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

[lomonaaeren]

“Harry! Mate!”

Harry turned around with a smile. He hadn’t talked to Ron in several months; he’d started distancing himself from all his friends because he’d thought he was going to become a Squib and go into the Muggle world. But it was nice to see him now. “Hi, Ron.”

Ron came to a stop next to Harry and goggled at him. “I’m surprised that you’re in Hogsmeade,” he said after a minute.

“Why?”

“I thought the wards were…”

Harry could have said something about how the wards weren’t the problem, the spells that prejudiced purebloods had woven were, but he didn’t see the point. He shrugged. “It’s still uncomfortable, but not as much as Diagon Alley. Tom reckons that the purebloods who put up the spells here didn’t hate Giftless half-bloods as much.”

Ron hesitated. Finally he said, “You know it sounds a little mental to talk about the people who put up the spells hating anyone, right? They just wanted to protect us.”

Harry hid a sigh. Ron wasn’t a bad person, but he was someone who had grown up in a pureblood family, with the Weasley Gift—spell-creation—almost from birth, and had never had to worry about what name he would bear or how he would support himself.

“It might sound mental, but it’s the truth. You know that Hermione felt it so much she had to go back to the Muggle world?”

“Right, but she’s a Muggleborn, so she was never going to have a Gift.”

“My mother does.”

“Sort of? I just—the spells are there to protect us, Harry.”

Harry patted Ron’s shoulder. “Sure. And now Tom and I are creating places where different people can live, protected by different spells.”

A rustle of robes behind him made him turn around. Tom was coming out of a Hogsmeade shop that sold instruments but was apparently run by someone old enough to have seen the creation of the blood-prejudice spells in the village. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Ron and nodded to him.

“Ron Weasley, sir,” Ron said, looking a little awed.

“Ah, yes, Percy Weasley’s younger brother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your brother is doing good work in the Ministry,” Tom said, and turned away from Ron with a slight but definite motion of his shoulders, focusing on Harry. “Darling, I was thinking that we might want to weave our blood into the wards for the sanctuary we’re going to set up on the edge of the village.”

Harry nodded. They’d discussed that plan before, but they hadn’t been sure that the prejudiced protective spells hadn’t been woven with blood. If they had, then Tom and Harry’s new wards might have conflicted with the ones on the edge of Hogsmeade.

“Isn’t using blood a bad idea?” Ron asked.

“Why is that, Mr. Weasley?” Tom held out his arm, elbow crooked in an obvious way, and Harry rested his hand on it. Ron goggled at that, too.

“I mean—only Dark spells use that kind of blood, right?”

“No, protective ones can also use it,” Tom said absently. Harry hid a smile. It was obvious that Tom didn’t care much about Ron. “The ones Harry and I are going to use are of that kind.”

“But do we need other spaces? Anyone who has a Gift can be here in Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley.”

“And what about the people who don’t have Gifts?”

Ron just shrugged, uneasy, his eyes darting between Tom and Harry. “I just don’t think blood protections are a good idea.”

Harry nodded and ignored him. Ron had been his friend all his life, but they’d drifted apart in the last few years since Harry could hardly stand to spend time in most of the magical areas where Ron wanted to work or visit family members. And Ron didn’t have ill-will towards Muggleborns or goblins or centaurs or the like, but he also wouldn’t think that their being uncomfortable in Hogsmeade was a problem.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“To create more space.”

Ron sighed gustily. “I just don’t think we need it.”

“Perhaps you do not,” Tom intervened. “But everyone else does.”

Ron stopped and shook his head at Tom, apparently caught between arguing with him and being intimidated by his position as Minister. “But—sir—if only a few people need it, why go to this huge expense of magic and time?”

“It’s not really a huge expense of either,” Harry said cheerfully. “We can expand space pretty quickly, and we can do it inside a tiny barrier, so we don’t need to purchase the land. And we recover quickly, too.”

“Mate…”

Harry clapped Ron’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Ron. We’ll talk sometime next week, all right? Hermione will be coming back to the magical world to stay, now that we have these sanctuaries. I think we should also meet up at my mum and dad’s house or something. Maybe Tuesday?”

“Um. Maybe Tuesday.”

Ron stood and watched them go, his forehead furrowed. Tom laughed a little, quietly, once he and Harry were most of the way to the end of Hogsmeade’s main street. “And why do you think he feels the way he does?” Tom hissed.

