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Chapter Nineteen—The Rites of Truth

"I brought you the news as soon as I heard it, my lord."

Abraxas's voice was tight. Tom glanced over at him and made a soft disgusted sound when he saw how his Knight was kneeling, his face hovering only an inch or so off the floor. "I'm not angry at you, Abraxas. I'm considering the implications of the news."

"Yes, my lord." Abraxas still kept his eyes down and his body tense, as if he assumed he would need to escape in a moment if Tom lashed out.

Tom faced the window again, studying what looked like a pleasant morning, blue and clear, with only a few clouds high in the sky. He and Harry had planned to try and practice the wild magic rites this morning, at least the ones that didn't need extensive preparation. But the news Abraxas had brought had changed things.

"People saw him with their own eyes?" Tom asked at last. "Members of the Knights, or others you trust?"

"Yes, my lord. The Muggleborn man we recruited last month, Alexander Pierce? He reported it. And apparently he appeared in Diagon Alley, and not many people were there at the time, but the crowd all reported the same thing."

Tom nodded. Ah, well. He had known that the grace period he and Harry had won would end. Dumbledore was free of the coma now, and he had come back through the portal to their world. That he was showing himself to small groups and individuals was the only surprise. Tom had thought he would immediately move to resume his old position of power and crush the rumors that painted him as Grindelwald's lover and not someone to be trusted.

"Unless…"

"My lord?"

Tom shook his head, not having realized for a moment that he'd spoken aloud. He turned to Abraxas and smiled. "I think that dear Albus may be doing the same thing we are. Moving slowly because he's not sure how much of a power base we've managed to accumulate."

"You know that I am loyal to you, my lord."

"That sounds like it's about to receive a disappointing follow-up, Abraxas."

Abraxas flinched a little, but braced himself and met Tom's eyes. That wasn't something he would have done as little as two months ago, Tom thought. Harry had been good for all of them. "I don't know if you can fight Dumbledore and win. It seems likeliest that he'll resume his power base and we'll have to continue to fight the war from the shadows, as we have been."

"Showing ourselves in Diagon Alley as Harry and I did has already destroyed that plan," Tom said, with a little flip of his hand. "What Harry and I will have to do is consolidate our own power and see how many are willing to follow us."

"If you say so, my lord. But your new name hasn't spread very far or fast yet, and I know that some of our spies have reported outright disbelief that the Potters have returned or could be growing in power."

"Almost all of them from families who stand to lose something if the Potters reclaim their ancestral vaults or lands, I'm sure." Tom shrugged. "But I meant that Harry and I are going to have to work harder with the wild magic. Perhaps conduct a rite in public, and show that we are indeed functional rivals to Dumbledore. You have a question about that, Abraxas?"

His Knight swallowed and murmured, "Not as such, my lord, no. But I am worried that the rite might fail when you try it."

"We'll practice in private first," Tom reassured him, and arched an eyebrow when Abraxas failed to suppress a look of relief. "I work with Harry and I may have taken his name, but I'm not him, Abraxas."

Abraxas gave a faint smile. "May I say that I am glad, my lord?"

"Not where Harry can hear you." Tom leaned to the side as he heard movement in the corridor outside, and smiled as Harry strode into the room. "Hello, Harry. It seems Dumbledore has come back through the portal after his enforced sleep."

Harry paused for only a second, then nodded and came over to sit on the arm of Tom's chair. "All right. I suppose you'll want to move the rites where we try to impress the wild magic up, then? Since it would result in you having a more impressive skill to display to Dumbledore's enemies?"

We are more alike than either Harry or my Knights understand, Tom exulted to himself, and leaned up to hook his fingers in Harry's collar and pull him close for a kiss, ignoring the way Abraxas flinched as if expecting some kind of blow. "Yes. I trust that doesn't frighten you?"

"Not frightens me. Concerns me. You'll do it in private the first time, of course, but what if it works there and not in public?"

"Then we'll have you do it. And I will be there as your loving husband and ally."

"You. Standing in someone's shadow." Harry leaned back as if searching for the telltale glaze of the Imperius Curse in Tom's eyes.

"It's hardly standing in someone's shadow when he acknowledges me as his equal." Tom waved a dismissive hand. "Besides, having Dumbledore underestimate me could only be useful. And one public appearance is not the same as 'in all private settings' or 'in the eyes of the Knights.'"

Harry glanced at Abraxas as if to see what he thought about that, but whatever else Abraxas might be, he wasn't a fool, and simply nodded in agreement with Tom. Harry grunted and focused back on him. "So you want everyone to, what? Help us set up one of the rites and then stay out of the way? And stay out of the way if the rite does work and we decide to use it in front of Dumbledore?"

"That sounds good to me," said Abraxas.

