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Chapter Fourteen-Understanding

"What happened, Harry?"

Sometimes Harry hated the way that his mother could take one look at him and know that something had happened. Then again, at least she was here and able to do that, where she hadn't been in his life regularly for nine years. He summoned a smile.

"A lot of things. Is there any tea left?" He glanced towards the kitchen, deliberately turning his back on the window that he knew Tom's Aurors were standing beneath. For just a moment, he didn't want to be reminded how "treasured" he was, as Tom would put it.

It was one thing when Tom held him in his arms and said that to his face. Another thing when Tom acted like he needed a bodyguard to visit his parents.

"Yes, of course." Lily poured him a cup and held it out, her eyes questioning. Harry sipped from the cup and smiled. She had prepared it exactly as he liked it.

And then he sighed and led the way into the drawing room, because he knew that he couldn't put off some aspects of the conversation any longer. He looked around as he realized that James hadn't come out of the bedroom to join them. "Where's Dad?"

"I asked him to wait a while and let us talk together first." Lily brushed her sleeve forwards over her hand. "So what is it, Harry? I know that you've made a choice to accept Mr. Riddle, but what more than that?"

Harry jumped and glared at her. "I only told you that we'd provisionally-"

"Of course, but give me credit for more sense than that." Lily's smile was wan, but Harry couldn't see a real lack of acceptance behind it. "You were so quiet a few days ago that I didn't like to ask about it, but I knew something else must have happened."

Harry ran his fingers through his hair and wondered for a second what would happen if his mother sympathized more with Ron and Hermione than him. Then he discarded the thought. Mum had always been on his side, no matter what happened. She had sometimes made the wrong decisions, as when she had thought that it was best to conceal his soul-mark from Tom, but she had still sympathized with him over how hard it was and tried to make it better for him.

"Ron and Hermione sent me a message. They wanted to talk to me. And we did meet at the Leaky Cauldron. Under disguises, for them," he added quickly, when he saw the storm darkening his mother's eyes. "And Tom came along hidden under my Invisibility Cloak."

Lily nodded slowly. "I wondered why you wanted it, but of course, it's always yours."

"I went to talk to them. I expected-I thought it would be hard, but I could make them understand. But they wanted me to come back to the Order's camp with them, and they were more upset about me knowing they'd killed people than killing people. I think," Harry added softly. His memory of the conversation was so full of noise that now he had to wonder if he hadn't given his friends a fair chance. "I got so angry that I chained Hermione's mouth shut and froze Ron in stasis and Apparated out of there."

His mother stared at him in silence for a second, eyes wide. Then she reached out and let her hand rest gently on top of his. "Oh, Harry."

"Yeah." Harry hesitated. "I know they might not forgive me for that. But, Mum...I don't know if I can ever forgive them for committing murder and keeping it from me and thinking that I'm the one who's in the wrong for the soul-mark I was born with. When they committed murder."

Lily said nothing for long enough that Harry lifted his head to stare at her, wondering what she was thinking. She gave him a wan smile and managed, "I think that Hermione and Ron were always very influenced by Headmaster Dumbledore, more than you were. You didn't trust them as much, or him as much, because you already knew you couldn't get too close to anyone in case they revealed your soul-mark. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione grew up with full confidence in their parents and the Order of the Phoenix."

"I had full confidence in you, too!"

"But you always felt marked out for a lonely fate, Harry. Rightly. We didn't handle it the way we should have." Lily shook her head. "The proper response when Dumbledore asked James and me to lay our son on the altar should have been no."

Harry wriggled in place, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. "Fine, but that's what's been going on. The problems with Ron and Hermione and Tom and me not being sure what I should do."

"Keep on working to accept yourself and your soulmate, of course."

"Even though Ron and Hermione think it's wrong?"

Lily sighed and looked at the wall past his shoulder for a long moment. Then, speaking softly, she said, "I asked your father what would happen if I believed in something that he considered deeply wrong, if he would abandon me. And he said no. We-we think of soulmates as sacred, and say as a society that it's wrong to sleep with or even date someone who doesn't have your mark, although of course not everyone obeys that dictum."

Harry nodded shortly, thinking of the lovers Tom had had.

"But then we said yours was different, that things had gone too far because magic had destined you for someone we hated." Lily shook her head. "When Dumbledore's soulmate was Grindelwald. Why did we forgive him that, when he'd actually bonded with him, and say that he wasn't damned forever, when we thought you were?"

