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lomonaaerenTitle: Tarnished Weapons
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle
Content Notes: Angst, ignores the epilogue, implied dimension travel, discussions of past character death and violence, blackmail
Wordcount: 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry Potter retired from the Ministry years ago, unable to make a difference in the way he wanted to. They didn’t need him, with both Hermione and the Tom Riddle who had appeared from another world to help enact change. However, for some reason, Riddle didn’t agree.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season,” short stories posted between the first of December and the winter solstice.
Tarnished Weapons
Harry looked up and sighed a little as he saw Tom Riddle standing in the doorway of his office. “Go away,” he said, without much hope that it would happen, and went back to writing in the ledger. Expenses for the shop were balanced, at least so far, by the Galleons he earned teaching people who wanted to learn dueling techniques, and selling wand holsters and the like. But Harry needed silence and privacy to work on maths. It wasn’t like he was a bloody genius like Hermione.
“No.”
Riddle stalked forwards. He looked to be in his twenties, with dark hair that bore a blood-red sheen in certain lights and eyes that did the same thing. Harry knew what he looked like without glancing at him. He’d stared at the damn newspaper photographs often enough.
And Riddle’s face, too, when he had first arrived ten years ago, and the Ministry had spent months furiously interrogating him, trying to find out why he had appeared from nowhere and whether he was a shard of Voldemort.
The Ministry had determined that Riddle wasn’t. To Harry, it didn’t matter. He would never like Riddle, never trust him.
“A word, Potter.”
“Good-bye,” Harry responded instantly.
Riddle’s hands curled around the edge of the counter. Then he jumped back, cursing. Harry smiled a little. Learning the charm that embedded blades in the wood which would emerge at his will had been so useful.
Riddle sucked a bleeding finger and stared at him. “What was that for?”
“Well, I could have hurled them at you when you were walking across the shop, but I didn’t know how much of a wanker you were going to be.”
Riddle hissed, not a word Harry knew, and stepped back to conjure a chair. Of course the chair was white, with a high, arched back that had garnets or rubies or something embedded in it in the shape of a crown. Harry rolled his eyes. Riddle probably didn’t know how not to be dramatic.
Riddle sat down and stared at him. Harry gave him an indifferent look, which he wished was more indifferent, and went back to wrestling with the numbers. Riddle was so silent that Harry was actually able to figure out what had gone wrong with that column and set the numbers straight before the unwelcome voice spoke again.
“Why did you retire from the Ministry?”
“I didn’t think I could do any good there anymore, especially after I was responsible for the death of my Auror partner.”
“And having a shop does…good?”
“Says the man who once worked in a shop for purposes a lot smaller.”
Riddle snarled. Harry smelled burning wood and suspected that he’d set his ridiculous chair on fire. Harry smiled a little down at the ledger, and kept writing.
“What kind of good did you want to accomplish that you couldn’t?” Riddle asked, after a mutter that was probably meant to douse the fire that had started on the chair.
“Freeing house-elves or at least setting up legislation to treat them better, ending the registry for werewolves, providing werewolves with free Wolfsbane, making sure that everyone who persecuted Muggleborns during the war was arrested—”
“In other words, impossible goals.”
“Well, yeah,” Harry said, looking up to shrug with one shoulder. Riddle was leaning forwards and staring at Harry with absolutely devouring eyes, which was a little unnerving. Not that Harry was ready to admit that. “With the Ministry the way it is. I told you, that’s why I retired.”
“But if you could achieve those goals with me by your side?”
Harry laughed quietly, and turned back to his accounts.
Riddle’s hand slammed down in the middle of the ledger a moment later. Harry barely had time to lift his book before the blade he’d positioned there struck through the wood and up into Riddle’s palm.
Riddle howled. Harry shook his head and clucked his tongue, and a brief wind swirled through the room. A second later, Riddle stared down at his unmarked palm, and then lifted his unnerved eyes back to Harry’s.
