[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Heirs of Jörmungandr, Harry/Tom, 5/6, R

[lomonaaeren]

“Sir! I heard the wildest rumor.”

Tom smiled a little as he watched the Junior Undersecretary jogging towards him. Percy Weasley was a smart, capable man, who had unfortunately embraced the idea that there was nothing anyone could do to change the laws or structure of the Ministry, and therefore the best thing to do was roll over in front of them.

He’d said that to Tom even when they were discussing a law that Tom had changed. Truly, Tom didn’t understand him.

“Oh? What is that, Mr. Weasley?” Tom paused to adjust his robes. He had Apparated to the front steps of Gringotts, his Auror bodyguards appearing a minute later. Of course, he’d immediately drawn attention, even from those people who didn’t know what he intended.

He was only waiting for Harry to arrive before he began.

“That you were going to give the goblins more space! Isn’t that impossible, sir? They can’t come out into Diagon Alley, and they can’t expand the building.”

“Why can’t they expand the building?”

Weasley blinked and shoved the glasses he had lately taken to wearing up his nose. Tom didn’t know why he wore them, except perhaps to appear even more intelligent than he was. He didn’t need them. “Er, it’s in the Treaty of 1849, sir. The one after the Ninth Goblin Rebellion?”

“Have you read the Treaty of 1849, Mr. Weasley?”

“Well—not the original, no. But I saw it quoted in the Prophet.”

“I think if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that there are no quotation marks around those quotes.”

Weasley opened his mouth, then closed it. He said, “But they wouldn’t lie.”

Tom laughed in spite of himself. “Don’t you remember the article they published last year, that said I was the son of Morfin and Merope Gaunt, the product of incest? They didn’t have any proof of that, and they backed off after someone brought them proof of my Muggle heritage. But they said it.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Of course it is. But it doesn’t stop them saying it.”

Weasley looked as though someone had hit him on the head. Tom might have continued talking to him, but a flare of power reached him from the bottom of the stairs, along with the crack of Apparition. Tom turned towards it, his heart pounding so that his body shook.

Harry was walking towards him, clad in a pair of dove-grey dress robes Tom had altered to fit him. Sooner or later, Harry would buy his own, but Tom had a number of robes he hadn’t worn in years whose colors suited Harry perfectly. Harry didn’t have to buy his own yet.

And if it settled something possessive inside Tom to see Harry wearing his clothes, that was his own business.

Harry came to a stop next to Tom, smiled at him, and then gave Weasley a curious look. “Hullo, Percy. How’s Ron?”

“He, ah. He’s well.”

Weasley looked stunned to see Harry at Tom’s side, even though the Prophet itself had reported on Harry’s Parseltongue. Tom shrugged. He might hope that Weasley would have a clearer vision in the future, but it wasn’t something he was going to dedicate himself to.

“We are both here,” Tom said, using the slightly raised voice he had perfected that silenced all conversation in the area.

People turned to stare at them. Besides his Auror bodyguards and a few Department Heads from the Ministry who had wanted to come along, there were some who had gathered from the crowds flowing through Diagon Alley.

“What exactly are you going to do?” Amelia asked, looking tired and careworn.

“Expand Gringotts.”

“The building can’t expand. It would smash into others, or at least into their wards.”

“I don’t believe that we said we would expand the building.” Tom smiled at the odd glances thrown his way. “Although that is not explicitly forbidden by treaty the way that so many wizards and witches think, more by the practicality of space in Diagon and the spells that make goblins uncomfortable here.”

There was a bit of shifting in the crowd. Then someone said, “Well, they have an exemption to live in Gringotts.”

“Yes. And now they want more space.”

“How are you going to give it to them?”

It was the question Tom had been waiting for. He tilted his head to the person who had spoken, Augusta Longbottom. She looked skeptical of everything, but she had done that since a magical accident had taken her son from her tragically young. “Please come in and witness it for yourself.”

That invitation was enough for all of them, and everyone followed them in. Tom shot one glance at Harry to make sure he was all right, but Harry was striding along, the most bright-eyed and eager of them all.

Tom smiled, and looked ahead. Silverright was standing in the middle of the great lobby of Gringotts, waiting for them.

“We have come as requested, Madam Goblin.” Tom bowed to Silverright. She had told them to address her that way, as people who were not allies of the goblins did not deserve to hear her name.

Silverright nodded. “Come with me, Minister Riddle.”

