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lomonaaerenTitle: Jewel of the Night Wind
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Content Notes: AU (Lily and James live), politician Tom Riddle, mild angst, manipulation
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4200
Summary: AU. Tom Riddle sought the political route to attain power, and cloaked himself in it. Harry Potter was taken abroad by parents who feared that a prophecy about their son possibly being able to vanquish Riddle would come to his ears. Harry attended Beauxbatons and grew to maturity in safety. But the time’s come for a return to Britain…
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” fics, one-shot stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s from a request by Crow for Tom being a Dark Lord and Harry having been raised on the Continent, but eventually returning to Britain and meeting Tom for the first time. This is a scene from the AU rather than the whole thing, which would probably have to be novel-length, but I may return to expand it in the future.
Jewel of the Night Wind
Tom took a slow step back from the mirror that hung in his room and examined himself from several angles. It was often hard to judge and balance the effects he wanted to have on people. He wanted to say “Dark Lord” and “ruler of Britain,” but without frightening the public who thronged Ministry events like this.
He also wanted to say “approachable” without conveying the message of “so approachable that you might as well swarm me.” He tried out a smile in the mirror and then shook his head, frowning. No, he didn’t want to show his teeth. They had begun to turn into fangs a few years ago with one of the rituals he had undergone.
So. Smile with closed lips, wear the robes he had chosen for tonight that were black with gold edging to the sleeves and hems, and don’t frighten anyone so badly that they ran away gibbering in fear.
I can do that.
Honestly, Tom thought as he strode out of his bedroom and met his Auror guard, his biggest problem was likely to be boredom. He knew the people who would be at this party, which celebrated the establishment of wards that would gradually press Muggles further and further away from Diagon Alley and magical London, allowing Diagon Alley to expand. He knew how they would behave. He knew what questions they would ask, what kind of fake laughter would fall from their mouths.
He wanted something new, someone new, who wouldn’t cause him to relinquish his grip on power.
He wasn’t likely to get it, but Tom desired it all the same.
*
“Now, Harry, remember what we told you. This is a scouting mission more than it is anything else.”
Harry smiled and nodded, keeping an eye on the clock. He didn’t want to be late to the party.
“Are you listening to me, Harry?”
Harry let himself start a little, as if he felt guilty, and turned back to his mother. “Of course, Maman,” he said softly, with the acquired French accent that never failed to soften her face. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. I just want you to pay attention, that’s all.” Lily sighed and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it absently. “We don’t know what Riddle might know of the prophecy, if he might have something lying in wait for you.”
Harry nodded agreeably. If he was honest, he didn’t think Riddle had heard of the prophecy at all. He would have done something if he had, sent people to murder Harry or come himself.
Not that Harry would say that to his mother. He never talked much about Riddle with his parents, lest they hear the fascination in his voice.
Lily scanned him from head to toe, lingering particularly on the dark blue robes that she and the shop assistant had both told Harry brought out the highlights in his black hair and looked good with his pale skin. She nodded. “You’ll do.”
“Thanks,” Harry said softly, and smiled. Lily melted, as always, leaning forwards to kiss him on the cheek.
“Be well, Harry,” she said. “Remember to talk to as many people as you can without giving away too much information about yourself.”
Harry nodded, for all that he had heard these instructions fifty times, and mastered his impatience. He wasn’t just going to do. He was going to dazzle the Dark Lord, and draw his attention, and—
Indulge his fascination, as much as he could without getting killed.
His parents had told him and over that he would have done well at Slytherin in Hogwarts. Harry hadn’t had the chance to attend, but he’d perforce studied a lot of history during his isolated childhood growing up in France. He had to know his enemy, as Lily would say; he had to be ready to avoid the lies spun by that bastard, as James would say.
Maybe they shouldn’t have had me read so much about the Dark Lord, Harry murmured to himself as he got ready to Floo to the Ministry of Magic. Or maybe they should have given me other powerful figures to admire.
Not that it would have worked, probably, Harry thought, as he whirled away in flames. He couldn’t think of many other historical figures he’d read about who he wanted to fuck as badly as he wanted to fuck the Dark Lord.
*
“The Dark Lord of Britain!”
Tom stepped into the ballroom and scanned the rows of bowed heads and fists clapped over hearts with a sneer that he kept internal. Boring, as usual. Deference meant something when it was earned. This was unthinking, driven by fear rather than anything deeper.
He would not be able to enjoy himself tonight.
Of course, he made the speech about the need to keep Muggles away from wizards and witches, and he made it well. They lapped it up. But they would have lapped up anything lesser, too, anything that didn’t have clever twists and turns of phrase and carefully regulated metaphors, as long as Tom was the one speaking it.
It made him long to slip in something casual or informal or against the purpose of what he usually said, to see if they would react.
But the reality was that they probably wouldn’t, and—
Tom’s attention snagged on a tall young man standing towards the back of the ballroom, who was staring at Tom and not even touching his hands together in a polite mimicry of applause. He wore dark blue robes and a challenging expression. He even leaned a little forwards, as if longing for the moment when he could lunge at Tom.