Harry took a moment to bask in the fact that now they were unnerved, instead of unnerving, and shrugged. “I took a lot of precautions to tailor the shop to me,” he said. “I’m powerful here in a way that I’m not outside it.”
“So it is a metaphor for your retreat from the world.”
“Huh, it is?”
“You considered yourself powerless in the Ministry.” Riddle was flexing his fingers gingerly back and forth, his breath coming out in little hisses that again meant nothing to Harry. “So you created a place where you are not. And you insist that people who want to speak to you come here, instead of facing you in the outside world you hate and abandoned.”
“I don’t hate the Ministry, Riddle. And I see my best friends in plenty of places that aren’t here.”
“But you will only see me here.”
“Yes.”
“Even though we were once closer than any two beings have ever been.”
Harry stiffened for a second, then sighed. He supposed it had been inevitable that Riddle would find out his other self had once left a Horcrux shard in Harry’s head. All Riddle would have had to do was read Ron or Hermione’s mind looking for information specific to Harry. “Not us, Riddle. Me and the Voldemort I killed.”
He’d hoped that reminding Riddle his other self had died at Harry’s hand would get him to back the fuck off, but it didn’t seem to be working this time. Riddle was staring at Harry with his eyes so wide and his breath so unsteady that Harry didn’t think he had heard the words.
“You consider him and me as separate.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I thought I’d made that clear. I’d be out in the streets fighting you otherwise.”
“You—you think I can change. You might be willing to be near me in a way that you wouldn’t be willing to be near him.”
Harry regretted at the moment that nothing in his shop could hurt him. He would have liked to knock his head against a solid sheet of wood. “That’s what you’re going to take away from this conversation?”
“I came here thinking that persuading you to join me of your own free will was hopeless, but intending to try it anyway. Now I find that you make a distinction between and the one who hurt you. Yes, I rejoice to know it is no longer hopeless.”
Harry stood up and walked around the counter. Riddle turned to meet him. They were of a height, Harry was a little startled to realize. He was so used to Voldemort being taller than him that he hadn’t even thought Riddle might be different.
Then again, he had spent as little time around Riddle as possible once the maniac had awakened in Harry’s world for whatever reason.
“I don’t want to join you,” Harry said, as softly and forcefully as he could. “I don’t care what you think could persuade me. I don’t want to change things so that you become a dictator. I don’t want to disadvantage Muggleborns. I don’t want to separate us further from Muggles. I don’t want to make sure that people can use Dark Arts without penalties. We share nothing in common.”
“We once shared enough in common that your soul and mine rested against each other’s.”
“You can’t simultaneously claim that you’re the same as him and that you’re different, Riddle.”
“You have no idea how audacious my claims can become, Harry.”
It was the first time Riddle had used his first name, and it caused a kind of liquid shiver to travel down Harry’s back. He stepped away, shaking his head. “I meant what I said. I’m never going to join you because we’re not fighting for the same thing. And why would you want me to, anyway? My name doesn’t have any currency anymore. I told you, I was responsible for the death of my partner. There’s no one left with anything good to say about me among the Aurors.”
“You could have that currency back,” Riddle breathed. His voice was soft with excitement, his eyes wide. “If you joined me and we resurrected the image of the Boy-Who-Lived, the one you didn’t want to live up to the first time.”
“But I already told you, you have nothing on offer that would—”
“I’ve had some time to think, in the nine years I’ve been here,” Riddle interrupted. “What matters to me is power. It doesn’t matter what cause I struggle for, if I can achieve it.”
“And?”
“I could fight for your house-elves’ rights, Harry. For your werewolves. For Muggleborns, as easily as for purebloods. My other self seems to have come to believe in blood purity. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was simply that he lost the ability to distinguish between his followers believed and what he did. If I could guarantee that your cause would win and you could make the reforms to the Ministry that you longed to make…would my intent matter, if I used the right ends?”
Harry nodded.
“It would?”
