lomonaaeren (
lomonaaeren) wrote2019-07-13 11:27 pm
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Entry tags:
[From Liatha to Lammas]: The Grand Design, Harry/Tom, R, 2/3, sequel to Pride and Power
Part One.
Title: The Grand Design (2/3)
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 4500
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.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Part Two
Harry came to in the luxurious bedroom that Abraxas had granted Tom in Malfoy Manor. He frowned as he started to lever himself up. They hadn’t been in Malfoy Manor last night. Why and how had they come here?
“I wouldn’t.”
The words by his ear were almost a coo. The arms that crossed over his waist and the kiss Tom placed behind his ear had nothing to do with gentleness. Harry swallowed and leaned back a little. Yes, Tom was behind him, lying so that Harry’s body barely touched the sheets, but rested mostly on top of Tom instead.
“Do I have magical exhaustion?” Harry asked, staring forwards.
“Yes. And the highest place among the Knights next to mine, not that I would have expected otherwise.”
“Did Bulstrode live?”
There was a long pause. Harry took a sharp breath. Had he caused some other kind of change? Did this mean Millicent Bulstrode would never be born, if that fool was among her direct ancestors? And how would that change the world he was going back to?
“He lived,” Tom said. “For a few hours after that.”
Harry stiffened, sagged back for a second, then tugged hard. Tom evidently hadn’t been expecting that, and Harry got out of his arms and turned around, kneeling on the bed. Tom looked expressionlessly at him. Harry winced as the firelight from the elaborate marble hearth behind Tom cut into his eyes.
“You’re hurt.” Tom’s cool fingers rested on his temple.
“I’m furious,” Harry said, and jerked his head away, ignoring the feeling like someone had jabbed a hot poker into his ear. “Have you even thought about what this means, you wanker? Like you can’t see someone Challenge me without losing your temper! It’s going to weaken your standing in the eyes of your followers! You should have stayed out of it and let him live!”
Tom’s eyes widened for a moment. Harry nearly thought he would laugh, and he was read to try and curse the bastard wandlessly if that happened.
But then Tom shook his head slowly. “I doubt anyone would think me weak after seeing what I did to Bulstrode for endangering your life.”
“Tom. I told you, you can’t treat me that differently! Maybe someone pretended to be impressed and now they’re planning to strike the minute your back is turned. Did you think of that? All they have to do is threaten me, and you’ll lose control!”
“Not control. I think it takes exquisite finesse to draw someone’s intestines all the way out of their body while they’re still alive.”
Harry stared at him. Tom rose to his feet with sleek grace and circled behind him, or tried. Harry turned in place on the bed so he was still facing Tom. Tom sighed, an almost noiseless breath of air.
“They know that threatening you will not be tolerated,” he said, holding Harry’s eyes. “That is all I wanted them to know.”
“But it could cause problems for the reasons I said.”
“I don’t care if it does. Having you at my side is more important to me.”
Shit. Harry swallowed. The words slid over him like a warm touch, and he hoped that he prevented the appreciation he really felt from appearing on his face. He lowered his eyes, while Tom went on in a low, intense voice, never looking away from him and never touching him.
“I told you before. I thought I had told you. Perhaps not clearly enough. There are many followers whom I might attract, many slights I might avenge, and several ways I could reach my goals. But no one has made my world burn as you do. If you depart or die, then I will never have this again. You are my only choice.”
Harry swallowed and managed to look at Tom again. Tom was staring at him with a face swept clean of every kind of emotion except for what blazed in his eyes.
It was too much. Harry retreated, turning his head away.
“Now.” Tom took a step forwards. “Did you want to say something else? Perhaps tell me again that I shouldn’t defend you?”
Harry shook his head.
“And don’t think,” Tom said, relaxing in a sudden rush that made Harry look at him in spite of all his instincts, “that I am alone in this. I saw the shield you placed over me, Harry.”
“What about it? It kept you safe, didn’t it?”
“Yes. What I mean is that you included a special shield for me alone, separate from the ones that you used on my other Knights.”
“You were standing out of range of the perimeter shields!”
“No,” Tom said quietly. “I wasn’t.”
