Chapter Thirty-Three of 'Lightning and War'- Joining the Hunt

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Title: Lightning and War (33/35)
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-Three—Joining the Hunt

“Thank you for coming to listen to us.”

Tom spoke in a tone that was probably intended to seem modest. Harry, knowing how far away he was from actually feeling that, had to bite his lip and look up at the ceiling.

They were standing in another courtroom on the lowest level of the Ministry, not far from the one that he and Dumbledore had battled in. Harry thought the Wizengamot would have liked the symbolism of hosting this press conference in the battleground itself, but it had been fairly thoroughly destroyed. They were lucky that, except for a few Order of the Phoenix and Wizengamot members who were of similar age to Dumbledore, everyone there had survived.

Not all the Order members had been destroyed by Dumbledore’s draining, though, which was why they were here.

“And especially for listening to me, since I’m not the hero of the hour.” Tom turned his head, his eyes burning with the same fire that never seemed to be far from them since Harry had resumed his full power. “That is my husband, Harry Potter.”

Harry concealed his sigh as he stepped up to the podium that had been established where the defendants’ chair would ordinarily be. At least he knew that Tom would never fear his magic the way so many people had in his first world.

And while he had loathed possessiveness other people there had displayed for him, he had to admit he didn’t mind the slow way Tom caressed his back at all.

Harry cleared his throat and focused his attention on their audience before he started enjoying the caress a little too much. “I honestly don’t have a speech prepared.” He could feel Tom’s eyes rolling without even looking at him. Then again, if Tom had wanted Harry to have a speech, he shouldn’t have been so distracting last night. “So I thought I would see what questions you wanted to ask me, and—”

Half a dozen people started shouting at once. Harry willed a wave of silence to sweep the room, and it did. He nodded. “Madam Marchbanks, you had something to say?”

The new leader of the Wizengamot clear3ed her throat and stood a little taller. “How did you defeat Albus? What happened to him?”

“He was pulling all the magic he could from the Order members and anyone else around him,” Harry said, with a slight shrug. He felt that Tom’s hand had gone still, but he ignored that. He’d never had a desire to tell anyone else here the truth, unless they were Tom’s Knights and already sworn to secrecy. “I forced him to release that magic back to everyone.”

“Yes, we know that,” said someone else, a slightly stuffy silver-haired man Harry didn’t recognize. “But what happened to him? There was no sign of even a body.”

“When I forced him to release the magic, his body couldn’t take the strain,” Harry said simply. “It disintegrated.”

That made the crowd gasp and Tom’s fingers tighten against him, but Harry still thought it was the best response. They did need to account for the lack of a body somehow, and this was easier than trying to explain what Harry had actually done.

Harry wasn’t even sure he could explain it in a way that didn’t sound threatening. “I wove him into the pattern of pure magic and made him dissolve” would still strike them as terrible, and no one who hadn’t been there, in the woven pattern, would understand if they tried to talk about it.

“Why was he so intent on opposing you?” Madam Marchbanks asked then. “He seemed to have some kind of grudge against Mr. Gaunt—”

“Potter,” Tom and Harry corrected at the same time, and then Tom snorted as he glanced sideways at Harry. Harry just shrugged back.

“Mr. Potter, then.” Madam Marchbanks might have been smiling, but it was hard to tell. “But what did he have against you?”

“I think I became terrible in his eyes the moment I joined Tom’s side.” Harry shook his head. “Dumbledore wanted to take over the world, and he didn’t want challengers to that.” He paused, because what came next would be difficult, but it had to be said. “Or challengers to his view of the Dark Arts, either.”

“Surely, Mr. Potter, you must agree that the Dark Arts are evil.” That was a tall witch with a condescending smile.

“I’ll agree that they’re evil as soon as you tell me what they are.”

The woman blinked a few times. “They are the Dark Arts.”

“But what does that mean?” Harry snorted when she stared at him. “Tell me the spells that are part of it. The curses. And tell me, if you ran into a spell that you’d never seen before, or a spell that someone had invented for the first time, how would you know it was part of the Dark Arts?”

The woman frowned, but she was part of the Wizengamot and intelligent enough to rise to the challenge. “Well, any spell that causes pain. I think you could hold that standard even with new spells.”

Harry nodded. “So a Healer’s spell that transfers the pain from the patient to the Healer is Dark Arts?” He knew very well that there had been people in his first world who had said yes, and tried to ban those spells, even though they were consensual. That was what happened when you held inflexible standards instead of porous ones.

“No, it wouldn’t.” The woman was frowning harder at Harry now. Madam Marchbanks shifted as if she was going to say something, and then, in the end, didn’t say anything.

Harry shrugged a little. “But you said that you were basing your classification of whether it was Dark Arts on whether it caused pain. That kind of spell does cause pain, to the Healer.”

“But it ends pain as well.”

Harry nodded. “You see the complexities. Dumbledore didn’t. He had decided that certain spells, and talents, and the like, were evil no matter what. He wouldn’t have allowed for a spell that existed outside that category. He wanted to destroy Parselmouths because he decided that Parseltongue was a Dark Art. He wouldn’t have allowed for the fact that some Parselmouths are good people.”