“Yes,” Harry said, momentarily amused by the look on Riddle’s face. He looked peeved that he had been right about what Harry’s nod meant. “You’re incapable of loyalty, Riddle. You might pretend that you and I could struggle for the same ends, but the moment something inconvenienced you, that would change. You would betray me or abandon me or make sure that I was the one to take the fall for a mistake you made. So I see no sense in leaving my comfortable shop for the illusory comfort you can offer.”
Riddle cocked his head. “Your friend Granger doesn’t think that I’m incapable of loyalty.”
Harry shrugged. “She plays the political game better than I do. And she might not take that kind of betrayal as personally as I do.” He was still a little stunned that Ron and Hermione had decided that Riddle was trustworthy. But then again, they hadn’t been the ones who were prophesied nemeses with him.
Riddle moved a step backwards and circled behind the conjured throne. Harry didn’t think he would be so lucky as to have Riddle leave, but he wasn’t sure what the bastard was doing.
“You keep repeating the lie that you were responsible for the death of your partner.”
“It’s not a lie, Riddle. I cursed Ernest Macmillan in the back, through sheer carelessness. They couldn’t strip the Auror title and robes from me fast enough, after that.”
Riddle laughed quietly. “Did you think that none of the former Death Eaters would approach me?”
Harry hoped that the stiffening of his muscles wasn’t visible, but Riddle was smiling at him, so he’d probably seen. “They thought they could bring back Voldemort through you? Or they thought you were Voldemort?”
“Mostly the latter. None of them were that useful. But Amycus Carrow, when he heard that I was interested in you, did show me a most interesting letter.”
Never should have committed that to writing, Harry thought sourly. He forced himself to shrug carelessly. “I found out about his little scheme to cast the Imperius Curse on Wizengamot members. I couldn’t get at him in Switzerland, but I could warn him off, unless he wanted to make it worth my while to find a way to get at him.”
“He couldn’t have done anything by himself, from Switzerland. He had people in the Ministry doing it for him.”
“Sure. People he’d used the Imperius on.”
“And people who helped him willingly,” Riddle whispered. His eyes flared as if they were dying stars about to consume a planet. “Like Ernie Macmillan.”
Harry clenched his teeth.
“I couldn’t understand at first why you would have killed Macmillan, instead of bringing him in for trial,” Riddle said chattily. “Until I did some investigating, and figured out that Macmillan had a wife, and a son who was fifteen months old at the time. And Macmillan would certainly have gone to Azkaban if he’d lived. So you sacrificed your own spotless reputation to make it look as if had died in the line of duty, so that his son didn’t have to grow up with the shadow of a blood purist, Death Eater collaborator father hanging over him.”
Harry said nothing.
“I don’t think it was a coincidence that you saw yourself in the boy. Not when Brian Macmillan was exactly the age you were when you were orphaned.”
“When your older self orphaned me.”
Riddle inclined his head. “And I am not him. Did you know that Matilda, Macmillan’s wife, was in fact a willing collaborator with her husband?”
Harry closed his eyes. He had worried about that, but he hadn’t had any proof, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to make a child an orphan twice over. It had been enough that Carrow’s scheme to Imperius the Wizengamot had been stopped.
“I have the proof,” Riddle continued. “She’ll be arrested within the week. Her poor son, just a few months away from starting Hogwarts, with a dead father and an imprisoned mother, and no relatives except a great-aunt who’s really too old to take care of him…”
“You could use blackmail as the leash on her if you wanted.”
“Why should I, Harry,” and Riddle moved a step closer to him, “unless I can also use it on you?”
Harry shook his head, more in wonder than anything else. “I still don’t understand what you get from pulling me out of retirement. There are plenty of people smarter than I am, and embedded in the Ministry, and used to playing the game. Hermione, for one. People who will trust and follow you—”
“Three reasons,” Riddle said. “No, four.”
“And I’m sure you’re going to delight in explaining them to me.”
Riddle smiled at him like a shark glutted on blood. “First,” he said, “none of those supposedly smarter people embedded in the Ministry have as much power as you do.”
