Chapter 13
Hermione expected anger, the day Harry inevitably discovered the truth. She expected him to burst in, an explosion waiting to happen, as if he was still the fifteen-year-old boy she'd once known.
Harry came in quietly, shoulders stiff and squared as if he was on the frontline of a battlefield all over again.
"Harry…" she began, jolting to her feet.
"I could understand you not telling me at first," Harry said. "You were there to keep an eye on things, on me seeing as I couldn't even remember what my mission was..." He walked towards her, slow and dangerous, with a look on his face that he'd never directed at her before. "But after all these years, Granger? How could you not tell me?"
The surname stung, especially coming so coldly from his mouth.
"We thought knowing would distract you more," she said. "We were in the middle of the war." She drew herself up to full height, heart pounding. "You couldn't be the other Harry Potter yet."
Harry laughed, shaking his head.
"I wanted to tell you!" she reached for him, only to freeze as his wand appeared in his hand in an instant. "We weren't trying to make it worse for you."
"Except I know now. It's convenient for me to know now, right? Who the fuck cares about worse…"
She dropped her hand, and swallowed hard. "I gave you as much time as I could. Ron - many of the Order - wanted to tell you far sooner. He's not - oh, Harry, you can't save him anymore. I don't know if anyone ever could. He's past that, can't you see?"
The only reason Harry would be told, was if the man he'd become was no longer needed. If the mission failed, and Voldemort simply had to be killed for the good of everyone. If they needed the Boy Who Lived again.
The table shook under the force of his magic.
"Fuck you," he said.
Her eyes hardened. "It wasn't exactly easy on us, either, you know. Watching you with him, doing nothing. Knowing what he might do, knowing what he'd done already…all those memories, all those people that we left behind..."
Harry's nails dug into his palms. "He's not a monster."
But how many people had died, for that conviction? For Harry being unable to pull the most vicious of tactics, and use the most underhanded of methods, even in war. Maybe, if he'd been able to harden himself against Tom more, the resistance might not have lost.
Maybe all the doubts people had about him had been right, in the end - Tom Riddle's man, through and through.
She deflated, tugging a hand through her hair. "I'm sorry," she said. "I am. I...I tried, Harry. I tried to see what you could see in him, I tried to believe he could change for better. We all tried. This is for the best, now. Maybe he's not a monster, but he's not going to stop enforcing blood purity for you, is he? He picked that, over you."
Even after all of these years, it stung.
"He's not going to stop unless I kill him."
Maybe, it really was time to give up on his own personal war against Voldemort.
Voldemort weaved his way through the crowded ball-room.
The sight of Harry and Black wrapped around each other refused to leave his head, as if he didn't have other matters to attend to.
Cold seeped through his body.
Even when they were enemies, Harry had been his. It had been obvious, in the fact that there'd never really been any risk of Harry going off with someone else. He was a remarkable man, of course he'd have offers, however…
Well, he'd never thought Harry would take anyone up on those offers in any serious capacity. Neither of them had been exactly ready to move on. Harry was in love with him, he'd said so!
But was Harry ready to move on now? Properly? To leave Tom behind?
He couldn't bear the thought.
Rowle took his arm, peering up at him. "Is everything alright, my lord?"
He shuttered. "Fine. Everything is fine." He offered her his most charming smile, and watch her wounded ego soothe. "If you'll join me…?"
They headed up onto the podium. Lord Voldemort and his partner - the perfect partner, by all accounts. Diplomatic, compromising, beautiful and devoted to him…
Black's fingers twisted in Harry's hair, and that low moan escaping Harry's mouth for someone else…
"Thank you all for your attendance tonight," he began. "And joining us for this fundraiser."
Polite applause filled the hall.
Abraxas gave him a supporting nod, eyes gleaming mercury in the light of the chandelier. He stood where Harry might have, once, in a direct line of vision.
"In these dark times, it is especially important to not allow external threat to divide our nation and leech us of our hope." His voice grew stronger. "Which is why I believe the festival we will create together can become an annual tradition and reminder of Britain's ability to thrive even under crisis."
He would give Harry one more chance to prove himself, and...if he failed...he'd kill him. He'd indulged this for too long. Indulged Harry for too long. They couldn't keep spinning, fishtailing around the same argument in stasis, destroying everything around them in the process.
This was no longer sustainable.
Of course, he could do no harm to him while the truce lasted, but the whole affair would be resolved soon enough and the truce would no longer stand.
He scanned the crowd carefully, as he elaborated on date and time. Ensured that no one attempting to kill him could resist turning up to the Carnival, when he provided so many ample opportunities for murder…
"The winner of the duelling competition will receive the opportunity to duel me personally, among other rewards..."
Of course the masked figures would show themselves. It was the closest they could get to assassinating him at an international peace conference.
One of Potter's resistance members - a pale, silvery haired young man, with an uncanny resemblance to Abraxas - slipped out of the crowd and out of the hall.
He paused, surveying the room once more. All of them, staring up at him, bending to his power and his rule, proving his very right to be there.
"I look forward to seeing everyone at the festivities."
One more chance.
"Tell me everything," the Dark Lord demanded, bursting into the room.
Harry wanted to curl into bed and sleep forever - he'd barely had time to sit down in days.
It seemed an especially cruel thing, for fate to set him up to fall in love with the monster he was destined to kill. So why the bloody hell did the universe force him to talk to the bastard straight after coming to that conclusion?
He appraised Voldemort for a few seconds, taking a moment to steel himself. "How did your speech go?"
"Potter." Sharp. That easy rage still swelling beneath the surface of Tom's tongue, ready to erupt at any given circumstance.
