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Chapter Thirteen—Cliffs

Harry looked around slowly as his magic dropped him out of the Apparition and onto a rocky wall. He sighed. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised that he had come to the cliffs east of the cottage he and his parents had lived in when he was a child.

Harry walked slowly to the edge and looked down at the sea mewing below, the waves stroking the stones like a pounding heart. He sat down and crossed his legs beneath him with a stiff, uncomfortable grunt. The light around him was grey, overcast, but at least it wasn't actively raining at the moment.

Harry sighed out and let his eyes trace the path of the waves, lifting and rising and falling in the same regular rhythm he used to find so maddening. The foam hissed and withdrew, and it would go on doing that no matter who was Minister for Magic or how many people found their soulmates. He'd used to find it comforting, once he fully understood the meaning of the damn mark on his wrist. He'd stand by the cottage window and watch it for hours.

The sea didn't care about him or who his soulmate was. It had been oddly freeing.

Harry lay back on the cliff-top, shoulders against the scree, and watched the swirling grey hypnotic dance until his breathing had slowed enough to sound normal to him. Then he shook his head and stared at the sky.

So. He had a soulmate who wouldn't stay out of his head and who hated the Order on the one hand, and friends who thought he shouldn't be with his soulmate on the other. What should he do?

Harry started as he realized, suddenly, that at least one problem had been solved. He couldn't feel Tom's annoying presence hovering right at his shoulder anymore, or the waves of anxious inquiry playing down the bond. He had apparently shut the bond, maybe because he was Apparating and it would have distracted him. Or his burst of magic back in the Leaky had shut it for him.

He had privacy, now, to sort through the emotions clashing in his head, without Tom rushing to his side.

Harry closed his eyes with a weary finality. Fine. He had that privacy. Now what?

The sound of the sea filtered in and filled his head with more rhythms. Again he thought back to his childhood, and the lonely hours that he knew would never be filled by anything else. He couldn't get too close to friends, or he might show them the mark. He couldn't have his soulmate. He couldn't tell people like Sirius about it, or they might spread it around as gossip.

Harry swallowed. One revelation was rushing at him like the Hogwarts Express, and lying out here on the cliffs with no one else around to be hurt by it, it didn't seem like he could keep from thinking about it.

Hard to build a relationship of any kind when you don't trust anyone.

Harry nodded slowly. He'd been so focused on making sure that no one ever found out Riddle was his soulmate, he doubted that he had ever shown Ron and Hermione his true self. That meant he didn't know that they were his best friends, not really. They might only be friends of the mask he had built and used so carefully.

And he had carried on using masks in the Ministry. He was weak and useless. He was obsessed with Quidditch and nothing else. He was always going to be a lower-ranking official, since his parents and his godfather had been sent into exile.

And he had proposed to live like that for the rest of his life, because it was what he had thought he had to do.

Harry swallowed and clenched his hands tight. He really had thought he was doing the right thing, but that was because Dumbledore had told him he was. And his faith in the man had been another kind of mask.

Even now, Harry respected him. He knew firsthand, from his own experience, how hard it would be to give up his soulmate. And Dumbledore had done that after the establishment of at least the emotional bond.

But he had lost all desire to imitate him.

Harry closed his eyes again and let out a deep, shuddering breath. That was one thing decided, at least. He wasn't going to walk away from Tom. It would mean going back to the masks. Even if he had fled to the Order's secret world with Ron and Hermione, he would have spent the entire time dreading any syllable that slipped out of his mouth. Just in case someone had thought he was too devoted to his soulmate after all.

So. He would stay here. He would fight to change the Ministry, and Tom, from the inside.

What did that mean for his relationship to the Order, and Ron and Hermione?

Harry propped his hand in his chin. It felt so strange to be sitting here on the edge of the cliff and just thinking and not worrying about who would come after him or touch him on the wrist or call his name, and what kind of face he would have to turn to them. He had gone through all Hogwarts carefully analyzing his emotions, always watching himself, judging based on the reactions of others how much enthusiasm he should express, which subjects he should talk about, and whether he should even seem apathetic towards certain politics or not.

"Shit," Harry said aloud, blinking down at the sea. "Do I even know who I am?"

He knew that he had been desperately lonely. He knew that he had known more magic than most people guessed. He had known that he loved his parents and his godfather and his best friends. And—that had been about it. He didn't even know how good he would really have been at magic or Animagus training or any of the rest of it if he had been allowed to practice openly and freely.

