[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Living Well, Harry/Tom, R, 3/6

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Three

It was a day like any other day when they seized him.

Harry had come home and hung up his rain-soaked cloak, and stood there stretching, feeling the humming pleasure of a good duel in his muscles. He was studying for his NEWTS, but undergoing training so that he could honestly enter the Aurors, too. He didn’t want anyone saying that they’d taken him just because he was famous.

A series of heavy knocks fell on the door. Harry frowned and opened it quickly. It sounded so urgent that the only thing he could imagine was that it was either Ron or Hermione, and the other one was sick.

Instead, an Auror he didn’t know, with a hood surrounding their face to try and keep the raindrops off, peered in at him. “Harry Potter?”

Harry nodded and started to answer, wondering if the one who was sick was Kingsley, or they’d found another Horcrux or something. But then a Stunner crashed into him, and he was aware of his vision fizzling with black specks and fading.

When he came to again, he was on the floor of the Ministry Atrium. Aurors were standing around him, and someone in a grey hood that might be an Unspeakable. There were voices chattering loudly back and forth, but they stopped the instant Harry stirred, groaned, and started to sit up.

He caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the distance, and asked, “Kingsley?”, blurrily.

“Harry Potter, you are under arrest for violating the Ministry’s restrictions on the practice of Dark Arts,” said a loud voice. “To whit: not registering your true wand and power level with the Ministry, not reporting the truth to the Department of Mysteries about how you killed the Dark Lord known as You-Know-Who—”

“His name was Voldemort,” Harry interrupted loudly, so bewildered that he didn’t take notice of the other words. “Why are you having such trouble saying it, even now?”

Someone stomped on his wrist, making him cry out in pain, and then someone else bound him with Incarcerous and searched him, swiftly and efficiently. Whatever they expected to find, it wasn’t there. Harry could have told them that they’d snatched him too quickly to let him pick up his wand, but it’s not like they would have cared.

“It’s not here,” the searcher said.

“It has to be.” That was Kingsley’s voice.

“Well, it’s not. Unless he’s Transfigured it into something else?”

They tried to get Harry to talk, but he was already half-dazed from the Stunner and angry about the pain in his arms, and it was easy to pretend that he couldn’t say anything. In the end, they dragged him into the cell and threw him on the floor, one of them wielding their wand to dissipate the ropes before they left.

Harry scrambled up, panting and staring around in the brief moments before the lights flicked out. He saw the bare nature of the cell, the absolute lack of blankets or bed or chairs, and a cold feeling settled deep in the pit of his stomach.

Yet it wasn’t all anger or fear. There was a sense of resignation about it as well, as though I should have known that would happen.

Harry tried not to despair, but as the hours passed and no one came for him, he grew closer and closer.

*

Harry rolls over and gasps as he surfaces from the nightmare. Then he sighs and settles back. No wonder he dreamed of that day. He’s lying on brick and stone with only a Cushioning Charm to make it comfortable, a good way to remind himself of the cell.

And, well, that was the last time he lost everything. Now he’s done it again. It’s not as though he can go back to the shop, not now that Riddle knows he works there, and if they haven’t found his room yet, it’ll be a bloody miracle.

Harry shuts his eyes and does his best to breathe through his despair and hatred and horror and anger.

He has no Galleons but the few he always carries on him in case he has an emergency expense. He has no clothes except what he’s wearing. He has his wand, but that isn’t worth much, either.

You had less than this when you arrived. You can build yourself up again.

But then, no one was looking for him. No one even knew he existed, Harry thinks, digging his fingers deep into his hair. Now they know, and they’ll be looking, even if they don’t get very far. He never bothered to adopt a last name when he came here, and Jenkins can’t tell them what doesn’t exist.

But Riddle, with his fucking mind-reading and his possessive greed and his determination to destroy someone who might be as powerful as himself, won’t let that stop him. He’ll track Harry down, probably the same way he did last night, and then what?

You know one thing you could do.

Harry firms his lips and shakes his head, even though there’s no one around to see him. No, he’s not doing that. Even assuming he knew where it was in this world, and he doesn’t think he does, not for sure. Enough history has changed that he can’t expect to find it in any “ordinary” place.

So. Probably the best thing he can do is get out of the country. Riddle has to give up the chase if it takes enough resources, right, or if it takes an embarrassing length of time? He won’t want to seem like a little kid whinging about sweets to the country that he partially runs.

