Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Sixteen—Public

"Are you ready for this?"

It was Sirius who had leaned against the bathroom doorframe behind him to ask. Harry could see his face reflected in the mirror in front of him. Sirius looked ragged and tired, in a way that Harry never remembered him being in all the years he had been a fugitive.

Then again, Harry thought as he tightened the collar of his robes, I don't think he ever had the feeling that he'd done something wrong when he was on the run.

"I don't think I'll know until I see them," Harry said, and turned around, aware of the heavy robes sweeping the rug beneath him. Sirius studied those robes and frowned at Harry. Harry shrugged a little, awkwardly. "I've never been on this kind of display before. The Ministry gala didn't last all that long until our magic entwined. And no one knew I was Tom's soulmate then."

"If he asks you to do anything that you're not comfortable with, you know you can refuse," Sirius said, staring into his eyes.

"Of course I do," Harry said. "And to a certain extent, this whole thing is uncomfortable. But on the other hand, it's worth it to keep Tom."

The magic behind Sirius shifted, which meant Harry didn't jump when Tom murmured, "I am glad you think so." But Sirius did, and came down with his wand in his hand. Tom gave him a look of scalding contempt before he looked at Harry again. A smile lingered in his eyes without touching his lips. "You look magnificent."

Harry shrugged. He'd never worn dress robes before except the night of the Ministry gala, and these were a different sort. By the time he was old enough for the kinds of events at Hogwarts where he might have needed them, his parents had been on the run, and Harry couldn't justify spending his limited money on luxuries like that.

"You should see the way the green makes your eyes shine."

"He's got a mirror right there, he can see," Sirius muttered.

"You know as well as I do that he doesn't look with the same eyes we have, Black." Tom traced his hand up Harry's cheek and he swallowed back intense embarrassment as he felt himself harden. Tom smiled at him in the way that meant he knew but would never betray it, and stepped back. "Ready for your first appearance in front of the Wizengamot?"

"I don't see why they need to actually meet me," Harry muttered, even as he followed Tom across the flat and managed to will his body to calm down. "I'm sure that members of the Wizengamot get married or find their soulmates all the time, and I've never heard of the whole lot of them needing to meet the new spouse or soulmate before."

"It doesn't happen all the time, actually," Tom said, holding the outer door open for him. Harry frowned at him, which moved Tom not at all. The Aurors outside the door sprang to attention and fell in on either side of them. Harry felt the way Tom's magic swayed to spread over them. Tom would take no chances after discovering that Whipwood was a traitor. "After all, most members of the Wizengamot have reached the age when they would have found their soulmates or given up on them already."

"Which doesn't say why they want to meet me."

"You've declared the intention to make yourself a political player, to change my mind or slow me down. And you don't think that it's important for you to meet some of the most important people in Britain?"

"They don't know that."

"Of course they do. I said in that interview I gave yesterday that we don't agree on all matters and I look forward to how you will change my stagnant thinking as well as that of other pure-bloods in Britain."

Harry opened his mouth and found he had nothing to say for several dozen steps. He hadn't read the interview because he found it embarrassing to be the center of attention like that, and if his parents or Sirius had, none of them had said anything. He finally managed to croak, after they had already Apparated to the point outside the Ministry's Atrium reserved for the Minister alone, "What?"

"Yes, I thought it important to prepare them for you," Tom said casually as he stepped through a shimmering silver ward that distracted Harry for a second. There were white lines in it that he'd never seen before. But the ward didn't react when he stepped through it. "Of course, some of them will think that a license to target you and try to split us apart. I also look forward to the moment when you teach them better."

"But you all but declared me your enemy."

Tom chuckled quietly as they walked through yet another ward and out of the box of a stone courtyard they'd Apparated into, down a set of stairs, and through a second door into one of the corridors that ran through the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "Consider that most people knew you used to favor the Order of the Phoenix, Harry. That's not a surprise."'

"You could have lied," was all Harry could think of to say.

