Chapter 5: A Throne called Grace

"Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace."
Aberjhani

~Harry~

The morning after Dumbledore's visit Harry found herself getting ready along with Tom for their first foray into the magical world. Her thoughts were running around in circles, had she changed so much from her first life as the boy-who-lived that she could feel this way about her old mentor. Harry thought she had resolved any of her lingering anger at her old teacher during the beginnings of her endless cycle of death and rebirth. However, Harry was beginning to realize there were some things she had not worked through, there were some things she hadn't faced and it was festering there inside of her.

Tom grabbed her hand and Harry's eyes looked longingly at her violin case before they made their way out into London in search of the 'Leaky Cauldron'. The feeling of Tom's hand entwined with her own brought up another line of thoughts that Harry wasn't sure she knew how to answer and it left her feeling very confused. For a long time her life had been an endless loop of nothingness, she was alive but she was not living.

There had been a few of her lives where she had tried to help people, unable to fight her 'saving people thing' and she had tried to change the world. There were lives she had been the woman who had stood up and demanded she be treated as an equal to men. Lives where she had been that black skinned man that had fought to escape slavery and seek freedom for his people. There were lives Harry had in the beginning that all he had wanted to do was change the world into a better place. She scoffed at her idealism now, bitter and apathetic to the struggle she saw around her.

The truth of the matter was that Harry knew that if she stood up for anything, if she tried to make the world better, than she would be knocked down and killed much faster. The longest she had ever lived in a body after her first life had only been nine years, all spent out in the wilderness away from people and even then she had been killed by a bear. Harry knew that the life she was living was temporary, that nothing she did truly mattered because she would be dead soon enough.

Why fight? Why look for love? Why start a family? When death would come for her as soon as she had a taste of that happiness. Her eyes found Tom's face and a longing she had forced herself to forget came welling up inside of her choking out of her apathy. Harry wasn't sure why she needed Tom; why being near him made her feel alive for the first time in a very long time but it did. In the beginning Harry had told herself it was because Tom was the closest she had ever gotten to going back to her first life. That what she was feeling for Tom was only a reflection of the feelings she had experienced from her life as the boy-who-lived.

Then Dumbledore had come to give them their letters yesterday and Harry couldn't sit back letting that old man look down on Tom. There had been that familiar rush of angry protectiveness Harry had remembered from her fifth year of schooling from her life as Harry Potter. She had acted without thinking, without considering, like she had when she had rushed into that trap at the Ministry so she could 'save' Sirius. Harry realized that somehow in the years she had been by Tom's side that come what may she had developed feelings for the boy.

These feelings were odd, she wanted to protect him, she wanted to be by his side always, and she never wanted him to let go of her hand. Harry had never felt anything like this before, even when she had been married to Ginny, Harry had never felt this obsessive need to be near someone before Tom. Harry tired to push it away from her thoughts, had tried to make excuses that Tom wasn't the same one who had killed her loved ones…at least not yet. However, Harry had been by Tom's side long enough to know that wasn't quite true.

The potential was there, in his vindictive hurting of others, in his cold disgust of other people, in his cool superiority and his confusion over emotions. Tom was Voldemort, he had it all there inside of him waiting to be unleashed and it would…in time. Nevertheless, Harry found that she didn't care and let him do as he pleased without batting an eyelash. His need to hurt people didn't disgust her as it once had in her life as the boy-who-lived. She could no longer muster up that superior feeling of pity that she had for him as the boy-who-lived.

Pity had been squeezed out of her a long time ago; pity was for other people to feel, because she had no pity left in her. Feeling pity meant feeling sorry for someone else and that was just not something she could feel anymore. Harry had lived through enough hardship that she knew quite intimately people got what they paid for in choices and actions. If someone had a rough life there was no reason they couldn't pick themselves up to make their lives easier.

Harry had done it, had been born in the lowest of lows and still striven to make the best she could of what she had been given. Now all she felt for people who wallowed in their pain and made excuses for how themselves about why their lives were so horrible, was disgust. The truth of the matter was that life was what you made it. One can easily turn suffering into salvation…misery into grace…if one tried. Tom was abashedly himself, he did not cower at the rough handling he had been given…no Tom rose up. Tom looked at the squalor he was born into and knew he could become better.

Harry admired him for that, for not letting his circumstances beat him down and instead he rose up to the challenge. Harry hadn't lied when she had told Tom that she believed he would change the world…she knew he would one way or another. Maybe he being in his life would change Tom for the better, maybe it wouldn't, but that wasn't for her to decide…that was for Tom. Because if there was one thing she had learned in all her time on this earth was this…you cannot change anyone but yourself. Harry spotted the street that the Leaky Cauldron would be on and nudged Tom to let him know.

