Author's Note: A few warnings. First, this is a side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds", and if you aren't a fair chunk of the way through that you'll be very confused. Second, obviously, this is NOT CANON.

Tom did not often confide in his peers, in fact, Tom did not believe he ever had at all. To be accepted into his confidence, in any respect, was to in fact be lured into the false belief that one knew Tom Riddle well and could rely upon him. It gave the false idea of intimacy that, perhaps, with time and flattery could get him access to texts of dark magic loaned to him from the Malfoy or Black family libraries. More, it allowed him to engage with the aristocracy, to mimic them and see not just how they interacted with the plebian half-blood and mudblood scum but with each other.

Years later, perhaps five, perhaps ten, when Tom Marvolo Riddle had faded into obscurity and Lord Voldemort, heir of Slytherin, rose from the shadows as a dark and baleful god, he would need those mannerisms already in place. They would look to him, and see not just a dark and powerful wizard, but the ideal pureblood lord who could drive them into worship at the mere sight of him.

So, Tom did not have friends, did not even truly have enemies, but instead acquaintances or else perpetual thorns in his side. He did not confide, he did not confess, for seventeen years he kept his thoughts to himself and for the last seven a charming smile planted firmly on his face as he rose as far and as fast as a student could within Hogwarts.

However, and he didn't know precisely why this was, but something about the two foreign transfer students in his seventh year pushed him to the brink far enough that he asked Abraxas, in all honesty, "Why the bloody hell do they always insist on talking to me?"

Minato Namikaze and Lee Eru had shown up at the beginning of the year intent on transferring into Hogwarts to take and pass their NEWT exams after having paid for and passed preliminary OWL examinations over the summer. Passed though, was a kind term for it, after their arrival and meeting them face to face and Tom had decided to scour through the scores of the past year to find theirs, they had in truth slaughtered it.

The boy, Minato Namikaze, was approaching Tom's scores in nearly every subject. In Arithmancy, Transfiguration, and Runes he was dangerously close, and reading the examiner notes, Tom paled as he realized that he could match or even surpass Tom if the examiners hadn't kept insisting the boy use the Celtic rune system versus his own native branches.

(Defense had always been Tom's best subject, his favorite subject, but he had always been the best at every subject. Defense, Potions, Arithmancy, Runes, everything he had taken he had been the top of the class with nauseating ease, far surpassing even those like Minerva McGonagall in Transfiguration, those that were by no means stupid and possessed natural talent.

Tom, in short, had gotten so used to being the best, so unimpressed by his own record breaking OWL scores, that it had become inconceivable that he could be matched in anything. No, no one ever had come close to matching him, in the orphanage or in Hogwarts, so why should it have been conceivable in the first place?)

The girl, Lee Eru, was different and in some sense entirely dismissible, yet, at the same time, even more insulting and worrying than the boy. Her scores, at the end of the day, were slightly above average. Nothing to sneeze at but also nothing to really draw attention either. She was pitiful in theory, only in Transfiguration did the innate brilliance she must possess shine through, but otherwise examiners noted an almost contemptuous lack of understanding in her answers regarding Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and oh just about anything. However, the practical portions of her exams…

They had given her full marks, in anything in which there was a practical section, she received full marks, the same scores as Tom himself that had broken national records. More, in the comments section where Tom had received notes on his innovative techniques and genius, on hers they seemed to have been shocked speechless. Only capable of leaving the note that they highly recommended Lee Eru, upon graduation and the passing of her NEWT exams, join the auror corps and head to France, straight to the front and the dark wizards that waited there.

As if, somehow if this girl was out there facing Grindelwald herself, then this war was as good as won.

However, Tom hadn't known any of this on the train. No, all he'd known as he'd been summoned into Slughorn's office just before the feast, was that two foreign students from wizarding Japan had arrived via Kyoto, and that per their arrival at Hogwarts the night before they had both been sorted into Slytherin. Tom, smiling, had answered that he would do his best, as head boy and a Slytherin himself, to see that the two were adjusted to not only their new school but also their new country.

