Chapter Two of ‘His Darkest Devotion’- Attempts
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (2/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily, Molly/Arthur, Ron/Hermione, possibly others
Content Notes: Extreme AU, soulmate-identifying marks, angst, violence, torture, gore, minor character deaths
Rating: R
Summary: AU. Harry Potter has been hiding in plain sight all his life, since he carries the soul-mark of Minister Tom Riddle on his arm-and a fulfilled soul-bond will double both partners’ power. His parents and godfather are fugitives, members of the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry is a junior Ministry official feeding the Order what information he can. No one, least of all him, expects Harry to come to the sudden notice of Minister Riddle, or be drawn into a dangerous game of deception.
Author’s Notes: This is a long fic and an extreme AU, as you can see from the summary. The different facets of the AU will be revealed slowly, so roll with the differences at first; in time, all should be revealed.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two-Attempts
“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 Three.
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