lomonaaeren

“So, things have changed between you and Riddle, huh?”

Harry grinned at Ignatius as he dropped into place at the Gryffindor table and squirmed around a little. There was a delicious ache inside him where his arse met the hard bench, something else he would have said he didn’t like until he saw who was doing it. “You could say that.”

“Hmmm.”

Harry ignored Ignatius for the moment as he put a healthy helping of bacon on his plate, followed by sausages. He could feel Riddle’s eyes on him from across the Great Hall, and could just imagine what the bloke would say if Harry ate less than a “full breakfast.”

“You’re too skinny,” he’d said the night before, running a possessive hand down Harry’s ribs. “I can’t believe that you’ve gone this long with no one to look after your health.”

“Well, my Muggle relatives didn’t really care.”

“And your friends? Your tutors?”

Harry had sighed, letting his head fall back into the pillow. “I made a major mistake that cost me a bunch of friends. And my tutors were—well, they were adults, you know? Not really my friends.”

“What was the mistake?”

Harry glanced at Riddle. Riddle didn’t show any sign of thinking his question was inappropriate or blushing for asking it. Instead, he had leaned forwards, his face bright and his eyes shining in that way Harry found so hard to resist.

And Harry thought, What could it hurt? None of the people who would have objected to him talking about it were here, and he also doubted that Riddle was going to judge him for it. Riddle had done worse.

Maybe that shouldn’t be comforting.

But it was, so Harry ignored the hypothetical in favor of the reality and thought about how to phrase the truth in literal terms. “I knew a younger witch who got tricked, badly, by someone a lot older than she was. They forced her to play—well, they probably told her it was a prank, but it was a lot worse than that in the consequences for people. I got caught up in the prank and actually paralyzed for a bit. They healed me in the end, but I found out from a conversation I overheard that she was the one responsible.”

“And?” Riddle was leaning his cheek just above Harry’s now, his eyes unwavering.

Harry cleared his throat. “And, well, I blurted out that she was the one responsible when I had an argument with her a couple months later. Most people didn’t know. The ones who did, and her family, they blamed me for it. Because some other people shunned her. And because they said I should have had more loyalty to a friend.”

“She got you paralyzed.”

Harry nodded uneasily—not because of any guilt he still felt about Ginny, but because of the look in Riddle’s eyes. “She did.”

“And what was her punishment?”

“Well—none. The—adults said that she’d been tricked, and that was punishment enough. Supposedly she lived months in fear that someone would find out.”

“So what?” Riddle had snarled, his face close to Harry’s. “It should have been worse than that! She should have spent months in her room! Had to receive hexes from everyone she paralyzed! You weren’t the only one, were you?”

Harry shook his head. “No, but—she was eleven—”

“Young enough to stop doing what someone else told her once it paralyzed someone.”

“Are you saying that you wouldn’t have tricked her if you had the chance?” Harry asked irritably. “Or enjoyed paralyzing people you don’t like?”

Riddle gave him a grim flash of a smile. “Perhaps I would have, but she was not me. And you were blamed for telling the truth when you blurted out what happened?”

“I mean—yeah, but—I shouldn’t have done that—”

“She should not have done that. Did they ever forgive you, these so-called friends of yours?”

Harry swallowed. It was the first time he’d thought about his thorough shunning in Gryffindor in any detail since he’d been back in time. “No,” he whispered, and winced at how lost and lonely his voice sounded. The last thing he needed was to look weak or uninteresting in front of Riddle.

Riddle, though, didn’t seem to think he was. He nodded even more grimly. “Even Slytherins would forgive something like this, Harry. We might not forget, and we would keep secrets quiet around the person who blurted it out, but we would forgive.”

Harry swallowed and felt something scratch a little in his throat. He had heard Neville’s stuttering, quiet confession one night that the Sorting Hat had considered him for Slytherin. Harry had learned something by then about keeping secrets quiet, so he had, but he had felt a moment’s relief that the Hat had sent him immediately to Gryffindor. Two times now, even.

But at the moment, all he could think was that he might have done better in Slytherin.

He quelled the urge to say so and just shook his head. “Well, it’s nice to know that I wouldn’t have been completely alone in Slytherin if by some mistake I ended up there.”

“You think it would be a mistake?”

