Chapter Sixteen of 'Jonquils and Lightning'- A Visit in Wisdom

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter One.

Title: Jonquils and Lightning (16/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, a few one-sided het pairings and canon het pairings
Content Notes: Angst, blood, dubious consent, dimension travel, OC’s
Rating: R
Summary: Harry Potter found peace after the war in another world where a large number of Potters live. He makes his living as an animal healer in Godric’s Hollow, surrounded by family and away from all wars. But his peace shatters with the arrival of a Tom Riddle from another dimension, who seeks a Potter who can be his foretold weapon in his own war.
Author’s Notes: At the moment, I can’t say how long this story will be.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Sixteen—A Visit in Wisdom

“Where are you going?” Tom’s voice was pleasant, but his strides lengthened until he was right beside Harry, and his hand was out as if he was going to grip his arm and restrain him.

Harry gave him a faint smile. “I’m going to talk to someone who can tell me what she thinks I should do—someone I trust more than anyone else. Dorea loves me, but she doesn’t know me very well. Jonquil would only advise me to do what would benefit her. And I know that you would also try to give me advice that would benefit you.”

“I’d like to come with you and meet your most trusted source of advice.”

Harry turned around and faced him. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tom. That would be a horrible idea.”

“Why?”

“Because they would recognize you. They knew the shards of soul that your alternate self hid in his Horcruxes. They wouldn’t listen to a word you said and they would spend all their time glaring at you instead of telling me the truth.”

Tom’s eyes widened. “You’re talking about stepping back through the portal that you held open to your original world.”

“Yes.”

“But how can this woman, whoever she is, advise you? You won’t be able to tell her that I’m a variation of Tom Riddle, either, or she’ll spend all her time arguing. But how can she give you honest advice if she doesn’t know the whole truth?”

Harry looked at Tom with admiration. “Honestly, I’m sorry that I can’t introduce you to Hermione. If she could understand you the way I do, then you would get along so well.”

“I don’t want anyone else to understand me the way you do,” Tom purred, and moved close enough to trail a single warm finger down Harry’s arm to his wrist.

Harry shivered. Tom was a lot more seductive when he wasn’t trying with the same focused intensity he’d used at first. Harry shook his head. “No one will,” he said, and backed away a step. “I have to go and talk to her, Tom, even if she won’t understand why I’m attracted to you. I just need—a few days away from here. Someone who doesn’t love Jonquil to tell me about her.”

“I don’t love Jonquil,” Tom said helpfully.

“You hate her,” Harry said, narrowing his eyes. He was sure that Tom hadn’t at first, and probably it still wasn’t the emotion that Tom could bring to bear on Dumbledore, but Harry didn’t want to encourage that emotion to get any stronger. “I’ve got to step away from here, Tom. From the situation here. To think about a lot of things.”

Tom was quiet for a moment, but then nodded. “Are you going to tell your friends that you’ve met someone?”

“Given that you’re part of the reason that I want to see them in the first place?” Harry smirked at him as he stepped away from the back gate of Dorea’s house and began the walk towards his world’s portal. “Of course.”

“That you’ve met someone exclusive?”

“Both of them know me well enough to know that if I’ve met someone, it has to be exclusive,” Harry said, and gently placed his hand on Tom’s arm. Tom was walking along beside him again. “Stay here, please. I’m not going to ask you to soothe Jonquil or the rest of my family, but I am going to ask you to let me go alone.”

“Even to your portal? I can’t walk you there? What if Dumbledore is lurking in the hills?”

Harry could have said that he was much better equipped to handle Dumbledore than Tom was, but a glance at Tom’s face showed him the real reason that Tom wanted to come. His face softening, he nodded. “Then come with me that far. No farther.”

*

Despite how difficult it was, Tom held to his word and watched Harry disappear into the sparkling portal that hung above the hills before he turned around to walk back to Godric’s Hollow.

He’d been aware of someone following them, and expected to see Albus. He had to pause when it was Jonquil instead, pale-faced and determined. Tom folded his arms.

For Harry’s sake, he would try not to utterly destroy his cousin with words, the way Tom knew he could. But he wasn’t going to spare Jonquil, either. He thought her a spoiled girl whose family worried about her overmuch. Had they given that concern to Harry instead, then Tom would have understood.

“I need to talk to you,” Jonquil said.

Tom nodded a little. “So talk.”

Now that she was here next to him, Jonquil didn’t appear to know what to say. She flushed vividly, and then she clenched her fingers into her palms and said, “I’m not attracted to you so much because you’re handsome—I mean, you’re handsome, but—it’s what you could offer me. Getting away from here and becoming someone.”

“But you don’t have any idea what you want to become, do you?” Tom asked. He watched Jonquil, his mind crystalline, thoughts that he’d never entertained before flying across it like comets. He still swarmed with anger at the memory of what had been done to Harry, but it had been, in this twisted way only, a blessing: Harry had never been left to stew in the uncertainty that was consuming Jonquil. He knew that he had to be a hero, so he went out and did it.

