Chapter Thirty-Six of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Barbs
Chapter Thirty-Five.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (36/?)
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 Thirty-Six-Barbs
Tom stepped quietly into the flat that Harry shared with his parents and closed the door behind him. Harry wasn’t here yet, but that was a good thing. Tom could feel Harry pressing like a storm on his side of the bond. That meant he had discovered something in his conversation with Longbottom that had stirred him up worse than he’d been.
And Tom wanted a chance to talk with him before anyone else did.
He had planned to go into Harry’s bedroom and ward the door so that no one else could intrude, but Sirius Black stepped out of the kitchen before he could execute the plan. Tom turned and stared at him flatly, his magic boiling out of him in dark tendrils that Black would have good reason to be wary of.
Black swallowed and held his hands up flat in front of him as if that would be capable of driving Tom back. “I-I wanted to talk to you about Harry,” Sirius said.
“I’m not interested in talking to anyone but Harry right now.”
That would have been enough for most of the people in the Ministry, and Tom was already turning away. He should have remembered that the people who had followed Dumbledore had been trained to hate and despise him instead of fear him. Black caught his arm.
“I need to-”
Tom grew his magic through his skin without effort, into a spike that pierced the center of Black’s palm. Black let him go with a scream, and Tom heard scrambling noises in the kitchen that meant the Potters were coming.
“I’m not interested in talking to you,” Tom said, low enough that Black looked more afraid of that than upset about the pain in his hand as he stumbled back. Tom turned and stepped into Harry’s bedroom, closing the door behind him.
He set up the wards a second later that would forbid entrance to anyone but Harry unless they actually destroyed the building, and then added spells that would muffle the pounding fists on the door. Then he sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of Harry’s bed and closed his eyes, fully opening the bond. He’d thought he would be able to wait until Harry was physically present to speak to him, but not now.
Tom? Harry’s thoughts danced and ran alongside his, as cool and supportive as a strong stream.
Tom breathed out and said, Your godfather attempted to detain me. I grew a spike through my skin to make him let go of me.
The stream swirled and darkened, and Harry was silent for a long moment. Still, Tom was glad that he had told Harry. That would get out in front of any ridiculous story that Black or the Potter parents might try to spread.
You’re upset, Harry said, his voice edged now.
Because you are, and you wouldn’t tell me what you found, and you shut me out of your mind.
Harry spent a long moment sounding as if he was fuming and fumbling around in his mind, and then he sighed. Tom raised his eyebrows at the ceiling, and waited.
I found out that Neville’s parents were encouraging him to act stupid and stay out of politics because they were afraid of you but also didn’t want to have anything to do with Dumbledore, Harry said finally. It wasn’t as bad as what my parents did to me-Tom, are you all right? What was that odd emotion?
It had been a blue-silver flash of pride, because Tom hadn’t thought Harry would have come far enough to acknowledge that his parents had indeed mistreated him. Nothing, my dear. Only that I am glad you acknowledge their actions as wrong. What else did Longbottom tell you?
I-that I shouldn’t let it fester. I should talk to my parents about how they made me feel. Harry hesitated for a long few seconds. Then he said, Honestly, Tom, I’m not sure that you should be there for that conversation.
I am going to be here.
No, Tom-
I will remain in your bedroom with Privacy Charms raised and the bond sealed as much as possible if you want me to, Tom interrupted. It was time to correct some misunderstandings that had appeared between them in the last little while. I won’t listen in. But I will be monitoring your emotions, and I require the right to step in if you get too upset.
Harry was quiet. Tom let his eyes close and pictured him leaning against the side of one of the Longbottoms’ rather extensive greenhouses, his arms folded and his brow pinched. In truth, Tom thought that Harry had already left the Longbottoms’ house, but he was sure the posture was right.
Tom…
Yes? Tom was aware of a coiling tension rising from the bottom of his belly. He had done his best to respect Harry’s privacy in the last little while, and he still wouldn’t ask what Harry had discussed with his Mind-Healer unless he felt it affecting him, the way it had today. But he had done enough of the holding back and not interfering for now.
