Chapter Twenty-One of 'His Darkest Devotion"- Before
Chapter Twenty.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (21/?)
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 Twenty-One-Before
“You had a bad time?”
Harry tore his cloak from his shoulders and flung it in the general direction of the bed, swearing. Tom watched, although the tension of the emotional bond between them made him want to go to Harry. He had to let him work through this on his own, though.
Besides, he rather wanted to hear what Harry had to say about his dear friends.
“They sit there and look at me as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths!” Harry spun on his heel and kicked the bed. Blue flames ignited along his shoulder blades and stretched out into glittering, spectral shapes that reached for the ceiling. Tom kept his own delight still so it wouldn’t interrupt Harry’s rant. “They just tell me that you’re evil and everything will be better when you’re dead as if-as if they really believe it!”
“I think they do,” Tom said mildly. “After all, they literally grew up hearing Albus Dumbledore say such things.”
“But-people aren’t just evil,” Harry said, and kicked the bed again. “Stubborn and stupid and gullible and prejudiced, sure. But that isn’t the same as being a monster of hatred who just rejoices in it!”
“There must be a purpose in telling them that I’m evil. What was it?”
Harry closed his eyes for a second, although Tom knew that wasn’t so much an attempt to concentrate as a necessary struggle with his temper. Their bond was brilliant with the red and gold fire of it. Then Harry exhaled and opened his eyes again. “They would think anything was justified against someone who was actually evil.”
Tom nodded. “And I think Albus perhaps does believe it. But spreading the notion around serves the purpose of keeping their loyalty rooted to him.”
“They-I thought they were smarter than that, though. Hermione in particular.”
“Did I tell you why I decided against recruiting her into the Ministry?”
“Her being a fanatic for the Order and soul-bonded to Ron had to have something to do with it,” Harry said dryly, and flopped down in the chair next to Tom. Tom stroked his hair for a second, a little disappointed that he wouldn’t get more of the rant.
“Yes, it did, but her stubbornness was something I got reports on from every single one of her professors. Even Minerva McGonagall, and in general, she was extremely partial to the girl. Granger had trouble changing her mind about anything. When a Defense professor ar-rived who taught silent casting in a different way than the one you had in your sixth year, she filed a complaint with Minerva stating that Professor Delacruz’s way was ‘objectively wrong’ and would cause students to fail their NEWTS.”
Harry stared at him from a slightly upside-down position. “But that’s-Professor Delacruz was a great teacher! I mean, Professor Belrose was all right, not terrible, but I understand why you replaced her.”
Tom smiled a little. At least Harry had come to accept the degree of Tom’s control over Hogwarts, it sounded like, in a way that Albus never had. “Yes. Professor Belrose had become too complacent in her post, and too focused on teaching in a way that was good enough without challenging the students. I knew Professor Delacruz would provide a challenge, and a truer method of preparation for your NEWTS.”
“I had no idea Hermione made that complaint. I thought she liked Professor Delacruz.”
“She was respectful enough to her in public, I’m sure,” Tom said, with a shrug. “But yes, she did it because the Defense books and Professor Belrose had convinced her there was one and only one way to approach silent casting. I don’t think she ever changed her mind, either. I saw the optional essay she wrote for her Defense NEWT. She was allowed to choose her own topic, and she wrote about how the method of visualization was the ‘perfect’ way to silently cast and Profes-sor Delacruz’s method of separating incantation and wand movement was ‘dangerously back-ward.’”
Harry groaned a little and rubbed his eyes. “So basically, whoever gets to Hermione first convinces her of something.”
Tom nodded. “To be honest, she might not ever have wanted to work with me because of the game I was playing with the pure-bloods, but I had already decided against approaching her before her sixth year. She’s self-righteous and too convinced that whatever appeals to her is objec-tively correct.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re going to be allowed to continue this game without challenges, Tom.”
Tom smiled a little at the glint in Harry’s eyes and the way the flames had started burning up the sides of their bond. “I know that. And I welcome any challenge you want to make to me. But my point is, I don’t think she’ll change her mind because the lies Dumbledore spun for her ap-peal to her. This way, she gets to be the hero, someone who’s discriminated against for her blood and fighting an unfairly bigoted world. It’s hard to give up that rush. I know. I used to be prey to it.”
“You?”
Tom inclined his head. “Remember that I was in her position during my first years at Hog-warts, before I discovered that I was a Slytherin by blood.”
