Year Six: Chapter Twenty-One
Ch.20 Summary: Tom and Luna have nice sex, Tom meets Severus's SO (a prostitute with mad transfiguration skillz), Tom teaches his club about sex-based rituals and debunks some myths, Tom has less nice more possessive sex with Ginny as part of ritual to correct his eyesight.
Ch.21 Start
As he'd been warned, Dumbledore summoned him just a couple days before their spring break was due to start.
"Come in, Tom," came the Headmaster's reply when Tom knocked.
Tom's breath caught, and fear doused him in chills for half a second. He forced himself to relax, reminding himself he'd suspected Dumbledore knew already. This was merely confirmation, though why the man chose now to reveal his knowledge… He entered and sat, then stiffened. Dumbledore had his hands on his desk, and for the first time all year, no gloves covered them. Or rather, hid them, Tom realized. He clenched his teeth at the sight of the withered hand and the blackened, shriveled arm hidden by the Headmaster's voluminous robes. "You're dying," he said flatly, feeling sick. All this time, all these years, and now he'd never get the pleasure of murdering the old man properly.
"Yes, I am rather," Dumbledore said, examining the hand as though he'd not seen it before. "It's quite exquisitely painful." He set his hand back on his desk and smiled easily at Tom.
"How long have you known about me?" Tom asked, nearly certain of the answer and simply seeking to fulfill the masochistic need to have it confirmed.
"I've suspected since the very beginning," Dumbledore said, "And I've known for nearly as long. Haven't you noticed that I've avoided calling you by name?"
Tom clenched his fists. No, he hadn't. "So Luna was right. You decided that as long as I still filled the role, it didn't really matter that a Dementor ate the real Harry Potter." He took petty satisfaction at the small flinch his description of Potter's fate merited.
"Oh, no," Dumbledore disagreed. "I certainly care about that, but there's very little I can do about it. If removing you would have brought back Harry, I'd have done so in an instant. Honestly, I never expected you to agree to find a way to bring Harry back. It hadn't occurred to me that such a feat might be possible, you see, but if anyone can do it, it would be you." At Tom's snort, the Headmaster smiled sadly. "I've never denied your brilliance, Tom."
"So why call me in here?" Tom asked bitterly, wondering just how Severus had managed to work around his oaths to tell Dumbledore so much. "Just rubbing it in that I lost?"
Dumbledore regarded him calmly, blue eyes twinkling. "Do you know, Tom, that I too once pursued immortality?" He withdrew two objects from his desk. A wand and a stone. "While I don't deny your brilliance, I think you'll agree that in a fight against yourself, it would be beneficial to have an advantage."
Tom's eyes widened, and he had to clasp his hands together to prevent himself from reflexively reaching out to grab them. "The Hallows," he breathed, eyeing them greedily.
"Yes. Though that is not the only advantage I sought to give you. Your bonds have already saved you once, have they not?"
It took a minute for Tom to realize what Dumbledore was saying, but once he did, his gaze shot up to meet Dumbledore's, his magic flaring as anger coursed through him. Of course he had to tarnish even this. "You -"
"I gave the book to Sirius and suggested it, though I admit you've far surpassed my highest hopes for those bonds. I truly didn't believe you capable of the kind of trust necessary for the second stage. I had hoped only that the first stage might be enough to restrain your excesses." Dumbledore bowed his head. "I apologize, my boy. It seems I have done you, and indeed the entire world, a grave disservice by underestimating you. I regret that I will not live long enough to see you achieve the third stage, but I no longer doubt your ability to do so."
The words froze him, and Tom glanced back at Dumbledore's hand, then at the Elder Wand. A ringing had started in his ears, and he felt the eerie almost-calm that arose from being completely overwhelmed by his emotions. He raised his Occlumency barriers until he could feel nothing and asked flatly, "Do I need to kill you or merely disarm you?"
"Does it matter?" Dumbledore asked rhetorically. "Madam Pomfrey can confirm that I was already dying, and I have instructed the Order that you are to replace me as their leader in the event of my passing."
"I hate you," Tom hissed. If he could feel anything right now, he'd be shaking.
Dumbledore inclined his head, accepting the words. "I know. And now, my boy, if you would?"
