[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Twelve and One, Harry/Tom Riddle, R, 2/7
Part One.
Title: Twelve and One (2/7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily and Merope/Tom Riddle Sr.
Content Notes: Angst, past minor character death, violence, fairy tale AU
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 4300
Summary: AU. King James Potter has twelve daughters, each more beautiful than the last, and all under a devastating curse. He also has one son, who serves as his father’s steward. Harry has begun to wonder if his sisters will ever be free from the curse, until Prince Thomas Slytherin comes seeking a consort. (Very) loosely based on the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”
Author’s Notes: This is one of “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year. It will have seven parts.
Part Two
“Good luck, my son.”
Harry smiled at his father and reached up to clasp his shoulder. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He hesitated, because his father had had his hopes raised only to be disappointed so many times before, but finally he said, “I do think that Prince Slytherin can actually do it this time.”
The king sighed, a shadow that was more than the loss of Harry’s mother racing across it for a moment. “Let’s hope so. I’m not looking forward to what’s going to happen when I’m dead if your sisters are still under this curse.”
Harry nodded. Lord Black, Sirius, was a good man-well, elf, mostly-but he would want to promote the interests of his own children, and he regarded all Harry’s sisters as beloved goddaughters. He might stop entertaining royals who tried and failed to free them from the curse and just insist that all of them could live at home for the rest of their lives and play, and who cared about the night when they drooped and lost their spirits?
“Prince Harry. Your Majesty.”
Harry turned. Prince Thomas was coming down the steps into the garden, where they had watched Harry’s sisters yesterday. And despite the fact that Harry knew the gate was off in one corner somewhere, although he couldn’t see it, and ought to be drawing the Slytherin Prince’s eye, the man was looking and smiling at him.
“Prince Thomas,” Harry said, to get some of his own back by using the name the prince hated, and ignored the glare he got in response. He turned to his father. “I’ll see you this evening, then.” No matter how much time passed subjectively in the underworld for those who went through the gate, they always reemerged from it in the evening of the same day.
King James gave him a weak smile. “Yes, Harry.” He turned to Prince Thomas, seemed as if he was about to say something, and then ended up shaking his head and walking back into the palace.
“Excuse him,” Harry murmured. “Things have been so hard for him since my mother died.”
“And yet, not as hard as they have been for his children.” Prince Thomas stared at Harry again.
“Can’t you see the gate, either?” Harry asked, although he doubted that. Lord Black’s grandfather had been Unseelie, although both he and his daughter had married Seelie half-elves, and Sirius had no trouble seeing it.
“Of course I can. I simply have other things I prefer to look at more. And call me Tom.”
Since they weren’t in front of any other stewards or servants, Harry supposed he could. He turned away with a slight shrug and faced the corner where he had seen so many people disappear into thin air. “Does it look like an archway of golden light?”
“Yes.” Tom’s hand feathered up Harry’s neck, which made him tense his shoulders and shake his head. The prince dropped his hand and said nothing about it. “Come with me now. I’ll guide you so that you don’t fall.”
Harry rolled his eyes about the mocking tone in the git’s voice, and held out his hand without comment. Tom immediately wound Harry’s arm tightly through his and began gliding with that grace that Harry found so hard to imitate.
Harry just shrugged and kept walking. They were on the dewy grass of the garden for only a few steps. Then the air around them flared as if they were inside a crystal goblet, and Harry gasped as the horizon in front of him turned white and then the ground beneath their feet did as well.
“What…”
“Welcome to the elven underworld, Prince Harry.”
Harry was too busy looking around to answer the mocking tone in Tom’s voice. Legends about this underpart of Faerie where souls traveled didn’t do it justice. There was the same crystalline feel to the air, which curved above them as if they were inside a globe. The ground underneath was a soft, pearlescent green, highlighted by drifting scraps of silvery mist. Ahead of them were dark hills and fields, which Harry thought were almost indigo, and like the legendary blue hills of Faerie seen through a darkening lens.
“There’s the first manifestation of the curse,” Tom murmured, leaning, in Harry’s opinion, unnecessarily close and breathing along his ear as he pointed towards a shimmering figure on the ground in front of them.
