[One-shots]: The Artifice of Eternity, Harry/Tom Riddle, Jr, R, 2/2
Second part of a long one-shot. Don't start reading here.
The plans and counterplots of his friends swirled around him, and Harry sat in the middle of Ron and Hermione’s kitchen and stared at his hands. He didn’t know how he could tell them that Riddle’s image burned in front of him every time he closed his eyes now, so that he saw those waiting wild eyes instead of darkness. He didn’t know how to tell them that the longing that hadn’t bothered him at first, the same longing that seemed to be consuming Riddle, had been scorching the middle of his chest since he woke that morning.
He didn’t know how to tell them. But someone did.
“A moment,” said Fleur, who had been invited along, Harry thought, mainly because Hermione didn’t know a lot about Veela and wanted someone to tell her just in case she got it wrong. Fleur leaned forwards and put a gentle hand on Harry’s knee. “There are certain things we cannot do. He feels it.”
“He feels what?” Ron was sweeping his foot back and forth across the wooden floor, his face fierce. “If Voldemort thinks he’s going to mess with my friend again-”
“This is not a spell,” said Fleur, and her face had gone grave in a way that made Harry think she wasn’t sad or happy about this. Only knowing. She studied Harry’s expression for a moment, and then nodded. Harry sighed. Her touch on him soothed the burning in his chest a little. “This is a mating bond. He feels the same connection to the Veela that Bill did when I chose him.”
There was a silence, a moment so profound that Harry should have been wishing for some way out of this embarrassment, instead of for Riddle to be there. He lowered his head and clenched his hair in his hands.
“He’s what,” said Hermione. It was almost polite.
“I do not think he meant to,” said Fleur, and Harry nodded fervently. That much wasn’t private or burning or anything else that he wanted to keep secret. She tried to pull her hand away, but Harry flinched at her, and she nodded and kept it in place. “Riddle probably came to his house and touched him in a way that was meant to entice-”
“Do we have to talk about this,” sang Ron into his hands clapped over his face.
“This is for Harry, Ron,” said Hermione, and that made Ron sit up and look at her with a serious face Harry had never seen before. He wished he could have appreciated it more. He wished his mind would stay on thoughts of his friends, and never stray away from them.
Anything but this wish that he was back in the Chamber, but the age he was now, and the memory-Riddle was leaning towards him and gloating. At least that time, he had shown no indication that he wished to fly away.
He’s the one who has the wings. He’s the one who can decide when we’re going to meet and what he’s going to do to me when we do.
Harry shuddered. That thought made him feel cold, and he went colder as he thought about how sadistic Riddle had always been. That was the only thing that would quench the fire inside him, beside Fleur’s touch. He hunched on the stool now, and his arms were wrapped around him because Riddle’s arms weren’t there.
Fleur uttered a quiet hiss. “This is worse than I thought,” she said. “Riddle must have passed on some of his own desperation to complete the mating bond.”
“Wh-why?” Ron sounded dignified, and not like he was going to run out of the room or empty his stomach. He was better off than Harry was, then, Harry thought dimly, and twisted on the stool, on the end of his particular hook.
“Because most Veela mates are more patient than the Veela,” said Fleur. “Bill could appreciate me and want to go on more leisurely dates than I did.” Harry did have to open his eyes to see how Ron was taking this revelation of his brother’s sex life. Ron had the patient expression of someone who didn’t care, because he was going to use a Memory Charm on himself the minute this was done. “But when something is happening-when the Veela’s life might depend on the completion of the bond, for example, or it feels as if it does-then the Veela can infect their mate with the craving to do the same.”
“There has to be some other choice.” Harry hadn’t realized how close Hermione was to tears until now. “This is the man who murdered his parents.”
“No,” said Fleur calmly. “This is his Veela.”
Harry managed to find his voice and tell them one of the things he hadn’t mentioned. “I do think he’s different. He said that Fleur’s hair brought him to life, but he’s not a Horcrux. He’s sort of a memory. And he’s my mate because he fed on my magic.”
Fleur nodded. “That was enough to bring him to life and focus him on you, but the Veela hair had already changed him, in a way that You-Know-Who could never have been changed.” Her voice was helping Harry to focus, so he kept looking at her and listening to her. “His obsession survived. The nature of it has changed. He will never kill you. He will never rape you, because he wants you with him to stay.” She hesitated. “But I cannot say what else he might do to people who are not you, at least if we try to keep you from him.”
Harry cracked a smile. It felt as though his lips had gone so dry that they literally cracked, but at least he knew what he had to do now, and that was better than sitting there dazed while other people argued over his head. “So I need to find him and persuade him to-what? Sleep with me and go away?”
“He isn’t going away,” said Fleur. She was the one who shot him a stern look now. “He will stay with you, you understand? That is what a Veela and his mate do.”
Harry closed his eyes. God, his head ached. He wasn’t sure he was making the best or most rational of decisions, but he did know a couple of things. He wanted Riddle. He didn’t want Riddle to hurt anyone else. And he wanted to get close enough to Riddle to see if brilliant things could happen.
He wasn’t going to lie back and think of England, that was for bloody sure.
“Fleur!” Hermione, sounding scandalized. “You can’t just tell him things like that! If there’s a way to send Riddle away for good, then of course Harry should-”
“He will get worse if he tries that,” said Fleur, her voice holding the cold snap of an expert. It surprised Harry. Fleur didn’t sound like that, or at least he’d never heard her sound like that. “Both of them will. Riddle will become more aggressive, and might turn his claws or his magic on someone else. Whoever he thinks is keeping Harry away from him will definitely become a target. And Harry will get weaker.”
She paused, and Harry managed to look at her again. His eyes didn’t burn as much as they had. Maybe the decision to seek Riddle out had done him some good. “I do wonder why this is so strong,” she murmured. “Even passing on his desperation should not have worked so well for him. He is, in some ways, a magical construct, not a true Veela.”
Harry hesitated, but hey, they were already discussing his sex life and thinking about things that he would have died of embarrassment a few days ago if he even thought about sharing. “Does it matter how many people someone dated before?”
Fleur looked blank for a second, and then gasped. “You-you are a virgin?”