Thank you. Harry exhaled a little. I’m still not used to someone caring this much about me, and wanting to take care of me this much.
Tom nodded, understanding what had gone unsaid. Harry’s parents had tried, and so had Black, but their ideas of what was appropriate and what care should be taken of Harry were laughably far away from the reality Tom would accept.
I can’t persuade you to leave? You know you could be back at the flat in an instant if it turned out that they were saying something harmful to me.
No. Will you accept the compromise of Privacy Charms and the bond being closed so that I cannot track your individual thoughts, or do I need to propose another one? Tom hoped Harry would accept this one. It would be difficult enough to hold him back from his soulmate’s mind, given the amount of time he’d spent shut out of it recently.
Harry sighed, and then finally said, The only problem I have with it is that I think my parents won’t be completely honest if they know that you’re in the same building.
They have shown no disposition to blunt their defenses of their own actions before now.
A reluctant laugh trickled down the bond. All right. I’ll-I’ll come in and you can put up the Privacy Charms. Or, in fact, do that right now. But in the meantime, stay with me until I get up to the front door.
Tom felt some part of him that had been permanently ruffled, like an upset bird’s feathers, calm down a little. All he had needed was reassurance that his soulmate had missed his presence in the bond, too. He nodded. Very well, he said, and began casting the Privacy Charms. Noise from beyond the room vanished instantly, as did any shadows that would be the result of movement beyond the door.
But he lay with his mind against Harry’s, in swift and flowing communion, until the moment when Harry opened the door of the flat. And he raised a sturdy but porous wall after that, ready to move the moment Harry poured emotion too strong through the bond.
He would be the one to decide what “emotion too strong” meant.
*
“Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.”
It seemed that they could both tell that he hadn’t come here for a casual conversation. Lily turned to face him, and James half-stood from the chair he’d been in at the head of the table. Harry fought down his own nervousness and smiled a little at them, then took the chair nearest the kitchen counter.
“I found out something from Neville today, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”
His parents glanced at each other, communicating silently down their bond. Harry remembered how envious he had been of them the first time they did that. His mum had tried to soothe him, pointing out that he knew other people who couldn’t do it, like Sirius, whose bond with his soulmate had been rejected. But that hadn’t mattered to Harry as much as the fact that he would never be able to do it.
Sometimes, he’d thought that he should have been one of those legendary people born without a mark, rather than one that condemned him to a life of loneliness for decades.
Tom pressed against his side of the bond, and Harry sent back a mental headshake and focused on his parents instead. His mum was just saying, “What did you find out from Neville? I assume he knows about your mark by now.”
Harry swallowed and nodded. “And he still hasn’t found his soulmate. It was-general advice he gave me. Did you know that his parents pushed him not to do too well in classes and to avoid taking a political stance because they were so worried that he would be exploited either by Riddle or Dumbledore?”
James sighed. “I had thought they were doing that after something Frank said once, but we had a big argument over Dumbledore at about the same time and I never spoke to him with the same level of trust again. They actually did it? Why?”
“I just said,” Harry muttered, and found himself tracing his fingers in circles on the table. He sighed and made himself stop. There were no distractions, and no getting out of this conversation, as unpleasant as he found it. “Because they were afraid of how he’d be used and manipulated. Or how he could be used and manipulated. His mum actually intercepted my owl to Neville asking if I could come talk to him. He’d never have known I was there if a house-elf hadn’t gone and brought him word.”
His parents weren’t stupid. They exchanged another glance, and probably another burst of silent communication, and his mum leaned forwards. “Is that something you feel we did to you, too, Harry?”
“Not the lying and intercepting my post part,” Harry said, which caused a fleeting, strained smile to form on Lily’s face. “But I do think that you allowed your fears to overtake you and me, both, and ruined any semblance I could have had of a normal life.”
“We’re sorry,” Lily whispered.
“I know. But-Neville basically has no relationship with his parents because of this. I don’t want the same thing to happen to us. I’ve found my soulmate. Neville hasn’t, but he’s going to leave and maybe never come back when he does. I have you, and I have Tom in my life. I need to know I can trust you not to interfere again, or try and work against me, or hate Tom so much that you think anything would be worthwhile to get him to leave my life.”