Harry slowly walked closer. He had been unable to understand what he was seeing in the figure at first, but now he made it out. It was a closed flower, or looked like one, planted in the ground and throbbing slowly. It was the same indigo color as the hills-no, perhaps a little darker. Harry quenched the temptation to reach out and touch it.
“How do you know this is the curse?” he murmured.
“Can you really not see the light that illuminates it? How different it is from the rest of the underworld?” Tom shot him a swift glance.
“I must not be able to,” Harry said, and ignored the disapproving expression on Tom’s face. He had made his peace long ago with not seeing like an elf. Besides, he was just glad that he hadn’t been blinded entirely to the underworld. “So what should we do with it?”
“It looks like an amaranth flower,” Tom explained, which made Harry slant a glance at him. He looked entirely serious, however, so Harry just nodded, assuming Tom could see some resemblance that he couldn’t. “Your eldest sister’s name is Amaranth, and she is skilled in drawing buildings. So we should build a small one to contain the flower.”
“How-does that make sense?” Harry had thought he understood the nature of Faerie, and then he continually met challenges that untangled his own assumptions.
“It’s an elven curse,” Tom said, shrugging. “It turns your sisters into shadows of themselves at night, the time when shadows are strongest. And it makes sense that it would take the princesses’ own gifts to undo it.”
Harry shrugged back. He supposed it made sense that Tom, the son of an Unseelie elf, understood the nature of a curse based on shadows. “It does seem rather simple, though. Unless the building has to be as beautiful as one of the ones Amaranth designs. I’m no good at that.”
“It’s not simple to an elf,” Tom murmured. He appeared to be scanning the ground. He picked up a flat stone and handed it to Harry. “Their gifts are made their curses. No elf would be able to actually destroy the beauty your sisters can create, but they can use it to enchain them. And I’ll take care of making sure the building is beautiful.”
He would have to take charge of it, Harry admitted after a while, as he piled the stones where Tom told him to, around the flower and in careful rings and arches. Harry couldn’t see the overall shape, but he also couldn’t see the stones that Tom found under clumps of grass and beside trees and small trickles of water. On the other hand, if they broke the curse, then what mattered was that it was broken. Harry didn’t need to have credit for it or even know that he had played an equal part.
The small clinking noises the stones made as they put them together ended when Harry carefully put what seemed to be a small marble keystone into place on a final arch and then the whole world lit up around them.
Harry gasped and threw a hand over his eyes. He felt Tom’s hand on his shoulder, and another unnecessary breath on his ear as Tom said, “It worked.”
Harry opened his eyes slowly. In front of him stood a small, graceful house made of white marble, not piled stones, with soaring spires like some of the palaces that Amaranth drew in her free time. A single, open amaranth flower blossomed out of the roof. Harry shook his head in wonder.
“And you think it would be broken for her alone?” he asked. “Or would it have some link to Beryl, since they’re twins?”
“Only for Amaranth.” Tom had his hand on Harry’s shoulder still. Harry tried to shrug it off. Tom rode the motion with his fingers and kept them in place. “We will have to press on to find the other challenges. And I do expect them to be harder. An elven curse strengthens as each link in the chain is broken, not gets weaker.”
“Oh, wonderful.” Harry kept staring at the small house. After a moment, he frowned.
“What is it?”
Harry deliberately moved away. Tom kept standing so close that Harry could feel his hair and the brush of his clothes when he moved. “I just think it’s a shame that, when it was this simple, Amaranth has been under the curse for so many years,” he said quietly.
“They got what they deserved.”
Harry jerked himself around. “Say that again,” he whispered, his hands dropping to his sides.
Tom smiled at him. “Yes, I do like to see your eyes glowing like that.”
“My sister did not deserve what happened to her,” Harry spat. “Is this a part of you being Unseelie, that you blame people for things that they didn’t bring on themselves?”
Tom motioned towards him and kept moving, away from the small stone house that held the amaranth blossom. Harry reluctantly followed. The country around them looked different now, he noticed. The indigo hills had become defined, and some of then now resembled mountains ornamented with gigantic golden statues of griffins and winged horses. Wings cut the air far above. In front of them, not that far away, was something flat blue and shimmering that didn’t look much like water.
“I mean the other royals who attempted to break this curse deserve any shame they will get when we return and tell them how simple it was,” Tom said. “They could have got what they wanted so easily by bringing you with them. But they neglected you.”
