Chapter 17
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry deflected the spell, casting in a blur. In a matter of seconds a protective shield encased them both in a shimmering light.
The only sound seemed to be the panting of Harry's breath. The pounding of his own heart in his chest.
Becoming Voldemort was always supposed to be a matter of power.
Pureblood carried power. Magic carried power. Lord Voldemort could rule worlds, be a name everyone everywhere respected and feared to speak, be the sort of wizard worthy of love and able to defend it.
Halfblood meant being torn between two worlds and belonging to none of them. It meant weak and hurt and helpless to do anything about it. Tom Riddle could barely get a meal a day, he was a common bit of gutter trash with nothing to call his own, abandoned and reviled even by his own parents.
Lord Voldemort was special.
Lord Voldemort was never supposed to be powerless.
He wasn't supposed to slump on the floor, every bit of him aching like the older boys at the orphanage had kicked his ribs in again, watching as the man he loved stood between him and a dozen strangers trying to tear the beautiful, bold new world he'd built apart.
Harry being murdered by his hand was a huge distinction from Harry being murdered because of him, even if the responsibility still came to rest at his much bloodied hands.
For a beat, nobody moved or spoke.
Harry stood battle-ready and dangerous, holding the powerful shield resolutely even as sweat dripped down the back of his shirt.
"Showing your true colours, protecting him, are you?" someone said. "Were you ever on our side, Potter?"
"Of course I was," Harry spat. "Of course I am. But since when has our side been fine with torturing people? Killing him is one thing, I'll do that. But I won't torture him."
"The truce is broken," a redhead said - he looked like a Weasley. "Kill him then." Even to Voldemort's ears it sounded like a challenge, like he didn't expect Harry to do it.
"An execution." Harry's voice stayed cold, flat.
Tom felt a flicker of fear and hated himself for it. An intimate murder, yes. A clinical execution with unworthy rebels baying for his blood? No. He had no intention of dying, but a disinterested execution as if they were only ever enemies somehow seemed worse...
"Ron, please." Hermione took a step forward, shoulders shaking. "Killing him won't solve anything."
"Neither will torturing Harry," Ron replied. "And out of the two, killing that bastard would make me feel a whole lot better." The redhead looked at him like he was the utter scum of the earth.
"He is in the room and would like to know what the hell is going on," Harry said. "We had a plan, if either of you two remember."
So Harry and his resistance had been in on it all along. He hadn't wanted to believe, he'd been such a fool…to think Harry would ever surrender to him, would ever love him unconditionally...
Clearly, what Granger told him was a lie. It had always been impossible.
"Plans change," someone said. The Malfoy-looking blond. "Lower your wand and the shield charm, Potter. We don't want to hurt you more than necessary. We don't want to hurt Granger or Weasley, don't make them die trying to protect you. Just surrender."
Tom wished he could see the look on Harry's face. For once - horrendously - all clever and eloquent words and persuasions had dried up in his mouth.
Weak weak weak.
Granger bit her lip, her hands still clutched tight around her wand. She shifted a little closer to Harry, protectively, so that was something at least. She shot him a condemning look, her accusation clear enough.
You could have saved Harry from this, if you'd only agreed to my terms before anyone else arrived.
The other order members hissed among each other like wasps, but didn't try and outright attack. Yet. Maybe they knew Harry would strike down the first person to shatter the brittle stalemate.
But they were outnumbered.
Harry was a beauty on a battlefield but even he couldn't fight everyone in the room at once, forever, and everyone in the room knew it. He suspected it was only their respect for Harry that kept them from outright attacking on sight without giving Harry the chance to sacrifice himself.
Or maybe they didn't attack because they knew even if Harry couldn't escape, he could do a lot of damage to them before they took him down. Because they knew a noble sacrifice made a much better story for the history books than betrayal.
Either way, it wouldn't last long.
Their best chance of survival was a diversion, Harry untying him…
He tugged against his restraints, but it did no good.
"Harry," he warned, a flinty edge to his voice.
"Hermione," Harry said, his voice oh so soft by comparison. "Tell me what's changed. What's the new information?"
He could imagine the look on Harry's face now; earnest, beseeching. It had persuaded Tom more than rational words could, more than once, not that he'd admit it aloud.
He wondered what Harry would look like executing him. Righteous, in his conviction to his path? Heartbroken? Unlikely. Probably righteous. Harry was always so righteous even when he was wrong.
He wondered what Harry would like on the floor, screaming, howling, twisting under the cruciatus curse.
"You're a Horcrux." Granger's words choked like she actually believed it.
Harry's gaze shot to him - not as full of surprise about his darker deeds as Voldemort had expected. How long had Harry known about Horcruxes? He'd never said anything, not even tried to lecture. Perhaps in fear of tipping him off about his execution plans.
