Chapter Nineteen of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Surprises
Chapter Eighteen.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (19/?)
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 Nineteen-Surprises
“Are you ready for your duel?”
“I’m more ready than you look,” Harry said, and squinted at Tom. Despite the fact that he’d gone to bed at a reasonable time last night-Harry should know, when he’d shared the bed-Tom looked as pale as though he’d got the flu. His hands were trembling a little, and he sipped at the cup of tea that he’d put a truly ridiculous amount of milk in as if he actually needed it. “What happened to you?”
“Something,” Tom said, and their bond vibrated with a thrum that Harry had learned to take as a warning. He sighed. All right. Tom couldn’t lie to him, but he was asking Harry to drop it, and Harry was going to prove that he was a more considerate soulmate than the wanker he was paired with, who wouldn’t have dropped it except in a crater if Harry looked like that.
Maybe it was just that Tom feared losing him, Harry thought, a little subdued. He might have looked the same way if he had known that Tom was facing a duel with Dumbledore.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Sirius volunteered from across the table. He had his own cup of tea, but Harry was fairly sure it was Firewhisky and not brandy that he’d put in it. “I know you’re powerful, Harry, but she’s going to have Ron’s magic that she can call on, you know, not just hers.”
“And Harry will have mine,” Tom snapped, so quick on the heels of Sirius’s words that Harry thought he hardly heard them.
“You haven’t completed the full magical bond.” Sirius’s eyes were dark, and either he was so concerned about Harry or Tom looked so bad that he didn’t seem inclined to back down from Tom the way he normally would have. “Ron and Hermione have. Harry will be able to pull on your magic, but not as well-and you’re a fool if you don’t think this is a trap.”
“It is,” Harry said, to ward off more godfather-soulmate sniping. “I know it is. But you forget, Sirius, that I don’t have a choice about whether it’s a good idea or not. Hermione used that handy little spell you helped the Order develop to make sure I have to duel her.” He sipped his own tea and grimaced. At the moment, milk or Firewhisky were sounding like good ideas for him, too.
“Where will the duel be?” Lily asked. She hadn’t, it felt like, looked away from Harry since she saw Hermione’s letter. Harry didn’t know how much of that was knowing he had to fight a duel under duress and how much was the conversation Tom had had with her.
“It’s going to be someplace none of us know much about,” James answered for her. “You know they won’t expose the Order’s hiding spot that way.”
“Neither have any of you,” Tom said.
Lily said nothing. Sirius looked pensive, as if it had occurred to him that Tom could ask him about the Order’s refuge and he would have no choice but to answer. James was the one who said, more cool and steady than Harry had heard him in weeks, “We didn’t betray the Order so much as start thinking that we wanted to spend time with our son. Don’t mistake that for being on your side, Riddle. It’s not.”
“I don’t mistake it,” Tom said, and sipped his tea again.
James kept studying him, but said nothing more. Harry swallowed his uneasiness. Tom looks weak enough that perhaps they might attack, maybe. And that was a horrible thing to be thinking about his own parents, but now that the thought was in his head, he was glad that Tom was coming with him to the duel.
Not that he would have been able to go alone, no matter what happened.
Even as Harry thought that, he felt the cold lump in his stomach that wasn’t the result of any hurt he could imagine. He had heard Hermione describe the way the spell worked, and knew it was summoning him to the duel. He stretched out a hand to Tom, who stood and took it immediately, sheltering him close to a warm body that managed to dissipate some of the cold.
“This is like a Portkey?” Tom whispered as the walls dissolved around them into wheels of white light.
“The closest thing,” Harry admitted, and then the wheels faded and he stood on a battlefield.
That was his first thought, even though a second later he saw that there was no ripped-up ground, and no corpses were lying scattered, as he had first thought, because of the scattered logs and rocks. Instead, the air was heavy with floating shields that were meant to contain cast spells, and the dueling platform a short way in front of them was made of dark, somber wood, scored with runes that would Vanish blood and other fluids that touched them. Hermione already waited on top of the platform, her face pale, clutching her wand.
“Harry,” Hermione whispered. She stared at Tom. “Why did you bring him?”
“He wouldn’t have come alone,” Harry said, which was all he was inclined to explain right now, when his friend was in the state she was in. “How thick are the wards around the dueling platform?” He could have tried to sense them himself, but he didn’t want to reveal too much about his magic in case Hermione was still ignorant.
“Thick enough to prevent your lover from interfering,” Hermione said tartly.
