lomonaaeren

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Chapter Six—Peeling the Skin

“I think you are right that your soulmate isn’t the right person for you, Harry.”

Mum’s voice was subdued, and she put a hand on the doorway of Harry’s bedroom as if she needed the support. Harry stood up from the chair he’d been occupying in front of the fire, pretending to read the book on emotional coherence that his Mind-Soother had assigned him.

He knew it already. It didn’t matter to him one whit in his professional or personal life, but he did know it.

“I’m so sorry he did that to you, Mum.”

“I had no idea that he would—that he could. But part of it is my fault. I should have worked on my Occlumency more often, and so should your father—”

“No, Mum. I promise.” Harry took a few quick steps forwards and cupped her shoulders. Mum’s eyes were so miserable as she looked up at him, and Harry couldn’t stand to see her that way over Tom bloody Riddle. “There’s no way that Unspeakable Riddle should have violated laws and common decency and just—the rules of everything to go after your thoughts. I’ve already let him know what I think, and I’ll make sure to protect you from him.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How can you prevent him from doing what he likes?” Mum whispered, and her mouth trembled. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t—I’ve never felt anything like his magic, so powerful, and of course you’re already being prevented from active Auror duty because of him.”

Harry felt a flare of triumph, despite everything. If his family were on his side as far as the Mind-Soothing he’d been ordered to undergo being unnecessary, he had already gained an important victory.

“I’ll find a way,” he said. “After all, I know what he wants more than anything.”

“What’s that?”

“Me. Set a trap for him with me as the bait, and he’ll come running.

*

Tom found himself more than a little irritated when several days had passed since the dinner with Harry and his parents, and Harry hadn’t tried to retaliate in any way. Was Harry giving up so soon?

How disappointing.

And not something Tom believed, not at the bottom of his soul. Harry was the other half of him, and Tom would not have let the insult rest unavenged. Granted, Harry might be dealing with Auror case procedure now, in a way that made it impossible for him to spend as much time thinking about vengeance on Tom as he should, but this was a poor showing.

Tom might have let it go, but he heard the mention of Harry’s name as he was walking to his office that morning. He stopped at once, leaning against a wall next to a small alcove that held a particularly idiotic-looking bust of Minister Bagnold. A swift Disillusionment Charm meant he wouldn’t disturb the conversation when he looked around the corner.

“Scrimgeour’s ignored the problem that Potter presents for years.”

“And now he’s not.”

Draco Malfoy, one of the speakers, sniffed and folded his arms. “It would be best for everyone concerned if Potter was moved out of the Auror Corps. He’s like a broom with all its enchantments missing.”

“What do you mean? His arrest count is higher than everyone else’s.”

And his kill count, too, Tom thought, amused, as he regarded the woman Draco was speaking with. Tom thought she worked in the Ministry Archives, but he couldn’t recall her name. Her blonde hair probably meant she was a Malfoy relative, however.

It would explain Draco’s attention, as well. The man rarely spoke to anyone equal in rank to him when he could spend his time toadying to those above instead.

“He just makes up lies about how his cases went and passes them off as truth. Scrimgeour hates Dark wizards so much that he permits it.”

Not exactly the truth, but close enough. Tom tapped his fingers on his wand.

“But Scrimgeour wouldn’t tolerate lies in the name of arresting Dark wizards. Not if it meant they were walking free.”

“Oh, they don’t walk free. Potter kills them.”

You should have covered your tracks better, darling. Tom shook his head as he stepped out into the open. It was his privilege to defend his soulmate, and of course to have a soulmate who was so good at killing that he had got away with it for nearly a decade, but he would have prized Harry being cunning enough to avoid suspicion even more.

“Un-Unspeakable Riddle!” Draco was straightening up, brushing imaginary flakes of ash off his robe. “I didn’t realize you were coming in so early today.”

“The work of separation from the Muggle world waits for no wizard, Draco. Would you care to introduce me to your lovely companion?”

