[From Litha to Lammas]: Immaculate, 7/7, NC-17, Tom/Harry

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! Here’s the end of the story.

Epilogue

“I can’t believe he did that.”

Harry sat back and looked between his parents’ faces. Dad was scowling, and his face was so red that he looked like Arthur Weasley. His hands closed and opened over and over again, and then he leaned forwards and abruptly pounded one fist on the table in front of him, the one closest to the fire.

“It’s wrong!”

That, Harry absolutely agreed with, but he shrugged a little. “It’s also done, Dad. I promise, being imprisoned in the sense of his own guilt and self-torment, even if he doesn’t remember why, is enough of a punishment.” That was what he had told his parents he had done. He didn’t have to tell them exactly how far he would go to avenge himself.

As Riddle had taught him, he could choose who he would be.

Mum stirred. She was the one Harry was more worried about, actually. Sitting there with that closed expression on her face didn’t mean anything good for anyone with the last name Malfoy. “And you’re absolutely sure that his parents didn’t know a thing about it? That they only stopped inviting you over because they were afraid that it would be reflect badly on them to have a failed student in their house?”

That had been something it hurt to remember: that he and Malfoy had been friends once, when they were younger, and had spent parts of the holidays and summer at each other’s houses. Harry nodded. “Riddle looked into Malfoy’s mind for me, very carefully. There was no sign of his parents knowing about it.” And that was true. Riddle had also sneaked into Malfoy Manor and Nott’s house to burn the photographs there, while Harry took care of the ones in the Ministry.

Dad abruptly stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of the coffee table. Harry counted under his breath, and noticed Mum’s lips moving silently in the same words, and sure enough, Dad hit his shins on the coffee table within ten seconds and swore.

Mum shook her head and shot Harry a smile. Harry smiled back, and saw her blink. Of course, it had been a long, long time since he had done that.

Dad suddenly turned around and came over to embrace Harry. Harry swallowed and let him. This was something he was still getting used to, touching and being touched. But his Occlumency locked down the flinches he wanted to make as well as the fear that once would have made him run away.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Dad whispered. “I’m so sorry that you thought you couldn’t come to us. But I’m so proud you survived.”

“I couldn’t come to anyone,” Harry said, and hugged him back. “I wasn’t talking to different people and telling them instead of you.” Bella had figured out he was gay, but that was mostly because Harry had shared it with her to keep her from asking further questions, once she had figured out something was wrong. “And at least I did survive, and at least I have Occlumency and the promise of a future now.”

“You sure you don’t want me to do anything else to the Malfoys?” Dad asked hopefully, stepping back from him. “I could make sure that the Aurors have a reason to pay lots of visits to Malfoy Manor—”

“Dear, that would be an abuse of the power of your office.”

Mum’s voice was freezing. Dad winced and nodded. “Yeah, okay, I know that. I just don’t want them to get away with it!”

“From the sounds of it, they aren’t getting away with anything,” Harry said with satisfaction. Malfoy had already lashed out at someone at a charity gala and then tried to clumsily excuse it with being “lost in thought.” The papers had reported on it as a gossip item, but soon the stories would be worse and run longer.

It was a side-effect of imprisoning him in his worst memory that Harry hadn’t immediately anticipated: Malfoy’s control over his other emotions outside that circle of embarrassment would decay. But he was happy to accept it, and from the slow way Mum nodded over Dad’s shoulder, so was she.

“And what about Lucius and Narcissa?”

“They really, really didn’t know, Dad, I promise. And you make life difficult for Lucius all the time anyway.”

“Yes, I do,” said Dad happily. Harry knew he practically stalked Lucius to know who Lucius was trying to bribe and intimidate, so that no new rumors or legislation related to blood purity could start wending their way through the Wizengamot.

“I could make life difficult for Narcissa,” Mum added in a musing voice.

