A/N:
thank you to Coral for betaing this chapter!
Previously:
After an off-handed comment triggers Harry's guilty conscience, Harry asks Tom for some space. Tom is upset by this and spends the evening sulking and angry. The next morning, Harry confesses everything; Tom learns the truth of why they are under the wards. Tom Riddle did not die in the 1940s after all—he eventually grew to power and became the dark wizard known as Lord Voldemort.
Hurt by Harry's betrayal, Tom stalks off into the woods to think on his own. He comes to the conclusion that he needs to hear a better explanation before he can decide what he wants to do. Tom returns to the house and demands answers from Harry.
year four, cont.
"Tell me everything," Tom says, tone brooking no room for argument. "All of it, from the very beginning."
Harry gapes for a brief second, clearly surprised by Tom's request. Then he seems to settle, and the startled expression is replaced by one that is firm, unyielding. Harry scoots across the mattress, leaving space for Tom to sit.
Tom steps into the room and leans against the dresser, his back facing the wall. Harry's face falls, the tiniest amount, but then his resolve returns, washing the sadness away.
Gryffindor, Tom thinks, unbidden, and there is an unreasonable amount of fondness that wells up in him, all of it associated with the label, with Harry. He shoves it down, locks it away. What he needs is information so he can make an informed decision. What he needs is to be impartial, distant. What he needs is solid logic and conclusive evidence that Harry is telling him the truth, that there is more between them than circumstance and pity and justifications.
Tom wants Harry to feel the pain that he does. Harry needs to admit the harm he has caused, to feel ashamed of it. Tom wants his wounds soothed, and the only way to satisfy the hollow, angry part of him is if Harry suffers.
It has always been this way, hasn't it? Tom can't stand the imbalance, to know that he's been made a fool of this entire time—he'd had enough of that treatment at the hands of those at Wool's and at Hogwarts.
If the only way to get people to listen to him was to make them fear him, then that was what he would do. If the only way to feel better was to feel superior, then he would shove all those around him into the dirt and grind them to pieces beneath his heel.
Harry sucks in a breath, gathering his courage. "I suppose I should start with the prophecy..."
Tom perks up; Harry had only mentioned this in passing before. From Harry, Tom learns all the details of the prophecy: who delivered it into the world and who presented it to the ears of the Dark Lord. Tom learns about the innocent people who died because of it—Harry's parents.
And so Tom realizes why Harry was chosen to stay here with him. Or more aptly, why Harry had little choice at all. Four years of Harry's life at Hogwarts were spent living under the mantle of the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry spent four years known the boy who defeated Voldemort.
Four years that end in a graveyard, in the Cruciatus, in the death of yet another person who Harry considered a friend.
"After that," Harry says, "I spent the summer at Hogwarts. Dumbledore showed me memories of your life; growing up at Wool's and at Hogwarts. He showed me how you grew to hate death more than fear it. He told me that I needed to understand what would drive someone to split their soul into parts."
Harry talks about Horcruxes. He talks about how a man could become a monster if he was given tools to wield as weapons, if enough people turned a blind eye to his misery and anger. Harry unveils the story of Tom's fantastical future existence in slow, heavy statements. He explains how Lord Voldemort broke himself in order to rebuild himself and was never the same again.
"What Dumbledore really showed me, in the end, was how a boy with no family grew up alone and cold." Harry lets out a deep, weary sound. "And I knew—I knew that could have been me."
Tom wonders if this is supposed to garner sympathy. If so, it is not working. Tom doesn't care for the lives lost during his rise to power. He does not care for a past which will never be his to choose; he will not make the mistakes of his predecessor. Harry is the one who cares too deeply, too strongly—enough to sacrifice himself for a chance at a better future.
"If I hadn't had my friends, if I hadn't had Sirius," Harry says, "that could have been me. The Sorting Hat, it… it almost put me in Slytherin." Then Harry lets out a short, odd laugh. "And I begged it not to, because of Voldemort. Because I was afraid of going to the house that raised the man who killed my parents."
"The house that raised me," Tom says harshly, arms folded over his chest.