Harry hesitated. Then he nodded. He had made up his mind that he was going to stay with Tom. He didn't know yet that he would say he loved Tom—the man was different than everyone else in that category, partially because he knew things about Harry that even his parents didn't—but he didn't want to give up what they had.

However, some things would have to change.

With those thoughts, Harry closed carefully lowered the barriers he had put up around the emotional bond. Immediately Tom's worry cascaded over him, a little like a scalding waterfall. Harry took a heavy breath and felt Tom orient on him, then come springing through space.

Harry frowned lightly to himself. Yes, he'd heard of soulmates being able to Apparate to each other, but most of the time, it took longer for that part of the bond to form, at least a few weeks or months.

Maybe it's different because we denied it for so long but we were in regular contact for weeks before this, Harry thought, as the world seemed to blur around him with Tom's arrival. Suddenly the worry was lapping over him, joined by relief that was like a spring shower, and Harry's lips stretched in an unwilling smile.

"You're all right," Tom said, studying him. "When you left, I thought…"

"I'm all right," Harry confirmed quietly, without standing up and walking towards his soulmate the way the emotional bond so clearly wanted him to. "Physically. Not mentally."

Tom gave a muffled curse and stepped towards him with his arms out. Harry stood up, but stepped back. He heard Tom hiss something, without words, as his heels came down on the edge of the cliff looming over the ocean.

"Harry. Don't move another step."

"That's one of the things that's going to have to change, for instance," Harry countered without moving. "Your idea that concern for my safety means that you get to control me."

"If you're about to commit suicide—"

"Listen to the bond, Tom. Is that what it's telling you?"

Tom hesitated, which made Harry feel a flare of warmth; he wasn't the only one who wasn't accustomed to listening to a bond like the one they had. After a moment, Tom nodded, slowly. "You're right. All I can feel is a kind of quiet determination." Tom paused. "Is there a reason that you aren't touching me?"

"Yes. Because I tend to lose my head when I do that, and I think we should have this discussion in a clear-headed way." Harry rolled his eyes at and ignored the smugness gliding over him down the bond. "Listen to me, Tom. I don't want you to challenge my every decision and control my every movement in the name of keeping me safe."

Tom closed his eyes for a second. Harry thought he might be listening to the bond, although Harry couldn't "feel" him doing that. "And that means that you don't want me doing things like hurting everyone who's hurt you," Tom murmured. The tone of his voice, and the glassy wall that seemed to spring up between them on the bond, was opaque.

"Of course not," Harry snapped back, some of his anger returning like fire leaking through a cracked door. "I'm not as sadistic as you."

"Careful, darling." Tom opened his eyes and moved a step forwards after all. "That sounded like an insult."

"That's because it was."

Tom only nodded. "And one of the things I'm going to make a condition of our bond is that you give up the thought of me as someone who's a sadistic fool, out to conquer the world and kill all Muggleborns."

"You signed off on those experiments to bind books with human skin!" Harry yelled. Vaguely it crossed his mind that yelling at Tom felt safer than yelling at Hermione. Maybe it was because he wouldn't have the sane, convoluted arguments that Hermione would use to justify herself, though.

"Well, it was from dead murderers. They were hardly using it."

"It's still books in human skin, Tom!" Harry clapped his hands for emphasis, and then winced as he teetered on the cliff's edge again. Tom nodded and didn't move towards him. Harry sighed and made the step to safety himself.

"Then I will cancel the experiments and ask that the Unspeakables burn the evidence. The experiments were not yielding anything more than curiosities, anyway."

"I want you to—" Harry stopped. Tom watched him. Harry was sure he could feel the chaotic, jagged edges of the bond, surging back and forth, biting at both of them with teeth so sharp they would ache. Harry took a deep breath. "I want you to cancel them because it's the right thing to do, not because you want to please me or because the experiments gave you no data."

"You want me to adopt your moral system, whole." Tom quirked his lips and made a thoughtful sound. "Wouldn't that mean agreeing with Dumbledore that he was right to keep you away from me, to almost make your parents kill their son, to require such sacrifices of his followers? You don't understand all the implications of what you're asking, Harry."

"It's better than your system, which apparently consists of do what's useful and what will protect the people I care for."

Tom laughed, a huffing sound that made Harry fight to control his own smile. Shit, he was never going to get anything done if the bond affected him that way. "I think most people live by that code," Tom said, cocking his head. "The difference is that they wrap it up in justifications, whereas I don't. I hope that you won't tax me to see things from your point-of-view while never seeing them from mine, Harry."

Harry took a deep, difficult breath. "I want you to acknowledge that what you authorized the Unspeakables to do was wrong."

