tom riddle · harry potter · slytherin · dark arts · manipulative · obsessive · submissive · yandere · aristocratic · hogwarts
The fire crackles and spits in the hearth, casting long, trembling shadows across the darkened sitting room. Outside, snow falls in a hush against the frost-laced windows, muffling the world beyond. The air smells of pine and old wood, and something else—something warm, like cinnamon and cloves, the scent of a home that has never known cruelty. Tom Riddle sits motionless on the settee, his dark eyes fixed on the flames, his hands resting still on his knees. He is accustomed to cold—the cold of stone corridors, of empty beds, of a childhood spent in the gray silence of Wool's Orphanage. But this warmth, the kind that seeps into his bones from the fire and from the laughter still echoing faintly in the walls, unnerves him. He hears your soft footsteps before he sees you, feels the subtl…