Tom shook his head, fractionally. He'd know if he'd made Harry a horcrux - this had to be a trick of some kind, to make him turn against his own rule. An obvious ploy. A bad taste flooded his mouth when Harry still seemed doubtful. Maybe Harry thought he was lying to save himself from death, or maybe whatever small splinter of trust between them had finally shattered beyond repair.
Harry looked exhausted. Resigned. As if he were the one walking to an execution without a chance of survival. He looked like he believed that stupid lie.
"It's not true! I'd know. And even if it was...Harry just leave, now. I can cause a distraction. If you untie me, we can go together. We can talk about all of this."
Harry looked away from him. "That won't be a problem."
"You don't understand," Granger began.
"No, I understand perfectly. For him to die I have to die too. Is that why you think he will talk and renounce his claim? Because I'm his Horcrux?" Now he could hear the smile in Harry's voice. "It won't be enough."
"You're the last one," Weasley said. "The order found the others."
"Maybe that's why the resistance did so miserably. You were all distracted running about chasing shiny objects instead of fighting."
Tom's heart hammered in his head, drilling through his skull. It wasn't possible, he knew it was impossible that Harry was the last one. That he even was one. Of course, he'd considered it, when they got engaged, but he hadn't ever actually done it.
He couldn't take his eyes off Harry.
But...what if he was his last Horcrux, somehow? Granger and Weasley seemed so sure, by the determined fear on their faces. And Harry spoke Parseltongue, he called to Tom from the second they met. Maybe their souls were entwined but he'd always imagined it more sentimentally and less literally…
And if Harry was his Horcrux, his last Horcrux…Granger had said history was not supposed to turn out this way, as if she knew something different...
Harry glanced at him and baulked at the look on his face, quickly turning his head away. Now, his shoulders stiffened slightly.
"I'll take care of it," Harry said, with a sharper urgency now. "I said I would, wouldn't I? This is all unnecessary. It doesn't have to come down to this - I'll kill him, I said I would. But I'm not going to stand for torture, that's not we're about. We're better than that." He looked around at the Order members now, but they seemed unmoved.
The silence was damning. How did Harry not see that? How could he not see that peace could not be an option with these extremist rebels? They'd already attacked a peace summit! The end always justified the means, and it was only idealistic idiots too pure of heart like Harry who believed otherwise.
"Some people are less sure that you will do what," Granger replied instead, hesitantly. "They think you might be-"
"In love with him?" Harry offered. "Yeah. I've heard that. Is that why you didn't even give me a chance to finish it myself?"
"I was going to say compromised," Granger said.
Harry snorted.
"She's not going to let us go, if I don't renounce my laws," he hissed to Harry. "None of the mudbloods are. Untie me - what are you waiting for?"
Harry glanced at him, but made no move to do so. It was utterly maddening.
"They'll torture you, for no good reason, for nothing. Untie me. And we can fight on our terms, not for them. I'm not asking you to let me live or go, but we both know it doesn't end like this."
That seemed to sway Harry, at least a little, at least for a second before his expression hardened once more. "You'd slaughter everyone in this room if I untied you. I said I'm not interested in torture and bloodshed. As you said, this is between me and you."
The stalemate shattered, with fear over parseltongue and the possibility of plotting.
The first curse smashed into Harry's shield charm without warning, like a cannonball to a castle. Harry braced, his whole body jolting as he stumbled back in surprise, but the shield held strong.
"No!" Granger cried. "No - you can't hurt him -"
Too late. The room descended into chaos. Spells, dozens of spells, barraged against Harry's defensive warding, edging him back and back closer to Tom until they were both up against the wall. Hands scraped at the magic barrier, the impact reverberating all through the soft golden light.
"Stop protecting people who are going to torture you!" Voldemort hissed. Yes, he'd slaughter everyone in the room. They deserved to die for threatening Harry, for the audacity when his fiance had only ever fought for them. Sacrificed for them. He would have killed for them, died for them, wasn't that enough without forcing him to suffer on someone else's terms?
The top of the shield charm splintered under the onslaught. Just like he knew it would.
Harry had protected him, they wouldn't have any mercy or sympathy - even if Harry had done it purely out of love and remnant instincts and his desire for justice. As if they cared about justice, when they could have vengeance.
Voldemort's magic strained uselessly against the charms placed on him.
Blood trickled out of Harry's nose as he bolstered his shield charm, as if he could somehow hold out forever!
The shield splintered quicker this time, under the combined force of all of the enemy's power.
Harry's knees buckled - the shield went up again. His power flared again, desperately. His head cracked against the wall.
For a beat, it felt like the whole world stopped.
The shield charm crumbled. Arms tugged at Harry, dragging him away, before Harry's power exploded once more.
"Stop - no stop!" Granger cried out, Weasley too, but they couldn't get close. The mob had rule.
Harry's magic tore the room apart, stripping the walls, stripping skin, crunching bone as he blasted their enemies around as ever Tom's own tornado trapped in human form.
