[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Kept Man, Harry/Tom, R, 2/4
Part One.
Title: Kept Man (2/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, background James Potter/Lily Potter and James/OFC
Rating: R
Content Notes: Alternate universe (no Voldemort), angst, complicated family relationships
Wordcount: This part 4400
Summary: Harry Evans is a lowly Dark Patrol wizard who’s working hard to advance. He doesn’t think much of Senior Undersecretary to the Minister Tom Riddle, but on the other hand, a one-night stand that lets them both get rid of tension seems like a good idea. Except that the one night-stand never seems to end.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year. It will have four parts.
Thank you for all the reviews! Incidentally, this is going to be four parts now.
Part Two
“Harry, you're telling me that you’re going to be--kept by Senior Undersecretary Riddle.”
Harry sighed a little as he leaned on his knees in front of the fireplace in his flat. “I know, Mum. But he really has offered me a lot.”
Lily Evans drew her breath in sharply. “Oh, Harry. I’m afraid that this is going to spiral into some sort of political trap for you. Or an emotional one.”
“It’s hard to see how, though,” Harry pointed out as he stretched along the hearth. “I mean, sure, Riddle could use me in his schemes, but I’m not getting anywhere just by existing. I haven’t achieved anything in the last few years except to file endless reports and be a target of fun for people like Auror Halloway.”
“And that is my fault. I am sorry.”
“No, Mum. It’s mine.”
Lily’s head only bowed further, and Harry sighed soundlessly, to himself this time. In reality, it had been his idea that he try for some kind of career in the Ministry. He had thought he could overcome the stigma against his mother, against his parents' lack of marriage, against his own weird status in limbo where everyone knew James Potter was his father but James refused him formal acknowledgment.
He had been a fool.
His father was the true villain of the story, but Harry knew that a part of Lily blamed herself and always would. He hoped she could get over her shame enough to accept that he'd made his own choices, though.
Lily seemed to be thinking the same thing, because she swallowed whatever else she would have said and looked up. “Riddle’s politics could put you in danger of your life, though.”
“I don’t think so, not that much,” Harry said, shrugging. He kept his right wrist low at his side, so she couldn’t see the circle of fingerprints that surrounded it. Honestly, he still thought Riddle was violating his own demand for discretion by leaving marks like that on Harry. He could have kept Harry at his side with sweet promises and even had him as his lover without this constant physical touching.
Of course, part of Harry liked it. But that part was a fool, too.
“Why not? Everyone knows that Riddle’s enemies disappear, Harry.”
“The way that everyone knows people born outside marriage aren't worth anything?”
Not that he could tell through the green flames, but Harry knew his mother. He was sure that she had just flushed brilliantly. But her voice was calm. “Please don’t throw that back in my face, Harry.”
Harry sighed. “I know. But I’m just saying, public perceptions aren’t everything. They kept people at the Ministry from seeing my potential, and I think they’ve blinded people to what Riddle is. I know he’s dangerous, but I don’t think that he kills people. He wanted to make a bargain with me and be generous with it, not threaten me into his bed.”
“I knew you were thinking of leaving the Ministry and establishing a business as a dueling instructor!”
“I was, before this. I’m really tired of being a Patrolman, Mother. But he promised me I could become an Auror.”
Lily was quiet and tired-looking for a long moment. Then she said, “I just hope that you know what you’re doing, Harry.”
“Lily? Who are you talking to?”
Harry pulled hastily back from the Floo. He wasn’t ready for a confrontation with his father. “I’ll talk to you as soon as I can, Mum,” he promised. “I really am sorry that this is happening the way it is. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Harry,” his mother murmured, and then the flames flickered and went out, so Harry didn’t know what she would say to James, or even why the bastard was visiting this morning.
Harry rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the fireplace, then around his dusty little flat. He hated this place. He wouldn’t even have been able to afford a Floo connection if he hadn’t had a friend who had hooked up his connection in exchange for a favor.
But he couldn’t throw himself on the mercy of House Potter. Not yet. His father would have accepted his submission if Harry had admitted that he was wrong and he couldn't stand on his own without Potter protection. But Harry would rather eat dirt. James Potter had changed from a reckless young man into someone who would ruthlessly attack anyone who didn't do what he wanted. That, unfortunately, included his children themselves. Harry would have to lie for the rest of his life, or he would have to truthfully admit that he was nothing without a pure-blood name and parent.