“Oh, I’m sure that it’s because he doesn’t like change but he doesn’t really know why he should oppose this. So his arguments are weaker than they would be if he were really prejudiced against Muggleborns and magical creatures.”

“You are so perceptive, my darling.”

Harry turned around and tilted his head back, and Tom bent down to kiss him. Harry thought he could hear a muffled yelp from the end of the street, and smiled a little. Ron wouldn’t be upset about Harry being with a man, but Harry being suddenly Gifted and with Minister Riddle was probably a bit harder to take.

*

“I wondered if you had considered the licensing and property laws inside the sanctuaries, Minister Riddle?”

“I haven’t yet, Miss Granger, but I would be pleased if you would enlighten me.”

Granger carefully looked at Tom as she sat down in the chair opposite him in the Minister’s office. Tom kept a smile on his face, but he felt his temper sharpen and chill. That was the look of someone who had been disregarded and talked over by purebloods so many times that she found it strange someone wanted to listen to her.

“Ah. Right.” Granger cleared her throat and became brisk again as she spread out a sheaf of parchment on his desk. “I was simply wondering if you knew that a lot of the laws on the books say only purebloods can establish businesses or buy the kinds of buildings that are needed for shops and restaurants and so on?”

“Oh, yes. But I wondered if you had noticed this particular clause…” Tom sifted through the parchments for a moment, then tapped his finger on the sentence he’d been looking for. “Please read it.”

“Pursuant to the above,” Granger read obediently, “purebloods of established Gifts shall be the only ones who may purchase buildings or establish businesses in the following territories: Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, Knockturn Alley, Hogwarts…”

She reached the end of the list, and then looked up at him and laughed a little. “It doesn’t say anything about other areas?”

“No.” Tom smiled at her. “Since there are so few magical villages in Britain and even fewer areas that are completely magical with no Muggles, they didn’t think they needed to issue a blanket statement instead of naming them.”

“I have an idea for the sanctuary we could establish near Hogsmeade.”

“Yes?”

“It was hard on my parents when I was both away from them for ten months of the year and learning things I couldn’t tell them about,” Granger said quietly. “Establishing a sanctuary where Hogwarts students could live with their parents would be incredibly important. They could keep the connection to their families alive.”

“I agree that that is important, but given how hostile Hogwarts has become to Muggleborn students and others, do you think it’s the best idea to try and keep students going to that particular school?”

“Oh. Yes. But—it would take so long to establish another school…”

“It would take some years, certainly. But Harry and I could get started on creating it now. And Muggleborn students are not being pushed out of the school by the hostile spells yet. We would have time to create our own classes, hire our own professors, talk up the school’s reputation.”

Granger closed her eyes. Tom sat still. He thought she was about to start crying the way she had over the sanctuary in the Forest, and without Harry here, he didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Yes,” Granger whispered at last. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve dreamed of this. How much I want to teach History of Magic in a way that benefits the students.”

Tom smiled. “We will do what we can to make a number of dreams come true, Miss Granger.”

*

“We’re here to protect you…sir.”

It was hilariously obvious that the Hit Wizards didn’t know how to address him. Harry waved a hand at the nearest one, Anastasia Rowle, a tall blonde half-blood with icy blue eyes. “Oh, you can just call me Your Highness. No need for fancy titles.”

Rowle’s face tightened and she turned around to bark an order at one of the Hit Wizards behind him. They hadn’t been able to find enough half-blood and Muggleborn Aurors to fill out the complement of five that Tom thought necessary to defend him, so they’d given him Hit Wizards instead. Harry shook his head as he began to walk towards Hogwarts.

Today, he was going to speak with the professors and ask what they knew about the protective spells becoming hostile to Muggleborns and others. Tom was pessimistic about Harry’s chances of actually persuading any of the current professors to come teach for the new school, but that wasn’t why Harry was here. He just wanted to know what their perception was and use their words as confirmation for the news that he and Tom would spread.

Someone Apparated into being on the path behind them. Harry turned and dropped into a defensive crouch. It couldn’t have been Tom unless he had removed the tracking charm Harry had put on his wand, and Harry didn’t think he’d figured that one out.

And more to the point, the Hit Wizards who had surrounded him were falling back out of the way of the attacker, unpleasant sneers on their faces. Rowle stood at Harry’s side, but with her arms folded and her face in a heavy frown.