Harry had no defense against that except silence, so he returned to it. The bed dipped as Tom knelt next to him, and still Harry refused to look. It didn’t have to be real if he didn’t look. Or maybe Tom would grow so irritated with him that he would give this up.
Tom’s hand clasped the back of his neck. “Tell me the source of your reluctance,” he whispered. “Have I not tried hard enough? Do you believe that I would murder people without a good reason?”
“You already have,” Harry snapped, and pushed at his arm. “I wish Bulstrode was still alive.”
“That was a good reason. He deserved to die for trying to kill you.”
“It was a duel! You said yourself that Challenges go on until someone yields. He probably wasn’t trying to kill me, just trap me in a position where I would have to yield.”
“Results matter more than intent.”
Harry closed his eyes. He had known something like this would come up anyway. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been Tom doing something else casually cruel. Tom hadn’t made Horcruxes, and he had this kind of burning, obsessive devotion to Harry, but that wasn’t the same as being a good person.
Besides, Harry was going to be parting from him. Why not begin the process now?
“Harry.” Tom’s voice was the same kind of quiet heaviness he had used earlier, demanding a response.
Harry opened his eyes. “Results don’t matter more than insult to me,” he said, and pried Tom’s hand off the back of his neck. “I wish Bulstrode was still alive. And I want to know why you put me to sleep the instant you touched me after the duel.”
Tom said nothing, but his body surged with tension all the more frightening for being so sharply contained. “Because I knew that you would be magically exhausted after casting those spells, and I didn’t want you hurting yourself further by trying to cast again.”
“No, Tom. Tell the truth.” Harry didn’t even recognize the tone in his voice. Well, you knew this was coming, he repeated to himself. “You wanted me out of the way so I wouldn’t interfere with you torturing Bulstrode to death.”
“It was nothing like that.”
“It was both, probably.” Harry could relent that much. He was sure Tom had genuinely wanted to protect him. But that wasn’t going to get Harry to excuse him, not this time. “But I still don’t want someone’s death laid at my feet like a gift.”
“What do you want? Tell me.”
Harry shook his head wearily. “For you to find my shirt.” He’d noticed he was bare-chested when he woke, but he’d deliberately not let himself think about it.
Tom’s eyes flickered up to his face.
“I’m leaving, Tom.” Harry stood and crossed the room when Tom did nothing. He still wobbled a bit, but he was strong enough to use the Floo. Or the Knight Bus, which seemed only slightly more erratic here than it had in his world, and was sometimes the way he’d got back to his flat from the Ministry when he was exhausted with spellcasting.
“When will I see you again?”
Harry took a deep breath and studied the wardrobe in front of him. Yes, there was a shirt that would fit him. He didn’t care at the moment if it was Tom’s or someone else’s. “You won’t.”
Tom moved up behind him with sublime quietness and quickness. Harry didn’t turn to face him. He shrugged the shirt over his head. Tom’s hands settled on his shoulders, trying to pin him, but Harry just took a step away and held out his hand.
His wand zoomed over to him from where it had been lying on another table, and Harry sagged to his knees. Shit. The blast of blackness in his head warned him that he really shouldn’t have tried any wandless magic so soon after stopping the falling glass.
“Stop running and look at me.” Tom’s voice was a choked snarl.
“You killed someone. You killed someone and put me to sleep so I couldn’t stop it. You didn’t do it for me, or to protect me. You did it because you were in a temper.” Harry dug down deep, found the strength, and forced himself to stand again. “How can I trust that you won’t turn that temper on me someday?”
It was a low blow, the lowest he could muster. Better to make Tom bleed now than to let their attachment grow and sever it like a limb when he returned to his own time.
“I will do anything you want to prove that you can trust me.”
Harry walked from the room. Tom moved close behind him, and ignored it when someone ducked out of sight down a side corridor with a choked noise. Harry swallowed desperation as sour as lava.
Tom had to care about his standing among his Knights. That was the only way that he would achieve his plan, of making pure-bloods pay for the insults they had offered him and constructing a wall of protection around himself, one made of money, spells, and legal immunity.
“Anything,” Tom said, and his voice was close enough to Harry’s ear that Harry felt the warm brush of it. He shook himself and kept moving.
Tom grabbed his arm. Harry used the hold to pivot and bring his wand up beneath Tom’s jaw. He knew that he would probably pass out if he used any magic right now, but he could still injure Tom badly.
