"..."
In response to Tom's question, Draco simply stared at him in heavy silence. His grey eyes were fixed on Tom with an intensity that made him increasingly uncomfortable.
The prolonged stare stretched on, growing more awkward with each passing second. Tom's whiskers twitched with rising unease.
[Well, if there's nothing you need, I'll just be going then!]
When Draco showed no signs of breaking his silence, Tom produced an awkward laugh, more of a nervous meow and reached for Ariana's hand, preparing to simply walk around the silent Slytherin and escape into the Great Hall.
'If I'd known coming to lunch would result in being ambushed in corridors, I would have just gone back to the common room and had the house-elves deliver food there,' he thought with increasing irritation. 'This whole day has been nothing but unexpected confrontations and I am VERY READY for it to be over.'
"Why?"
The single word emerged just as Tom began moving, stopping him mid-step. Draco's voice carried a peculiar tone.
But the question itself was infuriatingly vague, contextless in a way that left Tom completely baffled.
[Why what?]
His whiteboard appeared with visible exasperation.
'What "why"? Why about what? Could you possibly be more specific? You're supposed to be the human here! So use words! Complete sentences! Give me something to work with!'
Whether Draco actually heard Tom's internal ranting or simply realized his question needed clarification, he continued,
"Why did you defend me in Charms class? Why did you speak up to Professor Flitwick on my behalf?" His voice dropped slightly. " I don't believe for a second you didn't notice my… hostility toward you."
To be entirely fair, if their positions had been reversed, Draco would absolutely not have intervened.
If someone had been planning to humiliate him, had been shooting hostile glances and clearly scheming against him, and then that person got into trouble with a professor? Draco would have watched the disaster unfold with satisfaction. Possibly even added fuel to the fire with a well-timed comment.
So Tom's choice to speak up, to tell the truth even when it benefited someone who'd shown him nothing but antagonism, it didn't fit any basis Draco understood. Was it simply Hufflepuff nature? That strange loyalty and fairness they were known for? Or something else?
'Hostility? What hostility? When did he show me hostility?'
If anything, Draco's question only deepened Tom's confusion. He replayed their limited interactions mentally, trying to identify this supposed antagonism. During Charms class, sure, Draco had been watching him but that hardly qualified as hostility in Tom's experience.
The emotional intensity Draco was attributing to those glances barely registered on Tom's scale.
If that counted as "hostility,", then the wild chaos he and Jerry got up to on any given day would require an entirely new vocabulary.
Compared to a day with Jerry, Draco's little mood was a ripple in an ocean.
Calling it "hostility" was like calling a candle flame a raging inferno because you'd never seen an actual fire.
But Tom was wise enough not to voice this particular thought. Explaining that Draco's strongest negative emotions barely registered as noteworthy would probably not improve the situation.
Instead, Tom shook his head with what he hoped was projected as friendly dismissal of the entire concern,
[You're overthinking this. We're all Hogwarts students together, aren't we? And besides, the situation in Charms class got as bad as it did partly because of my unconventional methods.]
"..."
Hearing Tom's response, Draco's head dropped. His gaze fixed on the stone floor, his fingers were gripping the sleeves of his robes with enough tension to wrinkle the cloth. His face had gone blank, lost in some private thought.
Tom took this silence as his cue to leave. He had no interest in prolonging this awkward encounter, and his stomach was making increasingly insistent demands about the lunch he'd already missed half of due to various professorial summons.
'If you're not actively trying to participate in a meal, you're making questionable life choices,' was Tom's philosophy. 'My lunch has been delayed far too long already. Any more delay and there won't be anything hot left to eat.'
He moved to walk past Draco toward the Great Hall entrance, already anticipating what food might still be available—
"...thank you."
The words were so quiet they were almost concealed. Barely more than a breath shaped into syllables, the volume strangled down into something between a whisper and a thought.
Draco had compressed the words so far down his throat that they emerged as the faintest murmur, like he was simultaneously desperate to say them and terrified of being heard.
Anyone without Tom's enhanced feline hearing would have missed the words. They'd have walked past without ever knowing Draco had spoken at all.
But Tom heard.
Before he could even process the words or give a response, Draco spun on his back with almost violent speed and fled down the corridor.
"?"
Tom blinked at the spot where Draco had been standing just seconds earlier, his cat brain was still catching up to what had just happened.
'Did... did Draco Malfoy just thank me?'
If Tom's memory served and admittedly his memories of canon were fuzzy around the edges, Draco was supposed to be proud to the point of arrogance.
The typical spoiled young master who'd been raised to believe his family name meant he was inherently superior to most of the population. The kind of person who'd sooner swallow glass than express genuine gratitude to someone he perceived as beneath his station.
And he'd just thanked a cat. A cat who wasn't even technically a proper wizard, who couldn't even be categorized as a Muggle because that term applied to humans.
The entire interaction felt surreal, like a scene from some alternate reality where character relationships had been shuffled and redistributed.
'How unexpected,' Tom thought with surprise.
Either way, it was certainly interesting.
"Ariana, are you alright?"
"And Tom—what did Professor McGonagall want with you? Did something happen?"
The moment Tom and Ariana stepped through the Great Hall entrance, Hermione's attention snapped toward them with laser focus as someone who'd been watching the doorway anxiously. She abandoned her previous companions mid-conversation much to Harry and Ron's confusion and hurried over with quick, purposeful steps.
Hannah followed immediately, setting down the treacle tart she'd been enjoying to join the concerned meeting around their friends.
Both girls radiated worry, their expressions were cycling between relief at seeing Tom and Ariana apparently unharmed and concern about what might have prompted the summons to begin with.
"We're fine!" Ariana assured them quickly. "Professor McGonagall just brought us to see the headmaster, that's all. I think it was probably about these gloves Tom made for me?"
