Chapter Thirty-Six of 'The Onyx in Radiance'- Enough

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story. I’ve loved writing this and loved the response. Thank you.

Chapter Thirty-Six—Enough

Orion dives to the floor and hides his eyes, wrapping his arms around his head so there’s no chance he’ll look at the basilisk. Then he casts a Blindfold Charm to wrap around his face and staggers to his feet.

Sense-Sharpening Charms are next, ones that will improve both his hearing and his ability to tell which direction sounds come from. The basilisk’s scales are dragging on the floor and there’s a tense cry from Dumbledore. Abraxas is panting harshly behind him.

Harry makes no sound.

Orion can’t stand it. He casts another charm that will thin out the blindfold in front of his eyes, keeping his head carefully turned away from the noise of the basilisk twisting around.

Harry is standing on the outside of the circle, still. He hasn’t moved. His head is lifted and his wand aimed in front of him. Orion’s heart thumps with admiration for his courage and dread of it. He opens his mouth to shout a warning.

Harry casts a spell with a voice as hard as a dagger. “Oculos frangere!”

The air in the Chamber ignites with what seems to be white fire. The basilisk gives a harsh cry of its own, the kind of scream Orion didn’t know a snake could emit. He shudders and turns his blindfold dark again.

“You can look,” Harry says, his voice echoing in a way that might be the result of a Sonorus Charm Orion didn’t hear and might just be the Chamber’s acoustics. “I’ve blinded it.”

Riddle hisses something in Parseltongue, Harry responds, and Abraxas makes quiet noises as if he’s wounded. Orion is the only one who seems to trust Harry enough to lift his blindfold, although admittedly he’s not looking in Dumbledore’s direction.

The basilisk is flinging its head back and forth, too fast for Orion to get more than a glimpse, and even then part of him is still tensed to dive away. But Harry’s spoken the truth. In the middle of the basilisk’s face are rose-red pits that are still slightly smoking, as if Harry burned the snake’s eyes out.

“Mr. Potter…”

Dumbledore sounds faint. Harry turns around to answer him, Riddle hisses something, and the basilisk tenses and slithers forwards faster than Orion knew such a huge creature could.

Harry dives to the side. The basilisk’s head crashes into the stone, and its body whips past, the tail taking Orion from his feet. He rolls and manages just in time to cast a Cushioning Charm that keeps him from breaking his skull or nose on the stone.

“Orion!”

That seems to be Abraxas’s voice. Orion wobbles back to his knees and reaches his hand out to his friend. He can’t look at him, can’t reassure him that he’s all right, because Harry is fighting the basilisk and it’s the most magnificent thing he’s ever seen.

Harry is darting around the snake like a mongoose, casting spell after spell that makes mold or webs or something else grow across its scales and start to rip them apart. Orion has heard that basilisks are resistant to all kinds of magic like that, but it doesn’t seem to matter to Harry. He fires and fires and fires again, his lips slightly parted and his eyes glowing.

“Mr. Potter!”

That’s Dumbledore. Orion spins to face him, feeling the force of his beating heart turn to anger. The idiot could distract Harry, and then he could die, they could all die—

But Dumbledore does have a legitimate reason for being upset this time. Riddle has broken free of the confines of the circle and is running straight towards Harry, his lips parted in a snarl that makes him look less than human.

Orion doesn’t have time to think of sensible reactions. Which is why he flings himself forwards and grabs Riddle’s leg.

They crash to the stone in a tangle of kicking, writhing limbs. Riddle’s foot slams into Orion’s temple and makes him go all dizzy and dazed. But he knows that he has to hang on, and so he does, clutching at Riddle’s hips and toes and feet and neck.

“Black, bugger off!”

If Orion had the breath to waste, he would laugh. But he doesn’t, and so he clings to Riddle and holds on and rolls over and then bumps up against something that might be the object that was sitting behind Harry on the floor—

It is. Orion rolls over and tugs the cloth off it, his hand knowing what to do before his brain does.

