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Chapter Nineteen.
Chapter One.
Title: Lightning and War (20/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, a few het and slash background pairings mentioned
Content Notes: Established relationship, angst, violence, dimension travel
Rating: R
Summary: Harry and Tom are pursuing Harry’s cousin Jonquil Potter into Tom’s dangerous, paranoia-ridden world. In addition to finding Jonquil, they need to deal with Dumbledore, Tom’s associates, and dangerous fluctuations in Harry’s magic. Sequel to Jonquils and Lightning.
Author’s Notes: This story involves a lot of background that won’t make much sense without having read the prequel. At the moment, I don’t know how long this story will be or if it will be the last in the series.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—Impressing the Audience
Tom opened his eyes and sat up in bed so fast that he nearly rolled Harry off the other side. His wand was in his hand, the way he had trained it to be from childhood. He’d never known when he might wake to his uncle or grandfather in a bad mood.
Now, though, the room was silent, except for Harry’s sleepy grumbles as he adjusted to being awakened. Tom honestly wasn’t sure what had caused his reaction. He forced himself to remain still, moving only his eyes. Had one of the Knights decided he was weak after his bonding with Harry and slipped some kind of trap or spell into the room?
They would die for that. But Tom had to determine if that in fact had happened, and if one of them needed to die.
“Tom?”
Harry’s voice was rough with sleep. Tom gently squeezed his knee and waited again. The silence was eerie. He could have sworn that a shouting voice was what had roused him from slumber.
And then he heard it. Not a voice. A huge ripple of power from the northwest, traveling over the world in silent challenge, a wavering, soaring bank of cloud.
“Tom?”
Harry had felt it, too, Tom knew, from the way he held his head up and his eyes darted from one corner of the room to another. He didn’t have his wand in hand, but the blue gem on his forehead had lit with a soft glow that filled the room like moonlight.
The challenge repeated once more, this time more like a flag someone was waving aloft. But along with the flag came the sense of who had sent it. Tom felt his lips draw back in a triumphant snarl.
“Dumbledore?” Harry asked. His gem was flooding the room with ripples of blue light now, as if responding to the magic that had woken them up.
“Yes. Wanting us to know that he’s back, and I suppose that he can’t resist the temptation to show off while he does it.”
Harry gave a dry chuckle. “Like you wouldn’t do the same thing,” he said, and sat up and stretched in a way that Tom watched with appreciation.
He didn’t feel the same level of appreciation for Harry’s words, unfortunately. “I wouldn’t. I would hardly announce my intentions to my enemies.”
“Yes, I suppose you don’t have the tendency to explain all your plans and your brilliance in extended monologues like Voldemort did,” Harry agreed, curling up on his side so that his knee touched Tom’s. “So what are we going to do?”
Tom spent a moment considering it, and listening to the silence of the manor. Truly, no one seemed to be stirring, and he would have expected at least one of his Knights to be seeking reassurance if they had felt Dumbledore’s display. He supposed that it took someone of a certain level of power to sense it. “From here, we move forwards.”
“Yes, yes, we thought about that, and about using the wild magic rites in public. But what exactly are we going to do?”
Tom opened his mouth and then shut it, a certain memory darting into his consciousness. It was of one of the books he had read during the long period of study for his NEWTS, and specifically the days and nights immediately before the exams, when not reading something would have brought undesirable attention to him. Few people would have accepted that Tom had simply spent years studying the basic NEWT information already and had it memorized.
“He may have outsmarted himself.”
“I thought that was true when he let us join up together. But what are you referring to now?”
Tom rolled Harry beneath him and kissed him breathless. Harry went along with it after a second, laughing in the rare few moments when he could get his breath, and reaching up to hook a languid arm around Tom’s neck. Tom drew back at last, and kissed Harry’s fingertips instead.
“That’s not an answer, as nice as it is.” Harry’s smile was bright, and the fluttering light from the gem on his forehead had brightened and now shone steadily.
“But it is,” Tom murmured. “I was thinking of a particular book I’ve read, which probably holds our answer. And I wanted to express my joy by kissing you.”
Harry rolled his eyes but submitted to another kiss, and even to Tom starting to remove his own pants that he’d put on for comfort earlier. “Fine, but you can explain what you meant by your joy while you fuck me.”
“I certainly never anticipated anything else,” Tom murmured, smiling at him as he reached down and casually slid his hand up Harry’s cock. Harry liked to sleep in the nude as long as the blankets were warm enough. Now, as he arched up and gasped, Tom reveled in how utterly casual he could be, how he could show that he wanted Harry and Harry would give in and let him do what he wanted.
“Get on with it,” Harry said, even as he wriggled under Tom and his arse began to glisten. Tom laughed.
“You mastered wandless magic for that?”
“Considering what kinds of spells you’ve proven yourself adept at casting, you can hardly mock me.” Harry’s voice was just a little breathless as Tom’s fingers stroked up his length again. “Come on, tell me what this great secret is.”
