Chapter Ten of 'Jonquils and Lightning'- The Sound of Trumpets

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Nine.

Chapter One.

Title: Jonquils and Lightning (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, a few one-sided het pairings and canon het pairings
Content Notes: Angst, blood, dubious consent, dimension travel, OC’s
Rating: R
Summary: Harry Potter found peace after the war in another world where a large number of Potters live. He makes his living as an animal healer in Godric’s Hollow, surrounded by family and away from all wars. But his peace shatters with the arrival of a Tom Riddle from another dimension, who seeks a Potter who can be his foretold weapon in his own war.
Author’s Notes: At the moment, I can’t say how long this story will be.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten—The Sound of Trumpets

“Harry? Can I talk to you?”

Jonquil’s voice was as tense as a tightrope strung between towers. Harry turned away from the book spread out on his lap and swallowed the last of his cheese-and-pickle sandwich. “Sure, Jonquil. Come in.”

His cousin walked in and sat down on the chair in front of his desk, her whole body so tight that Harry winced watching her. But he had to wait her for to begin, because he had no idea what angle she would come at this from.

When she finally spoke, her voice quivered. “Tom wants you and not me, doesn’t he?”

Oh, Jonquil. Harry would have got up and gone over to her if he thought it would help. But as it was, he stayed still for a second, and then nodded. “He does. But that’s because he’s a fool.”

“He’s intelligent.” Jonquil rubbed her eyes with her elbow for a second. “He knows what he wants. You can’t blame him for that.”

Harry shook his head. “But I’m never going to want him back. I have no reason to leave this world. I won’t go with him to fight a war, either, since I’ve given up on wars. If he still thinks that he can somehow force me to go along with him, or seduce me, then he’s not nearly as intelligent as you think he is.”

Jonquil didn’t immediately respond, keeping her head down. Then she whispered, “But he doesn’t want me, either.”

“No. I think the most likely conclusion is that he’ll give up on trying to get something from us eventually and leave, once he realizes that he doesn’t have the time to waste if he’s serious about changing his world.”

Jonquil said nothing, although from the corners of her face and the way they moved, Harry could tell she was frowning. Then she murmured, “What if I said that I would go with him, and not require him to be my lover or boyfriend or anything like that? Just be my friend?”

Harry raised his eyebrows. Before he saw into Tom’s soul, he wouldn’t have believed him capable of friendship, but he knew better than that now. “Well, I think friendship is a rare thing for him, so it still might take more persuasion than it would for most people. But you could try.”

Jonquil nodded slowly. Then she glanced at him. “I have to know one thing.”

“Oh?”

“How can you not want him?”

Harry softened his smile as best as he could, reminding himself that Jonquil was still young, and she hadn’t been through a tenth of what he had. And he never wanted her to go through it, either. “Handsome faces don’t do much for me anymore, Jonquil. Some of the people who fought with me and tried to murder me were pretty enough to attract attention. And his pushiness doesn’t recommend him.”

Jonquil nodded again, although from the polite expression on her face, she was still baffled. “Thanks, Harry.”

“I only did as much as I can,” Harry said, waved off her thanks, and watched as she departed the room. Then he turned back to the book. He was thinking of becoming a human Healer in a few years, and for that, he needed to know more about anatomy than he currently did.

Which is nothing outside of what some people’s bones look like when they take a Blasting Curse to the chest.

“Harry. I’d like to speak to you.”

Harry blinked, feeling as baffled as Jonquil had looked. He couldn’t remember a time when Dorea had come up to his room. “Of course,” he said slowly, and pushed the book under a fold of the covers. “Is Jonquil all right?” That would be the only thing he could imagine bringing Dorea here.

“Perfectly fine.” Dorea smoothed her robes out and took the chair Jonquil had. “I wanted to speak to you about young Mr. Gaunt.”

“What about him?” Harry matched his great-aunt’s voice, quiet and polite.

“What is he to you?”

“An annoyance.”

“Harry.”

Harry sighed and looked away. He hadn’t told any of his relatives about his experiences in his first world, and honestly, he wanted it to stay that way. Why should he burden them with things even he wanted to forget? He went back through the gate to his first world only to visit Ron and Hermione, sometimes the rest of the Weasleys, and even more rarely, his parents’ graves. The longing for family had died down somewhat since he’d met the rest of the Potters in this dimension.

But he also trusted Dorea not to spread the information widely, and not to react with sheer horror and nothing else.

“Another incarnation of the man I spent the first eighteen years of my life fighting a war against,” he said, turning back to face her.

Dorea only nodded as if she had expected something like that, though Harry saw the way her nostrils flared. “But he is not that man?”