Harry shakes his head in firm disagreement. "That isn't my point. When I met you, I knew what I expected to see. Someone who didn't trust anyone because there had never been anyone to trust. Someone who was angry at the world for being cruel but was also angry at themselves for failing to fit into it. I know," Harry adds, "because I felt that way when I was living with the Dursleys."
Tom has conceptualized many parallels between them over the years. Rationale to explain why he feels so close to Harry, so drawn to him. Harry has never confirmed having similar thoughts one way or the other. They have never discussed the depth of their similarities, the jointness of their separate lives, the pain of their associated pasts.
Pain that Tom has always felt, pain he inflicts upon those around him, the only way he knows how to express it—
"You're wrong," Tom finds himself saying. "That isn't me. You don't know anything about me—"
"I know you're not Voldemort," Harry says vehemently, standing up. "I don't see you as him and I never have. You have to know that, Tom. How could I see you as—as someone who hurt me?"
It is difficult for Tom to organize his thoughts into something coherent. He is not Voldemort. He could never inflict torture and suffering upon Harry without a shred of remorse. But at the same time, the potential for this exists in him.
He is not Lord Voldemort—not yet.
Though the course of history may have changed, part of Tom Riddle will forever belong with Voldemort. He and Voldemort are one and the same in nature, despite their divergences. Circumstances have shifted, placing him on a path that is free of war and strife, but Tom has always known he would be capable of great things. Capable of murder, if what Harry says is true.
"Now that I've had years to look back on it," Harry continues, oblivious to Tom's dark thoughts, "I think this is what Dumbledore planned for. He wanted me to empathize with you so I would agree to do this because it was the only way you and I would survive here together for any length of time. If I met you at Wool's while hating you for what you had the potential to do, we never would have gotten anywhere."
"So he manipulated you."
"I—" Harry falters, his hands falling loosely by his sides. "I suppose he did. And I suppose I've known that for some time. But that doesn't mean I see you any differently, Tom."
Tom barks a laugh—he can't help it. After all this, after everything they'd gone through, Harry still wants to believe the best of people. In Tom, and even in Albus bloody Dumbledore. "Of course it does. Dumbledore may have sorted Gryffindor, but his methods are far from righteous. You saw how easily he was willing to discard me. He cares so long as you are useful to him. Tell me, Harry, what was the real reason for sending me back?"
Harry's face falls. That is how Tom knows he won't like the answer.
"Why did Dumbledore decide to send me back?" Tom repeats with a sneer. "Did the goodness of his old, shrivelled heart finally run dry?"
Harry's shoulders twitch, then slump. "It did," Harry says, regretful, like the words are bitter on his tongue. "He decided you were beyond saving. That you would become Voldemort no matter what. He thought the risk was too high. He wanted to send you back and resume the war."
"High and mighty Albus Dumbledore," Tom spits out, uncaring of the venom in his tone. "If there is anyone with a god complex, Harry, it's him. So he's played you for a fool. What else?"
"What else?"
"Don't expect me to believe your tripe about knowing I'm a good person, Harry. I am not a good person. You've said that I kill people—that fact is not cause for a minor disagreement. If I've done what you say I have, I will always be capable of those things. I will always be the man who murdered your parents."
Harry pulls back half a step. "You're not," he protests. "Tom," he adds, an afterthought, the postscript of Tom's humanity tacked on at the end.
"Lord Voldemort," Tom says aloud, and is satisfied when Harry's expression flickers. "You fear him. You fear me. You have and you will, and that will be the way of things regardless of how many chickens we raise together or how many potatoes we unearth from your garden."
"That's not true. Tom, you have to believe me." Harry's tone, so beseeching, hurts to hear. Harry's eyes, so wide behind round glasses. The submissive gesture of Harry's hands, pleading, spread open in invitation. "Do you—do you want me to apologize some more? Is that it? I'm sorry I was selfish—"
It isn't. Tom doesn't want that. He may have thought so before, but now the idea of further apology only triggers a sharp sense of resentment. "You didn't want Slytherin. You didn't want to be here. I was convenient for you. An easy way to save your friends and family."
"Tom, I love you."
"If you love me, that will invariably fall to second place as soon as we set foot outside of these wards."
