[From Litha to Lammas]: Iron and Sapphires, Harry/Tom Riddle, R, 4/6
Part Three.
Part One.
Title: Iron and Sapphires (4/6)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background Lily/James
Content Notes: Massive AU, angst, depression, unreliable narrator, past child death, suicidal thoughts, passive suicide attempt, dysfunctional relationships, child abuse, mindfuck, mental instability, dubious consent, past minor character deaths, violence, gore, Dark Arts, disturbing content.
Wordcount: This part 5400
Rating: R
Summary: After what he did to his brother when he was ten years old, Harry has devoted himself to atoning for it and to doing whatever he can for his younger sister, Amara. When she asks him to steal an artifact for her from the powerful Lord Gaunt, Harry agrees. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him, or how thoroughly it will end his world.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. It should have four parts. Please look at the warnings; this is an extremely dark and disturbing fic.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Four
“How do you feel now?”
Harry glanced up at Tom, and then away. Tom studied the way Harry’s hands had closed on the sides of his teacup. As hot as the elves made the tea, it must have half-burned him, but he didn’t move them.
“It’s really odd, thinking about it without the manacle.” Harry stared out the enchanted window in Tom’s small dining room, which showed a rolling ocean on a beach of black lava. Tom smugly noted to himself that Harry had adopted the right name for the “bracelet,” but didn’t call attention to it, since it might have made Harry angry. “I can remember what I thought, but it’s like remembering a dream. A really logical one,” he added. “But at the same time, I know it’s not my real life.”
“I am curious why you rejected my suggestion of speaking with a Healer.”
“The injury is mental, not physical.” Harry turned towards him with that fire Tom liked coming back into his eyes.
“Not all of it, not with the damage done to your magic while it was confined.” Tom took a sip from his own tea, which had reached the perfect temperature. “And even if it was strictly mental, I think you could benefit from talking it out with someone who is trained in such talking.”
Harry shut his eyes and shook his head a little. “Because I’d have to explain how I submitted to the manacle and let my own magic enslave me,” he whispered. “How weak would I look? How stupid?”
Tom blinked and stared at him. He hadn’t suspected that at all. “You were ten. They manipulated you.”
“But a younger child should have known how to see through that. I bet Brandon…” Harry blinked and trailed off.
“The brother you told me was only eighteen months old when he died?”
Harry was silent, trailing his fingers back and forth across the sleek ebony of the tabletop. Tom ignored the streaks that appeared. It wasn’t as though those would endure long, with the attentive house-elves around.
“It’s strange,” Harry whispered. “Another of those remembered-dream things. I remember thinking that Brandon would be so much more than I was. A stronger wizard, a smarter one, a kinder one. But why did I decide that? When? For that matter, when did my parents decide that?”
“They surely influenced you.”
Harry rolled his eyes at Tom. “And I told you, I don’t think they made this up as something that would enslave me just because they hated me. They’re-broken. Brandon’s death broke them so fundamentally that I don’t think they’ll ever recover. They really believe that it’s the right thing to do, to bring him back. They believe that he would have been the most wonderful person in the world if he hadn’t died. And they believe that I have to atone.”
Tom shrugged. Whether the Potter parents’ delusion was real or had been concocted from hatred and fear of Harry’s power didn’t matter to him. What did was that Harry hadn’t said no to taking vengeance on them.
“And did they have the right to break their other two children?” Harry had told him a little about his sister, Amara, and she sounded spoiled and shallow to Tom, but not as bad as their parents. More than likely, she hadn’t thought to question the “need” for Harry to die because she’d been raised with that idea from the time she was three years old.
“I-no.”
“No, they did not.” Tom leaned towards Harry and smiled at him. “And I look forward to seeing you prove how not broken you are. We start today in the circle where I freed you.” He reached across the table to slide his fingers up the back of Harry’s hand, lingering on his knuckles.
