Chapter Two of 'Lightning and War'- Tom's Inner Circle

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One.

Title: Lightning and War (2/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, a few het and slash background pairings mentioned
Content Notes: Established relationship, angst, violence, dimension travel
Rating: R
Summary: Harry and Tom are pursuing Harry’s cousin Jonquil Potter into Tom’s dangerous, paranoia-ridden world. In addition to finding Jonquil, they need to deal with Dumbledore, Tom’s associates, and dangerous fluctuations in Harry’s magic. Sequel to Jonquils and Lightning.
Author’s Notes: This story involves a lot of background that won’t make much sense without having read the prequel. At the moment, I don’t know how long this story will be or if it will be the last in the series.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Tom’s Inner Circle

“Harry, these are Abraxas Malfoy, Phillip Lestrange, and Roland Avery.”

Harry stood calmly at Tom’s side, his eyes resting on the faces of Tom’s followers. He didn’t have his wand out, which Roland did, because nothing Tom had done had managed to cure the git of his paranoia. He didn’t have a hostile, burning sideways glance, the way Philip did. He didn’t have Abraxas’s completely blank expression.

And yet even a fool wouldn’t have mistaken Harry for anything but the most trusted and competent of them. Tom was glad that he hadn’t chosen fools to follow him.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Harry said quietly. He had his hands linked together behind his back now. He actually stepped away from Tom as if he was going to take one of the back ring of chairs against the wall, waiting for the others who would be summoned later. Tom shook his head and grabbed the nape of Harry’s neck.

Harry’s eyelashes fluttered before he could stop himself, apparently, since he glared at Tom a moment later. Tom smiled and drew Harry back to his side.

Yes, that was jealousy on Abraxas’s face. Not that he’d thought he had a romantic chance with Tom, but he had thought he was closest, the one Tom would choose if he had to prefer someone above his other followers. Tom wasn’t all that sorry to disappoint him.

“Gentlemen,” Tom said, collecting their attention at once. He didn’t raise his voice. He never did when talking to political allies or friends. It was only fitting that they should have to listen harder to him. “Harry has come with me through the portal to find his cousin. She was the one who passed through it a few days ago.”

“Do you know what happened to her?” Harry asked instantly.

Philip flicked an eyebrow at him. “No idea. We know someone came through because I was watching the portal at the time, but I don’t know what Dumbledore’s men did with her. I heard a discussion that didn’t seem hostile. Then they Apparated somewhere.”

Harry firmed his jaw. Tom adored that look, but he did wish it was for him, even a mistake that he’d made, rather than bloody Jonquil. “We’ll find her.”

“Yes, we will,” Tom said, drawing his followers’ attention back to himself. “Now. I would like you to consider the most important news that happened during the weeks I was gone. I want you to tell it to me in chronological order when you’ve finished considering.”

He leaned back in his chair. Harry took the one next to him at a pointed look, but he still seemed as if he’d rather be back in the shadows, or out the door searching for Jonquil. Tom rested his hand on Harry’s arm. He felt the restless heat shimmering there, like a captured fire.

“We will find her,” Tom said, and Harry glanced at him and finally relaxed completely, shutting his eyes and tilting his head back.

Tom turned back to his followers and nearly laughed aloud. They were staring at him with open mouths. Tom let his own eyebrows creep up, and got instant shutting of mouths and focus that he liked.

“Dumbledore also went through the portal thanks to a blood sacrifice,” Tom said. “We somewhat inconvenienced him in Harry’s world, such as that he can’t come back here for a month.” He didn’t intend to tell them exactly how Dumbledore had been inconvenienced, since they then might despise Harry for not having that level of power anymore. “We may, however, have less or more than a month, given the flow of time on different sides of the door. We need to move fast.”

“Yes, my lord,” Abraxas said, inclining his head. “What do you intend to do to take advantage of Dumbledore’s absence?”

“Release our blackmail.”

Roland started, and turned away from aiming his wand at Harry for the first time. “My lord?”

“All of it,” Tom continued, enjoying getting to see Philip’s tonsils and the whites of Abraxas’s eyes that he hadn’t known existed. “We’ll approach the Prophet first, but if we can’t find a reporter willing to take the case, then we’ll Obliviate the one we asked, and release the information on scraps of paper that we’ll distribute to every wizarding community in Britain. Abraxas, I’ll need your family’s Granians for that.”

“But what do you intend to do?” Philip asked. “Please, my lord, we’ve spent years collecting that information! Help us understand?”

“I intend to destroy the public’s confidence in Dumbledore’s government,” Tom said. He kept a deliberately bland tone, the better to watch their faces strain to express their astonishment. “We have blackmail on almost everyone he’s put in a prominent position in the Ministry. With all of it spread out like this, we have a chance to shake that Ministry to the ground. Or at least the tower Dumbledore has built out of his popularity.”

“We don’t have near enough blackmail on Dumbledore himself, though, my lord. He might lose all his supporters and still go on. We don’t have anything that can counteract the effect the Grindelwald War had on the public.”

