Harry Potter & The Hand God

Harry is growing to love him. Blaise said that, too. This isn’t exactly true, Tom knows. Harry loves, is starting to love, the version of himself that Tom presents. If Harry knew what Tom did and has done and is doing -- regardless of the fact that what he does? That’s pretend, too -- … would he still love him? Is Harry’s love unconditional? Should any love at all be? Tom doesn’t know if it should be but he knows he wants it to be. If Harry does not accept him as him, even and especially if that ‘him’ Harry knows isn’t Tom, then… Then Tom does not know what he’d do. 

(Hurt Harry, who he wants only to protect? Hurt others? He would lose control. He would lose his fucking mind.)

It doesn’t matter.

Because Tom will not let Blaise test that. The illusion of himself that Harry thinks is real will keep itself that way. He just has to shut Blaise the fuck up first.

Tom got his method through Harry’s journal, when it was his rotation to sort through it. He’d, during his second year, used a ‘lip-lock charm’ on Snape. He could not think, write, or in any way communicate the word Squib. Tom was impressed and amused -- Harry is so adorable, isn’t he? Snape’s a full grown wizard; Harry’s charm lasted less than half an hour. Tom starts to wonder if Harry thought it was worth it before finding a passage saying that, even after six days’ detention and a loss of fifty House points, that he regretted nothing. (Watch your tongue or fucking lose it.)

Then Tom realized that Blaise Zabini, while possessing a power Tom is infinitely jealous of, is… not as powerful as a full grown wizard. He’s fifteen. And Tom, Tom is the very definition of capable. He has so much magic his body is not big enough to hold all of it. 

He is not Harry Potter. He will not repeat his mistake. He is practically overflowing with magic. 

So the lip-lock charm. It fits. It solves everything. And then Tom’s secret dies with Blaise’s ability to talk about it. 

But Blaise is smart, reluctantly admitted. He also sees the future. He is a hard boy to get alone.

“Blaise,” Tom tries one day during lunch. “There’s this book I’m looking for, A History: The Sabbath. I believe you were reading it a couple weeks ago? I’d love your help locating in the library, if you would?”

Blaise’s eyes lock onto Ron and he says, without missing a beat, “I see no reason why not. Weren’t you looking for a book, too, Ron? Why don’t you join us?” He locks eyes with Tom and Tom resists the urge to slit his throat. You have no idea who you are messing with. Or maybe you do. Maybe you know exactly. “I’m sure Tom would enjoy the company.”

Ron blinks. “Oh, shit -- yeah, thanks for reminding me, Blaise.”

“Anytime,” and he means it to Tom, too, as a warning. He cannot try this stunt again. Blaise is not above tattling over suspicion.

They spend the evening in a library and Tom thinks their company is lacking. It is in no way lovely. This changes only when Harry shows up and decides that, out of all of them, out of everyone, he wants to sit with Tom. (His heart flutters. He feels weak but… but he accepts that; embraces it, for to do so is embracing Harry. How could he ever have rejected a vice this enticing?)

Tom is forced to back off for a little while. He cannot risk Blaise catching on more than he already has. He makes no move to get him alone; makes no move to bring Harry closer. He sits back. Just for a little while. But that ‘little while’ is agonizing. So this only lasts a week until he is back at it again. 

I can be more subtle. Last time was a fluke. Blaise will not know what hit him.

But Blaise knows. Blaise always knows. When Tom tracks his schedule and plans to corner him in the hallway, he will turn into the corridor and see that Blaise is not there. He knows. And Tom thinks it is not too long before he acts.

Blaise can see the future, see Tom’s heart, likely seeing the way Tom is actively planning against him. Well. That’s okay. Because Tom thinks it works like all the other senses in the way that it, too, can be overwhelmed.

“You are to start spreading around a new slur, in place of Mudblood, which you idiotically can no longer say,” he orders his Knights, some of them looking down guiltily. “And you, Lestrange, I need you to try and get Harry Potter alone. Administer some sort of revenge. Show him he cannot mess with us without consequence.”

“Oh -- uh, alright, sir,” stumbles Lestrange. “I have a question, though.”
Tom glares at him. “Yes?”