Tom glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes, brilliant and deep, caught Harry's. Harry stopped walking. The Aurors did the same thing so as not to pile into him, but stared stoically over Tom's head as he leaned in and caught Harry's hand.

"I told Black," he murmured, "and I am going to tell you now, that I never intend to lie about who and what you are, Harry. I trust you. I trust that our bond is more important to you than the need to score petty political points, and that you'll come and talk to me about concerns you have instead of listening to my enemies and keeping your own counsel. If that's not true, you can tell me now."

Harry licked his lips and held Tom's eyes. His joy was ringing through the emotional bond. Harry didn't think it was all about getting one leg up on his enemies in the Wizengamot; not exactly, anyway. "It's—true. You matter more to me than just hearing what your enemies have to say."

Tom smiled and turned around and began to walk again. One of the Aurors coughed a second later, and Harry realized he was standing there and staring at his soulmate's back like an idiot. He flushed and kept going.

He had been contemptuous in the past of the agents the Order had lost who had gone over to Tom's side. Now, though, he could well believe the stories of how seductive Tom was.

He closed his eyes and willed down the reaction of his body again. Then he opened them and focused on Tom's back as well as what would come when they stepped into the meeting chamber of the Wizengamot.

He had been an actor for years, and he'd been a good one, concealing his power, his intelligence, his ambition, his true goals, his loyalties. Now he would call on that same talent to give some apparent openings to Tom's enemies instead of appearing as an immediate threat.

Tom didn't want to lie about him? Fine. But Harry was going to find out the truth, including things Tom had done that would have to change but Harry hadn't heard about, and he would do it in his own way.

Tom smiled a little as he watched Madam Moonwell heading towards them as fast as her cane could click across the floor. She would be wondering what had happened given that he and Harry had both said that Harry wasn't his soulmate before this, and Tom had to admit he wanted to see how Harry would handle her.

Harry met her with a bland smile that Tom would have checked at, except that he could feel Harry's actual emotions through the bond. Wariness and readiness combined, coiled like Nagini when she thought a mouse had found its way into Tom's quarters. Harry held out a hand and kept it poised. Madam Moonwell had to shake it whether or not she'd been planning on it.

From the way her eyes narrowed as she studied Harry, Tom rather thought she enjoyed it. She snorted and said, "So you were hiding from your soulmate?"

"Him, and the rest of the world who might have tried to use me against him," Harry said in a voice as bland as the smile, stepping back and pausing courteously in a way that Tom knew meant he was waiting for Madam Moonwell to find a seat. The woman scowled and remained on her feet. Harry shrugged and said, "But I decided that it was better to stop ignoring the obvious."

"What about that article you published where you accused Minister Riddle of trying to seduce you?"

"The article's a bit outdated," Harry said. "After all, since then he's succeeded."

Madam Moonwell tapped her fingers on her stick for a moment. "Are you happy about the age disparity between you and your soulmate, Mr. Potter?"

"Being unhappy about various aspects concerning my soulmate bond kept me from approaching Minister Riddle for years," Harry said softly. "I've learned better than to curse fate and wish things were different. I'll trust magic to guide us, and my own native intelligence to know when it's Minister Riddle trying to do it instead." He tilted his head back to give Tom a gaze that was too wry to pass as adoring.

Tom smiled slowly back, pleased when Madam Moonwell cackled. "Well, Mr. Potter, I can see that you're going to shake things up," she said, and moved out of the way as a few other members of the Wizengamot drifted forwards.

"So this is your soulmate, Minister Riddle." Arcturus Black didn't use a cane to walk, but Tom happened to know that was because of potions and his own stubbornness. He stared at Harry from narrowed grey eyes beneath a mass of hair almost the same color. "Looks a young thing."

"Old in necessity, Mr. Black," said Harry, and didn't look disconcerted when Arcturus circled a bit closer. Tom just watched. Arcturus was an old shark, but he wouldn't try anything completely underhanded in public.

