Holiday From Real

Tom knew the password to the Hufflepuff house; I didn't ask him how or why even though he has no reason to ever visit the Hufflepuff House. Except for me, all of his "friends" are in Slytherin. But hey, his seemingly useless information came in pretty hand, so I'm not going to complain. Tom grunted as I pulled on his hand when I started to run faster, "Why are we even seeing Karen?"

I rolled my eyes while running down the stairs to the girls' dormitories. Apparently Helga Hufflepuff trusted the male members of her house since the stairs didn't do anything funky when Tom stepped on it, and I know first hand that he's a man. A very, very, powerful man, if you catch my drift. Anyway, I didn't stop running until I found Karen's dorm. I couldn't get her out of bed until I told her Tom Riddle was here to see her. She immediately jumped out of bed and magically lit several candles around her four-poster bed. Tom awkwardly smiled and waved at her. Karen blushed and then looked at me, "What do you guys need at his hour?"

I quietly asked her, "Do you have any of the Harry Potter books with you?"

"What?" She leaned over as if she could somehow get closer to my already spoken words, "The Harry Potter books?"

I sighed, placed my left hand on my hip and my right hand on my forehead, "Yes, thank you for yelling it."

Karen shrugged and then got off of her bed. She shuffled the items in her trunk around for a few minutes until pulling out several books, "I only brought my favorites."

I smiled and then laughed, "Why was I the only one who did not pack for a very long trip?"

Karen laughed at me, "That's a good question." She smiled and handed me her stack of books: The Chamber of Secrets, The Half Blood Prince, and The Deathly Hallows. I put them down on her nightstand and then opened the Chamber of Secrets. It immediately disintegrated when I opened the book. Karen started at me with anger and awe, "Why'd you ruin my book?"

"I, I didn't mean to. It just happened."

She sighed.

I smiled, "But isn't that good news?"

Karen sat down on her bed, "How?"

"If it disintegrates it means all of that stuff didn't happen, right?"

She shrugged, "I guess so."

"I mean, as far as the stuff in the second book, anyway—"

A soft, timid voice from the bed behind me said, "Uhm, excuse me?"

I looked over my right shoulder and at the owner of the voice.

"I don't mean to be rude, but it is a school night, and I'm trying to sleep…"

I quietly gasped; there are classes tomorrow and it's well past one in the morning. Damn that Tom Riddle. "I'm so sorry, we'll leave right now."

She smiled shyly, "Thanks."

I grabbed the two remaining books and walked out of the dorm. Tom and Karen followed me out and to the Hufflepuff common room. I plopped down on a large, comfortable, yellow armchair and crossed my legs. I put the seventh book on my lap and opened up the Half Blood Prince. Most of the pages were blank; the chapter on Slughorn's memory, much to my relief, was blank. However, the whole part on Dumbledore dying and people fleeing to the Dark Lord was still in existence. I sighed, but then I realized that the pages looked oddly blurry. I called Karen over from the armchair opposite me and asked her, "Do the pages look blurry to you, too?"

She looked at it for a minute, "Yeah, they do. That's weird."

"Yeah…" I put that book down and picked up and opened The Deathly Hallows. Most of the pages were blank, but the few pages that were in there were all about the Dark Lord version of Tom, but they were all extremely blurry; we could barely read the pages. I drew in a deep breath while Karen asked me,

"What do you think that means?"

I thought it all over for a minute or two before saying, "I think it means that it could happens, not that it does happen."

Tom asked with a surprisingly soft voice, "What do you mean by that?"

I looked up to see him in a way I've never seen before. Fear, curiosity, and excitement contorted his handsome face. I wasn't sure if he was excited because he still had a chance of being the Dark Lord, or because he now had a choice. Sure, he always did have a choice, but now he knows something different. I gulped, "I mean that you don't have to become a Dark Lord. I mean that your future isn't set in stone, and I hope you chose the path that isn't to the Dark Lord."

Tom sat down on the black loveseat across from me. He buried his face in his hands and said something, but I didn't hear him well enough to know what he said, so I asked him to repeat himself. "I can't control it."

"What are you talking about?" I jumped up, "Obviously so if you have a choice now—!"

"No!" Tom jumped up, too, and said, "It. Our… Our traveling system of the night, I can't control it—!"

"What?"

Tom stared at me.

I said it again, only louder.

"I can't control—"

I jumped up and brought my knees into my chest before stomping as my landing. "WHAT?"

Tom smirked to refrain from laughing at me. I tossed the seventh book onto the armchair I was just on and shouted, "But! But!" I drew in a deep breath and angrily whispered, "But you're the heir for Chrissake! You're—"

"I'm not full, err…" Tom sighed and sat back down on the loveseat, "I'm only a half blood, it doesn't fully respect me."