The coldness of Tom's voice shocks them both. Harry, who had not expected to hear it, and Tom, who had not expected to admit it. To admit this fear is a crushing weight simultaneously placed and lifted on his chest. The freedom from telling truth is offset by the pain of his vulnerability.
Across from him, Harry flinches backwards, a myriad of emotions playing out across his face. Pain, sadness, regret. The tiny changes of facial muscles that Tom can pick out so easily. He knows Harry, and that makes this moment so much worse.
Then, like a switch is flipped, Harry recovers from the damage of Tom's words, unfurling like a blossom in springtime. His eyes grow clear, crystal green as they gaze at Tom. He is steeling himself, gathering that Gryffindor courage.
"Love… love isn't about rankings," Harry says. "Loving someone isn't like winning the House Cup. If I love you, then I love you. I don't love you any more or less because I love other people."
Around them, the house is quiet. Sunlight streams through the window, highlighting the paint strokes on the wall. The snowy wingspan of Harry's owl, Hedwig. The downy feathers of Cluckers, who rests on Tom's lap. Visions of happiness pressed into the wall.
"You don't understand," Tom says quietly. "Life is always ranked. More so when death lives at your doorstep. Who lives, who dies. The choices we make. The choices we discard. Those who shy away from that choice, from choosing at all, are weak." His hands clench into fists, white-knuckled and biting at his palms. "In any world, people will hurt you. They will put you down because that is where they see you."
Bitterness curls in Tom's chest. He had forgotten what it was like to feel disappointed.
For years, Harry had proven to be the exception to his self-imposed isolation. For years, Tom had convinced himself that Harry was a person worth trusting, someone who would be his constant companion for decades to come. Someone who could love him, unreservedly.
This is not true. There is no love without strings, no life without hardship. Tom had been foolish to ever believe otherwise.
"Dumbledore manipulated you. You think that love redeems all, that the answer to world peace lies within our hearts, not our minds. There is no such thing as utopia, Harry. The sins of humankind are not so easily cleansed. The lust for war, the endless greed. We are what we make of ourselves, and we shape the world with bold strides, not silent ones."
These were concepts Tom had held close to him as he planned for his ascent in the magical world; the universe was not kind, was not lenient. If it had ever been, it would have been long ago, long before Merope Gaunt was born, long before Tom had taken breath in this world.
"You asked me to explain," Harry says, his voice just as quiet as Tom's. "Why do I feel like you never meant to hear me out at all?"
"I am hearing you out," Tom argues, but the itch of his anger is crawling up his spine, a scalding heat that makes his throat run dry. "But you're not telling me anything that matters, Harry. I am Lord Voldemort. You can deny it all you like: that we are not the same person, that we never will be. But he exists in me. We have the same traits, the same ambitions and desires. You expect me to believe that you won't someday wake and realize that?"
"I—"
"Watch yourself," Tom snaps, stalking forwards, backing Harry towards the window. "Do not lie to me."
Harry's hands go up on instinct, to protect himself, to shield himself from the aggression that oozes from Tom in spades. "Tom," he says, more frustrated than fearful. "Stop it. Let me explain."
Tom halts a few meters from the wall. "Go ahead."
"You're right. What you said. You're right. Maybe you always will have the potential to be Voldemort. But that's—it is a choice." Harry inhales a shaky breath, lowers his hands enough to hold them out once more. "It's a choice to do that. People change, Tom. You've changed in the time that we've known each other, and I've changed, too. You can choose not to be Voldemort. I can choose to see you as a person, not a monster. We can—we can choose to be who we want despite what the world tries to tell us. Don't you see?"
Tom sees so much at once, all of it overwhelming. The complexities of human nature, the impossibility of his own emotions.
He sees the threads of his past connected with the threads of his future. Himself, the heir of Slytherin, as Hogwarts' undisputed best student. As the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Powerful enough to be called lord by those who had once spurned him as lesser.
He sees Harry, the love that exists between them, tainted by past and future alike. The boy he loves, the only person he has ever learned to love.
Loving Harry has always been a journey. It is a journey of gradual education—a gathering of the minutiae that make up their relationship. Tom holds in his heart the simple pleasures of their day-to-day lives, the quiet intimacy of knowing someone so absolutely, and the blissful warmth of touch that he had been denied for so, so long.