“And also Ron?” Harry moved away from Tom and sprang lightly onto the dueling platform. Runes lit beneath him, and the air around the sides shimmered, enclosing them in a box of transparent light. That would also prevent someone from falling over the side of the platform accidentally, Harry knew. He spun his wand in his fingers, watching Hermione intently.
“It won’t keep Ron out,” Hermione said quietly. “We’re a bonded pair.”
“What do you think Tom and I are?” Harry asked, and tugged on the magical bond. The air around him swarmed in instants with flecks of light, some of which grew in size and number until they resembled fireballs. Hermione stared at him with an open mouth. Harry held out his hand, and one of the blue fireballs landed in his palm and cast out small flames that tickled his palm. Harry curved his fingers around it and tilted his head at Hermione. “Hmmm?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because he can’t love! That means you can’t make a bond!”
Harry shook his head. “Hermione, even Dumbledore thinks that Tom might become more powerful if I love him. That was the whole point of trying to keep me away from him.” He sighed and watched the way Hermione’s wand twitched. Most of the time, she was clear-headed, but when she was surprised or upset, she would react impulsively. “Not that it succeeded. And we did manage to bond. Twice.”
“Twice?”
Harry nodded. “The emotional bond and the magical one.”
He saw the moment when her eyes widened, when her terror flooded them, and when she struck out with a silent spell. Harry countered it with an easy twist of his wand, and then he wrapped his body in the fireballs and shielded himself from the broad Blasting Curse she sent his way. The fireballs exploded like bubbles full of sparks as the curse caught him, but nothing touched Harry.
Then Harry heard multiple pops of Apparition all around the edges of the dueling platform and barely avoided nodding. Yes, the Order was coming in. Harry and Tom had known this was a trap, and that the Order would never let Hermione and Ron fight Harry alone.
Harry settled his focus. He would defend himself. He could only hope that Tom, magically-exhausted as he was, would be able to do the same.
*
“Tom.”
Tom turned enough that he could keep both Harry and Albus in view, and nodded to him. “Albus.” He smiled as Harry blocked the Blasting Curse with the fireballs, and folded his own arms, his fingers tightening in the cloth of his robes for a second. That reassured him that his own contribution to the fight was still waiting for him.
“Both of you are going to suffer now,” Albus said in a low voice. “If you hadn’t been so selfish, it need only have been you.”
Tom let himself gape the way he wanted to. It would lead to the impression that he was caught off-guard. “Merlin, Albus, you think Harry wasn’t suffering? I know that he wonders how much you lied to him and how much you must hate him. He thinks that you and his parents probably never trusted him, since he was literally born with my soul-mark on his arm.”
It was Albus’s turn to stare. Then he took a ragged breath and said, “That is not true.” He drew his wand. “I will make sure that Harry knows the truth once we have captured him and forced him to sever the bond.”
“Even you use the word forced,” Tom said softly, and surveyed the Order members appearing around him. There were a few missing he would have expected to see, namely anyone with ginger hair, except for the youngest male Weasley. “Ah, you’re preparing the runic configuration to channel magic into Granger?”
“I knew she couldn’t defeat Harry on her own.”
“Your duel was a sham, and Harry’s element of choice was a pretense,” Tom said lightly. Anger was singing through him like a burst of fire, but he didn’t want to let it go too suddenly. That might distract Harry when he was in the middle of a complicated dodge. “I don’t see any reason why I should let you have your way.”
Albus let out a low laugh that seemed almost ripped out of him. “I don’t know what you can do to stop us, Tom. You look run ragged. Did you stay up all night trying to persuade Harry not to sever your bond?”
Tom smiled peacefully and let his fingers spread out, shaking his arms so that his sleeves stood free of them. “Not quite. Now.”
The last word was in Parseltongue, and the defenses he had been up all night creating slithered out of his robe and down to the ground. Albus had paled at the Parseltongue, but he shook his head at the sight of the small black snakes. They had gold and red flakes of color worked into their scales, but Tom had to admit they didn’t look that impressive.
Unless, of course, you knew what they were.
“Even the most venomous vipers are not a problem for a group of adult wizards standing in a runic configuration and channeling their magic into a single person,” Albus said. His wand had begun to glow. He took a step back that put him into the upper line of the configuration. “And they are not infant basilisks. They’re too small.”
“They are not,” Tom agreed, and Albus paused at the sight of his smile. Tom turned to his snakes. “Grow.”
