x
Harry lay nestled between Tom's legs, with his cheek resting on Tom's still gaunt stomach and Tom's long stick-thin fingers carding through his hair. The Green Suite of the Nott Manor was beginning to feel like home again. Harry still could not quite grasp that fifty years had actually passed. He wasn't sure he would ever have a reliable sense of time again.
"You have friends in this time?" Tom asked when he noticed Harry was awake, the question related to whatever topic was on his mind in the very early hours of the morning.
"Associates," Harry corrected him in a slightly hoarse voice. He made a silent wish for a cup of water. It was granted, whether by a house elf or by his subconscious magic. He couldn't care less. He raised his head only as much as he absolutely had to, and drank.
Tom shivered when the cool liquid dripped onto his stomach.
Harry experimentally let go of the glass.
It vanished before it hit the floor.
The bond hummed contentedly and he felt sleepy, but didn't want to go back to sleep when there was this quiet nox et solitudo with his husband to enjoy.
"Not even that, if they'll label me a traitor when they find out I'm married to you…" he added contemplatively.
"Hmm…" Tom replied eloquently, returning to his previous occupation of stroking Harry's hair. "You don't sound too disappointed," he remarked.
At the moment, Harry was simply mentally unable to feel disappointment. He laughed, burying his face into the expanse of soft skin. How could he be anything less than happy?
"Your self-confidence is not as low as to need an artificial boost from me, Tom," he said in between chuckles. "Besides, I am hardly objective."
"No one is objective about me. I don't even have a clear sense of what constitutes 'me'. How much of Voldemort is there?"
Harry personally thought there was a lot of Voldemort, but it all belonged to Tom just as Harry belonged to Tom. As long as Voldemort's forcefulness was mediated by Tom's sense, it did not bother him in the least. "You once said you wanted me to stop you if you were about to make a mistake. I will, Tom. What else is there to ponder?"
"Your friends." Tom just had to think of something. "They are close to Dumbledore and might easily end up being collateral damage…"
Harry probably had his own Voldemort concealed inside him, because he honestly couldn't think of any way to respond but shrug. It would be a pity if either of his friends died… but it was also a pity Snape had died. It was a pity Theodore Nott the First had died. It had happened. Life went on. The only deaths that would have made the world end for him were his own or Tom's.
There was silence and Harry eventually started falling asleep again, only dimly aware that Tom was still lost in thoughts.
x
A massive media campaign was fired.
Articles about corruption and gross neglect of duty in the highest places of the Ministry were springing up daily.
In Skeeter's drawer Harry found a written biography of Dumbledore which no one had had the gall to publish. He commandeered a muggle printing office. Soon the book could be bought on every corner.
A copy of the Memorandum was delivered to every house and plastered to many a wall in public places. Other copies found their ways into Hogwarts where they were distributed evenly across the entire castle, into Ministry where the authorities destroyed them almost religiously yet somehow new ones popped up all the time… they appeared even on doors of public loos.
Within two weeks the two Riddles had the collective finicky wizarding public eating out of their hands. Xenophilius Lovegood renewed the alliance after he had read the Memorandum, had been assured by Harry that it was valid and by Luna that Harry was really Harry – the girl took the events in stride, as always, taking after her mother. Harry and Tom went as far as to have the Quibbler publish an interview with them, in which they were presented as T.M. Riddle and H.J. Riddle – enough for the people who had once known them personally to catch on, but disclosing very little to the average wizard. As a matter of fact, very few people realised that the leaders of the new movement were in fact the Dark Lord and the Boy Who Lived, and Dumbledore was forced to maintain his silence on the topic until he would find a way around Harry's spellwork.
Following the interview, Harry had received more than a dozen owls from his previous connections, who were, naturally, interested in the shift of power happening around them. Some promised support outright, others asked for assurances, but by the end of August Harry had the base of a new web of contacts firmly established.
It was the 31st of August when Narcissa Malfoy practically begged for an audience with them, finally convincing them with the argument that she wanted to present Draco before the start of the next school year. Harry didn't want to see the bleached ferret, but it was probably a good idea to remain at least faux cordial with the Malfoys. They were fashion-setters. If they pulled away from the New Order, they would take many others with them.
