lomonaaeren

Thank you for all the reviews! This is now going to be three parts, because Riddle won’t shut up.

Part Two

The next step came faster than Harry had anticipated, and it involved other people, something Harry also hadn’t thought about.

Harry liked to ramble about in the middle of the night, without the Invisibility Cloak if possible. The Cloak made him feel as if he stood in a spotlight, the target of hundreds of interested eyes. It was probably just his uneasiness with being the Master of Death, but still, he didn’t like it.

So he was walking down the middle of a corridor fairly deep in the dungeons, thinking night thoughts, when someone Stunned him.

Harry woke again a few seconds later—it took truly powerful magic to put the Master of Death down for long—but by then they had already stuffed a bag over his head and were bearing him on their shoulders to some unknown destination. They’d taken his wand, too. Harry thought about calling it back, but in the end, decided that he would have to let it go.

He could accidentally kill someone, like Abraxas Malfoy, who wasn’t central to the timeline like Riddle and didn’t have the same protection. That would be a mess and the kind of error that could cause him to Leap again.

Besides. He was curious.

When they whipped the bag off his head, Harry saw they were in the middle of a room with silvery walls and a large blue pool in the center of the floor. He blinked and looked around. This was a room in Hogwarts he had never seen before, which was rare enough to be worth noting.

“Steel!”

“Shhh, I’m looking.”

“He has our lord’s careless manner, all right,” Orion Black muttered.

Someone hit Black with a Stinging Hex, from the yelp, and a minor scuffle broke out. Harry ignored it. He had noticed that there was a faint, sparkling silver haze overlaid on the icy blue water, as if someone had conjured stepping stones.

It made him a little uneasy.

Finally the scuffle stopped, and Abraxas Malfoy spun to face Harry. “We want to know what your exact connection to our Lord is,” he snapped.

“I’m not sure that Riddle would want me sharing his private business.”

“You’re never his lover,” said Avery, a seventh-year who lurked in the corners of the common room and stared at Riddle a lot and never talked much.

In some times he had been Cyric to Harry, but now Harry looked at Avery and shrugged. The Cyric he had known didn’t exist in this iteration of the world, any more than the scarred Auror Harry had been did. “If you say so.”

“Hit him! Hit him!”

Harry braced for one of the boys, probably Avery or Goyle, to punch him, but instead Malfoy aimed his wand at Harry and muttered something, and the unexpected pain of a Cruciatus gripped Harry.

He screamed mostly out of surprise, and then he focused all his attention on the curse and threw it off. For a moment, Malfoy staggered, hurt himself as the spell deflected onto him, and he stood still and gaped at Harry.

“Knights.”

That was Riddle, and it was funny how they all snapped alert at his voice, some of them spinning towards the entrance of the room and bowing to him. Riddle strode in, his robes billowing around him, his eyes narrow and annoyed. Harry saw the way his eyes skipped across the cringing Knights of Walpurgis and dismissed them, before landing on Harry.

Harry turned his head away as if in annoyance, but he could feel the dissatisfaction beating from Riddle.

That’s at least one reason that he’s intrigued with the thought of having a soulmate. He wants someone who will never betray him but also doesn’t cringe in front of him.

“Why do you have Steel here?”

“He lowers you, my lord!”

Harry raised his eyebrows. Of everyone, he wouldn’t have expected Sven Lestrange to speak. He was almost always the most silent Death Eater in timelines where he and Harry knew each other at all, and he simply followed Riddle’s orders fanatically.

“Explain that to me, Sven.”

Riddle’s voice was soft with shock, but Lestrange must have thought it was gentleness. He turned to Riddle, and his face was shining and full of hope.

Poor bastard, Harry thought. He believes he’ll have a chance if he clears me out of the path.

It was pitiful, in a way, to see these Knights of Walpurgis who would never realize they were no more than tools to Riddle.

“He claims to be your soulmate, but he lowers you, my lord!” Lestrange waved his hands around, more impassioned than Harry had ever seen him, his eyes glowing a dark blue. “He’s a Mudblood, or half a Mudblood at least, and he doesn’t perform well in class, and you can beat him in a duel without trying! We wanted to teach him a lesson.”

“Did I ask you to teach him this lesson, Sven?”

“No, my lord. But we are trying to anticipate your needs before you speak of them, like all good servants—”

That made more than one of the Knights wince. They wouldn’t like being compared to house-elves, Harry thought, coolly.

