Chapter Thirty-Nine of 'His Darkest Devotion'- Announcements

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Chapter Thirty-Nine—Announcements

Albus leaned back against the wall in the Leaky Cauldron. His disguises were succeeding so far. He had cut his beard and his hair and used a spell that would make his eyes appear rheumy and red-rimmed, his hair grey and grizzled. Keeping to ordinary robes did the rest.

He was exhausted. He was having more trouble locating Gellert than he’d thought he ever could, given that he knew which direction his bondmate was in. He would draw near, and feel that pulse, and then it would dim again.

Albus missed him. He wanted Gellert back to stand at his side, and to make sure that neither of them did anything wrong in their pursuit of justice.

Owls came sweeping into the pub with the Daily Prophet. Albus didn’t dare have anything like a subscription tied to this identity, but he did lean over and pick up a paper after one of the customers who’d received it simply left it sitting on the table.

He turned the paper to the front page and felt as if he’d taken a blow to the head.

MINISTER RIDDLE AND SOULMATE ANNOUNCE DESIRE TO PURSUE IMMORTALITY!

Albus held the newspaper in loosely shaking hands until his heart stopped beating quite so frantically. Then he began to read. The photograph on the front page was one he remembered seeing before, of Riddle standing with his arm around Harry near the doors of the Wizengamot chamber and Harry staring up at him in adoration.

Where did I go wrong? Why did I listen to Harry’s pleas to go to the Ministry and work near his soulmate? So much of this might have been avoided.

Minister Tom Riddle announced today that he fully believes he and his soulmate, Harry Potter, possess enough magic to become immortal. “We’re the most powerful pair I’ve heard about in years,” he explained to this reporter. “Yes, no pair has become immortal for centuries, but they wouldn’t have tried if they didn’t have the power, either.”

The scones Albus had eaten for breakfast were threatening to come back up his throat. He closed his eyes and sat there for a few minutes, holding the paper, then forced himself to open his eyes and continue reading, skimming a bit.

The next paragraph that leaped out at him was one near the end of the article.

“I lost time with my soulmate because the Order of the Phoenix convinced him to hide his mark,” said Minister Riddle in response to a question. “I would have him for the rest of our lives, for decades, for centuries. No time would be enough to spend with my darling Harry.”

Albus leaned his head back and laughed in despair.

“Mate? You all right?”

That was a one-eyed warlock squinting at him from the next table. Albus coughed again, making sure his breakfast was definitely not making a reappearance, and managed to nod. The warlock shrugged and turned back to a game of chess he was apparently playing against himself.

They want to be immortal. Or Tom does, and he convinced Harry.

Albus drained the last of his mug and reached into his robe pocket for the Sickles he owed. He had to get moving. He had to find either Gellert or the phoenix who had revealed the truth of the future to him as soon as possible. Tom and Harry could not be allowed to become immortal. It would doom the world.

*

“Harry? Can we talk?”

Lily hated the wary expression on Harry’s face as he stepped into the flat. But still, he had come in response to James’s owl, and even if he was surprised to see only her and not both of them there, he nodded. “Sure.”

Lily led him to the kitchen table and sat down on the opposite side from him. Harry took his seat and looked at her with a polite expression.

Lily hated it. It looked as if everything that made Harry himself were locked out of sight under a bright, smooth, shiny surface, and she wondered if Riddle had encouraged him to do that or if it was simply a tactic that Harry had adopted on his own.

“I wanted to say how sorry I am.”

“For what?”

“For—encouraging you to hide your soul-mark all these years.” Lily watched as her hands twisted on the table in front of her. She would have liked a cup of tea to hide her face from Harry, but because it would have been hiding, she’d decided to forego it. “Your father and I were upset by the mark you were born with, but we had no right to make you feel evil because of it or as if we hated you. Neither is true.”

Harry stirred for a moment, opened his mouth, and then shut it. Lily sneaked another glance at him. Harry’s face had a bit more emotion to it this time, but Lily didn’t know what it was.