“Don’t you? We get along pretty well, Riddle, but part of being honest with each other is admitting that I’d be a horrible fit for your House.”

Riddle remained still for a long moment, eyeing him. Harry looked back. He had nothing else to offer but his honesty. And his body, but at the moment, Riddle didn’t look as if he even remembered they were naked in bed together.

And then he did, and his teeth flashed like a snake’s as he leaned down and whispered into Harry’s ear, “I still have time to make you come before our first class.”

“Not well.”

“Oh? I’m going to make you sscream, Harry Potter.”

There was that odd hiss on the edge of his words again, but Harry gave up thinking about it in favor of the way that Riddle swallowed him better than any snake could have.

And he maintained that he did no more than whimper, but he had to admit that Riddle had probably made good on his boast.

*

“So there is something going on between you and Riddle.”

Harry nodded and started eating. He was doing it for himself, not for Riddle and not for Ignatius. “Yeah.”

Ignatius waited perhaps five seconds, which Harry had the impression was probably like an eternity to him, and then gave a high-pitched whine. “Harryyyy. What happened?”

Harry just laughed and shook his head. Here he had friends, but also a kind of privacy that hadn’t been possible in Gryffindor Tower in his own time, when everyone was watching him in case he betrayed another Gryffindor again. “None of your business.”

Ignatius pouted at him, but Harry ignored him easily enough. He thought there was only one person in the school whose pouting he would give into, and Tom was dignified enough to never do that.

Huh. When did I start calling him Tom instead of Riddle in my head?

But it didn’t seem to matter that much, not when Harry glanced across the Great Hall again and caught Tom’s smile.

*

“What’s the most powerful spell you can cast?”

“How are you defining power?”

For once, they weren’t in bed, or up against the wall of a cupboard. They were lying in the grass near the lake, under a Warming Charm, on what might be the last sunny day of the autumn. Harry had his arms folded beneath his head, and an exquisite awareness of how close Tom sat to him. The soft heat of his body was better than the sun.

“Harry. Don’t go to sleep.”

“I’m not going to sleep,” Harry protested, and opened his eyes and smiled at Tom, who looked patently disbelieving. “I’m listening to you. But I don’t know how you’re defining power. The force with which it hits someone? The effort it takes to cast?”

“I would think it would be intuitive. For example, the Imperius Curse that I hit you with is one of the most powerful spells in existence.”

“And yet, it failed to have an effect on me,” Harry said, wanting to see if he could get Tom to scowl. It was the closest he came to pouting.

Tom didn’t do that, though, instead leaning intently forwards. When he got really interested in a topic, like he was now, his eyes seemed to glow. “That’s because you’re unusually powerful yourself. Abnormally so—”

“Don’t call me that.”

There was a moment of silence, Tom staring at Harry as if he were trying to figure him out, and Harry feeling his cheeks warm up with what wasn’t the sun as he realized what he’d sounded like. He looked away, wincing. Damn, he hadn’t known the word still got to him like that.

“Did someone call you that?” Tom whispered at last. His voice was so soft that the lapping of the lake on the shore almost overwhelmed it. “Did someone make you feel terrible because you weren’t Muggle enough for them?”

“Stop talking like that, it’s creepy.”

Tom showed no inclination to stop talking like that. In fact, he moved towards Harry on his hands and knees and crouched over him like a giant spider, reaching out to caress Harry’s jaw. Harry moved his head irritably to the side, but Tom’s hand followed.

“Because I could harm them,” Tom whispered. “I could make them grovel at your feet for daring to breathe the same air as you did and using it to insult you. I could make them pay.”

“No! Stop it!”

Tom paused for long enough that Harry wasn’t sure he would, and then he pulled his hand back, shrugged, and smiled, suddenly once more the genius Head Boy with a perfect sense of politeness. “If you wish.”

“That was—Tom, what was that? It was like you weren’t even you for a second.”

“I am still me,” Tom said, although his eyes were hooded. “And that was part of me, just like you’re the daring Gryffindor who dives after the Snitch on his broom and also the quiet boy who claims that he doesn’t want me to take revenge for him.”

Harry sighed and stared at him for a second. Tom just stared back. If there was something dark hiding in him, maybe because he practiced Dark Arts—

Of course he does, Harry, or do you think he just happened to cast the Imperius Curse perfectly on the first try?

