[From Litha to Lammas]: Immaculate, 2/6, NC-17, Tom/Harry

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

“Potter.”

Harry forced his reaction to the voice away. He looked up. “Nott.”

Theodore Nott was lurking in the door of Harry’s little office where Harry did nothing very important and did it every day. He said nothing. Harry went back to his work.

“Riddle’s asking around about you. He contacted me this morning.”

Harry just nodded, and shoved aside a report that he’d marked with red ink. For some reason, Auror Holden simply could not spell “Dementor” right.

“Did you hear what I said?”

Harry looked up. “I heard what you said, Nott.”

“If you’ve been telling tales…”

Harry waited. There would come a threat, or maybe some dark reference to what almost everyone among the Slytherin fifth-year boys knew had happened. The knowledge hadn’t spread further than that, even though—

Harry’s thoughts hit a wall, and a feeling of shock rippled through him. But it meant less pain later, so he simply sat and stared at Nott until Nott glanced away and made an uneasy motion with one hand. “You and your creepy stare, Potter.”

Better creepy than weak. Better protected than vulnerable.

“I just told him that you were always quiet and stupid and couldn’t pay attention to your studies. Apparently he wanted to know why you were Sorted into Slytherin and why you failed your OWLS. I told him we put it down to the Sorting Hat’s mistake.”

Harry nodded. It had been a mistake, and whose didn’t really matter, eleven years after his Sorting. “I didn’t say anything to him. My father assigned me to escort him to a criminal in the holding cells yesterday.”

“And that’s it?”

“He’s a Legilimens. They get interested in odd things. You know that he would have asked different questions if he had suspected something.”

“Yeah.” Nott lingered, though. Harry went back to marking, at least until Nott said, “You know what he’ll do if he finds out you spilled.”

“I know.” It took every ounce of Harry’s control to get through those words. But he got through them. “You can tell him that I won’t say anything. I’ve held the secret this long. I don’t want it to get out.”

Nott smiled, seemingly reassured by the inflections Harry put onto those last words. “Yeah. You’ll have the most to lose of any of us if it comes out, won’t you?”

Only because I was—

Again his thoughts slammed into a wall. Again his mind rippled with shock. But it was better this way. Harry was still alive.

He watched Nott walk away with blank eyes, and then reached for the next report in the stack on his desk.

*

“Tom Riddle to see Director Potter.”

Tom swept into the office of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement with a brisk nod of his head. He didn’t see the point in standing on much ceremony. That would be more likely to put someone like James Potter off. Supposedly, he was bluff and hearty and disliked it even when his employees called him “sir” too much.

Tom didn’t understand that. Respect was earned. But at the moment, James Potter’s qualities would serve him well.

“Mr. Riddle!” Potter set aside his quill with what looked to be gladness. The parchment in front of him was covered with more doodles than words, Tom noted. “What can I do for you? Was there a problem with Selwyn’s mind?”

“No.” Tom smiled as he settled into the chair across from Potter and leaned the most delicate pressure on the man’s thoughts. Goodwill and cheer came swimming up to the top of Potter’s mind, and he smiled back. “But I found myself interested in why you chose your son to escort me to the cells two days ago.”

Potter’s eyes darted down, and he winced. The chatter of his thoughts was moving too fast, through too many dimensions, for Tom to catch hold of it, other than it was about his son. Then Potter sighed and shifted his shoulders.

“Sorry if you were offended,” Potter said softly. “It’s just—I was trying to bring Harry to your notice.”

“Oh? Why?”

“It was a last-ditch effort, really,” Potter admitted in a rush. “He has no prospects, stuck down in that little office and without many OWLS and with his damn creepy stare and—I’m sorry! It didn’t work! I should have known it wouldn’t! Harry’s not very interesting, really. Every bit of his potential was wasted when he was Sorted into Slytherin.”

The way that Potter sneered the last word told Tom that he was someone who regarded House rivalries as important beyond Hogwarts, or, more likely, had been deeply involved in them when he was there. He also probably didn’t know or had forgotten Tom’s own House placement, let alone the rumors about his Slytherin blood.

Tom had been content to let them remain rumors. While he could have pursued Dark Arts and immortality through them, as he had once planned on, the rumors had been useful. But when he had discovered the depth of his natural talent for Legilimency, he had let the Dark Arts go to focus on that instead, on how easy it to was to manipulate and control others around him and have what he wanted with a minimum of work, and the rumors had faded. So had the enemies Tom had earned through some of his challenges to other Slytherins at Hogwarts, the people who would have hated him for being a half-blood, the people whose Legilimency and Occlumency books he had taken.

