[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Living Well, Harry/Tom, R, 2/5

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two

“Harry?” The voice was slow and unfamiliar.

Harry rolled over to stare out through the bars of the holding cell. The lights had turned on a few minutes before, so he’d known he would have a visitor, but he’d thought it would be Ron or Hermione, not a stranger.

But it wasn’t a stranger who stood in front of the bars. Not exactly. It was Justin Finch-Fletchley, flinching and holding his robes closed as if he thought there was some sort of invisible slime in the air that that might coat them.

“Justin,” Harry breathed as he sat up. “What are you doing here?”

Justin flinched and looked around, and Harry wondered if someone had constrained him to come when he didn’t want to. But it would have been an odd choice. Someone who would get a reaction from Harry would be someone more like Neville or Luna, if the Ministry didn’t think Ron or Hermione safe to approach.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Justin finally asked.

Harry frowned. “Tell you what?”

“I thought—well, there were all those rumors about you being the Heir of Slytherin in second year, and it turned out you weren’t after all.” Justin ran his hand through his hair. “But now the rumors are about you being a Dark Lord, and I think you know that you are one. I mean, you’re powerful enough to be one. Whether or not you’re ever going to be one in actions.”

“And I should have told you that I was a Dark Lord? Why? I’m not one!”

“We’re old friends, Harry…”

Justin let that trail off when Harry laughed harshly at him. Harry turned away and lay down with his face to the wall again. “I don’t know who told you to come here and was convinced you would get something out of me,” he muttered, closing his eyes. “But you can tell them that it didn’t work and I’d appreciate it if you never came back again.”

Justin said nothing for long moments, long enough that Harry could almost believe he’d gone away. Then he cleared his throat and said, “We never asked for this.”

“Who’s we?”

“The ordinary students. Kids at Hogwarts. We never asked to be caught up in a war between you and You-Know-Who.”

Harry didn’t bother responding, and after another few blustering tries, Justin went away. Harry snorted bitterly to himself and closed his eyes.

Whatever the Ministry wanted from him—some verbal acknowledgment of his “crimes,” most likely, that they could look at in Justin’s memory—they weren’t getting it from him. Harry had just about decided that anyone who wanted something from him the way that the Ministry did could fuck off.

But one of Justin’s sentences lingered in him, a slow-growing seed.

We never asked to be caught up in a war between you and You-Know-Who.

That was true, that was real, maybe the only true or real thing Justin had said during the attempted conversation. And it was the one thing Harry regretted. He would have given a lot to keep other people out of his conflicts with Voldemort.

*

“And you’re fine?”

Harry sighs a little and glances at Jenkins, who is leaning around the side of the counter as if he thinks Harry might explode if he comes closer. “Fine, sir.”

“All right.” Jenkins hesitates. “If you need time off, you just need to say so.”

Harry turns away from contemplating how to hang the curve of gold to stare at him. This is the man who barely pays Harry enough to have his flat and small meals and patched robes, and who gets upset if Harry sniffles or coughs, no matter how sick he might actually be. And now he’s insinuating that it would be okay if Harry took time off?

Jenkins folds his arms. “I just wanted to know if you’re sick,” he snaps. “You’ve been acting like you were since Riddle’s flunkies returned you.”

Harry lets the angry words crawl back down his throat. He doesn’t see the point in getting angry at people in this world, mostly, any more than he saw the point of fighting the Aurors yesterday. He needs his job, just like he needs to be ignored by the Ministry.

“No, sir,” he murmurs. “Just—surprised, by the fact that Aurors came and got me and let me go again.”

“Have a reason not to want to be looked at too long by the Aurors, then?”

Harry thinks of the illusion spell that Jenkins put on his ship yesterday, and snorts. “Yes, sir. Along with many others.”

As he expected, direct confrontation makes Jenkins back away with his hands in the air. “Never said that I didn’t, never said that I didn’t,” he mutters hurriedly. “And as long as you’re not sick, you can work here, and—well, look, my house-elf made this.”

Harry blinks as Jenkins turns and draws the cloth away from a package that he set down on the floor by his chair earlier. Harry assumed it contained his lunch, but it turns out to be a beautiful cake with waterfalls of white chocolate and cream down the sides, crowned with plump strawberries.

Harry licks his lips and can’t stop the rumble of hunger from his stomach. “Thanks, sir. Can I have a piece right now?”

“Of course, of course!”