The way Harry stared at him with slightly parted lips created an invitation that Tom was hard-pressed to ignore, but he managed in favor of smiling at his soulmate and stroking his hair back from his face. Harry finally sighed and muttered, “I find it hard to believe that you would have ever wanted to think of yourself as a hero.”
Tom shrugged. “It can be addictive. And you forget. It’s the pose that’s sustained me in the Ministry, pretending that I care about people who others see as disadvantaged or in need of protec-tion.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “I want you to start changing that, Tom.”
“Certainly, my dear. Imagine a viable political strategy that I can use instead, and explain it to me. After all, the reason I chose the pure-bloods is not because I believe in their bigotry, but be-cause they hold the power. What do Muggleborns have to offer me?”
Harry’s lips parted again, but Tom didn’t think he was staring at him in surprise this time. “That’s…cold, Tom.”
“You’re startled, darling?” Tom slipped his hand around the back of Harry’s neck and brought him closer, but from the way Harry resisted, glaring at him, he wasn’t going to get such an easy kiss this time. Tom sighed mournfully and released him. “You have a privileged view of me. I never normally show this much emotion to my Aurors, or my public, or the people who have voted with me in the Wizengamot.”
“You don’t say your allies.”
“I have few allies,” Tom said simply. “Madam Moonwell perhaps comes closest because we understand each other. But the others are tools who foolishly think they wield me instead of the other way around.”
“Why did you adopt that kind of perspective?”
Tom hesitated, but Harry’s hand was on his arm, and the blue flames springing up between them weren’t the kind caused by Harry’s anger anymore. Tom still closed his eyes as he spoke, because watching Harry’s face while he said this wasn’t in his power.
“I thought that perhaps my soulmate bond had been destroyed when my soul-mark was burnt. It took me a while to figure out that wasn’t the way it worked. Ignorant children aren’t the best companions for someone suffering that kind of doubt. And then when I discovered that so few people had any sympathy for me, and that my soulmate might be the kind of person who would be horrified by what I had done as vengeance, I decided that I couldn’t care. I sepa-rated myself from the world.
“I told myself that either my soulmate would never come to me because of their disgust and fear, or that when they did, they would understand what I’d done. And I could use the power I’d accumulate to protect them if they did ever reveal themselves. Either way, I had nothing to lose by holding onto that kind of cold arrogance. It protected me. It might protect them. No one else would.”
*
God. He felt so abandoned by the world.
Tom had been leaning on him with his eyes averted, shut, but Harry couldn’t let him keep being that way. He kissed him, and Tom started and turned towards him. Harry opened Tom’s lips with his tongue and kept kissing him until Tom had given up that stiff posture and embraced him, bending him back over the arm of the chair.
Harry finally loosened his hold on Tom’s mouth when it was that or start swooning like a teenager. He stroked his hand down Tom’s chest and said softly, “You don’t need to do that any-more.”
“You’re going to swoop in like a hero and make everything better, is that it?”
“I am a Gryffindor,” Harry said, but he wasn’t smiling as he reached up and cupped Tom’s jaw gently. “No. I think we’ve had enough of heroes. What I want to show you is that you can be human with me. And that means I can help protect you and let you be human in front of those bas-tards on the Wizengamot, too.”
Tom blinked once, his eyelashes barely shadowing his intense gaze. “Don’t mistake me, Harry. I’ll be changing because you want me to, not because this is the best thing to do or you’ve awakened some sense of principle in me.”
“I know.” Harry sucked in air that felt more like fire. “I think I’m finally ready to accept that.”
“You are?” Tom’s hand curled around his arm.
Harry nodded. “Tom, you’re not innocent, and I want you to change. If you weren’t willing at all, I’d have to walk away, no matter how much I loved you.”
Tom made a soft little sound in Parseltongue, his hand still in place and his eyes wide in a specific way that said he would have tried to prevent that.
“But you are,” Harry said softly, not looking away from him. “And I don’t want to do what Dumbledore did-abandon you because you aren’t perfect and you don’t fit some vision I have of the way you should act. In Dumbledore’s case, you didn’t fit his notion of an innocent victim, be-cause you were a Slytherin or not a pure-blood or you were angry about what happened-I don’t know. I won’t make his mistake. You’re not my vision, but you’re mine.”