The woman gave him a reserved smile. Soulmated, then, or committed to waiting for her soulmate. “I’m Jasmine Fawley, sir. I work in the Ministry Archives. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure that you do sterling work up here.”

“And my pleasure to meet you, too. Knowing names makes it so much easier.”

“What do you m—”

Tom flicked his wand and cast a wordless Memory Charm. He wondered for a moment if Harry would be impressed if Tom told him about it, and then sighed a little. No, he thought not, more was the pity. Harry was hard to impress.

In a suitable way, of course, befitting Tom’s soulmate. But Tom could have wished for someone to impress simply in the matter of courtship the way he could have wished for someone more cunning.

“You had a conversation where Draco expressed his jealousy of Auror Potter and his relief that Potter was spending some time in a Mind-Soothing session,” Tom said. “You, Archivist Fawley, do have to wonder if Draco has an unacknowledged crush on Potter. And you, Draco, have enough dread and discomfort when speaking Potter’s name that you wonder that yourself.”

He released them into the waters of their new reality with another flick of his wand. Draco gasped a little and turned red. Fawley gave him a sidelong glance. The sharp set of her face told Tom how old-fashioned she was, probably not believing that someone with a living soulmate should have a trace of romantic feeling for someone else.

“How are you related to Draco, Archivist Fawley?” Tom asked politely.

“Oh.” Fawley turned back to study him. “I’m his second cousin, sir.”

“Ah,” Tom said, and nodded wisely, and said nothing else. He turned and walked into his office, shutting the door quietly behind him. He heard a quarrel break out between Fawley and Draco before he had got it all the way shut.

Tom smiled a little as he sat down behind his desk. He couldn’t wait to tell Harry how Tom had protected his reputation and kept his name out of the mouths of those who did not deserve to speak it.

He will not turn to me yet. But when he turns to me, he will find treasures awaiting him.

*

“Close your eyes. Picture your mind as the inside of an egg.”

Harry was doing that, because he could use what Mind-Soother Selwyn was ordering him to do for his own purposes, but he wondered if Selwyn had any idea what Harry was picturing as hatching from the egg.

A serpent, with fangs sharper than anything that Riddle could imagine—

“You are still radiating chaos and rage, Auror Potter.”

Harry shrugged and opened his eyes. Selwyn was leaning forwards on his stool—Mind-Soothers thought that using stools was a statement of how non-threatening they were or something—with his eyes fixed on Harry’s face.

“Why are you radiating those emotions, Auror Potter?”

“I don’t want to be here, Mind-Soother Selwyn.”

“I did tell you to call me Bertram, Harry.”

“Then why you are still calling me by my title half the time?”

Selwyn cleared his throat and shifted back and forth on his seat. Harry maintained eye contact and a smile, not caring how aggressive it made him look. They had forced him into this. They could deal with the consequences.

“You realize that if you’re not cleared by a Mind-Soother, you won’t ever manage to rejoin the Auror Corps?”

Harry took a deep breath. It was the kind of thing he had managed to forget from time to time, either because he was so annoyed at the Mind-Soothers or because he thought that Riddle wouldn’t want to keep him distant from the Ministry forever. But keeping him imprisoned here was an effective threat, so he nodded stiffly. “My apologies, Mind-Soother.”

“Please call me Bertram.”

“What if I don’t feel comfortable with that?”

Selwyn cleared his throat. He was a short man with brown hair and black eyes that reminded Harry a little of the last suspect he’d killed. That made it more difficult for Harry to control himself, granted, but that was his problem. “Let’s explore why you don’t feel comfortable with that, shall we?”

“All right.”

Harry droned out possible reasons that were the kind Selwyn and the other Mind-Soothers wanted to hear, his eyes fixed on the far wall of the office. It was hung with images of phoenixes, unicorns, and young dragons, all beaming at someone Harry thought was supposed to be the patient, about how calm and bright and gentle the world was.

