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lomonaaerenTitle: The Realities of Courtship
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle
Content Notes: Time travel, angst, violence, soulmate-identifying marks, open ending
Rating: : PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3900
Summary: Harry’s an experienced time traveler by now, and he knows very well that trying to kill Tom Riddle doesn’t work, because the force of history will always save him. But if he keeps Riddle occupied—specifically by pretending to be the git’s soulmate—then maybe something can be done.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It will have a second part, to be posted tomorrow.
The Realities of Courtship
The thump of his feet echoed through this deserted section of the Forbidden Forest.
Harry straightened and glanced down at his hands, nodding when he saw that he seemed to be back in his sixteen-year-old body. And all human, too. The time he’d ended up with tentacles had been disconcerting.
He tilted his head back and took several deep breaths. Air, breathable. Good. There had also been the time that sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle had managed to unleash something far worse than the basilisk and Harry would have died if he hadn’t Leaped at once. He’d only found out what had happened there by going back and watching that world’s past through a Lens.
Wand. Check. Harry drew it and held it, sighing as he watched the Elder Wand twist and shimmer into what looked like a chestnut version of itself. Very well. That probably meant Dumbledore held the Wand now, despite the fact that Harry should have arrived before hie duel with Grindelwald.
Leaping was imprecise, uncertain. Harry was doing the best he could.
It was all the same world, though. Not different worlds. But time and history pulled the world between them like taffy, there could be different pasts and different futures, and only the strongest and most important constants held true no matter the path.
It was unfortunate that Tom Riddle was one of those constants.
Harry pulled back his left sleeve and put the wand to the inside of his forearm. Then he closed his eyes and thought, as clearly and carefully as he could, about one of the scars that Tom Riddle had carried in every universe.
The Elder Wand cut him, and healed the cut at the same moment. Harry had found that the Wand was perfectly willing to hurt him as long as the hurt wasn’t permanent.
You’d think it would want to go with someone stronger than me. Someone who would use it to hurt enemies more often than himself.
The Wand trembled and sparked in his hand. Harry sighed. Yeah, the damn Deathly Hallows had made their decision, and they didn’t go to other people even in times and pasts when they could have.
Harry slid his wand into his holster and held up his left arm. Yes, the scar was in the same position and the same size and shape as Riddle’s, and it had the odd green tinge, as though Riddle was the one who had barely escaped the Killing Curse.
Harry smiled grimly. The scar was another constant.
*
“SLYTHERIN!”
Harry put the Sorting Hat down on the stool next to him with a nod. It had been years since the bloody thing had tried to Sort him anywhere else, and even longer since they’d had any kind of discussion.
Which was perfectly fine with Harry.
He walked towards the Slytherin table, which began clapping and cheering a moment later. Harry ignored that. He was here under his real first name but one of his adopted names of Steel, and they would know well enough that there were no purebloods in Britain with that name.
And not supporting purebloods was still dangerous here, although Harry had gathered during the past week of reconnaissance, and his work with the Lens before that, that Grindelwald had been defeated the year before in this version of the past.
Tom Riddle stared at Harry as Harry sat down at the end of the bench. Harry ignored him. That would get Riddle’s attention far faster than engaging him, and it wasn’t as though Harry had to gape because Riddle was handsome or unexpected. Harry was just used to him now, after so many journeys to the past.
“Steel?”
Harry smiled at Abraxas Malfoy, who never got any more tolerable. He made Draco seem like an open-minded, fair champion of justice and equality.
(Maybe Draco would even have got the chance to be that, if he hadn’t been killed in a resurgence of former Death Eaters near the end of their eighth year).
“Yeah.”
“Not a pureblood name.”
“Did I say I was?”
“You won’t fit into Slytherin if you’re not a pureblood.”
“It seems being a pompous arse is another requirement.”
Malfoy withdrew in offended silence. Harry served himself food and ate in equal silence, ignoring the covert glances and the few people who outright asked his story. He had a story, of course, he always did, but it was best to keep it vague.
That way, he could make Riddle feel special when Harry fed him little drips, a bit at a time.
*
The chance came that first night Harry was in the sixth-year Slytherin boys’ dormitory, somewhat to his surprise. Fate so rarely cooperated with him like this. But Riddle was dressing, and his sleeve fell away from his left forearm.
Harry gasped sharply, stumbling away and letting his back connect with one of the bedposts. His gaze remained fixed on Riddle, and he reached towards his left arm and clutched it with one hand.
Riddle laughed softly. “Like what you see, Steel?”
“I—how long have you had that scar?”
Riddle became as tense as a black mamba, although almost no one would notice who didn’t know him as well as Harry did. “What do you mean?”
“I just—I have the same one,” Harry said hoarsely, and tilted his arm to show Riddle the new scar without taking his eyes from the one that Riddle had.