"You did think Tom was a murderer," Harry said, trying to smile. "And he is."

Lily didn't smile back. "But there isn't a war, except for the one the Order was fighting. I haven't seen any evidence for it."

Harry hesitated. His mother focused on him. "Did your Tom tell you there was?"

"No. He seemed to think the idea ridiculous. He did say that he's passing laws and handling votes the way I thought he was, with an agenda." And I have to talk to him about that agenda. "But he's not gathering soldiers or an inquisition to round up Muggles or Muggleborns, or butcher them."

"There could still be a different kind of war."

Harry nodded. "But that's the point, that it would be a different kind of war. Not the kind that Dumbledore thinks the Order should be fighting. Which means their strategy has been totally baseless and probably made things worse by making everyone think the Order is just a bunch of criminals...what is it, Mother?"

A deeply sad smile was pulling at the corners of Lily's lips. "You referred to the Order with their instead of our."

Harry tightened his hands in front of him. He looked down at them and thought about Hermione's smile and Ron's laughter and Sirius's hand ruffling his hair, and how much he had admired Dumbledore for giving up his own soulmate after he bonded with him. He thought of Molly's hugs and Arthur's steady patience and all the stories he had heard of the lives they had left behind to do what was right.

He thought of the way Ron and Hermione had been murderers and he had never known it, of the way that Dumbledore had collected spells that might have made Mum and Dad and Sirius and Molly and Arthur his murderers and Harry had never known it. He didn't know how much had been false from that end, too. Even as he'd lied to everyone about his soul-mark, they had lied to him because they knew that he would object to the thought of sacrificing innocent lives for the cause.

No, more that they knew I would think of those Unspeakables and Aurors and all the rest as innocent. They didn't think that way.

He finally met his mother's gaze again. "Yeah," he said. "I reckon I've chosen my side."

Lily had to close her eyes. So this is what it came to, Albus. You insisted that Harry had to give up everything. And then he couldn't even live away from his soulmate. He had to spend all that time in his sphere of influence. It was like you wanted to test him, constantly, instead of surrounding him with the love he needed to overcome the temptation. You never trusted Harry, did you, not from the moment he was born with that mark?

"That doesn't mean I'm going to just adopt Tom's attitude towards everyone," Harry went on. "I think he's wrong about Muggles and Muggleborns. And his solution to Dementors isn't that much better. I'm going to talk to him about that. I'm going to change things from the inside."

Lily opened her eyes slowly. "There were others who thought the same thing, Harry. I know. Albus told me about them. Members of the Order who walked away from it after years in the Ministry and just said they couldn't support Albus anymore."

"But they didn't reveal the Order's secrets, did they? They didn't agree with the Order's methods, but that's not the same thing as reform being impossible or Albus's war the only way."

Lily paused. Then she sighed. "You're right. And I should have realized that if I was going to question all the rest of Albus's nonsense, I should have questioned this, too."

"Come on, Mum. You can't blame yourself for that."

Lily hugged him. Her strong, capable son. The son she had barely seen for nine years, and had still wronged. Harry hugged her back. He forgave her, she knew.

Perhaps too easily.

Lily settled back in her own chair and cleared her throat. "I'm trying to use the blame in productive ways, such as making sure that I carefully question everything now. And I do wonder how Riddle is going to settle you at his side."

"What do you mean? He told me he caught an Order operative who was posing as an Auror, the same one who poisoned him on the day we were supposed to meet you."

Lily looked into his clear gaze. It seemed some essential innocence was still left to Harry. She hoped, silently, that he would always be able to retain it, and that what she was about to say wouldn't tarnish it. "I don't mean just the Order, Harry. There are political powerhouses who will see the Minister's soulmate as an easy target. People who will assume you're a conduit to Riddle's favor, and some who will resent you because they'll think you'll be in the way. Perhaps even those who resent you because they intended to seduce the Minister themselves."

"I...knew that." Harry spoke slowly and studied her with a faint frown. "But I think Tom is going to help me handle them."

"You should also be able to stand on your own and prove that you are a political powerhouse in your own right."

"You mean I'll have to play politics the way Tom does? But I'm not a pure-blood."

"What does that have to do with anything? You know that half-bloods are often in the greatest positions of power in the Ministry. Your Tom is an example. And he tends to promote half-bloods and surround himself with them."

"He does?"

