HIS DARKEST DEVOTION

Harry glanced up as someone called his name. Auror Jalena Whipwood was
tapping her wand on her hip as she glared at him from the other side of the
common office where the junior employees of the Department of Magical
Games and Sports had their desks. Harry stood up at once and made his way
across the room to her, bowing his head a little when he got close.

“Auror Whipwood. What can I do for you?”

“Time for the monthly interrogation, Potter,” Whipwood said, and spun on her
heel to walk down the corridor. She fit her name as far as her leanness and sharp
movements went, although her honey-blonde hair that she wore long to her back
didn’t. She had supposedly sworn to cut it when she met someone who could
defeat her in a duel. Harry stared at her back and dreamed about using a
Severing Charm right now.

But in the end, he managed to subdue his impulse, and a good thing, too,
because when Whipwood led him into the small room with the round table
usually used for interrogations, Harry found not just Head Auror Kingsley
Shacklebolt, a calm man who never made him feel intimidated, but Minister
Tom Riddle. Harry’s heart constricted in his throat.

The name sprawled along his wrist in magically-inked letters seemed to burn.

Harry reminded himself, as he hadn’t had to do in a while, about the Muggle

tattoo of a phoenix rising from broken shackles that covered the words, and
which he’d had done long enough ago that most people thought that image was
his soul-mark. Harry nodded politely to both men, making the bow of his head
deeper to the Minister. “Head Auror Shacklebolt. Minister. Will it be under
Veritaserum this time?”

“Yes, of course,” Minister Riddle said, the smile on his face pleasant if you
didn’t look at it too closely. “Concerned, Mr. Potter?”

“I always am, sir,” Harry said, and made his voice anxious as he sat down
across from them and took out his wand to put it on the table. “I really want to
succeed in this job.”
Minister Riddle snorted, his gaze drifting away from Harry, and Harry relaxed a
little. He had permitted himself to excel at Quidditch in Hogwarts, but nothing
else, because he knew Riddle thought Quidditch only a few steps above a brawl.
It meant he had no reason to find Harry interesting. The position in the
Department of Magical Games and Sports was a ruse for the same reason.

Harry did wish he could have taken a different job, but only so that he could
have fed more useful information to his parents and godfather. Quidditch
schedules and gossip about which Gobstone teams were in debt had limited
currency.

Harry let himself study Riddle from sidelong glances as Shacklebolt read him
the long, long list of reasons they would be involving Veritaserum in this
interrogation and the rules under which it would be used—things Harry knew so
well he could mouth along, but which had to be read every time again, because
of Ministry rules.

No one would deny that Riddle was a handsome man, taller than most wizards,
with dark hair silvered at the temples that he wore short and sharply cut at all
times. His eyes, dark blue with only a hint of red, could soften or blaze, and he
seemed to do the right thing at the right time, always. The phoenix of onyx and
diamond that hung on a slender silver chain over his heart, the two jewels
making its feathers mixed black and white, might have been an unusual touch,
but everyone knew the story.

Riddle had once borne the soul-mark of the rising black-and-white phoenix on
his chest. Then two students who had attacked him at Hogwarts when he was
thirteen years old had burned it off. Riddle had had the jeweled phoenix he wore
crafted several years afterwards, relying on Pensieve memories of the original
mark, and wore it always on a chain exactly the right length to make the
phoenix dangle where his mark would have been.

The two students who had burned him had disappeared on the anniversary of
the attack a year later. Then the single sibling they’d each had at Hogwarts had
disappeared on the next anniversary. Their parents on the third. And so on, until
all of their families and friends and allies were dead.

Headmaster Dumbledore suspected what Riddle had done to them, but he could
never prove enough to arrest Riddle.

And Riddle walked around with that phoenix in plain sight and no worry over
what anyone would say to him.
Harry turned away when he saw the red-tinged eyes coming back to him. It was
expected that the lower-level functionaries of the Ministry would gape at the
Minister, but there was only so much servility he could stomach, even for the
sake of the deception.

“Three drops on the tongue, Mr. Potter.”

Harry opened his mouth. As soon as the three drops began to dissolve on his
tongue, he squeezed his fingers into the palm of his left hand.

That triggered one of the spells he had practiced with Professor Dumbledore
until he could cast it windlessly, wordlessly, and without anyone else noticing.
His skin might have given a slight spark. Not enough to notice.

Riddle’s eyes did narrow a little, but he said nothing. Harry let his lips part
slightly and his eyes glaze, the way that they would if he was completely under
Veritaserum.

“Are you in contact with any of the malcontents known as the Order of the
Phoenix?” Shacklebolt asked, after a few testing questions that proved what
Harry’s middle name and birthday were.

“No,” Harry said. The resistance spell danced under his skin and around his
tongue, nullifying the potion before it could force him to speak the truth. Most
attempts to resist Veritaserum didn’t work because they tried to prevent the
potion from affecting the brain. But giving back control of one’s mouth was
simpler and more likely to work.

Of course, that should have made Harry’s brain blurred and shadowy, and his
answers still lies. But Harry had never reacted to attempts to control him exactly
like anyone else.

“What do you think of your godfather and parents?” Shacklebolt was scribbling
down the answers as busily as he usually did.

“They’re fools,” Harry said. He stared straight ahead and ignored the impulse to
turn his head just a little to watch Riddle as he leaned forwards. “They rebelled
for no good reason and listened to a man who should have advised them better
if he was going to advise them.”

“A rather unusual opinion for a man who was supposedly a devoted son and
godson,” Riddle said, his voice soft.
Harry continued staring straight ahead and said nothing. Riddle wouldn’t catch
him that easily. It wasn’t a question, so someone actually drugged with
Veritaserum wouldn’t have responded.

“When and why did you change your mind from being a devoted son and
godson?” Riddle asked then.

“Minister, we’ve found that we get the best results when—”

“When my godfather was exiled,” Harry said, emotionlessly, in the way that he
and Dumbledore had practiced for hour after hour. “I thought they were putting
me first. It turned out they were putting their politics first.”

“Ah. What is your greatest ambition, Mr. Potter?”

“To be a professional Quidditch player.”

Riddle made a very soft sound that might have been a scoff if you were listening
closely enough. Harry was. “And you harbor no ambition to go into politics?
Why not?”

“No. It made my godfather and my parents abandon me. I needed them and they
weren’t there.”

Far worse than learning the resistance spell itself had been Harry’s learning to
speak those deceptions in an emotionless voice. He didn’t want to. He hated the
sensation of lying about his love for Sirius and Mum and Dad.

But it was necessary. They would suffer worse than exile if Riddle caught them.
If he knew that Harry sometimes contacted them. For the well-being of those he
loved, Harry would face dragonfire.

And if part of him grimly rejoiced in keeping the soulmate from Riddle that he
would have given the world to get, that did nothing bad to his Veritaserum
resistance.

“An interesting perspective,” said Riddle, gazing into his eyes as if searching
for something. Harry suspected it was a reflection of the ambition that he bore.
Headmaster Dumbledore had said that Riddle was incapable of understanding
people different than he was. “So. Tell me, Mr. Potter. What are your political
beliefs?”

“Muggleborns should be able to attend Hogwarts and work in the Ministry.”

Riddle paused for a long moment and then murmured, “And beyond that?”

“I think half-bloods should be treated better, too.”

Riddle leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Shacklebolt. “Head Auror,
does this young man have any other beliefs?”

“Not really,” Shacklebolt said with a slight shrug, as he leaned over to retrieve
the Veritaserum antidote. “I don’t see that he needs to, Minister. When we’re
questioning young wizards who have suspect family connections, it’s probably
better if they don’t have strong convictions.”

The antidote always made Harry blink and gasp, because the combination of the
cold sensation on his tongue along with the resistance spell sparking and
dancing beneath his skin was weird. He released the spell and rubbed his jaw,
shivering. He avoided Riddle’s gaze, not because he wanted to but because
someone who had been asked questions that intense would.

“Tell me, Mr. Potter, without the potion this time. Why didn’t you flee to join
your parents and godfather?”

“Because I don’t even know where they are,” Harry whispered, and worked
dejection into his voice. He ignored Shacklebolt’s hiss. Apparently Riddle
shouldn’t be questioning him without the Veritaserum, and Harry shouldn’t be
answering without it. But Harry didn’t really care about that part. “They chose
their politics over me.”

“But you could have gone to them when you completed your Hogwarts
education.”

“What, sir? Just run into the wilderness and hoped to find them?” Harry looked
up and blinked at Riddle, doing his best imitation of “defiant young man who
doesn’t really know how to be defiant.” “I don’t—that’s not the kind of life I
want for myself.”

“So you’re not a freedom fighter?” Riddle looked half-amused, half-bored. This
really couldn’t be going better.

“No, sir. I like Quidditch. I believe certain things, but if the Ministry doesn’t
want to let Muggleborns and half-bloods have a fair chance, there’s not much I
can do.” Harry stared at his hands this time. “Blood politics always bewildered
me…”
“Along with a great many other things, I imagine.” Riddle’s boredom had won.
He stood up and waved a hand at Auror Shacklebolt. “Keep up the good work,
Head Auror. I have other business to attend to this morning.” He strode through
the door. Listening, Harry imagined he could hear the jeweled phoenix
bouncing off the buttons in Riddle’s robe.

Shacklebolt shook his head a little. “I don’t know why he questioned you, lad.
You have a clean record, and the Veritaserum never reveals anything suspect.”

Harry let out a bitter, brave little sigh. “I know why, sir. It’s always hard to
believe that I don’t want to follow my parents. They’re so notorious.”

“I know.” Shacklebolt leaned forwards and searched his face, but he wasn’t a
Legilimens and Harry met his gaze fearlessly. “You know that if
someone does suggest you run and join their side, you could come and talk to
me, don’t you?”
Harry looked into Shacklebolt’s earnest eyes and nodded. As far as he knew, the
man wasn’t as bad as Riddle. He had never shown any sign of believing in
blood purity in all the years that Dumbledore’s allies had observed him. On the
other hand, he followed along because he thought that Riddle was good for the
Ministry, which only went to show how blind some people could be.

“Good lad.” Shacklebolt squeezed his shoulder for a minute. “You were
excellent at Quidditch at Hogwarts, I’ve heard. You can parlay that into an
excellent career in the Department of Magical Games and Sports, as well.”

Harry grinned and bobbed his head, as empty-eyed a look as Shacklebolt would
expect from him. Then he ducked out of the conference room. He waited until
he was back in his little shared office to run his fingers over the mark on his
right wrist.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, it might say along his wristbone, but the black letters
faded now into the open, shattered shackles that his tattooed phoenix was
erupting from. It would be hard for Riddle to accidentally touch the words even
if he grasped Harry’s hand.

And he had “tested” Harry when he first came to work at the Ministry, the way
he did everyone who had a phoenix image somewhere on their skin. Images
were harder to match as soul-marks than words, and Riddle wouldn’t let the
chance pass by.
But of course, touching the phoenix had done nothing, when it was simply
Muggle ink. Riddle had let him go at once and turned to walk back into the
Ministry.

Harry sat down at his desk and picked up his quill again.

There were members of the Order who had thought he was insane to get a
phoenix tattoo at all, when it was so similar to what Riddle bore. But Harry had
done it for himself, not Riddle. He wanted to carry the reminder, each and every
day, of what it would mean if he gave into his own longing for his soulmate and
accepted that—monster.

Lily looked carefully around the clearing in the Forest of Dean. It seemed
deserted, but then, most places in the woods looked like that until you started
casting the necessary protection spells.

“It is deserted, Lily-Bell,” James breathed from next to her, tugging the

Invisibility Cloak off over his head. Long years of practice kept Lily from
flinching about it, but she did give him a single expressive look. James ignored
her. “I’m sure that it’s safe for you to send him the Apparition coordinates.”

Lily nodded and breathed a single, careful breath. It was already dusk, and they
would have to hurry if they wanted to send Harry usable coordinates. She
brandished her wand, and a second later her silver doe leaped through the
evening, seeking out her son.

They had always been careful never to send their recognizable Patronuses
whenever Harry might have someone with him, and yet there was always the
first time for slipping up. Lily readied her wand, while James stood next to her
in tense silence.

Ten minutes later, Harry Apparated in.

Lily felt tears slipping down her face as she extended her hands. Harry caught
them, and then he hugged her and she was kissing him desperately on the nose
and the cheeks. Harry laughed. Lily felt a trace of tears on his cheeks, as well.

“You’re taller,” she muttered into his shoulder, where she hid her face for a
moment.
“Am not,” came Harry’s automatic reply, and then James took him from her
arms, and Lily wiped away the last of her tears and smiled. James hugged Harry
for a much shorter time. Stupid masculine pride, Lily thought idly as she
watched James pounding Harry’s back with one hand for a moment.
“Well, you look taller,” Lily said, before James could demand Harry’s report.
“How are you, Harry?”

Harry gave her a smile with a shadow in it, and Lily softened and reached up to
trace her hand over his brow. There was an old, ancient scar there, from the time
that Harry had fallen off his broom when he was four years old and split his
head open on the oak in front of their cottage door. Some ignorant people had
thought the lightning-bolt-shaped scar was his soul-mark, at least until Harry
had got the Muggle tattoo.

Lily reached back almost without thinking, and touched the green stag in the
center of her back. She could feel James’s smug look without turning. She
rolled her eyes back without turning, knowing he would feel that.

Knowing he was probably touching the pale lily on his left forearm, too.

“I had my monthly interrogation today,” Harry began, and Lily steeled herself
to listen. She hated hearing about what they put her baby boy through, the
Ministry. Yet he was twenty-four now, not a baby anymore, and Lily herself
had seen forty-five years, and they had chosen to fight this war.

James listened to what Harry said with an increasingly grim look. “Do you think
there’s any way Riddle could suspect what you are?” he asked.

Lily stepped forwards and hugged Harry again, ignoring the way he stiffened
and muttered, “Mum, geroff.” They never said that Harry was Riddle’s
soulmate aloud, except when discussing it with Dumbledore. Not even Sirius
knew. There was too much chance that someone could betray them, or would
assume Harry was evil and had to be killed for someone he’d had no control
over.

As far as Sirius and Arthur and Molly and the rest knew, “what you are” just
referred to Harry being their spy in the Ministry. Which was dangerous enough,
honestly.

“No,” Harry said. “I think he just likes to question everyone from time to time,
and try to ‘understand’ them.” The inverted commas he put around the verb
could have pierced the sky, Lily thought. “It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t think that
anyone without exactly his kind of ambition is worth anything. He asked me
about my politics and seemed disbelieving that I didn’t have any.”

“None?” James asked sharply.

“I pretended that the Veritaserum forced me to admit that I think Muggleborns

and half-bloods should be treated equally. That’s all. I couldn’t hide that
anyway, Dad, there are too many people at the Ministry who knew me in
Hogwarts.”

“True enough, “James said, calming down. “But I assume that he wanted to find
out if you were ready to follow us.”

“Yeah, that was what he wanted.”

Harry stared off into the distance for a moment. Lily couldn’t see well, given
the muted Lumos Charm on James’s wand alone and the soft purple light
coming from above, but she could make out the edges of the grim set to her jaw.

It made Lily want to hug him again, but she held back. Two hugs were about as
much as Harry would permit at any one meeting—well, three, but the last one
had to be saved for when he was leaving. God, it hurt, knowing her son could
never be with his soulmate.

But how could he be with a man who would despise him at best, knowing he
was the son of a blood traitor and a supposedly inferior Muggleborn, and who
would try to woo him and seduce him at worst? Soulmates gained fourfold
power when they were together and truly in love—but it did have to be true
love, not one-sided. If Riddle managed to seduce Harry and win his heart, he
would only be doubly powerful, not fourfold. That was because Riddle didn’t
have a heart to lose, Lily thought.

But doubly would be bad enough for the Order’s cause. And Harry had
understood, even when he was very young and Lily had explained to him who
his soulmate was, that some things were more important than an individual’s
happiness. He was so brave, her son. So much a Gryffindor.

“If you ever think that it’s becoming too much,” James said seriously, reaching
up to lay a hand on Harry’s shoulder, “the pressure and the lying, let us know.
You’d be welcome here, you know that.”
Harry smiled at them, and the grimness Lily had become half-used to seeing
dissolved in instants. “I know, but I’ve been useful where I am, haven’t I? I’ve
been able to pass on word of things like that raid that almost caught Sirius?”

“Yes, and I’m damn grateful for it,” said a voice from the side. Sirius shook off
the last remnants of the black dog he’d been for a minute and grinned at Harry.
“Hello, kiddo.”

“Hi, Sirius,” Harry said, and did permit another hug after all.

“But I mean it,” James insisted, catching Lily’s eye for a second. She nodded. In
this case, they spoke as one. “If you want to be here, you’re here. Your life is
more important than that bloody information. Your happiness.”

Harry’s mouth twisted, a little wistfully. “Ron and Hermione did get together,
didn’t they?”

“Yes, last week,” Lily muttered, shaking her head. “I’ve never known someone
who was so stubborn about being with their soulmate.”

“Did you mean Ron or Hermione?” Harry teased. Like Lily, he knew it was
both of them. They’d both come close to being arrested for a too-obvious
attempt to break into the Department of Mysteries and had to run, and Hermione
had wanted to be “more than a pure-blood’s wife” and Ron had still been
denying he liked her. At least that was over now.

“See, that’s another thing,” James interjected, looking back and forth between
Lily and Harry. “If you came here, you could be with your friends. I know
you’ve missed them.”

“I do miss them, but...” Harry hesitated. Sirius reached forwards and cuffed the
back of his head, the way he used to do when Harry was slow to answer at
lessons before Hogwarts, but his eyes were worried. Lily knew the feeling. “I
just don’t want to spend much time around people united with their soulmates
right now.”

“Ah, kiddo,” Sirius said in a low voice, and embraced him. Harry hugged him
back, but he was already withdrawing. Lily could see it. The life he led away
from them was lonely and dangerous, but he seemed almost to prefer it.

People among the Order would either look at him in pity, the ones who thought
his soulmate was dead, or constantly ask him why he wasn’t searching for her.
Supposedly by Harry’s age it had become a pull that was impossible to ignore.
“Going so soon?” Sirius asked, but Harry nodded and kissed Lily on the cheek,
hugging her the regulation one more time before he patted Sirius on the
shoulder and punched his father. Then he turned and Apparated away.

Sirius sighed. “Merlin, I would do anything if I could find that kid’s soulmate
for him.”

“I know,” James said, and he exchanged a sad smile with Lily that had all the
meaning Padfoot would never know. He draped an arm over her shoulder as
they walked back towards the Apparition point that would take them into the
Order’s guarded camp.

Lily closed her eyes tightly. She had her soulmate, the fourfold bond of love and
trust and magic and united thoughts.

But it pained her so much that her son was never to know the same.

“But I heard that Professor McGonagall’s classes are really hard.”

Peter smiled and pushed the scroll on the desk back across it, towards young
Miss Lavelock. “I think they are both hard and rewarding. In any case, you
passed your OWL with an O, Miss Lavelock. You belong in NEWT
Transfiguration.”

“I wish I could just stay in the fifth-year class,” Lavelock whispered

desperately. She had white hair that was characteristic of her family, and it fell
over her face as she looked down and chewed on her lip.

“You can still come to me for help,” Peter promised. “Remember that I know
the Animagus transformation, too, and I have all the necessary education.”

“Then why aren’t you teaching NEWT Transfiguration?”

Long years of practice kept Peter from rolling his eyes, even though he felt like
it. Students were all the same in the way they acted when they thought they’d
perceived some shortcoming on a teacher’s part and wanted to call them out.
“Because I enjoy the younger years,” he said easily. “And because we have time
and room and money for multiple Transfiguration professors, now, thanks to
Minister Riddle. Professor McGonagall is the senior one and got to choose what
she wanted.”
“Yeah, well...” Lavelock’s voice trailed off into silence. Then she sighed. “I can
still come and ask you for help, Professor Pettigrew?”

“Of course. But you should talk to Professor McGonagall as well. I promise you
that she’s not as intimidating as she appears.”

“You were in Gryffindor House, weren’t you, sir?”

“Yes. And I can also promise that she’s not as biased against Slytherins as your
Housemates might have told you.”

“Alllll right,” Lavelock said, stretching the sound out to indicate that she was in
the thrall of teenage hopelessness, and trailed out the door. Peter waited until he
was sure that the door had shut behind her before he chuckled.

Every now and then he got someone who had become so comfortable and
complacent in the forth- and fifth-year courses that they decided Professor
McGonagall must be a tyrant simply because she wasn’t him. But in general,
Peter and Minerva cooperated well, and now that she had multiple colleagues
with expertise in Transfiguration, she had more time for her Deputy
Headmistress duties as well as time to concentrate on individual students.

Although even when she was by herself, she hadn’t done badly, Peter thought
idly as he stood up and made sure that the pincushions for the next morning’s
class were stored neatly in the bins on his shelves. She’d turned three of them
into Animagi, after all.

Peter winced at the thought. He hadn’t seen Sirius and James in a long time. It
had nothing to do with Remus, although that terrible night in their fifth year
when Sirius had come up with his great idea to prank Severus Snape had stood
between them for months. No, in the end what they couldn’t stomach was
Peter’s refusal to join the Order of the Phoenix.

Or, maybe even more than that, his decision to register as an Animagus and get
a proper education in Transfiguration, already with an eye to becoming a
professor one day.

Peter honestly didn’t see what they had to be that upset about. He’d held his
silence and never revealed to anyone else that Sirius was a dog and James a
stag; they could tell people or not on their own. But he had looked long and
hard at Albus Dumbledore the day he had announced that he wanted talented
students to join the Order.
He’d seen a man who was recruiting children to fight his war. More than that, a
man who approached only Gryffindors (and now and then a select Hufflepuff).
If House prejudices really had no place in a full life, as their professors were
forever telling them, how could it have a place in a decision as important as who
should fight to free their world?

That, and, well...

Peter glanced at the clock, but it was still a few minutes before he would join
Minerva to walk to the Great Hall for dinner.

Albus, and the rest of the Order, saw Riddle as a madman who would someday
rise up and eradicate all the Muggleborns in their world, mainly because he
pandered the politically-powerful pure-bloods who wanted that. And Peter did
think that prejudice was stupid and not something he wanted to emulate.

But was he the only one who saw Riddle as a politician? Someone who
followed that rhetoric when necessary, but also promoted Muggleborns to
positions of power and favored half-bloods more than anyone? Someone who
steered the Wizengamot as if with a bridle because he could anticipate what
they wanted and somehow twist their desires around so that the answer to
achieving them focused on him?

Peter didn’t admire every decision Riddle had made. Some struck him as risky,
or made out of laziness, because Riddle didn’t really care about the question
under debate and simply went with whatever would please the majority of his
supporters.

But in general, Peter couldn’t imagine someone further from a madman.

Someone who had to play the political balancing game he did was simply too
clever to fall into madness through the use of Dark rituals the way Albus and
the Order believed he had. And if he had been pretending at sanity, he would
have been found out by now.

Peter had chosen a different path than war. If it was a kind of sneaking, sly way
of peace, well, that fit with the admiration he felt for Riddle, too.

And with his Animagus form, even though he didn’t think he needed another
reminder of that.

Someone knocked briskly on the door, although from years of experience, Peter
knew by now that the “someone” was Minerva. He smiled as he opened his
door, and Minerva nodded to him with the relaxed expression Peter wished she
would wear around the students more often. It would help lessen their terror of
her.

“Ready, Professor Pettigrew?” She was always formal like that out in a corridor,
where a student might pass and overhear.

“Yes, Professor McGonagall,” Peter said, and went to fetch his scarf. His seat at
the High Table seemed to have a persistent draught.

“There’s nothing else you need from me, sir?”

“No, thank you, Auror Shacklebolt,” Tom said, and waited for the Head Auror
to depart before he leaned back in his chair and stared into the fire that blazed in
a corner of his office. It was high summer, and he knew the others thought it an
affectation.

However, the fire wasn’t for his benefit. A long, lean shadow uncoiled near his
feet and slithered towards the fire.

“You are well, Nagini?” Tom asked, leaning over to let his fingers trail down
her back. The smoothness of her scales, and the silvery color of them,
comforted him. He had her layered and armored in spells that would turn
everything short of a Killing Curse.
“I am well, my human.” Nagini curled up near the fire, although with her head
resting on his foot, and stared into the hearth.

Tom looked down at her. Few people knew of her existence. None knew that
she was his familiar, bound to him by such spells that they tugged on his very
soul.

Of course, there was another tug, another bond that should have been completed
for the good of his soul and was simply empty, stretching away into midair like
smoke. Tom could see it whenever he worked magic that used Nagini’s help.

If he had his soulmate, then he could use magic that would ensure even the
Killing Curse could not take Nagini away. He might achieve immortality, as the
most powerful fourfold-bonded pairs supposedly did. It was the only reason he
had held back on creating Horcruxes. They promised immortality, but nothing
else.

He could do that. If he had his soulmate.

Tom’s lips curled in a silent snarl. He had risen to the position of Minister
because he wanted the power and because he loved the game of playing one
faction off against each other, but also because he wanted security as deep as he
could make it. When he found his soulmate, he would not lose them.

“They must exist,” he muttered in English.

Nagini lifted her head and locked her bright golden eyes with his. She didn’t
understand English most of the time, but she had heard those words often
enough to know what they meant. “They exist, or the empty place in your soul
would not,” she agreed. “But you have sought them for almost seventy years
without finding them. Will you not give this up and find some other way of
achieving what you want, my human? Your magic has kept you looking as
young as it has, with undiminished strength. You are strong enough to fulfill
your desires by yourself.”
Tom shook his head. “I want them so that I can achieve things that would take
me decades or centuries otherwise. Decades or centuries I do not have. And I
want them—“ He stopped.
“Yes?”

But not even to Nagini could he speak of the other reasons, although she knew
them already and Tom also knew that she would never betray his secrets. He
reached down and ran a long, slow hand over Nagini’s back. The spells he had
on her scales trembled under his touch and made her arch her neck in pleasure.

“Enough that I want them. I shall have them. I shall court them and make them
fall in love with me.”

Not that Tom believed it would be difficult. Someone who was a true mate to
his soul would have the same burning, boundless ambition that he did, and must
also welcome the increase in power. They would be unstoppable together, and
Tom wanted that.

He did not want to consider the likely possibilities: that either his soulmate was
so young he would have to wait decades more, or that his soulmate knew
exactly who Tom was and was avoiding him on purpose.

I would not be a rival. I would not harm them. Can they not see that?

But such thoughts were for the silence and the fire. Tom settled back and
allowed himself ten minutes more before he stood.
He had to hear a tricky case before the Wizengamot tomorrow, and he needed
his rest.

Chapter 2: Attempts
Chapter Text

“Come in, Minerva.”

Minerva ignored her own tingling spine as she opened the door of Albus’s
office and stepped through. She had been scheduled to visit him, and in any
case, he had a phoenix and the ability to speak to all the portraits in the castle. It
would have been stranger if he hadn’t known who was knocking.

Fawkes crooned at her in greeting from his perch off to the side of the room.
Albus gave her a smile, too, but it was fainter. Minerva sat down across from
him in the chair that he always offered adult guests and studied him over the rim
of a whirling silver dish.

“Is something wrong?” Albus’s voice dipped into the gently chiding one that
bothered so many people.

“Yes. I’m worried about you, Albus.”

That made Albus sit a bit further back from the desk. Minerva kept up her direct
stare. Frankly, she had learned too much about Albus in the last few decades to
be put off by the twinkling eyes or the smile that he now turned on her. She had
watched his appetite, instead, and where his eyes fell when they roved over the
Great Hall.

She had noticed the tightness of his mouth, and the way that he smelled of
potion fumes. What had he been brewing that he couldn’t ask Juliet Legion,
their Potions Professor, to brew for him?

“It’s only old memories returning to haunt me, Minerva,” Albus said at last.
“You know what day is coming up next week.”

She did, but only because Albus had let her into his confidence long ago, and
she had once been part of the Order of the Phoenix, before Albus’s drive to
recruit all the useful students he could find had made her walk away. Minerva
shook her head. “They died more than sixty years ago, Albus. Why do you still
feel so guilty?”
“Because I didn’t realize what young Tom was until it was too late. If I had
been doing my job and watching out as I was supposed to do—if I hadn’t
discounted the evidence of my senses because I was so convinced that a child
that young couldn’t be so Dark—then Albert Langley and Kim Yarrow would
still be alive.”

Minerva shrugged, uncomfortably. She could feel the coiling swirl of her own
blue soul-mark, an eddy of water, on her shoulder if she breathed the right way.
That was over now, with Elphinstone’s death, but the thought of someone
burning it off her before she had even met him still made her burn with rage.

“Or their children would be,” Albus added softly, because they had had this
conversation before and he knew the next steps as well as Minerva did. “Their
grandchildren. Their cousins. He killed their families as if it was nothing,
Minerva.”

“Because they burned his soul-mark off,” Minerva said. “You know that they
would have spent the rest of their lives in Azkaban if anyone had believed him,
Albus.”

“Then they would have done that.” Albus moved his hand impatiently. “Justice.
But instead, Tom Riddle enacted vengeance. How is any of this allowed to go
unpunished?”

Minerva sighed. While Albus recruiting students had been the biggest reason
she’d walked away from the Order, this was another part of it. “Brooding on the
wrongs of the past does no one any good. If you want to work against Riddle
politically and prevent another Langley and Yarrow, fine. But I don’t think that
trying to start a war is a good idea.”

“The war is going on, Minerva. Or have you noticed how often Muggleborns
leave our world after graduating Hogwarts? I do my best, and I do believe that
the prejudice is less in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, but Slytherin and Ravenclaw
still spread their hatred of anyone who is not a pure-blood. What good does it do
to have money and professors to expand our school if we cannot serve the ones
who most need us?”

“I’ve noticed the number of Muggleborns Riddle’s promoted in the Ministry,

too.” Minerva hated herself for getting involved in the argument the minute the
words passed her lips. It never ended any other way but with an admission that
Albus was right, because he wouldn’t let it end any other way.
“He only promotes the ones who agree with him, Minerva. The ones who want
to shed their Muggle past and prove that they’re ‘unique individuals’ who can
be useful to him.”

“Why would you expect Riddle to promote his political opponents? You don’t.”

“He only does it to put them on his leash, Minerva, not in true recognition of
their talent. Don’t tell me that you don’t see the difference.”

Minerva held up a hand and stood. “Very well, Albus. I came to see what you
were worried about. If it is only misplaced grief over decades-old murders, then
I will leave you be.”

She turned to go, but a piece of parchment shoved towards the edge of the desk
caught her eye. It was one of the detailed plans, announced in the Prophet, for
Riddle’s monthly “public day,” when anyone could approach him in a building
near the Ministry and ask him questions or make pleas for help directly. Riddle
always published the number and names of Aurors he would be traveling with,
the name of the place, the length of time he’d be there, and more details that
Minerva found so tedious she’d never read them.

It was an extremely odd thing for Albus to have on his desk, no matter how
much he wanted to watch his “enemy.” Minerva snapped her gaze to his face.
“What are you planning, Albus?”

“Only what needs to be done.”

Minerva narrowed her eyes. But the fact was, she had no proof that Albus was
doing anything wrong. The smell of the potions that had hung around him were
harmless; she’d asked Juliet, who had said they were only ordinary health
draughts for clarity of mind, making up for lost meals, and the like. If Albus
was brewing them, he was probably actually taking care of himself better than
Minerva had thought.

Minerva hesitated, but in the end, she left the room without speaking further. It
wasn’t her war. It wasn’t even a “war” in the strictest sense of the word. Riddle
paid almost no attention to Albus, other than sending politely-worded letters
when they disagreed on some expansion or plan the Ministry wanted to put into
place at Hogwarts.

Minerva had her own hands full, with students, Deputy Headmistress duties,
being the Head of Gryffindor House, and acting as a buffer between Albus and
poor Peter, whom Albus still hadn’t forgiven. Asking questions only got her
involved in useless arguments like the last one. She would let it be.

Albus closed his eyes as the door shut. Honestly, he wasn’t sure that he had
spoken the truth to Minerva, after all. He wasn’t sure that he was doing only
what needed to be done.

But on the other hand, what else could he do? No one would be able to stop
Tom Riddle if he didn’t act. For some people he was already years too late, but
he could protect the future.

Albus glanced once more at the paper resting on the edge of his desk. Yes, all
the Aurors and officials named in it were ones who had cooperated with Riddle
in the past, which moved them out of the category of innocents into the one of
war criminals. Albus shook his head. He wasn’t aware of the blood status of all
of them, but they had helped Riddle, and that was what he needed to know.

He reached under his desk and picked up a huge crate of potions, all in
Strength-Charmed glass flasks. Mind-healing potions and nutrient potions were
the majority, but there were also some that would promote the growth of healthy
flesh and bone.

He knew he couldn’t let Minerva see those. She might prefer to avoid the war as
much as possible, but she would be able to know that there was no
reason Albus would require them.

He looked back up in time to meet the shimmering tears in Fawkes’s eyes.

Albus shook his head and reached out to trace his fingers over the bright
plumage on the phoenix’s neck. Fawkes let him, but continued to weep.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Albus said tiredly. “And this is in the name of
justice, and the name of love. That must ease the sting.”

From the mournful way Fawkes looked at him, it didn’t. But Albus had little
time for phoenix morals. He was late already. He picked up the crate of potions
and made his way to the Floo.

“You, Potter!”
Harry looked up and gaped at Whipwood, jamming a finger into his chest. It
didn’t take a lot of effort. It was still September, his interrogation had been
passed just last week, and there shouldn’t be any reason for an Auror to
summon him now. “Me, Auror Whipwood?”

“You! The Minister wants you as part of his entourage for the public day. Says
that you’ll represent the common man’s point-of-view.” Whipwood stared at the
crusted remains of Harry’s breakfast on his desk and the stacks of paper
wavering right on the edge, and shook her head. The wind from the motion sent
one of the stacks over. “Well, he’s got that right.”

Harry bent down to pick up the papers, babbling all the while. “Oh, no, Auror,
I’m sure that you must be mistaken. The Minister would never ask
for me. Maybe he didn’t say Potter, maybe he said Peters?” Algernon Peters
was one of Harry’s co-workers, who did all sorts of brilliant strategizing for
Quidditch teams and would probably be hired as a coach soon. Harry hated him
on principle.

“That’s what I asked, too.” Whipwood’s face was stony when Harry turned
back to her. “But he said he meant Potter.”

Harry sighed mournfully and scrubbed one sleeve over the crumbs. “If I have
to. Are they going to serve lunch at the public day thingy, at least?”

Whipwood gave him a look like a slashing branch and turned away. Harry
trailed after her, his mind racing. If they did serve lunch, it would serve the
same purpose as the crumbs on his desk did. Riddle abhorred sloppiness. Harry
could chew with his mouth open and get bits everywhere and disgust him.

But it made him wary that Riddle had asked for his presence in the first place,
“common man’s perspective” or not. The whole point was to be meek and
forgettable. If Riddle remembered him, even from contempt, then Harry was
close to compromising his cover.

You can always come to us, whispered his mother’s voice in his

head. Information isn’t as important as your life.

But Harry didn’t want to flee until he had no choice. The Order was safe in its
way, but the complex magic that kept it so would be strained by the presence of
one more person. And Harry didn’t have much in the way of friends here, but at
least he didn’t have people hunting him down for his blood.
And no one asking questions about where his soulmate was, either. No one here
was interested enough in Harry to ask him questions like that.

Harry lifted his head, and followed Whipwood.

“Minister Tom Riddle!”

Tom had once hated the sound of his own name—so unremarkable and ordinary
and Muggle—but it did sound better when it was preceded by the title of his
office, he had to admit. And the hoarse cheering from the Aurors as he walked
into the middle of the prepared space for the public day made his smile come
more easily than it might have.

Tom looked around. Yes, the chairs were set up, and the desks that usually
occupied the office of the St. Mungo’s Satellite Office for Less Serious Illnesses
had been removed. The dome that arched overhead, with an enormous faceted
crystal skylight, shed dazzling radiance he would enjoy exploiting.

There was a chair that was almost a throne in the middle of that space of light.
Tom let his smile turn genuine. The thing was, after the first few years, he had
never had to suggest anything like that to them. They did it themselves.

Human beings were truly the most remarkable creatures on the planet.

He paused for a flash from a camera, carefully masking his sneer, and then
strode towards the chair. It had a star imprinted into the wood at the back Tom
knew that when he sat down, his head would be precisely in the center of the
star, with the lower points projecting out around his shoulders and the top points
shining above his head.

He turned and sat down, and saw the faint smiles from his publicists and the
larger ones from the Aurors, who took everything at face value. Tom posed for
a second and let his gaze sweep around the room.

For a moment, it lingered on the young man standing next to Auror Whipwood
with his arms folded, his face locked in a petulant scowl. Why was anyone
attending the pre-public day festivities with such unruly hair?

Then Tom remembered, and smiled at Potter. He was doing this as a favor for
the poor idiot, honestly. Perhaps he would learn some ambition if he saw the
rewards of it so obviously.
Potter caught his eye and flushed, but also seemed about one second away from
sticking out his tongue. Tom smiled back and let his gaze wander on. There
were other people here who would be far more honored by it.

And there were others waiting for his speech, of course.

“My dear friends…”

The sandwich was corned beef and good enough that Harry almost didn’t want
to chomp on it and send bits spewing around. But his deception was worth more
than a sandwich, so he talked with his mouth full and let crumbs escape down
his robes and in general made his neighbors move away from him.

He was explaining the theory behind Gobstones while chewing with his mouth
open, to a witch who looked as though she wished her neighbors were smaller,
when someone laid a hand on his shoulder. Harry turned around with wide eyes
and said, “Minifter Riddle, thir!”

Riddle looked at the piece of half-masticated bread that had landed on his
buttons, just shy of the jeweled phoenix, and then let his eyes travel slowly back
up to Harry’s face.

Harry blushed on command—that part he was good at—and put down the
sandwich and said, “Um. Minister Riddle, sir.”

“You were invited to provide the common man’s perspective, Mr. Potter,”
Riddle said, with a slight shake of his head. “Not the vulgar one.”
Several people around them tittered on cue. Harry let his flush deepen, and
bowed his head until he wasn’t looking at Riddle’s face anymore. That was all
to the good. He knew from Headmaster Dumbledore’s warnings that Riddle was
an accomplished Legilimens. Harry had probably only got away with his lies
under Veritaserum because Riddle hadn’t bothered to try and sense them.
Everyone knew that someone under Veritaserum could only tell the truth.
“You will give me all the apology I need if you slow down and try
to appreciate the food,” said Riddle.

Harry let his head bob, and said quietly, “Sorry, sir.” If people like Riddle said
only one thing was necessary to an apology, that was always a cue to provide
more.
“Apology accepted,” said Riddle smoothly, and walked away from Harry back
to the throne-like chair. Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but he held still, because
people would expect it from him. Everyone else was seated on a bench in front
of a long table like the ones in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, and Riddle got a
bloody throne?

Then Harry sighed. The thoughts were only a desperate attempt to distract
himself from the itch beginning under his skin. Something had been bothering
him since they’d walked into the Healing building, and he didn’t know what it
was.

The only thing he could compare it to was the feeling he sometimes got just
before the Snitch changed direction. He knew things wouldn’t stay the same. He
knew they would alter any second. But he couldn’t open his mouth and name
the direction the Snitch would choose.

And he couldn’t say what bothered him now.

Harry took a few more restrained bites of the sandwich and caught Auror
Whipwood’s gaze. The woman next to her was her soulmate, Eloise Jensen.
Jensen gave Harry a scolding smile. She was the Head of the Department of
Magical Games and Sports and an excellent supervisor, and her black eyes
radiated calmness across the room.

Harry wondered sometimes why Fate had played such a stupid game that one of
the kindest people he knew had ended up soulmated to one of the worst, but not
as often as he wondered what the fuck Fate had been thinking with his soul-
mark.

Harry stood up, and stretched, and left the food tables behind as he ambled
around the space. It was a nice-looking building, even without the skylight. He
had to admit that. Not much else, maybe, but that.

The members of the public would be arriving soon. Harry honestly wasn’t sure
why Riddle had this particular little meal and speech and posing for the cameras
before they did. Was it just to impress the people around him? But for the most
part, they were pretty impressed with him already.

And me as the notable exception, Harry thought as he paused to scratch

viciously at his shoulder blade. A couple people glanced at him with an
expression of disgust. Harry moved his hand down to scratch his arse, even
though it didn’t itch, and actually got them to back away.
Harry grinned, but it faded the minute he thought he didn’t feel anyone looking
at him. This was weird, this itching and prickling up his spine. Sure, it had
happened with the Snitch, but that all ended quickly. This just went on and on.
Then Harry abruptly leaped in place and turned. That feeling, he knew.
Someone had just raised wards around the building that would keep anyone
from Apparating or Portkeying out. He had felt them go up around his house the
night he was fifteen and his parents had to flee, though they’d got out before the
wards went up.
Fuck. Riddle’s enemies? Or Riddle himself?

Other people were starting to react now, and from their expressions, it had to be
Riddle’s enemies (although Harry wouldn’t have put it past the man to stage
something like this just for the pictures in the papers). Riddle was issuing orders
in a low voice. The Aurors had spread out to cover the windows and doors.
Others had formed into a tight guard around Riddle’s throne.

Harry was the only one who found his gaze drawn irresistibly up and to the
skylight.

A huge, black, falling thing was all he had time to see, before it dissolved into
waves of painful Dark magic and smashed into the skylight.

And the roof, and the walls, and everything else. Harry snapped his head up. He
could see star-shaped patterns of cracks cutting through the room, as though
someone had wanted to imitate the design on the back of Riddle’s throne.

He felt something else, too: the thick, smoky line of a particular spell lacing
along the cracks, flowing with them. It was a spell Dumbledore had taught him
to recognize, one keyed to Riddle’s magical signature. That meant nothing
Riddle could do would be enough to keep the roof from falling and crushing
them all. And Riddle was the most powerful wizard in the room.

They were going to die. This was an Order of the Phoenix assassination attempt,
but far more thorough and organized than Harry had ever seen before.

They were going to die.

And then Harry lost his head, and drew his wand.

Tom stared up at the cracks that seamed the roof above him, and knew what it
meant. For a moment, the pieces were delicately, oddly, balanced, but they
would fall, and they would crush him, and they would kill him, since he had
prepared no Horcruxes.

He would never see Nagini again.

He would never find his soulmate.

The minute the falling object had appeared, coming towards the skylight, he had
concentrated, lashing out with his power, aiming at the walls. He meant to
Apparate himself and all those closest to him, something he had never
announced he could do, but swearing his loyalists to secrecy was nothing next
to living—

And he’d encountered the wards that would prevent Apparition and Portkeys,
and the spell attuned to his magical signature, which would probably prevent
him from acting in any way. That spell would affect every piece of rubble that
fell, every stone, every shard of glass. Someone had planned well.

Then you win, Albus, Tom thought, his mind turning to the information that
would be released in consequences of such an inevitability. I hope you like your
victory served up tasting of ashes.

He saw eyes turning to him, hopeful, brilliant, eyes of people who did not
understand. He began to give orders, not because he thought they would do any
good but because they would hold down panic and perhaps keep anyone from
realizing, before they died, that they were going to do so.

Because he was looking in the right direction, he saw the fire that rose from
Harry Potter’s wand, and felt the sheer trembling magic unleashed from him,
like the sudden unfurling of a dragon’s wings.

And then Tom saw what happened afterwards.

Harry called on fire because it was his best set of spells, and because it was the
one that first came to mind. Later, when people scolded him for it, his only
thought was that they hadn’t been there, and they hadn’t realized how fast the
roof would come down.

“Invoco ignem!”
The petals of fire unfolded above him, and became wings, stairs, buttresses,
stepladders of fire. Harry pushed with his sheer will, not having the time to
chant the right incantation. He wasn’t even sure that there was a right
incantation. Instead, there was desire. He desired, and it was done.

The flames spun away from him, fracturing and dividing, two-by-two, four-by-
four, eight-by-eight, and then Harry lost the ability to count them. They seized
every piece of the roof and the skylight and the walls where the cracks had
penetrated, and gripped them. Some of them toppled over anyway, but the fire
hovered and snatched those, too.

It was like watching the claws of a dragon you couldn’t see the body of, Harry
thought, his mind and body vibrating from the sheer effort of holding up so
many different parts. He kept thinking one must have escaped, and then—

No. He had to stop thinking that, or he would drop them. He pushed the fire up,
and up, and up, and up, and then all the pieces were splayed above him, some
caught in spirals, some on what looked like staircases of fire reaching from the
ground to the ceiling, and some sealed in place by burning mortar. Harry sank to
his knees, and fed more power into the flames. It was safer than releasing them
right now. He had no attention to spare for where they would land if he did that.

“Mr. Potter! Let go!”

Someone was shouting right in his face. Harry blinked without looking away
from the hovering rubble, and found Eloise Jensen there, her eyes fierce. She
reached out and locked her hands on either side of his head, getting in the way.

“Aurors are ready and waiting to take the pieces when you let them go!” she
shouted. “Do it before you drain yourself of magic and faint!”

Harry grimaced, thinking of how much more of a mess the fallout would cause
if he just let it go randomly, and nodded. Then he pulled the flames back, slowly
and smoothly, retracting them into his body like claws.

He felt Auror after Auror grab them, all of them working together doing what
only Harry would be able to do by himself—or Riddle, if the magical signature
spell hadn’t forbidden him from doing so. Harry sighed as he felt every piece of
rock or glass or wood cupped and held. Yes, it was going to be all right.

When the release came, he sagged to hands and knees, breathing harshly. The
thrum of his heart in his ears was its own hoarse song. He couldn’t hear
anything beyond that.
For long moments, he didn’t want to. He just knelt there, reveling in the languid
feeling of magic well-done, thinking—

Harry’s eyes snapped open as thought kick-started itself again.

Oh, shit.

This was a magical assassination attempt that had to originate with the Order of
the Phoenix. Probably with Dumbledore. He was the only one who would have
been powerful enough to raise the wards by himself and cover the whole
building, instead of just one portion of it, with the spell that was tied to Riddle’s
magical signature.

And Harry had stopped it. Well, yes, he had saved many, many people’s lives,
but Dumbledore must have considered it worth the sacrifice, and it wasn’t like
he would have known Harry would be there, what with Whipwood bringing him
along at the last minute.

Harry had interfered, and that meant Riddle had lived, when they could have
ended the war with one strike.

As Harry slowly managed to get back to his knees, he thought other things. Saw
other things. The wide, awed eyes of the people around him were one of those
things, and they nearly made him sick to his stomach. These were people who
knew he was powerful, now, and who—shit—owed him life-debts now. It was
going to be so hard to duck back out of sight that Harry knew he might never
manage it.

And there were laws, too, Harry suddenly remembered. Laws that Riddle had
had passed years ago in an attempt to expose his soulmate more easily, as
Dumbledore had informed him. Laws against hiding the power of your magic
when the Ministry hired you, because it was supposedly “safer” for everyone at
the Ministry to know what everyone else was capable of.

Laws that Harry had violated upside-down and sideways and backwards when
he was hired, like he had faked his way through the OWLS and the NEWTS.

Harry finally regained the strength to lift his head. There were people
applauding him now and others asking him questions, but the person his eyes
locked on was Riddle. Riddle, whose smile was the most dangerous thing in the
universe at the moment.

“Well, Mr. Potter,” said Riddle. “It certainly seems we have something
to discuss, you and I. I am most anxious to begin the conversation.”
Shit.
Chapter 3: Conversations
Chapter Text

“Bring him.”

Riddle had said that and then had just started walking away, not even looking
back at Harry. Whipwood closed in one side of him, Jensen on the other, and
then an Auror each beyond that. Harry gritted his teeth and walked.

The most humiliating thing was that that wasn’t even within the first five
minutes after Harry had levitated the pieces of the roof with fire, or even the
first ten. Instead, Harry had had to recover for fully thirty minutes in a chair,
panting, while Jensen handed him water and more sandwiches on Riddle’s
orders. Riddle had watched Harry with brilliant, determined eyes, but hadn’t
spoken to him. All he said were those commands to feed Harry and, now, haul
him along.
As if I were just a weapon for him to use.

Harry tilted his head back and straightened his shoulders, ignoring the way that
Jensen glanced at him, followed by Whipwood a second later. No, he was fine.
And he was already spinning the lies in his head.

All he knows about me is that I have power. That by itself isn’t enough to reveal
me as his soulmate. Of course he’ll want to touch my mark to see if he is, but…

Harry smiled a little. All he had to do was make sure that his small soul-mark,
the words themselves—which were invisible among the tattoos of the shackles
—were turned away from Riddle when he made the grab at Harry’s wrist. He
might not even do that, given that he’d done it once already and found nothing.

But it was best to be prepared.

Harry walked the rest of the way back to the Apparition point spinning the lies
and stories that he would use in his head.

Tom waited until they were safely back in his office to dismiss the Aurors. Of
course there was no reason to think that Harry would attack him and try to bring
down this roof on his head when he’d just saved Tom and some of his best
people from that same fate, but it was always best to be cautious when dealing
with Dumbledore and his Order.
Then he lunged across the desk and grabbed Potter’s arm.

Potter blinked at him, his eyebrows raised, saying nothing as Tom’s fingers
explored the phoenix mark. But of course nothing happened, and of course
further exploration did nothing, either. Blue fire would have sprung up between
them in instants if they were true soulmates, and a further touch was not
necessary.

Tom slid his hand slowly back across the desk, oddly disappointed. He had
touched Potter once before and knew what the outcome would be now. But still,
there were certain things he would have appreciated if this man had been his
soulmate.

Such as that level of power, and those lovely green eyes, and the way his stare
was direct for a second before he dropped his head to stare at the floor in
pretended humility.

“I want to know why you hid your power,” Tom said. He settled back in his
chair and crossed his legs. Not many people got to see him in this informal
posture, but then, Mr. Potter had proven that he was anything but a normal
person.

Potter kept staring at the floor for a second. Then he looked up, and his eyes
were wide and he was biting his lower lip. He resembled the man who had
scattered crumbs around at lunch far more than he did the one who had lifted
the roof up with flames.

But Tom knew which one he thought was real. He contained his own
amusement and waited for Potter’s mouth to open.

It did, and Potter spoke in a way that made it seem as if he was having to weigh
every single word and make sure it was the right one. “I—well, I saw the cracks
spread. I knew that something must have gone wrong, or you probably would
have Apparated out the instant they appeared, sir.”

Tom smiled in spite of himself. Potter was doing his best to portray himself as
an idiot, but it would have taken a quick mind, working more quickly than
normal in an emergency, to notice that sort of thing while his life was in danger.

Potter blinked at him and went on more slowly yet. “I wanted to live. I knew
that I would die if that roof fell on me. And so would everyone else in the
room.” Potter pretended to shiver, and Tom was sure it was pretending. “I
reached deep inside myself and found a kind of magic. Professor Dumbledore
said that he did the same thing, once, when he was facing Grindelwald. Do you
know—” Potter blushed, and it was a pretend blush, too, Tom was certain,
Potter ducking his head in apparent embarrassment. “Of course you know
Professor Dumbledore. You must talk with him about your plans for Hogwarts
all the time.”

“Go on, Harry.”

“Wow, sir! It’s such an honor for someone so important to address me by my

first name.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. That kind of behavior would have been enough to put
him off, the way the mess at lunch had, in an ordinary situation, but they were
no longer in an ordinary situation. Surely Potter had realized that by now? Or
had he convinced himself that Tom would let anything go as long as he was
disgusted enough by stupidity or bad manners?

Potter leaned forwards confidingly and said, “Anyway, the magic was there
when I needed it. I doubt I could do it again. Unless, I mean, if my life was in
danger or something.” He bit his lip some more in what Tom was utterly sure
was feigned nervousness. “I could do it then. But I hope it never will be! I’m
not an Auror, you know!”

Tom let the laughter that followed that statement die into silence. Then he
leaned forwards. “No, Mr. Potter. You are something much rarer and more
special.”

“Not your soulmate, though?” Potter managed a squeak, and to turn his face
flaming red. Tom was more impressed with his acting skill than he wanted to
be, considering what he suspected Potter might have been hiding from him. “I
mean—I can’t be. You grabbed my wrist and didn’t go up in flames.”

Tom smiled a little. “No, Mr. Potter. I mean a spy from the Order of the
Phoenix who has managed to figure out a way to trick Veritaserum. I am
honestly impressed.” He leaned back and let his smile fade. “But I would be
more impressed by honesty right now. Tell me why you chose to blow your
cover today.”

Shit.

Harry considered Riddle carefully, and whether it was possible that he might—
No. Every sign, from the stern face to the crackle of buzzing power that Harry
could feel building around the Minister, warned him against lying. Harry
considered it for one more moment.

Then he straightened up in the seat, and curled his hands in his lap as if he was
overwhelmed with fury. That brought his hand close to the Portkey that he wore
every day as a robe button and which no one had ever noticed because it was
essentially inactive until prodded by a jab of Harry’s magic. Mum’s words
throbbed in his head. Information is worth less than your life.

And, even more than that, the information he had passed on—which had never
been much—was worth less than other kinds of information. The kinds that
Riddle could pry out of his head if he really believed Harry was a spy.

The Portkey made him feel more comfortable, though. Well, that and the fact
that Riddle had brought Harry to his office instead of throwing him into a cell.
He could have grabbed his wrist and then done that immediately, and no one
really the wiser.

Riddle had some other plan for him.

“Say that I believe that,” he said, and saw Riddle mark the change in his voice
and the way he held himself. “That you’d be impressed by honesty. How much
honesty can I get away with here?”

“I suspect you will tell me something I do not want to hear.”

“Oh, yes. Minister Tom Riddle. Murderer of two children sixty years ago. And
their families. Even the pets, it was said. Even the distant cousins.”

“Reciting ancient unproven allegations doesn’t make the case for your
intelligence very strong, Mr. Potter.”

“I’m just getting started,” Harry said, and heard himself snarl. All the years of
having to hold his tongue, around Riddle, around the people he had known at
Hogwarts and at the Ministry, all the unfairness of his soulmate being a bastard
because Fate didn’t have anything better to do than mess around with his life,
built up in him and burst. “I’ve looked up your voting record, too, you know.
Oh, it looks impressive. Promotions for Muggleborns, passing absolute bans
against Muggle-hunting, improving inheritance practices for illegitimate half-
blood children, it looks like you’re conducting a war against the old pure-blood
elite. But then you look at the other votes. The ones that say the memories of
Muggles who know about magic are bound, instead of wiped. They’ll be fine as
long as they don’t try to talk to anyone who doesn’t know, but then they’ll be
cursed and have their minds wiped back to child-status if they do. And replacing
the Dementors on Azkaban with spells of your own creation—”

“They are humane, I assure you.” Riddle had a smile on his lips that looked
frozen there. “I have had this discussion with many members of the
Wizengamot far more informed than you, and—”

“They look humane if you don’t know that Legilimency underlies them.” Harry
leaned in, his hands now fully curled around the Portkey button. “If you don’t
know that they pull out memories of the crimes and torment the prisoners over
and over with them, until they go mad.”

Riddle hadn’t moved, but he reminded Harry of a cat with every hair standing
on end. Of course it was the magic, dancing around him and vibrating
warningly, like a whole swarm of bees. Riddle said between closed teeth,
“Prisoners are released from Azkaban on a regular basis, Mr. Potter. None of
them are mad.”

“Until they get into circumstances that remind them of their original crime.
Then their minds snap. You’re fond of that, aren’t you? It’s the same sort of
punishment you employ on Muggles that know about magic.”

Riddle surged to his feet and stalked around the desk. Harry rose to his feet to
meet him. He wasn’t afraid. The roaring fury still filled him too hotly, the way
that his heartbeat had filled his ears after the display of magic at the St.
Mungo’s satellite building.

Powerful, intelligent, and defiant. Tom found himself sorrier than he had been
in years that a particular person was not his soulmate.

And he has figured out a way to trick Veritaserum. That was the particular
achievement that intrigued Tom the most. Obviously Harry Potter did have a lot
of politics, and they went far beyond just wanting equal rights for Muggleborns
and half-bloods.

“Tell me what else you think you know about me,” he breathed, looming over
Potter—who was shorter than him by several inches—and watching the changes
in his face. Most of the time, people stepped back from him when he was this
close, instinctively. They couldn’t stand the pressure of his magic, whether or
not they could feel it.
Potter slid a step closer, until Tom could feel the hovering heat of his chest. His
own magic was snapping around him like invisible fireworks. It was weaker
than it would be most of the time, Tom thought, given the remarkable display of
it he had put on not an hour before, but he also seemed to be recovering rapidly.

“I know that you came from a bloody Muggle orphanage, and yet you despise
Muggles.” Potter stared him dead in the eye despite his shorter height, not
seeming to care that it would strain his neck. His hands were clenched, and Tom
found himself wishing to see them open, to see what Potter was like when he
was relaxed. He had probably never seen the real man.

“Tell me how you know that.”

“The mind-wiping spells are one part of it. But you’re also funding research into
giving magic to all human beings. That’s one way to eliminate Muggles, isn’t
it? But your preliminary results have indicated that not all human bodies can
tolerate magic, so you’re also funding ways to induce widespread disease—”

Tom’s amusement fled. The rest, he knew, were common talking points that
anyone could bring up who had paid enough attention to his Wizengamot voting
record, but that particular research was under sharp security at the Department
of Mysteries.

He shot out a hand to grip Potter’s hair, but he had twisted away, his
movements as graceful and fluid as if he had had Auror training after all. He
was light on his feet, Potter was, and his magic had already started to surge as
high as a wave.

Tom knew no one else who could have gone through such magical exhaustion
and then recovered so fast. He wasn’t sure that he could have done so himself—
and that was an unpleasant revelation to face when also confronting an enemy.

He fell back a step and reached for his wand. Potter gave him a taunting smile
and reached for something that was not his wand.

It was pure instinct that made Tom raise the anti-Portkey spells. Apparition
wasn’t possible for anyone but him from this portion of the Ministry anyway,
and it was unlikely Potter had sneaked in a broom. So, when the swirling colors
started to consume Potter’s body, they simply fell back like a splash of water
around him.
Potter froze for a second. Then he nodded. “If you try to kill me, then I’m going
to make sure I cripple you,” he said. There was a lurking certainty in the back of
his words that Tom didn’t understand.

“It is interesting, Mr. Potter, that you assume I am going to kill you.”

“You reached for your wand. A duel with you in here would mean a great deal
of property damage. If you didn’t kill me in the duel, you would kill me because
I damaged your desk or cracked your chairs.”

Tom smiled fully, and let go of his wand. Potter didn’t do the same thing. He
retained the coiled posture of an ambush predator.

Yet he couldn’t be an assassin for the Order. All he would have had to do was
tear through the anti-Apparition spells earlier today, as Tom had not been able
to do, and leap out if he was. Nor did it make sense that he would have worked
in the Department of Magical Games and Sports for years without trying to
harm Tom somehow.

“Why does the Order’s side appeal to you more than mine, Mr. Potter?”

“Because of the ridiculous reasons that you exiled my parents and godfather.”

Tom frowned for a moment, trying to remember what he knew about the
circumstances under which Sirius Black and James and Lily Potter had become
fugitives. “I must admit that I don’t remember those so-called ‘ridiculous
reasons.’”

“Sirius played a prank. That was all he did. He made some of your mind-
warpers believe that their spells on Muggles had failed.” Potter’s eyes were
alight with hatred, and Tom wished that he could make them light up with
enthusiasm instead. “A prank, and he had to run.”

“Do you know what would happen if the Muggles became widely aware of our
world, Mr. Potter? Do you know—”

“I know that the Obliviators worked fine, when they still existed.”

Tom sneered. The boy might be appealing in some ways, but he was still
irredeemably stubborn and obviously hadn’t paid as much attention to some
versions of history as he had to Tom’s voting record. “Perhaps you should study
the reason an overwhelming tide of votes swept me into office.”
“That would be called voter suppression, Mr. Riddle.”

Tom lost his sternness to a snort of laughter before he could stop himself. Potter
watched him, still a wild creature, ready to strike in a way that Tom wished he
could talk him out of.

“Is it?” Tom asked. “What techniques do you think I used to suppress voters,
Mr. Potter, instead of encourage them to vote the way I wanted?”

“Encouraging them to vote the way you wanted is suppression!”

“No, it is not,” Tom said patiently. “I presented my own history with the
Muggles, and many people were sympathetic to that. Would you say that is
suppression? Telling the truth? I recall that Albus Dumbledore bent the truth,
when it suited him.”

“You told the voters about your history, of course,” Potter said. “But you lied.
Not everything you said happened did.”

“Oh, really? Do you want to tell me what is false in the history I should know
because it is my history, Mr. Potter?”
“You said that the matron there hated you just because you were magical.
That’s ridiculous. Muggles hate us when we’re cruel to them. They don’t hate
us just because. It’s a stupid, exaggerated story that you manipulated to suit
your own ends.”

Tom whirled his magic up around him, a crackling mass of lightning that he
expected to send Potter cowering and weeping into a corner. Potter’s magic
answered, and he looked as if he was going to charge Tom and stab him in the
eye with his wand if he couldn’t do anything else.

That persuaded Tom to speak instead of striking. Most of the time, he would not
allow anyone to deny or mock such a painful part of his life, one that had nearly
led him to consider himself mad and seek means to erase the soul-mark he had
been born with before his attackers had burned it off. But most people were
afraid of him and sniveled when they saw so much as a tenth of the magic
dancing around him now. Potter deserved more consideration simply for the
blaze of courage in his eyes.

“Tell me,” Tom said, and made his voice a tolling bell. “How much experience
do you have of Muggles?”
“I’ve met my friend Hermione’s parents. You exiled her, too. And I know that
my mum has Muggle relatives.”

“But you’ve never met them, have you?” Tom goaded quietly. As a matter of
fact, he had done research on Lily Potter’s relatives not long after she had run,
in case she ever fled to them. What he had learned had convinced him that she
never would. Mrs. Cole was worse than they were, but only slightly.

“No. What does that matter? I know that your quest to paint all Muggles as evil
and dangerous means—”

“Your mother’s family is full of people who value being normal so much that
they tell everyone your aunt’s sister died in a car crush. They say that she was a
whore, and that your father was a drunkard. They haven’t told anyone about
you. They didn’t even tell your cousin. If you showed up on their doorstep, your
aunt would scream, your uncle might seize a gun, and your cousin would stare
at you blankly and not know who you were.”
Potter breathed in harshly. Then he said, “And you think that all Muggles are
like that?”

“I think that enough of them are that we must keep the knowledge of magic
from them at all costs,” said Tom. He was speaking with more raw violence
than he would have most of the time, but then again, he wouldn’t lure Potter in
with the polished political speeches that he used to the Wizengamot, either. And
he would like to lure him if he could. This much power and passion could be
harnessed. “For example, did you know that Muggles have prejudices based on
skin color?”

He got a blank stare and a “What?” from Potter.

Tom smiled. “You went to school with Blaise Zabini, did you not, Potter?”

“Yes, what about him?” Potter was watching Tom’s wand as if assuming that
this was all a diversion and he would attack when Potter was off-guard. That
wasn’t a bad idea, actually. But Potter seemed confident he could cripple Tom,
and Tom would watch and wait. “He was a pure-blood Slytherin. Bit of a prat.”

“In the Muggle world, there are people who hate people like Mr. Zabini for the
color of their skin.”

“That makes no sense—it sounds like the way you hate Muggles just for not
having magic.”
Tom gritted his teeth. But he said, “It is the truth. I will swear any oath you like.
The Muggle world contains violent prejudices and hatreds that make no sense
and speak to how fundamentally unreasonable they are.”

Potter’s nostrils flared. “Then it sounds like wizards and Muggles are even more
alike than I thought.”

Tom surged forwards and swung his magic like a whip at Potter. Potter’s magic
answered, and Tom caught his breath as he ended up standing sideways to
Potter, holding that implacable green gaze, while power swirled between them.
Potter had been right. He could strike hard and deep, and Tom would win, but
he would walk with a permanent limp, or lose a hand or an eye. And he could
not afford such weakness in the judgment of the world.

From the malicious way Potter’s lips curled up, he knew exactly what Tom was
thinking and was amused by all of it. Tom drove away all of his anger in a soft
breath and said, “Perhaps we can make a different deal instead, Mr. Potter.”

“Tell me.”

“I assume, from the way you reacted when the ceiling cracked, this was not an
Order plot that you had foreknowledge of.”

Potter’s magic tightened around himself in a glittering carapace that told Tom
the answer even before Potter twitched his head. “No.”

“Then you might be willing to work with me.” Tom softened his voice. He
was good at this. Of course, Potter could resist and get angry, but that might not
matter much, not if Tom could handle him carefully enough. And Potter was an
asset worth handling carefully. “You might be willing to see the ones who
did that brought to justice, and some of the others—pardoned.”

“You said yourself in that speech you gave two years ago that you never pardon
anyone. You said it would make it look like justice in the wizarding world
depends on who you’re related to. As if it doesn’t already, of course, but I
thought it was a pretty speech.”

Through the buzz of his own irritation, Tom couldn’t help but feel flattered. Not
even his political opponents paid that much attention to his words—which was
to his advantage since it made it easier to run circles around them, of course, but
sometimes a wizard wanted someone who did pay attention.
“Everyone knows that political situations change,” Tom breathed, his eyes not
moving from Potter’s face. “And I have pardoned those whose crimes turned
out to be exaggerated or—not as bad. Perhaps we could reopen the investigation
into your parents’ crimes. What were they made fugitives for?”

Holy shit, he signed the order that would have stripped them of their
possessions and their freedom and he doesn’t know?
But Harry’s annoying habit of thinking through arguments so he could use them
against Riddle worked against him now. To be fair to Riddle, this wasn’t the
center of his life the way it was of Harry’s. Of course Harry knew every details
of his parents’ and Sirius’s cases while to Riddle, they were just more
paperwork.
But he didn’t want to be fair to Riddle. And if the man signed so many arrest
warrants that he lost track of the most prominent names, didn’t that signal that
something in their world needed to change?

Now, though…

Harry wondered what would make the man faithful to any promise that he made
to Harry, when he probably wouldn’t be faithful to one made to his political
constituents—unless they were pure-bloods—but he did have to admit that he
didn’t like what Dumbledore had done, at all. And if his position was blown and
he couldn’t flee to the Order, his best bet would be to find out
something really important and make an escape once Riddle trusted him some
more.

The thought was more tempting than it should have been, pulling at him like a
hook.

Remember what happens to hooked fish, Harry, he chided himself, and studied
Riddle slowly, looking for the telltales of a lie that Dumbledore had drilled him
in. He didn’t see any of them, but then again, Riddle had always been
annoyingly hard to read, too. Harry forced himself to relax. “I don’t think that
you’re really going to move against Dumbledore if you didn’t in the past.”

“I might not have to now, either.” Riddle gave him a pleased smile that made
him look like an eagle. “My Aurors brought in the magical signature analysis
from the outside of the building. Dumbledore’s magical signature was only on
one part of it.”

Harry stared at him blankly. “What?”

“The spell that was meant to keep me from using magic to stop the collapse,”
Riddle went on, ignoring Harry’s gape. “That was his, oh yes. But everything
else? No. Multiple, powerful wizards, all working together with him.” He took a
step away, clasping his hands behind his back and looking every inch the
politician for a moment. “None of them recognizable, either. But then, the spells
to track magical signatures so well were only perfected within the last five
years, and I believe most of the Order went on the run long before that?”

“No. I…” Mum and Dad wouldn’t be part of something like this. Sirius
wouldn’t. Remus might be estranged from everyone, but he wouldn’t be part of
it, either.

“Your parents and godfather are not the only members of the Order, Harry. Not
the only ones who believe in their cause.” Riddle’s voice was low and insidious,
winding into Harry’s thoughts like fouled water flowing into a stream. “Think
of it. This was a plan to kill multiple innocent people. Let us leave aside the
question of my own innocence for a moment. And your own beloved
Headmaster was willing to see them die.”

Harry closed his eyes. It was what he hadn’t wanted to confront, even when he
thought Headmaster Dumbledore was the only one who’d worked the magic on
the building. That they were willing to sacrifice so many lives, all the Aurors
and reporters in that room, to murder Riddle.

But Harry found his tongue from somewhere, sluggish as it was. “Professor
Dumbledore would say that the people in that room with you are war criminals
since they’ve aided you.”

“War criminals for writing articles? War criminals for arresting people who had
nothing to do with any absurd political agenda of mine? For protecting people
against Dark wizards?”

“I—” Harry looked away. “I didn’t say that I believed that. I’m telling you the
argument he would use.”

“Ah. And is there a struggle going on in your heart, young Harry? Who should
you believe, the man who mentored you and turned you into a spy and means
the world to you? The man who also turned children into Order of the Phoenix
members so young that they’ve remained loyal to him
through nine or thirteen years on the run? Or me, the evil man that your
Headmaster raised you to fear and hate? The man who cannot commit war
crimes because there is no war?”
Riddle’s voice cracked like his magic had earlier, reaching for Harry’s soul, and
Harry jerked out his answer without thinking. “You’re going to launch a war
any day now! You want to torture and kill Muggleborns.”

Riddle stared at him. “What?”

“You pander to all the pure-bloods who want that! You give them prominent
positions in your government! You make sure that they get their voices heard in
the Wizengamot—”

Riddle laughed like a raven. “And for how many years have I been doing that,
Harry? Longer than you’ve been alive, long before I was Minister. If I’ve been
balancing them and indulging them for fifty years, where is this war that
Dumbledore predicts so ardently? Do you think that I would have planned this
long when my only real opposition is a bunch of hotheaded idiots and one old
man?”

“You could be trying to take people off-guard.”

Riddle snorted, then, not something that Harry had ever pictured him doing. The
elegant man in his head, the epitome of pure-blood pride, wouldn’t even know
what such a plebian noise sounded like. “I wouldn’t have needed fifty years for
that. No, Harry, this is a game. I want power and security for myself, and I
intend to have it. I balance the pure-bloods because they are rich and entrenched
and part of the game. They dance to my tune. A half-blood’s tune, or have you
forgotten, you who know so much about my background? It’s one of the most
satisfying things about this, I have to admit.”

Harry shook his head. “A game. That’s horrible. You’re playing with people’s
lives, beliefs—”

“As they would play with Muggleborns if not properly leashed. I am doing the
work that your Headmaster never wanted to do, Harry. Stepping up to do the
leadership that other people only contemplate and complain about.”

Harry said absolutely nothing. He could see the way Riddle was trying to
play him, and he still wanted to reject it. The idea that Dumbledore’s ethics
were twisted, that he was also playing with other people’s lives, and that Riddle
was at least honest about it.

But did that make him any less horrible? Did that make him any less worthy of
being stopped, if he wasn’t actually planning a war?
The answer sounded like a bell from the furthest depths of Harry’s soul.

Yes.

If Riddle wasn’t the kind of monster Harry had always been taught to think he
was, it did change things. And it left Harry with a lot to think about, at the very
least.

“This doesn’t mean I’m suddenly on your side,” he told Riddle, opening his
eyes and glaring at the man. He gave his magic a warning rattle. The man liked
snakes, he ought to appreciate that.

Riddle smiled at him. “Give me a chance to convince you, Harry. Stay with me
and watch me work. We can spread the word that you’re my bodyguard in case
our enemies attempt something else like this. You’re obviously the second most
powerful wizard currently working with the Ministry.” Riddle’s smile altered
then, becoming something more familiar from the months that Harry had
watched him. “And we can see about you retaking those tests, and admitting to
the truth of what you are. Perhaps exams as well?”

Harry groaned. Still, hope pulsed in him. There was still the chance that he
could get useful information for the Order, or escape at some point. Bound to
the Minister’s side and watched was still better than imprisoned in Azkaban or
dead.

“You’d better not make me regret this,” he muttered to Riddle.

To his shock, he found that he believed Riddle when the man clasped his hand
and said, “I would consider it a personal failure if you did, Harry.”

What Tom said to Harry was nothing less than the truth. He had never failed in
converting anyone he set his sights on. It would irk him to no end if he did this
time and lost someone whose magic sang around him like this.

And something else was the truth, too, something he would never say,
something that he buried as deeply inside him as the knowledge of Nagini’s
existence.

What a pity that he is not my soulmate.

Chapter 4: Complications
Chapter Text

“I feel sick,” Lily whispered, her hands wrapped tight around her wand. She and
James were sitting in a tent in the Order’s encampment and listening to the
sound of rushing water outside. There was always rushing water outside, even
though they hadn’t camped near a river. Frankly, Lily was getting sick of it, too.

But the nausea that had consumed her right now was of another order. And she
couldn’t get rid of it by just standing up and moving around.

“You know that Albus had—good intentions.” James put a hand on her
shoulder. He was speaking as though his jaw was about to crack, though.

Lily said nothing, staring blindly ahead. The golden walls of their tent billowed
up and down in the gentle breeze. She wanted to scream and kick something.
She wanted to fling her wand into the air and run away from it.

She and James had put together the spells Albus had asked for in good faith, and
Albus had stored them in a potions vial, the way he’d learned how to do, in
order to release them later. Neither she nor James had known that—

Lily closed her eyes, and James made a soothing noise behind her and kissed
her forehead.

Neither one of them had known that the spells, put together, would come close
to killing their own son.

“Things worked out,” James breathed into her ear, with that optimism Lily had
always loved. She had lost it herself, especially after their fifth year and what
had happened with Severus. “You know that Albus isn’t going to try something
like that again.”

Lily flung herself to her feet and turned around, nearly striking James, who
stepped back and stared at her in dismay. “No, he won’t,” Lily snapped. “But
only because this failed! Not because he’s changed his mind about trying to kill
Riddle!”

James swallowed and sat down on the chair she’d stood up from. Lily turned
and walked to the tent flap, leaning against a carved harp that she had always
meant to learn to play. She’d made it during their first year on the run, and she’d
pictured herself playing delicate, rippling music on the day that they won the
war and came out of exile. She had pictured Harry’s face when he heard it.
He would never hear it now. Either because Riddle would kill him, or because
Harry would turn away from her and his father in horror when he learned what
they’d done.

Lily shut her eyes, but it didn’t matter. Tears still leaked from beneath the lids,
and James shuddered in pain. Lily could feel it without turning. Their bond was
always active, like that, always the bond of joined, fulfilled, fourfold love.

It was why they’d been able to put together the spells Albus asked for, and why
the signature-tracking spells Riddle’s Ministry wielded would have trouble
finding them. The signature of two soulmates acting together read very
differently from actions they took on their own, and the magic that tracked
magical signatures at all was so recent an invention that the Ministry hadn’t
learned how to account for that yet.

Sooner or later, though, Harry would have to learn the truth. How would he
look at them then? Would he even look at them? Or would he never speak to
them again?

The nausea in Lily’s belly squirmed faster.

“We did what we thought was right,” James whispered. “And the last thing we
heard, Harry hadn’t been found out as Riddle’s soulmate. You know that
bastard would have announced it that he’d found what he was looking for at
last. Probably be planning the fucking wedding right now, too. That means he’s
alive. That means he hasn’t betrayed us, either, and we can explain it to him
someday.”

Lily shook her head a little. “We shouldn’t have to explain it to him, James! We
never should have endangered him in the first place!”

James wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the top of her head. The
bond between them trembled with tension, and Lily doubted they would agree if
she kept trying to force him to see her side. She relaxed back against him,
staring out the flap of the tent. The glint of sunlight off the golden trees and the
waterfall nearby didn’t cheer her up.

“We can’t go back in time and change the past,” James murmured. “All of
Albus’s best people haven’t figured out how to do that. We can only move
forwards and hopefully send a message to Harry when he’s alone.”

“When will he be, though? You know the Ministry will probably be watching
his post now, and we can’t guarantee that a Patronus would find him alone.”
Lily knew when her husband was grimacing. “You realize that we’re probably
going to have to use Sirius’s talent.”

“I don’t entirely trust Sirius to get to Harry without trying to play a prank
somewhere.”

“You know that he’s been raging ever since he heard about Riddle taking Harry
captive. We’ll explain it to him and emphasize that he’s our best hope. He likes
being depended on, you know.”

Lily sighed and let her head tilt back. James’s shoulder was solid and waiting
for it, as always. He smoothed his hand over her hair, and Lily gazed into the
world that the Order had opened a portal to and just hoped that he was right.

“You mean to say that one person prevented the roof from falling on the
Minister and all the rest of the people he had around him?”

Peter put down the buttered scone in front of him and turned to face Minerva,
raising his eyebrows. He hadn’t paid much attention to the papers or even
gossip in the past few days, caught as he was in the middle of a pile of
Transfiguration essays. The first ones assigned in a new term were always hard.

Minerva’s mouth was grim as she stared at the front page of the Prophet. When
she saw Peter looking, she held the paper out.

Peter was glad that he hadn’t put the scone in his mouth, since he choked at the
picture of the boy on the first page. It was definitely Harry, despite the fact that
the photograph was in black-and-white and hadn’t captured the intense green of
his eyes. Peter didn’t think he knew anyone else in the world with a jaw that
stubborn.

He read the headline and then the article and felt numb. He handed the paper
back to Minerva and stared at the breakfast he had no appetite for.

“Peter? Are you all right, dear boy?”

Only from Minerva could he tolerate that kind of address. Although, Peter
noticed as his eyes went past Minerva to the chair that Albus usually sat in, it
seemed that he would have only one person here today who would try to say it
anyway.
“Sorry, it’s just a shock,” he murmured. “To know that a student I had, and the
son of one of my dearest friends, did this—I never saw a glimpse of that power
when he was here as a student. Did you?”

“No.” Minerva regarded the paper again, with a slight shake of her head. “He
would sometimes have a fluke of power in his NEWT-level Transfiguration
classes, but I’m sorry to say that his exams were most disappointing. An
Acceptable in Transfiguration, when his father was capable of so much more.
And he got a Poor in most other subjects, you know. The ones he was taking. It
wasn’t many because of the OWLS that he didn’t pass.”

“Then—you think he hid it deliberately?” That shocked Peter a little. But when
he thought about it, well, maybe it wasn’t so strange. He and Sirius and James
had successfully hidden that they were Animagi from most people at that age,
and Remus had hidden his secret until that dreadful night in the tunnel.

“I suppose so, but I can’t imagine why. He could have been promoted away
from that lowly position he has right now if he hadn’t!”

Unless that was the point, Peter thought, chilled, and staring at the stubborn
face. To stay hidden and out of the way until the time was right.
Right for what, though? Peter’s first thought was assassination, but Harry had
actually saved the Minister from assassination. And he hadn’t made an effort to
get close to Riddle, anyway, like a skilled actor could have.

“But I suppose we’ll be seeing Mr. Potter soon and we can ask him for
ourselves,” Minerva continued, sounding almost as if she was talking to herself.

Peter blinked. “What? But why would someone it says the Minister has
recruited for a bodyguard come here?”

“They think he was faking his results on the OWLS and NEWTS. They want
him to retake them, and you and I to administer them. Apparently they’re afraid
of corruption in the Wizarding Examination Authority, or incompetence, since
they didn’t spot his deception the first time.”

“Neither did we.”

Minerva gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Well, you know the bias Minister
Riddle has in favor of Hogwarts professors. That has pretty much always
existed.”
Peter nodded. Yes, it had, and Hogwarts had benefited from the time and
attention and money Riddle had seen fit to lavish on it. He gave another glance
at the photograph in the paper, and wondered what he should do if Harry
approached him and begged for Peter’s help in hiding his power again.

Somehow, Peter didn’t think it would be wise to give him that help.

“Don’t you enjoy seeing Hogwarts again, Harry? I believe that you were a
Gryffindor. Can you point out the seventh-year boys’ windows to me from
here?”

Harry kept silent. Riddle was teasing him, of all things, walking easily beside
him as they made their way towards the doors of Hogwarts, and glancing up and
down as though he was really interested in windows, and Gryffindors, and
Harry.
Of course, Harry had listened to enough Ministry gossip—plentiful even in the
Department of Magical Games and Sports—to know how this worked. Riddle
was happy to entice people to his side this way. Make it seem like he cared
about them and was interested in their interests, and people seemed to fall over
like piles of cards for it.

That was one reason Harry had chosen to concentrate on Quidditch the way he
had. He was absolutely certain that Riddle would never overcome his disdain
enough to chatter at Harry about it.

“How can I maintain a good rapport with my bodyguard when he doesn’t talk to
me?” Riddle’s voice was low, but less teasing than before, as they came into the
entrance hall.

“Oh, I’m more of the strong silent type.”

Riddle laughed. Harry turned to stare at him, ignoring the way that students
passing up and down the corridors stared at them in return. Some people were
whispering, and the name “Riddle” was prominent there. The stone-faced
Aurors walking behind them stared straight ahead.

It was still less remarkable than the way Riddle had laughed. Harry found
himself eyeing the man suspiciously, and Riddle smiled at him like a fox.

“What was the purpose of saying that, if not to amuse me?”

“To put you off,” Harry said, too unbalanced not to be honest.

He could have lived with the flickers that produced in the faces of the Aurors
around him, but Riddle had the gall to give him a much more slow and
thoughtful smile. “You continue to do this even though your position has been
discovered and we are actually hear to make you take honest exams,” he
murmured to Harry, his voice low and unpleasantly—something. “Is it force of
habit? Or do you truly believe you can make me lose interest in you now?”

“Minister Riddle.”

There was only one person that could be, who would say the title in that
freezing tone of voice, and Harry happily grabbed hold of the implied
permission to back the hell away from Riddle. He smiled up at Professor
Dumbledore as the man descended a few steps. Yes, he had done something
Harry would have to think about the morality of, but at least Harry knew it
wasn’t personal. Dumbledore had had no idea he was there. “Hello, sir.”

Dumbledore’s somewhat pale face warmed a little at the sight of him. “Hello,
dear boy.”

“Of course you would be close,” Riddle said, standing to the side of the bottom
step where he could watch everyone. “The former Head of Gryffindor House,
and the child of two of the most prominent Order members…it makes sense.”

“Now, Tom,” Headmaster Dumbledore said, without batting an eye. “No one
has ever proven that I know a thing about the whereabouts of James and Lily
Potter. Or Sirius Black, for that matter.”

Harry hid a grin. It was true. The Order had used the magic of its bonded
members, like his parents, to open a portal to another world where they could
live in peace, and the only ones who knew anything about the location of the
portal or what lay on the other side were the ones who had opened it.

“I shall remember this.”

Harry ignored Riddle and took a few steps up to talk to Dumbledore. Riddle
probably meant to be threatening, assuring Harry that he would remember him
laughing at Dumbledore’s jokes and the like. But that only showed how
insecure he really was, how every little gesture of someone not completely
subordinated to him was a threat to his power. He was probably jealous.

Such a weakling, really, in soul. Fate was mad to pair me with him.
*

Tom watched closely as Harry engaged with Albus, his face open and his voice
light and teasing. Albus said something that Tom couldn’t hear, behind them as
he was. Harry laughed aloud and shook his hair back as he answered it, his
words audible for a moment.

“Nothing that I couldn’t handle, sir.”

The openness and the unfeigned respect supported Tom’s suspicions. Albus had
known the true extent of Harry’s power, and had placed him as a mole in the
Ministry, had probably been one of his mentors as well. Somehow, he had won
the loyalty of a powerful wizard without really trying.

Tom shook his head. No, he knew the tactics that Albus had chosen, and he
even used them himself, at times, on people who had come to him young
enough, or those who were related to his loyalists. The one difference between
those people he bent to his will and Harry was the amount of power.

Powerful wizards were meant to strike off on their own and do what they
wanted to. The ones who became powerful only because of fulfilled soul-bonds
were different. They functioned as a unit, and they were prone to following the
leaders they already respected, because they couldn’t imagine the necessity of
standing alone.

But Harry had no soulmate, and he had ridiculous levels of magical strength.
Tom wondered what particular arguments Albus had chosen to convince him.

“Ah, here we are. The testing room.”

Tom exchanged a cool smile with Minerva McGonagall as she came forwards
with a sheaf of parchment that must be the Transfiguration NEWT. He had
never much liked her, but on the other hand, she had been a good Head of the
Transfiguration Department since he had begun to expand the school, and she
knew her subject matter. So did Peter Pettigrew, behind her, who had the
parchment for the Transfiguration OWL.

“The procedure is irregular, of course,” Albus was saying, with the same
irritating cheer that he used to discuss everything, including why he thought it
unlikely that Tom would find his soulmate. “We will be conducting abbreviated
versions of the exams, which would otherwise take too much time, and relying
mostly on the practical.”
Harry jerked to a stop and lifted his head like a wolf. Tom admired the line of
his throat. He had slept with enough other people to make it good for his
soulmate when he found them, and Harry was handsome.

Especially when he was taken unawares.

“What?” Harry asked slowly. “But I thought the largest portion of the mark
came from the written portion of the exam.”

“Well, of course, there are exams that consist entirely of a practical portion,
such as the one for the Apparition license,” Tom said. Harry turned to face him,
his eyes full of that banked fire that Tom couldn’t get enough of. “Given that
precedent, and the fact that you achieved such a low mark last time, I think it
highly probable that you get anxious on written exams. Aren’t I right, Mr.
Potter? So we decided to cut the written portion back and concentrate on the
practical one, to give you a fair chance to show what you can do.”

Harry looked as if he was going to snarl. Tom might have wanted him to do it if
they were alone. As it was, they had an audience, and Tom smiled pleasantly
and with visible concern, and Harry had to choke back what he wanted to say or
risk looking strange and ungrateful.

“Thank you, Minister Riddle,” Harry wrestled himself into enough submission
to say. His eyes kept blazing, and Tom smiled himself, in what the others would
probably take as graciousness, but what they would both know as delight. He
wanted to always be able to see Harry’s eyes and face when they spoke. “I—I
don’t have anxiety about written tests, though. I understand the effort you’ve
gone through to let me retake the exams, and I don’t want to ask people to
rewrite the questions, but could we shift the balance of the mark? So that most
of it comes from the written portion instead? I just don’t want anyone to say that
I had an unfair advantage.”

He had tried, Tom would give him that. It made Tom more inclined to be truly
gracious, given the amount of entertainment he was getting out of this.

“Now, Mr. Potter,” he said, “I think that the question of unfair advantage is
rather out the window here, given the circumstances that led to this. Wouldn’t
you agree? That you are able to retake the exams at all is an allowance on the
Ministry’s part.”
Rather than ending in a cell as an Order spy. But the best part of the dynamic
between him and Harry was that he hardly needed to say it. Harry only jerked
his head briefly, like a horse testing the pull of the reins.
Then he turned to Minerva and Pettigrew. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me,
professors. It’s just a little nerve-wracking, knowing I have to do this all again
when most people get it out of the way when they’re teenagers.”

“If you had been honest about your skill the first time, Mr. Potter,” said
Minerva as she laid down the parchments in front of her, “then you wouldn’t be
in this position. We are glad that Minister Riddle did see that your innate talent
should give you another chance.”

Oh, yeah, so fucking lucky.

Harry had been planning to eke out an Acceptable again, because the written
portion was always so much easier to fake than the practical one. Sure, he’d
made it work the first time around with the Wizarding Examination Authority,
but they hadn’t been expecting anything of him and they weren’t his regular
professors. That meant they really had no idea what he would be doing or
should be doing when it came to classwork.
Now, confronted with professors who had known and Riddle, who expected it,
Harry could feel sweat gathering under his hairline. This was going to
be so much harder.
But then he shook his head and settled down in front of the written portion. So
what if Riddle thought he was powerful? Riddle already thought he was
powerful. Harry was still keeping the most important secret, the one etched on
his wrist.

And he had put up with the disappointment of his professors already, when he’d
got an Acceptable on both OWL and NEWT. This wouldn’t be anything new.

He picked up his quill, and Riddle abruptly stepped forwards and said, “If you
would excuse us for a moment, professors? I have something I would like to
talk with Mr. Potter about.”

“Of course,” said Professor McGonagall immediately, and stepped back. Peter
moved with her, his eyes fixed on Harry, an odd, undefinable yearning in them.
Harry ignored the way that made his back bristle. He had never been sure if
Peter was trustworthy or not. His parents seemed to think different ways, and
trade positions pretty often.

“Surely nothing you say can be a surprise to me, Tom,” said Dumbledore, with
a friendly smile.
Riddle smiled back at him without showing any teeth and raised a complicated
privacy charm around them with a single turn of his wrist. Dumbledore did
nothing but fold his hands behind his back and look out the nearest window,
humming a little tune. Harry sighed in helpless admiration. He wished he was
that strong. Magical power had nothing to do with being able to keep your
temper under circumstances like this.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry started and turned to Riddle. Now his smile had teeth, but it looked
strained. Harry wondered what he had to feel that way about when he was in
control of every variable here.

“Yes, sir?” he asked. He worked to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

“I am sure that you know the conversation we had the other day, about possibly
ensuring that your parents and godfather were pardoned for their crimes, is
conditional. This is one of the conditions.”

Harry stared at him. Doing well on the exams—what? Riddle continued to

surprise him, but he also reminded Harry more and more of what Dumbledore
had said about the man. No one who played the kinds of games he did could
possibly be sane, it involved so much changing of one’s mind and tricky
balancing.

That remained true, Harry thought, even if Riddle was playing a different kind
of game than the Order believed.

“Conditional on you doing well on these exams, Mr. Potter. Do you understand
me?”

Riddle even sounded irritated at having to state it out loud, which caused
sickness to churn in Harry’s belly. What had happened to the man who rejoiced
in being smarter than anyone else? The evidence that Harry was so dim should
have cheered him up.

“I always assumed it was conditional, sir. To the point that I don’t think it will
happen.”

Riddle blinked. Once, twice, several times. Harry wished there could be
someone to witness this rare sight, but Dumbledore was still looking out the
window and the other professors were chatting quietly about something, faces
averted.
“You distrust me with a fervor I have not encountered in some time, Mr.
Potter,” Riddle said finally.

“You don’t keep your promises to people like me,” Harry told him. “Someone
who has power or can trade favors with you? Of course. Not people like me, the
son and godson of fugitives and someone who lied to you.”

“But you have power.”

Harry sighed in disgust. “Not much compared to you, or even to some of your
followers who have those fourfold soul-bonds. I wish I could ask you just what
you wanted of me, Riddle, but I suppose that you wouldn’t answer me
honestly.” He turned and sat down at the desk behind the parchments again.

“Magical power can be stronger in many cases than political favors or money.
So can the power of my having my good will.”

Harry said nothing and continued to work. Riddle clucked his tongue and ended
the privacy charm, stepping away.

Harry supposed that he couldn’t completely throw the exams the way he’d
intended. But he would make sure that he only got an Exceeds Expectations or
something like that. Whatever goal Riddle intended to prove with these tests,
Harry wasn’t going to let him have it.

The exams themselves might not be important, but Harry thought he knew why
Riddle was treating them that way. This was a test, of Harry’s obedience and his
openness to persuasion. Do well on them, and Riddle would pile on the praise,
the enticements.

Time to show him I can’t be corrupted that way.

“You’re remarkable, Mr. Potter.”

For some reason, Harry’s shoulders went up around his ears when Tom said
that. He continued to walk briskly towards the Apparition point outside the
gates of Hogwarts. Tom kept pace with him, studying his profile.

Harry’s responses made sense for someone who had been trained to be a spy
and a member of the Order of the Phoenix for a long time—trained to distrust
him. But something was still off, Tom was certain. Spies could bask in praise. It
might even have been wise for Harry to do so, now that Tom had figured him
out. If Tom was trying to lure him in, he might do the same thing, and bolt with
important information once Tom lowered his guard around him.

Harry, though, acted as though notice and praise and the gift of being able to
take his exams over again and move up in the Ministry were thorns instead of
roses. Punishments instead of opportunities. Tom couldn’t figure out how that
served the Order’s mission, either before or after he had spotted what Harry was
up to.

What are you hiding, Harry Potter?

Unfortunately, Tom could think of too many things, given that this was the
Order of the Phoenix they were talking about. It jangled his nerves, not to be
able to divine more about someone who had belonged to the most unsubtle
House in Hogwarts and revealed himself in such an unsubtle manner.

So he moved on to another tactic he hadn’t planned to use until Harry trusted

him more. “You know, you don’t need to listen only to them,” he said softly.

“Apparently I do, since you put them in charge of reporting my exam results.”

“I wasn’t talking about the professors. I was talking about the people who’ve
indoctrinated you since you’ve been young.”

“I know. It’s so sad that you never got the chance.”

Tom slowly lifted his head. “Mr. Potter, you are treading on my nerves.”

Harry gave him a smile as brilliant as the phoenix on his arm. “Only treading? I
thought I would have reached the point of jumping up and down on them by
now.”

“You know that I have spared you only because of your—interesting

background and magical strength. Do you want to be in a cell?”

“I don’t want to be threatened. And you can’t threaten me one moment and then
act hurt that I mistrust you the next. What am I supposed to do? Believe half of
what you say?”

Of course, Tom wanted to say. The right half. Then again, he didn’t usually deal

with people like Harry. They were either loyal, they understood how the
political game was played and what words to listen to, or they were utter
enemies like Albus and there was no point in trying to charm or compromise
with them anyway.
Perhaps that means there is no point in trying to charm Harry.

But Tom would still like to have Harry on his side in truth. It might be partially
a point of pride in winning one of the Order’s assets away from them, but Tom
was not used to denying himself small things he wanted. He had been denied
the great thing—his soulmate—and saw that as enough sacrifice and privation.

“I have something I want you to see when we return to the office, Mr. Potter.”

“Looking forward to it, sir,” Harry replied, with a flinty expression and smile.

This should change his mind, Tom thought, as he stepped a little ahead and let
the bodyguard Aurors move in on him. And I look forward to seeing what his
expression is then.

Harry looked around in wary interest. They had taken a lift in the Ministry he’d
never seen before down to a floor he hadn’t known existed. Now they walked
through what seemed to be constantly shifting shadows—although Harry
couldn’t find the light source that made them shift—and the floor beneath their
feet was gleaming black marble.

“This way, Mr. Potter.”

Riddle was holding open a door that had the proper black dungeon look, made
of heavy ebony and carved with sneering gargoyle faces. Harry stepped past
him and found himself confronting a chaos of broken pieces of wood and glass.
He blinked. On the floor lay sand that was scattered around as if a giant child
had been playing here.

“What’s this?” Harry asked, because Riddle had shut the door behind them and
was standing there in silence. He was close enough that Harry could pick up the
faint smell of some kind of expensive shampoo. He longed to turn around and
hit the bastard in the throat.

Not that he could. Riddle had taken his wand without a word when they’d got
on the lift.

“The reason why your friends were going to be arrested, Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked again. Riddle had to be talking about Ron and Hermione, and this
had to be the Department of Mysteries. But that still didn’t say anything about
why this room had been left to look like a rubbish tip. “What are you claiming
they did?”

“Broke into a room that contained important research on time and smashed
everything they could get their hands on.” Riddle nodded at the sand spilled on
the floor. “This was once contained in Time-Turners, and powerful devices that
were meant to mimic them but allow further trips back in time. Did you know
that two of the Unspeakable conducting research have been missing since your
friends did that? We think they might be trapped in another time, or even a
frozen moment of it, but since Miss Granger thoroughly burned all the notes and
set a spell that destroyed all existing copies, we can’t be sure.”

“I—” Harry’s throat was thick and dry. All he had ever heard was that Ron and
Hermione had broken into the Department of Mysteries looking to stop some of
Riddle’s more dangerous research. What their mission had been, he hadn’t
known. Professor Dumbledore hadn’t thought it wise to pass on that information
in case Riddle did notice Harry and used Legilimency on him.

“They destroyed lives,” Riddle said. “They killed two people on their way out,
did you know? When they cast a spell to destabilize the walls and, I assume,
make the Unspeakables stop following them, and the walls collapsed.”

“They didn’t mean to,” Harry whispered. Murder horrified both Ron and
Hermione. It was why they had been willing to join the Order in the first place
and stop the imminent genocide Riddle was going to practice on Muggleborns
and Muggles.

The genocide he might not be planning after all.

But he’s still researching ways to wipe people’s minds, and the rest of it, Harry
reminded himself hastily. He lifted his head. “Perhaps that’s the kind of risk you
take when you do dangerous research for the government—”
“It was hardly dangerous, you fool.” Riddle’s voice was, though, when he hit a
note that low.

“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have used successful time travel to go back and
change things so that Professor Dumbledore never became Headmaster, or you
won the war,” Harry spat, turning around to face his damned soulmate. “Of
course it was—”
“Only your ignorance of the extreme theoretical unlikeliness of what you’re
claiming is allowing me to be patient with you right now.” Riddle stepped close,
breathing into his face and looming over him. Harry glared back. “It was
research, plain and simple. Dangerous only in the same way that all the devices
Unspeakables work with are dangerous. Your friends killed two people and
caused the disappearance of two more, not to mention set back the cause of
magical theoretical progress by a decade. They deserved their fate.”

“They don’t deserve to be on the run for the rest of their lives!”

“They would have endured perhaps three years in Azkaban if they had simply
surrendered when told to,” Riddle said. “That was before they did anything that
hurt someone or caused a disappearance. But no, they had to remain free to fight
‘the war,’ and so they acted.”

Harry closed his eyes and said nothing. The stillness of the room all around him,
the chaos and destruction, did make the Order look like terrorists, he knew.

But this was still Ron and Hermione they were talking about, friends he had had
since his first night in Gryffindor, people who were on the same side as he was.
He couldn’t betray them.

“Let us go,” Riddle said, voice as cold as iron. He turned and stalked out of the
room.

Harry followed him, trying to work up some gloating in his own mind. Not
impressed that your little plan didn’t impress me, huh?

But the sight of the room remained seared in the back of his mind, the silence
that might be filled with the silent screams of trapped victims in another time.

Chapter 5: Messages
Chapter Text

“Hey, boy. How are you?” Harry knelt down and ruffled Sirius’s ears as the big
black dog bounced up and down in front of him, barking.

The people who were passing him on the street gave Harry sideways glances,
but said nothing. They had got used to the way that he had adopted the “stray”
dog several years ago now. Given that only people in the Order had ever known
about Sirius’s Animagus talent, it was unlikely that anyone would guess what
he was actually doing.
“Mr. Potter, we should be packing up,” called Auror Yelson down the stairs that
led up to Harry’s flat. He was the leader of the Aurors that Riddle had assigned
to come to Harry’s home and “help him move.” “Do you want someone to find
a crate for that dog? Or do you have one?”

“He likes to wander around,” Harry said. “If he wants to come with me, then
he’ll find me at my new place. It’s not that far from the Ministry on the left side
of Diagon Alley, after all.”

Yelson sighed and went back to floating books into a trunk with a wave of his
wand. Harry felt Sirius bury his head against his chest, and ruffled his
godfather’s ears. “Be good, boy,” he whispered. Then he concentrated, and his
voice moved inside his head. What did you want to tell me?
Sirius’s tail wagged, once, and he gave a theatrical-sounding woof as he stood
up on his back legs and pawed at Harry’s shoulders for a second. His voice
came back, a soft thrum. This was a talent that nobody had known he had until
it manifested after Sirius went on the run, maybe because he was so desperate to
find a way to communicate with Harry and James. Mainly we wanted to be sure
that you were all right, but we wanted you to know that Dumbledore did set up
that assassination attempt. He had no idea you were there, though.
Harry sighed and ruffled Sirius’s ears again. I know that. I don’t blame him.
Sirius nuzzled closer, and his physical voice came out as a high whine, while his
mental one stuttered. I—I also need to tell you that Lily and James contributed
spells to that assault. And so did I. The kind that Albus stored and took away in
vials.

Harry swallowed slowly. He’d suspected that, and there was no reason for the
long, slow feeling like a pendulum swinging back and forth in his chest.

He was young, compared to them. He had always lived a life half in shadow,
given whose mark he had been born to carry on his wrist. He couldn’t know
exactly what had gone through their heads.

If they had thought that what Dumbledore did was right, and Harry disagreed
with them…did he only do that because he’d been in the building and was
letting his personal safety and sense of outrage overrule good arguments?

There was no answer in his mind, only the sensation like the pendulum
swinging.

Harry? Sirius lifted his head and licked Harry’s face, which didn’t make him
appreciate the slimy feeling of drool running down his cheek, but did shock him
out of the half-frozen trance that he’d been locked in.
“None of that, boy,” Harry murmured. I forgive you. I know you didn’t
endanger my life on purpose.

Sirius crowded closer. Harry stroked his fur down his back, and Sirius gave a
happy little whuffling sound. Harry had to smile. It was probably weird to relate
to his godfather like this, but on the other hand, Harry had been used to Sirius
appearing as a dog and the ways that he liked to be petted since he was a kid.

I want to ask one thing, he said abruptly, the thought of the room Riddle had
shown him in the Department of Mysteries burning in his head. Just to make
sure that Riddle can’t use my friends against me. Ron and Hermione killed
people when they broke into the Department of Mysteries?
They didn’t want to, Sirius said, and took the chance to sneak in another lick
down Harry’s cheek. They had to do something to make the Unspeakables stop
pursuing them, and unfortunately the tactic they chose brought the roof down.

Harry nodded and bade Sirius farewell after that. Yelson was already telling
him to come upstairs so that he could choose which clothes to take, the heavy
implication being that they weren’t going to take all of them.

Sirius bounded off, and no one indicated to Harry that they realized he had been
speaking with a human being in dog form instead of just a dog. One of the
Aurors did raise her wand with an offer to Stun Harry’s disobedient dog and
bring him back that way, but Harry just shook his head and said, “He’ll find me
when he needs me.”

Most of his being, even as he chose the robes and shirts and mechanically
defended his jeans against Yelson’s desire to burn them, was occupied with an
uncomfortable thought.

Riddle meant to kill people. It was obvious enough if you studied his voting
record the way Harry had done. Ron and Hermione hadn’t meant to.
Dumbledore had, but not people he thought of as innocent, the way Harry had
been.

What was worse, to announce that you meant to kill someone and then do it, or
to kill someone in violation of your stated principles?

“What’s wrong, Harry? You are very quiet.”

Harry glanced at Tom once and then turned away, stacking his books on a shelf
in the new flat Tom had found for him. So far, he hadn’t spoken a word of
gratitude for that. The shelves were wide and deep, the windows enchanted to
always show sunshine, and the bedroom so big that Harry’s bed looked rather
pathetic in it. Then again, with the wages he would soon draw from the
Ministry, he ought to be able to buy any furniture he liked.

“Did you not hear my question?” Tom added, when about five minutes had
passed and Harry hadn’t said anything. “I expect some expression of
acknowledgment.”

Harry nodded. Tom narrowed his eyes when nothing followed that except Harry
desultorily rearranging his books on the shelf.

“Well?”

“I nodded to acknowledge that I’d heard.” Harry’s voice was flat, uninterested,
not even challenging. That was what made Tom start to boil beneath his skin.
He caught Whipwood’s eye and jerked his head sideways.

Whipwood frowned at Harry and then at him. “Are you sure, sir?” she asked,
not bothering to lower her voice. “He could be very dangerous.”

“Totally,” Harry said, picking up a book and then dropping it again. “Very
dangerous. You should stay here and protect the Minister from my might.”

Tom caught Whipwood’s eye before she could launch into the diatribe that he
knew her opening mouth signified. “I am sure, Jalena,” he said, and the Aurors
all knew what it meant when he used their names like that. “If you would?”

Finally, she nodded and all the other Aurors filed out, although Whipwood went
last and kept looking back as though she expected him to countermand his
orders. Tom did not, and Whipwood finally sighed loudly and let the door bang
shut behind her.

“Now that we are alone,” Tom said, and he wasn’t above lowering his voice on
those words, “will not tell me what is troubling you?”

Harry jerked a little, as if fighting conflicting impulses, and stared at the shelf in
front of him. Tom moved around to the side. Harry’s face had gone almost
blank—a disconcerting sight when he was usually so open—but his lower lip
twitched. He saw Tom noticing it and got it under control.
“You’ve upended my life over the last few days, implied I was lying on my
exams and made me take them again—”

“You were lying,” Tom interrupted in a pleasant tone. The Wizarding

Examination Authority had put up a kind of squeaky fight over marking one set
of exams out of season, but Tom had reminded them at whose pleasure they
served and they had quieted down quickly enough. “Did you know that you
have an Outstanding on six of the subjects you retested on? Placing more of the
weight on the practical portions did show us what you can do.”

Harry hunched his shoulders. Tom wanted to shake his head. Praise was a blow,
personal attention from the Minister was undesirable, and invitations to explain
himself resulted in silence. What kind of twisted ideas had the Order of the
Phoenix fed Harry? Did he think he could go back to being a spy when Tom
never intended to let him go?

“That’s nice,” Harry finally said.

“I know you don’t believe it of me,” Tom said in a low, coaxing tone, moving
no nearer, “but my desire is to help you, Harry. You have great potential. I don’t
want to convert you all at once, but I want you to understand my policy choices
and my voting record, and give you the choice that your parents never did.”

Harry curled his lip, which was helpful insofar as it told Tom that his parents
were on his mind, but nothing more. Harry’s hands were steady as he moved
from the bookshelves to the framed photographs, which occupied only one box.
Tom watched as he set up a picture of himself standing next to a red-haired boy
and a girl with too much hair.

“They are your exiled friends?” Tom asked. “Weasley and Granger?” He did
remember that the Weasleys were all ginger.

“Yes.”

Harry went on putting up pictures. One was of him in his Gryffindor robes,
standing in front of Headmaster Dumbledore and smiling with a scroll in one
hand. There was also a medal pinned to the front of his robes. Tom squinted. “I
don’t recognize that particular honor.”

“Excellence in Quidditch.”

“Of course,” Tom drawled. “It’s amazing that you didn’t get the brains knocked
out of your head by the Bludgers.”
“You know I played Seeker?”

“I did revise your records when I looked up your exam results, Harry. And I
want to help you if you’ll let me.”

That got him a twitch of a shoulder and nothing else. The pictures continued to
go up. Some of them showed a much younger Harry with his arm around a man
who resembled Regulus Black, and a handsome couple cradling him close. Tom
stepped particularly close to a photograph that showed Lily Potter with Harry.
From the way Harry glanced at Tom, he wanted to object, but didn’t want to
break his silence even more.

Lily Potter had remarkable eyes. Harry had clearly inherited them. Tom
preferred to say nothing about that, though. Harry had probably heard the
remark enough to tire of it. “No pictures of you with someone you dated?” he
asked instead.

That got him a massive twitch, but Tom’s sense of victory was diluted by the
fact that he had no idea what made that question more personal than the others.
“Call me old-fashioned,” Harry said. “I don’t want to date anyone other than my
soulmate.”

“And you don’t have any idea who they are?” Tom asked. It was unusual for
someone to remain mateless as long as Harry had, unless circumstances like
Tom’s own intervened.

“Oh, I know.”

Tom waited, but Harry had retreated into that maddening silence. Now he
seemed to be involved in straightening the pictures so that all of them faced the
same direction, out into the room. Tom studied the angle of sight from the
photographs. Harry had put a chair in front of the fire, so he would see all of the
people he treasured and he could talk to them.

Tom continued, because the subtle art of conversation was obviously lost on
Harry. “And what happened? Did they find someone else they wanted to love
more?” It happened rarely, considering the prestige granted to soulmates in their
society and the possibility of fourfold bonds, but humans were unpredictable.

“No. I discovered that my soulmate would never accept me.”

Tom blinked. He concentrated most of the time he was around Harry now,
bringing his passive Legilimency to bear on every statement Harry uttered. That
hadn’t been a lie. Neither was the clear bitterness behind it. “But why not? Do
they understand your power? That you have the chance to be high up in the
government?”

Harry lowered his head to rest against the fireplace mantel for a moment. His
shoulders shook. Tom raised an eyebrow. Sobs or laughter? And would he ever
understand this deeply confusing man?

“The power would matter to them,” Harry admitted, drawing back. “But—they
would never accept me because of my blood. Because of my beliefs. I won’t
lower myself to begging a blood purist and someone who believes in everything
your Ministry does for acceptance.”

Tom stared at him. Soulmates usually shared deep beliefs. Magic, it was
generally accepted, knew what it was doing when it entwined two souls. “That
—is something you should perhaps discuss with your soulmate, Harry. Beliefs
can change. And blood matters less to many of us in the government than you
would think.”

“I still don’t want to pretend to be someone other than I am.”

“But why not? I think you rather excellent at it,” Tom said, and knew that his
words had hit home when he saw the crimson staining Harry’s cheeks.

“I’m so flattered that you think highly of me, sir.”

And the conversation died there. Tom made other observations and asked other
questions, but they won no response. Harry spoke respectfully to him as far as
using a title, and never said anything that sounded like rebellion, but Tom still
had to resist the impulse to slam the door of the new flat when he strode out.

He thought Harry was intelligent, but Harry refused every effort Tom made to
promote his rise or offer him advantages. He thought Harry was powerful, but
the man acted as though no one knew it even now and things would go back to
the past if he simply acted that way long enough. Harry must want his soulmate,
as most people did, but utterly refused to compromise principles that Tom
thought his soulmate would be all too willing to bend.

What a bundle of contradictions he is.

Tom shut the door of his office behind him when he reached it, and settled
down to study Lily and James Potter’s files. It was still possible that he could
reverse their banishment.
Given certain concessions from Harry, of course. And he would ignore the
small part of him that wanted those concessions (absurdly) to be freely given.

Harry wrapped his arms around his stomach and closed his eyes. Everything in
his mind hurt.

Sirius and his parents had nearly participated in killing him.

They hadn’t actually killed him. Or anyone else. They hadn’t known what

Dumbledore planned to do with those stored spells. But they had gone along
with it and hadn’t asked enough questions.

And the plan would have succeeded if not for the chance of Harry being there.

Harry felt like a traitor and the betrayed one all at once. The problem was, he
really wanted to talk with his parents and not communicate in a limited way
through Sirius, but any movement of a Patronus would be noted, he knew now.
And Riddle had left Aurors to watch over him.

Harry stood and moved in front of one of the enchanted windows, just to check.
Sure enough, a shadow flickered to follow him, an Auror in the shade of a
nearby shop turning to study the front of his flat. Harry exhaled and went back
to his chair to sit down, staring at his obliviously smiling and waving family
members and friends.

He wanted so badly to come up with a solution. He wanted to turn back time,

with the research that Ron and Hermione had destroyed, and just make himself
a useful spy for the Order and leave Riddle in ignorance of his existence.

He wished that Riddle was the kind of man Harry could have accepted for his
soulmate.

Harry raised his hand and rubbed the mark on his wrist. For a moment, the
black letters showed clearly through the tattoo of the shackles, the part nobody
ever touched because they were so focused on the enormous phoenix. Harry
held his wrist as if that would make things better, then sighed and dropped it.
No, it wouldn’t make things better.

And neither would sitting here and wishing that he lived in a different world.
If it came down to it, he still had to choose the side he had been raised with. Of
course he hadn’t had as many years with his parents and godfather as he should
have, but whose fault was that? Not theirs.
And yes, they had created a spell that had endangered people, but both his
parents and other members of the Order had explained over and over again how
little Harry knew. He had to know little, for his own protection and that of other
people. There were probably justifications, arguments, that made sense of
everything that he was missing.
Am I the sort of person who gets my head turned by pretty words from an
arsehole?

No, he wasn’t. Harry knew he must have flaws in his own soul, given that
magic or fate or whatever had paired him with that kind of arsehole, but he
could fight back against it, make his own sacrifice for the cause.

In the end, not having his soulmate, when his soulmate was such a berk, was
nothing like the exile the Order members had endured.

Not content, but settled enough to eat something, Harry stood up and went to
investigate the enormous kitchen he hadn’t wanted.

Peter slowly opened the letter that had arrived for him earlier that evening. He
hadn’t recognized the owl that brought it, but he had sensed, before he ever
touched the envelope, what it would contain.

Yes. This was Harry’s handwriting, made unforgettable by dozens of essays in

the three years Peter had taught him.

I know you can’t do anything about the results of the exams, because Riddle has
them already, but I would appreciate it if you would keep your mouth shut in
case the Aurors come and question you about anything else. Especially what
happened in third year.

Peter sighed and set the letter on the edge of his desk, then sat back, studying it.
The fire was burning low on his hearth. Neatly-marked stacks of essays
occupied the two chairs on the other side of his desk. Peter absently rubbed the
black-edged soul-mark on his right arm—a burning sword—and picked up the
tumbler of Firewhisky he’d been drinking before the letter arrived.

Third year…
Harry’s third year had been eleven years ago, but Peter still remembered it as
clearly as the light reflecting through the glass he held.

“Now, I can’t promise that all of you will achieve what I’m about to teach you
today.” Peter smiled as he watched a few faces fall. This mixed Gryffindor-
Ravenclaw class was among his favorites to teach. The Ravenclaws’ academic
intensity balanced the Gryffindor enthusiasm.

“It won’t be your fault,” Peter added. “This is such a difficult exercise that most
people won’t be able to master it in their lifetimes. Yes, Miss Granger?”

“Then why teach it to third-years, sir?” Granger asked, as her hand bobbed back
down to her side again. “Why not wait until later?”

“Because this is one way of detecting extraordinary talent early,” Peter said. “If
you are one of those who are able to master the Animagus transformation, I
want to know, so that I can help you and alert Professor McGonagall to give
you some extra training.”

Miss Granger’s face grew as intent as a Ravenclaw’s, and Peter nodded at her.
He didn’t know for sure if she was one of the people who would see a future
animal form today, but he knew she would try.

He waved his wand, and a sphere made of faceted green glass appeared on the
tables in front of each student. The Ravenclaws stirred, and Terry Boot muttered
something that sounded like, “We’re doing Divination?”
“In a way,” Peter said. He used the calm tone that had taken him years to
master, but shut his students up instantly. “You’ll speak the incantation I give
you without moving your wand. Then you’ll meditate on the glass and attempt
to draw a glimpse of the form to the surface.”

“How can we know that we’re seeing what’s there instead of a reflection or just
what we want to see, sir?”

Peter glanced thoughtfully at Harry Potter, who had his arms folded across his
chest as if he thought that he would have lock out the image of a dog or a stag.
“An excellent question, Mr. Potter. And it can be hard to tell. I will say that the
true image will be accompanied by an intense emotional sensation. It’s difficult
to describe, but nearly-impossible to mistake for anything else.”
Harry nodded after a moment. As Peter taught them the incantation, he made a
silent bet with himself that Harry would see a stag. He was closer to James than
to Sirius, after all, given that Sirius had fled into exile two years before.

But when he worked his way around to Harry’s crystal globe, Harry was
shivering and staring in front of him. Peter bent over to see it. He had cast
another incantation, wordlessly, at the beginning of the class that would enable
him to see the students’ projections. He would be the only one besides the
individual student who could. He had developed such spells early on in his
career; it let him reassure troubled or embarrassed students that their Animagus
forms were still a sign of talent, no matter how small or unexpected.

He gasped. The green-glowing reflection in Harry’s crystal ball was a snake. A

boomslang, if Peter was correct.

He turned to Harry in wonder, and stopped when he saw the look of absolute
dread on his face. “It’s all right,” Peter murmured. He was about to reassure
Harry that just because his Animagus form was a serpent, he didn’t have to be
upset—that the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin had no place here—
but Harry interrupted him.

“I don’t want you to tell him,” Harry said at once. “Can you keep it secret?” His
eyes were piercing, greener than the crystal ball, and Peter felt judged and held
as he only ever had under Albus’s gaze.

Peter hesitated a long moment. Most Animagus forms were mammals, which
made sense because humans were mammals as well. The next most common
were birds. Transfiguration theorists held that, although birds were only
distantly related to humans, they were also only distantly related to their
reptilian ancestors, and many wizards’ desire to fly could overpower that
distance.

Reptiles were the third most common, so not as rare as an insectile form, which
might only come along once in a generation. But serpents were the rarest of the
reptiles, probably because of their lack of limbs and many wizards’ wariness of
them.

More to the point, Minister Riddle required Transfiguration professors at

Hogwarts or private tutors to report any child who foresaw that they would have
a serpent form, so they could start training early. They were inducted, often the
moment they left school, into Riddle’s Serpent Guard, protecting important
people and artifacts in the Ministry and throughout the British Isles.
“You would be treasured,” Peter began.

Harry gave the bleakest laugh Peter had ever heard, one which made a few of
the concentrating students glare at him. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he
murmured, and then met Peter’s gaze.

Under that waterfall of desperation, Peter could only nod. Harry slumped back,
and told his friends later, when they asked, that he had seen a murky cloud and
had tried too hard to force it into the shape he wanted, leaving him with a
headache. Supposedly Peter had been trying to reassure him his parents would
still value him.

Peter had wondered, often, since that day, if he should have agreed. But the
sight of Harry’s eyes returned to him each time, and he had to be sure he had
made the right decision.

Now, though, with Harry’s letter in front of him…

Peter wrote a quick response. I will not volunteer anything I learned in the past.
But if they require me to participate in a test to see if you have an Animagus
form, I won’t hide it. You deserve to have your talents recognized and nurtured,
Harry.
Peter shook his head as he stood up with the letter in his hand. He wished
he had managed to convince Harry otherwise all those years ago. He might have
made his own life, without being in the shadow of his godfather—exiled
thirteen years ago—or his parents—exiled nine. How long, Peter had to wonder,
was Harry going to hide and pretend that he didn’t have some powerful magic
or a rare Animagus form, just because it would be more convenient for the
Order?
Or is that all it is? Now that he thought about it…Peter frowned. Harry’s magic
and Animagus form could have been convenient for the Order. They could have
placed a spy Riddle would never suspect closer to him than Harry had been in
the Department of Magical Games and Sports, and without the possibility of a
disastrous revelation like the latest one. Harry’s desire to stay far away seemed
to border on hysteria and have a different cause.

But in the end, despite running the ideas over in his mind, Peter had to admit he
had no idea what the cause of that hysteria could be. He walked up to the
Owlery and leaned on the cold stone as he watched the bird he had chosen wing
away.
I hope he doesn’t blame me too much, when all is said and done. I’m a teacher.
Who doesn’t want to see their pupils learn and grow?

*
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied.”

Albus stared at the thick vial of white liquid he held, and swallowed roughly. “I
have to be,” he whispered. “This is—not the kind of warfare I would have
wished to conduct, but he’s proven that we can’t destroy him through
conventional means.”

The figure resting swathed in thick black robes on the cot snorted hard enough
to disturb the flickering flame of the candle nearest it. “You still haven’t proven
that he needs to be destroyed at all. It’s not like he’s proclaimed himself a Dark
Lord and gone on a genocidal rampage.”

Albus flushed, and turned further away so the redness on his cheeks would
hopefully look to be from the fire. They were in a deep cave that even the
candles and the flames lit poorly. There was a chance. “I handled the one who
did that, too.”

The figure on the cot laughed. “And it took you so long to do it that he almost
won.”

“Why do you think I want to move more strongly on this one?” Albus snapped,
staring for a moment at his hands. “Getting the war stopped before it starts is the
action that makes the most sense.”

“Whatever you say,” the figure muttered, and then slumped back and began to
cough.

Albus sighed and reached for the vial of healing potion he’d brewed the day
before. He was getting tired of collecting the same ingredients and making the
same repetitive stirring motions, but it wasn’t as though he could entrust this to
anyone else.

“I want you to destroy the dummies that are across the room from us.”

“Yes, sir.”
Tom frowned as he watched Harry take up his position at a designated line in
the middle of the room, a thick one drawn on the floor with a Paint Charm.
Gone was the man who had challenged him in his office and analyzed his voting
record, but gone too was the boor who had spat crumbs all over himself at
Tom’s Public Day. This version had hunched shoulders and blank eyes and
watched the floor more than anything.

Tom knew the symptoms of the Imperius Curse, or he might have suspected
that. Then again, the exam results in Defense indicated that Harry was strong
enough of will to probably throw off the Unforgivable anyway.

Perhaps this is simply his true personality, the one hiding under all the
masks, Tom theorized to himself as he watched Harry blow the dummies up
with precisely-targeted and never-varying curses.
But Harry turned his head back towards Tom when he was done, and stood
there, and Tom couldn’t believe it. Not when the lines of his body had been so
defiant before, and were so slumped now. Not when his eyes looked so
different.

Not when he had used such wonderful and beautiful spellcraft before—most of
Tom’s Aurors had admitted that they would never try to catch falling rubble
with fire—and used only regular Blasting Curses now.

Tom flicked his wand at the wall. With a sizzling sound, a barrier of white light
sprang up between him and Harry and the rest of the room. From the corner of
his eye, he saw the little attentive shudder Harry couldn’t hide, and smiled
grimly.

“Duel with me,” he said, turning to face Harry.

The mask slipped. Defiance flickered at the edge of Harry’s eyes again, and
then it was gone. Harry said in his flat voice, “I’d lose, sir.”

“So? Many, many people have lost a duel with me. You would have no special
distinction.” Tom began a slow stalk that would take him around in a circle
towards Harry, and Harry lost the battle against his instincts and began to move
in the opposite half-crescent. Tom laughed in exhilaration. “Show me what
you’re capable of.”

“I already have.”

Merlin, his eyes were on fire. He looked so angry that Tom couldn’t help
casting a spell, the Whip Serpent, which coiled out of his wand and towards
Harry in a complicated slithering motion that most people couldn’t anticipate
the direction of.

Harry didn’t bother trying to anticipate it. He met it with the full power of his
will, and the serpent exploded into sparks and light that danced in the air and
then faded.

“You’re going to be so much fun,” Tom told him, and threw a barrage of
missiles.

Harry darted forwards, accepting a multitude of small hits. Tom studied him,
looking for the skin-tight shield he must wear, but couldn’t see it. Was he really
just—

Harry was close enough now, though, and he cast a spell Tom had never seen
before, one that appeared to add a long iron boot to his left foot. Then he spun
on his right foot and kicked Tom in the solar plexus with his left one.

It really was made of iron, and Tom’s shields were meant to stop spells, not
physical hits. He bent over, wheezing, and Harry nearly kicked him in the
temple. Tom managed to flick his head aside at the last moment.

His Aurors were shouting and pounding on the barrier that separated them now.
Harry grinned at him. “Shouldn’t we let your babysitters in?”

“I see no need to do that,” Tom rasped, and burst apart the floor underneath
Harry. Harry was already climbing into the air, twirling at the end of an
invisible rope and a modified Levitation Charm, and received nothing except a
few nips on his legs from the wooden shrapnel.

After that, the spells were cast too rapidly for Tom to do anything but keep up.
He’d known people who could match his speed, but none who could match his
creativity, or anticipate what he was going to cast. Harry could do both. Fire
met water, ice met fire, and Harry cast two or three other spells Tom had never
seen. He was never less than willing to take a hit on his bicep, except when the
curses were poisonous or disabling, like the Whip Snake. And he fought as if he
was born to do nothing else.

Tom spun away from a red-edged throwing star made of pure magic and
laughed in exultation. It was almost like—

Almost like he had imagined dueling his soulmate would be, if he ever found
them.
His mood soured rapidly at the reminder, and he stepped back and raised a
shield in front of him that would hold both physical spells and curses at bay, but
also prevent him from casting out. Harry halted at once, panting, his hand
clasped to his side where a stitch had probably started. He had recognized the
spell, then, and the end of the duel that it signaled.

“Enough,” Tom said softly. He raised another spell that covered the barrier and
cut off the sights and sounds of the furious Aurors. “Don’t think that you can
hide from me again.”

Harry laughed aloud, tossing his sweat-soaked black hair back from his
forehead. He was made of fire and wonder, alive and utterly beautiful. Tom’s
eyes traced the line of a bead of sweat making its way down his cheek before
Harry said, “What else have I been doing?”

Tom narrowed his eyes, but let the strange statement go. “Now I know what you
are capable of. Where did you find the spell that added the iron boot to your
foot?”

“Oh, I reckon it’s in one of those old books I read at Hogwarts.”

“Another way you tried to disguise yourself,” Tom said, and couldn’t help the
purr that had entered his voice. “You wanted me to believe you were a
Quidditch-obsessed Gryffindor. The Hat offered you Ravenclaw, too, didn’t it?”

Harry laughed abruptly as though someone had flipped a Muggle switch in him,
and then cut it off with what looked like a wince. He shook his head. “No.”

“Ah, well.” Tom waited for a moment until Harry began to relax, and then
stepped up close to him. Harry froze at once, hand on his wand and muscles
ready to move in any direction.

I know the Order didn’t train him to be a fighter. Which makes this all the more
remarkable, really. It’s all his own ability. Tom leaned in and spoke softly into
Harry’s ear, pleased that the closeness or perhaps the warm breath on his
earlobe made the young man tremble. “I know exactly how intelligent and
powerful and skilled you are now. I can value you as you deserve.”

“You can never make up for exiling my parents or my godfather or—”

“You should know that I’ve submitted your parents’ cases to the Wizengamot
for reconsideration.”
Tom was close enough to feel the fine tremor that made its way through Harry’s
arm. But he still tossed his head back and said, “They won’t agree. And this is a
bribe, and everyone will know that it’s a bribe.”

“In view of the assets that I’m about to acquire,” Tom said, letting his hand
glance down Harry’s arm as he took a step back, “I doubt most people will
care.”

He turned to dissolve the barrier and the charm that kept them from being seen
or heard, and added over his shoulder, “Don’t hide from me again.”

Then the spells were down, and he had to answer the maddened questions of his
Aurors. But it was more than worth it.

Harry stood there with his hands clenched and ignored the wary glances he
could feel straying towards him. He was too consumed by temptation.

And shame. Less than twenty-four hours since he had mentally recommitted
himself to the Order’s cause and he was already being led away from it.

They were right not to trust me with secrets like what Ron and Hermione were
doing. I’m weak. So weak. I can’t be trusted to make the right decision.

Harry opened his eyes and stared at Riddle’s back. The man apparently had the
bloody mental ability to tell when he was being looked at, since he turned
around and gave Harry a faint, sincere smile.

Harry turned away with a rough shake of his head. Or it’s because the bastard’s
my soulmate, and he’s always going to seem tempting to me when he wouldn’t
to other people. I already spend too much time thinking about what he looks
like, what he’s feeling.
I’ve got to stop feeling this way. I have to.

Harry knew it wouldn’t be easy. But neither was staying hidden for twenty-four
years, and he had managed that. He had even managed to shade the truth in his
conversation with Riddle today, making him think spells that Harry had created
himself were just present in obscure books.

I’ll manage it. I’m weak, but I’m no traitor.

Chapter 6: Pardons
Chapter Text
“Do you really mean it, Albus?” Minerva was aware that she’d raised her voice
and they were in front of the students, but on a day like this, she did hope that
no one would ask her to lower it. This was too shocking, like a mild version of
the pain she had experienced when her soulmate Elphinstone died. “Lily and
James Potter are to be pardoned?”
“Yes.” Albus’s own face was pale as he spread out the paper in front of him on
the staff table so that everyone could take a look. Then again, he had been
brewing all those healing potions, Minerva thought, and perhaps the problem he
was taking them for had got worse. “I—see for yourself.”

Minerva leaned over Albus’s shoulder to read the article, which was breathless
and gushing the way it often was when Minister Riddle won a victory over the
Wizengamot. Minerva didn’t approve of the cult of personality the man had
built around himself, but she did have to admit that seeing him depress some
pure-blood pretensions was good sport.

The photograph on the front of the paper showed Riddle standing in front of the
Ministry, the official pardon held high in one hand. Beneath that was an old
picture of Lily and James Potter, taken soon after their graduation from
Hogwarts.

And beneath that was that recent picture of Harry Potter that had graced the
front page after he had saved Minister Riddle and his retinue from death by
falling building material. Minerva sniffed. “You think he did this as a gesture of
gratitude to young Mr. Potter?”

“That,” said Albus, and lowered his voice. “Or as a bribe.”

“A bribe?” Minerva looked back and forth from the slightly scowling picture of
Harry to Albus. “What are you talking about? To whom?”

“To Mr. Potter,” Albus said, but he shook his head when Minerva started to turn
towards him. “Please, my dear, let’s not talk about it in public.”

Minerva let the conversation go, but she knew that she would resume it in
private. She was disturbed, and not even obscurely, by Albus’s idea that Harry
would be bribed by Riddle encouraging the Wizengamot to pardon his
parents. What would Harry be bribed to do? And if he did have his parents back
and free again, what exactly did Albus worry would happen?

None of it made sense, but it didn’t make sense in a way that rendered
Minerva’s chest tight.
*

Harry moved dazedly through the corridors of the Ministry towards the Atrium.
The official announcement of his parents’ pardons had already been made, and
he’d told Riddle that was enough, but now there had to be another interview, for
some reason. An interview that was coupled with a public invitation for his
parents to come forwards and speak with him.

Harry knew better than to think they would. Hidden away in that portal to
another world, they might not even have read the Prophet and heard about the
pardons yet. But more than that, they still had uncomplicated loyalties to the
Order and an uncomplicated distrust of the Minister.

Harry couldn’t claim that was true of him, anymore.

“Will you please cheer up?” Riddle said softly into his ear as they passed
through the doors into the lift that would take them down to the Atrium. They
were the only ones in it, to the visible distress of Riddle’s Aurors. A week ago,
Harry would have found that funny. Now his gut churned. “This is supposed to
be a joyous day for you.”

“A joyous day that you arranged for your own reasons. I don’t owe you
anything.”

Riddle tried to take his wrist, but Harry moved away from him as much as the
confines of the lift would allow. He didn’t want to be touched or confined right
now. He did have to admit it would be funny if he managed to throw up on
Riddle’s expensive shoes, but he didn’t have enough confidence to aim for
them.

“You’re terrified.”

Harry glared at Riddle, who as usual had seen past the pretenses that he tried to
put up in the most annoying way possible. “What do you want, a biscuit for
guessing correctly?”

“Are you afraid of what they’ll say to you?” Riddle shook his head slowly.
“You shouldn’t be. You’ve achieved more in a few weeks than they did with
years on the run.”

“You have no idea what they were trying to achieve.”

“Yes, I do. The Order of the Phoenix wants me to soften or reverse my policies
on a number of matters. And here you’ve managed it, making me pardon two
criminals when I haven’t done that, ever, after they became fugitives.
Congratulations, Harry. If they have any sense, they’ll come forwards and offer
you the same words.”

No, they’ll think of me as a traitor, Harry thought, as the lift stopped and let
them out in the Atrium. And they would be right.

Riddle shadowed him closely as he walked out towards the central fountain—
where a whole collection of reporters waited. Harry froze. Of course he had
known he would be interviewed, but for some reason, he had thought it would
be one person and a photographer.

“Do get used to it,” Riddle counseled him, as he laid his hand in the middle of
Harry’s back and drove him forwards like a Muggle driving cattle. “I assume
that you’re going to be in the public’s sights a lot from now on.”

“Because of you and your pathetic farce of making me your bodyguard,” Harry
hissed, not moving his lips, as they came up close to a woman he recognized as
Rita Skeeter from the Daily Prophet. He had thought of her as a devoted
supporter of Riddle’s regime, but she was beaming at him now, almost
bouncing on her heels, one hand rising to pat her blonde hair and make sure it
was in place. He supposed her real love was being on the front lines of
important stories.

“Why so nervous, Harry? I understand that you’re a talented actor.”

You have no idea. Harry forced down the terrified laughter that wanted to
bubble out of his throat.
Yes, he was skilled at acting and lying, but at only one kind: the kind that would
keep Riddle from looking at him. He knew exactly how he should act long
before Hogwarts. Even most of the other members of the Order, except Sirius
who loved him because he was Harry’s godfather, had dismissed him as a
bumbling idiot who couldn’t be of much help in their struggle.
Be small. Be just smart enough not to draw attention from concerned professors
who want to help you pass your exams. Be unimportant. Be unremarkable. Be
unseeable. Be invisible. Speak of your soulmate, if you must, as female, so no
one gets the wrong idea.

He had to keep anyone from looking at him too closely, because those other
Order members might have wanted to treat him as a weapon if they’d realized
that they had Riddle’s soulmate on their side. His parents and Dumbledore had
never wanted that, but the bloody name on his wrist distanced even them from
Harry.

Harry didn’t think they were aware of the way they looked at him, sometimes,
with shadows in the back of their eyes. The way his mother’s hand trembled
when she touched him. The pity deeply entwined with suspicion in his father’s
heart, and he didn’t know about the suspicion.

Part of them has to wonder: why in the world does my soul resemble Tom
Riddle’s enough to make us potentially bonded to each other? And what about
those black feathers mixed with the white ones on Tom Riddle’s phoenix?
Harry roughly shook his body, dislodging the stupid, thick thoughts in his head
and Riddle’s hand both at once. Yes, he could feel sorry for himself all day
long, and in the end, that would do nothing to help the Order. The real thing he
could actually do was walk forwards and make sure that Riddle never found out
that last dirty secret.

He made sure he was smiling as he reached out and shook Skeeter’s hand. “Ms.
Skeeter, right? I’ve heard so much about you.”

What would it take to win him over? Truly?

Other than some questions that inevitably came his way, Tom had stepped into
the background and watched as Harry expertly handled the reporters: joking,
answering earnestly, even flirting a little as if he didn’t notice he was doing it.
He might have been in training to handle them all his life.

What in the world did the Order teach him?

Tom knew where his own skills—skills like fading into the background even
though he was there—had come from: his childhood in the cursed orphanage,
and the desperate, clawing need to survive that had carried him through his first
few years as a Mudblood in Slytherin. But Harry Potter had been raised as the
child of doting parents, and while they had been active rebels even then, it
wasn’t as though they would have—

Yes. His skills could come from training.

But then, lodging Harry Potter in a minor position in the Ministry and not even
having him try to kill Tom still foundered on the rock of common sense.
Skeeter finally wrapped up her interview, her eyes aglow in the way that Tom
knew meant she was truly impressed. She edged out of the conversation and
over to Tom, tilting her head at him like a curious bird. “Wherever did you find
him, Minister Riddle?”

Tom smiled at her. “Why, right here in the Ministry, Madam Skeeter. You must
have heard that he had a position in the Department of Magical Games and
Sports before he came to such unexpected prominence.”

“Of course, sir, I reported that myself. But I can’t help but wonder.” Skeeter
paused to moisten her lips with her tongue for a moment. “Did you perhaps
keep him in reserve, your own protégé, until you planned to pull him out and
stun us all? I only ask because it’s so unusual for you to pardon criminals, you
understand.”

And the inspiration came to Tom like a bolt of sunfire.

Not how to win Harry over. It would take time and study to understand that. But
how to make it that much harder for him to hide.

Tom leaned forwards. “Well, you must know that he followed in the footsteps
of his parents more closely than I have acknowledged to the public. He believes
in their ideals. I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone, but I know your prowess with
the quill, Madam Skeeter.”

Skeeter snapped it up like a frog after dragonflies, of course, her eyes wide with
greed. “Then why give him as much favor as you have, Minister?”

“Because,” Tom said, and lowered his voice a little, an effective trick he had
learned from watching Horace Slughorn, “he is more than that. More than a
misguided choice he made when he was younger. Do you realize that everyone
who was there when he stopped the roof from falling, including me, owes him a
life-debt now? And yet Mr. Potter avoids calling attention to himself and hasn’t
even spoken about the life-debts he has claim to. I believe he is far less arrogant
and more modest than his parents.”

“So you think that you can redeem him?”

“Perhaps the word I might use is reclaim,” Tom said, with a subtle tilt of his
head. “After all, Mr. Potter would certainly argue that he did no harm when he
followed his parents’ beliefs, any more than he did when he stopped that roof
from falling. But he doesn’t even think I would spend that time on him. He
has no expectation of reward, Madam Skeeter. None at all. He expects scorn
and fury. That’s it.”

Skeeter looked appropriately baffled. Tom had to admit he sometimes enjoyed

speaking to her; no one else around him had a more intuitive grasp of how
power worked. Skeeter glanced at Harry and then at him. “So he won’t seek me
out for an interview?”

Tom shook his head.

“He—he won’t try to parley the life-debts into something interesting?” An

appalled tone was creeping into Skeeter’s voice.

“It wouldn’t even occur to him.”

“He won’t at least take the chance to raise his profile in the eyes of the public?”

“Of course not,” Tom said, gentle as spring. “Look at the stiff way he’s smiling
at people now. He doesn’t like it when they look at him. He’s not a hardened
criminal, Madam Skeeter. He’s someone young and powerful who’s been told
to downplay that talent all his life. That’s the reason I think I can reclaim him.”

Skeeter nodded slowly. The greed in her eyes was more complex now, the way
she looked when she had a story that appealed to her personally as well as one
people would want to read. “You think he might go back into hiding unless
someone makes the effort to bring him forwards?”

“I think it’s a distinct possibility, Madam,” Tom said.

“Then someone should,” Skeeter said, and set off for Harry like a shark moving
through bloody water.

Tom didn’t step back and salute himself, but he would have liked to. His gaze
crossed Harry’s, and he wanted to laugh at the suspicion in Harry’s eyes. The
attack would come from a direction he wasn’t anticipating. That was one good
thing about Harry’s fervent belief that Tom was the source of all evil.

The only good thing.

But Tom had won a move in the game, and he didn’t intend to brood right now
on Harry’s hatred for him and his own odd focus on overcoming that hatred.
Other reporters waited to interview the Minister who had made such an
unprecedented move as pardoning fugitives. He turned to savor his eminence.
*

“Do you have any idea why Riddle did this, Albus?”

Lily sat back in a quiet corner of Albus’s office and let James ask the questions.
She was too busy basking in the nostalgic feeling of being back at Hogwarts.
She and James hadn’t returned for nine years, since their exile. She watched
Fawkes on his perch, and the brilliant fire in the corner, and the gleaming gold
on the covers of the books on Albus’s shelves.

It made her breath come short with something like hunger. She would be free to
come out and read new books again, not the few that had come with them and
the even rarer ones that some people dared to smuggle or steal for them. She
could absorb new knowledge and let her fingers run gently over pages they
hadn’t felt a hundred times before.

“He aims to control Harry.”

Lily’s pulse jumped, and she focused on Albus again. Yes, she could read new
books if Riddle’s pardon was sincere and he actually meant to let them come out
of exile. Of course, neither Albus nor James trusted in that promise.

“He knows what Harry is?” James was so tense that Lily felt the bond between
them vibrate. She reached out to stroke his shoulder. James leaned a little
towards her, but he didn’t relax and he didn’t look away from the Headmaster.

“No,” Albus said, with a considering shake of his head. “I doubt it very much.
He would not have let matters go this far without immediately moving to secure
Harry as his. And I do believe he would announce it.”

“He would,” Lily said. “More than that, Harry would have let us know.”

Albus’s answering nod was so slow that Lily wanted to stand up and shriek.
“What?” She knew she sounded louder, more put-out, than she should have
been, but Albus made her voice go like that sometimes.

“Harry would have let us know. If he is still loyal.”

Lily held her head high. “I trust my son. He’s put up with enormous temptations
so far. And his cover is mostly gone now, he can’t be an effective spy anymore,
but he still hasn’t told Riddle the one thing that matters most.”

Albus sighed a little. “Neither has he reached out to us, my dear—”

“His post is being intercepted, I’m sure. And he has Auror guards around him
even when he’s not with Riddle, Sirius said. So he can’t send a Patronus,
either.”

“I want to believe that he is loyal,” Albus said, every word falling into the
silence like a piece of metal into water. “So much, so strongly. You have no
idea how I yearn for that. But I must take account of contingencies when I make
plans. And Harry’s acceptance of this closeness to Riddle makes me
think...makes me fear...”

“He knows Riddle is a bastard,” James burst in, his fists balled on his knees.
“You can’t think that he’ll go over to him!”

Albus sat back. “Do you know why I agreed to Harry’s request to be in the
Ministry, despite the fact that it would have been much safer for all of us if he
had gone into exile with you?”

“I know,” Lily said. She remembered the determination on a fourteen-year-old

Harry’s face, when he came to them, just a few days before they had to leave, in
fact, and told them he didn’t want to be kept in the dark out of Riddle’s sight all
his life. “He had to feel like he was doing something. He wanted to help, and he
knew that he would never be able to have his soulmate, so—”

“Yes, I gave him a way to contribute to the war effort. I never would have done
it if I had thought there was a risk that he would come to Riddle’s attention.”

Lily looked at Albus, and it felt almost as if she had become detached from her
body, floating. Certainly it must be someone else, or something else, that
opened her mouth and used her voice to ask, “Or if you thought there was a risk
that he would save Riddle’s life?”

The tension in the office hung frozen for endless moments. James’s eyes opened
wide. Albus stared at her and didn’t move. Lily waited for the tension to break,
but it felt like ice when it did.

“I did not anticipate that Harry would be there,” Albus said, his voice itself
touched with frost. “Are you saying that I would have—”

“I’m not saying you meant to kill him,” Lily said, and amazingly, it seemed that
the person in control of her mouth and body was her, and she was going ahead
and saying this, after all. “I’m saying that you’re disappointed Riddle didn’t die.
And part of you probably thinks that Harry intervened to save his soulmate, not
his own life, or the lives of all the other innocents who were there—”
“They were not innocents, Lily. They were war criminals—”

“Riddle and his cronies could say the same of us,” Lily interrupted. “Albus, I
want to know where the war is. I want to know why it was worth slaughtering
reporters and Aurors and others along with Riddle to kill him. I understand that
he’s passed laws or is going to pass laws that have a huge impact on Muggles
and Muggleborns. Can’t we concentrate on those, instead of treating this as a
war? I’m tired of fighting one that doesn’t even have soldiers on the other side.”

“But we have no choice, Lily-Bell.” James was leaning earnestly forwards in his
chair, his hand extended, while Albus watched them, mute. “We’re fugitives,
we’re on the run—”

“I don’t think we’re fugitives anymore.”

That shut James up but good, and Lily couldn’t help the faint twinge of
satisfaction that traveled down the bond to jolt him. James frowned and shook
his head, but not as if he was doubting her. It was Albus who interrupted.

“Once you think about it,” Albus murmured, “I am sure that you will see that
the intent behind the pardons Riddle has issued for you is not sincere. After all,
he may have done it only to gain favor with Harry. Not as a courting gift,” he
added hastily, probably because he’d seen both their mouths opening, “but to
constrain him, make Harry grateful and walk at his side. And to
lure you from my side.”

“There’s nothing saying that we can’t work against Riddle legally if we go back
to the wizarding world, you know,” James said, and his face was sick with the
same kind of longing Lily could feel in her heart. “We would just have to make
sure that our association with the Order of the Phoenix stayed quiet.”

“And Riddle’s attempting to gain Harry’s favor? You know how powerful
Harry is. It would be a disaster for our side if he joined Riddle! It already has
been!”

Lily sat up slowly. “You’re not saying that it was a disaster that our son lived,
Albus?”

“It is a disaster that Riddle is alive!”

Lily closed her eyes. She could feel old and new loyalties struggling in her, and
she didn’t know how to make the decision. It shouldn’t be made out of guilt or
love, she thought. It should be made out of disinterested principle.
But Albus had already gone beyond that, hadn’t he? The desperation shining
through his eyes said how personal this was. And treating it like a war had
begun to wear on Lily long before this, though she had never known how much
until now.

She swallowed and looked at Albus and said, “I’m going to go back to my son.
I’ve missed nine years with him. I don’t want to miss more. And I’m going to
learn how to help him live in a world where his soulmate is alive but Harry can
never be with him.”

Albus sat motionless. Then he said, “You still believe that Riddle and Harry
should not be together, then.” His voice was defeated, weak.

“Yes.” Lily hadn’t changed her mind on that. Riddle might not be in the midst
of a war, the people who had been with him in that building when the roof
collapsed might not have deserved to die, but Riddle was still a heartless bastard
who would never be able to get over the fact that his soulmate was half-
Muggleborn. Or even that he had hidden for so long. The last thing Lily wanted
for Harry was a cage. He had been in one already.

“So be it.” Albus sighed. “I can hardly compel you to stay. But make contact
with the Aurors in a protected place, will you? And a long way from the portal
that leads back to where the Order is hiding.”

“Of course.” Lily had never had any other intention. If nothing else, Sirius
hadn’t been pardoned yet, and she didn’t want him to be captured.

James smiled at her and they stood, walking away from the office. Lily reached
out to take his hand. The moment they touched, the tingling, singing bond
sprang to life between them, and Lily saw the depth of James’s yearning to—

“Go home,” he whispered, turning and bending down to kiss her. “To be
somewhere that we can see our son daily and help him. I don’t know if
even Harry knows what’s going to happen next. We should help him figure that
out.”

Lily closed her eyes in delight, and led her soulmate away from there, through
the silent corridors of Hogwarts.

Albus stared at the thick white potion in the flask, and felt as though someone
had reached inside him and scooped out all his viscera. His stomach twinged,
and his head, and he shut his eyes and fought the temptation to vomit that was
coursing through him.

He had the poison. He knew that this one would get past all the defenses that
Riddle might possess as a Parselmouth. And he had someone else in the
Ministry, someone Harry had never known about, closely-positioned enough to
give the poison to Riddle. It could not be eaten or drunk; it had to be spelled
into Riddle’s skin.

But it felt as though he had come down to last-ditch, desperate measures. His
people were walking away from him. There was no war, Lily had said, and
Albus had to wonder how many others would start to believe that, or even falter
in their commitment simply because Riddle had pardoned too many people and
they would wonder if they could be next.

Albus then opened his eyes and sharply shook his head. He had not started this
crusade because he had wanted to command others. He had started it because of
the danger that Tom Riddle had posed, and still posed, to their world. A
madman would not have been as dangerous, but a charismatic, intelligent,
political bigot? Yes, everyone had reason to fear, whether or not they
understood it.

And if Harry was going to help Riddle…

Well, the guilt that had long stayed Albus’s hand, the guilt at what would
happen to one soulmate with the loss of the other, need no longer apply.

“Your parents said that they’re going to meet us here.”

Harry looked around uneasily at the dripping clearing in the middle of the
Forbidden Forest. Honestly, he did believe the message. Both his parents’
Patronuses had come to him and confirmed it, and his hope had soared high
before they Apparated here.

But for some reason, he just didn’t feel easy here. Maybe it was the way the
trees loomed around them and cut out the sight of the sky. Maybe it was the
constant soft patter of the rain. It bounced from the Impervious Charm stretched
above Harry’s head, sure, but that didn’t matter.

“Harry.”
Harry jumped and turned around to look at Riddle, catching the sight of
Whipwood’s scowl out of the corner of his eye. Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly
please me that he calls me by my first name, either, Harry thought back at her,
and focused on Riddle. “Yes, sir?”

“Have you thought about what you might want to claim as payment of the life-
debt I owe you?”

“I thought my parents’ pardons were payment for that, sir.”

Riddle’s eyes widened a little. Harry hated that he couldn’t tell the difference
between sincerity and lying on the man’s face anymore. “What? Of course not. I
reconsidered the cases and agreed with the Wizengamot that they had been
punished unfairly.”

Harry snorted and faced the dripping forest again. His parents were supposed to
come from the east. He hoped that they would simply show up, and he would
get to hug them, and then they would get to go home. Hopefully not to the fancy
new flat that Riddle had insisted on shoving him into, either.

“It’s not polite to leave someone who asked you a question without an answer,
Harry.”

Harry half-closed his eyes and exhaled in silent frustration. Then he turned
around, shook his head roughly, and said as clearly as he could, “I am not going
to claim the life-debt.”

Silence, except for the plop of rain from the branches. Then Riddle took a
casual step closer to him and said, “You cannot do that.”

“Really? Anyone who doesn’t want to claim one can refuse a life-debt.” Harry
felt savage delight welling up in him as Riddle’s face darkened. “I know my
pure-blood history as well as you do, Minister, given that the professors
you installed in Hogwarts teach it. Life-debts are refused because the person
doesn’t care to spend that amount of time around someone whose life they
saved, or because the savior is wealthy and doesn’t need any form of
repayment, or because the savior considers it already repaid. And of course no
one can claim a life-debt who rescues someone out of some ulterior motive.”
“Are you saying you rescued me out of some ulterior motive, Harry?”

“Oh, no, Minister. Of course not. My motivation is the first one.”

“Remind me which of the ones in your list was the first one, Harry.”
Riddle’s eyes were blazing in that murderous way that said he didn’t need
reminding. Harry smiled at him, as sweet as the cherry pies his mother used to
make. “I can’t stand you.”

“Incoming, sir,” said an Auror hastily from behind Riddle. “The Potters.”

Harry didn’t even have the chance to turn away before Riddle abruptly
collapsed, clawing at his throat.

Shit! They’re going to blame my parents; they’re going to blame me…

Harry dropped to his knees beside Riddle, ignoring the fact that Whipwood and
some other Auror were trying to wrestle him away. A quick flex of his magic
ensured that a barrier rose up between him and them that bounced them all away
from him, and Harry could concentrate on Riddle.

The way his throat was swelling closed and his eyes were going glassy said
poison. But most people knew Riddle was immune to almost all forms of venom
as a Parselmouth, so why would someone try—

Dumbledore. It has to be. Of course he would try again.

Harry closed his eyes. He had a moment to debate, and all the thoughts fled
through his head: he should let Riddle die; he’d already betrayed the Order
enough; the last thing he wanted was to go to Azkaban now, when he might
have a chance at a normal life with his parents; they would blame his parents for
this when they’d shown up just as the poison took effect; Dumbledore would
think Harry had saved Riddle just because they were soulmates.
Shit.

