Harry's body felt hollowed, as though there was now only a void where her heart and soul should be. She didn't feel anything as she shuffled through Hogwarts' empty corridors aimlessly. She was still completely in shock by what she'd just learned.
Minister Riddle had magically created Harry to be a parselmouth. Or something.
Riddle was behind Harry's current predicament in more ways than Harry could ever have imagined.
And the strangest thing about the whole confrontation had been that Riddle seemed so proud of his achievements. He'd looked as though he expected Harry to praise him for his efforts. Harry had merely mumbled some nonsense tokens of agreements before excusing herself since it was already well past curfew.
It only now dawned on Harry that there was something wrong with Riddle. That the man fundamentally lacked some very basic human traits. He'd honestly and genuinely hadn't seemed to expect Harry to be upset by anything he'd said. Like he couldn't even imagine it.
For all that Riddle was an incredibly intelligent and powerful man, he somehow seemed to be clueless when it came to navigating common human emotions, in both himself and in others.
Harry didn't realize she'd wandered to Regulus and Severus' quarters until she knocked on their door.
"Harriet?" Regulus looked her up and down when he opened the door before waving her inside quickly. "What happened? You look as pale as a corpse."
Without saying a word, Harry sat down on the sofa and buried her face in her hands. She felt like crying, but she was too empty inside for tears to come.
"What's Riddle done now that made you once again despair over your future?" Severus asked with his usual tact when it came to teenage girls and their daily relationship dramatics.
"He cursed me," Harry muttered, face still pressed against her palms, shoulders shaking.
"Seeing as he's teaching you how to duel that shouldn't come as a surprise," Severus drawled as he poured them all cups of tea from a pot quickly delivered by a house-elf.
"No," Harry sighed, finally looking up at her two uncles. "I mean, he modified a blood curse and basically cursed me through his own blood to become a parselmouth so he could marry one."
Regulus tilted his head as he took that information in. "That is quite ingenious, when you think about it."
"Really?" Harry snapped, glaring at the man's audacity to not take her suffering seriously.
Regulus honestly seemed puzzled as he stared at Harry. "Harriet, you already knew something had awakened the ancient talent of parseltongue in you. Now you simply know what it was that did so."
Harry opened and closed her mouth a few times as she let Regulus' words sink in. "No, no, it's not that simple," she finally said, jaws clenched as the emptiness inside of her was finally replaced with fiery anger. "He purposefully ruined my life, don't you get that?"
"Not really, no," Severus said, leaning back in his seat to sip his cup. "What do you expect to happen to him now that he's told you this?"
"I want him to pay for what he's done!" Harry said as she stared at Severus in disbelief. "He should be arrested for cursing me. Blood curses are illegal, aren't they?"
"They are," Regulus agreed quietly while giving Harry a challenging look. "But Riddle didn't curse you with a real blood curse. He modified it, very cleverly, to awaken ancient magic in your bloodline. That's not something anyone is going to arrest him for, especially when it turns out the curse hasn't affected you negatively in any other way."
Harry was more than a little tempted to throw her teacup at Regulus' head to satisfy the impotent rage she felt grow inside of her. How could they be so calm about this when her whole life was falling apart?
"I thought you were getting along with him now?" Severus drawled while giving Harry a critical look. "Are you really going to let one little bump in the road ruin all the progress you two had made together?"
"A little bump in the road?" Harry sputtered in quiet outrage, her teacup spilling hot liquid across her shaking hands.
"Look, we understand Riddle can be a difficult man to work with," Regulus said before Harry could spontaneously combust. "And we also understand better than most that some of Riddle's tactics can be unsavoury to say the least."
"There's a reason we decided to become Hogwarts professors after we quit our jobs at the Ministry," Severus said in a quiet voice, dark eyes full of burning intensity. Harry had almost forgotten that Regulus and Severus had briefly worked for Riddle right out of Hogwarts. As far as she could remember they'd always been professors at Hogwarts.
"We couldn't see eye to eye with Riddle on many things, so we simply removed ourselves from the situation," Regulus said with an elegant shrug while offering Harry a practised smile that displayed nothing but pleasantness.
"But you do not have this luxury of simply changing future spouses," Severus pointed out, much to Harry's silent frustration. "So it remains in your own best interest to make this work between you both."
