Chapter Thirty-Seven of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Gaps
Chapter Thirty-Six.
Chapter One.
Title: His Darkest Devotion (37/?)
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-Seven-Gaps
“I have to talk to you, Harry.”
Sirius hoped that his tone and the expression on his face-pathetic, he knew that-would be enough for Harry to let him stay. Harry studied him over the cup of tea he’d been making when Sirius walked into Riddle’s kitchen. He didn’t offer any to Sirius, and that had changed from the young man Sirius had known, too.
Then again, Sirius had to reevaluate, often, how much of that young man he had actually known. For one thing, he hadn’t known about the soul-mark that had defined Harry’s entire life. And that was something he still couldn’t get used to.
Harry nodded, finally, and said, “All right,” waving at a chair across the table from him. Sirius took it with a sense of relief. He wasn’t being thrown out right away, and that was something.
“Tom is still asleep,” Harry added in a waring tone as he sat down not quite straight across from Sirius. “I don’t want you to do anything that’ll wake him up.”
“That’s a pretty broad-”
“I mean it, Sirius.”
Sirius eyed Harry, and then sighed and nodded. “Fine. I won’t.”
“Good.” Harry smiled at him, and it made Sirius’s chest ache to see how much the smile still looked like that of the boy he had tossed in the air and spoiled and cherished when he was younger. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Sirius stared at his hands. This wasn’t the bold and confident way he had envisioned announcing the news. But then again, he had only come to this realization with the help of his Mind-Healer, and he wouldn’t have told Harry about it at all if he hadn’t known that Harry was also seeing a Mind-Healer.
“I realized that a large part of Remus rejecting the bond was me,” he said. “For years I went around telling myself that Remus was just too sensitive and our bond couldn’t have been that deep if he turned his back on me the first chance he got. But now I know that I-I used him as a weapon.”
“All right,” Harry said, his voice so soft Sirius couldn’t tell what he was feeling. And, at the moment, he couldn’t look up at him, either. “Are you going to try to find Remus and bring him back? Are you going to apologize?”
“I-don’t actually need to reach out to him. I got a letter from him.”
Harry blinked at him, and then sat back a little. “Did you want me to read it?”
“Yes,” Sirius said, so relieved that he wouldn’t have to ask for a favor that his voice rose a little. Harry looked at him sternly, and Sirius coughed. Right, pseudo-Dark Lord asleep in the other room. He took the parchment that was folded over eight times out of his pocket and extended it to Harry.
Harry unfolded it and read it in silence. That didn’t matter. Sirius had stared at it so many times over the last few days that the words were embedded in his mind.
Dear Sirius,
I can’t pretend that writing this letter is pleasant for me. I’ve thought over and over again about coming back, but I never wanted to. I didn’t know what I’d find. Why would you resume the soul-bond when I’d rejected it?
But now, the more I think about it, the more I decide that this is a new kind of world. I read in the papers about your godson and the Minister. That’s something I never knew about, and I have to think that you didn’t, either, or you would have tried to tell me about it before now and use that to convince me to return. This is something so different that maybe, just maybe, it’s changed you, too. Maybe I have a chance of having a different bond with you.
I’m still thinking about it. I want to see you how respond to this letter. If you’re the same childish prankster you always were, I’ll just stay here.
But maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to.
Sirius waited for longer than he’d expected. He supposed Harry was going over and over the letter, but he didn’t know why. Harry had never known Remus and wouldn’t be able to tell anything about whether he was sincere. Finally, just barely remembering to keep his voice low, he asked, “What do you think?”
Harry glanced up from the letter and fixed Sirius with a hard, considering gaze that again made it clear just how much he’d changed. He wouldn’t have done that a year ago, a month ago. He shook his head a little and asked, “Have you tried to reach Remus with your telepathy?”
“I’ve reached out,” Sirius admitted. “He never answers. Just like he never answered my owls before now.”
“And he never met me.”
