Chapter Twenty-Seven of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Promises

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Chapter One.

Title: His Darkest Devotion (27/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily, Molly/Arthur, Ron/Hermione, possibly others
Content Notes: Extreme AU, soulmate-identifying marks, angst, violence, torture, gore, minor character deaths
Rating: R
Summary: AU. Harry Potter has been hiding in plain sight all his life, since he carries the soul-mark of Minister Tom Riddle on his arm—and a fulfilled soul-bond will double both partners’ power. His parents and godfather are fugitives, members of the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry is a junior Ministry official feeding the Order what information he can. No one, least of all him, expects Harry to come to the sudden notice of Minister Riddle, or be drawn into a dangerous game of deception.
Author’s Notes: This is a long fic and an extreme AU, as you can see from the summary. The different facets of the AU will be revealed slowly, so roll with the differences at first; in time, all should be revealed.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Seven—Promises

“How do you intend to claim your life-debts, Mr. Potter?”

Aelia Malfoy’s words were so distant and unconcerned that Harry could have thought she was speaking of someone entirely unconnected to herself. But he saw the savage way that her hand pinched the edge of her robes down near the side of the chair, and how even the soft, soothing sound of tree branches swaying in the background didn’t appear to calm her.

“I have something in mind,” Harry said. They were sitting in the enchanted room off Tom’s office that he apparently had woven all these illusions of being outside around so that his enemies would spill more of their secrets when they were here. A table disguised as a tree stump sat between him and Madam Malfoy, and Harry picked up his teacup and sipped from it.

“Why have you not told anyone what it is?”

“Because I think speaking to people on an individual level is better,” Harry said. “Some of the repayments will be the same across different families, but others will be individual.” He nodded to her. “Yours is one of the ones where I want you to think carefully before you refuse my payment.”

“A gentleman would not ask a lady to do something she finds personally distasteful.”

“Oh, in a matter of life and death, he might,” Harry said. He’d thought about saying that he wasn’t a gentleman, but Tom had cautioned him that the pure-bloods he had to deal with would seize any chance they could to place him beneath them. The last thing Harry should do was willingly give up any relative status. “And I need you to think of me as someone who cares more about what you can do for me, and how you can repay the life-debt, than someone who wants to protect you.”

Madam Malfoy gave him one of those bright, blank stares that seemed to be her specialty in the Wizengamot. Frankly, Harry thought they were overrated. He went on sipping his tea, and tried one of the small pieces of shortbread that Tom must have ordered the house-elves to bring, because Harry certainly hadn’t asked for anything like them.

“What do you want from me?”

Harry smiled at her and slid a piece of parchment across the stump-disguised table to her. “Please read this.”

Madam Malfoy’s mask fractured a little, into what seemed to be shining pieces of glass, as she read. Harry was glad that something could break it, anyway. “What is this? It appears to be a simple list of numbers.”

“Arithmantic calculations measuring certain levels of power among the students who entered Hogwarts in the last year,” Harry said calmly. That was one of the reforms Tom had pushed through which Dumbledore hadn’t been able to combat. Harry assumed it had probably happened after he was a first-year, though, or Tom would have known about Harry’s power a lot sooner. Or maybe Professor Dumbledore had had a word with the Sorting Hat.

The thought made Harry’s chest ache, but he pushed through it, knowing what a sign of weakness in front of a pure-blood would do to him right now. “Are you familiar enough with the Arithmancy to determine which ones are the strongest?”

Of course, Madam Malfoy was one of those people who wouldn’t admit she didn’t understand something, so she tossed him a scathing glance and bent over the parchment. A few minutes later, she raised her eyebrows. “The calculations that indicate those who are strongest appear to be randomly scattered, but it is clear that there are a quarter of them that stand out above the rest.”

“A quarter,” Harry said meaningfully. He waited to see if she would volunteer the knowledge on her own, but she treated him to another glare. Harry smiled. “That corresponds to roughly the number of Muggleborns in the wizarding population of Britain.”

Madam Malfoy jerked back from the parchment, but pinned it in place with a hand so it didn’t flutter to the floor. Then she shook her head. “I refuse to believe that every single strongest student in the last autumn term was a—”

“Not a very good politician, are you,” Harry said softly, his eyes fixed on her, “if you had to take a minute to think about the word?”

Madam Malfoy spent a moment fussing with the edge of her sleeve, something Harry doubted she would have done if they were in public, or even just the Wizengamot chamber. Then she met Harry’s eyes. “Not every single one of them was Muggleborn.”

