[From Litha to Lammas]: The Mirror and the Candle, Harry/Hadrian, Hadrian series, R, 2/3

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

He felt it from afar, as a ripple disturbing the still black pond of his mind.

He lifted his head and turned it slowly back and forth, seeking the truth in metaphorical directions. His hand closed around the wand at his side, and he lifted it, ready to cast a spell if he located the source of the disturbance.

Nothing happened. The ripple danced across his mind and died away again.

Voldemort leaned back against the sleek black throne he had caused Lucius to give him and wondered what it had been.

*

“Why do you think the pentagram burst, exactly?”

Hadrian leaned back and stretched. Harry had put a tray of sandwiches and delicately carved meat and fruit across his lap in bed, after they had compromised: Hadrian wasn’t going to eat broth, and Harry wasn’t going to let him try to manage the stairs to the dining room. He smiled at Harry, who scowled back.

“I promise that I’m no longer magically exhausted, Harry.”

“I still think that you need more rest,” Harry began. “But you can at least answer my question even if you do. Why did it burst?”

Hadrian sighed. “Remember that this is only a theoretical answer, and I don’t know for sure if I’m right.”

“You’re smarter than most of the people in this dimension, Hadrian. I know you’ll figure it out.”

Hadrian lay still for a long moment, drinking in the faith and trust shining from Harry’s eyes, until Harry shifted impatiently. Then he cleared his throat. “The Horcrux we destroyed was different from all the others that I destroyed in my dimension, and different from ones like the ring or the diary, too. It was integrated with you, and mostly asleep.”

“But wasn’t that like the Horcrux in you in your dimension?”

“No. After I absorbed the spirit of Voldemort, my Horcrux became more aware, and I became more aware of it. Not to the extent that I could ever carry it as a separate being in my mind, until the very end of the ritual, but I touched the edges of it and learned about it in the course of learning about Voldemort’s spirit. Becoming aware of him in my mind and soul forced me to become aware of what else in me wasn’t—me. I don’t think that the one in your mind was ever aware of itself until we woke it in the course of the ritual.”

“That still doesn’t explain why the pentagram burst.”

“Of course it does. Think back to that magical theory book I had you read last week, and I think you can tell me.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Hadrian, but leaned back in his chair. “If I can’t tell you, then you’ll tell me, right?”

“Of course,” Hadrian repeated, and smiled at him. “I just want you to have the experience of thinking through it on your own.”

Harry nodded and closed his eyes. Hadrian watched him as he sat there in silent thought, and decided that Harry was already taller than he had been at the beginning of summer, and Hadrian didn’t think it was his imagination. Harry’s skin also had more of a tan than it had, but then again, he’d been pretty sickly pale then.

And his lightning bolt scar was already a faded pale line, as though someone had reached out and clawed him there a week ago.

Hadrian went on watching him until Harry’s eyes fluttered open and he smiled sharply. He also flushed sharply, when he saw Hadrian looking, but his voice was firm as he said, “The pentagrams were meant to contain a wizard who was Dark. Their strength adjusted themselves to the strength that was in the circle at the beginning, like in that book when it said that every ritual circle has to be chosen carefully to match the subject or object of the ritual.”

“Good,” Hadrian encouraged. “And…?”

“It would have worked if it was just me, if I was a Dark wizard like you, or if the Horcrux had been aware of itself.” Hadrian noted that Harry didn’t flinch or show any fear when he described Hadrian as a Dark wizard, which was a positive step. “But it couldn’t change itself to account for the Horcrux waking up.”

Hadrian nodded. “Yes. That was my fault. I should have realized that was a possibility from the beginning, especially since I planned to banish the Horcrux to the outer ring and I knew it would become a separate entity from you. But I was rushing, and I based the circle on the one that contained me in your Room of Requirement just because it was convenient, without paying enough attention to whether it was workable.”

“Did I cause this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted the Horcrux out of me right away. If I’d waited and not rushed you, would you have chosen a safer ritual and a better circle and never exhausted yourself? Never been in danger.”