Tom had sometimes hated his own ambition, cursed it when it stretched strange wings and drove him in strange directions, but now he could bless it, too. He had never slowed down like Jonquil did because he had known what he wanted. Power, of all kinds. He studied magic and got revenge on those who bullied him and sought a means of immortality and courted the pure-bloods because of that. Yearning in no particular direction had driven him in all directions.

Jonquil had the yearning without the doing.

“I don’t,” Jonquil said. Tom thought that might be the most honest thing she’d ever said to him. “But I know that I have to get out of here. It’s killing my soul.”

Tom swallowed back the chuckle he wanted to give at that melodramatic declaration. He was only a year older than Jonquil, and he knew he’d never acted like that. “But what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then appealing to me wouldn’t have helped you anyway. I can help people achieve their goals. I can’t help anyone do something when they don’t know what they want themselves.”

Jonquil stared at him with flat eyes. Tom got the impression that he wasn’t supposed to say that. He shrugged. “If you have real ambition, then you’ll find your way to London or wherever else you mean to go soon enough.” He turned away, ready to Apparate. Walking back was losing its appeal.

“How am I supposed to go there? I don’t have any money!”

That made Tom pause. He’d never had the impression that the Potters were poor. “Why don’t you speak to your grandmother? She might have some Black money. I know she wants you to be happy. She’d probably give you enough to set you up with a flat near Diagon Alley, at least.” Jonquil might have to live in Muggle London, but he doubted a Potter would have the same sort of objection to that that he would.

“I don’t—I don’t want to ask her for help. I want to earn my own way.”

Tom didn’t really mean to laugh, but it just came welling out of him. Jonquil stiffened and stared at him in what looked like betrayal. Tom went on hooting. It was hard to stop. He managed to press a hand over his mouth and get himself to do it, finally, and he said, “So at one and the same time, you were thinking of going to another world and becoming some sort of Dark Lady, but you also want to succeed honestly. On your own terms. Without inherited money and advantages. Even though you’re already using those advantages.”

“Shut up! What do you mean?”

Tom stood there. Jonquil glared at him. Tom raised his eyebrows and said politely, “Sorry. I thought you wanted me to shut up.”

Jonquil looked as if she’d like to murder him, at the moment, but managed to restrain herself to a clench of her hand. “Tell me what you mean.”

“You wouldn’t have been allowed to just run around for the year after you graduated Hogwarts if you really didn’t have the Potter money and name behind you,” Tom said plainly. “You would have had to work, probably a lot harder than you have so far. That’s what I mean by you having those advantages. You have parents who love you. Family who loves you. A cousin who would do anything for you, even deny himself what he wants. Those aren’t small things. Fucking find a way.”

Jonquil was staring at him with her eyes wide open and her nostrils narrowed to slits, an odd combination. She took a step back from him. Then she held her ground, although it looked as if it took her a lot of nerve, and snapped, “But you could make things easy for me.”

“How?”

“If you told me what kind of magic you find in me, if you took me back to your world and inducted me into your cause—”

Tom sighed. It felt as though someone had laid a heavy iron cloak on his shoulders. “You don’t have any idea what my cause is. Who offers to join a cause they don’t know anything about?”

“I know it’s a war!”

“And that’s all you know about it,” Tom snapped at her. “You know that it’s different from here, and you think it’s grand and exciting because of that. You don’t know anything else. Maybe if you seemed interested or helpful, I would have told you.”

“I know you’ve told Harry…”

“Harry is not you. Frankly I don’t understand why he wants to sacrifice so much for you, either, but that’s his decision. Just like it’s mine not to indulge you and to tell you to get the hell out of my way.”

Jonquil stood there for a second, her face flushing more and more steadily, and then turned and marched back down the hill. Tom watched her go with a shake of his head. She might have been more interesting if she had been older or known what she wanted. But as it was, he would leave her as Harry’s problem. He wasn’t about to make her his.

Then Tom Apparated back to Godric’s Hollow, before Dumbledore could come up with some bright idea to waylay him.

*

“Harry.”

Hermione always sounded so relieved whenever she hugged him, as if she thought that he just disappeared when he left them instead of coming back to a loving family. Harry held her as tightly, though. The one thing he regretted about disappearing from this world were his best friends. If they had consented to come with him to his new world, he would have shut the portal behind him.

But they had their families here, just like he had his where he was now, and he understood their choices perfectly. Harry stepped back and smiled at her, only to accept Ron’s hug in return. “How’s your family, Ron?” he muttered into his best friend’s shoulder.

“Mum’s still missing you, you know.” But Ron didn’t press him too much on that, just saying it casually as he stepped away. “Ginny and Dean are engaged.” Harry grinned; he’d hoped that Ginny would put all lingering thoughts of him out of her head, and it looked like she’d done it. “George—he’s never going to go back to normal, I think, but he’s better now that he’s dating Angelina.”

Harry relaxed and sat down on the other side of the dining room table. Ron and Hermione had a beautiful house, a small one but one filled with light and the paintings that they’d bought from Dean and the glittering crystal, abstract shapes that George had made for a few years after Fred’s death. Ron went into the kitchen to get tea and biscuits while Hermione sat across from him and told him about Luna’s new animal sanctuary, Percy’s reforms at the Ministry, Charlie’s discovery of an herb that helped ease dragons’ way out of their eggs, and Arthur’s promotion.