She at least said it without a sneer. Harry decided that was enough, and nodded. “No. Two of them were pure-bloods, and three were half-bloods. All of the others were Muggleborn.”

Madam Malfoy stared at him. Then she said, “There is no reason that would cause that. If blood does not matter, as I believe you are attempting to suggest to me, then more of them should be pure-bloods and half-bloods.”

“There is a reason that would cause it. Tell me, Madam Malfoy, are you aware of how closely related most of the pure-blood families are?”

Madam Malfoy arched an eyebrow. “Of course. Just as I am aware of how many powerful wizards and witches there are among my peers.”

“Then you’re probably aware of how many people in your parents’ generation married out.” Harry had thought Madam Malfoy would sneer, but instead, she turned pale. Harry honestly couldn’t tell if she had known or not. “Married half-bloods, married Muggleborns, or married people who had previously been called blood traitors. There was a law passed two years before you were born, wasn’t there? Declaring that calling someone a blood traitor in public could be punished with a duel right then and there. The duel didn’t have to follow the usual restrictions. I thought it was curious when I first read about it, especially since the law was struck down twenty years later, but now I know. Some of the people who married supposed social outcasts didn’t want their spouses taunted.”

Madam Malfoy was giving him a frankly wary look. “And that means…”

“When you intermarry too closely, one of two things happens,” Harry said, thinking of the way that Sirius had told him about the Black family. “You get unstable children, or you get Squibs.”

“That is not true. No one knows what causes Squibs!”

“Not down to the point of being able to name the cause,” Harry admitted. “And it’s true that some Squibs are born to families that also have magical children. But those families that have non-magical children at all also are the mostly closely intermarried ones.”

Madam Malfoy sat still. She’d gone back behind that glacial mask again, but perhaps simply because he was sitting close to her, Harry could see the way her nostrils flared.

“And what do you intend to have me do with these supposed revelations, Mr. Potter?”

“Start spreading the truth of them.” Harry shook his head when she opened her mouth. “I’m not asking you to change the kind of person that you are. That’s obviously impossible.” He smiled a little at the expression that crossed her face then. “Frame these conclusions however you want. Talk about how unexpected it is that Muggleborns show this kind of power, sigh about how there just aren’t enough polite younger people nowadays, remind people that the law saying calling someone a blood traitor was a duel-worthy offense existed. I don’t really care how. But spread the word.”

“That will damage my reputation.”

“As what?”

“As a Malfoy!”

Harry waited until she had calmed down enough to listen to him and said, “The most important thing is that other people know the facts I’ve just laid out for you. But you damaging your reputation…” He smiled. “That’s also part of the point.”

“Why would you want to take this kind of revenge on me? My family has not hurt your family personally.”

“You’ve hurt Muggleborns and half-bloods and Muggles by promoting the kind of nonsense you do,” Harry said quietly. “That’s personal enough for me.”

Madam Malfoy had managed to get control of her facial features and her voice by now. “You cannot change the world. Not in the way you think you can. You are not strong enough. We are too entrenched.”

“By myself, no. And I’ve seen how useless force is when it’s something like the Order of the Phoenix. But with Tom on my side, and a whole bunch of the most bigoted people having to do what I tell them, I think it’s easier.”

*

“Did she glare at you when you said that?”

“Of course she did.” Harry grinned at Tom. He was leaning back with his feet on Tom’s desk, his chair tilted so it was on two absurd legs. He had given up on waiting for Tom to say something about that, which was good, because on that matter Tom lived to disappoint. “But I don’t really know why everyone found her so frightening. Her mask has all these cracks in it if you look closely enough.”

“Cracks, I think, that you put there.”

“Yes, but cracks that are possible. Everyone acted like they weren’t.”

Tom chuckled and gave in to his desires, coming around the desk to touch Harry’s forehead, over his old faded scar from a broom accident. “It might have taken someone coming from the outside to see them.”

“Maybe.” Harry’s eyes were dark and full. He tilted his head back and then murmured, “We can’t—in the middle of the Ministry.”

“I know,” Tom said. It was enough for him to know that his soulmate wanted to, the heavy waves surging between them, and he might even have tried for it with a door that locked more strongly or less urgent business on hand.

As it was, he had something to tell Harry that Harry wouldn’t like at all. He stepped back, and Harry’s face shut down. He had already received the foreboding of what Tom would say through their bond, then.

