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lomonaaeren) wrote2019-07-12 10:09 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2019-07-12 10:09 pm
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[From Liatha to Lammas]: The Grand Design, Harry/Tom, R, 1/3, sequel to Pride and Power
Title: The Grand Design
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, background Charlus/Dorea and Fleamont/Euphemia
Content Notes: Time travel, angst, violence
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 5900
Summary: Harry is struggling between his desire for love and his desire to fulfill his duty, to find a way to stay and a way to return to his own time. Tom Riddle’s attempts to seduce him permanently are not helping.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to both “Earning His Notice” and “Pride and Power”; read those first, or you’ll be lost. This is part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series of fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August, and will probably have three parts.
The Grand Design
“You never did tell me what that design of two snakes meant that you received in the post.”
Harry sighed and sat back from the groaning table in Dorea’s dining room. She was his great-aunt really, but she was convinced that she was his grandmother, due to the machinations of people in this time. She sat now with a glass of red wine in her hand, her eyes tracing the lines of his face in quiet wonder.
The excellent meal he’d just finished couldn’t bury the feeling of guilt that squirmed in his stomach. Harry swallowed and said, “My friend made it as a prank. He threatened to tattoo it on me with his wand.”
Dorea laughed lightly, shaking her head. She had long, sleek black hair that reminded Harry of the way Sirius’s might have come to look if he lived long enough, and eyes that Harry had never seen dull or bored. “You do have extraordinary friends, Harry. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would create a design that intricate as a prank.”
No, Tom hadn’t. But Harry wasn’t about to tell his “family” about Tom, or tell him about them in any detail, either. Tom did know that an Auror at the Ministry had introduced Harry to the Potters in the firm belief that Harry was their illegitimate grandson, or great-nephew, in the case of Fleamont and Euphemia.
His real grandparents. Harry’s head and heart spent far too much time spinning dizzily at the fact that he got to see them argue and laugh and invent potions in this time period.
These people he’d never known, wanted to know, shouldn’t have known. The time period he should never have visited.
“Harry, darling. What’s wrong? Are you still worried that we’re suddenly going to turn blood purist on you? I promise, it will never happen.”
Dorea reached out across the table to him, her eyes troubled. Harry captured her hand and lifted it to his lips to kiss it, the way he’d seen Charlus do more than once. “I don’t think that, Grandmother.” The word made his throat ache. “It’s just—there are things that I’m still trying to deal with. My life changed so suddenly.”
“Ah, yes, well, I can understand that. But perhaps you can clarify my curiosity about something. Did you really intend to never approach the Potter family?”
Harry blinked. His cover story was that he was the son of a Muggle woman Dorea and Charlus’s son Tristan had seduced, that he’d known his heritage but had never intended to claim it. “I—yes, of course. Why would I embarrass you that way?”
“But you must have heard a little about our politics in the war and in the years before that. I would have researched my family.”
“I didn’t dare to—go too deeply. Not when I never anticipated meeting you.”
“You’re daring and reckless in all other aspects of your life, Harry. Can you help me understand why you were going to be so different when it’s a matter of concern to me and Charlus that we might never have got to meet our grandson?”
Not your grandson. Your time-traveling great-nephew. Harry ignored the hammering of his heart and said slowly, “I didn’t think the Potters were blood purists, exactly. But I know that it can be embarrassing even if you’re the most open-minded family on the planet to have an illegitimate child show up out of nowhere. I was thinking of it from that angle.”
“I would have had more of a problem with it if you were Charlus’s son,” Dorea told him immediately. Her eyes and her voice were calm, and Harry wondered if he would ever understand her. “But given that we’d given up on having more children besides Tristan and we never thought he would settle down and have a family, this is a miracle.”
Her hand tightened on his. Harry sighed and looked at the tabletop.
*
“But can’t you see that he’s corrupting you, my lord? You had great and ambitious plans before you met him, and now you’re just focused on seducing Potter!”
Harry paused outside the Malfoy dining room. He’d made plenty of noise as he approached, but it seemed the argument had overpowered it. Tom answered Lestrange’s words a moment later, his own voice calm.
“You don’t understand my goals or what I would sacrifice to attain them, Lestrange. Come in, Harry.”
Harry grimaced as he opened the door. Tom might have arranged the whole argument to coincide with the time that Harry came to the dinner. He loved using Harry to humiliate his pure-blood followers. He had never forgiven them for the time they had treated him as just another Mudblood, though they thought he had.
Harry hated the dynamic. But he hadn’t yet found a way to disrupt it.
Tom’s eyes gleamed at him as Harry walked in and past the enormous cherrywood table. Lestrange was glaring at him as usual. Abraxas had a strictly neutral face. Rosier, with a hooked nose and blank eyes, nodded at Harry and stood up to shake his hand. “I don’t think that we met at much length before. Evan Rosier.”
“Harry Potter.” It was still surreal to speak his actual name to someone in this time.
Rosier smiled a little, although he was examining him the same way Abraxas used to, as if trying to find out what in the world would convince Tom Riddle to get fixated on him. If he figured it out, Harry would ask Rosier to tell him. It wasn’t like he understood it himself.
“Come sit beside me, Harry.”
Apparently he’d held Rosier’s eyes too long. Tom breathed jealousy, sometimes. Harry shook his head as he walked over to Tom’s side of the table and endured the arm around his waist. They might be lovers, as terrible an idea as that was, but Harry wished Tom would save gestures like that for the bedroom.
“Rosier was telling us about some innovations that the Unspeakables have been coming up with,” Tom said lazily.
“You’re young to be an Unspeakable,” Harry said. “Congratulations.”
Rosier shook his head a little. “It’s my cousin who is. But they don’t make the apprentices swear the secrecy oath until they’re journeymen. Under the impression that people that junior can’t learn interesting secrets, I suppose. They’re wrong.”
Harry made an interested noise and then leaned back in the chair a little, letting himself drift. It was unlikely that Rosier would say anything he had to be involved in. Probably secrets that would feed Tom’s love for esoteric knowledge or maybe let him recruit more pure-bloods.
Harry couldn’t be involved in that, for all that people like Rosier and Malfoy probably thought he was, simply by being at Tom’s side. And he was still feeding some information to Albus—a little bit, a little that wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t belong here. He had to go home.
It was like an itch on his skin, and Harry breathed out slowly as he realized that he had probably made a decision. He had been torn and aching for weeks, but now he was ready to confront it. He had to leave.
“…and of course the Time Room is fascinating everybody at the moment.”
Harry turned his head abruptly. Rosier was holding forth with a glass of champagne, or at least something that looked like champagne in his hand, his eyes sparkling. He paused when Harry looked at him and blinked. “Yes, Potter? What is it?”
“Only that I didn’t realize the Unspeakables were looking into time,” Harry said, shaking his head. He felt Tom staring at him, but Tom did that all the time anyway, as if trying to look beneath Harry’s skull and see what was happening within his brain. “I thought it was less extraordinary magic that they only wanted everyone to think was interesting.”
Rosier smiled. “From what my cousin says, some of their reputation is exaggerated, but not everything. And the Time Room is something they discovered, not created.”