“My name is tarnished—”
“Your magic, Harry. You know very well what I am talking about.” Riddle’s eyes flickered for a moment to the wand holster on Harry’s waist.
Harry said nothing. If anyone pulled out the wand in that holster, they would discover that its wood looked like holly. No wizard or witch would be able to pierce an illusion that the Elder Wand chose to cast upon itself.
“Second,” Riddle continued, moving a step forwards until their chests were pressed against one another’s, “my elder self declined into a madman, surrounded by people who did nothing but agree with him. I need a challenge to make sure that I am not following the same path. You will never let anything go. You will speak up against me at every turn.”
“It’ll drive you mad faster than people agreeing with you will.”
Riddle smiled and reached out to put a hand underneath Harry’s chin. Harry caught his wrist and squeezed until Riddle hissed in pain. But he didn’t back off, and he didn’t stop smiling.
“Third,” Riddle said, “I want you.”
Harry blinked at him. “I’m not gay, Riddle.”
“According to your friend Hermione, it’s not about the cock or the cunt for you.” The words sounded far more obscene emerging from Riddle’s mouth than they would have from anyone else’s, and Harry gaped at him. Riddle’s smile deepened, turned more personal. “It’s about letting someone near you who can survive the press’s attention and the danger that comes from people like dear Amycus still wanting to kill you. I can do that, Harry. I promise, you’ll never find anyone more willing to stand at your side.”
It was almost charming, Harry thought, how Riddle spoke as if he was providing a benefit to Harry by blackmailing him. He laughed.
“What are you laughing at?”
Riddle sounded curious, not offended, another difference from Voldemort. Harry grinned at him. “Just thinking about how it’s going to look when you show up, in your mid-twenties, with a dirty old man of forty in your bed. Do you really think that the press is going to go easy on us? Why handicap your political popularity with that?”
“The age difference doesn’t matter—”
“I’m only saying—”
“To us, the important ones.”
“What the fuck are you on about, Riddle?”
Riddle smiled at him, and this smile was far worse than all the others. “Why should an age difference matter to those who are immortal?” he asked softly. “Master of Death?”
Harry stared at him.
“I sensed it years ago, before you left the Ministry,” Riddle breathed. “The glamour on your face, the grey in your hair and the wrinkles around your eyes. I didn’t understand at first. You had the power to cover the signs of aging completely. It didn’t make sense that some would escape the glamour if you wanted to conceal them. And then I realized that you’d added them. You have to look as if you’re aging naturally. The furor would have been even worse if you hadn’t.”
“The fourth reason,” Harry whispered.
“The fourth,” Riddle agreed. “I don’t have Horcruxes, you know. I am perfectly capable of making a Philosopher’s Stone for myself.” He smiled. “Or stealing one.”
Harry shook his head, but not in denial. Just wonder, again.
What Riddle had said was true. Harry had killed Ernie to keep from tainting his son’s life. He would do what Riddle wanted to keep that little boy’s mother from going to prison. He didn’t allow people near him because he was worried about how they would bear the attention, but also because they would figure out too quickly that Harry wasn’t aging normally, that he had too much magic, that he concealed too many secrets.
Riddle had figured out those secrets, and still wanted him.
It was probably a terrible mistake. Riddle would probably still only pretend to work for the rights of house-elves and werewolves and Muggleborns and betray Harry at the worst possible moment.
But maybe not. And if Harry chose to use his power for more than molding his shop around himself, he could defend himself from the fallout. Perhaps better than he’d ever thought, if Riddle managed to resurrect the fame of the Boy-Who-Lived.
“You’ve agreed.” Riddle’s fingers feathered over Harry’s throat, stirring sensations that Harry had long since given up on. “That’s excellent.” His voice was hot with excitement.
Harry half-shrugged. “For now.”
“Let me prove myself. Let me show you what forever with your equal is like.”
It was probably still a mistake. A terrible tarnishing.
But he was tarnished already.
