Chapter Thirteen of 'Lightning and War'- A Serious Conversation

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter One.

Title: Lightning and War (13/?)
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 again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirteen—A Serious Conversation

“Are we sure that we’re ready to confront the public yet, my lord?”

Abraxas’s words sounded nervous, at least to Harry’s ear. But Tom only smiled, lounging back on the high white chair that was one of the few uncovered pieces of furniture in this back room of Malfoy Manor. He’d insisted on Harry sitting on the arm of the chair so that Tom could keep his arm around Harry’s waist.

“Of course we are, Abraxas. Dumbledore’s absence from this dimension won’t last forever. We need to move while we still have a lack of his physical presence. Once he comes back, there are some people who will flock to him no matter what.”

Abraxas’s eyelashes fluttered a little. Then he nodded and stood up, bowing his head. “My lord, while you were gone, Jonquil Potter tried to break out of her room three times.” He darted a glance at Harry that flicked away too fast for Harry to interpret.

Tom opened his mouth. Harry reached out and squeezed his hand, then stood up, even as both Tom and Abraxas studied him suspiciously. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Well, you’ve done that before, and it didn’t do too much good.” Abraxas had kept his voice quiet, a little cautious, since Harry had come back from Gringotts wearing the Potter diadem. He wasn’t the only one. Harry could practically feel the uncertainty in their stares, as they tried to assess him as a threat. “Why would it change now?”

“Because now I’ve seen the quality of the Order of the Phoenix members—”

“Or the lack of it.”

Harry tilted his head to acknowledge Tom’s interruption, but didn’t look away from Abraxas he spoke. “They don’t hesitate to kill. I mean—I knew that, but I thought they would have more caution when they were around the public and someone whose powers they didn’t know. They didn’t. Jonquil is going to get herself killed, not just wounded or sent home, if she persists. And it’s time for me to tell her that.”

Abraxas just nodded and let himself out of the room, unconvinced. Harry looked down at Tom, whose gaze was steady. “I want to come with you.”

“No, Tom.”

“You’ve said before that the only thing that might really send her home is breaking her heart.”

“And now I don’t think that’s effective. You’ve been as cruel as you can to her, Tom, but she’s blinded by love. I was holding back because I didn’t want to be cruel to her. Now I see the truth.”

“That she’s a little girl I could never love and who should never have come here?”

“Yes.”

Tom opened his mouth and then slammed it shut. In seconds, he was on his feet, his arm whipping from around Harry’s waist to curl around his neck instead. “What happened didn’t teach you that much about the Order or about Jonquil,” he breathed into Harry’s ear. “It taught you something about yourself.”

“Yes.” Harry swallowed. If he had been with anyone but Tom, he didn’t think he could have admitted this. Even Ron and Hermione might have made him flinch from it, but Tom… “I went to that dimension because I wanted a family so badly. And you know why I did.”

Tom’s eyes flickered the way they sometimes did when Harry mentioned the Dursleys, but he nodded, not looking away. Harry drank in that attention and tried to ignore the twitching in his groin.

“It wasn’t—exactly the way I imagined, even though it took me a long time to admit that. It was great in some respects, but my aunt, or the woman who would have been my aunt, despised me, and I had all these cousins who didn’t even exist in my first world…I realize now that I was trying to make people into what I wanted them to be, instead of appreciating them for who they were.”

Tom’s hand gripped his shoulder hard enough to force a grunt out of Harry. “I’m not going to listen to this if turns into another tirade of self-blame.”

Harry shook his head and managed a smile. “No. It’s more me realizing that I made a mistake.”

With his eyes fastened on Harry’s face, Tom eased back on the grip. Harry took that as permission to continue. “So I just imagined they would put me first, because that was what family did. But I’d only been there a few months and they all had their own complicated relationships and sorrows and lives. So I relied on them too much.”

“And now…”

“Now I want to rely on someone else.” Harry took a deep breath and leaned a little harder into Tom. “Someone who does put me first. Even if the way he does it sometimes puts me off, too.”

Tom’s eyes were radiant with triumph, but he restrained himself to a soft kiss. “I depend on you to put me first, too,” he murmured into Harry’s mouth. “Enough for you to tell me when you think I’m about to go too far and lose you.”

Harry kissed him harder. That was the reason he had felt comfortable enough to tell Tom this in the first place. Because of the diadem, or because he was no longer as worried that Harry was simply going to die of magical fluctuations, Tom was pulling back himself, letting Harry have more room to breathe.

Tom sighed and smoothed his hands down Harry’s robes when he finally stepped back from the kiss. “I still want to watch when you break Jonquil’s heart.”