Jenkins waves his wand to cut the cake, making the piece larger than he probably would if he wasn’t feeling so relieved. Harry doesn’t object, though. When the cake settles in front of him on a round plate that he had no idea Jenkins kept behind the counter, he closes his eyes and bites into it.

Intense sweetness fills his mouth, the kind he hasn’t tasted for five years. Harry opens his mouth and nods to Jenkins, then swallows and says, “Thanks, sir.”

Jenkins nods happily enough, cuts his own slice, and begins to eat. Harry savors his cake, filling his mouth slowly and glad that no customers come in until five minutes after he’s done.

And he’s sure, now, that he doesn’t have to worry about losing his job. Jenkins is comfortable enough to go to sleep after lunch, and he wouldn’t do that if he thought Aurors were going to raid the shop any second.

Maybe it’s worth being kidnapped for a few hours sometimes, if this is the result, Harry thinks, and swallows again to remind himself of the taste of white chocolate and strawberries before he goes back to work.

*

Tom hisses to himself as the seeking spell he cast, the same one that Travers used a few days ago to find the man with music in his soul, once again fizzles out. It’s working. But it manifests to Tom as a faint version of the song he heard, not the guiding light that lit Travers’s wand, and it doesn’t seem to get louder as Tom madly Apparates around the country, chasing the sound.

Thus, whenever the spell ends, Tom is no better off than he was before.

“Permission to enter, sir?”

Tom glances up and nods at Isabelle Yaxley, whose smile lights her blue eyes as she steps towards the edge of his desk. “You said that you had a special mission for me, sir.”

“Yes.” Tom forcibly yanks his attention away from the last teasing notes of the song, and tries to look like he’s slept well since the last time he heard it in reality. “I wish you to keep an eye on our dear Lucinda.”

Yaxley blinks, and her forehead furrows. “You think there’s something wrong with her, sir?”

“Let’s say that I have reason to suspect something, yes.” Tom closes his hand on his wand, and doesn’t tilt his head in the direction of the last music as it once again fades from his comprehension. “She may have been taking bribes. Or she might be the victim of someone’s Imperius Curse. Either way, I think she’s been acting out of character, and I want to be reassured whether it was her fault or someone else’s before I yank her out of her position.”

Yaxley looks more and more puzzled, but she nods. “Very well, sir. I’ll bring you a report tomorrow.”

“Good,” Tom says. He is a little irritated at having to put his vengeance against Travers off, but his cursory investigation has revealed nothing of her motive for trying to kill him, and he doesn’t have the attention to give it right now. He’s cleared his paperwork and meetings for the afternoon, so he can investigate that taunting song. “I trust in you, Yaxley.” He stands up.

“Will you need an escort, sir?”

“No, thank you, Yaxley.”

Tom moves out of the office, aware of the way that her concerned gaze rests on his back. If there’s one of his Aurors who has his own good at heart, or at least the good of the country that would be destabilized by suddenly losing a powerful Head for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, it’s Yaxley.

At the same time, it means she has an irritating sense of ethics, and she won’t tell him anything more about the man the Aurors brought to the Ministry several days ago.

Tom takes the nearest Floo to his home, and spends the next half-hour researching a spell in a tome that he hasn’t taken down from the shelves in ages. Magic to enhance his senses intrigued him at one point, but his interest faded. Now that he thinks about it, most of his interest in everything except ways to attain more power seems to have disappeared in the last decade.

Maybe that’s the reason the song intrigues me so much, in comparison to the blandness of everything else. Maybe once I discover this man, then I won’t find him that interesting, and I’ll let him go after an interrogation.

But preparations for immortality, which included a lot of meditation courtesy of Nicholas, mean that Tom has a hard time lying to himself. He wants this man. He wants to speak with him, find out what he knows, probe the recesses of his soul and discover reasons behind things like the dark tones and why he’s using a wand that isn’t suited for him.

So Tom studies, practices, and then casts the spell on his ears that will allow him to hear subtle differences in the quality of the song. If it’s to be soft unless he’s very near his target, well, he can’t do much about that. But if he can perceive a variation in the sound at all, then he’ll continue to Apparate in the direction it comes loudest from, and eventually, he will hold his prize in his arms.

At least the strength of the song, despite how soft it is, the next time he casts the spell reassures Tom that the man hasn’t died since the Aurors brought him to wake Tom.

You cannot die. I will show you.