The flakes of red and gold drifted off their scales and encircled them for a moment like the fireballs had encircled Harry. Tom was pleased by the comparison. He would have to remember to tell Harry about it.
In seconds, the light had formed cocoons, which lengthened and bent, especially near the tops. Then they expanded rapidly, and by the time they tore open to disgorge Tom’s serpents, they had increased to ten meters each. They reared above the terrified and staring Order wizards and opened their mouths to hiss.
“These kinds of snakes, I think you’ll agree,” said Tom conversationally as he drew his wand, “are a problem.”
*
Hermione felt close to fainting as she watched the huge serpents loom over the Order. She should have guessed that Riddle would try to cheat in the duel with Parselmagic.
But she had no choice but to keep on going. Ron’s magic was flooding into her through their bond, steady and brilliant, and the conduit had opened behind her down which the Order had intended to send their power. Hermione was well-read in her own right, and had been strong even before she bonded with Ron.
In a few moments, she understood that none of that was probably going to matter.
Harry was surrounded by not just the fireballs but a glittering corona of magic that only grew as they battled, exchanging hexes, jinxes, curses, countercurses, and spells that were meant to affect their environment. Hermione barely managed to end a charm that turned the air in her lungs to smoke and lunged back, finding herself trapped against one of the shimmering walls that enclosed the platform.
And to make it worse, the runic configuration the Order had arranged to stand in had already been disrupted. Hermione cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw the serpents, tails lashing, sending wizards and witches flying like Muggle skittles. The magic they’d summoned was writhing above them, trailing in confused patterns.
A quick glance was all she could afford, because Harry was already turning the wood beneath her feet to mud. Hermione leaped to the side and blasted him with a Bone-Breaking Curse-well, it should have been. It stopped existing halfway to Harry, devoured by a serpent of lightning that extended itself in front of him.
“What, are you a Parselmouth, too?” Hermione gasped. She had a harsh catch in her side that indicated she was running out of breath. She avoided touching it as she stared at Harry. He shouldn’t have been able to do this.
“My soulmate is, and we’re magically bonded,” Harry said softly. He gestured with his wand, a vertical slash in front of his chest that Hermione had never seen before, and a door seemed to open in the air. A small, flying creature struggled out of it, golden and dripping with red liquid that Hermione shuddered at the sight of. “And remember that no matter how powerful we’ll become after a full bond, our power is commensurate when we’re born, Hermione.”
“You never-”
Harry sent the small creature, like a little dragon, straight at her. Hermione had to construct a net to wrap around it and bind it to the floor of the dueling platform, and by then, Harry had moved on to something else, whipping his wand in a long corkscrew shape in front of him while chanting rapidly under his breath.
“Hermione!”
She threw a desperate glance towards Ron and swallowed. “Help the others get back up, Ron.”
Ron nodded and turned without arguing, picking up her desperation from the mental and emotional bond. Right at the moment, getting people into place so they could start pumping magic into her again was more important than feeding her power himself.
She had to turn back to fend off the whirlwind that was growing up in front of Harry, visible waves of curving white power that rose and then aimed straight at her. Hermione knew he was trying to disarm her. They had worked on this spell in seventh-year Defense. But Harry had never seemed that good at casting it then…
Hermione felt a bitter pulse travel through her stomach and come out her mouth. “How long have you been lying to us, Harry?”
“Longer than you’ve been lying to me,” Harry said. His hair was stirring only a little in his own whirlwind, but his eyes shone with sustained power. He looked stronger than Hermione had felt when she had over twenty people lending her magic.
“We only did that because we knew you would disapprove!” The pain in Hermione’s side had grown worse. She had to keep Harry talking, for now, because she needed a chance to recover and let Ron do what he’d gone to do.
“Funny. My motivation for lying was exactly the same.”
“If you’d told us the truth, then maybe we could have given you the level of comfort so that you wouldn’t have gone to Riddle-”
“Dumbledore was the one who decided that I had to be totally isolated and you couldn’t be trusted. Maybe take it up with him.”
Hermione shook her head. Arguing with Harry for its own sake was fruitless-the boy she had known had probably been half a deception from the start-but this topic might keep them occupied for a second. And Harry had already proven that he didn’t want to really hurt her, exactly the way Professor Dumbledore had said would happen. This would work. “He was right. You couldn’t be tempted.”
“But I should have told you the truth anyway?”
Hermione hesitated. That response hadn’t gone the way she’d imagined it. Harry tended to back away from arguments.
