Chapter Text
“Andromeda is dropping out.”
Tom turned, slowly, every muscle perfectly tense and cut into a deadly scowl. “What.”
“Andromeda,” Eileen repeated, “dropped out. As in, she will no longer be performing, she needs to be replaced, the show must go on without her. As in, you need to recast.”
“She can’t drop out. This is the show of a century.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “It’s going to be pretty hard to dance on a leg broken in three places.”
Tom breathed out through his nose, then his mouth, his breath escaping in a hiss. “I’m not casting one of her sisters. Narcissa is too stiff and Bellatrix too sloppy.”
“Everyone else likes them,” Eileen pointed out. “They’re the best ballerinas for the part.”
“They’re not good enough.”
“They’re going to have to be enough, though, won’t they?”
He clenched his eyes shut. “No,” he said. “Open auditions again. I’ll take a girl that knows how to dance.”
It took a mere few days for adverts and whispers to spread—the Prince Academy wants more dancers. The Prince Academy wants a new Odette.
And then they came in, request after request, Eileen screening through the initial hundreds until Tom took the final five.
The door swung open, silent on well-oiled hinges, bringing with it the first candidate of the afternoon: Nymphadora Tonks, an excitable young girl and, more importantly, Andromeda’s recently adopted daughter. Tom was still holding out in hope that Nymphadora would have the same talent as her mother, thereby making replacing Andromeda the easiest thing he’d ever done.
Nymphadora, however, shattered that hope rather quickly.
It wasn’t that she was a bad dancer. No, much like Narcissa and Bellatrix, Nymphadora was excellent. She was enthusiastic in her dancing, elegantly so, and could easily be one of the best dancers in the country.
Still, she was clumsy. Not obviously or comically so—more just that sometimes her enthusiasm would override her gracefulness and her arms would dip too low, swooping in a way that looked natural but Tom, who had designed the audition dance, knew was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Next,” he said, perfectly calm, cool as ever, and let the imperfection leave the room to make way for Lavender Brown.
Unfortunately for Tom, the auditions continued in this vein. From the Lavender Brown’s nervousness causing her eyeline to constantly swing back to try and read Tom’s expressionless face to Parvati Patil’s unnecessary flourishes; Pansy Parkinson’s perpetual sneer marring her face and undercutting her performance with flicks far too aggressive for the grace of Odette; Daphne Greengrass’ flawless execution that was so isolated from emotion that it could’ve been performed by a machine in place of a living, breathing girl, icy cold in a way that would never set foot on Tom’s stage.
He shoved the files into the bin. None of them were good enough. None of the girls were as picture perfect as Andromeda had been. He couldn’t cast for anything less than perfection and, at this rate, he’d have to cancel the biggest show he’d ever worked for. He’d have to cancel his vision.
His eyes caught on an older draft of his work on his Swan Lake reimagining, where Odette was played by a ballerino.
He hadn’t looked at male dancers.
Perhaps the show was not lost.
Perhaps the Prince Ballet Academy would once again open auditions for men.
*
“Your names, my liege,” Eileen said, dry as dust as she held out the final files to him. “Your loyal servants have been working themselves to ground trying to get only the very best for your tastes.”
“Cut it out,” Tom said, already flicking open the files. There were the standard names he’d expected to hear in response to his call for dancers: Cormac McLaggen, Zacharias Smith, Draco Malfoy, Cedric Diggory, Barty Crouch, and Regulus Black—who he knew he wouldn’t take; Regulus was ever so careful with his movements and was never good enough even for his own tastes.
And then there was someone else.
This was a name that Tom didn’t know. He considered himself up to date with every single dancer that ever crossed a stage or made headlines, even paying attention to the occasional awe-inspiring actor. But he didn’t know this name. And if he didn’t know this name, then that meant that this name was the name of a nobody. A dancer who hadn’t made it yet. Not a dancer for the show of a century. Not the dancer for his Odette, his dance, his show.
