Chapter Text
Rubeus Hagrid had learned to live with a certain amount of pain.
For a time, that pain was only physical. He learned very early on in his life, through personal experience and exhaustive research done by his worried father, that young half-giants were prone to growing pains of special intensity. At least three times a week—sometimes even several times throughout the same night—he would wake up to a throbbing, aching burn through his legs and radiating up his back, so intense that it would blot out everything else: all color and light, all sound, all thought. He could do nothing except be in pain and try to breathe.
His father would do his best with numbing spells and topical salves, but they rarely did more than take the edge off. And Rubeus saw how hard it was on him, physically as much as emotionally, and so eventually he trained himself to bear it: to lie silently in bed with tears streaming down his face so his father would not wake, would not worry. He’d already lost his mother, who in her disappointment for birthing a runt had gone back to her colony to forget he existed. He did not want to lose his father, too.
But in time, the growing pains stopped if only because he stopped growing, though it had been a long thirteen years to get to that point. He still dealt with aches and pains occasionally—a lifelong feature of being a half-giant, he’d been reliably informed, related in ways he didn’t quite understand to the density of his bones—but they were bearable. His bed at Hogwarts was comfortable, even though the house-elves had to enchant it to be twice as big as all the others in the dorm. He saw his father on every Hogsmeade weekend. And though his friends in Gryffindor were few, they were real. It felt like the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Finally, there was no more pain to keep him up at night.
And then he had the terrible luck to fall in love.
Rubeus did not know Tom Riddle, but of course he knew of him. Everyone knew of him. He was the star of the Slug Club, adored by every girl who saw him and more than a few boys, favored pupil of every professor, too handsome by half, and even (if the rumors were to be believed) a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself.
Rubeus had never personally formed much of an opinion on him as their paths never really crossed, being in different houses and different years. But whenever he caught sight of Riddle across a corridor or the Great Hall, Rubeus was always struck by the thought that he looked a little distracted, and perhaps a little morose, like he was puzzling through something terrible and tremendous. Rubeus’s friend Evangeline, who’d fancied Riddle from afar since the moment she’d seen him, would sigh and say that it made him mysterious—but Rubeus didn’t think there was anything particularly mysterious about pain.
So when he heard the whispers of some sort of huge, dangerous beast living under Hogwarts, and the subsequent rumors of Tom Riddle being the only one able to access it, Rubeus was drawn into investigating by the former; the latter was incidental.
“Hey! Hey! Hagrid, isn’t it? Get up!”
He just hadn’t expected things to go south so quickly. Though as he woke up on the cold, slick stone floor, he found that he couldn’t even really recall how it had gone south. One moment, he was following Tom Riddle and Professor Dumbledore into a particular bathroom on the second floor, and the next he was falling, and then…
“Come on, get up! I could really use some help—shit!”
Something huge and heavy slid across the floor nearby, passing them at alarming speed. He finally managed to lift his head, though his vision was so blurry that he only caught a glimpse of black scales flashing golden in nearby torchlight.
“Yield,” hissed Professor Dumbledore’s familiar voice from further away. “You will yield to me… Imperio!”
A loud hiss. A thrash. That huge body writhed on the stone, but Hagrid’s was having trouble making himself sit upright…
“Please.” Finally, though, Rubeus’s vision swam back into focus. “You need to get help. Get Dippet, alert the Ministry, something. Dumbledore’s— He’s—”
“Yield!”
And though his vision had cleared, it took him several more seconds to really perceive what was in front of him. Tom Riddle, slick with blood and sweat, on his knees in front of him, staring with muted horror at—
Rubeus scrambled up and away. “Merlin’s mercy! Is that a basilisk?”
It was as impossible as it was undeniable. A basilisk, one of the deadliest creatures in the world, fifty feet of gleaming scales and whipcord muscles, lashing its tail and trying to strike at— Did he hear Professor Dumbledore trying to use an Unforgivable on it? Where even was he? It looked like some horrible combination of a sewer and a temple, all vaulted stone ceilings and flickering torches.
