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Chapter Six-Responsibility

Tom burst through the door of the Order of the Phoenix's fortress, ducking his head as spells zipped over it. It seemed they'd been smarter than he thought at first, leaving some of their force behind the defenses to deal with anyone who might make it past the outer ones.

But it was still nothing against him, or against Abraxas's swift spells, or against Roland's blood magic, which curled and snapped in red coils around the legs and ankles of their opponents. Tom smiled a little as he watched Order of the Phoenix members collapse. Those who continued to fight too hard had their heads torn from their shoulders.

For years, he and his Knights hadn't dared this kind of open action. Tom didn't intend to leave any witnesses behind, which was the only reason he allowed it now.

He cast a spell that detected human life, and nodded as three of the doors glowed. A nonverbal Wind Curse flung all of them open at once. He got a groan as one door clobbered someone hiding behind it, a wave of Dumbledore's men from the second, and a scream that he remembered less than fondly.

"Please, help! They've been holding me prisoner here!"

Tom traded glances with Abraxas, silently telling him to handle the others, and swept into the room where Jonquil Potter was being held. It seemed to be a bedroom from which the bed had been abruptly removed, judging by the pattern of dust on the floor. Jonquil was bound to a chair, her arms linked together with rope and her legs with chain. Tom wondered for a moment why they hadn't gagged her, but more footprints in the dust told of a hasty exit. They'd probably been interrogating her when he and the Knights arrived.

Jonquil, her black hair hanging in scraggly curls around her, drew another breath and let it go without shouting. "Tom?"

Tom fought the urge to kill her for the hope shining in her eyes, and the only reason he really did was because Harry would be disappointed in him otherwise. "Potter," he said curtly. He severed the chain and rope with precisely aimed hexes, then faced Abraxas. "Can you make sure that Philip comes to me?"

Abraxas nodded and sprinted off. Of all his Knights, Philip was the most competent with healing spells. Tom, turning back and studying Jonquil, couldn't see much except some bruises, chafing from her bonds, and a knot on the back of her head, but for Harry's sake, he would have her checked over carefully.

"Why are you here, if you didn't come to rescue me?"

"For Harry's sake. He wanted you rescued."

Jonquil threw her head back defiantly. "I thought I made it clear to my family that I'm an adult and I was leaving them behind when I came through the portal. Why did Harry come after me?"

"Because, for reasons that are utterly obscure to me," Tom drawled as Philip appeared in the room's doorway, "Harry loves you." He nodded at Philip. "Make sure that her bruises are healed, and the chafing."

Philip eased carefully past him. Tom narrowed his eyes at him, and Philip mouthed, Harry loves her?

Ah. Philip thought Tom was dealing with a romantic rival, and wondered at the restraint, which Tom normally would not have bothered to put on himself. Tom's lip quivered at the thought of considering Jonquil a rival for anything.

"Philip, this is Harry's cousin, Jonquil Potter," was all he said, and left the room. He found his strides abruptly becoming longer as he left the house, nodding when members of his Knights called out their intentions to him. They were all doing exactly as he wanted them to, binding and bringing along the vast majority of the Order of the Phoenix members as prisoners, cleaning up the bodies, and neatly finishing off anyone so badly wounded that none of Philip's spells would reach them.

He had time to go back to Harry and talk to him.

Harry spun around the minute he heard the crack of Apparition. He knew it was Tom's without even questioning. There was something distinct about the sound, as though it had knives that sliced the air.

"Tom! Is Jonquil all right?"

From the way that Tom's jaw jutted out from his face, that was the wrong question to ask. Tom nodded to Black and stalked over to Harry, grabbing his arm. "Your services are appreciated, Shara."

Black bowed at once and Apparated without a pause. Harry tried to shake his arm out of Tom's grip, studying his face. "You would have said something if Jonquil wasn't all right," he guessed when Tom remained silent and motionless. "You wouldn't have tried to hide your glee, at least."

"I think you need reminding of who I am," Tom said, his hand rising from Harry's arm to touch his face. Harry paused. Despite how gentle Tom's touch was, there was more than a trace of danger in it. "And who you are. And who your cousin is."

"I put up with the damn guards that you stuck on me," Harry snarled at him. Tom was spoiling for a fight, was he? Harry had no idea why, but he would give him one, then. "I let Black take me out of there when I knew I couldn't cast spells. I didn't lie and say that I could fight when I couldn't! I'm not tearing you apart with my bare hands trying to get information on Jonquil right now! Tell me what the hell is going on, Tom."

Tom only watched him with reptilian patience for a moment, then nodded. "You also didn't go willingly, after promising me that you would accept the guards. You could have been a liability to me, to yourself, to my Knights, even to Jonquil if the fluctuation had struck after you entered the house. You questioned me about her first."