Inside the cage is a rooster.

“Make it crow!” Harry shouts, and his voice rings through the Chamber and comes clearer to Orion than Riddle’s swearing or Dumbledore’s shouts or Abraxas’s attempts to restore some sort of order.

Orion doesn’t know a charm to make a rooster crow. It’s not like it’s ever been necessary. In desperation, he casts one that’s meant to make plush toys make a sound for young children.

The charm vanishes into the rooster’s feathers and makes its neck puff up. And then it crows, flinging back its head and making all the feathers on its neck gleam green and red.

“No!” Riddle screams, but his voice is drowned by the scream of the dying basilisk.

Orion rolls to the side, and manages to bring the cage with him. Absurdly, the main thing he’s thinking at the moment is that Harry might be upset if his rooster got crushed.

When he forces himself back onto his elbows and looks over at Harry, it’s to see him on the floor beneath Riddle, who’s choking him. Orion shouts something incoherent and fumbles for his wand.

“Mr. Riddle!”

Dumbledore probably meant his trumpet-like voice to distract Riddle from his murder attempt, but Orion could have told him that wouldn’t work. Riddle is pressing a knee into Harry’s throat now, and it looks horrible. Orion shoots to his feet and aims his wand.

Abraxas gets there first.

“Bombarda!”

The spell might hit Riddle straight on; it might hit the floor next to him. Orion honestly isn’t sure, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Riddle is a sudden blast of bone and blood and bits of flesh, and Harry is rolling over with a wound on his shoulder but alive.

“Mr. Malfoy!”

Now Dumbledore probably wants to scold someone for attempted murder. Orion ignores him and hurls himself at Harry. Harry grabs hold of him and bows his head so that his chin rests against Orion’s neck. He’s shaking.

Orion scoops him up, then has to pause and cast a Lightening Charm. Even desperation can’t give him the strength to haul Harry’s weight without a problem.

“—knew it would be necessary.”

Harry’s whispering something, but Orion doesn’t have time to do more than nod to show he’s listening before Dumbledore swoops down on them.

“Mr. Black! Mr. Potter! Are you all right? Are you—” Dumbledore is shaking, his hand closing around his wand as if he thinks that he’ll need to kill another basilisk any second. “Did you—was it necessary to kill Mr. Riddle?”

His last question is almost plaintive. Orion blinks at his professor. He never would have said that Dumbledore is naïve, but that’s the way he sounds.

Harry sits up next to Orion and slings his arm around Orion’s shoulder. He sighs as he looks at Dumbledore. “I knew there might be a basilisk down here, sir. That’s why I brought the rooster. But I swear to you, I didn’t know that Riddle would unleash it the way he did. I was planning to kill it after the ritual.”

“Why did you not at once charm the rooster to crow when the basilisk came out?”

“All I could think about was it killing Orion,” Harry says quietly, and turns his head to stare Orion full in the face. “I sort of lost my head. I thought I had to destroy its eyes, and then—then I was fighting it.”

Orion can’t catch his breath. He stares like an idiot, and Harry reaches up and squeezes his shoulder, then turns back to face Dumbledore.

“I’m sorry, sir. I just—I thought that I might be able to handle everything by myself, but obviously I couldn’t.”

Dumbledore stares at Harry for a long moment, and then nods. “I must be glad that Mr. Black and Mr. Malfoy were here, then.”

“It’s all right if you don’t want to, sir. I can be glad that they were here for you.”

Dumbledore looks a little flummoxed, but ends up turning away to walk over to the dead basilisk. Maybe he wants to make sure it’s dead. Maybe he’s already plotting to take ingredients from it to make into some kind of alchemical solution. Orion has heard that basilisk parts can be worth a fortune for things like that.

Harry turns to Abraxas and bows to him. He’s covered with blood and has what might be some of Riddle’s bone fragments in his hair, but that doesn’t lessen his dignity. “Thank you, Abraxas. Thank you for saving my life.”