The way Tom’s eyes lit up made Harry feel as though he could fly without a broom. He kissed Tom again, but eased back with a shake of his head when Tom tried to pull them both onto a couch.
“We have to imagine that viable political strategy you challenged me to come up with. And that means we have to have it in place before Ron and Hermione’s trial.”
“You’re determined to release them, aren’t you?” Tom’s hands tightened for a second, and then he leaned back with a resigned sigh and stared at Harry with his eyes cold and bright.
“I would like it if I could,” Harry said quietly. “But there’s no way-they would work against me and you even then, and be convinced that they were doing the right thing. So it can’t happen.”
“Then tell me how you envision their trial going.”
“With a Truth Crystal in every corner of the room.”
Tom stared at him with blank incomprehension, instead of the vicious delight Harry would have anticipated. Harry frowned and poked him in the shoulder. “A Truth Crystal? Those devices that Dumbledore used to make sure people were telling the truth before he admitted them to the Or-der? The spies you captured must have told you about them.”
“No,” Tom whispered. “Not one of them has mentioned them. You are-sure these Truth Crystals exist?”
“Yes.” Harry leaned further back in the circle of Tom’s arms, more than a little baffled. He would have bet that the Truth Crystals were ancient inventions. The ones that Dumbledore used had seemed that way, with dirty golden bases that curled around the globes of faceted crystal inside them. “They stand in the corner of a room, and they ensure that people who come into that room can only speak the truth. The more you have, the stricter the truth is. Just one Crystal means that people can still avoid answering questions or keep silence; they just can’t lie about something they know to be true. If you have two, they can only keep silence for a few minutes before they get pushed to answer. If you have three, they can’t avoid a question, either. If you have four, they have to add their own thoughts to the question, things the question makes them think of.”
“I have never heard of them,” Tom breathed, his hands settling low on Harry’s hips. Harry twitched a little, distracted despite himself. Tom gave him a daring smile. “Where do you think they came from?”
“Well, I don’t think Dumbledore made them,” Harry said. “They looked too old for that, and he never said anything about it. Maybe they’re something that the Headmasters know about? Sort of something they inherited from the Founders?”
“We have to correct your stumbling manner of speech,” Tom scolded him, but his eyes were already bright with thought. “Would you be able to point to their hiding place if I took you to Hogwarts?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know where he kept them. I only saw them when he was questioning Mum and Dad or other people about things and when he inducted me into the Order.”
“He didn’t trust even his most faithful servants?”
“I haven’t told you what five of the Crystals do,” Harry whispered, and reveled in the way Tom fell silent, his eyes widening and darkening. He sat back with a smile and continued, “The fifth one forces people to work past Memory Charms and biases-basically, anything that blocks the truth they suspect or know to be true.”
“So he used them to make his spies more effective reporters.” Tom’s hand was like a shackle on Harry’s hip, not that Harry minded. “He started working on you young, didn’t he?”
Harry nodded, not inclined to dispute it now. He was still sure that Dumbledore sincerely believed that Tom was evil and he was acting out of the best reasons, but that didn’t excuse what he had done. “He wanted all of us-all of the Gryffindor students he chose for the Order-to be-lieve that he was all-powerful and his cause was all-important.”
“Didn’t he choose anyone else for the Order/”
“All the other students didn’t become full, inducted members of the Order. They’re on the margins, and sometimes they send reports, but they’re not like me and Ron and Hermione.”
“And other Gryffindors that he inducted over the years. Like your parents.”
Harry nodded and stretched his arms over his head, reveling, this time, in the greedy way that Tom’s eyes traced over his muscles and lingered on his shoulders. “But while I can’t tell you where he hides the Truth Crystals, I can tell you that I can make one.”
Tom’s face snapped into a mask for a moment, and then he shook his head lightly. “I should have known. You’re more powerful than you let anyone else know, and you had enough exposure to the Crystals to duplicate them, didn’t you?”
Harry nodded, thinking of some of those sessions in the Headmaster’s office. Most of the other Gryffindors, with the exception of Ron and Hermione, had thought that Harry kept getting into trouble and that for some reason, Dumbledore preferred to handle his detentions personally. “There often wasn’t a lot to do. Some of the Order’s maneuvers flew over my head when I was that young, and I-I didn’t like to listen when they started talking about you.”
“They did that in front of you?”
Harry swallowed and nodded. “I think it was Dumbledore’s way of trying to toughen me. Of reminding me what I would be up against if I did try to claim you as mine.”
