[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Mirror of a Thousand Shadows, pre-Tomarry, Ginny/Bellatrix, AU, 4/4

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last part of this story. I will be writing at least one sequel at some point in the future.

Part Four

“Ugh!”

Tom turned his head towards his brother, who was sitting next to Harry on the other side of the library table and scowling at Tom. “Yes?” he asked, with the confident drawl that he had learned from Draco Malfoy.

(Malfoy was a prat, but that didn’t stop him from occasionally having good ideas).

“Why are you just—just so Slytherin?” Ron waved his hands back and forth as if he was shaping them around a large box. Tom liked to imagine it as the Christmas present Ron’s hadn’t got him. “You were never like this at home! It’s like I don’t know you anymore!”

Tom sat up. He heard Harry muffle a groan under his breath, probably because Harry recognized the source of one of Tom’s complaints.

There were times that Tom wished Harry had been his brother. It would have been wonderful to be around someone who understood. But then Harry wouldn’t be who he was, and so, as much as Tom hated the Lady Firebrand for tricking him, he had to admit that orphaning Harry was one of her better actions.

Besides, there was something in Tom’s head that clicked in utter refusal at the thought of Harry being his brother. He didn’t know what it meant, and it was working for him to ignore it, so he ignored it, and instead went about demolishing Ron’s argument the way he could never demolish him at chess.

“Because you knew me so well, of course,” Tom said lightly. “You know the way I think and speak and never mock me for it, while complaining that I couldn’t possibly be your brother and it would have been better if I was your little sister. You knew exactly what I would like for Christmas, which is why you got it for me—”

“What did Ron get you for Christmas?” Harry asked, sounding interested. “You didn’t tell me that, Tom.”

Tom gave him a small frown. “It’s not really a secret—”

“Harry, mate, don’t—”

“A comb,” said Tom, leaning a little towards Harry so no one who might be lurking around hoping for an update on the Heir of Gryffindor situation could hear him. “Something that I’m sure he went through his possessions for hours to choose.”

Ron turned bright red, but that wasn’t new. For some reason, Harry looked as if he understood perfectly, which made Tom’s curiosity stir.

Harry stays here for all the holidays, too, and never talks about the Muggles he lives with. I wonder why?

“I didn’t—I forgot about it, okay?”

“You mean, you forgot about your little brother who was staying at Hogwarts for the holidays?” Harry stared blankly at Ron. “When you sent me at least three letters complaining about how he was driving you mental staying here?”

Ron got redder, which up until that point, Tom wouldn’t have believed was possible. “Listen,” he growled. “We’re all supposed to get each other a gift, and it doesn’t matter how much it costs! It’s just supposed to be thoughtful!”

“Which yours wasn’t,” Tom said helpfully.

“What did you get him, Tom?”

Tom smiled, a little coldly. “The same thing I got everyone else. I wrote out a short list of flaws that I’d observed they had, and how they might correct them. In Ron’s case, I made a list of the chess games he’d lost, and explained some of the moves that might correct them, along with the library books he could check out that talked about them.”

Harry blinked. “That sounds…fine, actually. Thoughtful.”

Tom smiled at him. Harry was the only one who had ever understood his intentions with those gifts, to show his family that no matter how little thought they gave him, he was still watching and listening and observing and thinking of them.

“He just does it so he can get away with criticizing all of us!” Ron really had decided that he should be the most flushed Weasley in history, Tom thought distantly. “He sent Mum a list of ways she could improve her cooking! Tom’s never cooked a day in his life!”

“I may not cook, but I know when someone puts too much sugar in things.”

“She loves us! It’s not easy taking care of seven kids! She does her best!”

“Ron, you criticized her for that, too,” Harry interrupted. “You complained about those corned beef sandwiches on the Express first year. Or do you think that she was making some sort of subtle point with that?”

Tom sighed as he watched Ron splutter some more, apparently because his best mate wasn’t backing him up. Harry really was perfect. Tom was determined to prove that he was trustworthy, the best confidante, and the best friend before all was done.

He didn’t mind that Harry was Ron’s friend as well as his, not really. Harry needed a friend in his own year to sit with in class and partner with in Potions and have discussions about second-year classwork with. And Harry even liked playing chess more than Tom did, although he was terrible at it.

But Tom would show him in time that Harry only needed one person he trusted with important things.

