lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-06-24 06:00 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-06-24 06:00 pm
Entry tags:
[From Litha to Lammas]: Immaculate, 4/6, NC-17, Tom/Harry
Thank you again for all the reviews! Just a warning: this chapter contains some very difficult material to read, and was very hard for me to write.
Part Four
Tom stared at the owl who had come back with his book and looked up at it. “He truly sent this back?” he asked, hating the thin, disbelieving tone in his own voice, and the fact that he was speaking aloud to a bird at all.
The owl hooted at him, and then turned and swiveled its head towards the bowl of owl treats Tom kept on the mantel.
Tom stood up as if in a trance and went to procure one. When he held out the treat, the owl snatched it from his fingers and took off, fleeing into the air as if glad to be away from someone who asked it questions.
Tom slowly sank into the chair across from the fireplace and stared again at the book. He had sent the best lure he could think of to Harry. It was a book that almost no one would possess because it was ancient and had always been limited in its numbers, and one that recognized how wonderful and unique Harry’s magic was. Tom had known that Harry had received little notice and less encouragement since Hogwarts. He should have leaped on this.
He had not.
The simple solution occurred to Tom then, and his mouth twisted in a silent snarl. Harry could become a different person with a simple shifting of his Occlumency walls. He could have transformed himself into someone who would never be tempted by that book. Had he not transformed himself into someone who didn’t care about praise in the last seven years?
I don’t know what to do.
Tom looked around the large, airy room that was the center of his house. The shelves were covered with books he had acquired from their owners, or persuaded other people to give him the money to buy. The marble fireplace had been paid for with money given to Tom by a woman grateful that he’d turned her abusive brother into someone who wouldn’t bother her again. He had the secrets and the gratitude of half a hundred high Ministry officials tucked away in the reaches of his improbable memory.
None of it would help him here. It had been so long since Tom hadn’t been able to acquire something he wanted that he sat there in the dull dragging of bafflement for endless moments. Finally, he stirred and took a deep breath.
I can’t have him just for the asking or the taking.
And that ignited a blaze inside him that it took Tom some moments to understand. Finally, after some meditation, he realized it.
It was desire.
How long has it been since I really wanted something? How long has it been since it wasn’t absurdly easy for me to get?
Of course, in most people, that would have meant they were all the more frustrated now, and longing to smash through the obstacles that stood in their paths. But Tom felt the idea settle deeply into him, winding tendrils around the roots of his mind, and smiled a little as he leaned back in his chair.
If I can offer Harry respect freely, make it so that I’m not just asking what happened to manipulate it but am asking because I care, then I’ll have him. And I’ll have something new for myself, as well. I’ll be able to feel new things.
Until that moment, Tom hadn’t realized how numb he had become, how bored. He had mistaken the boredom for satisfaction and contentment at his victories.
He could still be satisfied and content. But he would like to understand triumph and joy again. And it would be wonderful if he could learn to understand them again because of having Harry at his side.
I’ll leave him alone for a few days, so that he can decide if he wants to stop retreating behind his Occlumency shields. And then I’ll owl him again and ask for a meeting at a time and place of his own choosing.
I can do anything I wish. Including being gentle. Including seducing the best Occlumens I’ve ever met—the only true match for me.
*
Harry frowned as he closed his eyes. He had manipulated his Occlumency shields carefully, making sure that what came through was pleasure and interest in being with his family. But it was getting harder and harder to contain the agony at the center of his mind. It seemed to be chewing through the sleek black walls.
“Harry?”
Harry started and opened his eyes. Mum was sitting in front of him, leaning forwards from her chair by the fire.
And for once, her eyes were full of concern that looked focused just on him, not his sisters or some exasperating thing from her job.
“Are you all right?”
Harry swallowed and nodded. He supposed that he had denied his parents the ability to be concerned about him; his Occlumency had subdued his emotions so effectively that he hadn’t had any idea if his parents had been concerned about him, as opposed to just being smug that going to Slytherin had hurt him. And he’d taken their lectures about the values of OWLS and how he should have tried harder without even wondering if anything else, like fear for his future, lurked behind them.
“You don’t look like you are.” Mum leaned forwards and touched his arm.
Harry arranged a few of his shields and whispered, “I’m trying to think about and handle what happened to me in fifth year, and it’s hard.”
“What did happen?”
No use of his shields would allow him to talk about it, particularly since Mum and Dad would expect him to feel something and not just be neutral the way he would have to be. Harry forced a smile. “I failed my OWLS.”
“But before that? What caused it, Harry?”
“I mean…I thought you knew I failed them because I was a poor student.”
“You don’t just go overnight from Exceeds Expectations and sometimes Outstandings or Acceptables to utter failure.” Mum’s voice was quiet, and her hand stroked his arm. “You were so closed-in whenever I tried to talk to you about it that I stopped. But I’d like to know, if there’s any way that I can help you.”
Part of Harry longed to tell her. But he didn’t know how to do it without coming across as stupid and weak and—
The pain flowed through him as his Occlumency shields nearly buckled under the pressure of his own stupidity. Harry winced and bowed his head.
“Harry?”
“I can’t talk about it right now,” Harry whispered. “Maybe later.”
Mum sat with him, holding his arm and chattering quietly about some of the experimental rune magic that was going into her own work, for a while longer. Then she stood and gave him a measured look from eyes so like his own.
It was a while since Harry had had that thought. His mum’s eyes had remained alive through the years, and his had gone as dead as stone.
“I’m here, when you want to talk,” Mum repeated, and then turned and walked out of the sitting room.
Harry sprawled back in his chair and stared at the fire. He hated to admit it, but he didn’t think this was the kind of problem he could handle on his own. Still, telling someone else what had happened was out of the question. Harry wouldn’t endure the telling. He thought his mind might actually fracture.
What did that leave?
I can show someone who can read minds.
Harry clenched his hands on the arms of the chair. He didn’t want to reach out to Riddle. He didn’t want to let that arsehole think he was winning. And he didn’t have the kind of money that would let the arsehole think of this as a transaction where he could just see the truth and then give Harry advice on keeping his Occlumency intact.
But when Harry let himself consciously think about Riddle without his strongest shields, he had to admit, grudgingly, that he had something else the bastard wanted. The truth itself. Attention paid to him. Engagement with the ideas about magical theory he’d been throwing out, ideas he might be able to test just by looking at Harry’s mind.
Harry didn’t want to do it. Riddle had manipulated Dad. He had acted as though he was entitled to everything from an invitation to private family dinners to Harry’s secrets, just because he existed and was a Legilimens.
But Harry didn’t want to go insane from the pressure of his secret, either. And now that he could think about it more clearly, he knew he didn’t want to go back to living the way he had, so contained that he didn’t feel the pain of his past but barely interacted with anyone else or had a life, either.
Someday, he wanted to be able to move on, as much as he could. He didn’t think he could become prominent in the future or have any other kind of satisfying career, both because of his lack of NEWTS and because Malfoy—
His walls trembled.
--Would notice. But he could have a small life that was still fuller than it was now. He could have his family back. He could be an uncle and enjoy the children that maybe Bella and Natalie and Marlene would someday have.