Harry placed his hands on either side of Riddle’s throat and sank his magic in.
Riddle arched his back up and then became still. Whipwood and the other
Aurors were screaming and pounding on the barrier now.

Harry reached deeper and deeper still with his magic, working out the poison,
drawing it out. The only reason he could do this was that his Animagus form
was that of a venomous serpent—well, that and his soulmate connection with
Riddle. But he would simply rely on the story of powerful magic if anyone
asked him how he’d managed.

The venom flowed into Harry, and he shuddered. He could feel his own throat
thickening, his head drooping as sweat broke out on his forehead and his system
engaged in all-out battle with it. He knew he would win. Riddle had probably
only succumbed to it in the first place because he was taken by surprise. Harry’s
magic and body had known what was coming, and had even had the chance to
study the poison a little as he absorbed it.

But it would still be a fight. Harry let go of Riddle’s throat as the flush and
swelling subsided and the man began to breathe normally, and, with a last effort
of will, broke the barrier that held the Aurors back.

Someone was screaming at him and holding him at wandpoint. Harry ignored
that completely, turning his attention inwards. Right now, he needed all his
concentration to ensure that he survived.

He would, he promised himself. He would live with his parents. He would

ensure that, going forwards, they somehow managed to battle Riddle but stay in
the world and not use the Order’s extreme tactics.

And—

Harry smiled as darkness raced over him. Riddle would owe him another life-
debt after this, wouldn’t he?

Freedom from Riddle’s presence sounded like the best gift Harry could ask for.

“For the last time, Jalena, I’m all right.”

Auror Whipwood sighed and stepped back as Tom climbed to his feet. “I’m
sorry, sir. When I saw your throat swelling and that barrier Potter put up around
the two of you, I thought for sure—”

“Understandable. Would you send two of your own to escort the Potters in? I
am going to accompany this particular Mr. Potter to St. Mungo’s.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir? They might have had something to do
with this.”

“And we’ll investigate and see if that was true or not.” Tom treated Whipwood
to a thin smile. “Go.”

With a loud sigh, Whipwood turned and stomped away. Tom, meanwhile,
walked over to stand and look down at Harry, who was flushing and paling by
turns while his body worked through the poison. Thick white droplets were
sliding down his skin, mingled with sweat, as the battle continued.
“He should not be lying in the dirt,” Tom said softly without taking his eyes
from Harry. “Lift him.”

Aurors and flunkies rushed to obey his command. Tom strode next to Harry as
they headed rapidly for the limits of the anti-Apparition spells, after which
would come transportation to St. Mungo’s.

The more suspicious part of his mind was wondering whether Harry had set this
up, after all. Save Tom’s life twice and get him to trust him? A masterful ploy
for steering an Order spy close to him.

But two life-debts wouldn’t create a greater connection than a single one. And
Tom was absolutely certain that the disdain on Harry’s face when he had said he
wouldn’t claim the first debt was real. In fact, the antagonistic approach was all
wrong for getting Tom to trust someone in the first place. He didn’t put up with
abrasiveness. He had been drawn to Harry in spite of that, not because of it.

What Harry wanted more than anything, Tom was certain, was for Tom to leave
him alone.

Of course, that did leave the questions open of why he had acted the way he
had, and why he seemed to crave the simple life so much.

And how he was fighting this poison in the first place, when he wasn’t a
Parselmouth and had no ability to resist venoms.

Tom smiled pleasantly. Once again, he found himself looking forward to the
conversation he and Harry would have in the near future.

Chapter 7: Articles
Chapter Text

Harry woke slowly. His whole body felt the way his tongue did after he drank
too much. He wrinkled his nose and stretched, pausing when he heard the
crinkle of sheets. He would have expected to find he was in a holding cell at the
Ministry, not a bedroom.

He opened his eyes to the blank white ceiling of what must be St. Mungo’s.
Harry snorted a little. Riddle was piling on the supposed kindness to get Harry
to work for him, wasn’t he? Didn’t he have anything better to do?

No one was responding to his noises, so Harry assumed he was alone until he
sat up and managed to turn his head. Then he froze. There was a chair with
wooden arms and a padded back sitting not far from the bed, and Riddle was
sprawled across it, his legs on one arm and his head on the other, asleep.

Harry winced automatically, but then decided the man must have cast some
Cushioning Charms. He was far too decadent to actually sleep on wood.

But those snide thoughts tattered and blew away as Harry’s eyes lingered on
Riddle. God, he was handsome when he wasn’t sneering and arguing and trying
to blow Harry’s head off. Even the silver around his temples just made his dark
hair look better, like the silver edging on really expensive robes or something.

Harry knew he was staring, but he couldn’t manage to care. This was maybe the
only chance he would ever have to watch his soulmate and dream a little and
not have to conceal the secret or feel guilty about it.

His parents had actually encouraged him to date at Hogwarts, knowing that he
would never have the chance to be with his soulmate, but Harry had held back
at that. Unless he could find a widower—a boy or man whose soulmate had
died—he wouldn’t feel right taking someone else’s chance at happiness away
from them. And widowers, except the rare ones born with black-edged marks
that indicated their soulmate had died before they came into the world, tended to
mourn for the rest of their lives. Harry didn’t want to date someone who did
that, either.

He had never let his eyes run over someone like this, linger on the creases at the
corner of their eyes, or stared at the flat stomach and muscles that peeked out
from under a rising shirt. He wondered if he should be doing it now.

Then again, Riddle was probably used to attention like this. If he woke up and
saw Harry staring, he wouldn’t assume Harry was his soulmate. He would think
that Harry had succumbed to his charms like “everyone” did.

But it wasn’t Riddle’s handsome face, in the end, that made Harry settle back
and watch him. It was his soft breathing, his dangling left hand, and the faint
wetness at the corner of his mouth. The way he looked human, and vulnerable,
and had chosen to go to sleep in Harry’s presence when he probably had every
reason to be paranoid about him.
Then Harry roughly tore his eyes away from Riddle and swore under his breath.
Was he trying to prove himself disloyal? To say that he honestly had no bone
left in his body that belonged to the Order, and that he was trying to have
something he knew he couldn’t have?
Deliberately, he closed his eyes and reminded himself of the way Riddle had
shoved him into a new flat, relentlessly questioned him about things that
were none of his business, fought him, passed laws that would wipe Muggles’
minds, exiled his godfather and his parents…

Over a few minutes, Harry’s breathing steadied, and he curled up with his face
turned away from Riddle. If he had to do that to control his weakness, then he
would. He kept his eyes closed. He probably needed to catch up on sleep
anyway.

And maybe his dreams would be about Riddle, too, the way it felt like they
would right now, but if so, he would deal with it.

“Ah, Harry.”

Harry glanced up from the tray of sausage and eggs in front of him and gave
Tom a smile that wasn’t the less fierce for not showing teeth at the moment.
Then he turned deliberately back to his breakfast.

Tom sat down in the chair he’d spent a lot of time in over the past eighteen
hours, which was how long it had taken Harry to fight off the venom and the
Healers to be sure that he wouldn’t have a relapse.

“You are a wonder.”

“Hmmmm.”

“I owe you two life-debts and you don’t want to claim a single one. You act as
though you would do anything for your parents and godfather, and yet you are
extending the same loyalty to me.” Harry whipped around at that, glaring. Tom
smiled and held up his hands, enjoying the way that Harry’s gaze went to them
to make sure he wasn’t holding a wand. “How else should I take the fact that
you saved my life twice?”

Harry swallowed, but didn’t speak.

“And now, this.” Tom lowered his voice. “I want you to tell me how you purged
the poison.”

“When you have magic as powerful as mine—”

Tom’s amusement fled. This was the other side of Harry being so different from
most of the people who surrounded him: he thought he could get away with
treating Tom like he was stupid. “I know very well that powerful magic is not a
defense, or the poison would not have felled me in the first place.”

“You weren’t prepared for it. I was.”

“Even that is not an answer.” Tom had had the Healers collect samples of the
liquid dripping out of Harry’s skin. It was an incredibly potent mixture of cobra
and taipan venom, added to with magic until it had that thick white consistency.
Tom knew he would have had more luck defeating it if he was aware of it when
it struck, but he still would have found himself writhing on the ground and
unconscious for nearly as long as Harry.

Which left one possibility.

“How long have you been a Parselmouth?”

Harry froze, his fork in the air. Then he turned around, eyes narrowed. “I’m not
one.”

“Come, Harry, don’t be stubborn.” Tom leaned forwards, hoping Harry

wouldn’t see the slight tremor in his hands. He would think it weakness, and
Tom wanted honesty at the moment, not challenges. In reality, he was dealing
with a delight so intense that it seared him like flame. “No one but another
Parselmouth could have defeated the venom, and you obviously understand
me.”

“I’m not one. I can understand it, but I can’t speak it.” Harry was going to bend
the fork if he kept on clutching it like that. “I—when I was thirteen I found out I
had the potential for a boomslang Animagus form.”

Tom blinked. Then he said, “You know that I honor those with serpentine forms.
Why did you hide it?”
Harry turned fully to look at him for the first time since Tom had entered the
room. His teeth did show this time, and he said, “Oh, I wonder.”
Exasperation raced along with the delight and twined through it like a second
fire starting. Tom stood, but kept speaking in Parseltongue as he paced over to
Harry’s hospital bed, his hand shooting out and twisting in Harry’s hair.
Nothing but defiance shone out of the green eyes staring at him as Tom said,
“You must get over your attempts to deprive me of things I want.”

“While those things include me, I’ll do whatever I please.”

Tom let go of Harry but sat down on the side of the bed, much closer than he
usually got. That practically ignited the flames in Harry’s eyes, but Tom ignored
the way he tried to move off. “You are playing a game that has no good reason
behind it. I already know who you are, what you’re capable of. When you get
out of hospital, I’ll ensure that you get to participate in an Animagus training
program, since I’m sure that you never went through the trouble to master your
form.”

Harry’s face took on an amazingly vapid expression, the sort he’d worn Tom’s
Public Day before Dumbledore tried to bring down the roof and Harry had
saved them all. “Animagus training? Huh? You know I probably had all the
brains knocked out of my head by Bludgers years ago.”

Tom stared at him. “You would fail the class.”

“Amazing guess, Dark Lord.”

Tom felt as though someone had stung him across the face with a whip. He fell
into English. “I am not a Dark Lord. I did not choose that path. And I have
never done anything that you can throw in my face.”

“I’ve told you already what I think about your policies concerning Muggles and
Muggleborns.”

“And I should have told you enough to make you realize that I will not be
committing genocide on Muggleborns or whatever ridiculous excuse
Dumbledore has dreamed up to make me look like a Dark Lord! It is a game—”
“Indulging people obsessed with genocide is the kind of game that means you
don’t care about anyone else.” Harry was hiding behind a wall of righteousness
again, his magic agitated to the point that it surrounded him with small
sparkling white flashes like fireworks. “You’ll let them talk and you’ll let the
discourse in Britain turn more and more against Muggleborns, and you won’t
care, because all that matters to you is being the one at the center who calls the
tune.”
“And all that matters to you is useless stubbornness for its own sake.”

“You can’t make me into one of your servants. I think that’s enough.”

Tom imposed the kind of restraint on himself that he had to have to deal with
the Blacks, and managed to smile thinly. “You haven’t seen the paper today,
have you?”
“Oh, are they calling me one of your servants? It won’t matter. We both know
the truth, and we know how passionately I’ll resist if—or is it my parents? What
have you done to my parents?”

Passionately. Tom wanted that passion, yes, but he wanted it in willing

surrender. He could imagine Harry underneath him, mouth straining open,
hands reaching up and yearning as they curled near Tom’s temples, his face
flushing as he understood the Parseltongue endearments Tom hissed, which was
more than anyone else had ever done—

Tom wanted him so badly that it was an effort to step back, but he managed to
shake his head. “Nothing about your parents. They’ve been kept outside St.
Mungo’s because they were so intent on trying to do something about the
venom that they got in the Healers’ way. But they’ll see you now that you’re
conscious. The article is one of Madam Skeeter’s devising.”

“Then I don’t see why I should really want to read it when it’ll be all lies
anyway.”

“Now, Harry, I thought you understood the ways of power.”

“I understand them just fine. That doesn’t tell me why I should practice them.”

Tom paused. He wondered if Dumbledore had coached Harry to act like this, or
if it was something Harry did on his own. Really, when Harry could be almost
anything, why did he choose to be this?
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and unfolded the copy of the Daily Prophet he
had kept beside him for Harry’s awakening. “Now, if you would take a look at
this article and then try to accuse me of hurting you again, it would make my
day complete.”
Harry shot him a narrow-eyed look and then looked at the paper. His eyes
widened. “You bastard.”

“My parents were as married as yours.”

“Or as married as a Muggle and a witch who used love potions on him could
be.”

Tom had to stiffen his muscles against the urge to strike out. “You could make
things dangerous and tedious for yourself, Harry, or you could go along with
me,” he suggested softly. “Why not go along?”

“Because what you want from me is my service. And I already have a cause that
I’m loyal to.”
Tom took a step back. “A cause that’s given you little, since it’s had you hiding
who you are, and convinced you that you can never approach your soulmate,
and deprived of your parents and your godfather. At least consider my offer,
Harry, instead of blindly rejecting it.”

Harry was having difficulty looking away from the front page of the paper,
which was good and as Tom had designed it, but he did turn towards him with
narrow, brilliant eyes then. “I thought of what I want as the payment for my
second life-debt.”

“What’s that?”

“You to stay away from me.”

“No.”

Harry stared at him, beautiful even in his frustration. Tom made sure that
nothing of his desire showed on his face. “What? I’m making a request. You
can’t even pretend to honor one that you were urging me to make not a day
ago?”

“It’s been more than a day,” Tom said pleasantly, for the pleasure of seeing
Harry’s snarl deepen. “And you don’t know the rules surrounding life-debts as
well as you think you do, Harry, or you would have known better than to make
this particular request. The person who saved the other’s life is assumed to have
a certain interest in the one they rescued. That means that they need to spend
some time together, and the rescuer can’t simply send the debtor away. That’s
tantamount to wishing that you had never saved my life in the first place.”

“I wish I never had!”

Tom laughed. “And I know that if someone managed to poison me right now,
you would spring up to save me. You aren’t good at fooling people, Harry. I
wish you wouldn’t try. If you knew what I could give you, what I long to give
you…”

Harry opened his mouth as though to say something, and then turned away with
a violent shake of his head. “I want to see my parents.”

“But of course. As long as you are out of danger.” Tom paused to watch as
Harry stared at the paper again, his mouth set in a grim line, and then smiled. “I
will see you later, my dear, and we will talk at greater length.”
Harry refused to react to the Parseltongue, but Tom left the room well-pleased
anyway. Skeeter’s article had won him some revenge, assuming he had ever
needed it, but in truth, he wanted to devise some way to win Harry’s loyalty.

Perhaps he should take another look at his godfather’s case.

MINISTER’S PRODIGY SCARED TO APPROACH SOULMATE!

Harry swallowed and shook his head. The headline was devastating, and not
because of the treacly article that followed, gushing over the details that Harry
had told Riddle and he had passed along to Rita Skeeter. The article said that
Harry’s soulmate was someone important in the Ministry, someone who valued
blood purity and had political beliefs the opposite of Harry’s, and concluded
with Riddle’s “moving appeal,” as Skeeter put it, to the unknown soulmate to
approach Harry.

“I know exactly how valuable our Mr. Potter is,” Minister Riddle told me,
looking into my eyes with the sincerity so characteristic of his politics. “I would
hate to see someone lose out on the chance to know him because of a misguided
belief in blood purity.”

Harry’s fingers curled around the edge of the paper and made it wrinkle. Then
he swallowed and bowed his head.

It sounded like he had told Riddle about who his soulmate was, or hinted around
the edges. Would Dumbledore be able to forgive him for that? Would his
parents?

Then Harry violently dismissed the notion of Dumbledore forgiving him. Of

course he couldn’t, when Harry had interfered in his attempts to end the war
twice now. No, he would just take this as confirmation that he also needed to
kill Harry now. It was his parents whose reaction worried him.

Then the door of the room opened, and his mother exclaimed, “Oh, Harry, are
you okay?”

Harry flung the paper aside and turned to them. His parents’ eyes were shining
with anxiety, and Harry felt his heart bound. They were here, they were real,
they were alive, and Riddle hadn’t said a word about blaming them for the
poisoning. He held out his arms, and his mother ran across the room and hurled
herself into them.
His father came in a little more slowly, but still grabbed him in a rough
embrace. He whispered, “What price did Riddle demand for our pardons?”

“Nothing. He’s trying to use them as a bribe.” Harry wished he had bigger arms.
It was hard to hold his parents the way he wished he could, and his mother
giving a little sob and cuddling closer didn’t help with that.

“Well, now that we’re back, we can help you stay out of situations where you
need to save Riddle’s life.” James seemed to realize that hadn’t landed well, and
cleared his throat. “Did you—tell Riddle about your soulmate?”

Harry snorted. “Hardly. I told him that my soulmate was someone who
wouldn’t want me because of blood purity and their political beliefs, and he
drew his own conclusions.”

“Oh.” James leaned closer and hugged him as Lily finally stepped away, wiping
her eyes and smiling. “Harry, I have to tell you…”

Harry nodded, and let his father cast the spell that could project thoughts the
way Sirius could, although no one could answer the silent voice. It was the most
secure way of communicating in hospital, which was probably crawling with
Riddle’s spies and flunkies.

Albus wasn’t pleased with us for leaving the Order. We even wondered if he
planned for the poisoning to occur as we arrived at the rendezvous. But not
everything is lost, as long as you don’t tell Riddle the name of your soulmate.

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said, and smiled at James. Lily took his hand, and
Harry squeezed it back and then hugged her again as she sat on the edge of his
bed. She was far more welcome than Riddle had been.

“I’m sorry,” James said aloud. “We’ve asked for so many sacrifices from you,
and now we’re going to go on asking for more.”

Harry sighed. “I knew when I was little that I wouldn’t get to have my
soulmate, Dad.”

“And yet you never dated anyone else.”

“How could I take someone else’s happiness from them?”

Lily interrupted. “This is getting morbid. Let’s talk about happier things, like
the fact that you have a new flat that could hold us all, Harry. I’m afraid the
Ministry didn’t see fit to relax the interdiction on our house…”

Harry let himself swim happily back into the realm of “normal” conversation,
still half-disbelieving that he had his parents back.

“And that’s all they said?”

“That’s all they said about his soulmate, sir. The rest of the conversation was
about where they would live, and how much money they could use from the
accounts that had been unfrozen to buy furniture.”

Tom nodded and dismissed the Healer, Enkson, who owed him enough favors
to report anyone else’s conversations without hesitation. Enkson bowed and
scurried out of the room. Tom leaned back in his chair and stared up at the
ceiling.

Who was Harry’s soulmate? And how could he have known since he was

young, given that he bore the phoenix image on his arm, and images were
notoriously difficult to match to one another? It was one reason that Tom had
had to test everyone he could find who carried a phoenix; there was no way to
be sure who it was from a mere description.

Tom closed his eyes. This didn’t make sense, any more than Harry hiding his
serpent Animagus form did.

Well, no, he supposed that last part made “sense” in the same odd way that
everything else did: Harry had been utterly determined to avoid Tom
Riddle’s attention in particular. Even if he had declined to enter the Serpent
Guard, he would have been watched, and under consistent “persuasion” and
testing from those who were aware of his Animagus form.

But how he could have known who his soulmate was—

Tom snapped his eyes open abruptly, his breath coming short. Harry could have
known if he carried a name. Soulmates born with someone else’s name on their
skin were rare, and even then, the person they were paired with might have an
image or a different phrase, not the corresponding name. That would fit the
situation perfectly. Harry was aware of who his soulmate was, but the other
person wouldn’t realize it.
And that meant the phoenix image Harry carried was an illusion. A lie.
He’s been lying all along, Tom thought, his heart crashing in his chest. Why
wouldn’t he lie about this?

But then, Tom couldn’t take on trust the other information Harry had fed him,
either. Perhaps his soulmate wasn’t highly positioned in the Ministry, or a
believer in blood purity. Perhaps Harry had some other reason for staying away
from her.

No, wait. Tom had been listening as a Legilimens when Harry spoke those
words. He would have picked up any true lies. The illusion on Harry’s skin,
though, was a passive lie, the kind of thing no one would have a reason to
probe.
How does he know? Who is it?

Desire surged molten through Tom. He had thought for a moment of promising
Harry that he would dissolve any obstacles between the stubborn idiot and his
soulmate, but he had already attempted that with the article, and Harry had been
anything but grateful. In truth, Tom Riddle did not want to help Harry Potter
find his soulmate.

It would be much more satisfying to seduce Harry Potter from his fruitless

loyalty to someone he was determined never to join.
We will find out if I can do that. Tom Riddle reached again for the file resting
on the edge of the desk.

“But are you sure this is a good idea, son?”

Harry grinned up at his father. The Healers still weren’t letting him out of bed
because they wanted him to “recover from his magical exhaustion,” which was
stupid. Fighting the poison had been a lot less work than lifting the roof of the
building with magic, and no one had insisted he rest then. “Yes, I am. You saw
that article Riddle put out about me.”

“Yes, but I think Skeeter is an uneasy ally to have.”

Harry shrugged and looked up as the door of his room opened. James tensed
beside him, and Harry was sure he knew why. It couldn’t be easy to spend years
in exile and then see your greatest enemy stroll up to you as if nothing had
happened, hand extended and an empty smile on his face. Harry wasn’t sure if
his father noticed the way that Riddle’s gaze remained fixed on Harry, even as
he appeared to attend to James.

Then again, the sincerity or otherwise of Riddle’s congratulations would hardly

tempt James to switch sides.

“Mr. Potter?” Riddle’s voice was low and smooth. “I’m Minister Tom Riddle.
I’m so glad that the Wizengamot was able to pass the pardon for the crimes that
I didn’t judge closely enough. And so sorry that we had to meet later, under
these circumstances, than our original meeting planned in the forest.”

“Minister Riddle.” James’s voice was stiff, but he did shake the bastard’s hand,
which Harry thought was pretty gracious of him. “I’m sorry my wife couldn’t
be here to greet you. She’s reading.”

“Reading?” Riddle’s voice was politely baffled. He took the chair next to
Harry’s bed as if he belonged in it, the one usually reserved for either blood kin
or a soulmate. James opened his mouth as if to say something about that, then
closed it. Harry was glad. He had enough trouble controlling his own reactions
in the meantime.

But it made him even surer of the course he had decided on yesterday, when he
had sent an owl to Skeeter.

“Yes. She wasn’t able to read up much on new Healing techniques in the past
few years. The books she had access to were…limited.”

Riddle smiled as genially as if he had had no part in that. “Of course. Well, give
my best to Mrs. Potter. Then again, it’s entirely possible that I shall be staying
here until she returns.”

“It is, sir? But you must be so busy.”

“I’ve cleared my schedule this morning. It’s the least I could do given that
someone who saved my life twice over is in hospital.” Riddle turned smoothly
to face Harry. “Isn’t that right, darling?”
Harry looked back calmly. Laugh now, you bastard, while you can. He ignored
his father’s sharp intake of breath at the Parseltongue and said only, “I’m
honored by your attention, Minister, but it’s not necessary. The Healers have
assured me I’ll make a full recovery.”

“We still have other matters to discuss, however. For example, I had the feeling
that you weren’t pleased by the article Madam Skeeter published.”
“I understand that you can’t control the activities of newspaper reporters,
Minister, and what they choose or choose not to write.” Especially not
today. “That doesn’t mean that you need to take time out of your schedule to
manage my personal reaction.”

“But I would not displease you for the world, Harry.” Riddle was smiling at
him, that heavy expression that rested on Harry like a hand did. “Please tell me
if there’s anything you want me to stop.”

James flickered a question at him with a single glance. Harry shrugged. He

supposed it couldn’t hurt.

“Would you please stop calling me by my first name?”

Riddle nodded thoughtfully. “I could see why that would irritate you when, in
your perception, we are not equals. I see you as my equal in power and
intelligence, of course, but you continue to call be a respectful title, and it
makes sense that you would want the same for yourself.”

“Thank you,” Harry said warily, while part of him tried to unravel the new
game that had been sprung on him. Riddle saw him as his equal in intelligence?
There was no way that was true.

“And it makes sense that you would want a modicum of privacy. I have long
experience being on the front pages of newspapers, while you have almost
none.”

Harry thought about what was going to be on the front page of the paper later
that day and almost laughed. “I understand that sometimes someone will have to
snap a picture of me, sir. It’s part of being your bodyguard.”
Riddle smiled. “Given all that, and how I don’t like the distance between us that
‘Mr. Potter’ implies, I feel that calling you admired one is a sufficient
compromise.”

Harry startled. The words had been in Parseltongue, and as little experience as
he had with the language, he could pick up on the nuances. They almost
vibrated with appreciation for his ability to hunt and make the kill when he did,
and contained the outermost edges of a snake being ready to mate.

He can’t…

Harry stared directly into Riddle’s eyes, trying to pick up on his intentions. He
had no experience with Legilimency, but he could see the message Riddle was
sending. His glance had gone deep and soft—well, imitation soft, which was the
best you could get with someone like Riddle—and was slightly sidelong.

Shit. He wants to court me. Shit.

Harry subdued the instinctive panic and shook his head slightly. “I don’t think
that’s a good name either, sir.”

“But you want me to call you by name. And Mr. Potter places too much
distance between us.”

“It’s an appropriate distance for Minister and bodyguard, sir.”

“But I call my Aurors by their first names. Or have you not been around long
enough to hear that?”

Harry clenched his hands under the blankets. Yes, it was true that Riddle called
Whipwood Jalena and other Aurors Samuel or Morgana or Betsy. But he had
never thought it would apply to him. Technically, he was still Riddle’s enemy,
and Riddle should have been wary of him, concentrated on punishing him.

Then again, almost nothing Riddle had done since the moment Harry had saved
his life for the first time made sense.

Harry breathed out slowly and shrugged. “If you really insist on calling me that
—Parseltongue term, Minister, then I’m not able to stop you.”

“Well, one thing could make me stop.”

“What?” Harry asked quickly, wondering if he should use a life-debt to just

make Riddle call him “Mr. Potter.”

“Your permission to go back to calling you Harry.”

“You seem to be overly intimate with my son for someone who’s not his
soulmate or blood kin, Minister Riddle,” James said coolly, and made Harry
jump. He’d honestly forgotten his father was there, as focused as he was on
Riddle. A bad sign, Harry, he thought to himself. “I would honor his wishes,
given that you’re neither.”
Riddle raised his eyebrows and stared back, a mild enough stare by his
standards, but it made Harry’s father turn red in the face. Smiling, Riddle
looked at Harry. “Which of the two do you prefer? Admired one or your first
name?”
“Neither.”

“If the two are both equal, then I’m afraid the choice is mine. Admired one.”
Harry was holding himself back from a truly unfortunate response when the
door opened and his mother walked in, carrying a copy of the Prophet. Harry
grinned at her and held out his hand. Lily gave him a faint smile and handed it
to him.

“I assume you haven’t had the chance to look at the paper today, sir?”

“Tell me, admired one, has your soulmate come forwards in response to that
article?”

Harry gave him a soulful look. “Given what’s been happening lately, Minister,
she might assume she’s not welcome.” He handed the paper to Riddle, who
nearly ripped it in his eagerness to take and look at the thing.

Riddle went still the minute he caught sight of the headline. Harry leaned back
in his bed and savored that stillness, as well as the white lines that appeared on
either side of his nose a minute later.

“You dare.” The last word wasn’t in Parseltongue, but given the sharpness of
the hiss, Harry thought Riddle would have liked to say it that way.

“Of course I do,” Harry said softly. “I would dare a lot more in the name of
making you understand our relative positions, Minister.”

Tom flipped slowly through the article. The sole photograph was a picture of
Harry reclining in his hospital bed, looking pale and interesting, but then again,
it hardly needed more than that, given the content.

MINISTER URGES PROTÉGÉ TO ABANDON MORALS!

The first paragraphs were pure, breathless Rita Skeeter; they could have put a
different byline on it and Tom would have known it for hers.

It seems that Minister Tom Riddle’s latest protégé, the miraculously powerful
Harry Potter, is being urged to abandon his “old-fashioned” morals. According
to Mr. Potter, Minister Riddle is all but courting him—and thinks that his
determination not to date anyone but his soulmate is less than commendable.
The news comes less than a day after this very newspaper reported Minister
Riddle’s comments urging Mr. Potter’s soulmate to come forwards.
“I really thought he was trying to do the right thing and act in the name of true
love, breaking down barriers,” Mr. Potter said from the hospital room where he
was still recovering from saving Minister Riddle’s life. The latest attempt
consisted of an enchanted venom that witnesses said had rendered the Minister
unable to breathe. “Why else would he ask me about my soulmate and then
publish that information? But it was really all a front.”
Mr. Potter said that Mr. Riddle was sitting on the edge of his bed yesterday, in a
position reserved for blood kin or soulmates. There’s also the fact that Minister
Riddle has given Mr. Potter a new flat, made him one of his bodyguards after a
single incident that did not demonstrate bodyguard potential, and rammed the
pardon of Mr. Potter’s parents through the Wizengamot.
Mr. Potter was almost in tears about that last one. “I really thought that he was
acting out of good will at first,” he said. “But then he pardoned my parents.
Everyone knows that Minister Riddle stands for unbending justice. What does
justice mean if everyone just gets what they want? I hate to think that his
attempts to make me like him are causing him to abandon his principles.”
Readers may remember Minister Riddle’s past indiscretions with individuals as
different as then-Head of the Wizengamot Isolde Greengrass and the alleged,
since-cleared, Dark wizard Manfred Gaunefroy…

Tom skipped past that, which was old gossip and old news, and came to the end
of the article, where Skeeter’s conclusion lurked.

While some may have discarded the old courtesies as, well, old, there is no
reason for the Minister to press his suit on the unwilling, Mr. Potter said.
“I never want to date or sleep with anyone except my soulmate,” Mr. Potter
said, the most innocent of tears standing in his eyes. “If that makes me old-
fashioned, so be it. I’d rather be old-fashioned than…” And Mr. Potter hid his
eyes and could not speak the word.
I’m sure the rest of us can speak it for him, dear readers. And I urge you to join
me in calling on Minister Riddle to leave the pursuit of Mr. Potter to his
soulmate, should she ever respond to Mr. Potter’s appeals.

Tom looked up slowly. Harry was watching him with a smile turning up the
corners of his mouth. Tom leaned forwards. Harry leaned in to mimic him.

“You are a fool if you think this will make me want you less,” Tom whispered.

Genuine surprise blazed on Harry’s face for a second, and then he sneered.
“Yes, but I can make it too expensive politically for you to pursue me.”
Tom drew his wand, ignoring the way that James Potter pulled in a stuttering
breath and Lily Potter moved as if to put herself between him and her child.
What mattered was Harry, his admired one, surveying him with a smile that had
a slight trace of smugness to it.

Tom snapped his wand out and straight at the illusion, the lie, stretching up
Harry’s arm. “Finite Incatatem!”
Nothing happened. The phoenix continued to shine on Harry’s arm, and Harry
raised his eyebrows a little and leaned back in the bed. “Does it hurt to be that
wrong, Tom?”
Even in the storm of confusion striking through his mind, part of Tom seized
and rejoiced in the fact that Harry had spoken his first name. He slid his wand
back into the sheath strapped along his arm and shook his head. “You have
made mistakes. You have left enough of a trail behind you that I am going to
find out who your soulmate is.”

Harry shrugged. “Do what you want. It won’t change my resolve or quiet the
scandal that’s going to come out of this.” He flicked his fingers against the
paper, and his pictured self looked up at him with wide eyes.

“I am going to find out who it is,” Tom continued. “And I am going to seduce

your affections away from her.”

Harry sat up further in his bed, but he said not a word, despite his wide eyes.
His expression was locked in a mask of stone as he watched Tom walk out of
the room. Tom heard the older Potters begin scolding their son before the door
was shut, but he doubted Harry would pay any heed to them. Tom would not
have, in his place.

The storm in Tom’s mind had become a storm of determination. Never before
had he had an enemy who could play opposite him as an equal on so many
fields: magical power, politics, manipulation of public opinion, and turning
apparent setbacks to his own advantage.

Tom would not say that he was in love. He would not say that he would not give
Harry up if he discovered his own soulmate tomorrow.

But right now, he knew that he wanted, with a bottomless yearning he had not
experienced since he had learned what the mark on his chest meant.
Chapter 8: Knowledge
Chapter Text
Molly blinked when the wards brought her the news of who was waiting at the
far edge of their temporary campsite outside the Muggle town of Manchester.
She shot a glance at Arthur as he came up next to her and felt their bond vibrate
with doubt. “Why do you think he’s here?” she murmured.

“It must have something to do with James and Lily.” Sirius had bounced up
next to them before Arthur could answer. “I mean, nothing else really important
has happened lately, has it? Maybe the pardons turned out to be false after all.”

Arthur caught Molly’s eye and shook his head. Molly nodded back. Neither of
them really thought Albus’s visit would have much to do with that, but
reasoning with Sirius had been almost impossible since James and Lily had left.
He was lonely, restless, and determined to “do something”—a bad combination.

“We’ll only know for sure by going and seeing what he wants,” Arthur said. His
soul-mark, a bright flame, shimmered for a second on his right arm, and Molly
got a wave of his silent strength. She smiled. She did love her man, and ever
since the moment their fourfold bond had been completed, she’d never doubted
they could overcome any obstacles by working together.

“I’m coming.”

Molly would have preferred for Sirius to stay behind, but it was true that they
couldn’t really make him do so. She just nodded, and they walked together
towards the edge of the camp. All around them was pavement, asphalt, cold
stone and steel. The abandoned building that stood behind them had no trace of
wood or anything natural. Molly hated it, but she would have hated living under
Riddle’s rule more.

Albus appeared the moment they crossed the wards. He gave them a smile that
seemed weaker than Molly ever remembered seeing it, and his eyes had no
twinkle at all. “Evening, Molly, Arthur, Sirius. Are the others here?”

“They went into town to steal food from the Muggles.” Arthur clapped his hand
on Albus’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you, though. Did you want something to
eat?”

“A chance to sample Molly Weasley’s cooking is not to be missed.”

But Albus was quiet and abstracted throughout the meal, eating it and praising
her mechanically. Molly had once thought he would be at home anywhere, in
Hogwarts or the midst of battle or the golden world beyond their created portal
or, as he was right now, in the middle of what Sirius said was called a “parking
lot” eating stew cooked over a fire. Here, though, he seemed strained and
stretched, and to fit badly into the air around him.

He finally put the pot aside and said, “I’m afraid that I have to tell you a secret
I’ve kept for a long time. I wouldn’t reveal it now, because I once promised I
never would. It’s a case of privacy. But—well, war is no respecter of secrets.”

“No, it’s not,” said Molly, glancing at Arthur. They all sat on Transfigured
chairs, although Sirius had taken a stool. He never seemed good at
Transfiguration except the kind that had turned him into an Animagus, because
he was always rushing, Molly thought. “But this sounds especially grave. Is it,
Albus?”

“Yes.” Albus seemed to be bracing himself. “It concerns Harry’s soulmate.”

Sirius perked up a little. “Did you find her? I know the poor kid’s been awfully
lonely. And this might be the one thing that gets him out from under Riddle’s
thumb. The old laws say that no one can stand between soulmates.”

Molly nodded and started to add her own support, but stopped speaking when
she saw the grim line Albus’s mouth was set in. “Did you not find her?” she
whispered.

“I’m afraid that the Order of the Phoenix has been the recipients of a deception.
A deception started by myself and Lily and James for the best of reasons, but
now useless.” Albus picked up a piece of gravel from the ground and threw it
into the fire. “We have known Harry’s soulmate since the day he was born. He
carries the name on his wrist.”

A low sound startled Molly. It wasn’t until she looked at Sirius that she realized
he was growling, and leaning forwards as if he was going to leap over the fire
and tear Albus’s throat out.

“You’d better have a damn good reason for this,” Sirius whispered. “Keeping
soulmates apart is a crime and you know it.”

Albus braced himself visibly before turning to Sirius. “The name was Tom
Marvolo Riddle.”

Molly felt as if the world had dropped out from under her. Riddle was
Harry’s soulmate? She put out a faltering hand and felt Arthur’s solid shoulder
pop into place underneath it. Molly leaned on him, shivering, shocky. Arthur
stroked her hair with a reassuring hand before he asked, “And Riddle doesn’t
know?”

“No. It’s why we encouraged Harry to excel in Quidditch and spread the rumor
that his soulmate was female.” Albus’s eyes wandered back and forth between
them. “Everyone knows that Riddle thinks Quidditch is a stupid and dangerous
sport, and he’ll never look twice at anyone involved with it. And the more
people who had the completely wrong idea about Harry’s soulmate, the better.”

“See here, Albus,” Sirius interrupted. “I’ve seen Harry’s soul-mark. That giant

phoenix on his arm. It can’t be—”

“Do you recall seeing it before he was fifteen, Sirius?”

Sirius hesitated. “Well, no. But I got exiled just before he went to Hogwarts.
That’s around the time most children start displaying their soul-marks,
anyway.” Molly nodded. It was considered vulgar for people younger than that
to flaunt them, especially if they were names or unique images. It was a form of
bragging that they already knew who their soulmates were, unlike those with
more ambiguous marks who might have to spend years searching.

“That is because he did not have the image then. The phoenix image is a tattoo
that Harry received from a Muggle artist.” Albus sat heavily back on his side of
the fire. “Harry got it so that people would pay attention to it instead, believe
that was his soul-mark, and not bother searching his skin for anything else.”

“He—he got the idea that he should do this from you, didn’t he?” Molly asked.
She hated the unsteadiness in her voice.

“Of course he did.” Albus watched her gravely. “We cannot cope with Tom
Riddle as he currently is. Do you want to know what he would be like if he
gained fourfold magical powers?”

“No, but—Albus. To keep a young man from his soulmate…”

“I gave up my own soulmate for the good of the world, Molly.” Albus’s voice
was a study in weariness. “I know the sacrifice we demanded of Harry. It is a
hard one. But it is better than dooming the world.”

“You haven’t succeeded, though, have you?” Sirius demanded. He had his arms
folded so that he was almost hugging his chest. “Harry’s in Riddle’s control
right now, and from the way he’s saved the bastard’s life, he might be getting
friendly with his soulmate.”
“I cannot prevent the fact that Riddle is still alive, or that Harry might choose to
protect him.” Albus was staring into the distance. “I would never have
attempted assassination in the first place if I were not desperate. I know that a
soulmate’s death causes a wound that does not heal. And I do not want to
assassinate Harry now. But I am going to keep them apart.”

“Is that why you told this to us?” Arthur asked. Molly nearly jumped. Other
than the subtle vibration through the bond that spoke of his calming strength,
she had nearly forgotten her husband was there.

“Yes.” Albus glanced at them. “Lily and James—well, I understand how they
felt about being pardoned after nine years as fugitives, but it has clouded their
minds. They haven’t said anything about encouraging Harry to pursue Riddle,
but they haven’t been as open with me as I could wish, either. And Tom is
charming. In his company, Lily and James might well change their minds.”

“They couldn’t.” Molly was firm on that point. “Not Lily and James.”

“You don’t know, Molly. They might convince themselves that Harry being
happy is the only thing that matters.” Sirius leaned forwards. “You had enough
trouble getting them to agree to keep the secret in the first place, didn’t you,
Albus?”

“You know me and them too well, old friend,” Albus murmured. “Yes. They
were horrified when they saw the name on their child’s wrist, of course, but Lily
was at first in favor of finding a way to make it work. Then Riddle revealed his
prejudice against Muggles more openly, and Lily changed her mind. But if she
did not know that Riddle is incapable of love, then I think she might put
pressure on Harry to give the man a chance.”

“We don’t have to worry about fourfold magical powers, at least,” Arthur said
thoughtfully. “If Riddle can’t love, the most we have to worry about is twofold.
If Harry comes to love him.”

“Even that’s a nightmare we don’t want,” said Sirius bluntly. “But what can we
do, Albus? Since we’re living at a distance from Harry and Lily and James now,
they’re probably going to have more influence over him.”

“You acted as parents to Harry until your own more recent exile, Molly and
Arthur. And you’ve suffered more for your beliefs than Lily and James did,
Sirius. I would like you to put pressure on him that way. And tell Ron and
Hermione. They’re his best friends, and they were the closest to Harry of all for
seven years. That should be enough indication that no one approves of this…
union.”

“Does Harry?” Molly asked.

She thought it a sensible, practical question, but it got her a frown and a shake
of Albus’s head. “If I could tell that, Molly, I would feel much more at ease in
my mind. But I know nothing, I can be sure of nothing. I only know that the last
time I saw him, Harry was as much against Riddle as ever. And he could have
earned special treatment for himself a long time ago if he wanted, simply by
revealing the truth. I have to believe that, despite his tendency to prize lives
above freedom, he is still loyal to the Order.”

“Then why do you need us to pressure him?”

“To make sure that he stays loyal. That he is not tempted.” Albus held up a hand
as Molly opened her mouth. “I agree, Molly. I know that keeping one soulmate
from another is reprehensible. But I cannot imagine a better solution.”

Molly bowed her head. She couldn’t say that magic or fate or whatever created
soul-marks—beliefs differed—always knew best, or her own sweet Charlie
wouldn’t have been left with a soul-mark that was black at birth, indicating his
soulmate had died before he was even born. Bill wouldn’t be paired with
someone who Molly found far too airy and light-headed, and who had kept Bill
from joining the Order.

But it wasn’t faith in Albus or concern about soul-marks and soulmates that
made her agree, in the end. She was thinking about Harry, and the happiness
that he would need in his life if he couldn’t have his soulmate.

That happiness should include his best friends.

“I’ll talk to Ron and Hermione,” she said softly.

“Excuse me, Minister, but I think there’s something we need to discuss that
doesn’t concern the law about dragon reserves.”

Tom settled back with a faint smile. “Ah, yes, Madam Moonwell. You had
something you wanted to bring forwards?”
Selene Moonwell squinted at him and thumped her stick on the floor. Her
daughter Pandora had married into the Lovegood family, but Selene had nothing
of the dreamy air that Pandora carried about her. She was a formidable
opponent, or would have been if Tom hadn’t been able to predict every move
she made days in advance.

“I’m talking about the accusations in the paper against you, Minister.”

“Accusations? I saw none, Madam Moonwell.”

“You know that we’re talking about the interview that young Potter gave
Skeeter, Riddle. How dare you try to seduce someone young and innocent and
faithful away from his soulmate?”

Ah, yes, it was all so distressingly predictable. Tom looked from face to face
and caught glance after glance, although their eyes slid away from him a few
moments later. They might be letting Moonwell lead the attack and pretending
to back her up, but they would be incapable of facing him.

Tom let them see the truth in his eyes, that they would always be unworthy of
being his opponents, and then turned to Moonwell again. She had her white hair
piled up on her head and her large silver crescent moon earrings dangling from
her lobes, but those were only unimportant personal eccentricities. Tom had to
see her as the embodiment of the public that would think these ridiculous
questions work asking.

“Perhaps you could let me know why you think this is a seduction, Madam
Moonwell?”

“The boy all but called it that, Riddle!”

“Yet I don’t remember him actually using the word in his article.” Tom smiled
and stood, nodding to Moonwell across the space of the galleries that separated
them. “I may have committed a few indiscretions, but I would do much the
same for any Auror or bodyguard of mine who had suffered injuries in
protecting me. Are you saying that I should not have waited at his bedside in St.
Mungo’s, or given him more money or a better job for the services he had
provided me?”
Moonwell hesitated at that. She knew as well as Tom did that there were no
laws against what Tom had done, only customs—customs that some people had
already discarded as mindlessly traditional. “I know what I read, sir.”
“But I must remind you that the sense of words on a page matters as much as
what they seem to imply,” Tom said softly. “Harry Potter felt uncomfortable
around me. Very well. I will tone down those behaviors. But that doesn’t mean
that I have done something wrong, violated laws or crossed boundaries. And it
doesn’t mean that I should have let continue to draw his former, small salary or
abandoned him to the cold mercies of the Healers without explanation. There is
tradition, which guides us, and there is compassion, which I always hold as a
higher good.”

That made the people behind Moonwell shift around again. Tom looked at them
with a calm, impersonal gaze, and they slid away from it like the cockroaches
they were in the light.

They hated him as much as they needed him. On the other hand, they knew that
if he was gone and one of them tried for the position of Minister, they would
fight until the wizarding world burned down. Tom had amused himself by
encouraging their hereditary hatreds, their distrust of other wizarding families,
and the pride that whispered to them that no one with the name of an old enemy
should command them.

It made them so much easier to control. And it made it so easy for him to
maintain his place on top.

“I want to see an apology to Mr. Potter.”

Tom shifted his gaze back to Moonwell. “A public one?”

“Of course a public one! You’ve already made the poor boy uncomfortable
enough with all the ‘private moments’ that you’ve arranged!”
Tom felt his lip curl a little at the idea that he had arranged for his own
poisoning in the forest or the satellite building of St. Mungo’s to fall on his
head, but his mind was already buzzing with ways to turn Moonwell’s demand
to his advantage. He nodded. “Very well. You realize that this might make Mr.
Potter more uncomfortable still?”
“Not if he’s as Light as he seems. He’ll want everything done right and proper,
and without any of this faffing about behind closed doors! Keep in mind that
you’re not the boy’s soulmate, sir.”
More’s the pity. Tom nodded and put on the sort of expression they would
expect to see him wear, the complicated mixture of thoughtfulness and self-
condemnation that someone who had violated ancient customs should wear.
They thought he was just like them, obedient to the bonds of tradition, because
he had portrayed himself that way, as someone who honored pure-blood ways.
“Of course, Madam Moonwell. I’ll think of something suitable.”
He turned after a few more conciliatory noises and strode towards the door.
People watched him and then pretended they hadn’t been. All of them drew
back. None dared to challenge him.

Tom had never loved pure-blood traditions. He used them when they smoothed
his path, and broke them without a care when they didn’t. But they formed
useful chains for the inbred fools’ necks, he’d admit that, and sometimes that
meant a minor concession to them was necessary.

In this case…

Tom smiled. He doubted that Harry, who would, after all, have to bear the brunt
of his “apology,” would agree with Madam Moonwell about the proper form for
it.

“Mr. Potter. Mrs. Potter. Harry.”

Harry clenched his hand around the small trunk he carried that was loaded with
shrunken furniture. He had spent an enjoyable day at the shops with his parents,
finding furniture and clothes—and books, his mum had been insistent about that
—that would suit them and allow them to set up home in the spacious flat
Riddle had foisted on Harry. He’d actually managed to forget about Riddle for a
while, despite the whispers that had followed them in the shops.

But now, with Riddle leaning against the front door of the building that housed
his flat, it came rushing back like an ignored burn that had started hurting again.

And it was a thousand times worse when Riddle stepped forwards and swept
into an elegant bow.

Harry felt his whole body twitching. Riddle paying so much attention to him,
and in the middle of the bloody street where anyone could happen by and
Aurors were probably watching, made him feel faint and sick. This was exactly
what he had been trained to avoid. Riddle should never look at him, should
never know he existed,

“Harry,” Riddle intoned again. “I wanted to give you my sincerest apology that
I made you uncomfortable. I should have realized that someone raised in such a
traditional environment would feel loyal to his soulmate alone, and committed
to a life of pious loneliness when he knew he couldn’t have her. After all, you
never even dated someone in Hogwarts. I mistook who I was dealing with. If
there is something I can do to atone for my mistakes, you have only to say.”

Traditional environment. Harry barely kept from twitching. Of course Riddle

couldn’t know what his upbringing had really been like, but he knew damn well
it hadn’t been traditional, not with Harry’s parents in exile since he was fifteen
years old.

And Riddle had revealed information about Harry’s dating life to anyone
listening, information that hadn’t been included in the articles. Harry wanted so
badly to step up and punch the bastard in the nose.

He wouldn’t be so handsome if he had to get someone to set his nose after I

broke it.

But they were in public, before staring eyes and eyes that Harry was sure he
didn’t see. He had no choice but to incline his head and say, “You made me
uncomfortable in the past, Minister Riddle, but I’m sure it was unintentional.
And there’s nothing else that I require from you. You’ve already given me so
much.”

“Good.” Riddle straightened up. “I only want to help you, Harry. Your full
potential has been suppressed by people who don’t understand you, and I have
to include myself in that number. I saw that you worked in the Department of
Magical Games and Sports, and I foolishly concluded that you couldn’t be
worth anything. Let me make up for that mistake now.”

The words sounded polite from a distance, and Harry even heard his mother
make a faint inquiring noise behind him, probably surprised by Riddle’s
courtesy. Harry was the one who stood close enough to make out the way
Riddle’s eyes shone. He was enjoying every minute of this, and the lust he had
studied Harry with in hospital was still there, too.

“You really don’t need to, Minister. Everything was understandable. I don’t
want you to think—”

“There is one thing he could help us with,” Lily said abruptly, making Harry
jump. “I understand that you were the one who gave Harry this flat, Minister?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Then perhaps you can come in and advise us on the decorations. We’ve never
lived in a space like this, only in a cottage, and it’s been nine years since we had
that, even. We have the furniture and the colors we’d like, but we could use
someone else’s perspective on how to arrange them.”

“I would be entirely delighted, Mrs. Potter,” Riddle said, with another bow, and
extended his arm. Harry was sure that caused some of the watchers to choke, at
least if they were pure-bloods. That courtesy wasn’t often given to
Muggleborns.

But Lily took Riddle’s arm as if she did this every day and proceeded ahead of
them into the flat. Riddle glanced back once, eyes full of amusement, and made
a little beckoning gesture with one finger.

“What the hell is she doing?” Harry hissed to his father as they followed. If this
was some plan, he sure hadn’t been let in on it!

“Something she said the last night in hospital, after you went to sleep.” James
looked supremely uncomfortable, but he was moving, not wanting to spend any
more time in public than Harry did. “That someone who had done this much for
you might not be—all bad. And a person who had been wrong about one thing
might be wrong about others.”

Harry’s eyes went wide, but he tried to walk normally, in case one of those
watching Aurors was more perceptive than the others.

Dumbledore. His mother was talking about Dumbledore. He had been wrong, as
she had seen it, about saying that Riddle would never relent and never pardon
anyone who was in the Order of the Phoenix. So Dumbledore might be wrong
about the state of Riddle’s heart, too.

“But she still can’t want…”

“I think she wants someone to advise us, right now.”

Harry nodded and fell silent at the implied rebuke in his father’s voice. James
was right. Better to deny information to the sharks watching them than to give
away something that might get back to Riddle and tell him the truth where
nothing else had.

But part of him still burned. He was sure his mother’s intention was to make
him happy. It always had been.

But he did not want her interference.

*

“My husband and son will want a drawing room decorated in purely Gryffindor
colors, but I have more sophisticated taste than that, and so do you, I hope,
Minister Riddle.”

Tom found himself smiling. “Yes, Mrs. Potter, I do. What do you say about a
mixture of browns and reds? Earth tones? It would make the drawing room
cozier, and of course the bedrooms could be made up in lighter, airier colors.”

“Exactly, Minister Riddle.”

Lily Potter was an intriguing opponent, full of wide-eyed, ingenuous questions

and a smile that never seemed to waver. Tom had spent a few minutes
considering what she actually wanted before he decided he knew.

She was trying to decide whether his changes would do Harry good. And if she
decided they did, Tom believed she would fully encourage her son to comply
with them.

So Tom ingratiated himself. He agreed with some of her decisions but gently
challenged others, and cast an illusion of what the room might look like with the
colors or the furniture she desired that he knew was beyond her power to create
or maintain. Lily Potter’s eyebrows rose higher at that, and she gave him a
thoughtful glance as they neared the end of one particularly large bedroom.

“Harry described this as a flat, but it’s more like a house that occupies one floor
of a building.”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

That won him a genuine, if thin, smile. Then Lily dropped the act and asked,
“Why do you want my son so badly, Minister? And you don’t need to pretend
that you don’t. I saw the look in your eyes.”

Tom thought about it and decided only part of the truth would do. Although
none of the files on the Potters had said that Lily Potter had any talent in
Legilimency, she seemed the kind of person who would pick up on deception.
“I want him because he’s the only magical equal I’ve ever encountered who’s
available to me.”

“Available?”
“Emotionally available, Mrs. Potter. It’s true that he’s devoted to the memory or
image of his soulmate.” Lily’s face acquired a patina of sadness that Tom found
interesting enough to file away. At least it indicated that Harry’s parents
appeared to believe the same way he did, that his soulmate would never accept
him. “Everyone else who was near me in power has had a soulmate, or, well,
been on the opposite side of a war.”

“So was Harry, until recently.”

“He never held the same ideals, or he would never have saved my life. Perhaps
the first time, when his was in danger as well, but the second? No.”

“He told me that he did it partially because he feared the poisoning would be
blamed on his.” From the tone of her voice, Lily Potter had her own suspicions
about the timing of that event.

Tom smiled. “That is what he would tell you, yes. Do you believe him?”

Lily straightened and turned to look at him. Her glance was direct and blazing
bright. Tom was glad, for a moment, that Harry had inherited those eyes in
different shades. It would have been annoying if Tom had encountered that kind
of gaze every time he looked into them.

Then again, Lily Potter was sure of herself partially because she had her
soulmate, Tom was sure. Harry had the same kind of hungry longing about him
that—

That I have.
That would have stirred Tom’s frustration, if he’d let it. How could
Harry not respond to the kinship between them? How could he not sense it?

“Harry has always been compassionate,” Lily said, stealing Tom’s attention
back. “He hated killing animals for potions ingredients. It’s one reason it wasn’t
a sacrifice for him to do poorly in that class.”

“He did poorly on purpose. I knew that. Now tell me why.”

From the slight widening of Lily’s eyes, she hadn’t meant to reveal that. But she
gave the thin smile again and shook her head. “You’ll have to ask Harry if you
want to know the answer to that.”

“I permitted you to ask questions of me.”

“You have all the power in the situation, Minister Riddle, and you’re the one
trying to persuade my son to give up some long-held beliefs. There are still
things that you should ask him, or it’s not fair.” Lily walked over to study the
illusion that hung on the wall, showing what a tapestry might look like here. “I
don’t like the blue. But what happens if we lighten the shade?”

The revealing conversation, Tom suspected as he moved his wand again, was
over. But at the same time, he thought he had been permitted to learn more than
an eavesdropper on the conversation might have guessed.

He had Lily Potter’s tacit—only tacit—approval.

Harry turned slowly around to face Riddle.

He had known what his mother was doing the instant she came out of the
bedroom that she had been decorating with Riddle and drew his father aside for
a low-voiced conversation. James looked red in the face, but he nodded in
agreement, and then Lily had come up and kissed Harry on the cheek, before
looking into his eyes for a long second.

“We’ve found that some of the tapestries aren’t the right color, darling,” she
murmured. “We’ll have to take them back to the shops. Why don’t you stay
here and converse with Minister Riddle for a moment?”

All of Harry’s muscles had tensed. “Mother—”

“I think it’s wise, Harry.”

That was the only thing that had kept him still instead of insisting on
accompanying his parents. His mother really did seem to believe it would be all
right. And Harry knew that she wouldn’t have said anything like this if she had
believed staying with Riddle would hurt him.

Even his father had been persuaded, and he would have needed some kind of
truth, or he wouldn’t have consented to leave Harry behind, either.

Riddle stepped out of the bedroom the minute his parents vanished through the
door. Harry turned to face him, clenching a hand on the new cherry wood table
that they’d bought and he’d arranged next to a chair.
Pain and irritation tore across his soul like winds. Why did everyone have to do
this? He knew very well that he couldn’t be with Riddle no matter what, so why
did Riddle act as if it was possible? And now Harry’s parents were in on the act
when they were the ones who had told him for years that he couldn’t have his
soulmate!

“There it is.”

Harry glanced sharply at Riddle. “What are you prattling about now?”

Riddle’s left eye twitched minutely, the reaction to the word “prattling,” Harry
supposed. But he said only, “The way your eyes light up when you’re angry. It
makes you look wonderfully alive.”

“Yeah, yeah, everyone praises my eyes, I know all about them and what
a glorious color they are,” Harry drawled. The few people who had tried to date
him at Hogwarts, mostly idiots who had wanted to make their soulmates
jealous, had used that word all the time. “But I never thought you would be one
to fall for a pair of pretty eyes, Riddle.”

“It’s far more than that, of course. Your intelligence. Your magic. Your refusal
to back down and give in the way I want.”

“Then let me keep you from disappointment permanently,” Harry said in a

bright tone. “The answer is no. Forever.”

“Your mother confirmed that you deliberately held back in school and hid your
talents,” Riddle said. He slid a little closer, but stopped and raised his hands in a
“peace” gesture the minute Harry tensed. “I only want to know why. I
understand that you believe you can never be with your soulmate. But making
yourself look small doesn’t seem like a rational response.”

“I can look however I want,” Harry said. “And I knew the moment I realized
how powerful my magic was that I would never be valued for myself, only
for it. So I created a façade that only people who really wanted to value me
would see behind.”

“I have. I like what I see.”

Riddle’s voice was husky, and Harry hated the low, warm feeling it ignited in
his stomach. He shook his head with a sneer, though. Damn it, he still had to do
this. Riddle might be as soft as he liked to Harry, but he would still dangerously
misuse the fourfold power of a soulmate bond. “You want my magic. You said
so yourself.”

“I also said the other things I like.”

“You see me as an asset, Riddle.” And it took no effort to put the acid into his
voice, because while Harry had abandoned most of the beliefs that Dumbledore
had tried to instill into him, others were easy to hold onto. Riddle proved them
true with every word he spoke. “Not as a person.”

Riddle’s gaze dipped for a moment. Then he said, “I will admit that I don’t see
you exactly as I would see my soulmate. I can give that kind of devotion to only
one person. But I will value you only second to them.” And his eyes rose again.

Harry took a step back from the searing desire in Riddle’s eyes.

“And I think,” Riddle went on, voice pitched low, “that all of this stubbornness
has a different source than I assumed. I thought that you couldn’t believe me,
and then that you didn’t want to believe me because it meant you would be
receiving tenderness and care from someone who wasn’t your soulmate. For
whatever reason, you are convinced that you can’t have that.”

Harry opened his mouth to tell Riddle to piss off, but Riddle crossed the floor
between them and curled his hand around Harry’s arm, luckily the part that was
marked by the phoenix and not the side of his wrist where Riddle’s name lay.
Harry stared back at him, and wasn’t sure what his eyes or face showed, only
that Riddle looked satisfied.

“Instead,” Riddle breathed, “you are this stubborn because you are afraid.”

Harry snarled, his surprise vanishing in fury. He twisted smoothly to the side,
freeing himself from Riddle’s grip, and tried to ignore the burning sensation
where Riddle’s fingers had been.

Riddle shook his hand a little, probably injured by the way his wrist had been
forced to bend, but his eyes were full of triumph. “You are afraid that you might
have to give up the precious illusions that you’ve been clinging to. That only
your soulmate and your family could ever love or care for you. That someone
might value your magical power and still see you as a person. You’d have to
start living up to your potential instead of crouching here in a kind of living
death. It’s been so easy, hasn’t it, to dim yourself down—”

“You mean dumb yourself down—”

“I said what I meant. You’ve dimmed that light that could have shone from you,
and basically decided that since fate’s paired you with someone who doesn’t
want you, that means you can’t have anyone at all. Not conservative or
traditional. Cowardly, Harry.”

Harry took a step towards Riddle with his magic orbiting around his head in
small sparks, the way it had during their first confrontation in Riddle’s office.
Riddle only watched him with brightened eyes.

And that was horrible, because it made Harry dream about all the things that he
couldn’t want, because he couldn’t have them. He tore his gaze around and said
through twisting lips, “That doesn’t mean I would want those things from you.”

“If I encourage you to wake up, then I’ll have done at least one good deed,”
Riddle said. “But you also need someone who isn’t discouraged by that dull
façade you’ve wrapped around yourself. I’m getting beneath that, aren’t I,
Harry? You need someone who infuriates you because only rage is going to
make you burn bright enough to live right now.”

Harry cupped his hands in front of him, and the sparks of magic gathered there.
Harry held his hands still, and held Riddle’s stunned, slowly widening eyes, as
he built up a rotating spiral of white-golden light, dancing and falling like a
continuously moving fountain. It was a picture of his own magical potential,
one that students in their seventh year at Hogwarts learned to create. Harry
knew both the light and motion of his power were unusual.

And it was private. The only thing more private was one’s bed without a
soulmate.

“Here, you bastard,” Harry said. “Take this as a sign that I’m not afraid, and
that I accept your bloody challenge. You’re still going to fucking lose. I
don’t need you. I can show my full magic and believe that people don’t want to
use me and it has nothing to do with you, nothing. I have reasons you can’t
understand for what I do.” He was panting with anger, the emotion racing
through him and making his words stumble over themselves. “Take this. It’s not
sacred, it’s not secret, I just haven’t had someone to show it to before.”

He was sure, for a moment, that he had passed the irritation point and this was
the part where Riddle would back away, he was standing so still. But instead, he
paced gravely forwards and stood staring down at Harry’s fountain, glinting
with radiance. Harry held his gaze and didn’t flinch as Riddle reached out.
He took Harry’s right hand and tilted it up without disturbing the fountain
image. Harry’s heart raced with terror for a moment at how close those
fingertips were to the hidden name, but Riddle didn’t seek to wrap them around
Harry’s wrist.

Instead, he bowed his head and kissed the back of Harry’s hand, holding their
joined gaze all the while.

Harry couldn’t help the way his eyes widened and his breath came faster. Or the
knowledge that this was definitely not from anger.

“Challenge accepted, indeed,” Riddle said. His voice had deepened to a rumble
that Harry hated finding erotic. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, or
how much I want you. Or how fun the chase will be.”

And he stepped back and smiled at Harry one more time before walking out of
the room.

Harry dropped his hands and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. He
promised to himself that he wouldn’t yield to Riddle’s seduction. It was still
calculated, no matter how sincere individual statements might be. He was still
the reason Harry had grown up without a godfather for thirteen years now, and
without parents for nine. He was still the reason Harry had had to hide all his
life and would never have someone who loved him and wanted to be in bed
with him for reasons other than increased power.

But the burning sensation of Riddle’s lips on the back of his hand remained, a
silent mockery.

Chapter 9: Edges
Chapter Text

“I wanted to talk to you about a pardon for Ron and Hermione.”

“Who?” Tom turned from his desk to study Harry. Harry had been working on
lists of spells that he considered “Dark” or “unacceptable” for most of the
morning, in preparation for showing them to Tom and debating why they
shouldn’t be used. Tom didn’t expect to encounter many arguments he hadn’t
heard before, but there was always value in a genuinely new perspective.

And it got Harry used to being close to him, listening to him, speaking to him.
Tom knew well how bonds could be forged between people because of hours
like that.
“My friends. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.” Harry braced his hands on
either side of the desk as though he assumed Tom was about to attack him. “I
suppose you don’t remember signing the arrest orders for them, either?”

Tom sighed. “I only remember it when it’s highly unusual, Harry. The Order is
big enough to contain people who didn’t do anything especially heinous—”

“But you said that it was heinous! You showed me the part of the Department of
Mysteries that they destroyed.”
“And I was about to say that I do indeed remember them, because of the crime
they committed.” Tom leaned forwards and felt the thrill that was rapidly
becoming familiar as Harry refused to back down even that much. “Has it
occurred to you that perhaps they don’t deserve to be pardoned? They
committed murder.”

“In the name of defending themselves!”

Harry’s eyes had flinched away from him, though, and Tom knew he took the
point. He shook his head. “I can make an exception for certain crimes, like the
small ones that your parents were charged with, but not for murder. And don’t
tell me that you won’t speak to me or continue living in your flat if I don’t do
that. For all your objections to my principles, you should know why it makes
sense for me to hold this stance.”

“I know that you’re being ridiculous about it,” Harry muttered rebelliously.

“Why ask for this pardon now? You didn’t even ask for one for your parents, or
for your godfather, whose crime was one of the lesser ones.”

Harry turned bright red and looked away. Tom got up and walked in front of
him at once, his steps steady and slow. Harry was looking at the floor.

“Something has changed,” Tom murmured. “And since the only public things
that have were you saving my life and the pardons for your parents, and you
wouldn’t brag about the first one, it must be the pardons. Have they contacted
you wanting you to secure them pardons, Harry? Have you thought about
simply urging them to come in for trials, instead?”

Harry said nothing for long enough that Tom hoped no one came into the office.
They wouldn’t understand the silence etching itself like a woven web between
them, or what Tom hoped for to break the silence.
“They want to talk to me,” Harry mumbled finally. “That’s all. They want—
they have something special to say to me.”

“They can say it with an owl.”

“When your Aurors are probably intercepting my post?”

Tom shrugged. “I’ve rescinded my orders to that effect. You only have to
convince your paranoid friends that they can commit certain things to
parchment.”

“Hermione would never do that,” Harry said, shaking his head.

“Then I’m afraid they don’t get to say whatever it is that’s so important to you.”
Tom smiled. “Think about it this way. You’re certain to learn more important
information and have more enlightening conversations with the political figures
that you’ll meet at our gala.”

“It’s yours. Not mine.” Harry threw him a glance like a dagger. “And this is the
reason that I know I’m not important to you.”

“Do elaborate on the logic of your leap there. I’m fascinated.”

“You still treat me like a prisoner, for all the claims that I’m supposedly
unique.” Harry had overcome whatever was flustering him so badly, and simply
gazed at Tom with steady disdain. “You have me on a short chain. I know that
you have eavesdropping spells in the flat. You pardoned my parents to have
someone to manipulate me. Hostages, in the worst extreme. You won’t let me
communicate with my friends.”

“I would not take your parents hostage. It’s an inelegant tactic that backfires

more often than not.”

“You won’t let me communicate with my friends—”

“Write an owl to them. I can guarantee that it won’t be read.” Tom took a step
forwards and reached out to smooth his fingers over the phoenix on Harry’s
arm, the thing that wasn’t Tom’s soul-mark. It always made Harry’s breath
catch in a pleasing fashion when he did that. “Of course, if your friends come
and talk to you in territory I control, I can’t promise you that they won’t be
arrested.”
Harry tried to break his arm free with the smooth twist that he’d used the other
day in his flat, but Tom was used to that motion by now, and merely followed it.
It brought him around to the side of the desk, and Harry looked ready to surge
up from his chair and confront him.

“You mistake our relative positions,” Tom said. He could feel the heat of their
mingled breaths between them, and the heat of Harry’s sparking magic. “I am
the Minister, and you are—”

“Someone you want to make into a whore.”

The word startled Tom enough to make him drop Harry’s arm, and Harry stood
up and folded his arms across his chest. The phoenix shone, taunting Tom.
Harry saw the direction of his gaze, and flexed it, smiling.

“You like to throw your power and your position in my face,” Harry murmured.
“But then you talk about how much you desire me. You want me to sell myself
to you for my parents’ pardons and a few luxuries. You want me to betray my
soulmate. All the time, both of us know that you’ll abandon me the instant you
find your soulmate. A whore is what you want, and what I won’t be.”

Tom drew in a slow breath. If he snapped back, then he would react exactly the
way Harry wanted. Instead, he said, “The pardons were not meant as a bribe.”

“Then what?”

“A method of showing you that I can be reasonable, and show mercy when
there’s a reason to do so. I wanted to change your ideas about me.”

“And why is it so important what I believe about you, Minister Riddle? There’s

a horde of adoring sycophants all ready to say whatever you want to hear.”
They’re not you. But Tom knew Harry would hardly accept that. Instead, he
said, “Perhaps I’m tired of them. Perhaps I want the company of my intellectual
and magical equal.”

Harry’s eyes were hard as they watched him. Then he shrugged and said, “Your
words have already pointed up at least one difference between us, sir.”

“Yes?”

“You think you need an excuse to show mercy. I think one should show mercy
at all times.”
And he went back to the desk and assembling the lists of spells. Tom tried to
ask him more questions, and Harry answered with perfect politeness, but he had
withdrawn his spirit into himself again, and he was no longer flustered as he had
been when Tom originally spoke to him.

Tom hated it as much as he would have hated Harry declaring that he was going
to rejoin the Order of the Phoenix.

Obviously, however, the situation would take delicate handling in a way he had
not yet discovered. He smiled slightly when he realized that, and leaned back in
his chair, seeing from the corner of his eye that Harry had turned his head a
little towards Tom.

At least he’s intelligent enough to recognize that being a challenge just makes
him all the more intriguing.

Harry leaned on the windowsill and watched as the black dog came trotting up
the door below and barked peremptorily. One of the Aurors who had been
standing guard there since this morning obviously recognized it as “his” dog,
and turned around and entered the building. Harry closed his eyes.

Sirius would be coming to tell him, now. His parents had received the message
from Sirius yesterday, and told him that morning, which was the reason he had
been so distracted and allowed Riddle to take the lead in the conversation today.
His friends and other members of the Order of the Phoenix knew that Riddle
was his soulmate.

Harry’s skin crawled, and he felt his breath starting to come faster again. He
shook his head roughly. No, he had to be strong. He had to remind himself that
just because Ron and Hermione and Mr. Weasley and Mrs. Weasley and Sirius
knew about the name on his wrist, that didn’t mean Riddle would find out. All
of them were Order members who would be almost as invested as Professor
Dumbledore in him not finding out.

To know that a secret he had protected all his conscious life was out, though…

It made him feel as if he were in the middle of that collapsing building again.
With his magic bound.

Harry dried his hands on his trousers and glanced towards the firmly-closed
bedroom door. His parents had offered to be with him when he and Sirius had
the conversation, but Harry had refused. They’d had their own conversation
already. Sirius had been furious that they’d concealed the secret from him,
James had admitted. Harry thought he and Sirius needed their own separate talk.

When the door opened and the Auror leaned in to say, “Sir, your dog is
downstairs,” the only disorientation Harry suffered was the weird feeling he
always got when an Auror called him “sir” now. What made it worse was the
disgruntled expression on the Auror’s face. Harry hadn’t earned their respect.
They only thought they needed to be polite because, for some reason, Riddle
was.

“Yes, please bring him up. Thank you.”

The Auror withdrew with a dubious look, and then Sirius bounded in and gave
himself a brisk shake. Harry hurried over and knelt with his arms around his
godfather’s neck, closing his eyes partially so that he didn’t have to see the
betrayal in Sirius’s face.

Harry, why did you never tell me about your soulmate?

“Hi to you, too, Padfoot,” Harry said, as he sat back and Sirius sat down next to
him. The Auror who had escorted him up shut the door, but not before Harry
saw her roll her eyes.

Well, let her. Harry would much rather have gone through any number of cross-
eyed looks from Aurors than have the conversation he had to have now.

I’m waiting for an answer. Sirius let his tongue loll out, but anyone who knew
him could have read the reproachful look in his eyes.
Harry sighed and answered silently, stretching out on his side on the floor so
that he could scratch Sirius’s fur. My parents and Dumbledore told me that I
shouldn’t. They were afraid that someone would let the secret slip unless we
could keep it to ourselves. And the last thing we want is for Riddle to grow in
power.
Sirius gave a little bark and wagged his tail, but didn’t move away from looking
into Harry’s eyes. And do you still think that, with all the time that you’ve spent
with Riddle?
It’s not like I had much choice, Harry snapped. If Dumbledore hadn’t tried to
kill a bunch of people, he never would have found out!
Sirius hesitated, and Harry thought he probably wasn’t ready to talk about that
attack yet, not when Harry’s parents had told him that Sirius had contributed
magic to it, too. I—I never would have betrayed you, pup.
Harry sighed again, feeling exhausted. I know, but I’m not the one who made
that decision. You need to take it up with Dad and Mum and Dumbledore.
You could have told me once you grew up a bit.
And then you would probably have told me to keep my mouth shut and listen to
Dumbledore. You know, the way you did the one time I did try to tell you.
Sirius raised his ears and scraped at the floor with one paw. What are you
talking about?
When I was ten. Harry rolled on his back and stared up at the ceiling. It was one
way to ignore the demanding stare that he could feel Sirius pinning on the side
of his face. I came to you and said that I had something that was bothering me
and I wanted to talk to you about it. I got as far as saying that Dumbledore had
told me to keep it to myself, and then you said that I should keep my mouth shut.

It had hurt, that rejection, even though Harry understood why Sirius had said it
now. It had felt like he was reaching out a hand and Sirius had slapped it away.

I…don’t remember that.

I didn’t expect you to. Harry rolled over and buried his face in Sirius’s fur.
Regret filled him like a wound. He just wanted everything to be different. He
wanted Sirius and his parents never to have been exiled. He wanted Riddle’s
name off his wrist. He wanted to have been born normal, with a nice, normal
soulmate. Having Riddle notice him when Harry knew he would never be able
to do anything about it was hell. It’s just, what was I supposed to do, Sirius?
Disobey Dumbledore when you thought it was a good idea and keep it to myself
the rest of the time? It just feels like no matter what, you would find a way to
blame me.

Sirius whimpered and turned around. Harry lifted his head in time to have Sirius
lick his face. He smiled faintly and pushed back so that Sirius’s head was on the
floor again and Harry was ruffling his ears.

I can get past that. I have, you know. I just don’t want you to blame me now.
I won’t. The rush of emotion behind those words told Harry that Sirius meant it.
He sighed and sat up, scratching absently behind Padfoot’s ears as he stared out
the window. He could see the edge of one Auror’s pointy hat as they stood
guard outside the doors of the building.
Always a captive. It was yet another reason that Harry didn’t think this business
with Riddle would work out even if Dumbledore wasn’t in the picture. Riddle
guarded him like a prized possession when the only things he really knew about
were Harry’s powerful magic and attempt to hide it from him.
I won’t be a caged pet because Riddle would like his soulmate to be that way.
Harry? Are you all right?
Harry looked down as Sirius nudged his nose up under Harry’s hand. It was no
trouble to pet him when he was like this, all wide-eyed and begging with his tail
going sideways at six miles a minute. I’m fine, Sirius. I wish things were
different, but they aren’t, and I’m pretty used to living with that. He
hesitated. Did Dumbledore tell you why he decided to share the news about my
soulmate now?
He said that he thought you might be succumbing to the temptation to join
Riddle, since you saved his life.
Harry shrugged. It might be tempting if I could believe him. But he’s always
disguising what he really means with these pretty words. I can’t trust anything
he says. And he does want to hold me captive, you know. He has me surrounded
with guards, and he said that he’d stopped intercepting my post, but I doubt it.
And he pardoned Mum and Dad to manipulate me.
Sirius licked his face again, and then said, If you have to be alone for the rest of
your life…
I know. It’s not ideal, but you managed it, right? Harry knew very well that
underneath Sirius’s shaggy fur was the mark of a howling wolf—forever
unfulfilled because his soulmate, Remus Lupin, had turned away from his
friends in horror after what had happened during their fifth year. He’d left years
ago to try to find Severus Snape, now a werewolf, and apologize to him.
Sirius wagged his tail a little. Yes, I mean that, but I also mean that I’m always
going to be there for you, no matter what. I don’t want you to feel as though
we’re all going to abandon you because the truth is out there.
I know. Harry hugged Sirius around the neck, and they lay there in
companionable silence until darkness fell and Sirius stood up and stretched.
Harry knew he really had to get back to the Order.
Sirius?
Yeah? Sirius looked over his shoulder as Harry went to open the door for him.
I love you. Thanks for coming. And thanks for—sticking beside me despite
everything.
You’re you. Riddle is a bastard, but it’s not your fault whose mark you were
born with. Sirius licked his hand and then trotted past him and downstairs. The
Aurors muttered and shifted as Padfoot galloped between their legs. Harry
smiled a little and watched him until he was out of sight.

Right now, even with his mother and father in the next room and the knowledge
that not everyone in the Order had turned their backs on him, Harry envied
Sirius. He would have given anything to be as free as that, slipping silently into
the darkness and running towards his friends.

Harry shook his head slowly in the next second. He’d lived with this all his life.
He could keep living with it. Sooner or later, Riddle’s interest would wane
when Harry refused to give in. Then things could go back to—well, if not
normal, at least similar to what they had been, because that would mean that
Harry was once again not receiving the direct attention of the Minister.

Not receiving the direction attention of his soulmate.

It’s fucked-up, you know, that you both want his attention and don’t want it. It’s
not even fair to him, what you’re doing. Let him go and find someone who could
cope with his possessiveness and his ways of “honoring” someone.

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, he understood. He understood that it was far more of
a kindness to Riddle than Riddle would probably grasp. He would do what he
could to put Riddle off, but considering that nothing had been enough so far, it
might well turn into an endurance contest.

Well, if that was what he had to, it was what he had to do. He turned away from
the window and the captive night to speak to his parents.

“Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“Why, Harry, I don’t recall hiding it from you.”

“I was told about the gala! Not that I had to be one of the fucking guests of
honor!”

“Swearing is vulgar,” Tom murmured, but his voice was absent. Harry was
staring at him with widened, incredulous eyes, and Tom couldn’t turn away.
The sparks of magic dancing around him were subtle if one didn’t know what to
look for, white and brilliant, but so small they could be passed over.

“And of course you’re one of the guests of honor,” Tom continued. “We are
throwing this to honor recent political achievements, such as the pardon of your
parents. That showed that I am not so hardened or committed to inflexible
principles that I would reject the heartfelt plea of parents to rejoin their son.”

“Bollocks. You did that because it was me, not because it was your principles at
work.”

“Yes? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Harry leaned closer to him, making the rest of the office, and the fact that
someone might open the door any moment, fade into insignificance for Tom.
Harry’s eyes were brilliant, too, his cheeks flushed.
“Principles have to be abstract to be any good at all,” Harry hissed. “If you just
do favors for your friends or the relatives of your friends, you’re not a moral
person!”

Tom couldn’t help it. He laughed. Harry narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t
withdraw.

“No one lives like that,” Tom said, shaking his head. “The most fervent
proponents of justice still make exceptions—demand them—when someone
close to them gets arrested for a crime. And I know that you don’t live like that,
Harry.”

“Yeah? Prove it.”

“Doubtless you would say that you are a moral person because you have a sort
of abstract forgiveness you can apply to others,” Tom said airily, and had to
hide the pleasure that thrummed like a harpstring in the center of his chest. “But
you haven’t forgiven me, despite my pardoning your parents, despite my letting
you assume a prominent position in my life. This, when you were a spy for my
enemies and I could have had you thrown into Azkaban based on my own laws.
Who is the more forgiving person?”

Harry’s eyes widened, and he took a step back. Tom controlled the urge to
move after him. This was about teaching Harry something. He held his position
and the gaze, and Harry flinched and turned away, massaging the back of his
neck.

Tom narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to do that.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Harry murmured. “I haven’t—I haven’t been as open as I

could have.”

Then he took a deep breath, and turned around, and his face was settled again,
the crack in his defenses gone. Tom wished he could know why Harry had
managed to become expert in those defenses in the first place. Just fearing Tom
would notice him because of his magic or even his Animagus talent didn’t seem
enough reason to go to such effort.

“But every gift of yours comes with a hook buried in it,” Harry continued
quietly. “I know that you pardoned my parents to get into my good graces. I
know that me being your bodyguard is part of you trying to take advantage of
my magic. I know that my being guest of honor at this gala is about you trying
to show me that I can have a high position in society if I want it.”
Tom breathed out in exasperation, but at the same time, the exhilaration
continued to thrum in him. Harry wouldn’t be half so breathtaking if he’d
accepted Tom’s gifts at face value.

“The hook is there,” Tom admitted. Harry’s eyes widened. Doubtless he hadn’t
expected, perhaps hadn’t even wanted, the acknowledgment, Tom thought.
Harry seemed to prefer it when Tom acted the Dark Lord whose path he’d
rejected, probably because that made it easier for Harry to go on rejecting him.
“But it’s mostly a hook because someone told you that you can’t have these
things. Why not? If you manage to get close to me and change my mind, why
would that be an evil thing? If you had political power, why would that be more
disastrous than half the fools in the Wizengamot having it?”
Harry stared at his feet for a second. Then he said, “I’ll go to the gala. But I
am not wearing dress robes.”

“Answer the question, Harry.” Tom kept his voice calm and confident. He was
sure that he had asked the right question, even if he hadn’t arrived at the right
answer. Harry’s evasions weren’t often this clumsy.

“I can’t.”

Tom thought for a moment that Harry might mean he couldn’t answer the
question, but then Harry looked up in misery, and he understood.

“I can’t have everything you offer me,” Harry said, running his hand through
his hair. “I—you don’t understand. Even if the gifts were sincere, I couldn’t
take them. No, if they were sincere, you would be a different person, and maybe
I could. But I can’t take them. Not in the world as it stands.”

“Tell me.” Tom lowered his voice without moving from his place. “Tell me
why they taught you to hide, why they were so frightened about you drawing
my attention. Tell me who taught you to hide.”

That last question was perhaps a mistake, given that Tom was almost certain it
was Dumbledore, and a second later he knew it had been. Harry’s nostrils flared
and he stepped back, shaking his head.

“So you could do what to them? No, I won’t betray them like that.”
“Has it occurred to you,” Tom said, and gave in to the temptation to inch slowly
forwards, “that you could enact laws to protect those you value? To limit my
power? To persuade me that those things you believe are right are right?”

“What, from the left side of the bed?”

“I prefer to sleep on the left, actually.”

Harry’s eyes flared open, and he stared. Then he said, “You—you’re actually
saying it. You’re saying that your goal is to sleep with me.” He sounded a little
dazed.

“Please, Harry, don’t insult me by saying that is my only goal. But you knew
before this that I wanted to seduce you.”

Harry stood there a moment longer. Then he wheeled sharply away and said
over his shoulder, “Since I refuse to wear dress robes to the gala, we should
discuss what I’m going to wear instead, and how it fits the ‘code’ that you’ve
probably set up.” He sounded as if he was using tongs to pick up the word.

Tom followed, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. Harry had once again
executed a clumsy evasion. He had to know Tom wouldn’t be put off forever.

But he would let himself be put off for now. Especially since he knew about the
other surprise awaiting Harry the night of the gala.

“Those look suspiciously close to dress robes.”

Riddle had appeared next to him the moment Harry came through the door of
the huge Ministry ballroom on the seventh floor. Harry smiled tightly and tilted
his head to the side. “My mother said I shouldn’t ruin my first public
appearance with Muggle clothes.”

“Ah, yes, your mother is an interesting person.” Riddle put out his arm in a
weird way, like he was trying to hold a drink without having a drink to hold.
Harry skirted around him, and Riddle looked a flicker of put out. Only then did
Harry realize he was probably supposed to take the stupid arm.

“She is,” Harry said with a bland smile. More interesting now that she seemed,
for some reason, to be urging him towards Riddle.

Harry had confronted her about that right after he’d put on the fine, silver-
trimmed black dress robes that Riddle’s people had delivered to his door, and
had had to endure the wide-eyed, perfectly-crafted mask of innocence that Lily
used to hide her intentions.

“You know he doesn’t have a heart, Mum.”

“He doesn’t have one in the way that we would usually mean,” she’d agreed,
adjusting the hang of his robes and stepping back to stare critically at him.
Harry didn’t understand her. She knew he didn’t want to wear them at all, she
knew he didn’t want to attract attention, so why was she acting as though it
mattered what he looked like? “His possessiveness over you proves that.”

“Then why—”

“I think his possessiveness also proves how affected he is by solitude.” Lily had
tilted her head back to look at him and taken Harry completely by surprise with
her earnestness. “He’s lacked his soulmate for decades. I think he’s probably
dreamed of how tightly he would hold to that person when they appeared, so
you have, well. This.”

“It doesn’t mean I want it. It doesn’t mean I’ll have it.”

“I’m only saying that you should try to understand him and be tolerant.” Lily
had adjusted his robes again and nodded as though the fate of the universe hung
on how Harry looked. Then she murmured, “Dear one, what if you could have
this?”

“I can’t, and there’s no reason to indulge an impossible fantasy.”

Lily had paused for a long moment. Then she had sighed, looking wistful and
tolerant both, as if she had expected what Harry had said but hoped it would be
something else. “If that’s what you want, darling.” She had leaned up and kissed
Harry and left the room before Harry could explain that it had nothing to do
with what he wanted. If he wanted, then he would be tempted, and she knew
that.

“Harry.”

Riddle’s voice brought him back to the present. Harry managed to smile and
incline his head to the woman who was waiting to be presented to him. He
recognized her from various appearances in the papers as Madam Moonwell.
She extended her hand to clasp his, balancing on a fine blackthorn cane, and
studied him before snorting.

“It’s a fine thing to see young people following the traditions of the past, Mr.
Potter.”
Since he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, Harry merely smiled
and said, “I fine that too many people my age rush away from the traditions
now.”

“Exactly. Dating anyone other than your soulmate! It wasn’t done, in my day.”

Harry bit back a hysterical giggle as he thought of what this formidable old
woman would say if she knew that he was, in fact, here with his soulmate, not
that it did any good at all. He at least knew the political context for her words
now, though. He confined himself to a small shake of his head and a bland
smile. “I know I might never be together with my soulmate, but I still want to
honor her.”

Riddle stiffened next to him, but Harry ignored that. There was so much about
this that was an endurance contest, he repeated to himself. He only had to
outlast Riddle, and ignore things that stabbed at him, and resist the temptation to
show himself off the way he’d already done.

Madam Moonwell shook Harry’s hand with a grip that left his wrist tingling,
and then walked off and apparently ambushed someone else. Harry sighed and
looked around, wondering if he could find someone who sympathized vaguely
with the Order, or maybe someone related to one of his friends at Hogwarts.

Riddle, though, hooked an arm under Harry’s elbow and towed him towards the
middle of the room. Harry rolled his eyes. “Let me guess,” he murmured, while
walls that more resembled those of a cavern slid past them, “you’re going to
make a speech so unpopular that you’re afraid someone’s going to assassinate
you.”

“Not at all. We have the opening dance.”

“What?”

Riddle grinned at him in that way he only seemed to employ when he had Harry
at a disadvantage and he knew it. Then he spun smoothly, and the music started
at the same time.

A waltz. A bloody waltz.

And they were right in the middle of all of wizarding society, or at least the
parts of it that supposedly mattered, where ducking away or pretending to sprain
his ankle would be impossible.
Harry adopted the right steps, glaring furiously at Riddle. Riddle looked back
intently, his smile fading. All of his focus seemed to center on the places where
his hands rested, lightly, on Harry’s hand and waist, and he curled his fingers
into Harry’s black dress robes as if seeking a better hold.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “What, realized that I don’t have anything to offer
you?” he taunted. He knew that he was a passable dancer, but compared to the
masters and mistresses of the art that Riddle would have engaged with, it must
be like dancing with a tree branch.

“If you could see what you look like,” Riddle breathed. His fingers flexed and
then sank into Harry’s palm, squeezing. Harry squeezed back.

Riddle smiled, but it was a small, luminous expression, full of wonder,

unfurling slowly. “It feels like you were made for me.”

Harry nearly missed a step. “What the hell?”

“Perhaps you were too angry to notice. Take a deep breath and clear your head,
Harry, and feel.”

In his worry that Riddle must have cast some kind of spell that might reveal
something to the immense audience, Harry did as Riddle instructed. He had lots
of practice with meditation, which he’d learned to deal with the sheer unfairness
of the life he had to live. He breathed three times, sinking into his head, nearly
abandoning his body, which whirled through the dance without involving him.

And then he felt it.

The magic that always hovered around Riddle had reached out and was
brushing soft, exploratory tendrils through Harry’s. Harry’s had reached back,
instead of retreating. A slowly-circling warmth had soaked through Riddle’s
robes and chest and into Harry, and Harry could hear a pulsing beat in his ears
that was—

Shit, it was their hearts beating in bloody concert.

He met Riddle’s eyes, and saw that wonder paired with desire that Riddle
probably wouldn’t hesitate to express in public, given what else he’d dared so
far. The wonder might actually be more dangerous, though. Magic wasn’t
supposed to do this! When soulmates bonded, their power reached for each
other’s, but it didn’t happen before then without explicit choice or a ritual. It
never happened in the middle of a casual dance.
“This isn’t political for me,” Riddle said softly.

Harry tensed against his own longing to stay cocooned in this warmth for the
rest of the evening, and tore himself away.

Tom felt as though someone had broken his arm. The shot of pain and shock
ripped through him in that way when Harry pulled free and hurried towards a
darkened corner of the room.

Tom caught the eye of Amelia Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical
Law Enforcement. She nodded and at once moved into position, drawing
attention by loudly clearing her throat. She didn’t always like or trust Tom, but
they worked well together, ensuring that nothing seriously disrupted the
political currents of wizarding Britain.

Harry is a disruption all by himself, Tom thought, and then he followed, easily

able to track Harry even as he moved into the corner that would take him
beyond reach of the floating candles and the chandelier in the middle of the
room. Their magic, eagerly joined, only reluctantly parted, left a hovering trail
that might as well have been one made of scent.
That did not happen. Magic in general didn’t simply reach out like that, and
neither did Tom’s magic. And from the utterly stunned expression on Harry’s
face, neither did his.

Tom ached, one steady pounding pulse all up and down his body, like the united
heartbeat that had throbbed through him and Harry. And he was determined that
he wouldn’t be going home alone tonight.

What did traditions and morals and honor mean, next to a miracle?

He caught Harry as Harry put his hand on a door that led to a Floo anteroom.
Tom gestured and locked the door with a wandless flick of his hand, then sent
his magic flowing forwards when Harry turned to face him, fearless and furious.

Their power entwined again. Harry gasped, his eyes widening, the air around
him flickering with a dark, blazing aura.

Their heartbeat sounded in their ears again. And something else followed it,
searing pleasure that left Tom bent over for a moment. He mastered it, because
he must, and because he knew it would feel even better when he touched Harry,
and moved forwards.
Harry was utterly tense, standing still with his eyes closed now, floating in the
middle of some private world that he seemed to think would calm him down.
Tom destroyed that calm with a touch on Harry’s arm.

Heat followed the pleasure and the magic this time, and Harry opened his eyes
and leaned into Tom, as drawn as he was. Tom guided him close. Harry took the
initiative as Tom was opening his mouth to speak, blurting out a noise of
incoherent need and kissing him.

It was so good. Tom groaned as tingles raced down his arms, as every hair on
his neck stood up, as his arms locked into place around Harry’s shoulders.
Harry was sucking on his tongue, sending pleasure leaping up into Tom’s
mouth. Harry parted his legs, and Tom came to rest between them as if there
was nothing more natural.

Bliss swallowed him, and their joined heartbeat transformed into a steady song,
a cascade of triumph. Tom knew he and Harry could have lifted up the entire
Ministry right now and turned it into a floating, rotating building like the ones
that were said to have been common in ancient wizarding civilizations.

Nothing was like this. Tom shifted his hips forwards, and there was hardness to
receive him, and Harry was bucking against him, eyes savage with excitement,
and it was nothing like Tom could have imagined.

It would be nothing like what he had imagined. Tom broke the kiss and
languidly reached up to draw his hand across Harry’s face. Harry hissed in what
wasn’t Parseltongue but was the nearest equivalent, and Tom replied in it. “They
will just have to excuse us, darling. Let’s find a bed.”

And then, when it was all going so well…

Harry snapped himself free.

Tom didn’t even know how he’d done it. It seemed impossible, when his arms
were so tight and their faces were so close and their magic was so joined. In
fact, Tom realized as Harry moved away from him, panting like the Hogwarts
Express, their magic was still joined. Harry’s mouth had curled in a grimace of
pain.

Tom felt nothing of the kind. Probably because he was not fool enough to deny
what had arisen between them.

“I need to leave,” Harry whispered.

“And you think that you can when this is between us?” Tom’s hand touched air,
but Harry gasped as if stroked. Tom nodded. “We aren’t parting tonight. Stop
being stubborn, Harry. It verges on stupidity now.”

“You can’t be with me!” Harry snarled, and tipped his arm so his phoenix came
into view again. “Or have you forgotten that something like this is only
supposed to happen between soulmates, and you’re not mine?”
“I forget nothing,” Tom said. “For example, I know that nothing like this has
been recorded as happening before in magical history, except between
soulmates.”

“So it shouldn’t be happening! Someone might have cursed us—”

Tom laughed, and Harry moved a step towards him at the sound, as if he
couldn’t help himself. Then he stopped and shook his head violently. But Tom
noticed that he wasn’t able to make himself retreat, despite what looked like a
valiant effort.

“Oh, no, Harry,” Tom murmured. “This is no curse. You know that as well as I
do. This is magic’s blessing. I don’t know why it’s happening, why we seem to
be unique, but I’ve accepted that my life frequently points in that direction.
Come here, Harry.”

Harry had a strong will, Tom would say that for him. He managed to turn away
and undo Tom’s locking charm. His movements were as joined as a
marionette’s as he fled, but he did it. Tom admired him more than he could say.

Despite the fact that the effort was useless, since their magic was still one and
Harry might as well have tried to run while holding one end of a tapestry
connected to Tom’s soul.

Tom followed at a leisurely pace, knowing exactly where this chase would end,
willing to indulge Harry, and burning with desire and wonder and pleasure and
joy.

Chapter 10: Mates

Chapter Text

Harry could feel the tug on his soul as he ran.

It meant he couldn’t simply Apparate straight back to the flat. He had to keep
making short little hops, resisting the tug that tried to make him turn around and
return to Riddle. The magic trailing behind him called out hopefully to Riddle’s
magic, and Harry clenched his teeth and ignored the pull.

He had to ignore it. He was being an idiot. He had been an idiot to let it go this
far. Riddle might be convinced at the moment that the phoenix image was
Harry’s soul-mark and their magic mingling had to mean something else, but if
he came close enough or took long enough to think about it, he would realize
the truth.

And that would be disastrous.

Although, the more he thought about it, the harder Harry found it to think. He
nearly turned around and Apparated back in the direction of the stalking,
crawling magic coming for him, and then he remembered, in a flash, what
Riddle had done to Sirius, and Ron and Hermione, and what he would do to
Muggleborns and Muggles if he got the chance.

But Ron and Hermione murdered people…

His temples ached. Harry reminded himself harshly that he had to think about
more people than just himself here.

Even if it felt as though he would be utterly justified in thinking about himself

for once.

Riddle’s magic surged towards him, embracing him and making Harry tremble
with pleasure. He gritted his teeth and Apparated again, aiming for his old flat
instead of the expensive one. The last thing he wanted was for his parents, who
had fought so long and truly, to watch him succumbing to his weakness.

Which felt, at the moment, like what was going to happen.

Tom was a little surprised when he ended up outside the building that housed
Harry’s poky old flat instead of the new one, but then shrugged. Harry wouldn’t
want an audience, and the new flat would hold the Potter parents.

Tom didn’t want an audience, either. He strode forwards lightly and reached out
to lay his hand on the door.
Wards snapped and snarled at him. Tom jerked his hand back in surprise and,
once again, admiration. Putting up wards against someone whose magic was
intertwined with his would have been beyond Tom, but it was like Harry.

Tom leaned against the wall beside the door. Dirty bricks probably stained his
dress robes, but he didn’t care. Even his urgency had lessened now that he knew
Harry was on the opposite side of those wards. Harry would know that the next
words Tom spoke were the simple truth.

“We have to talk, Harry.”

Silence, but Harry’s magic sang around him. He would be standing right on the
other side of the wards, probably unable to convince himself to move any
further away. Tom let his hand drift out and hover an inch or so away from the
wards, and sighed as the pleasure moved through him like a pulse of hot syrup.

“If you don’t want me in your bed tonight,” he said quietly, “then I won’t be
there.”

The silence seemed to take on a startled, listening quality. Tom smiled and
inclined his head, his eyes half-closed. God, he felt so good.

“I don’t want anyone unwilling. I never have done that in my life and I never
will. But I do need to talk to you. We need to figure out why this happened and
what to do about it.”

The silence seemed to listen to him still. Tom waited. Moments slid past and his
patience simply increased, because being with the man who made him feel like
this was worth anything.

Then Harry’s voice said, “And if I told you to walk away, would you?”

“I won’t bed you. I won’t touch you. But I won’t walk away, no. You know as
well as I do that something like this isn’t an ordinary occurrence, and if nothing
else, we need to think about how we’re going to handle the news of it spreading
beyond the gala.”

“Would anyone have noticed—”

“Amelia Bones did, if no one else,” Tom said. He had to cut off this fantasy of
escape that Harry was clearly indulging. He had indulged it when he fled into
the night, and now he wanted to pretend that he could hide again, as long as the
rock he crawled beneath was big enough. “And while she won’t gossip, she’ll
also want to know what happened. And there were reporters there. Do you
really want Madam Skeeter to be the one controlling the narrative that we
spread around?”

More silence, but this time it was resigned. Tom wasn’t surprised when the
wards came down, and he stepped immediately through the door and walked up
the stairs to Harry’s flat. He didn’t bother to knock.

Harry stood in the darkness, staring at him. Tom leaned back against the wall
near the door the way he had been on the outside of the building, and inclined
his head. His nerves were burning like fireworks, but he had given his word
about not touching.

To be this close was…

Was more than he had ever hoped for.

“We have to tell them the truth,” Harry said.

“That our magic entwined? All right. But they will still want to know why.”
Tom paused, but Harry said nothing. “And I want to know why, myself,” he
continued in a voice that he didn’t have to make a soft, velvety purr on purpose.
It simply transformed itself into that. His magic spread through the flat like
puddling water, reaching insistently for Harry. “Things like this do not
simply happen.”

“What if I asked you to walk away and not speak of it again?”

Tom shook his head, and let the flicker of anger he’d felt come out. “You do not
owe me your body or your bed, as much as I might want them. You do owe me
an explanation.”

Harry was silent for long enough that Tom wondered if he was trying to search
for the words. Then he lifted his head, and the faint moonlight coming through
the window illuminated his expression.

“I don’t.”

Tom plucked at their joined magic, his anger growing up inside him like flame.
Harry gasped and backed up another step. This time, Tom followed. He was
beyond sick of this, the way that Harry showed him his magic or made some
open challenge to Tom or kissed him and then acted as though backing away
would solve all their problems. If this was a plan of Dumbledore’s, it was the
most maddening one Tom had ever seen.
“You do,” he said, voice low. “You know more about this than I. You expected
at least this much. I saw that in your eyes. I feel it through your magic. Tell me,
Harry.”

“Why should I, when you’ll use it to damage the world?” Harry screamed, and
then abruptly launched himself towards Tom. Tom could never tell afterwards if
he meant to attack or to run past him and out the door on yet another useless,
futile chase.

Tom’s instincts made him snatch Harry up in a magical net before he could
escape. The net swung past Tom, rough even though he would have tried to
make it gentle in another mood, and slammed Harry into the wall opposite the
door. His arms and legs splayed out, pinning him, helpless. But his mouth was
still open in a snarl of defiance as Tom stalked up to him.

“I won’t touch you,” Tom said in a low voice. He was trying to recapture the
joyous feeling that had come to him as he followed Harry’s short-line
Apparitions across the countryside, but it was swallowed up by the bleak feeling
that Harry was keeping the truth from him, probably because of something
Dumbledore had said. How could Tom hope to overcome that sort of
indoctrination when gentleness and honesty and violence and even their
intertwined magic wouldn’t do it? “But you are going to tell me the truth.”

Harry looked at him, trembling, until he came close. Then he whispered

something. Tom leaned close to hear.

One of Harry’s hands promptly lashed out in a punch aimed for Tom’s ear,
proving that the bonds Tom had thought were tying him to the wall weren’t so
secure after all. Again Tom reacted on instinct. He seized Harry’s wrists and
pinned them to the wall above his head, dizzy with anger.

His dizziness made him fail to realize what his senses were telling him for a
long, long moment. Then he stared down and saw the way blue flames were
curling up around Harry’s right wrist and licking gently at Tom’s fingers.

Tom felt the sensation that other people had described to him at the same
moment. It was as if a wound that had bled so long he no longer felt it had
sealed itself. Tom stood there, gasping and trembling, and Harry stared at him
with eyes so wide that Tom could no longer read any emotion in them at all.
Tom turned Harry’s wrist and used magic to sharpen his eyes until he could see
through the darkness. This time, he could see the broken shackles beneath the
phoenix, something he had taken for part of the overall image of Harry’s soul-
mark. And he could make out the small letters that curled thickly through them.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Tom looked up slowly, the air around them thick with complicated emotions.
Harry was no longer shaking, but he still had those wide eyes. Tom leaned
nearer, and he was the one who trembled now, although he couldn’t have said
whether it was with tenderness or rage as he hissed in Parseltongue, “Tell me
the truth, darling.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

The word had repeated so many times in Harry’s head that it was starting to lose
all meaning. The world had shattered and fallen to pieces around him. The blue
flames were dancing on his wrist, where they never should have been.

The truth was out, where he had been sure that it never would be.

And Riddle held him, and all Harry could think was how gentle it felt, despite
the flexing fingers that pressed tight bruises into his wrists. Part of him had
stopped screaming when Riddle touched his mark. There was silence in his head
at the center of all the whirling and the guilt and the fear and the self-doubt. He
had his soulmate.

Who I can’t have. Who could destroy the world with his power if I fell in love
with him.

That was one of the major reasons Dumbledore had told him to avoid exposing
the secret. He had tested Harry’s power when Harry was a child, and had
warned him gravely afterwards that it was excessive.

Stay away from Tom not because he doesn’t inherently deserve to have his
soulmate, but because no one deserves the level of power that you would have
together.
“Tell me, darling.”

The Parseltongue words echoed in his ears. Harry had never thought he would
feel so tempted to reveal the truth. He closed his eyes and waited. Sooner or
later, he thought, the last sane piece of his mind drifting on what felt like a raft
above deep dark waters, Riddle would grow frustrated with his silence and
leave him.

The rest of him, the part that was swimming in those dark waters like a
predator, knew this was much a piece of shit as the man in front of him.

Silence endured, and the blue flames raced up and down, their flickering light
casting strange shadows on Harry’s eyelids. When Riddle moved, he couldn’t
help but open his eyes, hoping he would see frustration there. Contempt.
Disgust. Anything he could build on.

Instead, Riddle looked at him with starving eyes and kissed his mark, then
released his wrists. The blue flames immediately died, but the sensations they’d
brought didn’t retreat. Harry knew exactly where Riddle was as he moved away
and headed towards the inadequately comfortable chairs in the center of the
room. He would have known if he was blind and deaf.

Riddle lit the fireplace with a gesture of his wand and Transfigured the chair
across from him into a billowy one that looked as if it probably came with five
pillows and its own full set of lace. “Sit down, Harry, please.”

Harry moved slowly towards him. At least Riddle didn’t seem like he would
suddenly pounce and pin Harry against either the bed or the wall. And part of
Harry regretted that, because despite everything, he resented knowing he’d be a
virgin all his life and wanted to know what it was like to be inside someone, to
have someone inside him.

He caught his breath and sat down. It was his weakness that had contributed, in
large part, to his betrayal of the Order.

“I won’t hurt you,” Riddle breathed. His eyes were tracing Harry’s face over
and over again. “If you could know how long I’ve waited, what I would do to
see to your every need and comfort…”

“So that you can have the power you need to dominate the world and destroy
the Order, I know,” Harry said irritably, leaning back and trying not to notice
the softness of the pillows that his back and arse rested against.

“So that I could spoil you beyond measure. So that I could have someone to
love, who loved me. So that I could use all our power to defend you.”
Harry lowered his eyes, because the words did sound convincing, but on the
other side, Riddle was a skilled politician who played games for a living. He
didn’t move, and Riddle continued in a lighter voice.

“You won’t tell me why you hid, but I think I can guess. You were born with
my mark on your wrist, and by that time, I would have been a well-known
politician. I’m sure that your parents were horrified, and they immediately
reported the truth to Albus. And he was dismayed, but on the other hand, he
rejoiced, because he knew the weight of the weapon he’d been handed.”

“They never wanted me to be a weapon!” Harry snapped his gaze up again, and
managed to hold it despite how it made him feel to see Riddle looking at him
like—that. “They never told me to try and assassinate you or something!”

“There are different kinds of weapons.” Riddle said the words in an odd tone,
one that Harry realized abruptly sounded a lot like joy. And Riddle was
watching him with bared and gleaming teeth, one hand rising to extend towards
Harry as if he couldn’t help himself. Harry’s breath caught. He had thought
Riddle would try to manipulate him right away, cage him or tie him up or
something, but he just seemed happy.
That’s no guarantee that he isn’t manipulating you, Harry, Harry reminded
himself, and settled back in place, his annoyed, skeptical gaze fixed on Riddle.
From the small smile that breezed across Riddle’s face, he acknowledged it.

“For example,” Riddle said softly, “what would you say to someone forging you
into a weapon against my heart?”

“That didn’t happen.” Harry felt as though he’d been tossed from a broom. He
shook his head, clenching his hands on his knees. “You weren’t—hurt by my
not being there.”

“Oh?” Riddle kept smiling, but he also lowered his head like a unicorn about to
charge. “I suppose that Dumbledore told you I was incapable of feeling
yearning, of wanting my soulmate to be beside me, of being lonely because I
had no one when most people around me were paired.”
Harry shivered, a sensation like a song traveling over him. He wanted to hear
that, he admitted to himself. He wanted to be desired. He’d spent so much time
at Hogwarts, sitting by himself while listening to the murmurs of the people
around him, and seeing how their eyes glowed when they looked at their
soulmates, and knowing he’d never have that.

And he’d experienced the loneliness and the longing that Riddle talked about,
too.
I can’t believe that I’m thinking about betraying the Order again, Harry
abruptly thought in disgust, and tried to wrench his eyes away from Riddle’s. It
was difficult. Their magic had lapsed back to twine lazily into the air, instead of
an active pull, but Harry wanted to keep looking. He wanted to listen. He
wanted to touch.
No. I can’t. I know why I can’t. It’s not even the sex that’s important. It’s that it
might lead to me falling in love, and Riddle would be stronger that way.

“Yes,” Riddle said. “He told you that.”

“Well, he was right, wasn’t he?” Harry winced the moment he spoke the words.
Somehow, they coiled back on him with reflected pain. It was an effort to force
himself to speak the next ones. “You—you never made it clear what you were
feeling. Just that you would give your soulmate a reward if they would come
forwards.”

“So because I do not wear my heart on my sleeve the way Dumbledore thinks I
should, I am to be punished?”

Agony sang in the middle of Harry’s chest, and he gasped. Riddle leaned back
in his chair at once, face soft with something Harry would have called remorse
if he hadn’t known better.

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to hold on to my temper better.”

“What the hell, Riddle? Am I suffering because our magic is still tied together?”
Harry licked his lips and ignored the separate kind of pain that assaulted him
because there was still space between their chairs. This was endurable, he
reminded himself.

Riddle stayed still for a long moment. Harry looked back at him and found his
eyes narrowed, showing nothing but darkness, no emotion Harry could
recognize.

“You are that stubborn, then,” Riddle said softly. “Or you’ve purposefully
dulled your senses. You’re suffering because the emotional bond has already
begun to form between us, Harry.”

Harry turned away and buried his face in his hands. He could hear his breath
rushing in his ears, like the flowing of a flooded river, and he could feel
Riddle’s impatience and anger, lapping around him like waves.
Harry wondered if he would be able to explain that a lot of his emotions came
from the fact that no one matter what happened now, he wouldn’t be able to
disconnect from Riddle and do what Dumbledore wanted him to. They’d told
him to act like a good boy, basically, like someone who would never be able to
have his soulmate for good reasons.

And now it turned out that it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to do what they
wanted no matter how excellent the reason was.

He was probably going to end up tempted beyond his ability to endure, just
because Riddle was there. He was weak.

And he was free.

Tom didn’t know what to make of the emotions crashing through him. When it
came to this particular bond, he was as inexperienced as Harry. Perhaps he
could have sorted out the feelings if he had felt them one at a time, but this was
a chaotic ocean, and he had to resist the temptation to reach out and touch
Harry, which he knew instinctively would have made it easier to sail.

But he did understand one thing. It was clear and brilliant and pierced him.

It was joy.

Tom smiled, and he went on smiling as Harry dropped his hands from his face
and looked up cautiously. “They denied you any kind of happiness, didn’t
they?” he asked, and he didn’t care what his voice sounded like, for the first
time in more years than he could remember. “They said that you couldn’t be
with me. They said that you couldn’t do anything to ease your pain. They said
that you couldn’t try to change my mind.”

“They didn’t say that,” Harry said, but his face was open in a way that Tom
hadn’t dared to hope for this early, and the joy still shone in him. It reminded
Tom of the first beam of starlight after a storm. “In fact, my parents wanted me
to date someone else, to try and get a chance at happiness.”

Tom didn’t bother to hide his crushing jealousy, which would flow through the
bond. He said only, “You didn’t think you could.”
“Unless I was dating a widower, how could I take someone else’s happiness
away from them?” Harry asked simply. “And I wouldn’t be very good
company, knowing I was hiding your soul-mark.”

“You wanted me.”

“I wanted the person you would have been if you had been born with a
conscience.”

Tom raised an eyebrow and let that ringing declaration die away into the silence
of the bond between them. Harry glanced away, but Tom could see the way that
his lips were twitching.

“You should know,” Tom said calmly, “that I have no intention of letting you
hide the mark and pretend that this never happened.”

“Yeah, I know. And I…”

More emotions crashed through the bond, and Tom simply waited. He didn’t
know if Harry himself fully understood the reasons behind his behavior at the
moment.

Harry looked back up. He dropped his hands to his sides, and he stared directly
into Tom’s eyes. “You won’t tell them.”

“Anything you tell me will remain strictly between us, yes,” Tom promised
immediately.

Harry nodded. “I knew why it had to be done. I knew they were afraid that you
would grow in magical power and use that to make yourself into a dictator no
one could stop. I know that it probably isn’t magic or fate that really makes
people soulmates. Otherwise, why would some people be born with black-edged
marks? What could a baby do that would deserve that? So it wasn’t my fault
that I had your mark. It was just bad luck. I had to live with it, but it wasn’t pain
that anyone wished on me. I heard all the arguments.”

Tom moved before he thought about it, although he still didn’t cross the
distance between their chairs in case it stopped Harry’s confession. He did send
a long pulse through his magic, and it flowed around Harry, enwrapping his
shoulders. Harry closed his eyes and shivered.
“I heard that,” he whispered. “I understood all the arguments. And I knew that
my parents and Professor Dumbledore were just doing what they thought was
best.

“But I hated them for it at the same time.”

Tom swallowed. He thought he might start drooling otherwise. Harry had just
admitted something to him that Tom was certain he had never said to anyone
else. They would have been too prone to misunderstand it.

And he was smart enough to keep silent, while Harry slowly fumbled his way
through speaking thoughts he must have kept silent all his life.

“They said people had to make sacrifices. Fine, but they had their soulmates. Or
they had the chance and then they threw it away, but they never thought they
could never have that happiness. They wanted me to do this for them, and I was
just a kid when it started, and I hated it. They said you were a dictator already
and you were fighting a war that was on the verge of being declared, and…
“And the few times that I asked about it and asked why you hadn’t started the
war already if you hated all Muggleborns so much, they told me that that was a
stupid question and you were trying to take us off our guard. They implied I was
stupid for not seeing it. For years, I told myself they didn’t use the word stupid
and I was taking it too seriously, but I still. I resented them for it.”

The resentment burned through their bond to Tom, a clean flame, much cleaner
than what the Order and Dumbledore between them had done to Harry. He
couldn’t help leaning to the far edge of his chair and murmuring, “You never
need to hide that from me. I understand. You didn’t want to question them, but
you couldn’t help it. And you had no one to confide in, no one who could
understand you, no one who would ever share that closeness…”

Harry choked.

And stretched out a hand.

Tom stood at once and crossed over to take it. The minute their skin touched, he
hissed in response. The fire of Harry’s resentment seemed to change to pure,
shining flame and leap down his nerves. Tom swayed a little, feeling the
pressure of it in his eyes, his limbs, his shoulders.

Harry closed his fingers into a tight knot around Tom’s, the opposite of his
words. “Even now, I keep wondering if I did something wrong, if
I’m doing something wrong, if I’m just creating justifications for myself
because I want you so much.”

That was all Tom needed to hear. He tugged hard. Harry nearly rolled out of the
chair, then straightened up and frowned at him.

Tom pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around Harry and resting his chin on
top of his soulmate’s head. The mark on Harry’s wrist filled the bond between
them with its own pulsing now, so strong that Tom could hear it like a
drumbeat. He whispered into Harry’s ear, “I will be more than glad to stand
between you and them. Tell me what to say, darling. I would defend you with
my bare skin if I had nothing else.”

Harry shivered, a deep motion that seemed to go all the way to his bones. Tom
leaned closer and waited for directions, his hands smoothing gently up and
down Harry’s back.

Harry wondered how he could hate himself for betraying the Order and be so
relieved at the same time.

He’d carried those facts, those emotions, around for years without letting them
out. What good would they do? He understood why he couldn’t be with Riddle.
He didn’t want to be with someone who hated people like his mother simply for
existing. And he wouldn’t want to take other people’s soulmates away from
them, either. There was no good solution. He was stuck.

He’d told all that to Riddle, and he’d expected a rejection. Maybe part of him
had been hoping for it. Who would want someone who was weak and pathetic
and babbled at you about things that couldn’t be changed?

And then he’d realized that to Riddle, this could be changed. There were other
options than Harry suffering in silence for the rest of his life. Maybe his mum
had seen that earlier, even, Harry thought suddenly.

And Riddle had waited for his soulmate so long that he would probably have
accepted a lot worse.

Harry swallowed and closed his eyes. He felt as if the freefall that had started
when the blue flames sprouted around his wrists had started again.

“I don’t want you to hate them,” he mumbled.

“It’s too late for that.”
Harry’s eyes flared open. Shit, he’d been so stupid, acting as though Riddle’s
longing for his soulmate had guaranteed his parents’ safety. He shoved hard
against the sides of Riddle’s arms, but Riddle only eyed him in amusement and
waited.

“If you do something like strike back at my parents or try to get them arrested
again for keeping me away from you—”

“It does make me wish I hadn’t pardoned them.” Riddle infused the words with
a verbal shrug that caused Harry to glare at him. “No, I do not mean that,”
Riddle added in English. “I will say nothing as long as they don’t scold you or
call you weak or a traitor or whatever other names are running through your
head right now. But I am not going to stand back and let them do that. And I
will have no mercy on Dumbledore.”
Harry hesitated. Part of him wanted to have no mercy on Dumbledore, either.
But—“He acted on good intentions,” he said. “I mean, he really did think that
you would bring a war and start slaughtering all Muggleborns and Muggles.”

“And I really did think that he was an idiot who takes ridiculous risks because
of his idiocy and expects others to bear the brunt of those risks. Would the
sincerity of those beliefs justify an attempt to assassinate him?”

Harry said nothing. Yes, he had known all along that Riddle would see it
differently. Of course he had. Why had he expected any other response?

Riddle poured more emotions at him: longing as distant as icebergs, and

weariness that made Harry have to close his eyes. Yes, he had felt those things,
although he had always known where his soulmate was. But the weariness of
knowing that almost everyone else had a partner or the chance of a partner and
he never would, that was the same.
“You don’t trust me,” Riddle said. “I accept that will take time.” His voice was
as soft as the crackling of a fire. “And I don’t entirely trust you either, darling.
For one thing, I am still angry.”

Those last words dropped back into Parseltongue. Harry would have folded his
arms if he could, but he was too close to Riddle’s chest for it. He did stare
challengingly right into his eyes.

“I was doing what I thought was best.”

“Oh, yes, Albus Dumbledore’s excuse.” Riddle somehow managed to stare at

him like a circling predator even though he was right there and already holding
Harry. “Which means one that doesn’t make sense. I know that he indoctrinated
you with a conviction of my terrible nature, but you’re an adult, Harry. I would
have expected some attempt at questioning. I would have expected defiance,
given what you have shown me, rather than this dedication to living the life of a
passive martyr.”

“I thought you were evil!” Harry tried to pull back. Riddle let him go but then
just pushed him up against the wall and wrapped his hands around Harry’s
wrists. The blue flames sparked to life again, filling the room with a soft,
diffused light.

“You are more intelligent than to think a human being simply capable of evil for
no reason.”

“Dark wizards do it all the time!”

“And Light wizards who are bent on slaughtering innocents to make a point?”

Harry closed his eyes. The world rocked around him. He knew what was
coming, he knew the revelation that was rising in his mind, and he had been
trying to avoid it. He shuddered.

“Come here, Harry.”

Riddle folded him in his arms again. Harry refused to look at him. He knew,
he knew this part of it wasn’t Riddle’s fault, but he was the catalyst for it, and
Harry just—didn’t want to look at him right now.

He’d doubted before. He’d looked at the way no one else in the world except
the Order of the Phoenix thought a war was coming, and he’d questioned
himself. He’d burned with resentment when he discovered that he had a serpent
Animagus form and that meant he'd never be able to pursue training, in case
Riddle paid attention to him.

And all the time, he’d forced his doubts down. Other people were making
sacrifices for the Order and the war. His parents and Sirius had given up all
hopes of a normal life, at least until Riddle’s pardon for Lily and James came
through. Ron and Hermione had given up living in the normal world, the “real”
world, shortly after they graduated from Hogwarts, and Hermione must have
given up part of her innocence if she had killed people.

But none of them had sacrificed as much as he had.

And for what? In the end, it didn’t matter. Dumbledore had still told other
people who Harry’s soulmate was. Riddle still knew.

Harry shuddered again, and sorrow crept through him like an approaching
storm. He wanted to weep, but he wouldn’t do anything so weak in front of
Riddle. His life had been a waste. A lie. It still could have meant something if
he had managed to hold onto the secret but—no, Dumbledore still would have
told the others, and there was always the chance that someone would let it slip.

He’d sacrificed twenty-four years when he could have been doing something
else, for nothing.

The bond was heavy enough with emotion that Tom had trouble breathing. And
what were almost words came through, etched across his mind in what looked
like pure-black letters. I’ve lived for no reason.
Tom was not going to allow that to stand.

He caressed Harry’s cheek, digging his nails in when he realized Harry was too
deep in his own head to feel anything. Dazed eyes stared back at him. Tom
clenched his hand, and Harry’s eyes and the bond sparked with anger as he
tilted his head back, responding to what was almost a call to battle.

Tom had known he could count on Harry’s defiance.

“You have not lived for no reason,” he told Harry, keeping his words as fierce
and quiet as his embrace. “Never. You have lived because you were meant to be
born, because you were meant to be mine. Yes, the deception you lived under
did you no good. That doesn’t matter. What matters is what comes after this,
here, now, moving forwards.”

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep, shivering breath. Tom watched and
wished Harry felt confident enough to cry in front of him. On the other hand, he
could (nearly) understand why Harry didn’t. To show that he was, as he’d think,
“weak” in front of the untouchable Minister Tom Riddle would break him
further than he had broken already.

But Tom had other things to offer.

“You weren’t meant to be a martyr or a sacrifice,” Tom continued murmuring.

“They told you that, but they were wrong. I’m angry at you, yes, but because of
the years that I could have spent loving you and enjoying you at my side and
didn’t get. We’ll still have plenty of them. Come with me and leave any of the
Order members who think you should be a helpless pawn behind. They don’t
matter.”

“Th-they—” Harry coughed and forced the words out. “They were my friends.
My mentors. What happens if Ron and Hermione don’t want to be my friends
anymore when they know you know?”

“Then they were useless all along,” Tom said coolly.

“That’s easy for you to say.” Harry’s eyes shone and he wrenched at Tom’s
hold, but Tom didn’t release him. Right now, he shouldn’t try to stand on his
own. “You’ve probably never had friends as close as I was with Ron and
Hermione!”

Tom shrugged. “I didn’t need them the way you do, but think of it this way. If
they only liked the person you used to be, then they liked a deception. A shell.
A shadow. If they’re true friends, they’ll accept you as my soulmate.” He
couldn’t keep from reaching down and curling his fingers around Harry’s true
mark again, making the blue flames spring to life. Pleasure danced through him,
and he breathed on Harry’s ear.

Harry shivered, but it was a tired move. “I—Riddle, I should go home. My

parents will be worrying.”

“After decades of solitude,” Tom said softly, “you will leave me behind
tonight?”

Harry swallowed. Tom saw the words strike him, felt the way they struck him
down the bond, and smiled slightly. “I—I think if I stay with you, we’re going
to end up having sex. And I think I would regret it.”
Tom took note of the fact that that statement implied: when they had sex, Harry
didn’t want to regret it. He smiled and slid his hand down Harry’s face, taking
note of the texture of his hair and the way his eyes blinked as Tom’s hand ran
by. “My word that I won’t ask for that tonight. I want to hold you in my arms as
you sleep, and I want to share the same bed.” He paused. “And I want you to
call me Tom.”
Harry blinked wide, glossy eyes. Tom understood. He had splintered tonight,
come up against a fact he’d never expected to have to face, and gone through
the establishment of the first of the soulmate bonds and their magic
intertwining. (The fact that it was still intertwined was another reason Harry had
been foolish to think he would be sleeping alone tonight, but Tom could forgive
him for not noticing in the face of all the other things he had to pay attention to).
“Would you like me to make the decision, then?” Tom asked softly. “To
Apparate us to my home and put you to bed?”

Harry licked his lips. Another shudder ran through him, but Tom knew full well
that this one wasn’t disgust and wasn’t hatred. “Please.”

Tom kissed him behind the ear and escorted him out of the building. It had
begun to a rain, a fine, soft drizzle. Tom cast an Impervious Charm around them
and then draped his cloak around Harry’s shoulders.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Harry muttered, stubborn and prideful to the end.

“But I wanted to. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to spoil you.”

Harry hesitated for a long moment. Tom waited. He did want to Apparate them,
he did want to lay Harry in a bed and lie down himself with his arms wrapped
around him, but Harry was struggling to say or do something, and Tom wanted
to know what it was.

Harry turned to face him, gaze watery but determined, and leaned forwards.
Tom met him halfway, the kiss considerably less violent than the one they’d
shared at the Ministry gala. This was a flicker of warmth in the middle of the
storm, and Tom’s hand stroking down Harry’s cheek, and a promise of what
was to come.

Harry leaned his head on Tom’s chest and closed his eyes. Tom Apparated
them, holding Harry close, his heart racing with tenderness and triumph.

There was a hard road still ahead, but to know that he would not walk it alone
would be worth every moment.

Chapter 11: Awakenings

Chapter Text

“James, what are you doing? Come to bed.”

Lily knew perfectly well what he was doing, of course. The bond between them
throbbed anxiously, the way part of it always had since the day Harry was born.
But this particular emotion had sharpened as the hours passed and Harry didn’t
return.

“It’s okay, Lily-Bell. You go to sleep. I’ll just—stay up. I want a cup of tea.”
“Yes, you really look as if you’re going to do that when you’re standing in front
of the window, James.”

James started and turned to look at her guiltily. He rubbed the back of his neck
with one hand and glanced out the window.

“I—I just think it’s not like Harry to stay out this late. He never did it when he
was a child.”

“We’ve been gone for years,” Lily said, and held out her hand. “Maybe he does
this all the time now. We should go into the kitchen if we’re going to make tea,
James. And then I think we ought to have a talk.”

“Who’s he staying out late with, that’s what I’d like to know,” James muttered
under his breath as they entered the kitchen. Lily Summoned the kettle out of
the cupboards where Riddle’s people had placed it, and James began
distractedly to make the tea, just the way he always had in the Order’s camp.
“You know very well that he won’t date someone no matter how much we try to
urge him to do it—”

“I think it’s Riddle.”

“Oh. You mean they just stayed late at this stupid Ministry gala and Riddle
wouldn’t let Harry leave?” James relaxed, and his hands began to actually
prepare the tea-leaves instead of tear them to shreds. “Why didn’t you say?”

“I think he’s with Riddle.”

“You said that—oh.” For a second, James froze, and Lily cast a spell to actually
hold the kettle in midair instead of having it splatter all over the floor. Then
James cursed, soft and fervent, and took over control of the spell from her.

“Why would he do that now, though?” James asked in a low voice. He kept his
head bowed so that Lily could see nothing but a gleam from the side of his
glasses. “After so many years of hiding from him and putting the fate of the
world first, why would he succumb to temptation now?” He cursed again as the
two cups he’d Summoned nearly hit the wall and shattered, and had to work for
a second on guiding them to a smooth landing on the counter.

“Precisely because we’ve asked it of him for so long,” Lily said softly. She
could feel the heartache pouring from James down the bond, mixed with
shadowy resignation. He knew he couldn’t do anything at the moment to affect
Harry’s choices and he was uncertain if he should even try, while still feeling
pulled by his old loyalty to the Order.

It wasn’t just their emotional bond that let Lily feel what he was feeling so well.
The questions he was asking, the temptations he was fighting, were hers.

Lily came to him and curled an arm around his shoulders. James let out a low
sound and leaned against her.

“I think,” Lily whispered, “that we have to stop worrying about what the Order
will say, and Albus, and Molly and Sirius and Arthur and Harry’s friends. We
have no influence on them. We have the responsibility to see our son well and
happy.”

“But that’s exactly what he won’t be if he sides with Riddle!”

“Think about it this way, James. If you found out after you started noticing me
that I was Dark and wanted to work for Riddle’s government, would you have
resisted the bond with me?”

James closed his eyes. Lily stood with her hand on his shoulder, ignoring the
nagging worry that the tea was getting cold. There were such things as Warming
Charms.

James finally whispered, “I would be so…I would be upset, but I think I would
choose you, even if I never agreed with the government you worked for and we
could never discuss it in private. I would choose you.”

Lily kissed his brow. “I know I would do the same.” Then again, she had never
believed in the greater good as much as James and had always been a bit of a
rebel, so the choice wouldn’t have been as hard for her. Only the fear that
Riddle would destroy her and all people like her had let her agree with Albus
that it would be a good idea to disrupt a soulmate bond. “And we can’t make the
choice for Harry, James. We have to let him stand on his own.”

“I don’t think Riddle is good for him.”

“Not everyone works out, of course,” Lily agreed quietly. There had been a
living example of that close to them for more than twenty years, since Sirius
had done something Remus, his soulmate, found unforgivable. “But Harry
needs to decide that for himself.”
James held her and said nothing. Then he whispered, “Lily-Bell, if it turns out
that Harry and Riddle are compatible and Harry can even rub some of the rough
edges off Riddle—then how are we going to face the guilt that we kept them
apart for all those years?”

“You know Harry would never demand repayment for that, James.” Lily was
less certain about Riddle, but she was certain that Harry would never let his
soulmate harm them.

“I’m not talking about what kind of payment he would demand, Lily. I’m
talking about how we’re going to live with ourselves.”

“The way we do now.” Lily hugged him and rubbed his back, resting her head
on his shoulder. “One day at a time.”

“My dear girl. I am afraid I may need your help.”

Hermione glanced up from the book she’d been revising, not really surprised to
hear the Headmaster’s voice coming out of a crystal that he had given her years
ago. Most of the Order no longer carried those communication crystals, since
they were pretty good about meeting with Professor Dumbledore in hidden
times and places. But Hermione was both not as good at Apparating as some
members of the Order and wanted for a worse crime, so they had all agreed it
was best if she stayed in the world beyond the portal and used the crystal.

Hermione put the book down on the little wooden table next to her and picked
up the crystal, a stone as big around as her fist and colored like rose quartz.
“Yes, sir, I’m here. What is it? Ron and I haven’t had a chance to talk to Harry
yet.” There was no way they were going to say what should be said in an owl
that Riddle could intercept, when the whole point was to keep it from the
bastard.

“I’m afraid that Riddle may know he’s Harry’s soulmate.”

Hermione felt herself freeze, and the crystal nearly wobbled out of her hold and
crashed on the floor. She hastily grabbed it and swallowed slightly. “How do
you know, sir?”

“I have a spy in the Ministry who reported that both Harry and Riddle left the
gala they were at early last night, and within moments of each other. Their
magic also entwined on the dance floor.”
Hermione breathed out. She and Ron hadn’t got to that step until after they were
emotionally bonded, even though they had known for years that they had each
other’s soul-mark. Hermione had been unhappy at the thought of being bound to
someone she didn’t get to choose, even if she loved Ron, and unhappy at the
thought that people would assign her more worth than other Muggleborns just
because she was bonded to a pure-blood.

“Would Harry turn his back on everything he believes in like that, sir?” she
asked. “I mean, maybe their magic entwined but Harry hasn’t told him yet.”

“I’m afraid that even if he didn’t, Riddle would have forced the truth from him
by now,” Professor Dumbledore said. His voice was so weary that Hermione
wanted to weep for him. “Such an unusual event needs an explanation, and
Riddle won’t rest until he finds it.” He paused, and Hermione wrenched her
mind away from the thought of what might be happening to Harry right now.

“So what do you want us to do, sir?”

“I’m going to ask you to take a risk, Hermione. Owls won’t get through to
Harry, and it’s extremely unlikely that Tom will allow his soulmate near anyone
he thinks might convince him otherwise. Go into the wizarding world. Take
Ron with you. Use whatever means you have to get near Harry and speak to him
about what he’s doing concerning the future of the wizarding world.”

Hermione swallowed. It would be a risk. She had never seen anyone as furious
as Riddle had been, at least according to the front page of the Prophet, after she
and Ron had raided the Department of Mysteries and got away with it. He
hadn’t made extravagant promises about what would happen to them if they
were caught. The article had mainly been about the damage to the Department,
and Riddle’s own quote had been limited to the issuance of the arrest order.

But it didn’t need to be more than that, not with the expression in those dark
eyes.

Hermione, though, was willing to take the risk. Riddle had plans in motion that
could erase the minds of people like her parents, and change the past so that
Professor Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix would never have existed.
There had been rumors of worse, and…

Hermione glanced across the room. One book rested on the shelf with the
others, but its cover was worn and shiny in a way none of the others were, even
the ones that had been with Hermione for years.
“Miss Granger? Are you there?”

Hermione smiled a little desperately as she turned back to the crystal. Things
had got bad when Professor Dumbledore was calling her by her last name. She
had granted him permission to use her first one long ago. “I’m here, sir. And
I’m going to take the risk.”

The sigh that came through the crystal seemed intense enough to have fluttered
hangings on the wall, if Hermione had had any. “And Mr. Weasley?”

“Ron will want to be in on this as well. He really cares about Harry.”

“Thank you, Hermione. Please let me know when you plan to venture into the
wizarding world. It may be that I can create a distraction that will keep the
Aurors occupied and let you get closer to Harry.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

Hermione waited until the crystal darkened and then glanced towards the front
of her tent. “I can tell that you’re there, Ron.” He was always telling her that he
knew where she was and what she was thinking because of the soulmate bond.
Well, that ran both ways. He should know better than to think she would ignore
him.

Ron folded the tent flap back and came in with a slightly embarrassed face that
Hermione determined to ignore. “Do you really think that Harry would have
been with him, Hermione? I mean, Riddle’s a madman!”

Hermione sighed. “No, he isn’t, Ron. Things would be easier if he was.” It

would have been a lot easier to convince other people that Riddle was
dangerous and bent on genocide, for one thing. And he never would have
gained the power in the Ministry that he had.

It would be easier to talk Harry out of falling in love with his soulmate.

Hermione had felt a sense of inevitability when Professor Dumbledore had told
them the truth about Harry’s soul-mark. Of course she understood now why
Harry had covered it, until he “suddenly” revealed the phoenix in their fifth
year, and his reluctance to date anyone or discuss his love life. He must have
been so afraid of someone seeing the real mark and spreading the word around.
Which made it harder to understand, now, why he would have disregarded all
the Order’s advice and twenty-four years of stubborn loyalty and simply
tumbled headlong into love with Riddle.

But the man must be charming at close range, or if you weren’t Muggleborn.
And Hermione could grasp the way the Order’s crusade looked from the
outside. They would have seemed mad, unless they had the knowledge of
Riddle’s ultimate plans that he kept as state secrets.

“Well, fine,” Ron said, drawing her out of her thoughts. “Not a madman, then.
But Harry must be mad for giving in!”

Hermione nodded. Honestly, to her this sudden change spoke of charms or a

potion. Harry had been wonderful at throwing off the Imperius Curse—tested
on all students Hogwarts when they were fourth-years, one of many
“innovations” that she hated—but that didn’t mean something subtler would
leave him unscathed.

“When are we going?”

Hermione smiled and stretched her hand out. Ron clasped it. The bond between
them throbbed and danced like a Muggle wire in the wind. This was the kind of
devotion that Hermione had always prized between them, the way they could
move like one mind, because in many ways they were.

“I think tomorrow might do, given the security arrangements we’ll have to
make.”

Ron nodded and kissed the back of her hand. Hermione’s heart sang with the
proof of his devotion and her mind sang with sorrow that Harry would never be
able to know this.

Riddle might seem to offer it, but Riddle’s gifts were always tainted. Harry was
probably overwhelmed now. He would need the perspective that only his best
friends could provide.

Harry opened his eyes slowly.

It was strange, because he didn’t care that much for the luxury of the sheets that
wrapped around him, or the softness of the pillow beneath his cheek. But this
awakening was still precious, unique, unprecedented.
Because his soulmate’s arms were around him, and Harry could feel the
contentment that surrounded them like a warm lake.

He opened his eyes and tilted his head back. Riddle was lounging behind him,
head lifted at what had to be an uncomfortable angle. He must have been
watching Harry sleep for hours. Harry could feel himself blushing. Wouldn’t it
—

“Nothing is too much effort for you.”

Harry nodded slowly. He believed that in a way that he had never believed
anyone else, and that made him wary, but on the other hand, he didn’t have an
emotional bond with them of the kind that he had to Riddle, either. It was
impossible to lie when Harry knew the bond would sing out around him about
any deception it discovered.

“I do have a request,” Riddle breathed against his ear.

Harry closed his eyes as he felt the stirring between his legs. It wasn’t even so
much the warmth, just the feeling of someone focused on him and only him and
not caring about the greater good or the Order or other people or the faceless
masses that he had to sacrifice his soulmate to save.
That was over, now, for good. There was no Obliviate strong enough to break
the emotional bond and force Harry back into hiding, and he knew it.

“What’s the request?” he asked quietly, bending his head towards Riddle’s
chest.

“That you call me Tom.”

Harry hesitated. He had thought of the man by his surname for so long that he
thought “Tom” would taste strange on his tongue.

On the other hand, he wouldn’t know until he tried it, as Dad would say about
all the foods that Harry had tried to refuse when he was a child.

“Tom,” he said.

Tom drew in his breath so sharply that he sounded like he was about to faint.
Stunned, Harry stared at him, and felt the emotion that came flowing down their
bond, as thick as tar. Hunger.
Tom wanted to pin him to the bed and devour him. And now Harry knew
exactly how much.

Tom wanted to lower himself onto Harry and kiss him so intensely that it was
painful to pull away.

But Tom had learned to take the long view—it was the one virtue of spending
decades alone—and he knew that there would be regret if he did that. Harry
would probably regard this as adolescent fumbling, exactly the kind that he had
avoided for so long. Tom intended that their first time together ignite a hunger
in Harry that would never fade and would answer his.

Tom contented himself with a light kiss on the cheek and feeding more hunger
down the bond. Harry’s cheeks were richly flushed now, and he looked away
after a second, shaking his head. “Keep that up and I won’t be able to walk to
breakfast,” he murmured.

“What makes you think you need to walk?” Tom turned and gestured with one
hand. His well-trained house-elves recognized the gesture and popped in the
breakfast that he’d silently requested. “We can eat here.”

Harry blinked. “It feels—decadent.”

“Not half as decadent as it could be,” Tom said. “I meant it when I said I
wanted to spoil you. But I know there would be too much, too soon, if I pressed
now. So we’ll start with breakfast in bed, and ease up on real decadence later.”

Harry smiled faintly, a rapid flick of his lips that Tom immediately fixated on.
He was sure that few people had ever seen it. Then again, Harry had held
himself aloof from most people for fear that someone would find out his secret.

“What are you angry about now?”

The bond stung with exasperation, and Tom looked hard at Harry. Harry was
picking up a chocolate-covered strawberry between two fingers and watching
him with a hardness of eye that Tom could have waited a long time to see from
his soulmate.

“That you obeyed them for so long.” Tom leaned back and let his hands rest on
either side of the breakfast tray. He wanted answers more than he wanted food.
“Why did you go along with them for so long? Even after you began to have
doubts?”

“Because other people made sacrifices, too.”

It wasn’t the answer Tom had expected, and he blinked, leaning forwards.
“Explain to me what that means.”

“So many people gave up a normal life to struggle against you,” Harry said
quietly, gaze fixed on the strawberry instead of him. “Perhaps you’re not the
monster they painted you as, but you have done things that made them question
you, made them hate you. How could I complain about what I had to live with
when they were existing as fugitives? I gave up less than they did.”
“Freedom, and your life, and the ability to tell the truth, and your soulmate.”
Tom hissed the last word in Parseltongue; he couldn’t help himself. “You were
the only one who had to do that.”

“Not even that’s true.” Harry popped the strawberry into his mouth and offered
Tom a different kind of grin, one that had self-loathing in it. “Professor
Dumbledore gave up his soulmate once he realized that there was no way to
make Grindelwald turn back from the path of a Dark Lord.”

“But he never hid from him,” Tom said, and saw Harry flinch. His anger would
be raining down the bond like sleet, and he knew it. But he couldn’t spare
Harry, not now. The thing about Dumbledore’s deception was that it had so
nearly worked.

If Harry hadn’t acted to save Tom’s life that day in the St. Mungo’s satellite
building—if he hadn’t been there—if Dumbledore had never tried to assassinate
Tom but on the other hand Harry had never come to his attention, or had and
then had run away before Tom could find out what he was—

It would have worked. He would have spent the rest of his life in crippling pain
and loneliness.

“No, he did something harder,” Harry said, and his eyes were full of admiration
that made Tom want to hold Dumbledore under the Cruciatus. “He gave up on
the bond after it was already established. I never had to do that.”
“And you’ll never get the chance, either.” Tom couldn’t help himself. He
reached forwards, spilling the breakfast tray onto the sheets, and gripped
Harry’s hands, and pinned them down on the pillow above his head. The blue
flames curled around his fingers, singing, as he touched Harry’s mark again,
and the pleasure that mimicked the physical bond they hadn’t created yet
shuddered beneath him. Harry was gasping, but still folded up his legs in a way
that prevented Tom from leaning as close as he liked, and his eyes were still full
of flame that more than matched the blue ones. “I will never back off. I will
never let you go now. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you sound insane from the possessiveness.”

Harry didn’t know where he found the strength to utter the words. Part of him
was rejoicing in all the emotions that Tom was sending down the bond. He
was wanted. He was desired. No one was telling him, regretfully, that he
couldn’t have this. No one was touching their soulmate’s face delicately in front
of him and then telling him he had to be alone for the rest of his life.

But the rest of him remembered the high-handed way that Tom had tried to
bring Harry into his life long before he knew they were soulmates. How he had
planned to seduce him and sleep with him just because he could. The newspaper
articles. The manipulative pardons for his parents.

And his Merlin-damned voting record.

“Disagree with me, then,” Tom hissed in Parseltongue, leaning in until his body
was pinning Harry beneath him. Harry ignored the urge to open his legs and
accept Tom between them. That was just a distraction right now. “Fight with
me. Argue with me about why I should change. But don’t leave me. And don’t
hide again.”

“I don’t see how I could even if I wanted to,” Harry pointed out, irritably. “I’m
not strong enough to use a Memory Charm on you, and I don’t know of
anything that can break an emotional bond once it’s in place.”

“Yes.” Once again, Harry felt a wave of that smugness pour over him. He shook
his head and uncurled his legs, pushing Tom away.

“Ew,” he added, as his elbow came down in the middle of a bowl of smashed
strawberries. “Call another house-elf and have them make us more breakfast.”
Through his head, briefly, there flashed an idea of what Hermione would say
about him casually taking advantage of a house-elf’s service, but he ignored the
thought. He didn’t even know if his friends were going to be his friends
anymore.

Did I give up the love of everyone I know to have my soulmate?

Harry took a deep breath and reminded himself that he hadn’t seen much of Ron
and Hermione in the past few years, since they’d made that attack on the
Department of Mysteries and then fled to join the other fugitive Order members.
And if they were good friends, as Tom had suggested, then they wouldn’t
abandon him without listening to him.

Can I make an argument good enough to explain to Hermione why I’m with
someone who wants to commit genocide on anyone like her, though?

“I do not enjoy the tenor of your thoughts.” Tom drew back, but kept his hand
curled around Harry’s right wrist, stroking the mark with his fingers in an
absent-minded way, the way he might do with a cat who had fallen asleep next
to him. “We need to have a long discussion, I think, about why my voting
record actually means, and what I think about Muggleborns, and what I meant
when I said politics was a game.”

“Yes,” Harry said quietly. He hesitated. “If it’s too difficult, then you could let
me go.”

Tom stared at him. There was a gleam of red in his eyes, and Harry felt a tremor
in his arm that he thought was Tom being a moment away from gripping his
wrist with crushing strength and only restraining himself at the last moment.

“You think I fear an argument with you?”

“I think that if you’re going to spend the rest of your life debating me, you
might have more peace if—”

Tom jerked hard on his wrist. Harry snarled and tried to roll with the motion,
thinking it was the beginning of an attack, and then ended up pressed against
Tom’s chest, Tom’s arms clasped around him, listening to the rushing of the
man’s breathing and the beating of his heart.

“I know what peace means,” Tom breathed into his ear. “It means loneliness. I
spent long years thinking that I knew exactly what kind of person my soulmate
would be like, and what I would need to do to win and keep them when I found
them. You’re different from anyone I could possibly have imagined, but I don’t
care. I’m going to keep you, and do whatever I have to do to do that.”

Harry nodded against Tom’s chest. Honestly, he’d expected that to be the result
when he offered to leave. He wondered if he’d even hoped that Tom would
refuse, because he wanted to be coddled and petted and spoiled and—
He grimaced. Tom immediately cupped his chin in one hand and stared him in
the eye.

“What is the matter?”

“Now it’s my problem with decadence.” Harry shrugged with one shoulder and
tried to keep his voice light, but Tom’s stare told him he wasn’t getting away
with it. “I wonder if I’m going to keep asking questions like that, testing you
and acting as if I want to push you away even though I don’t, because I want to
hear you declare that you never want to leave me.”

Tom kissed him, something so deep that Harry felt his head spin. Tom pulled
back eventually, when Harry probably would have run out of air otherwise, and
purred into his ear, “I don’t mind answering that question. Push as much as you
want. Ask as much as you want. You haven’t reached nearly the limit of what I
want to give you.”

Harry slowly nodded. Then he said, “I think we still need to have that
discussion. And breakfast somewhere other than a sticky bed.”

“Yes, unfortunately, given that we can’t make the bed sticky the way I like.”

Harry flushed brilliantly and tried to ignore the fact that Tom had been close
enough to him to feel the result of his arousal already anyway. He got up and
held out his hand to Tom, who claimed it with a tug and flowed off the bed
easily himself.

“Come to the kitchen. The house-elves will be happy to have more than one
person to serve.”

Harry sat down in the chair across the table from Tom, his eyes brilliant and his
mouth set in a line that Tom was frankly thrilled to see. Harry acting meek or
boorish—the way he had when he’d thought he could avoid Tom’s notice or
make him back off—was the wrong way for him to act. Tom wanted to go
through a thousand arguments with him rather than avoid them and end up
losing him to one of those unfinished fights.

“So,” Harry said. “I think we’ll start with murder.”

Tom only raised an eyebrow. Harry was also going to find out that he wasn’t
easy to shock. Harry lifted the lid off a platter of scrambled eggs and stared at it
for a moment as if he assumed that perfect food was something that only
happened in stories, then shook his head and helped himself.

“I assume you mean the murder of those helpless individuals that your friends
brought down the roof of the Department of Mysteries on? We can certainly do
that. What would they try to say to justify it to you?”

Harry shot him a narrow-eyed glance and went on eating. He waited,

deliberately, until he had swallowed to say, “No. Those people you murdered
who burned your soul-mark off your chest.”

“Yes.” Tom smiled. “Let’s discuss them.”

Harry paused. Then he said, in a tone of wonder somewhat obscured by the fact
that he was forking more eggs into his mouth, “You don’t have any regrets at
all, do you?”

“No,” Tom said. “I don’t wake up every day and hug myself with glee over
what I did, but neither do they trouble my dreams.”

“You killed them. And their families, who never did anything to you.”

“I wrote to their families for justice. And their families laughed at me and told
me they would kill me, not just burn the mark off my chest, if I protested to
them any more than I had.”

“I…”

Harry looked shocked. Tom focused on the bond. Yes, the shock was real,
pouring like cold water down the link between them.

Harry was feeling at him in the same way, and he closed his eyes for a second.
He would have felt the sorrow, the loss, Tom knew. Both when Tom had
thought having his soul-mark burned off might mean that he would never
actually have his soulmate—have someone who wanted to be with him, for him
—and the fact that when he had spoken up, no one had believed him.

“Why did no one believe you?” Harry whispered. “You—you must have seen
their faces.”

“Yes. And they were Slytherin pure-bloods, but still sixth-years. They hadn’t
had their seventeenth birthdays. That meant they were protected by their
families and couldn’t be forced to take Veritaserum. Professors kept saying that
they had to believe them, because there were two of them and only one of me,
and their alibis complemented each other. No one seemed to notice
how perfect those bloody alibis were.” Tom breathed air heated by six decades
of hatred. “I put memories in a Pensieve. Professors said I must have altered
them. Dumbledore kept shaking his head sadly and saying that I must be
making up false tales out of jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” Harry whispered.

“They both had their soulmates. Supposedly I had gone insane from the loss of
my soul-mark and I was jealous.”

“So when you killed them…”

“Their soulmates committed suicide a few years later.”

Harry looked away from him. “So you sacrificed them,” he whispered. “And
their families.”

“They sacrificed me, too, to their children’s sadism.” Tom smiled, and he knew
that Harry was flinching from what was flowing down the bond right now. He
didn’t care. Harry would understand who he was dealing with, yes, but he would
understand the full context. “The professors, to their own comfort. They didn’t
want to ask questions that would have made things uncomfortable with them,
trying to get justice out of prominent pure-blood families. No one helped me,
Harry, even when it would have been easy. I defended myself.”

Harry swallowed, but it looked heavy and sick. Tom was sorry he had disturbed
his soulmate’s appetite, but he sat and waited for the questions Harry would
want to ask.

They came quickly. “Couldn’t you have—damaged them in some way that was
less permanent?”

Tom cocked his head. “How? How could I have returned equivalent harm?
Burning their soul-marks would have done nothing, since they had already
found their soulmates. And they would have decided it was me. As it was,
before they died, someone ambushed them in a corridor and cast curses at them
—someone who wasn’t me, but probably someone taking revenge for their
constant bullying of Hufflepuffs. The professors all blamed me and gave me
detention. No, trying to take the route of justice didn’t work, and trying to do
anything less than complete and untraceable wouldn’t have worked, either.
They were all too ready to turn on me.”
“That’s horrible,” Harry whispered. “But it doesn’t justify murder, or the
sacrifice of innocent people. The Order tries to live—”

“They live by the exact same principles.” Tom leaned in with his lip curling.
“Or what was Dumbledore doing, asking you to be a sacrifice and preparing to
kill hundreds of innocent people?”

“He—he explained to me why I had to be—when I was old enough I agreed to

it—”

“And did he ask the consent and agreement of all the people who would have
died in his attempt to reach me? Did he even tell your parents and anyone else
who might have contributed to that spell the truth about what he was doing?”

Harry shut his eyes tightly, while the bond radiated chaos. Then it smoothed
away, and Tom sighed. He hoped he was going to hear a strong argument from
Harry this time, not another bromide crafted by Dumbledore.

Harry looked at him and said, quietly but with absolute conviction, “Yes, the
professors failed, and Dumbledore failed, too. But that doesn’t make what you
did right.”

Tom laughed in delight. Harry’s brow crinkled in confusion, and Tom reached
out and stroked the scar on his forehead. “How did you get that?”

“Broom accident,” Harry whispered, and then shook himself sharply out of
reach. “How can you laugh when I say something like that?”

“Because I always hoped my soulmate would have a mind. Someone who

worships me would bore me. But someone who might share my life forever
should be able to stand up to me and fight back.”

“We’re still deciding on the forever.”

“Of course we are. At the moment, only the emotional bond is established. We
don’t have anything like the fourfold magical bond that would be enough to
strengthen us so that we don’t have to die unless we want to.”

“That’s—impossible. People have thought matched soulmates could be

immortal, but they were wrong.”

“Would you like to see my Arithmantic calculations that prove them wrong?”

“I don’t know enough about Arithmancy to be sure—” Harry tightened his
mouth. “You’re distracting me from the subject under debate.”

“All right.” Tom leaned back and crossed his legs. “So Langley and Yarrow
died more than sixty years ago. I can’t resurrect them. I won’t have the
Unspeakables research time travel specifically to go back in time and prevent
their murders. What would you like me to do to atone?’

“You’d be willing to atone?”

Tom laughed softly. “Why not? It bothers my soulmate.”

Harry folded his arms. “You shouldn’t want to atone because it bothers me. You
should want to atone because—well, because of higher ethical principles.”

His voice trailed off at the end, and Tom smiled at him. “Yes, starting to
question the ones who taught you those higher ethical principles, aren’t you?”