*

Harry grimaced as he watched Fiendfyre eat at the walls of the Appearing-and-Disappearing Room. He’d deliberately asked for something that could resist it, and luckily, the room knew of Fiendfyre, because Harry doubted that an ordinary place would be able to contain it when Harry lost control.

He was doing that. Continually.

Harry flopped back on the chair that the room had provided earlier and stared up at the ceiling. It was almost the end of the school year, and while there had been no more attacks on anyone and the Chamber of Courage had gone back to being a rumor, he was starting to worry about what would happen if he couldn’t destroy the diary Horcrux before he left for the summer. Would it really be all right here by itself? What would happen if someone else knew about the room and came into it when it was in a similar enough form to the diary-storing one to find it? Would Ginny be able to make them do what she wanted, too?

Harry hadn’t heard anyone else talk as if they knew about the room, but then, neither had he or Tom.

Harry finally stood up, wearily. So far, he hadn’t experienced any of the negative side-effects of casting Fiendfyre that the book had warned about, but he suspected that was because he couldn’t cast it properly. It only ever assumed the form of a few snarling dragons, and spluttered out the minute Harry tried to send it in a direction other than just a steady stream out of his wand.

Harry sighed and stood up. The Fiendfyre was eating the wooden sticks and the old, tattered clothing the room conjured for him to practice on, so that was something. But Harry didn’t think it was the same as successfully destroying a Horcrux.

He heard a sharp, smart knock on the outside of the wall where the door would show if Harry hadn’t asked the room to make it disappear into the stone. He smiled and turned around. That knock meant Tom had got tired of waiting for him to show up in the common room and intended to fetch Harry out himself.

When he opened the door, it was to see Tom shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

“Do you have it?” Tom asked immediately.

“Have what?” Harry thought for a second that Tom was talking about the power to call Fiendfyre, and then shook himself. No, Tom hadn’t shown any sign that he suspected Harry knew that kind of spell or was practicing it, and with the way Tom hated being left out of secrets, he would have. “I mean, no, I don’t think so.”

“The diary?” Tom asked in a lower voice. “Do you have the diary?”

“No,” Harry said, lifting his eyebrows. “Do you think we need to go look at it?”

“I came across a reference to Horcruxes somewhere else,” Tom said, folding his arms and rocking back and forth for a moment. “I thought it would be a good idea to look at the diary again and do a sort of…test to see if it matches the information I found.”

Harry stared at him. Tom tilted his head at him in the impatient way he had, but that didn’t entirely soothe Harry’s suspicions. Tom was precise with his language, to the point that people three years older than him made fun of him for it. He wouldn’t say “somewhere else” and “sort of.”

But on the other hand, if this was the diary possessing him again, then Harry couldn’t let on that he knew. He stepped forwards and nodded. “Sure. Let me get out of the room so we can change it to the one that holds the diary, though.”

Tom’s eyes brightened. Harry stepped out and let the door shut behind him, keeping a close eye on Tom.

Tom didn’t move, even though he usually loved being the one to walk a new configuration of the room into being. Harry tilted his head. “What’s the matter? Did you hurt your legs or something?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you want to be the one to open the door?” Harry tried to put just the right amount of fake confusion into his voice, without producing anything that the diary could latch onto.

Tom gave him a smile that was a touch too big and fake. Tom smiled, sure, but in the dreamy way that said he was plotting revenge on someone, or the dark smile that meant he was rejoicing in a secret Harry had asked him to keep. Not as though he was on the edge of exploding in cheerfulness. “Oh, I thought I’d let you do it this time.”

Definitely weird. Harry only pretended to stow his wand, keeping it low at his side, as he stalked back and forth in front of the wall. I need a place that can safely contain someone possessed by a Horcrux. And I need the door to look like the one to the room where we left the diary.

The familiar door popped into being on the wall. Tom reached for it eagerly. Harry walked a little forwards, wand still gripped at his side, and saw the moment that Tom—or rather, the thing inhabiting Tom’s body—realized that it wasn’t the room where they kept the diary.

He spun around, his wand already lifting and aiming. Harry’s wand was in place faster, however, and he cast a Stunner that slammed into Tom’s Stunner.

There was a glistening storm of golden light that formed into a dome, and abruptly, a song, as though a giant bird were with them in the corridor. Harry stared as he watched the golden light spread out around them as bars like those of a cage, and the dome arch until it covered almost the whole corridor.