Riddle took out his wand and casually blew one of Lestrange’s fingers off his left hand. Lestrange went down, screaming from shock and pain, and the others froze like mice before a cat.

Riddle stepped past Lestrange, leaving the other Knights to scramble up to him and restore his finger or not. He put his hand on Harry’s shoulder and stared into his eyes. Harry braced himself, but he couldn’t feel a Legilimency probe. The ropes holding Harry fell away like stunned snakes, though.

“Will you show them why we are destined for each other, darling?” Riddle hissed, his tongue darting between his teeth as if it were forked.

“Destined for each other is so strong,” Harry said, ducking his head and feigning shyness. He was curious why Riddle wanted to reveal to his Knights that Harry was a Parselmouth, but reckoned that it could be kind of fun to go along and find out.

Shocked cries rang out from several directions, and Harry heard more than one person claiming that there was no way a Mudblood could be a Parselmouth. It sounded like Lestrange was one of them, for all that Harry would have thought worrying about his missing finger would dominate his thoughts. Harry’s mouth twitched in spite of himself.

“And do you think that Salazar Slytherin came from nowhere?” Riddle asked, turning to face the Knights. “That there might be speakers of the Noble Tongue elsewhere in the world, even if they are not his direct descendants?”

Harry laughed aloud at the blatant way Riddle had stolen his argument. Riddle flashed him a wink with a subtly shutting eye and escorted Harry to the door through his followers, staring emptily at Malfoy when he stepped forwards.

“My lord, my lord,” Malfoy bubbled, one hand over his heart as if he were trying to keep it from pounding out of his chest, “does that mean you really are soulmates?”

Riddle kept staring at him, and then wrinkled his nose and said, “All that, and that is what you took from my speech, Abraxas?”

“Are you, my lord?”

Riddle just flashed him a single cutting glance, and Malfoy stumbled hastily out of the way, probably glad that it wasn’t a cutting curse the way it had been with Lestrange. Harry followed him, looking back at the expanse of silver light scattered across the surface of the pool. No, of course it wasn’t the spell that would tear his soul from his body and bind it forever. He had to remember what the sixth-year Slytherins were capable of, but it didn’t include spells like this.

(Harry had spent approximately a year with his soul bound in a crystal. It wasn’t an experience he would recommend).

When they were several corridors away from the torture room, Riddle spoke in a curiously flat voice. “How did you let yourself be taken off-guard?”

“They Stunned me, and I threw it off, but by the time I did, they were carrying me somewhere. I wanted to see why and what they considered worth taking me off-guard in the middle of the night.”

Riddle halted and gave him a stare flatter than his voice. Harry looked back. It had been a long time since he had allowed Tom Riddle to discomfit him.

(Startle him, disappoint him, hurt him, sure. But discomfort was too minor).

“One wonders why you were not Sorted into Gryffindor, with that kind of curiosity.”

“One wonders why you’re speaking in the third person.”

Riddle gave Harry his long, slow lizard-blink, and then he laughed. It was a sound like tinkling ice that made the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck try to run away.

“Perhaps you are my soulmate, at that.”

“Perhaps,” Harry echoed back at him, and turned around and led the way back to the Slytherin common room. Riddle’s eyes remained on him, and Harry ignored them.

*

The next morning at breakfast, Malfoy nearly dropped a glass of pumpkin juice in Harry’s lap.

Harry shifted out of the way with a frown, wondering if this was some bizarre form of revenge for last night, and then saw the way Malfoy’s hands were shaking. He blinked. That looked a lot like the aftermath of Cruciatus torture.

Ah. Riddle had found out what Malfoy had done, and had ensured the debt was paid.

Harry glanced down the table. Riddle was waiting to meet his gaze, probably assuming that Harry would have seen right away what had happened to Malfoy. He lifted his own teacup in a toast to Harry.

In front of the Slytherins and Gryffindors and Dumbledore and everybody.

Harry looked back, sipping his own tea and wondering a little.

*

“Mr. Steel, could you stay behind after class, please?”

Harry had received that request from Dumbledore in many other timelines. Sometimes it was because they had to discuss plans to stop Riddle. Sometimes it was because Dumbledore wanted to lecture Harry on not letting the Dark Arts consume him.

