Warnings: ALTERNATE UNIVERSE - FANTASY; humor, pre-slash, slash if you squint, god knows what this is lmao

Pairing: TMR/HP (Tom Marvolo Riddle/Harry Potter)

Summary: In which Tom is The Witch—not a witch, The Witch—and Harry is his new spunky assistant.

What could possibly go wrong?

Tom wishes someone had actually asked him that question beforehand, because then he might've wisely reconsidered. Unfortunately, no one was around at the time, so now Tom's stuck cleaning up after Harry's messes when his assistant is supposed to be cleaning up his.

Life is tough as The Witch of Little Hangleton.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling

"Please make me your apprentice!"

Tom shrugs. "Sure."

"I'll do anything, I'll—wait, what?" Harry blinks. "'Sure'? Really? Are you sure you're sure?"

Tom shrugs again. "Why not? I could use a hand to clean the cauldrons."

"So…I'll be your assistant…"

"The Witch doesn't take apprentices, child," Tom sneers. "There need only be one Witch in town, and that Witch is me. Unless you have something to say about that…?"

Harry quickly raises his hands in the universal sign of surrender. "No! No, I'm good. We're good. One Witch, gotcha. I don't even want to be a witch—"

"The Witch," Tom corrects impatiently.

"Yes, yes. The Witch. I don't even want to be—well, that is to say, I'm sure your job is wonderful, and I'm not trying to—"

Before he can dig himself further into the hole of social blunders, Tom points to the back room and commands him to clean the empty potion flasks and organize the ingredient shelves afterward. Harry doesn't hesitate and is gone in less than three seconds.

Hm. Kid's quick.

Tom thinks he probably won't regret this, if Harry is as efficient as he is fast.

As it turns out, Harry is very efficient at cleaning. By the end of the day, all of Tom's flasks are cleaned and shining, the ingredient shelves are dusted and lined in alphabetical order with corresponding labels (as well as very friendly CAUTION signs the size of a toothpick for the particularly corrosive and vile contents), the stains on the ceiling from his more volatile experiments are gone, and the large crack on the wall that Tom vaguely remembers making in a fit of fury isn't even there anymore.

One day. It took Harry one day to undo a mess that's been building up for years.

And, while he was at it, Harry mended Tom's robes. While they were on him. And Tom hardly noticed.

"Well," Harry declares, stretching as the clock hits midnight, "A good day's work, if I were to say. What do you think, Boss?"

"You're staying," Tom says in a tone not to be argued with.

"Great!" Harry beams. "I'll come back around tomorrow at eight. Oh, and I'll bring breakfast, too! See you then, Boss!"

Instead of hiring an assistant, he's gotten himself a maid. Then again, they're basically the same thing. Right?

Unfortunately for Tom, he is wrong. Very wrong. So wrong, that he'll be cursing his lack of foresight in the very near future.

"…You what."

Harry shuffles his feet, looking sheepish. The hippogriff behind him snorts and starts to preen its feathers.

"Well, I couldn't just leave him there!"

"You stole a hippogriff," Tom says slowly.

"'Stole' is a very…strong word…Besides, he was about to be executed! I think by that point whoever owns him is willingly giving him up."

The Witch of Little Hangleton sighs. "Fine, you can keep him, but this means collecting ingredients is going to be part of your chores."

Harry beams. "No problem, Boss! Come on, Buckbeak, I'll take you to the stables."

That's the start of it, at least. Tom should've known this wasn't going to be the last time Harry's 'hero instinct' kicked up.

"Harry, why are you trying to hide a dragon egg in your coat pocket?"

His assistant freezes. Tom waits patiently for a good explanation—after all, Harry should very well know that he can't hide anything from The Witch. It takes a near traumatic event to make his assistant forget that fact…never mind the very unfortunate lack of skill Harry has in lying to begin with.

"Um. I can explain?"

Tom's fingers drum against the desk. "I'm waiting."

"Well, I found this guy in this alleyway and—"

Harry proceeds to tell him a very long, elaborate story that Tom is unsure whether or not he can believe. The only support he has for believing it is that it comes from his assistant, which is actually an incredibly strong supporting fact. On the other hand, Harry is basically telling him that he saw a man getting robbed in the alleyway, interrupted the mugging, saved the man from the ensuing chase because apparently it wasn't a normal robbery—something about mafia and Death Eaters; Tom's not sure—and then further helped him by carrying his groceries home, where he was rewarded with said dragon egg.