“Discovered where?” Harry leaned forwards, and ignored the way that Tom’s arm became an iron belt around him in response.
“In the bowels of the Ministry. There used to be something else down there, something before the Department of Mysteries, but all the records got erased centuries ago. Powerful spells. No one’s managed to counteract them.” Rosier preened a little, but then caught Tom’s eye and went on in a more sober voice. “So the Time Room is something they dug out. And it’s apparently filled with floating devices that reverse time, or isolate a person in bubbles where it passes faster, or even do other things. I don’t think my cousin has enough seniority yet to know everything.”
Harry nodded and said, “Well, I suppose that’s a sign that the Ministry might be lying or exaggerating about other things, as well. Have they found anything else that supposedly existed before the Department of Mysteries?”
*
Harry had been rather proud of that little conversational aside, which meant that Rosier and Malfoy and even Lestrange had started talking about history from four centuries ago, and almost came to blows over whose ancestor had cursed whose. He should have known that Tom would still note his unusual interest.
“Looking into time magic, Harry?”
Harry glanced up from the chair he was sitting in with a book on the history of Parseltongue. They were in the room at Malfoy Manor that seemed to be given over to Tom’s exclusive private use. It was darker than Harry would have preferred, with almost no illumination aside from the fire, but enough firelight glittered to let Harry catch Tom’s eye in the silver mirror he faced. He wore a smile that only looked calm if you didn’t know anything about him.
“I thought it sounded fascinating.” Harry turned a page of his book deliberately.
“It sounds dangerous to me.”
“I—that really does surprise me, Tom. I would have thought you’d want to try it.”
Tom stalked towards him, already bare-chested but still wearing the sleek blue-grey trousers that seemed to be his preferred clothing for beneath his robes. Harry found himself unexpectedly holding back a moan. Tom looked powerful and dangerous that way, skin bearing a few scars that were a reminder of what he had seen and survived, but fewer than Harry had.
And the sleek bulge beneath the trousers was what Harry’s eyes went to next. He swallowed.
Tom didn’t acknowledge Harry’s response with so much as a smile. He stood in front of the ebony wood chair Harry occupied and reached out to press down on his shoulder with a heavy hand. “I don’t want you to go looking for trouble.”
“I didn’t. I managed to stay out of it until a few months ago, and that was your fault and Abraxas’s—”
Tom leaned over to press a savage kiss to his mouth. Harry surged up to meet him, glad that this was happening instead of a talk. Words were more dangerous than actions right now.
Tom did try to pull back once and speak, but Harry had had enough of that. He shook his head and slid rapidly down Tom’s body, nuzzling his face against the erection that had been tempting him. Tom caught his breath and held it.
“You—you didn’t want to do this before.”
“That was before,” Harry replied, and yanked down Tom’s trousers.
Tom stepped back, his eyes wide. Harry grinned at him and then eased his pants down slowly, just to be an arse. Tom said nothing, although he looked as if he was clenching every muscle while he waited for Harry to start sucking on him.
Or not. He probably thinks that “not” is more likely.
But Harry wanted to show Tom that he wasn’t in charge here, that just because Tom was the one who had started this sex thing, it didn’t mean he got to finish it. Harry leaned forwards and sucked Tom in before he could change his mind.
Only sheer stubbornness kept him from coughing Tom’s cock right back out again. Hell, it was big, bigger than Harry had thought it would be. And it was heavy on his tongue, and it poked his mouth in odd ways, and every time he thought he’d got used to it, it would slide some other way and threaten to choke him again.
But he was going to win. Harry dug his hands into Tom’s hips and felt him wince a little, maybe from the sting of Harry’s nails. Well, too fucking bad. Harry blew out over Tom’s cock, and then sucked in, and Tom snapped his hips forwards with a startled groan.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Tom whispered, and he sounded as if he was on the verge of yet another stupid jealous snit like the silent one he’d had over Rosier. Harry wasn’t going to permit that, either. He lapped around Tom’s head and reached out to stroke his bollocks. Tom lost all words and began thrusting in a regular rhythm.
It wasn’t easy, but it was sure satisfying. Tom always seemed so in control most of the time, Harry thought, gazing up as he sucked. Now the line of his throat was back and bare, and his eyes were shut as Harry had only ever seen them for rare blinks. Tom never went to sleep first when they were in bed together, and he always woke up first.
Now he staggered, and Harry reached out and clutched at his hips again, as much to keep him upright as anything else. Tom made harsh noises in response. Harry pinched a fold of skin, and Tom’s eyes flew open again.
“You—”
Harry swallowed as harshly as he’d pinched, and Tom lost all words. He wavered. Harry breathed through his nose as hard as he could and kept going, ignoring the intense taste gathering in the back of his throat.
Tom’s thrusts slowed, then quickened, and abruptly he reached out and gripped the back of Harry’s head. Harry drew away in response. But it was too late, and Tom was coming into his mouth, his hiss of Parseltongue wavering like his balance.
Harry only half-swallowed, and did cough, jerking back to spit all over the floor. Tom didn’t say anything. His breathing was still returning to normal when Harry looked at him again, and his face had a manic flush.
He got to see that much before Tom grabbed him.
They didn’t make it to the bed. Tom bore him down, and held him pinioned with his hands on Harry’s shoulders, rubbing his thigh mercilessly against Harry’s cock. Harry still wore his pants, he protested in a jumble of half-words, and he tried to keep himself from thrusting. It didn’t matter. The pleasure Tom created was as merciless as he was, and Harry crested violently, shouting, his head twisted back.
When his panting had slowed down enough that he could focus on something other than the cooling wetness at his groin and the rawness in his throat, Tom raked a hand through his hair and gripped it. Harry met his eyes and held them coolly. He wasn’t wearing the brooch that Albus had created for him to guard against Tom’s Legilimency, but Tom didn’t even try now. He seemed to have accepted that Harry was naturally a good Occlumens.
And, well, Harry had also threatened him with walking away if Tom ever tried to read his mind, so his restraint now was what Harry expected.
“I will not lose you,” Tom said, as if he needed to repeat the words to hypnotize Harry. “I will not let you go.”
Harry sighed and let his head roll to the side. “I know you won’t,” he said. And he really didn’t expect Tom to ever willingly let him go. If Harry found a way home, if he left—and he knew now that he had to—then he wouldn’t expect Tom to cheerfully help him along his way, either.
“Why aren’t you making the same kind of promises about staying with me?”
Harry tensed all over, and knew that Tom could hardly help but feel it when he was lying on top of him. Shit. This was the first time that Tom had ever asked the question.
“Because I can’t,” Harry said.
“You won’t tell me why.” Tom sounded more musing than upset.
Harry shook his head in silence, and pushed at Tom’s hands. Tom let him go. Harry looked at the red handprints on his shoulders and shrugged. Most of the time, Tom was gentle, because it was what Harry responded best to, but sometimes it happened like this.
“If you won’t tell me…”
“I can’t.”
“Then I’ll have to prove to you that you can trust me, and get you to tell me that way.”
Harry froze with tension again, although this time he was standing with his back to Tom. He had thought Tom’s sentence would end with “I’ll have to force it out of you” or something similar. Sometimes it still shook him, how insightful Tom was.