That was a deception, too, Hermione decided, locking eyes with Harry. Power looked straight back at her.
“I mean-you could have come with us when the Order went into hiding and not worked at the Ministry. Then you could have told us the truth, and we could have told you.”
“I think Professor Dumbledore was wise to keep me out of the Order’s space, actually. Not because he was right about needing to isolate me from Tom.” Harry swung his wand, limbering his arm, and Hermione felt the silent torrent of power soaring up from the ground. “But because he knew I would object to tactics like collapsing a roof on top of hundreds of innocents or raiding the Department of Mysteries and killing people.”
“Your bloody soulmate did the same thing,” Hermione hissed, even as she began to work her fingers around her wand. She listened intently, not willing to turn away from Harry, but there were still screams and hisses behind her. Riddle must have some form of protection on his snakes so Ron couldn’t take care of them easily. “He killed people. He planned to kill people.”
“So that makes murdering people in return okay?”
“People who were working for him.”
“And reporters who happened to be in the building on the same day. And Aurors, including some who might have been loyal to the Order. And at least one Unspeakable’s daughter who was visiting the Department of Mysteries and had nothing to do with the experiments, Hermione! I read the goddamn report!”
His voice hadn’t risen, which was probably the worst thing. Hermione swallowed and wondered what the hell was taking Ron so long with the snakes. They had studied tactics against the things, and Ron in particular had come up with some spells that had been used long ago by Light wizards to fight Parselmouths.
Right now, she would have given almost anything to be the one fighting Riddle’s magic instead of here, facing Harry’s condemning eyes.
“It doesn’t make what he did right,” she whispered.
“No, of course not. He and I are already starting to talk about that. We’re going to change things, change the way he operates. Tom knows he has to do that or risk losing me.”
“And you think he cares about that?”
“I used to think you were smart.”
Hermione recoiled before she could think about it. The tone of Harry’s voice was so scathing that she didn’t even make the decision. “What?”
“You keep dredging up all these logical contradictions, Hermione.” Harry lifted his hands in front of him, holding them palm out, and shining strands of blue and red were forming across them. Hermione had no idea what that was, which was only one of the reasons she didn’t like it. “Supposedly I should have told you the truth, but it was right of Dumbledore to command me to lie. Tom wants me desperately to boost his power, but he doesn’t care about losing me and won’t ever change. Think.”
Hermione would have replied, but a triumphant shout from behind her told her that Ron must have succeeded at last. Harry’s eyes went past her shoulder, so she felt free to turn and look, too.
She saw what Ron had done.
And a second later, she saw what happened next.
*
Fighting Albus was no easy thing, but on the other hand, he couldn’t move, unless he wanted to give up his place in the runic configuration that he had counted on to help his “champion” win the duel. And that meant he couldn’t dodge, and he had raised a shield that Tom had already managed to crack simply because of the heavy curses he was flinging at it.
And there were his snakes.
Weasley, Harry’s friend, was fighting them, casting spells designed to shatter scales and weaken coils. Tom would be interested to know where Weasley had found them, but given that his snakes were interested mostly in knocking people aside and incapacitating them, not killing them, he thought he would get the chance to ask.
Then came the moment that Tom had been anticipating in silence for some time. Weasley managed to slice off the head of the immense snake on the left. He let out a shout that rang in the air for a moment.
A moment.
Because the stump had sealed itself, and what grew from it were two twisting, slender necks, each bearing a lump that rapidly became a snout, a pair of glowing eyes, snapping jaws. One of them aimed at Weasley and nearly knocked him to the ground, he was so stunned, while the second one breathed out a stream of weak fire towards the Order’s members.
Not fire that would kill. Tom had created his guardians in a Parseltongue ritual last night without the ability to substantially harm anyone except on accident. Harry must have friends among the Order and still had a disgusting loyalty to them, so he might not forgive Tom if they got hurt.
But the mere sight of fire drove some people mad with fear, and some of them were running away now, shouting, “Dragon!”
“They are hydras!” Albus was screaming. “Fight them by burning the necks before a head can grow back!”
Tom nodded in respect to his old opponent’s knowledge, and flexed his hands. He would need a specific spell to crack Albus’s shield and keep him from being dangerous, but he would also need uninterrupted time to cast it.
From the way Albus turned towards him with fire and murder in his eyes, he wouldn’t get the chance. Tom tugged, and Harry swept magic back towards him with a slight tilt of his head. Tom gathered it around him and returned to their duel.
