hiii cud u pl do a headcanon/oneshot where its a muggleborn reader who smhow ends up befriending the tom riddle who always seems to soft only to her, including tolerating her sassy attitude and its a study session together and they're bantering or summin? i think it wud be nice. thank you!
A/N: Girl I gotchu
･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ.
Unsaid
Summary: By now you've got a pretty good idea why you're friends with Tom, but sometimes, when it comes up, you wonder why he's friends with you.
[GN reader ★ no pronouns ★ Hufflepuff house (but ngl it doesn't really come up u just gotta trust me)]
Word count: 1.2k
･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ.
“I’m dropping out,” you announce, dumping your bag on the table and falling emphatically into the seat adjacent to Tom’s.
Tom, for his part, does not look up. His quill doesn’t even hesitate as he writes in a smooth, unbroken script across his parchment. Instead, he says: “Your bag is on my book.”
You shove it unenthusiastically to the side to reveal the open textbook he’s been working from, and then fix him with a pointed look. Tom is set up in the same little spot in the library as always, his bag at his feet and at least ten other books neatly stacked off to the side of the table. He looks (as Tom always looks) like the poster boy of adhering to the uniform dress code.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?” you say, slightly put out.
“I would not bother,” he says simply, leaning forward and dipping his quill in a small inkwell in front of him. “I’ve come to accept the inevitability of you telling me all sorts of things I don’t care to hear about, whether I ask about them or not.”
He resumes writing.
You kick his chair leg lightly and his quill skips sharply down the page, leaving a jolted line about an inch long off where he’d been writing the word putrescence.
This finally makes him look up, fixing you with a supremely irritated glare that’s made his whole face go tense.
You lean your elbows on the table and smile at him.
Tom’s jaw works slightly, and he takes a long breath. “What’s wrong?” he asks sarcastically.
“Well,” you say as he puts down his quill and bends to pick up his bag. “In Herbology this morning when we were cracking Wiggentree nuts, Lucy Grollen had this horrible allergic reaction and her feet swelled up so much that her shoes burst.”
“And this affects you how?” Tom drawls, diligently rubbing a Spellfriends eraser across his parchment.
You give him a scandalised look. “She’s my friend, Tom.”
He gives you a very dry look and then flips the eraser over to the purple side. “I hardly think you’d be tempted to leave the school because your friend is allergic to nuts.”
“Well she’s also my greenhouse partner,” you say dramatically, throwing yourself back in your seat, “and because she had to go to the hospital wing I had to finish the rest of the assignment alone, and obviously by the end of class I didn’t have all our nuts cracked so Beery made me stay late to finish them. And that meant that I missed the sign up for the fieldtrip to the Menagerie of Mirabilia.”
Tom throws down the eraser and exhales in frustration. The ink remains unmoved. “You have been talking about that fieldtrip for six weeks,” he says in a clipped tone, pulling his wand from his bag. “And I have been telling you for six weeks that it was going to fill up quickly. Evanesco.”
The eraser shavings on his parchment vanish and leave both of you staring at the tenacious line of ink—which if anything, now just looks a little smudged.
His little comment about the whole six weeks thing has not left you feeling very sympathetic for him. “Wow. You have got to tell me what kind of ink you buy,” you say with a smirk as Tom tosses his wand onto the desk in frustration.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he says hotly, folding his arms and finally looking at you properly as he leans back in his chair. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What happened with the fieldtrip?” he prompts irritably.
“Oh – so as I’m sure you remember, I promised Madeline I’d go with her on the fieldtrip because she’s obsessed with magizoology at the moment, so then I had to tell her I wasn’t going, and she was so upset, and I couldn't stop thinking about it because I felt so bad. So then I was really distracted in Transfiguration and of course Dumbledore notices and asks me to recite the whole definition of Amandation’s Command in front of everybody.” You sigh loudly. “So I can’t do it because I hadn't been paying attention, but then he points to the board and the definition is written right there and I just hadn’t noticed, and everyone laughed at me.”
You cross your arms too, feeling sorry for yourself. “The only solution is to drop out,” you reiterate moodily.
“This is one of your jokes,” says Tom delicately.
You narrow your eyes at him. “Yes well spotted.”