“He put me under Imperius,” Riddle panted, “forced me to do…something…to open the door to the Chamber of Secrets— Hagrid, you need to go and get help. Take the girl and run!”
There were a lot of follow-up questions worth asking, but Rubeus suspected he didn’t have enough time for them. He glanced over at the girl. Myrtle something, currently unconscious on the floor a few feet away. She’d been in the bathroom already, or at least he was mostly sure she was, when Riddle and Professor Dumbledore had entered, but everything had happened so quickly…
“I don’ even know where I am!” Rubeus protested.
“There’s a way out, I think, through that set of doors behind you. I think we’re underground, so keep going up as much as you can. Just hurry. I know what he plans with this Basilisk, and if he gets his way, a lot of people are going to die.”
An eerie green thread of magic connected the beast with the end of Dumbledore’s wand. The beast resisted, as best it was able, thrashing against the magic spiderwebbing across its body and slamming itself into walls and columns with such strength that the rock beneath them shook with each collision.
Rubeus managed to scramble to his feet. Riddle did, too, with more difficulty due to a wound on his leg that was soaking the left side of his trousers with blood, but he managed to levitate the girl into Rubeus’s waiting arms.
“Go,” Riddle said the moment she was secure. “Before he notices you’re gone. Send help.”
“An’ what about you?” Rubeus asked. “Yeh really ought’er come with us.”
Riddle shook his head, face set in hard, grim lines. “I need to stop him. I need to kill that thing.”
“You—?”
“It’s my family’s legacy,” Riddle said, turning toward the violent confrontation between man and serpent on the far side of the room—then sharply looking away when the basilisk wrenched its face toward them, avoiding its deadly gaze. “It’s my problem. My responsibility. Just go, Hagrid.”
“I—”
But Riddle was already turning, racing into the fray, casting his first spell to immobilize the beast and then again, immediately after, to stun Professor Dumbledore, who barely countered in time.
Their duel was fast and precise and brutal. Rubeus felt momentarily rooted to the spot, and in the frantic few seconds before he could tear his eyes away, he was hit by the same feeling as when he went to the Museum of Magical History in Cardiff and watched the memory of the famous last duel between Merlin and Morgana: awe tempered by terror. History was happening in front of him, he was sure.
But he had no time to appreciate it. Myrtle was stirring in his arms, and he had to get her out of here.
He turned and ran.
And, of course, Rubeus did as he was asked: he woke up Slughorn, who sent a message to Dippet, who rallied all the other professors and made a Floo-call to the DMLE in London, and soon the help Riddle had told him to find arrived.
In the days that followed, Hagrid was able to piece together most of the story: the way Professor Dumbledore had been trying to persuade Riddle over the past few years to open the Chamber of Secrets and “claim his birthright,” the way Riddle had resisted from mistrust and fear, the plans Riddle had uncovered about what Dumbledore intended with the basilisk, which forced the confrontation that had nearly killed two students.
Riddle was given some sort of special award, lauded as a hero, and Dumbledore fled the castle before he could be arrested. And that was all well and good, but Rubeus really only cared about one thing, and it was the only question no one seemed to be asking:
“Are yeh all right, Riddle?”
“My wounds have been healed.”
“S’not what I asked. The question was if yer all right.”
Riddle paused, looked up. Rubeus had found him in the library, having fled a group of fawning students who’d nearly cornered him in the corridor. He looked at Rubeus as if he didn’t quite understand the question.
“Am I…?”
“All right,” Rubeus repeated. “That was proper scary, what happened. ’S a miracle yeh survived. An’ I just wanted ter make sure…”
He glanced over his shoulder. Riddle had chosen a reliably empty corner of the library, in just the right spot to have near-complete cover behind bookshelves and columns. Rubeus sat down across from him, the wood of the chair groaning under the sudden weight.