He wore magic around him more imperially than the robes, and Tom had never seen him before.
Before Tom could go after the man—whose handsome face, dark hair, and green eyes he would surely have remembered if they had ever met—he turned and melted into the crowds. Tom had to listen to gushing praise and watch more bowing and accept the shuffling of his Auror guards around him, and by the time he could get out from in between them, the man had disappeared.
Tom lifted his lip in a sneer of discontent, and ignored the flinch that some of the people near him gave at catching sight of his altered teeth. They had had time to get used to his scarlet eyes and now ignored them, or praised them. They would do the same with the fangs.
He was more interested in finding the man who had stared at him.
*
Harry leaned against the far side of the ballroom, in an alcove that had sheltered a small statue of a manticore until he moved it, and laughed to himself silently, watching as the Dark Lord stalked around the middle of the huge ballroom. It was an immense place, with arched ceilings and equally arched enchanted windows that were filled with visions of dark blue skies and endless stars.
The floor was covered with mosaics of sea and air and fire, merfolk and dragons and phoenixes. The Dark Lord didn’t appear to notice any of it.
Harry smiled. Perhaps the Dark Lord was distracted by something else, but he didn’t really think so. He was pretty sure it was him, and that meant the second stage of his plan could go into motion.
Without taking his eyes from the Dark Lord, Harry moved his hand down by his side and spread his fingers in a wandless casting pattern. He still used his wand in front of his parents and had done it with most of his professors at Beauxbatons, but it was actually easier for him to cast without one.
The Dark Lord stiffened a moment later. Harry nodded to himself. His charm had worked as intended, then.
Sighing across the air between them, on magical currents of wind that would keep the words silent from everyone’s ears but the Dark Lord’s, a hollow voice would be whispering, “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…”
Harry cut off the prophecy before it could get to the second line. He had no intention of endangering himself by letting the Dark Lord know the possible vanquisher’s birthday. But he had a good vision of the Dark Lord looking unsettled, flashing fang-like teeth at his Auror guards before suffering them to lead him away.
The party wasn’t over yet, and neither was Harry’s torment of the Dark Lord. He slipped off to the side and reentered the party under a mild glamour that would make him look like someone most people knew and would rather avoid. Eyes slid over him and the expressions of most people he passed turned to grimaces.
That was fine by Harry. He wasn’t here for them.
*
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…”
Tom scowled at the Firewhisky in front of him, which brought a fawning flunky to replace it and bow repeatedly and ask him if there was anything the man could do for Tom. Tom shook his head curtly and picked up the cut crystal glass that sparkled like a million jewels in the firelight.
He wanted to find the man he had seen before. He wanted to know what the words meant. He knew they were a trick, but why that particular trick, and why now? It would have made more sense to wait until Tom was alone, to make him feel hunted. Stalked.
Right now, Tom wasn’t so much feeling stalked or hunted as he was supremely angry.
The Aurors who had worked with him longest could sense his mood, and eased some of the other, more prone-to-trampling-boundaries Aurors back from the collisions they might have had with Tom’s temper. Tom prowled in slow circles, the drum of his own heartbeat driving him, and the people who might have come over to talk to him lowered their heads and shut their mouths and drifted away.
Suddenly, Tom’s idly roving eyes locked on the man he had seen before.
The man shimmered beneath a white light of magic that indicated the presence of a minor glamour, but didn’t move when Tom’s eyes landed on him. In fact, he tilted his head to the side, winked, and then turned and walked towards one of the shadowed parts of the ballroom.
“Return to the Ministry,” Tom told Auror Shaywood, the captain of his guard, without taking his eyes from the stranger.
Shaywood started to protest, but Tom didn’t stay long enough to hear what she was saying. Instead, he slipped away, following the man, his heartbeat racing now with the desire to grip and rend and tear.
He will have to speak fast to save himself from such a fate.
*
Harry turned around in an alcove shaded by a curtain, not far from the one he’d stood in before, and found himself alone with the Dark Lord of Britain.
His presence was overwhelming, crowding towards Harry not only physically but magically. Harry lifted his head and inhaled a long breath of cold air that seared his lungs. The Dark Lord’s power beat and circled around him, howling like a wolf in a winter storm, a jewel polished by the night wind.
Harry smiled at him, not afraid but enthralled. “Hello.” His voice was breathless.
The Dark Lord cocked his head. He wore power on his face, not youth or age, although Harry had thought in previous photographs that there was silver in his hair. Maybe it was only there when he willed it to be. He nodded slowly as if examining Harry from top to toe. “You are not what I expected.”
“Too young?” Harry knew that he looked that way, himself. He had tried to put on glamours around people who might remember his getting into the party, but the Dark Lord’s eyes couldn’t be fooled.
“Too unafraid.”
