Chapter Thirty-Two of 'Lightning and War'- Return

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Thirty-One.

Title: Lightning and War (32/35)
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 Thirty-Two—Return

Tom pitted his strength, once again, against the weight holding him down. It had to crack. It had to be like rotten ice, or broken earth, because he willed it so. He had to get to Harry’s side and stand there for this battle.

But it didn’t move. It hadn’t moved since Harry strode away from him and into the Wizengamot courtroom, around a corner that Tom was frustratingly unable to surmount with simply his eyes.

Tom sagged back on his knees, and resolved to wait a minute, to bring his magic to the surface of his skin and hold it there. It was possible that he would manage to break Dumbledore’s hold if the bastard’s power came into direct contact with Tom’s, with only the barrier of Tom’s skin separating them.

But before he could do that, a breeze stirred the corridor. Tom glanced around and caught Shara’s eye. She nodded. Like him, she’d felt that.

Is this some kind of attack from Dumbledore’s allies? This time, Tom tried to shuffle around on his knees to see it, but the magic prevented him from doing even that. He drew himself back, in rage at the thought that he might die struck from behind without even the chance to see his attacker, and hurled himself forwards again.

He stopped halfway to the barrier that was Dumbledore’s magic, because something other than an enemy attack was coming down the corridor.

Some of his Knights cried out in shock. Others tried to bring up their hands in front of their faces, obviously recognizing the power in what was coming, but not the source of it.

Tom did. The minute the first wind heavier than a breeze touched his face, he knew, and his chest rebounded like a drum beaten by the magic, and he had the urge, for the first time in his life, to sing aloud for joy.

Harry’s magic.

The power poured past them in a mostly invisible torrent, visible, like the wind, from the hair it lifted from their shoulders, from the rippling shudders that it caused in the stone blocks of the walls, from the way it touched their skin. Tom bowed his head, and felt a sensation like a hand caressing his hair.

There was too much for this to be a remnant of the portal he had closed after Dorea had gone through it, Tom thought, dazed. Besides, Harry would have summoned that magic at the beginning of the battle, just to get up off the floor. What was this? Some reserve of power in the diadem that even Harry hadn’t known about?

He never questioned that if Harry had known about it, he would have shared it with Tom.

The wind hovered above their heads for a moment, and Tom felt it on his skin more keenly than sunlight. He found himself extending his hands, laughing aloud. It was a childish thing to do, but—

He was extending his hands.

The enchantment that Dumbledore had used to keep Tom and his Knights kneeling there reasserted its grip in the next moment, driving Tom’s head down towards his knees. But right now, it didn’t matter. All that did was knowing he had broken it once, and there was now more give in it, enough that he could raise his head and shuffle around on his knees.

No one else was coming up the corridor.

Tom turned to face forwards again, and caught Shara’s eye. She nodded to him, her face reflective of grim determination intermixed with radiant hope. It was a strange expression, but as he started to crawl forwards, Tom was sure that he was displaying the same mixture.

Even when he wasn’t in the same room, and couldn’t possibly know what it meant to Tom and Shara to break free of this enchantment, Harry had freed them.

Tom directed all that determination towards his wish to stand at his husband’s side, and crawled.

*

Harry had forgotten what it was like to be filled with this much magic, pouring into him in a steady stream.

It was like standing in the middle of autumn and knowing he could command it to be another season in an instant.

It was like being surrounded by a maelstrom and knowing he controlled which direction all that ocean water would flow, and what ships it would drown.

It was like dancing with fire and knowing with absolute certainty that he wouldn’t get burned, that all he had to do was enjoy the light and the heat.

Harry lowered his gaze to Dumbledore, who was staring at him with his face ashen. “You reaped the magic from your followers until there was nothing left to drain,” Harry said softly. “And it still wasn’t enough to contain me. Who are you going to reap now?”

Dumbledore’s gaze flickered towards the corridor.

In truth, Harry had no idea if Dumbledore could affect Tom or the Knights of Walpurgis when they didn’t have the brand that connected the Order of the Phoenix members to the one who wanted to drain their magic. But he wasn’t about to take the chance. He chopped his hands down, and a huge, powerful wash of magic answered him, sweeping Dumbledore from his feet.

Oops. That wasn’t actually what Harry had meant to do. Lack of practice had made him clumsy.

He called it back, though, and created a flowing wall of brilliant white light around Dumbledore. Dumbledore stood up and tried to blast it through it. Harry shuddered. His enemy was strong enough, still, to have given him concern if he’d had anything other than his full power with him.

But that repeated magic had an inherent weakness, too. The combined people’s power fought against each other, as if Dumbledore was trying to stab Harry’s magic with a handful of serrated knives. Harry, meanwhile, could wield a single sword.

“Make what peace you can,” Harry said quietly.

Dumbledore stopped struggling and stared at him. Harry stared back, not sure what Dumbledore was looking for in his eyes, but knowing he probably wouldn’t find it.