Silence spread around them like a pool of venom, although Harry also heard Malfoy curse under his breath. There were legends about people, soulmates with the same mark, but they were legends, rather like the ones that some magical people told about themselves as descendants of the population of Atlantis. It didn’t happen.
And because it didn’t happen, people got to spin all sorts of tales of perfection around it, like the other person being the ideal match to your soul. The soul Riddle had probably already tattered with Horcruxes.
Riddle’s face snapped into a cracked mask. Harry hadn’t seen him this taken off-guard in a long, long time (except when he got buried underneath Harry’s Siberian tiger Animagus form, maybe). “No,” he breathed.
“Yes.” Harry gave him a strained smile and turned away, shaking his head. “But it’s all right. We don’t need to do anything about it. I suspect that you probably didn’t plan for this any more than I did.”
“You do not know what I have planned.”
Harry shrugged, because if he said that he didn’t Riddle would probably sense the lie, and crawled into the canopied bed that was against the far wall. He had ended up between Malfoy and Nott again. Oh, well. It wasn’t like he hadn’t endured far more than that, he thought as he curled up and buried his head in the pillow.
Voices flickered back and forth like flames outside his curtains. Harry heard mention of “Steel” and “Mudblood” and “soulmate” more than once, until Riddle spoke harshly and all of them shut up.
Harry smiled into his pillow.
*
“And you don’t know much about your parents?”
Harry shook his head and reached for the cinnamon to put in his porridge, biting his lip to conceal his amusement at Malfoy’s disgusted glance. Honestly, Harry had already had to fight to keep in his amusement. Malfoy had sat down beside him this morning and started questioning Harry’s parentage in increasingly detailed and frantic terms.
It was so obvious that he was on a scouting mission from Riddle, and that Riddle would think less of any soulmate of his who had Muggle heritage.
“Then maybe both of them were purebloods?”
Harry shrugged a little and ate a spoonful of porridge so thick with sugar and cinnamon that it crunched. Malfoy flinched next to him as if Harry had aimed a Killing Curse in his direction. “Nope,” Harry said cheerfully through a mouthful of food. “But I grew up with my aunt, and she was as Muggle as you can get, so my mother must have been Muggleborn like my aunt claimed.”
“What happened to your aunt?”
“Oh, I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“What’s her name?”
Harry leaned close to Malfoy as if he were going to share a secret, and Malfoy audibly held his breath and leaned close, too. “I can’t tell you,” Harry whispered loudly. “There are still pureblood supremacists around even after Grindelwald’s defeat, you know. Not safe.”
He nodded wisely and went back to his breakfast.
Riddle came striding into the Great Hall, his gaze drawn to Harry. Harry waved back and then continued eating. Malfoy gave a loud, exasperated sigh and stood up to make his way over to Riddle and whisper into his ear.
From the dark look on Riddle’s face, he was ripping into Malfoy verbally. Malfoy just stood there and took it. Harry snorted and went on eating, not looking up when Orion Black tried to engage him in conversation, until Black gave up and went away.
Harry would do this on his own terms, and exactly by being himself, he would become someone Riddle couldn’t resist.
*
“Steel.”
“That’s me.” Harry gave Riddle a meaningless smile and turned back to the thick vines in front of him. He hadn’t taken sixth-year Herbology in several Leaps. It was hard to remember exactly what he was supposed to feed these vines.
And why he was supposed to fear them. He carried enough scars in his soul that he never worried about any he might accumulate on his body anymore. Besides, they would be gone again in the next Leap.
You don’t want to Leap again, though, remember? You want to distract Riddle so thoroughly that the world can just proceed and there will be no war.
Right.
“Why have you not sought me out to talk about our soulmate marks?”
Riddle’s voice was soft, but Harry still heard him well enough. He blinked and looked up. “Well, you seemed pretty disgusted that it was me. A half-blood, and someone you’d never met before. So I decided to stay away from you.”
“You fear rejection?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re a genius. You’re someone who’s handsome and seems to rule our year group. I reckon that you don’t need someone like me. I’m a curiosity, maybe. But you told me that I didn’t know what you have planned. You’re right. You probably have no use for a soulmate in your life.”
Harry kept his voice as matter-of-fact as he could, but his tone cracked in the middle, exactly as he’d planned. He cleared his throat and stared down at the vines again. He noticed Riddle parting the ones in his own pot with swift, efficient motions, in a way that meant he never needed to look away from Harry, and tried half-heartedly to imitate him.
“Soulmates are sacred.”
“But you don’t strike me as someone who holds much sacred.”
Riddle blinked, once, as slow as a lizard on a carcass. “What gave you that impression?”
“You stare at everyone with your lip curled, or like it’s going to curl any second. And I repeat: half-blood, raised in the Muggle world, not that good at classes with all my time out of a structured school environment, me.” Harry flapped his hand at himself. He had got good at speaking the truth to a Legilimens in such a way that it was better than a lie. “You’re probably not tempted at all. If you’d found a pureblood soulmate, maybe. But they still probably couldn’t keep up with you in looks or talent.”