So I can still wince when someone puts it like that, Harry thought, but at least he wasn’t suffering as much as Ron, who yelped, “I didn’t need to know that about my sister!”, even if his face stung from the blush.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and shrugged a little, while Fleur looked at him in patent disbelief. He wondered if she had thought he’d slept with Ginny, too, or if she was just surprised that Britain’s most popular wizard hadn’t pulled someone. “Riddle acted delighted when he discovered it.”
“It will make the bond stronger,” Fleur agreed. “And he can pass on his desperation better because you have no experience of a different kind of desire, no resistance that would enable you to pit your memories against his.”
“But he’s also rejoicing because he’s a bastard,” Harry muttered.
Fleur nodded. “Yes. I suspect this will increase his possessive streak.” She looked pensive for a second, her head turning as if she listened to mysterious Veela senses beyond Harry’s power to comprehend. “In fact-”
Harry felt it at the same moment as Fleur did, but then, he didn’t have much choice. The window broke, and the wards broke with it at the same moment. Harry bent over, gasping, because the sudden heat in his belly was like a pleasurable Portkey. It certainly pulled him to his feet and over towards Riddle.
Riddle, who stood in the entrance of the room with his wings spread, looking longer and wider than they had before, and said to Fleur with a menace that was liquefying Harry’s senses, “You touched him.”
Harry wondered dazedly what Riddle could mean, because Fleur hadn’t touched him at all, and then he remembered the hand she’d put on his knee. He did his best to stop Riddle as he started to march murderously forwards.
“No! She was just trying to ground me, telling me about Veela bonds and things.” It was such an effort to make his mind work, and Harry hated it. He managed to work some spit up in his throat when he saw the way Riddle was staring at Fleur, though. “L-look, I w-wouldn’t-please don’t!”
“Was she telling you that a Veela can have more than one mate?” Riddle paused and slowly curled one talon so that his claws extended outwards. Even Fleur looked at them in horrified admiration, Harry saw, and she was probably familiar with some even more formidable Veela weapons. “She was lying.”
The word shook the house. Ron and Hermione fell to the floor. Fleur was the only one who looked as if she might be able to resist, but she was standing with her eyes on the floor and her body held very still instead.
“No!” Harry caught Riddle around the waist and the wrist and said the only thing he thought he could that might make Riddle focus on him. “She was the one who was telling me that because I’m a virgin, I’ll belong to you all the more.”
It was like wandless magic. Riddle pivoted to face him in a second, his eyes wide with something that Harry might have mistaken as delighted surprise, except he knew better. Riddle’s hand came up, and Harry flinched, but the claws had sunk back into the talons, and there was nothing when Riddle touched him except the torrent of pleasure that the touch had brought before. Harry closed his eyes and moaned and slumped against Riddle, who cradled him with strong arms and wings at the same time.
“You acknowledge my claim?” Riddle whispered. “I don’t need to stake it?”
Harry forced open heavy, hanging eyes. He knew one thing. Well, he knew lots of things, including that Riddle was a bastard even as a Veela, and that he would hurt Harry’s friends if Harry didn’t do something, and that he had no idea what was going to happen next, after Riddle-well, fucked him.
But the most important thing, the fact branded into his mind, was that he wanted this. He might only want it because Riddle could touch him and make him feel like that, but damn, he wanted to see what was going to happen in the fucking, too.
“You don’t,” he said softly, holding Riddle’s heated gaze. “Although maybe something is going to get staked around here.”
“Mudbloods and blood traitors,” said Riddle, and tightened his hold on Harry, “it’s been a pleasure.”
And, holding Harry close to him, he flew out the window.
*
Harry wasn’t entirely surprised when they ended up back at his house. Riddle had been there that once before, and where else would they go?
Riddle flung him on the bed and moved closer to him. His eyes were so dark that he looked as if he was in pain. He stood for a moment, and then he pulled at his shirt. It looked like woven shadows, anyway, and dissolved before the beat of his black wings.
“Do you even have an idea what you’re doing?” Harry muttered, taking off his own shirt. He didn’t know if Riddle had ever had sex before he became a memory trapped in the diary, but he knew he hadn’t had sex as a Veela before.
Neither did Harry, but at least Harry wasn’t the one who went around gathering people up and flinging them into walls and beds.
“I think I’ll manage,” said Riddle, and spent a moment curiously flexing his wings, as though he thought they would hurt more when they came free of the shirt. Then he looked at Harry, and Harry’s throat dried out before the meaning, the message, the passion in that gaze.
Riddle strode towards him. His wings had spread and drooped out to the sides, and his gaze was directly pointed, between Harry’s legs. Honest, in his own twisted way, Harry thought, and he didn’t feel the terror he’d half-expected, the terror of being back in the Chamber of Secrets with the basilisk coming for him.
Harry didn’t have experience at sex, or being a Veela’s victim-slash-mate, or any of a hundred other things that other people might have done better than him. But he’d always known how to hold Voldemort’s attention. And even Tom Riddle’s, if you counted the gloating way the memory had spoken to him in the Chamber.
He leaned back against the pillow now, and lifted his hips.
Riddle hissed. His trousers, or the ghost of the trousers he had been wearing, was gone somewhere. And he reached out and ran his talons so gently along the top of Harry’s leg that he never drew blood, only cloth.
Harry watched as the cloth unspooled, running away from Riddle’s talons, splitting apart to reveal his flushed skin, his hard cock. He cried out when Riddle touched him with one clawed hand that didn’t hurt, but it was his own cock that kept his attention. No wonder it almost hurt. It was so dark. He wondered why in the world he hadn’t come before now.
“Because you won’t come until I say so.”
Harry snapped up his eyes, suddenly alert, listening, watching. Riddle leaned towards him and hovered above him, his wings spread out, the depth of his eyes making it impossible for Harry to look away from his face and tell whether the hovering was literal or not.
“We’re connected, now,” Riddle whispered, and gave him a vicious kiss. “What you do is what I say.”
Riddle seemed utterly taken by surprise when Harry returned the kiss, powerful, languid. Harry liked the sensation of a tongue in his mouth. It could almost be any tongue, and if they were all like this, warm and wet and strong, then he could get to like kissing.
This is me. Not just anyone!
Riddle’s voice was in his head now. It might have made Harry wonder about going mad if he hadn’t already been through what he had. But he had lived with someone else’s madness, and accusations of madness, and Riddle had simply lost the power to make him afraid.