To reach that, he needed Riddle’s help.
And what he could have mattered more to him than the price Riddle might exact.
*
Tom blinked as he watched the owl that had settled in front of him. He didn’t think this was the same bird that had returned the book he’d lent Harry, but then again, both birds had been so generic that he couldn’t say for certain. He reached out and removed the letter tied to its leg, turning it to the side so that he could read the handwriting on the outside.
Tom Riddle, Master Legilimens.
Tom was fairly sure that was Harry’s handwriting, having looked at his own memories of the writing on Harry’s reports in a Pensieve.
Smiling, he opened it. Perhaps he didn’t have to invite Harry someplace after all. Perhaps Harry was as lonely for someone to speak to about his Occlumency as Tom was for a real challenge.
Dear Mr. Riddle,
I know that you don’t work for free, and I’m not expecting you to. But I am hoping the fact that you know the truth about my Occlumency would convince you to charge a lesser price than you usually do.
I am willing to meet with you and show you the secret of what happened in my past. In return, you would advise me on how to contain it with Occlumency. My shields appear to have weakened since I started to manipulate them. I could go back to being the person I was before, and I think that would contain my emotions, but it would entail sacrificing them.
Would you agree to dinner at the Leaky Cauldron in a week or two? I know you have a busy schedule. I hope this will give you time to clear it.
Sincerely,
Harry Potter.
Tom stared at the letter for a long time. It wasn’t dissimilar to others he had received before. There were always people who wanted to bargain with him to charge lesser prices, and who were sure their problems were unique and tried to dangle the challenge of solving them before him in return for paying him less money.
And he should have been pleased that Harry had come to recognize his need for Tom’s skills.
But he wasn’t.
This wasn’t the kind of personal interaction he had envisioned, the delicate challenge of seducing Harry without alienating him, and apologizing to him for what he had done to Harry’s father without using those words. It wouldn’t entail discussions of magical theory or explorations of what they might be able to create together. It would just be a business transaction.
Tom narrowed his eyes.
It wouldn’t be like he had imagined, unless he was the one to move it back in that direction.
Seizing a piece of parchment lying next to his elbow, he wrote a reply before he could change his mind.
Dear Harry,
I am amenable to meeting in the Leaky Cauldron at ten-o’clock on Tuesday of next week. However, I won’t be charging you anything. I’ve caused you enough consternation that I would feel wrong doing so. And yes, I know that doesn’t fit with my reputation and you might distrust this, but I’ve never met anyone like you, either.
Regards,
Tom Riddle.
*
Harry sat behind the table in the Leaky Cauldron, which already bore two empty mugs of butterbeer, and fought the overwhelming compulsion to drink a third.
He shouldn’t feel this nervous. What Riddle had written was absolutely true. He had manipulated Harry’s Dad, and tried to manipulate Harry, both with Legilimency and without, and he was an arsehole who owed Harry. Even if he was just saying that so he could get Harry to cooperate with him in investigating magical theory, he wasn’t wrong.
But precisely because Riddle had been so manipulative up until this point, Harry couldn’t be easy.
Riddle walked into the Leaky Cauldron clad in a hooded cloak like a mundane version of the one Unspeakables used, probably so he wouldn’t be recognized by the few people who might be here and know him, but Harry knew him right away. The confidence of his stride and the cant of his head as he sat down at the table across from Harry were both infuriating.
Oddly enough, that got Harry past his nervousness. He gave Riddle a grim smile and said, “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” Riddle echoed back, and tilted his hood enough so that Harry could see his face. His expression was neutral and relatively open. “What’s that?” he added, as Harry hauled up a leather bag to the table.
“All the Galleons I have saved that aren’t in my trust vault and which my parents wouldn’t notice me taking. I know that it’s probably a pathetic portion of your usual fee, but I hope you’ll forgive that.”
“Did you not read the part of my letter where I said I didn’t intend to charge you?”
“Yes, and it’s bollocks. I know that you’re trying to get one over on me, Riddle.” Harry leaned forwards, and ignored the way that Riddle’s hand inched towards his wand for a second. With his lack of OWLS and magical power, Harry wasn’t a threat, and Riddle would remember that if he just thought about it for a minute. “You don’t feel the remorse you wrote in that letter.”
“Oh? How do you know? I didn’t think your talents extended to Legilimency.”
“Because if you were that kind of person, you wouldn’t have tried those actions in the first place.”
Riddle was silent for long moments. Harry waited for him to say something, indignation burning low in his belly. Riddle wanted to change this into a—a study group or something like that, or sweet-talk Harry into teaching him how to get past Harry’s Oclcumency, or something. Well, Harry was going to make it a business transaction if it killed him.
“Say rather, I was that kind of person because I had never found someone who convinced me it was worth being otherwise,” Riddle finally murmured.
“What the hell—are you saying that I redeemed you or something?”
“No, of course not. I have done nothing that I wish redemption for.” Harry snorted, and Riddle’s eyes caught the light for a second in a way that made Harry glad for his Occlumency. “But you have shown me that I can’t get what I want in this situation by charming you into dropping your guard or manipulating your mind. So I am going to ask you if you would permit me to help you.”
“Manipulate me.”
“No.”
“Teach you how to get past my Occlumency.”
“No—”
“What the hell,” Harry repeated. “You’re saying that you just want to see what’s in my mind, and—what? Keep it to yourself for the rest of your life? Why would you do that instead of spread it around?” The secret bucked within the cage of his Occlumency walls, and Harry gritted his teeth. He had to do something, yes, but he wasn’t going to simply yield to Riddle like a stereotypical maiden in those romance novels Mum didn’t know Bella read.
Riddle looked honestly startled and offended, or at least it was honest as far as Harry could tell. “What value does a secret have when it is shared?” he asked, and shook his head. “I would keep your secrets to myself for the pleasure of having them. And in hopes that you would continue to associate with me in the future.”
“What value could I have for you once you figure out some way past my Occlumency?”
“How loud is this room for you, Harry Potter?”
Harry blinked, thrown. He’d chosen the Leaky to meet in because it was the kind of public place where Riddle attacking him wouldn’t go unremarked, and because it was unlikely to be familiar territory for Riddle. Noise hadn’t been a factor. “Um, I just hear people talking in low voices and putting cups down and the fire crackling,” he said at last. “Not very loud.” There weren’t that many people here this late on a weekday.
Riddle inclined his head. “I can hear stray thoughts from every mind in this room except yours,” he said. “Flutters of ideas, plans, worries, fears. The world for me is continuous noise, unless I’m by myself or speaking to someone through the Floo. But you are silent.” He smiled at Harry, a smile that looked like he was about to spring across the table and tear open Harry’s throat with his teeth, so not exactly reassuring. “You have no idea how relaxing that is for me, or what it would mean to spend time with someone whose every motivation and future word I couldn’t guess before they opened their mouths.”
Harry blinked. Yes, all right, that sounded like the kind of selfishness that Riddle could use in a reasonably enlightened way and also something Harry never would have been able to guess. He leaned back in his chair and studied Riddle.
Let me try something.