“You don’t think your son was well-suited for his House?”

Potter’s eyes darted up to Tom’s, and Tom dipped beneath the surface of his mind.

Shock—why did he go there?—nothing to indicate why he was placed there—nothing like he was as a child—hiding secrets—why—hurt—he should have known that we would be behind him no matter what—

Tom tore himself out of the chaos of Potter’s mind, blinking slightly. Well, then. Potter’s family had no more idea why he had been placed in Slytherin than anyone else did. Tom had questioned Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini yesterday, but Nott had Occlumency shields that let only certain thoughts of Potter leak past, mostly contempt, and Zabini had regarded Potter as so boring that he barely retained any memories of him.

Tom had assumed his family would know Harry best, but he hadn’t wanted to tip his hand by asking too many open questions about him. Now, he had simultaneously lost and won. James Potter didn’t know anything, but he had been the one to shove his son at Tom in the first place, and so he would welcome any interest Tom showed.

Not that they think he would amount to anything without their help. And that is where they are wrong.

“I think the Hat made a mistake,” Potter was saying, answering Tom’s spoken question. Words were always so much slower than flying thoughts. “And I think Harry is a good boy who could use someone’s help to get out of the hole he dug.”

Tom gave Potter his most amiable and helpful smile, and ignored the slight headache he was already getting from sitting in a confined space with someone this mentally chaotic. “Well, I must admit to being interested in someone who was as deferential as he was, and with such interesting thoughts. I don’t know if you know this, Director Potter, but poor marks don’t always indicate a lack of talent in some disciplines. For example, Legilimency…”

As he had thought, Potter was so desperate he leaped straight into the trap. “Legilimency? You think he really could learn, sir?”

“I think he might be able to,” Tom said, and from there, it was only a matter of spinning a few careful lies to get Potter to give his full blessing and directions to Harry Potter’s little office, where he apparently acted as a proofreader. Tom carefully concealed his contempt for the man across from him as he exchanged pleasantries, declined the offer of an escort, and stood to make his way back to the lifts.

How in the world could he not have noticed? If his impression of his son from before he went to Hogwarts is accurate, he must have noticed something was off when Potter returned with Occlumency walls so formidable they kept him from feeling most emotions.

But Tom dismissed the thought from his mind. Right now, he was on his way to spend time with a challenge. And also with someone whose mind was blissfully silent.

Tom was not sure what he was looking forward to more.

*

Someone knocked sharply on the door of his office. Harry stood up, assuming it was probably an Auror angry about the way he’d corrected their reports. The documentation itself was delivered to him automatically, either on the wings of memos or by the Ministry archival practices that involved wafts of enchanted air operating during the night.

He opened the door and found Tom Riddle there.

Harry stared at him, wondering if he’d offended the man during their interaction the other day and so he’d come to demand an apology. “Hello, sir. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yes, actually. Please, let’s go into your office.”

Riddle didn’t act offended. Maybe Harry was supposed to escort him somewhere else. But Riddle didn’t say it, and he seemed like the type who would have, so Harry led him to the chair behind the desk and himself leaned against the wall. There was only the one seat in the office, and he wasn’t skilled enough to conjure or Transfigure something else.

Riddle took the chair and steepled his fingers, smiling at Harry over the top of them.

That was odd. Harry settled himself and waited.

“I was trying to approach this delicately, but asking others and hinting around didn’t work. How long have you been such an impressive Occlumens?”

Only then did Harry allow himself to remember what Nott had talked about, how Riddle was showing some odd interest in Harry. But Harry could never have guessed it would be something like this. Riddle was a master Legilimens, and so shouldn’t be making basic mistakes about something so fundamental to his discipline.

But he had to answer. Getting lost in his own mind was disrespectful.

Harry allowed himself one blink, and said, “I don’t know Occlumency, sir.”

Riddle leaned slowly forwards. He had magic swirling around him, but not magic like Harry had ever felt. Usually it was the magic of temper, an adult’s version of accidental power, which might set paper on fire or explode someone’s coffee mug. This felt like—

Harry didn’t know what it felt like. Escaping perfume from a flower, maybe.

“Did you know that a Legilimens can sense lies?”

Harry had heard that, but hadn’t known it was more than a rumor. Not that it mattered. He always told the truth. It was easier. “No, sir.”

“And I can sense that you’re telling the truth, and you really don’t think you’re an Occlumens. But when I peer into your mind, I can sense immaculate Occlumency walls. I’ve never seen anything so impressive.” Riddle’s voice was low and fervent. “How is it that you could have achieved this without knowing what you’re doing?”

