lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-07-19 04:34 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-07-19 04:34 pm
[From Litha to Lamams]: The Mirror and the Candle, Reflection series, Harry/Harry, R, 1/3
Title: The Mirror and the Candle
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Harry
Content Notes: AU starting in fifth year, dimension travel, angst, violence, self-cest, underage
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 4600
Summary: AU, sequel to “Shards of the Mirror.” Harry Potter and Hadrian Black continue their hunt for the Horcruxes, while dealing with their new relationship and avoiding the efforts by Dumbledore and Harry’s friends to get them to come back.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s the sequel to “Twisted Mirror” and “Shards of the Mirror,” which you should read first, and will probably have three to four parts. The title comes from the quote “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it” by Edith Wharton.
The Mirror and the Candle
“Hadrian?”
Hadrian turned around with a smile. Harry had been reading a book on the theory of Horcrux creation in the library of the Peverell safehouse where they’d landed, and Hadrian had anticipated that he would have questions.
But Harry looked at him with a pale face that didn’t seem impacted by the book he’d read. “Do—do you think I’ll ever be able to see Ron and Hermione again?”
Hadrian sighed and went over to sit in a large armchair near one of the enchanted windows, drawing Harry into his arms. The window showed a shifting forest right now, tossing in the wind in all shades of green, and Hadrian smoothed his hand down Harry’s back, watching the forest, as he thought.
Hadrian wouldn’t have wanted to see friends who had betrayed him with Tracking Charms again. But then, he didn’t really have friends. It made sense that Harry would regret some of his immediate impulses of living separately from Granger and Weasley forever and want some reassurance.
“I think, when we finish the quest,” Hadrian said at last. “When the Horcruxes are gone, and we can face Voldemort in battle and bring him down. There’s too much chance that they would interfere before then.”
“Interfere? But I know they wouldn’t want to keep Voldemort alive.”
“Oh, of course not,” Hadrian said. “I just think they might cause problems without intending to. What if they insist that you should cooperate with Dumbledore or ask his advice, and that’s the means of Voldemort getting wind of what we’re doing? That’s the kind of thing I worry about. They don’t know as much as we do and they’d want to waste time arguing with us. So why give them the chance to do it?”
Harry nodded slowly. Then he took a deep breath and asked, “And what will you do, after the quest is done?”
“I can’t go back to my world, Harry. I assumed you would want me to stay with you, but—”
“No!” Harry spun to face him, glaring up with eyes that Hadrian couldn’t help but find enchanting, no matter how narcissistic someone might say that was. “I mean, I do! Of course I do! But what if you’re only sleeping with me because this is a desperate situation and anyone would do, and once it’s done, you’ll leave me for something cooler?”
Ah. Hadrian drew his hand affectionately down the lightning bolt scar in the middle of Harry’s forehead. “I’m not as cool as you seem to think, Harry.”
“Stronger and more sophisticated and smarter and more independent. Yeah, sure you aren’t.”
“Do you really think that I would leave you behind? When I’ve made so much effort to secure you as mine?”
Harry gaped at him for a minute. Then he swallowed and said, “I didn’t—I knew it was—I knew it was strong, but I didn’t know it was permanent.”
Ah. Well, that makes sense, I suppose. He has often hardly been encouraged to look beyond the next week, when it comes to his survival.
Hadrian tangled his fingers in Harry’s hair and pulled one wavy strand straight for a moment. Then he said, in a quick, low voice that Harry leaned forwards to hear, “It is permanent, unless you change your mind and wish to break free.”
“I can’t imagine that I would.”
No, Hadrian thought, as he tucked his chin into Harry’s hair as much to hold him close as to hide his own smile, I can’t, either.
*
“This isn’t the most dangerous hiding place, right? You said Gringotts was the most dangerous.”
“In terms of sheer protections on the Horcrux, that is true,” said Hadrian, in that clipped, upper-class tone Harry could only imagine he’d learned from Voldemort’s spirit. “But this is the place where the most Order people will be popping in and out.”
Harry nodded nervously, and looked at Grimmauld Place. It seemed that Regulus Black in Hadrian’s world had stolen Voldemort’s locket from its original hiding spot, and Hadrian had managed to track it down mostly by luck and accident, after overhearing a conversation between Sirius and Kreacher about a strange golden locket among the Black artifacts.
Sirius.
Harry took a long breath. It was kind of astonishing, he thought dimly, how the grief wouldn’t hit him, and then it would, crashing down like a wave that had been frozen in place by magic and breaking into splintering glass shards inside of him.
“Harry? Are you all right?”
Harry swallowed and nodded, glancing up. Hadrian’s hand was firm on his shoulder. “Yeah. Just that this house belonged to Sirius, and I miss him.”
Hadrian’s eyes softened, and he squeezed gently before taking his hand away. “That’s understandable. I was never close to him in my world, but of course you would miss someone who tried to take care of you.”
Harry said nothing as he followed Hadrian closer to the edge of the street where Grimmauld Place waited. Of course Hadrian shouldn’t have been able to see it when it was under Fidelius, but Harry had tried to share the secret with him, and it had worked.
The Fidelius isn’t secure. It wasn’t for my parents. It didn’t keep Sirius from dying in the end. Why does anyone trust it?
Harry shook his head. He didn’t hate Dumbledore, not the way that Hadrian seemed to have decided he hated him the minute Harry told him about Dumbledore keeping secrets like the prophecy and the Horcruxes, but it was harder and harder to think Dumbledore really knew what he was doing.
“Let me go first,” Hadrian said, his hand clenching around his wand and his eyes going cool and remote. “If there are any Order members there…”
Harry hated the thought of Hadrian getting hurt protecting him, but he also knew that he was better off letting Hadrian get on with it and not whining. He nodded and stepped back into the shade of his Cloak as Hadrian made his way slowly to the front door of Grimmauld Place.
