Chapter Seventeen of 'Lightning and War'- Potters United

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter One.

Title: Lightning and War (17/?)
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 Seventeen—Potters United

“Uh, really? You’d want that?”

Tom raised an interested eyebrow as he buttered his toast. Harry had taken a full minute to recover from the declaration that Tom wanted to take the Potter name, and these were his first words. Tom chewed through a portion of the toast wondering if Harry thought that this wasn’t a good idea for some reason.

“Yes,” Tom said, finally managing to swallow. “Do you have an objection?”

“I never thought that you would,” Harry said softly, and reached out to cover Tom’s hand with his own. “Of course I don’t object. And I think it’s horrible that your family disowned you. I just—didn’t think you would want to take on the name Potter.”

“Will this have a justification?” Tom showed his teeth in a bright smile as he buttered the next piece of toast. By now he could recognize the signs of a self-deprecating snit coming on. “One that will please me?”

Harry took a deep breath. “I know you said once that a lot of people were predisposed to listen to you because you had the last name Gaunt. It’s Sacred Twenty-Eight. Potter isn’t. Do you think that’s going to be a problem?”

A more salient political objection than I thought you would raise. Tom turned his hand and clenched Harry’s fingers with his own, ignoring the way that Harry winced. “It might make some things harder,” he admitted. “But given that I’ve attracted as many pure-blood members from the Sacred Twenty-Eight as I’m probably ever going to attract, and many of my followers are half-blood or even Muggleborn—”

Harry choked. Tom waited patiently for him to get over it, suppressing his annoyance. Yes, he knew he had similarities to the Tom Riddle figure that had made Harry’s childhood a nightmare, but really.

“I don’t think that taking another name will make much difference,” Tom finished, with a shrug. “And Potter is going to become a much more famous and respected name than it was in its last centuries.”

“It is?” Harry sounded blank.

“Because you can’t help but shine,” Tom explained as he uncurled his fingers and released his hold on Harry’s hand. “Unless you intend to retreat back into a shell again just as we’ve begun opposing Dumbledore’s Order.”

Harry took a deep breath and finished his tea before he responded. “Of course not,” he said. “But it wouldn’t have occurred to me to promote my last name. I thought—I’d be at your side, you know. Or behind you as necessary.”

Tom leaned forwards. There was the kind of stupidity he had anticipated and was already poised to counter. “So you’re saying that you would have done your best to remain in my shadow, even after we did in the Alley.”

“It’s your struggle,” Harry said, his voice lowering and his eyes flashing once. The light of the diadem on his head didn’t brighten, which was one comfort. “I didn’t want to take the focus away from you.”

“It’s our struggle. After what Dumbledore did to you back in your second world, and what he’ll probably try to do once he comes back here? It’s ours.”

Harry conceded that with a quick nod. “Fine. But that still doesn’t mean that you have to adopt the Potter name. For some of your Knights, that will probably make you seem as if you’re making yourself subservient to me.”

“Anyone foolish enough to believe that can come and talk to me.”

A faint smile lifted the corner of Harry’s mouth before it ever moved. “Fine. It makes me wonder about—” He broke off and frowned down at the teapot, turning it around as if he hadn’t already seen the pattern of fine clouds that was scattered around the fine, rose-colored porcelain.

“I want to hear what you wonder about,” Tom said, and continued in a lower voice when Harry’s eyes darted over to him, maybe wondering about his tone. “No thought that goes through your head is too small for me. I want to know them all. I want to know every beat of your heart and every flutter of your brain.”

“Possessive, Tom,” Harry murmured, but his breathing had quickened. Tom let his smile widen into a smug one. Something he already knew about Harry, that Harry himself might not: Harry could struggle against the bonds of Tom’s possessiveness, but part of him did that to test the bonds and see how firm they were. He liked being known and owned in that way.

Because no one ever valued him enough before this.

Tom dismissed the thought. That was the past, and it did not seem likely that he would be able to take revenge on the Muggles who had made Harry’s childhood a misery or the wizarding world that had turned him into a weapon any time soon. Harry was here now. He would not want for anything again.

“When I sacrificed part of my magic to open the first gate,” Harry began, “I did it to find a world where Potters and family awaited me.”

“And now you think that it might have meant this world and not the first one you arrived in.” Tom could not contain the burst of intense emotion in his chest. Knowing that he was the one prophesied for Harry, just as Harry had been the one prophesied for him—

Well, he rather regretted that they had no extra time to spend in bed this morning.

Harry just nodded without seeming to pick up on Tom’s mood. “It didn’t mean Jonquil, whatever I thought at first,” he said, and then looked wistful. “Although every other Potter but Calliope in my second world had a better relationship with me.”

Tom took hold of his wrist. Harry relaxed, and smiled at him. “I’m not yearning to go back there, as long as I’ve got you.”

Tom nodded and kissed the center of his palm, making Harry shiver in a delightful way and his regret increase. “Let us make the announcement to the Knights, and then get ready to escort your delightful cousin to the portal.”