"I suppose that you agree completely with your soulmate, then," said Laurentius Lestrange. Tom cordially hated the man. He could say things with slight pauses that others couldn't with the most veiled insinuations. "Since you are…joined."

Tom didn't let his eyes flicker. Harry offered Lestrange a smile as cool as the blue eyes watching him and said, "Actually, no. I don't like Minister Riddle's voting record on the issues of Muggleborns and Muggles. I'm willing to listen and learn in case there are nuances I'm missing, but wiping someone's mind free of memories if they talk about magic to other Muggles is not a nuance."

Tom suppressed a twitch. Trust Harry to begin their disagreements in public with this.

Lestrange gave a low laugh. "But that is only natural, coming from the son of a Mudblood."

Tom could feel the indrawn breaths all over the room, and the eagerness to see what Harry would do. Harry stared at Lestrange with slightly widened eyes, and their bond throbbed in a way Tom hadn't felt before.

But all Harry did was shake his head and murmur, "Is this the famous subtlety of the Wizengamot? Using a slur in public? I suppose I should thank my father for marrying my mother, or the Potters could have ended up marrying relatives who had already all married each other, the way some families did."

Lestrange's face darkened. Tom wondered if Harry actually knew that the speculation was rampant that Laurentius's mother, supposedly an "adopted" child of the Lestranges betrothed to their blood son, was really his grandfather's bastard daughter and thus married to her half-brother.

"You should…watch what you're saying, half-blood."

"I can give you the name of a good Healer who treats speech impediments, if you want one." Harry's eyes were wide and utterly guileless.

Lestrange turned and walked back to his seat. Black remained where he had been, eyes and face both blank. Madam Moonwell was cackling openly.

"At least someone in the Wizengamot will have a spine," she said, and nodded to Tom. "I approve of your soulmate, Minister Riddle." She went back to her own seat, followed a moment later by Black.

Harry watched them go, then glanced sideways at Tom. "But I don't have an official place in the Wizengamot, right? It would seem undemocratic if I did just because I'm the Minister's soulmate."

"You think anything about the Wizengamot is democratic?" Tom asked softly as he guided Harry to the side where their own seats waited. Harry's guest chair was made of silvery birch wood, to distinguish it from the darker and heavier seats of the Wizengamot, but Tom had thoughtfully removed the chains that usually would have coiled on the arms and could have bound Harry to it. "Half of the people here run various departments in the Ministry; they're either my appointments or ones made by prior Ministers. The others are people chosen by their peers, who are previous members. It takes enormous scandal to get someone removed from the Wizengamot, and mostly they have enough money and connections to squash a scandal before it appears."

Harry was silent, his eyes traveling around the room. "I still don't like the idea that my presence here only isn't objectionable because it's not more objectionable than anyone else's."

"Then that's another thing you'll need to work to change," Tom murmured as he took his own heavy seat. "I will warn you that it's not easy. The Wizengamot system has endured hundreds of years with little incentive to change."

"You're the only democratically-elected member here," Harry seemed to realize abruptly, and stared at Tom. "You."

"It makes you shiver, doesn't it?" Tom said, and gave Harry a half-smile before he stood and called the meeting to order.

Shit.

Harry stared at Tom's back as he intoned some empty formalities that apparently always began the Wizengamot meetings, while his disbelief swayed back and forth like a striking cobra.

If the Order had killed Tom, then probably one of the Wizengamot members would have taken over as Acting Minister until an election could be held. Given how slowly the Ministry moved, that might be months—probably closer to years. And if the one who took over was someone like the Lestrange who had insulted Harry, then things might actually have got worse for Muggleborns and Muggles with Tom's assassination, not better.

Harry closed his eyes, but only for a second. There were people who would be watching for that, and consider it a sign of weakness.

