Gods and Monsters
Amalin


In the twilight, winter braids the sky with pale gems and adorns the horizon with strands of pewter and husky indigo. Breath puffs into the air, steam that quickly dissipates and scatters like shards of glass.

Tom Riddle trudges through snowdrifts that rise to his knees, thin fingers turning slowly purple in the frigid temperatures. He rubs frozen palms together, trying to generate any small measure of warmth.

A tiny cottage ahead bleeds smoke out to tickle the sky.

When Tom raps his knuckles against the front door, feeling tingling into his hand with a belated rush, it swings open almost immediately. "You expected me," he says with swirls of winter slipping in behind him, but the other shakes his head. The two steaming cups of chocolate on the table indicate otherwise.

"Cold out," Hagrid rumbles, slamming the door and knocking several icicles from where they cling to the ledge of his roof. Tom can hear them breaking outside and drowning in the snowbanks. Tom's frosted robes are dripping their melting snow onto the floor, his uniform sticking to clammy skin. He curls a finger around the cup of chocolate, breathing in the sticky aroma and letting it breathe life back into his glowing cheeks, and carries it to the fire. When he sips, he scalds his throat and his tongue smarts with pain.

If Hagrid sits on the floor beside him, they are almost the same height.



Tom is thin-boned and graceful and purposeful in his gait. Hagrid is hulking and hairy and especially clumsy around Tom.

They compliment each other perfectly, these nights by the fire. They stretch their legs and their shadows envelop each other.



"Someone should do an experiment," Tom murmurs, the pads of his tapered fingers tapping a restless rhythm against each other. "Prove the superiority of my kind, once and for all."

Hagrid rumbles noncommitally.

"You must be miserable," Tom says. "You all must be miserable. Muggles, magical freaks. Hideous abominations."

"Yeh got Muggle blood in yer veins," Hagrid points out, the shake of coiled thunder in his otherwise soft voice.

Tom smiles, and there is a faint sinuous hiss to his words. He folds his hands over his stomach, bare toes outstretched to the fire. The warmth curls up in the lines of his feet. "My father's taint has not touched me," he says coolly. "And I will redeem myself in blood."

"Monster."

"So are you."

They sip, quietly, contentedly, as the fire purrs on.



Only very late, when cold liquid pools in the bottom of their cups, cocoa staining the sides, when the flames are embers and the embers are ash, only then does Tom call him anything besides Hagrid.

Sibilant, faint echoes of Parseltongue on thick woodsmoke skin.

"Rubeus."

No one says anything when the fire burns itself out.



The first time Tom sauntered down to the little hut, it was just after Hagrid's expulsion. He found the half-giant clutching a large pink umbrella with tears the size of saucers streaming on his face. Tom laughed at him, his Prefect badge gleaming to the chime of his teeth, visible with genuine amusement darkening his eyes. He laughed until the remnants of tears collected around the rims of his eyes like pooling rainwater, leaning against the doorframe.

Then he made them both a cup of tea.



Tom taunts him with magic, with the words, with jibes worse than Muggle and Squib, because what Hagrid has and knows and feels in his veins, he cannot use. And Hagrid looks away.

"How does it feel?" Tom wonders, carelessly spouting flowers and tiny sparks and little flames of magic from his wand. "To be such a freak? To know that the only redeeming blood in your veins, the bit of wizard you might have become, has been taken away?" He only chuckles when Hagrid does not answer.

It is ironic, perhaps. That the gentle giant is the one afraid of his enigmatic, spider-limbed and serpent-voiced companion. He always has been, really; wary, from the moment he saw Tom eyeing him at the Sorting.

Then again, there is irony in everything. Irony that Tom the monster is encased in porcelain skin and piercing eyes and smiles that lend charm to every flowing motion of his body. Irony that Hagrid the monster is the hairy, suspected beast who towers over his former fellow students and inwardly cowers from his shadow.

"Don't you ever want to do something?" Tom asks. "Break free?"

"Of what?"

Shrug.

They watch the fire, Tom tracing a pattern in the air with his wand. "You need ambition," he says. "Foolhard courage gets you nowhere but where you are. This little cottage."

"I'll leave that ter you," Hagrid mumbles.

Tom laughs. Irony, then, that he only laughs with true amusement when he is laughing at Hagrid. Lately, all the mundane aspects of Hogwarts cease to engage his attention. "You'll still be here, then. Years from now. Living and dying in this hut. Is that what you want?"

But H`grid will not speak what he wants, which is not just Tom, but to be Tom, to own that effortless ease of living. To have sparks leaping like electricity in your limbs, to smile so smugly that your face barely creases.

And Tom wants-

Well, for the time being, what he wants is this.