He moved his shields, floating and turning them on the invisible sea of magic that surrounded them, and a second later, Riddle let out a surprised gasp.
“What did you do?” His voice was level, but taut, and his eyes shone with something that Harry thought could easily becoming killing anger.
“Shielded you from the rest of the room,” Harry said. “The same way I shielded my parents from your prying.” He smiled sweetly at Riddle. “I can give you silence in more than one way, it seems. Interesting to know it worked.”
*
Tom sat there in the silence of a public room that hadn’t been part of his world in years, except during the brief moments with Potter before, and felt the echo of his own shock and desire and fear ringing through his brain.
He can do this. He is more powerful than I. He could cut me off from my own Legilimency itself—
And then Tom shook his head and drew in a whistling breath. He was thinking of the disadvantages, not the advantages, and now that Potter had become the kind of person who would use Occlumency in that way, he was also the sort of person Tom could negotiate with. Someone he didn’t have to try and defeat.
On the contrary, it had become more important than ever to woo him to Tom’s side and work with him in a way to create an art or a theory of it that encompassed both Legilimency and Occlumency.
“Does the silence hurt you?”
The question was unexpected. Tom clung to it as he forced his gaze up and to connect with Potter’s. “Not pain, exactly,” he said. “But I am used to being able to defend myself. I had forgotten what it is like to be helpless.”
Harry’s eyes widened until the point when they looked like they might burst the sockets. “But—you’re powerful! You must know all kinds of spells I don’t, since I never took my NEWTS. Why would you be helpless?”
Tom looked back in the silence, the thick silence that he found himself feeling at continually, waiting for the thoughts to assault him again. He took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on Harry’s words instead of the unaccustomed sensation.
He never meant to trap me, bind me, make me helpless. It probably didn’t even occur to him. He just wanted to show he was strong, not that I was weak.
And he thinks of himself as weak even if he’s skilled in Occlumency.
Tom leaned slowly back. He could work with this, far better than if he’d been dealing with one of his own kind, savage and determined to cling to power. “I have come to rely overmuch on my Legilimency,” he said, admitting something he thought he might never have been able to admit if Harry hadn’t shown it to him. “And that means that I feel helpless when I can’t reach out and touch others’ minds, even if they are not saying anything of particular importance at the moment.”
*
Harry nodded, quiet, absorbing it. Then he said, “I still meant what I said in my letter about my Occlumency apparently weakening.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because I want to remain more open and emotional than I used to be. My shields worked perfectly to contain the secret as long as I never let up with them. I thought I’d just learned to repress it, remember, I didn’t know it was Occlumency. But without locking down like that…” Harry shook his head. “I know my weakness probably disgusts you.”
“It does not.”
Harry paused. Riddle sounded honest for—as much as Harry could tell. It wasn’t like he would be great at reading a master Legilimens. “Why not?”
“Someone who changed the whole course of magical theory and didn’t even realize what he was doing? The first person I have met who can stand up to me? Harry, you are the furthest thing from weak.”
The way Riddle purred his name did weird things to Harry’s belly. He put that aside, more easily after his long years of Occlumency. “All right, then. But I don’t know how I can show you the secret without self-destructing. If I lower my walls enough for that, then the pain will knock me unconscious.”
Riddle’s eyes widened. But he said, “I can use my Legilimency in different ways, if you will release me from the shielding. You can lower your walls a short distance. Or fissure them. And I can sweep my magic through your thoughts again and again, catching short glimpses each time, and then add them up.”
“Won’t that be disorienting?”
“I overcame much worse in the process of mastering my own mind.”
Harry nibbled his lip, and then nodded. He didn’t see that they really had any other choice. He breathed in and out, while the secret blazed and blazed in his mind, like a cancer that would kill him the moment it was diagnosed.
Then he said, “Okay,” raised a Privacy Charm, and met Riddle’s eyes, cracking his shields along a narrow axis. The hollow boom of falling stone filled his mind.
*
Tom swept his nets through again, and again, and again. Long before the end, Harry was panting harshly with his hands clasped to his temples. But he kept his eyes stubbornly on Tom’s, who tucked his own reactions away so that he could focus on absorbing the data. His self-control of himself was sorely tested, for the first time in years.
But what Harry had endured—
Enough, Tom thought, leaning back and retracting the tendrils of his Legilimency to coil around him while Harry realigned his shields. When he opened his eyes again, they were dull and fireless.
Tom understood that Harry would have had to retreat into the most extreme form of his Occlumency to survive the revelations that had been unearthed here. It did nothing to calm the fire roaring in his own ears, for vengeance and the desire to hurt.
Tom closed his eyes and retreated into his own mind, assembling the flashes of images into a whole. Harry’s emotions came with them, but at a remove, which was necessary so that Tom could understand what had happened but not integrate the experience as his own.
And he must understand it, so that he could suggest improvements to Harry’s Occlumency shields, but also so that he could persuade Harry that enough time had passed with his being the only one suffering.
*
“Um, Draco?”
The Malfoy boy looked up from the parchment spread in front of him. He was ordinarily handsome, Tom thought, although the softening tinge of Harry’s memories made rainbows appear to rise and set in his face. “Yes, Harry?” he asked, sounding distracted. Obviously he wanted to return to his essay more than he wanted to hear this confession.
“Um, I like you. A lot.”
Malfoy froze, his eyes widening. Tom knew that the Slytherin fifth-year boys’ dormitory was empty; Harry had carefully waited until a time when the rest of his roommates would be away. But Malfoy still stared around wildly as though someone would catch them, or catch on.
“You—do?” Malfoy asked finally. His voice was heavy. Tom howled in the back of his mind, because he didn’t need Harry’s memories of what had happened later to see the falseness of Malfoy’s reaction now. He wasn’t caught off-guard or hesitating because of uncertainty. Disgust layered the underneath of his reactions, if you knew how to look for it.
Harry, the poor fifteen-year-old boy he had been there, smiled and sat down next to Malfoy on a stool. “Yeah. And I know that you might not like me back, but that’s okay. I just wanted to tell you.”
Malfoy made the decision for reasons that Tom might not ever be able to fathom, and smiled. “Actually, I might like you too.”
Harry sat up, his breathlessness sounding like an echo to Tom as he watched the memories, part and not-part of them. “Really?”
“Yeah. I—I haven’t thought about it much,” Malfoy said, and then the lie became more fluid. “I haven’t dated any blokes before, you know? But this is the kind of thing where we might be able to see where it goes.” He ducked his head and looked up at Harry faux-bashfully. “You would have to be serious about dating me for me to be serious about dating you.”
Harry nodded fervently. “I could be! I promise!”
“Okay, but you’ll have to prove it to me.” Malfoy tilted his head, and his eyes were bright with something worse than triumph. Tom beat his own emotions back again, and watched. “Can you get your hands on a lubricant potion?”
Harry’s eyes widened, and Tom reminded himself again that he could not kill people in memories. “You want me to--?”
“Just get yourself ready for me,” Malfoy said. He was doing a good job of pretending as he glanced down the line of Harry’s long, skinny legs. “Wait me for in my bed with the curtains pulled. I’ll want to—I’ve never done this before. I need to get myself ready, too.”