*
James had been struggling with his own fear and doubt for the past several moments, and Lily had hit him with soft pulses of warning that had made him keep his mouth shut. And he knew that he said stupid things when he was angry. It was one of the main reasons that Remus had left and he’d lost Peter’s friendship.
But hearing what Harry had just said, the parallel to his own thoughts about Tom bloody Riddle, made the words burst out before he could stop them.
“It would be worthwhile,” James said, and slapped his hand on the table, ignoring the iron grip Lily abruptly had on his arm and the betrayed look on Harry’s face. “He’s evil, Harry. You know his voting record. You know the legislation he wants to pass. He would kill people for the simple crime of speaking of the magical world! Or send them back to a mental childhood, at least! That’s so-”
“You would have killed people if that spell Dumbledore prepared with your help had landed on the building Tom was in. Including reporters and Aurors and people whose only crime was just coming to ask Tom a question. Including me. Does that make you evil?”
“We were fighting for a righteous cause-”
“And Tom thinks he is, too,” Harry snapped, his eyes getting the deep green tint they always did when he was arguing with all his heart. Up until this point, James had only seen it when Harry was a child arguing that he wanted to destroy the mark or go to his soulmate. “You’ve changed your mind about some of Dumbledore’s shite, I see, but not all of it.”
“You said that he was just a cynical gameplayer.” James shook Lily’s hand off and leaned forwards. This was too important. This was their son’s happiness and the world’s happiness. “How can he believe he was fighting for a righteous cause?”
Harry closed his eyes, looking a little sick. James held his breath. Had he got through to him that quickly? He hadn’t dared hope-
And then Harry opened his eyes again and glared, and James rocked back in his chair. That was the glare he got from Lily whenever he’d got on her last nerve.
“He was fighting for the cause of maintaining power and keeping his soulmate safe,” Harry said, sounding as if he was barely holding back a curse. “Yes, it’s not the kind of public-spirited cause that the Minister should fight for. But neither was yours, Dad. You just wanted to kill and destroy him.”
“At least our world would have been safe from him if he’d died. And we could never have anticipated you being in that building, Harry, you know that. He just brought you along to make a point.”
“It doesn’t matter. You know now that there’s no secret war, that he’s not planning to go out and slaughter Muggles and Muggleborns and the rest. Yes, some of what Tom has voted for is horrendous, but that’s one reason I’m restraining him. Why do you still hate him so much?”
James ground his teeth. Lily said down the bond, You have to answer him. You have to tell him.
James flicked his eyes at her. He’s going to think it’s stupid.
Then he thinks it’s stupid, James. It’s still the truth.
James nodded shortly and faced his son again. Harry was leaning forwards with all the magic he had gained from that bloody fourfold bond with his damned soulmate crackling around him. It was honestly intimidating to sit in the same room with him. But James spoke, as he had to speak.
“You know that my friend Remus Lupin was a werewolf and Sirius’s soulmate,” he said. “And because of a stupid miscalculation Sirius made, Remus rejected his bond with Sirius and went in search of Severus Snape, whom he’d turned into a werewolf.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the story,” Harry said, voice low and obviously unsure what this had to do with the subject at hand.
James took a deep breath and sat up, aware of Lily’s steadying presence through their bond. Honestly, it was the only thing letting him speak at all right now. “Riddle had passed a law the year before all this happened that werewolves weren’t entitled to regular healing and counseling in the event of them losing their soulmates.”
“I remember that vote. It’s not exactly like that.”
“How could you remember that vote?” James demanded in utter exasperation. Now Harry was just making things up. “It happened before you were born!”
“I mean, I remember reading about the results of that.” Harry bit his lip. “Sorry. I mean that the Wizengamot proposed a law that werewolves be driven out of Britain and Tom fought back against it, with the help of a few other people. They got it beaten down to the point where it still restricted rights for werewolves, but it was less bad than it could have been.”
“He should have defeated it altogether,” James hissed. “If he was a righteous man, he would have.”