Unfortunately, because he was watching the spell in such fascination, he forgot to watch Tom. Tom crashed into him, and thin arms wrapped Harry in a hug for a moment, tugging his neck down. Harry found out why when Tom’s fist smashed into his temple, and he lost his grip on his wand the way that he lost consciousness.

*

Harry opened his eyes slowly. His head throbbed, and his first instinct was to lie still and play dead. The longer that the Horcrux thought he was out of it, the more of an advantage he would have.

But then a great purring voice spoke, and stole all of Harry’s motivation to lie still with a few simple words. “The problem is awake.”

Harry gathered himself and rolled to the side, ignoring the way that his head was still filled with sick throbbing. He’d faced Dudley and his gang with injuries before, and it was always best to be on his feet as soon as possible.

There was a huge creature looming over him, what Harry at first took for a giant lion with odd green-golden eyes. Then he saw the dragon tail that folded around its back legs, and the sleek fleece that covered its body, and he had to swallow. A chimera.

At least, as he eyed the long claws projecting from its forefeet, he knew what had torn apart Mrs. Norris and Lavender Brown’s face. Brown had been extraordinarily lucky to escape with as few scars as she had.

Tom stepped forwards, or rather the Horcrux wearing Tom stepped forwards. Harry could easily tell the difference now. Tom moved as if he was shorter than he really was, and twirled his wand between his fingers in a way he never had. One hand rested casually on the fleece of the chimera’s nearest leg.

“I can see that, Aurelia,” Tom said, stroking her fleece for a second. “And what do you suggest we do with him? It would probably cause too much of a disturbance if the Boy-Who-Lived disappeared without a trace. We don’t want them searching for and finding the Chamber. On the other hand, tearing his body apart might cause a…disturbance as well.”

Harry realized with a start that either they didn’t care about discussing their plans in front of him, or they didn’t know he was a Leonismouth. His best bet was to not react and keep gaping and shivering, as if he didn’t understand the snarls and hisses emerging from Tom’s mouth and the chimera’s jaws.

And find his bloody wand. Harry clenched his hand down by his side and focused all his will on the wand, as much will as he had bent towards the casting of Fiendfyre. Come to me. You’re mine. Come to me.

There was no response.

“I suggest that we tear apart his body and leave him at the entrance to the Chamber as a warning.” The chimera—Aurelia?—stretched her body and shook herself. “I tire of this cramped space, mistress. I long to run and feast freely, and from what you have said, your other self needs my help.”

Well, Harry thought grimly, that pretty much put paid to the notion that the Heir of Gryffindor wasn’t Lady Firebrand. Ginny. He wondered, with the idle desperation of someone about to die, what her last name had been.

“A good idea, Aurelia.” Tom’s hand rose and stroked her side again, while his mouth stretched in a smile that Harry thought he would have been mortified to give, even to a chimera. “And the one whose body I am wearing?”

“I will eat him. I might spread his bones about the entrance to the Chamber and down the stairs. When I am not here anymore, there is nothing else here worth defending.”

Harry supposed, still with suppressed hysteria, that that way, he could at least tell Dumbledore that nothing else was down here and there weren’t any secrets that he’d “failed to investigate properly” or anything like that. It seemed like something Dumbledore would be concerned about.

I’m talking to myself as if I’m going to survive.

Giving into despair didn’t seem like it would do anything, though. And Harry had to accept that his wand really wasn’t here. On the other hand, he could also see that Tom’s hand, still clasped around his yew wand, was low and loose at his side, all the attention of the being in his body focused on Aurelia.

Wielders of brother wands can use each other’s.

Harry threw himself forwards, without even really giving himself time to think through the course of action, because it would probably show in his scent or something. He grabbed Tom and bore him to the ground, with Tom gaping up at him in surprise. He’d hate that too, Harry supposed, as he grabbed Tom’s wand arm and beat it against the floor. Tom’s hand opened, and the yew wand rolled towards the far corner of the Chamber.

Harry scrambled after it, just in time to avoid the scrape of wild claws through the air over his head.

He rolled over and came up holding the wand, in time to see Aurelia stalking towards him, belly to the ground in a way that made her resemble a much smaller cat. “You would touch my mistress?” she hissed. “Your execution will be long and slow.”

“I don’t give a shit about you,” Harry snapped in Leonistongue, which came out something like, “I care about you less than a scat.”