Harry shook his head. “They couldn’t be sure that I would be of any service here. For that matter, I’m still not sure that I’m seeing what you are. Do you see something flying above us?”
“Of course, though perhaps more clearly than you do. But they could still have tried. Just as you could have tried to be a prince, and dropped the retiring servant act.”
“The household needed someone to run it after my mother died!”
“And a servant could have done that. Come, I think the next part of our quest approaches.”
Harry reluctantly looked up. The flying shape overhead had resolved itself into a more distinct one. Harry frowned. He could see the edges of horns, and what looked like ruffles on the bat-shaped wings, and-
“A dragon?”
“A dead one,” Tom said off-handedly. “A live one wouldn’t be in the underworld. But yes, I think it is.” He raised his hand, and he abruptly held a huge, poison-green blade that he must have drawn from somewhere unseen. “I suspect you will be necessary to battle it, but stay behind me for now. I am going to try speaking to it in Parseltongue.”
“And you think that’ll work?” Harry found himself unable to take his eyes off the dragon as it approached. Close to, he could see that the skull was black, as if it had passed through fire. The rest of the body seemed to be a mixture of bones and mist, as though the dragon had wrapped itself in a shroud before taking flight.
“Why not? Now be quiet.” Tom stepped forwards, his sword extended to one side of his body, and spoke in a hissing language. The dragon kept coming for them, body snaking through the air. Harry watched. Maybe Parseltongue would work after all.
Then the dragon opened its mouth and spat black flames.
The fire punched down towards Tom, who frowned at it as if he couldn’t believe that even a dead-or undead-dragon would be this impolite. Harry flung himself forwards and knocked Tom off his feet by tackling his knees. Tom went down with a sharp huff of air and an even sharper snap at Harry, but at least the fire sailed past his head and scorched a tree instead. Well, it turned some of the tree’s branches into shadows, which Harry thought was probably the same thing here.
“I would have been fine,” Tom said, shoving at Harry’s shoulders.
Harry stood back up, facing the sky warily. The dragon had turned and was moving back towards them with no hurry. Perhaps that meant that it wasn’t going to hate them.
But it could still destroy them, Harry thought, staring at the empty eye-sockets of the skull.
“Harry. Move.”
“Have you tried speaking to it normally, instead of commanding it the way you probably did?” Harry snapped irritably over his shoulder.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
There was an undertone to Tom’s voice that said he very well did. Harry rolled his eyes and said to the dragon in the same kind of tone he would use to a horse that was being stubborn about going to the farrier, “Excuse me. Can you leave us alone? We’re here for a quest that probably has nothing to do with you.”
The dragon pulled up sharply, hovering over him. The wings lay motionless on the air, reinforcing Harry’s impression that it was really nothing like a normal dragon.
Tom drew in a sharp breath behind him, but for once seemed to have nothing to say. Maybe he was still too upset about the fact that his Parseltongue obviously hadn’t worked on the dragon, Harry thought smugly. He nodded. “If you are part of our quest, then perhaps you could let us complete it and be on our way? I promise that neither of us wants to destroy you.”
The dragon continued to float, staring. Then it landed on the ground and held out one leg that seemed to be more darkness than bone.
Harry relaxed. The dragon had responded like some of the horses in the stables did when Harry spoke to them, or the cats that did the mousing in the kitchens. Other servants always fetched him when there was an animal that needed dealing with. Honestly, Harry didn’t think that he did anything they couldn’t learn. They just had to be kind to the animals instead of yelling or hitting or flinging old boots.
Harry glanced over at Tom as he walked towards the dragon’s spread foreleg, and found him gaping. Harry grinned. It was kind of a good look on him.
Tom snapped his mouth shut in the next second, of course, and said haughtily as he followed Harry, “I don’t like people who lie to me.”
“That means about as much as ‘I’d like a cheese sandwich’ right now,” Harry told him, flinging his leg over the dragon’s back. There was cold nothingness beneath him at some points and knobs of bone at others, but it still beat sitting in one of those uncomfortable banquets that his father hosted now and again.
“I don’t like cheese.”
Harry rolled his eyes and heard Tom settle behind him. He nodded to the dragon and said, “Can you take us wherever you need to take us, please? I think that you might know, if you’re part of the curse.”