"Surely, darling. When you agree that your friends committing murder was wrong."

"I've already admitted that," Harry said, and shoved his hands through his hair. "I was never going to go back to the Order's hiding place with them."

"That's not the same thing as saying that they were wrong."

"Do you think I would have hesitated if I thought they were right?" Harry glanced up and frowned at something glassy in Tom's eyes. The hum of the bond had a different tone now. "You do think I would have gone with them even if I thought they were wrong. Why?"

If you wanted badly enough to get away from me.

Tom swallowed it. Harry had not actually said he would, and Tom would be best-served by not giving him the idea. He held out his hand.

"I didn't arrest your friends," he said. "I left, because otherwise I would have had to tell them that I was there. Come home, Harry. You owe yourself more than to brood in this forsaken place."

"This forsaken place used to be home." Harry didn't move. "And I want you to say that what you authorized the Unspeakables to do was wrong."

Tom slowed his breathing. It wouldn't do to react too precipitously to what Harry was saying. "And you understand that I'll do so because you wish it? Not because I have the same kind of abstract moral principles that you do?"

Harry paused for a long moment. Then he said, "What are the chances of you changing your mind?"

"Adopting your principles simply because they exist?" Tom shook his head. "But I will make changes if you want me to."

Harry stared at him, his eyes slowly moving back and forth across Tom's face, tracing currents of emotion that felt unknown to Tom himself. "So you would be willing to let me make changes from the inside."

"Yes," Tom said. "What, did Dumbledore never suggest that? I'm surprised."

"He thought I was weak enough to fall in love if I tried it."

"And it's my power that he's afraid of, more than anything else," Tom said. Harry hadn't stated it explicitly, but it made a lot of sense. Dumbledore might not regret driving Tom insane, but it couldn't be his primary goal, or he would have turned to the Mind Arts and potions instead of assassination attempts. "Well, I can't deny that I'll put forth any effort needed to seduce you. But I can say that I won't try to force you to follow my own code."

"So everything is just…as difficult as it was before?" Harry was staring at him with eyes as hard as gemstones.

"I think everything is going to be as difficult as it was before," Tom said honestly. "Except that this time, we know what we are. And I'll try to give you what you want as well as what you need."

Harry gave a quick, fleeting smile. "Why didn't you call the Aurors and have Ron and Hermione arrested?"

"Because I want what's best for you," Tom said, wondering how many times he would need to repeat it. Then again, Harry had clearly shown that he hadn't had that many people who were trying to do what was best for him. This was probably due to scars from the Order and the way he had been raised rather than a lack of power behind Tom's attempts. "I know that you wouldn't want your friends arrested. What?" he added, since Harry was staring at him.

"So you'll go against your own code of principles for—me?"

"I told you that I don't hold to an abstract code like you do," Tom said quietly. "Yes, I would arrest your friends if they came into a public place and did something like they were going to do again. I wouldn't have any choice. But no one except us knew they were there. I can afford to let them escape."

"Tom." Harry looked a little dazed. "You—can't put pleasing me above everything else."

"Not above everything else. I want immortality, and I want revenge in some way you don't object to. Those are still lofty goals."

Harry closed his eyes for a long moment. "I can't believe it," he whispered.

"Have you never met anyone else who privileged their soulmate above all else?" Tom asked in curiosity. Perhaps not his parents, since they had a child, but… "I am sure you must have seen Weasley and Granger do things they never would have done, if not because the other one wanted them to."

"I—no one's ever done that for me."

Ah. Tom smiled and remained where he was. Well, things had changed, but it wasn't surprising that Harry still needed some time to get used to the idea. He waited, and Harry got control of himself sufficient to open his eyes and look at him again.

"If you want to please me," Harry said, voice steady, "then I'm going to tell you something, but I don't want you to act on it."

Tom swallowed. That might be difficult, but it was important that Harry know he could trust Tom. "Very well."

"Part of me does want revenge on all of them," Harry whispered. "All of them who had their soulmates, or the chance at their soulmates, and who think I should give you up now. All of them who could just follow Dumbledore's orders, because they didn't have a conflict with it. They made sacrifices, but not like mine."

Tom hissed in pleasure, and in frustration. So Harry wasn't as pure as Tom had thought, and part of him did burn at what the Order had done, and consider it a crime—

But he wouldn't let Tom punish them. Tom would have said something frustrated if he was less iron-willed. As it was, he bowed his head and murmured in Parseltongue, "Then that shall stay between us, darling."

Harry took a single hard, deep breath. Then he walked forwards and let his head drop so his chin rested against Tom's neck. "Take me home, will you?"