“I can feel how strong you are,” Dumbledore said.

Harry nodded. Maybe this meant that Dumbledore would yield and make his peace the way Harry wanted him to.

“Strong enough that you could show mercy.”

Harry sighed. Of course not. But then, good sense isn’t this Dumbledore’s strong point. “I could, if you hadn’t used the curse you used on Tom.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“To break it, you have to die.” Harry wouldn’t mention, even now, that the curse had taken away Tom’s Parseltongue. He didn’t know if the Knights of Walpurgis were listening from the corridor, but if they were, or if they could, he wouldn’t expose Tom’s weakness.

“But what does it matter? One more Dark gift gone from the world. One more Dark wizard crippled.” Dumbledore nodded to the circling wall of magic that surrounded him, which would have shut him away from Harry’s vision if anyone else was wielding it. As it was, the magic was as transparent as seafoam to Harry’s eyes. “I can see from the color of your light that you are not lost to Dark Arts. Why should you care if I crippled him?”

Harry laughed abruptly. Dumbledore recoiled from him, while the jewel on the diadem, which had gone quiet since the arrival of the rest of Harry’s magic, flickered back to power and shed its blue-green light over the whole thing. The circle of magic around Dumbledore seemed to be made of actual seawater now.

“You think because my magic manifested as white that it means I can’t perform Dark Arts?” Harry gestured at the circle again. “Look at the way it changes color in the light, Dumbledore. Does that make me a water wizard? An aquamarine wizard?”

Dumbledore regarded Harry over his spectacles, the way he had done many times when Harry was a student at Hogwarts. But Harry held the image in his head of his own Dumbledore falling from the top of the Astronomy Tower. That was a good man who had died in the pursuit of his own war, even if he had used Harry hard to win it. That man was not the same one who stood before him now.

Dumbledore jerked. “I can see my death in your eyes. What—happened to him?”

“He drank a poisonous potion in an attempt to retrieve an artifact that was keeping a Dark wizard alive, and then died from the Killing Curse.” Harry saw no reason to get into the complexities beyond that.

“You fought Dark wizards in your own world, and yet you won’t do it here?” Dumbledore actually sounded outraged.

“We have a disagreement about what Dark means,” Harry said, and then saw a shadow of motion from the corner of his eye. He tightened the circle of his magic about Dumbledore before he turned his head slightly.

Tom and Shara came into the Wizengamot courtroom on their hands and knees.

Just minutes ago, if someone had asked Harry to imagine Tom Potter coming to him like this, he would have been able to imagine it only if Tom was shaking and spitting in outrage at being made to cringe. But he wasn’t cringing, not like this. His head was lifted, and his eyes were fixed on Harry and burning with pride so hot that it scorched Harry where he stood.

Shara was hanging back, a little. That might be because she was less capable of fighting Dumbledore’s magic than Tom, but Harry didn’t think so. She seemed to want to leave them a small space of privacy where they could be together.

Harry stepped forwards and rested his hands on Tom’s shoulders. For a moment, the crushing force of the magic holding Tom tried to bear down on him. But Harry broke it with a shrug, and Tom sighed and climbed back to his feet.

There was blood on his knees from the flagstones, Harry saw. Blood on his hands. But that heat in his eyes remained.

“Are you all right?” Harry asked.

Tom nodded. “Although I think that you’ve kept this mastermind talking too long. Go ahead and finish it, Harry.”

And then, at the moment when he probably assumed Harry was distracted by Tom’s presence, Dumbledore threw all his power against the tidal wall of magic. This time, he was wielding it so that the different blades of the knives could punch through, without a care for them cutting him at the same time.

But he had made a mistake.

With people in the room to protect, with his husband in the room to protect, Harry turned and lashed back with the full force of his own.

*

Tom opened his mouth to speak, and Harry whipped away from him.

The air surged around him at the same time, blurring and coalescing, spreading out in a golden flood that Tom had no way of avoiding and wouldn’t have wanted to even if he could.

His fingers were caught up in it, then his head, then his body. The magic didn’t flow around Tom, the way Harry’s power had around Dumbledore, but nor did it crush him. It wove him into itself, instead, and then reached out and made everything and everyone else in the room and beyond part of its tapestry.

Tom was bound, floating in a fabric that had no end. The slightest ripples in the distance affected him, eventually, even if they only made the fibers that made up his body tremble. The links between him and Dumbledore and Shara and the other Knights and the crumpled bodies on the floor were there, visible, no longer to be ignored.

The white rotating wall of Harry’s magic was gone. Tom stared ahead with dazed eyes and saw Harry floating in the middle of everything, the center of the threads, the biggest figure in the tapestry—

And yet another like all the others. That was the biggest difference between Harry and Dumbledore, Tom understood then: Harry had never held himself separately, disdaining to be affected.