James pushed concern at her down the bond. Lily sent light and gentleness back. So far, Harry hadn’t yelled at her or stormed out or said that he never wanted to see them again. Lily had to give him a chance to absorb the apology they were, in fact, offering.

Finally, Harry took a deep breath and muttered, “Do you still feel like Tom is evil?”

That had been one of the questions James had hoped he wouldn’t ask, but which Lily had known they would have to answer. She took a deep breath, held it for a second, and then let it out and nodded.

“Why? Is it just leftover Dumbledore propaganda?”

“You looked at his voting record. I did the same thing. Maybe he’s changed his mind and decided to support some better things because you want him to, Harry, but in the past, what he supported…who’s to say that he won’t go back there, if you end your bond with him or leave him?”

“I won’t.”

“None of us know what the future holds, Harry.”

For a second, Harry’s eyes glinted, as if he was going to ask a question or make a joke. Then he swallowed whatever he would have said, and smiled at Lily, almost back to the motionless polite one. “I know enough to know about this. I won’t leave Tom or turn my back on him.”

Lily tightened her fingers on each other, but despite what she could feel James whispering in the back of her mind, she could tell it would do no good to argue with Harry about it. She nodded and tried to look agreeable. “All right. But aren’t you concerned about the nature of someone who basically changed his politics on a whim to whatever he felt like supporting at the time? Even his soulmate probably can’t convince him to be firm on a point of principle, when he's rejected those for so many years.”

Harry shrugged. “He’s faithful to me, even if not to principles. He won’t do anything I totally disapprove of. And we’re going to leave politics after Dumbledore is defeated.”

Lily felt as though someone had just hit the chair beneath her and dropped her on the floor. “What?” she asked faintly, while James asked an insistent question in her mind about whether she was all right.

“What?”

“I—you managed to persuade him to leave politics?”

Harry snorted a little. “It didn’t need that much persuasion. One of the main reasons he entered politics was to be able to look for his soulmate and keep an eye on the people who came to work for the Ministry. He doesn’t need to do that anymore. The other reason is because he likes having power, but he knows that I wouldn’t be content to do that for the rest of my life. So we both agreed that we’d leaves when Dumbledore was defeated.”

Lily shook her head slowly. That didn’t fit at all with the image she had of Riddle as a ruthless Dark Lord who would do anything to remain in office and had only become Minister in the first place to take his vengeance on a world he believed had denied him his soulmate.

I don’t like it, James murmured.

Neither do I, Lily said, and glanced at Harry. He had his head tilted, lips moving a little, as if he was answering an inaudible query from his own soulmate.

“What?” Harry added, as he opened his eyes and noticed her attention.

“Riddle is listening to this?”

“Of course. I assume Dad is, too, from the other end of your bond.”

“That’s—different,” Lily said, and then felt foolish for saying so, particularly when she watched Harry’s eyes narrow and his lips part in something that wasn’t a smile.

“Look,” Harry said gently, “I accept your apology. I accept that you’re upset about the way you raised me, and sorry for it. And I accept that you won’t be comfortable around Tom for a long time, if ever.

“But you aren’t going to persuade me to leave him. You aren’t going to persuade me to act as a perfect chain on his conscience in the way you want. He’d do a lot to oblige me, but he won’t listen to my parents dictating my course of action.”

Lily twisted her hands together again. She had thought about that, she realized, although she and James hadn’t discussed it. If Riddle really was as devoted to Harry as it looked like, they’d thought that perhaps they could influence Riddle to pass laws more favorable to Muggleborns and the like through their son.

Now he was going to be leaving as Minister—

If he’s telling Harry the truth, James pointed out.

--and even that particular chance of exerting political influence was gone.

“Mum?”

Harry’s voice was quiet. Lily leaned back in her chair and tried to look at him, tried to see just the boy she’d raised, and loved, and worried for ever since he was born and she saw the mark on his wrist.