Harry gave him a stubborn look and then clenched his hands into fists. “Not all
of them are wrong.”

“Perhaps not. I’m willing to listen to and consider your arguments. But I
am not going to say that Dumbledore was right simply because he’s
Dumbledore. I’m not going to flagellate myself with guilt because of people
who deserved to die. I’m not going to agree to a sacrifice of our soul-bond.”

“Wouldn’t that be impossible anyway? I mean, now that it’s been established.”

Panic came down the bond. Tom reached across the table to touch his hand.
“Yes, it would be. Which is why we need to compromise—both of us—and
learn to respect each other. And if you find yourself disgusted by the idea that
two teenagers deserved to die for burning off my soul-mark, then understand
how disgusted I am that Dumbledore chose to attribute my attempts to get
justice to jealousy, and then decided that I deserved to be alone for the rest of
my life because of his own mistake.”

“I won’t ever agree to murder as the solution to a problem.”

“I haven’t done that again. I was volatile as a teenager.”

“Is that supposed to excuse it?”

“Are Dumbledore’s good intentions and the fact that he failed supposed to
excuse his own murder attempt?”

Harry closed his eyes for another second, his fingers tightening around Tom’s to
the point of pain. Tom didn’t move, and didn’t release Harry from his intense
gaze. After a few moments, Harry opened his eyes again and nodded slowly.

“Yes. All right. Okay. Compromise.”

Tom smiled. This was a good beginning to their joined lives.

Chapter 12: Approaches

Chapter Text

Tom strode into the Ministry and savored the shock that flooded out from the
people watching him, as if this was a normal day and he always came through
that same Floo on the way to his office. He nodded distantly to the crowed and
kept his eyes focused forwards. Someone would approach him soon enough.

“Minister!”

He had not anticipated that the first person to do so would be Percy Weasley,
but then, the man didn’t seem to share the exaggerated fears of the rest of his
family. Tom turned towards Weasley, his faint smile in place. “Yes, Mr.
Weasley?” he asked, and the silence deepened as his ordinary words fell into
them.

Weasley came to a stop in front of him, staring intently. “We wanted to make
sure that you were all right, sir. No one has seen you since you vanished from
the gala last night.”

Tom nodded. “But you did receive the owls that canceled my meeting with the
Head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation, did you not?”
Weasley was Undersecretary for Bartemius Crouch, who ran the department.

“Yes, of course, sir.” Weasley trotted anxiously beside him as Tom strode
towards the lifts that would take him to his office. “But we merely wondered…
since you wouldn’t leave such an important official event without an excellent
excuse...”

Tom turned his head. Weasley shut up at the expression on his face and then
bowed hastily, his expression twitching a little.
“Of course, sir, of course,” he murmured, although Tom hadn’t actually said
anything.

“Thank you,” said Tom, and stepped into the lift and left Weasley to wonder
what the thanks were for. That ought to screw his caution up enough to make
him more courteous about approaching Tom again.

The gossip network moved fast, not that Tom had expected any less. By the
time he stepped out of the lift, several people were waiting to greet him, but the
only important one was Amelia. Tom nodded to her and faced towards his
office.

“Madam Bones, if you would?”

Amelia dismissed the rest of her hangers-on with a few pointed eyebrow raises
—nothing more needed, she’d trained her people well—and followed him into
the office. She stared at him as he sat down behind his desk. “This must be
something important for you to send word to no one after you left the gala.”

“Tell me, Amelia, how much did you see at the gala itself?”

She met his eyes and waited a moment before saying, “It looked like your
magic was intertwining with Mr. Potter’s. But that should be impossible except
between soulmates.”

Tom looked at her evenly.

Her eyes widened, and for a moment sought the phoenix of diamond and onyx
that dangled on a chain around his neck. Then she began to smile. “Oh,
congratulations, sir. Congratulations, indeed.” She paused, then added
delicately, “But I thought everyone was saying young Mr. Potter was not your
soulmate?”

Tom sighed and moved a piece of paperwork marked “urgent” over towards the
side of the desk. “You recall that until recently his parents were fugitives? They
ran when I was going to arrest them for questioning on how much they knew
about some of those raids the Order of the Phoenix was planning.”

Again Amelia showed her quickness. “So they taught him to fear you.”

Tom nodded. “It’s my name, Amelia, that he carries.” He basked for a moment
in the awed look on her face. There were still some of the older pure-bloods
who thought name soul-marks were more impressive than any other kind, and
denoted that the bond would be of special strength once established. Then Tom
sighed and altered his voice to one of deep sorrow. “And he’s half out of his
mind with shame for it.”

“Shame?” Amelia stared at him, her mouth slowly firming into a line. “And
James and Lily Potter taught him this? I never would have thought they were
that kind of people.”

“They taught him then, but they have learned better. I have no doubt now that
they can help him learn to live with it.” Tom leaned back and thoughtfully
folded his arms behind his head. “But I don’t think his parents came up with
that idea on their own. They were barely political when he was born. No,
someone else frightened them into it. But I have to find that person, and I have
few clues. Harry doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Through lowered eyelashes, Tom watched as Amelia thought it over and then
said, “It would be Albus Dumbledore, of course.”

Tom let himself roll his eyes a little, while delight burned in him like a banked
flame, second in warmth only to the emotional bond with Harry draped around
his shoulders. “Amelia, you know as well as I do that we’ve searched to find
something linking Albus to the Order of the Phoenix, and we’ve found nothing
conclusive.”

“And is your soulmate unwilling to give that testimony? What about his
parents?”

Tom sighed. “Amelia, I can’t have them testify against the old man, even if they
have a connection to him. The road to accepting Harry Potter as my soulmate
will be hard enough without asking him to betray such an old loyalty. Likewise,
his parents have no reason to trust me.”

“You pardoned them!”

“Yes, but at the time I was interested in their son. And there will be those who
say now that I knew the supposed secret of Harry’s soul-mark all along and
pardoned them to manipulate him.” It had been true manipulation at the time,
but Tom knew from the fire mounting in Amelia’s eyes that she would now
become one of his most dedicated crusaders against the idea. “We can’t find the
proof this way, and I won’t try.”

“What if I spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Potter?”

“I still don’t think it would be a good idea to have a prominent Ministry official
—”

“As a concerned parent.”

Tom blinked. “I didn’t know you had relatives attending Hogwarts right now.”

“Well, no,” Amelia admitted. “The last was my niece Susan, who graduated
with your Harry.” She gave Tom a faint smile that Tom basked in again. “But
she told me two stories about how Albus approached her and requested that she
come to ‘private meetings’ where he could give her ‘special instructions.’ Susan
refused on her parents’ advice. Now, though...”

“Yes, it does sound like the Headmaster attempting to influence a student. But
that’s not the same as saying that he’s behind the Order of the Phoenix or
any activities they may have undertaken.”

“Such as the assassination attempts on you?”

She suggested it, not me. Tom stared at his hands for a moment. “Amelia...”

“I know very well that you have no love for the old man, sir. Why you haven’t
already moved more aggressively to take him down before now when he denied
you justice for the burning of your soul-mark, I don’t know.”

That, Tom had not expected. He blinked at Amelia for a moment, and then

shrugged, seamlessly playing even the honest reaction into the act. “As a child,
what good would it have done? And as I got older, yes, I dislike him, but I know
very well he’s a pillar of the community and a force for good in Hogwarts.”

“It sounds less like good and more like manipulation to me.” Amelia strode
back and forth in place for a moment. “I am going to set Griselda on this. I
know she’d want to be involved.”

Griselda Marchbanks was a prominent member of the Wizengamot, and

Amelia’s soulmate. Tom did not let his lips quiver, but he wanted to. “If you’re
sure.”

“I am.” Amelia paused near the door and looked over her shoulder.
“Congratulations on your soulmate, Minister. Would you like me to handle it
with the Aurors?”
“Please.” Tom had not been looking forward to explaining to his overprotective
guard detail why he had left them behind in the middle of the gala.

Amelia nodded with a soft smile. “Then I will. Congratulations again,

Minister.” And out the door she slipped.

Tom sat with his eyes closed for a few moments, then went to work on some of
the forms and reports he absolutely had to read and sign. He was listening,
however, and when the ruckus in the corridor became loud enough, he called,
“Come in,” without looking up from his desk.

The door flung open, and Jalena Whipwood stalked into the room. Her
breathing was loud enough to muffle the sound of her footfalls, the first time
Tom could ever remember that happening.

He leaned back and watched her with eyes calm enough that it seemed to
infuriate Whipwood more. She leaned forwards with her hands braced on either
side of the desk and hissed, “Minister, exactly what did you think you were
doing?”

“Leaving the gala?”

“Any of it. But yes, let’s begin with that. Sir.”

Tom hadn’t expected Whipwood to lose her temper this badly. Most of the time,
she was the one who told the others that they shouldn’t explode in anger
because it would only make Tom react badly. (Listening spells in the Auror
offices were such useful things). But right now, she looked ready to fling him
off a cliff.

Tom watched her thoughtfully for long enough that she looked ready to shout
again, and then simply smiled at her. “I found my soulmate.”

Whipwood opened her mouth to speak and then seemed to find herself bereft of
words. She shook her head and said in a soft croak, “What?”

“I don’t blame you for being startled,” Tom said, but he was watching, and he
knew the emotion on her face ran deeper than surprise. It looked like—

Devastation?

And yet, Whipwood was happily soulmated, and certainly her wife would have
known if Whipwood had inclinations elsewhere.
Tom took out his wand and held it ready under the desk, across his legs, while
he shook his head. “No congratulations? Or are you still too startled?”

Whipwood cleared her throat. “Startled, sir. I suppose that when someone goes
without their soulmate for years, you just assume that that will be the case
forever. But of course I’m happy for you.” She smiled and stepped away.

Tom wouldn’t have had to be a Legilimens to sense the lie in those words. And
he was ready when she threw a Stunner at him, underhand, although the fact
that she used no wand was its own surprise.

Tom snapped up a Shield Charm and rose calmly to his feet. He was truly calm,
and not just because he wanted to project no alarm down the bond to Harry,
although that was a major consideration. He moved around the desk, his eyes
bent on Whipwood. She had already fallen into a dueling stance.

“You will find that all the anti-Apparition wards around my office are now up,”
Tom said. “As are the ones that disable Portkeys and the nearest fireplaces.”

“I don’t want to run from you anyway,” Whipwood said, with a blinding smile.
“You bastard. You utter bastard.”

“So tell me, how did you come to work for the Order of the Phoenix?” Tom
watched as the flush mounted up her neck to her cheeks. Whipwood was a good
duelist, as were all the Aurors who had made it as far up the ranks as she had,
but they measured their skill in exhibition matches. Whipwood’s attack on him
had been the poison in the forest, it had to be. But Tom had read all the reports,
and they said that she was no good at all when fighting angry.

Tom intended her to be blazingly angry by the time he was done.

“Thera Wildwood. Do you remember that name?” Whipwood began to move in

the duelist’s circle. Tom followed.

“No, I can’t say I do. Relative of yours?”

“No. A friend. A Muggleborn friend.”

“Ah.” Tom thought he could see where this was going. He kept his feet light
and his eyes fixed on Whipwood’s wand. He could have called for help, but he
was honestly interested in the kinds of insights he could gain from ranting
enemies, and Aurors who came into the office might hesitate for a moment
between him and Whipwood, and create fatal distractions.
“She knew that you would never permit her to remain in the wizarding world
after she finished her education at Hogwarts. So she stole from you.”

“I don’t recall any such theft from my vaults.” Tom had built up his fortune
from donations, gifts, the wills of rich, childless followers, and the kind of
misguided bribes that people thought they could use to influence him in the
early years.

“No. She stole her talent and her future from you. She said that she would work
in the Muggle world and reveal magic to them. Why not? They deserve to have
magic to cure their diseases and injuries just like anyone else! Did you know
that we can heal a broken arm in a few hours and it takes them weeks?”

Tom curled his lip a little. There was no point in trying to debate a fanatic, but
he could think of words that might push Whipwood further into her rant. “And
it never occurred to either of you that word of a ‘miracle’ like that could bring
Muggles down on us like rats on eggs?”

“What does it matter? This world is so corrupt it could do with a little shaking

up!”

Whipwood cast again while she was still talking, this time with the Killing
Curse. Tom stepped aside from it and then concentrated all his magic into a
blast of heat. He could hear people starting to pound at the door. Apparently
someone had finally noticed the raising of the anti-Apparition wards and was
now eager to do their jobs.

Besides, he could get information out of Whipwood later on with Legilimency

and Veritaserum, and he did think he owed it to Harry not to become injured.

Whipwood raised the correct shield for the curse that she probably assumed
would come at her, but this wasn’t a curse; it was simple heat, as unable to be
stopped by a magical shield as a flare from the sun. Whipwood screamed as
blisters exploded into being along her raised arms, and as her wand caught on
fire. Tom stomped his foot once on the floor, releasing the wards and directing
his magic at the same time.

By the time the Aurors burst through the door, Whipwood was sprawled,
unconscious, on the stone.

“S-sir?” Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped forwards, his eyes wide. “Are you well?”
“Unfortunately, Auror Whipwood attacked me.” Tom shrugged and lowered his
wand. “I must admit that I don’t understand all of her motives, but she seems to
have been working with the Order of the Phoenix, and attacked me on the news
that my soulmate had been found.”

He was watching their faces, and saw the few who flinched or started away
from him. Tom smiled at them, and they stopped moving abruptly. Kingsley
hadn’t blinked, though he did acquire a faint look of shock.

“That’s good news, Minister.” Kingsley cleared his throat and reached out to
Levitate Whipwood. “Do you think she was responsible for the attack in the
forest as well?”

“She was.” Tom held Kingsley’s eyes for a moment. “I will want to know,
Auror, why no one in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement suspected
that the traitor was one of their own.”

“I will be asking that question as well, Minister.”

Kingsley’s voice was appropriately harsh, so after a moment of consideration,

Tom waved a hand at him. “Go and do what you need to do, Auror Shacklebolt.
I need to return home to recuperate for a few hours, but I will come back.”

Kingsley nodded once, and then stepped out of the office with Whipwood
floating behind him and the voices of the Aurors starting up. Tom gave them an
impassive look, and they took the hint and left.

I hope I didn’t steal too much of Amelia’s thunder, Tom thought, and that was
when sharp desperation flared up through the bond from Harry’s direction and
he Disapparated without thinking about what would happen when other people
felt that jolt through the wards on the Ministry as a whole.

Harry glanced up from the book that Tom’s Arithmantic calculations were
written in, and raised his eyebrows a little when he saw a gleam of silver in
front of him. Was this some kind of ward that Tom hadn’t told him about? Tom
was currently at the Ministry soothing tempers he said would be ruffled by them
leaving the gala together, and Harry was trying to get up the courage to send an
owl to his parents.
But then the wisp of silver formed into a very familiar otter Patronus, and Harry
felt his breath begin to come short as he stared at it. He couldn’t—he couldn’t
reply—

“I figured out how to set at Timing Charm on my Patronus so it would only

manifest when you were alone,” Hermione’s voice said from the otter’s mouth.
“Harry, Ron and I are going to be venturing into the wizarding world under
disguises very soon. Be at the Leaky Cauldron at two in the afternoon on the
fourth.”

Then the Patronus dissolved, and Harry buried his head in his hands. All the
doubt that he had stilled when he was in Tom’s arms came rushing back over
him like a breaking wave.

How was he going to explain this to Ron and Hermione? How in the
fuck could he?
But he knew he had to be there. Tom was going to place some Aurors on him,
or want to, whenever Harry moved around in public, but that would just have to
be a plan that lapsed. Harry would have to see his friends.
He wanted to explain. He wanted them to be happy for him. He thought it was
too much to hope for that he’d accomplish that in the initial conversation, but it
was still something he did want.

“Harry?”

Harry jumped and turned towards the front door, blinking as it opened. What
was Tom doing here? He’d left almost an hour ago, but he’d said that he’d
expected to be at the Ministry most of the morning.

“What’s wrong?” Tom shut the door behind him and padded towards Harry,
eyes narrowed as if looking for someone who had caused him distress.

And of course he was. The bloody emotional bond, Harry realized abruptly.
He’d thought distance might affect it—it wasn’t something that people who had
found their soulmates explained in public—but he should have known that even
if that was the way it usually worked, it wouldn’t for them.

“Why were you upset?”

Harry sat back in his chair with a long sigh and shook his head. “Just thinking
about explaining—everything,” he said. He sighed again as Tom moved up to
his side and ran a hand through his hair. The bond sang around him, definitely
more palpable when they were right next to each other, tight and warm and
close. “I know that you don’t have many friends, but for me, my friends were
the people I thought I was going to spend my life with. I was thinking about
how to explain to them and not coming up with anything.”

Tom smiled, bent over until his mouth was near Harry’s ear, and breathed,
“Bollocks.”

Harry snapped his eyes open. He’d been enjoying the warmth of their emotional
bond, and didn’t expect that word at all. “What?”

“It’s more than that that has you upset. You went from calm to sweating with
dread in seconds. I could tell.” Tom circled around in front of him and took
another chair with a pleasant smile. Those hungry eyes, of course, meant the
smile wouldn’t have deceived anyone who was close to him. And Harry could
also feel the bond singing steadily with Tom’s desire and lack of amusement.
“Tell me.”

“It’s really—”

“The bond means that you can never lie to me again, Harry. And here I was, the
other day, thinking that you never would want to, because of course you’ve
learned better than that now that we’ve found each other as soulmates.” Tom
tilted his head and sighed. “It seems not. Come, tell me.”

Harry gritted his teeth. “It’s about people you hate.”

“That’s too bad, isn’t it?”

“So I don’t get to have any mental privacy as long as the bond exists?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t intend to use Legilimency on you without an excellent

reason. But lying to me for years and years means that you don’t get to have my
trust until you prove that you’re truthful.”

Harry closed his eyes. The bond couldn’t hide that pain that went along with
Tom’s light words, and reminded him, again, that he’d always known the truth,
while Tom had had to deal with believing he was alone in the world. He nodded
slowly. “It was a message from Ron and Hermione.”

There was silence opposite from him, but not down the bond. That was stinging
and stirring like an ancient dragon opening one eye.
“Let me guess,” Tom whispered, and Harry knew he shouldn’t be aroused by
the tone in his voice, but it was so hard to help. And he shouldn’t think of the
word hard, either. “They want to meet you and convince you to turn back into a
martyr for the cause of the Order. Of course they would.”

“They—it’s not about wanting to persuade me to be a martyr—”

“But they think that it’s evil you found your soulmate, of course. Have you told
them that they can rate you as an innocent victim because I didn’t give you a
choice?”

“I didn’t send any message back yet,” Harry muttered tightly.

Tom nodded. “Well, suffice it to say that you won’t be going to any meeting
without me.”

“Are you insane?”
“No. That’s what Dumbledore wanted me to be, but I’ve managed to avoid it. I
always believed that I would find my soulmate one day.”

“Dumbledore didn’t want you to—”

“Why are you going out of your way to excuse them? What would I have to do
to earn the same kind of loyalty from you, Harry? Abuse you for the same
amount of years?”

Harry took a difficult breath. The truth was there, but he didn’t know if he had
the strength to speak it.

Tom went on staring intently and silently at him, though, rather than talking,
and that finally gave Harry the courage to murmur, “I—I think that blaming
them would be self-indulgent. Because part of me still believes that I’m weak
for giving in to you and that it would be strange to blame the Order for that
when I could blame myself.”

Tom considered him for a moment more, and then nodded. “I could hardly
expect you to come out of that environment unscathed,” he murmured, and
reached out to trace his fingers gently around the bone of Harry’s right wrist,
near to but not touching the soul-mark. “Very well. I will come with you under
an Invisibility Cloak and stay silent. But I will be there.”
“If I did run, you wouldn’t have that much trouble finding me,” Harry muttered,
irritated to find that he was blushing and only wanted Tom to keep touching
him.

“It’s about more than that. Did you think I enjoyed the sight of your suffering?”

“I know you don’t, but that only makes it all the stranger that you want to go
along! Because I’m going to suffer when I talk to them. It’s inevitable. Why
don’t you stay here and wait for a report from me, or do whatever you need to
do at the Ministry?”

“As a matter of fact, some damage control has been necessary.” Tom still didn’t
move away or stop touching him. “And what I mean by not liking the sight of
your suffering is that I will do everything I can to prevent it.”

“Nothing can prevent this.” Harry closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to
determine in his own head if the way he felt when Tom touched him was worth
the loss of his oldest friendships. “It’s just the way it is.”

“Then at least I can be there when you want to collapse because of the
misguided ideas I’m sure Weasley and Granger are going to express to you.”

Harry swallowed and met Tom’s eyes, saw the determined darkness burning in
them. “You aren’t going to change your mind about this, are you?”

“No. We can argue, if you want.” Tom’s mouth twitched in an amusement that
his eyes, and the bond, thick and dark and clinging, didn’t reflect. “I do enjoy
that.”

“I will need some privacy from you.”

“I expect that. I respect that. But you will not have privacy about something that
causes you this much pain.”

After a moment, Harry nodded, and then rearranged himself in the chair so that
he was leaning against the arm. Tom moved his own chair so that his arm was
under Harry’s head. Harry sighed and murmured, “So what happened at the
Ministry? Does everyone hate me now, or does no one know what happened?”

“I will not be keeping our bond quiet,” Tom said, running his fingers through
Harry’s hair and over the old scar on his brow. “There is too much chance that
someone else would notice you, now that you have been brought into the circles
of power, and try to seduce you away.”
Harry sighed. “I wouldn’t go with them.”

“I do not wish to witness them.”

“Fine. But what’s been happening?”

Tom leaned towards him and began to speak in Parseltongue, and Harry nearly
forgot himself in the warm voice and the bond that encircled him like a blazing
rope.

Harry stood with his hands clenched in the taproom of the Leaky Cauldron, and
tried to ignore the ravenous stares coming from every corner of the room. They
made his skin prickle. People knew that he was the Minister’s soulmate, now.

They didn’t know that his two best friends would be here soon. And they didn’t
know that the Minister was in the chair beside Harry right now, under the
Invisibility Cloak that belonged to the Potter family.

Harry felt as though he was—well, as though he was the only one who knew the
entire truth, although it wasn’t true. Tom knew. But he thought everything was
fine, which only meant that Harry grew more and more stressed wondering if
that was a good sign or not.

His parents’ reactions had been oddly muted. Lily had looked him in the eye,
sighed, and wrapped her arms around him. “I think it might be the wrong
decision, but I’ll support you in whatever you decide to do,” she’d murmured.

James had coughed and given Harry an awkward clap on the shoulder. “It’s a
long time since I had charge of you, and you’re your own man now,” he said.
“As long as you think about it and you’re sure you want this, Harry.”

The problem was, Harry wasn’t sure. And the more he tried to seek someone
who could tell him what to do, the more he felt as though he was in a tiny boat
tossed on choppy waters.

“Potter.”

Harry turned around with a relieved sigh. The people standing in front of him
had to be Ron and Hermione, although the disguises were so good that it really
did look as though they were the bearded men they seemed to be. Warlocks,
even, with grizzled hair hanging down the sides of their heads. “You have
something for me?” he asked, the signal he’d arranged in more Patronus
exchanges with Hermione.

Exchanges that Tom had known about, had been witness to. Harry felt as if he
had been dipped in slime as the word Traitor, traitor, echoed through his head
again and again.

“Phoenix fire,” muttered the warlock on the left, in a voice that sounded like
Ron’s if Harry thought about it.

Harry took a deep breath and nodded. “Then come on,” he muttered out of the
side of his mouth, leading the way towards the staircase. There were rooms
above the pub that one could rent out for a week or a day or an hour. Harry had
chosen a day. He didn’t know how long the conversation would take.

What they would need to say to him. Whether Tom, pacing after them with soft
amusement pouring down the bond, could hold his silence. What Harry
would feel after Ron and Hermione had spoken to him.

He felt so dirty and conflicted that it was amazing Tom had refrained from
touching him so far, his usual reaction when Harry sent emotions like this down
the bond. Then again, perhaps he was getting used to it.

Oh, Harry.
Tom held himself motionless under the Invisibility Cloak because right now, he
knew that living up to the promise he had made to Harry was more important
for the future of their bond than constantly reassuring him. But he burned with
the desire to reassure him. Harry was all but shifting in place and sending sirens
of distress down the bond, and his friends—as they were under the illusions
they were removing—stared at him in silent judgment. Tom wanted so much…

Well, he had endured unfulfilled desires for years before this. He settled down
silently to watch, keeping his hands motionless. They should never know he
was there, and that was what he wanted, to see how they treated Harry in
private.

Harry held out a hesitant hand. The red-haired wizard who must be Ron
Weasley came forwards to clasp it. Tom held still, but it was difficult. He was
looking into the face of a man who had murdered many of his people.
The brown-haired witch behind him, Hermione Granger, wasn’t much easier for
Tom to watch. She had stiff shoulders and a stiff expression and, from what
Tom knew of her, a stiff brain. She had been brilliant in Hogwarts, but her
brilliance ran in narrow channels, one reason she had never achieved an
Outstanding in Defense, Tom considered. She lacked the truly creative,
insightful way of fighting or of countering curses that made the examiners give
top marks.

“Harry,” Granger said. The tone was clipped, judgmental. “We wanted to warn
you against giving in and letting Riddle corrupt you.”

“What do you mean by ‘corrupt’?” Harry’s tone was quiet. He didn’t make a
motion, not even a minor twitch of his head, towards Tom, although of course
he knew of his presence. Tom narrowed his eyes. Harry was a fine actor, he had
to be, but Tom had not realized before this how much he had wanted to see
honesty infuse Harry’s actions after the revelation of their soulmate bond.

Harry touched the bond gently, like a harpstring, without moving, either. Tom
recovered himself. The last thing he wanted was for Harry to have to
reassure him in this situation.

“Well, you know what she means, mate.” Weasley folded his arms and regarded
Harry as if he were someone Weasley had caught cheating at Quidditch. “It’s
ridiculous, the way he goes on. He’ll have you hating Muggles and
Muggleborns before you know it.”

Harry smiled faintly. “I could never do that. My mother’s a Muggleborn, as you

very well know.”

The bond screamed. Tom locked down the iron self-control that had once let
him permit a curse to whizz an inch by his head during an assassination attempt.
Harry stood there as if everything was normal.

Perhaps it had been normal, for years. The Order’s definition of normal. They’d
tell Harry to do something or make an assumption about him, and he’d smile
and agree, while inside he screamed in agony.

Tom was going to change that. And he would start this evening, after this
dreadful conversation was done.

“But Riddle’s charming,” Granger said. “He can corrupt even some of the
Order’s spies. You know that.”
“Well, if he’s so charming you think that I’m going to be taken in despite
myself, what exactly would you have me do? Either I’m strong and capable of
resisting it, or I’m so weak you had to take the risk of coming into the wizarding
world as wanted criminals to scold me, and that’s still not going to be enough.”

Tom licked his lips and told himself to tame his imagination. Right now, he
couldn’t take the time to think about how he wanted to reward Harry for his
intelligence and strength.

Granger and Weasley hesitated and glanced at each other. Then Granger said,
“It’s not to scold you.”

“What is it for?”

Again the exchange of glances. Then Granger said, “You have to understand,
we haven’t talked this over with Professor Dumbledore.”

“But we’re agreed on it,” Weasley said. “There’s no reason for you to stay here
any longer, Harry. You can’t feed information to the Order anymore now that
you’re compromised, and what kind of career or contribution can you really
make to the wizarding world if you’re Riddle’s pet?” He held out his hand.
“Come with us. Come back to the Order’s hiding place. We know that you can
be yourself again if you can be with us.”

Tom tensed all his muscles. If Harry did seem as if he was about to accept
Weasley’s hand in anything other than jest, he would break his promise. The
one thing he could not bear was that his soulmate should leave him again.

Harry stared in silence at Weasley’s hand. Then he looked up and shook his
head. “I don’t have any reason to stay here when my parents are free?”

“You know that Riddle’s going to change his mind about that as soon as they’re
not politically convenient anymore,” Granger said impatiently. “Mr. and Mrs.
Potter are loyal to our cause, Harry. They took the pardons because they wanted
to see you and they wanted to get close to Riddle and extract some secrets if
they could, but that won’t last forever.”

“Yeah, he did it to get you on his side,” Weasley added. “They’ll come back
soon enough, and then you’ll want to be with them.”

Harry licked his lips. Then he said, “What would you do if Hermione supported
something you really hate, Ron?”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Weasley said, with faith that might have been touching
if it wasn’t so stupid. “We’re soulmates. We can’t be on opposite sides.”

“Then how can Riddle and I be on opposite sides?” Harry was whispering now.
“No, something’s gone wrong. Or right. I don’t know which. I know that I don’t
want to run to the Order’s secret hiding place now. Not with my parents free
and—and not with the possibility that I was wrong.”

“Do you know what we found in the Department of Mysteries?” Granger

demanded. “Books bound in human skin, Harry!”

“Hogwarts’s library has some of those, too—”

“Recent, Harry! The Unspeakables were conducting experiments in seeing

whether the contents of magical books changed when they were bound in
human skin! And we found notes from Riddle himself encouraging those
practices! He was interested in seeing whether the skins of murderers would
retain enough memories that he could use it as a means of punishment!”

Tom frowned. He had indeed forgotten about those experiments. He had

regretted signing off on them, since it seemed that none of the Unspeakables
were learning anything worthwhile from them.

“What?” Harry choked out.

“I bet you didn’t know that about your soulmate, did you?” Weasley’s glance
was triumphant, even as Tom attended more to the hammering waves of
emotion that had begun to flow up the bond he had with Harry. “Yes, exactly,
Harry. That’s exactly what he was doing. That’s exactly why we have to oppose
him! He’s going around doing that sort of shit!”

Harry swallowed and covered his eyes with one hand. The bond was in chaos
now, bouncing back and forth between them as if someone had stretched it like
a rope. Tom responded quietly with reassurance, holding back his hatred of
Weasley and Granger. Harry didn’t need that right now.

“I need to talk to him about this,” Harry said abruptly. “Confront him with this.”

Tom tensed, and knew it would be impossible to keep some of that out of the
bond. Harry’s head didn’t twitch, though. He kept his gaze on Weasley and
Granger, who both looked upset.
“I wouldn’t do that, Harry,” said Granger, with a wise shake of her head. “What
are you going to do? Actually assume you’ll get some acceptable answer out of
him? The way that—”

“The way that I would get some acceptable answers out of you if I asked you
why you murdered people in the Department of Mysteries?”

Granger’s eyes went wide. Weasley stepped back as though Harry had pressed a
blade to his throat. Granger said, after a moment, “How did you find out about
that?”

“My soulmate told me,” Harry said, and bitterness crashed down the bond.
“And it’s true, isn’t it? You killed people!”

“Only in self-defense!”

“Self-defense you wouldn’t even have needed if you hadn’t broken into the
bloody Department of Mysteries in the first bloody place!”

“You sound like you’re on Riddle’s side already, mate.”

“Yes, I’m a bloody traitor,” Harry said. “I’m a terrible, horrible person.” He was
trembling, and Tom could barely describe what was happening in their bond. It
was like being bathed with hot blood that also carried dozens of minute glass
fragments. “Because no matter where I look, I find something to object to, and I
don’t have a nice safe soulmate who I’m absolutely sure will never do anything
wrong, and I should have just died like a good little martyr instead of saving my
own fucking life when Dumbledore tried to collapse a building onto a bunch
of innocents!”

“They would have been casualties of war—”

Harry’s power tore out of him. Tom gasped soundlessly as he watched

Granger’s mouth seal shut with chains that simply sprouted out of her lips and
jaw and linked to each other. Weasley yelled something incoherent and
staggered towards Harry, but Harry’s magic seized him, too, and imprisoned
him inside a glassy case.

Harry buried his face in his hands.

Tom tried to send his concern down the bond, but Harry snapped his head up
and shook it so hard he must have hurt his neck. Tom knew that the words he
spoke next were as much for him as for Weasley and Granger.
“I’m leaving. Don’t follow me.”

And Harry sprang out into a wild, undirected Apparition, and Tom felt their
bond seal shut from his side, cutting off Harry’s emotions as firmly as
Occlumency.

Chapter 13: Cliffs

Chapter Text

Harry looked around slowly as his magic dropped him out of the Apparition and
onto a rocky wall. He sighed. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that he had
come to the cliffs east of the cottage he and his parents had lived in when he
was a child.

Harry walked slowly to the edge and looked down at the sea mewing below, the
waves stroking the stones like a pounding heart. He sat down and crossed his
legs beneath him with a stiff, uncomfortable grunt. The light around him was
grey, overcast, but at least it wasn’t actively raining at the moment.

Harry sighed out and let his eyes trace the path of the waves, lifting and rising
and falling in the same regular rhythm he used to find so maddening. The foam
hissed and withdrew, and it would go on doing that no matter who was Minister
for Magic or how many people found their soulmates. He’d used to find it
comforting, once he fully understood the meaning of the damn mark on his
wrist. He’d stand by the cottage window and watch it for hours.

The sea didn’t care about him or who his soulmate was. It had been oddly
freeing.

Harry lay back on the cliff-top, shoulders against the scree, and watched the
swirling grey hypnotic dance until his breathing had slowed enough to sound
normal to him. Then he shook his head and stared at the sky.

So. He had a soulmate who wouldn’t stay out of his head and who hated the
Order on the one hand, and friends who thought he shouldn’t be with his
soulmate on the other. What should he do?

Harry started as he realized, suddenly, that at least one problem had been
solved. He couldn’t feel Tom’s annoying presence hovering right at his shoulder
anymore, or the waves of anxious inquiry playing down the bond. He had
apparently shut the bond, maybe because he was Apparating and it would have
distracted him. Or his burst of magic back in the Leaky had shut it for him.
He had privacy, now, to sort through the emotions clashing in his head, without
Tom rushing to his side.

Harry closed his eyes with a weary finality. Fine. He had that privacy. Now
what?

The sound of the sea filtered in and filled his head with more rhythms. Again he
thought back to his childhood, and the lonely hours that he knew would never
be filled by anything else. He couldn’t get too close to friends, or he might show
them the mark. He couldn’t have his soulmate. He couldn’t tell people like
Sirius about it, or they might spread it around as gossip.

Harry swallowed. One revelation was rushing at him like the Hogwarts Express,
and lying out here on the cliffs with no one else around to be hurt by it, it didn’t
seem like he could keep from thinking about it.

Hard to build a relationship of any kind when you don’t trust anyone.
Harry nodded slowly. He’d been so focused on making sure that no one ever
found out Riddle was his soulmate, he doubted that he had ever shown Ron and
Hermione his true self. That meant he didn’t know that they were his best
friends, not really. They might only be friends of the mask he had built and used
so carefully.

And he had carried on using masks in the Ministry. He was weak and useless.
He was obsessed with Quidditch and nothing else. He was always going to be a
lower-ranking official, since his parents and his godfather had been sent into
exile.

And he had proposed to live like that for the rest of his life, because it was what
he had thought he had to do.
Harry swallowed and clenched his hands tight. He really had thought he was
doing the right thing, but that was because Dumbledore had told him he was.
And his faith in the man had been another kind of mask.

Even now, Harry respected him. He knew firsthand, from his own experience,
how hard it would be to give up his soulmate. And Dumbledore had done that
after the establishment of at least the emotional bond.

But he had lost all desire to imitate him.

Harry closed his eyes again and let out a deep, shuddering breath. That was one
thing decided, at least. He wasn’t going to walk away from Tom. It would mean
going back to the masks. Even if he had fled to the Order’s secret world with
Ron and Hermione, he would have spent the entire time dreading any syllable
that slipped out of his mouth. Just in case someone had thought he was too
devoted to his soulmate after all.

So. He would stay here. He would fight to change the Ministry, and Tom, from
the inside.

What did that mean for his relationship to the Order, and Ron and Hermione?

Harry propped his hand in his chin. It felt so strange to be sitting here on the
edge of the cliff and just thinking and not worrying about who would come after
him or touch him on the wrist or call his name, and what kind of face he would
have to turn to them. He had gone through all Hogwarts carefully analyzing his
emotions, always watching himself, judging based on the reactions of others
how much enthusiasm he should express, which subjects he should talk about,
and whether he should even seem apathetic towards certain politics or not.

“Shit,” Harry said aloud, blinking down at the sea. “Do I even know who I am?”
He knew that he had been desperately lonely. He knew that he had known more
magic than most people guessed. He had known that he loved his parents and
his godfather and his best friends. And—that had been about it. He didn’t even
know how good he would really have been at magic or Animagus training or
any of the rest of it if he had been allowed to practice openly and freely.

Harry hesitated. Then he nodded. He had made up his mind that he was going to
stay with Tom. He didn’t know yet that he would say he loved Tom—the man
was different than everyone else in that category, partially because he knew
things about Harry that even his parents didn’t—but he didn’t want to give up
what they had.

However, some things would have to change.

With those thoughts, Harry closed carefully lowered the barriers he had put up
around the emotional bond. Immediately Tom’s worry cascaded over him, a
little like a scalding waterfall. Harry took a heavy breath and felt Tom orient on
him, then come springing through space.

Harry frowned lightly to himself. Yes, he’d heard of soulmates being able to
Apparate to each other, but most of the time, it took longer for that part of the
bond to form, at least a few weeks or months.

Maybe it’s different because we denied it for so long but we were in regular
contact for weeks before this, Harry thought, as the world seemed to blur around
him with Tom’s arrival. Suddenly the worry was lapping over him, joined by
relief that was like a spring shower, and Harry’s lips stretched in an unwilling
smile.

“You’re all right,” Tom said, studying him. “When you left, I thought…”

“I’m all right,” Harry confirmed quietly, without standing up and walking
towards his soulmate the way the emotional bond so clearly wanted him to.
“Physically. Not mentally.”

Tom gave a muffled curse and stepped towards him with his arms out. Harry
stood up, but stepped back. He heard Tom hiss something, without words, as his
heels came down on the edge of the cliff looming over the ocean.

“Harry. Don’t move another step.”

“That’s one of the things that’s going to have to change, for instance,” Harry
countered without moving. “Your idea that concern for my safety means that
you get to control me.”

“If you’re about to commit suicide—”

“Listen to the bond, Tom. Is that what it’s telling you?”

Tom hesitated, which made Harry feel a flare of warmth; he wasn’t the only one
who wasn’t accustomed to listening to a bond like the one they had. After a
moment, Tom nodded, slowly. “You’re right. All I can feel is a kind of quiet
determination.” Tom paused. “Is there a reason that you aren’t touching me?”

“Yes. Because I tend to lose my head when I do that, and I think we should
have this discussion in a clear-headed way.” Harry rolled his eyes at and
ignored the smugness gliding over him down the bond. “Listen to me, Tom. I
don’t want you to challenge my every decision and control my every movement
in the name of keeping me safe.”

Tom closed his eyes for a second. Harry thought he might be listening to the
bond, although Harry couldn’t “feel” him doing that. “And that means that you
don’t want me doing things like hurting everyone who’s hurt you,” Tom
murmured. The tone of his voice, and the glassy wall that seemed to spring up
between them on the bond, was opaque.

“Of course not,” Harry snapped back, some of his anger returning like fire
leaking through a cracked door. “I’m not as sadistic as you.”
“Careful, darling.” Tom opened his eyes and moved a step forwards after all.
“That sounded like an insult.”

“That’s because it was.”

Tom only nodded. “And one of the things I’m going to make a condition of our
bond is that you give up the thought of me as someone who’s a sadistic fool, out
to conquer the world and kill all Muggleborns.”

“You signed off on those experiments to bind books with human skin!” Harry
yelled. Vaguely it crossed his mind that yelling at Tom felt safer than yelling at
Hermione. Maybe it was because he wouldn’t have the sane, convoluted
arguments that Hermione would use to justify herself, though.

“Well, it was from dead murderers. They were hardly using it.”

“It’s still books in human skin, Tom!” Harry clapped his hands for emphasis,
and then winced as he teetered on the cliff’s edge again. Tom nodded and didn’t
move towards him. Harry sighed and made the step to safety himself.

“Then I will cancel the experiments and ask that the Unspeakables burn the
evidence. The experiments were not yielding anything more than curiosities,
anyway.”

“I want you to—” Harry stopped. Tom watched him. Harry was sure he could
feel the chaotic, jagged edges of the bond, surging back and forth, biting at both
of them with teeth so sharp they would ache. Harry took a deep breath. “I want
you to cancel them because it’s the right thing to do, not because you want to
please me or because the experiments gave you no data.”

“You want me to adopt your moral system, whole.” Tom quirked his lips and
made a thoughtful sound. “Wouldn’t that mean agreeing with Dumbledore that
he was right to keep you away from me, to almost make your parents kill their
son, to require such sacrifices of his followers? You don’t understand all the
implications of what you’re asking, Harry.”

“It’s better than your system, which apparently consists of do what’s useful and
what will protect the people I care for.”

Tom laughed, a huffing sound that made Harry fight to control his own smile.
Shit, he was never going to get anything done if the bond affected him that way.
“I think most people live by that code,” Tom said, cocking his head. “The
difference is that they wrap it up in justifications, whereas I don’t. I hope that
you won’t tax me to see things from your point-of-view while never seeing
them from mine, Harry.”

Harry took a deep, difficult breath. “I want you to acknowledge that what you
authorized the Unspeakables to do was wrong.”

“Surely, darling. When you agree that your friends committing murder was
wrong.”

“I’ve already admitted that,” Harry said, and shoved his hands through his hair.
“I was never going to go back to the Order’s hiding place with them.”

“That’s not the same thing as saying that they were wrong.”

“Do you think I would have hesitated if I thought they were right?” Harry
glanced up and frowned at something glassy in Tom’s eyes. The hum of the
bond had a different tone now. “You do think I would have gone with them
even if I thought they were wrong. Why?”

If you wanted badly enough to get away from me.

Tom swallowed it. Harry had not actually said he would, and Tom would be
best-served by not giving him the idea. He held out his hand.

“I didn’t arrest your friends,” he said. “I left, because otherwise I would have
had to tell them that I was there. Come home, Harry. You owe yourself more
than to brood in this forsaken place.”

“This forsaken place used to be home.” Harry didn’t move. “And I want you to
say that what you authorized the Unspeakables to do was wrong.”

Tom slowed his breathing. It wouldn’t do to react too precipitously to what

Harry was saying. “And you understand that I’ll do so because you wish it? Not
because I have the same kind of abstract moral principles that you do?”

Harry paused for a long moment. Then he said, “What are the chances of you
changing your mind?”

“Adopting your principles simply because they exist?” Tom shook his head.
“But I will make changes if you want me to.”
Harry stared at him, his eyes slowly moving back and forth across Tom’s face,
tracing currents of emotion that felt unknown to Tom himself. “So you would
be willing to let me make changes from the inside.”

“Yes,” Tom said. “What, did Dumbledore never suggest that? I’m surprised.”

“He thought I was weak enough to fall in love if I tried it.”

“And it’s my power that he’s afraid of, more than anything else,” Tom said.
Harry hadn’t stated it explicitly, but it made a lot of sense. Dumbledore might
not regret driving Tom insane, but it couldn’t be his primary goal, or he would
have turned to the Mind Arts and potions instead of assassination attempts.
“Well, I can’t deny that I’ll put forth any effort needed to seduce you. But
I can say that I won’t try to force you to follow my own code.”

“So everything is just…as difficult as it was before?” Harry was staring at him
with eyes as hard as gemstones.

“I think everything is going to be as difficult as it was before,” Tom said

honestly. “Except that this time, we know what we are. And I’ll try to give you
what you want as well as what you need.”

Harry gave a quick, fleeting smile. “Why didn’t you call the Aurors and have
Ron and Hermione arrested?”

“Because I want what’s best for you,” Tom said, wondering how many times he
would need to repeat it. Then again, Harry had clearly shown that he hadn’t had
that many people who were trying to do what was best for him. This was
probably due to scars from the Order and the way he had been raised rather than
a lack of power behind Tom’s attempts. “I know that you wouldn’t want your
friends arrested. What?” he added, since Harry was staring at him.

“So you’ll go against your own code of principles for—me?”

“I told you that I don’t hold to an abstract code like you do,” Tom said quietly.
“Yes, I would arrest your friends if they came into a public place and did
something like they were going to do again. I wouldn’t have any choice. But no
one except us knew they were there. I can afford to let them escape.”

“Tom.” Harry looked a little dazed. “You—can’t put pleasing me above

everything else.”
“Not above everything else. I want immortality, and I want revenge in some
way you don’t object to. Those are still lofty goals.”

Harry closed his eyes for a long moment. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

“Have you never met anyone else who privileged their soulmate above all
else?” Tom asked in curiosity. Perhaps not his parents, since they had a child,
but… “I am sure you must have seen Weasley and Granger do things they never
would have done, if not because the other one wanted them to.”

“I—no one’s ever done that for me.”

Ah. Tom smiled and remained where he was. Well, things had changed, but it
wasn’t surprising that Harry still needed some time to get used to the idea. He
waited, and Harry got control of himself sufficient to open his eyes and look at
him again.
“If you want to please me,” Harry said, voice steady, “then I’m going to tell you
something, but I don’t want you to act on it.”

Tom swallowed. That might be difficult, but it was important that Harry know
he could trust Tom. “Very well.”

“Part of me does want revenge on all of them,” Harry whispered. “All of them
who had their soulmates, or the chance at their soulmates, and who think I
should give you up now. All of them who could just follow Dumbledore’s
orders, because they didn’t have a conflict with it. They made sacrifices, but not
like mine.”
Tom hissed in pleasure, and in frustration. So Harry wasn’t as pure as Tom had
thought, and part of him did burn at what the Order had done, and consider it a
crime—
But he wouldn’t let Tom punish them. Tom would have said something
frustrated if he was less iron-willed. As it was, he bowed his head and
murmured in Parseltongue, “Then that shall stay between us, darling.”

Harry took a single hard, deep breath. Then he walked forwards and let his head
drop so his chin rested against Tom’s neck. “Take me home, will you?”

Tom took him back to his own house, because Harry hadn’t specified. But
Harry didn’t protest, so maybe that had been what he wanted, without wanting
to ask for it.

Tom put Harry to bed and sat beside him, watching him as he dozed, Tom’s
hand curled around the edge of the chair’s arm. He heard again Harry’s words,
“No one’s ever done that for me,” and he considered the unasked question that
had nonetheless accorded with Harry’s will.

He would set the world on fire for Harry’s pleasure, but if he could listen to his
unspoken words and be the sole provider of what Harry wanted but would never
ask for…

I confess, I would prefer that.

Albus waved his wand and finally dissolved the chain that had tied Miss
Granger’s mouth and lips together. Granger gave a small sigh and then began to
weep. Weasley stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder, his expression
helpless. From what Albus had gathered, Harry had bound him in a kind of
stasis that had faded after a few hours, but the chain had been a physical
Conjuration and consequently took longer to disappear.

Albus wanted to shake his head as he thought about it. These were Harry’s best
friends, and still he had done this to them. How could he have?

“I don’t know why he did it,” Granger said at last, and her eyes were swollen
despite the fact that she hadn’t cried for very long. “The only thing we did was
invite him to come back with us and tell him that he was wrong.”

“I fear that Riddle must have got to him already,” Albus said. The very thought
made him feel weary, but it was also the only thing that would explain the way
Harry had turned on friends who had stuck by him through years of sullenness
and stubbornness and hiding. “It was a valiant effort, Hermione. You are not to
blame for its failure.”

He leaned back against the tree behind him, and sighed. They were seated
around a small fire in the Forest of Dean, deep enough into sections regularly
visited by Muggles that wizards were unlikely to find them. But it was still a
risk for Weasley and Granger to be here at all, given the “crimes” they were
wanted for.

Such courage, Albus marveled as he looked at them. So young, and so willing

to give up their lives, their freedom, anything but each other and their beliefs to
ensure that Riddle didn’t succeed. It wore at his heart that Harry would not
imitate them.
“Headmaster.” Albus looked up as young Weasley sat down in front of him.
“Harry didn’t know anything about the raid we did on the Department of
Mysteries, did he?”

Albus shook his head. “You remember we discussed it with each other when I
first asked you to go? We both knew that Harry would feel conflicted over any
action that was likely to result in the loss of life.”

Weasley looked troubled, a shadow sweeping across his face. “But I thought
you were going to tell Harry afterwards. I mean, he didn’t seem surprised to
hear it, but that was because Riddle got to him first. If we’d told him the truth,
then we could have prevented Riddle from corrupting him.”

“Harry has always been—unreasonable on that particular point,” Albus said. It

disturbed him more that he did not know where that trait had come from. It was
true that Lily and James were no great killers, but neither had they hesitated to
contribute their magic to spells that Albus knew they had to suspect were
assassination attempts. And Sirius had always been willing to do what he had
to, as well. Where did Harry’s reverence for enemy life come from? “I always
intended that he remain ignorant of it.”

“When was he going to come back to the Order, though, sir?” Granger asked.
“You know that he couldn’t continue passing information to the Order forever.”

“I don’t think he was ever intended to come back,” Sirius said then, loud and
brash, plopping down and inserting himself into the conversation.
Albus slanted him a carefully calibrated exasperated glance. Sirius just glared at
him and said, “We can’t reason with Harry, so we need to take him out of there.
You see that, don’t you?” He glanced at Weasley and Granger, and then gave a
laugh that was more like a bark. “Well, maybe you don’t, if you’re all
convinced that he’s evil now.”
“He tied her jaws shut with a chain!” Weasley yelled. “I mean—I think he
should have been told about the raid we did, but he would never do anything
like that if he was in his right mind!”
“He’s not evil. He’s not insane.” Sirius’s voice was low but convincing, and
Albus found himself listening. “He’s only being influenced by that fucking soul-
bond.” He ignored Granger’s gasp at his language, and fixed burning eyes on
Albus. “I’ve seen this before, when I watched some members of my family
change after bonding with their soulmates. I think they can only have the
emotional bond right now, though?”

Albus slowly nodded. “I cannot be sure, but it certainly is the one that is
established first most of the time.”
“Right.” Sirius ran a hand through his hair. “So we have the chance to get him
away from Riddle if we’re smart about it. I know a spell that will block the
emotional bond or any other bond that someone tries to establish with Harry.
Like really good Occlumency. We’ll give Harry a chance to think it through and
realize that Riddle hasn’t magically changed from being the bastard he always
was.”

“But how are we going to get Harry to reconsider that in the first place, if he’s
already being influenced?” Weasley asked.

Sirius grinned, and there was a bold edge to it that made Albus uneasy. But,
well, he had only one other plan in mind for dealing with Harry, and he didn’t
want to employ it unless matters were desperate. “Trust a Marauder to arrange a
little kidnapping.”

Harry woke with a stretch. A hand came to rest on his forehead at once,
smoothing slowly back and forth, and warm emotions lapped him. Harry was
too tired to distinguish them other than knowing that one of them was
protectiveness.

“Tom?” Harry breathed. Tom leaned over him, saying nothing, watching him
with fierce eyes.

Harry stared up at him, and his first thought was, He looks lonely.

That reminded him how much time Tom had endured without his soulmate,
decades while he was waiting for Harry to be born. Harry had known they could
never be together, but Tom hadn’t known Harry existed.

Harry reached up and hooked an arm around Tom’s neck. Tom bent over him
without a word, his eyes burning. Harry kissed him silently, and Tom exhaled
and hissed something that made Harry wonder if he actually understood
Parseltongue after all. The words seemed to mess and blur into one another.

Harry kept pulling, and Tom fell heavily down beside him on the bed. Harry
continued to kiss him, and then he reached out and slid a hand down Tom’s
chest. Tom stared at him, unblinking until Harry slid his hand into Tom’s
trousers, and grasped the erection that awaited him.
Tom did hiss understandable words then, reaching out and tracing his fingers up
the side of the soul-mark on Harry’s wrist. The soft blue flames that ignited lit
his face with shifting shadows. “You don’t have to.”

“I know,” Harry replied quietly, and then stroked.

Tom’s lips parted, and he seemed incapable of saying anything else. Harry kept
touching him, eyes fastened on his face, watching as Tom’s chest heaved, his
breathing sped up, and his mouth opened to gasp in air. He tilted his head back
and breathed harder and harder, and Harry leaned in to lick up the side of his
throat.

He felt his head grasped, and Tom kissed him wildly, his tongue stabbing and
sliding. Harry moaned and dug his fingers in until Tom twisted in what was
obviously discomfort. Harry went back to the slow stroking then, making sure
he twisted his wrist at the end of each motion.

“Harry…”

The hiss was so low and guttural it might have been Parseltongue, and might
not have been. Harry swallowed. He understood it either way. He took his other
hand and guided it between Tom’s legs, while Tom watched him as though he
was the ending and the beginning of the world.

Harry touched Tom’s bollocks, parting the cloth to feel the tight, wrinkled skin,
and watched the way that Tom’s eyes rolled back covetously. He pulled his
hand back until Tom was looking at him again, because he wanted Tom
to see him.

Then Harry brought both his hands together, and stroked Tom up and down and
sideways at the same time.

Tom came with a shudder and another hiss, and watching him break apart with
pleasure, a heady surge of power startled Harry. He had done that. He had
brought the Minister for Magic off, brought a man off, when he had once
thought he would never dare do that. Never be able to do that.

Tom’s thrashing hand brushed against Harry’s wrist again, and the blue soul-
fire lit his face and the emotion that was there.

Tom wasn’t a virgin, Harry knew that full well. The speculations and the
rumors and the gossip and the truth had always been wound together in
the Daily Prophet when he took a lover. But Harry knew, he knew without
anyone telling him, that Tom had never looked at any of them like this.
Tom grabbed him and drew him down, holding Harry across his chest as he
kissed him fiercely. His fingers were digging painfully into Harry’s back, but
Harry found that he didn’t care, even that he liked it. He wanted someone to
hold him as though he was the center of the universe.

But when Tom started to slide a hand between his legs, Harry drew back and
shook his head. “I don’t want that,” he murmured. “Right now,” he hastened to
add, because he had seen what Tom’s face was doing in the shadow of the
flames. “I mean—I’m fine. Later. I want—I want to be with you.”

Tom folded his arms around Harry and said nothing. It took a long, long
moment, but Harry heard his breathing return to normal, and he knew he could
put his head down and go to sleep.

All the while, his soulmate’s arms remained around him, as steady as a wall,
and their emotional bond sang with soft awe.

Harry fell asleep with a smile on his face.

This man.
Tom thought of the stumbling words Harry had spoken earlier that day, that no
one had ever put him first. Well, Tom could have said the same thing now. No
one had ever touched him with such pure concern for his pleasure, and then
asked nothing more than to curl up next to him.

Tom rolled them so that he was the one resting on his back and Harry was more
or less draped across his chest. He maintained his tight hold, but shifted to clasp
one hand around Harry’s right wrist, so he could see the blue light shine.

It illuminated Harry’s face like moonlight, and the soft smile Tom saw there
made him close his eyes.

He would defend Harry with everything he had. He would kill for him. He
would hold back on killing or wreaking vengeance if Harry told him to, and
only because it was Harry who was saying it.

But he would also lie here, and give Harry the most peaceful night’s sleep he
could.
 Chapter 14: Understanding
Chapter Text

"What happened, Harry?"

Sometimes Harry hated the way that his mother could take one look at him and
know that something had happened. Then again, at least she was here and able
to do that, where she hadn't been in his life regularly for nine years. He
summoned a smile.

"A lot of things. Is there any tea left?" He glanced towards the kitchen,
deliberately turning his back on the window that he knew Tom's Aurors were
standing beneath. For just a moment, he didn't want to be reminded how
"treasured" he was, as Tom would put it.

It was one thing when Tom held him in his arms and said that to his face.
Another thing when Tom acted like he needed a bodyguard to visit his parents.

"Yes, of course." Lily poured him a cup and held it out, her eyes questioning.
Harry sipped from the cup and smiled. She had prepared it exactly as he liked it.

And then he sighed and led the way into the drawing room, because he knew
that he couldn't put off some aspects of the conversation any longer. He looked
around as he realized that James hadn't come out of the bedroom to join them.
"Where's Dad?"

"I asked him to wait a while and let us talk together first." Lily brushed her
sleeve forwards over her hand. "So what is it, Harry? I know that you've made a
choice to accept Mr. Riddle, but what more than that?"

Harry jumped and glared at her. "I only told you that we'd provisionally--"

"Of course, but give me credit for more sense than that." Lily's smile was wan,
but Harry couldn't see a real lack of acceptance behind it. "You were so quiet a
few days ago that I didn't like to ask about it, but I knew something else must
have happened."

Harry ran his fingers through his hair and wondered for a second what would
happen if his mother sympathized more with Ron and Hermione than him. Then
he discarded the thought. Mum had always been on his side, no matter what
happened. She had sometimes made the wrong decisions, as when she had
thought that it was best to conceal his soul-mark from Tom, but she had still
sympathized with him over how hard it was and tried to make it better for him.
"Ron and Hermione sent me a message. They wanted to talk to me. And we did
meet at the Leaky Cauldron. Under disguises, for them," he added quickly,
when he saw the storm darkening his mother's eyes. "And Tom came along
hidden under my Invisibility Cloak."

Lily nodded slowly. "I wondered why you wanted it, but of course, it's always
yours."

"I went to talk to them. I expected--I thought it would be hard, but I could make
them understand. But they wanted me to come back to the Order's camp with
them, and they were more upset about me knowing they'd killed people than
killing people. I think," Harry added softly. His memory of the conversation
was so full of noise that now he had to wonder if he hadn't given his friends a
fair chance. "I got so angry that I chained Hermione's mouth shut and froze Ron
in stasis and Apparated out of there."

His mother stared at him in silence for a second, eyes wide. Then she reached
out and let her hand rest gently on top of his. "Oh, Harry."

"Yeah." Harry hesitated. "I know they might not forgive me for that. But,
Mum...I don't know if I can ever forgive them for committing murder and
keeping it from me and thinking that I'm the one who's in the wrong for the
soul-mark I was born with. When they committed murder."

Lily said nothing for long enough that Harry lifted his head to stare at her,
wondering what she was thinking. She gave him a wan smile and managed, "I
think that Hermione and Ron were always very influenced by Headmaster
Dumbledore, more than you were. You didn't trust them as much, or him as
much, because you already knew you couldn't get too close to anyone in case
they revealed your soul-mark. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione grew up with full
confidence in their parents and the Order of the Phoenix."

"I had full confidence in you, too!"

"But you always felt marked out for a lonely fate, Harry. Rightly. We didn't
handle it the way we should have." Lily shook her head. "The proper response
when Dumbledore asked James and me to lay our son on the altar should have
been no."

Harry wriggled in place, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was
taking. "Fine, but that's what's been going on. The problems with Ron and
Hermione and Tom and me not being sure what I should do."
"Keep on working to accept yourself and your soulmate, of course."

"Even though Ron and Hermione think it's wrong?"

Lily sighed and looked at the wall past his shoulder for a long moment. Then,
speaking softly, she said, "I asked your father what would happen if I believed
in something that he considered deeply wrong, if he would abandon me. And he
said no. We--we think of soulmates as sacred, and say as a society that it's
wrong to sleep with or even date someone who doesn't have your mark,
although of course not everyone obeys that dictum."

Harry nodded shortly, thinking of the lovers Tom had had.

"But then we said yours was different, that things had gone too far because
magic had destined you for someone we hated." Lily shook her head. "When
Dumbledore's soulmate was Grindelwald. Why did we forgive him that, when
he'd actually bonded with him, and say that he wasn't damned forever, when we
thought you were?"

"You did think Tom was a murderer," Harry said, trying to smile. "And he is."

Lily didn't smile back. "But there isn't a war, except for the one the Order was
fighting. I haven't seen any evidence for it."

Harry hesitated. His mother focused on him. "Did your Tom tell you there
was?"

"No. He seemed to think the idea ridiculous. He did say that he's passing laws
and handling votes the way I thought he was, with an agenda." And I have to
talk to him about that agenda. "But he's not gathering soldiers or an inquisition
to round up Muggles or Muggleborns, or butcher them."

"There could still be a different kind of war."

Harry nodded. "But that's the point, that it would be a different kind of war. Not
the kind that Dumbledore thinks the Order should be fighting. Which means
their strategy has been totally baseless and probably made things worse by
making everyone think the Order is just a bunch of criminals...what is it,
Mother?"
A deeply sad smile was pulling at the corners of Lily's lips. "You referred to the
Order with their instead of our."
Harry tightened his hands in front of him. He looked down at them and thought
about Hermione's smile and Ron's laughter and Sirius's hand ruffling his hair,
and how much he had admired Dumbledore for giving up his own soulmate
after he bonded with him. He thought of Molly's hugs and Arthur's steady
patience and all the stories he had heard of the lives they had left behind to do
what was right.

He thought of the way Ron and Hermione had been murderers and he had never
known it, of the way that Dumbledore had collected spells that might have made
Mum and Dad and Sirius and Molly and Arthur his murderers and Harry had
never known it. He didn't know how much had been false from that end, too.
Even as he'd lied to everyone about his soul-mark, they had lied to him because
they knew that he would object to the thought of sacrificing innocent lives for
the cause.
No, more that they knew I would think of those Unspeakables and Aurors and
all the rest as innocent. They didn't think that way.

He finally met his mother's gaze again. "Yeah," he said. "I reckon I've chosen
my side."

Lily had to close her eyes. So this is what it came to, Albus. You insisted that
Harry had to give up everything. And then he couldn't even live away from his
soulmate. He had to spend all that time in his sphere of influence. It was like
you wanted to test him, constantly, instead of surrounding him with the love he
needed to overcome the temptation. You never trusted Harry, did you, not from
the moment he was born with that mark?
"That doesn't mean I'm going to just adopt Tom's attitude towards everyone,"
Harry went on. "I think he's wrong about Muggles and Muggleborns. And
his solution to Dementors isn't that much better. I'm going to talk to him about
that. I'm going to change things from the inside."

Lily opened her eyes slowly. "There were others who thought the same thing,
Harry. I know. Albus told me about them. Members of the Order who walked
away from it after years in the Ministry and just said they couldn't support
Albus anymore."

"But they didn't reveal the Order's secrets, did they? They didn't agree with the
Order's methods, but that's not the same thing as reform being impossible or
Albus's war the only way."
Lily paused. Then she sighed. "You're right. And I should have realized that if I
was going to question all the rest of Albus's nonsense, I should have questioned
this, too."

"Come on, Mum. You can't blame yourself for that."

Lily hugged him. Her strong, capable son. The son she had barely seen for nine
years, and had still wronged. Harry hugged her back. He forgave her, she knew.

Perhaps too easily.

Lily settled back in her own chair and cleared her throat. "I'm trying to use the
blame in productive ways, such as making sure that I carefully question
everything now. And I do wonder how Riddle is going to settle you at his side."

"What do you mean? He told me he caught an Order operative who was posing
as an Auror, the same one who poisoned him on the day we were supposed to
meet you."

Lily looked into his clear gaze. It seemed some essential innocence was still left
to Harry. She hoped, silently, that he would always be able to retain it, and that
what she was about to say wouldn't tarnish it. "I don't mean just the Order,
Harry. There are political powerhouses who will see the Minister's soulmate as
an easy target. People who will assume you're a conduit to Riddle's favor, and
some who will resent you because they'll think you'll be in the way. Perhaps
even those who resent you because they intended to seduce the Minister
themselves."

"I...knew that." Harry spoke slowly and studied her with a faint frown. "But I
think Tom is going to help me handle them."

"You should also be able to stand on your own and prove that you are a
political powerhouse in your own right."

"You mean I'll have to play politics the way Tom does? But I'm not a pure-
blood."

"What does that have to do with anything? You know that half-bloods are often
in the greatest positions of power in the Ministry. Your Tom is an example. And
he tends to promote half-bloods and surround himself with them."

"He does?"
Lily frowned. "You can't have been unaware that Albus directs a lot of his
recruitment efforts at the half-bloods in the Ministry? He knows that they're
likely to feel at least some sympathy to Muggles and Muggleborns, and also that
Riddle is likely to promote them further."

"I--no, I didn't know that." Harry ran his hand through his hair, looking
overwhelmed. "I suppose part of it is that I didn't pay a lot of attention to the
blood status of the people who surrounded him. Tom is the one who dominated
my perspective. But I'm sure Albus also told me that Tom looks down on half-
bloods. Sees himself as an exception rather than a rule."

Lily shook her head in wonder. She supposed it wasn't strange to realize that
Harry had been lied to like that, but it wasn't a lie that would have occurred to
her. Because, along with the half-bloods he promoted, Tom Riddle had always
made it clear that he favored pure-bloods.

"I suppose I should have known, though," Harry mused, before Lily could say
anything else. "He did tell me that he sees the pure-blood rhetoric he
manipulates as a game."

Lily blinked at him. "He said that?"

"Yeah." Harry's eyes glinted for a second. "That's something I should have
talked to him about before now, but we're definitely going to be talking about it
in the future. These are people's lives he's playing with, not just a game."

"It sounds like a good idea to talk to him," Lily agreed faintly, and then put on a
bright smile and began engaging Harry in the sort of talk about his soulmate that
she would have loved to do early on if Harry had been born with a more
ordinary name on his wrist. Harry smiled and answered some questions, not all.
At least he no longer looked as if he was going to leap out of his chair any
second.

But Lily did wonder, if only to herself, how long it would take Riddle to
untangle all the lies that Albus had bound Harry in, lies that even his parents
had never been aware of.

"Sirius Black, don't you dare."

Sirius winced and then straightened up and tried to look at her with affronted
dignity. The problem, Molly thought, was that Sirius had misplaced his dignity
when he was young and had no idea where he'd left it. "I don't know what
you're talking about."

"Don't you dare set up some kind of trap for young Harry and try to make him
come back to the Order of the Phoenix or do your bidding otherwise." Molly
folded her arms. Albus had explained the kidnapping plot to her and Arthur, and
she'd held her tongue in front of him, but there was no reason to be quiet like
that around Sirius. "Remember that he's your godson."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Do you want him to keep loving you or not?"

Sirius looked genuinely startled and dropped the book he'd been reading on the
golden grass. Behind him, his golden-green tent rippled gently in the breeze of
their conjured world. "Of course."

"Then don't take him from his soulmate. He's finally happy. He'll never forgive
you if you snatch him away from that."

"The emotional bond is confusing him. Once I get him far enough away from
Riddle and block it, then he'll be able to listen to us and see the good in coming
to join the Order."

Molly closed her eyes in weariness. Sirius had said something like that before,
but she had thought he was just saying that in front of Dumbledore and he didn't
really believe it. Now that he did... "I want you to leave Harry alone, Sirius."

"When it will mean that Riddle destroys all of us? And destroys the Order/"

"Maybe Harry will make a difference for him. Maybe he can teach Riddle how
to love."

Molly didn't believe the words even as she spoke them, and from the
incredulous sneer on Sirius's face, neither did he. "Right," he drawled slowly.
"When nothing has so far. When he hasn't regretted the innocents he's destroyed
up until this point or the minds of Muggles he'll wipe in the future."

"How exactly do you think that you can kidnap Harry even if you're right?"
Molly asked, changing the subject. "You know that Riddle will have guards on
his soulmate. He'll protect Harry more fiercely than any artifact."
Sirius winked. "No one on his side knows about my Animagus form, and the
Auror guards around Harry know that he has this disreputable black dog who
visits him sometimes. I haven't been human around the Aurors in years."

"That only covers you getting in," Molly said, folding her arms, even as her
heart sank. Yes, that could work. "How are you going to get him out? Especially
with Harry resisting?"

"A Stunner is going to take care of any resistance pretty fast," Sirius said. "Of
course I'd never hurt my godson."

"How are you going to get him out?"

Sirius sighed and reached for something sitting on the ground next to him.
Molly blinked when she saw it was a glass, wide-mouthed potions flask. Sirius
could brew, but it had never been his best subject. James had once hinted that
that was because their schoolboy nemesis, Severus Snape, had been remarkably
talented at the art, and Sirius had avoided anything that reminded him too much
of the boy.

That would be childish, Molly had to admit, but like Sirius.

The thick, glutinous potion in the flask made her do more than blink, though.
"Sirius, no. Not Polyjuice."

Sirius shrugged. "Sure. Easy enough. Snip a bit of hair from Harry's head,
transform into him, conceal him under a Disillusionment Charm, slip back out
again. The Aurors haven't been ordered to stop any excursions that Riddle's pet
soulmate makes outside the flats, but that's probably coming. I have to act fast."

"I don't think Minister Riddle wants to keep Harry captive."

"Oh, damn, Molly, not you too, with all the benefit of the doubt and why don't
we think about this," Sirius said, doing a high-pitched impression of Arthur's
voice. "And giving him a respectful title? Where's the rebel? Where's the Order
of the Phoenix matriarch who shouted encouragements as us during raids?"
Molly smiled despite herself, but shook her head. "I think it really is different
now. It might all come right. Harry's Riddle's soulmate, but that means that he
can't really change from our Harry, can it? I think he's going to
change Riddle instead. We're going to get pardons the way James and Lily did,
because Riddle won't want to disappoint him, and--"
"I wish I had your faith," Sirius said, in a voice so dismissive that Molly shut up
in sheer outrage. "But I'm not going to wait around and just find out in the end
that Riddle is the same bastard he always was. I'm going to steal Harry back."

"And then what?" Molly demanded. "You know that Riddle will tear the world
apart to get him back."

"Not if Harry tells him honestly and openly to leave him alone and refuses the
emotional bond, the way Albus did with Gellert."

"Albus didn't do that until Grindelwald was in a prison cell," Molly snapped.
"You think Harry has any chance of getting Riddle there?"

Sirius hesitated too long. "No," he said finally. "But Riddle will have to back off
once Harry tells him to."

"Ah." Molly squinted at him. "You think Riddle will respect that?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then, if he's that reasonable and devoted to his soulmate, we should be able to

negotiate with him and get at least some of the pardons that we want from him."
Sirius clenched his hands for a second, but when he spoke, it was with
frightening quietness that Molly wasn't used to hearing from him. "No, Molly.
No. The whole point is, his government isn't legitimate. It doesn't have any
authority over us. We didn't vote for Riddle. We shouldn't hold out for pardons
because that implies that we did something wrong in the first place. Are you
going to admit to that?"

"I would admit to a lot to go home."

"But would you give up your convictions? Could you sit back and just listen to
Riddle's plans for Muggles and Muggleborns with a smile?"

Molly shook her head, reluctantly. More and more she was coming to wonder if
the war existed, if their raids were on people who were all following Riddle or
simply thought they came to the Ministry every day and did work for a
legitimate government. But that wasn't convincing enough to make her abandon
her beliefs.

Sirius smiled at her and picked up his flask of Polyjuice. "Then allow me to do
some fighting for the greater good in my own way."
*

Peter stared at the letter that had arrived for him that day with a Ministry seal on
it. He had been vaguely curious about it, but it had come during a heavy
marking period for exams and he had thought it was probably only thanks from
a former student who had been promoted up the Ministry's ranks, or maybe
information on Animagus training. He had put it aside. In fact, he'd only opened
it after dinner because the heavy golden seal had gleamed at him from across his
quarters and he'd felt guilty.

Instead, it was from Minister Tom Riddle himself.

Seeking information about Harry.

Dear Professor Pettigrew,
As you may have seen in the papers, I have claimed Harry Potter as my
soulmate. He has revealed some unexpected talents to me, and one of them is
that he has a serpentine Animagus form. I would like to see the records from his
third year, concerning the tests to find the form that the students usually
conduct during that time. I would be especially interested in any discrepancies.

Peter had put down the letter at this point and clasped his hands over his face.
Of course, when he looked again, there was only the Minister's signature after
that. No more to read.

And the pleasant tone of the letter did suggest that he didn't think Peter a traitor
or holding out on him. He probably thought, if anything, that the Headmaster
had intervened to hide Harry's results.

But if Peter had to reveal that he'd known about this and he'd kept the
knowledge to himself...

Peter swallowed back nausea. Harry had already written to him, he thought
firmly. And he'd told Harry that he wouldn't spread around the knowledge, but
he also wouldn't keep it quiet if someone asked him direct questions.

Granted, at the time I thought it was going to be Aurors, and not the fucking
Minister!

Peter took a deep breath and blinked away the hysteria. It made all too much
sense, Harry's determination to keep his Animagus form secret and stay the hell
away from Riddle. But compared to that secret, nothing Peter had known would
be anywhere near as interesting.
Peter sat down to write a calm, polite letter, or at least as calm and polite as he
could manage, to the Minister telling him what he knew of that day when
Harry's third-year class had tried to divine their forms. The more he wrote, the
more true tranquility came back to him. It was really scraps, now that he
thought of it. Harry had never trained to acquire mastery of his Animagus form
or enter the Serpent Guard, so Peter could honestly say that all he knew was
Harry's potential.
His calm mood lasted until he had sent the owl off to Riddle, and then he
stopped in the middle of the steps to the Owlery as he considered exactly how
intent Riddle must be on pursuing all the scraps of knowledge kept from him
about his soulmate over the years.

Peter closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Harry's marks, Harry's
Animagus form, he had thought those were the most "damaging" things he
knew. But there was another secret, one from Harry's fifth year that he had tried
not to think of often.

Peter frowned as he considered the heavy ward on a classroom that was most
often abandoned because it was too cold to tempt couples with the privacy to
snog. The ward argued that perhaps a seventh-year had decided to use it as a
private studying spot, but Peter personally didn't know a seventh-year in the
school who could cast a ward like that. It made the corridor around him tingle
with power, and filled the space like a screen of frosted glass.

He might have thought it was one of his fellow professors, but it didn't have that
familiar magical signature. And it didn't have a twist in the glassy wall of the
ward that he would have expected if so--the one that kept Animagi out.

It only took Peter a moment to decide. The ward didn't seem dangerous, and he
knew both Minerva and Mrs. Norris were far away from this corridor right now.
He spun into the form of a rat, waited patiently for his senses and balance to
adjust, and then scurried under the ward into the room beyond.

He blinked as he sat in the shadow near the door. The space was much brighter
than he would have expected, thanks to floating globes of light that looked to
have been sculpted out of crystal. Peter stared at them. He didn't know that spell.

Nor did he know the runic patterns that scored the flagstones, all of them white
and traced in what looked like salt.
But he did know the young man who stood in front of them, his eyes closed and
his arms folded. His breathing was slow and soft, much more so than Peter
would have said someone who darted around like Harry could attain, and his
left hand moved back and forth in a regular, wobbling pattern.

"This has to work," Peter heard him whisper, and then Harry lifted his head.

Peter would have backed away if it wouldn't have drawn attention to himself.
The only green eyes he had seen burning like that were in a cat's face.

Harry spun on one heel and then ran forwards, directly towards the salt runes.
As Peter watched, they stretched up and around him, in shimmering transparent
walls rather like the glassy one the ward had created in the corridor. Harry
passed through them, and the runes caught and twined themselves around his
right arm, the one with his phoenix soul-mark that he'd started showing this
year.

Harry skidded to a stop, in a way that somehow didn't disturb any of the salt
patterns, and stared at his arm. A second later, his face crumpled.

He put his face in his hands and sighed out. The sigh didn't have tears in it, but
so much defeated weariness that Peter was tempted to transform and comfort
him. He didn't think Harry would like it, though.

And as he watched Harry sweep up the salt with a gesture of his left hand and
wandless magic spiraled through the room, Peter wasn't sure it would be wise,
anyway. There were things going on here that he had no knowledge of.

He scurried out of the room and resumed his human form a good distance from
the room, in the meantime wondering what Harry had been doing. Salt runes
were sometimes used in Divination rituals, Peter knew that. Had Harry been
hoping to find a clue to his soulmate by using this?

Peter grimaced and continued walking towards his office. No, now that he knew
what he knew, he suspected Harry had been using the other kind of salt ritual:
the kind that would erase a soul-mark if properly done.
Except that Peter didn't think it could be properly done, not in the way that so
many people wrote and whispered about. He had never heard of it working--and
he had studied it extensively himself, with his black-edged soul-mark. Harry
had tried it out of desperation, and the evidence that at fifteen he had loathed
himself and his fate to that extent made Peter cringe now.
That was also probably something Riddle would want to know about Harry.

Peter leaned against the wall for a moment and rubbed his face. Was he
betraying Harry's best interests by continuing to hold that knowledge to
himself? Perhaps Riddle could get Harry to visit a Mind-Healer where no one
else had managed it. Perhaps Harry needed that kind of help to work through
what Peter was sure was the upending of his world and the complicated tangle
of his emotions.

But he knew only perhaps concerning that kind of knowledge, and

only yes concerning something else: Harry would take it as a betrayal if Peter
broke his word and volunteered information that wasn't in response to direct
questions.

The thought of the Minister taking it as a betrayal if he kept his word to Harry
made Peter quake, but he shook his head and stood up. He had been useful here
at Hogwarts, a competent Transfiguration professor who had stayed for years,
unlike some of the people Minerva had tried before him. He would cast his lot
with Harry unless things drastically changed, and trust in his record to make
Riddle spare him.

I just hope it works.

Tom narrowed his eyes in interest as he watched Harry move around the flat.
Tom had come earlier for a somewhat strained dinner with the Potter parents,
but they had proven they could tolerate him for Harry's sake, which was all he
could ask for right now. Harry, though, had uttered splintered laughter, while
splintered emotions flowed down their bond.

Tom leaned back in his chair. It seemed Harry had accepted that he couldn't lie
to Tom, but that wasn't keeping him from trying another tactic: not talking about
things and hoping that Tom would let the silence continue. It was nearly cute,
but Tom wouldn't let his own amusement keep him from asking the obvious
questions.

"What's troubling you, Harry?"

Harry's shoulders hunched. "I don't want to talk about it."

Lily Potter turned around from where she'd been quietly talking to her husband
and looked at Harry in something like alarm. "Is it something to do with the
Order?" she asked.

Tom would have put Galleons on it being their soul-bond, himself, but that was
one reason it was good to surround himself with people who saw and knew
things he didn't. Harry flinched and stepped back from the kettle he'd been
scrubbing. A quick dart of wandless magic from him kept the kettle from falling
to the floor, but Tom didn't let himself be taken in by the distraction, the way
James Potter had, if his sharp exclamation was any sign.

"Trouble shared is trouble halved," Tom said, helpfully quoting something he

remembered hearing Albus say to a Gryffindor in his year.

From the narrow stare Harry gave him, he had heard the saying, too, and knew
exactly where it came from. But he shook his head and floated the kettle back
onto the counter so he could clean it some more. "Not this one."

Tom gathered up his own magic, and saw the Potter parents flinch. He had
added a bit of darkness and lightning to his aura, just for them. Unlike Harry,
they couldn't sense the invisible buildup of his power. "Dear Harry. The request
to talk is no longer a request."

Harry ignored him utterly, and set the clean kettle in the sink. Then he turned to
his parents, and nodded. "Don't worry about it, Mum and Dad. I'll handle it."

"But you shouldn't have to do it alone," James said, his face bright with
concern. "Let us help, Harry."

Tom watched in interest to see if Harry was going to respond to that, although
he kept his eyes half-lidded so that his interest wouldn't show so obviously.
Harry swallowed and said, "This is something I have to handle by myself. It
involves other people's secrets."

That came with a flicker of a glance in Tom's direction. Tom smiled and said, "I
love learning secrets."

"Other people's."

"Those, too," Tom agreed easily.

"I won't tell them to you."

Tom pushed back his chair and stood up. Harry faced him with his arms crossed
and hostility radiating from him more strongly than his power.

"Surely, Harry," James began, sounding a little nervous. He seemed to think

Tom and Harry would engage in a duel right in the middle of the kitchen.

Luckily, Tom had more weapons than that at his disposal. He leaned forwards,
made sure that his eyes were focused on Harry's, and lifted the shield that had
been dampening his emotions while they ate dinner, sending a bolt of honest
pain and fear of rejection towards Harry.

Harry gasped, then shut his eyes tightly. A second later, he curled his fingers
into a gesture Tom had noticed he'd used before when he wanted to keep
emotions at bay, and asked, "Can you give us some privacy, Mum, Dad?
Please?" he added, when neither one of his parents moved.

Lily touched James's arm, and they had what must have been their own silent
conversation down their soul-bond. Then Lily nodded. "Of course," she
murmured, and they exited.

Tom turned back to Harry. "There's something you're not telling me."

"I'm astonished."

Tom shook his head. "Haven't we settled by now that keeping secrets doesn't
work out in anyone's favor? Besides, I let your friends who murdered my people
leave without arresting them." Unsaid was the option, which Harry surely knew
he was considering, of arresting them in the future. "This secret can't be worse
than the knowledge that they want to meet you."

Harry turned away and paced slowly towards the window that looked out from
above the sink down onto the entrance of the building. Tom wondered idly if
Harry could see his Aurors standing there. Tom had doubled the guard after he
had found out that Whipwood was a traitor, but Harry hadn't said anything
about it.

"This is a secret that no one on your side has ever found out about," Harry said
at last. "I know for sure that everyone who knows it and belongs to the Order is
utterly loyal to Dumbledore. Can you see why it feels different than you
knowing about Ron and Hermione? Especially when you knew about their
crimes before I did?"
Every one of Tom's senses came to straining alert. He's bitter about that. I could
use that. I could poison his relationships with--

He looked up to see Harry staring back at him, eyes narrowed slightly and body
poised as if he was going to start a duel any second.

"And that's precisely why I don't want you to know those secrets," he said flatly.

Tom wondered for a second whether his Occlumency was full of enough holes
that his thoughts had leaked across, but then cursed himself for a fool. His
emotions were traveling down the bond right now, of course. He came up and
leaned on the sink beside Harry, staring out the window.

"Then what can you tell me without betraying the central secret you consider so
important?"

Harry stirred next to him. Tom didn't remove his eyes from the street.

"You would accept that?" Harry whispered.

Tom wanted to snap that he wasn't so much of an ogre as all that, but held back
the words at the last moment. Of course Harry thought he was as much of an
ogre as all that. He had been raised to believe that, had that hammered into his
head all his life.

"Yes," Tom said. "Not happily. Not without wanting you to trust me with
everything. But that doesn't matter, Harry. I want to compromise, I told you
that. I need to know something about what's making you so miserable. You
need to hold back part of it. I understand that. So tell me what you can."

Harry reached out and did something he had never done before. His hand
clasped the phoenix made of onyx and diamonds hanging around Tom's neck.
Tom closed his eyes, mourning that he had made the deaths of the fools who
had burned off his soul-mark so quick. He would have liked to see the blue
flames dancing around Harry's fingers.

"Black and white feathers," Harry whispered. "Do you know what it means
now?"

Tom turned his hand over so that he was clasping Harry's. Harry must have read
one of the many interviews Tom had done, back when people still regularly
asked him about his soul-mark, saying that he had many different interpretations
of the mixed colors of his phoenix's feathers.
He murmured, "That you have so much potential for both Dark and Light
magic. That you are drawn to highly contradictory sets of ethics. That you are in
the middle, both things and not one or the other." He bowed his head to kiss
Harry's wrist, and delighted in the ignition of the flames, without breaking their
gaze. "I am sorry for your sake that it should be so, but still delighted to meet
you."

Harry's smile was quick and fleeting, but there. "All right. The fact is that now
my friends have tried and failed to get me to come to the Order, someone else is
going to try. That's going to be my godfather."

Tom nodded. "Sirius Black. How?"

"Part of that is the secret I can't tell you." Harry's hand tightened furiously
around Tom's wrist for a second. Tom pulled back on the pulses of pain in their
emotional bond, and waited. Harry began speaking again a few seconds later.
"But I know that Sirius could never believe I was insane or evil. He'll believe
that I'm influenced by you, though. His--the message I got from him before
dinner said as much."

Tom stared at him. "I didn't see you receive a message."

"Secrets, Tom."

Tom tilted his head, recalling what he knew about Sirius Black. He had had a
soulmate, but the man had left Black behind years ago, after some kind of
altercation that none of Tom's spies could clarify for him. That was a complete
rejection, the only thing other than a death that could limn a soul-mark in black,
which meant-- "Telepathy?"

Harry jerked away from him, hands flying out and glassy shimmers of light
surrounding them like bracelets.

"I didn't read your thoughts," Tom said quietly. He held his own hands up,
though from the wild emotions pulsing down the bond, Harry didn't believe he
was harmless like that any more than Tom thought Harry was. "I promise. I
know that when someone completely rejects their soulmate, both of them gain a
kind of telepathy."

Harry gave several heavy blinks. "I--we thought it was some kind of gift Sirius
had cropping up," he whispered. "But then why has Remus never communicated
with him?"
Tom shrugged, although given what he knew of Sirius Black, he had some
suspicions. "I don't know."

"Where does the telepathy come from?"

"The souls desperately reaching for some kind of completion," Tom said, and
watched the way Harry flinched. "At least, that's the prevailing theory. It doesn't
happen when someone's soulmate dies, before or after they're born. Only with
rejection."

"Sirius would hate thinking that."

"Don't tell him, then," Tom said, and listened with some satisfaction to Harry's
rusty chuckle. "Fine. So he told you that he's going to come and fetch you out
somehow. What did you say in response?"

"That I would be waiting for him."

"And do you think you can talk him away from his loyalty to the Order?"

Harry swallowed, while the bond turned thick and dark and anxious. "No. I was
going to tell him the truth, about why I want to stay with you, and then probably
say goodbye. I don't think he'll ever turn his back on Dumbledore."

"But he doesn't want to give you up, either."

"No." Harry's eyes were shadowed. "I think his plan probably involves
kidnapping me if he can't talk me around."

Tom smiled brightly, knowing from the shudder Harry gave that he could feel
the heat coming down their bond. "That is not going to be happening."

"Tom, you can't kill him. I won't forgive you that."

The bond hummed with simple truth. Tom shook his head. "I never intended
that. I intended to neutralize him and keep him in the wizarding world so that
you can have your best try at convincing him. Or he can be an honored guest
while he listens to you."

"And if I can't, then you're going to make him a prisoner, aren't you?"

"He's a wanted fugitive coming back into the wizarding world, and he's also
trying to kidnap my soulmate." Tom showed his teeth. "What do you think?"
"I won't let him kidnap me."

"If he's as skilled at slipping in and out of the wizarding world as he seems to
be, you might not have a choice."

Harry shook his head once. His eyes, steady and clear, stayed on Tom. "I'll tell
him that I want to stay."

Tom rolled his eyes. He wouldn't have done that in front of just anyone, but
Harry had the context of the emotional bond to appreciate why Tom had done it.
"You've described him as essentially a fanatic. Why would he listen to you?"

The way Harry stared at his hands told Tom that he wasn't sure Black would,
either. Tom reached out and gripped Harry's shoulders, pulling him close and
sighing at the feeling of physical warmth that joined that in the bond. "Listen to
me, Harry. I'm willing to meet with Black myself, and explain a few things."

"Sirius wouldn't forgive me for that. He wouldn't forgive me for having this
conversation."

"Do you care so much for his forgiveness that you can place it above mine?"

Harry closed his eyes. "I thought you wouldn't hold it against me for having
secrets. I thought that was part of the bloody compromise."
"Not that, Harry. I won't forgive you if you allow yourself to be
bloody kidnapped because you're so determined to give Black his bloody
chance to speak."

Harry was silent. Tom quelled all the things he wanted to say and lounged
against the counter. The emotional bond spoke for him, and for Harry. Small
sparks shimmered and danced along it, burning with so many emotions that
Tom couldn't distinguish them.

Harry finally looked up. "You can't be in the room when I meet with him. That's
the secret I won't betray, how he gets past your Aurors."

Tom gritted his teeth, but nodded. He would know immediately if Harry was in
danger, after all. "Then I'll wait in the back room of the flat here."

"No."

Tom leaned in and tapped his fingers sharply against Harry's soul-mark.
"Compromise, Harry. I'm letting you keep the secrets. I'm letting you meet with
a man you admit frankly wants to kidnap you. There's no way I'm going to go
home and wait for news of your kidnapping in the morning."

"It won't come to that."

"Harry, if I could believe that you would fight him if he tried to take you, I
would let you meet with him alone. But I believe that you're going to hold back.
You're so determined to keep your godfather's regard that you'll cripple your
defenses. And then I'll be dealing with the kidnapping. And you're in deep pain
already, at the thought of betraying him and betraying me."

Harry licked his lips. "Then the same parameters apply that they did when we
met with Ron and Hermione. Stay out of sight, don't speak, and only intervene
if it looks like it's going to turn to physical violence."

Tom inclined his head. "I would never have asked for anything else."

Harry closed his eyes. "There's one advantage to this bond, at least."

Tom held back the hurt response he wanted to make, and asked, "Oh?"

"At least there's one person in my life who can never lie to me," Harry
whispered, and accepted Tom's embrace.

Sirius stepped into the drawing room of the flat and sniffed deeply. At once he
froze. There were lingering scents from James and Lily, who must have visited
earlier, and there was Harry, standing in the middle of the drawing room rug
and radiating nervousness. It really was Harry. Sirius's nose would have picked
up the telltale smell of Polyjuice on his breath, even if whoever was
impersonating Harry had taken it almost a full hour ago.

But there was another scent, too, in a back room that must have been a
bedroom. Sirius had smelled it before on raids, thick and drenched in Dark Arts
like so many of the artifacts in Grimmauld Place had been.

Riddle was here.

"Hello," Harry said softly. "I need to talk to you--"

Sirius stared at Harry's face and saw through human eyes despite his four legs
and fur. There was pain written all over Harry. Being in the middle like this was
dismembering him with agony.

Even if Sirius did take him away to the Order's camp, he wouldn't be free from
that position. There was only one thing Sirius could do that would guarantee
Harry's liberty.

Harry opened his mouth to continue speaking, and Sirius transformed, the
smoothest and fastest he'd ever done it since he became an Animagus. Then he
aimed his wand and spoke the words of the spell that he'd planned on using to
suppress the emotional bond that tied Harry and Riddle.

He didn't expect the scream that sounded as if it was ripping Harry in half.

Or the way that the wall between them and Riddle dissolved, and a storm of
black and red magic curled into the drawing room, shapes in the middle of it
like phoenixes with silver talons that aimed straight for Sirius's heart.
Chapter 15: Clouds
Chapter Text

Tom rode in the midst of the clouds that his magic had formed, the fire burning
so fiercely that he knew he had temporarily abandoned his body.

It was something that used to happen to him when he was young and incredibly
angry; he would simply dissolve into fire. After the matron of the orphanage
had tried to order an exorcism for him, Tom had learned to control it. The last
thing he wanted was to die because of some stupid, uncontrollable reaction.

But he had used it when he'd murdered the enemies who had burned his soul-
mark, and he would use it again now, to protect his soulmate
from anything and everything. Out of the smoke he called the fiercest shapes he
could, and they manifested as phoenixes, the shapes of his soul. Talons formed
on them made of silver that would have killed a werewolf in seconds.

Through their eyes, and through the pain ringing down the bond as Black's spell
tore it apart, Tom saw Black cowering. But he still tried to stand in between
Harry and the phoenixes, as if he thought that Tom would ever harm his own
soulmate.

The loyalty only maddened Tom further, and he screamed through all three
beaks. If he was that loyal, he would not have done this!
Tom knew of the spell, but even he would never have cast it, no matter how
much he hated a soul-bonded enemy. It got into an emotional bond and ripped it
apart, patiently, bit by bit. It would have had no effect if he and Harry had been
bonded twice, if they had already slept together in a full joining or linked their
minds or completely entwined their magic. But one bond, this spell could
handle.

Black was an idiot. He needed to die. Tom caught him between two of the
phoenixes and raked their talons delicately across the man's bare shoulders,
delighting in his screams as narrow slivers of flesh peeled off. The phoenixes
flashed overhead and turned at the wall. Black would take a long time to die.

Harry was struggling up on his knees, his eyes running with tears of blood. He
spread his hands towards Tom. "You promised," he whispered.

I'll never forgive you if you kill him.

Tom managed to control the phoenixes and the fire so that they all hovered in a
cloud near the ceiling, the phoenixes practically perched on the coils of flame.
He breathed in and exhaled. What did it matter whether Harry forgave him or
not? The spell was still spiraling, spreading out in concentric circles, destroying
their bond. They wouldn't be soulmates after this. Tom didn't have to listen to
him.

Black looked up at him, lips moving. Tom leaned the phoenixes down so that he
could stare at the coward's mouth.

Counter.

Tom flexed the talons of his phoenixes. There was no counter to this spell. He
would know it if there was. No one knew more about soulmate magic than he
did, not when he had spent years scouring books attempting to find spells that
could summon his soulmate to him or help him identify their mark from a
distance.

But on the other hand...

Would he have found spells written in books that were deep in the paranoid
library of the paranoid Blacks? Some of them had given Tom their allegiance,
but not all, with the Black beneath him being the most prominent example. And
not all of them had shared books with him. There might be spells that would
counter this one.
Tom spread his wings and screamed at Black. He could always kill him later,
when this didn't work. The pain was tearing through his own mind, and Harry
had stopped screaming, simply huddling on the floor.

Tom intended to make Black stop existing. The phoenixes all leaned forwards,
and Black hastily snatched up his wand.

Sirius hadn't ever hurt this much, not even the day that his soul-mark had gained
black edges. Honestly, he'd expected that after the way Remus had turned away
from him when Sirius had used him as a weapon against Snape.

No, here was the child he had loved and wanted and played with so much as a
kid writhing on the floor. And it was his fault.
I should have known that that spell didn't just suppress an emotional
bond, Sirius thought, as he crawled over to Harry, who had screamed himself
hoarse. Now only small whimpers came out of his mouth. Nothing that you find
in the books in my family's library can be that harmless. Of course it would
unravel it.

Sirius gathered Harry gently up in his arms. Harry stared at him with unseeing
eyes. Sirius took a difficult breath and leaned over him. "Harry, can you hear
me?"

The whimpers stopped for a second, and Harry gave the merest nod. Then the
whimpers started again. The unraveling of his bond probably hurt too much for
him to get rid of the sounds.

Sirius drew his wand and closed his eyes. For a moment, the pages of the books
in the Black library seemed to blaze in front of him. He had hated his parents,
but the process of forcing him to memorize Dark spells at least had the merit
that he really never did forget anything he'd read there.
Touching Harry's throat with his wand, he circled in the same motion that he
would have used to cut another wizard's jugular vein, and heard the phoenixes
scream in protest above him. He flinched, but it didn't affect his wand hand,
another product of his parents' "concerned love." The blood leaking from the
wounds on his shoulders didn't affect it, either. "Conservare."

The magic trembled through him, fed on the love that he felt for Harry, and
leaped from him into the fraying bond tied around Harry and Riddle. Harry
abruptly stopped making noise. Sirius clutched him close, afraid that he might
have stopped breathing, too.
But then Harry opened his eyes wide and gave a sound like a demented
hiccough. The phoenixes soared down from the rafters and landed around him, a
feathery, metallic mass forcing Sirius away from his godson. He went with his
hands raised and his head pounding with guilt. He'd never thought the spell
would do anything like this.

The phoenixes and the fire shed about them coalesced into a human shape, and
Tom Riddle turned scarlet eyes on Sirius. Sirius flinched back. He had never
seen human eyes that looked like that. They burned as much as the fire.

"Stay in the corner, Black," Tom ordered. "And be silent." Then he curled his
hand around something that must have been Harry's soul-mark, given the blue
fire that leaped into the air around them.

Sirius retreated and said nothing, although he was already thinking of whether
he would be allowed to return to the Order. He had already caused enough
chaos. Maybe Riddle really could heal Harry.

Of course, that didn't prove he loved Harry. He could just want the doubled
power that a soulmate who was in love with him could give him, the way Albus
had always suspected. The theory made too much sense to Sirius for him to
abandon it completely.

For now, though, if Harry could be healed...

It would be worth it, Sirius thought. Even if he had helped Riddle.

Harry shuddered as he reached out for the comforting stream of cool water, or it
sure felt like that, that was pouring over him. He felt as if something had been
sucking on his soul, separating it from him like marrow from a bone. He never
wanted to feel that again, and he huddled against Tom's chest.

Tom either licked his temple or touched him with a curl of that multi-colored
fire Harry had only caught a glimpse of out of the corner of his eye. "Darling,"
he said, in what might have been either English or Parseltongue. Frankly, Harry
didn't think he was hearing with his ears right now, or understanding with his
brain. "I have you."

Harry reached back to him, and now there was something to reach along. Their
emotional bond was rebuilding itself, Harry saw, a complicated, glittering,
subtle silver bridge that rose into the air in the form of long ribbons. Again,
Harry didn't think he was seeing them through his eyes, but that hardly
mattered. He grasped them with an exhausted cry.

A few seconds later, they stopped growing. Harry held them, feeling them
writhe against his control. Tom's emotions were molten but distant, like a voice
heard through a closed door. "What's happening?" he whispered.

"You have to build your half of it, Harry. I've come as far as I can with my
half."

Harry lowered his head, trembling. His shoulders hurt, and his throat hurt, and
his being hurt, and he didn't know how he could do this.

"I will be here. I will wait for you as long as it takes."

Harry lifted his head when he heard those words. How long had
Tom been waiting already? Decades and decades, while his heart and his
conscience grew more sluggish. And yet he had held more hope and faith than
Harry had. Harry had given up the minute he really understood whose name he
carried on his wrist.

He could do this. For Tom.

Harry reached down and into his magic, and a sparking silver ribbon slowly
drifted out of him. Harry forced it to reach for the starry bridge that stretched
between him and Tom. The ribbon connected, and Harry gasped as health and
strength seemed to pour back into him, like the opposite of a Dementor's Kiss.

The darkened world around him bounced, and then Tom swept his arms around
Harry and kissed him hard enough to bruise his lips. "You've come back to me,"
he said, while the bond between them sang.

Harry couldn't answer for a few minutes, while he ran his fingers through Tom's
hair and down the nape of his neck, and explored the return of their emotional
bond. He could feel arrogant satisfaction and shining anticipation crawling over
him, and Tom's anxiety and anger and regret as a crust of emotions on top of the
others.

And something as thick and dark as the chocolate cake that his parents had
given Harry for his fifth birthday, underneath all of that. Harry reached out and
grasped it, and then hissed and retreated. It was hot, Tom's hatred for Sirius.
"Remember what I said about my godfather," he murmured, opening his eyes to
catch Tom's gaze.

"It's the only reason he's still alive," Tom said evenly. "He will have the chance
to swear loyalty to you and accept honored guest status. If I think that he would
do this again, I will kill him and take my chances with your forgiveness."

"You think you could--what? Seduce forgiveness out of me?" Harry relaxed
against Tom and closed his eyes. Honestly, this was something close to normal
for them already, discussing bloody murder while Tom held him.

"Yes. I would give better chances for that than forgiving myself if I let him hurt
you again."

"I'm sorry," said Sirius's hoarse voice from across the room. "I'm so sorry,
Harry."

Harry turned with a sigh to look at him. His godfather had long slashes across
his shoulders that had torn the cloth of his shirt and also torn what looked like
talon-shaped slivers from his flesh. Harry leaned his head against Tom's
collarbone. "That's not good enough, Sirius. Who put you up to this?"

"I--I came up with it myself."

Harry flinched back. Even Tom's arms around him couldn't soothe this pain.
Tom poured steady affection down the bond, though, and thoughts of blood that
were reassuring at the moment.

I have someone who can't lie to me about how much he cares for me, and
someone who will never be loyal to Dumbledore.
"I didn't know what it would do, Harry! I swear I didn't!" Sirius was speaking so
fast now it was difficult to understand him, although maybe that was also
because he was waving his hands around and Harry had one ear resting against
Tom's chest. "I thought it would just suppress the emotional bond between you
and stop Riddle from influencing you. I didn't know it would destroy the bond.
I'm sorry. I should have known better. The Blacks wouldn't have a spell that
harmless in the book I got it from." He shuddered. "I'm sorry."

"Your apology is noted," Tom said, and his arms strained around Harry for a
moment. "But forgiveness is not granted. You will swear an oath, Black, and
you will remain here. You will not return to the Order."
"Well, I'm relieved that you're not trying to use me as a spy," Sirius said frankly.
Harry listened, but he couldn't hear any joking tone in his voice. That was a
good thing, he thought. It might mean his godfather was going to survive this
evening. "I wouldn't be useful in that role."

"You are going to be kept as entertainment for my soulmate," Tom said. "And
Chief Truth-Teller."

"What?" Harry and Sirius asked at the same time.

"Harry here is tangled up in lie after lie that Dumbledore told him, mostly to the
point that I can't even find them all, and Harry is hardly going to volunteer
every fact he thinks he knows and ask me whether it's the truth." The expression
on Tom's face as he leaned back said he would of course be willing to do that if
they had time. He kissed Harry once, and Harry melted against him before he
could think about it. "You are going to be the one responsible for telling him the
truths."

"But Sirius is just as corrupted by Dumbledore," Harry said.

"Hey!"

"Remember who I'm talking to here, Sirius," Harry said. "Corrupted in his
perception."

"Yes, but Black also has access to both perspectives through knowing his family
and Dumbledore in a way you don't." Tom trailed his fingers across Harry's
scalp. Harry tried not to shiver too obviously in front of Sirius, but he probably
wasn't doing a very good job. "In fact, he was indoctrinated in the opposite way
you were, through people who thought blood purity was the truth and not a
game."

"It's neither," Sirius muttered, sounding cross.

"Get Harry to tell you what I said to him about pure-blood rhetoric," Tom told
Sirius, and faced Harry again. "He can offer you something that's not unbiased,
but it will be nuanced. And he should, if he wants to live."

Harry just nodded. He understood things had changed, and Tom was going to be
less forgiving than he would have been for a while. Frankly, Harry was still
amazed that Sirius wasn't in bloody scraps strewn all over the floor of the
drawing room.
He glanced around and blinked when he saw that the wall between the drawing
room and the bedroom where Tom had hidden had indeed vanished. "And what
are we going to do about that?" he asked, with a motion of his head.

"I have an architect who does regular repair work for me," Tom said casually.

"What? Not even the Minister for Magic has that," Sirius said.

Tom turned his head a little, and Sirius began an intense study of the floor.
"You don't need to worry about what I have or don't have in terms of architects,
Mr. Black," Tom said. "Only that I have enough sanity left to spare your life."
He tightened his hands around Harry's arms, and they stood.

"Should I go explain to my parents?" Harry asked.

"The only thing you're going to do tonight is take a Dreamless Sleep Potion.
Perhaps talk a little with Black first," Tom added, perhaps because he'd seen
Harry's face. "But other than that, the potion."

"I hate Dreamless Sleep Potion," Harry said, knowing he sounded childish. But
his chest still hurt, and the last thing he wanted was to add a foul aftertaste to his
mouth. He tried to shift back, and Tom's fingers tightened like cage bars. Harry
sighed. "It leaves my mouth tasting like mint for days afterwards."

"Who have you been trusting to brew for you?" Tom shook his head. "Mint is
added as a sweetener only. I have one without it."

"I don't like it, Tom."

"This kind of soul-wound needs deep sleep," Tom said, in the sort of tone that
meant arguing with him would change nothing. "You shouldn't use that much
strength even on coming up with dreams."

"You don't use strength to come up with dreams," Harry said, although he

wasn't sure of that at the moment. The room was closing in with soft corners of
darkness, tucking it around him like a sheet. He sighed and leaned against Tom,
who gently folded him under one arm.

"You will have to sleep," Tom said. "Perhaps an hour or so on your own, and
then I'll wake you up to feed you the potion."

Harry sighed, but he was too far gone to protest.

*

Sirius swallowed. There was no way that was Minister for Magic Tom
Riddle, blood purist, Muggle-hater, and complete bastard, bending above Harry
with a soft expression as he cradled him in his arms.

But then the Minister stood up and turned around, and Sirius hastily revised his
opinion. Yes, that was in fact the bloody bastard Sirius had committed himself
to a war against, staring at him with slightly narrowed eyes that had a touch of
crimson to them.

"You are lucky that you knew the countercurse," Riddle whispered.

"Because you would have torn me apart if I didn't, I know," Sirius said, and had
regained enough of his courage to roll his eyes.

"I would have," Riddle agreed. "But the world, the Order that you care so much
for, Dumbledore's life whether or not I could prove anything against him
legally...I would have torn that apart, too."

Sirius stared at him. But the man appeared entirely grave. Sirius shook his head.
"You know that Harry wouldn't have wanted you to do that."

"Your curse would either have killed him if the bond hadn't stopped unraveling,
or it would have destroyed our soulmate connection," Riddle said. "I would not
have been responsible to him for anything, then."

Sirius shivered. Honestly, he had never considered the fact that Harry might be
some kind of restraint on Riddle if their soulmate bond ever became
established. He had taken it for granted that all the influence would run the
other way. "That's--not true," he said weakly.

"You cannot know, can you?" Riddle glanced back at Harry and then lifted him
up. He must have cast a Lightening Charm on him, of course, but Sirius had to
admit that he looked at the way Riddle cradled Harry and wished he had that for
himself. "I'm going to require you to write a message to the Order."

"I won't betray them or tell you where they are!"

"Why," Riddle murmured, "do so many of you have the desire to become
martyrs? Could it be that Dumbledore has cultivated the mentality in you that
only martyrs are worthy of having their sacrifices respected?"
Sirius recoiled before he thought about it. Of course, he should have said that
there was no way that was true and Riddle was being ridiculous, but now that he
thought about it...

Hadn't he admired Albus for rejecting his own soulmate? Hadn't he envied Ron
and Hermione, just a little, for getting put on the wanted list for crimes more
severe than his? Hadn't part of him resented, before he figured out who Harry's
soulmate was, that Harry had always received more of Albus's attention?

His own black-lined soul-mark had never seemed like such a sacrifice. Not
when the event that had led to Remus's rejection had been a prank he had
devised and not thought through carefully enough.

"What do you want me to say, then?" he asked, subdued.

"That you are here, and will not be leaving, and anyone who comes to search for
you stands a chance of being captured." Riddle's eyes had already turned away
from him and back to Harry, as if he thought Sirius unworthy of being looked
at. "That you will not betray Harry, and that our bond still exists."

Sirius paused. "You want me to tell them that? You don't want to make them
think that maybe it worked and pretend weakness for a little while?"

Riddle glanced at him over his shoulder. "I do not intend to hide Harry or betray
him in public."

"I mean, just pretending for a little while--"

"Is what I will not do, Black."

The words were on the edge of Parseltongue, to the point that Sirius thought he
was lucky to understand them. He found himself shrinking back and saying
nothing. Riddle nodded briskly at him and turned away to take Harry into a
bedroom. For now, a shimmering veil of magic replaced the wall that Riddle
had dissolved with his magic.

Sirius stared after him and shook his head. He knew that Riddle’s violence
should have horrified him. The loss of control implied that he could do terrible
things to Muggleborns and other innocents if they annoyed him.

But all he could wish was that someone—and he didn’t know whether it should
have been Remus or Albus—would have fought for him that way.
*

Tom laid Harry gently in the middle of the bed and then sank down in the chair
next to him. He didn’t take his eyes from Harry, and he didn’t look around
when he heard the rustling, muffled sounds of Black going into another room.
He didn’t worry about Black fleeing back to the Order. Chains of guilt would
hold him more strongly than any vow at the moment.

He couldn’t take his eyes from Harry.

Harry was pale now, breathing silently, but Tom could see his chest rising and
falling, and that was enough to calm any incipient urge to kill people. Tom
leaned his cheek on his hand for a moment and waited until his racing thoughts
broke apart into clear pictures again.

No matter what Albus and his other enemies thought, Tom had never killed
indiscriminately. If anything, he could force down his rage and wield it as a cold
weapon at the appropriate time. That was what had made him able to carry out
the murders he had, of Slytherin students who were older than he was and then
people who were forewarned that he was coming. Crystalline fury froze
everything in his mindscape and let plans and details and obstacles hover in
front of him like a projection of a Pensieve memory, enabling him to solve
problems before they came up.

But when he had felt the emotional bond eroding, he had reacted with that
fountain of red-hot fury that had only ever lasted a second before. And what
prompted it and came after it and filled him now was a fear that turned his
thoughts icy and sluggish.

He could not lose Harry. He would awaken to a world that had changed

irreparably—and not only for him. He imagined his magic unleashed not on
Black but on dozens, hundreds, of innocents, and shuddered. That would make
him no better than Dumbledore, and Tom could picture the disapproving
expression on Harry’s face.

His soulmate was his tether to conscience. Dumbledore never should have
attempted to drive them apart.

That thought sent sharp spikes of hatred through Tom’s mind, and Harry stirred
on the bed. Tom quelled the thoughts and the emotions with them, and reached
out to weave his hand through Harry’s hair. Harry turned towards him without
waking, proof that the emotional bond could reach even through the darkness
created by literally soul-deep exhaustion.
Tom told himself to calm down. Black hadn’t succeeded, and hadn’t even meant
to do what he did. The Order hadn’t separated him and Harry. No one ever
would again.

The fear was finally dissipating, sliding down the icy channels in his mind that
had waited for it. Tom’s hand stayed in Harry’s hair, though, and he watched by
him throughout the night, not sleeping himself.

He had to know that Harry would be there when he woke.

“So you used an unknown spell on my son that you expected to suppress his
emotional bond to the soulmate that he’s finally gained.” Lily half-regretted
speaking the words when the knife’s edge of them sliced into Sirius like it
visibly did, but she couldn’t help herself. “After something that already showed
we have no idea what we’re doing half the time and could have killed Harry!”

“You were just as complicit in Albus’s attempt to kill Riddle as I was,” Sirius
muttered, his arms folded and his eyes on the table.

“But we didn’t do it again!” James snapped, leaning forwards on the other side
of the table. Lily glanced sideways at him. James had been the one to insist that
they owed it to Sirius to hear him out, but he was even angrier about this than
Lily was.

“And I didn’t knowingly do it again, either!” Sirius threw his hands in the air.
Lily studied him. As upset as Sirius had been when they came over to the flat
and he began to tell them the story, he also appeared more—animated than he
had in months in the Order’s camp. As if the worst already happened and he
knows that it can’t happen again, Lily thought. “I thought it really would just
suppress the bond and let Harry think more clearly. I didn’t know it would
destroy it! And I didn’t know the destruction of the bond would have that effect
on Harry or Riddle, either.”

“Fine,” James said, abruptly blowing away his anger in one huge breath the way
Lily had never been able to. “Now you know. And I never want to see you do
anything like that again.”

Sirius studied him for an uncertain moment. “Friends?”

“We never stopped being friends, Padfoot.” James clapped Sirius on the
shoulder hard enough to bruise, which matched the emotions that Lily was
getting down their bond. Mixed anger and relief and resignation. “And it’s good
that we aren’t on opposite sides anymore, either.”

Sirius drew himself up. “I’m never going to be on Riddle’s side.”

“We are,” Lily said quietly. “In the sense that we support our son, and you
know that Albus won’t like that. I don’t agree with Riddle’s methods or the
rhetoric he spouts. Harry is going to work on changing that, and I’ll support
him. But you know that Albus would be even more pleased by the destruction
of their bond right now than Riddle’s permanent defeat.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sirius sprawled back in his chair and frowned at the ceiling.
“Either of you wonder why that is?”

“Because he believes Riddle will be more powerful than ever with the doubled
power that the bond could give him,” James said, frowning at Sirius. “It’s the
same reason that we all wanted to prevent Harry and Riddle from bonding. It’s
too bad that it came to pass, in some ways, but I’m going to stand by my son no
matter what.”

Lily wanted to sigh, but refrained. James was going to stand beside Harry, she
knew that, but it was “too bad.” She hoped that James would either not meet
Riddle’s eyes or bury that thought deep the next time they were around Riddle
and his Legilimency.

“No, I mean. Why is it more important to prevent Harry and Riddle from
bonding than it is to prevent the bastard from passing laws or gaining control of
more Aurors or finding out about the Order’s hiding place?’

“I don’t think he ever came close to identifying the Order’s hiding place. And
there’s no sign that Harry told him.”

“You’re still not really listening to me, James.” Sirius tipped his chair back so
that his feet were resting on the table and his head was bumping the wall.
“Dumbledore is overly focused on that damn bond. He approved the kidnapping
plan I had, but he wanted me to cast that spell more than anything.”

“You think he knew what that spell did and that’s the reason he wanted you to
cast it?” James jumped up and started pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “I’ll
kill him. I’ll hunt him down and kill him!”
Molly was usually the person Lily exchanged glances of sympathy with, and
usually about Sirius. It was a strange event to be doing it with Sirius about
James instead. But they still did it, and Sirius rolled his eyes and said, “He can’t
have known what it really did or much about it, or he would have suggested that
I just cast it when I was close anyway, instead of taking the risk of kidnapping
Harry and sneaking out past Riddle’s guards. He thought I had to cast it when I
had one of the bondmates well away from the other. But I do think that he
wanted the bond destroyed more than anything else.”

“Why?” Lily asked, since while she thought Sirius’s theory had merit, it didn’t
give them an answer for Albus’s obsessive focus.

Sirius shook his head, and his voice was rough. “I don’t know. I just think that if
Albus gets the chance, he’ll cast the spell on Harry, too.”

“Does he know the incantation?”

“No, I didn’t tell him that. But it’s not impossible that he could find books like
the ones in the Black library that I learned it from.”

James nodded and relapsed into deep thought. Lily was the one who leaned
forwards. “I knew I needed a project other than just decorating the flat and
trying to rejoin normal life. Especially since persuading Harry to give Riddle a
chance has been successful so quickly.”

Sirius glanced at her. “You’re going to search for the reasons why Albus is so
eager to see that bond destroyed?”

Lily nodded. “There has to be one. And I’ll start with looking at my memories
in a Penseive, along with James’s. It’s possible that he dropped bits of clues in
front of us that we didn’t notice at the time.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Of course, Sirius. I intend to understand the reason that Albus Dumbledore is
such a threat to my son. I understood why Riddle was, but Dumbledore remains
a mystery.”

Sirius lifted his hands. “I’m just saying, what if it turns out that there is a real
reason? Albus isn’t mad. What if he has a reason to believe it’s vitally important
to the future of the world that Harry and Riddle shouldn’t bond?”
Lily sighed. “Then I’ll still be on my son’s side, but we’ll have to decide what
to do about that. Maybe Riddle and Albus can be brought to consider peace
talks.”

Sirius snorted. “I can’t see what would persuade Albus.”

“Neither can I,” Lily said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to give up
before we even begin. He’s still a human being, and he deserves better than
what he tried to do to Harry.”

James rolled his eyes, but Lily only looked at him flatly. He wasn’t on Riddle’s
side yet, either, not completely, which made him a hypocrite if she wanted to
give Albus a chance. James winced and nodded as her emotions flowed down
the bond. Lily drank from her own teacup and turned her mind to where to
begin.

Part of Albus’s personal history was bothering her. She knew that he had
rejected his bond with Gellert Grindelwald, but she didn’t know how they had
met. Grindelwald had supposedly gone to Durmstrang and then had been kicked
out for Dark Arts beyond the purview of what the school allowed. How had he
got to Britain? Or why would Albus have gone to the Continent?

That’s where I ought to begin, then.

Albus stared at the thick white potion in his hands with a feeling of great
weariness. It was what was left of the poison that he had intended to use on
Tom.

Well, had used. But in the end, all it had gained him was his enemy finding his
soulmate and the loss of an important spy among the Aurors.

“You should tell them.”

Albus turned towards Gellert’s cracked and broken voice. He shook his head.
“You know they would refuse to believe it was about them.”

“They should still have the chance to discover why you have been so against
them all these years.” Gellert broke into sharp coughs, and Albus reached for
one of the healing potions. He ignored the way that Gellert tried to fend him off
as he poured the potion down his throat. Gellert had never wanted to die. He
simply wanted to thwart Albus in any way he possibly could.
Albus waited until Gellert had swallowed. “I told you, they would not believe
me. And I must be much further gone than I am before I would trust Tom
Riddle, of all people.”

Gellert laughed. His voice already sounded stronger. He turned away and let his
head rest on his arm for a moment as he murmured, “But you trust yourself, the
judgment of a man who rejected his soulmate.”

“You never would have stopped, Gellert. You were intent on taking over the
world.”

“You could have restrained me. If you had fully accepted the bond—”

It was an old argument, one that Albus had no intention of letting play out
again. He went on as if he had not heard. “You would have corrupted me and
brought me over to the Dark, and I would have done anything rather than betray
my soulmate. You know the stronger personality of the two holds sway. The
same thing would happen with Tom Riddle and young Harry, if I dared to trust
them. They would become weapons of destruction because Harry could not
overpower Riddle.”

“Do you dare believe that you are the only one who knows the true fate of the
world?”

“I was the one a phoenix sought out,” Albus said simply.

After all, the argument had played out the way it always did, and Gellert had no
more answer to that pronouncement than he ever did, closing his eyes and
slipping into sleep. Albus watched him fall, and sighed out as he sat down in
front of the fire at the back of the cavern.

Yes, he had regretted so much that he did in the past, but he could not regret the
decision to reject his soulmate, or stand against the vision of the future that Tom
Riddle and Harry Potter represented. He was playing out the vision the phoenix
had shown him, and how could he have rejected that and still considered
himself a Light wizard?

Harry woke to find Tom watching him. He stretched slowly in the bed,
grimacing at the aches that rang through his body, and asked, “Did you get any
sleep at all?”
“No.”

Harry sighed and reached up to take Tom’s hand. The emotions soared through
him, the fear at the back of the fireworks of rage and protection and fondness.
“I’m still here. Sirius’s spell didn’t cause lasting harm.”

“We don’t know that yet.”

Harry knew he wouldn’t win if he tried to argue on that head, so he just nodded
and murmured, “Fine. But you should know that I thought of something.”

“Yes?” Tom shifted so that he was leaning an elbow on the bed and halfway to
embracing Harry, and his emotions made another light show in the back of
Harry’s mind.

“Would that spell have worked if we had shared more than an emotional bond?”

Tom’s silence was answer enough, while the single bond between them at the
moment raged and bounded as if it was a captive gazelle. Harry nodded. “I want
to create another bond as soon as possible.”

“I don’t want you to feel pressured into it,” Tom murmured, looking at the far
wall. “Or to want to create it for just that reason.”

“I know,” Harry said. “And I want to wait to have sex with you.” Tom’s side of
the bond shimmered again. “Or to open my mind to you.” He took a deep
breath. “I need a chance to become comfortable with my own thoughts, first.”

“The magical one, then?” Tom’s thumb lingered on the pulse in the hollow of
Harry’s throat.

Harry nodded. “There’s no reason to wait. Our magic is partially entwined

already, most of the time. And I want—I want to know that you’re close to me
and not about to leave me the way it felt last night, Tom.”

Tom’s smile lit the room like the invisible blaze of their bond did. He called up
his power, and it swayed around him, full and brilliant as a silvery tree. Harry
slowly did the same with his own magic. He had expected it to feel a bit
battered and reluctant to respond after what the spell Sirius had wielded had
done.
But it was no such thing. Harry’s power rose and sang, and the branches of a
golden tree reached for Tom’s silvery one. Tom caught his breath as the
“branches” mingled. Harry made no sound. What he felt ran too deep for that.

The sensation cascaded over him, the one he had only felt before the night of
the Ministry gala when their magic had mingled on the dance floor. Harry
closed his eyes and drifted within it, the cloud of strength and ferocity. He had
always hesitated to defend himself as strongly as he might have when hurt,
afraid that he would reveal his magic to someone’s inquiring glance. Now he
knew what it felt like to have that ability and that desire.

Even if he had been hurt and wanted to hold back on hurting someone in return,
Tom’s magic that ran partially through his veins now wouldn’t let him do that.

So don’t get hurt, right, Harry thought, and blinked and shivered, and focused
on his soulmate as he said in a hoarse voice, “That spell of Sirius’s won’t work
against us now.”
“No,” Tom breathed out in confirmation, letting one arm curl around Harry’s
shoulders. “And I intend to make sure that nothing else will, either.”

He pressed his lips against Harry’s then, and Harry was more than happy to go
with it, swept up into a shining world where it felt, for just a moment, as though
nothing would ever harm them again.

Chapter 16: Public

Chapter Text

“Are you ready for this?”

It was Sirius who had leaned against the bathroom doorframe behind him to ask.
Harry could see his face reflected in the mirror in front of him. Sirius looked
ragged and tired, in a way that Harry never remembered him being in all the
years he had been a fugitive.

Then again, Harry thought as he tightened the collar of his robes, I don’t think
he ever had the feeling that he’d done something wrong when he was on the
run.

“I don’t think I’ll know until I see them,” Harry said, and turned around, aware
of the heavy robes sweeping the rug beneath him. Sirius studied those robes and
frowned at Harry. Harry shrugged a little, awkwardly. “I’ve never been on this
kind of display before. The Ministry gala didn’t last all that long until our magic
entwined. And no one knew I was Tom’s soulmate then.”
“If he asks you to do anything that you’re not comfortable with, you know you
can refuse,” Sirius said, staring into his eyes.

“Of course I do,” Harry said. “And to a certain extent, this whole thing is
uncomfortable. But on the other hand, it’s worth it to keep Tom.”

The magic behind Sirius shifted, which meant Harry didn’t jump when Tom
murmured, “I am glad you think so.” But Sirius did, and came down with his
wand in his hand. Tom gave him a look of scalding contempt before he looked
at Harry again. A smile lingered in his eyes without touching his lips. “You look
magnificent.”

Harry shrugged. He’d never worn dress robes before except the night of the
Ministry gala, and these were a different sort. By the time he was old enough
for the kinds of events at Hogwarts where he might have needed them, his
parents had been on the run, and Harry couldn’t justify spending his limited
money on luxuries like that.

“You should see the way the green makes your eyes shine.”

“He’s got a mirror right there, he can see,” Sirius muttered.

“You know as well as I do that he doesn’t look with the same eyes we have,
Black.” Tom traced his hand up Harry’s cheek and he swallowed back intense
embarrassment as he felt himself harden. Tom smiled at him in the way that
meant he knew but would never betray it, and stepped back. “Ready for your
first appearance in front of the Wizengamot?”

“I don’t see why they need to actually meet me,” Harry muttered, even as he
followed Tom across the flat and managed to will his body to calm down. “I’m
sure that members of the Wizengamot get married or find their soulmates all the
time, and I’ve never heard of the whole lot of them needing to meet the new
spouse or soulmate before.”

“It doesn’t happen all the time, actually,” Tom said, holding the outer door open
for him. Harry frowned at him, which moved Tom not at all. The Aurors outside
the door sprang to attention and fell in on either side of them. Harry felt the way
Tom’s magic swayed to spread over them. Tom would take no chances after
discovering that Whipwood was a traitor. “After all, most members of the
Wizengamot have reached the age when they would have found their soulmates
or given up on them already.”

“Which doesn’t say why they want to meet me.”

“You’ve declared the intention to make yourself a political player, to change my
mind or slow me down. And you don’t think that it’s important for you to meet
some of the most important people in Britain?”

“They don’t know that.”

“Of course they do. I said in that interview I gave yesterday that we don’t agree
on all matters and I look forward to how you will change my stagnant thinking
as well as that of other pure-bloods in Britain.”

Harry opened his mouth and found he had nothing to say for several dozen
steps. He hadn’t read the interview because he found it embarrassing to be the
center of attention like that, and if his parents or Sirius had, none of them had
said anything. He finally managed to croak, after they had already Apparated to
the point outside the Ministry’s Atrium reserved for the Minister alone,
“What?”

“Yes, I thought it important to prepare them for you,” Tom said casually as he
stepped through a shimmering silver ward that distracted Harry for a second.
There were white lines in it that he’d never seen before. But the ward didn’t
react when he stepped through it. “Of course, some of them will think that a
license to target you and try to split us apart. I also look forward to the moment
when you teach them better.”

“But you all but declared me your enemy.”

Tom chuckled quietly as they walked through yet another ward and out of the
box of a stone courtyard they’d Apparated into, down a set of stairs, and
through a second door into one of the corridors that ran through the Department
of Magical Law Enforcement. “Consider that most people knew you used to
favor the Order of the Phoenix, Harry. That’s not a surprise.”’

“You could have lied,” was all Harry could think of to say.

Tom glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes, brilliant and deep, caught Harry’s.
Harry stopped walking. The Aurors did the same thing so as not to pile into
him, but stared stoically over Tom’s head as he leaned in and caught Harry’s
hand.

“I told Black,” he murmured, “and I am going to tell you now, that I never
intend to lie about who and what you are, Harry. I trust you. I trust that our bond
is more important to you than the need to score petty political points, and that
you’ll come and talk to me about concerns you have instead of listening to my
enemies and keeping your own counsel. If that’s not true, you can tell me now.”

Harry licked his lips and held Tom’s eyes. His joy was ringing through the
emotional bond. Harry didn’t think it was all about getting one leg up on his
enemies in the Wizengamot; not exactly, anyway. “It’s—true. You matter more
to me than just hearing what your enemies have to say.”

Tom smiled and turned around and began to walk again. One of the Aurors
coughed a second later, and Harry realized he was standing there and staring at
his soulmate’s back like an idiot. He flushed and kept going.

He had been contemptuous in the past of the agents the Order had lost who had
gone over to Tom’s side. Now, though, he could well believe the stories of how
seductive Tom was.

He closed his eyes and willed down the reaction of his body again. Then he
opened them and focused on Tom’s back as well as what would come when
they stepped into the meeting chamber of the Wizengamot.

He had been an actor for years, and he’d been a good one, concealing his power,
his intelligence, his ambition, his true goals, his loyalties. Now he would call on
that same talent to give some apparent openings to Tom’s enemies instead of
appearing as an immediate threat.

Tom didn’t want to lie about him? Fine. But Harry was going to find out the
truth, including things Tom had done that would have to change but Harry
hadn’t heard about, and he would do it in his own way.

Tom smiled a little as he watched Madam Moonwell heading towards them as

fast as her cane could click across the floor. She would be wondering what had
happened given that he and Harry had both said that Harry wasn’t his soulmate
before this, and Tom had to admit he wanted to see how Harry would handle
her.

Harry met her with a bland smile that Tom would have checked at, except that
he could feel Harry’s actual emotions through the bond. Wariness and readiness
combined, coiled like Nagini when she thought a mouse had found its way into
Tom’s quarters. Harry held out a hand and kept it poised. Madam Moonwell
had to shake it whether or not she’d been planning on it.
From the way her eyes narrowed as she studied Harry, Tom rather thought she
enjoyed it. She snorted and said, “So you were hiding from your soulmate?”

“Him, and the rest of the world who might have tried to use me against him,”
Harry said in a voice as bland as the smile, stepping back and pausing
courteously in a way that Tom knew meant he was waiting for Madam
Moonwell to find a seat. The woman scowled and remained on her feet. Harry
shrugged and said, “But I decided that it was better to stop ignoring the
obvious.”

“What about that article you published where you accused Minister Riddle of
trying to seduce you?”

“The article’s a bit outdated,” Harry said. “After all, since then he’s succeeded.”

Madam Moonwell tapped her fingers on her stick for a moment. “Are you
happy about the age disparity between you and your soulmate, Mr. Potter?”

“Being unhappy about various aspects concerning my soulmate bond kept me

from approaching Minister Riddle for years,” Harry said softly. “I’ve learned
better than to curse fate and wish things were different. I’ll trust magic to guide
us, and my own native intelligence to know when it’s Minister Riddle trying to
do it instead.” He tilted his head back to give Tom a gaze that was too wry to
pass as adoring.

Tom smiled slowly back, pleased when Madam Moonwell cackled. “Well, Mr.
Potter, I can see that you’re going to shake things up,” she said, and moved out
of the way as a few other members of the Wizengamot drifted forwards.

“So this is your soulmate, Minister Riddle.” Arcturus Black didn’t use a cane to
walk, but Tom happened to know that was because of potions and his own
stubbornness. He stared at Harry from narrowed grey eyes beneath a mass of
hair almost the same color. “Looks a young thing.”

“Old in necessity, Mr. Black,” said Harry, and didn’t look disconcerted when
Arcturus circled a bit closer. Tom just watched. Arcturus was an old shark, but
he wouldn’t try anything completely underhanded in public.

“I suppose that you agree completely with your soulmate, then,” said Laurentius
Lestrange. Tom cordially hated the man. He could say things with slight pauses
that others couldn’t with the most veiled insinuations. “Since you are…joined.”
Tom didn’t let his eyes flicker. Harry offered Lestrange a smile as cool as the
blue eyes watching him and said, “Actually, no. I don’t like Minister Riddle’s
voting record on the issues of Muggleborns and Muggles. I’m willing to listen
and learn in case there are nuances I’m missing, but wiping someone’s mind
free of memories if they talk about magic to other Muggles is not a nuance.”
Tom suppressed a twitch. Trust Harry to begin their disagreements in public
with this.

Lestrange gave a low laugh. “But that is only natural, coming from the son of a
Mudblood.”

Tom could feel the indrawn breaths all over the room, and the eagerness to see
what Harry would do. Harry stared at Lestrange with slightly widened eyes, and
their bond throbbed in a way Tom hadn’t felt before.

But all Harry did was shake his head and murmur, “Is this the famous subtlety
of the Wizengamot? Using a slur in public? I suppose I should thank my father
for marrying my mother, or the Potters could have ended up marrying relatives
who had already all married each other, the way some families did.”

Lestrange’s face darkened. Tom wondered if Harry actually knew that the
speculation was rampant that Laurentius’s mother, supposedly an “adopted”
child of the Lestranges betrothed to their blood son, was really his grandfather’s
bastard daughter and thus married to her half-brother.

“You should…watch what you’re saying, half-blood.”

“I can give you the name of a good Healer who treats speech impediments, if
you want one.” Harry’s eyes were wide and utterly guileless.

Lestrange turned and walked back to his seat. Black remained where he had
been, eyes and face both blank. Madam Moonwell was cackling openly.

“At least someone in the Wizengamot will have a spine,” she said, and nodded
to Tom. “I approve of your soulmate, Minister Riddle.” She went back to her
own seat, followed a moment later by Black.

Harry watched them go, then glanced sideways at Tom. “But I don’t have an
official place in the Wizengamot, right? It would seem undemocratic if I did just
because I’m the Minister’s soulmate.”

“You think anything about the Wizengamot is democratic?” Tom asked softly
as he guided Harry to the side where their own seats waited. Harry’s guest chair
was made of silvery birch wood, to distinguish it from the darker and heavier
seats of the Wizengamot, but Tom had thoughtfully removed the chains that
usually would have coiled on the arms and could have bound Harry to it. “Half
of the people here run various departments in the Ministry; they’re either my
appointments or ones made by prior Ministers. The others are people chosen by
their peers, who are previous members. It takes enormous scandal to get
someone removed from the Wizengamot, and mostly they have enough money
and connections to squash a scandal before it appears.”
Harry was silent, his eyes traveling around the room. “I still don’t like the idea
that my presence here only isn’t objectionable because it’s
not more objectionable than anyone else’s.”

“Then that’s another thing you’ll need to work to change,” Tom murmured as
he took his own heavy seat. “I will warn you that it’s not easy. The Wizengamot
system has endured hundreds of years with little incentive to change.”

“You’re the only democratically-elected member here,” Harry seemed to realize

abruptly, and stared at Tom. “You.”

“It makes you shiver, doesn’t it?” Tom said, and gave Harry a half-smile before
he stood and called the meeting to order.

Shit.

Harry stared at Tom’s back as he intoned some empty formalities that

apparently always began the Wizengamot meetings, while his disbelief swayed
back and forth like a striking cobra.

If the Order had killed Tom, then probably one of the Wizengamot members
would have taken over as Acting Minister until an election could be held. Given
how slowly the Ministry moved, that might be months—probably closer to
years. And if the one who took over was someone like the Lestrange who had
insulted Harry, then things might actually have got worse for Muggleborns and
Muggles with Tom’s assassination, not better.

Harry closed his eyes, but only for a second. There were people who would be
watching for that, and consider it a sign of weakness.

He had never thought of Tom as a restraining influence on the Wizengamot.

After all, they seemed to do mostly what he wanted, and legislation that Tom
championed was passed most of the time. He had played his pure-blood rhetoric
games with them, and stood aside with a smile when they said things in public
that Harry would have deemed unforgivable.

And Harry still didn’t think that was right. Maybe Tom wouldn’t have got far
with open opposition to some of their policies, but he at least might have turned
the Wizengamot into a space where people like Lestrange couldn’t just walk up
to a stranger and say “Mudblood.”

Dumbledore, though, didn’t have influence here as far as Harry could tell.
Unless that was another of those things about the Order that he had been
considered unfit to learn? But otherwise, it seemed that he would have
murdered Tom and then just left the Wizengamot to continue on their
conservative and pure-blood course. Harry didn’t think that was much of a plan.

So neither of them is completely right. Well, I knew that.

It meant that he would have to go further into politics than he had thought.
Harry thoughtfully rubbed his soul-mark and sat back to watch some of the
dynamics of the Wizengamot at play. He would treat this as a fact-gathering
mission for the moment, unless someone else approached him and tried to insult
him the way Lestrange had. Then he would defend himself with all the wit and
strength at his disposal, and he didn’t care if it played havoc with Tom’s plans.

From the soft humming of the bond in the back of his mind, though, Harry
could tell that Tom was pleased with his performance so far.

Wearily, Harry prepared to listen to what the prejudiced idiots said, and
wondered if he would ever understand his soulmate.

“May I ask a question, Madam Moonwell?”

It was the first time Harry had spoken for more than an hour, while the
Wizengamot traveled through the necessary formalities and then a few debates
were held on proposals Tom didn’t care much about. The people who wanted to
remove Muggle Studies from the rotation of classes at Hogwarts would never
gather the necessary votes, and therefore he ignored both the desultory debate
about it and the storm gathering in his bond.

Tom was willing to talk to Harry about why he’d ignored that discussion at any
point, but it seemed Harry had a question for someone else. Madam Moonwell
flashed him a quick smile and didn’t sit back down from where she’d stood up
to give a blistering speech about why the last thing the wizarding world needed
to do was encourage ignorance. “Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“Why did you say that we need to pay more attention to Muggles, but you also
voted three months ago for that law that says Muggle parents of Muggleborns
should have their minds erased if they talk to other people about magic?”

“Because there’s a difference between isolationism and laxness about security.”

Madam Moonwell thumped her cane on the floor. “The parents of Muggleborns
were already warned not to talk about it in the past. It’s just that there were no
consequences if they did. Now, we’re keeping the promise the earlier warnings
implied.”

“And you don’t think that taking away their ability to reason is extreme?”

“Not if we warn them about it. Would you feel sorry for someone who was
warned away from a canyon and then insisted on jumping into it anyway?”

“When someone else had the ability to build a secure fence around that canyon?
Yes, I would.” Harry glanced around at the other members of the Wizengamot
without bothering to stand up. “We’re supposedly superior to people without
magic, and yet we can’t come up with anything better than this?”

“You might be interested to know that your soulmate was one of the
enthusiastic proponents of that law,” Arcturus Black drawled.

“Oh, I know that,” Harry said, although Tom could feel how Harry’s magic
singed the edge of his and knew Harry hadn’t counted on the “enthusiastic” part
of that. “And I think he’s wrong, too. But at the moment, I’m asking people I
thought had some good sense why they voted for it.”

“We have to do something to protect ourselves,” said Amelia Bones, although

from the set of her mouth, Tom knew she was unhappy. She had bitterly fought
the law, and it was only her loyalty to the Ministry and her policy of not
questioning his decisions in public that was driving her words now. “I don’t
think this is the right way, but… it’s true that the Obliviators are being called
out twice as often as they used to be, and two-thirds of the incidents in the past
six years weren’t for accidental magic or drunken pranks, but because parents of
Muggleborns decided to tell other Muggles about magic.”

“I was unaware of that,” Harry said. His voice was thoughtful. “And do you
know, it still never would have occurred to me to leap straight to destroying
someone’s mind. It makes me wonder what convinced all of you this was a
good idea.” He turned to look at Tom.

Tom met him, look for look, and said blandly, “It was the only way to have an
absolutely foolproof solution to the problem.”

“Amazing that it was never necessary before.”

“We never had so many Muggles willing to expose our world before.”

“I can think of three better solutions right now,” Harry said. “Do you want me
to name them, Minister, so that you don’t have to tax your brain thinking them
up?”

More than one member of the Wizengamot gasped. Tom had dueled for lesser
insults.

Then again, those duels had been over twenty years ago, when Tom was still
climbing the ranks of the Ministry, and Tom had ensured that they had become
so legendary that he didn’t have to fight more. He settled in with his arm
crooked and his smile soft and amused, and said, “Tell me, Mr. Potter.”

Harry held Tom’s eyes and nodded. “The first is the kind of simple vow that
doesn’t depend on magic, except for the person who acts as the bonder. Have
the Muggles swear on their children’s wands that they won’t tell other Muggles
about magic unless they already know. The vow will literally deprive them of
their voices if they try to say anything about it, even on accident.”

“Muggles can’t make vows like that,” said the nasal voice of Gerard

Greengrass, who lacked to pride himself on his knowledge of spells. “It still
depends on magic!”

“The magic of their children would be sufficient,” Harry said, without bothering
to look away from Tom. “The blood link between parent and child will activate
the vow.”

Tom laughed softly. He enjoyed the gapes on the faces of the other Wizengamot
members as much as anything. “And what do you intend to do if they refuse to
make such a vow?”

“Then place them under a Forgetfulness Charm focused on the word magic and

similar ones.” Harry shrugged. “It would be awkward because it would make it
hard for them to talk with their children about their schooling, but there could
be workarounds, while it would make what they were trying to say virtually
incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t already know the secret.”

“That doesn’t seem all that much more secure,” Madam Moonwell called out.
“Is the third method going to be less secure still?”

“No.” Harry hesitated for the first time. “Tie their memories of magic to the
presence of their children and owls. They won’t even think about magic when
their children are at Hogwarts or they’re not reading a letter from them.”

“They could still tell a Muggle the truth about magic as long as their child was
there, or a letter,” said Lestrange, looking triumphant.

“Sir,” Harry said, his eyes opening a little and his voice dropping, “don’t
you know how tying memories works? It means that they also won’t be able
to talk to anyone, by any method, about magic except for the people the
memories are tied to, or by letters on owls. And they certainly won’t be sending
owls to ordinary Muggles.”

Someone chuckled in the background. Tom didn’t want to look away from
Harry to figure out who it was, but it sounded as though it might be Aelia
Malfoy. That was a feat, getting her to respond that way. Normally, she would
never have laughed at something a half-blood said; she looked straight through
Tom himself most of the time.

“Of course I know how tying memories to the presence of a particular person or
method of communication works, Mudblood!” Lestrange was on his feet,
vibrating with rage. “And I know that no spell like the one you describe exists!”

“It does with the Greater Version of the hex,” Harry said flatly. Then he paused,
and his mouth opened in faux confusion. “Unless…oh, dear, sir. Are you going
to tell me that you can’t cast the Greater Version of the hex?”

Another titter, although Tom didn’t think that was Aelia Malfoy this time.
Perhaps Hyacinth Parkinson.

“I am more than powerful enough to cast spells of all kinds! But you are talking
about a spell that does not exist!”

“Would you like me to demonstrate it?” Harry asked coolly.

“You cannot draw your wand in the Wizengamot chamber!”

“Then why do you have yours half-drawn?” Harry asked, a beat ahead of Tom
opening his mouth to say that there was no such rule.

Lestrange was silent now, but Tom knew the way his nostrils were flaring. He
unclenched his hand slowly from around his wand and pointed a single finger at
Harry instead. “I challenge you to a duel, Mr. Potter.”

“Accepted,” Harry said at once. “But in the meantime, did you want me to cast
the Greater Version of the hex?”

Lestrange sat down and proceeded to ignore Harry completely. Madam

Moonwell gave a cough that sounded more like a cackle and focused on Harry
again. “We didn’t think about the last solution because not many of us seem to
know this Greater Version of the common hex that you’re talking about,” she
said solemnly. “But the others are not foolproof. The Muggles still might find
some way around them.”

“Is erasing their memories really foolproof, either?” Harry asked softly. “Won’t
Muggles be moved to investigate when someone who’s young enough not to
suffer brain ailments, which many parents would be, suddenly loses all their
memories and regresses to a child-like state? If it happens often enough,
couldn’t they notice a common pattern? And what about the Muggleborns
you’ll alienate with this? They’ll turn their backs on the world that damaged
their parents, won’t they?”

As he spoke the words, he abruptly turned his head and stared at Tom. Tom
raised an eyebrow. There was a long shiver of cold moving down their bond,
but he wasn’t sure what Harry had noticed or realized.

Something they would have to talk about later, from the way Harry turned
pointedly to face Madam Moonwell. Madam Bones, meanwhile, was nodding
firmly. “Those are good points that we didn’t consider closely enough,” she
said.

“We didn’t consider them closely enough because there is nothing to consider.”
Arcturus Black’s voice was a hiss. “We have to protect ourselves! Muggles will
be willing to suffer a bit of humiliation or pain to expose our secret, because
they hate us. They are jealous of our power. We have to destroy their memories
if they speak. Nothing else will work.”
“But you haven’t tried it, have you?” Harry asked quietly. “Nor did you need it
in the past, when Muggleborns’ parents presumably had this same jealousy and
hatred, but didn’t spread around the secret. What’s changed, and why is there a
sudden increase in the number of people who want to do so? That’s the kind of
pattern and increase you should investigate.”

“You’ve been very quiet, Minister Riddle,” Black said, turning the strike. “Does
your soulmate speak for you, too?”

“As you know, I voted for the law,” Tom said, arching his neck a little so that
he could show off the profile of his face if Harry looked over at him. “I thought
we needed an immediate and permanent solution to the problem. But it is
intriguing, as Mr. Potter says, that suddenly we have any number of Muggles
willing to tell their neighbors about magic when the number of them in the past
was very small.”

He spoke in a relaxed drawl, and he found what he was looking for. There was a
tightness to Black’s shoulders that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“That is not a pattern I noticed,” Tom continued, “and it’s something that we
need to think about. Madam Bones, do you think that you might task some of
the Obliviators with talking to Muggleborns’ parents? Ones who haven’t been
put under the new spell yet, for preference, but those who might have shown
some tendency to want to brag about their children’s magic or achievements.”

Amelia nodded at once. “I can think of several who will be happy to take on the
duty, Minister Riddle.”

“Good, then.” Tom glanced at the papers spread out in front of him. “And I
understand that you wanted to bring up an addition to the classes at Hogwarts,
Madam Malfoy?”

“Yes,” Aelia Malfoy said, standing. Her face was so pale as to look bloodless,
and she had white hair that cascaded down her shoulders, but then again, she
always had. She was a Malfoy by birth who had apparently, according to the
rumors, never married because she had never found someone worthy of her. “I
am given to understand that most young wizards and witches do not know how
to write with a quill when they arrive.”

“The Mudbloods, of course,” Lestrange said, not seeming to notice that more
than one person had shifted their chair or gaze away from him. “Why would
they know it? They grow up with all manner of Muggle devices.”

Malfoy turned to stare at him, and Lestrange winced. Tom had forced himself to
grow accustomed to the stare of those pale grey eyes, but few other people had.
“I am talking about my own great-nephew, and other relatives of mine,” Malfoy
said in a passionless voice. “I could barely read Draco’s letters, and he grew up
entirely in a pure-blood household. I propose a class that would tutor students in
this skill as well as others, including the proper ways to clean their hair and
nails, during their first term at Hogwarts.”

“Clean their hair and nails?” demanded Madam Moonwell.

“Too many pure-blood children assume that their house-elves will take care of
everything,” Malfoy said, glancing at Moonwell. “Or did you not have to
suddenly improve your hygiene after a few years at Hogwarts when you
realized that certain people whose attention you wanted to attract were avoiding
you?”

Madam Moonwell blushed heavily and opened her mouth, then shut it. Tom
cocked his head and wondered how Malfoy knew Moonwell had been one of
those people. Or perhaps it had simply been a lucky guess.

“We can of course talk about such a class,” he said. “The difficulty comes in
seeing who should teach it. There are not NEWTS in quill-writing or household
charms.”

“Any wizard or witch with mastery of these skills could teach them.” Malfoy
was staring through him now. “I suggest that you hold an exam in calligraphy
and the like if you feel the need to discover the most qualified candidate.”

Tom held back an exasperated reply. Malfoy had good ideas, but she had no
idea what skills a good teacher needed. And Tom was too protective of
Hogwarts and everything he had tried to improve about it to simply dump
someone who might harm children into it.

Nevertheless, he nodded. “An exam might be a good idea, Madam Malfoy.

Thank you for the suggestion.” He glanced around the chamber. “How does the
Wizengamot decide on a preliminary vote?”

Harry waited until they were in Tom’s bedroom to speak about the law
concerning the Muggleborns’ parents, and then only because yelling in public
would be counterproductive.
“You enthusiastically supported that law, then,” he said, and he kept his voice
low to force Tom to listen to him. “And you probably thought that it was a good
thing to alienate Muggleborns from the wizarding world, didn’t you?”
“If I thought that, I wouldn’t have pushed for more accurate Muggle Studies
classes at Hogwarts, or for Muggleborn children to be taught the kinds of skills
that they need to fit in with the rest of us,” Tom said, hanging up his cloak.
“Mind telling me where you came to this conclusion?”

Harry paced back and forth. He wished in that moment that he could speak
Parseltongue, not just understand it. Those felt like the only words that would
let him properly express the disgust spreading through him.

“When I said this afternoon that the law would alienate Muggleborns from the
wizarding world by destroying their parents’ brains,” Harry said. “And I
thought that that might be what the pure-bloods want and why they supported
that law. But you. You don’t care if Muggleborns are in the wizarding world or
not, do you?”

Tom tilted his head. “I care about them having a good education, as I do all
wizarding children. And I don’t want them to betray us if they choose to live
full-time in the Muggle world after graduating. But those aren’t the answers
you’re looking for, I suspect.”

“You—you don’t care about Muggleborns as a separate entity.” Harry sat down
heavily on the chair next to the bed. The emotional bond between them was
calm, shifting with Tom’s curiosity more than anything else. “You don’t hate
them the way Dumbledore thinks, but you also don’t want to protect them. You
voted for that law—why?”

“Because it was a concession that the pure-bloods were so greedy to get that
they didn’t notice some of the laws that I was passing under their noses,” Tom
said calmly. “Mostly related to classes at Hogwarts they otherwise would have
fought me on.”

“You supported something unethical because—”

“It was politics. Yes.”

Harry turned his head away from his soulmate’s calm face, and the emotional
bond. Clear. Crystalline. Waiting. “And your enthusiasm?”

“I had to persuade them that I felt exactly as they did about it, or they might
have got suspicious.”
Harry swallowed heavily. “But you could have done that with less enthusiasm.”

“At the time, I wasn’t sure that I could. But now that you’ve come up with
alternate solutions, I can throw my political weight behind those instead.”

Tom sounded perfectly placid. Harry turned in his chair to stare at him, hard.
“You really don’t care, do you?”

“I care because it troubles you.” Tom came over to stand in front of him,
considering him. “And I care because this way, it deprives Lestrange and Black
of something they want. Did you notice that Lestrange never approached you
after the session with a place or time for the duel?” Tom’s lips quivered.

“I noticed,” Harry said shortly. He had noticed, and hadn’t cared. “But I’m not
more intelligent than you are. You could have thought of those solutions if you
had wanted to, and proposed them instead. Why didn’t you?”

“I can tell you the truth, or I can tell you what you want to hear.”

“I want to hear the truth.”

“That, then.” Tom sat down in the chair facing him and leaned forwards. “I
didn’t propose those solutions because I didn’t care enough about figuring them
out. I don’t care about most people, Harry. I’ll go out of my way to help some
of them some of the time, such as creating those new classes at Hogwarts. But I
don’t love the mass of them the way you do.” He paused. “I don’t actually know
if there are many people who care about other wizards and witches in general,
as a mass. For example, the pure-bloods in the Wizengamot are mostly invested
in protecting the interests of their families. Albus talks the game of the greater
good, but he shows little compassion towards individuals who simply happen to
be around his enemies. Certainly most of our people demonstrate no more
desire to protect the lives of those on the opposite sides of various wars than
Muggles do. Of everyone I know, Amelia Bones might come the closest, but
she also values the innocent more than the guilty, and people she knows the
best. I’ve seen her fight and kill criminals who endangered the lives of the
Aurors.”

“Who do you care about?” Harry whispered.

“You.”

Harry closed his eyes. “Do you—does that mean that you only care about me or
that you care about me in a way that you don’t care about anyone else?”
“Very good, Harry.” Harry opened his eyes to see Tom smiling at him. “The
latter. I don’t actively wish harm on most others. I’ll be happy to support the
solutions that you brought up today.”

“But you didn’t care enough about Muggleborns to support them in the first
place.” Harry thought he might gag.

“No,” Tom said softly. “I didn’t.”

Harry thought he understood now. Tom wasn’t boiling and churning with the
hatred that Dumbledore had assumed he was, the loathing towards Muggleborns
and the longing to be a pure-blood, that the Order of the Phoenix believed in.

No, he didn’t feel hatred. He felt utter indifference.

Which was worse.

Harry blinked and swallowed and fixed his attention on Tom, who considered
him with one eyebrow raised. “Yes?”

