Chapter Text
Harry was staring he knew, had been for the past half-hour if the hands on the clock were true to the hour.
It should have embarrassed him to be doing this, but he couldn’t help it. Everything about this situation was strange. Wrong, somehow. Like if everything in the small classroom had been shifted five centimeters to the left without his awareness.
“Mr. Evans.”
Harry jolted, back now erect as he tore his gaze away from the girl he’d been staring at to level Professor Slughorn a sheepish glance.
“Pardon, ma’am?” He asked, cheeks flushing when the walrus-like woman pouted, brows screwing together to give him a disappointed frown. “I-I didn’t hear the question.”
It was true. He hadn’t been paying any attention, so caught with the dark tresses on the back of the girl’s head. Her pale fingers dexterously moving about the vials and the ingredients with a precision not even Snape from his own time was capable of mimicking.
The girl was a genius. A prodigy in every sense of the word. Unlike the boys and girls that slaved for hours in the library, searching for answers to future exam questions in class. Not that Slughorn was necessarily a harsh instructor, or particularly difficult, but still. There was some preparation necessary, even if a little.
This girl made it all seem easy. Put even Hermione to shame when she raised her hand and answered questions without seeming overly eager. It made any effort Harry made seem lackluster. Not that Harry was trying to butter the woman up. He had already done so once before in his own time, and he refused to be put through that whole thing again.
No, the reason for his efforts now was not for Slughorn.
It was really for his own sake. To fit in when he clearly did not. Harry Potter was not meant to be here in the 1940s, in a time where everything was the same but also wasn’t.
Because this girl, the creature that sat only one row away from the front with other Slytherin girls, was none other than Tom Riddle.
How this came to be, how Harry had ended up in the correct time but clearly in the wrong universe, he didn’t know. He’d spent days ransacking the library, hinting to his professors about the possibilities of something like this happening, and—
It all had amounted to nothing.
There was a pause, a moment where Slughorn sighed deeply, loud enough for everyone in the silent classroom to hear, before she turned her attention to regard the exact person Harry had been staring at earlier.
Ice cut through his veins when Slughorn’s expression turned pensive, and then her eyes brightened with something that looked disturbingly like determination. Harry knew where this was going. The attention the professor had put on Riddle, the way she placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder before turning her gaze back to him told him all that he needed to know.
So it came as no surprise when Riddle, after Slughorn whispered Merlin knew what into the girl’s ear, turned in his direction.
Harry wanted to duck his head and pretend she wasn’t looking at him, but he couldn’t. His body had frozen stiff, her dark eyes magnetic as if they held their own gravitational force. As if someone had cast some sort of compulsion spell that forced him to really look at her.
An action he had refused to do since coming to this time, unable to reconcile the fact that this girl was Riddle. That that pale skin, luminous and smooth beneath the faint light emanating from the light source above, was the Dark Lord.
Or was she?
Her lips were pink, soft and full. Eyes slanted, sharp and angled as if they could cut through stone with just a flutter of her long lashes. Her face was heart-shaped, a careful balance between the soft swell of her cheeks and the hard lines of her jaw and nose. Pretty in every conceivable way, and a carbon copy of the boy she had been in his time but now wasn’t.
Where Tom had been powerful, fluid and deliberate like the coil of a deadly serpent, she was elegance incarnate. A queen that carried herself through court without so much as a glance to either side of her. Caring not for the peons around her unless they could do something for her. As if no one else mattered but her.
Though no one truly saw that particular aspect to the girl. She always looked mild mannered. Kind. A sweet girl that smiled fondly, that spoke rather politely to her instructors in spite of the absurd things that might come out of their mouths.
A lady, that was what she was, but Harry would not let himself be fooled. He would not mistake her for doe, for a startled bird caught in the maw of the angry serpents of her house.
She ruled them without saying a word. A subtle tension working behind the scenes that had he not been mindful of, had he not bothered to pay attention when stalking Draco Malfoy all those years back in his time, he would have missed.
Tamsin Gormlaith Riddle, regardless of her gender, of the clever ploy she’d crafted to wrap all around her web of lies, was a predator. Tom Marvolo Riddle still rested within her chest.
Her fingers were delicate and refined, but there was power in the way she moved them. They were still spidery, long and supple as her male counterparts’ had been. Though now, they were softened. Less calloused where Tom had ridges along the ends of his fingers.
She was tall, still. One of the tallest girls in the school save for a girl that surely had to be related to the Bulstrode of his time. But he couldn’t see her height now, sitting where she was.
He only saw her face, stomach twisting in an odd way when her lips immediately curved into a sweet smile.
“Harry, I’ve just spoken to Miss Riddle, and it seems that she is perfectly alright with partnering up with you for this project.”
