Chapter Fifteen of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Clouds
Chapter Fourteen.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (15/?)
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 Fifteen--Clouds
Tom rode in the midst of the clouds that his magic had formed, the fire burning so fiercely that he knew he had temporarily abandoned his body.
It was something that used to happen to him when he was young and incredibly angry; he would simply dissolve into fire. After the matron of the orphanage had tried to order an exorcism for him, Tom had learned to control it. The last thing he wanted was to die because of some stupid, uncontrollable reaction.
But he had used it when he'd murdered the enemies who had burned his soul-mark, and he would use it again now, to protect his soulmate from anything and everything. Out of the smoke he called the fiercest shapes he could, and they manifested as phoenixes, the shapes of his soul. Talons formed on them made of silver that would have killed a werewolf in seconds.
Through their eyes, and through the pain ringing down the bond as Black's spell tore it apart, Tom saw Black cowering. But he still tried to stand in between Harry and the phoenixes, as if he thought that Tom would ever harm his own soulmate.
The loyalty only maddened Tom further, and he screamed through all three beaks. If he was that loyal, he would not have done this!
Tom knew of the spell, but even he would never have cast it, no matter how much he hated a soul-bonded enemy. It got into an emotional bond and ripped it apart, patiently, bit by bit. It would have had no effect if he and Harry had been bonded twice, if they had already slept together in a full joining or linked their minds or completely entwined their magic. But one bond, this spell could handle.
Black was an idiot. He needed to die. Tom caught him between two of the phoenixes and raked their talons delicately across the man's bare shoulders, delighting in his screams as narrow slivers of flesh peeled off. The phoenixes flashed overhead and turned at the wall. Black would take a long time to die.
Harry was struggling up on his knees, his eyes running with tears of blood. He spread his hands towards Tom. "You promised," he whispered.
I'll never forgive you if you kill him.
Tom managed to control the phoenixes and the fire so that they all hovered in a cloud near the ceiling, the phoenixes practically perched on the coils of flame. He breathed in and exhaled. What did it matter whether Harry forgave him or not? The spell was still spiraling, spreading out in concentric circles, destroying their bond. They wouldn't be soulmates after this. Tom didn't have to listen to him.
Black looked up at him, lips moving. Tom leaned the phoenixes down so that he could stare at the coward's mouth.
Counter.
Tom flexed the talons of his phoenixes. There was no counter to this spell. He would know it if there was. No one knew more about soulmate magic than he did, not when he had spent years scouring books attempting to find spells that could summon his soulmate to him or help him identify their mark from a distance.
But on the other hand...
Would he have found spells written in books that were deep in the paranoid library of the paranoid Blacks? Some of them had given Tom their allegiance, but not all, with the Black beneath him being the most prominent example. And not all of them had shared books with him. There might be spells that would counter this one.
Tom spread his wings and screamed at Black. He could always kill him later, when this didn't work. The pain was tearing through his own mind, and Harry had stopped screaming, simply huddling on the floor.
Tom intended to make Black stop existing. The phoenixes all leaned forwards, and Black hastily snatched up his wand.
*
Sirius hadn't ever hurt this much, not even the day that his soul-mark had gained black edges. Honestly, he'd expected that after the way Remus had turned away from him when Sirius had used him as a weapon against Snape.
No, here was the child he had loved and wanted and played with so much as a kid writhing on the floor. And it was his fault.
I should have known that that spell didn't just suppress an emotional bond, Sirius thought, as he crawled over to Harry, who had screamed himself hoarse. Now only small whimpers came out of his mouth. Nothing that you find in the books in my family's library can be that harmless. Of course it would unravel it.
Sirius gathered Harry gently up in his arms. Harry stared at him with unseeing eyes. Sirius took a difficult breath and leaned over him. "Harry, can you hear me?"
The whimpers stopped for a second, and Harry gave the merest nod. Then the whimpers started again. The unraveling of his bond probably hurt too much for him to get rid of the sounds.
Sirius drew his wand and closed his eyes. For a moment, the pages of the books in the Black library seemed to blaze in front of him. He had hated his parents, but the process of forcing him to memorize Dark spells at least had the merit that he really never did forget anything he'd read there.
Touching Harry's throat with his wand, he circled in the same motion that he would have used to cut another wizard's jugular vein, and heard the phoenixes scream in protest above him. He flinched, but it didn't affect his wand hand, another product of his parents' "concerned love." The blood leaking from the wounds on his shoulders didn't affect it, either. "Conservare."