Tom longs for the ease of their relationship, for the ebb and flow of their lives together, peaceful and full of laughter. He wishes for it more than anything. But he cannot forget, and he does not know if he can forgive. Not this, not so easily.
"Forgiveness is not in my nature, Harry," Tom says at last, an attempt at honesty. "How could you expect me to look past this? If there was a point of no return, we left it behind long ago." Tom suppresses the ache in his heart, blinks the moisture from his eyes. "I love you," Tom says, "I love you because I do love you, Harry. But love is not enough."
It stings. Tom knows it does; the cruelty of his words slide in and bury deep. Harry's confidence withers before his eyes; Tom tells himself it is necessary and commits the expression to memory despite his own agony. It is better to desensitize himself from the misery of it.
There is the pain. There, etched into each aspect of Harry's expression. There, reflected in those anguished green eyes. There, in the slow dip of Harry's head as his face falls, shattering and giving way to grief.
Is this how I feel? Tom wonders. Is this what's become of me, when Harry looks at me?
They are motionless. Neither of them moving, breathing—only their fixed gazes and the purposeful distance between them. Tom, who wishes, and Harry, who regrets.
When Harry speaks again, his voice is just as hushed as before. Reticent and weary. "Is… is this it, then?"
It's laughable. Tom wants to laugh, to make a mockery of his poor, poor heart. Is this it? Years of his life spent on Harry now thrown away because he cannot possibly sacrifice any more of himself to this beautiful boy. How easy would it be to forgive, to slide to his knees and beg for Harry to love him, to accept him, to forgive him for crimes never committed.
Harry would do it. Harry would do all that and more, would offer love and safety and forgiveness. But Tom would always wonder. The notion would live in the back of his mind, black poison that would curl tendrils around every word, every action.
"I don't know. I'm tired." That is also the truth. Tom has been wandering around in circles, paths of logic that lead him nowhere. He has gone over the meaning of what he observes and the meaning of what he mourns. He has not yet reached a reasonable conclusion.
In response, Harry cracks the weakest attempt at a smile that Tom has ever seen. "I'm tired, too."
Exhaustion sweeps through Tom, sudden and unforgiving. Any other time, he would have sooner broken his own arm than shown weakness. Now, however, Tom walks over to the bed and settles down on it.
The mattress dips beneath him, creaking. The sheets are soft under his hand. Harry had slept here last night, alone. This fact fails to evoke sadness in him. He is beyond sadness, now. He is somewhere distant, splintered and subdued, ready to lay in this very spot for a thousand years if it means knowing peace in the future. If it means having answers.
After a brief second, Harry goes to sit next to him. They are not touching—a space of a few inches exists between them—but they are together, in a way.
"Where do we go from here?" Harry asks. From the tenor of his voice, the question is clearly rhetorical. It does not stop Tom from wanting to answer anyway.
"We don't," he says simply. "We don't go anywhere."
They are here. They will stay here until the wards fall. Tom is hurting, is angry, is grieving the pureness of love and the bliss of ignorance. But he is here, with Harry, and that will not change no matter how much he wishes otherwise.
Some minutes go by. Tom can't decide if he ought to get up and leave. Sitting here with Harry is more preferable than being alone, funnily enough, but the debate of this conundrum will keep him occupied for days, surely—to stay or to go.
"Do you hate me?" Harry asks.
"No," Tom answers.
"Okay." Harry resumes his scrutiny of the window. "Thank you."
Shadows move across the wall, over the mural. Tom's gaze wanders for a while, from person to person, from shape to shape. He looks at himself, at the wave of his hair and the pensive smile that rests on his painted lips. Harry sees Tom Riddle as someone content to sit with a chicken and smile.
Then Harry speaks. "What did you think of me when we first met?"
Everything about Harry is tangled within the loops and knots of Tom's emotions. A heap of rubbish that Tom does not particularly care to separate at the moment. But then Tom considers, and the knowledge comes to him, creeping up his throat like a bad cough, spreading upwards and outwards until the words emerge from his throat.