“Okay,” Harry said, and his eyes were dazzled. He leaned forwards as if he was about to touch Malfoy, but Malfoy shied away. Harry looked disappointed.
Malfoy sighed and reached out to cup Harry’s chin with a hand that Harry probably thought was trembling with nerves instead of fury. “Just leave it for tonight,” he whispered. “Be in my bed by ten, okay? Prepared and ready.” He smiled. “I think I can promise to give you a night you will never forget.”
Harry nodded and stood up, glancing over his shoulder and winking once as the door opened and Zabini came in. Malfoy winked back and then turned to contemplate his essay again.
Harry floated on air to the bathroom, where he apparently kept some supplies of lubricant hidden in a cupboard. The image jerked and flashed dizzyingly, and then it was later, and Harry was lying in the middle of a green bed that was probably supposed to be Malfoy’s, his fingers sliding into himself, coated with glistening lubricant potion.
Tom half-averted his gaze, and listened for the whispers and soft laughter beyond the curtains that were part of the memory even though he doubted Harry had heard them consciously at the time. If he had, he might have known what was coming.
Harry finally seemed to finish preparing himself to his satisfaction, and set the small vial of lubricant potion aside. He spread his legs and looked around impatiently, his body visibly trembling. Tom doubted he had been ready for sex himself at the time, but so dazzled was he—
By someone who had no right, who had no—
The curtains ripped abruptly aside, and standing there were Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, and two larger and lumpish-looking boys whom Tom didn’t know but supposed were also part of the Slytherin fifth-year complement. Harry turned his head with a smile on his lips he probably thought was seductive and then froze, eyes wide.
A camera began going off with regular, steady flashes.
The echoing laughter of the boys made Tom have to lock down his own emotions completely with Occlumency. He watched impassively as Malfoy leaned nearer and sneered at Harry.
“You think I would ever sleep with a half-blood?” he snapped. “Let alone one so ugly, and a male? You know nothing about me, Potter. I’m going to marry a beautiful pureblood witch, and I have my choice. I would never choose you.”
“L-look at him lying there looking l-like a whore!” Theodore Nott whooped, one hand clapped over his mouth, laughing so hard that tears were sliding down his face like it was smeared with the lubricant potion.
“Look at him!” repeated one of the lumpish boys. The other one was laughing hard enough that it didn’t look like he could talk.
Harry opened his mouth and said nothing. From the look on his face, his world was falling to pieces around him, and Tom had to lock down his emotions again to be able to go on watching.
“Draco?” he finally whispered.
“You disgust me,” Malfoy said, and walked over to kneel next to the bed. He stared at Harry’s smeared arse and half-hard cock, snorted, and looked back at Harry’s face. “What did you expect, some dreamy confession of romance? You ought to have known me better than that. You didn’t, and you need to be punished for it. You’re so fucking disgusting, Potter. No one would ever want to sleep with you.” He turned around and gestured, and Nott handed him the camera. “I’ve had Theodore take several pictures. What do you think I’m going to do with those pictures?”
Harry closed his eyes. Opened them again. “Post them around the school?” he whispered.
Malfoy snorted again. “You really don’t know me at all. No, I’m sure that we can come to some kind of deal, Potter.” He looked Harry in the eye and smiled coldly. “As long as you do exactly what I say, then I don’t put up the pictures, and word of this humorous little interlude never has to leave the dormitories.”
Harry buried his face in his hands. For long seconds, the loudest noise in the room, as the other boys’ laughter regressed to snickers, was Harry’s labored breathing.
“What are you going to want me to do?” Harry finally whispered. His voice was broken. “Suck you off?”
Malfoy shoved Harry roughly enough that he fell back on the pillows. “I’m not bent. What is it going to take to hammer that through that thick head of yours, Potter? No, I’ll just make sure that you can do any number of fun things that don’t involve sex. And remember. Do them willingly. With a smile. And don’t tell anyone why.”
Harry nodded, still with his hands over his face.
The memory flickered and dissolved. Tom shuddered and opened his eyes.
Harry was watching him with that utterly blank look across the table. Tom wanted to reach out and shake him to make sure he was still alive, but he didn’t have the excuse. He could see very well that Harry’s chest was still rising and falling.
“And you…” Tom whispered. He licked his lips. “You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t go to anyone, or Malfoy would release the pictures. And one of the things he asked you to do was fail your OWLS.”
Harry shrugged. “He said that he was sick of looking at me and didn’t want to see me anymore after that year,” he said, his voice mechanical. Tom’s mind was burning, even beneath his Occlumency. “OWLS were the natural excuse. He told me to make it look real, so I passed a few because it would have looked strange if I’d failed all of them when I’d done all right in some classes up until that point. But yes, I failed them. And then I left.”
“And since then?”
“He sends some people, like Nott, to check up on me now and then. Sometimes he sends me a copy of a photo by owl post, to remind me that he still has them. I don’t know how many, or how many copies he made.”
Tom closed his eyes and sat there, breathing softly. The Malfoys were wealthy and well-known in magical Britain for things like their sizable charity donations to St. Mungo’s and the Hogwarts scholarship fund. Simply destroying their entire house with Fiendfyre would lead to questions that Tom didn’t have a defense prepared for.
“I need to ask a question.”
Tom blinked and released some of the tight hold on his Occlumency shields. He had mastered enough of his rage that he no longer truly needed them. “Ask.”
“Why do you care so much? Why does this matter to you more than just a secret that you’ve gained, or just a test of my Occlumency walls?”
“Do you have a touch of Legilimency yourself, that you can tell what I’m feeling?”
Harry blinked and opened his mouth slightly. “Sir? I can just see it from the way that you’re holding onto the arms of your chair and the way you’re breathing as if you’re a cousin to the Hogwarts Express.”
The words soothed Tom. They meant that Harry had already loosened his incredible chokehold on his emotions, at least a little, enough to make a joke. He leaned forwards. Harry did the same thing in what might be unconscious imitation.
“He might have destroyed you,” Tom said softly. “The pain you felt because of that…you could have committed suicide. Or you might have broken down and attacked him and been expelled, or you might have been socially destroyed if he’d decided to spread his blackmail around. You might never have mastered Occlumency. I might never have met you.”
“It seems…out of character, from what I know of you, for you to care about someone being hurt like this.”
“I do not care about most people. You are not them.”
Harry stared at him in silence for a long moment. Then his Occlumency shields retreated enough for his eyes to soften. “I can’t remember the last time someone without the name Potter said something like that to me.”
Tom reached out slowly. He’d intended to touch Harry, but he ended by placing his hand in the center of the table, leaving it up to Harry what happened next. Harry glanced thoughtfully between Tom’s face and his hand, and then reached out and clasped it.
Tom closed his fingers, and said softly, “Will you allow me to help you not only strengthen your Occlumency but also help you take revenge on Draco Malfoy?”
Harry’s shoulders hunched. “It’s going to be difficult. I have no idea how many copies he’s made or where they all are.” From the sound of his breathing, he was using Occlumency to talk about this at all.
“Lucky for you that I have never fled a project because of its difficulty.”