The magic trembled through him, fed on the love that he felt for Harry, and leaped from him into the fraying bond tied around Harry and Riddle. Harry abruptly stopped making noise. Sirius clutched him close, afraid that he might have stopped breathing, too.
But then Harry opened his eyes wide and gave a sound like a demented hiccough. The phoenixes soared down from the rafters and landed around him, a feathery, metallic mass forcing Sirius away from his godson. He went with his hands raised and his head pounding with guilt. He'd never thought the spell would do anything like this.
The phoenixes and the fire shed about them coalesced into a human shape, and Tom Riddle turned scarlet eyes on Sirius. Sirius flinched back. He had never seen human eyes that looked like that. They burned as much as the fire.
"Stay in the corner, Black," Tom ordered. "And be silent." Then he curled his hand around something that must have been Harry's soul-mark, given the blue fire that leaped into the air around them.
Sirius retreated and said nothing, although he was already thinking of whether he would be allowed to return to the Order. He had already caused enough chaos. Maybe Riddle really could heal Harry.
Of course, that didn't prove he loved Harry. He could just want the doubled power that a soulmate who was in love with him could give him, the way Albus had always suspected. The theory made too much sense to Sirius for him to abandon it completely.
For now, though, if Harry could be healed...
It would be worth it, Sirius thought. Even if he had helped Riddle.
*
Harry shuddered as he reached out for the comforting stream of cool water, or it sure felt like that, that was pouring over him. He felt as if something had been sucking on his soul, separating it from him like marrow from a bone. He never wanted to feel that again, and he huddled against Tom's chest.
Tom either licked his temple or touched him with a curl of that multi-colored fire Harry had only caught a glimpse of out of the corner of his eye. "Darling," he said, in what might have been either English or Parseltongue. Frankly, Harry didn't think he was hearing with his ears right now, or understanding with his brain. "I have you."
Harry reached back to him, and now there was something to reach along. Their emotional bond was rebuilding itself, Harry saw, a complicated, glittering, subtle silver bridge that rose into the air in the form of long ribbons. Again, Harry didn't think he was seeing them through his eyes, but that hardly mattered. He grasped them with an exhausted cry.
A few seconds later, they stopped growing. Harry held them, feeling them writhe against his control. Tom's emotions were molten but distant, like a voice heard through a closed door. "What's happening?" he whispered.
"You have to build your half of it, Harry. I've come as far as I can with my half."
Harry lowered his head, trembling. His shoulders hurt, and his throat hurt, and his being hurt, and he didn't know how he could do this.
"I will be here. I will wait for you as long as it takes."
Harry lifted his head when he heard those words. How long had Tom been waiting already? Decades and decades, while his heart and his conscience grew more sluggish. And yet he had held more hope and faith than Harry had. Harry had given up the minute he really understood whose name he carried on his wrist.
He could do this. For Tom.
Harry reached down and into his magic, and a sparking silver ribbon slowly drifted out of him. Harry forced it to reach for the starry bridge that stretched between him and Tom. The ribbon connected, and Harry gasped as health and strength seemed to pour back into him, like the opposite of a Dementor's Kiss.
The darkened world around him bounced, and then Tom swept his arms around Harry and kissed him hard enough to bruise his lips. "You've come back to me," he said, while the bond between them sang.
Harry couldn't answer for a few minutes, while he ran his fingers through Tom's hair and down the nape of his neck, and explored the return of their emotional bond. He could feel arrogant satisfaction and shining anticipation crawling over him, and Tom's anxiety and anger and regret as a crust of emotions on top of the others.
And something as thick and dark as the chocolate cake that his parents had given Harry for his fifth birthday, underneath all of that. Harry reached out and grasped it, and then hissed and retreated. It was hot, Tom's hatred for Sirius.
"Remember what I said about my godfather," he murmured, opening his eyes to catch Tom's gaze.
"It's the only reason he's still alive," Tom said evenly. "He will have the chance to swear loyalty to you and accept honored guest status. If I think that he would do this again, I will kill him and take my chances with your forgiveness."
"You think you could--what? Seduce forgiveness out of me?" Harry relaxed against Tom and closed his eyes. Honestly, this was something close to normal for them already, discussing bloody murder while Tom held him.