Abraxas bows his head and murmurs, softly enough that there’s no chance Dumbledore will hear, “My lord.”

Harry flushes a little and shakes his head, but doesn’t actually contradict Abraxas. He turns back to Orion and says, “I have to do something you might not like.”

There’s so many things about this that I didn’t like, except for the part where we survived, Orion thinks, but he nods. “What’s that?”

“I’m going to have to kiss you with blood on my face.”

Orion waves his wand and casts a Cleaning Charm that makes the various—pieces—of Riddle fly across the Chamber and land against the far wall. Harry blinks, stares at him, and then laughs aloud and leans in to kiss him.

Orion drowns in the warmth, the relief, the pleasure, and only draws back when he sees Dumbledore giving them a disapproving look. Maybe it does seem heartless to be celebrating when Riddle just died violently in front of them.

But Orion can’t care that much. Even if it means that Dumbledore takes against them in the future, they only have a few more terms left at Hogwarts. And all the might of the Black family will protect them legally from what happened.

He knows that he’s alive and he has Harry in his arms. That’s what matters.

*

“Why did you insist on holding the ritual in the Chamber of Secrets?”

Harry sighs a little and rolls over next to Orion in the bed. They’ve been snogging, but honestly, they’re both magically exhausted, as well as stinging a bit from the healing that Madam Eldiss gave them for their minor wounds. Neither of them has energy enough to do more.

“Part of it was that I knew the basilisk was probably still there and I wanted to get rid of it. Hence the rooster.”

“But if that was all that mattered, you could have called the basilisk forth yourself and used the rooster to kill it immediately.”

“I don’t know that I could have called the basilisk. I’m a Parselmouth, but I’m not an Heir of Slytherin. It might be that the basilisk would only have obeyed one of them.”

Orion makes an impatient noise. “Come on, Harry. You would at least have tried it. Since we had to have Riddle there anyway, you could always have made him do it if it turned out that you couldn’t command the snake.”

“You’re right.” Harry traces a finger across the covers, looking down. “There was another reason. I’m afraid that you’ll be ashamed of me, though.”

Orion stares at him, aware that he’s gaping and it’s undignified, but—he never once suspected this was the reason that Harry might have kept some things from him. “Harry, that’s not true,” he whispers.

“You don’t know why I kept it secret. You could be.”

Harry would be laying his ears back if he was a Kneazle. Orion considers him for a second, then says, “I can’t know if you don’t tell me. I suppose I can’t promise a certain reaction, but I still want to know.” He takes a breath and reaches out to clasp Harry’s wrist. “Please?”

Harry nods slowly. “I knew I would have to tell you,” he whispers. “I might as well go ahead and do it.” He sits up and tucks his feet underneath him, but lets Orion retain his hand.

“I knew Riddle had to die,” Harry says. “But we needed Dumbledore’s help for the ritual, and he never would have condoned outright murder.”

Orion stares at him for a long moment. “Why did you think we needed Riddle dead? Because he might have told the truth about the Horcrux?” He finds himself lowering his voice on the last word, despite the wards they wove around his bed before climbing into it.

“I never thought Azkaban would hold him,” Harry says quietly. “I thought a follower would probably break him free, or he’d manage it himself. If he had time to think, persuade the human guards at the prison, or even meditate to strengthen his power? I couldn’t chance it.”

“You don’t think you could have defeated him again?”

“He wouldn’t have underestimated me this time.” Harry’s hand closes and opens in Orion’s hold. “And he would have known to go after you. Abraxas. Probably your parents, once he heard about you taking me in at Christmas. I wouldn’t have killed to protect myself, but to protect the lot of you? Yes.”

Orion thinks that he will watch this memory in a Pensieve again and again, this moment of Harry crouching like an eagle on the edge of a cliff, his teeth visible and his magic sparking around him as he seems to imagine crushing Riddle against the ground.