“Harry, no, don’t blame yourself.” Hadrian reached out and captured Harry’s hand, which twisted in his as if Harry were thinking about pulling it away. Hadrian tightened his hold, along with the intensity of his gaze into Harry’s eyes. “I would have felt the same way, if I’d lived your life and only recently learned that I was hosting a Horcrux. Removing it, wanting to remove it, is natural. And I wanted you to get what you wanted.”

“Why, though? If there was a safer way?”

“Because you deserve to be treasured, and cherished, and treated well.”

Hadrian had spoken the words without thinking much about the way they’d come out, and now watched, enthralled, as an absolutely wonderful dusky redness overtook Harry’s face and rolled down his neck. His shirt was slightly open, and Hadrian watched as the blush continued down Harry’s chest, what he could see of it.

He looked up. Harry’s eyes were locked with his and his breathing was heavy.

“I think I’m not too exhausted to do some of what we put off, in the past,” said Hadrian, with a smile that he knew was on the edge of a leer.

“Shut up, God, you are so annoying,” Harry said, but since he leaned forwards to kiss Hadrian, Hadrian was happy to feel like he’d won.

*

“Do you think we can get him to come back?”

“I am not sure, Miss Granger.”

Hermione bit her lip and slumped back in the chair in front of the Headmaster’s desk. She had hoped so hard when Ron told her about the alarm and trap at Grimmauld Place that they’d found Harry. Even if it was because he would have stayed with Hadrian when he was trapped, at least he would be there, and they could talk to him.

Now, she didn’t know if she would ever see one of her best friends again.

Ron, seated next to her, awkwardly patted her on the shoulder. Hermione scooted her chair closer to him and leaned her head on his shoulder, thinking furiously.

There had to be some way of finding Harry. Ron had managed to find out where Harry had gone with innovative thinking, going to the Room of Requirement and asking to see what Harry had done there. Why couldn’t they come up with some similar method to find Harry?

There had to be a way.

There has to be a way.

Hermione took a deep breath after a few seconds and sat up. She’d had an idea, but more because it was the only possible one than because she knew how to make it work. “Sir? What if we could make something like the Marauder’s Map, but focused on Harry?”

Headmaster Dumbledore peered at her with thoughtful eyes. “What are you thinking, Miss Granger?”

“Just that—the map shows everyone in a certain area. I know that we can’t use the same kind of trick to find Harry, because we don’t know where he is, and maybe none of us would have visited it even if we did. But we know Harry himself. We know his personality and the way he thinks and—we have hair, right? Could we use that to track him?”

Headmaster Dumbledore hesitated. Then he said, “Hair is more useful in potions, such as Polyjuice, than applications of the kind you are talking about, Miss Granger.”

“Oh.” Hermione drooped.

“But blood would let us track him, wouldn’t it?” Ron asked abruptly.

Hermione sat up. That had been the thing she was trying to remember, the knowledge nagging at her and forcing her to consider this method. She nodded. “Yes, that’s right! If we could get his blood somehow, if Madam Pomfrey has it…sir, please say that you have it!”

Dumbledore hesitated an even longer time. Hermione kept staring at him. She thought he would have just said “No” immediately if he didn’t have access to Harry’s blood. But there was some kind of problem.

“I do, in a way, have it,” Dumbledore murmured.

“But?” Ron asked. Hermione just leaned forwards and increased the intensity of her stare. It actually seemed to be making Dumbledore uncomfortable, but she would do that if it meant that she had a way to track her friend.

He made Harry so upset that he ran away, thought he couldn’t trust us, and summoned Hadrian. He has to bear part of the responsibility.

“It is an artifact that is connected to the blood of his aunt and cousin rather than Harry,” Dumbledore said quietly. “It was used to monitor the wards on the house on Privet Drive, which are no more. And the artifact is currently in pieces.”

“But you could put them back together, right, sir?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore acknowledged slowly. “Although it would take fairly advanced alchemy, and at least a week.”

Hermione swallowed. She wanted to say that they didn’t have a week, but they didn’t have any other way to track Harry, either. She reckoned they would just have to accept this and do anything they could to help Dumbledore.

Otherwise…

Wait and hope.