Very easily, when it’s a matter of survival—

Harry’s thought crashed into the walls, and died. Harry tilted his head a little. He supposed the walls could be Occlumency. He had never thought of them in those terms.

“I don’t know for certain, sir. But I have a theory.”

“Do share it, Mr. Potter.”

Riddle sounded a little like a professor inviting a favorite student to speak up. Harry had only observed that from the outside and never experienced it himself, but that was what it sounded like.

“I failed most of my OWLS in my fifth year. I had to leave school, and it was a terrible time for me.” Harry was proud of the way that his voice remained calm and detached, and then the pride curled up and withered. “My parents were upset with me, and I hadn’t made any friends at Hogwarts, so I had to come up with some way to handle the pain. It’s possible that I taught myself Occlumency to do so. I simply thought I was concentrating on repressing the pain. I didn’t know it might have a name.”

“You had no friends?”

That was an odd part of the statement for Riddle to focus on, but he was a Legilimens, and they could do what they wanted. “No, sir.”

Riddle leaned back behind the desk and stared at him. Harry waited. There was nothing particularly urgent he had to get done today. The first batch of documents from this morning were mostly done, and none of them were from people who got particularly upset when he corrected their spelling.

“This is very odd to me,” Riddle murmured. “How did someone capable of such dedicated study fail their OWLS? Why did you not go back for your NEWTS when you had somewhat recovered from your pain?”

“I would have had to study a lot more, sir. And I didn’t have the kinds of relationships with my family or professors where I would have been comfortable asking them for help.”

“So what do you intend to do for the rest of your life?”

Harry’s surprise at Riddle being interested flickered and died. He blinked. “Stay in this office, sir. If they move me somewhere else, I’ll go somewhere else. Or perhaps I’ll find work in a shop somewhere in Knockturn Alley if they sack me here.”

Riddle took a sharp, deep breath and closed his eyes. Harry just watched him and waited. Curiosity that Riddle was here flickered and died. He could wait as long as needed. Perhaps Riddle would give up and go to lunch soon.

“You make no sense,” Riddle said softly, finally, opening his eyes. They burned with frustration, and more of that odd kind of magic was coiling around him. “One of the greatest Occlumens I have ever met, content with life in the bowels of the Ministry?”

“I wouldn’t say I was content, exactly, sir.”

“What, then?”

Harry searched his mind for a good word. This was usually the point where the other person got impatient and left, but Riddle just sat there and looked at him, so Harry settled on, “Existing.”

Riddle got up and barged out of the office.

Oh. That’s the point where he got impatient and left.

Harry shrugged and sat down in front of the documents again. Riddle faded from his mind as he concentrated on typos, misplaced commas, and repeated lines from Auror Eldon, who would write “blah blah blah” just to see if anyone was paying attention.

*

Tom stalked back and forth in front of his Floo, temper roaring to the point that the fire responded and swayed in the hearth. He had never been so angry, so impotently angry, the magic flaring and dying on his skin in little sparks.

There was some secret about Harry Potter. That was obvious. But his family didn’t know about it, and his Slytherin yearmates didn’t know about it—Tom was sure that he would have picked up at least one reference to Potter’s Occlumency in the minds of either Nott or Zabini if they had—and Potter himself was the one person in the world whom Tom couldn’t simply pluck the secrets out of.

It was going to drive Tom insane.

As was the fact that Potter had achieved an unprecedented magical feat, Occlumency that could keep Tom out, and was just laboring away in a cell on work that no one thought was important and, according to the skim Tom had done of Aurors’ thoughts on the way out, people regularly verbally abused him for.

How could someone with that kind of talent in mental magic not trumpet it to the skies? How could someone not want to, at the very least, become the kind of person who taught others his skills in Occlumency? Tom was highly aware of how many people hated him because he had read their thoughts or twisted their minds into shapes of his own liking (with many fewer of the latter than the former, admittedly, since he didn’t usually leave them conscious of the fact). Potter would have been flooded with students wanting to improve their Occlumency even a little bit if he had promoted his skills.

And Tom saw no way of finding out if he could not coerce or trick Potter into revealing his secrets. There were simply no more clues to go on in the Ministry, and he could see no way of getting invited to the Potter home.

Then Tom paused.

Of course I can.

Tom shook his head and gave a short laugh. He had forgotten, in his frustration, that he was Tom Riddle, respected master Legilimens, and he had more ways of getting what he wanted than skimming the thoughts off the top of someone’s mind. Potter had made him forget.

Tom smiled and reached for his Floo powder. A quick trip to Director Potter’s office, and the man would be falling all over himself to express thanks for Tom’s interest in his son, which he would suggest could be rewarded by a dinner meeting.

