Chapter Four of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Complications
Chapter Three.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (4/?)
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 Four-Complications
“I feel sick,” Lily whispered, her hands wrapped tight around her wand. She and James were sitting in a tent in the Order’s encampment and listening to the sound of rushing water outside. There was always rushing water outside, even though they hadn’t camped near a river. Frankly, Lily was getting sick of it, too.
But the nausea that had consumed her right now was of another order. And she couldn’t get rid of it by just standing up and moving around.
“You know that Albus had-good intentions.” James put a hand on her shoulder. He was speaking as though his jaw was about to crack, though.
Lily said nothing, staring blindly ahead. The golden walls of their tent billowed up and down in the gentle breeze. She wanted to scream and kick something. She wanted to fling her wand into the air and run away from it.
She and James had put together the spells Albus had asked for in good faith, and Albus had stored them in a potions vial, the way he’d learned how to do, in order to release them later. Neither she nor James had known that-
Lily closed her eyes, and James made a soothing noise behind her and kissed her forehead.
Neither one of them had known that the spells, put together, would come close to killing their own son.
“Things worked out,” James breathed into her ear, with that optimism Lily had always loved. She had lost it herself, especially after their fifth year and what had happened with Severus. “You know that Albus isn’t going to try something like that again.”
Lily flung herself to her feet and turned around, nearly striking James, who stepped back and stared at her in dismay. “No, he won’t,” Lily snapped. “But only because this failed! Not because he’s changed his mind about trying to kill Riddle!”
James swallowed and sat down on the chair she’d stood up from. Lily turned and walked to the tent flap, leaning against a carved harp that she had always meant to learn to play. She’d made it during their first year on the run, and she’d pictured herself playing delicate, rippling music on the day that they won the war and came out of exile. She had pictured Harry’s face when he heard it.
He would never hear it now. Either because Riddle would kill him, or because Harry would turn away from her and his father in horror when he learned what they’d done.
Lily shut her eyes, but it didn’t matter. Tears still leaked from beneath the lids, and James shuddered in pain. Lily could feel it without turning. Their bond was always active, like that, always the bond of joined, fulfilled, fourfold love.
It was why they’d been able to put together the spells Albus asked for, and why the signature-tracking spells Riddle’s Ministry wielded would have trouble finding them. The signature of two soulmates acting together read very differently from actions they took on their own, and the magic that tracked magical signatures at all was so recent an invention that the Ministry hadn’t learned how to account for that yet.
Sooner or later, though, Harry would have to learn the truth. How would he look at them then? Would he even look at them? Or would he never speak to them again?
The nausea in Lily’s belly squirmed faster.
“We did what we thought was right,” James whispered. “And the last thing we heard, Harry hadn’t been found out as Riddle’s soulmate. You know that bastard would have announced it that he’d found what he was looking for at last. Probably be planning the fucking wedding right now, too. That means he’s alive. That means he hasn’t betrayed us, either, and we can explain it to him someday.”
Lily shook her head a little. “We shouldn’t have to explain it to him, James! We never should have endangered him in the first place!”
James wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the top of her head. The bond between them trembled with tension, and Lily doubted they would agree if she kept trying to force him to see her side. She relaxed back against him, staring out the flap of the tent. The glint of sunlight off the golden trees and the waterfall nearby didn’t cheer her up.
“We can’t go back in time and change the past,” James murmured. “All of Albus’s best people haven’t figured out how to do that. We can only move forwards and hopefully send a message to Harry when he’s alone.”
“When will he be, though? You know the Ministry will probably be watching his post now, and we can’t guarantee that a Patronus would find him alone.”
Lily knew when her husband was grimacing. “You realize that we’re probably going to have to use Sirius’s talent.”
“I don’t entirely trust Sirius to get to Harry without trying to play a prank somewhere.”
“You know that he’s been raging ever since he heard about Riddle taking Harry captive. We’ll explain it to him and emphasize that he’s our best hope. He likes being depended on, you know.”
Lily sighed and let her head tilt back. James’s shoulder was solid and waiting for it, as always. He smoothed his hand over her hair, and Lily gazed into the world that the Order had opened a portal to and just hoped that he was right.
*
“You mean to say that one person prevented the roof from falling on the Minister and all the rest of the people he had around him?”