Tom took him back to his own house, because Harry hadn't specified. But Harry didn't protest, so maybe that had been what he wanted, without wanting to ask for it.

Tom put Harry to bed and sat beside him, watching him as he dozed, Tom's hand curled around the edge of the chair's arm. He heard again Harry's words, "No one's ever done that for me," and he considered the unasked question that had nonetheless accorded with Harry's will.

He would set the world on fire for Harry's pleasure, but if he could listen to his unspoken words and be the sole provider of what Harry wanted but would never ask for…

I confess, I would prefer that.

Albus waved his wand and finally dissolved the chain that had tied Miss Granger's mouth and lips together. Granger gave a small sigh and then began to weep. Weasley stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder, his expression helpless. From what Albus had gathered, Harry had bound him in a kind of stasis that had faded after a few hours, but the chain had been a physical Conjuration and consequently took longer to disappear.

Albus wanted to shake his head as he thought about it. These were Harry's best friends, and still he had done this to them. How could he have?

"I don't know why he did it," Granger said at last, and her eyes were swollen despite the fact that she hadn't cried for very long. "The only thing we did was invite him to come back with us and tell him that he was wrong."

"I fear that Riddle must have got to him already," Albus said. The very thought made him feel weary, but it was also the only thing that would explain the way Harry had turned on friends who had stuck by him through years of sullenness and stubbornness and hiding. "It was a valiant effort, Hermione. You are not to blame for its failure."

He leaned back against the tree behind him, and sighed. They were seated around a small fire in the Forest of Dean, deep enough into sections regularly visited by Muggles that wizards were unlikely to find them. But it was still a risk for Weasley and Granger to be here at all, given the "crimes" they were wanted for.

Such courage, Albus marveled as he looked at them. So young, and so willing to give up their lives, their freedom, anything but each other and their beliefs to ensure that Riddle didn't succeed. It wore at his heart that Harry would not imitate them.

"Headmaster." Albus looked up as young Weasley sat down in front of him. "Harry didn't know anything about the raid we did on the Department of Mysteries, did he?"

Albus shook his head. "You remember we discussed it with each other when I first asked you to go? We both knew that Harry would feel conflicted over any action that was likely to result in the loss of life."

Weasley looked troubled, a shadow sweeping across his face. "But I thought you were going to tell Harry afterwards. I mean, he didn't seem surprised to hear it, but that was because Riddle got to him first. If we'd told him the truth, then we could have prevented Riddle from corrupting him."

"Harry has always been—unreasonable on that particular point," Albus said. It disturbed him more that he did not know where that trait had come from. It was true that Lily and James were no great killers, but neither had they hesitated to contribute their magic to spells that Albus knew they had to suspect were assassination attempts. And Sirius had always been willing to do what he had to, as well. Where did Harry's reverence for enemy life come from? "I always intended that he remain ignorant of it."

"When was he going to come back to the Order, though, sir?" Granger asked. "You know that he couldn't continue passing information to the Order forever."

"I don't think he was ever intended to come back," Sirius said then, loud and brash, plopping down and inserting himself into the conversation.

Albus slanted him a carefully calibrated exasperated glance. Sirius just glared at him and said, "We can't reason with Harry, so we need to take him out of there. You see that, don't you?" He glanced at Weasley and Granger, and then gave a laugh that was more like a bark. "Well, maybe you don't, if you're all convinced that he's evil now."

"He tied her jaws shut with a chain!" Weasley yelled. "I mean—I think he should have been told about the raid we did, but he would never do anything like that if he was in his right mind!"

"He's not evil. He's not insane." Sirius's voice was low but convincing, and Albus found himself listening. "He's only being influenced by that fucking soul-bond." He ignored Granger's gasp at his language, and fixed burning eyes on Albus. "I've seen this before, when I watched some members of my family change after bonding with their soulmates. I think they can only have the emotional bond right now, though?"

Albus slowly nodded. "I cannot be sure, but it certainly is the one that is established first most of the time."

"Right." Sirius ran a hand through his hair. "So we have the chance to get him away from Riddle if we're smart about it. I know a spell that will block the emotional bond or any other bond that someone tries to establish with Harry. Like really good Occlumency. We'll give Harry a chance to think it through and realize that Riddle hasn't magically changed from being the bastard he always was."

"But how are we going to get Harry to reconsider that in the first place, if he's already being influenced?" Weasley asked.

Sirius grinned, and there was a bold edge to it that made Albus uneasy. But, well, he had only one other plan in mind for dealing with Harry, and he didn't want to employ it unless matters were desperate. "Trust a Marauder to arrange a little kidnapping."