He had never thought of Tom as a restraining influence on the Wizengamot. After all, they seemed to do mostly what he wanted, and legislation that Tom championed was passed most of the time. He had played his pure-blood rhetoric games with them, and stood aside with a smile when they said things in public that Harry would have deemed unforgivable.

And Harry still didn't think that was right. Maybe Tom wouldn't have got far with open opposition to some of their policies, but he at least might have turned the Wizengamot into a space where people like Lestrange couldn't just walk up to a stranger and say "Mudblood."

Dumbledore, though, didn't have influence here as far as Harry could tell. Unless that was another of those things about the Order that he had been considered unfit to learn? But otherwise, it seemed that he would have murdered Tom and then just left the Wizengamot to continue on their conservative and pure-blood course. Harry didn't think that was much of a plan.

So neither of them is completely right. Well, I knew that.

It meant that he would have to go further into politics than he had thought. Harry thoughtfully rubbed his soul-mark and sat back to watch some of the dynamics of the Wizengamot at play. He would treat this as a fact-gathering mission for the moment, unless someone else approached him and tried to insult him the way Lestrange had. Then he would defend himself with all the wit and strength at his disposal, and he didn't care if it played havoc with Tom's plans.

From the soft humming of the bond in the back of his mind, though, Harry could tell that Tom was pleased with his performance so far.

Wearily, Harry prepared to listen to what the prejudiced idiots said, and wondered if he would ever understand his soulmate.

"May I ask a question, Madam Moonwell?"

It was the first time Harry had spoken for more than an hour, while the Wizengamot traveled through the necessary formalities and then a few debates were held on proposals Tom didn't care much about. The people who wanted to remove Muggle Studies from the rotation of classes at Hogwarts would never gather the necessary votes, and therefore he ignored both the desultory debate about it and the storm gathering in his bond.

Tom was willing to talk to Harry about why he'd ignored that discussion at any point, but it seemed Harry had a question for someone else. Madam Moonwell flashed him a quick smile and didn't sit back down from where she'd stood up to give a blistering speech about why the last thing the wizarding world needed to do was encourage ignorance. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Why did you say that we need to pay more attention to Muggles, but you also voted three months ago for that law that says Muggle parents of Muggleborns should have their minds erased if they talk to other people about magic?"

"Because there's a difference between isolationism and laxness about security." Madam Moonwell thumped her cane on the floor. "The parents of Muggleborns were already warned not to talk about it in the past. It's just that there were no consequences if they did. Now, we're keeping the promise the earlier warnings implied."

"And you don't think that taking away their ability to reason is extreme?"

"Not if we warn them about it. Would you feel sorry for someone who was warned away from a canyon and then insisted on jumping into it anyway?"

"When someone else had the ability to build a secure fence around that canyon? Yes, I would." Harry glanced around at the other members of the Wizengamot without bothering to stand up. "We're supposedly superior to people without magic, and yet we can't come up with anything better than this?"

"You might be interested to know that your soulmate was one of the enthusiastic proponents of that law," Arcturus Black drawled.

"Oh, I know that," Harry said, although Tom could feel how Harry's magic singed the edge of his and knew Harry hadn't counted on the "enthusiastic" part of that. "And I think he's wrong, too. But at the moment, I'm asking people I thought had some good sense why they voted for it."

"We have to do something to protect ourselves," said Amelia Bones, although from the set of her mouth, Tom knew she was unhappy. She had bitterly fought the law, and it was only her loyalty to the Ministry and her policy of not questioning his decisions in public that was driving her words now. "I don't think this is the right way, but… it's true that the Obliviators are being called out twice as often as they used to be, and two-thirds of the incidents in the past six years weren't for accidental magic or drunken pranks, but because parents of Muggleborns decided to tell other Muggles about magic."

"I was unaware of that," Harry said. His voice was thoughtful. "And do you know, it still never would have occurred to me to leap straight to destroying someone's mind. It makes me wonder what convinced all of you this was a good idea." He turned to look at Tom.

Tom met him, look for look, and said blandly, "It was the only way to have an absolutely foolproof solution to the problem."