It wouldn't take much to tip him over the edge.
"Did you think that I wasn't coming back?" Harry forced a smile, knowing exactly which buttons to press. "I'm not your prisoner, am I? I don't need to explain my absences to y-"
And there was the explosion.
Voldemort's fingers wrapped throttling around his throat, power and control and none of those things at all as scarlet eyes burned, more lost than angry.
Harry's heart slammed in his chest, the smile only more vicious than his question. "Oh, you did."
Voldemort's hand flexed around his jugular.
Harry dug his fingers into a pressure point, and the Dark Lord recoiled.
The warmth of close proximity did nothing to aid the coherence of his thoughts or the conviction of his plan.
"Considering our common enemy," Voldemort said, after a moment, "it hardly seems unusual that I may wish to know if you have been taken, interrogated, and brutally killed. Your revealing my secrets would be a great inconvenience."
True, but Harry doubted it was just that. It would have been better, if it was just that, if he didn't see shards of Tom and what they had been, at every waking moment.
"You said we would talk later, and now you are stalling," the Dark Wizard continued. "Please, do not insult my intelligence and professional integrity-" Harry snorted at that "- by attempting to distract me with Black next."
Well, he couldn't say that the bastard didn't know him far too well.
Voldemort's eyes narrowed, studying him. "Start with where you were."
Easy questions. Focus points to guide his words and thoughts. Harry wanted to smile in some awful way. It felt like his insides were crawling with maggots.
"It's...the details are irrelevant," he allowed. This was his life now - memories forgotten meant absolutely nothing. The Boy Who Lived was irrelevant, a dream. Tom Riddle was more real. But Tom Riddle had chosen Voldemort.
"Then tell me, if it means nothing to do so," Voldemort said.
Harry spared him a filthy look.
Tom raised his brows.
For a moment, they just stared at each other, trying to puzzle out all the tangles of the situation.
No, he wouldn't kill Voldemort out of some prophecy and the destiny of another life. He'd do it because it was better than watching hatred consume Tom entirely, because he couldn't bear the thought of someone else killing him instead. Screw whatever the Order said about why he should do it.
Voldemort took a step forward again, a spidery hand brushing along Harry's cheek.
"Tell me," Tom insisted, again, softer. "We both know it's to do with me, or you would not be anywhere near so hesitant and defensive to discuss it."
But maybe he could give Tom just one more chance to prove himself capable of redemption.
"Do you…" Harry swallowed, jerking away from the caress. "Do you believe in alternate...parallel universes?"
Tom's eyes narrowed. "It is neither here nor there," he replied, after a few seconds. "I am far more concerned with the world and universe we live in. To focus on another universe is like focusing on regrets, and every single thing that one would do differently. I see no point dwelling on such a thing. What might have been is irrelevant. The importance lies in what is, and what can be in the future you work for. That we can work for."
Harry felt oddly reassured that there was at least one ideology that they could still agree on, even if everything else had gone to hell and ruin. Though even that similarity would no doubt sour before the end.
Voldemort's head titled. "Why do you ask?"
"What of fate?"
"Harry, tell me what happened."
There was something in the Dark wizard's expression, something that Harry couldn't quite put his finger on. An urgency unparalleled even to the force of Tom's general concern.
Harry stepped back, as Voldemort reached for him again. "Do you ever think about our fate?"
Tom stopped - watching him as if Harry was the live grenade in this conversation. "I don't have to."
Harry's brow furrowed, not expecting that response. Thrown off course for a second.
"I know my fate," Tom said, stepping forward again, stalking after Harry until he just stopped bothering to walk backwards. "I know our fate. We will be together, and you will be on my side again."
It felt like someone had shot a blasting spell into his stomach.
The laugh came before Harry could contain it, his chest aching and the sound dragging ragged and raw over his lungs. Because, really, that was as far from a death prophecy as possible. As far from Harry's plans, as possible...and absolutely everything he could want. "Yeah?" he couldn't breathe. "How do you figure that?"
Tom didn't laugh. "Because you being by my side was the only thing that felt right, so if I believed in fate that would be the only fate to make any conceivable sense." That strange something only intensified, but maybe they really had lost what they had, because where once dual conversation would have been easy, Harry couldn't read what Tom was trying to say now.
His laughter cut, eyes wide. His throat seized tight. "That's funny," he said. "Considering you would still have me and my kind less at your side, and more on our knees or dead for having the audacity to not be born pureblood." His head spun.
"You're the one who left," Voldemort said, features cold now.
"Because of your obsession with blood purity." No, that was old ground. Harry sucked in deep breath, and prayed. "I'd have stayed...I would stay, if you'd let it go. We could leave, together."
He prayed for Tom to accept that compromise, to not make Harry kill him.
Voldemort's head tilted the other way. "Is that what you believe our fate is? To run and hide, for me to give up everything I have created? You seem to find the idea of our being together laughable."
Harry looked away. This had been a mistake, to work with Voldemort, to come back, to start this conversation. All of it. It would just make it worse, in the end. He rubbed a hand over his face, shoulders tensed.
He needed to be close enough though, trusted enough, to get the opportunity to kill Voldemort. Killing Lord Voldemort was no easy task, even if one took Tom Riddle out of the equation.
He looked back to Tom. - to Voldemort. If there'd been something flickering in his expression before, it was gone now. Closed off and as inscrutable as a stranger's.
The silence stretched, and each beat of it seemed to thicken the distance between them.
"I know who's behind the Paris poisonings," Harry said.
"I know how we're going to catch them," Tom said.
He wondered if Voldemort felt the stasis they'd been in break too.
A/N: Onto the final 5-10 chapters!