“Will you please try, sir?”

Dumbledore nodded once, and then again, harder. “I wish my old friend Nicholas was with me. It would make things both easier and faster. But needs must, and I will find him, Miss Granger—Hermione. I will.”

“Thank you, sir. If I can help, with research or anything like that…”

“I will be sure to let you know.”

Dumbledore kindly but firmly escorted them out of the office after that, and Hermione and Ron stood staring at each other as the moving staircase escorted them downwards. Ron finally broke the silence. “Do you think we’ll manage to find Harry?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“What about—convincing him to come back?”

Hermione took a deep, difficult breath. She wanted to say that of course they would, that they and Harry had been friends for years, but it was difficult, remembering the way that Harry had just run away with Hadrian.

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

*

Harry opened his eyes, and felt a flutter of relief and warmth and happiness in his chest that he didn’t understand at first. Then he rolled over and saw Hadrian resting beside him, one arm draped towards Harry. Harry must have rolled in the night, though, and Hadrian’s arm had slid off.

Harry swallowed. The warmth spread and consumed him.

In the end, he and Hadrian hadn’t done much last night. Some kissing, some touching. Harry had got off, but Hadrian had ended up slipping into sleep in the middle of telling Harry that he didn’t need to return the favor. He was still a lot more magically exhausted than he had realized, Harry thought, leaning towards Hadrian and staring at his face.

Harry’s own face, in a way.

But the longer Harry spent with Hadrian, the more he looked at him, the more he saw hm. And saw the differences. Hadrian had lines of pain carved into his face that Harry didn’t. His scar was more faded—although Harry thought he might catch up in time, now that his Horcrux was gone. His hair had what looked like a permanent spell cast on it that made it just a little wavier than Harry’s.

And of course he was taller and stronger, and braver, and he had left the Dursleys behind before his first year.

But for once, Harry didn’t feel like he was lacking in comparison to Hadrian. He was thinking of the way Hadrian had talked about his world and the people in his world, and the ritual that had destroyed the Horcruxes and taken away his name. Hadrian had so many things, but he hadn’t had friends or Sirius.

And Hadrian never would have stayed with Harry, honestly, if he really thought Harry lacking. Or at most he would have got Harry out of trouble and left him somewhere and gone on his way.

I must be better than I think, because Hadrian thinks I’m better.

And that eased into a decision that Harry hadn’t realized he’d made. He reached out and shook Hadrian’s shoulder to wake him up.

Hadrian woke, yawning and wrinkling his nose. He looked like Harry when he did that, or the way Harry thought he looked when he woke up. Harry smiled, and made sure that he was meeting Hadrian’s eyes when he opened them.

Hadrian smiled at him immediately, reflexively. Harry wondered why he’d never noticed that before. “Yes, Harry? What is it?”

“Are you—rested enough?”

Hadrian’s smile immediately changed, and he changed from just lying down to almost lounging, folding his arms behind his neck. “Yeah,” he said softly. “What do you want? Me to suck you? Touch you?”

“Fuck me.”

Hadrian’s mouth actually hung open. Harry couldn’t help himself, and he laughed.

Then he winced. Hadrian was proud enough that he might be upset about Harry laughing at him—

But Hadrian smiled in the next moment, and it was a different smile from all the others. He reached out and traced his fingers over Harry’s faded lightning bolt scar, down and across his cheek. “Are you certain? We don’t have to. Not right now. We can wait—”

“We’ve waited. And I almost lost you yesterday.”

“You did not.”

“You didn’t immediately know what to do when the Horcrux broke free, did you?”

Hadrian hesitated, and then bowed his head. “No, but I figured it out. And then I was tired, but you didn’t almost lose me.”

“I did! And I want you!”

“You want this memory in case—what? You do lose me?”

“That won’t happen now, because I’ll make you take some bloody precautions,” Harry snapped, and watched as Hadrian’s face changed into a delighted expression. Maybe just because he was talking about protecting Hadrian, maybe because he’d sworn. “But I want you to be mine, and I want to celebrate, and—please, Hadrian.”