"Amazing that it was never necessary before."

"We never had so many Muggles willing to expose our world before."

"I can think of three better solutions right now," Harry said. "Do you want me to name them, Minister, so that you don't have to tax your brain thinking them up?"

More than one member of the Wizengamot gasped. Tom had dueled for lesser insults.

Then again, those duels had been over twenty years ago, when Tom was still climbing the ranks of the Ministry, and Tom had ensured that they had become so legendary that he didn't have to fight more. He settled in with his arm crooked and his smile soft and amused, and said, "Tell me, Mr. Potter."

Harry held Tom's eyes and nodded. "The first is the kind of simple vow that doesn't depend on magic, except for the person who acts as the bonder. Have the Muggles swear on their children's wands that they won't tell other Muggles about magic unless they already know. The vow will literally deprive them of their voices if they try to say anything about it, even on accident."

"Muggles can't make vows like that," said the nasal voice of Gerard Greengrass, who lacked to pride himself on his knowledge of spells. "It still depends on magic!"

"The magic of their children would be sufficient," Harry said, without bothering to look away from Tom. "The blood link between parent and child will activate the vow."

Tom laughed softly. He enjoyed the gapes on the faces of the other Wizengamot members as much as anything. "And what do you intend to do if they refuse to make such a vow?"

"Then place them under a Forgetfulness Charm focused on the word magic and similar ones." Harry shrugged. "It would be awkward because it would make it hard for them to talk with their children about their schooling, but there could be workarounds, while it would make what they were trying to say virtually incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't already know the secret."

"That doesn't seem all that much more secure," Madam Moonwell called out. "Is the third method going to be less secure still?"

"No." Harry hesitated for the first time. "Tie their memories of magic to the presence of their children and owls. They won't even think about magic when their children are at Hogwarts or they're not reading a letter from them."

"They could still tell a Muggle the truth about magic as long as their child was there, or a letter," said Lestrange, looking triumphant.

"Sir," Harry said, his eyes opening a little and his voice dropping, "don't you know how tying memories works? It means that they also won't be able to talk to anyone, by any method, about magic except for the people the memories are tied to, or by letters on owls. And they certainly won't be sending owls to ordinary Muggles."

Someone chuckled in the background. Tom didn't want to look away from Harry to figure out who it was, but it sounded as though it might be Aelia Malfoy. That was a feat, getting her to respond that way. Normally, she would never have laughed at something a half-blood said; she looked straight through Tom himself most of the time.

"Of course I know how tying memories to the presence of a particular person or method of communication works, Mudblood!" Lestrange was on his feet, vibrating with rage. "And I know that no spell like the one you describe exists!"

"It does with the Greater Version of the hex," Harry said flatly. Then he paused, and his mouth opened in faux confusion. "Unless…oh, dear, sir. Are you going to tell me that you can't cast the Greater Version of the hex?"

Another titter, although Tom didn't think that was Aelia Malfoy this time. Perhaps Hyacinth Parkinson.

"I am more than powerful enough to cast spells of all kinds! But you are talking about a spell that does not exist!"

"Would you like me to demonstrate it?" Harry asked coolly.

"You cannot draw your wand in the Wizengamot chamber!"

"Then why do you have yours half-drawn?" Harry asked, a beat ahead of Tom opening his mouth to say that there was no such rule.

Lestrange was silent now, but Tom knew the way his nostrils were flaring. He unclenched his hand slowly from around his wand and pointed a single finger at Harry instead. "I challenge you to a duel, Mr. Potter."

"Accepted," Harry said at once. "But in the meantime, did you want me to cast the Greater Version of the hex?"

Lestrange sat down and proceeded to ignore Harry completely. Madam Moonwell gave a cough that sounded more like a cackle and focused on Harry again. "We didn't think about the last solution because not many of us seem to know this Greater Version of the common hex that you're talking about," she said solemnly. "But the others are not foolproof. The Muggles still might find some way around them."

