x
Just before the dawn Tom woke them with his own nightmare. Shaking and sweating, he stumbled into the bathroom to throw up. Harry followed him as soon as he managed to rouse himself to semi-consciousness. He felt possibly worse than he had felt the previous evening, and sincerely hoped that this was all just a reaction to their encounter with dementors. He couldn't imagine having to deal with such a reaction long-term.
He found Tom kneeling in front of the toilet with his eyes closed and mouth half-opened, trying to breathe in as deeply as possible. Harry flushed the toilet, put his arm around Tom's middle and pulled him up, dragging the two of them into the shower. He held Tom against the wall while he fiddled with the taps, and it somewhat surprised him when he felt arms around his shoulders and, a moment later, Tom's head coming to rest against his collar-bone.
They were both in a right state.
Cool water began to rain on them from the showerhead, but Tom wasn't letting go, so Harry tried to convince himself he was content just standing there for a while. The bond gradually awoke, projecting half-forgotten terrors that came back to haunt them and a kind of hunger for something spiritual that Harry couldn't identify well enough to provide.
After a while they both started shivering and Harry turned the water warmer, which, apparently, aggravated some of Tom's superficial injuries. There were still the shallow cuts on his chest and a few bite-marks. Harry hoped that his casual knowledge of Healing spells would be enough to mend those, but first Tom would have had to un-stick himself.
Just as he thought that, Tom pushed himself away from Harry's chest and grumbled something uncomplimentary about himself that Harry didn't care to understand. It was too dark in the room to make out Tom's expression, but his discontent was palpable.
"I don't have time for a fucking stress disorder!" he growled, letting his head fall back against the tile. He absently scratched at the scabs on his chest.
Harry batted his hand away before he managed to hurt himself worse. He could guess what Tom was thinking about. "You're not taking any potions."
"You can't order me around," Tom spat, glaring. His eyes were shining in the deep-blue dusk.
"Of course I can't," Harry agreed tonelessly. It was pointing out the obvious – no one and nothing could really control Tom – but the man sometimes allowed his pride and determination to get in the way of common sense. "But if you get addicted on top of everything, your body won't make it."
Harry loved that body, but even he couldn't deny that, physically, Tom was scarily frail. He had barely gained a pound since his restoration and was now weaker than he had been in school.
Faced with Tom's obstinacy, Harry was well nigh on helpless. "For Merlin's sake, have you looked into a mirror, Tom?" he insisted, shaking his head to get his wet bangs out of his eyes. "I've seen dementors with more flesh on them! I love you Tom, but if you die on me, I'm giving up on the Vision."
It sounded too much like blackmail to his ears, but in fact it was a mere warning. Tom was the power behind the revolution – he was the idea and the force. Without him the entire New Order would fall apart. On the off chance that the bond wouldn't kill him, too, Harry by himself wouldn't have the motivation required to keep it running. He needed Tom to realise this – to realise that his survival was essential for the survival of his Vision.
"I'm not going to be here forever!" Tom protested, finally deigning to look at Harry through the curtain of droplets between them.
"Well neither am I!" Harry shot back. "And Tom, if you've forgotten, I'm twenty-bloody-year-old! I can't always be your security blanket!"
Harry's knees gave out under him. He folded down onto the floor of the shower, drenched so much that if he was crying, no one could tell. And what if he was? He was tired and scared, and so was Tom, and they should have eaten some bloody chocolate last night before they went to sleep… He couldn't believe he was breaking down like this, but his lungs felt like they were being compressed inside his chest and he couldn't stand up and walk away because his legs refused to obey him.
Tom slapped him, like he did a few hours earlier from the nightmare, but this time Harry was already awake, so it didn't work. It seemed supremely unjust: here Harry was, giving all of himself that he could, and when it wasn't enough, instead of finding support he got slapped. He wished he could laugh at himself, but he really couldn't.
He sobbed.
"Harry… Harry!"
He sobbed again.
There was a flash of red light and darkness.
x
Harry awoke in a place so soft and warm that he in the first moment thought it had all been just a nightmare. He was disabused of the notion when he found Tom sitting on the side of the bed with his wand aimed at him.
"I apologise," Tom said. "I didn't know what to do with you, so I Stunned you. I've had a few hours to think about it and I am almost certain I know what happened."