Aurelia halted, her eyes widening, and Tom abruptly began to wail. His voice got higher-pitched and more feminine, although it sounded like an older teenage girl, maybe, rather than one around their age. “You can’t be a Leonismouth! I’m the only Leonismouth! You can’t be as special as I am! I’m special!”

Harry ignored that and focused his wand on Aurelia, who was by far the greater threat. He reckoned that Fiendfyre would take care of a chimera if it could take care of a Horcrux. And all his anger and all his fear and all his desire to survive centered into a glimmering point on the end of the wand that he sent flying with a snarled, “Ignis inferiae!”

The blast of fire that unfolded from his wand was deeper, darker in color than the fires he’d managed to conjure in the Appearing-and-Disappearing Room, and had teeth and claws and fangs all along its edges. Harry was thinking hysterically, Die, chimera, die, and maybe that fueled the fire, too, the way the book said it would. Suddenly a blazing chimera five meters tall was confronting Aurelia, mouth opening and a long tongue that was also a tongue of fire curling out, around one of her legs.

Aurelia began to burn.

Her scream was unearthly. So was the scream from Tom’s throat. Harry had to bring down one of the smaller chimeras hastily so that it was between him and Tom, and while the spirit in his body seemed to want to kill Harry, it also wasn’t going to fling itself into the flames. It danced back and forth along the edges, screaming at him.

Harry didn’t bother listening. He had to turn back to the battle unfolding between his fiery chimera and Aurelia.

Aurelia was snarling, clamping her mouth around the back of her opponent’s neck, but it almost didn’t matter, Harry saw. There was nothing solid for her to grab, just pure magic and shifting incandescence. Everywhere the Fiendfyre touched her, she ignited, and soon her snarls of pain were drowning out the crackling of the spell.

Harry lifted his wand, driving the chimera higher and faster when it seemed that Aurelia might spring into the air and get over it to kill him. Aurelia gave one more scream and completely combusted, a wash of heat and light that drove Harry back several paces with his arm folded over his eyes.

Tom screamed, too, or rather Ginny did, and began raving in Leonistongue. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

Harry spun to face her—him—it—the Horcrux, and called the Fiendfyre back in towards his body. It came, prancing and tame, though with an edge that told Harry it would probably start fighting him any minute. Harry ringed himself with fire, and Tom stood just outside it, eyes gleaming and catching the light like a predator’s.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Ginny screamed at him.

Harry didn’t bother answering. He was too busy considering what he would do when he had to let the fire go, since Ginny would probably drive Tom to attack him and Harry wouldn’t be in great shape magically to stop her.

“You’ve destroyed a Horcrux! My Horcrux! Aurelia was my Horcrux!” Ginny waved Tom’s arm madly up and down in the direction of what looked like mostly fallen ash. The Fiendfyre had burned even Aurelia’s bones, Harry saw. “I am going to kill you! Kill you and rip your body apart!”

That decided Harry. He would be too tired to do anything if he kept the fire up for much longer, even though it also seemed like his best protection against the insane spirit. He released it with a little gasp.

Tom immediately charged him.

“Impedimenta,” Harry gasped, and the jinx coiled around Tom’s ankles and did its work. He went sprawling on the ground, long enough for Harry to aim a Stunner at him. He almost immediately went still.

Harry dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around himself, gasping. He felt hollow in a way that he never had before, even when he’d fought Malfoy in a duel last year that had taken at least ten minutes. The Fiendfyre seemed to have pulled half his magic into itself and burned all the more brightly and quickly for it.

His gaze fell on Tom’s wand, which had sung with power so easily in his hand and given him no feelings of resentment or pushiness.

Maybe I succeeded at the Fiendfyre because I was using Tom’s wand and it’s more destructive or something.

Harry shook his head. He really had no idea. It was hard to absorb that he’d apparently destroyed a second Horcrux, too. Right now, he just wanted to get out of here and figure out how to drive Ginny out of Tom’s body.

*

Tom opened his eyes, and began to gasp and choke. “Harry!”

“I’m here.”

Tom rolled over on his side and stared up at Harry, who was kneeling next to him on the floor of what looked like the Slytherin common room. By the fact that it was deserted, though, Tom guessed that it was a configuration of the Appearing-and-Disappearing Room that Harry had formed to look like their common room.