~Tom~

Tom willed his hands to stop shaking and lifted his chin up as his hand tightened around Harry's. This was it, the Leaky Cauldron, the entrance to the world he belonged to…to his future. They stepped into the Cauldron and Tom saw Harry flatten her bangs over her forehead. It was not what he had been expecting, the grim, the shabbiness, it was all too familiar and Tom resisted the urge to sneer. He pulled Harry with him up to the Barman figuring this was the Tom they had been told to seek out.

"Excuse me sir," Tom said to get the bartender's attention, "Would you be so kind as to show us into Diagon Alley?" Tom said as the bartender gave him a gap tooth smile.

"Sure," the bartender said as he came around leading them into the back.

Tom wrinkled his nose at the garage piled back there and watched with keen eyes as the barman tapped the bricks making them fall away. The Barman excused himself after and for a moment Tom just stood there staring from the corner of his eye he caught Harry flattening her bangs again. The sight of the cramped alley, bustling with activity and filled with so many things he had never seen before made Tom freeze. "Let's only get a couple books today and our wands," Harry said snapping him out of it a moment later.

His attention diverted Tom looked at Harry and nodded, "We shall come here every other day so we can become acclimated to this new culture." Harry agreed easily and then Tom pulled her into the alley close behind him. The alley was so crowded that Tom had to press Harry firmly into his side to make sure she didn't get separated from him. His eyes scanned the signs searching for a place to buy their wands and finally after fighting through the crowds for a good half hour they found Ollivanders.

Ollivanders, Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C., seemed very promising so Tom pulled Harry into the shop. There was a family in there already and the girl with them was waving around a wand with a bored look on her face. Tom felt a surge of resentment as the girl pouted up at her father as he encouraged her to try another wand. Some children just didn't know how easy they had it. Tom pulled Harry into a seat beside him as they waited for the girl to finish.

About five minutes later a wand shot up green sparks and the girl squealed in delight. The father paid for the wand as the mother hugged the girl proud smile on her face. Tom wanted to throw something at them and was relieved when they left. The man, Ollivander, blinked at them with huge silver eyes and asked which arms were their 'wand arms'. Tom just followed Harry's lead and held out the hand he wrote with watching with narrowed eyes as two tape measurers started to take their measurements.

Around the time the tape measure was trying to measure the length of his nose and Tom was considering incinerating the thing Ollivander came back with an armful of boxes. Inside each box was a wand that Ollivander told them to "Give them a wave," and then he just stood there looking at them disturbingly. Tom hesitated, what if none of the wands picked him? He reached out and took the wand from the cushion feeling like a fool as he waved it around.

Ollivander snatched it out of his hands quickly and handed it to Harry who waved it for less time than he had before Ollivander took it from her too. So it went, wand after wand, and none picked him. It was standing like he was standing in line with the other children on visitor day for the first time again. What if no wand picked him? Like no adult had ever picked him. They had been in there for hours it seemed like with no luck and Tom was beginning to doubt himself.

Harry seemed to sense his thoughts because Tom felt her magic wrap around him like a warm hug. Calm Down, echoed through his mind, I'm here. Tom released a breath he hadn't known he had been holding and gave Ollivander the latest useless wand. Ollivander was looking more and more excited the more wands rejected the pair of them. "Hmm I wonder," the wand maker said as he went back into the stacks of wands.

When Ollivander came back he was carrying two boxes, one he placed on the counter and the other he gave to Tom. The creepy old man stared at Tom as he opened the box, inside was a pale white wand and Tom stood there staring at it. "Thirteen and a half inches, Yew and Phoenix feather core, very strong, go on now…give it a wave," Ollivander said smiling eagerly.

Tom picked up the wand and felt a rush of power run through him as a shower of silver sparks shot out the end of the wand. It was nothing like Tom had ever felt before; a sense of belonging, similar to how he felt when his magic danced with Harry's but different. He felt so powerful, like nothing could stop him as long as he had this wand in his hands and a smile broke out on his face. Spontaneous and startling in his inability to fight it off his face the smile only widened.

Harry clapped and Tom turned to her grinning he hoped Harry would find her own wand soon. Ollivander fiddled with the other box he had placed on the counter, "I wonder," he said as he handed Harry the box. When Harry opened it she froze, and she stared wide eyed at the wand in the box. Slowly she reached out with a shaking hand into the box and Tom watched proudly as her wand showered her in gold. "Curiouser and Curiouser," Ollivander mumbled as he put away the other rejected wands.

"Excuse me, sir, but what is so curious?" Tom asked to euphoric about his wand to be annoyed at the mysterious behavior.

Ollivander smiled at him strangely before pointing to the wand in Harry's hand, "Elven inches, Holly, and Phoenix feather…curious that young Miss Vedette here was destined for that wand. The Phoenix gave me one other feather, just one, and it's in your wand Mr. Riddle. Brother wands foraged on the same night under the harvest moon, curiouser and curiouser. I expect great things from the two of you, great things," he said mysteriously.