Harry rolled to his side and watched as Tom got up, returned his wand into its holster, and walked over to the vanity, where he picked up a goblet. He carried it back, and waited for Harry to sit up before he handed it over.
"It shouldn't be too vile," he muttered. "It's mostly theobromine and sugar."
Harry drank it and had to concede that it really wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. He handed the goblet back and settled against the headboard, watching Tom with careful neutrality. He had no idea what he should expect – had his breakdown exasperated his husband, or was it disregarded? The apology suggested that Tom wasn't too angry, but Harry hated being a disappointment – something that might have been instilled into him by the Dursleys.
"Yesterday has affected us both and I should have realised that I was not the only one with bad memories. That is what exacerbated this situation, is it not?"
"Probably," Harry agreed, frowning at how strange his own voice sounded to him.
Yes, without the encounter with dementors and the subsequent overthrow of Dumbledore, his feelings of inadequacy wouldn't have crippled him to this point. Now, with the potion already working, those feelings actually faded. He did deserve his post. He was just as essential for the New Order as Tom was.
"I felt depressed," he summed it up.
"As I thought. I abhor those things."
"There are not many of them left," Harry replied dryly. It still seemed surreal to him, but in the light of the day somehow more possible. How could he have been so stupid? Tom had told him from the beginning that attacking the prison would be insane. He had mucked it up. "I am a bloody idiot! Tom, next time I get a 'smart' idea just remind me of Azkaban, okay?"
Tom rubbed his temples and flopped down onto the bed with hilariously little grace, resting his head on Harry's stomach like he used to years ago, whenever they had found a rare moment of privacy in the Room of Requirement.
"Harry… you are the only one who could do a year's worth of work in a day and consider it a mistake."
Harry tentatively reached down and twined his fingers in Tom's hair. His only response was a soft hum. He still felt like he was lying on nails, but Tom's presence there gave him the prospect for the next day being better.
"Yes, and so very happy it has made us," he said softly.
Tom squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again, staring at Harry imploringly. "I am not good at giving reassurance."
But he was bloody brilliant at restoring self-confidence. Harry practically soaked it up, pulling Tom off himself and kissing him quite thoroughly. Few minutes later, slightly out of breath but with renewed (if artificial) determination, Harry crawled out of the bed, ignoring Tom's inarticulate declaration of displeasure.
"Well, I've got work to do today-"
Tom didn't want to give in, which Harry could understand, but not really allow.
"We can keep Dumbledore where he is until tomorrow – provided that the elf was telling the truth."
Harry ignored the jab at Chatter and concentrated on how annoyed with the world he was. It worked perfectly – as long as he wasn't blubbering, he was in a proper Dark Lord mood. Hopefully the Death Eaters would be smart enough to show him the utmost respect or else get out of his way, because Harry definitely did have it in him today to try out some inventive curses.
"It has nothing to do with Dumbledore," he told Tom, who looked like a twisted picture of innocence, burrowed in the warm white bed linen where Harry's body had been a while ago. "By the way, I need a manual to the Dark Mark – what it is, how it works, how you create it." He paused in his search for fresh clothes, deciding to forgo the shower after the fiasco he had experienced there earlier. He was clean enough in his opinion… There. Odd, how even after his August shopping spree he seemed to have trouble finding clean undergarments. Apparently, it had little to do with what he actually owned, and much more with his lack of organisation. "How you undo it," he added when he remembered he had been saying something.
"What for?"
Harry was glad to hear that Tom didn't dismiss the idea outright. "I want someone Marked, but I don't trust Voldemort not to have twisted it."
Tom buried his face in the pillow and his entire body tensed. Harry made a step toward him, but he waved his hand dismissively.
"Just go."
x
Harry found Theodore Nott the Third on his way to the dining room. The boy was carrying a broom and had that wind-swept, pink-cheeked look that signified he had been flying. Harry sort of missed flying, but not enough to do anything about it.
"My Lord," the boy said calmly, offering a shallow bow. "You wished to speak to me today…?"
Harry nodded. He hadn't expected to happen upon Theodore so quickly, and dealing with Dumbledore clearly took precedence, but he was full of the take-charge kind of energy that made his veins thrum with the need to do something. This, at least, was something he could be reasonably sure he would manage without another of his trade-mark screw-ups.
"Go take a shower and meet me in the Victorian Salon in twenty minutes," Harry ordered and barely waited for an acknowledgement before he strode away in the direction of the meeting point he had designated.