Of course, this particular Tom had never created Horcruxes. He had managed to work out all by himself that Harry was lonely and starving for affection, and he needed a gentle touch the first time.
Sometimes that made Harry’s chest ache with collared hope. Surely this world was different, then, a completely different dimension instead of just the past? But then he would lose hope again because Tom could always be lying, and be so strong-willed that he could go against his own nature if he had to.
Harry wanted to stay here. But he had to go. That was the way it was.
“Harry,” Tom said, voice soft again. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That I’m tired and would like to go to bed.”
There was a silence so long that Harry wished Tom would attack him, just so it would break and he would be justified in ending things now. But instead, Tom said softly, “Then come with me.”
Harry hesitated. He’d slept with Tom in his own little flat, but not here.
“Abraxas won’t mind,” Tom said. “No one minds. There are still some of the Knights who are having trouble adjusting to the fact that you’re a half-blood, but you’re mad if you think they would voice such things.”
Harry let Tom lead him to the gorgeous, enormous bed, where he stretched out with only a small grunt of discomfort. Tom raised his head at once, of course. “You’re hurt?”
“My throat is a little sore,” Harry said. He had to give Tom something to latch onto, or he wouldn’t give up.
Tom nodded, and cast a healing spell. Harry sighed and relaxed next to him. Tom’s arm slid over his waist.
“I wish you could trust me.”
Harry let the words die without a response. The room was dark now, as the fire died, too, and he could feel but not see Tom’s eyes watching him, constantly watching. Harry lay stiff and still and stared up into the darkness at the ceiling.
He wished he could be sure this was a different world and not the changed past. But there was no way to be sure of that, no omniscient being who could tell him. So he had to leave, had to return home and protect the past for those who he owed his first allegiance to, the vulnerable. If this was a different world, it wouldn’t suffer any harm.
And if it wasn’t, then Harry would have done what he could to protect it.
He knew Tom was still awake when he at last slid into sleep, because he always was.
*
“I see,” Albus said slowly when Harry had finished explaining his decision to him. “A choice I honor you for, my dear boy. I only wish that it wasn’t so hard.”
Harry blinked at the floor and said nothing. They had teacups, as usual, but they had drunk the last of the tea long before. Harry had stumbled through his explanation, because he’d had to include what he’d been keeping from Albus so far, the sexual closeness with Tom.
Albus had listened to him and hadn’t judged. Of course, when Harry thought about it, he’d had the same kind of relationship with Grindelwald once upon a time. If there was anyone in any world who could understand him, Albus would.
Harry looked up with a sigh and met Albus’s gaze. “Can you help me get to the Department of Mysteries? Or bring a device out? Or books?”
“Books would be the easiest,” Albus said at once. He had a soft shine to his face again, and Harry felt a surge of strength rise up in his limbs. For obvious reasons, neither Tom nor the Potters were going to help him. Albus had been soft and subdued when they first spoke, reflecting Harry’s grief back at him, but now his encouragement was going to help more than anyone else’s. “And even I would not be able to venture into the Department of Mysteries on a whim. However, I have copies of many of the same books that they might hold in my personal library.”
Harry slumped on his chair. “Thank you. Honestly, thank you.”
“You have made the most difficult decision I think I’ve ever heard of someone making,” Albus said solemnly. “It’s true that I turned away from Gellert, but I did it after a disaster had already happened.” His face darkened again. “I will not speak of that disaster, as it’s not only my secret, but—you are a better man than I am, Harry Potter.”
Harry blinked back tears. “Thank you, Albus.”
Albus squeezed his shoulder once by way of farewell. Harry went back to bed and slept in a better frame of mind.
*
“I would like a good explanation of your absence from dinner the other night, young man.”
Harry swallowed. For a woman he’d only known for a few weeks, Dorea was incredibly intimidating, and all the more so because her voice was low. They stood in the entrance hall of her home, and maybe she just didn’t want to shout and alert Charlus, Tristan, Euphemia, and Fleamont, who were all in the dining room.
But her grey eyes were frosty with disappointment, not anger. Harry glanced at the floor. “I don’t have an excuse. I’m sorry.”
Silence. Harry looked up, wondering if Dorea had gone back into the dining room. But she simply stared at him.
“Harry,” she said next, and her voice had changed completely, and her hand trembled a little as she reached out to him. “Please, dear. I know something’s wrong. I want to help. All of us would, if you would only tell us.”
Harry leaned against her for just a moment, her arm strong and secure around his shoulders. Merlin, he would like nothing more than that, to step back and lay his burden in her hands and let her carry it.
But what could she do? She wasn’t some secret specialist in time magic. Harry knew it was likely that she wouldn’t agree with him that he had to leave, and would pour all her power into persuading him to stay.
It felt like there was a knife in his heart every time he breathed at the thought of leaving her. All of them, but he had become closest to Dorea.
But how could he say that the disappointed hopes of five people were worth more than his friends, and maybe millions of other people in his world, not existing? Harry would have given anything not to have to be the one who would make this choice. But he was, and whinging about it wouldn’t change things.
He straightened his shoulders and told her something that would be the truth in a few weeks, at least if he didn’t handle Tom more carefully than he would probably be able to. “I had a fight with Tom.”
“Your friend?”
Harry flinched, but Dorea put both arms around him before he could pull back. Her voice was even softer as she said, “I can recognize the signs. I don’t disapprove, my dear. It’s true that Charlus is starting to fuss about great-grandchildren to me—”
Oh, God. Harry was beyond grateful that his supposed grandfather had kept that to just him and Dorea for right now.
“But we only found you a short time ago. And this is another reason you didn’t want to come find us, hmmm?” Dorea’s arms tightened until, if anything could have compensated for the knife under his ribs, they would have. “Please, Harry. Don’t draw back from us. We’re going to accept everything about you. I can’t speak for everyone—I think Tristan is going to take longer to come to terms with having a son—but I love you.”
Harry nearly lost it then. God, the tears were rising; they were going to choke him if he didn’t force them back. He clenched his fists and leaned his forehead on Dorea’s shoulder.
“That was it, wasn’t it?” Dorea whispered into his ear. Her hands were stroking through his hair. Harry imagined having this in his own world, and forcibly banished the thought. “You were afraid that we couldn’t accept you because you like men.”
Harry blinked and sniffled a little, which was a lot less than he wanted to do, and said thickly, “Yes.” At least it would be excellent cover for the real reason, and Dorea was less likely to keep asking now that she had one that satisfied her.
“We will accept you,” Dorea said firmly, and hooked her hand under his elbow. “Come and have dinner.”
It was a wonderful meal, full of fussy dishes that Harry had heard of before but never tasted, like roast boar and larks’ tongues and small stuffed quail. He ate more than he should have, but he also laughed at the old stories Charlus told about the pranks he’d played in Hogwarts, and found Potions more fascinating than he’d ever thought he could when they were explained by “Great-Aunt” Euphemia. Tristan was the sort of quiet he always was around Harry, but he leaned towards him near the end of the meal and murmured, “You’re strong, you know.”
Harry blinked a little. “You mean magically?”