Harry looked at him for long moments, and then he let something else through and smiled sharply. Tom felt as though a shard from that smile had gone into his heart.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Why the hell not.”
Part Four
Tom stared at the owl who had come back with his book and looked up at it. “He truly sent this back?” he asked, hating the thin, disbelieving tone in his own voice, and the fact that he was speaking aloud to a bird at all.
The owl hooted at him, and then turned and swiveled its head towards the bowl of owl treats Tom kept on the mantel.
Tom stood up as if in a trance and went to procure one. When he held out the treat, the owl snatched it from his fingers and took off, fleeing into the air as if glad to be away from someone who asked it questions.
Tom slowly sank into the chair across from the fireplace and stared again at the book. He had sent the best lure he could think of to Harry. It was a book that almost no one would possess because it was ancient and had always been limited in its numbers, and one that recognized how wonderful and unique Harry’s magic was. Tom had known that Harry had received little notice and less encouragement since Hogwarts. He should have leaped on this.
He had not.
The simple solution occurred to Tom then, and his mouth twisted in a silent snarl. Harry could become a different person with a simple shifting of his Occlumency walls. He could have transformed himself into someone who would never be tempted by that book. Had he not transformed himself into someone who didn’t care about praise in the last seven years?
I don’t know what to do.
Tom looked around the large, airy room that was the center of his house. The shelves were covered with books he had acquired from their owners, or persuaded other people to give him the money to buy. The marble fireplace had been paid for with money given to Tom by a woman grateful that he’d turned her abusive brother into someone who wouldn’t bother her again. He had the secrets and the gratitude of half a hundred high Ministry officials tucked away in the reaches of his improbable memory.
None of it would help him here. It had been so long since Tom hadn’t been able to acquire something he wanted that he sat there in the dull dragging of bafflement for endless moments. Finally, he stirred and took a deep breath.
I can’t have him just for the asking or the taking.
And that ignited a blaze inside him that it took Tom some moments to understand. Finally, after some meditation, he realized it.
It was desire.
How long has it been since I really wanted something? How long has it been since it wasn’t absurdly easy for me to get?
Of course, in most people, that would have meant they were all the more frustrated now, and longing to smash through the obstacles that stood in their paths. But Tom felt the idea settle deeply into him, winding tendrils around the roots of his mind, and smiled a little as he leaned back in his chair.
If I can offer Harry respect freely, make it so that I’m not just asking what happened to manipulate it but am asking because I care, then I’ll have him. And I’ll have something new for myself, as well. I’ll be able to feel new things.
Until that moment, Tom hadn’t realized how numb he had become, how bored. He had mistaken the boredom for satisfaction and contentment at his victories.
He could still be satisfied and content. But he would like to understand triumph and joy again. And it would be wonderful if he could learn to understand them again because of having Harry at his side.
I’ll leave him alone for a few days, so that he can decide if he wants to stop retreating behind his Occlumency shields. And then I’ll owl him again and ask for a meeting at a time and place of his own choosing.
I can do anything I wish. Including being gentle. Including seducing the best Occlumens I’ve ever met—the only true match for me.
*
Harry frowned as he closed his eyes. He had manipulated his Occlumency shields carefully, making sure that what came through was pleasure and interest in being with his family. But it was getting harder and harder to contain the agony at the center of his mind. It seemed to be chewing through the sleek black walls.
“Harry?”
Harry started and opened his eyes. Mum was sitting in front of him, leaning forwards from her chair by the fire.
And for once, her eyes were full of concern that looked focused just on him, not his sisters or some exasperating thing from her job.
“Are you all right?”
Harry swallowed and nodded. He supposed that he had denied his parents the ability to be concerned about him; his Occlumency had subdued his emotions so effectively that he hadn’t had any idea if his parents had been concerned about him, as opposed to just being smug that going to Slytherin had hurt him. And he’d taken their lectures about the values of OWLS and how he should have tried harder without even wondering if anything else, like fear for his future, lurked behind them.
“You don’t look like you are.” Mum leaned forwards and touched his arm.
Harry arranged a few of his shields and whispered, “I’m trying to think about and handle what happened to me in fifth year, and it’s hard.”
“What did happen?”
No use of his shields would allow him to talk about it, particularly since Mum and Dad would expect him to feel something and not just be neutral the way he would have to be. Harry forced a smile. “I failed my OWLS.”
“But before that? What caused it, Harry?”
“I mean…I thought you knew I failed them because I was a poor student.”
“You don’t just go overnight from Exceeds Expectations and sometimes Outstandings or Acceptables to utter failure.” Mum’s voice was quiet, and her hand stroked his arm. “You were so closed-in whenever I tried to talk to you about it that I stopped. But I’d like to know, if there’s any way that I can help you.”
Part of Harry longed to tell her. But he didn’t know how to do it without coming across as stupid and weak and—
The pain flowed through him as his Occlumency shields nearly buckled under the pressure of his own stupidity. Harry winced and bowed his head.
“Harry?”
“I can’t talk about it right now,” Harry whispered. “Maybe later.”
Mum sat with him, holding his arm and chattering quietly about some of the experimental rune magic that was going into her own work, for a while longer. Then she stood and gave him a measured look from eyes so like his own.
It was a while since Harry had had that thought. His mum’s eyes had remained alive through the years, and his had gone as dead as stone.
“I’m here, when you want to talk,” Mum repeated, and then turned and walked out of the sitting room.
Harry sprawled back in his chair and stared at the fire. He hated to admit it, but he didn’t think this was the kind of problem he could handle on his own. Still, telling someone else what had happened was out of the question. Harry wouldn’t endure the telling. He thought his mind might actually fracture.
What did that leave?
I can show someone who can read minds.
Harry clenched his hands on the arms of the chair. He didn’t want to reach out to Riddle. He didn’t want to let that arsehole think he was winning. And he didn’t have the kind of money that would let the arsehole think of this as a transaction where he could just see the truth and then give Harry advice on keeping his Occlumency intact.
But when Harry let himself consciously think about Riddle without his strongest shields, he had to admit, grudgingly, that he had something else the bastard wanted. The truth itself. Attention paid to him. Engagement with the ideas about magical theory he’d been throwing out, ideas he might be able to test just by looking at Harry’s mind.
Harry didn’t want to do it. Riddle had manipulated Dad. He had acted as though he was entitled to everything from an invitation to private family dinners to Harry’s secrets, just because he existed and was a Legilimens.
But Harry didn’t want to go insane from the pressure of his secret, either. And now that he could think about it more clearly, he knew he didn’t want to go back to living the way he had, so contained that he didn’t feel the pain of his past but barely interacted with anyone else or had a life, either.
Someday, he wanted to be able to move on, as much as he could. He didn’t think he could become prominent in the future or have any other kind of satisfying career, both because of his lack of NEWTS and because Malfoy—
His walls trembled.
--Would notice. But he could have a small life that was still fuller than it was now. He could have his family back. He could be an uncle and enjoy the children that maybe Bella and Natalie and Marlene would someday have.
To reach that, he needed Riddle’s help.
And what he could have mattered more to him than the price Riddle might exact.
