lomonaaeren

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Chapter Forty-Four—Aftermaths

Tom stared at the disintegrating motes of what had been his greatest enemy, and blinked, and licked his lips, and swallowed. Then he slumped sideways so fast that he was mildly impressed Harry managed to catch him in time.

“Tom!” Harry practically shouted in his face.

Tom dug down into himself past the surge of gifted magic that was now almost exhausted and found his absolute determination to be there for his soulmate at all times. He allowed that to haul him back to his feet, and he wrapped an arm around Harry’s shoulders. He was still swaying like a drunkard, but Harry was with him, and that was all he needed.

“Where did the blue phoenix go, do you think?” Harry whispered, rearranging Tom’s arm around him so that he could support him better. The bond between them throbbed with physical pain and emotional satisfaction, thick as pollen. And love.

“It left because it lost the battle for this version of reality,” Tom said, with a shrug that even by itself nearly tipped him over. “I doubt it cared that much, in the end. It wanted to win, but when it realized it couldn’t, it departed.”

A sharp song made him look up. Fawkes was sitting on a branch above them, glorious tail spread, eyes fixed on Tom with what Tom would have sworn was an indulgent look.

“Yes, we did what you wanted, didn’t we?” Tom muttered. He had no idea why Fawkes would care about what he was saying, but he had to say it anyway. From the way Harry’s arm shook around him and the bond shone, Harry was thinking much the same thing.

Fawkes dropped from the branch and spread his wings, hovering in front of them. Flames trailed from the edges of his fathers. He was growing brighter and smaller, becoming a point of pure light.

Tom nearly went to his knees again with the love and pride that flooded from the phoenix. He stared at him as Fawkes sang one more time, a soft, soul-touching sound, and then turned and flung himself into the air.

He vanished between one turning of cloud and another, and Tom was certain that he had gone into another reality. Perhaps to follow and chase down the blue phoenix there, perhaps to find another world to save.

Or damn? Tom shook his head. Just because Fawkes had done what Tom thought was the right thing in this one didn’t mean it was actually the right thing. He had no idea how to feel about phoenixes.

“Come on,” Harry said. “I know we should find Professor Pettigrew and thank him for the magic he gave us, but I’m dropping on my feet. Let’s go home. We can find him and thank him later. I think Fawkes would have told us if he was in danger.”

Tom nodded. He felt a distant surprise; he didn’t think he had realized it was Pettigrew who had given them that magic. But right now, exhaustion was sweeping everything else before it, a dark wave that tumbled all their ordinary thoughts like boulders.

He let Harry wrap one arm around him and Apparate them. He seemed to be the stronger. Tom simply wanted to sleep.

With his soulmate by his side, it had to be said.

*

“Harry!”

Lily had realized some time ago that Harry wasn’t asleep in the bedroom nearest to the kitchen, and never had been. That had been a mad dream of some kind, or reality between one moment and the next. This was the waking world, and Harry was staggering through the door with his arm around Riddle.

James stood up next to her, and then hovered uncertainly. At the moment, it looked as if all that was keeping Harry and Riddle from falling over was each other. Lily had no idea what would happen if they tried to hug Harry or pull him away from the bastard he was soulmated to.

“I’m all right,” Harry said, his voice slurring. “But listen, Dumbledore’s dead, and we need to sleep. I came here because it was closer and I know it better. We need to sleep, okay? Don’t interrupt us.”

“But what happened?” James blurted, before Lily could tell him that this probably wasn’t the time.

“Dumbledore’s dead, I said it,” Harry muttered, and then paused with his hand on the bedroom doorknob. “But you’re all right? I know the realities shifting back and forth would have affected you. You’re all right?”

Lily took a deep breath. There were all sorts of questions she wanted to ask, and she could feel them boiling up in James, too, but she reached out and took his arm, squeezing once. Yes, they would have to wait.

“I think so,” she said quietly. “It’s like trying to remember a dream. It was intense at the time, but now it’s gone, and I can’t think why I believed you had survived and Riddle was dead so much.”

Riddle lifted his head. The grin he gave her made Lily shudder. The way his lips rolled back from his teeth made his face look like a skull.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he gasped.

Lily looked down at her hands for a second, then back up at him. She would probably never like him. She still thought that her first optimism when Harry had been forced to come clean to Riddle was probably misplaced. Riddle wasn’t the best choice for him. There should have been others.

But she could acknowledge that their bond was complete now, and Harry’s happiness had to matter more than her own reservations.

“It’s not a disappointment to me,” she whispered.

Riddle and Harry stared at her, and so did James. Lily lifted her head, smiled at all of them, and grabbed James’s hand and pulled him towards her so that he couldn’t say something stupid. Together, they watched Riddle and Harry stagger through the door and fall on the bed.

