lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of this story arc, although maybe someday I’ll add another chapter or arc to the series.

Chapter Eleven—Endings and Beginnings

“What does this mean for you being part of the Potter family?”

Angela’s eyes were huge and solemn. Harry wrapped his arms around her and gave her a short hug. They were sitting by the lakeshore, and the water sparkling in the sunlight reminded Harry of his own mood. He hadn’t even realized how much the issue of his parents hating Parseltongue was weighing on him until he managed to emerge from it. It was like walking in constant, private sunshine.

“I’ll always be your brother,” he said. “And Brian’s brother. If you want to come and live with me….”

“I think I have to.”

“What do you mean?” Harry turned fully to face her. Angela had reasons to be upset right now, no matter how Harry felt. Of course Harry should have thought about the consequences to her more fully.

Angela swallowed and looked up at him. “Ever since I wrote to Mum and Dad about my Dark Arts affinity, I haven’t got a letter from Mum. Dad was the one who wrote back to me, and he told me it wasn’t a problem and he would make sure it wasn’t a problem. But I didn’t realize that meant that you would be exiled.”

“I exiled myself, Angela,” Harry said quietly. “And you can live with me. You think they’d kick you out?”

“I think they’d try to correct me. And I don’t know for sure what that would mean and I’m afraid…” Angela took a breath so hard that she choked.

Harry rubbed her back. “We don’t need to give them a chance to find out. I’m not a Potter anymore, and you’re in need of a place to live. I’m of age. If something had happened to-James and Lily, I would be the natural choice to take care of you and Brian.”

“Not Sirius and Remus?”

“I hope they’ll help, but honestly, Sirius is going to have problems with Dad because they both own that prank shop together, and Remus doesn’t trust himself around children.” Harry shook his head. He’d trust Remus with children before he’d trust some of the people he’d met among other “responsible adults,” but Remus felt that way because of his lycanthropy, and it wasn’t going to change anytime soon. “Will you want to come live with me?”

Angela flung herself into his arms. “Yes,” Harry made out whispered next to his shoulder, through her sobs. “Please.” And she hugged him harder. Harry rubbed her back again.

He glanced up when someone moved near him. Tom was standing a short distance away. From his stance, he’d heard the whole conversation.

Harry narrowed his eyes a little. He needed Tom because of the Parselmouth thing, of course, but he wasn’t about to give up on his siblings. (Assuming that Brian expressed a desire to come live with them at all). That meant they would have to find some way to coexist.

Tom tilted his head down a moment later, with a smile of private amusement that Harry didn’t fully understand on his face. Then he turned and vanished with a waver of motion in the air. Harry recognized the spell Tom had created based on the one Harry had created to sneak out of Hogwarts, and smiled.

“What?” Angela asked, wiping at her eyes as she sat up.

“Nothing,” Harry said. They could explain it later. “Now, do you want to explore your Dark Arts affinity? Or just learn what kinds of spells are Dark Arts and which aren’t?”

*

“I hope you aren’t upset about Angela coming to live with us.”

Tom quirked a smile at Harry, who was leaning against the doorframe of Tom’s office and didn’t look as though he knew whether to be defiant or not. “I know that you’re close, Harry. Closer than I would have expected, given…everything. And while she’s not a Parselmouth, I can appreciate someone who wants to learn about Dark Arts.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “You shouldn’t teach her that.”

“Why not? If she expresses an interest.”

“You’re a Defense professor.”

Tom laughed aloud, beyond flattered. “My dear, if you think that means that I’ve never taught Dark Arts or can’t understand them, then your faith in me is touching, but misplaced.”

“Angela is thirteen.”

Tom shrugged, enjoying the expression on Harry’s face as he stalked into Tom’s office and glared down at him. “And if she has a true affinity, she might start seeking out the spells on her own, as they call to her. And her magic could compel her to find powerful books and study them.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have my own Dark Arts affinity, Harry. And that’s what happened to me when I was a little younger than your sister.”

