lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2021-12-13 09:20 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2021-12-13 09:20 pm
Entry tags:
[Solstitial Shorts]: A Ruby Silence, Harry/Tom Riddle, PG-13
Title: A Ruby Silence
Pairing: Harry/Tom
Content Notes: Master of Death Harry, dimension travel, gore, references to minor character deaths and murder, soulmate dimension
Rating: PG-13
Riddle awaited him on a battlefield hot with gore.
Harry walked quietly towards him, his cloak streaming behind him like a silvery banner in the air. It looked a little like Snape’s robes tended to in all the universes Harry had visited so far, but not because Harry had willed it to. It was just that the Cloak of Invisibility tended to react like that when the Master of Death faced powerful enemies, ready to wrap around him at a moment’s notice and hide him from those enemies.
Riddle turned to face him. Harry watched his wand, which was brilliant yew here, as it was most of the time. In the last dimension, though, it had been birch. He remembered that.
Riddle’s appearance was probably the thing that varied the most about these confrontations. This one had pale skin, but not a monstrous appearance, although his cheeks were thin and hollow, as if something had been eating them away from the inside. His dark hair was scarred with silver here and there, and his eyes shone like rubies in the dark.
It was night when they met. It usually was.
Harry halted in front of him, and let Riddle look his fill. He knew rumors about him would have reached Riddle when Harry started killing his Death Eaters. Harry would be called away from this dimension before much longer, sent to conquer another Voldemort in another world, but he’d like to make sure this one didn’t have too many Dark wizards left to run around.
“I have your symbol.”
Harry blinked, politely baffled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Riddle kept his wand leveled on Harry with his right hand while he drew back his dark robes from his chest with his left. There was a symbol etched in black ink over his heart. It was the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, not that Harry needed to squint much to make it out. All incarnations of his symbol sang to him with the same voice of power.
“Huh. Nice. Did you go to a Muggle tattoo artist to have it done?”
Riddle stared at him, eyes more furious than Harry had seen them in several dozen worlds. Harry grinned at him, all teeth. They were too close to Hogwarts for his liking. They could start dueling now, and then he could kill Riddle and go on his merry way to another dimension.
“It is the symbol of the one who will complete me,” Riddle hissed. “My soulmate. How can you not know this?”
Harry blinked a little more. He hadn’t been in one of those worlds in—probably at least a few months, travel-time. They seemed to be rarer than worlds like his own, where Voldemort was simply the crazed madman who despised love.
“I don’t come from a world like that,” Harry admitted with a shrug, ignoring the way that Riddle’s gaze sharpened at the Parseltongue. That made him obsessive a lot of the time. But Harry didn’t belong to anyone except the Deathly Hallows, so he would have to get over it. “Are you sure that that mark doesn’t show your soulmate is Grindelwald, or Dumbledore? They were seeking the Hallows at one point in their lives. And they’re both still alive here, I think.”
“You bear my mark.”
“No, I don’t. Nothing like a skull or a snake anywhere on me.” There had been one world where Death Eaters had captured Harry when he nearly collapsed due to magical exhaustion and threatened to brand the Mark on him, but they hadn’t succeeded. And the Hallows would probably have removed it anyway. They were jealous of their own.
“The first spell I ever performed was to hurl a bolt of lightning.”
Harry paused. That scar on his forehead had never faded, either, the only thing other than the cloak, stone, and wand to accompany him from world to world.
Riddle leaned forwards. “You are mine. I know what you are, Master of Death. Parseltongue-speaker. Holder of my soul. I performed a divination that told me all about you.”
“Then it told you how many times I’ve been your doom.”
“Do you think I care about them? They were weak reflections of me, shadows of my power.” Riddle hissed as if something was rattling around inside his skull. “And the divination I performed told me another thing. That you are tired of defeating them, of going from world to world with no place to call your own.”
Harry stared at him. Riddle just watched him, and since no one else alive was in their immediate vicinity—really, Harry could always tell—Harry let himself think about it.
He went from dimension to dimension, world to world, and he never made any connections there. He was always there for only one purpose: to try and save the people in it from Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Sometimes he killed a lot of people, sometimes only Voldemort, and then he was off again, snatched through space or whatever really lay between worlds. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken with someone about his past, or his feelings, or his likes and dislikes. He could barely remember the last time he’d eaten a full meal, or slept a full night. He still liked doing those things; he just didn’t need to anymore.