Harry rolled his eyes as he started down the corridor. “Didn’t you already see enough of that expression when you were the one who was making her feel it?”

“You have no idea how much I despise her, Harry.”

Harry reached out and took Tom’s hand, squeezing it in silence. He was glad that he had finally seen the truth and was going to take a step back to let Jonquil be her own person instead of the family he should care for or who should care for him. Otherwise, there was the distinct possibility that he would have watched his cousin’s death instead of her heartbreak.

*

Tom hung back near the door as Harry walked into the bedroom where Abraxas had been keeping Jonquil. He hated the way her eyes immediately darted towards him and her mouth opened in a little questioning circle. He hated the way that the light fled from them when Harry was the one who reached out to take her hand.

Jonquil didn’t deserve being related to his Harry. If Tom had been in her position, he would have done everything he could to ensure that Harry regarded him as family.

Tom wanted to snort at the thought. Well, perhaps not family, at that. He didn’t want to follow the ways of his Gaunt ancestors that closely.

But he burned inside to see the undeserved, unearned regard that Harry poured over Jonquil like spring rain, and that she wasted as if it was ash.

“I’m going to make you go home now,” Harry said.

Jonquil promptly leaned back and tore her hand away. “You already said that you can’t do that,” she said, and her voice was a little shrill despite her confident words. Tom thought he knew why. Harry’s sad serenity was new. “You know that I’ll turn around and run back through the portal again. You can’t keep me at home without closing the gate.”

“I had hoped you would be an adult about this—”

“I am an adult. I’m going after what I want.” Jonquil bit her lip and turned around to look at Tom, fluttering her eyelashes a little. She was even worse than Shara when she used to flirt with Tom instead of accepting her place in his ranks. “And you can’t deny that Tom pays a lot of attention to me.”

“Looking for weak spots so I can kill you.”

Jonquil pulled back, tucking her hands in to her chest. Harry shot Tom a glance and then looked at his cousin again. “Well, I have options. I didn’t want to do this, because I kept thinking I couldn’t use them without making my family hate me forever. But you know what? Keeping me and Tom and the people here safe is more important. Besides, I already think that you’re probably going to hate me forever.”

Jonquil narrowed her eyes, but muttered, “You can’t do anything to me.”

Harry nodded. “Yes, I can. I could use the Memory Charm on you. I could put a Compulsion Charm on you that would make you keep walking through the portal into your world and never walk towards the gate from the other side again. It might make your life difficult if you had to go into the hills around Godric’s Hollow for any reason, but that’s not my problem.”

“You wouldn’t do that! Grandmama Dorea would never forgive you!”

“At this point, I don’t even know if I’ll see her again. And I can’t live my life in fear of what my family says.”

“Why do you want to get rid of me so badly? I’m a good duelist! You taught me some strong magic! I could help you!”

“Because you don’t have the best quality that a soldier has.”

“What?”

“Obedience.” Harry said it so flatly that for a moment Tom thought he had slipped into Parseltongue, but Jonquil stared at him in what looked like horrified understanding, not blankness. “You just run around doing whatever you want; you don’t really listen to anyone who gives you an order; and you don’t even listen to Tom when he tells you the truth. What do you call a soldier who keeps getting in the way and endangers herself at every turn?”

“What?” Jonquil’s voice sounded parched.

“A liability.”

Tom licked his lips and kept his eyes on Harry as desire pooled in his belly. He would never allow Jonquil to assume that he was looking at her that way.

Jonquil shoved herself away from Harry. “No! I can prove that I’m a help! You always said that I only needed a chance to prove myself—”

“I said that when I thought there was a chance you would still make a decision, and that you wouldn’t hurt anyone except yourself and maybe your family’s feelings.” Harry’s eyes were as hard as the blue jewel in the diadem now. “Now you could hurt lots of other people by dashing away in the middle of a battle or even helping our enemies.”

“I would never do that!”

“Even accidentally? What would have happened if the Order had interrogated you more strongly, and you’d known a little more? Now you do know more, like the location of some of Tom’s safehouses and the names of some of the Knights. And you thought we would just let you go?”

Jonquil’s face was absolutely stunned. Tom blinked. He’d thought he was getting through to her better than this—

And then, then, he understood. His stomach tightened and surged with tension. He might have spoken if Harry hadn’t been there.

Jonquil had never understood. Not really. She had lived a charmed life compared to him, to Harry, even probably to most people in her home dimension. She had never thought he would harm her. She had thought she could coax Tom around. Despite her complaints that her family was trying to keep her a child, she had been one at heart.