“No. I did try to write to him about you a few times, but-” Sirius shrugged. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“I just wonder why my bonding with Tom would make such a huge difference to him.” Harry thoughtfully turned the letter over. “Dad told me that Lupin didn’t want to go to Mind-Healing under the conditions that would have bound him because he was a werewolf. He has no reason to like or trust Tom. Would he really want to come back because of that?”
“You think he’s lying?”
“I think it could be a trap.”
It didn’t take Sirius long to figure out what Harry was thinking, and he couldn’t help but scowl a little when he realized it. “From Dumbledore.”
Harry handed the letter back to him. “Do you think he would stop at anything to try and break my bond with Tom?”
“No, but-” Sirius licked his lips and considered what he was going to say for a moment, which would probably have made his Mind-Healer proud of him. But in the end, with Harry sipping his tea and giving him that straightforward stare, he said it anyway. “Sometimes things aren’t about you, Harry. Maybe Riddle thinks he’s the center of the universe, but you know that you’re not.”
“He is the center of mine, and that is enough.” Riddle walked bare-chested out of the bedroom and bent over to touch Harry’s cheek with his fingertips like a kiss. His eyes remained on Sirius the whole time, of course, the bastard, testing to see how he would react.
Harry tipped his head back, and his expression blazed with adoration. Given that, Sirius swallowed what else he would have said.
At least one of them could be happy.
“But not the center of mine,” Sirius countered, when he could drag his mind away from the insults he wanted to launch at Riddle, and which would just get him thrown out. “I need advice about meeting with my soulmate, and I don’t think it’s a trap from Dumbledore.”
“If you think that, then you have already decided against any advice I would have given.” Riddle shrugged in a way that Sirius hated having to admit was elegant, and sat down in the chair next to Harry’s. When he reached for tea and a scone, Harry nudged them both towards him, and then looped an arm around his shoulders and looked at Sirius.
“Have you tried-”
Sirius shook his head hard. He didn’t want Harry to discuss anything more specific than they already had in front of Riddle.
Harry sighed, but shrugged. “Fine. Then I don’t know what to tell you, Sirius. I told you why the letter seemed a little strange to me, but you want to go meet him, and I can’t change your mind. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Sirius said, a bit sullenly. He hadn’t thought that Harry would put it that bluntly.
“Then take someone with you, at least,” Harry said. “From what you told me about him, Remus is pretty emotional. Maybe he’ll want to shake you, or yell at you, or play a prank, for all I know.”
“You think I need protection from my own soulmate?” Sirius sat up in his chair, glad to have something to fight about.
“I think that you don’t really know each other anymore, and this is the soulmate who rejected you,” Harry said coolly. “I also know that picking up the bond again isn’t as simple as running up to him and hugging him. Think, Sirius. Why does he want to reach out to you now and not earlier?”
“You read the letter.”
“I read the strange letter. I’m only trying to spare you the kind of disappointment that-”
“You were denied your soulmate for a long time! You’re the last person I thought would try and deny me mine.”
Harry put his hand over his eyes and sat there for a minute. Sirius couldn’t help glancing warily at Riddle, waiting for the moment the man would strike at him for having irritated Harry. But Riddle only blinked lazy, snake-like eyes at him, and said nothing. Sirius supposed that there were different levels of irritation.
“Do what you want, then,” Harry muttered. “But the next time you need advice, go ask someone else.” He snatched up a scone and walked out of the room.
Sirius blinked after him. “He’s that upset I didn’t take his advice?” he asked, not really expecting an answer from Riddle.
“Rather, that you’re ignoring it,” Riddle said dryly, and stood up and followed Harry.
Sirius sat there for a few more minutes to make a point, but in the end, after another cup of tea, he departed. And his resolve hardened as he stalked over to the Apparition point.
He was going to meet Remus. He was going to do his best to pick up their bond where they had left off. And so what if there was some strangeness in the letter? Anyone would sound strange writing to their soulmate after so many years apart.
He would have to find an owl as soon as he got home.
*
“Please tell me that some people will go with Sirius.”
