Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Eight—Claims of Blood

"I have information that can help you. But I require some guarantees."

Tom opened his mouth to tell Dorea where she could put her guarantees, despite the fact that such words didn't really fit the darkened atmosphere of the ancient Potter library with old, spell-preserved tomes on the shelves. But before he could do that, Harry leaned forwards and did it for him.

"You can't do this, Dorea." Harry's voice was low, but the blue light of the diadem still filled the room with steady light. It lit up the sharp curl of Dorea's fingers around the handle of her teacup, and the lines in Harry's face as he leaned forwards like an eagle from his chair next to Tom. "You don't belong in this world, and you led us into what turned out to be a trap. You don't get to ask for safety of some kind when you can just go back through the portal to your world and be ultimately safe. You don't get to ask for anything for Jonquil. That's not how it works."

Tom stared at Harry, amazed. Harry reached out without turning to him—he seemed to think Dorea might turn into someone else if he looked away from her—and squeezed Tom's fingers silently. Tom did understand, then. The loss of Tom's Parseltongue had rattled Harry, badly, and at the moment, he wasn't in the mood to put up with the kind of bollocks that Dorea might otherwise have tried to feed them.

Tom smiled.

"It wasn't a trap." Dorea set her teacup down hard enough to make the little table rattle. Tom cast her a look of scorn, but kept quiet. Harry wanted to resolve this in his own way, and Tom would let him.

"It sure felt and looked like one." Harry leaned back in his chair. "And I notice that you tried to save the books in the Black library instead of coming with Tom, me, and Shara when we escaped."

"Those books are priceless," Dorea said.

"But this isn't your world. Why do you care if one version of them burns?" Harry shook his head slowly. "I'll cherish the memory of those days that I lived in your world, but I can't trust you. And I already told you what kind of limits there are on the guarantees you can ask for."

Dorea picked up her teacup again and took what Tom thought was meant to be a fortifying sip. Then she put it down, and said, "It's actually about the books in the Black library that I've come."

"Oh?"

Tom regretted the fact that they weren't alone. He would have liked to take Harry to bed right now, while he was looking and talking like that. He settled for scratching the side of Harry's wrist with his nails, out of sight from Dorea. Harry half-smiled, but didn't turn away from the woman who thought she had some kind of claim to him.

"I—I want you to promise that that will never happen again. What you almost did. The burning."

"We're hardly likely to be invited back."

"But it would extend to other Black properties and so on," Dorea persisted. "And if Arcturus—the Arcturus of this world—is fighting beside Dumbledore, then I don't want you to kill him."

Harry gave the ghost of a shrug. "We can't promise that. If Arcturus tried to attack me and Tom, I would strike back without hesitation. I think even Shara probably would." Tom wasn't as sure of that, but he didn't want to undermine Harry right now, so he kept silent.

"You—you don't want to hear the information I have on Dumbledore?"

"I'm telling you that your price for it is too high." Harry's eyes were utterly clear and so calm that Tom could have got lost in them. "There's no way that I'm going to hold back and let Arcturus wound or kill someone who's fighting with us if we come face to face."

"You could use that gem you wear to stun him!"

"And how do I know that would keep him out of the fight? He might wake up, or someone else might wake him, and there he'd be. For all I know, I'd have to spend more time concentrating on stunning him then I would actually fighting other people."

Tom was glad that the light was dim in the Potter library so that Dorea couldn't see the erection he was sporting. He kept his eyes on Harry. Dorea just looked lost, sitting there with her hands tightly clasped in front of her.

"You don't care about our family?" she finally whispered.

"Your family," Harry said, gently. "Jonquil is your granddaughter, and you're part of a world I wasn't born into. And I don't have any relation to the Blacks except distantly, the way that so many of the pure-blood families do."

Dorea shut her eyes. "I wish that you could have just stayed in our world and accepted being part of our family, Harry. That you hadn't come there." She opened her eyes and focused on Tom for the first time in the conversation. "We suffered and lost him when you came through the portal."

Tom smiled at her and said nothing. The flinch when she saw his smile was enough. And Harry had just squeezed his hand chidingly, asking him not to do that. That was all right with Tom. For Harry, he would be silent and let annoying people leave instead of killing them.

"I suppose the question you need to ask," Harry said, "is whether you want to keep your information to yourself instead of using it so that I might be more likely to survive. Do you care enough about me to do that? Or do you care more about the Arcturus of this world and the books I almost burned?"

Dorea closed her eyes. "When you present it that simply, it isn't a choice."

"Most things can be presented that simply," Harry said.

Tom disagreed, which might put him in unity with Dorea, given the wild twitch at the side of her mouth. But he said nothing, and she said nothing for long enough that Tom thought she might stand up and storm out, taking her information with her.

