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Chapter Seven—A Talk With Jonquil

"You mean to tell me it was only teenage rebellion?"

Harry glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. Tom was leaning on the wall of the small sitting room where his Knights had deposited Jonquil, his arms folded and his head slowly shaking back and forth. Jonquil was paying more attention to him than she was to the mug of hot chocolate in her hands or to Harry's questions.

"Yes," Jonquil whispered. "You don't understand what it's like to be rejected by someone you want and stifled by your family."

Tom leaned forwards. Harry moved a little so that Jonquil would have trouble seeing him, and then gently took his cousin's hand. "Come on, Jonquil. Tell me more. You came through the portal because you wanted to have adventures and show Tom that you were worth something, right?"

Tom sighed, loudly. Harry cast without thinking about it, swiping his hand towards Tom with a wandless Silencing Charm flying from his fingers. It made the magic whip and rage through him and his teeth tighten to keep from screaming, but it did the job.

"Yes," Jonquil said, with a small sniffle. She glared at Harry. "And I didn't ask you to come after me."

"You should have known I would, though. I'm your family, Jonquil. I love you."

"Not enough to not take Tom from me."

Harry shifted his shoulders unhappily. He could explain the truth, that he hadn't wanted to do it but Tom and his own feelings hadn't left him much choice, but then he would have to deal with two angry people.

Well, angrier, Harry amended, as he felt the tip of Tom's wand touch the middle of his back. He must have reversed the Silencing Charm. Harry ignored the wordless message and said softly, "I'm sorry things worked out that way, Jonquil. But still, how could you think that jumping through a portal into a world you knew nothing about was a good idea?"

"It was the only place I could think of that wasn't tamed and safe," Jonquil whispered. Her hands twisted together, and she refused to lift her eyes to meet Harry's gaze. "The only place that Mum and Grandmother wouldn't find me right away."

"They don't want to stifle you, Jonquil. But they can't tell you what you should want, either."

"I don't want them to! I just want them to step back and stop hovering over my shoulder all the time and thinking they know what's best for me!" She aimed an accusing glare at Harry.

"And yet," Tom said, in a voice cold enough that Harry went with the nudging of the wand this time when it moved him away from Jonquil, "you still leap into dangerous situations like a child who does need someone to watch out for them." His hand closed demandingly on Harry's elbow and he tucked Harry close to his side, an arm over his shoulders. Harry went with it, but winced when he saw the expression on Jonquil's face.

"I wouldn't have had to if you had—"

"What? Loved you the way I was supposed to?" Tom laughed, and the sound was cruel, flickering around the room like shadows from a fire. "I chose who I want. I'm not going to reverse my decision. Abandon the delusion that I rescued you because I like you or care for you. I rescued you because Harry wouldn't shut up about it."

Harry winced again and tried to step away from Tom. Tom closed his hand down hard enough to make Harry's vision briefly white out from pain, and then hissed in Parseltongue, "Not this time, love."

Harry stopped fighting and nodded. He couldn't afford to do it much right now, anyway, since he was still recovering from using magic with the fluctuation in his power. He turned back to Jonquil.

"I can say the same things in a less mocking tone, but they'll still be the same things," he told Jonquil, who was watching them with raw pain on her face. "Coming here didn't make Tom notice you or like you any better. I insisted that we rescue you. He would have left you to rot with the Order of the Phoenix otherwise."

"Then you—you did the same thing that Mum and Grandmother are always doing," Jonquil whispered, sounding strangled. "You came running to save me because you thought I couldn't handle myself."

"Yes."

Jonquil closed her eyes and bowed her head. She might have been crying, but if so, Harry honestly couldn't tell. Her face was completely hidden, and she sat still instead of shaking with sobs.

Tom drew Harry ruthlessly away, into a side room, and shut the door. Then he said, "What was the reason you cast that Silencing Charm?"

"To make you stop saying hurtful things to Jonquil."

Tom grabbed his shoulders and slammed Harry into the wall. Harry went with it, rolling a little, and it didn't hurt as much as it could have. He'd sometimes imagined that he'd use his combat training in circumstances that weren't fighting, but he'd never imagined that dealing with his lover would be one of them.

"You exhausted yourself when you knew that you shouldn't have," Tom snarled softly. His eyes were as dark as the diary shade's had been when it was telling Harry that it was part of Voldemort. "You did it to spare someone who's going to take pain from your words anyway, and do it no matter what you say to her."

"I—"

"If you do that again—"

"What are you going to threaten me with, Tom? I was under the impression that you didn't want to hurt me."

"Oh, not you. If you do something like that again, then I'll flay Jonquil alive with my words."

Harry froze for a second, then nodded. Tom let him go and stood in front of him, turning his wand around in his hand as if he wanted to feel the different grains of the wood, his eyes a little brighter but just as focused.

