[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Genius by the Numbers, Harry/Tom Riddle, R, 6/7

[lomonaaeren]

Part Five.

Part One.

Title: Genius by the Numbers (6/7)
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, Tom/OFC, and Sirius/Remus
Content Notes: AU (the Potters live), angst, violence, family drama, infidelity, past minor character death, dubious consent
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 6200
Summary: AU. Harry Potter, as the eldest brother of the Girl-Who-Lived, has always felt like the average person in his family of geniuses. He has a plan that might change that, but meanwhile, he has to contend with his partially estranged family as he attends his sister’s wedding. And contend, too, with his sister’s fiancé, Tom Riddle.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year, and should have three parts, to be posted over the next three days.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Six

After a few minutes had passed while Riddle sat there staring quietly at the table, Harry did think of things to say.

“Are you mad?” It seemed to be the only question that would come to Harry immediately, the winner of the contest among the ones crowding his throat. “I just—are you mad?”

“Arguably, I used to be.” Riddle lifted his eyes, and Harry caught a glimpse of the red tint touching them. He almost thought he was mad himself now, for never connecting that to the red eyes Voldemort had supposedly had. “As far as I can tell, my older self had almost nothing left. I suppose that is what creating multiple Horcruxes does to you.”

“No! I meant—offering me these.” Harry waved his hand over the Horcruxes, careful not to come anywhere near to touching them. “And offering me your wand. I could kill you right now.”

“Do you want to?”

Harry drew his own wand, and the equations burned on his tongue, ones that would poison Riddle, drown him in his own blood, or turn him into a creature that Harry could kill. “I should. For what you did to Diana and me and the whole world, I should.”

Riddle only sat there and watched him. Harry lifted his wand over his head, and Riddle didn’t move, didn’t blink or breathe.

Harry cursed bitterly and tucked his wand away. “I can’t kill you as you just sit there. Unlike you, I’m not a murderer.”

Riddle smiled a little. “I didn’t think you were.”

“But I could still destroy these.” Harry flung his hand out in another gesture at the Horcruxes without taking his gaze from Riddle.

“Yes. That is why I brought them to you.”

“You want them destroyed.”

“Not particularly.”

“Fuck you, Riddle, will you say something that has a lick of sense behind it?”

Riddle finally leaned back in his chair, and Harry thought his limbs fell a little looser with relief, although he couldn’t say for sure. “I trust that you will do something about the Horcruxes,” Riddle said, still never looking away from Harry, drinking him in as though he was the answer to a prayer. Not that Riddle seemed the type to pray, Harry had to acknowledge. “But not kill me. I didn’t think you were a murderer, and I am pleased to see that my intuition was correct. I am placing myself entirely in your hands, Harry. I am surrendering. What happens to me next is up to you.”

Harry covered his face with his hands. “I don’t want that much responsibility for anyone’s fate,” he whispered. “You’re pressuring me into a corner that I don’t want again, Riddle.”

“No.” Riddle’s voice was calm. “You can throw me and the Horcruxes out, and warn Diana and your family if you want. Then I would have my political plans, the ones that depended on marrying your sister, destroyed, and I would also lose my chances of spending my life with someone who has such powerful, universe-bending magic, the only person I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

Harry dropped his hands from his face. “You can’t be in love with me.”

“I don’t know for sure if I’m capable of that emotion.” Riddle shrugged. “I was conceived under a love potion that my mother used on my father, and it’s true that I never felt it before I went into the diary or for your sister. I do know that when you explained your Arithmancy to me, it was like a sun rising inside me. That’s all I know.”

“Just because you want power, and just because you want to have it, doesn’t mean you will. Sirius and Remus couldn’t do that Arithmancy when I showed them.”

“I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll ever able to share your power. Not your exact power. I suspect you cracked Heller’s Theorem in a way that’s unique to you.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. That sounded like something Riddle would say to praise and flatter him and convince Harry to fall in love with him in return, but it didn’t work when Harry had no idea what it meant. “Talk sense, I said.”

“Heller’s Theorem says that you should be able to work different spells, and even affect the physical world, based on the symbolic significance of equations and numbers.” Riddle still hadn’t looked away from him. It was—bizarre. “But it also talks about resonance. Did you ignore that part?”

Harry shrugged. “It didn’t make sense, so I left it out.”