She turned away and led them out of the lobby into one of the side tunnels Tom had never been into before. He could hear a murmur of confusion moving behind him. Probably most of the wizards and witches here thought the vaults beneath Gringotts were expansive enough already.

Tom smiled, and kept walking.

The tunnel soon became rough, barely worked stone, sloping further and further down. The floor remained marble, however. Tom stopped when Silverright held up a claw and gestured for him to do so.

They were in a large cavern, Tom knew that, but he didn’t know how large until Silverright barked an incantation and the torches on the walls came up.

Tom almost swallowed his tongue. The roof of the cavern hung perhaps twenty-five meters above them, and it and the walls and floor were all smooth black stone without a single hint of a join or a seam. There were doors in the walls that were either closed or quickly closed, as Silverright turned around and did it for the door behind them. A worried murmur erupted from the crowd behind them.

“Silverright, please do let out any of those who don’t want to bear witness to our glorious transformation,” Tom said, without turning to look.

The murmur calmed down.

Tom held out a hand and grasped Harry’s. He was looking around the cavern, to make sure that he had a good sense of its dimensions.

Then he faced Harry, who was looking at him with a faint smile and absolute confidence. Tom closed his fingers down in a hard hold. “Do you think we can manage a space this size, my darling?” he asked.

“Yes. We can.”

Again came the startling and the surprise and the disbelief that Harry could speak Parseltongue. But then again, this was a group of witches and wizards accustomed to believing daily lies. Tom ignored them, drawing Harry against his side and turning so that they faced the cavern.

It was the first time they would be creating space that they stood inside, and their first time working with a space this large. It didn’t matter. Not when Tom could feel the heartbeat in his throat, the power rising in him.

He and Harry were unstoppable, together.

“Create the earth!”

All around them, the cavern shook. Tom tilted his head back as magic seemed to flow and drip from his hair, sliding across the floor like water, rearing in invisible waves. Silverright’s eyes widened, but she didn’t move away.

The humans in the crowd didn’t seem to feel anything.

That was all Tom had time to see before he had to turn his attention fully to the magic.

It sloshed back and forth for a moment in the cavern, not seeming to understand the confines of the place or how it was different from the small areas in stone circles that Tom had claimed before. But he spoke the words again, and heard Harry echo him, and then—

Harry’s magic roared in answer.

This time, the collision of their power was visible in a flash of golden and silver light, and flames as dark as the walls around them. Tom looked down and watched calmly as more black stone began to stretch underneath their feet. Within a few moments, the walls of the cavern were notably further away.

Fearful cries emerged from the human audience. Tom ignored them, again. He was diving within Harry’s magic, curling along the tops of the waves, leaping from watery point to watery point, and the magic cried out in response.

More than it had ever cried out before. Tom lifted his hand, still joined with Harry’s, and the power rolled out and become visible again, this time as the silvery waves Tom had thought of, lit from within by a flickering fire. Mystical water leaped up and ran down the walls of the cavern.

Which breathed, and grew higher and further away.

Tom kept his eyes locked on Harry’s face, which was transcendent with joy. He dipped his head and took Harry’s lips in a kiss, and Harry tilted his head further back, as the warmth blazing between their mouths spread out and encompassed the cavern and the pouring magic.

Tom lost himself in the kiss, in the way that the cavern was expanding, in the way that Harry trembled beneath his touch. And then he lifted his head with a soft exhalation as he realized that Silverright was shouting to them.

“That is enough! That is all that is required!”

Tom turned around, still holding Harry close beside him, and stared. The cavern’s walls were now out of sight, and the smooth black floor beneath them stretched into the distance, beyond sight. Part of the problem, of course, was that they hadn’t multiplied the torches, so it was hard to see in any case.

But they had certainly succeeded. The cavern was so big that Tom suspected it rivaled the bank above for size.

The humans who had come to watch looked very small, standing in the middle of all that vastness. Tom gave them only a glance before he turned to Silverright. “I trust we have passed the test you set us?” he asked politely.

Silverright looked at him for so long that Tom thought her fear might win out. And then she gave the loud cackle that was laughter to a goblin, but which so few of them would use in front of humans.

“You have indeed,” she said. “Consider our agreement made.”

Tom bowed to her, which made Weasley, among others, stutter what sounded like the beginning of a protest. Tom wasn’t interested in listening to them. He began to guide Harry back to the entrance, which would take some walking.