*

“Congratulations, my lord.”

It was the first thing that any of the Knights had said since Tom had made his announcement about taking the Potter name, and it was Shara Black who had said it. To Harry’s relief, she rose from the circle of chairs in which they were sitting in the Malfoys’ great hall, and bowed to both of them.

“Yes, my lord, congratulations.” Philip Lestrange echoed what Shara had said, but his eyes rested on Harry in a way that would tell anyone looking who he blamed for Tom’s name change. Harry sighed a little. He had hoped that they would manage to avoid this, but it seemed not.

“Tom Potter.” Abraxas Malfoy frowned a little as though listening to music in his head. “May I suggest that you go with Thomas Potter when introducing yourself to someone else for the first time? It flows better.”

“You may indeed suggest that, Abraxas,” Tom said, with a smile that made Harry have to hold back helpless snickers. Yes, Abraxas could suggest that all he liked; Tom didn’t look as though he would automatically adopt the idea, though.

From the resigned way Malfoy shrugged, he had already understood and accepted the nuance. “Are you going to call on the legends of the Potters when you begin your opposition to Dumbledore, my lord?”

“Legends?” Harry interrupted. Other than what the goblins had told him about the diadem and the fact that the Potters had died out thoroughly in this world four hundred years ago, he had no idea what his family’s reputation was here.

Abraxas started. “My lord hasn’t—discussed this with you, Harry?” He still looked as though he resented having to speak Harry’s first name, as if he would prefer to keep some formal distance between them, but he did it anyway. “I assumed this was one of the major reasons that he had chosen to take the Potter name.”

“I have multiple reasons,” Tom said. “But you know the ancient legends better than I do, Abraxas. You tell them.”

A few of the other Knights of Walpurgis were shifting restlessly in their chairs. Harry didn’t think it was all because Abraxas had chosen some bloody uncomfortable, over-ornamented monstrosities for them to sit in. “Is there some discontent with your choice?” he murmured into Tom’s ear, pointing with his chin.

“Surely any discontent can be voiced by my loyal servants,” Tom said, with a faint smile.

Two or three people poked each other and muttered at each other. Then a thin blonde woman Harry didn’t think had been among the Knights during the first few meetings he had attended stood up. “My lord, there are disturbing rumors spreading about you.”

“Oh? From the confrontation in Diagon Alley?”

“No. I mean—some people are retelling ancient rumors about the Gaunts, my lord. Rumors that I’m sure don’t apply to our lord at all,” the woman rushed to add. She had a firm chin that nonetheless trembled beneath Tom’s gaze. Harry wanted to shake his head. He had never wanted to inspire this level of fear, but he knew Tom reveled in it. “The rumors concerned who the Gaunts—married.”

Tom sighed. “The incest rumors, I assume.”

The woman nodded with her skin turning such a bright red that it made her look as if she had been sunburned. “Yes, my lord. I am sorry to bring it up,” she added in hushed tones.

“I am not inbred as they are,” Tom said, “precisely because I am a half-blood. My father had no magical blood in his veins except for some distant Squib ancestors.” Harry was glad that he managed to keep his face still at that, because he had never heard that about Tom Riddle, Sr. “And now the family has disowned me, so my fate is not theirs. That is precisely why I am so happy to take up the name of Potter.”

The woman blinked and sat back down again. Harry raised his eyebrows. If all their opposition was that easily conquered, he’d be happy to see it. He doubted it, though.

“The legends, Abraxas,” Tom added, looping an arm around Harry’s waist and pulling him close enough to rest his chin on his shoulder.

Abraxas cleared his throat and stared resolutely at the walls, which held some empty portrait frames, as if that was easier than looking at them. “Yes, my lord. Well. The Potters were said to possess some of the last wild magic in the world, running in their veins. And it bred true no matter what kind of spouses they took.”

“Wild magic,” Harry repeated. “Is that like wandless magic?”

Abraxas shook his head, and then took on a more lecturing tone and the ability to look at them once in a while. Harry supposed that he enjoyed the position of knowing more than Harry did. “Wandless magic bends to a wizard’s will, just like any magic that comes through a wand, and even the accidental magic used by children. When it’s wild, then it is the will of the earth, the water, the animals, the plants nearby.”

Harry frowned. “Does that mean that I’m suddenly going to do whatever they want me to do?”

“Probably not,” Abraxas said, and smiled for what looked like the first time in a while. The smile went away again as Tom traced a slow finger around Harry’s eyes beneath the glasses. Harry shot him a glance, and then Abraxas cleared his throat and continued. “The Potters supposedly had a bargain with the wild magic. Sometimes it would aid them, do what they wanted, but they always had to repay it immediately.”

“Do what it wanted.” Harry tilted his head. That sounded more balanced than some of the bargains that he’d read about magical families making. “I suppose I could do that.”