Although, he'd wondered even as he and Slughorn had left for the feast, how they had managed to convince Dippet and Dumbledore to allow them, foreign students from the far east, inside the school in a time of war. True, they were a bit young to be spies, and unlike the muggle war Grindelwald's wizarding counterpart did not involve magical Japan, but he'd still expect some resistance, especially on Dumbledore's end as he seemed to get more and more morose with each year the war continued.

Then, for a simple beautiful moment, he'd laid eyes on them sitting side by side at the Slytherin table and had thought nothing of them. Foreign, he'd thought distantly to himself at a first glance. The boy, though blonde and blue-eyed as any Swede, had a certain oriental cast to his features that made it easy to believe that some part of his family had come from the far east. The girl could have looked English enough, he supposed, but there was something about the bright red of her hair, the unnatural green cast of her eyes, and her pale skin that made her seem alien if not simply foreign. However, it was mostly how they held themselves, what they wore beneath their robes, the way they looked at their peers and Hogwarts, that marked them as not quite English.

Certainly, he'd thought with some amusement and contempt, not from the English pureblood aristocracy that Tom had become so delightfully knowledgeable about in the past seven years. Ah, the sacred twenty-eight, how he loathed each and every one of them and all that they had denied him.

In other words, he'd thought to himself at the time, the two of them were about to be eaten alive.

Unfortunately, that was when the girl caught sight of him and his delightful indifference would begin to crack at its foundations. Her too green eyes widened, as if in recognition, she leaned forward with an unnaturally bright grin on her face as she exclaimed in a perfectly English accent (a posh one too, not the kind Tom himself had been surrounded with growing up in Wools), "Ren, you sly son of a bitch, what on earth are you doing here?"

Tom's face fell, his smile slipping out of place as he took his customary seat between Orion and Abraxas, he could feel everyone's eyes sliding towards him and waiting with cruel smirks to see exactly what he'd do. Tom forced the smile back on his face, stretched and thin now, as he reached out with a hand, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid we haven't met, I'm Tom Riddle, the head boy and former Slytherin prefect."

The girl's cheerful smile turned into something a touch amused, as if Tom was putting on some sort of a show for her that she just found adorable, but the boy's expression fell and something dangerous entered his eyes. Tom stopped at that, caught himself, and looked at the boy and wondered if he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing.

It was… It was something very near, something kin to, that spark of lethality that existed within Tom's pale eyes. Not the same contempt and satisfaction at destroying the lives of the orphans, at releasing a basilisk upon the unsuspecting masses, but something poised and dangerous and ready to strike all the same. A steeling of one's soul, in other words, glittered in Minato Namikaze's blue eyes.

He said something to the girl, flowing in his own language, in Japanese most likely (though Tom realized with a blink that he had no idea what Japanese was even supposed to sound like), and she spared Minato a pair of raised eyebrows and an even more amused look as she responded back in the same flowing language, the word Ren, and English, caught somewhere inside.

"So, Namikaze, Eru," this was Abraxas, cutting in rather pointedly as he interjected whatever conversation the pair were having, "I can't say I'm familiar with the families of the orient, but I'm afraid I'm having difficulty placing your surnames. Your parents, they were wizards, weren't they?"

The pair, as one, turned to look at Abraxas before looking at each other, a long-suffering sigh passed between them. Finally, Minato, in perfect English that contained the barest trace of some foreign Asian accent proclaimed, "I am afraid that I am a lowly orphan son of civilian merchants, you would call them muggles, though Lee, herself, is technically an orphaned clan heir of two green chunin… I mean magical academy graduates."

In other words, the boy fully admitted to being a mudblood, with only the slightest bit of hesitation to tell that he understood what this meant and was resigned to it none the less. As if he had any idea what that could possibly mean for him.

