Chapter Twenty-One of 'Lightning and War'- Dark Against Dark

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty.

Title: Lightning and War (21/?)
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-One—Dark Against Dark

“I still can’t believe that the Wizengamot is letting us come out of the shadows and making us a legitimate organization.”

Harry smiled at Shara, who looked as if she was in the middle of some happy dream she assumed she would wake up from at any second. “Well, it’s happening, but I can’t imagine that you’re alone in feeling this way. The Wizengamot probably assumed they would follow Dumbledore’s lead until he died.”

Shara smiled in a way that said she agreed even if she thought it would be undignified to say so, then let the smile lapse. They were out in the middle of the Malfoy Manor grounds near the copse of trees that Harry and Tom had bonded in front of. “I still think this part is going to fail.”

“Don’t let Tom hear you say that.”

“Of course not.” Shara’s face held up to the enormous roll of her eyes she indulged in, but Harry honestly didn’t see how. “My lord wants to turn the wild magic into a weapon, and we’ll try. But from everything I’ve heard about it and the reciprocal risk it demands, nothing will change it. The rite can’t be done quickly, and the magic has to be given back immediately. What use would it be if you collapsed in the middle of battle?”

Harry hesitated. Shara narrowed her eyes at him and let one hand rest on her wand. Well, Harry had thought they probably wouldn’t get through this part without having to tell the truth to the Knights, no matter what Tom said. “Tom doesn’t think that—well, he believes I can persuade the wild magic to hold back.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ask for its price later, so that we can go ahead and fight the battle, then come back to repay the debt.”

Shara caught her breath. “No one has done that in history, and it seems unlike my lord to risk it now.”

Harry shrugged. “I keep telling him that it’s unlikely to work, but he wanted me at least to practice.” He turned to face the copse of trees. The leaves that surged back and forth above him might have whispered something in blessing; Tom would insist that they had. But Harry only kept his eyes on them and hoped that he would be found worthy. He didn’t dare hope for more.

“What should I do?” Shara was stepping from foot to foot behind him.

“Not dance in place, since that distracts me,” Harry snapped, and nodded as she fell still and silent. “Thank you.”

He had to be able to invoke the wild magic without the rites that he’d used before, if he was to do it in battle. And this time, he would make sure to promise a smaller favor, so it wouldn’t drain him.

He let his senses open, the surging leaves becoming as much a part of his mind as the thoughts that shimmered just beneath the surface. His memories of Tom’s face intertwined with the noise of the wind. The feel of rough bark beneath his palms when he stepped forwards and let his hands rest on the trees was mingled with the smoothness of sheets beneath him from this morning.

He couldn’t explain how he knew what to think, where to let his thoughts wander. When he started to contemplate it too much, he tensed up, and it took the diadem bursting into light to soothe him again.

This is your birthright, as a Potter.

Harry smiled. Yes. He had thought he’d found a home in his second world, among Jonquil and Dorea and the Potters there, but it had only been a holding pattern. Truly, this was the world where his family belonged.

Speak to the trees.

Harry nodded, the motions feeling slow and dreamlike, and asked the trees, Can I help you grow larger leaves tomorrow?

The long confusion moved back and forth in him like the dance of leaves. It was so hypnotic, and felt so much a part of him, that it took Harry a moment to understand why the trees were confused. They had no concept of “tomorrow.” They didn’t feel days or the rise and fall of the sun and moon the way humans did.

In a time. Take the sense of the time from my mind.

They did, so rapidly that Harry felt this was probably what the soil they sucked water out of felt. His breath grew short, and he slumped to the ground without being able to open his eyes. Distantly, he heard Shara cry out.

The human with me is worried. Leave me enough magic to rise and walk.

The words he spoke to the trees had no sense of demand in them, and he knew the trees could sense that as well. This was simply a statement of fact, and the trees responded that way, rustling for a moment and then feeding some of his strength back into him. The communion of minds required effort that couldn’t as easily be repaid back, though.

Harry swore to himself that he would have the breath to tell Tom that, so Shara wouldn’t get in trouble.

Will you agree to give me the strength and then I will return it tomorrow?

The minds shifted around him, not used to making decisions. Harry could understand that. They responded to necessity, such as a rock that roots had to grow around or through, and the lack of sunlight or rain in any given season, and the cold that made them pinch off leaves and drop them. A tree’s ways were established and good because they existed. Choosing between different ways was strange to them.

Harry fed them the relief that he felt when he made a decision, the closest he could come to sharing the process. After a ripple of green and gold magic that traveled through him, the trees seemingly made their choice, as much as they could make it, and agreed.

Thank you.

Harry ripped himself free from the communion and found Tom standing over him, while Shara crouched a few meters away and stared at him as mournfully as if he was about to die. Harry shook his head as he sat up. “What did I miss?” he asked, but he found it turning into a yawn.