Lily frowned. "You can't have been unaware that Albus directs a lot of his recruitment efforts at the half-bloods in the Ministry? He knows that they're likely to feel at least some sympathy to Muggles and Muggleborns, and also that Riddle is likely to promote them further."

"I-no, I didn't know that." Harry ran his hand through his hair, looking overwhelmed. "I suppose part of it is that I didn't pay a lot of attention to the blood status of the people who surrounded him. Tom is the one who dominated my perspective. But I'm sure Albus also told me that Tom looks down on half-bloods. Sees himself as an exception rather than a rule."

Lily shook her head in wonder. She supposed it wasn't strange to realize that Harry had been lied to like that, but it wasn't a lie that would have occurred to her. Because, along with the half-bloods he promoted, Tom Riddle had always made it clear that he favored pure-bloods.

"I suppose I should have known, though," Harry mused, before Lily could say anything else. "He did tell me that he sees the pure-blood rhetoric he manipulates as a game."

Lily blinked at him. "He said that?"

"Yeah." Harry's eyes glinted for a second. "That's something I should have talked to him about before now, but we're definitely going to be talking about it in the future. These are people's lives he's playing with, not just a game."

"It sounds like a good idea to talk to him," Lily agreed faintly, and then put on a bright smile and began engaging Harry in the sort of talk about his soulmate that she would have loved to do early on if Harry had been born with a more ordinary name on his wrist. Harry smiled and answered some questions, not all. At least he no longer looked as if he was going to leap out of his chair any second.

But Lily did wonder, if only to herself, how long it would take Riddle to untangle all the lies that Albus had bound Harry in, lies that even his parents had never been aware of.

"Sirius Black, don't you dare."

Sirius winced and then straightened up and tried to look at her with affronted dignity. The problem, Molly thought, was that Sirius had misplaced his dignity when he was young and had no idea where he'd left it. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you dare set up some kind of trap for young Harry and try to make him come back to the Order of the Phoenix or do your bidding otherwise." Molly folded her arms. Albus had explained the kidnapping plot to her and Arthur, and she'd held her tongue in front of him, but there was no reason to be quiet like that around Sirius. "Remember that he's your godson."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Do you want him to keep loving you or not?"

Sirius looked genuinely startled and dropped the book he'd been reading on the golden grass. Behind him, his golden-green tent rippled gently in the breeze of their conjured world. "Of course."

"Then don't take him from his soulmate. He's finally happy. He'll never forgive you if you snatch him away from that."

"The emotional bond is confusing him. Once I get him far enough away from Riddle and block it, then he'll be able to listen to us and see the good in coming to join the Order."

Molly closed her eyes in weariness. Sirius had said something like that before, but she had thought he was just saying that in front of Dumbledore and he didn't really believe it. Now that he did... "I want you to leave Harry alone, Sirius."

"When it will mean that Riddle destroys all of us? And destroys the Order/"

"Maybe Harry will make a difference for him. Maybe he can teach Riddle how to love."

Molly didn't believe the words even as she spoke them, and from the incredulous sneer on Sirius's face, neither did he. "Right," he drawled slowly. "When nothing has so far. When he hasn't regretted the innocents he's destroyed up until this point or the minds of Muggles he'll wipe in the future."

"How exactly do you think that you can kidnap Harry even if you're right?" Molly asked, changing the subject. "You know that Riddle will have guards on his soulmate. He'll protect Harry more fiercely than any artifact."

Sirius winked. "No one on his side knows about my Animagus form, and the Auror guards around Harry know that he has this disreputable black dog who visits him sometimes. I haven't been human around the Aurors in years."

"That only covers you getting in," Molly said, folding her arms, even as her heart sank. Yes, that could work. "How are you going to get him out? Especially with Harry resisting?"

"A Stunner is going to take care of any resistance pretty fast," Sirius said. "Of course I'd never hurt my godson."

"How are you going to get him out?"

Sirius sighed and reached for something sitting on the ground next to him. Molly blinked when she saw it was a glass, wide-mouthed potions flask. Sirius could brew, but it had never been his best subject. James had once hinted that that was because their schoolboy nemesis, Severus Snape, had been remarkably talented at the art, and Sirius had avoided anything that reminded him too much of the boy.

That would be childish, Molly had to admit, but like Sirius.

The thick, glutinous potion in the flask made her do more than blink, though. "Sirius, no. Not Polyjuice."