Harry flushed so brilliantly that Tom thought the heat in his face probably rivaled the tea. He sat back with a smile that was mostly for himself, while Harry busied himself with breakfast.
He would enjoy working with Harry. In every way.
*
“This ritual will get you accustomed to using your magic again.”
Harry nodded, his eyes half-closed. The light shining from the circle seemed brighter than it had been in the ritual that broke the manacle, even though physically, he thought it was dimmer. This time, water made to run with magic filled the carved patterns in the floor between the steel parts of the circle. Harry had asked why, and Gaunt had said it was to absorb any stray bursts of power he might give off. Running water grounded and nullified magic.
Harry thought he’d known that, but the knowledge seemed dim and far away without the manacle, as did the knowledge he’d acquired of necromancy while he wore it. His mind was distancing it, probably.
That was likely for the best, but Harry hoped he didn’t forget. He never wanted to.
“Is there anyone you want me to contact before we begin?” Gaunt asked, strolling along the rim of the circle with his robes flaring behind him. “Once the ritual closes, we will both be locked in here for however long it takes your magic to settle.”
Harry swallowed. “Can you send a Patronus to someone you haven’t met before? My godfather, Sirius Black.”
“The only one who really cared about you.”
Harry tried a half-hearted glare, but said nothing. He didn’t know, now, how much Amara had really understood about the manacle, and he knew Remus thought he had accepted it of his own free will. They both might be more like Sirius once they knew the truth.
“Yes, if you want to put it like that.”
“Of course I do.”
Harry turned his back on Gaunt’s smug smile, not least because it made him feel things he didn’t want to feel. “You didn’t answer the question, either.”
“I can send a Patronus, but mine is a basilisk. Will he assume the worst when he sees it and leave without even trying to hear the message?”
“He should hold still long enough to hear it. I’d like to tell him that I’m safe and he can come to the boundaries of your wards on Friday morning, the way we discussed.”
“Then that is what it will say.”
Gaunt raised his wand, but Harry interrupted before he could move it in the flick that would call the Patronus. “Why do you care so much? Why are you so willing to do what I want to do?”
“I have never met someone who might be my equal before.”
Harry licked his lips, especially when he noticed the way Gaunt was looking at him. “Okay. Fine. But you know that I’m not your equal when it comes to geniusity-”
“Or vocabulary.”
Harry rolled his eyes, back on slightly more familiar ground. “I’m not as smart as you. Even if I am as powerful, and you said you couldn’t be sure until I met my magic. So why do you think that I could be your equal?”
Gaunt tilted his head slowly, in an odd motion that made Harry wonder if he was making up some answer to give. But as a minute passed, Harry thought that he might simply be thinking deeply about that answer.
“I appreciate your Parseltongue,” Gaunt said at last. “I appreciate that you’ve gone through more in your life than most of the people who try to appeal to me or propose a collaboration to me will have. I appreciate your perspective that isn’t bound by the usual rules and chains like Hogwarts and a wand.”
Harry eyed the pale wand in the man’s hand, and said nothing. Gaunt gave him a thin smile in response.
“You have the potential to be my equal. And that is more than anyone has had in a long, long time.”
Harry stood there, absorbing the words, a little flustered to realize that he might have asked Gaunt the question because he wanted so badly to hear a compliment. The sensation made him nod sharply and turn to face the far side of the ritual circle.
“All right. Can you send the Patronus, and we’ll begin the ritual?”
“Of course, Harry.”
Gaunt’s basilisk Patronus filled most of the room outside the circle, and looked as if it meant to challenge Nyx for height. But it reacted like an ordinary Patronus after Gaunt had spoken the message for Sirius, crawling out of the room. Harry took a deep breath and spread his arms as Gaunt had told him he should.
The light crackling along the edges of the circle swayed towards him like candle-flames driven by a strong wind.