This moment, the one he'd been waiting for since he was eleven and trembling after meeting his first adult wizard, had come… and it'd been thoroughly ruined. Dumbledore wasn't begging, and Tom could think of no threats to bring about the despair he wanted to see in those eyes. Anything he might say would either not matter enough or would be false, and Dumbledore would see through the lies. He'd spent the entirety of the past two years believing, like an utter idiot, that he'd ever had any control, when in reality, he'd been barely more than a puppet. His eyes burned, his throat seized up, and his vision blurred, and Tom spat a hoarse, "Fuck you" before lifting his wand and adding, "Avada Kedavra."
The old man slumped over his desk, and Tom felt his soul shudder, but it remained as whole as it had been since he'd awoken - proof that even he couldn't consider this a proper murder - so instead of having to mend the tear he'd been prepared for, he just sat there and stared at his old Headmaster until at last he picked up the stone and the wand and conjured up Luna's patronus and told it, "Dumbledore is dead," and sent it on its way to the Hospital Wing. Then he sat back down and curled up as he hadn't in years and hid his face in his knees until he felt the real Luna's arms around him.
It wasn't until much later, after Madam Pomfrey had come and, with a knowing look, sent him away with the suggestion that he not reveal his presence at the time of the Headmaster's death, that he conjured a second patronus. He sent the owl patronus to Voldemort and hoped it would ruin the man's year to be told that Dumbledore was dead, and that he'd died content.
That night, Tom didn't even go to Gryffindor Tower. He instead went to the Room of Requirement to lick his wounds in solitude, and the Room respected his wishes and refused entry to anyone else.
The announcement of Dumbledore's death took place at breakfast the next morning, stunning the entire school. Professor McGonagall, the one to make the announcement, looked like she'd been crying all night, and most of her colleagues were no better off. Severus looked particularly pale, and when Tom stumbled in, exhausted after a long night with no sleep, he considered that Severus likely thought he'd be killed for finding a way around his oath.
It sounded like something Tom would do, but he couldn't work up the energy to care enough to do it. He just closed his eyes and let the other students assume his appearance was down to grief. He was mourning, certainly, but he was mourning the method of Dumbledore's death and the satisfaction the man had denied him.
Ron was, to his surprise, the first to approach him. The boy sat down beside him, swallowed, and said, "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Tom asked in a monotone.
Ron considered him, lips twisted in a sympathetic look that only hurt Tom more. "I really want Voldemort dead," he said carefully. "But before he dies, I want him to realize exactly how wrong he was. I want him to regret everything he's done and feel the full horror of his actions." Ron grimaced. "But he won't, and I know that. The way it makes me feel, knowing I'll never get the satisfaction of seeing him realizing everything he's done wrong… I imagine it's only a fraction of what you're feeling, since you had every reason to think you'd get that chance, and it obviously didn't happen."
Tom blinked slowly, studying Ron. He didn't think Ron was considering that the person he was speaking to had, essentially, done at least some of that. If nothing else, Tom was appropriately horrified by Voldemort's insanity. At last he gave a jerky nod, deciding to assume Ron meant well. "Thank you," he croaked.
Ron gave him a weak smile. "I asked 'Mione and Ginny to hang back. They're not… They might not be as innocent as they were, but they still don't get this kind of thing."
Tom nodded. He didn't expect they would. It wasn't a particularly Gryffindorish feeling, and he was surprised Ron understood as well as he did. "We're being sent home for break early, aren't we," he commented, changing the subject.
"Yeah."
Tom sighed. He needed to lead the Order now, not mope around. Voldemort would simply have to suffer more to make up for the lack of enjoyment Dumbledore's death provided him. They were approaching the endgame now. That meant he also needed to prepare for Potter's return. "What should I tell Black?" he wondered absently.
"About?" Ron asked, looking completely baffled by the turn the conversation had taken.
"I'm going to bring Potter back into a different body. I can make it look somewhat like this one, but it won't be identical, and Potter will no doubt want his old relationships back." No matter how impossible it would be to have the same relationships with people after disappearing for a couple years.
After several seconds, Ron nodded to himself and said, "What if you tell him the truth? Or something like the truth at least, so he knows his actual godson will be in a new body? He offered to adopt you, right? If he adopts Harry instead, he can pretend Harry's his kid he just recently found out about. I think that'd make Harry happiest too. He's always wanted a family." Ron swallowed. "I wish I'd realized how important that is sooner."
