Chapter Eleven of 'Jonquils and Lightning'- Learning Harry

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Ten.

Chapter One.

Title: Jonquils and Lightning (11/?)
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 Eleven—Learning Harry

“Where did you learn those spells?”

“From books about healing animals before I came here.”

Tom leaned on the fence and watched as Harry moved through the same repertoire of spells over and over again, first on the mare called Princess, then on her foal, then on a few other horses that stood grazing here and there. They didn’t seem to harm the horses, although they did sometimes twitch their ears and walk a few steps in response.

Of course they don’t harm the horses. Can you see Harry using spells that hurt innocents like that?

Tom had to admit he couldn’t. And that thought made something low in his belly tighten with excitement, instead of the contempt it would have a fortnight ago.

“What do the spells test for?” Tom murmured. A brown gelding ambled towards him, nostrils flared, and Tom held out his hand flat. The gelding sniffed for a second more, then evidently decided Tom had nothing interesting to offer and turned away to flick his tail at a fly.

“Some diseases. The solidity of bone. How well they’re digesting the food in their stomachs. The soundness of their hooves. The state of their coats. I found one horse that way that wasn’t being groomed well enough by her owner.” Harry sighed a little. “It turned out she was trusting her teenage son to do it and he just hadn’t been. He cast illusions to make it look like the horse was being taken care of instead.”

Tom snorted. It would never have occurred to him to lie about something like that, much less to use illusions to reinforce it. “You need to check all the horses for the same things? Even the foal?”

“No, I use slightly different spells on him. But there are still some conditions I’d need to know about right away if they were affecting him.”

“Why did you decide that you wanted to heal animals?”

“I took enough away from the world during the war,” Harry said, shaking his head a little. “And had enough taken away. Even after the war, it seemed all I could do was destroy. This is a way to give something back to the world. And keep helpless animals safe.”

Tom turned to watch him. He’d finished casting the spells on the gelding, and was scratching the back of his neck with what looked like a Transfigured brush. The gelding was stretching and rubbing back and forth, lips wrinkled, seemingly caught up in the moment. “You didn’t destroy. You saved your world, from what I can tell.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Yes, but then I couldn’t build up a normal life or even bind the Death Eaters who attacked me and deliver them to prison. I ended up killing them instead.” He took the brush away, and the gelding turned his head and gave Harry a look that even Tom could read as reproachful. Harry paid no attention, instead staring at his hands. “I did try. My magic was too powerful. And my intent too murderous.”

He said the last words softly, but Tom heard them. “You had the right to be as murderous as you wanted, after what they tried to do to you. I’m only surprised that as many people survived as did.”

Harry shuddered a little and sent the brush flying back to the barn with a flick of his hand. “Well. It doesn’t matter. That part is behind me now.”

“Is it, if it bothers you so much?”

“Yes. Dorea asked me much the same thing, if I could be content to stay here after spending so much of my life fighting. I told her the same thing I’ll tell you now: I’m glad to be done with it. I deserve some peace and quiet, and I don’t want war or excitement, the way you and Jonquil do.”

“Not subtle, Harry,” Tom said with a faint smile. He felt as if he could stand here for hours and watch Harry, even though he was doing nothing more now than scratching the gelding with crooked fingers. “And I think there is something my world that would appeal to you.”

“Besides your company?”

Even the way he curled his lip and looked at Tom sidelong was appealing. Tom tried not to get distracted by it. “Yes. I know that Dumbledore was the Headmaster of Hogwarts in your world. Do you know if he was ever offered any higher political power?”

“He was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards. He had plenty of political power.”

“Chief Warlock still isn’t as important as the Minister. That’s what he is in my world, and he’s changing things to reflect his vision.”

“Good for him, then.”

Tom sighed. “When he has secret police that listen to conversations on the sly and sometimes make people disappear? When he’s banned all sorts of magic that he thinks might break the Statute of Secrecy, whether or not it actually has? When he wants people to swear loyalty oaths to him, not to the Ministry or their Departments, the way it was always done?”

Harry hesitated a second. Then he said, “I don’t like the idea of secret police. But we had a bunch of incompetent Ministers in my world. What happens when someone in yours does break the Statute of Secrecy?”

“For now, the Obliviators handle it. Dumbledore has spoken out about how inhumane he finds the use of the Memory Charm on Muggles. He wants to end it.”

“It is inhumane,” Harry muttered, but he was flushing in a way that made Tom wonder, idly, if there were specific Muggles he’d like to see it used on, or didn’t mind it being used on. Those Dursleys he had lived with, perhaps.

“And trying to come up with an alternative would be fine, if he wasn’t tipping the scale all the way to the other side and deciding that means that he doesn’t need permission to cast Memory Charms on wizards. He wants to Obliviate them of the knowledge of how to perform certain magic, under the excuse that it could be dangerous to Muggles.”

Harry’s eyes widened for a moment. Then he asked, “And is that legal?”