Harry blinked, shifting his attention back to Slughorn’s face. The woman looked pleased with herself, the twinkle in her eye making Harry green with nausea. It was clear what Slughorn wanted from this whole thing, what she was thinking by stopping the whole lesson to put Riddle and himself together.
She thought Harry had a crush on Riddle.
A wild laugh wanted to escape him, vicious and disbelieving. It was hogwash. Utterly absurd, but somehow, Slughorn being the person she was, had interpreted his quiet staring for something else.
Well, better this than the alternative.
If this would get the Slughorn off his back, then he’d allow the woman to think what she did. It suited him just fine really. It would steer Riddle completely out of his way, to be mistaken for another pauper that wanted to ask for her hand in marriage in this era.
Because that was all anyone ever talked about here. Marriage, bloodlines, and heirs to pass down their knowledge to the next generation to come.
Riddle never seemed to partake in those discussions. At least, Harry had not overheard her state her opinion on the matter or mention that she was interested.
Though that didn’t mean that Harry would accept this lying down. He didn’t want to be near her. Not really. It was easier to watch from a distance, better to remain as unseen as possible than have her attention trained on him.
The attention of the Dark Lord, whether female or not, was the last thing anyone wanted. Terrible things happened to those that managed to pique their interest. Harry Potter knew this fact well, having lived it once before already.
“I-er, thank you, ma’am. You didn’t have to do that, you just caught me off guard is all—” Harry tried to say before he was abruptly cut off by a wave of the woman’s hand, a short laugh erupting from the her lips.
“Nonsense!” Slughorn said, stepping back and pointing to the empty seat that no one had bothered to fill in all the time Harry had been there. It’d been two months since he arrived to this universe’s version of the 1940s and not a single person had bothered to partner with Riddle in that time.
She’d always worked alone. Until now.
Well, here goes nothing.
“Well, if it’s alright with her .” Harry said, reluctantly tearing his gaze from Slughorn’s smiling face to look at the girl in question. Her eyes were trained on him, as if she’d been gazing at him from the moment Slughorn had brought him to her attention.
There was no way for him to know what it was that Slughorn said, but Harry sincerely hoped that it hadn’t been anything damning. He didn’t think he could stand this lesson with Riddle breathing down his neck because of this small hiccup.
There was a small pause where no one said a word. The room was deathly silent, the only sign that there were others besides them in the room, the occasional rustling of a bag and the soft whisper of a student speaking into the ear of another that Harry didn’t bother to listen to.
Then, Riddle parted her lips, a pink tongue licking at the bottom of the flesh, and she spoke.
Harry hated that he followed the motion, eyes drawn to the pearlescent sheen of her lips.
“Of course, I am always willing to give a helping hand to those that need it.”
A shudder crawled up his spine at the soft tenor of her voice, and the way it was barely above a whisper. It was powerful, carrying itself across the room in spite of its softness. Similar in a way to Voldemort’s own hisses when he’d been speaking into Harry’s mind as he slept.
It was disturbing. Jarring.
Harry ignored it and rose from his seat, the screech of his chair like someone had cast a bombarda in the quiet room. It made him uncomfortable, hyper-aware of all the eyes on him.
Calm down, Harry. Just pretend it’s like any other day since you fell into this alternate universe.
“Thank you, you’re too kind, Riddle.” Harry replied, respectful and polite in spite of the acid churning in his stomach. The last thing he wanted was to sit beside her, but Slughorn had given him no choice. It would be impolite to say no, it would look odd for him to be repulsed by a girl that everyone simply adored.
Except perhaps the Slytherins that knew her for what she truly was. Those snakes were just afraid of her.
After making the short walk, Harry took the seat to the girl’s right. It was spacious enough that he didn’t have to brush up against her, but still close enough to catch a whiff of the perfume she wore.
It was faint. Nothing like the powdery and gaudy scents many of the richer students bathed themselves with. It was almost like the comforting scent of lotion rather than that of some artificial smells girls and even boys in this bloody school used.
“So, class, about this group assignment…” Slughorn said after a moment, glancing at both Harry’s and Riddle’s faces before continuing on to explain the term assignment.
Harry tried to ignore as best he could the burning stare of the girl at his side. It was almost like a physical touch, her gaze making gooseflesh pucker along his back from its intensity.
“Staring is rude, you know.” Harry said tightly when Slughorn went on about the assignment, but the girl had yet to turn away.
He didn’t bother to look at her, eyes glued stubbornly to the professor as he went on, hoping that this would somehow make the minutes tick by faster.
“I could say the same to you, Mr. Evans.” The girl demurred at his side, her chair creaking slightly with the weight of her body. “You yourself have not been subtle with your wandering eyes.”