*

Harry frowns and shakes his head, spending a moment to rub at his ear. Since the Aurors took him to Riddle, his magic sensitivity seems to have gone into overdrive. At least three times now, he’s turned towards the door of the shop, anticipating the arrival of customers who never showed up.

It’s a distant, irritating buzzing at the moment, which Harry hopes means that he won’t have to react to the magic of whoever’s coming until they actually get close. Jenkins hasn’t said anything about it, but Harry knows that part of the reason the man’s kept him on is so that his ability that can warn them of Aurors. Harry dreads what will happen if he doesn’t have that anymore and thus isn’t as useful.

“All right there, Harry?”

And great, Jenkins has noticed. Harry smiles a little over his shoulder as he goes back to polishing the cursed silver tea set one of their regulars brought them, which can’t be polished by magic without the cups trying to eat your hands. They grumble and shift even under Harry’s rag. “Yes, sir.”

“All right.” There’s a creak in the chair as Jenkins settles back and reaches for the book he’s been reading lately. Harry was a little amused to learn that Rita Skeeter became a novelist in this world, writing about imaginary Lords and Ladies engaging in romance and political scandal, instead of a newspaper reporter.

He supposes it’s for the best, though. The Oracle is bad enough as it is, without the addition of anything she might decide to write.

For long minutes, the only sounds are turning pages and Harry’s rag laboriously restoring the shine to the tea set. Harry steps back to survey his handiwork and shakes his head. There are still several hours’ worth of labor to go, which means he won’t finish this particular task today.

Then again, what does that matter? All Harry has on his mind this evening is a small dinner—they’re always small—of noodles and soup and a hot date with his bed. He still isn’t used to the feeling that he doesn’t have endless duties and tasks to save the world, and that he can put something off until the next day without a professor breathing down his neck.

“Harry?”

Harry blinks and turns away from the contemplation of his reflection in the side of the largest teapot. Jenkins is on his feet, book tucked away, reaching for his cloak.

“I’m closing up the shop. You coming?”

Harry nods and secures the cursed tea set in the cabinet that Jenkins keeps such items in until the Dark magic can be removed. He doesn’t have a cloak himself, but that’s all right, even with the nights turning sharply towards December; he can manage a Warming Charm well enough, reluctant wand or not.

They’re near the door when Harry freezes. This time, he doesn’t think it’s a false alarm. The magic chatters and buzzes harshly at him, and although Harry has only heard it once before, while in the midst of Tom Riddle’s soul, he recognizes the sound. It’s close, and it’s coming fast, and it pierces Harry’s heart with how loud and determined it is.

“Not Aurors this time?” Jenkins asks, watching him closely.

Harry falls back a step, shaking his head hard to clear it. “No. Sir, I—sorry. I think an enemy is coming,” he gasps.

“An enemy?” Jenkins’s wand jumps into his hand.

“Not of yours. Of mine.” It’s hard for Harry to talk. The magic sings even in his teeth. “Please, sir, I’ve felt this magic before. From someone in the Ministry. Go, and save yourself. I’ll take the back way out and hopefully lead them away from the shop.” Even though I don’t think he gives a shit about what’s in the shop.

Luckily, friendship or not, Jenkins doesn’t linger to question Harry, more concerned with saving his own skin. He nods and bolts out the front door. Harry locks it and touches his wand to the sign to make it melt from OPEN to CLOSED.

Then he takes a step back, and prepares to fight for his life.

*

Tom pauses for a moment, under his Disillusionment Charm, to watch the old wizard run past him, but then shakes his head as the loud song keeps sounding from the building in front of him, instead of changing to follow the shopkeep. He glides towards the door, pleased to see the CLOSED sign, and feeling, now that he’s close enough, the storm of gathering magic.

He knew that the one who called to his soul could not be a weak wizard, but it is nice to be proven right, even so.

Tom raises his hand and knocks lightly on the door, testing whether this man will open to him that way. Nothing happens. Tom steps to the side and sees an alley stretching away behind the building to join up with one of the many small, crooked streets that spread off to the sides of Knockturn.

Oh, that won’t do, Tom thinks. Not when we’re about to finally meet.

He weaves a series of Parseltongue wards over the mouth of the alley, bright magenta threads that cannot be destroyed. Then he turns and uses magic to open the door gently, not causing it to fly back on its hinges. The man in the shop—a customer?—might value it, and Tom will preserve everything that his soul-called values.

