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Chapter Twenty-Four—The Great Shield

Harry was paler than Tom liked as he sat at the dining room table in the newly rediscovered Potter House. Tom had had one of Abraxas's house-elves bring them a thick stew for dinner, not something that he would have eaten normally, but the elves were reluctant to disobey the elder Malfoys. They were just more afraid of Tom.

"Is something wrong?" Tom asked, when they had eaten for several minutes and he had asked Harry five questions and only two had been answered.

Harry sighed and looked up at Tom. "I was just thinking that this isn't something I ever got to see in my first world. If my father or his family owned more properties than the little house my parents were living in when Voldemort attacked, I never knew it."

Tom inclined his head. "Dumbledore stole your heritage from you in more than one world. I do not blame you for grieving."

Harry rolled his eyes then, which made him look a lot more like himself. "Tom, you don't know that it was related to Dumbledore. Maybe my family was more humble there and just didn't have a lot of property."

"No, I think it was him."

"Listen," Harry began, leaning forwards and launching into a spirited defense of his first world's Dumbledore. Tom just listened and nodded. It was irritating to hear, of course it was, but it kept Harry from brooding on the implications of what he had seen here, and that was more than enough.

Perhaps ten minutes later, Harry abruptly stopped himself in the middle of a word and looked suspiciously at Tom. Tom raised an eyebrow at him and took another pointed sip of the stew. Harry hadn't eaten enough, either.

Harry picked up his spoon, but he said, "Did you just distract me from worrying about whether there were properties like this in my first world, too?"

"Would I do that?"

"You would do so much." Luckily, there was a touch of amusement in Harry's voice, and his lips curved as he propped his chin in his hand and stared at Tom. "Dare so much. I don't know why I got lucky enough to have you."

Tom grabbed the hand that held Harry's spoon and pulled it to him, touching Harry's knuckles with his lips. "I think it's the other way around."

"Why don't we say that we're both lucky, and split the difference?" Harry turned his head with a sigh and rested it against Tom's arm for a second. "I'm tired, but I am more hopeful than I was when I left my first world."

"And in your second?"

"I was content there," Harry said stubbornly. "But you've taught me contentment isn't the same as joy."

"No," Tom said, his own joy mounting up in him like phoenix flame. "It is not."

"Masters Potter and Potter!"

Harry sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. The blue gem on his forehead was already lighting the room around him. Tom was awake next to him, but lying flat, one hand gripping his wand, as if he thought he would need the energy later.

"Mizzy is not supposed to be being here," whispered the house-elf that Harry recognized as one of Abraxas's, wringing her ears. If there had been anyone still asleep, her "whisper" would have woken them up. "But Mizzy remembered that Master Harry Potter had been kind to her one morning when she was spilling his cereal. She is telling them that she heard Master and Mistress Malfoy speaking of battle plans."

"Who with?" Tom asked, sitting up now. Harry turned again to look at Mizzy. Shamefully, he had to do it because the tumble of Tom's dark hair across his forehead was threatening to distract Harry.

Harry remembered, then, Tom's assurance that the Malfoys would never bind themselves to Dumbledore because they saw their bloodline as supreme. He grimaced. He hoped that assurance had been true.

"With the Dumbledore," Mizzy gasped. "Theys be talking about how the Dumbledore's soldiers are massing outside the Ministry."

So, not allies, but useful information, Harry thought. Knowing the Malfoys, they were probably thinking about how this would affect their own social standing.

And then his mind shed the last traces of sleep, and he reached out and caught Tom's shoulder at the same moment as Tom's hand squeezed ruthlessly around his.

"Mizzy," Tom said, with the same sort of shocking quietness in his voice that Harry had heard him use when he was punishing the Knights. "Can you take us to where these soldiers are massing?"

"Don't do that, Tom," Harry promptly snapped. "We can't face the Order of the Phoenix all by ourselves. We have to gather the Knights-"

Tom glanced at him, and Harry gasped. His face was grim in the light of the diadem, but there was also an odd echo of the joy Harry had seen earlier when they made love.

"We're powerful enough to do this ourselves," Tom murmured, sliding his hand up Harry's arm in his damnable method of persuasion. "And why do you think they're attacking the Ministry at night? There's not that many people there. They don't want lots of casualties, or to take the Wizengamot hostage. They want to do this as a symbolic victory. Once they're in charge of the Ministry, some people will go ahead and surrender. Well, we're going to win a symbolic victory over them, too. One where it doesn't matter if we win every duel or defeat Dumbledore in person."

"We could die attempting this."

"Funny, Gryffindor Potter extraordinaire." Tom slid his hand up to Harry's shoulder again. "I never thought I'd see the day when you were a coward."

Harry had long since learned to control his instinctive reaction to that word. He narrowed his eyes a little. "And I never thought I'd see the day when you were so eager to dash headlong into danger."