No. I refuse.
Harry grimaced and went to find a meal in his small kitchen. He should probably hope that his father didn’t find out about Riddle and Riddle’s "arrangement," either. That would be a disaster. Let him think that Harry was just tired of being a lowly Evans and had managed to impress the Senior Undersecretary.
*
“Your flat is utterly unacceptable.”
“So are your insults,” Harry said quietly, standing back from the door because Riddle looked ready to force his way in. Riddle only paused in his grimacing at the walls of the flat to shoot him a quick glance.
“My lover would never live in a place like this.” The wand in Riddle’s hand had already begun to flick, and colored streamers of light were surging away from it, heading for exactly those walls. Harry folded his arms and leaned back on the doorframe. This ought to be interesting.
The cleaning spells, or spells to hang expensive portraits, or whatever they were, touched the walls and recoiled. Riddle hissed sharply at the same time. Harry turned to him. He appeared to be clutching his wrist. Harry smiled innocently.
“What did you do?” Riddle demanded, turning to him.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“You cast some kind of spell on me.”
Harry clucked his tongue. “You mean that you always cast without checking for defenses on the object you want to enchant? That’s curious and sad, and a deficiency I hope you can correct, since I would never agree to stay with someone without a degree of basic caution. Watch.” He twisted his own wand through the small motion that would reveal the household defenses keyed to him.
The walls promptly lit with blue, green, red, and amber, crisscrossing each other in what Harry knew would look like wards to most people. From the narrowing of his eyes, Riddle wasn’t most people. He turned his head from side to side, tracking the loops of color, and then sighed and shook his head as they collided in front of him.
“I did not know you would suffer from paranoia.”
“Ready to give me up now?” Harry raised an eyebrow.
Riddle met his eyes, and Harry had to take a step back at what he saw in them. “Hardly,” Riddle whispered.
Harry recovered enough to say, “When I was in training to be a Patrolman, it was accepted that pranks on someone’s home and personal items kept us in ‘fighting trim’ or whatever nonsense they wanted to apply to it. Someone broke into my flat. That was the first time that happened, and the last.”
“So you had these defenses even before your training? Interesting.”
Harry rolled his eyes. That wasn’t what he had meant Riddle to take from his statement, even though it was a correct conclusion. “Believe whatever you want,” he murmured. “Now. If you tell me why you think that my flat is ever going to matter while we play this out, maybe I can help you. I thought you would move me into some different place during the times you wanted to sleep with me. It's not very discreet to have you visiting my flat.”
“Because in two hours, the Daily Prophet is coming over to see the place where the unfairly ignored Harry Evans lives.” Riddle made gentle brushing motions down his sleeves, as if to get rid of dust that wouldn’t have had the chance to settle there. “Their phrasing, not mine,” he added, as Harry felt his jaw tremble with the urge to fall open.
“You set this up.”
“I merely made my concerns known, and the Prophet contacted me. Understandably, they were curious about the man who had achieved so much with a Muggleborn last name, and then had his accomplishments ignored just because of that name.”
Riddle’s eyes were cutting enough that Harry turned away from them. But he shrugged. “Then you can show them this, and they can believe that my taste is a little less-impeccable than a pure-blood's.”
Riddle narrowed his eyes and stepped forwards. “I’m your ladder out of a life of lowly paperwork. You should be a bit more pleasant to me, Harry.”
“You’re the one who wanted this arrangement just to fuck me.” Harry shook his head. “I can only go on and hope that things aren’t going to go too badly. If you leave me here, I’m no worse off than I was.”
“Except the attention you’d draw from people wondering why you were about to be promoted and then had the promotion yanked. Attention you can’t afford, with your last name.”
Harry drew in his breath sharply, and then nodded and turned away from Riddle. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
“Not when it’s been in mugs as dusty as I’m sure you keep yours.”
Harry turned around even though he hadn’t meant to. “I’ll have you know that I have a mastery of basic household charms. All of us Giftless Muggleborns have to have that, you know, since we have no hope of house-elves.”
Riddle watched him as closely as though he thought Harry would try to attack him while he took off his cloak. Then he nodded as if Harry had said something other than what he really had. “Tea would be welcome.”