“Eileen,” he said, voice slow, measured, and deadly. “Who, exactly, is Harry Potter?”
She took a breath, which meant that she’d prepared a speech, which meant she knew that Tom would be displeased but went ahead with her plan anyway. “You don’t take no-names.”
“That is correct. I do not. So why, pray tell, is there a no-name on my list?”
“Just—watch him dance, Tom. That’s all I ask for.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Who’s up first?”
Cedric Diggory was the golden boy of ballet, the darling of every theatre. He charmed every audience with an easy smile, the perfect Prince Charming for every fairy tale, never a foot out of place; elegant, graceful, and the personality suiting of a hero. Unfortunately for Cedric, he was not auditioning for Odette, the Swan Queen, he was auditioning for an Odette that was not quite Odette, but also the darker Odile; a malicious second half that didn’t suit his everpresent appeal as the white knight.
“Next.”
Cormac McLaggen walked in with an easy swagger that came from a man who knew he was the best. That may have been true when he first blossomed as a performer, solo on the stage and used to owning it, but time had passed, and with his solitary performances, his spatial awareness had suffered and decayed.
“Next.”
Barty Crouch was a man who knew how to create perfection for an audience. An audience of one, that was. He could read a man better than anyone else could, changing his dance style to bleed precisely into his watcher’s desires. Tom, however, had made a career of not being what people expected. Barty Crouch was glorious, but with every minute shift of Tom’s face, his dance jerked and assimilated itself into something new, something more suited, something different. There was nothing consistent about Barty Crouch when Tom Riddle was in the room.
“Next.”
Draco Malfoy acted like a prince. In his mind, he probably was. He danced his all first time, gave it everything he had, and didn’t drop that even once. He was everything, all the time, pouring his heart and soul into his dance, gliding across the floor as though he were weightless. According to all accounts, Draco was the prince he thought he was. But in giving it his all, he sacrificed dynamics. He sacrificed those moments where he did not need to quite fling himself into his work, but to gracefully bend an arm and dip into his position. No, this was not the man for the gentle Odette.
“Next.”
Regulus Black came with no surprises. Elegant, trained from a young age by the strictest of teachers, solid gold as a dancer, well-used to being on the stage and experienced enough to perform every movement whilst making it seem effortless. But with a harsh teacher in his mother also brought insecurity, a kind of timidity to his actions, doubt cast with every spin and swirl, fingers slipping from their well-practised positions.
“Next.”
Zacharias Smith was perfect, in all senses of the word. He was everything Tom wanted in a dancer. There was no reason to turn him away. Yet he was insufferable—didn't take critique, didn’t take corrections, didn’t listen to reason from his director.
Tom said, with a vicious smile, “Next.”
He was expecting to kick Harry Potter out the second he walked in the room. He was short, with scruffy black hair and a scar on his face, walking with hunched shoulders and barely picking up his feet. He had his head down, not looking at Tom once, and Tom didn’t even bother to hide his disgust. He didn’t train nobodies, and especially not nobodies that acted like they were nothing.
He pressed the button and let the music play, and—
Harry Potter unfurled like a flower. His head held high above him, chin up, the most astonishing green eyes focused just above Tom’s head, his face perfectly expressing every emotion Odette was supposed to feel. His shoulders straightened out, carrying his movements, sleek and precise, arms curving with the notes, legs straight and toes pointed.
Harry Potter was breathtaking.
“Yes,” he murmured. “You’ll do, little unknown one. I’ll make you a somebody to be remembered.”
“You’re choosing me?”
Tom resisted the urge to clamp his eyes shut and sigh. This is why he hated training nobodies. “You are the best of the candidates. This does not, however,” he continued as Harry perked up, “mean that you are good enough for my routine. You are simply my only choice. You will be perfect for me, and you will be the best Odette the world has ever seen. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Now let’s see how much of the routine you can pick up in half an hour.”
Harry Potter entered the studio and kept himself laser focused. When Tom showed a move or gave an instruction, he’d execute it, and when it wasn’t good enough or wasn’t quite right, he’d do it again until it was good enough. Harry Potter did not disappoint.