"Is erasing their memories really foolproof, either?" Harry asked softly. "Won't Muggles be moved to investigate when someone who's young enough not to suffer brain ailments, which many parents would be, suddenly loses all their memories and regresses to a child-like state? If it happens often enough, couldn't they notice a common pattern? And what about the Muggleborns you'll alienate with this? They'll turn their backs on the world that damaged their parents, won't they?"

As he spoke the words, he abruptly turned his head and stared at Tom. Tom raised an eyebrow. There was a long shiver of cold moving down their bond, but he wasn't sure what Harry had noticed or realized.

Something they would have to talk about later, from the way Harry turned pointedly to face Madam Moonwell. Madam Bones, meanwhile, was nodding firmly. "Those are good points that we didn't consider closely enough," she said.

"We didn't consider them closely enough because there is nothing to consider." Arcturus Black's voice was a hiss. "We have to protect ourselves! Muggles will be willing to suffer a bit of humiliation or pain to expose our secret, because they hate us. They are jealous of our power. We have to destroy their memories if they speak. Nothing else will work."

"But you haven't tried it, have you?" Harry asked quietly. "Nor did you need it in the past, when Muggleborns' parents presumably had this same jealousy and hatred, but didn't spread around the secret. What's changed, and why is there a sudden increase in the number of people who want to do so? That's the kind of pattern and increase you should investigate."

"You've been very quiet, Minister Riddle," Black said, turning the strike. "Does your soulmate speak for you, too?"

"As you know, I voted for the law," Tom said, arching his neck a little so that he could show off the profile of his face if Harry looked over at him. "I thought we needed an immediate and permanent solution to the problem. But it is intriguing, as Mr. Potter says, that suddenly we have any number of Muggles willing to tell their neighbors about magic when the number of them in the past was very small."

He spoke in a relaxed drawl, and he found what he was looking for. There was a tightness to Black's shoulders that hadn't been there a moment before.

"That is not a pattern I noticed," Tom continued, "and it's something that we need to think about. Madam Bones, do you think that you might task some of the Obliviators with talking to Muggleborns' parents? Ones who haven't been put under the new spell yet, for preference, but those who might have shown some tendency to want to brag about their children's magic or achievements."

Amelia nodded at once. "I can think of several who will be happy to take on the duty, Minister Riddle."

"Good, then." Tom glanced at the papers spread out in front of him. "And I understand that you wanted to bring up an addition to the classes at Hogwarts, Madam Malfoy?"

"Yes," Aelia Malfoy said, standing. Her face was so pale as to look bloodless, and she had white hair that cascaded down her shoulders, but then again, she always had. She was a Malfoy by birth who had apparently, according to the rumors, never married because she had never found someone worthy of her. "I am given to understand that most young wizards and witches do not know how to write with a quill when they arrive."

"The Mudbloods, of course," Lestrange said, not seeming to notice that more than one person had shifted their chair or gaze away from him. "Why would they know it? They grow up with all manner of Muggle devices."

Malfoy turned to stare at him, and Lestrange winced. Tom had forced himself to grow accustomed to the stare of those pale grey eyes, but few other people had.

"I am talking about my own great-nephew, and other relatives of mine," Malfoy said in a passionless voice. "I could barely read Draco's letters, and he grew up entirely in a pure-blood household. I propose a class that would tutor students in this skill as well as others, including the proper ways to clean their hair and nails, during their first term at Hogwarts."

"Clean their hair and nails?" demanded Madam Moonwell.

"Too many pure-blood children assume that their house-elves will take care of everything," Malfoy said, glancing at Moonwell. "Or did you not have to suddenly improve your hygiene after a few years at Hogwarts when you realized that certain people whose attention you wanted to attract were avoiding you?"

Madam Moonwell blushed heavily and opened her mouth, then shut it. Tom cocked his head and wondered how Malfoy knew Moonwell had been one of those people. Or perhaps it had simply been a lucky guess.