Harry let the tight grip he’d been keeping on his magic ever since the end of the last ritual go, and dark blue power rose to meet him, accompanied by flashes of green and purple and silver and gold.
*
Tom paced slowly along the outside of the circle, eyes on Harry as he gathered the leaping magic like water in his palms, where it pooled before flowing away again and hitting the floor and leaping back up to hang like a frozen fountain over Harry’s head.
He is my equal.
Not, as Harry had so calmly pointed out, in intelligence, or experience. And Tom hadn’t measured Harry’s magic on any of the scales that were normally used to test it in Slytherin House, or various professions after Hogwarts, or the Ministry when gauging the kind of power they would need to hold a criminal. But this was more than that, a resonance between his magic and Harry’s that had much more to offer than a simple number.
They sang on the same frequency. To the same tune.
Harry glanced up at last, and smiled at Tom, an open and sweet smile that Tom once would have either sneered at or been wary of. But knowing what he knew about Harry, and how he’d been taught to distrust his magic ever since he was a child, made him smile back.
“Which spell?” Harry whispered.
They’d talked about having him try actual spells once he had calmed his magic, and Tom had intended to pick something simple, like a Lumos Charm. But curiosity about another matter touched him abruptly, and as it sometimes seemed he had endlessly done since meeting Harry, he followed the impulse.
“Summon a Patronus.”
Harry blinked. “Isn’t that difficult?”
“It takes practice,” Tom admitted. “But that is because few people have the power to summon it at first, and they need to practice focusing on a spectacularly happy memory. You have power to burn, and I suspect you’ll have no trouble finding a happy memory.”
Harry’s eyes lit the way they had after he had broken free from the manacle and finally stopped weeping. “Yes.” He turned to face the far boundary of the ritual circle and spread his hands. Light gathered there, the dark blue color that spoke to purest power rather than one of the gifts his magic had worked itself into under confinement.
Tom tensed in anticipation.
“Expecto Patronum!”
Harry almost sang the words. The air above his hands churned and fought, while Harry stood there with his eyes closed, not looking worried now, but simply intent.
And the power went on building rather than dissipating the way a failed spell would. A second later, a silvery, winged figure leaped from Harry’s right hand and sped around the inside of the ritual circle, flapping strongly in what seemed to Tom sheer gladness.
He couldn’t get a clear glimpse of it, other than that it was a large bird, until it slowed to a stop and landed on the floor in front of Harry, head tilting back to meet its creator’s eyes. Harry stared back, stunned.
Tom smiled slowly as he saw the crest and the widespread talons, recognizable even though the silvery color of a Patronus meant the feathers didn’t have the usual hues of its species. A phoenix.
Well, that made sense. Harry had been reborn yesterday in more ways than one.
Harry knelt down and held out his hand. The phoenix leaned its beak delicately into his palm for a second, and then vanished as Harry’s concentration faltered, or perhaps the magic that had been strengthening the Patronus was simply used up.
Harry remained kneeling, so still that Tom grew wary. Perhaps he’d pushed him to expend too much magic at once.
Then Harry turned around, and the look in his eyes told Tom that this moment might replace yesterday’s as Harry’s happiest memory.
“I used magic,” Harry whispered. “And I wasn’t dangerous.”
Tom smiled at him, beyond smug, beyond pleased.
*
“Harry!”
Harry leaped lightly across the ward boundaries-Sirius would probably think it was because of the manacle, although it was really because Gaunt had made an exception to the wards’ paranoid defenses for him-and hugged his godfather. Sirius grabbed him and held him close, so greedy that Harry stifled a sigh in his shoulder. Sirius had probably learned from his parents that Harry hadn’t gone to retrieve something for them, and had had no intention of taking the manacle off.
Then, I sure didn’t.
“I was so worried, kiddo,” Sirius practically babbled into his ear, his arms tightening around Harry. “Are you-what happened? Did you have to hide out in Gaunt’s gardens until you could escape?”