Sirius shrugged. "Sure. Easy enough. Snip a bit of hair from Harry's head, transform into him, conceal him under a Disillusionment Charm, slip back out again. The Aurors haven't been ordered to stop any excursions that Riddle's pet soulmate makes outside the flats, but that's probably coming. I have to act fast."

"I don't think Minister Riddle wants to keep Harry captive."

"Oh, damn, Molly, not you too, with all the benefit of the doubt and why don't we think about this," Sirius said, doing a high-pitched impression of Arthur's voice. "And giving him a respectful title? Where's the rebel? Where's the Order of the Phoenix matriarch who shouted encouragements as us during raids?"

Molly smiled despite herself, but shook her head. "I think it really is different now. It might all come right. Harry's Riddle's soulmate, but that means that he can't really change from our Harry, can it? I think he's going to change Riddle instead. We're going to get pardons the way James and Lily did, because Riddle won't want to disappoint him, and-"

"I wish I had your faith," Sirius said, in a voice so dismissive that Molly shut up in sheer outrage. "But I'm not going to wait around and just find out in the end that Riddle is the same bastard he always was. I'm going to steal Harry back."

"And then what?" Molly demanded. "You know that Riddle will tear the world apart to get him back."

"Not if Harry tells him honestly and openly to leave him alone and refuses the emotional bond, the way Albus did with Gellert."

"Albus didn't do that until Grindelwald was in a prison cell," Molly snapped. "You think Harry has any chance of getting Riddle there?"

Sirius hesitated too long. "No," he said finally. "But Riddle will have to back off once Harry tells him to."

"Ah." Molly squinted at him. "You think Riddle will respect that?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then, if he's that reasonable and devoted to his soulmate, we should be able to negotiate with him and get at least some of the pardons that we want from him."

Sirius clenched his hands for a second, but when he spoke, it was with frightening quietness that Molly wasn't used to hearing from him. "No, Molly. No. The whole point is, his government isn't legitimate. It doesn't have any authority over us. We didn't vote for Riddle. We shouldn't hold out for pardons because that implies that we did something wrong in the first place. Are you going to admit to that?"

"I would admit to a lot to go home."

"But would you give up your convictions? Could you sit back and just listen to Riddle's plans for Muggles and Muggleborns with a smile?"

Molly shook her head, reluctantly. More and more she was coming to wonder if the war existed, if their raids were on people who were all following Riddle or simply thought they came to the Ministry every day and did work for a legitimate government. But that wasn't convincing enough to make her abandon her beliefs.

Sirius smiled at her and picked up his flask of Polyjuice. "Then allow me to do some fighting for the greater good in my own way."

Peter stared at the letter that had arrived for him that day with a Ministry seal on it. He had been vaguely curious about it, but it had come during a heavy marking period for exams and he had thought it was probably only thanks from a former student who had been promoted up the Ministry's ranks, or maybe information on Animagus training. He had put it aside. In fact, he'd only opened it after dinner because the heavy golden seal had gleamed at him from across his quarters and he'd felt guilty.

Instead, it was from Minister Tom Riddle himself.

Seeking information about Harry.

Dear Professor Pettigrew,

As you may have seen in the papers, I have claimed Harry Potter as my soulmate. He has revealed some unexpected talents to me, and one of them is that he has a serpentine Animagus form. I would like to see the records from his third year, concerning the tests to find the form that the students usually conduct during that time. I would be especially interested in any discrepancies.

Peter had put down the letter at this point and clasped his hands over his face. Of course, when he looked again, there was only the Minister's signature after that. No more to read.

And the pleasant tone of the letter did suggest that he didn't think Peter a traitor or holding out on him. He probably thought, if anything, that the Headmaster had intervened to hide Harry's results.

But if Peter had to reveal that he'd known about this and he'd kept the knowledge to himself...

Peter swallowed back nausea. Harry had already written to him, he thought firmly. And he'd told Harry that he wouldn't spread around the knowledge, but he also wouldn't keep it quiet if someone asked him direct questions.

Granted, at the time I thought it was going to be Aurors, and not the fucking Minister!

Peter took a deep breath and blinked away the hysteria. It made all too much sense, Harry's determination to keep his Animagus form secret and stay the hell away from Riddle. But compared to that secret, nothing Peter had known would be anywhere near as interesting.

Peter sat down to write a calm, polite letter, or at least as calm and polite as he could manage, to the Minister telling him what he knew of that day when Harry's third-year class had tried to divine their forms. The more he wrote, the more true tranquility came back to him. It was really scraps, now that he thought of it. Harry had never trained to acquire mastery of his Animagus form or enter the Serpent Guard, so Peter could honestly say that all he knew was Harry's potential.