"I have someone beside me who can turn night to day and grow trees with a touch of his hand." Tom tilted his head and smiled almost winsomely. "Who says that I have to worry? That I'm in danger?"

Harry shook his head sharply and considered the merits of Tom's idea. Honestly, it had them. There would be a symbolic victory here, and if Mizzy went with them, they had someone who could start spreading the rumors right away, even if there was no human there who would. And there were files and weapons and the like in the Ministry that he wanted to prevent from falling into Dumbledore's hands.

"Let's do it," he said, and reached for his clothes.

"You're so handsome when you see things my way."

Harry didn't bother rolling his eyes, because they didn't have time, but he thought about it very hard.

Mizzy brought them to an Apparition point not far from the ridiculous telephone box that was one method of entry to the Ministry. Tom straightened his shirt sleeve and reached out to take Harry's hand. Harry glanced at him once, the gem blazing above his brow.

Tom stifled some of the more unfortunate impulses that seeing Harry look like that gave him, and nodded to their joined hands. "Did you know that there are spells only bonded couples can perform?"

Harry stared at him. "No. And you think we can perform them correctly the first time we do something like this?"

"We're Potter and Potter," Tom said, and drew Harry into his arms. "And listen to our magic. Listen to it singing together."

Harry's eyes slightly unfocused, and his breath caught. Tom smiled. He had been alone when he first noticed the joined note of their magic now that they were bonded, but he had reacted similarly. Here was a new source of power that he had never even thought about, partially because he had been so focused on bonding with Harry for different reasons.

"Tune your magic even more to mine," Tom whispered. "It sounds like a chorus right now. It has to sound like a single voice."

Harry nodded and closed his eyes. The note became more and more audible, until they seemed to be standing in the middle of a chapel thrumming with song. (Tom despised himself for the Muggle comparison, but it was also the right one).

By the time the song was so loud that they couldn't hear any noise that might have been coming from Dumbledore's supporters, Harry's eyes snapped open. There was a blue shine behind them that resembled both the light from the diadem and the color of Tom's own eyes. "Like this?" Harry asked.

Tom knew it wasn't his imagination that there was an echo of his own voice in Harry's. He nodded and smiled, and Harry lifted one hand, holding his fingers pointed out and stiffened in front of him. Tom's arm rose along with his, in the way he had known it would, without his conscious command.

They directed their magic into the earth, aiming at the underground portions of the Ministry, which was almost everything. Tom watched as the blue flames raced ahead in shining lines, and curved back to meet themselves. When they met, it was with a sound like the snapping of a belt buckle.

But the air had shifted, and Tom knew that wherever Dumbledore was, he would have felt the tightening and the difference from before. He would probably come seeking them in a minute.

Tom tugged on Harry's arm. "Come on. We have to move."

Harry opened his eyes with a gasp and sagged forwards. Only Tom's grip on his arm kept him from falling. "Holy shit," Harry breathed, and then glanced at Tom with a frown. "Why aren't you affected?"

"You were the conduit for it," Tom said, and lifted a hand to brush it gently down Harry's cheek. "I helped, but you were the one who aimed the fire. In the future, we'll work better together and get used to sharing those particular duties."

Harry only nodded as if he didn't really believe that but didn't want to argue it right now, and hurried along behind Tom as they made their way around the Ministry. From what Mizzy had said, Dumbledore had arrayed his troops on nearly all sides of the Muggle buildings that loomed above the underground portions of the Ministry.

Tom didn't love the idea of fighting in front of Muggles, but then, it was Dumbledore who had begun this in the first place. And there would be far fewer than there would have been during the day.

Above all, it was incentive to finish the fight quickly, before Muggle authorities started to notice what was going on.

Harry was still staggering a little from the magic when he and Tom rounded a cobblestoned corner, but a curse blasting above his head shocked him back to awareness easily enough.

Harry ducked and pulled Tom with him on instinct. They rolled back to their feet a second later, lit by the soft fire of the flames. Harry realized he couldn't tell whether the diadem was lit in that particular radiance, but he didn't think so. It had retreated to a watching, flickering radiance after it had come to life in their bedroom.

As they scrambled up, two of the Order's branded soldiers appeared ahead of them. Harry started to draw his wand, but stopped when he felt Tom's hand on his arm. He glanced sideways and saw that Tom was smiling, his eyes brilliant.

"No, Harry. We can stop them with the fire alone."

Harry swallowed uneasily. "I'm not sure that's true."

"You don't need to be sure of it," Tom said, in an eerie voice. "It's true." He raised his hands, and the flames danced and abruptly sprang up into shining sapphire columns.

Harry barely had a chance to blink before the flames wrapped around the Order members and burned them alive. It happened so quickly that Harry heard the clink of their charred bones falling to the ground of the alley before anything else. He stared in shock, and Tom grabbed him and pulled him on.

