Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Why are you doing it in the path of everyone, the path you just set?
Why?
But Tom knows why. He also sees Harry's stride, his purposeful, intent movements, and knows, too, what he's doing. There is no mystery here.
Yes. Tom gets it. Harry Potter is a fucking monster.
(Harry Potter is also fucking a monster -- but Tom hasn't put that quite together yet. But he will. Just you wait.)
Tom moves slowly up the stairs, walking alongside the curious children who have decided, against Tom's one hope, to follow their guardian. This is Hell, thinks Tom, but the worst has yet to come. The worst has yet to even start.
His mouth is dry and his heart thunders in his ears, the hand against the railing sweaty and nervous. What are you doin? he thinks again. Why are you doing this to me?
But he knows. He knows. That's why his jaw refuses to unhinge, why his voicebox refuses to squeak out the words. His body and his mind are not caught up yet.
Who am I? thinks Tom, ridiculously. What Bible story am I living through now?
I am the whole world, he thinks. I am the whole world. He looks outside, takes a glance out the window, and notes that it's raining again. Like last time, it will leave no rainbow in its wake. Here, God has made no promise.
Tom knows who he is. Tom is a sinful beast drowning to death. Harry never promised not to flood his world.
The door to Tom's room is open. His peers brush past him and gather at the doorway, holding each other up in order to get a glance inside. He has an audience for his punishment -- an audience, perhaps, as part of his punishment
Has something like this happened before? This public stoning, this humiliation? It must have, given how long Harry's orphanage of a home has existed. But it is again an unfair assumption to make. Tom doesn't know how long Harry's practice has occurred for. He doesn't know how old Harry even is.
Harry is a stranger, thinks Tom. Harry is a fucking monster.
Tom pushes through the crowd, noting in the corner of his eye Kreacher dragging Klippers into his room. A trail of still leaking blood marks their path. Tom swallows, eyes sliding back to his room.
He can hear Harry shuffling through his stuff. What is he doing? thinks Tom. What is he doing?
(But a part of him knows. He knows.)
Whispering. He's surrounded by it.
All eyes on me, thinks Tom. All eyes on me.
HIs peers move so he can pass. He is Moses before the Red Sea. Tom stands a moment at the edge of his room. He watches, just for a moment.
Harry's opened his wardrobe. His clothes, the new ones Harry bought for him and the few he brought, are spewed among the floor.
His nose wrinkles at the mess. This is my punishment, he thinks. A messy room for a neat boy -- how could he know I'd hate it?
He feels in his gut, despite this wandering, that this isn't true. That the messiness is secondary, a side effect, something that Harry definitely considers but doesn't care for. Tom broke one of the two rules set out for him. Both, if he counts his involvement in Klippers' assault.
How could he expect a punishment so tame?
Because this? What Tom feels deep inside himself is true, and has been true, the moment Harry headed toward his room? This is not tame.
YOU ARE READING
the gift of fear (tomarry) (harry x death)
Lãng mạnTom Riddle takes one look at hoping-to-adopt Harry Potter, who is best described as divine, and decides that he must have him. He's determined to manipulate, lie, and cheat to get what he wants out of the man -- but, as it turns out, Harry is nothin...