He finally shrugged. “I am a bit tired,” he finally admitted. “But I don’t see what you expect me to do about it. I’m in service to Death, to the Hallows, and they want me to continue killing you across every world that exists.”
“Did they ever tell you that you could never stop?”
They hadn’t, as a matter of fact. Harry didn’t have conversations with the Hallows, as such. He just received general impressions from them, such as protectiveness or gleeful desire to cause agony.
Harry held up his right hand, where the silver band set with the Resurrection Stone rested, and lifted the Elder Wand out of his holster. He ignored Riddle’s obsessive stare as he did. He’d ignored a lot worse. The Cloak billowed closer. Harry spoke to them aloud, not knowing any other way. “What do you think?”
The Wand pushed its desire for destruction at him. The Stone radiated a cold, calm patience. The Cloak gave him its longing to wrap him up and keep him safe forever.
“Do I have to kill him?”
The Wand projected a sort of homicidal intent that pointed into the distance. The Stone and the Cloak were silent. Harry swallowed.
The Elder Wand doesn’t care who it kills, as long as it kills someone.
“Do I have to go to another world?”
The Cloak embraced him and nuzzled against his neck and back. The Stone and the Wand were silent.
If they want me to be happy…
“Do I owe it to my parents and the others he destroyed?”
Harry spoke directly to the Stone this time. It stirred once on his finger, and then pulsed a deadening sort of frost down his arm. The Cloak didn’t move. The Wand was silent.
No.
Harry blinked slowly, looking around the battlefield. They were in the ruins of Hogsmeade, but a Hogsmeade shattered and destroyed, houses mere rubble, flames climbing towards the sky. Bodies lay all around them. Dried blood coated Riddle’s legs and robe hems to the height of a few inches.
Harry had come here to avenge them, the way he had so many times. But…
He had killed more than a hundred versions of Voldemort before this, in as many worlds.
Surely he had avenged them?
Harry looked back at Riddle, who looked about ready to start panting. Harry sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right. You are mine.”
“The thing is,” Harry said, pointing his finger at Riddle, “I could never be with someone who insists on causing this kind of death. You’ll need to cut back on it and stop killing innocent people. Kill dangerous magical creatures, if you want. Kill some of your own Death Eaters. Kill in self-defense. Kill Muggle murderers. But you have to stop the genocide.”
Riddle moved a slow step forwards. Harry watched him, and couldn’t deny the hope that was making his heart beat faster. One reason that he hadn’t tried to form connections in the worlds he’d passed through was that he knew no one would understand him anyway. No one else was immortal. No one else knew how death stirred and rose in him like a dragon.
Riddle was. Riddle did.
And it was true that he was the only one Harry had ever met who bore a soul-mark that might have been Harry’s. (And Harry didn’t really think it was either Dumbledore’s or Grindelwald’s, despite what he’d said).
And it was true…
The lightning bolt scar had never faded. Even Harry’s basilisk bite scar had got lighter and fainter as he traveled from world to world. The lightning bolt never had.
Riddle halted in front of him and nodded in as deep a bow as Harry thought he would get. “Master of Death. Might I know your name? That is one thing the divination hid from me.”
Harry smiled a little. “Harry Potter.”
“My name is Tom.”
Harry’s smile widened a little more. He hadn’t ever met a Voldemort who didn’t deny and despise his name, either. Maybe Harry was the only person Riddle would ever claim it with, but that he could was an excellent sign.
Riddle leaned forwards, eyes flickering like living rubies from Harry’s forehead to his lips. Harry answered the implied question and lifted his head. Riddle was taller than Harry, as he had been in all the worlds Harry had ever traveled to, but Harry could live with that.
Their lips met, and something that had been roaring endlessly in Harry, something he hadn’t noticed, crashed to a halt. They kissed in silence, while all around them blood shone like rubies, and Riddle’s eyes did the same.
It wasn’t right. Nothing could make what had happened right, either what Riddle had done or the price Harry had paid for picking up the Hallows.