"What is it that makes you want to protect her at all costs, Harry?"

"I already told you that." Harry sighed, and slumped into a chair next to him. His wrist still hurt where Tom had pressed tendon to bone, and his magic rattled and rang around inside his body. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. "And I'll stand in your way again if you try to harm her. The thing that matters, Tom, is that I want her to be safe."

"Then you'll stop acting as though you don't matter."

Harry nodded without opening his eyes. He could understand the nuances without Tom having to make them any clearer. "I want her to decide that she's going back to her world of her own free will. If we push her through the portal, then she'll come back the minute we aren't guarding it, and this time, we won't know where she is."

"I could easily compel her to do what we want, and she'll never guess that it's not her own idea."

Harry tensed and his eyes flew open. "I won't let you do that."

"You speak as though you would have a choice in the matter." Tom spoke softly, and he didn't move away from Harry's side. Him being that close was a worse threat than any other he could have made.

"I'm asking you not to, then," Harry said. "There are certain things you can threaten me with, and there are certain things that you can't. If it gets to the point that my choice is between leaving you and you breaking Jonquil's mind, then I know which one I'll choose."

Tom waited, as though he thought Harry was going to add on to the end of that, although Harry didn't see any reason to do so. Then Tom nodded and sat back in the chair, his legs sprawling out on the floor. He sighed and said, "I wish that she wasn't taking up so much of your attention."

"Treat her the way you have been, and it might be easy to persuade her to go home."

"Or she might want to stay longer, to prove that we can't control her, like the stubborn teenager you've characterized her as."

Harry couldn't think of anything to say to that, and silence fell between them. But he did shift over, after a moment, to put his head on Tom's shoulder. One of Tom's hands came up and clasped the back of Harry's neck, his fingers rubbing gently back and forth. Harry let himself close his eyes and enjoy it.

At least his Knights agreed with him that Jonquil Potter was annoying, Tom saw with some relief. He honestly hadn't been sure that would be the case.

Of course he had to give her a bodyguard, which was another annoying feature. In the end, he left Philip and Shara with Harry and gave Jonquil to Abraxas. That would let Abraxas continue to prove his loyalty the way he wanted to but get him out of Harry's way and perhaps lessen his jealousy.

Jonquil asked questions and pouted when they weren't answered; she proclaimed her ambitions and appeared annoyed when the Knights mocked her; she tried to catch Tom's attention and ended up storming out of the room when he ignored her. Harry looked increasingly desperate to do something to soothe her, but Tom refused to change his own behavior. They'd had a discussion, and Harry knew where he stood. If he wouldn't let Tom use compulsion or the like on her, then she deserved nothing better.

Harry spent an equally annoying amount of time with Jonquil, trying to help her figure out her ambitions, or speaking about her family and their love of her. Jonquil turned up her nose at that bait, and it was the one trait that Tom liked about her. Harry had yet to understand that someone who had grown up with a loving family couldn't grasp his desperate longing for one.

Meanwhile, their plans continued apace. The revelations about Dumbledore stirred shock in the Wizengamot and any number of loud speeches about how the Wizengamot members didn't personally believe them, of course not. But the fact that Dumbledore didn't reappear to deny them struck a blow. So did the fact that someone tracked down Bagshot and interviewed her, and in between the senile remarks came an even more damning picture of Dumbledore's liaison with Grindelwald.

Things were falling out as Tom imagined they would, but he remained alert to any move from the Order of the Phoenix. He hardly thought they would sit back and let Tom slander their leader forever.

And on the Tuesday after Jonquil's rescue, their response came.

"But don't you want to see Dorea again?" Harry was working on Jonquil from that angle, in a back room of Malfoy Manor, where silver and looking glasses surrounded them. "I know she loves you. She was incredibly distressed when she discovered that you'd gone through the portal."

"Because she thinks of me as a disobedient child and wants to punish me." Jonquil picked up a delicate blue vase and held it to the light as if she wanted to calculate the value, then sighed and put it down and started roaming again through the shrouded furniture. "Not because she really loves me."

"You weren't a child that long ago—"

"I'm an adult."

Harry literally bit his tongue to keep from saying something unfortunate. After all, Tom was a year older than Jonquil, and there was no way that Harry thought of him as a child. He put his hands up. "All right, so you aren't one. But even if Dorea is angry and locks you in your room for a week when you go back, do you really think that she doesn't love you?"

"I don't care."

Harry rubbed his forehead. At the moment, Jonquil was reminding him of some of his classmates in the Auror training he'd quit, although they'd had more defined ambitions. They would disregard all the warnings about not trying dangerous spells on their own and the like, because of course they knew better. Jonquil might not be casting magic that could injure her soul and body, but she was still trying his patience.

