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lomonaaerenTitle: Heirs of Jörmungandr
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (no Voldemort), Minister Tom Riddle, angst, violence, Parseltongue, pureblood bigotry, politics
Rating: : R
Summary: AU. After Grindelwald made his way to magical Britain itself during the war and panicked the populace, the purebloods in control of the Ministry managed to both authorize the casting of a spell that makes magical British areas hostile to witches and wizards not born there, and to pass a law that ensured only those possessing the Gift of a pureblood family can inherit money or houses. Decades later, Harry, who wasn’t born with the Potter Gift, is preparing to leave for the Muggle world when Minister Tom Riddle finds him and persuades him to try a risky ritual that will make him a Parselmouth if it succeeds—and change their prejudiced world.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. As you can see from the summary, it’s a massive AU, so don’t assume things function as canon. It should have six to seven parts. In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr is another name for the Midgard Serpent, the ouroboros that encircles the world.
Heirs of Jörmungandr
“May I have this dance?”
Harry blinked and looked up. Minister Riddle stood in front of him in bright scarlet robes, stooped in a half-bow, his hand extended.
“I—sure, why not?” Harry said, with a faint shrug. He put down his mug of butterbeer and stood up.
Riddle’s hand settled into his, heavy and warm. He smiled at Harry with the same warmth lighting up his eyes, which were as scarlet as his robes. Harry thought it an odd approach to a Giftless twenty-year-old who’d made nothing of himself, but the Minister was famous for his subtle politics. Presumably someone else at the dense gala in honor of the new improvements to Time-Turners needed to be impressed or made jealous.
Not that dancing with me will do that.
“Excellent,” Riddle breathed, and hooked an arm around Harry’s waist. “You know this dance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“None of that while we’re dancing, Harry. Call me Tom.”
Harry gaped at the Minister until Riddle raised his eyebrows, and then he snapped his mouth shut and nodded. “Uh, sure.” He wouldn’t actually say the name, but even the pretense that he could was incredible.
Riddle smiled as if he knew what Harry was thinking. He might. Rumor said he was a Legilimens, in addition to possessing Parseltongue, the Gift of the Slytherin line.
That had had a lot to do with his rising to the Ministerial position, Harry thought, despite the odd way that Riddle clung to his Muggle last name. He could have changed it to Slytherin or Gaunt, but he never had.
Harry tripped over Riddle’s foot, and the Minister straightened him with a chiding expression. “Do pay attention now, Harry.” His right hand lingered on Harry’s elbow, while the left one came to rest in the middle of Harry’s back.
He’s definitely trying to make someone jealous by pretending to flirt with you. I’m still surprised he picked me, though.
“Okay,” Harry breathed, and paid just enough attention to the music not to stumble again. Meanwhile, he looked around the room for Riddle’s target.
There didn’t seem to be an obvious one. Ministry flunkies, Department Heads, Wizengamot members, and Hogwarts professors crowded the room, which was decorated with hourglass motifs and drifting golden wisps that resembled tumbling sand. People laughed and chatted and danced and ate. No one seemed to be paying outraged attention to Harry and Riddle, although a few were staring.
Harry caught the eye of his younger brother, Colton, who was one of the starers. He shook his head. Need help? he mouthed, as Harry and Riddle whirled past.
No, Harry mouthed back. He was sure the dance would end in a few minutes.
And it did, but Riddle just swept Harry into the beginning of the next one, his hands still firmly in place. When Harry looked back at him, there was a hard smile on his face.
“Clarify something for me if you would, Harry.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did I say?”
Harry just met Riddle’s gaze and projected his disagreement as strongly as he could. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get away with calling Riddle “sir,” but nothing would make him use “Tom.”
Riddle paused for a second, but managed to conceal it as a casual sidestep, before he turned Harry into the next pattern. His voice was soft, intense. “Is it true that you were born both without the Potter Gift and without the Evans one?”
Harry’s nostrils flared before he could stop himself. He thought of tearing himself out of Riddle’s arms and flouncing to the other side of the ballroom, but that would only cause commotion for no good reason.
And he had his pride. He couldn’t deny that he was Giftless, so he would tell the truth.
“Yes,” he said evenly. “Although some purebloods would disagree with you saying there is an Evans Gift, I’m sure.”
“Your mother can fly, which is not a trait of any pureblood lineage in Britain. She has the right to call it a Gift.”
Harry half-shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Since he couldn’t carry the name Potter, Harry went by “Evans” as a courtesy. If the purebloods had taken Mum’s claim that she had a Gift seriously, then he wouldn’t have been allowed that name, either.
“You are entirely without both of them.”
“Yeah, I am.”
Harry kept his answer clipped this time. Now he wondered if Riddle was making a point about how he associated with the Giftless to whoever in the room he was trying to impress, but still wanted to taunt Harry so Harry would know how far beneath Riddle he was.
He tried to step back, but Riddle whirled them in a circle and shook his head. “My reason for asking is not what you think it is.”
“What, you’re not a stuck-up, pompous prat like the rest of them?”
Riddle’s eyes heated as if Harry had said something flirtatious. Then he spun in another circle, pulling Harry close with one hand so low on his back that his fingers were practically caressing the top of Harry’s arse. His voice was low and intimate, and breathing the last thing into Harry’s ear that he would have expected.
“No. I needed to find someone entirely without a trace of the Gifts, not even something that could show up in their child, so that I could change the world.”
Harry stared at him, and then realized the music had stopped. The musicians were getting something to eat. Harry recoiled from Riddle, shaking his head.
“You need to work on your sales pitch,” he said, borrowing a term from his mum.
Astonishingly, Riddle laughed at that, his chuckle dark and nothing like the laughter that Harry had heard on the wireless before. His eyes shone. “You’ll see what I mean soon, Harry. If you would let me owl you after this?”
Harry’s face burned at the feeling of eyes on him. “Go fuck yourself,” he spat.
“If you could help me bring down all the purebloods who think that a single inborn talent defines you? The ones who drive Muggleborns back to the Muggle world half the time?”
Harry paused. One of his best friends, Hermione Granger, had gone back to the Muggle world when she finished Hogwarts, because apparently the protective spells to keep out witches and wizards from other countries had felt unwelcoming to her, too.
Even Harry was starting to feel the same way in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, the last time he had been there.
“Harry?”
Right, he was still standing in the middle of the dance floor with Riddle saying weird things to him. He shrugged. “If you want to. I don’t have wards up against it. But you might want to do it this week.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll be taking the Squibarren Potion and going to the Muggle world soon.”
He hadn’t told anyone else that, not even Cole, but the astonishment on Riddle’s face was worth it. Harry smiled sweetly and turned away.
Riddle said something, but it was low enough that Harry didn’t hear it. He kept walking until he got to the side of the ballroom where Cole stood, his eyes, a few shades lighter than Harry’s own, wide. But Cole shook his head a moment later and got a glass of Firewhisky for Harry, because he was a good brother like that.
“What did he say to you?”
“Some kind of political move,” Harry said, because that was what it was, and he didn’t feel like telling Cole the details of a conversation that would never happen the way he was envisioning. “Did I see Lucius Malfoy snub Mum earlier?”
“Yeah, want to go make his evening miserable?”
Harry gave a smile that was only a little strained. Malfoy hated being close to any Giftless person and would hate it if Harry came within a few meters of him, while also considering it impolite to retreat.
“Yeah, let’s.”
Harry set out, walking beside his brother, who was the best sibling he could ask for, and who wasn’t at fault for having inherited the Potter Gift, and so the name and eventually the land and the house and the vaults, when Harry hadn’t.
It was hard not to be bitter sometimes. But Cole didn’t deserve it, so Harry straightened his shoulders and set his sights on someone who did.
*
Tom felt as if his heart had squeezed into a small ball in his chest.
Because I’ll be taking the Squibarren Potion and going to the Muggle world soon.
Tom had searched, for so long, for someone who had no trace of a Gift, meaning that they wouldn’t even pass it to their children. So often a Gift would skip one generation only to appear in the next. There were tests that could detect that kind of thing, and so purebloods who might have Gifted children in the future were often treated as exceptions to the scorn Giftless people faced, but the tests had only been recently developed.
Tom had wasted so much time and tried so many times with unsuitable candidates before the Unspeakables had developed those tests.
The Squibarren Potion, unfortunately, was another thing the Unspeakables had developed. Giftless people who drank it would become Squibs and wouldn’t have magical children, either.
Officially, it had been invented in the first place to “allow Giftless people to integrate better into the Muggle world.” But Tom knew a lie when he heard one.
He knew, too, that he could not accomplish what he wished to with only one Parselmouth. That was another thing he had tried for years without results.
He needed someone utterly without trace of a Gift to host the Slytherin Gift in their soul. And it had to be someone who wasn’t a pureblood, either, because most of them would never agree with Tom’s real political goals.
Tom clenched his fists, his eyes following Harry Evans as he went to bait Lucius Malfoy.
He would have this chance. He would persuade Harry one way or the other.
And he rather thought that Harry would enjoy it, once he had agreed. Not only the chance to pay the purebloods back for what they had done by proving them wrong, but to have such a powerful and prominent Gift…
With abilities that no one in Britain except Tom knew, given that he was the only one alive here who possessed it.
He smiled and went to pick up a flute of champagne. Perhaps he would join the circle forming around Lucius.
*
“It’s beneath you to torment Mr. Malfoy, Harry.”
“No, it really isn’t.”
Mum stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, holding up a blue gem that probably had some magical resonance Harry couldn’t sense. She turned it back and forth, examining it in the glass, and then she met his eyes in the reflection.
She smiled a second later. “Yes, all right, you deserve that satisfaction.”
“You do, too. He has no call to snub you like that.”
Mum sighed, and the burden fell on her shoulders again. Harry came forwards to hug her. He knew there were purebloods in the Ministry and Hogwarts and everywhere else the bastards swarmed who blamed her for not bearing James Potter two children with the Gift of Potter Luck, even though Colton’s birth should have proven it was just chance that Harry didn’t have it.
“You’re a great person,” Harry whispered to her. “A wonderful mother. It’s not your fault that the world is this way.”
“I wish I could have changed it for you.”
“I know.”
They stood there hugging for a minute or so. Then Mum cleared her throat. She was an Unspeakable and had probably been examining the gem for her job. She hadn’t developed the Squibarren Potion that Harry knew of—he just didn’t think it was the kind of project she would have agreed to work on—but she had uncanny intuition.
“Are you sure that going to the Muggle world is what you want, Harry?”
“Yes.”
“And the other—you would give up magic?”
Harry took a deep breath. So it seemed that Mum would be the second person he would tell after all, instead of Colton.
“I know myself,” he said. “And Mum, I’m not a great person.”
“Harry, of course you are! You’re compassionate, thoughtful, you love a lot of people—”
“I love some people,” Harry said, even though he felt bad for interrupting her. But it was important for her to understand this. “And I know that I’m jealous. I’ve been jealous of Cole for years for having a Gift that I didn’t. I mean, I love him because he’s my brother, but I still feel that way. And I know that I would be jealous if my children had a Gift and got accepted into a pureblood lineage when I couldn’t.”
Or even halfway accepted, like you were.
Mum looked genuinely astonished. “I never knew you were jealous of your brother.”
“Well, I am.” Harry jammed his hands into his robe pockets. “I’ve done my very best to make sure he never sees it—and please don’t tell him. And please don’t say it’s your fault. It’s not.”
“You know that the Potters have married purebloods for generations and they’ve preserved their luck…”
“That’s just accepting the stupid pureblood lies about how blood has something to do with it,” Harry said firmly. “I’ve studied the family tree, Mum, and there were more than a few instances when no Potter children in the direct line had the Gift and they had to adopt a cousin or a niece or something. Or they sneaked in a Muggleborn a few times who had a Gift that resembled theirs. Dad admitted that.”
Mum breathed out slowly. “I didn’t realize that you’d dug that far back.”
“Yeah.” Harry didn’t think he should mention that he’d been looking for any instances of when a Potter had manifested their Gift after they turned seventeen.
There were none. A Gift appeared by the time a child was seventeen, or not at all. It was the same with all the other families Harry had studied.
At least that fact had allowed him to stop lying to himself.
“So you’re going to give up all your magic?”
“I can’t support myself here, Mum. You know how many times I’ve tried to get a job in the Ministry, or playing Quidditch, or even in a shop, and they just all tell me no.”
“That’s so stupid.” Mum’s eyes were deeper and greener than Harry’s when she got angry. “As if not having a Gift were something you could catch—”
“I know. But that’s the way it is. And I don’t want to stay at home forever,” Harry added, anticipating the next thing she would say. “I know you’d support me, and Dad, and Cole. But I want to stand on my own.”
To have a name I have a right to.
Harry wasn’t sure whether he would keep the name Evans when he went back to the Muggle world or adopt a new one, but either way, it would be his. Something that belonged to him. Something that people didn’t look on the verge of correcting him about half the time.
The magical world wasn’t his home, even though it was the one he’d been born to. He would go to the Muggle world and study as hard as he could, work as hard as he could, until he achieved a position he could be proud of.
Sometimes he thought he should have let the Hat put him in Slytherin after all.
Mum sighed hard enough to ruffle Harry’s hair from where she stood. “All right. But you need to explain it to your father and brother, not just spring it on them. They deserve to know.”
“Not the part about the jealousy.”
“No, I agree. I’ve never told your father that sometimes I’m jealous of him for being a pureblood and having a Gift that other people acknowledge.”
Harry stared. “I—didn’t know that, either.”
“We’re a lot alike,” Mum said softly, and leaned over to embrace him. “I hope that you achieve all your dreams, Harry, and that you never feel you’re not a good person. Jealousy or not, you’ve still struggled to make sure that Cole is comfortable around you, and I know he doesn’t think you hate him. It’s an uncomfortable situation. We’re doing the best we can.”
Harry hugged her hard, half-closing his eyes. He knew that it was technically illegal to set up a Floo fireplace in a Muggle home, but Mum could probably step around that, since she was an Unspeakable.
He hoped she would visit a lot, after he went to his true home.
*
“What is this about, Riddle?”
“Riddle” was at least better than “sir,” Tom told himself. Riddle was a name he had made his own, independent of the man who had sired him.
“Please sit down, Harry. We’ll order first.”
“Oh? You think they’re going to give us that long? I saw the look in the owner’s eyes when I walked in.”
Tom smiled, and let the full force of his true self shine in his eyes. Harry paused, his hand on the back of the chair and his expression growing sharp.
“I told them to let you in and ordered them to leave us alone other than bringing the food and wine,” Tom said softly. “They know that I can make them regret it if they don’t.”
This was part of a series of tests he’d been conducting on people for years, including some of the candidates for the Slytherin Gift who had failed because they turned out to be carrying the traces of their ancestors’ Gift in them. Tom had to see if Harry would run now.
“This is what you’re really like?”
“Tell me what you think I’m really like, Harry.”
“Ruthless.”
Harry leaned forwards and stared at him. Really stared. Tom looked back with a faint smile lifting the corner of his mouth, and abruptly Harry nodded and sat down in his chair without taking his eyes from Tom. He didn’t look away even when a vine stretched along the delicate arched window of the restaurant bounced and bobbed in the wind.
“I should have known it,” Harry said softly. “Even with your Gift, you wouldn’t have made it this far with a Muggle last name. unless you were ruthless.”
“And will you turn away from me now?”
“As a collaborator? It’ll depend on what you want. In general? No. I was willing to make myself a Squib to live in a world where I could have some pride back and to make sure I had Muggle children whose magic I wouldn’t have to be jealous of.”
Tom’s breath caught. This was more than he had reckoned on. Someone who could match him beat for beat, darkness of soul for darkness of soul.
Maybe. Tom told himself not to be so sure.
“I’ve never heard a hint of it about you.”
“I’ve kept my jealousy tamped down because it’s not fair to my brother to be jealous of him,” Harry said with a shrug. “Because he had the good luck to get the Potter Gift and I didn’t.”
“And?”
“And that’s my mature perspective. There were times when I was a kid when I dreamed about him getting sent to Azkaban for something and the Potter Gift manifesting in me the way that those old stories say it can when the family’s in danger of losing their last heir.”
Tom shivered and let himself rake his eyes over Harry’s face and body and those intense green eyes for a moment. This might be pleasurable in many ways.
But he needed it to be pleasurable in the most important one, first.
“Are you willing to listen to what I have to say?”
“Of course. But let’s order first.”
*
Harry put down the fork and sighed a little. The delicate chicken in a white sauce he’d had was very good, and he could find some amusement in the way that the server had flinched away from him when she’d put the dish down on the table.
He wouldn’t be surprised, honestly, if Riddle had picked this restaurant specifically to torment people who thought you could catch not having a Gift.
Harry could appreciate that.
He sipped from his glass of wine and said, “All right. So you’re saying that the magic of someone who wasn’t born with Parseltongue but who could acquire it from this potion—” He broke off and swallowed. He wanted this so badly that his throat hurt. But he had to continue. “Has to be completely clear of the trace of any other Gift, even one that they might have inherited from a Muggleborn parent and which wouldn’t be called a Gift by that bunch of stuck-up arseholes. It’s like planting a mandrake in a pot. It doesn’t tolerate competition.”
“An innovative way to put it.” Riddle’s eyebrows climbed up his face. He had a far more expressive one than Harry had ever thought. Then again, Riddle had mostly appeared in the papers with a slight frown or a smile as the political situation demanded. Harry hadn’t known him. “But yes, that is right.”
“You haven’t said why it’s so important to you that someone else have the Gift. You could get married if you wanted a child who had it.”
Riddle’s face went still. Then he said, “I am disinclined to the company of people who could produce children for me.”
Harry stared at him for a moment, wondering what he meant. Riddle had plenty of witches who worked for him in high-up Ministry positions, like Amelia Bones in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement…
Then it hit. Harry swallowed and nodded. “Oh. All right.”
“I must have another Parselmouth. I did try to achieve what I wanted alone, and it was impossible.” Riddle leaned forwards, and like this, with him so close, so intent that his features looked as if they were lit by an inner flame, so ruthless (now that Harry knew that), Harry could see the appeal other people had talked about for years. “And they cannot be a pureblood. A pureblood would never agree, in the end, with what I want to do.”
“So you’ve tried other people before me.”
“Yes.”
“None of them worked out.”
“No.”
“Because they had traces of Gifts in their magic still? Or because they ran when they found out what your goals were?”
Riddle’s smile was bright and savage and terrifying. “Both. You have met two of my qualifications, Harry Evans. It remains to be seen if you can meet the third.”
“Tell me one thing first.”
Riddle looked at him.
“Why did you keep your Muggle last name, when you could have called yourself Gaunt or Slytherin?”
“Slytherin was a pureblood who hated Muggleborns—who made me loathe half my heritage before I discovered the Gift that makes me the equal of any pureblood. And the last Gaunts were inbred degenerates who also loathed Muggleborns and Muggles.”
Harry smiled. The way that Riddle said those words, the sharp edges to them, made him feel alive as he thought about something other than the Muggle world for the first time in years. He swallowed the last of his wine and stood.
“Then let’s go, and you can tell me what your plan is.”
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (no Voldemort), Minister Tom Riddle, angst, violence, Parseltongue, pureblood bigotry, politics
Rating: : R
Summary: AU. After Grindelwald made his way to magical Britain itself during the war and panicked the populace, the purebloods in control of the Ministry managed to both authorize the casting of a spell that makes magical British areas hostile to witches and wizards not born there, and to pass a law that ensured only those possessing the Gift of a pureblood family can inherit money or houses. Decades later, Harry, who wasn’t born with the Potter Gift, is preparing to leave for the Muggle world when Minister Tom Riddle finds him and persuades him to try a risky ritual that will make him a Parselmouth if it succeeds—and change their prejudiced world.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. As you can see from the summary, it’s a massive AU, so don’t assume things function as canon. It should have six to seven parts. In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr is another name for the Midgard Serpent, the ouroboros that encircles the world.
Heirs of Jörmungandr
“May I have this dance?”
Harry blinked and looked up. Minister Riddle stood in front of him in bright scarlet robes, stooped in a half-bow, his hand extended.
“I—sure, why not?” Harry said, with a faint shrug. He put down his mug of butterbeer and stood up.
Riddle’s hand settled into his, heavy and warm. He smiled at Harry with the same warmth lighting up his eyes, which were as scarlet as his robes. Harry thought it an odd approach to a Giftless twenty-year-old who’d made nothing of himself, but the Minister was famous for his subtle politics. Presumably someone else at the dense gala in honor of the new improvements to Time-Turners needed to be impressed or made jealous.
Not that dancing with me will do that.
“Excellent,” Riddle breathed, and hooked an arm around Harry’s waist. “You know this dance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“None of that while we’re dancing, Harry. Call me Tom.”
Harry gaped at the Minister until Riddle raised his eyebrows, and then he snapped his mouth shut and nodded. “Uh, sure.” He wouldn’t actually say the name, but even the pretense that he could was incredible.
Riddle smiled as if he knew what Harry was thinking. He might. Rumor said he was a Legilimens, in addition to possessing Parseltongue, the Gift of the Slytherin line.
That had had a lot to do with his rising to the Ministerial position, Harry thought, despite the odd way that Riddle clung to his Muggle last name. He could have changed it to Slytherin or Gaunt, but he never had.
Harry tripped over Riddle’s foot, and the Minister straightened him with a chiding expression. “Do pay attention now, Harry.” His right hand lingered on Harry’s elbow, while the left one came to rest in the middle of Harry’s back.
He’s definitely trying to make someone jealous by pretending to flirt with you. I’m still surprised he picked me, though.
“Okay,” Harry breathed, and paid just enough attention to the music not to stumble again. Meanwhile, he looked around the room for Riddle’s target.
There didn’t seem to be an obvious one. Ministry flunkies, Department Heads, Wizengamot members, and Hogwarts professors crowded the room, which was decorated with hourglass motifs and drifting golden wisps that resembled tumbling sand. People laughed and chatted and danced and ate. No one seemed to be paying outraged attention to Harry and Riddle, although a few were staring.
Harry caught the eye of his younger brother, Colton, who was one of the starers. He shook his head. Need help? he mouthed, as Harry and Riddle whirled past.
No, Harry mouthed back. He was sure the dance would end in a few minutes.
And it did, but Riddle just swept Harry into the beginning of the next one, his hands still firmly in place. When Harry looked back at him, there was a hard smile on his face.
“Clarify something for me if you would, Harry.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did I say?”
Harry just met Riddle’s gaze and projected his disagreement as strongly as he could. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get away with calling Riddle “sir,” but nothing would make him use “Tom.”
Riddle paused for a second, but managed to conceal it as a casual sidestep, before he turned Harry into the next pattern. His voice was soft, intense. “Is it true that you were born both without the Potter Gift and without the Evans one?”
Harry’s nostrils flared before he could stop himself. He thought of tearing himself out of Riddle’s arms and flouncing to the other side of the ballroom, but that would only cause commotion for no good reason.
And he had his pride. He couldn’t deny that he was Giftless, so he would tell the truth.
“Yes,” he said evenly. “Although some purebloods would disagree with you saying there is an Evans Gift, I’m sure.”
“Your mother can fly, which is not a trait of any pureblood lineage in Britain. She has the right to call it a Gift.”
Harry half-shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Since he couldn’t carry the name Potter, Harry went by “Evans” as a courtesy. If the purebloods had taken Mum’s claim that she had a Gift seriously, then he wouldn’t have been allowed that name, either.
“You are entirely without both of them.”
“Yeah, I am.”
Harry kept his answer clipped this time. Now he wondered if Riddle was making a point about how he associated with the Giftless to whoever in the room he was trying to impress, but still wanted to taunt Harry so Harry would know how far beneath Riddle he was.
He tried to step back, but Riddle whirled them in a circle and shook his head. “My reason for asking is not what you think it is.”
“What, you’re not a stuck-up, pompous prat like the rest of them?”
Riddle’s eyes heated as if Harry had said something flirtatious. Then he spun in another circle, pulling Harry close with one hand so low on his back that his fingers were practically caressing the top of Harry’s arse. His voice was low and intimate, and breathing the last thing into Harry’s ear that he would have expected.
“No. I needed to find someone entirely without a trace of the Gifts, not even something that could show up in their child, so that I could change the world.”
Harry stared at him, and then realized the music had stopped. The musicians were getting something to eat. Harry recoiled from Riddle, shaking his head.
“You need to work on your sales pitch,” he said, borrowing a term from his mum.
Astonishingly, Riddle laughed at that, his chuckle dark and nothing like the laughter that Harry had heard on the wireless before. His eyes shone. “You’ll see what I mean soon, Harry. If you would let me owl you after this?”
Harry’s face burned at the feeling of eyes on him. “Go fuck yourself,” he spat.
“If you could help me bring down all the purebloods who think that a single inborn talent defines you? The ones who drive Muggleborns back to the Muggle world half the time?”
Harry paused. One of his best friends, Hermione Granger, had gone back to the Muggle world when she finished Hogwarts, because apparently the protective spells to keep out witches and wizards from other countries had felt unwelcoming to her, too.
Even Harry was starting to feel the same way in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, the last time he had been there.
“Harry?”
Right, he was still standing in the middle of the dance floor with Riddle saying weird things to him. He shrugged. “If you want to. I don’t have wards up against it. But you might want to do it this week.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll be taking the Squibarren Potion and going to the Muggle world soon.”
He hadn’t told anyone else that, not even Cole, but the astonishment on Riddle’s face was worth it. Harry smiled sweetly and turned away.
Riddle said something, but it was low enough that Harry didn’t hear it. He kept walking until he got to the side of the ballroom where Cole stood, his eyes, a few shades lighter than Harry’s own, wide. But Cole shook his head a moment later and got a glass of Firewhisky for Harry, because he was a good brother like that.
“What did he say to you?”
“Some kind of political move,” Harry said, because that was what it was, and he didn’t feel like telling Cole the details of a conversation that would never happen the way he was envisioning. “Did I see Lucius Malfoy snub Mum earlier?”
“Yeah, want to go make his evening miserable?”
Harry gave a smile that was only a little strained. Malfoy hated being close to any Giftless person and would hate it if Harry came within a few meters of him, while also considering it impolite to retreat.
“Yeah, let’s.”
Harry set out, walking beside his brother, who was the best sibling he could ask for, and who wasn’t at fault for having inherited the Potter Gift, and so the name and eventually the land and the house and the vaults, when Harry hadn’t.
It was hard not to be bitter sometimes. But Cole didn’t deserve it, so Harry straightened his shoulders and set his sights on someone who did.
*
Tom felt as if his heart had squeezed into a small ball in his chest.
Because I’ll be taking the Squibarren Potion and going to the Muggle world soon.
Tom had searched, for so long, for someone who had no trace of a Gift, meaning that they wouldn’t even pass it to their children. So often a Gift would skip one generation only to appear in the next. There were tests that could detect that kind of thing, and so purebloods who might have Gifted children in the future were often treated as exceptions to the scorn Giftless people faced, but the tests had only been recently developed.
Tom had wasted so much time and tried so many times with unsuitable candidates before the Unspeakables had developed those tests.
The Squibarren Potion, unfortunately, was another thing the Unspeakables had developed. Giftless people who drank it would become Squibs and wouldn’t have magical children, either.
Officially, it had been invented in the first place to “allow Giftless people to integrate better into the Muggle world.” But Tom knew a lie when he heard one.
He knew, too, that he could not accomplish what he wished to with only one Parselmouth. That was another thing he had tried for years without results.
He needed someone utterly without trace of a Gift to host the Slytherin Gift in their soul. And it had to be someone who wasn’t a pureblood, either, because most of them would never agree with Tom’s real political goals.
Tom clenched his fists, his eyes following Harry Evans as he went to bait Lucius Malfoy.
He would have this chance. He would persuade Harry one way or the other.
And he rather thought that Harry would enjoy it, once he had agreed. Not only the chance to pay the purebloods back for what they had done by proving them wrong, but to have such a powerful and prominent Gift…
With abilities that no one in Britain except Tom knew, given that he was the only one alive here who possessed it.
He smiled and went to pick up a flute of champagne. Perhaps he would join the circle forming around Lucius.
*
“It’s beneath you to torment Mr. Malfoy, Harry.”
“No, it really isn’t.”
Mum stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, holding up a blue gem that probably had some magical resonance Harry couldn’t sense. She turned it back and forth, examining it in the glass, and then she met his eyes in the reflection.
She smiled a second later. “Yes, all right, you deserve that satisfaction.”
“You do, too. He has no call to snub you like that.”
Mum sighed, and the burden fell on her shoulders again. Harry came forwards to hug her. He knew there were purebloods in the Ministry and Hogwarts and everywhere else the bastards swarmed who blamed her for not bearing James Potter two children with the Gift of Potter Luck, even though Colton’s birth should have proven it was just chance that Harry didn’t have it.
“You’re a great person,” Harry whispered to her. “A wonderful mother. It’s not your fault that the world is this way.”
“I wish I could have changed it for you.”
“I know.”
They stood there hugging for a minute or so. Then Mum cleared her throat. She was an Unspeakable and had probably been examining the gem for her job. She hadn’t developed the Squibarren Potion that Harry knew of—he just didn’t think it was the kind of project she would have agreed to work on—but she had uncanny intuition.
“Are you sure that going to the Muggle world is what you want, Harry?”
“Yes.”
“And the other—you would give up magic?”
Harry took a deep breath. So it seemed that Mum would be the second person he would tell after all, instead of Colton.
“I know myself,” he said. “And Mum, I’m not a great person.”
“Harry, of course you are! You’re compassionate, thoughtful, you love a lot of people—”
“I love some people,” Harry said, even though he felt bad for interrupting her. But it was important for her to understand this. “And I know that I’m jealous. I’ve been jealous of Cole for years for having a Gift that I didn’t. I mean, I love him because he’s my brother, but I still feel that way. And I know that I would be jealous if my children had a Gift and got accepted into a pureblood lineage when I couldn’t.”
Or even halfway accepted, like you were.
Mum looked genuinely astonished. “I never knew you were jealous of your brother.”
“Well, I am.” Harry jammed his hands into his robe pockets. “I’ve done my very best to make sure he never sees it—and please don’t tell him. And please don’t say it’s your fault. It’s not.”
“You know that the Potters have married purebloods for generations and they’ve preserved their luck…”
“That’s just accepting the stupid pureblood lies about how blood has something to do with it,” Harry said firmly. “I’ve studied the family tree, Mum, and there were more than a few instances when no Potter children in the direct line had the Gift and they had to adopt a cousin or a niece or something. Or they sneaked in a Muggleborn a few times who had a Gift that resembled theirs. Dad admitted that.”
Mum breathed out slowly. “I didn’t realize that you’d dug that far back.”
“Yeah.” Harry didn’t think he should mention that he’d been looking for any instances of when a Potter had manifested their Gift after they turned seventeen.
There were none. A Gift appeared by the time a child was seventeen, or not at all. It was the same with all the other families Harry had studied.
At least that fact had allowed him to stop lying to himself.
“So you’re going to give up all your magic?”
“I can’t support myself here, Mum. You know how many times I’ve tried to get a job in the Ministry, or playing Quidditch, or even in a shop, and they just all tell me no.”
“That’s so stupid.” Mum’s eyes were deeper and greener than Harry’s when she got angry. “As if not having a Gift were something you could catch—”
“I know. But that’s the way it is. And I don’t want to stay at home forever,” Harry added, anticipating the next thing she would say. “I know you’d support me, and Dad, and Cole. But I want to stand on my own.”
To have a name I have a right to.
Harry wasn’t sure whether he would keep the name Evans when he went back to the Muggle world or adopt a new one, but either way, it would be his. Something that belonged to him. Something that people didn’t look on the verge of correcting him about half the time.
The magical world wasn’t his home, even though it was the one he’d been born to. He would go to the Muggle world and study as hard as he could, work as hard as he could, until he achieved a position he could be proud of.
Sometimes he thought he should have let the Hat put him in Slytherin after all.
Mum sighed hard enough to ruffle Harry’s hair from where she stood. “All right. But you need to explain it to your father and brother, not just spring it on them. They deserve to know.”
“Not the part about the jealousy.”
“No, I agree. I’ve never told your father that sometimes I’m jealous of him for being a pureblood and having a Gift that other people acknowledge.”
Harry stared. “I—didn’t know that, either.”
“We’re a lot alike,” Mum said softly, and leaned over to embrace him. “I hope that you achieve all your dreams, Harry, and that you never feel you’re not a good person. Jealousy or not, you’ve still struggled to make sure that Cole is comfortable around you, and I know he doesn’t think you hate him. It’s an uncomfortable situation. We’re doing the best we can.”
Harry hugged her hard, half-closing his eyes. He knew that it was technically illegal to set up a Floo fireplace in a Muggle home, but Mum could probably step around that, since she was an Unspeakable.
He hoped she would visit a lot, after he went to his true home.
*
“What is this about, Riddle?”
“Riddle” was at least better than “sir,” Tom told himself. Riddle was a name he had made his own, independent of the man who had sired him.
“Please sit down, Harry. We’ll order first.”
“Oh? You think they’re going to give us that long? I saw the look in the owner’s eyes when I walked in.”
Tom smiled, and let the full force of his true self shine in his eyes. Harry paused, his hand on the back of the chair and his expression growing sharp.
“I told them to let you in and ordered them to leave us alone other than bringing the food and wine,” Tom said softly. “They know that I can make them regret it if they don’t.”
This was part of a series of tests he’d been conducting on people for years, including some of the candidates for the Slytherin Gift who had failed because they turned out to be carrying the traces of their ancestors’ Gift in them. Tom had to see if Harry would run now.
“This is what you’re really like?”
“Tell me what you think I’m really like, Harry.”
“Ruthless.”
Harry leaned forwards and stared at him. Really stared. Tom looked back with a faint smile lifting the corner of his mouth, and abruptly Harry nodded and sat down in his chair without taking his eyes from Tom. He didn’t look away even when a vine stretched along the delicate arched window of the restaurant bounced and bobbed in the wind.
“I should have known it,” Harry said softly. “Even with your Gift, you wouldn’t have made it this far with a Muggle last name. unless you were ruthless.”
“And will you turn away from me now?”
“As a collaborator? It’ll depend on what you want. In general? No. I was willing to make myself a Squib to live in a world where I could have some pride back and to make sure I had Muggle children whose magic I wouldn’t have to be jealous of.”
Tom’s breath caught. This was more than he had reckoned on. Someone who could match him beat for beat, darkness of soul for darkness of soul.
Maybe. Tom told himself not to be so sure.
“I’ve never heard a hint of it about you.”
“I’ve kept my jealousy tamped down because it’s not fair to my brother to be jealous of him,” Harry said with a shrug. “Because he had the good luck to get the Potter Gift and I didn’t.”
“And?”
“And that’s my mature perspective. There were times when I was a kid when I dreamed about him getting sent to Azkaban for something and the Potter Gift manifesting in me the way that those old stories say it can when the family’s in danger of losing their last heir.”
Tom shivered and let himself rake his eyes over Harry’s face and body and those intense green eyes for a moment. This might be pleasurable in many ways.
But he needed it to be pleasurable in the most important one, first.
“Are you willing to listen to what I have to say?”
“Of course. But let’s order first.”
*
Harry put down the fork and sighed a little. The delicate chicken in a white sauce he’d had was very good, and he could find some amusement in the way that the server had flinched away from him when she’d put the dish down on the table.
He wouldn’t be surprised, honestly, if Riddle had picked this restaurant specifically to torment people who thought you could catch not having a Gift.
Harry could appreciate that.
He sipped from his glass of wine and said, “All right. So you’re saying that the magic of someone who wasn’t born with Parseltongue but who could acquire it from this potion—” He broke off and swallowed. He wanted this so badly that his throat hurt. But he had to continue. “Has to be completely clear of the trace of any other Gift, even one that they might have inherited from a Muggleborn parent and which wouldn’t be called a Gift by that bunch of stuck-up arseholes. It’s like planting a mandrake in a pot. It doesn’t tolerate competition.”
“An innovative way to put it.” Riddle’s eyebrows climbed up his face. He had a far more expressive one than Harry had ever thought. Then again, Riddle had mostly appeared in the papers with a slight frown or a smile as the political situation demanded. Harry hadn’t known him. “But yes, that is right.”
“You haven’t said why it’s so important to you that someone else have the Gift. You could get married if you wanted a child who had it.”
Riddle’s face went still. Then he said, “I am disinclined to the company of people who could produce children for me.”
Harry stared at him for a moment, wondering what he meant. Riddle had plenty of witches who worked for him in high-up Ministry positions, like Amelia Bones in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement…
Then it hit. Harry swallowed and nodded. “Oh. All right.”
“I must have another Parselmouth. I did try to achieve what I wanted alone, and it was impossible.” Riddle leaned forwards, and like this, with him so close, so intent that his features looked as if they were lit by an inner flame, so ruthless (now that Harry knew that), Harry could see the appeal other people had talked about for years. “And they cannot be a pureblood. A pureblood would never agree, in the end, with what I want to do.”
“So you’ve tried other people before me.”
“Yes.”
“None of them worked out.”
“No.”
“Because they had traces of Gifts in their magic still? Or because they ran when they found out what your goals were?”
Riddle’s smile was bright and savage and terrifying. “Both. You have met two of my qualifications, Harry Evans. It remains to be seen if you can meet the third.”
“Tell me one thing first.”
Riddle looked at him.
“Why did you keep your Muggle last name, when you could have called yourself Gaunt or Slytherin?”
“Slytherin was a pureblood who hated Muggleborns—who made me loathe half my heritage before I discovered the Gift that makes me the equal of any pureblood. And the last Gaunts were inbred degenerates who also loathed Muggleborns and Muggles.”
Harry smiled. The way that Riddle said those words, the sharp edges to them, made him feel alive as he thought about something other than the Muggle world for the first time in years. He swallowed the last of his wine and stood.
“Then let’s go, and you can tell me what your plan is.”