Riddle’s lips parted a little. Then he gave a laugh that fell on Harry’s ears like feathers. “Oh, Harry. You cracked it without even paying attention to the whole of the theorem? You are a wonder. No one else will ever be able to do what you do.”

Harry tensed. “You’re looking at me as if you want to worship me. I don’t like it. Stop it.”

“I’m a Legilimens—”

“I knew that.”

Riddle didn’t indicate that he’d heard Harry except by a slight tilt of his head. “And that means that I’m more easily able to sense deception, as I can tell the difference between surface thoughts and those underneath even when I’m not actively inside someone else’s mind. I cannot distinguish between objective truth and something someone merely believes to be true, but neither can Veritaserum.” He leaned in a little. “And I can tell that part of you likes the thought of being worshipped very much.”

Harry felt the blush to end all blushes creeping up his face. It was true that he’d fantasized, so many times he had no idea how much of his life he’d spent at it, his family and other people staring at him in awe when he finally did something impressive enough to earn their regard. Those who had disregarded him at Hogwarts, like Malfoy. People he trusted who still didn’t seem to see him fully, like Sirius and Remus. Someone who would eventually fall in love and want to marry him, the person he really was, not the Potter family’s reject.

“Yes, I thought so,” Riddle said, his voice low and throbbing with satisfaction. “And you deserve admiration and love. Perhaps many people do,” he added, which Harry supposed was his version of a generous moral concession. “But you are instinctively brilliant. I do not know why it did not reveal itself before, and I do not care. Not now that I can offer you that admiration and love.”

“You just said that you didn’t know if you were capable of love!”

“If I can offer it to anyone, it would be you.”

Harry turned around and paced to the far corner of the kitchen, leaning his head against his icebox. The Cooling Charms on it didn’t do much, unfortunately, beyond quelling a tiny bit of his headache. “What does the resonance part of Heller’s Theorem do?” he asked finally, because that was an answer he thought he could deal with right now.

“It means that certain minds will resonate in certain ways with certain numbers. So everyone’s way of solving Heller’s Theorem will be different.” Riddle shrugged a little. “Or at least fall into different narrow categories. I suspect your mind might have resonated in the same way with numbers as Heller’s did. It would explain why what feels intuitive and easy to you does not feel so to other people, and why no one else cracked it. No one whose mind resonated in the same way studied it for long enough.”

Harry sighed and turned back. “Then you shouldn’t care about me or want me. I’m not a genius, in that case. Just someone who studied it for long enough.”

“What you do with your Arithmancy, and the way that you invented a way to destroy an ancient vow on the fly, is still beautiful,” Riddle said, as if the words were a law of the universe not even Harry could break. “Patience and endurance might have been the foundation of how you cracked it, but they are not the whole thing.”

Harry disliked the warmth seeping down into his chest, but it was true that he wanted to be admired for what he’d done. That ambition had been one of the reasons the Hat had wanted to put him in Slytherin.

But why did it have to be Riddle?

“I don’t understand why you see me as so different from the rest of my family, though,” he said, walking back to the table and moving his chair so he could sit not exactly opposite from Riddle, and as far away from the Horcruxes as he could get. “They have the patience and endurance to get good at spells in their special areas, too.”

“They have dogged persistence, and they call that genius,” Riddle said scornfully. “Diana thinking that she knows all about Defense, and rejecting your gift because of that.” His eyes burned again. “I, on the other hand, recognize good taste as well as intelligence.”

“You kept the book.”

“Of course I did. It came from your hands, and that means it must be useful.”

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. I can’t believe I’m sitting here feeling flattered because of something bloody Lord Voldemort said. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Along with his need to matter to his family, he should have been able to shed his desperate craving for praise.

Maybe it was harder because he just wasn’t used to it.

Striving to get away from that silly dilemma and back to the impossible one in front of him, Harry asked, “But why does that make me so bloody special to you? If you knew all this, I’m surprised that you aren’t over there kneeling at Diana’s feet. She’s your Horcrux. She has to be special, doesn’t she?”

Riddle rolled his eyes. “The other Horcruxes I, or rather my older self, made deliberately. The shard inside your sister is an accidental piece so small that it can’t even influence her—”

“It made her fall in love with you, surely.”

Riddle actually had the bollocks to look offended. “I did that.”