"What-what does that have to do with anything?"

"Remember that I put up with her for your sake, Harry. She has done nothing to endear herself to me. Rather the opposite."

Those last words were in Parseltongue. Harry replied in the same language, searching Tom's expression for some clue about what he was supposed to be seeing. "You know that you come first with me, Tom."

"Then why did you ask about her and not me?"

"Because I can see perfectly well that you're not injured! I have no idea about her."

Tom's nostrils flared for a second. Then he nodded. "She had bruises and some marks on her wrists and probably her legs where she was bound," he said in English. "A knot in the back of her head. I told Philip to heal her."

Harry scowled at him. "That's one of the reasons that you wanted him to be my guard, isn't it? Because he could heal me if something happened to me."

Tom moved abruptly. Harry found himself propelled backwards against the trunk of a scrubby tree and held there. Harry tried to lash back, instinctively using his power instead of his body, and his magic rippled and twisted like wind. He convulsed in agony.

Tom held him steady, the soft grip of his hands utterly at odds with the rough Parseltongue words. "I'm not that stable at the best of times, Harry. I can control myself best with preparation and in political situations. In battle, I fight to keep alive, and I've wounded allies before when they were too close to me and my brain mistook them for enemies.

"Now I have you as a new source of stability. But you're vulnerable as well. Remember what I told you about how I would guard you? Imagine what would happen if I undertook preparations to guard you and you were hurt anyway."

Harry swallowed. "You're saying that you would have destroyed-"

"The Order of the Phoenix, at the very least. More likely the house. Maybe some of my Knights. You want your cousin to stay alive? You must."

Tom leaned towards him as he said that and kissed him ferociously. Arms held back, Harry accepted the kiss and then sighed when it was done, leaning in so that he could drop his chin on Tom's shoulder.

"I didn't mean to make you angry," he whispered. "But Tom, Jonquil does mean a lot to me. Not as much as you," he added hastily as he felt Tom's muscles coiling. "But a lot."

"Tell me why."

"Can we go inside and sit down first?" Harry looked into the distance, but he still didn't see anyone Apparating back with Jonquil or prisoners. Then again, they were behind the house, and he and Tom hadn't been talking very long. "I'd like to talk about this in a room where none of your Knights are going to stumble in accidentally."

Tom looked as if he wished he could purr. "That would be acceptable, Harry." He released Harry's arms and held out his own, offering support into the house.

He likes it when I ask to be private with him, Harry thought in bewilderment as he followed Tom into the house. Harry's only prior experience of something like that had been with people who were pleased and proud to be dating Harry Potter.

I wonder why he's so happy to be alone with me? It's not as though he cares about the kind of fame that I used to have, and he admires my magic and my skills but it's not the reason he fell in love with me.

Tom glanced back at him, and Harry felt a new understanding come to life in him like a flame springing up.

It's because he loves me. He doesn't need any reason other than that.

"Stop casting bloody diagnostic charms on me, Tom."

Tom watched the results of his latest one fade away, and nodded. It seemed true that Harry had taken no hurt in the battle, and he also hadn't sustained any visible damage to his body or magic from the fluctuations he went through.

Which was only reassuring on one level, since an injury to the deep magic in Harry's body would produce exactly that kind of result while wreaking all sorts of invisible havoc.

Tom gritted his teeth and pushed the glass of water he'd fetched Harry towards him across the table. Harry sighed, but picked it up and took a drink, and also took a bite of the cheese wedge Tom had given him that was more symbolic than anything. Tom nodded and leaned back in his chair.

"I want to know why you'd risk everything for Jonquil when she hasn't exactly treated you well."

"She's my family—"

"That doesn't matter, Harry. You didn't grow up with her. You're only related to her because you both happen to have the name Potter. You weren't even born in the same bloody dimension! Help me understand." Tom managed to recapture his breath and his sanity at the same moment. "Tell me why."

"I am telling you. Is it my fault that you don't listen?" Harry calmed himself and turned away, staring at the far wall. Tom hated that he couldn't imagine any of the scenes dancing in front of Harry's eyes, but he restrained himself from reacting, and waited.

"I didn't grow up with family," Harry whispered. "I did grow up knowing my parents were dead and my mother's relatives hated me. When I came into the wizarding world, I realized that I had distant magical relatives, but no one close. My godfather was unfairly imprisoned and never got to act like a real father to me."

Another deep breath, and Harry turned back to face Tom. "When I stood in front of the Mirror of Erised in my first year, a mirror that shows your heart's deepest desire, I saw all my relatives around me. Mother and father, grandparents and aunts and uncles. Cousins I never got to know, or maybe they were never born. I want a family, Tom. My own family, not someone else's who adopted me, even though that was great. I found the Potters. They took me in. They didn't have to. Jonquil is my cousin in every way that matters."