“He did it so perfectly,” Tom said, and his voice would have sounded pleasant if someone was across the room from him and couldn’t feel the way his muscles tensed or his magic sparked up around his body. “I sometimes wonder, though, why he didn’t simply kill you when he saw your mark.”
Harry sighed. “I think he thought he was being moral. Or maybe he did plan to use me as a chain on you. If so, I don’t know how.”
Tom nodded and sat in silence for a moment. Then he shook his head. “If you are going to use those Truth Crystals in your friends’ trial, you should start creating them as soon as possible. Their trial is set to begin next week.”
Harry nodded. “And of course you aren’t going to let me do it today.”
“I’m not going to let you?”
“I’m magically rattled from seeing Ron and Hermione,” Harry admitted, and wasn’t sur-prised when the hand on his hip grew even heavier. “I didn’t think it would be that hard, but it-really was. I couldn’t reconcile my friends with the people sitting in front of me. If you’d asked me two days ago, I would have said that they were loyal to each other first, then me, then Dumbledore and the Order. It hurts that I’m third. If that.”
Tom cupped his cheek and nodded. “And you’ll need a trance as calm and clear as the Truth Crystals to create them, of course. That’s understandable.”
“How did you know that?” Harry breathed. Of course it was true, but he had never shared the insights he had gained from letting his magic lick around the Truth Crystals with anyone. How had Tom guessed?
Tom smiled at him. “I think our mental bond is beginning to form.” He kissed Harry and eased him gently to his feet. “And now we should call a house-elf and have a meal, and I should send you to bed, before we become distracted by more pleasurable pursuits.” He paused. “How are you going to convince the Wizengamot to let us introduce the Truth Crystals at trial?”
“We’ll tell them part of the truth, that they’re artifacts Dumbledore has been using,” Harry said. “But then we’ll imply that you seized them from him, since after all, you’ll have to go to the school and look it over for damage anyway.”
Tom grimaced. “True.” And in the back of Harry’s mind tingled something like a thought, mingled with Tom’s sour distaste, that said he would probably have to change some professors as well.
Harry smiled as a house-elf popped in with a tray of broth and bread (which he was going to be able to forgive Tom for, easily). He couldn’t wait for their mental bond to fully form. Or their sexual one.
He felt a flutter of desire at that that he couldn’t quell. Tom glanced at him with dark eyes, and spent the rest of the meal teasing him by feeding him and stroking Harry’s arm with his fin-gers, so lightly that the hair on Harry’s arm stood up under the caress.
It didn’t help Harry sleep better, at first, when he went to bed, but after twenty or so minutes of lying there, Tom appeared next to the bed holding a small crystal flask of swirling lilac potion.
“Diluted Dreamless Sleep,” Tom explained quietly, holding it out.
Harry grasped it eagerly and swallowed it. A few seconds later, the world turned inside out and drew down crystal shutters, and he slept.
*
“They beat you, didn’t they?”
Albus did his best to glare at Gellert, but his heart wasn’t in it. He collapsed on the bench near the back of the cave and closed his eyes. His chest ached, and he honestly wasn’t sure if that was the magical exhaustion or the sheer, bloody urge to cry.
“Why did they beat you?”
“The dirty serpent magic that Riddle drew on,” Albus said tiredly. “I didn’t anticipate it. I can understand Parseltongue, but I can’t study the books that detail that sort of thing, not when Salazar Slytherin left them locked to natural-born Parselmouths.”
Gellert snorted and rolled over so that he was facing the back of the cave. “You only think it’s a dirty trick because you wish you’d thought of it yourself. If you were a Parselmouth, you’d be talking about the purity of the power and how Riddle was the one who degraded it.”
“I would not,” Albus snapped, stung. “I think serpent magic was degraded by the fact that Salazar Slytherin spoke it, and Slytherin turned his back on his destiny.”
“Destiny?” Gellert spoke without turning over, but Albus felt the faint prick of his curiosi-ty. “You’ve never mentioned that before.”
Albus grimaced and slumped against the bench, trying to ignore the sense of failure in the back of his mind. “I should not have mentioned it now.”
“As you say,” Gellert said, his voice sinking again. “But now you have a problem to deal with in that Riddle and Potter are united. What else are you going to try?”