Harry laughed a little. “He sent you a basilisk Patronus, and you can ask that?”
“Well, all right,” Sirius admitted. “But I thought maybe you tricked him or something. Or he was lying.”
“He was lying, but you came anyway?”
“Yeah, I-” Sirius abruptly stopped talking and stared at Harry’s arm with his mouth open.
Harry smiled. “I wondered when you would notice that the manacle is gone,” he said, and held out his arm, turning it back and forth, so that Sirius could admire it. “Lord Gaunt is strange in a lot of ways, but he was right about how the manacle had influenced my thoughts so that I would want to die.”
“You-Harry.” Sirius lunged forwards and hugged him so hard that they crashed into the hedge that marked the ward boundary. Harry caught Sirius, laughing, and held him, bowing his head so that his chin nestled into his godfather’s shoulder.
It seemed to him that he could remember being held like this, long ago, before the accident.
“You’re calling it a manacle,” Sirius whispered, babbling so fast that it was hard for Harry to understand him. “You said they influenced you. Lord Gaunt helped you. What? How? Why? You really do want to live?”
“Yeah. Sorry for the lie I told you. Amara actually sent me to steal an artifact from Lord Gaunt’s collection for her, but I couldn’t get through the inner wards, and he caught me. And he recognized that the bracelet was actually a manacle, and that it was probably influencing me to want to commit suicide.” Harry swallowed. “He put me in a ritual circle that broke it.”
“Harry.”
Sirius hugged him some more, and Harry patted his godfather’s back. He felt the pressure of a gaze on them-a non-deadly one-and knew Erebus was probably watching. Then again, as long as Sirius didn’t try to cross onto the property without Gaunt’s invitation, the black unicorn wouldn’t be hostile to him.
“Why?” Sirius whispered at last, after long moments of him just holding Harry had passed. “Why would Lily and James do this?”
“They broke after Brandon died,” Harry said. He stepped back a little, and Sirius let him go, although he seemed really reluctant about it. “They just-when they lost him, they went more than a little mad. I know that now. What kind of person dedicates themselves to necromancy to bring back their dead child? It’s not just illegal, it’s mental. And Father decided that if my magic hadn’t been unrestrained, then he would still have Brandon.”
“They still had no right to do that to you.” Sirius’s eyes gleamed in the way they did when he was about to leap on someone in dog form.
“No, they didn’t,” Harry agreed quietly. “But I think they really were afraid that I would hurt Amara, or that I would kill someone else. And they came up with this idea of atonement and sacrifice because they want Brandon back so badly that they chose a necromantic ritual where I would be part of the ingredients.”
Sirius closed his eyes. “What does Lord Gaunt think?”
The question was so unexpected that Harry blinked in surprise. But he answered, “He thinks Mum and Father hate me and want to destroy me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
Harry clasped Sirius’s shoulders and met his eyes. “Even if you think that, and even if you agree with Gaunt, then you should know that I’m the one who’s going to take revenge. I’m the one who was hurt the most by them, so I’m the one who gets to decide what happens to them.”
Sirius folded his arms and looked almost ready to throw a tantrum. “And does Lord Gaunt know that you’re the most forgiving idiot on the face of the planet?”
“I’m different than the person you thought I was, Sirius. So much of what I became and said and did in the past few years was because of the manacle. Now I have to relearn how to use my magic and what kind of person I am, but so does everyone else.”
Sirius grunted, but also relaxed. “Fair enough. Are you going to introduce me to your benefactor?”
“If you want. But he insists on me staying here for a little while, and I think he’s right.” Harry grimaced at the thought of going back home at the moment, and even Sirius’s house was subject to invasions at the most inopportune moments by Remus and Amara. “So that means you’d have to, too, or go home but not tell anyone I’m here.”
“I’ll stay,” Sirius said at once. “You might as well know that I had a huge argument with your parents, and so did Remus.”
Harry blinked and stared at him. “He did?”