You can think that because I kill the kind of people who would prove you wrong before they can become a problem.

“What do you hope to accomplish in Mind-Soothing, Auror Potter?”

“I thought you were going to call me Harry.”

Selwyn fussed with the scroll of parchment in front of him, blank for now. Harry enjoyed the sight. Of course the hypocrite didn’t really know how to respond to accusations like that. “You seemed uncomfortable with it.”

“I’m also uncomfortable with calling you by your first name,” Harry said blandly.

Selwyn sighed gustily. “Very well, Harry. What do you hope to accomplish through your Mind-Soothing responses?”

“A return to the Auror Corps as soon as possible.” Normally Harry would just lie, but Selwyn had spells all over his office that detected the emotions Harry radiated, which was how he’d known to make that remark about anger and chaos. So Harry could only speak shallow lies about comfort like he’d already given, instead of saying that he really did want to be calm and peaceful.

Selwyn shook his head, his face troubled. “Even though that means you might end up tossed out?”

I won’t end up tossed out. Scrimgeour only cares about appearances, not about stopping me from actually killing Dark wizards.

But with Riddle interfering, Harry supposed that he couldn’t count on that to shield him any longer. He fussed with his hands much like Selwyn did and made his eyes big. “You think I might?”

“If you continue to be a dragon flapping loose and causing problems, yes.”

I can work with this. Harry leaned forwards. “Well, sir—”

“Harry.”

“Bertram,” Harry said, and ducked his head and let his mouth wrinkle as if saying the name were much harder than it really was. “The biggest problem right now is my soulmate.”

“Unspeakable Riddle?”

Not advocating for calling him by his first name, are you? Harry nodded earnestly. “Yes, s—Bertram. Do you know that he recommended I be Mind-Soothed not because he’s really worried about me but because he’s playing a petty game with me? He’s upset that I told people he was raised in a Muggle orphanage.”

“You have proof of this?”

“Oh, yes.”

Selwyn sat back on his stool, looking so disturbed that Harry wanted to laugh. He would have used this tactic earlier if he’d known it would work so well. “I would not see Mind-Soothing wielded as a club against those who need it,” he murmured. “But at the same time, it’s undeniable that you were causing trouble in your previous position, Harry.”

“My previous position?”

“The position that will be your previous one if we cannot make this work.”

Harry closed his eyes and for a moment floated in his own Mind-Soothing equivalent, which was him picturing burning people to death. Then he nodded and opened his eyes. “But I don’t think that you want to see Unspeakable Riddle win.”

“You speak of this as if it’s a contest.”

“Isn’t it?” Harry tilted his head. “He was the one who sent me here and reckoned on you treating me without questioning whether I really needed it. He’s the one who’s using you as a club, like you said, or trying. He’s the one who’s letting his bitterness over my not waiting for him overwhelm his common sense.”

“It does not seem to me that someone who is calm and detached would burn his own soul-mark.”

“I didn’t do it to get back at Riddle, though, or whatever insane reason he’s devised. It’s just that I didn’t know who my soulmate was, and I was desperate, and I wanted to wake my brother-in-law up.”

“So you would say that your broken soulmate bond with Unspeakable Riddle is—whose fault exactly?”

“The fault of the person who put my brother-in-law in that coma, and forced my decision.”

After a long moment, Selwyn nodded. “I think that we should still try to calm down the rage and chaos radiating from you,” he murmured, which Harry had frankly expected him to say. “But I can admit that perhaps some of the conclusions I had drawn from the way Unspeakable Riddle told us about this are false.”

What a gracious admission.

“I think I could help damp my own rage and chaos,” Harry offered in a tone that was as close to shy as he could make it. “As long as I know that someone believes me about my lack of a bond with Unspeakable Riddle.”

“Why do you think he recommended you for Mind-Soothing?”

“Because he wants to control me,” Harry said promptly. “He knows that we’ll never have a normal bond and I have no interest in completing one, but as long as he can use other people to beat me down into a shape that he finds pleasing, he can force me into a bond like the one he wants. Or so he thinks.”