"—and he told me that it was safer with me when I tried to say no. I was actually going to give it to you as a birthday gift, Boss, but…" Harry sheepishly shrugged, "Nothing I can do about it now that you know. Surprise?"

"…How do you know my birthday?"

His assistant grinned. "I checked your calendar! Knowing you, Boss, it wasn't going to be labeled as your birthday—quite the opposite—so I checked for the most violently insulted, scribbled out date of the year! And I found December 31st. Week from now. Am I right?"

Tom weighs the pros and cons of his assistant knowing his birth date. "What's the breed of the dragon?" he asks instead.

"Dunno. We'll have to wait for it to hatch."

"Do you even know how to take care of a dragon?"

Harry nods vigorously. "Oh, yeah. One of my friends has a brother who works at a dragon reserve. He's very enthusiastic about his dragons—I get to hear about them all the time when I get invited to their family dinner."

"Do you know how to train a dragon?"

"Yeah. They're like puppies, almost. Just a bit more intelligent with a more volatile personality. Not so bad. Oh, but you have to dodge the flames, because they can't control it very well while they're growing up, and—"

"You were right. My birthday is December 31st. When the dragon hatches, train it to be a guard dog and we can keep it," Tom orders.

Harry beams. "Great! Gee, it's a sure good thing you live on a mountain, Boss. Dragons like the extra space. When he gets older, we can—"

"Don't you have work to do?"

His assistant turns serious as he pulls out a little notebook from his other pocket. "Boss: the floors are clean, cauldrons are drying, your appointment book is organized—you have one today at three, by the way—I restocked your supply of monkshood, bottled the leftover polyjuice, pulled the weeds from the garden out back, picked up your new robes, and lunch is just about done in your newly installed kitchen. Do you want to eat now, by the way? Otherwise I can put it under stasis for later."

Sometimes, Tom really hates the fact that he can't complain about his assistant. Instead, he nods for "Lunch now, Harry," and then waves to continue the training program for their new dragon. Harry puts the egg in the fireplace before he grabs the food, and then they sit down and discuss the importance of having a large, gaping cave versus leaving a dragon out in the open for intimidation tactics.

If Tom thought that a hippogriff and a dragon would be the end of it, well…

He would be wrong.

"Harry, do we need to have another talk? This is an evil lair, not a zoo!"

His assistant frowns. "But…but Boss! How did you know?"

Tom waves him off impatiently. "You have that look on your face, obviously. The same look you had when you stole a hippogriff, the same look you had when you brought back a dragon egg, the same look you had when you asked if we could have a lake—"

"But Buckbeak's helpful! You get your ingredients twice as fast now—and hey, you like Norbert, Boss! I see you petting him when you're outside and you think no one's looking. And having a lake helps you grow the plants that only live in water. Like gillyweed! See, now I don't have to go out with Buckbeak and buy it—"

"Harry, we could have a lake without a giant squid in it."

Like all the other times, Harry looks sheepish. "Um…"

"We also don't need a mermaid village in it."

"…All the better to defend your stuff with…?"

"And the kelpie?"

"They were hunting her! I couldn't just leave her there. Besides, Nessie's nice. And now you can get kelpie hair for free instead of paying forty galleons a bundle! Honestly, merchants these days; kelpies aren't that hard to—"

Tom cuts him off with a sharp hand gesture.

(Harry knows there's a limit to how much he can irritate The Witch in one day. He may be strong, but he's not stupid. Tom can thrash him in any battle they have, and he's not all too keen in the first place to piss off his employer.

Besides, he likes working for Tom. In fact, he likes Tom in general. The Witch is a surprisingly nice person—well, aside from the fact that he feeds whoever Norbert catches to Nessie, and okay the time when he instigated the assassination of the Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic was pretty mean, too, and—

Alright. Maybe Tom's only nice to him.)

"What did you bring back this time?"

Harry smiles in that familiarly sheepish manner that Tom's gotten so used to. "Uh, so recently one of the magical forests near Hogsmeade burned down, so the thestral herd in that area didn't have anywhere to go…"

"Are you telling me I have a herd of thestrals somewhere on my mountain?"

"…Now you can get free thestral hair, too?"

Tom can't dispute that. Nevertheless, he sighs, acting very put upon because otherwise his assistant might think it's okay to do this yet again, even though Harry hasn't seemed to have gotten the message.