“I know someone who might,” Tom said, and turned to face Harry.

*

Harry looked up from his contemplation of the wall—this place was a dim, cold room in the back of Malfoy Manor, apparently because Abraxas’s father didn’t approve of him consorting with Tom—and met several stares before the last of Tom’s words caught up with his wandering attention.

“I told you that I came here to retrieve Jonquil and not help you fight your war, Tom.”

Tom gave him a soft, charming smile. “But Harry, you’ve already started, by helping me fight back against Dumbledore’s men that were guarding the portal. And this isn’t even a violent action. All you have to do is tell me what you know of that fight you once mentioned in Dumbledore’s past.”

“It was different here. I already know that. I might get some of the details wrong.”

“That doesn’t matter so much in blackmail,” Lestrange said, his head tilted back a bit, as if he couldn’t believe that he was helping persuade someone who hadn’t proved his loyalty to Tom. “Sure, Dumbledore might counter the details once he returns, but he’s not here right now. And the louder his denials, the more convinced some people will be that there’s something behind it.”

“There’s something behind it, all right,” Harry muttered, thinking how badly he’d wanted to dismiss the lies in Rita Skeeter’s book, and how some of them hadn’t been lies.

“Then you have to help us,” said Avery, his wand lowering so that it pointed more at the floor than Harry for the first time. He had big dark eyes that Harry might have found attractive if he hadn’t fallen in love with Tom first. And if the man hadn’t been constantly pointing a wand at him, of course. “We seriously have nothing on Dumbledore, other than the fact that he doesn’t like Slytherins. And what he dislikes, the general public dislikes. It leaves us in a weaker position than we should be in.”

“This fight that happened when he was younger…who was he fighting?”

That was Malfoy, his expression tightly contained but his voice sounding a lot like Avery’s. Harry did his best not to groan or slap a hand over his eyes. He had even more than the tattered information about Dumbledore fighting his siblings.

He had Dumbledore’s romance with Grindelwald.

Assuming it was the same in this universe. And I have no way of knowing that it was.

Harry hesitated for a long moment. He glanced at Tom, and found Tom’s eyes on him, soft and encouraging. There was no hint of gloating that he was getting his way. Harry would have refused to help him if there had been.

“I need to visit someone,” he said abruptly. “Someone who lived in the same village Dumbledore did when he was young. She ought to be young enough here, too, to tell me the truth. She was pretty senile when I knew her in my first dimension.”

“Her name? When will we see her?” Tom sounded casual, but the “we” in his voice told Harry everything he needed to know about exactly how far away he would be getting from Tom’s side.

Harry tried anyway, though. He thought he’d be able to control his temper no matter what Bathilda Bagshot said, but Tom might be a different matter. “What? Why would you need to know that? It’s just a little scouting mission.”

“One I won’t be sending you on alone.”

“Don’t you trust me, Tom? I’m hurt.”

Tom smiled for one moment, acknowledging that Harry was playing the game, not conceding for a moment that he had a right to. “I think everyone here will be more comfortable if I come with you, Harry.”

Harry glanced around at the other members of Tom’s circle. Avery still looked as if he’d like to be pointing a wand at Harry. Lestrange had changed to a blank expression, apparently not knowing what to make of him. But Malfoy had a definite frown, and shook his head, as if involuntarily, when Harry caught his eye.

“No, I don’t think so,” Harry announced cheerfully. “So if someone could tell me the Apparition coordinates for Godric’s Hollow, I’ll be on my way.”

Malfoy opened his mouth, and Harry nodded at him. Malfoy’s dislike of him might be a little tiresome, but it was going to help Harry accomplish his goal, so he would do anything he could to encourage it.

Malfoy froze, then, exactly as if he had been hexed. It took Harry a moment to realize his eyes still blinked, and that he had frozen because of something he saw behind Harry.

Harry turned around to see Tom standing there with his wand softly swinging in his hand. He might have looked like a little boy, but there was a swallowing darkness in his eyes. Malfoy backed a step away with his hand raised and his head ducked.

Harry simply scowled, because he wasn’t going to allow Tom to control him or his movements like this, just by getting angry. “Stop scaring your followers.”

“I will be going with you, Harry.”

Harry folded his arms. “You think you can get your way just by saying it? I hate to tell you, Tom, but I don’t work that way.”

Tom’s stare eased a little, the darkness receding, but he shook his head again. “You are foolish beyond permission, Harry. I am coming with you, and you have no right to refuse me and try to keep me here.”

Harry took a step forwards and lowered his voice. “There’s a chance that my source might not talk to me if she sees you with me. Are you really willing to risk everything just because you want to come with me?”

“I am.”

Harry hadn’t expected that answer at all. He’d expected some convoluted explanation about how it was really all for the best that Tom should come. He blinked. “What?”

Tom caught his wrist and turned it over as if he was admiring the bump of Harry’s bones beneath his skin. “I want you safe. I want that more than I want blackmail information on Dumbledore. And if you won’t let me come with you, then I can’t be sure that you’ll be safe.”