Hadrian gave a low moan, eyes locked on Harry. Harry promptly perked up. He had felt, before this, that Hadrian was the one making him feel things, but it seemed he could affect Hadrian, too.

For example, the way those wide eyes were locked on him said that Hadrian really liked the word “please.”

“Please,” Harry said again, and ducked his head, trying to look up through his eyelashes. Hadrian had accused him of doing that on purpose a few times, so Harry might as well try it now. “Will you fuck me?”

Hadrian rolled over, and rolled Harry beneath him. Harry gave a sudden squeak of shock. Hadrian stared down at him from so close that his eyes locked black, his trembling hand rising to caress Harry’s hair.

“Yes,” Hadrian said, in Parseltongue.

*

Hadrian’s hands were shaking with the goad of his own desire as he prepared Harry. He went slowly, he used all the spells that he knew and a few that he’d briefly left the bed to look up, and he still wondered if it was enough. If Harry would change his mind halfway through and decide it was too much, that it hurt.

But Harry lay there with his legs spread, and looked at Hadrian with utter trust, and Hadrian realized at, yes, about the halfway point of the process, that neither of them was going to stop.

He explored Harry with his fingers, which he’d done before. Harry’s eyes always got large, and Hadrian paused more than once, vigilant in case he hurt Harry. But Harry grasped his legs, which he’d never done before, and lifted them as high as he could go.

“Please,” he said, in Parseltongue.

Hadrian hissed in response, a wordless noise of intense pleasure, and slid forwards. Harry tilted his head back, throat working, as he accepted Hadrian with his body the way he had already accepted him with his heart.

As deep as he could go, Hadrian bent over and hissed softly to Harry. Harry thrashed for a second, his legs flailing as if he didn’t know where to put them. Hadrian grabbed one and looped it around his waist.

Then he decided, No, and he reached out and spent a moment bending Harry until his legs were over Hadrian’s shoulders. Harry stared at him with eyes so large that Hadrian thought he could see right through them into Harry’s soul, now Horcrux-free.

“Now,” Hadrian said, and began to fuck Harry.

*

It hurt. It flashed like fire. It was wonderful.

Harry had never known that a position like this, with him basically bent in half, was possible, and he was astonished by it. That astonishment poured through him like fire, too, and he was—

He was in Hadrian’s arms, Hadrian’s bed, and he never wanted to leave.

Hadrian fucked him with force, his head bowed and his face tucked into Harry’s thigh half the time. Harry reached towards him, but his hand fell short.

Then Hadrian somehow shifted a little closer, and now Harry’s legs were really bent, and the pleasure crowded through him again, because Hadrian was pushing against his prostate, which he’d only briefly touched before, and it was wonderful, and Harry wanted.

He looked up, and Hadrian bent, neck and shoulders obviously straining, and kissed him. Harry sobbed a little, because this position was even closer to being bent in half, and Hadrian gave a laugh as strained as his bend and drew back a little.

Harry caught his breath, and then Hadrian really began to fuck him.

*

So this is why people make such a big deal out of sex.

The thought blazed in Hadrian’s mind and disappeared like a crack of thunder. He was too busy staring at Harry to think much.

Harry’s wide eyes. The way that the firelight caught on his neck and throat. The way he tossed his head back and sometimes made little murmurs that Hadrian didn’t even think he knew he was making. The crinkle of the sheets beneath Harry as he shifted. The way he reached out. How he touched. How he felt, sleek and warm around Hadrian’s cock.

Harry’s own cock, bobbing and jerking and slapping against his stomach.

There was so much here—so much—sweeping him up and carrying him off and making him—

Hadrian came with a clenching of his muscles and a shaking that actually hurt, enough that the noise he made was a bitten-off cry of pain. Then he reached down and stroked Harry to completion, because watching Harry lie there, panting, not yet consumed with the same kind of pleasure, hurt nearly as much.

Harry clenched and released and followed him. Hadrian stared down at him, not sure that the wild beating of his heart was all from the sex.

No. He knew it wasn’t.

He waited until Harry had opened his eyes again, and then he rolled on the bed and gathered him close. He should perform a cleaning charm, he thought hastily, but Harry wasn’t complaining, and—

Maybe he hadn’t recovered from the magical exhaustion of battling the Horcrux, after all.

