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Chapter Twenty-Seven—Recovery from Darkness

"Some of the Knights aren't very happy about the decision you made setting them free."

Harry looked up in surprise as Abraxas came around a corner of the shelf in the library. Then he shrugged and looked down at his History of Magic book again. Binns was as boring as ever, but it just meant Slytherins were expected to study outside the class to keep up. "I can't help that. They'll get used to thinking on their own again."

"Why did you make that decision?" Abraxas asked softly, sitting down on the other side of the table. "You could have had everything you wanted after defeating Riddle, including the fawning devotion of all of us. Just treat us right, and it would have been a big enough contrast to Riddle to earn you that."

Harry shook his head. "I already have fawning devotion from one person," he murmured, thinking of Orion, and the way all of that could fall apart if he somehow vanished back to his own time. "I don't need it from others."

"But it would be useful."

"To do what with, Abraxas?"

Abraxas hesitated as if he had never considered the question. Then he leaned forwards. "It would mean that you're entirely safe in the Slytherin common room and our dormitory and don't need to worry about Riddle anymore."

"I don't worry about Riddle now," Harry pointed out. "Besides, these are all people, including you and Orion, who never stood up to Riddle before." He kept his voice as kind as he could. "I don't mean to criticize you, since I understand why he was hard to stand up to, but why would it become easier now?"

Abraxas frowned and drummed his fingers on the table. "Before, we only had fear to motivate us to keep away from Riddle. Now, we would have loyalty to you motivating us to stand up to him."

"And that might get you hurt. I'd rather protect people who might dislike me or wait for me to become a lord when I never will than have anyone get hurt on my behalf."

"But that's…" Abraxas seemed lost. "One of the things that lords do is get defended by their followers."

"If you want to stand at my side to face Riddle or someone else, feel free," Harry said, and waved his hand. "But I won't require it of anyone, or bind you with the kinds of oaths that it sounded like Riddle required from the Knights of Walpurgis."

"Strict ones." Abraxas looked a little green for a second. Then he shook his head. "Avery and Lestrange aren't going to like this. Neither are some of the fifth-years who were looking forward to being recruited into Riddle's circle."

Harry shrugged. "They can come and complain to me if they're so upset about it. Not that it's going to do them much good, mind."

"You truly don't care for power."

Abraxas sounded as though he was speaking a foreign language and hoping for Harry to tell him that his accent was correct. Harry grinned. "No, I really don't. The Hat put me in Slytherin for other reasons."

"I'm not sure that I think your strategy cunning, either."

Abraxas was speaking in a slow, soft voice, one hand under the table as if resting on his wand. Harry just shrugged at him yet again. "I'm not going to attack you for saying things like that, either. And you can go back and tell them that I said so." He glanced down and grimaced as he saw a long list of dates of goblin rebellions that presumably he would have to memorize.

Abraxas frowned and took his hand away from his wand, folding it on the table. "You are the strangest Slytherin I've ever met."

"Just not someone who needs to use magical power to make my wishes come true."

It was such a fact that Harry considered it bland. After all, magical power wouldn't take him back to his own time, and it might have attracted Orion's attention, but it never could have allowed him to want to court or fall in love with Harry on its own. But Abraxas drew back and stared at him, mouth slightly open.

"What?"

"Nothing. I just…I have to tell Lestrange something," Abraxas murmured, and stood up and retreated hastily from the library, with a gesture in Harry's direction that might have been half a bow.

Harry sat there for a moment, idly tracing the edge of the history book's page, and wondered if more than one person would be left devastated when he disappeared—as he kept thinking he had to—back to his own time.

Then he shook his head. The only thing he could do was protect them while he was here, and grant Orion the benefit of his caring and companionship the same way. If he disappeared, at least they would have those memories.

Maybe it's for the best if I go soon. Then Orion wouldn't have time to get too attached to me, and he could still marry Walburga, and Sirius and Regulus could still be born.

But I hope that he wouldn't forget me.

Harry sighed in irritation at himself and his own excuses for messing up the timeline, and went back to studying.

"Why can't you break through it?" Orion howls, on his feet and pacing back and forth outside the rim of the black dome that covers Harry and Riddle.