Selwyn started, his eyes going wide. “That is evil. To manipulate something as sacred as a soulmate bond…”

Harry shrugged, keeping his gaze on Selwyn while pretending to look at the floor from beneath lowered eyelids. “I think that Riddle has been so desperate to find his soulmate for so long that it’s twisted him into some…unfortunate shapes.”

“I will certainly help you, Auror Potter. No one deserves to be forced into a soulmate bond they do not want.”

“Thank you, Mind-Soother,” Harry breathed, and endured the little lecture about not using a formal title with good grace.

He had Selwyn on his side now, against the supposed evil of Riddle. And in the meantime, he had someone who would offer good reports to Scrimgeour and his parents, if they asked after them. Harry was less certain that his parents would ask, after what Riddle had done to them.

That left Scrimgeour, though, and any other Aurors who had to be convinced that Harry had been set up to “need” Mind-Soothing by Riddle instead of really requiring it.

Well, with Selwyn’s help, I think I’ll manage to get through them.

*

“Darling.”

Harry turned around with a welcoming smile for Tom, which Tom had to admit wasn’t what he had expected to see from his soulmate. “Tom,” he said. “Did you know that the Mind-Soothing is succeeding?”

“Is it?” Tom hadn’t expected the topic of conversation, either, but he was more than willing to accept it. He walked briskly towards Harry down the middle of the corridor, between Auror desks. He had been visiting a contact in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement when he had spotted Harry. He reveled in the eyes watching them, in the people who would be thinking of, and whispering about, them standing together. “I have to admit, I didn’t expect results that soon.”

“Neither did I! But Mind-Soother Selwyn has told me about these soothing meditations I can practice that will get rid of a lot of the frustrations I feel at the world in general.”

“Those frustrations that led you to kill suspects out of hand?”

Yes, people were definitely watching them now. Tom wondered idly how many Aurors had known about Harry’s “arrests” that ended in murders, and then dismissed the notion. The single most important person at the moment was the one with blazing green eyes in front of him.

“Those were some of them,” Harry said, and lowered his voice a little, although not enough to be out of the hearing of their audience. His eyes were bright with sorrow. “But the rest were connected with you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I came to realize that it really wasn’t my fault I needed Mind-Soothing. You were the one who told them that, after all. And it’s not as though it came from real concern about my arrest record. It’s because our broken soulmate bond is at the root of all this, and you’re angry that you haven’t managed to resurrect it.”

“Harry—”

“It’s all right, Tom. I understand. You waited decades for your soulmate, and it broke something fundamental in you. And then you didn’t go searching for me because you wanted someone to hunt you down. That means that you missed your chance, and you can’t forgive yourself for that. You’re displacing your anger onto me. Mind-Soother Selwyn told me all about that. When you Mind-Soothe, you peel back layers of emotions, did you know? Like yolk and shell in an egg. And I discovered that I wasn’t even angry at you for doing this. I pity you, that’s all.”

Tom could feel rage rising in him. The Aurors at the desks were watching and gaping and agreeing. Even if most of them wouldn’t give an outer sign, Tom could see the ripples making their way up and down beneath their robes, the nods edging out into the open, on the edge of being. He gripped the edge of the nearest desk and said in a flat voice, “I did not want someone to hunt me down.”

“Oh?” Harry stretched the word in exactly the right way to convince others, and gave Tom a sympathetic nod. “I understand. You felt that way, but you regret giving me the clue. You hate me for forcing you to endure decades of loneliness and a broken soulmate bond. I understand. It’s all right.”

He reached out as if he were going to put a hand on Tom’s shoulder. Tom shot his hand out and gripped Harry’s wrist, twisting a little. He knew he could cause agonizing pain from both the grip and the magic he was sending through his fingers.