That was why Tom was currently lounging in an armchair in the Open Study rather than in the Green Suite, while Harry was less than gracefully spread out on the sofa. He was reading up on warding, not so much out of interest as to assure himself that without the intervention of someone of Potter blood (of which only the two Riddles were alive) Dumbledore couldn't free himself of the confidentiality ward.
They both stood when a house elf announced the guests, presenting a front of power and splendor meant to intimidate and attract at the same time. It was just an illusion, admittedly. Tom was a bit taller than Harry, but Harry had always been the physically stronger one of the two and it never had been as obvious as it was now, since neither of them was wearing a robe.
Narcissa and Draco entered and bowed. To Harry's mild surprise, Antonin followed them in.
"Take a seat," Harry ordered them dispassionately and lead by example.
Tom had returned to his original position as soon as they had said their greetings.
"Thank you for your time, my Lords," Narcissa said politely, trying to sound out whether the Malfoys were still out of favour after the debacle in the Department of Mysteries, or whether their speed in accepting Tom Riddle's new regime and Harry Potter's inclusion in it cleaned that stain on their name.
"My Lord indicated that he wished to give Draco a task to be done at Hogwarts during the school year… there was also… a mention of him getting the Dark Mark…" Narcissa steeled herself and looked at Tom. It was rather obvious that she didn't want her son to be Marked yet.
Harry shared the sentiment. He didn't want to deal with that brat.
"Draco Malfoy? Were you insane, Tom?" he hissed, staring at his husband, who merely lifted en eyebrow in response. Harry sighed. "Right, a stupid question."
"Do you want the Mark, little Malfoy?" Tom asked the boy, who jerked, startled out of his occupation of the past minute: glaring at Harry.
Draco floundered, weighing the pros and cons, and ended up looking at his mother for instruction.
Harry suppressed a groan. No wonder he had barely learnt any creative thinking until his sixteenth birthday, if this had been his only challenger.
"Narcissa, do you have anything else to discuss?" he asked of the woman.
She took a deep breath and braced herself. "May I inquire about the whereabouts of Severus Snape, My Lords?"
Tom's hands convulsively gripped the armrests of his chair, but so far nothing had exploded, which Harry counted as success. Life in the Dark Order was easier without Snape around, probably less painful for the random Death Eater. Maybe that death wasn't as unfortunate in the long run after all, if merely the Potions Master's name induced this kind of temper in the Dark Lord.
"Hell," Harry said, ending that discussion.
"Oh…" she said expressionlessly.
Draco's face, as opposed to hers, conveyed his feelings on the matter quite succinctly. The anger went a bit overboard, in Harry's opinion, but he could understand that five years of sucking up to a teacher going down the drain must have stung.
"In that case," Narcissa ventured, "forgive my insolence, My Lords, but neither I nor Draco is able to manage the Malfoy estate effectively at this time. I most humbly ask you… Please, return my husband to me."
Harry watched Tom's reaction. The man remained unmoved, but inside his head wheels were turning at light speed.
"I meant to punish Lucius's incompetence to take him down a peg," he said in Parseltongue, ignoring the shivers of horror from the Malfoys. "Arrogance runs in that family and I am becoming tired of it. But were we to take down Azkaban…"
"You changed your mind?"
"You must be absolutely certain, Harry," Tom implored. "Nothing can go wrong there. Can you do it?"
Harry thought about it. It had never been done before, but that wasn't an argument that had ever worked on him. He was the one who set precedents: the only wizard to have banished a great number of dementors with a single Patronus, the only Light Dark Lord, the only person (he knew about) to have spontaneously time-travelled, the only human to have survived the Killing Curse…
Was there ever anything he hadn't accomplished when he had set his mind to it? He couldn't recall anything.
"Yesss," he hissed.
"Very well, Narcissa," Tom replied to the woman's plea, promising nothing but suggesting measures would be taken. "Now, is that all?"
The witch nervously pushed a lock of golden hair out of her face. "May I see my sister, my Lord?"
There wasn't much to see about Bellatrix, but there wasn't any reason to deny the request either. The woman was just lying downstairs, unconscious, periodically washed by an unlucky house elf. There was about as much point to it as there had been to visiting the Petrified Hermione back in second year… thinking of which…
"Have a house elf lead you to her," Tom commanded before Harry could think it through. "Do not move her, wake her or kill her. Otherwise do as you wish."
"Thank you." Narcissa stood and bowed, with Draco reluctantly following her example with a second of delay.