All doors to him, Tom thought with some inner schadenfreude, were now closed.

"Chunin, Minato, please, they were urban guerilla revolutionaries no matter their demise at the English equivalent of an S-ranked nuke nin, not to mention that my father at least was formerly in the closest thing this godforsaken country has to a shinobi corps," Lee said before Malfoy could so much as sneer in distaste, "That is at least deserving of the rank of jonin."

Minato looked over towards her, blinking slightly, then asked rather blandly, "Since when do you defend your family, Lee?"

"Oh, it's hardly a defense," Lee said with a shrug as if she truly didn't care in the slightest, "But I just think we should straighten out our equivalent terms given that we're going to be stuck with these people for a while. I mean, until I figure out this whole alternate dimension past get back to Konoha thing out. If muggles are clearly civilians, these people are academy students or genin and maybe even chunin if we're being generous, then anyone even close to touching the title of auror has to be a jonin."

"Perhaps we shouldn't try to be equivalent," Minato said, rather wryly, gaze lingering on all of the rest of them in judgement, "After all, none of them are really shinobi."

Something about the way he said that, though perfectly polite, made it seem like as if it was not simply an insult but contempt for everything they stood for and everything they were.

Naturally, even as the sorting started in earnest and everyone's attention was forced towards the front of the great hall, it all went downhill from there.

In normal circumstances Tom would expect them to regret their existence rather quickly. Their supplies would be sabotaged, they'd be harassed and stripped bare of all defenses in the hallways for not only their foreign origins but their dirty blood, they would be shunned and friendless, and they would either rise to the occasion or more likely crack under the pressure and wait hopelessly for the year to simply end. Perhaps, he mused to himself, they'd even transfer out and return to Japan from whence they came.

Unfortunately, the circumstances quickly proved to be anything but normal.

Orion, on first trying to break into Minato Namikaze's trunk during the first day of classes, found himself on the verge of death within ten seconds. Tom had been watching, Orion had pointed a wand at the trunk with a smirk, cast the simple unlocking spell, "Alohamora" and then there'd been a bright flash of light, of runes activated, and then a magical backlash striking back into him that seemed to actively eat at his magical core.

They'd had to take him to Saint Mungos and it took a full month for him to recover enough to set foot inside Hogwarts. When he did, pale and shaking, whenever he caught Minato's blue eyes, he flinched.

When confronted that same afternoon, Tom tracking the pair down to the library where Minato read through piles and piles of thick texts on seemingly every subject ever written and Lee rested her head on pale arms in a slumped nap, Minato had simply blinked, looking entirely baffled as he set his book aside, and said, "He tried to touch my things."

As if, simply attempting steal, break, or defile any object in his possession was just cause for the most vicious of retribution. No, not that, that anyone who would attempt any such action was a fool worthy of death.

Of course, on being brought before Slughorn, Minato was only innocent smiles and polite denials suggesting that perhaps Orion had miscast a spell, entirely certain that whatever rune system protected his trunk would be undetectable amongst the ordinary space expansion spells.

He was right though, even Dumbledore analyzing the trunk hadn't managed to find anything out of place, and Minato Namikaze walked out of that office without even a detention to his name with Tom all but staring after him with slack-jawed disbelief.

On being confronted in the hallways later that week, for revenge over what happened to Orion as well as pride that a mudblood had been capable of hospitalizing him, three more Slytherins found themselves in the hospital wing with broken bones and internal beating as Lee and Minato had, apparently, beaten them half to death with nothing more than their bare hands.

Only, of course, neither Crabbe, Goyle, or Lestrange would ever admit to having been defeated by a pair of foreigners, one a mudblood, with such muggle methods so they all blithely reported that they had, "Fallen down the moving staircase" and refused to say anything else.

So, for a second time, Minato Namikaze and now Lee Eru, walked away without a detention or lost house point to their name.