That cold magic reached out and embraced him, and Harry swayed forwards with a gasp. He managed to turn the sway into a step, and he twisted a little to the side, avoiding the hand that the Dark Lord was reaching for his wrist. Those crimson eyes widened as Harry’s hands landed on his shoulders.
“You dare.” But he sounded more disbelieving than angry.
“I dare this and a lot more than this,” Harry said, and then he took a deep breath and shared the secret that had been just his and his family’s since he was five years old. “I dare to speak to you in your own tongue, Dark Lord of Britain.”
*
Tom felt the words cut into him like knives dragged down his skin. He stared, and knew he was staring, and could not help it.
Close to, this stranger was younger than he’d thought, with eyes so completely green that it was like being bathed in magic simply looking into them. But his actual magic was present, too, the warmth of a fire radiating out from him and clashing with Tom’s own cold power in a way that reminded Tom of fire playing across snow.
And then he spoke.
Tom stepped forwards and twisted himself, trapping this other Parselmouth, this wonderful surprise, against the wall with his hands on the man’s shoulders. The man’s head fell back, with a gasp, baring his throat. He almost invited Tom to bite.
But one of his hands had also slid down from Tom’s shoulders, and his fingers had twisted into the dark cloth under Tom’s ribs. Tom knew from the way they were braided that the man could summon a wandless Blasting Curse with them.
He could. He could do that. Tom would have disregarded the threat even if he had felt the gesture, before the stranger spoke his words. But Parselmouths cast like that, their intentions darting through the air, as agile as snakes, their fingers naturally assuming the shape best-suited to the casting.
That this man had found the shapes without being tutored by Tom…
Tom leaned close and let his top fangs rest against the man’s throat. “Tell me who you are.”
“Henri Peverell.”
The name sent Tom’s heart thrumming. He’d only heard it in children’s stories, but that only made the man in front of him more special, the one who seemed as if he might have stepped out of a tale.
Before Tom could decide if he wanted to speak or bite or hiss, Peverell stepped backwards, with a twist that forced Tom to let him go without ripping into his throat. Peverell’s eyes laughed at him. Tom hissed at him, wordless but insulting.
“If you insist,” said Peverell, and then he vanished entirely from Tom’s sight.
Tom spun around in place, staring. He couldn’t understand where Peverell was, and why he couldn’t sense him. He could have smelled the man’s pounding blood even if he was under a Disillusionment Charm. And Tom entertained no illusions that it wasn’t pounding as fiercely as his own.
A wind seemed to murmur the words into his ears, the way it had murmured the words of what sounded like a prophecy earlier that night, only these words were in Parseltongue. “In the gardens. Come and find me.”
Tom broke into a running glide.
*
Harry smiled as he leaned back against the hedge in the “gardens” outside the ballroom. It was really another part of the Ministry, which had been enchanted in such a way that plants grew from the floor and the ceiling and walls had been rendered invisible. But the addition of a breeze and star and snow illusions helped it feel like it was outside, at least.
The Dark Lord was coming. Harry knew what it meant when his blood was singing inside him, reacting to the presence of other strong magic. But he had encountered none that were as strong as this.
And there was the man of the hour himself, slowing to a stalk as he came around the edge of a large bush with red flowers. His nostrils were flaring as he swept his head back and forth. His eyes glowed like crimson stars in the darkness.
Not even the Dark Lord’s senses were a match for Death’s Invisibility Cloak, though. Or the caution of a man who had spoken with Death itself.
From the slow snarl the Dark Lord gave, he was discovering that. Harry grinned and sauntered a little closer, wondering how near he could get before something gave him away. The illusion of snow on the ground didn’t crunch under his feet the way it would have in a real garden.
The Dark Lord whipped towards him abruptly, and whipped a hand out.
Harry ducked, but couldn’t keep from laughing, and the Dark Lord was on him in the next instant, crowding Harry against a bush covered with illusory icicles, which chimed and rattled like the real thing. Harry smiled and pushed back the cloak’s hood, smiling wider as the Dark Lord started.
“The Cloak of Death,” the Dark Lord whispered.
Harry was a little surprised the man had got it so soon, but he supposed that the name he’d adopted was a bit of a giveaway. He inclined his head. “Yes,” he hissed back. “I wanted to make sure that if you were hostile, I could leave without being seen.”
“Why would I be hostile towards a fellow Parselmouth? One of my own kind?”
“Rumor says that you revel in being unique, Dark Lord. I couldn’t be sure that you would deem me, ah, worthy to share the gift that you claim as part of Slytherin’s unique lineage.” Harry slowly pulled the Cloak off and slid it into his pocket, where it compressed more than any normal one would.
He had thought the Dark Lord’s eyes might follow the Cloak—he was known to collect unique and rare things—but they remained on Harry’s face instead. “I know there are other Parselmouths in the world, but I have never met them,” he murmured. “And I have never known there were others as powerful as I am.”
Harry’s eyes widened before he could help it. He knew his power was unusual, but he hadn’t realized that the Dark Lord would think it a match for his. Harry hadn’t had the chance to really compare the two of them.