Then he made the mistake of looking into Tom’s eyes.
They were molten with fury and desperation of his own. He leaned in until he could have touched Harry’s lips in a kiss and whispered, “You are worth more to me than all this. You make me feel things I didn’t know existed.”
Harry jerked back with an oath, and Tom let him go. And he stood in one place as he watched Harry walk away. Harry made sure to keep his focus on the richly-woven carpet at his feet and swallow again and again. It was the only way he could keep down the bitterness.
Of course he had found this kind of devotion from someone in a different time, someone he could never have.
Someone who would kill anybody who threatens you.
Harry breathed out slowly. Yes, he had to remember that. That was enough to temper the bitterness.
What tempered it was more bitterness. But the situation was fucked-up enough. Harry wouldn’t remain here and condemn more innocent people to death.
*
“I believe this book would probably be of the most interest to you.”
Harry rubbed his eyes and leaned forwards to look at the tome Albus was extending. He had missed Auror training today, sending off an owl with a plea of illness. He had been up all night seeking peace and not finding it, and he knew he would be useless at spellcasting from the aftermath of the exhaustion anyway.
“What is that?” Harry tilted his head to the side, trying to make sense of the spiral design on the page Albus was showing him. At first he’d thought it was some kind of illustration of a windstorm, but no, now that he studied it, it was a runic pattern set into a pictured floor. Not a circle, like every other runic pattern Harry had seen and studied in the past few years, but a long, wavering, snaking mass of lines, ornamented here and there with burning flames and bowls of water and star-shaped objects.
“The design that could let someone travel in time if certain conditions are met.” Albus pushed his glasses up his nose. “The problem with creating it is twofold. First, as you can see, it requires multiple components, not only the runes that construct the basic spiral. Second, it requires each line of the pattern to be coated by the blood of the person who wishes to travel.”
Harry whistled thoughtfully. “So I would have to collect my blood for maybe a month beforehand, and use Blood-Replenishing Potions. But then I would have to spread all of it out on the design at once.”
Albus nodded. “It requires enough blood to kill two healthy humans if you attempted to collect it all at once.”
“Well, I can do that.” Harry’s eyes traveled down the page. “Oh, that’s another problem, isn’t it? It requires an extremely powerful wizard to do it, and they have to know exactly what the future they’re going to looks like.”
“Yes. That last is the most persistent problem, I believe. Whoever created this design was not likely thinking that it would be used by a wizard who had come back in time before even attempting to travel the other way.”
Harry nodded absently, reading through the list of ingredients. He did wince when he read about the gold and the jade that he would need. “Um, I don’t have enough money to buy most of this. Could you—”
“I have enough,” Albus said kindly. “And some of what might be beyond my reach I can get in trade, or I already have in storage.”
Harry raised his eyes and studied him thoughtfully for a second. “You’re much more willing to help me than most people would be. Especially since it means that you’re going to be losing your spy in the Knights of Walpurgis.”
“I would rather that you go back to your own time,” Albus said, and then shook his head. “And in truth, this is better than some other outcomes as far as Mr. Riddle is concerned.”
Harry blinked. Albus’s face softened. “You know some of my own history. I waited far too long to see what Gellert had become, and it cost me personally, but it also cost the wizarding world. What would happen if you remained at Mr. Riddle’s side, denying what he is, and helped strengthen him? He might have accumulated power to the point that you couldn’t have defeated him even if you turned on him ultimately.”
Harry nodded sharply. He hadn’t considered that. When he was with Tom, it was easy to let the world melt and float into slivers of magic and heat, let nothing exist outside the bed.
He shouldn’t ever have been thinking that way. But he had woken up, and he thought the chances were excellent that he would never see Tom again. How could he forgive the insults to his pride that Harry had dealt him?
“Harry?”
Harry started and returned to himself. “Oh, yes. So if we can start working on getting the gold and jade and brewing the Blood-Replenishing Potions, then I can start working on the runes I’ll need to know…”
*
“Feeling better, Potter?”
Harry grimaced a little as he nodded to one of the other Auror trainees, Alyssum Parkinson, who had come over to stand beside him. She’d ignored him when he first joined the classes, but had become miles more polite once word of his “real” relationships with the Potters had got about. “Yes, thanks.”
