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Chapter Three—Making

"Abraxas located a reporter who will listen to us and do as we say."

"Um. Good."

Tom watched Harry as he undressed. They were in the small house in Hogsmeade that Tom had made his own through a combination of earned money, gifted money, charm, and charms. Harry was pacing back and forth through the bedroom, his pacing stirring shadows up and sending them whirling through the moonlight. He hadn't made any move to take even his shirt off.

Tom stood and came over to take Harry's shoulders into his hands. Harry halted at once, but he still quivered under Tom's hands like one of the horses that he had healed back in the Potters' dimension.

"Harry. We'll find her."

"But Dumbledore's men have her."

"I know that." Tom leaned forwards to trace his fingers around the curves of Harry's muscles. "But they have no reason to treat her badly. We'll find her. We'll get her back. And I suspect that she doesn't have much information to tell them."

"You told me enough about the Order of the Phoenix in this world to make me think—Tom, what if they torture her? If they assume she must know something since she came through the portal and try to make her tell them something?"

"The one good thing about the Order," Tom said quietly, his attention more on the faint tremor in Harry's shoulders than Jonquil, "is that they don't use torture to get the truth because they don't need to. Dumbledore legalized the use of Veritaserum on any suspect a decade ago. They would just dose her and figure out that she doesn't know a thing. Now, they might not let her go. We might need to fight our way into an Order stronghold to get her out. But, I promise, Harry, I won't let her be destroyed without a fight."

Harry relaxed back against him, finally. "Why, though? You don't like her."

Tom smiled brightly into the mirror on the wall, although Harry had his head lowered and didn't see it. Dislike was a mild word for what he felt for Jonquil, with her pathetic nature and her tears that she wept because she couldn't have him. But the answer was the same. "For your sake, Harry. Because I want to make you happy."

"You should think of people as ends in and of themselves, not just for me."

Harry's voice was heavy, though, and his attention all too obviously fixed on the circles Tom was making on his bare skin. Tom chuckled at him and drew him towards the bed.

"You must already know how unusual it is for me to fall in love at all. I'm not going to stretch my good nature to encompass someone that I have no reason to love."

Harry turned around with a smile and lifted a hand to slide against Tom's cheek. "I do know how different you are. How different you could be. Thank you for loving me."

Tom kissed him, because he didn't know what to say to that. It was inconceivable to him that he might have come to Harry's new world and not loved him, no matter how little experience he had of it here.

His hands restless, he pulled Harry towards the bed. Harry came with him, eyes focused, glimmering, amused. Tom preferred him this way, by far, to brooding over Jonquil.

Harry fell back with a gasp when Tom arranged pillows behind him and began to explore him in the way that it seemed they'd never had time for when they were in Godric's Hollow. Harry opened his legs and his eyes and his arms, yearning for him.

Tom kissed him again, and then reached down and stroked Harry's cock, thinking. Yes, he wanted to do this this evening. He dipped his head and captured Harry in his mouth.

Harry cried out, urgent, passionate, a sound of throbbing life that Tom had no experience of in Hogwarts's dim corridors or the even dimmer Gaunt shack, and then said, "B-both of us. G-get up the bed—"

Pleasure stole his voice again, but luckily, Tom had heard enough to know what he meant. He eagerly swung his leg around and got onto the bed, shuffling up, so that he was kneeling next to Harry. Then he stretched out and lifted his legs, and exposed his erection to Harry's mouth even as he put his own back where it belonged.

The heat he was engulfed in, the heat he was sipping and licking and sucking, together chased away any sensation of possible regret or fear that Harry himself felt regret over the way he had come to this strange world. He closed his hand down and harshly tugged on Harry's bollocks, trying to deal with the warmth, with all the doors it opened and all the things it—

And then Harry spilled into his mouth, and Tom was trying to deal simply with the sensation of having a great deal to swallow at once. He manipulated his lips as best he could around the mouthful of flesh and liquid, and swallowed, and swallowed, and then jerked his hips down and filled Harry's mouth, too.

By the time he got his senses back and pulled himself back around and up so that his head was lying on the pillow instead of next to Harry's hip, Harry had swallowed. There was a trace of white lingering at the corner of his mouth, which Tom found himself staring at for far longer than necessary. Harry reached up and traced his fingers through Tom's hair, down his neck, his eyes wide with longing.

"I grew up thinking I'd never have someone to do this with," Harry said. His voice was blurred, but his eyes saw clearly, from their shine. "Never someone who would love me and not see me as a burden. I'm so glad that you've come along to prove me wrong, Tom." He buried his face in Tom's shoulder and gave a deep, contented sigh.