Harry looked into Riddle’s red eyes, and let himself fall further.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle
Content Notes: Angst, ignores the epilogue, implied dimension travel, discussions of past character death and violence, blackmail
Wordcount: 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry Potter retired from the Ministry years ago, unable to make a difference in the way he wanted to. They didn’t need him, with both Hermione and the Tom Riddle who had appeared from another world to help enact change. However, for some reason, Riddle didn’t agree.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season,” short stories posted between the first of December and the winter solstice.
Tarnished Weapons
Harry looked up and sighed a little as he saw Tom Riddle standing in the doorway of his office. “Go away,” he said, without much hope that it would happen, and went back to writing in the ledger. Expenses for the shop were balanced, at least so far, by the Galleons he earned teaching people who wanted to learn dueling techniques, and selling wand holsters and the like. But Harry needed silence and privacy to work on maths. It wasn’t like he was a bloody genius like Hermione.
“No.”
Riddle stalked forwards. He looked to be in his twenties, with dark hair that bore a blood-red sheen in certain lights and eyes that did the same thing. Harry knew what he looked like without glancing at him. He’d stared at the damn newspaper photographs often enough.
And Riddle’s face, too, when he had first arrived ten years ago, and the Ministry had spent months furiously interrogating him, trying to find out why he had appeared from nowhere and whether he was a shard of Voldemort.
The Ministry had determined that Riddle wasn’t. To Harry, it didn’t matter. He would never like Riddle, never trust him.
“A word, Potter.”
“Good-bye,” Harry responded instantly.
Riddle’s hands curled around the edge of the counter. Then he jumped back, cursing. Harry smiled a little. Learning the charm that embedded blades in the wood which would emerge at his will had been so useful.
Riddle sucked a bleeding finger and stared at him. “What was that for?”
“Well, I could have hurled them at you when you were walking across the shop, but I didn’t know how much of a wanker you were going to be.”
Riddle hissed, not a word Harry knew, and stepped back to conjure a chair. Of course the chair was white, with a high, arched back that had garnets or rubies or something embedded in it in the shape of a crown. Harry rolled his eyes. Riddle probably didn’t know how not to be dramatic.
Riddle sat down and stared at him. Harry gave him an indifferent look, which he wished was more indifferent, and went back to wrestling with the numbers. Riddle was so silent that Harry was actually able to figure out what had gone wrong with that column and set the numbers straight before the unwelcome voice spoke again.
“Why did you retire from the Ministry?”
“I didn’t think I could do any good there anymore, especially after I was responsible for the death of my Auror partner.”
“And having a shop does…good?”
“Says the man who once worked in a shop for purposes a lot smaller.”
Riddle snarled. Harry smelled burning wood and suspected that he’d set his ridiculous chair on fire. Harry smiled a little down at the ledger, and kept writing.
“What kind of good did you want to accomplish that you couldn’t?” Riddle asked, after a mutter that was probably meant to douse the fire that had started on the chair.
“Freeing house-elves or at least setting up legislation to treat them better, ending the registry for werewolves, providing werewolves with free Wolfsbane, making sure that everyone who persecuted Muggleborns during the war was arrested—”
“In other words, impossible goals.”
“Well, yeah,” Harry said, looking up to shrug with one shoulder. Riddle was leaning forwards and staring at Harry with absolutely devouring eyes, which was a little unnerving. Not that Harry was ready to admit that. “With the Ministry the way it is. I told you, that’s why I retired.”
“But if you could achieve those goals with me by your side?”
Harry laughed quietly, and turned back to his accounts.
Riddle’s hand slammed down in the middle of the ledger a moment later. Harry barely had time to lift his book before the blade he’d positioned there struck through the wood and up into Riddle’s palm.
Riddle howled. Harry shook his head and clucked his tongue, and a brief wind swirled through the room. A second later, Riddle stared down at his unmarked palm, and then lifted his unnerved eyes back to Harry’s.