Regulus nodded his agreement. "I understand that at your age it comes almost natural to divide anything and everything into good and bad, black and white. But when you grow older you'll understand that there are many more options than simply two extremes at opposite ends. And Riddle is a person who lives entirely in the middle parts of life's spectrum."
"Riddle creating a curse that awakens an ancient magical talent in a bloodline distantly related to him is exactly such a thing that is neither good nor bad, but simply something that happened." Severus narrowed his eyes, corners of his mouth quirking up just a bit. "I do understand that you'd like some payback. I can teach you a spell that might let you win a duel for once."
Harry perked up despite her fuming determination to despise her uncles for not going along with her misery. "Yeah, all right. What's the spell?"
Severus took the next hour to teach her the spell and a strategy on how to use it to hopefully catch Riddle unawares enough so Harry could disarm him for the first time ever. That would then give Harry an opportunity to tell him exactly how she felt about him.
During the next week Harry let herself get swept up by Hermione's frenzied revisions for their upcoming OWLs. Harry still spent plenty of time, usually in the evenings while she lay curled in bed with a book, staring at the pages without seeing a single word, contemplating Riddle and his unsavoury schemes. Perhaps Regulus and Severus were right that the revelation of Riddle's curse wasn't as big of a deal as she initially thought it was. It didn't change anything in her current situation. But that didn't mean that Harry wasn't pissed off, because she was. Even if there was very little she could change about the situation, she still wanted Riddle to understand why and how he'd upset her.
The next Thursday came around quickly enough and Harry spent most of the day doing various breathing exercises to keep herself calm for her upcoming confrontation.
She kept an iron handle on her nerves, greeting Riddle in her usual way as he once again flew them down into the Chamber of Secrets. While Harry's flying was improving, it still wasn't good enough to fly through narrow tunnels on her own.
"Are you looking forwards to our duel?" Riddle asked pleasantly as he unhooked his cloak and dropped it on the floor near the wall.
"Oh yes," Harry breathed, wand gripped tightly in her hand. She kept going over Severus' instructions in her mind again and again.
The duel started as usual, with Riddle going easy on Harry so she could show off what sort of new spells she'd learned that week. Harry cast a stream of poisonous bubbles at Riddle, which he waved away with his wand, followed by a cloud of sharp icicles that flew at Riddle's head. Just as Riddle raised his wand to transfigure the icicles into sunflowers, Harry flicked her wand and thought, Levicorpus. The colourless spell took Riddle by surprise and as soon as he was yanked up into the air, feet first, Harry cast a silent Expelliarmus.
Riddle's wand sailed through the air and Harry caught it with ease.
Much to her surprise, Riddle started laughing, a deep, genuinely amused sound. "Well done, my dearest Harriet."
Harry stared at Riddle as he hung suspended up in the air, black hair fanning out, shirt falling down and exposing his skin, revealing a thin trail of black hairs that ran from his navel down into this trousers and that was somehow incredibly distracting to look at.
Gritting her teeth, Harry shook herself. She refused to feel any arousal or lust at that moment, no matter how much seeing Riddle's naked skin intrigued her. "I could hurt you," she said, her own wand gripped in her right hand and Riddle's in her left. She'd be able to cast with both if she needed to, she was sure of it. "For what you did to me. I could make you pay in the most painful way."
Riddle's face lost all traces of amusement as he stared at Harry with a frown. "What has you so upset suddenly?"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Harry snarled, staring at Riddle in disbelief. For a moment she thought he might be putting up an act, pretending to be clueless. But she knew Riddle a bit now, know what he looked and sounded like when he acted for other people. And right now, Harry was absolutely certain, Riddle was being honest. "You told me last week that you cursed me and my family. That you manipulated the entire bloody universe to pop me out just so you'd have a perfect wife to marry."
Riddle waved his hand and ended the spell, twisting his body so he landed on his feet, because of course the man was really good at wandless magic. He was good at pretty much everything else, except being a functional human being. "I told you that because I thought it would make you understand that we were meant for each other," Riddle whispered as he took a few hesitant steps towards Harry. "I thought it would help you accept our relationship."
Harry raised both wands, aiming them at Riddle's chest. Hermione had once claimed that Ron had the emotional range of a teaspoon. She wasn't wrong, of course, but compared to Riddle, Ron was an utter empath when it came to understanding basic human emotions.
Expecting Riddle to understand Harry's distress was like expecting a wall or a tree to empathise with a person's suffering. They were simply incapable of it.
