Thank you again for all the reviews! Including this chapter, there will now be two more chapters and an epilogue for "Immaculate."

Part Five

"A traditional Occlumens focuses on imagining their thoughts hiding beneath barriers," Riddle said, sitting across from Harry at a wrought-iron table in the middle of his garden. It was blazing green all around them, and Harry concentrated on that as much as on Riddle's words, which dripped slowly over him and slid into the cracks and crevices of his mind like a spilled potion. "But you have already more than mastered that step, since you can move your barriers in whatever direction you wish. You will have to work on strengthening them."

Harry stirred a little. Riddle promptly shifted as if he wanted to reach for Harry, and then visibly held himself back. Why he wanted to touch Harry so often, Harry had no idea, except maybe to make sure he didn't disappear. "Yeah, okay, I get that. But I thought that was what we were here to work on."

"It is. Close your eyes."

Harry did, then promptly opened them again.

"What is wrong?"

Riddle didn't sound impatient, the way Harry had assumed he would. Harry breathed out slowly. "When I'm this—open, I don't trust you. I can't sit here with my eyes closed. I don't know what you're going to do next."

From the looks of it, Riddle visibly suppressed some of what he wanted to say before he nodded. "Yes, I understand. Very well. You told me that your secret was eating through your walls like a fire or a poison."

"Yes."

"Think of water or antivenin."

Harry scowled at the bastard. "You think it's that simple? Why wouldn't I have mastered it myself, if it was?"

"Because your grasp of Occlumency up until this point has been all instinctive." Riddle sipped from the small silver cup of hot chocolate that one of his elves had brought out. Harry didn't understand how the man could possibly drink it at all, when the day around them was so hot, but to each his own tastes, he supposed. "You have not thought about the theory."

"You said I broke the theory."

Riddle nodded. "You did. If this was traditional Occlumency, you would simply envision the water or the antivenin as barriers to the secret. But I am going to ask you to do something else in a moment. The first step is the same, though. Picture it."

Harry sighed and stared off to the side, letting his eyes unfocus. The thought of snakes made him flinch too much, especially the thought of snakes crawling around the carved beds and the furniture in the Slytherin common room, so he simply pictured a clear, spreading pool of water. A pool a thousand meters deep. No bottom. An endless, cool plunge.

"Very good," Riddle murmured. How he knew what point Harry had arrived at, Harry didn't know and wasn't sure he wanted to find out. "Now, envision the water and the stone of your barriers joining together."

Harry wanted to ask how he could do that, but the answer swam into his mind even as he opened his mouth. Of course. He would envision stone barriers with skeins of water threaded through them, shining so much that he shivered with the thought of touching them. Floating pieces of stone, stone that was water, water that was stone.

"Now move them."

And once Harry had that image in mind, the water and the stone that were each other, it was as easy to manipulate them as if they were the walls that had encircled his mind until Riddle started talking to him. He floated them into place, even more lightly than he had done with his shields so far, because they were lighter. Part of them was liquid. He surrounded the secret.

There was a glimpse of Malfoy's face, of his derisive smile, and the sound of the camera clicking, and then they were gone. But Harry could consider what had happened as if he were reading words printed off a page, words that had happened to someone else, and he could remember it. He didn't have to squash all thought and emotion to function.

He shuddered and let his head drop to the tabletop, just barely taking care not to smash his face into the wrought iron.

"Harry?"

Riddle was reaching for him, and this time his hand came to rest on Harry's shoulder. Harry managed to sit up and shake his head, shrugging Riddle's hand off at the same time. "I'm all right," he whispered.

"Then why the reaction?"

"This is the first time I've been able to think about what happened as a whole," Harry said flatly, the images dancing in front of his mind's eye. "And think about how fucking angry I am."

Riddle looked surprised for a second. Then he smiled and nodded. "As you should be. As you should always have been able to be. Do you want to trap Malfoy in his own mind and leave him to suffer?"

Harry blinked. "What?"

"I thought of it," Riddle said, his face dreamy as he looked at some plant behind Harry that was shining with red color. Harry still couldn't turn to look at it, couldn't bring himself to take his eyes from Riddle and the threat he was. "Trapping Malfoy in a nightmare version of his worst memory, or one that you've come up with. Your Occlumency could do it in a way that not even my Legilimency could, because I can only create relatively simple patterns that repeat. Ones that encourage obedience to me, for example. But you could encircle his mind with your walls, and compartmentalize his mind in such a way that he would appear normal and conscious and functioning to everyone else, but part of him would be screaming behind his eyes. Forever."