The Salon was one of the more modern chambers in the Manor; Harry appreciated the relative comfort and style, and preferred to surround himself with it rather than the intimidating gothic megalomania better befitting a 'second Dark Lord.' He had a house elf bring him something to eat, but found he could not stomach it. He felt too queasy in the wake of his nightmare and so, apparently, did Tom, for the bond was transmitting a skin-crawling sensation.
Harry wished there was something he could do to make Tom brighten up, but even if he weren't drowning in depression himself, Tom wouldn't know how to accept such help any better than Harry would know how to help him.
"My Lord?" a wary voice inquired from the doorway.
Harry blinked, surprised at how long a time he had spent contemplating his and Tom's states of mind. He gestured toward an upholstered chair, close enough that he would be able to see Theodore's face even without his glasses, yet outside his reach. While the boy obeyed and, without a hint of nervousness, sank into the indicated seat, Harry set his spectacles down on the table by his left hand and rubbed his eyes.
Theodore reminded him a lot of young Tom – he had the countenance, the intelligence and the ambition. At sixteen they were both the quintessential Slytherins, perfectly aware of their abilities and determined to succeed in the future they have chosen for themselves. There was even a certain physical resemblance. The main difference, however, was that Theodore was a follower, whereas Tom couldn't have been anything but a leader.
Harry smiled. Theodore's presence was soothing. It amused and pleased Harry that the boy maintained a respectful silence while he waited for Harry to speak, and would have done so even if Harry had been in a much more stable mood.
"I know you have been groomed for service to Voldemort, Theodore. I have requested it of your grandfather personally." He wondered a little if the boy resented him for that. What little he remembered of his Gryffindor past led him to believe that teenagers despised being forced into roles by their parents, respectively guardians.
"That is not exactly correct, my Lord," the young man spoke, for the first time displaying traces of uncertainty. His eyes were pleading. "After Halloween 1981, my father didn't believe that the Dark Lord's sanity would ever be returned, my Lord. He relayed grandfather's tale to me, but allowed me to decide for myself whether I wanted to be a Death Eater instead of making it an obligation."
Harry could understand – and accept – that. Theodore the First had died before his grandson was born, and Theodore the Second had not experienced Tom ere his loss of sanity. However, the boy sitting vis-à-vis Harry had not taken the easy way out of the conflict; he chose to be involved, without any conditioning. He was either a spy, or a true believer in the Vision. Harry hoped to any listening deity that it was the second case.
"You have that choice, Theodore, and I mean it. It's not between the Mark and death as it might have been a few months ago. If you decide you don't want it, you can remain a supporter. It would mean that you could not get into the meetings for a while, and then only into select ones, but it is your choice." It was a weak attempt to convince the boy to stay where he was, and Harry knew it, but he rarely resorted to coercion and, frankly, he wanted to trust this boy. That required allowing him the freedom of choice.
Once he recovered from his surprise, Theodore had difficulty suppressing his laughter. The worry vanished from his eyes, replaced with a spark of what Harry guessed to be happiness as he slipped out of the chair, sat on his heels at Harry's feet and took Harry's hand into both of his. "I have always wanted to be a Death Eater, my Lord. The current situation has moreover made it into an enjoyable prospect." He leant forwards and touched his lips to Harry's wedding ring. "I am a fighter, my Lord, not a grunt-worker, nor a politician. Permit me to remain myself, and I will execute your will, what ever it may be. Remain true to your Vision and allow me my soul, and I will pledge my body, mind and magic to you.
Harry was floored. He retracted his hand and stared into the boy's eyes.
Theodore in response immediately lowered his Occlumentic shields and bared his mind for Harry to access.
Harry skimmed its surface and was moved by the devotion he found.
"You need not give yourself to me, Theodore," he spoke, using shortness to disguise the unexpected emotionality. This was what he needed. Gone was the desperation borne of irrational feelings of inadequacy, along with the fear of failure. Here was the very proof that he made a lord his subjects were proud of; he inspired such devotion… "You already have my trust, as you have Tom's. But, reconsider: would you not rather pledge yourself to Tom? Spite the deceptive appearances, I am very much a Light wizard."
"The Light Lord," the boy replied with the tiniest wry smile. "Truthfully, I do not grasp the difference it would make for me. With a soul-bond between you so powerful that even lacking an anchor it turned a Killing Curse, there is no telling where one of you ends and the other begins. There is no 'between you'… my Lord."