I’m thinking of it like this because otherwise I’d have to think about having sex with my worst enemy, he replied, and his voice entwined about Riddle’s the way his tongue was curving around Riddle’s. Unless you can make me forget about that, then this is a way to get through, and have some fun, and not blame myself.
“Not your enemy,” Riddle said aloud. It was impossible for Harry to be sure at the moment whether it was in English or Parseltongue. “Let me show you.”
And he fell atop Harry and shoved him back, out of the bed after all, and up against the wall. Harry gasped. Riddle’s strength was holding him up. Perhaps a Horcrux-turned-Veela could do that. Riddle reached up and curled his talons, and held them against Harry’s lips.
“Lick them,” he whispered.
“They’ll still hurt me when they go in,” Harry said, and stuck out his tongue to curl it around the talons. The scales on them were rough and rasping, and he thought for a second he would cut his tongue. But in a second, they were ordinary human fingers, save for a gleam of horn here and there.
“I am capable of making you comfortable.” Riddle shifted so he was holding him with one hand and magic, and slid his licked fingers down to Harry’s arse. Harry gurgled and thrashed. One of them went in without any other preparation, and it was rough and dry and it hurt.
But then the finger began to move, and Riddle murmured something, and there was extra wetness moving along with it, not just Harry’s saliva. Harry relaxed with a sigh, then felt surprise flare through him almost as hard as pleasure when Riddle reached what must be his prostate.
“You’ve heard of it, then,” Riddle whispered, and his voice conjured up evenings thinking about rumors and gossip and wondering if it was real, and Harry’s hand on his own cock, and his fingers in his own arse. Harry had tried not to even think about those consciously lately. It had seemed so likely that he would just be normal and get married to someone, and-
No.
The voice was in his head like the beat of great dark wings, bigger than Riddle’s, wings that overshadowed the sky. Harry tossed his head back and closed his eyes, and there were fireworks going off behind his eyes that had a lot to do with his prostate and not a lot to do with Riddle.
“Yes,” said Riddle. “Anyone could touch you there and get much the same reaction.” With a single vicious motion, he ripped his fingers out, and left Harry to gape in shock at the loss. But then Riddle was lining up his cock, and Harry was wincing in anticipation, and Riddle paused to give him a single dark smile.
“But this,” he said, “is me.”
And he drove in, and proved why the daydreams Harry had had when he was touching himself were not enough, were impossibly far from enough.
It hurt. But the pain was mingled with something else, something that moved like honeyed blood through Harry’s head and down over his eyes. For a second, he blinked, thinking he was going blind. And then he almost wished he had, so that he didn’t have to look into Riddle’s smug face as the arsehole fucked him, using what seemed like his hands only to hold Harry against the wall, but was proved to be the power of his wings when Harry saw the stirring way they moved.
“I can go faster,” said Riddle. It sounded like a taunt.
“Why don’t you?” The words came out in a gasp, but at least, with Riddle in his head, Harry knew Riddle wouldn’t interpret that as a sound of pleasure. “Since all I’m really getting out of this right now is a stretched arsehole.”
Riddle paused for the briefest of moments and stared at him like he couldn’t believe his own mate was saying that. Or maybe just that someone was talking back to him in general. It had to be a rare occurrence. Harry glared back, and folded his arms.
Riddle hissed, and then began to drive him into him with longer, faster surges.
“Still just stretched,” Harry said after a second.
Riddle’s eyes were wild now. He paused again, and Harry wondered if he would pull out and try some other position. Harry couldn’t really blame him if he did. He was a Veela, and he needed to fulfill his mate, and maybe it was bad for him if his mate didn’t get fulfilled.
But he didn’t pull out. Instead, he leaned forwards, and held his face a centimeter or so away from Harry’s face, and then he hammered.
Harry gasped. The waves that traveled through his body all came from his arse, and they were stretching him, yeah, but also opening him, and there were so many of them that Harry didn’t get a chance to recover before the next one came along. There was just the endless, wild pounding. And Riddle was panting and gasping now, from effort, and Harry laughed aloud, because he could make someone who pretended that he was cool and in control all the time lose that control.
It was pretty amazing, actually.
Riddle hissed at him again, but his pleasure was too great for him to really hold back his movements, or his reactions. His hands curved in and held Harry’s shoulders, and his wings fluttered, beating feathers and a deep scent like spices into Harry’s nostrils. He tossed his head back with his hair dancing around him. That probably came from the wind he was creating with his wings, too.
Harry had to admit, it was pretty hard to keep his eyes off Riddle.
Riddle was grunting now, his sounds loud and low and oddly arousing. Harry would have moves a hand down to stroke himself if he could possibly stir his hand from the wall. But Riddle had it pinned there, and the most Harry could do was arch and rub himself a little against Riddle’s moving hip. Or groin, or something. He was going so fast now that it was a little hard for Harry to tell what he was touching at any given moment. He angled his own hips to the side and arched, but it was still impossible.
“You’ll take the satisfaction I give you,” Riddle croaked. There was sweat rolling down his face and getting in his eyes. Harry grinned at the sight.
“And you’ll take what I give you,” Harry said, making it into a sort of threat, and squeezed down with his arse at the moment when Riddle was the deepest inside him.
Riddle tossed his head back, fingers opening and closing in irregular ways. Harry could feel blood rolling down his shoulder, and he didn’t care. There was blood rolling down Riddle’s face from his bitten lip, as if from the intensity of his pleasure, and that was all Harry cared about at the moment.
He waited for the feeling of Riddle coming to subside, and then leaned forwards as far as he could and licked at the blood.
Riddle’s eyes were open in a second, insanely intense, focused on him. His fingers reached out and scraped up and down Harry’s shoulders, and Harry winced as he felt the skin there parting. Now Riddle wasn’t the only one who was bleeding.
Honestly, though, Harry had never anticipated that being the case. He stuck out his chin and faced Riddle head-on, not sure what was next.
What was next was Riddle moving a little to the side and up, and Harry bowing his head before the crippling waves of pleasure riding up from his belly. And then Riddle was moving, either hard again or in a place so sensitive that it didn’t matter, hissing out obscene demands against Harry’s ear.
“You will come, that doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to me. It’ll break you and leave you falling down, and there will be no one to catch you but me. No one’s hands to wring something from you but mine-”
Harry came, at last.