“But you were meant for me.”
The charge in Riddle’s voice sent an unexpected bolt of lightning down Harry’s spine. He turned back to Riddle, tucking his chin down so that he was staring at Riddle out of half-lidded eyes, and murmured, “Well.”
“And I was meant for you.”
Harry swallowed. It was part of his role, the way it had to be. The only way he was going to win and save the world was by distracting Riddle.
But there was something compelling about the way Riddle stared at him with huge dark eyes. Harry hadn’t thought there would be. He had thought he would sacrifice his own freedom to love who he wished for the sake of everyone else. And he had been content with that.
“I would satisfy you.”
It seemed that Riddle had picked up on at least some of his thoughts—although it couldn’t be everything, or he would have flown at Harry’s throat. Harry had to be careful about making eye contact with him for too long. He glanced down now and gave a deliberately clumsy rip at the vines, starting when they recoiled and lashed at him.
Riddle laughed, long and delighted and deep. All over the greenhouse, people turned to stare at them.
Harry didn’t have to work hard to bring a blush to his face.
*
“The wards on your trunk are abnormally strong.”
“Were you testing them, Riddle?”
Harry was sprawled on his bed, reading a Quidditch magazine. It was kind of amusing to see the names of famous Quidditch players he knew from history dancing across the page, and watch them standing near their brooms and winking up from the moving photographs.
Only kind of amusing, though. He had met some of those people on his last Leap, fought beside some of them, and had watched them die with sickening speed when they set themselves against Riddle as he had been then.
“Yes. What are you hiding in there?”
“Personal things.”
Harry could feel Malfoy and Black and Lestrange and the rest staring at them with sharp interest. None of them had ever met someone who would dare to frustrate Riddle.
At least, not in this iteration.
“You could tell me what they are. We’re soulmates, Harry.”
Harry let himself jump and then flush. It was the first time Riddle had called him that. And it made Harry put down the magazine and pay attention to Riddle, the way the git had doubtless intended. When Harry looked at him, Riddle was posed on his bed, leaning on his elbow, artlessly tousled dark hair falling into his eyes.
Well, only artlessly if you don’t know him.
Harry acted flustered and stared at the floor for a second. Then he said, “I didn’t think that mattered to you.”
“What has every bit of attention I’ve paid to you in the past few days said?”
“That you’d given up on getting information about me by other means.”
Riddle leaned a little further forwards. His eyes were wide and hurt. Harry wondered, appreciatively, how many people had given in to that seeming promise in his eyes and got themselves hurt.
“I have asked through the mouths of others because I did not wish to pressure you by approaching you myself, Harry.” Riddle tilted his head and looked more appealing than ever. Harry was pretty sure he heard at least one sigh from their attentive group of watching Slytherin boys. “But I promise, I am interested. I want to hear all about you. Your dreams, your plans, your desires.”
Harry leaned forwards, and flicked his wand to raise a dome of silence around them. Riddle started. Harry thought it might be the spell—which had only existed in one version of the world—as well as the fact that Harry had performed it wordlessly.
“You only want to know that so you can fold me into your own plans,” Harry whispered.
Riddle’s eyes were full of hunger. Harry thought that emotion might be what made him an unfortunate constant of the world. He wanted to devour everything. He wanted to know every spell in existence. He wanted to take everyone who crossed his path and make them into a tool or a weapon, or suck as much use as he could out of them, like a leech, before he discarded their empty husks.
He wanted.
Now Harry had dangled the temptation of a soulmate in front of him, and of course Riddle would latch onto that. Harry was counting on him.
“Who is to say that that has to be a bad thing, Harry? Who is to say that we could not be magnificent, together? When I read about the blessing of soulmates and how rare they are, I didn’t think one would be vouchsafed to me, on top of all my other blessings. But here you are. I would give you the best life possible. And belonging to me can be such luxury as you have never known.”
Harry let his eyes widen. He hadn’t really thought Riddle could talk like that, as if he held something sacred other than his own life and ambition, and sound so convincing. He ducked his head a little.
“Harry?” Riddle lowered his head as if trying to look into Harry’s face.
“That would be wonderful,” Harry whispered.
“Would?”
“If it were real. It’s not. But you did a good job of trying to sell it to me, Riddle. I respect you for that.”
Harry smiled at Riddle and swished the curtains of his bed shut. He was in time to see the look of immense frustration on Riddle’s face.
*
“What do you have?”
“An aching back.”
Riddle had powerful enough magic that the air around him turned noticeably cooler as he spun to face Harry. Harry blinked innocently back at him. They were coming from Defense, where Harry had had to spend time dodging Riddle’s spells and had fallen on the floor once. An aching back made perfect sense.