“I love you, Harry. We love you,” Lily corrected herself, because she never wanted Harry to think that James despised him, no matter what he might have said in a moment of frustration. “We would have chosen any path for you other than this one, if we could.”

“I know,” Harry said, but not as if he agreed it would have been the better thing not to be Tom Riddle’s soulmate.

Lily hesitated, then said, “And we’ll try to come to terms with your soulmate and love you just as you are. Become as comfortable around him as we can. As long as he never does start a war against Muggles and Muggleborns…?”

Lils?

We have to, James. We have to forget what Albus said. It has no connection with reality, and honestly, the closest we came to making it real was probably trying to keep Harry away from him.

James lapsed into what seemed to be stunned silence. Lily looked back at Harry, and Harry gave her a weary smile.

“He won’t,” Harry said, with calm conviction. “He’s not the most moral person in the world, Mum, definitely. But he’s also not—committed to blood purity or these ideas about what should happen to Muggleborns the way people like Arcturus Black and Laurentius Lestrange are. Nothing much matters to him except me. I’ll do my best to keep him away from all immoral ideas and activities.”

Lily flushed a little at the sharp sarcasm in his voice on those last words, but she saw only one possible response. She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“I’m not just doing it for you.”

“I didn’t think you were. I wasn’t saying thank you for that. I was saying—thank you for giving us another chance. And coming to talk to me without Riddle here and without your father. I don’t think it would have…gone well if they were.”

Harry snorted and laughed at the same time, and Lily could only imagine what Riddle was saying from his side of their bond. James was radiating a mixture of shame and outrage that made Lily gladder than ever he had listened when she’d insisted that she be the one to speak to Harry.

“You’re my parents, and I love you.” Harry leaned across the table to hug her. “There are memories I’m always going to have a problem with, and Tom is always going to have a problem with, but I never wanted to cut you out of my life. Just speak, and have you listen.”

Lily nodded. She wondered what would happen the next time she and James saw Riddle face-to-face, and maybe what would happen the next time Harry and James saw each other. But that was a problem for the future.

And their son was still smiling at her, still loving her, and if he was also very much in love, didn’t that prove that at least one of Albus’s points of contention was wrong?

Riddle could love. He wouldn’t have been able to feign it through an emotional bond.

Lily would do her best to open her hands and let all the other fears crumble through her fingers.

*

“This is utterly ridiculous,” Sirius muttered under his breath, just loud enough to be heard.

The Auror who was standing next to him didn’t bother to respond, but Kingsley Shacklebolt, the one standing in front of him and scanning the deserted meadow with a few clumps of high grass and a few twisted old trees, turned to him with his eyebrows elevated.

Sirius flushed. He thought he remembered Albus telling him at one point that Shacklebolt had had Order sympathies, but if so, he had done a great job of concealing them.

“The letter was from my soulmate,” he said loudly. “My soulmate. And so were the Apparition coordinates. There’s no reason to think that he would try to…I don’t know, trick or trap me.”

“From your soulmate who rejected your bond based on something he thought you did wrong,” Shacklebolt said, his voice deep and calm. “It’s common knowledge that you were on the run for some years, Mr. Black, and that the main reason you were allowed to come out of hiding is because you’re important to the Minister’s soulmate, not because you underwent a trial and were acquitted. Who can say whether your soulmate won’t think it’s his duty to try and make you pay for what he might see as a failure of justice?”

Sirius scowled and hunched his shoulders into his cloak and said nothing. The wind was picking up. He hoped that Remus Apparated in soon.

The presence of all the Aurors might put him off. That was another reason Sirius had wanted to come by himself. Remus had hated and feared Aurors and others in power who would see him as an animal because of his curse. Maybe he would just send another owl and say he had to see Sirius in private.

But then there was the crack of Apparition from the end of the field, and Sirius jumped up and turned around.