Albus took a long, shaky breath. There was one obvious answer, and he had avoided it be-cause he didn’t want to look weak to the one who had shown him his life’s purpose. But right now, weakness and pride were irrelevant considerations. He had to appeal for help, because stop-ping Tom and Harry was more important than anything else.
For a moment, tears shivered in his eyes. Where did I go so wrong with Harry? Why did I fail to teach him what his friends absorbed so easily?
But that question didn’t matter, either. Albus reached up and removed a small vial of col-ored dust from the shelf in the cave where it had stood for decades. He reached out and sprinkled the dust on the fire in front of him.
The dust rose up in a column of subtle rose, brilliant blue, and trembling orange. Albus sat back with his arms folded around his legs and waited as patiently as he could. Even Gellert had rolled over so that he could stare, although he snorted and glanced in the other direction when Al-bus turned to him.
The fire drew Albus’s attention. The flames curled and swayed, and he found himself thinking that they looked like the gate of an elaborate house, decorated with gables and roundels and porticos and…
Why did you call my attention?
The phoenix that loomed above him was the same one that had brought him the proph-ecy, Albus was sure of it. He took a long breath and looked the phoenix in the eye. “Because the Dark Lord has joined with his soulmate, and my efforts to keep them apart were in vain. I need to know what I should do next.”
The phoenix launched itself silently from the fire, hovering for a moment in the air before settling on the floor of the cavern. Gellert caught his breath with a sharp gasp. The phoenix ignored him and instead arched its neck to stare directly into Albus’s eyes.
Albus watched and waited in silence. He had never received a sense of the phoenix’s sex from it, although he had known the first time he met Fawkes that he was male. He supposed that if this agent of fate wanted him to know, it would tell him.
You know that this will change the world.
Albus grimaced and nodded. “But I have done my best to lure Harry back with his friends, to appeal to the beliefs I thought I’d instilled in him, and to break his emotional bond with Riddle. Nothing worked. I am a hunted fugitive now since I showed myself so openly with the Order at our last confrontation. I need advice.”
The phoenix took a step back, scarlet breast feathers glittering in sharp contrast with the rest of its body, which was ice-blue. For a moment, Albus thought it was looking at Gellert, but it seemed to be staring through the wall of the cavern instead, out and far beyond anything present with them.
Then it turned back to Albus. There must be exceptions made for desperation. No mat-ter what you have to do, kill this one born with the Dark Lord’s soul-mark.
“I don’t know how to get close to him. He’ll be surrounded by a guard of Aurors day and night now-”
The phoenix moved one foot, and something fell to the floor as if it had always been clutched in the talon, although Albus didn’t think it had. In silent bewilderment, he picked up and stared at what looked like a tuning fork. He glanced back at the phoenix, who bobbed its head as if understanding what Albus’s questions were.
Use this like your Imperius Curse. Send it to someone close to the pair, and it will res-onate with your mind and replace their desires with yours. You can only use it once, only with simple commands, and not on the Dark Lord or his consort. Choose wisely.
Albus took a slow, long breath. There was only one real choice, when he thought about it like that. “Thank you.”
The phoenix said, Do not thank me. I am only an agent of fate. And it turned and flew back into the fire that had simmered down but never stopped burning. In seconds, the vision of a shining palace gate collapsed and was gone.
“How can you trust that thing?”
Albus sighed and glanced at Gellert. “Phoenixes are the purest creatures of Light on the planet, Gellert. I can understand why you might never feel easy with one, but they have only the. best of intentions.” He curled his hand around the silvery tuning fork, which hummed responsively in his palm. Instinctively, he raised his Occlumency walls to forbid the thing from reaching for his mind the way it wanted to do.
“The phoenix didn’t say it served the Light. It said it served Fate.”
Albus shrugged. “But it sought me out to give the prophecy, it spoke of Dark Lords, and legends and lore the world over say that phoenixes are of the Light. I think I’ll trust a phoenix more than your doubts about it, thank you.”
*
“You’re sure that you’re rested enough to do this?”
Harry chuckled and reached over to pat Tom’s cheek. “You’re sweet.”
Tom dodged, scowling, and watched as Harry walked into the middle of the field he had asked Tom to bring him to. It was a wide meadow at the edge of a private house Tom had claimed as dueling spoils from a pure-blood who had challenged him early on in his Ministry career.
There were small piles of glass shards on the ground. Tom had offered more “ingredients” for the Truth Crystals, but Harry had shaken his head and said he didn’t need them. Tom wondered if that was true.
