Evidence of Absence

Understanding

“Do you need to sit down, Harry? Get something to drink or eat? I had the impression you didn’t eat much at breakfast this morning.”

Harry blinked, hard, and looked up at Tom. They were in his office. Harry didn’t even remember the process of getting there. Esmeralda was looped around his feet, and Harry was sitting in a chair he vaguely remembered from the last time he’d come here, in second year.

He had made sure not to get a detention as well as not stand out in class, and especially not to come and talk to the professor. Every precaution he could take, he’d taken, to make sure that Tom wouldn’t remember him, wouldn’t see him as someone worth cultivating or looking into.

That’s all gone, now.

“Harry? Are you in shock?”

Tom’s voice was low and urgent. It shook Harry out of his contemplation, and yeah, maybe he was in shock, from the soft, soothing hisses and advice Esmeralda was giving. Harry trailed one hand across her back and smiled tremulously at Tom. “I’ll be all right. I just—could I get a cup of tea and some treacle tart?”

A second later, he thought how ridiculous he was, to request that as his food, but Tom didn’t seem to find it so. He nodded and stood with a snap of his fingers. A Hogwarts house-elf popped into the room, and Tom gave the order in a low, worried voice, never taking his eyes from Harry. When the elf was gone, he conjured a chair next to him and sat down, wrapping his arm around Harry.

Harry leaned into him and swallowed. The warmth of Tom’s body was creeping through him, and it was as soothing, in its own way, as Esmeralda’s soft voice.

“Have they always been like that with you?” Tom whispered into his hair at last. “Not listening to what you say, condescendingly convinced they knew what was best for you?”

“Not before I got Parseltongue—”

The tray with the food and tea popped up on the desk then. Tom turned Harry’s chair with a wave of his wand, and Harry sighed and grabbed a piece of treacle tart, stuffing it into his mouth. A wave of warmth went through him. He closed his eyes.

Tom’s hand descended on his back, rubbing in circles. Harry chewed and swallowed in silence for a few minutes, and then continued, “They were the best parents I could have asked for when I was a kid. I think they still are to Brian and Angela. This—this is because of their fear of snakes.”

“Ah. Their fears matter more to them than their child.”

Harry turned around to stare at him. “That’s not true!”

“It is if it means they essentially changed themselves as parents to avoid confronting that fear.” Tom reached up and brushed Harry’s fringe back gently. “And I am sorry if you dislike hearing me put it that way, but I dislike what they did to you in Albus’s office.”

Harry lowered his eyes and went back to eating his treacle tart. Tom didn’t move away from him, and Harry leaned more into the warmth, and finally spoke what he was most afraid of as he finished his last sip of tea. “Can I—I can’t really expect them to change their behavior, can I? Not when it’s a phobia. Those aren’t reasonable. They can’t be changed.”

“I don’t believe that,” Tom said quickly. “They could visit Healers to have the memories and fears sequestered. They could do the same with a master Legilimens, and they certainly know one.” Professor Dumbledore, Harry thought. “They could have learned spells that would make any snake you brought into the house harmless, rendered unable to bite, or unable to constrict anything larger than a mouse. They didn’t seek out these solutions because they preferred to remain in mindless fear and force you to change your whole life instead of changing theirs.”