“Of course, Harry. I won’t let the idiot get killed because he wants to prove something. And it will annoy him so. It will be amusing.”
Harry leaned back in his chair and sighed as he felt Tom’s arm wind around his shoulders. “You enjoy annoying people, don’t you?”
“Not everyone. Most of my political enemies, I either strive to keep under control or destroy. It’s only people whom you value for some reason and want to keep around that I enjoy annoying, because I don’t have any other way to show my dislike for them.”
Harry paused a little. Then he turned his head towards Tom. Tom was basking like a cat in sunlight, his head tilted to the side. Their bond was the sunlight, and Harry knew it.
“Do you hate them that much?” he asked.
“They kept you from me.” Tom spoke lazily, still like a cat, without a trace of the rage that had driven him last night. “They have talents and minds of their own, but they listened to Dumbledore and followed him without once thinking of the consequences. Of course I hate them.”
“Sirius wasn’t involved in keeping me from you. He didn’t know anything about my mark.”
Tom’s eyes opened, and he turned his head, a tide of cold already pouring down the bond. Harry winced, but held Tom’s gaze. It was difficult. Nothing compared to not flinching back from the bond, though.
“He cast the spell that could have unraveled us. Or did you forget?”
Harry sighed. “No, I didn’t forget,” he said aloud, because right now the silent communication of the bond would have felt too intimate. “But I hoped that we could both forgive that.”
“No.”
Harry stared at Tom this time, and his own anger helped him master the impulse to turn away. “Why not? I know you don’t care about my parents and Sirius, not really. The only reason they matter to you is because they’re connected to me. You didn’t even really care about them as fugitives, or you would have told the Aurors to make them a priority. Why can’t you just let their actions go?”
“Because they are a threat to you.”
“No, they’re not.”
“Harry. Listen to me.”
It wasn’t often that Tom got that tone in his voice, and Harry didn’t think he’d heard it since they bonded fully, at least. Harry leaned a little further back and resisted the temptation to pick up something from the table to munch on. He didn’t want to look as if he was paying less than full attention to Tom’s words.
Tom’s hand stroked the side of his neck like a harpstring. Harry’s eyes closed in spite of himself.
“They are a threat to you not because they hate you, or because they truly believe that they can keep us apart any longer,” Tom said. “They are one because they love you, too much, and refuse to consider that they might be wrong.”
“After last night-”
“It is possible that that might have shocked your parents into realizing the truth,” Tom agreed, without allowing Harry to finish his sentence. “Or it might have hardened their hearts and convinced them I am a horrible person and shouldn’t be with you.”
Harry sighed and leaned his head on Tom’s shoulder for a moment. “At least you allow for the possibility.”
“I want them away from you.”
“No.”
“Harry-”
“It’s your turn to listen to me,” Harry said, and to his credit, Tom fell silent, although he was watching Harry’s mouth with the kind of intense concentration that Harry thought meant Tom might be paying more attention to his lips than his words. “You’re right that they’re more rooted in their delusions than I thought. And they distrust and fear you because of your politics even though they know that about eighty percent of that was made up by Dumbledore.”
Tom’s arm curled harder around his shoulders, and the bond murmured, Only eighty percent?
Harry gave him a thin-lipped smile and kept speaking, not letting himself be distracted. “But on the other hand, they never knew how much they’d hurt me with comments like wishing I hadn’t been-born with your soul-mark. Because I kept it to myself, and I let them think that I was happy to reject you. Or at least happy to do my part in the war.”
“They should not have had to hear it from you,” Tom snarled, his eyes turning the color of garnets. “They should have known that that was beyond an awful thing to hear, to say-”
“And you wouldn’t care about how awful it was if it was said to some child who wasn’t me, even if that child had also been deprived of their soulmate.”
Tom stared at him in what Harry could feel from the bond was true incomprehension. Harry sighed and shook his head a little, fondly. “I mean that you’re not objecting because of the principle of the thing, or because you think that parents in general shouldn’t do that. You’re objecting because it’s me.”