And then…

Then I shall know.

*

“Harry!”

Harry paused and turned. Bella was waiting for him in the far doorway of the Floo room, gesturing madly with one hand. Harry walked over to her, mildly intrigued, although by the time he reached his sister, the emotion had dissolved.

“I don’t know exactly what’s going on,” Bella hissed at him when he was near enough, “but I know Mum and Dad invited Tom Riddle for dinner, and then said we shouldn’t tell you. Dad said something about him being able to promote you or get you to take an interest in life again or something. Mum agreed, so they’re doing an intervention for your own good. Or something. Act like you’re surprised, okay?”

Harry gave one slow blink. Annoyance showed up in his mind and smashed into the (Occlumency?) walls and died. But he nodded. “Thanks for telling me, Bella,” he said, and then turned and marched into the dining room.

Riddle was sitting in the chair Dad usually took, grinning smugly at him.

Harry nodded to him. “Hello, sir,” he said, and then turned to his mother as she bustled in from the kitchen. “Do you want me to set the table this time, Mum?”

She gave him the kind of strained smile she’d been giving him since the first Christmas holiday after he’d been Sorted into Slytherin. “No, Harry, dear, it’s fine. Natty can do that—”

“Natalia!” said Natalie’s voice from beyond the door.

“You have a good talk with Mr. Riddle here. He has something to say to you.” Mum flipped her hand at him and went back through the door. Harry heard her saying, “No, Natalia, you can’t use your wand on the roast,” and then what must have been a Silencing Charm went up and cut them off.

Harry turned to Riddle and gave him a smile that he knew was empty. “Did you hear how good our house-elf’s cooking is, sir? I do believe he outdoes himself when he knows guests are coming.”

*

Tom had hoped that there might be a slight slip in Harry’s mask when he walked through the door and found Tom unexpectedly there. But of course, nothing had happened. Tom could acknowledge to himself that Harry would hardly be a decent challenge if something had, while still being privately irritated.

He leaned forwards. “I did have a reason for asking your father for an invitation to dinner this evening, but it wasn’t your house-elf’s cooking.”

“Oh, I see, sir. Perhaps you wanted to talk to my mother about her esoteric magical research, then?”

“It was you, Mr. Potter. You remain an Occlumens of unexpected talent.”

Harry continued to give him an utterly meaningless smile. Tom darted forwards a tendril of his reaching Legilimency, and once again smashed into those immaculate, sheer black walls. Harry seemed to be looking past him, eyes blinking now and then, and smile as polite on his face as anything that Tom had seen at some Ministry galas.

Tom leaned back with a snarl, hands clenched on the arms of his chair. Harry looked at him and said, “I’m afraid I won’t be very interesting, sir. I don’t have good marks and can’t be useful to you, either.”

“There are other kinds of usefulness, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom leaned back and forced himself to smile in return. “I am told that you did pass your OWL in Care of Magical Creatures. You enjoy animals, Mr. Potter?”

“I scraped an Acceptable, sir. I enjoy animals.”

“Enough, then, to escape whatever trauma struck you about the time of your OWLS?”

There was a tremor or a ripple in the air around Harry, as if he was getting angry and his temper might react like Tom’s. Tom held his breath.

The ripple died. Harry inclined his head. “You could say that, sir.”

Tom made a frustrated sound, but at that moment, a girl who looked perhaps sixteen made her way into the room. “Harry, Dad wants you upstairs,” she said, and flicked her head in the direction of the Floo room. The door to the upstairs must be beyond that.

“All right. Thanks, Bella.” Harry stood up and walked in the opposite direction without a change in his posture. Meanwhile, Bella, apparently, sat down where he had been and stared at Tom with open hostility.

Tom skimmed her mind. The usual chaos of adolescent thoughts, but also worry for Harry, and the I won’t tell anyone, but Mum and Dad won’t care that he’s gay—won’t care—think they’ll care—

Tom leaned back and smiled at her, while disappointment climbed his spine like morning glory vines. That was all? Harry Potter was so petrified of his parents finding out he wanted to fuck men that he’d learned Occlumency to keep the secret?

That was…childish. And based in utterly mistaken perceptions, as far as Tom could tell. He’d never heard that Lily or James Potter supported any of the people who made the loudest noise about witches marrying witches or wizards marrying wizards, or three or more people marrying, for that matter. That was mostly a fringe prejudice carried by those who tended to be the Potters’ political enemies.

It seemed he had wasted his time. Harry Potter might be a remarkable Occlumens, but he carried no remarkable secrets.