The dragon did indeed seem to know, if the speed it used to lift them from the ground was any indication. Harry sat back, smiling, and watched the ground pass below. There were several trees with shadows as part of them. He wondered if that meant the dragon had breathed fire on them, too.
“You lied to me.”
Tom’s arms linked painfully tight around Harry’s waist, interrupting his triumph. He shook himself in irritation. “What are you talking about?”
“You said that you had no elven magic.”
“I don’t. Not really.”
“You can make yourself understood by the dragon.”
“That’s not magic, that’s common sense.” Harry glanced over his shoulder, and found the Slytherin prince’s intense eyes staring at him again. He turned away uncomfortably. They were dark, he could say that, but he didn’t know whether they were blue or indigo or a green deeper than his own. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to look that closely into Prince Tom’s eyes. “Treat animals kindly, and sometimes they’ll listen and help you.”
“Would it surprise you to know that I heard your voice change?”
“But you could understand what I said. It wasn’t Parseltongue.”
“Yes. But your kindness is also an ability to make yourself understood by animals.”
Harry shrugged. Maybe that was true, but he’d never thought so. Not all horses or cats listened to him, even when he spoke as gently as he could, and the dragon might not have, either. And sometimes animals seemed willing to listen, but didn’t understand him. “It’s a minor talent, if that. Nothing like Hyacinth’s ability to bring the dead back to life or Iris’s ability to make her reflection dance.”
“Those talents to me seem singularly useless.”
Harry gaped at the dragon’s neck in front of him, because he didn’t feel like turning around and staring at Tom again right now. “What? Resurrecting the dead is useless?”
“Has she ever brought someone back from the dead who is human or elven?”
“Well, no,” Harry had to concede. “Only leaves and flowers. And once a kitten that had just barely died.”
“I rest my case. Your talent seems much more useful.”
Harry frowned and spent some time arranging the words he wanted to speak in his own head, while the dragon soared on over fields of wavering blue grass and flowing streams that went steadily uphill. Finally, Harry said, “You seem intent on taking my part, which makes no sense, as you barely know me. Is it just because you dislike my father?”
“I don’t dislike your father, or I wouldn’t have come to his kingdom to acquire a consort.”
“Of course,” Harry said slowly. Those words had been just a little too quick, to his ears. Perhaps Tom didn’t have any particular feelings towards Harry’s father, but he did seem to be lying about something. “That still doesn’t make any sense about why you’re so upset about me having a magical talent and serving as a steward.”
The dragon began to slow, and Tom tightened his hold on Harry’s waist as if he anticipated being thrown off. He nodded ahead of them. “Perhaps this should wait until we’ve dealt with that?”
Harry looked up, and blinked. A mountain had loomed abruptly in front of them, one that had a flaring “waist” that then tapered back in again, so it looked like it was perched on a gigantic diamond-shaped base. The base of the diamond itself was perched on a tree. And the dragon was aiming for a black spot high in the purple and white, one that grew clearer as Harry watched. “The cave with its hoard, do you think?” he murmured.
“I would assume so, Harry.”
Harry kept his roll of his eyes to himself, but he really didn’t understand why Prince Thomas had to keep saying his name again and again. It was as if he wanted to prove a point, but Harry could have told him there was no one on the other side of the gameboard.
The dragon raised its wings as they came down on a lip of ledge near the cave entrance. It was big enough for the whole of the dead dragon’s snaky body, although Harry held his breath at first believing it wouldn’t be, and once again the creature extended its leg. Harry smiled at it as he stepped down over the claws ignoring the fact that Tom had got down first and had his hand extended to help him. “Thank you.”
Mist seemed to fill the empty sockets of the skull, the only sign Harry was sure of that he had been heard, and then the dragon turned and lay with its chin facing the underworld. Harry stepped into the cave, Tom guiding himself with a hand on Harry’s shoulder.
Jewels sprawled everywhere in the cavern, piled up to the walls, hanging on stalactites from the ceiling, draped over the edges of trunks and goblets. Harry frowned. They were obviously supposed to search for something specific in here, but he had no idea how.
Tom made a thoughtful noise, and Harry glanced at him, hoping he had some idea. Tom met his eyes and smiled. “I was just thinking how much wealth these jewels could bring to my House.”