Peter put down the buttered scone in front of him and turned to face Minerva, raising his eyebrows. He hadn’t paid much attention to the papers or even gossip in the past few days, caught as he was in the middle of a pile of Transfiguration essays. The first ones assigned in a new term were always hard.
Minerva’s mouth was grim as she stared at the front page of the Prophet. When she saw Peter looking, she held the paper out.
Peter was glad that he hadn’t put the scone in his mouth, since he choked at the picture of the boy on the first page. It was definitely Harry, despite the fact that the photograph was in black-and-white and hadn’t captured the intense green of his eyes. Peter didn’t think he knew anyone else in the world with a jaw that stubborn.
He read the headline and then the article and felt numb. He handed the paper back to Minerva and stared at the breakfast he had no appetite for.
“Peter? Are you all right, dear boy?”
Only from Minerva could he tolerate that kind of address. Although, Peter noticed as his eyes went past Minerva to the chair that Albus usually sat in, it seemed that he would have only one person here today who would try to say it anyway.
“Sorry, it’s just a shock,” he murmured. “To know that a student I had, and the son of one of my dearest friends, did this-I never saw a glimpse of that power when he was here as a student. Did you?”
“No.” Minerva regarded the paper again, with a slight shake of her head. “He would sometimes have a fluke of power in his NEWT-level Transfiguration classes, but I’m sorry to say that his exams were most disappointing. An Acceptable in Transfiguration, when his father was capable of so much more. And he got a Poor in most other subjects, you know. The ones he was taking. It wasn’t many because of the OWLS that he didn’t pass.”
“Then-you think he hid it deliberately?” That shocked Peter a little. But when he thought about it, well, maybe it wasn’t so strange. He and Sirius and James had successfully hidden that they were Animagi from most people at that age, and Remus had hidden his secret until that dreadful night in the tunnel.
“I suppose so, but I can’t imagine why. He could have been promoted away from that lowly position he has right now if he hadn’t!”
Unless that was the point, Peter thought, chilled, and staring at the stubborn face. To stay hidden and out of the way until the time was right.
Right for what, though? Peter’s first thought was assassination, but Harry had actually saved the Minister from assassination. And he hadn’t made an effort to get close to Riddle, anyway, like a skilled actor could have.
“But I suppose we’ll be seeing Mr. Potter soon and we can ask him for ourselves,” Minerva continued, sounding almost as if she was talking to herself.
Peter blinked. “What? But why would someone it says the Minister has recruited for a bodyguard come here?”
“They think he was faking his results on the OWLS and NEWTS. They want him to retake them, and you and I to administer them. Apparently they’re afraid of corruption in the Wizarding Examination Authority, or incompetence, since they didn’t spot his deception the first time.”
“Neither did we.”
Minerva gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Well, you know the bias Minister Riddle has in favor of Hogwarts professors. That has pretty much always existed.”
Peter nodded. Yes, it had, and Hogwarts had benefited from the time and attention and money Riddle had seen fit to lavish on it. He gave another glance at the photograph in the paper, and wondered what he should do if Harry approached him and begged for Peter’s help in hiding his power again.
Somehow, Peter didn’t think it would be wise to give him that help.
*
“Don’t you enjoy seeing Hogwarts again, Harry? I believe that you were a Gryffindor. Can you point out the seventh-year boys’ windows to me from here?”
Harry kept silent. Riddle was teasing him, of all things, walking easily beside him as they made their way towards the doors of Hogwarts, and glancing up and down as though he was really interested in windows, and Gryffindors, and Harry.
Of course, Harry had listened to enough Ministry gossip-plentiful even in the Department of Magical Games and Sports-to know how this worked. Riddle was happy to entice people to his side this way. Make it seem like he cared about them and was interested in their interests, and people seemed to fall over like piles of cards for it.
That was one reason Harry had chosen to concentrate on Quidditch the way he had. He was absolutely certain that Riddle would never overcome his disdain enough to chatter at Harry about it.
“How can I maintain a good rapport with my bodyguard when he doesn’t talk to me?” Riddle’s voice was low, but less teasing than before, as they came into the entrance hall.
“Oh, I’m more of the strong silent type.”
Riddle laughed. Harry turned to stare at him, ignoring the way that students passing up and down the corridors stared at them in return. Some people were whispering, and the name “Riddle” was prominent there. The stone-faced Aurors walking behind them stared straight ahead.