His calm mood lasted until he had sent the owl off to Riddle, and then he stopped in the middle of the steps to the Owlery as he considered exactly how intent Riddle must be on pursuing all the scraps of knowledge kept from him about his soulmate over the years.

Peter closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Harry's marks, Harry's Animagus form, he had thought those were the most "damaging" things he knew. But there was another secret, one from Harry's fifth year that he had tried not to think of often.

Peter frowned as he considered the heavy ward on a classroom that was most often abandoned because it was too cold to tempt couples with the privacy to snog. The ward argued that perhaps a seventh-year had decided to use it as a private studying spot, but Peter personally didn't know a seventh-year in the school who could cast a ward like that. It made the corridor around him tingle with power, and filled the space like a screen of frosted glass.

He might have thought it was one of his fellow professors, but it didn't have that familiar magical signature. And it didn't have a twist in the glassy wall of the ward that he would have expected if so-the one that kept Animagi out.

It only took Peter a moment to decide. The ward didn't seem dangerous, and he knew both Minerva and Mrs. Norris were far away from this corridor right now. He spun into the form of a rat, waited patiently for his senses and balance to adjust, and then scurried under the ward into the room beyond.

He blinked as he sat in the shadow near the door. The space was much brighter than he would have expected, thanks to floating globes of light that looked to have been sculpted out of crystal. Peter stared at them. He didn't know that spell.

Nor did he know the runic patterns that scored the flagstones, all of them white and traced in what looked like salt.

But he did know the young man who stood in front of them, his eyes closed and his arms folded. His breathing was slow and soft, much more so than Peter would have said someone who darted around like Harry could attain, and his left hand moved back and forth in a regular, wobbling pattern.

"This has to work," Peter heard him whisper, and then Harry lifted his head.

Peter would have backed away if it wouldn't have drawn attention to himself. The only green eyes he had seen burning like that were in a cat's face.

Harry spun on one heel and then ran forwards, directly towards the salt runes. As Peter watched, they stretched up and around him, in shimmering transparent walls rather like the glassy one the ward had created in the corridor. Harry passed through them, and the runes caught and twined themselves around his right arm, the one with his phoenix soul-mark that he'd started showing this year.

Harry skidded to a stop, in a way that somehow didn't disturb any of the salt patterns, and stared at his arm. A second later, his face crumpled.

He put his face in his hands and sighed out. The sigh didn't have tears in it, but so much defeated weariness that Peter was tempted to transform and comfort him. He didn't think Harry would like it, though.

And as he watched Harry sweep up the salt with a gesture of his left hand and wandless magic spiraled through the room, Peter wasn't sure it would be wise, anyway. There were things going on here that he had no knowledge of.

He scurried out of the room and resumed his human form a good distance from the room, in the meantime wondering what Harry had been doing. Salt runes were sometimes used in Divination rituals, Peter knew that. Had Harry been hoping to find a clue to his soulmate by using this?

Peter grimaced and continued walking towards his office. No, now that he knew what he knew, he suspected Harry had been using the other kind of salt ritual: the kind that would erase a soul-mark if properly done.

Except that Peter didn't think it could be properly done, not in the way that so many people wrote and whispered about. He had never heard of it working-and he had studied it extensively himself, with his black-edged soul-mark. Harry had tried it out of desperation, and the evidence that at fifteen he had loathed himself and his fate to that extent made Peter cringe now.

That was also probably something Riddle would want to know about Harry.

Peter leaned against the wall for a moment and rubbed his face. Was he betraying Harry's best interests by continuing to hold that knowledge to himself? Perhaps Riddle could get Harry to visit a Mind-Healer where no one else had managed it. Perhaps Harry needed that kind of help to work through what Peter was sure was the upending of his world and the complicated tangle of his emotions.

But he knew only perhaps concerning that kind of knowledge, and only yes concerning something else: Harry would take it as a betrayal if Peter broke his word and volunteered information that wasn't in response to direct questions.

The thought of the Minister taking it as a betrayal if he kept his word to Harry made Peter quake, but he shook his head and stood up. He had been useful here at Hogwarts, a competent Transfiguration professor who had stayed for years, unlike some of the people Minerva had tried before him. He would cast his lot with Harry unless things drastically changed, and trust in his record to make Riddle spare him.

I just hope it works.