“Yes, but…all sorts of things.” Tristan toyed with his wineglass, and his riotous Potter hair fell into his eyes. “I wouldn’t have had the courage to pick myself up and meet my new family like you have.” He paused. “I’m proud that you’re my son.”
Harry felt as if he had an iron ball in his throat. He ducked his head, and Tristan reached out and ruffled his hair.
Luckily, choking and ducking his head was practically an expected reaction in this situation. And Tristan was uncomfortable enough already that he wouldn’t demand anything more.
Tom is the one who taught me to anticipate people’s reactions like this and use them against them.
Harry swallowed, when he could, and ignored that. Well, if that was the case, then he would use the lessons to protect everyone he could.
Even Tom.
*
“I Challenge you.”
Harry paused. He’d attended another meeting of the Knights of Walpurgis where they discussed what kinds of magic they were going to use on key people in the Ministry to make sure they passed certain laws. His head was buzzing, both with the list of names he was storing up to tell Albus and because he could see, now that he knew what Tom really wanted—safety and protection for himself—how those laws fell into a pattern that would mean Tom could never be threatened again.
Now he turned and looked across the enormous ballroom they’d used as their meeting place this time; it was in a manor that Rosier was connected to somehow. It had far too many golden decorations, in Harry’s opinion, and a chandelier that loomed overhead and reflected light into a dazzling broken pattern that had added to Harry’s headache. Now he blinked and tried to focus through the dancing dizziness, to find out who had spoken.
And why he could practically hear the capital letter in it.
“Did you hear me, Potter? I Challenge you.”
Harry held back a sigh that would have rasped his throat raw. It was Aloysius Bulstrode, one of Tom’s new recruits. He had a thick, stocky build, and hands as large as though he wrestled dragons for a living. His dark hair fell into grey eyes gleaming with excitement as he stalked forwards. His wand weaved in his hand.
“Tom,” Harry said, and watched the mild shock on Bulstrode’s features. “What are the rules for a Challenge among the Knights?”
“A duel,” Tom said. He stood in front of the raised chair that didn’t resemble a throne because it didn’t need to. He rested his elbow on the padded red arm of the chair and smiled at Bulstrode. “All spells are allowed except the Cruciatus and the Killing Curse. Duel ends when one of the duelists yields. After that, the one who lost becomes the lowest-ranking member of the Knights until he can Challenge someone else successfully, while the winner assumes the loser’s old place.”
Right next to Tom. Harry didn’t wonder now that Bulstrode had Challenged him. He only wondered that none of the other Knights had.
Then again, most of them had been present in the smaller meetings rather than this full conclave, where they had seen how Tom touched and looked at Harry. Perhaps none of them dared.
“Very well,” Harry said. “I accept the Challenge.”
Bulstrode laughed aloud. Harry saw Malfoy and Rosier exchange glances. Tom took his seat again, lounging against the back. There was laughter in his eyes when Harry looked at him.
Of course. Tom had said before that he had never forgiven the Slytherin pure-bloods for disdaining him as a mere Muggleborn orphan in his first years at Hogwarts. He would look forward to seeing Harry, a fellow half-blood, wipe the floor with them.
Harry shook his head at Tom. He received a glance of such focused delight that he whirled away from it, face aflame.
God, Tom needed to stop looking at him like that.
It made Harry want to trust him with things that were none of his business.
Harry took a deep breath and strode over to the center of the ballroom’s floor to face Bulstrode. Bulstrode was already maneuvering in a way that suggested he’d noticed Harry’s problem with the lights and was trying to take advantage of it. He must be a little smarter than he looked.
Harry still thought there were only two courses of action Bulstrode would take, though. Either he would charge first, trying to get close and overwhelm Harry with his bulk, or—
“Imperio!”
Right, he would use the one Unforgivable that’s not banned from this contest. Harry thought for a moment about pretending to be under the curse and then hexing Bulstrode when he got close enough, but that would make him look weaker than it would clever.
Instead, he shook his head a little and let the curse rush past him like water. Then he smiled. “Was that supposed to affect me?” he murmured.
There was an answering murmur from the avidly watching Knights. Harry wondered for a fleeting moment how many of them could resist the Imperius.
The burning sensation of eyes on his back increased. Harry thought his ability to resist couldn’t have surprised Tom that much, not when Tom thought he was an Occlumens, but he supposed he’d never told Tom about it in so many words, either.
“It was,” Bulstrode said grimly, because apparently he’d never heard of rhetorical questions. “Venenum!”
The air in between them boiled and became a flying mess of poison, a rain of green and purple droplets headed straight for Harry. Harry laughed and waved his wand. “Silva serpentium!”
Silver and blue trees shot out of the floor in front of him, each of them bearing an enormous snake in their branches. The snakes and trees together, with open mouths and fluttering leaves, absorbed the venom, and then the snakes crawled towards the floor and began advancing on Bulstrode.
He was occupied with Vanishing them for a moment, which gave Harry the chance to murmur, “Frigidus in mente.” He wanted to speak all the spells aloud, so that the Knights would know exactly how much he knew and how stupid it was to challenge him.
And then he wanted to kick himself in the head. What would it matter? You’re going to be leaving soon, remember?
But his vision narrowed to the moment of the battle, as he watched Bulstrode’s movements slow, his mind assuming the sluggishness it would if he was freezing to death. Harry strolled a little closer, considering whether he should extend the battle or not. There was something to be said for making it flashy, but on the other hand, winning as quickly as this was impressive, too.
Bulstrode managed to breathe, through trembling lips, “Finite!”, and then his movements abruptly sped up. Harry halted and watched him, curious. So it wouldn’t be such a quick victory after all.
Bulstrode stepped back and pointed his wand straight up as he screamed, “Frangere vitrum!”
The chandelier above them shattered with a sound like glaciers breaking.
Harry spun in a circle, his wand flicking out several spells at once, no longer keeping track if he was saying them aloud or not. He raised a circle of shields around the Knights at the perimeters of the room, raised a special dome of its own above Tom’s head, and then faced upwards as he watched the rain of glass shards start down towards him.
There was no use running. He would never get out of the impact zone.
Harry took a deep breath. “Desinere!”
The magic boiled out of him and swirled up as fog right below the first of the plunging razors as it reached a point perhaps a meter above Harry’s head. Then the fog was abruptly gone, and Harry stared up as the shard above him froze.
The ripple of stillness traveled back up around the whole cone of the broken chandelier, stopping each chip of glass or bit of chain or flickering candle exactly where it was. In far less than five seconds, the whole ballroom above the height of a human’s head was a maze of reflected light and thrown shadow and paralyzed objects.
Harry stepped back and started to sit down in the middle of the floor. He didn’t even manage to glance over and see what Bulstrode was doing. If he lost the Challenge, so be it. He couldn’t stand up now after unleashing that much magic.
Strong arms caught him, and by the sheer firmness of their grip around his waist, Harry knew who it was. He sighed and leaned back against Tom for a minute, then tried to pull away. He could probably stand now. “I’m all right.”
Tom laid a wand against his temple and whispered in a tender tone, “Somnio.”