He must have felt what Harry was feeling down the bond, but he didn’t seem
distressed or upset. Harry rubbed his forehead. “I have to go,” he said, standing
abruptly. He couldn’t disentangle his magic entirely from Tom’s, and didn’t
want to, but it pulled sharply at him as he separated it as much as possible. “I
have to—I have to be around my parents and godfather right now.”

“Of course, Harry,” Tom said softly. “Whatever you need.”

Harry shot him one more incredulous glance—now he was acting reasonable?—
and then stormed out of Tom’s house and towards the Apparition point. His
heart was beating too fast, his head hazy and his temper on fire.
Why had Magic chosen to tie him to someone who had this kind of—of
morality? Or lack of morality?

Harry knew that Tom would indeed support the new solutions to keep Muggles
from talking about magic. Or something else that he might come up with that
could be even less invasive. The thoughts that Harry had thrown out in the
Wizengamot today had just been the first ones that had come to him. They
might not be the best ones.

But Tom would do it because Harry wanted that from him. Not because it was
the right thing to do. Not because he did believe that Muggleborns, or Muggles,
were people who ought to be treated equally.
And Harry would have to decide how to live with that. Because he doubted
Tom would change.

“He seems a volatile sort.”

Tom chuckled and let one hand reach down to smooth along Nagini’s scales as
she slithered into the drawing room. “Well, I think I need that. I couldn’t be
soulmated to someone as analytical and restrained as I am myself. It wouldn’t
work.”
“Nonsense. Mates should be similar to each other, or they will not produce
strong hatchlings.”
Tom laughed softly. “That is not a concern for him and me, Nagini.”
“It could be.”

Tom shrugged and dismissed the notion, Nagini curling up on his feet so that
she could better rest herself in front of the fire. Tom, in the meantime, stared
into the flames and felt a smile curl up the corner of his mouth.

He didn’t enjoy causing Harry pain. But it was good that Harry understood the
truth, and beyond good that he had impressed the Wizengamot, as Tom knew
enough of the pure-bloods to realize that he had.

They still had plenty of compromises to make. And Harry would probably need
to retreat and accept the company of people more like-minded to him than Tom
was, which suited Tom. His soulmate should have everything he needed.

Tom would wait. With the immortality that he was absolutely certain he and
Harry could achieve together, everything was within his reach, as well.

And the indifference to so many others that he knew Harry found disgusting…

Well. Sooner or later, Harry would come to see that he could steer and shape
Tom’s actions into being more like those of a “good” person, a benevolent
politician, precisely because Tom didn’t care about holding on to a certain set of
principles. Tom could be what Harry required of him.

Not in everything. But in the most important ways.

Just as Harry, in the most important aspects, was what Tom would always
require.

Chapter 17: Truths

Chapter Text

“I just don’t know what to do with him.”

Lily leaned in and kissed her son’s forehead, over the old lightning-bolt scar
that he had received falling off his broom. “I know. But I think that he’s
probably thinking something similar.”

“He isn’t. He just sits there and feels calm when I’m telling him that I think he’s
immoral.”

“He should be down on his knees thanking every god that ever existed for the
fact that you were willing to give him a chance,” James said from the other side
of the dining room table. Lily frowned at him, but James ignored her. “I don’t
know why you decided to give him that chance, frankly, Harry.”

“And you wouldn’t have given Mum a chance if it turned out that she was a
Dark witch?”

James paused. Lily nodded. That was one of the problems her husband was
having, one that she understood herself, and could only avoid by constant
reminders to herself that she had left the Order. They had been so used to
thinking that Harry’s bond with Tom Riddle was somehow uniquely evil that
they also kept forgetting it was a soulmate bond, and subject to the same kind of
rules that governed others.

“I would have,” James said finally, reluctantly. “But if she was passing
legislation against Muggleborns, I would have—”

“Do tell me,” Lily said. “I’m fascinated to hear it.” And she really was, given
James’s assurances to her that he would have stayed by her side if she believed
something that was repugnant to him.

James breathed out slowly. “I would have tried to change your mind.”

“Which you couldn’t have if you simply fled and left me behind.”

James sighed. “Fine. But that doesn’t tell Harry how he’s going to change the
bastard’s mind when he doesn’t even seem dismayed by the fact that Harry’s
upset.”

Harry had leaned back in his chair while they argued, and he spent a moment
toying with the glass of butterbeer that Lily had given him the instant he came
into the kitchen. He glanced around, as if looking for something, and then
cleared his throat. “Is Sirius here?”

Lily nodded. Sirius might be the best one to talk to Harry, anyway. He hadn’t
grown up knowing that his soulmate was someone he couldn’t have, but he did
have a rejected soul-bond. “Yes, taking a nap. Do you want to talk to him?”

“Yeah. There are—there’s something I thought of that isn’t directly related to

Tom’s horrible beliefs, and I want to talk to him about it.”

“I’m right here, kiddo.” Sirius stumbled out of the bedroom, his eyes drooping.
He rubbed his face, and yawned loudly, and dropped into the chair across from
Harry. “What do you want to know?”

Harry nibbled his lip and looked at Lily and James. Lily stood up and leaned
over to kiss Harry’s forehead again.

“We’ll go work on that research I’m doing,” she said. And she was finding
some fascinating, confusing things, especially in back issues of the Daily
Prophet, about what people thought they knew about Dumbledore and
Grindelwald. “Come on, James.”

James took a moment to squeeze Harry’s shoulder. “I do love you, son,” he

murmured. “I never want you to think I don’t.”

Harry squeezed James’s hand back and gave him a wan smile. “I know, Dad.
Love you.”

Sirius made a dramatic noise to himself, and Lily swatted him on the back of the
head without looking. Sirius then did melodramatic cringing and whimpers, and
Lily took James’s arm as they left the room, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Do you really think that he’s the best one to talk to Harry?” she whispered,
unable to contain herself when it was just the two of them. Sirius had done
something recently that had almost unwound Harry’s soulmate bond, after all.

“Did you notice that he woke immediately when Harry said he wanted to talk to
him?”

“So? I assumed he was listening in and came in when he heard Harry said that.”

“I felt a spark of magic, Lily-Bell. I think that Riddle’s tied Sirius to Harry
somehow, so he knows when Harry needs him.”
Lily narrowed her eyes. That was something she would have to speak with
Harry about. Speaking with Riddle about it would probably do no good, and she
was realistic enough to admit that. But Harry wouldn’t like a secret like that
kept from him.

“Can you let it go for right now?” James sounded a little nervous.

Lily nodded. “But it only makes it more imperative that we support Harry when
he wants to talk about things, and tell him the truth. Riddle shouldn’t be
sneaking around behind his back and casting magic on people without their
consent.”

James snorted. “Good luck getting him to change. He’s still a bastard, even if
he’s not exactly the kind Albus told us about.”

“I know.” Lily pushed a chunk of her hair behind her ear and turned to the table
spread with her research. The Daily Prophet hadn’t responded to her request for
old editions, but the Wizarding Archive Library (established by Riddle twenty
years ago) had been delighted to send her those old articles, as well as some
history books written by witches and wizards outside Britain’s borders.

It made part of Lily burn to know that she couldn’t trust the history books
written inside Britain. They would glorify Riddle, too, and wouldn’t say much
that was honest about him. But the same was true of Albus.

It bothered Lily that one of them might be as bad as the other, but she had little
proof of that yet on Albus’s side. More research was required.

Sirius considered Harry’s pale face, and wanted to sigh. He was sure that Harry
was still less balanced and alert than he should be, and probably clutching at his
emotional bond for reassurance more than normal, even though the only proof
Sirius had of that was that normal people didn’t worry this much about
disagreeing with their soulmate.

That damn spell.

Well, it had been cast and then reversed, and Harry was still willing to trust
Sirius close to him. Sirius didn’t see why he should brood on it more than the
victim of it did. He leaned close. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Did you hear me tell Mum and Dad that Tom is indifferent to people and
doesn’t hate them?”
“Yeah,” Sirius admitted. “It doesn’t surprise me. I grew up with a lot of people
who were the same way.”

“I thought your mum hated Muggleborns.”

Sirius snorted. “I’m not talking about her. My dad, for instance. He just didn’t
care about many things. He could have taken or left Muggleborns. But it was
convenient to go along with Mum’s hatred so that he had peace in his own
house. That was what he told me when I asked about it,” Sirius added, because
Harry’s eyes were wide.

“I’m sorry, Sirius.”

Sirius shrugged. He didn’t see what good sympathy would do now, so long after
the fact. “It’s all right, kid. So you’re saying that your…Tom is going along
with the pure-blood hatred because it benefits him.”

“Right. And he said that he lets them pass horrible legislation because then the
pure-bloods don’t push back on the more important legislation he wants to
pass.”

“Sounds like almost every politician I’ve ever heard of.”

Sirius had made the admission reluctantly, but Harry still stared at him
incredulously. “It’s horrible, Sirius! The point is that he shouldn’t think
legislation that’s going to hurt Muggleborns’ parents is less important than
whatever else he wants to pass!”

“I agree,” Sirius said, holding up his hands. “But I’m just telling you that I think
that’s the way a lot of politicians play the game. They compromise and get their
hands dirty in pursuit of goals they think are more important.”

“Tom is going to have to readjust his perception of what’s important.”

Sirius had to smile at the bright flash of Harry’s eyes. “Right on. Now, was that
what you wanted to talk to me specifically about?”

Harry calmed down in seconds, but maybe “calmed down” wasn’t really the
right word, Sirius saw, concerned. He linked his hands together and stared at
them as if they suddenly held all the secrets of the universe. Sirius tried to
remain quiet and let any thoughts Harry was having rise to the surface.
“I never really understood much about the structure of the Wizengamot,” Harry
began slowly. “I—well, my parents and Dumbledore thought that my studying
it might be dangerous. It could have brought me to Riddle’s attention if I
seemed to be interested in government. And it wasn’t like they thought I would
have to know it for a career.”

Sirius simply nodded, although part of him stewed at the idea that
studying history could be dangerous. It was starting to sound like Lily and
James, as much as he cared for them, hadn’t thought through their plans any
more than Albus had. If studying history was that dangerous, why let Harry
work in the Ministry at all?

“Tom told me today that about half the members are Ministry employees and
half the rest are pure-bloods who appoint each other. Is that true?”

Sirius shrugged. “More or less. There are certain rules and restrictions, like it’s
a lot easier for the Ministry employees to be removed for misconduct, and
someone who’s a half-blood or Muggleborn but close with a prominent pure-
blood can get chosen. And technically the person is supposed to be above fifty
years old if they’re appointed from within the Ministry. The Wizengamot is
supposedly a good idea because it’s the wisdom of our elders leading us, after
all. But there’s lots of people who ignore that rule, especially when we’ve had
some young Ministers. Can’t elect them and then keep them out of the
organization that’s supposed to help them run the country, after all.”

“Right.” Harry was looking ill. He took a deep breath and finally blurted out
what must have been the thing he was really worrying about. “Doesn’t that
mean that if Dumbledore’s plan to assassinate Tom worked, he would have
killed the only democratically elected member of the Wizengamot?”

Sirius paused, startled. He’d never thought about it that way before. A second
later, though, he found the loophole in Harry’s argument. “That’s not really
true, though. They would hold an election for a new Minister.”

“How soon?”

“What?”

“How soon would the next election be? Tom said that if he died, someone else
from the Wizengamot would take over as interim Minister, and probably a pure-
blood who’s been there a long time. How soon would the next election take
place? Could they hold it off for years?” Harry was leaning so far forwards that
he was almost falling off his chair.
“Of course not,” Sirius said, levels of detail he’d had to learn in his childhood
coming to his rescue. “Someone else would be in charge of the Wizengamot,
but only until the next...scheduled election...”

He hesitated. Harry was nodding. “So that means that if Tom was assassinated
right now, when he was reelected last year, it’d be another four years until a
new Minister was elected, right? Sirius, that’s awful. Think of what someone
like Lestrange could do if they were in charge of the Wizengamot for four
years.”

“Anyone has to be better than Riddle!”

“Including the man who decided to call me a Mudblood to my face and who I
think might be involved in actively trying to alienate Muggleborns from our
world? Really?”

“They can both be pretty horrendous,” Sirius defended, but Harry just stared at
him with flat eyes, and Sirius gave in with a sigh. “Yeah, well, Lestrange
sounds like he might be worse. This would be Laurentius Lestrange?”

“I think so. Didn’t hear anyone call him by his first name.” Harry sighed and
leaned back so that he could stare up at the ceiling. “And the thing is, Tom
isn’t innocent. But—I need you to tell me what Dumbledore’s plans were. He’d
assassinate Tom. But what would come after that? Would he try to influence the
Wizengamot to pass better laws? Does he have influence over someone in there
that I never knew about?”

Sirius slowly shook his head. “Most of them wouldn’t attack Albus, but they’re
pretty resistant to helping him. Bunch of snakes.”

Harry just shrugged. “So what would happen after he assassinated Tom? The
country gets worse?”

“If Riddle was dead, there wouldn’t be a war!”

“Wake up, Sirius!” Harry leaned forwards and waved his hands. “There’s no
war now! There’s hideous laws and Tom acting in a way he needs to seriously
change, but the Order is the only group that thinks there’s a war! It makes them
come across like lunatics!”
Sirius stared at Harry. “That’s—that’s not true. The reason that people don’t
fight beside us is because they don’t understand what Riddle is—”
Harry made a frustrated noise and buried his head in his hands. “That’s not true,
Sirius,” he said tiredly. “If all Dumbledore cared about was just getting allies
against Tom, he could have reached out to some of the pure-bloods in the
Wizengamot who hate him so much. They would probably have been willing to
work with Dumbledore as long as they thought Tom wouldn’t find out. But
Dumbledore never did, did he?”

“They wouldn’t have helped us,” Sirius said, but his scalp was starting to
prickle.

“Why not?”

“I mean—they wouldn’t have cared that Riddle was getting ready to slaughter a
bunch of Muggles and Muggleborns. They just wouldn’t.”

“Maybe not, but they could still have cooperated with the Order to boot Tom
out of power. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?” Harry bowed his
head. “But Dumbledore never worked with them, and he never seems to have
thought about what would happen once Tom was dead and someone like
Arcturus Black or Lestrange was in control of the Wizengamot. Sorry,” he
added, “I know Arcturus has to be your relative, but I didn’t like the way he
acted today.”

“Can’t stand the old idiot myself,” Sirius said, and made Harry smile tiredly.
“But you’re acting as though Albus couldn’t have planned past this. I think he
probably had some plan neither of us knows.”

“Like what? And why would he keep it from you?”

“I mean—he has to know that I’m impulsive, that I make mistakes, like the way
I cast that spell on you.”

Sirius trailed off. Harry sighed. “If he’d thought that was a bad idea, he would
have told you so. What do you really think, Sirius?”

It wasn’t a complete surprise when Sirius felt a firm pull around his neck as
though he was wearing some sort of wire collar with a leash on it—a spell his
parents had also used on him when he was a child to prevent him from lying.
Not a complete surprise, but still one Sirius wanted to kill Riddle for.

He gritted his teeth and said, “He’s got me under a spell to tell you the truth.”

Harry bowed his head. Then he asked, “Do you want to stop talking, then?”
Sirius shook his head, still gritting his teeth. Riddle had told him that he would
be speaking the truth to Harry if he stayed. Sirius simply hadn’t expected the git
to be so literal about it. “No,” he managed to say, and then the truth tumbled
out. “I think Albus got obsessed and thought removing Riddle would solve all
the problems. I think he isn’t thinking beyond that at this point.”

Harry nodded slowly. “And that would make sense out of the way he decided to
take risks that could end up costing a bunch of innocent people their lives, too.
He just had to get rid of Tom, and he started calling them war casualties when
even he had to know that would sound horrible. He’s blinded by his obsession.”

Sirius breathed out. “Yeah, I think so.” To his relief, the spell didn’t sting him
for saying that. Sirius slumped back and stared at the ceiling. “Something
bothers me, though.”

“What?”

“Albus was obsessed with keeping Riddle away from you and killing Riddle.
Why didn’t he do something as drastic as the assassination attempt a long time
ago? For that matter—forgive me, Harry—why didn’t he kill you when you
were born with Riddle’s mark?”

“He didn’t want to alienate my mum and dad, maybe?”

“Albus would always put the greater good over losing a few followers,” Sirius
said listlessly. So not even Harry thought it was because Albus had cared for
him. Well. “No, there’s something else going on here. I don’t know what it is,
though.”

Harry gave him a tentative smile. “Well, Mum is doing research on it. You
know that no one can dig as deep as she can. I hope she’ll find something out
and maybe we can convince Dumbledore to leave us in peace.”

Sirius smiled and made lighthearted jokes. To his relief, the truth spell didn’t
affect him unless someone asked him a direct question. He could keep
concealed his conviction that someone as obsessed as Albus was with this
particular goal wasn’t going to leave anyone in peace.

“But I don’t understand why Sirius doesn’t come back.”

Molly had made a promise to herself that if she heard her future daughter-in-law
say that one more time, she was going to speak up. And now Hermione was
sitting on the other side of the small house Molly and Arthur had built in
memory of the Burrow in their refuge world, and Ron was on a mission, and
Arthur had gone off to tinker with some Muggle artifacts he’d rescued the last
time he was in England, and it was just the two of them.

It didn’t mean things were perfect. But Molly had long since accepted that they
didn’t live in a perfect world.

“If you truly don’t understand that, my girl, you’re not the intellectual I thought
you were.”

Hermione blinked at her with wide eyes. Molly smiled, and didn’t care if it
looked a little mean. She adored Hermione, and not just because the girl was
Ron’s soulmate. She’d been his good friend before then, and a good friend to
the twins and Ginny. But she did have a tendency to disregard anyone who
wasn’t like her, and that had unfortunately included a tendency to say careless
things about Molly because she stayed home and took care of her children.

“What do you mean by that, though? It doesn’t make tactical sense for Sirius to
stay. He failed to cast the spell on Harry, or it failed when he did, and he
admitted in his letter that he doesn’t think he can persuade Harry to leave
Riddle. So why doesn’t he come back?”

“He also said in his letter that Riddle had him under a vow and probably several
spells to ensure he stayed as a kind of court jester.” That wasn’t what Sirius’s
actual letter had said in so many words, of course, but Molly was enough of a
mother to read between the lines, the way she’d had to do with so many of the
twins’ letters home from Hogwarts. “So why would you be puzzled that he
stayed?”

“I would have run away if it was me. I wouldn’t let a silly vow stop me.”

“A vow can actually bind your magic,” Molly said, as gently as possible. “It can
force you to remain where you were.”

“Then I wouldn’t make the vow.”

“If the alternative to that was Riddle killing him, I can see why Sirius made it.”

Hermione frowned slowly. “So—you don’t actually think our cause is worth
dying for?”
Molly sighed and put down the pan she had been casting cleaning charms on. It
was still good enough if it was just cleaned from Arthur’s last attempt to make
scrambled eggs in it, and she didn’t like the thought of taking another one from
Muggles who might have less than they did.

“Hermione, you’re young,” she said, and ignored the speechless outrage that
filled Hermione’s eyes. “You might think that you can do anything, resist
anything, die for anything because you haven’t been put to the test. But Sirius
has come near dying any number of times. Do you really think the problem is
that he’s a coward? Or me?”

“No,” Hermione said, sounding sheepish. “But Ron and I were willing to die
when we went into the Department of Mysteries! I just think Sirius should have
been, too.”

Molly shook her head. Neither Ron nor Albus had told her about that mission in
advance, probably to avoid the words they knew would be hurled at their heads.
It just ensured they got them afterwards. “So he would have died as he was
trying to come back to us. And for what? He wouldn’t have made it back. What
point would that prove? A silly heroic death?”

“If he’d stood firm enough, Riddle wouldn’t have tried to bind him with the
vow, and he could have come back.”

Molly lifted her eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you understood that little about the
way Tom Riddle works.”
“What?” Hermione folded her arms. “I know what he believes. I know the way
he thinks. I’ve spent years studying the way he votes in the Wizengamot and the
laws that people think someone else started but really have his authorship all
over them! I know him!”

“And you think he would bluff?” Molly asked softly. “Or let his bluff be
called?”

Hermione blinked. “You think he would have killed Sirius.”

“Exactly.”

“But that would have made Harry unhappy.”

Molly waited a moment for Hermione to realize the contradiction at the heart of
what she’d said, but Hermione only continued to wait in turn, so she said,
“Riddle is a heartless monster. I think most of us here would agree. So why
would he let Harry’s happiness or unhappiness stop him?”

Hermione hesitated a long time. Then she said, “Well, he would want to keep
Harry’s good opinion so he could make Harry fall in love with him and double
his power…”

“Enough to let someone who was threatening to run back to the Order of the
Phoenix simply do it, without binding him with a vow?”

Hermione reluctantly shook her head. “No. Riddle would probably think that he
could eventually overcome Harry’s pain at that and manipulate him into falling
in love with him anyway.”

Molly gave her a sad smile. “Exactly. I think all of us are going to have to
change our tactics if we actually want to survive and achieve what we’ve been
fighting for. The ones we’ve used haven’t worked so far.”

“Ron and I destroyed important research in the Department of Mysteries!”

“Did Riddle change his behavior publicly because of that at all?”

Hermione hesitated a moment too long. Molly reached out and squeezed her
hand.

“I think this is a war in a way,” Molly said. Poor Hermione looked as if she had
been standing on an ice floe that was melting out from under her suddenly.
“Maybe not the kind that Albus thought it was, but we can’t let Riddle pass
whatever laws he wants and discriminate against Muggleborns. The problem is
that committing random crimes and raids and getting ourselves exiled hasn’t
changed anything. We have to do something else.”

“We can’t compromise with him!”

“Not about something like the lives and safety of Muggleborns,” Molly said,
and Hermione settled back again, perhaps because she had heard the conviction
in her voice. “But we can oppose him politically instead of with guerilla
tactics.”

“Opposing him politically won’t do anything.”

“Why not?”
“Professor Dumbledore has done it all along, and nothing has changed.”

“He’s made his principles known,” Molly agreed. “But he hasn’t tried to get
himself appointed to the Wizengamot, even though at one point several of his
allies offered him the position of Chief Warlock. He hasn’t tried to put up
another candidate for Minister, or even offered that much support to the people
who were willing to run against Riddle. Just trying to kill Riddle or destroy his
support base isn’t going to work.”

Hermione chewed her lip hard. “If Professor Dumbledore didn’t do that, there
must be a reason he didn’t. Something important that we don’t know about.”

“Why don’t you ask him about it, dear?” Molly suggested. “I’ve tried, but he
hasn’t answered me when I asked the question.”

“I will. He listens to me.”

Molly nodded. It was possible that Albus would listen to Hermione. He valued
her and Ron second in the Order only next to Harry, Molly had once thought.

As she watched Hermione march firmly in the direction of Albus’s tent, Molly
wondered whether that impression was still true—and whether Albus had
valued most the youngsters he could manipulate.

“I have to talk to you.”

Tom nodded and moved aside so that Harry could fall into step beside him in
Diagon Alley. The Aurors who had been following him shifted without
grumbling to extend their protection over Harry as well. Tom smiled.
They could learn.

“As you will, Harry,” Tom said. “What do you want to begin with?”

Harry tilted his chin up to hold Tom’s gaze. Tom took the chance to watch the
way that the brilliant emerald shade of his eyes shifted and darkened. Merlin, he
loved the way Harry looked when his eyes were alive.

Even if what they were currently alive with was angry determination.
“Did you ever think about the fact that your future soulmate might be
Muggleborn and that your laws could affect them in a devastating way?” Harry
asked.

Tom paused. “That’s an intriguing question.”

“I’m wise to that trick of avoiding an answer. An answer, Riddle.” Harry came

as close as he probably could to hissing Parseltongue words.

“I only meant what I said,” Tom continued mildly, and stepped around a yellow
stain in the middle of the cobbles that could have been a spilled potion. He
wasn’t about to take the chance. “It’s an intriguing question because I never
pictured my soulmate as someone who would care about that.”

Harry thrummed with indignation, actually looking as if it might lift him off his

toes. “Riddle—”

Tom stopped dead and stared at him. Harry paused, then seemed to realize what
he’d done wrong, and grimaced. “Tom,” he continued, while the emotional
bond flowered around them with feelings as dark as bruises. “Now you know
you have one.”

“Yes, but I thought anyone who was my soulmate would either be almost
exactly like me, or holding back because they were wary of my power,” Tom
said, with a shrug. “I didn’t picture anyone who had been raised to ethically
oppose me.”

Harry snorted. “Now you know. What are you going to do about it?”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Tom smiled a little as he saw a flash of
too-bright blonde hair from the fascinated crowd that was gathering around
them. Trust Skeeter to be nearby, he thought. Tom had come to Diagon Alley to
visit one of the small schools that were opening to serve half-blood children
who had been rejected by their Muggle parent, forcing the witch or wizard in
the marriage to file for divorce. It was good public relations to come to the
rescue of toiling single parents, and Tom had carefully spread around word of
exactly where he would be.

But arguing with Harry was more fascinating than a school visit any day, and
could also be spun in any number of directions provided that Tom was careful
in how he handled it.
“I want you to make up your own mind,” Harry growled. His magic flexed
around him, a swaying serpent. Tom raised his own to match it, and heard more
than one nervous gasp.

That was all right. He provoked some fear simply by virtue of his office and his
immense magical strength. If their combined power meant that some people
would hesitate to attack Harry, Tom was all for it.

“But you know that if I do, I will simply continue my course,” Tom said in the
same mild voice. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m doing what’s best to protect our
world.”

“Erasing human minds is not ethical.”

“The Minister erased someone’s mind?” called an alarmed voice from the
crowd.

Harry turned in its direction, so engrossed in the question that he didn’t seem to
notice the camera flashes that were exploding around them. “He voted for the
law that will erase the minds of Muggle parents if they have a magical child and
happen to talk about magic to someone who doesn’t already know.”

“Oh, Muggles,” said the same voice.

Harry’s eyes widened, and he stared into the crowd as if he couldn’t believe that
someone would care so little about fellow human beings. And Tom had no
doubt that Harry did see Muggles as fellow human beings, one of the few
wizards Tom had ever met who did.

That only made Tom want to guard him and cherish him more.

Before Harry could say the words that were clearly brewing on his tongue, a
flicker of green magic streaked towards him from the far corner of the crowd.
Tom was moving even before he realized that the color was more a deep jade
than the sickly green of the Killing Curse, but it turned out he didn’t need to.

Harry drew instinctively on their joined magic and lifted a shimmering, multi-
layered shield of blue and white, one that reared above Diagon Alley like a
curving wave. The curse slammed into it and ate through one of the layers, but
dissolved before it could touch the others.

“Who was that?” Tom said in an undertone to the nearest Auror. She saluted
and turned away to bark orders at the others, sending them into motion.
“No need, Mr. Riddle,” drawled the familiar voice. “I am merely coming to
make sure that Mr. Potter realizes our duel was delayed, not cancelled.” And
Laurentius Lestrange sauntered through a rapidly-widening corridor to stand in
front of them. He wore dark dragonhide robes and an arrogant smile.

But Tom had known the man for decades, and he could easily make out the
slightly too-wide eyes and the bobbing motion in his throat. Lestrange hadn’t
expected Harry to resist the curse so handily, or at all.

“An interesting way to begin a duel, Mr. Lestrange,” Harry said. “Throwing a
curse that could have destroyed your opponent or even someone innocent in the
way without fanfare or a formal challenge? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

His voice snapped out on the last word, suddenly a roar that no one in the Alley
would have trouble hearing, and the wave-like shield crashed into massive
shards of magic raining down around Harry. In seconds he was dressed in
glittering weaves of blue light that Tom knew would rival Lestrange’s
dragonhide robes as a protective measure, and his wand was in his hand. Harry
stepped forwards, his power expanding and unfolding around him, constantly
growing long past the point where most wizards would be exhausted.

Look at him, Tom thought, not moving to defend his soulmate. He was perfectly
safe, and had to show what he could do, or the challenges to duels would only
keep on coming.

“Well?” Harry asked, lifting his wand. “Aren’t you going to attack me now,
Lestrange? Or isn’t even footing to your liking?’

“Are you challenging my honor?”

“No, I’m saying that you don’t have any.”

Tom winced in silence to himself, but Lestrange was already screaming and
charging like a maddened dragon. Harry spun on one heel as yet another streak
of green magic tumbled towards him, and spat a single word that Tom couldn’t
make out through Lestrange’s screaming and the rush of blood in his own ears.

The ground beneath Lestrange cracked open, and Tom stared. Was Harry going
to make him simply fall into a pit? That seemed a mild revenge for the kind of
insult he had presented—

But then black hands reached up from beneath the cobbles, shining with lava at
the edges, and locked around Lestrange’s ankles. He screamed in pain, and Tom
saw the flesh of his feet begin to bubble a second before the smell of roasting
flesh reached his nostrils. Lestrange crumpled and tried to turn his wand on the
hands holding him, but one of them snatched it and flicked it contemptuously
away. Tom saw the end of the wooden handle burning. He felt a twitch of a
smile cross his face at the same time. If Lestrange ever got any use out of that
wand again, it would be a miracle.

“Please, please, stop!” Lestrange stretched out his hands towards Harry, who
was walking towards him clad in light. “I surrender, just—let me live!”

Harry stopped in front of him and stared down. “I wonder why I should,” he
whispered. “You didn’t care about killing me outside the confines of the formal
duel, or killing anyone else. Why should I?”

Lestrange sobbed, but didn’t answer. He probably knew it wouldn’t do any

good. Harry sighed, and different expressions chased themselves over his face
for a second before he lifted one hand in front of him.

“I couldn’t sleep tonight if I killed you,” he said, and folded his fingers inwards
to his palm.

I wouldn’t have a problem, Tom admitted to himself, but he forced his muscles

still and only watched as Harry lifted Lestrange out of the crack, sent the hands
back into the small ravine he had opened, and then closed the gap in the cobbles
again. He didn’t bother healing the burns on Lestrange’s ankles, Tom was
relieved to see. Lestrange was exactly the sort who would take that as an
admission of weakness and a reason to renew the challenge sometime in the
future.

Although…

Tom looked at the way Lestrange was shuddering, curled in on himself, and had
to admit that Harry might have been successful in finally teaching the arrogant
bastard otherwise.

“Mr. Potter!”

The cameras flashed and clicked, and Harry looked up just in time to look at
Skeeter forcing her way through the crowd. Tom saw his shoulders hunch,
while the emotional bond grew so taut that it would have hurt for either of them
to move apart from each other. It was obvious that Harry’d like to use their
conjoined magic to simply vanish.
But he faced Skeeter and prepared to answer her questions with a grim little
smile. He knew as well as Tom did, said that smile, that he was past the point of
being able to retreat.

Tom stepped forwards and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and Harry
flashed him a startled glance before he nodded and relaxed.

They were together, Tom thought as he gently wrapped their magic back around
both of them and soothed the tension thrumming through Harry. No reason they
had to suffer alone.

And he was the luckiest man in the wizarding world.

The next day, the newspapers bore on the front page a picture of Harry facing
the photographer with his eyes still brilliant with power, and Tom behind him,
his eyes bright with adoration.

Chapter 18: Intimacies

Chapter Text

Harry shut his eyes as he heard Tom enter the flat after him. At least he knew
that Sirius and his parents had both planned to be elsewhere; Sirius was at the
Ministry answering all sorts of questions about his legal status, and James had
gone with him to support him. Lily was at the Archive, doing some more
research.

“Tom, I don’t really want to talk right now,” he whispered. “Or have an ethical
argument, or something like that.” He didn’t even want to continue the
conversation they’d been having in Diagon Alley when Lestrange had
interrupted. The duel using both their magic had drained and shaken Harry in a
way he hadn’t expected.

It was as if it had deepened the emotional bond, or the magic had leaked into the
bond and heightened it. Tom’s admiration and lust had filled Harry to the point
where he knew it would be easy to mistake for love if he had let himself. And
while so much else the Order had told Harry about Tom had been lies, he didn’t
yet have proof that he could love.

“I wasn’t going to talk, Harry, except to ask your permission.”

Harry turned with a frown. “Permission for—”

Tom leaned in and kissed him firmly. Harry gasped and kept on gasping, as
Tom’s tongue slipped into his mouth and he got the most thorough kiss of his
life. Harry was dimly aware that Tom had him pushed up against the doorframe
into the drawing room and that his hands were sunk into Harry’s hair, but only
dimly.

The kiss was so good that Harry’s head filled with light and his heart pounded
madly. He had no idea where his hands were. He kissed back, and let the heat
fill him and his erection swell.

Tom reached down and touched him, gently. His fingers smoothed back and
forth, and he slowly pulled away from the kiss to murmur, “Will you let me?”

Harry paused, but the emotional bond and the magic surged around him and told
him that Tom was telling the truth. His admiration was burning as bright as a
bonfire, and the lust was there but restrained.

Harry’s wasn’t.

Harry groaned shakily and opened his legs. “Tom, I’ve never—I can’t promise
I’ll be good at—”

“I know, darling, and I’m beyond pleased that you waited for me,” Tom hissed
in Parseltongue. Harry shuddered as the words dug into him and seemed to drag
more heat to the surface of his skin. Tom smiled at him and added, “You like
that? I’ll talk to you in Parseltongue as long as I can, then.”

“What do you mean? What are you going to do—”

Never removing his eyes from Harry’s face, one hand remaining on his cock,
Tom sank to his knees.

Harry’s breathing picked up, and he reached out and gripped Tom’s hair before
he thought about it. Tom tilted his head without moving it from his grasp and
murmured, “I’m also delighted that you can be possessive, too.”
A strange, feral mood was overcoming Harry, pouring through the emotional
bond like a heavy waterfall. He dragged Tom forwards, and Tom laughed and
gently mouthed his cock through the cloth of his trousers before saying, “It’ll be
easier for both of us if you take your clothes off.”
Harry swallowed and nodded, sweeping a hand down his body. His trousers
folded back as if slit, and his pants did the same thing, and Tom’s eyes dilated at
the same moment as the emotional bond leaped around them.
“Mine forever,” Tom said, and then locked his mouth furiously around Harry’s
erection. Harry cried out without meaning to, thrusting forwards. Tom rode it
without choking.
For a moment, the knowledge of the reason why cut through Harry’s
haze. Tom hadn’t waited for him. He’d been with others. He’d practiced on
them to get as good at this as he was right now—
Tom’s magic tightened around him in a whole-body caress, and Tom licked up
and down his shaft without letting go. Harry relaxed except for the tightened
muscles in his groin and legs, understanding the message. The others had only
been practice. Tom had done it to make this good for him.

And because Harry understood that, he let go of some of his hard-won control.

He grabbed Tom’s temples and tugged him closer. Tom’s mouth widened in
what Harry knew had to be a smug smile around him, and then he began to suck
in so much earnest that Harry rose up on his toes.

Yes. Yes. This is what I want.

Frustration and longing pulsed through him, and Harry began to thrust, shutting
his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see Tom’s dark ones looking up at him.
Right now, he couldn’t take that. He gasped and gripped hair and felt smooth
skin slip under his fingers. Tom’s hands shifted, and he nearly lost control of
himself.

Tom didn’t say anything, but then, he hardly could with his tongue and lips so
busy. Instead, his fingers slipped gently through the cloth that still clung to
Harry’s hips, and up to his bollocks, tugging on them. Harry growled his
approval, widening his stance, and hissed when Tom’s fingers gently brushed
against his arse.

He’d wanted this. He’d stared at other blokes in school and resented the fact
that he would never have this.
It burst in his head like a star, the sudden realization that he could have this. He
could have all the sex with his soulmate that he wanted. His soulmate wanted to
give him this, proclaimed their tensely singing bond. Harry could thrust as hard
as he wanted and come as often as he wanted, and it would only make Tom like
it all the better.

Harry bent forwards, letting Tom have more access to his arse but forcing him
to move so that he could keep Harry’s cock in his mouth, and breathed out, “I
want you to make me come as hard as you can, and I want to do it in your
mouth.”
*

Tom wanted Harry like physical pain.

But he held off, because that was also what he wanted to do, and Harry—Harry
was putting his own pleasure first, finally.
Tom bobbed his head to show he understood and then gave a single long,
violent suck that he’d learned from a Muggleborn wizard who’d been talented at
little else. Harry shouted once, and then settled into a steady, shallow pushing.
Tom would have protested, but the lazy look on Harry’s face said that this was
what he wanted to do right now.

Tom had never seen him like this, and the sight pulled him, making his magic
spiral out of his body. Harry’s eyes were slightly glazed, but utterly focused on
him. His lips were parted, the air rasping in and out of them, and he closed his
hands in Tom’s hair as if he had forgotten it might be attached to his head.

His desire soared through their bond and made its own spiraling dance, and
Tom threw himself into that and let himself be utterly consumed.

Everything was for Harry right now. Tom’s mouth—for his pleasure. Tom’s
probing fingers—to slide gently along the crease of his arse and show him the
thin, thin line between a flickering flame of touch and sensation intense enough
to hurt. Tom’s hair—for his grip. And Harry was warm and thick in his mouth,
thickening steadily as Tom blew him, and it was everything he wanted right
now.

Harry came without warning, but Tom took enough of one from the way he
abruptly stopped thrusting and all his muscles tensed. He swallowed, while
Harry’s hands curled down hard enough to resemble iron bracelets. Tom
swallowed one more time and slid back, catching Harry as he slid downwards in
turn. Harry was breathing fast enough that Tom would have been concerned
without the bond to tell him that Harry was more content than he’d ever been in
his life.

“Welcome back, love,” Tom murmured when Harry’s eyes finally fluttered
open with something other than bliss in them.

Harry gave him a satisfied, languid smile that would have started wars for his
hand if he’d been born without a soul-mark. Tom knew pure-bloods who would
consider it even knowing who he was bound to. But he had caused that smile,
and no one else could, and this was the first time Harry had looked like that.
He licked his lips, and Harry flushed an abrupt, brilliant rose. The bond grew
hesitant. “Do you—do you want me to do that to you?” Harry said in a voice
husky enough to make it sound like he’d already sucked Tom off. “I know that
I’m not going to be as good at it as you are.”

“I know that, and I wouldn’t expect you to be good at it,” Tom murmured,
taking Harry’s hand and moving it gently downwards. “The reason why you
aren’t is more than acceptable.” Harry flushed a harder red, and the bond sang a
high startled note. “For now, what you did in the past for me is what I want.”

Harry’s hand began to move, and Tom tilted back his head and bucked into the
pleasure, intertwining himself even more with the emotional bond and the
magic than with the physical sensations. When he came, it was like a wall
falling on his head. He shuddered and turned to bury his face in Harry’s
shoulder, something he had never done.

They fell asleep on the floor, and there was no part of Tom that wasn’t happy.

“You got into a duel with Lestrange in the middle of Diagon Alley?”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

Lily sighed as she examined her son and his mulish expression, somewhat
marred by the red flush to his cheeks. Yes, she knew that. Of course Harry
wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea to duel with innocents around, or
without a formal ring and all the rest. James had been careful to teach him the
rules of dueling, as separate from battle; duels were primarily a pure-blood
institution, and Harry was risking less respect from others because of his blood
status if he portrayed anything at all except perfection there.

But she still reached across the dining room table and clenched his hand tight.
“Can you promise me that you won’t do it again?”

“Can you promise that some hot-headed idiot isn’t going to attack me in Diagon
Alley again under the pretense of a duel?”

Lily sighed and sat back. No, she couldn’t. But she did have something to say,
something that hadn’t occurred to her before. “Are you sure that you want the
part of being the Minister’s soulmate in such a public way? No one would have
bothered you like this before when you were posing as a minor Ministry
flunky.”
Harry paused, a frown darting across his face. Lily held her breath. There was a
depth of thought in his eyes that promised he wasn’t going to just respond with
a banal reassurance, and an expression in them that she had never seen before.

“When I was posing,” Harry repeated softly. “That’s the trouble, Mum. I know
why you were trying to keep me safe, I know why you did it and chose the
methods you used, but it was always a lie. It meant I even had to keep secrets
from you and Dad and Professor Dumbledore.” His voice roughened for a
moment on that last name, but he kept right on. “I don’t want to lie anymore.
I can’t lie anymore. I announced the truth about me to too many people with my
actions and in those articles, and so did Tom. And what are we going to
do? Obliviate anyone who saw me duel Lestrange yesterday? We can’t.”

Lily tapped her fingers on the table. “You’re saying that people are going to
court you for being a powerful wizard even if you distance yourself from Riddle
and decide that you don’t want to accept your place as his soulmate.”

“Something I will not allow.”

Lily jumped. She had come to think of the flat Riddle had given Harry as “their”
place, since she and James had a bedroom and Riddle maintained his own
house, and had forgotten he could bypass the wards. But she turned around
determined to meet Riddle’s eyes and justify herself if she had to.

He gave her a polite little smile that was more chilling than a shout, and came
over to put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Lily didn’t think it was her
imagination that a small patch of air near his shoulder had darkened and formed
a red-eyed serpent that was watching her.

“Tom, don’t threaten my parents,” Harry said, without even turning to face his
soulmate. But Lily knew it wasn’t her imagination that Harry had leaned back
towards him and that some of the tension had dissipated from his body with the
rush of his breath.

“I’m not threatening them, darling,” Riddle said. “I’m only telling them the
truth.”

Harry grunted and turned his head a little. “What did you mean, exactly? You’re
not going to allow me to distance myself from you or you’re not going to allow
people to court me? And don’t I get a choice in this?”
“Of course.” Riddle bent over to kiss the nape of Harry’s neck, but his eyes
never left Lily’s. “If you want to make a choice that leads to the streets running
with blood, you’re of course free to.”

Lily swallowed. She wondered if Harry heard the tone as lightly teasing, as soft
as any ordinary person’s. Lily didn’t. She couldn’t, not gazing into those red-
tinged eyes and seeing Riddle’s hands flex as if he was about to grab hold of
Harry’s shoulders and carry him off like a dragon.

“I don’t want to,” Harry said quietly. “But if we do find out that we’re
incompatible, Tom, I want you to let me go.” He turned around in the chair
while Riddle was still opening his mouth to reply. “For your own sake. You
deserve to find a partner who truly complements you, instead of someone who
can only be a hindrance.”

“Look me in the eyes and tell me that that’s what you believe you’re going to
turn out to be.”

Lily had to turn her head away, her face burning, as Harry arched his neck back
and met Riddle’s gaze. She couldn’t feel their emotional bond or their magic
except as a distant swirling on the edge of her senses, but what she could feel
was almost unbearably intimate.

“No,” Harry said finally. “I wouldn’t turn out to be that.”

“We may disagree on many things,” Riddle said, his voice now having no tone
Lily had ever heard in it before. “We may need to talk and argue them through.
But that’s not the same as leaving or threatening to leave. I need you to know
that, Harry.”

Harry reached out and touched something that Lily couldn’t see because she
was still looking aside. Maybe the side of Riddle’s neck, maybe his hand. “I
know. I’m sorry. I think I have…exaggerated ideas of how easy and right it
would be for someone to leave me.”

“I know. And I know exactly who to blame for it.”

“Stop looking at Mum like that.”

Lily turned back to face Riddle’s eyes and the silent, deadly stare. She couldn’t
deny her fear, but neither was she a coward who would run from it or leave her
only child unprotected in the face of it. “Are you going to attack me, Minister
Riddle? Most of the time, I would consider such a look a threat.”
Riddle blinked, then laughed, rapidly and silently. “I enjoy your spirit, Mrs.
Potter. Can I speak to you in private?”

“You’re not going to kill my mother.”

“Of course not, darling,” Riddle said, and although Lily strained her hearing to
search his voice for the sound of a lie, she heard nothing but soft, sincere
affection. “There’s simply one aspect of the situation that we’re both aware of,
but she’s not. I want to explain it to her.”

Lily nodded before Harry could say anything. “Yes, I want to hear it.”

“As long as it’s not anything about our…”

Riddle laughed. “Of course not.” And he traced his fingers for a second over
Harry’s cheekbone. Lily blinked. It reminded her of something, but she wasn’t
sure what.

Then she knew. It reminded her of the half-silent, half-verbal conversations she
could have with James, the ones that were only possible because they knew
each other so well that they could anticipate what the other one was going to
say.

Lily felt her cheeks flush as she stood. She didn’t want to think too closely
about how Minister Riddle and her son could have formed that part of their
connection.

But she walked into the drawing room, and turned around as Riddle shut the
door behind them. She did have to stiffen both her shoulders and her legs when
he turned to face her, and she saw the wild flare in his eyes.

“Do you know why Harry is so convinced that I would simply leave him? That
he is a burden, a hindrance?”

Riddle stood absolutely still, but it didn’t matter. Lily could feel that same
wildness in him, the kind a tiger would have expressed by pacing around its
cage. She knew he was ten times more dangerous than that tiger. “Yes,” she
replied. “Because we told him that his soul-mark was a shameful thing and he
would never be able to be with his soulmate. I know that. I’m sorry for it. I’m
working every day to make it up to him.”
“Not only that.” Riddle gave her a smile that should have been framed with
fangs; it nearly looked wrong without it. “But also because his parents and
godfather abandoned him for a decade.”

Lily stared at him and felt for a second as if she was going to faint. Then she
stood straight. “Harry knows why we did that.”

“Of course we are. My soulmate is a man of compassion and understanding, for

which I must be grateful. But it has contributed to this complex of his that he
would be easily abandoned. Why did you not take him with you when you ran?”
“How could we? It would have meant disrupting his education at Hogwarts and
making him a fugitive when he was fifteen years old!”

“Of course it would have. But you don’t know Harry at all if you think that
mattered to him, compared to being with you.”

Lily reminded herself that Riddle wasn’t a parent and wouldn’t understand the
deep, defensive tide of reaction moving through her. “And parents get to make
the decisions for their children, most of the time. We had to lead a running life
from that day forwards. A limited life. It wasn’t what we wanted for him.”

“Interesting,” Riddle said, studying her.

“What?”

“When did what Harry wanted come into it?” Riddle asked, in the kind of
detached tone Lily was more used to hearing Healers adopt. “Or did it never?
Did only making decisions for him and telling him to hide himself and running
away from him and ensuring that you could only meet with him sometimes
come into it?”

“You don’t understand.”

“No. But I am willing to give you the chance to explain.” Riddle smiled, and
this time I was an emptier and colder expression. “Because you’re special to my
soulmate. Otherwise, I would have killed you by now for damaging him.”

“We did not damage him!”

“Oh? Then you haven’t noticed the way he looks at you, as if you’re going to
disappear any second? You haven’t noticed that he’s at least as willing to
confide in me as you, despite the fact that he’s truly known me for only a few
weeks? You haven’t noticed that he seems to assume every person in his
vicinity is going to abandon him the second he does something that’s ‘difficult’
for him or demands attention?”
“We had to go!”

“Both of you? One of you couldn’t stay and take the punishment? Your
particular crime would have required three years in a non-Azkaban prison at
most. You would have been out in that time and there for him for the past six
years, not on the run.”

“James and I had to go together! Soulmates have to be together. It’s more

important than anything else—”

Lily stopped.

The room was full of Riddle’s laughter, gentle if you heard it at a distance.

“I know that you don’t see it this way,” he said. “But as far as I am concerned,
you put your cause before Harry at all times. That, and your soulmate bond.
While you continually told him that his own soulmate bond wasn’t special
enough to warrant even trying to get to know me, you chose your husband over
your son, and your war over him, and your loyalty to Dumbledore over him,
and everything over him!”

His voice had surged into a vicious whisper by the time he finished speaking,
not a shout but a rattling noise that seemed to fill every corner. Lily flinched,
but then held herself still. Riddle didn’t know the full context, she told herself
again.

“Why are you bringing this up?” she asked. “You know very well that you
would hurt Harry if you told him, and you’re not going to hurt me.”

“Because someone should have,” Riddle snapped. “And because if you make

another decision where you put the greater good of people you’ve never
even met over my soulmate’s while preserving your own precious bond and
individual good, then you should know I will destroy you.”

“You won’t hurt me.”

“Do you think I need to cause physical pain to destroy you?” Riddle asked.
“Your soul is bleeding right now because I told the truth. I can feel that much.”

“I’m not—affected as much as you thought I was,” Lily said. And she truly
believed that. She continued to study Riddle. “I won’t abandon my son again.”
“Unless you thought it was for his own good. After all, you’re still defending
that particular decision to me.”

“I know better than to think Albus Dumbledore infallible anymore.”

“There is a large difference between holding that belief and trusting Harry to
know what is best for him and make his own decisions.”

“And you think you do that?”

Riddle shrugged. “I tell him what I will and won’t do, what I’ll stand aside for
and what I won’t. At least Harry has the information to make his own decisions
and decide how he’s going to respond, not just be left behind when someone
disappears or be blindsided by the raids that the Order of the Phoenix made.”

He turned and departed the room before Lily could answer. She exhaled slowly
and stared after him.

She supposed, in a sense, that she should thank Riddle for looking after Harry.
It was true that she and James and Sirius hadn’t been there to do that for years.

On the other hand, she also wished, fervently, that Harry could have been paired
with someone less—intense.

“What did you want to talk to my mum about?”

“About the way that your parents left you behind when they chose to become
fugitives.”

Harry was on his feet before he even thought about it, his wand drawn. Tom
smiled, his magic spreading out to encompass the room, and briefly flaring as
though it was growing wings. Harry tried to ignore the sensation as he stalked
up and jabbed a finger into Tom’s chest.

“I don’t want you to get in the way of me developing my relationship with my

parents again,” he hissed.

“But that’s not what you’re angry about right at this moment. What are you
angry about, Harry?”
“How did you—how did you know I felt that way about my parents?” Harry
barely managed to stop his voice from shaking. “Did you read my mind?”

“Not at all.” Tom reached out and wrapped his hand around Harry’s wrist.
Harry watched him, ready to break free the second Tom started to pull him
forwards. This was too important to get distracted by the effect Tom’s touch had
on him. But Tom only stood there, arm at full extension, eyes brilliant. “It’s
there for everyone to see in the way you act as though anyone could leave you
behind, the hurt they inflicted on you.”

“I understand why they did it. They could hardly take a fifteen-year-old child
with them, and I—”

“Understanding is one thing, and feelings are another. What do you feel,

Harry?”

Harry swallowed, and felt as though his throat was being cut by knives. He
tugged his hand, and Tom let him go. Harry turned and paced around the dining
room table, staring out the window for a second. Tom remained still.

“As though they finally decided they could never trust me,” Harry admitted.
“As though everything was a test. They wanted me to stay at Hogwarts even
though I was less likely to come to your attention if I was hiding with them, and
it felt like they wanted to see if I would crumble and run to you. And the work
in the Ministry, the same thing. I made the suggestion that they let me work
there so I could feed them information, but I never expected them to take me
seriously. Then they did. I mean, Dumbledore was the one who approved the
idea, but my parents didn’t say anything against it.” He raked his fingers
through his hair. “Except, later, they did,” he added, trying to be fair. “They said
that what I was doing wasn’t worth the risk to my life and I should join them.”

“But they never tried seriously to discourage you from taking the Ministry job.”

Harry eyed him. “The way you would have.”

Tom simply smiled. “The situation would never have arisen.”

Harry decided not to think about that, and continued pacing in a slow circle
around the table, ignoring it when he came near Tom and both the heat of his
soulmate’s body and their burgeoning bond tugged on him. Tom just kept
watching him, with that obsessive devotion that Harry told himself he hated,
couldn’t get enough of in reality, and found so hard to admit that he might as
well not look at Tom while he thought about it.
“I wanted to go with them,” Harry finally whispered. “I sent them an owl the
night after they fled, asking them to meet me somewhere and let me come with
them.”

“What did they do?”

“My dad sent me a Patronus telling me not to owl them again, because the letter
might be intercepted.”

“Just that? Did he ever reply to your question about wanting to come with
them?”

Harry shrugged uncomfortably. “No. I suppose they had to think of their safety
first, and the safety of the other Order members, but—it was years before it
stopped hurting.”

Tom’s face was blank and smooth. Harry shook his head at once. “Tom, stop it.
You have no idea what it was like for them.”

“Perhaps not,” Tom said, although with harmonics in their bond that said he
doubted his own ignorance. “But I know exactly what it was like for you. Your
pain and loneliness were among the first things that drowned me when we
established the emotional bond, did you know that? Along with guilt because
you felt like you had failed.”

“I want you to promise me that you’ll never hurt my parents.”

“That vow has to be conditional, Harry. If they attack you, then I will return
blow for blow.”

Harry stared at him. “They never would. They love me.”

“Loving parents don’t run away and leave their child behind for nine years.
How many times did you see them between when they left you and when they
finally came back? Tell me the number of times,” he added, when Harry opened
his mouth. “Now how deep or rich any interaction was, I don’t care about that.
The number. Now.”

Harry hissed at him, which made Tom smile, but not stop waiting. Harry could
feel the incredible tug on his magic, and he wanted to curse at Tom. He could
keep silent, and Tom wouldn’t harass him about it, but the question would hang
between them asked and never unasked.
And he couldn’t lie to his fucking soulmate. Which meant that he couldn’t claim
not to know the number.

Finally, he swallowed and said, “Twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five times in nine years.” Tom paced slowly towards him now. Harry
was the one who remained still and watched him with narrowed eyes. Tom
reached out and slid a slow hand up his neck, cupping his ear for a second,
before touching the back of his head and drawing him close.

“I am never going to forgive them for what they did to you,” Tom whispered.

“You have to. Otherwise, it will hurt and hurt me.”

“There’s a difference between not hurting them unless they hurt you and
forgiving them. Or did you think there wasn’t?” Tom rubbed his fingers gently
behind Harry’s ear, and Harry closed his eyes in spite of himself. No one else
had ever found that spot, but then, no one had ever been close to him in the way
Tom was. “One thing you need to learn, Harry, is that there is a difference
between intentions and actions.”

“I know that,” Harry muttered. “I wanted to kill Lestrange, but I held back and
just hurt him.”

“Wonderfully,” Tom said. “His pain was wonderful.” His arousal played
through the bond, and Harry opened his eyes but just stared straight ahead. “But
I meant when it comes to me. Your Order judged me for decades, thinking I had
hidden intentions to start a war that would eliminate Muggles and Muggleborns,
when they should simply have judged me by my actions.”

“Your actions that also include voting for horrible legislation because it’s
convenient?” Harry snarled, and felt his magic activate around him, reaching
out for Tom’s in lazy swirls. He pulled at it irritably, trying to separate them a
little, and swore when he only physically tugged himself closer to Tom.

“Yes, judge me for that,” Tom said. “But that’s not what they judged me for.
They thought all my actions were lulling them off-guard, and my hidden
motivations were more important.”

“Motivations are important!”

“Would it matter to you what I believed, if I did the things you consider right?”
Tom asked softly, his hands reaching out to cup the sides of Harry’s face. “If
my voting record was pristine and I was speaking up for Muggles and
Muggleborns all the time, but it turned out that I secretly despised them, would
you care?”

“Yes, I would.” Harry glared at him. “I know what this is about. You’re thinking
of playing up the redemption angle.”

“Do tell me what you’re thinking, Harry.” Tom’s finger moved back into that
distracting place behind his ear again.

Harry managed to keep his eyes from crossing, and ignored the soft pulses of
disappointment down the emotional bond. He hoped that he couldn’t resist Tom
so well just because he was a virgin. That would imply he’d do whatever Tom
wanted after they established the sexual part of the bond, which
was not acceptable. “That you’ll start voting the way I want soon, and claiming
that as your soulmate, I redeemed you. I won’t accept that. You can’t—you
can’t do something right if you have the wrong motivations for it.”

“Oh,” Tom said, his voice deepening. “Then I should change my whole person?
Bow to your desires and do exactly as you want?”

“What? No!” Harry jerked his head away.

“But I’m confused.” Tom smiled at him, and Harry hated how attractive he
found it. “You don’t want me to act as I’ve been doing. You don’t want me to
change my actions to please you while keeping my beliefs that you are the only
person who matters to me. You don’t want me to bend to your will and become
a different person. What do you want, Harry?”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. He wanted Tom to be—like him.
Valuing Muggleborns and Muggles because they were intrinsically worth as
much as pure-bloods, as wizards. But it really did seem that Tom was going to
never do that.

And he wanted Tom to be like him without forcing him into it. If Tom had
woken up tomorrow morning and found goodness in his heart on his own, it
would have been perfect. But it couldn’t be because Harry wanted it and had
told him there was no choice.

“Well, I did think of a fourth course of action that might be acceptable to you,”
Tom said brightly a few moments later.

“What?” Harry asked, turning.

“We could try to sever the bond if the kind of person I am is totally—”

“Don’t you fucking dare suggest that,” Harry snapped, and the air around him
burst into fire before he thought about it.

Tom reached out with a raised eyebrow and ran his fingers through the flames.
Harry started. It was like being petted on his soul. He swallowed and subdued
them. No one had ever been able to be close to him when he was blazing like
that, not even his parents or Sirius when he had done it as a kid.

“Then it seems,” Tom said, “that we’ll have to find a compromise. And what
you scornfully call a redemption angle strikes me as the most plausible one.
Given that I stood back in Diagon Alley and watched you destroy a pure-blood
man I’ve often voted in concert with without raising my wand, we’ve laid a
good foundation for it.”

Harry took a slow breath. Yes, things would probably never be perfect, but Tom
was right about the compromise. Withdrawing, forcing Tom to act as he
wanted, and doing nothing all unsettled his stomach with wrongness.

Before he could say anything, an owl soared through the window. Harry turned
towards it with the uncomfortable churning relocated to his stomach. He
recognized the bird. His name was Solaris, and the Order often used him for
official messages.

To enemies.

Harry reached out a trembling hand, only to find Tom’s arm across his chest.
Tom frowned at him and shook his head tolerantly, then cast a series of charms
at the owl. One of them stopped him in midair and then conjured a perch
beneath his feet. The others sparkled around the wings and on the letter.

Harry blinked. “You’re looking for—potions?”

Tom nodded, ignoring the indignant hooting from Solaris as if he heard things
like that every day. “And charms that would enforce certain actions on your
part.” He stepped back and studied the owl for a second, then used another
charm. This one made a swirl of green light start around the letter, but it turned
white as Harry watched. Tom sighed. “It also means that they haven’t used any
poisons, either.”
“You would prefer them to have?” Harry asked in a low voice as he stepped
through the last of the magic to hold his hand out to Solaris. He got the
indignant hooting, too, but at least he handed the letter over.

“It would make your inevitable rupture with them less painful if you made the
first move.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but only until the parchment started to glow blue when he
touched it. He stared at it, his mouth feeling frozen. Then he swallowed and
unrolled the letter.

“What does that spell do, Harry?” Tom spoke calmly, but the bond jolted in a
way that told Harry the only reason Tom wasn’t already at his side snatching the
letter away was that Harry appeared physically unharmed.

“I won’t know until I read the letter,” Harry said, and didn’t much bother to
damp his own emotions as they entered the bond. Tom stepped up beside him
and bent over to read the letter at the same time as he did, but given what Harry
now knew it contained, he couldn’t fault Tom for that.

Dear Harry, said Hermione’s handwriting,

Please forgive me for the spell. I know that you aren’t evil or insane, now that
I’ve had more time to think about it. I just can’t support what you’re doing,
either. You might reform Riddle, but I think it’s a very small chance, and in the
meantime, Muggles and Muggleborns will be tortured and dying. And if you fall
in love with him and his power doubles, there will be no one who can defeat
him.
Therefore, I’ve bound you to meet me in a duel that will decide the matter. If
you win, then Ron and I will turn ourselves in and face punishment for our
“crimes.” And if I win, I have the right to demand that you reject the bond with
Riddle the way that Professor Dumbledore rejected his with Gellert
Grindelwald.
Hermione.

Harry closed his eyes. Tom’s hand was almost crushing his wrist, but he only
had to shove a little with his magic, and Tom released him. Harry swallowed
and didn’t look at him.

“Explain to me how she’s bound you.” The word itself was in Parseltongue.

“A spell the Order developed,” Harry said softly, still not opening his eyes. “I
didn’t think to check for it because—well, it’s not commonly-used, and your
charms wouldn’t have found it, anyway. It can be used to bind anyone who
touches the parchment to a certain course of action. It’s how Dumbledore kept
some of the people who worked in the Ministry for the Order and had a change
of heart from betraying us. Them, I mean,” he added hastily, as Tom’s magic
coiled and lashed in hatred. “They couldn’t talk about anything they’d done on
behalf of the Order after that, but magic scanning them wouldn’t have come up
with anything similar to the Imperius Curse.”

“You’re not going to duel this woman.”

“I won’t have any choice,” Harry said. “That’s what the spell does. If you had
me under sedation and in an area that was impossible to Apparate out of, then it
would wake me up and forcibly Apparate me to the place she’s chosen when the
time comes. It would make sure that I was alert and had my wand in my hand.”

Tom was silent. Harry could feel a darkness tumbling through the bond that he
hadn’t sensed before. Then Tom clamped his hands on Harry’s shoulders and
turned him around. Harry met his eyes solemnly.

“If you do not try in this duel,” Tom began, “then you will be forced by the
same spell to reject our bond.”

“Yes, I will.” Harry reached up and hooked his fingers gently around Tom’s
wrist. “But there are two advantages here.”

“Which are?” Tom’s magic was probably visible in the air right now, but Harry
had closed his eyes.

“First, Hermione has never seen me use my magic fully,” Harry said. “I hid it
from her and Ron and everyone else but my parents and Dumbledore. She
thinks she can win the duel, which says something about how she much she
really knows my power.”

“And second?”

Harry opened his eyes and saw Tom stare into them in fascination. He knew
they were shining, at the moment, more like green glass lit behind with fire than
anything else. He had looked into the mirror before when he felt like this, when
he had to be in private with his real emotions and there was no one he could
show them to.

“She probably thinks that I’m going to hold back and not try that hard because I
don’t want to see her and Ron punished,” Harry said. “But I am—Tom, I don’t
want to reject the bond even more. I think this is probably Dumbledore’s latest
suggestion for a way to get me back in the Order’s fold. It doesn’t feel like
something Hermione would have done on her own. And…”

Tom said nothing, which meant Harry could unleash his anger around himself
as visible, lifted dragon wings made of pure light.

“By forcing me to duel my friend, he’s made me really angry,” Harry said.

Chapter 19: Surprises
Chapter Text

“Are you ready for your duel?”

“I’m more ready than you look,” Harry said, and squinted at Tom. Despite the
fact that he’d gone to bed at a reasonable time last night—Harry should know,
when he’d shared the bed—Tom looked as pale as though he’d got the flu. His
hands were trembling a little, and he sipped at the cup of tea that he’d put a truly
ridiculous amount of milk in as if he actually needed it. “What happened to
you?”

“Something,” Tom said, and their bond vibrated with a thrum that Harry had
learned to take as a warning. He sighed. All right. Tom couldn’t lie to him, but
he was asking Harry to drop it, and Harry was going to prove that he was a
more considerate soulmate than the wanker he was paired with, who wouldn’t
have dropped it except in a crater if Harry looked like that.

Maybe it was just that Tom feared losing him, Harry thought, a little subdued.
He might have looked the same way if he had known that Tom was facing a
duel with Dumbledore.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Sirius volunteered from across the table. He
had his own cup of tea, but Harry was fairly sure it was Firewhisky and not
brandy that he’d put in it. “I know you’re powerful, Harry, but she’s going to
have Ron’s magic that she can call on, you know, not just hers.”

“And Harry will have mine,” Tom snapped, so quick on the heels of Sirius’s
words that Harry thought he hardly heard them.

“You haven’t completed the full magical bond.” Sirius’s eyes were dark, and
either he was so concerned about Harry or Tom looked so bad that he didn’t
seem inclined to back down from Tom the way he normally would have. “Ron
and Hermione have. Harry will be able to pull on your magic, but not as well—
and you’re a fool if you don’t think this is a trap.”
“It is,” Harry said, to ward off more godfather-soulmate sniping. “I know it is.
But you forget, Sirius, that I don’t have a choice about whether it’s a good idea
or not. Hermione used that handy little spell you helped the Order develop to
make sure I have to duel her.” He sipped his own tea and grimaced. At the
moment, milk or Firewhisky were sounding like good ideas for him, too.

“Where will the duel be?” Lily asked. She hadn’t, it felt like, looked away from
Harry since she saw Hermione’s letter. Harry didn’t know how much of that
was knowing he had to fight a duel under duress and how much was the
conversation Tom had had with her.

“It’s going to be someplace none of us know much about,” James answered for
her. “You know they won’t expose the Order’s hiding spot that way.”

“Neither have any of you,” Tom said.

Lily said nothing. Sirius looked pensive, as if it had occurred to him that Tom
could ask him about the Order’s refuge and he would have no choice but to
answer. James was the one who said, more cool and steady than Harry had
heard him in weeks, “We didn’t betray the Order so much as start thinking that
we wanted to spend time with our son. Don’t mistake that for being on your
side, Riddle. It’s not.”

“I don’t mistake it,” Tom said, and sipped his tea again.

James kept studying him, but said nothing more. Harry swallowed his
uneasiness. Tom looks weak enough that perhaps they might attack, maybe.
And that was a horrible thing to be thinking about his own parents, but now that
the thought was in his head, he was glad that Tom was coming with him to the
duel.

Not that he would have been able to go alone, no matter what happened.

Even as Harry thought that, he felt the cold lump in his stomach that wasn’t the
result of any hurt he could imagine. He had heard Hermione describe the way
the spell worked, and knew it was summoning him to the duel. He stretched out
a hand to Tom, who stood and took it immediately, sheltering him close to a
warm body that managed to dissipate some of the cold.

“This is like a Portkey?” Tom whispered as the walls dissolved around them
into wheels of white light.
“The closest thing,” Harry admitted, and then the wheels faded and he stood on
a battlefield.

That was his first thought, even though a second later he saw that there was no
ripped-up ground, and no corpses were lying scattered, as he had first thought,
because of the scattered logs and rocks. Instead, the air was heavy with floating
shields that were meant to contain cast spells, and the dueling platform a short
way in front of them was made of dark, somber wood, scored with runes that
would Vanish blood and other fluids that touched them. Hermione already
waited on top of the platform, her face pale, clutching her wand.

“Harry,” Hermione whispered. She stared at Tom. “Why did you bring him?”

“He wouldn’t have come alone,” Harry said, which was all he was inclined to
explain right now, when his friend was in the state she was in. “How thick are
the wards around the dueling platform?” He could have tried to sense them
himself, but he didn’t want to reveal too much about his magic in case
Hermione was still ignorant.

“Thick enough to prevent your lover from interfering,” Hermione said tartly.

“And also Ron?” Harry moved away from Tom and sprang lightly onto the
dueling platform. Runes lit beneath him, and the air around the sides
shimmered, enclosing them in a box of transparent light. That would also
prevent someone from falling over the side of the platform accidentally, Harry
knew. He spun his wand in his fingers, watching Hermione intently.

“It won’t keep Ron out,” Hermione said quietly. “We’re a bonded pair.”

“What do you think Tom and I are?” Harry asked, and tugged on the magical
bond. The air around him swarmed in instants with flecks of light, some of
which grew in size and number until they resembled fireballs. Hermione stared
at him with an open mouth. Harry held out his hand, and one of the blue
fireballs landed in his palm and cast out small flames that tickled his palm.
Harry curved his fingers around it and tilted his head at Hermione. “Hmmm?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because he can’t love! That means you can’t make a bond!”

Harry shook his head. “Hermione, even Dumbledore thinks that Tom might
become more powerful if I love him. That was the whole point of trying to keep
me away from him.” He sighed and watched the way Hermione’s wand
twitched. Most of the time, she was clear-headed, but when she was surprised or
upset, she would react impulsively. “Not that it succeeded. And we did manage
to bond. Twice.”

“Twice?”

Harry nodded. “The emotional bond and the magical one.”

He saw the moment when her eyes widened, when her terror flooded them, and
when she struck out with a silent spell. Harry countered it with an easy twist of
his wand, and then he wrapped his body in the fireballs and shielded himself
from the broad Blasting Curse she sent his way. The fireballs exploded like
bubbles full of sparks as the curse caught him, but nothing touched Harry.

Then Harry heard multiple pops of Apparition all around the edges of the
dueling platform and barely avoided nodding. Yes, the Order was coming in.
Harry and Tom had known this was a trap, and that the Order would never let
Hermione and Ron fight Harry alone.

Harry settled his focus. He would defend himself. He could only hope that Tom,
magically-exhausted as he was, would be able to do the same.

“Tom.”

Tom turned enough that he could keep both Harry and Albus in view, and
nodded to him. “Albus.” He smiled as Harry blocked the Blasting Curse with
the fireballs, and folded his own arms, his fingers tightening in the cloth of his
robes for a second. That reassured him that his own contribution to the fight was
still waiting for him.

“Both of you are going to suffer now,” Albus said in a low voice. “If you hadn’t
been so selfish, it need only have been you.”

Tom let himself gape the way he wanted to. It would lead to the impression that
he was caught off-guard. “Merlin, Albus, you think Harry wasn’t suffering? I
know that he wonders how much you lied to him and how much you must hate
him. He thinks that you and his parents probably never trusted him, since he
was literally born with my soul-mark on his arm.”
It was Albus’s turn to stare. Then he took a ragged breath and said, “That is not
true.” He drew his wand. “I will make sure that Harry knows the truth once we
have captured him and forced him to sever the bond.”

“Even you use the word forced,” Tom said softly, and surveyed the Order
members appearing around him. There were a few missing he would have
expected to see, namely anyone with ginger hair, except for the youngest male
Weasley. “Ah, you’re preparing the runic configuration to channel magic into
Granger?”

“I knew she couldn’t defeat Harry on her own.”

“Your duel was a sham, and Harry’s element of choice was a pretense,” Tom
said lightly. Anger was singing through him like a burst of fire, but he didn’t
want to let it go too suddenly. That might distract Harry when he was in the
middle of a complicated dodge. “I don’t see any reason why I should let you
have your way.”

Albus let out a low laugh that seemed almost ripped out of him. “I don’t know
what you can do to stop us, Tom. You look run ragged. Did you stay up all
night trying to persuade Harry not to sever your bond?”

Tom smiled peacefully and let his fingers spread out, shaking his arms so that
his sleeves stood free of them. “Not quite. Now.”

The last word was in Parseltongue, and the defenses he had been up all night
creating slithered out of his robe and down to the ground. Albus had paled at the
Parseltongue, but he shook his head at the sight of the small black snakes. They
had gold and red flakes of color worked into their scales, but Tom had to admit
they didn’t look that impressive.

Unless, of course, you knew what they were.

“Even the most venomous vipers are not a problem for a group of adult wizards
standing in a runic configuration and channeling their magic into a single
person,” Albus said. His wand had begun to glow. He took a step back that put
him into the upper line of the configuration. “And they are not infant basilisks.
They’re too small.”

“They are not,” Tom agreed, and Albus paused at the sight of his smile. Tom
turned to his snakes. “Grow.”
The flakes of red and gold drifted off their scales and encircled them for a
moment like the fireballs had encircled Harry. Tom was pleased by the
comparison. He would have to remember to tell Harry about it.

In seconds, the light had formed cocoons, which lengthened and bent, especially
near the tops. Then they expanded rapidly, and by the time they tore open to
disgorge Tom’s serpents, they had increased to ten meters each. They reared
above the terrified and staring Order wizards and opened their mouths to hiss.

“These kinds of snakes, I think you’ll agree,” said Tom conversationally as he

drew his wand, “are a problem.”

Hermione felt close to fainting as she watched the huge serpents loom over the
Order. She should have guessed that Riddle would try to cheat in the duel with
Parselmagic.

But she had no choice but to keep on going. Ron’s magic was flooding into her
through their bond, steady and brilliant, and the conduit had opened behind her
down which the Order had intended to send their power. Hermione was well-
read in her own right, and had been strong even before she bonded with Ron.

In a few moments, she understood that none of that was probably going to
matter.

Harry was surrounded by not just the fireballs but a glittering corona of magic
that only grew as they battled, exchanging hexes, jinxes, curses, countercurses,
and spells that were meant to affect their environment. Hermione barely
managed to end a charm that turned the air in her lungs to smoke and lunged
back, finding herself trapped against one of the shimmering walls that enclosed
the platform.

And to make it worse, the runic configuration the Order had arranged to stand in
had already been disrupted. Hermione cast a quick glance over her shoulder and
saw the serpents, tails lashing, sending wizards and witches flying like Muggle
skittles. The magic they’d summoned was writhing above them, trailing in
confused patterns.

A quick glance was all she could afford, because Harry was already turning the
wood beneath her feet to mud. Hermione leaped to the side and blasted him
with a Bone-Breaking Curse—well, it should have been. It stopped existing
halfway to Harry, devoured by a serpent of lightning that extended itself in front
of him.

“What, are you a Parselmouth, too?” Hermione gasped. She had a harsh catch in
her side that indicated she was running out of breath. She avoided touching it as
she stared at Harry. He shouldn’t have been able to do this.
“My soulmate is, and we’re magically bonded,” Harry said softly. He gestured
with his wand, a vertical slash in front of his chest that Hermione had never
seen before, and a door seemed to open in the air. A small, flying creature
struggled out of it, golden and dripping with red liquid that Hermione shuddered
at the sight of. “And remember that no matter how powerful we’ll become after
a full bond, our power is commensurate when we’re born, Hermione.”

“You never—”

Harry sent the small creature, like a little dragon, straight at her. Hermione had
to construct a net to wrap around it and bind it to the floor of the dueling
platform, and by then, Harry had moved on to something else, whipping his
wand in a long corkscrew shape in front of him while chanting rapidly under his
breath.

“Hermione!”

She threw a desperate glance towards Ron and swallowed. “Help the others get
back up, Ron.”

Ron nodded and turned without arguing, picking up her desperation from the
mental and emotional bond. Right at the moment, getting people into place so
they could start pumping magic into her again was more important than feeding
her power himself.

She had to turn back to fend off the whirlwind that was growing up in front of
Harry, visible waves of curving white power that rose and then aimed straight at
her. Hermione knew he was trying to disarm her. They had worked on this spell
in seventh-year Defense. But Harry had never seemed that good at casting it
then…

Hermione felt a bitter pulse travel through her stomach and come out her mouth.
“How long have you been lying to us, Harry?”

“Longer than you’ve been lying to me,” Harry said. His hair was stirring only a
little in his own whirlwind, but his eyes shone with sustained power. He looked
stronger than Hermione had felt when she had over twenty people lending her
magic.

“We only did that because we knew you would disapprove!” The pain in
Hermione’s side had grown worse. She had to keep Harry talking, for now,
because she needed a chance to recover and let Ron do what he’d gone to do.

“Funny. My motivation for lying was exactly the same.”

“If you’d told us the truth, then maybe we could have given you the level of
comfort so that you wouldn’t have gone to Riddle—”

“Dumbledore was the one who decided that I had to be totally isolated and you
couldn’t be trusted. Maybe take it up with him.”

Hermione shook her head. Arguing with Harry for its own sake was fruitless—
the boy she had known had probably been half a deception from the start—but
this topic might keep them occupied for a second. And Harry had already
proven that he didn’t want to really hurt her, exactly the way Professor
Dumbledore had said would happen. This would work. “He was right. You
couldn’t be tempted.”

“But I should have told you the truth anyway?”

Hermione hesitated. That response hadn’t gone the way she’d imagined it.
Harry tended to back away from arguments.

That was a deception, too, Hermione decided, locking eyes with Harry. Power
looked straight back at her.

“I mean—you could have come with us when the Order went into hiding and
not worked at the Ministry. Then you could have told us the truth, and we could
have told you.”

“I think Professor Dumbledore was wise to keep me out of the Order’s space,
actually. Not because he was right about needing to isolate me from Tom.”
Harry swung his wand, limbering his arm, and Hermione felt the silent torrent
of power soaring up from the ground. “But because he knew I would object to
tactics like collapsing a roof on top of hundreds of innocents or raiding the
Department of Mysteries and killing people.”
“Your bloody soulmate did the same thing,” Hermione hissed, even as she
began to work her fingers around her wand. She listened intently, not willing to
turn away from Harry, but there were still screams and hisses behind her. Riddle
must have some form of protection on his snakes so Ron couldn’t take care of
them easily. “He killed people. He planned to kill people.”

“So that makes murdering people in return okay?”

“People who were working for him.”

“And reporters who happened to be in the building on the same day. And
Aurors, including some who might have been loyal to the Order. And at least
one Unspeakable’s daughter who was visiting the Department of Mysteries and
had nothing to do with the experiments, Hermione! I read the goddamn report!”

His voice hadn’t risen, which was probably the worst thing. Hermione
swallowed and wondered what the hell was taking Ron so long with the snakes.
They had studied tactics against the things, and Ron in particular had come up
with some spells that had been used long ago by Light wizards to fight
Parselmouths.

Right now, she would have given almost anything to be the one fighting
Riddle’s magic instead of here, facing Harry’s condemning eyes.

“It doesn’t make what he did right,” she whispered.

“No, of course not. He and I are already starting to talk about that. We’re going
to change things, change the way he operates. Tom knows he has to do that or
risk losing me.”

“And you think he cares about that?”

“I used to think you were smart.”

Hermione recoiled before she could think about it. The tone of Harry’s voice
was so scathing that she didn’t even make the decision. “What?”

“You keep dredging up all these logical contradictions, Hermione.” Harry lifted
his hands in front of him, holding them palm out, and shining strands of blue
and red were forming across them. Hermione had no idea what that was, which
was only one of the reasons she didn’t like it. “Supposedly I should have told
you the truth, but it was right of Dumbledore to command me to lie. Tom wants
me desperately to boost his power, but he doesn’t care about losing me and
won’t ever change. Think.”
Hermione would have replied, but a triumphant shout from behind her told her
that Ron must have succeeded at last. Harry’s eyes went past her shoulder, so
she felt free to turn and look, too.

She saw what Ron had done.

And a second later, she saw what happened next.

Fighting Albus was no easy thing, but on the other hand, he couldn’t move,
unless he wanted to give up his place in the runic configuration that he had
counted on to help his “champion” win the duel. And that meant he couldn’t
dodge, and he had raised a shield that Tom had already managed to crack
simply because of the heavy curses he was flinging at it.

And there were his snakes.

Weasley, Harry’s friend, was fighting them, casting spells designed to shatter
scales and weaken coils. Tom would be interested to know where Weasley had
found them, but given that his snakes were interested mostly in knocking people
aside and incapacitating them, not killing them, he thought he would get the
chance to ask.

Then came the moment that Tom had been anticipating in silence for some time.
Weasley managed to slice off the head of the immense snake on the left. He let
out a shout that rang in the air for a moment.

A moment.

Because the stump had sealed itself, and what grew from it were two twisting,
slender necks, each bearing a lump that rapidly became a snout, a pair of
glowing eyes, snapping jaws. One of them aimed at Weasley and nearly
knocked him to the ground, he was so stunned, while the second one breathed
out a stream of weak fire towards the Order’s members.

Not fire that would kill. Tom had created his guardians in a Parseltongue ritual
last night without the ability to substantially harm anyone except on accident.
Harry must have friends among the Order and still had a disgusting loyalty to
them, so he might not forgive Tom if they got hurt.

But the mere sight of fire drove some people mad with fear, and some of them
were running away now, shouting, “Dragon!”
“They are hydras!” Albus was screaming. “Fight them by burning the necks
before a head can grow back!”

Tom nodded in respect to his old opponent’s knowledge, and flexed his hands.
He would need a specific spell to crack Albus’s shield and keep him from being
dangerous, but he would also need uninterrupted time to cast it.

From the way Albus turned towards him with fire and murder in his eyes, he
wouldn’t get the chance. Tom tugged, and Harry swept magic back towards him
with a slight tilt of his head. Tom gathered it around him and returned
to their duel.

Tom was weak because he spent all night conjuring hydras. The great git could
have told me.

Harry forced down his relief and fondness and went back to weaving the net
across his hands. And he saw the flash in Hermione’s eyes that told him she had
come to understand she was going to lose.

She was smart. But she also liked to be involved in a good fight for a good
cause, and she would listen to Dumbledore above anyone else. Harry suspected
she had been ignoring her own fears, suspicions, and awareness of the
contradictions in the Order’s stance for a long time, enraptured by the romance
of being a revolutionary struggling against a tyrannical government.

And could Harry blame her for that? He had romanticized the struggle much the
same way, and he had listened to Dumbledore long after he should have started
to doubt his motivations.

“You can’t take me in,” Hermione whispered. “He’ll kill us.”

“Execution is actually only a regular punishment for rituals that involve human
sacrifice, you know,” Harry said calmly. His net was almost complete, but he
wondered if he would need it. Hermione had gone pale and was staring past
him. “And Tom won’t punish you as harshly if I ask him.”

“Because you’re asking him,” Hermione said, with a flash of her old

impatience.
Harry shrugged. “I’ve had that argument with him about intentions versus
actions, and haven’t convinced him not to do what I want because I want it yet.
You can have it with him and see if you get any further.”

“What—what if I told you that you had to sever your bond with Riddle for the
good of the world?”

Harry’s hands were so thick with the jeweled net now that he knew he would
have to fling the spell soon. He met Hermione’s stare. “Then I would ask you
how you know, and who told you.”

“Professor Dumbledore told me.”

Harry shook his head and lifted his arms. “Then I don’t believe you.”

“Wait! This is something that no one else knows, Harry, not even Ron. I have to
tell you. I have to let you know, and then maybe you’ll see sense and see how
bad a powerful man like Riddle being even more powerful would be for the
world.” Hermione stood straighter. “Can you just pay attention to me for a
moment?”

“You have literally thirty seconds, Hermione.”

“Professor Dumbledore was shown a vision by a phoenix that two powerful

wizards would damn the world if they bonded!”

Harry arched his eyebrows and spread his hands. The net soared up in front of
him, radiating colors like diamonds and sapphires.

“And that’s it? It sounds like it might have meant Dumbledore and Grindelwald,
for all you know, or any other two—”

And then Ron’s spell hit him in the back.

Pain slid down the bond, so thick and hot that Tom stumbled for a second. Since
it carried him beneath one of Albus’s curses, that wasn’t such a bad thing. But
he reacted with a further drop to the ground, and then turned and hissed in
Parseltongue, “Protect my soulmate!”
The nearest hydra turned and slithered towards the dueling platform. Tom
watched it for a second before he snapped his attention back towards Albus. The
man was smiling and shaking his head a little.

“You have discovered that an untrained warrior can be a liability as well as an

asset, have you, Tom?” he asked softly.

Tom dug his hands into the dirt beneath him. There was only one answer he
could make to that, and it would exhaust him. But at the moment, he was
feeding most of his power towards Harry and the agony that drowned him
through the emotional bond anyway. Right now, he was inclined to make the
answer.

He hissed softly, so that Albus’s rumored understanding of Parseltongue

wouldn’t aid him, “Chthonic ones, come to me.”

The ground heaved underneath him, and his magic flooded out of him and
downwards. Tom staggered as he came back to his feet. He glanced in Harry’s
direction and found that he was standing upright, although swaying back and
forth on his feet. He caught Tom’s eye and smiled weakly.

His back was a mess. There was a hole in his robes, with singed cloth around it
and a mass of flesh in the middle that Tom stared silently at. His anger rose
through the bond, and Harry answered it with a crooked eyebrow in the seconds
before he vanished behind the protective body of a three-headed hydra and
flung the jeweled net at Granger.

“Are you ready to yield now, Tom?”

Tom stared at Albus and flavored his rage with hatred. This man had kept his
soulmate from Tom. He had intended to sever their bond once it was
established. He had, perhaps, intended for his friends to kill Harry, since they
had used that kind of spell on him.

“I will exult in your death,” Tom said softly.

Albus blinked at him, perhaps taken off-guard by the seriousness of his tone. “I
am afraid it will have to be the other way around, Tom, my boy.”

Tom laughed and braced himself on the swell of earth that had abruptly risen
beside him. “Are you sure of that?” he asked, and then the ground broke apart,
in the same moment that Albus’s confidence had begun to disintegrate.
The earth-serpent that rose from the collapsing dirt was a rich brown all over,
the color of fine agates, but its eyes were rubies. Tom inclined his head as
others surged up around him, colored like feldspar and emeralds and sandstone.
“Subdue everyone but the man who smells like my magic. Do not kill.”

The serpents had a simple way of following his command: they wrapped around
legs and arms and dragged the members of the Order of the Phoenix beneath the
earth. When they were buried up to their heads, it didn’t matter how much
magic they had. Few of them had ever studied wandless spells, it was clear, and
they couldn’t move their wands.

Albus blasted several of the serpents apart, but as more and more of his
followers became helpless, the ones that were left just turned more of their
attention to him. Albus backed up towards what Tom suspected was an
Apparition point. Tom just watched. Calling the chthonic ones had taken the last
of his strength, unfortunately. He couldn’t defend himself if Albus cast a curse
or stop him if tried to leave. Three snakes were already curled next to Tom, of
course, ready to place themselves in the way if Albus did try a curse.

“You don’t know what you are about to destroy,” Albus whispered.

“No, I don’t. Because you never shared knowledge, did you?” Tom shook his
head. “You didn’t even have the sense to use Harry as a bribe, to tell me that
you had my soulmate and I could have access to him for the price of making
changes in my laws or stepping down from power.”

Albus’s face was the color of old cheese, and Tom didn’t think it had much to
do with the earth heaving like water around him. “That would have been—
immoral.”

Tom started to laugh, and couldn’t stop even when he felt something low down
in his chest nearly tear. “More immoral than what you did? Telling him over
and over that he could never have even the bond that you established with your
Gellert?”

“You have no idea what kind of fates you’re dealing with, Tom.”

“You hardly told me.”

“You will regret that you did not simply give in and let him go,” Albus said, and
swirled his wand around himself. The air lit with brilliant fire, and he flashed
away in a form of travel that was absolutely not Apparition.
Tom supported himself with one hand on the head of an earth-serpent that had
risen before him, and, accompanied by his second hydra, went to see what had
happened to his soulmate.

The jeweled net had bound Hermione to the shimmering wall around the
platform, which remained because no one had officially surrendered to end the
duel and the spell. Harry sat down heavily, leaning against the column of the
hydra’s neck. His back ached with pain, but he had already channeled some of
his magic to subdue what he suspected was a major wound.

He stared at Ron, who was up to his neck in dirt and had ceased to struggle. He
watched Harry with quiet eyes, a dark stubbornness in them that Harry
remembered too well from Hogwarts. Ron wasn’t going to answer any
questions.

Harry asked one anyway. “Why did you curse me in the back?”

“It should have forced you to draw in so much magic that it would have
dropped Riddle’s shield and we could kill him.”

Harry sighed and tipped his head back. He knew that in a few seconds Tom
would be there, and he was stunned that Ron had actually spoken. But he did
shake his head and murmur, “And what do you think would have happened to
me when he died, since we’re bonded in emotions and magic?”

“We would have healed you so that you couldn’t follow him into death. Got you
to a Mind-Healer.”

“We’ll get him to a physical Healer as it is,” Tom said, and then he was there,
limping and with a faint smile on his face. He reached out and touched Harry’s
shoulder, and his face went blank for a second. Then he glanced at Ron. “Do
you realize only the strength of our magical bond and the presence of my hydra
is keeping him from bleeding out right here?”

“Harry’s not a Parselmouth. He can’t benefit from a hydra.”

“I am. And he is cradled in my magic.” Tom’s voice was clipped, and the bond
around Harry had heated like sunlight reflected through glass. He turned.
“We’re going to a Healer, now. I’ll send Aurors to fetch them all later.”
Harry cleared his throat. “They might not be here, if you give Dumbledore time
to come back and free them.”

“I gave nearly all my remaining magic to feed these earth-serpents,” Tom said,
with a jerk of his head at the strange snakes still crawling around the clearing.
“They won’t listen to anyone but me, and destroying them would take more
power than Dumbledore’s got if he has to blow them all to pieces one by one.”
He gestured and hissed, and the hydra near Harry bent and gently lifted him by
wrapping all three necks around him. “No more arguing, Harry.”

“Wasn’t arguing,” Harry muttered. His consciousness was slipping away from
him. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Tom reached out and touched him, and
Harry did manage to look long enough to say, “Don’t hurt them.”

“My snakes have not killed a single Order member,” Tom said. “I did that for
you.”

Harry managed to smile. He would probably despise that properly later.

“Know.”

He slipped away then, and the last thing was Tom pacing beside the hydra as it
slithered off the dueling platform.

Chapter 20: Sessions

Chapter Text

Hermione closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. She was afraid that
she would start sobbing otherwise, and that was hardly the picture she wanted to
present to the Dark wizards who would come to interrogate them.

She was in a room with Ron that could have come from a prestigious Muggle
hotel. The walls were a soft yellow color with one, unmoving, landscape
painting that showed a curling ocean wave about to break on a black stone
beach. There was a twin bed with white sheets, a single table with two chairs, a
bathroom that had charms to start water running and flush the loo automatically,
and three meals delivered a day due to house-elf magic.

But the suppression spells woven into the walls were so thick that she couldn’t
touch Ron’s magic at all. It made her feel as if she’d lost a third eye that she’d
taken no notice of until now.

“Are you all right, Hermione?”

Ron had been sitting beside her on the bed for the past hour, but his emotions
were as muted as the magic. Hermione turned and buried her face in his
shoulder, shuddering. Ron stroked her hair and made meaningless little
shushing sounds that Hermione knew he meant well. But nothing was going to
be all right again.

Riddle was going to take over the world. He was going to subjugate
Muggleborns and may eliminate them altogether. And he was going to do worse
to Muggles.

Because they had failed.

They should have moved decisively in so many different directions, Hermione

mourned as Ron wrapped an arm around her waist. They should have talked to
Harry and made him divulge the truth when they noticed him staring gloomily
into the distance all the time. And the gloom got worse when someone found
their soulmate. Hermione had thought, at the time, that Harry was simply upset
not to be matched yet, and had encouraged him by telling him that the phoenix
was an ambiguous symbol. His soulmate could be someone deeply interested in
Light magic, or who had been reborn in some way, or who was a bird Animagus
—

She’d never probed deeply enough into his state. She’d left him lonely enough
that he’d never truly accepted that he couldn’t have his soulmate, and had gone
seeking Riddle instead of backing away from him.

She hadn’t opposed the idea of Harry working in the Ministry. She had been
concerned about whether Harry would be safe when he was the son of two
members of the Order of the Phoenix and the godson of another. She’d thought
he probably wouldn’t be able to pass much useful information to them with his
position in the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

But she hadn’t asked enough questions about why he wanted to do it when it

was so dangerous. Obviously, the bond with Riddle had been yanking him in
that direction all along.
She hadn’t told him the truth. Of course, neither had Ron, but Hermione still
blamed herself more. She was the one who had noticed Harry’s edginess and
silence and wondered about the Ministry plan and still hadn’t questioned him.
Ron had seemed content to support his best mate.

“What can we do?” she whispered, and Ron sighed and lowered his head so that
his chin was resting on her hair. They had clung to each other like that when
they had first come back from the raid on the Department of Mysteries, and
Hermione’s heart had ached.

“There’s not much we can do,” Ron said. “Except continue to be loyal to the
Order and have an honorable death.”

Hermione took a deep breath and sat back from him, wiping at her eyes. “Then
do you think we won’t have a chance to convince Harry?”

Ron slowly shook his head. “I can’t see that Riddle is going to let us alone with
him. You saw the way Harry was holding back during the duel and using non-
lethal spells. He still cares about us. Riddle is probably afraid that we’ll talk him
around again if we’re alone with him.”

Hermione breathed out. “If Harry survives.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Hermione, you were the who told me to use that spell.”

“Not in the back!”

“It wasn’t the most honorable thing to do, but neither was bringing the Order to
the fight,” Ron said. “Or Harry bringing Riddle. I told you, Hermione, we have
to be practical about this. That spell isn’t going to kill Harry, and it would let us
weaken his bond to Riddle in time if we only could have got him away.”

Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but the door opened at the same
time. She felt Ron stand and move in between her and the door. She had closed
her eyes because she didn’t want to see Riddle’s smug and mocking face.

Instead, she heard his voice, and it wasn’t mocking or smug. It was as soft and
dark as if thunder had grown the ability to speak. “Harry is alive. If he had died,
you would wish you had.”

“Does Harry know you want to torture us?” Ron asked. Brash, brave, as always,
and Hermione could feel his emotions a little better now, vibrating with
contained fury. Maybe the wards had lessened when the door opened. “I can’t
think he’d approve of that.”

“I’m not going to torture you. I am telling you the truth.” Riddle moved further
into the room and shut the door behind him. Hermione decided that she’d had
enough of sitting there with her eyes closed like an idiot, and looked at him. It
was harder to make him out than she’d thought, despite the sun-like
illumination that had begun to glow from the walls with his entrance.
Then Riddle glanced at her, and Hermione swallowed hard and held very still.
The reason it was so hard to make him out, she realized, was that his magic had
seeped from his skin to surround his head like the flared hood of a cobra.

“If Harry had died,” Riddle continued, pacing a step towards them, “my sanity
would have gone with him. I would make you pray for death then.”

“That would only happen if you were true soulmates who had completed all the
bonds,” Ron said, tensing next to Hermione but not moving. “I know you
aren’t.”

Riddle laughed softly. “What, Dumbledore didn’t raise you on tales of my

madness and how I was only constructing a sane mask to lurk behind on my
way to taking over the world?”

“It wasn’t tales,” Hermione said. She had got her churning stomach under
control and managed to look at Riddle with as much contempt as she could
muster. “It’s the truth. You’re doing it now. You’ve built up the groundwork,
and in a few years or decades at most, you’re going to take over the wizarding
world completely, forbid Muggleborns from attending Hogwarts, and start
killing off Muggles. Unless someone manages to defeat you before then.”

“And I’ve been working towards this for, what? Fifty years now? Come, tell
me.”

Hermione hesitated. This was a trap, and she knew it. There were no way that
Riddle was as reasonable as he sounded right now.

On the other hand, she couldn’t stop defending the Order’s ideals just because
Riddle had her a little inconvenienced right now. She lifted her chin proudly and
said, “Yes, you have. Maybe longer than that. Professor Dumbledore thinks that
you might have started working towards it when you were a student and found
out about the Slytherin legacy. There were people who would follow you just
for that.”

“Idiots,” Ron muttered, not enough under his breath. Hermione leaned harder on
him, but Riddle didn’t seem inclined to notice. Instead, he was nodding
thoughtfully, which wasn’t what she’d expected.

“And how long would I need to prepare these secret genocidal plans that, at the
same time, weren’t so secret that Dumbledore couldn’t find out about them?
More to the point, why didn’t he reveal my genocidal secret to the world once
he knew it?”’
“No one would have believed him,” Ron said bitterly. “You were too popular.
The same reason you can’t arrest him.”

“Oh, that is likely to change now that he has participated, very publicly, in a
banned ritual with a vigilante group,” Riddle murmured. “But to return to the
main point. I have prepared for fifty years. I suppose that if I ‘prepared’ for ten
more, or thirty more, and then died of old age, you would still never believe that
I had simply been advancing my political agenda instead of secretly plotting
genocide.”

“You’re trying to catch people off-guard,” Hermione said, despite the

uneasiness that was sparkling deep inside her soul like a diamond in a velvet
casing. “You want to lull them. You’d take as long as it needs to do that.”

“Fascinating.” Riddle tilted his head. “It occurs to me that there is no way I can
exonerate myself in your eyes. Denials that I was doing such a thing would only
seem like one more layer of secrecy. Continuing to do as I always have done
would come to seem like secret planning in your eyes.”

“Why would you even want to exonerate yourself?” Hermione asked, back on

more familiar ground now. “You despise Muggleborns and ‘blood traitors.’”

“I thought it would be pleasant to understand Harry’s friends more and be able

to convince them that Harry is not bonded to an evil lunatic.” Riddle shrugged
and turned towards the door. “As it’s wasted effort, I’ll leave.”

“Wait!” Hermione blurted, and shivered in hatred when Riddle glanced over his
shoulder at them. She despised sounding so desperate around him. In a just
world, he would be the one sounding desperate. “I—what are you going to do
with us?”

“Not torture you. Leave you here a bit longer. Your meals will be delivered as
they have been.” Riddle’s eyes were distant, his head tilted as if he were
listening to something. “Then you’ll go on trial.”

“You can’t put us on trial.”

“Oh, but I can.” Riddle’s voice was low. “Isn’t that what you promised in your
letter to Harry? That if you lost the duel, you would go on trial for your
crimes?”

“Technically he didn’t win the duel! I didn’t surrender!”

“You never intended to let him win,” Riddle said, and his lips skinned back
from his teeth in a feral gesture. “Any more than you left him a choice to fight
you with that damn spell that bound his will and pulled him to your side like a
Portkey.”

“I—we knew we would need all the people in the Order to win. What I offered
him was more honorable than what you do.”

“A chance to live a life that isn’t a fugitive’s? Life with his soulmate?”

“You’re going to corrupt him.”

Riddle shrugged. “Many reports from Hogwarts mentioned your intelligence,

Miss Granger. I thought about trying to recruit you, but once I found out about
your soul-mark, and that you were bound to one of the Weasleys who will
probably die trying to oppose me, I didn’t bother.”

Hermione felt herself turn bright red. “So you decided when I was in sixth year,
is that it?” she asked loudly. Sixth year was when she had publicly revealed her
soul-mark to stop some nasty speculation among the pure-blood students that
she didn’t have one because of her Muggle heritage. “Oh, yes, Minister, I
believe your decision wasn’t based on blood.”

“Oh, that was my final decision. Before that, I had looked at other reports about
your stubbornness, and thought that I would probably be wasting my time.”

Riddle gave her a mocking bow and left the room with a slight click of the door.
Ron immediately raced over to it and tried it, but then looked at her and shook
his head. Hermione closed her eyes and struggled not to cry.

She had always done what she felt was right. She had fought so hard, and lived
on the run for so long after Hogwarts, putting her life on hold because she knew
she had to to fight against injustice. Well, not that she would have had much of
a life in Riddle’s world unless she wanted to accept a vision of herself as
inferior.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now.

Ron slid his arm around her shoulders. “We’re still going to fight,” he
whispered to her, while their emotional bond flared and guttered out like a
candle with the wards settled back over the room. “We’ll watch for a chance
when they move us. There’s no way they can keep up their guard all the time.”
Hermione nodded slowly. Riddle might be powerful and clever enough to
anticipate anything they could do, but not everyone who worked for him could
be the same. She leaned harder on Ron and allowed herself to hope.

“I understand that you won’t do as the Healers ask and sleep on your stomach.
That should be a minor effort, Harry.”

Harry turned his head and scowled at Tom. The white walls of the private
Healer’s House around him were nearly as annoying as the peach-colored ones
of St. Mungo’s would have been. “Who told?”

“Healer Floyd. I understand that she’s fond of the Galleons the House receives
to fund treatment into a cure for lycanthropy.” Tom sat on the chair next to the
bed and stared at him. Harry winced as the bond rang around them accusingly.

“Tell me why you won’t sleep on your stomach.”

Harry breathed out slowly. “If I do that, then I won’t be able to stand as easily if
someone comes in.” Tom’s gaze still demanded answers, and Harry tossed his
head and looked away uneasily. “I feel vulnerable.”

Tom eased forwards and curled his hand around Harry’s wrist. It was his magic,
though, that draped over them like the wing of a dragon. Harry sighed and
rolled closer to him, his eyes shut. A flicker of heat like a dragon’s tongue
touched his cheek.

“That makes sense,” Tom said. “But let me assure you that at the moment, this
building is surrounded by the most powerful wards I’m capable of casting, and
one of the hydras is lingering to watch over you. I had to reabsorb the other to
get some of my magical strength back.”

Harry stirred despite himself. “That means that you’re vulnerable, though.”

“I assure you that I am capable of staying in my warded flat and among my

Aurors when I’m not with you.”

“The Aurors who have proven to be traitors already?”

“At the moment, I am choosing only those who have made some sort of
personal oath of loyalty to me in the last week,” Tom said lightly. “It’s not a
usual procedure; their oath is to the office and the Ministry, since Ministers
have to be replaced. But at the moment, a temporarily binding vow is a piece of
good sense that everyone has agreed upon.”
Harry snorted even as he forced himself to lie back down on his stomach. “I’m
surprised that you didn’t do something like that already, given that
you don’t think you should be replaced.”

Tom appeared infinitely smug as he picked up one of the vials Healer Floyd had
left for Harry. “It doesn’t do to appear too grasping. It lets the peasants pretend
that everything is fine and nothing has changed while the whole world alters
around them.”

Harry sighed and sipped half of the vial, ignoring the way the potion clung to
the sides of his throat in vast sticky strands like an Acromantula’s web.
“They’re not peasants, Tom.”

“I’m afraid that you’ll find it harder than you think to change my perception that
most people are beneath me, Harry.”

That was true enough, so Harry abandoned that conversation for the one he’d
been too tired to have the last time Tom was here. “What’s going to happen to
the Order?”

“Some of them can pay a fine for participating in a forbidden ritual and then
leave,” Tom said with a slight turn of his head. “Your friends will go on trial,
along with the others who committed more savage crimes at Albus
Dumbledore’s instigation.”

Harry breathed out, long and slow. “What’s going to happen to Ron and
Hermione?”

“A trial. I told you.”

“In which they’ll be found guilty, and sentenced to Azkaban. I can’t

countenance that, Tom, no matter what they did. You don’t punish someone for
murder with the loss of their—their personality.”

“Cheer up. It might be the Kiss, so they’d lose their souls instead.”

Harry leaned forwards a little more, ignoring the way the skin on his back
stretched like the potion going down his throat. “Tom, I can’t accept that.”

“I want you to tell me what else you think I should do. If I spared them a trial,
then I would be showing our political opponents that my lover influences me to
softness, and that makes me weak. If I kept them in prison indefinitely without a
trial, I would be accused of suborning justice. If I let them go, they would only
continue to work against me. I spoke to them before I came here, Harry, and
they are utter fanatics. Granger is so convinced that everything I do is only
distraction from my ultimate purpose of launching a genocidal war that I don’t
think an angel descending from heaven with proclamations of my innocence
would convince her. Dumbledore’s done well with them, I’ll give him that.
They’re as bound up in his thoughts and promises as a butterfly in a cocoon.”

Harry was quiet, his eyes on the sheets beneath him. The emotional bond lay as
flat as those sheets. Tom had apparently said all he wanted to for now and was
waiting for Harry to react.

“Give—give me a chance to talk to them,” Harry said finally.

“If anything you say to them can get through, I’ll be truly impressed.”

“And you’ve been consistently impressed since you knew me,” Harry said,
turning on one elbow and ignoring the way Tom hissed at him for pulling at the
wound in the middle of is back. “I don’t see why doing this will cost you
anything if Ron and Hermione are going to end up in Azkaban anyway.”

Tom raised his eyebrows as slowly as the surprise sang through the bond. “I’m
not worried about it costing me anything,” he said, and his eyes lingered on the
wound.

“Oh.” Harry flushed and cleared his throat. “I promise that I’ll have one of your
Auror guards with me at all times.”

“Yes, you will,” Tom said, in a way that said this wasn’t even a promise Harry
could make because it would have happened anyway. “I want you to make me
another promise.” He leaned across the bed to touch Harry’s cheek with the
back of his knuckles.

“What’s that?” Harry’s eyelashes fluttered, and he did his level best to prevent
his breathing from doing the same.

“That you’ll withdraw from the conversation the moment they begin to cause
you pain.”

Harry started and jerked his eyes open. The bond soured, and Harry sighed and
lay down as carefully as he could. He wasn’t used to paying that much attention
to his level of discomfort, and certainly not the obsessive level Tom did.
“Sorry.”

“Your promise, Harry?”

Harry hesitated for a long moment. “I can’t make it. I mean, it just—friendships
cause some level of pain when they’re under this much stress, Tom. It’s just the
way it is. If I make that’d promise, then I’d have to step back from Ron and
Hermione before we even talked.”

“Do you think they feel the same way you do?”

“That our friendship is under stress? Of course.”

“That this is a level of unacceptable pain. Or will they attempt to persuade you
around to their way of thinking because they are so bloody convinced that
they’re right?”

Harry blew out his breath. “I need you to accept that what’s done is done, Tom.
Hermione shouldn’t have used that spell, but she did, and she shouldn’t have
had people lined up in a ritual to duel me, but she did.” He kept unsaid the fact
that Hermione had arranged the ritual when she couldn’t possibly have known
Tom would be able to come with him. That indicated a level of foresight
targeted at defeating him that hurt too much to think about right now. “We need
to deal with the consequences, not what we wish could have happened.”

“And one of those consequences is your friends paying the price of their
actions.”

“You’re being a hypocrite, Tom.”

“Oh, quite possibly.” Tom smiled, a bright, innocent thing that would have
fooled Harry from a picture in the papers, while around him the air hummed
with violence. “Tell me what about, specifically.”

“You spared me from the natural consequences of my actions when I was an

Order spy for years. And you did it before you knew I was your soulmate. You
also pardoned my parents and did all but pardon Sirius. There’s no reason that
you can’t spare Ron and Hermione the same thing.”
Tom laughed like Sirius barking. “I did that because I made your godfather
swear a vow, and your parents accepted a pardon in return for leaving the Order
and moving in to a place where I could keep an eye on them. They
made agreements. Would Weasley or Granger keep those agreements?”
Harry hesitated. “No,” he finally whispered.

“Exactly. They wouldn’t agree to swear a vow, and I can’t trust them because
they believe any action is justified, including lying, if it defeats me.” Tom
reclined in his chair and watched Harry with calm, weary eyes. “I don’t want to
hurt them because I hate them in particular, Harry. I want to hurt them because
otherwise they will not stop. Unless they are stripped of the ability to act against
me.”

Harry remained still, his hands rubbing back and forth in complicated patterns.
That lasted until Tom leaned over the bed and let his hand rest on the ridge of
Harry’s shoulder, at the edge of the injury. Harry turned and collapsed against
him with a soft sigh.

“I think it might be useless,” Harry agreed. “But I have to try.”

“I don’t want you exposed to them.”

“You can’t keep me from pain all my life, Tom.” Harry kissed the back of his
hand. “This is pain that I willingly choose to bear, because I might be able to
spare myself some more in the future.”

There was a silence long enough that Harry didn’t know if it would make any
difference, if Tom would yield. Then he made a disgusted noise and tore his
hand away. “You’ll have an hour with them. Once. If you can make them listen,
the amount of time should be enough. If you can’t, then I won’t have you going
back again and again.”

Harry tried to ignore the sick, pounding sensation in his middle that told him
Ron and Hermione’s lives and freedom rode on him. In truth, their lives and
freedom had been at risk the moment they chose to join the Order of the
Phoenix.

And he wasn’t doing this just to try and spare his friends, as much as he would
mouth those words and as much as he knew Tom probably believed it.

He was doing this because he needed answers. Even if they hurt.

Hermione looked up with a madly pounding heart again as the door opened.
Ron was standing behind it, the crystal lamp from the table in his hands. They
had agreed their best chance was to stun any Auror who entered the non-
magical way. Not that many had training in hand-to-hand combat, Professor
Dumbledore had said.

But it was Harry who walked in, and a Harry who was by himself. The door
shut instead of spitting in anyone who could have accompanied him. Hermione
was so surprised that she just sat and stared with her mouth open.

“Hermione.” Harry gave her a pained smile and glanced towards Ron.
Something flashed off his skin, and Hermione blinked. It looked as if he was
clad in almost-invisible, brightly-polished chain mail. “Good plan, with a
physical strike, but it wouldn’t work. I’m wearing a ward that would bounce it,
and so would any Auror who comes in here.”

“Why?” Hermione whispered. Ron sat the lamp carefully back on the table and
came over to sit next to her with his arm around her waist.

“Because they’d be visiting a pair of dangerous murderers. Just like I am.”

Hermione gasped because she couldn’t help it. Harry sat down in the chair
across from them, the one Riddle had ignored. The room was still dim, except
for a glow of sunlight from the edge of the window, but Harry cupped his hand,
and blue flames streaked up from his palm.

“How are you doing that?” Hermione whispered. “The duel magically
exhausted you.”

“I’ve been resting, and I can call on Tom’s magic. He’s strong.” Harry let his
blazing hand rest in his lap. “We’ve completed that part of the bond.”

“Then the world’s doomed,” Hermione said, and closed her eyes to force
back more tears. She was so bloody sick of crying. Ron leaned harder against
her side, but the wards on the room still kept them from feeling each other
through the emotional bond.

Maybe that was something she could change. Hermione focused on Harry.
“Don’t you think it’s inhumane to separate a prisoner from their soulmate?”

“I’m surprised at you, Hermione. I thought you had no problem with that, given
Albus Dumbledore’s tactics against Tom and me.”

Hermione forced herself, forced herself, to ignore the poisonous sensation in her

throat, as if she was about to swallow a potion that would give someone control
over her. “It’s different when the bond has never been consummated.”
“Maybe that’s true. But you aren’t separated from Ron. You simply can’t use
his magic and he can’t use yours, and your ability to sense each other’s
emotions and thoughts is muted. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Ron burst out. “That’s more inhumane than anything we did to
you, Harry!”

“Including nearly killing me with a curse to the back?”

Ron flinched and rubbed the nape of his neck. Hermione shifted closer to him
protectively. She knew how guilty he was about that, and that he had thought of
almost nothing else except taking Harry out of the battle. She glared at Harry,
who was watching them with a painfully neutral expression.

“We know almost nothing about who you really are, do we?” Hermione asked.
“You were lying to us all through Hogwarts.”

“Then I feel like we’re on even ground,” Harry said quietly. “I don’t know
much about you, either. My best friends would never have done what they’ve
done in the name of the greater good or bound my will with that spell.”

“It was justified because you were lying to us.”

“What would you say if I told you that this confinement for you is justified
because of what you did?”

“It’s not the same thing at all.” Hermione leaned forwards. This was what she
had been hoping for, a personal chance to talk to Harry. “We only did what we
did in the name of the greater good. But what Riddle’s going to have you do is
going to kill people, Harry.”

“You killed them, too.”

Hermione sighed. “We were doing this because Riddle is going to cause the
genocide of Muggles and Muggleborns, Harry. Riddle will do what he does in
the name of his own power.”

Harry was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “Did you realize that Tom is
the only democratically-elected member of the Wizengamot? The others are
Ministry appointees, some of them from past Ministers, or pure-bloods who
recommend each other. What did you think would happen when Tom died and
someone like Arcturus Black took over the Wizengamot?”
Hermione waved a hand. She had thought Harry would probably say something
like this. “The democracy in the wizarding world is corrupt anyway, Harry. It’s
the only way someone like Riddle managed to be elected. It wouldn’t be the
best outcome possible, but Arcturus Black being in charge of the Wizengamot
would be better than Riddle being in charge of it.”

“And do you think Black hates Muggles and Muggleborns less than you’re
convinced Tom does?” Harry shook his head slowly. “He proposed and voted
for the laws that Tom supported—and which Tom is now going to be changing
his support for. No one is going to convince Black otherwise.”

“Yes, but with Riddle gone, the political and magical power necessary to make
the future miserable for us is removed,” Hermione said impatiently. Really, she
didn’t know why Harry wasn’t getting this. He might have hidden his magical
power from them at Hogwarts, but she knew he was plenty intelligent enough to
understand what she was saying. “The Wizengamot is full of pure-blood
infighting. They won’t manage to mount a coordinated attempt to do anything.”

“How do you know that for certain? Especially if one or more of them decided
to treat Tom as a martyr and managed to rally everyone behind that?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Harry. They don’t really like or support him. They
wouldn’t treat him like a martyr. They despise him for being a half-blood. They
only go along with him because he’s doing what they want.”
Harry stared at her. “Hermione. Listen to yourself. Tom is powerful and
dangerous and a political genius. But everyone hates him and barely stands
behind him, and he wouldn’t be missed if he died. Do you think anyone who
elected him might miss him? That he doesn’t have any allies who would do
their level best to destroy the people who destroyed him?”
“People were manipulated into electing him,” Ron pointed out. “They wouldn’t
miss him.”

Harry sat back in his chair and watched Ron in silence. Hermione decided that
that might mean they were on the verge of convincing him. She kept her voice
as gentle as she could while she leaned forwards again. “Harry. Don’t you see?
The masses of people are easily manipulated and gullible. But when we free
them, they’ll be grateful—”

“Why?”

“Because we’ll have freed them.”

“But are you planning to make some grand pronouncement to tell them how
Tom fooled them all?”

Hermione blinked. “Of course not. We can’t—I mean, the Order doesn’t
announce its existence that way. We don’t need to. People who know the truth
will realize that we worked in the shadows for the good of all humanity.”

“Tell me something. Do you believe Tom has them all under a literal spell that’s
going to be removed by his death?”

“No. There’s no kind of enchantment that’s so wide-ranging.” Hermione was

sure. When she had first realized how thoroughly Tom Riddle controlled the
wizarding world, she had researched to see if there was. But she had come to
the conclusion that there wasn’t, and it was simply the wizarding public’s
depressing stupidity that let Riddle retain control.

“Then why do you think they’re suddenly going to wake up and realize the truth
when they elected him in the first place and you’re not going to tell them
anything?”

Hermione hesitated. There was a trap here, but she couldn’t see where it was
coming from.

“Anyone ought to be able to see how terrible Riddle is,” Ron said, his face
flushing. “Unless they’re brainwashed into thinking Riddle is capable of love.”
Harry folded his hands in his lap. “I’m only asking you to think about it from a
logical perspective. How is anyone going to realize the truth if Tom is widely-
respected and no one knows the truth? How can he control everyone so well as
to force them to elect him, and yet be so incompetent as to cause them
unparalleled relief when he’s gone? How is the Order’s perspective going to
become everyone’s perspective if you don’t spread it?”
Hermione clenched her hands slowly. The words sort of made sense, but
she had to resist them, because Harry was speaking them and she knew he had
been tainted by Riddle. “With him gone, everything will be better, Harry. You
can’t deny that.”

“Of course I can. You know what will happen to cripple my mind and soul if
he’s gone.”

Hermione sighed. “You’re just seeing it too much as an individual. It’s tragic
that you were marked as his, but if we have to sacrifice a soulmate bond—”

“What would happen if I asked you to sacrifice your bond with Ron?”
“There’s no need to ask for that,” Ron said, tightening his hand on her arm. “We
aren’t evil.”

“Oh?” Harry whispered. “But from Tom’s perspective, you are. And the papers
are starting to spread all sorts of things, based on very few interviews with him
in which he offered only bare facts. They’re saying that you’re so entrenched in
Dumbledore’s nonsense that there’s no saving you, and you should be killed to
spare the world from what you would do if you escaped. Trying to murder the
Minister’s soulmate and potentially drive him mad has done you no favors in
the wider wizarding world’s eyes.”

Hermione felt a huge jolt under her breastbone. She had never once considered
that the public would turn on them. “That’s not true!”

“Why is it true in my case? And Tom’s?”

“He’s evil!”

Harry sighed in what sounded like exhaustion. “The problem, Hermione, is that
you don’t have a rational argument about that. You’re not even prepared to
make those arguments. You just think that everyone should see it from your
point-of-view without an explanation.” He stood up. “It’s perfectly logical to
make the argument that Tom is evil. You could have done it by pointing to his
voting record. But you’re so convinced that everyone should just believe what
you do and your own actions are justified that you didn’t do that. And now half
the wizarding public is convinced that you’re a terrorist and wants you dead,
and the others are calling for your imprisonment in Azkaban.” He took out a
paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

Hermione unfolded it and stared at it. The front had a photograph of her and
Ron the day they had graduated from Hogwarts, draped in bright red and gold
robes and smiling. But the headline said, MUGGLEBORN TERRORIST
CAPTURED AT LAST!

Hermione skimmed the article. Phrases jumped out at her like pure-bloods out
of an ambush.

…brightest witches to graduate…influenced heavily by Albus Dumbledore…

soulmated to a pure-blood she persuaded to rebel…raided the Department of
Mysteries…
“They’re twisting it,” she whispered, and stared at Harry, wondering how he
could stand there in front of her with dry eyes when he had to know what this
could lead to. “This isn’t the way it happened!”
Harry shrugged. “You weren’t making the arguments to convince them
otherwise, Hermione. You were hiding in the shadows and striking from them.
Killing people that most people are convinced were innocent.”

“The Unspeakables weren’t—”

“But you didn’t publish the reason you went after them,” Harry said, his voice
sharp and pitiless. His eyes were terrible. “You just committed the crime and
then ran away. No public trial, no pamphlets that gave the Order’s side
distributed.”

“We had to do it that way, though,” Ron whispered, taking over because
Hermione’s throat had clogged and she could say nothing at all. “If we handed
out pamphlets and so on, then they would have suspected Professor
Dumbledore’s involvement. His public image would have been compromised.”

Harry snorted. “So you gave up your freedom and your normal lives and even
your attempts to persuade people to join your cause to protect his apparent
innocence? That’s just rich.”

“We—we had to do it that way,” Hermione said, but her voice was wavering
and she hated it. Her eyes remained on the headline. She knew Riddle
controlled the papers, of course everyone knew that, but at least one person—
who wasn’t Rita Skeeter—had written this story. She knew it wasn’t Riddle.
She knew his writing style. “It was imperative that Professor Dumbledore
remain uncompromised.”

“Why? How did he assist the Order’s cause? He didn’t even really speak up
against Tom’s interference in Hogwarts, but he told me more than once that he
hated it.”

Hermione shook her head. She had been so sure that other people understood
the rightness of their cause. And why should they have to speak up to defend
themselves? The people on the right side didn’t.

“Dumbledore’s sacrificed all of you so that he could keep playing at being

Headmaster of Hogwarts,” Harry said. “He hasn’t come forwards now, either,
even though Tom said that he’s to be arrested if found and not cursed on sight.
He spent years recruiting people who came through Hogwarts for the Order.
That was more important to him than actually explaining what the hell you
stood for.”
Hermione dropped the paper on the stool next to her. “Harry, you know that we
have a point! You said that you could easily think of Riddle as evil just from his
voting record. Why do you—”
“Because even if I wanted to defend you, you’ve made it really fucking hard,
you nutters!” Harry shouted, and Hermione fell silent in shock. She never, ever
remembered him yelling at them like this in Hogwarts. “You bound me with a
spell to force me to duel, and then you had dozens of people waiting to feed you
magic in a forbidden ritual! Ron cursed me in the back! Tom wants
to destroy you. He would have been happy to just see you arrested and tried for
your original crime, but this? He wants you dead.”

“Casualties of war,” Hermione whispered. “It was justified.”

“You haven’t even convinced the average person that there is a war,” Harry
snapped. “They don’t know what you’re fighting for! They’re caught up in the
romance of the Minister who’s gone partner-less for so long finding his
soulmate at last, and they like that I’m powerful and dueled Lestrange to a
standstill in the middle of Diagon Alley, too. They hate you. Yank your self-
serving heads out of your arses and stop thinking everything you do is perfectly
obvious and everyone will rally to you because you’re the good ones. Use that
logic you’re so fond of, Hermione. If Tom controls the wizarding world,
perfectly, and has pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes regarding this supposed
war, why would anyone support you?”

“Professor Dumbledore said—said that everyone would understand once Riddle

was dead.” But the words tasted of ashes as Hermione repeated them.

“Yeah, well, he’s a nutter, too,” Harry snapped, and turned to face the door.
“Listen to me. I’ll save as much of your lives and freedom as I can. But after
that, if there’s anything of you left, then you’re going to have to work to free
Muggleborns. Not commit romantic crimes and spout that rot about sacrifice
and the greater good and casualties of war. And if you ever tell me again that
someone else is evil and that means you’re justified in whatever you do to them,
then I’ll let Tom do whatever he wants with you.”

The door slammed. Hermione sank slowly onto the bed, and felt Ron trembling
as he tucked his arm around her.

“He’s the nutter,” Ron whispered. “Going over to Riddle like that.”

Hermione shook her head slowly, eyes locked on the paper. She felt like she’d
been hit with a Stunner that had awakened her instead of dumping her asleep.
“No, Ron, he’s right.”
“What? About Riddle being—”

“No. About the way that we’re coming across to the public.” Hermione folded
the paper up again and lowered her face into her hands. “I mean—it’s
not right. But Riddle does control the wizarding world. It’s full of sheep that
will follow anyone. We were stupid to think that the righteousness of our
actions would proclaim the righteousness of our cause without trying harder to
express those views in public.”

“So what are we going to do?”

The word stung her throat, but Hermione forced it out. “Compromise.”

Chapter 21: Before

Chapter Text

“You had a bad time?”

Harry tore his cloak from his shoulders and flung it in the general direction of
the bed, swearing. Tom watched, although the tension of the emotional bond
between them made him want to go to Harry. He had to let him work through
this on his own, though.

Besides, he rather wanted to hear what Harry had to say about his dear friends.
“They sit there and look at me as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths!” Harry
spun on his heel and kicked the bed. Blue flames ignited along his shoulder
blades and stretched out into glittering, spectral shapes that reached for the
ceiling. Tom kept his own delight still so it wouldn’t interrupt Harry’s rant.
“They just tell me that you’re evil and everything will be better when you’re
dead as if—as if they really believe it!”

“I think they do,” Tom said mildly. “After all, they literally grew up hearing
Albus Dumbledore say such things.”

“But—people aren’t just evil,” Harry said, and kicked the bed again. “Stubborn
and stupid and gullible and prejudiced, sure. But that isn’t the same as being a
monster of hatred who just rejoices in it!”

“There must be a purpose in telling them that I’m evil. What was it?”

Harry closed his eyes for a second, although Tom knew that wasn’t so much an
attempt to concentrate as a necessary struggle with his temper. Their bond was
brilliant with the red and gold fire of it. Then Harry exhaled and opened his eyes
again. “They would think anything was justified against someone who was
actually evil.”

Tom nodded. “And I think Albus perhaps does believe it. But spreading the
notion around serves the purpose of keeping their loyalty rooted to him.”

“They—I thought they were smarter than that, though. Hermione in particular.”

“Did I tell you why I decided against recruiting her into the Ministry?”

“Her being a fanatic for the Order and soul-bonded to Ron had to have
something to do with it,” Harry said dryly, and flopped down in the chair next
to Tom. Tom stroked his hair for a second, a little disappointed that he wouldn’t
get more of the rant.

“Yes, it did, but her stubbornness was something I got reports on from every
single one of her professors. Even Minerva McGonagall, and in general, she
was extremely partial to the girl. Granger had trouble changing her mind
about anything. When a Defense professor arrived who taught silent casting in a
different way than the one you had in your sixth year, she filed a complaint with
Minerva stating that Professor Delacruz’s way was ‘objectively wrong’ and
would cause students to fail their NEWTS.”

Harry stared at him from a slightly upside-down position. “But that’s—

Professor Delacruz was a great teacher! I mean, Professor Belrose was all right,
not terrible, but I understand why you replaced her.”

Tom smiled a little. At least Harry had come to accept the degree of Tom’s
control over Hogwarts, it sounded like, in a way that Albus never had. “Yes.
Professor Belrose had become too complacent in her post, and too focused on
teaching in a way that was good enough without challenging the students. I
knew Professor Delacruz would provide a challenge, and a truer method of
preparation for your NEWTS.”

“I had no idea Hermione made that complaint. I thought she liked Professor
Delacruz.”

“She was respectful enough to her in public, I’m sure,” Tom said, with a shrug.
“But yes, she did it because the Defense books and Professor Belrose had
convinced her there was one and only one way to approach silent casting. I
don’t think she ever changed her mind, either. I saw the optional essay she
wrote for her Defense NEWT. She was allowed to choose her own topic, and
she wrote about how the method of visualization was the ‘perfect’ way to
silently cast and Professor Delacruz’s method of separating incantation and
wand movement was ‘dangerously backward.’”

Harry groaned a little and rubbed his eyes. “So basically, whoever gets to
Hermione first convinces her of something.”

Tom nodded. “To be honest, she might not ever have wanted to work with me
because of the game I was playing with the pure-bloods, but I had already
decided against approaching her before her sixth year. She’s self-righteous and
too convinced that whatever appeals to her is objectively correct.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re going to be allowed to continue this game without

challenges, Tom.”

Tom smiled a little at the glint in Harry’s eyes and the way the flames had
started burning up the sides of their bond. “I know that. And I welcome any
challenge you want to make to me. But my point is, I don’t think she’ll change
her mind because the lies Dumbledore spun for her appeal to her. This way, she
gets to be the hero, someone who’s discriminated against for her blood and
fighting an unfairly bigoted world. It’s hard to give up that rush. I know. I used
to be prey to it.”

“You?”

Tom inclined his head. “Remember that I was in her position during my first
years at Hogwarts, before I discovered that I was a Slytherin by blood.”

The way Harry stared at him with slightly parted lips created an invitation that
Tom was hard-pressed to ignore, but he managed in favor of smiling at his
soulmate and stroking his hair back from his face. Harry finally sighed and
muttered, “I find it hard to believe that you would have ever wanted to think of
yourself as a hero.”

Tom shrugged. “It can be addictive. And you forget. It’s the pose that’s
sustained me in the Ministry, pretending that I care about people who others see
as disadvantaged or in need of protection.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “I want you to start changing that, Tom.”

“Certainly, my dear. Imagine a viable political strategy that I can use instead,
and explain it to me. After all, the reason I chose the pure-bloods is not because
I believe in their bigotry, but because they hold the power. What do
Muggleborns have to offer me?”
Harry’s lips parted again, but Tom didn’t think he was staring at him in surprise
this time. “That’s…cold, Tom.”

“You’re startled, darling?” Tom slipped his hand around the back of Harry’s
neck and brought him closer, but from the way Harry resisted, glaring at him, he
wasn’t going to get such an easy kiss this time. Tom sighed mournfully and
released him. “You have a privileged view of me. I never normally show this
much emotion to my Aurors, or my public, or the people who have voted with
me in the Wizengamot.”

“You don’t say your allies.”

“I have few allies,” Tom said simply. “Madam Moonwell perhaps comes closest
because we understand each other. But the others are tools who foolishly think
they wield me instead of the other way around.”

“Why did you adopt that kind of perspective?”

Tom hesitated, but Harry’s hand was on his arm, and the blue flames springing
up between them weren’t the kind caused by Harry’s anger anymore. Tom still
closed his eyes as he spoke, because watching Harry’s face while he said this
wasn’t in his power.

“I thought that perhaps my soulmate bond had been destroyed when my soul-
mark was burnt. It took me a while to figure out that wasn’t the way it worked.
Ignorant children aren’t the best companions for someone suffering that kind of
doubt. And then when I discovered that so few people had any sympathy for
me, and that my soulmate might be the kind of person who would be horrified
by what I had done as vengeance, I decided that I couldn’t care. I separated
myself from the world.

“I told myself that either my soulmate would never come to me because of their
disgust and fear, or that when they did, they would understand what I’d done.
And I could use the power I’d accumulate to protect them if they did ever reveal
themselves. Either way, I had nothing to lose by holding onto that kind of cold
arrogance. It protected me. It might protect them. No one else would.”

God. He felt so abandoned by the world.

Tom had been leaning on him with his eyes averted, shut, but Harry couldn’t let
him keep being that way. He kissed him, and Tom started and turned towards
him. Harry opened Tom’s lips with his tongue and kept kissing him until Tom
had given up that stiff posture and embraced him, bending him back over the
arm of the chair.

Harry finally loosened his hold on Tom’s mouth when it was that or start
swooning like a teenager. He stroked his hand down Tom’s chest and said
softly, “You don’t need to do that anymore.”

“You’re going to swoop in like a hero and make everything better, is that it?”

“I am a Gryffindor,” Harry said, but he wasn’t smiling as he reached up and

cupped Tom’s jaw gently. “No. I think we’ve had enough of heroes. What I
want to show you is that you can be human with me. And that means I can help
protect you and let you be human in front of those bastards on the Wizengamot,
too.”

Tom blinked once, his eyelashes barely shadowing his intense gaze. “Don’t
mistake me, Harry. I’ll be changing because you want me to, not because this is
the best thing to do or you’ve awakened some sense of principle in me.”

“I know.” Harry sucked in air that felt more like fire. “I think I’m finally ready
to accept that.”

“You are?” Tom’s hand curled around his arm.

Harry nodded. “Tom, you’re not innocent, and I want you to change. If you
weren’t willing at all, I’d have to walk away, no matter how much I loved you.”

Tom made a soft little sound in Parseltongue, his hand still in place and his eyes
wide in a specific way that said he would have tried to prevent that.

“But you are,” Harry said softly, not looking away from him. “And I don’t want
to do what Dumbledore did—abandon you because you aren’t perfect and you
don’t fit some vision I have of the way you should act. In Dumbledore’s case,
you didn’t fit his notion of an innocent victim, because you were a Slytherin or
not a pure-blood or you were angry about what happened—I don’t know. I
won’t make his mistake. You’re not my vision, but you’re mine.”

The way Tom’s eyes lit up made Harry feel as though he could fly without a
broom. He kissed Tom again, but eased back with a shake of his head when
Tom tried to pull them both onto a couch.
“We have to imagine that viable political strategy you challenged me to come
up with. And that means we have to have it in place before Ron and Hermione’s
trial.”

“You’re determined to release them, aren’t you?” Tom’s hands tightened for a
second, and then he leaned back with a resigned sigh and stared at Harry with
his eyes cold and bright.

“I would like it if I could,” Harry said quietly. “But there’s no way—they would
work against me and you even then, and be convinced that they were doing the
right thing. So it can’t happen.”

“Then tell me how you envision their trial going.”

“With a Truth Crystal in every corner of the room.”

Tom stared at him with blank incomprehension, instead of the vicious delight
Harry would have anticipated. Harry frowned and poked him in the shoulder.
“A Truth Crystal? Those devices that Dumbledore used to make sure people
were telling the truth before he admitted them to the Order? The spies you
captured must have told you about them.”

“No,” Tom whispered. “Not one of them has mentioned them. You are—sure
these Truth Crystals exist?”

“Yes.” Harry leaned further back in the circle of Tom’s arms, more than a little
baffled. He would have bet that the Truth Crystals were ancient inventions. The
ones that Dumbledore used had seemed that way, with dirty golden bases that
curled around the globes of faceted crystal inside them. “They stand in the
corner of a room, and they ensure that people who come into that room can only
speak the truth. The more you have, the stricter the truth is. Just one Crystal
means that people can still avoid answering questions or keep silence; they just
can’t lie about something they know to be true. If you have two, they can only
keep silence for a few minutes before they get pushed to answer. If you have
three, they can’t avoid a question, either. If you have four, they have to add their
own thoughts to the question, things the question makes them think of.”

“I have never heard of them,” Tom breathed, his hands settling low on Harry’s
hips. Harry twitched a little, distracted despite himself. Tom gave him a daring
smile. “Where do you think they came from?”

“Well, I don’t think Dumbledore made them,” Harry said. “They looked too old
for that, and he never said anything about it. Maybe they’re something that the
Headmasters know about? Sort of something they inherited from the
Founders?”

“We have to correct your stumbling manner of speech,” Tom scolded him, but
his eyes were already bright with thought. “Would you be able to point to their
hiding place if I took you to Hogwarts?”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know where he kept them. I only saw them when
he was questioning Mum and Dad or other people about things and when he
inducted me into the Order.”

“He didn’t trust even his most faithful servants?”

“I haven’t told you what five of the Crystals do,” Harry whispered, and reveled
in the way Tom fell silent, his eyes widening and darkening. He sat back with a
smile and continued, “The fifth one forces people to work past Memory Charms
and biases—basically, anything that blocks the truth they suspect or know to be
true.”

“So he used them to make his spies more effective reporters.” Tom’s hand was
like a shackle on Harry’s hip, not that Harry minded. “He started working on
you young, didn’t he?”

Harry nodded, not inclined to dispute it now. He was still sure that Dumbledore
sincerely believed that Tom was evil and he was acting out of the best reasons,
but that didn’t excuse what he had done. “He wanted all of us—all of the
Gryffindor students he chose for the Order—to believe that he was all-powerful
and his cause was all-important.”

“Didn’t he choose anyone else for the Order/”

“All the other students didn’t become full, inducted members of the Order.
They’re on the margins, and sometimes they send reports, but they’re not like
me and Ron and Hermione.”

“And other Gryffindors that he inducted over the years. Like your parents.”

Harry nodded and stretched his arms over his head, reveling, this time, in the
greedy way that Tom’s eyes traced over his muscles and lingered on his
shoulders. “But while I can’t tell you where he hides the Truth Crystals,
I can tell you that I can make one.”
Tom’s face snapped into a mask for a moment, and then he shook his head
lightly. “I should have known. You’re more powerful than you let anyone else
know, and you had enough exposure to the Crystals to duplicate them, didn’t
you?”

Harry nodded, thinking of some of those sessions in the Headmaster’s office.

Most of the other Gryffindors, with the exception of Ron and Hermione, had
thought that Harry kept getting into trouble and that for some reason,
Dumbledore preferred to handle his detentions personally. “There often wasn’t
a lot to do. Some of the Order’s maneuvers flew over my head when I was that
young, and I—I didn’t like to listen when they started talking about you.”

“They did that in front of you?”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “I think it was Dumbledore’s way of trying to

toughen me. Of reminding me what I would be up against if I did try to claim
you as mine.”

“He did it so perfectly,” Tom said, and his voice would have sounded pleasant if
someone was across the room from him and couldn’t feel the way his muscles
tensed or his magic sparked up around his body. “I sometimes wonder, though,
why he didn’t simply kill you when he saw your mark.”

Harry sighed. “I think he thought he was being moral. Or maybe he did plan to
use me as a chain on you. If so, I don’t know how.”

Tom nodded and sat in silence for a moment. Then he shook his head. “If you
are going to use those Truth Crystals in your friends’ trial, you should start
creating them as soon as possible. Their trial is set to begin next week.”

Harry nodded. “And of course you aren’t going to let me do it today.”

“I’m not going to let you?”

“I’m magically rattled from seeing Ron and Hermione,” Harry admitted, and
wasn’t surprised when the hand on his hip grew even heavier. “I didn’t think it
would be that hard, but it—really was. I couldn’t reconcile my friends with the
people sitting in front of me. If you’d asked me two days ago, I would have said
that they were loyal to each other first, then me, then Dumbledore and the
Order. It hurts that I’m third. If that.”

Tom cupped his cheek and nodded. “And you’ll need a trance as calm and clear
as the Truth Crystals to create them, of course. That’s understandable.”
“How did you know that?” Harry breathed. Of course it was true, but he had
never shared the insights he had gained from letting his magic lick around the
Truth Crystals with anyone. How had Tom guessed?

Tom smiled at him. “I think our mental bond is beginning to form.” He kissed
Harry and eased him gently to his feet. “And now we should call a house-elf
and have a meal, and I should send you to bed, before we become distracted by
more pleasurable pursuits.” He paused. “How are you going to convince the
Wizengamot to let us introduce the Truth Crystals at trial?”

“We’ll tell them part of the truth, that they’re artifacts Dumbledore has been
using,” Harry said. “But then we’ll imply that you seized them from him, since
after all, you’ll have to go to the school and look it over for damage anyway.”

Tom grimaced. “True.” And in the back of Harry’s mind tingled something like
a thought, mingled with Tom’s sour distaste, that said he would probably have
to change some professors as well.

Harry smiled as a house-elf popped in with a tray of broth and bread (which he
was going to be able to forgive Tom for, easily). He couldn’t wait for their
mental bond to fully form. Or their sexual one.

He felt a flutter of desire at that that he couldn’t quell. Tom glanced at him with
dark eyes, and spent the rest of the meal teasing him by feeding him and
stroking Harry’s arm with his fingers, so lightly that the hair on Harry’s arm
stood up under the caress.

It didn’t help Harry sleep better, at first, when he went to bed, but after twenty
or so minutes of lying there, Tom appeared next to the bed holding a small
crystal flask of swirling lilac potion.

“Diluted Dreamless Sleep,” Tom explained quietly, holding it out.

Harry grasped it eagerly and swallowed it. A few seconds later, the world
turned inside out and drew down crystal shutters, and he slept.

“They beat you, didn’t they?”

Albus did his best to glare at Gellert, but his heart wasn’t in it. He collapsed on
the bench near the back of the cave and closed his eyes. His chest ached, and he
honestly wasn’t sure if that was the magical exhaustion or the sheer, bloody
urge to cry.

“Why did they beat you?”

“The dirty serpent magic that Riddle drew on,” Albus said tiredly. “I didn’t
anticipate it. I can understand Parseltongue, but I can’t study the books that
detail that sort of thing, not when Salazar Slytherin left them locked to natural-
born Parselmouths.”

Gellert snorted and rolled over so that he was facing the back of the cave. “You
only think it’s a dirty trick because you wish you’d thought of it yourself. If you
were a Parselmouth, you’d be talking about the purity of the power and how
Riddle was the one who degraded it.”

“I would not,” Albus snapped, stung. “I think serpent magic was degraded by
the fact that Salazar Slytherin spoke it, and Slytherin turned his back on his
destiny.”

“Destiny?” Gellert spoke without turning over, but Albus felt the faint prick of
his curiosity. “You’ve never mentioned that before.”

Albus grimaced and slumped against the bench, trying to ignore the sense of
failure in the back of his mind. “I should not have mentioned it now.”

“As you say,” Gellert said, his voice sinking again. “But now you have a
problem to deal with in that Riddle and Potter are united. What else are you
going to try?”

Albus took a long, shaky breath. There was one obvious answer, and he had
avoided it because he didn’t want to look weak to the one who had shown him
his life’s purpose. But right now, weakness and pride were irrelevant
considerations. He had to appeal for help, because stopping Tom and Harry was
more important than anything else.

For a moment, tears shivered in his eyes. Where did I go so wrong with Harry?
Why did I fail to teach him what his friends absorbed so easily?

But that question didn’t matter, either. Albus reached up and removed a small
vial of colored dust from the shelf in the cave where it had stood for decades.
He reached out and sprinkled the dust on the fire in front of him.
The dust rose up in a column of subtle rose, brilliant blue, and trembling orange.
Albus sat back with his arms folded around his legs and waited as patiently as
he could. Even Gellert had rolled over so that he could stare, although he
snorted and glanced in the other direction when Albus turned to him.

The fire drew Albus’s attention. The flames curled and swayed, and he found
himself thinking that they looked like the gate of an elaborate house, decorated
with gables and roundels and porticos and…

Why did you call my attention?

The phoenix that loomed above him was the same one that had brought him the
prophecy, Albus was sure of it. He took a long breath and looked the phoenix in
the eye. “Because the Dark Lord has joined with his soulmate, and my efforts to
keep them apart were in vain. I need to know what I should do next.”

The phoenix launched itself silently from the fire, hovering for a moment in the
air before settling on the floor of the cavern. Gellert caught his breath with a
sharp gasp. The phoenix ignored him and instead arched its neck to stare
directly into Albus’s eyes.

Albus watched and waited in silence. He had never received a sense of the
phoenix’s sex from it, although he had known the first time he met Fawkes that
he was male. He supposed that if this agent of fate wanted him to know, it
would tell him.

You know that this will change the world.

Albus grimaced and nodded. “But I have done my best to lure Harry back with
his friends, to appeal to the beliefs I thought I’d instilled in him, and to break his
emotional bond with Riddle. Nothing worked. I am a hunted fugitive now since
I showed myself so openly with the Order at our last confrontation. I need
advice.”

The phoenix took a step back, scarlet breast feathers glittering in sharp contrast
with the rest of its body, which was ice-blue. For a moment, Albus thought it
was looking at Gellert, but it seemed to be staring through the wall of the cavern
instead, out and far beyond anything present with them.

Then it turned back to Albus. There must be exceptions made for desperation.

No matter what you have to do, kill this one born with the Dark Lord’s soul-
mark.
“I don’t know how to get close to him. He’ll be surrounded by a guard of
Aurors day and night now—”

The phoenix moved one foot, and something fell to the floor as if it had always
been clutched in the talon, although Albus didn’t think it had. In silent
bewilderment, he picked up and stared at what looked like a tuning fork. He
glanced back at the phoenix, who bobbed its head as if understanding what
Albus’s questions were.

Use this like your Imperius Curse. Send it to someone close to the pair, and it
will resonate with your mind and replace their desires with yours. You can only
use it once, only with simple commands, and not on the Dark Lord or his
consort. Choose wisely.

Albus took a slow, long breath. There was only one real choice, when he
thought about it like that. “Thank you.”

The phoenix said, Do not thank me. I am only an agent of fate. And it turned
and flew back into the fire that had simmered down but never stopped burning.
In seconds, the vision of a shining palace gate collapsed and was gone.

“How can you trust that thing?”

Albus sighed and glanced at Gellert. “Phoenixes are the purest creatures of
Light on the planet, Gellert. I can understand why you might never feel easy
with one, but they have only the. best of intentions.” He curled his hand around
the silvery tuning fork, which hummed responsively in his palm. Instinctively,
he raised his Occlumency walls to forbid the thing from reaching for his mind
the way it wanted to do.

“The phoenix didn’t say it served the Light. It said it served Fate.”

Albus shrugged. “But it sought me out to give the prophecy, it spoke of Dark
Lords, and legends and lore the world over say that phoenixes are of the Light. I
think I’ll trust a phoenix more than your doubts about it, thank you.”

“You’re sure that you’re rested enough to do this?”

Harry chuckled and reached over to pat Tom’s cheek. “You’re sweet.”
Tom dodged, scowling, and watched as Harry walked into the middle of the
field he had asked Tom to bring him to. It was a wide meadow at the edge of a
private house Tom had claimed as dueling spoils from a pure-blood who had
challenged him early on in his Ministry career.

There were small piles of glass shards on the ground. Tom had offered more
“ingredients” for the Truth Crystals, but Harry had shaken his head and said he
didn’t need them. Tom wondered if that was true.

Harry closed his eyes and stood still for a few minutes. It was a cloudy day, a
freshening wind sweeping in from the south and ruffling the grass and Harry’s
hair alike. Tom wanted to conjure a cloak for his soulmate, but he had promised
not to interrupt once Harry began.

And Harry considered taking care of him an interruption. Against his will,
Tom’s gaze sought the ragged edges of the healed wound under his shirt.

Then Harry spun to the side, tugging on Tom’s magic without absorbing it, and
began.

His hands rose above his head, and he murmured something that Tom was
certain wasn’t a Latin incantation. He knew Harry couldn’t actually speak
Parseltongue, but it sounded remarkably like that. Harry raised his hands further
and then dropped them, and his voice trembled on a sharp note.

Tom felt the immense power around them shift.

And he saw what Harry had meant when he said he needed nothing more than
glass to conjure the Truth Crystals.

The glass soared into the air and bent instead of breaking, forming round
globes. From beneath the globes, Harry’s magic erupted, spiraling down into
legs that looked rather like the clawed feet of the furniture Tom’s grandparents
had possessed. They were ornamented, heavy gold. Harry spun on his heel as if
he was about to Apparate, and more magic showered the globes.

They began to shine.

Tom stared. He had never heard of any magic like this, as Harry focused it and
poured it, and he doubted he would ever have discovered it on his own. Harry
wrung his hands sharply as if breaking an enemy’s neck, and the same shine
coalesced around his fingers.
Tom blinked. It was translucent, wavering, pearly colored, and reminded him of
nothing so much as the color of Veritaserum. He wondered if somehow, both
the potion and the Truth Crystals were drawing on the same deep magic,
something no one else had remembered lately.

The light abruptly snapped away from Harry’s hands and took up residence in
the Crystals. Harry sagged to his knees in the next moment, but the light didn’t
stop flowing from him. Tom stared in wonder until he heard the sharp, shallow
breaths from Harry’s direction.

“Cancel the spell,” he said, taking a long step forwards and no longer worrying
about interrupting. “Now.”

Harry nodded, but not as if he was agreeing with Tom. “This isn’t a spell,” he
said, even as he drew his hands level with his throat and the light stopped
flowing from him. He still didn’t sound normal, though. “This is creation.”

“I don’t care what it is, it’s not worth your life.”

“So sweet and adorable,” Harry said, smiling at him over his shoulder. “Do your
enemies know about this side of you? They must not, or they would have been
getting you kittens and flowers for years now.”

Tom gripped Harry’s arm and leaned towards him. “I know something that will
wipe that smile from your face,” he hissed, and hated the way Harry grinned at
him. “I’ll take you back to the Healing House and keep you there for the rest of
the month.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at him and tried to move away, but not only was Tom’s
grip too high, Harry had exhausted himself again. “You couldn’t persuade the
Healing House to take me for a month! I wasn’t that badly-wounded.”
“Did you know that magical exhaustion coming on top of a wound can be
damaging? Not to mention all the years that you kept your magic secret at
Hogwarts and suppressed it, and the late development of the soulmate bond.
They would love to keep you and heal you in-depth. Several of them were
talking about it.”
Harry scowled at him. “I know you’re telling the truth because of the damn
Crystals,” he muttered. “I—need to be there when they try Ron and Hermione,
Tom. I have to.”

Tom stroked Harry’s arm and enjoyed the sensation of pleasure zinging through
the bond and the way that gooseflesh followed the motion of his hand. “I
understand that,” he said. “But you’ll do as I say when it comes to your health.”
“The Crystals are important.”

“Not more important than you.”

Harry’s mouth fell open, and he blinked. Tom stared back at him, wondering
what unusual revelation have come to Harry now. It seemed he was always
coming up with some unique angle that Tom would never have thought of.

“You really mean that.”

“Of course I do.”

“I—there just haven’t been many times when someone thought I was worth
more than other things in their lives,” Harry breathed, and reached out to cup
Tom’s chin and draw him near for a kiss.

Tom went, smug beyond belief. He had a partner who could create things like
Truth Crystals out of pure magic, after intuiting the principles behind how they
worked merely by being in the same room with them. He had persuaded that
partner to listen to him instead of exhausting himself further the way Tom was
sure Harry would have liked to.

And he was the one who was bonding Harry closer than any magic could,
simply by valuing him the way he should be valued.

Let everyone in the world envy me. It would still not be enough to match what
Harry is worth.
Chapter 22: Bonds
Chapter Text

Hermione looked up as the door of their room opened and Harry walked in. She
was pleased to note that no Aurors came with him this time, either—well, she
was pleased until Riddle stepped in behind him and shut the door firmly with a
halfway pleasant smile on his face.

That, of course, meant he would be a complete berk, Hermione knew.

“We wanted to speak to you,” Riddle began.

Harry sent him an annoyed look, and Riddle shut his mouth and stepped away
with his hands folded behind his back. Hermione blinked. It looked almost as if
Harry had made Riddle do something he didn’t want to do, like shut up during
the conversation, but Hermione already knew that couldn’t be right. No one
made the Minister do anything he didn’t want to do, and Professor Dumbledore
had explained many times to her and Ron that they couldn’t encourage Harry to
bond with Riddle in the hopes that he could control him, because not even a
soulmate bond was powerful enough to overcome the darkness Riddle had
steeped himself in.

“Yes, we did,” Harry said. “Your trial is next week. I wanted to tell you that
I’ve done my best to make sure that you get a fair trial.”

Hermione shook her head. “We’re prepared to compromise, Harry.”

Harry paused. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said a second later in a neutral tone. “But
how? I’m very aware that your oaths to Dumbledore and the Order prevent you
from telling any of their secrets.”

“Ron and I are prepared to swear that we’ll use legal methods to fight Riddle
from now on.” Ron nodded firmly at Hermione’s side, and she tried to ignore
the crawling unnaturalness that was not knowing how he felt through their
emotional bond. “We won’t betray the Order, but we won’t rejoin them.” She
thought there probably wouldn’t be anything to rejoin, anyway. Professor
Dumbledore was on the run now, and most of the Order’s more powerful
members had been with them at the ritual that was meant to subdue Harry. “You
don’t have to worry about us staging a raid on the Department of Mysteries
again.”

Harry stared at her. Hermione swallowed as she felt a swift prickling move
down her neck. This shouldn’t be as hard as it seemed. Why was Harry
just staring instead of thanking them?

Riddle hissed something. Harry shook his head. “No, they really don’t
understand.”

Hermione bit her lip. Against everything else Harry had been keeping from
them, that he could understand Parseltongue was such a small secret, but it still
stung.

“What don’t we understand?” Ron demanded. “We know that if you put us on
trial, you could have a revolt on your hands.”

Riddle abruptly turned away and walked to the far side of the room. Hermione
blinked. His shoulders were shaking as if he were biting back cries of rage. She
turned to Harry to explain it, and found him staring at his hands.
“Harry?”

Harry started and looked up at them, shaking his head a little. “Honestly, you
two. What you don’t understand is that you have no power in this situation.”

“Yes, we do! We have the secrets and we could—”

“Secrets that you either can’t or won’t betray. Dumbledore has been removed as
Headmaster of Hogwarts.” Hermione felt as though a meteorite had hit her in
the stomach, but Harry kept going, with no time for her to absorb that
information. “And the public isn’t going to come to your aid because they hate
you.”

“That’s just Riddle’s manipulation of public opinion, mate.” Ron tapped his
fingers on his knee. “Once you explain that we’re your best friends and some
about the Order’s reasons, then we’ll be hailed as heroes.”

“I told you before, you waited too long to make the Order’s position clear
because you just assumed everybody would already know what you were
about.” Harry’s voice was low and intense. “They hate you now. If you were
smart, you wouldn’t have gone with Dumbledore’s nonsense about a secret war
that’s so hard to prove, anyway. You would have looked up Tom’s voting
record and drawn attention to that. You would have pointed out how
hypocritical it is of him to be a half-blood and yet favor pure-bloods. But now
it’s too late, and he has a grip on the public’s throat.”