“The book was written about laws that got passed at a point in history when there were two Dark Lords at a time in the wizarding world.” Tom reached out and cast his own spell, covering his cock with lube, then leaned in to tease at Harry’s hole with the head. Both of them sighed out, but Tom managed to keep enough of his mind on what he was doing to continue speaking. Harry might actually murder him if he didn’t. “It concerned displays of power.”
“What—about them?” Harry was already losing control of his voice, the cords on his neck standing out.
“That they could be taken as a declaration of war, because they so often happened just before a battle began anyway.” Tom gave in to their twinned desires and slid into Harry’s body, hissing sharply as he felt the heat take him.
Harry gasped in a satisfying way, but then reached up and tugged on Tom’s hair. “Get on with it.”
He probably meant the lovemaking and not the explanation, but just for the challenge, Tom was going to continue both. He grunted a little as he thrust, and let his voice relax until Harry started to open his mouth again. “And—that remains true even if—the Wizengamot doesn’t contain wizards of sufficient st-strength…”
“To feel it,” Harry said, smirking for a second before Tom must have found his prostate, because Harry’s eyes flew wide open. He reached up and raked his fingers across Tom’s shoulders. It only made Tom smile.
“Yes.” Tom flexed his back muscles, and got to see how much wider Harry’s eyes could open. “They—only have to cast a simple spell, and…”
“Let go,” Harry said, twisting up the top half of his body at an impossible angle to whisper the words in Tom’s ear.
Tom gritted his teeth and tried not to, but the pleasure washing through him was too incredible. He yielded and simply thrust and reached between their bodies to touch and stroke where Harry would welcome his hand the most.
And if he did come without finishing the explanation the way he had planned on, at least Harry came first.
When he lay on top of Harry’s body, he kissed his ear and then whispered into it, “They can feel if we felt it, essentially. The spell will confirm the truth of our words. It’s a declaration of war, and we’re justified in mobilizing to meet it.”
“What is that going to mean, though?” Harry murmured sleepily, turning his head and reaching up to catch his fingers in Tom’s hair again. “We aren’t an army. And even if we made our intentions plain in Diagon Alley already, we aren’t exactly a legal organization.”
Harry was already most of the way into sleep, so Tom didn’t think he would retain the memory of Tom’s next words, but he spoke them, since they were nearly as satisfying as the sex. “It means that the Wizengamot has to join us.”
Harry proved that he was awake after all by stirring and murmuring, “And I bet you’re as pleased as anything about that.”
Tom kissed the nape of his neck, and after that, neither of them truly remembered anything until the next morning.
*
Harry took his steps slowly into the massive room that arched up and around him. He could feel the hostile stares from every direction. There were as many Wizengamot members here as ones who had attended his hearing for underage magic in his first world, maybe more, and he hated the feeling that they were glaring at his back and plotting ways to make him vulnerable.
But he managed to walk with his head up and his shoulders as loose as possible, and he felt Tom give him an approving look. Then Tom’s arm came to rest around his shoulders for a moment. That stirred a wave of hisses and murmurs, but it made Harry feel better.
“Mr. Potter.”
“Yes?” Tom asked, glancing up. The speaker was a woman in blood-red robes and who had long dark hair and big dark eyes so reminiscent of Bellatrix Lestrange that Harry tensed for a new reason.
The woman frowned at Harry, looking exactly as sulky and heavy-lidded as Bellatrix ever had. “I was speaking to Mr. Potter.”
“That’s my name, too,” Tom said. “Since we bonded.”
Silence around the room this time. Harry didn’t think the Wizengamot was dealing well with the shock, however. Probably simply trying to decide what to say that would hurt the most. He turned his largest smile on the woman and nodded. “Probably best to speak to us as a unit.”
“This is highly irregular,” the woman said, standing up. She saw the way Harry looked at her and added impatiently, “Estelle Rosier, of the Ancient and Noble House of Rosier. How can you be bonded when the Potter line has not even existed in this world for hundreds of years?”
Ancient and Noble, right. Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but he kept his expression calm and serene as he raised a hand to touch the diadem on his forehead. “When I came into this world, the goblins gave me the Potter legacy, which had been waiting for someone like me. I assume that you are aware of the diadem, Madam Rosier?”
Tom’s hand tightened on his shoulder for a second, and Rosier’s eyes narrowed. It told Harry he might not have chosen the right title. But frankly, he didn’t care, and a moment later, Rosier said, “I am. I recognize it.” Similar murmurs came from other members of the Wizengamot.
They kept silent, though, which meant they had somehow chosen Rosier to speak for them. Harry still didn’t really care. He shrugged a little and said, “I think that I am enough of a Potter if the legacy claimed me. Then I bonded with Tom. He’s a Potter now. We both are.”
Rosier glanced around as if seeking someone who had a different opinion and who would be willing to stand up next to her, but in the end, she nodded and sat down. Another man stood to took her place. He had brilliantly golden hair and was dressed in plum-purple robes. “Why have you requested this meeting?”
“You know that, Master Gryffindor, or you would only have laughed at us when we asked for it,” Tom said.