Bodies dropped.
It took three resistance members to disarm Harry, and the world was left in an unnerving quiet. Harry was forced onto his knees, under the same suffocating spells that Tom was. As if magic was ever supposed to be so disgustingly restrained, when it felt like having an organ removed or a limb amputated.
Why hadn't Harry run? Why struggle with that useless Shield charm for nothing?
Their eyes met across the room.
There was still that resignation on Harry's face, despite the fierce fight he'd put up.
"Don't kill them," Harry said. "They're just doing what they think is right. This doesn't need to be a slaughter. It's going to be fine."
"Do you, Lord Voldemort, give a magically binding vow to dissolve all your legislation regarding blood purity and the first Wizarding State of Great Britain?"
A wand dug into Harry's throat.
"No."
Harry's eyes closed.
"I renounce blood purity..."
At first, when Harry heard the words, he thought they must have been imagined in some fogged up, pain-delirious part of his brain.
Then, louder. "I renounce blood purity!" Tom yelled. "Stop it! Let me get to him - he needs -"
The words swam in and out of his ears. He had no idea how long they'd been torturing him for, he'd thought Alphard and Voldemort's security team would have arrived by then. Alphard had been right behind him.
He didn't think Tom would agree to the Order's demands for anything...
The pain stopped with Voldemort's surrender. It felt impossible that the pain could ever stop, Harry's entire body buzzing as he shuddered against the floor.
Hands cradled his head, lifting him, and he was disappointed to see they were Hermione's rather than Tom's. There were tears in her eyes as she whispered to him that she was sorry, that he was alright now. Nonsensical things.
Tom had renounced blood purity...
The world felt fragmented, shattered, like a world viewed through bits of a stained glass window. Harry's head throbbed.
His gaze slid blearily to Tom - and if he'd still been unsure if he'd hallucinated the Dark Wizard's surrender, they vanished at the look on Voldemort's face. God, the look on his face…
The order members shouted around them.
"Lock him up for execution-"
"-No, don't let him see Potter!"
"He needs to finish confessing-"
The shouts turned to panic, turned to screams, turned to blood as Voldemort's security team finally arrived.
Hermione's frantic hands vanished, replaced by Alphard.
"Took you long enough," Harry managed.
"Salazar, what happened?" Alphard demanded.
"My lord, are you alright?" Abraxas asked Tom.
The next thing he felt was Tom's magic. Even as Voldemort, even dark beyond all possible imagining, Tom's magic felt familiar. It soaked into every atom of Harry's body and raised the hair on the back of his neck with the sheer power of him.
Bodies dropped. Crumpled. Order members fell under the Dark Lord's wrath.
Harry's vision swam.
"No!" Tom's voice cut through the chaos again. "No, Alphard, leave Harry. Don't release his magic."
He knew it was the end then, for Tom to deny magic.
The blood, not his own now, seeped beneath his cheek and soaked into his shirt.
Hermione's dull blank eyes stared vacantly back at him.
"No - don't - please -" Harry began either way, because he couldn't not try. He hadn't wanted a slaughter, he'd never wanted a slaughter.
Tom paused, just for a moment, just long enough that Harry knew that he heard, long enough for their eyes to meet again.
He could almost physically see the shift from Tom, to Voldemort. He watched him grow blank and turn cold.
Voldemort killed every single resistance member in the building.
Only then, in the sickening carnage, did Voldemort come to a stop next to him. He suspended Harry's aching and battered body in front of him with a flick of his wand.
Abraxas' eagerness to see him finally dead felt almost as visceral as the possessive coil of the Dark Lord's magic around his limbs. Harry couldn't remember if he'd ever felt it like this, unbuffered by the clash of his own power.
"You told me, once, that I'd always save you Harry," Voldemort hissed.
" I'm the one who organized your back up!" Not to mention he wouldn't even be in this situation, if it wasn't for Voldemort. "You're the one who got yourself bloody well kidnapped, you arse." Even hoarse, even with his voice cracked from screaming, he wasn't about to let Tom forget that. It was the only clear thing, when everything happened so fast and he could barely think straight.
Scarlet eyes narrowed.
Harry had never missed Tom Riddle's gorgeous dark eyes more.
They stared at each other in a stony silence.
The only sound seemed to be the panting of Voldemort's breath. The pounding of his own heart in his chest.
"Are you happy now, Harry?" Tom asked, reaching an arm out and pulling him close, taking his wounded weight. "I chose you over my world, I renounced blood purity just like you always wanted. Does it make you happy?"
"You killed them. All of them." He'd begged him not to, to show mercy. "All they wanted was their basic human rights."
"Are you happy?" Tom asked, again, oh so softly. "I chose you, love. And it feels like poison."
A/N: Well, this chapter is a mess. Not sure I got the effect I wanted.