Harry sighs, shakes his head, and steps out of the little alley off Knockturn where he spent the night.

He freezes when he sees Riddle standing across the street from him. Riddle is leaning against the wall of a shop and having what looks like a soft-voiced discussion with an Auror next to him. Riddle straightens the instant he sees Harry, his eyes widening with admiration and, presumably, the desire to shut Harry up in a tower somewhere.

Harry stands there, his hands clenching, staring. Riddle turns to the Auror and says something that makes the man frown and shake his head, but the Auror doesn’t follow as Riddle makes his way across the street.

Harry thinks about running, about Apparating. He could.

But it’s utterly obvious that Riddle can find him whenever he wants, probably by using the same spell that his people did to find Harry in the first place. And Harry can feel something else swelling and building under the despair.

Rage.

He never got to express that appropriately last time, what with the Ministry suddenly grabbing him, his lack of a trial, and the fact that at first he hoped being compliant and docile would encourage them to set him free. But here, who’s going to care if he yells? Riddle, Harry supposes, but so what? The man has already destroyed his life. He has nothing on offer that Harry wants.

It would feel so good to tell someone, for once, what a dick Harry thinks they are.

It seems like he only blinks, and Riddle is standing in front of him. “Harry,” he murmurs, body angled as if he wants to keep someone out in the crowd from reading his lips. “Please allow me to escort you to breakfast.” He pauses, his eyes trailing up and across Harry’s face for a moment, and he frowns. “Did I really cause you to sleep outside all night? That was not my intention. I’m sorry.”

Harry stares at him, weighing the apparently sincere apology against the fact that Riddle did, indeed, cause him to sleep outside all night, and gave Harry a splitting headache with his unwanted Legilimency, and, oh yeah, destroyed his life.

“Let me tell you what you can do with your breakfast,” Harry says, leaning forwards a little. “And your escort.”

“I am sorry,” Riddle repeats instantly, his eyes locked on Harry. “I only want to help you. To take care of you. And find out what happened to you in the past so that I can help you avenge yourself on the people who hurt you.”

“Take out a wand and curse yourself in the head, Riddle, because you’re first in line.”

Riddle doesn’t explode the way Harry’s been expecting. A duel would have been good, ranting and swearing better, backing off in offense best of all. But instead, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, shaking his head. “I suppose I deserve that.”

“Yes, you do, you bastard,” Harry says, pleasantly, with a wide smile, so that the Auror watching from across the street will think their interaction is going according to Riddle’s wishes. If the Auror approaches, Harry thinks he really will have a panic attack. He only avoided one when they came to get him the other day because of Yaxley’s reassuring presence. “You realize I don’t have a job now, thanks to you? I don’t have a home?”

“What?” Riddle’s eyes widen. “Your boss has kicked you out? And your landlady? Why would she?”

“No,” Harry says, and feels magic rising around him, crackling. The concerned, staring Auror, and the people around them make no difference to that, not with how badly he wants to destroy Tom Riddle. “But I can hardly go back to work or home without you finding me, can I? God, fuck you, Riddle.”

“I wish you would.”

Harry stares at Riddle, interrupted before he can get his rant going, and sees the hope shining in Riddle’s eyes. It’s—sincere, as far as Harry can tell. Riddle really does want Harry to fuck him, to come to bed with him, maybe even to kick him in the bollocks.

What the hell.

Harry shakes his head and takes a step back. “You’re mad,” he whispers. “I mean, madder than usual. I’m not—a pet you can adopt, or a challenge, or the next game piece you can move on your chess board.”

“I would hope not,” Riddle replies softly in Parseltongue, “seeing as I am neither into bestiality nor fucking objects.”

Harry groans and puts his hand over his eyes. His head is still throbbing because of Riddle’s stupid Legilimency, and more than anything, he wishes he could lie down on his bed in a cool dark room and just sleep until it passes.

“Harry?”

“Stop saying my fucking name,” Harry snaps back in Parseltongue, since he gave up on keeping that secret when he had to unravel the wards Riddle put over the alley. “I have a headache because of your Legilimency, just so you know. Fuck you for reading my mind, too. You can fuck off.”

“I hope I can teach you to be more creative with your curses,” Riddle says, and there’s a sound like a switch flicking through the air—Harry jumps—and then Riddle places a hand on his shoulder. “There. That took care of your headache, I hope.”

Harry is even angrier to find out it actually did.