“Not going to defend me?” Harry asked. The figure in front of him was cloaked in dark grey and had already drawn their wand.

“I’ll do it if they use an Unforgivable,” Rowle drawled. “You don’t deserve to die. But they probably only want to maim you or disfigure you so Riddle no longer finds you attractive. You don’t deserve the position you have.”

“So loyal.” The Rowle Gift was an unyielding will that allowed them to remain loyal or keep pushing forwards through extreme pain or hardship.

“To those who deserve it.”

Harry snorted and turned to face the figure walking towards him. “You’ll see.”

He set up a shield hovering behind him, so that if any of the Hit Wizards decided to help the attacker they would have to take it down and cause a noise, and then charged forwards.

The attacker paused, then launched a Blasting Curse at him. Harry rolled on the ground underneath it and launched one of the spells that Sirius had taught him as soon as Harry was old enough to manage a hex. “Dolor oculorum!”

The attacker shrieked as their eyes began to swell shut. They would counter it, of course, given enough time. The hex was painful and disabling in the short term, but it didn’t require a special countercurse.

Harry didn’t intend to give them that time.

He came up right next to the attacker and kicked them in the groin. They crumpled, which at least said they were probably a wizard under the clothing. As he bent, Harry kicked him in the face, harder than he’d kicked him in the groin.

There was a long groan, and the wizard sagged back. Harry cast the Wand-Splitting Curse without hesitation, and cracked the attacker’s oak wand down the middle. Someone cried out behind him.

Harry smiled. They probably found his tactics beyond the pale, brutal and barbaric and just like a filthy half-blood.

He turned around. Rowle and three of the other Hit Wizards were gaping at him. The fifth was backing away in a manner that made Harry think they’d probably helped with setting up the attack.

Harry used a broad Stunner and Stunned three of his “guards” including the one who was backing off, then the one he’d left out beside Rowle. Then he pointed his wand at her.

“I didn’t—I didn’t have anything to do with this,” she whispered. She was holding her hands up.

“But you were going to stand back and let me possibly be killed because of your stupid beliefs,” Harry said, and Stunned her.

He looked at the Hit Wizards lying on the path around him, and sighed. Then he turned and walked over to the man he’d defeated. Flipping back his hood revealed a face he didn’t know, but with the classic high cheekbones and aquiline nose of an inbred pureblood.

Harry sighed again and went to Hogwarts. He would have to ask if he could use Professor McGonagall’s Floo to reach Tom.

*

“I don’t know if we should be doing this when we’re still angry, Tom.”

“Yes, we should.”

Harry smiled at Tom, his eyes bright and gentle, and rested a hand on his shoulder.
“I know that you think I might have died, but I didn’t. That’s the whole point, that their plot failed.”

Tom didn’t bother answering. The fact that the Hit Wizards had either known about the plot to kill Harry and stood aside or just not bothered to interfere had sunken underneath the surface of his skin and still rankled now, hours after Harry had contacted him through Minerva McGonagall’s Floo to reassure Tom that he was safe.

So they stood near a small patch of land surrounded by a stone wall on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Miss Granger was with them, her mouth pinched tight as she looked back and forth between Harry and the outer buildings of the village. A group of witches and wizards had begun to gather around them, looking variously curious, hostile, and disbelieving.

“I already sacked the Hit Wizards who were so stupid as to stand aside this afternoon. Peter Mulciber, who attacked you, is in a holding cell and will be lucky if he isn’t sentenced to Azkaban.”

“Right. So do we need to do anything else?”

Tom twisted around and slammed his lips into Harry’s. There were incoherent protests from some of their watchers, but Tom didn’t care. He drew Harry roughly against him as he had before when they’d established their sanctuaries, but this time, he made it obvious how possessive his grip was, how close he was pressing.

Harry gasped a little and then gave as good as he got. Tom kissed him until he was sure that Harry’s head was swimming and he would have forgotten most of the arguments he intended to make, then drew back slowly, licking his lips. Harry’s eyes were bright and glassy, his hair standing out as though Tom had run his hand through it repeatedly.

Tom glared over Harry’s head at the audience. Some of them found extraordinary interest in trees or clouds or houses off to the side.