This continued.
He met the rest of the team the following Tuesday, taking his position in front and centre, seemingly unconcerned by everyone else flocking to him. Good. Not a nervous nobody, then. Not someone who would flinch away at dancers spinning around him as he focused on his own.
He was glorious when he was dancing. He was everything but when he was not.
“They all said you didn’t like no-names,” Harry said, hovering by the door to the studio. Tom could hear the seconds ticking away. “I don’t want to—impose—”
“Look at you,” he sneered. “You need to be cleaned up before you’re stage ready. Your hair is a disgrace.”
Harry flushed, dark and embarrassed. “Sir—”
“I picked you,” Tom said, enunciating every syllable clearly. “Because you were the best. Unfortunately for me, ballet is also about presentation, which you lack. Fix your hair before you come back in here. And your double pirouette finishes too quickly.”
Harry lowered his eyes, swallowing. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll see you on Thursday.”
“Chin up. You’re one of my troupe, there’s no room for self-doubt. Be better next time.”
Dangerously insecure. Dangerous because a dancer needed to be composed.
Wednesday slipped by as Tom evaluated some of the footage to find his critique.
“Granger,” he barked. “You’re out of position as we introduce Siegfried to the swans.”
She tucked into the crowd, slotting into the space between Cho and Marissa like a key to a lock.
“Weasley, you need to match Lovegood’s steps. You’re the same person, ideally, a dark spirit latched to a brighter one. The Von Rothbart leech onto Siegfried.”
With a twirl of her bright red hair, Weasley tucked her feet into smaller steps to stay obscured by Lovegood, who was making her entrance and dancing lightly towards Odette. The gender swap was rather fun, with the singular male actor also the main one, always the centre of the audience’s attention, ever so gentle as Odette and harder, faster, sharper as Odile.
And then Harry Potter’s en pointe had a wobble. A shake more dangerous than his insecurities ever would be. A near tip, unbalancing himself and nearly tumbling to the ground, barely righting himself to continue with the dance.
“Potter,” he spat. “Stay behind.”
At least nobody had asked him why he’d taken on a no-name. That might’ve been his breaking point.
His dancers filed out one by one, leaving Harry Potter standing in the middle of the room, half folded in on himself and barely keeping his head up.
“Potter.”
“Sir,” Harry mumbled. “My en pointe—”
“This show has to be perfect,” he hissed. “You might not be well-known, but you will be by the time we’re done. This will be perfect and you will be famous. Do you understand?”
Harry nodded.
“Good. Now understand that if your en pointe isn’t flawless on Saturday, you’ll be less than nothing.”
“You don’t have the time to replace me, sir.”
“But I will dance it myself if you are not giving me your all.”
Harry looked dubiously at the scar, thick and angry red, showing through Tom’s skin-coloured dance tights. “Sir—”
“I can still dance,” he spat. “I still teach you, after all.”
“Then why did you stop performing?”
Tom’s lips curled up into a thin smile, a mean little thing, hurt and wounding all at once, self-inflicting at the same time as inflicting it upon others. “I was laid out for a while,” he purred. “And every newspaper screamed my name. True loss to the beauty of ballet, they said. A star and his performance halted causes chaos in the world of performance. Nobody was good enough to take my place.”
“But your throne was waiting for you when you recovered.”
“But every other dancer was still shit.”
Harry flinched, startled.
“I had to stop performing to make everyone else worth something. To make sure ballet—true ballet, genuinely good ballet—didn't die with me. I made a new generation. I make people into stars.”
“You take only the best.”
“And I make them worth it.”
Harry Potter, the beautiful flower of ballet, one that only bloomed in the spotlight, whispered, “You chose me.”
“I only take those who mean something. I only take those that will become the best.” He tipped his head to one side and leant over Harry, who flinched away, short and insecure and terrified of being anything the second he slipped from his dance. “You are worthy. Make it worth my goddamn time.”