Tom lowered his head so that his chin rested against the side of Harry’s neck. “Yes.”
Harry nodded. “So. I still want my parents as part of my life. But,” he added, to stem the snarl that he could feel Tom getting ready to utter, “not in the same way they were before, where I just forgave them everything and they rushed around doing things for the Order and not thinking about the effects on me.”
“There’s no Order now.”
“I mean, Tom,” Harry said, and reached out to pull Tom’s head around so that they were face-to-face, “that the same way I’m a chain on your conscience and I could keep you from doing truly terrible things, you’re a chain on my martyr complex. I want to get along with my parents, but I can’t forgive them that easily. You’re here to make sure I don’t do that.”
Tom blinked a little. “So what kind of relationship do you want with them?”
“An adult one,” Harry said firmly. “Where we both understand that we’re flawed people, and we give up the image of the past where someone was a perfect hero. Honestly, the way they taught me about heroism makes me a little queasy now. They insisted I was a hero for bearing with your soul-mark, and then that I could be one by staying in the Ministry, hidden, and feeding them a little information now and then. It was false all the way around. I need to shake that image. Mind-Healer Laufrey is helping, and you’re more than helping. And I need to realize that my parents aren’t the shining beacons of courage I once thought they were, or terrible people, either.”
“They are terrible people.”
“I depended almost solely on them for decades-”
“You should not have had to-”
“I can’t just forget what they did!”
Tom drew in a sharp breath, and Harry looked down to find that he had cracked the table in half with nothing more than a sharp blow of his hand. As he stared, the two halves of the table wobbled back and forth, and then one of them fell over. He shook his head as he watched its legs waver back and forth in the air.
“You are magnificent.”
Harry jerked his head up. Tom had gone from one mood to another in instants, and was leading towards Harry now, his eyes smoldering more than slightly red. The boiling magic in the air around them manifested as squiggles of black and crimson.
“I have never seen someone do what you just did,” Tom continued, his voice soft and musing. “Not even those who aimed to do it.”
Harry cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “I mean, I can’t imagine that most people you know are aiming to crack tables-”
“That was merely the physical manifestation of the almost impossible thing you were doing,” Tom countered, his eyebrows flowing up his face, as if he couldn’t believe Harry didn’t know this. “You were channeling your magic through your body as if your body were a wand, without cracking your bones or otherwise hurting yourself. That is rare, Harry.”
“But it must happen all the time with accidental magic?”
Tom sighed at him. “I know that you deliberately held yourself back in the magical theory classes at Hogwarts so you wouldn’t attract my attention, but you should know enough by now to realize why that is a ridiculous statement. Think about it. Why is it?”
Harry closed his eyes and forced himself to recall ancient lessons from books that he had spent more time investigating for information on soulmates than anything else. “Because…accidental magic is the magic erupting outside the user’s body?”
“Exactly. If we didn’t teach them to use wands, many children would just keep manifesting their magic that way, which is exhausting and half the time doesn’t have the results we want anyway.”
Harry nodded, thinking about the time that he had wanted to make his broom fly faster and had made it so heavy that it fell to the ground instead. “And why is it so hard to channel it through your body instead?”
“Because we get used enough to wands that we assume our bodies can function like them. But wands have their cores and their wood to mute and direct the magic. Our bodies do not.”
Harry grimaced as he imagined the strain on the bones and flesh that Tom was probably talking about. “But someone else must have done it.”
“I meant when I said that I have seen no one else do that.” Tom took his hand and kissed it. “But I have felt someone do it.”
“You,” Harry said, because of course it couldn’t be anyone else. Tom would have tracked down the person who did it and made them part of his Ministry otherwise.
Tom tilted his head in response. “Yes, and even I did it with long and careful study, as I had no wish to incapacitate myself in front of people who would pounce on a hint of weakness. You did it without thinking.” Now the magic had come to circle tightly around his body, and his eyes and the bond were both gleeful.
“That should frighten you.”