A tall figure in a dark cloak stared at him for a second, and then started walking in his direction.

The Aurors promptly closed in tightly all around Sirius, so tightly that he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

“Let me through, damn it!” Sirius said, and shoved the ones next to him away with a growl, on the brink of transforming and simply leaping over them as a dog. But Shacklebolt had raised some kind of glittering white fence of energy, and Sirius wasn’t at all sure what would happen to him if he charged it. “Let me through! I don’t want him to think that I’m rejecting him again!”

“You didn’t reject him, as I heard it,” Shacklebolt murmured without taking his eyes from Remus. “He rejected you.”

“Yes, and what I did was wrong and stupid and I’m never going to do it again. Let me through!”

Shacklebolt twisted around and studied him, maybe to see how desperate Sirius was. Sirius did his best to look rational and alert and also desperate. With a sigh, Shacklebolt swished his wand, and the fence of energy disappeared.

Sirius started running, then forced himself to stop halfway there, because he’d seen that Remus had stopped moving when he started. He clasped his hands and tried to smile. He was sure it came out as a twisted grimace, but it seemed enough for Remus that he was standing there. He started forwards again.

He came closer, and Sirius drank up the details of his face. Remus gave him a strained smile. His eyes were cold.

“I’m so sorry,” Sirius whispered. “Thanks for giving me another chance, you don’t know, I’m so sorry, Remus—”

Remus hesitated, and then opened his arms.

Sirius bounded forwards and clung to him. Remus’s scent flooded into his mouth and nose as though he’d never stopped smelling it. It was old books and slightly damp fur and old leaves. Sirius sobbed and leaned against him.

Remus swallowed. “You swear that you’ll never do anything like that to me again?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Sirius babbled. “Of course I do, I promise—”

“And you understand why it was wrong?” Remus leaned back, although Sirius wanted to pull him close enough to obliterate the space between them, and stared at him searchingly.

“Yes, of course. I shouldn’t have tried to use my soulmate as a weapon. I should have respected your autonomy. I shouldn’t have thought something like trying to make you kill someone was funny. I should never have driven you away.”

Remus shut his eyes. He seemed to be breathing as if he was about to sink into meditation. Sirius held on to him and watched hopefully.

Then Remus said, “I think—I think I can—” He grabbed Sirius and hauled him closer.

Sirius leaned against him and tried not to cry, mostly because he thought it would embarrass Remus and show too much emotion to the Aurors. These were Riddle’s Aurors. There were probably some among them who hated werewolves. The last thing Sirius wanted to do was make a scene that would upset Remus.

Remus’s arms wrapped around him tightly. Sirius leaned closer still and felt hopefully about for the beginning of the emotional bond. If Remus had forgiven him, then it should start resuming any second now.

Instead, what Sirius felt was intense pain.

It took him a moment to understand what had happened. Something had jabbed into his side, deep enough that it was scraping against his ribs. Sirius tried to draw a breath, but he couldn’t shout. It was like the air couldn’t find his lungs.

Desperate, aghast, he stared at Remus. Remus sneered back at him, and his features twisted.

And went on twisting. Left beneath what must have been Polyjuice Potion were the features of Severus Snape.

Sirius tried to yank away. That just made more blood flow down his side, and somehow gave him enough air to cough. He heard someone who sounded like Shacklebolt yell.

“Easy enough to manipulate the wolf who was so sorry he’d turned me,” Snape whispered. “Easy enough to keep his hair for Polyjuice Potion when he’s spent years under the Draught of Living Death. Easy enough to finally, finally take vengeance—”

“Mr. Black!”

A spell zipped past Sirius and hit Snape. Snape staggered and let Sirius go with a low snarl. Then he turned and ran a few steps before Apparating again.