“You stopped breathing for a few minutes. Shara was wise to fetch me.” Tom directed a slashing look at Shara that made her flinch and look away, and the trees stir and murmur. They had accepted Shara as someone who came with Harry, like a root, and they did not like to see her tremble when there was no wind.

“I’m sorry.” Harry took up his wand and cast a quick spell, feeling the trees’ dislike at the sight of a twig they believed had been chopped from a living tree. Harry sent them a message of the feather inside and felt their silence, but at least they seemed to accept that the wand was dead. A quick Lumos popped out in front of him, and Harry sighed. “I’m fine.”

“You are not.” Tom jerked Harry around with his fingers in Harry’s robe collar. Harry winced at what he thought the reaction from the trees would be, but it seemed he was already losing his ability to communicate with them; he felt nothing. “You stopped breathing.”

“I think it was because I was so deep in communion with the trees,” Harry offered. He glanced sideways at Shara, but she was staring determinedly at the sky. Harry couldn’t blame her for that, really. “I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

Tom let his mouth relax and his eyes close. “I worry.”

“I know.” Harry stroked one hand down his arm. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I gained their consent?”

Tom peered at him with one eyelid almost shut. “Did you gain their consent?”

“I did.” Harry thought his smile must be a little bloodthirsty, Tom looked so approving. “The magic will come when I need it.”

*

“Remember, Mr. Potter, that this is a peace offering, not a chance for you to show off your magic or your theory.”

Antonius Gryffindor’s voice was low and anxious. Tom didn’t bother to look at him. They were standing in the middle of a large, flat plain in the heart of England, hidden from Muggles. Some wizards claimed that this was the original Camlann, where King Arthur had faced the traitor Mordred. Tom frankly didn’t care for the truth, but he did like the symbolism, and the fact that it was so treeless and bare that they could see in all directions.

“Our flags are not white, though, are they, Master Gryffindor?”

Gryffindor was silent for a few seconds. Tom used them to raise a few more protection charms around their little company. He honestly didn’t trust Dumbledore or the Order of the Phoenix to keep to the terms of the meeting, which meant they would probably use magic from a distance.

“No,” Gryffindor finally acknowledged. Their flags were green, the sign of the righteous protectors of Britain meeting a rebellious underling. “But on the other hand, neither are they black.”

Meaning a war to the death. Tom grinned a little and focused on the shimmer of movement near the far side of the plain. “They aren’t, but it’s interesting to see what flags Dumbledore and his people are carrying, isn’t it?”

Gryffindor narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. The flags moving towards them across the field, carried by two phoenix-marked witches on pegasi with folded wings, were green.

Tom shrugged a little. He should have known that Dumbledore saw himself that way, and that he wouldn’t obey all the rules of a declared war. Why should he? He had obeyed none of the traditional rules about how one dealt with the Wizengamot and other pure-bloods, either.

The witches both halted and stared down at Tom and Gryffindor. Tom stared back impassively. They were pretty women, with tightly-braided blonde hair, and their Granians, both a delicate, rare shade of dapple grey, were stunning. But for Tom, whatever they represented or didn’t represent was marred by the rising phoenix on their cheeks.

“You still have a chance,” said the woman on the right, her voice bearing a faint trace of an accent. “Surrender.”

“Or?” Tom asked, and waited.

The women gave each other confounded glances. The pegasi stood stolidly beneath them, in a way that made Tom reevaluate their conformation. He nodded a little at what he found. Pretty, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they flew like lumbering boats in the air.

“Or what?” asked the woman on the left slowly.

“It’s surrender or,” Tom explained patiently, wincing a little to himself at the thought that he had to do this for them. “Surrender or face a painful death? Surrender or face exile? Surrender or be killed where you stand? You’d think that Dumbledore is enough of a Dark Lord to know how this works.”

“He is not a Dark Lord!” The woman on the left spurred her pegasus towards him. Tom tapped the ground with his foot and raised a slender green barrier spell that had been waiting for his release signal. The rider stopped and gave him a glare of hatred.

“Legally, he is,” Tom explained. “Someone who sends a wave of power like the one he used a few days ago is announcing that he’s forsaken any legal options and just wants everyone to bow down to him. The Ministry has a useful definition of it, very historical. You did pay attention in History of Magic, didn’t you?”

The pegasus snorted and tossed its head, catching its rider’s mood. Gryffindor moved in the corner of Tom’s eye, and Tom saw the glare he was receiving. No doubt Gryffindor thought this particular interaction inappropriate for a negotiation.

But Tom had a reason for this, and honestly, if Gryffindor didn’t understand that, he was both a bad politician and a better mask for Tom’s true intentions.