"Yes. I would give better chances for that than forgiving myself if I let him hurt you again."
"I'm sorry," said Sirius's hoarse voice from across the room. "I'm so sorry, Harry."
Harry turned with a sigh to look at him. His godfather had long slashes across his shoulders that had torn the cloth of his shirt and also torn what looked like talon-shaped slivers from his flesh. Harry leaned his head against Tom's collarbone. "That's not good enough, Sirius. Who put you up to this?"
"I--I came up with it myself."
Harry flinched back. Even Tom's arms around him couldn't soothe this pain. Tom poured steady affection down the bond, though, and thoughts of blood that were reassuring at the moment.
I have someone who can't lie to me about how much he cares for me, and someone who will never be loyal to Dumbledore.
"I didn't know what it would do, Harry! I swear I didn't!" Sirius was speaking so fast now it was difficult to understand him, although maybe that was also because he was waving his hands around and Harry had one ear resting against Tom's chest. "I thought it would just suppress the emotional bond between you and stop Riddle from influencing you. I didn't know it would destroy the bond. I'm sorry. I should have known better. The Blacks wouldn't have a spell that harmless in the book I got it from." He shuddered. "I'm sorry."
"Your apology is noted," Tom said, and his arms strained around Harry for a moment. "But forgiveness is not granted. You will swear an oath, Black, and you will remain here. You will not return to the Order."
"Well, I'm relieved that you're not trying to use me as a spy," Sirius said frankly. Harry listened, but he couldn't hear any joking tone in his voice. That was a good thing, he thought. It might mean his godfather was going to survive this evening. "I wouldn't be useful in that role."
"You are going to be kept as entertainment for my soulmate," Tom said. "And Chief Truth-Teller."
"What?" Harry and Sirius asked at the same time.
"Harry here is tangled up in lie after lie that Dumbledore told him, mostly to the point that I can't even find them all, and Harry is hardly going to volunteer every fact he thinks he knows and ask me whether it's the truth." The expression on Tom's face as he leaned back said he would of course be willing to do that if they had time. He kissed Harry once, and Harry melted against him before he could think about it. "You are going to be the one responsible for telling him the truths."
"But Sirius is just as corrupted by Dumbledore," Harry said.
"Hey!"
"Remember who I'm talking to here, Sirius," Harry said. "Corrupted in his perception."
"Yes, but Black also has access to both perspectives through knowing his family and Dumbledore in a way you don't." Tom trailed his fingers across Harry's scalp. Harry tried not to shiver too obviously in front of Sirius, but he probably wasn't doing a very good job. "In fact, he was indoctrinated in the opposite way you were, through people who thought blood purity was the truth and not a game."
"It's neither," Sirius muttered, sounding cross.
"Get Harry to tell you what I said to him about pure-blood rhetoric," Tom told Sirius, and faced Harry again. "He can offer you something that's not unbiased, but it will be nuanced. And he should, if he wants to live."
Harry just nodded. He understood things had changed, and Tom was going to be less forgiving than he would have been for a while. Frankly, Harry was still amazed that Sirius wasn't in bloody scraps strewn all over the floor of the drawing room.
He glanced around and blinked when he saw that the wall between the drawing room and the bedroom where Tom had hidden had indeed vanished. "And what are we going to do about that?" he asked, with a motion of his head.
"I have an architect who does regular repair work for me," Tom said casually.
"What? Not even the Minister for Magic has that," Sirius said.
Tom turned his head a little, and Sirius began an intense study of the floor. "You don't need to worry about what I have or don't have in terms of architects, Mr. Black," Tom said. "Only that I have enough sanity left to spare your life." He tightened his hands around Harry's arms, and they stood.
"Should I go explain to my parents?" Harry asked.
"The only thing you're going to do tonight is take a Dreamless Sleep Potion. Perhaps talk a little with Black first," Tom added, perhaps because he'd seen Harry's face. "But other than that, the potion."
"I hate Dreamless Sleep Potion," Harry said, knowing he sounded childish. But his chest still hurt, and the last thing he wanted was to add a foul aftertaste to his mouth. He tried to shift back, and Tom's fingers tightened like cage bars. Harry sighed. "It leaves my mouth tasting like mint for days afterwards."
"Who have you been trusting to brew for you?" Tom shook his head. "Mint is added as a sweetener only. I have one without it."
"I don't like it, Tom."
