Weirdness like whoa. I have a headache. It's NaNoWriMo 12 days. Random slashy one shot. Because I wanted to do a TMR/HP and couldn't be bothered to write a proper one. I'm still working on The Love of Good Men and Serendipity (that is, Meeting Harry's sister fic).

Nonchalance - the casual lack of concern

When Harry was twelve he fell in love. He didn't mean to - it was quite accidental - but he fell in love nonetheless. The object of his affections was a diary. A battered, seemingly empty diary that, when he wrote in it, it wrote back. One day it showed him a shadow of the past and there, hidden in the folds of the diary's pages was the most handsome boy Harry had ever seen. Tom Marvolo Riddle. The owner and possessor. Tom had talked to him as though he mattered. As though he was Just Harry, but that being Just Harry was more than enough and he'd been half in love with the boy already. Seeing him had just sealed the day.

But Tom had forced Harry's hand. He'd attacked the students, tried to kill the sister of Harry's first ever friend. Had tried to kill him. So Harry had hidden the diary away, in the hidden recesses that all little boys' trunks contain and known only to them.

I'm sorry, Tom, he'd written. But I won't let you hurt my friends.

Tom had never written back, had never swallowed those words. They had remained constant and steady on the first page of the diary and Harry, in the silence of number 4, Privet Drive when the Dursley's had left for their Harry-free holiday, had wept.

-oOo-

When Harry was fourteen he found one of the other parts of Tom's soul and it scared him. But as much as it scared him, Harry knew that he would love it. Because he loved everything about Tom, even the strange, ugly parts. He knew better than anyone that even - especially - the prettiest of people had ugly secrets. Tom's had just been revealed to the world.

When the rat had cut Harry's arm open he had poured everything into that wound. He remembered everything about his love of Tom. He remembered how it felt to believe that he was loved back - even if it wasn't real. He remembered the sweet, secret smiles he had only smiled when he knew no one could see them. He remembered the hot flush of love, love, foolish sweet love.

But it didn't do any good. When Voldemort rose again his skin was scaly, his nose was non existent and those dark, blood red eyes Harry so loved were brighter, lit by harsh insanity. And Voldemort had duelled him, tried to kill him again. So Harry had run again, clutching Cedric's body and the portkey to him as a little more of his hope was crushed.

When he finally had time to himself again Harry wrote in the diary again, for the first time in two years. His words from before still hadn't disappeared.

I met you again today. You tried to kill me again. Why do you want to kill me Tom?

Again, he got no response.

-oOo-

When Harry was fifteen he stole a ring. It was an old ring crusted in dark magic, but Harry thought it was pretty anyway. No. Not pretty. Handsome. Handsome like his Tom. He had found it because he remembered some of Tom's stories, back when the older boy still spoke to him. He remembered that his beloved was the Heir of Slytherin, that his heritage meant everything to him, and that his muggle father had ruined it all. So Harry escaped the Dursleys - just for a week or two - and went to the old Gaunt hovel.

The dark magic burnt his hands, but he was used to it from the diary and swallowed it, feeding it to the dark creature that hid inside him. He didn't put the ring on - that wasn't his right. He wished that, one day, he might have the right, but sometimes he needed to remind himself that it was he who loved Tom and that Tom did not love him. The ring was not his, would never be his.

So Harry went home, no one the wiser to his trip, and took out the diary again. He kissed the cover softly and opened it to a random page in the middle. He didn't want to open the cover page and see his own words staring back at him, as they surely would be. Instead he gently placed the ring in the middle of the diary and placed the whole thing into one of his desk drawers.

"I promise I won't look," Harry whispered to the diary as he shut the drawer. He didn't feel silly in the slightest for talking to a book.

-oOo-

When Harry was sixteen he found a locket. He'd seen a man - a mostly good man - die for a copy of the locket. But the real one was in his godfather's house. It was one of the trinkets Sirius let Kreacher keep. A reminder of a dead brother. Harry liked that. But he loved Tom. So he stole the locket for himself. For Tom. Harry felt guilty for stealing from a creature had so little in his sad little life, so he had shown Kreacher the diary. He had opened it to another random page and placed the locket there with a kiss.

"It's going to disappear, Kreacher," Harry told the Elf. "And it will never come back."

"Master Regulus will bes happy," the elf had said with a happy nod of his head and left the room.

Harry had stared at the diary for a little longer and tried to not to cry again. He would not cry for Tom anymore. That would be a selfish indulgence in self-pity. He should know better. So he stroked the spine tenderly and hidden the book once more to take back what had always been its own.

-oOo-

When Harry was seventeen he found a diadem and a cup. He knew what they were now, other than just Tom's. They were called Horcruxes. Pieces of soul that Tom had broken off and collected in elaborate jars. Harry wondered how sad Tom had been that he felt he had to split himself up to have a little decent company. He shouldn't feel pity, he knew. Tom wouldn't like it and Hermione said that it was wrong to.

But Harry had always been led by his heart. And his heart belonged to those shattered pieces of soul that he carried with care from Bellatrix' vault and the Room of Hidden Things. He'd even saved a couple of dragons in the process. Harry laughed at the comparison - Draco wasn't half as fiery as a real dragon, much more like a wet mop.

Tom hadn't minded him watching as the horcruxes melted into the diaries pages this time. It was as though the diary sensed the urgency in both situations. Perhaps it did.

Harry chanced a look at the first page and tried not to smile in the middle of battle when he saw that his words were gone. Love, full and free and total and no longer doubting itself bloomed fiercely in his chest and he left the castle. It was time to face Voldemort. It was time to tell the unloved boy that he was loved.

-oOo-

When Harry was seventeen he died.

He opened his eyes to blinding white light and a sense of warmth that he had never known before. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Tom was looking at him. He was young and handsome and had blood red eyes. He was sat on a white bench on a white platform in a white train station. And when he saw that Harry was awake, Tom smiled.

"Hello, Harry," Tom said.

"I love you," Harry replied, sitting cross legged and staring up at him.

Tom smiled again. "I know. I'm sorry. I love you too."

Then Tom took Harry's hands in his own and stood up, pulling Harry up with him. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Harry nodded. "Always."

And then a train arrived, they stepped onboard, hand in hand, and left.

Feel free to ignore this. Hell if I know what I'm doing. Love me? xx