“She possessed me,” Tom whispered. “I couldn’t stop her—I couldn’t—”

“Shh. I know. It’s all right now.”

“How is it all right?” Tom demanded, rolling so that he came up on one elbow. He promptly wavered and almost fell back, except Harry caught him and helped him sit all the way up. Tom would have been planning to Memory Charm the person involved if it were anyone but Harry, who just looked at him in concern, without pity. “She possessed me—and—”

“I knew you were possessed, but I couldn’t stop her in time. Our wands connected when I tried to use a Stunner on you and she tried to use one on me. Then she knocked me unconscious and took me down into the Chamber of Courage.”

“What was it like?” Tom was immediately distracted.

Harry laughed a bit. “Big. Open. Right across the hall from us, behind that tapestry of the trolls.” Tom swore at himself softly, but Harry ignored that. “It had carved lions all over the place. And a really big chimera in it that she was petting and calling Aurelia.”

“Where is the chimera now?” Tom demanded.

“Dead.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. Harry didn’t sound concerned when he said that. He sounded almost dead, himself. And he was crouching beside Tom with his own wand dangling from his hand and staring straight ahead, not meeting Tom’s eyes after he initially woke up.

“What happened?”

Harry took a deep breath and turned to look at Tom. “I found the destructive fire spell that the Horcrux book talked about. But it said that casting it would give you nightmares and make you more callous and—basically hurt the caster. I didn’t want you to be hurt. So I’ve been learning to cast it on my own, but it didn’t work until—I was down in the Chamber. I tried to call my wand to me, but it didn’t come. I didn’t find it until we got back up to the corridor. So I managed to take your wand away from—her—and cast the fire spell with it. It killed the chimera. Turns out she was a Horcrux, too.” Harry shut his eyes.

Tom stared at him. All he could feel were tumbling emotions: relief that Harry was okay, amazement at what he had done, and boiling resentment that he had been left out of that kind of secret because Harry had been worried about him. Like Tom was a little kid or something.

“Listen to me,” Tom said quietly. “You tell me about this next time. Or we are done as friends. Do you hear me, Harry? I don’t want to be left out of anything you think is important again. That’s the kind of bollocks my family pulls.”

Harry’s eyes widened. He probably wouldn’t have got it without the comparison to Tom’s family, Tom thought crossly, although it was also true that Tom didn’t often swear.

Now it just remained to be seen whether losing Tom’s friendship was enough of a threat for Harry to tell the truth next time.

It seemed to be, because Harry was nodding shakily. “Yeah, Tom—I get it. I just—didn’t know how to destroy the Horcrux except using Fiendfyre, and when we came up here, you were so still, but your eyes opened once, and I could see her looking out of them at me—” He shuddered.

Tom sighed. “You already destroyed the diary, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know any other way to keep her from possessing you!” Harry snapped, coiling up like a serpent. “And you immediately twitched and sighed when it was destroyed, and I asked this room to create a place that could resist Fiendfyre, the same way I did when I was practicing—”

“Yes, fine,” Tom said, not entirely displeased to have missed the destruction of the diary. He still didn’t know how Ginny had possessed him when he’d been careful never to touch the diary since Christmas, and he’d never been alone with it in the configuration of the room that imprisoned it, either. He didn’t know for sure that he could have resisted picking it up or defending it if he’d been there when Harry destroyed it.

And that left him free to feel another emotion that he hadn’t known for sure he would ever feel. He reached out and put a hand on Harry’s arm, and made Harry look at him with miserable eyes.

“Thank you,” Tom said. “For coming for me and not damaging me in the Chamber and destroying the diary Horcrux. No one else would have done that for me.” He was absolutely sure of that. Ron would just have gone and whinged to the professors, and probably by then, the chimera would have been munching on Tom’s bones.

Well, the twins might have tried to rescue him. But they couldn’t have used Tom’s wand, or done anything to kill the chimera without the extensive Fiendfyre practice that it sounded like Harry had had.

Merlin, they might have not taken it seriously in time, either, and the chimera would have munched their bones, too.

“Thanks,” Harry whispered, and his eyes looked a little less haunted. He sighed. “I’m lucky, I know. And you’re more than lucky. But I just—you’re right. I should have trusted you with the secret.” He shook his head. “I suppose I’m just not used to trusting anyone with anything. Look at the Dursleys.”

“Dursleys?” Tom vaguely recognized that as the name of the Muggles Harry lived with, but he didn’t remember ever hearing Harry talk about them in any detail.