“I’m not making claims that Tom’s a good man, just that he believes in the righteousness of what he’s doing,” Harry said, shaking his head and staring at James as if he thought there should be a distinction between those two things. “But what about the specific provisions for werewolf counseling?”
“One werewolf went into St. Mungo’s on the full moon and deliberately exposed himself to the rays of the moon through a window during a late-night counseling session,” James said, the injustice still rumbling in his stomach. “He ripped the Mind-Healer, his soulmate who’d rejected him, to pieces. From that, the Wizengamot insisted that all werewolves be ineligible to receive counseling except under such strict and humiliating terms that Remus refused.”
There was silence between them for a moment after that. Then Harry said slowly, “Let me make sure I’ve got this right. Sirius set up this situation that turned Snape into a werewolf, and Remus refused Mind-Healing on the terms that the Wizengamot offered and left, and you think he would have stayed and accepted his bond with Sirius if he could have had Mind-Healing on the terms he wanted.”
“Yes! Do you know what those terms are? The werewolf needing to be escorted by Aurors the whole way to St. Mungo’s or the other place the Mind-Healing session is being held even if it’s not a bloody full moon, being tied to the chair with unbreakable ropes or chains, the Mind-Healer having the right to have a muzzle next to their chair-”
“I know it’s horrible.”
Harry’s voice cut through James’s words like a knife through a heart. He paused, and found himself blinking at his son, who was leaning forwards with his hands on the table.
“I know that part of the reason Tom voted the way he did was because of the outside chance that his soulmate might be a werewolf,” Harry said quietly, but his eyes blazed. “It wasn’t defensible, what he did. I’m not blaming your friend for that.
“But I am blaming him for rejecting the bond and running away because he was, I don’t know, too proud or whatever. And of course Mind-Healing like that was the only option, not working through things with his soulmate? Or rejecting the bond but continuing to live with his friends? It sounds like you were true friends to him. He might have recovered if he’d stayed with you.”
“You don’t understand! Having your soulmate do such an awful thing isn’t easy to get over-”
Harry threw back his head and laughed.
James stared at him, and didn’t need Lily bowing her head into her hands beside him to know he’d said a stupid thing. He sighed. “All right. So I didn’t need to tell you that.”
“No,” Harry said. “And I think it’s ridiculous that you took a situation that sounds like it was mostly of Sirius’s and Remus’s making, and blamed Tom for it. Tell me, Dad, did you have help from Dumbledore to do that?”
James opened his mouth, then closed it without a sound. He was going to say that of course he hadn’t, but he did remember discussing the matter with Albus, and how Albus had tutted and shaken his head and murmured that it was too bad, but with Riddle’s handling of the situation, then poor Remus really had no choice but to leave, unless they wanted to force him into a parody of Mind-Healing.
“Riddle could have done something,” James said, half-absently, revising his memories for the first time in a long time. Had Albus suggested more than commiserated? He honestly couldn’t remember, and probably wouldn’t be able to without the help of a Pensieve.
“The Minister’s powers don’t work like that,” Harry said, sounding bored. “And if they did, then you would have used it as even more evidence that Tom was a dictator.”
“I don’t understand what you mean about Riddle supporting the revised legislation because he believed his soulmate might be a werewolf,” Lily said brightly, her words so palpably a distraction that James sent an amused pulse down the bond. Lily’s response wasn’t amused at all. “Why would that make a difference? Why would he think that?”
“He believed that his soulmate knew about him, given the publicity of his soul-mark, and hadn’t approached him for some reason related to fear or not feeling worthy. At one point the only explanation he could think of was that his soulmate was a werewolf.”
“No other reason, of course,” James muttered, shoving away the thoughts about Remus. Harry had said it himself. No matter what the result was of the legislation, his soulmate still wasn’t a good man.
“Yeah, well, I can’t blame Tom for not realizing that his soulmate had been born to a pair of fanatics who believed that he was a Dark Lord,” Harry snapped.
Lily flinched, physically and down the bond, and that centered James and made him take the battle to Harry as nothing else could have. “Don’t speak to your mother that way, Harry.”