When he touched the door, it swung open. Hadrian immediately leaped back and raised a shield that looked like a shimmering mesh of interlocking blue squares in front of him. Harry sighed a little in envy. Hadrian was so cool. Harry just didn’t know how he could ever live up to that.
But he reminded himself that Hadrian thought Harry was cool, too, and had potential. Harry had killed the diary with a basilisk fang and survived its bite, which even Hadrian hadn’t done.
The least I can do is be worthy of him.
Harry took a deep breath. Yeah. Things he wouldn’t have wanted to do because he thought they would make him look arrogant were fine if he was doing them for Hadrian’s sake.
He snapped his attention back to Hadrian when he noted that Hadrian’s shield was shaking under what looked like the impact of multiple strong blows. Hadrian took a step back from the house’s front door, and then a loud alarm began to wail, sounding so Muggle that Harry jumped and instinctively looked over his shoulder towards some of the houses.
Hadrian sprinted towards him. Harry felt Hadrian’s arms close around him, and they Apparated, cutting off the sound of other cracks and the alarm in mid-cry.
Harry leaned against Hadrian outside their safehouse and gasped, “What was that?”
“Alarm spell targeted at strangers that hadn’t been in the house before.” Hadrian’s face was grim. “I should have suspected something like that when I saw the door was just open. The spell affects that. It’s part of the trap, to make the people the trap targets feel safer coming further into the house. I should have let you go first. I’m sorry.”
“The alarm would still have gone off when you stepped inside, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Hadrian leaned back to look at Harry. “I was so impatient to get rid of the Horcruxes…and the one in Gringotts and the one in Hogwarts and Voldemort’s snake will be harder to access…”
“What about the one in me?”
Hadrian narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t want to tackle that one yet. I know of several ways to handle it, but all of them take a ritual and all of them are dangerous.”
“I trust you. And if we have to wait, we have to wait.”
Hadrian’s eyes widened. Harry didn’t see what he’d said that was so extraordinary, but Hadrian, reaching out and gently tangling his fingers through Harry’s hair, murmured, “No one in my world trusted me. I suppose I gave them ample reason not to, but still…”
“You deserve to be trusted,” Harry said, and leaned back so that his neck was cupped in Hadrian’s hand, and closed his eyes. He was thinking a little of the way Hadrian had touched him in bed, but mostly how warm Hadrian’s body was and how good it felt to lean back against someone who understood him completely.
“Thank you, Harry.” Hadrian’s voice was dark with an emotion Harry didn’t know that either of them could easily define. “And if you’re sure that you won’t be going back to Hogwarts in the autumn…”
“No.” Harry turned his head so that his lips rested against Hadrian’s palm. “Maybe someday in the future, but not this term.”
He felt a jolt of excitement as he spoke. He was free of Hogwarts by doing this, free of endless constricting rules and homework for classes that had felt especially useless this past year. Why did it matter how many moons Jupiter had or when the best time to re-pot a mandrake was, when Umbridge was forcing him to tear up his hand on a regular basis and nightmares echoed through his head?
“Good,” Hadrian said, and kissed his forehead, lips lingering on the lightning bolt scar. “Good.”
*
“Was it Harry, Albus?”
Albus shook his head wearily as he looked at the ashy black remains of the intricate trap spell he had cast on the front door of Grimmauld Place. It had done its job, alerting him to the arrival of a stranger, but the parts that should have lured them into the house and trapped them hadn’t worked.
Which meant it was worse than useless.
“I don’t know,” Albus murmured, when Molly repeated the question. “I do know that Harry was not the one to come to the door, or the spell would not have reacted to him like this.”
“We have to find him, Albus!”
“I agree, Molly, but wishing won’t make it so.”
“Acting distant and weary won’t do it, either,” Molly said, and glared at him for a moment before she turned away to call to her children, shaking her head. Albus had Flooed the Burrow when he’d thought Harry might be here and unwilling to leave the trapped Hadrian. The Weasleys could persuade Harry to come back better than Albus could.
No, acting distant and weary won’t do it either. And neither will traps.
Albus sighed again. He had hoped that—that this would be simple. Harry’s devastation after Sirius’s death was completely understandable, just not his method of handling it. If he would just speak with Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger and Albus himself and explain what he felt about the prophecy, he would learn that he wasn’t alone, and he didn’t have to run away with a version of himself from another dimension.
Someone, Albus was sure after viewing Mr. Weasley’s memory of the Room of Requirement, who had used Dark magic, and had come to their world with the use of Dark magic. Those pentagrams on the floor in the memory, meant to contain a powerful Dark wizard, could indicate nothing else.
Why did Harry go to that room? Why not his friends? Why not come to me?
Despite having watched Mr. Weasley’s memory, Albus was not sure he would ever know for certain—not until he could speak to Harry and clear it up.
That would have to be soon.
*
“You can’t step outside the circle. No matter what. Do you understand me, Harry?”
“I understand, Hadrian.”
Hadrian wished that Harry hadn’t chosen to undergo this particular ritual right now. He hated the meek, submissive tone in Harry’s voice, which sounded too much like a tremor of fear.
He should never have to be afraid. He should be able to stand true and strong and proud, with me beside him.
Well, Hadrian was taking some steps on the road to get him there. Unlike Hadrian, Harry had derived no benefit from having a piece of Voldemort’s soul within him, and it needed to disappear so that this world’s Voldemort would never again be a threat to Harry.
Hadrian stepped back and examined the circle on the floor. It was an adaptation of the one that had brought him to Harry’s world in the Room of Requirement. The pentagrams all faced different directions, however, and the circle consisted of a double ring rather than a single one. Harry would have to remain within the inner ring, while the Horcrux got banished to the outer one.