Harry would have managed to fight off the Sleep Charm any other time. Even now, he struggled for a second, his consciousness flickering like the candles poised above him.
And then, light and consciousness together were snuffed.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, background Charlus/Dorea and Fleamont/Euphemia
Content Notes: Time travel, angst, violence
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 5900
Summary: Harry is struggling between his desire for love and his desire to fulfill his duty, to find a way to stay and a way to return to his own time. Tom Riddle’s attempts to seduce him permanently are not helping.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to both “Earning His Notice” and “Pride and Power”; read those first, or you’ll be lost. This is part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series of fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August, and will probably have three parts.
The Grand Design
“You never did tell me what that design of two snakes meant that you received in the post.”
Harry sighed and sat back from the groaning table in Dorea’s dining room. She was his great-aunt really, but she was convinced that she was his grandmother, due to the machinations of people in this time. She sat now with a glass of red wine in her hand, her eyes tracing the lines of his face in quiet wonder.
The excellent meal he’d just finished couldn’t bury the feeling of guilt that squirmed in his stomach. Harry swallowed and said, “My friend made it as a prank. He threatened to tattoo it on me with his wand.”
Dorea laughed lightly, shaking her head. She had long, sleek black hair that reminded Harry of the way Sirius’s might have come to look if he lived long enough, and eyes that Harry had never seen dull or bored. “You do have extraordinary friends, Harry. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would create a design that intricate as a prank.”
No, Tom hadn’t. But Harry wasn’t about to tell his “family” about Tom, or tell him about them in any detail, either. Tom did know that an Auror at the Ministry had introduced Harry to the Potters in the firm belief that Harry was their illegitimate grandson, or great-nephew, in the case of Fleamont and Euphemia.
His real grandparents. Harry’s head and heart spent far too much time spinning dizzily at the fact that he got to see them argue and laugh and invent potions in this time period.
These people he’d never known, wanted to know, shouldn’t have known. The time period he should never have visited.
“Harry, darling. What’s wrong? Are you still worried that we’re suddenly going to turn blood purist on you? I promise, it will never happen.”
Dorea reached out across the table to him, her eyes troubled. Harry captured her hand and lifted it to his lips to kiss it, the way he’d seen Charlus do more than once. “I don’t think that, Grandmother.” The word made his throat ache. “It’s just—there are things that I’m still trying to deal with. My life changed so suddenly.”
“Ah, yes, well, I can understand that. But perhaps you can clarify my curiosity about something. Did you really intend to never approach the Potter family?”
Harry blinked. His cover story was that he was the son of a Muggle woman Dorea and Charlus’s son Tristan had seduced, that he’d known his heritage but had never intended to claim it. “I—yes, of course. Why would I embarrass you that way?”
“But you must have heard a little about our politics in the war and in the years before that. I would have researched my family.”
“I didn’t dare to—go too deeply. Not when I never anticipated meeting you.”
“You’re daring and reckless in all other aspects of your life, Harry. Can you help me understand why you were going to be so different when it’s a matter of concern to me and Charlus that we might never have got to meet our grandson?”
Not your grandson. Your time-traveling great-nephew. Harry ignored the hammering of his heart and said slowly, “I didn’t think the Potters were blood purists, exactly. But I know that it can be embarrassing even if you’re the most open-minded family on the planet to have an illegitimate child show up out of nowhere. I was thinking of it from that angle.”
“I would have had more of a problem with it if you were Charlus’s son,” Dorea told him immediately. Her eyes and her voice were calm, and Harry wondered if he would ever understand her. “But given that we’d given up on having more children besides Tristan and we never thought he would settle down and have a family, this is a miracle.”
Her hand tightened on his. Harry sighed and looked at the tabletop.
*
“But can’t you see that he’s corrupting you, my lord? You had great and ambitious plans before you met him, and now you’re just focused on seducing Potter!”
Harry paused outside the Malfoy dining room. He’d made plenty of noise as he approached, but it seemed the argument had overpowered it. Tom answered Lestrange’s words a moment later, his own voice calm.
“You don’t understand my goals or what I would sacrifice to attain them, Lestrange. Come in, Harry.”
Harry grimaced as he opened the door. Tom might have arranged the whole argument to coincide with the time that Harry came to the dinner. He loved using Harry to humiliate his pure-blood followers. He had never forgiven them for the time they had treated him as just another Mudblood, though they thought he had.
Harry hated the dynamic. But he hadn’t yet found a way to disrupt it.
Tom’s eyes gleamed at him as Harry walked in and past the enormous cherrywood table. Lestrange was glaring at him as usual. Abraxas had a strictly neutral face. Rosier, with a hooked nose and blank eyes, nodded at Harry and stood up to shake his hand. “I don’t think that we met at much length before. Evan Rosier.”
“Harry Potter.” It was still surreal to speak his actual name to someone in this time.
Rosier smiled a little, although he was examining him the same way Abraxas used to, as if trying to find out what in the world would convince Tom Riddle to get fixated on him. If he figured it out, Harry would ask Rosier to tell him. It wasn’t like he understood it himself.
“Come sit beside me, Harry.”
Apparently he’d held Rosier’s eyes too long. Tom breathed jealousy, sometimes. Harry shook his head as he walked over to Tom’s side of the table and endured the arm around his waist. They might be lovers, as terrible an idea as that was, but Harry wished Tom would save gestures like that for the bedroom.
“Rosier was telling us about some innovations that the Unspeakables have been coming up with,” Tom said lazily.
“You’re young to be an Unspeakable,” Harry said. “Congratulations.”
Rosier shook his head a little. “It’s my cousin who is. But they don’t make the apprentices swear the secrecy oath until they’re journeymen. Under the impression that people that junior can’t learn interesting secrets, I suppose. They’re wrong.”
Harry made an interested noise and then leaned back in the chair a little, letting himself drift. It was unlikely that Rosier would say anything he had to be involved in. Probably secrets that would feed Tom’s love for esoteric knowledge or maybe let him recruit more pure-bloods.
Harry couldn’t be involved in that, for all that people like Rosier and Malfoy probably thought he was, simply by being at Tom’s side. And he was still feeding some information to Albus—a little bit, a little that wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t belong here. He had to go home.
It was like an itch on his skin, and Harry breathed out slowly as he realized that he had probably made a decision. He had been torn and aching for weeks, but now he was ready to confront it. He had to leave.
“…and of course the Time Room is fascinating everybody at the moment.”
Harry turned his head abruptly. Rosier was holding forth with a glass of champagne, or at least something that looked like champagne in his hand, his eyes sparkling. He paused when Harry looked at him and blinked. “Yes, Potter? What is it?”
“Only that I didn’t realize the Unspeakables were looking into time,” Harry said, shaking his head. He felt Tom staring at him, but Tom did that all the time anyway, as if trying to look beneath Harry’s skull and see what was happening within his brain. “I thought it was less extraordinary magic that they only wanted everyone to think was interesting.”
Rosier smiled. “From what my cousin says, some of their reputation is exaggerated, but not everything. And the Time Room is something they discovered, not created.”
“Discovered where?” Harry leaned forwards, and ignored the way that Tom’s arm became an iron belt around him in response.