Riddle raised a Silencing Charm around them—an ordinary one, not like the spell that had only existed in one reality which Harry had raised—and said, “I have many gifts.”
“Congratulations.”
Riddle crossed his arms and bowed his head. He didn’t smile in the lipless way Harry associated with Voldemort (and luckily, not in the way that he had smiled in the one world where he had almost managed to prevent Harry from Leaping), but it was fairly close. “I have Parseltongue. I have enormous magical strength. I have a subtle and brilliant mind.”
“I believe I’ve acknowledged that already.”
“If you are my soulmate, you should also have gifts. I don’t believe that you’re my soulmate if you don’t. Fate and magic would never have gifted me with someone ordinary, when you are supposed to be sacred.”
Harry leaned a little closer. Riddle mimicked him, eyes stretched wide and eager. Harry couldn’t tell if he was most eager for Harry to tell the truth or to fail to do so. He might want to continue enjoying his self-proclaimed pinnacle of supremacy.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s one you already share,” Harry hissed.
Riddle staggered back away him, his back hitting the wall of the corridor. Harry half-closed his eyes and smiled.
“My lord!”
“Are you all right, my lord?”
Harry ended the bubble of silence and walked past Riddle. He could feel the way that Riddle’s eyes pierced his back like javelins, but Harry wouldn’t give up his secrets that easily. If Riddle wanted to know if Harry was also an Heir of Slytherin, or something else, he would need to come to him.
Come to me, Riddle.
*
“Where did you learn to speak Parseltongue?”
“One doesn’t learn a magical language, Riddle.” Harry turned around and folded his arms. He had sought out a room deep in the dungeons where someone had once practiced dueling spells, or at least it seemed like it from the scores and deep scorch marks on the walls. He had known Riddle would watch and follow. “I’ve been able to speak it as long as I can remember.”
Harry could lie carefully to a Legilimens, but he was telling the full and unpolished truth now, and it seemed as if Riddle might understand and appreciate that. At least the ragged breaths he was taking said he did.
“You cannot be a descendent of Slytherin.”
“Did I say I was?”
“None but the descendants of Slytherin can speak Parseltongue.”
“And did you never think that Salazar came from somewhere? That people in other countries can speak it? That Britain isn’t the whole world?”
Riddle’s eyes widened again. He was almost attractive when he did that, Harry thought idly. At least, attractive to someone like Harry, who knew his whole sordid history. Riddle was attractive most of the time to most people.
“What else is special about you?”
Harry smiled, and Riddle might have taken a step back if he were anyone else. But he let Harry walk right up to him. Harry swept his hair back from his forehead. His scar was there. It was always there. It had faded a little after the Battle of Hogwarts in the first version of the world he had lived through, but it had burned bright and harsh again just before Harry had received news of Voldemort’s resurrection.
Brought back to life by another Horcrux, Harry had thought then. Now he understood. For some bloody reason, Riddle was one of the fulcrums on which the world spun. He couldn’t be killed by the kind of trickery Harry had used with the Elder Wand.
Of course, neither could the Master of Death.
“I survived the Killing Curse,” Harry whispered, and Riddle jerked. His Legilimency would be telling him it was the truth, and it was such a plain statement that he wouldn’t be able to find any technical truth or lie of omission within it.
Of course, being Tom Riddle, he tried. “You mean that someone cast it at you, and you dodged it.”
Harry laughed. “I mean that someone cast it at me, and hit me directly, and I lived.”
Riddle gaped. Harry had to admit that was a little satisfying. He had surprised Voldemort, sometimes, but never outright shocked him. And Riddle, as much as he tried, couldn’t fight his reaction under control for a moment.
Then he said, “Why would my soulmate need that gift?”
“Don’t you seek to conquer death, Riddle? To live as long as you wish, and never die? I do the same thing.”
Riddle charged then, bulling Harry up against the wall behind him and grabbing the collar of his robes. “You lie.”
“You know as well as I do that I’m not lying, Riddle.”
Riddle dived at his mind through their connected gazes, but slammed against Occlumency walls that Harry could claim as another gift. He had known, when he began to Leap, that he could never reveal the truth to anyone—not Snape, not Dumbledore, not any version of Riddle he met—and he had practiced and worked on the Occlumency as hard as he had worked on the crafting of the Lenses.
“That is—you can keep me out. No one can keep me out.”
Harry smiled at him. “Not Dumbledore?”
Riddle let him go and backed away. His wide, staring eyes remained fixed on Harry. Harry just stared unblinkingly back, and Riddle swallowed and shook his head a little.
“You know more than you should.”
“Why are you speaking in English? Soulmate?”
Riddle turned and marched out of the room. Harry chuckled a little. He wouldn’t be surprised if Riddle began running, or at least walking quickly, once he was out of sight. Harry had succeeded in unnerving him.
But being Riddle, he would never admit that had happened for long. He would come back. His own pride would compel him to challenge Harry.