"This kind of soul-wound needs deep sleep," Tom said, in the sort of tone that meant arguing with him would change nothing. "You shouldn't use that much strength even on coming up with dreams."
"You don't use strength to come up with dreams," Harry said, although he wasn't sure of that at the moment. The room was closing in with soft corners of darkness, tucking it around him like a sheet. He sighed and leaned against Tom, who gently folded him under one arm.
"You will have to sleep," Tom said. "Perhaps an hour or so on your own, and then I'll wake you up to feed you the potion."
Harry sighed, but he was too far gone to protest.
*
Sirius swallowed. There was no way that was Minister for Magic Tom Riddle, blood purist, Muggle-hater, and complete bastard, bending above Harry with a soft expression as he cradled him in his arms.
But then the Minister stood up and turned around, and Sirius hastily revised his opinion. Yes, that was in fact the bloody bastard Sirius had committed himself to a war against, staring at him with slightly narrowed eyes that had a touch of crimson to them.
"You are lucky that you knew the countercurse," Riddle whispered.
"Because you would have torn me apart if I didn't, I know," Sirius said, and had regained enough of his courage to roll his eyes.
"I would have," Riddle agreed. "But the world, the Order that you care so much for, Dumbledore's life whether or not I could prove anything against him legally...I would have torn that apart, too."
Sirius stared at him. But the man appeared entirely grave. Sirius shook his head. "You know that Harry wouldn't have wanted you to do that."
"Your curse would either have killed him if the bond hadn't stopped unraveling, or it would have destroyed our soulmate connection," Riddle said. "I would not have been responsible to him for anything, then."
Sirius shivered. Honestly, he had never considered the fact that Harry might be some kind of restraint on Riddle if their soulmate bond ever became established. He had taken it for granted that all the influence would run the other way. "That's--not true," he said weakly.
"You cannot know, can you?" Riddle glanced back at Harry and then lifted him up. He must have cast a Lightening Charm on him, of course, but Sirius had to admit that he looked at the way Riddle cradled Harry and wished he had that for himself. "I'm going to require you to write a message to the Order."
"I won't betray them or tell you where they are!"
"Why," Riddle murmured, "do so many of you have the desire to become martyrs? Could it be that Dumbledore has cultivated the mentality in you that only martyrs are worthy of having their sacrifices respected?"
Sirius recoiled before he thought about it. Of course, he should have said that there was no way that was true and Riddle was being ridiculous, but now that he thought about it...
Hadn't he admired Albus for rejecting his own soulmate? Hadn't he envied Ron and Hermione, just a little, for getting put on the wanted list for crimes more severe than his? Hadn't part of him resented, before he figured out who Harry's soulmate was, that Harry had always received more of Albus's attention?
His own black-lined soul-mark had never seemed like such a sacrifice. Not when the event that had led to Remus's rejection had been a prank he had devised and not thought through carefully enough.
"What do you want me to say, then?" he asked, subdued.
"That you are here, and will not be leaving, and anyone who comes to search for you stands a chance of being captured." Riddle's eyes had already turned away from him and back to Harry, as if he thought Sirius unworthy of being looked at. "That you will not betray Harry, and that our bond still exists."
Sirius paused. "You want me to tell them that? You don't want to make them think that maybe it worked and pretend weakness for a little while?"
Riddle glanced at him over his shoulder. "I do not intend to hide Harry or betray him in public."
"I mean, just pretending for a little while--"
"Is what I will not do, Black."
The words were on the edge of Parseltongue, to the point that Sirius thought he was lucky to understand them. He found himself shrinking back and saying nothing. Riddle nodded briskly at him and turned away to take Harry into a bedroom. For now, a shimmering veil of magic replaced the wall that Riddle had dissolved with his magic.
Sirius stared after him and shook his head. He knew that Riddle’s violence should have horrified him. The loss of control implied that he could do terrible things to Muggleborns and other innocents if they annoyed him.
But all he could wish was that someone-and he didn’t know whether it should have been Remus or Albus-would have fought for him that way.
*
Tom laid Harry gently in the middle of the bed and then sank down in the chair next to him. He didn’t take his eyes from Harry, and he didn’t look around when he heard the rustling, muffled sounds of Black going into another room. He didn’t worry about Black fleeing back to the Order. Chains of guilt would hold him more strongly than any vow at the moment.