Gryffindor, seriously? Harry mouthed at Tom. Tom shrugged back and kept his gaze calm and narrow on Gryffindor. The man smoothed down his long yellow moustache and seemed to think about his answer.
“We felt the swell of power from the west yesterday,” said the man slowly. “But you have no proof about who it was.”
Tom snorted, a sound that made Harry twitch. It seemed so unlike Tom. “And you know that’s not true, or you wouldn’t have agreed to this meeting in the first place.”
“Haven’t you attacked Albus Dumbledore enough?” asked Rosier. “We know that it was your men who confronted the Order of the Phoenix in Diagon Alley.”
“Do you think that some other powerful wizard lurks out there, just waiting to make the world acknowledge him?”
“No,” said Rosier, after a long, uncomfortable pause. Harry suspected there was some history there he didn’t know about.
“Exactly.” Tom’s eyes were glittering with satisfaction in a way that made Harry have to look away, before he had an unfortunate reaction. “That was an announcement of his power. By the laws of the Ministry, Albus Dumbledore is now classified as a Dark Lord. I call on you, the Wizengamot of Britain, to defend the soil and water of the British Isles from the chance of pollution.”
Harry blinked. So the history included a Dark Lord who had done that kind of pollution? Suddenly the laws made a bit more sense.
“If you are right,” muttered Rosier, “and I am not saying you are, then what makes you think we would even survive fighting Albus Dumbledore?”
“Harry,” Tom said, his tone of command one that made Harry bristle. But they had discussed this particular tactic before they came to confront the Wizengamot, and he knew what was expected of him. He sighed and loosened the restraints on his power.
Rosier flinched visibly as the magic filled the chamber, and Harry blinked at her. That was odd. He would have thought that she would be more used to that sort of thing, since she had apparently been around Dumbledore for a long time.
And he was less powerful after giving up some of his magic to stabilize the gateway. He frowned. Were these people going to be useless allies because they didn’t know as much as Tom thought they did?
When Harry glanced at Tom, though, he saw the same glitter in his smile that had earlier been in Tom’s eyes. Harry shrugged a little and turned to face his audience again.
This time, a small, squeaky wizard who reminded Harry of Filius Flitwick spoke up from near the front. “How do we know that you were not the wizard who announced his presence as a Dark Lord this morning, Mr. Potter?”
“There is a spell you can perform that should show you the difference,” Harry said, and widened his eyes a little. “Haven’t you done it yet? Were you hoping that you could get away with not having to face the fact that Dumbledore’s set himself against you?”
That got him some glares from various corners of the Wizengamot, but various other people were nodding, and Gryffindor pulled out his wand. With a slash and an incantation that Harry couldn’t hear, under his breath, the man apparently performed it. He looked up with wide eyes. “That wave of power was Albus’s.”
Tom stood next to Harry radiating smugness so strong that Harry was surprised it wasn’t drifting around in fumes that obscured everyone’s eyes. Harry shot him a warning look, to encounter Tom’s wide, innocent gaze. Harry sighed and turned back to look at Gryffindor. “It was. And we’re prepared to help you fight him.”
“You and what army?” Rosier had her arms folded and was looking around as if she expected everyone to jump up and throw Tom and Harry out. “I don’t imagine that you command all that many people, Mr. Potter.”
“My Knights of Walpurgis stand ready,” said Tom, with a fluid shrug. “And we have two weapons that you might not have considered.”
“What?” Rosier was really sneering now. Harry wondered if she just didn’t think Tom was worth paying attention to, or if she was secretly a Dumbledore partisan. Or maybe someone who went where the wind was blowing at the time, and Tom hadn’t shown it was due Potter.
“Well, for one thing, many of my Knights have secrets and favors owed to them by some fairly powerful people. We can make sure that some of Dumbledore’s allies won’t dare to join him.”
“What you are talking about is blackmail, Mr. Potter,” said the small squeaky wizard.
“I understand that, Master Goblinwrought.” Tom didn’t look away from Rosier. “But consider how quickly the rumors spread that Dumbledore had been Grindelwald’s lover. We did that. I can do something similar if you inform me of any key allies that I don’t already know about.”
“And the next secret weapon?” Rosier demanded.
Tom let one hand rest on Harry’s shoulder. “Besides being a fount of power, he can perform wild magic.”
There were gasps from several different directions. Harry tightened his magic, ready to fling a shield in any direction at need. He didn’t know if those gasps were disgusted or frightened enough that someone might come to attack him and Tom any second.
“That is impossible,” Rosier whispered. She was, at last, pale.
“If you know anything of history, then you know that the Potters were known for their command of the wild magic,” Tom said, his nose in the air. Harry wanted to correct him for his use of the word “command,” but then again, Tom was probably using it so that he could conceal some of the subtleties about the reciprocal nature of the wild magic from their audience. “And it’s true again, now.”
“What about you?” asked Gryffindor.
Tom did nothing but smile, which Harry thought was wise of him. Gryffindor nodded, glancing around the room and collecting eyes with an ease that made Harry think he was probably a born politician.
“Then,” Gryffindor said, “I think we should vote to oppose Dumbledore.”