Tom narrowed his eyes in interest as he watched Harry move around the flat. Tom had come earlier for a somewhat strained dinner with the Potter parents, but they had proven they could tolerate him for Harry's sake, which was all he could ask for right now. Harry, though, had uttered splintered laughter, while splintered emotions flowed down their bond.

Tom leaned back in his chair. It seemed Harry had accepted that he couldn't lie to Tom, but that wasn't keeping him from trying another tactic: not talking about things and hoping that Tom would let the silence continue. It was nearly cute, but Tom wouldn't let his own amusement keep him from asking the obvious questions.

"What's troubling you, Harry?"

Harry's shoulders hunched. "I don't want to talk about it."

Lily Potter turned around from where she'd been quietly talking to her husband and looked at Harry in something like alarm. "Is it something to do with the Order?" she asked.

Tom would have put Galleons on it being their soul-bond, himself, but that was one reason it was good to surround himself with people who saw and knew things he didn't. Harry flinched and stepped back from the kettle he'd been scrubbing. A quick dart of wandless magic from him kept the kettle from falling to the floor, but Tom didn't let himself be taken in by the distraction, the way James Potter had, if his sharp exclamation was any sign.

"Trouble shared is trouble halved," Tom said, helpfully quoting something he remembered hearing Albus say to a Gryffindor in his year.

From the narrow stare Harry gave him, he had heard the saying, too, and knew exactly where it came from. But he shook his head and floated the kettle back onto the counter so he could clean it some more. "Not this one."

Tom gathered up his own magic, and saw the Potter parents flinch. He had added a bit of darkness and lightning to his aura, just for them. Unlike Harry, they couldn't sense the invisible buildup of his power. "Dear Harry. The request to talk is no longer a request."

Harry ignored him utterly, and set the clean kettle in the sink. Then he turned to his parents, and nodded. "Don't worry about it, Mum and Dad. I'll handle it."

"But you shouldn't have to do it alone," James said, his face bright with concern. "Let us help, Harry."

Tom watched in interest to see if Harry was going to respond to that, although he kept his eyes half-lidded so that his interest wouldn't show so obviously. Harry swallowed and said, "This is something I have to handle by myself. It involves other people's secrets."

That came with a flicker of a glance in Tom's direction. Tom smiled and said, "I love learning secrets."

"Other people's."

"Those, too," Tom agreed easily.

"I won't tell them to you."

Tom pushed back his chair and stood up. Harry faced him with his arms crossed and hostility radiating from him more strongly than his power.

"Surely, Harry," James began, sounding a little nervous. He seemed to think Tom and Harry would engage in a duel right in the middle of the kitchen.

Luckily, Tom had more weapons than that at his disposal. He leaned forwards, made sure that his eyes were focused on Harry's, and lifted the shield that had been dampening his emotions while they ate dinner, sending a bolt of honest pain and fear of rejection towards Harry.

Harry gasped, then shut his eyes tightly. A second later, he curled his fingers into a gesture Tom had noticed he'd used before when he wanted to keep emotions at bay, and asked, "Can you give us some privacy, Mum, Dad? Please?" he added, when neither one of his parents moved.

Lily touched James's arm, and they had what must have been their own silent conversation down their soul-bond. Then Lily nodded. "Of course," she murmured, and they exited.

Tom turned back to Harry. "There's something you're not telling me."

"I'm astonished."

Tom shook his head. "Haven't we settled by now that keeping secrets doesn't work out in anyone's favor? Besides, I let your friends who murdered my people leave without arresting them." Unsaid was the option, which Harry surely knew he was considering, of arresting them in the future. "This secret can't be worse than the knowledge that they want to meet you."

Harry turned away and paced slowly towards the window that looked out from above the sink down onto the entrance of the building. Tom wondered idly if Harry could see his Aurors standing there. Tom had doubled the guard after he had found out that Whipwood was a traitor, but Harry hadn't said anything about it.

"This is a secret that no one on your side has ever found out about," Harry said at last. "I know for sure that everyone who knows it and belongs to the Order is utterly loyal to Dumbledore. Can you see why it feels different than you knowing about Ron and Hermione? Especially when you knew about their crimes before I did?"

Every one of Tom's senses came to straining alert. He's bitter about that. I could use that. I could poison his relationships with-

He looked up to see Harry staring back at him, eyes narrowed slightly and body poised as if he was going to start a duel any second.

"And that's precisely why I don't want you to know those secrets," he said flatly.