He couldn’t take his eyes from Harry.
Harry was pale now, breathing silently, but Tom could see his chest rising and falling, and that was enough to calm any incipient urge to kill people. Tom leaned his cheek on his hand for a moment and waited until his racing thoughts broke apart into clear pictures again.
No matter what Albus and his other enemies thought, Tom had never killed indiscriminately. If anything, he could force down his rage and wield it as a cold weapon at the appropriate time. That was what had made him able to carry out the murders he had, of Slytherin students who were older than he was and then people who were forewarned that he was coming. Crystalline fury froze everything in his mindscape and let plans and details and obstacles hover in front of him like a projection of a Pensieve memory, enabling him to solve problems before they came up.
But when he had felt the emotional bond eroding, he had reacted with that fountain of red-hot fury that had only ever lasted a second before. And what prompted it and came after it and filled him now was a fear that turned his thoughts icy and sluggish.
He could not lose Harry. He would awaken to a world that had changed irreparably-and not only for him. He imagined his magic unleashed not on Black but on dozens, hundreds, of innocents, and shuddered. That would make him no better than Dumbledore, and Tom could picture the disapproving expression on Harry’s face.
His soulmate was his tether to conscience. Dumbledore never should have attempted to drive them apart.
That thought sent sharp spikes of hatred through Tom’s mind, and Harry stirred on the bed. Tom quelled the thoughts and the emotions with them, and reached out to weave his hand through Harry’s hair. Harry turned towards him without waking, proof that the emotional bond could reach even through the darkness created by literally soul-deep exhaustion.
Tom told himself to calm down. Black hadn’t succeeded, and hadn’t even meant to do what he did. The Order hadn’t separated him and Harry. No one ever would again.
The fear was finally dissipating, sliding down the icy channels in his mind that had waited for it. Tom’s hand stayed in Harry’s hair, though, and he watched by him throughout the night, not sleeping himself.
He had to know that Harry would be there when he woke.
*
“So you used an unknown spell on my son that you expected to suppress his emotional bond to the soulmate that he’s finally gained.” Lily half-regretted speaking the words when the knife’s edge of them sliced into Sirius like it visibly did, but she couldn’t help herself. “After something that already showed we have no idea what we’re doing half the time and could have killed Harry!”
“You were just as complicit in Albus’s attempt to kill Riddle as I was,” Sirius muttered, his arms folded and his eyes on the table.
“But we didn’t do it again!” James snapped, leaning forwards on the other side of the table. Lily glanced sideways at him. James had been the one to insist that they owed it to Sirius to hear him out, but he was even angrier about this than Lily was.
“And I didn’t knowingly do it again, either!” Sirius threw his hands in the air. Lily studied him. As upset as Sirius had been when they came over to the flat and he began to tell them the story, he also appeared more-animated than he had in months in the Order’s camp. As if the worst already happened and he knows that it can’t happen again, Lily thought. “I thought it really would just suppress the bond and let Harry think more clearly. I didn’t know it would destroy it! And I didn’t know the destruction of the bond would have that effect on Harry or Riddle, either.”
“Fine,” James said, abruptly blowing away his anger in one huge breath the way Lily had never been able to. “Now you know. And I never want to see you do anything like that again.”
Sirius studied him for an uncertain moment. “Friends?”
“We never stopped being friends, Padfoot.” James clapped Sirius on the shoulder hard enough to bruise, which matched the emotions that Lily was getting down their bond. Mixed anger and relief and resignation. “And it’s good that we aren’t on opposite sides anymore, either.”
Sirius drew himself up. “I’m never going to be on Riddle’s side.”
“We are,” Lily said quietly. “In the sense that we support our son, and you know that Albus won’t like that. I don’t agree with Riddle’s methods or the rhetoric he spouts. Harry is going to work on changing that, and I’ll support him. But you know that Albus would be even more pleased by the destruction of their bond right now than Riddle’s permanent defeat.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sirius sprawled back in his chair and frowned at the ceiling. “Either of you wonder why that is?”
“Because he believes Riddle will be more powerful than ever with the doubled power that the bond could give him,” James said, frowning at Sirius. “It’s the same reason that we all wanted to prevent Harry and Riddle from bonding. It’s too bad that it came to pass, in some ways, but I’m going to stand by my son no matter what.”