Parkinson eyed him for a second as if she suspected him of lying, then smiled and tapped her wand against his chest. “Glad to hear it. It got boring yesterday. No one to duel.”
“I’m sure there were plenty of people to duel.” Harry looked around the huge training classroom. They spent at least one day a week here, and usually more, depending on how much their instructors thought they needed the practice. Right now, more than one trainee was getting yelled at by Aurors Nott or Greengrass, often in front of gouges in the walls that weren’t as deep as they should be.
“None with your level of skill.” Parkinson flicked her hair behind her head. She kept it in a long, dark braid that must have some kind of protective enchantments on it, since it never strangled her no matter what spells Harry aimed at it. “Come on, let’s go. I want you to show me how badly being sick affected you.”
Harry faced her across the width of the stone room. She was smiling widely, which made him sure she was up to something, and sure enough, she cast a nonverbal spell that hurled a storm of snow at him—something she had tried to do the other day and failed at.
Harry called fire with ease, melted the snowflakes, and stepped through them into a whirlwind of hail. This time, Harry decided that he would do something more complex than melting them, if only to prove to himself than the magical exhaustion was completely gone. “Vade retro!”
The spell bucked against him for a moment; technically it was a simple charm, but it took a lot of power to make work, rather like the spell he had used to stop the glass of the chandelier in midair.
Don’t think of that.
Instead, Harry watched with some satisfaction as all the hailstones turned on themselves, sometimes actually whirling around in place, and dashed back at Parkinson. She squawked and ducked out of the way, getting hit twice before she actually remembered to end the spell. She glared at Harry while rubbing a brand-new bruise near her eye. “That’s not the best technique in battle, Potter, not when all someone has to do is cancel their own charm.”
“Yes, but it takes people by surprise. Admit it, you didn’t even think of that at first. And if I’m sending knives or something else that’s deadly back at someone…”
Parkinson grinned unexpectedly. “Yes, I can see how that would work.” She studied him for a second, intently enough that Harry frowned. There were a few Parkinsons among Tom’s followers, although they were neither close nor important, and Harry had only heard their names. He wondered if this particular Parkinson was now spying on him for Tom.
“What?” he snapped finally.
“I’m just seeing what Auror Greengrass meant about you,” Parkinson murmured. “Why she decided to accept you for training so quickly. You have power, of course, but it’s your creativity that makes you deadly. That’s the kind of thing I want to learn to imitate.”
Harry flushed. “Yeah, well, anyone can do that—”
“Once they learn how, sure. It’s just that I have to study and think about ways to integrate that kind of spell into my repertoire, and you just do it on the fly.” Parkinson aimed yet another grin at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll work on it and then you’ll have some real competition.”
Harry blinked and managed a faint smile. Parkinson bumped his shoulder hard with hers as she started towards Nott, who was calling her over. “Don’t get sick again, all right?” she said. “Like I mentioned, it’s boring without you here.”
Harry stared at her back. That almost sounded like he had—a friend. Someone who noticed when he was sick. Someone who wanted to practice and improve her dueling against him, but also someone who missed his presence.
Harry closed his eyes. You can’t. It doesn’t matter. Come a month, and you’re going to be gone.
Luckily, he didn’t have to interact with Parkinson again that morning, so he didn’t have to snub her. He had the feeling it would be much harder to do that with someone who hadn’t killed a person in the last twenty-four hours.
*
Harry aimed his wand at the owl sitting on the windowsill. It was a majestic snowy one he had seen before, flying around the Owlery at Malfoy Manor. Just the sight of it made his throat ache. It looked so much like Hedwig, although without the special warmth that her eyes had always had when she looked at him. “Go away.”
The owl gave a gentle hoot and spread its wings as though to show that, while it wasn’t his friend, it wasn’t hostile. The parchment hooked to its foot was what Harry watched more warily. It had the entwined-snakes design on the outside that Tom had once sent to him through the post as a mark they could share someday.
I really didn’t think I would hear from him again. Well, but maybe that parchment is the denunciation he needs to make.
Harry relaxed a little when he thought about that, and only cast the most cursory detection spells on the parchment and the owl. That did make the bird ruffle its feathers and glare at him. “Sorry,” Harry muttered. “You can leave the letter on the table.”
