Chapter Six of 'Jonquils and Lightning'- Ambition
Chapter Five.
Chapter One.
Title: Jonquils and Lightning (6/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, a few one-sided het pairings and canon het pairings
Content Notes: Angst, blood, dubious consent, dimension travel, OC’s
Rating: R
Summary: Harry Potter found peace after the war in another world where a large number of Potters live. He makes his living as an animal healer in Godric’s Hollow, surrounded by family and away from all wars. But his peace shatters with the arrival of a Tom Riddle from another dimension, who seeks a Potter who can be his foretold weapon in his own war.
Author’s Notes: At the moment, I can’t say how long this story will be.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Six-Ambition
Tom gave Arthur Potter a polite smile as he sipped at his tea. “Jonquil spoke of me while I was gone?”
“Yes, she seemed put out.” Arthur’s smile was kind, but the eyes that watched Tom across his glasses...Tom had seen eyes like them before, during most of his childhood when his uncle was still alive. “She said that she looked in several different places for you and couldn’t find you.”
“I was with Harry.”
“Ah. Well, I’m sure she didn’t think of that, since you appear to dislike each other.”
Tom waited. He could feel questions coming, and the sooner they happened, the sooner he could be alone to contemplate the consequences of the duel and his next move. Arthur shuffled a few cups around on the table and cleared his throat. Then he said, “I feel like the worst of formal fathers asking this, but what are your intentions towards my daughter?”
“Not to seduce her and carry her off to my world unsupervised,” Tom said lightly. It made Arthur chuckle, as he hoped it might. Then he shrugged a little. “I would be happy to teach her some more powerful magic, the way that she told me Harry was. Other than that, it would have to depend on her ambition and mine.”
“Jonquil’s always had powerful ambition. It’s part of the reason why she was in Slytherin at Hogwarts. But she’s never known what she wanted to do.”
“She wants fame? Fortune? Power?”
“Even that, I don’t think she knows completely. Although she did tell me last year that she’d like every wizard or witch in Britain to know her name.”
An ambition easily gratified if she came back with me to my war, though it would be a different wizarding Britain. Tom no longer thought it likely that he would accept Jonquil Potter as his companion, though. Not when he knew a far more powerful one who had the ability to almost make Tom come with a touch.
“Then she should start working on her magic,” Tom said firmly. “She could craft a powerful spell or a mighty invention. That would be one way to earn some of the attention she craves.”
“Yes.” Arthur sounded uncertain. “You think she could be famous and powerful? You aren’t making this up?”
Tom leaned forwards and let all the charm and quiet intensity that had lured some pure-bloods to his side in spite of themselves manifest in his voice. “Anyone has the potential to be great. But she’s going to have to focus. If she continues to sit around saying she wants to have achieved instead of achieving, then I don’t think she’ll ever be great.”
“She has a hard time choosing between all the careers she’s heard about.”
Tom did know that problem. At one time, it had seemed that making an actual decision would foreclose boundless spaces that he had the power to roam in as long as he never made that decision. All things might be his if he did not choose one.
And then he had grown up, and realized that he did in fact want one thing more than any other: a wizarding world where he could thrive, and be damned if anyone else did.
“Tell her to focus,” Tom said pleasantly. “It’s what I did. I mean no harm to your daughter, Mr. Potter.”
“Do call me Arthur.” But Arthur was already nodding, apparently as satisfied as Tom could wish that he wouldn’t get in Jonquil’s way or hurt her on purpose. “If she does decide to go back to your world, you’ll take her with you? You can visit?”
Tom blinked. “You have to realize, Mr.-Arthur, that the portal will close once I go back through it. The Oracle who opened it for me only did so so I could come here and seek out a Potter to help me in my quest.”
“Your quest is for what?”
“Power and fame,” Tom said, smiling slightly. “So it would suit Jonquil well, but only if she decides she wants those things.”
“All right. And I assumed your portal was more like the one Harry opened. He has it open so he can go back and visit his friends in his first world. But I don’t know much about other worlds, I’m afraid. Forgive an old man’s foolishness.”
Tom listened to his own voice say that there was nothing to forgive, while his vision darkened and his ears rang. He had thought-well, he had believed, he’d thought Harry had implied, that the portal had shut.
Of course it must. He had sacrificed his magic to open it, but to keep it open…
It became even more urgent that Tom get some time alone, and after he ate a thick sandwich and chatted to Arthur for a while longer, he managed to do exactly that. He stood a moment in the middle of his bedroom, composing himself, then lifted subtle charms that would make everyone who drew near his door remember pressing business elsewhere, before he slid his hand down his pants.
Most of the time, he disdained this action, and performed it only for the same reasons he ate, because unsatisfied needs might distract him at a critical time or interrupt his sleep. Now, he filled his mind with the image of Harry arching up to him on the grass of the pasture, his mouth open in a deep gasp; Tom twisted his fingers and rubbed thick, milky liquid in a circle as he remembered the duel and the magic.
Harry, staring at him with darkened green eyes. Anger had darkened them, but Tom could so easily imagine a different kind of passion.
The way he will look when I take him to bed. The way he will look when he agrees to come back to my world with me.