And then Hadrian would do battle with it.
“How much will it hurt?”
Hadrian smiled gently at Harry, who had looked up at him with bright, desolate eyes. “A lot for a few moments. It won’t last longer than that if you don’t leave the circle.”
“I—why would I do that?”
“The Horcrux will know what we’re doing once we begin. It’s slumbering now, really, but this will wake it up. It could try to possess you and do anything it can to disrupt the ritual.”
“Then why don’t you bind me?”
“What?”
“Chain me to the floor. Or wrap me up with Incarcerous! Do something, so I can’t escape!”
Hadrian paused. The option had crossed his mind, but he’d rejected it at once. He’d been sure Harry would never agree to it, given how much he had been locked up in his cupboard and his room at the Dursleys. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure! I want this thing out of me!”
Hadrian nodded slowly. Maybe he had been protecting Harry a little too much. He deserved to participate in the rejection of the Horcrux. “All right. Then hold still. I’ll make the bonds as comfortable as I can, but as strong as I can, too.”
“Yes. Please. Just do it.”
Hadrian whipped his wand back and forth in a spell that he’d used before when he wanted to leave someone hunting him alive as a warning. The crystalline chains manifested out of nowhere and reached for Harry’s wrists. Hadrian murmured charms to adjust them, since he hadn’t really cared about his enemies’ comfort in the past.
“What are the chains attached to?” Harry was jerking his head back and forth, staring at the ends of the bonds that vanished into midair.
Maybe trying to distract himself from his own fear, Hadrian thought. “My magic. Don’t worry, I won’t let you go.”
“I know you won’t.”
Hadrian felt his cheeks grow hot at the way Harry was staring at him, and he steered his mind away from other uses for those chains. “Remember that the pain won’t last for more than a few minutes,” he said, and then began to chant, repeating the Latin words of a ritual that he’d double-checked in a book from the Peverell safehouse, with Harry’s name and the word Horcrux substituted at the right parts.
*
Harry felt a long tremble start making its way through his body around the fifth time Hadrian repeated the chant, and the pentagrams of the circle began to shine with red light. He shuddered. It felt as though something was making him shake from the inside out.
I don’t want to!
The words slammed into his mind, sounding like his own voice, but Harry knew it wasn’t. It was the Horcrux. The voice was hot and full of fear.
I want to, Harry thought back, and the Horcrux seemed to become aware of him for the first time. Harry cried out as it turned its attention on him. It was like suddenly staring into the eyes of a lion without cage bars between them.
Hadrian’s steady chanting never faltered.
You! You hold me prisoner!
The Horcrux reached out and raked long claws down Harry’s mind. He screamed. This time, there was pain that seemed imposed on him, like Voldemort’s Cruciatus Curse in the graveyard, like watching Sirius fall through the Veil all over again.
Kill you!
Harry struggled back against the Horcrux, not knowing exactly what he was doing, but simply focusing on how much he wanted it out of him, how much he trusted Hadrian and knew things would be better with the soul-shard gone—
The pain ended abruptly. Harry felt the Horcrux back away from him and tun its attention outwards, to Hadrian.
He is the architect of my despair, the Horcrux thought, its voice sounding more different from Harry’s this time, and it leaped.
Harry screamed again as the chains shook and all the pentagrams flared.
*
Fucking thing.
Hadrian managed to keep chanting even as Harry screamed in pain by focusing his mind on the end result of this. Harry was going to be free. That was the important thing. It didn’t matter how much the Horcrux hurt him right now.
It was aiming at Hadrian now, he knew that, but it wouldn’t be able to get past the pentagrams and the outer ring of the circle around the inner—
One of the pentagrams shattered, in a silent spray of red light and chalk dust.
Harry screamed again, but this time it sounded like fear instead of pain, even as Hadrian whipped his wand towards the onrushing force that looked like a dark wind leaving Harry’s forehead.
He kept up the chant. He kept his mind concentrated on Harry’s eventual freedom, the most important goal, and fell into the instinctive nonverbal defenses that he’d commanded ever since he was eleven and learning to integrate Voldemort’s spirit into his.
The dark wind bounced from the wordless shield Hadrian conjured, and prowled in a circle on light paws, snarling. Hadrian raised the shield all around him and then grinned. The Horcrux had provided him with a sort of opportunity to test something that he’d long wanted to test.
He could imagine what Harry would say about that “opportunity.” But right now, it was up to Hadrian to protect Harry and himself.
The air churned around him, thick and semi-transparent. But there was a hole that opened up by his right flank. Hadrian kept chanting, not turning away from Harry, who was writhing in the chains, as if unaware of the weak point in his defenses.
The Horcrux was more aware of risks than the others that Hadrian had confronted in the past, maybe because it had spent so much time integrated with Harry. But eventually, it couldn’t resist. It dashed forwards.
Hadrian ended the chant and dropped to his knees as he swung the shield outwards, propelled by the sheer power of his will.
The Horcrux charged through the weak point in the shield, which promptly closed behind it. Then the shield landed on the remaining four pentagrams, and Hadrian anchored it with a slash of his wand and more power than he had used in years. He felt the chains that had anchored Harry tremble.
He fed more power into them. He would not let Harry run to his rescue and disrupt the remaining part of the ritual.
The Horcrux shrieked, a rattling, high-pitched sound that tore through Hadrian’s ears like a Muggle drill. He ignored that as he rose to his feet. The shield was substituting for the broken outer circle right now, but it wouldn’t hold for long, with only four pentagrams to anchor it instead of five.
Hadrian narrowed his eyes.
