break his fall. Tom would find his broken body seven floors down.
Don't let me die like this, Harry prayed, his heart a furious war-drum as it pounded in his body. As he continued to fall, he could begin to make out the detailed engravings and designs at the base of the other staircases.
This is my end.
A frantically hissed "Strigas!" cut through the air. Tom, Harry thought.
At once, Harry abruptly ceased his tumbling, freezing on the last step. His head hung over the last step, all seven stories of open air staring back at him. As he lay unmoving, forced into an unnatural stillness, he imagined what his plummet headfirst would have looked like. Probably with my head smashed open on the stone floor.
The longer he lay there, his jackhammer pulse and pounding heart began to relax, the blood roaring in his ears beginning to abate.
Harry breathed an internal sigh of relief, as he was physically unable to do so. I'm safe now.
Tom approached him with quick footsteps, and once he could feel Tom's robes draping against his body, Tom put trembling hands on him. Quickly Tom pulled him back to safety up a couple steps, and Harry felt the steps chafe at his body as Tom struggled to drag him upwards. Once Tom deemed he was far enough away from the baseless staircase edge, he ended the spell. Harry pulled himself to his feet, ignoring Tom's extended hand. He could do it himself.
Although Avery and Selwyn were already quite far apart from them, Harry could still see that they were wide-eyed and solemn, smirks wiped from their faces. Selwyn swallowed, the dim moonlight illuminating the bob of his Adam's apple. Someone clearly hadn't thought that his little prank would have led to Harry's death.
Harry seethed. He glared at them with as much intensity he could muster, feeling hatred and vindictive satisfaction rise in him as Avery and Selwyn turned back and hurried to catch up to the rest of the group. He promised himself that he would make them suffer.
Tom donned an unnaturally blank expression, neutral except for his deathly intense eyes, a promise of a thousand painful deaths glinting inside them.
Before the group was out of view, he saw the prefect glance back at them with cool eyes before briskly turning around and marching away. Harry clenched his teeth. Fuck him.
Now that the initial threat was gone, despair set in. They were stuck on a staircase, and would be stuck there for an indeterminable amount of time. The staircase could reconnect in two minutes or two hours.
"We'll be stuck here forever," Harry said, taking a deep breath. He darted his eyes back and forth at the ever changing scenery.
Tom was scowling deeply. "The staircases better reconnect in two minutes," Tom muttered.
Harry chewed his lip, staring at the gap between the last steps and the floor below, which was growing larger as they moved sideways.
"Do you remember the way back to the dorms?" he asked.
Tom said, "I should."
Harry waited glumly for the stairwells to connect. It felt like thirty minutes before they finally did, Harry and Tom remaining in silence for the entire time they waited, too shaken by the events to discuss just yet. Once they connected, they followed the stairs down into the adjacent hallway, which was dim and vast, the reflections of the pale moonlight their only light source. Cold drafts battered Harry, and he shivered intensely.
Harry froze as he heard a shout. "Oi, you there! Students in the halls past curfew! Students in the halls!" came a holler from behind them.
"Run!" he whispered frantically.
They sprinted, speeding down the hallway and the following stairwell before finding a small, innocuous closet that they almost passed without noticing. In other words, it was the perfect place to duck into.
"OI!" the caretaker shouted from behind the corner. Harry and Tom paused before the closet, and Harry prayed it would open as Tom struggled with the doorknob.
With a snarl, Tom wrenched the door open. He shook his arm slightly before squeezing himself in the tiny closet that was cluttered with stacks and rolls of old, crinkled parchment, broken quills, and jars of used and unused ink pots. A supply closet.
Harry scrambled in after Tom, squishing himself against Tom's body. His head was so close to Tom that he could feel the hot moisture from Tom's breath, while his arms were smashed against the prickly quills. He winced, but refrained from yelping, the consequences of making a noise first and foremost on his mind.
As soon as he fit his arms and legs inside, Harry slammed the door shut. The thundering steps got closer and closer, and when the caretaker finally reached the closet, he stopped. They could hear as clear as day his mutters of "Where did they go?" and "Detention for a week and a harsh whipping, if I find the rascals!" They dared not breathe or move as they remained there, pressed uncomfortably against each other and the materials of the supply closet.
After what felt like an eternity, Harry began to feel lightheaded. Thankfully, not soon after, the caretaker departed, his steps and other unintelligible mutters signaling his exit. Woozy, Harry tapped Tom clumsily to ask if it was okay to leave. Tom shook his head.
Only after what felt like another eternity twice as long as the last, Tom nodded. Harry pushed against the door, trying to open it, but panicked as it remained stubbornly shut.
"We're stuck!" he said frantically, feeling even more dizzy.
Meanwhile, Tom did not look affected in the slightest. "Are you a wizard or not?" he deadpanned.
Harry flushed, some cognizance returning to him.
"Alohomora," Harry cast, waving his wand as best he could in the limited space.
With a soft click, the closet opened. Harry peeked outside, and, to his relief, there was no one there. He extricated himself from Tom and gingerly stepped out of the closet and into the hall. Harry inhaled deeply, savoring the fresh air, a complete opposite of the staleness of the closet. Tom pushed himself out and frowned as even more rolls of parchment fell out.
With unspoken agreement, the two rushed to shove the rolls back. Once all the materials were crammed back into the tight space, Tom shut the door with a firm push. The two sighed in poorly disguised relief.