Sirius wondered dimly, as he sank to his knees, why Snape had stabbed him instead of using a spell that would have cut his heart in half or something like that. Surely the slimy bastard knew one—

But when he thought about it, he knew. Snape had wanted to make sure that Sirius died, had wanted to punish him and watch the betrayal on his face and feel the blood on his hands, in a way that a spell that caused near-instant death wouldn’t have let him.

“Mr. Black!”

Sirius heard the voice through the ringing in his ears. But it was distant. He lay there, and he saw the sky whirling above him, and then what looked like terrified, concerned faces appearing in it.

Maybe they were. Sirius didn’t know for sure. He let his eyes slip shut and followed the flow of blood into darkness, because that was easier.

*

“You said that he would be safe.”

Tom wrapped his arms around Harry and held him as they stood together in a private visitors’ room at St. Mungo’s. Black was under the wands of the Healers at the moment. Apparently the knife that had made the wound was cursed or had some kind of potion or poison on it that made the healing a lot more difficult.

“You promised the Aurors would keep him safe.”

“I am sorry they didn’t,” Tom said simply.

Harry stared up at him for a second, and the storm that was filling their magic and their bond stilled. Then Harry flung himself at Tom, wrapped his arms around him, and sobbed.

Tom gently stroked his back. Harry had been teetering on the edge of this ever since they’d heard about Black’s injury, reported by a trembling Shacklebolt, and honestly, Tom would rather that he shed all the tears he needed to in private and then face the world with a brave expression than break down in public.

And in private, no one would be in the way of Tom providing him all the comfort he needed.

Tom led Harry over to a couch that leaned against the wall and had a hideous floral pattern on it, and sat down on it, tugging Harry half onto his lap. Harry leaned against him and sobbed harder. Tom stroked his back again and wrapped him in loving concern down their bond.

“He—he was the first one to put me on a toy broom,” Harry whispered, when his sobs had finally died enough for him to speak. “Mum and Dad were upset about it, but he insisted—he said I could fly, that I had Potter genes, that I’d be fine—and he was right.”

“I am somewhat surprised to hear a pureblood wizard like Black speak of genes,” Tom offered mildly.

Harry nodded against Tom’s neck. “Yeah, but he had Mum talking at him about things like science pretty early on. And no one could really be isolated form the Muggle world when she was around.” He sniffled. Their bond trembled and slowly cleared, like Veritaserum in the final stage of brewing. Tom touched Harry’s neck again. “I just wish I could know that he’d be all right.”

“The Healers are doing all they can.”

And a little more than they would otherwise, Tom knew, because this man was dear to the Minister’s soulmate. Tom hadn’t had to threaten the Healers. He’d just caught the eye of the lead one on the way in, and he knew they would work past the point where they might have given up on a different cursed patient.

Harry squeezed him once more, and sat back. Tom kept a hand on Harry’s back. From someone else, he would have despised the weakness.

But this was his soulmate, and his soul and his privacy and his comfort and his peace were Tom’s to protect and guard and kill for.

“The Aurors said that it was someone using Polyjuice who Apparated,” Harry said quietly. “I heard that much from Shacklebolt. But they didn’t say that they’d recognized the bloke. Not—Lupin?”

Tom had to shake his head. “From the description of Lupin that your parents gave, I thought he was a coward, but I think he would probably not try to stab one of his oldest friends, even if he were Lupin’s rejected soulmate.”

Harry nodded, and his agreement created a warm crush in the bond, as if Tom were being wrapped in velvet passed through sunlight. “So, who else do you think it could have been?”

“Why not Snape?”

“The man Lupin bit and turned into a werewolf?” Harry’s surprise was bright and crystalline. “Why?”

“Shacklebolt did say that the attacker had dark hair and became taller when the Polyjuice faded, and who else would have reason to hate Black that much and to know what Lupin meant to him? Lupin went after him, from what your parents said. To try and make up for what happened, because werewolves like to join together in packs and Snape would have been a new one, who knows?” Tom leaned back on the couch. He had heard that Severus Snape was brilliant at Potions and Dark Arts when he was in Hogwarts, and might have tried to recruit him, but he was glad now that Snape’s own disappearance had prevented that. Someone who could brood on vengeance for more than thirty years was not the kind of unstable Tom could use.