He steps inside, giddy, his heart doing so many flips inside his chest that he feels as he did the day he got Nicholas to agree to the apprenticeship. No, he feels better than that. Grander than that.

There’s only one person in the shop, which means that Tom’s eyes go to him immediately. He’s a slender young man, matching Tom’s memory of his voice. Not that the memory will be anything like the real thing, Tom is sure, any more than his memory of the man’s soul-music is like what he actually heard when their souls were joined.

The man faces Tom and tosses his unruly black hair out of his face. His brilliant green eyes smite Tom’s heart.

“Hello,” Tom says, and he knows his voice is caressing, but it doesn’t matter. He can’t take his eyes from the marvel that is someone who might be his true match, his equal. “What’s your name? I believe that you know already mine is Tom Riddle.”

The man’s eyes flash, and he crouches for a moment as though he’ll leap into flight. But then he straightens back up, and shakes the chestnut wand into his hand. It’s definitely the one Tom saw in the vision when their souls connected, the ill-suited one.

“I want no part of you,” the man says, a thin layer of steel underlying his voice. “I got you conscious again, and the only reward I asked for was my anonymity. Why are you violating that?”

“I had to meet you.” Tom doesn’t know how he’ll explain the gladness spreading through him, the warmth, the wonder. “Please, tell me your name. I promise, I’m not here to hurt you or tell you to keep my secrets. I want to give you everything you want.”

“Then go away.”

“I cannot believe that someone with power and a soul that matches mine can truly desire only this.” Tom ends the seeking spell. The song in his ears is going mad, and right now, beautiful as it is, it distracts Tom from its very real owner’s voice. “You have a wand that doesn’t work well for you. Why? Can you not afford a new one? Please allow me to replace it.”

The man stares at him. “How do you know that?”

“I felt it when our souls connected.” Tom can hear a pleading tone enter his voice, but he doesn’t care. He can no more take his eyes from the man in front of him than he could sever his bond with Nagini. “Please. Let me help you. Let me take care of you. Let me be all things to you.”

The man shakes his head slowly this time. “I don’t know where your impression of me came from,” he says, “but I don’t have that much magical power. Otherwise, I’d be able to find a wand that worked better for me. This was the best of a bad lot.”

Tom laughs aloud, rejoicing in the resistance in the way that he never has in a confrontation with an enemy. “I felt your magic gathering when I was still several meters away down the street. Don’t lie to me, please. It insults your intelligence and mine.” He can’t stop smiling.

The man’s eyes widen for a second. Tom studies his patched robes while he apparently decides on his next move, and half-nods. Yes, they speak of poverty along with the ill-suited wand. Tom doesn’t know why the man hasn’t used his obvious power to get more of what he wants, but perhaps he doesn’t have the training. Another thing for Tom to take care of.

“I want no part of you.”

“At least tell me why.” Tom can be patient. He’ll hear the man’s arguments. Once he knows what they are, he can counter them.

“I don’t want to live in the spotlight. And someone who’s the friend of a politically prominent person does.”

“You don’t have to be prominent at all,” Tom says instantly. In fact, the mere thought of sharing this man with everyone around him is hateful, makes him want to reach out and claw their eyes from their heads so they can never look at Tom’s prize. “Some of the other Department Heads maintain stringent privacy around their personal lives, and the press doesn’t succeed in piercing it. I don’t even know the names of all their spouses.”

“Spouses?”

The man sounds so aghast that Tom’s smile widens. But he has to thank him, too. Until this very moment, when clarity struck him like the spotlight this man abhors, Tom didn’t know for sure what relationship he wanted with the one who called to his soul. He has simply imagined this man as his, without specific terms other than that.

But now Tom knows. He will be this man’s lover. Perhaps in the privacy of bed, their souls will join as they otherwise cannot without the spell.

“Of course,” Tom breathes. “I have never found someone who could be my true equal. Now I have.”

The man passes his hand in front of his eyes, muttering in something so low Tom isn’t sure it’s English. He listens devotedly. He will learn another language if he needs to, if this man is more comfortable speaking in it.

Then the hand drops, and the man leans forwards and says, “You’re mental, Riddle. No means no.”

“I cannot sleep, since the coma.”

“What?”