"We can of course talk about such a class," he said. "The difficulty comes in seeing who should teach it. There are not NEWTS in quill-writing or household charms."

"Any wizard or witch with mastery of these skills could teach them." Malfoy was staring through him now. "I suggest that you hold an exam in calligraphy and the like if you feel the need to discover the most qualified candidate."

Tom held back an exasperated reply. Malfoy had good ideas, but she had no idea what skills a good teacher needed. And Tom was too protective of Hogwarts and everything he had tried to improve about it to simply dump someone who might harm children into it.

Nevertheless, he nodded. "An exam might be a good idea, Madam Malfoy. Thank you for the suggestion." He glanced around the chamber. "How does the Wizengamot decide on a preliminary vote?"

Harry waited until they were in Tom's bedroom to speak about the law concerning the Muggleborns' parents, and then only because yelling in public would be counterproductive.

"You enthusiastically supported that law, then," he said, and he kept his voice low to force Tom to listen to him. "And you probably thought that it was a good thing to alienate Muggleborns from the wizarding world, didn't you?"

"If I thought that, I wouldn't have pushed for more accurate Muggle Studies classes at Hogwarts, or for Muggleborn children to be taught the kinds of skills that they need to fit in with the rest of us," Tom said, hanging up his cloak. "Mind telling me where you came to this conclusion?"

Harry paced back and forth. He wished in that moment that he could speak Parseltongue, not just understand it. Those felt like the only words that would let him properly express the disgust spreading through him.

"When I said this afternoon that the law would alienate Muggleborns from the wizarding world by destroying their parents' brains," Harry said. "And I thought that that might be what the pure-bloods want and why they supported that law. But you. You don't care if Muggleborns are in the wizarding world or not, do you?"

Tom tilted his head. "I care about them having a good education, as I do all wizarding children. And I don't want them to betray us if they choose to live full-time in the Muggle world after graduating. But those aren't the answers you're looking for, I suspect."

"You—you don't care about Muggleborns as a separate entity." Harry sat down heavily on the chair next to the bed. The emotional bond between them was calm, shifting with Tom's curiosity more than anything else. "You don't hate them the way Dumbledore thinks, but you also don't want to protect them. You voted for that law—why?"

"Because it was a concession that the pure-bloods were so greedy to get that they didn't notice some of the laws that I was passing under their noses," Tom said calmly. "Mostly related to classes at Hogwarts they otherwise would have fought me on."

"You supported something unethical because—"

"It was politics. Yes."

Harry turned his head away from his soulmate's calm face, and the emotional bond. Clear. Crystalline. Waiting. "And your enthusiasm?"

"I had to persuade them that I felt exactly as they did about it, or they might have got suspicious."

Harry swallowed heavily. "But you could have done that with less enthusiasm."

"At the time, I wasn't sure that I could. But now that you've come up with alternate solutions, I can throw my political weight behind those instead."

Tom sounded perfectly placid. Harry turned in his chair to stare at him, hard. "You really don't care, do you?"

"I care because it troubles you." Tom came over to stand in front of him, considering him. "And I care because this way, it deprives Lestrange and Black of something they want. Did you notice that Lestrange never approached you after the session with a place or time for the duel?" Tom's lips quivered.

"I noticed," Harry said shortly. He had noticed, and hadn't cared. "But I'm not more intelligent than you are. You could have thought of those solutions if you had wanted to, and proposed them instead. Why didn't you?"

"I can tell you the truth, or I can tell you what you want to hear."

"I want to hear the truth."