“Why? I know you will not do it to me, and that is all I need to know.”
Harry sighed and leaned back against him. Tom’s hand touched his shoulder and rested there. Harry felt his support down the bond, but there was also a large, clear, golden-tinted current of lust and smugness.
“We were arguing about my parents,” Harry said. “I’m not going to lose them again just because of you. It was your say-so and their actions that got them exiled last time. I won’t just forgive them mindlessly, but I won’t forget them.”
Tom moved in a way that Harry knew meant was reluctant, but the current was still flowing towards him, carrying the same emotions. “Agreed,” Tom eventually murmured.
Are you really changing your mind just because I showed you magic that you’ve been the only one to perform in the past? I thought you were going to kill my father last night.
Magic matters more to me than your parents. You matter more than anything. I will not forget about them, either. And if they need chastising, I will be there to provide it. But I think they have received what they needed, for now.
Harry grimaced and nodded. He hadn’t forgotten the looks in his father’s face or his mother’s eyes, which had conveyed their emotions to him as strongly as if he’d had an emotional bond with them, too
“I’ll go and speak to them later.”
“And you don’t want me to come along,” Tom said, leaning back and removing his hand from Harry’s shoulder.
Harry stilled the flare of worry that this would make Tom back away from him and never come back. He had seen how tightly Tom clung to the merest mention of his soulmate. Rejection was one thing he never had to worry about. “That’s right,” he said, and held Tom’s eyes.
Tom was the one to look away first, and grunt a little. “Make sure they understand how lucky they are to still have you.”
“I hope that’s a realization they’ve already come to themselves,” Harry said, and finished his tea.
*
“Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.”
Lily gave Harry what she knew was a watery smile, and leaned up to embrace him. He touched her back, lightly, and Lily wished for a moment that she could know his emotions the way she did with James.
“Hi, Dad.”
Harry said it more heavily, and Lily winced, but held her tongue and glanced over her shoulder. James was sitting at the table staring into his teacup. His emotions had retreated to a low, thrumming level that made her feel as if she was standing with her shoulders against the boot of a Muggle car.
“James,” Lily prompted after a second.
Her soulmate sighed and tilted his chair back until his feet were hooked under the top of the table. “Hi, son,” he said.
Harry blinked at him for a second. Lily wondered whether he would summon his soulmate, whether this amounted to disrespect that would drive Riddle into rage again-
And then Harry laughed.
Lily smiled, but she had to admit she wasn’t really sure what they were smiling about. She glanced at James again, and found him blinking and sitting up. A trickle of stronger feeling came down the bond, and she asked, Did you think that he was going to kill you?
I thought Riddle might.
Lily winced, because she couldn’t deny thinking that herself, and turned back to Harry. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t mention the way James is acting to Riddle,” she said.
“I don’t have any problems with the way he’s acting,” Harry said, in a baffling way, and sat down at another chair at the table, not the one he’d taken last night, twisting his own chair around so that he could smile at them. “I just think it’s funny.”
“Nearly wanting me killed is funny?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Is something wrong with your ears, Dad? No, the way you’re acting now is funny. You’re acting like a sulky child, and I’m the one who would have a right to do that if anyone did. I just think it’s amusing.”
“Why?” Lily asked, sitting down from across him, but still within reaching and touching distance of James if she needed to be. From the way James was wordlessly opening and closing his mouth, she thought she might need to be. “I don’t-there seems to be so much unsaid between us, Harry, and I don’t want it go unsaid anymore.”
Harry smiled at her and nodded. “Well, first of all, you should know that you aren’t going to persuade me to leave him. The sacrifice that you forced me to make for years and years is over. I’m not going to resume it.”
Lily swallowed, and nodded. She had spent a lot of time thinking last night, even after James went to sleep, when she was sure her thoughts wouldn’t disturb him. And she had come to the conclusion that while her initial perception of Riddle as a madman wasn’t right, and neither was her secondary perception of him as someone simply devoted to Harry, and she had no idea where the truth lay, Harry wasn’t going to walk away from him.