Dorea finally opened her eyes. "You drive a hard bargain."

"You were the one who made it a bargain," Harry said, and gave Dorea a winsome smile as he propped his chin up with one fist. "Come on, then. Tell us what you've discovered."

"Dumbledore knew exactly where certain books were in that library, from the way he ran to save them, and that included shelves that, if they're identical to the ones in my world, are usually restricted to family." Dorea hesitated for a long moment, and Tom felt impatience writhe in his belly. He, at least, had already come to the conclusion that the curse Albus had used to remove his Parseltongue gifts was one that must have come from the Black family; it could hardly be from anywhere else.

"When we calmed the flames, and before Arcturus threw me out, I noticed a certain book was missing." Dorea was almost whispering now, leaning forwards with a pale face and a stretched mouth that looked as if she was about to start vomiting. "There is—only one spell in that book."

"A ritual?" Tom asked.

For once, Dorea didn't disdain to answer him. She gave such a vicious nod of her head that it looked as if she had hurt her neck. "Yes. But at the end, it charges your wand with the spell, and you don't need the ritual circle to cast it. So Dumbledore could cast it anywhere, not lure you to a place of his choosing."

"You can't be sure that the book is the same?"

"I can't be sure. But I think you need to prepare as if that spell is the one he's going to cast—the one he'll try to use the end the war."

"Will you tell us what it does?" Tom hissed. Dorea's air of mystery hadn't got any less irritating for the time since they'd last seen her.

Dorea started and looked at him with dislike. Tom stared back. He wasn't at all sorry he'd pricked the bubble of mysterious importance she was attempting to build around herself.

"It will harvest your soul," Dorea said. "It will allow Dumbledore to keep it for himself, or torment it, or send it immediately to the afterlife, or use it as a source for any kind of magic he wants." She closed her eyes again. "He can gather five souls before he has to repeat the ritual that would charge his wand with the magic."

Harry made an abrupt motion next to him. Tom grabbed him. Harry looked like he wanted to throw up, and Tom absolutely did not blame him. All he could do was gather Harry close and murmur reassurances while he stared at Dorea.

"And there's no counter to it?" he asked. "No protection from it?"

Dorea shook her head. "Only to avoid being hit by the curse, the same way as with the Killing Curse. Placing a physical object in the way would probably destroy the object but also count as a use of the curse. There is a story in my world that one of my ancestors stood against a rogue from the family who had gained the knowledge of the spell by constantly conjuring boulders in the way, and when the five uses were exhausted, she killed the rogue."

"Then the solution is simple," Harry said.

Tom turned and stared at him. "What the hell are you saying, Harry? I am not about to let any of my Knights be sacrificed to him. And he might do that and then go back and use the ritual to charge his wand again because he knows it would hurt us."

"You said that if he's performed the ritual, he can cast at any time?" Harry asked Dorea, ignoring Tom. Tom decided that he wasn't nearly as attractive as he had been right now. "Like any ordinary spell?"

"Yes. And you can't predict it and can't stop it, and there is no verbal component to the spell, so you might well assume that he's casting an ordinary curse and not know what's happening until it hits you."

"A simple solution," Harry repeated, his smile so bloodthirsty that it seemed to sparkle separately in the air from his face and Tom had to revise his opinion of Harry's attractiveness again. "We're going to destroy his wand."

Dorea's eyes widened. "I—yes, that would work. He would have to perform the ritual again and charge a separate wand. The curse follows the physical instrument, not the caster."

Harry nodded. "And when we go to destroy his wand, we're going to kill him."

"What about the grand battle that you and I were going to fight?" Tom demanded, a little disoriented. He didn't know how Harry had come to that solution so fast, and honestly it bothered him that he hadn't been the one to do so. As Harry had said, it was simple enough that anyone could have thought of it.

"We'll probably still have to do that," Harry said, with a shrug that made Dorea stare at him in something like horror. "Killing Dumbledore won't necessarily make his followers stand down, and destroying his wand might take so much of our time and attention that we miss him. But let me be clear, Tom." He turned towards Tom and smiled, and Tom swallowed at the dangerous expression on his face. "We're going to do this. And we're going to destroy that wand. I won't let him perform soul-magic on anyone who follows us."

Tom nodded, mesmerized again. He would let Harry outline the plans for the attack, and offer help only as needed. He did hope that he would get some private time with Harry before they left.

"You told your followers that you needed private time with me to plan our strategy, and it was for this?"

Honestly, Harry was proud of himself for gasping out that whole sentence at once. Tom was on top of him, within him, his face so intent that Harry might have thought he was casting ritual magic himself. His hands gripped Harry's wrists and forced them back against the pillow, his nails scratching the way they had during the conversation with Dorea. Harry spread his legs and groaned in appreciation as Tom fucked him.