“What if he starts to take my magic, too?” Everyone looks at him oddly. He throws his hands up. “You were all there -- you all saw it! Something about that little kid is seriously fucked.”

“First of all,” says Tom. “If he takes your magic, then beyond the field of fucks I give and find it barren. You embarrassed yourself by losing, all of you. Your true punishment is this risk.” Second of all, he is not a little kid. “I need another one of you to attack -- maim, I remind, not kill -- the house elves. Preferably the rest of you. Understood?”

It wasn’t. But no one said no. Draco Malfoy eyes him questionably but Tom kissed his cheek and asked what troubled him. “I worry about you,” Tom,” he confesses. “You’re biting off a lot at once here.” That is kind of the point, Draco, thinks Tom.

“If anyone can handle it, it is me,” he says. “Worry not.”

Tom sits at dinner the next day and Blaise’s eyes seem to slide right off him, and onto his Knights. He is a nervous wreck all day. Harry whispers to him and then he, soon, too grows fidgety. Is it the house elves? thinks Tom. Why worry for their sanctity? Your compassion never fails to amaze me. But your distress, however sad to see, will contribute to Blaise’s, ah, malfunction. You might not ever forgive me if you found out. It is a good thing you won’t.

“Yo,” Harry snaps, slamming his bag down onto the table a few days later. “New slur just dropped.”

Hermione closed her book. “I know. It must upset you, but you need t--”

“Fuck remaining calm. I’m so pissed. My Affair worked for what? A couple weeks?”

“It’s weird, though,” notes Ron. “I thought that prohibited them from spreading their ‘Muggles are shit’ rhetoric in general?”

“Close but not. The loser had to admit they were wrong. And they have. But they’ve found a loophole; apparently, this applies only to opinions they held beforehand. Any new opinions don’t have to admit to shit.”

“So they’re talking new shit?”

“New slurs included!” Harry chirps, then lays his head on the table with a groan. “Fuck. I didn’t know bigots could get so creative. They’re saying that Merlin killed thousands of Muggles in his lifetime -- which isn’t true – and that that’s somehow a good thing and an inspiration--”

“Wait,” says Tom. “How do you know it’s not true?” Harry didn’t talk about the Church of Merlin much, besides the odd comment here and there about Squibs. 

Harry went red in the face and buried his head in his arms. He mumbled something. Tom didn’t hear it. “Sorry?” says Tom.

Neville rubs his hand along Harry’s back comfortingly. “He used to be a Merliner,” he says. 

Tom blinked. He blinked again. “What?” No wonder Harry didn’t talk about them as much as he talked about the Ministry -- he’s ashamed.

“When I was little,” says Harry, still a bit muffled but less red in the face. “I mean. Directly after my parents died, I think? I don't remember, exactly. I guess I latched on.” It felt close. 

Was that when Merlin started visiting you? Tom theorized. How odd. Did Lily get you to believe? I have so many questions, none of which you can answer. All the more reason to fix it. “What about the anti-Squib ideologies?” asks Tom.

“I didn’t agree with them. I just.. I dunno!” he laughs at himself. “I was stupid. Figured that they weren’t instrumental to the religion. If I ignored them,” Harry shrugs. “It was like they weren’t there, so I wrote.”

“So what changed?”

Harry ruffled his hair, using the other one to lock fingers with Neville. “Me? I think. I think maybe I changed. Or maybe nothing did. Maybe I woke up one morning, everything around me the exact same as before, and decided that… that it all seemed awfully silly.”

Yes, yes, change does work like that, does feel like that sometimes, doesn’t it? So silly. You get it. You get it! Who else but us does, Harry? Who else? “And now you’re angry at them?”

“Mhm. But the point is, I know. There’s an entire chapter in my journal dedicated to Merlin’s life and death and lasting effect and I know it by heart, I had read it over so many times,” He tugs on his hair. “I’ve tried to scrub it clean, you know? Like get it out of my head. But I think it’s stuck. Like you guys are. Or the infirmary is.” Hermione and Ron share a look but Tom misses it because he’s thinking That’s me. That’s what I did with Merlin, too. People talked about him so much that he’s stuck. You get it.

You get me. Without even knowing.You are wonderful, Harry.