Orion blinks and breathes and manages to chase the image away. They are too tired for more than snogging. “And you couldn’t come up with a way to make it look like an accident?”

“Not when Dumbledore would probably already have been suspicious. And I couldn’t come up with any way to make him kill Riddle—unless I showed him how dangerous Riddle was and that he wouldn’t back away from murder in cold blood.”

“You meant to have Dumbledore…”

Orion can only trail off, but Harry nods. “Yeah, of course. I thought I would be too busy with the ritual and maybe the basilisk. And even just calling the basilisk might not have convinced Dumbledore that he should put an end to Riddle. I had to show him that Riddle was going to call the basilisk, and I had to have Riddle attack me. That’s the main reason I delayed deploying the rooster. I had to show myself as prepared but not too prepared, cunning but not too cunning.”

“And that’s why you couldn’t tell me and Abraxas,” Orion whispers.

“Dumbledore might have sensed that something was going on depending on your reactions, or read it out of your minds.” Harry winces, probably at the expression on Orion’s face. “I’m sorry.”

“It seemed like Riddle was defeating you.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I was gathering the magic to throw him off, but I wanted to wait until I could make it seem like an act of desperation and accidental magic. Otherwise—”

“Dumbledore wouldn’t buy it,” Orion finishes. He feels odd, as if he’s floating or drifting in the middle of a cold crystal mist. He supposes he should feel upset at being manipulated and put in that situation, one that could easily have resulted in his death. Harry took a risk, especially when he could have stopped the basilisk right away.

But all Orion can feel is relief that it worked out after all, and a subtle awe at Harry’s manipulation skills that makes his hand tighten on Harry’s. Harry looks up at him in question.

“It worked,” Orion whispers. “Abraxas told me. Dumbledore bought him killing Riddle. He gave him a stern talking-to, but he says Abraxas was obviously working under stress and chose the most destructive spell that’s taught in Defense. And that he was concerned for his friends.”

“Dumbledore…basically just told Abraxas not to kill anyone again?”

Orion laughs a little at the incredulous expression on Harry’s face. “Yes, he did. It worked, Harry. He’s gone, and the Horcrux is gone from you, and the basilisk is dead, and as far as Dumbledore is concerned, we’re stressed students he should keep an eye on, but nothing more than that.”

Harry abruptly breaks into laughter himself, and the sound is jagged and beautiful and sharp and joyous. He leans over to kiss Orion, and they roll over on the bed, and Orion takes a deep breath and pulls away.

“Orion? I promise, I am sorry for putting your life in danger.”

“I just want to do something,” Orion says. He’s abruptly on fire with nerves, not sure that he should do this, but also sure that this is the moment. If they weren’t so exhausted and were having sex right now, he wouldn’t be, but they aren’t, so he is.

He reaches out and plucks his wand off the table, then casts a silent Summoning Charm. The box he’s been hoarding since they came back from Grimmauld Place after Christmas soars out from under the bed and lands in his hand.

“Orion?”

Harry’s voice is soft and hoarse, and he’s staring at the little box, of black lacquer, as if he knows exactly what it is. Orion hopes he does.

They’re already on the bed, but Orion still kneels in front of Harry as he holds out the box. Harry doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are traveling back and forth between Orion’s face and the box, and now he looks stunned.

Orion will take stunned. He just can’t take refusing. He thinks he knows what a broken heart will feel like if Harry does that.

“Harry,” he whispers, and reaches out to slide his fingers around Harry’s jaw, cupping it. Harry takes a stuttering breath that sounds painful. “I love you, so much, and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without you.”

“I don’t think I’m going to disappear back to my own time, Orion.”

Orion shakes his head. “But you might find someone else you like better, and…” Now he’s the one who has what feels like a fork jammed sideways into his lungs. “I want you to be with me. To know how much I value you.”

He tilts open the lid of the box. Inside is the silver ring, set with onyx, that he once dreamed about giving Harry. And that was when he barely knew Harry at all and had only seen him defy Riddle.