"Of course I wouldn't do that," Harry said, his mouth feeling as if it moved on its own while his consciousness stood outside his body. "I'm not that kind of person."

Riddle's eyes sharpened and locked on him again. He smiled like an eagle. "I think what kind of person you are depends entirely on who you want to be," he said, "and how you position your Occlumency walls."

Harry stared at him. That was true, wasn't it? Riddle's distinction between the Outer and Inner Arts came back to him, and he shivered a little as he realized that while Riddle controlled other people in a way Harry found unacceptable, Harry controlled himself.

He could become the kind of vengeful person who would leave a part of Draco Malfoy trapped in his head for eternity. He could become a saint and martyr who never did anything like that again. He could become the emotionless pariah who had haunted the Ministry and his family's dreams.

Harry swallowed and abruptly stood, shoving back from the table. Riddle didn't stop him as he walked to the far side of the garden and stood, hunched, his head bowed. His mind was whirling so hard that not even the threat Riddle could present distracted him now.

How could I—I could do it, I don't know, when did I—

Tom kept an eye on Harry as he ate the small lemon cakes his house-elves had provided, but it didn't seem as if he was going anywhere. He was simply dealing with a sudden realization of power, and while Tom had come to knowledge of his own over many years, this knowledge was hitting Harry all at once.

And after years of thinking himself worthless, at that.

It still infuriated Tom that so many people had managed to ignore Harry for so long. He couldn't have completely avoided people who had some touch of Legilmency or Occlumency. One of them could have looked at Harry and figured out what gifts he possessed, and taken him to training.

If they had bothered. If they had looked at Harry with eyes that saw anything other than a terrible disappointment.

Tom resented that they had not, for Harry's sake, and rejoiced that they had not, his own. It was an uneasy combination that made him sit up and pay special attention as Harry came walking slowly back across the garden.

"I need to know something."

"Yes?"

"How much would something like this hurt Malfoy? I mean, would it be comparable to the pain that I endured? Or worse?"

"It would depend on the constitution of Malfoy's mind," Tom said, and his triumph howled in him like a werewolf. "But you could adjust that, tightening your shields to the necessary thickness. And you could leave him to suffer for seven years only, if you wanted." Tom hated the idea of that, but this vengeance had to be Harry's choice even if it took the form Tom had suggested. "That would make it more likely that he would approach feeling what you did."

Harry closed his eyes and bowed his head. Tom ate some more of the lemon cakes, and pushed one towards Harry. He didn't touch it. Tom sighed. One thing he had picked up, inevitably, from Harry's memories was how much of his life had been polluted by Malfoy's games. His OWLS, his ability to relate to other people normally, his dating prospects, what he felt about his own body and abilities, and even simple pleasures in life. That Harry had believed he was unworthy of them, a somewhat natural consequence of walling off everything associated with pleasure, given how much he had repressed his sexuality.

Well. Tom was willing to help Harry get all of that back. He ate and plotted, and finally Harry's eyes flicked open. Tom was pleased to note that Harry could shut his eyes around Tom now, and seemed less guarded than he had been only an hour ago.

"I want him to suffer," Harry whispered. He was shaking with what Tom recognized as rage. The mere thought of what Harry could do with that rage, if he really wanted to, was making Tom hard under the table. "But I have to make sure that we get hold of all the photographs first. And I don't know how to make sure that we get all the copies. Even if you know that they're lying about holding some of them back, there could be some they honestly forgot about. And what happens if they find them years later?"

Tom nodded. "I understand. Then we will make it a priority to find and destroy all the copies of the pictures, and then we will punish."

"I want you to leave Malfoy to me."

Harry was leaning across the table, glaring at him. Tom smiled, and did nothing to hide his delight or his appraisal. Harry frowned at him, but finally picked up and ate the lemon cake without breaking eye contact.

"I notice that you did not claim Theodore Nott. Or the lumpish boys."

"Crabbe and Goyle. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle." Harry grimaced. "Honestly, they were just Malfoy's followers. As long as we make sure that they don't have any pictures or any memory of it, then we can leave them alone."

It was not what Tom wanted to hear, but it was what he had to accept, or lose things more precious to him than revenge. "And Theodore Nott? What about Blaise Zabini? I noticed that he was not included in your memory."

Harry grimaced again and touched his temple for a moment, as though he was having trouble touching the memories—or, more likely, as though he were consciously thinking about them for the first time in many years. "Malfoy deliberately waited until Zabini had sneaked out of the dormitory to see his girlfriend. Zabini wouldn't have approved."