“Not a whole lot of them,” someone muttered from the back of the room.

Harry just raised his eyebrows and chose to ignore that. He supposed there would always be people around who thought they knew best, and that their fears were the same thing as someone being evil. He looked at the woman he’d been speaking to again, who still had a frown on her face. “Do you see?”

“But Dumbledore was making the wrong decisions…”

“And you think that would have stopped him?” Tom stuck his face around Harry’s elbow to stare at the woman incredulously. “You think he was even coherent enough at the end to realize that other people might have thought differently?”

“You are being offensive, Mr. Potter.”

“He’s saying the exact same thing as me,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Mostly, we only agreed to speak today because we knew you would have questions. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to stand by and smile patiently while people declare us evil because of a language we speak or spells we were willing to cast. Dumbledore was willing to use them, as well, and to drain strength from a large portion of you.” He met the eyes of those people he had seen lying on the floor of the courtroom, and they glanced away from him uneasily. “And despite what he said about preparing to Memory Charm himself at the end, whenever that end would arrive, and remove the knowledge of Dark Arts from his own brain, we never got there.”

“You have to acknowledge that removing the memory of Dark Arts from the world would be a good thing, though,” Madam Marchbanks insisted.

Harry shrugged. “Again, it depends on how you define it. My husband and I object to being removed from the world because someone thinks Parseltongue is a Dark Art. The Healers might object to you taking those pain-removing spells from them. If what you mean is an end to violence, you won’t find it that way. If no one knows how to cast curses anymore, people will murder each other with Cutting Charms, or Levitate a rock over someone’s head and drop it.” He thought for a second of Ron Levitating the troll’s club in their first year, in his first world. “Give up that dream, and let’s live in the world as it is.”

*

“Why were they pushing so hard when we were the ones who won the battle?”

“You won the battle,” Tom replied, sliding Harry’s shirt gently off his shoulders. They’d spent time together last night, but it wasn’t nearly enough for all the appreciation and gratitude Tom wanted to show. Harry sat on the bed frowning into the distance, though, and that was unacceptable. Tom sighed and knelt down in front of him.

Harry blinked and paid attention. Tom smothered a pleased smile. At least he knew that Harry could show the proper appreciation of his own when his husband was kneeling between his legs. Tom smoothed his hands up Harry’s thighs, still covered by cloth, and murmured, “From the stories you told me of your first world, I’m surprised that you didn’t recognize their motivation.”

“They’re…afraid.” Harry sighed out the word as Tom slipped a hand gently through his trousers.

Tom nodded. “They were afraid of Dumbledore, too, but he’d held positions of power so often that they’d more or less grown used to him. Grown used to thinking that someone had the right to command his own secret police to control the population.” He cupped and stroked Harry’s rapidly hardening erection, and Harry spread his legs encouragingly. Tom smiled up at him. “You’re new, and your power is greater than his ever was.”

“So it’s the situation in my first world all over again.”

Harry’s voice was bitter, but it ended in a gasp, and Tom gave himself the credit for that as he gently used the backs of his fingers to touch Harry. “No, it won’t be,” he said. “The Ministry might want to look the other way, but there won’t be fans stalking you. There won’t be only a few friends around you, the way there were in that world.”

“I had Ron and Hermione—”

Harry’s voice disappeared into a cry as Tom swallowed him down, his throat flexing. Harry reached out and then dropped his hand back. Tom licked him carefully and drew back enough to say, “Touch me with your magic.”

“What?” Harry’s eyes and hands were fluttering, and Tom took yet another moment to remind himself that he was the one who had caused that for the most powerful wizard he’d ever heard of. Sometimes the joy that struck him that he was here with Harry was so intense that it was hard for him to withstand it.

“Not your hands. I know you’re afraid to do that.” That got him a mild, if half-addled, glare. Tom added another lick to make the confusion grow. “Guide my head with your magic.”

Harry groaned and closed his eyes. “You’re going to make me concentrate enough to do that?”

“Yes.”

Tom stayed mercilessly away while Harry fumbled with his power for a second, and then a sensation like a soft spring breeze filled the room. Tom could have sworn he felt the brush of fabric against his cheek, too. He smiled. After what had happened when they finally defeated Dumbledore, he would probably never be able to avoid comparing Harry’s magic to cloth again.

And then a gentle pressure gripped the back of his neck and urged him forwards. Tom let his mouth fall open, and weaving pressed on his tongue, then withdrew. But the thing behind his neck remained, and still pressed him on.

When he wrapped his lips around Harry at last, the magic glided him back and forth, and Tom went with it, content enough to bask in the bliss of being that close to that much power, and in the knowledge that Harry would never willingly hurt him.

And if he came himself without a touch because of the delicacy of that pressure and the warmth beating out from Harry as the magic heated him from beneath his skin…that was no one’s business but Tom’s.

*

“What did you mean when you said I had friends here?”