Harry understood now that no matter how angry she was at Riddle or how long she'd try to explain that to him, he was simply incapable of understanding how utterly creepy he was with his possessive statements.
"It was creepy," Harry finally said, hoping against hope Riddle might understand that much. "It made me feel like I'm just some thing for you to play with, to take ownership of." Harry's lips trembled, much to her chagrin. "I hate it that you made me feel that way."
"Harriet, no." Riddle stood in front of her at once, uncaring about the wands pressed against his body. "You are the most precious person in the world to me, you must understand that." Riddle briefly looked down with a frown. "This is all new to me, I must confess."
"How so?" Harry asked, curious to know where Riddle was going with that.
"I've never had a true relationship," Riddle said with a self-deprecating chuckle. "I've had dalliances and liaisons aplenty. But I've never had one single person be the sole centre of my attention and I honestly am unsure how to behave around you more often than not. But please know that I care for you more than I have for anyone else in my entire life."
Harry slowly closed her eyes. She was not immune to such powerful words, no matter how creepy Riddle might act from time to time. Harry had never been someone's sole centre of attention before. She had a loving family, certainly, but most of her parents were busy people who had little time for the children. And while Remus had done his best as the main caregiver, he was only one man and Harry had lots of siblings that needed lots of attention. So from an early age on Harry had understood that she was no one's priority, that she was expected to sacrifice parts of her happiness to make sure those around her were well taken care of.
Yet now there was a man, a very powerful and handsome man, who confessed to seeing Harry as the most important person in his world.
This was a heady feeling, tantalizing yet also suffocating, the more Harry let it wash over her.
She took a step back from Riddle, who was still gazing down at her with fear in his eyes, as though he was genuinely worried Harry might dissolve into nothing right there and then.
"My OWLs are coming up," Harry whispered, staring down at the floor while she handed Riddle his wand back. "I need to concentrate on school for the next two weeks, and after that I'd like to spend some time with my family."
"Of course," Riddle murmured, giving Harry a dubious look.
Inhaling a deep breath, Harry managed a brave smile as she met Riddle's gaze. "Write to me and we'll set up a meeting a few weeks into the summer holiday, if that's all right?" That would give Harry some time to let all the new discoveries she'd made about herself and Riddle sink in. She'd be able to think of some way to deal with this, because she knew, no matter how much she wanted the situation to be different, she was going to be stuck with Riddle for the rest of her life one way or the other. She needed to find a way to deal with him and his inability to act like a person with a complete range of emotions.
"I understand." Before Harry could protest, Riddle bent down and brushed a soft kiss against Harry's cheek. "Congratulations on winning our duel. You truly have improved dramatically so far."
Before she could stop herself, Harry inhaled Riddle scent. It was a mixture of masculine musk and some cologne that was dominated by sandalwood and hints of citrus. That scent buried itself in Harry's mind so deeply she knew she'd recognize it for the rest of her life as being uniquely Riddle's.
"Good luck with your OWLs," Riddle whispered as he stepped back, a soft smile on his face that Harry quickly looked away from. The last thing she needed right now was for whatever tentative feelings she had for Riddle to grow into genuine feelings. She could not let her decision-making get influenced by lust or love, no matter how attractive of a man Riddle was.
Harry threw herself into her schoolwork, sticking to Hermione's side as they studied day and night the last few days before their OWLs. And while Harry was nervous, she was quite sure she'd pass all her OWLs, though she wasn't sure what her exact scores would be.
Sitting exams day after day was exhausting in ways that Harry hadn't yet experienced. It did keep her mind from wandering towards any topic concerning Riddle for a week or two, which was exactly what Harry needed to create some distance between them.
After the schoolyear ended Harry was relieved to find herself on her way back home. The past year had been one of many drastic changes, in her personal life as well as in their society. At the start of the year she'd been prepared to put together a coven, and now at the end of the year she was trying to come to terms with her relationship with the most powerful man in Britain who for some reason lacked any real insight into the emotional lives of human beings.
The first few days back home were filled with the usual chaos of Harry constantly getting interrogated about Hogwarts by her younger siblings. She didn't mind at all, since she had missed the little monsters, no matter that they usually ended up annoying her sooner rather than later.