“I will take care of you, now,” he told the Horcrux, and he saw Harry stop struggling and pay attention. So he retained Parseltongue despite the removal of the Horcrux. Good. Hadrian hadn’t been sure that would happen. He thought that he had only done it because he had hosted both the Horcrux and Voldemort’s spirit for so long—
And he would get distracted if he kept on that tangent.
Hadrian dug up more power, more will, and focused on the shield. It began to swirl in place, as the pentagrams turned in their own places, and Hadrian moved it closer and closer inwards around the Horcrux.
The soul-shard howled at him. Then it spoke in a voice that sounded a little like Harry’s might in Parseltongue. “I can offer you riches! Wealth! Wisdom!”
“You tried to kill me. You tried to kill Harry.”
The Horcrux howled again and slammed against the shield. It had chosen the place where Hadrian had left the deliberate weakness, but he had closed that hole, now. He kept on pushing, and the Horcrux was crowded into a smaller and smaller space. It paced back and forth, looking like an indistinct but mostly canine shape.
“Hadrian, what are you doing?”
Hadrian raised his hand to tell Harry to be quiet. He didn’t dare take his eyes or attention from the Horcrux, now. It had escaped once, and he still wasn’t entirely sure why the first pentagram had broken. It might happen again if he was too complacent.
The Horcrux crouched low, and then tried to leap over the shield.
Hadrian slammed it back into place with a twist of the shield, and then decided, Fuck going slowly. He fed more magic to the pentagrams, made them spin faster, and slammed the sides of the shield together, crushing the Horcrux.
It screamed again. Its essence turned to smoky black tendrils like the flying spirit of Voldemort that Hadrian had absorbed, trying to creep out and away.
But this wasn’t a physical crushing. It was a magical one, and Hadrian repeated it, again and again and again, until he was panting for breath and sinking to his knees, barely able to hold the magic that anchored Harry’s chains.
The Horcrux screamed one final time, and vanished from existence.
Hadrian managed to roll on his side, panting harshly, and gesture at the inner circle. It broke. The chains holding Harry vanished at the same moment, allowing Hadrian to pull some of his power back into himself.
That will make recovery easier, he thought hazily, hearing Harry rush to his side.
And then he slumped into darkness, himself.
*
It had been four hours since the ritual when Hadrian stirred.
Harry laid aside the book he’d been reading—the one where Hadrian had found the ritual to remove his Horcrux—and bolted to his feet. He ran towards the bed and then drew back, hovering anxiously. Were you supposed to crowd someone who had suffered what Hadrian had? What had he suffered? Just magical exhaustion, or something worse?
Some form of possession, like Harry had with Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries?
Please, no. Please. I want the Horcrux to be gone completely. It was supposed to be gone completely.
I can’t lose him.
“Harry?” Hadrian turned his head, squinting as if the light hurt his eyes. But at least his eyes were green and clear, not the red Harry had been half-expecting and wholly dreading. He raised his hand so that the back of it rested against his forehead. “Are you—what happened?”
“You don’t remember the ritual?” Harry swallowed. He didn’t know if he could describe everything that had happened, and especially why the pentagram and the outer circle had split like that, when they were supposed to hold.
“No, I do. I just—I wanted to know if you were all right.”
Harry exhaled in relief and reached down to grip Hadrian’s hand, hard. It turned and returned Harry’s clasp, almost to the point of pain, no matter how tired Hadrian must have been. “Yes, I’m fine. But you—I had to Levitate you to bed, you arsehole.”
Hadrian smiled, that smile that seemed to melt a layer of ice under his skin and made Harry want to stare at him endlessly. “And you didn’t join me in it? Tsk tsk, Harry.”
Harry felt himself blush so vividly that he was sure he must look like a sunset. He leaned in and punched Hadrian on the shoulder. Hadrian laughed aloud, quietly, not moving. His eyes were still focused on Harry, and he tightened his clasp on Harry’s wrist, pulling him in, slowly, like he was reeling a fish.
Harry held back, but when he saw the way Hadrian’s eyes had dimmed, he added hastily, “No! Not because I don’t want to. Just because I think that you should have some more time to recover before we do—anything like that.” He touched Hadrian’s hair, a little shocked at how soft it felt beneath his fingers. He was sure that his own had never felt anything like that.
“Well.” Hadrian smiled at him and leaned back against the pillow. For some reason, he was blushing himself now. Harry wondered why. “I can’t argue with reservations on the matter of health.” He tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes. “Will you stay with me, until I fall asleep?”
“If you’re sure that you don’t need any potions or Healing or anything like that? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am, Harry. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I kind of like having someone to worry about, Harry thought, but he bit his tongue. He couldn’t think of a way to say that that wasn’t needy and demanding. “Do you know why the pentagram exploded like that?”
“I think so. But I need to rest right now, really. I’ll explain it later.”
Hadrian’s fingers moved gently on Harry’s wrist, hypnotic in their way. Harry nodded. “Okay.” And he sat back on the bed and waited for Hadrian to fall asleep.
*
No one had ever cared for him like this.
Hadrian had grown accustomed to no one caring for him at all, in his own world, or only in the sense that they wanted to hunt him down and make him pay for all sorts of real and imagined sins. He knew that he would have to take care of his own injuries, his own shelter and food, his own knowledge and future. It was one of the reasons he had been so bored of sex before meeting Harry. What was the point of sharing pleasure when it only meant lies or more danger? Better to take care of himself.
And then he had found a world where he could do that and still have true pleasure, true sharing, with another person. One who would never betray him. One Hadrian wanted to protect, since Harry was a version of himself.
But still, Hadrian had thought he would be the one taking care of Harry’s injuries, if they happened. Sheltering him. Defending him, the way he had with the chains and the pentagrams and the circles that should have worked.
Here was…
Here was Harry taking care of him.