(Well, to Minato's name at least, within the week Lee had put it upon herself to rack up a truly noteworthy amount of lost points and detentions due to her back talk, purposeful obtuseness and obliviousness, absenteeism and tardiness, and complete and utter lack of respect for any professor.

Minato seemed exasperated but unsurprised, always laughing to himself when Lee managed to earn herself yet another ten points lost from Slytherin. Sometimes not even laughing slightly but descending into overt hysterics as Dumbledore and Lee would engage in yet another staring contest to see which of them would break first. Still, even Tom had to admit that watching the girl goad Dumbledore week after week had to be some sort of balm for his soul.)

And all the pair ever did was study obsessively in the library, sprint like madmen around Black Lake before classes or else engage in hand to hand magical combat out on the grounds for just about anyone to see, do their homework (with Namikaze gaining points almost equal if not equal to Tom himself), attend classes (with the pair, but Eru especially with seemingly no effort at all, appearing to match Tom in practice), attend detention (with Eru pretending to scrub away at the floors of the castle while Minato chivalrously waited for her punishment to end), and then hand out divine and merciless retribution for anyone who so much as thought of getting in their way.

Oh, yes, and they insisted on, if they talked to anyone at all, talking to Tom and giving him the fond and mysterious label of, "English nin".

Which, upon finally breaking down and looking up the damn term, Tom discovered was the rough equivalent of "English assassin".

He had somehow, in all this mess, become their go to translator of English wizarding phenomena. Not English, oh no, the pair were remarkably fluent in English (if fond of bizarre idioms and references that Tom had never heard of) but instead on why English wizards did what English wizards insisted on doing. Like Tom was some sort of sane cultural expert who could be expected to explain such concepts like why the magical population hadn't been drafted into a child army, or else why Hungarian dark wizards employed by the government hadn't simply hunted Grindelwald down and made a vicious example out of him after torturing him for information and stealing his genetic material for the advancement of "the Hungarian hidden village", or Tom's personal favorite why magical Britain was so fond of quidditch and what the appeal and purpose of sports were in general.

Some, Tom felt, were decent questions that only a foreigner could think to ask. Such as why dark magic was considered dark, why these spells were forbidden and frowned upon, and why the quick and painless death of Avada Kedavera was considered unforgiveable.

However, most of it he found (to his own surprise as he'd always considered himself quite vicious) vaguely horrifying. All of it from their distant almost amused surprised that the end of Grindelwald would be the end of war in magical Europe, their complete and utter confusion over the lack of a draft for the wizarding war and the fact that Tom wasn't being trained to slaughter the enemies of magical Britain, or their constant questions of why wizards and witches were so utterly pretentious without anything to show for it.

"I think I hate these people, no offense Ren, but I really, truly hate your people," Lee had said at one point oh so casually, like she was discussing the bloody weather or her good health, after the pair had cornered Tom in the quidditch stands after the game had ended, "There's so much arrogance, the kind you'd expect from clans, except you don't even really have blood limits. You have no clan techniques, no heritage, just a few fading books of aging clan jutsus that none of your clan heirs even have the patience to read. And not a sensor among the lot of you, you just ask for last names, paying no mind to chakra or training, which just might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. It's like they've got it all figured out when in any true war they would be inches from death for all the mistakes they insist on making."

Tom agreed, to a point he agreed, and he hated that. He'd always hated the unfounded arrogance of his peers, the obsession with blood to the point of dismissing the heir of Slytherin even when he hid among them with a common, vulgar, name like Riddle. He had always wondered what they felt had separated the likes of him from the likes of them, and yet, he hated hearing those same thoughts from her amused lips.

Stiffening, staring down onto the empty field, Tom asked in his own similar casual manner, "Am I not included in this they?"

She had the gall to laugh, leaning into Minato, against his side and almost falling backward into his lap as she said with a too pleased smile, "Of course not, you're the closest thing these people have to a shinobi, Ren, even without knowing what a shinobi is."