It wasn't until a week into the holidays that she finally had the opportunity to tell her parents about the blood curse that Riddle had cast. James, Lily, Sirius and Remus were all home and they had a loud dinner together in which Harry was made to describe every single Quidditch match she'd flown in that year in detail for her dad and Sirius.
Afterwards, as they gathered in the sitting room, Remus put the youngest kids to bed, leaving Rigel, Dennis and Hyacinth to spend time with the adults. Harry cleared her throat and said, "I know why I'm a parselmouth."
James blinked in confusion while Sirius looked at her with a frown.
"Riddle modified a blood curse and cast it on his own bloodline to create a new parselmouth. Apparently we're distantly related through the Peverells, so the curse found me and now I can speak snake." Harry shrugged, chest full of nervous flutters as she looked between her parents.
"That pillock!" Sirius snarled, face twisted with outrage.
"A blood curse?" James demanded, jumping up from his chair. "That's illegal. We could arrest him for that."
"Good luck with that," Lily muttered, sipping a glass of wine. "Those charges will never stick since Harriet wasn't hurt by the curse."
"You're not marrying him, Harry," James ranted as he paced in front of the massive fireplace. "I've never liked the idea of you marrying a man old enough to be your grandfather, but this does it."
"I can't break the contract," Harry said with a tired sigh. She'd thought long and hard about ways to get out of the agreement with Riddle over the last few months. Even Hermione had spent hours and hours researching the issue and finding nothing.
"The contract would be voided if he died," James said in a flat tone while sharing a pointed look with Sirius.
"You want to do him in?" Sirius asked in a hesitant tone, though he didn't seem adverse to the idea as he sat up a little straighter.
"You want to kill someone?" Dennis asked in a small voice as he looked between his parents.
"You lot, go to bed," Sirius said, gesturing wildly at the three younger kids.
"You can't make us," Rigel said with a defiant glare, arms crossed.
"Go, now!" Sirius barked, grey eyes piercing as he pointed from his son to the door. That was the moment Remus returned and he only needed a few seconds to understand whatever was going on shouldn't include three young children. Within a few minutes only Harry remained aside from her parents.
"We need a plan," James said, squaring his shoulders as he stood in front of the fireplace, a dark frown on his face.
"So now you're prepared to act," Lily muttered, sipping more wine. "When Harriet's forced to marry."
"What?" James asked in confusion, staring at Lily with wide eyes.
Lily's green eyes were blazing as she looked up at James. "You're willing to murder Riddle for Harriet, but when I was forced to marry a whole bunch of men against my will you did nothing, you bloody coward!"
James' face lost all colour while Sirius looked at Lily as though he'd never seen her before.
Lily slowly stood up, her entire body shaking. "You were all too happy to whore me out to your friends."
"Wait a minute," Sirius said with an affronted look. "You wanted this."
"I never had a choice!" Lily yelled, face blotched red, hand trembling as she gestured around the room. "I had to marry or I'd end up in Azkaban for at least a decade. I didn't even have a choice to turn down Hogwarts' invitation, because if muggles argue against letting their children attend, they're simply charmed with a compulsion until they give in. The Ministry isn't about to lose any precious girls, after all."
"Lily," James said softly, voice tight with repressed pain. "Why did you never say anything?"
"What could I have said?" Lily reached up a hand and grabbed hold of a chuck of her own hair in a sign of complete frustration. "That I didn't want this? That you lot were the least offensive option? That I had to take lust potions to make sleeping with your precious best friends bearable?"
"What?" James seemed to shrink where he stood.
"That's how Severus made his fortune. By inventing a lust potion that looks and smells very much like Pepper-up," Lily said, much to Harry's surprise. She hadn't known Severus had a fortune, let alone that he'd made it by inventing a potion. "That way when women are forced to have sex with the husbands they never wanted to marry, they can pretend to feel a bit under the weather and take a lust potion that at least makes the act physically pleasurable, no matter how much they despise it."
"You should have said," James muttered while Sirius kept rubbing his hand across his face harshly.
"You could have fucking asked how I felt about any of this!" Lily inhaled a few deep breaths, though they didn't seem to do much of anything to calm her down. "I never wanted this and for years and years I couldn't change it. So I tried to make the best of it, no matter how I really felt." Lily tilted her chin up as he gave James a defiant stare. "But that's changed now that the Coven system as been abolished. I can finally have my freedom to do what I want with my life. And what I want is a divorce. From all of you." And with that, Lily marched out the door.
