[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Living Well, Harry/Tom, R, 6/8

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews

Part Six

“If you would tell the truth, we would let you go.”

Harry gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the liar standing outside his cell in the robes of an Auror. Harry had his arms looped around his legs and his blazing eyes fastened on the far wall of the cell. He refused to look at his tormentor. This same man had come back, day after day, but had never even told Harry his name.

“Kingsley Shacklebolt thinks so, too.”

So Kingsley is part of this, and he never even bothered to come see me himself, Harry thought bitterly. Or maybe they’re just claiming to speak in his name, and he can’t exert himself to get me freed.

Or maybe Kingsley was trying, but those political efforts were as self-serving as those of the Aurors and the Unspeakables, who pretended they would free him if he only told them what they wanted to know.

“Come, Mr. Potter. Is telling the truth such a huge sacrifice? You get your life back if you do. You are free from the taint of everyone thinking you are a Dark Lord or a Horcrux. Why resist such a small thing?”

Harry swung his head around and glared. He probably shouldn’t have, but then again, nothing he said could make the situation any worse unless it made them hit him with the Cruciatus or something. “I already told you the fucking truth.”

“Clearly you did not,” the Auror replied quickly, stepping up to the bars. He was a tall man with pale skin and blue eyes and a neatly-groomed black beard, and Harry hated him as he had only hated Voldemort before. “You are as powerful as you are because you wield the Elder Wand. Just tell us where it is. We searched your home and didn’t find it.”

“I told you! I put it back in Dumbledore’s tomb!”

The Auror sighed. “No one in their right mind would do that, and I do still think that you’re in your right mind, Mr. Potter. Just stubborn.”

“Why don’t you go look in the tomb if you don’t believe me?”

The Auror hesitated for long enough that Harry stared into his face again. The man was frowning, his eyes direct but under a shadow. Harry found himself mildly interested in what the wanker had to say for the first time.

“We cannot open the tomb,” the Auror admitted finally. “We sought permission from the Headmistress and were refused. We can’t confirm one way or another that you’re lying, but we all know that you didn’t demonstrate unusual signs of power when you defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The power you’ve shown since must be a result of the wand.”

Harry fell on his back and began to laugh. The Auror stared at him, stiff and frowning, until Harry’s hysterical chuckles died away to nothing.

“What is so funny, Mr. Potter?”

“You—you arrest me, with no legal justification for doing so,” Harry finally managed to choke out, “but you pretend you can’t confirm what I’m saying because of a petty little legal rule like the Headmistress refusing you permission? You only care about laws when it comes to people who aren’t me?”

And as soon as he’d said that, he realized that yes, it was true. The Ministry wouldn’t have tried most people before a full court of the Wizengamot for underage magic, would they? Only Harry, because he was special.

Most kids wouldn’t have been smeared in the newspapers during their fifth year, or called insane and a liar by the whole population of the school. But most kids had parents who would stand up for them. Harry hadn’t. The adults who cared about him had been fugitives, or more preoccupied with keeping the truth from Voldemort than anything else.

The Ministry could do whatever they wanted to him. No one but Ron and Hermione was going to care.

Harry shut his eyes, feeling sick.

“Why are you so difficult, Potter?” the Auror hissed.

Harry could have responded, but he saw no reason to do so. He lay there while the Auror explained, or ranted, about the Ministry’s respect for Hogwarts and the need to hold together the wizarding world’s morale after the war by not interfering with the rightful Headmistress’s orders, and so on.

They didn’t care about the morale when they arrested me.

But Harry knew that trying to explain that would just get him another rant. So he lay there, staring at the ceiling, while the Auror ran down and glared at him. Harry knew it was a glare of hatred. He didn’t have to turn his head for that.

“You’re going to be Kissed,” the Auror finally spat, and stormed off.

Harry lay there and thought about it. Some of his visitors had talked about the Kiss and some had talked about him being thrown through the Veil. At the moment, Harry had no idea, for sure, what was going to happen.