It was like nothing else he had ever felt. His neck was splayed back, he was spraying, and his legs were trembling so hard that he was sure he would have fallen if he had been standing on the floor. It was pleasure so intense that it sliced him when he moved, and he couldn’t help trying to hold still so that it would be keener. But Riddle jostled him, bounced him, and made him move, made him ride it.
By the time Harry sank to the floor, in the unrelenting embrace of Riddle’s arms, he was ready to admit how deeply and thoroughly Riddle had ridden him.
*
Harry opened his eyes what felt like a long time afterwards, although the sun hadn’t moved much across the windows. Riddle was standing at the foot of the bed, looking curiously out the window. His wings still fanned back and forth as if a current moved them.
Harry sat up, and Riddle was on him in a second, gliding over to the bed and sitting down to stare at him. Harry stared back. Now that pleasure and shock were out of sight, he was conscious of a little fear again.
But he honestly didn’t know what would happen now. Fleur had made it sound as if it was uncommon for Veela to kill their mates, but Riddle was hardly a normal Veela.
“Now,” said Riddle, and his voice was soft and demanding, “I want you to tell me all about this world. How it’s changed since I was last alive. It’s so different. I want to know all about the differences.”
Harry tensed himself to resist. It was what he did best. “I won’t tell you anything that would help you conquer it.”
Riddle blinked. “Oh. Is that what my ambition turned into in my last incarnation? No matter.” He made a sweeping motion with one hand. “I have different ambitions now. To understand what I am, and how I came to be this way. To figure out what I’m going to do now.” He smiled then, and Harry felt himself bound and held like a mouse in a hawk’s talons by the force of that smile. “You.”
“But-surely you’re not-like a normal Veela,” Harry said. “You don’t want to stay with me as my mate or whatever.”
“Not like a normal Veela,” said Riddle, and lifted his short, rounded black wings as if to emphasize the point. “Faster. Stronger. Better at magic.” He reached out and stroked Harry’s shoulder with his talons. Harry winced, expecting another cut, but realized that the wound had already scabbed over, and Riddle’s touch actually felt soothing. “But going to stay with you, yes.”
Harry buried his head in his hands. “How can you?” he asked, and he didn’t care if his voice was muffled. Riddle would still be able to understand him, he was sure. “You’re not-it’s not like you’re harmless, or not known. People will know who you are. They’ll try to kill you. I was your enemy, your greatest enemy. You can’t sit there and tell me that you’re just here to learn about the world when all of that is true.”
“There are special laws on the books dealing with Veela like me,” said Riddle, and laughed when Harry looked up. “Surely you don’t think I spent all my time stalking you? I went and looked up the current state of the laws.”
“But if you’re not a normal Veela-”
“No, but I fit into a category.” Riddle had never sounded so smug, Harry thought, not even when he was explaining how he had persuaded Ginny to trust him and pour her strength and spirit into the diary. “People Transfigured into Veela by magical means. And here I am, and here I am going to stay.” He reached out and laid his hand on Harry’s shoulder, and this time, Harry had to shudder from the sheer weight of it. “I can stay alive and do what I like as long as I live with you, don’t kill anyone outright, and attend a boring meeting in front of the Wizengamot once every six months. Wonderful, no?”
Harry peered between his fingers at him. “You don’t fit into my life,” he said bluntly. “Not with what I want to do or the way I was picturing myself.”
“Then repaint the picture,” Riddle said, and leaned towards him. “I’m not going anywhere. You are mine, Harry Potter.” He paused as if thinking Harry would respond to that, and then added, “You’ll have someone on your side who will make sure that others never mistreat you. Or spread lies about you. Another thing I did was look up old Prophet articles. I assure you, no one would have got away with calling you crazy, evil, or a liar if I was around.”
“They only did it because of you!” Harry exclaimed in frustration.
Riddle laughed, and there was a soft, cruel, exultant edge to his voice. “That was a different me. I don’t even remember doing it, although the articles provided some useful background information. And I don’t want to do it anymore.” He crawled forwards until he was kneeling right in front of Harry, and his eyes were serious enough to distract Harry from the sudden realization that they were both naked.
“I want to be with you,” Riddle said. “Protect you. Have you. Care for you.”
“You don’t even say love,” Harry muttered, and sneered when Riddle flinched. “What’s the matter? Scared, Riddle?”
“My name,” said Riddle, reaching out to take Harry’s fingers and hold them instead of crushing them, which had been what Harry had reckoned he would do, “is Tom.”
“I thought you hated that.”
Riddle shrugged. “That was a different person. A different life. I think I told you. Even my memories of my time at Hogwarts and my time in the diary are fading; I remember them as if they were a book I once read, not a time I lived.” He leaned in and whispered, “I can be ambitious enough to make up for my mistakes and try new things. Or do you not think I can be?”
He thinks of even that as a challenge, thought Harry, and shook his head minutely. Riddle spread one wing, and Harry flinched, but Riddle only leaned the wing on his shoulder almost companionably and said, still in a whisper, “I can set out to conquer your heart instead.”
Harry stared at him. Riddle’s eyes had that burning sheen of-well, Harry would have called it madness once. Not now. It looked saner, and maybe more dangerous.
“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Harry asked in resignation.
“Never,” Riddle declared.
Harry thought about it, trying to shape his mind around things. It was true he hadn’t started his “real” life yet, the way he had wanted to define it, and equally true that he couldn’t imagine Riddle fitting into anything he had considered.
But maybe-it would take so much work that it was only worth it because Riddle wouldn’t leave him alone-he could change the picture. And he was as stubborn as Riddle, as much of a fighter. There were things he could refuse to do, and that would stop Riddle cold as Voldemort wouldn’t have been stopped.
“Fine,” said Harry. “As long as you don’t leave, and you don’t hurt one of my friends, and you apologize for possessing Ginny and getting Hagrid expelled and try to make it up to them-” He paused, but Riddle was nodding, so he must remember that enough to know what Harry was talking about. “I don’t know how you can make it up to them, but you’ve got to try.”
Riddle only nodded again, not taking his gaze from Harry. Harry hesitated one more time. “And that’s not too great a price to pay?” he asked, because it did seem strange that Riddle wouldn’t consider that a gigantic price.
Riddle’s smile made Harry’s blood heat in spite of himself. “Never,” he said again, and kissed Harry’s palm.
And then he urged him onto his back, and Harry went with the motion, burning with curiosity and desire and impatience.