That was a better suggestion than Tom had expected. He considered it. He didn't think it would be a good idea to admit that Harry was inside a Dementor at the moment, because Sirius could, failing to believe in Tom's ability to rescue the boy's soul, decide that killing Tom was the best course of action. If he pretended that the experience with the Dementor had only awoken the horcrux though…
The ride home was quiet. Both Hermione and Ginny were in shock at learning Dumbledore had died. They no doubt knew Tom had been involved, but they weren't sure what to make of his reaction. Luna brought Astoria (who apparently now came with one Draco Malfoy attached), and the three spoke quietly together, letting Tom stare out the window in peace.
Tom opened the door to Grimmauld Place, grateful that he'd have a day or two alone with Sirius and Lupin before the others arrived. "Pup!" Sirius exclaimed, pulling him into a crushing embrace the moment he set his trunk down. Tom grimaced and waited for the affection to be over. He considered his course of action. This conversation was going to be painful. Did he really want to have it? He envisioned waiting until after he'd given Potter Voldemort's old body. "Hi Sirius," he'd say. "By the way, I'm actually Tom Riddle, one of Voldemort's horcruxes, and this here is your godson, who might be a little damaged because he's been sitting inside a Dementor for a couple years now."
Yeah, no. Tom sighed. "Hey, Sirius? I wanted to talk to you about the - about the adoption. That you offered," Tom said once Sirius was an acceptable distance away.
Thankfully, Sirius could read nonverbal cues, even if he often chose not to, so the man sobered. "Alright, come on." Tom followed Sirius to a room he'd never even noticed before and stared around, feeling the wards surrounding it with no small amount of awe. He could have searched this house for years without ever noticing this office.
"Now, then," Sirius said as he settled back into a large, ridiculously soft-looking chair. "What did you want to talk about specifically?"
Tom took a breath, trying to settle his pounding heart. "Have you ever heard of the term 'horcrux?'"
Immediately the man tensed, his wand appearing from out of a sleeve. "Yes," Sirius said warily.
Time to see if he could sell this. "Well," he said, running a hand through his hair nervously, "It turns out that I'm one. I've been one since the night my parents…" He bit his lip. "I didn't know until this summer when the Dementors attacked. They, I don't know, woke it up or something, and since then, Tom's been inside me, talking to me." He made his voice quiver, dredging up every ounce of fear he could manage.
"Are you still yourself, pup?" Sirius asked, gaze intense. "Any lost time? Blackouts? Times when you're not in control of yourself?"
Tom shook his head. "No, not the first two. But.. Yeah. He.. He takes over. Sometimes." He looked down as though ashamed. "A lot. I… I can't stop him." Tom wondered about that. If Potter were still in this body – if this scenario were what had actually happened – would he be able to wrest control of the body from Potter? He thought so, but he was nonetheless glad he'd never have to find out.
Sirius released his breath in a woosh and gripped the arms of his chair. "Is he listening right now?"
Tom leaned back, dropping every inch of his Harry Potter persona and then some. "Of course," he drawled. "Do you think I'd have let Potter come tell you if I didn't approve of it?" He noted the way the knuckles gripping Sirius's wand whitened, and smirked. "You want to curse me? Go ahead, Black. Your godson's the one who'll feel it."
Sirius grit his teeth. "What do you want." His voice was flat, and Tom was surprised how much it hurt him to hear the hatred in the man's voice. This was necessary though.
"This body," Tom said as though it was obvious. He nearly laughed at the expression on Sirius's face. "Potter and I have come to an agreement. I will be acquiring him a different body. We're bringing this up now because I want you to adopt that body. I'll take his name and live out the rest of my life as The Boy Who Lived, and he can be Scion Black, an otherwise unremarkable boy who lives the completely ordinary life he's always wanted."
Sirius frowned. "And Harry's okay with this? I want to talk to him."
Tom rolled his eyes. "Obviously, he'd rather keep his own body, but he's surprisingly capable of compromise for a Gryffindor." He sneered the word Gryffindor as he'd seen Draco do many times.
He took a breath and forced himself back into the role of Harry Potter. Neither side of this act felt truly like him anymore, but it was as close to the truth as he thought safe to disclose to Sirius. "Please, Sirius," he said, dropping the cultured tones he'd struggled so hard to learn and maintain while in Slytherin. "I mean, I don't, you know, like it, exactly, but… Tom's right. I'm never going to be just Harry, and I can't keep living in the same body with him. It feels, sometimes, like I'm falling apart, and it scares me." He swallowed. "I think it scares him too." He feigned a wince, as though he'd made 'Tom' angry, and shook himself. "I want to do this, Sirius. I just want to know that you're okay with it too. Tom says he's going to use my blood to make the new body look more like me, but if he uses some of yours too it'll be… we'll be family." And he didn't have to try to hard to inject an awed tone at the idea of an actual family, because no matter their present, both Harry Potter and Tom Riddle had both, once upon a time, been orphan boys who wanted nothing more than to have some long-lost family member swoop in and save them.