It was just as well if none of their audience saw how much Harry needed the support, after he had come close to magically exhausting himself.

“Minister.”

Amelia was standing in the way, everything about her stiff, from her limbs to her face. Tom nodded to her. “Yes, Director Bones?”

“You—that is impossible.”

“And yet, you saw me do it.”

Amelia’s gaze darted back and forth between him and Harry, as if to bring to his attention that Harry had been part of it. Tom smiled at her mockingly.

Amelia swallowed, and then said, “Sir, I hope you will consider Auror protection for Mr.—Evans as well as yourself.”

Tom paused. If Amelia thought there might be attacks, there probably would be. He nodded. “Look for Aurors who are half-bloods or Muggleborns and won’t speak the word Giftless in a taunting tone.”

“No one will do that now.”

Tom looked at her.

Amelia flinched. “Yes, all right. Although we have very few half-blood or Muggleborn Aurors, as it stands.”

“Get as many as you can.”

Tom turned to Harry, wondering if he would object to the idea that he had to be protected. But Harry gave him a sweet, sleepy smile and shook his head. “Whatever you think is best, Tom.”

Tom wouldn’t want Harry this docile all the time, but it was appealing at times, in its own way. He swept Harry out of the bank, and their trailing crowd split back off in the Alley, talking in low voices.

Harry made a soft noise of discomfort. Tom glanced at him and realized that the Diagon Alley wards were getting to him. They probably didn’t hurt as much as they’d used to, now that Harry had a Gift some of the pureblood creators would have approved of, but Tom saw no reason to keep them here with their purpose fulfilled.

He Apparated, Harry held close in his arms.

*

Harry opened his eyes and grinned at the ceiling. He actually felt the joy curling through him even before the memory of how they had altered the goblin cavern came back and he rolled over and laughed aloud.

“Something funny, my own?”

Harry looked up and smiled at Tom, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. He had been studying a book that looked more like a bound scroll than anything else, but he set it aside and leaned towards Harry.

“I’m free.”

“A somewhat ambiguous statement when not made in Parseltongue.”

Harry rolled towards him and raised his arms. Tom bent into them at the silent demand and kissed Harry. Harry kissed back, with lots of tongue, still reveling in the notion that he had found so much.

A Gift. A place in the magical world. A lover who was attentive and gentle and would also fuck him hard.

And is really bloody hot.

Tom straightened back up and raised his eyebrows. Harry laughed again, more for the fact that he was of course waiting for Harry to explain what he meant, and lounged against the pillows. “I mean free of all the cages they tried to put me in.”

Tom’s eyes lit, and he nodded slowly. “I felt much the same way when I became Minister.”

“Even though you hadn’t found another Parselmouth yet?”

“Even though. At least I was free to search and to urge the Unspeakables to develop the kind of magic that would allow me to find a potential partner more quickly.” Tom leaned forwards, attention fastened on Harry. “Though I could not have imagined finding someone like you.”

“It’s the hotness, isn’t it. The eyes? Everyone says the eyes.”

“I find that I am rather fond of your arse.”

Harry laughed aloud again, because he could and because it was a day for it, and pulled Tom down on top of him. They should share the pleasure and the joy of the day with their bodies as well as their minds, he thought.

It was his last coherent thought for some time.

*

“Minister Riddle.”

It was the first time Tom had ever seen a centaur use the Floo. He asked no questions, however, because the centaur in the fire was Bane, and he was grim as Tom hadn’t seen him since the beginning of their creation in the Forest.

“Yes, Bane?” Tom turned in his chair and made sure to focus his full attention on Bane, so that he wouldn’t feel he was being ignored.

Bane closed his eyes and opened them again. “Someone destroyed the sanctuary that you made in the Forest.”

Tom felt a wave of cold move across his soul, and Bane drew back in the fire—from him, not from the aftermath of the destruction. Tom did his best to smile a little and nod. “I did expect a strike from our enemies, though not quite so soon.”

“Then you will come and heal it?”

“Heal it, protect it, make it bigger. Thank you for telling us about it.”

Bane paused, waiting for, probably, an insult. Then he nodded and murmured, “You are welcome,” and the fire shut.

Tom rose, feeling as if dark wings stretched around him. He would fetch Harry, and they would go and strengthen and heal the sanctuary.

Their enemies had struck them a blow. But they would strike back, harder.