To get on with the next stage of his life, and see what would happen.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/744220.html. Comment wherever you like.
The plans and counterplots of his friends swirled around him, and Harry sat in the middle of Ron and Hermione’s kitchen and stared at his hands. He didn’t know how he could tell them that Riddle’s image burned in front of him every time he closed his eyes now, so that he saw those waiting wild eyes instead of darkness. He didn’t know how to tell them that the longing that hadn’t bothered him at first, the same longing that seemed to be consuming Riddle, had been scorching the middle of his chest since he woke that morning.
He didn’t know how to tell them. But someone did.
“A moment,” said Fleur, who had been invited along, Harry thought, mainly because Hermione didn’t know a lot about Veela and wanted someone to tell her just in case she got it wrong. Fleur leaned forwards and put a gentle hand on Harry’s knee. “There are certain things we cannot do. He feels it.”
“He feels what?” Ron was sweeping his foot back and forth across the wooden floor, his face fierce. “If Voldemort thinks he’s going to mess with my friend again-”
“This is not a spell,” said Fleur, and her face had gone grave in a way that made Harry think she wasn’t sad or happy about this. Only knowing. She studied Harry’s expression for a moment, and then nodded. Harry sighed. Her touch on him soothed the burning in his chest a little. “This is a mating bond. He feels the same connection to the Veela that Bill did when I chose him.”
There was a silence, a moment so profound that Harry should have been wishing for some way out of this embarrassment, instead of for Riddle to be there. He lowered his head and clenched his hair in his hands.
“He’s what,” said Hermione. It was almost polite.
“I do not think he meant to,” said Fleur, and Harry nodded fervently. That much wasn’t private or burning or anything else that he wanted to keep secret. She tried to pull her hand away, but Harry flinched at her, and she nodded and kept it in place. “Riddle probably came to his house and touched him in a way that was meant to entice-”
“Do we have to talk about this,” sang Ron into his hands clapped over his face.
“This is for Harry, Ron,” said Hermione, and that made Ron sit up and look at her with a serious face Harry had never seen before. He wished he could have appreciated it more. He wished his mind would stay on thoughts of his friends, and never stray away from them.
Anything but this wish that he was back in the Chamber, but the age he was now, and the memory-Riddle was leaning towards him and gloating. At least that time, he had shown no indication that he wished to fly away.
He’s the one who has the wings. He’s the one who can decide when we’re going to meet and what he’s going to do to me when we do.
Harry shuddered. That thought made him feel cold, and he went colder as he thought about how sadistic Riddle had always been. That was the only thing that would quench the fire inside him, beside Fleur’s touch. He hunched on the stool now, and his arms were wrapped around him because Riddle’s arms weren’t there.
Fleur uttered a quiet hiss. “This is worse than I thought,” she said. “Riddle must have passed on some of his own desperation to complete the mating bond.”
“Wh-why?” Ron sounded dignified, and not like he was going to run out of the room or empty his stomach. He was better off than Harry was, then, Harry thought dimly, and twisted on the stool, on the end of his particular hook.
“Because most Veela mates are more patient than the Veela,” said Fleur. “Bill could appreciate me and want to go on more leisurely dates than I did.” Harry did have to open his eyes to see how Ron was taking this revelation of his brother’s sex life. Ron had the patient expression of someone who didn’t care, because he was going to use a Memory Charm on himself the minute this was done. “But when something is happening-when the Veela’s life might depend on the completion of the bond, for example, or it feels as if it does-then the Veela can infect their mate with the craving to do the same.”
“There has to be some other choice.” Harry hadn’t realized how close Hermione was to tears until now. “This is the man who murdered his parents.”
“No,” said Fleur calmly. “This is his Veela.”
Harry managed to find his voice and tell them one of the things he hadn’t mentioned. “I do think he’s different. He said that Fleur’s hair brought him to life, but he’s not a Horcrux. He’s sort of a memory. And he’s my mate because he fed on my magic.”
Fleur nodded. “That was enough to bring him to life and focus him on you, but the Veela hair had already changed him, in a way that You-Know-Who could never have been changed.” Her voice was helping Harry to focus, so he kept looking at her and listening to her. “His obsession survived. The nature of it has changed. He will never kill you. He will never rape you, because he wants you with him to stay.” She hesitated. “But I cannot say what else he might do to people who are not you, at least if we try to keep you from him.”
Harry cracked a smile. It felt as though his lips had gone so dry that they literally cracked, but at least he knew what he had to do now, and that was better than sitting there dazed while other people argued over his head. “So I need to find him and persuade him to-what? Sleep with me and go away?”
“He isn’t going away,” said Fleur. She was the one who shot him a stern look now. “He will stay with you, you understand? That is what a Veela and his mate do.”
Harry closed his eyes. God, his head ached. He wasn’t sure he was making the best or most rational of decisions, but he did know a couple of things. He wanted Riddle. He didn’t want Riddle to hurt anyone else. And he wanted to get close enough to Riddle to see if brilliant things could happen.
He wasn’t going to lie back and think of England, that was for bloody sure.
“Fleur!” Hermione, sounding scandalized. “You can’t just tell him things like that! If there’s a way to send Riddle away for good, then of course Harry should-”
“He will get worse if he tries that,” said Fleur, her voice holding the cold snap of an expert. It surprised Harry. Fleur didn’t sound like that, or at least he’d never heard her sound like that. “Both of them will. Riddle will become more aggressive, and might turn his claws or his magic on someone else. Whoever he thinks is keeping Harry away from him will definitely become a target. And Harry will get weaker.”
She paused, and Harry managed to look at her again. His eyes didn’t burn as much as they had. Maybe the decision to seek Riddle out had done him some good. “I do wonder why this is so strong,” she murmured. “Even passing on his desperation should not have worked so well for him. He is, in some ways, a magical construct, not a true Veela.”
Harry hesitated, but hey, they were already discussing his sex life and thinking about things that he would have died of embarrassment a few days ago if he even thought about sharing. “Does it matter how many people someone dated before?”
Fleur looked blank for a second, and then gasped. “You-you are a virgin?”
So I can still wince when someone puts it like that, Harry thought, but at least he wasn’t suffering as much as Ron, who yelped, “I didn’t need to know that about my sister!”, even if his face stung from the blush.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and shrugged a little, while Fleur looked at him in patent disbelief. He wondered if she had thought he’d slept with Ginny, too, or if she was just surprised that Britain’s most popular wizard hadn’t pulled someone. “Riddle acted delighted when he discovered it.”