Tom wrapped his arms around Harry and let himself drift away. For the first time that he could remember, it was really safe to do so.

Harry watched with quiet, narrowed eyes as Tom's men shifted in front of him. Well, men and women. This particular version of Riddle seemed to have more female Death Eaters than just Bellatrix Lestrange.

Not Riddle, Gaunt. And not Death Eaters, Knights of Walpurgis. And Bellatrix hasn't been born in this world and might never be.

Harry took a slow, deep breath and let it out. He needed to keep reminding himself of that. He would mess everything up if he forgot what world he was in, which people he was surrounded by.

Currently, they were meeting in a manor house that did used to belong to the Lestrange family, but Tom's Lestrange follower said they'd sold it to Muggles long ago. Then Lestrange had simply chased the Muggles out again when Tom wanted it and set up spells to ensure they thought it was haunted and they wouldn't return.

Harry hadn't said anything about that, but Lestrange had flinched before his gaze and turned away. Harry supposed that was all he could ask for.

Tom put a light hand on his arm, and Harry nodded and sat down in the chair next to Tom. Tom himself was seated at the head of a long table, and the other Knights of Walpurgis hastened to sit down when Harry had.

"Now," Tom said, clasping his hands as he leaned forwards. "You know that Dumbledore went through the portal after me. He will be inconvenienced and unable to return for a short time." Harry clenched his jaw, but didn't interrupt. The fact was, given the different rate at which time flowed in the two worlds, they couldn't be sure they'd have the full month that the spell guaranteed in Godric's Hollow. "We have excellent blackmail material thanks to Harry. We need to move now to destroy Dumbledore's credibility."

"But why now?" asked a woman with iron-grey hair who didn't look old, just like that was her natural hair color. She frowned between Harry and Tom as if she didn't expect them to be able to answer her question. "Why do we have to move so fast? You haven't answered that so far, and I think you really should. My lord," she added hastily, as Tom turned his head a little and looked at her.

"Because Dumbledore will return from the inconvenience soon."

"But we've worked on efforts to collect blackmail for years." The woman's knuckles were white as she rested her hands on the table. At least she wasn't clutching her wand as well, Harry thought. Tom got a little irrational when people held their wands like that around Harry. "We have to carefully deploy it."

"Tell me, Shara, can you think of a reason we should not?"

"Please just trust us with the real reason, my lord."

Harry memorized her face carefully. Shara of the unknown last name did look a little familiar, but with as inbred as most wizarding families in all versions of England tended to be, that didn't mean much.

"Very well," said Tom. "We have imprisoned Dumbledore in the dimension that both he and I traveled to. He might break free of the prison in a short time. It is impossible to be sure how short the time is, as the time flow is different between the two dimensions. Now." His voice chilled and lowered. "Is that enough for you, Shara?"

Evidently not, because the woman turned to Harry next. Harry was a little impressed at her bravery. If not for Tom's recruiting policies, he would have wondered if she had been a Gryffindor. "We?"

"I cast the spell that imprisoned him," Harry answered, because there was no mistaking who Shara's question was addressed to.

"You're not as strong as our lord. Why didn't our lord cast it?"

Tom shifted next to him. Harry put a hand on his wrist. He didn't really want Tom to destroy his relationship with a follower for Harry, as annoying as it was for that follower to question him.

"Raw magical strength isn't all that a warrior needs. Or did Avery and Lestrange and Malfoy not tell you about the Order of the Phoenix members that I disabled near the portal?"

"You took them by surprise."

Harry sighed. "Then would a dueling demonstration convince you? I promise not to break too many of her bones, Tom," he added, as his lover shifted again.

Tom gave him a heavy glance, and Harry would have recoiled if this was the appropriate venue for it. Oh. From the blaze in Tom's eyes, he wasn't worried about Harry breaking Shara's bones at all.

"It would," the woman said, standing and twirling her wand around her hand. "You must understand—what is your last name?"

"Potter." Harry stepped back so that he was away from the table and flexed his wand hand.

No flicker of recognition on her face. It seemed that Tom was right about there being no Potters in this world. "Mr. Potter. I'm sensitive to magic. I always have been. And I know that you don't have enough in your body to give me a fair fight." She smiled a little. "My name is Shara Black. I hope you don't mind losing."

She passed behind Lestrange's chair while Harry was still dealing with her last name, and he heard the bloke hiss, "Consider carefully, Black! Would Tom have chosen a weak consort?"