"You-you said symbolic victory," Harry breathed at last, as they ducked into the shelter of an older building's cornice.

Tom shrugged. "Symbolic in that we're protecting the Ministry and I doubt we'll destroy the entire Order here. Victories are never purely symbolic for those hurt by them."

"You didn't need to kill them like that."

"One of them had a wand that was glowing green. Would you rather I took chances with my safety, or yours? Or the safety of the people who depend on us?"

Harry nodded slowly. Tom had explained the need for Harry to keep himself safe in a way that made sense to him; as the most powerful of Tom's allies, Harry would leave others to be injured if he was and he couldn't protect them. Others would die if he died.

There was also, always, the threat that Harry kept at the back of his mind, that Tom would go mad if Harry died. Or at least have no more reason to hold back from hurting people. If anything could make Harry sober up and think about what he was doing, it was that.

"Come out!"

That was Dumbledore's voice, strong and, to Harry's private disappointment, not sounding as though he had been injured at all by the fire in the Black house. He stepped into view around the same corner that the Order members had rounded, one hand clenched in front of him and a shining set of blue-and-gold robes draped over his shoulders.

Tom made a soft sound. Harry glanced at him, but Tom shook his head. He'd probably have to explain later, Harry thought.

"You have invoked the Great Shield when you had no reason to do so," Dumbledore said, studying the buildings and obviously not finding their hiding place yet. "I did not intend to destroy the Ministry. I merely intended to enter it and assume my rightful place as the ruler of the Wizengamot."

"You have intended to claim all the knowledge of the Ministry for yourself and end this war before it began." Tom was striking the type of pompous posture typical of a pure-blood, and Harry thought he probably didn't even know he was doing it. "We have merely stopped you. Preserved the Ministry for the future generations who will have no part in this war."

Dumbledore sighed. "I would have removed the Dark artifacts from the Ministry."

"And the Dark knowledge?"

"I do not think my answer would surprise you. You know my goals."

"And they are wrong and mistaken," Tom said flatly. "Your fear has no boundaries, Dark Lord. It only grows. Sooner or later you would decide that even spells considered Light by the Ministry now are Dark, and you would attempt to erase knowledge of them as well. And someone would discover a way to use other, ordinary spells against you, and you would destroy them, too. In the end, what magic would we have left? What we would have left except the shadow of your terror?"

Harry could feel his eyebrows creeping up. It was a fine speech, but he wondered who Tom was making it for. He could see Order of the Phoenix members starting to mass up behind Dumbledore, but it couldn't be for them. Tom would never think that he could turn any of those fanatics with simple words.

"I want our world to be safe."

"Stifling progress and innovation would only make it stagnant."

"It would be safer without these spells that you call markers of progress and innovation."

"And what will happen when you ban the Cutting Charm because someone can use it to slice a throat? The Levitation Charm because someone could levitate a rock over someone else's head and drop it? I want to know where the limits are."

"I will ban improper use of magic, not the spells themselves. I will erase the knowledge that these spells can be used that way from the human mind."

Tom rolled his eyes. "And then someone else will discover it anew, and you'll use Memory Charms on them until their mind is torn and bleeding. I don't truly expect you to give me another answer, Albus. I know you, and I know what you stand for."

"Then why this exchange of words at all, Tom?"

Tom smiled and glanced around. Harry listened. There was the wail of Muggle sirens. "It sounds like your time to take the Ministry is up, old boy."

Dumbledore clenched his hands together in front of his heart and closed his eyes. Harry felt a stirring of unease move through him when he didn't attempt to do anything else, just stood there with his breathing slowing further and further.

And then a bolt of green light rose up in front of him, spiraling around itself, slower and slower, the color of the Killing Curse. Harry stared. The diadem on his forehead was waking up, but as slowly as the curse was moving. It didn't seem to recognize this spell, either.

The bolt shimmered, and developed a serpent's head at one end. Harry started to raise his wand.

The bolt struck before he could defend either of them, lashing out straight and true at Tom. Tom screamed as it wrapped around him, and black liquid began to bleed down his face, reminding Harry far too much of the "blood" the diary Horcrux had shed.

"Thus all Dark Arts die," Dumbledore said softly, before he Apparated away. There was a series of pops as the other Order of the Phoenix members followed him.

Harry managed to call in the magic that powered the blue flames guarding the Ministry-the Great Shield, if that was really what it was-and they flickered out. He gathered Tom close and Apparated as well, landing inside the specially-prepared room of the Potter house that they had discovered allowed Apparition. Tom breathed hoarsely and leaned against Harry for a long moment, unnaturally still.

"Tom?"

Tom looked up at him slowly. Harry stopped breathing at the look in his eyes.

"I don't know how," Tom whispered, "but he took my Parseltongue away."

And then, motionless, silent, he began to weep.