Assassin, the dictionary had told him in the Hogwarts library, trained assassin.

"That," Minato added, as he fondly brushed a tan hand through Lee's hair, staring down into her green eyes as if he could drown in them, "Is your curse, Tom Riddle, you always only be what you have the potential to become. You were born in the wrong world and the wrong time."

Born in the wrong world and the wrong time, he'd thought that sometimes, especially when he was younger. He wasn't supposed to have been born in an orphanage, he wasn't supposed to have been in London at all, he was in the wrong place.

Maybe that's what he really hated about them, he thought to himself, that they could so easily, so freely, say back to Tom what he'd always thought only to himself. Tom did not confide, but with Minato Namikaze and Lee Eru he hardly had to, it was as if they read his mind back to him, but his thoughts stained by their strange, foreign, violent perspective.

However, Tom was smarter than his peers, and though his hands were stained with the blood of his family as well as unfortunate Myrtle Warren he had the patience and insight they lacked. So, even as the rest of the Slytherins fought back and then retreated to lick their wounds while glaring at the two, Tom did nothing. Tom simply smiled, stuffed that hatred and fear down inside of his soul, alternating between wishing they would simply disappear already or else wondering if it wasn't in his best interest to seduce them early to Lord Voldemort's cause.

To turn them into his lackeys, his own magical assassins for future use, when the time came, whenever that time would come.

He never would have thought this would end up bringing him to the present moment though, of himself, Hogsmeade, and Minato Namikaze and Lee Eru hand in hand on what felt like some strange date that Tom had been unwittingly invited to.

The pair were holding hands, dressed in strange half foreign clothing that wasn't magical, muggle, or even Japanese for all Tom could tell but some unholy mixture of all these as well as a dash of something else. A great red billowing scarf overtook most of Minato's neck, with Minato apparently indifferent to the fact that red was not a vogue color for a Slytherin. More, they smiled at each other, almost directly across as they were close to the same height, in a way that was so sappy that it made Tom want to vomit just looking at the pair of them.

You'd never think, he thought as his eyes drifted to their hands, Minato's tan squeezing Lee's pale, that those same hands had torn apart three of their own classmates without a hint of regret.

Tom decided to interrupt this while he could, "Why, exactly, am I here again?"

"You have no friends, no plans, and nothing better to do," Lee said, her grin taking on a hint of something shark-like and sly even as Minato sent her a somewhat reproving look at her complete lack of tact (but Tom, after the first few months of enduring their presence, was beginning to think Lee's tactlessness was an incurable disease.)

Unfortunately, as always, this was true. Lee might act like an idiot on occasion, but if push came to shove Tom would label her an idiot savant. Oh, she would say the dumbest things in class, would even sleep through it frequently, but any time Dumbledore or any other professor sought to put her in her place through some practical demonstration she'd just prove that by innate skill alone she could have already easily graduated and been on her merry way. More, she was dangerously good at reading people sometimes, people of course meaning Tom himself.

The point was though that he didn't have anything better to do. His peers bored him, had bored him for years, and even exposure to something, anything, different no matter how aggravating and unnerving it was gave him same sort of relief. Like he'd been sinking further and further underwater and had had no idea how much he'd needed a breath of fresh air.

However, that didn't mean he liked it.

"We also do have something to ask you," Minato added, as always, more politely and with his own seeming instinctive charm, "And you're just about the only person we can ask."

Even though it was still only Fall, even though this was the first Hogsmeade trip of the year and there were many more to go, Tom couldn't help but ask, "And why is that?"

"Ren, do you have any idea how many civilian friends I have?" Lee asked, looking like he had just asked her the dumbest question she had ever heard, and that he should have already guessed the answer to his own question long before he asked it.

Tom just looked away from the pair, contemplated speeding up to catch up with Abraxas, Orion, Crabbe, and Goyle all headed towards the Three Broomsticks. They glanced towards him, in confusion and perhaps a touch of fear as they saw who exactly he was walking with. Strange, that Minato Namikaze had been upgraded from pathetic mudblood to something to be feared within only a few short months.

