lomonaaeren

“Why are you reading that?”

Harry glanced up with a little laugh. Only Tom would sound that absolutely disgusted by a book. Tom had a reputation as someone who should have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, but Harry had learned early on that he only valued the kinds of tomes that could contribute to his power.

“It’s a book of advice on how to become a teacher.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Harry laughed again. Tom’s voice was the equivalent of the way Aunt Petunia had once picked up a dead mouse with a pair of tongs. And then thrown away the tongs and vigorously scrubbed her hands afterwards. “Well, I thought I might become a teacher after Hogwarts.”

For some reason, Tom paused, his hand turning white on the back of the chair that he’d started to pull out across from Harry. “A professor?”

“No.” Harry snorted at the thought that he could teach Hogwarts children in any subject. He had seen the kind of work Dumbledore and Merrythought and the other professors had to put in to hold their students’ attention. “No, I thought I’d teach people dueling or other Defensive spells. Work one-on-one with them.”

“That is…an ambition unworthy of you.”

Harry blinked and shook his head. “No. I’m not going to accomplish great things like you are, Tom. I don’t have the ambition or the power or the connections.”

Tom sat down and leaned closer. His scent wasn’t actually that overwhelming—he didn’t wear some of the spelled charms that other Slytherin boys did—but Harry felt a little dizzy anyway, with those dark eyes focused on him.

“You can be so much more than that,” Tom whispered. “You think you don’t have the power, but you do. And I have enough ambition for both of us. Do you think I would allow my consort to be less than I am?”

“Consort?”

“It’s the recognized kind of relationship between two men in pureblood society,” Tom said calmly. Harry stared at him, but Tom didn’t appear to realize he had said something insane. He just went placidly on. “Of course we can’t have the same kind of bonding that a man and a woman do, because that kind of bonding always has a place in it for pregnancy, but we can have something very similar.”

“But you’ll leave me behind.”

“What do you mean by that, Harry?”

“I mean that I’m willing to stay with you, but you’re obviously meant for great things. You’ll drop me at some point, because I’m like dead weight compared to your ambitions.”

“You sit there and look at me as if you believe that.”

“Of course I do.” There were signs of mounting anger in the way that Tom’s eyes narrowed and his jaw grew harder, so Harry reached out and took his hand. “I’m not upset about it. I know that you’ll do what you need to do, and we’ll have fun together. But I also know that I’m not what you need long-term.”

“I thought we had discussed this,” Tom said, his tone as sharp as though he were carving each word in ice. “You are my equal. You are the only person who is not afraid of me. I have come as close to loving you as I have ever been able to come. Of course we are not going to part.”

Harry’s head whirled. “You—love me? Sort of?”

“I have never felt a tenth of what I do for you for any other person.” Tom reached out and placed his hand on Harry’s wrist. His nails promptly cut little notches in Harry’s skin, and his eyes were flaring with hunger and rage and possessiveness. “I will not let you go, not when you are the first person who has made me feel this way.”

“But—what if you could find someone else? Someone more worthy to stand at your side?”

“Who would that be?”

“Well, someone pureblooded, for a start.”

“I am not myself. And you think that I would seek out a pureblood who would always secretly think himself superior?”

Tom’s curled lip and flaring eyes made Harry duck his head a little. It sounded stupid, put like that. But—Tom always seemed like he wanted so much. Power, freedom, endless magic, endless knowledge. There was no way that Harry, who was an ordinary person at the end of the day, could give him that.

“Tell me what you are thinking, my darling.”

The words were practically a command, but it was still novel for someone to ask Harry to share his thoughts at all. He’d just had to do it without waiting to be asked when he was helping first- and second-year students hide from the Carrows. So he raised his head and took a deep breath. Tom leaned forwards.

“That you sound like you mean it, but I know that you might sacrifice me. Because of your ambition, and because I know that matters more to you than I do. So I have to make plans for what’s going to happen to me after that. My plans can’t all revolve around you, Tom, no matter how much that might sound like a good idea.”