Harry briefly closed his eyes and shook his head. There was a spot of truth to Theodore's spiel, even as it was largely idolised. "The Light and Dark factions of the Order will not be united for years – if ever. Do you believe you would be content amongst Light radicals?"
Theodore met Harry's eyes again, and his smile widened. "I do not doubt it."
x
Harry stood over the motionless form of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and, involuntarily, recalled the different ways he had viewed this man, this incredibly arrogant person who had assumed to shape more than just Harry's life, throughout his teen years. It was difficult to identify this perfectly powerless shell with the nigh omnipotent yet benign warlock that had 'rescued him from Voldemort's clutches.' For all Dumbledore's blinding radiance, he had likely been the one to send Harry into those clutches in the first place.
Once the Headmaster stopped glowing, he became a very ordinary old man, with wrinkled face and thinning hair that was grey rather than white as Harry used to recall it, a wizard whose gnarled hands were affected by arthritis and whose veins created ugly knots just under his skin. He was dangerous, yes, but suddenly Harry could see him as Tom always saw him – a manipulative, cunning, emulous and above all flawed man.
This was not somebody Harry would have wanted to follow, although he didn't doubt that under different circumstances – i.e. his not falling through time – he would have, and most likely he would have died in service of ideals forced upon him. Dumbledore would have called Harry's enlightenment corruption; he would not have listened, understood or tolerated ideas other than his own. He would have- he had denigrated the Vision, and called Tom an enemy for standing up for himself. Dumbledore condoned child-abuse in the name of the Greater Good and sent people into prison –Sirius was far from a unique occurrence – without giving a thought to whether he was acting within the law.
"Chatter!" Harry called, recounting his last thought. No, he would have to change his plans. While he did have the power to incarcerate Albus Dumbledore for the rest of his days, he also had the forbearance to do it legally.
A soft pop landed a grey-green knee-tall creature in front of himself. It bowed and straightened again, tennis-ball eyes practically popping out of its head as it quivered in fear. "I-inky is s-sorry, Master Lord Harry!"
Going on the assumption that Inky was the house elf's name, Harry granted his forgiveness for the unknown misconduct and questioned the elf on the whereabouts of Chatter.
"Chatter is being resting, Master Lord Harry. Inky is most sorry, Master Lord Harry, but Chatter is being having no rest in days and she is ordering Inky to guard prisoner in her stead! Inky is not letting prisoner get away!"
Harry nodded and tried to hide his frown, lest he be subjected to more grovelling. He appreciated forthrightness and assertiveness in house elves (which made Chatter his favourite among the staff) and the servile defensiveness this specimen badgered him with rather aggravated him.
"Tell her to find me when she wakes. Do not wake her earlier." Chatter was much too useful and much too able to be denied the time necessary for her to recuperate.
"Master Lord Harry is too-"
Harry had no idea what he was deemed to be this time, for he slammed the door behind himself, ignoring the yammering for fear that he would have lost whatever positive effect his meeting with Theodore had on him. The day was pretty much lost already anyway, and he was becoming frustrated with the lack of progress.
x
Tom wasn't in the Green Suite when Harry returned to change; in fact, he wasn't anywhere within the Manor. Harry barely even considered whether he was going to look for him on the grounds, where he could sense him if he extended himself. He wanted to be with Tom right now.
Over the past month, he had very nearly forgotten what this was like; he craved his husband's presence and was reasonably certain that Tom was feeling the same. The bond hardly ever left their feelings one-sided.
He shed his lordly robe and pulled on what he thought of as his work-clothes, forgoing the cloak since it was neither cold outside, nor was he going to be seen in public anytime soon.
He Apparated part of the way and walked the rest.
Tom was standing on the shore of a pond hidden in the middle of a largish grove. He was looking into the distance but, as Harry knew him, was in fact lost in his head. He had that typical thinking pose, with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his left hand closed around his right triceps. "Is it not stupefying?" Tom spoke plaintively as Harry approached and stood beside him. "Not a trace of magic anywhere around – not in the water, in the flora nor in the fauna."
He was right, naturally – there was no magic except two wizards anywhere in the immediate vicinity.
"In a way it is relaxing," Harry noted, searching Tom's face for a reaction. Tom loved magic… more than he was willing to admit.