“Remus wasn’t around when the accident actually happened, you know that,” Sirius said softly. “He was off in France participating in the trial for that experimental lycanthropy cure the French Ministry hoped would work out. By the time he came back, the manacle was on your wrist, and everyone except me-well, and Amara, but she was too little to call it anything-was calling it murder. And Lily and James did a great job convincing Remus that you wanted to wear the damn thing.”
“Because they really do believe it themselves. They broke when they lost him, I told you.”
“And why weren’t two kids enough for them?” Sirius demanded abruptly, his eyes flashing. “Why didn’t they hold you and Amara closer than ever, and love you more than ever, and become the kind of nightmare overprotective parents that Remus’s were after he got bitten? What in the name of Merlin were they doing?”
Harry grimaced. Gaunt had asked some of the same questions over the last few days, and hadn’t seemed satisfied when Harry gave his answers. Honestly, Harry wasn’t satisfied either, but he still thought his answers were likelier to be correct than Gaunt’s idea of some grand conspiracy between his parents because they were jealous of his power.
“They thought of me as a murderer,” he said. “They weren’t lying about that. They believe it themselves. You could put them under Veritaserum, and I’m sure that’s what they would say, that it was murder.”
He was going to go on, but Sirius hugged him and held him.
“I’m sorry that we weren’t there for you more,” he whispered. “Remus and I. If I’d been thinking, I would have taken you and Amara away from them. I would have recognized that manacle for what it was. I would have insisted that Lily and James get Mind-Healing. And I would have stopped them from making that house and that grave into a damn shrine to Brandon. They broke when they lost him, fine, but it can’t help that they visit his grave all the time and talk constantly about him and have his pictures up everywhere.”
Harry nodded silently against Sirius’s shoulder. “You said that Remus was angry, too?”
Sirius snorted. “He told Lily and James that he’d kill them, but that he didn’t want to leave you and Amara orphans.”
Harry felt his mouth open, and hang open. “Wow,” he said at last, a little awkwardly. “I, uh. How did they take that?”
“Lily tried to persuade Remus that they’d put so much time into the ritual, he should still do it with her. And James told Remus that he didn’t understand the danger that unrestrained accidental magic posed to our world. I left them yelling at each other, honestly.” Sirius took a deep breath. “Remus came to me afterwards and apologized. He would have come with me tonight, except that Gaunt said to come alone and I’m not sure how you would feel about seeing him.”
Harry nodded, dazed at the thought that Remus had changed so completely now that he no longer thought Harry had taken up the manacle willingly. “Yeah, I think Gaunt might have killed him if he saw him. He was already irritated enough about you coming.”
“Why does he care so much?” Sirius demanded then, a question Harry had been dreading because he was still trying to answer it himself. “He was never James’s political rival, that I know of, and he certainly never acted as though he had any interest in your family or in helping out young wizards in bad situations.”
“He cares because he thinks I might be his equal in magical power.” Harry nodded as Sirius’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, I know, it’s strange, but that’s what it is. Besides, I’m a Parselmouth, and that means he wants to-”
“You are not a Parselmouth!”
Harry pictured Nyx in his mind, and hissed, “Are you sure about that?” Seeing Sirius’s rapidly paling face, he winced a little, and reached out to support him with a hand under his elbow. “Sorry. But Gaunt has a theory about my magic expressing itself any way it could under the manacle, and the only way it could find to do that was in non-physical things like Parseltongue.”
“The fear it sent down my spine is sure a physical thing,” Sirius muttered.
*
Tom studied Sirius Black as they sat on opposite sides of the small, warm sitting room where Tom brought his most favored guests. Harry, whom he no longer considered as only a guest, lounged in a chair on the other side of the room, watching them both with the exasperated air of a Hogwarts professor who expected to have to break up a fight.