Tom wondered for a second whether his Occlumency was full of enough holes that his thoughts had leaked across, but then cursed himself for a fool. His emotions were traveling down the bond right now, of course. He came up and leaned on the sink beside Harry, staring out the window.

"Then what can you tell me without betraying the central secret you consider so important?"

Harry stirred next to him. Tom didn't remove his eyes from the street.

"You would accept that?" Harry whispered.

Tom wanted to snap that he wasn't so much of an ogre as all that, but held back the words at the last moment. Of course Harry thought he was as much of an ogre as all that. He had been raised to believe that, had that hammered into his head all his life.

"Yes," Tom said. "Not happily. Not without wanting you to trust me with everything. But that doesn't matter, Harry. I want to compromise, I told you that. I need to know something about what's making you so miserable. You need to hold back part of it. I understand that. So tell me what you can."

Harry reached out and did something he had never done before. His hand clasped the phoenix made of onyx and diamonds hanging around Tom's neck. Tom closed his eyes, mourning that he had made the deaths of the fools who had burned off his soul-mark so quick. He would have liked to see the blue flames dancing around Harry's fingers.

"Black and white feathers," Harry whispered. "Do you know what it means now?"

Tom turned his hand over so that he was clasping Harry's. Harry must have read one of the many interviews Tom had done, back when people still regularly asked him about his soul-mark, saying that he had many different interpretations of the mixed colors of his phoenix's feathers.

He murmured, "That you have so much potential for both Dark and Light magic. That you are drawn to highly contradictory sets of ethics. That you are in the middle, both things and not one or the other." He bowed his head to kiss Harry's wrist, and delighted in the ignition of the flames, without breaking their gaze. "I am sorry for your sake that it should be so, but still delighted to meet you."

Harry's smile was quick and fleeting, but there. "All right. The fact is that now my friends have tried and failed to get me to come to the Order, someone else is going to try. That's going to be my godfather."

Tom nodded. "Sirius Black. How?"

"Part of that is the secret I can't tell you." Harry's hand tightened furiously around Tom's wrist for a second. Tom pulled back on the pulses of pain in their emotional bond, and waited. Harry began speaking again a few seconds later. "But I know that Sirius could never believe I was insane or evil. He'll believe that I'm influenced by you, though. His-the message I got from him before dinner said as much."

Tom stared at him. "I didn't see you receive a message."

"Secrets, Tom."

Tom tilted his head, recalling what he knew about Sirius Black. He had had a soulmate, but the man had left Black behind years ago, after some kind of altercation that none of Tom's spies could clarify for him. That was a complete rejection, the only thing other than a death that could limn a soul-mark in black, which meant- "Telepathy?"

Harry jerked away from him, hands flying out and glassy shimmers of light surrounding them like bracelets.

"I didn't read your thoughts," Tom said quietly. He held his own hands up, though from the wild emotions pulsing down the bond, Harry didn't believe he was harmless like that any more than Tom thought Harry was. "I promise. I know that when someone completely rejects their soulmate, both of them gain a kind of telepathy."

Harry gave several heavy blinks. "I-we thought it was some kind of gift Sirius had cropping up," he whispered. "But then why has Remus never communicated with him?"

Tom shrugged, although given what he knew of Sirius Black, he had some suspicions. "I don't know."

"Where does the telepathy come from?"

"The souls desperately reaching for some kind of completion," Tom said, and watched the way Harry flinched. "At least, that's the prevailing theory. It doesn't happen when someone's soulmate dies, before or after they're born. Only with rejection."

"Sirius would hate thinking that."

"Don't tell him, then," Tom said, and listened with some satisfaction to Harry's rusty chuckle. "Fine. So he told you that he's going to come and fetch you out somehow. What did you say in response?"

"That I would be waiting for him."

"And do you think you can talk him away from his loyalty to the Order?"

Harry swallowed, while the bond turned thick and dark and anxious. "No. I was going to tell him the truth, about why I want to stay with you, and then probably say goodbye. I don't think he'll ever turn his back on Dumbledore."

"But he doesn't want to give you up, either."

"No." Harry's eyes were shadowed. "I think his plan probably involves kidnapping me if he can't talk me around."

Tom smiled brightly, knowing from the shudder Harry gave that he could feel the heat coming down their bond. "That is not going to be happening."

"Tom, you can't kill him. I won't forgive you that."