The way he will look when he yields.
Tom came with a choked gasp and an instinctive biting of his knuckles, a habit left over from his childhood at Hogwarts, when he didn’t want the other boys to know what he was doing. Then he spelled himself clean and sank, replete, onto the bed. This felt far more satiating than it usually did.
And that was only another sign that he would be making the right choice to ask Harry to come back to his world with him.
He fell asleep smiling.
*
"Harry. Can you tell me what you're doing with Tom?"
Harry turned around with a gentle smile. He had wondered if Jonquil would come and ask him this question, and he had prepared compassion for when she did, for all that Jonquil could be fiery. He didn't want to fight his own cousin, especially over someone who mattered as little as Gaunt.
Jonquil stood behind him with clenched hands and a haughty face, but her eyes revealed the truth of the question. Harry nodded to her. "You saw part of the duel?"
"I--I came and watched part of it when I felt your magic rising. I understand better now why you won't teach me all the magic that I want to learn." Jonquil took a deep breath. "I left before the end."
But she might have suspected the end. Harry nodded. "Sit down beside me, Jonquil." He had been sitting on a stump near the pasture that held Princess and her foal, weaving leather with magic and hands both into a new bridle. Jonquil conjured a chair next to him, so she was a little higher.
Harry didn't mind that. Contrary to what Gaunt thought, little assumptions of power never bothered him. It only started to raise his hackles when someone thought they could dominate him based on those little assumptions.
"You know that he might be my best chance at leaving here." Jonquil's voice was strained and quiet. "You have options. I don't."
Harry stared at her. He honestly hadn't realized she was that distressed. Or ignorant of her own talent and ambitions. "Jonquil, in just a few months you're going to be a talented duelist. You can at least leave here and teach dueling in London if you want while you figure out what kind of goals will make you happy."
Jonquil blinked. "But a few months won't make me reach the level of you or Tom."
"That isn't what most people want, though." Harry shook his head. "They want the kinds of spells that don't get taught in Hogwarts, the legal ones. And you can do some of the same things I can, just not as powerfully. The ice I imprisoned Gaunt in yesterday? You could conjure the same thing. You wouldn't be able to make it as strong as I can, but most people won't be able to break free, either, because they aren't as strong as Gaunt."
"You're so trained already..."
"I'm six years older than you, and I survived a war. Don't worry about it. Going through a war isn't the kind of thing I want for you, Jonquil."
"You know that I'll be going through a war if I go back to Tom's world with him."
Harry gave a short sigh and tangled his fingers in the leather of the bridle again. That was what mattered to him, making new things and improving old ones. He didn't understand people like Gaunt or Jonquil, who might find glory in destruction. But he didn't have the right to stand in her way, either. "At least let me train you so that you have a better chance of surviving if that's your choice."
"You really don't want him, do you?"
Harry gave her a wry smile. "I don't. Just because he's strong, that doesn't mean he matters to me. You matter to me because you're my cousin and bursting with ambition and want to do something with yourself."
"And you won't stand in my way if I want to go with him?"
"I won't, though I reserve the right to give you a lecture about all the reasons it's a stupid decision."
Jonquil put her head on her hand. "But I have to do something, you realize? Something that will keep me satisfied and teach me new magic and get me away from always having a family looking over my shoulder? I don't have any idea what it is even after training with you for months! This might be it!"
"Of course it might, but I also don't think waiting is a bad thing. You have some options now that you didn't have before, like having me help you become a more experienced duelist. You don't have to decide everything about your life the minute you turn eighteen, Jonquil."
"I'm almost nineteen now."
Almost the same age as Gaunt. As little as he wanted Jonquil to go with him, it comforted Harry in a strange way. The closeness in age might make Gaunt decide that Jonquil was the one he should choose after all, since he could mold her more easily than he could someone who was five years older than he was.
"I know, but the same principle applies. I know that you feel desperate because you don't know what you want to do, but that's all the more reason to look around and study different things and decide what you want to do from that. I wish I'd had the same freedom of choice when I was your age."
"I thought the war was over by then?"
"It was, but I entered Auror training because I honestly thought I had no choice. Not because I wanted to."
"And you didn't want to be an Auror?"
Harry shook his head. This was the one chance he had to explain his perspective to Jonquil without sounding like he was trying to make her decision for her. "No. Killing people, always living on the edge of alertness, destroying objects, reading reports--that's what it's really like, Jonquil."
"It sounds like it could be for me. If you're not understating things about the reports."
"They were a big part of it," Harry had to admit, but he smiled as he glanced at his cousin. He might have ghosts in his past, but she didn't. And he had to admit he liked her better for it, the way she was so determined to take on the world and win. "Have you considered training as an Auror? It might be better for you than being a soldier."
"I won't be a soldier. I'll be a warrior. A warrior Queen."
Jonquil's eyes were bright, and even though Harry thought her ambition would hardly be fulfilled in Gaunt's world either--because Gaunt wouldn't share power or set up a monarchy--he smiled again. "All right. Well, let me finish making this bridle as good as it can be, and then I'll show you some more spells."
*
He has no magical exhaustion at all. None.