“That seems like it’s—pretty slim evidence.”

“Of course it is, but when Black wakes up, we can ask him.”

“You think he’ll wake up?”

“Yes,” Tom said, and he wasn’t even lying. The curse or poison on the blade, if it was moving slowly enough that the Healers were still working, was more likely to be the kind that was curable.

Harry swallowed and leaned against his side. “Just for future reference,” he whispered, “I don’t ever want you to lie if you don’t think something like this is true. I’d rather know the truth and face it in my own way.”

Tom didn’t bother responding that it was difficult to lie with their emotional bond anyway, or to say that he would keep the truth secret for a while if he thought it better for Harry. He simply wrapped his arms around his soulmate and held him.

*

Sirius slowly opened his eyes, and Harry shot out of his chair halfway across what looked to be a Healer’s ward and ran over to him.

“Sirius! Are you okay? Who stabbed you? Do you remember?”

“Harry, perhaps don’t overwhelm Black,” Riddle’s deep, amused voice said from behind Harry.

Sirius wanted to glare at Riddle for daring to tell off his godson for being concerned and compassionate, but his throat was dry and his head was throbbing and his eyes were seeing double. He could do nothing but cough and cast his eyes sideways, hoping there was a glass of water in that direction and Harry could be persuaded to get it for him.

Luckily, it worked. Harry immediately darted over and filled the glass, and Sirius wasn’t even sure if he’d used his wand to conjure the water. Frankly, it didn’t matter. The water spilling into his throat was like a blessing, and he drank two more glasses before he was able to clear his throat and say, “Was Snape.”

Harry went still for a moment, but hastily grabbed the glass again when Sirius begged with his eyes. Riddle was nodding, Sirius could see that much, even with his blurry sight. “We thought it might be. He will be found.”

Sirius nearly choked on his swallow of water, but managed to get it down before he glared at Riddle. “Much you care,” he said, since he couldn’t voice all the complete sentences he would have liked to.

Riddle raised an eyebrow. “You are precious to my soulmate, Black. I have no very strong regard for you, but Snape nearly took you from Harry, and he has had enough losses. So we will hunt him.”

“He—he has Remus somewhere. He said. Under the Draught of Living Death.” Talking was much easier now, Sirius found, although when he tried to sit up, he found out that wasn’t. He slumped back. “Was—knife cursed?”

Harry nodded as he fetched more water for Sirius. “The Healers said it was a variation of a Blood-Poisoning Curse. It started turning your blood to actual poison. It took them a while to figure that out and that it wasn’t a regular potion or venom, so they could counter it.”

Sirius closed his eyes. He could hardly imagine how much agony he would have died in, even if he had survived the initial wound.

Which was probably what Snape had counted on, the vindictive bastard.

But the thought echoed hollowly in Sirius’s mind. Foremost was the idea that he would probably never see Remus again. Snape was vindictive enough to kill him when he went back to wherever he was hiding, and there was no guarantee that the Aurors could track him back there or find him in time to stop him doing it.

“Are you all right, Sirius?”

“I just—I wanted my soulmate so badly.” Sirius whispered.

Harry bent down and hugged him carefully. “I know, Sirius. I know.”

And he was probably the only one Sirius knew who could say those words sincerely, Sirius realized. Harry had been denied his own soulmate for so long, and it hadn’t even been the result of anything he’d done, except being born with the “wrong” mark on his wrist.

Sirius clung to his godson desperately, and watched Riddle’s eyes narrow a little. Then Riddle simply nodded and stepped back to speak to one of the Healers who had been hovering by the door.

I know. I understand now. You can count on me.

Sirius tried to say that, as much as he could, with the way he hugged Harry, and he thought Harry got some of it, from the way he hugged back.