Lily wanted to sigh, but refrained. James was going to stand beside Harry, she knew that, but it was “too bad.” She hoped that James would either not meet Riddle’s eyes or bury that thought deep the next time they were around Riddle and his Legilimency.
“No, I mean. Why is it more important to prevent Harry and Riddle from bonding than it is to prevent the bastard from passing laws or gaining control of more Aurors or finding out about the Order’s hiding place?’
“I don’t think he ever came close to identifying the Order’s hiding place. And there’s no sign that Harry told him.”
“You’re still not really listening to me, James.” Sirius tipped his chair back so that his feet were resting on the table and his head was bumping the wall. “Dumbledore is overly focused on that damn bond. He approved the kidnapping plan I had, but he wanted me to cast that spell more than anything.”
“You think he knew what that spell did and that’s the reason he wanted you to cast it?” James jumped up and started pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “I’ll kill him. I’ll hunt him down and kill him!”
Molly was usually the person Lily exchanged glances of sympathy with, and usually about Sirius. It was a strange event to be doing it with Sirius about James instead. But they still did it, and Sirius rolled his eyes and said, “He can’t have known what it really did or much about it, or he would have suggested that I just cast it when I was close anyway, instead of taking the risk of kidnapping Harry and sneaking out past Riddle’s guards. He thought I had to cast it when I had one of the bondmates well away from the other. But I do think that he wanted the bond destroyed more than anything else.”
“Why?” Lily asked, since while she thought Sirius’s theory had merit, it didn’t give them an answer for Albus’s obsessive focus.
Sirius shook his head, and his voice was rough. “I don’t know. I just think that if Albus gets the chance, he’ll cast the spell on Harry, too.”
“Does he know the incantation?”
“No, I didn’t tell him that. But it’s not impossible that he could find books like the ones in the Black library that I learned it from.”
James nodded and relapsed into deep thought. Lily was the one who leaned forwards. “I knew I needed a project other than just decorating the flat and trying to rejoin normal life. Especially since persuading Harry to give Riddle a chance has been successful so quickly.”
Sirius glanced at her. “You’re going to search for the reasons why Albus is so eager to see that bond destroyed?”
Lily nodded. “There has to be one. And I’ll start with looking at my memories in a Penseive, along with James’s. It’s possible that he dropped bits of clues in front of us that we didn’t notice at the time.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Of course, Sirius. I intend to understand the reason that Albus Dumbledore is such a threat to my son. I understood why Riddle was, but Dumbledore remains a mystery.”
Sirius lifted his hands. “I’m just saying, what if it turns out that there is a real reason? Albus isn’t mad. What if he has a reason to believe it’s vitally important to the future of the world that Harry and Riddle shouldn’t bond?”
Lily sighed. “Then I’ll still be on my son’s side, but we’ll have to decide what to do about that. Maybe Riddle and Albus can be brought to consider peace talks.”
Sirius snorted. “I can’t see what would persuade Albus.”
“Neither can I,” Lily said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to give up before we even begin. He’s still a human being, and he deserves better than what he tried to do to Harry.”
James rolled his eyes, but Lily only looked at him flatly. He wasn’t on Riddle’s side yet, either, not completely, which made him a hypocrite if she wanted to give Albus a chance. James winced and nodded as her emotions flowed down the bond. Lily drank from her own teacup and turned her mind to where to begin.
Part of Albus’s personal history was bothering her. She knew that he had rejected his bond with Gellert Grindelwald, but she didn’t know how they had met. Grindelwald had supposedly gone to Durmstrang and then had been kicked out for Dark Arts beyond the purview of what the school allowed. How had he got to Britain? Or why would Albus have gone to the Continent?
That’s where I ought to begin, then.
*
Albus stared at the thick white potion in his hands with a feeling of great weariness. It was what was left of the poison that he had intended to use on Tom.
Well, had used. But in the end, all it had gained him was his enemy finding his soulmate and the loss of an important spy among the Aurors.
“You should tell them.”
Albus turned towards Gellert’s cracked and broken voice. He shook his head. “You know they would refuse to believe it was about them.”
“They should still have the chance to discover why you have been so against them all these years.” Gellert broke into sharp coughs, and Albus reached for one of the healing potions. He ignored the way that Gellert tried to fend him off as he poured the potion down his throat. Gellert had never wanted to die. He simply wanted to thwart Albus in any way he possibly could.