Either way, nothing I can do at this point will change things.

The lights flickered off, the way they always did when a visitor departed. Harry rolled over and did his best to sleep.

*

“Are you all right? You look like you didn’t sleep last night.”

Tom, who has opened his mouth to ask that question himself, blinks and closes his mouth again. He watches a pale-faced Harry with dark circles under his eyes look anxiously at him, and has to hold back the impulse to preen.

“You look terrible,” Tom says.

Harry snorts. “Don’t change the subject. You look like you were tossing and turning all night. Was it too—wearing to hear about what I went through in my original world?” He watches Tom with a flippant smile that doesn’t hide his anxiety.

Tom shakes his head slowly. “I was wishing that I had met you earlier. For both our sakes.”

“I know why you wish you could have met me, but what would the acquittance have given you?”

Tom sighs and moves his hand in the prearranged signal that will tell his house-elf, Amanda, that he wants the smallest possible breakfast she can be persuaded to make. There’s a long pause before the sausages, scrambled eggs, and toast with several different kinds of jam and marmalade appear on the table. It will be hard to please Amanda after this, probably for days.

Harry sits down at Tom’s large dining room table when Tom mentions for him to do so, but doesn’t take his eyes from his face. “Well?” he prods, gently, for a certain definition of gently.

“I would have had someone who was capable of understanding me,” Tom admits. “Someone who would have believed me when I said I didn’t make Horcruxes, and someone to give me a goal to grow towards.”

“Other people don’t believe you about the Horcruxes?”

“Flamel questioned me closely to make sure I’d left that ambition completely behind, but in the end, he did believe me. Dumbledore couldn’t be convinced. I think he passed on his suspicions to Minerva McGonagall, from the way she looks at me whenever I have occasion to visit Hogwarts.”

“I didn’t consider whether you’d made them before you told me.”

“Liar,” Tom says mildly, blowing across the surface of his tea. It’s delicious, not that he expects anything else from Amanda.

“No, really,” Harry says, studying Tom until Tom uses his fork to point to Harry’s own plate. Harry sighs and takes more sausages than Tom will. Tom makes a mental note to ask Amanda for more meat in their meals from now on. “I didn’t think that you’d made them because you behave as if you were sane. I mean, when you’re not rushing around asking complete strangers to please marry you.”

Tom shakes his head and spreads orange marmalade across a piece of toast. “So you didn’t think I’d made Horcruxes.”

“No. I was more worried about your possible other resemblances to Voldemort than that one. And what do you mean, give you a goal to grow towards?”

“Only now,” Tom says, slowly pulling the words out of his mouth and stomach like the sticky marmalade, “do I realize how stagnant I had grown. I had ceased to do anything but watch for the next enemy or political power play, and do what I must to destroy them or maintain my position. But I had no real ambition anymore. I was bored.”

“Do you think you’ll grow more bored when the years pass and I’m physically older than you are?”

“You’re going to be immortal with me. So, no, I doubt it.”

“Immortal with you, is it?”

“The Philosopher’s Stone is a means of eternal life that can be shared, unlike a Horcrux. Although, who knows, you might be immortal all on your own. You survived something your world’s Ministry for Magic thought was a certain death sentence.”

Harry seems to stop breathing for a second. Then he shakes his head and says, “How would they know if there were other worlds on the far side of the Veil, if no one ever came back to tell them?”

“True.” Tom cocks his head at Harry. “I thought you told me your secrets last night. But not the one about possible immortality?”

Harry coughs and plays with his fork. Tom hides his smile behind a cup of tea. He thinks Harry thought he might back off once he’d supposedly revealed all his secrets. Tom can’t imagine finding Harry less than fascinating, no matter how much he knows about him, but he’s not surprised there are secrets remaining.

“I’m not sure I understand it myself,” Harry admits finally. “I’ll tell you when I’m sure I do.”

Tom lets it go. Even if Harry never agrees to drink the Elixir of Life, they have decades, maybe a century, ahead of them, with Harry’s young physical age. He can wait and have this argument over and over again, as many times as necessary.