Harry took a moment to bask in the fact that now they were unnerved, instead of unnerving, and shrugged. “I took a lot of precautions to tailor the shop to me,” he said. “I’m powerful here in a way that I’m not outside it.”
“So it is a metaphor for your retreat from the world.”
“Huh, it is?”
“You considered yourself powerless in the Ministry.” Riddle was flexing his fingers gingerly back and forth, his breath coming out in little hisses that again meant nothing to Harry. “So you created a place where you are not. And you insist that people who want to speak to you come here, instead of facing you in the outside world you hate and abandoned.”
“I don’t hate the Ministry, Riddle. And I see my best friends in plenty of places that aren’t here.”
“But you will only see me here.”
“Yes.”
“Even though we were once closer than any two beings have ever been.”
Harry stiffened for a second, then sighed. He supposed it had been inevitable that Riddle would find out his other self had once left a Horcrux shard in Harry’s head. All Riddle would have had to do was read Ron or Hermione’s mind looking for information specific to Harry. “Not us, Riddle. Me and the Voldemort I killed.”
He’d hoped that reminding Riddle his other self had died at Harry’s hand would get him to back the fuck off, but it didn’t seem to be working this time. Riddle was staring at Harry with his eyes so wide and his breath so unsteady that Harry didn’t think he had heard the words.
“You consider him and me as separate.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I thought I’d made that clear. I’d be out in the streets fighting you otherwise.”
“You—you think I can change. You might be willing to be near me in a way that you wouldn’t be willing to be near him.”
Harry regretted at the moment that nothing in his shop could hurt him. He would have liked to knock his head against a solid sheet of wood. “That’s what you’re going to take away from this conversation?”
“I came here thinking that persuading you to join me of your own free will was hopeless, but intending to try it anyway. Now I find that you make a distinction between and the one who hurt you. Yes, I rejoice to know it is no longer hopeless.”
Harry stood up and walked around the counter. Riddle turned to meet him. They were of a height, Harry was a little startled to realize. He was so used to Voldemort being taller than him that he hadn’t even thought Riddle might be different.
Then again, he had spent as little time around Riddle as possible once the maniac had awakened in Harry’s world for whatever reason.
“I don’t want to join you,” Harry said, as softly and forcefully as he could. “I don’t care what you think could persuade me. I don’t want to change things so that you become a dictator. I don’t want to disadvantage Muggleborns. I don’t want to separate us further from Muggles. I don’t want to make sure that people can use Dark Arts without penalties. We share nothing in common.”
“We once shared enough in common that your soul and mine rested against each other’s.”
“You can’t simultaneously claim that you’re the same as him and that you’re different, Riddle.”
“You have no idea how audacious my claims can become, Harry.”
It was the first time Riddle had used his first name, and it caused a kind of liquid shiver to travel down Harry’s back. He stepped away, shaking his head. “I meant what I said. I’m never going to join you because we’re not fighting for the same thing. And why would you want me to, anyway? My name doesn’t have any currency anymore. I told you, I was responsible for the death of my partner. There’s no one left with anything good to say about me among the Aurors.”
“You could have that currency back,” Riddle breathed. His voice was soft with excitement, his eyes wide. “If you joined me and we resurrected the image of the Boy-Who-Lived, the one you didn’t want to live up to the first time.”
“But I already told you, you have nothing on offer that would—”
“I’ve had some time to think, in the nine years I’ve been here,” Riddle interrupted. “What matters to me is power. It doesn’t matter what cause I struggle for, if I can achieve it.”
“And?”
“I could fight for your house-elves’ rights, Harry. For your werewolves. For Muggleborns, as easily as for purebloods. My other self seems to have come to believe in blood purity. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was simply that he lost the ability to distinguish between his followers believed and what he did. If I could guarantee that your cause would win and you could make the reforms to the Ministry that you longed to make…would my intent matter, if I used the right ends?”
Harry nodded.
“It would?”