“What is it?”

“I want you to listen to me, not just reject it right away,” Tom said.

“I am listening.”

Tom raised his eyebrows in polite doubt, and then murmured, “I’ve found a Mind-Healer that I’d like you to visit.”

“What makes this one so special?”

“He specializes in dealing with patients who have encountered opposition to their soul-marks from friends and family. Most often pure-bloods who found out they had Muggleborn soulmates, but there are other cases, too.”

“And you think that he’ll be able to talk to me in detail about the Order without scolding me about it?”

Tom paused. That hadn’t been an objection he’d anticipated. “What do you mean?”

“That he won’t take me to task for having acted with a terrorist group. That he won’t spend so much time on that he’ll sort of forget to help me with the soul-mark part.”

Tom trailed his hand down Harry’s cheek, and Harry made a soft sound and closed his eyes in pleasure. “I promise that other people won’t despise you for that,” Tom whispered. “I saw that memory of you when you were a child and asking your mother about whether your soul-mark made you evil. Your Mind-Healer will understand the way you were raised.”

“My mother was doing the best she could.”

Tom made a noncommittal noise, but Harry narrowed his eyes, probably at what he was getting through the bond. Tom stepped back with his hands in the air. “The Mind-Healer will help you sort things like that out.”

After a second, Harry’s agitated stare cooled, and he looked away, at the same moment as something like soft water poured through their bond. “Sirius said that he talked to you about finding him a better Mind-Healer, too.”

Tom nodded. “I believe that the conflict going on in his head will do no one any good.”

Harry snorted. “Is that a nice way of saying that you don’t want him to oppose you?”

“I doubt I could get him to see things the way I do no matter how long a Mind-Healer worked with him. But if he remains as impulsive and torn between loyalties as he is right now, he might do something he has cause to regret.”

Harry grimaced, and the shiver of fear in his mind said that he remembered the bond-severing spell as clearly as Tom did. “Fine. I think a Mind-Healer will be a good idea. But I don’t think one will help me much.”

“Will you please go in with a clear head and a willingness to listen?” Tom asked quietly. “It’s true that nothing can help if you’re absolutely determined to resist.”

Harry sighed, thinking about it. “Fine. When is the first appointment?”

“Tomorrow at nine.”

Harry froze for a second, and then turned to Tom, his thoughts so clear that they shot down their bond before he could have spoken the words. That’s also the hour that Hermione and Ron are supposed to swear their oaths.

“I would prefer to keep you away from them,” Tom admitted, not ashamed that he’d been caught. Part of him was curious, eager, to see if Harry would do as Tom was asking and stay away from his former friends. “I can reschedule the appointment with the Mind-Healer if you’d prefer, of course.”

“Reschedule it.”

“Of course.” Tom inclined his head, sighing a little. “They don’t deserve your loyalty.”

“They would say the same thing about you. I’ll give my loyalty where and how I please.”

The stubborn uptilt of Harry’s head said that he was going to argue about it, so Tom simply placed a hand on his shoulder. “I hope that you at least won’t deny me the privilege of being beside you while you listen to their oaths.”

“No, you should be there,” Harry said, and his eyes sparked for a second. “Because you’ll see how much strength they still have when they take them. I think they’re very brave for agreeing to do this at all, you know.”

Tom held back his reaction, and only nodded. “Then shall we talk of more pleasant things while we wait for tomorrow morning?”

Harry smiled at him, and Tom let the complementary emotion erupt down the bond between them and carry them away for the afternoon.

*

Harry shivered a little as he stood in the Ministry Atrium. Originally, he had thought Ron and Hermione would take their oaths in the Wizengamot courtroom they’d almost destroyed, in front of the people they’d almost killed with the Ultimate Destruction Curse in their bond, but Tom had vetoed that. Apparently, he’d thought most of the wizarding world might like to see them do it.

Harry had argued against it, but Tom had only looked at him and said, “They would have left the entire wizarding world headless if they had succeeded in their mad strike against the government,” and Harry had been forced to back down.

And the crowd was bigger than Harry had expected. People stood crowded so close to the Floos and the golden fountain that Harry thought they would have the pattern of bricks or the basin imprinted on their backs later. The only clear patch of floor was a narrow corridor leading from the lifts that Ron and Hermione would come out of and towards the fountain. Tom had said they would take their oaths under the indifferent eyes of the wizard and witch symbolized among the fountain’s group of creatures.

