Chapter Three of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Conversations
Chapter Two.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (3/?)
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 again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three-Conversations
“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 Four.
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