Harry frowned at him again. Tom nodded encouragingly behind Harry's back, not that he supposed he needed to. There was no question which of them Abraxas would pay more attention to.

"Then I suppose there's nothing preventing us from doing one of the rites tonight," Harry said. "There's enough wild land around Malfoy Manor to let us give the wild magic back. If it answers us in the first place."

"Are you so convinced that it won't?" Tom asked him softly, reaching out to tilt Harry's face towards him so he could read his expression better.

"I simply don't want to depend on it too much," Harry said, and Tom nodded slowly.

"But we're going to try it. We can't know whether we can depend on it at all or not until we try it."

"Very well." Harry straightened his shoulders. "Then I suppose I should go study that book again. You've probably already memorized all the components of the ritual, but I haven't."

Harry stepped out of the Manor dressed in a green robe with golden accents, the way that the book Abraxas's ancestors had preserved showed. He stared at his arms for a second. The green robe seemed to drape and move with him like part of his skin, more alive than it should be, even though he had simply bought ordinary robes with money from the Potter vault and Tom had Transfigured them.

It was beyond strange to be getting ready to do a ritual that his family had apparently done in yet another world two portals from his own. Dorea had mentioned a few rituals that the Potters in his second world had performed, but Harry had never seen one. Most of them seemed to be connected to summer, when the children were home from Hogwarts.

Harry closed his eyes and ran through the instructions of the wild magic rite in his mind for a few seconds. Then he looked up again and walked towards the copse of trees behind the house where he and Tom had—

Bonded? Married? Tom's Knights seemed to think it was a marriage, while Tom himself referred to it as a claiming. Harry smiled a little as he felt the crystal pendant around his neck tap against his chest. If it was a claiming, then Tom had claimed him as thoroughly as the other way around.

Tom waited for him already, dressed in a common set of brown robes. The other Knights were dressed the same way. Shara caught Harry's eye and gave him an encouraging smile.

Harry looked at the ground and studied the braided ritual cord waiting for him, as green and golden as his robes. It seemed the Potters had always made their circles out of cords or ropes instead of the traditional blood, stone, or metal. Harry was grateful that they hadn't chosen blood, at least.

The diadem on his forehead was warm as he stepped over the cord and into the space of earth set aside by it. Then it gave a single pulse of warmth that traveled through his head like roaring blood, and stopped. Harry looked around, but couldn't see anything different about either the circle, the trees, or the audience.

He did feel a bit more calm and centered, though, which might have been the whole purpose of the diadem in the first place.

Harry lifted his hands in front of him. He felt the listening attention of the trees at once, and somehow he knew it was the trees, not the humans. It felt different against his skin than the regard of eyes, maybe. Warmer and slower and like the huge, ponderous stirring of something that didn't bother to pay attention to humans very often.

Harry turned to face the trees, and bowed, keeping his hands extended in front of him. The diadem on his forehead was glowing softly now, and trails of green and golden light began to echo his fingers as they moved.

"If you would grant me the magic to create a fire between my palms that will burn neither me nor anything else," he said, "I will at once try to heal the one of that is almost dead." That was one reason they'd chosen to have the rite here, other than just the good memories of his and Tom's bonding, or whatever it was. One tree leaned heavily on the others, only a few branches putting out green leaves.

He wasn't prepared for the overwhelming amount of power that came pouring through him. Harry gasped as fire burst out of him, flames that pinwheeled through colors of green and gold along with more normal orange and scarlet. It expanded around him in a huge circle, confined by the cord on the ground, and danced and somersaulted through the air.

Harry glanced up. His hair and head were also crowned with fire, and Tom was staring at him with eyes that had that devouring gleam to them. Either he was hungry for the fire or he wanted to punish Harry for calling that much fire and scaring the shit out of him; Harry wasn't sure which.

Harry swallowed and bowed to the trees. "Thank you. Will you please dismiss the fire?"

The flames winked out at once. Harry turned, still with that current of strength channeling through him like he was a riverbed, and willed the dying tree healthier.

He wasn't prepared, again, but this time for the crippling pain that flooded him, the slow death of roots, the clinging heaviness of bark that was peeling and ripping away from the trunk, and how hollows had formed in the center of his being. Harry gasped and fed the strength forwards as fast as he could, concentrating on the blossoming of new leaves, the establishment of new roots, the closing of gaping wounds in the bark. Then he dropped straight down so that he was sitting on the earth, spent.

Tom started towards him, and then stopped on the other side of the cord. Harry winced at the sight of it. He knew he had to open the circle somehow, but his head was swimming, and he couldn't remember how.

"Speak the words to dismiss the circle," Shara muttered. Her voice was so low that Harry thought he read the movement of her lips more than anything else.