“Someone tried to kill my intended this morning,” Tom said flatly. “I have had enough of your blood prejudice, your prejudice against magical creatures, your idiotic belief that your Gifts make you superior. This is the end of that.”

He whirled to face the stone circle and held up his hand. Harry’s magic rose to meet his, bright and joyous.

Tom reminded himself that this still existed. He could be angry, he could be enraged, but Harry was full of bloody joy more often than not. He would always have Harry to bring him back to normality.

Right now, however, he didn’t care about anything but what was in front of them.

“Create the earth!”

The earth inside the stone circle expanded more rapidly than it had ever done before. Harry’s magic leaped over the wall and began to raise stones out of the ground, joined a moment later by Tom’s power.

Tom held Harry’s hand tightly as he watched their motes of silver power whirl around each other, flame and light at the moment instead of the water they had looked like when expanding the cavern under Gringotts. He poured rage and hatred and love and sorrow into the stones, and Harry breathed back the emotions and expended some of his own.

Tom could see the images in his mind, how Harry’s skin had stung and he had flinched from invisible glares and punches when he walked Diagon Alley or even through the corridors of Hogwarts.

His own rage rose, and Harry’s joy and sorrow crashed into it, entwining together like long-necked serpents.

Tom hadn’t pictured anything specific, only what he felt he wanted, and Harry was reaching back towards him with the same desire. Their magic danced together, smoothing off the edges that would have separated them, and then—

Then.

Tom opened his eyes with a gasp and stared at the building rising in the stone circle. It was like Hogwarts in some ways, with the corridors and the grounds that contained a lake and the slender towers at the corners. But the lines were clean, slender stone, and it had pavilions the wind could blow through, and Tom could see the glass windows glinting in the walls. He took a step forwards and nearly sagged.

“You’re the one who needs me now,” Harry whispered as he caught Tom and kept him from falling. “It’s all right. We did it. We built the kind of school we wanted. We just need to make sure we can protect it.”

Tom nodded and bowed his head. He was still breathing hard, caught up in the storm of emotions that had torn through him. Harry’s hand on his back was a steadying anchor when he wanted simply to blow away.

“Minister Riddle.”

Tom ignored the voice behind him. He was so tired he didn’t even recognize it.

But then Miss Granger stepped around Harry and looked at him, and Tom forced himself to meet her eyes. Harry would be upset if Tom ignored one of his best friends. “Yes, Miss Granger?’ he asked.

She looked him straight in the eye. “It would be my honor to help you raise the wards to protect this Academy.”

Tom half-smiled. They hadn’t discussed a name for their school; he had assumed it would take some time to choose one. But that Academy would be part of the name made sense. “As you will, Miss Granger.”

She nodded to him, and then she turned and marched towards the entrance of the school. The air around her sparked when she stepped over the wall. Tom blinked.

“I was thinking that we needed some protections right away, just in case we collapsed from the overload of emotion and magic,” Harry murmured behind him. He was the one to link his arms together around Tom’s waist this time. “You know Hermione will be a good professor?”

“I am rather counting on it.”

Harry smiled into the nape of Tom’s neck. “Of course, it’ll be a long time before our school can be a real competitor to Hogwarts.”

“If the number of their students keeps going down because of how hostile those protective spells are, then they’ll lose enough that they can’t go on functioning. It’s not like they can make their number up with students from abroad.”

Harry smiled again, and they stood watching as Miss Granger appeared at one of the windows of the Academy and waved to them.

*

“I am disappointed in you.”

It was a simple sentence, the kind of thing that Harry would have thought most people wouldn’t care about. At least, not the kind of people determined to attack him and bring him down. They would already know that they were risking Tom’s wrath.

But Tom’s words cut into the assembled Hit Wizards in a way that made them blink and flinch and lower their heads. It probably helped that Amelia Bones stood beside Tom, her arms crossed and her bearing radiating the kind of cold contempt that Tom didn’t.

At the moment.

Tom lifted his head, and transformed between one breath and another from the mild-voiced man he had been so far into the man Harry had seen the night they confronted Lestrange. Harry had to shift so that his own inappropriate reaction was hidden behind the fall of his and Tom’s robes.

“I could perhaps respect enemies who planned cleverly enough to get away with it,” Tom said, his voice etching his rage on the air. “I would have hunted you down and you would have died in duels with me, but I could have respected you.”

They would have died anyway, no matter if they tried to refuse the duels.