Harry exhaled once more, this time despairing that they were completely lost. No matter how well Tom knew the common routes back to the dormitories, they had only visited the seventh floor a couple of times and thus, Tom was unable to memorize these routes.
"How do we get back?"
Tom dipped his head down, lowering his chin slightly. "We'll descend the staircases and find out."
They wandered around the halls and descended multiple stairwells.
Once they counted having descended seven floors, they were confident that they were on the bottom floor and wandered around, always making right turns and hoping to stumble upon the dorms. They had made a full circle from four right turns, but they had not ended in their starting point. Resigned to his fate, Harry suggested they try all left turns.
Although the landscape changed slightly from one dim hall to the next, they never seemed to get anywhere important. They did not recognize any landmarks in the halls.
Harry shivered, feeling the cold creep in as another gust of chilly air blast him.
"I'm scared," he said plainly.
Tom clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth in irritation. "Don't say that. We'll find our way back."
"How can you be sure? We've been wandering for hours!" Harry refused to believe he was wandering around for anything less than that.
Tom leveled an unimpressed stare at him. Harry wisely shut up.
After even more aimless walking, Tom spotted a closed small, hidden door that had an archway adorned with slithering, coiled stone snakes, a sight that Harry missed without Tom's input. Seeing the signs of Slytherin, Harry hoped that it was a secret entrance to their dorms.
Harry stepped forward and reached his hand out to touch the doorknob. As his fingertips made contact with the silver knob, a flaring, electrifying heat raced up his fingers and arm. He recoiled from the knob, his hand and forearm feeling like it had been badly burned while his shoulder throbbed.
"What?" asked Tom, irritated.
Harry sputtered, "It—The doorknob burned me!"
Tom raised an eyebrow at Harry, clearly disbelieving of his claims. He put his hand on the door and kept it there, remaining unaffected. He narrowed his eyes at Harry as Harry gaped.
"It feels fine to me, like any other door," Tom said. "I think you're going crazy."
Harry said sullenly, "I am not. It definitely burned me."
At Tom's continued stare, Harry sighed. "Whatever, I want to see if you can open it."
Tom twisted the doorknob. Nothing happened. He twisted harder. Again, nothing happened. He jerked his hand back from the knob, glaring disdainfully at the door. He tried again, putting both hands on the door and twisting as hard as he could. Nothing happened.
Tom let go and stepped back. He picked up his wand and said, "Alohomora." The door remained closed.
By this point, Tom was beginning to become annoyed. He stepped closer until his eyes were inches away from the stone snake atop the archway. He glared before pointing his wand again and hissing something.
To Harry's surprise, the door slid open swiftly without making any noise, revealing a familiar sight of their trunks and robes—the interior of their room. A closer glance at the engraved archway showed that the snakes were now moving, coiled and twined this way and that.
He turned to Tom and said, "I think you've found a magic door."
Tom glanced at the upper snake again, which was now undulating back and forth, stone rippling smoothly. "Everything in this castle is magic, Harry. But I suppose this is moreso than most."
Harry shook his head. "I think it only works when someone hisses at it. I mean, the door opened to our room specifically."
Tom frowned, although he seemed quite distracted. Lost in his thoughts, perhaps.
"I don't remember hissing," he trailed off. "Although it is entirely possible."
He stepped forward eagerly to investigate the door, running an admiring hand up and down the back of one serpent.
Harry tugged on Tom's sleeve. "Leave it till morning. I'm tired."
"No," Tom said resolutely. "You go inside first if you're so tired."
Harry harrumphed before crossing the door, feeling a strange sensation wash over him as he did so. He shivered, but stepped across and collapsed onto his bed.
Before he fell asleep, the last sight he saw was Tom hissing affectionately to the top snake.
No matter how hard they searched, they could not find the door again. It was a one time miracle, Harry thought, due to amazing luck and nothing more.
However, all miracles were paired with tragedies. The good always came with the bad. Harry and Tom had brainstormed ways to make Avery and Selwyn suffer for almost killing Harry, but they simply could not make them happen because any sort of equally harmful retaliation to Avery and Selwyn only would have ostracized Harry and Tom further.
And it was not like there was anyone else as witness, except for Maxwell Crabbe, who had left them there. Without any reliable proof to support their claim, they would be viewed as nothing more than attention seeking mudbloods.
And, Harry mused, even if there was proof, the Slytherins would turn a blind eye anyways. That totally hadn't happened before.
Tom and Harry desperately needed the protection the model minority myth afforded them. If they deviated even the slightest from being intelligent, well-mannered muggleborn students, then the Slytherins would rain hellfire upon them, even more than they were. (Racism was one hell of a drug.)
It was a lose-lose situation, with no way to wriggle themselves out of it.
Therefore, they had to pretend that it never happened. Harry hated sucking up to the Slytherins and living up to their expectations. He absolutely hated it, but they had no options left.
As the days passed, their hypothesis proved true. The other Slytherins did not attack them any further and the incidents flared down slightly. However, it was an awful humiliation to see Avery and Selwyn with smug smiles in the hallways, worse than the time Mrs. Cole caned him in front of all the other orphans. Each time, Harry struggled to suppress his urge to punch them in the face. Each time, Harry struggled to suppress his urge to make them suffer a tenth of what he suffered.
But each time, he stopped because Tom subtly nudged his legs under the dining table or discreetly tugged his sleeve.
He stopped because if an enraged Tom could control himself, Harry could too.