Children always believed, in some distant part of themselves, that nothing bad could happen to them. Tom knew the moment when he had started to believe differently, remembered it vividly, and knew that was the moment his childhood had ended.

Harry might be remembering it, too, judging by the grim way he bent his gaze on Jonquil.

“You’d send me back and maybe wipe my memory so that I can’t betray you,” Jonquil whispered.

Harry nodded. “I don’t know why this is such a surprise to you,” he said. Tom knew very well that was a lie, and would have even if he wasn’t a Legilimens, but he didn’t give a sign of it. Not for the world would he reveal that to Jonquil. “I told you again and again that I didn’t want you here, and neither did Tom—”

“But that’s not true! He practically encouraged me to follow him through the portal! Tell him, Tom.”

Tom hadn’t expected to be invited into the conversation. He felt a sharp tingle start under his breastbone. He met Harry’s eyes and smiled a little at the way the lines of his face had tensed.

But Jonquil had asked him a question. Surely Harry didn’t want him to leave a question unanswered?

“Any flirting that I did with you was only so that I could remain in Godric’s Hollow without suspicion from your family. I wanted Harry from the first day that I saw him.”

Harry’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing. Jonquil swallowed, loudly. “Why?”

“Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” Tom drawled back. “Not his face by itself, but his power, and his command over that power, and the way that he fought me instead of surrendering to me. I fulfilled the prophecy that led me through the portal, and I didn’t even know it.”

Harry clasped his hands together. Tom reached out and took his hand to still the motion. He wouldn’t have bothered, but he knew the clench was so tight that Harry had to be hurting himself.

“But I could have power. I could have command over that power. And I wanted to come back here with you! You had to talk Harry into it!”

“Yes. And that is what makes him better than you, Potter. Because he fought me and argued with me and made me have to rethink the principles I started from. Why would I want someone who yields to me before I can even voice the desire?”

Jonquil’s eyes were bright with tears, but also with understanding. For the first time, Tom thought the blade of his words had stabbed to her heart, instead of glancing off her pride or self-confidence or whatever it was that was keeping her from understanding the truth.

Harry shifted next to him. Tom turned a steady glance on him. Harry wasn’t going to end his triumph. He had to understand that this was the best way to make things happen.

And Tom didn’t want an argument to start that would keep them from adjourning to a bedroom after this and doing something about the insistent ache in his groin and his appreciation for Harry’s newfound spine.

“You—want me to go back home.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Because there’s nothing here for you. Tom’s never going to be yours. This war is never going to be yours to fight in. I tried to offer you my love and protection, and you didn’t want either of them.” He tried to smile, although it looked like it was hard when Tom’s hand was resting possessively over his. “I haven’t been a very good older brother, or cousin, or whatever, to you.”

Jonquil bowed her head. “But—you said that I could be anything I wanted. I thought that meant. I thought that included being the lover of a man who desired me.”

“You could be anything you wanted if you made up your mind. But you didn’t. You just waited and waited, and I could never tell what you were waiting for.” Harry’s voice had a crack of bitterness in the middle of it. Tom had sometimes had the impression that Dorea Potter had been fed up waiting for her granddaughter to decide on an ambition. It sounded like she had nothing on Harry. “So now the decision’s been made for you. Tom doesn’t want you.”

“Really not,” Tom added, in between one breath of Harry’s and another, so that he wasn’t technically interrupting.

He got a glare anyway, but Harry faced Jonquil and went on instead of snapping at him. “You came here, and no one wants you here. Your family is waiting for you, but you won’t go back to them willingly. Even if you say you will, I’m going to have you swear a magical oath that you will, because I don’t trust you. Your stubbornness has lost you a lot of things. Including my trust.”

Jonquil was crying, but quietly, her head bowed, her hands over her face.

“Will you go with the oath?” Harry asked. “Or do I have to Obliviate you, or cast a Compulsion Charm on you?”

Jonquil had to work hard to stifle her sobbing. Tom shifted impatiently next to Harry. How could anyone have thought she was strong, even her family? He supposed they had been blinded by the potential they had thought was there, not the reality.

Then again, she was a child, still. Tom hadn’t been one for long enough that he wouldn’t know what merit could be found in one of them.

In so many ways, Harry has been good for me, but I’m not sure about the softening part.

“I’ll take the oath,” Jonquil finally whispered.

Harry nodded, and drew his wand. Tom fell back so that they could see each other, but didn’t let go of Harry’s hand.

Once the oath was finished—and to Tom’s satisfaction, without any loopholes he could think of that would give Jonquil the ability to slip out of it—then he and Harry had an appointment with a bed.