Black both stared and scowled. He seemed to think that Tom was bad for Harry and he would have to stage a heroic rescue any second. Not much like the other members of his family, whom Tom had bought grimoires from and even learned a few spells from in his time.
A fine time for him to be a hero, now, when he spent so many years not being one.
But Harry was unreasonable on the subject of his godfather and Tom’s conviction that Black bore part of the blame for what the Potters had done, so Tom said only, “Harry has magical potential that I want to explore. And he’s already demonstrated to you that he’s a Parselmouth, Black.”
“Harry’s not a thing.” Black acted as if he was about to surge out of his chair, mouth open and teeth bared in something like a snarl. “Don’t talk about him like he’s one!”
“I don’t think he is,” Tom said. He kept his voice as smooth and polite as he could. Strange, that for the first time in so many years, real anger was rising in his chest. “I think that he has the potential to be my equal, and I would not say that to just anyone. I will give him whatever he wants in exchange for being able to train and collaborate with him.”
“You and I already disagree on one thing,” Harry put in, with a smile that missed the definition of charming by miles. “You think my parents should die. I don’t think they should. I think the vengeance I have planned will be enough.”
“The only way they can pay for their crimes is to die,” Tom explained patiently, turning to face Harry. He was far more pleasant to look at than Black, and not because he was younger. The way his spirit and power shone out of his green eyes was the major reason.
“No, the only way they can pay for their crimes is to lose what they value most.”
Harry was leaning forwards now, one hand slicing down through the air. Tom could feel Black’s surprise when a trail of purple sparks followed the motion. He didn’t bother looking at Black, content to keep his preening internal. I saw that before you did. I discovered what his magical gifts were before you did. I am the one who freed him from the manacle, not you.
I am the one who has the most right to him.
“And tell me what that is,” Tom cooed. “If you intend to say yourself, then I will not grant you the right to your vengeance, as they did not value you near enough.”
Harry half-smiled. “It’s going to be a surprise.”
“If you don’t tell me, then I shall simply kill them.”
“No, you won’t.” Harry shifted his full attention to Tom now, instead of splitting it with his godfather as he had been doing up until now, and Tom licked his lips at the heady sensation. “Because I can stop you.”
Tom laughed, despite himself. “Harry, you’re wondrously strong and going to receive a wonderful education from me, but you can’t stop me from doing anything I want to do, right now. It’s not as though you could master the Imperius Curse.”
Harry raised his hand in response. Purple sparks leaped all over his fingers, flashing small shadows of light on his skin.
“Really?” Tom asked, delighted beyond measure, and ignoring Black’s shocked gasp. “You’re going to use a gift you know nothing about against me?”
“I know what it is.”
“How?” Tom demanded, unreasonably jealous of the thought that he might have been shut out of Harry’s experiments with his magic.
“I practiced by myself the other day.” Harry rotated his wrist, as if he was warming up his hand to cast the way some wizards did with their wands. “And I found out what it does. The house-elves helped me.”
Tom narrowed his eyes. “They reported nothing to me.”
“I asked them nicely not to.” Harry grinned at him, hard and smug.
Tom stared at Harry, wanting to say something about how the house-elves’ loyalty was to him alone, but that admission would probably make him look weak in front of Harry. “Show me, then,” he murmured, taking his wand from the sheath that he carried along his left arm.
“Harry,” Black said weakly. “Do you think this is the best idea?”
“I sure do,” Harry said, without, Tom noted, taking his eyes from Tom once. “Because Lord Gaunt here needs to learn that if we’re going to have a partnership, he can’t overrule and order me around the whole time.”
Tom raised his wand with a thrill rising in him. No one had challenged him like this since he was twenty and working in Knockturn Alley to make ends meet, before he achieved his first grand magical discovery. “I am going to cast the Cruciatus Curse on you,” he said gently. “Try and stop me.”
“Harry!”