*

Tom studies Harry carefully, wondering what else he can offer, why Harry is glaring at him as if Tom offended him personally. Tom did not mean to drive him away from his home or job. He is not the reason that Harry spent the night in a dirty alley, on the cobblestones.

Except that it seems he is, somehow.

Tom takes a breath against the impulse to tell Harry that he has never offered anyone as much as he is offering Harry. For some reason, he doesn’t think that Harry would be impressed.

“Breakfast?” he asks, and holds up a hand when Auror Stornaway would approach him. Harry, for whatever reason, has had bad experiences with Aurors. Tom does not want to take any steps backwards in his hard-won rapport with Harry.

Harry glares at him. Tom listens to his stomach rumble, watches his cheeks darken, and thinks that he could spend hours noting the smallest, subtlest changes in Harry’s face and being enthralled with them. But he would prefer to do it when Harry is not hungry.

“Fuck off,” Harry says in Parseltongue, and turns to walk away.

“Do you really want to spend the night sleeping in another alley?” Tom calls after him, and Harry halts and turns to scowl over his shoulder. Even the view of one angry green eye sets Tom’s desire flexing in him like claws tearing through his chest. He spends a moment wishing that he was not affected like that, and then remembers how bored and detached from life he felt before he was cursed and decides that he doesn’t regret it.

“I can find my own place to sleep.”

“You can’t have many Galleons left at the moment, I suspect.” Tom doesn’t have to try to put sympathy or interest in his voice, the first time that has ever been true. “I didn’t mean to drive you away from your job, but I suppose I must have.”

“Yeah, I wonder why the owner of a business in Knockturn Alley wouldn’t welcome the attention of the fucking Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

Harry has prowled a step or two back towards him, which Tom is careful not to point out. He is learning what will set this relationship—which he is determined it will be—back, now.

“Come to breakfast, then. Let me give you some money. Let me make it up to you.”

“Are you going to apologize for using Legilimency on me?”

“I don’t regret it. But I am sorry for the headache it caused you.”

Harry evaluates him in silence for a long moment. Tom watches him, and wishes that he could cast a spell to shield them from the sight of the people on the street, who are doing some gawking, without Harry reacting negatively. He does not want them looking. He wants to keep Harry for himself.

The man who can cast a Patronus Charm powerful enough to physically delay Tom. The only other Parselmouth Tom has ever met. The man so stubborn that he tried to evade the gratitude he could have claimed from Tom and slept on the streets rather than stay in a place he must have known Tom would find.

The man whose soul sings to his own.

There is no one Tom would rather have breakfast with. Or have cursing him, as it turns out.

“Fine,” Harry snaps, and comes walking back to him. “But if you use Legilimency on me again, I’m going to hurt you so badly that you won’t recover before you bleed to death.”

Tom’s body throbs with the longing to find out what that curse is, but he won’t push. Dueling Harry can come later, after he has talked to him, extended his apologies, made up for his mistakes, and attached the first thread to make Harry his.

And if Harry is only agreeing because he’s hungry…

Well. It is a first step. And once Tom has taken one, he doesn’t retreat.

*

Having breakfast with Tom Riddle is beyond weird.

Even if it is in exactly the kind of restaurant Harry always secretly assumed Riddle would eat in, a gleaming, posh place called the Crystal Swan with panes of glass that close all around their table and shut everyone else out. Even if the Auror, Stornaway, was dismissed by Riddle after a quiet argument Harry didn’t bother to try and listen to, and that means Harry can relax a little.

Riddle is handsome in this world, without a trace of the red eyes or other features that made Voldemort in Harry’s world look horrific. He has dark hair with soft splashes of silver-grey at the temples, but his face is unlined, and his eyes are a dark and intense blue. He leans forwards across the table when they’ve asked a hovering, ghost-like figure for food, and his eyes never leave Harry. They barely seem to blink.

That’s familiar, too, Harry thinks, and folds his arms, and glares back.

That kind of look, which would only have sent Voldemort off, proves there’s another difference between the monster Harry knew and this world’s Riddle. Riddle’s eyes sharpen, yes, but his grin is brilliant, hungry, and he looks for a second as if he’ll reach across the table to touch Harry’s elbow. Harry stiffens, and Riddle’s hand drops.

“You’re mental,” Harry tells him.

“Because I wish to sleep through the night again? Because I am interested in making a friend, an ally, perhaps a lover, of the only other Parselmouth I have ever met?”