Tom smiled at Harry’s sister and asked her how she liked Hogwarts, pretending to listen with fascination to her tales of getting ready for her seventh year, while he silently plotted how he was going to get revenge on Harry Potter for wasting his time.

And bringing him hope where there was none. Tom had no equal, and he should have known it. Talent meant nothing with trivial motivations driving it.

*

Harry leaned against the wall in his dad’s study and listened to Dad’s lecture about how this could be Harry’s one chance. Tom Riddle didn’t care about his marks. He cared about the fact that Harry might demonstrate some talent in Legilimency. He hadn’t said, but he had highly hinted, that he might want to take Harry as an apprentice. Harry nodded and made noises in the right spots.

Meanwhile, he was delicately pressing against the walls in his mind, an emotion that didn’t die immediately welling up in him for the first time in a long time. Wonder.

He had sensed Riddle’s Legilimency tendrils reaching out towards him. He had batted them aside without effort. But he had done it by flexing and moving the walls in his mind, which he hadn’t even known he could do. The walls had, for so long, existed simply to help Harry function through the day-to-day humdrum of his life.

He wondered what else he could do with them now that he knew it was Occlumency and apparently a gift and an art and not just something stupid he had come up with in the aftermath of something more than stupid he should have known better than to do—

Bright panic sparked like a wildfire inside him at the thought of thinking of it. And then it went away.

Harry blinked. Dad broke off the lecture and peered at him.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

“Yes, Dad,” Harry said, and smiled. He flexed his walls, and some real meaning sank into the smile.

Holy shit. He could move the walls inside his own head so that the panic was subdued and he couldn’t think of what had happened and was so terrible, but he could let other emotions through.

He hadn’t—known he could do that.

“Oh. All right. Good.” Dad seemed a little rattled by the fact that Harry was smiling at him now more genuinely than he had in years, but he rallied. “So it’s very important that you don’t turn down the apprenticeship with Mr. Riddle if he does graciously agree to take you on, because who knows when you’ll get another—”

Harry tuned out the voice. Well, not exactly. He put it on one level so that he could still respond with the nods that Dad would require of him, and instead, sank down inside his mind so that he could examine his walls.

They twisted and snapped into place at his command. He was in charge of the inside of his head, not the walls. He could feel what he wanted to feel, subdue emotions at his own command, and—

Could he reach outside his own head with the walls?

Why not? Riddle can do it with his Legilimency.

“Harry!”

Harry jumped a little, and watched Dad’s eyes widen again. Wow, he hadn’t known that his reactions would be that different when he felt some more emotion. “Um, yeah, Dad. Sorry. I know. Getting an apprenticeship with Riddle might be one of my last chances.”

But not really. Because he could use his Occlumency, Harry would bet, to isolate his memories and improve them, too, so that he could study for his NEWTS without remembering some of the things that the study would have invoked before.

“Oh, good,” Dad said, and then sighed heavily. “You know that we care about you, Harry,” he said softly, standing and coming around the table. “That we want to help you. But we can’t if you don’t help yourself sometimes.”

Harry nodded absently, still involved in feeling the sudden freedom that stretched inside his head like a plain encircled by gleaming walls. He was safe inside his castle. And he reached out, on a whim, and imagined a set of gentle walls encircling Dad’s mind.

Dad stopped speaking mid-sentence. Harry focused on him, concerned now. (And how long had it been since he’d felt concern about anything other than the possibility of his secrets being discovered?) Had he isolated his dad from his own emotions?

But instead, Dad frowned and rubbed his temple, where a grey strand was showing. “Huh,” he muttered. “I—do you know, I don’t know why I invited Tom Riddle for dinner today of all days? I would have preferred that it just be a meeting in my office with him and you so we could talk about what kind of gifts you might have and why Mr. Riddle would want to foster them. Not one of these family dinners where things are always so hectic and we’re always so busy with Marlene and…”

He trailed off. Then he said, “Why did I invite Riddle to our house in the first place?”

Harry hid a smile, but he managed to shrug and shake his head. “I don’t know, Dad. I think you were just trying to prove how much you care about my future.” He allowed some of his genuine love for his father, which he hadn’t felt much of in the last few years, leak into his mind from behind a particularly thick wall. “But I don’t know why you decided to invite him today, particularly.”

“He—did he influence me to make this possible?”

As Dad thought through the consequences, and his face darkened, Harry grinned internally, and let up on the particularly hard grip he’d had on his sense of triumph. Feeling that was dangerous, when he had felt it once and been so wrong.

But right now, he wouldn’t even allow himself to think of why. And he smiled and agreed with Dad when he said that he would go down and ask Tom Riddle some important questions right fucking now.