And the thought he’d had a few months ago came back. Why not? Harry knew the names of all Tom’s family members, even Bill and Charlie, whom he’d never actually met. Tom had talked about them if only to explain why he’d stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas and the like. Why had Harry never mentioned his relatives? Racking his brain, Tom discovered that he wasn’t even sure how many of them there were or exactly what their relationship was to Harry. There was an uncle, wasn’t there? Maybe an aunt.

Harry froze. Then he shook his head. “Never mind,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “I suppose you should go to the hospital wing, but—I really don’t know what we would tell Madam Pomfrey—”

“Harry.” Tom gripped his arm again. “You need to make it up to me that you went off and practiced Fiendfyre without me.”

Harry stared at him, then sighed. “Fine. But I need another wand oath.”

Tom gave it without a problem. In fact, Harry was the one who flinched, as if he had been exhausted by the simple magic of that.

“The Dursleys—don’t like me. They’re magic-hating Muggles to the extreme.” Harry flicked his hand out to the side, still avoiding Tom’s eyes. “They didn’t tell me anything about me being a wizard until they were forced to, because Hagrid showed up with my Hogwarts letter after they took it away from me and kept taking it away from me when more showed up. They—look, they don’t do this anymore.”

“I want to know everything,” Tom said softly. And he did. He was as greedy for knowledge about Harry as he’d ever been for knowledge about Horcruxes or Fiendfyre or Ginny’s magical theory explanations.

Harry met his eyes. “They had me sleep in a cupboard for ten years. Until I got my Hogwarts letter addressed to it and they thought wizards might be watching them.”

Tom’s world burned, froze, and shattered. He stared at Harry with wide, disbelieving eyes, but although Harry looked miserable again, he didn’t look like he was lying.

Tom had never had to endure that. He hated most of his family, but he shared a room with Ron, and he had a bed. He had always thought that that, and his parents’ eternal disappointment that he wasn’t born a girl, was the worst anyone could ever endure.

Now, he knew it wasn’t.

He stared at Harry, light-headed with something it took him a long moment to identify. It was rage. He had never felt it like that before, so light and hot that it filled his body as if it was air.

“I’ll kill them for you,” he whispered. “I’ll kill them.”

Harry took a deep breath and shook his head. “I asked Dumbledore about them, and he said I had to stay there,” he said. “If you kill them, he’ll know, and I have no idea where he’ll put me next. Maybe with someone he thinks can control me or something. Maybe with someone who’ll try worse.” Harry closed his eyes. “But thank you for wanting to.”

Tom closed his fists and opened them, again and again. He was restless with the need to do something, to hurt someone, to kill them the way the Muggles should have died the instant they raised a hand to Harry.

He looked back at Harry, who was giving him a weary smile. And Tom knew, maybe from the way the corners of Harry’s smile turned down, something that he hadn’t been sure of a moment ago. “That’s not all they did, is it?” he asked.

Harry licked his lips. “No.”

“Tell me,” Tom said, almost purring it as he slid up beside Harry. “You owe me, remember?” He touched Harry’s shoulder. He thought Harry probably also wanted to tell someone. But he wouldn’t have admitted that aloud any more than Tom would have admitted his problems with his family to just anyone.

“All right,” Harry whispered, not looking at him. “They don’t give me food, sometimes. They make me do a lot of chores. My cousin beats me up. My aunt—well, she’s never beaten me or anything, but she’s slapped me, and swung a frying pan at me a few times.”

Tom thought of the heavy pans his mother used, and his rage came back again. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, reminding himself that Harry didn’t want Tom to hurt his relatives, not because he was some bleeding heart but because it would alert Dumbledore. That was a good reason, Tom could admit. That was a good reason to hold back.

“I’ll send you food under a Preservation Charm,” Tom whispered. “I can get Mother to cast it, and she’ll just think I want some extra food for when I’m going outside and reading for a long time.”

Harry gave him a long, assessing look that made Tom’s hands close again, but only because Harry should have been able to trust, and he wasn’t. Then he smiled. “Thanks,” he said simply.

Tom nodded. He didn’t think even that was everything, even now, but he had pressed Harry as far as it seemed he was willing to go. And he knew that he knew more of Harry’s secrets than anything else.

Well, maybe Ron had had some idea. But Ron obviously hadn’t had the proper reaction, since the Dursleys were still alive.