"Really. Why not?"

"He would have thought it was crude. I don't think Zabini knows anything about it, or he would have done something by now."

"And Nott?"

Harry clenched his hand back and forth on the table. "I want him to suffer," he finally admitted, "but I don't know how, exactly. What we're going to do to Malfoy seems too extreme for him, and yet…"

"You want him to suffer," Tom repeated.

"Yeah."

"Then allow me to take over that part of the punishment," Tom murmured.

Harry leaned forwards and stared at him, eye-to-eye, without looking away. "Not without knowing what you intend to do."

Tom licked his lips, and hoped that Harry would think it was because of the lingering taste of lemon cakes. Harry was perfect. Perfect and to be treasured, and the loss of the rest of the world was Tom's gain. "I intend to discover what he loves most and take it away from him."

"Easy to say, hard to do."

"Not for a Legilimens." Tom smiled. He had done lesser versions of this before, when someone had paid him to cut someone off from an addiction—their own or someone else's—by inducing a hatred and horror of the substance they were addicted to into their brain. But this would be a work of art. "I will cause him to have an aversion to whatever the thing or person is. A lover? He will never be able to touch them again without fainting with disgust. A food? He'll no longer be able to taste it without vomiting. A spell, a form of magic, Quidditch? He won't even be able to think about it."

Harry gasped softly. Tom looked at him and waited for the praise or the condemnation that would come forth. It said something that he was looking forward to either, to basking in the praise or winning an argument.

He's just…

Harry wanted to shake his head. He didn't want to turn into the kind of person sitting across the table from him just because he was good at Occlumency. The kind of man without a conscience, who could explain what he was going to do and smile at Harry with steely eyes.

On the other hand, Harry felt a jealousy as deep and cold as a river flowing over him. He didn't have to, of course. He could shift his walls so he didn't feel it at all. But he was jealous, and he sat there and let himself soak in it, because Riddle would never have had something like Malfoy's blackmail happen to him.

Harry took a deep breath. There was no sign that Riddle thought he was weak, and he wouldn't trick or lull himself into acting as if he was. He sat up. Riddle leaned a little forwards over the table, eyes wide.

"Why do you look at me like that?" Harry found himself asking, a question he hadn't meant to blurt out at all.

"Like what?"

"Like—you want me."

Riddle blinked once. "I do."

"You can't, though."

Riddle laughed softly. "I'm not as good at controlling my emotions as you are, Harry. You can, of course, refuse me and tell me to go away—although I don't plan to leave until I've helped you take vengeance and made sure that you won't succumb to your memories again." Lazily, he leaned back and tilted his head a little to the side. "But you can't make me simply stop wanting you."

"You aren't disgusted by what you saw?"

"I have told you of what I can do, of what I plan to do and take glee in doing. Why would I be disgusted by anything you have done after that? If anything, I admire what you have done, to ensure that you could go on living."

Harry sat there and wrestled with memories that seemed to be glossy imprints laid on his mind. He had seen people smiling at him sometimes, but when they were women, he hadn't had any interest, and when they were men, he had buried his own responses so deep that they had been less than echoes in the dungeons of his Occlumency. To see Riddle smiling calmly at him now, and know that he would reach across the table now and touch Harry if he wanted—

If they both wanted. Harry might not understand everything that had happened, why Riddle thought Harry was so impressive and was so fixated on helping him, but he understood that Riddle wouldn't touch him unless Harry agreed.

Because otherwise he would get less than what he wants. He's greedy.

Maybe he could let someone else be greedy over him? Maybe it was something he would like?

I have no idea what I would like, Harry realized, a little ruefully. He had the painfully innocent and naïve dreams of what he would like before Malfoy, but all of those had withered even before he'd mastered Occlumency.

So the best thing to do was put it aside for now and plan their revenge. He gave Riddle a small nod of acknowledgment and said, "Thanks for letting me know that you would. Now, let's think about how we're going to catch Malfoy and Nott by surprise. They're already suspicious, so it won't be easy."


He hasn't rejected you. He has only said no for right now.

Tom found himself more impatient, strangely, than he had been a few days ago when he'd thought it possible that he would never be able to touch Harry. To know that Harry could come to accept him, perhaps, and yet to sit back in his own chair and discuss revenge instead of what it would be like to touch Harry…

Tom breathed slowly in and out. Harry gave him a deep smile, a charming one that would have had people swarming him in the streets had they known who he really was.