He gathered Harry closer than ever, until Harry’s face was smashed into his chest. Harry still didn’t complain. Then again, Hadrian thought, hearing the depth of his snores, maybe he had fallen asleep while Hadrian was still laying himself down.

I fucked him senseless.

Hadrian smiled. He knew it was smug. He knew he was feeling accomplished in a way he hadn’t since he had found the first of Voldemort’s safehouses the summer after his first year and convinced the wards to accept him.

This was different, though. Not because of Voldemort. Because of Harry.

I can’t wait to make him feel good again.

*

“Do you need a Cushioning Charm on the chair?”

Harry flushed. He should have known that Hadrian would realize Harry was sitting in the chair across from him and flexing his arse, clenching and releasing his muscles.

“Of course not. You did a really good job with the preparation, and I’m barely sore. I can sit on a chair.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I—remembering what it felt like to have you inside me.”

Hadrian’s eyes darkened. For a long moment, Harry thought they would either skip breakfast, or Hadrian would simply spread Harry out on the table and take him right there.

I’m a person who thinks like that, now, Harry thought, and there was power and pride and pleasure in the thought.

But in the end, Hadrian laughed a little and glanced away, shaking his head. “I should give you longer to recover before that happens again.”

“Are you going to?”

The look Hadrian gave him was full of enough heat to be reassuring, but he also smiled and said, “Yes, actually. But there’s nothing wrong with my knees.” And before Harry could wonder what he meant by that, Hadrian stood up, took one quick stride around the table, and sank to his knees before Harry.

Harry just stared at him. Hadrian kept his eyes on Harry’s, not smirking, not really smiling, just having a gentle shadow hovering around the corner of his mouth, as he reached out and unfastened Harry’s robes.

There was nothing wrong with his mouth, either. Or his hair, which Harry had his hands buried in when he came.

Afterwards, Harry braced his leg, and Hadrian rubbed his own cock off against it, the same barely-there-smile on his face. When he came, he tossed his head back and groaned, and Harry shook with something that might be love, for all he knew.

He didn’t know if it was possible to be in love with your other self from another dimension. But if it was, Harry thought he was probably heading there.

*

Albus took a step back from the reassembled silver instrument on his desk and spent a long moment examining the knobs that projected from it, and the slender disks that whirled around each other in the center, for flaws. But as far as he could see, he’d used alchemy to transform the silver perfectly.

He nodded. If there was merit in Miss Granger’s idea, then he would accomplish it.

Albus did have to close his eyes for long moments when he began the spell that would, hopefully, connect Harry and the artifact. He would have to work without an incantation and with the artifact substituting for his wand, driving the whole mechanism forwards through desire and will.

He had done this before, but mostly when he was much younger. Now, he had to struggle to remember how to reach out, how to skim his mind over the surface of the artifact like a swallow over water, how to—

There.

There was a nearly audible click in his mind, and Albus felt his thoughts turn, speeding over the miles. He received confusing flashes for a long moment, images of trees and books and Hedwig at rest in an owlery. Then he saw—

An image flashed before him, shining with such power that it utterly threw Albus out of the delicate state of concentration needed to run the instrument. He collapsed to the floor, blood running from his nose, and only slowly picked himself back up.

The image remained in his mind.

Gellert’s symbol. The Deathly Hallows, the triangle and the circle and the line. The Cloak and the Stone and the Wand.

Hadrian, what have you done?

*

This time, the ripple was more like a shout. It jerked Voldemort out of sound reverie, and he opened his eyes, a familiar symbol blazing in his mind, although it took him long moments to remember where he had seen it.

Carved on the Ring, he remembered at last. The symbol of an old family, the Gaunt family. Of his Horcrux.

Voldemort hissed and rose as smoke from the bed where he had been not sleeping. He fled out the window and began to travel, in the silent, secret way that he needed now, so as to lead no one else to one of his Horcruxes.

He landed outside the shack in Little Hangleton, and he entered, and when he found his Ring was gone, his rage was terrible.