It was still less remarkable than the way Riddle had laughed. Harry found himself eyeing the man suspiciously, and Riddle smiled at him like a fox.
“What was the purpose of saying that, if not to amuse me?”
“To put you off,” Harry said, too unbalanced not to be honest.
He could have lived with the flickers that produced in the faces of the Aurors around him, but Riddle had the gall to give him a much more slow and thoughtful smile. “You continue to do this even though your position has been discovered and we are actually hear to make you take honest exams,” he murmured to Harry, his voice low and unpleasantly-something. “Is it force of habit? Or do you truly believe you can make me lose interest in you now?”
“Minister Riddle.”
There was only one person that could be, who would say the title in that freezing tone of voice, and Harry happily grabbed hold of the implied permission to back the hell away from Riddle. He smiled up at Professor Dumbledore as the man descended a few steps. Yes, he had done something Harry would have to think about the morality of, but at least Harry knew it wasn’t personal. Dumbledore had had no idea he was there. “Hello, sir.”
Dumbledore’s somewhat pale face warmed a little at the sight of him. “Hello, dear boy.”
“Of course you would be close,” Riddle said, standing to the side of the bottom step where he could watch everyone. “The former Head of Gryffindor House, and the child of two of the most prominent Order members…it makes sense.”
“Now, Tom,” Headmaster Dumbledore said, without batting an eye. “No one has ever proven that I know a thing about the whereabouts of James and Lily Potter. Or Sirius Black, for that matter.”
Harry hid a grin. It was true. The Order had used the magic of its bonded members, like his parents, to open a portal to another world where they could live in peace, and the only ones who knew anything about the location of the portal or what lay on the other side were the ones who had opened it.
“I shall remember this.”
Harry ignored Riddle and took a few steps up to talk to Dumbledore. Riddle probably meant to be threatening, assuring Harry that he would remember him laughing at Dumbledore’s jokes and the like. But that only showed how insecure he really was, how every little gesture of someone not completely subordinated to him was a threat to his power. He was probably jealous.
Such a weakling, really, in soul. Fate was mad to pair me with him.
*
Tom watched closely as Harry engaged with Albus, his face open and his voice light and teasing. Albus said something that Tom couldn’t hear, behind them as he was. Harry laughed aloud and shook his hair back as he answered it, his words audible for a moment.
“Nothing that I couldn’t handle, sir.”
The openness and the unfeigned respect supported Tom’s suspicions. Albus had known the true extent of Harry’s power, and had placed him as a mole in the Ministry, had probably been one of his mentors as well. Somehow, he had won the loyalty of a powerful wizard without really trying.
Tom shook his head. No, he knew the tactics that Albus had chosen, and he even used them himself, at times, on people who had come to him young enough, or those who were related to his loyalists. The one difference between those people he bent to his will and Harry was the amount of power.
Powerful wizards were meant to strike off on their own and do what they wanted to. The ones who became powerful only because of fulfilled soul-bonds were different. They functioned as a unit, and they were prone to following the leaders they already respected, because they couldn’t imagine the necessity of standing alone.
But Harry had no soulmate, and he had ridiculous levels of magical strength. Tom wondered what particular arguments Albus had chosen to convince him.
“Ah, here we are. The testing room.”
Tom exchanged a cool smile with Minerva McGonagall as she came forwards with a sheaf of parchment that must be the Transfiguration NEWT. He had never much liked her, but on the other hand, she had been a good Head of the Transfiguration Department since he had begun to expand the school, and she knew her subject matter. So did Peter Pettigrew, behind her, who had the parchment for the Transfiguration OWL.
“The procedure is irregular, of course,” Albus was saying, with the same irritating cheer that he used to discuss everything, including why he thought it unlikely that Tom would find his soulmate. “We will be conducting abbreviated versions of the exams, which would otherwise take too much time, and relying mostly on the practical.”
Harry jerked to a stop and lifted his head like a wolf. Tom admired the line of his throat. He had slept with enough other people to make it good for his soulmate when he found them, and Harry was handsome.
Especially when he was taken unawares.
“What?” Harry asked slowly. “But I thought the largest portion of the mark came from the written portion of the exam.”