“You still should,” James whispered, and ignored the sharp prod that Lily sent down their bond. “Someone capable of holding your father up against the wall and threatening to kill him…”
“You’re still friends with someone who used his own soulmate as a weapon to try and kill someone he didn’t like,” Harry said, his magic flaring with a cascade of colors that passed too quickly for Lily to retain more than an impression that they existed. “So don’t tell me what’s moral and all that rot.”
James opened his mouth, then closed it and hung his head. Lily put a hand on his arm and took a bracing breath. “Is your soulmate going to require us to answer for what we did?”
“Not unless you hurt me again.” Harry lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “But honestly, the only thing keeping you alive right now is the fact that he knows I value you.”
Lily blinked and stared at the boy, the man, sitting across the table from her, who was not the one she’d thought she’d raised. “Harry,” she breathed. “I-how can you say that so coolly?”
“I was by myself a lot when I was younger,” Harry said, seemingly randomly, but Lily doubted it was randomly to him, so she swallowed the temptation to snap at him and listened instead. “I learned that I wasn’t to make too much noise or too many demands. You didn’t take me to play with other kids because they might see my mark. You didn’t dare let me have hope that my love could somehow change my soulmate, because you knew he was an evil man. You educated me carefully to be a hero.”
“We didn’t mean you to be a martyr,” James whispered.
“Not have the attitude of one, no.” Harry looked at James for a moment with a pitying smile, and Lily blinked. How much of this was new, and how much of this had been under the surface, Harry never wanting them to see it? She had no idea. “But you did raise me to give up what you saw as the most important thing in the world.”
“There are other important things! Freedom, and friendships, and-”
“But you didn’t act like that.” Harry raised his eyebrows, and the pity crept into his eyes. “I lost count of the number of times that you told me Mum was the most important person in your life and the best thing ever to happen to you, and Mum just got tears in her eyes whenever she looked at my mark.”
Lily closed her eyes. So this was what he had come to tell them. That part of the reason Riddle had claimed him so strongly was their fault.
If we had played it more cautiously, convinced Harry that there are indeed other important things-
But we always knew who his soulmate was, James insisted. What else could we have told him?
We could have tried harder to find out the truth about Riddle. We’re smart people, James. I know that if we didn’t see the truth of Riddle before now, then it’s because we refused to see. Lily swallowed back words she might have said and opened her eyes. “Does Riddle intend to let us live?” she asked bluntly.
Harry stared at her for a second, as if he couldn’t believe she had asked the question. Then he nodded. “I already said that. He knows how important you are to me, and that I’d be upset if he killed you. He might not leave us alone for very long, though, depending on what he can feel through the bond.”
“What a moral, upstanding man,” James muttered. “The only reason he spares us is because we’re important to you.”
“Hypocrite,” Harry said, calmly, but the word still struck Lily, given that Harry had never said anything like that to his father before. “The only reason you didn’t kill him before we ever met is because you didn’t have the power. And you would have killed him even knowing that it would have crippled me emotionally, and maybe made me commit suicide. He cares about my life more than you did.”
James stared at him again. Harry stared back. Lily swallowed. She had never noticed how much their eyes resembled each other’s before, despite Harry’s color being hers, and how stubborn they could both look.
“We never thought there was a way to free you from the curse of being his soulmate,” James whispered.
“It’s not a curse.”
“You only think that way because you’re so close to him! He’s done horrible things-”
“And so did you, you fucker.” Harry’s voice had cooled down to the point that Lily wasn’t surprised to see thin threads of ice appear on the table. “You collaborated with Dumbledore in an effort to kill Tom and hundreds of innocent people, including me. You kept me isolated and said and did horrible things to me. Even now, you act as if Tom is worse than anyone in the world. You still haven’t shed the remnants of your time licking Dumbledore’s arse. Tell me, how does it feel to have it shoved up there so deep that you want me to disown my soulmate? I was thinking it was a mistake that you targeted that building I was in that day and that you said you wished I hadn’t been born because you were just so frustrated, but it’s more and more sounding like you don’t care if I die, as long as Tom goes with me.”