I let myself fall down onto the cold but clean wooden floor of the Hufflepuff common room. "Then what are we supposed to do?"

Tom raised his right brow, "We?"

I smiled crookedly, "You don't think that I'd let you do this on your own, do you?"

"It's my problem—"

I gave him the sternest look I've ever given to anyone, "I didn't come back in time to watch you struggle, Tom, I came back to help you—"

Tom sprung out of his seat, "I don't need your help!"

I jumped up from the floor, "Obviously you do—!"

"Who do you think you are, anyway? You randomly appeared in my life and you messed with my emotions and now you want to help me?"

I angrily patted my hair down onto my head, "God damnit, Tom! Don't you see? Don't you see that things don't have to be this way? Things don't have to always be terrible for you—"

Karen backed a few feet away while he took a step closer to me, "Things aren't terrible for me!"

"Oh please!" I took a step closer to him, "Your mother died and your father abandoned you! Instead of coping and moving on, you have some insane grudge over it all and you want to murder a whole group of people, but in the mean time you're chillin' in an orphanage! No one has showed you true care or any type of real love and now you're like this!"

Tom flung his hands into the air and waved them around, "What is that supposed to mean?"

"That you don't have to be trippin' all the damn time—"

"SPEAK IN ENGLISH, GOD DAMNIT!"

"I THINK YOU HAVE SOME SERIOUS GOD DAMN ISSUES, TOM! I THINK THAT YOU'RE TOO FULL OF YOURSELF TO WANT TO COPE WITH YOUR PROBLEMS LIKE A REGULAR HUMAN—"

"I'M NOT A REGULAR HUMAN!"

"Guys!" Karen worriedly shouted, but we both ignored her, "Guuuys!"

He repeated himself and took a step closer to me, "I AM NOT A REGULAR HUMAN!"

I rolled my eyes, "JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN SPEAK TO SNAKES AND DO CRAZY MAGICAL SHIT AS A CHILD MAKES YOU SO MUCH ABOVE US, HUH? BECAUSE YOU WERE GIVEN MORE REFINED ABILITIES SOONER? YOU KNOW WHY YOU WERE GIVEN THOSE? BECAUSE YOU HAD LOST SO MUCH ELSE! AND INSTEAD OF USING THEM FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, YOU WENT ALL INSANE AND HATEFUL!"

We still ignored Karen even though she shouted, "GUYS!"

"SO YOU'RE JUST GONNA GIVE UP, EHY?" Tom was literally five inches away from me as he yelled, "WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO EVEN START PREACHING TO ME ABOUT BEING NORMAL AND WHAT LOVE IS? WHO SAYS MY PARENTS DIDN'T—?"

"YOUR MOTHER GAVE YOUR FATHER LOVE POTION TO CONCEIVE YOU! YOU PROBABLY CAN'T EVEN REALLY LOVE ANYWAY, SO I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M EVEN HERE!"

Tom went to slap me, but I stormed off. I half stomped, half ran to the door, but I stopped half way there when he said, "You're wrong."

I didn't turn around, "Your mother did—"

"I'm not talking about my parents."

I slowly turned around, "Then what are you talking about?"

He gulped and practically whispered, "I can love."

I just stood there.

"I just don't know what to do with it."

I smiled crookedly, "You don't know what to do with your love?"

Tom smiled awkwardly, "You appeared in my life so oddly that I'm up half the night every night wondering if you'll leave just as fast, just as oddly. And I think that if I don't address it I won't have to worry about it, but I just worry more, and I have no one to talk to about it. Abraxas is always talking about you, and I really don't give a damn how he feels, but it doesn't make my thoughts any clearer to hear how confused you make him."

I crossed my arms against my chest and took a long step closer to him.

Tom sighed and ran his hands through his hair, "I troll the corridors quite often, just so I can think without these dunces interrupting me, and I often see you with your bother. The fact that you take so much time out of your day, time you should be utilizing for your academics or your boxing, you spend it with him."

I took another step closer to him and softly said, "That's my brother, Tom. We are connected by blood. We look alike, we think alike, we sound alike, we are alike. To deny him would be to deny myself."

Tom sighed again and absent-mindedly shook his head from left to right, "I always figured you did it out of some sort of obligation. The women at the orphanage don't have any special interest in me; they have to take care of me. If you don't take care of Nalo no one will. But you do it out of what? Why?"

I took one final step towards him, "Because everyone deserves love, and whom else am I supposed to give my love to? I hate his father, but I don't hate him. Nalo did nothing wrong. And besides, Tommy," I smiled again, "to see the joy in his face when I spend time with him is worth all my time."

Tom was silent.

"I'm just really quite selfish. I do it because his happiness makes me feel good."