“Well, of course, there are exams that consist entirely of a practical portion, such as the one for the Apparition license,” Tom said. Harry turned to face him, his eyes full of that banked fire that Tom couldn’t get enough of. “Given that precedent, and the fact that you achieved such a low mark last time, I think it highly probable that you get anxious on written exams. Aren’t I right, Mr. Potter? So we decided to cut the written portion back and concentrate on the practical one, to give you a fair chance to show what you can do.”
Harry looked as if he was going to snarl. Tom might have wanted him to do it if they were alone. As it was, they had an audience, and Tom smiled pleasantly and with visible concern, and Harry had to choke back what he wanted to say or risk looking strange and ungrateful.
“Thank you, Minister Riddle,” Harry wrestled himself into enough submission to say. His eyes kept blazing, and Tom smiled himself, in what the others would probably take as graciousness, but what they would both know as delight. He wanted to always be able to see Harry’s eyes and face when they spoke. “I-I don’t have anxiety about written tests, though. I understand the effort you’ve gone through to let me retake the exams, and I don’t want to ask people to rewrite the questions, but could we shift the balance of the mark? So that most of it comes from the written portion instead? I just don’t want anyone to say that I had an unfair advantage.”
He had tried, Tom would give him that. It made Tom more inclined to be truly gracious, given the amount of entertainment he was getting out of this.
“Now, Mr. Potter,” he said, “I think that the question of unfair advantage is rather out the window here, given the circumstances that led to this. Wouldn’t you agree? That you are able to retake the exams at all is an allowance on the Ministry’s part.”
Rather than ending in a cell as an Order spy. But the best part of the dynamic between him and Harry was that he hardly needed to say it. Harry only jerked his head briefly, like a horse testing the pull of the reins.
Then he turned to Minerva and Pettigrew. “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me, professors. It’s just a little nerve-wracking, knowing I have to do this all again when most people get it out of the way when they’re teenagers.”
“If you had been honest about your skill the first time, Mr. Potter,” said Minerva as she laid down the parchments in front of her, “then you wouldn’t be in this position. We are glad that Minister Riddle did see that your innate talent should give you another chance.”
*
Oh, yeah, so fucking lucky.
Harry had been planning to eke out an Acceptable again, because the written portion was always so much easier to fake than the practical one. Sure, he’d made it work the first time around with the Wizarding Examination Authority, but they hadn’t been expecting anything of him and they weren’t his regular professors. That meant they really had no idea what he would be doing or should be doing when it came to classwork.
Now, confronted with professors who had known and Riddle, who expected it, Harry could feel sweat gathering under his hairline. This was going to be so much harder.
But then he shook his head and settled down in front of the written portion. So what if Riddle thought he was powerful? Riddle already thought he was powerful. Harry was still keeping the most important secret, the one etched on his wrist.
And he had put up with the disappointment of his professors already, when he’d got an Acceptable on both OWL and NEWT. This wouldn’t be anything new.
He picked up his quill, and Riddle abruptly stepped forwards and said, “If you would excuse us for a moment, professors? I have something I would like to talk with Mr. Potter about.”
“Of course,” said Professor McGonagall immediately, and stepped back. Peter moved with her, his eyes fixed on Harry, an odd, undefinable yearning in them. Harry ignored the way that made his back bristle. He had never been sure if Peter was trustworthy or not. His parents seemed to think different ways, and trade positions pretty often.
“Surely nothing you say can be a surprise to me, Tom,” said Dumbledore, with a friendly smile.
Riddle smiled back at him without showing any teeth and raised a complicated privacy charm around them with a single turn of his wrist. Dumbledore did nothing but fold his hands behind his back and look out the nearest window, humming a little tune. Harry sighed in helpless admiration. He wished he was that strong. Magical power had nothing to do with being able to keep your temper under circumstances like this.
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry started and turned to Riddle. Now his smile had teeth, but it looked strained. Harry wondered what he had to feel that way about when he was in control of every variable here.
“Yes, sir?” he asked. He worked to keep his voice as neutral as possible.
“I am sure that you know the conversation we had the other day, about possibly ensuring that your parents and godfather were pardoned for their crimes, is conditional. This is one of the conditions.”
Harry stared at him. Doing well on the exams-what? Riddle continued to surprise him, but he also reminded Harry more and more of what Dumbledore had said about the man. No one who played the kinds of games he did could possibly be sane, it involved so much changing of one’s mind and tricky balancing.
That remained true, Harry thought, even if Riddle was playing a different kind of game than the Order believed.