“We have better things to do than debate history,” said the woman on the right, glancing back and forth between Tom and her companion as she though she suspected what he was about to do. Tom gave a mental shrug. If she did, he would just find some other way of accomplishing his end goal.

“I totally agree.” Tom gave them a faint smile. “For example, you were saying we had to surrender to your Dark Lord, and we were explaining that that’s not true and you have to surrender to us. We are the righteous defenders of wizarding Britain.”

The woman on the left was tightening her hands on the reins, causing the Granian to dance lightly. Tom’s smile just widened further. It seemed Albus had sent people who were loyal to him, not ones who were good at negotiation.

How like the man. Albus had never seemed to think he needed to negotiate, either.

“You cannot tell us that!”

“Well, we have.” Tom shrugged. “It seems we’ve reached an impasse, since we both fly green flags and neither of us are about to listen to what the other side probably laughably terms ‘words of reason.’ Go, if you will. We can begin the battle, while you kiss the hem of your Dark Lord’s robe and soil yourself because he frowns.”

The woman on the left shrieked and drew forth a sword. Tom turned smoothly to the right as she bore down on him, the Granian half-springing from the ground with the power of its enormous wings. There was a reason flying cavalry had been feared throughout wizarding military history. It was a decided threat to have those sharp hooves and snapping teeth and buffeting wings and muscular body all bearing down on you at once.

However, as the woman’s sword rose and swept forwards, a shining barrier of leaves sprang up between her and Tom. A thin woody vine bounced her sword off and sent it spinning from her hand.

Before the woman could do so much as open her mouth to shout, another woody vine had writhed around her neck. The Granian snorted and immediately slowed in alarm, standing with its wings open, tense and vibrating. Other vines were wrapping themselves around its legs and neck.

“What is this?” the woman gasped.

“A protection that was in place if you decided to violate the promise of no violence,” Tom said lightly. “And I should have known that you would. Those who serve a Dark Lord don’t prize peace.”

The woman glared at Tom with hatred. Her eyes were as dark as holes into nothingness. “You will see that you are the Dark Lord. The one who wants to use the magic the Chief Warlock sought to ban—”

“This is wild magic, though. Outside the bounds of Light and Dark. There’s nothing in the laws that says we can’t use this.”

The woman stared at him, then down at the vines that covered her and her horse. They had stopped growing and hung silent, but tugging on one produced another rustle of burning growth. “What?” she breathed. “I can’t—I can’t believe—”

“Of course you can’t. But you should have paid more attention to my last name of Potter, perhaps, before you decided to follow Dumbledore or attack me.”

This got him a gape from both negotiators. Then the woman who was free of the vines cleared her throat cautiously, eyes on the hedge her fellow had ridden into, and said, “There are no more Potters. It is a pure-blood line that died out centuries ago.”

“And yet Potters were the ones who could use the wild magic this way.” Tom nodded to the makeshift hedge, smiling. “Tell your friend that she’ll be fine if she stops thinking murderous thoughts about me, which is the only reason that this tangle is still holding her here.”

“I am right here!”

“Somehow,” Tom said, tilting his head a little as he looked at the imprisoned woman, “I don’t think you’ll be as reasonable as your friend. Just a guess.”

The woman tangled in the vines shut her eyes and sat still, and the vines slid slowly from her, as though some of them were reluctant to let go. For all Tom knew, that was the truth. He didn’t understand all the intricacies of the bond that Harry had entered into with the wild magic, and he doubted he needed to.

What he needed to know was how it could be used to defeat their enemies, and how much Harry could give before he passed out or died. As soon as Tom knew that, he could make sure it never happened.

The woman and her horse finally eased back, but there was a sick hatred in her eyes as she stared at Tom. “Our lord will hear from you,” she whispered.

“Well, finally. You call him by the proper title.” Tom nodded. “If you want to go and tell him, feel free, although I don’t imagine that it’s news to him by now.”

Both women turned and trotted away without a further word, their horses spreading their wings and lifting off when they were far enough away for most curses not to reach them. Gryffindor shook his head as he looked at Tom. “Was that wise, Mr. Riddle? They will be the more bitterly committed to the war now.”

“I don’t think you could change Dumbledore’s commitment even with the Imperius Curse,” Tom said dryly. “And attacking someone at a peace meeting is a declaration of war, Master Gryffindor.”

“You wanted this to happen?”

“I wanted to get the formalities out of the way and have them admit with their actions that this is a war to the end. No one can be allowed to sit around and think Dumbledore won’t touch them because they’re not a formally declared ally of ours.”

“How were the vines?” Harry asked, as he appeared from behind a dark green shimmer of magic. Gryffindor swore and stepped away.

Tom leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Wonderful, dearest.”