Harry sat frozen on the sofa, her chest filled with the cold realization that her family had just completely disintegrated. That the happy, loving home she'd grown up in had, all this time, housed a woman who was forced to have sex with men she hadn't even wanted to marry. Glancing up, Harry saw James wiping tears from his eyes with a rough hand while Sirius stood beside him, a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"We'll talk to her," Sirius whispered while James seemed at a loss for words. "We'll make her see sense."
"You'll do no such thing," Harry heard herself say before she could stop it. "Just leave her alone." And then she realized something that she needed to make clear to her parents. "And I don't want you to kill Riddle. I'd much rather marry him than see him dead."
And that was the truth of it, now that Harry was completely honest with herself. For all that Riddle was a dominating, complicated, uncaring creep most of the time, Harry genuinely had come to like him. She certainly enjoyed spending time with him. And while the feelings she had for him weren't yet anything close to love, Harry was sure that they could grow into it given enough time. So the simple truth was that Harry liked Riddle enough that she didn't want him to die.
"Harry," James said with a trembling voice, eyes bloodshot as he gave her a pleading look. "We can help you, I promise."
"Can you?" Harry asked as she got up from the couch, legs unsteady from the rush of adrenaline that Lily's rant had caused. "You've never been there for me in the past, so I'd much rather deal with my own problems like I'm used to doing." And the moment she said it, Harry realized those were words that she'd needed to say for a very long time.
All her life Harry had gone along with what others wanted of her. She was prepared to do her duty, like the law demanded, and she was capable of looking after herself, like her family had forced her to do.
And now she didn't want their interference anymore. Whatever was there between her and Riddle was hers to deal with, no matter the outcome.
Harry spent the next few days comforting her younger siblings who were all extremely hurt and confused by the sudden change in their family. Lily gathered her belongings and moved to a small, muggle apartment near St Mungo's, and Harry really couldn't blame her. She also couldn't really say that she missed her mother since Lily hadn't ever been there all that much to begin with.
It soon became clear that the Potter household wasn't the only one to break down now that the Coven system was abolished. Fred and George were apparently heartbroken because Angelina Johnson ended her engagement with them and Lee Jordan, saying she wanted to focus on Quidditch for the next few years. Harry couldn't blame her in the slightest.
Ron lost two parents when Rowan Parkinson and Michael Whittaker divorced his mother and decided to marry each other. Neville's family suffered a similar fate, with Walter Simmons and Reginald Bones divorcing Alice and marrying each other. At least they still kept living at Longbottom Manor as Walter looked after the children full-time.
The Daily Prophet was full of articles decrying the recent avalanche of divorces the Ministry had to deal with. Riddle gave a few interviews in which he urged the witches of Britain to think long and hard before divorcing the wizards who'd been so good and loyal to them over the years. Harry shook her head as she read his words. Poor Riddle really did not understand how much the witches of Britain had suffered under the Coven system, did he?
And that's when Harry realized what she needed to do to help not just herself, but Riddle and the magical world. Riddle was a genius and one of the most powerful wizards that ever lived, but it became more and more obvious that Riddle simply didn't understand humans enough to truly come up with ways to improve their society that would work for everyone.
Riddle needed someone at his side to point out his mistakes.
Harry sent him a letter asking him for a meeting and the next day she flooed to Hogsmeade where Riddle waited for her.
"Hold on," Riddle said, offering Harry his hand. "I'll apparate us."
Harry clasped her much smaller hand in his and tried to relax as Riddle transported them to a windy shoreline beside a white cottage with a slate roof.
"Where are we?" Harry said as she glanced around curiously. The terrain looked rugged, with lots of windswept grass and bushes but without a tree in sight.
"Northern Scotland," Riddle said, still holding on to Harry's hand. "This is my holiday home. I like to come here when I need some time away from it all. It's especially lovely in the winter with snow on the ground."
"It's really nice," Harry said honestly. She could imagine herself there, with Riddle, just taking long walks and sharing hot cups of tea in front of a blazing fireplace. But those fantasies had to wait. She had a new deal to make. "I've been doing some thinking."
"Do share." Riddle gave her hand an affectionate squeeze.
"I'm willing to accept both sex magic and the no divorce clause in our marriage contract," Harry said, looking up at Riddle with narrowed eyes. "But in return I want to rule Britain by your side as equal partners."