Perhaps the purebloods think all magic that we wield is the gentle magic of creation. But they should remember that the forces of creation include fires, winds, enormous waves…

Tom smiled.

And earthquakes.

*

Harry swallowed tears that he thought Tom probably wouldn’t want him to shed as he stared at the ruined sanctuary they had created in the Forbidden Forest. He leaned against Tom and closed his eyes.

Tom stroked his hair and took over the business of talking to Bane and Magorian, another centaur who had come with him. “Were you able to track the ones who did this?”

“No. They obviously Apparated in and then back out. The footprints we found on the ground were of dragonhide boots such as many wizards might wear.”

“Hm.”

Harry couldn’t read that sound. He hoped that it meant Tom didn’t feel as hopeless and battered as he did. He looked up and walked around to the side of the stone wall that was now scattered rubble, where the invaders had apparently crossed.

The meadow’s grass was blackened and burned, the stream’s water rusty-colored and foul-smelling. The castle they’d made in imitation of Hogwarts had been so completely destroyed that Harry never would have thought a building had stood here if he hadn’t known. He felt desolation sweep through his soul like a winter wind.

“Harry.”

Harry turned reluctantly to face Tom. He thought Tom would probably say that he shouldn’t cry, and he was actually ready to argue and fight about that. If he couldn’t mourn the first sanctuary they’d created as a symbol of hope, what could he mourn?

But Tom was only watching him with glittering eyes. He extended one hand. “Come,” he said quietly. “We will build it better than before, more to the centaurs’ specifications.”

Harry hesitated, then crossed over to Tom. “It’s gone, though.”

“They cannot take the memory of that joy,” Tom said softly, running a hand down his face. “Do not give them that much power, Harry. Rise from the ashes, and build a sanctuary that’s better than the one before.”

Harry leaned forwards and kissed Tom, hard, ignoring the way that Bane and Magorian stamped and shuffled and looked uncomfortable. They could put up with it.

When Harry was finished, Tom looped an arm around his waist in the position that had become so familiar Harry just cherished the warm weight of it now, and faced the centaurs. “Tell us what you would like to see.”

*

Tom waited until he was sure Harry was asleep, and then set up wards around the bed that would protect Harry against anyone with any Gift Tom knew of. Tom had put his Legilimency to good use when he first became Minister, reading the truth of how to defeat the Gifts of every pureblood family out of their minds. And most of them would rely on their Gifts instead of ordinary magic for an attack on Tom’s—

Lover. Partner. Soulmate. Heart.

My darling.

Tom brushed his fingers down Harry’s cheek, as he was the only one who could reach through the wards, and then stood. He didn’t know how to track down the bootprints from the spoiled sanctuary, either, but he didn’t need to.

He had recognized the Lestrange Gift in the despoiling of the water. They could blight things, make them smell and rot.

Tom whirled and strode out of his house. He might have taken Harry with him, but he’d hesitated when he thought of what he must do. Harry might have moral objections to mental torture in a way that he didn’t to simply confronting purebloods with their prejudices.

Tom reached the edge of his wards and Apparated. He did wonder, as he landed, if the Lestrange wards would be closed against him, but everything was open and waiting.

Fools.

Tom half-closed his eyes and let his magic break its chains. A flood of power rather like the one he and Harry had used to enlarge the cavern poured out of him and splayed across the night sky. It reared above the Lestrange home and swayed back and forth, a great cobra.

Everyone in the Lestrange house at the moment would feel the pressure of Tom’s magic on their minds. They would know he was coming.

And that he was displeased.

Tom hadn’t walked most of the distance to the front door before it opened. Rodolphus bolted out and fell at Tom’s feet. Tom didn’t doubt he might have done that anyway, but he also thought that someone had probably shoved him.

“Please,” Rodolphus babbled. “We didn’t mean to make you this angry.”

“You thought I would not be?”

Tom’s voice emerged in a hiss that wasn’t Parseltongue, and which made Rodolphus bow his head until his face touched the earth. “No—yes—no—”

“I am losing patience, Rodolphus.”

“You don’t need to use Parseltongue to gain power, sir! We’re here, ready and willing to serve you! You don’t have to just keep being Minister! We would follow you anywhere! Your blood doesn’t matter when you have one of the Great Gifts! Please, sir, stop playacting for the masses and just take over the Ministry and magical Britain for good!”