"We are planning our strategy," Tom said, and bent down until his mouth was right next to Harry's ear, hissing in what was certainly his best approximation of Parseltongue without the language itself. "I'm giving you something to come back to."

Harry took a moment to simply appreciate the sheer luxury of Tom inside him and Tom's hands on his wrists, which meant it took him more than a moment to absorb the words. He glared at Tom. "I have—more than e-enough—oh."

Tom was pressing thickly against his prostate, and Harry arched his back and reached for the pleasure. Tom waited to speak until Harry was paying attention to him again. "You have a tendency to charge ahead and sacrifice yourself for others. I want to make sure that's not going to happen this time."

He rocked, sending another slow wave of pleasure over Harry's senses, overwhelming them and making him stare and stutter. "I—I won't—"

"You're going to make me a promise."

It was unfair how unaffected Tom sounded, Harry's rattled brain presented to him. That meant he had to do something about it. He braced himself against Tom's next thrust instead of tilting into it and squeezed down. At last Tom's eyes unfocused and pleasure washed over his face.

"H-Harry—"

"Feel with me," Harry said. "Don't worry about the battle or str-strategy. Just be here with me."

Tom released a shaky breath and focused on him, and his face became utterly determined. Harry smiled. He always liked what followed that expression.

And he did. Tom drove forwards like a madman, hitting Harry's prostate more than half the time. Harry was lost somewhere inside his own body and his own head, but he kept looking up, meeting Tom's eyes, and flexed his hands now and then to feel the dents that Tom's fingers were putting in the skin of his wrists.

And then, when Harry was trembling on the edge of a massive orgasm, Tom stopped.

Harry arched his neck back, blinking dry eyes, gasping, as he stared up. Tom stared back, and he was trembling. But his body remained still and his hold remained firm, meaning that Harry couldn't drive himself back and finish.

"Tom?" Harry whispered.

"I want you to promise me that if the battle goes against us, you'll flee. Back through the portal to Dorea's world, and that you'll reclaim your magic and collapse it behind you."

And he's still speaking in complete sentences, it's so unfair, was Harry's first, nonsensical thought. He groaned and shifted, but Tom remained still. Harry had to work for long seconds to dredge up words on his tongue. "How can you ask th-that of me—Tom? How can I betray you and the Knights?"

"It's not betrayal. It's what I need to go into this battle and stay sane, knowing you're protected. Besides." Tom smiled and shifted his weight from side to side, which was teasingly close to enough without being anywhere near it. "Otherwise, you don't get to come."

"I c-can—" Harry couldn't say it, but luckily, the gesture he made with his hand towards his cock ought to translate well enough.

"You could have, if not for the little charm I cast on the bedroom when we started to prevent you finishing without me."

Harry closed his eyes and did his best to clear his mind when Tom was still within him and the pressure to orgasm was everywhere. And he did his best to reclaim his voice. Tom already had a lot of advantages here. There was no need to hand him everything just because he was a sneaky bastard.

"Okay," Harry finally whispered, managing to open his eyes. "I—I'll make the promise, Tom. But I never intended to act reckless, or sacrifice myself, or do something dangerous that would mean I would die."

"I know," Tom said, and one hand left Harry's wrist to reach up and stroke through his hair. "The problem is that you so often do something unexpected and unplanned. I want you to make the promise to me sealed in magic."

The only magic Harry could call forth right now was a glow from the diadem on his forehead, but Tom glanced at it and nodded. "That ought to be enough," he said, and faced Harry.

"I promise that I'll go back through the portal to Dorea's world and collapse it behind me if you die in battle."

Tom scowled at him, but Harry scowled back. That was his wording and he wasn't going to change it.

After a second, Tom sighed and bent down to kiss him, which meant all sorts of interesting pressure inside Harry. Harry gasped, and Tom did the same thing, and then began to plow forwards, snapping his hips, both of them forgetting about anything else until the moment of completion.

Afterwards, Tom lay in Harry's arms and murmured, "I want you to know that you're everything to me. I would rather you survive than you stay here to seek revenge."

"I should ask you for a similar promise."

"I couldn't collapse the portal, and fuck if I'm going to a world where Jonquil is waiting for me."

Harry managed to snort. "I didn't mean it like that. I should ask you to run if I die, but—I already know you won't."

"No." Tom was quiet for a moment. "You have more reasons to live than I do, Harry. And if the battle goes against us badly enough that both the Knights and you die, then I don't have any reason to."

Harry closed his eyes, but said nothing. It wasn't worth arguing about. Instead, he traced his hands gently up and down Tom's shoulder blades and made another promise, this time to himself.

His first promise wouldn't be needed, because the only one who would die was Dumbledore.