Someday, Tom would kill them. And he would do it with Harry’s eyes on him, he was sure.

*

“What’s this, Harry?”

“That’s what was causing the attacks from the Chamber of Courage. Sir. The Lady Firebrand’s Horcrux.”

From the way Dumbledore went still, Harry was sure that he had heard of them. But he reached out and picked up the diary, turning it back and forth. Harry had coaxed the Fiendfyre to leave enough of the diary that it was still recognizable as a book, though essentially the covers were a binding holding together ash instead of pages.

It had been easier to cast Fiendfyre the second time. And he had had a nightmare that night in which he imagined fiery chimeras devouring Tom.

Harry tried not to think of that.

“Where did you hear the word Horcrux, my boy? That is a tainted Dark Art that I would not have you—”

“You’re more concerned about that than you are about knowing that this was in the school,” Harry said quietly. “Or are you just upset that it turned out to be the Gryffindor Dark Lady after all and not a Slytherin you can blame? Sir.”

Dumbledore stared at him in silence. Harry stared back. He felt dusty and hollow and exhausted, still, although it was more than a day since he’d defeated the chimera and destroyed the diary Horcrux. He was just—left. Gone. Used-up.

And Dumbledore acted as if Harry had been the one who had done something wrong.

“You shouldn’t need to acquire that sort of knowledge as a schoolboy,” Dumbledore said, which Harry frankly thought was weak.

“But I did. Now, do you want to know the story, or do you want to keep sitting there and thinking that you know better than anyone else and that it’s a shame you can’t blame a nasty Slytherin?”

“You are trying my patience, Mr. Potter.”

Frankly, Harry didn’t care. They held a silent staring contest until Dumbledore nodded, probably meaning to look gracious about it. But his act didn’t work on Harry and never would again.

In short, choppy sentences, Harry told the truth, and Dumbledore did at least look genuinely horrified when Harry described the chimera and the flames that Harry had wielded to bring her down. His face tightened again, however, when Harry described destroying the diary Horcrux.

“Why did you not bring it to me?” he asked.

“How was I supposed to know that you would believe me?” Harry asked wearily. “That you wouldn’t start writing in it and getting possessed by it? She could have done a lot worse with you than she did with Tom.”

Dumbledore stared at him. Then he shook his head and murmured, “I wonder when I lost your trust, Harry.”

“When I learned that you were the one who left me with my abusive relatives. Sir.”

Dumbledore’s face tightened again. “I am afraid that I cannot recognize your gesture to the whole school,” he said, with false politeness. “Not without naming the student who was possessed by the Horcrux, at least.”

“It’ll be enough if you tell them that the Chamber of Courage is closed forever and the Heir of Gryffindor isn’t coming back. Imply that you defeated her yourself, if you want to. I don’t really care.” Harry paused to take a ragged breath. “And tell me what Ginny’s last name was. She wouldn’t reveal it to Tom.”

“Her name was Wesley when she came to school, but she believed, and I came to believe as well, that her true name should have been Ginny Weasley.”

Harry stared at him, sick with shock. Then he nodded and stood. He wondered for a second if he should tell Tom that truth.

Then he dismissed the notion. Keeping it from Tom would only damage their relationship. And he couldn’t imagine Tom not wanting to know.

*

Weasley. The Dark Lady was a Weasley. Is a Weasley.

Tom stared out the window of the train compartment he was sitting in with Harry, and wondered how much difference it would have made to grow up knowing that. Then he shrugged a little. Probably not that much. Obviously his family, if they even knew the truth, were committed to being as different from the Dark Lady as possible.

But it was something for Tom to think about, that at one time his family line had been no stranger to magical power and burning ambition.

Perhaps they could be like that again, he thought, and turned around to catch Harry’s eye. Harry seemed to relax with a little smile, probably glad that Tom wasn’t having too negative a reaction to the news.

Tom wasn’t sure he wanted to explain his reactions right now, so he smiled and took out his Exploding Snap cards. “Want to play?”

“You hate that game,” Harry said.

“Not when I’m playing it with you,” Tom said simply.

When he saw Harry’s brilliant smile, he renewed his determination to oppose the Dark Lady, and not just because of what her Horcrux had done to him. She wanted to kill Harry. And that wasn’t to be permitted.

Harry was Tom’s. Was going to be forever.

The End.