“Tom—”

“Make your choice, Harry. How badly do you want that blackmail material? Because it’s with me, or not at all.”

“What if she won’t talk to you?”

“She has no reason to know you, either. The chance that she’ll talk to you is no greater or smaller if I come here or stay behind.”

Harry scowled. Tom smiled back. “You don’t like the taste of logic very much, do you?” he whispered. “But I can use it just as well as you can, Harry.”

Harry turned away with a quiet curse. “Fine. Then you decide what you’re going to tell your followers,” he hissed, loudly enough for Malfoy, Avery, and Lestrange to hear.

“Gladly.” Tom turned back to face them. “I am going with Harry to collect the blackmail information on Dumbledore. I’ll make sure that it and we get back here safely. Abraxas, I want you to find a way to contact a good report without your father finding out. Roland, go collect the rest of the blackmail. Philip, you’re still able to cast that Duplication Charm?”

“Yes, my lord,” Lestrange said. He looked a little dazed, but he had already snapped out of it, and he wasn’t wasting time glaring at Harry the way Abraxas was. “I’ll get started on that the minute Roland gets back.”

Tom tilted his head slowly at Avery. Avery blinked a second, then shot out the door like his bum was on fire.

“I’ll need time to contact the reporter safely, my lord,” Malfoy said. His face was pale, although how much of that was natural pallor, Harry wasn’t sure. He glared at Harry one more time and then turned away.

“Do that,” Tom said, and escorted Harry out into the Malfoy gardens with a firm hand on his shoulder. Harry shook free the minute they were in the clear, cold air again.

“You’re a git, you know that?”

“You were the one who fell in love with me and chose to help me with my war after all,” Tom retorted, looking immensely pleased. “Now, do you think you know the village where Dumbledore grew up well enough in this dimension to Apparate there, or do we need to go somewhere nearby first?”

*

Tom looked around as they walked down the main street of Godric’s Hollow, which Harry had insisted on approaching in shorter Apparition jumps. It was pleasant enough, he supposed, at least if you had to live somewhere that had Muggles mingled with wizards. The houses were mostly small, and Tom couldn’t see much evidence of old construction or wealth. The graveyard was the most notable feature, if only because someone had a huge mausoleum there.

The house that Harry led him to was a neat cottage with a broom leaning against the door. Tom examined it while Harry knocked, and determined that it wasn’t magical. He hoped the woman was enough of a witch to use household charms and only kept the broom for the sake of her Muggle neighbors.

The woman who opened the door was clear-eyed, at least, although her hair was long and white and hung down her back. She subjected both of them to an intense stare. “What do you want?” she snapped.

“Your name is Bathilda Bagshot, right?” Harry asked. Tom gave him an approving squeeze on the elbow. He loved how Harry adapted quickly to any situation, including matching direct and blunt with direct and blunt.

“If you’ve come for autographs on that novel, go away! I always meant to write a decent historical book, not a novel! And there’s no romance in it, either!”

“We wouldn’t dream of questioning you about your book,” Harry said, moving a little in front of Tom as if he thought Tom needed to be protected from this woman’s ranting. Tom immediately stepped up next to him, of course. Harry didn’t look at him, but his back stiffened with irritation. “I came to find out if you knew Albus Dumbledore, actually.”

Bagshot opened her mouth, then closed it again. She ended up peering at Harry out of one eye. “You want the letters?”

Harry opened his own mouth and then paused, looking stunned. Tom was the one who had to take over this time. “If you think it would be appropriate for you to give them to us,” he said, with a dubious look that made Bagshot immediately nod.

“I have no use for the bloody things. I told him to come and get them long ago. He just said that he would send someone when the time came, and they would know the right things to say.”

Tom folded his arms and did his best impression of Abraxas’s father at breakfast in the morning. “We do want to know if you know him.”

“Wait here.”

The door slammed, and Harry smiled a little at Tom. “Thanks. I didn’t know where to go with that. I froze.”

“We seem to have stumbled, accidentally, into a situation that Dumbledore set up,” Tom murmured. He did wonder why Dumbledore wouldn’t have destroyed these dangerous letters, if they were dangerous. Perhaps he feared Bagshot’s comments if he asked her to do that more than the letters themselves.

Which argues they aren’t very good blackmail.

When Bagshot came back, she thrust the letters at them and sniffed. “He said they were important to history. I say, if they are, then they should be displayed in the Ministry so that everyone can see even our Minister suffered from folly in his youth, not cooped up in a dark room here, but did he listen when I said that?”

“I can see that he didn’t,” said Tom, and his heart glowed as his hands tightened around the letters. He waited out Bagshot’s rant, nodding at some of it, and then turned away as she shut the door and flipped the first letter close to the light of his wand.

My dearest Gellert…

Tom felt himself reeling back almost before it occurred to him that his body actually was moving. He found himself staring at Harry with wide eyes. “He—he was friends with Grindelwald?”

Harry reached out and took his hand gently. “No. He was in love with him.”

Tom felt as if a million Christmases had all come, at once.