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it, then went over to shut the door behind him. “I never thought about that. I just thought that my parents’ fears were exaggerated and they were seeing things that weren’t there, with both Angela and you.”

“The accusation that I am Dark merely because I am a Parselmouth is untrue. But the accusation that I am a powerful Dark wizard keeping my magic under control while I teach? That is true.”

Harry bowed his head. “Am I taking you away from a job you love?”

“During the summer, hardly,” Tom said. “And I hadn’t yet decided if I will come back in the autumn term, but on the whole, I think not. I will have more than enough to do, spending time with you, teaching Angela, and exploring Parseltongue magic that I could never manage to do on my own or just with Nagini.”

“You’re thinking of having me and Esmeralda join you for rituals?”

“Yes.”

From the way Harry flushed, he might even have daydreamed about that, although he’d be less likely to admit it. He cleared his throat and murmured, “And you think that we’ll have enough money for that? I would be making much, if anything, as an apprentice spellcrafter.”

“Oh. I never told you.”

“Told me what?”

Harry had such an adorable suspicious expression. Tom should tell him that sometime. “I have money stored away, Harry. So much. I used spells that let me locate silver and gold, and found my way to buried caches of Galleons and Sickles, and even some lost Muggle treasure, early on. And to some caches that might not have been forgotten, but were stolen, so the people I took them from could hardly complain.”

“Is it enough for three of us to live on?”

“The five of us. Enough to keep us in food and shelter and rich clothes for eternity. And that’s nothing to the money that you’ll likely make when you’re trained as a spellcrafter, and what we’ll be able to earn as a pair of people doing Parseltongue rituals.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the rituals are warding rituals. Hogwarts itself is protected by magic that Slytherin laid down when he was here. We won’t be able to recreate all of it, since he was using a coterie of Parselmouths and there are only two of us, but I promise you, we will make wards that people like Lucius Malfoy would fall over to have on their houses.”

“We’re not going to give wards to him, are we?”

“We could give him a lesser version. And charge him until he shrieks for it.”

Harry smiled. The smile had sharp edges that Tom had been waiting to see spring into being, and for a moment, Harry stared dreamily into the distance. “That would be so worth it,” he whispered.

Tom nodded. “Whatever you need, Harry, whatever you want. I’ll take another job if that’s what you wish, but I think spending time with you and Angela and Nagini and Esmeralda will take precedence over that.”

“It should.”

Tom smiled down at Nagini, who had awoken from where she was coiled around the legs of his chair. “Yes, dear one, that is what we’re saying.”

“Make us the precedent and the priority and the everything,” Nagini ordered, and flicked her tongue imperiously out at Harry. He chuckled a little and stepped aside so that she could get past him, watching her with admiration.

It soothed something in Tom he hadn’t realized was ragged. There was no sign that Harry regretted his decision to reject his parents. He had done what he needed to do, and it seemed that part of him knew that.

“What about Brian?” Harry asked, his gaze coming back to Tom. “Would you be resigned to living with two children if you had to?”

“Not resigned. They are your siblings. They are more than an imposition.” Tom stood and moved across the space between him and Harry, resting his hands lightly on Harry’s shoulders. “Although I will require that we have a lock on our bedroom door, and locking wards if necessary.”

Harry shuddered with something Tom was sure wasn’t fear or disgust, his gaze never leaving Tom. “You really want to do this. Share a room, court, get married.”

Tom reminded himself, against the instinctive flash of anger, that Harry was someone who had been rejected by his parents for years and still hadn’t really got over it. He nodded and leaned closer. “If you think that I will let you go…”

“I knew that you wouldn’t.” Harry’s hand lifted to fist itself in Tom’s hair and tug. “But there’s a difference between not letting someone go and sharing a bed with them, a life, a marriage. Doing more than just living in the same house.”

Tom slid his hand down Harry’s neck, watching him stretch it in a motion that seemed to unconsciously imitate a snake and made Tom hard enough to want to take Harry right there. “You want to share a bed with me?”

Harry opened his eyes. “Yes,” he hissed.