“We don’t even know for certain if you have wild magic in your veins,” Tom reminded him. “You’re not genetically related to the Potters who used to live in this world, after all.”

“Genetically?” Abraxas looked baffled.

“A Muggle concept that Harry and I have discussed,” Tom said. “You’ll learn about it.” He glanced at Harry. “It doesn’t necessarily matter if you don’t have that wild magic, though. Other people will think you do. And they’ll think I do, as well. People who married into the Potter line could be gifted with that kind of power.”

“What makes you think I would share?”

Tom opened his mouth to retort, but Abraxas rushed on to speak. Harry thought that probably the only thing that that would have made him interrupt his lord was not liking the way Harry and Tom were flirting with each other. “There are also legends that Potters could never be defeated on their home ground.”

“Specifically where they lived?” Harry asked. That was another thing that might be a problem, since he didn’t have a home of his own.

“Any ground they claimed as their own.” Abraxas hesitated. “Some of this I read about in my family’s library, since they were usually on the opposite side of a war from the Potters. It was a portable claim. Potters had to perform certain rituals and make a certain vow to declare a piece of earth their own, however. My family tried to duplicate the rituals and the vow, but could never make it succeed.”

“Are the details still in the books in your family’s library?” Tom asked. Abraxas nodded, and Tom echoed him with a brisker nod. “Good. Then we’ll try that out and see if we can make them obey us.”

“You’re jumping ahead a bit,” Harry said to Tom out of the corner of his mouth.

“You’re right. You haven’t officially declared me a Potter yet.”

“Tom—”

“And we have matters to settle with another Potter.” Tom clapped his hands, and the noise lingered hard in corners of the room that Harry had trouble seeing. “Now. You are going to go out and begin spreading the necessary rumors about the resurrection of the Potter family. See if you can find people who are spreading rumors about seeing us in Diagon Alley the other day. That will make it easier, if we can link those two sets of rumors together.”

“Tom,” Harry hissed at him as the Knights started to disperse.

“I’m thinking that we’ll escort Jonquil to the portal first,” Tom informed him softly. “Then we can get on to the official declaration of making me a Potter.”

“We don’t know if those rituals will work! We don’t know if I have wild magic!”

“No, but rumors are nearly as good as reality.” Tom kissed the corner of his mouth. “And I am rather looking forward to being accepted into a powerful pure-blood family. I never was before this, you know.”

Damn him for still having the power to steal my breath.

*

Jonquil Potter stood outside the portal, looking at it with dead eyes.

Tom watched her without sympathy. He had never been able to muster up much for her in any case, but she had made the vow that said she would never seek to come back through the portal or resist Harry when he took her there, and in a few minutes, how much sympathy he had for her would not be an issue.

“I wish things were different,” Jonquil whispered. It was still him and not Harry she turned to, the cousin who had risked everything for her. “I wish you loved me.”

“How could I love a hysterical little girl?” Tom asked, and watched in satisfaction as she turned her face away.

“Tom, you don’t need to be cruel.”

“Yes, I do,” Tom said. “She believes me, but she still wishes things could be different. Didn’t you hear her? She still wishes I was a pawn in her little games of ambition and romance.”

Jonquil abruptly clenched her fists in front of her and spat, “I hope that I never become like you!”

Tom let his left eyebrow rise. That was a new one.

“You’re selfish and murderous and cruel,” Jonquil went on recklessly, stepping away from Harry’s hand when he reached for her. Once again, she didn’t even look at the man who would have comforted her if he could. “Harry’s right. You don’t need to be cruel to me, but you still are. I never want to be that kind of person.”

“Then don’t,” Tom said, with a shrug. “It matters very little to me what kind of person you become once you’re on the other side of this fucking portal.”

Jonquil said, “I hate you,” with the kind of passionate conviction that religions were founded on. Tom smiled at her brightly and opened his mouth to tell her what she could do with her hatred, but she turned and marched through the portal before he could say anything, kicking aside chunks of rubble as if they weren’t there.

The portal flared brightly for a second, and Tom felt Harry tense. He carefully kept himself from reacting. He would not be like Jonquil, hanging all his hopes on one person and trying to keep that person from doing anything he didn’t like.

But he did wish that Harry didn’t ever desire to visit the world of Godric’s Hollow or his first world again, that he would be content to remain at Tom’s side.

“Come,” Tom murmured when he was sure that Jonquil wouldn’t come back, extending a hand to Harry. “You know that we shouldn’t linger here.”

Harry let Tom wrap his arm around him and Side-Along Apparate him. Tom rested his cheek heavily on Harry’s chest when they landed back in the courtyard outside Malfoy Manor and listened to the heartbeat singing beneath his ear.

“We still haven’t officially made me a Potter yet,” Tom said, after a moment.

Harry started and then laughed. “Of course we have to do that,” he said, and guided Tom towards the house. His heartbeat stayed steady.

This, Tom reflected, is something else I could learn to love.