“Why not?” Harry stared at them, and his eyes were bright in a way that James had only seen before when he was working some powerful spell. Harry had never looked like that when he was a child and accepted the necessity of staying apart from his soulmate. “You were. That’s exactly what you were. Fanatics who believed the word of a deranged Headmaster that the Minister for Magic was evil and deserved to be deprived of his soulmate.”
“He’s been Minister for too long!” James stood up to emphasize his point. “It is practically a dictatorship! He needs to be removed from office so that the country can thrive-”
“You were never one half that reasonable when you described him to me!” Harry surged up, too, and the chair behind him twisted and warped, flowing through so many shapes that it no longer looked like wood. “You always said that he was a genocidal maniac who could barely keep himself from slaughtering everyone in sight! You said he wanted to transform Muggles into mice and crush them! You said that he wanted to use Muggleborns as sources of bones for purebloods with broken bones instead of having to use Skele-Gro! You were insane, Dad!”
“You-”
“I heard you,” Harry snapped, and James stared at him. What was he talking about? They’d talked to Harry often about his soulmate and why he would have to make the ultimate sacrifice, how it was terrible but someone had to do it.
“I overheard you,” Harry corrected himself, and there was a sob in the back of his throat. “If you-a few nights before I got my Hogwarts letter-you said-”
The night returned to James in terrible, painful clarity. He winced, and felt Lily’s hand cover his. But he still reached out to his son, because if Harry had listened to the whole conversation, then of course he’d understood that James hadn’t meant what he said. He’d only said it in a moment of extreme frustration, and he and Lily had both talked that through afterwards.
“Harry-”
The door to Harry’s bedroom burst open, and raging cold filled the flat.
*
Tom had had enough.
The memory that Harry was talking about was one he hadn’t shared with Tom, hadn’t mentioned. But the pain that filled their bond was like fire lifting Harry off the ground, and Tom knew the time had come to break his word and interfere.
He stalked towards the kitchen table, his eyes on his soulmate, ignoring the way that the Potters cowered. No, they didn’t matter right now, even though the way they had hurt Harry made Tom want to kill them. He slipped his arms around Harry and spoke down the bond, his face resting against the side of Harry’s neck.
What did they say?
Harry’s anger eddied and curled back on itself in currents, embarrassed now, not wanting to be shared. Tom kept one hand on the nape of his neck and steady pressure against the bond, comforting, encircling pressure.
Harry half-felt that he was being ridiculous and shouldn’t share something that would encourage Tom to dislike his parents, not surprisingly. But that half-feeling wasn’t enough to contain the anger, not this time, and neither was the love of his parents. He reached out, and his magic overlaid Tom’s like a membrane.
Tom barely had time for a gasp before he was sucked into a small corridor running behind what seemed to be the drawing room where Harry had been with his mother in the first memory they’d shared. A young Harry, his head bowed and his hand encircled around his right wrist, leaned against the wall near a doorway. Tom turned and listened.
“…just hard, Lily.” James Potter’s voice was tired and defeated. Tom’s lip curled. He couldn’t believe the man thought he had the right to feel that way, given what his son was showing right now.
“I know. But it’s done. We’ve told Harry about the need to hide from his soulmate. He’s very mature for his age. I’m sure he understands-”
“I know, but what kind of half-life is he going to have, denied his soulmate and running around with that lack of a bond? But we can’t have him go to Riddle and double his power.” There was a heavy thunk, as if James had leaned against a wall. “I’m so tired, Lily. Sometimes, I think-”
Silence as deep as velvet. Tom stared at the younger version of his soulmate, who stood there with his head bowed so his fringe hung in his eyes.
“What, James?”
“Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if Harry hadn’t been born at all,” James Potter’s voice whispered hoarsely. “Rather than have this kind of life-rather than be this kind of prize for a deranged madman.”
The pain that surged through the memory cut Tom like a blade of glass, so sharp and sudden that for a long moment he didn’t believe he’d been cut at all. And then the memory dropped away, fading into multicolored wisps around the image of Harry running silently down the corridor, and he was back in the kitchen.