If I do not want him to run away and become someone else's, I must hold back my desire.

Tom soothed himself with the discussion of what they would do to Nott and Malfoy. But yes, the pictures first. Only then would Harry feel safe enough to do other things.

Whether those things were in bed or out.

Harry shivered as he heard footsteps in the corridor. For all that he had his walls floating in such a way that he couldn't feel the same panic and fear that he would have once on facing Malfoy unshielded, it still felt unnatural to sit there and listen to Malfoy coming without locking down or running.

A whisper of power came alive in his mind, magic that Riddle had left with him. It would activate when Harry grew frightened. I am with you. I am near at hand.

And Harry knew Riddle was. In the end, they had decided the best trap was the simplest. Riddle had spent steadily more time in the Ministry over the past few days, and had visited Harry's office, and had spoken about him to other people in generic terms. That itself had stirred up gossip, and that gossip would bring Malfoy to Harry.

And Riddle was waiting nearby.

Harry sat back and didn't have to pretend to cower as Malfoy leaned against the doorframe and sneered at him. He ducked his head as Malfoy said, "Potter. What have you done?"

"I don't know what you mean," Harry whispered. He didn't have to pretend to the tremor in his hands, either, or the way that he wanted to sink under the desk and disappear. He flinched as Malfoy strode up to the edge of his desk.

"He's a Legilimens. What are you doing? Thinking about betraying your little secret? How you spread your legs and would have let me fuck you, because you had no idea how far above you I was?"

Harry's mind shook, and he had to fight against himself briefly. His shields were trying to slide into place, to prevent the words from cutting into his mind and damaging him.

They are only words. They cannot harm you. The thread of Riddle's magic in his mind was growing stronger, darker, and Harry could have raised his hand and pointed through the walls at Riddle's exact position. Harry hadn't known having a thread of Riddle's magic with him would do that, not for sure.

And he would have disagreed about the words, but in his case, it was true. He had a choice as to whether the words could harm him or not, and he chose to lean back in his chair and choke a little and let them and the pain they caused slide away.

"I'm not thinking about betraying it," Harry whispered.

"What's that? I couldn't hear you, Potter." Malfoy's hand crashed down on his desk again, the way it had last time, and Harry found himself jumping without having planned on it. It seemed his lower level of Occlumency wouldn't let him completely control his physical reactions.

"I'm not thinking about betraying it," Harry said, and closed his eyes, and shivered. It was easy to say what he had to say next, because he had believed it for so long. "I—I know that you're above me, and I—I didn't deserve to have you touch me. I know that you—"

"I could destroy what kind of life you have right now," Malfoy murmured, and his eyes were glinting with enjoyment when Harry looked up. "All it would take is a few of those pictures in the Daily Prophet. Skeeter would oblige me. She's always looking to stir up outrage against your father since he helped pass those laws against illegal Animagi. And how would you family look at you when they see you oiled up and glistening like that, Potter? At the very least, they aren't ever going to forget."

This wasn't a danger Harry had foreseen. He felt himself gripping the edges of his chair, his breath coming faster and faster. Even his Occlumency shields were buckling under the strain. This wasn't old memories, wasn't something he knew had already happened and couldn't change. This was happening now. It could change.

Malfoy's mocking laughter filled the office.

And Riddle struck.

The thread of his magic in Harry's mind had let him feel the intensity of Harry's emotions, although not exactly what they were. And now they were flaring and fluctuating wildly, not in the way they should have if Harry was still maintaining strict control of them with his Occlumency.

Time. The original plan had been for Tom to wait out of sight, in an office down the corridor that was hardly ever used, and only enter when Malfoy was getting ready to leave, so that he was confident he had subdued Harry and wouldn't be on his guard. But Tom couldn't leave Harry to suffer like this.

I do not think I can ever leave him to suffer again.

Tom glided out of the office, his magic rising up around him, the Legilimency tendrils that Harry could resist but almost no one else could reaching out and snapping at the air. He chuckled as he felt Harry's emotions calm down. It seemed that part of Harry recognized the nearness of Tom's magic as promoting safety.

Malfoy would not, probably wouldn't even be aware of it until it was too late.

Tom spun his power as thick as chains, and then knocked open the door of Harry's office, which was standing half-ajar.

Malfoy flung himself around to face Tom. His hand had darted into his robe, but not after a wand holster. Tom paused, simply to see what would happen, and Malfoy took out what looked like a fat sheaf of photographs.