This time, it would have to be the Dark Arts conversation, since Harry hadn’t approached Dumbledore in several Leaps. He just said, “Of course, sir,” and went on packing away his Transfiguration books.

Riddle paused next to him.

“It’s nothing, go on,” Harry told him quietly.

Harry had the impression that it was difficult for Riddle not to reply in Parseltongue. “He will be punished if he dares to touch what is mine,” Riddle settled for saying at last.

“Creepy, Riddle.”

“You are mine.”

Harry blinked. He’d heard that declaration before, of course, from countless variations of Riddle and Voldemort. It was usually followed by “mine to kill’ or “mine to corrupt” or something dramatic like that.

Not simple, like this. Not stated while Riddle’s eyes swept him up and down with devastating speed and power, and Riddle leaned nearer as if he would touch Harry and then jerked backwards with a shake of his head.

“Remember it,” Riddle whispered, and left the classroom.

Harry stared after him.

“Mr. Steel?”

Harry turned around. Dumbledore stood before him, frowning slightly, alive, the Transfiguration Professor of Hogwarts.

(Not the Headmaster. Not dead so many ways that Harry had lost track. Not the lover who had never abandoned Grindelwald and had come to conquer Britain with the Elder Wand shining in his hand and the light of battle in his eyes. Not the man who had held Harry at wandpoint so many times).

“What did you want to talk to me about, sir?” Harry asked, yanking his mind back to the path that he wanted it on with an effort.

Dumbledore sighed. “I see that you are rapidly growing closer to young Mr. Riddle.”

“Well, yes, sir. He’s been the most welcoming out of my year in Slytherin.”

“You did not receive a cordial reception?”

“Not with my last name, sir, no.”

Dumbledore sighed again and pulled off his glasses, spending a moment polishing them. Harry waited, curious now. Dumbledore hadn’t trotted out the warnings about Dark Arts right away. Did he think that Harry wouldn’t get into them because of his last name and the distance that most of the Slytherins were keeping from him?

(Not that the distance had much to do with Harry’s last name, anymore).

“Be careful with Mr. Riddle,” Dumbledore said at last, putting his glasses back on and sitting down behind his desk with a heavy expression.

“Sir?’

Harry made it a question. Dumbledore shook his head as though someone were poking him in the temple from behind.

“I have seen many students who aspired to hold Mr. Riddle’s attention,” Dumbledore said at last, almost gently. “He dropped them as soon as they had served whatever purpose he had in mind for them. You seem like an earnest young man. You might be more damaged than most when he drops you.”

“If, sir.”

“What, Mr. Steel?”

“If he drops me.” Harry held his chin up and did his best to radiate power and confidence enough to discourage Dumbledore’s questions, without making himself seem like someone who would attract Dumbledore’s attention. “Tom will stay with me because he’s really genuinely attracted to me.”

Something complex and bitter moved across Dumbledore’s face for a moment. Then he nodded. “I cannot come between a young man and the man he loves, Mr. Steel. But please remember that I did try to warn you if it doesn’t work out.”

“Of course, sir. Thanks.”

Harry stepped out of the classroom and walked towards the Slytherin common room, turning over the interaction in his head. He missed the person standing in an alcove until they reached out an arm and snagged him as he passed.

Harry twisted, the Elder Wand leaping into his hand, and won free of the hold. In a second he was on the other side of the corridor, panting, his knees bent in one of the more multifaceted dueling stances, and Riddle was watching him with arched eyebrows, one hand dangling empty.

“You are fast, Harry.”

It was the first time in this version of the world that Riddle had sounded sincere with his first name. Harry nodded and tucked his wand away. “I’ve seen some shit,” he said.

Riddle’s lip curled a little at the obscenity, but he wasn’t taking his eyes from Harry. “I wish to speak with you.”

“Dumbledore didn’t hurt me.”

“I wish to speak with you.”

Harry sighed and followed Riddle down into the dungeons, past the Slytherin common room. It should be a good thing that two incidents in two days—the Knights of Walpurgis torturing Harry and Dumbledore having him stay after—had tilted Riddle into thinking of Harry possessively, he supposed. But it was a little annoying all the same.

*

Riddle turned around when they were ensconced in a dungeon room that had the Dark Mark scraped up in silver on the wall. Or rather, the remnants of the Dark Mark. Riddle or whoever had put it there had been smart enough to remove it, but not to get rid of all the magical residue.