Tom’s mind blanked for a moment as he stared at Rodolphus. He’d thought they’d destroyed the sanctuary out of hatred for Harry, petty jealousy, or fear of what the sanctuaries could become in the future and mean for Muggleborns and Muggles and magical creatures.

That they thought he should be their figurehead had never occurred to him.

It should have. Power in its bluntest form is all they understand, all they want to follow.

“Tell me, Rodolphus,” Tom said softly, and watched as the man relaxed. A mistake, but then, he was a fool from a family of fools. “Why do you think I kept the name Riddle instead of choosing the name Gaunt or Slytherin, both of which I had a right to?”

“You didn’t want to frighten people, sir,” Rodolphus said promptly. “They might think that you had an anti-Muggleborn agenda with either name, or that you were proud of a family like the Gaunts that was—unfortunate.” The distaste in his voice made Tom want to laugh aloud, but he managed to contain it. “But you can claim either name now, and we would follow you to the ends of the earth. Such power as you have! You can ditch that filthy half-blood and end whatever magic is letting you lend your Parseltongue to him. You don’t need him. You have us!”

Rage gripped and crushed Tom’s mind. He opened his mouth.

“What are you going to do to him for that insult, Tom?”

Tom spun around. Harry stood behind him, head cocked. He walked up and stood next to Tom, nudging Rodolphus with a boot. Rodolphus seemed to think it was Tom’s boot and huddled close for a moment, then looked up and scrambled back with a disgusted yell.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I felt my tracking charm go off and followed you.”

“You cannot have a tracking charm on me,” Tom said, momentarily distracted. “I would have felt anything on my skin, and I changed my clothes before I left.”

“I put it on your eyebrows.”

Tom stared at Harry, and felt as if his heart would beat its way out of his chest. He reached out and grabbed Harry’s arm, yanking him close, Harry came, hissing wordlessly in satisfaction as their chests touched.

“The other reason I left you behind is that I thought you would disapprove of what I would do to the Lestranges.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Mental torture.”

Harry laughed aloud, ignoring the way that Rodolphus flinched and whimpered. “Tom, there’s nothing you could do that would disgust me.”

Tom ignored Rodolphus, too, to lean over and kiss Harry with one hand behind his head so he couldn’t move away and spoil the kiss. By the end of it, Harry was flushed and smiling, and Tom was hissing soft words in Parseltongue about Harry’s magnificence. Harry cleared his throat and nodded to their audience.

“Do you think I care?”

“No, perhaps not.”

Tom smiled and faced Rodolphus. The man was staring up at him, frozen like a rabbit in front of a snake. Tom reached out with his Legilimency instead of with the rest of his magic, which still swayed above them like a cobra.

He dived deep into Rodolphus’s mind. The man knew some rudimentary Occlumency, but it wasn’t enough to keep Tom out, not like this. He pounced and raided and clawed, and Rodolphus screamed.

Tom gathered up all his own memories of people laughing and sneering at him in Hogwarts before he had revealed that he had the Slytherin Gift. He thought of the way that Harry had radiated despair when Tom had approached him at that first Ministry gala. He thought of the tears slipping down Miss Granger’s cheeks, the sorrow on Bane’s face, the way that Silverright had had to guard her name from the humans who had come to Gringotts.

He forced all of them into Rodolphus’s mind and bound them around the Lestrange Gift that he carried. Down, down, he forced them, and when he pulled away, Rodolphus flung back his head and wailed in agony.

“What did you do?” Harry hissed, close to Tom’s ear, close to his side, where he would be all the days of their lives if Tom had anything to say about it.

“Made him feel that he’s dirty,” Tom said. He watched as Rodolphus writhed on the ground, and satisfaction sang in him like a heartbeat. It had been so long since he’d indulged his taste for pain. “Every time he uses his Gift, he’ll feel it. Every time that he thinks about Muggleborns or magical creatures, he’ll feel the same things about himself that he used to feel about them. The self-loathing will grow and take root in him until it cripples every happy impulse he has and turns every joy into filth.”

Harry caught his breath. Tom glanced at him, wondering if this would be too much for his partner after all.

But Harry turned and looked up at Tom, and there was no mistaking the hardness beneath his robes.

Tom drew him in for another kiss, smiling as Rodolphus made a noise of despair, and Apparated them away.

It was not the most complete punishment he could have bestowed, perhaps, but it was the most long-lasting. Rodolphus would pay over and over again in years of agony for every moment of it that he had caused Harry.

Tom thought it a fair exchange.