Then it wasn’t anything that was making Tom angrier or more likely to walk away because Harry had refused his offer of revenge. If anything, Tom had started to smile slyly, fondly, again, as though Harry had done something other than stare at him and wait for the next curse to strike.

“Do you know what I like most about you?” Tom breathed.

“My dick?”

Tom rolled his eyes.

“My arse?”

Tom lunged forwards and grabbed Harry, bearing him to the ground and stretching out on top of him. Harry watched him, heart beating furiously with a delicious tempo. He didn’t feel scared of Tom, not exactly, but he liked the idea that Tom could hurt him and was only holding back because it pleased him to do so at the moment.

“That you are not afraid of me.”

Harry waited, and then raised his eyebrows a little. “Seriously? There’s no one else in the whole school who isn’t afraid of you?”

“Oh, there are those who flatter me in hopes of getting closer, and those dazzled by the façade I put on for the world, and a few who despise me. But only you have looked straight into my soul,” for some reason, Tom smiled at that, “and not been upset or cowered.”

“Huh.” That seemed odd to Harry. Tom was smart and brilliant and might be intimidating because of that, but he didn’t seem particularly dangerous.

“You do not know what I have done.”

“No, I don’t.” Harry leaned back on his elbows and stared up at Tom. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

Tom’s eyes seemed to darken, almost the way they had when he was telling Harry he could get vengeance on the Dursleys for him, but not as bad. He leaned forwards, and his lips brushed Harry’s, and he breathed out the words.

“I have killed.”

Harry swallowed. He had assumed it would be something like that. He took a long, deep breath, and asked, “Was it—a duel gone wrong? Or you were testing out a Dark Arts spell and it got out of hand?”

Tom froze, staring at him.

“Hello? Tom?” Harry wondered what was wrong now. He liked Tom a lot, but this freezing and staring and blinking and acting like a spider at random moments was getting a bit much.

“You do not back away from me,” Tom whispered.

“Yes? You already said that?”

“But I thought you would,” Tom continued in a soft tone, as if talking to himself rather than Harry. “I thought for sure there were limits to your tolerance, and you would stand up and yell at me and despise me as a murderer.” His hands abruptly tightened on Harry’s shoulders. “Why don’t you despise me as a murderer?”

Harry hesitated, but Tom was gripping him in a way that had never happened even during sex. He reached up and put his hands on Tom’s shoulders, and reminded himself that Tom wasn’t the kind of person who would try to turn Harry in to the Ministry or the Aurors.

Besides, it wasn’t like he could ever prove that Harry had killed someone in this timeline, anyway.

“I would prefer that you don’t tell anyone else about this,” he still said.

Tom leaned closer, his eyes widening. “I would never share your secrets,” he whispered.

That had the feeling of a truth hammered right down into Harry’s chest. Harry bit his lip, nodded, and then took a deep breath.

“All right. The beginning of—well, almost a year ago, now. I suppose it doesn’t matter what month it was. But some Dark wizards and witches came after me and my friends. And what remained of my tutors.”

“Does that have something to do with why you’re here now?”

“Yeah,” Harry murmured, because it did, and it was even the literal truth, the way Dumbledore and Dippet had told him to tell. “But there was one particular Dark wizard who tortured people. He was a werewolf, and not like some of them who don’t accept their curse and try to live among humans. He was so melded with his wolf that he could grow claws in human form, and so hate-filled that he attacked children just to attack them.”

“He didn’t—infect you?”

Tom seemed to draw back without moving. Harry rolled his eyes at him. “Come on, are you kidding? You would have noticed before this that I was disappearing at full moons. Everyone knows what a genius you are.”

Tom relaxed in a rush and smiled at him. “I could get used to the compliments. But what happened?”

“He went after a little kid I’d known for years,” Harry said simply, even though he’d only known that particular fourth-year Gryffindor for three years at that point. “He did it in a—hidden place, because the Dark wizards and witches had taken us captive and they didn’t like the thought of their captives being wasted. But I happened to be passing by, and I heard her screams.”

“What did you do?” Tom breathed.