“You’re not taking them.”
“You’re assuming that any of them would even survive the transition back to the human world in their present form,” Tom retorted. “There are enough legends of what jewels transform into when taken outside the gates of the underworld that I would not risk it.”
“Then why even talk about taking the risk?” Harry turned back to the hoard. “And I don’t know what we’re supposed to look for.”
“To see the look on your face.”
Harry turned around and glared. Tom sighed. “It’s not mysterious, Harry. I told you before that I prefer you when your eyes shine like a Seelie elf’s.”
“Tell me what we’re supposed to look for.”
“What makes you think I would have any idea? They are your sisters.”
“You wouldn’t have spoken if you didn’t. You wanted to show off your intelligence.”
This time, when Tom narrowed his eyes, Harry decided that he had a name for their color. They were indigo, the color of the hills of the underworld.
“A beryl,” Tom said coolly. “That is what your second eldest sister is named for, is it not?”
Harry wanted to groan aloud with his own stupidity, and he would have if he’d been with anyone else, but now he turned his back and faced the hoard. When he closed his eyes, he could feel an intriguing warmth in one particular direction, towards the back of the cave.
He waved his hand, and murmured, “Accio.”
“A human spell?” Tom said behind him with something like disgust, but Harry ignored that. If anything, the man should have learned by now that Harry was more human than he was elven.
There was a long rush of clattering and clacking, as though jewels were being shouldered aside, and then something shot towards Harry and slammed into his hand. He opened his eyes and grinned at the oval-shaped beryl shimmering there.
Except…
When he peered closer, he realized there was a huge and obvious flaw in the beryl. It looked almost like a stain, but as he studied it, the features of a face came clear. Beryl’s face, frozen in an endless, terrified scream.
Revolted, Harry ignored what Tom was trying to say and turned and threw the beryl as hard as he could.
It slammed into the wall of the cavern, and broke open. Harry caught his breath. He shouldn’t have done that-he shouldn’t have reacted that way and what harm might it have done to his sister-
But then Tom came up behind him and leaned on his shoulder in that overly-familiar fashion, and murmured, “I think that’s your second sister free.”
Harry swallowed. “But how can you think so? I broke the jewel.”
Tom gave him a curious glance and then led him towards the broken gem. When Harry bent down towards it, he gave a vast sigh of relief. The cracks had made a map, one of the ones that Beryl had practiced drawing over and over again: the coasts and outlines of the continent where the human kingdoms existed with Faerie.
“I suppose the way we freed her didn’t have to do with maps, the way Amaranth’s architecture helped us free her, but we can still see it as a sign,” Harry said.
“Yes, we can.” Tom locked an arm around his shoulders, and turned him back towards the mouth of the cave. “In the meantime, I’m very anxious to make a camp for the night.”
“Night?” Harry looked towards the small portion of sky he could see through the cave entrance and beyond the head of the dragon, but it looked the same as ever to him.
“Nights and days in the underworld are what you make of them,” Tom admitted with a shrug. “But I feel the need for some rest and food. I brought enough with us that we won’t have to eat anything here, which would be…unwise.”
Harry could only agree. He reached out to climb up the undead dragon’s foreleg again, but then paused. It was faint, but a growl was welling up towards them. Harry stared at the beast and wondered what had changed, but then realized that the “gaze” of the empty sockets was pointed behind him, at Tom.
Harry turned around. “What did you do?”
“What makes you think I did something? Are you going to believe an undead beast over me?”
“I would believe lots of beasts over you,” Harry said dryly.
Tom stood motionless beneath both pairs of eyes for a moment. Then he shrugged and began to empty gemstones from his pockets. Harry stared at him, then snorted. “And you think it’s a good idea to take jewels out of the underworld when you said they might transform?”
“Worth a try,” Tom said, as the dragon stopped growling and held out its foreleg again.
Harry shook his head and hung back. Tom glanced at him. “What? That was the last of the gems, as you ought to be able to tell.”
“I want you to be in front this time, so you don’t hang onto my waist in that creepy way.”
“Just for you, Prince Harry,” Tom purred, “I’ll show you how creepy I can be.”
And he leaned back so that his shoulders were pressed to Harry’s chest all the way down. Harry sat there, and fumed.
Part Three.
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