"This isn't an ordinary spell with a countercurse, Mr. Black!" Madam Laniss has her wand aimed at the black dome, but her spells are merely bouncing from it. Her lips are wrinkled in an intense frown of concentration, but Orion already knows that she isn't going to break through just from that. "This is a construction of pure, uncontrolled accidental magic!"

Orion snarls under his breath. Uncontrolled, his foot. Riddle planned this, even if he didn't plan to attack Harry in front of witnesses.

Orion turns around and hammers the dome with an uncoordinated blast of his own magic. It's not something he's done in years, and it physically hurts to tear it out of himself instead of sending it through a wand. But the way it makes the dome ring like a struck gong is the only satisfaction he thinks he's going to get right now.

Orion goes to work, sending pulse after pulse of anger and fear and love against the dome. He feels something deep inside it shift and crack. He can only hope that it's not Harry's bones or something like that. On he goes, raining strikes, and barely manages to pull back the magic in time when the dome abruptly explodes into shards of glimmering black light.

Harry rolls to his feet on the other side of the floor the dome once covered. His left arm is hanging down, streaks of dull grey running from his shoulder to his wrist. He looks furious. Orion swallows, and then glances at Riddle.

Riddle is lying on the floor where the dome was, gasping. His throat is covered with bruises that seem to indicate Harry strangled him with both hands. One of the hands was missing fingers, even. Orion feels a fierce surge of pride, and heads straight for Harry.

If these idiots in the Wizengamot are going to try and get upset at Harry for choking Riddle or using a Muggle method of defending himself or anything similar, they'll have to go through Orion first.

"Are you all right?" Harry asks, reaching up with his right hand to rest it on Orion's shoulder. He doesn't take his gaze from Riddle, and Orion can understand why, as much as he'd like Harry to look at him right now.

"I'm fine. You?"

"Some bruised ribs, but the main thing is this." Harry visibly tries to move his left arm, winces, and sighs as he turns so that it's in full view of the Wizengamot, who are binding Riddle and using some sort of spell that makes the bruises begin to fade. "He used magic, pumped it into my arm through one hand. I don't know what."

Orion snarls and spins around. "You care more about him than about the person attacked by him?" he snaps at Madam Laniss, who is heading towards them.

Madam Laniss holds up her hands and visibly shows them both that they're empty, swallowing a little as she meets Orion's gaze. "We're sorry, Mr. Black. Mr. Riddle is our charge, so we have to be concerned about him. And there was—you somehow reduced his blood circulation magically, Mr. Potter, as well as giving him bruises."

"Good.'

Both Orion and Harry say it at the same time, and blink at each other. Harry smiles grimly a second later, and lets Orion hold up his limp, grey arm so that Madam Lanis can reach it with her wand as she draws it. "Can you help with this?"

"I recognize it, at least," Madam Laniss says. "He was trying to turn you to stone. But the curse isn't very powerful without a wand." She waves her wand over Harry's arm, whispering the incantation, and Harry sighs in relief not greater than Orion's as the grey streaks retreat. A moment later, Harry's arm twitches in Orion's grasp, and he lifts it easily.

"Your hand," Madam Laniss whispers, her eyes locked on Harry's blackened palm and the missing fingers.

Harry shrugs, in a way that Orion would not have managed if it were his hand. "It's something that happened before this. Something that you might end up trying Riddle for, if I'm right about the charges, but not something you can do anything about right now."

Orion strongly disagrees with that. Madam Laniss could at least offer her apologies for not restraining Riddle appropriately and fall all over herself trying to make that up to Harry. But from the way Harry smiles at Madam Laniss, he honestly wouldn't like that.

Orion sighs. Sometimes being Harry Potter's lover is so trying.

"Yes, perhaps," Madam Laniss murmurs, still staring at Harry's hand. Only when Harry raises an eyebrow at her does she seem to recall that she's supposed to be working. She coughs and turns back to deal with Riddle.

"Are you really all right?" Orion whispers into Harry's ear, sweeping his hand over Harry's elbow.

Harry turns and smiles at him. "Yes. I'm sorry that I upset you."

And once again, he worries more about other people than himself. Orion has to take a steadying breath. He won't get anywhere if he complains about that right at the moment. Not to mention that he doesn't mind Harry's endless compassion for other people, when it's directed at him. "What happened under the dome? No, wait, what happened to make Riddle attack you?"

