Chapter Eighteen of 'The Onyx in Radiance'- Laid Bare

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eighteen—Laid Bare

In the end, it turned out to be the easiest thing in the world to bait Riddle into a situation that would allow Harry to show off his Parseltongue. In fact, he wasn’t really baiting Riddle. He was just sitting around the common room, and Riddle decided that he had to speak up.

Then again, Harry thought as he watched Riddle loudly clear his throat, my very existence has been provoking Riddle since I was born.

Everyone in the common room seemed to be paying attention to Riddle, which Harry supposed was the point. The bastard had his wand twirling through his fingers. Harry wondered if he was trying to make himself look more intimidating. If so, he’d failed.

Well, at least for Harry. When Harry glanced around, he could see plenty of nervous and outright fearful expressions on the faces of other Slytherins in the common room. He reckoned that was as good an answer as any to why Riddle had reigned for so long.

“You were witness, a few days ago, to a duel that some of you might have thought I lost,” Riddle announced loudly. “I am about to show you that that loss was only part of a larger plan, and I am, and always will be, the most prominent duelist in Slytherin.”

People turned around to stare at Harry. They also started whispering to their friends, because Merlin forbid that they should form their own opinion. Harry thought, as he looked up and struggled to keep his face blank, that that might be the worst effect Lords had on people: they seemed incapable of thinking apart from the group.

Here we go.

“You were saying something, Riddle?” Harry spoke softly. Let them lean in to hear him. Let them find it hard to tell what he was feeling. He couldn’t show that he had prepared for this moment. It had to seem as though he was simply careless and casual, at least until he’d freed the Knights of Walpurgis from Riddle and had told them to disband. Otherwise, Riddle might well spot the trap in time and manage to avoid it.

“I am saying,” Riddle snarled as he took a step forwards, “that I am the ruling power in Slytherin, and that I demand you stand up and face me. Unless you fear me?”

Slytherins and Gryffindors are more alike than I would ever have guessed, Harry thought as he leaned forwards. Of course the challenge begins with a claim that I have a bad case of cowardice.

‘I don’t fear you. And I don’t need to stand to face you.” Harry opened his mouth, carefully fastened his eyes on the snake crest Riddle wore on his robe, and said in Parseltongue, “Why should I fear you when I am your equal, Tom Marvolo Riddle?”

He took a moment to revel in how pale Riddle turned before he added, “Come to me, snakes of Slytherin. Defend me.”

People were crying out as the snakes on the couch around Harry stirred and came to life. In seconds, Harry was surrounded by wooden bodies patterned with wooden scales, their wooden fangs bared and their coils settled ankle-deep around him.

In reality, it wasn’t as impressive as it looked. After all, the snakes were made of wood. Someone could just set them on fire and keep coming. But Harry knew that the snakes were less the point than the fact that he could command them.

Riddle stared at him like an idiot, and kept staring like an idiot even when Harry allowed the dramatic pause to lengthen. Really? Okay, then, I suppose I’ll have to move this forwards.

“I can command the snakes of Slytherin.” Harry made sure to smile. If people saw the stress behind the smile, he hoped they would think it was just stress at having to deal with idiots like Riddle. “I can speak the language of serpents. You hold half the people here in awe with your Slytherin heritage and your pride, Riddle. Well, where is that pride now?”

Okay, good, Harry thought as Riddle finally shook himself as if waking up, and snapped in Parseltongue, “Who are you? Why are you here? Why are you challenging me? We should be allies.”

“I am challenging you because you are unworthy of the name of Slytherin’s heir. You misuse your gift. You’re foolish and petty. I am stronger than you are, Riddle. I can command the snakes to do things you wouldn’t dream of.”

Riddle stepped back, his face pale and his breathing shallow. Harry let his grin widen into something almost rabid. People would remember Riddle backing down. In the short term, it would make them more rabid, themselves, to follow Harry as a Lord.

In the end, it would make them think. At least, Harry hoped so. Did they want someone who sounded like he was an animal, hissing away, for a Lord? They shouldn’t flock back to Riddle after Harry had taken control of the Knights of Walpurgis because that would apply to both of them.

Riddle stormed up the stairs. Harry looked around, and realized that people were staring at him with dropped jaws and something like wonder in their eyes.

Great, just great. Can’t they think for themselves? The ability to talk to snakes honestly isn’t that impressive. Where it’s going to be useful, unless in a place like the common room?

Harry sighed and stroked the air as if petting the snakes, saying, “Thank you for defending me, noble snakes. Please return to the places you occupied before now.

The snakes did so, looping themselves around the legs of the couch and becoming plain wood again. Harry picked up his bag and walked away, hoping that people would unfreeze their brains without him in the room.

He sighed as he heard people following him, but a glance over his shoulder revealed it was just Orion and Abraxas. Harry relaxed a little. Two people who had shown more of a tendency to think for themselves than others, he could deal with.

But even they would need to go free in the end, and stop following him around.