“You did not know?”
“I thought I was strong. I thought you were stronger.”
The Dark Lord smiled at him, all fangs and flashing teeth, and Harry’s breath caught. “What was your plan when you came here, then? To challenge me, to make me pay attention to you? Or did you really think that you would slip beneath my notice?”
“I wanted to see what you would do when you saw me,” Harry whispered. It was, quite literally, the only thing he had thought about.
The Dark Lord tossed his head back with a laugh. Harry stared at the sleek column of his neck and knew he should hate the heat rushing through him, that he should think he was betraying his parents and the Order and everyone who had kept Harry hidden and safe, but he couldn’t.
“When did you discover that you were a Parselmouth?” The Dark Lord ran a hand down Harry’s cheek.
“When I was five.” Harry had talked to snakes before that, but it had never been when anyone was around, and he had simply thought it was something most people could do, the way they could cast complicated spells. The looks on his parents’ faces when they’d told him what Parseltongue was had been seared into his mind for years.
But no longer.
“And I have never heard of you before now?”
“My parents wanted me to stay safe and hidden. The same way they would be appalled that I’ve revealed the Peverell Cloak to you.”
And that was true, they would have been appalled—if they’d known about it.
“How old are you, Henri?”
Harry felt his blood pumping through his veins again when the Dark Lord spoke his name—false, yes, in a way, but also the name under which he’d attended Beauxbatons for years. He met the Dark Lord’s eyes squarely. “Nineteen.”
“Young.”
“Old enough to know what I want.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
The prophecy was right, in a way. Harry still didn’t know what it had meant by “mark him as his equal,” since his parents had fled Britain before any kind of confrontation could happen between baby Harry and the Dark Lord, but they were equals in that the Dark Lord was the only one who had ever made him feel so alive.
Harry leaned forwards and sealed his lips over the Dark Lord’s.
*
Tom froze, and then nearly struck out with one hand to send Henri spinning out across the garden.
This—was not—
But he felt the warmth surging to life in his veins, and he knew that he wanted to close his eyes and give in to the heat. He did, lifting his hands to tenderly stroke his fingers along Henri’s cheeks.
Henri groaned and pressed closer, that exquisite body trembling as he did, and little hisses of Parseltongue made their way out around the sides of his tongue. Tom gathered him closer still, working his tongue in and out of Henri’s mouth, and was rewarded with more hisses.
He had never known that kissing another Parselmouth would be like this. He tugged, and Henri gasped and fell against him, scrambling with his feet in the illusion of snow.
Tom took the opportunity to lift him higher, showing off his strength as he easily maintained Henri a foot or two above the snow. Henri groaned again, seemingly as excited by that as Tom was by the kiss.
They could go to bed. There was no one to prevent them. Henri had come and submitted willingly, apparently because he had wanted Tom, thoroughly and honestly, for himself, and Tom’s Auror guard was nowhere in sight.
Tom was trying to remember, through the haze, where the nearest room with a bed might be when Henri gasped and tore himself away.
Tom blinked and stared at him. Henri looked back, panting, his eyes opening and closing in slow, delicious blinks. But he wiped a hand across his mouth, and lifted the hand in forbidding when Tom stepped towards him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Tom hissed at him, tightening his hands in front of him to keep from reaching for Henri.
“I came to get a taste of you. To see what you were like.”
“And? You wanted me.”
“I know. But I didn’t expect you to want me back—so soon.”
Henri’s eyes were wide, and Tom found himself reaching out, instinctively, with Legilimency, to see what he was thinking. Henri immediately jumped back and drew the Cloak of Death over him in a shimmer of magic.
“Where are you?”
Tom thought Henri might respond, simply because he would not be able to help himself. But there was no reply. Tom turned in slow circles, thinking he might see the illusion of snow disturbed because of Henri’s footsteps even though there would be no sound.
Nothing.
Tom narrowed his eyes in frustration and left the gardens with swift strides, ignoring the way that his Aurors babbled when they caught up with him again and people all over the ballroom stared at him with avid, curious eyes.
Perhaps he had been too eager, too sharp-edged. Perhaps he had scared Henri Peverell away.
But the man who had sought him out once would not be able to stay away forever.
Tom smiled.
*
“What did you learn, Harry?”
“You should see the way that he holds sway over the hearts and minds of the people gathered around him. I don’t think Dumbledore’s plan to turn someone close to him is a very good one. On the other hand…”
Harry let himself spout absolutely irrelevant facts and observations, while his mind lingered in the snowy garden where he’d shared the kiss with the Dark Lord, the ballroom where he’d sent the words of prophecy scraping past his destined enemy’s ears.
He’d gone to see what his prophesied enemy was like and to dangle bait he hadn’t believed would work, but which his own desire had compelled him to try. He had found more than he’d bargained for.
Some part of himself was shaken, and deep inside, was shaking still.
But Harry had to admit that he was already dreaming of what would happen the next time he saw the Dark Lord.
There would be a next time.