The bond hummed with simple truth. Tom shook his head. "I never intended that. I intended to neutralize him and keep him in the wizarding world so that you can have your best try at convincing him. Or he can be an honored guest while he listens to you."

"And if I can't, then you're going to make him a prisoner, aren't you?"

"He's a wanted fugitive coming back into the wizarding world, and he's also trying to kidnap my soulmate." Tom showed his teeth. "What do you think?"

"I won't let him kidnap me."

"If he's as skilled at slipping in and out of the wizarding world as he seems to be, you might not have a choice."

Harry shook his head once. His eyes, steady and clear, stayed on Tom. "I'll tell him that I want to stay."

Tom rolled his eyes. He wouldn't have done that in front of just anyone, but Harry had the context of the emotional bond to appreciate why Tom had done it. "You've described him as essentially a fanatic. Why would he listen to you?"

The way Harry stared at his hands told Tom that he wasn't sure Black would, either. Tom reached out and gripped Harry's shoulders, pulling him close and sighing at the feeling of physical warmth that joined that in the bond. "Listen to me, Harry. I'm willing to meet with Black myself, and explain a few things."

"Sirius wouldn't forgive me for that. He wouldn't forgive me for having this conversation."

"Do you care so much for his forgiveness that you can place it above mine?"

Harry closed his eyes. "I thought you wouldn't hold it against me for having secrets. I thought that was part of the bloody compromise."

"Not that, Harry. I won't forgive you if you allow yourself to be bloody kidnapped because you're so determined to give Black his bloody chance to speak."

Harry was silent. Tom quelled all the things he wanted to say and lounged against the counter. The emotional bond spoke for him, and for Harry. Small sparks shimmered and danced along it, burning with so many emotions that Tom couldn't distinguish them.

Harry finally looked up. "You can't be in the room when I meet with him. That's the secret I won't betray, how he gets past your Aurors."

Tom gritted his teeth, but nodded. He would know immediately if Harry was in danger, after all. "Then I'll wait in the back room of the flat here."

"No."

Tom leaned in and tapped his fingers sharply against Harry's soul-mark. "Compromise, Harry. I'm letting you keep the secrets. I'm letting you meet with a man you admit frankly wants to kidnap you. There's no way I'm going to go home and wait for news of your kidnapping in the morning."

"It won't come to that."

"Harry, if I could believe that you would fight him if he tried to take you, I would let you meet with him alone. But I believe that you're going to hold back. You're so determined to keep your godfather's regard that you'll cripple your defenses. And then I'll be dealing with the kidnapping. And you're in deep pain already, at the thought of betraying him and betraying me."

Harry licked his lips. "Then the same parameters apply that they did when we met with Ron and Hermione. Stay out of sight, don't speak, and only intervene if it looks like it's going to turn to physical violence."

Tom inclined his head. "I would never have asked for anything else."

Harry closed his eyes. "There's one advantage to this bond, at least."

Tom held back the hurt response he wanted to make, and asked, "Oh?"

"At least there's one person in my life who can never lie to me," Harry whispered, and accepted Tom's embrace.

Sirius stepped into the drawing room of the flat and sniffed deeply. At once he froze. There were lingering scents from James and Lily, who must have visited earlier, and there was Harry, standing in the middle of the drawing room rug and radiating nervousness. It really was Harry. Sirius's nose would have picked up the telltale smell of Polyjuice on his breath, even if whoever was impersonating Harry had taken it almost a full hour ago.

But there was another scent, too, in a back room that must have been a bedroom. Sirius had smelled it before on raids, thick and drenched in Dark Arts like so many of the artifacts in Grimmauld Place had been.

Riddle was here.

"Hello," Harry said softly. "I need to talk to you-"

Sirius stared at Harry's face and saw through human eyes despite his four legs and fur. There was pain written all over Harry. Being in the middle like this was dismembering him with agony.

Even if Sirius did take him away to the Order's camp, he wouldn't be free from that position. There was only one thing Sirius could do that would guarantee Harry's liberty.

Harry opened his mouth to continue speaking, and Sirius transformed, the smoothest and fastest he'd ever done it since he became an Animagus. Then he aimed his wand and spoke the words of the spell that he'd planned on using to suppress the emotional bond that tied Harry and Riddle.

He didn't expect the scream that sounded as if it was ripping Harry in half.

Or the way that the wall between them and Riddle dissolved, and a storm of black and red magic curled into the drawing room, shapes in the middle of it like phoenixes with silver talons that aimed straight for Sirius's heart.