(So wonderful that Tom misses that dark look shared by Hermione and Ron. He cannot see beyond his face.)

“I know that Merlin never killed a Muggle. Not one. So this shit’s straight slander,” finishes Harry.

“Please don’t do anything rash about it,” pleas Hermione. 

Harry scoffs, like the idea that he would is embarrassing. “Of course not.” Hermione sighs in relief. “I have to figure out how to harness my power first.”

“Harry, you can’t just steal the magic of everyone you don’t like!”

“I can,” he says. “If they’re bigots, Mione.”

“You think I don’t get it?” she snaps, hair frizzing around her. “Me, the Mudblood? Me, the Blue?” She laughs without mirth. (Blue is the new slur. “Muggles don’t bleed like the rest of us,” it’s said. “They bleed blue.”) “You want to help people like me, so let me say this; I do not think something this radical will help our cause! You’re just creating a divide.”

“And what is wrong with a divide?”

“What’s wrong?” Hermione glares. “We need them to concede, to agree with them. You cannot silence an entire group of people, just like they cannot silence us. It won’t work.”

“Arguing with them won’t work, either,” argues Harry. “I think that, for the most part, people who do this, who believe, against everything, against all proof otherwise, in hating Muggles? They can’t change. They will fight it every step of the way. They will not concede and, in the end, we don’t need them to. We just have to have them act like it, through whatever means necessary.”

“And you think that means hurting them?” asks Hermione, disbelief. “You think that means stealing their magic?”

“Yes! Yes, I do. Protest and dissent and rioting -- since the beginning of time, no social change has been made without these. American slavery was not resolved without blood. Same with women’s rights. If I am to get my rights to marry, there’s no way it’s not going to be the same way. History proves it, Mione: Anger is essential to change.”

“But so’s love,” says Hermione, quieter. Tom looks away from Harry (who he watched because, even if he doesn’t care about the topic at hand, he cares about the way Harry discusses it, so full of passion and intensity that Tom literally has to tear his eyes away from him to look at Hermione.)

“Really?” laughs Harry.

“Yes, really! Legal change can be made with anger, yes, but it can only go so far. Social activists use information, patience, time to get the people to actually like these minorities. If everyone who was the tiniest bit homophobic was just punched on-sight, then no would like gay people.”

“I still punch homophobes,” says Blaise.

Hermione falters. “That’s -- still. Because there are gay people who didn’t, you have more rights than your predecessors.” She shrugs. “Majorites don’t like minorites who shove it down their throat.”

“I will not pander,” says Harry, disgust in his voice. (Tom feels affection rise in his chest at his voice; prideful, stubborn, the most attractive thing Tom has ever heard.) “I am not outlawed because gay people were nice. The gay people before me fought for their right to live. I do not live for majorites to accept me, or, god forbid, like me. If I feed into their stereotypes, then that’s on them for having them in the first place.”

“It is a mix of both,” Hemrione says. “Why can’t you buy that violence is just as essential to social change as informing people? What is so difficult about that?!”

“Some people don’t want to learn, Mione.”

“So it is no longer worth it to try, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying--”

“Class starts in ten minutes,” interrupts Tom. Harry pauses. “We’ve got to get going now, if we want to make it on time.”

Harry seems grateful at the out. “Yeah. That’s right.” He grabs his bag, standing and searching through his supplies. He frowns and sighs. “Oh --shit.”

“What is it, Harry?” Tom asks, all too innocently.

“I forgot my Charms homework.”

“Ah,” says Tom. “You’ll be late to Slytherin-Hufflepuff Charms.”

Blaise’s eyes furrow but do not widen. He sees too many hearts in action, thanks to Tom, to know that the real danger is coming up very, very soon. 

Harry walks toward the Hufflepuff tower. “See you two in class,” he says, waving. 

“Of course,” says Tom smoothly. 

Hermione, Ron, and Neville leave, too, and then it is just Tom and Blaise sitting at a table. Blaise knows it now. The danger he is in. The danger he can no longer avoid. Blaise rises slowly. He says, mouth dry, “Shall we?”

Tom rises, too. “We shall.”

They begin the long walk to Charm, side by side, and, most importantly, alone.