"Alone, Narcissa," Tom added. "We have something to discuss with your son."
The witch went pale. "Have mercy!"
Harry scoffed. Why should there be mercy for Narcissa Malfoy when it was denied to Lily Potter? She would have it, he knew, but the begging on behalf of a sixteen-year-old who should have been quite capable of comporting himself in this situation was the height of indignity.
"Dismissed!" he snapped.
She bowed one last time, cast a rueful glance at Draco and swiftly left the room.
Antonin, who had previously remained in the background to watch, came forwards to take the seat she had abandoned. "Have you changed your mind about Azkaban, my Lord?" he asked Tom.
Harry lifted his hand rapidly and stopped all conversation. "Chatter!" he called.
A house elf popped in, hastily wiped her face with the corner of the towel she was wearing, and curtsied. Harry was partial to her, since she had a hint of self-respect and personality, and the independence and intelligence to carry out tasks without express detailed instructions.
"Follow Malfoy," he ordered. "Make sure she only visits the comatose woman in the dungeons and comes straight back. If she goes elsewhere, Stun and bring her here."
"Chatter shall, Master Lord Harry," she said quietly and disappeared.
"You're having my mother followed?" Draco asked incredulously, staring at Harry. Apparently, he had yet to understand that if he annoyed a Dark Lord, he wouldn't get patted on his head and sent to his bedroom, which was the Dumbledorean solution; he wouldn't even be slapped on his wrist and given candy afterwards as he undoubtedly was at home.
The first thing Draco Malfoy learnt about being a Death Eater was that no one offended Harry in the Dark Lord's presence.
"Crucio," Tom said coolly.
He didn't hold the Curse for long – it was less than twenty seconds – but Draco kept on screaming for a while afterwards. It was really rather pathetic.
"I think I'll Mark him anyway," Tom said once they could hear each other talking.
Draco twitched on the floor until Antonin became sick of the sight and helped him back into the armchair, where the boy curled up on himself and tried to hide his tears.
"I haven't had someone I didn't need to hold back on for fear of permanently damaging them since Wormtail…"
The statement caused Malfoy to begin sobbing.
Harry hoped that Tom didn't really intend to accept this little pansy into the Order. He would have been about as useful as Lucretia had been at that age.
"I would keep my mouth shut if you wanted to Mark Theodore, but this is a spoilt little kid," Harry protested. "He'll end up dead, and his daddy will come raining contumely on our heads… It will accomplish nothing."
Tom obviously agreed with him, disgusted by the show Draco Malfoy made of himself. Harry knew exactly what Tom's Cruciatus felt like – it was horrible, but it didn't justify that amount of self-pity afterwards. Then again, Draco was the boy who had wanted a hippogriff executed over a little cut.
"We need Dumbledore out of the school," Tom stated, but it was pretty obvious to both of them that this pathetic excuse for a wizard would be useless in that endavour.
"And we'll get him out of the school," Harry agreed. "But let adults deal with him – not children."
"You are right," Tom said to Harry, driving in the lesson. There were now two Lords, and Draco Malfoy was but an insect on their road they might or might not step on. "Do mature a bit, Mr Malfoy, before you request admittance among fighters."
The boy nodded tearfully, probably finally understanding a bit about respect, even if it was only because he was scared shitless.
The matter concluded, Harry stood to leave. Tom could manage his people without supervision.
Before he had the chance, however, the elder Nott knocked and walked right in. "I apologise, My Lords, but there is an urgent missive for my Lord-" he nodded to Harry to signify which one he meant, "-and the bird won't let anyone take it-"
He was cut off by a sea-gull flying into the room through the slightly ajar door. It let Harry take its letter without a protest. The study was plunged into tense silence – even Draco stopped sniffling – while Harry read the message.
"Great bloody Merlin," he gasped and let his hand with the parchment down, lifting his eyes to meet Tom's. The shock and jubilation were transferred by the bond.
"What?"
"I have just secured us an alliance with Gringotts," Harry exclaimed incredulously, smile spreading over his face.
Tom took the parchment from his hand and his eyes skimmed over the lines. Then he grinned, set the letter on the table and displayed his own elation by kissing Harry.
"You, Mr Riddle, are brilliant!" he asserted with an uncharacteristic lack of concern for their privacy.
"Don't make me out to be smarter than I am," Harry protested, while at the same time he was enjoying the feel of Tom's arm around his waist. "You are and always will be the brains of this outfit."