“And I could have respected it if you had come to me and expressed the fears and disappointments that I assume led you to attack Harry Evans. I might not have agreed, but I would have listened.”

That made a few faces brighten. Harry snorted. They still thought there was some way they were getting out of this.

Some of the Hit Wizards glared at him. Harry just grinned back.

“But you did neither of those. You simply stood back when my lover was attacked and never thought about what would happen if he won.”

“Oh, come on, Tom,” Harry said, and leaned around Tom to smile at Rowle, who was one of the “Hit Wizards” in the expanded office even though she had technically been sacked already. She scowled back at him. “You know that they never thought I might win? They think of me as lesser.”

“You are,” someone muttered in the back row.

From the way Tom turned his head, Harry was sure he knew exactly who had said that, but he didn’t single them out immediately. He let his eyes sweep dismissively back and forth over the Hit Wizards, and then he said quietly, “In one way, you will have what you wanted.”

“What?” croaked Rowle, looking startled.

“You wanted to have a Minister who would not have a formerly Giftless half-blood for a lover. Now you will not have one. I am stepping down, effective immediately.”

There was a wave of noise that Harry thought might actually be more powerful than the wave of magic he and Tom had unleashed to create the Academy. It meant that no one noticed him laughing, anyway.

“Sir, you can’t do this,” Madam Bones was saying, closer to hand, when Harry paid attention again. “You were duly elected and you have to serve—”

“Oh, come, Amelia. You know as well as I do that Ministers leave their offices early all the time when there’s a scandal and the like.”

“Of course, sir, but this isn’t—”

“It is.” Tom turned and looked at the Hit Wizards, who were still yapping, but shut up as they noticed the direction of his gaze. “The scandal of not being able to have Hit Wizards I can trust.”

“He was Giftless!” shouted someone in the back row, who might be the person who had said Harry was lesser.

“And now he’s not.”

There was more complaining, and then some begging and pleading. Harry wondered idly how many of them were just surprised, and how many were like Lestrange and had thought Tom wanted to be their figurehead. He supposed it didn’t matter, in the end. Tom just glittered at them and gave sharp-edged replies.

“Who is supposed to take over as Minister?” Madam Bones asked, when she had somewhat restored order by firing off loud bangs from her wand that sounded like fireworks.

“I believe the line of succession would nominate you, Amelia.”

That made some of the Hit Wizards look frightened, probably because they thought Madam Bones wouldn’t tolerate corruption in the same way Tom had. They were probably right, Harry thought, highly entertained. It was all they deserved.

“Minister Riddle—”

“Now, now, you can just call me Tom, Minister Bones. Mr. Riddle, if you want to be courteous.”

“Don’t you care at all about how this will destabilize magical Britain?”

“I did,” Tom said, “until these people decided I didn’t have the right to care.” He held out his hand to Harry, who took it, beaming. “I have better things to do than guess what direction the next knife is coming from.”

He and Harry walked towards the door of the expanded office, and the half-broken voices from behind them didn’t make an impression. But Minister Bones did ask one question that did.

“What are you going to do now, Tom?”

Tom smiled over his shoulder at her. Harry, breathless with laughter, thought he looked more handsome than he ever had.

“I’ve always been interested in becoming a professor.”

*

“It was rather impetuous, you know.”

Tom turned his head. He had come to Harry’s parents’ house to have dinner, and he and Harry had been sitting in the garden behind the house since then, quietly discussing the events of the day. Tom had been sitting against the leg of Harry’s chair, head leaning back so that Harry could stroke his hair.

Colton, Harry’s younger brother, either thought Tom was asleep or didn’t care he was present.

“Yeah, I know,” Harry said happily. He had been happy all day. Tom thought now that he should have resigned from his office as soon as he had given Harry Parseltongue. He would have been able to watch that smile with even more attention. “But so was that stupid plan where they tried to assassinate me.”

“Why did they try that?”

“They thought they had chains on Tom that they didn’t.”

“But—don’t you see that this is sudden?”

“Yes. I don’t care.”

“Why not? Help me understand, Harry. Mum and Dad are acting like they accept it, but it’s hard to—I just don’t understand why they would do that.”

Harry sighed and was silent for a bit, his fingers still moving through Tom’s hair. Tom half-wished that Colton would give up and go away, and half-wanted to hear the explanation he thought Harry was gathering the breath and thoughts to give.