Hadrian had known he could feel care and affection. He felt it for himself, after all.
Now, he really thought he might be capable of falling in love.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Harry
Content Notes: AU starting in fifth year, dimension travel, angst, violence, self-cest, underage
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 4600
Summary: AU, sequel to “Shards of the Mirror.” Harry Potter and Hadrian Black continue their hunt for the Horcruxes, while dealing with their new relationship and avoiding the efforts by Dumbledore and Harry’s friends to get them to come back.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s the sequel to “Twisted Mirror” and “Shards of the Mirror,” which you should read first, and will probably have three to four parts. The title comes from the quote “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it” by Edith Wharton.
The Mirror and the Candle
“Hadrian?”
Hadrian turned around with a smile. Harry had been reading a book on the theory of Horcrux creation in the library of the Peverell safehouse where they’d landed, and Hadrian had anticipated that he would have questions.
But Harry looked at him with a pale face that didn’t seem impacted by the book he’d read. “Do—do you think I’ll ever be able to see Ron and Hermione again?”
Hadrian sighed and went over to sit in a large armchair near one of the enchanted windows, drawing Harry into his arms. The window showed a shifting forest right now, tossing in the wind in all shades of green, and Hadrian smoothed his hand down Harry’s back, watching the forest, as he thought.
Hadrian wouldn’t have wanted to see friends who had betrayed him with Tracking Charms again. But then, he didn’t really have friends. It made sense that Harry would regret some of his immediate impulses of living separately from Granger and Weasley forever and want some reassurance.
“I think, when we finish the quest,” Hadrian said at last. “When the Horcruxes are gone, and we can face Voldemort in battle and bring him down. There’s too much chance that they would interfere before then.”
“Interfere? But I know they wouldn’t want to keep Voldemort alive.”
“Oh, of course not,” Hadrian said. “I just think they might cause problems without intending to. What if they insist that you should cooperate with Dumbledore or ask his advice, and that’s the means of Voldemort getting wind of what we’re doing? That’s the kind of thing I worry about. They don’t know as much as we do and they’d want to waste time arguing with us. So why give them the chance to do it?”
Harry nodded slowly. Then he took a deep breath and asked, “And what will you do, after the quest is done?”
“I can’t go back to my world, Harry. I assumed you would want me to stay with you, but—”
“No!” Harry spun to face him, glaring up with eyes that Hadrian couldn’t help but find enchanting, no matter how narcissistic someone might say that was. “I mean, I do! Of course I do! But what if you’re only sleeping with me because this is a desperate situation and anyone would do, and once it’s done, you’ll leave me for something cooler?”
Ah. Hadrian drew his hand affectionately down the lightning bolt scar in the middle of Harry’s forehead. “I’m not as cool as you seem to think, Harry.”
“Stronger and more sophisticated and smarter and more independent. Yeah, sure you aren’t.”
“Do you really think that I would leave you behind? When I’ve made so much effort to secure you as mine?”
Harry gaped at him for a minute. Then he swallowed and said, “I didn’t—I knew it was—I knew it was strong, but I didn’t know it was permanent.”
Ah. Well, that makes sense, I suppose. He has often hardly been encouraged to look beyond the next week, when it comes to his survival.
Hadrian tangled his fingers in Harry’s hair and pulled one wavy strand straight for a moment. Then he said, in a quick, low voice that Harry leaned forwards to hear, “It is permanent, unless you change your mind and wish to break free.”
“I can’t imagine that I would.”
No, Hadrian thought, as he tucked his chin into Harry’s hair as much to hold him close as to hide his own smile, I can’t, either.
*
“This isn’t the most dangerous hiding place, right? You said Gringotts was the most dangerous.”
“In terms of sheer protections on the Horcrux, that is true,” said Hadrian, in that clipped, upper-class tone Harry could only imagine he’d learned from Voldemort’s spirit. “But this is the place where the most Order people will be popping in and out.”
Harry nodded nervously, and looked at Grimmauld Place. It seemed that Regulus Black in Hadrian’s world had stolen Voldemort’s locket from its original hiding spot, and Hadrian had managed to track it down mostly by luck and accident, after overhearing a conversation between Sirius and Kreacher about a strange golden locket among the Black artifacts.
Sirius.
Harry took a long breath. It was kind of astonishing, he thought dimly, how the grief wouldn’t hit him, and then it would, crashing down like a wave that had been frozen in place by magic and breaking into splintering glass shards inside of him.
“Harry? Are you all right?”
Harry swallowed and nodded, glancing up. Hadrian’s hand was firm on his shoulder. “Yeah. Just that this house belonged to Sirius, and I miss him.”
Hadrian’s eyes softened, and he squeezed gently before taking his hand away. “That’s understandable. I was never close to him in my world, but of course you would miss someone who tried to take care of you.”
Harry said nothing as he followed Hadrian closer to the edge of the street where Grimmauld Place waited. Of course Hadrian shouldn’t have been able to see it when it was under Fidelius, but Harry had tried to share the secret with him, and it had worked.
The Fidelius isn’t secure. It wasn’t for my parents. It didn’t keep Sirius from dying in the end. Why does anyone trust it?
Harry shook his head. He didn’t hate Dumbledore, not the way that Hadrian seemed to have decided he hated him the minute Harry told him about Dumbledore keeping secrets like the prophecy and the Horcruxes, but it was harder and harder to think Dumbledore really knew what he was doing.
“Let me go first,” Hadrian said, his hand clenching around his wand and his eyes going cool and remote. “If there are any Order members there…”
Harry hated the thought of Hadrian getting hurt protecting him, but he also knew that he was better off letting Hadrian get on with it and not whining. He nodded and stepped back into the shade of his Cloak as Hadrian made his way slowly to the front door of Grimmauld Place.