“That, yeh know, yer sleepin’ well still. That yer not jumpin’ at shadows. That yer all right.”
Riddle’s brow furrowed a fraction. “I…” He paused, stared at the table for a moment in thoughtful silence. “I’m not sure. I think I am. But it’s…difficult for me to be sure.”
Rubeus paused, surprised by the answer. After a moment, he folded his arms and leaned forward on them across the table, which Riddle seemed to take as an invitation to continue.
“Professor Dumbledore and I have always had a…strained relationship,” he said. “He was the one who told me I was a wizard.”
“The direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin didn’t know ’e was a wizard?” Rubeus asked, surprised.
“I didn’t have any parents around to tell me,” Riddle answered, which was objectively a heartbreaking answer, but which Riddle said as if remarking on the weather. He kept going before Rubeus could even come up with something kind to say. “And from the moment I met him, Dumbledore was always telling me that I was special—different, powerful, unique. Flattery was so new to me that it took me a while to realize that he was likely only doing it because he wanted something from me. It took even longer to realize how bad that something was.”
Then he abruptly stopped talking. He looked up at Rubeus again, all those handsome lines and angles of his face taking on a look of suspicion.
“I can’t imagine you care about this,” he said.
“If I didn’t care, I weren’t’ve been askin’.”
“Is that so? Why, then?”
“Why…?”
“Why do you care?”
“Seemed like someone should,” Rubeus answered, which was the truth, but which only seemed to perplex Riddle further. So he clarified: “Seemed ter me like everyone was too busy congratulatin’ yeh ter bother askin’ if yeh feel safe.”
The suspicion on Riddle’s face didn’t fade, exactly, but it take on strange depths that Rubeus didn’t think he could accurately parse. For a long while, he was silent, staring with those endlessly dark eyes that, Rubeus slowly realized, were doing funny things to his chest.
Finally, though, he did eventually answer:
“Dumbledore clearly only wanted to use me to achieve his ends.” He sat back in his chair, mouth twisting. “And that infuriates me. And yet a part of me knows that, but for his interference, I very well may have taken that same power he coveted and done something equally as unspeakable.”
Rubeus frowned.
“I am not a good person,” Riddle continued, though he was talking more slowly now, his dark eyes unfocused. “I know that. There is something rotten in my soul. And after the events of the Chamber, I am forced to wonder if the reason Dumbledore singled me out is because he knew that, and saw himself in it, and thought he could use it to his advantage.”
And then the pair of them sat in silence for a while. Rubeus took the opportunity to study Riddle, thinking about all he knew of him, through observation and rumor. He could not imagine why Riddle had such an intensely negative view of himself. It certainly took Rubeus almost no time at all to come to the conclusion:
“I don’ think yer rotten.”
Riddle didn’t look impressed. “You claim to have some special insight? You barely know me.”
“Well, that’s true,” Rubeus answered, “but I were there when it happened. I saw yeh in crisis. It would’er been a lot easier fer yeh to stand by an’ let Dumbledore do what ’e wanted, or jus’ ter run away, but yeh didn’t. Yeh stayed, yeh fought. Yeh saved my life. Myrtle’s too, I reckon.”
“I was angry at him,” Riddle said. “I didn’t do it because I wanted to help anyone.”
“An’ yet yeh still got me an’ Myrtle ter safety first.”
“I needed help.”
“There were other ways ter get it. Yer instinct chose the one that got us out o’ harm’s way,” Rubeus said, and finally Riddle seemed to run out of counterpoints.
His expression had changed over the course of the conversation. At some point, he’d started staring at Rubeus as though wondering if he’d suffered a head injury. And honestly, Rubeus wasn’t even entirely sure himself why he was trying so hard to convince Riddle of the truth of his assertion. Maybe because Rubeus knew what it was like to assume there was something fundamentally wrong with one’s self, a feeling he wouldn’t wish on anyone.