There were thoughts flashing behind his eyes that Tom could almost read, even though he made a careful point of never using his Legilimency on anyone else unless invited or unless they wouldn’t notice. He leaned down and sealed Harry’s mouth with his own.

Harry’s hands dug into Tom’s shoulders, and he hissed again into their joined mouths. Tom backed him against the wall, biting more than gently at his lips, and felt Harry shudder beneath him with something else that wasn’t fear or disgust.

Yes. Yes, he enjoyed this. Yes, he wanted this. And if he had to prove that to Harry every day for the rest of their lives, that was what he would do.

*

“Harry.”

Harry turned around, a little surprised at the address from Malfoy before he remembered. Now that Harry had disowned himself and was without a last name, people had to call him by his first until he officially chose a new one. A few people—like Ron—were already calling him Riddle, but that was a line that Malfoy probably wouldn’t cross.

Harry nodded. “Malfoy.”

The nod he got in return was more directed to the floor than him, but then Malfoy looked up and directly at him, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

Malfoy gave him a glare, probably because Harry was making him spell it out, but then he winced and seemed to recall what might happen if someone told his mother he was behaving this way. “I—for implying that you took some sort of chance I might have had at an apprenticeship with my mother away from me.”

“You spoke with her?” Harry was keeping his own reaction calm and subdued, but he did have to admit that Malfoy looked as though someone had been beating him with a large stick.

“Yes. I, she, told me the truth about the state of my spellcrafting talent.”

Harry valiantly didn’t laugh. Malfoy did sound as though someone had forced him to apologize, and Harry might have to see him in the future if they were both visiting Madam Black at the same time. “Apology accepted.”

“Really?” Malfoy blinked at him. “That’s it?”

“I don’t have anything to hold against you.”

Malfoy seemed to take the hint and jerked his head as if he was going to bow and then thought better of it. He turned and marched off. Harry turned around when he heard someone clapping behind him.

He was going to tell them off if it was Ron or Dean, but of course it was Tom, and that made Harry stare at him with rather different intentions in mind. Tom half-laughed and walked over to him, leaning a hand against his chest for a moment. “You think the whelp will leave you alone?”

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t,” Harry said, with a shrug. “He didn’t believe that I had the kind of talent his mother was looking for. Now he does. It would be pretty hard to tell Madam Black that he thought she was lying to her face.”

“He might not do that, but that’s not the same as not making trouble for you in the future.”

Harry folded his arms and gave Tom a cool stare. It was difficult. He still wasn’t used to having someone stand up for him, and he desperately wanted to bask in it. But his apprenticeship was different from having Tom support him against his parents. “I’ll thank you not to interfere in the working relationship that I build with Madam Black, Tom.”

After a long moment when their eye contact seemed to grow more and more intense the longer neither of them blinked, Tom lifted his hands. They were both empty, and the expression on his face was innocent, but Harry wasn’t sure he trusted that, either. “Your word?”’

“I won’t interfere in your working relationship with Madam Black.”

“Thank you.”

“I said nothing about Malfoy, mind.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “If he actually does try to make a nuisance of himself, you’re welcome to do something about it.”

*

“I’m sure that I got number seven wrong! And eight. And five—”

“Relax, Hermione, you did fine.” Ron slung his arm around her shoulder and guided her in the direction of Gryffindor Tower, since they both didn’t have another NEWT exam until tomorrow.

“How do you know?”

Dean snorted as he looked after them, and then glanced sideways at Harry. “So you probably did fine on the written, but are you ready for the practical Defense exam?”

The NEWT proctors had split the seventh-year Defense students into two groups. Hermione and Ron had already had their practical and had just finished the written exam; Harry and Dean’s group had taken the written exam that morning and would have the practical now. Something to do with the proctors getting a greater variety of students that way and being able to mark with a fresher eye. Harry wasn’t sure he believed it, but it wasn’t his problem.

He nodded. “Sure.” And if Dean guessed that Harry’s heartbeat was drumming wildly away in his chest, he was kind enough not to mention it.