He brought them into the Ministry—he dared—

Tom swept the chains of his magic into Malfoy's mind, and made the ends of them spiked. Malfoy screamed, a choked-off sound that ended with him falling to the floor, only escaping senselessness because Tom willed him to remain alert to what was happening around him.

Know that I hate you, Tom whispered as he cracked open Malfoy's defenses and poured through his mind, dragging out every scrap of information, memory, emotion, and thought related to the photographs. Know that I despise you and suffer my contempt that is worse than anything you ever felt for Harry.

Malfoy screamed soundlessly, mouth open. Tom raked out the knowledge with a similar tactic to the one he had used to send his Legilimency through the willing fissures in Harry's mind when he was absorbing the memories of what Malfoy had done, but this time, he didn't bother being gentle.

He meant to send the pictures to Rita Skeeter. He meant to pass them out to people in the Ministry today.

Tom doubted the plan would have worked the way Malfoy had thought; people were more likely to be disgusted by the person passing out the pictures than the subject of them. But Malfoy was convinced they would have worked, and perhaps some people would have laughed or shied away from meeting Harry's eyes.

For that, Tom gave his mind another sharp rake as he withdrew. Malfoy screamed again, this time with some sound behind it that Tom let him make, and collapsed.

"You know where all of them are?" Harry whispered.

Tom nodded and bent down to gather the pile of photos that Malfoy had slipped out of his pocket. He incinerated them without looking at them, and felt Harry's relaxation in the moments before Harry bore down hard on the Legilimency tendril still in his mind, crushing it out of existence.

"He made copies," Tom said. "Not many. Nott has some, some are at Malfoy Manor, and some are in an office hidden in the Ministry. The ones I just burned were all the rest." He bared his teeth. "I haven't touched him other than to pry all the memories out of him and make sure I didn't miss anything. He's all yours."

"What?" Harry blinked and stared at him.

Tom edged closer, unable to help himself. Harry didn't withdraw, and Tom's voice dropped to a croon. "What we discussed? Imprisoning him in his worst memory for seven years?"

"I—yeah, but—"

I didn't think it would be today.

Tom could hear that thought without the benefit of his Legilimency. They had only planned to trap Malfoy and get the knowledge of the photographs from him today, then Obliviate him—or use Tom's more high-powered version, which would trap the memories behind a barrier Malfoy would never notice—and send him on his way. The vengeance Harry wanted to take, that he still hesitated to take, would need some more time to marinate, Tom had thought.

He looked at Harry and said gently, "I can still do what we planned on. Take the memory from him, and leave the rest of his mind intact. It depends on what you want to do."

Harry closed his eyes, and Tom had no idea what fluid shifting of his Occlumency barriers was going on. Maybe Harry was pondering the effects of his vengeance if he did take it now. Tom stood helpfully by and waited with a patience he had never known for the outcome.

Then again, Harry was worth his patience when no one else was.

Harry stared at Malfoy, and part of him said, If I'm a good person, I can't take that kind of vengeance.

But he'd had year after year when no one cared that he was a good person. They just argued with him about typos, or disregarded him altogether, or hovered helpless to help him, the way his parents had.

Had Harry even been a good person? Could he have been if he never did anything, just stayed locked behind his mental shields and plodded through his life, as neutral as a stick?

Harry licked his lips. He knew what he wanted to do. And he also knew that he could keep himself from feeling any stab from his conscience, if he wanted to. He glanced at Riddle, the only one in the room who might be able to hold him back because of fear of judgment.

Instead, Riddle's eyes were glinting and fastened on him. That possessive desire shone all over him, like a coating to his skin instead of just emotions or thoughts in his mind. Harry knew from the tendril he'd just removed from his mind how Riddle felt about him.

Blinding, fervent want. Desire to protect at all costs. Fury on his behalf. No concern with whether Harry was a good person, but concern as to whether he would manage to reclaim what Malfoy had stolen from him.

Harry's eyes fell to the ashes on the floor. Malfoy had brought pictures with him.

Why?

To pass out to people. That's the only possible answer.

And Harry shifted the barriers to let the hatred and rage through. Suddenly he was shaking, and Riddle was taking a long step forwards, his eyes wide and alert, one hand rising.

"I'm all right," Harry said, and made it so. "Just—felt what I was really feeling about him for the first time in a long time."

Riddle settled back, head tilted. Harry looked at Malfoy sprawled motionless on the floor and stood up.

He stole seven years of my goddamn life.

Time to steal some of his.