"When I met you, you were no one. You were not supposed to matter to me. You were another stepping stone to the future." Tom closes his eyes, shuts out the sights and the sounds. He breathes and focuses on the truth. "I hated that I was forced to rely on you. I thought I might ruin you for thinking yourself superior. For rescuing me from a fate I could not save myself from.
"I looked at you and saw no one. But you—" Tom barks a laugh. "You looked at me and saw everyone. Everything. A euphoric, flawless future free of suffering and free of pain. No wonder I fell for you, Harry. How could I not, when everything you hold so dear rests squarely in my hands? When I alone have the power to make or break your happiness so thoroughly? You look at me like the sun rises and falls at my behest. I am a scale that weighs your life against my own, and that is somehow perplexing enough to keep my mind occupied for a millennium."
Tom exhales, counts the seconds that pass before he inhales once more. Next to him, Harry's breathing is just as measured.
"For years I laboured under the assumption that you were my saviour. A saving grace for the poor orphan boy raised in a loveless orphanage," Tom says resentfully. "Now I see that I was your saviour after all."
An idol for devotion, a vessel for affection. A desperate hope for a desperate boy. Tom opens his eyes to take in Harry's reaction. Distant and reflective—those expressive eyes full of wistfulness.
Harry presses his palms flat against his thighs. His fingers flex and unflex against the fabric of his trousers. "I never wanted to be anyone's saviour. I just wanted to be Harry. And when you met me, I was not the Boy-Who-Lived, not Voldemort's prophesied enemy. I was just Harry, and you were just Tom."
It is not what Tom expected to hear. It is not the birth of a Dark Lord. It is not the birth of a boy named Harry Potter or the idealized past of a boy named Tom Riddle. It is their beginning that Harry speaks of now.
"You have the capability to be Voldemort, but you also have the capability to be whoever you want. You know that you do, right?" The question is delivered without heavy emphasis, but Tom senses the meaning behind it, the consideration that Harry wishes to impress upon him.
"You still have control over your own destiny," Harry says. "The past holds as much choice as the future does. We can choose to learn from history or not. We can choose to see ourselves differently. How we see ourselves rather than how others see us. I don't—I guess I don't expect you to forgive me. But you need to know that I never did anything because I wanted to hurt you."
Tom has no answer at first. In a perfect world, an ideal world free from war and death and meddlesome adults, they are just Harry and just Tom. They can live on a farm together and have that be enough.
In this world, they are enemies. Circumstances had dictated that they meet as enemies.
To Tom, Harry had been a stranger. To Harry, Tom had been… a murderer, a monster.
Harry had chosen to see past all that, to now consider Tom as a person separate from Lord Voldemort. For Tom, it is not so easy to move on.
Lord Voldemort was his destiny, the inevitable conclusion of his rise to power in Slytherin house, the result of endless ambition and a desire to see the society that had failed him brought to heel. To shed that part of himself is impossible. To forgo Voldemort is to capitulate to everyone who ever mocked him and told him he would amount to nothing.
Even Harry must know this, must see it as the truth. Tom Riddle would always become Lord Voldemort unless someone came to stop him. The failings of the institutions he lived in, the apathy of those who looked down upon him; all of that is made minuscule by comparison. Men are not born evil, unless—
Fate has decreed that he go this way. Tom cannot deny it; his hands could stain with blood and he would not flinch from the sight. Dumbledore believed it. Harry believed it and may still believe it now. They believed in his inescapable capacity for evil, so much so that they decided to lock him up here.
His future haunts him and his past mocks him. The only version of himself Tom feels he can be is the one he is now, but even then—he finds he no longer wants to.
"If I could be just Tom," he says, allowing an ounce of regret to seep into the words, "I would be, here with you."
Harry seems to accept this. He nods and looks back to the window. "So what do you plan to do when we leave?"
That is the question—what will he do? Does Tom Riddle walk into the future and become a dark lord? Will he and Harry always find themselves on opposite sides of a battlefield?
He couldn't, he couldn't. Thoughts of Harry run deeper than the cut of any betrayal. Tom no longer knows how to separate himself from Harry, but he does know that Harry standing at the other end of his wand is nothing he wants. He could hurt Harry, could jinx and curse him, but he would never kill him—he could never extinguish the light that had brought joy to his life—and that is weakness. Weakness to the highest degree, to care so rottenly that it robs him of a sane mind.