Tom stared at him. Harry's face was flushed with passion, his eyes sparkling so rapidly that they looked as if they were made of metal. Tom felt his own flush start deep inside his belly and work its way up to his face.

He wanted that. That should be his. He should be the focus of Harry's shining eyes, his spinning thoughts, his devotion and desire and loyalty.

And saying so, or aspiring to Jonquil's place, would gain him nothing.

Tom nodded as though he understood everything Harry was saying. "And this place can only be filled by blood family?"

Harry eyed him as though he was about to charge. "Of course not. But that's what I never had, Tom, and it's what I want. Adopted family is great, I said that. Friends are great. But they all have their own blood families. It's not the same, and they realize that."

"What about a lover?"

"I've never had a very steady one before," Harry said, frowning as though he didn't see how the question connected to his own words. "A few months was all one lasted before they gave up in the glare of the press or had their head turned by the money someone was offering them for a newspaper story. Or betrayed me in other ways."

"You can't believe that I would have my head turned by money from another world, or by your fame."

"I don't believe that. But even you got to grow up with your mother, Tom. It might not have been a happy childhood, but you had it. The Tom Riddle in my world never had his parents, because his mother died giving birth to him and he murdered his father later. That was one reason I empathized with him so strongly." Harry reached out to capture his hand and smooth his thumb over Tom's knuckles. "It doesn't mean I loved him. But-it's too hard being an orphan. I traveled between dimensions to find family. Don't ask me to give up the Potters."

Tom swallowed roughly. He could see the truth in Harry's eyes. Harry would squirm at the choice, he would shudder to make it, but if Tom made Harry choose between Tom and the Potters, Harry would never be truly his. He could say he was and he was giving up his sort-of blood family. That wouldn't last.

Tom was determined to be someone who would last in Harry's life. And the only way he could do that was by proving himself the superior choice, not trying to persuade or manipulate Harry.

"You want people who are yours in a way that they aren't your friends'," he said, to make sure he understood.

Harry smiled wistfully. "Yeah. The family who practically adopted me were the Weasleys. Ron and Hermione were my best friends, and I dated Ron's sister Ginny for a while. But-it just wasn't the same. They turned to their parents so naturally. They were all bonded by their grief when one of their brothers died. I lost some of my connection with them when Ginny and I broke up for good, because of course Ginny was their daughter and I was just one of their children's friends."

Tom shook his head. "I don't know if I can be everything you need, Harry. I want the portal to remain open so that you can go back to Godric's Hollow and visit the Potters whenever you want to."

"But."

Tom tilted his head, accepting Harry's guess that he was going to push on past the first point. "But I can't sit by and watch you take stupid risks like the one you were prepared to take today for Jonquil."

"I didn't! I held back!"

"You still wanted to remain near the battle, which was a risk that we've already discussed."

Harry narrowed his eyes, but finally nodded. "Honestly, I didn't know if you and the others would treat Jonquil well. That was the main reason I wanted to stay. She deserved to see a friendly face and know someone was happy that she was rescued."

Tom had to bite back a snort, remembering the way Jonquil had reacted when she saw Tom's face instead. "And you deserve protection. You deserve to have someone who places you first before all else."

"Which is you?"

"Yes. That part you said about wanting someone who will just be yours? I can do that, Harry. I grew up with my mother, but I have very little attachment to my birth family. I've looked for someone to be mine above all other people, as well. I'm willing to give that to you if you're willing to extend it to me in return."

Harry's face was incredibly soft as he said, "Thank you, Tom. I-do want the portal to remain open, and I want to send Jonquil home if she'll go."

"If she'll go? Of course we're sending her back!"

"Jonquil wants independence from her family badly enough to sneak through a portal into a world she knows nothing about. Do you really think that she'll stay put if we just dump her back in that world? And do you think that we'd necessarily sense her if she crept back through the portal again?"

Tom shook his head. "But what does she want?"

Harry gave him a tired smile. "If I remember myself when I was that age? Sometimes defiance is the most important point. The harder we try to just hold her back and nothing else, the more she'll fight."

"Then what do we do?" Tom hadn't realized how close he was to whining, mostly because he hadn't realized how close he was to thinking the problem solved once they took Jonquil back from the Order of the Phoenix.

"Let me talk to her. I still have the best chance of getting through to her of anyone else, because I also empathize with her." Harry squeezed Tom's hand and stood up.

"We're not done with this conversation," Tom said, turning on his chair to watch Harry. "Take the water and cheese with you."

Harry scooped them up and rolled his eyes at Tom, but only said, "I don't want to be done with it yet, Tom. I never want to be done with something that concerns you."

And with that, Tom had to be content for now.