“That’s true,” Riddle said over his shoulder. He sounded pleasant again.

“But we could still stage a raid on the Department of Mysteries,” Hermione

said. She tried to speak more slowly this time, despite the clawing bewilderment
that had taken her over. Harry was just staring at her with hard eyes, and
how could he? Why was it taking so long to convince him?

“You’ll be in prison,” Harry said. “Or, if you don’t go to Azkaban, bound by

loyalty oaths of the kind that render you unable to do that.”

“We’re going to be free, though.”

Harry leaned forwards. “What made you think that?”

He seemed to be waiting for something in particular, but Hermione had no idea

what was going on and what he expected her to say, so she kept silent. Ron was
the one who said, “Because you’re going to get us out. Aren’t you?”
Hermione swallowed through a choked throat. She realized that she didn’t know
for sure if that was true. And Harry was staring at them with a strange mixture
of mockery and pity.

“Of course not. I want you to survive, if you can, but there’s no way that I can
let you go back to what you were. Didn’t you understand that after our last
conversation?”

“But we’re your friends—”

“Who could have killed me.”

The room was silent and cold. Hermione glanced towards Riddle and then
shivered. The cold magic was coming from him, she was certain. Harry never
would have done something like that to them because they were friends.

Or had been. “A friend wouldn’t accuse us of that,” she whispered.

Riddle gave another long, sliding hiss of Parseltongue. Harry glanced at him but
didn’t respond aloud, answering her instead. “A friend also wouldn’t curse
someone in the back or bind his free will so he had no choice but to consent to
an unequal duel.”

Hermione licked the inside of her mouth, hating the way it tasted like fear. “We
did what we had to do.”

“And that’s part of the reason that you need to go through the trial,” Harry said,
his voice soft. Hermione couldn’t be sure what he was feeling, but she thought it
might be disbelief. “Because after all this, you’re still loyal to him.”

“No, Harry! I understand what we did wrong. And I’m loyal to you, too. I want
to help—you.” Hermione darted a quick glance at Riddle, who was just standing
there with his arms crossed. He said nothing, but Hermione didn’t dare meet his
eyes for long.

“You haven’t repented, Hermione. You think that you deserve to go free and
maybe swear one oath, and that’s it? How would you react to me telling you I
should be able to do that if I’d cursed Ron in the back and he’d nearly died?”

“I would hate you.”

“Well?”
“We won’t get a fair trial under this biased system, Harry, and you know that.
That means the only just thing you can do is let us go, so that we can join the
public life of the wizarding world again.” And persuade them to our way of
thinking, she thought, but didn’t say. Harry had to know that. Riddle must,
although at the moment he was standing there like a wall and doing nothing.

“I have Truth Crystals. The trial is going to be as fair as it can be. You’ll have to
tell the truth about your actions and your motivations, and the people who
would be biased against you are going to have to admit their biases.”

Hermione stared at him, appalled. She had been under the Truth Crystals’ spells
a few times when she was giving reports to Professor Dumbledore, and that had
been uncomfortable enough when she knew the Professor would never misuse
the facts she gave him. He just wanted to make sure their reports were complete.

Now, though…

“Are you still insane?” she whispered. “How did you know where Professor
Dumbledore hid them? Why did you give them to Riddle?”

“You don’t need to worry about how he found them,” Riddle interrupted, voice
smooth and so serpentine that Hermione shuddered and drew away from him.
Ron wrapped himself close, but for once, the proximity of her soulmate didn’t
help. “I’ve had enough of this. I promised Harry that he could have a certain
amount of time to talk you around, but that time has passed.”

“You’re going to be disgusting about controlling him, just like Professor

Dumbledore said,” Ron snapped.

Riddle shrugged. “It seems to me that you are not upset with the idea of
someone controlling Harry, only upset that it’s not someone who’s on your
side.” He went on before Hermione could do more than gasp in anger. “Now,
perhaps you will listen to me and the simple facts that Harry was dancing
around. Your trial takes place next week. You’ll be in front of the Wizengamot
and a few witnesses who survived your attack. The Truth Crystals will be in
place, as Harry said, to ensure that everyone in the room is free of unconscious
bias. You can expect—”
“Harry! Why are you standing back and just letting him do this to us?”
Hermione asked, noting that Harry was leaning against the wall with his arms
folded and his face shut down. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him look that
cold, which made no sense. Had Riddle cast some spell that gave him control of
Harry? It made as much sense as anything else she could think of.
*

Harry caught Tom’s eye, and nodded jerkily. Yes, he remembered their bargain.
He had said that Tom could talk after a while if Ron and Hermione weren’t
listening to him, and he’d said that he’d step back and stay silent.

And honestly, he didn’t think anything good would happen if he answered

Hermione’s question. She was refusing to grasp the obvious, that there wasn’t a
miraculous way out of this because they were “on the side of the Light.” And he
hadn’t realized, until he said it, how much it hurt that his friends had cursed him
the way they had.

Hermione asked another question that Harry ignored. He paced over to the side
of the room and stood staring up at the motionless Muggle landscape paintings
on the walls. He wondered why Tom had chosen them, but decided that he
would ask later, if he ever did at all. The answer probably didn’t matter much.

Tom continued, his tone bland, but the bond around Harry ringing with satisfied
fury. “You can expect to be asked questions about the Order of the Phoenix, but
of course you will be unable to answer some of them.” He paused, then turned
around. “Harry, I didn’t ask how the Truth Crystals worked with vows. Would
they be able to force someone to answer even though that person is under an
Unbreakable Vow?”

Harry shook his head without turning to Tom. “The Founders, or whoever really
created them, didn’t want people to suffer and die under them. They just wanted
the truth. They’ll stand there and look foolish until you ask them another
question.”

“Looking foolish is an option,” Tom said, and continued to Hermione and Ron.
“Your sentence will be Azkaban or death, depending on what you—”

“Fuck you, Riddle!”

Harry spun around. Even he hadn’t thought Ron would go this far. But Ron was
on his feet, charging straight at Tom, his hands reaching for his throat.

Harry shouted and tried to Apparate across the room, but he already knew the
wards were in place, and—

And then Ron collided with a shield in front of Tom that Harry hadn’t been
aware of, and bounced back so far he almost slammed into the couch where
Hermione was sitting again. Hermione stood up, pale and horrified, and
gathered Ron close, dropping her head so that her hair shaded his face and she
was whispering to him.

“Don’t try something like that again,” Tom said softly. He kept his hands folded
behind his back. He hadn’t drawn his wand, which meant he’d had the shield
hovering around him before they came into the room, Harry realized. He had
suspected Ron might try a physical attack.

Harry swallowed, a difficult sound. Tom nodded at him and continued,

“Depending on how the trial goes.”

“We’ll never accept this kind of justice,” Hermione said, looking up. Harry had
thought she might be weeping, from the strained quality in her voice, but she
wasn’t. Her eyes were remarkably dry and focused. “You’re in charge of an
illegitimate government. You have no right to do this to us.”

Tom laughed, short and sharp. “As if the one you would have replaced it with
would have been any more legitimate? From what Harry’s said, it makes it seem
as if you had no plan once I was defeated but letting whoever wanted to take
over the Wizengamot. It could have been someone even more openly hostile to
Muggleborns and someone who would make things worse for the people you
claim you want to protect.”

“But you would be gone.”

Harry closed his eyes. That simple faith was probably the truth, and probably
what Hermione and Ron would say, too, under the Truth Crystals.

Hermione continued, although her voice was wavering. Harry supposed it was
the expression on Tom’s face. “And besides, what happens in the Wizengamot
doesn’t matter so much. It’s people’s day-to-day lives that we need to deal with.
Once you’re gone, those will get better.”

“Why?”

A long silence. Harry had to look, despite his conviction that just keeping his
eyes shut would be easier for him, and saw Hermione worrying her lip with her
teeth as she stared at him.

But Hermione finally took a deep breath and said, “Because there won’t be
someone so charismatic and magically-powerful warping people’s minds.
Whatever the Wizengamot does after this, they won’t do it with you in charge,
and they won’t be as effective.”
“That comes the closest of anything you’ve said to a coherent argument,” Tom
murmured, voice precise. “But you can’t actually know that, and you forget that
it might take years for another Minister to be elected.” He gave a half-bow. “I
look forward to seeing what the Truth Crystals bring out at your trial, Granger,
Weasley.”

He turned around and held out his hand, and Harry came to him. Hermione said
something desperate behind him that he deliberately didn’t let himself hear.

“Disappointed?” Tom asked when the door closed behind them.

Harry nodded and stepped closer to him. Tom looked at him with his eyebrows
raised. Harry reached up and hooked a hand around the back of his neck,
ignoring the way the Aurors watched them.

“You’ve been patient with my desire to speak to them, and I thank you,” Harry
said quietly. “I don’t think they’ll be convinced until they hear us speak in the
presence of the Truth Crystals, but you can’t help that.”

“All right,” Tom said, his eyebrows raised a little as though he was trying to
figure out what Harry was talking about.

“I’d like to spend the night in bed with you. May I?”

Every part of Tom seemed to freeze, including the emotional bond and the
magic they shared. He reached up and gently slid the back of his knuckles down
Harry’s face. Harry smiled a little, but kept looking steadily at his face. Tom
leaned towards him and gently kissed the shell of his ear.

“Yes,” he said. “You may join me.”

Harry nodded and stepped back before the Aurors could get too curious. He
turned around to find Amelia Bones striding towards them. She had a crisp
frown on her face, and she was carrying what looked like a handkerchief in her
fingertips, her whole hand seeming to flinch back from it.

“Is something wrong, Madam Bones?” Tom asked, and canted his body a little
to the side, as if he wanted to shield Harry from whatever she was holding.

“I want to know what it means that this was found near my home, Minister
Riddle,” Madam Bones said, her voice painfully neutral. “I feel that I’ve been a
—a trustworthy ally to you, and so why you would leave a piece of cloth with
your magical signature and the beginnings of blood magic on it where my niece
could have come across it puzzles me.”

Harry was moving before he thought about it. He yanked on the magic
swarming around Tom, and heard Tom shout as Harry dissipated the shield that
had sheltered him from Ron. Harry didn’t care, though, couldn’t care. He
snapped the magic up and out, and the handkerchief in Madam Bones’s hand
burst into flames.

“Mr. Potter!” Madam Bones stared at him in outrage. “Are you trying to protect
your lover from the natural consequences of his actions? I am appalled—”

“There’s no such thing as a handkerchief that could be used in blood magic and
which also has the magical signature of a specific person it,” Harry said. His
voice was harsh and buzzing, and all around them, the Aurors were moving
chaotically, not sure who to attack and who to protect. It didn’t matter. Harry’s
eyes stayed on Madam Bones. “The blood magic would obliterate the traces of a
magical signature if it was that far advanced, and if the signature was still
detectable, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was meant to be used in a blood magic
ritual. Which means that isn’t what you were carrying.”

“Mr. Potter, I must insist—”

Tom Stunned her. Madam Bones staggered rather than going down right away,
which told Harry a frightening amount about her magical strength, and then
another Stunner slammed into her. Tom still conjured a cushion along the floor
before she could hit the ground.

That left the Aurors to gape at them in horror. Tom turned to them, and
whatever they saw in his face at least redirected their gazes to the floor and the
walls. Harry stood there, breathing and staring at Madam Bones.

“You’re to search her office,” Tom said softly. “Find out who she’s been in
contact with in the past ten hours. No, twenty.” He glanced at Harry, and Harry
nodded. He didn’t know for sure what sort of mind control had been used on
Madam Bones, but twenty hours was a good timeframe for tracing back things
like the Imperius Curse, so it ought to work for this. “Full permission granted
for owl tracers and ward readers.”

“I mean—sir, won’t someone say it’s an invasion of privacy when they find out
we did—”
“The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has
been compromised,” Tom said, and the tile in the floor immediately next to his
feet crackled as it turned to ice and then broke. “I assure you that I will bear the
brunt of whatever political consequences might come out of this.”

“Yes, sir,” breathed the Auror who had objected, and then several of them took
off up the corridor.

Harry glanced at Tom, who was staring at Madam Bones. “Do you think she’s
going to be all right?”

“Yes,” Tom said. Harry wondered if he was only imagining the uncertainty in
his tone, but when Tom turned to him, he understood. From the stubborn set of
Tom’s chin, he would not let it be any other way. “We’ll make sure that
whoever did this is properly punished for hurting Amelia, Harry.”

“I think we both know who did it.”

Harry thought he had kept his voice low enough, but from the sharp slash
Tom’s had made in the air, perhaps not. Harry nodded and stepped back, and
watched as Tom turned to converse with the Aurors who had remained around
them.

He supposed there was no reason, even now, to think that the Aurors’ ranks
were free of traitors.

“Why would he do something like that to Amelia Bones?”

Harry put down his cup of tea and faced Lily with a little sigh. Lily stared at
him. She knew that he had got no taller in the last few weeks, but it seemed as if
he had. Certainly he was more clear-eyed and had lost every trace of shyly
ducking his head the way he used to when he had to carry the secret about his
soulmate around.

“Dumbledore had to know that she was one of the very few people who could
get close enough to Tom and me unsuspected,” Harry said, his fingers toying
with the outside of the cup. He kept turning his head a little to the side, and Lily
was sure, if she asked him, that he would say it was just a coincidence. She
didn’t think so. Harry was sensing Riddle’s presence even though he wasn’t
here right now, pointing his face in the right direction. “Especially after
Whipwood being caught and interrogated. Tom wouldn’t trust an Auror right
now.”

“He trusts them around him.”

“They’ve made personal vows of loyalty. But Tom doesn’t trust them enough to
just let them approach without putting his guard up.”

Lily looked down at her own teacup and frowned fiercely. Harry made a noise
that was sort of like a groan and sort of like a chuckle. “Say what you’re
thinking, Mum. I mean, I know you will anyway.”

Lily looked up. “I think that we’ve abandoned one tyrant to support another.”

Harry gave her an odd look. “I didn’t think you supported at him at all.”

“I mean—we’re here.”

“Yeah, but he hasn’t required you to go to Azkaban. He pardoned you. That’s

not the same as recruiting you.” Harry shrugged, apparently unconcerned with
the way Lily was staring at him. “I always assumed that that was the reason you
were mostly staying out of the way and looking at furniture and your accounts
and things like that.”

Lily swallowed. Then she swallowed again. “You’re not upset about that?”

Harry leaned back and stared up at the ceiling for a second. “Mum, most of the
people in the wizarding world don’t support him. Or Dumbledore either,
admittedly, and the number of people who do that is going to go down now that
Dumbledore’s a fugitive.” Lily nodded, because she had assumed the same
thing herself. “But there’s mostly a lot of complacency. People didn’t care
enough about Tom’s voting record to look it up.” Harry’s eyes narrowed and
hardened. “Not even Hermione did that. She just accepted Dumbledore’s words
about Tom being evil on faith. No one wants to do enough bloody research.
They want to believe in the romantic version of his life Tom puts out there, or
they want to believe Dumbledore is a shining force for good. It drives me
bloody insane,” he muttered.

“Romantic?”

“Oh, come on, Mum. You know. That he got his soul-mark burned off when he
was a kid but it didn’t stop him, he still believes in love. And here love is
coming along and showing that he has a real soulmate and all his patient waiting
for him wasn’t in vain.” Harry rolled his eyes. “I mean, he’s a showman. A con
man.”

“But you support him anyway.”

“We’ve been over this,” Harry said quietly, a force of strength like a fire behind
his words. “No, I don’t support what he’s done so far. I support him changing,
and he’s starting to talk to me about what that would look like. But I spent
twenty-four bloody years denying him and rejecting him because I was told that
was what I had to do. It didn’t change anything. For once, I’m working with
him.”

Lily hesitated. “And if your father and I never come to his side?”

Harry stirred his tea with magic and watched as it moved in the cup. “I can’t
pretend it won’t hurt. But you’re your own people, and you have your own
beliefs. It has to be hard to overcome those and just pretend everything is fine.”
He hesitated. “And Dumbledore had some good ideas. It was his methods I
questioned.”

“Are those the ideas that you’re trying to introduce to Riddle?”

Harry nodded. “I mean, not the one where I think it was a good idea to hide
from him for twenty-four years. But others.” He smiled.

“Can you—can you forgive us for that?” Lily blurted, and had to close her eyes
when she saw how Harry’s expression changed. “Riddle came—he said that
we’d betrayed you—”

“Tom,” Harry sighed, and Lily had to hold back a gasp at how much it sounded
like the way she sometimes said James’s name. “He does things he knows I
don’t want him to in the name of being protective.”

“So you don’t feel comfortable with him?”

“Yes, Mum, that’s exactly it. Because Dad never want too far when you were
still friends with Severus Snape.”

Lily sighed. “I didn’t—fully accept that we were soulmates then.”

“And I never accepted Tom ever.” Harry folded his arms and gazed at her
evenly, although with a pulse beating in his throat that Lily knew meant he
would argue with her to the death if he had to. “I know what it’s like, Mum. I
know there’s going to be a lot that we have to go through, and work through,
and work on. The thing is, I don’t see that that’s a reason to give Tom up.”

Lily reached out and caught her son’s hand, squeezing once. “As long as you
can accept that we’re probably going to be of the opposite political persuasion.”

“And as long as you can accept that if you act against him, I really don’t think I
could convince Tom to pardon you this time,” Harry said quietly.

Lily nodded. Honestly, there was a coil of tension in her belly that had relaxed
at the words. The kind of activities that Albus had directed the Order of the
Phoenix to do no longer appealed to her. Informing people about Riddle and his
laws and votes, writing letters, talking to Muggleborns and Muggles who were
affected by the restrictions, and getting rid of the Dementors in Azkaban all
sounded much more interesting.

“I hoped Hermione would come to the same conclusion,” Harry said then. He
stared into his teacup as if there was something important hidden at the bottom
of it. “But she still thinks that it’s unfair that she’s going to be tried at all, and
that there are going to be Truth Crystals at the trial.”

“Truth Crystals? Where did you get them?”

“I created them.”

Lily opened her mouth and then closed it. “I think Albus must be kicking
himself,” she said at last.

Harry stared at her curiously. “For what? I don’t think he realizes that I spent
enough time around the Truth Crystals to figure out how they work. I don’t
think anyone knows that.”

Lily shook her head. “Not that. I mean that he must have wished he had
encouraged you to use your magic.”

“On his behalf, then. And then Tom wouldn’t have got away with so much, and
Ron and Hermione would have known better and could have figured out the
right way to take me down. Yes, I see.”

Lily’s heart hurt at the casual way he spoke about the essential end of his
friendship with Ron and Hermione. She stood up and came around the table.
Harry stood, too, his brow furrowing for a second, and then gasped as Lily
enveloped him in her arms and hugged him close.
“I love you,” Lily whispered. “I love you so much. And I want you to know
that nothing is as important to me as you coming home safe, except your
happiness. I’m so sorry that the way we raised you made you so unhappy. I’m
sorry, baby.”

Harry leaned against her and kissed her gently on the cheek. “This is why I
don’t agree with what Tom did, Mum. I mean, the way he confronted you.
There’s no way that we can go back and change the past. And you genuinely did
have good intentions.”

“That wasn’t enough to save Ron and Hermione with you. Or Dumbledore.”

“They’re not my parents,” Harry said, so dryly that Lily laughed in spite of
herself. “And Ron and Hermione…lied to me, too. And Dumbledore probably
went too far the minute he refused to listen to Tom’s claim that he’d had his
soul-mark burned off. He made his choices, and he finally did something stupid
in public. He’ll be hunted down now, and frankly, that’s enough for me.”

“You’re too forgiving, maybe,” Lily said. She felt tears prickle against the sides
of her eyes, but blinked them away. “I’m sure Riddle would say so.”

“Tom should be glad that I’m this forgiving. It’s not like I would have accepted
that arsehole as my soulmate otherwise.”

And Lily laughed again, and something even deeper in her eased with those
words.

“Coming, dear one?”

Harry smiled into the mirror of Tom’s bathroom. Then his smile faded, and he
took a deep breath, and removed his shirt. He’d already decided what he
wanted, and the desire spread through him more strongly than his fear.

His fingers still trembled as he laid his shirt aside, though.

“In a minute,” he called back.

“You don’t need to brush your teeth. I promise that I won’t turn away no matter
what your breath smells like.”
The sincerity Harry could feel through their bond, and the banked heat of Tom’s
own desire, reassured Harry more than anything else could have done. He
nodded firmly at the mirror and raked his fingers through his hair. Then he
reached down and hooked his fingers into his trousers and pants, tugging them
down in one smooth motion.

He straightened up and stared at himself in Tom’s full-length mirror, then gave

his head an impatient shake. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he looked like.
And from the desire smoldering in their bond, he knew Tom would like the way
he looked.

At least.

He hoped Tom would like the way he looked. The only feature people had
tended to praise on him was his eyes. And even that had been limited praise,
because Harry had made it clear from the time he started attending Hogwarts
that he planned to wait for his soulmate.
That turned out to be true, didn’t it? Just in another way that had nothing to do
with someone coming close enough to see your soul-mark when you were
naked.

For some reason, that made Harry’s shoulders straighten, and he smiled in spite
of himself. Then he turned and walked out of the bathroom.

Tom had expected some sort of surprise with the fluid way that Harry’s
emotions kept changing in the bond and the vague answers he gave when Tom
asked if he was ready to come out yet, but he had never expected this.

Harry stepping into view naked was a sight that Tom hadn’t realized he wanted.

His desire was suddenly so present that moving and catching his breath was a
chore. Tom swallowed and stalked a slow step forwards. Harry stood watching
him come, his eyes tracing over Tom’s face for a second before falling to his
erection.

Tom was glad, now, that he still wore his robes, and that they had done enough
before this for Harry not to be shocked by the sight of Tom’s cock pressing
against the cloth. He would enjoy undressing for Harry, but he didn’t want to
deal with a virgin terrified to the point of running.
Harry smiled a little then. “I never intended to run,” he said. “We’ve both had
enough of that.”

“Picking up my thoughts, my dear?” Tom was surprised the words didn’t come
out in Parseltongue, his voice deepening and sliding as he stopped in front of
Harry and reached out a hand to trail his long fingers over a thick, ropy scar on
Harry’s chest. Harry breathed in, and Tom watched, entranced, as the skin rose
and fell beneath his touch, humming with life. “What is this scar from?”

Harry had to tilt his head sharply to the side to see where Tom’s hand was
resting, which Tom found far more enchanting than he should have. “Oh.
Someone conjured a panther during a duel with another student in Gryffindor
and then bloody lost control of it.”

Tom stared at him. “A panther. It does not look like a bite.”

“No, it used its claws.”

“Who was this student?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Look, he had to serve detention for four months straight
with Professor McGonagall. I think he was punished enough.” He leaned
forwards and kissed Tom without touching him with his hands, and Tom’s
interests changed abruptly.

And Tom let the name of the unknown student go, more than content to gather
Harry in his arms and lean forwards, their tongues touching each other’s, their
lips brushing, their hands gathering each to one another.

Tonight would be the night they bonded fully, the night Tom had once assumed
he would never live to see even if he became immortal.

And here it was.

This is worth more than immortality.

Chapter 23: Beds
Chapter Text

Harry swallowed as Tom gently escorted him to the bed. It wasn’t like he hadn’t
been here before, and it wasn’t as if someone had compelled the decision he’d
made in the bathroom. He knew what he wanted.

He wouldn’t be here if Tom had tried to force him.

Tom paused and caught his eye, which Harry supposed shouldn’t be such a
surprise. Their bond had to be ringing and trembling with his nervousness. “I
promise that I will not hurt you. I’ll use all the spells necessary. And if you want
to back off and wait for this, I can do that.”

The bond sang how much Tom would hate to do that even more than his
shaking hand did as he reached out to trace a path down Harry’s breastbone.
Harry caught his wrist as he lay down and shook his head. “No, Tom, I don’t
want to wait. This is the right time. But please use the spells.” He smiled, and
then smiled a little more from the way Tom stared at him, his eyes wide. “It’s
also my first time, after all.”

“You don’t know how glad I am of that,” Tom said as he moved his wand in
intricate patterns, and Harry felt a soft warmth travel through his arse, followed
by an odd, involuntary relaxing of his muscles and a slickness at his entrance.
“I’m greedy. I know I didn’t wait, and I couldn’t have expected my soulmate to
wait for me. But if I had to know that you’d shared yourself with someone
else…”

“Well, you don’t have to,” Harry said simply. He had seen the way Tom’s eyes
lingered on the panther-claw scar on his chest, and he already didn’t like to
imagine how Tom would fight to restrain himself from hunting down the
responsible party. “I’m right here, and all yours.”

Tom’s eyes darkened, and the air around them writhed for a second, dark shapes
like the phoenixes he had used to harm Sirius appearing and then disappearing.
Harry swallowed. It shouldn’t have made him harder, but should appeared to
have very little bearing on his reactions.

Tom reached up to the collar of his robes and touched them. The robes folded
neatly back, followed by the shirt and pants he had worn underneath them, and
puddled on the floor for a second before rolling themselves into a neat bundle
on the chair arm.

Harry stared blankly at him, then said, “Unfair not to teach me that spell.”

“I’ll teach you all sorts of things, darling.”

Harry spread his legs with a soft needy sound, and Tom came to kneel on the
bed next to him. For a moment, he stared, and Harry caught flickers of thought
and emotion, loneliness and yearning and the conviction Tom had come to ten
years ago that he would never stop seeking his soulmate, even though by then
he thought they must have been born and were avoiding him.
“I think we were always meant to end up here,” Harry whispered, arching his
neck and catching Tom’s gaze, “whatever our politics were and whatever tricks
I came up with to hide.”

Tom’s smile warmed slowly into place, and he reached out and let his fingers
curl around Harry’s soul-mark. Harry sighed as the blue flames sprang into
being. He glanced at the burn scar on Tom’s chest.

“Yes, I wish I had one for you to touch,” Tom whispered. “I hope that you don’t
mourn its absence.” He glanced towards the pile of robes. On top, the phoenix
made of onyx and diamonds gleamed.

“No.” Harry took a deep breath and did what he could to shift the mood. Right
now, he thought too much softness would drift towards melancholy for the
years and things they’d lost, and he didn’t want that. “You know what I wish
for?”

“What?” Tom stared at him, focused, as if Harry was the center of his existence.

“For you to fuck me,” Harry whispered, and grabbed his arm to draw him in.

Tom knew what Harry was doing, but he allowed it. There was no retrieving the
past, and he wouldn’t spend his completion of the sexual bond with his
soulmate trying.

He released Harry’s wrist and followed the motion of his demanding arm down
to kiss him, then stretched out on top of Harry completely bare for the first time.
Harry’s breath visibly hitched, and he reached up, half-clawing at Tom,
grabbing and holding anywhere he could. Tom welcomed the pain of the small
scratches Harry’s short nails inflicted.

He breathed out gently and then rolled out of the way, going up onto his knees
to reach for his wand again. He cast more lubrication and relaxing charms, and
then, with a smile, the one that made Harry twitch his head around to stare
curiously.

“Just ensuring that when I’m inside you, you’ll experience more pleasure than
normal from my cock,” Tom hissed as he put his wand aside. “Pleasure just
from having it in you, no matter what it touches or if I’m moving.”
He knew he’d made the right decision when he saw how Harry’s eyes met his,
and Harry nodded rapidly twice and spread his legs.

But Tom wanted to touch him other places first, and he spread his fingers out
around Harry’s nipples. They were already tight, and Tom didn’t pull them. He
leaned down and breathed on them instead.

Harry gave a hoarse hiss in which Tom could, unfortunately, detect no

Parseltongue words. Then he lunged his head off the pillow and kissed Tom in a
painful click of teeth. Tom eased back and slipped his hand around Harry’s
cock.

It hardly needed the help, straining up from between Harry’s legs as it was, but
Tom had had too many fantasies about this moment to let them go so easily. He
formed his fingers into a ring and held still.

“What do you—want?” Harry asked, after a second. He was concentrating on

Tom as hard as he could, but Tom wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t pick up
exactly what Tom longed for. Their mental bond was too new and not complete
yet.

“I always thought, if I had a male soulmate, that I wanted him to fuck my fist.”

“People would be so surprised to know how lazy you are,” Harry muttered, but
his smile was already the deep, shining one that Tom liked best. He began to
thrust up, his erection sliding along Tom’s fingers and slicking them. Tom just
stared, and his heart thundered and sang in his chest.

It was better and more vivid than anything he’d imagined. Everything, from the
soft sounds it made to the way that Harry’s cock caught here and there at the
calluses from quills, was real.

“I’m starting to feel like I’m doing all the work here,” Harry finally drawled,
sprawling back on the bed and giving Tom a challenging look. “Is there going
to be any reciprocation, or is the Minister for Magic too lazy to do that?”

“What do you want?” Tom repeated, and then again in Parseltongue, to watch
that greedy dark look creep into his eyes.

“I want you to—”

Harry half-closed his eyes as if to gather his strength, but Tom was a practiced
Legilimens, and he picked up the flash of the thought. He laughed. “Well,
soulmates are supposed to be well-matched sexually as well as in souls and
minds and magic.”

“Shut up,” Harry muttered.

“Glad to,” Tom said, and slithered down the bed with his mouth open. Harry
was thrusting before Tom got him in his mouth, which made the position more
challenging, but he hardly cared. He rode the violent pushes into his throat, and
Harry’s shaky groan made him thrust, too, against the bedsheets.

Tom didn’t get long to suck Harry, unfortunately, since Harry was already near
his peak and Tom had to do what he wanted. He reached out, timing it, waiting
until the last safe second, and then cast the spell that choked back Harry’s
orgasm.

Harry cast back his head and uttered a strangled howl. Tom remained calm,
knowing exactly what Harry was feeling from the emotional bond surging
around him. Harry swallowed and lay there with his chest heaving—an
attractive sight, Tom had to admit—and then looked at him.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “That was intense.”

“That’s part of what you need,” Tom whispered, reaching back down and letting
his fingers trace around Harry’s slick arsehole. Harry let his eyes flutter shut
and sighed. “That intensity of experience. You crave it.” He paused, and his
eyes turned against his will to Harry’s chest. “Was that part of the business with
the panther?”

“Fuck you,” Harry said crossly, his eyes flying open again and the emotional
bond turning nearly to a solid block of ice around Tom. “I didn’t conjure it and
it wasn’t my idea to have it attack me!”

“But you also treated having the scar completely nonchalantly, and I’m sure that
you never told the name of the person who conjured it to your Head of House.”
Tom had evaluated Minerva McGonagall carefully before he had let her become
Head of Gryffindor House, and he didn’t believe she would have let someone
like that go unpunished.

Harry flushed a dull red. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Once we have the mental bond, I can read the name out of your head,” Tom
said, and laughed at the way Harry snarled. Not because he couldn’t feel the
anger, but because he loved the way Harry looked when he felt like that.
“Are you going to fuck me, or am I going to have to conjure a cock and do it all
myself?”

“Do you know that spell, then?” Tom asked, as he renewed the pleasure charms
on his cock. He didn’t want Harry to get any idea about relying on his own
hands.

“Yes.”

“Did you use it often?”

Harry met his gaze, and his face lost some of the red tint. But he breathed in
deep and answered. “Not often. It just felt like reminding myself of something I
was never going to have. Or I thought I was never going to have.”

“You’ll have all you want, all you’ll ever need,” Tom promised, and his fingers
settled on Harry’s hip. “And you’ll let me know if you do feel pain, or
something beyond the level of intensity you want.”

“I’ll tell you.”

The shining eyes and the shining face uptilted to him ruined Tom’s simple plan
to slide into Harry. He leaned forwards and did it at the same time he was
kissing Harry, swallowing his gasp, and running his fingers down Harry’s chest
and over that panther scar.

He wanted everything about Harry. His wounds, his pain, his desires, his

embarrassment, his cravings, his memories. And he was on the way to
achieving it.

Harry hadn’t been lying when he’d said that he rarely did the Invisible Cock
Conjuration. He would lie there after it was done with his eyes closed, wanting
to be fucked by his soulmate, knowing it couldn’t happen, feeling guilty for
wanting it to happen, feeling angry at the people who had told him it never
could.

Now he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d conjured the damn thing
every day. Because having Tom inside him was nothing like the
invisible, tiny cocks that he’d managed to conjure before this.
He lay there, gasping, and feeling the hardness inside him, piercing him,
opening his arse, separating him from the man he had been. Tom leaned down
above him with a frown, hands on his shoulders and eyes bright and concerned.

“Harry?”

“I’m all right.” Harry blinked his eyes open, and found that he was smiling,
although that was no surprise when he could feel their bond spinning open
around them like a sunburst. He reached up and let his hand rest on Tom’s
cheek. “I still promise that I would tell you when it gets too much for me.”

Tom nodded, that serenely smug smile creeping back into place. “In truth, I no
longer think you would need to. I would feel it.” And he began to thrust.

Harry reached back, gripping the pillows above him, and opened his legs and
his body and his mind.

There was nothing like this, and Harry let himself spiral into the bond. There
was pleasure spreading from Tom over him like fire, and there were the harsh
motions of Tom’s body that caused that pleasure, and there were so many
emotions tumbling over him that it was like being caught in a flow of warm
water, and there were flickering, dancing thoughts—

Harry reached out towards them.

Mine, my soulmate, worth waiting for, wish I’d waited, wouldn’t have been able
to make it so good for him if I had—
Harry let the thoughts go with a gasp and worked his inner muscles around
Tom, making him lean closer and hiss in Parseltongue, “You’re going to need
more than that to bring me off, darling.”
Harry just stared at him, still reeling with the possessiveness he’d felt, and
Tom’s determination to have and keep him. Tom smiled lazily at him and
continued moving. True to his words earlier, he must have been able to feel
from the mental bond that Harry’s shock was nothing bad.

“I can do more than that,” Harry whispered when he’d recovered his breath, and
began to squeeze in opposition to Tom’s thrusts, bearing down when he pulled
out, relaxing as he pushed back in. Tom’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes
fluttered. The bond danced around them again, chaotic and golden.

Harry immersed himself once more in the thoughts. He’d always belived they
were calm and orderly; that was the way Hermione had described the bond she
had with Ron, at least, the one time Harry had been masochistic enough to ask
her about it.

But instead, this was a storm.

Mine, protect him, keep him, have him, he’s safe, he’s underneath me, he’s
staring at me like I’m the center of his world, I’m going to be—

Harry darted back out again, a swift shudder of pleasure running down his
spine. Tom smiled down at him and kept languidly thrusting, and damn, Harry
had lost the rhythm he’d been maintaining. He squeezed down again, doing his
best to envelop Tom in warmth and pleasure that would hold him.

His mind was spinning, and not just because of the fierceness of the bond that
might calm down when it wasn’t so new.

Tom was—

Tom was mad over him.

If they had known, it would have been possible to have peace with him a long
time ago. Tom would have agreed to almost anything, including, Harry knew,
treating Muggleborns better, when it was such a game to him in the first place.
To have his soulmate, to know that his parents were raising him and treating
him kindly—

To be able to meet him when he was younger and reassure Harry that he would
live by Harry’s principles in the future—

Because of fear, that chance had been taken away from all of them, not just
Harry and Tom but the Order and the world.

“Harry,” Tom whispered, and touched his cheek. Harry blinked up at him,
dazedly. “You’re crying. Are you all right?”

Harry bit his lip and nodded. Tom had stopped moving. Harry mustered a laugh
when he noticed. “How are you going to get me off by holding still? Sorry, but I
don’t think even you’re that good.”

“Will you tell me what you were weeping about later?” Tom’s eyes had more
than a hint of red to them, and he was frozen above Harry, so intent still that
Harry felt a rush of possessive affection of his own.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said. “And I’ll be better than fine when you get your arse
moving in my arse again.”

Tom continued to study him for a second as if he wasn’t sure Harry was telling
the truth, but Harry projected the calm and reassurance he truly felt through the
bond, and Tom finally nodded and began to move. Harry opened himself up
again, this time not trying to read the individual thoughts as they swept through
his mind like soft rain.

He knew what they meant, anyway, without hearing them. He was loved.

Tom could feel the grieving edge to Harry’s thoughts, but he couldn’t grasp
them well enough to tell what he was thinking about. Harry’s mind leaped and
darted like a fish, and the waters of their bond were too new yet. Tom had heard
the effect described many times, but for some reason, he had never thought it
would happen to him.

He shook away the disappointment as a glow seemed to spread out of Harry’s

mind and embrace him. The important thing was that they loved each other, and
they were soulmates, and together at once.

And he wanted to concentrate on giving his soulmate as good a first time as it

was possible to have.

He thrust without taking his eyes from Harry. Harry stared up at him for a
second, and then began to smile. He squeezed down again, with a devilish edge
to the smile that reminded Tom of how Harry had resisted him when he’d first
begun to suspect there was something unusual about the young man who had
saved him from a collapsing roof.

Tom bent down next to Harry’s ear and breathed, “It occurs to me that I still
technically owe you a life-debt.”

Harry scowled at once. “No, you—oh.” He let his eyes fall half-shut as Tom
thrust again, carefully hitting his prostate.

“So glad that you agree, since you’re not actually disagreeing,” Tom said
casually, and laughed a little when Harry’s eyes flared open to focus on him
again. “I love you, darling.”
Harry gaped up at him, and Tom touched his cheek before he resumed his
thrusts. Harry swallowed and whispered, “I—love you, too.”

The emotional bond around them might have been lit on fire, a gentle,
coruscating warmth that made Tom’s heart beat faster in his chest. He held
himself back from coming with an effort, and managed to smile as he said, “I’m
going to make this so good for you.”

“It already is.”

“You have no idea,” Tom said, and then closed his eyes and descended into the
haze of warmth in his own chest. Harry’s power thrummed there next to his
own. Tom paused for a startled moment. He had always expected the magic of
his soulmate to blend with his own, but hadn’t known that—

That they would become one like this. He wouldn’t be pulling on Harry’s magic

when he cast a spell if he wanted extra power. He would be pulling on theirs.

But at least it made what he wanted to do easier. Tom shook away his own
surprise and hissed out the incantation, slowly, envisioning a serpent winding
up and around Harry’s chest as he did so. Parseltongue made the manipulation
of nerves and physical sensations easier, the snake-like pattern of veins and
arteries and neurons resonating in sympathy with the language. Tom had only
done this once before, however, and he fed the strength slowly through the net
of his concentration.

“You stopped again.”

“My apologies,” Tom murmured, and opened his eyes to see Harry frowning at
him in a way that was honestly marvelous. “I think I can promise that from now
on, that’s not going to be a feature of our sex.”

“Altogether?”

“No, just this one time,” Tom admitted, and then cast his own small charm to
ensure that he wouldn’t hurt his back and hips doing what he wanted to do,
before he began to thrust wildly forwards.

Harry gasped and then began to buck back to meet him. But his muscles hadn’t
been enhanced by the magic Tom had used, and it only took a few minutes
before he ran out of strength and lay there, making the most minute of motions
with his hips, his eyes locked on Tom’s.
“What did you do?”

“Something special,” Tom said, and then thrust forwards and plowed directly
into Harry’s prostate.

Harry gasped again as he began to come. Tom watched with his emotions
whirling around him and Harry’s incoherent thoughts flying beside his as Harry
coated his own belly, and then raised an eyebrow when Harry stared down in
bewilderment.

“I’m still hard,” Harry whispered, his eyes darting back up to Tom.

“Parseltongue has a charm that allows for multiple orgasms,” Tom explained,
and then began to thrust again.

Harry just stared at him, but in less than a minute, he tipped over the edge again,
vibrating and shouting. Tom grinned. In truth, the spell was more a matter of
giving Harry the pleasure than making him come more than once; his erection
hadn’t gone down much. Tom thought there might be enough magic left for
twice more.

Harry was breathing harshly as he managed to focus again. “I—Tom. I feel

so good.”

And the bond burst into light around them, not fire, and Tom had to close his
eyes as he felt it immerse him to the point where he could no longer imagine
being separate. He reached out and wrapped his hand around Harry’s erection,
stroking, touching, and then pulling back and pushing forwards once more.

Harry shivered through another orgasm, his expression open and

simply happy in a way that Tom had never seen on him before. He looked up
and met Tom’s gaze, and then he laughed, a sound as simple and happy as the
grin. He reached out a yearning hand, and Tom claimed it and kissed the back
of it.

One more, he thought, and the spell would be finished. And his bollocks were
beginning to ache with the effort of holding back, and the spell he had cast to
strengthen his muscles would be fading before much longer, too.

“Ready?” he whispered.

“I don’t think there’s any getting ready for this,” Harry said, and laughed again.
“Thanks for having lovers before me and studying sex magic, Tom.”
A bit of guilt Tom hadn’t realized he was feeling burned away at that, and he
smiled and thrust again, and then again, and then once more—

And the whole of his being caught on fire.

He saw the shapes of phoenixes sweeping past him for a moment, and serpents,
and Harry’s face. And then he fell into his orgasm, and into the bond at the
same moment.

It pushed him to the bed, and then it pushed him into unconsciousness less than
a second later.

Harry wrapped his arms around Tom and settled back on the bed. The steady
hum of their bond sang around him, reassuring him, despite the odd blackness
where Tom’s thoughts should be. Even when he had been asleep before, it
hadn’t felt like this, not since the mental aspect of the bond had started and they
had been catching glimpses of each other’s thoughts. Then it had been like
standing at the edge of a restless dark pool alive with darting fish.

But Harry knew their bond wouldn’t hurt Tom. He had to trust in that. He took a
long breath and closed his eyes, and listened to the humming song around them.

It wasn’t exactly like anyone else’s bond, but then, Harry was starting to suspect
that no words really existed to describe that bond to someone who hadn’t
experienced it. There were bright ribbons of emotion, trails of light that marked
where their bond had completed itself, echoes of pleasure. Harry smiled and
stretched a little around the soreness in his arse, and watched as the impressions
in front of his eyes danced and rippled into new configurations. Yes, the
physical, sexual aspect of their bond was complete as well.

And their magic…

Harry reached out and yanked carefully on their magic, and the mingled, pooled
power leaped at him. He gasped and sagged back against the pillow, and
shuddered as new memories and knowledge settled into the back of his mind
like a heavy block.

He knew how Tom had called forth those serpents from the earth when he had
faced Dumbledore and the Order. He—he didn’t know if he could do it. It didn’t
feel as though he could speak Parseltongue, as though that ability had
transferred. But he knew so intimately how it was done that he might be able to
anyway.

And there were other memories, Harry thought, as his hand went to his chest.
He knew, as if he passed through it and out again in a flash, what it was like to
have a soul-mark on his chest, and have it burned off.

He swallowed and touched the memory again, and this time the sensation that
swept through him was one of dark rage, freezing rage, the conviction that he
might lose his soulmate forever and the desperation to make someone pay for
that.

Harry closed his eyes. He could no longer claim to be innocent of the darkness
in the depths of Tom Riddle. He turned his mind in another direction, and he
knew kinship with the freezing indifference that had made Tom able to vote for
laws that he knew would hurt and disadvantage Muggleborns and Muggles.

Harry understood what it was like to care for nothing and no one but himself
and his soulmate.

He breathed out and released the feeling, and then moved closer to Tom,
curving one arm around his back. He thought, as he began to drift off to sleep,
that if he got to understand what it was like for Tom, then at least Tom would
also get to understand what it was like for him, and that might teach him
compassion in a way nothing else had been able to do.

And then Harry’s eyes snapped open again. Tom would also get the emotional
content of the memories where Harry had lain there in the dead of night and
thought no one would ever love him and he would have to suffer alone for the
rest of his life.
Well—I mean, the compassion has to outweigh that, right? The things I think
are right mattered more to me than my loneliness over my soulmate. I thought
about them more.
At least, I hope so.
But Harry found, as he lay down in the embrace of the stirring, complete bond,
that he wouldn’t have given up any of it to protect his privacy. This was the
course he had chosen, and it was the right one, the only one, that would bring
him to love and peace.
And if I have to drag Tom along behind me to get him to follow it, that’s what
I’ll bloody do.
Chapter 24: Claims
Chapter Text
Tom woke slowly, his magic pulsing inside him the way his lungs did when
he’d taken a particularly deep breath. He rolled over and blinked. Harry was
curled next to him, his marked wrist an inch or so from Tom’s eyes.

Tom touched it and watched the blue flames spill out at the same moment as he
touched their completed bond. He wasn’t surprised it had dragged him into
unconsciousness, not when he felt how thick it was. He’d used more magic than
Harry in the bed, and he’d also gone longer without the completion.

But now Harry was asleep and didn’t feel, or notice, Tom gliding gently in and
out of his memories. His trust in Tom was another thing that had become
perfect with the bond. Tom held back the desire to crow about that, and instead
carefully drew out a memory in front of him, long and gold and gleaming, like a
particularly bright strand pulled from someone’s temple to put in a Pensieve.

The memory glittered in front of him as Tom entered it, but the glitter faded
quickly. Tom found himself in the drawing room of an ordinary cottage, and
glanced around to see Harry, who looked seven or so, sitting in front of the
fireplace. He was cradling his right wrist, his fingers obliterating Tom’s name.
This must have been long before he got the phoenix tattoo.

Tom moved across the room and stood behind Harry, resting a hand on his
shoulder, even though he knew it would make no difference, as no one here
could see him.

Harry stood up as Lily Potter came into the room, and Tom moved his hand.
“Mum,” Harry said, with a quiver in his spine that Tom could feel, although his
voice was firm.

Lily glanced up from the book in her hand. “Yes, Harry? Did you want fish and
chips for dinner tomorrow? I’m afraid it can’t be tonight, Albus is coming over,
and he asked for—”

“Mum,” Harry repeated, and his mother closed the book and concentrated on
him. “I don’t want to—talk about dinner. I want to talk about my soulmate.” He
lifted his hand and thrust his wrist forwards.

A complex expression crossed Lily’s face, and Tom sneered a little. The woman
was playing the part of a tormented mother, as far as he was concerned. She
wouldn’t fight for her child. She gave in to and went along with what
Dumbledore wanted.
Yet, of course, part of what had made the memory glitter so was Harry’s love
for his parents, and Tom knew he wouldn’t be able to talk Harry out of that. He
retreated towards the fireplace as Lily sat down in a chair and Harry kicked the
corner of the hearth with his foot.

“You know why you can’t be with your soulmate, Harry,” Lily said, settling her
robes around her. “We’ve talked about this.”

“But it’s not fair,” Harry said, and stared intensely at her, in a way that made
the declaration less than childish. Tom moved around him so that he could see
Harry’s face, and yes, even at this age his eyes could blaze with fire. “You said
that you hated Dad the first time you met him because he made fun of your best
friend. And Mr. Dumbledore’s soulmate was a Dark Lord. But you were both
with them.”
Lily Potter bit her lip and looked less than comfortable. Good, Tom thought,
though as far as he was concerned, this was far less than the lash she deserved.
“Well, Harry. I mean—it isn’t a matter of fair and unfair. Your father is a good
person. And Albus broke off the bond with Grindelwald when he realized what
kind of man he was.”
“But you just say that I can never be with him. I want to know why.”

There was an odd thrumming just at the edge of Tom’s awareness, straining
around the edge of the memory like stitches on a shirt. He cocked his head and
realized it was Harry’s magic, answering its young owner’s agitation. He
sighed, wishing he could have been here, wishing he could have done
something.

Harry’s control was unnatural in a seven-year-old, or six-year-old, which he

might be. Most children that age still had accidental magic outbursts all the
time. It spoke of the kind of hell his parents and Dumbledore had put him
through.

“Because we fear that he would get hold of you, and make you want to stay
with him,” Lily said. She opened her arms. “Come here, baby.”

But Harry didn’t move. “You’re saying,” he said, and rubbed his marked wrist
on his trousers, “that I’m not a good person? Because I would want to stay with
him.” His face looked ready to crumble. “I’m not a good person like Dad is a
good person or Mr. Dumbledore is a good person.”

Lily flew across the room then and gathered him close. Harry leaned against
her, but his jaw was still clenched, and his hand was rubbing and rubbing at his
right wrist. Tom could see that much from where he stood.
“Never, never,” Lily whispered. “I would never say that. You’re such a good
person, Harry, so good that you want to give someone evil a chance. But that
just makes it more dangerous, you see?”

“No.”

Lily sighed and sat back, kneeling down in front of Harry to study him. Tom
noted that she kept her eyes firmly away from Harry’s right arm, even though
his left hand was covering the mark right now anyway. “It’s easier for evil
people to trick good people, Harry. You would want to give your soulmate a
chance, because he’s your soulmate, and you would give in to him, and you
would think that things couldn’t be so bad and he wasn’t so bad. Even though
you know he is. Do you understand?”
Harry closed his eyes. “But that’s still like Mr. Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
He still had a chance to get to know him. And he rejected the bond when he
found out Grindelwald was a bad person. My soulmate’s not a Dark Lord. Why
can’t I at least try? Maybe I could turn him good instead of him turning me
bad.”
My soulmate was more logical than half the adults in the Order of the Phoenix
at seven years old, Tom thought.
“Oh, Harry.” Lily touched the back of his head, not looking away from his face.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to wait until you were older. But your soulmate is a Dark
Lord.”

Tom’s magic coiled, lashing, around him, and if this memory had been reality,
he would have shattered half the furniture in the room. Harry was staring at his
mother with a profoundly betrayed look on his face. “What?” he whispered.
“But I just thought—I just thought he was the Minister for Magic, not a Dark
Lord.”

Lily nodded sadly. And the infuriating thing, Tom thought, stalking in a circle
around them to relieve his feelings, was that she truly did believe that, and
wasn’t lying to Harry. “Yes, Harry. I’m sorry. He hides it. He’s preparing for a
war in secret. He learned his lesson from Dark Lords like Grindelwald who
were open about it. But he is one, and we can’t have him with you. Imagine
how powerful he would grow if you fell in love with him.”

Harry rubbed his face with his hands, like he was going to cry. He was a little
boy at the moment, Tom thought, and yet the memory around him began to
radiate an almost adult pain, a consequence of this being something shared
through the mental bond instead of a Pensieve. “N-no. I can’t—I can’t believe
that, Mum. Why would magic and fate be so cruel and just give me to a Dark
Lord?”
“I don’t know,” Lily said. She clung to her son, but Tom was more pleased than
he could say that Harry didn’t lift his arms to hug her back. “No one really
understands how soul-marks come to be. They just are. And sometimes they
don’t make much sense. And it’s possible to lose or reject a soulmate bond. You
know that.”

“But you said soulmates were special and good, too,” Harry whispered. “And
that it was Sirius’s worst thing that he lost Mr. Lupin. And I thought you and
Dad were special, and everyone was special, and—Mr. Dumbledore told me
that he even used to think his bond with Grindelwald was special. I d-don’t—
why am I different? I don’t want to be different!”

And then he was sobbing into his mother’s shoulder, while she rocked him back
and forth and whispered comforting words into his ear. Platitudes, Tom noticed.
He sneered. Of course. She didn’t really understand what she was saying, didn’t
understand what she believed, and she refused to notice the contradictions in her
own belief system. If soulmates were a gift, then Harry’s must be, too. If
everyone else got to have a chance to dedicate themselves to a bond and only
reject it after a taste, Harry should, too.

But it was different, because it was.

Because of an old man’s fear.

The air around Tom shone like a sword, and he knew what that meant even
though their mental bond wasn’t very old. He didn’t have much time left here,
because Harry was waking up. He took a step back and let his mind pass up and
through the memory, but his knowledge of it burned in him nonetheless.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into Harry’s open ones. Harry
smiled at him tentatively, but touched the emotional bond a second later and let
the smile fade. “What’s wrong?” Harry whispered.

“I want to kill a great many people who hurt you,” Tom told him.

Harry sighed. “I know. But I don’t want you to.”

Tom rolled on top of him, consumed, almost choking, with the need to hear the
answer to a question from Harry’s lips. Harry relaxed beneath him, staring,
while his mind danced with white question marks and the bond around them
chimed with his concern.
“Did you ever want to leave them all behind and come looking for me?” Tom
breathed. “Tell me.”

“You could read the answer out of my mind.”

“I want to hear it from you.” Tom carefully drew his hand back when he
realized their magic was flowing over his fingernails, sharpening them nearly to
claws. He didn’t want to hurt Harry, and nor did he want to tear the pillows to
shreds. They were poor substitutes for the true victims he wanted. “Tell me,
Harry.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “I thought about it sometimes,” he said. “There

was one night I actually packed my trunk and grabbed my broom and almost
flew out the window of Gryffindor Tower, to come to you.”

Tom pictured what that might have been like, and hissed again. “What stopped
you?”
“I imagined the looks on my parents’ faces if I did,” Harry mumbled. “They’d
just been exiled, and I—I was a mess. I thought of myself as an orphan. I
thought I would never see them again. I just wanted someone who could care
for me because of who I was, and not who they thought I was.”

“Yes, you lied to your friends,” Tom said softly. “And you turned around and
put the trunk away?”

Harry nodded against his chest. Tom drew back enough so that he could see
Harry’s eyes and hold them. He could have felt the answer through the bond
before Harry spoke, if he’d wanted, but he needed to see what Harry looked like
when he said it. “And is that the only time that you ever thought of a solution
for your problem?”

“No, of course not,” Harry said, and a long, soft chill passed through their bond.
“I thought about running away to you other times, although that was the time I
went furthest. I—” He turned his head restlessly away.

“Harry.”

Harry half-closed his eyes. “Look, I’m not proud of the other things I tried to
do, and I think they would only hurt you. So why talk about them?”

“You know that we’ll share memories more and more often now, until the bond
settles completely.” Tom put a hand on the back of his neck and gently tilted
Harry’s head until they were face-to-face again. “Will you hide all of them and
mutter that you want me to be safe, only to have me come upon them
unexpectedly?” Harry said nothing, but his mouth shifted into the stubborn line
that Tom remembered from courting him, and the bond was still. “How bad
were they?”

“Bad.”

Tom stared at him, and fear coalesced into certainty. “You tried, at least once,”
he said, his voice coming more slowly to give himself time to get used to it, “to
kill yourself.”

Harry closed his eyes. “Yes.”

Tom said nothing, but Harry still flinched back from him, no doubt feeling what
he wouldn’t say. “I didn’t, obviously,” Harry said, and opened his eyes and
glared. “It—that was only once. Other times, I was trying things that I hoped
would get rid of the mark. Okay? I know now it was wrong and I should have
accepted you from the beginning. I was thinking about that last night, about
how if my parents and the Order had been smart they would have tried to
bargain with you, and got you to moderate your behavior in exchange for
keeping me safe and treating me well. It was Dumbledore’s fear that made that
impossible. Stop staring at me like that.”

“You need a Mind-Healer, Harry.”

Harry wrenched himself in his arms, although since he was under Tom and
pinned to the bed Tom wondered idly where he thought he was going.
“Don’t say that! I did the best I could! I put up with all the stupid pressures they
piled on me, and you piled on me, and—”

“I am not saying you’re weak,” Tom said. “Is that how you took it, Harry?” He
touched Harry’s face, his fingers wandering down from the old broom accident
scar on his forehead to Harry’s nose and lips and cheeks, and continued
touching him until Harry went quiet. “You need a Mind-Healer because the
inside of your head must be a horrible place, that’s all.”

Harry took a long breath that it sounded like was meant to cleanse him, and
shook his head. “I can barely share what I went through with you, Tom. I’ve
heard all about Mind-Healers and how opinionated they are. I don’t want to
listen to someone tell me where I went wrong and encourage me to make
amends or whatever.”

“Amends?”
“Well, yes. The only person I know who went to a Mind-Healer is my
godfather, and she was always encouraging him to make amends with his
soulmate and disown the prank he pulled that caused his soulmate to reject him.
I don’t want to get told that I should go back to the Order or that I should have
come to you earlier or something.”

“You have done nothing that you need to make amends for,” Tom whispered,
sliding his hand down Harry’s back towards his arse. Harry flexed his hips and
the bond altered, not subtly, but Tom ignored those signals. “I promise that any
Mind-Healer who dared to suggest you had would be removed.”

“As in, removed as my Mind-Healer. Not killed.”

“The temptation would be there, but you know for yourself how rarely I resort
to murder, Harry.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Fine. I’ll—we’ll see about getting me a Mind-Healer.

But later. We have other things to do today, don’t we?”

“I consider nothing more important than you,” Tom said, and wondered why
Harry flushed and turned his head to the side.

“I know. But for right now, I don’t want to discuss this further.”

Tom thought about saying that they would never truly abandon a subject as long
as the emotional bond thrummed between them, but he didn’t think it wise to
press Harry any further on the subject right now. He nodded and stood. “Very
well. We’re going to introduce you to the public as the Minister for Magic’s
soulmate. Can you bear that?”

Harry laughed and sat up, the sadness of the previous moments falling off his
shoulders. Tom wasn’t entirely sure he trusted that, but then he reminded
himself how many years Harry had lived while pretending there was some
reason that kept him from seeking out his soulmate other than the real one, how
many years Harry had lived by lying.

He could do that to the public starving for information about the Minister of
Magic’s soulmate, even if he could never lie to Tom himself. It might even
prove to be an essential skill.

“Bear it? I’m looking forward to it. To know that I’m yours and you’re mine
and that means no one else had better bother throwing themselves at you? Yes, I
think it’s essential.” Harry’s hand slipped into his.
The thought echoed back and forth between them, and Tom took Harry’s chin
and kissed him, gently, while another thought arose that Harry might or might
not be ready to share.

When they found Dumbledore, Tom intended to taunt him with musings on how
the man had inadvertently made Harry an even better soulmate for him than he
might have been if Tom had known about him from the cradle.

“Welcome, Minister. Welcome, Mr. Potter.”

Minerva hoped that her voice didn’t crack on those words. She had already had
a few full days—and nights—preparing to become the Headmistress of the
school now that Albus had done…what he had done. Seeing her former student
at Minister Riddle’s side shouldn’t be that much of a shock.

“Headmistress.” Minister Riddle sat down in the chair across from her desk, the
one Minerva used to use when she was arguing with Albus, and folded gloved
hands on his knee, his gaze politely straying around the office. He paused when
it reached the perch. “Fawkes is here with you? I would have thought Albus’s
phoenix would have gone with him.”

Minerva cast a helpless glance at the perch. Fawkes looked up from his
preening to give her a cheerful warble, and went right back to it.

“He—communicated with me in some way when I entered the office for the
first time to take up my official position,” Minerva said, and sighed in
frustration. It was hard trying to describe it. “I don’t know exactly how. But he
said that he remained with the school. That it was his destiny, or some such.”

“How fascinating,” Minister Riddle murmured, and turned to face her. “I

suppose you have heard the old theory that phoenixes are creatures of Fate, and
not Light?”

Minerva blinked and moved a strand of hair out of her face. “I actually hadn’t,”
she admitted. “Not that I think I really know what Light means anymore, or else
I’ve had it wrong all my life.”

“I have found no evidence implicating you in Headmaster Dumbledore’s

crimes,” the Minister said. “You’re wise enough to know that if I had, you
wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
Minerva met his gaze, but said nothing. They didn’t need to argue about that, of
all things. “What was the main question you wanted answered today, Minister?”
she asked, drawing out the ledger that she’d created to bind the many, many
loose pieces of parchment that had been floating around the office. “I’m afraid
that I haven’t had the chance to go through all of Albus’s notes yet.”

“There is one class that the Wizengamot has proposed again and again, only to
have it shot down by the former Headmaster.”

“I am not allowing a Dark Arts class within my school.”

“I don’t blame you. And that’s not the one that I was referring to, in any case.”

Minerva paused. “I wasn’t aware of any other class the Wizengamot had
proposed that Albus had turned down.”

Harry spoke for the first time, his voice gentle, an interesting contrast to the
Minister’s. Minerva supposed it was too much to hope for that Potter would
restrain some of the man’s worst excesses, but it was interesting to watch the
way Riddle deferred to him when he spoke. “Practical Ritual Magic,
Headmistress. It’s a class that the Wizengamot brings up every six months and
has had rejected every time.”

Minerva blinked. It was true that she didn’t think many students would take that
class. Ritual magic was complicated and required a lot of study, and Merlin
knew that most of the students found it hard enough to study for their core
subjects. “What was Albus’s reasoning?”

“That not everyone would be able to take the class because not everyone has the
same level of strength in ritual magic.” Fascinatingly, Harry was the one who
continued to speak. “People who have found their soulmates, or who have the
discipline and calm to meditate and clear their minds, are better at it.”

Minerva resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. “Then we shouldn’t be teaching
Divination, either!”

“In fact, I do not think we should,” Riddle interjected, his fingers tucked
beneath his chin as he leaned forwards. Minerva didn’t think it was her
imagination that he had leaned closer to Harry at the same time. “The rare
student who actually has visions of the future could be guided into
apprenticeships with appropriate practitioners, but there is no reason for a full-
blown class that untalented students need to take.”
Minerva blinked. “Then why did you allow one to go on?”

“Dumbledore’s reputation was too secure for me to make all the decisions I
wanted to about the school. The best I could do was set up independent
departments, like the Transfiguration one that you were the head of, and let
those heads make most of the decisions. And Albus Dumbledore was invested
in not just a Divination class, but having someone particular as the teacher.”

Minerva scowled. “Sybill is useless.”

“Yes,” Minister Riddle said. “Unless, I suspect, you are as much a devotee of
prophecy as Dumbledore was.”

“Prophecy,” Minerva said slowly. She hadn’t even considered that that might be
Sybill’s talent. It was the rarest of the various methods of doing Divination, and
most of the people who did See the future embedded a vision in what they felt
were the right words at the right times, rather than reciting those words
involuntarily.
Involuntary prophecy at the right time, though, would have explained why
Sybill was still at Hogwarts. Minerva focused on the Minister. “Why would he
believe so much in a prophecy spoken by someone like her?”

“If he wanted to hear it badly enough,” Harry said, “he wouldn’t care where the
prophecy came from.”

Minerva stared at her former student, a little startled by the good sense from his
mouth, but then nodded. “That much is certainly true.” She hesitated once. “Do
you know what prophecy it was that he kept her for?”

“No.” Minister Riddle’s smile was cold, bordering on feral. “I suggest that you
summon her here and ask her.”

Minerva paused only a moment before turning to get the Floo powder. Her
curiosity, something symbolized rather than denied by her Animagus form,
would eat her alive if she didn’t.

Tom glanced at him as the Headmistress called into the fire, and raised an
eyebrow. Harry could hear his thoughts by barely concentrating on the mental
bond. That was an inspired guess.
Harry tilted his head as he heard Professor Trelawney’s voice coming from
within the flames, and barely murmured, “There had to be some reason other
than just plain fear why he wanted to keep us away from each other.”

Tom frowned in the way that said he disagreed, but then Professor Trelawney
swept through the fireplace and commanded all the attention in the room, the
way she usually did.

“Well, Minister Riddle, Mr. Potter!” Trelawney fluttered at them. She had a
gauzy scarf wrapped around her hair, and sparkling silver glasses so large that
they looked like separate galaxies floating around her face. Harry did his best
not to wrinkle his nose at the stream of incense she brought with her. “I hope
that you’ve been good boys since your soulmate bond deepened.” She giggled
and looked back and forth between them.

Harry reached out and clenched his hand down around Tom’s wrist. He could
tell simply by the shift of the magic inside them, never mind the suddenly-
frozen emotional bond, that Tom was furious and ready to launch himself out of
the chair at Trelawney. Harry gave her a strained smile and shook his head.
“We’ve been fine, Professor Trelawney.”

Inwardly, he sent a thought towards Tom. Are you all right? Before the

completion of their bond, he knew that Tom had sometimes showed his temper
in public, but he certainly wouldn’t have had to be restrained from physically
attacking.
Tom glanced at him and breathed out softly. The thought came back. She
showed you disrespect.

Harry visibly rolled his eyes and turned back to face the Divination professor as
Professor McGonagall motioned her towards a seat. Trelawney chattered about
teacups and tealeaves and seeing the future in the stars as she sat down. Harry
wondered if she could sense the edge in the air and this was her way of trying to
get rid of it.

“Now, Sybill,” Professor McGonagall said finally, “it’s come to my attention

that Albus probably kept you on staff because of a certain prophecy you
revealed to him. I’d like to know what the prophecy was.”

Trelawney’s eyes widened, and her teacup trembled. Then she clucked her
tongue and shook her head. “Minerva, Minerva. I’ve asked you before not to
simply ask questions about the Inner Eye. It detaches the retina, you know.”
I can arrange to detach more than that, said a clear thought from Tom’s side of
the room.
Harry leaned forwards and managed to catch Trelawney’s wandering attention.
“Was it about us, Professor? Our soulmate bond? If it was, then I’m surprised
that Professor Dumbledore trusted you with the knowledge as long as he did.”

He knew he’d laden his voice with just enough skepticism when Trelawney
puffed up like a hen. “You would not be surprised if you knew the extent of our
relationship,” she snapped.
Harry fought back his gag reflex, since he was pretty sure she wasn’t implying
what it sounded like she was implying, and just shook his head. “He allowed
you to remain here and teach a class that you can’t really teach, given that
someone either has the Sight or doesn’t. So I suppose I’m not surprised. He
seemed like the kind of man to indulge people who told him what he wanted to
hear.”
“I did not tell him what he wanted to hear! I told him the truth! There was no
mistaking his unhappiness with the prophecy!”

“Well, I don’t see how I can do anything but mistake it, unless you’d be willing
to tell us this prophecy.”

Trelawney faltered for a second, but Harry sighed and turned to Tom and said,
“I was right, there’s nothing here for us,” and that tipped the Divination
professor over the edge.

“Fine! I’ll tell you! You should probably know anyway, since it’s turned out to
be about you and you unwisely decided to complete the bond with your
soulmate.” Trelawney scowled at him and then cleared her throat importantly.
For a moment, her eyes appeared sharp behind the sparkly silver glasses.
“When the Dark Lord and the one bound to him come close to completion, the
fortress of power will fall, the stones will snuff out life, and the master of
serpents will poison the world.” Her voice was a hoarse, echoing whisper that
made tentacles of ice whip around Harry’s spine. “Only equal power joined and
commanded can face them, joined of two and commanded by the one who is a
leader in disguise.”

Professor McGonagall didn’t look any more comfortable. Tom was still enough
that Trelawney began to shake when she glanced at him after she completed her
recitation. Harry touched Tom’s wrist, and the emotional bond sprang back to
reluctant life.

“Ambiguous as all Divination is,” Professor McGonagall said stiffly, folding

her hands on top of her desk. “Give me a good Transfiguration any day.
You know what its limitations are, and no one mistakes it for destiny.”
Tom cleared his throat with what Harry suspected he was the only one to
recognize as a slight laugh. “Indeed, Headmistress.” He faced Trelawney
instead. “What year did you make this prophecy in?”

“1981.” Trelawney’s trembling had calmed, but Harry noticed that she hadn’t
picked up her teacup again. “The year after Harry Potter’s birth.” Her eyes
flickered over to Harry. “Not that I knew whose soul-mark you bore, Mr.
Potter. I should have recommended a mercy killing.”

Tom hissed. Harry reached down and caught the green serpent that rose up
between their chairs from nothingness and pulled it into his lap. The snake
struggled for a second, then calmed down. If nothing else, Harry thought,
although he didn’t speak Parseltongue now, he knew that the snakes wouldn’t
hurt him when they had been partially formed from his magic.

“Do you want to be punished as part of the conspiracy that kept my soulmate

from my side, Professor?” Tom asked softly. “Under the Joined Fates Laws of
1862, you could be.”

“I already told you that I didn’t know about it!”

Trelawney’s eyes were dark with fear, and Harry didn’t know about Tom, but
he was inclined to believe her. He said quickly, “You knew about the prophecy,
but you didn’t know that it meant me and Minister Riddle, correct? You didn’t
suspect that I was his soulmate? And Professor Dumbledore never told you.”

Trelawney gave her head a shake that made her look as if something was wrong
with her neck. “No, no, I knew nothing! He never would have confided in me.
He knew that I didn’t want to be part of his Order.”

Harry just nodded, although he was a little surprised that she knew enough to
know the Order’s name. He turned to Tom and opened his mouth, but Tom was
still looking at Trelawney, and the emotional bond hovering around them was
pregnant with violence.

“I mean it.” Harry pitched his voice low enough that he hoped neither woman in
the room could hear, but at this point, he had many fewer concerns if they did.
“Calm down, Tom. Now.”

Tom turned to look at him in what felt like the ending of a dream. Harry met his
eyes, a predator’s eyes at the moment, and didn’t flinch. Tom finally nodded
and glanced at Trelawney.
“You can go.”

Trelawney practically fled out the door onto the moving staircase. Harry
wondered if that was just because she’d been sitting near it or because her hand
was shaking too badly to contemplate using Floo powder right now.

“She will be replaced,” Tom said into the ringing silence that was left.

“The prophecy sounds frankly ridiculous,” Professor McGonagall said at once.

“Maybe she made it up to persuade Albus to retain her.”

“Perhaps,” Tom said, although his doubt smelled like a poisonous weed to
Harry down their bond. “At any rate, I meant what I said. She could be charged
under the Joined Fates Laws.”

“I’ve never heard of those,” Harry said. “What do they do?”

Tom glanced at him. “They make it illegal to knowingly keep someone from
their soulmate, absent evidence that the soulmate in question has already
rejected the other or proclaimed hatred or a blood feud against them or their
family.”

“Well, she didn’t know. She just made an ill-advised remark. You can’t kill
everyone who does that.”

“I wouldn’t be killing her. I would be trying her.”

“Don’t you have enough people in Azkaban?” Harry snapped, leaning forwards,
ignoring the wide-eyed way Professor McGonagall was watching him. “And an
important trial coming up this week already? Hold back, or I’m going to have to
rethink my accommodations.”

“If you even think of sleeping elsewhere—”

“I already told you that I was. Don’t you listen?”
Tom’s anger pressed at him. Harry pressed back with his own irritation, his own
lack of fear. Tom narrowed his eyes. I’m not lying to you about how much she
enraged me.
Then you should know that I’m not lying to you about how unimpressed I am
with your temper.

Tom leaned back abruptly and nodded, his emotions shifting as he tucked them
behind what Harry thought of as his “Minister” mask. He faced Professor
McGonagall. “Forgive the byplay, Minerva. Our bond is still new.”
“I—see.” Professor McGonagall made a soft sound that would probably have
been gasping in anyone else, but Harry had always admired how steady and
calm his Head of House was. “Well.” She rearranged some parchments on her
desk and then studied Tom. “You’ve come to propose other new classes that
Albus and the Board of Governors rejected in the past as well, I understand.”

“Yes.” Tom unfurled a piece of parchment on the desk. “As you can see, the
timeline for the rejection of the classes was…”

Harry settled back in his chair, deciding that it was unlikely he would be called
on to do anymore for a while. Tom was still eyeing him, but Harry didn’t intend
to give him the satisfaction of responding with a facial expression or gesture
that Professor McGonagall could see. He responded with an interested, mild
look when they talked, and answered a few questions about classes that he had
wanted and ones that he thought could be trimmed back from his time as a
student.

Even if he knew they would have a confrontation when they got out of here, at
least Tom wasn’t going to throw a fit in public, and that was all Harry wanted
for now.

“You drive me mad.”

Tom was only speaking the truth as he crowded Harry against the door of his
house. Luckily, Harry hadn’t made good on his threat of going elsewhere. But
Tom was still bristling with possessiveness and the desire to drag Harry into bed
and sleep on top of him until he forgot about his anger.

“You can feel that all you like,” Harry said. He had his arms folded, but he
didn’t look defensive. He looked as though he was regarding Tom from a
critical distance. “That doesn’t mean you get to threaten to murder people in
public.”

“You’re all right with it in private, then?”

Harry didn’t answer directly, but the stream of rejection that curled towards
Tom made him blink and release Harry. Harry took a stride and then turned
around to face him. “Excuse me for thinking that I was soulmated to someone
who was a politician,” he said sharply. “As in used to keeping his calm in the
face of provocation.”
Tom clenched his hands but didn’t move in to touch Harry. “What I said to
Minerva was true.”

“Which part of it?”

“Our bond is new. I want to—” Tom swallowed hard, but the bond had already
told Harry what he meant, if the way Harry’s eyes darkened was any indication.

“Well, you can’t chain me to the bed and keep me for just you to touch.”

But Harry couldn’t hide his arousal any more than Tom could hide his
possessiveness. Tom narrowed his eyes. “Part of you would like that.”

“Yes, but not because you want to keep me from other people. Just because I’d
like it.” Harry swallowed roughly and continued, “And we have to appear
before the Wizengamot tomorrow as soulmates, and we have to get through Ron
and Hermione’s trial that way, and we have to see about the new classes at
Hogwarts and the prophecy and capturing Dumbledore and all the rest that way.
I meant what I said about you changing your behavior, Tom. If it keeps going in
this direction, I’ll go back to my parents’.”

“You want me to change everything about myself?”

“Not everything.” Harry sounded weary now, which was the last thing Tom
wanted, but he listened as Harry paced back and forth for a minute. “Think
about it like this. You made some decisions that probably made sense at the
time, decisions that would let you protect yourself or your soulmate when you
found them. And now you want to continue those decisions. But you don’t have
to, because I’m here.” He turned to Tom and reached out to clasp his wrist.
“Please. Understand that I’m here.”

“And already talking about leaving.”

“Going to stay with my parents isn’t the same as leaving you forever or leaving
you the way Dumbledore wanted me to, and you’re smart enough to know it.”

Tom winced a little under the spark of Harry’s temper, and nodded. “I won’t
talk about murdering others in public. I will endeavor to control my behavior.”

“Thank you.”

“But in the meantime, I want you to do something for me.”

Harry nodded, eyes clear and serious and fixed entirely on Tom, while the bond
writhed and danced eagerly as if he couldn’t wait to hear what Tom would ask
for. “What is it?”

“I want you to admit that you’re a politician yourself.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “I have no problem admitting that.”

“It’s not something you were specifically cautioned against by Dumbledore or

the Order, I do believe that,” Tom said, his hand sliding down Harry’s back and
tracing circles around his spine. “But I saw your memory this morning. I can
feel the thoughts that travel through your head, even the ones that are
subconscious. You said that you were soulmated to a politician, earlier,
implying that you don’t think you are one. And in the memory I saw, you
jumped too easily to assuming something was wrong with you instead of other
people. I want you to acknowledge your own strength. Doing otherwise will—
irritate me.”

“And Merlin forbid that you be irritated,” Harry muttered, eyeing him.

“It doesn’t result in good consequences for other people.”

“I can’t believe you conjured a serpent to attack Trelawney.”

“That is one thing I will be trying to change. But one thing to ask yourself is
what will irritate me most? You putting yourself down, trying to appease others
by making light of your strengths and talents, and assuming they must always
be right. That is a deflection technique I believe you have used more than once,
including with your friends, when you were lying to them about your soul-mark.
But today, in McGonagall’s office…you were handling the others, Harry. It
takes intelligence and no small degree of skill to do that.”

A slow look of understanding dawned over Harry’s face. “The kind of skill you
think I’ve been taught to despise.”

“You have been taught to. And don’t imagine that this kind of conversation or
the work I’m asking you to do substitutes for sessions with a Mind-Healer. We
will be arranging those as soon as we find a trustworthy one.”

Harry blew out a slow breath and ran his hand through his hair. “Fine. I should
have known that after being separated from your soulmate for so long, you’d
become a demanding bastard.”
“If you think this is demanding, that is something else I want you to think about.
Why is it demanding to ask that you live up to your potential?”

“It’s demanding to demand it.”

“You need your vocabulary expanded.”

“The thoughts I’m picking up from you right now have nothing to do with
expanding that.”

“Well, no,” Tom agreed, and dropped all the barriers on the bond to watch
Harry’s eyes darken again. “But perhaps your repertoire?”

Harry laughed, and they spent the rest of the afternoon expanding that and
finding out what both of them liked. Tom tried to sate the burning hunger that
had overcome him last night, with the completion of the bond, in Harry’s lips
and hands and mouth and body.

At the same time, he knew it would probably not be enough. The completion of
their bond had left him more than happy; whether it would ever satisfy him was
an open question.
Chapter 25: Trials
Chapter Text

“So you’re the Minister’s soulmate.”

I win the bet, Harry sent to Tom as he turned around and gave Arcturus Black
an insincere smile. Tom had thought Black would approach Harry with an
obsequious attitude, angling to get the Minister’s soulmate on his side. But
Harry had thought it would be contempt, because Black would hate the fact that
Tom was matched with another half-blood.

“That’s right,” Harry said. “It took some people long enough to acknowledge
it.”

That made Black pause and stare at him, obviously wondering if Harry
considered him one of those people. Harry drew his lips back to show his teeth
and, when he could see Black reaching the point of wondering if that was a
smile or not, Harry dropped them back again.

“Including me,” he added, and turned to face the door of the Wizengamot
courtroom.
Black reached out and put a hand on his arm. This time, Tom sent only a
lightning storm of rage, and for Black’s sake as much as Tom’s, Harry stepped
back, shaking his head.

Black sneered. “Too good to have a pure-blood touching you?”

“I’m the Minister’s soulmate,” Harry replied quietly. “How do you

think he feels about a pure-blood touching me?”

Black’s eyes widened a second before Tom appeared at Harry’s side, one hand
digging into his shoulder. Harry zapped him back with unhappiness and pain,
and Tom’s hold eased. “Black. Always a pleasure, but not a usual one. Did you
have something to say to us before the trial?”

There was a long moment when Harry could feel Black furiously calculating the
odds, and then he evidently decided to charge ahead. “I don’t think it’s
appropriate for your soulmate to be at the trials, sir.”

“Why not?”

“These people are his friends.”

“I explained to you yesterday how the Truth Crystals worked, Black,” Tom
said, his smile and his posture soft and persuasive. Harry was the only one who
knew that Tom was eyeing Black’s body, looking for the weak points. “Harry
won’t be able to speak less than the truth when he’s in the room with them. And
Harry is not on trial. I think you’ve forgotten who is.”

Their eyes held for a second, and then Black jerked his head and turned away.
Tom smiled coldly, and the bond coiled around Harry like a serpent. “They
thought that they would discover my soulmate before I did, and they could use
him or her to control me,” he said softly. “They won’t be happy that you stand
at my side now.”

Harry blinked. “You were searching as hard as you could for me. Why would
they think they’d find me before you?”

“Wishful thinking.” Tom’s hand was firm around his wrist as he guided Harry
towards the courtroom again. “They want to have a chain on me. They ignore it
most of the time, but whenever they actually remember that a magically-
powerful half-blood is in charge of their government, they panic.”

“Their government?”
“I told you of the game I have played,” Tom murmured, lowering his voice
almost to vibrations against Harry’s ear as they passed through the great arched
doors. “It has belonged to them more than to me, at least on the surface.”

Harry squeezed Tom’s wrist and made himself look towards the center of the
courtroom. This particular hall was arranged in a huge circle, with three tiers of
seats going around all the walls. In the center sat the two chairs, in this case, for
prisoners, more like an elongated bench with arms dividing different sections of
it from each other. Hermione and Ron sat there, chained with spells more
effectively than with physical bonds.

Hermione caught his eye and stared at him with such harsh betrayal that Harry
nearly turned away. But Tom’s hand was still there, like a chain on Harry’s
wrist itself, and he shook Harry a little.

“Never let anyone in public see your weakness,” he murmured. “And especially
not these traitors.”

“Technically they haven’t—”

“They betrayed your friendship.”

Harry grimaced a little and sent the thought to Tom as Tom’s warm hand on his
back escorted him to his seat, Technically the friendship was never what they
thought it was. I lied to them all the time.

A sharp pinch to his back showed what Tom thought of that, and also made
Harry straighten up just in time to turn and face Madam Moonwell. She had her
cane in one hand and eyes so bright that Harry was sure some of it must come
from vicious enjoyment. He nodded to her and tried to restrain his scowl at
Tom. Tom could feel perfectly well what Harry was going through from the
emotional bond, anyway.

“You are playing a dangerous game,” Madam Moonwell muttered. “To come in

here and flaunt your complete bond in all their faces?”

Harry didn’t know what she was talking about, but he did his best to keep his
face open and relaxed, not glancing at Tom. Tom was the one who raised his
eyebrows and said in a thin voice, “They never had any hope of finding my
soulmate, and most of them had given up trying.”

“But they hadn’t given up thinking that you might not have a soulmate, and
trying to insert someone they controlled into the position of your lover. And
don’t scowl at me, young man, you know it was a common assumption after
your soul-mark was burned.”

Harry winced in silence, and Tom sent back a flow of warmth and reassurance.
None of that showed in his expression or voice, which were both thick with
disdain, as he murmured, “Well, if they tried to kill Mr. Potter, they would find
out the error of their ways. Unless you were not hinting at them trying to kill
him?”

“Among other things.” Madam Moonwell turned more fully to look at Harry.
“And I hope that you’re taking good care of yourself as well as your soulmate,
young man.”

Harry shrugged and said, “He makes it difficult. We’re all doing our best.”

Madam Moonwell snorted. “Some of us are not,” she said, glancing towards the
door, where Black had come in with Lestrange. “But others are.” And this time
she turned towards Amelia Bones as she stumped to her seat, although Harry
supposed that might have been a coincidence.

“You never said what you were going to do about Bones,” Harry said, mostly
under his breath, as he moved beside Tom towards their seats.

“There has to be a trial. She attacked the Minister in front of Aurors. My

opponents would scream that I was favoring an ally if I let her off without one.”
Tom smiled, an expression that darted across his face like a lizard and into
hiding. “But they cannot say anything about me handling her questioning
myself.”

“And with the Truth Crystals in the room.”

“Exactly.”

Harry sat down in his seat next to Tom, this time one that looked exactly like
every other chair in the courtroom. He found it easier than he’d expected to
keep his eyes away from his friends, despite the heat of Hermione’s betrayed
stare on his face. He had more interesting things to think about.

More interesting than your friends?

That horrified voice in his head sounded more like Dumbledore than Harry was
comfortable with. He just nodded and leaned back in his chair, raking the floor
and the seats in the gallery with a dispassionate gaze.
More than one person scowled at him or mouthed what looked like a threat, but
Harry had a response to that. Tom had agreed that it would be foolish to keep it
concealed when everyone would expect to see it anyway.

Harry dropped the guards he had maintained for so long on his power. It came
rushing out of his skin, battering at the air for a moment in a white-gold corona
before it grew towards the ceiling in spikes.

There was utter silence for a long second. Then people started talking again, all
the while pretending that the silence hadn’t existed.

Harry smiled and threw one arm over the back of the chair. They might assume
that he was drawing on his power joined with Tom’s and had never been that
impressive on his own, the duel with Lestrange notwithstanding.

But it hardly mattered. The message was still clear: You do not want to fuck with
me.

And that was all Harry really wanted.

“He completed the bond with Riddle.”

Hermione nodded in silent agreement with Ron’s assessment, her own breathing
shallow and stricken. She found herself unable to take her eyes from Harry, who
sat in the seat that she knew was reserved for the Minister’s consort and blazed
with a magic that wasn’t his, could never be his.
“You know,” Ron said after a second, his voice thick and choked with grief, “I
suppose part of me never gave up on him. I was hoping—I didn’t know I was
hoping, but I hoped it was some kind of ruse to fool Riddle. To get close to him
and then assassinate him. That Harry hadn’t betrayed the Order’s ideals.”
Hermione sighed, her eyes tracking Harry as Riddle bent down next to him and
said something that made him laugh. The open adoration on Harry’s face was
something she had never thought she would see there, and she would have given
up everything except her soul-bond with Ron to let Harry feel it but direct it
towards an appropriate object.

“That was never going to work unless he was a much better actor than he is,”
she whispered. “Riddle is a Legilimens. He could have known Harry was
lying.”
“Like I said, it was a stupid idea.” Ron leaned as close to her as he could get
when they were both chained. “But I wanted to believe it. That’s all I was
saying.”

Hermione nodded without taking her eyes from Harry. “Yes. I know. But we
don’t live in an ideal world, so we have to prepare ourselves to live in the real
one.”

“Right.” Ron straightened up again as one of the Aurors shot them a warning
glance, which Hermione found nearly as infuriating as Harry’s sudden
allegiance to Riddle. Did none of them wonder what had driven her and Ron,
normal schoolchildren until Professor Dumbledore had recruited them, to rebel
against the Minister? Didn’t they wonder what he had done that could be so
awful, and want to investigate?
Well, why should they, when they have comfortable lives under the pure-blood
supremacist regime? Hermione thought snidely, and returned her gaze to
Harry. And he did the same thing. He gave up his ideals for material comfort
and a warm body in his bed at night.

Her hope that Harry would rescue them, as stubborn and blind as Ron’s in the
end, flickered and died.

Tom watched faces as two of the Aurors who had been present when Madam
Bones brought the blood-soaked handkerchief to him and Harry gave their
testimony. More than one person looked disgruntled. Others looked bored.

Aelia Malfoy looked alert, and was glancing towards the corners of the room
that held the Truth Crystals. Tom was a little surprised that she had deigned to
pay enough attention to notice that the Aurors’ reports were unusually detailed
and were admitting their own biases as they talked.

At one point she looked straight at him, which Tom thought doubly unusual,
until he realized that her eyes were focused on Harry. Well and so. She can be
unworldly, but she can also recognize a threat when she sees one, presented by
a half-blood or not.

The second Auror finished her report, and Tom stood with a sigh. “When the
Aurors searched Madam Bones’s office, they found this device.” He nodded
towards the object like a tuning fork that had been placed in the kind of stasis
globe usually used for the transportation of vicious animals in a menagerie. In
truth, he had examined it and didn’t think it was dangerous to anyone but
Madam Bones—it had been made to resonate with her mind specifically—but
he would take no chances.

“How can we prove where the object came from?” That was Lestrange,
although he quailed when Tom’s eye fell upon him. Apparently he was still
trying to make up for his loss of prestige after the duel with Harry by offering
random questions. “I mean—it just seems there’s no evidence to link it to your
enemy, Professor Dumbledore, Minister.”

“Former Professor Dumbledore,” Tom said, and how he enjoyed saying that.

“It’s true that we have no magical signature of his on this handkerchief or
Dumbledore here to question him. However, we do have other people who
know something important.” He turned towards the doors of the courtroom just
as they opened and former Auror Whipwood was ushered inside.

Whipwood walked with her arms linked together behind her back and her head
uplifted. She nodded in recognition to Granger and Weasley, sneered at Harry,
and sat down in the chair that was provided for her without trying to remove her
arms from the tight hold of the magical bindings.

“You’ll get little out of me,” she said. “Vows protect the Order of the Phoenix’s
secrets.”

“I want to know where Professor Dumbledore might have found items like the
Truth Crystals that now stand in the corners of this room,” Tom said, and
nodded to the nearest Crystal in case she had missed them.

Whipwood turned her head to look, and then snapped back around, staring at
him. “You found them? Where did you find them? They were hidden in
Hogwarts!”

Tom smiled thinly. It appeared the vows were less restrictive than he’d thought,
or perhaps they were simply less restrictive on someone like Whipwood than
someone like Granger or Weasley, who had been trusted with important raids
and were wanted enough to go on the run with other Order members. “He found
them in Hogwarts, then,” he said to the watchful audience. “I see. And why did
he never report to the Ministry that he had discovered artifacts so useful?”

Whipwood sneered again. “I don’t know his thought processes.”

“In your opinion?”

“Why would he report anything to you, when he knows that you’re planning to
launch a secret war that would kill all Muggleborns and most half-bloods?”

Tom sighed, while mutters swept the courtroom. It was their first look at the
Order’s unvarnished paranoia, for many of the Wizengamot members here.
Other people he’d captured hadn’t known as much as Whipwood or hadn’t had
open trials. “And that would include artifacts like the Truth Crystals. I see.
What were they originally used for?”

“To prevent students cheating on exams.”

Tom snorted quietly. “And in your opinion, could Professor Dumbledore have
found a store of similar artifacts that he would use in other situations?” The
question about her opinion was an easy step around some of the Order’s vows,
especially with the Truth Crystals to compel someone to speak at length. They
might get inaccurate information, but at least it would be some information
instead of silence.

“He could have found them, but he would use them for only the best purposes,
like bringing down an illegitimately-elected Minister.”

“Why do you say that I was illegitimately-elected?” Tom noted more than one
person staring at Whipwood in disbelief, which he fully intended to enjoy. His
opponents had been desperate, after the second time he won an election, to
prove that not that many people would have voted for a half-blood. If they
hadn’t managed to uncover anything in their investigations, it was unlikely that
an “Order” composed of paranoiacs and fugitives would have managed.

“How else could someone like you have won?”

“Who do you think should have been elected instead?” Dumbledore had never
been interested in election, which Tom understood—he wanted to keep his
stranglehold on children at Hogwarts rather than deal with other adults in the
Wizengamot—but neither had he backed any of the candidates who had
opposed Tom.

“Someone who wasn’t insane!”

Tom sighed and abandoned that line of questioning. Making Whipwood

look that mad in front of the Wizengamot actually wasn’t his goal, any more
than it was with Weasley and Granger. The Wizengamot would be more
inclined to think their testimony wasn’t useful, in that case. “Very well. Have
you ever seen this artifact before?” He gestured to the tuning fork, while around
him his bond with Harry abruptly shifted into a buzzing alertness. Tom didn’t
look at him, but extended a tendril of curiosity.
Ron and Hermione are staring. They might know something about it.

Tom sent back a frisson of understanding rather than nodding, because for the
first time, Whipwood appeared to be struggling not to speak. She lost the battle
as the Truth Crystals glowed a little, and blurted, “I haven’t seen that particular
artifact before, but I saw something like it in a book that Professor Dumbledore
gave me to read.”

“What was that book called?”

Again a struggle, and then, “Agents of Prophecy.”

More than one person laughed. Madam Moonwell called out, “You mean that
tome of nonsense that that madwoman Hilaria Ashenblossom wrote? The one
that claims our world is always alternating between two realities, and agents of
prophecy run around trying to make one reality permanent?
That’s nonsensical.”

“If Professor Dumbledore believes in it, then it’s not nonsensical!” Whipwood
turned her head to glare at Moonwell over her shoulder.

Tom shook his head and turned to his peers. “Well, it seems that she’s given as
much useful testimony as she can. Unless someone else has another question?”

Arcturus Black stood. Tom nodded to him, wondering what question Black had
thought he could come up with to undermine Tom and Harry and get damning
information out of Whipwood—because he wouldn’t have wanted to question
her for any other reason.

“Why does your leader believe that Minister Riddle is mad?”

“He’s going to launch a secret war, you idiot! One he’s spent decades preparing
for.” Whipwood stared at Black with the kind of contempt that Tom knew
would make him bristle faster than anything else. “Have you listened
to anything I’ve been saying, or is your head too far up your pure-blood arse?”

Black sat down abruptly. “No more questions, Minister Riddle.”

Tom smiled as he turned back to the Aurors who had escorted Whipwood in and
nodded to them. They led her out again. She was shouting something about the
“secret war” as they did, but honestly, most people had already started
whispering to their neighbors or had gone back to looking at the artifact or
Madam Bones.

The more you call me mad, old man, the more I can beat you at your game.

“Votes on whether Madam Bones should be held responsible for her actions?”
Tom asked, looking around the courtroom with his eyebrows raised.

The vote went the way he had expected it would, with nearly everyone
concluding that Madam Bones should serve no time in Azkaban or even with a
Mind-Healer. If the artifact hadn’t been definitely proven to come from
Dumbledore, at least there was the high chance it had. And more, this kind of
anonymous threat meant that nearly everyone in the Wizengamot could see
themselves a victim.

Tom wasn’t about to enlighten them that Dumbledore wouldn’t have chosen
any of them as victims because he would never trust them as near him or Harry
as he had trusted Amelia.

But it didn’t matter. The outcome had been the one he wanted. Now Tom
picked up the next stack of paperwork, nodding to Amelia, who had an
expression of profound relief on her face, and turning to conduct the real trial of
the day.

Harry had been ignoring his best friends’ expressions as well as he could. They
were looking mainly at him rather than Tom, except when they nodded in
support of Whipwood’s conclusions or stared hard at the artifact. Hermione had
tried to mouth something to him, but Harry had deliberately avoided looking at
her too closely.

Now he would have to speak against them, probably.

Hermione caught his eye again. Harry only raised his brows and glanced over to
Tom, who was regarding him with a tilted head. Harry nodded back without
being obvious about it, and Tom faced Ron and Hermione.

“Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, you stand accused of murder, attempted

murder, damage of Ministry property, and terrorist violence in your actions
against the Department of Mysteries,” Tom said. His voice was cold and dry.
Harry wondered if anyone else knew exactly how much he was enjoying this.
“This body will present the charges. Then you may respond. You have refused
the solicitor assigned to you, so therefore you will provide your own defense.”

Harry started. He had assumed that the solicitor simply hadn’t been in the
courtroom for the first part of this trial because there was no reason for him or
her to be there while they were debating Amelia Bones’s guilt or innocence. But
to know Ron and Hermione had refused that kind of help…

He caught Hermione’s eye again, but this time she was the one looking away.
Hermione sat up and smoothed her hands down her robes, as much as she could
move them with the chains of magic on her arms. “That’s right.”

Tom nodded. “This body may present questions on many aspects of the raid.
Keep in mind that you may ask for extra time on questions, but you will not be
telling less than the truth with the Crystals present.” He looked around the
Wizengamot. “Does anyone have any questions for the defendants before the
charges are presented at length?”

Harry held his tongue. This sounded unfair, making Ron and Hermione respond
to questions outside of their defense, but he knew it was also fully legal
Wizengamot procedure. He’d spent a lot of last night reading up on it.

And it was yet another thing that Dumbledore and the Order had never sought to
change, even when it might have benefited them if they were captured and tried.

Aelia Malfoy rose to her feet. Harry felt Tom’s surprise like a hidden lightning
strike, but Tom nodded. “The Ministry recognizes Madam Malfoy.”

“What was your motivation for making the raid?” Malfoy asked, turning and
staring at Hermione. Harry saw the disgust on her face, and wished he had some
way of knowing what was the bigotry he wanted to combat and what was
contempt for a criminal.

“We thought Minister Riddle was conducting research into time magic in the
Department of Mysteries. We had to stop him. He could have won the war
forever if he could go back and kidnap or kill key people, like Professor
Dumbledore.”

Another mutter swept the courtroom. Harry glanced from face to face as subtly
as he could, without moving his head, but it was hard to tell what the members
of the Wizengamot believed or didn’t.
Madam Malfoy only stood there as if she was made of stone, which from what
Tom had said was her usual way of doing things. “And what proof of this did
you have?” she asked.

Ron was the one who answered this time. “Professor Dumbledore said so. He
had spies in the Department of Mysteries who told him they were working on
time magic.”

Tom’s hand clenched behind his back, but Harry was the only one who had a
clear view of his back, so he supposed that was okay. The bond lashed between
them like a writhing snake, and Harry swallowed. He resisted the temptation to
reach out and touch Tom, though. It would probably hurt more than it would
help right now.

“Have you cleaned up these spies in the Department of Mysteries, Minister?”

demanded Black.

“Yes,” Tom said, his voice without inflection, but that was enough to make
Black blanch and sit down. “Continue asking your questions, Madam Malfoy.”

“How did you ascertain that the purpose of the time magic was for going back
in time and unleashing a genocidal war or destroying Professor Dumbledore,
instead of what the Minister stated it was for?” Madam Malfoy asked. Her voice
was a different kind of blank lack of inflection from Tom’s.

“What purpose was it stated to be for?” Hermione sounded bewildered. Harry

studied her face for a second, without letting her see him looking, and decided
she was genuinely puzzled.

“For visiting certain points in history and recovering artifacts reported as lost,”
Tom said. “Or bringing important people forwards in time who were identified
as disappearing or dying of an unknown disease so that they could be either
rewarded with a second chance in the future or perhaps cured.”

Hermione snorted. “That’s what you say, but we know what it was really for.”

Tom let out a careful sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. Harry wondered
for a second how he had learned to be so perfectly manipulative, but of course
the answer was obvious. He’d grown up in Slytherin House with a lot of people
thinking he was a Muggleborn at first.

And watching Dumbledore taught me much, Tom’s thoughts murmured to him.

You never said that.
You have much to learn about me, Tom said, and ended the mental
communication, the way Harry had noticed they needed to do when one of them
was speaking aloud. “How did you learn what it was ‘really’ for?”

“Professor Dumbledore told us.”

“And is there any way that you might disbelieve him or that someone else could
even falsify the premises of his argument?” Tom asked, letting more emotion
leak into his voice.

“Why would we disbelieve the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever seen?”
Ron demanded.

Tom sighed and looked at the ceiling. “You realize that the Headmaster of
Hogwarts is not normally a political position?”
“It doesn’t matter. It became political because he needed to counter you.”
Hermione’s eyes were afire. Harry stared at her in silence and thought that he
had never seen her like this before. He could only hope that he would still judge
her reactions accurately. “What matters is that he held meetings with us where
he laid out all the proof we’ll ever need about who you are.”

Tom shook his head and turned to the members of the Wizengamot. “I suspect
this diversion has gone on long enough, and we should proceed to the formal
presentation of charges. Unless you have any other questions, Madam Malfoy?”

She took long enough to think it over that Harry thought she did, but then she
shook her head and sat down.

Tom nodded and picked up the scroll of charges in front of him. “To wit: on the
first charge of murder…”

Hermione clenched her hands in her lap as she watched Harry. It had been hard
to take her eyes off Riddle while he was speaking, and she had hated the
unsubtle magic of the Truth Crystals shoving and shoving and shoving at her.
On the other hand, what did she have to worry about? It wasn’t like she was
ashamed of anything she was saying.

They were the ones who should be ashamed. But Harry, at least, was refusing to
pay attention to them with the kind of shocked and horrified expression
Hermione had expected to see on his face when the charges were read. To
accuse her and Ron of murder missed the whole point. There was no such thing
as a true murder charge or a fair trial under a dictatorship.

Then Hermione shook her head sharply. She had to stop thinking of Harry as
their friend. She had to remember the realization she had come to half an hour
ago, that Harry had ceased to be their friend when he became the Minister’s
soulmate.

Ron tensed next to her. Hermione tapped her fingers sharply on the arm of her
chair. They still had something they could do, but she wanted to wait for the
sentencing. It wasn’t impossible that someone might speak up for them to be
spared Azkaban, especially once they heard about the compromise she and Ron
were prepared to offer. Hermione didn’t want to give away their main
advantage if they didn’t have to.

Ron nodded to her with a sheepish look, and their bond briefly broadcast a
feeling of jumping on a trampoline, which was his usual apology. Hermione
smiled at him and turned back to face the front. She supposed she should have
been paying attention to the list of charges, but honestly, she knew what they
were, she knew what the Ministry said they were, and she knew why Riddle was
convinced she and Ron were wrong.

It didn’t mean they were wrong, or that she and Ron would ever agree with
Riddle and Harry.

“Your defense,” Riddle said, and Hermione nodded. Ron would add facts only
if absolutely necessary; they had agreed she would handle this.

“First, I want you to know that I can see through you,” she said, staring at
Riddle. No one else in the Wizengamot might pay attention to this, and she had
lost hope for getting Harry to come back to their side. But she needed to say it
because defiance against a dictator was important, and there were people among
the Aurors here who might be Order sympathizers if not Order spies.

“See through me?” Riddle asked softly.

Hermione nodded. “All that nonsense about using time magic to fetch people or
artifacts from the past? You know it’s nonsense as well as I do. You’re
committed to a war against Muggleborns and Muggles because you hate us as a
group and Professor Dumbledore personally. It’s a wonder that you’ve managed
to fool this many people for so long. You might as well know it doesn’t fool
us.”
Riddle’s face was blank. “Your defense against the charges of murder?”

Hermione shrugged. “It’s twofold. First, those people were working for you.
They deliberately chose to undertake dangerous and unethical research because
they believed in your goals. People who work for you aren’t innocents. They’re
willingly serving a dictator. And ‘I was just following orders’ has never been a
defense.”

A muscle twitched in the side of Riddle’s face, but he said only, “The second
part.”

“There’s never been a war that was stopped without violence. We were that
violence.” Hermione turned and looked around the room, at the silent
Wizengamot. Their faces were disgusted as they watched her, but who knew?
Maybe the truth and the passion of her words would touch someone here. “We
willingly took on the burden of killing, of potentially splitting our souls, for you.
So that other people didn’t have to do it.”

“Your defense against the charges of attempted murder?”

“The same as before.”

Riddle waited, but Hermione had said all she was going to say. He nodded.
“The charges of damaging Ministry property?”

“It’s what you should have expected, sir, when you committed the Ministry to
the cause of genocide.”

“The charges of terrorist violence?”

“The Order of the Phoenix is only a terrorist group in the propaganda you’ve
put out to convince people to follow you,” Hermione said. She was strong now
and soaring, thinking of the way she had once seen Fawkes spread his wings in
Headmaster Dumbledore’s office. She wanted to fly like that. She was an agent
of fate as much as any other. “We’re a resistance group.”

“Against what?”

“Your terrorism against Muggles and Muggleborns.”

“Tell me, Ms. Granger,” said Riddle, looking bored and academic in a way
Hermione loathed, “what open acts of terrorism have I committed? What raids
comparable to the ones your Order has carried out? What murders and what
attempted murders?”

“You’ve passed laws that could impact them!”

“I asked you about raids and attempted murders, Ms. Granger, not laws. You
care little for laws yourself, seeing as how you’ve broken them.”

“You’re not the government that represents us,” Hermione pointed out.

“Violence against you is permissible.”

“And what government would represent you?”

“Professor Dumbledore in the Minister’s seat.” Honestly, did Riddle think he

could trip her up with questions this simple?

“Which he has repeatedly refused, along with membership in the Wizengamot,

even when members of the Wizengamot offered to sponsor him.” Riddle leaned
forwards. “Who would you see in my place who is not a currently accused
criminal and terrorist leader?”

“Anyone would be better.”

Riddle leaned back and said, “The Ministry has no more questions to put to the
defendants. Do any of the members of this august body have questions for the
defendants?”

Hermione turned in a slow circle, and watched as people stared at her and
coughed and mumbled among themselves. She shook her head as she turned
back to Riddle. “No one does because of how indoctrinated they are and how
much they fear you.” She ignored the protests that followed that. They knew it
was the truth. If they hadn’t been so indoctrinated, they would have joined the
Order of the Phoenix already.

“You are a fine one to talk about indoctrination,” Riddle said quietly.

Hermione stared at him, not knowing what he meant, not really caring. She had
made the best case she had, and it was for the people in the audience who might
listen to her, not Riddle. He had probably gone beyond listening the day he
decided to kill children who had hurt him.
Riddle’s smile cramped as if he could read her thoughts from this distance with
his Legilimency. Well, let him. Hermione lifted her chin and sat down again,
where the chains shot across her arms and held her.

Ron smiled at her. Hermione smiled back. She had done the best she could.

I thought she was mad. But it’s worse than that. She’s just sealed herself away
from the world in a way that means there’s no argument that can reach her. She
thinks arguing back is a sign that someone’s mad themselves.

Harry rubbed his forehead with one hand. He didn’t know what he should do
next.

You need do nothing, Tom’s voice murmured in his head, and then Tom turned
to the members of the Wizengamot and said, “There are two sentences available
for crimes such as they are charged with: execution and life in Azkaban. Keep
that in mind as you vote. Guilty or not guilty?”

There was a wave of wands around the room, and Harry nearly flinched before
he realized that they were merely firing sparks into the air, not curses. Then he
wanted to flinch anyway. The sparks were almost uniformly black, not silver,
the color of innocence.

You knew it would come to this.

Harry said nothing, but let the emotional bond speak for him. Tom’s hand out of
sight twitched this time as if he wanted to reach out and touch Harry. But Harry
knew why he couldn’t, and he simply waited until the sparks died.

“Guilty,” Tom said quietly. “Now, black for execution and silver for Azkaban.”

This time, the sparks were much more mixed, but silver dominated. Harry
closed his eyes. He wondered if he should feel relieved or not. His friends
wouldn’t die, but Azkaban might as well be death in many ways. And if he
couldn’t persuade Tom to pass the prison reforms that he wanted soon, there
might be…

No way for them to survive as the people he had known.

Did you ever really know them, with the lies you told them and the ones they
told you?
Harry opened his eyes and stared bleakly at Ron and Hermione. Ron was pale
enough that his freckles stood out. He was staring around the room with wide,
betrayed eyes, as if he had thought not even the Wizengamot could turn against
them with an argument as supposedly sound as Hermione’s.

Hermione’s face gleamed with shock, but then she shook her head and turned
towards Ron. She extended her hand, and he extended his, and they clasped
wrists. It should have been a simple sign of togetherness in the face of a horrible
fate.

But Harry had known them in some way, whatever Tom wanted to imply, for
years, and he saw how their gazes locked, how the air around them began to
tremble as if they were launching silver sparks of their own.

His alarm reached Tom, who whipped around, at the same moment as silver fire
burst out around Ron and Hermione, towards the ceiling and the floor and the
walls—

And all of the parts of the room lifted away from each other.

Chapter 26: Ties

Chapter Text

The way that Tom’s eyes widened told Harry that he recognized the silver storm
consuming Ron and Hermione. Even as Harry lifted and wove their magic,
rapidly expanding a circle of protection around the Wizengamot to shield the
people there, he tugged on the knowledge from Tom’s mind.

A knot placed in the soul-bond. It could be charged with a single spell and
would take effect at the proper time. And it most likely would consume the bond
and the people who powered it with it.

Harry’s mouth moved in a deep grimace that felt oddly detached from him. So
Dumbledore had convinced Ron and Hermione to place an Ultimate Destruction
Curse in their bond. This was like the roof collapse and the “war casualties”
story all over again.

But one thing, Harry didn’t mind being the same. And that meant he was going
to save everyone in the room.

Everyone.
The circle of protection was complete in less than a second, and Harry leaped
out in the next one, sending a stream of silver power pouring towards Ron and
Hermione.

Harry! What the hell are you doing?

Harry ignored that, because it was a useless question. Tom knew very well what
he was doing. He could read the intent in Harry’s mind and magic and soul, and
he should have known before this if he understood at all what sort of person
Harry was.

Not just someone to sit back and let people destroy themselves, even if he had
given up on his friendship with them. He’d saved strangers. Why couldn’t he
save people he knew?

That shield you set up is going to deflect the magic by sending it back on its
casters! You’ll break that shield if you spare them. The energy will have to go
somewhere!

Harry didn’t reply, because he had known that, and he had a plan for that, too.
First he encircled Ron and Hermione in the same cool power that he’d flooded
the Wizengamot with, and then he began to work.

As she dissolved, as her bones briefly caught on fire and the agony
overwhelmed her mind, Hermione let herself sink into peace. At least she knew
they would destroy Minister Riddle, and that meant millions of Muggles and
Muggleborns would be safe. And if the Wizengamot was really as corrupt as
Harry had hinted, this was a way to chop off the head of the snake, too. Start
fresh, with new members…

The new future that she and Ron would never see. But then, they wouldn’t have
seen it from inside an Azkaban cell, either.

Hermione became aware that it was taking longer to dissolve into the pain and
the nothingness than she had thought. She opened her eyes with a frown, and
then snapped them open wide, staring.

In front of her, where she had thought there would be a wash of light and fire,
there was a hovering shape. When she squinted, she thought she could make out
the talons and fanned tail of a phoenix, and tears filled her eyes.
Was it Fawkes, come to save them? Or perhaps even another phoenix, an agent
of fire and fate who believed they should live to continue the Order’s work?

The bird’s beak opened, and it sang a high, quivering note that made
Hermione’s bones creak in sympathy—which reminded her that she had bones.
She caught her breath. Yes, it had to be a phoenix. No other mortal creature
would have the strength to survive this.

But when the phoenix faced her fully, Hermione found herself looking into
brilliant green eyes she had seen every day for seven years. Her mouth fell
open, and she didn’t know what to do. She could feel Ron hovering behind her,
uncertain, but the sensation was dimmed, as if they had already gone part of the
way to death.

If they were partway there, they couldn’t come back, Hermione thought,

calming a little. Not even Harry’s power could resurrect them. He wasn’t
an actual phoenix.
But the power was sweeping around them, not burning them. Hermione shook
her head and frowned. She tried to turn towards Ron to ask him what he thought
was happening, but suddenly there was a tightness in her chest, or what was left
of it, and she couldn’t breathe.
There were floating pieces of silver and black in front of her now, and
Hermione didn’t understand. What was happening? How could this be—
gathering them, holding them in, transforming them? She and Ron
had triggered the Ultimate Destruction Curse. That meant there was no way
they could come back.

But she kept seeing the silver and black pieces anyway, not the darkness or the
light that should have come along with a transition to the afterlife. She pushed
fretfully back into her bond with Ron, not understanding.

I think that he’s—

But then the silver and black pieces curled around them in an explosion, and
Hermione gasped, and part of her did go fleeting away down the brilliant white
tunnel that she suspected led to death. She went willingly. She knew Ron would
come with her, as all joined souls did, and they had at least done good in their
very last moments.

More good than most of the people alive in the wizarding world right now have
done.

*
Had someone asked Tom, with all his knowledge of magical theory, if what
Harry was doing was possible, he would have said no unequivocally.

But here Harry was, gathering up the pieces of Granger and Weasley’s soul-
bond that the Ultimate Destruction Curse should have broken, and slamming
them together, and flying as a phoenix after another one, and snatching it up,
and bringing it back. He was keeping the shield he had woven around the
Wizengamot from breaking, or destroying Weasley and Granger, by containing
the curse that would have impacted it.
Tom had remained a silent observer so far, lending their joined power to the
endeavor, but he stirred when he felt Harry’s exhaustion pouring down the
bond. If you continue to try to do this, he pointed out, you will have to drop the
shield that is guarding the Wizengamot and us.

Harry turned towards him. Tom wasn’t sure exactly how he was “seeing” him
right now. It wasn’t physical. Perhaps this was with the eyes of the soul. Harry
looked half-human at best, with white talons and silvery phoenix wings coming
out of his back. He was panting, and thick blood wound down from a cut on his
temple. Tom controlled his rage and listened to Harry’s response.

They—it’s too much. It’s too easy. For them to do this. To get out of
punishment, and—they’re mad, and they were my friends, and I want them back.
Tom nodded, understanding better than Harry would have thought he could, if
the flicker of surprise down the bond was any indication. But you can do this
only with my cooperation. If you try to destroy yourself rescuing them, then I
will pull back on the magic.

Harry lowered his head and closed his eyes for a second, Power hung around
them, contained, and Tom took a moment to study it. He thought he understood,
now, what Harry had been doing. Harry had two concentric circles of silver, one
on the outside forming a shield that surrounded the Wizengamot, one inside the
first trapping the pieces of Weasley and Granger’s bond and bodies from flying
too far.

Let me save what I can, Harry whispered at last.

Of course, Tom said, and watched as Harry spread his talons and his wings and
his magic, and collapsed the inner circle in on itself.

The pieces that had been trapped hovered there, then began to funnel back
together, and the pieces that had been outside the ring began to soar away.
Harry breathed steadily, and the tremors that coursed down their magic would
have been invisible to anyone not bound to him.
Tom found himself oddly proud of that. Then he wanted to laugh. Harry was
performing a literally impossible feat of magic, and Tom was proud of the fact
that it wouldn’t have looked nearly as effortful as it was from the outside?

Perhaps some people had a point about his priorities.

Harry clenched his hands together—and they were fully hands again, at least in
this formulation, and not talons—and there was an odd, crunching slam, as
though they were all inside a lift that had been falling down its shaft and had
abruptly been stopped. Then Harry gasped and let the power go.

Tom blinked and found himself standing in the intact courtroom, with Weasley
and Granger slumped senseless in their chairs. He studied them with a clinical
eye. Weasley was missing a good chunk of his arm, Granger of her hair, and
both of them had no left foot. But those were the kinds of injuries common in a
Splinching, and St. Mungo’s would be able to heal them.

“You brought them back as good as new,” he muttered, and his stomach
tightened. He wondered for a moment if Harry would have taken the same risk
for anyone, or if his traitorous friends still held a special place in his heart.

“Not exactly.”

Harry’s voice was heavy and quiet. Tom glanced at him and frowned a little.
Harry was leaning forwards with his hands on his knees and his head hanging
down between them. Tom reached out to touch the back of his neck. Nothing
was streaming to him down their bond at the moment, neither thoughts nor
emotions.

He exhausted himself so much that he can’t even use that magic. “Their injuries
are bloodless and can be healed.”

Harry swallowed and replied without trying to lift his head. “But they buried the
curse in their bond. They used the bond’s reservoir of magic to launch it. I—I
brought back their bodies and their minds, but I couldn’t save their bond.”

Tom blinked. He had never heard of such a situation. There were people who
died when their bond was severed, especially if it was newly complete, and
sometimes people who died even if they had never met their soulmate when
their mark became black-lined. But he didn’t know what would happen if the
bond was ended for two people at the same time and they were both still alive.

“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”

“Don’t even think about using them in experiments of some sort, Tom. I won’t
allow it.”

“You can’t feel anything down the bond from me right now,” Tom argued,
because he was sure that was still true. He sat down next to Harry and conjured
a cloak for him. As he had thought would be the case, Harry was trembling as
much with cold as with exhaustion. His skin felt slick and icy to the touch.

Tom cast a Warming Charm as Harry tilted his head to look up at him a little
and nodded. “But I know the way your mind works.”

Tom shrugged. “Well, I will not be putting them in the Department of

Mysteries. But an opportunity has presented itself that we didn’t have before.”

“Yes?”

“With their magic entwined with their bond like that, they are likely to be little
better than Squibs. I am willing to let them live in the Muggle world if they take
certain vows not to act against my regime again.”

“What about—they committed murder and all that?”

Tom snorted. “I think the loss of magic worse than the loss of life, Harry,
although I know not everyone will agree. And the Wizengamot already voted
against execution.” He ran his hand gently down Harry’s neck and through his
hair. “On the other hand, if they refuse to take the vows, it’ll be Azkaban in any
case. The Wizengamot might prefer that since they don’t have the magic
anymore to take the kinds of magically binding oaths a wizard would. Squibs
can be bound, but not as tightly.”

Harry sighed and leaned against him. “I know that you’re letting this happen
because it’s me and because you don’t care that much anyway, but thank you.”

“You fought so hard to save their lives,” Tom said lightly. His hand tightened
on the back of Harry’s neck for a second. “Would you do it for anyone who was
being destroyed in that same way? Or only for them?”

“I’d do it for you,” Harry whispered. “Sirius. My parents. A couple of the other
people I grew up with, I think, although I’m not nearly as close to them since
we left Hogwarts. But—not for everyone.”
Tom nodded, satisfied. It was good to know that his soulmate
wasn’t that ridiculously self-sacrificing. The shield he had created for the
Wizengamot was a different matter, since it had saved his life and Tom’s as
much as anyone else’s. “Go to sleep, Harry.”

“I want to be there when Ron and Hermione wake up.”

“This time, I’ll ask you for something. I don’t want you there.”

Harry pulled back and studied him for a moment. “I won’t do anything else to
try and save them. I don’t even know what I could do.”

“I know. But they’ve hurt you enough, and you made an enormous sacrifice for
them.”

“I didn’t die. We didn’t lose any of our bond or our magic.”

“But you know we could have.”

Harry continued to study him. Tom didn’t move and kept a calm smile on his
face. He would be as gentle with Harry as he needed to be, but he deserved to
have this much after the risk Harry had taken.
Harry abruptly blew out his breath, and their bond flickered back to life between
them, as gentle and fragile as the blue flames that sprouted whenever Tom
touched his mark. He leaned up to kiss Tom, and his amusement and awe
and greed danced through the air so thickly that Tom blinked in shock.
Even now, I can’t believe someone would fight like that for me. I let this moment
stretch longer than I should have because I wanted to feel it. Sorry.
Tom kissed him back, and then turned to the dazed members of the
Wizengamot, keeping one hand on Harry’s shoulder, while he gently tugged at
the silver shield to collapse it. Given that he wanted to be the one who gave
Harry everything that he had been denied for years, the slip was more than
forgivable.

Hermione opened her eyes slowly, and then sat up as fast as she could—which
turned into a grunting fall when she realized that magical bonds linked her to
the hospital bed beneath her the way they had to the chair in the Wizengamot
courtroom.

What the hell is going on?

She felt oddly dull and muffled, both in her senses and in her mind, as if she had
been given one of a number of sleeping draughts. But she seemed to be wide
awake. She turned to the side and saw that this looked like one of the healing
wards at St. Mungo’s, with Ron asleep on a bed next to her.

Hermione probably stared at him for a full five minutes before the next strange
thing hit her.

She couldn’t feel him.

Hermione’s heart leaped to drumming life in her ears, and she tried to lunge off
the bed. It didn’t matter. The magical bonds tightened and pulled her back flat,
and then she was breathing hoarsely, hands clamped over her mouth. She felt as
if she was about to throw up.

They couldn’t have—they couldn’t have severed the bond. Not really.

Otherwise either she or Ron or both of them would be dead. It was what
happened with full-bonded partners.

She raised a shaking hand and reached towards him, although the bond around
her wrist snatched her hand back to the mattress before it went too far. “Ron?”

“He’s alive.”

Hermione jumped and nearly shrieked. Then she glanced over to find Riddle,
smooth bastard that he liked to present himself as, sitting in a chair near the wall
with his legs crossed. He smiled when he saw her looking at him, and proceeded
to stand and stretch, his arms rippling and shrugging and shaking, as if he was
getting up after a long nap.

“How do you feel, Miss Granger?”

Hermione ignored the mock-solicitous question. “What did you do to us?” she
demanded. “Reverse it right now!”

“Ah, well, that would require breaking all the laws of magic and conducting
some sophisticated research in the next second,” said Riddle, in a voice
someone might have mistaken for sympathy if they couldn’t see his cold eyes.
“You see, no one has ever been in the situation you were in before, where you
buried an Ultimate Destruction Curse in your bond but managed to survive it.
The Healers have been beside themselves as they work to keep you alive and
understand what happened. It’s quite an exciting opportunity for them.”

“You broke our bond because you hate us.”

The next instant, she gasped, because it felt as though the cold coils of an
anaconda were wrapped around her. Riddle smiled, but that was worse than him
not doing it.

“You are alive with your bond broken because my bondmate strained his magic
to the limits to keep your bodies and minds from flying apart.”

Hermione looked wildly around the room, but didn’t see Harry. She stared back
at Riddle, and had to drop her eyes. His cold ones were too unpleasant to meet.

She licked her lips and managed to swallow. “And you let us live?”

“The Wizengamot did not vote for execution.”

Hermione closed her eyes. “I wish you had let us die. I wish—I don’t want to be
alive if I don’t have my soul-bond with Ron.”

“Strange,” Riddle said, his voice so light that Hermione really should have
expected the verbal knife that came chopping in next. “You being unwilling to
lead the kind of existence that you would have condemned Harry to for the rest
of his life.”

“We didn’t know his soulmate was you.”

Hermione thought she had managed to put sufficient venom in her voice, but it
splashed against Riddle’s mental defenses and collapsed as if it was water.
Riddle chuckled and shook his head. “But once you did, you didn’t want him to
bond with me. Don’t try to hide behind lies and evasions, Granger. After all,
you were willing to destroy the entire Wizengamot, the entire government of the
wizarding world, in order to prove a point.”

“The government that wasn’t democratically-elected!”

“Which was a point so minor to you that it hadn’t even occurred to you until
Harry told you.” Riddle folded his hands behind his back, while Hermione
reached for the bond with Ron again and again, and crashed against the bloody
muffling of her senses, and fought tears. “And what would have happened to the
wizarding world with no government?”

“Freedom!”
“Chaos.” Riddle gave her a smile that Hermione also had to look away from.
“Of course, that would be a minor point to you, considering that you had
decided you wouldn’t be alive to see it.”

Hermione lifted her chin. “It was a pleasure and an honor when Professor
Dumbledore asked us to put the curse in our bond.”

“I’m sure it was.”

Riddle turned, acting utterly uninterested now, and nodded to Ron. “You can
wait for him to wake up. He’s fine, physically. Then I’ll have you both take the
vows to never act against my regime again, and you can live in the Muggle
world. The Wizengamot agreed that was a reasonable compromise,
considering…everything.”

His voice made Hermione’s mouth fill with bile. “What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you noticed?” Riddle’s eyes glittered at her. “Well, of course, it’s
harder to notice an absence than a presence.” He waited, and Hermione
clenched her fists in the bedsheets, and finally lost her temper and answered
him.

“I know that you stripped Ron and me of our bond!”

“Not that. The Wizengamot will argue for a while about the wording of the
vows that should be used, but we’ll doubtless find some that are strong enough
to bind a Squib.”

Hermione reeled back in the bed, her hand over her mouth. “You can’t—
you can’t—”

“I didn’t take your magic,” Riddle said, his voice horrifyingly gentle. “You did
that yourselves, with the aptly named Ultimate Destruction Curse. I don’t know
of any cases where someone buried it in their bond and survived, so the loss of
your bond was a surprise, but there have been a few cases where someone cast
the curse fueled with their own magic and lived. They were always Squibs
afterwards. How could you think your magic would survive?”

Hermione tried frantically to reach for her power, to make the slightest spark
sing along her veins, and couldn’t. There was only that odd muffled sensation.

“And that you live,” Riddle said, “that you are able to go into the Muggle world
alive at all, is because of my bondmate.” The possessive tone in his voice would
have disgusted Hermione under other circumstances, but barely registered now.
“There has never been a case of someone reversing an Ultimate Destruction
Curse or containing one, but there is now. Because, despite everything you did
to him, he loves you that much.”

“And you—you let him use that magic.”

“In the moment, I don’t know that I could have prevented him without suffering
for it.” Riddle shrugged. “But yes, I let him do it, and the only condition I made
was that he rest when he was magically exhausted and not come near you for
now.”

“Why not?” Hermione’s voice was so low that she honestly didn’t know what
she was feeling herself.

“Because you’ve done enough, don’t you think?”

Riddle turned and vanished out the door of the room. Hermione was left staring
after him, and then she gulped and looked over at the bed beside her with Ron
still resting obliviously in it.

There was a realization pressing against the gates of her mind like someone
pounding on a door. Hermione resisted it for a long time, not even consciously
sure what it was, only knowing it would hurt.

And then it burst in, the gates fell, and she couldn’t lie to herself anymore.

Harry still loves us. Riddle let him use that magic to save us.

Hermione buried her head in her hands and began to weep, while the rest of her
thoughts traced out a relentless course. If Harry loved them, then he wasn’t
completely evil, and he wasn’t as opposed to the goals of the Order as
Hermione and Ron had thought.

And if Riddle had let Harry do this, then he was capable of mercy.

Hermione shuddered again and again, so lost in sobs that she didn’t hear Ron
when he began to wake up. He had to practically shout to get her attention.
“Hermione! What’s going on? And—why didn’t I know?”

Hermione swallowed and turned to him, holding out her hand. Ron reached
across the distance between the beds and clasped her wrist, and Hermione
vaguely registered that the magical bonds tying them to the beds were long
enough to permit that to happen—not something she would have expected.

Ron was staring at her, on the verge of panic, and Hermione had no doubt he
was both trying to sense her thoughts and emotions and sending her his as hard
as he could. She took a deep breath, and began to explain.

She would wait longer to explain the devastating revelation that—while she
didn’t doubt Riddle had horrible goals and she resented the fact that Harry was
going along with them—they had been wrong about how evil both of them
were.

And what else does that mean we’ve been wrong about?

“How is he?”

“No change since you were last here, Minister.”

Tom nodded shortly and sat down beside Harry’s bed. Honestly, it was the best
news he could have expected. Harry was resting, still cradled in the magical
slumber that both the Healers and Tom had renewed, and that meant he wasn’t
expending magic saving a kitten stranded in a tree or something.

Tom sighed. The sneering tone to his own thoughts was one he was no longer
comfortable with. He reached out and smoothed down Harry’s hair, tumbled
across the pillow his head rested on.

A few weeks, and you’ve changed me.

The miracle who had changed him slept on, lips slightly parted. Tom knew the
magical sleep was more or less impervious to interruptions, but he did turn
sharply when he heard footsteps in the corridor outside. The surrounding rooms
had been cleared of patients so that Tom’s Aurors could stand guard.

But it was Harry’s parents who pushed into the room, followed by Black, who
avoided Tom’s eyes. Lily Potter marched right to Harry’s bedside and stared at
Tom. Tom raised his eyebrows, but also raised his body, moving out of the way
so she could sit down in the chair.

James gave him a quietly hostile glance and asked, “How is he?”
“Magically-exhausted,” Tom said. “And recovering.”

“What did he do that made him so exhausted? I thought after you—bonded—

that no task was hard enough for him anymore.”

“He saved his friends when they tried to blow up the Wizengamot courtroom
and probably most of the Ministry with an Ultimate Destruction Curse buried in
their soul-bond,” Tom said mildly, and he did enjoy watching the way James
Potter’s face changed. “He saved the lives of everyone in the room, although he
couldn’t save his friends’ bond or their magic.” Tom shrugged. “Better that they
live and go as Squibs into the Muggle world than stay in the wizarding one,
even in Azkaban.”

James was silent. Lily had reached out and laid a hand on Harry’s forehead and
was talking to him softly. Black fidgeted about for a second, then asked, “How
did Albus convince Ron and Hermione to put a curse like that in their soul-
bond? I thought—they were always good kids, not suicidal. I didn’t think they
would have agreed to that.”

“Perhaps Dumbledore has more of a hold over them than he did you,” Tom said.
“You’re older, and two of you had a child, which does change your priorities.
Weasley and Granger are absolute fanatics. Being young and self-important can
do that to you.”

“They were important,” Black said, his eyes downcast. “I mean, Hermione
Granger’s one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. And Ron Weasley was
a strong magical presence and a strategy master.”

Tom snorted before he could help himself. “You believe that Albus Dumbledore
would allow someone else to plan his strategy?”

Black hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “And you think he would be that
blind to where his advantage might lie?”

Tom nodded shortly. “I don’t think that he trusted anyone but himself. You, as
members of the Order, were pawns.”

“And, of course, you would never do such a thing.”

James was determined to argue with him, it seemed. Then again, Harry had
survived and the problem of his friends was solved. Tom didn’t feel much anger
in himself as he gazed at Harry’s father. “Of course I would. But I didn’t create
a group of people that I deliberately isolated from the rest of the world, infected
with the conspiracy theory that they were fighting against a secret war, and
praised as the only good people left.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Yes, it was,” Tom said peacefully. “And even you think it was, or you
wouldn’t have come away.”

James turned from him with his jaw clenching, and focused on the bed. Tom
just nodded and turned to leave. He didn’t think Harry’s parents and Black
would hurt him or try to sneak him out of hospital.

“Riddle, wait a minute.”

Black was walking after him. Tom nodded and turned to wait in the corridor,
leaning against the wall. Black stood in front of him with his hands stuffed in
his robe pockets and his eyes on the floor.

After a minute of that, Tom sighed impatiently. “Was there something you
wanted, Black? I do have a country to run and a Wizengamot to reassure.”

Black started and glanced at him. “I—Harry said something about how you
want him to see a Mind-Healer.”

“Of course I do. The aftereffects of growing up thinking he was evil because of
something he was born with, if nothing else, merit that he sees one.”

Black swallowed noisily. “Do you think.” Then he apparently reached the end
of that sentence and had to start over. “Once some of the legal ramifications are
sorted out. Do you think you could arrange for me to see a different one, as
well?”

Tom tilted his head. Well, he hadn’t anticipated that request. But he nodded.

There was no reason to refuse it, much like there was no reason not to leave
Harry alone with his family. “Of course.”
“You’re really not as merciless as Dumbledore says.”

Tom laughed before he could help himself. “Was that remark about wanting to
see a Mind-Healer a test? To see what I would say?”

“Partially. But I’m beginning to think it would do me good. I just have—too

much anger, and I’m afraid sometimes that I might lash out and…”
“If you hurt Harry, then you know that’s the end.”

Black nodded with a pensive look on his face, rather than the frightened or
outraged one Tom would have expected. “I know. And I never want to do
something like that to him. Thanks, Riddle.” Then he turned and wen back into
the hospital room.

Tom shrugged and kept walking. The bond between him and Harry was
flickering softly, like candlelight, and that was all right with him. At least it was
coming back to life, and for right now, neither memories nor his exhaustion
were distressing Harry. He might even get an apology from Granger, though
Tom wouldn’t hold his breath for it.

Amelia Bones met him the minute he came through the Floo into the Ministry.
“Where were you?” she demanded. “They’ve been looking for you all over! We
have a situation on our hands.”

“Which one is that?” Tom asked pleasantly as he fell into step beside her. He
could think of several that might be exploding at the moment.

“Some of the Wizengamot members are demanding that your soulmate register
exactly how powerful he is. They say that he’s saved two buildings full of
people now, and the registration should have been completed after the first one,
but it wasn’t, and they want to know why.”

Tom felt his lips twitch. In truth, he thought, the members of the Wizengamot
were probably much more annoyed at owing a life-debt to a half-blood. Even if
they tried to claim that they owed Tom a life-debt instead since he and Harry
shared magic, they would have to acknowledge that the intent to save them and
the power that did so were Harry’s.

Most of them know me well enough to realize it’s the last thing that would occur
to me.

“Very well,” he said, and sped up a little when he got a chiding look from
Amelia.

Molly stared at the front page of the paper and then leaned back against Arthur
and closed her eyes. His arms were around her in an instant, and the contented,
warm thrum of their bond surrounded them both.
“I never knew they were so far gone,” Molly whispered. “Did we really not love
Ron enough, that he would have sought distinction like this?”

“I don’t think this was about distinction.” Arthur’s voice had something broken
in the back of it, and Molly could feel his pain in their bond as well, dancing
like lightning for a moment before he consciously pulled back, trying not to hurt
her. “I think it was about believing in a leader and following him blindly wh-
whether or not he should have.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Molly said. “But then I still don’t know why we
didn’t see it.”

“We’ve been exiles so long, Molly. And you know that a lot of it must have
happened at Hogwarts, where we wouldn’t have seen it anyway.”

Molly nodded slowly. She had also prided herself on raising their children as
independent thinkers, so it wouldn’t have been as though she was watching for
signs of this in Ron. But perhaps she should have questioned Bill more closely
about why he’d rejected the Order.

“So what do we do now?” Arthur whispered.

He had been the one who had made decisions like swearing to the Order first
and when to complete their emotional bond. But he had left up to Molly other
decisions, like how many children to have and how to teach them when they
were still at home.

Molly stood and turned to face him. “We can’t do anything about Ron and
Hermione having lost their magic and their bond, or being exiled to the Muggle
world.”

Arthur nodded, sorrow and understanding in his eyes. Molly sighed, grateful
that she wouldn’t have to argue with him about it.

“So what we need to do now is discuss the terms of our surrender, keeping in
mind that it won’t be to save our son and daughter-in-law.”

“Does it have to be surrender?” Arthur asked, the way Molly had expected him
to ask. His hands were restless on her shoulders and in her hair. “I mean, I know
that we can’t keep on as we have been…but our neutrality….”
“Do you think they’ll believe it, after how fiercely we fought them when we
were part of the Order?” Molly kept her voice as gentle as she could. She knew
Arthur was suffering.

Arthur closed his eyes. Then he shook his head a little.

Molly nodded back. “So we’ll do what we can, and we’ll try to make sure that
the terms of our surrender are as favorable to our other children as we can. We
just need to give up any idea of saving Ron and Hermione.”

She did find it hopeful that Riddle hadn’t killed them yet. That might mean
Harry was beginning to temper him, the way Molly had wondered if he might
be able to.

“What about Albus?”

“What about him?” Molly turned around fully to look at Arthur, and ignored the
hesitant tremble of his fear that she could feel in the back of her mind. “I don’t
see why we should have any loyalty left to him after the way he used Ron and
Hermione, and the way he’s probably disappointed that things didn’t work out
the way he wanted them to.”

“I didn’t mean that. I just meant that we have some secrets that aren’t bound by
the Order’s vows. Are we going to give those up?”

Molly sighed. Those secrets mostly concerned the way that the refuge for the
Order had been constructed, and some of the investigations into the Muggle
world that they’d done which Albus had pointed out could turn up evidence to
show that Riddle’s secret war was about to begin.

But Molly herself didn’t see that much valuable in them. She and Arthur had
been one part of establishing the refuge, but not a whole part. Even if she turned
over all the notes that she’d made to Riddle, he wouldn’t be able to reconstruct
what the Order had done without capturing everyone who had participated.

“I was going to use them to buy us some consideration,” she said quietly.

Arthur closed his eyes in pain. “This isn’t the world I want to live in,” he
whispered.

“I know.” Molly touched his hand, and did her best to pour soothing calm over
their bond, which was vibrating between them now like an Augurey’s feather in
a windstorm. “I wish there was something we could do that was different,
something that would make a difference. But things didn’t turn out the way we
wanted them to, and some of it may never have been real. And Albus has
abandoned us. We have to make the stand that we can to save the rest of our
family.”

She didn’t get a response from Arthur at first, but she hadn’t really expected to.
She just kept lightly touching his hand, lightly feeding him confidence, and
finally Arthur nodded and whispered, “Then let’s do it.”

Molly went to gather up her notes and pack the clothes and other things they
wouldn’t be able to easily replace. She hoped the joy that swirled up from her
side of the bond didn’t distress Arthur too much.

After over six years of exile, they were finally going home.

Chapter 27: Promises
Chapter Text

“How do you intend to claim your life-debts, Mr. Potter?”

Aelia Malfoy’s words were so distant and unconcerned that Harry could have
thought she was speaking of someone entirely unconnected to herself. But he
saw the savage way that her hand pinched the edge of her robes down near the
side of the chair, and how even the soft, soothing sound of tree branches
swaying in the background didn’t appear to calm her.

“I have something in mind,” Harry said. They were sitting in the enchanted
room off Tom’s office that he apparently had woven all these illusions of being
outside around so that his enemies would spill more of their secrets when they
were here. A table disguised as a tree stump sat between him and Madam
Malfoy, and Harry picked up his teacup and sipped from it.

“Why have you not told anyone what it is?”

“Because I think speaking to people on an individual level is better,” Harry said.

“Some of the repayments will be the same across different families, but others
will be individual.” He nodded to her. “Yours is one of the ones where I want
you to think carefully before you refuse my payment.”

“A gentleman would not ask a lady to do something she finds personally

distasteful.”

“Oh, in a matter of life and death, he might,” Harry said. He’d thought about
saying that he wasn’t a gentleman, but Tom had cautioned him that the pure-
bloods he had to deal with would seize any chance they could to place him
beneath them. The last thing Harry should do was willingly give up any relative
status. “And I need you to think of me as someone who cares more about what
you can do for me, and how you can repay the life-debt, than someone who
wants to protect you.”

Madam Malfoy gave him one of those bright, blank stares that seemed to be her
specialty in the Wizengamot. Frankly, Harry thought they were overrated. He
went on sipping his tea, and tried one of the small pieces of shortbread that Tom
must have ordered the house-elves to bring, because Harry certainly hadn’t
asked for anything like them.

“What do you want from me?”

Harry smiled at her and slid a piece of parchment across the stump-disguised
table to her. “Please read this.”

Madam Malfoy’s mask fractured a little, into what seemed to be shining pieces
of glass, as she read. Harry was glad that something could break it, anyway.
“What is this? It appears to be a simple list of numbers.”

“Arithmantic calculations measuring certain levels of power among the students

who entered Hogwarts in the last year,” Harry said calmly. That was one of the
reforms Tom had pushed through which Dumbledore hadn’t been able to
combat. Harry assumed it had probably happened after he was a first-year,
though, or Tom would have known about Harry’s power a lot sooner. Or maybe
Professor Dumbledore had had a word with the Sorting Hat.

The thought made Harry’s chest ache, but he pushed through it, knowing what a
sign of weakness in front of a pure-blood would do to him right now. “Are you
familiar enough with the Arithmancy to determine which ones are the
strongest?”

Of course, Madam Malfoy was one of those people who wouldn’t admit she
didn’t understand something, so she tossed him a scathing glance and bent over
the parchment. A few minutes later, she raised her eyebrows. “The calculations
that indicate those who are strongest appear to be randomly scattered, but it is
clear that there are a quarter of them that stand out above the rest.”

“A quarter,” Harry said meaningfully. He waited to see if she would volunteer

the knowledge on her own, but she treated him to another glare. Harry smiled.
“That corresponds to roughly the number of Muggleborns in the wizarding
population of Britain.”
Madam Malfoy jerked back from the parchment, but pinned it in place with a
hand so it didn’t flutter to the floor. Then she shook her head. “I refuse to
believe that every single strongest student in the last autumn term was a—”

“Not a very good politician, are you,” Harry said softly, his eyes fixed on her,
“if you had to take a minute to think about the word?”

Madam Malfoy spent a moment fussing with the edge of her sleeve, something
Harry doubted she would have done if they were in public, or even just the
Wizengamot chamber. Then she met Harry’s eyes. “Not every single one of
them was Muggleborn.”

She at least said it without a sneer. Harry decided that was enough, and nodded.
“No. Two of them were pure-bloods, and three were half-bloods. All of the
others were Muggleborn.”

Madam Malfoy stared at him. Then she said, “There is no reason that would
cause that. If blood does not matter, as I believe you are attempting to suggest to
me, then more of them should be pure-bloods and half-bloods.”

“There is a reason that would cause it. Tell me, Madam Malfoy, are you aware
of how closely related most of the pure-blood families are?”

Madam Malfoy arched an eyebrow. “Of course. Just as I am aware of how

many powerful wizards and witches there are among my peers.”

“Then you’re probably aware of how many people in your parents’ generation
married out.” Harry had thought Madam Malfoy would sneer, but instead, she
turned pale. Harry honestly couldn’t tell if she had known or not. “Married half-
bloods, married Muggleborns, or married people who had previously been
called blood traitors. There was a law passed two years before you were born,
wasn’t there? Declaring that calling someone a blood traitor in public could be
punished with a duel right then and there. The duel didn’t have to follow the
usual restrictions. I thought it was curious when I first read about it, especially
since the law was struck down twenty years later, but now I know. Some of the
people who married supposed social outcasts didn’t want their spouses taunted.”

Madam Malfoy was giving him a frankly wary look. “And that means…”

“When you intermarry too closely, one of two things happens,” Harry said,
thinking of the way that Sirius had told him about the Black family. “You get
unstable children, or you get Squibs.”
“That is not true. No one knows what causes Squibs!”

“Not down to the point of being able to name the cause,” Harry admitted. “And
it’s true that some Squibs are born to families that also have magical children.
But those families that have non-magical children at all also are the mostly
closely intermarried ones.”

Madam Malfoy sat still. She’d gone back behind that glacial mask again, but
perhaps simply because he was sitting close to her, Harry could see the way her
nostrils flared.

“And what do you intend to have me do with these supposed revelations, Mr.
Potter?”

“Start spreading the truth of them.” Harry shook his head when she opened her
mouth. “I’m not asking you to change the kind of person that you are. That’s
obviously impossible.” He smiled a little at the expression that crossed her face
then. “Frame these conclusions however you want. Talk about
how unexpected it is that Muggleborns show this kind of power, sigh about how
there just aren’t enough polite younger people nowadays, remind people that the
law saying calling someone a blood traitor was a duel-worthy offense existed. I
don’t really care how. But spread the word.”

“That will damage my reputation.”

“As what?”

“As a Malfoy!”

Harry waited until she had calmed down enough to listen to him and said, “The
most important thing is that other people know the facts I’ve just laid out for
you. But you damaging your reputation…” He smiled. “That’s also part of the
point.”

“Why would you want to take this kind of revenge on me? My family has not
hurt your family personally.”

“You’ve hurt Muggleborns and half-bloods and Muggles by promoting the kind
of nonsense you do,” Harry said quietly. “That’s personal enough for me.”

Madam Malfoy had managed to get control of her facial features and her voice
by now. “You cannot change the world. Not in the way you think you can. You
are not strong enough. We are too entrenched.”
“By myself, no. And I’ve seen how useless force is when it’s something like the
Order of the Phoenix. But with Tom on my side, and a whole bunch of the most
bigoted people having to do what I tell them, I think it’s easier.”

“Did she glare at you when you said that?”

“Of course she did.” Harry grinned at Tom. He was leaning back with his feet
on Tom’s desk, his chair tilted so it was on two absurd legs. He had given up on
waiting for Tom to say something about that, which was good, because on that
matter Tom lived to disappoint. “But I don’t really know why everyone found
her so frightening. Her mask has all these cracks in it if you look closely
enough.”

“Cracks, I think, that you put there.”

“Yes, but cracks that are possible. Everyone acted like they weren’t.”

Tom chuckled and gave in to his desires, coming around the desk to touch
Harry’s forehead, over his old faded scar from a broom accident. “It might have
taken someone coming from the outside to see them.”

“Maybe.” Harry’s eyes were dark and full. He tilted his head back and then
murmured, “We can’t—in the middle of the Ministry.”

“I know,” Tom said. It was enough for him to know that his soulmate wanted to,
the heavy waves surging between them, and he might even have tried for it with
a door that locked more strongly or less urgent business on hand.

As it was, he had something to tell Harry that Harry wouldn’t like at all. He
stepped back, and Harry’s face shut down. He had already received the
foreboding of what Tom would say through their bond, then.

“What is it?”

“I want you to listen to me, not just reject it right away,” Tom said.

“I am listening.”

Tom raised his eyebrows in polite doubt, and then murmured, “I’ve found a
Mind-Healer that I’d like you to visit.”
“What makes this one so special?”

“He specializes in dealing with patients who have encountered opposition to

their soul-marks from friends and family. Most often pure-bloods who found
out they had Muggleborn soulmates, but there are other cases, too.”

“And you think that he’ll be able to talk to me in detail about the Order without
scolding me about it?”

Tom paused. That hadn’t been an objection he’d anticipated. “What do you
mean?”

“That he won’t take me to task for having acted with a terrorist group. That he
won’t spend so much time on that he’ll sort of forget to help me with the soul-
mark part.”

Tom trailed his hand down Harry’s cheek, and Harry made a soft sound and
closed his eyes in pleasure. “I promise that other people won’t despise you for
that,” Tom whispered. “I saw that memory of you when you were a child and
asking your mother about whether your soul-mark made you evil. Your Mind-
Healer will understand the way you were raised.”

“My mother was doing the best she could.”

Tom made a noncommittal noise, but Harry narrowed his eyes, probably at what
he was getting through the bond. Tom stepped back with his hands in the air.
“The Mind-Healer will help you sort things like that out.”

After a second, Harry’s agitated stare cooled, and he looked away, at the same
moment as something like soft water poured through their bond. “Sirius said
that he talked to you about finding him a better Mind-Healer, too.”

Tom nodded. “I believe that the conflict going on in his head will do no one any
good.”

Harry snorted. “Is that a nice way of saying that you don’t want him to oppose
you?”

“I doubt I could get him to see things the way I do no matter how long a Mind-
Healer worked with him. But if he remains as impulsive and torn between
loyalties as he is right now, he might do something he has cause to regret.”
Harry grimaced, and the shiver of fear in his mind said that he remembered the
bond-severing spell as clearly as Tom did. “Fine. I think a Mind-Healer will be
a good idea. But I don’t think one will help me much.”

“Will you please go in with a clear head and a willingness to listen?” Tom
asked quietly. “It’s true that nothing can help if you’re absolutely determined to
resist.”

Harry sighed, thinking about it. “Fine. When is the first appointment?”

“Tomorrow at nine.”

Harry froze for a second, and then turned to Tom, his thoughts so clear that they
shot down their bond before he could have spoken the words. That’s also the
hour that Hermione and Ron are supposed to swear their oaths.

“I would prefer to keep you away from them,” Tom admitted, not ashamed that
he’d been caught. Part of him was curious, eager, to see if Harry would do as
Tom was asking and stay away from his former friends. “I can reschedule the
appointment with the Mind-Healer if you’d prefer, of course.”

“Reschedule it.”

“Of course.” Tom inclined his head, sighing a little. “They don’t deserve your
loyalty.”

“They would say the same thing about you. I’ll give my loyalty where and how
I please.”

The stubborn uptilt of Harry’s head said that he was going to argue about it, so
Tom simply placed a hand on his shoulder. “I hope that you at least won’t deny
me the privilege of being beside you while you listen to their oaths.”

“No, you should be there,” Harry said, and his eyes sparked for a second.
“Because you’ll see how much strength they still have when they take them. I
think they’re very brave for agreeing to do this at all, you know.”

Tom held back his reaction, and only nodded. “Then shall we talk of more
pleasant things while we wait for tomorrow morning?”

Harry smiled at him, and Tom let the complementary emotion erupt down the
bond between them and carry them away for the afternoon.
*

Harry shivered a little as he stood in the Ministry Atrium. Originally, he had

thought Ron and Hermione would take their oaths in the Wizengamot
courtroom they’d almost destroyed, in front of the people they’d almost killed
with the Ultimate Destruction Curse in their bond, but Tom had vetoed that.
Apparently, he’d thought most of the wizarding world might like to see them do
it.

Harry had argued against it, but Tom had only looked at him and said, “They
would have left the entire wizarding world headless if they had succeeded in
their mad strike against the government,” and Harry had been forced to back
down.

And the crowd was bigger than Harry had expected. People stood crowded so
close to the Floos and the golden fountain that Harry thought they would have
the pattern of bricks or the basin imprinted on their backs later. The only clear
patch of floor was a narrow corridor leading from the lifts that Ron and
Hermione would come out of and towards the fountain. Tom had said they
would take their oaths under the indifferent eyes of the wizard and witch
symbolized among the fountain’s group of creatures.

Tom hadn’t said anything about why, but Harry did wonder if he had found out
that Hermione despised the service of house-elves and the domination of
magical creatures that many traditional pure-bloods stood for. Forcing her to do
this here was a particularly subtle psychological strike.

But Harry hadn’t said anything, partially because he knew Tom had indulged
Harry’s protests about his best friends’ fate as far as he was willing to go, and
partially because he didn’t want to give Tom ideas.

Their bond flared, and Harry turned his head even before the lifts began to open.
Tom was riding in them with an escort of Aurors and a few of the Wizengamot
members who had been there when Ron and Hermione unleashed their magic
for the last time.

Amelia Bones stepped out first, her face cold, and a few people trying to press
past the Hit Wizards who were keeping that patch of floor clear froze when they
met her eyes. Madam Bones nodded and kept walking, while Ron and
Hermione shuffled behind her. Harry winced when he heard the shackles they
wore clanking.
Maybe it was his wince, one of the only movements in that eerily still room,
that drew their eyes to him. Hermione looked up, and her gaze locked with his.
Ron’s followed a second later.

Harry knew that he was looking closely enough to see Hermione’s eyes fill with
tears. Ron’s didn’t, but he put an arm around Hermione’s shoulders and turned a
little as if to shield her from Harry.

Harry swallowed around his pain, and then caught Tom’s eye in turn. Tom was
standing far too still, especially with Aurors hesitating behind him, and there
was a curve of his arm that said his hand was about to rest on his wand.

He might still punish them, if you act too pained around them. As if they haven’t
been punished enough…

Harry yanked his pain back into himself, and Tom’s face cleared. He still gave
Harry a thoughtful look as he walked around the Aurors to stand near the
fountain facing Ron and Hermione. The people who had been pressing close
enough before to imprint the basin into their backs cleared as if Banished. Harry
himself only turned so that he could keep everyone under observation.

Ron still had his arm around Hermione’s shoulders, and his face was nearly
blank. Harry hoped that Tom wouldn’t interpret that in any bad way. Madam
Bones was the one who cleared her throat and drew the attention of the crowd
and reporters to her.

“We come here today to hear the oaths of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger,
former members of the Order of the Phoenix who attacked the Wizengamot
during their trial for terrorist activities,” she said. “They are now Squibs with a
broken soul-bond, so they will not be taking the most powerful oath they could
possibly take, the ones that bind wizards. They will be taking oaths that the
Minister, Weasley, Granger, and the Wizengamot have all agreed on the
wording of.”

Hermione shifted as if she was going to protest that bit about the agreement, but
Ron wrapped his arm tighter around her shoulders and quieted her. Harry
swallowed. He knew that this was the best outcome, out of all the ones that had
been likely, but—

Well, it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t have liked things to work out differently.

“Ms. Granger, Mr. Weasley, you will begin the oaths with your first part.”
Hermione stepped forwards, although she was shaking, and laid her hand on the
golden chain that Madam Bones had taken out of her pocket. When she
stretched it taut between her hands, it rang a little, and then quieted. Harry eyed
the chain. He had been assured that it could bind anyone who had once felt the
touch of magic within their bodies, which made it an effective tool to hold even
Squibs, although not Muggles.

He didn’t know what it was made of, or why it was so effective, and Tom had
only said that he would explain the magical theory later.

“Mr. Weasley, you as well.”

Ron followed a taut moment later, and his hand joined Hermione’s on the chain.
They took a deep breath and began to recite together. Harry wondered if they’d
had to practice that, or if it was a remnant of their bond-closeness that they
could do it.