Harry rolled his eyes at her. Mum stared at him. Harry realized how long it had been since he had done something like that, but still managed to smile and shake his head a little as he said, “You don’t have to.”

“Your Mum does it without even trying to,” Dad bragged, and leaned in to kiss Mum on the cheek. “Seeing Narcissa’s face sour every time your mother walks into a room at a party or a charity event is worth it.”

Harry snorted. He had never paid attention to Malfoy’s parents in the last seven years, since they weren’t relevant to his life or his secret, but it seemed that their intense blood purity hadn’t lessened.

And if they had never taught that blood purity to their son, then neither of us might have had to suffer.

Harry shook off the idea. Yes, things would have been better if none of this had ever happened. But it had happened, and he could confront the memories without shutting them away again, except when he slept, when he closed his shields. He didn’t want them infecting his nightmares.

“I love you, Harry.”

It was Mum, bending over and hugging him. Harry froze in surprise for a second, and then hugged her back, hard enough to make her sigh. That was one thing Harry never intended to miss out on again, the way his family would be affectionate with him if he just let them. He would hold Marlene and tease Natalie and talk with Bella about some of the more serious things in his life. She was old enough now to understand them.

It would be a while before he offered the story of what Malfoy had done, though. There was no reason to give anyone else nightmares.

“And of course we don’t care that you’re gay,” Mum was whispering into his ear. “And of course we don’t care who you date. As long as it isn’t Malfoy.”

Harry had to laugh. “If it was, then I think Riddle would be on our doorstep before the news could spread far, determined to dig into my mind and figure out what had happened.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Mum asked with a small frown, stepping back. “Will he be your friend, or a mentor of sorts, going forwards? Now that you know what you can do is Occlumency?”

Harry gave her the only answer he had. “I don’t know.”

*

“Hello, Mr. Riddle.”

Tom turned around, hoping that he concealed the eagerness from other people in the crowd. From the faint smile on Harry’s face, Tom hadn’t hidden it from him. He inclined his head. “Mr. Potter. How are you doing?”

The Harry behind him was so different from the one Tom had first met in the Ministry that he caught his breath. Harry’s eyes had light behind them again, he wore a pair of splendid blue robes outlined with silver instead of the plain black ones Tom had seen him in before, and he gestured with his hand in a way that almost sent wine spilling out of the silver cup.

“I’m enjoying myself. You?”

“For certain values of ‘enjoy,’” Tom murmured, and led Harry’s gaze straight to Lucius Malfoy. The man stood near the front of the Malfoys’ ballroom, answering questions from a smiling Rita Skeeter and looking harassed.

Harry sighed. “What did you do to him?”

“I? I needed to do nothing. This interview is about the embarrassment his son caused by shouting at children in St. Mungo’s yesterday that they don’t deserve the Galleons his family spends. Mediwizards hustled him out as soon as they heard him, of course, but the damage was done. I think three owls were probably on their way to Skeeter before Malfoy cleared the building.”

Harry laughed and started to respond, but a voice behind him said, “Oh, if it isn’t the failed Potter.”

Tom shifted to Harry’s shoulder as Harry turned around to face Draco Malfoy. Lucius’s son had a scowl on his face, but it kept slipping, as his stare went to Harry’s robes or the expression on his face. Tom mourned that he couldn’t simply wrap his arms around Harry in public yet. If nothing else, that would have been good for a laugh as Malfoy stumbled back in horror at the sight of two men embracing.

“Hello, Malfoy,” Harry said, and his eyes glittered. “I would refer to you as the failed Malfoy, but I understand that just speaking your last name in certain circles is enough to make some people change the subject these days.” He seemed to be looking beyond young Malfoy’s shoulder, but Tom couldn’t immediately figure out what he was seeing.

And he couldn’t sense the tinge of Harry’s thoughts on the air, either. He would have been able to with anyone else. Tom sipped his wine and reveled in his own incapacity.

Malfoy spluttered, obviously groping after the memories of what he had once done to Harry and not finding them. “You’ll get yours,” he said at last.