“Yes,” Harry said, momentarily amused by the look on Riddle’s face. He looked peeved that he had been right about what Harry’s nod meant. “You’re incapable of loyalty, Riddle. You might pretend that you and I could struggle for the same ends, but the moment something inconvenienced you, that would change. You would betray me or abandon me or make sure that I was the one to take the fall for a mistake you made. So I see no sense in leaving my comfortable shop for the illusory comfort you can offer.”
Riddle cocked his head. “Your friend Granger doesn’t think that I’m incapable of loyalty.”
Harry shrugged. “She plays the political game better than I do. And she might not take that kind of betrayal as personally as I do.” He was still a little stunned that Ron and Hermione had decided that Riddle was trustworthy. But then again, they hadn’t been the ones who were prophesied nemeses with him.
Riddle moved a step backwards and circled behind the conjured throne. Harry didn’t think he would be so lucky as to have Riddle leave, but he wasn’t sure what the bastard was doing.
“You keep repeating the lie that you were responsible for the death of your partner.”
“It’s not a lie, Riddle. I cursed Ernest Macmillan in the back, through sheer carelessness. They couldn’t strip the Auror title and robes from me fast enough, after that.”
Riddle laughed quietly. “Did you think that none of the former Death Eaters would approach me?”
Harry hoped that the stiffening of his muscles wasn’t visible, but Riddle was smiling at him, so he’d probably seen. “They thought they could bring back Voldemort through you? Or they thought you were Voldemort?”
“Mostly the latter. None of them were that useful. But Amycus Carrow, when he heard that I was interested in you, did show me a most interesting letter.”
Never should have committed that to writing, Harry thought sourly. He forced himself to shrug carelessly. “I found out about his little scheme to cast the Imperius Curse on Wizengamot members. I couldn’t get at him in Switzerland, but I could warn him off, unless he wanted to make it worth my while to find a way to get at him.”
“He couldn’t have done anything by himself, from Switzerland. He had people in the Ministry doing it for him.”
“Sure. People he’d used the Imperius on.”
“And people who helped him willingly,” Riddle whispered. His eyes flared as if they were dying stars about to consume a planet. “Like Ernie Macmillan.”
Harry clenched his teeth.
“I couldn’t understand at first why you would have killed Macmillan, instead of bringing him in for trial,” Riddle said chattily. “Until I did some investigating, and figured out that Macmillan had a wife, and a son who was fifteen months old at the time. And Macmillan would certainly have gone to Azkaban if he’d lived. So you sacrificed your own spotless reputation to make it look as if had died in the line of duty, so that his son didn’t have to grow up with the shadow of a blood purist, Death Eater collaborator father hanging over him.”
Harry said nothing.
“I don’t think it was a coincidence that you saw yourself in the boy. Not when Brian Macmillan was exactly the age you were when you were orphaned.”
“When your older self orphaned me.”
Riddle inclined his head. “And I am not him. Did you know that Matilda, Macmillan’s wife, was in fact a willing collaborator with her husband?”
Harry closed his eyes. He had worried about that, but he hadn’t had any proof, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to make a child an orphan twice over. It had been enough that Carrow’s scheme to Imperius the Wizengamot had been stopped.
“I have the proof,” Riddle continued. “She’ll be arrested within the week. Her poor son, just a few months away from starting Hogwarts, with a dead father and an imprisoned mother, and no relatives except a great-aunt who’s really too old to take care of him…”
“You could use blackmail as the leash on her if you wanted.”
“Why should I, Harry,” and Riddle moved a step closer to him, “unless I can also use it on you?”
Harry shook his head, more in wonder than anything else. “I still don’t understand what you get from pulling me out of retirement. There are plenty of people smarter than I am, and embedded in the Ministry, and used to playing the game. Hermione, for one. People who will trust and follow you—”
“Three reasons,” Riddle said. “No, four.”
“And I’m sure you’re going to delight in explaining them to me.”
Riddle smiled at him like a shark glutted on blood. “First,” he said, “none of those supposedly smarter people embedded in the Ministry have as much power as you do.”