Dumbledore’s power struck, chopping, flaying. Tom shuddered from just the distant echoes of how much it hurt. But Harry was moving ahead—not charging, but floating in a sea of bound threads, warp and weft, protection and cunning. He held his hands out, and tiny bits of strength came flowing to him from Tom and Shara and the other Knights in the corridor and maybe even Dumbledore and the people lying motionless around them, for all Tom knew. He was too far away from them to tell for sure where those little ripples originated.

Dumbledore screamed, and the sound was agonized. Tom winced. For all that Dumbledore was their enemy, he was also part of that web they were all bound in, and to hurt one was to hurt the others.

Harry, from the locked, sweating mask on his face, was probably hurting worst of all. But he ignored the pain pouring through him and bore his magic against Dumbledore, twisting, crushing.

Tom opened his mouth to shout that Harry should cut their enemy free of the tapestry, and then closed it again. He understood why Harry couldn’t. That would mean Dumbledore would be free and unaffected, and he had to be bound, so that Harry could use both the bonds and the full force of his protective instinct against Dumbledore. Cutting him loose would, in some way, weaken Harry’s ability or desire to protect Tom and the Knights.

It didn’t entirely make sense, but Tom wasn’t sure that magic at this level had to make sense. He knew he would never wield power like it.

Harry continued crushing, flinging folds and ripples of cloth around Dumbledore, cloth that was pure magic and pure binding, rolling him up and up and up, and then stepping on it. Tom gasped as more power ripped free of him, but only the tiniest piece. Harry had his arms spread and his eyes half-closed. The diadem on his forehead was sending bobs and weaves of blue-green in front of them, mimicking the motion of sea waves, probably the closest it could come to creating a tapestry of its own.

He’s drawing on his own power most of all.

Tom would have leaned forwards and tried to send more magic along the threads that connected him to Harry, but he knew it would do no good. They were already as bound as they could be, and straining to get closer wouldn’t do anything else.

Harry closed his eyes, suddenly, and moved his hands, which Tom saw as floating above the tapestry, as if he was playing an invisible harp. Or a huge spiderweb made of harpstrings, Tom thought. That was probably the more apt metaphor. Harry’s hands darted, he seemed to have too many, and everywhere was the heavy thrumming feel of magic dancing around Harry, singing.

Dumbledore gave one more loud, thumping scream that echoed in Tom’s ears long past the point it should have faded.

And then he dissolved.

Tom shuddered as he felt the ripples flow past him, brushing him like the muzzles of woven horses. They didn’t drench him, but there was enough connection that he felt revolted as he realized what had happened. Harry had turned Dumbledore into pure magic and scattered him throughout the weave, sending the power he’d stolen back to the people he’d stolen it from. Tom absently wondered if all of them would wake up. He could hope that most of the Order members didn’t. It would save the trouble of hunting them down later. On the other hand, losing too many members of the Wizengamot would—

And then something slammed into him that dropped him physically to his knees, although his consciousness still remained more aware of the golden tapestry-connection hovering around him than his physical motion.

His first thought was that Harry was returning the magic he had taken to fight Dumbledore. But then he realized it was deeper than that, darker, and delving into him to the point that it felt like a tree sapling rooting in his chest.

Some curse that Dumbledore cast with his final breath? Tom had no vanity about being Dumbledore’s target. The old man would probably have liked to destroy Harry more, but he must have known Harry was too strong to be affected by any last expending of strength like that.

But then he realized, as something seemed to unfold in his head like a new tapestry of his own, that it was his Parseltongue gift coming back.

Suddenly he could remember the intricate pattern of hisses that defined the concept of “food,” and how he would say Harry’s name in his birth language, and what exactly had been said during some of his older memories when his mother cradled him close and the exact nature of the House of Gaunt hadn’t been revealed to him—

Tom breathed, and held back his sobs, and turned. Shara was standing close to him, shaken, but alive. When Tom looked over his shoulder, it was to see other Knights stumbling through the door of the courtroom, and most of the bodies around him beginning to stir. Even the ones that lay still had the flutters in them, the cascades through the tapestry around them, that meant life and unconsciousness.

And then the tapestry, and Tom’s awareness of it, frayed.

Tom mourned that more than he’d mourned the loss of anything except his Parseltongue. Shara gave a cut-off cry, then blushed and cupped her hand over her mouth. Tom, meanwhile, stood and went to touch the radiant being who had saved them all.

Harry looked up, and Tom shivered. The magic that shone through Harry must have come from dissolving the portal that tied his second world to his first, Tom thought. Part of him hoped Jonquil had been trying to cross through it at the time.

“Are you afraid of me?”

Harry’s voice was low. Tom came up to him and cupped his jaw, and whispered, “Only glad that I got to see you this way. Never give up your magic again.”

Harry leaned against Tom with legs that Tom could tell were weak as cloth now that the tapestry-connection was gone. His voice was low, but that was all right. No one else needed to share this with them. “I won’t.”