Tom was silent for a minute after that, his head still cocked in a listening posture, as if he thought Harry would add something. Then he nodded decisively and stood. Harry swallowed, wondering if he had cut the short time he had with Tom even shorter.

But Tom leaned down and kissed him, so sweetly and intensely that Harry’s head spun and he forgot they were in the library. When he stood to continue the kiss, Tom pulled back and tugged on his wrist.

“Come with me. I need to show you something.”

Harry followed him, his eyes sliding down Tom’s broad shoulders to his arse. He really was spectacularly handsome.

And maybe he did deserve someone better than Harry, but for all his words, Harry knew he would maintain his grip and only let go when Tom did.

*

“What kind of room is this?”

Harry had been a little surprised when Tom took him deep into the dungeons, because he’d assumed that Tom would never bring him to the Slytherin common room. But they had gone even deeper than that probably was, or the students wouldn’t be able to reach the classes easily. They had walked through corridors of rough stone decorated only with torches.

And then they had reached an arched doorway that glowed softly with white stones above it. And they had stepped into a fine space beyond that.

Harry blinked around at the walls decorated with tapestries of dragons and cockatrices and enormous snakes. There was a chair like a throne in the center of the room, and there was a glowing pool beside it.

He turned to Tom for an explanation.

Tom had been standing with his arms crossed, leaning against the doorway, and enjoying Harry exploring the room, if the look on his face was any indication. Now he sauntered towards Harry, his slow steps more than ever like those of a predator.

But Harry wasn’t afraid. Maybe he was stupid, but he wasn’t afraid.

“This is where I bring a select group of purebloods under the guise of teaching them Dark Arts,” Tom said softly. “They bow to me and call me their lord. I enjoy their obedience, and I promise them power.”

“But you don’t intend to give it to them.”

“No.” Tom took Harry’s wrist and stroked the underside of it with cool fingers. Harry bit his lip as he got hard, because of course he did. It was ha—difficult not to, around Tom. “They are only my servants, not my equals. But you may have it, Harry.”

“I don’t know that I want power.”

“Of course you do,” Tom said, so dismissively that Harry wasn’t sure he would have been able to hear a protest. “But I understand that you want it for different reasons and goals than I do. In the meantime, I would share this with you.”

He led Harry towards the glowing pool. Harry stared down into it. The water, or whatever filled it, was technically blue, but the light within it turned the liquid silver, and there was a faint stirring, as though Harry was looking at a portal into another world.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“A secret of the great Salazar Slytherin,” Tom said. Harry glanced up to see his face wreathed in a smile crueler and harder than the ones Harry had seen so far. “I am of his true House, his bloodline, and I discovered it in a place that few have ever accessed.”

Harry froze, staring at him. Tom cocked his head. “What is it, Harry?”

“Were you ever possessed, Tom?”

Tom snorted. “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

“There was—well, I knew someone who sort of had a right to be called the Heir of Slytherin, but they were really possessed by a spirit.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “It’s not impossible that the spirit of my great ancestor or some other relative possessed them, of course. But no, I am the real thing, Harry.” He gestured towards the pool. “Will you step into it?”

Harry looked slowly back and forth between Tom and the pool, his thoughts buzzing. If Tom was the Heir of Slytherin, if he’d found his way to the Chamber of Secrets and Petrified people…

Then Tom really was evil.

But Harry had known that Tom practiced Dark Arts since Tom had shot that Imperius at him in the library. And Harry had killed, just like Tom had. He might have tortured Greyback longer than Tom had tortured any of his victims. His own hands weren’t clean.

And he just couldn’t muster up the outrage that perhaps he should, given that he had been one of the people Petrified in his own time. He’d spent five years being a pariah because of that Heir of Slytherin. This one had welcomed him in.