“In the bowels of the Ministry. There used to be something else down there, something before the Department of Mysteries, but all the records got erased centuries ago. Powerful spells. No one’s managed to counteract them.” Rosier preened a little, but then caught Tom’s eye and went on in a more sober voice. “So the Time Room is something they dug out. And it’s apparently filled with floating devices that reverse time, or isolate a person in bubbles where it passes faster, or even do other things. I don’t think my cousin has enough seniority yet to know everything.”
Harry nodded and said, “Well, I suppose that’s a sign that the Ministry might be lying or exaggerating about other things, as well. Have they found anything else that supposedly existed before the Department of Mysteries?”
*
Harry had been rather proud of that little conversational aside, which meant that Rosier and Malfoy and even Lestrange had started talking about history from four centuries ago, and almost came to blows over whose ancestor had cursed whose. He should have known that Tom would still note his unusual interest.
“Looking into time magic, Harry?”
Harry glanced up from the chair he was sitting in with a book on the history of Parseltongue. They were in the room at Malfoy Manor that seemed to be given over to Tom’s exclusive private use. It was darker than Harry would have preferred, with almost no illumination aside from the fire, but enough firelight glittered to let Harry catch Tom’s eye in the silver mirror he faced. He wore a smile that only looked calm if you didn’t know anything about him.
“I thought it sounded fascinating.” Harry turned a page of his book deliberately.
“It sounds dangerous to me.”
“I—that really does surprise me, Tom. I would have thought you’d want to try it.”
Tom stalked towards him, already bare-chested but still wearing the sleek blue-grey trousers that seemed to be his preferred clothing for beneath his robes. Harry found himself unexpectedly holding back a moan. Tom looked powerful and dangerous that way, skin bearing a few scars that were a reminder of what he had seen and survived, but fewer than Harry had.
And the sleek bulge beneath the trousers was what Harry’s eyes went to next. He swallowed.
Tom didn’t acknowledge Harry’s response with so much as a smile. He stood in front of the ebony wood chair Harry occupied and reached out to press down on his shoulder with a heavy hand. “I don’t want you to go looking for trouble.”
“I didn’t. I managed to stay out of it until a few months ago, and that was your fault and Abraxas’s—”
Tom leaned over to press a savage kiss to his mouth. Harry surged up to meet him, glad that this was happening instead of a talk. Words were more dangerous than actions right now.
Tom did try to pull back once and speak, but Harry had had enough of that. He shook his head and slid rapidly down Tom’s body, nuzzling his face against the erection that had been tempting him. Tom caught his breath and held it.
“You—you didn’t want to do this before.”
“That was before,” Harry replied, and yanked down Tom’s trousers.
Tom stepped back, his eyes wide. Harry grinned at him and then eased his pants down slowly, just to be an arse. Tom said nothing, although he looked as if he was clenching every muscle while he waited for Harry to start sucking on him.
Or not. He probably thinks that “not” is more likely.
But Harry wanted to show Tom that he wasn’t in charge here, that just because Tom was the one who had started this sex thing, it didn’t mean he got to finish it. Harry leaned forwards and sucked Tom in before he could change his mind.
Only sheer stubbornness kept him from coughing Tom’s cock right back out again. Hell, it was big, bigger than Harry had thought it would be. And it was heavy on his tongue, and it poked his mouth in odd ways, and every time he thought he’d got used to it, it would slide some other way and threaten to choke him again.
But he was going to win. Harry dug his hands into Tom’s hips and felt him wince a little, maybe from the sting of Harry’s nails. Well, too fucking bad. Harry blew out over Tom’s cock, and then sucked in, and Tom snapped his hips forwards with a startled groan.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Tom whispered, and he sounded as if he was on the verge of yet another stupid jealous snit like the silent one he’d had over Rosier. Harry wasn’t going to permit that, either. He lapped around Tom’s head and reached out to stroke his bollocks. Tom lost all words and began thrusting in a regular rhythm.
It wasn’t easy, but it was sure satisfying. Tom always seemed so in control most of the time, Harry thought, gazing up as he sucked. Now the line of his throat was back and bare, and his eyes were shut as Harry had only ever seen them for rare blinks. Tom never went to sleep first when they were in bed together, and he always woke up first.
Now he staggered, and Harry reached out and clutched at his hips again, as much to keep him upright as anything else. Tom made harsh noises in response. Harry pinched a fold of skin, and Tom’s eyes flew open again.
“You—”
Harry swallowed as harshly as he’d pinched, and Tom lost all words. He wavered. Harry breathed through his nose as hard as he could and kept going, ignoring the intense taste gathering in the back of his throat.
Tom’s thrusts slowed, then quickened, and abruptly he reached out and gripped the back of Harry’s head. Harry drew away in response. But it was too late, and Tom was coming into his mouth, his hiss of Parseltongue wavering like his balance.
Harry only half-swallowed, and did cough, jerking back to spit all over the floor. Tom didn’t say anything. His breathing was still returning to normal when Harry looked at him again, and his face had a manic flush.
He got to see that much before Tom grabbed him.
They didn’t make it to the bed. Tom bore him down, and held him pinioned with his hands on Harry’s shoulders, rubbing his thigh mercilessly against Harry’s cock. Harry still wore his pants, he protested in a jumble of half-words, and he tried to keep himself from thrusting. It didn’t matter. The pleasure Tom created was as merciless as he was, and Harry crested violently, shouting, his head twisted back.
When his panting had slowed down enough that he could focus on something other than the cooling wetness at his groin and the rawness in his throat, Tom raked a hand through his hair and gripped it. Harry met his eyes and held them coolly. He wasn’t wearing the brooch that Albus had created for him to guard against Tom’s Legilimency, but Tom didn’t even try now. He seemed to have accepted that Harry was naturally a good Occlumens.
And, well, Harry had also threatened him with walking away if Tom ever tried to read his mind, so his restraint now was what Harry expected.
“I will not lose you,” Tom said, as if he needed to repeat the words to hypnotize Harry. “I will not let you go.”
Harry sighed and let his head roll to the side. “I know you won’t,” he said. And he really didn’t expect Tom to ever willingly let him go. If Harry found a way home, if he left—and he knew now that he had to—then he wouldn’t expect Tom to cheerfully help him along his way, either.
“Why aren’t you making the same kind of promises about staying with me?”
Harry tensed all over, and knew that Tom could hardly help but feel it when he was lying on top of him. Shit. This was the first time that Tom had ever asked the question.
“Because I can’t,” Harry said.
“You won’t tell me why.” Tom sounded more musing than upset.
Harry shook his head in silence, and pushed at Tom’s hands. Tom let him go. Harry looked at the red handprints on his shoulders and shrugged. Most of the time, Tom was gentle, because it was what Harry responded best to, but sometimes it happened like this.
“If you won’t tell me…”
“I can’t.”
“Then I’ll have to prove to you that you can trust me, and get you to tell me that way.”
Harry froze with tension again, although this time he was standing with his back to Tom. He had thought Tom’s sentence would end with “I’ll have to force it out of you” or something similar. Sometimes it still shook him, how insightful Tom was.