Harry leaned back and came to rest against Tom. “Yes, I rather think I will.”

Tom felt surprise run through him like a stabbing blade, but he curled his arm around Harry’s waist and leaned in to nuzzle his neck. Harry tilted his head back. Tom thought he was the only one who would have felt the tension throbbing through him, completely understandable after how many years he had avoided intimate contact.

Malfoy watched with his mouth open. The punishment Harry had inflicted on him had rather dulled his wits, Tom thought, and laughed a little as he followed the path of his nose down Harry’s neck with his tongue and teeth.

“Disgusting!” Malfoy yelled at last, pulling away.

Skeeter spun around from where she was confronting Lucius, eyes bright with a predator’s interest in what scandal the younger Malfoy was causing now. Harry snorted and grabbed Tom’s arm, drawing Tom after him as they moved towards a door that Tom happened to know led from the ballroom to a private anteroom.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Harry said under his breath.

Tom was more than happy to follow along.

*

Once they were in the anteroom, Harry turned and walked over to the silent fireplace. The room was a slightly dark one, paneled in and furnished with heavy woods, and with a steel figure of a horse galloping along the mantel as the only decoration. Harry rested his back against the mantel as he faced Riddle.

Riddle remained near the door, for all that Harry could see his hands twitching with the desire to reach out and touch. At least, until Riddle tucked them behind his back. His eyes rested on Harry, calm and bright on the surface.

“It’s been five months,” Harry said.

“Yes, it has,” Riddle agreed.

The conversation lay in the middle of the floor, and Harry concealed his sigh with difficulty. Riddle was going to make Harry shoulder the burden, then?

Perhaps it’s the only way he can make sure that I can really want this. And after what Harry had said about the need to wait, that was only fair.

Harry straightened. “I’ve given a lot of thought to what you said about learning more about my Occlumency and teaching other people.”

“What have you decided?” Riddle barely moved his lips.

“I’d like to. But I don’t think I can teach other people unless I understand more about it, and what it can and can’t do, and exactly how it works with Legilimency, and how it revolutionizes the magical theory you were talking about.” Harry had been reading, but there weren’t that many books that talked about Inner and Outer Arts, any more than there were books that talked in detail about the fact that you needed a wand for spells. It seemed to be taken for granted as so fundamental that it could be ignored.

Riddle smiled at him. “And what would you like from me?”

“Your help. If that’s still on offer.”

Riddle’s foot twitched as if he wanted to step forwards, but instead, he nodded, a deep nod that went into the beginnings of a bow. “Always, Harry. The offers I extended you before have not changed. It remains up to you to take hold of them.”

Harry swallowed and studied Riddle. Riddle just waited. Not a good man, Harry thought. Riddle was still the kind of man who would manipulate Dad’s mind if he thought he had a good enough reason. Well, he was more likely to hold back than before, but that was just because Dad was related to Harry. Some random Ministry employee who was a lot like Dad but didn’t have the protection? Riddle would reach in there and do whatever he wanted.

But Harry no longer thought that he could or should try to achieve the image of a snowy-white saint, not after what he had done to Malfoy. He didn’t regret that, and for more than one reason. It had freed him from the endless worries about whether he had deserved what had happened to him.

And all those years ago, when he had chosen Slytherin in an effort to be more than just his parents’ son—well, now he knew he was. Riddle had told him that not one in ten thousand people would have evolved an instinctive grasp of Occlumency to deal with their trauma. Harry was unusual. He was special. He mattered.

He could make his own choices in this matter, too. And if his parents disapproved, he would live with that, the way it had been hard to do when he was eleven and in Slytherin.

Harry tucked his chin down and smiled at Riddle. “Why don’t you come here and show me how well you can kiss?”

*

Tom wondered if Harry was feeling any exhilaration at kissing like this in the midst of a party at Malfoy Manor, home to the arsehole who had so damaged Harry. He hoped so. Tom certainly was.