“Not completely, not yet.” Tom hid his smile, because if he revealed it too early, then Harry would realize he had become drawn into the discussion about the politics of Tom’s world after all. “He can’t get the Wizengamot to agree to it in all cases. That’s why the Obliviators still function. But he’s got a few high-profile cases moving through the Wizengamot that might change things.”

“What kind of magic did the wizards use?”

“The Unforgivable Curses, most of them.”

Harry frowned and shook his head. “But then, they’re already illegal, right? If they’re called Unforgivables in your world, too. So he shouldn’t need to say that the wizards need some kind of special punishment.”

“Ah,” Tom said softly, “but you don’t understand the way he thinks, Harry. He says that the wizards who cast the Unforgivables in front of and on Muggles can be redeemed. But only if they lose the knowledge of the Unforgivables and most other magic and become essentially blank slates, to be taught better by the Aurors.”

Harry stared at him. Tom picked at a splinter of wood on the pasture fence and glanced at the gelding, who was nuzzling at Harry’s arm. Harry finally woke up again and petted the horse’s neck, frowning deeply.

“That’s a strange variety of redemption,” Harry finally said.

Tom shrugged. “Not if you think, as Dumbledore does, that what the world really requires is the inability to do wrong. Not if you want complete control of your enemies’ minds, and the wizarding world’s minds, as he does.”

“My Dumbledore was very different from yours,” Harry muttered, staring into the field and watching the foal as he kicked up his heels and scrambled around his mother. “I mean, you’re very different from my version of Voldemort, too. But something must have happened in my first world, or happened in yours, that changed his course.”

Tom shrugged a little. From what he could see in Harry’s memories, his Dumbledore had been exactly the same, only focused on controlling the minds of students instead of the whole wizarding world and on Harry specifically. Tom saw no reason to bring that up, though, when it would only distract Harry.

“My resistance movement isn’t very strong yet,” Tom murmured instead. “I can barely muster people who want to fight with me. There are more who will donate money, but even they’re terrified of Dumbledore noticing them.”

“Do they think he’s going to kill them?”

“They think he’s going to take their minds away from them, Harry,” Tom said, and dared to move a little nearer, since Harry was giving him this chance. “They could wake up Obliviated of important memories, maybe even that they opposed Dumbledore in the first place. And more, the people who have private conversations with him come back changed. Not always missing their memories, but convinced he’s right.”

Harry tapped his fingers on the fence. “Do you think he’s using the Imperius Curse?”

“That would leave more traces of itself behind. And while I don’t think Dumbledore’s beyond the hypocrisy of using the Imperius Curse even as he tries to Obliviate the knowledge of it from other people’s minds, it would be too crude in this case. The Imperius Curse really affects behavior in a noticeable way. These people just act like they’ve been enlightened.”

“You lost someone, didn’t you?”

Tom frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You lost someone to Dumbledore’s manipulations,” Harry said, gently. His eyes were wider and brighter than Tom had seen them yet, focused on him. “You had someone you thought was a friend, and then they went into Dumbledore’s office and came out on the opposite side.”

Tom took a step back. Harry shook his head. “I’m not using Legilimency or the Angelfire Charm or anything else, Tom. It’s just a logical conclusion.”

“The kind of ‘logical conclusion’ that no one else has been able to come up with.”

For some reason, that made Harry nod a little. “You see another reason that you might not want me to come back to your world with you? I’m a little unnerving, right?”

Tom relaxed and chuckled. “And manipulative. You keep trying to come up with ways to make me not want you, Harry. It won’t work.”

Harry’s face snapped into a neutral expression. “Anyway. Who did you lose to Dumbledore? Who went in there and came out convinced that he was right and he’d always been right?”

“One of my followers’ brothers, Justin Mulciber,” Tom said softly. He could still see Apollo’s devastated eyes when he first told Tom what had happened and begged for his help. And Tom had tried, but looking into Justin’s mind had simply revealed seamless layers of thoughts and fervency, all of them focused on Dumbledore. Tom couldn’t undo the manipulations he couldn’t find. “It was more how important he was to my friend that made him important to me.”

“And because you couldn’t protect him. That was a large part of it, wasn’t it? Because you were setting yourself up as this powerful figure for the people who knew you, and then you couldn’t save someone they wanted you to save.”

Tom stepped closer instead of away this time, letting his warmth at being seen like this overrule his fear at it. “You should be training to be a Mind-Healer instead of an animal Healer,” he whispered. “You would be spectacular at it.” To see what would happen, as much as anything else, he let his hand glance off Harry’s where it lay on the fence.

This time, the connection was different. Tom didn’t feel the burning pleasure he had before; he felt as if he had been struck by an enormous clarity of mind and body. For a minute, he had a glimpse of bright plans he would make with Harry, the heights they could soar to, and then the lightning passed and left him again in darkness.

Harry stepped back from him, gasping.

“The touch really does vary,” Tom said in wonder. “Based on what we’re thinking about, what we want, at the time.”