"If you're going to save another group of animals, I'd prefer a herd of unicorns. Unicorn horns are inflating and I'm not going to buy one for thirty galleons each."

"Got it, Boss."

The next week, Harry brings back two unicorn colts, explaining that they lost their way from a migrating herd and he couldn't find them.

"Close enough," Tom tells him. That night's dinner tastes a notch more delicious than the usual, probably because Harry wanted to thank him for putting up with his nonsensical—though profitable—heroics.

At some point, Harry's bound to get himself into trouble that even he can't get out of so easily. Unfortunately, Tom isn't on Harry-watch every minute of the day, so it's not like he knows when it'll happen.

Fortunately, Tom thinks ahead. It's important, being The Witch and all, to have your possessions marked in case some unscrupulous noble thinks he can mess with The Witch and get away with it. This includes his assistant. Tom does not like weaknesses, and doubly does not like his own potential weaknesses to be exploited, so part of the contract he made with Harry was that he would be marked.

The sudden burn of his wand in its holster is the alarm going off. Tom flicks his hand and puts his current work into stasis before drawing his wand and apparating to his assistant.

…Who is getting chased by a colony of acromantulas.

"Boss!" Harry exclaims in surprise, nearly tripping but thankfully righting himself before he can fall.

Tom notices the ripped state of his clothing, the smudges of dirt and mud, the tired, fatigue sag in his posture. His assistant, The Witch notes, is the most tired he's seen him since his employment—and that's saying something, with how Harry's chore list looked.

Whatever Harry's gotten himself into, it's more than he can handle.

Tom inclines his head. "Later, you will tell me what you did and what the repercussions of it are. Now, I save you from being eaten alive while you watch very carefully and do with the information what you will."

Harry blinks, confused, but nods anyway. "Ah, sure thing, Boss…?"

When Tom single-handedly fells the entire pursuing acromantula colony, Harry understands. Tom is The Witch for a reason.

For a very, very good reason.

And while Harry's not his apprentice…it isn't like he hasn't learned anything during his employment. He's watched Tom brew and create and do all sorts of marvelous things—though this is the first time he's seen The Witch fight a battle. Well, fight might be too loose a term. It was more like a one-sided massacre.

"Boss?"

Tom sniffs stiffly. "Do you still have enough energy to harvest ingredients?"

Harry immediately perks up as if he'd just drank a pepper up potion. "Sure thing! Acromantula venom goes for a hundred galleons per pint on the market—"

"I know. Get to work."

While the command is, undoubtedly, a command, Tom helps his assistant out with the tall task. He figures he could at least allow Harry a little leeway this time.

Then there was the time Harry was almost eaten by a basilisk.

Tom's still not too sure how he'd gotten himself into that mess, even after hearing the story several times. Also occurring on that day is the notable event of Harry learning that The Witch could speak to snakes. For Tom, it was also the day that he learned how thankful he was that he always kept a vial of phoenix tears among his ingredients, and an even smaller vial on himself in case of dire emergencies like the one his assistant found himself in.

Coincidentally—though the coincidence part is, to Tom, always debatable ever since the unicorns—the next addition that joins their magical beast sanctuary is a couple of runespoors.

Harry says he couldn't find a basilisk.

Tom wonders at the lack of trauma his assistant shows, despite the stupid amount of crazy situations he gets into.

Though his sense of self-worth and safety—and perhaps even more prominent is the 'save everything!' aspect of Harry's personality—cause plenty of trouble on their own for Tom, he's never really been bothered all too much about it.

For one, gathering magical beasts and having an assistant who actually knows how to care for them is actually quite profitable. Not only do they supply ingredients, but they also protect the mountain Tom lives on so he doesn't have to worry about that aspect. And because Little Hangleton is technically under Tom's protection, too, the beasts help out in that respect as well, which conveniently lets Tom increase the amount of tribute the villagers have to pay to him.

And they can't complain.

(A dragon is only one layer of the defense, after all; who wants to slay a dragon when they'll have runespoors and a kelpie and more coming after them next?)

Besides, it makes Harry happy to have them around, and a happy assistant means delicious food and beaming smiles and a content Witch. What more can Tom ask for?

So no, Tom doesn't really mind the times he has to go save his assistant who doesn't know what caution means, and he isn't truly upset when Harry brings home something from his adventures—how does he find time for those?—Tom's fine with it.