Tom hadn’t said anything about why, but Harry did wonder if he had found out that Hermione despised the service of house-elves and the domination of magical creatures that many traditional pure-bloods stood for. Forcing her to do this here was a particularly subtle psychological strike.

But Harry hadn’t said anything, partially because he knew Tom had indulged Harry’s protests about his best friends’ fate as far as he was willing to go, and partially because he didn’t want to give Tom ideas.

Their bond flared, and Harry turned his head even before the lifts began to open. Tom was riding in them with an escort of Aurors and a few of the Wizengamot members who had been there when Ron and Hermione unleashed their magic for the last time.

Amelia Bones stepped out first, her face cold, and a few people trying to press past the Hit Wizards who were keeping that patch of floor clear froze when they met her eyes. Madam Bones nodded and kept walking, while Ron and Hermione shuffled behind her. Harry winced when he heard the shackles they wore clanking.

Maybe it was his wince, one of the only movements in that eerily still room, that drew their eyes to him. Hermione looked up, and her gaze locked with his. Ron’s followed a second later.

Harry knew that he was looking closely enough to see Hermione’s eyes fill with tears. Ron’s didn’t, but he put an arm around Hermione’s shoulders and turned a little as if to shield her from Harry.

Harry swallowed around his pain, and then caught Tom’s eye in turn. Tom was standing far too still, especially with Aurors hesitating behind him, and there was a curve of his arm that said his hand was about to rest on his wand.

He might still punish them, if you act too pained around them. As if they haven’t been punished enough…

Harry yanked his pain back into himself, and Tom’s face cleared. He still gave Harry a thoughtful look as he walked around the Aurors to stand near the fountain facing Ron and Hermione. The people who had been pressing close enough before to imprint the basin into their backs cleared as if Banished. Harry himself only turned so that he could keep everyone under observation.

Ron still had his arm around Hermione’s shoulders, and his face was nearly blank. Harry hoped that Tom wouldn’t interpret that in any bad way. Madam Bones was the one who cleared her throat and drew the attention of the crowd and reporters to her.

“We come here today to hear the oaths of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, former members of the Order of the Phoenix who attacked the Wizengamot during their trial for terrorist activities,” she said. “They are now Squibs with a broken soul-bond, so they will not be taking the most powerful oath they could possibly take, the ones that bind wizards. They will be taking oaths that the Minister, Weasley, Granger, and the Wizengamot have all agreed on the wording of.”

Hermione shifted as if she was going to protest that bit about the agreement, but Ron wrapped his arm tighter around her shoulders and quieted her. Harry swallowed. He knew that this was the best outcome, out of all the ones that had been likely, but—

Well, it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t have liked things to work out differently.

“Ms. Granger, Mr. Weasley, you will begin the oaths with your first part.”

Hermione stepped forwards, although she was shaking, and laid her hand on the golden chain that Madam Bones had taken out of her pocket. When she stretched it taut between her hands, it rang a little, and then quieted. Harry eyed the chain. He had been assured that it could bind anyone who had once felt the touch of magic within their bodies, which made it an effective tool to hold even Squibs, although not Muggles.

He didn’t know what it was made of, or why it was so effective, and Tom had only said that he would explain the magical theory later.

“Mr. Weasley, you as well.”

Ron followed a taut moment later, and his hand joined Hermione’s on the chain. They took a deep breath and began to recite together. Harry wondered if they’d had to practice that, or if it was a remnant of their bond-closeness that they could do it.

“We swear that we will go into the Muggle world for the rest of our lives. We swear that we will have no unmonitored contact with anyone magical, including children who have not yet entered Hogwarts. Monitors are only to consist of Minister Riddle or members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. We swear that we will not try to enter the magical world through any point in Britain, including but not limited to entrances to Diagon Alley, St. Mungo’s, and the Ministry. We swear that we will not spread materials about the Order of the Phoenix or that criticize Minister Tom Riddle and the Wizengamot, including but not limited to pamphlets, speeches, private conversations, and letters. We swear that we will not communicate with Professor Albus Dumbledore, former Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and will immediately report any attempts on his part to contact us to Madam Amelia Bones. We swear that we will not try to contact members of the Weasley family, Harry Potter, Lily Potter, James Potter, Sirius Black, or anyone else who has been connected to the Order of the Phoenix without prior approval from the Minister.”