Tom laughed, "I always knew that deep down, you're a terrible person."

I laughed and opened my arms as if to hug him. Tom looked at me curiously, but then opened his arms, took one step forward, and scooped me into his arms. He held me awkwardly for a long time before whispering, "I see you teaching Nalo how to play instruments, helping him with his subjects, with his young boy problems, with his homesickness, and I just can't figure out how you know what to do with it."

"It?"

He gulped, "Your love. Why don't you just ignore him and focus on you? You are the most important person in your life."

"I don't have any answer besides the one I've already given you."

Tom was silent.

I wrapped my arms around him and breathed out loudly, "Love is meant to be given, not ignored. If it was meant to be ignored you would never see people expressing their love. Love isn't something explainable; it's just something that happens. And you just have to figure out what to do with it. Keeping it hidden and packed away inside you isn't what you should do."

Tom squeezed me into him and sighed. "It seems like I should be able to do whatever I want with my love."

I sighed, "Fine, Tom. Fine." I pressed my hands against his chest and tried to break free from him, but I couldn't. I looked up at him to tell him to let me go, but he randomly kissed me. He stared into my eyes as he softly captured my lips with his. The kiss was, at first, awkward; he still was rather unsure how to go about it, and I was caught off guard. I slid my hands up his chest and around his neck, but he had to hunch awkwardly due to our one-foot height difference, so he wrapped his arms tightly around me, picked me up, and stood me on a very small table. I sighed and ran my hands through his still neat hair. We kissed until someone giggled. I pulled away from him and giggled at his happily dazed expression. He didn't say anything or change his facial expression; he drew in a deep breath and immediately started to kiss me again. Tom slowly slid his right hand from my mid back to my left hip, and finally into my back pants pocket. I quickly swatted his hand away. Tom pulled away from me and said,

"What?"

I rolled my eyes, "You're not my boyfriend, we shouldn't even be kissing—"

Tom looked at me as if I was the Devil stuck in the mind of the stupidest troll. "We just, we just told each other what we feel and you say—"

I sighed, "You have no idea how many times I thought that was enough."

He glared at me, "I'm not some stupid boy from your damn—"

I glared back and slid my hands back down onto his chest, "I didn't say you were."

Tom hurriedly spat, "Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I'm scared, Tom. I'm scared and I'm nervous and I just want a legit question so I can give you a legit answer and be in a legit relationship."

Tom rolled his eyes and turned his head to the right, but he turned it back a second later and looked very amused, "Will you be in a legit romantic relationship with me?"

I laughed and leaned into him. I carefully pressed my forehead against his shoulder and replied, "Yes, I will be in a legit romantic relationship with you."

Tom laughed but then tensed. I looked up at him and asked, "What's wrong?"

He drew in a deep breath and said, "It's late, and we have to start a project in DADA tomorrow—"

"What's really wrong?"

Tom laughed again, "It's two in the morning; we have to be up and ready and functional in seven hours."

I sighed, "Will you carry me to Gryffindor Tower? I'm so tired."

Tom quickly picked me up – earning a squeal from me – and put me down on the ground, "No, but I'll walk you."

I pouted.

"You look like a dog with down syndrome."

"WHAAAAT?" I shouted, glared at him, and punched him in the shoulder.

He quickly sucked in a breath and rubbed his left shoulder with his right hand, "What was that for?"

I wiggled away from his left arm and slowly walked away, "You called me a dog."

"Oh dear God. Are you serious, Karma—?"

Someone snickered.

Tom practically snapped his head off of his neck by turning it to the right so fast. I was going to laugh at Tom, but then I saw the somewhat large group of people near the dormitory doors. Twenty, maybe thirty tired Hufflepuffs were standing there with grins. Karen cleared her throat and took a step forward so Tom and I could see her, "I tried to tell you guys—"

I sighed angrily and walked over to Tom. I grabbed his left hand right before he grabbed his wand. I held onto it with both of my hands and tugged him forward, "Come on, lets just go."

Tom pulled me into him, "Such disrespect should—"

"Be expected of teenagers. We woke them all up with our arguing. Calm down about it, it doesn't matter."

Tom angrily sighed and shook me off of him. He stormed out of the room; I sighed, ran my hands from my collarbone to the back of my neck, and tentatively followed him out. He wasn't in the corridor when I walked out of the Hufflepuff House and towards the main staircase. I figured he rounded the corridor and went down to the dungeons until he reached the Slytherin House. I mumbled to myself while I climbed up the stairs, taking them two at a time; I didn't stop mumbling like that creepy thing with the ring in Lord of the Rings – you know, that thing that's like my preeecciouss – until Tom stepped out of no where and in front of me. He coolly leaned against the railing and quietly told me, "I had a dream three nights ago."