The owl flew over and did just that, but then perched on the back of the chair Albus usually used when he visited, shaking its tail a little. Harry stared at it. “I’m not going to respond.”
The owl turned its head the opposite direction and ignored him. Apparently he had a guest until he changed his mind. Harry rolled his eyes as he reached for the letter. “I don’t have any owl treats, either.”
That got him a glare that almost certainly accused him of being a philistine. Harry shook his head and opened the letter.
You are right. I killed Bulstrode in a fit of temper.
Harry staggered back and found himself leaning against the wall. The owl hooted. Harry stood upright and shook his head. He hadn’t expected those words, but he owed Tom this much. He’d read the letter.
I cannot bear the thought of anyone harming you. When I think of it, the kind of red rage descends across my vision that used to happen when I heard the word “Mudblood” directed at me, and that has not possessed me for a decade. Do you know what this means? For me to prize you as highly as myself?
I do not know for certain if what I feel is love. But you bring me the closest to it that I can come. I told you that before.
“Yeah, you did,” Harry muttered, which got another curious look from the owl. He drew in a ragged breath. Shit. This had less to do with what Tom “really” felt for him, and more to do with the impact that Harry leaving would probably have on him.
But then again, wasn’t that the point of the conversation he’d had with Dumbledore when they looked at the runic design? Tom could become greater and more terrible with someone next to him, someone he trusted completely and who would cure some of the weaknesses that he would otherwise succumb to.
It couldn’t happen.
I only want the truth. Come back to me and explain why you would refuse this. I will listen no matter what you say. I cannot promise that I will give up reaching for you, not when I have no idea what would make you retreat from me, but I will listen. Name the time and place of your choosing. Only make it accessible by Floo or Side-Along Apparition, and I will come to you, leaving my wand behind.
TMR.
Harry shivered and bowed his head over the letter. Shivers kept sweeping his body, as warm and frigid as if Tom was there and touching him.
He had never heard of Tom willingly disarming himself, in either world. Even when he spent time with Harry in bed, his wand was always in view and accessible to him, unlike Harry’s, which Tom would sometimes put out of sight. He would have to trust not only Harry but also whoever brought him, or let him use their Floo fireplace.
I thought…
I thought he just wasn’t thinking far ahead enough about what his killing of Bulstrode would do to his standing among the Knights. That he acted out of anger the way he did when—I mean, the way the other one did when he was Voldemort. No matter whether the action would actually benefit him or not.
But no. He knows. He just doesn’t care.
Harry breathed raspingly out, and the owl flew over to the table next to him and groomed a stand of his hair for a second, hooting in concern. Harry smiled wanly at it. He supposed he must look bad if a Malfoy owl thought it had to offer comfort.
Tom could feel what he would feel, and Harry would have to feel what he felt, too. Which was longing to stay with someone who could love him this way, who could put aside his weapons and—even if he didn’t feel remorse for Bulstrode’s death—would offer atonement.
But Tom had still killed someone.
Harry breathed around the feeling of someone having scooped out most of his heart, and glanced at the book that was also on the table, open to the picture of the runic design he would need to create to go back home. Another thought stirred to life in his head.
What if he asked Tom to come three weeks or a month from now, when the design would be completed and all the blood Harry needed to drip into vials every night would be collected? Tom—needed to know the truth. At least then he might accept that there was no way he could win Harry back, and not go on the sort of rampage that Harry feared he would if someone he could love was lost to him. Harry would tell him the truth and then step back into the design and let it do what needed to be done. He would make his last sight in this world Tom’s face, and if it was devastated and angry…
That would be all Harry deserved.
He wrote his response quickly, just a few lines saying that he was willing to meet with Tom if he came through the Floo and left his wand behind, and giving him the address of the house in Godric’s Hollow where he and Albus were laying out the design. It wouldn’t matter if Tom got it right now. Albus had the house, including the Floo connection, heavily warded against anyone who wasn’t them. Harry would only have to drop the wards once.
He watched the owl fly away with a deepening sense of peace. This was the best compromise he could make. He had to go, to spare this world as much as his own, but he could tell the truth.
Someone who had bared his heart to Harry as Tom had deserved no less.