He ran his hands over Harry’s neck and down to his shoulders, touching everywhere he could, bare skin and robe cloth, a fever rising to consume him. He wanted to strip Harry naked and take him, but Harry was the one who had to set the pace.

And luckily, Harry was kissing back just as hard, hands clenching on Tom’s arms as if to dig through to the bone. Then he abruptly whirled and pinned Tom to the mantel in his place, and bit Tom on the throat.

Tom groaned his appreciation and slid a hand into Harry’s hair, tugging. Harry made a startled noise of pleasure. Evidently he hadn’t known he liked that. Tom spelled the door shut and bent down to tug harder, then use his mouth on Harry’s shoulder where his robe had slid down.

Harry’s skin was pale but getting redder when he pulled away. Tom stepped back and watched him. Harry’s chest was heaving, and Tom wondered if he was frightened, if some part of this had reminded him too much of the past. Normally, Tom would have been able to tell, but Harry’s impeccable Occlumency still remained in place enough to block out his emotions from Tom’s sight.

“You know what I’m really tired of?” Harry asked a moment later, when he’d stood there without touching each other for a long moment.

“What?” Tom murmured.

“Being a virgin.”

And Harry launched himself at Tom again, and this time dragged him away from the mantel towards a couch. Tom went with it, gasping and shedding his robes hastily with a few taps of his wand. He had learned those spells in the last few months, after he had begun to think that he and Harry might someday meet up like this.

Well. Not quite like this.

“You don’t want something more special for your first time?” he asked, a question he’d never had to use with any of his other lovers. He’d always known.

Harry glared up at him from where he knelt on the floor, undoing his own robes with sharp jerks of his fingers. Tom savored the sight of Harry’s pale muscled chest with red flaring down it. “I want to replace that memory,” he said harshly. “I want it to be as unlike what I thought I would have with Malfoy as possible.”

“Fast and filthy, then?”

“Yeah. And doing it here in the middle of bloody Malfoy Manor?” Harry grinned and shimmied, sending his robes down to puddle around his feet. Tom spelled them to fold neatly into a corner. Harry rolled his eyes. “I hope you don’t expect the rest of this to be clean.”

“Certainly not,” Tom murmured, and lay back on the couch in the corner that they were apparently going to use. He fired a Locking Charm at the door and then laid his yew wand aside, his mind thrumming with anticipation. “Come here.”

*

Harry could certainly see the appeal—for some people—of having a domineering arse for a partner, but he didn’t intend to put up with it himself. He stood in the middle of the room and removed his trainers, his socks, and his pants instead.

Riddle’s eyes grew brighter and brighter. Harry supposed he ought to call him Tom, but that could be for later. And he really was unlike Malfoy in every way possible: taller, older, dark-haired, possessed of depths of cruelty and greed that Malfoy could only have envied.

Also, willing to wait, and gentle because of whatever desire he felt for Harry.

Harry casually kicked the clothes out of the way and then looked around the room, Summoning a chair to himself. “Why don’t you come here instead?” he asked.

“The chair will not be nearly as comfortable as the couch.”

Harry laughed as he sat down. He thought Riddle was wrong, anyway; the chair was so soft that his arse sank a good few inches into it. “It depends on the position we’re taking, doesn’t it?”

Riddle thought about that, visibly. Harry waited, smiling at him. His cock wasn’t getting any softer, and neither was Riddle’s.

“Perhaps you are right,” Riddle said, in what he probably imagined was a gracious concession, and then stood and walked towards Harry. Harry’s mouth watered at the image of his heavy bollocks, the skin taut around his stomach and the curve of his erection, and he lifted his head for another kiss when Riddle was right near him.