“I’m afraid I do need to go to work today,” Tom says at last, when he’s read through the Oracle and listened to Harry sigh about every article. “A meeting between the Department Heads is happening, and I need to catch up on my Aurors and the investigation into the one of them that cursed me.”

“It was one of your own people?” Harry’s voice rises a little. “And they’re still running around alive?”

“She, in this case.” Tom has to smile at Harry’s righteous indignation. “I suspect I know what her motives are, but I can’t make an Auror disappear or die without too many questions. And I didn’t want to prolong the investigation when I could be meeting you.”

“Fucking Aurors,” Harry says. “I won’t be going with you to the Ministry.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” Tom says, with a little shrug. “I encourage you to use the Floo to talk to my agent about a house you would like to buy, however.”

“Wait a minute. How many houses do you own?”

“Seven,” Tom says blandly, enjoying the way that Harry’s eyes widen in outrage. “Being Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement doesn’t pay that well, my dear. I own the houses and rent them out to afford such necessities as breakfast at the Crystal Swan and robes at Glamoursall’s.”

“How did you get them, though?”

“Won them in duels,” Tom says smugly, and can’t help the way that he smiles when Harry laughs in delight. “In three cases, I rent them to the families who originally lived there and owned them. That way, they can pretend that nothing is wrong and their status hasn’t changed, while of course still paying me.”

“Are all of them purebloods?”

“All the people I won the houses from, yes. I only duel for the best. Not all of the people living in them. What do I care for people’s blood status, as long as they can pay me?”

“I’d like to duel you.”

Tom feels a stirring in his pants and tamps down his instincts with difficulty, smiling a little. “I would like that as well. Perhaps this evening, when I return from the Ministry and you have chosen a house?”

“I mean—I don’t have anything like a house to give you if I lose.”

“I know,” Tom says. “I would value the practice, however. I’ve never dueled someone as powerful as I am, and haven’t fought at all in more than a year. The Aurors—” Harry grimaces and flinches, which makes Tom wonder what he can do to help with that “—make sure I am well-protected.”

“I don’t know if I’m as powerful as you are.”

Tom sighs. “Allow me to be a good judge of personal power levels, Harry. I would have chosen you for that reason aside, never mind all the rest.”

“My soul, and my Parseltongue?”

“Yes, but every trait added makes you more perfect. Even you being a half-blood who grew up in the Muggle world. I couldn’t have found someone who truly understood me in a pureblood who’d never set foot there.”

Harry doesn’t bridle or bristle as Tom was afraid he might. He eyes Tom instead, then nods slowly. “I don’t know that I’ll ever feel as deeply for you as you do for me,” he says. “And I’m sorry to be putting it like that, but it’s true.”

Tom simply smiles at him. “I take statements like that as a challenge, Harry. Don’t worry. I’m committed to wooing you as long as necessary.” He stands up and looks for a moment at his gleaming golden watch, the kind of accessory that people expect the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to wear. “My agent’s name is Deborah Harmon, and her Floo’s name is Harmon’s Harmonious Homes. I’d wait until nine to Floo her, however. She won’t be awake yet.”

“Will she accept that I’m—who you say I am?”

“I’ve already owled her,” Tom says, waving a hand. “Last night before I went to bed.” Harry went earlier than he did, which Tom understands perfectly. He was worn out emotionally from everything he told Tom last night, and he slept badly the night before.

“You already thought I would want a house?”

“We did discuss that, Harry.” Tom raises an eyebrow at him. “And it’s a little late to decide that you don’t trust me now, when you’ve already spilled so many secrets to me and had me make an Unbreakable Vow.”

Harry swallows what looks like it might be an angry retort. Then he nods slowly. “Yeah, I know.”

Tom smiles at him and touches Harry’s hand where it lies on the table. “Stay at the table as long as you like. If you want more breakfast, ask Amanda. She would be thrilled to make something more complicated for you than I asked for today.”