*
Tom blinked as he watched the owl that had settled in front of him. He didn’t think this was the same bird that had returned the book he’d lent Harry, but then again, both birds had been so generic that he couldn’t say for certain. He reached out and removed the letter tied to its leg, turning it to the side so that he could read the handwriting on the outside.
Tom Riddle, Master Legilimens.
Tom was fairly sure that was Harry’s handwriting, having looked at his own memories of the writing on Harry’s reports in a Pensieve.
Smiling, he opened it. Perhaps he didn’t have to invite Harry someplace after all. Perhaps Harry was as lonely for someone to speak to about his Occlumency as Tom was for a real challenge.
Dear Mr. Riddle,
I know that you don’t work for free, and I’m not expecting you to. But I am hoping the fact that you know the truth about my Occlumency would convince you to charge a lesser price than you usually do.
I am willing to meet with you and show you the secret of what happened in my past. In return, you would advise me on how to contain it with Occlumency. My shields appear to have weakened since I started to manipulate them. I could go back to being the person I was before, and I think that would contain my emotions, but it would entail sacrificing them.
Would you agree to dinner at the Leaky Cauldron in a week or two? I know you have a busy schedule. I hope this will give you time to clear it.
Sincerely,
Harry Potter.
Tom stared at the letter for a long time. It wasn’t dissimilar to others he had received before. There were always people who wanted to bargain with him to charge lesser prices, and who were sure their problems were unique and tried to dangle the challenge of solving them before him in return for paying him less money.
And he should have been pleased that Harry had come to recognize his need for Tom’s skills.
But he wasn’t.
This wasn’t the kind of personal interaction he had envisioned, the delicate challenge of seducing Harry without alienating him, and apologizing to him for what he had done to Harry’s father without using those words. It wouldn’t entail discussions of magical theory or explorations of what they might be able to create together. It would just be a business transaction.
Tom narrowed his eyes.
It wouldn’t be like he had imagined, unless he was the one to move it back in that direction.
Seizing a piece of parchment lying next to his elbow, he wrote a reply before he could change his mind.
Dear Harry,
I am amenable to meeting in the Leaky Cauldron at ten-o’clock on Tuesday of next week. However, I won’t be charging you anything. I’ve caused you enough consternation that I would feel wrong doing so. And yes, I know that doesn’t fit with my reputation and you might distrust this, but I’ve never met anyone like you, either.
Regards,
Tom Riddle.
*
Harry sat behind the table in the Leaky Cauldron, which already bore two empty mugs of butterbeer, and fought the overwhelming compulsion to drink a third.
He shouldn’t feel this nervous. What Riddle had written was absolutely true. He had manipulated Harry’s Dad, and tried to manipulate Harry, both with Legilimency and without, and he was an arsehole who owed Harry. Even if he was just saying that so he could get Harry to cooperate with him in investigating magical theory, he wasn’t wrong.
But precisely because Riddle had been so manipulative up until this point, Harry couldn’t be easy.
Riddle walked into the Leaky Cauldron clad in a hooded cloak like a mundane version of the one Unspeakables used, probably so he wouldn’t be recognized by the few people who might be here and know him, but Harry knew him right away. The confidence of his stride and the cant of his head as he sat down at the table across from Harry were both infuriating.
Oddly enough, that got Harry past his nervousness. He gave Riddle a grim smile and said, “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” Riddle echoed back, and tilted his hood enough so that Harry could see his face. His expression was neutral and relatively open. “What’s that?” he added, as Harry hauled up a leather bag to the table.
“All the Galleons I have saved that aren’t in my trust vault and which my parents wouldn’t notice me taking. I know that it’s probably a pathetic portion of your usual fee, but I hope you’ll forgive that.”
“Did you not read the part of my letter where I said I didn’t intend to charge you?”
“Yes, and it’s bollocks. I know that you’re trying to get one over on me, Riddle.” Harry leaned forwards, and ignored the way that Riddle’s hand inched towards his wand for a second. With his lack of OWLS and magical power, Harry wasn’t a threat, and Riddle would remember that if he just thought about it for a minute. “You don’t feel the remorse you wrote in that letter.”
“Oh? How do you know? I didn’t think your talents extended to Legilimency.”
“Because if you were that kind of person, you wouldn’t have tried those actions in the first place.”
Riddle was silent for long moments. Harry waited for him to say something, indignation burning low in his belly. Riddle wanted to change this into a—a study group or something like that, or sweet-talk Harry into teaching him how to get past Harry’s Oclcumency, or something. Well, Harry was going to make it a business transaction if it killed him.
“Say rather, I was that kind of person because I had never found someone who convinced me it was worth being otherwise,” Riddle finally murmured.
“What the hell—are you saying that I redeemed you or something?”
“No, of course not. I have done nothing that I wish redemption for.” Harry snorted, and Riddle’s eyes caught the light for a second in a way that made Harry glad for his Occlumency. “But you have shown me that I can’t get what I want in this situation by charming you into dropping your guard or manipulating your mind. So I am going to ask you if you would permit me to help you.”
“Manipulate me.”
“No.”
“Teach you how to get past my Occlumency.”
“No—”
“What the hell,” Harry repeated. “You’re saying that you just want to see what’s in my mind, and—what? Keep it to yourself for the rest of your life? Why would you do that instead of spread it around?” The secret bucked within the cage of his Occlumency walls, and Harry gritted his teeth. He had to do something, yes, but he wasn’t going to simply yield to Riddle like a stereotypical maiden in those romance novels Mum didn’t know Bella read.
Riddle looked honestly startled and offended, or at least it was honest as far as Harry could tell. “What value does a secret have when it is shared?” he asked, and shook his head. “I would keep your secrets to myself for the pleasure of having them. And in hopes that you would continue to associate with me in the future.”
“What value could I have for you once you figure out some way past my Occlumency?”
“How loud is this room for you, Harry Potter?”
Harry blinked, thrown. He’d chosen the Leaky to meet in because it was the kind of public place where Riddle attacking him wouldn’t go unremarked, and because it was unlikely to be familiar territory for Riddle. Noise hadn’t been a factor. “Um, I just hear people talking in low voices and putting cups down and the fire crackling,” he said at last. “Not very loud.” There weren’t that many people here this late on a weekday.
Riddle inclined his head. “I can hear stray thoughts from every mind in this room except yours,” he said. “Flutters of ideas, plans, worries, fears. The world for me is continuous noise, unless I’m by myself or speaking to someone through the Floo. But you are silent.” He smiled at Harry, a smile that looked like he was about to spring across the table and tear open Harry’s throat with his teeth, so not exactly reassuring. “You have no idea how relaxing that is for me, or what it would mean to spend time with someone whose every motivation and future word I couldn’t guess before they opened their mouths.”
Harry blinked. Yes, all right, that sounded like the kind of selfishness that Riddle could use in a reasonably enlightened way and also something Harry never would have been able to guess. He leaned back in his chair and studied Riddle.
Let me try something.
He moved his shields, floating and turning them on the invisible sea of magic that surrounded them, and a second later, Riddle let out a surprised gasp.