“I was so angry that I didn’t think twice about what spell I cast. It was one that one of my tutors had taught me at one point to deal with werewolves.” Harry didn’t see any point in saying that it had been Snape, who had hated Harry but not enough not to teach Harry’s Defense class about the best ways to kill werewolves. “It summoned silver spikes and impaled him with them, through his limbs and his eyes and his ears.”

Tom let out a long, slow, cold exhalation. He ran his hand down Harry’s chest. “So you didn’t kill him right away.”

Harry swallowed. “No.” It had bothered him that it didn’t bother him more, but Fenrir Greyback had been a true monster, and it was hard for Harry to summon remorse about what had happened to him. “He was alive for—several minutes.”

“Harry. Don’t think I don’t know when you lie, darling.”

“All right. Almost an hour.”

Tom let out that long, slow sigh again, and Harry felt him grow hard. He drew back and stared at Tom. “What was that?”

“I think you know full well, darling.”

“Yes, but why are you getting hard hearing about me torturing someone?”

Tom bowed his head and ran his tongue up Harry’s knuckles again. Harry was promptly glad that he didn’t have many friends here and would never see someone from his timeline again, because then he need never tell anyone how hot that was.

“Because I am what I am,” Tom breathed. “And I gave up long ago on finding someone like me.”

“I’ve already told you that I’m not as smart or talented as you are, though.”

“I don’t require a perfect mirror, Harry.” Tom wound about him with a slow motion like a great serpent shifting its coils, sighing dreamily. “But I required someone who had as much ruthlessness and power as I did, and someone who wouldn’t flinch away from the parts of me so many people fear to look at. I told you already how rare that is.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“Wouldn’t you—aren’t you sort of settling when it comes to me? What if there’s someone out there who’s as beautiful and popular as you are and as ruthless and won’t flinch away from you?”

Harry’s face burned as he finished, because this was some sappy bollocks, telling Tom this. He sounded like an insecure, fainting first-year. But Tom only put a hand on his cheek and leaned a little nearer, until his eyes were all that Harry could focus on. Haunting, deep blue, and so much more beautiful than Harry’s own, which were just kind of a freakishly bright green.

“Beauty is an assert,” Tom whispered, “but one that you have plenty of.” He held Harry’s face still so he couldn’t shake his head. “And popularity? That is something I get by manipulating people. It’s useful and amusing, but not something I require others to have. Those most popular at Hogwarts are often the Quidditch players, and you know that kind of fame is fleeting and fickle.”

Harry thought he should say something to defend the honor of Quidditch, but he had no idea what to say.

From the look on Tom’s face, he didn’t mind that. He withdrew with a soft, satisfied breath, and stroked the side of Harry’s face again as if wanting to memorize the feel of his skin. Then he stood up. “Even with the privacy charms that I have around us, darling, I don’t think we should go further in public.”

“They didn’t see?”

“No. But my fans and yours are apt to notice if it’s up for too long a period of time.”

“I don’t have fans.”

“You play Quidditch. Don’t you?”

“Just the other blokes on the Quidditch team are the only ones who admire me.” Harry stood up and tried to will his own erection down. “And if you think I would do something like this with them, you’re mental.”

“Oh? They aren’t as attractive as I am?”

Tom looked ready to preen, not that he needed much of an excuse for that. Harry rolled his eyes. “You know they aren’t, you prat. But also, you would probably make anyone I cheated with fall down the stairs or something.”

Tom stopped moving and looked—appeased. “I am so glad that you understand me so well.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s great.” Harry wriggled an impatient hand at Tom. “Are we going inside and out of the public eye or not?”

Tom laughed, a low, deep sound that turned more than a few heads between the lake and the Quidditch pitch. Harry resisted the urge to stick out his tongue at them and declare that he had Tom and they didn’t, because bragging was ugly.

“We are. Come, darling.”

“Soon enough.”

And if he made Tom laugh with what sounded like surprise this time, well, Harry always strove to satisfy.

*

“My boy, I really need to talk to you.”

Professor Dumbledore had said that in a distressingly familiar tone, which was his “I don’t like Tom” tone, but Harry had at least expected a quick talk in the Transfiguration classroom. Instead, Dumbledore had marched up a few sets of stairs and then up one that Harry had only climbed a few times before, to the Headmaster’s office. Harry glanced at Dippet in worry where he was sitting behind his desk. Would it help that Dippet was a fan of Tom’s?