Harry feels as though someone has touched a spring in his head. There. Riddle said that one part in Parseltongue, which means that he doesn’t want other people to know it, no matter how secure the wards at the Crystal Swan seem to be. Things he doesn’t want other people to know are vulnerabilities. Weaknesses.

Harry just has to make this as loud and crass and public as possible, and Riddle will go the fuck away.

Harry’s resolve falters a little when he thinks of the way Riddle stared at him in Diagon Alley with all those people walking by, but then, they didn’t know who Harry was. Once Riddle begins making this public, then Harry can easily embarrass him out of attempting to pursue this—this—any further.

“I prefer your face when you’re smiling.”

Riddle is smiling, too, gazing at him with the kind of devotion that Harry thinks other people would kill for. Well, he’s received looks like that, and they all ended the same way, except for Ron and Hermione (who never really looked at him like that anyway). With “love” turned to hatred, and fear, and the Veil.

Harry half-closes his eyes. He doesn’t often allow himself to think of Ron and Hermione, not after five years here. He just has to hope that they’re alive and making themselves nuisances to the Ministry in exactly the way Hermione was vowing to do.

“You’re a mystery, Harry.”

“Yeah, I know,” Harry says, forcing his eyes open and seeing the obsessive way that Riddle’s staring at him. Well, obsessive for right now, anyway. Harry will take care of that soon enough. “It probably drove you mad that you couldn’t find out anything about my past or my surname, huh.”

Riddle’s smile changes to something odd, more subtle and more crooked. Harry thinks he might be seeing the sincere side of Riddle, and shudders away from the realization internally. No, Riddle is not allowed to be sincere at him. Or, rather, he is, but that’s only because he has no idea who Harry is.

Not really. He just wants an illusion, the way they all do.

“You’re good at hiding,” Riddle acknowledges. “And it really is strange. It’s as if you simply appeared out of nowhere five years ago. No one knows the slightest bit about you, other than the scraps I was able to gather from your landlady and your employer.”

Harry leans forwards a little, and he knows his smile probably looks savage and deranged, but he doesn’t care. “If you’ve hurt them—”

“I have not. Although it surpasses my understanding why you are so loyal to a man who pays you starvation wages and a woman who overcharges you for the single room you’re staying in.”

Harry shrugs and sits back. “They took a chance on someone who had no references and no OWL or NEWT scores and no last name to give them. Loyalty is the least I can give them in return.”

*

Does he really think so little of his own claims?

Tom stares at Harry and realizes that, in fact, Harry does. He looks a little uncomfortable, but as if he finds admitting to his lack of references or exam scores embarrassing. Not as if he thinks that it’s embarrassing that someone capable of so much was living in the place and working at the job that he was.

Tom exhales slowly. Well, some of the mysteries are solved, then. He wondered, when he really thought about the memory of Harry being held in chains, why Harry didn’t simply lash out with his magic and break them. He could have.

Harry is truly modest and humble. That makes it all the odder that he’s such a match for Tom’s soul, but then again, Tom has all the pride and arrogance that he will ever need to demand what the two of them deserve. Perhaps a proud soul-called would have made the relationship between them explode.

“Will you tell me where you came from?” he asks, but then the food arrives, and he can’t miss the way Harry’s eyes light up on seeing it. It’s not just temporary, his hunger, Tom thinks. This is the look of someone who has been deprived of food for long periods of his life.

Tom wants to destroy the entire restaurant. No, better, he wants to break open the skulls of those who starved Harry, who did not teach him to think highly enough of himself to demand a full stomach, who did not pay him enough for him to afford those things.

Tom dreams of vengeance on Jenkins while Harry eats his way through a bowl of fruit, a plateful of venison, a bowl of soup, and part of a platter of chocolate biscuits. But near the end, Tom loses the pleasure of imagining Jenkins’s stomach exploding for the pleasure of Harry’s eyes closing and his bites slowing down as he savors the biscuits.

Tom has used food, his own magic, his words, and many other things to sway potential allies to his side before. To seduce them, if necessary, although that was a last resort simply because he feels physical passion at a reduced, flickering level compared to most people.

Now he knows the difference. Most people were not Harry. And if simply watching Harry eat gives him this much pleasure, Tom cannot wait to see what will happen when Harry allows Tom to touch him.