“We swear that we will go into the Muggle world for the rest of our lives. We
swear that we will have no unmonitored contact with anyone magical, including
children who have not yet entered Hogwarts. Monitors are only to consist of
Minister Riddle or members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
We swear that we will not try to enter the magical world through any point in
Britain, including but not limited to entrances to Diagon Alley, St. Mungo’s,
and the Ministry. We swear that we will not spread materials about the Order of
the Phoenix or that criticize Minister Tom Riddle and the Wizengamot,
including but not limited to pamphlets, speeches, private conversations, and
letters. We swear that we will not communicate with Professor Albus
Dumbledore, former Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry, and will immediately report any attempts on his part to contact us to
Madam Amelia Bones. We swear that we will not try to contact members of the
Weasley family, Harry Potter, Lily Potter, James Potter, Sirius Black, or anyone
else who has been connected to the Order of the Phoenix without prior approval
from the Minister.”

Harry jerked his head around and frowned at Tom. Forbidding Ron and
Hermione from contacting Dumbledore only made sense, with how easily they
were influenced, but he hadn’t known it would extend to him.

Tom gave him a cool look, and Harry knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by
arguing about it. With a scowl, he faced back towards Ron and Hermione.
“And we swear that any move we make against the wizarding world, the current
wizarding world government, Minister Tom Riddle, or his soulmate Harry
Potter will be non-violent in nature.”

Hermione closed her eyes as she made that last statement. Ron just stood closer
to her, staring out of the corner of his eye at Ton and Harry.

Harry could feel himself reeling. He hadn’t known that oath would be in the

package. He had expected something that would prevent them from acting
against the magical government at all, similar to the one that said they couldn’t
spread propaganda for the Order of the Phoenix. He leaned towards Tom as
reporters shouted questions and Madam Bones fielded them, while Aurors
moved in to stand close to Ron and Hermione.

“Why did you leave them an opening to act against you at all?” he asked
quietly.

“They would probably explode without it, and do something that would violate
one of the oaths,” Tom said. “Breaking an oath punishes them with pain, with
death if they violate it more than three times. And that would upset you.”

“So you did it because you didn’t want to upset me.”

“Well. Yes.”

Harry stared at him. Tom looked back, gaze steady, mild, and a little inquisitive.
He obviously didn’t see what problem Harry had with this.

“You’re supposed to do things like that because it’s the right thing to do, not to
condemn your enemies to death,” Harry hissed finally. “Not because you want
to make someone close to you happy.”

“We’ve established that we don’t play the political game by the same rules,
darling.”

Harry would have said something else, but one of the reporters turned towards
him at that point, and Harry forced a smile. He recognized Rita Skeeter, and he
knew that she wouldn’t hesitate to flip the story around and present Ron and
Hermione as innocent victims and Harry and Tom as the terrible people, if she
could.

“Mr. Potter, I just wanted to know how you felt about your friends getting a
second chance like this, while your second chance was different,” Skeeter said,
her eyes turning to Tom for a second as if she thought she could pin him in
place. Tom only smiled indulgently. He had told Harry that he enjoyed
“playing” with Skeeter. “After all, you were all involved with the Order of the
Phoenix, but you were spared and given an important position in the
government, while your friends were stripped of their magic and exiled. What
do you think happened to cause the difference?”
Harry consciously kept his eyebrow from twitching. Of course
Skeeter knew what had happened. Everyone did who was marginally aware of
the Minister’s search for his soulmate and it succeeding at last.

But he did suppose that answering like that wasn’t a good idea, so he sighed and
said, “It was two things, I suppose.”

“Of course. Tell me what the two things were?” Skeeter’s quill hovered over her
parchment.

“First, I was never directly involved with the Order of the Phoenix, not in the
way that my friends were.” Harry kept his eye on the quill, and noticed when it
began to scribble down a much longer sentence than the one he’d spoken. He
smiled and flexed his own magic a little. The quill stopped. “I don’t think your
audience wants all the speculation, do they, Madam Skeeter? They would rather
have the truth?”

Skeeter stared at him. Harry stared back. Tom’s amusement simmered, banked,
in the back of their bond, but he could have felt that amusement if Harry had
been about to make a fool of himself, so Harry didn’t take a lot of comfort from
it.

Skeeter finally sighed and pulled another quill from her front robe pocket.
“Fine, Mr. Potter. You win. So you deny direct involvement even though most
of your family and friends were part of the Order?”

Harry nodded, keeping a sharp eye on the quill. But it did lack a slight flare of
enchantment that had been there around the other, so he supposed it really was
doing only what it was supposed to. “I was a spy for them, in a way. I passed on
useful information that I came upon in the course of my Ministry job. But
because I worked in the Department of Magical Games and Sports, there wasn’t
much of that.”

“Why did you work in that department?” Skeeter interjected.

“I was good at Quidditch in school, but not much else—”

“Something that will be rectified,” Tom said, in the kind of deep, soothing voice
that could fool so many people into thinking he was talking about harmless
things. “For example, Mr. Potter will be resitting some of his NEWT’s in
various subjects.”

Harry ground his teeth, but he did say, “At the time, I believed it would be
wrong for me to be with my soulmate. I think better of that now, of course,
but while I believed it, I made every effort to conceal my power from Minister
Riddle’s notice.”

“Does that include deliberately failing exams?” Skeeter seemed fascinated.

“I never got below an Acceptable,” Harry said. There was only so much damage
that his parents had wanted him to do to his scores, and plenty of competent
wizards and witches got Acceptables. “But yes, I did poorly in some situations
where I could have done a great deal more.”

Skeeter looked as if she was dithering between questions for a second, but then
she pursued another tactic. “You said there were two reasons that you were
being treated differently than your friends. One of them was no direct
involvement with the raids and other less-than-legal activities of the Order of
the Phoenix.” She made a great show of writing down another sentence,
although from what Harry could see by glancing at her parchment, it was only
what she’d just said. “And the second factor?”

“I saved the lives of a great many people,” Harry said with a shrug. “First in the
building that Headmaster Dumbledore tried to collapse on top of Minister
Riddle and the reporters and Department Heads who were with him at the time,
and then in the Wizengamot. It would have been hard for the Minister to put me
in prison while also owing me a life-debt.”

Skeeter immediately perked up. “And how are you planning to repay that life-
debt, Minister Riddle?”

Harry leaned towards her and lowered his voice before Tom could say a thing.
He didn’t know what Tom would say, in fact, which made the question a little
dangerous. “Life-debts don’t truly exist between soulmates, you know. The
greater magic link prevents the lesser magical link of the debt from taking
hold.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Tom’s scowl, and turned an angelic smile on
him. That was something he’d known for a while, but, of course, he’d never
believed he would end up in a situation where Tom owed him a life-debt of any
kind, or where he wouldn’t want to hide that he was Tom’s soulmate.

“You plan to spoil and pamper Mr. Potter in other ways, I hope,” Skeeter said to
Tom.

“Of course I do,” Tom said, with a flash of his charming smile. “Furnishing a
flat for him was the least I could do.”

Harry feared that Skeeter might ask what else Tom was doing, but luckily, she
got distracted asking about the color scheme and furnishings of the flat, and that
left Harry free to move slowly towards Ron and Hermione.

They were standing close to each other, not touching, but leaning so near that it
looked like they were. Amelia Bones was examining them every time she
finished answering a reporter’s question and turned to glance over her shoulder,
but she didn’t seem to think they would run away or attack anyone.

Harry halted in front of them and swallowed. “Hi,” he whispered.

Hermione gave him a deep, sad glance, but there was less blame in it than he
had expected. Ron put a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at Harry.

“I wish it hadn’t turned out this way,” he said.

“So do I.” Harry hesitated. Part of the reason they hadn’t made the oaths right
away was that the Wizengamot and Tom were debating on the wording of them,
but another reason was that they had spent time with the Aurors, giving answers
to some questions, since magical oaths that had bound them to keep Order
secrets had no claim on them now. None of those answers had been conveyed to
Harry, though. “I—why did you bury the Ultimate Destruction Curse in your
bond?”

Ron and Hermione glanced at each other in what seemed to be silent

communication even though Harry knew they had no bond any longer. Well, he
supposed some of the habits would remain even though they couldn’t literally
hear each other’s thoughts or feel their emotions now. Harry bit his lip to resist
the impulse to apologize. He hadn’t destroyed their bond out of malice. It was
that, or have them fall apart into ash.

He preferred them alive.

Hemione finally turned to face him, and said, “It was a year ago, after the raid
on the Department of Mysteries. Professor Dumbledore pointed out that we
could have been caught, and even though the oaths we’d taken protected some
of our secrets, the Aurors would still have got something out of us. We had to
have—a weapon, to get away from our enemies if necessary.”

“To get away? But your bond powered the curse!”

Hermione glanced at the floor. Ron wrapped his arm around her shoulders again
and said to Harry, “Get away as in die.”

“Oh.” Harry massaged his own throat as he thought of what would have
happened if Ron and Hermione had died in the Department of Mysteries, or
some other time, when he wouldn’t have been able to save them or prevent it. It
would have—hurt. A lot.

“Why did you believe Dumbledore so much?” he asked then. “I believed him a
lot, but not enough that I would have cast a suicidal curse on myself.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Hermione whispered.

“I’m here, and you can say anything to me,” Harry promised, although he did
glance over his shoulder at Tom. Tom was still talking to Skeeter, but also
watching Harry in a way that said he knew very well what Harry was doing, and
didn’t like it.

“He makes you feel so special when he’s talking to you,” Hermione murmured,
her voice full of yearning. “He knows exactly what to say. He told us that we
would need to escape if someone caught us, for the Order and because we
wouldn’t want to spend the rest of our lives in prison. And that was true. I
mean, it was true enough that we unleashed the spell when the Wizengamot
voted for Azkaban.”
Harry nodded. So you’re admitting he manipulated you, then. But that wasn’t
something he could say, either. “He made you special, and like you were
contributing to a cause bigger than yourself.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like we would really have a chance to do that at our age if
not for the Order,” Ron interjected. “We would have had to work our way up in
the Ministry to make a difference, and Riddle is so prejudiced against
Muggleborns and ‘blood traitors’ that we’d have a hard time—” He halted.

“Forget he’s my soulmate?” Harry raised his eyebrows a little, but relented
when he saw how embarrassed Ron looked. “No, forget it. It’s a change, and it’s
not like I really listened to Dumbledore any less. He told me that I had to keep
my soul-mark hidden, and then he didn’t veto my plan to spy on Tom in the
Ministry itself. I never questioned that, and I should have.”

“Can we write to you, Harry?” Hermione blurted out suddenly. “I—I need to
say things to you, but I don’t know what they all are right now.”

“I’ll have to talk it over with Tom,” Harry said, truthfully enough, and not just
because Tom had left Skeeter and was wending his way around the fountain to
speak with them. It was also in their oaths. “But I wish you lot the best. I wish
things didn’t have to turn out like this.”

The Aurors tensed when Hermione and Ron lifted their shackled arms, but they
were only hugging him, and Harry leaned happily into their embraces, hugging
them back as hard as he could. On the other hand, he didn’t resist when Tom
reached out and took his elbow, their bond ringing cold as he drew Harry back.

“Take them into the Muggle world,” Tom told the Aurors.

“Yes,” Madam Bones echoed. “I don’t think much of a purpose is served by

allowing them to linger.”

Harry still met his friends’ eyes as long as he could before they were ushered
through the flames of the nearest fireplace. Then Tom stepped deliberately into
his line of sight, his hand flat as he gently cupped Harry’s chin and forced his
head back a little.

“Regrets?”

“I wish they could have kept their bond and their magic,” Harry said, and
shrugged. “And I wish that Dumbledore hadn’t influenced them so much.”

“But if you could undo the damage that had been done to them at the price of
undoing our bond?”
Harry blinked and looked at Tom. “What brought that on?” he asked. It was a
strange thing for Tom to ask in public, even though he had spoken in
Parseltongue so no one else could understand him. But that he had had to ask,
that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to forego asking…
“I am—unaccustomed to being the most important person in your life yet,
Harry. And you seem to greatly regret that you did not exhaust yourself
magically or kill yourself or burn out our bond trying to save them.”
Harry sighed and leaned against Tom for a minute, ignoring the click of
cameras. Tom would have moved them somewhere more private before this if
he had been worried about that. It was probably good public relations, anyway,
for the Minister’s soulmate to look romantic with him. Or something. “I wish
that things had been different because I wish they could have kept their magic
and their bond and been on our side. But I know that can’t happen, and I don’t
seriously lie awake at night regretting what happened.”

Tom held his eyes for long seconds, then nodded. And then he turned right
around and began answering questions from Skeeter and the others as if nothing
had happened.

Harry rolled his eyes. But that was his soulmate, and at least their emotional
bond burned, steady as a fire, reassuring him if he ever needed it.

Albus closed his eyes. The charms on the old Dumbledore house, hidden behind
a Fidelius of which he was the Secret Keeper, shivered for a second, as if they
would crumble with the force of his grief.

Ron and Hermione had failed, according to the papers. Molly and Arthur
Weasley had turned themselves over to the Aurors, and the rest of the Order
who hadn’t been captured would soon follow. Or perhaps they would fade
quietly into the background and pretend that they had never opposed a mad
Dark Lord, when the price of opposing that mad Dark Lord was so hard.

The picture on the front page of the Prophet was of Harry gazing trustingly up

into Riddle’s eyes, while Riddle curled his fingers around Harry’s soul-mark
and the shifting flames sprang up.

It was all going wrong. Albus was losing every chance to save the world.

For now, of course, he would only have one choice. Perhaps he had known all
along that it would come to this. He sighed and turned to face the row of books
that stood behind him, the most ancient ones he owned. Some of these were
several centuries old. Most concerned the nature of soul-marks, soul-bonds, and
phoenixes.

There was one that he reached for which he flinched from as he touched. The
pulse of power around it stung his fingers, but he ignored that and flipped it
open.
One course left open to him. One course that everyone would loathe him for
taking, if they knew of it. But there was only one person who would know the
truth, and that person’s opinion could not be allowed to matter.

This way, Albus would gain the power to face down Riddle and Harry and the
soul-bond that would be deepening their connection the longer he waited.

And then everyone would be safe. And free.

Chapter 28: Clarity

Chapter Text

“Come in, Mr. Potter. Please have a seat.”

Harry nodded and sat down in the chair in front of the Mind-Healer’s desk.
He’d thought the man’s office might look less—well, like an office. The Mind-
Healer that Sirius had complained about seeing had large glass balls and soft
cushions scattered all over the place, and colorful decorations on the walls, and
tanks full of water that bubbled and glowed. Sirius had said it was at least easy
to distract himself.

This just looked like a nicer office from Hogwarts, although different because it
didn’t have the piles of parchment everywhere that were essays waiting to be
marked. The desk was a curve of some kind of pale wood, birch or yew maybe.
The only decoration was a painting of autumn leaves that shifted slowly back
and forth.

Mind-Healer Gerald Laufrey was a tall, dark-skinned man with his long brown
hair caught back in a tail. Harry hadn’t seen that many people in his life wear
the style. It seemed to be considered “Muggle” by a lot of pure-bloods. He had
dark green eyes that Harry avoided, looking down at his hands clasped on his
knees.

“I know you were reluctant to meet with me,” Mind-Healer Laufrey said
quietly. “Can I ask why?”

Harry took in a deep breath and looked up, this time studying the man for some
trace of resentment. But there didn’t seem to be any. He just sat there and
studied Harry back and seemed comfortable as the silence stretched.

“My godfather went to a Mind-Healer who essentially berated him into

accepting her conclusions,” Harry said quietly. “I didn’t want to have the same
experience, and I assumed I probably would.”
“Why?”

“I’ve been on the wrong side of the war—I mean, a war that Albus Dumbledore
thought was going to happen. I assume that most of wizarding Britain would
think of me as a terrorist. I wasn’t looking forward to hearing about it.”

Laufrey smiled for the first time. “That would make anyone reluctant to visit
someone, I think. One thing you should know that is that I’m not here to berate
you. And actually, what Minister Riddle told me when he set the appointment
up is that he thought you had been abused by many people in your life, and
would need help recovering from that abuse.”

“So he spun you this sad story about me not wanting to be a terrorist, and that
was all it took to get your attention?” Harry shot a bolt of cold displeasure down
his bond with Tom. Smugness came back, and then warmth that lapped around
him like a hot bath. Harry shook his head and focused on Laufrey. “I’d hope
you were more perceptive than that.”

Laufrey raised his eyebrows a little. “One thing you’ll soon find, Mr. Potter, is
that I can’t be irritated as easily as some of the people you might have dealt with
in the past. And Minister Riddle told me that he was going to ask you to come
into this with your mind open, and your eyes, the same.”

Harry sighed and stared at his hands. “I just—I don’t want you to tell me a lot of
shit about how my parents treated me.”

“At the moment, I have no idea what your parents did other than a very
shadowy outline Minister Riddle sent me,” Laufrey said placidly. “And I have
to make allowances for the fact that of course the Minister would hate anyone
trying to keep his soulmate away from him, no matter what justifications they
had. I have in fact already sent him an owl telling him that in that case, he
should hate you, too.”

Harry jerked his head up. Laufrey held his gaze for a long moment before he
winked. “I am loyal to my patients first, Mr. Potter,” he said gently. “And there
are many techniques that I can use to show you a healthier path to a clearer
mind without following Minister Riddle’s specifications exactly.”

“But you do want me to accept the soul-bond.”

“From where I sit, Mr. Potter, you’ve already done that,” Laufrey said. “What I
want you to do is look back at your life that led up to the soul-bond and make
peace with it. It’s highly unusual. A challenging case.”
“And that’s the perspective you’ll approach it from.”

Laufrey chuckled. “You are a prickly one. I’m surprised that your soul-mark
wasn’t a hedgehog.”

Harry eyed him, but Laufrey didn’t appear to be laughing at him. He smiled at
Harry and tilted his head a little to the side. “Will you permit me to explain to
you a little more about what I can help you with?”

Open mind, open mind, Harry chanted to himself. Sirius’s awful experiences

couldn’t be all there was to Mind-Healers. And he could feel Tom lying like a
cat with one eye open in the back of his bond.

“Fine.”

It wasn’t the most gracious giving of permission, but Laufrey nodded and began
to speak. “Conversation is a primary tool of the Mind-Healer, but I also work
with memories, and with crystals that store the sense of soul-bonds. Some of my
patients have permitted me to infuse those crystals with a sensation that is like
having a successful soul-bond. Some of them did so at the end of my work with
them. Others already had sound bonds and came to me for other reasons, but
agreed to do this to benefit future patients I might have. If our sessions go well,
it might be that I’ll ask this of you, as well.”

“All right,” Harry said slowly, his mind whirling. Could a crystal like that help
Ron and Hermione? It wouldn’t be the same thing as having their bond back,
but if they could hold one and be surrounded by the feeling, maybe it could
lessen the numbness and withdrawal that Hermione had described to him.

“I think memories will be the first tool that we act with. Minister Riddle told me
that he had experienced one of yours. When you were six or seven years old, I
believe, and questioned your mother about whether your soul-mark made you
an evil person.”

Harry grimaced, but nodded. It was a far more neutral description of the
memory than he would have expected Tom to give, so there was that.

“And you also tried at least once to commit suicide.”

Harry tensed his shoulders. That was not a bloody neutral description,

Tom. “Yes.”

“Why?”
“I wanted to—get away from all of it. I wouldn’t ever be able to have a soul-
bond, and I hadn’t found any method to remove my mark or make it so that I
would survive if my soulmate got killed. It was—” Harry shook his head. “I
didn’t get very far.”

“But you tried, and that is significant.” Laufrey regarded Harry for a few
moments, then said, “I am interested in looking at one of your memories of
trying to remove the mark. Could I see it?”

“Why that one?” Harry blinked. He had been sure that Laufrey would want to
investigate one of the memories Tom had told him about.

“It sounds as though it would be in between the two emotional extremes of the
others,” Laufrey said quietly. “In some ways, I need to establish a—I am
reluctant to use the word normal, but a sort of baseline for what your thoughts
about your soul-bond are. This memory might be a good way to do it.”

“All right,” Harry said. He looked around for a Pensieve, but didn’t see one.

“I don’t actually use a Pensieve, but a method of my own.” Laufrey lifted his
wand and, moving slowly as if he didn’t want to startle Harry, cast so that the
air between them shimmered. Harry blinked as a golden shape appeared and
warped into a door. “This method, once the memory is placed behind it, will
actually allow us to enter it, and it will—I am reluctant to say have us relive the
memory, but it will duplicate the emotional content in a way that a Pensieve
memory will not.”
“I don’t want to go through that again.” Harry shook his head when he heard
how small his voice was, and sat up angrily. Damn it, I will not look weak. The
last thing we need is some of Tom’s enemies trying to take advantage of that. “I
—would prefer if we used a Pensieve.”

“The emotions are ones that I will feel, Mr. Potter,” said Laufrey. “You will be
separated from them, viewing it more like a Pensieve memory, yourself. You
may feel some faint echoes, and of course the memory itself may recall to you
some of what you went through. But I will be the one with the full experience.”

Harry stared at him. “Why would you ever do something like that?”

“Because,” Laufrey said simply, “I want to help people.”

Harry drummed his fingers on his arm for a second. It wasn’t as though the
impulse was foreign to him, but he had always thought of helping people as
keeping secrets, or entering politics, or the kind of actions that the Order of the
Phoenix took. Willingly taking on someone else’s emotional pain was—new.

But then again, he had always had enough of his own, and he had never wanted
to be a Healer.

“All right,” he said. “How do you extract the memory?”

“In this case, the door does function like a Pensieve. And I would prefer that
you do it yourself, so that you can choose exactly where it will begin and end,
and obviate the chance of me seeing anything that you do not wish me to.”

Harry nodded slowly, and tried to ignore the feeling that he was unused to being
given that much control over his destiny. Even if it was true, that didn’t mean
he needed to start sniveling in front of the Mind-Healer.

He moved over and stood next to the golden door, or whatever it was, while
focusing as hard as he could on one of the memories he had of trying to remove
the mark. Only the removal itself, not the research process, although that
bubbled up into the forefront of his mind as well. When he was sure he had the
memory isolated, he stuck his wand to his temple and carefully pulled free the
shining strands of silver.

Laufrey nodded encouragingly when Harry looked over at him. “Yes, simply
stir your wand behind the door.”

Here goes nothing, Harry thought, half-convinced that the memory would

simply splash on the floor, or whatever it would do without a Pensieve. He
waved his wand behind the door—

And the silvery blob detached and floated quietly into place, hovering behind
the door with the air of a politely waiting server.

As Harry watched, blinking, the area inside the memory began to spin and
coalesce, so that he could no longer see the floor or the walls. When it settled,
Harry was looking at what he would have described as a tent made out of pale
canvas. It flapped and resisted the air as if a breeze was blowing.

“And we’re both going in there?” Harry murmured.

Laufrey nodded, sparing him a smile, when before Harry didn’t think he’d taken
his eyes from the process of memory extraction. “Yes. We must go both
together, and enter through the door, or it doesn’t work the way it should.”
“All right,” Harry breathed. His stomach was trembling like a drum, and he
reached out and put his hand on the door’s knob, which was clear crystal, to
stop himself from backing away.

Laufrey was a solid presence at his back, and Harry reminded himself, again,
that he wouldn’t feel the emotions if this worked. He took a breath and stepped
through.

Harry opened his eyes and nodded. So far, this was working like Laufrey had
predicted. They were in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts, the ritual room
that Harry had called up several times for his attempts to be rid of his soul-
mark, but there was no crushing burden of grief and desperation the way Harry
knew he had carried that evening.

He glanced once at Laufrey and saw the man breathing rapidly, a hand over his
throat. Harry winced a little and turned back to the memory again.

His fourteen-year-old self was sitting in front of a ritual circle drawn in his own
blood, which he had collected a little bit at a time over a month, because trying
to do it all at once would have resulted in him collapsing of blood loss. There
were symbols sketched on the stone floor inside it, also in his blood. Most were
runes, but there were also symbols that resembled the wand movements used for
Transfigurations and Finite spells. Harry would have been satisfied either to get
rid of his mark altogether or to change it into a harmless blob.

Harry paced slowly over to the side so that he could see his younger self’s face;
they’d landed facing his back. The teenage Harry was bent over the thick book
in front of him, lips moving as he read.

Harry could still remember the most important phrase to him out of that
book. You have to mean it; you have to reject the concept of a soulmate
completely to get rid of or change his mark.

Well, Harry had. At the time, he’d envisioned no possible reason that the ritual
could fail, which only made it all the more devastating that it hadn’t succeeded.

Now, of course, he knew perfectly well why it had failed. He hadn’t been able
to reject the concept of a soulmate, no matter how much he had wanted to. He
had clung to the fantasy of someone who would complement him and love him.
Except it wasn’t a fantasy, was it?
Harry shook his head and backed away a little so that he could see the intent
look on his younger self’s face, and the motions that his hands were making, as
he shook out salt and powdered silver shavings over the blood circle.

“Where—where did you get the silver, Mr. Potter?”

Laufrey’s voice was strangled. Harry took another step back, this time to be
near the Mind-Healer in case he needed help, but he got a shivering, head-
twitching look for his trouble, so he turned back to himself.

“Raided the Potions master’s storage cupboards,” he murmured. Now the

younger Harry had closed his eyes and begun to move his lips in the soundless
chant that was necessary to remove the soul-mark. Harry didn’t feel the
overwhelming intensity of the desperation he would have in the moment, since
Laufrey was getting all of it, but he did feel his chest ache for the poor boy who
had no idea he would be loved one day.

“Do—did you know what this ritual did?”

“Of course I did,” Harry said simply, glancing over at Laufrey. He was waving
his wand and casting several charms that would, if Harry recognized them
correctly, calm down a pounding heart. “I had to research it extensively and
sneak into the Restricted Section to get the book, after all.”

Even half-incapacitated as he was, the Mind-Healer still narrowed his eyes.

“We should speak about your suicidal impulses as well, Mr. Potter.”

“That was only once—”

“This qualifies.”

Harry would have argued the point, but just then, the ritual circle lit up with the
radiant silver lightning that Harry remembered from the ritual. He sighed. It
looked beautiful from the outside, although of course he hadn’t noticed that at
the time. He had simply been devastated that the ritual had failed.

Rising and falling shapes like the Northern Lights, but all in silver, traced the
edges of the ritual circle. The younger Harry, opening his eyes, reached the
climax of his chant and thrust his marked right wrist into the circle.

A second later, he was screaming, and this was not soundless. It echoed from

every corner of the room, and Laufrey bowed his head and shivered.
The younger version of himself screamed, and screamed, and kept his hand in
the fire. Harry’s eyes and heart ached as he watched, but he had to admit that,
mostly, his eyes were dry. He had already seen and suffered through this, after
all, no matter how new it was to Laufrey.

Finally, the past Harry took his hand out of the fire. He stared down at the
blistered, burnt skin, and waited until his magic healed a few of the blisters so
that he could see if the mark was gone.

It was still there.

The younger Harry bowed his head and wept.

Harry turned his face away. The memory dissolved around them in the
meanwhile, and although he had thought they would have to go back through
the door, he wasn’t entirely surprised to lift his head and realize they were back
in Laufrey’s office without ever passing through it.

“Have a seat, please, Mr. Potter.”

Laufrey’s voice sounded scraped raw. Harry sat down across from him and
looked at him carefully. Laufrey nodded as if Harry had asked a question. “That
shows me very effectively some of the problems that you dealt with for having
the Minister’s soul-mark. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“Even though those problems were self-inflicted?”

“Then you came up with all the ideas you had about your soul-mark on your
own?”

Harry winced. Shit, walked right into that one. “No, sir. I mean—”

“I’d prefer it if you referred to me as Gerald, Mr. Potter. Having a barrier of

formality between us is not going to help your healing.”

“Then why are you calling me by my last name?”

Laufrey paused for a second, then smiled. “Good point. All right, I’ll call you
Harry if you call me Gerald.”

Harry nodded. This was working out better than he had thought it would so far,
although he knew he would probably resent some of the things that Laufrey
came up with. “All right. I didn’t come up with all the ideas on my own, but I
was the one who decided to do that ritual. My parents never even suggested that
I try something like that to remove my soul-mark, or kill myself. That was my
idea.”
“Mmmm.” Gerald scribbled something down on the parchment in front of him
and looked hard at Harry. “And what did your parents say?”

“That I could never be with my soulmate. That he was someone who was evil
and preparing to wage a secret war on Muggles and Muggleborns.” Harry felt
his shoulders tensing and tried to shake it out. Fuck, even after all this time,
mentioning Dumbledore’s ideas still made him feel like bolting in a random
direction. “I had to resist him, or he would have ended up with doubled power.”

Gerald paused in the middle of scribbling something else down. “Doubled? Not
quadrupled?”

“They didn’t think To—Minister Riddle was capable of love. So they thought I
would fall in love with him, because he was so manipulative and charming, but
not the other way around.”

“You can call him whatever you want in front of me, Harry. And I’ll do
whatever you need to do to feel comfortable. Calling him by his last name was
instinctive, but I can change that if you want.”

Harry paused and shot a question down his bond with Tom. The answer that
came back was a simple outpouring of warmth, like a beam of sunlight through
water. Harry opened his eyes and smiled. “He says that the first name is fine.”

Gerald nodded to him, expression serious, and wrote down a new note. “What
did you think, when your parents told you that?”

“It wasn’t just my parents. It was my godfather and the Headmaster.”

“How well did you know the Headmaster before you started at Hogwarts?”

“Probably better than most Hogwarts students do.” Harry breathed for a second
to try and get the bitterness out of his voice. “I met him for the first time when I
was too young to remember. My parents contacted him when they read the soul-
mark on my wrist.”

“Your parents became members of the Order of the Phoenix while they were
still schoolchildren, then?”
Harry nodded. “A lot of people did. My godfather and several of the Weasleys,
too. I think it was the time when Dumbledore could most easily influence them.
But the Order had members who were Dumbledore’s age, so I suppose it was
probably his reputation as the one who rejected his soul-bond with a Dark Lord
that influenced those people.”

“No doubt he saw himself in you. No doubt he assumed that you would have the
strength to reject a Dark Lord as well? Or someone that the Headmaster saw as
a Dark Lord.”

Harry hesitated. “That’s the thing. It never seemed that he did think that way.
He assumed that if I came to Tom’s notice at all, I would inevitably fall in love
with him and betray the Order.”
Something like shame woke up in the center of his chest. Hadn’t Dumbledore
been right in a way? He’d come into contact with Tom, he’d given up his
anonymity and his loyalty to the Order for the comfort of a soulmate—

This time, the warmth that came down the bond was more like dragonfire.
Harry turned his head to bask in it, eyes closed, and then started when he
opened them and saw Gerald watching him with a small smile. “Sorry.”

“And you still feel partially as though you betrayed a loyalty expected of you,
for all that no one should have had the right to expect it of you.” Gerald clasped
his hands in front of him on his desk and studied Harry thoughtfully.
Harry averted his eyes and nodded. He knew intellectually that it was all
nonsense, but part of him wondered if he had just proved everything that
Dumbledore thought right instead of wrong.

“Do you remember what particular result you were hoping for from that ritual?”
Gerald asked.

Harry blinked and looked at him, surprised that he’d asked. “That the mark
would be gone.”

“Yes, but the primary emotion that I felt when we went through that memory
wasn’t hope,” Gerald said. “It was self-loathing. Did you hate
yourself that much for something you couldn’t help being born with?”
Harry closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought he was evil, not exactly. He’d known
that he hadn’t had any choice about the soul-mark, and that was something his
parents and Sirius and even Dumbledore had emphasized repeatedly.
But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how much easier it would be if
he didn’t have it. If it was just gone. And his thoughts had revolved continually
around the tale of the attack on Tom’s soul-mark, how the people who had
attacked him had managed to burn the phoenix away completely. What if—
what if he could do that?

It had at least seemed like a solution.

“It would have made my life so much better if it had disappeared,” he

whispered. “And that’s not something I can talk to Tom about, because he was
so faithful. He kept waiting, and hoping, and thinking—”

“You don’t need to fear what Tom would say about it,” Gerald said softly.
“That’s one of the reasons he sent you to me, you know. Because he knew that
there would be things it would be difficult for you to speak to him about.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. He knew that. He accepted it. But the thought
still seared his mind that Tom had never given up, that the man he had been
trained to hate had still been waiting and searching for him.

That overlapped with the guilt that he felt for not doing as his parents had
wanted, but didn’t replace it. The two emotions together twined around his
heart, and Harry winced at the thought of what he must be projecting down the
bond to Tom.

Gerald waited patiently until Harry opened his eyes and focused on him again.
Then he asked, his voice so soft that Harry could barely hear him, “If you had
the choice, would you give up the soul-mark now?”

“No.”

Gerald nodded, and a smile broke across his face. “Then that’s one decision
made. You know that you can’t go back into the past and change something this
important. That means that you’ve got to accept it and move forwards.”

“But that’s exactly what I don’t know how to do,” Harry snapped.

“I know. And we’re going to work on it.” Gerald turned the parchment around
that he’d been writing on. “These are the notes that I’ve made about the
memory you shared with me and the emotions I felt during it. We’ll talk about
them together. Reason them out. Locate their origin. Determine how much
danger you’re in of actually repeating them.”

Harry shot him a wary look. “Why?”

“That way, you won’t have to worry about experiencing them again in the
future.”

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, he had a bond he would die to defend, but that he’d
also been ready to hurt himself and die to reject at one point. He could see why
Gerald thought it was important to talk about.

“And I hope,” Gerald went on, “that by the time we’re done talking about them,
you can have a weapon against any such emotions that you might feel in the
future.”

Harry finally gave in to something he’d been wanting to do for a few minutes,
and smiled.

“What you are going to do is foolish, Albus.”

Albus ignored Gellert as he laid the patterns of colored sand out in front of him
on the floor of the cave. The red one had to loop around the blue one, and the
purple one had to be on the outside. And the black one, of course, had to form a
huge circle around all the others.

“This is madness.”

Gellert’s voice was rasping and distressed enough now that Albus turned to look
at him. He sighed and shook his head. “Why would you say such a thing? The
madness was the belief that you set out to promote, that Muggleborns were
inferior to other wizards.”

“Even I,” Gellert said, and began to cough. Albus waited it out. He would have
to wait on Gellert more and more often, now, but it was a price he was willing
to pay to defeat another Dark Lord.

“Even I,” Gellert finally finished, “was never mad enough to interfere with soul
magic and soul-marks. What do you think is going to happen? You were the
one who made the decision to reject our bond in the first place!”

“And that means,” Albus said quietly, “that I can take it back.”

Gellert stared at him, then yanked up his arm. The mark on his right forearm,
that twirled around and around in patterns Albus could still see behind his eyes
every time he closed them, was thorns and flames, and all was black-edged.
“There is no reviving a dead mark!”

“There is,” Albus said, and scattered another few grains of black sand into the
outer circle, “in the magic that I have found.”

He knew what was coming even before Gellert launched the unfocused blast of
wandless power at him. He had enough protections on the cave to compensate
for the finished magical bond they didn’t have, after all. He deflected it with a
sweep of his wand, and went back to carefully lying out the patterns.

“Albus. You don’t have to do this. There’s no sign that Riddle is a Dark Lord,
or, if he is, then maybe having his soulmate will temper him.”

Albus sat back with a long, slow sigh. “But I can’t take the chance, Gellert,” he
said quietly. “There were visions from the phoenixes that I never told you
about. As long as Tom and his soulmate stayed apart, there was a chance that
the world would be saved. That was the strongest possibility out of the visions I
saw. But all the ones that showed them joining together showed the detailed
prophecy coming true.”

“Detailed prophecy.”

“The one that predicts the rise of a Dark Lord.” Albus stood up and faced his
recalcitrant soulmate across the circles of sand. “Do you know how many
visions I saw of Tom and Harry saving the world, or creating a better one, after
the forging of their bond?”

Blinking, Gellert shook his head.

“One,” Albus said. “One out of ninety-nine.”

Gellert looked down at his dead soul-mark again. “That doesn’t mean that
you’re the one chosen to try and save the world, Albus. You could let someone
else, like other people in the Order of the Phoenix, do it for you. Or you could
do it via some other method.”

“The Order has been disbanded. And now that Tom and Harry are joined, Tom
will have doubled powers very soon, if he does not already. Harry by himself
was strong enough to save Tom from an assassination attempt coordinated
by multiple soulmated pairs in the Order and among my allies.” Albus realized
that his breath was rushing faster and faster. He tried to calm down. The more
hysterical he sounded, the less cooperation he could expect from Gellert. “I’m
not powerful enough to oppose them unless I have it, too.”

“You can’t have them.” Gellert laughed, a vicious edge to the sound. “I don’t
love you. You don’t love me.”

“I have a solution to that problem.”

Gellert’s eyes seemed to widen to the point that he’d lost all the pupil in them as
he stared at the flask of potion shimmering like mother-of-pearl next to Albus. It
had been there all along, of course, because it had to be inside the circles of
sand. Albus had simply removed the illusion covering it. “Albus,” he said, his
voice barely a whisper. “No.”

“I don’t need you to drink it.”

Gellert’s eyes jerked to him, but Albus had cast the first spell, the one that made
the circles of sand lift and revive, swirling around him. It enclosed him in a
shining, prismatic shell that grew brighter and brighter as his magic was added
to it, and then the sheen of the potion. Albus spoke the second spell, and the
sand traveled outwards to dance around Gellert.

“Albus! Albus, you’re mad!”

Albus ignored him and cast the third spell. The air filled with the roaring,
whistling noise of a sandstorm on the move. Albus turned and faced into the
heart of the storm, taking up the flask of the potion as he did so.

The next part was tricky. Albus gazed into the heart of the sand until he was
ready to attempt it.

At one and the same moment, he cast the spell to create an Inferius on his own
black-edged soul-mark and dosed himself with the Amortentia.

The power soared through him, at the same time as obsessed sparked in his
veins and life erupted from the soul-mark on his arm and reached out to find the
corresponding one on Gellert’s.

Albus locked eyes with Gellert, who was staring at him in shock for some
reason.

Why? Albus loved him. He knew it like he knew the names of all the stars. And
he crossed the boundary of the sand that joined them instead of separated them
and clasped Gellert in his arms, and smiled, and kissed his hand, since Gellert
was lifting an arm to shield his face.

Their soul-marks flickered, and turned grey, and Albus laughed in soft
exhilaration as he shared his love with Gellert and Gellert shared his horror with
him.

The world was, at last, on the path that it should be.

Chapter 29: Destinies

Chapter Text

Tom turned his head. Outwardly, he had been listening with what patience he
could muster to yet another diatribe from Arcturus Black on why Muggleborns
didn’t belong in the Ministry. He knew that Harry had planned to approach
Black about the life-debt he owed, but they had agreed that it was best to wait
and let Madam Malfoy spread some of the facts Harry had assigned her first.

And Harry was at his Mind-Healing session right now in any case, with only
some emotions filtering down their bond. At the moment, his mood was one of
quiet attentiveness like soft ice. What Tom had felt came from something else.

“And if you think that pure-bloods will sit back and let Mudbloods trample over
our sacred traditions—”

Tom held up his hand. Black blinked and fell silent. It wasn’t a usual practice of
Tom’s, to command like that. He was skilled at listening to inane conversations
with half his attention while reaching out with his true awareness in other
directions.

But this time…

Tom listened, and listened, and finally made out the sound. It was like a soft
bell ringing in another room, but becoming harder as the breeze from an open
window stirred it. It was one of the alarms Tom had planted about the Ministry
to alert him if someone with a large and active magical aura ever came within a
certain distance of it, another method of finding his soulmate. Tom had never
bothered to dismantle the alarms after he’d found Harry. He had idly thought
they might make a good warning if Dumbledore tried another attack on him.

But now…

“Wait here,” Tom told Black, who was opening his mouth again to complain—
that would be what it was, it was never anything else. “We may be about to
suffer a raid.” And he left his office and shut the door behind him, making his
way towards the bell in question.

It hung in one of the outer offices of the Department of Magical Law

Enforcement, under a spell that ensured no one came too near it. Tom didn’t
want it triggered by random Aurors. But it should have been ringing more
strongly than this if a spell had impacted the Ministry or was moving nearer. In
fact, the tone hadn’t changed at all since Tom first heard it, which was more
than strange. Was Dumbledore building up a spell just outside its range?

Tom stepped into the small meeting room and walked over to his bell, absently
banishing the illusion of empty space that it occupied. The small silver
instrument swung back and forth on the taut steel wire that Tom had conjured
for it, the clapper lazy and gentle. Tom frowned at it, and then glanced around
the room. Maybe something had gone wrong with his warding, and it had
picked up on the magic of an Auror who had simply walked past on their way to
somewhere else.

But when he used magic to enhance his senses, there was no recent smell of
anyone near here, nor any sign that the carpet had been crushed by footsteps or
the table disturbed by small pools of sweat. Tom ended the enchantment and
stepped back to observe the bell again. He hadn’t built much of a sense of
direction into them, given that they had been meant to indicate someone
powerful in the Ministry itself, but he could read a little information from the
wall the clapper pointed at when it reached the top of its arc.

It pointed towards the western wall, but already it was softening, its tone sweet
instead of warning. Tom closed his eyes and realigned his senses to reach out
towards the west. What was there? From what he could tell, nothing much.
Quiet country, small villages where no one was performing magic, city
streets…

Tom’s eyes snapped open. Yes, there was the remnant of some great gathering
of magic there, as if someone had opened a gate to another world (an art Tom
had never been interested in, since none of them would have had his soulmate).
No wonder the bell had barely sensed it. It must be right on the edge of its
magical reach.

But who would have had the power to open a gate or conduct some other
comparable working? Tom shook his head. He kept a private list of the
soulmated pairs in the country, and how strong their magic was. None of them
even compared to him by himself, much less what he would have now that his
bond with Harry was fully open.
Unless Dumbledore had managed to resurrect the bond with his soulmate, of
course.

Tom stepped slowly back from the bell, his mind full of books he had read in
his twenties, when he had still been searching for a way to bring his mark back.
What he had found indicated that there was no way he could do so, but also that
it hadn’t destroyed his potential to bond with a soulmate, which had been the
question he most wanted to find the answer to.

And for someone to start a bond again that they had once rejected was also
possible, but only with true love on both sides. Tom snorted. He could not
imagine Dumbledore going to Grindelwald in Nurmengard, casting himself on
his knees, and confessing that he had loved him for years.

So what might have happened? Had Grindelwald summoned Dumbledore and

told him that he regretted the dissolution of their bond and wanted to bond
again?

Then again, Tom didn’t know how love could have come into the heart of a
rejected Dark Lord nursing his bitterness alone. For all that he was not a Dark
Lord, Tom thought he understood Grindelwald better than most. He would have
forgiven Harry much, but not establishing their bond and then turning away
from it.

No, most likely there was something else he hadn’t yet considered, some way
that Dumbledore had managed to receive a greater power or bring his bond back
into existence.

Tom sighed in irritation and turned back to the door. He would have to go to his
office and pretend interest in Black’s complaints again. There was nothing he
could do without more knowledge and Harry at his side.

At least they had had this forewarning.

Molly swallowed as she stepped through the door of the Leaky Cauldron. She
had thought it an odd place for the Aurors to ask her and Arthur to meet them
and surrender their wands, but it was more the people bustling around her that
made her skin prickle. She hadn’t been outside the Order’s refuge or camps in
years, and she knew everyone there.
But strangely, no one glanced at them more than twice. It was a busy day, of
course, bustling with parents escorting their children who were home over the
Easter holiday, so perhaps that was part of it.

The bigger part, however, Molly saw when she edged around a witch with a tall
hat and stopped. There was a contingent of Aurors waiting for them, yes,
although only three, far fewer than Molly had thought they’d want when
meeting with dangerous terrorists.

And in the middle of them was the Minister.

Molly gripped the sheaf of documents she was carrying harder than ever. Never
in any dream or daydream had she thought Minister Riddle would be there to
“greet” them. She exchanged a helpless glance with Arthur.

Arthur finally smiled back at her and lifted his shoulders. “Best to begin as we
mean to go on, my dear,” he murmured. So far, Molly noticed, neither the
Aurors nor the Minister had made any move towards them, although they were
clearly watching. Arthur nodded to her and then turned around and strode
towards that central table.

Molly followed slowly, and tried not to feel the old instinctive hatred when
Minister Riddle’s eyes landed on her.

The Minister studied her only a moment before turning and rising to his feet to
shake Arthur’s hand. “Thank you for surrendering and helping us avoid any
unpleasantness,” he said, in a rich, cultured voice that made Molly blink. Then
again, she hadn’t heard him speak in years. The Order avoided having
possession of a wireless, in case they could be tracked by it. “I know my
soulmate is fond of both of you.”

“We thought he was fond of our son and daughter-in-law, as well,” Molly said a
little numbly.

“Well, I imagine that fondness diminished after they cursed him in the back and
forced him into a duel,” Riddle said, his voice sharpening. It was still a pleasure
to listen to, which was unnerving. He let go of Arthur’s hand and reached out
for hers. Molly took it and tried not to let her eyes linger on the onyx-and-
diamond phoenix pendant around Riddle’s neck. She’d thought he might stop
wearing it after he’d found his soulmate, but perhaps he was attached to it. “You
haven’t done anything like that that I’m aware of.”
Molly shook her head and reclaimed her hand. “No. To be honest, we were
questioning the Order’s goals for some time.”

“But not enough to walk away from it and sue for pardon before this.”

“It’s hard to walk away from something you’ve built a life doing.” Molly
wanted to talk some more, but Arthur’s arm slipped around her waist, and she
felt their soulmate magic gently pulling at her, soothing her. She bit her lip and
tried to stay silent.

“Yes, it is,” Riddle said, his voice now with a sympathetic resonance that didn’t
sound feigned. Molly eyed him, and Riddle nodded to her. “But if we’re going
to speak further of this, perhaps we should go elsewhere.”

Molly glanced back and saw most of the people in the Leaky Cauldron staring
at them. She nodded. “Why did you want to meet here, sir?” It was hard to force
the last word out of her throat, where it seemed to stick, but she managed. If she
had been referring to Dumbledore that way for years, perhaps it was time to use
it to talk about someone else.

“So there could no doubt that your arrest had proceeded peacefully,” Riddle
said. “And that you had surrendered. Your wands, please.” He held out his
hand.

Molly swallowed and drew it. She held it by the middle of the shaft and
displayed it on her palm to Riddle. Riddle claimed it with a flare of magic
around his hands that she supposed was meant to neutralize any traps on it.

He did the same to Arthur’s wand, studied them for a moment, and then nodded
and handed them to the Aurors. Then, absurdly, he stepped up to Molly and
offered her his arm like a Muggle courtier.

Molly stared at him, but took the arm when she saw his eyes harden. “Why are
you doing this?” she asked under her breath as they went towards the door.

“You’re important to my soulmate,” Riddle said, with a shrug. “I told you that
already. You may choose to disbelieve me, but if I hear that you’ve been ugly to
Harry because of it, then we can reconsider the amount of unpleasantness I am
willing to indulge.”

For a moment, his sharp fingernails pricked the skin of her wrist. Molly nodded,
a little dazed. “I have no wish to scold him. I only want to know what’s going
on. This isn’t anything like I expected.”
“No one expected anything like it,” Riddle said. His face was stern and cold, but
his eyes shone for a moment. “Including Dumbledore.”

Molly shivered as they reached the Apparition point and Riddle Apparated with
her. She could only risk one glance backwards to make sure that Arthur was still
following in the Aurors’ custody.

Riddle might be inclined to treat them more graciously because of Harry, but
she was wondering if his version of graciousness would overlap with hers.

“How did it go with Mind-Healer Laufrey?”

“It was different than I expected it to be,” Harry said, leaning back on the couch
and watching Tom make dinner, which was so domestic he found it suspicious.
Then again, Tom wanting to be in charge of everything Harry did, including
what he ate, did make a certain amount of sense. “Less scolding.”

“You do have a consistent perception that people would wish to scold you for
what you suffered,” Tom murmured, glancing over his shoulder before he
concentrated on the salmon in front of him again.

Harry sighed and looked out the window of Tom’s flat. The distant lights of
London were flickering on, and he wondered idly if someone could look back at
them and see them. Probably not, knowing all of the protections that Tom
would have layered over the windows. “People mostly did.”

“Who?”

“Well—I mean, I don’t think my parents meant to. But they were always
drilling me on what I had to do if you approached me, or how I should respond
if I had the chance to meet you and tell the truth. It felt like scolding sometimes
that I’d been born with your soul-mark, especially when I was younger. And the
Mind-Healer Sirius had scolded him. And you’ve done the same thing.”

“I have not.” Tom turned, while their bond thrummed with a slippery cold
emotion that Harry identified after a second. Tom felt aghast.

“Telling me that I should have approached you earlier? Accepted your

assignment of a Mind-Healer without protesting? That I shouldn’t have
remained friends with Ron and Hermione after they cursed me?” Harry was
ticking them off on his fingers, and ignoring the way the bond grew hotter and
hotter. “Maybe you were right, but you talked about them in this condescending
‘I told you so’ way that’s very off-putting.”

Tom blinked several times, while the bond cooled off. Then he did something to
the salmon that appeared to involve a Stasis Charm, and came over to sit down
next to Harry. “If I did that, I’m sorry for it. I do think that there were some
conclusions you could reasonably be expected to have come to, even if
Dumbledore was lying to you—”

“There you go again.”

Tom sat back with a grimace and a shake of his head. “I really did think that I
was just telling you the truth.”

“I know. I know you are,” Harry repeated, when Tom looked at him and the
bond thrummed like a string someone had plucked. “I know that you’re telling
me honestly what you think. But I hate—I hate being a disappointment to
everyone the way I know I am.”

“You are not a disappointment.”

“Admit it, Tom. You wish I would have broken away from Dumbledore and the
Order and come looking for you earlier. You wish that I wouldn’t have wasted
so many years believing what they did and that you were evil and so was I. You
wish I was more confident and politically savvy.” Harry hesitated, and the bond
writhed.

“Say the last thing.”

“You wish I was a pure-blood.”

Tom grabbed his hands and held them still. Harry blinked as the bond heated up
again, and Tom leaned in until his lips were a centimeter, perhaps, from
Harry’s. According to the tone of the bond, though, he had never felt less like
kissing Harry.

“The last is absolutely not true,” Tom whispered fiercely. “To wish that you
were as bigoted as the rest of them and inclined to sigh about Muggleborns and
only put up with having a half-blood soulmate because I’m powerful? No,
Harry. The blood status of my potential soulmate never mattered to me, but I
thought a lot about the bigotry I might have to overcome if you were a pure-
blood. That you are what you are couldn’t please me more.”
The bond pulsed like a sun between his shoulders and made Harry able to sigh
and believe him. “All right. But the other things I said?”

Tom renewed the Stasis Charm on the salmon and curled up on the couch with
his arm wrapped firmly around Harry. Harry leaned with his head on Tom’s
shoulder and wished Gerald hadn’t recommended talking with his soulmate. So
far, it just hurt a lot.

“I wish things had been different,” Tom admitted. “That we could have had
more years together and that you hadn’t spent so much time wishing that you
hadn’t been born with my mark. But I blame the Order and Dumbledore and
your parents and your godfather for that. You were raised that way. Your
parents and godfather weren’t, but they accepted the bollocks that Dumbledore
was spewing anyway.”

“Dumbledore was really convincing and charismatic, though. And they thought
that you were a Dark Lord and he’d rejected his Dark Lord soulmate, so he
knew what he was talking about.”

“This, though? This spirited defense of people who treated you badly and who
need to acknowledge that, even if they did it for the best of reasons? That’s all
you.” Tom lifted his head so that their eyes were meeting, even as the bond
leaped and rang. “And it’s bloody annoying.”

“Sorry.”

Tom shrugged. “No level of annoyance would rise to me breaking the bond,
Harry. I want you. I love you. I’ll always fight to keep you. And I’ll work on the
condescending tone.” He tapped Harry’s leg. “While you work on seeing the
truth about your childhood.”

“All right.” Harry leaned more heavily against Tom, then glanced over as he
smelled something burning. “Do you need to renew the Stasis Charm on the
salmon again?”

“Shit!”

Harry laughed. The pleasure of knowing no one would believe him if he said
the Minister for Magic had almost burned their dinner was outweighed by the
pleasure of knowing that no one else need ever know it.

*
“Albus. Albus, let me go.”

Albus sighed. That was the kind of meaningless utterance that Gellert had been
repeating since Albus had renewed their bond. Albus knew that the horror
coming down the bond was real, but on the other hand, what would
Gellert have of him? This was the only way, the best way.

And Albus loved Gellert. Enough to ignore the ramblings from him that meant
nothing and focus on getting them to a position where they would be honored
and they could receive the cures they needed. When they were heralded as the
saviors of the world.

Currently, Albus stood beneath two large trees with intertwined branches that
some people considered to mark an entrance to the Forbidden Forest, his gaze
fastened on Hogwarts. He needed to get back into the school to fetch some
materials—potions, books, ingredients—that he hadn’t had time to retrieve
when he went on the run. And he needed to make sure that he wouldn’t hurt too
many people doing it.

“Albus!”

Albus turned around in vague interest. That had sounded meaningful. Perhaps
Gellert had spied someone trying to sneak up on them.

Gellert hovered overhead in a contraption rather like a Muggle rocking chair,

made of strips of wood braided together, wrapped with the spells necessary to
protect him from the cold and keep him in place. He stared into Albus’s eyes,
and the bond leaped and twanged between them. Albus frowned.

“Yes, Gellert?” A wave of tenderness came over Albus as he spoke, and he

admired the curl of Gellert’s hair where it hung down by his cheek, and the
curve of the cheek itself.

“Please let me go,” Gellert whispered, his head drooping. “This is madness.
You must know that.”

“Many things might seem mad from the outside when you’re doing them to
save the world.” Albus reached up and stroked Gellert’s hair, and ignored the
way Gellert flinched from him. He would have to get used to that. If people
thought he was mad, with his love thundering through his veins, well, that was
the way it was. Albus had to be concerned with the safety of the world, not his
reputation. “And I know that even unrequited love results in doubled powers.
This is the only way that we can challenge Potter and Riddle.”
“What if we don’t need to challenge them?”

“What do you mean?” Albus thought he knew where Gellert was going with
this, which would result in more meaningless chatter, but he could indulge the
man he loved if he wanted to.

“What if Riddle isn’t a Dark Lord?” Gellert whispered, bending close, although
there was no one to hear them in many directions if Albus’s Detection Charms
were working right. “What if Potter manages to tame him?”

Albus sighed and took his hand away from Gellert’s hair. This was indeed the
same kind of nonsense that Gellert had brought up again and again. “Let’s say
that I grant the truth of this for one moment. What happens then?”

“We don’t have to go up against them, and you release me from this bond,”
Gellert said immediately.

“No,” Albus said softly. “I mean that there’s still good to be done in defeating
Riddle even if he’s not a Dark Lord. He’s still a disgusting politician who chose
to play the game of pure-blood supremacy. And he’ll draw Harry into that game
and secure his hold on power. We need to defeat him even if he has some name
other than Dark Lord.”

Gellert closed his eyes. Tears were leaking down his face. Albus kissed them
away, and then turned and faced the school again. This time, he could sense
someone coming towards them, but he held his wand back. There was every
chance that this person was an innocent, even throbbing with the strong aura of
magic.

Then red and golden fire sparked through the forest, and Albus frowned. In a
way, the person coming to confront them was indeed an innocent, but not
anyone he would have wanted to see or stood a chance of persuading to his side.

The flames settled in front of him, and rolled aside like a curtain to reveal
Fawkes’s settled form. Albus watched him dispassionately. There had been a
time that he trusted the phoenix’s counsel absolutely, but it had become clear
that they were working for two different versions of reality.

“I do wish,” he told his ancient companion, “that I knew why you wanted
Riddle and Potter to win the war so much.”

Fawkes ducked his head and trilled. The song wove into Albus’s mind, and, for
a moment, formed an image. Albus tilted his head. It seemed to him that he was
standing above some kind of amphitheater, and he wondered if Fawkes was
showing him a symbol, an image of a gladiatorial contest between the different
realities they represented, perhaps.

The image came more and more clear. The amphitheater was built of white
stone, and Albus found that he knew it. It had once been a public space for the
wizarding world to hold gatherings, competitions, and duels, but had been
bought by the Black family sixty years ago and turned into a private training
arena.

It was full of people in the image. They were clapping and cheering. Albus
didn’t see many people he recognized, but here and there was red hair that
might have been a Weasley, and, close to the front, the Potter parents.

Tom Riddle and Harry Potter stood in the middle of the amphitheater on the
raised stage, and showed off a large scroll tied with a golden ribbon between
them. Albus squinted. The image promptly moved closer like a Muggle camera,
and he could see what was written on the outside of the scroll.

Muggleborn Reparations Laws.

Albus snorted under his breath, and the picture vanished. Fawkes stared up at
him like a chick in the nest, giving very soft chirps that conveyed nothing to
Albus.

“Do you think that vision is new to me?” Albus demanded. “The particular
contents are, but not the vision itself. It is only that that is one version of reality
out of a hundred. And even if they won and passed such laws, what would keep
them from passing other, less acceptable ones? Ones that would legalize Dark
Arts and take control of Hogwarts entirely from the Headmaster?”

Fawkes gave a low croon and turned his head. Albus followed his line of sight.
He was looking at Gellert, who was hovering still next to Albus, and utterly
silent. His eyes were fixed on Fawkes, however.

Albus shrugged. “I must do some less than acceptable things in the name of the
greater good. But I am making the sacrifice myself, not expecting anyone else
to make it with me. And I love him. Tom Riddle loves no one and nothing.”

Fawkes gave him one last sad look, and then turned and flew back towards the
castle. Albus relaxed minutely. He had thought that perhaps Fawkes would try
to interfere, but he seemed to think that simply projecting his version of the
future was enough.
Albus was glad that he followed an agent of Fate who was more proactive.

He returned to studying the castle, and finally decided that he would find no
better route into it than the secret passage that ran from the Honeydukes cellar.
Luckily, it wasn’t a Hogsmeade weekend and there would be no students in
attendance.

Albus turned to tell Gellert his decision, and blinked. Gellert’s left hand was
darting away from his side, as if he had a wand there to palm. But Albus had
hidden his wand long before he took Gellert out of Nurmengard, so he knew it
couldn’t be there.

“What do you have in your hand, Gellert?”

Albus knew that his voice was gentle and loving, but he got a near-terrified look
from Gellert before he opened his hand and said, “Nothing.”

Albus leaned towards him and cast an honesty hex on him. But Gellert only
repeated the word when Albus asked the same question.

That left only one explanation. Albus shook his head and smiled gently at his
soulmate. “You know that you don’t have to lie or act as though you’re
mysterious to get my attention. You already have it. You always will.”

That made Gellert look ill, and the bond flickered with orange-red splotches.
But Albus had to ignore that. There were many things that he had had to ignore
since he had come to love his soulmate.

He had made hasty decisions when he was young, such as abandoning the
emotional bond with Gellert because of a difference of opinion. He should have
sought a reconciliation then, and perhaps Tom Riddle and Harry never would
have risen. He and Gellert could have changed the world enough to make a
Dark Lord impossible.

Albus sighed wistfully and walked towards Honeydukes under Disillusionment,

Gellert also Disillusioned and floating behind him.

There was a fire in front of him.

Peter woke up squeaking and flailing, then blushed despite the fact that there
was no one around him. But he’d had nightmares about fires from the time he
was very young. Maybe it was just a consequence of accidentally lighting his
pillow on fire when he was little and wanted to be warmer.

He sat up and then stared. There was a fireball in the center of his carpet. Peter
snatched up his wand to conjure water, but then realized the fireball was sitting
very tamely in place and not going anywhere else.

Real fires weren’t so polite, of course. Peter rubbed his fists into his eyes and
wondered if he was still dreaming.

But then the flames congealed in on themselves, and Peter could see that it was
Fawkes. He leaned forwards, concerned. Minerva was the Headmistress now,
and perhaps Fawkes had come with a message from her. “Fawkes? Is Minerva
all right?”

Fawkes opened his beak and sang. Peter shivered, closing his eyes. He had only
heard phoenix song one other time, and it was one of the most peaceful
memories in his life.

But now, a different image appeared in his mind, one not at all peaceful. This
was of a dark tunnel that seemed to slope upwards. Peter was reminded of the
tunnel into the Shrieking Shack, but after a few moments of the pictures
growing clearer, he realized it wasn’t. Instead, it was the tunnel that led into
Honeydukes, behind the state of the witch on the third floor of Hogwarts.

“Something is wrong with the tunnel?” Peter stood up and threw on a day robe
over his sleeping one. “Is a student in trouble?”

Fawkes’s voice soared, and the picture in Peter’s mind expanded outwards from
the edges in red lines, like the opposite of a burning piece of parchment. He
could see, now, that the tunnel was empty—except for two figures in the
middle. One of them seemed to be floating in the air, tied with ropes, and the
other was coming down the middle in long strides.

Peter squinted. They were Disillusioned, but then Fawkes’s voice grew more
shrill and insistent, and he could see the face of at least the leading figure.

Dumbledore.

Peter shivered violently. “I have to get Minerva,” he muttered, and reached for
the doorknob of his quarters.
Fawkes leaped up and abruptly landed on his shoulder, making Peter freeze.
He’d never thought a phoenix would be so close to him. Fawkes bent down
until his red beak was right in front of Peter’s face and warbled, again and again
and again.

There were words now in Peter’s mind instead of images, but not comforting
ones.

It is your fight.
Peter swallowed so hard that it hurt his throat and tried to shrug Fawkes off his
shoulder. Fawkes stayed, even clinging. Peter turned to stare, and he knew he
probably looked panicked, but that was only honesty, because he was.
“Do you know what I am? A frightened man whose Animagus form is a rat! I
didn’t speak up when I should have and had clues that Harry Potter was the
Minister’s soulmate! I didn’t report on the efforts of the Order of the Phoenix
when it was active! What makes you think I can face Dumbledore in a fair
fight?”
Fawkes spread his wings and gave a stern reply that was less words than the
flash of light off the blades of his feathers. What makes you think it has to be
fair?

Peter closed his eyes. That was—true. He had his rat form. He had his
experience with the Marauders playing prankers, although to be honest, mostly
they had been the kind that took four people to set up. Or three, after Remus
declined to forgive Sirius.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe he had to do what he could do anyway, because

Dumbledore couldn’t have come back here for any good reason.

He finally got Fawkes to leave by melting down into his rat form and running
silently under the door of his quarters and towards the third floor. It would take
him longer to get there this way, but he needed the sense of safety that his
Animagus form provided right now.

Then there was a rush of wings above him, and abruptly Fawkes swooped
down, grabbed Peter in his talons, and began flying as urgently as he’d
delivered the message in the direction of the witch statue.

Peter squeaked in annoyance, but Fawkes didn’t respond. Peter tried to tuck his
paws under his belly and ignore the pressure of the talons against his sides. So
far, they weren’t breaking through the flesh, and he didn’t think phoenixes were
predators, anyway.
He thought.

Peter sighed, and closed his eyes, trying not to wonder about the fight that
waited for him.

Chapter 30: Tricks

Chapter Text

Peter was breathing hard by the time Fawkes finally set him down in the middle
of the corridor near the statue of the humpbacked witch, but he tried to
concentrate through his terror. He had sometimes felt like this right before the
Marauders played some big prank, he remembered dimly.

What had he done then?

He had gathered up all his courage and gone through with his part in them,
that’s what he had done. And sometimes he had come up with clever twists that
not even Sirius and James could have anticipated.

New thoughts bubbled to the surface of his mind, pranks he had idly
contemplated in the years since he had stopped playing them, tricks he had seen
students play, and things that had gone wrong in his Transfiguration classroom.
Peter settled himself with a shake of his tail and then glanced up at Fawkes.

Fawkes landed on the statue of the witch and spread his wings, crooning softly
and encouragingly at Peter.

Peter darted through the space between the witch and the opening of the tunnel,
which was more than big enough for a rodent, and scampered down the
corridor. Ideas were whirling together in his head, but some of them would
require a wand, so he stopped and transformed, listening hard with both kinds of
hearing.

He didn’t hear anyone yet. Dumbledore must be pretty far down the tunnel.

Peter drew his wand and started casting.

Albus pressed forwards with a faint smile on his face. He didn’t

actually enjoy the terror and fear that he could feel coming down his bond with
Gellert, but he knew that it was for the best. The bond existed, and that was
something most magical theorists would have said was impossible, after Albus
had been foolish enough to reject their first one.

He would do what had to be done—discover new techniques of magic, exploit

his own heart, exploit his own soulmate—if it meant that the visions of peace
and a quiet future would come to pass, not the ones where Riddle and Potter
ruled.

The tunnel bent in front of him and then straightened out. Albus paused to
glance back at Gellert, who was still attached to the floating chair.

“Are you all right, Gellert?”

Gellert never answered the questions that Albus chose to show his love and
care, although given the way he probably thought of their renewed bond, Albus
supposed he couldn’t blame him. He was staring up the tunnel instead, his brow
wrinkled. “Did you hear something?”

“I cast a charm that would have detected anyone in the tunnel with us before we
started down it,” Albus reassured him.

“But there’s still something—”

A second later, Albus heard it, too. It was an odd, skittering noise. He had to
liken it to a swarm of insects building up and rushing towards them, but he
couldn’t imagine what that many insects would be doing in a deserted tunnel.
Hogwarts had active spells that usually took care of vermin. He turned with a
frown.

A wall of rats came rushing around the corner towards them.

Albus couldn’t help his jerk and shout of disgust. It was immature, but when the
rats started pressing around him, and he could feel their sleek bodies, their long
and squirming tails, he leaped back. Then he started casting the kind of barrier
charms that would hold them back.

One bit him on the ankle.

Albus dropped his wand in shock. The bite hurt so much that it felt poisoned.
He clapped his hand over the wound and bent down to see what it looked like.

“Albus!”
Gellert’s shout tugged on the bond between them and spun Albus around. The
bond was resonating with panic. Some of the rats had leaped from the ground
and were climbing up the floating wicker chair to chew on his robes.

Albus reached up to free Gellert. He would do that rather than allow him to be
eaten alive.

Then, abruptly, the rats vanished. Albus glanced around, and found no trace of
them, nor of the objects that he would have suspected they were Transfigured
from. Nor had the bite on his ankle disappeared the way it should have if the
rats were mere illusion, and Gellert’s robes bore true marks of chewing.

“Are you hurt?” Albus scanned the corridor closely. No, there was no trace at
all, and that was more than unnerving.

“No.”

Gellert was still breathing fast. Albus nodded and went to find his wand.

It was gone.

Albus immediately clasped his hands in front of him and closed his eyes. The
first wandless spell he had perfected was one to Summon his wand, which was a
prime target in duels. Unless it was actually broken, he should be able to pull it
back to him.

Other than a distant rattle that might have been his wand bouncing off some
unseen barrier, nothing happened. Albus shivered and opened his eyes.

Illusory rats shouldn’t have been able to take his wand away. Transfigured ones
shouldn’t have been able to disappear so completely. Real ones wouldn’t have
had the brains, or be able to prevent his wand from coming to him now. Like
any Summoning Charm, his wandless one could only be foiled by the object
being locked in a box or container of some kind. If a real rat under someone’s
command had stolen it, his wand would have lifted over them and flown back to
him.

“Let’s get out of here, Albus.”

Albus shook his head, not taking his eyes away from the corridor in front of
him. There had to be someone there, but he should have been able to make out
the shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm, and any Invisibility Cloak except the
one the Potters possessed would be permeable to his eyes. “Are you there?” he
called out.

“Of course they’re bloody there!” Gellert hissed from behind him.

Albus ignored him. “Listen to me,” he said, as kindly and firmly as he could.
“You may not understand the importance of the wand you stole, or of helping
me preserve our world, but I assure you that there is a great—”

“Get out of here!” Gellert called. “He’s mad!”

Albus turned to stare at him, his love twanging inside him in betrayed shock.
Gellert raised his eyebrows.

“What do you want me to say? You are.”

“Shut up, Gellert.”

“No. Don’t do it!” Gellert kept yelling down the tunnel. “You have the bloody
Elder—”

Albus clenched his magic in a long surge, and Gellert gagged and then went
under the wandless Silencing Charm. Albus shut his eyes. “I hate hurting you,
but there are things that are more important than our bond,” he said, and once
again faced the motionless, silent tunnel stretching out in front of him.

It somewhat unnerved him that he could see and hear nothing. There was faint
light from the torches in the walls that lit whenever an adult walked through
here, as opposed to a student. Why wouldn’t he see a shadow cast by those
torches? Hear a voice, a shuffling step?

“I will give you one more chance to come forth and give me my wand back like
a civilized wizard,” he called.

Silence.

Albus closed his eyes to center himself. The next feat of magic he was about to
perform would have been beyond his wandless abilities most of his life, but
since he had bonded with Gellert, there was little limit to what he could do.

When he was sure that he had the power built up, he whispered, “Dolor,” and
let the spell go.
*

Peter crouched on the floor of the tunnel, shuddering in relieved disbelief. He

hadn’t been at all sure that would work, but it had.

He had copied a Transfiguration failure that had happened in one of his third-
year classes the previous spring. The student had been meant to be
Transfiguring a carved wooden rat into a real one, and Peter always measured
the success of that exercise by checking for things like the correct beat of the
rat’s heart and the length of its whiskers, things he knew intimately. (He didn’t
let the students Transfigure the rats back to wood, either, instead keeping them
and letting them go in the Forbidden Forest).

Yet, somehow, the student had Transfigured the wooden rat into two of them,
one real and one not-real—an illusion that nonetheless felt solid until Peter
actually poked it with his wand. The two rats had run around the classroom and
acted like complete mirrors of each other. Peter had been fascinated, but he’d
unfortunately had to correct the mistake when other students started shrieking in
fear.

So he had imitated it on the dust in the corridor, with a small twist of his wand
that greatly multiplied the number of illusory rats per Transfigured one, and
then made sure that all the “real” rats were in the vanguard of the army, with
himself in his own form among them. He’d been the one to snatch
Dumbledore’s wand and get it to safety, and when all of the Transfigured rats
were back around the corner, vanished the illusions. The Transfigured ones
were hiding in corners now, silent, waiting.

Albus was surely planning a counterstrike now that his appeals had failed. What
was it—?

“Dolor.”

The spell filled the corridor with invisible waves of pain, and Peter transformed
sharply as the agony nearly made him cry out. He wasn’t about to reveal his
position to Dumbledore, especially since the hastily Transfigured box that he’d
hidden the wand in might not hold forever against the thing’s rattling and
thumping.

As a rat, the pain was dimmer and sort of turned sideways. It was the kind of
spell meant to affect humans, not other animals. Peter crouched in place,
shivering, until the last part of it was gone, and then cocked his ears.
“Are you ready to come out and speak like a normal person?”

Peter shuddered all over. Dumbledore’s voice was calm and patient and utterly
mad. How could he have sent a spell like that and then expected someone to
stand up, walk around the corner, and admit that it was “normal?”

For that matter, how had he managed to send that kind of pain curse with
wandless magic anyway? Peter knew that particular curse, and it was only a few
shades less intense than the Cruciatus. James and Sirius had tried to learn it
wandlessly for when they were cornered by Slytherins, but neither of them had
managed.

Then Peter reminded himself of the second figure floating in the corridor. He
swallowed. It might have been—

Dumbledore’s soulmate. He might have found a way to resurrect and force the
bond.

The mere thought made Peter scratch himself in desperate nervousness. Then he
crept to the corner of the corridor and peered around, keeping it to the absolute
least portion of his eye necessary, so that he could see without being seen.

Dumbledore was standing with his hands on his hips, shaking his head back and
forth. “If you would only give me back my wand, then perhaps we could discuss
this like civilized people and there would be no need for these curses!” he
called.

Peter focused his eyes and nose, as best as he could when he was so close to the
ground, on the figure floating in the wicker chair behind Dumbledore. The
man’s face was covered with grizzled beard, and his scent wasn’t familiar. But
—

There had been stories, hadn’t there, around the time Dumbledore had defeated
Grindelwald? That the man had been his soulmate?

Peter shivered. There had been stories, yet, but Dumbledore tended to smile
sadly when people asked him about his soulmate and show the black-edged
mark. Peter, who bore a black-edged one himself, could understand not wanting
to talk about something so painful. He thought that people inducted into the
Order of the Phoenix had learned the truth, but that had never been Peter.

Of course, there was supposed to be no way of getting the bond back once it had
been rejected, or Sirius would have managed to repair the bond he’d had with
Remus when it snapped after the Tree Prank. Who knew what Dumbledore had
done?

“I am growing impatient.”

Peter retreated back around the corner. His mind, which had been as twitchy as
fleas, suddenly was cool and deep, like a pool of still water.

The knowledge that Dumbledore had repaired his bond with Grindelwald had to
leave the tunnel. Presumably Fawkes had known, but either he couldn’t talk to
people the way he had to Peter about his “destiny” or he wouldn’t. Peter had to
survive because people had to know about this—travesty.

Of course, Peter also couldn’t just retreat and hope that someone else would
take care of Dumbledore’s entrance to the school. He had to do what he could to
distract Dumbledore. Seizing his wand was an unexpected stroke of luck—

There was something he could do.

Peter turned back to human and cast a certain spell, then became a rat again and
slunk around the corner, moving carefully. Dumbledore had his back turned
talking to the floating man, luckily, and didn’t see him as Peter crept carefully
through the shadows and forwards. If the floating man saw him, he was going to
keep it to himself.

When Peter got close enough, he could hear Dumbledore saying, “It pains me to
hurt you, Gellert. You will only know how much if you concentrate on the
bond. But I hope you’ll understand me declining to free you.”

Gellert. It is Grindelwald.

Dumbledore turned to face the main mouth of the tunnel again, and cast another
wandless Summoning Charm that made his wand rattle against the conjured
box. Peter crouched and leaped as high as he could.

If the conjured rats he had made had done it, he could do it, too.

Peter sprang from the ground, shaking, and landed on Grindelwald’s bound leg.
He bowed his head and began to gnaw on the ropes that some of his
Transfigured rats had also worked on. Grindelwald stared at him, but didn’t say
a word.
“I am beginning to grow impatient,” Dumbledore said, in the kind of patience-
dripping voice that had terrified Peter when he was a student. “I will come
around the corner in a moment, and it will not go well for you.”

Peter swished his tail, but refused to be hurried. Unlike regular rats, he knew
exactly where to gnaw, and the rope parted around Grindelwald’s ankle with a
quiet hiss. Dumbledore started to turn back around.

At that moment, the charm Peter had cast before he became a rat erupted with a
boom.

Mad, cackling laughter filled the tunnel. Dumbledore stiffened in shock and
pivoted back to face it. Peter crawled up to Grindelwald’s shoulder and began to
chew as fast as he could on the rope that bound the Dark Lord’s right hand. He
would have grimaced and spat if a rat could. The musky, woody taste of the
rope was disgusting.

“Albus!” called the conjured voice that Peter had set up, one of the pranks that
the Marauders had perfected in their third year. “I see what you are doing
there!” More mad laughter followed.

“Who are you?” Dumbledore moved forwards a few steps, his hand twitching
down at his side where he sought his wand and then forming into a fist. Peter
paused to exhale and went back to gnawing. “What do you want from me?”

“Albus!” The voice descended to a low, growling sound. One part of the prank
that Sirius had come up with was that the voice always sounded like all four of
their voices together, not one, which would make it difficult for Dumbledore to
be sure that someone was here who couldn’t be. “What evil have you done?”

That was a standard phrase that they had used to make the Slytherins run, but
Dumbledore seemed to take it more seriously. He lifted a hand and yanked out
with another wandless Summoning Charm.

Nothing happened, of course. Peter had anchored the charm in the walls and
floor of the tunnel. Dumbledore’s wandless magic was still good enough to
make a few pebbles fall, but not to summon half the building.

Peter could only hope, as he chewed one more time and the rope around
Grindelwald’s right hand parted, that Grindelwald was just as adept with
wandless magic due to their bloody soul-bond.
The moment his hand was free, Grindelwald was moving. Peter sprang free and
ran towards the nearest dark corner, ignoring the impact made as the ground
slammed his body. So it hurt a little. So what? It still hurt a lot less falling that
distance as a rat than it would as a human.

He crouched and whipped around, digging into the floor with all four feet, ready
to scuttle or leap at a moment’s notice.

Grindelwald had broken the other ropes and was already directing his own blast
of wandless energy at Dumbledore’s back. Of course he felt it coming, as he
would have felt his soulmate’s surge of emotions down the bond, and was
turning to counter it. But the point was, he had eyes for nothing else but the way
Grindelwald was free, and Peter could go running around the corner and back
towards the box the wand was in.

He had to get it out of here.

Peter nerved himself, and when white lightning crackled between the two men
and Grindelwald said something in what might be German, he scuttled along the
wall back towards the corner. The air behind him was filled with flame and
light, and magic that made his spine tingle. Peter didn’t know what he would
see if he looked back, and he honestly couldn’t think of a reason why he should.
He kept running.

Albus could feel the bond twisting between him and Gellert with exultation and
despair and his own surprise, all of them sharp as rapiers. What he didn’t
understand was how Gellert had got free. The person who’d been lurking about
in the tunnel had helped him, obviously, but why? Why would they choose to
help someone with a reputation for being a Dark Lord over the Headmaster of
their own school?

He felt weak and shaken. His wand had been taken from him. Gellert had
broken the Silencing Charm with easy magic. His love was turning on him.

Of course, that didn’t mean he would simply give in and go meekly along with
Gellert. Not at all. He clenched his hands, and white sheets of flame danced up
and down on his arms, joining the glare of yellower light from Gellert.

“You will not destroy what I have worked so hard for,” Albus said, and winced
a little when he heard his voice come out as a snarl. Someone watching them
from a distance might have had a hard time telling a difference between them.
And that thought was distracting. He put it smoothly away, as he had done with
many distracting thoughts over the years.

“As far as I can see, Albus, what you have worked so hard for consists of your
mad Order of the Phoenix, which is now broken and fleeing from the war you
have lost.” Gellert snapped a sheet of yellow light into being in front of him and
began moving to the left. Albus turned to counter, his own white flame curling
around his feet. “And there has been little enough benefit for me from our
resurrected bond or your relentless campaign. But I will take the magic.”

“I cannot allow you to go off on your own,” Albus said steadily. “You might try
to take over the world again.”

Gellert rolled his eyes, as if that made sense, as if Albus’s words deserved such
a contemptuous gesture. “You’re confusing me with yourself.”

“I never wanted the world! I simply wanted to make sure that Tom Riddle
didn’t have it.”

“And in the meantime, you didn’t care if you plunged it into chaos, or killed
people, or betrayed the ones who used to follow you—”

Albus snapped out the white lightning he’d been gathering when he was sure
that Gellert was pretty far into his little speech. He hissed as the lightning turned
back from the yellow shield that Gellert had conjured. Even worse, the magic
was weak and hesitating, partially because of the wandless power he had
expended already.

And partially because he was attacking his soulmate, and with all his soul and
his power, he did not want to.

However, if he was right about the length of time that had passed since they had
completed the bond, he had only to wait.

Gellert darted abruptly to the right. Albus again turned to counter him, and the
yellow light Gellert had summoned danced back from his shields as surely as
Albus’s lightning had rebounded from Gellert’s. They were equal in power,
although Albus knew he loved Gellert more.

But they were not equals in body.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, Gellert bent over, the tearing cough he had
acquired in Nurmengard and that Albus had dosed him with potions for
bubbling up in his lungs. Albus ran forwards, ready to take advantage of the
distraction, but also to rescue his love from the poor decisions he had made in
the past.

Gellert met him with a rope of light that snaked around Albus’s ankles and
tripped him.

Albus’s mind was full of blank surprise as he went over. This was ridiculous. It
was a prank spell, rather like the ones that the Marauders had sometimes used
on other students. He could not be defeated by something like this.

He couldn’t be defeated by a wall of rats that must have been mostly illusion,
either. But somehow, it had overcome him and deprived him of his wand.

He rolled over and started to come back to his feet. Then he went very still,
because there was a hand on his throat, and it clenched tight as he coughed. And
there was something hot and burning in it.

Albus imagined Gellert burning his face off, and even though the bond trembled
at the thought of it, he continued to be still.

“You rejected our bond all those years ago,” Gellert breathed. “And you thought
I would be happy to resume it? Where have you been burying your head,
Albus? You thought I would just happily agree to this?”
So he wants to talk. Albus relaxed a little. Someone who wanted to talk was less
likely to burn his face off. And although Gellert didn’t understand or want the
bond the way Albus did, he might still be able to persuade him around.

So long as he kept talking.

“I did what I had to do,” Albus said, his eyes fixed on the far wall of the tunnel.
He listened intently, but heard nothing other than Gellert’s heavy, hoarse
breathing from behind him. No sign of whoever had stolen his wand. “I know
that you didn’t see Riddle and Potter as the threats they are, but they are,
Gellert. And as powerful as they are, the only way I could fight them was by
resurrecting our bond.”

“They matter to you more than I do.”

“Of course not, Gellert!” Albus’s love sizzled in his veins, love even for Gellert
in this violent state that wasn’t really him, love even for the fingers that closed
around his throat in warning when he started to turn his head. He sighed and
held still again. “You matter more to me than anyone else. My soulmate, my
bond partner. I would give up the fight against Riddle and Potter in an instant if
I thought we could go on living in the world without winning it.”

Gellert was silent. Albus wondered if that was something he hadn’t considered.
The bond pooled between them, at least, cool and contemplative.

“You don’t mention me in those visions you have.”

“I don’t see myself much, either,” Albus admitted. He shifted under Gellert.
Neither of them was young, but he stood a better chance of overpowering
Gellert than the other way around, he was sure. He had fully embraced the
bond, which meant he had more access to the magic, and more capability to
wield it. Gellert would never have managed to ambush Albus at all if he wasn’t
surprised. “It’s mostly Riddle and Potter. But I know that we didn’t save the
world because I see them destroying it, Gellert.”

“How?”

“They’re taking it over. Riddle becomes Minister for years and years—the rest
of his life, or a little less than that. And they’re immortal, Gellert. Even if
Riddle gave up the Ministry, think of how much they could influence society if
they were still alive.”

“Is it a pernicious influence?”

Albus nearly gaped, but then managed to control himself. “Of course it is,
Gellert! Riddle hates Muggleborns and Muggles. You can’t think that a world
he made would be kind to them.”

“I remember, once, that you didn’t care about that.” Gellert’s voice was
growing stronger, but Albus didn’t know why. He shifted balance a little, and
Albus began to gather strength in his back and knees, adding magic to the old
muscles. “I remember that you talked about dominating Muggles in the name of
the greater good.”

“I learned better.”

“And what makes you think I have?”

The words shocked Albus so much that the strength he had gathered went
fleeing after all, and he barely managed not to flinch. But he shook his head and
said as calmly as he could, “You’re toying with me, Gellert. You know as well
as I do that you gave up that vision when I defeated you.”
“Numengard killed it, not my defeat.”

“Well, then,” Albus said, a little reassured, although he still didn’t like the tone
in his bondmate’s voice. He loved it, of course, but he didn’t like it. “We are
going to bring the world into alignment with the phoenix’s vision. We’re going
to do the right thing.”

“That’s not a vision I serve, Albus.”

And the pressure was abruptly gone from Albus’s back. Albus rolled over and
sprang to his feet, using magic to oil his joints and call fire into his hands.

Gellert was standing there with hands cupped around fire of his own, but for
some reason, it was a spark far too small to be an offensive weapon. Albus eyed
him in perplexity. “What are you doing, Gellert?”

“I don’t think I can change your mind,” Gellert said, meeting his gaze, his blue
eyes so old and weary that the dim trembling of the bond couldn’t compare to
them. “And I can’t change the way things will probably fall out. But I can
do one thing.”

And he blinked, as if he was an illusion like the rats, and then turned into fire
himself and drained into the spark.

Albus stared. The spark hovered in the air for a moment, and then darted
towards the walls. Albus tried to seize it, either with his hands or with the magic
of the bond, but it slipped through both as easily as water.

That left him standing there and staring helplessly after the spark.

He knew the bond hadn’t been severed, because he could still feel it, although
stretched and strained. Soulmate magic was always easier to access when the
bondmate was right at one’s side, which was why Albus had gone to such
grievous measures to keep Gellert with him.

But how had Gellert done that? Albus tried to imagine leaping into a spark of
fire to go after him, and it should have been possible if Gellert had called on the
magic of their bond. But he remained stolidly human, his feet planted on the
stone floor of the tunnel. He couldn’t imagine his way into the flames.

The only time he had seen something like that had been…
When his goals were still aligned with Fawkes’s, and the phoenix had
transported him by fire.

Albus’s mind flashed back to the moment that Fawkes had left them in the
Forbidden Forest, and the glittering thing that he had thought, for a second,
Gellert was clasping to his side. Fawkes had given him that spark.

A sense of betrayal as profound as the sea flowed over Albus, and he found
himself sinking to his knees in the corridor. He put his trembling hands over his
face. How could Fawkes have done that to him? Why was he so determined to
see the world destroyed under the hands of Potter and Riddle?

Albus had not believed that phoenixes could be evil. But now he had to question
it.

A soft crooning noise made him look up. Fawkes was sitting on a small
projection of rock from the side of the corridor that Albus couldn’t have sworn
was there a moment ago, staring at him with steadfast sadness.

“You did this,” Albus whispered.

Fawkes tilted his head and gave voice to a long, rising and sweeping trill. Albus
felt none of the joy he once had when the phoenix sang. He stood on shaking
legs and said between clenched teeth, “The phoenix who comes to me never
intervened directly. I know that agents on that level must have someone else to
act for them.”

Fawkes ended his song, and continued to perch there. Then he sang again. But
this time, Albus didn’t think he was wrong that the sweet music was mocking.

“You did intervene directly!” Albus shouted. “That spark couldn’t have been

anything but phoenix fire! How dare you?”

Fawkes fluttered his wings and faded away in wisps of red and gold. Albus took
a step towards the projection of rock and then stopped himself, hard though it
was to do when his desire for revenge rode him almost as hard as his love for
Gellert.

He had to find his wand. That was the best thing to do, and it didn’t matter who
had stolen it. He would need it when he went after Gellert. They were far nearer
equals in the contents of wandless power than he had speculated.

With no impending battle or worries except the ones that waited in the future to
wrack him now, Albus thought it ought to be a simple matter to Summon the
Elder Wand back with his wandless power. He clasped his hands in front of him
and focused on the tug that would affect any object hit with an ordinary
Summoning Charm, and the way that it would speed towards him.

“Accio the Elder Wand,” he said, softly but firmly.

There was nothing, not even the sound of the distant bang against a solid object
that he’d heard before. Albus stared down the tunnel until his eyes watered, and
then at last walked around the corner where the rats had come from.

There was nothing and no one there. Albus looked around helplessly. The Wand
would have come back to him even if Fawkes had hidden it somewhere, he
thought. It would have battered down barriers in the way to reunite with the
wizard who planned to use it in conquest.

Unless…

Unless Albus’s suspicions about phoenixes being unable to intervene directly,

and needing allies to move their visions of the future forwards, remained true.
And that would mean Fawkes had intervened only to give the spark of fire to
Gellert, which could be used only if Gellert somehow got his hands free.

There had been someone else here who had sent the rats and stolen his wand
and somehow managed to free Gellert’s hands, although on that one Albus was
unsure of the method.

“Hello?” he called.

The silence that answered sounded as mocking as Fawkes’s song.

Minerva pulled her head out of the Pensieve memory and stared at Peter for
long moments. Peter tried to act as modest as he could, even though once he
was out of the tunnel, exhilaration had burned away his fear.

“This is something to make the Minister aware of at once,” Minerva finally

said.

Peter nodded. “I’m happy to supply my memories or speak to him, whichever

you think would be better.”
“I’ll send him a copy of this memory, with your permission,” Minerva said, and
Peter just nodded again. “He’ll probably be along to speak to you tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why Albus could have gone so mad.”

Peter preserved a prudent silence. Telling Minerva that he’d seen it coming long
before when the man began to recruit school-children for his imaginary war
probably wouldn’t sit well with her when she’d been one of Dumbledore’s
adherents for so many years.

“And then there’s his wand.” Minerva poked the box that Peter had put it in.
“Does it feel oddly inert to you? Not that wands are truly alive, but they usually
have more of an aura about them than this.”

Peter blinked. He could feel what seemed like a strong aura himself. But the
Headmistress had more experience in matters like that. Peter wouldn’t have said
he had expertise in anything except Transfiguration and pranks, himself.
“Maybe so, Headmistress. Are you going to send it to the Minister as well?”

“I wouldn’t trust owl post with something like this,” Minerva said shortly. “Best
to keep it under guard until Riddle gets here.”

Peter nodded and stood. “Then with your permission, Headmistress, I’ll try to
get a few more hours of sleep.”

“Please do that, Professor Pettigrew. Peter.” When Peter glanced at her face
again, Minerva was watching him with a softly glowing smile. “Please know
that I’ve seen no more Gryffindor act in all my tenure as Head of House. No
matter how it was accomplished.”

Peter left the office feeling as if he was a core of light around his burning joy.
Except that, oddly, something seemed to be tugging on him as he left, too,
trying to call him back.

But he forgot about that when he saw Fawkes perched on the gargoyle at the
bottom of the Headmistress’s staircase. Peter scowled at him. “I am going
to sleep, and I don’t care what you want me to—”

Fawkes spread his wings, soared as lightly as a butterfly across the distance
between them, and perched on Peter’s shoulder. Then he rubbed his head
against Peter’s cheek, and sang a little trill of song. It fell on Peter like a
blessing.

Peter went to bed and had the best night’s sleep he could remember in decades.
 Chapter 31: Wands
Chapter Text

“And you’re sure that this is the wand Dumbledore was carrying?”

Minerva eyed the Minister with more skepticism than she had expected to have
when she Flooed him and asked him to come to the school. Minister Riddle had
seen Peter’s memory and also had probably had the chance, over the years, to
examine Albus’s wand for himself. Yet he was letting his hand barely hover
over the wooden box on the desk, and his eyes were narrow enough to glint in
the light from the fire like a predator’s.

“I’m sure, Minister.” Minerva heard her voice come out snappish, and sighed.
Instinctively, she glanced at Harry, who stood leaning against the far wall of her
office. “Perhaps you could tell him, Mr. Potter?”

“I never really got to examine Dumbledore’s wand closely.” Harry smiled at her
to take any possible sting out of the words and walked over to the desk, leaning
an elbow on it to peer into the box himself. Even in her irritation, Minerva
noticed the way that Riddle shifted over to make room for his soulmate. “But I
remember that it had a certain aura.”

“An aura.”

“Yes. It felt more alert than most wands do.” Harry glanced at her over his
shoulder. “Of course, most wands have that for the person who holds them. But
I could sense the one from Dumbledore’s wand even when I was at a distance.”

“All right. So what?”

“You will not treat my soulmate disrespectfully, Headmistress,” Riddle

murmured, without looking away from the wand.

Minerva caught her breath and in the end said nothing, because she supposed
she should have known better than to react like that. She was too used to
thinking of Harry as a student instead of an adult and someone who was in a
much more responsible position now than he’d ever worked in at the Ministry.

Harry, though, rolled his eyes at Riddle and turned to look at her. “Please,
Headmistress, excuse my soulmate. He’s still suffering from years of being left
alone and needing to do whatever he could to survive.”
From the way Harry jumped a moment later, Riddle had sent a pretty sharp
response down the bond. But all Harry did was stare at him stubbornly, and
Riddle turned away with a snort and a mutter.

Minerva carefully held back any reaction and said, as neutrally as she could,
“Has the aura on this wand changed?”

“It feels dead now,” Harry murmured, holding out his hand and letting his
fingers hover above the wand in its box. His look was curious enough that
Minerva studied him covertly. Harry just tilted his head and contemplated the
wand, though, and didn’t look as though he was getting any special insight from
the thing. “I almost wonder if Dumbledore could have substituted an ordinary
wand for the one he had…” He glanced at Riddle.

Riddle shook his head briskly. “Even if he had known that someone was
watching him and wanted to stage a loss of his real wand for their benefit, he
was too desperate to get this one back. It has to be the real thing.”

Harry nodded, and then they stared at each other in silence, doubtless
exchanging thoughts down the bond. Minerva carefully concealed her envy as
she had her emotions earlier. She had lost that bond when Elphinstone died, and
sometimes it still nagged at her like a broken bone.

“Given that,” Riddle said slowly, as if he was continuing the silent conversation
aloud, “I think we should probably leave this wand here instead of taking it into
custody.”

Harry nodded, a smile quirking up his mouth for a second, and then turned to
Minerva. “Do you mind holding it if Professor Pettigrew agrees,
Headmistress?”

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“Dumbledore might come back for it.” The Minister was watching her closely
enough that Minerva had to resist the impulse to straighten her shoulders and
snap her chin up. She wasn’t one of his guards or his followers. “He certainly
knows it was lost in Hogwarts even if he doesn’t know who has it right now.
And you can see from the memory how good he is at wandless magic.”

“Let him come.” Minerva didn’t recognize the grinding tone of her own voice,
and apparently neither did Riddle or Harry, from the way they were staring at
her. Minerva put up her back, and didn’t care how much doing it reminded
either of them of her Animagus form. “I’ve had quite enough of him.”
“That won’t be enough to defeat him, though, Professor McGonagall.”

Harry looked worried. For her. The mere thought of a former student worrying
over her ability to defend herself made Minerva want to hiss and claw. She
managed to calm down enough to offer Harry a thin smile. “I know that. But I
spent the night introducing some new defenses to Hogwarts after Peter showed
me his memories.”
“Did you forget I needed to approve all new defenses?”

Minerva turned and looked at the Minister. He was all coiled, cold power, and
although he was smiling, she knew all about the shadows behind that smile. Not
being part of Albus’s Order anymore hadn’t left her ignorant.

Even if she privately thought that the smile had got less cold since Riddle had
found his soulmate.

“That’s why I documented all of them on this parchment,” Minerva said, taking
it out and laying it down in front of her with a bit of a flourish. “As well as the
passage in the Hogwarts Charter where it says new defenses may be installed on
an emergency basis and approved later.”

Riddle only nodded, as if he’d never given her a reason to feel threatened, and
leaned over the parchment to review them. Minerva sighed out and caught
Harry’s eye. Harry shrugged a little, as if asking how much she wanted him to
change Riddle.

In truth, Minerva had never thought that anyone could change him this much.
Harry was doing a remarkable job so far.

“Why this ward against Summoning Charms?” Riddle asked.

Minerva turned back to him. “Albus was attempting to use wandless magic to
Summon his wand back. The ordinary charms on the school only prevent
younger students from Summoning the furniture and anything larger with a
burst of accidental power. I want to make sure that we’ll pick up
on wandless magic, and purposeful magic, too, in the future.”

Riddle regarded her for a moment with his eyes as flat and calm as a snake’s.
“Resourceful, Headmistress,” he said, and then went back to tracing his finger
down the list of improvements she’d made.

Minerva sat behind the desk and tried her best to keep from feeling as if she’d
be called before the entirety of the Wizengamot in a short time. She caught
Harry’s sympathetic grimace, and he nodded to her, leaning over to murmur,
“You’ve impressed him.”

Riddle hissed something in Parseltongue, and Harry started. Then he rolled his
eyes and moved away from Minerva. Minerva could only assume that Riddle
had declared his soulmate off-limits from being too close to anyone.

Again, it was less than she’d thought he’d do should he ever discover that
soulmate, given how desperately he had searched after the criminals had burned
off the mark on his chest. She entertained a wistful vision of what might have
happened if Harry’s parents and Albus had let them meet years ago.

Then she shook herself. She would do more good focusing on the future, which
might include an attack by Albus, than the past.

“What do you know of him?”

Harry shot Tom an annoyed look. When they could both speak silently down
their bond, it was only showing off to speak in Parseltongue in front of someone
else, not necessary for secrecy. Professor Pettigrew was already shaking
slightly, even though he was behind his desk in his own office, where Tom and
Harry had come to meet him.

“Answer the question, Harry.”

You don’t have to hiss and frighten him like that, Harry said down the bond, and
continued before Tom could say whatever he was going to say, I know him as a
professor at Hogwarts, and he was patient and helped most people learn
Transfiguration well enough that a lot of them got higher than an Acceptable on
the OWLS. And I know that he used to be my parents’ friend, but he refused to
join the Order. That caused a rift between them.
“Smart enough to avoid Albus from the beginning, then,” Tom hissed. “I like
him more than I thought.” And he turned to Peter, who was holding very still
now to keep himself, as Harry knew, from shaking. “Tell me, Professor
Pettigrew, what alerted you to Dumbledore trying to break into the school?”

A curious look crossed Pettigrew’s face, but then he relaxed. “I’m sorry, sir, I
forgot that I didn’t include that in the memory. Fawkes did. He came and
showed me an image of the attack coming up the secret tunnel from behind the
statue of the humpbacked witch, and then he carried me there.”

“Carried you?”
“I transformed into a rat.”

Harry shot annoyance down the bond at Tom. Even if Pettigrew had meant that
Fawkes had carried him in human form, that was still perfectly possible for a
phoenix. It didn’t mean Pettigrew was lying, and Harry disliked that Tom
seemed to be trying to set him up.

Tom’s pleasant expression never varied, even as he said down the bond, All part
of making sure that Albus didn’t use him, darling. “It didn’t occur to you that a
phoenix who used to belong to Albus Dumbledore might be on his side, instead
of yours, and manipulating you into letting his former master into the school?”

Pettigrew straightened up for the first time and gave Tom an odd look. “No,
sir.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t follow Dumbledore out of the school,” Pettigrew said. “So he didn’t
want to be his companion anymore. After the revelations that have come out
about Dumbledore and the Order, I can’t really say that I’m surprised.”

“You speak of companions and not pets.”

“Phoenixes aren’t pets, sir.”

“And you don’t think I would know more about them than you?” Tom leaned
forwards, and his voice abruptly became the kind of savage snarl that Harry had
heard him use to eviscerate people in the Wizengamot. “Given that I am the one
who once had the mark of a phoenix on his chest and would have made
a study of them?”

Pettigrew clenched his hands in his lap, at least from the motion of his
shoulders, but his face remained blank and hard to read. “Forgive me, sir, but
no, I don’t think so. Or else you’re trying to confuse me for some reason.
Phoenixes really aren’t pets. They’ll endorse someone’s actions for a while, but
Fawkes brought me there, showed me Dumbledore was a danger, and blessed
me in the end after I came out of the Headmistress’s office. It was perfectly true
that I’d done what he wanted.”

“Blessed you?” Harry asked. “How?”

Pettigrew gave him a slightly more comfortable smile than any look he’d given
Tom. Then again, he’d been the man’s student, so Harry supposed it made sense
that Pettigrew was more comfortable with him. “When I left the Headmistress’s
office, Fawkes was waiting on the gargoyle. I started to tell him I wasn’t
defending the school again that night, but he flew over, rubbed his head against
me, and sang softly. Then I slept better than any night I can remember.”

Tom raised his eyebrows and caught Harry’s eye. “That is indeed something I
did not anticipate.”

“Seriously, stop speaking in Parseltongue just to intimidate someone who’s

plenty intimidated by you already,” Harry snapped.

Pettigrew blinked, and stopped shaking. Tom tilted slowly back in his chair,
fingers laced across his knees, attention entirely focused on Harry to the point
that the bond was vibrating. Soulmates should present a united front in
public, he said down the bond.
Maybe people whose soulmates aren’t aresholes to random bystanders can do
that all the time.

Tom frowned at him, but Pettigrew had nodded to Harry, and Harry asked him a
question while hopefully he was in a more relaxed mood and would be happy
that Harry had taken his part. “What did you feel from Dumbledore’s wand after
you had it?”

“That it had an active aura,” Pettigrew replied. “It was almost humming.”

“It felt inert when we examined it in the Headmistress’s office.”

“She said the same thing.” Pettigrew visibly thought about it. “With one
person’s perspective against three other people’s, then I have to concede I was
wrong. Just because it felt that way to me doesn’t mean it was.”

“Why would it feel differently to you?” Tom’s voice was cool, but at least he
was speaking English this time.

“Because I was perhaps still overwhelmed by the battle last night? I couldn’t
believe I’d survived.” Pettigrew shook his head a little. “I’m good at
Transfiguration, sir, not much else. I could have easily mistaken the wand’s
aura. For one thing, I don’t know much about wandlore.”

“You defeated one of the most powerful wizards in Britain, and you call
yourself weak?”
“Untalented, sir.” Pettigrew’s face was calm and set. “I know that there was a
lot of luck in surviving the way I did, especially that I was able to get
Grindelwald free and that he distracted Dumbledore after that. If I hadn’t
managed to steal the wand, things would have been very different.”

The bond throbbed in Harry’s head, and a strong peppermint flavor filled his
mouth. He managed to keep from snorting, but barely. Tom didn’t know what to
do with someone who admitted faults and weakness and that he might be
wrong. He certainly didn’t get that kind of humility from the pure-bloods.

“What would happen, do you think, if we asked you to cast with the wand in
front of us?” Harry asked.

Pettigrew gave him an assessing glance that reminded Harry abruptly that,
untalented or not, very few students had got away with cheating or carelessness
in Pettigrew’s Transfiguration classes. “I don’t know. It might not respond to
me at all.”

“But you think it might?”

“If I wasn’t mistaken about the aura it had.”

“A good thing I brought it with us, then,” Tom said, and took the wooden box
he’d borrowed from McGonagall out. He opened it with a flourish like a
Muggle magician producing a trick. Pettigrew blinked, uncertain again. Harry
sighed.

Don’t compare me to a Muggle.

Why are you so determined to overset him? I think we can see by now that he’s
not a traitor Dumbledore planted.

Tom ignored him, extending the box to Pettigrew. Pettigrew studied the wand
for a moment, then reached out a hand. The wand levitated from the box before
he could touch it and smacked into his palm.

There was a chorus of distant voices that reminded Harry, for a moment, of
phoenixes singing together, and then sparks like a wildfire rained from the end
of the wand. Pettigrew yelped and managed to turn it so that it was pointing
away from them. Harry watched the red and gold cascade, and had to smile.
“Gryffindor colors?”

“Those were the colors of the sparks when I got my first wand, too.” Pettigrew
stared. “I swear, Minister, I didn’t mean to attack you.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Tom said, straightening his robes, and Pettigrew
looked nervous again.

Seriously, stop being a fucking arsehole.

Tom didn’t reply, but he did twitch his shoulder in an annoyed way and then
modulate his tone when he spoke again. “No, Professor Pettigrew, I know there
was no attack intended. But I am curious about why the wand felt so dead to us
and is so alive with you. May I?” He held out his hand for the wand.

Pettigrew started to hand it to him, but the wand abruptly clung to his fingers.
Pettigrew blinked and shook his hand. The wand continued to cling. “I’m
sorry,” he said, almost stammering. “Really, this is most unexpected.”

Tom eased his hand back, his expression calm, for all that behind it, Harry
could feel his mind running furiously. “Interesting. Most wands will submit
easily enough to an inspection.”

“Yes. And I want this one to, too!” Pettigrew pulled the wand free from his
fingers and tried to hand it over again. This time, the wand appeared to have
cemented both of his hands to the wood. Pettigrew looked more than a little
aghast. “I really have no idea what’s happening. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a good thing,” Harry interrupted, before Tom could make Pettigrew the
subject of some kind of experiment.

“Oh?” Tom looked at him, while the bond sang a sharp note.

“It means that we can be sure the wand doesn’t want to go back to
Dumbledore,” Harry said, glancing at Tom, and plucked the bond himself. You
know that he would be more dangerous if he was armed.
He is dangerous enough for figuring out a way to resurrect the soulmate bond,
but you are right, Tom said, and nodded. “That is true, although I would still
like to examine it, to determine why it was so inert when we tried to sense it.”

“I’d like to make sure you have the chance to do so, Minister. Let me try
something.” Pettigrew shut his eyes.

Harry had some idea of what he was going to try, having seen his demonstration
on the first day of class with him, and thought it a bit clever. Sure enough, when
Pettigrew changed into a rat, the wand clattered to the desk, and Tom reached
out and snatched it up before Pettigrew could change back into a man.

“Fascinating,” Tom breathed.

Harry shifted towards him, trying to figure out why, but thought he had when he
was close to it. If someone had asked him whether it was a plain piece of wood
or a wand, he would have said that it was a plain piece of wood without
hesitation, or else a wand that had been broken and then subjected to
a Reparo Charm. You couldn’t fix a wand that way, but Harry knew people who
had tried when they were in Hogwarts.

“What do you think you’ve learned about it, sir?” Pettigrew had transformed
back, smoothly, on the other side of the desk.

“Its loyalty is to you and only you,” Tom said. “I am not sure why, but I agree
with my soulmate that it doesn’t want to return to Dumbledore. I thought
perhaps I would sense some hostility to my handling it, but no, it simply
remains dead.” He turned, aiming the wand at the far wall. “Reducto!”
There was nothing, not even a trace of the sparks that had rained from it when
Pettigrew picked it up. Harry, because he was polite like that, glanced at
Pettigrew for permission before he reached out and picked up the wand. He
aimed it himself and murmured, “Lumos.”

No reaction. He might as well have picked up a twig from the forest floor.

“I do know a little bit about wandlore,” Tom said, as he handed the wand back
to Pettigrew. “And I know this is highly unusual.”

“Do you think—well, perhaps it was that I simply stole the wand from
Dumbledore, Minister? Rather than won it?”

“Stolen wands wouldn’t give their allegiance to another wizard or witch in the
way that a conquered one would, that much is true.” Tom was still watching the
wand with a calculating gaze that reminded Harry of the way he used to think
Tom did everything: cool, utterly detached from the world and consequences.
“But they wouldn’t feel dead, either. I think that this wand wanted to make
sure no one but you could use it, Professor Pettigrew.”

“I—see.” Pettigrew frowned at the wand, and then shrugged. “I’ll keep it safe,
to make sure that Dumbledore can’t easily access it even if he does sneak into
the school, sir.”

“The Headmistress said the same, but I’m not sure that any place here would
match that definition of safety from him.”

“I’m going to take it to Gringotts.”

Tom nodded. “I see.” He stood. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Thanks,” Harry added, with a smile at Pettigrew, who nodded back to him with
a strange little smile on his face. Harry wondered if maybe Pettigrew was glad
to see that being the Minister’s soulmate was working out well for him, given
that Harry had been his student and he might have worried about the
consequences.

That made something in Harry relax. Whether Pettigrew had ever been brave
enough to speak out against the Order’s idea that Harry had to maintain a distant
stance towards his soulmate (or had even known about it), he approved now.

Sometimes, it was just nice to have more confirmation that people in the Order
had been a bit mad.

“So why were you so interested in Pettigrew’s wand?”

They were lying in Tom’s bed after they’d made love, and Tom had been
drifting towards sleep, wondering in the back of his mind if he would see
another of Harry’s memories. Harry’s words, however, yanked him back to
awareness.

And Harry was sending sharp flicks of interest down the bond, so he obviously
wasn’t ready for sleep himself yet. Tom yawned. “This is what you wish to
discuss now?”

“I didn’t do it earlier, did I?”

Tom smiled a little as he recalled the sweetness that was sharing orgasm with
his soulmate, and shook his head. “Very well. There were rumors that when
Dumbledore dueled Grindelwald and took that wand from him, it was the Elder
Wand.”

“The Elder Wand? Like in the fairy story?”

“Fairy stories are sometimes true,” Tom whispered, his breath glancing over
Harry’s ears and stirring shivers from him that made Tom wish he had nothing
else to do in the world but this. “Or did you think that all the stories about
soulmates were rubbish when you didn’t have one?”
“I knew people who were soulmates,” Harry countered. He shifted, and Tom
concealed a smile at the burgeoning hardness against his thigh. “I don’t know
anyone who believes in the bloody Deathly Hallows.”

“Remind me to introduce you to someone who does.”

“What?”

Tom chuckled. “Did you know someone at Hogwarts named Luna Lovegood?”

“Of course.” Harry narrowed his eyes after a second. “You’re saying that she
believes in the Deathly Hallows?”

“I don’t know the girl personally.” Tom let his chin rest in the crook of Harry’s
neck, only moving when Harry gave him an irritable shove. “But her parents
certainly do. They’ve made it their lives’ work to seek them.”

“And do what with them?”

Tom shrugged. “If there are people in the world with a pure academic interest in
such powerful objects, the Lovegoods are them. They want to behold them, I
suspect. Photograph them. Talk to the people who own them. Write about them.
That’s all.”

“And you think I should meet them?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“This is a time of prophecy,” Tom intoned in the deepest and gravest tone he
could, and got Harry to stare at him with wide eyes for three whole seconds
before the bond gave the truth away and Harry hit him over the head with a
pillow. Tom ducked, laughing, giddy—for the first time in his life, perhaps—
and overwhelmed by the surge of love and normality.

That he had to lived to do something like this with his soulmate…

“The real reason.”

“It’s not far off what I told you.” Harry hefted the pillow threateningly, and
Tom shook his head. “No, I mean it. We have a prophecy in play, and while it
might not come true, we should be prepared for it. We have the Elder Wand
apparently seeking retirement, rather than coming out of it, and rejecting
Dumbledore. I’m at least willing to listen to what people who have dedicated
their lives to studying the Hallows say.”
“It might not come true?”

“It was something I was thinking, but I wasn’t sure until I saw the memory that
Pettigrew put in the Pensieve.” Tom wrapped his hand around Harry’s and
tugged gently until Harry was lying against his chest, head tucked in the corner
of Tom’s own shoulder. “Fawkes approached Pettigrew to fight for him. What
does that tell you?”

“That phoenixes are really good at seeing potential?”

“That at least one legend about phoenixes is true,” Tom said, while kissing the
faded scar on Harry’s forehead for the cleverness of that answer. “They cannot
act directly to influence the world, at least not without help. Fawkes could have
done something to have barred Dumbledore’s entrance to the school. Instead, he
sought out someone who was supposed to help him, and who did manage it.”

“Would he do something to bar Dumbledore’s entrance, though?” Harry bit his

lip, his brow wrinkling, so that Tom had to kiss it again. “I mean, he used to be
Dumbledore’s companion.”

“That has nothing to do with it now,” Tom said. “He obviously opposes him.
No, the legend I was referring to, Harry, is that phoenixes are agents of fate and
destiny. They choose people to help them, to play certain roles. But taking too
much direct action would, according to that particular tale, destroy the world.”

“Let’s avoid that, right,” Harry said, while the bond trembled a bit in the back of
Tom’s mind. “But why?”

“Phoenixes are too much,” Tom said simply. “Too much fire, light, life. They’re
immortal, and they’re the only creatures we’re aware of in the magical world
who are so without draining someone or something else. Vampires have to live
on blood, Dementors on souls, sea serpents on that special kind of water the
Muggles are making so much noise about lately. Phoenixes can exist without
that, though.”

“I know other creatures who can be immortal without that kind of draining.”

“What?”

“Soulmated couples who love each other enough and have enough power.”
Tom kissed him, and the kiss got complicated and interesting enough that he
nearly forgot his point. But Harry pulled back, with a faint smile Tom was never
going to get enough of, and asked, “Phoenixes?”

Tom cleared his throat. “Soulmated couples bonded at that level still need each
other and can’t be immortal alone. One of them dies if the other does, even if
they were immortal up until that point. Phoenixes are responsible for their own
rebirth. Not even the Killing Curse does anything except cause them to burn.
Nothing else we know of is like that. The theory—”

“Or legend.”

“Is that they must have far more powerful magic than anything else we know of
to maintain that state. Imagine them turning that magic on the world. They
might regenerate the whole world. Or they might destroy it in their quest to
make it immortal.”

“You think that’s their quest?”

Tom snorted and tugged gently on a lock of Harry’s hair. Harry shook the bond,
but then yawned. He had too little energy to even muster resentment right now,
Tom thought.

Well, I always knew that I would be good at shagging my soulmate.

Harry punched him in the shoulder with a closed fist and repeated, “Well? Is
that their quest?”

Tom shook his head. “No. They do want to regenerate the world, but that means
different things depending on the phoenix. Some of them serve one version of
reality, some another. They use those people they think proper for the roles and
play the games to avoid confronting one another and ending everything in
disaster.”

“Are there only two sides?”

“I assume there are as many sides as there are phoenixes,” Tom murmured.
“But right now, I suspect the only sides that need concern us is the one that
wants Dumbledore to triumph and the one that doesn’t, represented by Fawkes.”

“It’s interesting that you don’t say Fawkes’s side is the one that wants us to
win.”
Still so clever, even in this state. Tom nodded. “I don’t think we can be sure of
that. Our triumph and Dumbledore’s not triumphing might be the same thing, or
they might look very different. And I doubt Fawkes would answer our
questions.”

“Do you think—”

Harry stopped, but Tom knew from the light flooding in through his side of the
bond that he was still awake, so he looked down. Harry bit his lip and rolled
slightly over on his side to return the glance. “Do you think that’s the reason
you had a phoenix as your soul-mark? Together, we have the power to change
the world? Or destroy it?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said, his hand getting tangled in Harry’s hair again. He
pulled gently this time, and Harry huffed and shut his eyes. “This is only one of
the legends about phoenixes, and I wouldn’t think it was the true one if we
didn’t already have some evidence about the way Fawkes used Pettigrew as his
tool. I’ve never known for sure what my soul-mark meant.”

Harry just nodded, but there was a muddled mix of emotions in the bond that
made Tom spread his hand out over his shoulder and keep it there in a quiet
hold. Harry finally sighed and said, “I wonder if the phoenix meant me. That’s
something I couldn’t help wondering when my parents told me that you’d been
born with a black-and-white phoenix on your chest. I grew up with the stories
about phoenixes as symbols of Light and only Light, but the black feathers…”

“You wondered if you had the capacity for Dark Arts. And now you wonder if
you have the capacity for that immense destruction.”

“Yeah.”

That was a hoarse whisper, and that wouldn’t do. Tom rearranged them so that
they were still lying chest-to-chest but he could see Harry’s face. Harry fisted
his hands in the sheets and didn’t look away, despite the fine tremble that Tom
could tell was invading his muscles.

“Soul-marks are rarely unambiguous,” Tom said, and he let his fingers fall on
the words that decorated Harry’s wrist. The soft blue flames sprang into
existence. Tom didn’t think it was his imagination that they were feathered on
the tips now, though, or that they were a deeper blue, more the color of ocean
water than lightning. “Yours is a rare case. What my phoenix meant, I don’t
think anyone will truly know. Dumbledore and your parents interpreted it one
way. I interpreted it another.”
“What was your interpretation?”

“That my soulmate would be someone with whom I could share power of all
kinds, the Light and the Dark, love and pain.”

Harry smiled, and his eyelids drooped a little, perhaps worn out by the thick
emotion as much as the sex they’d had before that. “That’s a good
interpretation.”

Tom kissed his forehead again and watched as Harry drifted off. He wondered,
as he did, what would happen the next time they faced Dumbledore, and what
part Fawkes, or some other phoenix who shared the same desired version of
reality, might call on them to play.

But only one thing terrified him now, and that was losing Harry. He would have
been consumed with doubt if he had thought he had to bear the burden of
deciding the world’s fate alone.

As two, the doubt burned, and hope, Tom’s private phoenix, rose from the
ashes.
Chapter 32: Burns
Chapter Text

The sharp knock on the door of Tom’s office startled Harry, particularly since
Tom wasn’t in. He sat back and opened his mouth to tell the person standing
there that, then closed it again when he saw the person was Aelia Malfoy.

She remained there, staring at him, and Harry finally realized that she wouldn’t
take the implied invitation. It probably wouldn’t be “proper.” Harry checked his
sigh as he nodded. “You’re welcome to come in, Madam Malfoy.”

“I have learned what you wanted me to learn.”

Harry tilted his head as she spread out a clutch of parchment on the small desk
Tom had placed for Harry next to his. He’d wanted to make it bigger, and Harry
had said that “Minister’s soulmate” wasn’t either an elected or a paid position,
so he would take the small one. As he watched Malfoy arrange things so that the
papers were overlapping the least, he thought it was the first time he’d wished
for a bigger one.

“The power levels vary. The Muggleborns sometimes show the highest power
levels, depending on the year. Sometimes the half-bloods.” Malfoy’s hands
hovered for a second over the largest piece of parchment, which Harry could see
was a list of high OWL scores for what looked like the past five years. Students’
parents had to give permission for the publication, but they usually did, as long
as the scores were Exceeds Expectations or above.

“Yes.” Harry said it quietly, but Malfoy glanced at him. “Do you see now why
trying to run this society based on blood politics is ridiculous?”

“The Muggleborns and half-bloods still do not have as much knowledge as we

do.”

Harry shrugged. “It depends on what you mean. I never heard that half-bloods
raised by traditionalist parents are any different than pure-bloods, at least as far
as ridiculousness goes.” Malfoy narrowed her eyes, but Harry kept on. “And the
Muggleborns have all sorts of knowledge about the Muggle world that pure-
bloods lack.”

“Why do we need knowledge about the Muggle world?”

Harry tapped the parchment. “Because none of this would be a surprise to them.
They’ve done tests that prove humans have the same kind of blood. That
heredity relies far more on unpredictable combinations of—traits from each
parent than it does on a strict account of power levels.” At the last moment, he
decided not to say anything about genes, which would just entail more
explanation. “And they’ve also done studies that show children are influenced
by who raises them and their peers at least as much, and in some cases more,
than by their blood parents.”

Malfoy stared at the parchments with a frown. “You’re saying that if I had
adopted my Muggleborn daughter, I could have raised her into a powerful
Malfoy.”

“You were going to adopt a Muggleborn child?” Harry blurted out, and then
cringed a little. Wonderful, Harry, think about how that must have sounded.

But for once, the pure-bloods’ obliviousness to other people served him. Malfoy
took no notice of his tone, only nodding a little. “I was thinking of it. There was
a particularly appealing little girl whose parents knew about magic and who
placed her on the steps of the Leaky Cauldron to give up because her accidental
magic was violent against her relatives. She was blonde, and she had a
personality I could see myself sculpting.”

“But?”
Malfoy glanced at him. “My brother reminded me that it was not proper, and
that nothing could ever wash away the taint of her dirty blood.” She glanced at
the parchments again, her face blank and smooth as glass. “But perhaps
something would have.”

“Yes,” Harry said faintly. Now wasn’t the time talk about “dirty blood,” either.
“What happened to her?”

“Someone else adopted her and moved out of Britain.” There was no emotion in
Malfoy’s voice. She swept her nails lightly back and forth along the list of
names. “So you want me to speak about this.”

“Yes, please. In the Wizengamot.” Harry leaned forwards. He probably couldn’t

talk about regret, either. She would see admitting it as a weakness, and she
hadn’t sounded regretful. “Imagine the way that other people would feel if they
knew that adopting young Muggleborn children could increase the numbers of
people who believe like them.”

Malfoy’s eyes glinted at him, steely. “You play the game as well as our
Minister.”

“Game?” Harry asked, a little startled by her phrasing, but not thinking she
meant the same thing as Tom did. Why would the pure-bloods have danced to
Tom’s political tune for so long if they knew how he regarded them?

Malfoy leaned back in her chair. “The Minister only wants power for himself.”

Harry waited. He was hardly going to deny that. The part where Tom was
willing to share power with his soulmate was, well, private.

“He doesn’t care about blood purity. He doesn’t care about preserving our
traditions. He cares about staying in power. And he knows that people like me
are the ones who can keep him there.” Malfoy stared at him. “But you want
justice for Muggleborns and the like. So you pursue the path that will allow us
to invest in your dream with you.”

Harry said nothing. That was dangerously clever, more than he had thought any
pure-blood could be. It wasn’t that all of them were stupid, it was that they were
so invested in believing themselves superior that they had to ignore contrary
evidence lest their worldview start crumbling around them.
“The path that will lead us to power. Where did you learn to play that game,
Harry Potter?”
Dangerously clever. But it hardly meant that Harry needed to spill all his
secrets, even so.

He let his lip rise a little, his eyes bore into Malfoy. “Where do you think I
learned it, growing up in an Order of fanatics who wanted to destroy my
soulmate?”

“And you wanted to prevent them,” Malfoy said, apparently overlooking the
possible complexities of the situation, which was fine with Harry. “Yes, I can
see how that might teach you some intrigues.” She stared at him with those
pearl-like eyes and then asked, “How much?”

“For what?”

“What amount of money, or favor, would convince you to turn the game in our
direction? Your soulmate was not meant to be Minister forever, but he seems to
intend it. And you know that while your desire to protect Muggleborns is
sincere, his is not. I have told you that I nearly adopted a Muggleborn girl. Why
can we not use this information, this alliance, to pry the Minister from power?”

Honestly, to Harry’s shame, he did consider it for a moment. He didn’t really

enjoy politics or being the soulmate of the Minister.

But it wasn’t as though a pure-blood like Malfoy in the position would be any
better, or would continue the “reforms” for Muggleborns without someone to
push them along that path. Harry was only achieving what he was because he
was sleeping in the Minister’s arms. So he met Malfoy’s eyes and shook his
head a little.

She lowered her voice, until it sounded more like a humming harpstring than
anything else. “There are ways to block the soulmate bond. Perhaps no one ever
taught them to you because they were so bent on keeping you from reaching
that destiny, but I can teach you. You can lie to him.”

“I don’t wish to,” Harry said, and that was true. He would have to talk to Tom
about his dislike of politics if he wanted to change his mind, not go around
doing something about it behind his back. “Now, will you bring up this
information about Muggleborns in the next Wizengamot session, or shall I bring
it up and you’ll back me?”

Malfoy’s eyes widened a little. Then she said, “I was lying about adopting a
Muggleborn girl. I was trying to get you to empathize with me more, to see
things from my point-of-view.”
“Perhaps you were. But I can tell you the Wizengamot that you told it to me
anyway.”

“They will never believe you.”

Harry had to snort about that. “Are you so sure? You don’t think they’ll eagerly
seize on any evidence that could weaken you in their eyes?” And of course the
pure-bloods would think it was a weakness, to be sentimental over the fate of a
Muggleborn, even to care about raising one in Malfoy’s own image.

“It is a lie.”

“And we both know, of course, that you are so beloved in the Wizengamot that
everyone would believe you were telling the truth about that.”

Malfoy clenched her hands and stared at him in silence. Harry just raised his
eyebrows, with what he had to admit was mockery.

“Why are you so stubborn?” Malfoy whispered. “I know you grew up entirely
in the wizarding world; why do you care so much about Muggleborns and
Muggles?”

Harry shrugged. “My parents taught me that they were people, too. One of my
best friends in school was Muggleborn. I saw no reason to think that half-bloods
were less powerful than pure-bloods, or that you were right about Muggleborns,
either. If you want people to believe your propaganda, perhaps you should make
it more convincing.”

Malfoy looked away from him. “We are prepared to offer you a place in
whatever government we will form after Riddle is removed as Minister.”

“Whatever government.” Harry fought for a second against the laughter

bubbling up in him, then let it go. Malfoy’s lips pinched down until they were
invisible, but that wasn’t Harry’s problem. “You don’t even know who would
take his place, do you? You hate him, but you also can’t form a strong faction to
oppose him because you hate each other, too. Merlin, this is funny.”
Malfoy locked her hands together. “You could have a position of power that
you do not even understand if you worked with us.”

“Because I don’t understand it, it’s less temptation for me.” Harry smiled with
only his lips. “But I understand two things.”
“What?” Malfoy’s voice sparked, and Harry wondered that anyone had ever
thought her cold mask was unbreakable.

“First, I know that you’ll always despise me for being a half-blood.” Harry gave
her a full smile this time. “And second, I already have power that you don’t
understand.”

He let it pool and flow around him, rising through the office and changing the
walls as it passed. Some of them became constructions of shells; some turned to
wood; one sprouted another enchanted window that twisted like an open eye
and showed a vision of underwater kelp forests. The hovering magic reached
the ceiling, and it became pearl and gold with a huge chandelier hanging from
it.

Malfoy sat where she was and stared at him.

“It would all be real, if you touched it,” Harry told her softly. “I’m stronger than
you are. You’ll have to live with that. Take your research with you when you
leave. And remember that you’ll still need to present the information in the
Wizengamot as we agreed, or you don’t want to see what will happen.”

Malfoy stood up and walked out of the office. Harry watched her go, then
pulled his magic back into his body.

“You enjoyed that,” Tom said mildly as he stepped out from behind the door
that led to a small anteroom where he’d been having his own meeting with
Arcturus Black.

Harry shrugged. “Yes. And she probably thought it was illusion. If she’s so
dedicated to staying in power that she thinks I’d betray you…”

“It’s real.” Tom reached out and pushed a little on a corner of the wall that had
been made of shells until a moment ago. “I know that. Harry, I know you better
than any of them, and I hope that you wouldn’t think I’d require you to remain
in a position of political power given how much you hate it.”

“But you love it.” Harry relaxed back into his chair and studied Tom. “I
wouldn’t want to make you give up being Minister, either.”

Tom inclined his head, a barely-noticeable nod towards the fact that he
preferred to remain where he was. “But you can step back. You can work
behind the scenes. And if you ever grow to hate being so much in the political
eye to the point that it interferes with our bond…”
“Yes?” Tom had deliberately suppressed the bond during Harry’s meeting with
Malfoy, because he’d wanted to see how Harry did on his own and they needed
to practice being in their own minds more, as he’d told Harry. But Harry felt it
quivering on the side of his mind now like a butterfly in a cocoon.

“Then we’ll leave.”

Harry swallowed. “I told you that I didn’t want to make you give it up.”
“But if you ever start hating it that much, then you’ll hate it more than you like
giving me what I want.” Tom’s voice was soft as he leaned over and traced a
fingernail up the corner of Harry’s face, around his eyesocket. “You and our
bond matter more to me than the Minister’s position. It’s only that if
you can tolerate my being in the office, then I would prefer to stay here.”

Harry nodded and reached up to clasp his hand around Tom’s wrist. “How
would I ever accomplish my grand plan to make you betray your own political
principles and champion mine if we left?”

Tom smiled, and then he laughed. He bent down and captured Harry’s lips.
Harry gave in to the bond surging between them, in colors as bold and deep as a
summertime meadow streaked with sunlight.

Tom pulled his head back with a little sigh, and murmured, “I must admit that I
would at least like to stay in power until the Dumbledore situation is settled.”

Harry nodded. “Of course. We need to bring him down, and we need to know
where in the world Grindelwald went.” That had been one thing Pettigrew
hadn’t accounted for, since he’d sensibly left the tunnel as soon as he could. It
was incredible that he’d managed to capture Dumbledore’s wand at all.

“At least he doesn’t seem to be cooperating with his soulmate. That’s

something. But Dumbledore’s doubled powers worry me.”

Harry narrowed his eyes, because the bond was vibrating and jumping between
them, but the emotions that flooded down it were too warm for worry. “Tom?
Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

Tom touched his hands lightly. “I know that you’ve done remarkable feats of
magic, and each time, I was there, which means that I could have been feeding
into your power passively. But we need to start training together. To have the
skill to oppose Dumbledore with those fourfold powers that we’re destined to
have.”
Harry listened to the bond for a moment, and then laughed. “The notion of those
powers makes you excited, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.” Tom gave him a brief smile. “But I’m serious about the need to
train. And that means that we both need to do our part. You need to keep
visiting Healer Laufrey. And I need to introduce you to someone I’ve been
putting off the introduction of. I was worried that it might go badly.”

Harry swallowed. “A past lover?”

Tom stared at him. The bond turned a sickly yellow. “You think I would
be that crass? Or that any past lover could matter compared to what I have with
you?”
Harry shrugged and turned his face away, a little embarrassed. “I mean, you
would keep someone like that around if it was for a practical purpose. You
would expect me to get over my embarrassment and any feeling that I was
inadequate. So I don’t think it’s as terrible a suspicion as you—will you stop
laughing at me?”

“No one could compare to you,” Tom murmured, and kissed his forehead, while
the bond still coruscated with laughter. “I had other lovers because I wanted to
make sure that I had the skill to make my soulmate feel good, but I kept none of
them. Most of them were the kind of people who wanted absolute devotion,
anyway, and I could never have given that to them.”

“For the same reasons that you were telling me that you would stay with me
until your soulmate made you leave.”

“Yes. That it turned to be you is the greatest gift of my life.”

He’s an evil prick, and then he says something like that. Harry leaned on Tom’s
arm, and it was only a few minutes later that he stirred and said, “You have
someone you want me to meet? Or something you want to show me?”

“Both.” Tom’s hands closed on Harry’s shoulders and drew him gently out of
the chair.

“Nagini, come forth.”

Harry started at the Parseltongue words and gave him a strange glance. Tom
ignored him, eyes still on the shadows stirring around the doorway that led into
the drawing room. And then she slithered out, all the gorgeous meters of her,
and came straight towards Harry, who was staring at her in—

Fascination. Good. Tom relaxed. He had been worried, despite Harry’s

understanding of Parseltongue, that it would be revulsion.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry breathed, and Nagini, who recognized that word well
enough, turned her head and flickered her tongue out as she showed off the
scales on the side of her neck to Tom’s bondmate. “She’s your familiar, right?”

Tom nodded. “I didn’t dare let most people know about her. They would know
what I realized when I bonded with her.”

“Which is what?” Harry knelt down on the floor, fearless, and Nagini slithered
over and entwined herself around his arms. She made approving comments
about his warmth in Parseltongue, which caused Harry to smile.

“I had a living soulmate.”

Harry frowned. “I don’t understand. I mean, either part. Why you had to be
careful not to refer to Nagini around anyone else or why anyone would assume
that you didn’t have a living soulmate. You were searching for me so
devotedly.”

Tom nodded and sat down beside Harry. Nagini deigned to drape part of her tail
in his lap, but she was busy smelling Harry and demanding that he scratch her
behind the head, where her skin was beginning to split.

“Bonding with a familiar on a level as deep as I did with Nagini couldn’t be

done by someone whose soulmate is dead, or who has broken the bond,” Tom
said. “I actually thought that Dumbledore might have broken his bond with
Fawkes because he rejected his bond with Grindelwald, at least until I came
upon the theory about phoenixes being servants of fate instead and seeking the
people who can help them achieve that fate. And many people assumed that my
bond was broken when my soul-mark was burned off.”

Harry blinked at him for a second, then at the phoenix of onyx and diamonds
hanging around his neck. Tom had thought of taking it off, but after this long, it
felt part of him almost in the way Harry’s mark was. “But you were still
searching…”

Tom nodded. “There were others who assumed that I was a fool, however. They
would have been much more dangerous if they knew about Nagini and realized
I was right and they were wrong. And they might have had the resources and
time to search more openly for my soulmate, and destroy you if they found
you.”

“How? You had all those spells and counters all over the Ministry…”

Nagini shoved her head at him. “Talk about boring things later. Scratch now.”

Harry did with a helpless smile, and Tom took up the conversation again as
much as he wished he could just sit there and watch his soulmate rejoice with
his familiar. “What if my soulmate had been born in another country? Or had
died? It’s not like I would have known for sure, not with my soul-mark gone.
Oh, yes, I had the bond with Nagini, but all that proved was that my soulmate
had been alive or unborn when I bonded with her. It didn’t guarantee they still
were.”

Harry reached over and took his hand, while the bond throbbed as if the hooting
of an owl were echoing through it. “I’m sorry I made it so difficult for you. I
just—the Order—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tom said, and drew Harry back to rest against him.
Nagini came with them and curled up around them both, distracted even from
the itching of her old skin by the fact that they were together, at last, and Harry
had taken to her so easily. “You are here now.”

Harry sighed and relaxed. But the bond remained alert in the way that meant he
wasn’t going to sleep, and finally he asked mentally, as soft as new dawn, Was
there a particular reason that you wanted me to meet Nagini now and not later?
Tom stroked the nape of Harry’s neck with his knuckles. He had a remarkable
soulmate. Later, Harry said, and not earlier, forgiving something that another
might not.

“I think we’ll need ritual magic, you and I, to defeat Dumbledore and
Grindelwald,” he murmured. “And for that ritual, we’ll need Nagini’s help.” He
paused, and Harry shifted so that he could look up at him. “And you’ll need to
bond with a snake as well.”

“Are you willing to swear the oaths that we’ve asked of you?”

Molly glanced over at Arthur. He gently touched her shoulder. They were in the
middle of a long corridor that ran between the Ministry holding cells, which
they’d only spent a few hours in. The rest of the time, they’d been, confusingly,
in a cozy if small flat, or around Sirius, James, and Lily.

“Yes,” Molly said, and Arthur smiled at her as if the words had ended some
private nightmare he’d been having. Their bond twanged gently as he stepped
up next to her and held out his hands.

The Auror who had been assigned to be their Bonder nodded, and then the door
at the far end of the corridor opened and the Minister stepped out. Molly gently
blew out the air in her lungs. For some reason, even though she’d known they
would make their oath not to work with the Order of the Phoenix again to some
high-ranking Ministry official, it had never shadowed her mind that it would be
him.

“Molly and Arthur Weasley,” Riddle murmured as he stepped in front of them.

The phoenix pendant around his neck swung a little and then came to a stop.
Molly tore her gaze from it and sent her eyes back to Riddle’s face, surprising
what looked like a small amused smile there. But then it was banished, and
Riddle nodded to her as he held out his own hands. “Clasp one of them each.”

Arthur took Riddle’s left hand in what seemed like intimidated silence, but
Molly did have to speak up, if only to find out why things were so different than
she’d thought they were. “Why are you the one doing this, sir?” she asked, as
she took his right. It was warm and slightly dry, without the chill reptilian
texture that she’d imagined it would have.

“There is nothing I would not do to oblige my soulmate.”

Molly sighed a little. Of course. It was hard to realize how much they owed to
Harry, after what Ron and Hermione had done to him.

But she could do nothing to reverse that, or for Ron and Hermione right now.
She settled back into stillness and waited for the first words of the demanded
oath.

“Do the both of you swear that you will never take up arms against the Ministry
again, except in self-defense?” Riddle asked. His voice had a slight hiss to the
edges, perhaps at the thought of them fighting against the Ministry when he’d
gone out of his way—and Molly knew he had—to give them good treatment.

“I so swear,” Molly said, and Arthur was able to say it with her, since they had
such a complete soulmate bond. The words flowed from them and formed into a
bond of fire around their clasped hands.
The Auror standing next to them sucked in a harsh breath, but Molly wasn’t
sure why. Maybe the oath Riddle was asking for was milder than the one the
Auror had expected.

Riddle stared into her eyes. “Do the both of you swear that you will never again
communicate with Albus Dumbledore except under orders from me or Harry
Potter, by letter, mental communication, Floo, face-to-face, or any other way
you can comprehend?”

“I so swear,” Molly said, and as Arthur’s voice chimed along with hers, she felt
the bond shiver with disgust. Neither of them wanted to have anything to do
with the old man again. His fanaticism had got Ron and Hermione turned into
Squibs.

Riddle nodded as the second band of fire joined the first. “Do the both of you
swear that you will ask Harry Potter the instant you have a question about
Ministry procedures or the justice of what you see?”

Molly blinked. That wasn’t an oath she had expected to swear. But she and
Arthur spoke it, and the third band of fire, thicker than the others, as if this vow
was more important to Riddle, appeared.

Riddle flexed his fingers back and forth for a moment, as if he was getting tired.
Molly felt the power burning beneath his skin, and then she saw what the Auror
must have noticed, and gasped aloud.

There was no Bonder. Riddle was doing this all by himself, with wandless
magic. Fourfold power, Molly thought. It has to be.

She felt stupid as she met Riddle’s eyes and watched the corners of his mouth
turn up in a smug smile, but he didn’t taunt her. He only said, “Do the both of
you so swear that you will not engage in terrorist activities of the kind that you
undertook in the Order of the Phoenix, except at the order of myself, the
Wizengamot, or Harry Potter?”

“I so swear,” Molly said, Arthur’s voice only a beat behind.

She was still shaking as the oath finished and tightened around all their wrists in
brilliant ribbons that, after a moment, faded. It was one thing to know that
Riddle had claimed his soulmate and Harry was happier there than he had been
with the Order, something Molly unfortunately had no reason to doubt.
It was another thing to know that Riddle, the man she was used to thinking of as
a fearsome Dark Lord bent on genocide, could love, and that Harry loved him.

“Good,” Riddle said, standing back to his full height. “Now, I have the flat
where you stayed last night prepared for you, or Lily and James Potter have
invited you to stay with them. It’s up to you.”

Molly blinked, and blinked again. She glanced at Arthur, and he was the one
who answered, probably because he’d felt her confusion thrumming through the
bond. “We would like to stay with the Potters. Thank you.”

Perhaps only Molly knew how great the bitterness was behind the words that
Arthur just barely managed to force out, but Riddle only smiled and nodded as
if they were all the best of friends. “Then follow me to the Atrium. The Potters
are waiting there to collect you, and they’ll guide you to your temporary home.”
He turned around.

“Why are you doing this?” Molly asked his back.

The Aurors shifted as if they thought it was a stupid question, or worse, but she
couldn’t help it. Even if Riddle was really capable of love, that wasn’t the same
as being capable of kindness. Molly had fought beside and against soulmated
couples who were fierce and cruel in defense of their beloved and cared nothing
for anyone else.

Riddle glanced over his shoulder. Molly shivered. There was the coldness, the
indifference, that she had fully expected to see before this.

“Harry suffered when he lost his best friends from school,” Riddle said. “I
didn’t want him to lose his parents, and we negotiated a pardon for them. His
godfather is under more restrictions for several reasons, but he’s behaved with
some sense. You have even more. Why should Harry suffer when you seem
capable of behaving yourselves?”

And he turned and went down the corridor, and Molly started following before
one of the Aurors standing beside them could push her.

That single glance was still with her, lingering as cold near her heart. Riddle
was like one of those Dark Lords of legend whose only concern was their
soulmate, then. Perhaps not ready to wage a war on Muggles and Muggleborns
the way they had all thought he was, but deeply ready to do anything he must in
protection of his soulmate, or anything that would make Harry happy.
I pray that what makes Harry happy will never be a war.

Albus crouched beside the small, cool pond in front of him and splashed water
onto his face. Then he sighed. Perhaps it was foolish to linger so close to
Hogwarts, in a corner of the Forbidden Forest where he had built a version of
the Order’s refuge by himself when he was still Headmaster and had imagined
Riddle coming down on the school unheralded some night. But he had to have
his wand back, and that was the place where the thief probably still dwelt.

He glanced to the side, and at the small flask that lay there, and then away
again.

The effect of the Amortentia had ended, and with it, the love that he felt for
Gellert. He could start it burning again, he knew. All he had to do was swallow
the potion. He wouldn’t even have to use the rune or the rest of the ritual, now
that he had already resurrected their bond. It was in hibernation, not dead.

But with the fading of the potion had come the fading of a veil from his mind.

Did he want to force Gellert into the bond? Did he want to force this war? If
Riddle and Potter were going to win and become Dark Lords, what could
someone whose bond and twofold magic only worked sometimes do about it?

He sat back on his heels, still staring at the vial, on the precipice of a decision
that he knew he wouldn’t come back from.

He glanced up sharply as he heard a trace of sweet song from above him. When
he looked up, his phoenix was perched there, a creature of stunning midnight
blue and white, head cocked so that one sapphire eye was fixed on him.
“Do you want them to win?”

Albus swallowed. “I’m not sure I’m the right one to fight this war.”

“This is not about you. This is about the innocents who will suffer if you don’t
win.”

And the visions flooded out of the phoenix’s voice as it sang, and Albus saw
them. Muggleborns in campus, lying dead in trenches. Muggles poisoned and
dying by the millions. Muggle leaders controlled with the Imperius, launching
their nuclear weapons at each other. Harry reduced to a slave with a collar
around his neck, dazed with love and feeding magic to Riddle, who laughed,
red-eyed, over a world of the dead.

Albus shuddered, and the song died. The phoenix ruffled its feathers and
continued to watch him.

“But how can I win when I have only half the bond?” Albus said. “And that
only with the help of a potion?”

“How can you win if you refuse to try?”

And that shamed Albus, at last, into picking up the potion. His hands were
shaking, but he was resolved as he watched the phoenix swoop down from the
branch and vanish into nothingness.

Someone had to fight Riddle and Potter.

He swallowed the potion, and the burn of it cut through his doubts and pain.
Albus smiled, and turned his head.

He could feel Gellert’s pulse now, in the distance. He would go and fetch his
bondmate, and then he would get back to his war.

Chapter 33: Darkness

Chapter Text

“And you’re sure that it’s going to be completely safe?” Peter couldn’t help
asking for the fifth time as he walked towards the cart that waited at the vault
door. He glanced back at his vault, but the door had already sealed, and he
couldn’t see the Elder Wand.

“It almost seems as if you don’t trust us, sir.” The goblin who had led him to the
vault turned around and squinted at him with eyes deep enough that Peter
winced. When goblins started to look like that, and when they got polite, it
meant they were angry enough to be about to attack.

“I’m sorry.” Peter managed to hold himself back from flinching. He

remembered Fawkes’s soft song and the touch of the phoenix’s beak to his face.
He had been brave enough to face down a wizard much more powerful than
himself. That had to mean he could face down goblins, too. “But I recovered
that wand from a wizard who will want it for himself. I’m nervous about him
tracking me down, that’s all.”
The goblin considered him, then snorted and resumed the walk to the cart.
“Fine. It still smacks of distrust for you to doubt the security of the vaults.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter repeated, and then settled into the cart for the ride back to the
surface with a long sigh. He would have to hope that Dumbledore didn’t figure
out where he had taken it, and didn’t attack the bank with twofold power that
was enough to bring down the vaults.

Then again, Riddle, also a powerful wizard, and Harry, his soulmate, who
probably had fourfold power, had touched the wand and said it was dead to
them. Maybe that meant that if Dumbledore broke into the bank and got it back,
he still couldn’t use it?

Peter shook his head. It still felt like a chain of suppositions to him.

Then again, keeping the wand with him when he didn’t have the power to use it
felt like an even worse wager. He would just have to do the best he could, and
hope it didn’t work out badly.

This time, no one had obstructed his walk through the secret tunnel. Albus
straightened up outside it and checked his Disillusionment Charm. For being
wandless, it was holding up well.

He smiled. That naughty Gellert. Well, he couldn’t prevent the power their bond
gave him from flowing to Albus, and he couldn’t do anything to stop Albus
once he had the Elder Wand back. Albus turned and began walking up the
corridor towards his old office, humming to himself. There were devices there
that he had modeled after the Marauder’s Map James and Sirius had made. With
them, he could scan the whole of the school and find the Elder Wand’s hiding
place.

And then, he could do what he was meant to do, and protect the magical world
from the triumph of two Muggle-hating man.

Why does the magical world never realize it’s in danger? Albus asked himself
as he came to a halt outside the gargoyle. Why did it not realize it when Tom
Riddle started running for office? They should have known that someone who
was that slick and seemed so promising was up to no good. They should have
known that those two children had a reason for burning his soul-mark off his
chest. They probably foresaw what he would do.
Well, it did no good to speculate on the past. Albus sighed and spoke to the
gargoyle. “Licorice whips.”

The gargoyle didn’t move. Albus gave a disgusted shrug. He should have
known Minerva would change his password, but it had been worth a try. He
reached out and placed his hand on the gargoyle’s head, directing a long flow of
power into it. He had made sure ages ago that his command over vital things in
the school would go undisturbed, since it was tied to the position he held as
Headmaster. And Tom Riddle hadn’t formally removed him from that position.

For some reason, however, the top of the gargoyle’s head exploded into a
cascade of sparks, and Albus snatched his hand back, staring. Riddle hadn’t
removed him formally as Headmaster, but someone had.

“You should have known better than to think it would be that easy, when your
office has accepted me.”

Albus made a show of reluctance as he turned and his Disillusionment Charm

dropped. In fact, he didn’t really want to duel Minerva. She wouldn’t overcome
him when he had twofold power, even if he was currently wandless, but he
didn’t want to hurt her, either. She had stood by his side loyally for many years,
even when she was being a bloody inconvenient ally, and even when she had
broken with the Order of the Phoenix’s ideals.

“Minerva,” he told her gently, watching her red-flushed cheeks and the way she
gripped her wand. “Whatever lies Riddle and Potter have told you about me,
they are not true.”

“Your own behavior was all the excuse I needed,” Minerva snapped, and
stalked a little closer. Albus approved of that. His wandless spells were most
potent close-to, where he could catch a limb and tug someone from their feet, or
smother them in Transfigured material, or simply Stun them. “What were
you thinking, trying to sneak into the school?”

“I’m thinking that I need my wand back, Minerva, and you would not have
granted it to me.”

“It’s not your wand now.”

Albus sighed, despite the way that his heartbeat suddenly echoed in his ears.
“You think someone taking it away from me is the same as someone winning it
in a fair duel? I promise you, Minerva, it’s not the same. On the other hand,
there’s no need for a duel that would destroy half of Hogwarts and might cost
innocent lives. Give me my wand, and I will go my way and let you be
unharmed.”
“What a generous offer.”

“Well, yes. I thought it was.”

Minerva’s wand snapped into her hand. Albus raised his own hand, keeping his
face mild and his actions slow. There was still the chance that she would see
sense and back down before a fight started.

“Professor Legion,” said Minerva, her voice sharp, precise, “if Professor
Dumbledore moves, you know what to do.”

“Yes, Headmistress.”

Albus twitched a little, not liking the idea that standing somewhere out of sight
—even her voice had been altered so that he couldn’t pinpoint the source—was
Juliet Legion, their NEWT Potions professor. She was a vicious woman whom
Albus had never trusted, but after Riddle had taken control of the Ministry and
poured so much money into Hogwarts, Albus had largely lost control of hiring.
She knew Dark magic that might explain who had taken his wand from him in
the corridor below Hogwarts.

“I hope that you won’t do anything impulsive, Professor Legion,” he said,

raising his voice a little. “You might as well know that I have resurrected the
bond with my soulmate and have twofold magic. Remember that I was powerful
already, and estimate your chances if you have to face me.”

Legion said nothing in response. Albus hoped that meant she was reconsidering
her stance on Minerva’s side, although probably not, given that she was Dark
and her own soulmate was Pomona Sprout, the Hufflepuff Head of House. She
probably thought her own fourfold power could match his.

Let’s find out, Albus thought, and aimed his hand towards Minerva, willing
power through it that ought to force her back and make her heart stutter. Not
enough for a heart attack—he would never do that to a dear former friend—but
enough to take her out of the battle, freeing him to concentrate on Legion.

Minerva moved out of the way with a mocking smile, at the same time as
something heavy and warm collided with Albus’s back. He went down, gasping,
on his knees, and tried to struggle out of what felt like a huge heated blanket
draped over him. He did manage to roll onto his back, but not further than that.
A brown bear’s face snarled an inch from his own. Albus froze in sheer
surprise. He hadn’t realized that Legion was an Animagus.

But surprise couldn’t keep him pinned by itself, not when he knew what he was
dealing with. He gathered more of the same wandless force he’d planned for
Minerva between his palms, and slammed them down into the floor.

The force propelled him straight upwards, and although it didn’t carry him as
far as it might have without the weight of the bear on him, it still got him out of
his prone and trapped position. Albus staggered back to his feet on the other
side of the corridor while the bear stood up and shook her head.

This time, Albus aimed his hand at her. He still didn’t wish harm on anyone else
here, but the Legion had managed to be in his employ for eight years and he’d
had no idea she was an Animagus…he had to take out an opponent this
dangerous before she revealed some other unexpected talent.

But he had to shift his focus again before he could do that, this time to raise a
wandless shield against Minerva’s Stunner. He couldn’t help the stare he gave
her, and he hated the edge of the smile that lifted her lips in return, even more
mocking than the previous one.

“How dare you come back to the school you abandoned and assault my
professors?” Minerva whispered. “Why did you come back?”

“All I wanted was my wand! I would have departed in peace if you’d given it to
me.”

Albus had started out almost shouting indignantly, but towards the end, he
managed to tame his voice. The last thing he wanted was for students to become
involved, one reason he’d come so late at night when most of them would
already in their common rooms. But he supposed he should give up on
persuading Minerva.

This time, he bent all his concentration and will except for the part holding the
shield into a simple Summoning Charm. Accio Albus Dumbledore’s wand!

There was no response, not so much as a flicker. Albus felt a moment of greyest
despair before he forced his reaction down. Then he glanced at the bear.

She was gone. In her place, one hand to the back of her head as if he had hit her
there, was Pomona Sprout. And behind her was Juliet Legion, one arm curved
protectively around her soulmate, her wand as steady on Albus as Minerva’s.
This time, Albus really couldn’t prevent the words that spilled from his lips.
“You kept this from me all these years, Pomona?” The only people who had
worked for him longer were Minerva, Filius, and Binns.
“I kept it secret from everyone except my soulmate,” said Pomona, glancing at
him coolly. “And as you made it clear from the start of my soulmate’s tenure
here that you weren’t going to trust a Dark witch, I never saw a reason to
inform you.” She gently touched Legion’s arm. “I promise that I’m fine,
dearest. Worry about him.”
Something like a knife pushed in under Albus’s heart. He would never have that
with Gellert, since his soulmate persisted in not loving Albus the way he should
—
But then the bright cascade of love poured down on him again. What did that
matter? He loved Gellert exactly the way he was, and that was enough for the
bond, and that was enough for the safety of the world. Albus didn’t need
personal happiness. He was a humble servant of the greatest possible happiness
for the greatest possible number.