Tom bitterly noted that it had taken him years to get that level of respect.

"What Lee means to say is that you're more like us than you are them," Minato said, motioning up towards the rest of their Slytheirn class with that almost fond smile, "Here, that makes you the closest thing we have to a friend."

"A friend?" he asked rather dully, eyebrows raising.

Minato's smile darkened, like he had caught on to the punchline of a joke that Tom hadn't intended to make, and added, "The closest thing in England."

"So, where exactly should we go, that creepy dive or the overcrowded English pub?" Lee asked, sparing Tom a glance as if he would be the authority on which one to go to. Which, he supposed he was. On the one hand, one did not simply go to the Hogshead, that was the sort of place where alcoholics crawled off to die. On the other hand, everyone and their brother would be inside The Three Broomsticks, which meant that everyone and their brother would be witness to whatever the hell this even was.

Minato and Lee's date with Tom Riddle along as English baggage.

Minato answered for him, that dark smile growing a little anticipatory, "Overcrowded English pub."

Now, Tom asked himself, why did he think Minato Namikaze did that solely for Tom Riddle's discomfort and embarrassment?

"True, they're likely to have better food," Lee said, nodding to herself as if it was decided, then she sped up, pulling the rather amused and fond Minato behind her as she charged forth towards The Three Broomsticks.

The place was filled with just about every Hogwarts student third year and above, every table full, yet somehow within seconds Lee managed to evacuate a table of third year Hufflepuff girls and set up camp before darting towards the register to grab them each a pint of butterbeer and a plate of pixie mozzarella sticks.

This left Tom and Minato staring at each other.

He looked… Almost unbalanced, Tom thought, without Lee sitting right there next to him. He'd thought it before, distantly, when he saw Minato alone in their dorm room with Lee in the girl's dorm on the other side of the common room, but in broad daylight it seemed more glaring. Like, sitting here by himself without his other half, there was something off.

His invisible aura of charisma remained, certainly, as did his innate politeness and good cheer, but something seemed dangerously bright within him as if Lee's own aura of raw power tempered that half of him until he had appeared somewhat normal.

In Lee's own words, Tom realized, the pair had been in a constant act of good cop and bad cop, only with the bad cop gone the good cop no longer seemed so pleasant.

Or, Tom thought to himself, half so inclined to humor Tom. He looked across at him, with those bright blue eyes, and some knowledge there taunted Tom, as if he knew exactly what he was and what he would become and tolerated it only because it currently suited him to. Those eyes said that Minato could and would not hesitate to swat Tom Riddle like a presumptuous fly.

Tom sneered in response, folding his hands, and pleasantly said, "Now what, Namikaze, have I ever done to offend you?"

The boy smiled, it was not a pleasant thing, "Is it that obvious?"

"To the unobservant, no, but I've never been particularly unobservant," Tom said with his own, thin, stretched smile as an unseen tension rose between them. The hairs on the back of Tom's neck stood on end.

"No, you've never been that," Minato said with a small shake of his head, "It's a pity, you know, you would have been an exceptional shinobi."

"I thought you said I was a shinobi," Tom noted rather wryly but Minato seemed more amused than anything else.

"I said you were the closest thing these people have to a shinobi," Minato corrected, lips twisting into a smile that was really more of a sneer, "However, in its own way, that makes you twice as reprehensible as the rest of them. They're civilians because that's all they know how to be, all they have been trained to be. What kind of a man becomes a shinobi, even half of a shinobi, without a hidden village and centuries of clan warfare behind him?"

Tom snorted, choosing to be amused rather than insulted, however much he was already on edge, "That's a rather strong opinion from someone who doesn't know me at all."

"I know you entirely too well," Minato corrected before crossing his arms and tilting his head as if to get a better look at him, "It's why I have such strong opinions."