Harry jerked his head around and frowned at Tom. Forbidding Ron and Hermione from contacting Dumbledore only made sense, with how easily they were influenced, but he hadn’t known it would extend to him.

Tom gave him a cool look, and Harry knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by arguing about it. With a scowl, he faced back towards Ron and Hermione.

“And we swear that any move we make against the wizarding world, the current wizarding world government, Minister Tom Riddle, or his soulmate Harry Potter will be non-violent in nature.”

Hermione closed her eyes as she made that last statement. Ron just stood closer to her, staring out of the corner of his eye at Ton and Harry.

Harry could feel himself reeling. He hadn’t known that oath would be in the package. He had expected something that would prevent them from acting against the magical government at all, similar to the one that said they couldn’t spread propaganda for the Order of the Phoenix. He leaned towards Tom as reporters shouted questions and Madam Bones fielded them, while Aurors moved in to stand close to Ron and Hermione.

“Why did you leave them an opening to act against you at all?” he asked quietly.

“They would probably explode without it, and do something that would violate one of the oaths,” Tom said. “Breaking an oath punishes them with pain, with death if they violate it more than three times. And that would upset you.”

“So you did it because you didn’t want to upset me.”

“Well. Yes.”

Harry stared at him. Tom looked back, gaze steady, mild, and a little inquisitive. He obviously didn’t see what problem Harry had with this.

“You’re supposed to do things like that because it’s the right thing to do, not to condemn your enemies to death,” Harry hissed finally. “Not because you want to make someone close to you happy.”

“We’ve established that we don’t play the political game by the same rules, darling.”

Harry would have said something else, but one of the reporters turned towards him at that point, and Harry forced a smile. He recognized Rita Skeeter, and he knew that she wouldn’t hesitate to flip the story around and present Ron and Hermione as innocent victims and Harry and Tom as the terrible people, if she could.

“Mr. Potter, I just wanted to know how you felt about your friends getting a second chance like this, while your second chance was different,” Skeeter said, her eyes turning to Tom for a second as if she thought she could pin him in place. Tom only smiled indulgently. He had told Harry that he enjoyed “playing” with Skeeter. “After all, you were all involved with the Order of the Phoenix, but you were spared and given an important position in the government, while your friends were stripped of their magic and exiled. What do you think happened to cause the difference?”

Harry consciously kept his eyebrow from twitching. Of course Skeeter knew what had happened. Everyone did who was marginally aware of the Minister’s search for his soulmate and it succeeding at last.

But he did suppose that answering like that wasn’t a good idea, so he sighed and said, “It was two things, I suppose.”

“Of course. Tell me what the two things were?” Skeeter’s quill hovered over her parchment.

“First, I was never directly involved with the Order of the Phoenix, not in the way that my friends were.” Harry kept his eye on the quill, and noticed when it began to scribble down a much longer sentence than the one he’d spoken. He smiled and flexed his own magic a little. The quill stopped. “I don’t think your audience wants all the speculation, do they, Madam Skeeter? They would rather have the truth?”

Skeeter stared at him. Harry stared back. Tom’s amusement simmered, banked, in the back of their bond, but he could have felt that amusement if Harry had been about to make a fool of himself, so Harry didn’t take a lot of comfort from it.

Skeeter finally sighed and pulled another quill from her front robe pocket. “Fine, Mr. Potter. You win. So you deny direct involvement even though most of your family and friends were part of the Order?”

Harry nodded, keeping a sharp eye on the quill. But it did lack a slight flare of enchantment that had been there around the other, so he supposed it really was doing only what it was supposed to. “I was a spy for them, in a way. I passed on useful information that I came upon in the course of my Ministry job. But because I worked in the Department of Magical Games and Sports, there wasn’t much of that.”

“Why did you work in that department?” Skeeter interjected.

“I was good at Quidditch in school, but not much else—”

“Something that will be rectified,” Tom said, in the kind of deep, soothing voice that could fool so many people into thinking he was talking about harmless things. “For example, Mr. Potter will be resitting some of his NEWT’s in various subjects.”

Harry ground his teeth, but he did say, “At the time, I believed it would be wrong for me to be with my soulmate. I think better of that now, of course, but while I believed it, I made every effort to conceal my power from Minister Riddle’s notice.”

“Does that include deliberately failing exams?” Skeeter seemed fascinated.

“I never got below an Acceptable,” Harry said. There was only so much damage that his parents had wanted him to do to his scores, and plenty of competent wizards and witches got Acceptables. “But yes, I did poorly in some situations where I could have done a great deal more.”