The thick silence sat between all of them at the table. Harry was breathing harshly, glaring at James, whose eyes were wide open and who sat perfectly still. All Lily could feel down their bond was static, as if James was a telly.
“It’s not like that,” James finally whispered.
“Yeah, I know what it’s like.” Harry swept a hand through his hair. It was shaking, but Lily didn’t think it was with fear or sadness. “I know that you hate him so much more than you love me.”
“No!” Lily started to her feet. “Harry-”
“You acted like you could accept him at first, Mum. The last I knew, you thought Dumbledore was worse. What changed?”
Lily swallowed, and swallowed again. She didn’t know the answer to that, or so she wanted to say.
But the words welled out when she opened her mouth, as if they had been waiting there on their own for her to recognize them.
“I thought you never would accept him,” she whispered. “That you would turn your back on him when you found out what a terrible man he is. Or that he would change completely because it would be the only way he could have you. And instead he’s stayed the same, and you’re the one changing.”
Harry closed his eyes and exhaled what sounded like a lot of rage. Then he said, “It’s unrealistic to expect a person to just change to conform to someone’s standards, Mum. I’m changing Tom, but slowly. And if you really did expect that, then you’re as much of a hypocrite as Dad is. You didn’t change your beliefs about Tom despite having pretty excellent reasons to do it, right? And you still think it would be better if I wasn’t soulmated to him. If we didn’t have a complete bond.”
Lily shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to feel. The static that seemed to have infested her bond with James was blooming and roiling in the middle of her mind now.
Harry shook his head in response. “I came over here hoping that we could talk about having a fully adult relationship, is the way I put it to Tom,” he muttered, and pushed his chair back from the table roughly. “But I suppose I had too much hope and too much faith in you. You’re still too wrapped up in the fact that Tom is my soulmate to think about anything else. Well, I’ll let things cool down for a while and see if they improve.” He turned and strode for the kitchen door.
“Harry.”
James croaked those words, and not Lily. Lily supposed that was to be expected. She was still too full of words, and too closed.
Harry glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“I never wanted you dead.”
“At the moment, I’m not ready to believe that,” Harry said, and shut the door behind him.
James collapsed back into his seat and put his head between his hands. Lily wrapped her arm around his shoulders and sat down next to him. They leaned on each other, their bond shivering like leaves in high wind.
How does this feel so much worse than what we faced last night, with Riddle actually threatening James?
Lily closed her eyes and decided to think about that question. It wasn’t as if she would be able to do much else, right now.
*
Tom knew his part, and had since the bond rippled with fire on Harry’s end. He didn’t go to the Potters’ flat, despite what he had said earlier. This kind of anger wasn’t pure pain, although it was mixed with pain.
It felt, in fact, like the kind of emotion Tom had been waiting for Harry to feel for a long time.
The door to the house tore open and Harry stepped inside, not bothering to use his hands to close it, either. He marched across the kitchen and flung himself into the chair next to Tom, leaning his head on his shoulder.
Tom stroked his hair, and said not one word, either aloud or telepathically.
“I feel like they think me dying would be an acceptable price to get rid of you,” Harry whispered at last.
Tom curled himself closer around his bondmate. He kept his own fury carefully banked. It was easier than he’d expected, certainly easier than it had been last night. What mattered now was holding Harry safe and giving him as much protection as he could, and exploding in rage would force Harry to pay attention to him instead.
Harry pressed closer, and closer, and then said, “I want to go with you to the Wizengamot today. I want to talk to them. I want to see what they talk about. I want-I want to think about something else.”
Tom smiled. “You will be most welcome. At least, welcome at my side.”
“At the moment,” Harry said thoughtfully, “I don’t care how uncomfortable I’m making anyone else.”
And the emotions he sent down the bond were also ones that Tom had long waited for Harry to feel.