Harry was looking forward to it.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle
Content Notes: Time travel, angst, violence, soulmate-identifying marks, open ending
Rating: : PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3900
Summary: Harry’s an experienced time traveler by now, and he knows very well that trying to kill Tom Riddle doesn’t work, because the force of history will always save him. But if he keeps Riddle occupied—specifically by pretending to be the git’s soulmate—then maybe something can be done.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It will have a second part, to be posted tomorrow.
The Realities of Courtship
The thump of his feet echoed through this deserted section of the Forbidden Forest.
Harry straightened and glanced down at his hands, nodding when he saw that he seemed to be back in his sixteen-year-old body. And all human, too. The time he’d ended up with tentacles had been disconcerting.
He tilted his head back and took several deep breaths. Air, breathable. Good. There had also been the time that sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle had managed to unleash something far worse than the basilisk and Harry would have died if he hadn’t Leaped at once. He’d only found out what had happened there by going back and watching that world’s past through a Lens.
Wand. Check. Harry drew it and held it, sighing as he watched the Elder Wand twist and shimmer into what looked like a chestnut version of itself. Very well. That probably meant Dumbledore held the Wand now, despite the fact that Harry should have arrived before hie duel with Grindelwald.
Leaping was imprecise, uncertain. Harry was doing the best he could.
It was all the same world, though. Not different worlds. But time and history pulled the world between them like taffy, there could be different pasts and different futures, and only the strongest and most important constants held true no matter the path.
It was unfortunate that Tom Riddle was one of those constants.
Harry pulled back his left sleeve and put the wand to the inside of his forearm. Then he closed his eyes and thought, as clearly and carefully as he could, about one of the scars that Tom Riddle had carried in every universe.
The Elder Wand cut him, and healed the cut at the same moment. Harry had found that the Wand was perfectly willing to hurt him as long as the hurt wasn’t permanent.
You’d think it would want to go with someone stronger than me. Someone who would use it to hurt enemies more often than himself.
The Wand trembled and sparked in his hand. Harry sighed. Yeah, the damn Deathly Hallows had made their decision, and they didn’t go to other people even in times and pasts when they could have.
Harry slid his wand into his holster and held up his left arm. Yes, the scar was in the same position and the same size and shape as Riddle’s, and it had the odd green tinge, as though Riddle was the one who had barely escaped the Killing Curse.
Harry smiled grimly. The scar was another constant.
*
“SLYTHERIN!”
Harry put the Sorting Hat down on the stool next to him with a nod. It had been years since the bloody thing had tried to Sort him anywhere else, and even longer since they’d had any kind of discussion.
Which was perfectly fine with Harry.
He walked towards the Slytherin table, which began clapping and cheering a moment later. Harry ignored that. He was here under his real first name but one of his adopted names of Steel, and they would know well enough that there were no purebloods in Britain with that name.
And not supporting purebloods was still dangerous here, although Harry had gathered during the past week of reconnaissance, and his work with the Lens before that, that Grindelwald had been defeated the year before in this version of the past.
Tom Riddle stared at Harry as Harry sat down at the end of the bench. Harry ignored him. That would get Riddle’s attention far faster than engaging him, and it wasn’t as though Harry had to gape because Riddle was handsome or unexpected. Harry was just used to him now, after so many journeys to the past.
“Steel?”
Harry smiled at Abraxas Malfoy, who never got any more tolerable. He made Draco seem like an open-minded, fair champion of justice and equality.
(Maybe Draco would even have got the chance to be that, if he hadn’t been killed in a resurgence of former Death Eaters near the end of their eighth year).
“Yeah.”
“Not a pureblood name.”
“Did I say I was?”
“You won’t fit into Slytherin if you’re not a pureblood.”
“It seems being a pompous arse is another requirement.”
Malfoy withdrew in offended silence. Harry served himself food and ate in equal silence, ignoring the covert glances and the few people who outright asked his story. He had a story, of course, he always did, but it was best to keep it vague.
That way, he could make Riddle feel special when Harry fed him little drips, a bit at a time.
*
The chance came that first night Harry was in the sixth-year Slytherin boys’ dormitory, somewhat to his surprise. Fate so rarely cooperated with him like this. But Riddle was dressing, and his sleeve fell away from his left forearm.
Harry gasped sharply, stumbling away and letting his back connect with one of the bedposts. His gaze remained fixed on Riddle, and he reached towards his left arm and clutched it with one hand.
Riddle laughed softly. “Like what you see, Steel?”
“I—how long have you had that scar?”
Riddle became as tense as a black mamba, although almost no one would notice who didn’t know him as well as Harry did. “What do you mean?”
“I just—I have the same one,” Harry said hoarsely, and tilted his arm to show Riddle the new scar without taking his eyes from the one that Riddle had.