Harry rears up on his toes, and for a second, Orion thinks that Harry's going to kiss him. He's already reaching out to grasp Harry's jaw when Harry murmurs into Orion's ear, in the lowest of tones, "He knows about the time travel."

"What?"

The Wizengamot members look over at them. Harry gives him a sharp glance and shakes his head. Orion takes the point and walks with Harry over to the chairs they were sitting in before, taking a seat and shooting a glare at Riddle.

He's conscious again, and this time, bound to the chair with a double thickness of chains as well as a shimmer of a spell Orion doesn't recognize. But it surrounds the chair and makes the air glint now and then as if off the edge of a blade. So Orion presumes it's meant to keep Riddle sitting no matter what.

"Now," Madam Laniss says softly, "we were interrupted. Mr. Black, would you still consent to Veritaserum if we Flooed your parents?"

"No."

Riddle laughs, although to Orion's private pleasure, it sounds more than a little strangled. "He's worried about what it would reveal," he chokes out.

"You were willing before, Mr. Black."

"That was when I thought you were competent," Orion says, and ignores the way that the Wizengamot members bristle. He gestures at Riddle. "You were supposed to keep him in the chair and keep him from attacking anyone. Instead, you failed. And you failed to break the dome, too. How am I supposed to trust that you'll keep him away from me if I say something that enrages him?"

"We are trying to be unbiased…" says a man with a high nose who looks like a Selwyn.

"And you went so far in that direction that you didn't properly restrain him," Orion retorts. "I hope that you've been taught how dangerous that is. And I don't feel like proving it again to you. No, I won't speak under Veritaserum. You've granted Riddle the right to refuse. I have it, too."

Madam Laniss and the others spend a moment looking at each other, apparently silently speaking with the ease of long experience. Orion notices it, but it almost doesn't matter. What matters is the way that Harry is leaning his shoulder into Orion's in support.

What matters is the way that Harry is breathing and blinking next to him.

"Very well, then," Madam Laniss says at last. "We will proceed without Veritaserum.'

The testimony goes ahead, better than it would if they were in front of a whole courtroom, Orion's sure. Harry tells what he discovered about Riddle smoothly, factually, holding up his hand when he talks about the part where he broke the cage holding Alphard prisoner.

Riddle smirks at the sound of those words. Orion's wand is in his hand in an instant, but luckily, he keeps it at his side and just dripping sparks for the moment that passes before he remembers to put it away.

Harry leans his shoulder harder into Orion's.

Orion nods back and manages to keep his hand still for the rest of the testimony that passes.

"I think you are right, and we did give Mr. Riddle too much benefit of the doubt," Madam Laniss says uncomfortably when both Harry and Orion are done with their recitations. "And his attack on you when he was under our custody was unconscionable. I apologize, Mr. Potter."

"Thank you, Madam Laniss."

Orion wistfully thinks of all the things he would demand from the Wizengamot as compensation in Harry's place, but then again, he would probably be dead if he was in Harry's place. Harry survived being under a dome of intense magic that no one in the Wizengamot recognized or knew how to counter, and a curse that Riddle managed to wield well enough without a wand to weaken a whole entire arm. Orion is sure that he couldn't do the same.

Riddle abruptly hisses something at Harry.

Harry's face goes stony. He stares back without answering. Riddle shifts under the chains and hisses again.

This time, Harry replies, but it's a single, slashing word—or it sounds like that, at least—that literally makes Riddle start frothing at the lips.

"You will care!" Riddle hoarsely shouts at him. "I'll make you care!" The spell around the chair shudders, and so do the chains binding Riddle's arms to the chair arms.

This time, before Orion can even prepare himself to defend Harry the way he thinks he might need to, a Stunner soars away from Madam Laniss's wand and hits Riddle. He sags in his seat, head drooping over his chest. Orion sighs and reaches for Harry's hand.

"We will handle this," Madam Laniss says, and turns to the other Wizengamot members standing around her. "I am in favor of bringing this before the full body for trial, and calling as many other witnesses as we need to."

"We cannot force him to take Veritaserum," says someone else.

"It doesn't matter. We won't need it."

Madam Laniss sounds sure. Orion half-shrugs. At the moment, it isn't their problem, and won't be unless they're called back for Riddle's full trial.