It seemed it would. Dippet let out a sigh that sounded more like a creak. “Is this another one of your absurd theories about Tom, Albus?”

“Not so absurd now.” Dumbledore’s smile was tight. “I believe he has discerned that Harry came from another time.”

“How?” Dippet demanded, a moment before Harry did the same thing.

“I didn’t tell him anything!” Harry added.

“Did you let him look you in the eye?”

“It’s sort of hard not to when you’re fucking.”

Both the men appeared to choke on air. Harry could feel himself turning bright red and squirming in his seat, but stopped when his arse reminded him that squirming wasn’t a great idea right now.

“Your language, Mr. Potter,” said Dippet faintly.

“Sorry, sir. But I have looked into his eyes.”

“Then he has read your mind,” Dumbledore said, and went on while Harry was gaping at him, as if that wasn’t an incredible thing to say. “There is a mental art called Legiimency, the practitioners of which can read thoughts and detect lies. It is one of the reasons that we asked you to tell everyone the literal truth of where you came from. Without lies, we thought Mr. Riddle and others who might use it would not have any reason to read your thoughts.” He shook his head, as grave as an avalanche. “But it seems that did not work.”

“So why didn’t you tell me he could read minds?”

“There is no sure defense against Legilimency except a mental art called Occlumency that you would have had no time to learn.”

“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have told me to avoid eye contact!”

“Mr. Potter,” Dippet intervened before Dumbledore could answer, “your respect.”

“Sorry, sir,” Harry said, because he was practically yelling at a professor. But he turned and scowled at Dumbledore nonetheless. “If I’d known that, I would have avoided eye contact. I would have avoided Tom altogether.”

“It is not too late for you to do so.”

“So was he bragging that he knew about someone from another time, or what?” Harry asked grimly. He would have to figure it out, since it might mean that he had to swear Tom to secrecy or something.

“Of course not. Mr. Riddle would never be so indiscreet.” And wow, the distaste Dumbledore felt was practically dripping off the words, wasn’t it? “But he would have had no other reason to pay attention to a friendless Muggleborn Gryffindor who appeared for the first time a few months ago. He must have discovered it. It is the only thing that would make him find you so fascinating.”

Harry stared at Dumbledore and waited for him to say something else, but apparently that was it. Then Harry gave a short laugh. “Thanks for telling me I’m unlovable, sir.”

Dumbledore looked honestly stricken. “That was not my intention, Mr. Potter. I am sorry. But what other reason would he have had to spend time with you?”

“He likes that I stand up to him. That I’m not afraid of him. He says people usually are.”

“And you did not avoid him?”

“No,” Harry said.

“I am afraid that I cannot accept that as the true reason, Mr. Potter. Particularly when I believe that Mr. Riddle has no idea what love means.”

Come to that, Harry wasn’t sure that Tom did, either, but he did think that Tom was feeling the closest emotion he could experience to it when it came to Harry. Harry lifted his chin stubbornly. “I do, though.”

“You would not be the first to fall in love with a pretty face.”

“I never got fooled by that.” Except to think that Tom was just a sort of shallow popular kid because of it. “I might not be in love with him yet, but I know what it means, and I want to stay with Tom.”

“Don’t you understand how dangerous Tom is to you?” Dumbledore took a step forwards, ignoring the way that Dippet shifted and mumbled something fretful under his breath. “My dear boy, I am only trying to avoid you making a tragic mistake.”

“It’s not a mistake, sir. Even if for some reason we decide we don’t want to date anymore, we’ll just go our own ways.”

“That is not how it happens with Tom Riddle.”

“Why? Did he date someone before who he decided to curse?”

Dumbledore hesitated. Dippet jumped in before Harry could grow tired of waiting for the answer. “Mr. Riddle has never dated anyone as far as I know, Mr. Potter. And I believe he would have confided in me.”

Harry wasn’t sure about that, but it was true that Tom might have used the information to manipulate Dippet, because that was the kind of terrible person Tom was. “All right, sir. Then no one can really say how it will go.”

“I can,” Dumbledore said.

“Why you, sir?”