Maybe it was wrong, but there was no one here to judge him. So Harry took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

Tom’s smile was more brilliant than the pool. He stepped back and gestured, and Harry swallowed and walked into the water.

It did feel like water, at least at first. And then it changed to a cold caress that reminded Harry of being out in a light snowfall. He stopped and extended his hands, while the “water” trembled around him.

“Let it soak into you,” Tom whispered. “It will give you your deepest desires, give you magic to fulfill them.”

Harry honestly had to wonder what his deepest desires were. Before he came here, he would have said it was to be friends with the other Gryffindors again, but now?

He took a deep breath and thought, Well, whatever you can give me, I’ll accept it.

The “water” surged forwards and around him. Harry held his breath, but it never rose high enough that he felt like he was drowning. The blue-silver light simply encircled his legs, winding around him, and then rose to the point that it reached his waist. Harry felt that cool gentleness on his skin again.

And he did feel as if he were drowning, and cried out.

Tom’s arms closed around him, but he didn’t drag Harry out of the pool. Instead, he just bent close and whispered, “What is it telling you?”

Harry shut his eyes and forced himself to just stand there, even though his heart was beating wildly. After a long moment, the pool’s “water” withdrew from him, and he realized that the sensation had been outside and not inside him.

Which was really strange. How could you be drowning if water wasn’t inside you?

But that was the way it was, so Harry took a deep breath and murmured, “That I’m safe.”

“Yes. The gifts of my ancestors would never harm you.” Tom stroked his shoulders, and Harry stood still for a little while longer. Then Tom whispered, “You should be able to leave the pool now.”

Harry climbed slowly out, looking down at his legs. For a second he thought he saw wetness on them, and then it faded.

“What did the pool give you?” Tom asked. He looked expectant.

Harry turned his hands slowly over and looked at his arms, and tried to sense his own magic, to see if the pool had altered him physically or made him more powerful. But he didn’t see or feel anything.

Still, there was something, like a tickle in his throat. Harry opened his mouth and coughed.

“Harry?”

Tom was reaching towards him as if he thought Harry might topple back into the pool. Harry coughed again and then opened his mouth, wondering if something was happening like him growing gills. How that would help him achieve his greatest desire, though, he had no idea.

But instead, a low hiss came gurgling out of his throat.

Tom froze, staring at him. Did he think Harry was making fun of the times that Tom had spoken with a slight sibilant tone to his words? Harry hoped not.

“What did you say?” Tom whispered.

“I didn’t say anything,” Harry tried, but what emerged was a soft, slow hiss. He blinked and touched his throat, and then spoke very carefully. In English, he hoped. “I think—what did the pool do?”

He glanced at Tom, who would hopefully have an answer, and then froze in turn at the sight of the expression on Tom’s face. It was triumphant, blazing, so powerful that Harry found himself stepping forwards to meet his lover.

Tom seized him and kissed him. It was the most brutal kiss that Harry had experienced yet. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around Tom, content to kiss him back until Tom explained why he was so happy.

“My dear. My darling.”

Tom’s words sounded different. Harry blinked and looked at him, and—yeah, Tom was hissing, too. There was no doubt about it. He was looking Harry in the eye and crooning like a snake. But somehow also in English?

No, Harry thought then, with surprise so overwhelming it felt a lot like wonder, in a language I can understand.

“Is this Parseltongue, Tom?”

“Yesss,” Tom said, and he bent down and hissed next to Harry’s ear, and Harry’s head reeled. He was floating, he was falling, he thought, but it felt so good.

“I feel so good,” he said aloud.

“I have only once been close to another Parselmouth, and it felt nothing like this.” Tom ran a possessive hand down Harry’s cheek, staring at him with huge, unblinking eyes. “Shall we see what it feels like to have sex this way, darling?”

Harry’s erection surged, but he did have to make one more thing clear. “Why did the pool give me this?” he asked in English. “I wasn’t thinking about it. It wasn’t my greatest desire.”