Tom felt an excited rush of smugness run through him; of course their wands were brother wands, of course. Harry was his, of course, she would have the other wand that matched his wand… a pair foraged together. Tom paid the man for both wands and got them two used wand holsters that strapped to their arms. Harry took the two boxes that the wands had come in and the wand servicing kit that Ollivander shoved into her hands.

Something was bothering Harry about her wand but she refused to tell him so Tom simply resolved to get it out of her later. Sometimes Harry was like that, she would see something, or say something that made her go really quite for the rest of the day. Sometimes she wouldn't say another word for a week or two. Those were the times Tom would catch her playing the violin in their room every spare moment and then staring out into space the rest of time.

The Alley had thinned while they were inside the wand shop and it was much easier finding a book store without all those people in the way. The first bookstore they found though had only brand new books and no second hand ones they could see. Still Tom wanted to see what sort of books they should look for and dragged Harry along for browsing. Harry followed along closely as Tom skimmed through the titles, every so often he would pick one up read the first page and place it back down.

Tom was just turning the corner around a dark spot in the store when a boy maybe a year or two older than him bumped into Tom. "Watch where you're going mudblood," The boy sneered as he smoothed out his expensive looking robes. Tom's eyes narrowed as he watched the boy place a bag of marbles into his pockets. Tom hated being looked down upon and when the boy slammed into Tom again as he walked past Tom's hand slipped into his pocket.

The boy didn't even notice that he had lost his bag of marbles and Tom tucked them into Harry's jacket pocket as he turned his attention back to the books. His enthusiasm was steadily blown away by his anger at the boy's insult, wondering what it meant and why the boy had labeled Tom it at a glance. He pulled Harry out of the shop and searched for a second hand shop with a single minded fury. Eventually they ended up in an alley that was an offshoot of Diagon, it was called Nook Alley, and it was full of dingy little shops. Tom found a few books that were worn and yellowed from time, with writing on the sides and with bindings coming lose.

He got quite a few of such books without checking titles or content. The shop keepers tried to charge him more than the books were work but Tom was in such a fury that he negotiated them down to almost nothing with a single minded brutality. Once he had gotten ten books into a bag with an undetectable expansion charm on it (he had gotten that as a 'gift with purchase' from a shopkeeper that had been desperate to get rid of him) they left for the orphanage.

~Harry~

What did it mean, she wondered. Her holly wand, her first wand, had chosen her again…what could it mean? In her first life as the boy-who-lived she had been the first one to have wielded it…she was sure. So how could she have it now, what could it mean? When the orphanage came into view Tom's bruising grip on her hand loosened just enough so she could get the feeling back to her fingers. It brought her attention to Tom once again, just this morning Harry had marveled at how unchanged Tom was…how she could still see Voldemort inside of him.

It made her wonder if perhaps she was wrong, her holly wand felt heavy on her arm, perhaps Harry had changed more than she had thought. Tom was still had the potential to become Voldemort, there was no doubt about that…but did the world still have the potential to give rise to her as Harry Potter? Harry wasn't so sure anymore, the wand on her arm seemed heavy and damning. How could so much have changed?

Harry knew time was a human concept, that it was just a set of rules people had given to natural events to measure the unmeasureable and yet she had always thought some things could not change. Harry had noted that it hadn't mattered where or when she woke up in a new body…only that the person must have died beforehand. However, if by taking this wand…if by being here…now…with Tom…maybe she had changed something.

The Holly wand had been hers once, and here it was hers once again. It brought up a whole lot of questions that Harry had never really considered asking, like what being the Master of Death truly meant. If she could change something, really change something, that would change her first life as well…then how was she the Master of Death? If her life as Harry Potter could be changed then didn't that mean she could change the way she had handled her life then? Didn't that mean she could stop herself from becoming the Master of Death?

But if she could stop herself, why was she still here? The Holly wand seemed like an omen now, an omen of a whole new chapter of her life and Harry wasn't sure she liked where this was going. They made it up to their room and Tom put away the books as she kicked off her shoes crawling into their bed. Tom settled his head into her lap as she sat there putting his face into her stomach breathing in deeply as he took the bag of marbles out of her pocket.

The sight of the marbles calmed him down and suddenly Harry wanted to distract herself from her terribly disturbing thoughts. She took the bag placing it down beside her and taking out one of the marbles. The small glass ball swirled through different shades of green and she held it up to the light. "Let's play a game," Harry said as she pushed her magic to make the marble float above her hand.

"What are the rules?" Tom asked as he looked at her display of magic with interest.