She held up her hands, displaying the gloves with slight uncertainty, as though she still wasn't entirely sure why they'd warranted so much attention from multiple professors and her brother.
[Exactly,] Tom's whiteboard confirmed, his posture was radiating bewildered innocence. [Though I genuinely don't understand why they're making such a big deal about them. They're just gloves.]
He tilted his head with that particular cat expression that conveyed total lack of understanding about what the fuss was about. Just as he didn't recognize how profoundly his spell-casting methods violated magical convention, he remained completely oblivious to the revolutionary implications of his alchemical creation.
At this moment, Tom had absolutely no awareness that because of those gloves, Hogwarts was about to receive a very particular visitor. Someone whose arrival would mark the beginning of a rather legendary sequence of events.
[But actually, you probably won't believe this—] Tom decided a subject change was in order, steering away from the gloves before anyone could ask questions, he didn't have good answers for. [—when Ariana and I were coming here just now, we ran into Draco Malfoy. And he actually thanked me.]
"Malfoy? Thanked you? Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
Before Hermione or Hannah could respond, Ron who'd apparently followed Hermione over erupted with loud incredulity. His eyes went wide as Galleons, his voice was climbing in pitch with each word.
"There's just no way! I don't believe it for a second!"
Ron's reaction wasn't mere skepticism, it was fundamental rejection of a premise he considered physically impossible, like claiming water flowed uphill or fire froze things. His entire face radiated absolute conviction that Tom must be mistaken or joking.
Other people might not understand, but Ron knew better. As a member of the Weasley family as pure-bloods who'd never gotten along with the old pure-blood elite, who'd been sneered at and dismissed as "blood traitors" for generations, he understood exactly what the Malfoy family represented.
Dark wizards, the lot of them. Born that way, raised that way, trained that way. Cold, cruel, completely lacking in basic human decency. They didn't thank people. They didn't express gratitude. They certainly didn't acknowledge cats as deserving of courtesy.
If a Malfoy actually understood concepts like gratitude and basic politeness? Ron would... would... he'd wear brand new robes! Use the latest equipment! Become the most successful Weasley of his generation! Those outcomes seemed equally unlikely to him.
"Why is it so impossible?" Ariana interjected, her tone carrying a sharp edge of displeasure. She gave Ron a look that made him shift uncomfortably. "He definitely thanked Tom. I heard it clearly with my own ears."
While she tried to maintain patience as Ron was Hermione's friend, after all, and starting conflicts would make things awkward, her expression made her opinion of his intense skepticism quite clear.
"But it's a Malfoy! They've been dark wizards for generations, everyone knows—"
[Malfoy is also a person,] Tom interrupted,. [And Draco is just like you—a child who's still growing and learning. Why shouldn't he be capable of gratitude?]
Honestly, Tom didn't fully understand the depth of inter-House animosity that seemed to fill Hogwarts, particularly the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry. The whole dynamic felt somewhat outlandish to him. this hereditary hatred based on House affiliation and family history.
The Gryffindors despised Slytherin because Slytherin had produced dark wizards? But aside from Hufflepuff which seemed to genuinely lack any major dark wizard alumni, probably because Hufflepuffs were too busy being decent people to pursue dark magic, every other House had its share of historical villains. Glass houses and stones came to mind.
Besides, though his memories were admittedly hazy on details, Tom vaguely recalled that in the original story, Draco had eventually changed. Grown. Made different choices. Ended up with what seemed like a reasonably decent life outcome despite his flaws.
Didn't that prove Draco wasn't inherently evil? That he was capable of becoming better? He'd simply been shaped by his environment, raised in a household where pure-blood supremacy was doctrine, where cruelty was modeled as strength, where empathy was weakness to be suppressed.
And now, here at Hogwarts, away from that constant parental influence and toxic reinforcement? Without his father's voice in his ear every day preaching pure-blood superiority? This was an opportunity. A chance to reshape Draco's developing worldview before it hardened into the rigid prejudice that would define his early years in canon.
Though thinking about it further, Tom had to acknowledge that expecting eleven-year-old children to grasp concepts like "the complexity of human nature" and "how environment shapes personality development" was probably unrealistic, maybe even unfair.
In their black-and-white moral universe, rotten oranges were simply rotten oranges. Dark wizard families produced dark wizards. The son of a Death Eater would become a Death Eater. Simple cause and effect, no distinction required.
Add Ron's family history with the Malfoys from generations of mutual contempt and social warfare and expecting him to give Draco the benefit of the doubt was asking for emotional maturity he simply didn't possess yet.
So, Tom abandoned the philosophical lecture and opted for a simpler, more practical explanation:
[Besides, as a Hufflepuff, is it really so strange for me to be friends with a Slytherin?]
The shift in framing was effective. Ron's conflicted expression cleared like clouds dispersing under strong wind.
Talk to him about abstract moral complexity and he'd get lost. But frame it in terms of House dynamics he actually understood? That clicked into place perfectly.
Hufflepuff was essentially the social lubricant between all the Houses, friendly with everyone, holding no hereditary grudges, serving as neutral territory where students from different Houses could interact without the weight of centuries-old rivalries.
Even Slytherins got along reasonably well with Hufflepuffs, because Hufflepuffs didn't treat them like inherent villains.
Explained that way, Tom befriending Draco made perfect sense. It was practically expected, really as just normal Hufflepuff behavior.
Harry, who'd been listening to this exchange with the expression of someone trying very hard to follow a conversation in a foreign language, gave up trying to fully understand the distinction. When things got too complicated, he'd learned, it was better to just accept them and move on.
Besides, he'd just remembered something Hermione had asked him to do earlier. This seemed like a good opportunity to change the subject to something simpler.
"Hey, Tom," Harry said. "Do you know Hagrid?"