“I have seen a situation play out like this before, not with Tom Riddle, but with someone very similar to him. And the other person in it was very similar to you.” Dumbledore’s face was long. “Please trust me when I say that you are making a devastating mistake, Mr. Potter.”

Harry stared at him, having no idea what he was talking about. He turned to Dippet. “Do you know who he means, sir?”

“Some things should be left secret.”

Dippet was staring at his desk and probably did know, but he refused to answer. Harry wished he knew Legilimency. It would come in handy close to one hundred percent of the time, unless you were dealing with another Legilimens.

If I tried to read Tom’s thought, he would probably try to kill me.

That probably shouldn’t be exciting.

“I can’t promise to be a model of a flawless boyfriend,” Harry said, because someone had to keep the conversation going, “but I don’t think I’ll be a horrible one, either. I’ll do my best to treat Tom right and make sure the end of the relationship is as amicable as possible.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what else you want me to do.”

“It wasn’t my idea to bring you here,” said Dippet unexpectedly, and turned to glare at Dumbledore. “Was the conversation with the boy as inconclusive as I thought t would be then, Albus? Hmmm?”

“We still must make plans to deal with Tom Riddle’s knowledge of time travel.”

“If he knows of it.”

“He will. If not now, soon. And forgive me, Mr. Potter, he is hardly the kind of person who would share that sort of thing with a lover, especially one he learned had been keeping secrets from him in the first place.”

“So can I discuss it with him?”

“Have you not been listening to what I said, Mr. Potter?”

“Well, yes, but it didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Dippet cut in then. Harry wondered if the Headmaster and the Deputy Headmaster interrupted each other all the time, or if it was just a special case for this meeting. “I would still ask you not to discuss the time travel with Tom, Harry. There is always the possibility that someone else might overhear and use it against you. Particularly in Slytherin House.”

If only you knew that Tom is the most dangerous member of Slytherin House. “All right,” Harry said aloud.

“I still think it would be wise of you to disassociate yourself from Mr. Riddle. Break up, if you must.” Dumbledore raised an imploring hand.

“Sorry, sir, that’s not going to happen right now,” Harry said firmly. He thought, from the way Dumbledore relaxed, that he probably thought Harry was just going to break up with Tom later. He could keep thinking that. If it kept him occupied with something else and not worrying about Harry’s relationship, that was fine.

“Don’t you have a class to teach, Albus?”

Harry stood up when Dumbledore did, but Dippet motioned him to remain behind. Dumbledore narrowed his eyes at them for a moment, but then shook his head and left.

“Yes, sir?” Harry thought of asking whether the Headmaster could give him a note for his next professor, but he thought that just saying he’d been talking to the Headmaster would probably work.

“I am glad you are here for Tom, my boy.”

“You—are?”

Dippet nodded and leaned forwards. “While of course I respect Tom’s intelligence and magic and ambition, I am afraid he has been rather lonely, with no true equal, you see. And even though you are not in his House, you don’t fear him the way that he has told me other students do.” Dippet shook his head with a misty smile. “I don’t see it myself. Tom’s a fine young man.”

“Uh,” Harry said, who could see for himself why other students would fear Tom. But then again, he had been told more than once that he had an abnormally low amount of fear. “I’m glad I’m here for him, too.”

“Despite having traveled in time?”

Dippet’s stare was beginning to make more sense now. He probably wanted to know if Harry would try to time travel again and leave Tom behind.

And of course Harry would have to, if he had managed to find some way back to his own time. But more and more, this was coming to feel like his “own” time. And he didn’t think he would mess anything up. No one had connected him to the pureblood Potters, and Tom would probably leave him behind when he went on to do famous and ambitious things.

“There was very little I left behind me in my own time,” Harry said quietly. “My parents were dead, my only relatives hated me, and I made a mistake that cost me my friends. So I’m glad to be here. With Tom.”

Dippet sat back with a little sigh. “Thank you, my boy. Now, I’ll write you a pass so that Merrythought doesn’t tear your head off your shoulders…”

Harry smiled and relaxed. He hadn’t even had to ask.

With the note in hand, he walked down the staircase from the Headmaster’s office, his mind full of Tom and his own future.

Because he didn’t think what he and Tom had was going to last forever, but that left open the question of what he could do.