[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Twelve and One, Harry/Tom Riddle, R, 3/7

[lomonaaeren]

Part Two.

Part One.

Title: Twelve and One (3/7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily and Merope/Tom Riddle Sr.
Content Notes: Angst, past minor character death, violence, fairy tale AU
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3800
Summary: AU. King James Potter has twelve daughters, each more beautiful than the last, and all under a devastating curse. He also has one son, who serves as his father’s steward. Harry has begun to wonder if his sisters will ever be free from the curse, until Prince Thomas Slytherin comes seeking a consort. (Very) loosely based on the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”
Author’s Notes: This is one of “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year. It will have seven parts.

Part Three

“I don’t understand why you put yourself in a servant’s place.”

“But if I didn’t do that, Prince Thomas, who else would cook the dinner? You?”

Harry held his breath in to keep from laughing as he caught the look on Tom’s face from across the fire. He looked as though he had so many things to be revolted by that he didn’t know how to choose. Harry focused on making sure that the silvery trout Tom had brought, chilled and Preserved with spells, was cooking at the perfect temperature above the fire.

“A half-elf should not hold a servant’s place.”

“I assure you that my father has half-elven servants as well as human ones.” Harry gave the fish one more look, and then nodded, because it was done, and removed it from the fire. The jewel-bird eggs he had wrapped in leaves from his own medical supplies and buried among the embers were almost done, as well. “Elves marry for beauty and magic. They don’t always care if the person they’re marrying is royal.”

“I know that full well,” Tom snapped. He was already holding out a plate that seemed to be made of thin china with a rim of silver, and Harry held in his amusement. Yes, if he hadn’t put himself forwards to cook the dinner, they would have eaten cold food. Tom had no notion of how to take care of himself. “But princes shouldn’t be servants.”

“What, your mother never raised you on the doctrine of the prince being the servant of the land and the people, either?” Harry clucked his tongue. “How deficient she was.”

“Do not speak about my mother.”

That wasn’t Parseltongue, but it woke the shadows at the edges of the fire up anyway. Harry held Tom’s eyes as he loaded a delicate, flaky piece of fish onto his plate. “Fine. I won’t.”

Tom blinked, and the shadows retreated. Then he began to eat with a fork that seemed to be made entirely of silver, still watching Harry. Harry raised an impatient eyebrow at him, and Tom focused on the food for a moment.

“But I will speak about your father,” Tom said a moment later, as if they were continuing a conversation instead of starting a new one. “How could he suffer his son to take a servant’s part?”

Harry sighed and ate a few bites himself before he answered. “My mother had died. Our steward was in love with her, and grieved himself to death over her.”

Tom sneered. Harry shrugged. He wasn’t about to disparage someone who had always been faithful to the House of Potter, but he had to admit he privately agreed. Then again, that was another part of the reason for his resolve not to marry. He wouldn’t show the “right” kind of grief if his spouse died before him.

“The other servants didn’t know what to do. They were either running themselves ragged to care for my father, or to care for my newborn sisters and the older ones, too, or grieving in turn. I could do some of the things they needed to do, like being the voice who told various people what to cook on certain days. And after that it just—fell into place.”

“Rather conveniently for your father, it appears.”

“I was trying to be convenient to him.”

“I meant,” Tom said, leaning in to look at Harry as he removed the jewel-bird eggs from the embers, “he didn’t have to give you the place you had earned, as the prince of the family, the eldest son. He didn’t have to make you his heir because you had already made yourself his servant.”

Harry didn’t respond until he had the eggs picked out and cleaned off and safely on the plates. Then he shook his head. “Becoming his heir was never going to happen.”

“It should have. You’re competent and intelligent and beautiful. Who wouldn’t you as their heir?”

Tom’s voice had got thick on those last words, but that might be because he was eating the eggs and fish at the same time in one bite. Harry stared for a minute, then shook his head again. “You’re not thinking enough like an elf.”

“I’m a half-elf. I have no reason to share the full views of my mother’s people.”

“Then maybe I should say that you’re not thinking enough like a human enchanted by the Seelie,” Harry said gently. The narrow-eyed stare he got wasn’t the intended result of the words, but he treasured it anyway. “I was never going to be the heir because I don’t have that Blaze I told you about. No beauty, no magic. It was one reason my mother kept having children when most of the royals only have a few. She wanted to produce children who would manage to inherit the full might of her beauty. Even for a Seelie elf, you know, she shone.”

“So I heard,” said Tom, and he sounded absent. Harry hoped that might mean he wasn’t going to talk about uncomfortable subjects in detail anymore. “Did your mother die of the curse or of childbirth?”