“It will make the bond stronger,” Fleur agreed. “And he can pass on his desperation better because you have no experience of a different kind of desire, no resistance that would enable you to pit your memories against his.”
“But he’s also rejoicing because he’s a bastard,” Harry muttered.
Fleur nodded. “Yes. I suspect this will increase his possessive streak.” She looked pensive for a second, her head turning as if she listened to mysterious Veela senses beyond Harry’s power to comprehend. “In fact-”
Harry felt it at the same moment as Fleur did, but then, he didn’t have much choice. The window broke, and the wards broke with it at the same moment. Harry bent over, gasping, because the sudden heat in his belly was like a pleasurable Portkey. It certainly pulled him to his feet and over towards Riddle.
Riddle, who stood in the entrance of the room with his wings spread, looking longer and wider than they had before, and said to Fleur with a menace that was liquefying Harry’s senses, “You touched him.”
Harry wondered dazedly what Riddle could mean, because Fleur hadn’t touched him at all, and then he remembered the hand she’d put on his knee. He did his best to stop Riddle as he started to march murderously forwards.
“No! She was just trying to ground me, telling me about Veela bonds and things.” It was such an effort to make his mind work, and Harry hated it. He managed to work some spit up in his throat when he saw the way Riddle was staring at Fleur, though. “L-look, I w-wouldn’t-please don’t!”
“Was she telling you that a Veela can have more than one mate?” Riddle paused and slowly curled one talon so that his claws extended outwards. Even Fleur looked at them in horrified admiration, Harry saw, and she was probably familiar with some even more formidable Veela weapons. “She was lying.”
The word shook the house. Ron and Hermione fell to the floor. Fleur was the only one who looked as if she might be able to resist, but she was standing with her eyes on the floor and her body held very still instead.
“No!” Harry caught Riddle around the waist and the wrist and said the only thing he thought he could that might make Riddle focus on him. “She was the one who was telling me that because I’m a virgin, I’ll belong to you all the more.”
It was like wandless magic. Riddle pivoted to face him in a second, his eyes wide with something that Harry might have mistaken as delighted surprise, except he knew better. Riddle’s hand came up, and Harry flinched, but the claws had sunk back into the talons, and there was nothing when Riddle touched him except the torrent of pleasure that the touch had brought before. Harry closed his eyes and moaned and slumped against Riddle, who cradled him with strong arms and wings at the same time.
“You acknowledge my claim?” Riddle whispered. “I don’t need to stake it?”
Harry forced open heavy, hanging eyes. He knew one thing. Well, he knew lots of things, including that Riddle was a bastard even as a Veela, and that he would hurt Harry’s friends if Harry didn’t do something, and that he had no idea what was going to happen next, after Riddle-well, fucked him.
But the most important thing, the fact branded into his mind, was that he wanted this. He might only want it because Riddle could touch him and make him feel like that, but damn, he wanted to see what was going to happen in the fucking, too.
“You don’t,” he said softly, holding Riddle’s heated gaze. “Although maybe something is going to get staked around here.”
“Mudbloods and blood traitors,” said Riddle, and tightened his hold on Harry, “it’s been a pleasure.”
And, holding Harry close to him, he flew out the window.
*
Harry wasn’t entirely surprised when they ended up back at his house. Riddle had been there that once before, and where else would they go?
Riddle flung him on the bed and moved closer to him. His eyes were so dark that he looked as if he was in pain. He stood for a moment, and then he pulled at his shirt. It looked like woven shadows, anyway, and dissolved before the beat of his black wings.
“Do you even have an idea what you’re doing?” Harry muttered, taking off his own shirt. He didn’t know if Riddle had ever had sex before he became a memory trapped in the diary, but he knew he hadn’t had sex as a Veela before.
Neither did Harry, but at least Harry wasn’t the one who went around gathering people up and flinging them into walls and beds.
“I think I’ll manage,” said Riddle, and spent a moment curiously flexing his wings, as though he thought they would hurt more when they came free of the shirt. Then he looked at Harry, and Harry’s throat dried out before the meaning, the message, the passion in that gaze.
Riddle strode towards him. His wings had spread and drooped out to the sides, and his gaze was directly pointed, between Harry’s legs. Honest, in his own twisted way, Harry thought, and he didn’t feel the terror he’d half-expected, the terror of being back in the Chamber of Secrets with the basilisk coming for him.
Harry didn’t have experience at sex, or being a Veela’s victim-slash-mate, or any of a hundred other things that other people might have done better than him. But he’d always known how to hold Voldemort’s attention. And even Tom Riddle’s, if you counted the gloating way the memory had spoken to him in the Chamber.
He leaned back against the pillow now, and lifted his hips.
Riddle hissed. His trousers, or the ghost of the trousers he had been wearing, was gone somewhere. And he reached out and ran his talons so gently along the top of Harry’s leg that he never drew blood, only cloth.
Harry watched as the cloth unspooled, running away from Riddle’s talons, splitting apart to reveal his flushed skin, his hard cock. He cried out when Riddle touched him with one clawed hand that didn’t hurt, but it was his own cock that kept his attention. No wonder it almost hurt. It was so dark. He wondered why in the world he hadn’t come before now.
“Because you won’t come until I say so.”
Harry snapped up his eyes, suddenly alert, listening, watching. Riddle leaned towards him and hovered above him, his wings spread out, the depth of his eyes making it impossible for Harry to look away from his face and tell whether the hovering was literal or not.
“We’re connected, now,” Riddle whispered, and gave him a vicious kiss. “What you do is what I say.”
Riddle seemed utterly taken by surprise when Harry returned the kiss, powerful, languid. Harry liked the sensation of a tongue in his mouth. It could almost be any tongue, and if they were all like this, warm and wet and strong, then he could get to like kissing.
This is me. Not just anyone!
Riddle’s voice was in his head now. It might have made Harry wonder about going mad if he hadn’t already been through what he had. But he had lived with someone else’s madness, and accusations of madness, and Riddle had simply lost the power to make him afraid.
I’m thinking of it like this because otherwise I’d have to think about having sex with my worst enemy, he replied, and his voice entwined about Riddle’s the way his tongue was curving around Riddle’s. Unless you can make me forget about that, then this is a way to get through, and have some fun, and not blame myself.