I’ll make sure of it.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Content Notes: AU (Lily and James live), politician Tom Riddle, mild angst, manipulation
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4200
Summary: AU. Tom Riddle sought the political route to attain power, and cloaked himself in it. Harry Potter was taken abroad by parents who feared that a prophecy about their son possibly being able to vanquish Riddle would come to his ears. Harry attended Beauxbatons and grew to maturity in safety. But the time’s come for a return to Britain…
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” fics, one-shot stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s from a request by Crow for Tom being a Dark Lord and Harry having been raised on the Continent, but eventually returning to Britain and meeting Tom for the first time. This is a scene from the AU rather than the whole thing, which would probably have to be novel-length, but I may return to expand it in the future.
Jewel of the Night Wind
Tom took a slow step back from the mirror that hung in his room and examined himself from several angles. It was often hard to judge and balance the effects he wanted to have on people. He wanted to say “Dark Lord” and “ruler of Britain,” but without frightening the public who thronged Ministry events like this.
He also wanted to say “approachable” without conveying the message of “so approachable that you might as well swarm me.” He tried out a smile in the mirror and then shook his head, frowning. No, he didn’t want to show his teeth. They had begun to turn into fangs a few years ago with one of the rituals he had undergone.
So. Smile with closed lips, wear the robes he had chosen for tonight that were black with gold edging to the sleeves and hems, and don’t frighten anyone so badly that they ran away gibbering in fear.
I can do that.
Honestly, Tom thought as he strode out of his bedroom and met his Auror guard, his biggest problem was likely to be boredom. He knew the people who would be at this party, which celebrated the establishment of wards that would gradually press Muggles further and further away from Diagon Alley and magical London, allowing Diagon Alley to expand. He knew how they would behave. He knew what questions they would ask, what kind of fake laughter would fall from their mouths.
He wanted something new, someone new, who wouldn’t cause him to relinquish his grip on power.
He wasn’t likely to get it, but Tom desired it all the same.
*
“Now, Harry, remember what we told you. This is a scouting mission more than it is anything else.”
Harry smiled and nodded, keeping an eye on the clock. He didn’t want to be late to the party.
“Are you listening to me, Harry?”
Harry let himself start a little, as if he felt guilty, and turned back to his mother. “Of course, Maman,” he said softly, with the acquired French accent that never failed to soften her face. “I’m sorry.”
“I know. I just want you to pay attention, that’s all.” Lily sighed and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it absently. “We don’t know what Riddle might know of the prophecy, if he might have something lying in wait for you.”
Harry nodded agreeably. If he was honest, he didn’t think Riddle had heard of the prophecy at all. He would have done something if he had, sent people to murder Harry or come himself.
Not that Harry would say that to his mother. He never talked much about Riddle with his parents, lest they hear the fascination in his voice.
Lily scanned him from head to toe, lingering particularly on the dark blue robes that she and the shop assistant had both told Harry brought out the highlights in his black hair and looked good with his pale skin. She nodded. “You’ll do.”
“Thanks,” Harry said softly, and smiled. Lily melted, as always, leaning forwards to kiss him on the cheek.
“Be well, Harry,” she said. “Remember to talk to as many people as you can without giving away too much information about yourself.”
Harry nodded, for all that he had heard these instructions fifty times, and mastered his impatience. He wasn’t just going to do. He was going to dazzle the Dark Lord, and draw his attention, and—
Indulge his fascination, as much as he could without getting killed.
His parents had told him and over that he would have done well at Slytherin in Hogwarts. Harry hadn’t had the chance to attend, but he’d perforce studied a lot of history during his isolated childhood growing up in France. He had to know his enemy, as Lily would say; he had to be ready to avoid the lies spun by that bastard, as James would say.
Maybe they shouldn’t have had me read so much about the Dark Lord, Harry murmured to himself as he got ready to Floo to the Ministry of Magic. Or maybe they should have given me other powerful figures to admire.
Not that it would have worked, probably, Harry thought, as he whirled away in flames. He couldn’t think of many other historical figures he’d read about who he wanted to fuck as badly as he wanted to fuck the Dark Lord.
*
“The Dark Lord of Britain!”
Tom stepped into the ballroom and scanned the rows of bowed heads and fists clapped over hearts with a sneer that he kept internal. Boring, as usual. Deference meant something when it was earned. This was unthinking, driven by fear rather than anything deeper.
He would not be able to enjoy himself tonight.
Of course, he made the speech about the need to keep Muggles away from wizards and witches, and he made it well. They lapped it up. But they would have lapped up anything lesser, too, anything that didn’t have clever twists and turns of phrase and carefully regulated metaphors, as long as Tom was the one speaking it.
It made him long to slip in something casual or informal or against the purpose of what he usually said, to see if they would react.
But the reality was that they probably wouldn’t, and—
Tom’s attention snagged on a tall young man standing towards the back of the ballroom, who was staring at Tom and not even touching his hands together in a polite mimicry of applause. He wore dark blue robes and a challenging expression. He even leaned a little forwards, as if longing for the moment when he could lunge at Tom.