Silence spread around them like a pool of venom, although Harry also heard Malfoy curse under his breath. There were legends about people, soulmates with the same mark, but they were legends, rather like the ones that some magical people told about themselves as descendants of the population of Atlantis. It didn’t happen.
And because it didn’t happen, people got to spin all sorts of tales of perfection around it, like the other person being the ideal match to your soul. The soul Riddle had probably already tattered with Horcruxes.
Riddle’s face snapped into a cracked mask. Harry hadn’t seen him this taken off-guard in a long, long time (except when he got buried underneath Harry’s Siberian tiger Animagus form, maybe). “No,” he breathed.
“Yes.” Harry gave him a strained smile and turned away, shaking his head. “But it’s all right. We don’t need to do anything about it. I suspect that you probably didn’t plan for this any more than I did.”
“You do not know what I have planned.”
Harry shrugged, because if he said that he didn’t Riddle would probably sense the lie, and crawled into the canopied bed that was against the far wall. He had ended up between Malfoy and Nott again. Oh, well. It wasn’t like he hadn’t endured far more than that, he thought as he curled up and buried his head in the pillow.
Voices flickered back and forth like flames outside his curtains. Harry heard mention of “Steel” and “Mudblood” and “soulmate” more than once, until Riddle spoke harshly and all of them shut up.
Harry smiled into his pillow.
*
“And you don’t know much about your parents?”
Harry shook his head and reached for the cinnamon to put in his porridge, biting his lip to conceal his amusement at Malfoy’s disgusted glance. Honestly, Harry had already had to fight to keep in his amusement. Malfoy had sat down beside him this morning and started questioning Harry’s parentage in increasingly detailed and frantic terms.
It was so obvious that he was on a scouting mission from Riddle, and that Riddle would think less of any soulmate of his who had Muggle heritage.
“Then maybe both of them were purebloods?”
Harry shrugged a little and ate a spoonful of porridge so thick with sugar and cinnamon that it crunched. Malfoy flinched next to him as if Harry had aimed a Killing Curse in his direction. “Nope,” Harry said cheerfully through a mouthful of food. “But I grew up with my aunt, and she was as Muggle as you can get, so my mother must have been Muggleborn like my aunt claimed.”
“What happened to your aunt?”
“Oh, I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“What’s her name?”
Harry leaned close to Malfoy as if he were going to share a secret, and Malfoy audibly held his breath and leaned close, too. “I can’t tell you,” Harry whispered loudly. “There are still pureblood supremacists around even after Grindelwald’s defeat, you know. Not safe.”
He nodded wisely and went back to his breakfast.
Riddle came striding into the Great Hall, his gaze drawn to Harry. Harry waved back and then continued eating. Malfoy gave a loud, exasperated sigh and stood up to make his way over to Riddle and whisper into his ear.
From the dark look on Riddle’s face, he was ripping into Malfoy verbally. Malfoy just stood there and took it. Harry snorted and went on eating, not looking up when Orion Black tried to engage him in conversation, until Black gave up and went away.
Harry would do this on his own terms, and exactly by being himself, he would become someone Riddle couldn’t resist.
*
“Steel.”
“That’s me.” Harry gave Riddle a meaningless smile and turned back to the thick vines in front of him. He hadn’t taken sixth-year Herbology in several Leaps. It was hard to remember exactly what he was supposed to feed these vines.
And why he was supposed to fear them. He carried enough scars in his soul that he never worried about any he might accumulate on his body anymore. Besides, they would be gone again in the next Leap.
You don’t want to Leap again, though, remember? You want to distract Riddle so thoroughly that the world can just proceed and there will be no war.
Right.
“Why have you not sought me out to talk about our soulmate marks?”
Riddle’s voice was soft, but Harry still heard him well enough. He blinked and looked up. “Well, you seemed pretty disgusted that it was me. A half-blood, and someone you’d never met before. So I decided to stay away from you.”
“You fear rejection?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re a genius. You’re someone who’s handsome and seems to rule our year group. I reckon that you don’t need someone like me. I’m a curiosity, maybe. But you told me that I didn’t know what you have planned. You’re right. You probably have no use for a soulmate in your life.”
Harry kept his voice as matter-of-fact as he could, but his tone cracked in the middle, exactly as he’d planned. He cleared his throat and stared down at the vines again. He noticed Riddle parting the ones in his own pot with swift, efficient motions, in a way that meant he never needed to look away from Harry, and tried half-heartedly to imitate him.
“Soulmates are sacred.”
“But you don’t strike me as someone who holds much sacred.”
Riddle blinked, once, as slow as a lizard on a carcass. “What gave you that impression?”
“You stare at everyone with your lip curled, or like it’s going to curl any second. And I repeat: half-blood, raised in the Muggle world, not that good at classes with all my time out of a structured school environment, me.” Harry flapped his hand at himself. He had got good at speaking the truth to a Legilimens in such a way that it was better than a lie. “You’re probably not tempted at all. If you’d found a pureblood soulmate, maybe. But they still probably couldn’t keep up with you in looks or talent.”