"Even our lord can be fooled," Shara whispered, and she didn't seem to notice or care about the way Tom's eyes glowed. Harry wondered if she was one of the Knights Tom had told him about who was always testing his leadership because she was uneasy about following a half-blood.

Shara halted in front of Harry and gave him a parody of a friendly smile. "Do you always stand so tensely? Or only when you know that you are about to lose the duel?"

Harry said nothing. He ignored Tom's eyes and the way that Lestrange had his hand across his face. Right now, nothing mattered except the woman in front of him, and the way she'd already started to brace herself. That posture would allow her to either catch a curse on a shield or move offensively. She was good.

Harry just knew he was better.

"What a silent one you've brought us, my lord." Shara prowled a few steps closer. "I wonder if I should try to—make him speak. Larimas invoco!"

The Crying Curse poured from her wand and at Harry in a low green wave. Harry easily turned aside from it and turned the floor beneath Shara's feet to mud. She found herself staggering when she tried to get out of the way, and cursed for a moment, wrenching at her trapped boot.

Harry used that moment to conjure another wave of mud. It swept over Shara and pinned her to the floor. Shara turned it to ice and escaped before Harry thought she could, which was evidence of planning that he had to admire. He circled, his eyes on her, and at least the smile was gone from her face and she seemed to be taking him seriously now.

"You're not," Shara said, and didn't finish the sentence. Instead, she summoned a huge swarm of black beetles to send after him.

Harry suspected the tactic was more effective than it appeared because of how many people would start swatting at the beetles, but it didn't work on him. He had dealt with worse than insects. He froze them, too, and stepped over their shattered, icy corpses, his wand as steady as a plank.

"You haven't proved yourself yet!" Shara said, and cast the next spell without speaking. However, Harry knew the feeling of the Imperius Curse too well to be surprised—and it was indeed the next thing that an opponent losing a duel like this would probably turn to. He let it settle over him, breathed out, and waited until Shara spoke so that the other Knights would know what spell she had cast.

"Lay down your wand and kneel to me!"

Harry smiled. "No." He took advantage of the split second of surprise that crossed her face and conjured chains that bound her to the wall. Then he Disarmed her and considered a second before he nodded and turned to Tom. "I assume the duel is over when one of us defeats the other?"

Merlin, Harry.

Tom hoped that he wasn't too obvious with the way he licked his lips and leaned slowly back in the chair so that he could shift his weight. His Knights were all busy staring at Harry instead of him, though, or at Black, one of his best fighters, defeated so easily.

Tom would miss the sight of Harry glowing with conjured blue flame, but he was right that he didn't need it to defend himself. Powerful magic really meant nothing next to experience and knowledge of spells.

Harry spoke, and Tom paid attention to the words long enough to nod. "It is." He cast an indifferent glance at Black, and found that she was deeply enough in shock that she would probably need some prompting. "Shara? Do you yield?"

"I—yield, my lord."

Her voice was low, but her gaze remained fastened on Harry in a way that made Tom bristle as Harry removed the chains and walked over to give her her wand. Other Knights of Walpurgis, or even just wizards in general, might feel slighted at losing a duel. Shara, though, would admire the one who had defeated her, and perhaps prove a problem in the future.

Just as Harry handed her wand back to Shara, a sharp ripple seemed to travel through his body. Tom stood up, making it look as if he was simply taking a step to the side. But he was in time to see Harry clench his jaw and fight back a gasp of pain. The sense of magic in the room also deepened for a second, then bobbed up and down and flickered wildly, as if someone was making shadow puppets in front of a light.

Tom frowned. What was that? He had felt nothing similar in the world of Godric's Hollow, no matter how strong a spell Harry used.

"I hope that we might duel sometime in the future," Shara said softly as she placed the wand in her sleeve.

"Of course we could," Harry said, and turned around. He scowled at Tom when Tom opened his mouth to comment.

Very well. He'll only say that he's fine at the moment, so we'll stay away from the topic for now. Tom sat down and cocked an eyebrow at his other Knights. "Is there anyone else who will say that Harry is not worthy of standing with us?"

"No," the murmur came back, but it was touched with resentment as well as awe. Not everyone would have their admiration won so quickly as had happened for Shara. Some would seek to displace Harry so that they could stand higher in Tom's favor.

Well, let them try. Tom favored the people gathered in this room because they were powerful allies and fighters, and clever planners. If they lost out to Harry, then he would know he couldn't trust them, and he would rely on stronger people in the end.

His hand encircled Harry's wrist casually beneath the level of the table. Harry leaned back with a slight grimace and nodded.

He would know that he couldn't escape the interrogation Tom had planned for later. It pleased Tom that they understood each other so well.