“I still wish he hadn’t been born with that mark,” James muttered.

“We really can’t do anything about that now,” Lily said, a little more harshly than she’d meant, and James flinched and turned to look at her. Lily leaned her head on his shoulder for a moment. “Come on. Let’s go see how Sirius is doing.”

*

“It was so real.”

James nodded, not that Sirius thought he could really understand. He had brought over Firewhisky and declared he would drink with Sirius when Sirius had told them that was what he needed most of all. Lily hadn’t left until she was sure that Sirius wasn’t suffering from the lingering effects of madness or whatever that shifting realities business had been about, though.

“I want Remus back,” Sirius whispered, staring into the tumbler of Firewhisky that James had been kind enough to pour for him. It was what he had wanted, but right then, Sirius understood that the most powerful alcoholic drink he knew couldn’t quell the memories of having Remus, of wanting him.

He knocked the drink back anyway.

When he got done spluttering, James leaned across to pour some more into the glass. “I know,” he murmured. “I know, Padfoot.”

Sirius drank some more and thought about the dream and the reality that had been Snape telling him he had Remus under the Draught of Living Death. Riddle had brought in some sort of Potions expert who had warned Sirius that even if they did find Remus, he would never be the same again, not after spending so many years unconscious.

Frankly, Sirius didn’t care about that. The thing that mattered was that he could find his soulmate, hold him in his arms, help him recover, apologize, and do whatever he could to make up for using Remus as a weapon when they were fifteen.

It’s been nearly thirty years. That should be long enough to change the most stubborn mind.

James began telling some old story of their school days, a story that involved just him and Sirius and left out Peter, who hadn’t followed them, and Remus, who had rejected all of them when he left. Sirius listened and laughed in the appropriate places, but his mind was dashing feverishly along the track he had thought of.

Everyone else got to have their soulmate, even someone whose parents had believed his soulmate was a Dark Lord. Sirius wanted his, too.

*

“Neville, please. You’re being unreasonable.”

Neville kept his back turned as he packed his trunk. There were a few things he had, old clothes and favorite toys and the like, that he had spelled against any kind of charm when he was still young so that no one could throw them away. He had to pack them by hand rather than by spell, and so he had to linger in his bedroom, but no force on Earth could make him look at his mother.

“We were trying to keep you safe.”

Neville shut the lid of his trunk with a bang and shrank it with a thought. Sometimes, when he was really angry, he could use wandless magic. And it was better to use up the power crackling and sparking around him for that than using it to burn his mother. He turned around.

Alice Longbottom—that was how Neville thought he would have to think of her, to stay sane—still stood in the doorway with folded arms. Her face was cold, even though Neville thought the pleading tone in her voice was real. She wouldn’t want to lose control of me, he thought spitefully.

“You kept me away from my soulmate,” Neville said quietly. “You kept my post from me. You weren’t trying to keep me safe. You were trying to keep me from living at all, because that way you thought you could keep me from dying.”

Alice’s mask cracked, and she took a step away. Neville gave a tired half-laugh and shoved past her into the corridor.

“Neville, we had to—you don’t understand—”

“I understand that you think you mum and dad died because of politics,” Neville snapped. This was the last time that he ever intended to speak to his mother, so he supposed he might as well take the chance to spit out everything he wanted to say. “In reality, they died because they decided to experiment with some kind of stupid potion on Dumbledore’s orders, and it blew up on them. That’s not politics. That’s stupidity.”

“Neville, how can—”

“I don’t care what I say about them. They’re not here to hear me. And they were soulmates. They found each other. They had each other. They died at the same time. I would rather do that after only a year with Luna than keep living without her.”

Part of Neville whispered that he was being unfair, in what sounded like his grandmother’s voice. He knew that the vision he’d had of his mother imprisoning him and taking him away from Luna wasn’t real. It had been—not a dream, but something that could have happened, but hadn’t.

But it had burned deep grooves in his mind nevertheless. Now he couldn’t look at his mother without seeing that version of her, and he loathed that version.

“We wanted to keep you safe,” Alice whispered.

“That doesn’t justify everything!” Part of Neville’s magic got loose and latched onto a painting that luckily wasn’t a portrait, just a seascape. The corner burned before Alice flicked her wand and stopped it. “I don’t care anymore. I have Luna. I don’t need you.”

“Don’t talk that way to your mother, young man.”

Neville glared at his father, who was standing at the head of the stairs as if he would block Neville from going down them. “I’ll talk any way I like to the people who would have kept me from her.”

“We knew you would change once you found her.” Frank’s voice was heavy. “You were so obedient before. Such a quiet child—”

“You stifled me! You kept me that way!”

“I would rather that you were alive than that you were happy.”

Neville took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Maybe he would never get through to them, but he didn’t have to. He just had to leave. “The fact that you never looked for a way that I could be both makes you terrible parents.”