The appropriateness of the ring hasn’t changed, though.

Harry’s breathing charges the little space between the shut curtains of the bed with intense passion. He closes his eyes. Orion’s heart jumps with panic. If he’s trying to think about the best way to refuse—

But Harry whispers, “And to think that I thought I might have to let you go gracefully,” and reaches out. Orion guides the ring onto his finger in a daze.

“So that’s a yes?” Orion asks at last, when Harry has been staring at the ring on his finger for a full minute and he can’t take it anymore.

Harry turns to him, smile blazing across his face like a comet. “Yes.”

Orion feels a stretching sensation in his chest and takes a shuddering breath. The sharpness he felt has faded. What is left is lingering warmth, the heat of a slow-burning fire that won’t ever go out.

He touches Harry’s cheek. Harry turns his head into Orion’s hand and kisses the center of his palm.

This is what Orion wants. He doesn’t know the end of this journey, but he’s not sure that it has to have an end. He leans forwards, and Harry meets him, clenching his hands in Orion’s robe, tugging him towards the center of the bed.

Maybe they won’t be too tired after all.

Orion wraps his arms around Harry and hangs on, tighter than Riddle clung to life. Harry clings right back, and Orion tilts his head in, and Harry kisses him, and they are in love, they are here, they are.

*

Harry reckoned that he should have let Orion have longer to deal with the truth, but he had waited as long as he could. If Orion was going to call him a liar and turn his back on him, then Harry would prefer to know that now.

“Orion?”

Orion turned and looked at him. Harry braced himself. He was hovering on his broom, and honestly, part of the reason for that was so that he could speed away again if it turned out that Orion was too hurt to do anything but shout.

“Why did you just dump that all on me?”

“Because I’ve lied enough to you.” Harry grimaced and shook his head. He hadn’t even realized how easy it would be to answer a question like this, compared to the shouting he was sure Orion would do. “Keeping anything back felt like another kind of lie. And it meant you wouldn’t be able to use the truth to make up your mind.”

“What kind of decision do you expect me to make?”

“I told you that already.” Calm, calm, Harry thought to himself, the word pounding in his head only a little slower than his pulse. “I’ll just ask that you wait until the end of the holidays, like I said—”

“Why did you expect me to reject you?”

“Because I’m a bloody time traveler who fucking lied to you!”

Harry suddenly realized he was shouting, and that his words echoed back to him as if from invisible walls. He sat back, cleared his throat, and tried to tell himself, again, to calm down. “But I meant it, Orion. I—I care for you, a great deal, and I couldn’t let you just go on thinking I was some ordinary person from this time who didn’t want to discuss his past because it was painful. I don’t have a past with the Potter family. I didn’t take on Riddle out of purely noble motives. It was partially personal revenge, too. And I’ve destroyed the future you might have had. So I know I have no place in your life. Almost nothing about me is true or like you thought it was.”

There. I’ve said it. He knows what he should reject me for, and that’s better than hiding and lying to him, lying and lying. It’ll hurt, but it’s honest.

Harry took a deep breath and looked at Orion, waiting for the rejection. Orion glided a step or two closer. Harry wondered if it was a dueling position and then realized he was holding his own hand in a way that would let him draw his wand. He forced it down.

I deserve a curse, if that’s what he wants to do to me.

“You absolute idiot,” Orion said, sounding as if he were scolding a Crup for piddling on the rug.

Harry stared at him. “What?”

“I’m glad you told me the truth,” Orion said, his voice soft and his face lit as if with the light of an invisible sun. “Too many things about you just didn’t make sense. And I know that you haven’t told anyone else in this timeline the truth, no matter how much you like them.” He had come right up next to Harry, and Harry assumed he wanted the closeness for the curse to take effect, but instead, he lifted his hand and drove his fingers into Harry’s hair. It felt so good that Harry just tipped his head back and sat there like the idiot Orion had called him.