“Good luck.” Dean gently tapped a fist against Harry’s shoulder, let Harry tap him back, and then led the way into the Great Hall.

The Great Hall was set up with tables blocked with blurring wards, which would keep students from seeing how well other students did and getting distracted during their own attempts. Harry’s heartbeat picked up as he walked towards the table where his own proctor, a white-haired woman with a stern face and pale skin, stood. He knew from Sirius and Remus that their own Defense practical had involved dueling, but he wasn’t sure if that had changed at all down the years. None of the Gryffindors a year above them in Defense had wanted to speak about it, apparently not having done that well.

“When I signal you to,” the white-haired woman said calmly, “we will begin to duel. Points are given for creativity above all, and much more than for causing pain or disabling wounds. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?”

Harry could barely nod. This time, it felt like his nervousness was choking him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Madam Gallant will do.” The woman tossed her head as though listening to distant music. “Begin.”

Harry was glad that he hadn’t counted on traditional dueling strictures holding, since the woman wasn’t bowing to him. He barely managed to whip his wand out in time to counter her first hex, the Bone-Breaker.

After that, though, Harry did his best to calm down and let his own creativity flow through him, the way he would have in a duel with Tom. When she tried to convince him his left arm didn’t exist, he replied with a hex that convinced her her wand didn’t exist. She Transfigured the ground beneath him to quicksand, and Harry turned it to the kind of slick tile that covered a bathroom floor, with a rug beneath just his feet. She caught him with the Blinding Curse; Harry promptly enhanced his hearing and sense of smell so that he knew exactly where she was and then surrounded himself with a flowing breeze that carried her scent to him. She had to keep moving to stay downwind, which interrupted more than one of her spells.

Harry dropped underneath a hex that didn’t sound like anything he knew as it passed through the air, and finally managed to counter the Blinding Curse. Madam Gallant saw and aimed her wand at his eyes again, but Harry was already hissing a spell he’d created with Parseltongue but hadn’t told Tom about. It was the kind of thing he wanted to save as a surprise until he had a reason to announce it.

Madam Gallant stumbled as her legs abruptly changed into a snake’s long tail. Harry thought she might manage to pick up her wand and continue the battle, but after a moment when she seemed to test her balance, she shook her head and lifted a hand. Harry was astonished to see that she was smiling. “Time, Mr. Potter.”

Harry stood up and gave her a short bow while he reversed the hex, keeping his eye on her. He wouldn’t put it past her to have used calling for time as a ruse, but it seemed sincere. Her eyes were bright as she smiled at him.

“That was most stimulating,” she said. “And your marks on the practical will reflect it. What was the last spell you used? I’ve never encountered its like.”

Harry happily showed her the wand movement and explained the general meaning of the incantation. “I don’t think you’ll be able to use it unless you’re a Parselmouth, though,” he added, as he ended the explanation.

“Ah, well,” Madam Gallant said. “It is enough, at least at the moment, to have experienced it from the inside and marked a student so well-prepared.” She gave him a small nod. “Professor Riddle’s bragging about you was justified, Mr. Potter. Best of luck in the wider world. I hear that you have achieved a spellcrafting apprenticeship with Madam Black?”

Harry blinked. “I didn’t think that was widely-known. Did Professor Riddle tell you?”

“No, Madam Black was rather bragging about you.”

Harry’s face turned bright red, but at least he could spend the last few minutes of the practical chatting happily with Madam Gallant, someone who no longer resembled a person who was trying to kill him.

Proctors were…interesting.

*

“Harry!”

Tom saw the way Harry’s mouth fell open, and followed his gaze to the dark-haired man striding across Hogwarts’s grounds with open arms. That must be Sirius Black, Tom thought. After a moment of thinking, he did see a resemblance between this man and the continually loud student he had taught.

And hanging a bit back behind him was a russet-haired man with amber eyes, Remus Lupin, holding the hand of a young boy with black hair.

Tom stared. The boy had bright blue eyes, and for a moment he wondered if Black and Lupin had a son Harry had never seen fit to mention. But no, his hair was wild like Harry’s.