And James Potter was pinned to the wall by an array of shimmering blades made of pure magic, blades that went straight through the cloth of his robes, outlining him, holding him still. He looked ready to vomit with fear.
“You told him that.” Tom didn’t recognize his own voice for a moment, knew it best by the burning as it slid out of his throat. “You implied that you wanted your own child dead.”
“No! No, I didn’t-I didn’t mean it-it was a moment of frustration-”
That was all James had a chance to say before Tom’s magic tied his throat shut. Tom smiled at him, knowing that his eyes had probably turned red with his madness. The first time they had done that was when he had seen the burn on his chest and known that it had obliterated his soul-mark. He moved closer.
“I will enjoy your death,” he whispered. “I’ll savor it. I’ll stretch it out until you’re sobbing with the desire to die, and you’ll know that the only reason you breathe is my pleasure-”
“Riddle!”
A curse came at him from the side. Tom’s magic flexed around him and batted it away. Probably from Lily Potter, he thought distantly. He heard the curse shatter something, but he couldn’t care. His eyes still feasted on James’s pain and discomfort, and he thought he would never grow tired of the sight.
“Tom.”
He felt that, a painful yank at the furthest edges of his swirling power. Tom turned and looked reluctantly at his soulmate.
His soulmate, who was an adult and gazing desperately at him. But Tom could still see the little boy who had heard his father dismiss him as an unwanted burden, who had heard one of the people who was supposed to love him unconditionally say that it would be better if he was never born.
The mere thought of Harry never existing was enough to drive Tom to the edge of madness. He started to turn around again.
“I said no, Tom.”
Tom closed his eyes and moved slowly, feeling as if he was dragging chains, to tie down his power and bind it close to his body. He hadn’t actually hurt James yet, hadn’t wounded him; the knives had all gone through cloth. The thought nearly maddened him again, but he breathed through a tight throat and asked, “Why?”
“Because he really didn’t mean it. I know he was sorry for it as soon as he said it. And I could hear my mum scolding him when I was running away.”
Tom turned his head, and Harry went still, but didn’t move away from Tom’s side where he had clutched his arm. “And you think that is enough?” Tom’s throat burned and rasped from the passage of his voice again. He saw something fall, hissing, onto the floor, eating a hole in the wood, and knew it for a manifestation of his magic. “You think he has paid?”
“I want to talk to him about it. I don’t want you to cut him to death.”
“I said his death would take a long time. I meant it.”
“Tom.”
No one else could have spoken to him in that tone, when he was in this mood, and won his compliance. But Harry was the strongest and the most brilliant prize he ever could have won. Tom snarled, but he folded his magic back from James, although he left the knives in place, then extended his power around Harry. Harry stood there, armed and armored against anyone who could have tried to touch him, against anyone who would have taken him away. Tom turned his head to stare at Harry’s parents again, and saw them quail.
Harry didn’t. Harry stood strong at his side.
He might not have existed-
Tom stamped down on his temper as he saw the walls begin to shake, and waited.
*
Harry sighed a little as he realized this was all he was going to get out of Tom. In a way, he couldn’t blame him. He had just heard that one of his soulmate’s parents had said-that.
But even though it was still hard to think the words, Harry felt an easing of the poison and the pain he had carried with him. The unsayable was said at last.
He turned to look at his father. His mother had her hands at her mouth, and made a soft sound when Harry glanced at her. Harry shook his head.
“Tom won’t let him down right now,” he said, and faced his father, and took a step towards him. James opened his eyes and looked at him.
Their faces were so similar. Their hair was so similar. Harry had been hearing that all his life, from Sirius and his dad and Dumbledore and his mum. His mum in particular seemed to want to reassure Harry that despite the awful soul-mark on his wrist, he still belonged with his family, and his parents still loved him.
But Harry had sometimes doubted their love. And memories like the one he’d overheard were the reason why.
“You really didn’t mean it?” he asked quietly.