Tom bit him, not gently. Harry moaned and arched up towards his lover, which surprised him. He would actually have thought that would hurt too much to be arousing, but it was as if Tom had injected desire straight into his veins.

“Parseltongue if you want the answer, Harry.”

“You fucker.”

“I do hope so. But only if you speak our language.” Tom licked his cheek with a tongue that Harry could only imagine as forked, and went on in a murmur. “You told me yourself that you feared I would abandon you. Your greatest desire was to stay with me, I believe. And the pool gave you something I would value.”

Harry breathed and blinked. That seemed likely, with Tom on top of him and his hands so hot and gripping so hard. With Harry so hard.

But…

“How could I desire that when I didn’t know you spoke Parseltongue?”

“The pool is also from the Chamber of Secrets, where I found the water. It grants the desires of Slytherin’s Heir. It is one reason that I never intended to show this to anyone but my most trusted, lest someone find a way to gain power over me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. Of course. But he had another question he felt he had to ask. “Why do you value me so much? Because you didn’t know touching another Parselmouth would feel this good.”

Tom bent down and stared into Harry’s eyes. Harry stared back, wondering if he would see slit pupils. But no, only Tom’s eyes.

Although they did have a faint glint of red in the back of them.

“Because Parselmouths are so rare,” Tom whispered. “And to hear my own native language resting in the mouth of the only person I could see as my equal? Harry, I will never let you go.”

The words were spoken as more than half a threat, with Tom’s nails cutting into Harry’s skin as he touched his throat, but Harry couldn’t care. Not when someone wanted him.

“You want me?”

“As if you could doubt.”

“Well, I do,” Harry retorted, ignoring the way that Tom’s hands tightened on his shoulders and throat, “because all we’ve done so far is talk and engage in the kinds of things that someone pretty casual might do. If you want me? Prove it. Fuck me until I can’t talk in Parseltongue or English.”

Tom stared at him, his eyes so wide that Harry experienced a moment of disappointment. Was this the line that Tom wouldn’t cross, for some reason? Was he afraid of having sex and would disentangle himself?

But then Tom let out a hiss like a cobra, no words, just sound, and bent until his mouth was right next to Harry’s ear.

“I have been waiting for you to ask,” he sighed out.

Harry grinned at him and spread his legs.

Tom wasted no time. He used some kind of complicated Banishing Charm that got rid of their robes, and he used lubrication, and he thrust his fingers impatiently in and out of Harry until Harry was writhing in a mixture of pain and anticipation.

“Patience, my love, my darling,” Tom said, and even knowing that he might have said it mostly so that he and Harry could both hear the words in Parseltongue, Harry found himself smiling at being called “love.” “Oh, I will take you as no other ever will, as no one else will touch you like this ever again.”

Harry turned and managed to kiss Tom’s neck, although it was more of a bite, really, with the angle he was at. And the amount of teeth he used. “That’s a good boast. Let’s see you fulfill it.”

And Tom did.

There was an electric current running under Harry’s skin every time Tom touched him, every time he hissed another word or reached his hands down and scratched Harry’s chest or back. Tom’s face was desperate and lined with the odd flickering light of the pool from the Chamber of Secrets, and his cock in Harry was hot and huge and harsh. Harry rocked back up into him and had the satisfaction of hearing Tom wheeze, the delight of seeing him pause in his thrusts to struggle for control.

Harry squeezed down on him. Tom hissed in what sounded like pain.

“Give it to me harder.”

Tom braced his hands on Harry’s shoulders and fucked him until Harry felt he was going to fall apart. Everything ached, everything hurt, everything was brilliant agony. Harry reached up and dragged Tom’s head down by the back of his neck, biting his lips and kissing him and whispering into his mouth in Parseltongue.

“Let go.”

And Tom did, with a final thrust and a surprised expression on his face that told Harry he hadn’t planned to come then and might have been trying to hold out a little longer.