But, Harry thought as he closed his eyes and luxuriated in the first human touch he had received in countless years, it might be enough.
Pairing: Harry/Tom
Content Notes: Master of Death Harry, dimension travel, gore, references to minor character deaths and murder, soulmate dimension
Rating: PG-13
Riddle awaited him on a battlefield hot with gore.
Harry walked quietly towards him, his cloak streaming behind him like a silvery banner in the air. It looked a little like Snape’s robes tended to in all the universes Harry had visited so far, but not because Harry had willed it to. It was just that the Cloak of Invisibility tended to react like that when the Master of Death faced powerful enemies, ready to wrap around him at a moment’s notice and hide him from those enemies.
Riddle turned to face him. Harry watched his wand, which was brilliant yew here, as it was most of the time. In the last dimension, though, it had been birch. He remembered that.
Riddle’s appearance was probably the thing that varied the most about these confrontations. This one had pale skin, but not a monstrous appearance, although his cheeks were thin and hollow, as if something had been eating them away from the inside. His dark hair was scarred with silver here and there, and his eyes shone like rubies in the dark.
It was night when they met. It usually was.
Harry halted in front of him, and let Riddle look his fill. He knew rumors about him would have reached Riddle when Harry started killing his Death Eaters. Harry would be called away from this dimension before much longer, sent to conquer another Voldemort in another world, but he’d like to make sure this one didn’t have too many Dark wizards left to run around.
“I have your symbol.”
Harry blinked, politely baffled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Riddle kept his wand leveled on Harry with his right hand while he drew back his dark robes from his chest with his left. There was a symbol etched in black ink over his heart. It was the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, not that Harry needed to squint much to make it out. All incarnations of his symbol sang to him with the same voice of power.
“Huh. Nice. Did you go to a Muggle tattoo artist to have it done?”
Riddle stared at him, eyes more furious than Harry had seen them in several dozen worlds. Harry grinned at him, all teeth. They were too close to Hogwarts for his liking. They could start dueling now, and then he could kill Riddle and go on his merry way to another dimension.
“It is the symbol of the one who will complete me,” Riddle hissed. “My soulmate. How can you not know this?”
Harry blinked a little more. He hadn’t been in one of those worlds in—probably at least a few months, travel-time. They seemed to be rarer than worlds like his own, where Voldemort was simply the crazed madman who despised love.
“I don’t come from a world like that,” Harry admitted with a shrug, ignoring the way that Riddle’s gaze sharpened at the Parseltongue. That made him obsessive a lot of the time. But Harry didn’t belong to anyone except the Deathly Hallows, so he would have to get over it. “Are you sure that that mark doesn’t show your soulmate is Grindelwald, or Dumbledore? They were seeking the Hallows at one point in their lives. And they’re both still alive here, I think.”
“You bear my mark.”
“No, I don’t. Nothing like a skull or a snake anywhere on me.” There had been one world where Death Eaters had captured Harry when he nearly collapsed due to magical exhaustion and threatened to brand the Mark on him, but they hadn’t succeeded. And the Hallows would probably have removed it anyway. They were jealous of their own.
“The first spell I ever performed was to hurl a bolt of lightning.”
Harry paused. That scar on his forehead had never faded, either, the only thing other than the cloak, stone, and wand to accompany him from world to world.
Riddle leaned forwards. “You are mine. I know what you are, Master of Death. Parseltongue-speaker. Holder of my soul. I performed a divination that told me all about you.”
“Then it told you how many times I’ve been your doom.”
“Do you think I care about them? They were weak reflections of me, shadows of my power.” Riddle hissed as if something was rattling around inside his skull. “And the divination I performed told me another thing. That you are tired of defeating them, of going from world to world with no place to call your own.”
Harry stared at him. Riddle just watched him, and since no one else alive was in their immediate vicinity—really, Harry could always tell—Harry let himself think about it.
He went from dimension to dimension, world to world, and he never made any connections there. He was always there for only one purpose: to try and save the people in it from Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Sometimes he killed a lot of people, sometimes only Voldemort, and then he was off again, snatched through space or whatever really lay between worlds. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken with someone about his past, or his feelings, or his likes and dislikes. He could barely remember the last time he’d eaten a full meal, or slept a full night. He still liked doing those things; he just didn’t need to anymore.