“Okay, fine,” Harry said, and fought back his bubbling laughter. “So it’s too small to be of any use to you? It wouldn’t keep you alive?” He held his breath a little, waiting for the answer to that. Riddle would have to start lying any time now.

Riddle shrugged. “It didn’t keep my elder self’s spirit alive, although I think what happened in that case is that he was so small a piece of soul himself that he self-destructed with the combination of a piece being ripped away from him and implanted in your sister, and the backlash of your sister’s magic. She does have impressive magic,” Riddle added in a musing tone. “But it wasn’t visible when she was a baby, only afterwards, so I think your theory about her magic becoming essentially broken in a desperate attempt to shield her is correct. And my older self was mad to attack an infant in any case, all because of a prophecy—”

“What?”

Riddle paused for a long moment. He stared at Harry. Harry stared at him. He could hear the wild, angry thump of his heart.

“They didn’t tell you.” Riddle’s voice was soft with something that might be glee or shock or disbelief.

“That Diana was the subject of a prophecy? No, they sure as hell didn’t.” Harry clenched his hands on the table. His mind raced. It seemed strange to him now that he had never questioned the specifics of why Voldemort had gone after Diana, but—

Well, his parents had been Voldemort’s enemies, among the most prominent of them when Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix was still active. Sirius and Remus had certainly told him their share of death-defying stunts, and always mentioned that Lily and James were in the forefront of the battles. Harry had assumed that the strike was more aimed at them than at Diana, and if Voldemort had come further into the house they had at the time than the little front room where Diana’s cot was, he would have killed Mum and Dad, and Harry, who had been asleep upstairs.

But a prophecy did make more sense.

Harry closed his eyes and desperately tried to hold back his rage. It shouldn’t matter to him anymore what his family did, should it? He had discovered his own worth, and he should be able to stand out of their shadow.

But this betrayal went deeper than that. Mum and Dad had never shared with him that there was a prophecy, sure. But neither had Sirius and Remus.

It came back down to bloody Tom Riddle to do all these things that his own family should have done.

Harry twisted to his feet. Riddle followed him immediately, casting a spell that rushed the Horcruxes back into their silken bag.

“Where are you going?”

“To speak with Sirius and Remus. They should have told me the truth. I don’t know why they didn’t.”

“Allow me to come with you.”

Harry paused, even in the middle of the emotional maelstrom overwhelming him, and glanced back at Riddle. He’d dipped his head a little and didn’t look like someone asking for permission, but hey, at least he’d asked it instead of just making some pronouncement about the way that it was going to be.

“Why should I?” Harry asked instead. “You’re going to sit there and insult Sirius and Remus, and I don’t want to listen to you do it.”

“I will keep the insults to myself. But I wish to be with you right now.”

“Why?”

“You are still the only person I might ever come close to loving.”

Harry made a wordless gesture of frustration, and Riddle fell in behind him with a small smile. It wasn’t a gloating one, though, or Harry would have turned him into a donkey and left him there, Horcruxes and all. It looked like might have been a grateful one.

Harry just shook his head. He had no time to deal with all of Riddle’s revelations right now. The one that mattered most to him was how far he could trust even the godfather and foster father he had thought of as still on his side.

*

“Harry?” Sirius opened the door, yawning. “It’s almost eleven. What is it?”

From the looks of his mussed hair, he had fallen asleep in the drawing room again, the way he always used to when Harry was younger and Sirius would try to finish one last bit of Healer paperwork before going to bed. Harry felt his heart seize, but didn’t let that change his expression.

“I need to talk to you and Remus,” he said, and brushed past Sirius with Riddle right behind him. He had the feeling that Sirius might have tried to shut the door at least in Riddle’s face, but he was baffled enough to go along with it right now. “There’s something I found out that you never told me, and I want to hear what your excuses are.”

“Remus is in bed.” Sirius shut the door and turned around, leaning against it, blinking. “What are you talking about? What happened with your family yesterday? We expected you to owl us. Why didn’t you?”

Harry folded his arms and stared at Sirius. “I want to know why you never told me about the prophecy.”

Clouds of confusion drifted across Sirius’s face, and Harry didn’t think all of them came from just being tugged out of sleep. He watched closely for any sign that some of them might come from trying to conceal something.