The air sparkles near them, which means Amanda is listening. Tom ignores it. She thinks she’s subtle, and if she wants to think so, Tom will allow it. He spends a lot of time figuring out how to keep the people near him happy and content without showing that he’s doing so, so they’ll work harder on pleasing him.

With Harry, though, it has to be the real thing, or nothing. Which is part of what makes this whole entanglement with Harry so fascinating and difficult.

But Tom would have it no other way.

“Have a good day,” Tom says, and departs for the Apparition point outside the front door, feeling and ignoring his reluctance to leave Harry behind. Someday, perhaps they’ll spend the nights over at each other’s houses on a regular basis, or live in the same one. Someday, perhaps, Harry can overcome his fear of the Ministry and accompany him.

Someday, perhaps Tom will hold another job, one that Harry can join him in.

Tom pauses with his hand on the doorknob. That is a new thought, and one that he would have rejected a week ago without further pondering. He fought for his position as Department Head. He wants to hold onto it.

When it bored you? When you felt limited in it?

Frowning, Tom opens the door and Apparates to work, while still entertaining the new thought.

*

Harry spends some time sitting at the table, eating the extra scrambled eggs and toast that Amanda made for him when he asked, and wonders what Deborah Harmon will really say when Harry Floos her.

He isn’t as comfortable as Riddle is with assuming that everyone in his life will just adapt to Harry being there. On the other hand, no, he isn’t about to leave Riddle behind. Not when he’s bound to him by the Unbreakable Vow, and Riddle’s knowing and accepting who Harry really is, what world he came from.

Not when Riddle has made it virtually impossible for himself to betray Harry.

By the time that it’s just after nine and Harry casts Floo powder into the fire, calling out, “Harmon’s Harmonious Homes!”, he’s smiling.

The fire turns purple quickly, which makes Harry snatch up his wand, even though he doesn’t think an attack could be coming through the flames. But they turn to regular green in the next moment, and a woman’s cool voice says, “Who are you and how can I help you?”

Deborah Harmon is a witch with long, mostly grey hair, and eyes that watch Harry like she’s an eagle thinking about clawing his vitals apart. Harry likes her, though. She doesn’t look at him like he’s pitiable, but like he might be dangerous.

That’s better. Harry definitely doesn’t want to go back to the way that his Ministry treated him in his former world, with people hating him all the time for no real reason, but some respect is nice.

Because he can resist the Imperius Curse. Because he can cast an especially powerful Patronus, even with a wand that hates him. Because he can do things like unravel a powerful wizard’s Parselmouth wards without ever having done it before.

He deserves some respect.

“My name is Harry,” Harry says. He thinks about adding his last name, but he wants to keep that private for right now, just in case there are other Potters that Riddle hasn’t mentioned. “I’m staying with Tom Riddle. He said he owled you.”

He keeps his voice calm, not cringing the way he might have said it yesterday. He trusted Riddle with his deepest secrets. He can trust him to have spoken the truth about a damn owl.

Harmon’s face relaxes, and she nods. “He said you might Floo me. You’re interested in looking at houses?”

“Yes. But not some giant place like this.” Harry waves his hand around. “I think Riddle is mental for wanting to live in this huge place all by himself.”

Harmon blinks, studying him. Harry stares back. He can end the Floo call if this goes badly. He’s sure that Riddle will back him up.

Yes, he really is sure.

Harry is smiling to himself when Harmon says, “I believe you will be good for him.”

“What? He has a shortage of people in his life who talk back to him?”

“Yes, actually.” Harmon studies him again. “And he has never let anyone stay over in his house in all the years I’ve known him.”

Harry ducks his head so that his pleased smile won’t show too much, and shrugs. “All right. This is the first time. But I do want my own place. Could I visit some of those houses?” He has no idea how this sort of thing works. He found his little room here because Jenkins introduced him to the owner, and the flat he rented in Diagon Alley through someone Mr. Weasley knew.

“Yes. I will be happy to escort you myself.”