Skeeter looked as if she was dithering between questions for a second, but then she pursued another tactic. “You said there were two reasons that you were being treated differently than your friends. One of them was no direct involvement with the raids and other less-than-legal activities of the Order of the Phoenix.” She made a great show of writing down another sentence, although from what Harry could see by glancing at her parchment, it was only what she’d just said. “And the second factor?”

“I saved the lives of a great many people,” Harry said with a shrug. “First in the building that Headmaster Dumbledore tried to collapse on top of Minister Riddle and the reporters and Department Heads who were with him at the time, and then in the Wizengamot. It would have been hard for the Minister to put me in prison while also owing me a life-debt.”

Skeeter immediately perked up. “And how are you planning to repay that life-debt, Minister Riddle?”

Harry leaned towards her and lowered his voice before Tom could say a thing. He didn’t know what Tom would say, in fact, which made the question a little dangerous. “Life-debts don’t truly exist between soulmates, you know. The greater magic link prevents the lesser magical link of the debt from taking hold.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Tom’s scowl, and turned an angelic smile on him. That was something he’d known for a while, but, of course, he’d never believed he would end up in a situation where Tom owed him a life-debt of any kind, or where he wouldn’t want to hide that he was Tom’s soulmate.

“You plan to spoil and pamper Mr. Potter in other ways, I hope,” Skeeter said to Tom.

“Of course I do,” Tom said, with a flash of his charming smile. “Furnishing a flat for him was the least I could do.”

Harry feared that Skeeter might ask what else Tom was doing, but luckily, she got distracted asking about the color scheme and furnishings of the flat, and that left Harry free to move slowly towards Ron and Hermione.

They were standing close to each other, not touching, but leaning so near that it looked like they were. Amelia Bones was examining them every time she finished answering a reporter’s question and turned to glance over her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to think they would run away or attack anyone.

Harry halted in front of them and swallowed. “Hi,” he whispered.

Hermione gave him a deep, sad glance, but there was less blame in it than he had expected. Ron put a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at Harry.

“I wish it hadn’t turned out this way,” he said.

“So do I.” Harry hesitated. Part of the reason they hadn’t made the oaths right away was that the Wizengamot and Tom were debating on the wording of them, but another reason was that they had spent time with the Aurors, giving answers to some questions, since magical oaths that had bound them to keep Order secrets had no claim on them now. None of those answers had been conveyed to Harry, though. “I—why did you bury the Ultimate Destruction Curse in your bond?”

Ron and Hermione glanced at each other in what seemed to be silent communication even though Harry knew they had no bond any longer. Well, he supposed some of the habits would remain even though they couldn’t literally hear each other’s thoughts or feel their emotions now. Harry bit his lip to resist the impulse to apologize. He hadn’t destroyed their bond out of malice. It was that, or have them fall apart into ash.

He preferred them alive.

Hemione finally turned to face him, and said, “It was a year ago, after the raid on the Department of Mysteries. Professor Dumbledore pointed out that we could have been caught, and even though the oaths we’d taken protected some of our secrets, the Aurors would still have got something out of us. We had to have—a weapon, to get away from our enemies if necessary.”

“To get away? But your bond powered the curse!”

Hermione glanced at the floor. Ron wrapped his arm around her shoulders again and said to Harry, “Get away as in die.”

“Oh.” Harry massaged his own throat as he thought of what would have happened if Ron and Hermione had died in the Department of Mysteries, or some other time, when he wouldn’t have been able to save them or prevent it. It would have—hurt. A lot.

“Why did you believe Dumbledore so much?” he asked then. “I believed him a lot, but not enough that I would have cast a suicidal curse on myself.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Hermione whispered.

“I’m here, and you can say anything to me,” Harry promised, although he did glance over his shoulder at Tom. Tom was still talking to Skeeter, but also watching Harry in a way that said he knew very well what Harry was doing, and didn’t like it.

“He makes you feel so special when he’s talking to you,” Hermione murmured, her voice full of yearning. “He knows exactly what to say. He told us that we would need to escape if someone caught us, for the Order and because we wouldn’t want to spend the rest of our lives in prison. And that was true. I mean, it was true enough that we unleashed the spell when the Wizengamot voted for Azkaban.”

Harry nodded. So you’re admitting he manipulated you, then. But that wasn’t something he could say, either. “He made you special, and like you were contributing to a cause bigger than yourself.”