*
Tom was weak because he spent all night conjuring hydras. The great git could have told me.
Harry forced down his relief and fondness and went back to weaving the net across his hands. And he saw the flash in Hermione’s eyes that told him she had come to understand she was going to lose.
She was smart. But she also liked to be involved in a good fight for a good cause, and she would listen to Dumbledore above anyone else. Harry suspected she had been ignoring her own fears, suspicions, and awareness of the contradictions in the Order’s stance for a long time, enraptured by the romance of being a revolutionary struggling against a tyrannical government.
And could Harry blame her for that? He had romanticized the struggle much the same way, and he had listened to Dumbledore long after he should have started to doubt his motivations.
“You can’t take me in,” Hermione whispered. “He’ll kill us.”
“Execution is actually only a regular punishment for rituals that involve human sacrifice, you know,” Harry said calmly. His net was almost complete, but he wondered if he would need it. Hermione had gone pale and was staring past him. “And Tom won’t punish you as harshly if I ask him.”
“Because you’re asking him,” Hermione said, with a flash of her old impatience.
Harry shrugged. “I’ve had that argument with him about intentions versus actions, and haven’t convinced him not to do what I want because I want it yet. You can have it with him and see if you get any further.”
“What-what if I told you that you had to sever your bond with Riddle for the good of the world?”
Harry’s hands were so thick with the jeweled net now that he knew he would have to fling the spell soon. He met Hermione’s stare. “Then I would ask you how you know, and who told you.”
“Professor Dumbledore told me.”
Harry shook his head and lifted his arms. “Then I don’t believe you.”
“Wait! This is something that no one else knows, Harry, not even Ron. I have to tell you. I have to let you know, and then maybe you’ll see sense and see how bad a powerful man like Riddle being even more powerful would be for the world.” Hermione stood straighter. “Can you just pay attention to me for a moment?”
“You have literally thirty seconds, Hermione.”
“Professor Dumbledore was shown a vision by a phoenix that two powerful wizards would damn the world if they bonded!”
Harry arched his eyebrows and spread his hands. The net soared up in front of him, radiating colors like diamonds and sapphires.
“And that’s it? It sounds like it might have meant Dumbledore and Grindelwald, for all you know, or any other two-”
And then Ron’s spell hit him in the back.
*
Pain slid down the bond, so thick and hot that Tom stumbled for a second. Since it carried him beneath one of Albus’s curses, that wasn’t such a bad thing. But he reacted with a further drop to the ground, and then turned and hissed in Parseltongue, “Protect my soulmate!”
The nearest hydra turned and slithered towards the dueling platform. Tom watched it for a second before he snapped his attention back towards Albus. The man was smiling and shaking his head a little.
“You have discovered that an untrained warrior can be a liability as well as an asset, have you, Tom?” he asked softly.
Tom dug his hands into the dirt beneath him. There was only one answer he could make to that, and it would exhaust him. But at the moment, he was feeding most of his power towards Harry and the agony that drowned him through the emotional bond anyway. Right now, he was inclined to make the answer.
He hissed softly, so that Albus’s rumored understanding of Parseltongue wouldn’t aid him, “Chthonic ones, come to me.”
The ground heaved underneath him, and his magic flooded out of him and downwards. Tom staggered as he came back to his feet. He glanced in Harry’s direction and found that he was standing upright, although swaying back and forth on his feet. He caught Tom’s eye and smiled weakly.
His back was a mess. There was a hole in his robes, with singed cloth around it and a mass of flesh in the middle that Tom stared silently at. His anger rose through the bond, and Harry answered it with a crooked eyebrow in the seconds before he vanished behind the protective body of a three-headed hydra and flung the jeweled net at Granger.
“Are you ready to yield now, Tom?”
Tom stared at Albus and flavored his rage with hatred. This man had kept his soulmate from Tom. He had intended to sever their bond once it was established. He had, perhaps, intended for his friends to kill Harry, since they had used that kind of spell on him.
“I will exult in your death,” Tom said softly.
Albus blinked at him, perhaps taken off-guard by the seriousness of his tone. “I am afraid it will have to be the other way around, Tom, my boy.”
Tom laughed and braced himself on the swell of earth that had abruptly risen beside him. “Are you sure of that?” he asked, and then the ground broke apart, in the same moment that Albus’s confidence had begun to disintegrate.