"Thank you for your favors, earth," Harry managed. "Pull the circle back." Then he really did slump down, as a sudden backing of magic he hadn't realized was there vanished, but Tom's arms caught him before he could bury his face in the dirt.

"That was extraordinarily successful," Tom said, staring at Harry in that annoying way he had, as if Harry was to blame because he'd got a bit magically exhausted. "But what happened at the end?"

"I—healed the tree," Harry said, and coughed a little. He flexed his toes to remind himself that he really did have feet, and not roots. "But I suffered its pain while I was doing it. I didn't know that would happen."

"It should not have. None of the books described it that way."

Harry couldn't help rolling his eyes. "Well, if the books didn't, then of course I was probably imagining it."

Tom ignored him and turned to speak to Abraxas. "You read the books recently. What did it say about the price paid? The effects?"

"It did say that the person who gave power back to the earth would suffer some of what the earth suffered, my lord," Abraxas said. He sounded frightened, which made Harry stir restlessly in Tom's arms, wanting to tell Tom to stop it. But his mouth seemed stopped with earth, and Tom didn't move so Harry could actually see Abraxas's face. "It wasn't more specific than that. But it did mention that if the wild magic asked for was strong enough, the repayment sometimes killed the Potter who had invoked it."

Tom's arms tightened to the point that Harry pointedly moved, trying to get him to loosen the hold. Tom ignored him again. "Why do I not remember that?" he hissed, not actually falling into Parseltongue although he came close.

"I believe that it was in another part of the book than the one that described the rite itself, my lord. More about what my ancestors had witnessed some of the times that they had seen the Potters use the wild magic."

"I see." This time, Tom was using Parseltongue. He moved around in front of Harry and crouched down with that implacable expression that meant Harry would hate whatever was coming next. "I want you to avoid using the wild magic if at all possible, Harry."

"The whole point of this was being able to use it so that we would look impressive in front of our enemies," Harry said, working hard not to roll his eyes. He also thought it was stupid that Tom apparently wanted to conceal his intentions from the Knights, but he would indulge Tom rather than defy him right now. "So why go through it at all?"

"I didn't know you could die."

Harry shook his head. "I'll have to read the book myself to be sure, but I would say that probably the greater prices are paid for the greater feats. I wanted to heal the dying tree. I didn't realize how much magic it would take. I didn't even ask for that great a flame, only something that wouldn't burn me. The wild magic must have given me something so impressive because of what I intended to do to repay it."

Tom paused. "Then if we ask for something small and carefully-defined…"

"Or plan to do something small in order to repay the wild magic. Something smaller than healing a whole tree back to health. Yes, it ought to work."

Tom rubbed Harry's shoulders in silence. Then he said, "I still could have lost you," aloud. Harry felt the Knights relax, probably deciding that things were almost normal with the return to English.

Harry squeezed Tom's hand. His strength was returning rapidly, actually seeming to rise from the earth he sat on and pound through his body with the movement of his heart. He shrugged. "I think things will be fine if we're careful. The earth probably doesn't want to kill me. Then it wouldn't be able to receive my strength back to accomplish whatever I promised to do."

"I will never understand your causal acceptance of danger to your own life," Tom said into his ear. "Simply remember how I will react if you die."

"I always think of that," Harry murmured. "Even if I thought that my dying was worth it, I wouldn't want to hurt you like that." He stood slowly, leaning on Tom a little, but stretched his arms, and found that he felt much better than he'd anticipated. He smiled at Tom.

"The earth gave you back strength, didn't it?" Shara demanded. "I could almost see the green and gold currents weaving into you."

"That should have been impossible once he released the circle," said Tom sharply.

Shara lowered her eyes a little, but kept speaking, which was the bravest thing Harry had seen one of the Knights do yet. "It's the only reason I can think of for him recovering his strength so quickly, my lord. And I did see the currents myself. It would be hard to mistake them for anything else."

Tom frowned at Harry. "Do you feel as if that happened?"

Harry nodded. "The earth returns what it took, Tom. I think that's the only reason that the rite works at all. Like I said, it doesn't want to kill me. I offered a gift, it accepted, it gave me one, I gave one back, and then it fed me again."

Tom shifted his weight. Harry wasn't sure that he understood the expression on Tom's face, but, well. If he had to name it, he would say that Tom was uncomfortable with something so reciprocal and circular.

"Are you sure that you want to do this?" Harry asked under his breath as they began to walk back to the Manor, Tom still supporting him despite the fact that Harry no longer felt as if he really needed it.

Tom's chin rose. "Of course. Next time, I will perform the rite, so as not to endanger you."

Harry sighed. Then again, it was hard to move Tom from anything he'd decided on. And at least this intense, loving Tom was better than what Tom had become in his first world.

Even if he could stand to be less intense about my safety than he is.