It takes a weeping customer and a present Harry for Tom to not be okay with it.

"Of course we'll help you!" Harry blurts out, abruptly stopping in his sweeping to go give the crying woman a handkerchief.

Tom is annoyed. Tom is even more annoyed when the woman blubbers out 'thank you's and 'bless your souls' and 'how can I ever thank you enough?'

"And who," Tom sneers, "is we?"

Harry stiffens, realizing what he'd just done. "Umm…"

Tom turns to the customer. "Leave," he commands.

"Wait, Boss! Please! She's—"

"I do not repeat myself."

"Tom," Harry says, openly begging now. "If you don't help her, at least let me. Please."

There is a pause, filled only with the sniffles of Susan Bones before The Witch of Little Hangleton speaks again. "Get out," he tells the woman, and waits until she scrambles out the door and down the pathway before turning back to his assistant.

"Speak, before I lose all my patience with you."

Harry takes the seat that Bones vacated. "Her grandmother—"

"Noble Amelia Bones was taken hostage by the Dark Lord Grindelwald, yes I heard. Susan Bones can't pay and I don't do rescue jobs. You know that. Now explain your disrespect before I make your punishment thrice as painful."

Mid-flinch, Harry stops himself. Instead, he lifts his chin and looks at Tom straight in the eyes.

"Grindelwald killed my parents."

…Whatever Tom was expecting, it certainly wasn't that.

"Pardon?"

His assistant takes a deep breath before repeating himself. "My parents were Lily and James Potter, knights of King Dumbledore. Grindelwald wanted to weaken his power, so he targeted my parents. A year after I was born, they were killed personally by the Dark Lord. I hardly can remember their faces," Harry explains quietly. "I lived with my Aunt and Uncle for the next twelve years, and…"

Tom listens, and slowly as his assistant's story winds down to an end, he feels his anger fade. Replacing it is a very calm, very rational urge to set Harry loose upon the Dark Lord Grindelwald and watch him tear him limb from limb.

"—and that's how I ended up here," Harry finishes. "I sympathize with her—Bones. I don't want what happened to me to happen to—"

"I frankly doubt that Bones has relatives so foul," interrupts The Witch. "And she's hardly a year old. She can take care of herself. Don't you mean you want to take revenge?"

Harry shrugs. "My wanting to vanquish Grindelwald and it being personal are two different things. The reason I want him gone isn't because he went after my parents—it's because he's a horrid man who's torn apart many families already. Well, that and I don't think Dumbledore really wants to do anything about him."

Toms frowns. "And after you've defeated him, what will you do then?"

His assistant blinks. "Huh?"

"The reason you first came here was to learn, for the express purpose of vanquishing the Dark Lord. After you've vanquished him, what will you do then?"

"I…" Harry pauses, and then his expression goes from confused to hopeless puppy in a second. "You mean you don't want me here anymore?"

Tom, indescribably relieved, sends a stinging hex his way, which Harry doesn't dodge even though he could've. "Foolish assistant. I've marked you. I wouldn't let you leave even if you tried."

Harry laughs. The Witch spends the rest of the day teaching him the most underhanded ways to duel. A month later, Grindelwald is jailed in his own prison and King Dumbledore is hailed as a hero. Harry returns to Little Hangleton, plopping back into Tom's life like he'd never left on a month-long journey to defeat a Dark Lord.

Everyone on the mountain is glad to have him back.

"How did it go?"

"The King wanted to make me his knight," Harry says. "I told him I've already been put under employment. When I showed him your mark, he grew very pale and insisted he could save me from you."

Tom snorts. "So what did you do?"

"I obliviated him," his assistant answers casually. "He thinks I died in the battle with Grindelwald, and that instead of me hitting the finishing blow, it was him, taking revenge for me. Very heroic, makes for a good story—especially the whole 'letting him live is punishment for his sins' thing. So, how's the shop been, Boss?"

It's the first time Harry's ever seen The Witch smile.

"Dirty. Get to cleaning, and make dinner while you're at it."

"Sure thing, Boss!"

WHATISSLEEPIDON'TKNOW. (School is starting again soon and I really don't have time to be writing these trashy oneshots)

Finishing this fic up because I liked the summary, the title, and the Harry. It's sat in my folder abandoned for too long, and it's actually one of the do-able/finishable ones so I figured you guys might like it.

Hope you enjoyed the ridiculous read c;

Sincerely,

R.R.