*

“I—Orion, this is too much.”

Harry sounds so overwhelmed that Orion reaches out and puts a hand on his arm. “You haven’t even opened the package yet,” he teases as gently as he can.

“I know, but I can see what it is from the shape.” Harry looks down at the distinctively broom-shaped package on the floor beside him, and then sighs and lifts his head as if looking for help from Father or Mother.

He won’t find it, to Orion’s private knowledge and equally private satisfaction. Father agreed to the purchase of the broom once Orion told him about Harry’s flying skill. Prominence in Quidditch is another way to gain allegiance and alliances, and it won’t hurt at all to have the Black family’s newest son-in-law known as a good player. And Mother seems to have taken on Harry’s happiness as a personal quest. She spent yesterday asking Harry what illusions he’d like to see and conjuring them.

Orion was puzzled by Harry asking to see visions of the Weasley and Potter families, as much as Mother knows them, but he tucks that away with all the other questions that he has about Harry Potter.

They’re in the middle of the enormous room with the family tapestry where they usually have Christmas, but Mother’s covered the tapestry with an illusion of a huge, glittering silver dragon in flight. She does that every year, although she varies the illusion. Orion suspects it hurts her as much as it does him to look at Lucretia’s death year. The garlands and wreaths hanging all over the room are of ivy and holly, about half of them real, and there’s a tree as tall as the ceiling looming over the pile of gifts (every one of those is real).

Harry seems overwhelmed by the tree and the decorations, too. He keeps looking at them with wide eyes that tell Orion (and his parents, although he doesn’t think Harry has picked that up) more about his childhood than Harry could ever imagine. And sometimes he smiles helplessly, as if he wants to stop himself but can’t.

Orion is glad. He wants to spoil Harry. The dress robes were a good first step. The broom is a good second one. And Harry hasn’t objected to the books and clothes and sweets that Mother and Father bought him or Abraxas sent him. He shouldn’t object to the broom. Orion nudges it gently towards Harry with his foot. “It’s yours.”

“Orion—it’s so expensive.”

Harry tries to hiss the words, but of course Mother and Father are both present in the room, and Mother at once turns towards Harry with a look of concern. “You worry about being indebted to us, Harry?”

“Yes!” Harry gives her a relieved smile. “I’m sure Orion told you my situation. I can’t pay you back when I don’t have a Galleon to my name that wasn’t donated by Professor Dumbledore—”

“And we owe you so much more than we can ever repay,” Mother says, her voice going soft and warm. Orion hides a smile. Of course Mother does feel this way, but it’s a good tactic to destroy Harry’s ability to respond, too. “Orion’s life and freedom, Alphard’s life, the debt created by your missing fingers, the removal of Riddle from the school. Please accept the broom as a small token of what we owe you.”

Harry stares at her as if he has no idea what to say, which was the point, after all. Orion nudges the broom again, and Harry slowly unwraps it.

He swallows when he sees the rich color of the wood. “A Nimbus 1500,” he breathes, and strokes the handle.

“Yes.” Orion shakes off thoughts of how much he’d like Harry to touch him like that, and smiles at him. “Do you want to try it out?”

Harry looks up. “There’s not a pitch—I mean, there’s not a pitch here, is there?”

“No, but we can easily Apparate to where there is,” Orion says. “The Malfoys have a house they never use in the winter, but the house-elves keep up the pitch.” He extends his hands and smiles more coaxingly at Harry.

Harry smiles back, but there’s a strained edge to it. “Sure. Sounds good. After dinner?”

*

Harry keeps pausing during the dinner, as if he thinks that someone will stop him any second, but in the end, Mother coaxes him into eating an acceptable amount. And he lets Orion take him out of Grimmauld Place and Apparate him to the Malfoys’ pitch without anything more than a laugh. “Is Apparition even legal for you yet?” he asks in a low murmur.

Orion holds Harry close after they’ve landed on the short and snow-free grass of the pitch, one hand stroking down Harry’s spine to his arse. “Are you going to tell anyone, Harry?” he whispers against Harry’s lips.

Harry shivers all over and lifts his head. Orion kisses him, sliding his fingers under Harry’s chin and down his neck. Harry makes a startled noise as Orion strokes his throat and breaks away, head bowed.

“That was—that was—”

Harry looks at the pitch, but he doesn’t seem to be seeing it. His eyes are wide and his gaze far away. Orion steps towards him, half-bowing his own head. Something is hanging between them, and he doesn’t know if it’s good or bad, if Harry is going to tell him a secret or withdraw.

“Harry?”

Harry closes his eyes and mutters something, and then turns to Orion. “I can’t let you go on believing a lie anymore,” he says clearly. “It’s unfair to you. Is it secure here? I need to tell you something, but I also need to make sure that no one else overhears us.”