"When you go home—"

"This is my home now!" Jonquil slammed one hand down on what looked like a vanity, although only the mirror above it on the wall was perfectly free of dustcloths. "Why can't you get that through your thick head, Harry? I came here so that I could make my way in a more dangerous world, one where I can have adventures. You can't throw me back through the portal because you know that I'll just return."

Harry leaned back with his arms folded. He was starting to share some of Tom's frustration with Jonquil, which was his excuse for what he said next. "You know that Tom's never going to love you no matter how long you stay here."

Jonquil jumped, echoed by her dim reflection in the mirror. "That's not why I'm here! I want to have adventures, I told you."

"But you chose Tom's world of all worlds to have them in? Why didn't you go through the portal to my original world if all that mattered was it being a different place?"

Jonquil raised her head. "I wouldn't expect you to understand. You grew up in the middle of a war, and that colored your perspective. But your world is too safe. I would have chosen Tom's even if he didn't come from here."

Harry snorted and opened his mouth. The only thing he could remember later was that he was going to give her a dose of reality, but he honestly couldn't remember what he might have said.

The rooms that contained them shuddered. Jonquil reached out to catch herself against the wall, her eyes wide and her breath coming fast. Harry was on his feet in seconds, his wand whipping out. His magic hadn't gone through any fluctuations in the last few days, which meant that he was safe—he hoped.

"What was that?"

Harry cast one small detection spell that filled the air with shades of violet, and nodded, ignoring the way that his teeth felt as if they wanted to drop out of his mouth. "Someone created an Earthquake Illusion. It's meant to make people run out of their houses and forget about protecting themselves, but it doesn't actually damage anything. Just makes people upset and takes them off-guard so the attackers have an advantage."

"Finally!" Jonquil drew her own wand, which they'd found in a back cupboard of the house the Order of the Phoenix had been using as their headquarters, and ran out of the room. Harry cursed and ran after her.

He ran into Black and Lestrange in the corridor, who immediately took up their positions on either side of him. Harry glared at them in exasperation, but they didn't twitch or do anything except keep their gazes focused forwards and their strides steady. In the end, Harry had to give up and go with them, or he would have been the childish one.

They stepped into the main drawing room of the Manor and found Abraxas waving his wand in intricate patterns that stitched light over the windows. "Father and Mother are in France right now," he said shortly when Harry glanced at him. "I have no idea what's going to happen if they come back and find out the Manor has been damaged."

"I can help, if you let me go outside—"

"So can I!"

Abraxas raked his eyes over Jonquil in a way that was more insulting than just about any conversation Harry could have had with her, and left him reluctantly appreciating how intensely Abraxas must dislike her. Then the man glanced at Harry. "You know that you can't cast any powerful magic, on Tom's orders."

"I feel fine right now. And if Black and Lestrange go with me outside, then you're not going to get in trouble, are you?" Harry knew that Tom wasn't in the house right now; he had gone with a few of the other Knights to investigate a lead who had intimated that they might have information on Dumbledore, for the right price.

"I'll be in trouble if you get hurt. That's still true no matter how fine you might feel right now, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes and then winced as a flash of white light came from outside. It bounced from the Manor's wards, but he heard Abraxas curse shakily. Harry nodded. "There's a circle of them out there, working ritual spells together. Do you want to take the chance that your parents' house will survive?"

Abraxas shivered a little, then nodded. "All right. But your cousin stays here."

"You can't make me—"

Harry tuned Jonquil out and ran outside. The house did shudder around him and once bounce as if it was going to come after its foundations. Black clutched what looked like a Portkey around her wrist and reached for Harry's hand with her free one.

"Back away or I'll cut it off," Harry said without looking at her. Black didn't try to catch hold of him.

The door from the main part of the house led into a small courtyard that was part of the Manor's defenses. Ringed by powerful stone walls themselves infused with wards, they would contain any spell or magical weapon that fell into the middle of them. Harry kept his gaze focused on them as he warmed up his wrist.

And yes, here it came, something sharp and spiky spinning through the air like the head of a mace, coming down towards the courtyard. A ritual circle could make something like that powerful enough to burst the wards.

Harry moved forwards, his foot lashing out. That began a spinning circle that made his wand an extension of his arm, and he called out, "Repercutio!"

The shield that surged out of his wand rose up above the courtyard like the surface of a Muggle trampoline. The weapon crashed into it and bounced back at an oblique angle. Harry chuckled grimly. He knew it would fall among them and explode the way they'd wanted it to in the middle of the Manor's wards.

And it did, as proven by the shrieks of agony a few seconds later. But his shield wasn't in the right place to deflect the second weapon that came falling in right behind those screams.

The world vanished in a white haze of pain.