Harry resisted the temptation to add dust to the kettle as he boiled the water.
*
“Mr. Evans? I think I was at Hogwarts with you. In the same year. Ravenclaw, if you remember?”
Harry didn’t have to struggle that hard to remember Minister Granger. He shook her hand and nodded politely. She made firm eye contact, and her grip was firm, too, probably as a result of dealing with pure-bloods who liked to disparage her for her name. Harry had tried going the same route before he gave up. He had really wanted to be respected for just who he was.
And he had compromised even that by being with Riddle.
Harry took a deep breath and reminded himself that, whether he liked it or not, James Potter would have destroyed any hope of a promotion for Harry just based on his merits. Harry had seen his excellent NEWT marks vanish into obscurity. Certainly Auror Halloway, when Harry had interviewed to become a Dark Patrolman, had never heard of them. He sat down in the chair across from the Minister’s desk and nodded to her.
“Yes, we were in the same year, Madam. Of course, you've achieved much more than I have.”
Riddle leaned back in his chair and watched Harry with emotionless eyes, apparently letting him guide this interaction. Fine, then. Harry respected Minister Granger in several ways, but he had no fear of her. And she wasn’t a pure-blood who would need special persuasion just to accept that he might have some kind of valuable contribution to make.
“I'm not sure about that.” Granger looked sympathetic, in some vague way, before she pushed the glasses up her nose and opened the file in front of her. “I took the chance to look up your OWL and NEWT scores, Mr. Evans. May I say that I’m surprised that you haven’t been promoted to Auror already? Your Defense NEWT marks included all the enthusiastic comments from the WEA. They quite raved about you.”
Riddle’s stare sharpened. Apparently he hadn’t known that. Harry smiled a little and said, “They got rather carried away by my ability to produce a corporeal Patronus.”
Riddle blinked, but said nothing. Granger smiled at him. “That’s rather rare. And it makes me feel better about the promotion that Undersecretary Riddle has recommended.” She turned to Riddle and cast a kind of Privacy Charm Harry had never seen before, one that blurred the air between them and seemed to blur their voices, too. Harry could see nothing but a soft wavering haze like smoke when he glanced at the two of them, and their voices were like crickets chirping in the distance.
Harry took the chance to close his eyes and take a deep, irritated breath. Revealing all of this to Riddle was not something he wanted to do, lest it make him seem even more pathetic and like he had nothing to offer but his body. Then again, a few minutes ago he would have said that Riddle probably knew it all, anyway.
Granger spoke and made Harry open his eyes. “Then it’s settled. The paperwork will be completed by tomorrow, and you’ll begin classes next week.” She nodded, pleased. “I’m glad that Undersecretary Riddle’s recommendation wasn’t made for the obvious reason.”
“Obvious?” Harry parodied, only for Riddle to give him a searing look that urged him to pretend to knowledge. “Oh.”
“I am aware of such-arrangements,” Granger said, somehow managing to make it sound like something she was picking up with a pair of tongs. Then again, Harry would have talked about it like that if he was in private-assuming Granger was talking about the same thing at all. “But I am glad that something else is going on here. More merit than anything.” She smiled at Harry. “Your last name and blood status are not enough to prevent cream from rising to the top.”
Harry made some noncommittal mumble and escaped from her office as soon as he could. Riddle walked next to him. Harry glanced at him and arched his eyebrows. “Such arrangements?”
“The Minister believes I am taking you under my wing as my political protégé, and that that it is none of her business as long as we don’t succumb to corruption.” Riddle clasped his shoulder and winked at several people in the corridors, who stared at them, and then broke into a babble of loud whispers behind them. “That is all that matters.”
“No, it’s not. My classmates are going to interrogate me.”
“And I’m sure that you’re strong enough to withstand it, Mr. Evans.” Riddle tilted his head as they rounded another corner and descended towards the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. “Would you prefer to win the name of Potter? Nothing is going to be beyond you once we do this.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “No.”
“Yet with the name of Evans-”
“You’re the one who’s stating that you can give me magnificence even with the name of Evans. Prove it.”
Riddle only gazed at him as they turned a few more corners, and Harry forced himself to ignore the prickling sensation down his back. Riddle didn’t have a knife in his hand ready to stab him, and even if he did, he would be sorry. Harry carried a spell with him that could kill someone who was in the midst of killing him.