He wore magic around him more imperially than the robes, and Tom had never seen him before.
Before Tom could go after the man—whose handsome face, dark hair, and green eyes he would surely have remembered if they had ever met—he turned and melted into the crowds. Tom had to listen to gushing praise and watch more bowing and accept the shuffling of his Auror guards around him, and by the time he could get out from in between them, the man had disappeared.
Tom lifted his lip in a sneer of discontent, and ignored the flinch that some of the people near him gave at catching sight of his altered teeth. They had had time to get used to his scarlet eyes and now ignored them, or praised them. They would do the same with the fangs.
He was more interested in finding the man who had stared at him.
*
Harry leaned against the far side of the ballroom, in an alcove that had sheltered a small statue of a manticore until he moved it, and laughed to himself silently, watching as the Dark Lord stalked around the middle of the huge ballroom. It was an immense place, with arched ceilings and equally arched enchanted windows that were filled with visions of dark blue skies and endless stars.
The floor was covered with mosaics of sea and air and fire, merfolk and dragons and phoenixes. The Dark Lord didn’t appear to notice any of it.
Harry smiled. Perhaps the Dark Lord was distracted by something else, but he didn’t really think so. He was pretty sure it was him, and that meant the second stage of his plan could go into motion.
Without taking his eyes from the Dark Lord, Harry moved his hand down by his side and spread his fingers in a wandless casting pattern. He still used his wand in front of his parents and had done it with most of his professors at Beauxbatons, but it was actually easier for him to cast without one.
The Dark Lord stiffened a moment later. Harry nodded to himself. His charm had worked as intended, then.
Sighing across the air between them, on magical currents of wind that would keep the words silent from everyone’s ears but the Dark Lord’s, a hollow voice would be whispering, “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…”
Harry cut off the prophecy before it could get to the second line. He had no intention of endangering himself by letting the Dark Lord know the possible vanquisher’s birthday. But he had a good vision of the Dark Lord looking unsettled, flashing fang-like teeth at his Auror guards before suffering them to lead him away.
The party wasn’t over yet, and neither was Harry’s torment of the Dark Lord. He slipped off to the side and reentered the party under a mild glamour that would make him look like someone most people knew and would rather avoid. Eyes slid over him and the expressions of most people he passed turned to grimaces.
That was fine by Harry. He wasn’t here for them.
*
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…”
Tom scowled at the Firewhisky in front of him, which brought a fawning flunky to replace it and bow repeatedly and ask him if there was anything the man could do for Tom. Tom shook his head curtly and picked up the cut crystal glass that sparkled like a million jewels in the firelight.
He wanted to find the man he had seen before. He wanted to know what the words meant. He knew they were a trick, but why that particular trick, and why now? It would have made more sense to wait until Tom was alone, to make him feel hunted. Stalked.
Right now, Tom wasn’t so much feeling stalked or hunted as he was supremely angry.
The Aurors who had worked with him longest could sense his mood, and eased some of the other, more prone-to-trampling-boundaries Aurors back from the collisions they might have had with Tom’s temper. Tom prowled in slow circles, the drum of his own heartbeat driving him, and the people who might have come over to talk to him lowered their heads and shut their mouths and drifted away.
Suddenly, Tom’s idly roving eyes locked on the man he had seen before.
The man shimmered beneath a white light of magic that indicated the presence of a minor glamour, but didn’t move when Tom’s eyes landed on him. In fact, he tilted his head to the side, winked, and then turned and walked towards one of the shadowed parts of the ballroom.
“Return to the Ministry,” Tom told Auror Shaywood, the captain of his guard, without taking his eyes from the stranger.
Shaywood started to protest, but Tom didn’t stay long enough to hear what she was saying. Instead, he slipped away, following the man, his heartbeat racing now with the desire to grip and rend and tear.
He will have to speak fast to save himself from such a fate.
*
Harry turned around in an alcove shaded by a curtain, not far from the one he’d stood in before, and found himself alone with the Dark Lord of Britain.
His presence was overwhelming, crowding towards Harry not only physically but magically. Harry lifted his head and inhaled a long breath of cold air that seared his lungs. The Dark Lord’s power beat and circled around him, howling like a wolf in a winter storm, a jewel polished by the night wind.
Harry smiled at him, not afraid but enthralled. “Hello.” His voice was breathless.
The Dark Lord cocked his head. He wore power on his face, not youth or age, although Harry had thought in previous photographs that there was silver in his hair. Maybe it was only there when he willed it to be. He nodded slowly as if examining Harry from top to toe. “You are not what I expected.”
“Too young?” Harry knew that he looked that way, himself. He had tried to put on glamours around people who might remember his getting into the party, but the Dark Lord’s eyes couldn’t be fooled.
“Too unafraid.”
That cold magic reached out and embraced him, and Harry swayed forwards with a gasp. He managed to turn the sway into a step, and he twisted a little to the side, avoiding the hand that the Dark Lord was reaching for his wrist. Those crimson eyes widened as Harry’s hands landed on his shoulders.