When he touched the door, it swung open. Hadrian immediately leaped back and raised a shield that looked like a shimmering mesh of interlocking blue squares in front of him. Harry sighed a little in envy. Hadrian was so cool. Harry just didn’t know how he could ever live up to that.
But he reminded himself that Hadrian thought Harry was cool, too, and had potential. Harry had killed the diary with a basilisk fang and survived its bite, which even Hadrian hadn’t done.
The least I can do is be worthy of him.
Harry took a deep breath. Yeah. Things he wouldn’t have wanted to do because he thought they would make him look arrogant were fine if he was doing them for Hadrian’s sake.
He snapped his attention back to Hadrian when he noted that Hadrian’s shield was shaking under what looked like the impact of multiple strong blows. Hadrian took a step back from the house’s front door, and then a loud alarm began to wail, sounding so Muggle that Harry jumped and instinctively looked over his shoulder towards some of the houses.
Hadrian sprinted towards him. Harry felt Hadrian’s arms close around him, and they Apparated, cutting off the sound of other cracks and the alarm in mid-cry.
Harry leaned against Hadrian outside their safehouse and gasped, “What was that?”
“Alarm spell targeted at strangers that hadn’t been in the house before.” Hadrian’s face was grim. “I should have suspected something like that when I saw the door was just open. The spell affects that. It’s part of the trap, to make the people the trap targets feel safer coming further into the house. I should have let you go first. I’m sorry.”
“The alarm would still have gone off when you stepped inside, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Hadrian leaned back to look at Harry. “I was so impatient to get rid of the Horcruxes…and the one in Gringotts and the one in Hogwarts and Voldemort’s snake will be harder to access…”
“What about the one in me?”
Hadrian narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t want to tackle that one yet. I know of several ways to handle it, but all of them take a ritual and all of them are dangerous.”
“I trust you. And if we have to wait, we have to wait.”
Hadrian’s eyes widened. Harry didn’t see what he’d said that was so extraordinary, but Hadrian, reaching out and gently tangling his fingers through Harry’s hair, murmured, “No one in my world trusted me. I suppose I gave them ample reason not to, but still…”
“You deserve to be trusted,” Harry said, and leaned back so that his neck was cupped in Hadrian’s hand, and closed his eyes. He was thinking a little of the way Hadrian had touched him in bed, but mostly how warm Hadrian’s body was and how good it felt to lean back against someone who understood him completely.
“Thank you, Harry.” Hadrian’s voice was dark with an emotion Harry didn’t know that either of them could easily define. “And if you’re sure that you won’t be going back to Hogwarts in the autumn…”
“No.” Harry turned his head so that his lips rested against Hadrian’s palm. “Maybe someday in the future, but not this term.”
He felt a jolt of excitement as he spoke. He was free of Hogwarts by doing this, free of endless constricting rules and homework for classes that had felt especially useless this past year. Why did it matter how many moons Jupiter had or when the best time to re-pot a mandrake was, when Umbridge was forcing him to tear up his hand on a regular basis and nightmares echoed through his head?
“Good,” Hadrian said, and kissed his forehead, lips lingering on the lightning bolt scar. “Good.”
*
“Was it Harry, Albus?”
Albus shook his head wearily as he looked at the ashy black remains of the intricate trap spell he had cast on the front door of Grimmauld Place. It had done its job, alerting him to the arrival of a stranger, but the parts that should have lured them into the house and trapped them hadn’t worked.
Which meant it was worse than useless.
“I don’t know,” Albus murmured, when Molly repeated the question. “I do know that Harry was not the one to come to the door, or the spell would not have reacted to him like this.”
“We have to find him, Albus!”
“I agree, Molly, but wishing won’t make it so.”
“Acting distant and weary won’t do it, either,” Molly said, and glared at him for a moment before she turned away to call to her children, shaking her head. Albus had Flooed the Burrow when he’d thought Harry might be here and unwilling to leave the trapped Hadrian. The Weasleys could persuade Harry to come back better than Albus could.
No, acting distant and weary won’t do it either. And neither will traps.
Albus sighed again. He had hoped that—that this would be simple. Harry’s devastation after Sirius’s death was completely understandable, just not his method of handling it. If he would just speak with Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger and Albus himself and explain what he felt about the prophecy, he would learn that he wasn’t alone, and he didn’t have to run away with a version of himself from another dimension.
Someone, Albus was sure after viewing Mr. Weasley’s memory of the Room of Requirement, who had used Dark magic, and had come to their world with the use of Dark magic. Those pentagrams on the floor in the memory, meant to contain a powerful Dark wizard, could indicate nothing else.
Why did Harry go to that room? Why not his friends? Why not come to me?
Despite having watched Mr. Weasley’s memory, Albus was not sure he would ever know for certain—not until he could speak to Harry and clear it up.
That would have to be soon.
*
“You can’t step outside the circle. No matter what. Do you understand me, Harry?”
“I understand, Hadrian.”
Hadrian wished that Harry hadn’t chosen to undergo this particular ritual right now. He hated the meek, submissive tone in Harry’s voice, which sounded too much like a tremor of fear.
He should never have to be afraid. He should be able to stand true and strong and proud, with me beside him.
Well, Hadrian was taking some steps on the road to get him there. Unlike Hadrian, Harry had derived no benefit from having a piece of Voldemort’s soul within him, and it needed to disappear so that this world’s Voldemort would never again be a threat to Harry.
Hadrian stepped back and examined the circle on the floor. It was an adaptation of the one that had brought him to Harry’s world in the Room of Requirement. The pentagrams all faced different directions, however, and the circle consisted of a double ring rather than a single one. Harry would have to remain within the inner ring, while the Horcrux got banished to the outer one.