The mere thought of forcing Tom to come like that, to match him in power and brilliance at something, made Harry come himself, untouched. He shuddered and humped up into Tom as pleasure born from the pain melted his every bone, and he sank back onto the stone floor under Tom’s hands with a gasp when he was done.

“My darling.”

Tom was still there, cradling Harry’s head in his hand as he brought their mouths together for a rough sweet kiss. Harry dug his fingers into Tom’s shoulders, again and again and again. It was the only thing he thought he could do right now. He was so exhausted that it felt as if he might never move again.

Tom rested his face against Harry’s neck and mumbled something, so softly that Harry couldn’t tell if it was in Parseltongue or English.

“What did you say?” Harry asked, sweet and sleepy. He did want to rest, but probably on the stone floor of a room that other people came to visit on a regular basis wasn’t the best way to do it. He stirred, reluctantly.

So did Tom, but he only sat back on his knees and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders when he would have stood up further. Tom’s smile was one Harry hadn’t seen before, brilliant and sharp but more private than any expression he showed the public. “I said that you have taught me something I never thought to learn.”

“What’s that?”

Tom’s gaze did not waver. “How to love.”

Harry gaped at him for a long moment. Then he said softly, “Tom, I won’t think less of you for it. Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, because your not saying it was the only thing that was keeping me from falling in return.

Tom laid a hand over Harry’s lips. His eyes were merry, and he leaned in and kissed Harry again before continuing in Parseltongue. “I don’t think it looks like the love most other people would feel. I don’t want to give you endless gifts or take you on dates or make a family with you, as others would say. I want you to be by my side forever, and I want to make sure that you’ll never leave me. Your happiness is as important to me as my own. Not more than my own, but as important. There was never anyone else I could say the same about.”

Harry swallowed, again and again. He knew that some people would find fault with that declaration of love, but how could he, knowing who it was coming from? And knowing what it might have cost Tom?

What it had to have cost him. His body was showing a very faint tremor as he knelt there. As if he thought Harry might still turn on him.

Harry leaned slowly forwards. Tom’s eyes tracked him in a way that said he would normally be going for his wand.

“I love you, too,” Harry breathed. “How could I not love you, after everything you’ve done for me?”

“Some people would say that casting the Imperius on you and fucking you like I did isn’t proof—”

“Well, those people aren’t me,” Harry snapped, and decided he’d have to tear open his heart to bleed all over the floor, because Tom had, and Harry couldn’t do less than match him. “I wanted someone to want me. To cling to me. I thought I had friends, and they turned on me over something I’m starting to think was stupid. They never forgave me for a mistake I made when I was thirteen years old. I had no real family, and the people I might have been able to trust died or left me. So, yes, you’ve given me exactly what I want, Tom. Someone who clings back and will never let me go. You think that scares me? You think I want flowers and dates and shit like that? Fuck, no. Hold onto me. That’s what I want.”

Tom’s eyes had got wider and wider, and he was quiet and trembling again when Harry was done. Harry just stared at him. He knew he hadn’t said the wrong thing, because he had cut himself open down to the truth, and Tom just needed to accept it.

A second later, Tom flung himself at Harry. They went reeling back to the stone floor again, although Tom’s hand was in place to keep Harry from cracking his skull open. Harry lost his breath completely at the look in Tom’s eyes.

“My beloved,” Tom said, his voice thick. “You have taught me things and shown me things I never thought were possible. I was intending to keep you as my consort anyway, but now? You will be so.”

“I wish to be so,” Harry hissed back. “And you will be mine.”

He wondered a second later if he should have said that, if Tom would reject the idea that Harry could have power over him. But Tom kissed him so abruptly that their teeth clashed together, and drew back with Harry’s blood on his lips and that mania he showed before he dueled in his eyes.

“I shall be so,” Tom agreed. “Everything we wish shall be.”