“What did you do?” His voice was level, but taut, and his eyes shone with something that Harry thought could easily becoming killing anger.
“Shielded you from the rest of the room,” Harry said. “The same way I shielded my parents from your prying.” He smiled sweetly at Riddle. “I can give you silence in more than one way, it seems. Interesting to know it worked.”
*
Tom sat there in the silence of a public room that hadn’t been part of his world in years, except during the brief moments with Potter before, and felt the echo of his own shock and desire and fear ringing through his brain.
He can do this. He is more powerful than I. He could cut me off from my own Legilimency itself—
And then Tom shook his head and drew in a whistling breath. He was thinking of the disadvantages, not the advantages, and now that Potter had become the kind of person who would use Occlumency in that way, he was also the sort of person Tom could negotiate with. Someone he didn’t have to try and defeat.
On the contrary, it had become more important than ever to woo him to Tom’s side and work with him in a way to create an art or a theory of it that encompassed both Legilimency and Occlumency.
“Does the silence hurt you?”
The question was unexpected. Tom clung to it as he forced his gaze up and to connect with Potter’s. “Not pain, exactly,” he said. “But I am used to being able to defend myself. I had forgotten what it is like to be helpless.”
Harry’s eyes widened until the point when they looked like they might burst the sockets. “But—you’re powerful! You must know all kinds of spells I don’t, since I never took my NEWTS. Why would you be helpless?”
Tom looked back in the silence, the thick silence that he found himself feeling at continually, waiting for the thoughts to assault him again. He took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on Harry’s words instead of the unaccustomed sensation.
He never meant to trap me, bind me, make me helpless. It probably didn’t even occur to him. He just wanted to show he was strong, not that I was weak.
And he thinks of himself as weak even if he’s skilled in Occlumency.
Tom leaned slowly back. He could work with this, far better than if he’d been dealing with one of his own kind, savage and determined to cling to power. “I have come to rely overmuch on my Legilimency,” he said, admitting something he thought he might never have been able to admit if Harry hadn’t shown it to him. “And that means that I feel helpless when I can’t reach out and touch others’ minds, even if they are not saying anything of particular importance at the moment.”
*
Harry nodded, quiet, absorbing it. Then he said, “I still meant what I said in my letter about my Occlumency apparently weakening.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because I want to remain more open and emotional than I used to be. My shields worked perfectly to contain the secret as long as I never let up with them. I thought I’d just learned to repress it, remember, I didn’t know it was Occlumency. But without locking down like that…” Harry shook his head. “I know my weakness probably disgusts you.”
“It does not.”
Harry paused. Riddle sounded honest for—as much as Harry could tell. It wasn’t like he would be great at reading a master Legilimens. “Why not?”
“Someone who changed the whole course of magical theory and didn’t even realize what he was doing? The first person I have met who can stand up to me? Harry, you are the furthest thing from weak.”
The way Riddle purred his name did weird things to Harry’s belly. He put that aside, more easily after his long years of Occlumency. “All right, then. But I don’t know how I can show you the secret without self-destructing. If I lower my walls enough for that, then the pain will knock me unconscious.”
Riddle’s eyes widened. But he said, “I can use my Legilimency in different ways, if you will release me from the shielding. You can lower your walls a short distance. Or fissure them. And I can sweep my magic through your thoughts again and again, catching short glimpses each time, and then add them up.”
“Won’t that be disorienting?”
“I overcame much worse in the process of mastering my own mind.”
Harry nibbled his lip, and then nodded. He didn’t see that they really had any other choice. He breathed in and out, while the secret blazed and blazed in his mind, like a cancer that would kill him the moment it was diagnosed.
Then he said, “Okay,” raised a Privacy Charm, and met Riddle’s eyes, cracking his shields along a narrow axis. The hollow boom of falling stone filled his mind.
*
Tom swept his nets through again, and again, and again. Long before the end, Harry was panting harshly with his hands clasped to his temples. But he kept his eyes stubbornly on Tom’s, who tucked his own reactions away so that he could focus on absorbing the data. His self-control of himself was sorely tested, for the first time in years.
But what Harry had endured—
Enough, Tom thought, leaning back and retracting the tendrils of his Legilimency to coil around him while Harry realigned his shields. When he opened his eyes again, they were dull and fireless.
Tom understood that Harry would have had to retreat into the most extreme form of his Occlumency to survive the revelations that had been unearthed here. It did nothing to calm the fire roaring in his own ears, for vengeance and the desire to hurt.
Tom closed his eyes and retreated into his own mind, assembling the flashes of images into a whole. Harry’s emotions came with them, but at a remove, which was necessary so that Tom could understand what had happened but not integrate the experience as his own.
And he must understand it, so that he could suggest improvements to Harry’s Occlumency shields, but also so that he could persuade Harry that enough time had passed with his being the only one suffering.
*
“Um, Draco?”
The Malfoy boy looked up from the parchment spread in front of him. He was ordinarily handsome, Tom thought, although the softening tinge of Harry’s memories made rainbows appear to rise and set in his face. “Yes, Harry?” he asked, sounding distracted. Obviously he wanted to return to his essay more than he wanted to hear this confession.
“Um, I like you. A lot.”
Malfoy froze, his eyes widening. Tom knew that the Slytherin fifth-year boys’ dormitory was empty; Harry had carefully waited until a time when the rest of his roommates would be away. But Malfoy still stared around wildly as though someone would catch them, or catch on.
“You—do?” Malfoy asked finally. His voice was heavy. Tom howled in the back of his mind, because he didn’t need Harry’s memories of what had happened later to see the falseness of Malfoy’s reaction now. He wasn’t caught off-guard or hesitating because of uncertainty. Disgust layered the underneath of his reactions, if you knew how to look for it.
Harry, the poor fifteen-year-old boy he had been there, smiled and sat down next to Malfoy on a stool. “Yeah. And I know that you might not like me back, but that’s okay. I just wanted to tell you.”
Malfoy made the decision for reasons that Tom might not ever be able to fathom, and smiled. “Actually, I might like you too.”
Harry sat up, his breathlessness sounding like an echo to Tom as he watched the memories, part and not-part of them. “Really?”
“Yeah. I—I haven’t thought about it much,” Malfoy said, and then the lie became more fluid. “I haven’t dated any blokes before, you know? But this is the kind of thing where we might be able to see where it goes.” He ducked his head and looked up at Harry faux-bashfully. “You would have to be serious about dating me for me to be serious about dating you.”
Harry nodded fervently. “I could be! I promise!”
“Okay, but you’ll have to prove it to me.” Malfoy tilted his head, and his eyes were bright with something worse than triumph. Tom beat his own emotions back again, and watched. “Can you get your hands on a lubricant potion?”
Harry’s eyes widened, and Tom reminded himself again that he could not kill people in memories. “You want me to--?”
“Just get yourself ready for me,” Malfoy said. He was doing a good job of pretending as he glanced down the line of Harry’s long, skinny legs. “Wait me for in my bed with the curtains pulled. I’ll want to—I’ve never done this before. I need to get myself ready, too.”
“Okay,” Harry said, and his eyes were dazzled. He leaned forwards as if he was about to touch Malfoy, but Malfoy shied away. Harry looked disappointed.