Tom watched Harry covertly from beneath his lashes as they sat at Arthur's and Celandine's dinner table together. Jonquil was there, too, of course, and Dorea and Charlus, and Euphemia and Fleamont Potter, whom Tom had only met briefly. Calliope had apparently been invited but hadn't come. Tom intended to learn what she could tell him about Harry, but didn't know how much stock he would place in it.
Tom himself would need a day more to perform any spells of the level of complexity required in their duel. Harry had no pallor or lack of appetite, though. He laughed and joked with his cousins and his great-aunt and uncle--and his grandparents, as Tom supposed he must think of them--as easily as if he had spent yesterday asleep in a field at a heifer's feet.
Tom made a grimace at the thought of the animals Harry tended, and Harry sent him a mocking smile before he focused on something Euphemia Potter was saying. Tom studied her, too. She was a small woman with pale hair and blue eyes and a bright smile.
"You know that you're welcome to visit us at any time, Harry. Calliope is not with us all day every day."
"I do visit you plenty, Grandmother."
He has such delight in pronouncing that word. He had no family to be close to before he came here, I'm certain.
"I know that, but--" Euphemia sighed and reached out to rest her light hand on the back of Harry's. Tom felt his own involuntary bristling but kept it well away from his face. "You always act like a visitor. Not like a guest."
"Do I?" Harry blinked. "Well, I'll try to do better then. I'll come over and see you and Zachary and the children tomorrow, shall I? I heard Calliope mention that she would be attending her dance classes in London then."
"That would be perfect, Harry."
"Do make sure that your visit doesn't take the whole day, Harry." Dorea's voice was cool and would have passed as uninterested to the vast majority of listeners. "I think you should show Mr. Gaunt around the village."
"Oh, but Godric's Hollow is a small village and Mr. Gaunt is a powerful walker." Harry smiled, and Tom admired how many teeth he got into it. "I'm sure he's already seen all of it."
"Not the way that someone who lives here would see it."
"I'm afraid I do have a disadvantage there, Mr. Gaunt. I wasn't born here. But my cousin Jonquil was. She could escort you and show you all the village's little secrets."
"Yes, I could, Tom," Jonquil said at once. She smiled at him. Tom smiled back. "You must see some differences between this world and your own, don't you? You could figure out more of them by looking around Godric's Hollow."
"I do find it fascinating that you come from another world!" Fleamont Potter didn't seem to let his unfortunate name stop him from participating in the conversation. He brought his hands down on the table and beamed at Tom. "What would you say is the major difference between this one and yours?"
Tom considered it carefully, but only for a moment, his eyes fixed on Harry, who was eating a piece of roast beef with great determination. "It's more peaceful here," he said slowly. "I've heard no rumors of war or Dark Lords. We had them in my world, one of the Dark Lords recently. And even though technically there's no war at present, there's simmering tensions that could make one happen easily."
Harry's eyes rose to his. See me. Hear me. Listen to me, the way I listened to the conversation you had with your cousin earlier today.
"But also," Tom continued softly, "I think it's more stagnant here. With all due respect, Fleamont, Euphemia, Arthur, Celandine, I've read the books in your houses. They have no mention of spells that I think of as everyday charms and hexes. That speaks to me of a world that never needed to develop those defenses, but also never those innovations."
"More peace is always worthwhile."
Tom smiled a little. As he had thought it would, those words had lured Harry into the conversation. "But only if it doesn't come at a cost. If those spells had been developed here for peaceful purposes, I would agree this world is superior in every way."
"You should look through my books as well, Mr. Gaunt. I promise that you would find Darker spells in them."
"You're a Black, Dorea, of course he would." But Charlus looked immensely proud as he touched his wife's shoulder.
Harry stood up and stretched his arms above his head. Tom watched covertly. No, no sign of the muscles in his arms trembling, either. A man who could tear away enough of his magic to open and hold a portal, complete a duel like the one they had had, and then still be powerful enough to walk normally the next day...Tom could see why the Aurors in his world had snatched him up, but not why others hadn't.
"I'll clear the table," Harry said, and casually swept his wand to make plates, glasses, and cutlery follow him.
"I'll help," said Tom, and stood with a modest smile and a nod in reaction to the gratitude from the Potters. He saw Dorea smiling before he turned away to join Harry in the kitchen, and wondered what her goal was in trying to push him and Harry together.
Well, he would go along with it since it fit his own goals.
Harry ignored him completely, keeping his back turned as several separate spells filled the sink with soap and hot bubbling water and floated in the dinnerware by turns. Tom bent over him and slid his hand down Harry's arm. The stuttering of his breath and fluttering of his eyes were beautiful.
The spark that leaped up from his skin and blistered Tom's fingers was not.
"Keep your hands to yourself, Gaunt."
Not what Tom wanted, but he would take it for now. He worked next to Harry and scored a few more "accidental" fleeting touches to his wrist or arm that were too short for Harry to use his wandless magic with. Harry was snarling at him by the time they were done with the dishes, but Tom could make out the bulge in his trousers.
If one method of seduction doesn't work, I shall simply try another.
Chapter Seven.
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