Harry’s eyes flicker open, and he rears back in his chair. Tom glances over his shoulder, and then around the nest of crystal panes hemming them in. “What is it, Harry?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Harry scowls and shakes crumbs off his fingers. “So sorry that I don’t have the fancy pureblood manners you probably expect when you dine on your caviar and champagne every night.”

Tom smiles at him. “I did not grow up pureblood either, Harry.”

“That’s right. I’m not a pureblood. I’m a Muggleborn.”

Tom blinks. The first two statements sounded true, but the last one gave him a strange twisting sensation on the edge of his mind, which he usually only senses from his Legilimency when he’s actively trying to read someone’s mind and they’re lying to him. He decides it’s probably different with Harry because Tom is so focused on him.

“No, you’re not,” Tom says slowly, delight filling him with golden fire.

Harry glares at him. “What?”

“You’re a half-blood, almost certainly,” Tom says. “Like me.” Yes, he really does feel happy, joyful, emotions he hasn’t felt in so long that he’s almost forgotten them.

Harry is like him, a half-blood who didn’t grow up in the magical world, a Parselmouth, someone whose magic and soul complement Tom’s. What else is true of him? What else can Tom discover, find out, plumb the depths of, drag into the light?

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, darling.” The endearment slips out without Tom meaning it to, but it doesn’t get the reaction he expects. Harry looks at him with narrowed eyes, as if trying to see how much he means it, and then abruptly gives him a huge, friendly grin.

“Okay, then!” Harry announces. “You know what, I don’t think this breakfast is enough to make up for what you did to me, especially having to sleep out in the cold all night with a headache that made me feel like something was tearing through my skull. I insist on you buying me some new clothes, too.”

Tom shivers. He didn’t expect to win him over so easily, but he supposes that Harry is also like him in that he thinks differently of things when he sees them as revenge. “Yes,” he agrees thickly, standing. “Come, Harry. I know a robe shop that will be more than happy to cater to us.”

Harry blinks in what looks like confusion, but follows him to the edge of the crystal panes. Once they’re past them, into the restaurant proper, Harry seizes Tom’s hand and swings it back and forth, drawing attention from people at the other tables.

“I’ll rely on your taste, Tom,” Harry says softly, and gives him a huge, melting look that Tom immediately knows is fake, but which only delights him all the more. Harry wants to test him, then? To see how much he means this, and how much he can get out of Tom?

He will see that the answers are completely, and everything.

*

Harry is pleased to notice the looks of disbelief they’re getting from most of the patrons in the Crystal Swan. Some people are whispering behind their hands, their eyes lingering on Harry and Riddle’s joined hands and Harry’s patched robes. Excellent. Harry hopes the gossip spreads far and wide, and embarrasses Riddle into dropping this as soon as possible.

Riddle is riding the waves well, for right now, pretending not to notice the public attention, staring at Harry with that look on his face that one could call besotted. But it actually relaxes Harry now that he understands. Riddle wants him as some kind of asset, to wrap Harry around his little finger and use him. For the Ministry? To acquire more power? To perform some magic only another Parselmouth can do?

It doesn’t matter. Because what Riddle is, above all else, is a user. And the good opinion of the public is worth more to him than Harry is any day. Because that’s the way it always is. Harry only knows two people in all the worlds he’s worth more than that to, and their names are Ron and Hermione, and they’re—not here.

So Harry swings their hands back and forth and chatters loudly about robes, and hears the titters follow them. Riddle’s smile sharpens, and he glares at one woman who stands up as if she’s going to approach them. She hastily sits down again.

Getting to him already, Harry thinks in delight. I didn’t know it would be that easy.

Harry would skip if he could as Riddle guides him out of the Crystal Swan and almost hurries them towards a section of Diagon Alley Harry has never visited, in this world or his first one. He’s already thinking of how else he can make Riddle uncomfortable enough to walk away.

Pet names? Loud, smacking, pretend kisses?

No, no, wait. Harry is going to escalate his demands for clothes when they reach their destination, and eventually demand the most expensive robes in the whole shop. Dudley will be his role model. That way, Harry will eventually hit a point where Riddle will refuse and walk away, but he’s likely to get a couple good sets of robes out of it first. And he’ll embarrass the hell out of Riddle, even better.

Harry smiles, and sees Riddle’s face soften out of the corner of his eye.

Good. Let him think he’s seducing me, that he’s winning. He’s never going to win. There’s nothing real there.

He doesn’t want me for me, and that’s the only way I’d let him touch me.