“My father thinks the curse—”

“I wish to know what you think.”

Harry swallowed. He didn’t understand that intense gaze being aimed at him. It was too much like the way most people looked at some of his sisters. “I think it was a combination of both. My mother poured so much magic and love into us—her children, I mean. I think that the constant childbearing every two years weakened her until she couldn’t fight off the fever that overcame her after Krystal and Lobelia were born.”

Tom nodded and ate a few more bites, which let Harry relax and attend to his dinner as well. Then Tom put his plate aside and said casually, “Your parents were fools.”

Harry bared his teeth. “I’ll thank you not to speak about my mother, any more than I should about yours.”

Tom ignored him completely. Harry must not have been as intimidating as Tom had looked when Harry had mentioned Queen Merope. Then again, Harry didn’t have the serpent magic Tom did. “They were. To continue to have the queen bear child after child when they must have known it would exhaust her. To do so when the number of children would only have strengthened the curse, not weakened it.” He focused on Harry again. “Am I wrong that they continued to have children thinking sooner or later that they must have daughters without the curse?”

Harry sighed. “You’re not wrong.”

Tom nodded without changing his expression. “And fools not to see the treasure that they had in front of them.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, because being a good steward and a good cook would really have prepared me to run a kingdom when I don’t have any glamour.”

“They sound like something I am looking for.”

Harry stared at Tom. The other man continued to lounge there and smile as if he hadn’t said something shocking.

Harry shook his head. “You said that you came to find a consort, someone who wouldn’t outshine you and would help you rule your kingdom.”

“I did say that.”

“Well, I’m not female.”

“I’d noticed.”

Those two simple words should not have had so much of a leer in them, Harry thought as he turned to stare at the fire. It burned on wood that Tom had also brought with him, and had clear, transparent flames as glassy as some of the streams running past their feet.

“I want someone practical,” Tom said into the silence, after Harry had decided they wouldn’t pick up the conversation from where it was lying in the middle of the clearing. “I want someone who knows magic that we can use every day, and that makes our lives easier.”

Harry shrugged. “Most of my sisters have gifts like that, especially if you like listening to music or want to be sure that you have the best-tended garden in the kingdom.”

“And how are they at leading?”

Harry smiled, feeling like he was back on familiar ground now. “Krystal and Lobelia can specifically influence people with the gift of beauty and the gift of tongues. Just be careful that you keep an eye on them and let them know that convincing a guard to donate all his wages to charity is wrong.” He’d indeed had to clear up that little mess Lobelia had made the other day.

“I don’t want someone I have to keep an eye on. I want someone who’s my equal.”

Harry stretched out on the grass and looked at Tom thoughtfully. “Then perhaps you want to look at Amaranth and Beryl. They’re free of the curse now, and they’re the closest in age to you. And they’re fairly sober and respectable.” More to the point, he knew that they didn’t have attachments at court the way a few of the others did.

“You think we won’t manage to free the others of the curse?”

“I don’t want to gamble on what could happen before it does happen.”

Tom, for some reason, clenched strands of grass in front of him and hissed out, “They didn’t know how to value you.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Harry said. He thought that he was doing the best he could, pointing Tom towards the princesses he was most likely to suit, and he had explained why he had taken the steward position and that it made sense. If nothing else, he’d thought Tom would have liked seeing another prince in a servant’s position. It would mean nothing would keep Tom from being the most high-ranking one in any room.

“What are you going to do when your sisters are freed of the curse?” Tom asked abruptly.

Harry shrugged. “Remain as steward for a few more years. Honestly, I don’t expect my father to last much longer. He didn’t marry all that young for a royal, and these years without my mother have taken a toll on him. After Lord Black comes to the throne, I’ll probably move to managing his country houses. He has properties that have been in disrepair for a while, and—”

Tom rolled over and bundled himself into the fluffy blankets he’d also brought along without saying anything.

All right, Harry thought, after blinking at him, and wrapped himself in his own blankets. It was warm, and the air of the underworld was neither particularly cold nor particularly loud. After only a few minutes, he slumped into slumber.

*

The music woke Harry.

He opened his eyes and lay without moving. The sound in his ears was—strange. When he’d been mostly asleep, it had sounded like the sweet, beguiling music of a lute, the kind he hadn’t heard since Fleur Delacour, the most famous wandering minstrel of the age, had come to court and stayed a month. Delphinium preferred the harp and almost never played anything else.

Now that he was awake, it sounded like a cacophony of screeches and sighs, mixed with occasional trilling notes of the kind that a bird might give. Harry twisted his head towards the sound, waiting to see if that affected it and whoever was playing, or singing, stopped.