And then Hadrian would do battle with it.
“How much will it hurt?”
Hadrian smiled gently at Harry, who had looked up at him with bright, desolate eyes. “A lot for a few moments. It won’t last longer than that if you don’t leave the circle.”
“I—why would I do that?”
“The Horcrux will know what we’re doing once we begin. It’s slumbering now, really, but this will wake it up. It could try to possess you and do anything it can to disrupt the ritual.”
“Then why don’t you bind me?”
“What?”
“Chain me to the floor. Or wrap me up with Incarcerous! Do something, so I can’t escape!”
Hadrian paused. The option had crossed his mind, but he’d rejected it at once. He’d been sure Harry would never agree to it, given how much he had been locked up in his cupboard and his room at the Dursleys. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure! I want this thing out of me!”
Hadrian nodded slowly. Maybe he had been protecting Harry a little too much. He deserved to participate in the rejection of the Horcrux. “All right. Then hold still. I’ll make the bonds as comfortable as I can, but as strong as I can, too.”
“Yes. Please. Just do it.”
Hadrian whipped his wand back and forth in a spell that he’d used before when he wanted to leave someone hunting him alive as a warning. The crystalline chains manifested out of nowhere and reached for Harry’s wrists. Hadrian murmured charms to adjust them, since he hadn’t really cared about his enemies’ comfort in the past.
“What are the chains attached to?” Harry was jerking his head back and forth, staring at the ends of the bonds that vanished into midair.
Maybe trying to distract himself from his own fear, Hadrian thought. “My magic. Don’t worry, I won’t let you go.”
“I know you won’t.”
Hadrian felt his cheeks grow hot at the way Harry was staring at him, and he steered his mind away from other uses for those chains. “Remember that the pain won’t last for more than a few minutes,” he said, and then began to chant, repeating the Latin words of a ritual that he’d double-checked in a book from the Peverell safehouse, with Harry’s name and the word Horcrux substituted at the right parts.
*
Harry felt a long tremble start making its way through his body around the fifth time Hadrian repeated the chant, and the pentagrams of the circle began to shine with red light. He shuddered. It felt as though something was making him shake from the inside out.
I don’t want to!
The words slammed into his mind, sounding like his own voice, but Harry knew it wasn’t. It was the Horcrux. The voice was hot and full of fear.
I want to, Harry thought back, and the Horcrux seemed to become aware of him for the first time. Harry cried out as it turned its attention on him. It was like suddenly staring into the eyes of a lion without cage bars between them.
Hadrian’s steady chanting never faltered.
You! You hold me prisoner!
The Horcrux reached out and raked long claws down Harry’s mind. He screamed. This time, there was pain that seemed imposed on him, like Voldemort’s Cruciatus Curse in the graveyard, like watching Sirius fall through the Veil all over again.
Kill you!
Harry struggled back against the Horcrux, not knowing exactly what he was doing, but simply focusing on how much he wanted it out of him, how much he trusted Hadrian and knew things would be better with the soul-shard gone—
The pain ended abruptly. Harry felt the Horcrux back away from him and tun its attention outwards, to Hadrian.
He is the architect of my despair, the Horcrux thought, its voice sounding more different from Harry’s this time, and it leaped.
Harry screamed again as the chains shook and all the pentagrams flared.
*
Fucking thing.
Hadrian managed to keep chanting even as Harry screamed in pain by focusing his mind on the end result of this. Harry was going to be free. That was the important thing. It didn’t matter how much the Horcrux hurt him right now.
It was aiming at Hadrian now, he knew that, but it wouldn’t be able to get past the pentagrams and the outer ring of the circle around the inner—
One of the pentagrams shattered, in a silent spray of red light and chalk dust.
Harry screamed again, but this time it sounded like fear instead of pain, even as Hadrian whipped his wand towards the onrushing force that looked like a dark wind leaving Harry’s forehead.
He kept up the chant. He kept his mind concentrated on Harry’s eventual freedom, the most important goal, and fell into the instinctive nonverbal defenses that he’d commanded ever since he was eleven and learning to integrate Voldemort’s spirit into his.
The dark wind bounced from the wordless shield Hadrian conjured, and prowled in a circle on light paws, snarling. Hadrian raised the shield all around him and then grinned. The Horcrux had provided him with a sort of opportunity to test something that he’d long wanted to test.
He could imagine what Harry would say about that “opportunity.” But right now, it was up to Hadrian to protect Harry and himself.
The air churned around him, thick and semi-transparent. But there was a hole that opened up by his right flank. Hadrian kept chanting, not turning away from Harry, who was writhing in the chains, as if unaware of the weak point in his defenses.
The Horcrux was more aware of risks than the others that Hadrian had confronted in the past, maybe because it had spent so much time integrated with Harry. But eventually, it couldn’t resist. It dashed forwards.
Hadrian ended the chant and dropped to his knees as he swung the shield outwards, propelled by the sheer power of his will.
The Horcrux charged through the weak point in the shield, which promptly closed behind it. Then the shield landed on the remaining four pentagrams, and Hadrian anchored it with a slash of his wand and more power than he had used in years. He felt the chains that had anchored Harry tremble.
He fed more power into them. He would not let Harry run to his rescue and disrupt the remaining part of the ritual.
The Horcrux shrieked, a rattling, high-pitched sound that tore through Hadrian’s ears like a Muggle drill. He ignored that as he rose to his feet. The shield was substituting for the broken outer circle right now, but it wouldn’t hold for long, with only four pentagrams to anchor it instead of five.
Hadrian narrowed his eyes.
“I will take care of you, now,” he told the Horcrux, and he saw Harry stop struggling and pay attention. So he retained Parseltongue despite the removal of the Horcrux. Good. Hadrian hadn’t been sure that would happen. He thought that he had only done it because he had hosted both the Horcrux and Voldemort’s spirit for so long—
And he would get distracted if he kept on that tangent.