Then Sirius said, “That thing? The one that said Diana was destined to defeat Voldemort? I never put any stock in it. I haven’t thought of it in years.” He blinked and said a little more energetically, “Why should we have told you about it?”

“You don’t think I deserved to know that it existed?”

“Sirius, what’s going on?” Remus shambled out of the master bedroom, also yawning. His eyes snapped alert when he saw Riddle, or maybe when he saw Harry. The kind of emotions Harry was feeling right now were probably sparking a wildfire to his werewolf senses.

“Harry wants to know why we never told him about the prophecy.”

“Prophecy?”

Remus’s voice was blank enough that Harry closed his eyes. His emotions gave a high, vibrating twang inside him, and then settled down. It really did sound like they had just never told him about it because they hadn’t considered it important, not because they were keeping it a secret like his family.

Riddle’s hand brushed his elbow. Harry hated how he could tell it was him without even opening his eyes.

Or maybe it was just because there was no way that either Remus or Sirius would have touched him like this—lingering, caressing, possessive.

Harry pulled his arm away and opened his eyes to study Sirius and Remus again. They were looking hard at him now. Sirius was the one who said, “I doubt James and Lily would have said anything. Who did?”

Harry raised an eyebrow, and both of them swung around to stare at Riddle at the same moment. Riddle only huffed a little sigh and examined his nails. “It was one of the first things Diana told me, that she was destined to defeat this Dark Lord who attacked her when she was a baby. She knew about the prophecy. She bragged about it. Imagine never mentioning it to Harry, despite the fact that he’s her brother.”

“We didn’t know that you didn’t know,” Remus said. “And truthfully, Harry, it’s just faded from our minds so much in the last decade or so. It’s clear that You-Know-Who is dead.” Harry didn’t dare look at Riddle right then. “I didn’t see why it mattered. If it ever mattered, it’s been fulfilled.”

“Yeah, I always thought Divination was a load of dragon dung,” Sirius said, shrugging. “You-Know-Who put some stock in it, though, so Dumbledore did as well. It was either fulfilled or it didn’t make a lot of sense in the first place. Why would an infant have the ability to defeat a Dark Lord?”

“Diana’s very powerful,” Harry said, a little weakly. The rush of adrenaline was leaving him, and now he felt ashamed and irritated that he’d stormed over here solely on Riddle’s word. He ought to have known he could trust the word of the men who had taken care of him.

He was just so tired of being ignored and left out of family business.

“Yes, but she didn’t show that kind of magic as a baby.” Remus finally reached out and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, patting a little, as if he thought Harry probably wouldn’t explode this time. “Would you like me to make us some tea?”

“I think Harry could use something stronger.”

“Fuck off, Riddle. I broke the ancient vow and I can break more than that.”

Riddle only looked delighted, while Remus sucked in his breath sharply and Sirius looked as if he would faint. “What? Harry, what in the world are you talking about?”

“Oh.” Harry blinked. He’d forgotten that no one except him, Malfoy, Riddle, and Neville knew about that—and maybe Madam Madstrom, if she had got the gist of it from his comments—and he certainly hadn’t told Sirius and Remus. “Uh, yeah, maybe we should sit down and exchange news.”

Remus went over to the cabinet where Harry knew they kept the brandy, and Sirius herded Harry and Riddle into the sitting room. Harry went, moving almost in a dream.

Being about to hear the truth was such an unexpected situation that he had no idea what would come next.

Riddle contrived to sit on the couch next to him, because of course he did. Harry ignored him as best he could. There was the fact, though, that this was the first independent confirmation he’d received of something Riddle had told him. He really hadn’t been lying about the prophecy that had led Voldemort to target Diana.

Which meant the rest of what he was saying might be true, as well, and he might actually have crossed the barrier of honesty Harry hadn’t thought he could cross.

But Harry didn’t want to think about that right now, and he turned his attention to Sirius and Remus as Remus splashed some brandy into a few different cups and floated two over to him and Riddle. Harry took his and sipped without comment. He resolutely didn’t look over to see what Riddle did with his cup.

“First of all, yes, there was a prophecy,” Sirius said, and settled back against the chair he’d probably fallen asleep in, absently smoothing down his hair. “But like I said, no one’s thought of it in years. Except Diana, I suppose,” he added, with a darting glance at Riddle. “The Order of the Phoenix mainly latched onto it because at that point we were losing the war against You-Know-Who, and it offered a bit of hope.”