Here Tom did stiffen, and he wondered for a moment, if somehow Minato knew. If Minato knew what no one else in the world knew, that Tom had unleashed a basilisk in his fifth year, that the following summer he had murdered his father and his paternal family to pin it all on his sole remaining maternal relative.

Slowly, coldly, he asked, "Is that what you felt you needed to say to me?"

"No," Minato said, then his eyes, for a moment, flickered to the line where Lee's red hair was visible as she impatiently waited to reach the register already.

With an exhaled breath he finally looked back towards Tom and admitted, "Lee and I… We're very far from home, and we had thought that Hogwarts might contain what we're looking for. However, there are too many books, too little time, and not enough shadow clones in the world that I can produce to read through them all let alone break through the fuinjutsu bindings on the restricted section."

"Japan, you mean?" Tom asked but Minato just gave him a pointed look, as if to ask if Tom was an idiot, implying that home was not Kyoto as they had told just about everyone.

Swallowing, Tom asked, "What does this have to do with me?"

"You've been here for seven years," Minato said, folding his hands together, leaning forward and staring directly into Tom's eyes, "I choose to believe you haven't been wasting your time. You know the library inside and out, even the restricted section, if what we're looking for is in there you would have seen it already and if you find it then Lee and I will be on the first boat back to… Kyoto."

Then he'd be free, Tom thought, he find them this book, or he tells them it's not there and they'd be gone, just like that. He believed it too, for all that they did well enough in their courses (or Minato did will enough in their courses) neither had seemed invested in Hogwarts or even their future within England. Lee had, half-heartedly, put in her application to the auror corps with pending acceptance upon her NEWT results. He had no idea what Minato Namikaze had chosen to do.

The point was, Tom would once again be the unquestioning king, the greatest student Hogwarts had ever seen, and not faced with his blonde Japanese counterpart. A brilliant, charismatic, mudblood orphan son of civilians who in short order could rule this school with an iron fist if only he had any interest in it.

Before Tom could open his mouth to respond Lee had returned, pints of butterbeer on a floating tray along with the beloved cheese sticks. She flopped down in the seat next to Minato, again entirely too close for all that Minato didn't seem to mind, and said, "That took entirely too long."

Minato softened, and it was immediate, the snapping back into their previous roles. Suddenly Minato was the softer, kinder, half of the equation while Lee was the raw, jagged, edges and barely contained power.

"And it's not even ramen," Lee said with a sigh as she stared down at the cheese sticks in despair before shoving one into her mouth, "And I don't even think there's a chinatown in London, or at least, not really."

Minato laughed, a bright almost joyous thing, and with it and the smile on his face Tom wondered how this same boy could have been threatening him so easily only a few seconds before, "Well, it is England, Lee."

"Ah the mother country, how I didn't miss it," she thunked her head down on the table for a moment, groaning, hands clawing at the wooden surface before she glanced back up at Tom, "Well, I'm guessing Minato asked since you're looking kind of disturbed."

Tom blinked, blinked again, felt his face heat improbably as he grew flustered, "Disturbed?!"

"Sure," Lee said as she straightened with a shrug, "Minato looks like he's all sunshine and rainbows most of the time, but then he gets down to business and people remember that he was second best in our academy class for a reason."

Minato, with that same cheerful smile, pointed over towards Lee, "Lee was first, obviously."

"Obviously?" Tom couldn't help but ask, feeling like he'd slipped into some strange dream world without noticing.

"We care… less about theory and more about practice," Minato finally said, implied being that Lee, when it came to practice, was a god of magic.

"So, Ren, books, needed books, are they here or is our princess in another castle?" Lee asked, knocking rather insultingly on the wooden table to get his attention.

"I don't even know what that means!"

"It means," Minato translated with that infurating fondness, like there was nothing Lee could ever do to make him think she wasn't adorable and the greatest thing he'd ever seen in his life, "That if there are books on interdimensional portals, on high functioning interdimensional runes that reach across space and time inside the Hogwarts Library, then it's worth our time to stay here."