He said, “Professor Legion, if you aim your wand at me, I am going to strike as
hard as I can.”

Legion didn’t respond. She was a tall woman with dark hair always bound
beneath a scarf on her head, and grey eyes that Albus had never liked meeting,
for fear of what he would see in them. Now, she stepped away from Pomona as
the poor woman had commanded, and drew a flask with a shifting green potion
in it from her robe pocket.

Albus couldn’t help staring. “Battle draughts?”

Legion only offered him the same kind of mocking smile that Minerva had—at
least Albus thought he knew who had corrupted her now—and hurled the flask
into the air. It clanged to a stop about a meter away from Albus as if on an
invisible shelf and began to pour the thick green potion all over the floor. Albus
backed hastily away. Battle draughts had various effects, from turning the
enemy to stone to bewildering their minds so badly they couldn’t cast magic.
He, and more importantly, the world and the people that depended on him,
couldn’t afford for him to be caught here.

He tried again, this time screaming it aloud and not caring who heard him.
“Accio the Elder Wand!”

There was a long, drawn-out gasp that might have come from any of the three
women around him, and—
Albus strained all his senses, ignoring the way the green potion was piling up in
front of him, an effect he’d never seen before, forming a sludgy pile that was
growing claws and arms. All he needed was an edge of response, and a sense of
direction. He knew the school well. He would find his wand no matter where
they had hidden it.

There was no hint of a response. At all.

The battle draught’s creature loomed before him, thick as though it was made of
mud, but with brilliant glowing yellow eyes and a mouth that yawned open.
Dripping fangs snapped at him. Albus backed up a step before he realized how
fatal that was, how much confidence it would give to the enemy.

And then he saw the merciless look in Legion’s eyes, the way Pomona stared at
him with contempt, the way Minerva was angling in from the side.

He had no idea where the wand was.

He turned and ran.

“I’m sorry that we didn’t catch him, Minerva.”

“You did better than anyone could have expected, against one of the most
dangerous wizards in the world.” Minerva smiled wearily at Juliet and Pomona
as they stood in front of her desk, subtly leaning on each other. Through long
practice, she kept envy out of her voice and kept herself from rubbing her soul-
mark that had turned dark with the loss of Elphinstone. “Even wandless, he’s
still that.”

Juliet nodded, eyes fixed on her. “And what are you going to do now?”

“Report what happened to Minister Riddle. He has the Aurors and the time to
deal with this. My primary duty remains to the school, to you and our students.”

“If you don’t need us for anything else, then…?”

Minerva shook her head, and watched as Juliet tenderly supported Pomona out
of the room. Being tossed in her bear form was still rattling the woman.

Left alone, Minerva shut her eyes and worded the facts carefully in her head.
They had done incredibly well, yes, and Minerva was happy that both Juliet and
Pomona were on her side. But they had also lost Albus, and even though she
had started running from her quarters as soon as she’d heard the wards scream
about an intruder, Riddle was unlikely to look graciously on that.

Still, by the time she had worded the report in her head well enough that she
thought she wouldn’t get herself or Juliet and Pomona in trouble, Minerva
realized that her hand wasn’t shaking as she reached for the Floo powder.

The way it had been shaking during the encounter with Albus.

She feared Minister Riddle, formidable fourfold power and all, less than she did
her former Headmaster and friend.

“Nagini will help us.”

Harry nodded and moved slowly to stand at the opposite point of the silver
circle, pure silver as far as he could tell, embedded in the floor of the house
Tom had brought him to. Harry had looked around as they walked through the
corridors, but hadn’t seen any family device that he recognized, or even any
portraits. Maybe this had belonged to political enemies of Tom’s, or maybe it
was connected to the heritage that he hadn’t told Harry about in any detail.
Curious, dear one? What is it?

Harry swallowed as he looked up at his soulmate again. “I was just wondering

—where you came from. What your family was like. I’ve heard the stories and
the rumors, but that’s all they seem to be, without substance. Except that you
can obviously claim descent from Salazar Slytherin, of course.”

Tom’s eyelids drooped over his eyes. Then he said, “I don’t like to talk about
it.”

“I realize that, which is why I haven’t asked until now.” Harry gestured with his
hand around the circle, around the whole room where Nagini was crawling in a
slow motion, without taking his eyes off Tom. “This house, for instance. It
doesn’t look like a pureblood manor, but I don’t think a Muggleborn family
would have had a house this big, either. Is it yours? Why?”

For a minute, Tom’s hand tightened on his wand. Then he relaxed and tucked it
into his robe pocket. “It appears that we won’t be conducting the ritual right
this moment, Nagini.”
Nagini lifted her head high enough that Harry thought she was going to rear
right off the floor. “But the little one needs a snake.”
Harry hated how he flushed at the words. Little one. Well, he was shorter than
Tom, and not as long as Nagini. But he wasn’t as short as some of the people he
had known at Hogwarts. For a moment, his mind filled with the thought of little
Colin Creevey.

Little Colin Creevey who had sent him a Howler the other day, because he was
soulmated to someone Colin believed wanted only the worst for Muggleborns
like him.

Harry sighed as he half-listened to Tom answering Nagini. He probably wasn’t

going to get the best answer from Tom at the moment. But that didn’t matter.
He had to know, and then he had to work to change things.

That was the way it was.

Tom nodded once and then said, “So you might have heard that my father was a
Muggle and my mother a Squib of the Gaunt family.”

“Among other rumors,” Harry said, hoping to make Tom smile. Tom only gave
him a somber look and went on talking.

“Those are the true rumors. My mother fell in love with my father, who was
handsome.” Tom spent a moment touching his face. “I inherited my looks from
him, although I fancy that I am better-looking.”

“Infinitely.”

Tom half-smiled. “Your opinion means little as someone who never saw my
father, but I value it nonetheless.” He was quiet for a moment. “My mother used
a love potion on my father. They married under its influence. After they were
married and she knew she was pregnant, she was stupid enough to think she
could discontinue feeding him the potion and get him to love her on his own
recognizance.”

His eyes were distant, his voice caustic as he spoke of his mother, but Harry
could feel the pain flooding, cold and silver, down the bond. He reached out and
let a comforting hand of calm rest on Tom’s soul.

Tom closed his eyes, then nodded. “He rejected her. In fact, he was horrified to
learn there was such a thing as magic, having never had a clue that our world
existed. He returned to their home village, and my mother fled to London. She
died on the steps of an orphanage, living long enough to name me. And I was
raised by abusive Muggles.”
Harry took a long breath, but didn’t interrupt. The bond was singing like a
strangled snake now, and Nagini had moved closer to Tom, staring at him in
silence while her tongue darted out.

“I didn’t discover the truth of my family heritage until after I’d been at
Hogwarts several years. I tracked down my mother’s remaining family
members, but they wanted—nothing to do with me. Neither did my father or his
parents. I wanted to kill them. It might have been better if I had.”

“What did you do?”

“Placed them under the Imperius Curse. I convinced my grandparents that they
wanted to donate every bit of money they owned to various organizations. I let
them choose the charities. I didn’t care. I wanted them to be poor. They ended
up starving to death a few years after that.”

“And your father?”

The bond was as dark and thick as tar now, and Tom seemed to take the same
amount of effort to force the words out that Harry would have had to use to
move through real tar. “I trapped him in his mind. I convinced him that the
reality of his leaving my mother behind had been a dream, and that she had been
in control of his life from the point when she’d told him she was a witch. That I
had grown up in this house with him, the true master of it along with my
mother, while he thought he lived with only his parents. He ‘remembered’
waking up now and then from the spell, and then he would go back under it.
The Imperius Curse reinforced the illusion until he couldn’t distinguish it from
his own perceptions.”

“And what happened to him in the end?”

Tom met Harry’s gaze. “He went mad within a fortnight. He spent the rest of
his life screaming his lungs out in the home where his parents placed him.”

Harry stared back with the pulse beating high and hard in his throat. He was
sure Tom could have seen it even if he didn’t feel it through the bond. He
swallowed and sought something to say.

“I’ll understand if you want to back away and not spend time with me for a
while.”

Harry shook his head. “We’re not at the end of the story yet. What—why did
you come to have their house?”
Tom shrugged. “My grandparents willed the house to an animal sanctuary. It
was an easy thing to go to the sanctuary and use the Imperius Curse to make
sure that they sold it to me at a cheap price.”

Harry stood there and tried to figure out how he felt about that. The emotions
blended and mixed in him like running paint. Nagini slithered towards him and
hissed, “You smell like pain.”

Tom flinched slightly at the sound of that, but Harry lifted his head. “Not only
pain,” he said, not sure if Nagini could understand the English words, but then,
he wasn’t really speaking to her anyway. He stared Tom in the eye. “I should—
dislike it more.”

“And me? Dislike me more?” Tom sounded as if he was perched on the edge of
a cliff waiting for the answer.

“I should,” Harry agreed, and felt the bond flinch far more than Tom did across
from him. Tom just seemed to sway back and forth a little. Harry lifted his head
and forced himself to speak the words that burned in his throat. “But I don’t.”

“Tell me what that means, Harry.” Tom’s voice was a soft breath, and Harry
thought the mental bond probably whispered the words to him far more than he
was hearing them. A stray thought drifted through his head, something about
how soulmates would know the bond between them was deepest when they
didn’t bother to distinguish between spoken and mental communication.

But Harry just lsaid, “I hate what you did. I hate the thought of cursing someone
with the Imperius Curse and driving them mad. Or starving them to death. It—
it’s evil. It’s wrong.”

Tom nodded, but didn’t say anything or move, because he had to know as well
as Harry did that more was coming.

“But there are two things,” Harry said, and glanced down at the mark on his
wrist as the bond between them shimmered and danced like light on water.
“Three things, really. First, it’s in the past, and I can’t time travel. I want you to
make up for what you did. Rejecting you for it and screaming that you’re evil in
your face won’t change anything.”

“Hardly.” Tom’s voice was soft, but Harry could hear the bite there, and the
bond vibrated, once, as if the water could harden into ice and be plucked like an
instrument.
Harry continued, more slowly, no longer as sure as he had been about what the
right move was. “Second, our bond is complete. I’m not going to reject you. It’s
just not going to happen.”

The ice melted and dawn raced through their bond, streaks of brilliant light.
Harry tried not to smile, because he really did shudder at the thought of what
Tom had done to his father and grandparents. He moved a little closer to Tom,
but stayed on his side of the silver circle inlaid into the floor.

“And third,” Harry said quietly, “I hate them, too, for what they left you to.”

Tom was staring at him in a way that made Harry feel the sun might have
gained eyes and landed in front of him. Harry felt his face warm, and breathed
out as carefully as he could.

“No one has ever told me that before,” Tom breathed, and the bond sang and
strummed and flooded Harry with warmth until he did have to come around the
circle after all, damn their ritual preparations, and clasp Tom’s hands.

“How many did you let close enough to know you?” Harry asked gently. “I
know that it wasn’t your fault that you were abandoned or that you had your
soul-mark burned off.” Tom’s left hand twitched towards his jeweled phoenix,
but Harry didn’t let it go. “But after that, the defenses you set up would have
discouraged most people who wanted to get close.”

“And I did not want them close,” Tom murmured, his fingers flexing around
Harry’s. “I knew they would have tried to know me because they were looking
for political power, not because they wanted to sympathize with or help me.”

Harry nodded. “Right. I—I can’t pretend that I like what you’ve done, Tom.”
He shuddered as he thought of Tom’s grandparents starving to death under the
forceful compulsion to donate every piece of their money to charity, of Tom’s
father trapped and screaming in his head. “But that’s why we have to move
forwards and change things, because the answer isn’t abandoning powerful
magical children to abusive homes or excusing the crimes of those who hurt
you, either. I’d like to take some of those Galleons you keep offering me for my
own use and set up a foundation.”

“To do what?”

“To work on ways of countering the Unforgivable Curses.”

Tom shifted within Harry’s hold, his fingers flexing back and forth. “So that if
something like I did to my father happened again, you would have people
available who would recognize it and—”

Recognize it. The words came from both of them, colliding and meeting in the
middle of the bond like aimed curses.
Harry held Tom’s eyes much like he was holding his hands. “Yes. I don’t know
if you would ever use the same trick twice after telling me about it, Tom. I don’t
know if you’ve used it during other times that you don’t want to tell me about
right now. But I do know that no one deserves to suffer that way. And you’re
not the only wizard with the strength or skill or cruelty to have used that trick.
We work on creating a staff of people who are experienced in treating the
effects of the Imperius Curse and recognizing it, and treating the aftereffects of
exposure to the Cruciatus. Maybe even teaching people to throw them both off,
if we’re lucky.”

“And the Killing Curse?”

Harry swallowed. It wasn’t betrayal, he reminded himself. Not with everything

the Order had done to him. He looked into Riddle’s eyes.

“Dumbledore was working on a ritual way of deflecting the Killing Curse,

before he—went mad,” he admitted. “I don’t know the details, because it wasn’t
a main project of the Order’s. They thought you would use subtler means until
the war you were supposedly preparing for began. But I do know where the
notes that he was working on are hidden.”

Tom was still for a moment, and then he reached out and wrapped the bond
around Harry like the coils of a huge, warm snake.

You know that you can trust me, don’t you, darling?
Harry relaxed as much as he could when he was leaning back on nothing that
was actually there, the defining coils of Tom’s snake of power. Of course I do.
Tom caressed him with magic more than his hands, since his fingers were
making only small movements, and then said, Trust me now. He released one of
Harry’s hands and picked up his wand. Harry watched with half-lidded eyes and
a heart that was beating fast despite himself as Tom held out his wand and—
Tangled it in their bond. Harry stared. He hadn’t known that was possible. He’d
been around soulmated pairs for a long time, and none of them had ever done
anything like this.
They are not as brilliant as I am.
Harry snorted aloud. Nor as conceited.
When one is so incredibly brilliant, Harry, this is simply acknowledging reality.
Harry twitched one shoulder in acknowledgment, and watched in fascination as
Tom trailed silver threads behind his wand as he sketched a shape in the air. At
first, it looked like a miniature of the silver circle on the floor in the room with
them, but then it began to sprout dazzling complexities and dizzying half-
circles. By the time that Tom seemed to have finished sketching, Harry was
squinting, his eyes watering as he tried to grasp the shape.

You don’t have to grasp it. The important thing is that you understand what it
does.

Harry eyed him. “What does it do, then?” he asked aloud, simply to emphasize
the point that he didn’t know yet.

Tom closed his eyes and gathered up his magic, which Harry could feel, the
power wavering and breathing around him like a great beast’s slow exhalations.
Then he nodded and flung his wand out in front of him. “Avada Kedavra!”

Harry flinched back before he could stop himself, but even as he watched, the
green curse struck the middle of the silver maze and froze there. Then it began
to writhe back and forth like a lobster on the verge of being boiled.

Harry stared from Tom to the maze and back again. “What is going on?”
Tom replied in Parseltongue, his face slightly averted as if he didn’t want Harry
to see the expression on it. Of course, the bond blazed with pride and shame and
hatred and remorse, so that didn’t help much. “I’m aware of some of the same
research that Dumbledore must have been. People have been seeking a block to
the Killing Curse as long as it’s existed without one. But the rituals have always
been incomplete, and depended on being bound to a place and knowing ahead
of time that someone is going to cast this particular curse at you. Unless you’re
standing in that circle when it happens, the rituals are useless.”

Harry’s eyes flickered back to the maze. “But this isn’t?” It looked like a
drawing someone might try to make for a ritual.

Tom shook his head. “No. The essential part everyone was forgetting was
soulmate magic. And even then, it might not have worked without a soulmate
bond as powerful as ours. Until this moment, it was purely theoretical for me,
as well, since I didn’t have you until recently.” He tangled his fingers with
Harry’s and tugged him closer to the maze. “Come here, darling, look.”

Harry went with him, not reluctant but fascinated, and bent close enough to see
the green curse impaled on what seemed to be the silver spikes of one of the
maze’s half-circles.
“I don’t know what that means,” Harry admitted after staring at it for a little
while. Even with the pooled magic of their bond flowing between them, he
didn’t understand every nuance that Tom had tried to introduce or teach him.

For a moment, Tom’s chest inflated as if he didn’t want to explain what they
were actually looking at. Then he exhaled and turned to look at Harry instead.
“I’ve taken the ability to cast the Killing Curse away from myself.”

For a long moment, Harry’s body locked in a shivering tension. But he could
feel the truth from the bond. Tom had indeed done what he’d said.

Harry took a step back and stared at him. “But why?”

Tom caught hold of his hands again, the way Harry had held them when he was
trying to explain how he felt about what Tom had done. “Because I don’t want
you to distrust me. Because I want to show you that I support the work of this
foundation. Because I’ll donate this house to them if that’s what you want.” He
hesitated, then added, “Because giving up my ability to cast a spell is nothing
compared to the sacrifices I’m prepared to make for you.”

Harry leaned against Tom, overwhelmed. His body shook with emotion to the
point that he didn’t think Tom was surprised when he cleared his throat and
said, “We shouldn’t do the ritual to call a snake to me tonight.”

“No, I agree.” Tom’s voice, in English, was gentle again. He smoothed his
fingers down Harry’s cheek. “We’ll go home and come back tomorrow or this
weekend. Whenever the Wizengamot and my Ministry duties leave us enough
time.”

Harry nodded. Then he leaned harder against Tom, and sent a soft pulse of the
warmth he really did feel down the bond. He loved Tom, as complicated as this
was. He was bound. He wouldn’t be walking away any more than Hermione
and Ron would have walked away from each other, or his parents.

For better or worse.

Tom touched Harry’s cheek again, then his wrist, to watch the soul-mark shine
and dance with living flame. I am so much luckier than I ever deserved.
Chapter 34: Patterns
Chapter Text

“We have not truly discussed how you feel about your soulmate.”
Harry settled back in his chair and tried not to cross his arms. “Yes, we have.
It’s clear that I love him and he exasperates me.”

“I would like to see another memory of yours. Perhaps a time that you listened
to others discussing your soulmate and what you felt during then?”

Harry exhaled slowly. Gerald kept watching him with those terribly
understanding eyes, but there was something he hadn’t explained. “First, tell me
why this is so important.”

The Mind-Healer nodded. “Because I think that you haven’t acknowledged your
own conflicting feelings. I listened to you last week say that he was the most
important person in your life, and then five minutes later, you said your parents
were.”

Harry frowned. He couldn’t remember saying that. “I mean—people can feel

that someone is important to them in different ways.”

“Of course. I simply wanted to bring the contradiction to your attention, and ask
what you thought about it. And also,” Gerald added before Harry could answer
him, “to tell you that I think your situation is different than some others I’ve
seen. Yes, someone whose soulmate is Muggleborn when they’re a pureblood
and have grown up with a belief in blood purity has difficulty. But they have not
been surrounded with people telling them day in and day out that their
soulmate as a person is evil. Rather, it’s the category their soulmate belongs to
that is perceived as undesirable. Do you see the difference?”

Harry stirred restlessly. Yes, he saw the difference. He just didn’t think it
needed to be central to the Healer’s regime, and he said so.

Gerald considered him calmly. “Not central. But part of it. Until recently, Tom
Riddle was a man that you were willing to kill yourself to avoid. You tried to
erase your mark. You constructed an elaborate deception at every level of your
life, not even letting your godfather and your best friends know about your
mark. It nearly cost you Sirius’s life, and it played a part in costing you your
best friends. I do not believe that you could have gone from that stance to
accepting your soulmate as yours and solely yours without doing inner violence
to yourself.”

Harry rubbed his hands along his legs, his eyes fastened on his knees. This was
something he hadn’t really been able to talk about with anyone else. That much
was true. And it was equally true that he hadn’t really been ready to talk about
it. Tom was curious, of course, but Harry didn’t want to reveal anything that
would make him attack his mum and dad and godfather.

And his parents… They were making the best of a bad situation, and Harry
knew it. They had regrets about being involved with the Order of the Phoenix in
the first place, and with Dumbledore. They wished things could have been
different.

But they would listen to his misgivings about falling in love with Tom and urge
him to break free if he had any misgivings. Acceptance didn’t factor into their
thinking unless he was deeply and one hundred percent in love with Tom, even
though, with the Order broken and Dumbledore mad, Harry didn’t know what
they thought Harry would do.

Flee into the Muggle world? That was a possibility, and one that he could see
his mother suggesting when she’d grown up there.

“Harry?”

Harry jolted, and lifted his head. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I feel like Tom
wants me to become his grateful soulmate and burn the past, and my parents
want me to see that he’s evil and turn away. After having given it a good long
try, so that I never have the temptation to return to him in the future.”

The bond thrummed, and Tom reached out, his words gliding as softly as sharks
in shallow water. Are you all right, darling?
I want to concentrate on what I’m doing with Mind-Healer Laufrey.
The bond immediately closed down. Harry sighed. That was Tom for you. He
would yield in an instant as long as he thought Harry was doing
something else that he wanted him to do.

And it made Harry wonder exactly how well Tom would accept the political
compromises and the like that Harry wanted to offer in the future.

“Is there anyone you can talk to about that besides me?”

Harry considered that, but had to shake his head. “Tom is such a smooth talker
that I think he fools himself half the time. My parents are trying desperately to
be supportive, but they also would be thrilled if they thought I was doubting our
bond. My godfather…has his own problems.”

“And is your social circle so small?” Gerald asked gently. “You couldn’t ask
another friend, or a professor from your Hogwarts years?”
Harry blinked, hard. He hadn’t even thought of that. Of course, he’d felt distant
from most people in the school because he was hiding the secret of his soul-
mark, and so he’d assumed they felt the same way.

But…well, he had shared a bedroom with Neville Longbottom for seven years.

And friendship with Luna Lovegood for five of those. They hadn’t tried to talk
to him much since the end of their Hogwarts years, but Harry hadn’t reached
out, either. He was busy trying to help the Order with his low-level Ministry job
and the information he could pass to them, and he knew Neville was busy with
his Herbology business.

Luna? He had no idea what she was doing.

“I know some people who might be willing to talk to me,” Harry said, and
sighed a little as he massaged his sternum. It felt as if a weight had tumbled off
his shoulders, although he knew there was no guarantee that Neville or Luna
would be a perfect audience. Neville’s parents had been sympathetic to the
Order even though they’d never joined. Luna would listen, but she might not be
able to offer any reasonable advice.

“Why does that feel so much better?” he muttered to himself.

“You know that you are not alone,” Gerald said, and Harry jolted, actually
having forgotten for a second that the man was there. “I can offer you a
listening ear, but I shouldn’t be the only one. And you may not need them to tell
you what to do next. I have the feeling that many people have done that already.
Instead, they can offer you companionship.”

Harry nodded slowly. This Mind-Healing was working out a lot better than he’d
ever thought.

He couldn’t tell Tom that, though. The smugness that would come through the
bond would drown him.

Ignoring the curiosity he could feel plucking at him right now like the fingers of
a child, Harry tilted his head and asked, “Are we looking at memories today?”

“If you can find one that would not be too painful for you, I think it would
prove valuable.”

Harry nodded, and thought of one he could have Gerald see, but as far as he was
concerned, he’d already heard the best advice of the day.
*

“Thank you for welcoming us into your home, Mrs. Lovegood.”

“You should call me Pandora. And I did it because Mama said that I should try
to figure out what you were up to.”

Tom blinked, but controlled his reaction other than that. He didn’t often deal
with Pandora Lovegood, Madam Moonwell’s daughter, since she was an
experimental charms researcher without much reason to come before the
Wizengamot. Madam Moonwell was direct, too, but she played the political
game with relish for its own sake. Pandora simply did not care.

“Well, I told you that,” he said, as he settled back into the violently blue chair in
the violently orange drawing room. Harry took the seat next to him, his part of
the bond bright as candles with amusement. Tom petted the bond and watched
as Harry arched his back, trying to pretend to be unaffected. “We came here
because we need your assistance with a ritual, and Harry would like to speak
with your daughter.”

“But you have more of a purpose than that.” Pandora studied him with her
extraordinarily bright blue eyes. They looked like chips of ice implanted into
her face. “You do nothing without a political motive.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Mama says that you want to be a dictator.”

Harry tucked his chin into his chest, and the bond chattered with laughter.

“I won’t help you with dictatorship rituals,” Pandora continued, a hint of

censure in her voice. “You would have to achieve that on your own, and I don’t
think that dictatorship is morally right anyway.”

Harry appeared to almost be gasping to himself. Tom sent an irritated thought

down the bond, but it didn’t help. He sighed and looked Pandora in the face.

“I promise you that this ritual has nothing to do with dictatorship. I am a

Parselmouth, as you know, and Harry can understand Parseltongue, as my
marked soulmate. However, I would like to deepen the bond, and that means
granting him a stronger connection to snakes, such that he could speak it
himself.”
Surprise came from Harry’s end of the bond like a shaft of sunlight. Tom smiled
and kept looking away from him, patiently, at Pandora, who had sat up in her
chair and looked interested in the problem for the first time.

You didn’t tell me that that was what we were going to do. Just find me a snake!
I thought the Parseltongue would come about for you as a natural consequence
of that ritual, and so would the deepening of our bond. However, it is just as
well that we could not complete that particular ritual that night, because I found
this one. It will serve us better.
What does Luna’s mother have to do with it?

Luckily, Pandora answered that for herself, and spared Tom at least a little of
the effort of dealing with his exasperating soulmate. “You want me for my
expertise with snakeskin.”

Tom nodded. “I couldn’t think of any other expert in the wizarding world.”

That was perhaps less than flattering, but truth was the only thing that would
really work with Pandora Lovegood. After staring at him for a moment, she
nodded back. “Well, it is true that I have performed experiments that could
make up for the missing parts in the ritual.”

“Will someone please tell me the secret that the two of you seem to share?”
Harry interrupted. “What ritual? Why is it missing parts?”

Pandora stared at him in turn. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“There is a ritual to grant Parseltongue to a human being, but it hasn’t been

performed in years because parts of the original manuscript where it was
recorded have gaps,” Tom said hastily. There was a difference between letting
Pandora shoulder some of the burden of dealing with Harry and letting her
create distrust between them. “It also needs a Parselmouth who is willing to
share the gift, and, well, there have been few enough of those. Our soulmates
can understand us. For most, that has been enough.”

“But not for you.”

“Nothing will be enough until we share everything.”

Harry stared at him and swallowed, then said, “I’m pretty sure that Mind-Healer
Laufrey would have something to say about that and how possessive you
sound.”

But the bond had a single shiver of silver in the middle of it. Harry might never
want the consequences of that possessiveness bearing down on him, but he liked
that Tom felt it. Tom lounged back in his chair and smiled smugly.

“If you are quite done flirting in front of me?”

Tom could feel the blush trying to curdle on his cheeks, and shook his head
sharply. Harry looked at him with a question in his eyes, but Tom only sent
back, She didn’t mean it, she just wants to get on with the conversation, and
faced Pandora again. “Yes,” he said. “We are.”

She nodded. “You believe that you can fill in the gaps in the ritual with
snakeskin. Shed skin could complete the ritual circle in the places where the
manuscript is missing the placement of the original ingredients, and living
snakes coming to you and sending enough venom into your soulmate’s system
could possibly compensate for the missing instructions for the venom potion.”

“Excuse me, what?”

“Snakes need to bite you to get their venom into you,” said Pandora, switching
her gaze to Harry. “Possibly.”

“Possibly?”

“We don’t exactly know,” Pandora said, sounding a little impatient. “That is
why the ritual hasn’t been performed before. There are so many breaks and gaps
in it…” She stared off into the distance for a moment, smiling, then shook
herself and focused on Harry. “But you will see that for yourself.”

“You haven’t asked if I agreed to this.”

Tom knew very well that the words were meant for him and not Pandora. He
faced Harry. “Will you agree to it?”

Harry stared at him, his head tilted a little to the side as if that would make it
easier to examine Tom and emerge with the correct answer. Tom let him
examine all he needed. He knew Harry would make the correct decision, would
see how much Tom cared for him and how much this mattered to him.
“Why is it so important to you?” Harry asked. “To know that I can speak
Parseltongue with you and not just understand it?”

Of course, not without some questions, Tom conceded, while the bond between
them rang blue and smelled of mint. Still, he didn’t mind having this
conversation in front of Pandora. She wouldn’t care enough to repeat it to
anyone.
He got up and walked over to Harry’s chair, kneeling down to take his hand.
Harry started and glared at him, eyes traveling back and forth for a moment
between Pandora and Tom. Tom shook his head just slightly. He still didn’t
care, and the sooner Harry acknowledged that, the better off they would be.

“Tom?” Harry’s voice was a whisper.

“Listen to me, love,” Tom said, soft and clear. “I want to share everything that I
am with you.”

“But we already do. I can understand Parseltongue. You introduced me to

someone you wanted me to meet.” The wary flicker down the bond said that
Harry thought it would be best not to mention Nagini aloud. “I just don’t
understand why that isn’t enough for you.”

Tom raised Harry’s hand and kissed it. “Don’t you?” The devotion he felt for
Harry poured down the bond like a flood of dark water, and Harry closed his
eyes and shivered like someone who was drowning in it.

“I suppose I do,” Harry murmured. “But you must have another motive for
wanting me to speak Parseltongue as well as understand it.”

“Why?”

“Because you were going to perform the other ritual at first, the one that would
have just summoned a snake. What changed your mind?”

Tom hesitated, and Harry glanced at him, eyes as bright and sharp as a hawk’s.
“Tom. I can’t help you if you don’t trust me.”

Tom grimaced and nodded. He hadn’t wanted to worry or trouble Harry, and he
still wasn’t sure of his conclusions. But now he had no choice, and this was the
kind of conversation he would have chosen not to have in front of Pandora.

Well, he had options to maintain their privacy.

“I suspect that Dumbledore is going to be hard to stop.”
Harry frowned and replied mentally down the bond, adjusting without a single
instruction needing to be passed. Merlin, Tom loved this man. But we knew that
already. What does that have to do with me gaining Parseltongue?
“I’ve done research that leads me to believe Dumbledore has been following the
orders of phoenixes. The legends I told you of, that they can change reality, that
they bring multiple versions of reality into existence? I have uncovered
evidence, from talking with your parents and godfather, that he named his
Order after the version of reality that he wanted to bring into existence.”
Harry sat up. You didn’t tell them?
At least he had not asked if Tom had hurt them, and at least he knew Tom well
enough to realize that Tom would withhold his hand, no matter how frustrated
he was with someone else, if those people mattered to Harry. Tom shook his
head. “They would have answered, but it would create resentment there is no
need to stir. And it was better when they answered my questions innocent of
what I wanted rather than trying to guess and predict what I wanted to hear.”
Harry thought about that, the bond quivering with flickers of light, too sharp
and quick for Tom to read them as words. Then he looked at Tom and
asked, What did they reveal?
Tom shifted up so that he was standing beside Harry’s chair, since his knees had
started to ache, and placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder, shifting also to the
mental bond. Speaking in Parseltongue when Harry was speaking mentally had
begun to seem a little silly. They hinted that Albus created the Order to change
reality. He involved the Order, and the soulmated pairs in it, in powerful ritual
magic.
Well, yes, he did. But I never heard of a ritual that could literally change
reality.
In a way, that is what all of them do. Inside the circle, the world is—
I know that the world is different inside the circle, and when you break the
circle, the change spreads and ripples out into the world, Harry snapped. I still
don’t think that Dumbledore could have achieved results like that. The rituals
he had the Order do were all different, not dedicated to a single goal.
Tell me truly, Harry. Would you know if they had been?
Harry’s fingers made indentations in the cushion he was sitting on. Then he
said, But I don’t see what a ritual to create a refuge for the Order and a ritual
to create a powerful spell to kill you would have in common.
To change the world. To bring the vision that he wanted forwards.
But that ripple effect I was talking about—I know it only lasts a short time.
That’s why rituals have more success taking effect inside the circle, or only
changing something in their immediate area once the circle is broken. How
could Dumbledore add them together when the ripples from one ritual would
have faded by the time he did another?
Tom frowned. That is a difficulty with the theory.
Harry didn’t say anything else, just raising his eyebrows. The bond went rather
an acid yellow with smugness, which Tom thought was not his soulmate’s most
attractive color.

But, Tom added, since he has been following the orders of phoenixes, one of

them might have told him how to chain certain rituals together, to harness their
effects and keep the ripples from dissipating.
You’re talking about the whole thing, the Order and what it did, as part of some
gigantic ritual, too big to see?
Tom smiled, proud that Harry had guessed what he was hinting at so fast,
although to be absolutely fair, Harry might have picked that up from his
thoughts. Exactly. Dumbledore might not even have been conscious of it, not if
he was following the directions of a phoenix that didn’t reveal why it wanted
him to do certain things.
Harry tapped his fingers against the chair. And how can we fight back against
something like that? How can we be sure that me gaining Parseltongue is
something that would give us a weapon, instead of just another step in the
phoenix’s plan?
Tom shook his head. We can’t be sure, of course, but we do know that we’ve
inconvenienced Dumbledore and at least slowed down whatever plan he’s
working on. And this is a weapon that would give us more advantages.
Harry considered it, the thoughts moving through his mind like chiming bells.
Then he nodded. Let’s do it.

Tom touched his forehead, the most intimate he was willing to get in front of a
third party, and turned around to face Pandora. “We’ll be honored to work with
you on the reconstruction of the ritual, Mrs. Lovegood.”

“And I do need to speak to Luna,” Harry added, moving them back to the part
of the business Tom had almost forgotten about. “Would she be willing to speak
to me today, Mrs. Lovegood? Or is she busy?”

Tom settled back, the bond smoothing out on his own. He had received reports
on Luna Lovegood when she was still a student at Hogwarts, since his observers
had been unable to figure out if she would be useful to his cause or not, and he
knew that he had nothing to fear from her, either for Harry or the bond.

“She’s in her workshop, I believe,” said Pandora, and then turned back to Tom.
“We should discuss what snakeskins we will use for the ritual.”

“Yes, we should,” Tom said, and nodded to Harry. Harry rolled his eyes as he
stood up.
You don’t need to dismiss me like a house-elf.
I am showing that I trust you out of my sight.

The bond grew flat and dark for a moment, and then Harry glided away and
Tom shook his head. He faced Pandora, who said, “Have you gained fourfold
powers yet? It will affect how strong we need to make the ritual circle.”

Harry found the workshop exactly where he expected to find it, behind the main
house. At Hogwarts, Luna had worked in a small hut attached to Hagrid’s
house, and she had sculpted a path of white stone that led to it. Harry had just
had to go back the way he and Tom came, and then find the path of white stone
and follow it.

He stood well back from the door and carefully knocked. The door of this little
house was torn and scarred with what looked like potions stains, but Harry
knew Luna well enough to know that probably wasn’t the case. He waited, and
finally her footsteps sounded and she opened the door.

She gave him a deep, delighted smile. “Harry. Come in. Just duck under the
cobwebs. They’re part of the new design.” She turned and ducked into the
house herself. Harry followed, stooping lower than he probably needed to, but
all he really needed to remember was one evening when a cobweb in his hair
had been followed by third-degree burns. He’d be cautious when Luna said to
be for the rest of his life.

The interior of the workshop was a small, cheerful place, painted eggshell-blue
on one wall and eye-searing yellow on two more and tropical orange on the
final one. Harry didn’t know if that was part of the experiments, or just
something Luna had wanted to do to make it glow. In the center of the small
house was a table, made of metal, with a few smoking holes and stains in the
middle of it. Two chairs were the only other furniture, although one of them was
lying on the floor.

“Pick that one up and dust off the seat with your wand, and it should be safe to
sit on,” Luna said absently, rattling through what seemed to be a pile of metal
rods near the fireplace on the orange wall.

Harry followed her instructions precisely, and by the time he had, Luna was
walking over to him with a cup of tea. It steamed and smelled like jasmine.
Harry shook his head and accepted it. He had stopped asking Luna how she did
it long ago. He either got a long explanation that depended mostly on non-
existent beasts or a mysterious smile.

“What brings you here?” Luna asked, sitting down on the other chair.
Something popped and broke, and the chair leaped beneath her, but Luna didn’t
even spill her tea. “Did you finally find your soulmate?”

Harry nodded. He wasn’t surprised she knew, although knowing her, it was
probably going to be from something a swan had told her in a dream instead of
from the papers. “And he’s the Minister.”

“I never knew you wanted to go into politics.”

Harry sighed. “I didn’t. I was actually trying to stay away from them. But I was
born with his name on my arm. I always knew who he was. I just—wanted to
try and pretend that I didn’t. I thought I might be able to stay away from him for
the rest of my life.”

Luna sat up, staring at him. Harry concealed a wince. He had known that she’d
be able to accept that his phoenix had somehow matched Tom’s if that was the
truth, but she wouldn’t have thought he’d lie to her.

“Why did you tell me that your soul-mark was a phoenix?”

Harry swallowed. Yes, that kind of direct question meant she was upset.
“Because my parents and Dumbledore were afraid of what Tom would become
with fourfold powers. So they tried their best to raise me away from him and
make sure he’d never know. He might not have, but he got intrigued with me
and then touched my real soul-mark.”

“What is the phoenix on your arm, if not your real soul-mark?”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected the tone in her voice. “A Muggle tattoo I got.
I used it to conceal my soul-mark in the shackles along the edges.” He tilted his
arm and pointed out the words to Luna, although he held his arm further back so
that she couldn’t touch them. He didn’t think he wanted to explain that to Tom.

Luna, to her credit, only leaned in a little and studied the words intently, as if
trying to memorize the way they dodged in and out among the curls of flame
and broken shackles on the phoenix. Then she sat back in her chair. “You know
that I haven’t found my soulmate yet.”
Harry nodded. Luna’s soul-mark was a delicate, flowing green thing that might
be flowers and might be a vine and might be a creature that lived in either one,
and ornamented her back. Harry had seen it once, and admired it.

“I wouldn’t think of trying to hide from them.”

Harry swallowed around the thickness of his tongue, and then awkwardly
swallowed the tea that he was trying to drink. He put the cup down. “I know,
Luna, but—”

“And if someone told me that I had to hide from them, I would be very upset.
With the person who told me that, not with my soulmate.”

“My family said—”

“And I would tell someone else,” Luna said, her eyes sharpening on him to the
point where they felt like nails pinning Harry to the chair. “Not decide that the
best thing I could possibly do was keep the secret.”

Harry closed his eyes. He had entertained visions in his head of what would
have happened if he’d run away to Tom when he was in his fifth year, and what
would have happened if he’d succeeded in erasing the mark. Never once had he
thought about what have happened if he’d confessed his secret to Luna.

“I thought we were friends.”

Harry gave a difficult swallow. “We are.”

“Then why did you hide something like this from me? What was the point? I
could have helped you. I would have sent an owl if you needed me to.”

Harry blinked his eyes open again, the old bewilderment of dealing with Luna
overcoming his reluctance to see her expression at the moment. “An owl.”

“If you didn’t want to write to your soulmate because you were worried that
your handwriting would betray you. I could have sent him a disguised letter,
and then he wouldn’t know what your handwriting looked like.”

Harry chuckled a little, and reached out a hand. Luna frowned, but then took it.
She gave him one firm shake and used the hold to tilt his arm to the side so that
she could see the name written along his wrist.
“I don’t understand why you were so reluctant. I know you weren’t interested in
politics, but that’s not the same thing as hating them. And that’s not the same
thing as hating your soulmate.”

“I know. I didn’t—hate him, except when I thought about how much my parents
and the Order hated him, and what it meant that I would have to hide from him
for years.”

Luna looked him in the eye. “What did they tell you about him?”

“That he hated all Muggleborns and Muggles and was waging a secret war
against them. Or rather, gathering the forces to wage a secret war. That he
would do anything he could to bring down the Muggle world and separate
Muggleborns from it—if he didn’t just kill all of them. I thought my soulmate
was a genocidal Dark Lord.”

“You could have talked to me. Or someone else.” But it was clear that Luna
would have preferred him talking to her. “And we would have told you that he
wasn’t.”

Harry swallowed again, and didn’t look away. “But that’s exactly it. My parents
and Dumbledore and—other people thought he had the whole world fooled. I
couldn’t trust anything that anybody outside the Order said about him. If
someone else had found out he was my soulmate, my parents believed, they
would have betrayed me to him and he would have persuaded me to turn against
anything righteous.”

“Why would he have persuaded you to do that?”

“Because I wanted to believe so much that I was special and wasn’t evil for
being born with this mark on my arm. There was a time when I was fifteen or so
that I would have just collapsed into his arms and he could have done whatever
he wanted with me and the magic we’d generate together.”

Luna was the one to close her eyes this time, shuddering as if Harry had hit her.
“You aren’t evil. You deserved whatever he could give you. You still do.” She
whispered it.

Harry nodded, then touched her arm when Luna just kept holding his, because
after all, she couldn’t see what he was doing with her eyes closed. “I know that
now. Or Tom is helping me to learn it. I’m visiting with a Mind-Healer and all
that shit. But please don’t be angry with me for not telling you before now,
Luna. It wasn’t healthy, to think that my mark made me evil, but it was what I
believed for a long time.”

“I forgive you,” Luna said finally, when they’d sat in silence for long enough
that Harry thought she might send him away in anger. “But only if you promise
never to keep a secret like that from me again.”

She opened her eyes, and Harry caught his breath. The blaze in her blue eyes
was like a punch in the face. He had sometimes envied her soulmate when they
were younger, wishing that he could simply be with her and the whole
complicated mess of his soul-mark wasn’t real. Now, he envied her soulmate
just for having someone this intense.

“I’ll have to keep it a secret if Tom tells me to,” Harry said, because Tom came
first and he needed Luna to understand that. “But otherwise, fine.”

Luna beamed at him and stood up to hug him. Harry leaned against her, glad
that his heartbeat couldn’t be as loud to her as it sounded to him. He had one of
his friends back, one who had been missing from his life for a long time.

And someone who hadn’t been involved with the Order’s nonsense. After the
loss of Ron and Hermione, Harry hadn’t realized how deeply he needed that.

Damn my Mind-Healer. He was right again. Of course he was.

“Are you all right, James? You’ve been staring at that letter for ten minutes.”

James took a deep, shaky breath and smoothed out the letter that a plain barn
owl had brought him. He leaned back in his chair and looked his wife in the eye.
Lily was frowning, biting her lip, and the bond between them sang with
harmonies of discontent and fear.

“It’s a letter from Harry’s friend Luna Lovegood,” James said, and watched Lily
tilt her head for a long moment before she nodded in recollection. “She
addressed it to me, but I think it’s meant for both of us. You should read it.”

He held it out, not needing to stand at Lily’s side to know the words her eyes
were now passing over. He had stared at it long enough to memorize it,
especially since it wasn’t very lengthy.

Dear Mr. Potter,

I wanted you to know that it was very wrong to make Harry think his soulmate
was evil and that he was evil because he had Minister Riddle’s soul-mark. You
could have studied Riddle for yourself and tried to find out if he was really
fighting a secret war. Or you could have withdrawn from the Order and tried to
make sure that there was a way Harry could have his soulmate without losing
himself in the bond. You didn’t do either of those things. You just believed
blindly and followed along, and that means that Harry is much more in danger
of losing himself to the bond than if you’d been smart. He swung from being
isolated to being the center of someone’s world. What do you think that’s doing
to him?

And then her name at the bottom.

James massaged his forehead. At the moment, he felt as if he had his own scar
there, or a second soul-mark, throbbing purposefully. Shame flooded him with
each breath.

Miss Lovegood was right. It was no wonder that Harry was falling so deeply for
Riddle’s charm. They’d isolated Harry for so much of his childhood and made it
impossible for him to hold back or regard Riddle critically or neutrally. He’d
just had it drilled into his head that his situation with his soulmate was hopeless,
and nothing could change, and he could never have what other people had, and
then when he found out he could have it—
Or a shadow of it—

Of course he’d seized it with both hands.

James sighed and looked up at Lily. She had put the letter down on the side of
the table and was regarding him with a quiet, fixed gaze that he recognized.

“So we need to stop being so critical of Riddle?” James asked. His voice
cracked. He didn’t want to. It was one thing to discover that the man wasn’t a
Dark Lord in the way Albus had insisted on for so long, and quite another to
trust him, especially to guard Harry’s heart.

“We can still criticize him,” Lily said. “But criticize him for what he does, not
for what we’re afraid he’ll do.”

James nodded slowly. He could see the sense of that, especially since the gleam
in Riddle’s eye from time to time told James that he was enjoying the way
James’s suspicions were turning his son away from him.
But on the other hand, someone had to watch Riddle. Lily could be the friendly
face. James would fade into the background and make vague comments and
nods and smiles, and wait.

And when the truth was finally revealed—and James had the feeling it wouldn’t
be long—then he could be the one to strike at Riddle and take him out.

Chapter 35: Skins

Chapter Text

“So your talk with your friend went well.”

Harry nodded and sat down across from Gerald in the chair that he’d set up.
“And so will the next one, I hope.”

“You’ve chosen to contact Mr. Longbottom?” Gerald spoke in a relaxed tone

that might have fooled Harry if he didn’t know him. But he was leaning
forwards slightly, as if this was a good sign that he had to chase down so it
wouldn’t escape.

Harry bit back his own amusement and nodded. “Yes. I thought about it, and
he’s really the best one. He was friends with me even when it seemed that I was
trying to push everyone away because I couldn’t stand to either share the secret
or live with it one more moment.”

“I’ve watched a few of your memories now.” Gerald spoke carefully, and Harry
felt his good mood freeze and crack. “I appreciate how open you’ve been with
me, including with memories of the time when the pressure of the secret on you
grew so great that you might have harmed yourself.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“I know when a statement is about to be followed by but, thanks. Tom’s given

me lots of practice.”

“You’ve only shown me one memory that could be interpreted as critical of

your parents in any way,” Gerald said, now speaking like someone who was
picking their way across an icy pond about to break apart beneath them. “I
would like to see more, so that I can understand your relationship with them.”
“Have I not told you enough about it?” Harry knew his shoulders were
hunching, but he honestly couldn’t help it, or the mixture of panic and anger
welling up in him. “I’ve been honest. And you know that they were the ones
who told me to hide my connection to Tom. And I agree with you that that’s
wrong. What else do you need to know?”

Harry? Tom spoke in what sounded like alarm, reaching towards him down the
bond. What’s wrong?
Harry swallowed and dimmed his response as best as he could, although the
emotions were so overwhelming that he didn’t think he was
successful. Nothing. I’m still with Gerald.

The sense of Tom retreated, but Harry knew he was hovering nearby, ready to
move in the minute he thought he needed to. Harry massaged his forehead with
all five fingers for a moment.

“Harry?”

“I—I don’t want to show you more memories of them.”

“Why not?”

Harry worked his fingers back and forth. Gerald leaned forwards for a moment
as if he wanted to take Harry’s hands and still them, but sat back in his chair
when Harry gave him a sharp glance.

“Because I don’t want you to criticize my parents.” Harry winced as the words
slid out of his mouth. They felt slimy. He locked his hand on his knee,
massaging back and forth, watching the cloth of his robes wrinkle. Gerald’s
attention grew more sharp and focused. “I hear enough criticisms of them from
Tom.”

“What does he say?”

The danger seemed to be retreating, and Harry relaxed, hoping the sensation
would make it down the bond and cause Tom to back off, too. “That they were
wrong to keep me hidden for so long, and that they were idiots for following the
Order of the Phoenix.”

“I agree with him on both counts.” Gerald’s voice was mild. “And you are
already tensing up again.”
“I don’t need more criticisms of them,” Harry snapped. “They did what they
thought was best. They’re doing the best they can now, when what they thought
of Tom was proven so wrong. I don’t need him or you to harass them.”

“Does your bondmate harass them?”

“He gives them these smiles when he thinks I’m not looking,” Harry muttered,
knowing as he said it how irrational he sounded. But he knew what Tom
thought of them, none better. “And I can feel the hatred moving through the
bond. He—he despises them with a frightening intensity. I know that he doesn’t
like Muggles and he doesn’t care much about Muggleborns, but he doesn’t hate
either of them the way he hates my parents and my godfather. And
Dumbledore.”

“But that last one doesn’t bother you because you hate Dumbledore much the
same way?”

Harry looked up and nodded briefly. “And I know that Tom is going to get his
revenge on him, and I’ve made my peace with that. But he feels like he wants
revenge on my parents, too. I don’t want him to take it.”

“A source of tension between you, then.” Gerald leaned a little to the side,
studying Harry with what Harry thought was too much fascination. Not that
there was or would be anything sexual behind it, but Harry already had one
person striving to figure out how his mind worked.

Tom was near again, rubbing against his side of the bond like a cat rubbing its
cheek against Harry’s. Harry ignored him. He thought he was on the verge of
some breakthrough with Gerald, even if he didn’t understand precisely what it
was.

“Yes,” Harry acknowledged at last, as the silence grew heavy and constraining.

“And are you worried that he won’t respect your wishes, and will try to attack
them?”

“I don’t think he would do that unless he thought they were hurting me. But his
definition of what hurts me and mine aren’t the same.”

“Ah, I see.” Gerald leaned back and held Harry’s eyes. “So it would help if you
could have an advocate who would take your side and be able to tell your
bondmate when and if his anger is justified.”
Harry exhaled slowly. “It would, but for all I know, you’d see my memories and
decide you were on his side instead.”

“I would not, unless you showed me memories of abuse and insisted it wasn’t
abuse,” Gerald replied, as quietly as Harry had spoken. “There’s very little I
think you fear to show me. So I don’t think you’re afraid of the consequences—
that is, of my agreeing with your Tom or scolding you—if you showed me
these. Which means you fear something else.”

Harry glared at him. “You’re unfairly good at this.”

Shadows lingered around Gerald’s eyes, but not in his smile. “I should be,
considering how long I’ve trained to be good at it.”

Harry’s fingers rapped on the arms of his chair again. Then he said, “I’m afraid
that you’ll pity me, or tell me something useless, like that I should have left
them and sought out Tom years ago. And I’m sick of drowning in self-pity, and
I can’t change the past. I’m sick of thinking about it.”

Gerald spent a long moment blinking. Harry glared at the fireplace, and the
sparks of red and gold that shimmered in the stones around it.

Then Gerald said gently, “I’m aware that time travel doesn’t extend more than
an hour into the past, Harry. Believe me, if a method that reached back further
existed, I would have utilized it myself to go back and rescue some of my
patients from their situations.”

Harry relaxed again. At least that reminded him that he wasn’t the only
vulnerable person, or unlucky one, that Gerald had ever treated, even if most
people weren’t specifically told that their soulmates were evil.

That realization gave him the ability to touch his wand to his temple and close
his eyes. The memory was more than thirteen years ago, but it came blazing out
of his mind.

Gerald was staring at him when Harry looked again. “You must remember that
very well indeed.”

Harry nodded and extended his wand for Gerald to work his magic on the
memory. “Can I come with you this time?”

“Of course. Although you don’t have to do anything unless I ask you a question,
and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”
“I know,” Harry said quietly as he stepped forwards and into the illusion-world
the spell had created. He did think that Gerald might have some questions about
what he was going to see.

On the other hand, maybe he would just be upset. And Harry thought that he
could get used to someone being upset on a normal level about what his
childhood was like, instead of making plans to murder everyone who had made
it difficult.

Tom touched his side of the bond again, but Harry ignored it. This had to be his
private time, especially when he was willingly showing someone else this
memory.

He and Gerald landed on frost-touched grass outside the small cottage where he
and his parents had lived when he was eleven. Harry himself, his younger self,
was leaning against the side of the house, staring up at the stars, his hand
covering his soul-mark. Harry winced a little as he looked at the gouges sticking
out from under his fingers.

“You’ve scratched it,” Gerald said quietly, moving to the side so that the light
from the window fell on Harry’s arm. “Trying to get the mark off?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and then nodded to Gerald as the door opened and his dad
stepped out. He suppressed the impulse to try and hide. They weren’t really
here, and they weren’t going to be detected, and his younger self wasn’t going
to suffer from them being here.

From other things, sure, but not from them being here.

“You see now why Tom Riddle is evil?” James asked quietly, sinking down into
a crouch in front of Harry.

“Yes,” the younger Harry said, and Harry winced at the sound of his own voice.
It was clear and thick at the same time, as if he was struggling against sobs.
Maybe he had been. Harry honestly didn’t remember when the tear tracks on his
face had come to be there. “Because he exiled Sirius.”

“Yes.” James put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and shook him a little. “I know
that it’s hard on you, son, not to go to him. I wish with all my heart that you had
a normal soulmate. But you don’t.”
He hugged Harry, then, and Harry sighed to himself as he watched Gerald’s
face go rigid. Would Gerald see the love mingled in with the righteousness? His
father had been a fanatic, but he had really been doing what he thought was
right.

Gerald glanced at him a second later and nodded, so Harry reckoned he could
relax on that score, at least.

“And you do have an important part to play,” James went on, pulling back so
that he could look into the younger Harry’s eyes. “More important than a lot of
people who just become bonded to their soulmates and don’t do anything with
the magic.”

The younger Harry nodded. But his dad was waiting for him to say it, so he did.
“Keeping him from being a dictator, the way he would be with even doubled
powers.”

“That’s right. He’s terrible now, but you’re single-handedly keeping him from
being worse. So that’s something you can do for us, Harry, and you
can always do. You’re a hero.” James hugged him again.
Younger Harry hugged his father back. Harry watched, holding his peace, but
thinking the same thing now that he had when he was part of that reality. He
wanted to be a normal person with a soulmate he could love, not a hero.

“They put a burden on you to prevent a war.”

Gerald’s voice was low and angry. Harry shot a glance at him and saw him
leaning forwards, staring at James and the younger version of Harry as if they
were pieces in a chess game he had to win to save his life. Harry shook his head
a little. “They believed the war was coming no matter what. They put a burden
on me to keep Tom from being more powerful.”

“And they could do nothing to prevent this, of course.”

“They were trying,” Harry whispered. “They thought they were trying. Being

part of the Order of the Phoenix and doing all the shit Dumbledore wanted them
to do. But yeah, I think it broke something in them when I was born with Tom’s
name on my wrist. They were—they thought they might be evil, too.”

Gerald gave a harsh laugh, and looked around as the colors began to dim.
“There’s nothing more of this memory?”
“No,” Harry said quietly. There was a memory that he hadn’t offered to Gerald,
one of him lying alone in his bed that night and feeling a despair so deep that he
couldn’t even do anything—couldn’t stand or hurt himself or come up with a
plan. He hadn’t tried to harm himself the way he had at other times in his life,
but he had felt as if he was dark water going down a drain, and that was worse.

Tom leaned on him from the other side of the bond again. Harry watched as the
memory dissolved into colored sparks, and they stepped back into Gerald’s
office.

His Healer spent a moment frowning at his fingers and apparently getting
control of his temper. Harry sat back down and closed his eyes, rippling
gentleness and contentment down the bond to Tom.

Tom still asked, What was that? What happened? Why did you feel as if you
were falling off a cliff with no one to catch you?
That was another way to put it, Harry thought, wearily. I’m all right, he opened
the bond enough to send. Just revising a memory with Gerald that I don’t think
he was ready to see.
Or that you were ready to relive.
Hush, he’s talking, Harry said, and snapped the bond shut. Tom snarled at him,
but went silent, and Harry rolled his eyes to himself. What did Tom think Harry
was? A puling little thing who needed comfort every moment of every day?

No. Tom was the Minister. Harry knew he had important things to do.

“Do your parents know that memory is behind every interaction you have with
them, poisoning it?”

Harry blinked and stared at Gerald, who was leaning towards him with his
mouth like a slash down his face. Harry blinked. “I—I don’t think so. I mean, it
isn’t poisoning every interaction I have with them. I assume they remember it,
or my dad does, but it’s not like they think of it every day. Why?”

“That was poisonous to say to a young child.” Gerald’s eyes glittered for a
second with a chilly light, although he seemed to be holding onto his temper
better than he had just a short time ago. “I mean it, Harry. That he could be a
hero, that he would never be normal, that he could never enjoy romantic
love…”

“Not all soulmates do, either. Some of them refuse to be together because one of
them’s a pureblood with blood prejudice…”
Harry trailed off as he saw Gerald watching him. He sighed, and ignored the
way that Tom was almost battering his side of the bond like a door he wanted to
break down now. “You don’t think that’s the same thing.”

“No. And from the emotions I felt around the edges of that memory, neither do
you.” Gerald closed his eyes, then opened them again. “I’ll take your word for it
that that memory isn’t lingering behind every interaction with your parents and
poisoning it, but I do think you ought to mediate on it. Talk to them about it.
Work on it with your Tom.”

Harry couldn’t help rolling his eyes. “It would just make Tom want to kill
them.”

“I’m sure you can restrain him.”

Harry felt his cheeks flush. Gerald raised his eyebrows and waited curiously.
Harry cleared his throat. “I—think I might let Tom’s rage go on longer than it
should because I like the way it feels.”

“Down the bond? Or that someone is taking the time to stand up for you in that
way at all?”

“Both.” Harry mumbled the words and looked resolutely away from Gerald,
despite the rational part of his brain telling him that Gerald must have seen more
embarrassing situations if he really did specialize in treating people who had
trouble with their soulmates.

“I see.” Gerald didn’t sound as if he was laughing or about to start, much to

Harry’s relief. “Then you probably know the limitations of your own emotions
and your own actions better than I thought. I still think you should tell Tom
about it.”

“Can I have one difficult conversation a day?” Harry asked desperately. “Or
even a week? I need to speak to Neville today, and—he’s probably going to be
angrier than Luna that I kept all this from him.”

Gerald’s eyebrows arched a little. “Of course you can keep it to one difficult
conversation a week,” he said. “If you think that your Tom will let you, and not
take out his frustrations on your parents the way you were already afraid that he
would.”
Harry thought about the steady pressure on his mind—and thinking about it
brought it back, a moment later—and sighed. “No, he probably would. I’ll
speak to Neville this afternoon and Tom this evening.”

Gerald nodded, and then reached out and patted Harry on the shoulder. “I am
truly not trying to make life more difficult for you,” he said. “I think that you
will be relieved when you have helped others share your burden.”

Harry lowered his eyes and said nothing. His main fear was that he would never
be as angry about what his parents had done when fighting for the Order of the
Phoenix as other people believed he should be.

And he couldn’t imagine what Neville was going to say.

“Harry Potter to see Neville Longbottom.”

For a long, long moment, the silvery gates in front of him, set between pillars of
cloud-white stone, remained closed. Harry shifted uneasily. He had been to visit
Neville’s house, Longbottom Manor, before, but he never got any more
comfortable with it.

Finally, the gates shifted open, swinging entirely silently, and without stirring
up a puff of dust from the trail that continued between them. Harry, walking in,
stirred up more than enough by himself.

He bit his lip again and again as he made his way up the long, winding path to
the Manor. He traveled between flowerbeds and extensive gardens that
stretched into the distance without an end. Ancient Longbottoms had done
something to their land that meant it took up far more room than it officially
“should” have.

Harry had the impression that every single flower, and every single butterfly
fluttering over them, and every single bee pollinating them, was staring at him.
He put his head up and tried to walk as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

That wasn’t really the impression he wanted to give Neville, of course, but it
was the one he wanted to make on the older Longbottoms, who would certainly
be the ones to meet him at the door.

Sure enough, the door of the manor stood open when he got there, and Alice
Longbottom loomed in it, silently staring at him.
At least it’s nice to be able to meet the eyes of the one looking at me, Harry
thought, and didn’t let them go as he inclined his head a little. “Hello, Mrs.
Longbottom. Is Neville home?”

“Since you owled him and asked him to be here, of course he is.”

Alice Longbottom’s voice was full of censure, and so were her blue eyes, flat
and stony. Harry hid a wince. The Longbottoms had disapproved of Harry more
after his parents had fled to join the Order of the Phoenix than before that. From
what his mum and dad had said, Dumbledore had tried to recruit Frank and
Alice in Hogwarts, but, perhaps because of Neville’s grandmother, they’d
rejected the invitation.

But they were political outsiders, not following Tom any more than they had
Dumbledore. Harry could just envision what Alice and Frank would say about
all the complications he was bringing into their son’s life.

Harry swallowed and nodded. “All right. I can go back to the greenhouse if you
want.”

Alice’s eyes darted to his right wrist. “No. I want you to come in first, so I can
speak to you.”
Harry stiffened and stepped through the door, towards the sitting room she
motioned him into, but resentment had already begun to burn in him. Here
were more people hating him for the stupid mark he’d been born with, the mark
he couldn’t help.
I will burn them.
That doesn’t make it any better! Harry snapped down the bond, and found to his
surprise that he’d said the right thing to make Tom shut up. The sensation of
pressure against Tom’s side of the bond dissipated, and then came back as soft,
cool cloud, coiling in Harry’s mind like a patient snake.
You are right. I apologize, Harry. When you are able to tell me what would
make it better, then I will do it.

Harry had just enough time to turn his attention away from Tom and back to
Alice Longbottom, who was letting the door of the sitting room fall shut with a
simple click. She settled back in the chair nearest the door and stared at him.
Harry remained standing, his hands fisting together behind his back.

“How could you never tell us that your soulmate was Minister Riddle?” Alice
asked quietly.
That wasn’t the line of attack Harry had expected. He had thought it would be
all about potentially drawing Neville into dangerous politics, either Tom’s or
the Order’s. This sounded as if it was more about offending Alice and Frank.
Harry eyed her thoughtfully. “I never thought it was an option.”

“Of course it was!” Alice pushed her hair out of her eyes. “You saw enough of
us during your childhood that you should have known that. We tried to give you
a different perspective, one that didn’t depend on Dumbledore’s word the way
your parents’ did. And you still ignored us and stayed silent about it all along?”
Harry opened his mouth, and the last words he had expected fell out. “So you’re
blaming me for not being mature enough at seven, or nine, or eleven, to go
against my parents’ orders and Dumbledore’s abuse?”

Alice blinked. “Of course not. I would not blame a child for being abused.”

“But it sounds as though you don’t think I’m a child.” The fire was burning in
Harry again now, and maybe it was only because he couldn’t say the same
words to his parents without starting down a path that he could never come back
from, but it burned behind his words, too. “Or that I wasn’t. I should
have somehow been mature enough to realize that you were right and my
parents and godfather and the Headmaster they almost worshiped as a god were
wrong, and reached out to you. How did I even know that you would have
treated me better than they would? I know you don’t think Tom is a secret Dark
Lord, but you don’t like him.”

Alice’s mouth tightened into a slash across her face. “No child should have been
made to fear and hate his own soulmate.”

“You never said that to me.”

“You never told us about the mark!”

Harry shook his head. “It all comes down to me, doesn’t it, Mrs. Longbottom? I
should have been the one to tell people about the mark, or keep it secret, or
approach Tom, or not approach him, or restrain him, or influence him in the
direction someone else wanted. You never told me that you approved
of anything Tom had done. The only words you said about politics were that
everyone would stay away from them. How could my mark not be political?
How could I have thought of you as a source of help?”

Alice frowned and tapped her fingers against the arm of her chair. Her mouth
remained tight. “This is going to involve Neville in politics that could change
the fate of the magical world.”
Harry stared at her. “Then he can make the decision to not speak to me. He’s
my age. Almost exactly, even. Why do you have –he didn’t write me that letter
saying that he wanted to speak to me at all, did he? You did.”
He had thought Neville’s handwriting looked a little odd, but, well, any number
of things could have accounted for that, including that Neville had been nervous
and not really willing to talk to him. Harry had taken a chance despite how
nervous he felt, and now he was glad that he hadn’t sat down. He turned and
paced a circle around the sitting room.
“We have a right to know what’s going on with our son,” Alice said, her eyes
narrowed a little. “He’s still vulnerable. He hasn’t found his soulmate.”
Harry wondered how much of this was about that, and then discarded the
thought with a blink. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the friend he’d
come to speak to wasn’t even there, and Harry didn’t know if he could write to
him reliably, since apparently his parents intercepted his post. It took some
doing to interfere with a post-owl’s desire to deliver the message to the right
recipient.

“Listen, Mrs. Longbottom—”

Abruptly, the door of the sitting room came flying open, and Harry spun around
and dropped his hand to his wand, the pooled magic from his and Tom’s bond
surging up in him. Tom hissed like a serpent uncoiling, but then they both had
to stop their defensive instincts when Harry saw Neville standing in the
doorway.

You are well?

Harry sent back a positive impulse in response to Tom’s question while he

stared at Neville. He was a lot taller than Harry had ever seen him in school, but
his face and hands were still covered with dirt, and Harry would still have
recognized him by that if he’d met him suddenly on the street in Diagon Alley.

“The house-elves told me you were here,” Neville said, apparently to him, and
then turned and stared at his mother. “What are you doing, Mum?”

“You know he’s the Minister’s soulmate,” Alice said, almost hissing as if she
were a Parselmouth herself. “It isn’t safe to be associated with him.”

Neville dragged his hand across his forehead in what looked like a common
gesture of frustration, judging by the streaks of soil that he left behind. “I should
have been the one to make that decision!”
Harry stood and watched, not sure if anyone wanted him to speak. If he could. If
he should stay here at all. Neville prepared to speak to him was one thing;
Neville probably not having an idea of why he’d come was another.

“You don’t have good political instincts.” Alice swallowed, and Harry could see
the fear in her face, abruptly. The thought slipped into his head that even though
the Longbottoms hadn’t listened to Dumbledore the way his own parents had,
they’d apparently been tainted by the Potters’ fear of Tom. “You’re our only
child. We have to keep you safe—”

“Not by withholding information from me,” Neville said, in a quiet, deadly

tone, and turned to stare at Harry. “Why did you come here?”

Harry cleared his throat. “For advice.”

And you want him to be the one to give it to you?

You know very well what you would say, Tom. You’ve already offered me more
advice than I can use. Good advice, but not unexpected. I need the perspective
of someone who stands outside the situation.

Tom shut up in what frankly felt like surprise, if the cool blue feeling pressing
against the gates of Harry’s mind was what he really felt. Harry turned back to
Neville with a sigh. Neville was eyeing him speculatively.

“What advice could you want from someone who hasn’t found their soulmate?”

“Neville! Are you planning to talk to him?”

“You practically sealed my decision to do so by interfering, Mother.” Neville

spared one more glance at Alice and then turned and jerked his head at Harry.
“Come on into the greenhouse. I can guarantee that no one will be trying to
overhear us there.”

“Neville,” Alice said in an injured tone.

Harry just followed Neville out, keeping the impulse to shake his head to
himself. He had envied Neville having parents who were there, instead of
obsessed with Order politics or, later, on the run. He supposed that the old
saying was true, and the wand you didn’t hold always looked more powerful.

“What advice do you think I can give you?”

They were in the middle of what appeared to be Neville’s favorite greenhouse,
at least judging by how well it was warded. Neville was sipping a glass of
orange juice and stroking a tendril of a huge red plant that stood in a pot beside
him.

He seemed more relaxed than he’d been in the house. Harry assumed the
presence of greenery surrounding them had a lot to do with that.

Harry sighed. “Just someone who’s not part of this whole blame game my
parents and Tom have going with each other.”

“Tom, huh?” Neville glanced at him.

Harry raised his chin. If this was going to be a bad choice because Neville was
prejudiced against Tom, better for Harry to know now. “Yes. He’s my soulmate.
I’m not going to deny him, and I’m not going to run away the way I think my
dad would prefer me to. Even my mum and Sirius would prefer that, I think.”

“Why? Why did they make you keep your real mark secret?” Neville’s eyes
dropped to his arm.

Harry drew back his sleeve in response to the silent question, turning his arm so
that Neville could see Tom’s name darting in and out among the shackles
beneath the phoenix. “Because they know that someone who loves and is truly
loved in return could have fourfold powers, and maybe even immortality. They
were already scared of how strong Tom was. And they thought he was a Dark
Lord bent on exterminating all Muggles and Muggleborns. The last thing they
wanted was for him to be more powerful.”

“Did your parents not care at all that they were depriving you of your
soulmate?”

“They cared. But they talked about it as a sacrifice that made me a hero.”

Neville gave an unexpected, cawing laugh. Harry blinked at him and just sat
there. He hadn’t the least idea of what had prompted that, and no way of
guessing.

Neville shook his head. “I always thought we were a little alike, you know.
Both born in July just a day apart, both Sorted into Gryffindor, both sort of on
the wrong side of politics when it came to the Ministry if only because my
parents refuse to pick a damn side…but I didn’t know how alike we were.”
“I hope your parents didn’t make you keep your soul-mark a secret?”

“No. I still haven’t met my soulmate yet, but I have no idea who it is, so it’s not
like my parents can be upset about that. But my parents have preached heroism
to me since I was six years old. Their very own, very particular kind of
heroism.”

“What was that?” Harry had to admit he didn’t have any idea what Neville was
talking about, and that made him curious.

Neville turned and stared out the wall of the greenhouse for a moment, or Harry
assumed that was what he was doing. It was so covered with plants, though, he
probably couldn’t see anything through it. “To stay out of it.”

“It?” Harry echoed blankly.

“Politics. Debates. Arguments. Important issues. Life.” Neville abruptly banged

his elbows on the little table between them and turned to face Harry again.
“They were so convinced that things would go badly if Riddle noticed us or if
Dumbledore noticed us that I wasn’t allowed to do well at anything, except—”
“Herbology,” Harry murmured. He had thought it kind of strange that Neville
did so well in that class and so poorly in his other ones, barely scraping
Acceptables. He had never thought it was deliberate, though, except in the sense
that Neville preferred to put more effort into Herbology than the other subjects.
He’d still got seven NEWTS, and it wasn’t like he wanted a job in the Ministry
that would need more, or higher marks. “Did they try to stop you from doing
well in that?”
“They argued about it.” Neville turned to stare at the plants again. “My dad said
it probably didn’t matter, but it was a risk. My mum argued that I
needed something to work with and this was the most boring subject, and
neither Riddle nor Dumbledore would have any interest in gardeners.”

“Gardeners,” Harry repeated, and shook his head. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Neville.
That’s awful.”

“I can’t say it was more awful than what your parents did to you, but…” Neville
dragged a hand down his face, still staring at the plants. “I don’t know exactly
what your owl said.” He turned to Harry. “Did you want to just tell me in person
about your soulmate, or what?”

“I wanted your advice about a few things, but I don’t know if I should ask you.
You have enough to deal with.”
Neville gave that cawing laugh again. “At least listening to someone else might
give me new problems to think about.”

Harry eyed him cautiously, but he only got a stare, so he gave in with a sigh.
“My soulmate is angry at my parents for keeping the secret from them. My
Mind-Healer is upset at them, too. Basically everyone is except my parents
themselves, and Sirius, and—me.”

“You don’t care at all that they didn’t let you be with your soulmate?’
“Of course I do!” Harry snapped, and then saw from Neville’s slight grin that
that was probably the reaction he’d meant to provoke. He settled back with a
sigh. “But I don’t see the point of dwelling on it. My parents walked away from
Dumbledore. They’re never going to follow him again. My Mind-Healer wants
to pick through my memories of the times they told me I couldn’t be with Tom,
and Tom loathes them. I thought he got along well with my mum at first, but
that changed when the emotional bond started deepening and he learned that
she’d told me some specific things he didn’t like.”

“Hm.” Neville ducked his chin. “Well, I can tell you what I did.”

“With your parents, you mean?”

“Hm,” Neville said again, and nodded. “Yes. I know it’s not perfect, because
they’re still intercepting my post and the like.” His voice dipped violently, then
returned to normal. “But I stood up to them and told them that their politics
made me sick. They tried to deny having any politics, and I told them that of
course that’s having some.”

Harry nodded. He had never held the particular stance that Neville’s parents did,
having been born to one side whether he wanted to be or not, but he had heard
people at Hogwarts talk about not having politics and thought they were idiots.

“I told them that they have a chance to reconcile with me, apologize and
promise they won’t do anything like intercepting my post again. They’ve given
me half-apologies, because they really do think that their way of protecting me
is the best. But now I’ve made my decision. I’m leaving when I meet my
soulmate.”

“Because of the letter I sent and your mum answered? I’m sorry, Neville,”
Harry repeated.

“Don’t be. You set me free.” Neville turned eyes towards him that finally
looked haunted. “And I’d advise you to do the same thing, Harry. Speak to your
parents. See if they can actually admit that they made a mistake and Minister
Riddle is your soulmate whether they want him to be or not. Don’t let it fester,
the way I did.”

Harry nodded. He supposed that was the best thing to do, but he’d needed to
hear it from someone else. Both Tom and Gerald were too committed to sparing
him pain to suggest it. He stood up. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Neville glanced at him, eyes narrowing for a second. “And
if you hear of someone who has a soul-mark like mine, then know that I
wouldn’t mind adopting whatever the politics of their side were.”

Harry nodded, and squeezed his shoulder, and left.

Chapter 36: Barbs

Chapter Text

Tom stepped quietly into the flat that Harry shared with his parents and closed
the door behind him. Harry wasn’t here yet, but that was a good thing. Tom
could feel Harry pressing like a storm on his side of the bond. That meant he
had discovered something in his conversation with Longbottom that had stirred
him up worse than he’d been.

And Tom wanted a chance to talk with him before anyone else did.

He had planned to go into Harry’s bedroom and ward the door so that no one
else could intrude, but Sirius Black stepped out of the kitchen before he could
execute the plan. Tom turned and stared at him flatly, his magic boiling out of
him in dark tendrils that Black would have good reason to be wary of.

Black swallowed and held his hands up flat in front of him as if that would be
capable of driving Tom back. “I—I wanted to talk to you about Harry,” Sirius
said.

“I’m not interested in talking to anyone but Harry right now.”

That would have been enough for most of the people in the Ministry, and Tom
was already turning away. He should have remembered that the people who had
followed Dumbledore had been trained to hate and despise him instead of fear
him. Black caught his arm.

“I need to—”
Tom grew his magic through his skin without effort, into a spike that pierced
the center of Black’s palm. Black let him go with a scream, and Tom heard
scrambling noises in the kitchen that meant the Potters were coming.

“I’m not interested in talking to you,” Tom said, low enough that Black looked
more afraid of that than upset about the pain in his hand as he stumbled back.
Tom turned and stepped into Harry’s bedroom, closing the door behind him.

He set up the wards a second later that would forbid entrance to anyone but
Harry unless they actually destroyed the building, and then added spells that
would muffle the pounding fists on the door. Then he sat down, cross-legged, in
the middle of Harry’s bed and closed his eyes, fully opening the bond. He’d
thought he would be able to wait until Harry was physically present to speak to
him, but not now.

Tom? Harry’s thoughts danced and ran alongside his, as cool and supportive as
a strong stream.
Tom breathed out and said, Your godfather attempted to detain me. I grew a
spike through my skin to make him let go of me.

The stream swirled and darkened, and Harry was silent for a long moment. Still,
Tom was glad that he had told Harry. That would get out in front of any
ridiculous story that Black or the Potter parents might try to spread.

You’re upset, Harry said, his voice edged now.

Because you are, and you wouldn’t tell me what you found, and you shut me out
of your mind.

Harry spent a long moment sounding as if he was fuming and fumbling around
in his mind, and then he sighed. Tom raised his eyebrows at the ceiling, and
waited.

I found out that Neville’s parents were encouraging him to act stupid and stay
out of politics because they were afraid of you but also didn’t want to have
anything to do with Dumbledore, Harry said finally. It wasn’t as bad as what my
parents did to me—Tom, are you all right? What was that odd emotion?
It had been a blue-silver flash of pride, because Tom hadn’t thought Harry
would have come far enough to acknowledge that his parents had indeed
mistreated him. Nothing, my dear. Only that I am glad you acknowledge their
actions as wrong. What else did Longbottom tell you?
I—that I shouldn’t let it fester. I should talk to my parents about how they made
me feel. Harry hesitated for a long few seconds. Then he said, Honestly, Tom,
I’m not sure that you should be there for that conversation.
I am going to be here.
No, Tom—
I will remain in your bedroom with Privacy Charms raised and the bond sealed
as much as possible if you want me to, Tom interrupted. It was time to correct
some misunderstandings that had appeared between them in the last little
while. I won’t listen in. But I will be monitoring your emotions, and I require
the right to step in if you get too upset.

Harry was quiet. Tom let his eyes close and pictured him leaning against the
side of one of the Longbottoms’ rather extensive greenhouses, his arms folded
and his brow pinched. In truth, Tom thought that Harry had already left the
Longbottoms’ house, but he was sure the posture was right.

Tom…
Yes? Tom was aware of a coiling tension rising from the bottom of his belly. He
had done his best to respect Harry’s privacy in the last little while, and he still
wouldn’t ask what Harry had discussed with his Mind-Healer unless he felt it
affecting him, the way it had today. But he had done enough of the holding back
and not interfering for now.
Thank you. Harry exhaled a little. I’m still not used to someone caring this much
about me, and wanting to take care of me this much.

Tom nodded, understanding what had gone unsaid. Harry’s parents had tried,
and so had Black, but their ideas of what was appropriate and what care should
be taken of Harry were laughably far away from the reality Tom would accept.

I can’t persuade you to leave? You know you could be back at the flat in an
instant if it turned out that they were saying something harmful to me.
No. Will you accept the compromise of Privacy Charms and the bond being
closed so that I cannot track your individual thoughts, or do I need to propose
another one? Tom hoped Harry would accept this one. It would be difficult
enough to hold him back from his soulmate’s mind, given the amount of time
he’d spent shut out of it recently.
Harry sighed, and then finally said, The only problem I have with it is that I
think my parents won’t be completely honest if they know that you’re in the
same building.
They have shown no disposition to blunt their defenses of their own actions
before now.
A reluctant laugh trickled down the bond. All right. I’ll—I’ll come in and you
can put up the Privacy Charms. Or, in fact, do that right now. But in the
meantime, stay with me until I get up to the front door.
Tom felt some part of him that had been permanently ruffled, like an upset
bird’s feathers, calm down a little. All he had needed was reassurance that his
soulmate had missed his presence in the bond, too. He nodded. Very well, he
said, and began casting the Privacy Charms. Noise from beyond the room
vanished instantly, as did any shadows that would be the result of movement
beyond the door.

But he lay with his mind against Harry’s, in swift and flowing communion, until
the moment when Harry opened the door of the flat. And he raised a sturdy but
porous wall after that, ready to move the moment Harry poured emotion too
strong through the bond.

He would be the one to decide what “emotion too strong” meant.

“Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.”

It seemed that they could both tell that he hadn’t come here for a casual
conversation. Lily turned to face him, and James half-stood from the chair he’d
been in at the head of the table. Harry fought down his own nervousness and
smiled a little at them, then took the chair nearest the kitchen counter.

“I found out something from Neville today, and I wanted to talk to you about
it.”

His parents glanced at each other, communicating silently down their bond.
Harry remembered how envious he had been of them the first time they did that.
His mum had tried to soothe him, pointing out that he knew other people who
couldn’t do it, like Sirius, whose bond with his soulmate had been rejected. But
that hadn’t mattered to Harry as much as the fact that he would never be able to
do it.

Sometimes, he’d thought that he should have been one of those legendary
people born without a mark, rather than one that condemned him to a life of
loneliness for decades.

Tom pressed against his side of the bond, and Harry sent back a mental
headshake and focused on his parents instead. His mum was just saying, “What
did you find out from Neville? I assume he knows about your mark by now.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “And he still hasn’t found his soulmate. It was—
general advice he gave me. Did you know that his parents pushed him not to do
too well in classes and to avoid taking a political stance because they were so
worried that he would be exploited either by Riddle or Dumbledore?”
James sighed. “I had thought they were doing that after something Frank said
once, but we had a big argument over Dumbledore at about the same time and I
never spoke to him with the same level of trust again. They actually did it?
Why?”

“I just said,” Harry muttered, and found himself tracing his fingers in circles on
the table. He sighed and made himself stop. There were no distractions, and no
getting out of this conversation, as unpleasant as he found it. “Because they
were afraid of how he’d be used and manipulated. Or how he could be used and
manipulated. His mum actually intercepted my owl to Neville asking if I could
come talk to him. He’d never have known I was there if a house-elf hadn’t gone
and brought him word.”

His parents weren’t stupid. They exchanged another glance, and probably
another burst of silent communication, and his mum leaned forwards. “Is that
something you feel we did to you, too, Harry?”

“Not the lying and intercepting my post part,” Harry said, which caused a
fleeting, strained smile to form on Lily’s face. “But I do think that you allowed
your fears to overtake you and me, both, and ruined any semblance I could have
had of a normal life.”

“We’re sorry,” Lily whispered.

“I know. But—Neville basically has no relationship with his parents because of

this. I don’t want the same thing to happen to us. I’ve found my soulmate.
Neville hasn’t, but he’s going to leave and maybe never come back when he
does. I have you, and I have Tom in my life. I need to know I can trust you not
to interfere again, or try and work against me, or hate Tom so much that you
think anything would be worthwhile to get him to leave my life.”

James had been struggling with his own fear and doubt for the past several
moments, and Lily had hit him with soft pulses of warning that had made him
keep his mouth shut. And he knew that he said stupid things when he was angry.
It was one of the main reasons that Remus had left and he’d lost Peter’s
friendship.

But hearing what Harry had just said, the parallel to his own thoughts about
Tom bloody Riddle, made the words burst out before he could stop them.
“It would be worthwhile,” James said, and slapped his hand on the table,
ignoring the iron grip Lily abruptly had on his arm and the betrayed look on
Harry’s face. “He’s evil, Harry. You know his voting record. You know the
legislation he wants to pass. He would kill people for the simple crime of
speaking of the magical world! Or send them back to a mental childhood, at
least! That’s so—”
“You would have killed people if that spell Dumbledore prepared with your
help had landed on the building Tom was in. Including reporters and Aurors and
people whose only crime was just coming to ask Tom a question.
Including me. Does that make you evil?”

“We were fighting for a righteous cause—”

“And Tom thinks he is, too,” Harry snapped, his eyes getting the deep green tint
they always did when he was arguing with all his heart. Up until this point,
James had only seen it when Harry was a child arguing that he wanted to
destroy the mark or go to his soulmate. “You’ve changed your mind about some
of Dumbledore’s shite, I see, but not all of it.”

“You said that he was just a cynical gameplayer.” James shook Lily’s hand off
and leaned forwards. This was too important. This was their son’s happiness
and the world’s happiness. “How can he believe he was fighting for a righteous
cause?”

Harry closed his eyes, looking a little sick. James held his breath. Had he got
through to him that quickly? He hadn’t dared hope—

And then Harry opened his eyes again and glared, and James rocked back in his
chair. That was the glare he got from Lily whenever he’d got on her last nerve.

“He was fighting for the cause of maintaining power and keeping his soulmate
safe,” Harry said, sounding as if he was barely holding back a curse. “Yes, it’s
not the kind of public-spirited cause that the Minister should fight for. But
neither was yours, Dad. You just wanted to kill and destroy him.”

“At least our world would have been safe from him if he’d died. And we could
never have anticipated you being in that building, Harry, you know that. He just
brought you along to make a point.”

“It doesn’t matter. You know now that there’s no secret war, that he’s not
planning to go out and slaughter Muggles and Muggleborns and the rest. Yes,
some of what Tom has voted for is horrendous, but that’s one reason I’m
restraining him. Why do you still hate him so much?”
James ground his teeth. Lily said down the bond, You have to answer him. You
have to tell him.
James flicked his eyes at her. He’s going to think it’s stupid.
Then he thinks it’s stupid, James. It’s still the truth.

James nodded shortly and faced his son again. Harry was leaning forwards with
all the magic he had gained from that bloody fourfold bond with his damned
soulmate crackling around him. It was honestly intimidating to sit in the same
room with him. But James spoke, as he had to speak.

“You know that my friend Remus Lupin was a werewolf and Sirius’s
soulmate,” he said. “And because of a stupid miscalculation Sirius made,
Remus rejected his bond with Sirius and went in search of Severus Snape,
whom he’d turned into a werewolf.”

“Yes, I’ve heard the story,” Harry said, voice low and obviously unsure what
this had to do with the subject at hand.

James took a deep breath and sat up, aware of Lily’s steadying presence through
their bond. Honestly, it was the only thing letting him speak at all right now.
“Riddle had passed a law the year before all this happened that werewolves
weren’t entitled to regular healing and counseling in the event of them losing
their soulmates.”

“I remember that vote. It’s not exactly like that.”

“How could you remember that vote?” James demanded in utter exasperation.

Now Harry was just making things up. “It happened before you were born!”

“I mean, I remember reading about the results of that.” Harry bit his lip. “Sorry.
I mean that the Wizengamot proposed a law that werewolves be driven out of
Britain and Tom fought back against it, with the help of a few other people.
They got it beaten down to the point where it still restricted rights for
werewolves, but it was less bad than it could have been.”

“He should have defeated it altogether,” James hissed. “If he was

a righteous man, he would have.”
“I’m not making claims that Tom’s a good man, just that he believes in the
righteousness of what he’s doing,” Harry said, shaking his head and staring at
James as if he thought there should be a distinction between those two things.
“But what about the specific provisions for werewolf counseling?”
“One werewolf went into St. Mungo’s on the full moon and deliberately
exposed himself to the rays of the moon through a window during a late-night
counseling session,” James said, the injustice still rumbling in his stomach. “He
ripped the Mind-Healer, his soulmate who’d rejected him, to pieces. From that,
the Wizengamot insisted that all werewolves be ineligible to receive counseling
except under such strict and humiliating terms that Remus refused.”
There was silence between them for a moment after that. Then Harry said
slowly, “Let me make sure I’ve got this right. Sirius set up this situation that
turned Snape into a werewolf, and Remus refused Mind-Healing on the terms
that the Wizengamot offered and left, and you think he would have stayed and
accepted his bond with Sirius if he could have had Mind-Healing on the
terms he wanted.”
“Yes! Do you know what those terms are? The werewolf needing to be escorted
by Aurors the whole way to St. Mungo’s or the other place the Mind-Healing
session is being held even if it’s not a bloody full moon, being tied to the chair
with unbreakable ropes or chains, the Mind-Healer having the right to have
a muzzle next to their chair—”

“I know it’s horrible.”

Harry’s voice cut through James’s words like a knife through a heart. He
paused, and found himself blinking at his son, who was leaning forwards with
his hands on the table.

“I know that part of the reason Tom voted the way he did was because of
the outside chance that his soulmate might be a werewolf,” Harry said quietly,
but his eyes blazed. “It wasn’t defensible, what he did. I’m not blaming your
friend for that.
“But I am blaming him for rejecting the bond and running away because he
was, I don’t know, too proud or whatever. And of course Mind-Healing like that
was the only option, not working through things with his soulmate? Or rejecting
the bond but continuing to live with his friends? It sounds like you were true
friends to him. He might have recovered if he’d stayed with you.”

“You don’t understand! Having your soulmate do such an awful thing isn’t easy
to get over—”

Harry threw back his head and laughed.

James stared at him, and didn’t need Lily bowing her head into her hands beside
him to know he’d said a stupid thing. He sighed. “All right. So I didn’t need to
tell you that.”
“No,” Harry said. “And I think it’s ridiculous that you took a situation that
sounds like it was mostly of Sirius’s and Remus’s making, and blamed Tom for
it. Tell me, Dad, did you have help from Dumbledore to do that?”

James opened his mouth, then closed it without a sound. He was going to say
that of course he hadn’t, but he did remember discussing the matter with Albus,
and how Albus had tutted and shaken his head and murmured that it was too
bad, but with Riddle’s handling of the situation, then poor Remus really had no
choice but to leave, unless they wanted to force him into a parody of Mind-
Healing.

“Riddle could have done something,” James said, half-absently, revising his

memories for the first time in a long time. Had Albus suggested more than
commiserated? He honestly couldn’t remember, and probably wouldn’t be able
to without the help of a Pensieve.

“The Minister’s powers don’t work like that,” Harry said, sounding bored. “And
if they did, then you would have used it as even more evidence that Tom was a
dictator.”

“I don’t understand what you mean about Riddle supporting the revised
legislation because he believed his soulmate might be a werewolf,” Lily said
brightly, her words so palpably a distraction that James sent an amused pulse
down the bond. Lily’s response wasn’t amused at all. “Why would that make a
difference? Why would he think that?”

“He believed that his soulmate knew about him, given the publicity of his soul-
mark, and hadn’t approached him for some reason related to fear or not feeling
worthy. At one point the only explanation he could think of was that his
soulmate was a werewolf.”

“No other reason, of course,” James muttered, shoving away the thoughts about
Remus. Harry had said it himself. No matter what the result was of the
legislation, his soulmate still wasn’t a good man.

“Yeah, well, I can’t blame Tom for not realizing that his soulmate had been
born to a pair of fanatics who believed that he was a Dark Lord,” Harry
snapped.

Lily flinched, physically and down the bond, and that centered James and made
him take the battle to Harry as nothing else could have. “Don’t speak to your
mother that way, Harry.”
“Why not?” Harry stared at them, and his eyes were bright in a way that James
had only seen before when he was working some powerful spell. Harry had
never looked like that when he was a child and accepted the necessity of staying
apart from his soulmate. “You were. That’s exactly what you were. Fanatics
who believed the word of a deranged Headmaster that the Minister for Magic
was evil and deserved to be deprived of his soulmate.”
“He’s been Minister for too long!” James stood up to emphasize his point.
“It is practically a dictatorship! He needs to be removed from office so that the
country can thrive—”
“You were never one half that reasonable when you described him to me!”
Harry surged up, too, and the chair behind him twisted and warped, flowing
through so many shapes that it no longer looked like wood. “You always said
that he was a genocidal maniac who could barely keep himself from
slaughtering everyone in sight! You said he wanted to transform Muggles into
mice and crush them! You said that he wanted to use Muggleborns as sources of
bones for purebloods with broken bones instead of having to use Skele-Gro!
You were insane, Dad!”

“You—”

“I heard you,” Harry snapped, and James stared at him. What was he talking
about? They’d talked to Harry often about his soulmate and why he would have
to make the ultimate sacrifice, how it was terrible but someone had to do it.

“I overheard you,” Harry corrected himself, and there was a sob in the back of
his throat. “If you—a few nights before I got my Hogwarts letter—you said—”
The night returned to James in terrible, painful clarity. He winced, and felt
Lily’s hand cover his. But he still reached out to his son, because if Harry had
listened to the whole conversation, then of course he’d understood that James
hadn’t meant what he said. He’d only said it in a moment of extreme frustration,
and he and Lily had both talked that through afterwards.

“Harry—”

The door to Harry’s bedroom burst open, and raging cold filled the flat.

Tom had had enough.

The memory that Harry was talking about was one he hadn’t shared with Tom,
hadn’t mentioned. But the pain that filled their bond was like fire lifting Harry
off the ground, and Tom knew the time had come to break his word and
interfere.

He stalked towards the kitchen table, his eyes on his soulmate, ignoring the way
that the Potters cowered. No, they didn’t matter right now, even though the way
they had hurt Harry made Tom want to kill them. He slipped his arms around
Harry and spoke down the bond, his face resting against the side of Harry’s
neck.

What did they say?

Harry’s anger eddied and curled back on itself in currents, embarrassed now,
not wanting to be shared. Tom kept one hand on the nape of his neck and steady
pressure against the bond, comforting, encircling pressure.

Harry half-felt that he was being ridiculous and shouldn’t share something that
would encourage Tom to dislike his parents, not surprisingly. But that half-
feeling wasn’t enough to contain the anger, not this time, and neither was the
love of his parents. He reached out, and his magic overlaid Tom’s like a
membrane.

Tom barely had time for a gasp before he was sucked into a small corridor
running behind what seemed to be the drawing room where Harry had been
with his mother in the first memory they’d shared. A young Harry, his head
bowed and his hand encircled around his right wrist, leaned against the wall
near a doorway. Tom turned and listened.

“…just hard, Lily.” James Potter’s voice was tired and defeated. Tom’s lip
curled. He couldn’t believe the man thought he had the right to feel that way,
given what his son was showing right now.

“I know. But it’s done. We’ve told Harry about the need to hide from his
soulmate. He’s very mature for his age. I’m sure he understands—”

“I know, but what kind of half-life is he going to have, denied his soulmate and
running around with that lack of a bond? But we can’t have him go to Riddle
and double his power.” There was a heavy thunk, as if James had leaned against
a wall. “I’m so tired, Lily. Sometimes, I think—”

Silence as deep as velvet. Tom stared at the younger version of his soulmate,
who stood there with his head bowed so his fringe hung in his eyes.

“What, James?”
“Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if Harry hadn’t been born at
all,” James Potter’s voice whispered hoarsely. “Rather than have this kind of
life—rather than be this kind of prize for a deranged madman.”

The pain that surged through the memory cut Tom like a blade of glass, so sharp
and sudden that for a long moment he didn’t believe he’d been cut at all. And
then the memory dropped away, fading into multicolored wisps around the
image of Harry running silently down the corridor, and he was back in the
kitchen.

And James Potter was pinned to the wall by an array of shimmering blades
made of pure magic, blades that went straight through the cloth of his
robes, outlining him, holding him still. He looked ready to vomit with fear.

“You told him that.” Tom didn’t recognize his own voice for a moment, knew it
best by the burning as it slid out of his throat. “You implied that you wanted
your own child dead.”

“No! No, I didn’t—I didn’t mean it—it was a moment of frustration—”

That was all James had a chance to say before Tom’s magic tied his throat shut.
Tom smiled at him, knowing that his eyes had probably turned red with his
madness. The first time they had done that was when he had seen the burn on
his chest and known that it had obliterated his soul-mark. He moved closer.

“I will enjoy your death,” he whispered. “I’ll savor it. I’ll stretch it out until
you’re sobbing with the desire to die, and you’ll know that the only reason you
breathe is my pleasure—”

“Riddle!”

A curse came at him from the side. Tom’s magic flexed around him and batted
it away. Probably from Lily Potter, he thought distantly. He heard the curse
shatter something, but he couldn’t care. His eyes still feasted on James’s pain
and discomfort, and he thought he would never grow tired of the sight.

“Tom.”

He felt that, a painful yank at the furthest edges of his swirling power. Tom
turned and looked reluctantly at his soulmate.
His soulmate, who was an adult and gazing desperately at him. But Tom could
still see the little boy who had heard his father dismiss him as an unwanted
burden, who had heard one of the people who was supposed to love him
unconditionally say that it would be better if he was never born.

The mere thought of Harry never existing was enough to drive Tom to the edge
of madness. He started to turn around again.

“I said no, Tom.”

Tom closed his eyes and moved slowly, feeling as if he was dragging chains, to
tie down his power and bind it close to his body. He hadn’t actually hurt James
yet, hadn’t wounded him; the knives had all gone through cloth. The thought
nearly maddened him again, but he breathed through a tight throat and asked,
“Why?”

“Because he really didn’t mean it. I know he was sorry for it as soon as he said
it. And I could hear my mum scolding him when I was running away.”

Tom turned his head, and Harry went still, but didn’t move away from Tom’s
side where he had clutched his arm. “And you think that is enough?” Tom’s
throat burned and rasped from the passage of his voice again. He saw something
fall, hissing, onto the floor, eating a hole in the wood, and knew it for a
manifestation of his magic. “You think he has paid?”

“I want to talk to him about it. I don’t want you to cut him to death.”

“I said his death would take a long time. I meant it.”

“Tom.”

No one else could have spoken to him in that tone, when he was in this mood,
and won his compliance. But Harry was the strongest and the most brilliant
prize he ever could have won. Tom snarled, but he folded his magic back from
James, although he left the knives in place, then extended his power around
Harry. Harry stood there, armed and armored against anyone who could have
tried to touch him, against anyone who would have taken him away. Tom
turned his head to stare at Harry’s parents again, and saw them quail.

Harry didn’t. Harry stood strong at his side.

He might not have existed—

Tom stamped down on his temper as he saw the walls begin to shake, and
waited.
*

Harry sighed a little as he realized this was all he was going to get out of Tom.
In a way, he couldn’t blame him. He had just heard that one of his soulmate’s
parents had said—that.

But even though it was still hard to think the words, Harry felt an easing of the
poison and the pain he had carried with him. The unsayable was said at last.

He turned to look at his father. His mother had her hands at her mouth, and
made a soft sound when Harry glanced at her. Harry shook his head.

“Tom won’t let him down right now,” he said, and faced his father, and took a
step towards him. James opened his eyes and looked at him.

Their faces were so similar. Their hair was so similar. Harry had been hearing
that all his life, from Sirius and his dad and Dumbledore and his mum. His mum
in particular seemed to want to reassure Harry that despite the awful soul-mark
on his wrist, he still belonged with his family, and his parents still loved him.

But Harry had sometimes doubted their love. And memories like the one he’d
overheard were the reason why.

“You really didn’t mean it?” he asked quietly.

James shook his head, and then stopped when his cheek brushed a knife. The
swell of power behind Harry said that Tom would be happy to make the bump a
cut. Harry reached back and pressed his fingers into Tom’s arm without turning
away from his father. After a long pause, the magic sank down like water
draining.

“No,” James whispered. “I would have given anything to change your fate—
what I thought was your fate—but I only said that because I was tired and
frustrated that day. And your mum chewed me out right afterwards.”

“I most certainly did,” Lily muttered, her voice frigid. Harry wasn’t sure all the
coldness was for James, but at the moment, that didn’t gut him the way it once
would have, either.

Staring at his father, Harry felt as though something was opening and blooming
and settling in him, a power that had been furled for too long.
His parents had been his whole world before he started Hogwarts. He didn’t see
Sirius or Dumbledore or the rest of them often enough to make a difference. His
parents had been the ones who taught him, who told him about what his soul-
mark was and why he could never be with his soulmate, who loved him despite
whose mark he’d been born with, who encouraged him in the ideals of heroic
sacrifice and self-denial.

He’d gone to Hogwarts shrunken into the same mold they’d put him in. He
didn’t allow himself to get too close to his friends, even though he valued them,
because they could never share in the immense secret he carried. Sometimes,
the more he learned, like when he’d discovered he had a serpentine Animagus
form, the worse he felt. He had started his attempts to get rid of the mark then,
because he’d been away from his parents and sometimes felt tempted to rebel
against them, and those impulses to rebellion horrified him and drove him into a
more desperate kind of obedience.

But now, he’d grown beyond them. He didn’t have to rely on their approval and
do exactly what they said from day to day any more. He no longer thought they
were perfect and right and knew all sorts of things he didn’t.

He had met his fate, and it wasn’t the awful thing he had thought.

It wasn’t that his father’s words had ceased to hurt, but Harry had ceased to fear
that his world was about to end because one of the two people who loved him
really felt and thought that. He had more people who loved him, now, and he
knew that. And he had become capable of seeing that his dad meant it when he
said he hadn’t meant it.

“I can forgive you,” he said quietly.

“Harry.”
“I didn’t say I would do it right now,” Harry said, stepping back so that he could
feel the heat from Tom’s body behind him. He was still looking at his father’s
face, slack with fear and surprise. “But I said I can.” He took a deep breath and
released it. “The way I never could when I was avoiding bringing it up for fear
of what he would say.”
Tom’s hands tightened on his shoulders, and he bent his head so that he was
hissing directly into Harry’s ear. “Am I ever going to get to take vengeance for
you?”

Harry unfortunately couldn’t reply in the same language (yet), but kept his
voice low enough as he looked back at Tom’s gleaming crimson eyes that he
didn’t think either his mother or father heard. “Tell you what, how about when
we catch up with Dumbledore?”

Tom was still as a dragon on a clutch for a long moment, and then he gave a
jerk of his head. The magic once again retreated, back into Tom’s skin,
wrapping around him closely enough that Harry could barely feel it brushing
against his fingertips like a layer of silk.

He didn’t let go of Harry, and Harry didn’t really want him to. He nodded to his
parents and murmured, “Tom?”

The knives pinning James’s robes to the walls disintegrated. Lily hurried
forwards and knelt down next to him, her hands shaping his face and then his
shoulders, although their bond would have told her at once if his dad was
injured, Harry knew. Then she looked up at them and nodded. Her face was too
full for words.

Tom spoke the words down their bond, instead. I think I have been patient
enough.

Harry nodded. It would be best for everyone here if they left now. He turned
around and towed Tom towards the door, at least as much as he was towed.

They passed Sirius on the way, and he gaped at them, his mouth open. It was
kind of a miracle that he hadn’t interfered, Harry thought, and braced himself
for more “godfatherly wisdom.”

But Sirius whispered, “Good luck.” Harry thought Sirius’s hand was covering
his own black-edged soul-mark as they went out the door.

Tom Apparated them to his own home, and barely closed the door behind them
before he pinned Harry to the wall with his magic much as he had James,
kissing him fiercely. Harry lifted his head and returned it as best as he could
from his cramped position.

I’m here. I promise I am.

And if Tom slept entwined around him that night, it was both perfectly
understandable and no one’s business but theirs.

Chapter 37: Gaps

Chapter Text
“I have to talk to you, Harry.”

Sirius hoped that his tone and the expression on his face—pathetic, he knew that
—would be enough for Harry to let him stay. Harry studied him over the cup of
tea he’d been making when Sirius walked into Riddle’s kitchen. He didn’t offer
any to Sirius, and that had changed from the young man Sirius had known, too.

Then again, Sirius had to reevaluate, often, how much of that young man he had
actually known. For one thing, he hadn’t known about the soul-mark that had
defined Harry’s entire life. And that was something he still couldn’t get used to.

Harry nodded, finally, and said, “All right,” waving at a chair across the table
from him. Sirius took it with a sense of relief. He wasn’t being thrown out right
away, and that was something.

“Tom is still asleep,” Harry added in a waring tone as he sat down not quite
straight across from Sirius. “I don’t want you to do anything that’ll wake him
up.”

“That’s a pretty broad—”

“I mean it, Sirius.”

Sirius eyed Harry, and then sighed and nodded. “Fine. I won’t.”

“Good.” Harry smiled at him, and it made Sirius’s chest ache to see how much
the smile still looked like that of the boy he had tossed in the air and spoiled and
cherished when he was younger. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Sirius stared at his hands. This wasn’t the bold and confident way he had
envisioned announcing the news. But then again, he had only come to this
realization with the help of his Mind-Healer, and he wouldn’t have told Harry
about it at all if he hadn’t known that Harry was also seeing a Mind-Healer.

“I realized that a large part of Remus rejecting the bond was me,” he said. “For
years I went around telling myself that Remus was just too sensitive and our
bond couldn’t have been that deep if he turned his back on me the first chance
he got. But now I know that I—I used him as a weapon.”

“All right,” Harry said, his voice so soft Sirius couldn’t tell what he was feeling.
And, at the moment, he couldn’t look up at him, either. “Are you going to try to
find Remus and bring him back? Are you going to apologize?”
“I—don’t actually need to reach out to him. I got a letter from him.”

Harry blinked at him, and then sat back a little. “Did you want me to read it?”

“Yes,” Sirius said, so relieved that he wouldn’t have to ask for a favor that his
voice rose a little. Harry looked at him sternly, and Sirius coughed. Right,
pseudo-Dark Lord asleep in the other room. He took the parchment that was
folded over eight times out of his pocket and extended it to Harry.

Harry unfolded it and read it in silence. That didn’t matter. Sirius had stared at it
so many times over the last few days that the words were embedded in his mind.

Dear Sirius,
I can’t pretend that writing this letter is pleasant for me. I’ve thought over and
over again about coming back, but I never wanted to. I didn’t know what I’d
find. Why would you resume the soul-bond when I’d rejected it?
But now, the more I think about it, the more I decide that this is a new kind of
world. I read in the papers about your godson and the Minister. That’s
something I never knew about, and I have to think that you didn’t, either, or you
would have tried to tell me about it before now and use that to convince me to
return. This is something so different that maybe, just maybe, it’s changed you,
too. Maybe I have a chance of having a different bond with you.
I’m still thinking about it. I want to see you how respond to this letter. If you’re
the same childish prankster you always were, I’ll just stay here.
But maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to.

Sirius waited for longer than he’d expected. He supposed Harry was going over
and over the letter, but he didn’t know why. Harry had never known Remus and
wouldn’t be able to tell anything about whether he was sincere. Finally, just
barely remembering to keep his voice low, he asked, “What do you think?”

Harry glanced up from the letter and fixed Sirius with a hard, considering gaze
that again made it clear just how much he’d changed. He wouldn’t have done
that a year ago, a month ago. He shook his head a little and asked, “Have you
tried to reach Remus with your telepathy?”

“I’ve reached out,” Sirius admitted. “He never answers. Just like he never
answered my owls before now.”

“And he never met me.”

“No. I did try to write to him about you a few times, but—” Sirius shrugged.
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“I just wonder why my bonding with Tom would make such a huge difference
to him.” Harry thoughtfully turned the letter over. “Dad told me that Lupin
didn’t want to go to Mind-Healing under the conditions that would have bound
him because he was a werewolf. He has no reason to like or trust Tom. Would
he really want to come back because of that?”

“You think he’s lying?”

“I think it could be a trap.”

It didn’t take Sirius long to figure out what Harry was thinking, and he couldn’t
help but scowl a little when he realized it. “From Dumbledore.”

Harry handed the letter back to him. “Do you think he would stop at anything to
try and break my bond with Tom?”

“No, but—” Sirius licked his lips and considered what he was going to say for a
moment, which would probably have made his Mind-Healer proud of him. But
in the end, with Harry sipping his tea and giving him that straightforward stare,
he said it anyway. “Sometimes things aren’t about you, Harry. Maybe Riddle
thinks he’s the center of the universe, but you know that you’re not.”

“He is the center of mine, and that is enough.” Riddle walked bare-chested out
of the bedroom and bent over to touch Harry’s cheek with his fingertips like a
kiss. His eyes remained on Sirius the whole time, of course, the bastard, testing
to see how he would react.

Harry tipped his head back, and his expression blazed with adoration. Given
that, Sirius swallowed what else he would have said.

At least one of them could be happy.

“But not the center of mine,” Sirius countered, when he could drag his mind
away from the insults he wanted to launch at Riddle, and which would just get
him thrown out. “I need advice about meeting with my soulmate, and I don’t
think it’s a trap from Dumbledore.”

“If you think that, then you have already decided against any advice I would
have given.” Riddle shrugged in a way that Sirius hated having to admit was
elegant, and sat down in the chair next to Harry’s. When he reached for tea and
a scone, Harry nudged them both towards him, and then looped an arm around
his shoulders and looked at Sirius.

“Have you tried—”

Sirius shook his head hard. He didn’t want Harry to discuss anything more
specific than they already had in front of Riddle.

Harry sighed, but shrugged. “Fine. Then I don’t know what to tell you, Sirius. I
told you why the letter seemed a little strange to me, but you want to go meet
him, and I can’t change your mind. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sirius said, a bit sullenly. He hadn’t thought that Harry would put it that
bluntly.

“Then take someone with you, at least,” Harry said. “From what you told me
about him, Remus is pretty emotional. Maybe he’ll want to shake you, or yell at
you, or play a prank, for all I know.”

“You think I need protection from my own soulmate?” Sirius sat up in his chair,
glad to have something to fight about.

“I think that you don’t really know each other anymore, and this is the soulmate
who rejected you,” Harry said coolly. “I also know that picking up the bond
again isn’t as simple as running up to him and hugging him. Think, Sirius. Why
does he want to reach out to you now and not earlier?”

“You read the letter.”

“I read the strange letter. I’m only trying to spare you the kind of

disappointment that—”

“You were denied your soulmate for a long time! You’re the last person I
thought would try and deny me mine.”

Harry put his hand over his eyes and sat there for a minute. Sirius couldn’t help
glancing warily at Riddle, waiting for the moment the man would strike at him
for having irritated Harry. But Riddle only blinked lazy, snake-like eyes at him,
and said nothing. Sirius supposed that there were different levels of irritation.

“Do what you want, then,” Harry muttered. “But the next time you need advice,
go ask someone else.” He snatched up a scone and walked out of the room.

Sirius blinked after him. “He’s that upset I didn’t take his advice?” he asked, not
really expecting an answer from Riddle.

“Rather, that you’re ignoring it,” Riddle said dryly, and stood up and followed
Harry.
Sirius sat there for a few more minutes to make a point, but in the end, after
another cup of tea, he departed. And his resolve hardened as he stalked over to
the Apparition point.

He was going to meet Remus. He was going to do his best to pick up their bond
where they had left off. And so what if there was some strangeness in the letter?
Anyone would sound strange writing to their soulmate after so many years
apart.

He would have to find an owl as soon as he got home.

“Please tell me that some people will go with Sirius.”

“Of course, Harry. I won’t let the idiot get killed because he wants to prove
something. And it will annoy him so. It will be amusing.”

Harry leaned back in his chair and sighed as he felt Tom’s arm wind around his
shoulders. “You enjoy annoying people, don’t you?”

“Not everyone. Most of my political enemies, I either strive to keep under

control or destroy. It’s only people whom you value for some reason and want
to keep around that I enjoy annoying, because I don’t have any other way to
show my dislike for them.”

Harry paused a little. Then he turned his head towards Tom. Tom was basking
like a cat in sunlight, his head tilted to the side. Their bond was the sunlight, and
Harry knew it.

“Do you hate them that much?” he asked.

“They kept you from me.” Tom spoke lazily, still like a cat, without a trace of
the rage that had driven him last night. “They have talents and minds of their
own, but they listened to Dumbledore and followed him without once thinking
of the consequences. Of course I hate them.”

“Sirius wasn’t involved in keeping me from you. He didn’t know anything

about my mark.”

Tom’s eyes opened, and he turned his head, a tide of cold already pouring down
the bond. Harry winced, but held Tom’s gaze. It was difficult. Nothing
compared to not flinching back from the bond, though.
“He cast the spell that could have unraveled us. Or did you forget?”

Harry sighed. “No, I didn’t forget,” he said aloud, because right now the silent
communication of the bond would have felt too intimate. “But I hoped that we
could both forgive that.”

“No.”

Harry stared at Tom this time, and his own anger helped him master the impulse
to turn away. “Why not? I know you don’t care about my parents and Sirius, not
really. The only reason they matter to you is because they’re connected to me.
You didn’t even really care about them as fugitives, or you would have told the
Aurors to make them a priority. Why can’t you just let their actions go?”

“Because they are a threat to you.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Harry. Listen to me.”

It wasn’t often that Tom got that tone in his voice, and Harry didn’t think he’d
heard it since they bonded fully, at least. Harry leaned a little further back and
resisted the temptation to pick up something from the table to munch on. He
didn’t want to look as if he was paying less than full attention to Tom’s words.

Tom’s hand stroked the side of his neck like a harpstring. Harry’s eyes closed in
spite of himself.

“They are a threat to you not because they hate you, or because they truly
believe that they can keep us apart any longer,” Tom said. “They are one
because they love you, too much, and refuse to consider that they might be
wrong.”

“After last night—”

“It is possible that that might have shocked your parents into realizing the
truth,” Tom agreed, without allowing Harry to finish his sentence. “Or it might
have hardened their hearts and convinced them I am a horrible person and
shouldn’t be with you.”

Harry sighed and leaned his head on Tom’s shoulder for a moment. “At least
you allow for the possibility.”
“I want them away from you.”

“No.”

“Harry—”

“It’s your turn to listen to me,” Harry said, and to his credit, Tom fell silent,
although he was watching Harry’s mouth with the kind of intense concentration
that Harry thought meant Tom might be paying more attention to his lips than
his words. “You’re right that they’re more rooted in their delusions than I
thought. And they distrust and fear you because of your politics even though
they know that about eighty percent of that was made up by Dumbledore.”
Tom’s arm curled harder around his shoulders, and the bond murmured, Only
eighty percent?

Harry gave him a thin-lipped smile and kept speaking, not letting himself be
distracted. “But on the other hand, they never knew how much they’d hurt me
with comments like wishing I hadn’t been—born with your soul-mark. Because
I kept it to myself, and I let them think that I was happy to reject you. Or at least
happy to do my part in the war.”

“They should not have had to hear it from you,” Tom snarled, his eyes turning
the color of garnets. “They should have known that that was beyond an awful
thing to hear, to say—”

“And you wouldn’t care about how awful it was if it was said to some child who
wasn’t me, even if that child had also been deprived of their soulmate.”

Tom stared at him in what Harry could feel from the bond was true
incomprehension. Harry sighed and shook his head a little, fondly. “I mean that
you’re not objecting because of the principle of the thing, or because you think
that parents in general shouldn’t do that. You’re objecting because it’s me.”

Tom lowered his head so that his chin rested against the side of Harry’s neck.
“Yes.”

Harry nodded. “So. I still want my parents as part of my life. But,” he added, to
stem the snarl that he could feel Tom getting ready to utter, “not in the same
way they were before, where I just forgave them everything and they rushed
around doing things for the Order and not thinking about the effects on me.”

“There’s no Order now.”

“I mean, Tom,” Harry said, and reached out to pull Tom’s head around so that
they were face-to-face, “that the same way I’m a chain on your conscience and I
could keep you from doing truly terrible things, you’re a chain on my martyr
complex. I want to get along with my parents, but I can’t forgive them that
easily. You’re here to make sure I don’t do that.”

Tom blinked a little. “So what kind of relationship do you want with them?”

“An adult one,” Harry said firmly. “Where we both understand that we’re
flawed people, and we give up the image of the past where someone was a
perfect hero. Honestly, the way they taught me about heroism makes me a little
queasy now. They insisted I was a hero for bearing with your soul-mark, and
then that I could be one by staying in the Ministry, hidden, and feeding them a
little information now and then. It was false all the way around. I need to shake
that image. Mind-Healer Laufrey is helping, and you’re more than helping. And
I need to realize that my parents aren’t the shining beacons of courage I once
thought they were, or terrible people, either.”
“They are terrible people.”

“I depended almost solely on them for decades—”

“You should not have had to—”

“I can’t just forget what they did!”

Tom drew in a sharp breath, and Harry looked down to find that he had cracked
the table in half with nothing more than a sharp blow of his hand. As he stared,
the two halves of the table wobbled back and forth, and then one of them fell
over. He shook his head as he watched its legs waver back and forth in the air.

“You are magnificent.”

Harry jerked his head up. Tom had gone from one mood to another in instants,
and was leading towards Harry now, his eyes smoldering more than slightly red.
The boiling magic in the air around them manifested as squiggles of black and
crimson.

“I have never seen someone do what you just did,” Tom continued, his voice
soft and musing. “Not even those who aimed to do it.”

Harry cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “I mean, I can’t imagine that most
people you know are aiming to crack tables—”
“That was merely the physical manifestation of the almost impossible thing you
were doing,” Tom countered, his eyebrows flowing up his face, as if he couldn’t
believe Harry didn’t know this. “You were channeling your magic through your
body as if your body were a wand, without cracking your bones or otherwise
hurting yourself. That is rare, Harry.”

“But it must happen all the time with accidental magic?”

Tom sighed at him. “I know that you deliberately held yourself back in the
magical theory classes at Hogwarts so you wouldn’t attract my attention, but
you should know enough by now to realize why that is a ridiculous statement.
Think about it. Why is it?”

Harry closed his eyes and forced himself to recall ancient lessons from books
that he had spent more time investigating for information on soulmates than
anything else. “Because…accidental magic is the magic erupting outside the
user’s body?”

“Exactly. If we didn’t teach them to use wands, many children would just keep
manifesting their magic that way, which is exhausting and half the time doesn’t
have the results we want anyway.”

Harry nodded, thinking about the time that he had wanted to make his broom fly
faster and had made it so heavy that it fell to the ground instead. “And why is it
so hard to channel it through your body instead?”

“Because we get used enough to wands that we assume our bodies can function
like them. But wands have their cores and their wood to mute and direct the
magic. Our bodies do not.”

Harry grimaced as he imagined the strain on the bones and flesh that Tom was
probably talking about. “But someone else must have done it.”

“I meant when I said that I have seen no one else do that.” Tom took his hand
and kissed it. “But I have felt someone do it.”

“You,” Harry said, because of course it couldn’t be anyone else. Tom would
have tracked down the person who did it and made them part of his Ministry
otherwise.

Tom tilted his head in response. “Yes, and even I did it with long and careful
study, as I had no wish to incapacitate myself in front of people who would
pounce on a hint of weakness. You did it without thinking.” Now the magic had
come to circle tightly around his body, and his eyes and the bond were both
gleeful.

“That should frighten you.”

“Why? I know you will not do it to me, and that is all I need to know.”

Harry sighed and leaned back against him. Tom’s hand touched his shoulder
and rested there. Harry felt his support down the bond, but there was also a
large, clear, golden-tinted current of lust and smugness.

“We were arguing about my parents,” Harry said. “I’m not going to lose them
again just because of you. It was your say-so and their actions that got them
exiled last time. I won’t just forgive them mindlessly, but I won’t forget them.”

Tom moved in a way that Harry knew meant was reluctant, but the current was
still flowing towards him, carrying the same emotions. “Agreed,” Tom
eventually murmured.

Are you really changing your mind just because I showed you magic that you’ve
been the only one to perform in the past? I thought you were going to kill my
father last night.
Magic matters more to me than your parents. You matter more than anything. I
will not forget about them, either. And if they need chastising, I will be there to
provide it. But I think they have received what they needed, for now.

Harry grimaced and nodded. He hadn’t forgotten the looks in his father’s face or
his mother’s eyes, which had conveyed their emotions to him as strongly as if
he’d had an emotional bond with them, too

“I’ll go and speak to them later.”

“And you don’t want me to come along,” Tom said, leaning back and removing
his hand from Harry’s shoulder.

Harry stilled the flare of worry that this would make Tom back away from him
and never come back. He had seen how tightly Tom clung to the merest
mention of his soulmate. Rejection was one thing he never had to worry about.
“That’s right,” he said, and held Tom’s eyes.

Tom was the one to look away first, and grunt a little. “Make sure they
understand how lucky they are to still have you.”
“I hope that’s a realization they’ve already come to themselves,” Harry said,
and finished his tea.

“Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.”

Lily gave Harry what she knew was a watery smile, and leaned up to embrace
him. He touched her back, lightly, and Lily wished for a moment that she could
know his emotions the way she did with James.

“Hi, Dad.”

Harry said it more heavily, and Lily winced, but held her tongue and glanced
over her shoulder. James was sitting at the table staring into his teacup. His
emotions had retreated to a low, thrumming level that made her feel as if she
was standing with her shoulders against the boot of a Muggle car.

“James,” Lily prompted after a second.

Her soulmate sighed and tilted his chair back until his feet were hooked under
the top of the table. “Hi, son,” he said.

Harry blinked at him for a second. Lily wondered whether he would summon
his soulmate, whether this amounted to disrespect that would drive Riddle into
rage again—

And then Harry laughed.

Lily smiled, but she had to admit she wasn’t really sure what they were smiling
about. She glanced at James again, and found him blinking and sitting up. A
trickle of stronger feeling came down the bond, and she asked, Did you think
that he was going to kill you?
I thought Riddle might.

Lily winced, because she couldn’t deny thinking that herself, and turned back to
Harry. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t mention the way James is acting to Riddle,”
she said.

“I don’t have any problems with the way he’s acting,” Harry said, in a baffling
way, and sat down at another chair at the table, not the one he’d taken last night,
twisting his own chair around so that he could smile at them. “I just think it’s
funny.”
“Nearly wanting me killed is funny?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Is something wrong with your ears, Dad? No, the way
you’re acting now is funny. You’re acting like a sulky child, and I’m the one
who would have a right to do that if anyone did. I just think it’s amusing.”

“Why?” Lily asked, sitting down from across him, but still within reaching and
touching distance of James if she needed to be. From the way James was
wordlessly opening and closing his mouth, she thought she might need to be. “I
don’t—there seems to be so much unsaid between us, Harry, and I don’t want it
go unsaid anymore.”

Harry smiled at her and nodded. “Well, first of all, you should know that you
aren’t going to persuade me to leave him. The sacrifice that you forced me to
make for years and years is over. I’m not going to resume it.”

Lily swallowed, and nodded. She had spent a lot of time thinking last night,
even after James went to sleep, when she was sure her thoughts wouldn’t
disturb him. And she had come to the conclusion that while her initial
perception of Riddle as a madman wasn’t right, and neither was her secondary
perception of him as someone simply devoted to Harry, and she had no idea
where the truth lay, Harry wasn’t going to walk away from him.

“You still should,” James whispered, and ignored the sharp prod that Lily sent
down their bond. “Someone capable of holding your father up against the wall
and threatening to kill him…”

“You’re still friends with someone who used his own soulmate as a weapon to
try and kill someone he didn’t like,” Harry said, his magic flaring with a
cascade of colors that passed too quickly for Lily to retain more than an
impression that they existed. “So don’t tell me what’s moral and all that rot.”

James opened his mouth, then closed it and hung his head. Lily put a hand on
his arm and took a bracing breath. “Is your soulmate going to require us to
answer for what we did?”

“Not unless you hurt me again.” Harry lifted his shoulders and dropped them.
“But honestly, the only thing keeping you alive right now is the fact that he
knows I value you.”

Lily blinked and stared at the boy, the man, sitting across the table from her,
who was not the one she’d thought she’d raised. “Harry,” she breathed. “I—
how can you say that so coolly?”
“I was by myself a lot when I was younger,” Harry said, seemingly randomly,
but Lily doubted it was randomly to him, so she swallowed the temptation to
snap at him and listened instead. “I learned that I wasn’t to make too much
noise or too many demands. You didn’t take me to play with other kids because
they might see my mark. You didn’t dare let me have hope that my love could
somehow change my soulmate, because you knew he was an evil man. You
educated me carefully to be a hero.”

“We didn’t mean you to be a martyr,” James whispered.

“Not have the attitude of one, no.” Harry looked at James for a moment with a
pitying smile, and Lily blinked. How much of this was new, and how much of
this had been under the surface, Harry never wanting them to see it? She had no
idea. “But you did raise me to give up what you saw as the most important thing
in the world.”

“There are other important things! Freedom, and friendships, and—”

“But you didn’t act like that.” Harry raised his eyebrows, and the pity crept into
his eyes. “I lost count of the number of times that you told me Mum was the
most important person in your life and the best thing ever to happen to you, and
Mum just got tears in her eyes whenever she looked at my mark.”

Lily closed her eyes. So this was what he had come to tell them. That part of the
reason Riddle had claimed him so strongly was their fault.

If we had played it more cautiously, convinced Harry that there are indeed
other important things—
But we always knew who his soulmate was, James insisted. What else could we
have told him?
We could have tried harder to find out the truth about Riddle. We’re smart
people, James. I know that if we didn’t see the truth of Riddle before now, then
it’s because we refused to see. Lily swallowed back words she might have said
and opened her eyes. “Does Riddle intend to let us live?” she asked bluntly.

Harry stared at her for a second, as if he couldn’t believe she had asked the
question. Then he nodded. “I already said that. He knows how important you
are to me, and that I’d be upset if he killed you. He might not leave us alone for
very long, though, depending on what he can feel through the bond.”

“What a moral, upstanding man,” James muttered. “The only reason he spares
us is because we’re important to you.”
“Hypocrite,” Harry said, calmly, but the word still struck Lily, given that Harry
had never said anything like that to his father before. “The only reason you
didn’t kill him before we ever met is because you didn’t have the power. And
you would have killed him even knowing that it would have crippled me
emotionally, and maybe made me commit suicide. He cares about my life more
than you did.”

James stared at him again. Harry stared back. Lily swallowed. She had never
noticed how much their eyes resembled each other’s before, despite Harry’s
color being hers, and how stubborn they could both look.

“We never thought there was a way to free you from the curse of being his
soulmate,” James whispered.

“It’s not a curse.”

“You only think that way because you’re so close to him! He’s
done horrible things—”
“And so did you, you fucker.” Harry’s voice had cooled down to the point that
Lily wasn’t surprised to see thin threads of ice appear on the table. “You
collaborated with Dumbledore in an effort to kill Tom and hundreds of innocent
people, including me. You kept me isolated and said and did horrible things to
me. Even now, you act as if Tom is worse than anyone in the world. You still
haven’t shed the remnants of your time licking Dumbledore’s arse. Tell me,
how does it feel to have it shoved up there so deep that you want me to disown
my soulmate? I was thinking it was a mistake that you targeted that building I
was in that day and that you said you wished I hadn’t been born because you
were just so frustrated, but it’s more and more sounding like you don’t care if I
die, as long as Tom goes with me.”

The thick silence sat between all of them at the table. Harry was breathing
harshly, glaring at James, whose eyes were wide open and who sat perfectly
still. All Lily could feel down their bond was static, as if James was a telly.

“It’s not like that,” James finally whispered.

“Yeah, I know what it’s like.” Harry swept a hand through his hair. It was
shaking, but Lily didn’t think it was with fear or sadness. “I know that you hate
him so much more than you love me.”

“No!” Lily started to her feet. “Harry—”

“You acted like you could accept him at first, Mum. The last I knew, you
thought Dumbledore was worse. What changed?”

Lily swallowed, and swallowed again. She didn’t know the answer to that, or so
she wanted to say.

But the words welled out when she opened her mouth, as if they had been
waiting there on their own for her to recognize them.

“I thought you never would accept him,” she whispered. “That you would turn
your back on him when you found out what a terrible man he is. Or that he
would change completely because it would be the only way he could have you.
And instead he’s stayed the same, and you’re the one changing.”
Harry closed his eyes and exhaled what sounded like a lot of rage. Then he said,
“It’s unrealistic to expect a person to just change to conform to someone’s
standards, Mum. I’m changing Tom, but slowly. And if you really did expect
that, then you’re as much of a hypocrite as Dad is. You didn’t change your
beliefs about Tom despite having pretty excellent reasons to do it, right? And
you still think it would be better if I wasn’t soulmated to him. If we didn’t have
a complete bond.”

Lily shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to feel.
The static that seemed to have infested her bond with James was blooming and
roiling in the middle of her mind now.

Harry shook his head in response. “I came over here hoping that we could talk
about having a fully adult relationship, is the way I put it to Tom,” he muttered,
and pushed his chair back from the table roughly. “But I suppose I had too
much hope and too much faith in you. You’re still too wrapped up in the fact
that Tom is my soulmate to think about anything else. Well, I’ll let things cool
down for a while and see if they improve.” He turned and strode for the kitchen
door.

“Harry.”

James croaked those words, and not Lily. Lily supposed that was to be
expected. She was still too full of words, and too closed.

Harry glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“I never wanted you dead.”

“At the moment, I’m not ready to believe that,” Harry said, and shut the door
behind him.

James collapsed back into his seat and put his head between his hands. Lily
wrapped her arm around his shoulders and sat down next to him. They leaned
on each other, their bond shivering like leaves in high wind.

How does this feel so much worse than what we faced last night, with Riddle
actually threatening James?

Lily closed her eyes and decided to think about that question. It wasn’t as if she
would be able to do much else, right now.

Tom knew his part, and had since the bond rippled with fire on Harry’s end. He
didn’t go to the Potters’ flat, despite what he had said earlier. This kind of anger
wasn’t pure pain, although it was mixed with pain.

It felt, in fact, like the kind of emotion Tom had been waiting for Harry to feel
for a long time.

The door to the house tore open and Harry stepped inside, not bothering to use
his hands to close it, either. He marched across the kitchen and flung himself
into the chair next to Tom, leaning his head on his shoulder.

Tom stroked his hair, and said not one word, either aloud or telepathically.

“I feel like they think me dying would be an acceptable price to get rid of you,”
Harry whispered at last.

Tom curled himself closer around his bondmate. He kept his own fury carefully
banked. It was easier than he’d expected, certainly easier than it had been last
night. What mattered now was holding Harry safe and giving him as much
protection as he could, and exploding in rage would force Harry to pay attention
to him instead.

Harry pressed closer, and closer, and then said, “I want to go with you to the
Wizengamot today. I want to talk to them. I want to see what they talk about. I
want—I want to think about something else.”
Tom smiled. “You will be most welcome. At least, welcome at my side.”
“At the moment,” Harry said thoughtfully, “I don’t care how uncomfortable I’m
making anyone else.”

And the emotions he sent down the bond were also ones that Tom had long
waited for Harry to feel.

Chapter Text
Chapter 38: Unimagined

“Mr. Potter, do you have a moment to speak with me?”

Harry arranged his face in a polite smile as he turned to look at Madam

Moonwell. He never felt as if he knew what she was going to say. Most of the
time, she was supportive of him and Tom, but he had been at other Wizengamot
sessions or conversations with her in the Ministry where she would abruptly
start laughing at him, or claim that he was as witless as a Muggle, or argue
fiercely with him about his opinions on Muggleborns (whom she didn’t seem to
hate, but thought of as ignorant).

“Yes, Madam Moonwell?” he added, when she stood there with the staff she
used to walk planted in front of her and stared at him. They were just outside
the doors of the main Wizengamot chamber, and Harry wanted to get in there as
soon as possible to support Tom. He’d only left because he had to use the loo.

“You’re involving my daughter in some kind of ritual research.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re friends with my granddaughter.”

Harry blinked, then nodded. It was still hard to think of dreamy Luna and the
formidable Madam Moonwell being related in any way, but then he’d remember
the way Luna had got angry about his keeping his soul-mark from her, and he
could see the resemblance. “Yes.”

Madam Moonwell narrowed her eyes at him. “I want you to research a ritual
that would allow her to find her soulmate.”

“I mean, I could do that,” Harry said, a little confused. “But there’s all sorts of
rituals out there, and all sorts of answers you could find yourself. I’m sure Tom
would let you have access to the Hogwarts library if you need some obscure
books. Or Headmistress McGonagall.” It was still odd to call her that, when it
had been Dumbledore for so long.
“There are rituals that can only be performed by Parselmouths that have a
guaranteed chance of success,” Madam Moonwell said, her voice becoming as
harsh as a raven’s for a second. “None of the ones I’ve tried have had any
success.”

Harry blinked again, then nodded. “And in the meantime, will you withdraw
your opposition to that proposed bill about facilitating Muggleborn adoptions?”

“I thought you would do this for me as Pandora’s client and Luna’s friend.”

Madam Moonwell made it sound as if she was totally surprised, but her eyes
glittered. Harry ventured a snort. “There’s no free favors in politics. And the
research for the Parselmouth ritual is going to take up time that I could use on
other things Tom wants to do. Not to mention that I’m not a Parselmouth yet,
and it’ll take time to become one.”
Madam Moonwell lost her uptight posture, and cackled. “You’ll do, Potter,” she
said. “But I’m opposing that bill for a good reason, you know. There are
purebloods who would take advantage of an easy adoption to
actually steal Muggleborn children from their families.”

“The bill itself includes language to prevent that. If someone wants to adopt a
Muggleborn child, they’d still need to prove either that the child was an orphan,
there was abuse, or their parents had willingly given up their rights. The
adoption just wouldn’t need to go through five departments in the Ministry
anymore.”

“And you think that you can tell the difference between parents willingly giving
up their rights and being charmed into doing so?”

Harry blinked at that. “Yes, of course.”

Madam Moonwell paused. “How? I don’t think you know enough about the
Muggle world to be sure, not when you grew up in the magical one.”

Harry stared at her. Then he said, “Wait. Is this about the charms that might
have persuaded a Muggle parent being impossible to detect?”

“Yes, of course!” Madam Moonwell’s staff thumped on the floor hard enough
to turn a few heads from the people lingering around the entrance to the
Wizengamot’s chamber. “Don’t tell me that you have a way to do something
that’s impossible!”
“It’s not impossible for me,” Harry said, while his brain whirled. He hadn’t
even considered that as a reason for a possible objection—but he’d forgotten,
once again, that most people didn’t have access to the level of power that he and
Tom did, even if they were soulmated to someone who loved them back. “I
might have had the magic to do it on my own, I’m not sure, but now that I’m
with Minister Riddle—”

“Harry?”

Tom had stepped out of the Wizengamot chamber, despite what Harry was sure
was a spirited debate over the adoption bill. His face was smooth as he watched
Harry with Madam Moonwell, but the bond snapped back and forth between
them like a tree branch in high winds, and Harry thought that he was probably
lucky he’d got as much time for a conversation with her as he had.

“I’m coming,” Harry said, and sent a gentle push of adoration down the bond
that made Tom’s shoulders relax. He nodded to Madam Moonwell. “I hope that
we’ve both acquired new information today, Madam.”

She watched him with quiet, narrowed eyes as he and Tom walked away. As the
doors were about to close behind them, she called, “I want a demonstration.”

“Come along, then,” Harry called back without turning, and smiled as Tom put
a hand on his arm.

“What was that about?”

She wants me to perform a Parselmouth ritual to find Luna’s soulmate. I told

her I would if she would drop her opposition to the adoption bill, and told her I
could detect the charms someone might cast on Muggle parents to make them
give up their parental rights.

Tom’s eyes widened, and then he laughed, a soft, silky sound that made more
than one person in the room jerk their heads around. Harry read fear in their
faces as he watched out of the corner of his eye, and longing. There were people
here who would have given anything to carry Tom Riddle’s soul-mark.

I wish I could have.

But Harry buried that thought. The point was that he did stand here, known and
claimed, and he ignored the eyes of their audience to look at Tom.

“Then she should indeed come in,” Tom said, and drew Harry to his seat with
an arm around his shoulders and the bond purring in the depths of his mind.
*

“You have not answered our objection as to how we would make sure
that some people were not Confounding or otherwise charming Muggle parents
into giving their children up, Minister Riddle.”

That was Kalinda Jones, a half-blood who played the game in much the same
way Tom did, swaying back and forth to take advantage of the political winds,
and using both words and actions as necessary to make sure she didn’t look like
a hypocrite. She stood now with her dark eyes fixed on him, one hand toying
with the coil of brown hair that fell down past her shoulders.

“My soulmate is going to talk about that,” Tom said. He sat back as Harry stood
up beside him.

Jones blinked and refocused. Then she said, “With respect, Minister Riddle,
your soulmate doesn’t hold an elected political position and doesn’t belong in
this discussion.”

“But soulmates are considered, magically, part of their bonded’s elected

position once the bond is completed.” Harry’s voice was soft and rich and full.
Tom wished that Harry could see that some of the eyes in the chamber pointed
straight at him. Harry might believe that purebloods would have given
everything they had to be paired with Tom’s power, but Harry had power of his
own, beauty, fascination. There were many who would find him the more
attractive one.
Or rather, would have found him. Tom sat there now with his smile throbbing
and the chant of Mine, mine, mine, in the background of the bond.

Harry sent a thought of amusement back at him, and walked forwards to stand
in the middle of the patterned stone floor between the galleries of seats. “I am
very willing to use my magic on any Muggles you suspect may have been
charmed,” he said. “I can find the charms and reverse them. And if we found
them before the adoption took place, well, it would be easy to prevent it from
going forwards.”

“No one can see charms like that,” Jones said dismissively. Tom held back his
cackle. She wasn’t being stupid, just reciting the accepted magical theory.
“They’re not powerful enough. Even a Memory Charm can’t always be found
by a skilled Leglimens, and this would be the Confundus and the like.”

“I can see them.” Harry smiled at her. “More, I can make them visible so that
Aurors and the like can see them, too.”
A rustle of wonder and a murmur of discontent moved simultaneously through
the chamber. Lestrange opened his mouth as if he would say something, and
then clamped it shut. As he should, Tom thought, after losing the duel to Harry
so badly. Few took him seriously anymore.

“I do not believe you can do such a thing,” Aelia Malfoy said. She was sitting
down, not bothering to rise to her feet, but she stared at Harry and didn’t look
away. “For the reason that Madam Jones stated, and others. No one is powerful
enough to do that.”

“Do you want to volunteer as my test subject, Madam Malfoy?”

Malfoy took that as seriously as she did everything, and simply shook her head.
“No. And you must find someone who is Muggleborn to have it performed on,
or a Muggle, and then show us that you can detect and reverse the charms.
Purebloods would be different, and if you chose someone who knew you, they
might play along to prove your ridiculous argument.”

“I volunteer.”

Tom blinked at Jones. He hadn’t thought she would ever do something like that,
and for a moment, he reached out to Harry to make sure that Harry hadn’t made
a deal with her earlier or convinced her or “convinced” her.

No, of course not, Harry said snappishly back down the bond, which opened
like a crocodile’s jaws in the back of Tom’s mind for a second. She thinks I’m
going to fail, and then she can hold that failure over our heads.

That did sound rather more like Jones’s methods. Tom sat back and waved a
lazy hand. “If you would like to, Madam Jones, then I have no objection.”

“I do,” said Malfoy again, her voice higher than it normally would have been.
Ever since Harry had shattered her composure the first time, Tom thought, it
had been easier and easier to do so. “Madam Jones is a half-blood. She would
still confuse the results.”

“Really, Madam Malfoy?” Harry asked, and pinned Malfoy with a

condescending look so pure that Tom was tempted to stand up and applaud.
“You still think that there are noticeable differences between a half-blood’s and
a pureblood’s mind and power? Or a half-blood’s and a Muggleborn’s?
Knowing what you know, having learned what you’ve learnt?”
It was pretty hard to tell, but Tom was convinced that Malfoy had gone even
paler than her normal snowy-white skin tone. She sat down hard and stared at
Harry with blank eyes, her hands clenching beside her for a moment.

Harry waited as if he expected a real answer, and then sneered and turned
towards Jones. “I thought not. Would you come down here, Madam Jones?”

Jones looked less certain than she had before, to Tom’s private delight. But she
gave her head a toss and walked down the steps towards Harry, standing before
him with her arms folded and her eyes level with his.

“Confundus,” Harry said loudly and carefully, keeping his wand movements
slow enough that Tom was sure even the most inbred purebloods near the top
rows could see what was going on.

Jones blinked, and her arms dropped to her sides. She looked like a resident of
St. Mungo’s Janus Thickey Ward, Tom thought, privately delighted. He would
have liked to see others put under a charm like that from Harry’s magic, even if
it only lasted a few minutes each.

Harry raised his wand and spun it in a circle over Jones’s head. Tom knew that
was as much for show as anything else. Harry was using the pooled magic of
their bond to pull on the charm that was bubbling in Jones’s mind and force it
into visibility, but the people in the room would react better if they had a
process they understood.

The charm appeared, bright yellow streaks of light that crossed Jones’s face and
burrowed into her hair. Someone else gasped. Madam Moonwell leaned
forwards to demand, “And how do we know that that’s the Confundus and not
some other spell she has on her?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Do you want me to cast another spell and then match my
magical signature from that to this one?”

Tom stood up. “They would only say that you could have placed some other
charm than the Confundus,” he murmured. He looked straight at Madam
Moonwell. “Do you have any evidence that Madam Jones had another spell on
her before this?”

Madam Moonwell sat back, sulky as a bear with a wounded paw. Tom
suspected it wasn’t true opposition to him or Harry; she simply disliked losing
political games. “Magical theory says that charms like this can’t be revealed.”
“Well, yes, magical theory says quite a lot that turns out not to be true, Madam
Moonwell. Or did you think that saving all of your lives when my friends tried
to blow up the Wizengamot chamber with an Ultimate Destruction Curse buried
in their bond was predicted by any sort of theory?”

Tom laughed aloud. Harry cast one sparkling-eyed glance back at him, and then
turned to face Jones again.

“Watch what happens to the charm and her when I cast the counter. Finite
Incantatem.”

The yellow light vanished, snapping up into the air as if an invisible hand had
yanked on it and then shredded it. Jones shrieked and jumped, her wand
snapping into her hand in turn. She glanced around, then turned to stare at
Harry.

“You did that to me,” she whispered, her voice holding no small amount of fear.
“You made me feel as if I was detached, drifting, as if nothing mattered at all
but the contents of my own mind, which wasn’t my own…”

“Would you say that you were under the Confundus Charm then, Madam
Jones?” Harry asked loudly, with one eye on their audience. Arcturus Black had
joined Madam Moonwell in her scowling.

“Yes, of course I was! The bloody strongest one I ever felt, but still the
Confundus! Who says I wasn’t?” Jones swung around, apparently looking for
someone to duel who wasn’t Harry. Harry didn’t bother to hide his smile, or the
affection he dumped down the bond, although someone would have had to be
able to read Tom better than anyone else now alive could to notice that.

“Well, it was visible when Potter called on his magic to make it so,” Black
muttered. “And current theory says that charms like that can’t be made visible
—”

“If you don’t think it was, maybe you should volunteer to be his next test
subject, Black.”

Black coughed and sat back hastily. “I didn’t say that I didn’t believe it,
Kalinda, only what current theory says.”

Harry coughed himself to call attention back to him. “I can cast those charms,”
he said simply. “I can make them visible. I believe I can also teach others how
to see them, without my needing to be there. That should settle the issue of
whether any Muggle parents have been charmed into letting their children go
into adoptions when they don’t really want to let them go.”

“Yes, it should,” Jones said, taking a sliding step back from Harry. “I never
want to feel that again,” she muttered, although she at least sounded as if she
meant to say it to herself.

Tom concealed his amusement and nodded to Jones when she glanced at him.
Jones sought her seat again with alacrity.

“Does anyone else have more questions about how this will work?” Tom asked,
sweeping his gaze over the seats. Lestrange was sulking with his arms folded,
but at least it didn’t seem like he wanted to say anything. “I am sure that Harry
will be happy to arrange another demonstration—for instance, if anyone else
wants to feel it for themselves.”

“What if we have ethical concerns?”

Tom hid his surprise as he inclined his head towards Amelia. She had fully
recovered from what Dumbledore had inflicted on her with the tuning fork
device and returned to her duties, although only recently to the Wizengamot.
“Which ones are those, Madam Bones?”

“This procedure is not based on a spell that your soulmate can teach others, or a
Ministry process that can be replicated.” Amelia frowned at him and pushed her
hair behind one ear. “It is based solely on the strength of a single soulmated
pair. What happens if we pass this bill now, and then, in the future, after the two
of you have perished, no one else can figure out whether Muggleborns’ parents
have been Confunded or not?”

“I can teach the reveal to any soulmated pair, I think,” Harry offered. “It just
requires moving your magic in a certain way, not so much the strength.”

Tom nodded and put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “And at least right now,
Madam Bones, neither Harry nor I have any intention of perishing.”

The shock that ran around the Wizengamot was as pure and brilliant as
lightning. Tom basked in it and smiled a little as he saw Lestrange sit up. He
opened his mouth, caught Tom’s eye, and then slumped back even further.

What? Harry hissed down the bond, as full and furious as if he had been a
Parselmouth himself already. We never discussed that!
Surely you did not think I was eager to die, and leave your company?
We still didn’t discuss it! Why did you announce it here and now? It’ll give
people a reason to get upset at you! They don’t want an immortal Minister in
office!
Tom bent his head and extended his hand for Harry’s, which he lifted to his
lips. I have my reasons.
Tell me one good one.
I want you to be mine forever.
That’s not what I meant—

“Does this mean that you will not willingly leave the Minister’s office at the
legal end of your term?” demanded Amelia, her hand gripping her wand as if
she was about to draw it and cut Harry’s throat.

Tom would have loved to see her try, although only in the abstract, because it
would have been annoying to have to destroy her for the attempt. He smiled at
her instead, and watched as her eyes widened. “It means no such thing,” he said
calmly. “It means that we will be immortal, and can keep showing people and
soulmates how to perform the charm, which should settle your ethical
objections.”

Amelia looked as if she would have loved to say something scathing and witty
and entrenched in legal tradition all at once, but had no idea what.

“There has not been an immortal soulmated pair in centuries beyond centuries,”
Arcturus Black decided to interrupt, because of course what the conversation
lacked was his inestimable contribution. “I daresay that you will not break those
rules and become one yourself with your lover, Minister.”

“I daresay that you have no idea what you’re talking about, Black.” Tom
tightened his arm around Harry’s waist. “If we are a pair who can keep the
Wizengamot and the molecules of everyone’s bodies flying apart—”

“Your soulmate did that, not you, Minister.”

“With our pooled magic, Black.”
“Can we stop talking like impatient schoolchildren?” Harry asked loudly, which
made everyone blink and pay attention to him, which was probably what he had
intended. Tom saw his soulmate’s cheeks flush, but he stood there under the
glares instead of running away. “Regardless of whether we can be immortal or
not, what matters now is whether we can dismiss some of the objections to the
Muggleborn Adoption Bill.”
“I suppose we can,” said Tom with a long sigh, and rejoiced in the fury he was
receiving down the bond. Harry agitated was better than any argument with
Arcturus any day. He dropped his arm from around Harry’s waist and stepped
back, looking around the Wizengamot chamber. “Is there anyone who wishes to
continue to oppose it? Or to withdraw their objections?”

Tom wasn’t surprised when several wands went up to answer the last question,
and he smiled smugly at the back of Harry’s neck.

We need to talk about this, Tom.

I believe you were the one who said we needed to talk about the Muggleborn
Adoption Bill?

Harry sent a hiss in return that was nearly the mental equivalent of
Parseltongue, and then broke away from him in order to speak about the reasons
and ways that some Muggleborns might want to enter the wizarding world.

Tom leaned back in his seat and was pleased.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“What particular aspect of it, my dearest?”

Harry glared at Tom. Tom continued to lounge on the bed in his room, looking
Harry over with that brand of fond possessiveness Harry would never get tired
of or used to. Harry shoved his discontent down the bond.

“That only tells me what you feel, not what particular aspect of today displeased
you.”

“You announced to the Wizengamot that we both wanted to be immortal,”

Harry said stiffly. Tom just kept looking and said nothing, so Harry sat down in
the chair shoved almost under Tom’s desk. “That isn’t—Tom, we never
discussed that. Let’s say that it’s theoretically possible for strong soulmated
pairs. I don’t want it.”

“Is that because you would prefer not to outlive some of the people you love?”
Tom asked. “Or because you are so young that you cannot conceive of death as
more than a distant threat, and so you believe you could go quietly and
peacefully when it is your time?”

Harry paused. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

“Of course I have. Originally, I didn’t want to die before I had found my
soulmate. Then I did not want to die before I had spent as much time with them
as I should have had.” Tom sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed.
“And now I have found you, and I am so greedy of my time with you that I
cannot accept calmly that it might end in a few years or decades.”

Harry stared at him. Tom simply stared back.

Harry took a long, difficult breath. “I—I know you’re older than me. I always
knew that, because I always knew who you were. I still never thought about
being immortal.”

“And you never thought about being with me, either.” Tom smiled at him, and
the bond shifted as sleekly as a tiger. “I know you don’t think about this the
same way I do, Harry, but you were also forbidden from thinking about it. Your
own thoughts therefore make a weaker argument.”
Harry sighed through his nose. Yes, Tom was right in some ways. Harry had
never thought about immortality one way or the other, and he
wasn’t truly opposed to it because of some weak ideas about how death was the
greatest gift or one lifetime should be enough. Part of him found it romantic that
Tom had thought about it so deeply, had determined that the world owed him
the time to spend with his soulmate.

From the way Tom smirked at him, he knew that part of Harry existed, and was
pleased as fuck about it.

But that didn’t address the main objection Harry had. He dragged his mind back
to the moments when he had stood in front of the Wizengamot and felt as if he
would combust with embarrassment.

“You said that you wanted me to take an active role in politics. Challenge you.
Make you defend your choices, or change them if it turned out that you
couldn’t.”

“Yes, of course.”

“When you act as if I’m your lover to be indulged instead of a serious political
player in the middle of the Wizengamot, it undermines any effort I make in that
direction. And I don’t think you take me that seriously, either.”

Tom paused. Then he nodded slowly. “Yes. I can see that now. I’m sorry. I’ll—
endeavor not to do it again.”
Harry supposed that was better than a promise not to do it again, which would
probably be broken the next time that someone threatened Harry. He leaned
back against the chair with a little sigh. “The other part is that we’ve never
actually discussed immortality in any depth. I don’t know if I want to be
immortal with you.”

“Are you against it?”

“I said I don’t know. But I do know that it would be probably fuck things up
more than normal if Britain had an immortal Minister.”

Tom paused for longer this time. Harry could feel things shifting in the bond,
but he couldn’t isolate any particular emotions. It was as if Tom were feeling so
much at once the Harry only received the distant, muddied impression of the
whole.

Finally, Tom murmured in Parseltongue, “Is this how it ends?”

Harry sternly clamped down on the bound of irrational panic that made his heart
stutter. Tom wasn’t talking about ending their bond. Nothing Harry was aware
of could make him do that. But he had to mean something. Maybe Harry should
relax as much as he could and give Tom time to speak.

Only when he’d had the thought and he saw Tom’s lips curving a little did he
realize how much his mind-voice sounded like Gerald’s.

“I did not mean our bond, Harry. I will never think of ending that until you
order me to walk away, and then I would have you checked for the Imperius and
Polyjuice first.”

Harry stared at him and tried not to show his reaction to that possessiveness,
which would impress Tom, but in the wrong way. “Then what were you talking
about?”

“I was wondering if this is how my tenure as Minister ends.”

Harry sucked in his breath so sharply that he began to cough. Tom started to
stand up, but Harry filtered reassurance down the bond, so Tom sat down once
more and watched him calmly, until Harry got his breathing under control.

“I never—I thought you enjoyed being Minister. I don’t want to make you give
up something you enjoy.”
“It was a career that satisfied my need for power and being cleverer than other
people,” Tom said, with a slight shrug. “It also allowed me to pass laws that
gave me more oversight of the Ministry and more of a chance to find my
soulmate. But now I have found you, and sometimes the games, I must admit,
pall. People who see you as merely my lover and a pretty toy are boring to
manipulate.”

Harry snorted despite himself. “But the next election isn’t for years. You were
just reelected. Aren’t you going to serve out the term?”