Albus waited until Gellert had swallowed. “I told you, they would not believe me. And I must be much further gone than I am before I would trust Tom Riddle, of all people.”
Gellert laughed. His voice already sounded stronger. He turned away and let his head rest on his arm for a moment as he murmured, “But you trust yourself, the judgment of a man who rejected his soulmate.”
“You never would have stopped, Gellert. You were intent on taking over the world.”
“You could have restrained me. If you had fully accepted the bond-”
It was an old argument, one that Albus had no intention of letting play out again. He went on as if he had not heard. “You would have corrupted me and brought me over to the Dark, and I would have done anything rather than betray my soulmate. You know the stronger personality of the two holds sway. The same thing would happen with Tom Riddle and young Harry, if I dared to trust them. They would become weapons of destruction because Harry could not overpower Riddle.”
“Do you dare believe that you are the only one who knows the true fate of the world?”
“I was the one a phoenix sought out,” Albus said simply.
After all, the argument had played out the way it always did, and Gellert had no more answer to that pronouncement than he ever did, closing his eyes and slipping into sleep. Albus watched him fall, and sighed out as he sat down in front of the fire at the back of the cavern.
Yes, he had regretted so much that he did in the past, but he could not regret the decision to reject his soulmate, or stand against the vision of the future that Tom Riddle and Harry Potter represented. He was playing out the vision the phoenix had shown him, and how could he have rejected that and still considered himself a Light wizard?
*
Harry woke to find Tom watching him. He stretched slowly in the bed, grimacing at the aches that rang through his body, and asked, “Did you get any sleep at all?”
“No.”
Harry sighed and reached up to take Tom’s hand. The emotions soared through him, the fear at the back of the fireworks of rage and protection and fondness. “I’m still here. Sirius’s spell didn’t cause lasting harm.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
Harry knew he wouldn’t win if he tried to argue on that head, so he just nodded and murmured, “Fine. But you should know that I thought of something.”
“Yes?” Tom shifted so that he was leaning an elbow on the bed and halfway to embracing Harry, and his emotions made another light show in the back of Harry’s mind.
“Would that spell have worked if we had shared more than an emotional bond?”
Tom’s silence was answer enough, while the single bond between them at the moment raged and bounded as if it was a captive gazelle. Harry nodded. “I want to create another bond as soon as possible.”
“I don’t want you to feel pressured into it,” Tom murmured, looking at the far wall. “Or to want to create it for just that reason.”
“I know,” Harry said. “And I want to wait to have sex with you.” Tom’s side of the bond shimmered again. “Or to open my mind to you.” He took a deep breath. “I need a chance to become comfortable with my own thoughts, first.”
“The magical one, then?” Tom’s thumb lingered on the pulse in the hollow of Harry’s throat.
Harry nodded. “There’s no reason to wait. Our magic is partially entwined already, most of the time. And I want-I want to know that you’re close to me and not about to leave me the way it felt last night, Tom.”
Tom’s smile lit the room like the invisible blaze of their bond did. He called up his power, and it swayed around him, full and brilliant as a silvery tree. Harry slowly did the same with his own magic. He had expected it to feel a bit battered and reluctant to respond after what the spell Sirius had wielded had done.
But it was no such thing. Harry’s power rose and sang, and the branches of a golden tree reached for Tom’s silvery one. Tom caught his breath as the “branches” mingled. Harry made no sound. What he felt ran too deep for that.
The sensation cascaded over him, the one he had only felt before the night of the Ministry gala when their magic had mingled on the dance floor. Harry closed his eyes and drifted within it, the cloud of strength and ferocity. He had always hesitated to defend himself as strongly as he might have when hurt, afraid that he would reveal his magic to someone’s inquiring glance. Now he knew what it felt like to have that ability and that desire.
Even if he had been hurt and wanted to hold back on hurting someone in return, Tom’s magic that ran partially through his veins now wouldn’t let him do that.
So don’t get hurt, right, Harry thought, and blinked and shivered, and focused on his soulmate as he said in a hoarse voice, “That spell of Sirius’s won’t work against us now.”
“No,” Tom breathed out in confirmation, letting one arm curl around Harry’s shoulders. “And I intend to make sure that nothing else will, either.”
He pressed his lips against Harry’s then, and Harry was more than happy to go with it, swept up into a shining world where it felt, for just a moment, as though nothing would ever harm them again.
Chapter Sixteen.
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