“My name is tarnished—”
“Your magic, Harry. You know very well what I am talking about.” Riddle’s eyes flickered for a moment to the wand holster on Harry’s waist.
Harry said nothing. If anyone pulled out the wand in that holster, they would discover that its wood looked like holly. No wizard or witch would be able to pierce an illusion that the Elder Wand chose to cast upon itself.
“Second,” Riddle continued, moving a step forwards until their chests were pressed against one another’s, “my elder self declined into a madman, surrounded by people who did nothing but agree with him. I need a challenge to make sure that I am not following the same path. You will never let anything go. You will speak up against me at every turn.”
“It’ll drive you mad faster than people agreeing with you will.”
Riddle smiled and reached out to put a hand underneath Harry’s chin. Harry caught his wrist and squeezed until Riddle hissed in pain. But he didn’t back off, and he didn’t stop smiling.
“Third,” Riddle said, “I want you.”
Harry blinked at him. “I’m not gay, Riddle.”
“According to your friend Hermione, it’s not about the cock or the cunt for you.” The words sounded far more obscene emerging from Riddle’s mouth than they would have from anyone else’s, and Harry gaped at him. Riddle’s smile deepened, turned more personal. “It’s about letting someone near you who can survive the press’s attention and the danger that comes from people like dear Amycus still wanting to kill you. I can do that, Harry. I promise, you’ll never find anyone more willing to stand at your side.”
It was almost charming, Harry thought, how Riddle spoke as if he was providing a benefit to Harry by blackmailing him. He laughed.
“What are you laughing at?”
Riddle sounded curious, not offended, another difference from Voldemort. Harry grinned at him. “Just thinking about how it’s going to look when you show up, in your mid-twenties, with a dirty old man of forty in your bed. Do you really think that the press is going to go easy on us? Why handicap your political popularity with that?”
“The age difference doesn’t matter—”
“I’m only saying—”
“To us, the important ones.”
“What the fuck are you on about, Riddle?”
Riddle smiled at him, and this smile was far worse than all the others. “Why should an age difference matter to those who are immortal?” he asked softly. “Master of Death?”
Harry stared at him.
“I sensed it years ago, before you left the Ministry,” Riddle breathed. “The glamour on your face, the grey in your hair and the wrinkles around your eyes. I didn’t understand at first. You had the power to cover the signs of aging completely. It didn’t make sense that some would escape the glamour if you wanted to conceal them. And then I realized that you’d added them. You have to look as if you’re aging naturally. The furor would have been even worse if you hadn’t.”
“The fourth reason,” Harry whispered.
“The fourth,” Riddle agreed. “I don’t have Horcruxes, you know. I am perfectly capable of making a Philosopher’s Stone for myself.” He smiled. “Or stealing one.”
Harry shook his head, but not in denial. Just wonder, again.
What Riddle had said was true. Harry had killed Ernie to keep from tainting his son’s life. He would do what Riddle wanted to keep that little boy’s mother from going to prison. He didn’t allow people near him because he was worried about how they would bear the attention, but also because they would figure out too quickly that Harry wasn’t aging normally, that he had too much magic, that he concealed too many secrets.
Riddle had figured out those secrets, and still wanted him.
It was probably a terrible mistake. Riddle would probably still only pretend to work for the rights of house-elves and werewolves and Muggleborns and betray Harry at the worst possible moment.
But maybe not. And if Harry chose to use his power for more than molding his shop around himself, he could defend himself from the fallout. Perhaps better than he’d ever thought, if Riddle managed to resurrect the fame of the Boy-Who-Lived.
“You’ve agreed.” Riddle’s fingers feathered over Harry’s throat, stirring sensations that Harry had long since given up on. “That’s excellent.” His voice was hot with excitement.
Harry half-shrugged. “For now.”
“Let me prove myself. Let me show you what forever with your equal is like.”
It was probably still a mistake. A terrible tarnishing.
But he was tarnished already.
Harry looked into Riddle’s red eyes, and let himself fall further.
The End.