It’s going to be a secret, then. Orion’s spine tingles as he draws his wand and casts a spell that will detect eavesdropping charms and the like. It sweeps across the pitch and fades without catching on anything. “It’s clear,” he says, and puts his wand away. He’s aware that he’s gazing at Harry with open adoration, but he can’t help it. Harry is beautiful and powerful and humble and trusts him.

Harry takes a deep breath and clasps his hands in front of him. Then he says, “I’m from the future. Orion. I’m a time traveler.”

Orion stares at Harry. He feels as if someone has just pitched a rock at his temple. It’s that same kind of silent explosion of astonishment and pain behind his eyes.

“I know,” Harry says, his face twisting in a travesty of a smile. “I—I don’t know how it happened. I’d finished my fifth year at Hogwarts, and I woke up in Diagon Alley with my wand and the clothes I was wearing and nothing else.” He shakes his head. “My name really is Harry Potter. I’m the son of two people who haven’t been born yet, which is why the Potters here know nothing about me. And my mother was Muggleborn, and I did grow up with my mum’s Muggle sister and her husband and their son.” Harry takes a deep breath. “So you see that even though I told you the truth about some things, I was lying about most of the important things.”

Orion can’t control his mouth well enough to start talking about any of this. He just makes a speechless gesture for Harry to go on.

“In the time I live in,” Harry goes on in a soft voice, “my parents both died facing down Tom Riddle. Only he was much stronger then, and older, and called himself Lord Voldemort. I somehow lived through the Killing Curse when he cast it at me, and survived. I was pretty famous for it.” He sweeps his fringe aside to show Orion the lightning bolt scar on his forehead as if it’s proof of his absurd story. “But Voldemort didn’t die. He just became a wraith, flung out of his body. I faced him down when I was eleven, too, and kept him from coming back, and when I was twelve, I found a diary that had a memory of him in it and destroyed it, too. That’s one of the Horcruxes the Aurors found.

“When I was fourteen, he kidnapped me and used in a resurrection ritual to return to his body.” Harry draws up his sleeve and reveals what’s obviously the scar of a knife. “He tried to kill me, but I escaped again. And at the end of my fifth year, Voldemort tricked me into going to the Department of Mysteries, and my godfather came to save me, and he died. His name was Sirius Black.” Harry’s voice cracks. “He was your son.”

Orion staggers a little. “That’s why you kept asking me those questions about Walburga,” he whispers. “I married her in that timeline.”

Harry nods. “I barely knew anything about you before I came back, except that you supported Riddle and were a bad father to Sirius and Regulus,” he mumbles. “Or maybe you didn’t care about what Walburga did to them, or didn’t know. I don’t know.” His voice is hopeless. “Sirius was in prison for twelve years for a crime he didn’t commit but other people thought he did. And I kept thinking I couldn’t interfere in the timeline and prevent him from being born.

“But you were there.” Harry’s eyes turn back to him, and Orion swallows. “And you were being hurt. So I decided that I had to help you. I thought defeating Riddle and setting the Knights of Walpurgis free would change things, but at least it might mean not many people would notice when I disappeared from this time.” His voice sinks. “But I don’t even know what brought me here, and I haven’t found any reliable information in the books that would let me—” He shakes his head.

“You want to leave,” Orion says, as delicately as he can, trying to sound like he’s not accusing Harry. He’s not. He’s still reeling so hard that he can barely feel anything.

“I have to.” Harry’s eyes are deep and full of pain. “This is—I can’t let myself have this. I shouldn’t have let myself change things in the first place. But you were suffering, and so were other people, and I had to stop that. Even if it meant Sirius would never be born. But then you talked about how you didn’t want to marry Walburga, and your parents didn’t want you to either, and your sister died when I knew she lived longer than that in my world—I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

Orion takes a breath, hoping that it will lend some common sense to the world again. “Why did you decide to tell me?” he asks. “I mean, I’m glad that you did,” he adds hastily, when Harry’s eyes widen a little. “But why now? Why not keep it secret, the way you have been?”

“I was taking too much from your family. You gave me this.” Harry flicks the side of the Nimbus 1500 with a finger. “And I know that part of it is probably political and attaching yourself to someone powerful, but not all of it. I can’t break your heart if I just vanish someday the way I came. Which I could do at any time, for all I know. And I couldn’t keep lying when you trust me so much.”

“What—what do you expect me to do now?”

Harry’s eyes widen. “Reject me, of course.” He smiles, and it’s the saddest thing Orion’s ever seen. “I lied to you. I’m not who you thought I was. I could have told you the truth before this, but I kept it from you. And you deserve to have someone from your world who can love you the way you were meant to be loved.” He reaches out and brushes his hand down Orion’s cheek.

“I’d appreciate it if I can stay at least until the end of the holidays,” he murmurs. “I don’t have any other place to go, and now you know why. You can tell your parents whatever you like. Blame it entirely on me. I don’t mind.” He turns around and walks towards the far end of the pitch.

Orion watches him go, and wishes he knew how to make the world stop dancing like a whirlwind.