Harry pinned him with a gaze as sharp as that lightning bolt. “What you want. I have no desire to sleep with you or go back to your world, Tom.”

“You might,” Tom said. “I’m only trying to persuade you, Harry, not force you.” He privately thought there was another reason for the touch to have altered, but it would be the height of stupidity to speak that thought aloud right now.

Harry gave him a long, careful glance, and then turned away. He went back to casting diagnostic spells at the horses, and moved on to the cows and sheep, and Tom trailed him and sometimes asked polite, discreet questions.

Harry rolled his shoulders in obvious irritation, but he still answered them. Tom wasn’t entirely sure if that was because Harry was too polite and forgiving for his own good—something he had seen in those memories of Harry’s life—or because he was responding, slowly, to Tom’s interest in what he was doing.

And Tom did find it interesting. Not for the animals or the spells, but for the way Harry gestured and moved and spoke and cast most of those spells wordlessly, and sometimes windlessly. For the way he moved through the landscape without fitting into it. For the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled at a colt or a calf.

Tom wanted that smile to turn in his direction. But at least now he knew he would have to be patient.

*

Harry knew perfectly well what Tom was doing. He had launched a campaign to convert Harry to his side, the same as before, just using different tactics. Telling Harry about the awful government in his world was a way to convince Harry to help, to give him another world of people to save.

He doesn’t understand that that’s the opposite of a temptation for me. I don’t want to save people anymore. Healing animals of physical diseases is so different.

And Harry had a plan of his own.

He finally managed to shake Tom when he went back to Dorea’s house for lunch. Tom had apparently promised to eat lunch with Euphemia and Fleamont, so Harry smiled him on his way, and ignored the sensation of eyes on his back as he walked into Dorea’s kitchen.

And found Jonquil sitting at the kitchen table, just the way he’d planned. She had a habit of eating by herself and reading dueling books on Wednesday, which this was.

Jonquil looked up at him and then rose to her feet. Harry raised his eyebrows at her, and Jonquil frowned at him in response. “You look as though you’re going to send an offensive spell right at me as I sit here.”

“Well, no,” Harry said, and sat down across from her at the table, absently Summoning what he would need to make a bowl of soup to his specifications. “But Tom told me something about his home world that might change your opinion of going back with him.”

Jonquil sat back down, her back straight, her hands folded in front of her and her eyes filling with flame. “Does he already have someone in his world that he’s—close to?”

Harry wanted to snort, but he carefully didn’t. Jonquil was six years younger than he was, and Tom five. Maybe that was why they were all focused on something that wasn’t very important at all to him. Or maybe he’d just been soured by all the fans back in his first world who were convinced after spending a few minutes listening to him speak that they were in love with him and they and Harry could spend the rest of their lives together.

Tom isn’t really that different. He spent more time in my mind, but he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t want me.

That last thought sounded pathetic even to him, so Harry concentrated on what he could say. “No, just that the war in his world is different than I thought. He does want to fight, but a lot of it won’t be openly.”

He told Jonquil what Tom had said about Dumbledore and the way he could manipulate minds and was trying to outlaw even the knowledge of some branches of magic. Jonquil was pale by the time he’d finished, one hand raised to cradle her temple.

“That’s not the kind of warrior I am,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything about the mind arts. And you can’t teach me, can you?”

Harry shook his head. “I’m not good at anything but a kind of brute-force Legilimency. And it would take months to learn even if I was.” He paused, then added, “But Tom is. He’s very good at both shielding his mind and reading others’.”

Jonquil sat up. “So if I said that I was interested in learning…?”

“He might or might not teach you. But it would be a better preparation for his world than being trained in dueling, I think.”

Why in the world does he want me for my power, then?

Harry dismissed the notion. It was probably another product of Tom not really understanding who he was.

“And there are books that Grandmama Dorea mentioned at one point,” Jonquil muttered. “Books on the mind arts, I mean. She wouldn’t have given them to me when I was younger, but if I ask for them now and show I’m making an effort, then Tom would know that I’m aware of the danger and still want to stand at his side.”

“And you know,” Harry said delicately, “that you could learn them for yourself? That you don’t have to have Tom as an inspiration to learn them?”

Jonquil blinked at him. “I mean, I know I could. But it would be a lot of work to learn them without some kind of goal, wouldn’t it?”

Harry bit his lip to avoid saying what he thought, which was mainly You’re too young to have to decide every bit of the rest of your life right the fuck now. He knew that Jonquil, who wanted a direction, a way to walk, wouldn’t thank him for his condescension. She wanted to decide now, and she should be able to do that.

So they spent the rest of the lunch discussing what Occlumency and Legilimency were like, and what she might learn, and Harry hoped he could do both of the things he wanted.

Give Jonquil a direction and a way to occupy herself and learn some magic that might interest her even more than dueling.

And give Tom a thorough distraction, who might become a real friend or lover in the process. Jonquil adored Tom. Who could resist that kind of adoration forever?