James shook his head, and then stopped when his cheek brushed a knife. The swell of power behind Harry said that Tom would be happy to make the bump a cut. Harry reached back and pressed his fingers into Tom’s arm without turning away from his father. After a long pause, the magic sank down like water draining.
“No,” James whispered. “I would have given anything to change your fate-what I thought was your fate-but I only said that because I was tired and frustrated that day. And your mum chewed me out right afterwards.”
“I most certainly did,” Lily muttered, her voice frigid. Harry wasn’t sure all the coldness was for James, but at the moment, that didn’t gut him the way it once would have, either.
Staring at his father, Harry felt as though something was opening and blooming and settling in him, a power that had been furled for too long.
His parents had been his whole world before he started Hogwarts. He didn’t see Sirius or Dumbledore or the rest of them often enough to make a difference. His parents had been the ones who taught him, who told him about what his soul-mark was and why he could never be with his soulmate, who loved him despite whose mark he’d been born with, who encouraged him in the ideals of heroic sacrifice and self-denial.
He’d gone to Hogwarts shrunken into the same mold they’d put him in. He didn’t allow himself to get too close to his friends, even though he valued them, because they could never share in the immense secret he carried. Sometimes, the more he learned, like when he’d discovered he had a serpentine Animagus form, the worse he felt. He had started his attempts to get rid of the mark then, because he’d been away from his parents and sometimes felt tempted to rebel against them, and those impulses to rebellion horrified him and drove him into a more desperate kind of obedience.
But now, he’d grown beyond them. He didn’t have to rely on their approval and do exactly what they said from day to day any more. He no longer thought they were perfect and right and knew all sorts of things he didn’t.
He had met his fate, and it wasn’t the awful thing he had thought.
It wasn’t that his father’s words had ceased to hurt, but Harry had ceased to fear that his world was about to end because one of the two people who loved him really felt and thought that. He had more people who loved him, now, and he knew that. And he had become capable of seeing that his dad meant it when he said he hadn’t meant it.
“I can forgive you,” he said quietly.
“Harry.”
“I didn’t say I would do it right now,” Harry said, stepping back so that he could feel the heat from Tom’s body behind him. He was still looking at his father’s face, slack with fear and surprise. “But I said I can.” He took a deep breath and released it. “The way I never could when I was avoiding bringing it up for fear of what he would say.”
Tom’s hands tightened on his shoulders, and he bent his head so that he was hissing directly into Harry’s ear. “Am I ever going to get to take vengeance for you?”
Harry unfortunately couldn’t reply in the same language (yet), but kept his voice low enough as he looked back at Tom’s gleaming crimson eyes that he didn’t think either his mother or father heard. “Tell you what, how about when we catch up with Dumbledore?”
Tom was still as a dragon on a clutch for a long moment, and then he gave a jerk of his head. The magic once again retreated, back into Tom’s skin, wrapping around him closely enough that Harry could barely feel it brushing against his fingertips like a layer of silk.
He didn’t let go of Harry, and Harry didn’t really want him to. He nodded to his parents and murmured, “Tom?”
The knives pinning James’s robes to the walls disintegrated. Lily hurried forwards and knelt down next to him, her hands shaping his face and then his shoulders, although their bond would have told her at once if his dad was injured, Harry knew. Then she looked up at them and nodded. Her face was too full for words.
Tom spoke the words down their bond, instead. I think I have been patient enough.
Harry nodded. It would be best for everyone here if they left now. He turned around and towed Tom towards the door, at least as much as he was towed.
They passed Sirius on the way, and he gaped at them, his mouth open. It was kind of a miracle that he hadn’t interfered, Harry thought, and braced himself for more “godfatherly wisdom.”
But Sirius whispered, “Good luck.” Harry thought Sirius’s hand was covering his own black-edged soul-mark as they went out the door.
Tom Apparated them to his own home, and barely closed the door behind them before he pinned Harry to the wall with his magic much as he had James, kissing him fiercely. Harry lifted his head and returned it as best as he could from his cramped position.
I’m here. I promise I am.
And if Tom slept entwined around him that night, it was both perfectly understandable and no one’s business but theirs.
Chapter Thirty-Seven.