Malfoy sighed and reached out to cup Harry’s chin with a hand that Harry probably thought was trembling with nerves instead of fury. “Just leave it for tonight,” he whispered. “Be in my bed by ten, okay? Prepared and ready.” He smiled. “I think I can promise to give you a night you will never forget.”
Harry nodded and stood up, glancing over his shoulder and winking once as the door opened and Zabini came in. Malfoy winked back and then turned to contemplate his essay again.
Harry floated on air to the bathroom, where he apparently kept some supplies of lubricant hidden in a cupboard. The image jerked and flashed dizzyingly, and then it was later, and Harry was lying in the middle of a green bed that was probably supposed to be Malfoy’s, his fingers sliding into himself, coated with glistening lubricant potion.
Tom half-averted his gaze, and listened for the whispers and soft laughter beyond the curtains that were part of the memory even though he doubted Harry had heard them consciously at the time. If he had, he might have known what was coming.
Harry finally seemed to finish preparing himself to his satisfaction, and set the small vial of lubricant potion aside. He spread his legs and looked around impatiently, his body visibly trembling. Tom doubted he had been ready for sex himself at the time, but so dazzled was he—
By someone who had no right, who had no—
The curtains ripped abruptly aside, and standing there were Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, and two larger and lumpish-looking boys whom Tom didn’t know but supposed were also part of the Slytherin fifth-year complement. Harry turned his head with a smile on his lips he probably thought was seductive and then froze, eyes wide.
A camera began going off with regular, steady flashes.
The echoing laughter of the boys made Tom have to lock down his own emotions completely with Occlumency. He watched impassively as Malfoy leaned nearer and sneered at Harry.
“You think I would ever sleep with a half-blood?” he snapped. “Let alone one so ugly, and a male? You know nothing about me, Potter. I’m going to marry a beautiful pureblood witch, and I have my choice. I would never choose you.”
“L-look at him lying there looking l-like a whore!” Theodore Nott whooped, one hand clapped over his mouth, laughing so hard that tears were sliding down his face like it was smeared with the lubricant potion.
“Look at him!” repeated one of the lumpish boys. The other one was laughing hard enough that it didn’t look like he could talk.
Harry opened his mouth and said nothing. From the look on his face, his world was falling to pieces around him, and Tom had to lock down his emotions again to be able to go on watching.
“Draco?” he finally whispered.
“You disgust me,” Malfoy said, and walked over to kneel next to the bed. He stared at Harry’s smeared arse and half-hard cock, snorted, and looked back at Harry’s face. “What did you expect, some dreamy confession of romance? You ought to have known me better than that. You didn’t, and you need to be punished for it. You’re so fucking disgusting, Potter. No one would ever want to sleep with you.” He turned around and gestured, and Nott handed him the camera. “I’ve had Theodore take several pictures. What do you think I’m going to do with those pictures?”
Harry closed his eyes. Opened them again. “Post them around the school?” he whispered.
Malfoy snorted again. “You really don’t know me at all. No, I’m sure that we can come to some kind of deal, Potter.” He looked Harry in the eye and smiled coldly. “As long as you do exactly what I say, then I don’t put up the pictures, and word of this humorous little interlude never has to leave the dormitories.”
Harry buried his face in his hands. For long seconds, the loudest noise in the room, as the other boys’ laughter regressed to snickers, was Harry’s labored breathing.
“What are you going to want me to do?” Harry finally whispered. His voice was broken. “Suck you off?”
Malfoy shoved Harry roughly enough that he fell back on the pillows. “I’m not bent. What is it going to take to hammer that through that thick head of yours, Potter? No, I’ll just make sure that you can do any number of fun things that don’t involve sex. And remember. Do them willingly. With a smile. And don’t tell anyone why.”
Harry nodded, still with his hands over his face.
The memory flickered and dissolved. Tom shuddered and opened his eyes.
Harry was watching him with that utterly blank look across the table. Tom wanted to reach out and shake him to make sure he was still alive, but he didn’t have the excuse. He could see very well that Harry’s chest was still rising and falling.
“And you…” Tom whispered. He licked his lips. “You couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t go to anyone, or Malfoy would release the pictures. And one of the things he asked you to do was fail your OWLS.”
Harry shrugged. “He said that he was sick of looking at me and didn’t want to see me anymore after that year,” he said, his voice mechanical. Tom’s mind was burning, even beneath his Occlumency. “OWLS were the natural excuse. He told me to make it look real, so I passed a few because it would have looked strange if I’d failed all of them when I’d done all right in some classes up until that point. But yes, I failed them. And then I left.”
“And since then?”
“He sends some people, like Nott, to check up on me now and then. Sometimes he sends me a copy of a photo by owl post, to remind me that he still has them. I don’t know how many, or how many copies he made.”
Tom closed his eyes and sat there, breathing softly. The Malfoys were wealthy and well-known in magical Britain for things like their sizable charity donations to St. Mungo’s and the Hogwarts scholarship fund. Simply destroying their entire house with Fiendfyre would lead to questions that Tom didn’t have a defense prepared for.
“I need to ask a question.”
Tom blinked and released some of the tight hold on his Occlumency shields. He had mastered enough of his rage that he no longer truly needed them. “Ask.”
“Why do you care so much? Why does this matter to you more than just a secret that you’ve gained, or just a test of my Occlumency walls?”
“Do you have a touch of Legilimency yourself, that you can tell what I’m feeling?”
Harry blinked and opened his mouth slightly. “Sir? I can just see it from the way that you’re holding onto the arms of your chair and the way you’re breathing as if you’re a cousin to the Hogwarts Express.”
The words soothed Tom. They meant that Harry had already loosened his incredible chokehold on his emotions, at least a little, enough to make a joke. He leaned forwards. Harry did the same thing in what might be unconscious imitation.
“He might have destroyed you,” Tom said softly. “The pain you felt because of that…you could have committed suicide. Or you might have broken down and attacked him and been expelled, or you might have been socially destroyed if he’d decided to spread his blackmail around. You might never have mastered Occlumency. I might never have met you.”
“It seems…out of character, from what I know of you, for you to care about someone being hurt like this.”
“I do not care about most people. You are not them.”
Harry stared at him in silence for a long moment. Then his Occlumency shields retreated enough for his eyes to soften. “I can’t remember the last time someone without the name Potter said something like that to me.”
Tom reached out slowly. He’d intended to touch Harry, but he ended by placing his hand in the center of the table, leaving it up to Harry what happened next. Harry glanced thoughtfully between Tom’s face and his hand, and then reached out and clasped it.
Tom closed his fingers, and said softly, “Will you allow me to help you not only strengthen your Occlumency but also help you take revenge on Draco Malfoy?”
Harry’s shoulders hunched. “It’s going to be difficult. I have no idea how many copies he’s made or where they all are.” From the sound of his breathing, he was using Occlumency to talk about this at all.
“Lucky for you that I have never fled a project because of its difficulty.”
Harry looked at him for long moments, and then he let something else through and smiled sharply. Tom felt as though a shard from that smile had gone into his heart.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Why the hell not.”