“You dare.” But he sounded more disbelieving than angry.
“I dare this and a lot more than this,” Harry said, and then he took a deep breath and shared the secret that had been just his and his family’s since he was five years old. “I dare to speak to you in your own tongue, Dark Lord of Britain.”
*
Tom felt the words cut into him like knives dragged down his skin. He stared, and knew he was staring, and could not help it.
Close to, this stranger was younger than he’d thought, with eyes so completely green that it was like being bathed in magic simply looking into them. But his actual magic was present, too, the warmth of a fire radiating out from him and clashing with Tom’s own cold power in a way that reminded Tom of fire playing across snow.
And then he spoke.
Tom stepped forwards and twisted himself, trapping this other Parselmouth, this wonderful surprise, against the wall with his hands on the man’s shoulders. The man’s head fell back, with a gasp, baring his throat. He almost invited Tom to bite.
But one of his hands had also slid down from Tom’s shoulders, and his fingers had twisted into the dark cloth under Tom’s ribs. Tom knew from the way they were braided that the man could summon a wandless Blasting Curse with them.
He could. He could do that. Tom would have disregarded the threat even if he had felt the gesture, before the stranger spoke his words. But Parselmouths cast like that, their intentions darting through the air, as agile as snakes, their fingers naturally assuming the shape best-suited to the casting.
That this man had found the shapes without being tutored by Tom…
Tom leaned close and let his top fangs rest against the man’s throat. “Tell me who you are.”
“Henri Peverell.”
The name sent Tom’s heart thrumming. He’d only heard it in children’s stories, but that only made the man in front of him more special, the one who seemed as if he might have stepped out of a tale.
Before Tom could decide if he wanted to speak or bite or hiss, Peverell stepped backwards, with a twist that forced Tom to let him go without ripping into his throat. Peverell’s eyes laughed at him. Tom hissed at him, wordless but insulting.
“If you insist,” said Peverell, and then he vanished entirely from Tom’s sight.
Tom spun around in place, staring. He couldn’t understand where Peverell was, and why he couldn’t sense him. He could have smelled the man’s pounding blood even if he was under a Disillusionment Charm. And Tom entertained no illusions that it wasn’t pounding as fiercely as his own.
A wind seemed to murmur the words into his ears, the way it had murmured the words of what sounded like a prophecy earlier that night, only these words were in Parseltongue. “In the gardens. Come and find me.”
Tom broke into a running glide.
*
Harry smiled as he leaned back against the hedge in the “gardens” outside the ballroom. It was really another part of the Ministry, which had been enchanted in such a way that plants grew from the floor and the ceiling and walls had been rendered invisible. But the addition of a breeze and star and snow illusions helped it feel like it was outside, at least.
The Dark Lord was coming. Harry knew what it meant when his blood was singing inside him, reacting to the presence of other strong magic. But he had encountered none that were as strong as this.
And there was the man of the hour himself, slowing to a stalk as he came around the edge of a large bush with red flowers. His nostrils were flaring as he swept his head back and forth. His eyes glowed like crimson stars in the darkness.
Not even the Dark Lord’s senses were a match for Death’s Invisibility Cloak, though. Or the caution of a man who had spoken with Death itself.
From the slow snarl the Dark Lord gave, he was discovering that. Harry grinned and sauntered a little closer, wondering how near he could get before something gave him away. The illusion of snow on the ground didn’t crunch under his feet the way it would have in a real garden.
The Dark Lord whipped towards him abruptly, and whipped a hand out.
Harry ducked, but couldn’t keep from laughing, and the Dark Lord was on him in the next instant, crowding Harry against a bush covered with illusory icicles, which chimed and rattled like the real thing. Harry smiled and pushed back the cloak’s hood, smiling wider as the Dark Lord started.
“The Cloak of Death,” the Dark Lord whispered.
Harry was a little surprised the man had got it so soon, but he supposed that the name he’d adopted was a bit of a giveaway. He inclined his head. “Yes,” he hissed back. “I wanted to make sure that if you were hostile, I could leave without being seen.”
“Why would I be hostile towards a fellow Parselmouth? One of my own kind?”
“Rumor says that you revel in being unique, Dark Lord. I couldn’t be sure that you would deem me, ah, worthy to share the gift that you claim as part of Slytherin’s unique lineage.” Harry slowly pulled the Cloak off and slid it into his pocket, where it compressed more than any normal one would.
He had thought the Dark Lord’s eyes might follow the Cloak—he was known to collect unique and rare things—but they remained on Harry’s face instead. “I know there are other Parselmouths in the world, but I have never met them,” he murmured. “And I have never known there were others as powerful as I am.”
Harry’s eyes widened before he could help it. He knew his power was unusual, but he hadn’t realized that the Dark Lord would think it a match for his. Harry hadn’t had the chance to really compare the two of them.
“You did not know?”