Riddle bent down and kissed him hard enough to hurt, especially given that he was biting Harry’s lips. Harry scratched Riddle’s neck and shoulder and the side of his waist; Riddle hissed, in a way that reminded Harry of the rumors that he spoke Parseltongue, but it wasn’t a sound of protest. And then he took Harry’s wand and cast a lubricating spell on his own arse, and one on Harry’s cock. Harry squirmed a little as the odd sensation warmed him and ran in liquid trickles down the inside of his thighs.

“You are ready?” Riddle asked, dropping Harry’s wand on the carpet and looking every inch of haughty as he sank down.

Harry didn’t have a chance to respond before Riddle took him all the way in, suddenly and completely. He lurched forwards, gasping, and Riddle laughed aloud. His Legilimency scraped along Harry’s Occlumency walls and withdrew.

“You fucker,” Harry panted as he gripped Riddle’s shoulders and pulled him around so he could clearly see those self-satisfied grey eyes. They seemed to have a trace of red in the light from the fire.

“No insult when it is the truth,” Riddle hissed, and grabbed the sides of his face to drag him close for a kiss.

Harry gasped and thrust, because he couldn’t hold himself back. He tried, and it didn’t work. The heat of Riddle’s arse was too tight, too gripping, and he gave in and braced himself on the chair arms and pushed up again, and again, and again.

*

Tom had thought he might miss the chatter of his partner’s mind, when all was said and done. Yes, it was boring to know exactly what someone was thinking, and annoying when they wanted to use him, but surely he would miss it when all he had to listen to were the gasps and groans of his lover?

It turned out that wasn’t true. Not when he was the one causing those gasps and groans, and could make Harry turn the most incredible shade of red just by arching languidly back and controlling the pace.

And it had been years since he’d had someone else inside him. Tom enjoyed the sensation, bearing down and wriggling around until he was exactly where he wanted to be. He laughed aloud as he watched Harry squeeze his eyes shut, swearing under his breath with little huffs that Tom probably wasn’t meant to hear.

“I am right here, Harry, being the one fucking you,” Tom hissed.

Harry bucked and scraped his nails up Tom’s side again. Tom flexed his hips, and Harry gave in helplessly, driving upwards with increasing speed that told Tom their first encounter would be a short one.

He wouldn’t have it any other way. Let Harry think of all the pleasures he hadn’t got to taste. Let him imagine how this would continue, when they had time. Let him keep returning to Tom again and again—

Harry cried out as he came, and Tom had a moment to wonder if he should have put up a Silencing Charm around the door as well as a Locking Charm (and decide that, no, the Malfoys could deal with it) before Harry’s hand closed with clenching force around his own cock. Tom hissed something that had nothing to do with Parseltongue and groaned his release into Harry’s mouth, biting him as he drew back.

“You like to do that—too much,” Harry complained. He was sagging in the chair, his head lolling to the side, a small trickle of blood running from his swollen and bitten lips, his hands wandering aimlessly.

Tom smiled. “You enjoy it,” he said, and stood up. The rush of fluid out of his arse wasn’t pleasant, but he wriggled his fingers and wandlessly Summoned Harry’s wand, which he could easily use to clean himself.

In fact, the wand was so easy to use that Tom found himself peering at it. It looked like holly wood, not yew. He wondered if they had similar cores, although he had handled wands before that had phoenix feathers at the center of them and not experienced a reaction like this.

Perhaps it is a symptom of how much I want him.

Tom put it aside so that he could run one finger idly along Harry’s jaw and down under his chin, to where his pulse beat. He might not be able to read Harry’s thoughts or emotions, but he could feel the languorous way his heart was going right now and see the bliss on his face. “Did your first time satisfy you?”

*

“You arse. You know it did.”

“I am rather more than just an arse, if I may say so.”

Harry reached down and pinched Riddle’s side. Riddle shuddered in what felt like surprise, and maybe anger, too. Harry leaned back and grinned at him. “Yeah, you’re the bloke with unshakeable confidence, too. Does that come from being a Legilimens?”