Antonin laughed at the casual display of affection. "And to think Theo didn't want to believe me…"
"Ah well," Harry shrugged, recalling a certain conversation he had eavesdropped on. "He never felt any rivalry, did he?"
The Death Eater could have pretended he did not remember but betrayed himself by attempting a mock-innocent look.
Harry waved it off. "It was a long time ago, Antonin."
"A Listening Charm?" the man asked wearily.
Harry nodded, receiving another kiss and a reiteration of the compliment from Tom: "As I said, he's brilliant."
The little Malfoy, all but forgotten in the excitement of the alliance with goblins, muttered something that Harry didn't care to understand.
"Hush, Draco!" Antonin admonished with more gentleness than either Harry or Tom would have spared for the boy. "Mr Potter is one of the greatest Slytherins of this time."
Draco looked constipated hearing that, even though his mother must have talked to him about the Slytherin Harry Potter that Graduated in 1945.
"Thank you, Antonin," Harry said sincerely. "I value your opinion greatly."
Draco let out another sound – apparently fifteen seconds of Cruciatus were too little to teach him the merits of keeping quiet.
Harry let his head drop on Tom's convenient shoulder. "For Salazar's sake, just send him home. I don't want to listen to the incessant whinging."
Tom chuckled, too cheerful due to the good news to let one little idiot spoil his mood. "He is, indeed, quite annoying."
"Takes after his maternal Grandmother," Harry remarked, setting off both Antonin and Tom into a fit of laughter. He found himself staring at his husband and the spectacle he provided… so beautiful…
Draco was, actually, gaping in the same direction, although whether it was because he too could not tear his eyes away from the unique sight or because he hadn't believed that the Dark Lord had a sense of humour was questionable.
x
On the next day, the 1st of September, Harry began visiting his prospective allies.
He started out with the Diggorys, only to find that Cedric's mother was dead and his father had gone slightly irrational with the loss of his entire family. Amos swore allegiance without asking or being asked a thing and Harry accepted, too practical to refuse a fanatically loyal berserk fighter. He was the first on the list of wizards to take part in the raid on Azkaban.
The Tonks' found him seated on their front steps under a copy of the Memorandum stuck to the post box. They were just on their way to work, and quite shocked to see an aged Harry. They had never been particularly close to Dumbledore and, after inquiring about Bellatrix' fate, promised their support.
Harry approached several Weasleys (not Molly and Arthur, who were too entangled with the Phoenixes and would be warned to stay out of the conflict either by their children or not at all) and Prewetts, the Marchbanks', the Diggles and the Meadows'.
By five o'clock in the afternoon he had a list of wizards and witches willing to follow him that he felt satisfied with. There was but one last person he wanted to try and approach, even though it was a huge risk.
Harry Apparated half a mile up the road and walked down to the house, intentionally remaining visible at all times. He used a random stick he picked up from the ground to ring the bell and waited. The door opened with a loud screech that must have been cultivated for years. It hit a jingle-bell hanging from the ceiling.
"I have expected you," Alastor Moody stated, standing in the centre of a virtually empty darkened hall, having the advantage of movement, knowledge of the location, forewarning and the fact that Harry's eyes needed to adjust to the sudden lack of light.
"I would have been disappointed otherwise," Harry told him.
He was summarily gestured to come in and precede the retired Auror into the parlour – or what passed for a parlour in the home an older bachelor with no understanding of aesthetics and very basic one of hygiene.
"So you were the same Harry James Potter after all. Tell me, do you know now how you survived the Killing Curse?"
Moody might have been asking the question for Dumbledore, or he might have already guessed the truth from the article in the Quibbler. It was upping the stakes a bit much, but Harry had always lived by the Gryffindorly 'nothing ventured – nothing gained' and decided to gamble.
"It was because of our marriage vow."
Moody's sharp bark of laughter initially surprised Harry, but eventually made him chuckle a bit, too.
"Only you, Potter… or Riddle or whatever you are…" The man shook his head. "Screw the name, only you, anyway…"
"Well, I didn't intend to fall through time and marry my arch nemesis."
"You actually did all that unintentionally?" Moody didn't even wait for a response this time, he just laughed harder.