“No. He’s a lot younger than the version I fought was. But he looks like his younger self, who I saw in memories, and he has—the same ambitions. He wants to turn me into a weapon.” Harry winced a little as he said it, because after seeing Tom’s life he no longer believed that, but it was the simplest way to explain to Dorea. “I think he would turn any Potter who went with him to his world into a weapon, but he wants me because I have so much power.”

“More power than you have ever shown us.”

“Yes.”

“Harry.” Astonishingly, because she hadn’t done this sort of thing as long as he’d known her, Dorea stood up and walked across the room to him, catching his hands before he could draw them away. “Did you think we would reject you?”

“No.” Harry rubbed at his eyes. He seemed to be handling everything wrong today, from speaking to Jonquil to the way he talked to Dorea. “But I wanted to be normal. Ordinary, you know? Everyone who knew me in my first world except my two best friends and some of their family talked about me like I was some kind of object. A weapon or an idol or a cataclysm. I just want to be normal.”

“That, I think, you will never be.” Dorea rubbed circles on his back. “I have watched you since you moved here. Of course I am thrilled that you have rediscovered your family, and that I get to know you in a way that the version of me in your world never did.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I can sense the ‘but’ coming.”

“I don’t think that you would be content like this for long,” Dorea said quietly. “It’s only been six months, I know. You needed the rest. But for the remainder of your life? Harry, would you? You wouldn’t want to use that power thrumming in you? To marry someone else and have children?”

“There are people in Godric’s Hollow I can marry!”

“Whom?”

Harry grimaced after thinking it through for a moment. Well, all right, it was true, most of the wizards here were either married already, extremely young, or related to the Potters closely enough that he wouldn’t want to court them, even though he knew most other pure-bloods would think the relationship distant. “Fine. I could go elsewhere and find someone else to marry. But then I could come back here.”

Dorea’s hands stroked down the back of his spine and through his hair. Harry leaned against her. “Darling, you were meant for greater things. I know that I’m not your grandmother, that you don’t have Black blood directly in the last few generations, but you remind me so much of my own family. They wouldn’t have been content to bury themselves in a village for the rest of their lives.”

“Why not? You have!”

“I came to Godric’s Hollow to live permanently after a long and full life,” Dorea said sharply. She made Harry sit back so he would meet her eyes. “I was a Potions brewer who made frequent trips outside the country for ingredients. Then I learned Gobbledegook and served as a liaison between the goblins and wizards in London. Then I lived in Egypt for five years.”

“Doing what?”

“Well, you have undoubtedly seen worse. Studying necromancy.”

Harry flinched a little, his memory full of a graveyard and a cauldron, but he shook his head and made himself dismiss it. It was only so close to the surface because he’d let Tom look at it with the Angelfire Charm anyway. “Yes, I have.”

Dorea gave a sharp little smile. “I understand that Muggle mothers have a hard time having both a career and children, that they are pressured to stay at home with them. No one ever dared pressure me. I Apparated home to spend time with Arthur every week, every few days, and I raised my child. I am happy now to know my grandchildren. But this is the time of my life when I am happy because it was not always so, Harry. Can you say that you will not grow restless?”

“Yes.”

Dorea simply looked at him.

“I can say that,” Harry told her, looking at her unflinchingly, “because I also lived a full life. I fought a war. For years. I died and came back to life, Great-Aunt Dorea. Then I dealt with the consequences of that, of people wanting me to be their symbol and their weapon. There’s nothing else I want. I am going to live in peace and heal and help people and do nothing else.”

Dorea stared at him. “You mean that. The dying and coming back to life—they were literal.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Harry hesitated once more. Then he said, “Please don’t tell this to anyone else unless I approve it. I really don’t think some of them could bear to know. But I was a human Horcrux. The piece of soul that was inside me was killed by its maker. The man I fought and told you about. The man who’s a version of Tom Gaunt.”

Dorea stood silent and still for a long time. Harry had no doubt that she knew what a Horcrux was, if only because of her Black heritage.

Then she said softly, “Oh, great-nephew. I didn’t know. And I can see now where you’re coming from, why you only want to stay here and be left in peace.” She embraced him as if she thought he was made of rose-petals.

Harry hugged her back, and closed his eyes. “Thanks. Anyway. Like I said, please don’t tell them. I think Jonquil might need to know, to reassure her that I have absolutely no desire to go with Tom, but I want to be the one to tell her if she does.”

Dorea smoothed his hair down, as much as it could be smoothed. “Of course I won’t. I may want to be present for the conversation, though.” She smiled at him and left.

Only when she had been gone perhaps an hour did Harry look up from his anatomy book again, remembering that she hadn’t agreed with him that he should be left in Godric’s Hollow in peace.

*

Tom smiled at Jonquil as he watched her pick her way across the garden to him. Tom was sitting in Euphemia and Fleamont Potter’s garden, between some of the tall stands of wildflowers. He was sketching them; he had never seen flowers like them before, long purple-streaked white trumpets with golden bell-shaped petals clinging to them below, and thought they might not exist in his dimension.