However, there was no response. Harry was fond of silence, after so many years spent within constant bustle, but even silence sometimes became oppressive. He didn't want to feel uncomfortable in the presence of the one man he loved.
"Talk to me, Tom."
The Dark Lord – for he even now had his presence, his charisma and the sensation of power around him – looked at him, mildly surprised. Possibly, he had not realised the effect his taciturnity had on Harry. He pressed an unhurried kiss to Harry's lips to reassure him that the problem was not between them. He was silently reassuring Harry that they could face that problem together; Harry took that to mean that they could conquer it.
Still, he didn't speak.
"What did you dream about?" Harry decided to be direct. It partially worked.
Tom directed him to hook his arm under Tom's, and set out on a dirt path in the direction of the Manor. After a few steps he finally spoke: "The bombing of London, 1941. It makes you lose respect for human life when you see how easily it can be snuffed out." A bitter smile tugged onto the corners of his mouth. "That's all a human is – flesh and bones and liters of blood."
It was a truth Harry didn't quite know how to dispute. One spell – a motion of a finger, even – was all it took to kill someone. It made all striving seem vain and success taste like ashes when one faced the reality of death head on.
"And a soul," he said quietly. There had to be something that made people more… durable. More important, less ephemeral…
"And a soul," Tom agreed. Having had split his in order to achieve relative immortality, he couldn't really protest that claim.
Harry moved a little closer; Tom welcomed him against his side, likely drawing onto his presence to give him the grounding he needed when speaking of his nightmares.
"I was fourteen at the time," he stated, speaking oddly without inflection, as though he could hide from Harry what he was feeling. "It was after my third year at Hogwarts. There were dozens of children, from two to seventeen, all of us cramped in this dark, wet, smelly cellar. We couldn't move, couldn't sleep… We were scared stiff and some of them pissed themselves when the planes flew over us and it stank like nothing else… And we couldn't get out of there. The matrons promised to trash bloody anyone who spoke up."
Harry with a slightly hysterical sense of irony realised that they both had been dreaming of when they had been fourteen – one of them of Voldemort, the other of the Blitz.
"We sat there in silence, for hours," Tom continued in a faraway yet at the same time stridently present voice. "I wasn't even there for the worst part of it – the heaviest attacks had stopped mid-May. They had done the same thing in winter, at all times of the day… sometimes they'd been hidden there for days on end, kids were dying from dehydration…" He took a harsh breath and sneered. "And the reverent wizards, safe in their magical castle, sent me back to that place, year after year…"
Harry shuddered. It was perfectly understandable that Tom had become a little twisted after living through that. It would have been understandable even if he had simply hated humankind as a whole, but wanting to build a better world was at least something that gave him direction.
Harry wondered if every time Tom spoke of the Vision, he remembered that scene.
"I've seen corpses that summer. It changes your view of the universe when you see a dead body. You can grasp how simple killing someone is – and let me tell you, it is simple. I felt nothing when I did in the Riddles. There was no satisfaction in it, just as there was no disgust. It was of no consequence. It meant nothing to me, because by that time even the idea of my mother meant nothing to me. She was just another dead body, like those in the streets after the bombing."
Harry could honestly say that he was not the least bit surprised. He didn't feel quite the same way about people, death and killing, but then, he had not experienced bombing nor seen that many corpses. Tom was aware of the fact that his lack of sensibility in this made him a less than desirable leader, and that he needed Harry to temper his propensity for needless slaughter. Put into perspective like this, Harry found his yesterday's breakdown nearly laughable.
"I don't think about my parents anymore," he offered in return for Tom's confession. As far as he was concerned, the murder of Lily and James Potter by Voldemort didn't figure between them. It barely had from the beginning, truly. "For as long as I can remember, they haven't been a part of my life. Sure, I'm told I'm alive thanks to their sacrifice, but it's all too abstract. It's hard for me to understand that they were actually real people – flesh, blood, soul… everything." He was intellectually aware that they had existed, of course, but he lacked the emotional ties he would have created to them.
"They were. And they were just as easily killed as anybody else." Trust Tom to put the most morbid – and pragmatic – spin on it he could.
Harry had to be pretty twisted, too, because he sensed the irony in the statement. He knew he should have been appalled; instead he shrugged and slowed their pace. "It's not their death that I regret. It's that they weren't there when I needed them."