Tom chuckled into Harry’s shoulder and rolled on his back. Harry glanced at him, his face soft and brilliant in the reflected light from the diadem. Harry had thought he’d remove the thing after he’d gained his magic back, because it wasn’t like he needed it with his full power, and he could store the object for future generations of Potters. But the diadem hadn’t approved of that plan.

“Me and my Knights, of course. And even some of those people who were more impressed by the way you rescued them from Dumbledore than afraid that you’d continue down Dumbledore’s path.” Tom’s fingers traced casual trails back and forth in the wake of Harry’s sweat. “Back in your world, you did have your Ron and Hermione, but they couldn’t protect you from the wrath of the government or your fans.” Tom rolled his eyes. He’d said the last word in Parseltongue just for emphasis, Harry was sure. “Here, we can guard you.”

“I don’t want you hurting people.”

“Isn’t that exactly what the Ministry said about the people who thought they could hunt you down because they feared you or desired you?” Tom rolled again so that his chin was propped on Harry’s collarbone. Harry was sure that it wasn’t the light of the diadem’s jewel that made his face so damn self-satisfied. “We’ll keep you safe, Harry.”

Harry sighed and shook his head. “I just don’t think there’ll be a need for you to go to war over me, Tom.”

“War? I wouldn’t say that. As far as defending your life, however…” Tom rolled over again and faced the far wall. “Abraxas, bring the intruder as we discussed.”

Harry started as the door opened, and covered himself hastily with a sheet. Tom glanced at him sideways, eyes bright. Harry snorted. Yes, Tom would act as if he was never jealous, up to the point where someone else did see Harry half-naked and he got jealous.

Abraxas entered dragging someone behind him. Harry squinted, then sighed. He didn’t think the tall man Abraxas flung down on the floor was familiar, but his head had rolled so Harry could make out the Order of the Phoenix’s brand on his cheek.

“Fuck me.” Harry rubbed his eyes with tired fingers.

“My lord would kill me if I did, sir.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Abraxas this time and glanced at Tom. “Do you think that he followed one of the Knights back? Or did he just figure out where we must be based on something else?”

Tom shrugged. “We’ve Apparated from the grounds here to several places, including the last battle with Dumbledore and the Ministry this morning. Someone skilled enough could follow the Apparitions back. And Dumbledore attracted some very talented people.” He contemplated the Order member on the floor with casual eyes. “It would have been simpler if all of them had just died when Dumbledore drained their magic.”

“Right,” Harry agreed wearily. He glanced at the man sprawled on the floor again. “What are we going to do with him?”

Abraxas blinked. Tom gave Harry a very patient look and said, “Kill him, of course.”

“We shouldn’t—”

“The Wizengamot is supposedly in charge of hunting down the Order and making sure they stop being such an embarrassment,” Tom interrupted him. “You can see that that isn’t working. Abraxas caught him unraveling our wards. We have to kill him.”

Harry shuddered a little. “I didn’t feel him unraveling our wards.” And he was pretty sure that he should have. The wards on the Potter property were supposed to connect with a Potter and support that person in taking care of the house and grounds.

“Dumbledore probably taught him spells that he didn’t teach other Order members.” Tom had his arms crossed on his chest, but his eyes were narrowed in what looked like enjoyment. “This is Kevin Delaney, one of his most favored.”

“So we could turn him over to the Ministry?” Harry let the question trail off. Abraxas was studiously looking elsewhere. Tom just kept up his patient, relentless stare. “I suppose that doesn’t appeal to you.”

“No. Especially since he might escape with the help of sympathizers and come after us again, and who knows if someone would catch him in time?”

Harry was silent, struggling with the notion. Tom let him do it. Harry turned his focus inwards and confronted the answer that waited there.

He wanted to, that was the thing. He was so tired of threats on his life, even after he had arguably saved this world like he’d saved his first one. He was so tired of people who stood back and did nothing and wrung their hands while muttering that Harry was the Heir of Slytherin or a Dark Lord or just as bad as the enemy.

But that very impulse made him sure that killing Delaney was the wrong thing.

He opened his eyes and glanced at Tom. “What if I drained all his magic? The way Dumbledore intended to, but I made it permanent this time?”

Tom blinked. “That would kill him anyway.”

“Not if I stop the drain and just make him a Squib instead of a corpse.”

Tom considered that. Abraxas said nothing, but Harry knew he would go along with whatever Tom decided.

“Very well,” Tom said, and smiled a little as Abraxas Levitated Delaney out of the room. “Study up on it and figure out how to do it, of course. Abraxas will keep the idiot under Dreamless Sleep until then.” He ran his fingers through Harry’s hair and smiled smugly. “It’s nice to know how ruthless you can be.”

“If I weren’t also merciful,” Harry whispered, rolling so he was on top of Tom, “we wouldn’t be here together like this.”

“You can be merciful to just me,” Tom suggested, and arched his back with a gasp as Harry’s hand slid down his chest. “I don’t mind.”

Harry sighed. There were things about Tom that would never change, but he doubted that he would want him any other way.

And then he lost all thoughts of good and evil and ruthlessness and mercy in favor of more important considerations.