Harry closed his eyes and stood still for a few minutes. It was a cloudy day, a freshening wind sweeping in from the south and ruffling the grass and Harry’s hair alike. Tom wanted to con-jure a cloak for his soulmate, but he had promised not to interrupt once Harry began.
And Harry considered taking care of him an interruption. Against his will, Tom’s gaze sought the ragged edges of the healed wound under his shirt.
Then Harry spun to the side, tugging on Tom’s magic without absorbing it, and began.
His hands rose above his head, and he murmured something that Tom was certain wasn’t a Latin incantation. He knew Harry couldn’t actually speak Parseltongue, but it sounded remarkably like that. Harry raised his hands further and then dropped them, and his voice trembled on a sharp note.
Tom felt the immense power around them shift.
And he saw what Harry had meant when he said he needed nothing more than glass to con-jure the Truth Crystals.
The glass soared into the air and bent instead of breaking, forming round globes. From beneath the globes, Harry’s magic erupted, spiraling down into legs that looked rather like the clawed feet of the furniture Tom’s grandparents had possessed. They were ornamented, heavy gold. Harry spun on his heel as if he was about to Apparate, and more magic showered the globes.
They began to shine.
Tom stared. He had never heard of any magic like this, as Harry focused it and poured it, and he doubted he would ever have discovered it on his own. Harry wrung his hands sharply as if breaking an enemy’s neck, and the same shine coalesced around his fingers.
Tom blinked. It was translucent, wavering, pearly colored, and reminded him of nothing so much as the color of Veritaserum. He wondered if somehow, both the potion and the Truth Crys-tals were drawing on the same deep magic, something no one else had remembered lately.
The light abruptly snapped away from Harry’s hands and took up residence in the Crystals. Harry sagged to his knees in the next moment, but the light didn’t stop flowing from him. Tom stared in wonder until he heard the sharp, shallow breaths from Harry’s direction.
“Cancel the spell,” he said, taking a long step forwards and no longer worrying about inter-rupting. “Now.”
Harry nodded, but not as if he was agreeing with Tom. “This isn’t a spell,” he said, even as he drew his hands level with his throat and the light stopped flowing from him. He still didn’t sound normal, though. “This is creation.”
“I don’t care what it is, it’s not worth your life.”
“So sweet and adorable,” Harry said, smiling at him over his shoulder. “Do your enemies know about this side of you? They must not, or they would have been getting you kittens and flowers for years now.”
Tom gripped Harry’s arm and leaned towards him. “I know something that will wipe that smile from your face,” he hissed, and hated the way Harry grinned at him. “I’ll take you back to the Healing House and keep you there for the rest of the month.”
Harry narrowed his eyes at him and tried to move away, but not only was Tom’s grip too high, Harry had exhausted himself again. “You couldn’t persuade the Healing House to take me for a month! I wasn’t that badly-wounded.”
“Did you know that magical exhaustion coming on top of a wound can be damaging? Not to mention all the years that you kept your magic secret at Hogwarts and suppressed it, and the late development of the soulmate bond. They would love to keep you and heal you in-depth. Several of them were talking about it.”
Harry scowled at him. “I know you’re telling the truth because of the damn Crystals,” he muttered. “I-need to be there when they try Ron and Hermione, Tom. I have to.”
Tom stroked Harry’s arm and enjoyed the sensation of pleasure zinging through the bond and the way that gooseflesh followed the motion of his hand. “I understand that,” he said. “But you’ll do as I say when it comes to your health.”
“The Crystals are important.”
“Not more important than you.”
Harry’s mouth fell open, and he blinked. Tom stared back at him, wondering what unusual revelation have come to Harry now. It seemed he was always coming up with some unique angle that Tom would never have thought of.
“You really mean that.”
“Of course I do.”
“I-there just haven’t been many times when someone thought I was worth more than other things in their lives,” Harry breathed, and reached out to cup Tom’s chin and draw him near for a kiss.
Tom went, smug beyond belief. He had a partner who could create things like Truth Cry-tals out of pure magic, after intuiting the principles behind how they worked merely by being in the same room with them. He had persuaded that partner to listen to him instead of exhausting himself further the way Tom was sure Harry would have liked to.
And he was the one who was bonding Harry closer than any magic could, simply by valuing him the way he should be valued.
Let everyone in the world envy me. It would still not be enough to match what Harry is worth.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
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