TITLE: Companion
FIRST PUBLISHED: May 29, 2012
SUMMARY: "While Harry was sure he had never heard the name T. M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he'd had when he was very small, and had half forgotten." -CoS, chapter 13.
oOo
The quote always seemed like it would make a good story, so I finally wrote it. Also, this is meant to fit with canon; add to it, not contradict it. It's a filling-in sort of story.
—
"While Harry was sure he had never heard the name T. M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he'd had when he was very small, and had half forgotten."
—Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, page 233-234
...
Harry was lonely. This was not unusual—the Dursleys were not very good companions. He dreamed of a long-lost relative coming to find him. When he was younger, he believed it would happen, as he believed in his dreams of flying motorcycles and flashes of green light and high, cold laughs. When he asked Aunt Petunia how he got his scar, she said, "In the car crash when your parents died. And don't ask questions."
Harry wondered about that—if his parents had died in a car crash, then who had laughed? Where had the green light come from? What about the flying motorcycle?
As the years went by, the dream changed—the laugh stopped being part of it, though the green light persisted; the motorcycle became nothing more than a fantasy. Harry was growing up.
He finally got to go to school, only to find it was not much better than the Dursleys'. At first, a few people came over to him and tried to make friends, but after Dudley made clear that was Not Acceptable, he was left alone.
Dudley was in charge of the school from the moment he set foot in it. Everyone in his year and under obeyed him, out of fear of the consequences. Dudley had friends as well. And Dudley was never caught.
Sometimes Harry wished had power like Dudley's. If he could make people do what he wanted, he'd make them be nice to each other, and he'd make sure that being Dudley's friend was Not Acceptable.
In school, he didn't bother learning anything—what was the point? He had to look worse than Dudley, and it was easier if he didn't actually know it. He spent his time daydreaming or drawing pictures.
He soon discovered the library.
He liked the library—Dudley would not be caught dead in a library, for one thing. Also, it was quiet, and it had books.
Harry liked books. He liked books about anything, fiction mostly, but nonfiction as well. When he read, the people in it were his friends. They talked to him like he could understand what they had to say and assumed he was interested in whatever they had to talk about. Not like school, where the teachers explained things to him, when they bothered, as though he couldn't think.
Harry was good at being invisible, but when he read stories, he became someone else. Someone different. He became the people in the books.
Still, he was lonely. As he grew, he stopped thinking someone would come for him—after all, who did he have to come? But Harry was good at imagining, and so, one day, he decided to imagine himself a friend.
Harry thought about the friend a lot before he finally appeared. Harry was in his cupboard at the time, when the dark haired boy materialized in front of him.
"Hello," Harry said politely. "My name is Harry. You're my imaginary friend. I made you. Do you have a name?"
The boy looked around the room. "My name's Tom," he said, and fixed his piercing grey eyes on Harry. "Where are we?" he asked.
"In the Cupboard Under the Stairs. I sleep here."
"Really?" Tom asked. "Don't you have a bedroom?"
"No," Harry replied defensively.
"Oh," Tom said. He shrugged. He didn't seem to care much one way or another.
…
"Did you ever have an imaginary friend?" Harry asked Tom one day.
Tom rolled his eyes. "If I'm imaginary, how could I have imaginary friends?"
"Well, you're always telling me about your life," Harry said, "and your Orphanage, and all that. If you have a history, you can have an imaginary friend, can't you?"
"I suppose," Tom answered. He thought for a moment. "No, I never had an imaginary friend. I never needed friends."
"Never?" Harry asked skeptically.
Tom shrugged. "Well, there are the snakes," he admitted.
"Snakes? You never told me about them," Harry said, his interest piqued.
"There isn't much to tell," Tom said. "They talk to me. They do what I tell them to do. I suppose you could call them my friends."
Harry thought. "You know," he said at last, "I think you're even lonelier than I am."
Tom said nothing.
…
For a few years, Harry and Tom were inseparable. Tom was always there for Harry; he always had someone to talk to.
But it didn't last. As they got older, they diverged. Tom was always searching for knowledge, reading; while Harry's interest in books waned, and his fantasies became more than ever about the real world—that he would find friends, a life, something. "You don't need any of that." Tom said dismissively. Harry couldn't tell Tom about the reason for his wish—he wanted someone to love him. He knew Tom would never understand that.
…
"You should pay them back," Tom said, for the hundredth time. Harry was doing his homework, making sure all his answers were wrong. It was almost harder than answering the questions right. He had to look like he really didn't understand what he was talking about.
"No, Tom," Harry said again.
"If you want to have power in the world, you can't let them walk all over you. You could be better than Dudley if you tried—"
"I'm already better than Dudley."
"That's not what I mean. You could take his powers away from him. Pay him back from how he's treated you all these years!"
"I don't think you understand," Harry said, throwing his pen down. "If I did that, the Dursleys would make my life miserable."
"You're life is miserable now."
"Like yours is so much better," Harry said meanly. "Still think your father's going to come back for you?"
Tom flushed. "He would've…if he could. He might be dead."
Harry felt bad about the low blow he'd made. He sighed. Tom wouldn't accept an apology, he never did. He said they were for idiots. Harry changed the subject. "Hey, Tom, what about this question? I can't think of how to answer it."
Tom came over and bent over the page, and soon their argument was forgotten, at least for the moment.
…
In the end, it was something insignificant that ended their friendship. Harry couldn't even remember what had started it after the argument was done. But he knew, in his heart, that this was it. Tom wasn't going to come back.
He was sad, but not surprised. He'd known in his heart for a while now that their friendship could never last.
He went on with his life, and the memory of Tom faded; aided, perhaps, by his desire to forget.
Harry turned eleven and was sent a strange letter, a letter that, though he did not know it, would change his life forever.
—
Notes about the plot which aren't really explained in the story:
...
Tom was actually made by Harry. What happened was that Harry was lonely, so he made himself an imaginary friend using accidental magic. The reason the imaginary friend was Tom was because it was the Horcrux's memories and personalities that Harry used, unconsciously, to make into his imaginary friend. Tom was always the same age as Harry was, which is why he had no memories of Hogwarts or magic. As for how Harry could have forgotten him, I'd say that was partly Harry's magic helping him to forget, and partly the Horcrux's.