Of course, this particular Tom had never created Horcruxes. He had managed to work out all by himself that Harry was lonely and starving for affection, and he needed a gentle touch the first time.
Sometimes that made Harry’s chest ache with collared hope. Surely this world was different, then, a completely different dimension instead of just the past? But then he would lose hope again because Tom could always be lying, and be so strong-willed that he could go against his own nature if he had to.
Harry wanted to stay here. But he had to go. That was the way it was.
“Harry,” Tom said, voice soft again. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That I’m tired and would like to go to bed.”
There was a silence so long that Harry wished Tom would attack him, just so it would break and he would be justified in ending things now. But instead, Tom said softly, “Then come with me.”
Harry hesitated. He’d slept with Tom in his own little flat, but not here.
“Abraxas won’t mind,” Tom said. “No one minds. There are still some of the Knights who are having trouble adjusting to the fact that you’re a half-blood, but you’re mad if you think they would voice such things.”
Harry let Tom lead him to the gorgeous, enormous bed, where he stretched out with only a small grunt of discomfort. Tom raised his head at once, of course. “You’re hurt?”
“My throat is a little sore,” Harry said. He had to give Tom something to latch onto, or he wouldn’t give up.
Tom nodded, and cast a healing spell. Harry sighed and relaxed next to him. Tom’s arm slid over his waist.
“I wish you could trust me.”
Harry let the words die without a response. The room was dark now, as the fire died, too, and he could feel but not see Tom’s eyes watching him, constantly watching. Harry lay stiff and still and stared up into the darkness at the ceiling.
He wished he could be sure this was a different world and not the changed past. But there was no way to be sure of that, no omniscient being who could tell him. So he had to leave, had to return home and protect the past for those who he owed his first allegiance to, the vulnerable. If this was a different world, it wouldn’t suffer any harm.
And if it wasn’t, then Harry would have done what he could to protect it.
He knew Tom was still awake when he at last slid into sleep, because he always was.
*
“I see,” Albus said slowly when Harry had finished explaining his decision to him. “A choice I honor you for, my dear boy. I only wish that it wasn’t so hard.”
Harry blinked at the floor and said nothing. They had teacups, as usual, but they had drunk the last of the tea long before. Harry had stumbled through his explanation, because he’d had to include what he’d been keeping from Albus so far, the sexual closeness with Tom.
Albus had listened to him and hadn’t judged. Of course, when Harry thought about it, he’d had the same kind of relationship with Grindelwald once upon a time. If there was anyone in any world who could understand him, Albus would.
Harry looked up with a sigh and met Albus’s gaze. “Can you help me get to the Department of Mysteries? Or bring a device out? Or books?”
“Books would be the easiest,” Albus said at once. He had a soft shine to his face again, and Harry felt a surge of strength rise up in his limbs. For obvious reasons, neither Tom nor the Potters were going to help him. Albus had been soft and subdued when they first spoke, reflecting Harry’s grief back at him, but now his encouragement was going to help more than anyone else’s. “And even I would not be able to venture into the Department of Mysteries on a whim. However, I have copies of many of the same books that they might hold in my personal library.”
Harry slumped on his chair. “Thank you. Honestly, thank you.”
“You have made the most difficult decision I think I’ve ever heard of someone making,” Albus said solemnly. “It’s true that I turned away from Gellert, but I did it after a disaster had already happened.” His face darkened again. “I will not speak of that disaster, as it’s not only my secret, but—you are a better man than I am, Harry Potter.”
Harry blinked back tears. “Thank you, Albus.”
Albus squeezed his shoulder once by way of farewell. Harry went back to bed and slept in a better frame of mind.
*
“I would like a good explanation of your absence from dinner the other night, young man.”
Harry swallowed. For a woman he’d only known for a few weeks, Dorea was incredibly intimidating, and all the more so because her voice was low. They stood in the entrance hall of her home, and maybe she just didn’t want to shout and alert Charlus, Tristan, Euphemia, and Fleamont, who were all in the dining room.
But her grey eyes were frosty with disappointment, not anger. Harry glanced at the floor. “I don’t have an excuse. I’m sorry.”
Silence. Harry looked up, wondering if Dorea had gone back into the dining room. But she simply stared at him.
“Harry,” she said next, and her voice had changed completely, and her hand trembled a little as she reached out to him. “Please, dear. I know something’s wrong. I want to help. All of us would, if you would only tell us.”
Harry leaned against her for just a moment, her arm strong and secure around his shoulders. Merlin, he would like nothing more than that, to step back and lay his burden in her hands and let her carry it.
But what could she do? She wasn’t some secret specialist in time magic. Harry knew it was likely that she wouldn’t agree with him that he had to leave, and would pour all her power into persuading him to stay.
It felt like there was a knife in his heart every time he breathed at the thought of leaving her. All of them, but he had become closest to Dorea.
But how could he say that the disappointed hopes of five people were worth more than his friends, and maybe millions of other people in his world, not existing? Harry would have given anything not to have to be the one who would make this choice. But he was, and whinging about it wouldn’t change things.
He straightened his shoulders and told her something that would be the truth in a few weeks, at least if he didn’t handle Tom more carefully than he would probably be able to. “I had a fight with Tom.”
“Your friend?”
Harry flinched, but Dorea put both arms around him before he could pull back. Her voice was even softer as she said, “I can recognize the signs. I don’t disapprove, my dear. It’s true that Charlus is starting to fuss about great-grandchildren to me—”
Oh, God. Harry was beyond grateful that his supposed grandfather had kept that to just him and Dorea for right now.
“But we only found you a short time ago. And this is another reason you didn’t want to come find us, hmmm?” Dorea’s arms tightened until, if anything could have compensated for the knife under his ribs, they would have. “Please, Harry. Don’t draw back from us. We’re going to accept everything about you. I can’t speak for everyone—I think Tristan is going to take longer to come to terms with having a son—but I love you.”
Harry nearly lost it then. God, the tears were rising; they were going to choke him if he didn’t force them back. He clenched his fists and leaned his forehead on Dorea’s shoulder.
“That was it, wasn’t it?” Dorea whispered into his ear. Her hands were stroking through his hair. Harry imagined having this in his own world, and forcibly banished the thought. “You were afraid that we couldn’t accept you because you like men.”
Harry blinked and sniffled a little, which was a lot less than he wanted to do, and said thickly, “Yes.” At least it would be excellent cover for the real reason, and Dorea was less likely to keep asking now that she had one that satisfied her.
“We will accept you,” Dorea said firmly, and hooked her hand under his elbow. “Come and have dinner.”
It was a wonderful meal, full of fussy dishes that Harry had heard of before but never tasted, like roast boar and larks’ tongues and small stuffed quail. He ate more than he should have, but he also laughed at the old stories Charlus told about the pranks he’d played in Hogwarts, and found Potions more fascinating than he’d ever thought he could when they were explained by “Great-Aunt” Euphemia. Tristan was the sort of quiet he always was around Harry, but he leaned towards him near the end of the meal and murmured, “You’re strong, you know.”
Harry blinked a little. “You mean magically?”
“Yes, but…all sorts of things.” Tristan toyed with his wineglass, and his riotous Potter hair fell into his eyes. “I wouldn’t have had the courage to pick myself up and meet my new family like you have.” He paused. “I’m proud that you’re my son.”