“You’ve ruined my assignment,” he says, nodding at it.
“You ruined your own assignment. With your callousness.”
Rather surprisingly, Tom snorts a laugh. “I would loathe to be my friend, to hear you describe it,” he says with suspicious ease as he extracts a new roll of parchment from his bag. “It begs the question as to why you persevere.”
“Very occasionally, you do something really nice,” you say, watching him with suspicion. Tom’s irritability rarely fades this quickly. “I just kind of zone out all the bits in-between where you’re weird and sarcastic.”
“Weird and sarcastic?” Tom repeats, lips curling. “Have you been listening to yourself since you sat down?”
“My life is ruined, and you’re worried about an assignment.”
“Your life is not ruined,” he says monotonously as he begins diligently copying over his work.
“I’m upset about this and all you care about is telling me that it’s not a big deal!”
Tom sighs curtly and looks up at you, leaning forward a bit and resting his forearms on the desk. “Your life is not ruined. Lucy Groggen is going to be fine, Wiggentree nut allergies are fairly common and the reaction doesn’t last more than an hour, the worst she’ll have to deal with is buying a new pair of shoes. Beery should never have made you complete a two-person task by yourself and it’s ridiculous that he kept you late because of his own poor class management. If Dumbledore was half the teacher that he claims to be, he might have noticed that you were upset about something and think to ask you about it, but his mistake is made all the more egregious given that he chose to single you out in front of the whole class with what sounds like a very silly little trick. And I wouldn’t worry about upsetting Madeline if I were you, because I signed you up for the fieldtrip.”
He resumes writing without another word. You stare at him, dumbfounded. A full ten seconds passes before you can rouse yourself to speak again.
“You signed me up for the fieldtrip?
Tom’s eyes remain level on his work—he’s writing at lightning speed like he’s trying to make up for the lost time. “You have been talking about it for six weeks. It seemed odd that you failed to show up.”
You look at your bag still lying dejectedly on the table in front of you and attempt to process the glowy, warm feeling spreading up through your chest. “Thanks,” you say blandly.
He just looks up at you with a glint in his eyes about halfway between wry and cynical.
“I feel bad about your assignment,” you announce.
Tom slowly smiles, this time very wryly indeed. “You have certainly changed your tune.”
You grab your bag and pull out your water bottle, placing it emphatically on the desk beside him.
Tom’s dark eyes flick from it to you, and he lifts a brow. “Is this supposed to mean something to me?”
“You have to wet a Spellfriends for it to work,” you mumble, folding your arms and resting forward on the desk.
He stares at you in a sort of frozen state of disbelief. “You mean you let me suffer through all of that for absolutely no reason?” he demands in half-subdued outrage.
“There was a reason!” you protest, smiling at him again. “It was funny.”
He blinks once, and then snatches the drink bottle off the desk, shaking his head. “You are extremely irritating,” he says icily, twisting the bottle open.
“Huh, sounds like a nightmare being my friend to hear you describe it,” you parrot back at him with a grin. “One wonders why you persevere, Tom.”
Tom pauses, and instead of the scathing look of irritation or perhaps a biting remark back, he just looks at you with an unplaceable expression like you’ve caught him off guard.
“What?” you frown, sitting up a little in concern.
Tom blinks slightly and then holds out his hand. “Pass me the Spellfriends,” he says colourlessly.
You arch a brow right back at him, and retrieve the eraser from where it’s been lying discarded for the last few minutes in front of you. “If you were wondering what I meant by the weird part in weird and sarcastic…” you say to him pointedly, placing it in his hand.
Tom silently erases the offending ink stain with a taut jaw and an irascible look darkening his eyes.
“Hey,” you say.
He ignores you entirely, sweeping the fresh shavings off his parchment and setting the eraser aside.
“Hey,” you repeat, reaching out and taking his arm.
Tom’s gaze immediately flashes to you and he goes entirely still.
“Thank you,” you tell him sincerely. “For the field trip.”
He does not immediately reply. A second later his lips part like he’s going to say something, but they close like he thinks better of it. He blinks, and then pulls his arm from yours to reach for another book. “Are you intending on actually doing work this evening, or was this visit’s entire premise just to disrupt me?”
You roll your eyes, and reach for your bag again with a smile.