“Why should I? Did not your parents and Dumbledore paint me to you as an
arbitrary, tyrannical dictator? Why should I not follow my whims?”

“But you’ve pointed out before that you’re the only democratically-elected
member of the Wizengamot. What happens to it and our world if you step down
and someone like Arcturus Black takes over?”

“I neither know nor care. No, Harry, listen to me. You can ask me to change
some of my politics, and then work with me on it. Or you can ask me to step
down and remove myself from the political process. You cannot ask me to step
down and remain involved with the arbitrary pureblood games.”

“But—I do want to work to keep the world safe.”

Tom stared at him. “Let me know when you’re speaking with your own tongue
and not your parents’.”

Harry felt his face flare with heat. “I do.”

“Then tell me why it feels through the bond exactly as if you were telling a lie?”

Harry took a long, deep breath. He owed Tom honesty, if he owed it to anyone.
And Tom was waiting and staring at him curiously, his head slightly ducked as
if he thought catching Harry’s eye at this level would make him more likely to
be honest.

“I should want that,” Harry whispered. “I should want to look beyond my own

selfish desires and look out for the Muggleborns and Muggles that the
wizarding world could punish.”

“But?”
“I spent most of my life playing the unselfish martyr. I don’t want to play it
anymore.”

Tom’s smile was as bright and triumphant as the curve of the moon Harry could
see outside the window. “That is all I wanted to hear, darling. That you are
finally reconsidering how much your parents’ politics and Dumbledore’s have
cost you. For that reason, I shall not be upset if you want to do something that is
—not exactly saving the world, and not exactly the kinds of games we have
been playing until this point. I think perhaps you will want to continue
struggling to ensure Muggleborn rights, after you have had a chance to take
some time for yourself.”

Harry nodded slowly. That sounded true, truer than almost anything had in a
long time. He wouldn’t be able to simply sit back and watch someone like
Black or Malfoy wreak havoc on Muggleborns or Muggles unopposed.

But he didn’t want to be right in the center of it, either, or feel as if he was
responsible for stopping it as the only person who could. He wanted to do some
of the work that Hermione and Ron would be doing on the Muggle side of
things—useful work, the kind the Order had said they were doing, not what
they’d actually practiced.

“I can feel everything you’re thinking. It sounds wonderful, darling.”

Harry took a deep breath and turned to Tom. “Then how soon can we transition
out?”

“Let us ensure that Dumbledore is captured or neutralized first. Only then

would I feel easy in stepping down.” Tom grimaced a little. “I don’t put it past
him to try an attack on the Ministry, and in that case, our conjoined power
might be the only thing that would keep my employees safe.”

Harry nodded and felt determination well up in him. Before, he had thought of
Dumbledore’s eventual capture as something that he might figure in, but not a
particular goal.

Now, he wanted it to happen as soon as possible. Or Dumbledore’s death or

defeat, those would be all right, too.

I want to have a life with my soulmate, already.

*
Tom couldn’t have imagined the light pouring down the bond now, as Harry’s
will and emotions, not merely his magic, shifted to match Tom’s. But it was all
the more beautiful for having been unimaginable before.

Chapter Text
Chapter 39: Announcements

Albus leaned back against the wall in the Leaky Cauldron. His disguises were
succeeding so far. He had cut his beard and his hair and used a spell that would
make his eyes appear rheumy and red-rimmed, his hair grey and grizzled.
Keeping to ordinary robes did the rest.

He was exhausted. He was having more trouble locating Gellert than he’d
thought he ever could, given that he knew which direction his bondmate was in.
He would draw near, and feel that pulse, and then it would dim again.

Albus missed him. He wanted Gellert back to stand at his side, and to make sure
that neither of them did anything wrong in their pursuit of justice.

Owls came sweeping into the pub with the Daily Prophet. Albus didn’t dare
have anything like a subscription tied to this identity, but he did lean over and
pick up a paper after one of the customers who’d received it simply left it sitting
on the table.

He turned the paper to the front page and felt as if he’d taken a blow to the
head.

MINISTER RIDDLE AND SOULMATE ANNOUNCE DESIRE TO PURSUE

IMMORTALITY!

Albus held the newspaper in loosely shaking hands until his heart stopped
beating quite so frantically. Then he began to read. The photograph on the front
page was one he remembered seeing before, of Riddle standing with his arm
around Harry near the doors of the Wizengamot chamber and Harry staring up
at him in adoration.

Where did I go wrong? Why did I listen to Harry’s pleas to go to the Ministry
and work near his soulmate? So much of this might have been avoided.
Minister Tom Riddle announced today that he fully believes he and his
soulmate, Harry Potter, possess enough magic to become immortal. “We’re the
most powerful pair I’ve heard about in years,” he explained to this reporter.
“Yes, no pair has become immortal for centuries, but they wouldn’t have tried if
they didn’t have the power, either.”
The scones Albus had eaten for breakfast were threatening to come back up his
throat. He closed his eyes and sat there for a few minutes, holding the paper,
then forced himself to open his eyes and continue reading, skimming a bit.

The next paragraph that leaped out at him was one near the end of the article.

“I lost time with my soulmate because the Order of the Phoenix convinced him
to hide his mark,” said Minister Riddle in response to a question. “I would have
him for the rest of our lives, for decades, for centuries. No time would be
enough to spend with my darling Harry.”

Albus leaned his head back and laughed in despair.

“Mate? You all right?”

That was a one-eyed warlock squinting at him from the next table. Albus
coughed again, making sure his breakfast was definitely not making a
reappearance, and managed to nod. The warlock shrugged and turned back to a
game of chess he was apparently playing against himself.

They want to be immortal. Or Tom does, and he convinced Harry.

Albus drained the last of his mug and reached into his robe pocket for the
Sickles he owed. He had to get moving. He had to find either Gellert or the
phoenix who had revealed the truth of the future to him as soon as possible.
Tom and Harry could not be allowed to become immortal. It would doom the
world.

“Harry? Can we talk?”

Lily hated the wary expression on Harry’s face as he stepped into the flat. But
still, he had come in response to James’s owl, and even if he was surprised to
see only her and not both of them there, he nodded. “Sure.”

Lily led him to the kitchen table and sat down on the opposite side from him.
Harry took his seat and looked at her with a polite expression.

Lily hated it. It looked as if everything that made Harry himself were locked out
of sight under a bright, smooth, shiny surface, and she wondered if Riddle had
encouraged him to do that or if it was simply a tactic that Harry had adopted on
his own.
“I wanted to say how sorry I am.”

“For what?”

“For—encouraging you to hide your soul-mark all these years.” Lily watched as
her hands twisted on the table in front of her. She would have liked a cup of tea
to hide her face from Harry, but because it would have been hiding, she’d
decided to forego it. “Your father and I were upset by the mark you were born
with, but we had no right to make you feel evil because of it or as if we hated
you. Neither is true.”

Harry stirred for a moment, opened his mouth, and then shut it. Lily sneaked
another glance at him. Harry’s face had a bit more emotion to it this time, but
Lily didn’t know what it was.

James pushed concern at her down the bond. Lily sent light and gentleness
back. So far, Harry hadn’t yelled at her or stormed out or said that he never
wanted to see them again. Lily had to give him a chance to absorb the apology
they were, in fact, offering.

Finally, Harry took a deep breath and muttered, “Do you still feel like Tom is
evil?”

That had been one of the questions James had hoped he wouldn’t ask, but which
Lily had known they would have to answer. She took a deep breath, held it for a
second, and then let it out and nodded.

“Why? Is it just leftover Dumbledore propaganda?”

“You looked at his voting record. I did the same thing. Maybe he’s changed his
mind and decided to support some better things because you want him to,
Harry, but in the past, what he supported…who’s to say that he won’t go back
there, if you end your bond with him or leave him?”

“I won’t.”

“None of us know what the future holds, Harry.”

For a second, Harry’s eyes glinted, as if he was going to ask a question or make
a joke. Then he swallowed whatever he would have said, and smiled at Lily,
almost back to the motionless polite one. “I know enough to know about this. I
won’t leave Tom or turn my back on him.”
Lily tightened her fingers on each other, but despite what she could feel James
whispering in the back of her mind, she could tell it would do no good to argue
with Harry about it. She nodded and tried to look agreeable. “All right. But
aren’t you concerned about the nature of someone who basically changed his
politics on a whim to whatever he felt like supporting at the time? Even his
soulmate probably can’t convince him to be firm on a point of principle, when
he's rejected those for so many years.”

Harry shrugged. “He’s faithful to me, even if not to principles. He won’t do

anything I totally disapprove of. And we’re going to leave politics after
Dumbledore is defeated.”

Lily felt as though someone had just hit the chair beneath her and dropped her
on the floor. “What?” she asked faintly, while James asked an insistent question
in her mind about whether she was all right.

“What?”

“I—you managed to persuade him to leave politics?”

Harry snorted a little. “It didn’t need that much persuasion. One of the main
reasons he entered politics was to be able to look for his soulmate and keep an
eye on the people who came to work for the Ministry. He doesn’t need to do
that anymore. The other reason is because he likes having power, but he knows
that I wouldn’t be content to do that for the rest of my life. So we both agreed
that we’d leaves when Dumbledore was defeated.”

Lily shook her head slowly. That didn’t fit at all with the image she had of
Riddle as a ruthless Dark Lord who would do anything to remain in office and
had only become Minister in the first place to take his vengeance on a world he
believed had denied him his soulmate.

I don’t like it, James murmured.

Neither do I, Lily said, and glanced at Harry. He had his head tilted, lips moving
a little, as if he was answering an inaudible query from his own soulmate.

“What?” Harry added, as he opened his eyes and noticed her attention.

“Riddle is listening to this?”

“Of course. I assume Dad is, too, from the other end of your bond.”
“That’s—different,” Lily said, and then felt foolish for saying so, particularly
when she watched Harry’s eyes narrow and his lips part in something that
wasn’t a smile.

“Look,” Harry said gently, “I accept your apology. I accept that you’re upset
about the way you raised me, and sorry for it. And I accept that you won’t be
comfortable around Tom for a long time, if ever.

“But you aren’t going to persuade me to leave him. You aren’t going to
persuade me to act as a perfect chain on his conscience in the way you want.
He’d do a lot to oblige me, but he won’t listen to my parents dictating my
course of action.”

Lily twisted her hands together again. She had thought about that, she realized,
although she and James hadn’t discussed it. If Riddle really was as devoted to
Harry as it looked like, they’d thought that perhaps they could influence Riddle
to pass laws more favorable to Muggleborns and the like through their son.

Now he was going to be leaving as Minister—

If he’s telling Harry the truth, James pointed out.

--and even that particular chance of exerting political influence was gone.

“Mum?”

Harry’s voice was quiet. Lily leaned back in her chair and tried to look at him,
tried to see just the boy she’d raised, and loved, and worried for ever since he
was born and she saw the mark on his wrist.

“I love you, Harry. We love you,” Lily corrected herself, because she never
wanted Harry to think that James despised him, no matter what he might have
said in a moment of frustration. “We would have chosen any path for you other
than this one, if we could.”

“I know,” Harry said, but not as if he agreed it would have been the better thing
not to be Tom Riddle’s soulmate.

Lily hesitated, then said, “And we’ll try to come to terms with your soulmate
and love you just as you are. Become as comfortable around him as we can. As
long as he never does start a war against Muggles and Muggleborns…?”
Lils?
We have to, James. We have to forget what Albus said. It has no connection
with reality, and honestly, the closest we came to making it real was probably
trying to keep Harry away from him.

James lapsed into what seemed to be stunned silence. Lily looked back at Harry,
and Harry gave her a weary smile.

“He won’t,” Harry said, with calm conviction. “He’s not the most moral person
in the world, Mum, definitely. But he’s also not—committed to blood purity or
these ideas about what should happen to Muggleborns the way people like
Arcturus Black and Laurentius Lestrange are. Nothing much matters to him
except me. I’ll do my best to keep him away from all immoral ideas and
activities.”

Lily flushed a little at the sharp sarcasm in his voice on those last words, but she
saw only one possible response. She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“I’m not just doing it for you.”

“I didn’t think you were. I wasn’t saying thank you for that. I was saying—
thank you for giving us another chance. And coming to talk to me without
Riddle here and without your father. I don’t think it would have…gone well if
they were.”

Harry snorted and laughed at the same time, and Lily could only imagine what
Riddle was saying from his side of their bond. James was radiating a mixture of
shame and outrage that made Lily gladder than ever he had listened when she’d
insisted that she be the one to speak to Harry.

“You’re my parents, and I love you.” Harry leaned across the table to hug her.
“There are memories I’m always going to have a problem with, and Tom is
always going to have a problem with, but I never wanted to cut you out of my
life. Just speak, and have you listen.”

Lily nodded. She wondered what would happen the next time she and James
saw Riddle face-to-face, and maybe what would happen the next time Harry and
James saw each other. But that was a problem for the future.

And their son was still smiling at her, still loving her, and if he was also very
much in love, didn’t that prove that at least one of Albus’s points of contention
was wrong?
Riddle could love. He wouldn’t have been able to feign it through an emotional
bond.

Lily would do her best to open her hands and let all the other fears crumble
through her fingers.

“This is utterly ridiculous,” Sirius muttered under his breath, just loud enough to
be heard.

The Auror who was standing next to him didn’t bother to respond, but Kingsley
Shacklebolt, the one standing in front of him and scanning the deserted meadow
with a few clumps of high grass and a few twisted old trees, turned to him with
his eyebrows elevated.

Sirius flushed. He thought he remembered Albus telling him at one point that
Shacklebolt had had Order sympathies, but if so, he had done a great job of
concealing them.

“The letter was from my soulmate,” he said loudly. “My soulmate. And so were
the Apparition coordinates. There’s no reason to think that he would try to…I
don’t know, trick or trap me.”

“From your soulmate who rejected your bond based on something he thought
you did wrong,” Shacklebolt said, his voice deep and calm. “It’s common
knowledge that you were on the run for some years, Mr. Black, and that the
main reason you were allowed to come out of hiding is because you’re
important to the Minister’s soulmate, not because you underwent a trial and
were acquitted. Who can say whether your soulmate won’t think it’s his duty to
try and make you pay for what he might see as a failure of justice?”

Sirius scowled and hunched his shoulders into his cloak and said nothing. The
wind was picking up. He hoped that Remus Apparated in soon.

The presence of all the Aurors might put him off. That was another reason
Sirius had wanted to come by himself. Remus had hated and feared Aurors and
others in power who would see him as an animal because of his curse. Maybe
he would just send another owl and say he had to see Sirius in private.

But then there was the crack of Apparition from the end of the field, and Sirius
jumped up and turned around.
A tall figure in a dark cloak stared at him for a second, and then started walking
in his direction.

The Aurors promptly closed in tightly all around Sirius, so tightly that he felt as
if he couldn’t breathe.

“Let me through, damn it!” Sirius said, and shoved the ones next to him away
with a growl, on the brink of transforming and simply leaping over them as a
dog. But Shacklebolt had raised some kind of glittering white fence of energy,
and Sirius wasn’t at all sure what would happen to him if he charged it. “Let
me through! I don’t want him to think that I’m rejecting him again!”

“You didn’t reject him, as I heard it,” Shacklebolt murmured without taking his
eyes from Remus. “He rejected you.”

“Yes, and what I did was wrong and stupid and I’m never going to do it again.
Let me through!”

Shacklebolt twisted around and studied him, maybe to see how desperate Sirius
was. Sirius did his best to look rational and alert and also desperate. With a sigh,
Shacklebolt swished his wand, and the fence of energy disappeared.

Sirius started running, then forced himself to stop halfway there, because he’d
seen that Remus had stopped moving when he started. He clasped his hands and
tried to smile. He was sure it came out as a twisted grimace, but it seemed
enough for Remus that he was standing there. He started forwards again.

He came closer, and Sirius drank up the details of his face. Remus gave him a
strained smile. His eyes were cold.

“I’m so sorry,” Sirius whispered. “Thanks for giving me another chance, you
don’t know, I’m so sorry, Remus—”

Remus hesitated, and then opened his arms.

Sirius bounded forwards and clung to him. Remus’s scent flooded into his
mouth and nose as though he’d never stopped smelling it. It was old books and
slightly damp fur and old leaves. Sirius sobbed and leaned against him.

Remus swallowed. “You swear that you’ll never do anything like that to me

again?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Sirius babbled. “Of course I do, I promise—”

“And you understand why it was wrong?” Remus leaned back, although Sirius
wanted to pull him close enough to obliterate the space between them, and
stared at him searchingly.

“Yes, of course. I shouldn’t have tried to use my soulmate as a weapon. I should

have respected your autonomy. I shouldn’t have thought something like trying
to make you kill someone was funny. I should never have driven you away.”

Remus shut his eyes. He seemed to be breathing as if he was about to sink into
meditation. Sirius held on to him and watched hopefully.

Then Remus said, “I think—I think I can—” He grabbed Sirius and hauled him
closer.

Sirius leaned against him and tried not to cry, mostly because he thought it
would embarrass Remus and show too much emotion to the Aurors. These
were Riddle’s Aurors. There were probably some among them who hated
werewolves. The last thing Sirius wanted to do was make a scene that would
upset Remus.

Remus’s arms wrapped around him tightly. Sirius leaned closer still and felt
hopefully about for the beginning of the emotional bond. If Remus had forgiven
him, then it should start resuming any second now.

Instead, what Sirius felt was intense pain.

It took him a moment to understand what had happened. Something had jabbed
into his side, deep enough that it was scraping against his ribs. Sirius tried to
draw a breath, but he couldn’t shout. It was like the air couldn’t find his lungs.

Desperate, aghast, he stared at Remus. Remus sneered back at him, and his
features twisted.

And went on twisting. Left beneath what must have been Polyjuice Potion were
the features of Severus Snape.

Sirius tried to yank away. That just made more blood flow down his side, and
somehow gave him enough air to cough. He heard someone who sounded like
Shacklebolt yell.

“Easy enough to manipulate the wolf who was so sorry he’d turned me,” Snape
whispered. “Easy enough to keep his hair for Polyjuice Potion when he’s spent
years under the Draught of Living Death. Easy enough to finally, finally take
vengeance—”

“Mr. Black!”

A spell zipped past Sirius and hit Snape. Snape staggered and let Sirius go with
a low snarl. Then he turned and ran a few steps before Apparating again.

Sirius wondered dimly, as he sank to his knees, why Snape had stabbed him
instead of using a spell that would have cut his heart in half or something like
that. Surely the slimy bastard knew one—

But when he thought about it, he knew. Snape had wanted to make sure that
Sirius died, had wanted to punish him and watch the betrayal on his face and
feel the blood on his hands, in a way that a spell that caused near-instant death
wouldn’t have let him.

“Mr. Black!”

Sirius heard the voice through the ringing in his ears. But it was distant. He lay
there, and he saw the sky whirling above him, and then what looked like
terrified, concerned faces appearing in it.

Maybe they were. Sirius didn’t know for sure. He let his eyes slip shut and
followed the flow of blood into darkness, because that was easier.

“You said that he would be safe.”

Tom wrapped his arms around Harry and held him as they stood together in a
private visitors’ room at St. Mungo’s. Black was under the wands of the Healers
at the moment. Apparently the knife that had made the wound was cursed or
had some kind of potion or poison on it that made the healing a lot more
difficult.

“You promised the Aurors would keep him safe.”

“I am sorry they didn’t,” Tom said simply.

Harry stared up at him for a second, and the storm that was filling their magic
and their bond stilled. Then Harry flung himself at Tom, wrapped his arms
around him, and sobbed.
Tom gently stroked his back. Harry had been teetering on the edge of this ever
since they’d heard about Black’s injury, reported by a trembling Shacklebolt,
and honestly, Tom would rather that he shed all the tears he needed to in private
and then face the world with a brave expression than break down in public.

And in private, no one would be in the way of Tom providing him all the
comfort he needed.

Tom led Harry over to a couch that leaned against the wall and had a hideous
floral pattern on it, and sat down on it, tugging Harry half onto his lap. Harry
leaned against him and sobbed harder. Tom stroked his back again and wrapped
him in loving concern down their bond.

“He—he was the first one to put me on a toy broom,” Harry whispered, when
his sobs had finally died enough for him to speak. “Mum and Dad were upset
about it, but he insisted—he said I could fly, that I had Potter genes, that I’d be
fine—and he was right.”

“I am somewhat surprised to hear a pureblood wizard like Black speak of

genes,” Tom offered mildly.

Harry nodded against Tom’s neck. “Yeah, but he had Mum talking at him about
things like science pretty early on. And no one could really be isolated form the
Muggle world when she was around.” He sniffled. Their bond trembled and
slowly cleared, like Veritaserum in the final stage of brewing. Tom touched
Harry’s neck again. “I just wish I could know that he’d be all right.”

“The Healers are doing all they can.”

And a little more than they would otherwise, Tom knew, because this man was
dear to the Minister’s soulmate. Tom hadn’t had to threaten the Healers. He’d
just caught the eye of the lead one on the way in, and he knew they would work
past the point where they might have given up on a different cursed patient.

Harry squeezed him once more, and sat back. Tom kept a hand on Harry’s back.
From someone else, he would have despised the weakness.

But this was his soulmate, and his soul and his privacy and his comfort and his
peace were Tom’s to protect and guard and kill for.

“The Aurors said that it was someone using Polyjuice who Apparated,” Harry
said quietly. “I heard that much from Shacklebolt. But they didn’t say that
they’d recognized the bloke. Not—Lupin?”
Tom had to shake his head. “From the description of Lupin that your parents
gave, I thought he was a coward, but I think he would probably not try to stab
one of his oldest friends, even if he were Lupin’s rejected soulmate.”

Harry nodded, and his agreement created a warm crush in the bond, as if Tom
were being wrapped in velvet passed through sunlight. “So, who else do you
think it could have been?”

“Why not Snape?”

“The man Lupin bit and turned into a werewolf?” Harry’s surprise was bright
and crystalline. “Why?”

“Shacklebolt did say that the attacker had dark hair and became taller when the
Polyjuice faded, and who else would have reason to hate Black that much and to
know what Lupin meant to him? Lupin went after him, from what your parents
said. To try and make up for what happened, because werewolves like to join
together in packs and Snape would have been a new one, who knows?” Tom
leaned back on the couch. He had heard that Severus Snape was brilliant at
Potions and Dark Arts when he was in Hogwarts, and might have tried to recruit
him, but he was glad now that Snape’s own disappearance had prevented that.
Someone who could brood on vengeance for more than thirty years was not the
kind of unstable Tom could use.

“That seems like it’s—pretty slim evidence.”

“Of course it is, but when Black wakes up, we can ask him.”

“You think he’ll wake up?”

“Yes,” Tom said, and he wasn’t even lying. The curse or poison on the blade, if
it was moving slowly enough that the Healers were still working, was more
likely to be the kind that was curable.

Harry swallowed and leaned against his side. “Just for future reference,” he
whispered, “I don’t ever want you to lie if you don’t think something like this is
true. I’d rather know the truth and face it in my own way.”

Tom didn’t bother responding that it was difficult to lie with their emotional
bond anyway, or to say that he would keep the truth secret for a while if he
thought it better for Harry. He simply wrapped his arms around his soulmate
and held him.
*

Sirius slowly opened his eyes, and Harry shot out of his chair halfway across
what looked to be a Healer’s ward and ran over to him.

“Sirius! Are you okay? Who stabbed you? Do you remember?”

“Harry, perhaps don’t overwhelm Black,” Riddle’s deep, amused voice said
from behind Harry.

Sirius wanted to glare at Riddle for daring to tell off his godson for being
concerned and compassionate, but his throat was dry and his head was
throbbing and his eyes were seeing double. He could do nothing but cough and
cast his eyes sideways, hoping there was a glass of water in that direction and
Harry could be persuaded to get it for him.

Luckily, it worked. Harry immediately darted over and filled the glass, and
Sirius wasn’t even sure if he’d used his wand to conjure the water. Frankly, it
didn’t matter. The water spilling into his throat was like a blessing, and he drank
two more glasses before he was able to clear his throat and say, “Was Snape.”

Harry went still for a moment, but hastily grabbed the glass again when Sirius
begged with his eyes. Riddle was nodding, Sirius could see that much, even
with his blurry sight. “We thought it might be. He will be found.”

Sirius nearly choked on his swallow of water, but managed to get it down
before he glared at Riddle. “Much you care,” he said, since he couldn’t voice all
the complete sentences he would have liked to.

Riddle raised an eyebrow. “You are precious to my soulmate, Black. I have no

very strong regard for you, but Snape nearly took you from Harry, and he has
had enough losses. So we will hunt him.”

“He—he has Remus somewhere. He said. Under the Draught of Living Death.”
Talking was much easier now, Sirius found, although when he tried to sit up, he
found out that wasn’t. He slumped back. “Was—knife cursed?”

Harry nodded as he fetched more water for Sirius. “The Healers said it was a
variation of a Blood-Poisoning Curse. It started turning your blood to actual
poison. It took them a while to figure that out and that it wasn’t a regular potion
or venom, so they could counter it.”
Sirius closed his eyes. He could hardly imagine how much agony he would have
died in, even if he had survived the initial wound.

Which was probably what Snape had counted on, the vindictive bastard.

But the thought echoed hollowly in Sirius’s mind. Foremost was the idea that he
would probably never see Remus again. Snape was vindictive enough to kill
him when he went back to wherever he was hiding, and there was no guarantee
that the Aurors could track him back there or find him in time to stop him doing
it.

“Are you all right, Sirius?”

“I just—I wanted my soulmate so badly.” Sirius whispered.

Harry bent down and hugged him carefully. “I know, Sirius. I know.”

And he was probably the only one Sirius knew who could say those words
sincerely, Sirius realized. Harry had been denied his own soulmate for so long,
and it hadn’t even been the result of anything he’d done, except being born with
the “wrong” mark on his wrist.

Sirius clung to his godson desperately, and watched Riddle’s eyes narrow a
little. Then Riddle simply nodded and stepped back to speak to one of the
Healers who had been hovering by the door.

I know. I understand now. You can count on me.

Sirius tried to say that, as much as he could, with the way he hugged Harry, and
he thought Harry got some of it, from the way he hugged back.

Chapter Text
Chapter 40: Agents

“I’ve tried. I’ve tried and I can’t find him.”

Albus hated the pathetic sound of his own voice as it broke on the last words.
He took a deep breath and forced his mind into the calm state that he would
usually use for meditation, again. He had to concentrate. The blue phoenix
wouldn’t aid him unless he could make a good case for this. It would probably
see too much direct action as unacceptable.

But Albus had been searching for nearly a week since the announcement that
Tom and Harry intended to seek immortality, and he hadn’t found a trace of
Gellert. The magic Fawkes had given him had allowed him to disappear
completely. Even when Albus had drawn near to the place where their
emotional bond led, or seemed to lead, there was nothing there except a leafy,
trampled clearing in the Forest of Dean.

“Please,” Albus said quietly, sitting down in the middle of the clearing and
staring up at a point in the sky where the blue phoenix might appear if it chose.
“Lend me the strength and grace to find him. A tool, like the tuning fork you
gave me. Or a sign to point the way. It doesn’t matter. I must find him.”

Albus sat so still for so long that he didn’t think there would be a response. And
then the air slightly above and to the left of a tree began to glow.

Albus held back his sob of relief, clasped his hands, and bowed his head. If
nearly praying to the phoenix got him help, he didn’t care how desperate or
broken-down it might make him look.

The pinpoint of blue coalesced into a sharp, hard flame, and then dived towards
Albus and landed on the earth beside him. The phoenix canted its neck to stare
at him, motionless fire on its neck like a garland of knives.

“Do you enjoy asking me for help?”

Albus bowed his head. “No.”

“And yet, you allowed your bondmate to slip through your fingers yet again,
and along with him, any chance of saving the world.”

Albus felt his throat go rigid with terror. “It’s too late? There’s nothing I can
do?”

“Not unless I help you. He has hidden from you too well.” The phoenix swiveled
its head, hard sapphire eyes searching the air for a moment. “I did not think that
another of my kind would step on the other side of this fight.”
Albus nodded grimly. “I believe Fawkes thought I would serve his purpose at
first, hence why he was my companion so long. But it has become clear that he
believed in a corrupted vision of fate and may even want the prophecy that
proclaims Riddle and Harry’s victory to come true.”
“It will not come true if you can push through into the refuge that your
bondmate has established for himself.”
It took a moment for Albus to understand what the phoenix was implying. Then
his back stiffened. “He—he stole the magic I put together with the Order of the
Phoenix to create a refuge like the one we had?”

“You could say that.” The phoenix ruffled its feathers and radiated something
like cool amusement, although Albus didn’t understand why. Then again, he
was beneath the phoenix and might never understand. “The fire he took from my
enemy is keeping him safe and within the boundaries of the refuge. I will give
you fire to find you way inside.”

“Thank you, Great One.”

The phoenix didn’t respond, but turned and plucked a single sapphire feather
from its side. It tossed the feather high into the air, and Albus watched as it
drifted towards him, edged with white flame, somehow knowing he should
resist putting his hand out to catch it until the last moment.

The feather touched his hand and burst into fire. Albus jerked back instinctively,
but then realized he didn’t feel any heat. The white brilliance spiraled off his
hand and outlined a doorway in the air.

“Good luck. Do not betray my vision.” The echoes of the blue phoenix’s words
lingered behind as it took flight once more.

Albus bowed his head in its direction, took a deep breath, and stepped through
the doorway as it reached his height.

“So you’re confident your translation of the ritual is accurate?”

“I’m confident it’s as accurate as I know how to make it.”

Pandora’s pronouncement was less reassuring than Harry would have liked. On
the other hand, he knew that Tom was impatient to get on with the ritual that
would make Harry a Parselmouth, and he trusted his soulmate not to let
anything happen to him. If Tom had been less than confident in Pandora’s
translation, he would have insisted on waiting.

They stood in the gardens behind the Lovegood house, not far from Luna’s
workshop. She had come to watch, in fact, peering down at the circle they were
using with shadowy blue eyes. Harry smiled at her once; she nodded to him and
went back to watching Tom, apparently because she thought him the most
interesting person here.

The circle had been laid out with a variety of snakeskins, inscribed all around
with runes made of white stones and arranged sticks. Harry had to admit he
didn’t know a single one of them. Ancient Runes had been one of those classes
at Hogwarts where holding back and hiding any kind of skill to keep himself
safe from his soulmate had also meant he didn’t understand much, if any, of the
deeper mysteries.

Then again, since this ritual apparently hadn’t been used in generations, maybe
that wasn’t a surprise.

Pandora Lovegood was humming under her breath as she scattered handfuls of
crushed herbs and flowers onto the snakeskins. Harry watched with his hands
tucked into his armpits. The air had begun to get cold around them, and he
didn’t think it came from any natural weather.

“Harry.”

Harry turned to face Tom. Their bond was bright and crystalline, and Tom stood
with his hand on Nagini’s head as she coiled beside him. Her darting tongue
brushed against Tom’s hand, and Harry realized, with a start, that he felt the
sensation down the bond as well as if their bodies were entwined in bed.

“Tom?” he whispered.

“I will ask you one last time if you want to go through with this,” Tom said
quietly. “I want you to, you know that—” and the bond filled with his desire, as
thick as honey “—but it could be dangerous, and I want you to know I won’t
think less of you for turning aside.”

Harry took a deep breath. There were reasons against it, he knew: the age of the
ritual, the possible uncertainty of Pandora’s translation, the fact that he could
understand Parseltongue already and speaking it himself wasn’t something he’d
allowed before even as a dream.

But there was the fact that Tom wanted it, with desire that surged through their
bond like a tide.

And there was the fact that Harry himself wanted it, which was something he
hadn’t known he would find in the depths of his soul. But circumstances had
denied him his serpent Animagus form. They’d denied him interaction with
Tom at anything more than a superficial level until recently. He wanted this.

Tom seemed to realize it at the same moment Harry did, and Harry supposed his
decision must be bleeding down the bond. Tom smiled with triumph and
gestured at the circle. “You’ll be ready to take your place, then.”

Harry nodded once, and again, more firmly. He glanced at Luna as he stepped
into the circle. If she said it was dangerous, then he would back off. And he was
convinced that she would if she really thought so, whether or not he needed
Parseltongue to perform the ritual that would find her her soulmate.

But she only smiled at him, so Harry stood in the center of the circle and
watched Pandora walk around the outside of it, scattering more and more
flowers.

The smell of them began to get to Harry. He found himself closing his eyes
without realizing he’d done it, and then blinking them open again. His breath
was coming faster and faster, and he clutched his head for a second to make
sure that he was standing upright.

Harry? Tom’s mental voice was tense and sharp.

I’m all right, Harry sent back, but he was already beginning to feel as if he was
drifting in time and space.

Tom had said something at one point about that being part of the ritual, though,
so Harry did his best to relax. He found himself focusing on Niagni, who was
slithering slowly around the outside of the circle. Her hissing was soft and
seemed to match the curls of invisible smoke drifting through Harry’s brain.

“Relax, child of the sun…relax, child of the phoenix…”

Harry’s hand went dreamily to his wrist as he remembered that part of his
imaginary soul-mark was the phoenix. Tom’s had been the real thing, of course,
but the people who hated him had burned it away.

That had been one of the reasons Dumbledore had feared Tom and declared that
Harry couldn’t be his soulmate. Because Tom had murdered people, and Harry
couldn’t be the soulmate of a murderer, because he was a good person and his
parents were good people.

But a phoenix was about so much more than just goodness and light, wasn’t it?
Harry found his steps moving in time now with Nagini’s slithering; he was
dancing in the circle as she was dancing outside it. And that was an odd thing to
think, wasn’t it? She wasn’t dancing because snakes didn’t have feet; they
couldn’t dance.

But they could, if the right music was played…

Harry took a deep breath and found sleep curling into his lungs. He was on the
ground, although he didn’t remember sitting. Or falling? No, he thought he had
sat. He looked up and discovered that a snake was in front of him.

For a moment, he thought it was Nagini reflected in a mirror somehow. Mirrors

had been part of the setup that he remembered Pandora talking about. But this
snake was smaller, and her scales were a pale white edged with green, not
Nagini’s dark green. Harry found himself holding out a hand he hadn’t realized
he was going to extend.

The snake bit him.

The venom cleared Harry’s head, and he sat up with a shout. Suddenly his hand
was throbbing, and a long needle of pain was shooting straight up his arm.
Harry didn’t want to know what would happen when it reached his shoulder. He
reached up, not knowing if he was about to grab the wound or try to squeeze the
snake to death.

Harry!

Harry slowed down, panting. Tom was here, he reminded himself. Tom would
never have agreed to do this ritual if he thought it would cost him his soulmate.
He wanted Harry alive more than he wanted Harry to be a Parselmouth.

That’s right, my dear, I do. Tom’s voice was as clear and sharp as tempered
steel, waking Harry up even better than the poison. Hold still. You won’t die.

Harry breathed through the pain, eyes squinted almost shut. Sometimes he
thought the snake was there; sometimes he thought it had faded, and might
never have been a real serpent in the first place, but a trick of light and shadow.
He gasped when the poison reached his shoulder, and then something seemed to
spread over his skin.

He was wearing a mantle of scales.

He was down on the earth, on his belly.

Harry shuddered with something that wasn’t revulsion, and wasn’t quite delight.
He tried to turn his head, and found that it was heavier than it had any right to
be, and his tongue was dating in and out of his mouth without his consent. He
knew suddenly how a snake could dance without feet. The rhythm pulsed
through his stomach, and Harry turned his heavy, new, serpentine body to
follow it.

There was a path, stretching ahead of him. Harry could see flickers of stone and
trees and dirt and many places that other snakes had traveled. It was as if he had
suddenly become aware of a direction that had been there all his life, but for
some inexplicable reason, he’d never bothered to travel there. He flowed
towards it, and the direction rose up around him and embraced him.

Sounds flowered to life in his head, pulsed along his tongue like the rhythm
pulsing through his body, and Harry found out that—

That he could hiss, and the hissing was also called speaking, and the words
made sense, and he could say—

“Tom.”

The word slid past Tom with the softness that only Nagini had ever given it.

In wonder, panting, Tom stared at Harry, whose entire being had become
brilliant points of light for a long moment. But their bond had stayed as alive
and fresh as ever, so Tom hadn’t panicked.

And now Harry turned to him, and spoke his name in Parseltongue.

Tom stepped forwards and stretched out a hand. Harry took it, reaching across
the boundary of the circle. Tom heard Pandora gasp sharply and wondered if
they had disrupted the ritual without meaning to.

But when he glanced at her, she was smiling and had inclined her head in his
direction. “Congratulations, Minister. Your soulmate has Parseltongue now, and
it is a gift that ensures you can never be parted again.”

Tom thought of asking her what that meant, but honestly, he would probably
only get the kind of gibberish she was famous for. He pulled Harry into his
arms, and Harry sighed and rested his head on Tom’s shoulder.
“Darling?” Tom whispered, aware of Nagini swaying in delight at his side that
this was a conversation she could understand.
“Yes, darling?” Harry asked back, lifting his head and grinning at Tom, and
Tom had to lower his head and kiss him; there was no way around it.
Harry stiffened in his arms, and Tom remembered a moment later that Luna and
Pandora Lovegood were in the same garden with them. But then he melted, and
Tom stroked the back of his head and answered Nagini’s excited murmurs of,
“Will he spend more time with me now?” with his own soft, reassuring hiss.
Harry stepped slowly back from the kiss, one hand braced on Tom’s chest, and
answered Nagini on his own. “I’ll make sure that we can both spend more time
with you.”

Nagini’s tongue darted out in the instant before she flung herself at Harry’s legs.
Harry didn’t jump or cry out the way Tom had assumed he would. Instead, he
bent down and touched Nagini’s scales gently in the exact same places that Tom
knew she liked to be touched. Nagini wound her neck around Harry’s legs and
hissed in contentment.

“You are my brother,” Nagini said. “If I am Tom’s familiar and you are his
soulmate, then we are siblings.”

Harry was smiling as he straightened up. He started to say something else,

whether in English or Parseltongue Tom wasn’t sure, but someone cleared her
throat, and Harry started and turned around.

Luna Lovegood had one hand on her shoulder, where Tom assumed her soul-
mark probably was, although it was concealed by her shirt. “Are you going to
conduct the ritual that can help me find my soulmate?” she asked. “Now that
you’re a Parselmouth?”

“I can do that if you want,” Harry said.

Luna closed her eyes and nodded slowly, her hand rubbing back and forth as if
the mark might pain her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”

Harry glanced at Tom, and the bond sang in the corner of Tom’s mind. Ready to
begin another ritual that might be even more ancient and harder to navigate
than this one was?

Tom had no choice but to kiss him again.

*
“I—I don’t know what to say, mate. That Snape is holding Remus somewhere
and that’s the reason he hasn’t come back to you…”

Lily watched Sirius’s eyes cloud over, and wished that James would stop going
on about Sirius’s bad luck. Of course he deserved to be consoled and made
much of when he had suffered such a disappointment, but he and James would
usually have handled that by getting drunk together and playing pranks.
Constantly dwelling on it when Sirius wouldn’t even touch the Firewhisky he
had in front of him wasn’t helping anything, and it wore on Lily’s nerves.

“Yeah, well.” Sirius took a deep breath and swallowed a gulp of the Firewhisky,
then slammed the mug onto the kitchen table and leaned forwards. “I’ve been
thinking, and I think Remus never would have come back even if old Snape
wasn’t keeping him under the Draught of Living Death.”

James blinked. So did Lily. She felt his side of their bond shoot up in pure
bewilderment like fireworks for an instant, and soothed him without thinking
about it, and without taking her eyes off Sirius.

This was what had been off all evening, she thought. Sirius had been building
up to say something deep and grave, and James had just thought he wanted to
talk about how terrible Snape was.

(Lily had thought a little about Severus once she heard that he was the one
who’d stabbed Sirius, and then never again. There wasn’t a way to think about
him that didn’t hurt).

“Why not?” James asked. “I know he’s the one who rejected your bond, but it’s
been thirty years. He’s had time to come to terms with—”

“I was an idiot, James. I tried to use my soulmate as a weapon. He was—right

to reject me.”

A ringing silence hung over the table. Lily stared at Sirius and wondered if
she’d ever heard him say something so heartfelt before. Sirius’s eyes were shut
tight, as if he didn’t want to hear James’s reaction, and he slammed his mug
back up to his mouth and took another long pull of Firewhisky. But he didn’t
laugh, and Lily was sure that he had meant it.

“I mean, yes,” James said a minute later. He was floundering, the bond between
him and Lily tight and filled with static, and Lily reached over and took his
hand. His finger smoothed over her knuckles for a second before Jams took a
deep breath and continued, “You were an idiot, but everyone’s an idiot at
fifteen. He should realize that and be able to forgive you.”

“How do I know that he ever had the chance?” Sirius asked tiredly. “How do I
know how long he’s been under the Draught of Living Death? Maybe Snape
dosed him the minute Remus caught up with him. I can’t know, James. And of
course we’ll try to find Snape and make him pay for this, but that won’t bring
Remus back, and it can’t erase the time we’ve lost.” He swallowed more
Firewhisky and laced his fingers together. “And now I realize exactly what
idiots we were a lot more recently than fifteen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about our idiotic decisions to try and keep Harry away from his
soulmate. I cast that stupid spell that could have unraveled their emotional bond.
And you kept him away from Riddle because of vague fears about Dark Lords
and secret battles and—whatever nonsense was running through Dumbledore’s
head. And you wish that anyone else were Harry’s soulmate, don’t you? I can
see it. You hate him, James.”

“Not my son! Never my son.”

“I meant Riddle, and you know it.” Sirius leaned in and glared. “Come on,
James. Even though you know perfectly well now that he’s not a Dark Lord,
you still hate Riddle. Why? What do you think is going to happen?”
“He’s not a good person!” James burst out, and even Lily flinched from the tide
of hatred and red-white rage that ran down their bond. “Harry is! He should
have been matched with someone like, I don’t know, Hermione or Luna
Lovegood or Molly and Arthur’s eldest. Why in the world does he have a
soulmate like Riddle? I don’t like it, I don’t understand it, and I hate him!”

Sirius sat back with his eyebrows rising in the silence that followed that one.
Lily cleared her throat, because she had to. “I love you, James,” she said, “but
this is another time when you’re being an idiot after you were fifteen.”

James glared at her.

“Think about it,” Lily said. “If Harry is a good person, and you’re convinced of
that—”

“I am!”
“Isn’t the more logical conclusion that his soulmate is a good person, too, and
we really have misjudged Riddle just because of what Dumbledore said?”

“You looked up his voting record the same way I did, Lils. You saw what kinds
of laws he supported and what speeches he made when someone was going to
oppose him!”

“Yes, and Harry knew that before we did, and fell in love with the man.” Lily
sighed. She felt as if she had been walking carrying a burden on her shoulders
for a hundred years. “Harry forgave us when we almost murdered him. He
forgave Riddle for things that might have been worse but didn’t affect Harry
personally. I think we have to accept that Harry is perhaps the only soulmate
Riddle could ever have, but Riddle is also the only one Harry could ever have.
And obviously, the only one he wants.”

“And what happens when Riddle fucks up again and breaks Harry’s heart,
huh?” James tossed his hands in the air, ripping away the one Lily was holding.
“Are you going to be sitting here mouthing empty platitudes when what we
really need is a way to keep our son safe from this Dark Lord in training?”

Lily blinked. She hadn’t realized that was behind James’s fury, which was
ridiculous when she was bonded to him.

She opened their bond the widest it could go, and felt the current of James’s
fear. He was raging like a wildfire to avoid confronting that fear for Harry, and
the idea that Riddle would break Harry, reject their bond, do something that
would mean Harry would be worse off than before he’d found Riddle at all.
Lily took both of James’s hands in her own again and leaned across to kiss him.
“I understand,” she whispered to him. “You love our son so much, and you’re
still convinced Riddle is terrible for him, and you don’t know how to heal Harry
from a loss like that if it happens, and that frightens you. But, James, you have
to let the idea that Riddle is a Dark Lord go.”

“You saw what he did to me! You saw—”

“I saw him trying to repay you for the pain that you caused Harry in the past.”
Lily sat slowly back in her chair, making James stand and shuffle awkwardly
over to join her. Sirius was staring down into his Firewhisky, face filled with
old bitterness, Lily saw out of the corner of her eye, but right now, she couldn’t
care about that. She had to kiss James and say, “He was defending his
soulmate.”

“He didn’t have to do it in such a—Dark way.”

“I don’t think Riddle knows how else to be.” Lily took a deep breath and
confessed the thing she knew James most wouldn’t want to hear. “And I think
that we had a part in making him that way, James, since we were some of the
people who kept his soulmate from him. Maybe he would have been calmer and
more willing to listen to people like us or Albus if he’d had Harry earlier in
life.”

James’s face darkened to match Sirius’s, and he ripped his hand away from her.
Lily simply stood up when he would have retreated and stared at his back.
James turned around and sat sulkily down next to her in response.

“We can’t do anything to change that,” James muttered. “Does he expect us to

invent a Time-Turner that can go back a decade and give Harry to him?”

“I think that he’d settle for an apology, or just our treating Harry like he matters
and taking the fact that they’re soulmates seriously in the future.”

“Yeah,” Sirius spoke up, making Lily jump. She’d been watching the shadows
chase themselves across James’s face, and honestly had forgotten Sirius was
there. “That’s what I was saying. We have to stop acting like it’s some great
crime that Harry was born with Riddle’s name on his wrist. Maybe you’ll never
like the bastard. Hell, I don’t. But we have to accept him and we have to live
with it gracefully.”

“All this because Snape stabbed you?” James asked, a little fretfully.

“All this because I could have had that with Remus if I’d been more accepting
and understood him more, instead of trying to force him to live the way I
thought was funny,” Sirius snapped, and swallowed the rest of his Firewhisky,
and stood, and stomped over to the door.

Lily thought of following him so that he wouldn’t have to leave in such a bad
mood, but James had a look of revelation on his face and a tide of it flowing
through the bond, so she sat where she was and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh,” James said at last. “It’s—if we made Harry try to leave Riddle, he would
be feeling like Sirius does about losing Remus right now.”

It wasn’t perhaps the deepest revelation or the most useful that James could
have come to, but honestly, Lily didn’t care, as long as it was the basis for
changing things. She nodded and leaned her head on James’s shoulder.
“And then he really would never forgive us,” James whispered into Lily’s hair.
“And any chance we might have of making sure that he isn’t hurt by Riddle
being a bastard of a budding Dark Lord would be gone.”

“Yes, you can think of it that way,” Lily murmured.

James stroked her shoulder for a long moment as he thought about it. Finally he
nodded. “I’ll apologize tomorrow,” he said.

Lily sighed, and curled close to her soulmate, and wished she could believe that
Sirius would ever again feel something like this.

She couldn’t. But she could at least believe that Harry was feeling a version of
it, and be glad.

Chapter Text
Chapter 41: Versions

“You’re ready for the ritual?”

Harry nodded, hearing the things that Tom wouldn’t voice underneath his light
tone. They were sitting in Tom’s bedroom, both of them in bed, Tom naked
under the covers and Harry in a light set of robes he could tuck easily aside to
sleep or wank or piss or…do other things.

“No one’s performed it in years. Decades, perhaps.” The bond between them
thrummed and turned the blue color of ice.

Harry reached out and put his hand over Tom’s. “If you’re that nervous about it,
then I won’t perform it.”

Tom stilled. His eyes darted to Harry’s face, then away. There was a long pause
that was silent and still only in the physical bedroom, not in the bond between
their minds, which bounded and swayed like an iced rope in a high wind.

“You would give up political clout with Madam Moonwell, and a promise to
your friend Luna, to—”

“You’re my soulmate, and you come first.”

Tom bowed his head until his chin was resting against their joined hands. Harry
waited, reaching up to gently trace the curve of Tom’s cheek. Sometimes he felt
as if Tom was the stronger one between the two of them. He was the one who
had never given up his longing for his soulmate, his certainty that his soulmate
was out there, while Harry had in some senses given up as soon as he
understood what the name on his wrist meant.

But now and then, Harry thought that his years of longing and waiting and
struggle and self-sacrifice had tempered him in a way that Tom had never been,
and he was their strength as he floated now in the silence of the bond with Tom.

“No,” Tom said at last. “I’m confident that you can perform the ritual properly.”

“Then why try to talk me out of it?” Harry asked as gently as he could.

Tom stood up, his movements restless, and walked away from Harry towards
the window. He stood looking out almost blindly at the enchanted view, which
currently showed a night sky dotted with stars. Harry waited on the bed, and
was rewarded by the bond calming and thrumming now with a gentle vibration
as Tom obviously fed thought and self-control into it.

“I don’t know why that worry came to me so suddenly,” Tom said at last. “I
know that the ritual hasn’t been performed in decades, but if that was a major
concern of mine, I would have voiced it before now.” He turned around, his
back resting against the windowsill, and stared at Harry. “And you would have
if you’d felt afraid of it.”

Harry nodded. “Does it feel like a mental attack? Someone like Dumbledore
trying to make you doubt what we should do?”

“No.” Tom closed his eyes and tilted his head. The bond shook a little as he
spooled magic out of their combined puddle and towards some distant goal.
Harry waited.

Tom finally opened his eyes and breathed, “No. If anything, I think I was
thinking of this in terms of a warning, as something that wanted to prevent us
from doing the ritual for excellent reasons.”

“A warning from whom?”

Tom was about to answer that when a blossom of fire and light abruptly
unfolded in the middle of the room.

Harry flung himself off the bed, rolling, his own portion of their magic coming
up around him in defensive walls tight to his skin that moved with him. He
made it to his feet to see that Tom had his hand raised, rather than his wand, and
a shape of brilliant black and green was coiled around his arm, a summoned
viper.

But the fire turned out not to be the first attack from an enemy after all, or at
least Harry didn’t think it was. He found himself staring in astonishment at a
very familiar bird who had perched on the back of the chair near the desk.

“Fawkes?”

Fawkes tilted his head back and sang. Warmth and light flooded Harry’s soul
the way Fawkes’s flame had already flooded the room. He held out his arm
without thinking about it, and Fawkes flew over and landed just above his
elbow, clinging with his claws and crooning, staring intently into Harry’s face.

“Harry.”

Tom still had his hand raised, Harry realized. He sighed and shook his head at
Tom. “You can’t really think that Fawkes would have come here with the
intention of harming us,” he said, trailing his fingers down the bristling red-and-
gold feathers of Fawkes’s neck.

“I certainly can,” Tom said tightly. “He was Dumbledore’s phoenix.”

Harry started to respond to that, but Fawkes spun around to face Tom and shook
his tail as he began to scold Tom with sharp chirps jolted up from his chest.
Harry blinked and stared. He had no idea what Fawkes was “saying,” but Tom
seemed to understand better, if the flush on his cheeks was any indication. His
cheeks were a brilliant dark red, although the bond didn’t convey any emotion
to Harry except astonishment.

“What did he say?” Harry asked, when Fawkes had finished scolding and was
sitting on Harry’s arm grooming himself.

“He, ah, let me know that he could have killed us easily without revealing
himself if he’d wanted to.” Tom cleared his throat. “And that apparently he was
only Dumbledore’s phoenix in that he thought Dumbledore would send the
world down the path Fawkes wanted.”

“So he’s—”

“An agent of fate, yes.” Tom stared at the phoenix. Fawkes had moved on to
preening his tail feathers, and seemed determined to ignore everything aside
from that. “Just as some of the legends about phoenixes say.”
“Why couldn’t I understand what he was telling you?”

“Phoenixes can keep everything private if they want to,” Tom murmured.
“Their communications, their intentions, speech to one member of a soulmated
pair, visions they would share with other people…he couldn’t have stopped me
from telling you about it, I don’t think, but he could definitely make it so that no
one else could understand it unless I told them directly.”

Harry nodded and touched the magnificent bird’s back. Fawkes looked up at
him with a little trill. “Fawkes, do you know why Tom was born with the soul-
mark of a phoenix? There are so many different reasons, and we’ve been trying
to figure it out.”

“That’s what you want to ask him?”

Harry heard Tom, but only distantly. Fawkes’s eyes had locked on his, and they
were so deep and wide and brilliant that Harry felt as if he had fallen into a sea
of fire. He saw a vision of many phoenixes, in every shade from red to black,
sweeping over that sea, and he saw how they flickered out of existence, or
hatched in mid-flight from one that fell to ash, or swarmed up from the flames,
or combined with each other and became one swooping, diving figure.

Harry staggered back from the vision and let out a sharp breath. Fawkes flew
away to land on the back of the chair again with a little trill.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Harry whispered. He understood what Tom had meant about not being
able to share the exact communication from a phoenix, even though it had
sounded like Fawkes had talked to Tom in a way that was closer to words. This
was so wide and separate and other. “I think you had that soul-mark because we
had so much power to change the world.”

“That was certainly an interpretation that I considered.”

“I know, but you told me that you puzzled over the black and white feathers.”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t need to puzzle over it now. We have the ability
to bring great change and terrible change to the world, Tom. Both at
once. Fawkes doesn’t even know for certain which one it will be.”

“Again, that is not something new—”

“It was…it was…” Harry struggled for a moment with how to frame the vision
in words. Fawkes warbled softly, and that seemed to settle and clarify Harry’s
mind. “Not even phoenixes know which version it might be,” he said finally.
“Yes, there’s a prophecy, but it might not—it might not come true, Tom. It
depends on which version of reality rules the world at the moment it tries to
happen. Phoenixes can influence that version. Different ones act against each
other as agents of fate, trying to make particular fates happen. And different
realities can swap back and forth from moment to moment at particularly crucial
—I don’t know, I suppose you would call them intersections. New phoenixes
might be born from the intersections.”

Tom blinked, once, twice. “So Fawkes associated with Dumbledore because he
believed Dumbledore might help to bring about the version of reality Fawkes
wanted?”

Fawkes flapped his wings emphatically.

Harry nodded. “And now we have the power to make his reality come true
instead. But it’s not certain. And I think there’s a phoenix helping
Dumbledore.”

Fawkes shook his tail.

“A phoenix that opposes Fawkes,” Harry said, all the more certain now. He
didn’t really need Fawkes’s bobbing head and coo as confirmation, but it was
nice to have it anyway. “That might be what we were sensing, or you were. The
worry. There’s not one stable version of the world right now. There are two that
are competing for primacy.”

“That makes no sense. Or we would be alternating back and forth between

them. We would have two sets of memories.”

“We likely will when we get close enough to the center of the other version,”
Harry said quietly. His mind was burning with insight, as if the phoenixes that
Fawkes had shown him had left behind literal trails of enlightenment. “Right
now, only Albus Dumbledore and anyone close to him will be living in that
version.”

“How do we make sure that the version where the prophecy doesn’t come true
triumphs?”

Harry glanced at Fawkes. Fawkes fluttered back to him, but didn’t land on his
arm this time, hovering above Harry. His wings were beating so fast that Harry
felt the warm downdraft in his face, and Fawkes crooned softly at him before he
turned and soared out the window, into the night.

“Harry?”

“I think,” Harry said, breathing it out slowly, “that that’s something we have to
figure out on our own.”

Tom watched from beneath half-lowered eyelids as Molly and Arthur Weasley
shifted uncertainly, nervously, before him. “And you can give me no
information that might lead to me locating Albus Dumbledore?”

Arthur opened his mouth, but Molly shot him a hard look. Then she turned to
Tom and said, with a little half-bow of her head that he thought was more due to
the office of the Minister than to him, “We can tell you what we know of him.
But that isn’t the same as saying we know where he is now. He never acted
this…mad when he was with us.”

“For my hunters to have this much trouble locating him, I think he is in a folded
dimension much like the one the Order used for its refuge.”

Molly Weasley folded her arms and met his gaze evenly. “That’s entirely
possible. I wouldn’t presume to say where he is or isn’t. But we know that he
isn’t in the same refuge that we were living in.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we were the last ones to leave it, and it’ll have unraveled now,
without someone to go back and occupy it within a certain period of time.”

Tom felt his eyebrows twitch. He leaned back and stared at them. “And you
never said anything about this before?”

“We didn’t think to mention it, no.” Molly seemed to wilt a little, but she was
still stubbornly meeting him eye to eye. “We did say something to the Aurors
about how the refuge was vulnerable in our initial interview, but I don’t know
what they did with that information.”

Not brought it to me. Tom wondered for a moment if he would have to deal

with more Order sympathizers among his Aurors, but dismissed the notion a
moment later. Reports had been piling up unread on his desk as he dealt with
Wizengamot politics, the matter of Sirius Black, Harry’s parents, and most of
all with his soulmate himself. “Very well. Did he ever confide in you how many
similar refuges he might have established at other points or places?”

Arthur shook his head, looking older than Tom knew he was. “He—he wasn’t
very trusting of us when it came to the end of things, was Albus. Even before he
started to act…mad…he was keeping secrets and telling us certain things that
simply weren’t true, like that he had sent Lily and James to seek pardons from
you so they could spy on the Ministry from the inside.”

Tom snorted before he could stop himself. Molly Weasley nodded firmly, and
Tom found himself liking her. Perhaps she could fill some of the hole in Harry’s
life that the departure of his best friends had created.

“Very well. Then you will teach my Aurors, and through them me, to recognize
the telltale signs of such a refuge.”

“Is that wise? Molly…”

Molly ignored her husband, staring at him fixedly. “And what will you do with
Albus when you find him?”

“Give him a chance to face me in a duel,” Tom said calmly. “Or should I
say, us.” There was no doubt that Harry would insist on coming with him.

“He deserves a trial!”

“I would not trust any cell to hold him, even one in Azkaban. And after all,
dying in a duel is the chance that he presented to Harry, isn’t it? I am only
returning the favor.”

Molly glared at him some more. Tom looked back calmly. To Harry, he would
defend himself, attempt to justify and explain. In front of the Wizengamot, he
would do what he must to make his course of action sound palatable to those
who needed to hear it spoken that way.

To members of the Order who had been a part of Harry nearly dying in that
disastrous duel, he need say nothing.

“He deserves a trial,” Molly finally repeated, sounding a little uncertain now. “It
would help convince people like us, the ones who were rebels only a short time
ago, of the legitimacy of your regime.”
Tom rolled his eyes, and then blamed Harry for that as they stared at him in
shock. He would never have made such a juvenile gesture only a few months
ago.

On the other hand, if juvenile gestures were part of the way to keep his soulmate
bonded to him forever, he would perform them every day.

“People like you are the only ones who’ve questioned the legitimacy of it. Well,
people like you and blood purists like Arcturus Black, who can’t stand the idea
that a half-blood is Minister. Do you want to be like him?”

“Of course not!” Molly sat bolt upright and stared at him. “But we know about
your voting record, too. We know what kind of man you are. I’m amazed Harry
puts up with it, to be honest,” she added with a little huff.

His damn voting record, once again. Tom wished, as he had wished before, that
he had known his soulmate would come from such a stubbornly and rigidly
moral background. He would have voted differently and done his best to make
himself more acceptable to Harry and his friends and family if he’d known.

Then again, Dumbledore would probably have suspected him of being evil
anyway. And he might have managed to poison Lily and James and Molly and
Arthur and Harry’s friends the same way.

“I’m not going to give Dumbledore a trial,” Tom said. “I will do my best to give
him a painless death.” If only because leaving Dumbledore alive long enough to
fight him and Harry was not a good idea, no matter how much pain Tom wished
to cause him.

Molly started to speak again, but Arthur laid his hand over hers. She glanced at
him, and Tom recognized the faces of a pair speaking down their emotional
bond. Molly gave a long sigh and turned to face him.

“Do you promise that you’ll do your best to give Albus a painless death?” she
asked.

“I promise, but for Harry’s sake, not yours,” Tom said, unable to keep in his
sneer. “You don’t have any useful information to give me.”

“I do, actually.” Molly leaned forwards, eyes on him. “It’s true that I don’t
know whether Albus made any other dimensional refuges or where they would
be located if he did. But I do know the signs of one and how to know when
you’re getting close to one.”
“You couldn’t offer that before?”

“You hadn’t really done anything to indicate that you deserved to know it.”

Tom bit back his own disgust at the self-righteous expression on her face.
Alienating Harry’s friends and family wouldn’t help him, he repeated firmly to
himself. He would simply have to live with this and hope that once Albus was
dead, Harry’s friends would be a little less smug. “Very well.”

Molly nodded. “When you draw close to a dimensional refuge, you’ll feel the
sensation of someone pulling on your skin and your robes, and a coldness in the
air at the height of your mouth…”

“Your former allies are the most irritating sort of people.”

Harry glanced up and gave Tom a small smile as he slammed the door of the
drawing room behind him. “Molly and Arthur? They were frustrating?” He put
down his book. “But not too much, or you would have been raging when you
got in here.” As it was, the emotional bond gave off small sparks of blue and
gold, but not the icy blackness or blazing red that it would have if Tom was
truly enraged.

“Not too much,” Tom said, and spent a moment glaring out the window before
spinning around and stalking across the room to Harry. Harry licked his lips and
felt his heart pound crazily as he stood, reaching out with one hand.

Tom grabbed him and drew him near, kissing him hard enough to make Harry
feel as if he was about to faint. Then he drew back and put his hands on Harry’s
shoulders, staring deeply into his eyes.

“What is it?” Harry whispered.

“I know that you said you’re ready to do this ritual. I trust you when you say
you’re ready.”

“But?” Harry gently stroked his arm.

Tom swallowed. “No one has performed this ritual in decades. We know it
requires a Parselmouth, but not exactly what else it requires. We’re working
with Pandora’s best guess. If it was a tested and true ritual that carried no risk, I
would have used it long since to find you.”
“It requires two Parselmouths,” Harry murmured. “You would have had to go
out of the country to find someone else who could help you with it.”

“I wouldn’t have cared.”

Harry nodded and stepped closer to Tom, staring up into his eyes, not
dismissing his fears but making Tom look at him and keep looking at him
instead of glancing away. “I know it worries you,” he said gently. “I’m not
completely sure how it will work. But I trust Pandora, and I want to help Luna.
Not only because she’s one of my friends, but because I understand exactly how
frustrating and upsetting it is to be denied your soulmate.”

Tom clutched at his shoulders, as if he was thinking about some of the ways that
he might have lost Harry forever. Harry leaned against his chest and listened to
his heartbeat for a long moment before stepping back and looking into Tom’s
eyes again.

“You’re ready?”

Tom nodded, and the bond became like glassy honey again. He had only used
the irritation with Molly and Arthur to essentially hide in a corner with his own
uneasiness, Harry knew.

“Yes. Let’s do this.”

Harry stood across the circle from Tom, the plants of the Lovegood grounds
behind them. It was a beautiful, shining night, a full moon riding above them,
turning the air more the color of a dark blue velvet cushion in a jewelry box
than absolutely black. Tom found himself staring up at the moon and wondering
for a moment what happened to Remus Lupin, in his enchanted sleep, when the
moon was up.

Tom shook his head and turned back to Harry. He had made the commitment to
this ritual. Even in his thoughts, he wouldn’t back away from it now.

Harry turned towards Luna Lovegood and nodded. She walked towards the both
of them, wearing a set of pale blue robes that left her soul-mark, on her shoulder
and curling down her back, bare. It was a beautiful, curling vine ornamented
with flowers of the same color as the robes. It also looked generic enough that it
didn’t surprise Tom that she hadn’t found her soulmate yet.
Lovegood stepped into the middle of the circle, and the magic around Tom
came to shocked attention. He dug his nails into his palms to keep from
reacting.

Lovegood’s magic was already stirring, reaching out. It was visible now as a
streaming white-blue banner rather like the Northern Lights Tom had seen once.
It soared from her shoulders in a direction that…

It was blocked.
Perhaps there is more than one reason she has not found her soulmate, Tom
thought, directing it down the bond, and meeting and soothing Harry’s shock as
he realized what the signs of this meant.
I didn’t even know that you could block someone’s soulmate bond, Harry
thought, subdued. I wonder why the Order didn’t try that with me…
There isn’t a way to block a realized bond, Tom said absently, engaged in
feeling out the brilliant blue magic streaming from Lovegood’s shoulders with
his own power. It frizzled and swooped at him, not liking his interference, but
the path that it made across the silent evening sky was easy enough to
follow. There is a way to prevent someone from recognizing the mark that their
soulmate bears, even if they look exactly alike, even if they are looking right at
it.
Harry hissed down the bond and coiled higher and higher with Tom. Both of
them were chanting in Parseltongue now, the ritual compelling the words
automatically from their bodies. Their minds and magic were free to engage in
the discussion they were having now, and to trace that banner of power. I don’t
understand why someone would want to do that to Luna. She’s so…
It is entirely possible that it originated on the other end, Harry.
Harry returned bleak understanding as sharp as obsidian. If it did, and if they
objected to Luna because she’s, I don’t know, more sensitive than the average
witch, then I’ll rip them apart.

Tom sent back a noncommittal answer of withdrawing power, like the tide
going down a beach. Harry so far had kept few of his vengeance-fueled
promises, something that might be a liability when they fought Dumbledore.

Besides, Tom had a suspicion, one that was growing stronger as he noted the
direction the banner of magic was pointing, and he wondered if Harry really
would be able to keep any promise to rip them apart.

Harry hovered invisibly, cocooned in the magic of the ritual, over the
Longbottoms’ house, and felt as if his heart was breaking.
Neville blocked her? Why?
From what you told me of the young man, I doubt it was him, Tom said. He
sounded distracted. Harry suspected Tom was feeling currents of magic and
seeing things that Harry couldn’t, both because he had less experience with
rituals and because the familiarity of the Longbottom house and gardens
overrode other visions he might have seen. He seemed desperate for his
soulmate. I would suspect—
His parents.

Harry shut his eyes more tightly. Neville had been gentle and quiet, and there
had been times Harry had wished he could tell Neville about his soul-mark,
because he seemed like he might have taken it better than anyone else in
Harry’s life. And Luna…she’d been a good friend. They both deserved their
soulmates.

He took a deep breath, or the equivalent of one, and twisted towards Tom, who
in this perspective was a seething mass of blue ice lit with glorious white
fire. Why would they have an objection to Luna?
Not her, I am almost certain, Tom murmured, and began to follow the banner of
blue-white magic down again. Harry went after him, still heartsick. But her
grandmother is very involved in the politics of the Wizengamot.

Harry cursed bitterly. Yes, that would be it. He remembered Alice

Longbottom’s desperation to keep Neville out of politics and take no side.

Yes, he could understand why someone wouldn’t want to be swept up by the

delusions of war that the Order and Dumbledore had promoted. But objecting so
strongly to someone being involved in government that they would try to keep
their son’s own soulmate from him…

At least my parents really did believe Tom was a madman, no matter how
misguided they were. The Longbottoms would have kept Neville from Luna just
because her grandmother is a politician.

Tom nudged him gently, and Harry realized that he was probably projecting
sadness and rage down the bond. He tried to pull back his emotions, but he
could no more shut the bond between them than he could leave Luna and
Neville to suffer, and Tom wrapped himself around Harry, quiet and close.

We will fix this. I promise.

Harry nodded, and joined Tom in the final “flight” around the Longbottom
gardens that would confirm the banner extended to the house. In fact, they saw
the window that it projected from, leading straight through the glass.

The window of Neville’s room.

Harry pulled back at last, and let Tom sweep him back to their bodies. He
opened his eyes and blinked, aware that his eyes stung dryly, and that his throat
hurt from the chant. He reached out and accepted the glass of water Tom had
conjured for him gratefully.

Tom bowed to Luna, who had folded her arms and stood waiting for the answer,
as regal as a queen. “Miss Lovegood, we have your answer. The bond was
blocked at the far end by your soulmate’s parents, who wanted to remain out of
politics and most likely objected to your grandmother’s prominence in that
arena.”

“His name?”

“Neville Longbottom.”

Luna’s eyes widened and filled. Harry glanced away before her tears ran down
her cheeks. It didn’t seem right to witness that.

“Is the bond still blocked?” Luna asked quietly.

“To most people,” Tom said gently. “You could tell someone else that you were
soulmates, and they would not believe it. But not to you, not now that you know
it exists. Find him and show him your soul-mark, Miss Lovegood, and you will
recognize each other.”

Luna took a deep breath, then said, “I’m going to him tonight,” and conjured a
scarf that wrapped around her shoulders and covered her soul-mark. In seconds,
she had sprinted out of the circle and towards the edge of the wards around the
Lovegood grounds.

Harry sighed out slowly, and leaned his head for a second on Tom’s shoulder.
Tom rubbed his arm and turned to face Pandora, who was watching intently
from the edge of the circle. “That is enough for you, Mrs. Lovegood?”

“Yes,” Pandora whispered, and turned around and walked away with her
shoulders shaking. Harry thought that she probably wanted to cry in peace.
He flexed his fingers, sighed, and leaned more heavily on Tom as they went
home. He wanted a shower, food, and sleep, in that order.

Only that?

Harry stifled laughter as he looked up at Tom’s eyes and felt the movement of
magic between them—and warmth, and desire.

He was so glad to have his soulmate.

Yes, perhaps one thing more, he thought back, and let Tom Apparate them,
cradled safe in his soulmate’s magic and arms.
Chapter Text
Chapter 42: Shifts

The fire of the blue phoenix woke Albus from a secure but uneasy sleep. He sat
up and blinked at the brilliant bird, and then nearly vomited when he registered
that its flames were shifting back and forth, crossing each other and creating
shadowy, transparent shapes in the air.

“Our enemies are that near?” he whispered.

The phoenix opened its beak and sang a powerful, throbbing chord that made
Albus feel as if his heart was about to jump out of his chest. Then it stabbed its
beak towards Albus and uttered a commanding sound.

“I haven’t grasped hold of Gellert yet,” Albus whispered.

The phoenix shook its tail. Flames spiraled out from it, racing around each
other, and Albus watched as they melted into clear blue-and-gold shadows. He
smiled. If the phoenix was near changing color, then it meant that he didn’t need
Gellert. Reality was changing around them, shifting back and forth. Which
version dominated would depend on which party won the ensuing battle.

Gellert wasn’t with him, but if Albus could win, then it wouldn’t matter. And
he would win. The phoenix would be with him.

Albus stood up and offered his shoulder, unsure if the regal bird would decide
to sit on such a simple perch or not. Luckily, the phoenix seemed to have
chosen convenience over maintaining its dignity. It landed and gave him a
gentle peck just under his right ear. Albus nodded.

He understood. He had understood nothing before, it seemed, but now the

shining vision of reality opened and spread before him. He could understand
even the reasons for the phoenix’s instructions that had remained obscure
before.

“Let us go,” Albus whispered. “Let us prevent them from rising as Dark Lords.
In fact, let us prevent them from rising at all.”

The phoenix seized a strand of hair in its beak and gently tugged on it. Albus
smiled. He understood the directions pouring into his mind, and he left the
dimensional refuge he had been sheltering in for the last time.

The reality where he was the hero and Riddle and Harry the Dark Lords would
come to pass. He would defeat them and never need to hide again.

“Harry?”

Tom had sensed the sudden change in the bond. Harry had been sitting beside
him during a routine if boring talk with Madam Moonwell, and Harry’s side of
it had shuddered and filled with darkness like creeping tar. Now, as Tom stared,
he saw Harry grip his temples with both hands and shudder physically.

Darling? Tom called through the bond. Madam Moonwell was already

watching them with eyes that were curious enough. Tom didn’t want to betray
any more of their business in front of her if he could help it.
I’m—something’s changing, Tom—
A moment later, the change hit Tom. He could see everything in sparkling
clarity that at the same time was infused with darkness, like looking at it
through a pane of black crystal. He knew that he and Harry had the right to do
whatever they wanted with their magic, as the most powerful soulmated pair to
exist in Britain in centuries. He could see Harry standing at his side, supporting
whatever he wanted to do. He could see them destroying the Muggles, enslaving
the Muggleborns—
Wait. That is not Harry!
The conviction snatched him from back from a vision that was becoming
thicker and more real in front of him, a vision where Harry agreed with him and
ran at his side and there had never been a shadow of difference between them.
Tom shook his head rapidly. Of course there had been differences between
them. And those differences were ones that he wanted. Being matched with a
soulmate who always agreed with him and would roll over for him without a
word would have been boring.
And they hadn’t always been together, either. Harry’s parents had kept them
apart for too long. Tom clung to that annoyance, and the shadow that had been
swooping down on them hesitated.

Tom almost thought he could see that shadow from the corner of his eye, and
that it had wings.

A flash of brilliance erupted in the air above them, and for a moment, Tom
nearly shielded Madam Moonwell, thinking it had been caused by their joined
magic, which might be hostile to her. But instead, it manifested as Fawkes, who
flew down towards them, singing. He landed on Tom’s desk and stared at him.

The vision poured into Tom’s head. The shadow tore and fell apart into stinking
rags, and he saw Albus striding through the new countryside, alone except for
the blazing blue phoenix sitting on his shoulder.

Shit. Whatever clash is happening between Fawkes and this other phoenix, I
think it’s happening now.
Tom dragged himself to his feet and reached out for Harry. Harry’s eyes were
clear again, but frightened. Tom nodded to him. It can’t have been easy to feel
as if someone was changing your morals for you.
Harry drew in a ragged breath. No. Or that I would ever agree with you just
because you said something, you great git. You’re my partner, not my master.

Tom kissed his forehead, and then turned around, drawing Harry to his side
behind the desk. Madam Moonwell was struggling to stand, despite how
difficult that was for her with her cane, but she paused and sank back into her
seat.

“This doesn’t have to do with me, does it?” she asked, shrewd eyes fixed on
Tom.

“No,” Tom said. “I hope that it’ll leave you out entirely. Tell the Wizengamot
that I may be—absent for some time.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.” Tom glanced at Fawkes, who hadn’t stopped the slow, steady
flow of his song, singing almost under his breath, but the phoenix gave him no
clue. “Harry and I are called by a phoenix to battle against Albus Dumbledore.”

“Does this have anything to do with the ritual that you performed to help my
Luna find her soulmate?”
“I don’t see how it could. This is—bigger and stronger and has been going on
for centuries, probably, in a clash between these birds.” Again, Fawkes gave no
guidance on that front, although he did turn and soar towards the window,
wings and voice both in motion. “Please excuse us, Madam Moonwell.”

“Of course, Minister. Good luck, sir. Harry.”

Tom could feel Harry’s strained smile against his side, and then they walked
forwards as one and followed Fawkes out the window, Apparating when they
were already falling through the air. Tom didn’t know the coordinates, but
leaned blindly on the air and trusted the phoenix to be their guide.

Albus looked slowly around the forest clearing that the blue phoenix had
brought him to. He didn’t recognize it—this wasn’t the Forbidden Forest, and
that was the only one he knew with any degree of familiarity—but he could
recognize how appropriate it was. A creek ran through the clearing, separating it
into two halves that sloped down to steep banks, and water would quench the
fire of any future that Riddle and Harry thought they had together. He smiled
and deposited the blue phoenix on the branch of a tree nearby, then reached for
his wand and drew it. It was an inferior replacement for the Elder Wand, but
that couldn’t be helped.

He still had a phoenix on his side, and Riddle and Harry did not.

He looked up as a sharp crack of Apparition echoed through the forest. His

enemies appeared on the far side of the clearing, Riddle with his arm curled
around Harry’s shoulders. Albus clucked his tongue sharply. “You cannot stand
on your own?” he called mockingly. “You need each other?”

Riddle hissed something in Parseltongue, which Albus ignored. The fact

remained that he hadn’t refuted Albus’s accusation. And no phoenix
accompanied them—

The air lit with red and gold as Fawkes landed on the branch above Riddle and
Harry’s heads and let out a long, trilling warble that Albus would once have
found heartening. Now, he could only stare at the bird who had once been his
companion in disbelief.

“How can you serve a pair of Dark Lords, Fawkes?” Albus whispered. “For all
that you turned on me, I thought you had more loyalty to the Light than that.”
“You don’t understand?” Harry asked, sounding genuinely surprised. Albus
didn’t bother looking at him, keeping his eyes on Fawkes, but Harry’s words
entered his ears anyway. “Phoenixes serve different versions of reality, and
strive to bring their own into being. We’re only Dark Lords in the reality that
your phoenix wants to set up.”

Albus did glance at him now, and couldn’t keep the pity from his gaze, for all
that he felt it might be counterproductive when dealing with Harry. “You
believe those old tales about phoenixes being agents of pure, neutral fate instead
of light?”

“Yes, we do,” Riddle spoke, drawing Harry closer to his side and lowering his
head so that his neck curved over Harry’s like a snake’s. His eyes were a
brilliant, burning red. Showing his true nature at last, Albus thought, with
something like relief. “And in the version that Fawkes is driving, you will be the
Dark Lord.”
Albus laughed. “Impossible. What could I have done to make you think me the
Dark Lord?”

“Tried to murder innocents to get to Tom.”

“Tried to murder Harry through that farce of a duel.”

“Corrupted Ron and Hermione and other members of the Order through your
fanaticism.”

“Nearly brought down the Wizengamot because of the curse buried in Granger
and Weasley’s bond.”

“Deprived Ron and Hermione of their bond because you had them bury that
curse in it.”

Riddle’s and Harry’s voices had started to echo uncannily. They were moving
forwards together, too, their steps perfectly in time. Albus stared at them, and
wondered where the young man had gone, his student, the son of two members
of the Order, who would have been horrified to find himself acting like an
automaton in the name of the Dark.

“Persecuted me for crimes that were mostly in your head.”

“Refused to act on Tom’s behalf when those fools burned the soul-mark off his
chest.”
“Been so sure that you knew best that you allowed people to spend years on the
run who might have been pardoned or spent a short time in prison and emerged
again by now.”

Riddle’s voice was a low growl, and Albus knew very well it wasn’t his
imagination that Harry’s sounded so much like it, or that his eyes had picked up
Riddle’s red glow. Albus swallowed heavily. He had dreamed of this ending
with Riddle dead and Harry free from the poisoned soul-bond between them,
apologetic and redeemed, getting to live the rest of his life with his parents. He
would probably die soon of grief, but at least he would have seen the truth
before then.

How could things have gone so wrong?

His phoenix warbled behind him, and Albus relaxed as a reminder filled his
mind with effervescent clarity. “There is a prophecy. You are Dark Lords, and I
am saving the world, no matter that I must break a few eggs to do so.”

“That prophecy,” Harry said, and smiled.

“Only comes true if your version of reality triumphs,” Riddle said, and smiled.

“There’s no reason—”

“To assume that it will.”

Albus stared at them, and wondered what they’d been reading, or if perhaps
Fawkes had influenced their minds somehow. “Unlike some other forms of
Divination that are more uncertain,” he said slowly, “prophecies always come
true. Perhaps unexpectedly, but they do. That is the way it is.”

Riddle shook his head and clasped Harry’s hand with his. “Only if your version
triumphs,” he repeated. “If ours does, then your prophecy was never made at all,
or it is false. Or it applies to you, as the Dark Lord.”

“There are lines in that prophecy that could never apply to me!”

Harry shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Prophecies always come true,” he

echoed, with a mocking smile. “Perhaps unexpectedly, but they do. That’s the
way it is.”
Albus shook his head and drew his wand. Riddle pulled Harry closer to his side
and shut his eyes at the same moment as Harry shut his. The air around them
began to thrum with shining, poison-green magic.

Albus glanced back at the blue phoenix, who bobbed its head and sang a
comforting note. Good. It would stay here. Albus disregarded the legend that
sprang to mind about how phoenixes were so powerful that their direct action
might unravel the fabric of the world.

Better that it should unravel than that a pair of immortal Dark Lords should
reign over Britain.

Harry felt the pressure sliding and shifting on his mind. It was nothing like the
overwhelming surge of lust and greed that he had felt a few minutes ago, but it
was still obvious what the blue phoenix was doing: targeting everything it
could, including the philosophical divisions between him and Tom, to try and
destroy them.

Harry’s hand found Tom’s, and their minds found each other. Their emotional
bond flowed like crystal water in the midst of the slime around them, and Harry
said, Are we going to use our wands?
It wouldn’t avail against a phoenix. Use our pooled magic.

Harry nodded. He didn’t know how they were going to destroy the phoenix
when they were immortal, except by forcing the new reality into being—and
that could only be done by destroying the phoenix. But he trusted Tom, and they
raised their magic in front of them, a towering, invisible wave that crashed over
Dumbledore’s head.

Dumbledore cried out and staggered. But blue flame surrounded him a second
later, and he was back on his feet, giving both of them a condescending smile
and speaking words that Harry didn’t bother to listen to.

We should still do it this way?

Yes, Tom said, even as Fawkes’s song filtered into Harry’s awareness and filled
him with courage and strength of purpose. This is the way that we need to do it.
I’m sure that nothing we can do with our wands will really help.

Harry nodded, and they turned to face Dumbledore, moving together, so deeply
bonded that it was their mind, their magic, that sent the next pulse of magic, not
both.
*

Lily looked up, shivering as the walls of the flat melted around her into dark
wood.

She was—they were in a house. Of course they were in a house, Lily thought as
she stood up, hands reaching out to touch the walls. She and James. Albus had
given them a house that was like their original cottage but not the same, since he
couldn’t guarantee that Riddle wouldn’t have placed malevolent spells on their
first home. They spent every day and night watching over Harry, who was
suicidal and would probably die before the year was out, but she and James also
took turns speaking to him softly and trying to make him understand why
Riddle had needed to die.

Why had she been thinking about a flat?

Shivering again, Lily turned and walked to the far end of the table, where James
was sitting and staring into the next room. Harry lay on a bed there, his face
turned away from them, his arms wrapped around his head, and—

The world flickered and changed.

Lily collapsed back against the wall of what was very definitely their flat, the
flat that Tom Riddle and not Dumbledore had given them, breathing hard. She
stared with wide eyes at James, who had come in from the drawing room with a
book in his hand.

“Lily.” James swallowed and looked around. “Where’s Harry?”

“He’s with Tom,” Lily whispered, forcing herself to use the bastard’s first name
just because something in the center of her head insisted so strongly that he
was Riddle and she had to think of him that way and they had to work as hard as
they could to convince Harry that he had lost nothing. “Remember?”

James put a hand to his head. “What was that bit about us living in a house
Albus gave us and not—not knowing if Harry would live because Riddle was
dead? Was that a dream?”

Lily felt shamefully glad knowing that she wasn’t the only one to have
experienced that. She wrapped her arms around James’s shoulders and drew
him against her, filling the bond with as much calm as she could.
“I think something larger than us is happening,” she whispered. “We have to
keep our minds as concentrated and calm as possible, or we stand a chance of
going mad.”

Alarm punched the bond, and James pulled back to stare at her. “What?”

“I think—I think this is the kind of battle that phoenixes fight,” Lily said, and a
moment later, didn’t know why she had said that. Of course it had been the kind
of battle that phoenixes fought. Albus had told her all about the battle after he
had fought it. He had spared Harry, which meant he had done all that could be
asked of him. And he had killed Riddle before the bastard could attain
immortality or push his twisted desire for it onto Harry, which meant their son
would die free.

Lily turned to the other room, where their son would be lying, and decided to
see if she could speak to him quietly one more time about how none of this had
been his fault, including the mark that he’d been born with, and if he could only
see that he’d had the emotional bond for such a short time—

The room where her son was not lying.

Lily slumped into James’s arms, and began to weep, as the battle raged on and
the memory of the battle Albus had fought and told her about, and the death of
Harry’s soulmate, grew within her again.

“Hey, Sirius. Are you going to sleep out here all night instead of coming to
bed?”

Sirius turned his head and smiled at Remus, who was frowning at him from the
doorway of their bedroom, for all that his tone was gently teasing. He levered
himself to his feet, shaking his head. “Just thinking.”

“No, wondering if tearing Severus Snape limb from limb was a good thing or
not,” Remus said, folding his arms.

“Well, I mean. I did it, and you know me. I’m not one for regret.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “You had over twenty years of regret, Padfoot, during
which you could have sought me out and didn’t. Come on, now.”
“Can I say that I’m sorry about that, again?” Sirius leaned closer and wound his
arms about Remus’s waist, leaning his bearded cheek against Remus’s smooth
one. “A special kind of saying sorry?”

Remus’s eyes shone a warm brown, and he opened his mouth—

Only to fade in Sirius’s arms. Sirius staggered back and looked around wildly.

The light around him spoke of late afternoon, not evening. He knew that he
hadn’t been brooding about Snape’s death because he hadn’t killed Snape. No
one had found him yet, despite Riddle’s people searching with what Sirius
thought was honest, determined effort.

Sirius shivered. Was he going mad?

Well, wait, it didn’t matter if he was, he told himself. Remus was waiting in the
next room, and would make it all better.

Neville stared down at the railing of the ship and said in a numb voice, “I’m
never going to forgive you.”

“You will eventually.” His mother’s voice was soft, but there was iron
underneath it. Alice Longbottom had always been like that, Neville
remembered. He had overheard his grandmother saying it once when she didn’t
think Neville was around. Determined to marry her soulmate despite the
disapproval of everyone, including her parents (because the Longbottoms were
so much richer), her grandfather (who didn’t like Augusta Longbottom), and
Augusta (because she thought the nice girl Frank had been dating before that
was the superior choice).

“You went against everyone to marry your soulmate, how can you deny me
mine?” Neville cried out, and spun around. His mother was looking at him with
the same mask-like expression on her features that she had had ever since she’d
put him under the Imperius and forced him onto the ship when his soulmate
came knocking at the gates of Longbottom House. Neville didn’t even know
who it was because he hadn’t been able to meet her.

And now his mother had him under a spell that wasn’t the Imperius but was like
it, except for the body, not the mind, so he couldn’t even Apparate off this
stupid ship.
“Your soulmate’s family is dangerous,” his mother snapped, folding her arms.
“It could get you dragged into politics. We want you alive, and that matters
more than your happiness.”

“If someone had tried to deny you your soulmate, what would you have done?”

“That’s different. Frank’s family wasn’t dangerous.”

“Neither is hers, except for your stupid definition of politics that basically
means everyone with some measure of power is dangerous!”

His mother’s face tightened, and she flicked her wand. Neville felt the dull
pleasure of the Imperius Curse settle over his mind once more.

“I know it doesn’t feel that way right now,” his mother whispered. “But
someday, you’ll thank me for this—”

“Neville? Neville!”

Neville started and turned away from the vision of the ship, of his mother
wielding the Unforgivable Curse as if she’d been born to use it, and found
himself looking into Luna’s wide blue eyes. He shook as the emotional bond
between them flooded back to life, and looked wildly around the pleasant, sunlit
room in Luna’s family home where she’d brought him.

“Are you all right? You were—gone. I couldn’t feel you.” Luna reached
towards him, her hand shaking. Neville clasped it and drew it to his lips. “It was
like you were under that spell that blocked you from recognizing my soul-mark
again.”

Neville laughed shakily. “They can’t cast that on us now, not now that we’ve
recognized each other.”

“I know, but that was what it felt like. That, or a Heliopath infestation.”

“It was more like a waking nightmare,” Neville said honestly. “I dreamed that I
was on a ship and my mother was taking me away from you, except I didn’t
know it was you because she put me under the Imperius Curse and smuggled
me out of the house before I even saw you at the gates.”

“That’s not true,” Luna said. “You know that’s not true, right?” She drew him
towards her for a kiss.
“You know that you’ll thank me someday, Neville, don’t you?”

Neville stared at his mother, and the prodding of the Imperius Curse in the back
of his mind made him open his mouth and say, “Yes,” in a wooden voice, even
as the real part of him screamed.

How can he be so strong when he’s alone? Harry panted in the back of their
shared mind, and felt Tom’s magic reach out for him and clasp him, strong as
the touch of a hand.
He has a phoenix with him, and the phoenix is beyond strong.

Harry nodded, or sent the mental impression of a nod along the bond—at this
point, he couldn’t really tell the difference between mental and physical actions
—and then surged back into the battle, with Tom running just behind him.

The shared pool of their magic wasn’t drained yet, wasn’t anywhere near
drained, but Harry could feel it being forced inwards. He had no idea what
would happen when it was pinned against them or between his body and Tom’s,
but he didn’t want to find out. He lunged against Dumbledore again, saw the
man’s eyes widen, and then the ground beneath Dumbledore’s feet exploded
and he flew sideways.

No time to ask Tom who had done that, to know if it was the result of their
magic or something Dumbledore had done that had backfired. He and Tom took
a step forwards, following the path of least resistance—

And the blue phoenix landed on the ground in front of Dumbledore, wings
spread as it cried out. Harry felt the song fall over his mind like the pleasure-
touch of the Imperius Curse, but he had always been able to cut through that,
and Tom’s rage was a good sword. The phoenix fluttered into the air, still
opposing them, still shedding a blue shield that allowed Dumbledore to recover
and stand, but no longer singing.

Fawkes had gone from his branch some time ago. Harry grimaced. He knew the
answer to why, before he could even ask the question, because Tom’s mind was
there, reaching back to his.

He can’t help us directly with this battle. The blue phoenix is endangering
reality by doing this. The sudden changing between different versions of the
truth might drive people mad even if it doesn’t prompt any unraveling.
Then why is the phoenix doing it? Harry asked, as they were forced to retreat a
step, back towards the enormous oak that marked the edge of the clearing.
It doesn’t seem to care anymore, as long as it wins.

The phoenix abruptly sang once more, and the air around them darkened. Harry
found himself smiling grimly. He was glad that it had come to this after all, to a
single fight against Albus bloody Dumbledore. He owed the man for keeping
his soulmate from him, for poisoning his parents’ and godfather’s minds for so
fucking long. He was going to torture him to death, keep him alive for years,
maybe—

And he was going to enjoy it.

Harry!

Harry shook his head and catapulted out of the version of reality that the blue
phoenix was pushing. He clasped Tom’s hand and glanced at him. Tom nodded
slightly, and they reached and drew their wands after all.

Harry felt the world around them shudder and bounce, as if they were standing
in the middle of the shifting earth after a quake. He wondered absently how
long the world could last with a phoenix putting pressure on it, how good their
prospects were if they had to use their wands instead of their pooled magic.

Then again, wands were the better instruments to cast torture curses with.

Harry and Tom smiled at the same time, and raised their wands to oppose the
phoenix song.

Chapter Text
Chapter 43: Balances
He was running through a dark thicket, and the thicket swayed around him and
brushed against his face and pushed him back, and he was strangling with fear
and hatred and running and he knew he couldn’t get away—

Song. Light.

Peter blinked and lifted his face, and realized he was crouching next to his bed
in the middle of his own quarters at Hogwarts, not running madly through the
woods. Of course, he thought, of course he was a professor at Hogwarts and not
a traitor, not the servant of some mad Dark Lord. Of course. He climbed to his
feet, hands shaking.

He blinked harder when he realized that Fawkes was sitting on his headboard,
neck tilted back and voice throbbing in a way that made it seem as if someone
could have heard him far beyond Peter’s quarters. Peter blinked harder and
shook his head. He shouldn’t be worried about that right now, he knew, as
shreds and shards and shadows fell away from his mind. He should be
concerned about the wildly changing realities around them, and the way that
they could drive people mad.

I’m only not going mad right now because Fawkes is with me, and his magic is
enough to stabilize things.

Peter took a gasping breath and stood back to stare up at Fawkes. “All right. I’m
here now. What would you have me do?”

Fawkes flew down so that he was on the bed in front of Peter, never stopping
his song. Peter expected to smell burned cloth, but nothing like that happened.
Instead, Fawkes turned and offered him one of the brilliant feathers dangling
from his tail.

Peter blew out a long breath. “You want me to go with you.”

Fawkes’s head tilted back further, and there was a grinding shudder beyond the
bedroom. Peter swallowed. Perhaps Hogwarts was changing and collapsing on
them. Or it could if the shifting realities didn’t get solved. And Fawkes seemed
to think that Peter going with him would solve it.

Peter licked his lips and held out his hand to grasp Fawkes’s tail feathers. “You
might be going to regret this,” he whispered. “I was never as strong as the
others, or as intelligent. I didn’t agree to be part of Albus’s Order mostly
because I was afraid and I thought it was wrong of him to try recruiting us when
we were teenagers, not because—”

Fawkes raised his wings, and they were elsewhere.

Minerva shuddered, her head buried in her hands. She knew it was childish, but
it felt almost as if she wouldn’t have to confront reality, if only she didn’t raise
her head.

“Minerva.”

That voice was as low and deep as the tolling of a bell. Minerva rested her back
against the wall of the cell, told herself she had been in Gryffindor, and
managed to sit up.
Harry’s pitiless eyes stared in at her from beyond the bars. Minerva clenched
her fists. She had been wrong, most furiously wrong, about what kind of person
he was and what kind of soulmate to Tom Riddle he would make. She knew
now that he had only helped drag the world further towards darkness, not bring
Riddle into the light.

The bloody prophecy.

“I would expect a little more respect from you, Mr. Potter.” Her voice was
shavings of iron on her lips.

Harry paced a little closer, his smile wide and mocking. Minerva didn’t think it
was her imagination that she saw large, venomous snake fangs behind his lips.
Who knew what Dark Arts he had worked on himself in the pursuit of
immortality? “But didn’t you tell me to call you Minerva, the last time I was at
Hogwarts? Don’t you remember?”

She did remember. Riddle and Harry had come to Hogwarts after they had
defeated Albus, and Minerva, joyously, had told them to call her Minerva. Well,
Riddle probably already would have, but Harry had been intimidated, still, by
the professorial relationship that had once lain between them.

Had pretended to be intimidated.

“What do you want with me?” Minerva whispered. She had asked the question
before and received no answer. She didn’t truly expect to receive one now. But
she still had to ask. “Why do you think that you can—”

“Someone has to pay for what Dumbledore did. He died too quickly.”

Minerva stared at him. “I don’t know what you mean. I never knew about your
soul-mark or that the Order was holding you apart from your soulmate.”

“But you helped create the environment at Hogwarts that made everyone obey
Albus bloody Dumbledore as blindly as if he were a Dark Lord,” Harry said
softly, and then giggled. The giggle was gone in seconds, and he crouched down
on the other side of the bars, staring at Minerva with a slightly dreamy smile
that was the most frightening thing she had ever seen. “And among those people
were my parents.”

Were. Minerva shuddered and closed her eyes again.

“Yes, Tom and I got rid of them,” Harry whispered, sounding almost tender.
“Made them pay for their years of lying and moaning about how hard it was to
have a child who bore the name of a Dark Lord on his wrist. Fools. They could
have made me loyal to them forever by raising me kindly and teaching me that
the Dark Arts were a source of strength. But instead, they had to act as if I was a
burden to them. And neither Tom nor I will ever forgive them.”
“Harry,” Minerva whispered, wondering why she was still trying to reason with
him. A teacher to the end, some thought in the depths of her mind mocked her.
“They were your parents. I’m sure they tried to keep you safe because they
thought that Minister Riddle would try to manipulate you.” The way he has.

“They were fools,” Harry repeated, and then stirred with what looked like
impatience and stood up. “Well, I won’t say that it hasn’t been fun, Minerva.
But the time has come for you to pay, you see.”

He was staring down the tunnel of what had once been Hogwarts’s dungeons,
now repurposed by their two Dark Lords. Minerva turned and stared with them.

She didn’t know for sure what she was looking at as the wave of dark blue
scales crept forwards. It looked like a snake, yes, but she could also make out
hunched legs that dragged it forwards at various points. And when it opened its
mouth and hissed, she saw serrated teeth like a shark’s marching into the back
of its throat.

“Sirius spent his last moments begging for a kinder fate for you, if that gives
you any comfort,” Harry said lazily.

“What does this one do?” Minerva whispered.

Harry shrugged. “The sshafalnass will consume you, but it won’t destroy you.

You’ll stay in its stomach, and contribute magic to our project of rebuilding
Hogwarts.” He giggled again. “We’re making you into the equivalent of a
battery, if that helps you understand.”

Minerva straightened her shoulders. She could do nothing about this, she
supposed, except meet death with all the dignity she could muster.

The creature halted outside the cell. Harry dissolved the bars with a touch of his
hand, and the snake-lizard lunged forwards, jaws parting so wide that Minerva
thought she could see the bottom of its throat—

And she woke.

Minerva lay clutching the sheets of her bed in both hands, breathing hard,
hoarse breaths that quickly turned to sobs.
It had been a dream.

She knew it had. She knew that the shadows hovering around her weren’t
reality, that Harry and Minister Riddle hadn’t ever come to her and acted like
Dark Lords, and she didn’t know why she had so much trouble, for a second,
remembering that.
Perhaps because they are Dark Lords, whispered a voice in the back of her
head, and just because they didn’t kill you with that creature doesn’t mean that
they won’t kill you some other way.

Minerva rolled over, miserable, and tucked her hand beneath the pillow, her
breath quickening again, wondering when Harry would make her pay for her
part, as he saw it, in his parents’ deception.

Peter came out of the fire with Fawkes in the middle of what he thought at first
was a cavern. It was so brilliant and huge and echoing that he blinked back and
forth, trying to decide why there were torches set in the walls of a random cave,
and why they glittered and reflected off those walls when he heard no trickle of
water.

Then he realized that the light was reflecting off coins, and he stumbled
backwards and sat down.

They were in the middle of a huge vault at Gringotts.

“What in the world are you doing?” Peter whisper-yelled at Fawkes. “Exactly
what good am I going to do you if I get myself killed?”

Fawkes ruffled all his feathers up and looked down his beak, or seemed to, at
Peter. Then he tilted his head back and sang again, a rumbling, bubbling tumble
of notes that whipped away the fear that had been eating Peter alive.

Peter still stood up and shook his head, though. “I can’t rob Gringotts. If that’s
what you even want me to do,” he added hastily, suddenly aware that Fawkes
might have another reason.

Fawkes fanned his tail out and danced slowly back and forth on the perch he’d
found, on a huge mound of Galleons that looked ancient. His song continued to
waver up and down, and Peter turned his head in a direction that it
communicated to him without words, stretching his hand out, not knowing why.
Something slapped into it.

Peter winced and waited for one of the curses that he had always heard
protected Gringotts vaults to harm him. Maybe the coin would start to burn his
skin, or melt it. Maybe it would just wither his hand and the whole thing would
fall off. He couldn’t even summon fear at the thought, he was so overwhelmed
already.

But instead, it simply sat there, slender and cool. Peter finally breathed in and
lifted his hand so that he could see the object in the light of the torches and the
fire blazing away from Fawkes.

It was the Elder Wand.

Peter swallowed, and forced down the sticky lump of disbelief and terror that
seemed to sit in his throat. He stared at Fawkes. Fawkes had stopped dancing,
and even his song trembled to a stop as Peter listened. He inclined his head,
neck kinked like a snake’s, brilliant eyes focused on Peter’s.

Peter thought he knew why. Fawkes had brought him this far and given him a
chance to reclaim the wand. But what came after this had to be his choice.

“You’re sure that I can make a difference?” Peter whispered. “That you haven’t
wasted your time coming to me?”

Fawkes’s tail spread like a peacock’s, and flame spread with it. Peter found
himself staring at a vision framed in that fire, in what seemed to be a forest
clearing. On one side of it stood Dumbledore with a blue phoenix on his
shoulder, and Peter flinched at the sight of the bird without knowing why.

On the other side, stumbling as if against a great wind, were Minister Riddle
and Harry. Peter could see the magic around them, leaping and dashing forces
of power that surged forwards and enveloped Dumbledore and the blue phoenix
—

And fell short.

Peter gulped and looked at Fawkes. “They’re going to lose, aren’t they?
Because phoenixes have too great an effect on the world.”

Fawkes bobbed his head and crooned at Peter.

“But you could bring me in to help. Because that isn’t direct interference. And if
Riddle and Harry have lasted this long, they’re strong enough that just a little
thing might turn the balance.” Peter shivered. “Maybe.”

Fawkes turned, and for a second, Peter was afraid that the magnificent bird
would fly away and leave him here. But instead, Fawkes extended his tail, and
his crooning bubbled up into joyous song.

Peter swallowed one more time, stared down at the Elder Wand that felt like a
cool stick in his hand, and reached out and grabbed hold of Fawkes’s tail.

Tom knew they were losing.

He could feel it in the thoughts that swirled through his head. He was thinking
more and more of how to make Harry’s parents pay for what they had done to
Harry, how to torture Black for the spell that he had used to unravel their bond,
how to hunt down Weasley and Granger in the Muggle world and tear them
apart. More than he was thinking of how to oppose Albus, who was the one
doing this to him.

Tom stretched out a hand, and Harry’s shakily clasped it. He smiled at Tom,
once, and then turned and drove back a wave of blue-fringed darkness that had
broken at them from across the clearing.

Tom promised himself that if they died, he would make sure that he killed
Harry himself, in the moments before the unraveling bond would pull him after
his soulmate. Harry shouldn’t have to feel the crippling agony that came from
the death of a full bond.

“Have you given up, Tom?”

Tom managed to turn his head, despite the heavy currents swirling in the air,
and glare at Albus. The man sighed and shook his head. The phoenix on his
shoulder shone like a transparent glass over something blue and much deeper
than the ocean, deeper than magic itself. Tom shuddered at the thought of what
lay underneath that, and how it might harm the world if it was unleashed on it.

“Never, Albus,” Tom said, and he bent towards the earth and hissed out what
was more a summoning than a normal incantation.
The earth broke and heaved, and brilliant red serpents crawled out of it, winding
for a moment about Albus’s feet. He stumbled, but the blue phoenix tilted back
its head and poured out song to the skies, and the serpents faded away. At the
same moment, Tom felt a dull pain blooming underneath his breastbone, and
slammed a hand over it.

His bond with Nagini was unraveling.

“No,” Harry said in Parseltongue, and curled their joined magic around Tom
and pulled him straight, somehow. Tom took a deep breath and sent a pulse of
love and reassurance to Nagini. He doubted she would survive his death, but at
least she wasn’t here for Albus to torture, which he probably would, with his
irrational hatred of snakes.

“You would have less pain if you gave up,” Albus said gently. “If you accepted
that there are some battles you cannot win, and that I would kill myself before I
permitted two immortal Dark Lords to exist in our world.”

“We’re—not immortal,” Harry said, and he leaned for a moment against Tom,
while an invisible wind picked up the leaves and swirled them around everyone
present in the clearing, except that damnable phoenix, who shook itself free of
such mortal detritus and stared at Tom with unfathomable eyes.

“You will be, soon enough. You announced your intention to seek immortality.”
Albus came a step forwards. The riverbank was almost under his feet. It came as
a shock to Tom how far Albus had advanced, while he and Harry hadn’t even
managed to get across the stream that divided them. “And you are Dark. Can
you not feel it?”

Tom shivered. He knew, with one part of himself, that the shadows grinding his
brain into powder were created by that damn blue phoenix, and that he wasn’t
the monster Albus was trying to paint him as.

With another part of him, he shuddered and reached out to embrace it.

Why shouldn’t he? Albus had created a whole indoctrinated Order based on the

fear that Tom Riddle would go Dark. Why shouldn’t he prove them right, and
take what he’d always wanted? Harry was foremost, yes, but Harry was his
now. Why not reach out and grasp power with as open a hand as he could?

“Tom.”
Harry’s voice was distant and tinny, calling him back. Tom blinked and shook
his head, and then laughed sharply at the expression of disappointment on
Albus’s face, leaning back against his soulmate.

“If it was that easy to turn someone Dark, you would have convinced more
people that I was worth fighting against,” he murmured.

“It is only a brief gap between realities in which you aren’t.” Albus lifted his
wand, and it shone with the same kind of blue-fringed black flame as was filling
the air around the phoenix now. “You will become as you were meant to
become. The prophecy that Sybill spoke will come true. The future will be as it
was meant to be.”

The phoenix spread its wings and sang a delightful song. Tom found himself
swayed by it. He could see the serpents writhing beneath his feet, the chasms
opening up, the torture spells that he could pass and make legal…

He jerked himself back. “Why does that bird want this future?” he asked, to
distract himself.

“It does,” Albus said simply, and then began to weave his wand in the patterns
of a curse.

Tom fell back against Harry, and clasped his hand again. They would have to
raise a defense like a wall against Albus, backed by the power of the phoenix,
and he was tired, and he didn’t want to do this, but there was no choice, except
to turn his back on being the person he wanted to be and take up the mantle of
the Dark Lord that Albus was trying to foist on him.
Would it be so bad a choice?
Tom blinked what felt like frustrated tears from his eyes, much to
his continued frustration, and stood up straight as Harry leaned against him.
Yes, it would be so bad a choice, if only because it was the one Albus wanted.
He would die fighting. So would Harry.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have to kill Harry. Perhaps they would both go at the same
time.

A small sound came from the other side of the clearing.

Tom didn’t turn to face it, not wanting to remove his attention from Albus and
the blue phoenix, but his shoulders did relax a little when he heard Harry
whisper, “Fawkes?” Maybe the damn bird had brought them some help, as out
of character as that would be.
*

Landing in the clearing was the most terrifying thing Peter had ever done in his
life.

It looked pretty fucking different when it wasn’t a vision, he had to admit. Harry
was leaning against Minister Riddle on the other side of the clearing, panting
steadily, and Peter had to fight the temptation to turn his head away to give
them privacy. There was no privacy now, and there couldn’t be, not when
Dumbledore was already turning towards him and lifting his wand, and the blue
phoenix was turning its head—

Fawkes sang. Peter had the instruction leap into his mind, and he probably
would have heeded it even if Fawkes hadn’t given it to him, because it was just
common sense. Don’t meet his eyes.

Peter flung himself to the ground and rolled, arm over his eyes. He badly
wanted to transform, but he wouldn’t be able to hold the Elder Wand if he did,
and the wand was trembling in his grasp with an eagerness that showed how
badly it thought it would be needed and how much it wanted to be part of the
action.

A second, clashing song invaded the clearing and competed with Fawkes’s, and
Peter heard a voice in the back of his head whispering, All you are is a failure, a
disappointment, you refused to join the Order, you were just a professor at the
school and nothing else, you lost all your friends—

“Because I didn’t want to join some shit, sure,” Peter said, keeping his head
clear probably because of the Elder Wand or Fawkes’s continuing music or
some combination of the two. He forced his way back to his feet, and turned to
face Minister Riddle and Harry, and concentrated. He would probably have only
one chance to cast a spell before he would have to flee, because Dumbledore
would certainly try to take the Elder Wand.

And it could not end up back in Dumbledore’s grasp again.

Peter took a deep breath. “Amoveo magicam sine mure ex corpore!”

That wasn’t a spell. It was more or less bastardized Latin he had strung together
and was hoping would work. But this was a moment of light and phoenix song
and pausing between two different realities. If it didn’t work now, then it never
would have.
The magic in Peter’s body shimmered and then shot out of him. Peter sagged to
his knees as he watched the Elder Wand spreading out the wave of power and
splitting it between Minister Riddle and Harry.

And magnifying it. Peter knew as well as he knew the rhythms of his own pulse
that he didn’t have that much magic in his body. But the Elder Wand could do
whatever it wanted, apparently, or whatever its master asked of it.

When enough magic had left him that Peter felt cold, he reached for the last bit
that was left, the bit he had asked the spell to reserve, and transformed. He ran
madly as a rat into the forest, and hid beneath a root, shivering and clinging
with all four feet to the earth.

The Elder Wand clattered to the ground beside him.

Peter blinked at it and then stretched out his nose and whiskers and sniffed. It
smelled like magic and smug satisfaction.

Would it have remained with me after all if I had stayed and fought?

The Elder Wand rolled towards him and snuggled up against him. The only
thing Peter could compare it to was another rat snuggling up against him.

He found that he couldn’t care about it, that he was too tired and dazed to care
about it. He barely managed to curl himself up, with his tail around his body,
before the exhaustion seized him and dragged him away.

Harry braced himself as Professor Pettigrew’s magic surged into him. He knew
it would hurt. He might not have read as much about magical theory as Tom
had, but holy shit, it would hurt. There was no way to absorb someone else’s
magic, even when freely offered, without that kind of pain.

He felt a single hot slice traveling through him, like being cut with a knife, and
then it faded.

Fawkes pranced in place on his branch and swept his tail and his voice back and
forth, making it perfectly obvious who they had to thank for that.

Harry straightened up and laughed aloud. The shadows crumbled from his
mind. He felt himself flooded with light and reality again, the real reality, the
life he had lived, and the tangled, complicated feelings he had for his parents
and Sirius, and the emotional bond that sprang into life between him and Tom
like a third phoenix and sang.

It didn’t guarantee that they would win. But it meant that they had been
suddenly refreshed, and while the phoenix might be an unstoppable force,
Dumbledore was still mortal. His magic had to be growing tired.

Harry reached behind him and felt Tom’s hand waiting for his, the way he had
known it would be because of the bond. They leaned against each other briefly,
and then they turned and faced Dumbledore as one.

Dumbledore’s face was wan and grey. His breathing sounded as if he was on
the verge of panting. The phoenix flapped its wings abruptly and rose from his
shoulder, and Harry braced himself for another attack.

But instead, the phoenix turned and streamed upwards into the air, vanishing
between one twist of light and another. Harry blinked after it, and the last of the
shadows in his mind burned to ash.

Do you have any idea what’s going on? he asked Tom down their bond, noting
absently that the communication was easier than it had been for what felt like
hours.
I think it realized it couldn’t win, and it withdrew rather than continue the fight.

Harry blinked again. He had thought the bird too stubborn to do something like
that, but then, he could still say that he knew little of the motivations of
phoenixes. The knowledge that Fawkes had fed him had burned through his
mind and left a trail behind instead of staying.

So, he was still cautious, wrapping the magic close around both him and Tom,
as they turned to face Dumbledore. But for the first time in those hours, or days,
of clashing realities, Tom’s emotions tasted of hope.

Albus fell back one step, and another.

No, he thought, the fact pounding hollowly through him and flooding his veins
with something colder than the Killing Curse. They can’t win. They can’t
condemn the world to their endless reign…

It would have been better if they’d said something as they came forwards, if
Tom had laughed and bragged, if Harry had sneered or said something cutting
about Albus keeping him away from his soulmate. But they didn’t. They simply
pressed on, silently, relentlessly, and Albus’s robe lifted in the wind blowing
from them.

Gellert! he screamed into the void as hard as he could, and silence came back.
“Die, Albus.”
The words echoed from the trees and the ground, and Albus spared a moment to
think that he couldn’t have understood them if they were in Parseltongue, the
way they sounded, and Harry had never been a Parselmouth, so why was he
speaking the same words at the same time as Tom—

And then a sharp-edged blade swept through him, and cut him in half, and
brought all reality to a halt for him, now and forever.

Chapter Text
Chapter 44: Aftermaths

Tom stared at the disintegrating motes of what had been his greatest enemy, and
blinked, and licked his lips, and swallowed. Then he slumped sideways so fast
that he was mildly impressed Harry managed to catch him in time.

“Tom!” Harry practically shouted in his face.

Tom dug down into himself past the surge of gifted magic that was now almost
exhausted and found his absolute determination to be there for his soulmate at
all times. He allowed that to haul him back to his feet, and he wrapped an arm
around Harry’s shoulders. He was still swaying like a drunkard, but Harry was
with him, and that was all he needed.

“Where did the blue phoenix go, do you think?” Harry whispered, rearranging
Tom’s arm around him so that he could support him better. The bond between
them throbbed with physical pain and emotional satisfaction, thick as pollen.
And love.

“It left because it lost the battle for this version of reality,” Tom said, with a
shrug that even by itself nearly tipped him over. “I doubt it cared that much, in
the end. It wanted to win, but when it realized it couldn’t, it departed.”

A sharp song made him look up. Fawkes was sitting on a branch above them,
glorious tail spread, eyes fixed on Tom with what Tom would have sworn was
an indulgent look.

“Yes, we did what you wanted, didn’t we?” Tom muttered. He had no idea why
Fawkes would care about what he was saying, but he had to say it anyway.
From the way Harry’s arm shook around him and the bond shone, Harry was
thinking much the same thing.

Fawkes dropped from the branch and spread his wings, hovering in front of
them. Flames trailed from the edges of his fathers. He was growing brighter and
smaller, becoming a point of pure light.

Tom nearly went to his knees again with the love and pride that flooded from
the phoenix. He stared at him as Fawkes sang one more time, a soft, soul-
touching sound, and then turned and flung himself into the air.

He vanished between one turning of cloud and another, and Tom was certain
that he had gone into another reality. Perhaps to follow and chase down the blue
phoenix there, perhaps to find another world to save.

Or damn? Tom shook his head. Just because Fawkes had done what Tom
thought was the right thing in this one didn’t mean it was actually the right
thing. He had no idea how to feel about phoenixes.

“Come on,” Harry said. “I know we should find Professor Pettigrew and thank
him for the magic he gave us, but I’m dropping on my feet. Let’s go home. We
can find him and thank him later. I think Fawkes would have told us if he was in
danger.”

Tom nodded. He felt a distant surprise; he didn’t think he had realized it was
Pettigrew who had given them that magic. But right now, exhaustion was
sweeping everything else before it, a dark wave that tumbled all their ordinary
thoughts like boulders.

He let Harry wrap one arm around him and Apparate them. He seemed to be the
stronger. Tom simply wanted to sleep.

With his soulmate by his side, it had to be said.

“Harry!”

Lily had realized some time ago that Harry wasn’t asleep in the bedroom
nearest to the kitchen, and never had been. That had been a mad dream of some
kind, or reality between one moment and the next. This was the waking world,
and Harry was staggering through the door with his arm around Riddle.
James stood up next to her, and then hovered uncertainly. At the moment, it
looked as if all that was keeping Harry and Riddle from falling over was each
other. Lily had no idea what would happen if they tried to hug Harry or pull him
away from the bastard he was soulmated to.

“I’m all right,” Harry said, his voice slurring. “But listen, Dumbledore’s dead,
and we need to sleep. I came here because it was closer and I know it better. We
need to sleep, okay? Don’t interrupt us.”

“But what happened?” James blurted, before Lily could tell him that this
probably wasn’t the time.

“Dumbledore’s dead, I said it,” Harry muttered, and then paused with his hand
on the bedroom doorknob. “But you’re all right? I know the realities shifting
back and forth would have affected you. You’re all right?”

Lily took a deep breath. There were all sorts of questions she wanted to ask, and
she could feel them boiling up in James, too, but she reached out and took his
arm, squeezing once. Yes, they would have to wait.

“I think so,” she said quietly. “It’s like trying to remember a dream. It was
intense at the time, but now it’s gone, and I can’t think why I believed you had
survived and Riddle was dead so much.”

Riddle lifted his head. The grin he gave her made Lily shudder. The way his lips
rolled back from his teeth made his face look like a skull.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he gasped.

Lily looked down at her hands for a second, then back up at him. She would
probably never like him. She still thought that her first optimism when Harry
had been forced to come clean to Riddle was probably misplaced.
Riddle wasn’t the best choice for him. There should have been others.

But she could acknowledge that their bond was complete now, and Harry’s
happiness had to matter more than her own reservations.

“It’s not a disappointment to me,” she whispered.

Riddle and Harry stared at her, and so did James. Lily lifted her head, smiled at
all of them, and grabbed James’s hand and pulled him towards her so that he
couldn’t say something stupid. Together, they watched Riddle and Harry
stagger through the door and fall on the bed.
“I still wish he hadn’t been born with that mark,” James muttered.

“We really can’t do anything about that now,” Lily said, a little more harshly
than she’d meant, and James flinched and turned to look at her. Lily leaned her
head on his shoulder for a moment. “Come on. Let’s go see how Sirius is
doing.”

“It was so real.”

James nodded, not that Sirius thought he could really understand. He had
brought over Firewhisky and declared he would drink with Sirius when Sirius
had told them that was what he needed most of all. Lily hadn’t left until she was
sure that Sirius wasn’t suffering from the lingering effects of madness or
whatever that shifting realities business had been about, though.

“I want Remus back,” Sirius whispered, staring into the tumbler of Firewhisky
that James had been kind enough to pour for him. It was what he had wanted,
but right then, Sirius understood that the most powerful alcoholic drink he knew
couldn’t quell the memories of having Remus, of wanting him.

He knocked the drink back anyway.

When he got done spluttering, James leaned across to pour some more into the
glass. “I know,” he murmured. “I know, Padfoot.”

Sirius drank some more and thought about the dream and the reality that had
been Snape telling him he had Remus under the Draught of Living Death.
Riddle had brought in some sort of Potions expert who had warned Sirius that
even if they did find Remus, he would never be the same again, not after
spending so many years unconscious.

Frankly, Sirius didn’t care about that. The thing that mattered was that he could
find his soulmate, hold him in his arms, help him recover, apologize, and do
whatever he could to make up for using Remus as a weapon when they were
fifteen.

It’s been nearly thirty years. That should be long enough to change the most
stubborn mind.

James began telling some old story of their school days, a story that involved
just him and Sirius and left out Peter, who hadn’t followed them, and Remus,
who had rejected all of them when he left. Sirius listened and laughed in the
appropriate places, but his mind was dashing feverishly along the track he had
thought of.

Everyone else got to have their soulmate, even someone whose parents had
believed his soulmate was a Dark Lord. Sirius wanted his, too.

“Neville, please. You’re being unreasonable.”

Neville kept his back turned as he packed his trunk. There were a few things he
had, old clothes and favorite toys and the like, that he had spelled against any
kind of charm when he was still young so that no one could throw them away.
He had to pack them by hand rather than by spell, and so he had to linger in his
bedroom, but no force on Earth could make him look at his mother.

“We were trying to keep you safe.”

Neville shut the lid of his trunk with a bang and shrank it with a thought.
Sometimes, when he was really angry, he could use wandless magic. And it was
better to use up the power crackling and sparking around him for that than using
it to burn his mother. He turned around.

Alice Longbottom—that was how Neville thought he would have to think of

her, to stay sane—still stood in the doorway with folded arms. Her face was
cold, even though Neville thought the pleading tone in her voice was real. She
wouldn’t want to lose control of me, he thought spitefully.

“You kept me away from my soulmate,” Neville said quietly. “You kept my
post from me. You weren’t trying to keep me safe. You were trying to keep me
from living at all, because that way you thought you could keep me from
dying.”

Alice’s mask cracked, and she took a step away. Neville gave a tired half-laugh
and shoved past her into the corridor.

“Neville, we had to—you don’t understand—”

“I understand that you think you mum and dad died because of politics,” Neville
snapped. This was the last time that he ever intended to speak to his mother, so
he supposed he might as well take the chance to spit out everything he wanted
to say. “In reality, they died because they decided to experiment with some kind
of stupid potion on Dumbledore’s orders, and it blew up on them. That’s not
politics. That’s stupidity.”

“Neville, how can—”

“I don’t care what I say about them. They’re not here to hear me. And they
were soulmates. They found each other. They had each other. They died at the
same time. I would rather do that after only a year with Luna than keep living
without her.”
Part of Neville whispered that he was being unfair, in what sounded like his
grandmother’s voice. He knew that the vision he’d had of his mother
imprisoning him and taking him away from Luna wasn’t real. It had been—not
a dream, but something that could have happened, but hadn’t.
But it had burned deep grooves in his mind nevertheless. Now he couldn’t look
at his mother without seeing that version of her, and he loathed that version.

“We wanted to keep you safe,” Alice whispered.

“That doesn’t justify everything!” Part of Neville’s magic got loose and latched
onto a painting that luckily wasn’t a portrait, just a seascape. The corner burned
before Alice flicked her wand and stopped it. “I don’t care anymore. I have
Luna. I don’t need you.”

“Don’t talk that way to your mother, young man.”

Neville glared at his father, who was standing at the head of the stairs as if he
would block Neville from going down them. “I’ll talk any way I like to the
people who would have kept me from her.”

“We knew you would change once you found her.” Frank’s voice was heavy.
“You were so obedient before. Such a quiet child—”

“You stifled me! You kept me that way!”

“I would rather that you were alive than that you were happy.”

Neville took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Maybe he would never get
through to them, but he didn’t have to. He just had to leave. “The fact that you
never looked for a way that I could be both makes you terrible parents.”
Frank reeled back, looking more stunned than any Stupefy could account for.
Neville pushed past him roughly and walked down the stairs. He knew that
Luna was coming, somehow. He didn’t know how. The only thing that mattered
was that she would be there.
His grandmother was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Neville gave
her a hard stare. It wasn’t a coincidence that she was between him and the door,
he knew. Too bad. If she tried to say something to him, then he would hit her,
too, with words or with magic.

Augusta Longbottom took a deep breath. Neville braced himself.

“You’re right,” she said quietly, staring at him with haunted eyes. “It’s not
right. It’s not fair. Why should everyone else be granted their soulmate, just
because everyone else came from a safe family? We can’t put our desire to stay
out of politics ahead of everything else.”

Neville managed to relax enough to smile at her, although he knew that she
wasn’t smiling back. It didn’t matter. At least he had one member of his family
that he could perhaps still communicate and spend time with. “Thanks, Gran,”
he said, and hugged her once, pretending not to notice the way she clung to him
when he pulled back.

“Neville!”

His parents, on the other hand, could bugger off. Neville opened the door and
stepped out into the front gardens, tilting his head back to watch as the stars
shone down on him. From now on, they would be shining on him living
somewhere else.

“Neville.”

That voice was a much more welcome one, and Neville smiled as he looked
towards Luna. She was beyond the gates of the house, sitting on—invisible air.
And holding a rope that was apparently circling the neck of something else
invisible.

Laughing a little, Neville hurried out the gates and held out his arms. Luna slid
down from her whatever-it-was and held him close. The emotional bond
between them sang contentedly, so bright that Neville was sort of surprised it
wasn’t showering the grass around them with sparks.

Luna pulled back from him faster than Gran had, though. Now that they had
each other, they knew it was going to be permanent, and they weren’t so
worried anymore. She turned and gestured towards the invisible (probably)
creatures. “Do you like them? I brought some thestrals for us to ride.”
“Thestrals,” Neville breathed. He had heard of them, but never expected to ride
one. “They’re like winged horses, aren’t they? Only more reptilian.”

Luna smiled at him. “Yes. You don’t mind riding them?”

“I wouldn’t mind going anywhere with you,” Neville said, and kissed her
lightly. “But you’ll have to help me onto the one you want me to ride. I can’t
see them.”

“I like that,” Luna said, and led him to the one that apparently had a rope around
its neck while Neville was still blinking about her words. She let him touch the
invisible, thick neck, and had him hold out his hand until he felt the whuffle of
cold breath on it. Then she helped Neville boost himself onto its back.

There was something there, shifting under him, and Neville could hear its snort
and the noise its wings made when they unfolded. He still yelped a little when
the thestral took wing, given that it was more unnerving to ride a flying horse
you couldn’t see than just sit on one’s back.

Luna’s laughter followed him, as wild and sweet as the thestral probably was if
you knew it well.

Neville turned his head and watched her following him. Luna’s hair was
streaming behind her, scattering out flower petals that she’d braided into it. She
was smiling, and the bond between them was singing harder than she could. The
air around them was warm.

Yes, this is what I want for the rest of my life.

And Neville’s guilt burned and took flight.

“Tom? We should probably get up. It’s almost five in the afternoon.”

Harry’s mouth said those words, but the bond that thrummed between them
said contentment and warmth and bliss. Tom curled himself harder around
Harry and sighed a little, shaking his head. “We don’t have to get up at all if we
don’t want to,” he whispered. “Maybe tonight we can eat and send out some
kind of explanation to the Wizengamot or the Prophet and sleep together. But
we don’t have to right now.”

“Tom…”
Tom sighed and turned so that he could see Harry instead of just feel him. Harry
lay tucked solidly under the blankets of their shared bed, which Tom approved
of. He wondered if Harry had had the sense to do that, or if Tom had done it
before he’d gone to sleep, although he couldn’t remember doing it.

“Yes?” Tom finally asked, when it was clear that Harry didn’t intend to back off
until Tom acquiesced.

“Mum and Dad are waiting in the kitchen, and I think they’re getting impatient
for some kind of story about what happened.”

“They can be impatient.” Tom let his voice flow over Harry, and saw the way
that Harry blinked and struggled for a moment against the spell of it. Tom
smiled and touched Harry’s shoulder, sliding his hand down. “They can feel
whatever they want. The man they served is dead. Nothing they do can touch us
now.”

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I know, but we’ve slept more
than twenty-four hours, and I think they might come in and drag us out of bed if
we don’t go out there to give them an answer.”

Tom sighed. That would be annoying, and it would bother Harry. That last
reflection urged him to sit up in the bed and scan Harry one more time with both
the bond and a muttered incantation. “You’re truly uninjured?”

“You couldn’t have told if I was?”

“There was so much magic pooled in that clearing that it might have dulled my
senses.” Tom reached out and touched the old lightning bolt scar on Harry’s
forehead. “I’m more than happy to have you say that you aren’t, rather than
going on a search for wounds that would probably distract us, as pleasurable as
it would be.”

Harry flushed and cast down his eyes. He still wasn’t used to people admiring
him, Tom thought, despite all the work of the Mind-Healer and the love and
adoration Tom poured down the bond every day. “I promise, I’m fine. And I
think I would have noticed if you were bleeding out by now.”

Tom nodded. “I assume so. Well. Let us go and placate your parents, and then
perhaps we can go home and speak to Nagini.”

“Oh, no.” Harry sat up so fast that he nearly fell off the bed. “I didn’t even think
about her. Is she okay? Did she feel—”
“My bond to her is a bit unstable, but right now she’s sleeping,” Tom reassured
him. “Snakes aren’t as excitable as familiars like owls are. She’ll want an
explanation, but she can wait until we come to her.”

Harry nodded, looking grimly determined. “So let’s go out there and feed my
parents a story they’ll buy, and then go check on her.”

“A story they’ll buy?”

“They deserve an answer, since they were caught up in the shifting realities

with everyone else. But they don’t deserve every single detail of our thoughts.”

And there was the progress that Tom had hoped they would begin to see once
Harry had gone to the Mind-Healer. He reached out a gentle hand to cup
Harry’s shoulder. “Very well. Let me get dressed, and we’ll go out and soothe
these anxieties that are presumably left over from serving Dumbledore.”

“So it was really the blue phoenix’s fault, and not Albus’s?”

Harry rubbed his forehead and looked at his father. Dad had a hopeful look on
his face, as if he thought that it might redeem Dumbledore to hear that he had
been driven mad instead of always mad.

“I have no idea how long Dumbledore had those ideas about me and Tom,”
Harry said shortly. “What the phoenix gave him, and what it encouraged. We do
know that he had Fawkes with him for a long time, though, so presumably there
was a point when Fawkes thought Dumbledore could fulfill the fate that he
wanted to bring about. Who knows when Dumbledore turned away from that
path?”

Dad started to ask another question, but Mum put a hand on his arm. She was
the one to face Harry and say firmly, “It doesn’t matter. We’re just glad that you
survived the shifting realities with your mind intact, like us.”

“A pity that the changing realities could not have made them less prejudiced
against me,” Tom hissed in Parseltongue.
Harry hissed back, ignoring the way both his parents started. “I’m sure they’re
just as wistful about not having landed in a reality where you’re not my
soulmate.”
Tom scowled. Harry ignored him and faced his parents once again. “So that’s it.
Dumbledore is dead, and the blue phoenix left, so we have no reason to think
it’ll be back again. Are you all right?”

“Yes. I can’t feel any instability in our bond or in our minds,” Mum said, and
Harry smiled. He trusted her evaluation more than he would have trusted Dad’s,
anyway.

“So that’s it?” Dad asked a minute later, while Harry went back to his tea and
biscuits. Honestly, the story had taken as long as it had to tell because both he
and Tom were devouring all the food that Mum could spread out in front of
them. “Albus is gone, and the Order of the Phoenix is completely dissolved, and
the realities have calmed down…what do we do now?”

“Live,” Tom said softly.

Dad glared at him, but a second later, his glare softened, Even if that was
probably because Mum was speaking to him down their bond, Harry was sure
that he would at least think about the advice.

“And now,” Tom added, as Harry swallowed the last of his tea and they stood
up together, “we’re going to go home and make sure that my bond with my
familiar, which was strained during the shifting, is still strong.” He smiled at
Harry’s parents with a slightly false expression, but compared to the open
hostility they’d had between them such a short time ago, Harry would take it.
“Please do feel free to stay home and think some more about what kind of
future you have and want to have.”

And he turned and led Harry outside the wards, and Apparated them, his arm
secure around Harry’s shoulders, their bond thrumming in both their minds.

Peter woke slowly. He blinked and stood up, taking stock of his whiskers and
paws. Only when he was sure that he was completely whole as a rat did he
grimace and shift back to human, yelping a little as his depleted magic protested
the spell.

He stepped out of the hollow where he had spent the night and stared up at the
sky. The air ruffled as the Elder Wand sprang into his hand. Peter eyed it and
scratched what he could feel was at least a few days’ worth of stubble forming
on his chin.
“Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather be with someone else?” he asked.

The wand stung him with a little blast of power. Peter grinned and tucked the
wand into his pocket. He supposed he could take it back to Gringotts, but
perhaps he would wait and see if the goblins contacted him, or what the wand
wanted. Surely taking it out of Gringotts because otherwise an insane phoenix
would have destroyed the world had to be some sort of excuse for theft.

Peter looked up at the sky again, and Apparated himself back home. His lungs
were full of clear air, his body replenishing its strength despite how slowly that
would go, and his mind settled.

And it was morning.

Chapter 45: Futures

Minerva touched her head and frowned a little. She could recall some dreams so
strange that she wasn’t sure she should even keep trying to remember them.
Albus saving the world? Minister Riddle and Harry holding her prisoner and
feeding her to—

Minerva shook her head briskly. No, there was no point in remembering dreams
like that. She had enough to do in the regular, workaday, waking world.

And speaking of which…

“You wanted to see me, Headmistress?”

Minerva smiled at Peter as he stepped into her office, looking almost as nervous
as he had been when she’d called him to her office as a student for detention.
“Yes, Professor Pettigrew. Please shut the door behind you. I wanted to discuss
a promotion for you.”

Peter blinked as he sat down in one of the comfortable but ordinary chairs
Minerva preferred to the overblown purple monstrosities Albus had usually had
his guests sit in. “Doing what, Headmistress?’

“I know that you’re happy teaching the mid-year levels of Transfiguration and
have no desire to teach NEWT classes.” Minerva held her chuckle to herself as
Peter frantically shook his head. She actually thought he would be perfectly
competent at the theory and even the process of human Transfiguration, given
his rat form, but she knew that he didn’t want to deal with the struggles and
drama surrounding the upper-year students. “So I’ll be hiring someone new for
that. But I do need a Deputy Headmaster, and I’ve held off on promoting one
too long.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “But I thought Filius was in that position?”

“Temporarily, while I got more comfortable in my position as Headmistress.

But he’s informed me that he’ll want to retire in a year or two, and I need
someone more long-lasting, someone who will hopefully become Headmaster
or Headmistress after me.”

Peter looked overwhelmed. Minerva waited, but hopefully. She did think that
Peter would be good at it, and what qualities he lacked, he could grow into with
time. He was humble, and that was something no one could really teach
someone else and which was sorely needed for positions of this much power.
And he could flourish now, with Albus gone, in a way that he’d never been able
to when a Headmaster was in charge who disapproved of everything Peter did
because Peter hadn’t joined his Order of the Phoenix.

Minerva could be making the wrong choice. But she didn’t think so.

“I—this is unexpected,” Peter said at last. “I’d really like to, but are you sure
there isn’t someone else you’d rather have? Or did everyone else refuse like
Filius did?”

His gaze was steady, sharp in a way that Minerva hadn’t seen before. I’m used
to being last choice, it said. It’s all right to say it if I am.
“Filius was my first choice because I thought he was longing to be Headmaster,
and he deserved a reward for all his work,” Minerva said. “He also always
seemed timeless to me, certainly likely to outlast me at Hogwarts. But you’re
the first one I’ve asked after him, Peter. And please call me Minerva, won’t
you? We’re still colleagues, and we’re going to be working more closely than
ever if you become my Deputy Headmaster.”

A smile flashed across Peter’s face. “All right, Minerva. Then, yes, I accept.”

Minerva hoped that she concealed her sigh of relief in finally being able to have
a second who planned to stay, but form Peter’s deepening smile, she probably
didn’t. “Good, then your first task is to take on all this bloody paperwork I
hate.”

Peter laughed. “Ah, so that’s the main reason you wanted me as Deputy
Headmaster. My neat handwriting.”
“It certainly didn’t hurt,” Minerva admitted shamelessly. “Come on, Deputy
Headmaster Pettigrew, let’s start our work.”

Peter sat back in his chair with a long sigh. Minerva had introduced him as
Deputy Headmaster at dinner that evening, and as far as he could tell, the
applause had been genuine from both staff and students. Filius had made it a
point to tell Peter how delighted he was to be able to lay down the work, which
he’d been finding hard to handle on top of being Head of Ravenclaw and
Charms Professor.

Apparently, Minerva was appointing someone else to be Head of Gryffindor,

too. Long years in three positions had taught her that she didn’t want someone
else to wear three hats for any amount of time if they didn’t have to.

There was a twitch from his pocket. Peter took out the Elder Wand, put it on the
table, and stared at it.

It rolled a little towards him and lay there. It didn’t move, but Peter could feel
its steady, patient attention.

“Is this going to be enough for you?” Peter asked it. “Just undoing
Transfiguration mistakes, casting charms to ease Minerva’s way, and doing all
the little basic household tasks that most wands do?”

The Elder Wand sent a spark of contentment up his arm. Peter started. He didn’t
know how it could do that, when it was lying on the table, but somehow, it had.

“Okay,” Peter said slowly. He found he couldn’t contain his smile. Perhaps this
was the wand’s well-deserved retirement.

For him, he felt as though his life was just beginning.

Especially since Gringotts had sent him a letter explaining that the “theft” of the
wand was basically allowed since he’d been traveling with a phoenix and saving
the world, but that it had better not happen again.

Peter could live with that.

*
“You’re sure that you want to leave, Sirius? You know that Riddle’s people
have been searching and they haven’t found any sign of Snape or Remus.”

“I know. But I have to.” Sirius didn’t look up from where he was sliding
packages of food under Preservation Charms into his trunk. He’d shrink that
and carry it with him, along with multiple other trunks. He had no idea how
long he might have to search or where he would go, and he intended to have as
much as he needed so he wouldn’t have to abandon the trail in the middle.
“Remus needs me.”

“Even if you find him, what happens if you can’t get him to accept you as his
soulmate?”

“Then at least I’ll be with him,” Sirius said, and looked up at James, who was
standing in the doorway of the flat’s kitchen, eyeing the packages flying into the
trunks. “It’s not much, but at least we can share our lives. The way we always
should have.”

James winced. Sirius suspected it wasn’t because of anything Sirius had said,
but what he was thinking about Harry and Riddle, and the reasons they hadn’t
spent most of their lives together.

“And you think you can get past any wards or other guards that Snape has on
him?”

“I think I have to at least try. Come on, James. What’s the real reason that
you’re doing this? You can’t possibly think I’m just going to leave Remus
there.” Wherever “there” is.
James licked his lips. “I think—it feels like you’re my only ally against Riddle,
Sirius. Harry’s gone over to him entirely. Lily doesn’t like him, but she isn’t
even trying to work against him anymore, except by doing things like spreading
the truth about Muggleborns’ academic achievements and how they aren’t any
lesser than purebloods’.”

Sirius sighed, stood up, and reached over to take James by the shoulders. James
stared at him and blinked a little. For an instant, Sirius felt as if they were back
in Hogwarts, planning some prank that they would whisper about first, and then
try to get Remus and Peter involved in.

Peter. That was someone else Sirius should write to, just because he needed to
make some apologies, and to see what Peter would say.
They weren’t in Hogwarts, and the moment passed. Sirius squeezed James’s
shoulders and let go. “I don’t see what there is to set yourself against,” he said
softly. “You know that Riddle’s going to retire from politics soon. You know
that if he becomes immortal, he’ll do it with Harry, and not alone. You know
that he isn’t a Dark Lord the way Dumbledore thought, and he isn’t starting a
war. What do you need to struggle against?”

“I need—I need to make it up to Harry.”

“What up to Harry?”

“Talking about him the way I did in the past. If I can show him that I love him
enough, that I didn’t mean it when I said that I wished he hadn’t been born, then
maybe he’ll reject Riddle.”

Sirius sighed and rubbed one finger across his nose. “That isn’t going to
happen.”

“You don’t know that, though. Harry lived twenty-four years without him. He
was happy enough. If—”

“Something for you to think about, James,” Sirius interrupted. “Has it occurred
to you that out of all the people you were closest to, or the people you used to
be close to, you’re the only one who got your soulmate?”

James paused. A tension that hadn’t been there before flowed into him. “What
do you mean?”

“You have Lily,” Sirius said softly. “Peter was born with that black-edged
mark, so he had no chance to meet the soulmate who died before he was born.
Remus rejected me.” He breathed through the center of the pain in his chest and
kept talking, because he thought James really needed to hear this. “Albus
rejected his soulmate. You would have kept Harry from his. Why do you get
your soulmate and no one else gets theirs?”

“Wait. I never—I never thought like that.”

“You wouldn’t give up Lily for anyone, would you? But you thought it was
appropriate to deny your son his soulmate, and you want me to stay here instead
of going to find Remus, and you followed Albus for a long time. It isn’t
your fault, exactly. I don’t think you thought you could be the only happy one.
But you keep being thoughtless about it. Accept that Harry has Riddle, and he’s
happy. And I’m going to try and be happy with Remus. If I can’t, then at least
I’ll know it instead of telling myself that I would be happy if things were just
different and I was with him.”

James looked lost. Sirius clasped his shoulder. “I’ll be an owl away,” he said
quietly. “And Riddle is lending me a few spells that will make the search easier.
Maybe Moony and I will both be back before you know it, Prongs.”

James finally summoned a smile. “I suppose it makes sense that you have to
search.”

Sirius ignored the fact that James obviously thought his search wouldn’t
succeed, and nodded to him. “I told Harry and Lily goodbye this morning.
So…” He leaned forwards and hugged James, and James hugged him back,
arms tight and desperate. Sirius pretended not to notice as he pulled away.

He picked up the pinch of Floo powder waiting for him and waved to James
with one arm. “The Ministry!”

“Are you all right, Arthur?”

Physically, of course, Molly knew that he was. The pain pounding through the
bond would have been different if he was sick or injured. But as her bondmate
turned miserable eyes on her, Molly knew that this was a wound that wouldn’t
be purged unless she forced Arthur to talk about it.

“It’s silly, really.” Arthur smiled, while their bond turned a dusky grey and
trembled.

“Come on, Arthur, sit down and tell me.”

They were in the small flat that the Minister had found for them somewhere and
given to them, although with Auror visits every week. Molly had been baking
biscuits, but they were in the oven now, and she was growing increasingly
worried about Arthur. He sat down next to her, but his movements were
uncertain, and the bond grew darker and darker.

“Arthur? You’re starting to frighten me.”

Arthur took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair before he blurted out,
“I don’t know what to do with myself now that there’s no war.”
Molly sighed and took his hand. “We’ll be left in a limbo for a little while
longer, I should imagine, while Minister Riddle investigates what we did with
the Order and if he’s going to bring us up on charges. But after that, we can
begin our lives again, and I certainly hope that you’ll want to.”

“Do you think he will bring us up on charges?”

“No, I don’t think so, if only because it would upset Harry.”

Arthur fussed with a teacup for long minutes before he spoke again. “I don’t
think that’s a good thing, Mollywobbles. Not if it means that Riddle is acting
more in accordance with personal feelings than ideas of justice.”

Molly tried, but she couldn’t smother the laughter in the bond even if she could
muffle the sound with one hand. Arthur stared at her, a little shocked, but Molly
thought he was more wounded.

“Arthur,” Molly murmured, and drew him towards her, and gathered him in.
There were strands of glinting white in his hair when the light caught it. Molly
tucked away a private gladness that they wouldn’t have to live on the run as
they got older. “How many times did you go and get Alastor out of some
trouble he got into with illegal magic or enchanting Muggle artifacts he wasn’t
supposed to enchant before we went on the run?”

“Well, that’s different—”

“How many times did you get around the law that you wrote yourself? That you
put loopholes in so that you could do things like enchant that ridiculous car?”

“It wasn’t ridiculous, Molly,” Arthur began to protest instinctively, and then
paused and sighed. “You’re saying that the Ministry’s always been corrupt.”

“Yes.” Molly patted his shoulder with one hand and set up a puff of flour she
hadn’t realized was still on her fingers. “And while you might argue that your
little indiscretions didn’t hurt anything, you know some people would disagree,
and say that it’s more important for the Head of a department to be clean than it
is for anyone. I don’t think that allowing us to live here and not sending us to
Azkaban is the worst thing that Riddle has done, or the worst thing that a sitting
Minister has ever done. He might only be doing it because of Harry, but that’s a
better motivation than many he could have.”

Arthur sighed out slowly. “I suppose you’re right about that.”

“Of course I am, dear.” Molly patted his hand this time and stood up as the soft
ward on the stove began to sing, warning her that the biscuits were done. “Now,
come into the kitchen and help me eat these, there’s a dear.”

It took him days to even stir out of the hidden refuge that the phoenix fire had
brought him to. And then Gellert stood in the center of the forest clearing and
stared at nothingness, a thin blue cloak clasped around his shoulders.

He didn’t know how he knew it, since the artificial bond that Albus had
maintained with him using Amortentia had faded once the last potion dose did.
But perhaps there was a sharper, darker outline around his soul-mark, or
perhaps there was an echoing absence in the back of his mind that had always
held the possibility of a connection before.

He didn’t know. But he knew that Albus was dead.

Gellert took a few slow steps. The day was cloudy, the sun darting in and out of
a grey haze high above. He heard a stream murmuring in the distance. Running
water’s sound was one of the things he had missed most in Nurmengard,
strangely.

Gellert took a deep breath and let his cloak fall.

No one stormed into the clearing screaming for his arrest. Gellert was
cautiously hopeful that no one would, at least as long as he did nothing
obviously illegal or powerful that would draw attention.

He had no intention of going back to prison. He had no intention of conquering

the world. Years and years by himself, staring at the black-edged mark on his
wrist, had proven to him the consequences of that.

He would find a place where he could live quietly. Perhaps he would make a
friend. Perhaps he would contemplate the past. Perhaps he would live a few
years longer, or a decade.

And perhaps, someday, he would be able to mourn Albus, one of the few who
would.

“Harry?”
Harry rolled sleepily over. Tom had gone into the bathroom what felt like an
hour ago, at least. Harry yawned and lifted his wrist to check on the watch,
since his wand was on the bedside table and he felt too lazy to pull on their
pooled magic to cast a Tempus Charm. Yeah, an hour.

“Harry?”

He’d just begun to drift off again in pursuit of a dream he’d been chasing
through his sleep, and it was an agony to stir and force himself back into
wakefulness. But he did it, and smiled at Tom as he came to a step beside the
bed. “Yeah?”

“I’d like to make love to you.”

“Of course,” Harry said, deciding his cock wasn’t too tired after all to take an
interest. He started to roll over, but Tom shook his head and drew his wand,
casting a Lightening Charm on Harry and lifting him right off the bed.

Harry laughed softly and let his head loll onto Tom’s shoulder. “Where are we
going?”

“It occurred to me that I’ve never had you in the shower.”

Harry swore softly, and Tom smiled against his ear, probably because he
could feel Harry taking an interest down their bond as well as against his wrist.
He carried Harry gently into the bathroom and cradled him while he used his
wand to start the water flowing and probably adjust the temperature. Harry
waved a hand and removed the pants he was wearing, folding his robes neatly
next to the shower.

“It stuns me when you do that,” Tom whispered against his ear.

Harry laughed despite himself, and snuggled further into Tom’s arms as he
obviously tried not to drop Harry. “Why? You’re as capable of it as I am.”

“I know. But for years, I did it by myself because I thought I would never find
my soulmate. It’s still a wonder to me that I have you.”

Harry turned his head to nuzzle Tom’s ear with his nose. “Now you do. Show
me what your shower fantasies are like.”

The bond curled around Harry was warmer than Tom’s skin or the water as he
set Harry gently on his feet under the spray. Harry tilted his head back and
hummed happily as the water dashed across his skin. Tom caressed his
shoulders for a long moment before casting one final spell that was probably
meant to hold the temperature of the water constant and joining him.

Harry arched his head back to kiss Tom, and Tom bent down a little and
adjusted the angle of his neck. Their lips brushed, and Harry smiled at the
smugness that burst through the bond, Tom feeling Harry’s intense enjoyment
of the kiss and enjoying the enjoyment and enjoying Harry’s enjoyment of
Tom’s enjoyment that flowed back and forth between them.

Tom traced his hands over Harry’s shoulders, down the blades to the middle of
his back, and murmured a soft spell without moving. Harry jerked a little as he
felt himself loosen and stretch and grow slicker than the water could account
for. Tom’s lips seared the nape of his neck as he entered Harry slowly.

Harry squeezed down, and smiled to himself as Tom’s pace stuttered. Then
Harry decided he had no reason to keep that emotion private, so he fed it down
the bond, and Tom bit his shoulder and thrust into him punishingly.

Should choose a different kind of punishment if you want me to suffer, Harry

taunted, tilting his head further back and shivering with pleasure as Tom
brushed against his prostate.
You’re cheating. Say that aloud, and you would stutter.
Of course I’m cheating. Why shouldn’t I? I have a wonderful soulmate who’s
not, at the moment, being that wonderful a lover, or surely I’d be forgetting how
to speak—

Tom began to move faster, and Harry had to brace himself against the wall,
swearing under his breath. He could feel Tom’s smug grin against his shoulders,
and he tightened his arse again and began to shove back against Tom’s cock.

It took them a little while to find a rhythm, with the water pouring down around
them and the floor and the walls both as slick as Harry, but in no time, Harry
had his arm curled around Tom’s neck, and Tom was half-slumped forwards,
his hips snapping tight and regular thrusts, while his arms practically hung
down Harry’s chest.

I love you, Tom gasped down the bond.

I know you do, Harry said, and reveled in the fire of pure emotion that curled
through him, joined by the feeling of the blue flames as Tom’s fingers found the
mark on his wrist. I love you, too.
Their pleasure chased and spiraled around itself, raising wings hotter than
phoenix fire to fill the air around them with golden shadows. Harry smiled and
twisted around, ignoring Tom’s gasp of loss as he fell out of Harry’s arse. It was
only for a moment, until Harry could arrange himself against the wall facing his
bondmate and guide Tom back in.

Tom hissed into his ear, the Parseltongue that Harry could return now if he
wanted. Harry reached out and gripped Tom’s wet shoulders with curved
fingers, digging deeper as he listened to the words. “I love you. I’ll never stop
wanting you. I’ll never stop—”
“I’ll never leave you,” Harry hissed back, knowing the message Tom wanted to
hear, the one he wanted to pound into Harry’s flesh with his flesh, his gripping
nails, his words. “I’m here now. I’ll never leave you.” The Parseltongue words
were easy to speak in a way that English ones wouldn’t have been as Tom
steadily pounded into him.

It didn’t take a hand on his cock to make him come. It took Tom’s eyes staring
into his, their emotional bond draping coils around them as if it were a serpent
made of magic, and Tom’s fingers pressing tendon to bone in Harry’s wrist
where Tom refused to let go of his soul-mark.

Harry clawed wildly at Tom’s shoulders as he crested, and Tom followed with
something that sounded like a snarl with the buzzing undertone of a hiss. Tom
turned his head and kissed Harry, tongue darting in and out of his mouth, and
gathered him close as they slid to the floor of the shower together.

Harry curled closer and thought that he had honestly never been as happy in his
life as he was right at this moment.

“What do you think it’ll be like to be immortal?”

Tom turned his head towards Harry. They were sprawled across the bed
together now, Harry dragged across Tom’s chest with one hand clasped in
Tom’s. Tom had been idly amusing himself by closing and opening his other
hand around Harry’s soul-mark, making the blue flames spring up and then
disappear again.

The bond was bright and smooth and cool, like turquoise seawater, and Tom
tipped his head at Harry. “You have made your final choice, then.”
“I can’t get enough of this.” It was the type of confession that might have
sounded desperate in English, but Harry still sounded as calm as the bond
implied. He was smiling at Tom, his eyes clear. “I still don’t know about the
idea of being alive forever, but being able to have as much of each other as we
want, and then choose when we die? Yes, I want that.”
Tom leaned close enough to rest his chin on top of Harry’s head and close his
eyes. “If you could know how much I love and want you.”
“I do know. I can feel it.”
“It still seems to me as if I don’t tell you enough.”

A surge of loneliness enveloped Tom. He could still remember those years, so

many of them, when his only bond stretched to Nagini, and he’d hunted
obsessively for his soulmate, and passed laws that would make it easier to find
them, and tried to envision what kind of person they would be, and—

“I’m here, Tom.”

Harry repeated the words mentally a moment later, and Tom rolled towards him
and inhaled the warm scent rising off Harry’s neck. Their bond flashed with
heat and desire and love and passion, and then steadied.

I cannot have enough of this, Tom thought he thought, and then realized that he
couldn’t tell which one of their minds the thought had come from, so in tune
were they.

Tom rose up on his elbows, turning so that Harry was arranged next to him, and
smoothed his wild hair back. “I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you, too,” Harry said, and sent the fire of emotions through the bond,
since it seemed he would also have trouble putting what he was feeling into
words.

Tom bent his head to kiss his soulmate, the only light in their bedroom the blue
flames springing up from Harry’s mark as he once again clasped it, and hoped
immortality would always be like this, bright and clear and loving and fearless.

The End.
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