Nothing happened except a rustle off to the side. Harry rolled and saw Tom rising to his feet, his eyes glowing.

“Tom?” Harry asked. Tom didn’t look at him but kept walking towards the noise. “Prince Thomas?”

Still no response. Tom’s legs rose and fell in that graceful glide that he’d used to take Harry through the gate into the underworld, but this time, Harry had the terrifying impression that there was no mind guiding them.

Harry shook his head, rose to his elbows and knees, and then tackled Tom in a way that was becoming a habit. Tom made no sound as he went prone under Harry, but began to mindlessly and silently fight to stand. Meanwhile, the music had changed, spiraling up towards something that sounded like a shrill flute.

“Wake up!” Harry yelled in his ear, but Tom continued to fight without seeming to notice him. His eyes, when Harry got a chance to peer into them, were blank and glazed. Harry sank an elbow hard into his side, and Tom grunted breathlessly. He kept fighting, though.

Harry rose on his knees and reached forwards, clapping his hands over Tom’s ears. For a second, the struggle continued. Then Tom dropped onto his belly, lay there motionlessly, and muttered, “What are you doing?”

Harry wasn’t about to let him go so he could hear the answer. He concentrated his magic through his fingers, and by the time Tom shook him off, he was wearing invisible earmuffs that would keep any sound from reaching him. Tom stared at Harry and made a large motion with one finger that said what he thought of this.

“Some kind of magical music,” Harry said, and the minute he muttered it aloud, he grimaced. Of course it was. Both Coral and Delphinium had the gift of music, just in different ways. He stood up, watching with narrowed eyes as the grasses in front of him shivered and parted.

Tom tugged on his trouser leg. “Why aren’t you affected by it?” he asked plainly, his voice overloud. Then he followed Harry’s gaze and fell silent again.

Harry shuddered at the sight of the two figures. Their bodies were made of what looked like a more solid version of the mist that had filled the gaps in the undead dragon’s skeleton, writhing and changing in search of some shape they could use to influence him. One cradled a lute of moss draped over bone that it strummed with spiderweb fingers, and the other held a flute of what honestly looked like frozen blood to its lips. They had vague heads and no eyes.

Tom took a deep breath behind him and said, “They’re beautiful. Let me go to them.”

Elven sight must be something else, Harry thought, and wondered for a moment what Tom was seeing. Then he put that out of his head. What he needed to worry about right now was to how to react to this.

He tackled Tom to the ground again and sat on top of him. Then he faced the figures, who had halted in front of them and were still playing their instruments. Harry took a deep, deep breath, one that seemed to fill his lungs with more air than he had ever inhaled in his life.

And then he began to sing.

The playing faltered at once. Harry wanted to grin, but he didn’t let the motion of his lips interfere with his singing. His notes sawed and scraped and screeched at the air, and he could feel Tom’s muscles tense beneath him.

“Oh, I knew a fair maiden,
And with cares she was laden!
I offered to dispense with one,
And by the light of the sun,
To her bower I was baden…”

The figure with the lute retreated a few steps. The one with the flute kept playing. Harry narrowed his eyes even as he continued to sing. So using one of his sisters’ gifts wasn’t enough, then? He would have to use both at once.

Harry rose to his knees and began to play Tom’s back with his hands as a sort of drum. Tom struggled and complained underneath him, but Harry ignored him complacently. After all, Tom wasn’t in his right mind at the moment.

The figures faltered for the first time, rather than just backing up. Harry heard a few shrill notes that skittered past his ears and into some elven part of his brain that whispered they were beautiful, not just high-pitched. Harry ignored them and continued to sing.

“And then her father opened the door,
And she scurried like she did before
To say that no one was there!
I hid underneath her hair,
Which was so long it coated the floor…”

The song in front of him faltered once more under his onslaught. Harry had never been grateful that he wasn’t musical enough to pass as a full elf, but he was now. He continued roaring, and abruptly both instruments crashed to the ground as the shapeless figures put their hands over the parts of their vague heads where their ears might have been.

Harry stood up and absently kicked Tom out of the way when he tried to grab his ankle. He walked towards the two instrumentalists, clapping his hands to keep the beat, and “singing” for all he was worth.

“But her father had a knife,
And with it he threatened—not her life,
But her beloved pet dog,
Who was snoring like a log!
And I never said I would take her to wife…”

The figures abruptly wailed and dissolved into wavering pearly mist, and two things came springing out of them, twisting and twirling in midair. Harry stepped back in case they were dangerous, continuing his clapping and his singing. When he got a better look, though, he smiled. There was one piece of coral and one shining blue delphinium flower.