"I know exactly what you mean," Tom replied with a hint of smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
Harry was once again struck by just how beautiful the man was, regardless of the cesspool of horror stewing in the back of his mind. "In a way it's comforting to know that I won't ever be alone like that. I have you… and then I'll be dead and it won't matter anyway."
Tom's smile vanished, replaced with the emotionless mask he used to hide fear and depression. "That's what I thought, Harry," he snarled, wanting to hurt something but restraining himself from taking it out on Harry. "That… that's why it is so difficult for me to trust – not you, but trust that certainty. I once believed I wouldn't be alone again. And I relied on it. And…"
"Then I was gone," Harry filled in, his heart dropping. It had been easy for him – going to sleep in 1947 and waking up in 1996; the couple of days before he and Tom were reunited amounted to nothing. Tom, on the other hand… it didn't bear thinking.
"Yes," Tom said. "It's not your fault. It's really neither of us' fault."
Even the most powerful wizards experienced helplessness. Maybe it benefited them, kept them from becoming too arrogant, but Harry wished it had been less painful, less damaging to Tom. He wished, uncharacteristically, that he could torture and kill someone for what had been done to Tom.
"It's fault of the fucker who sent me into past, and I can't even really hate the bastard, because otherwise you and I wouldn't have happened and… the entire fucking universe would have gone a different way!" Harry, like Tom, didn't deal well with helplessness.
Tom snorted, amused by Harry's blow-up. "I just hope we won't find in fifty years that it was, in the end, ourselves who sent you. Predestination tends to be cruel like that."
Harry gulped. "I don't think it was… will be… us." He hoped. He accepted that love hurt, but had to wonder whether he loved Tom so little – or so much – that the amount of pain and terror would have made their relationship worth it still.
Tom seemed to follow his thoughts. "Can you honestly say that you would not send yourself back, if it was up to you?"
Honestly? "No." Harry shook his head. He couldn't imagine what his life would have been like without Tom in it. If he would have had a life at all.
"Then it is your wish to disclaim responsibility for that choice speaking." Sometimes Tom's real age was almost palpable.
"I would have liked to believe I was brave enough to make my choices." Harry drew onto his Gryffindor side, because what else did he have to match Tom's seven decades of experience? In cunning and ambition they were fairly matched.
"Well, you don't have to, yet."
Harry got the feeling that he unintentionally succeeded in amusing Tom out of his contemplative mood.
"And, as your journey back in time already happened, you either won't have to make it at all, or you'll find the necessary determination by the time it's needed."
Since that was a tautology, Harry figured further input from him wasn't necessary. He searched for a different topic to avoid thinking about whether he would be capable of making that decision one day, and what effect it would have on him.
They stepped out from among the last young birches and the Manor towered over them, pleasantly aged, in contrast to Malfoy properties that were always sparkling too much for Harry's comfort.
Tom pulled Harry to a halt. "I don't feel like meeting anyone right now."
Harry hadn't yet finished nodding when Tom Apparated them straight into the Green Suite. As if a switch was flipped, Tom's expression changed. He deftly unhooked the clasps of Harry's doublet and divested him of his tunic, careful of the hidden athame that was the next to go. Harry, bemused and entertained at the same time, obliged by taking off his belt – that particular accessory was as good as deadly to anyone who wasn't himself – while Tom unwove the spells on his own robe and absently pulled it off. It pooled on the floor, but Tom didn't even glance at it as he stepped out of the ring of silk and brocade and put his hands on Harry's shoulders.
He tried to push him down, and Harry couldn't stop a sudden laughter from bubbling out. "You said you wanted me to 'never kneel before you'," he protested through snickers, playing with the rim of Tom's braccae.
"Heathen…" the Dark Lord muttered, undarklordishly unwound enough to allow his frustration to show. "Why are you not always so obedient?"
"You wouldn't like me if I was obedient," Harry teased, ghosting his fingers over the obviously tented front of the trousers. He wondered if he could reduce Tom to pleading…?
"I appreciate obedient people," Tom muttered. He leant forward, putting his lips a scant inch from Harry's ear, and lowered his voice to a mock-conspiratorial whisper: "But it's true that if you had been one of them, I couldn't have loved you."
Harry had no chance to avoid a nonverbal wandless Jelly-legs jinx from this distance, but the backhanded proclamation of Tom's feelings was more than worth it.