“It was vague,” Remus said, shaking his head. “We didn’t get to know the exact wording, it was considered too dangerous for that, but from what Albus told us, it was only reporting that a child born at the end of a certain month would have the power to defeat a Dark Lord. Not even that it was You-Know-Who, or that it would happen for certain. Just the power.”

Harry blinked. “Then that makes me wonder why Voldemort chose her at all.”

“Lily and James had defied him to his face three times,” Sirius said. “He was always trying to recruit them, and they refused, of course. And they had also killed several of his Death Eaters and interfered in some of his attempts to kidnap or torture people. He took that really personally.”

“My older self was an idiot,” Riddle muttered under his breath, or something that sounded like it. Harry ignored him.

“He believed in the prophecy,” Remus said, with a shrug. “So did Albus, because he did, although he thought You-Know-Who would be the one to bring about its fulfillment himself. And I suppose Lily and James did, or do. They certainly told Diana about it. We thought they had told all of you.”

Harry swallowed. “No. I never knew about it until Riddle mentioned it.”

“All right, so I do want to hear about your supposed breaking of the ancient vow,” Sirius said, giving Riddle a dubious glance, “but there’s something else I want to ask about. Harry, kiddo, what the hell is going on in your family? First it turns out that Lily and James really did disparage your intelligence a lot more than we thought, and now they’re keeping secrets? What is it?”

“The same thing that’s been happening for fifteen years at least,” Riddle said coolly. “That was how long ago Harry was sent to live with you, wasn’t it? His parents ignore him and shunt him aside, and you’re surprised that they undervalue him?”

“We were happy to take Harry in,” Sirius said fiercely. “That had nothing to do with ignoring him.”

“Yes, but you permitted his parents to do so.” Riddle was leaning forwards now, body coiled like a leopard’s about to spring. “I don’t think Harry counts you among the ones who shuffled him off, but I do. When you treated all their comments as jokes, when you assumed that parents who visited him once a week were the same as those who loved him—”

Harry reached out and gripped Riddle’s shoulder. Riddle shut his mouth as if someone had closed a door on it. Harry sighed and said, “Not right now,” and then turned to Sirius. Remus was watching with anxious eyes from across the room.

Harry glanced at both of them, and then said, “Yeah, Diana spent a lot of time at school telling her friends that I wasn’t a genius. Not like her and Mum and Dad and Violet. I’ve been told over and over again that I must be jealous of them because I’m not as academically accomplished, or because Diana is the Girl-Who-Lived. When I went over there yesterday, they accused me of seducing Riddle, and then of my Arithmantic magic being a trick or an illusion. Everything came back to how they were right, I was wrong, and I shouldn’t have contradicted them or done anything that ruined their mediocre image of me.

“So that’s why I thought that you had kept the prophecy from me on purpose, because they did. And now that I think about it, Violet’s said a few strange things that could refer back to it. So they thought a girl who was still at Hogwarts needed to know about it, but not me? What do you think that says about them?”

Remus closed his eyes, looking stricken. Sirius reached out, although his chair was too far from Harry’s couch for him to actually take Harry’s hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I knew they valued intelligence and they were proud of Diana’s scores in Defense and Violet’s proficiency with Arithmancy, but—I had no idea this was what it was like, Harry.”

“That’s why you kept your Arithmancy from them, of course,” Remus said, his voice thick with sadness and understanding. “Because you were hoping it would finally make them see you as an equal, and then it turned out it didn’t.”

Harry laughed bitterly. “That was also the reason I was considering using some equations to change my intelligence or my personality. So I could either become what they wanted or become someone who didn’t care about what they wanted.”

“What?”

Riddle said it first, with Sirius and Remus only a beat behind him. Harry shrugged and started to answer, but Riddle grabbed his arm and wrenched him around. Harry dragged his arm back and glared at him.

“You were considering—sacrificing everything that makes you brilliant, strong, unique, to fit in better with them?” Riddle’s voice was a low, violent hiss.

Harry put a hand in the middle of his chest and shoved, hard. Riddle went rebounding back against the couch, and if Harry had cheated a bit by adding magical strength to his hand, well, Riddle wasn’t about to announce it.