Swallowing hard, Harry finally turned to face the girl, unable to ignore it any longer when her arm swept over the desk to push some of her belongings further into her space and away from his.
“That’s not what I—” Harry tried to protest, but the sight of her lips parting into a soft smile stopped him. Her cheeks were rosy, even more so than they’d looked from a distance. Her eyes were sparkling, the tight ring of brown more pronounced now that he was so close to her.
Her dark hair was brushed along her neck, the curls perfectly coiled and brushed to the sides of her throat. It made her look paler somehow. Softer. Like an angel rather than the demon she was, and Harry wondered if this was how she managed to wrap everyone around her finger.
If it was this disarming beauty paired with the soft lilt of her voice that drowned reason and subdued even the most stubborn of wills.
Harry’s lip twisted into a frown, eyes narrowed into slits when the girl cocked her head to one side. It was a serpentine gesture. Predatory and familiar in the way she scrutinized him, like how Voldemort had done when Harry had had the misfortune of facing him Fifth year.
“Oh? But that was exactly what you were doing, no?” The girl teased, and Harry glared at her, irked. He didn’t like this, didn’t like this sudden playfulness. She hadn’t been this way with others, hadn’t observed such conduct in all the time he’d been here.
She was always polite, but distanced at the same time. This was different, and Harry didn’t like it one bit.
“I don’t know what the professor told you, but I wasn’t. I just spaced out while looking in your general direction. It happens.”
The girl did not move. It did not even seem as if she registered what he’d said. Then, her lips parted, her damned tongue peeking out to sweep at her bottom lip, and Harry’s spine twinged with unease.
Harry did everything to resist glancing at her tongue, focusing instead on the arch of her perfectly plucked brows.
“The professor did not have to tell me anything. You were practically boring a hole into the back of my head.” She said. Harry clenched his jaw. She wasn’t wrong. He had been staring at her for a solid thirty minutes that day.
“Though, this isn’t the first time, is it?” She asked, and Harry flinched when the girl suddenly leaned in as if to get a better look at his face, eyes boring peculiarly into his own. “Ever since you transferred in, you’ve been looking at me as if I were going to eat you.”
Harry swallowed, mouth parting to speak, but stopped when the girl followed the motion of his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Her eyes took him in, practically ate him alive without a single touch from her behalf.
His nerves came to life, adrenaline coursing through his veins as if he were rearing up for a duel.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harry denied, lips screwed into a stubborn line while the girl only smiled at his answer. She didn’t believe a word he said, so it seemed.
“I wonder just why that is.” She said instead, creeping further into his space and forcing Harry to lean back into his chair, his side pressed uncomfortably against the table. She was overwhelming in a way that he didn’t recall Hermione ever being. Hell, none of the girls he’d met, girls like Pansy Parkinson or Daphne Greengrass had been nearly this intimidating.
There was Cho, or maybe Ginny, too. But this was a different kind of scary. A sort that made his hands sweat and his fingers shake with discomfort. He didn’t like it at all; not the way her eyes seemed to flash with something he didn’t understand or the way his heart rate picked up at catching the way her mouth curled.
Narrowing his gaze further, Harry was about to tell her exactly where she could take her damned assessment, when Slughorn’s voice interrupted his train of thought.
“Alright, classed dismissed! If anyone has any questions about the project, or any issues with their partners, please feel free to see me at my office. Now off you go, I won’t be held accountable if you miss your classes!”
It was like a crack of a whip. Everything abruptly stopped, the girl’s strange expression and oppressive presence dissipated as if it never was.
She leaned back, the dangerous curl of her lip and glimmer of her eyes shuttering away into the pleasant mask she always wore.
Harry could only gape, unable to do much else when she rose, her skirt fluttering like the wings of a butterfly before she brandished her wand without a word and cleared the desk. Leaving it spotless and untouched, as if she had not occupied this desk for the past hour and a half.
“It was a pleasure speaking with you.” She said after flicking her wand a second time, summoning the bag that carried her belongings to the hand not holding her wand. “I look forward to working with you, Harry .”
Harry tried not to shudder when her voice dropped an octave, his name sounding sinful and depraved when uttered by that mouth. It made his skin crawl, his insides wrench in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time, not since he’d been forced into side-along apparition all those months ago.
Like a hook tugging at your navel right? Insides forced out from the small puncture between your belly and your intestines.
Then, with a secretive smile Harry had no explanation for, the girl turned her back on him and left. The clicks of her shoes, the rustling of her skirt and robes the only sound he was capable of making sense of.
Her words and the strange distress curling in his belly the only evidence that Harry had brushed up against a predator rather than a woman.