“No tricks,” Riddle said softly. “No games. I wish to know where you come from.”

Harry nodded slowly, rewriting strategies in his head. If Riddle was this intrigued already, then Harry probably didn’t need to give him the story via little drips at a time. But he still wouldn’t tell him everything, would keep something back.

Harry needed Riddle intrigued by him permanently. Giving him everything would just ensure boredom and that Riddle turned on him.

“All right,” he said. “I really did grow up in the Muggle world with my aunt, just like I told Malfoy. She didn’t want to acknowledge magic. She went as long as she could without doing it, and just shouted me down when I asked questions about my parents or why strange things were happening around me. But eventually, it got to the point where she didn’t have any choice. She had to acknowledge it.”

Riddle was watching Harry as if he were tracing patterns in a flickering fire with his eyes. He leaned a little closer. “And what happened after that/”

“I did get taken into the magical world,” Harry said, and turned his head a little to stare at the far wall. Lack of eye contact would prevent Riddle from using Legilimency on him, although Harry would still have to phrase the truth carefully so that he wouldn’t lie. “But my guide didn’t—wasn’t the best wizard, and didn’t explain everything I would be facing. The context around blood purity, for example.”

“Ah,” Riddle breathed, swaying like a charmed snake. Harry promised himself never to forget how deadly this one’s fangs were. “And you got called a Mudblood?”

“Friends of mine and my mother, more than me,” Harry said, a little bitterly. “I barely know anything about my mother, but I made the mistake of not acting exactly like other people expected me to, and—well.” And that was all true, although the expectations he hadn’t lived up to had more to do with being the Boy-Who-Lived than anything else.

“You did not come to Hogwarts?”

“Not right away.” That, too, was truth, if he was thinking about the month he’d had to stay with the Dursleys before September first. The first September first, when he had been so innocent it was painful to think about. “And I decided I would have to learn more on my own.”

That was true, too. The first several Leaps Harry had taken were less to stop Riddle than to gain the combat skills he’d assumed he would need, and training from some of the best dueling instructors on the planet, not all of whom were alive at the same time.

Back then, he hadn’t realized that he couldn’t kill Riddle, that history or time would always intervene to save him.

Painfully innocent.

But Harry hadn’t ever figured out why Fate wanted to fuck their world over so badly, any more than he had figured out why he had been allowed to keep the powers and accoutrements of the Master of Death.

“And you learned it?”

“I killed my first man at eleven, Riddle.”

Riddle’s eyes filled with a complicated storm of emotions before he looked down and away. Harry just watched him without moving. Riddle had killed his family by now, and Myrtle by accident. He must be suffering from a mixture of kinship and jealousy.

Harry hoped so, at least.

Riddle looked up after a moment. “You are like me,” he whispered.

Harry knew that, of course, but the Harry Steel of this time wouldn’t. He stood still and let his eyes flit over Riddle. “What?”

“I grew up as a Muggle in an orphanage with people who hated me. I found out I’m a half-blood last year. I’ve killed people.” Riddle took a step towards Harry, who was only surprised at the confession for a minute. Then he saw the wild light filling Riddle’s eyes, and he knew why Riddle had told it to him. Riddle was sure Harry could understand him fully and completely, and would never reject him.

It worked. This wild gamble fucking worked.

Harry let a shaky smile work its way across his face. “You—you really—think that we’re soulmates?”

“What else can it be, my darling, when we are both Parselmouths, both half-bloods, both capable of killing?” Riddle’s hands seized his. “One day I hope that you will trust me with all your secrets, where you learned your magic and whom you killed, but for now—”

He lunged forwards and kissed Harry full on the mouth.

Harry shuddered and wrapped his arms around Riddle. He hadn’t planned for this, had thought it might take years for it to get as far as this, and didn’t know what to make of Riddle’s hot tongue plunging into his or the way that Riddle pulled Harry as close as he could get him, wild and warm and eager.

He hadn’t reckoned, either, on the way his own being seemed to melt and twine around Riddle like one lump of chocolate melting into another.

Like one timeline into another.

But he put aside the worries that tried to inevitably drown him. The fact was that he was here, and Riddle was here, and they bore matching scars on their arms, and every minute that Riddle was kissing Harry was a minute that he wasn’t out there plotting world domination.

Harry kissed him, and felt Riddle’s arms pull him closer, and he went.