It flowed past him, a life so normal and comfortable that Harry ached. But it wasn’t the kind of life he could have if he stayed here. There were too many demands in this world and too many people who thought they had the right to make those demands.

Hermione finally paused for breath and sipped a little of her tea that Ron had come back with, then grimaced and cast a Warming Charm on it. “So what about you, Harry? Is it still peaceful in your new world?”

“Yes and no. My family is fine. But there are intruders from another world…”

And Harry told them. He had thought about holding back the names, but there wasn’t any point. They wouldn’t be able to understand what agitated him so much if they didn’t know that those people were Tom and Dumbledore. Ron would just tell Harry to court and marry a “normal” girl, and get rid of anyone less powerful and persistent than Dumbledore.

And less beloved.

Harry would always feel ambivalent about his version of Dumbledore, but he would also always remember the times the man had saved him and trusted him and done the best he could, according to his own lights. It wasn’t simple.

Hermione’s hand went to her mouth and stayed there after Harry told them that this was Tom Riddle. Ron just gaped, then shut his mouth. Neither of them reacted calmly to the appearance of Dumbledore, but neither interrupted. Ron turned bright red. Hermione closed her eyes and listened to the rest of the story that way.

Hermione finally whispered, “Oh, Harry. What do you want?”

Harry nibbled the last biscuit he held all the way around before he replied. “I want to be happy. I want to be peaceful. I admire Tom, I’m attracted to him, but—in a way, I can’t help but wish he’d never come to Godric’s Hollow. He’s ripping up all my peace.”

“You want a normal life because you were denied one for so long.”

“Exactly.”

“And Dumbledore?” Ron asked, nose wrinkled as if he’d smelled something foul. “I mean, no offense, mate, but he sounds—horrible.”

“I know. I want him to leave, and I won’t let him hurt Tom. But I don’t want to hurt him, either. Just to stop him.”

“What do you think would happen if you told Tom that you want your normality back?” Hermione asked quietly. “Would he give it to you, or would he never stop trying to convince you?”

Harry had to snort, mostly because of the words that came to mind, not because he didn’t know the answer. “Tom bloody Riddle—or Gaunt, whatever his last name is in any world—doesn’t know what enough means,” he muttered. “No, I’m sure that he would keep trying to convince me to come with him, or at least do what he suggested. Hold his portal open with my magic so he could come back for visits, I mean.”

“And would that be such a bad thing?”

“Hermione!” Ron interjected. “Of course it would be! Listen to who you’re talking about, here.”

“This Tom never made a Horcrux,” Harry reminded him. “That’s already one huge difference. And like I said, there are things I really, really like about him. But I don’t want to upset Jonquil, either.”

“Well, Tom isn’t going to stop trying to persuade you,” Hermione said. “And Jonquil isn’t going to get over this tomorrow. So you have to decide what you want. You can’t guide your actions by what would make them happy, because they want different things.”

Harry blinked. “Yeah, I mean, I knew that.”

“I think you would keep on trying to make them both happy.”

“I did practically promise Jonquil that I wouldn’t sleep with Tom again.”

“You shouldn’t keep that promise if you don’t want to,” Hermione said at once, quick, clear-eyed, soft. “You should sacrifice part of your magic to hold that portal open if you want to, Harry. But only if you want to. You should send Dumbledore back to his own world and tell Jonquil to get over it if you want to. You won’t get back the same peace you had, I think. If only because you would miss Tom when he goes back to his world. You’ll need to fight your way to a different kind of peace.”

“I can’t believe that you call him Tom as if that doesn’t matter,” Ron broke in.

“He’s really not the same person I fought. I think I can accept that now.”

Ron rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine. Then I agree with Hermione. Do what you want. Don’t act as though Jonquil’s resentment or Tom’s desire to have you go back to his world with him are the things that matter most. I mean, mate, consider this. You found someone to sleep with in another world when you never found anyone here. That has to mean something, right?”

Harry closed his eyes and finally confronted what he’d been denying. When he was around Tom, dueling him or sleeping with him or listening to him talk or plotting with him against his world’s Dumbledore, he felt more. The ache he felt when he saw the pain in Jonquil’s eyes—

It just didn’t matter as much to him.

Harry swallowed back bitterness. He’d never wanted to hurt her.

But he might not have a choice, as Hermione had pointed out.

He opened his eyes. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’m going to go back home and tell Tom that—that I’m his if he wants me.”

“And I think you know,” Hermione said, as she reached out and put a hand on his, “that for him it’s not a question.”

Harry looked down at the table. “Yeah,” he whispered again.

The realization dizzied him, that he was going to risk the happiness he’d wanted so much on the chance of love.

Ron leaned on his shoulder from the side and said, “Enough of that. Tell us about Dorea and Arthur and other people who aren’t Jonquil.”

And Harry let the sense of having his life shifted go for now, to connect with what he had left behind, but would never forget.