“Look at it this way,” Rubeus eventually continued, “in th’ end, the why of it don’t matter. The what does. Even if we assume there is somethin’ rotten in yeh, it weren’t rotten enough to put yer classmates in danger. An’ so long as yeh keep doin’ the good thing, well, what does some secret rot no one can see matter?”
The shapes of Riddle’s face changed again. Mild confusion, thoughtful consideration, and then, to Rubeus’s surprise, a brief frown of vulnerability.
“If this whole calamity has taught me anything,” Riddle said, “it’s that I do not want to be like Dumbledore.”
“So don’t,” Rubeus answered.
“But I… How can I assure it? So far, I’ve only ever done the right thing by accident. How can I learn to do it deliberately?”
Rubeus frowned. “Yeh really believe this rot-in-yer-soul theory, don’t yeh?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of believing. It is the way I am and the way I’ve always been.”
Even still, Rubeus was not sure that he agreed. And there was something profoundly unfair about such a brilliant, brave, capable young man with so much potential to think of himself that way.
“Well… I s’pose I could help.”
Riddle looked up at him skeptically. “Help?”
“Not sayin’ I’m some great philosopher or nothin’, but I can keep an eye on yeh. I promise ter let yeh know the second yeh start actin’ like a crazy murderer.”
Rubeus grinned, but Riddle did not appear to be taking it as a joke. He was staring intensely at Rubeus, gaze measuring, like he was trying to work something out. Those funny things happening in his chest only got funnier.
And then, to his surprise, Riddle said, “All right. I’ll take you up on that offer.”
“Oh,” Rubeus answered. “Er… All righ’.”
“For now, I suppose I should set my sights on finishing my N.E.W.T.s to become an Auror.”
He stood, which while Rubeus remained seated finally put them at eye level with one another.
“Why an Auror?” Rubeus asked.
Riddle’s dark eyes gleamed. “Because if Dumbledore is anything like me, he’s not going to stop his schemes until someone forces him to.”
And that was how Rubeus Hagrid became the confidante of Tom Riddle.
He wouldn’t go so far as to call himself a friend. So far as Rubeus could tell, Riddle didn’t have friends. There was important work to do, after all: the magical and Muggle governments of Germany were falling into fascism with Dumbledore’s help, and war was on the horizon. And so instead of friends, he had associates, people drawn in by his skill and gravitas, willing to fight for his cause—Abraxas Malfoy, Arcturus Black, Myrtle Warren, Oswald Crabbe, and even more as the years went on—but they treated him like a leader, not a friend. By all appearances, a leader was all Riddle was, or perhaps all he allowed himself to be.
Which was a shame, because it took Rubeus less than one full term at school to find enough in Tom Riddle to fall in love with several times over.
If there was some rot in his soul, Rubeus did not see it, not even when he came to him over the next few years asking questions about whether his plans or ideas were morally sound. To Rubeus, these were the habits of someone constantly and deeply concerned with doing the right thing because he understood that goodness mattered.
And, of course, it did not help that he was also the smartest person in every room he walked into, driven and focused and dedicated to his goals, and probably the most classically beautiful young man Rubeus had ever seen in his life.
The love snuck up on him. One minute, he was talking with Myrtle about the concerning reports out of eastern Europe, and the next he’d looked across the room to see Tom bent over a copy of The Daily Prophet, studying it with such focus that Rubeus’s heart did a funny little flip in his chest and the realization that he was in love hit him like a blow.
He put the feeling away, of course. Tucked it deep down into the pit of his stomach where it would never be a problem for anyone but him.
And it was a problem for him, because the love kept growing bigger and bigger in unexpected ways: surging when Riddle passed his N.E.W.T.s with the highest Defense Against the Dark Arts marks on record, aching when he joined the Aurors, trembling like an overworked muscle when he rose higher and higher. But that was fine. Or at the very least, it was manageable.
Rubeus had learned to live with pain, after all.