"Or else?"

"Oh, I don't know, we'll probably assassinate Grindelwald," Lee said with a shrug, and at that Tom felt his jaw drop open. He looked around, almost desperately, to see if anyone else had heard but they all seemed consumed by their own conversations.

"You'll what?!"

"Grindelwald reputedly has an object of great power," Minato said, "Enough power, perhaps, to allow Lee and I to cut through time and space and get back to Konoha."

"It's a little desperate, and a little dangerous to the fragile space-time continuum," Lee said with yet another, longer, shrug, "But I guess that's just the price we have to pay."

"By assassinating Grindelwald?!" Tom repeated, practically choking on the words and the idea of them, that Lee could say them so… casually.

"Well, if we really are stuck here," Lee said crossing her arms, now looking thoroughly annoyed, "It'd be nice to have a little fame and fortune, if only to rub it in clan heirs' disbelieving faces at the Wizengamot."

She turned to look at their peers, eyes narrowing as she landed on them, she shuddered, "God, I hope we aren't stuck here."

Minato grinned, slung an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her closer to him, brushing his lips against her ear then her cheekbone, "Somehow, Lee, I think we'll manage."

"Manage?" Lee asked with a derisive sort of laugh, pointedly not looking at Minato, "Sure, I guess, but somehow, Minato, I don't think we'll ever become the most popular kids in school."

"Oh, but we wouldn't want to displace Ren here, would we?" Minato asked, motioning to Tom Riddle, "Besides, even if we never find out the true meaning of friendship with civilians or teach them how not to be racist, I suppose we can always keep putting them in the hospital."

Here Lee did laugh, turning and tucking her head under his with her own grin, "I do seem to be good at that, don't I?"

"Lee, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you might just be the best at that."

Tom coughed, not so much politely as loudly to interrupt whatever the hell they were doing, and decided to gather his rapidly deteriorating thoughts, "So, let me see if I get this straight. Either I say that we do indeed have these books in the Hogwarts library, somewhere in there, and you read through them at your leisure and stay in Hogwarts or else you head to France through a warzone and somehow, impossibly, assassinate Grindelwald."

"Oh, not impossibly," Lee said brightly, eyes open and staring at Tom in amusement even as she leaned against Minato, "I'm very good at killing people. Especially people who are stupid enough not to fear the wrath of God."

She said it so earnestly, like being good at killing people, at murder, was a talent that everyone should respect and admire.

"And if we don't find this book within the year," Minato added, in a similar casual manner, fingers now running up and down the length of Lee's pale arms, "And your war is still going on, then Lee and I will still travel to France and gut Grindelwald like a fish."

In other words, he thought as he caught sight of the hidden cruel edge to Minato's smile, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

Tom considered them, eyes glancing around the room and noting that, yet again, no one had seemed to notice at all. He took in their confidence, the connection they had to each other, and the power that reeked off the pair, refined and polished for Minato Namikaze, raw and untamed for Lee Eru.

He thought of wizards, shinobi, power, and Voldemort.

Tom offered the pair a pleasant smile, "Well, I confess that I haven't searched through the entire Hogwarts library, especially the restricted section but if you stay I'll do my best to help you and, when the time comes, help you search outside of Hogwarts and England as well."

Time, all Tom needed was time, for Tom Marvolo Riddle to disappear and fade into memories, to create and fashion horcruxes, and now to seduce two assassins to his side who said they could face down the dark wizard Grindelwald with such confidence that he couldn't help but believe them.

Tom raised his glass, a smile, almost genuine, on his face, "To the strangest of friendships."

Author's Note: Written for the winner of the tumblr poll asking for favorite ships, the favorite ship being Minato/Lee. Not really Minato/Lee in your traditional romantic comedy context but they are suitably unnerving for our narrator Tom so I say that it counts.

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Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto