lomonaaeren

“Minister Riddle.”

Tom looked up with a slight frown. He had told his lackeys only that he was busy for the next day, and they wouldn’t have known where to Floo him. But it seemed Lily Potter had discovered his hiding place.

Well, she is an Unspeakable.

Tom inclined his head to the woman looking at him through the fire and murmured, “Good morning, Mrs. Potter. Could I help you with something?”

“Perhaps you can tell me why my son never came home last night?”

“I assure you, Harry is an adult.”

Lily Potter’s face pinched tight. “And you would not address him by name that way unless there was something between you.”

“He is well,” Tom said, feeling a little pinch of irritation. “I have sheltered him and would never leave him without shelter.”

Mrs. Potter studied him in silence for a moment, then announced, “I am coming through.”

Tom thought she probably would have tried even if he had kept the Floo locked—she had managed to get through to speak to him even though the Floo was locked right now—so he released the wards on it and waited.

Mrs. Potter manifested in the kitchen in a roar of flames a moment later, brushing the soot off her skirts with her hands instead of a spell. Tom felt his mouth twitch a little. He often did the same thing. It seemed to be an instinctive gesture for Muggleborns and Muggle-raised magicals.

“Where is my son?”

“Upstairs, in the second bedroom on the right.”

Mrs. Potter stilled, staring at him. Tom stared back.

“If you took advantage of him…”

“I have given him everything he desired.”

Too late, Tom realized the other way that could be taken, since it wasn’t likely she knew about the Parseltongue Gift being transferred. Mrs. Potter’s wand was in her hand and pointed straight at him.

“If you touched him.”

“I have shared my Gift with him,” Tom said, more sharply and bluntly than he’d meant to. “He is a Parselmouth now.”

“That is impossible. We’ve perfected the potion, but not the ritual that goes with it!”

“I designed the ritual.”

“And so you put my son in a situation where he could have been driven mad?”

“Do you think he wasn’t going mad already, living in this world centered on purebloods that has done all three of us so much harm?”

Mrs. Potter gave a lizard’s slow blink. Then she tucked her wand away and considered Tom some more. Finally, she said, “If I find that he has been harmed, you will wish the ritual had failed.” And she turned and walked up the stairs.

Tom sat back with a small shake of his head. He hoped he would find an ally in Lily Potter eventually, but at the moment, she would need to hear from Harry how much his life had changed before she would accept that the potion and ritual had been a good thing.

Her protectiveness was understandable, of course. Until yesterday, there would have been far too many magical people who saw Harry essentially as sub-human, someone they could taunt or hex or use at will.

Tom himself had clawed his way out of that fate, but only because of his Gift. As he lifted his teacup to his lips, he felt a small, cold smile creep across them.

He was looking forward to the moment when those who had mistreated Harry found out about the Gift almost as much as he was looking forward to the moment when they saw some of the land he and Harry would create.

*

“Harry!”

Harry came rearing out of sleep, feeling an absurd combination of refreshed and like he was a child who had been taken sick. Mum was hovering next to him, her hand on his forehead. Her face was so awfully pale that Harry reached out an arm to support her before he thought about it.

“Mum?”

“You’re safe.”

Mum’s eyes were bright and desperate. Harry frowned at her. “Of course I am?”

“When you didn’t come home last night, I thought someone who hated you for being Giftless had got to you.” Mum collapsed into a chair she had probably conjured at the side of the bed, since it didn’t match the style of the room. “Harry, dear, what were you thinking?”

“That I wanted a Gift.”

“Oh, darling, he might have tricked you into thinking you had one, but—”

“Harry is my name in Parseltongue,” Harry hissed, and watched the way that her eyes widened. “Tom is his name. Lily is your name.”

Mum swallowed. It was a long moment before she reached a hand towards him. It trembled. Harry grabbed her wrist and held on. He was here, and real, and he didn’t know everything she was feeling right now.

When she spoke, she said something he hadn’t really expected. “I didn’t know you were that desperate for a Gift, darling.”

“The way this society is set up, everyone who doesn’t have a Gift is disadvantaged. Of course I wanted one.”

“But…you know we love you anyway.”

“Of course, Mum. But we already talked about this. I don’t want to be dependent on you or Cole for the rest of my life. I was willing to become a Squib to avoid that.”

Mum bit her lip, her eyes brilliant and worried for a second. “True. I’d forgotten that.” She found Harry’s hand and gripped it tightly. “As long as you understand that we love you and we never would have abandoned you.”

Harry smiled at her. “Of course I know that. You and Dad and Cole are all great.”

He talked soothingly to her about how he had gone through the ritual and was just fine, and by the end, she was smiling and declaring she wanted to talk to Tom about the ritual and understand how to duplicate it for other Gifts. Harry thought it would probably need to be redesigned for different people, given that the Unspeakables had only worked on a potion containing snake venom, but he nodded and asked questions.

And, well.

There might be people in the future who wanted to become Parselmouths enough to drink the potion and do the ritual and join them. But Harry would have the satisfaction of knowing he had been first, that he had the most of Tom’s regard, that he had been willing to take the risk.

That was what Mum would never understand. Harry didn’t distrust his family’s love and protection. He hadn’t wanted to become a Squib.

But he would always choose would what leave him a modicum of pride over what wouldn’t.

*

“I have to go home. Mum told me that Dad and Cole are worried.”

“And you always jump to do exactly what your family tells you to do?” Tom asked, but his voice lacked bite.

Harry just raised his eyebrows at him. He was eating the scones Tom had bought that morning with neat bites, much more relaxed and in less pain than Tom had expected from the ritual. “I promise to come back in a few hours. Or maybe tomorrow. Mum told me that my godfather is there as well.”

“Godfather?” Tom had probably read the detail about the godfather in one of the files he’d consumed on Harry as a likely candidate for the Parseltongue ritual, but he couldn’t remember the man’s name right now.

“Sirius Black.”

“Oh, that one.”

Harry peered at him. “What is it?”

“He thinks that it’s funny to morph into one of my Auror bodyguards and then cast prank spells at me.”

Harry’s lips twitched. “Well, no one ever said the Black Gift was responsibility.”

“Or sanity,” Tom muttered. The Unspeakables’ research into Gifts had largely discounted the old idea that the most powerful magic needed to be paid for by some flaw like madness or weakness in some other field, but the last Tom had known, they’d still been studying the Blacks’ Metamorphmagus Gift.

“Yeah, Sirius isn’t the most stable on that front, either.” Harry got up and walked around the table. He moved more smoothly and confidently than he had yesterday, already, Tom thought. He rose to his feet, and Harry reached up to clap his shoulder. “But you’re the one who gave me not only a Gift but a purpose, and a way to strike back at all the purebloods who loathed me. Of course I’ll come back.”

Tom reached out and drew Harry towards him with both arms around his waist. Harry’s pupils dilated as he stared up at Tom.

“See that you do,” Tom murmured, and bent his head to kiss Harry.

He went slowly, so Harry would have time to pull back if he wanted to, but it seemed that Harry was perfectly able to read the messages Tom had been sending him. He surged up, capturing Tom’s lips and urging them open with his tongue before Tom would have tried that trick. Then Tom was fully able to lose himself in warmth and pleasure for a minute or so.

Before Harry leaped back, shook his head, and shivered. “Damn, you’re good at that.”

“So are you. No jealous boyfriend or girlfriend waiting in the wings?”

Harry laughed outright, the sound tinged with bitterness. It was still Tom’s second favorite sound behind Harry’s joyous laughter. “Who would date someone without a Gift, who should have had it? Not even the Muggleborns wanted to do that. Too afraid of their children not having it. Or,” he added, a little more temperately, “they’d prefer to return to the Muggle world instead of marrying someone who might look down on them for their blood.”

“So you haven’t dated anyone.”

“No.”

“Have you—”

This time, Tom got the joyous laughter. “What, Minister Riddle, afraid to talk about sex in identifiable terms?”

“Your speaking my last name is extraordinarily annoying.”

“I’m not going to be compliant.”

Harry winked at him and then vanished through the fireplace. Tom was left staring after him.

Only a minute later did he become aware that his hand was on his lips, as if to preserve Harry’s kiss.

*

“I understand why you did what you did. But you could have waited.”

“But then Tom might have found someone else who wanted to be a Parselmouth.”

“Tom?”

“That’s what he told me to call him.”

Sirius spluttered wordlessly. Harry leaned back on the couch in front of the fire and grinned at his godfather. Sirius was sitting across from him, with Cole, who was listening intently but hadn’t said anything yet. Mum and Dad sat in chairs on either side of the couch.

Mum was tapping her fingers, but she had been at Tom’s house earlier, after all, and hadn’t found that much to disapprove of. Dad was the one who spoke up. “Based on what you described, he would have asked you to be a Parselmouth even if he had found someone else, Harry. Why not just wait? Why not discuss it with us?”

Harry sighed and faced his father fully. James Potter was still a handsome, fit man, even though he carried a lot more scars than he had before he became an Auror. There was grey around his temples, and he was chewing his lips, as he tended to do, while he looked at Harry.

“My choices were becoming a Parselmouth or taking the Squibarren Potion, Dad. Of course I went with the more attractive one.”

“What?”

“You don’t have to do that!” Cole objected at once. “I’d never kick you out!”

Harry shook his head. “It’s more that you would have the right to kick me out,” he said. “That I could never get a job. That I would be unlikely to find anyone magical who wanted to marry me. That a lot of people would hate me just for existing. I wanted to change the world so I could be more comfortable in it. And now I’m going to.”

He held back a chuckle as he thought how thoroughly that would be true. Tom had asked Harry to accompany him to a gala the Ministry was holding in a few days, one that would be smaller than the one in honor of Time-Turners where they’d met. Harry was looking forward to speaking Parseltongue in front of people with names like Malfoy and Lestrange.

“But I wouldn’t!”

Harry came back to the present and sighed a little. “I know. I still wanted to stand on my own and make sure I can earn my own Galleons. And I want to make the world better for other people like Hermione, too, who didn’t have that much choice,” he added. “I can do that now.”

“How? It seems likely to me the purebloods will just ask for that potion and ritual Riddle came up with. They won’t be that impressed that you’re a Parselmouth now.”

Harry shot Mum a glance. She shook her head. So she hadn’t passed on anything about how he and Tom could create land.

Of course, that might be because Harry hadn’t clearly explained it. He’d referred to Jörmungandr a few times, and that was it.

He stood up. “Let’s go to the garden, and I can show you.”

*

“What was your family’s reaction when they saw that you can create earth?”

“Silence.”

Tom turned around and studied Harry. He was wearing a pair of extremely brilliant blue dress robes with golden edging that Tom thought had been recently Transfigured, judging by the seams. Then again, Harry wouldn’t have had any need for dress robes for years, given that many people wouldn’t have invited him to any galas requiring them.

That will change.

“Silence?” Tom prompted, because Harry was examining himself critically in the mirror of Tom’s dressing room and not speaking anymore.

“I don’t think they really believed it would change the world.”

“You told them about why I think it will?”

“Sure. But Sirius said the pureblood arseholes would stop it, and Dad said it would probably contravene a lot of the Ministry’s laws.”

Tom laughed quietly. Harry met his eyes in the mirror and began to smile. It was a slightly mean smile, and Tom promptly adored it.

“What is it?”

“I suppose your father hasn’t paid attention to how I’ve quietly been changing most of those laws in the past few decades.”

Harry stared at him for a second and then laughed, a low, dark chuckle that was yet another sound Tom could see himself loving in the future. Harry hooked his arm around Tom’s and pulled him towards the entrance of the dressing room. “This is going to be even more fun than I thought.”

“You enjoy startling and confusing your family along with other people?”

“I already told you that I wasn’t a particularly good person, Tom.”

“Not good as the world understands it, perhaps, but to me, you are perfect.”

Harry stared at him, so still for a moment that Tom feared the compliment had landed wrongly. Then he broke into a brilliant smile and leaned forwards to kiss Tom.

Tom would have been happy to cancel their plans to attend the gala, after all, but in the end, he was looking forward to an opportunity to irritate the purebloods. There was a deep smile on his face as he followed Harry through the Floo.

*

“Sir.”

Harry thought that the way Rodolphus Lestrange flinched and shot him a hateful glance as he walked up to Tom and had to deal with Harry standing at the Minister’s side was one of the most hilarious things he’d ever seen.

But I know what would make it more hilarious.

Harry gave Lestrange a bright, careless smile, as if they’d never met before and Lestrange had never made his opinion of Giftless people clear, and started forwards with his hand out. “Hey, Tom was just telling me how valuable your perspective was at our private meeting this afternoon! Harry Evans.”

Lestrange nearly tripped over his robe hem with how fast he tried to go backwards, only to stop when Tom clucked his tongue. “I did hope that two of my most important advisors would get along, Rodolphus. What a disappointment that you apparently have some grudge against Harry without even shaking his hand.”

Harry turned a smile to Tom, bright enough that he saw Tom’s cheek twitch. “Oh, I’m sure Roddy here doesn’t have a grudge against me, Tom! It’s just he probably doesn’t like shaking a non-pureblood’s hand.”

“I—no, of course not. I’m no blood purist!”

Harry looked at Rodolphus and made his smile melting-sweet this time. “Oh? I probably just startled you, putting my hand out like this, then? Sorry! I forget sometimes that I need to treat purebloods like small wounded animals.”

Rodolphus was staring at him, and then back and forth between him and Tom, as if he were certain there was an explanation for this somewhere, and Tom would get him out of the situation. But Tom only raised an eyebrow and tilted his head so that the fairy lights strung along the walls of the ballroom reflected off the silver streaks at his temples.

(Harry should probably not find that as hot as he did).

“Aren’t you going to shake Harry’s hand, Rodolphus?” Now Tom’s voice held a promise of pain.

Rodolphus swallowed and slowly extended his hand to Harry. Harry grabbed it and shook it enthusiastically. He ignored the way Rodolphus tried to let go a second into the handshake and made it go on for almost a minute.

Rodolphus snatched his hand back and wiped it on his robes.

“I do expect you to wash your hands before you touch anyone else, Rodolphus,” Tom said, voice distant and icy. “You ought never to have come to this gala with dirty hands in the first place.”

Then Tom and Harry swept on into the ballroom. Harry contained his laughter to one choke, but he did conjure a small mirror in the hollow of his palm and hold it so he could watch Rodolphus.

The man looked as if the center of his universe had collapsed. Harry did laugh this time, and banish the mirror.

“Sir.”

That was Lucius Malfoy. He flicked an eyelid at Harry in acknowledgment and then turned to fully face Tom. “Might I have a moment of your time about that minor matter we were discussing the other day, when you get a chance?”

“The bill to take any money that Giftless people might have made and donate it to a fund for homeless orphans that you just happen to manage, Lucius?”

Malfoy started and shot an obvious glance at Harry this time. “Sir?” he asked slowly.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out, Lucius? That your charity is as empty as your heart?” Tom shook his head and gave Malfoy a weary look. “You could at least try to treat me as the intelligent opponent you think of me as.”

Malfoy seemed to try to simultaneously look at Tom’s eyes and look away. Harry had to hold in his laughter again. Had Malfoy forgotten that Tom was a Legilimens? Or just assumed that he would get away with things forever, if Tom had found it expedient to let him get away with some things some of the time?

“Ah, er, Minister, I assure you—this is a real fund.”

“It is not.”

“You would read the truth out of my mind?” Malfoy hissed. He seemed to have decided going on the offense was better than acting contrite.

“Of course I did. I warned you when we first began to work together that I would occasionally check your honesty that way. Did you think I was lying?”

Malfoy then decided he should attack Harry, because that must also be a better plan than acting contrite. He spun to face Harry. “How dare you stand so close to our Minister, you Giftless little—freak!”

Harry raised his eyebrows. This was going to be so good. “You went looking for another insult, didn’t you?” he hissed. “Except you probably remembered that I’m a half-blood at the last second.”

Malfoy froze. So did several other people who had been drifting towards Tom with seemingly casual movements. Harry thought even a non-Legilimens could have heard their thoughts.

What?

“I did not understand you,” Malfoy said, through what sounded like numb lips. “What did you say?”

“Well, you still won’t understand, but at least now you’ll have to acknowledge that it’s Parseltongue.”

Tom clapped a fist into place across his mouth, his eyes blazing as he looked at Harry. Harry smiled sweetly back and turned to Malfoy.

“Don’t you recognize Parseltongue when you hear it?” he asked. “I suppose you’re not familiar with the greater Gifts.”

Malfoy turned so pink that he looked like he was about to start bleeding. It was well-known that the Malfoy Gift was being able to shapeshift into a white peacock. They still counted as the “right sort” of people to those who were prejudiced against the Giftless, but it definitely wasn’t considered impressive.

“I want to know how you received Parseltongue, Mr. Evans. It is impossible for a Gift to manifest after one’s seventeenth birthday.”

“Is it?”

“Sir!” Malfoy turned to face Tom. “Are you going to let him defile your bloodline by speaking the Sacred Tongue?”

“The only ones who use that name for Parseltongue are those I would never share the Gift with,” Tom told Harry.

Harry again bit his lips to avoid laughing aloud. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so light and bright and cheerful. He shrugged. “You’ll have to make allowances for them if they’re politically useful, I suppose.”

“Lucius in particular seems to become less useful every time I see him.”

“Sir! Where did he get it?”

Tom turned and looked Lucius in the eye. “I shared it with him,” he said, and wrapped an arm around Harry’s waist, tugging Harry against himself. They pressed together from shoulder to hip, and Harry let out a contented little sigh at the constipated expression on Malfoy’s face. “I could have shared it with whomever I chose to, but until Harry, I had found no one worthy.”

Malfoy looked as if he didn’t know whether to splutter in indignation or die of a heart attack. He settled for some vague fluttering motion of his hands that was no more impressive than his Gift. “But surely—someone wise—someone pureblood—”

“Oh, but you already have your Gift, Lucius. And I would never defile your family line by saying that the Slytherin Gift should take the place of yours.”

Tom turned away, his arm still around Harry’s waist, and led him further into the gala. The silence was intense enough that Harry wondered for a moment whether any other victims would approach them.

But of course some people did. The ones who couldn’t learn better, or the ones who thought they would be different, and Tom wouldn’t devastate them.

Harry smiled more brightly than ever, and went to devastate them.

*

Tom found it difficult to take his eyes from Harry, who was talking with his godfather at the moment. The man had shown up from nowhere, stared at Tom with distrustful eyes, and tried to engage him in conversation. Harry had sailed in and done it instead.

Harry was magnificent.

And to think that Tom had doubted he would be able to bear the burden of Parseltongue, or might be unsuitable for the Gift. Of course he could handle it. The fact was there in the turn of Harry’s head, the glittering flash of his smile, how he hurled himself with savage joy at all the people who had hated him for years.

“Minister.”

Tom turned around and raised his eyebrows a little when he saw Amelia Bones standing behind him. She was not the kind of person who normally attended these galas. “Yes, Amelia? Did you have Ministry business to discuss?”

“No.” Amelia looked at him through her monocle, her grey hair frizzing a little around her head. “I wanted to ask what you thought you were doing.”

“Stunning the purebloods. Changing the world.”

Amelia gave him a deep frown, and leaned a little past him to look at Harry, who was currently saying something that had made Black start laughing almost frantically. “You’re possibly endangering your position by associating with a Giftless half-blood.”

“You’ve heard him hissing, Amelia. You know he’s no longer Giftless.”

“But there will be people who think it’s a trick or an illusion. And people who will think his behavior tonight arrogant. Is it worth risking your chance to be elected Minister again simply to prop him up?”

Tom smiled. “I’m not up for reelection until next year.”

“You know that you should really begin campaigning now, Minister.”

Tom studied her. This wasn’t the kind of advice that he would have anticipated Amelia dispensing. It seemed too conservative for her. He reached out and gently skimmed through her mind, cautious in case her Occlumency had improved since the last time he’d tried it.

Ah.

Amelia didn’t agree with all his politics and disapproved of the way that he had been elected more than four times, but she also thought he was the best option she was likely to get in the Minister’s office. She believed that anything would be worth him staying in the office, and anything that endangered it was wrong.

Tom shook his head and gave a soft laugh. “I promise, Amelia, I won’t endanger my standing for this.”

Especially since, now that he finally had the Parselmouth he’d been searching for, Tom would be stepping down next year. He had sought the Minister’s office in the first place so he could search more thoroughly for a candidate who could accept his Gift, and to have access to the Unspeakables’ research they were willing to share.

“I think you will.”

Tom shrugged. “I can charm a lot of people, you know that. I’ll simply do it again.”

“I hope you’re right, Minister.”

Tom smiled at the polite condemnation in her voice, and then turned around to meet Harry’s eyes again. Harry smiled back at him, and Tom hissed, “I think we’ve spent enough time at the gala, darling. Do you want to return home? You’ve only seen a property I use for practical reasons so far, not where I live.”

“Do you think we’ve freaked enough people out?” Harry asked, and his mouth twitched at the way some purebloods flinched back from him.

“Yes. The ones who will still persist in thinking this is a trick or the like are unreachable anyway.”

Harry nodded and came over to put his hand in Tom’s. Tom drew Harry against his side again, where he seemed happy to fit, and turned around to nod to Amelia. Her eyes were so wide that her monocle had almost fallen out.

“I will see you tomorrow, Amelia.” He would have to spend at least some time in the office taking care of meetings and paperwork.

Harry smiled at Amelia, and then Tom was sweeping him through the Floo and into the entrance room of what he knew was an impressive house. Harry’s eyes widened as he studied the pure, gleaming marble, accented by colorful rugs and decorations made from the shed skins of giant snakes.

Then he turned to Tom and said, “I want to do something.”

“What is that?”

“I want to stay the night with you.”

Tom’s eyes widened the way Amelia’s had. “After what you said about never sleeping with anyone—”

“Yeah. So you’ll get to be the first to fuck me.” Harry laughed again, the joyous one, as he looked at Tom. “I thought you’d like that.”

Tom bent forwards and kissed the laughter from Harry’s lips, and then whispered, “I would enjoy that. Let me show you pleasure, darling, as I have shown you happiness.”

“Looking forward to it.”