Frank reeled back, looking more stunned than any Stupefy could account for. Neville pushed past him roughly and walked down the stairs. He knew that Luna was coming, somehow. He didn’t know how. The only thing that mattered was that she would be there.

His grandmother was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Neville gave her a hard stare. It wasn’t a coincidence that she was between him and the door, he knew. Too bad. If she tried to say something to him, then he would hit her, too, with words or with magic.

Augusta Longbottom took a deep breath. Neville braced himself.

“You’re right,” she said quietly, staring at him with haunted eyes. “It’s not right. It’s not fair. Why should everyone else be granted their soulmate, just because everyone else came from a safe family? We can’t put our desire to stay out of politics ahead of everything else.”

Neville managed to relax enough to smile at her, although he knew that she wasn’t smiling back. It didn’t matter. At least he had one member of his family that he could perhaps still communicate and spend time with. “Thanks, Gran,” he said, and hugged her once, pretending not to notice the way she clung to him when he pulled back.

“Neville!”

His parents, on the other hand, could bugger off. Neville opened the door and stepped out into the front gardens, tilting his head back to watch as the stars shone down on him. From now on, they would be shining on him living somewhere else.

“Neville.”

That voice was a much more welcome one, and Neville smiled as he looked towards Luna. She was beyond the gates of the house, sitting on—invisible air. And holding a rope that was apparently circling the neck of something else invisible.

Laughing a little, Neville hurried out the gates and held out his arms. Luna slid down from her whatever-it-was and held him close. The emotional bond between them sang contentedly, so bright that Neville was sort of surprised it wasn’t showering the grass around them with sparks.

Luna pulled back from him faster than Gran had, though. Now that they had each other, they knew it was going to be permanent, and they weren’t so worried anymore. She turned and gestured towards the invisible (probably) creatures. “Do you like them? I brought some thestrals for us to ride.”

“Thestrals,” Neville breathed. He had heard of them, but never expected to ride one. “They’re like winged horses, aren’t they? Only more reptilian.”

Luna smiled at him. “Yes. You don’t mind riding them?”

“I wouldn’t mind going anywhere with you,” Neville said, and kissed her lightly. “But you’ll have to help me onto the one you want me to ride. I can’t see them.”

“I like that,” Luna said, and led him to the one that apparently had a rope around its neck while Neville was still blinking about her words. She let him touch the invisible, thick neck, and had him hold out his hand until he felt the whuffle of cold breath on it. Then she helped Neville boost himself onto its back.

There was something there, shifting under him, and Neville could hear its snort and the noise its wings made when they unfolded. He still yelped a little when the thestral took wing, given that it was more unnerving to ride a flying horse you couldn’t see than just sit on one’s back.

Luna’s laughter followed him, as wild and sweet as the thestral probably was if you knew it well.

Neville turned his head and watched her following him. Luna’s hair was streaming behind her, scattering out flower petals that she’d braided into it. She was smiling, and the bond between them was singing harder than she could. The air around them was warm.

Yes, this is what I want for the rest of my life.

And Neville’s guilt burned and took flight.

*

“Tom? We should probably get up. It’s almost five in the afternoon.”

Harry’s mouth said those words, but the bond that thrummed between them said contentment and warmth and bliss. Tom curled himself harder around Harry and sighed a little, shaking his head. “We don’t have to get up at all if we don’t want to,” he whispered. “Maybe tonight we can eat and send out some kind of explanation to the Wizengamot or the Prophet and sleep together. But we don’t have to right now.”

“Tom…”

Tom sighed and turned so that he could see Harry instead of just feel him. Harry lay tucked solidly under the blankets of their shared bed, which Tom approved of. He wondered if Harry had had the sense to do that, or if Tom had done it before he’d gone to sleep, although he couldn’t remember doing it.

“Yes?” Tom finally asked, when it was clear that Harry didn’t intend to back off until Tom acquiesced.

“Mum and Dad are waiting in the kitchen, and I think they’re getting impatient for some kind of story about what happened.”

“They can be impatient.” Tom let his voice flow over Harry, and saw the way that Harry blinked and struggled for a moment against the spell of it. Tom smiled and touched Harry’s shoulder, sliding his hand down. “They can feel whatever they want. The man they served is dead. Nothing they do can touch us now.”

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I know, but we’ve slept more than twenty-four hours, and I think they might come in and drag us out of bed if we don’t go out there to give them an answer.”

Tom sighed. That would be annoying, and it would bother Harry. That last reflection urged him to sit up in the bed and scan Harry one more time with both the bond and a muttered incantation. “You’re truly uninjured?”

“You couldn’t have told if I was?”