“Not your enemy,” Riddle said aloud. It was impossible for Harry to be sure at the moment whether it was in English or Parseltongue. “Let me show you.”
And he fell atop Harry and shoved him back, out of the bed after all, and up against the wall. Harry gasped. Riddle’s strength was holding him up. Perhaps a Horcrux-turned-Veela could do that. Riddle reached up and curled his talons, and held them against Harry’s lips.
“Lick them,” he whispered.
“They’ll still hurt me when they go in,” Harry said, and stuck out his tongue to curl it around the talons. The scales on them were rough and rasping, and he thought for a second he would cut his tongue. But in a second, they were ordinary human fingers, save for a gleam of horn here and there.
“I am capable of making you comfortable.” Riddle shifted so he was holding him with one hand and magic, and slid his licked fingers down to Harry’s arse. Harry gurgled and thrashed. One of them went in without any other preparation, and it was rough and dry and it hurt.
But then the finger began to move, and Riddle murmured something, and there was extra wetness moving along with it, not just Harry’s saliva. Harry relaxed with a sigh, then felt surprise flare through him almost as hard as pleasure when Riddle reached what must be his prostate.
“You’ve heard of it, then,” Riddle whispered, and his voice conjured up evenings thinking about rumors and gossip and wondering if it was real, and Harry’s hand on his own cock, and his fingers in his own arse. Harry had tried not to even think about those consciously lately. It had seemed so likely that he would just be normal and get married to someone, and-
No.
The voice was in his head like the beat of great dark wings, bigger than Riddle’s, wings that overshadowed the sky. Harry tossed his head back and closed his eyes, and there were fireworks going off behind his eyes that had a lot to do with his prostate and not a lot to do with Riddle.
“Yes,” said Riddle. “Anyone could touch you there and get much the same reaction.” With a single vicious motion, he ripped his fingers out, and left Harry to gape in shock at the loss. But then Riddle was lining up his cock, and Harry was wincing in anticipation, and Riddle paused to give him a single dark smile.
“But this,” he said, “is me.”
And he drove in, and proved why the daydreams Harry had had when he was touching himself were not enough, were impossibly far from enough.
It hurt. But the pain was mingled with something else, something that moved like honeyed blood through Harry’s head and down over his eyes. For a second, he blinked, thinking he was going blind. And then he almost wished he had, so that he didn’t have to look into Riddle’s smug face as the arsehole fucked him, using what seemed like his hands only to hold Harry against the wall, but was proved to be the power of his wings when Harry saw the stirring way they moved.
“I can go faster,” said Riddle. It sounded like a taunt.
“Why don’t you?” The words came out in a gasp, but at least, with Riddle in his head, Harry knew Riddle wouldn’t interpret that as a sound of pleasure. “Since all I’m really getting out of this right now is a stretched arsehole.”
Riddle paused for the briefest of moments and stared at him like he couldn’t believe his own mate was saying that. Or maybe just that someone was talking back to him in general. It had to be a rare occurrence. Harry glared back, and folded his arms.
Riddle hissed, and then began to drive him into him with longer, faster surges.
“Still just stretched,” Harry said after a second.
Riddle’s eyes were wild now. He paused again, and Harry wondered if he would pull out and try some other position. Harry couldn’t really blame him if he did. He was a Veela, and he needed to fulfill his mate, and maybe it was bad for him if his mate didn’t get fulfilled.
But he didn’t pull out. Instead, he leaned forwards, and held his face a centimeter or so away from Harry’s face, and then he hammered.
Harry gasped. The waves that traveled through his body all came from his arse, and they were stretching him, yeah, but also opening him, and there were so many of them that Harry didn’t get a chance to recover before the next one came along. There was just the endless, wild pounding. And Riddle was panting and gasping now, from effort, and Harry laughed aloud, because he could make someone who pretended that he was cool and in control all the time lose that control.
It was pretty amazing, actually.
Riddle hissed at him again, but his pleasure was too great for him to really hold back his movements, or his reactions. His hands curved in and held Harry’s shoulders, and his wings fluttered, beating feathers and a deep scent like spices into Harry’s nostrils. He tossed his head back with his hair dancing around him. That probably came from the wind he was creating with his wings, too.
Harry had to admit, it was pretty hard to keep his eyes off Riddle.
Riddle was grunting now, his sounds loud and low and oddly arousing. Harry would have moves a hand down to stroke himself if he could possibly stir his hand from the wall. But Riddle had it pinned there, and the most Harry could do was arch and rub himself a little against Riddle’s moving hip. Or groin, or something. He was going so fast now that it was a little hard for Harry to tell what he was touching at any given moment. He angled his own hips to the side and arched, but it was still impossible.
“You’ll take the satisfaction I give you,” Riddle croaked. There was sweat rolling down his face and getting in his eyes. Harry grinned at the sight.
“And you’ll take what I give you,” Harry said, making it into a sort of threat, and squeezed down with his arse at the moment when Riddle was the deepest inside him.
Riddle tossed his head back, fingers opening and closing in irregular ways. Harry could feel blood rolling down his shoulder, and he didn’t care. There was blood rolling down Riddle’s face from his bitten lip, as if from the intensity of his pleasure, and that was all Harry cared about at the moment.
He waited for the feeling of Riddle coming to subside, and then leaned forwards as far as he could and licked at the blood.
Riddle’s eyes were open in a second, insanely intense, focused on him. His fingers reached out and scraped up and down Harry’s shoulders, and Harry winced as he felt the skin there parting. Now Riddle wasn’t the only one who was bleeding.
Honestly, though, Harry had never anticipated that being the case. He stuck out his chin and faced Riddle head-on, not sure what was next.
What was next was Riddle moving a little to the side and up, and Harry bowing his head before the crippling waves of pleasure riding up from his belly. And then Riddle was moving, either hard again or in a place so sensitive that it didn’t matter, hissing out obscene demands against Harry’s ear.
“You will come, that doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to me. It’ll break you and leave you falling down, and there will be no one to catch you but me. No one’s hands to wring something from you but mine-”
Harry came, at last.