“Tom?”

“What is it, Jonquil?”

For long moments, she stood there, her fingers tracing the lines of embroidery in her robe, while bees dodged around her. Tom added a few lines to his sketch, leaning forwards to make sure that he had got the exact angle of the purple lines inside the nearest flower.

“I want to come back with you to your world. Would you take me as—as a friend? Not a lover? Just someone who wants to accompany you?”

That’s new. Tom added the finishing touch to the sketch and set the parchment aside, regarding her. Jonquil flushed under his scrutiny, but didn’t turn away or mumble anything. She stood there, still and silent, staring. Tom had to admit he hadn’t known she had that much strength.

If Harry hadn’t existed, if he had been less intrigued with him, then Tom might have said he had indeed found his Potter, and the deficiencies she had could be corrected by education back in his world.

As it was, he had to shake his head. “I’m sorry, Jonquil,” he said, and he meant it more sincerely than he would have two days ago. “But there’s only one person I want to come with me. Otherwise, I’ll go back to my dimension alone.”

“Harry.” This time she did mumble, and turned to stare blindly into the flowers as if they might give her magical strength like her cousin’s.

“Exactly.”

“But why? Is it just his power? Because he’s told me he has no intention of going back with you. And I don’t believe he’d lie to you about that.”

“His power was the main reason I would have chosen him, but he doesn’t like it to be the reason for his choosing,” Tom said, then paused when Jonquil cast him a look of blank incomprehension. So Harry still hadn’t told her everything. Tom would have to go more slowly to make sure he was respecting Harry’s privacy. “I mean that he doesn’t want me to think of him as a weapon or an object. Wanting him for his power would come close to that.”

“I wouldn’t like that, either. But you’re capable of being friends with someone, Tom. I know that.”

What you know is the façade I project. And I wouldn’t have been capable of even sitting here and listening to this much of your faff and nonsense if it wasn’t for what Harry has taught me.

Tom, of course, only smiled softly and said, “I know. But I could make friends in my world if that was my main objective, Jonquil. I’m still looking for someone to help me fight a war.”

“I can’t do that yet. But what if I could?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I spend time training and becoming better at fighting, and—and then you take me back with you to your world? I know the flow of time isn’t the same in our worlds, you said so yourself. What if only a few days pass in your world and years here?”

Tom had, in fact, made sure that he had the gate opened to a world where time passed more slowly, so he would not return home and find his resistance effort crushed beyond hope of redemption. But he no intention of using the years to wait for Jonquil. “I’m afraid it still wouldn’t be enough.”

Jonquil flushed as brilliant as Fiendfyre. “Do you—I mean, do you only like men?”

“As friends?” Tom began, and then saw where she was aiming. He laughed, a low sound that flushed Jonquil’s neck and chest, he was happy to see. “No. But I am extremely choosy about anyone I allow close to me.”

“I could still be it, Tom. I aspire to be it.”

“I know. But I won’t choose you, Jonquil. You ought to follow your cousin’s advice and become good at dueling or warding or whatever you want to do for your own sake. I’m going to persuade Harry to return with me or no one.”

“What if I told him that? That you’re still obsessing over him?”

Tom shrugged. “He does know. That doesn’t make him any more eager to be seduced, but he knows that I want him.”

Jonquil gave him a frustrated frown. “So you’re staying here because you hope to seduce him some other way?”

She was quicker than she had seemed yesterday. “Yes.”

“Then I could do the same thing.” Before Tom could bristle too much and assume that she meant seducing Harry, Jonquil added, “Convince you to take me with you without resorting to traditional methods.”

“Maybe you could,” Tom said, because it seemed as though many things were possible after what he had seen in Harry’s soul and not because he assumed she would succeed.

Jonquil’s chin went up, and she acquired the stubborn look that Tom had seen on her before. She nodded at him and stomped off.

Tom remained where he was for a few minutes, thinking. Then he finished sketching the flowers and stood up, tucking the scroll away. He could not carry out his plan to seduce Harry sitting in the garden.

He caught Harry walking out the door towards the stables that he seemed to spend so much time beside. Harry gave him a cautious glance. Tom resisted the impulse to touch him. That worked with some people, but not with Harry, not given their history.

Someday, I would like to touch him whenever I want, and know that I will be welcome.

“Something you wanted, Gaunt?”

Tom nodded. “For you to show me your work and how you heal animals.”

The utter bafflement in Harry’s eyes was its own treat. But he agreed after looking Tom over for signs of what Tom supposed were evil plans, and he glanced over his shoulder several times as they walked, apparently awaiting the beginning of the joke.

Tom gave him a sweet smile. It was no joke. He could only understand Harry and spend time with him by learning about those things that Harry wanted to learn about, the things that interested Harry.

I want him to like me. This is one way to do it.