"That, then." Tom sat down in the chair facing him and leaned forwards. "I didn't propose those solutions because I didn't care enough about figuring them out. I don't care about most people, Harry. I'll go out of my way to help some of them some of the time, such as creating those new classes at Hogwarts. But I don't love the mass of them the way you do." He paused. "I don't actually know if there are many people who care about other wizards and witches in general, as a mass. For example, the pure-bloods in the Wizengamot are mostly invested in protecting the interests of their families. Albus talks the game of the greater good, but he shows little compassion towards individuals who simply happen to be around his enemies. Certainly most of our people demonstrate no more desire to protect the lives of those on the opposite sides of various wars than Muggles do. Of everyone I know, Amelia Bones might come the closest, but she also values the innocent more than the guilty, and people she knows the best. I've seen her fight and kill criminals who endangered the lives of the Aurors."

"Who do you care about?" Harry whispered.

"You."

Harry closed his eyes. "Do you—does that mean that you only care about me or that you care about me in a way that you don't care about anyone else?"

"Very good, Harry." Harry opened his eyes to see Tom smiling at him. "The latter. I don't actively wish harm on most others. I'll be happy to support the solutions that you brought up today."

"But you didn't care enough about Muggleborns to support them in the first place." Harry thought he might gag.

"No," Tom said softly. "I didn't."

Harry thought he understood now. Tom wasn't boiling and churning with the hatred that Dumbledore had assumed he was, the loathing towards Muggleborns and the longing to be a pure-blood, that the Order of the Phoenix believed in.

No, he didn't feel hatred. He felt utter indifference.

Which was worse.

Harry blinked and swallowed and fixed his attention on Tom, who considered him with one eyebrow raised. "Yes?"

He must have felt what Harry was feeling down the bond, but he didn't seem distressed or upset. Harry rubbed his forehead. "I have to go," he said, standing abruptly. He couldn't disentangle his magic entirely from Tom's, and didn't want to, but it pulled sharply at him as he separated it as much as possible. "I have to—I have to be around my parents and godfather right now."

"Of course, Harry," Tom said softly. "Whatever you need."

Harry shot him one more incredulous glance—now he was acting reasonable?—and then stormed out of Tom's house and towards the Apparition point. His heart was beating too fast, his head hazy and his temper on fire.

Why had Magic chosen to tie him to someone who had this kind of—of morality? Or lack of morality?

Harry knew that Tom would indeed support the new solutions to keep Muggles from talking about magic. Or something else that he might come up with that could be even less invasive. The thoughts that Harry had thrown out in the Wizengamot today had just been the first ones that had come to him. They might not be the best ones.

But Tom would do it because Harry wanted that from him. Not because it was the right thing to do. Not because he did believe that Muggleborns, or Muggles, were people who ought to be treated equally.

And Harry would have to decide how to live with that. Because he doubted Tom would change.

"He seems a volatile sort."

Tom chuckled and let one hand reach down to smooth along Nagini's scales as she slithered into the drawing room. "Well, I think I need that. I couldn't be soulmated to someone as analytical and restrained as I am myself. It wouldn't work."

"Nonsense. Mates should be similar to each other, or they will not produce strong hatchlings."

Tom laughed softly. "That is not a concern for him and me, Nagini."

"It could be."

Tom shrugged and dismissed the notion, Nagini curling up on his feet so that she could better rest herself in front of the fire. Tom, in the meantime, stared into the flames and felt a smile curl up the corner of his mouth.

He didn't enjoy causing Harry pain. But it was good that Harry understood the truth, and beyond good that he had impressed the Wizengamot, as Tom knew enough of the pure-bloods to realize that he had.

They still had plenty of compromises to make. And Harry would probably need to retreat and accept the company of people more like-minded to him than Tom was, which suited Tom. His soulmate should have everything he needed.

Tom would wait. With the immortality that he was absolutely certain he and Harry could achieve together, everything was within his reach, as well.

And the indifference to so many others that he knew Harry found disgusting…

Well. Sooner or later, Harry would come to see that he could steer and shape Tom's actions into being more like those of a "good" person, a benevolent politician, precisely because Tom didn't care about holding on to a certain set of principles. Tom could be what Harry required of him.

Not in everything. But in the most important ways.

Just as Harry, in the most important aspects, was what Tom would always require.