“I wake up listening for the sounds of the song your soul sang when it touched mine.” Tom comes a step nearer. The man appears too startled to retreat. “I can only hold the seeking spell for a short time when I’m asleep, and the song is too faint without you near to comfort me in any case. I was fine when I didn’t know there was someone so compatible with me in the world, but now that there is, I’d like to court you. Sleep beside you. Be your friend, if that is all you will permit.” Tom feels desperation welling up inside him, and wishes he could force it down, but perhaps it’s better if he shows it honestly, just as the man is being honest with him. “Know your name.”

The man stands there, seeming to think, for a long moment. Tom waits. He’s glad, now, that he said nothing about replacing the man’s robes or giving him Galleons. He doesn’t think money would tempt this man.

The prospect of companionship? That does.

But in the end, the man shakes his head and says, “It would start with this soul-song, maybe, but it would end up with me being crushed under the weight of your magic and reputation. No.”

Tom snaps his head up, eyes fastened on the green ones across from him. They shine with determination and will, but not with Occlumency. He dives beneath their surface easily enough, seeking the man’s name and the reason that he doesn’t want to be with Tom, the real reason. He was tempted for a moment. Tom needs him to be so again.

He grabs hold of the name easily enough, Harry, but there’s a yawning black void where the last name should be. And Tom is distracted by other images anyway, ones from Harry’s past that are dancing in front of him like tattered autumn leaves.

Harry being shunned by students in Hogwarts robes who duck and shiver and move away from him.

Harry huddled in a small dark space that doesn’t seem to be a true room, holding his stomach as it aches with hunger.

Harry being marched along in chains through the Ministry, surrounded by Aurors.

Tom’s immediate and instant rage breaks through the concentration he needs to maintain the Legilimency, and Harry backs away, eyes wide. Tom paces towards him, not caring about his retreat now, consumed with the need to punish.

“Who were they?” Tom demands in a voice whose low pitch complements the high, ringing sound of every glass thing in the place breaking. Tom flings up a shield to keep the flying shards from coming near Harry, not releasing him from his gaze. “I didn’t recognize them. Who were they? How dare they hurt you? They brought you in chains to meet me?”

“That wasn’t the other day,” Harry immediately snaps, and a fire enters his green eyes that enchants Tom, that makes him want to have and hold and take. “It was another place, another time. Don’t attack your Aurors on my account.”

“Of course not,” Tom agrees. “If you will come with me and explain all about it. Let me treat you to dinner, Harry. Please.” He’s not just asking because he wants to. He needs to do something to take care of Harry to soothe his fury, which is coiled up in the middle of his chest and sullenly blazing.

“No.”

Tom loses his head, and casts the Summoning Charm with a force that he hasn’t used in years, when he cast it to Summon a broom so he could escape a pit his enemies had thrown him into. This time, his magic bounds at Harry and grabs hold of him, yanking him straight towards Tom.

Harry’s eyes widen, and he retaliates with the last spell that Tom would have thought of. “Expecto Patronum!”

An enormous silvery stag leaps out of Harry’s wand, no sign of weakness there now, its hooves actually ringing on the floor of the shop as it charges Tom with lowered antlers. Tom has to raise a shield, and he remains still in any case when he sees Harry slipping out the back door of the shop. His Parseltongue wards are there, and they’ll keep Harry in place.

In the meantime, Tom is more inclined to admire rather than get upset about Harry’s spell. The stag circling him and coming to a stop with a stomp of one hoof is magnificent. Tom has never seen a corporeal Patronus so beautiful or clear. And Harry managed to call it with a wand that is actively unhappy in his hand! Tom wants to see what Harry can do with a wand that is suited to him, one Tom can buy for him.

At last the stag fades away, and Tom strolls out into the alley, prepared to deal with a raging Harry who will be cornered against the Parseltongue wards—

Only to find the alley empty.

Tom stares blankly at the tangled magenta threads of his wards, and realizes with a slowness that makes him feel dull and stupid what happened. Harry didn’t tear through the wards, because no force would have made a dent in them. Instead, the wards are half-unraveled, lifted like an open door. Harry asked to be let through.

In the only way he could have. Harry is a Parselmouth.

Tom already knew he wanted Harry, knew he was obsessed. But the maw of desire that opens in him now is positively draconic, spreading wings and baring enormous teeth, as Tom’s existence pivots and locks onto Harry.

I want him willing. I will do whatever I have to.

I want him.

Tom Apparates home, shaking with passion and greed, and ready to begin the hunt in a new way.