Black lunged forwards, but Misty appeared and grabbed him around the waist, the way Tom had arranged ahead of time if Harry’s godfather got violent. Harry didn’t twitch at the movement or Black’s curses. He held Tom’s eyes, and he didn’t bother to stand up from his chair. The display of disrespect infuriated Tom and, at the same time, caused a violent, hot tug between his legs.
“Go ahead,” Harry said softly.
Tom raised his wand and began the motion for the torture curse, only a little slower than normal. Harry shouldn’t think he was joking. He would do it. Harry shouldn’t think that he was going to get special treatment once Tom declared he would do something, even if he was potentially Tom’s equal.
Tom had almost completed the wand motion when Harry said, twisting his right hand towards him, “Don’t cast the Cruciatus Curse.”
Tom gasped as something slammed into him, an odd sensation like a giant hand clamping him around the soul. He tried to move his right arm to complete the wand motion, and found he couldn’t. He tried to begin anew, and he couldn’t do that, either.
He spun in place and aimed his wand at Black, who yelped and scrambled for his own wand as best as he could in Misty’s hold, and tried to cast the Cruciatus Curse at him.
It didn’t work. His wand arm was frozen.
Tom switched back to pointing his wand at Harry and cast the Tickling Charm. Harry laughed and leaped up from his chair to dodge it, spinning around on one foot and treating Tom to a cheeky grin.
“My magical gift is called Forbiddance,” he said.
Tom swallowed. He wouldn’t have thought that, from the way the purple sparks had almost attacked him when he was still keeping Harry in a bedroom, because that had seemed more offensive, and Forbiddance was generally seen as a defensive gift. But it made sense, and-
It was powerful. And perfect.
“What does that mean?” Black demanded, in a voice that sounded like a moan. Tom glanced over at him and gestured to Misty to let him go. Black sighed and slumped back into his chair. “I saw that he was going to cast the curse, and then didn’t. Is that all it is?”
Tom was about to start a rant about how that wasn’t all it was and Black was an idiot, but Harry cut in before he could. “It’s powerful, Sirius. I can tell someone not to do something, and they have to stop it. I can’t tell them to do something, which makes Forbiddance classified as something different from the Imperius Curse. But I can protect myself, and I can word my orders as broadly or narrowly as I chose.” He gave Tom a narrow smile. “For example, if I’d ordered Lord Gaunt here not to cast the Cruciatus Curse on me, he still could have cast it on you. That’s one reason I worded it the way I did.”
Black looked somewhere between surprised and terrified, but Tom felt cascading delight pour through him. “You knew I would try.”
Harry gave him a small smile. “Yes, I did.”
“And the house-elves. You told them not to tell me.”
Harry’s smile grew broader, and his eyes brighter. “Yes, I did.”
“How did you learn that it was called Forbiddance?” Black demanded then. “What it was? You said you only found it you had it when Lord Gaunt here analyzed the manacle.”
“The elves brought me some books, and I did some studying,” Harry said, with a shrug that seemed to put Black’s wonder down as of no account. Tom could understand it, though. Harry had probably never studied seriously in his life before, not having been allowed to use magic or attend Hogwarts. “So. I have this, and it’s pretty fucking amazing. And so are the other things I can do, like the Parseltongue and the oneiromancy-”
“Oneiro-what?”
Harry laughed and began to explain, and Tom leaned back, his eyes raking up and down Harry’s body. His magic was the most attractive thing about him, but his released intelligence, his determination to have his own way, his defiance, his quick thinking when he wanted to defend himself, his lithe build…
Tom had helped him reach this height. And he would help him reach more, still.
I want him.
*
Harry was aware of the way Gaunt was watching him, and while he hadn’t entirely brought himself around to the idea of being in the man’s bed yet-he knew what the prick was thinking-he couldn’t help arching his neck a little, reveling in the attention.
He wants me.
After years of believing that no one wanted anything of him except his death, or that no one should, Harry basked in the sensation nearly as much as in his magic.