He gently slides a hand under Harry's arm and draws him along. Harry nods to him, and looks back only once at the Wizengamot members. A few catch their eyes, but none of them call Orion or Harry back.

That's good enough for Orion. He wants to find out exactly what Harry and Riddle's conversation was about.

"He said he knew about the time travel. And he said he'd—caused it."

Orion swears and paces back and forth in front of Harry again. They're in Orion's bedroom, with the door shut and Locking Charms so layered in place that not even a house-elf could overhear them. Harry is sitting on a chair in the corner, his worried gaze on Orion.

"So the whole time we were at Hogwarts, he knew exactly who you were?" Orion asks tightly, coming to a stop in front of Harry and reaching out. He has to touch Harry's shoulder, to feel Harry's skin warm and soft, feel his breathing, to reassure himself that Harry is still here and alive. "I suppose it's a miracle that you managed to defeat him."

"From what he said, I really doubt that he knew anything about my role in my own timeline. He said that he used a ritual to summon his greatest enemy, the one he stood the highest chance of losing to in all of time. He didn't expect me. I mean, he didn't say that, but I think he couldn't have expected me, because otherwise, he would have been waiting where I landed and probably killed me before I even got to Hogwarts."

"How could he do that?"

"He said he sacrificed all the purity in the world. I have no idea what he meant, but—"

Orion swallows nausea. He's heard that phrase bandied about in discussions between some of the seventh-years, who would have stopped talking immediately if they'd realized Orion was listening to them. "It means he sacrificed a unicorn."

Harry shudders. "I think—that makes sense. It's the only kind of thing that would have the power to summon me from my own timeline, I suppose. And only someone like Riddle would be mad enough to think of doing it."

"Why do you think he didn't just kill you when you showed up at Hogwarts?"

"This is just speculation, since he didn't say. But I think that he still didn't expect me. A sixth-year student like him? Riddle probably thought it would be someone more like Dumbledore. He might have wanted to wait and test what about me made me able to defeat him. It would explain why he just tested me in small ways at first, and then suddenly decided to challenge me to a duel."

"And his carelessness once you showed you could defeat him?"

"Speculation, again—"

"I would rather listen to your speculation than the best scholarship of anyone else, Harry."

Harry blinked, startled, and then blushed, clearing his throat. "Thanks, Orion. He didn't create his second Horcrux that long ago. I think it probably encouraged him to think he was invincible, since he was immortal and could return even if someone killed him. And didn't Abraxas say something about how Horcruxes encourage rash behavior? Because the maker's sanity is decaying?"

"He didn't tell me that," Orion says, startled.

Harry frowns. "Oh. That must have been one of the conversations we had in private, then."

Orion blinks, then grins. "So you're establishing more Slytherin connections than just me? Excellent." He's known that Abraxas wanted to be Harry's friend and sought his protection, but he wasn't aware how far their relationship had grown.

"I thought—I don't know, I thought you might be jealous."

"I would be if someone else was courting you or you took another lover," Orion admits freely. "But I really don't think you're the kind of person who would do that."

"Never." Harry hesitates, then stands up and approaches Orion.

Orion reaches out and catches him in his arms. Harry leans close enough to whisper into his ear, "If Riddle brought me here via ritual, then it might be possible to reverse it with another one and send me home."

Orion freezes, every part of him. It feels as if he's suddenly been encased in crystal.

"But I don't want to do that," Harry sighs, his fingers tracing the edge of Orion's robe. "Maybe it's wrong of me. Maybe I should want to go home. And maybe I should want to try it, no matter what I think the cost of such a ritual might be, and that it's probably higher than I want to pay. But—I want to stay here. You've brought me things I never had, things I never knew I wanted. I'm happy here. I love you, Orion."

Orion draws away just long enough to gasp the same words, and then begins to devour Harry's mouth, pushing him back towards the bed. Harry goes with a long groan, falling on the sheets and letting Orion clamber atop him.

Orion kisses him again and again until Harry is moaning like he can't think and Orion is doing much the same thing. Well, Orion, at least, can't think of anything but one thought.

Harry had a possible choice to return back home, and has chosen him.

Then Orion lets even that thought go, and sets about showing Harry his pleasure and appreciation with all the skill he has.