“I thought I was strong. I thought you were stronger.”
The Dark Lord smiled at him, all fangs and flashing teeth, and Harry’s breath caught. “What was your plan when you came here, then? To challenge me, to make me pay attention to you? Or did you really think that you would slip beneath my notice?”
“I wanted to see what you would do when you saw me,” Harry whispered. It was, quite literally, the only thing he had thought about.
The Dark Lord tossed his head back with a laugh. Harry stared at the sleek column of his neck and knew he should hate the heat rushing through him, that he should think he was betraying his parents and the Order and everyone who had kept Harry hidden and safe, but he couldn’t.
“When did you discover that you were a Parselmouth?” The Dark Lord ran a hand down Harry’s cheek.
“When I was five.” Harry had talked to snakes before that, but it had never been when anyone was around, and he had simply thought it was something most people could do, the way they could cast complicated spells. The looks on his parents’ faces when they’d told him what Parseltongue was had been seared into his mind for years.
But no longer.
“And I have never heard of you before now?”
“My parents wanted me to stay safe and hidden. The same way they would be appalled that I’ve revealed the Peverell Cloak to you.”
And that was true, they would have been appalled—if they’d known about it.
“How old are you, Henri?”
Harry felt his blood pumping through his veins again when the Dark Lord spoke his name—false, yes, in a way, but also the name under which he’d attended Beauxbatons for years. He met the Dark Lord’s eyes squarely. “Nineteen.”
“Young.”
“Old enough to know what I want.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
The prophecy was right, in a way. Harry still didn’t know what it had meant by “mark him as his equal,” since his parents had fled Britain before any kind of confrontation could happen between baby Harry and the Dark Lord, but they were equals in that the Dark Lord was the only one who had ever made him feel so alive.
Harry leaned forwards and sealed his lips over the Dark Lord’s.
*
Tom froze, and then nearly struck out with one hand to send Henri spinning out across the garden.
This—was not—
But he felt the warmth surging to life in his veins, and he knew that he wanted to close his eyes and give in to the heat. He did, lifting his hands to tenderly stroke his fingers along Henri’s cheeks.
Henri groaned and pressed closer, that exquisite body trembling as he did, and little hisses of Parseltongue made their way out around the sides of his tongue. Tom gathered him closer still, working his tongue in and out of Henri’s mouth, and was rewarded with more hisses.
He had never known that kissing another Parselmouth would be like this. He tugged, and Henri gasped and fell against him, scrambling with his feet in the illusion of snow.
Tom took the opportunity to lift him higher, showing off his strength as he easily maintained Henri a foot or two above the snow. Henri groaned again, seemingly as excited by that as Tom was by the kiss.
They could go to bed. There was no one to prevent them. Henri had come and submitted willingly, apparently because he had wanted Tom, thoroughly and honestly, for himself, and Tom’s Auror guard was nowhere in sight.
Tom was trying to remember, through the haze, where the nearest room with a bed might be when Henri gasped and tore himself away.
Tom blinked and stared at him. Henri looked back, panting, his eyes opening and closing in slow, delicious blinks. But he wiped a hand across his mouth, and lifted the hand in forbidding when Tom stepped towards him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Tom hissed at him, tightening his hands in front of him to keep from reaching for Henri.
“I came to get a taste of you. To see what you were like.”
“And? You wanted me.”
“I know. But I didn’t expect you to want me back—so soon.”
Henri’s eyes were wide, and Tom found himself reaching out, instinctively, with Legilimency, to see what he was thinking. Henri immediately jumped back and drew the Cloak of Death over him in a shimmer of magic.
“Where are you?”
Tom thought Henri might respond, simply because he would not be able to help himself. But there was no reply. Tom turned in slow circles, thinking he might see the illusion of snow disturbed because of Henri’s footsteps even though there would be no sound.
Nothing.
Tom narrowed his eyes in frustration and left the gardens with swift strides, ignoring the way that his Aurors babbled when they caught up with him again and people all over the ballroom stared at him with avid, curious eyes.
Perhaps he had been too eager, too sharp-edged. Perhaps he had scared Henri Peverell away.
But the man who had sought him out once would not be able to stay away forever.
Tom smiled.
*
“What did you learn, Harry?”
“You should see the way that he holds sway over the hearts and minds of the people gathered around him. I don’t think Dumbledore’s plan to turn someone close to him is a very good one. On the other hand…”
Harry let himself spout absolutely irrelevant facts and observations, while his mind lingered in the snowy garden where he’d shared the kiss with the Dark Lord, the ballroom where he’d sent the words of prophecy scraping past his destined enemy’s ears.
He’d gone to see what his prophesied enemy was like and to dangle bait he hadn’t believed would work, but which his own desire had compelled him to try. He had found more than he’d bargained for.
Some part of himself was shaken, and deep inside, was shaking still.
But Harry had to admit that he was already dreaming of what would happen the next time he saw the Dark Lord.
There would be a next time.
I’ll make sure of it.
The End.