Harry waited for the hilarity to abate, before he pulled out his last copy of the Memorandum and put it on the table. "I'm reassembling our Light support. We have a big raid planned, with the objective to infiltrate and seize, no avoidable slaughter. Thought you might be interested."
"What about Dumbledore?"
The question made sense, and Harry had been asked it several times during the day in various wordings. This was the first time he considered answering truthfully in stead of offering some kind of platitude. Moody was one of the very few Slytherins from a truly Light family, not one that had switched post the war with Grindelwald. Harry was convinced that the man fought alongside the Headmaster because it meant fighting for the Light, not because of any loyalty for the Supreme Mugwump himself. Dumbledore wasn't someone any Slytherin could ever truly look up to after seven years at Hogwarts.
"Tom and I don't like him," Harry said with a shrug. "We're getting rid of him. No plans are in motion yet, but I expect McGonagall will be Headmistress before Christmas… unless she goes down with him."
Moody took a swig from his bottle and rolled it around in his mouth, contemplating. "He protected the wizarding world from the monster you have created."
The whole spatio-temporal continuum was hopelessly tangled and knotted around Harry, and if he followed each thread of motivations, actions and reactions to its origin, he doubted he would be the one at fault. He just didn't see it. Dumbledore was the one who sent Harry to live with the Dursleys, for example. The lack of security at Hogwarts was what directly led to Harry's disillusionment at a very young age. Had either of that happened differently, he wouldn't have been able to understand Tom so well – they wouldn't have become lovers… spouses… Tom wouldn't have gone insane.
"He is just as guilty of the creation of Voldemort," Harry claimed demurely. "Besides, he should have rightly been in Azkaban for years – he breaks laws as he pleases. It's the privilege and risk of those with power," he tried to explain, because Moody kept giving him an inscrutable look. "I'm not judging Dumbledore. I just want him gone."
Mad-Eye humphed, obviously agreeing at least with a part of Harry's arguments, but still far from convinced. He was a hard one to persuade, mostly because he did not think of the sides in the war as 'the good one' and 'the bad one', but weighed all their aims and methods to decide which one he deemed worthy of support.
Harry knew one aspect Moody liked about the former Dark Order: they didn't style themselves as the ones in the right. They merely fancied themselves having more power and therefore being entitled to write the history to their liking.
"How do I know you're telling me the truth?" the man asked eventually, and Harry knew that unless he would do something phenomenally stupid he had won.
"I am powerful enough not to need to lie to you," he replied, much to Moody's amusement.
"Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. But I think you're smart enough not to try."
"We were House-mates for two years, Mad-Eye-"
Moody didn't let him finish, slipping into a recollection. "You were so forgettable, Potter! Unnoticeable even to people you shared the dorm with, but far more powerful than anyone except maybe Riddle… That's the most dangerous sort of buggers there are… And you went and washed glasses at the Leaky!" A shake of the ex-Aurors head showed just how incredible that decision had seemed to him. "And then you disappeared! I really thought you had done something Riddle didn't like and he stabbed you in the back and left you to rot in a dark alley."
That would never happen. Harry truly believed Tom would have set him free if they ever disagreed so fundamentally, but he also knew they would never disagree like that. They compromised. Well, more like Harry let Tom do what he wanted, except when he had a radically different opinion, in which case he simply overruled Tom.
"Tom and I couldn't fatally harm each other even if we wanted to – hence the reflected Avada and the Priori Incantatem. I specifically made sure it was part of the marriage vow," Harry admitted. He had selected the vow according to what he had known about the future, not because he was uncertain of Tom's intentions towards him in any way.
The statement succeeded in making Moody laugh again. "I don't know which of you is the sneakiest…"
"Oh, we're as bad as each other," Harry replied drolly. He checked the clock on the wall and found that, in case it was correct, he had been in this house far too long. "What do you think about the new Memorandum?" he cut to the chase.
"It has something to it," the ex-Auror said, seemingly noncommittally, but from him Harry took it as praise.
"Would you join us?"
Moody cocked his only surviving eyebrow. "Are you asking me this, honest to God-"
"You don't believe in God, Mad-Eye, and neither do I," Harry nipped that tirade in the bud. "You believe in magic, in yourself, and in striking first. Are you in?"
The man sighed, for the first time in all the years Harry had known him. Not even the Polyjuiced Barty Crouch had ever let out this rattling, chilling sound. "Potter, is this real?"
"Yeah."
"Then count me in."