He was sure it would work on someone as powerful as Riddle. Well, almost sure, anyway.
“Giving you magnificence,” Riddle murmured, his voice as low and intimate as Harry had only heard it the one night they shared a bed. Harry hated that certain parts of his body immediately stood to attention. “You do phrase things well.”
And Riddle kissed his hand, his eyes hot, right before two Auror trainees who came up to share their lift. Riddle promptly stepped back and pretended that there was nothing further from his mind than sex.
Harry sighed. It was going to be a very long day of meeting his classmates.
*
“So what’s the real story between you and Minister Granger?"
“We’re fucking each other’s brains out every night,” Harry said, not looking up.
The woman who had asked him the question choked, and Harry leaned back and stared at her wearily. “You’re asking the same exact question that everyone else has asked since I started classes. Don’t you read the papers? About my NEWT scores?"
“As if you would tell the truth to them. Everyone knows that Muggleborns and half-bloods lie,” said a different woman, Artemis Black, who had sat down next to him. She wasn’t the one who had already asked the question, but she stared at him with enormous black eyes as if she had. Harry grimaced at her. She was the bastard daughter of Bellatrix Black, the cousin of his father's friend Sirius, and he had known her when they were both in Hogwarts and hated her then, too.
She was a bastard, but she had the Black name and was even bragged about, the magically powerful child of a pure-blood who had died young in a broom racing accident. She was worth more to society than he ever would be.
Harry turned back to lacing up the dragonhide boots that had shown up at his window with an owl this morning. Of course he knew it was Riddle, because he wasn’t stupid, but he had spent long minutes smoothing his hands down the leather anyway.
“So we want the truth,” Artemis said, almost randomly, after a moment.
“The Minister looked at my NEWT scores and realized where I belong.” Harry stood, stamping for a minute. Yes, the boots fit perfectly. He rolled his eyes and wondered if Riddle had measured his feet the one night they had slept beside each other. It sounded like something the prick would do.
“But why would she promote someone like you?”
Harry glanced up when he heard someone near the door, hoping it was one of the instructors and they would stop this pointless interrogation. Instead, it was Riddle, leaning there with a dark smile as he ran his eyes up and down Harry’s legs. “Why don’t you tell them, Mr. Evans? You know it’s going to come out when you cast your spells, anyway.”
It took Harry only a moment of confusion to realize what Riddle was referring to. He would have to show his power if he was going to cast spells that could compete with the pure-bloods’.
He shrugged and drew his wand. “Which one?”
Riddle didn’t answer, but drew a curved iron bar from his pocket, like the one used to test Auror trainees on the first day of class. Iron was much harder to affect with simple spells than any other material. Riddle tossed it at him, and Harry lashed out with Incendio, casting it nonverbally.
Artemis wasn’t the only one to gasp and take a step back as the bar flashed into a burst of white steam, vaporized before it reached the top of his arc. That still wasn’t as hot as Riddle’s eyes, or the stupidly pleasant flush that crept over Harry’s skin when he met that gaze. Uncomfortable, he turned away and bent down to give his bootlaces one more unnecessary tug.
“You-how could no one ever have noticed before?” Artemis finally whispered.
“No one bothered to test,” Harry said. There were tests that were supposed to find “lost” heirs of families like the ones who might be born of Squibs in the Muggle world, but as far as Harry knew, they were given rarely and only to people who were virtually certain to pass. No one was going to test someone with the last name Evans.
“But you should have been. You can’t be an Evans. What families have gifts that result in fire?” Artemis asked, glancing around as if she expected someone to unroll a family tapestry from over their arms.
“You are making the mistake, Miss Black, of assuming that Mr. Evans’s magic only extends to fire.” Riddle leaned back on the doorway, his arms folded and his gaze possessive and admiring. Harry shuddered a little to see if that would make Riddle’s eyes slide like oil off his skin, but it didn’t help. “It is sheer, raw power.”
“Well, of course, that’s only a requirement for an Auror.” Artemis folded her own arms. “But there has to be something more to it than that. Every Auror has that.”
“I think you will find that Mr. Evans has more strength than any three of you.”
And then, of course, Riddle swanned out, and left Harry to the mercy of Auror trainees who had nothing like it. He scowled. He would have to beat them in mock duels, he was sure, as well as formal training.