“Conditional on you doing well on these exams, Mr. Potter. Do you understand me?”
Riddle even sounded irritated at having to state it out loud, which caused sickness to churn in Harry’s belly. What had happened to the man who rejoiced in being smarter than anyone else? The evidence that Harry was so dim should have cheered him up.
“I always assumed it was conditional, sir. To the point that I don’t think it will happen.”
Riddle blinked. Once, twice, several times. Harry wished there could be someone to witness this rare sight, but Dumbledore was still looking out the window and the other professors were chatting quietly about something, faces averted.
“You distrust me with a fervor I have not encountered in some time, Mr. Potter,” Riddle said finally.
“You don’t keep your promises to people like me,” Harry told him. “Someone who has power or can trade favors with you? Of course. Not people like me, the son and godson of fugitives and someone who lied to you.”
“But you have power.”
Harry sighed in disgust. “Not much compared to you, or even to some of your followers who have those fourfold soul-bonds. I wish I could ask you just what you wanted of me, Riddle, but I suppose that you wouldn’t answer me honestly.” He turned and sat down at the desk behind the parchments again.
“Magical power can be stronger in many cases than political favors or money. So can the power of my having my good will.”
Harry said nothing and continued to work. Riddle clucked his tongue and ended the privacy charm, stepping away.
Harry supposed that he couldn’t completely throw the exams the way he’d intended. But he would make sure that he only got an Exceeds Expectations or something like that. Whatever goal Riddle intended to prove with these tests, Harry wasn’t going to let him have it.
The exams themselves might not be important, but Harry thought he knew why Riddle was treating them that way. This was a test, of Harry’s obedience and his openness to persuasion. Do well on them, and Riddle would pile on the praise, the enticements.
Time to show him I can’t be corrupted that way.
*
“You’re remarkable, Mr. Potter.”
For some reason, Harry’s shoulders went up around his ears when Tom said that. He continued to walk briskly towards the Apparition point outside the gates of Hogwarts. Tom kept pace with him, studying his profile.
Harry’s responses made sense for someone who had been trained to be a spy and a member of the Order of the Phoenix for a long time-trained to distrust him. But something was still off, Tom was certain. Spies could bask in praise. It might even have been wise for Harry to do so, now that Tom had figured him out. If Tom was trying to lure him in, he might do the same thing, and bolt with important information once Tom lowered his guard around him.
Harry, though, acted as though notice and praise and the gift of being able to take his exams over again and move up in the Ministry were thorns instead of roses. Punishments instead of opportunities. Tom couldn’t figure out how that served the Order’s mission, either before or after he had spotted what Harry was up to.
What are you hiding, Harry Potter?
Unfortunately, Tom could think of too many things, given that this was the Order of the Phoenix they were talking about. It jangled his nerves, not to be able to divine more about someone who had belonged to the most unsubtle House in Hogwarts and revealed himself in such an unsubtle manner.
So he moved on to another tactic he hadn’t planned to use until Harry trusted him more. “You know, you don’t need to listen only to them,” he said softly.
“Apparently I do, since you put them in charge of reporting my exam results.”
“I wasn’t talking about the professors. I was talking about the people who’ve indoctrinated you since you’ve been young.”
“I know. It’s so sad that you never got the chance.”
Tom slowly lifted his head. “Mr. Potter, you are treading on my nerves.”
Harry gave him a smile as brilliant as the phoenix on his arm. “Only treading? I thought I would have reached the point of jumping up and down on them by now.”
“You know that I have spared you only because of your-interesting background and magical strength. Do you want to be in a cell?”
“I don’t want to be threatened. And you can’t threaten me one moment and then act hurt that I mistrust you the next. What am I supposed to do? Believe half of what you say?”
Of course, Tom wanted to say. The right half. Then again, he didn’t usually deal with people like Harry. They were either loyal, they understood how the political game was played and what words to listen to, or they were utter enemies like Albus and there was no point in trying to charm or compromise with them anyway.
Perhaps that means there is no point in trying to charm Harry.
But Tom would still like to have Harry on his side in truth. It might be partially a point of pride in winning one of the Order’s assets away from them, but Tom was not used to denying himself small things he wanted. He had been denied the great thing-his soulmate-and saw that as enough sacrifice and privation.
“I have something I want you to see when we return to the office, Mr. Potter.”
“Looking forward to it, sir,” Harry replied, with a flinty expression and smile.