A world without Harry pales in comparison to any other. A world where Harry replaces Tom Riddle with someone else makes him feel sick.
"I've changed my mind," Tom decides. "I hate you."
Harry lets out a startled laugh. The beauty of catching Harry off-guard never fails to please him—even now, Tom feels that familiar sense of triumph in his gut, mixed right in with the hollow sensations of anger and self-disgust.
"Well, alright. That's fair." Harry shrugs, quirks his lips so that he is nearly smiling, so close to smiling.
"I'll hate you forever."
"Is that so?"
"I'm furious with you."
"I can tell."
Tom sighs and lays down on the bed. He folds his hands over his chest and stares at the ceiling. After a beat, the bed shifts, creaking—Harry is next to him, still some inches away, but next to him nonetheless.
"This is my room, you know," Harry says.
Tom ignores the jibe. "When you leave," Tom asks instead, "where will you go?"
Harry will go to his family, likely. To his godfather and to the Weasleys.
There is a pause wherein Harry debates his answer. Then he says, "To Potter Cottage, I suppose? I don't know how this works, honestly. Your guess is as good as mine. Who knows what we'll find once we leave."
To Potter Cottage, not home. Neither of them know what that word means, really—home. Tom had called this house a home, but never has it felt more temporary than in this instant. Home is not the walls of this house, is not a room with a hand-painted mural or a grassy field with a flattened patch that is perfect for picnics. Home is a mental state, a space of safety and acceptance.
For some years, home had been Hogwarts; the best place either of them had ever known. An escape from Harry's abusive relatives. An escape from the obscurity and poverty of Wool's orphanage. But no longer. Not when Tom has had a taste of better, a taste that sours on his tongue whenever he dwells on it.
"And if they're not there? Your family."
Harry goes silent for so long that Tom is tempted to turn his head and check the expression on Harry's face for answers. But then Harry speaks, so softly that Tom has to strain to hear the words.
"If they're not, then that's alright. I just… I really hope that some good came out of this. That some people got to live better lives because of what I did."
Tom can't stand this answer because he is aware that Harry includes him under that umbrella of people who get to live better lives. Tom detests pity, but he has grown to accept its variant—compassion—if only because Harry is so insistent on utilizing it. And so Tom has nothing to say, nothing that won't result in another pointless argument.
They lay there in the quiet until the sunlight rises above the house, stealing the shadows with it. Tom's stomach aches with emptiness, the absence of last night's dinner a painful physical reminder of the chasm between them. Something about this spurs him to action; he sits up, a new decision suddenly made.
Harry's curious eyes follow his movements, but the silence remains unbroken. The steadiness of Harry's gaze flickers with uncertainty. There is a question in the air, one as clear as the scar on Harry's forehead.
Tom stands and heads for the door. Hw is not surprised when Harry catches up to him in the outside hall.
They go downstairs. Harry follows two steps behind him. Through the house and into the kitchen, and then Tom goes to the fridge. He pulls out the basics: tomatoes, lettuce, cheese.
"Sandwiches?" Harry asks.
"Lunch," Tom replies, the syllable clipped.
The act of preparation is familiar and easy. Tom's hands take over without need for conscious thought, slicing the relevant ingredients and handing the dirty utensils off to Harry, who washes them in the sink.
They take lunch out on the porch. The sun shines brightly overhead but not blindingly so. The yard is full of active chickens scrambling around in their pen.
The chickens need to be fed, Tom thinks. It's stupid and silly, but he can't help the genuine pang of concern that runs through him at that.
The chickens need to be fed. A chore that used to be insignificant in all aspects. Caring for living creatures that depend on him and Harry is a senseless attachment that only binds them together. But here, now, he must make the choices he can live with. He must decide his actions with all things in mind, with the balance of their microcosm dependent on what he says and does.
He and Harry are reliant on each other for company, for sanity. For affection and companionship. He and Harry are still in love; a love with broken trust, but a love nonetheless. Tom harbours feelings that are not so easily lost—not while the wounds are fresh.