“Oh, I don’t want to take you away from your work, ma’am—”

Harmon waves her hand. “I have a shortage of business today, and I want to encourage anything that will ensure Tom Riddle remains human. Come through the Floo, and I’ll get my cloak and escort you around the available properties.” She moves back, and the flames change to purple again.

Harry takes a deep breath. This could be one of the differences between the worlds, he supposes. It’s not like he’s taken a Floo in the magical world here since he arrived.

He steps through, wondering all the while what she meant by “ensuring Tom Riddle remains human.”

*

Tom nods to the people who nod to him as he makes his way towards his office in the back of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. This time, he notices more than usual who sneers behind their smile, who is pathetically eager to greet him in hopes of getting ahead, how many people lie with their eyes and their bodies.

He enjoyed that, once, didn’t he? The memory feels faded and old when Tom touches it within his own mind.

Yes, of course he enjoyed that. It’s one of the reasons that he aimed for a position as political as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It—pleased him, once. Perhaps it hasn’t for a while now, but Tom wasn’t conscious of actual dissatisfaction, as such, until he met Harry.

Harry is honest, painfully so. His emotions blaze across his face, and Tom wouldn’t need Legilimency to know when he’s lying. And although it took an Unbreakable Vow, he trusted Tom with the deepest secrets of his soul. Tom intends for Harry to trust him with more in the future, including this possible secret of his immortality and his body.

Compared to Harry, the others seem weak and unchallenging. Dishonest, in a pathetic way.

Tom goes to his office and deals with paperwork for the next few hours, until Isabelle Yaxley sticks her head around the door. She gives him a thin smile. “Can I bother you, sir?”

“Of course.” Tom puts his paperwork aside. He is still interested in why Lucinda Travers cursed him, and what she intends to do next, and who was using her, and why his own investigation, cursory though it was, uncovered nothing. “Please, sit down.”

Yaxley nods and shuts the door behind her, but remains standing. She does that often, as if she thinks that the difference in rank between them should never be forgotten. “Well, sir, I have to admit that I was surprised by what I discovered when I checked Lucinda’s background.”

“What is that, Auror Yaxley?”

Yaxley blows air through her parted lips. “She has had no contact with anyone who could have controlled her, not that I could find. She doesn’t owe anyone money, and she hasn’t taken large sums of it lately. And the Imperius Curse theory went up like a firework. It turns out that she’s one of those people who has such an extreme reaction to it—they tested her in the Auror Academy—that she basically acts like a giggling fool. You would have known at once if she was under it.”

Tom frowns and leans back to consider that. “What motivation did she have to curse me, then?”

“None that I could find, sir.”

Tom swears softly, his mind on Travers. She hasn’t acted unusually at all, that’s true, except for cursing him and then promptly volunteering the spell that would find the person most compatible with his magic and soul. Perhaps she did simply want to become important to him, and assumed that she would do so by bringing in the compatible person? Perhaps she didn’t foresee Harry becoming so important to Tom or desiring anonymity, and thought Tom’s gratitude would go to the person who suggested the spell?

It’s a tenuous theory, one that would have relied on her attempting to predict Tom’s actions in a way that she’s never tried to do in the past, but it’s the best Tom has. Because, after all, she has to be the one who cursed him. She was—

Tom doesn’t allow himself to react, keeping his head half-bowed, but his whirling thoughts have jerked to a halt.

She was one of two people with him when the Sleepless Soul Curse struck him.

The other person stands in front of him.

Why did he automatically assume it could not have been Yaxley? Because he trusts her. Because he thought she was loyal to him and the good of the country.

Because she speaks the right words and makes the right gestures. Because she seems so calm and motherly all the time.

Because Travers is loud and impatient and too quick to fling out a curse instead of speaking diplomatically when the situation calls for it. None of which are crimes.

It was Travers and Yaxley, working together last year, who subdued the assassin who came after him, that one who could walk through walls. Except it was Travers, wasn’t it? Yaxley was taken out of the battle early on with a leg wound.