“But you were meant for me.”
The charge in Riddle’s voice sent an unexpected bolt of lightning down Harry’s spine. He turned back to Riddle, tucking his chin down so that he was staring at Riddle out of half-lidded eyes, and murmured, “Well.”
“And I was meant for you.”
Harry swallowed. It was part of his role, the way it had to be. The only way he was going to win and save the world was by distracting Riddle.
But there was something compelling about the way Riddle stared at him with huge dark eyes. Harry hadn’t thought there would be. He had thought he would sacrifice his own freedom to love who he wished for the sake of everyone else. And he had been content with that.
“I would satisfy you.”
It seemed that Riddle had picked up on at least some of his thoughts—although it couldn’t be everything, or he would have flown at Harry’s throat. Harry had to be careful about making eye contact with him for too long. He glanced down now and gave a deliberately clumsy rip at the vines, starting when they recoiled and lashed at him.
Riddle laughed, long and delighted and deep. All over the greenhouse, people turned to stare at them.
Harry didn’t have to work hard to bring a blush to his face.
*
“The wards on your trunk are abnormally strong.”
“Were you testing them, Riddle?”
Harry was sprawled on his bed, reading a Quidditch magazine. It was kind of amusing to see the names of famous Quidditch players he knew from history dancing across the page, and watch them standing near their brooms and winking up from the moving photographs.
Only kind of amusing, though. He had met some of those people on his last Leap, fought beside some of them, and had watched them die with sickening speed when they set themselves against Riddle as he had been then.
“Yes. What are you hiding in there?”
“Personal things.”
Harry could feel Malfoy and Black and Lestrange and the rest staring at them with sharp interest. None of them had ever met someone who would dare to frustrate Riddle.
At least, not in this iteration.
“You could tell me what they are. We’re soulmates, Harry.”
Harry let himself jump and then flush. It was the first time Riddle had called him that. And it made Harry put down the magazine and pay attention to Riddle, the way the git had doubtless intended. When Harry looked at him, Riddle was posed on his bed, leaning on his elbow, artlessly tousled dark hair falling into his eyes.
Well, only artlessly if you don’t know him.
Harry acted flustered and stared at the floor for a second. Then he said, “I didn’t think that mattered to you.”
“What has every bit of attention I’ve paid to you in the past few days said?”
“That you’d given up on getting information about me by other means.”
Riddle leaned a little further forwards. His eyes were wide and hurt. Harry wondered, appreciatively, how many people had given in to that seeming promise in his eyes and got themselves hurt.
“I have asked through the mouths of others because I did not wish to pressure you by approaching you myself, Harry.” Riddle tilted his head and looked more appealing than ever. Harry was pretty sure he heard at least one sigh from their attentive group of watching Slytherin boys. “But I promise, I am interested. I want to hear all about you. Your dreams, your plans, your desires.”
Harry leaned forwards, and flicked his wand to raise a dome of silence around them. Riddle started. Harry thought it might be the spell—which had only existed in one version of the world—as well as the fact that Harry had performed it wordlessly.
“You only want to know that so you can fold me into your own plans,” Harry whispered.
Riddle’s eyes were full of hunger. Harry thought that emotion might be what made him an unfortunate constant of the world. He wanted to devour everything. He wanted to know every spell in existence. He wanted to take everyone who crossed his path and make them into a tool or a weapon, or suck as much use as he could out of them, like a leech, before he discarded their empty husks.
He wanted.
Now Harry had dangled the temptation of a soulmate in front of him, and of course Riddle would latch onto that. Harry was counting on him.
“Who is to say that that has to be a bad thing, Harry? Who is to say that we could not be magnificent, together? When I read about the blessing of soulmates and how rare they are, I didn’t think one would be vouchsafed to me, on top of all my other blessings. But here you are. I would give you the best life possible. And belonging to me can be such luxury as you have never known.”
Harry let his eyes widen. He hadn’t really thought Riddle could talk like that, as if he held something sacred other than his own life and ambition, and sound so convincing. He ducked his head a little.
“Harry?” Riddle lowered his head as if trying to look into Harry’s face.
“That would be wonderful,” Harry whispered.
“Would?”
“If it were real. It’s not. But you did a good job of trying to sell it to me, Riddle. I respect you for that.”
Harry smiled at Riddle and swished the curtains of his bed shut. He was in time to see the look of immense frustration on Riddle’s face.
*
“What do you have?”
“An aching back.”
Riddle had powerful enough magic that the air around him turned noticeably cooler as he spun to face Harry. Harry blinked innocently back at him. They were coming from Defense, where Harry had had to spend time dodging Riddle’s spells and had fallen on the floor once. An aching back made perfect sense.
Riddle raised a Silencing Charm around them—an ordinary one, not like the spell that had only existed in one reality which Harry had raised—and said, “I have many gifts.”