In time, perhaps, he will move on. In time, he may grow free of this entrapment, of the feelings that bind him.
Whether they stay here for months or years, Tom will keep the peace. But if the wards do not fall for years to come, Tom knows this prison will destroy him in the end. Harry will wear on him, as Harry does, with kindness and love. And Tom, with no choice, with nowhere else to turn, will welcome it with all the gratitude of a drowning man given a lifeline to clutch onto.
No man is an island. Tom once thought himself suited for solitude, that he hated other people enough to never need them. Harry has drawn him in with amicable smiles and friendly greetings, with indulgent touches and a patient gaze.
Harry loves him.
Harry loves him, but Tom will forever carry the burden of the foul truth. Harry's merciful deception will never fade, but the way Tom feels for Harry will never waver, either. He is damned to love Harry despite the betrayal he feels, damned to hate himself for falling for it—for falling in love. And the blame lies with Harry, too, because Harry had brought him here, had placed them both in this contrived situation where Tom could learn to feel this way.
"There is more to tell you," Harry says, "if you want to hear it."
Tom glances over. Harry has his hands wrapped around half a sandwich while the other half rests on a plate in his lap.
What else is there? More stories of Voldemort and his misdeeds to justify Tom's existence here under the wards? It can't hurt, Tom thinks sardonically. Surely it can't be any worse.
"If you like, then." Tom nods once and looks back to the sky, to the thin scatter of clouds above them.
"The scar on my forehead. I see you looking at it sometimes." Harry smiles, the fondness of old memories already leaking through. Memories of Tom's curious touch over raised skin. Memories of withheld flinches that faded to non-existence over time.
"The Boy-Who-Lived," Tom remarks, droll.
"Yeah." Harry shifts, suddenly restless. "I always thought of it as being marked for—for death. How I should have died, but didn't. For a long time, that was the only explanation I thought I'd ever get. But… there is a reason why you and I are here together, and it's not just because of prophecy." His hand lifts his fringe of hair, revealing his famous scar. "I'm a Horcrux."
Tom's breath freezes in his throat, the scope of the world narrowing down, down, down as the information worms its way into his mind, settling in like a satisfied cat before a blazing fire.
A portion of his soul resides next to Harry's. Not Tom Riddle's soul, which has not yet been split into shards, not yet been carved up by death—but his soul nonetheless.
"I keep us anchored here," Harry continues. "Because part of me is part of you."
Tom reaches, places the pad of a single finger against that lighting bolt mark. He traces the shape, wonders at the warmth of Harry's skin, at the comfortable tingle that washes over his hand like a current.
Dark magic leaves traces. Furthermore, unfamiliar magic tends to induce a sense of wrongness. But this magic is his own, is his own essence poured into the very vessel that he finds himself unable to detach from.
Harry is truly inescapable; how could Tom ever turn away?
Tom is transfixed. He has no words, no choice. Harry remains immobile under his hand, lips parted the slightest bit. Perhaps, they were meant to meet like this. Perhaps his own soul had drawn him here to be built up and broken, to suffer a glimpse of a kind, compassionate future where all is well. An indulgent existence where Tom does not have to choose between his pride and his weakness.
Four years ago, Harry had been his adversary. Then Harry became his friend, his equal, his love. And now, one more label applied, the most curious of them all: his possession. For Tom considers his soul to be very much his, in all shapes and forms. His soul is to be treated with care and nurtured to immortality.
His soul is Harry, who loves him. Harry, who anchors him to this transitional space.
"You don't have to forgive me," Harry says. Pleads. "But Tom, I'd really like for you to stay."
The 'with me' is unspoken, hanging in the air between them. Tom drops his hand down, holds it stiffly by his side, debating. If not for Harry, then for himself. If not for the future of others, then for his own. If not now, then...
Someday, perhaps, they will finish this as they had begun it:
Together.
A/N:
the next chapter will be the epilogue. thank you all for reading. i'll save my final final thoughts for the very end.
in the meantime, i am curious as to what people think about the morals of what has happened. i've seen arguments for both sides, and i have tried to refrain from replying too strongly either way in the comments because i was waiting for the reaction to this chapter.
so if you have thoughts, i would love to hear them!