Hadrian dug up more power, more will, and focused on the shield. It began to swirl in place, as the pentagrams turned in their own places, and Hadrian moved it closer and closer inwards around the Horcrux.
The soul-shard howled at him. Then it spoke in a voice that sounded a little like Harry’s might in Parseltongue. “I can offer you riches! Wealth! Wisdom!”
“You tried to kill me. You tried to kill Harry.”
The Horcrux howled again and slammed against the shield. It had chosen the place where Hadrian had left the deliberate weakness, but he had closed that hole, now. He kept on pushing, and the Horcrux was crowded into a smaller and smaller space. It paced back and forth, looking like an indistinct but mostly canine shape.
“Hadrian, what are you doing?”
Hadrian raised his hand to tell Harry to be quiet. He didn’t dare take his eyes or attention from the Horcrux, now. It had escaped once, and he still wasn’t entirely sure why the first pentagram had broken. It might happen again if he was too complacent.
The Horcrux crouched low, and then tried to leap over the shield.
Hadrian slammed it back into place with a twist of the shield, and then decided, Fuck going slowly. He fed more magic to the pentagrams, made them spin faster, and slammed the sides of the shield together, crushing the Horcrux.
It screamed again. Its essence turned to smoky black tendrils like the flying spirit of Voldemort that Hadrian had absorbed, trying to creep out and away.
But this wasn’t a physical crushing. It was a magical one, and Hadrian repeated it, again and again and again, until he was panting for breath and sinking to his knees, barely able to hold the magic that anchored Harry’s chains.
The Horcrux screamed one final time, and vanished from existence.
Hadrian managed to roll on his side, panting harshly, and gesture at the inner circle. It broke. The chains holding Harry vanished at the same moment, allowing Hadrian to pull some of his power back into himself.
That will make recovery easier, he thought hazily, hearing Harry rush to his side.
And then he slumped into darkness, himself.
*
It had been four hours since the ritual when Hadrian stirred.
Harry laid aside the book he’d been reading—the one where Hadrian had found the ritual to remove his Horcrux—and bolted to his feet. He ran towards the bed and then drew back, hovering anxiously. Were you supposed to crowd someone who had suffered what Hadrian had? What had he suffered? Just magical exhaustion, or something worse?
Some form of possession, like Harry had with Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries?
Please, no. Please. I want the Horcrux to be gone completely. It was supposed to be gone completely.
I can’t lose him.
“Harry?” Hadrian turned his head, squinting as if the light hurt his eyes. But at least his eyes were green and clear, not the red Harry had been half-expecting and wholly dreading. He raised his hand so that the back of it rested against his forehead. “Are you—what happened?”
“You don’t remember the ritual?” Harry swallowed. He didn’t know if he could describe everything that had happened, and especially why the pentagram and the outer circle had split like that, when they were supposed to hold.
“No, I do. I just—I wanted to know if you were all right.”
Harry exhaled in relief and reached down to grip Hadrian’s hand, hard. It turned and returned Harry’s clasp, almost to the point of pain, no matter how tired Hadrian must have been. “Yes, I’m fine. But you—I had to Levitate you to bed, you arsehole.”
Hadrian smiled, that smile that seemed to melt a layer of ice under his skin and made Harry want to stare at him endlessly. “And you didn’t join me in it? Tsk tsk, Harry.”
Harry felt himself blush so vividly that he was sure he must look like a sunset. He leaned in and punched Hadrian on the shoulder. Hadrian laughed aloud, quietly, not moving. His eyes were still focused on Harry, and he tightened his clasp on Harry’s wrist, pulling him in, slowly, like he was reeling a fish.
Harry held back, but when he saw the way Hadrian’s eyes had dimmed, he added hastily, “No! Not because I don’t want to. Just because I think that you should have some more time to recover before we do—anything like that.” He touched Hadrian’s hair, a little shocked at how soft it felt beneath his fingers. He was sure that his own had never felt anything like that.
“Well.” Hadrian smiled at him and leaned back against the pillow. For some reason, he was blushing himself now. Harry wondered why. “I can’t argue with reservations on the matter of health.” He tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes. “Will you stay with me, until I fall asleep?”
“If you’re sure that you don’t need any potions or Healing or anything like that? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am, Harry. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I kind of like having someone to worry about, Harry thought, but he bit his tongue. He couldn’t think of a way to say that that wasn’t needy and demanding. “Do you know why the pentagram exploded like that?”
“I think so. But I need to rest right now, really. I’ll explain it later.”
Hadrian’s fingers moved gently on Harry’s wrist, hypnotic in their way. Harry nodded. “Okay.” And he sat back on the bed and waited for Hadrian to fall asleep.
*
No one had ever cared for him like this.
Hadrian had grown accustomed to no one caring for him at all, in his own world, or only in the sense that they wanted to hunt him down and make him pay for all sorts of real and imagined sins. He knew that he would have to take care of his own injuries, his own shelter and food, his own knowledge and future. It was one of the reasons he had been so bored of sex before meeting Harry. What was the point of sharing pleasure when it only meant lies or more danger? Better to take care of himself.
And then he had found a world where he could do that and still have true pleasure, true sharing, with another person. One who would never betray him. One Hadrian wanted to protect, since Harry was a version of himself.
But still, Hadrian had thought he would be the one taking care of Harry’s injuries, if they happened. Sheltering him. Defending him, the way he had with the chains and the pentagrams and the circles that should have worked.
Here was…
Here was Harry taking care of him.
Hadrian had known he could feel care and affection. He felt it for himself, after all.
Now, he really thought he might be capable of falling in love.