The earth-serpent that rose from the collapsing dirt was a rich brown all over, the color of fine agates, but its eyes were rubies. Tom inclined his head as others surged up around him, colored like feldspar and emeralds and sandstone. “Subdue everyone but the man who smells like my magic. Do not kill.”
The serpents had a simple way of following his command: they wrapped around legs and arms and dragged the members of the Order of the Phoenix beneath the earth. When they were buried up to their heads, it didn’t matter how much magic they had. Few of them had ever studied wandless spells, it was clear, and they couldn’t move their wands.
Albus blasted several of the serpents apart, but as more and more of his followers became helpless, the ones that were left just turned more of their attention to him. Albus backed up towards what Tom suspected was an Apparition point. Tom just watched. Calling the chthonic ones had taken the last of his strength, unfortunately. He couldn’t defend himself if Albus cast a curse or stop him if tried to leave. Three snakes were already curled next to Tom, of course, ready to place themselves in the way if Albus did try a curse.
“You don’t know what you are about to destroy,” Albus whispered.
“No, I don’t. Because you never shared knowledge, did you?” Tom shook his head. “You didn’t even have the sense to use Harry as a bribe, to tell me that you had my soulmate and I could have access to him for the price of making changes in my laws or stepping down from power.”
Albus’s face was the color of old cheese, and Tom didn’t think it had much to do with the earth heaving like water around him. “That would have been-immoral.”
Tom started to laugh, and couldn’t stop even when he felt something low down in his chest nearly tear. “More immoral than what you did? Telling him over and over that he could never have even the bond that you established with your Gellert?”
“You have no idea what kind of fates you’re dealing with, Tom.”
“You hardly told me.”
“You will regret that you did not simply give in and let him go,” Albus said, and swirled his wand around himself. The air lit with brilliant fire, and he flashed away in a form of travel that was absolutely not Apparition.
Tom supported himself with one hand on the head of an earth-serpent that had risen before him, and, accompanied by his second hydra, went to see what had happened to his soulmate.
*
The jeweled net had bound Hermione to the shimmering wall around the platform, which remained because no one had officially surrendered to end the duel and the spell. Harry sat down heavily, leaning against the column of the hydra’s neck. His back ached with pain, but he had already channeled some of his magic to subdue what he suspected was a major wound.
He stared at Ron, who was up to his neck in dirt and had ceased to struggle. He watched Harry with quiet eyes, a dark stubbornness in them that Harry remembered too well from Hogwarts. Ron wasn’t going to answer any questions.
Harry asked one anyway. “Why did you curse me in the back?”
“It should have forced you to draw in so much magic that it would have dropped Riddle’s shield and we could kill him.”
Harry sighed and tipped his head back. He knew that in a few seconds Tom would be there, and he was stunned that Ron had actually spoken. But he did shake his head and murmur, “And what do you think would have happened to me when he died, since we’re bonded in emotions and magic?”
“We would have healed you so that you couldn’t follow him into death. Got you to a Mind-Healer.”
“We’ll get him to a physical Healer as it is,” Tom said, and then he was there, limping and with a faint smile on his face. He reached out and touched Harry’s shoulder, and his face went blank for a second. Then he glanced at Ron. “Do you realize only the strength of our magical bond and the presence of my hydra is keeping him from bleeding out right here?”
“Harry’s not a Parselmouth. He can’t benefit from a hydra.”
“I am. And he is cradled in my magic.” Tom’s voice was clipped, and the bond around Harry had heated like sunlight reflected through glass. He turned. “We’re going to a Healer, now. I’ll send Aurors to fetch them all later.”
Harry cleared his throat. “They might not be here, if you give Dumbledore time to come back and free them.”
“I gave nearly all my remaining magic to feed these earth-serpents,” Tom said, with a jerk of his head at the strange snakes still crawling around the clearing. “They won’t listen to anyone but me, and destroying them would take more power than Dumbledore’s got if he has to blow them all to pieces one by one.” He gestured and hissed, and the hydra near Harry bent and gently lifted him by wrapping all three necks around him. “No more arguing, Harry.”
“Wasn’t arguing,” Harry muttered. His consciousness was slipping away from him. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Tom reached out and touched him, and Harry did manage to look long enough to say, “Don’t hurt them.”
“My snakes have not killed a single Order member,” Tom said. “I did that for you.”
Harry managed to smile. He would probably despise that properly later. “Know.”
He slipped away then, and the last thing was Tom pacing beside the hydra as it slithered off the dueling platform.
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