Behind him, Tom said in a menacing voice, “You had better have an excellent reason for using my back as a drum.”

“Hey, it wasn’t your arse,” Harry said, and blinked. His voice was hoarse. He shrugged and turned to face Tom with a grin that didn’t seem to make much of an impression against Tom’s determined glare. “I did it because they had enchanted you with their voices, and they didn’t seem to prevail against me.”

“I could see that. I want to know why.”

Harry shook his head. “Human, remember? Less elven, less beautiful, but also less susceptible to elven glamour.”

Tom said nothing for long moments. He had obviously removed the spell that dimmed his hearing, but he just stood there, staring and silent. Harry raised an eyebrow at him and glanced back at their fire. It had gone out. He debated the wisdom of starting it again. They didn’t really need the warmth with the neutral temperature around them, and the sky had neither lightened nor darkened, meaning they didn’t need it as a source of light.

“We are both half-elves,” Tom said, and made it sound like a curse. “You should not be less susceptible than I am, or more susceptible. We should both be equally in danger or equally safe.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Come on, my lord. You have to admit that you’ve noticed differences between half-elves in the past. Between those of Seelie and Unseelie descent. Between those who show the glamour in their faces and those who don’t.”

Tom said slowly, “I have a younger sister, Princess Amratha.”

“Yes?” Harry asked encouragingly. He recognized the name as the elven word for “nightfall.”

“She takes more after my mother. She’ll probably live longer than I will. She’s already married, but she didn’t need to, given the amount of time that she has to produce children. She met another half-elf she fell in love with, though.”

“Then you do know what I’m talking about. Some of us bond more strongly with our elven heritage, and some with our human heritage.” Harry went to the pack of food that Tom had brought along, and scowled thoughtfully at it. Tom had brought bread and hard cheese. Harry thought that he could probably make some toasted cheese sandwiches out of it if he did relight the fire. The question was whether Tom would consent to eat anything so plebian.

Harry glanced over his shoulder and found Tom standing there again. His hands reached out and rested on Harry’s shoulders, and somehow, Harry didn’t stop them from doing so. Tom was staring at him with bright, searching eyes. Harry let that happen, too, even though most of the time he got uncomfortable when people looked at him too long.

“That might be true,” Tom whispered. His voice seemed to create an atmosphere of heat and exclusivity around them, and Harry found himself breathing it in. It made him a little light-headed. “But you can be sure that I am interested in seeing your relatives value you as you deserve.”

Those were perhaps the only words that could have broken the spell at the moment. Harry moved backwards with a snort and a shake of his head. “Listen to me, my lord—”

“Not if you use that ridiculous title.”

“Fine. Tom. My family didn’t demote me, or ridicule me. I willingly put myself in the place where I would do the most good. I want to be useful, and because I do lack the usual elven gifts, I couldn’t do it by being a diplomat or a ruler. Will you understand that I took the place that was open to me and I enjoy it?”

Tom watched him with a motionless face now. Then he said, “No.”

“No what?’

“I will not understand it. If you took that place out of enjoyment, you would display some pride in what you can do. Not this constant self-deprecation and claims that your sisters have more useful magic than you do.” Tom paused. “There is another thing.”

“Yes?” Harry started to dig out the bread and cheese, deciding that he was going to eat himself no matter what decision Tom made in the next few minutes.

“You’ve saved my life twice now.”

“What? Twice?”

“How quickly you forget the dragonfire.” Tom’s voice grew slowly warmer and quicker. “I do not.”

Harry shrugged, keeping his eyes on the food in his hands. He was uncomfortably aware of the eyes brushing him, and the hand that touched his shoulder with more regularity than was needed as they packed after breakfast, and the way that Tom tried to talk to him as they ambled along towards the distant hills, as if actually interested in his opinions.

Elven magic flowed through the saving of the lives and tied together the savior and the one saved. That was only natural, when elves could live so long and the person who saved them would be rescuing decades and centuries, not only years.

Harry wasn’t sure that the effect would be so powerful when both the savior and the one saved were half-elves, but from the restless flame in Tom’s eyes, it might be.

And the thought only made his mind heavier. He didn’t want a connection that existed because of elven magic and not because of both people’s fair choice.

Neither did he want to somehow “steal” the prince from his sisters, who had the native magic and beauty to attract the attention of someone like Prince Thomas Slytherin and hold it.

Harry set his mind firmly on the breaking of the curse. That was the only thing he had to look forward to right now.

Tom’s hand brushed his shoulder again. Harry shivered and ignored it.