Sirius looked stricken. Finally, he took a shuddering breath. "We're already family, kiddo. Always, no matter what." Then he shook himself in that doglike way of his. "Alright. I'll hold off on the adoption until we've got you your own new body." He chewed on his lip for a moment, then reached over and pulled Tom into a hug. "Thank you for telling me." With a deep breath, he added, "Can I talk to… Tom was it? again?"
Tom grimaced, but made the switch back to his 'Tom' persona. "What is it, Black?"
"Call me Sirius."
Tom raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
Sirius sighed. "Harry's my godson. If you're going to be Harry Potter…" He closed his eyes. "What are you planning to do about Voldemort? Does he know?"
Tom pursed his lips. He didn't understand what Sirius was getting at, talking about Harry being his godson, so he focused on the questions. "He is currently unaware, and I'd prefer he stay that way. I'm going to reverse our roles. He can be my anchor and stay sealed inside an inanimate object for the rest of eternity. That will leave an empty body conveniently made using Potter's blood. I expect that to make it fairly easy to stuff Potter's soul into it."
Sirius looked relieved for some reason. "Why are you going so far? What do you get out of giving Harry a new body?"
"It gets annoying listening to him," Tom said as though it were obvious. He hesitated, then added, "And I swore an oath to Hermione." That wasn't the exact content of the oath, but the result was the same.
Suddenly he found himself pulled into another hug and stiffened. "What are you doing?" he asked in a strangled voice.
The man shook his head and tightened his hold. Tom had the uncomfortable feeling the dog animagus was crying, if the shudders wracking through the man's body were any indication. He raised a hand, remembered he was still meant to be evil, and lowered it again, unsure what he should do. He ended up just sitting there, letting Sirius get it over with.
At last, Kreacher's voice saved him. "Bad Master wanted to know when the wolf got here."
Sirius pulled away, wiping at his eyes. "Right. Thanks, Kreacher." He looked at Tom, looking faintly abashed. "Sorry about that. Thank you for um, you know, not cursing me."
Tom waved the man off and went upstairs to his room, relieved to have that performance over. He'd hide out until the others were back, then resume his usual behavior and let Sirius make of it what he would.
Remus watched Harry walk up the stairs, then looked over to find Sirius watching the boy as well, but the dog animagus looked pale and shaky. "Siri?" Remus asked curiously.
"It's… come on," Sirius said. He led Remus into the same room Harry and he had just been in, then made sure the privacy wards were up before grabbing a half-full bottle of Firewhiskey and swallowing as much as he could manage in a single go.
Remus looked at him with first pity followed by disgust when the Black Lord belched out flames inches from his face. "Your talk went well then?" he asked wryly when Sirius at last set aside the bottle.
"He told me," Sirius said. He stared off into the distance, and Remus recognized the blank placidity Purebloods tried to teach their offspring to adopt at all times. Sirius never perfected it and only even tried when his emotions were too overpowering. Of all of them, Sirius had always been the most emotional, and he unfortunately also had the least ability to handle those emotions.
Remus sighed and dragged a hand down his face. He wasn't looking forward to hearing the answer, but he had to know. "Was Dumbledore right?" Dumbledore had come to first him and then, several months later, Sirius with a disturbing story. Supposedly, Harry was playing host to a portion of Voldemort's soul. While Lily's sacrifice had served to protect him for years, the encounter with the Dementor allowed the horcrux to break through that protection, and it was now slowly consuming Harry's soul.
His friend made a see-sawing sort of gesture and shrugged. "He admitted that he's a horcrux, but it doesn't seem like Harry's soul's getting eaten."
"And the horcrux is in control?" Remus pressed. "I taught Harry for a year, remember. That boy doesn't act like the Harry I taught."
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Do you really expect a sixteen-year-old to act like a thirteen-year-old?" He shook his head. "But yeah, that's not Harry. It's not Voldemort either though."
"Siri -"
"Remember when James and I pretended to have split personalities?" Sirius asked suddenly.