"Simple, we each change the one marble into something else, it has to be glass, but mass, volume, shape and color are all changeable. We take turns, whoever stomps the other with the most detailed piece wins," Harry said as she twirled her finger and the marble morphed into a delicate figure of a snowflake.

"What do I get when I win," Tom asked as he picked a marble from the bag not bothering to get up from her lap. He glared at the marble in his hand and it slowly became a miniature glass violin that looked exactly like her violin. He smirked up at her and floated their two creations onto the desk. Harry blinked, she hadn't expected Tom to get it so quickly but then she supposed he was a genius.

"What would you like?" Harry asked as she picked up another marble. This one twisted and twirled becoming a small glass butterfly that floated over to the desk easily.

Tom smirked and picked up his own marble. His marble turned into a small fighter plane and he floated it over to their desk with a careless wave of his hand. "Let me think about it," Tom said as he studied her face with an unparalleled intensity.

"Alright," Harry said as she picked up her marble. Her marble became a small glass mermaid with a starfish in her hair and a small heart shaped face. Tom seemed to take this as a personal challenge because his marble became a medium sized glass centaur with extraordinary detail. For a moment Harry just stared at it before she picked up her own marble.

It always surprised her just how gifted Tom was, and not just in magic. Tom was one of those once in a lifetime, honest to goodness prodigies that showed up randomly. Tom was more intelligent than should have been possible considering his learning environment and the resources he had available. With little more than library books, public schooling and some self study Tom was more educated than most college grads were during this time. The scary thing was he wasn't even really trying, Tom soaked it all up like a sponge and magic came as easily to him as breathing.

Honestly, what child could teach itself to do the mind arts as an accident? Only Tom, because had anyone else tried Harry was sure they would have destroyed their mind. Tom was passively reading thoughts by ten, without any instruction beside his own in magic and that was before he had ever even heard of Hogwarts. Frankly, if Tom hadn't destroyed his very frightening mind by ripping his soul apart Harry was quite certain she would have never been able to defeat him.

Her marble turned into a unicorn and she let Tom float it over to the desk without a thought. That was also very disturbing to think about, here Harry was countless years of experience under her belt and she was barely now starting to do magic that Tom had been doing naturally since he was a toddler. Tom picked up his marble and Harry barely blinked before it became a black Pegasus. "I know what I want now," Tom said as he watched her pick up her marble for her turn.

"Oh, what is it?" Harry asked as she turned her marble into a small grand piano. Harry thought she shouldn't let herself be so surprised about how much raw talent Tom had anymore. Tom was a genius, and in the truest sense of the word. It wasn't that Tom was intelligent, no; he was miles beyond just being intelligent. Hermione had been intelligent but she hadn't figured out magic before Hogwarts came a calling. Hermione had been the smartest woman she had ever known, she had made discoveries about magic that had her name in all the history books, but Hermione never came close to what Harry saw in Tom.

Tom was more than just book smart; he was just plain scary, give him a problem…seemingly unsolveable and through magic or otherwise Tom would figure out an answer. "Promise you'll give it to me first," Tom said slyly. Tom turned his marble into a cello and tossed it carelessly at the desk where it landed neatly.

"Okay, I promise," Harry answered just curious on what he would ask for and thoughtless agreed. She picked up a marble and turned it into a small ballerina that balanced impossibly on the small point of her foot. Tom sent it floating to the desk and took out his own marble. It turned into the most beautiful glass rose Harry had ever seen, the detail was impossibly lifelike and yet it was still glass. The red rose sparkled up at her as Tom held it up to her his long fingers holding the rose delicately.

"A kiss," Tom said face carefully blank.

"What?" Harry said blinking wide eyed as she stared at the rose he offered up to her.

"A kiss, your first kiss, that's what I want," Tom said as he smirked at her.

The rose was the exact shade of her hair and the stem was the exact shade of her eyes. All Harry could do was stare at it wide eyed unable to concentrate. "I win," Tom said smirking.

"What?" Harry blinked eyes refusing to relax from the deer in the headlights look.

"You haven't made anything new, I've stumped you with my rose, now give me my prize." Tom said as he got up getting very close to her face. He placed his rose into her limp hand and brushed his newly freed hand across her cheek. He cupped her face and Harry blinked. Was this really happening? Then Tom captured her lips pressing his lips against her own firmly. It was an innocent kiss, as far as kisses go, just a closed mouth pressing of each other's lips together.

However, it was like he had lit her lips on fire, where their faces met burned and at the same time…it felt so good. Harry slumped into him, kissing him back and running her free hand through his hair. The hand that held Tom's rose was captured by Tom's free hand entwining their fingers together. Where all kisses supposed to be like this? Because Harry had never felt this way kissing someone before.

A.N.: And that's a wrap! Thanks for reviewing! Read and Review! Let me know what you think!