Harry showed no sign of the pain, of course, other than a faint gasp. He kept his eyes on Tom and nodded as though someone were whispering secrets into his ear. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “So sorry that things worked out this way.”

Tom stepped closer. He was going to make that expression on Harry’s face change. He was going to wipe out that smug smirk. He was going to—

“Unspeakable Riddle!”

Tom let go of Harry, breathing heavily. That was Charlie Weasley, an experienced Auror several years older than Harry, who was making his way through the desks and frowning. As far as Tom knew, he had never been close friends with Harry, unlike the brother who was Harry’s age, but his daring and his knowledge of magical creatures made him someone respected. Even Tom couldn’t have got away with cursing him to his face.

“I understand that you’re disappointed in the loss of your soulmate bond, Unspeakable Riddle,” Weasley said, halting in front of Tom and frowning at him. “But that’s no reason to hurt the one who would have given you a soulmate bond if he could, sir.”

Harry was watching him from behind Weasley’s shoulder. Weasley had unsubtly separated them. No one else could see his eyes from this angle, but Tom could see the savage enjoyment there.

I win, Harry mouthed to him.

“I suggested Mind-Soothing for Auror Potter because I did believe there was something amiss with his arrest record,” Tom said, as amiably as he could. “I never thought that he had to be my soulmate.”

Weasley shook his head, his strong brow scrunching up. “I think the attention you’ve paid him since finding out about the broken bond argues otherwise, sir.”

I win, Harry mouthed again.

Tom felt rage rise up in him, surging and feral, the way that he hadn’t felt since he was a lonely child in a Muggle orphanage, not even knowing if any others of his own kind existed. His magic surged outwards, truly accidental for the first time since Tom had been eleven years old, and slapped Harry in the face.

Most of their audience might not have known what was happening, but they saw Harry stagger, heard the slap, saw the red mark that blossomed across his face.

“Sir!”

Tom clenched his fists, reprimanding himself more cruelly than Weasley would have dared to dream. He had not—lost control like that in public, ever. It would make it seem as if Harry’s accusations were true, and he was crumbling under the pressure of the broken soulmate bond.

Tom could not afford that. Could not afford any of this, truly.

If he rejects me, there will still be my goals and my political career left. I cannot endanger them for a man who might never respond to me the way I wish.

“I—apologize, Auror Potter,” he managed to force out, ignoring the way that smiles crept across a few of the faces around them. He was apologizing for the crowd, but his attention was locked only on Harry’s reaction. Harry tilted his head a little. “I have been under stress, but I should not have attacked you that way.”

“I do understand, Unspeakable Riddle,” Harry said, soft as a mudslide. “You’re bleeding internally from the loss of a soulmate bond, and you don’t like hearing that I experience discomfort and pity around you. Anyone would feel that way.”

No one had hurt Tom like this since he was at the orphanage. Or perhaps during his first year at Hogwarts, when so many people had believed that he was a Mudblood.

But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t take it out on Harry right now. No matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much he would have liked to yell at his idiotic soulmate.

He forced a slight smile onto his face and inclined his head. “No harm done, Auror Potter.”

“Thank you, Unspeakable Riddle. I appreciate your condescension.”

The Aurors sighed and settled back as a group now that they thought the entertainment was over. Weasley turned to speak to Harry, who was answering in a soft, tame way that made Tom’s hand itch for his wand.

Tom could do little with such an audience. But what he could do, he was going to.

He twisted his head as if he were trying to catch one last glimpse of his soulmate, and then he reached out and twisted his wandless magic into a punch under Harry’s ribs. Something fully deliberate, this time.

Harry’s mouth opened in a gasp. His eyes caught Tom’s, and for a moment, a scowl crossed his face.

Weasley started to turn around. Tom turned himself and walked towards the lifts, as tame as a lamb.

It wasn’t much pain. But it was all Tom could cause for right now.

He would cause more. He would make Harry pay attention to him, hurt and cry out and be in as much pain as possible.

I will not suffer alone.