“I assumed for a long time that I would inherit the Potter Gift,” Harry said at last. “And then I thought I might at least inherit the Evans one. But when it became clear that I wouldn’t inherit either, I was bitter. You can’t imagine how bitter I was.”

Even now, Tom thought with a curl of inner satisfaction, he will not tell his brother he is jealous of him. Or was jealous. But I know.

“But you know that we would have taken care of you!”

“Okay. So would you be willing to give up all the Galleons and property you’re going to inherit? Or your Gift?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know Mum and Dad would take care of you. You know they would find you a suitable guardian when they died.”

“Talk sense, Harry.”

“That instinctive disgust and revulsion you feel at the idea of having to depend on someone else? That’s what I felt, Cole. Only a lot stronger, because I had years to think about it and brood on what was going to happen.”

Colton was silent. Tom turned his head so that his lips were pressed against the line of Harry’s thigh. Harry nudged him without looking, although Tom knew it was with affection rather than irritation.

“I understand,” Colton whispered at last, sounding subdued. “I—I suppose you would take any hand that helped you out of that trap.”

“I would have, but Tom’s isn’t just any hand. He’s incredible, Cole. He gave me the ability to pay back the Gift he gave me, and protect the other people in society who are the most vulnerable. He brought Hermione back to the magical world. He’s wonderful.”

Tom let his mouth stretch in a smile. He would have to tease Harry, later, and ask Harry if he would have said those things if Tom were really asleep, unable to hear him. But the teasing would not be bitter on either side, because both of them already knew the answer.

“I suppose,” Colton said, and then sighed. “But at least you’re going to visit sometimes in between your new career of saving the world and your living with your handsome lover, right?”

“Of course. And you’ll visit in between studying for your classes as a trainee Auror—”

Tom almost laughed aloud.

“And chatting up some pretty witch.”

“Ginny Weasley said she might go out on a date with me. She had a crush on you for the longest time, you know.”

Tom decided that Ginny Weasley would not be visiting their house any time he was absent.

“Until she found out I was Giftless and going to stay that way, yeah.”

“Oh.”

There was silence, and then Harry gently slid Tom’s head off his lap and stood to embrace his brother. Tom stretched and yawned as if he were just awakening, and Harry’s brother nodded to him, doing an admirable job of concealing a grimace.

“Minister.”

“I’m not, remember.”

“Oh. Of course. Um. Be good to my brother.”

Tom took Harry’s hand and held Harry’s eyes, not Colton’s, as he leaned forwards to press a kiss to Harry’s knuckles. “I desire to be nothing else.”

Harry beamed at him. Colton probably turned and slipped out of the garden, but Tom honestly didn’t remember seeing him go.

It didn’t matter. He was busy with Harry’s mouth.

*

Harry lay awake in their bed, cradling Tom close. For once, the paranoid bastard had fallen asleep before Harry, and his soft breathing echoed in Harry’s ears. Harry thought he could bow his head and listen to it forever.

The stars beyond the window were as bright as the ones in the fairy tales Sirius had told Harry when he was little, when Harry still believed he might develop a Gift if he looked up at the stars and the moon and wished hard enough.

He’d endured years of bitterness, years convinced that he wasn’t as good as everyone else. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Because it had come to this. He had Tom. He had the support of his family, as confused as it was. He had one of his best friends back in the magical world. He had the promise of work in the future that was as beautiful as it was meaningful.

He even had Tom free of the political office that had taken up so much of his time in the past few weeks.

Tom, who stirred now and lifted his head. Harry lowered his head and kissed him, and Tom gave a sleepy hiss, not quite awake. It humbled Harry, how Tom trusted him to rest here in his arms like this and not be completely vigilant.

“Harry?’

“I’m here, Tom.”

“You won’t leave me.”

“I’ll be here always, Tom.”

Tom mumbled a little more, and Harry thought he had already slipped back into sleep. But then he said, as clear as a mountain stream, “I love you.”

Harry’s heart leaped. He spoke with no doubt of his words’ truth, for all the short length of the time they had known each other. “I love you, too.”

Tom gave him a sleepy smile, pillowed his cheek on Harry’s stomach, and slid into slumber again. Harry stroked his hair and looked up at the stars.

The night didn’t seem bright enough to contain his joy.

The End.