Remus blinked, then grimaced, remembering. "And you wouldn't stop, even after James called it quits. You kept up that act for a good three months."
Sirius gave him a shit-eating grin. "Yeah. That was pretty funny."
"That's a strange way to pronounce annoying," Remus commented idly.
Sobering, Sirius continued, "But that kid's trying to pull the same thing. He did a pretty good job really, but I'd bet you all three Marauder's Badges that I was talking to Tom the entire time."
"Tom?" He frowned.
"Yeah, Tom Riddle. And that's what I'm getting at. That's not Voldemort. It's not Harry, but it's not Him either. Voldemort hates being called by his real name, but that's what he called himself." Sirius gnawed at his lower lip, and Remus let him, content to wait until Sirius figured out what he wanted to say. "He says he swore an oath to give Harry his own body."
Remus's gaze sharpened. "An oath? To whom?"
"Hermione."
Remus nodded slowly. He'd have to check with her, but that was reassuring at least. Still… "And Dumbledore was sure we can't just remove him?" It wasn't really a question though. Dumbledore had been adamant that trying to remove Voldemort's soul by force would just kill Harry as well. Their leader hadn't thought there was any chance at all of getting Harry back. He'd thought the best they could hope for was for some amount of Harry's personality to bleed over into Voldemort. If the souls were separate though, and the shard possessing Harry was cooperating, that was a different story.
Sirius shook his head, bemused. "He could have kept pretending to be Harry. I've never said or done anything to suggest I'd even heard Dumbledore's suspicions, so he could have just kept on." He looked at Remus, and the look wasn't the sort of fanatical desperation he had when he was just trying to convince himself of something. Sirius was sure about this. "Harry's alive. I don't know what Tom's playing at with this fake split personality business, but he really means to give me back my godson."
"He's stealing your godson's body," Remus pointed out, feeling it necessary to play Devil's advocate, even if this was a better situation than either of them had been able to hope for since that dreadful day Dumbledore told them his suspicions.
Sirius shrugged that off, though he looked uneasy. "He's got good taste. Would you want to go back to looking like old Moldyshorts if you could look like James and Lily's kid instead?" He grimaced. "Well, of course, he says he can make the new body look like my kid, which would clearly be the better option but…"
"But this is the body he's spent the past two years getting used to," Remus concluded. "And Harry would jump at the chance to be your child. He wanted a family so badly…" He didn't really want to assign any positive rationale to 'Tom's' motives, but it did seem like the result would be positive for Harry. If Harry was still there. If Harry could be given back to them. "And practically speaking," he reassured himself, "it would be easier not to have any further obligations to our side once he's fulfilled his oath."
Sirius frowned at him. "He'll still be my godson." At Remus's blank expression, the dog animagus explained, "I can't have a son appear and suddenly not care about my godson. I wouldn't if that really happened, and it'd make Harry's life hell if the general public realized he was some sort of Dark construct."
"It's not like you'd have to keep that up forever though," Remus pointed out. "People drift apart all the time for all sorts of reasons."
"But…" Sirius hesitated. "That kid's… He's the one we've been talking to this entire time. I've actually spent more time with him than I've spent with the real Harry." He waved his hands before Remus could say anything, rushing to explain, "Of course I love Harry. I always will, and I'd do anything and everything for him. But I can't just… suddenly not care about this kid just because it turns out he's someone else."
Remus sighed. Sirius had always been the most emotional of the Marauders. And really, he'd expected this from the moment he realized that the person wearing Harry's body wasn't about to go about murdering babies and blatantly showing off his evil. It was why he'd advised Dumbledore not to tell Sirius in the first place. He closed his eyes and thought. If he was being honest with himself, he felt similarly, if not as strongly. "He called himself Tom?"
"Yeah." Sirius reddened, not quite blushing, but only because Sirius didn't have enough shame in him for it. "I might have cried on him a bit. Poor kid looked like he was going to bolt."
Remus choked back a laugh, trying to picture the same thing happening with Voldemort. "Fine." He'd keep an eye on the boy, as he had been, but in the end, the important part was Harry, and if Tom could give them back Harry, that was all that mattered.
AN: If you're curious, Slughorn went to Dumbledore at one point with his own suspicions (seeing as he knows about the horcruxes and recognizes Tom's mannerisms), and Dumbledore basically went with Tom's lie to the Slytherins about gaining all of Tom's memories. It doesn't really affect anything, and I don't plan on ever bringing it up in-story, but that's the background there.