“Congratulations.”
Riddle crossed his arms and bowed his head. He didn’t smile in the lipless way Harry associated with Voldemort (and luckily, not in the way that he had smiled in the one world where he had almost managed to prevent Harry from Leaping), but it was fairly close. “I have Parseltongue. I have enormous magical strength. I have a subtle and brilliant mind.”
“I believe I’ve acknowledged that already.”
“If you are my soulmate, you should also have gifts. I don’t believe that you’re my soulmate if you don’t. Fate and magic would never have gifted me with someone ordinary, when you are supposed to be sacred.”
Harry leaned a little closer. Riddle mimicked him, eyes stretched wide and eager. Harry couldn’t tell if he was most eager for Harry to tell the truth or to fail to do so. He might want to continue enjoying his self-proclaimed pinnacle of supremacy.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s one you already share,” Harry hissed.
Riddle staggered back away him, his back hitting the wall of the corridor. Harry half-closed his eyes and smiled.
“My lord!”
“Are you all right, my lord?”
Harry ended the bubble of silence and walked past Riddle. He could feel the way that Riddle’s eyes pierced his back like javelins, but Harry wouldn’t give up his secrets that easily. If Riddle wanted to know if Harry was also an Heir of Slytherin, or something else, he would need to come to him.
Come to me, Riddle.
*
“Where did you learn to speak Parseltongue?”
“One doesn’t learn a magical language, Riddle.” Harry turned around and folded his arms. He had sought out a room deep in the dungeons where someone had once practiced dueling spells, or at least it seemed like it from the scores and deep scorch marks on the walls. He had known Riddle would watch and follow. “I’ve been able to speak it as long as I can remember.”
Harry could lie carefully to a Legilimens, but he was telling the full and unpolished truth now, and it seemed as if Riddle might understand and appreciate that. At least the ragged breaths he was taking said he did.
“You cannot be a descendent of Slytherin.”
“Did I say I was?”
“None but the descendants of Slytherin can speak Parseltongue.”
“And did you never think that Salazar came from somewhere? That people in other countries can speak it? That Britain isn’t the whole world?”
Riddle’s eyes widened again. He was almost attractive when he did that, Harry thought idly. At least, attractive to someone like Harry, who knew his whole sordid history. Riddle was attractive most of the time to most people.
“What else is special about you?”
Harry smiled, and Riddle might have taken a step back if he were anyone else. But he let Harry walk right up to him. Harry swept his hair back from his forehead. His scar was there. It was always there. It had faded a little after the Battle of Hogwarts in the first version of the world he had lived through, but it had burned bright and harsh again just before Harry had received news of Voldemort’s resurrection.
Brought back to life by another Horcrux, Harry had thought then. Now he understood. For some bloody reason, Riddle was one of the fulcrums on which the world spun. He couldn’t be killed by the kind of trickery Harry had used with the Elder Wand.
Of course, neither could the Master of Death.
“I survived the Killing Curse,” Harry whispered, and Riddle jerked. His Legilimency would be telling him it was the truth, and it was such a plain statement that he wouldn’t be able to find any technical truth or lie of omission within it.
Of course, being Tom Riddle, he tried. “You mean that someone cast it at you, and you dodged it.”
Harry laughed. “I mean that someone cast it at me, and hit me directly, and I lived.”
Riddle gaped. Harry had to admit that was a little satisfying. He had surprised Voldemort, sometimes, but never outright shocked him. And Riddle, as much as he tried, couldn’t fight his reaction under control for a moment.
Then he said, “Why would my soulmate need that gift?”
“Don’t you seek to conquer death, Riddle? To live as long as you wish, and never die? I do the same thing.”
Riddle charged then, bulling Harry up against the wall behind him and grabbing the collar of his robes. “You lie.”
“You know as well as I do that I’m not lying, Riddle.”
Riddle dived at his mind through their connected gazes, but slammed against Occlumency walls that Harry could claim as another gift. He had known, when he began to Leap, that he could never reveal the truth to anyone—not Snape, not Dumbledore, not any version of Riddle he met—and he had practiced and worked on the Occlumency as hard as he had worked on the crafting of the Lenses.
“That is—you can keep me out. No one can keep me out.”
Harry smiled at him. “Not Dumbledore?”
Riddle let him go and backed away. His wide, staring eyes remained fixed on Harry. Harry just stared unblinkingly back, and Riddle swallowed and shook his head a little.
“You know more than you should.”
“Why are you speaking in English? Soulmate?”
Riddle turned and marched out of the room. Harry chuckled a little. He wouldn’t be surprised if Riddle began running, or at least walking quickly, once he was out of sight. Harry had succeeded in unnerving him.
But being Riddle, he would never admit that had happened for long. He would come back. His own pride would compel him to challenge Harry.
Harry was looking forward to it.