They are so settled into each other, tiptoeing around each other until they have worn figurative circles of isolation on the figurative grass, that they rarely argue. Hagrid knows Tom will never change, and Tom only mocks Hagrid but never expects to change him. The only real arguments they ever get into are about Dumbledore.

"Yer bein' ridiculous," Hagrid mumbles, hunched over Tom's Advanced Transfiguration book. "He's a great man."

"He's a fool."

"Yeh don't know 'im!"

"Neither do you! If you're that trusting, you're nowhere as clever as I'd thought. Just because he gave you a bloody house and a job? You think that makes him a god? That's how people manipulate, you know. You're just another one of his magical puppet freaks. You don't think he plays on your inferiority? You don't think he uses these petty gifts of a job and little falling down hut to suck you in?"

"Tha's not true," Hagrid returns staunchly. Then, quieter, "Yeh thought I was clever?"

"No," Tom says harshly. "I didn't. After all, you wouldn't have been caught then, would you?"

"I didn't do it. Aragog-"

"Save it," Tom says, and leans over the Transfiguration book to change the subject.



Tom secretly admires Hagrid, sometimes, on winter nights where the chill creeps through Hogwarts and leaves his toes curled beneath five layers of blankets. It's then that he thinks of the hulking giant who can cry like a baby and naively believe like a child. And he thinks that Hagrid does not have the pride of a Gryffindor, crazy and outright and brazen, but a lurking sort of pride. He'd think that only Slytherins would endure such treatment, just to stay at Hogwarts. He'd think that only Slytherins would work these menial tasks and suffer, just to keep their beginnings.

But that's the thing. Hagrid has no ambition. He is content in this little hut.

Still, sometimes Tom wishes he were like-

No. Because then the world would be different.



The puppy has wide, pooling chocolate brown eyes, and he whines under Tom's cloak as they trudge down to Hagrid's cottage. It is spring, with the mud squelching in Tom's shoes, and a harsh breeze whistling past.

"What're yeh got?" Hagrid asks, eyes narrowed at Tom. Is he trying to get him in trouble again?

The dog tumbles to the floor and goes racing around the table, poking its nose into the ash-laden fireplace. Tom smirks, leaning back against the doorway, hair tumbling in his face all raked through with the wind, and sticks his hands in his pockets. Hagrid is stunned. Curious. Interested. Afraid.

He asks, almost too shyly, "What is it?"

And Tom laughs, laughs with the traces of desperation, this time not at Hagrid, not like that, but in innocent amusement. In plain amusement at the irony, always the irony. He sinks to the floor, burying his face in his hands. "It's a dog," he manages. "A dog. You don't know what - You stupid, ignorant -"

"I heard about 'em," Hagrid blusters, feeling embarrassed. "Not a lot o' wizarding folk keep 'em, yeh know. Never seen one meself."

"It's for you, you know. Because-"

"Because yer not comin' back," says Hagrid, and Tom blinks because he never expected the other to realize.

"Well, yes."

"Yer stayin' up there," says Hagrid, with the taint of knowing something that will be there for years and years to come, a flush of humiliation and barely clinging pride and briefly painted anger and shame, "up in that castle where people stare at yeh as if yer a freak like me. Up with people like Dumbledore. An' just because yer destined for greater things, eh?"

"Things are beginning," replies Tom. "And people don't look at me like a freak. They look at me like a god."

"What's th' difference? Y'don't think people treated Dumbledore normal when 'e was young?"

Tom glances quickly away. "I am never going to be like Dumbledore."

"Mebbe yeh should be."

"His name is Fang," Tom growls and stands, hurriedly. "I - I made him. Well, not really, but. He's - he's got certain potions in his blood now, you see? I - he's going to live with you. As long as you, I mean. He's like-"

Hagrid stares at the creature. "He 'n't dangerous?"

"No more than the rest of us." Tom turns towards the door, arms crossed. "Just - thinking of you here, for the rest of your life, dying every day in this bloody hut." Pause. "If you ever want to change things, you can come to me. I could find a place for you in the world."

"I wouldn't."

"Then-" Sighing. "Then-"

And he pushes on the door, leaves it swinging in the breeze, long legs carrying him up and back to the castle with his robes flapping. Hagrid stares only at his back, then turns away and slams the door. If he perhaps could look deeper, he would see the twisted expression trying to fight its way onto Tom's face.

Fang whines, and Hagrid hesitantly pats his head.



If-

If Tom could cry, he would have no squirming dog to lick away his tears.

If Hagrid had strode out of the hut, he would have caught up to Tom.

If Tom had stayed a moment longer, he would have heard the clatter of breaking teacups.

If Hagrid hadn't cut his finger on the broken porcelain, he wouldn't have to wonder if it tasted different. But then, Tom has Muggle freak blood too.

If Tom had-

If Hagrid-

If-

But there are no what ifs.



And, really, there are no gods and monsters either.


End.