But he tightened his shoulders. He would do it. He would prove to Riddle that he was worthy of the man’s favor.
…Somehow that thought didn’t come out the way I meant it to.
*
“Harry, darling. It’s me.”
Harry grimaced as he stretched his arms and leaned back in the hot bath. He had no intention of answering the door of his flat, and not just because it was Riddle’s voice. If nothing else, trying to stand right now would probably send him plummeting right back into the bath.
He’d proven himself. He’d handled the duels. But it had left him with a worse case of strained muscles than the time he’d fallen off his broom while being chased by Slytherins who hated Muggleborns.
Then he heard the sound of a key in the lock, and watched in disbelief as Riddle stepped in. He stretched and draped his own cloak over the hook on the back of the bathroom door that usually held towels. Then he began to remove his shirt in a leisurely fashion.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Riddle looked up, his eyes full of pleasure. Harry doubted it was caused by the sight of him, since Harry’s nakedness was mostly hidden under the soapy, bubble-covered water of the bath. No, it was probably pleasure in making Harry uncomfortable. “Getting ready to fuck you, darling.”
“I’m sore,” Harry said bluntly. “I don’t want you right now.”
“At least you were honest enough to clarify that you’re talking about the immediate moment, not some impossible one where you don’t want me at all.” Riddle dropped his shirt on the floor, and Harry’s eyes took in the sight of Riddle’s muscles in spite of himself. “What if I could do something that meant you didn’t have to move at all?”
“There’s no position like that.”
Riddle smiled and flicked his wand. Harry found himself rising in the air, still with water and bubbles clinging to his hips. He snarled at Riddle, but Riddle strode over and knelt down next to the bath while Harry hovered on an invisible cushion.
“Ah, yes, there.”
Harry arched his back as Riddle’s fingers slid into his arse, into a place where it was true the harsh exercise of the Auror classes hadn’t made him sore, and let his eyes become half-lidded. Riddle stood up and stripped the rest of the way, his face bright for some reason. Harry wanted to shrug, but that would have involved irritating his shoulders.
“Let me-ah.”
Harry’s eyes rolled back in his head as Riddle found his prostate. And then Riddle sat on the edge of the bathtub, which he must have secured in place with charms so it wouldn’t rock, and used the cushion of air to float Harry towards him, sinking him onto his cock.
Harry braced for the pain, but the spells Riddle used must also have included lubrication. There was nothing except a kind of satisfying burn different from the one in his muscles before Riddle began to thrust.
It took a minute or so before Harry managed to pop one eye open and watch Riddle. Riddle was panting, sweat standing out slick on his skin. His hips pumped and his muscles bulged with strength Harry wouldn’t have expected of a wizard his age.
Then again, there was little about Riddle that was in any way normal.
“Am I pleasing you, Harry?” Riddle asked, and for some reason there was an almost insane little smile on his lips. “Or are you going to gape at me like someone dull-witted until I fuck the answer out of you?”
“Of course you’re pleasing me-ah!” Harry let his head sag back and his eyes shut again. He wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
Luckily, it seemed Riddle wasn’t, either, if the way his thrusts abruptly quickened was any indication. Harry clasped his legs around Riddle’s waist and rode it out, wanting to shake his head but unable to do it because of how he was moving. This was weird, the way just confirming something to be true set Riddle off.
But as Harry’s pleasure crested and came roaring out of him, he found that he couldn’t care.
Riddle joined him a second later, and Harry winced as he sank his teeth into Harry’s shoulder, right on top of one of the muscles that had been jolted the most by training today. “Fucking snake,” Harry said.
He opened his eyes to find that Riddle was leaning forwards to kiss him. “Don’t worry,” he said, when he drew back and left Harry’s mouth warm and tingling. “I have a salve that I’ll rub into your muscles before I let you sleep.”
“Let me sleep?” Harry demanded, only to have the words smothered by Riddle’s mouth.
And yes, it was letting him sleep, in the end, since they didn’t reach the bed before Harry had the strength for another round.
And he even lay awake for a short while, staring at the wall with wide eyes and absorbing the simple fact that he couldn't remember the last time, with another arm bundled over his chest and another body bundled against his back, that he had been this warm.
Or this content.
Part Three.
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