This should change his mind, Tom thought, as he stepped a little ahead and let the bodyguard Aurors move in on him. And I look forward to seeing what his expression is then.
*
Harry looked around in wary interest. They had taken a lift in the Ministry he’d never seen before down to a floor he hadn’t known existed. Now they walked through what seemed to be constantly shifting shadows-although Harry couldn’t find the light source that made them shift-and the floor beneath their feet was gleaming black marble.
“This way, Mr. Potter.”
Riddle was holding open a door that had the proper black dungeon look, made of heavy ebony and carved with sneering gargoyle faces. Harry stepped past him and found himself confronting a chaos of broken pieces of wood and glass. He blinked. On the floor lay sand that was scattered around as if a giant child had been playing here.
“What’s this?” Harry asked, because Riddle had shut the door behind them and was standing there in silence. He was close enough that Harry could pick up the faint smell of some kind of expensive shampoo. He longed to turn around and hit the bastard in the throat.
Not that he could. Riddle had taken his wand without a word when they’d got on the lift.
“The reason why your friends were going to be arrested, Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked again. Riddle had to be talking about Ron and Hermione, and this had to be the Department of Mysteries. But that still didn’t say anything about why this room had been left to look like a rubbish tip. “What are you claiming they did?”
“Broke into a room that contained important research on time and smashed everything they could get their hands on.” Riddle nodded at the sand spilled on the floor. “This was once contained in Time-Turners, and powerful devices that were meant to mimic them but allow further trips back in time. Did you know that two of the Unspeakable conducting research have been missing since your friends did that? We think they might be trapped in another time, or even a frozen moment of it, but since Miss Granger thoroughly burned all the notes and set a spell that destroyed all existing copies, we can’t be sure.”
“I-” Harry’s throat was thick and dry. All he had ever heard was that Ron and Hermione had broken into the Department of Mysteries looking to stop some of Riddle’s more dangerous research. What their mission had been, he hadn’t known. Professor Dumbledore hadn’t thought it wise to pass on that information in case Riddle did notice Harry and used Legilimency on him.
“They destroyed lives,” Riddle said. “They killed two people on their way out, did you know? When they cast a spell to destabilize the walls and, I assume, make the Unspeakables stop following them, and the walls collapsed.”
“They didn’t mean to,” Harry whispered. Murder horrified both Ron and Hermione. It was why they had been willing to join the Order in the first place and stop the imminent genocide Riddle was going to practice on Muggleborns and Muggles.
The genocide he might not be planning after all.
But he’s still researching ways to wipe people’s minds, and the rest of it, Harry reminded himself hastily. He lifted his head. “Perhaps that’s the kind of risk you take when you do dangerous research for the government-”
“It was hardly dangerous, you fool.” Riddle’s voice was, though, when he hit a note that low.
“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have used successful time travel to go back and change things so that Professor Dumbledore never became Headmaster, or you won the war,” Harry spat, turning around to face his damned soulmate. “Of course it was-”
“Only your ignorance of the extreme theoretical unlikeliness of what you’re claiming is allowing me to be patient with you right now.” Riddle stepped close, breathing into his face and looming over him. Harry glared back. “It was research, plain and simple. Dangerous only in the same way that all the devices Unspeakables work with are dangerous. Your friends killed two people and caused the disappearance of two more, not to mention set back the cause of magical theoretical progress by a decade. They deserved their fate.”
“They don’t deserve to be on the run for the rest of their lives!”
“They would have endured perhaps three years in Azkaban if they had simply surrendered when told to,” Riddle said. “That was before they did anything that hurt someone or caused a disappearance. But no, they had to remain free to fight ‘the war,’ and so they acted.”
Harry closed his eyes and said nothing. The stillness of the room all around him, the chaos and destruction, did make the Order look like terrorists, he knew.
But this was still Ron and Hermione they were talking about, friends he had had since his first night in Gryffindor, people who were on the same side as he was. He couldn’t betray them.
“Let us go,” Riddle said, voice as cold as iron. He turned and stalked out of the room.
Harry followed him, trying to work up some gloating in his own mind. Not impressed that your little plan didn’t impress me, huh?
But the sight of the room remained seared in the back of his mind, the silence that might be filled with the silent screams of trapped victims in another time.
Chapter Five.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/1064739.html. Comment wherever you like.