Harry woke with a stretch. A hand came to rest on his forehead at once, smoothing slowly back and forth, and warm emotions lapped him. Harry was too tired to distinguish them other than knowing that one of them was protectiveness.

"Tom?" Harry breathed. Tom leaned over him, saying nothing, watching him with fierce eyes.

Harry stared up at him, and his first thought was, He looks lonely.

That reminded him how much time Tom had endured without his soulmate, decades while he was waiting for Harry to be born. Harry had known they could never be together, but Tom hadn't known Harry existed.

Harry reached up and hooked an arm around Tom's neck. Tom bent over him without a word, his eyes burning. Harry kissed him silently, and Tom exhaled and hissed something that made Harry wonder if he actually understood Parseltongue after all. The words seemed to mess and blur into one another.

Harry kept pulling, and Tom fell heavily down beside him on the bed. Harry continued to kiss him, and then he reached out and slid a hand down Tom's chest. Tom stared at him, unblinking until Harry slid his hand into Tom's trousers, and grasped the erection that awaited him.

Tom did hiss understandable words then, reaching out and tracing his fingers up the side of the soul-mark on Harry's wrist. The soft blue flames that ignited lit his face with shifting shadows. "You don't have to."

"I know," Harry replied quietly, and then stroked.

Tom's lips parted, and he seemed incapable of saying anything else. Harry kept touching him, eyes fastened on his face, watching as Tom's chest heaved, his breathing sped up, and his mouth opened to gasp in air. He tilted his head back and breathed harder and harder, and Harry leaned in to lick up the side of his throat.

He felt his head grasped, and Tom kissed him wildly, his tongue stabbing and sliding. Harry moaned and dug his fingers in until Tom twisted in what was obviously discomfort. Harry went back to the slow stroking then, making sure he twisted his wrist at the end of each motion.

"Harry…"

The hiss was so low and guttural it might have been Parseltongue, and might not have been. Harry swallowed. He understood it either way. He took his other hand and guided it between Tom's legs, while Tom watched him as though he was the ending and the beginning of the world.

Harry touched Tom's bollocks, parting the cloth to feel the tight, wrinkled skin, and watched the way that Tom's eyes rolled back covetously. He pulled his hand back until Tom was looking at him again, because he wanted Tom to see him.

Then Harry brought both his hands together, and stroked Tom up and down and sideways at the same time.

Tom came with a shudder and another hiss, and watching him break apart with pleasure, a heady surge of power startled Harry. He had done that. He had brought the Minister for Magic off, brought a man off, when he had once thought he would never dare do that. Never be able to do that.

Tom's thrashing hand brushed against Harry's wrist again, and the blue soul-fire lit his face and the emotion that was there.

Tom wasn't a virgin, Harry knew that full well. The speculations and the rumors and the gossip and the truth had always been wound together in the Daily Prophet when he took a lover. But Harry knew, he knew without anyone telling him, that Tom had never looked at any of them like this.

Tom grabbed him and drew him down, holding Harry across his chest as he kissed him fiercely. His fingers were digging painfully into Harry's back, but Harry found that he didn't care, even that he liked it. He wanted someone to hold him as though he was the center of the universe.

But when Tom started to slide a hand between his legs, Harry drew back and shook his head. "I don't want that," he murmured. "Right now," he hastened to add, because he had seen what Tom's face was doing in the shadow of the flames. "I mean—I'm fine. Later. I want—I want to be with you."

Tom folded his arms around Harry and said nothing. It took a long, long moment, but Harry heard his breathing return to normal, and he knew he could put his head down and go to sleep.

All the while, his soulmate's arms remained around him, as steady as a wall, and their emotional bond sang with soft awe.

Harry fell asleep with a smile on his face.

This man.

Tom thought of the stumbling words Harry had spoken earlier that day, that no one had ever put him first. Well, Tom could have said the same thing now. No one had ever touched him with such pure concern for his pleasure, and then asked nothing more than to curl up next to him.

Tom rolled them so that he was the one resting on his back and Harry was more or less draped across his chest. He maintained his tight hold, but shifted to clasp one hand around Harry's right wrist, so he could see the blue light shine.

It illuminated Harry's face like moonlight, and the soft smile Tom saw there made him close his eyes.

He would defend Harry with everything he had. He would kill for him. He would hold back on killing or wreaking vengeance if Harry told him to, and only because it was Harry who was saying it.

But he would also lie here, and give Harry the most peaceful night's sleep he could.