This must be Brian.

“Congratulations, Harry!” Black had picked up Harry and was swinging him around and around.

Lupin stepped up behind Black and gave Tom a rather more restrained smile. “I understand that we have you to thank for Harry’s talents being recognized, Professor Riddle.”

“Yes.” Tom managed not to glare in Black’s direction. He knew the man was Harry’s godfather and was here partially to make up for his parents being missing. “And I understand that you knew nothing about them?”

Lupin’s eyes turned sad. “No. We hadn’t the least idea that he was a Parselmouth or had gifts at spellcrafting. I wish he could have trusted us, but…” He looked at Harry, who was standing in front of Black and describing the duel that had taken place during the exam. “I understand why he didn’t.”

“Professor Riddle?”

Not understanding why it felt more emotionally fraught to confront Harry’s younger brother than it had to agree that his younger sister could live with them, Tom turned to the boy. “Yes? Brian Potter, right?”

“Yeah.” The boy stared at him. He had a sharp stare, and he didn’t move at all, even when Lupin gave his hand an encouraging little squeeze. “You’re going to marry my brother.”

That was truer than some things James Potter’s best friends might have told the boy about Tom, and not as terrifying to deal with, because it was simply reality. Tom inclined his head. “Yes.”

“Are you going to adopt me? Angela is going to live with Harry, and I don’t want to stay with Mum and Dad if they’re both gone.”

Tom wondered, in a quiet corner of his mind, what gift this boy might have that Lily and James would think was cursed. But he didn’t want to ask aloud, so he simply said, “Legally, we can do it. But we didn’t know if you would prefer it over staying with your parents.”

“I prefer it.”

“Very well,” Tom said, and bowed to the boy.

Brian gave him a tentative smile, one that widened when Harry finally tore himself out of Black’s hug and came over to embrace Lupin. He smiled at his brother, as tentative, and touched his hair. “Hey, Bri.”

“I’m going to live with you and Angela and Professor Riddle.”

Harry blinked, once. He glanced at Tom. Tom nodded.

Then Harry smiled and said, “All right,” and his brother relaxed and began to chatter more like a child his age about cool spells and Parseltongue and how he liked snakes but he’d never been able to understand what they were saying and Harry’s familiar behind him on the grass was beautiful and could Harry teach him Parseltongue?

“He’s always worshipped Harry.”

Tom glanced over his shoulder at Sirius Black. Black was standing with his hands in his robe pockets and his gaze fixed on his godson. “And when he found out that Harry wasn’t a Potter and he might not see him again, he cried and cried.”

“You reassured him, I take it?”

“Sounding pretty protective there already, Riddle.”

Black’s voice was teasing, but only his voice. Tom faced him and said, “For Harry, there is nothing that I will not do.”

Black considered him for some moments longer. Lupin was doing the same thing. Harry and Brian were talking away about Parseltongue, and Esmeralda was greedily absorbing Brian’s praise and touches, and they didn’t notice.

Then Black smiled. “Welcome to the family. The one we’re making, not the one Lily and James fucked up.”

“You said fucked up, Padfoot!” Brian sounded delighted.

“Not in front of the children, Sirius,” Lupin hissed, sounding as much like a snake as a werewolf could.

Black spread his hands and began to protest his innocence, and Lupin gave in enough to laugh. Brian continued to gleefully repeat the words.

Harry stepped back enough to look over Tom’s shoulder. Tom followed his gaze and saw Angela making a beeline for them. Nagini, who slithered at her heels, picked up speed and reached Tom first.

“It is a strange family we will have,” Nagini said, eyeing Black and Lupin as if she was torn between accepting them and finding out if they tasted good.

“It’s ours.”

Those words came from Harry, and Tom looked up quickly at him. His eyes were bright and steady, and when he smiled, it was as if the whole world Tom had been denied for years on account of not being able to find another Parselmouth stood up and reached for him.

“It is,” Tom hissed back, and not one person present flinched at the sound of the Parseltongue, or when he touched Harry’s hand.

Their future shone before them.

The End.