One that, when treated later at St. Mungo’s, turned out to have been shallow and not all that serious. Tom attributed Yaxley’s poor performance in the battle to shock at having been wounded at all—it’s not something that often happens to an experienced field Auror—and blood loss. And later, he always thought of it as Travers and Yaxley having saved his life, not Travers by herself.

Even though that is what occurred.

Tom looks up, and smiles a little. “Well done, Isabelle,” he says quietly. “Cursing me in the back like that and doing it so skillfully that I never even suspected you, even though plenty of things about the other suspect’s behavior made no sense. Even though Travers has never had any skill in lying.”

Yaxley’s eyes widen minutely. “What are you talking about, sir?”

“Well done,” Tom repeats, but his rage is rising. He could have died under that curse if Travers had not happened to know the counter. He suspects Yaxley thought no one did, or she would not have risked the kind of spell that did have a counter.

He remembers how fiercely Yaxley protected Harry’s anonymity. Because Harry asked for it, Tom thought, but also because Yaxley didn’t want Tom to unite with someone who complemented his soul and might give him a fresh perspective on life and a new direction. More ambition.

Tom’s mind jumps to something else: the cup of tea that Yaxley has brought him on a regular basis for the last year.

“What was in the tea?” he breathes. “Not a love potion, I know that.”

“You’re not making any sense, sir,” Yaxley says gently. “Would you like to sit down for a while? You might not be completely recovered from the curse Lucinda used on you.”

Tom hates himself for considering that for one moment. Then he shakes it off. Yaxley is good at manipulation, but he still thinks she had help.

“A Wit-Dulling Draught, then,” Tom decides. It’s the only thing that makes sense, and while it can’t account for his long lack of interest in his job or his boredom with the world overall, it does account for things like him not immediately suspecting Yaxley and feeling increasingly detached from life.

“That’s an obscure potion, sir.”

“The Sleepless Soul Curse is obscure, too.” Tom points his wand at her. “You might as well confess, Isabelle. Or, if you’re truly innocent, let me look into your mind, and that will prove it better than any Veritaserum will.”

Yaxley’s wand leaps into her hand, and she casts a spiraling, spreading red wave of a spell that Tom banishes, but barely. He’s never seen that spell, either, and cold fear works out through him as though someone is spinning a web through his chest.

“If you could have died, that would have been better,” Yaxley says softly, working her way to the left, around his desk. Tom turns steadily to face her, keeping his hand on his wand. “I didn’t even know a coma was a probable result of the curse. And of course I couldn’t disagree with Lucinda when she trotted out that spell. Interfering bitch.”

A day ago, Tom would have laughed if someone had told him that Yaxley would ever swear. How long has he simply accepted that she was loyal without actions to prove it? He wants to shake his past self.

“Why did you do it?”

“You’re immortal. That’s too long for one person to hold a position like yours. Or even just decades, until you really got bored with it, would be too long. The Ministry needs new change, new blood. We need to bring in people who hold the position for a time, not forever.”

“And I suppose you think you would make a wonderful Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, trusted as you are?”

She would, is the thing. Or the woman Tom thought she was would. How long has Yaxley been weaving her subtle way into being trusted?

“We’re not here to discuss me,” Yaxley says. “But I do want to see your face when I cast the Sleepless Soul Curse on you again.” She smiles. “You don’t know how to shield against it, do you?”

In fact, Tom does not. But he laughs in her face. “What was undone once by a spell, can be undone again by the same spell.”

Yaxley laughs back at him. “If you’re cursed a second time, only the exact same person can raise you from the coma, not just any person who’s compatible with you. And I’ll be taking care of that little problem after we’re done here. Anima insomnis!”

Tom tries to dodge, since he can’t shield, but the curse is too big, a spreading wave of blue that once again wraps him in the dark cocoon, hearing but motionless. As he crashes to the floor, terror and rage devour him.

Rage for his situation. Terror for Harry.

And Yaxley’s laughter.