“Yes, I was,” Harry said. “Because they’re my family, and I still wanted to belong. Or else I wanted to change myself into someone who wouldn’t care if I didn’t belong.”

“Wait,” Sirius blurted. “You can do that, Harry? You could cause permanent changes in yourself with the equations?”

“I never tested it. I would have practiced with something less extreme first. But yeah, I think so.”

“Or permanent changes in someone else?” Riddle asked in an odd tone.

Harry shot him a glance, wondering what in the world he was thinking now. Riddle’s face remained shadowed, however. He was simply watching Harry with the kind of intensity that demanded an answer.

Harry shrugged. “I think so. I already did it to you, didn’t I, when I broke the ancient vow?”

“Yes, I want to hear about that,” Sirius said firmly. “How in the world did you manage to do that? Why did you want to?”

“Because Riddle had bound me without giving a fuck about what I wanted,” Harry said, and ignored the way that Remus sighed about his language. “I didn’t want someone following me around everywhere and telling me how grateful I should be for his protection. Not to mention the problems it caused with my parents and Diana.”

“Your family doesn’t deserve you,” Riddle whispered.

“But I might have reconciled with them if not for you—”

Harry was all ready to argue, but Remus interrupted this time. “No, Harry, I don’t think that’s true. Not given what you’ve told us about them, what we managed not to see all these years.” His eyes were bright and sad as he studied Harry. “Not from the moment that Tom bound himself to you and they saw you as interfering in Diana’s rightful destiny.”

Harry sighed. “Maybe you’re right. But I didn’t ask for it. I went to my ritual circle in the Forest of Dean—”

“Since when do you have a ritual circle?”

“Since I made one to contain my Arithmantic magic,” Harry said, and went on with the story. “I decided that I couldn’t do much about Mum and Dad and Diana, but I could damn well do something about the ancient vow. I constructed three equations that all added up to thirteen, and had various symbolic numbers in them that represented what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to get rid of. Then Riddle found me, probably because of the bond.” He glanced at Riddle, who simply nodded. “I drew a triangle under the equations and raised them as a floating pattern of dirt, then brought down the all the chaos and bad luck of thirteen threefold on the ancient vow. It shattered.”

“The backlash must have been horrific!” Sirius looked as if he was standing in the forest and watching. “Did you pass out?”

Harry laughed. “No. The equals signs of the equations and the numbers that represented what I didn’t want absorbed the backlash for me.” He glanced smugly at Riddle. “I’m a little surprised he could walk, though.”

“So am I, though perhaps not for the same reason.”

Harry blinked at Riddle, but although he had a half-smile, he spoke to Sirius next, not Harry. “And he doesn’t realize how extraordinary he is.”

“No,” Sirius croaked. “There should have been no way of breaking an ancient vow. No way…” He trailed off, and then gave a rather nasty-sounding chuckle that Harry had mostly heard when he told stories of playing pranks as a Marauder. “Jamesie is going to be so upset about losing you if he ever figures it out, Harry.”

“I don’t think so. Not after what he thinks I did to Diana.”

“That’s why I said if. James wanted extraordinary children. He has three of them, not two.” Sirius pointed a finger at him. “And I want to be in the room the next time you try to explain your Arithmancy to him.”

“I don’t know that I will again. I’m done seeking their approval. Unless they want to apologize, they can fuck off.”

“You don’t want to be with your family, Harry?” Remus looked saddened.

“They don’t want me. Why should I?”

Remus nodded slowly. “I’m sorry that we never saw what was going on and put a stop to this before it got to this point.”

Harry shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault, and what’s done is done. If things hadn’t got to this point, then I probably wouldn’t have my Arithmancy. And I would give up so much just for that, you have no idea.”

Riddle made a soft sound beside him. This time, Harry didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking around. He probably wanted to say that Harry wouldn’t have him, either, if he had remained safe in the bosom of the Potter family, but Harry didn’t want him.

And he didn’t know what to do with the fucking revelations Riddle had laid in his lap, either. Charging off to find out what Remus and Sirius knew about the prophecy was, in part, a way to avoid dealing with them. But he knew that he couldn’t put that off much longer.

“Do you want to stay the night, Harry?” Sirius asked. “Your room is ready for you as always. And for you, Riddle, there’s the stable, if you want.” He sniggered.