I yawned and leaned against the railing, too, "What happened in it?"

Tom swallowed the spit in his mouth and loudly breathed out of his nose before telling me anything. "I dreamed that not only did I kill Nalo, but I became him."

Air uncomfortably rushed into the back of my head from how wide I opened my eyes.

"And I dreamed that you were okay with that. Like you didn't even notice the difference. And you took care of me."

I opened my mouth a centimeter, maybe two, and gave him my best, "What the FUCK are you talking about?" look.

Tom stared into my eyes, "I have no desire to do that, so stop worrying."

My eyes slowly went back to their usual size.

"However, I do desire you, and to throw away what I just acquired would be foolish."

I closed my mouth and swallowed my spit. In a tired, cracked voice, I asked him, "Is this an apology?"

"Yes."

I smiled sleepily and looked up at him with lazy eyes, "I imagine that not too many people get sincere apologies from you."

He smirked, "You'd be correct."

I drew in a deep breath and cuddled into his chest. He awkwardly, but less awkwardly than before, loosely wrapped his arms around me. I breathed in his surprisingly sweet scent and said, "I want you to know now that I have no idea what's going to happen once I finish whatever I was supposed to do here. I don't know if I'm going to wake up or be sent back to my own home in my own time, and I don't know if some twisted game will happen to me with something involving Nalo, but I do know that I'd like to stay with you."

He timidly played with my loose hairs.

"And I'm not going to lie to you, Tom."

He whispered, "About what?"

"I think that I could fall deeply in love with you, but if I ever have to pick between you and Nalo, I have to pick Nalo."

Tom squeezed me to him.

"Do you understand wha—?"

"No," Tom laughed, "Not really. But I see how much of a mother you have to be for him, and I know that good mothers never leave their children unless it's time to let their children go, and he's only eleven."

I smirked crookedly and nuzzled my face into his chest. "Your mother loved you, Tom, and I'm sure she still does love you—"

"You don't know—"

"Neither do you. But my thought process makes more sense, it really does. If she didn't love you wouldn't she have just left you to die?"

Tom bitterly responded, "She could have left me with her family—"

"They abused her."

He didn't question me.

"They abused her emotionally and physically. I don't know for sure, Tom, but I know from my own experience that I would never just leave Nalo in our shitty apartment. There are too many dangers, too many chances for people to harm him. You'd have been harmed in the place she grew up; your father was a man they deeply hated and a muggle. And they didn't really like her much either. You were safest at the orphanage."

Tom squeezed me so tightly that I probably should have been snapped in half. "She died. She was a witch—!"

"She was weak, Tom! Her heart was broken and she was homeless and pregnant! Stop focusing on what she couldn't do for you and think about what she did!"

Tom gulped angrily.

"She made sure you survived, Tom. She probably wanted to die long before your birth, but she used the little bit of strength in her to make sure you were okay, not herself."

Tom gulped again, but it was his calming down gulp.

I snuggled closer to him, "Nalo is ten years old."

Tom was silent for a few minutes, but then he whispered, "How old are you?"

I smiled crookedly again, "I'm seventeen."

Tom laughed, "Then why are you in fifth year?"

"Because you're in fifth year. I had to make sure I was with you."

He played with my hair again, but in a much more relaxed manner. "I'm flattered."

I laughed, "I was sucked back into time and into a world I didn't even know existed; I was obviously sent back to be with you."

"How do you know that?"

I sighed, "It's honestly too much to explain. At least at this hour."

Tom stopped squeezing me to death and kissed the top of my head, "You make me feel odd."

I laughed, "I'll take that as a compliment."

"I don't know if I like it, but I feel better… I feel good when I like it. When I allow myself to like you."

I looked up at him with confused concern, "Allow yourself—?"

Tom sighed, "What I mean is that I allow myself to focus on something besides myself and my future."

I cuddled against him again, "I will skin you alive and throw you in a tub of salt if you make those pages clear again."

Tom cringed and then laughed, "What would it mean if the pages were clear again?"

"That you made a colossal chode of yourself—."

"Chode?"

I giggled, "It's the term for a penis that's wider than it is long."

Tom's body stiffened, "Oh sweet Jesus!"

I laughed, "Anyway, it'd mean that you made a colossal chode of yourself and became the Darkest Wizard of all time and eventually end up killing yourself after trying to kill a young teenager who continuously owned you."

"That sounds terrible."

"I know."

"You know, being the Darkest, most powerful wizard in the world—"

I did my best imitation of a purr and rubbed the right side of my face lovingly against his chest.

"Just to end up being defeated by a school kid."

I rolled my eyes.

Tom chuckled.

Abraxas sighed.