Harry felt as if he had an iron ball in his throat. He ducked his head, and Tristan reached out and ruffled his hair.
Luckily, choking and ducking his head was practically an expected reaction in this situation. And Tristan was uncomfortable enough already that he wouldn’t demand anything more.
Tom is the one who taught me to anticipate people’s reactions like this and use them against them.
Harry swallowed, when he could, and ignored that. Well, if that was the case, then he would use the lessons to protect everyone he could.
Even Tom.
*
“I Challenge you.”
Harry paused. He’d attended another meeting of the Knights of Walpurgis where they discussed what kinds of magic they were going to use on key people in the Ministry to make sure they passed certain laws. His head was buzzing, both with the list of names he was storing up to tell Albus and because he could see, now that he knew what Tom really wanted—safety and protection for himself—how those laws fell into a pattern that would mean Tom could never be threatened again.
Now he turned and looked across the enormous ballroom they’d used as their meeting place this time; it was in a manor that Rosier was connected to somehow. It had far too many golden decorations, in Harry’s opinion, and a chandelier that loomed overhead and reflected light into a dazzling broken pattern that had added to Harry’s headache. Now he blinked and tried to focus through the dancing dizziness, to find out who had spoken.
And why he could practically hear the capital letter in it.
“Did you hear me, Potter? I Challenge you.”
Harry held back a sigh that would have rasped his throat raw. It was Aloysius Bulstrode, one of Tom’s new recruits. He had a thick, stocky build, and hands as large as though he wrestled dragons for a living. His dark hair fell into grey eyes gleaming with excitement as he stalked forwards. His wand weaved in his hand.
“Tom,” Harry said, and watched the mild shock on Bulstrode’s features. “What are the rules for a Challenge among the Knights?”
“A duel,” Tom said. He stood in front of the raised chair that didn’t resemble a throne because it didn’t need to. He rested his elbow on the padded red arm of the chair and smiled at Bulstrode. “All spells are allowed except the Cruciatus and the Killing Curse. Duel ends when one of the duelists yields. After that, the one who lost becomes the lowest-ranking member of the Knights until he can Challenge someone else successfully, while the winner assumes the loser’s old place.”
Right next to Tom. Harry didn’t wonder now that Bulstrode had Challenged him. He only wondered that none of the other Knights had.
Then again, most of them had been present in the smaller meetings rather than this full conclave, where they had seen how Tom touched and looked at Harry. Perhaps none of them dared.
“Very well,” Harry said. “I accept the Challenge.”
Bulstrode laughed aloud. Harry saw Malfoy and Rosier exchange glances. Tom took his seat again, lounging against the back. There was laughter in his eyes when Harry looked at him.
Of course. Tom had said before that he had never forgiven the Slytherin pure-bloods for disdaining him as a mere Muggleborn orphan in his first years at Hogwarts. He would look forward to seeing Harry, a fellow half-blood, wipe the floor with them.
Harry shook his head at Tom. He received a glance of such focused delight that he whirled away from it, face aflame.
God, Tom needed to stop looking at him like that.
It made Harry want to trust him with things that were none of his business.
Harry took a deep breath and strode over to the center of the ballroom’s floor to face Bulstrode. Bulstrode was already maneuvering in a way that suggested he’d noticed Harry’s problem with the lights and was trying to take advantage of it. He must be a little smarter than he looked.
Harry still thought there were only two courses of action Bulstrode would take, though. Either he would charge first, trying to get close and overwhelm Harry with his bulk, or—
“Imperio!”
Right, he would use the one Unforgivable that’s not banned from this contest. Harry thought for a moment about pretending to be under the curse and then hexing Bulstrode when he got close enough, but that would make him look weaker than it would clever.
Instead, he shook his head a little and let the curse rush past him like water. Then he smiled. “Was that supposed to affect me?” he murmured.
There was an answering murmur from the avidly watching Knights. Harry wondered for a fleeting moment how many of them could resist the Imperius.
The burning sensation of eyes on his back increased. Harry thought his ability to resist couldn’t have surprised Tom that much, not when Tom thought he was an Occlumens, but he supposed he’d never told Tom about it in so many words, either.
“It was,” Bulstrode said grimly, because apparently he’d never heard of rhetorical questions. “Venenum!”
The air in between them boiled and became a flying mess of poison, a rain of green and purple droplets headed straight for Harry. Harry laughed and waved his wand. “Silva serpentium!”
Silver and blue trees shot out of the floor in front of him, each of them bearing an enormous snake in their branches. The snakes and trees together, with open mouths and fluttering leaves, absorbed the venom, and then the snakes crawled towards the floor and began advancing on Bulstrode.
He was occupied with Vanishing them for a moment, which gave Harry the chance to murmur, “Frigidus in mente.” He wanted to speak all the spells aloud, so that the Knights would know exactly how much he knew and how stupid it was to challenge him.
And then he wanted to kick himself in the head. What would it matter? You’re going to be leaving soon, remember?
But his vision narrowed to the moment of the battle, as he watched Bulstrode’s movements slow, his mind assuming the sluggishness it would if he was freezing to death. Harry strolled a little closer, considering whether he should extend the battle or not. There was something to be said for making it flashy, but on the other hand, winning as quickly as this was impressive, too.
Bulstrode managed to breathe, through trembling lips, “Finite!”, and then his movements abruptly sped up. Harry halted and watched him, curious. So it wouldn’t be such a quick victory after all.
Bulstrode stepped back and pointed his wand straight up as he screamed, “Frangere vitrum!”
The chandelier above them shattered with a sound like glaciers breaking.
Harry spun in a circle, his wand flicking out several spells at once, no longer keeping track if he was saying them aloud or not. He raised a circle of shields around the Knights at the perimeters of the room, raised a special dome of its own above Tom’s head, and then faced upwards as he watched the rain of glass shards start down towards him.
There was no use running. He would never get out of the impact zone.
Harry took a deep breath. “Desinere!”
The magic boiled out of him and swirled up as fog right below the first of the plunging razors as it reached a point perhaps a meter above Harry’s head. Then the fog was abruptly gone, and Harry stared up as the shard above him froze.
The ripple of stillness traveled back up around the whole cone of the broken chandelier, stopping each chip of glass or bit of chain or flickering candle exactly where it was. In far less than five seconds, the whole ballroom above the height of a human’s head was a maze of reflected light and thrown shadow and paralyzed objects.
Harry stepped back and started to sit down in the middle of the floor. He didn’t even manage to glance over and see what Bulstrode was doing. If he lost the Challenge, so be it. He couldn’t stand up now after unleashing that much magic.
Strong arms caught him, and by the sheer firmness of their grip around his waist, Harry knew who it was. He sighed and leaned back against Tom for a minute, then tried to pull away. He could probably stand now. “I’m all right.”
Tom laid a wand against his temple and whispered in a tender tone, “Somnio.”
Harry would have managed to fight off the Sleep Charm any other time. Even now, he struggled for a second, his consciousness flickering like the candles poised above him.
And then, light and consciousness together were snuffed.