“There was so much magic pooled in that clearing that it might have dulled my senses.” Tom reached out and touched the old lightning bolt scar on Harry’s forehead. “I’m more than happy to have you say that you aren’t, rather than going on a search for wounds that would probably distract us, as pleasurable as it would be.”

Harry flushed and cast down his eyes. He still wasn’t used to people admiring him, Tom thought, despite all the work of the Mind-Healer and the love and adoration Tom poured down the bond every day. “I promise, I’m fine. And I think I would have noticed if you were bleeding out by now.”

Tom nodded. “I assume so. Well. Let us go and placate your parents, and then perhaps we can go home and speak to Nagini.”

“Oh, no.” Harry sat up so fast that he nearly fell off the bed. “I didn’t even think about her. Is she okay? Did she feel—”

“My bond to her is a bit unstable, but right now she’s sleeping,” Tom reassured him. “Snakes aren’t as excitable as familiars like owls are. She’ll want an explanation, but she can wait until we come to her.”

Harry nodded, looking grimly determined. “So let’s go out there and feed my parents a story they’ll buy, and then go check on her.”

“A story they’ll buy?”

“They deserve an answer, since they were caught up in the shifting realities with everyone else. But they don’t deserve every single detail of our thoughts.”

And there was the progress that Tom had hoped they would begin to see once Harry had gone to the Mind-Healer. He reached out a gentle hand to cup Harry’s shoulder. “Very well. Let me get dressed, and we’ll go out and soothe these anxieties that are presumably left over from serving Dumbledore.”

*

“So it was really the blue phoenix’s fault, and not Albus’s?”

Harry rubbed his forehead and looked at his father. Dad had a hopeful look on his face, as if he thought that it might redeem Dumbledore to hear that he had been driven mad instead of always mad.

“I have no idea how long Dumbledore had those ideas about me and Tom,” Harry said shortly. “What the phoenix gave him, and what it encouraged. We do know that he had Fawkes with him for a long time, though, so presumably there was a point when Fawkes thought Dumbledore could fulfill the fate that he wanted to bring about. Who knows when Dumbledore turned away from that path?”

Dad started to ask another question, but Mum put a hand on his arm. She was the one to face Harry and say firmly, “It doesn’t matter. We’re just glad that you survived the shifting realities with your mind intact, like us.”

“A pity that the changing realities could not have made them less prejudiced against me,” Tom hissed in Parseltongue.

Harry hissed back, ignoring the way both his parents started. “I’m sure they’re just as wistful about not having landed in a reality where you’re not my soulmate.”

Tom scowled. Harry ignored him and faced his parents once again. “So that’s it. Dumbledore is dead, and the blue phoenix left, so we have no reason to think it’ll be back again. Are you all right?”

“Yes. I can’t feel any instability in our bond or in our minds,” Mum said, and Harry smiled. He trusted her evaluation more than he would have trusted Dad’s, anyway.

“So that’s it?” Dad asked a minute later, while Harry went back to his tea and biscuits. Honestly, the story had taken as long as it had to tell because both he and Tom were devouring all the food that Mum could spread out in front of them. “Albus is gone, and the Order of the Phoenix is completely dissolved, and the realities have calmed down…what do we do now?”

“Live,” Tom said softly.

Dad glared at him, but a second later, his glare softened, Even if that was probably because Mum was speaking to him down their bond, Harry was sure that he would at least think about the advice.

“And now,” Tom added, as Harry swallowed the last of his tea and they stood up together, “we’re going to go home and make sure that my bond with my familiar, which was strained during the shifting, is still strong.” He smiled at Harry’s parents with a slightly false expression, but compared to the open hostility they’d had between them such a short time ago, Harry would take it. “Please do feel free to stay home and think some more about what kind of future you have and want to have.”

And he turned and led Harry outside the wards, and Apparated them, his arm secure around Harry’s shoulders, their bond thrumming in both their minds.

*

Peter woke slowly. He blinked and stood up, taking stock of his whiskers and paws. Only when he was sure that he was completely whole as a rat did he grimace and shift back to human, yelping a little as his depleted magic protested the spell.

He stepped out of the hollow where he had spent the night and stared up at the sky. The air ruffled as the Elder Wand sprang into his hand. Peter eyed it and scratched what he could feel was at least a few days’ worth of stubble forming on his chin.

“Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather be with someone else?” he asked.

The wand stung him with a little blast of power. Peter grinned and tucked the wand into his pocket. He supposed he could take it back to Gringotts, but perhaps he would wait and see if the goblins contacted him, or what the wand wanted. Surely taking it out of Gringotts because otherwise an insane phoenix would have destroyed the world had to be some sort of excuse for theft.

Peter looked up at the sky again, and Apparated himself back home. His lungs were full of clear air, his body replenishing its strength despite how slowly that would go, and his mind settled.

And it was morning.