Riddle stared at him with brilliant eyes, the kind of light Harry thought he might find at the heart of a dying star. Then he inclined his head. “It comes from being me, and knowing that no one else could do as I did. Including being your lover.”

“We haven’t made any permanent commitments.”

“I did,” Riddle said pleasantly. “And you haven’t told me to leave. If you don’t, and simply show up with someone else, then their mind shall disintegrate overnight. A pity, but it does happen sometimes, I’m told.”

Merlin, his eyes. He looked at Harry, and they were bright and cold and warm, and he was daring Harry to do something about it, and Harry wanted to touch him again. So he did, reaching out and letting his fingers slip down Riddle’s chest in a way that would have left stripes of blood if he had claws. Riddle tilted his head down to watch Harry’s hand, his breath coming softly, gently.

“If I tell you that I want your help with Occlumency?”

Riddle didn’t blink. “I would be more than happy to give it.”

“If I told you that I wanted you to stop reading random people’s minds?”

Riddle gave him a sharp, dazzling smile. “I would remind you of what you did to Malfoy, and that it was justified. And I would ask whether you regret what you did.”

“Of course not. But what did those random people do to you?”

Riddle shrugged. “I rarely read the minds of random people anymore. Only those I’m paid to read, those whose thoughts shout some kind of threat to me, and those who approach me. Your father was an exception, and the other people related to you. But I will not change what I am, Harry. I cannot cease being a Legilimens who can sense the thoughts of others practically adrift on the air, at this point. Say that you cannot live with that, and I will walk away. But I will not change.”

Harry shivered. The worst part—

The best part—

His Occlumency shields flickered back and forth, changing the person he was between one moment and the next—

Was that he didn’t want Riddle to change.

The man was evil, in the way that Harry had been raised to understand. But he had seen what no one else had seen. He had brought Harry back to life. He had been proud of his Occlumency and taught Harry to cherish it. He was the reason Harry was sitting here, with his life and his future assured, no longer a virgin, and on the way to Outstanding on at least four OWL exams.

Harry couldn’t turn away from him.

“Don’t manipulate the minds of my family again,” Harry ended up saying, his voice steely.

“You can shield them in any case. It would be wasted effort.”

Riddle’s voice was soft, his eyes bright. Harry blinked, and lost any outrage he might have had.

His own voice was too soft when he answered, and he knew that, for the words he was saying. “You should want to avoid reading them because that’s how a good person would react, not because I can shield them.”

Riddle prowled up to him and lowered his head to breathe gently over Harry’s hand, the hand that had so recently brought this man off. His eyes didn’t blink as he said, “We’re neither of us good people as the world understands it, Harry. I think many times, no Legilimens or Occlumens is. We know too much about what the human mind holds, and how many times the people who believe themselves good harbor desires as dark as any of ours. Or can take actions like the one Malfoy took and go on believing themselves good in spite of it all.” His tongue extended and curled around one of Harry’s fingers.

Harry was finding it difficult to breathe.

Riddle released Harry’s finger and went on in a musing tone, as if he hadn’t touched Harry like that at all. “I think we should speak to each other if we worry about our actions, or about each other’s. Stop worrying about such obscure morality.”

Harry shuddered and reached out to touch him.

Riddle folded Harry’s hand in his and watched him with something hard and rock-like and hot as a volcano. If it wasn’t devotion, it was a bloody good facsimile of it.

Harry leaned forwards and kissed him, and Riddle bent his head and returned as good as he got, hot dart of his tongue after hot dart. Harry was the one who pulled back, licked his lips, and asked, “Help me study for my NEWTS?”

“Of course.”

Harry grinned at him. “Help me put the room back together so the Malfoys will never know what happened here?”

“Of course.”

“Give me reason to use your first name someday?”

“Yes.”

“Move with me to a faraway island where we’ll rescue kittens together?”

Riddle smiled like the predator he was, staring at another predator. “Don’t push it.”

The End.