“Yeah, and it’s not like we would really have a chance to do that at our age if not for the Order,” Ron interjected. “We would have had to work our way up in the Ministry to make a difference, and Riddle is so prejudiced against Muggleborns and ‘blood traitors’ that we’d have a hard time—” He halted.

“Forget he’s my soulmate?” Harry raised his eyebrows a little, but relented when he saw how embarrassed Ron looked. “No, forget it. It’s a change, and it’s not like I really listened to Dumbledore any less. He told me that I had to keep my soul-mark hidden, and then he didn’t veto my plan to spy on Tom in the Ministry itself. I never questioned that, and I should have.”

“Can we write to you, Harry?” Hermione blurted out suddenly. “I—I need to say things to you, but I don’t know what they all are right now.”

“I’ll have to talk it over with Tom,” Harry said, truthfully enough, and not just because Tom had left Skeeter and was wending his way around the fountain to speak with them. It was also in their oaths. “But I wish you lot the best. I wish things didn’t have to turn out like this.”

The Aurors tensed when Hermione and Ron lifted their shackled arms, but they were only hugging him, and Harry leaned happily into their embraces, hugging them back as hard as he could. On the other hand, he didn’t resist when Tom reached out and took his elbow, their bond ringing cold as he drew Harry back.

“Take them into the Muggle world,” Tom told the Aurors.

“Yes,” Madam Bones echoed. “I don’t think much of a purpose is served by allowing them to linger.”

Harry still met his friends’ eyes as long as he could before they were ushered through the flames of the nearest fireplace. Then Tom stepped deliberately into his line of sight, his hand flat as he gently cupped Harry’s chin and forced his head back a little.

“Regrets?”

“I wish they could have kept their bond and their magic,” Harry said, and shrugged. “And I wish that Dumbledore hadn’t influenced them so much.”

“But if you could undo the damage that had been done to them at the price of undoing our bond?”

Harry blinked and looked at Tom. “What brought that on?” he asked. It was a strange thing for Tom to ask in public, even though he had spoken in Parseltongue so no one else could understand him. But that he had had to ask, that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to forego asking…

“I am—unaccustomed to being the most important person in your life yet, Harry. And you seem to greatly regret that you did not exhaust yourself magically or kill yourself or burn out our bond trying to save them.”

Harry sighed and leaned against Tom for a minute, ignoring the click of cameras. Tom would have moved them somewhere more private before this if he had been worried about that. It was probably good public relations, anyway, for the Minister’s soulmate to look romantic with him. Or something. “I wish that things had been different because I wish they could have kept their magic and their bond and been on our side. But I know that can’t happen, and I don’t seriously lie awake at night regretting what happened.”

Tom held his eyes for long seconds, then nodded. And then he turned right around and began answering questions from Skeeter and the others as if nothing had happened.

Harry rolled his eyes. But that was his soulmate, and at least their emotional bond burned, steady as a fire, reassuring him if he ever needed it.

*

Albus closed his eyes. The charms on the old Dumbledore house, hidden behind a Fidelius of which he was the Secret Keeper, shivered for a second, as if they would crumble with the force of his grief.

Ron and Hermione had failed, according to the papers. Molly and Arthur Weasley had turned themselves over to the Aurors, and the rest of the Order who hadn’t been captured would soon follow. Or perhaps they would fade quietly into the background and pretend that they had never opposed a mad Dark Lord, when the price of opposing that mad Dark Lord was so hard.

The picture on the front page of the Prophet was of Harry gazing trustingly up into Riddle’s eyes, while Riddle curled his fingers around Harry’s soul-mark and the shifting flames sprang up.

It was all going wrong. Albus was losing every chance to save the world.

For now, of course, he would only have one choice. Perhaps he had known all along that it would come to this. He sighed and turned to face the row of books that stood behind him, the most ancient ones he owned. Some of these were several centuries old. Most concerned the nature of soul-marks, soul-bonds, and phoenixes.

There was one that he reached for which he flinched from as he touched. The pulse of power around it stung his fingers, but he ignored that and flipped it open.

One course left open to him. One course that everyone would loathe him for taking, if they knew of it. But there was only one person who would know the truth, and that person’s opinion could not be allowed to matter.

This way, Albus would gain the power to face down Riddle and Harry and the soul-bond that would be deepening their connection the longer he waited.

And then everyone would be safe. And free.