AN: After Chapter 52
Scenario: Tom has become smothering since the revelation that Harry is one of his Horcruxes. Harry agrees with Ron & Hermione to spend a Tom-free weekend in order to gain a bit of space and to reconnect with his friends. The day finishes out with Tom evading questions on whether he sees himself becoming Voldemort.
Excerpt in bold:
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Tom was silent, studying him intently.
"Those Gryffindors are a bad influence on you. They make you paranoid."
There was a rather ominous ring to his tone.
Things were only just beginning. This wasn't over.
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It's like that final moment... after sunset, after dusk... before the sky turns to jet, when there's just enough fading ambient light to make your way home without a torch. The colour reminds me of the wild violets that Aunt Petunia used to make me weed from down the bottom of the garden, back in the Cupboard days. She hates all wildflowers—too untidy and common and uncontrolled. When I was little, I thought that she hated the violets because they were like me—undersized and delicate and surviving unwanted in dark, enclosed spaces. I used to put them in my pockets to sneak back to my special shelf. But they were always wilted, crumpled and shrunken by the time I brought them out again, their sweet perfume turned sickly and decayed.
The husky velvet lustre of evening and the tiny companionable promise of violets surround me. There is something else, too, teasing me with a comforting yet foreboding familiarity. Before it can be grasped though, the association floats away, borne into the visceral deep, deep blue.
I'm lying down, and it's soft and warm and that same familiarity returns, hovering like an elusive scent or a wilful snitch, just out of reach. For some reason, I'm not startled by the first touch, nor by any of the touches that follow. It's as if I came here for the express purpose of submitting, nearly drunk on violets, to these questing hands on my skin. I don't need to see them to know what they look like. All my eyes see is a throbbing blue blue blue, but all my mind can perceive is slender pale fingers, moving authoritatively over my body, silky with purpose.
The hands are everywhere now—my wrists, my hair, my arms, my shoulders, my neck, my jaw, my lips. They explore my hands, my face. It's not until they trace the outline of my chest that I realise that I'm gasping with need. It's that final moment of the game, and I'm pushing the Firebolt to its limits, reaching and reaching...
There are hands below and above me. They squeeze my thighs and perfect fingernails bite into my left forearm. These hands and the violet that cradles me are all I that want, all I've ever wanted. There's a sensation of moving, as if the hands are a river that is swiftly carrying me on, on into the endless deep dark blue. I know that if the river comes to an end, I'll fall up, soaring without the need for any broom.
A rushing sound fills my ears and just at the moment where the hands launch me into the sky... everything turns red.
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I pop up in the bed, panting, my torso bobbing like a jack-in-the-box. It takes me a while to get my bearings and fully break away from the dream of hands, of violets transmuting to blood.
A cooling sensation trickles into my awareness, pushing through the adrenalin. It's centred within my boxers. In utter disbelief that it's finally happened to me, I have to check. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen—at 16 years of age, Harry Potter has finally woken up sticky. It suddenly occurs to me that the other boys my age have had a reason to be embarrassed about this, and that I have no idea if I made any noise during the dream that is swiftly fading past my ability for recollection.
In the darkness of the dorm, the sounds of breathing remain the steady assortment of sinuses that they've always been, and the still lump on the other side of the bed would indicate that Zevi too, has remained undisturbed. Just to be on the safe side though, I grab my glasses to take a quick look around. Everything is as expected... until I reach the bed beside mine.
There, just on the other side of Zevi, a long, lean figure is propped up on deceptively strong elbows. In the shifting shadows thrown by moonlit lake-water, I can just make out the sparkle of dark, knowing eyes.
As I feel my cheeks burn with shame and... shame, I'm abruptly hit by the half-remembered scent of violets... the feeling of water rushing on my skin, caressing me like deft and artful fingers... and the sensation of flying into an eternal burning night.
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AN: Poor Harry- he can't even have a wet dream without the connection waking Tom up. But at least he finally got to benefit from Tom's paranoid rule that none of them be allowed to use the curtains round the beds. Ah well.
Thanks so much for the reviews. Please keep them coming!
I've gone back through the previous 10 chapters and tidied each of them up a bit, trying to incorporate suggestions from the comments I've received. I hope you're pleased with the results.