“N-no,” Harry said, cursing himself for stuttering, at least until Orion gently caressed his collarbone. Now it was Orion’s name he was stuttering, his heart fast enough in his chest that he had no idea how to respond.

“Nothing about my feelings for you has changed,” Orion whispered, and pulled him closer.

Clumsy on a broom for the first time in his life, Harry stumbled off and managed to stumble straight into Orion’s arms. And then Orion kissed him, and the rest of the world blew away.

Harry knew he was making little sounds. He knew he was pulling Orion closer. He could feel Orion’s hands on his back and arse. But the heat blossoming between them made it hard to absorb that, or care.

Only the relief was stronger. He forgave me. He still wants me.

Harry forced his eyes open a little when he felt grass touch him. They were lying on the ground—when had that happened?—and Orion was clearing off the snow from the grass. Harry shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

It was obvious what Orion intended, and Harry wanted it, with a purity that none of his motives since he’d landed in this timeline had had. But he did pull back and ask, “Why, though?”

Orion was charming their robes open, and for a second, Harry thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he looked at Harry, and—

There was that pure longing in his face, too. That pure desire.

He wants my honesty as much as he wants the rest of me.

No one else had ever wanted him like that.

But that made worry tear through Harry’s relief like a knife through skin, and he shuddered as he reached up to run his hand down Orion’s front from his throat to his chest. “Orion, please. Have you thought about this? Have you—”

“Not all of it,” Orion said, and rolled on top of Harry. Part of Harry went quiet that seemed to have been screaming all his life. He lay there, dazed, and blinked up at Orion.

“I don’t know how to come to terms with all of it yet. But what I know is that I still want you. Someone who trusts me like this, who’s so incredible that he would offer me the chance to walk away even when it’s obvious he doesn’t want to? Someone so Slytherin and so Gryffindor at the same time? Harry.”

He raked Harry with his nails. It was all Harry could do to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head and his brain from utterly losing track of the conversation.

. “I want you. I love you.”

The world shuddered around Harry, or maybe that was just him. It was—yes, he expected desire, and gratitude for freeing Orion from Riddle, and maybe some kind of awe. But love—this soon—this uninhibited—

Harry didn’t know how to answer it. He didn’t know how to warn Orion about what he was afraid might happen, but he had to try.

“But I meant what I said about not knowing how I came to this time, either. I could still disappear someday—”

“So could anybody,” Orion said, and lowered himself further, to mouth at the crook of Harry’s neck. Harry flung his head back, learning something new about himself with each movement of Orion’s teeth and tongue.

“Lucretia taught me that, dying the way she did,” Orion whispered, pulling back. “Father could die of a heart attack tomorrow. Mother could misjudge how much magic she uses on her illusions and die of exhaustion. You could vanish. I could fall off a broom or get eaten by a plant in Herbology. All we ever have is here and now. Stay with me, Harry. Be with me.”

“Orion…”

But Harry could feel the truth of that down to his bones. And he knew what he wanted. He knew what he desired.

He knew whom he loved.

He reached up and drew Orion down to him.

*

When it was over, Harry lay on his side in the grass beside Orion, arms wrapped around him, cradling him as he slept, and his love for Orion blazing like a sun in his chest.

He had worried and wondered that he was fitting too neatly into his time. He had worried about what it would do to Orion, and even Abraxas, if he disappeared from this timeline. And he could. He could vanish as suddenly as he had come.

He had thought he should want that, want desperately to get back to his own time and his friends and the version of Tom Riddle he had supposedly been born to defeat. He had been upset with himself for not being more upset about being here.

But now he knew.

Now he knew that if he found out the reason he had come here and the method he had traveled by, he would only do it to make sure that he could never be taken back.

He had made his choice. It wasn’t perfect. Part of him would mourn Ron and Hermione forever.

But the rest of him was here.

Orion had said it was enough.

It was more than enough, Harry thought, to be in love, and to be held.

He was here. He was in love.

They were here. They were.

The End.