He finally shrugged. “I am a bit tired,” he finally admitted. “But I don’t see what you expect me to do about it. I’m in service to Death, to the Hallows, and they want me to continue killing you across every world that exists.”
“Did they ever tell you that you could never stop?”
They hadn’t, as a matter of fact. Harry didn’t have conversations with the Hallows, as such. He just received general impressions from them, such as protectiveness or gleeful desire to cause agony.
Harry held up his right hand, where the silver band set with the Resurrection Stone rested, and lifted the Elder Wand out of his holster. He ignored Riddle’s obsessive stare as he did. He’d ignored a lot worse. The Cloak billowed closer. Harry spoke to them aloud, not knowing any other way. “What do you think?”
The Wand pushed its desire for destruction at him. The Stone radiated a cold, calm patience. The Cloak gave him its longing to wrap him up and keep him safe forever.
“Do I have to kill him?”
The Wand projected a sort of homicidal intent that pointed into the distance. The Stone and the Cloak were silent. Harry swallowed.
The Elder Wand doesn’t care who it kills, as long as it kills someone.
“Do I have to go to another world?”
The Cloak embraced him and nuzzled against his neck and back. The Stone and the Wand were silent.
If they want me to be happy…
“Do I owe it to my parents and the others he destroyed?”
Harry spoke directly to the Stone this time. It stirred once on his finger, and then pulsed a deadening sort of frost down his arm. The Cloak didn’t move. The Wand was silent.
No.
Harry blinked slowly, looking around the battlefield. They were in the ruins of Hogsmeade, but a Hogsmeade shattered and destroyed, houses mere rubble, flames climbing towards the sky. Bodies lay all around them. Dried blood coated Riddle’s legs and robe hems to the height of a few inches.
Harry had come here to avenge them, the way he had so many times. But…
He had killed more than a hundred versions of Voldemort before this, in as many worlds.
Surely he had avenged them?
Harry looked back at Riddle, who looked about ready to start panting. Harry sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right. You are mine.”
“The thing is,” Harry said, pointing his finger at Riddle, “I could never be with someone who insists on causing this kind of death. You’ll need to cut back on it and stop killing innocent people. Kill dangerous magical creatures, if you want. Kill some of your own Death Eaters. Kill in self-defense. Kill Muggle murderers. But you have to stop the genocide.”
Riddle moved a slow step forwards. Harry watched him, and couldn’t deny the hope that was making his heart beat faster. One reason that he hadn’t tried to form connections in the worlds he’d passed through was that he knew no one would understand him anyway. No one else was immortal. No one else knew how death stirred and rose in him like a dragon.
Riddle was. Riddle did.
And it was true that he was the only one Harry had ever met who bore a soul-mark that might have been Harry’s. (And Harry didn’t really think it was either Dumbledore’s or Grindelwald’s, despite what he’d said).
And it was true…
The lightning bolt scar had never faded. Even Harry’s basilisk bite scar had got lighter and fainter as he traveled from world to world. The lightning bolt never had.
Riddle halted in front of him and nodded in as deep a bow as Harry thought he would get. “Master of Death. Might I know your name? That is one thing the divination hid from me.”
Harry smiled a little. “Harry Potter.”
“My name is Tom.”
Harry’s smile widened a little more. He hadn’t ever met a Voldemort who didn’t deny and despise his name, either. Maybe Harry was the only person Riddle would ever claim it with, but that he could was an excellent sign.
Riddle leaned forwards, eyes flickering like living rubies from Harry’s forehead to his lips. Harry answered the implied question and lifted his head. Riddle was taller than Harry, as he had been in all the worlds Harry had ever traveled to, but Harry could live with that.
Their lips met, and something that had been roaring endlessly in Harry, something he hadn’t noticed, crashed to a halt. They kissed in silence, while all around them blood shone like rubies, and Riddle’s eyes did the same.
It wasn’t right. Nothing could make what had happened right, either what Riddle had done or the price Harry had paid for picking up the Hallows.
But, Harry thought as he closed his eyes and luxuriated in the first human touch he had received in countless years, it might be enough.