It was like nothing else he had ever felt. His neck was splayed back, he was spraying, and his legs were trembling so hard that he was sure he would have fallen if he had been standing on the floor. It was pleasure so intense that it sliced him when he moved, and he couldn’t help trying to hold still so that it would be keener. But Riddle jostled him, bounced him, and made him move, made him ride it.
By the time Harry sank to the floor, in the unrelenting embrace of Riddle’s arms, he was ready to admit how deeply and thoroughly Riddle had ridden him.
*
Harry opened his eyes what felt like a long time afterwards, although the sun hadn’t moved much across the windows. Riddle was standing at the foot of the bed, looking curiously out the window. His wings still fanned back and forth as if a current moved them.
Harry sat up, and Riddle was on him in a second, gliding over to the bed and sitting down to stare at him. Harry stared back. Now that pleasure and shock were out of sight, he was conscious of a little fear again.
But he honestly didn’t know what would happen now. Fleur had made it sound as if it was uncommon for Veela to kill their mates, but Riddle was hardly a normal Veela.
“Now,” said Riddle, and his voice was soft and demanding, “I want you to tell me all about this world. How it’s changed since I was last alive. It’s so different. I want to know all about the differences.”
Harry tensed himself to resist. It was what he did best. “I won’t tell you anything that would help you conquer it.”
Riddle blinked. “Oh. Is that what my ambition turned into in my last incarnation? No matter.” He made a sweeping motion with one hand. “I have different ambitions now. To understand what I am, and how I came to be this way. To figure out what I’m going to do now.” He smiled then, and Harry felt himself bound and held like a mouse in a hawk’s talons by the force of that smile. “You.”
“But-surely you’re not-like a normal Veela,” Harry said. “You don’t want to stay with me as my mate or whatever.”
“Not like a normal Veela,” said Riddle, and lifted his short, rounded black wings as if to emphasize the point. “Faster. Stronger. Better at magic.” He reached out and stroked Harry’s shoulder with his talons. Harry winced, expecting another cut, but realized that the wound had already scabbed over, and Riddle’s touch actually felt soothing. “But going to stay with you, yes.”
Harry buried his head in his hands. “How can you?” he asked, and he didn’t care if his voice was muffled. Riddle would still be able to understand him, he was sure. “You’re not-it’s not like you’re harmless, or not known. People will know who you are. They’ll try to kill you. I was your enemy, your greatest enemy. You can’t sit there and tell me that you’re just here to learn about the world when all of that is true.”
“There are special laws on the books dealing with Veela like me,” said Riddle, and laughed when Harry looked up. “Surely you don’t think I spent all my time stalking you? I went and looked up the current state of the laws.”
“But if you’re not a normal Veela-”
“No, but I fit into a category.” Riddle had never sounded so smug, Harry thought, not even when he was explaining how he had persuaded Ginny to trust him and pour her strength and spirit into the diary. “People Transfigured into Veela by magical means. And here I am, and here I am going to stay.” He reached out and laid his hand on Harry’s shoulder, and this time, Harry had to shudder from the sheer weight of it. “I can stay alive and do what I like as long as I live with you, don’t kill anyone outright, and attend a boring meeting in front of the Wizengamot once every six months. Wonderful, no?”
Harry peered between his fingers at him. “You don’t fit into my life,” he said bluntly. “Not with what I want to do or the way I was picturing myself.”
“Then repaint the picture,” Riddle said, and leaned towards him. “I’m not going anywhere. You are mine, Harry Potter.” He paused as if thinking Harry would respond to that, and then added, “You’ll have someone on your side who will make sure that others never mistreat you. Or spread lies about you. Another thing I did was look up old Prophet articles. I assure you, no one would have got away with calling you crazy, evil, or a liar if I was around.”
“They only did it because of you!” Harry exclaimed in frustration.
Riddle laughed, and there was a soft, cruel, exultant edge to his voice. “That was a different me. I don’t even remember doing it, although the articles provided some useful background information. And I don’t want to do it anymore.” He crawled forwards until he was kneeling right in front of Harry, and his eyes were serious enough to distract Harry from the sudden realization that they were both naked.
“I want to be with you,” Riddle said. “Protect you. Have you. Care for you.”
“You don’t even say love,” Harry muttered, and sneered when Riddle flinched. “What’s the matter? Scared, Riddle?”
“My name,” said Riddle, reaching out to take Harry’s fingers and hold them instead of crushing them, which had been what Harry had reckoned he would do, “is Tom.”
“I thought you hated that.”
Riddle shrugged. “That was a different person. A different life. I think I told you. Even my memories of my time at Hogwarts and my time in the diary are fading; I remember them as if they were a book I once read, not a time I lived.” He leaned in and whispered, “I can be ambitious enough to make up for my mistakes and try new things. Or do you not think I can be?”
He thinks of even that as a challenge, thought Harry, and shook his head minutely. Riddle spread one wing, and Harry flinched, but Riddle only leaned the wing on his shoulder almost companionably and said, still in a whisper, “I can set out to conquer your heart instead.”
Harry stared at him. Riddle’s eyes had that burning sheen of-well, Harry would have called it madness once. Not now. It looked saner, and maybe more dangerous.
“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Harry asked in resignation.
“Never,” Riddle declared.
Harry thought about it, trying to shape his mind around things. It was true he hadn’t started his “real” life yet, the way he had wanted to define it, and equally true that he couldn’t imagine Riddle fitting into anything he had considered.
But maybe-it would take so much work that it was only worth it because Riddle wouldn’t leave him alone-he could change the picture. And he was as stubborn as Riddle, as much of a fighter. There were things he could refuse to do, and that would stop Riddle cold as Voldemort wouldn’t have been stopped.
“Fine,” said Harry. “As long as you don’t leave, and you don’t hurt one of my friends, and you apologize for possessing Ginny and getting Hagrid expelled and try to make it up to them-” He paused, but Riddle was nodding, so he must remember that enough to know what Harry was talking about. “I don’t know how you can make it up to them, but you’ve got to try.”
Riddle only nodded again, not taking his gaze from Harry. Harry hesitated one more time. “And that’s not too great a price to pay?” he asked, because it did seem strange that Riddle wouldn’t consider that a gigantic price.
Riddle’s smile made Harry’s blood heat in spite of himself. “Never,” he said again, and kissed Harry’s palm.
And then he urged him onto his back, and Harry went with the motion, burning with curiosity and desire and impatience.
To get on with the next stage of his life, and see what would happen.
The End.
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