Riddle laughed, but he didn’t sound amused. And Harry didn’t think that Riddle’s tolerance would extend to his godfather. He glanced sideways, and Riddle’s face confirmed that it wouldn’t.

“No, thanks, Sirius.” Harry put down his drained drink. “I need to get back to the flat. Madam Madstrom will expect me in the shop tomorrow morning.”

Sirius got up and came over to hug him. “You’re just fine the way you are,” he breathed fiercely into Harry’s ear. “You’re amazing. And I’m not surprised that a handsome, talented bloke wanted to marry you more than he wanted to marry Diana, if you want my opinion.”

If only you knew, Harry thought, but this wasn’t Sirius’s problem to worry about, and Harry didn’t know that it ever would be. He hugged Sirius back, and held onto him, and then Remus, for an extra-long moment.

Then he and Riddle were outside Sirius’s house, and standing on the Apparition point. Harry took several deep breaths and turned to face Riddle.

He was going to ask how they could get the Horcrux out of Diana, but Riddle took him completely by surprise for the third or fourth time that evening. “You believe that you could safely make changes to someone else with Arithmantic equations.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “I did it to you, didn’t I? And that vow was deeply rooted in your magic, which you still have.”

Riddle smiled, but there was a desperation of sorts beneath the expression that made Harry cautious. “And the changes you would have made to your personality…could you safely make those to someone else, as well?”

Harry stared at him. “What the fuck are you saying, Riddle?”

“That if you could come up with equations that destroyed my Horcruxes, at the same time you might come up with some that would alter me into someone you would find more lovable,” Riddle said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Harry fell back a step, instinctively. Riddle didn’t move towards him, but stood watching him with eyes that glittered a little.

“No,” Harry whispered. “That’s sick, Riddle.”

“Obviously you didn’t always feel that way, or you wouldn’t have come up with the option of doing it to yourself,” Riddle answered instantly. “I want your acceptance enough to have a chance with you, Harry. I made mistakes, and I have attempted to rectify them. I met your challenge of honesty, I believe, and have placed my fate in your hands. Why should that fate not be to become a different person, to never have a chance again of slipping back into my former identity?”

Harry shook his head, his heart boiling with a formless sort of horror. “No. I won’t do that. You shouldn’t be changed.”

“Again, you wished the same fate for yourself.” Riddle was making the argument quietly, but not smiling, his eyes shining with that same blinding intensity that he’d had during the wedding, and the aftermath in the Forest of Dean, and earlier tonight when he had laid his soul on the table in front of Harry. “I am also choosing this of my own free will. Why wouldn’t you grant the favor to me? You can sculpt me to become whatever you want—”

“I don’t want to do that!”

“Then what do you want?”

Harry shook his head, wordless, as he looked at Riddle. He’d never thought beyond the honesty requirement and the baring of the soul requirement, honestly. He’d been so sure that Riddle could never pass those tests, why bother thinking beyond them to something that was clearly impossible?

But the man standing in front of him now was capable of that kind of honesty. And the kind of evil that made him able to create Horcruxes. And a weird devotion to magic, if not to Harry himself. And draining a girl to death.

“I think I want you to go away,” Harry said, inaudibly.

Riddle tilted his head downwards. “If you wish for me to do that, and place the problem of the Horcruxes in someone else’s lap, then I will.”

“No, I—I wish I didn’t have to deal with this at all.” Harry tore a hand through his hair. “Why did you choose me to deal with it?”

Riddle’s lips quirked in a faint, unhappy smile that was the only real one Harry thought he had ever seen from him. “Because you are capable of doing so.”

That straightened Harry’s spine, which was absurd, but it was a vote of confidence. And, well, he’d thought yesterday that he would be tied to this bastard in a vow for life, and he hadn’t been.

He had thought he would be able to convince his family to accept him, and he hadn’t. But he had found a path out of that situation.

He could find a path out of this.

He met Riddle’s eyes. “Give me until tomorrow evening,” he said. “Come to my flat at six. We’ll discuss it then.”

Riddle bowed. “As you wish,” he murmured, and then turned and Apparated away without looking over his shoulder at Harry.

Harry blinked at the empty space. He left. Because I asked him to.

That was a test he hadn’t even thought to set.

But perhaps, Harry admitted as he Apparated himself, the one that most mattered.