To Kill You With A Kiss

~Chapter 8~

...

Harry and Tom wove their way through the ancient labyrinthine corridors of Hogwarts. They walked in silence, like strangers who had nothing to say to each other, or like old friends who knew each other so well they no longer had a need for words; Harry couldn't decide which. He glanced over at Tom as they walked, and his breath caught in his chest. I am your horcrux... Something he couldn't name was tearing at his heart; it felt like the Cruciatus curse, but infinitely sweeter.

In the future I left behind, we were mortal enemies, you and I. Two days ago, when we walked on the moor, we were friends and we laughed together. But today, in this sudden silence that quivers between us, I can finally sense it: there is something between us that is deeper than both enmity and friendship. I am your horcrux. I carry within me a fragment of your lost soul. We are one, Lord Voldemort and the Boy Who Lived. I wonder if two people were ever as strangely bound together as we are? We two, alone among all mortals, share a soul...

We met so briefly in the future, my Dark Lord. Our encounters were fragments of a nightmare, filled with terror and darkness. But even when you were not there, there was always the shadow of you, lingering in my dreams. You were always in my thoughts, but I didn't know you then; I didn't know the soft look your eyes had once; I didn't know the sound of your laughter. How different you are now! As I look at you now, the future seems to be ebbing away, and I feel that this must be you, Tom, the young man with the soft curls, and not that dark wizard of tomorrow. Perhaps Voldemort is nothing but a dream after all?

Do you know what I am, Tom? Oh, how can you know? I don't think you know it even in the future. You feared the prophecy about the two of us, and you wanted me dead. But I wonder... Was there not after all something in you that half recognized what I was? Your death eaters could easily have killed me, but something, perhaps some strange whisper in your heart, made you tell them not to touch me, that I was yours alone to kill?

Can you feel it now, Tom? Do you recognize me? No, your mind is too preoccupied, I can sense that now. You are thinking of Abraxas, of his mouth against mine, and you are thinking of serpents, ripping him to pieces...

"Tom?"

Tom turned and looked at him, absently. "What?"

"He was just trying to help me. With the play, I mean. The final scene with the kiss. Call off the serpents, will you?"

"The serpents-?" Tom looked at him in surprise for a moment, and then he flushed deeply. "Merlin, leave my mind alone, Elias!"

They had arrived at Tom's office now, and Tom flung the door open. His study was as warm and welcoming as it had been the last time Harry entered it, and a fire crackled cheerfully in the fireplace.

"Have a seat. Let me lock the door, so no one will disturb us."

Harry didn't sit; he merely stood and looked at Tom. Your dark curls. Your grey eyes. That all too human flush...Voldemort? It seems impossible, looking at you now, that you will one day become Voldemort. I wish there was a way to hold time still, so the future never comes...

Tom turned to him abruptly. His eyes were suddenly darker now, or perhaps it was just the way the light and shadows from the fire fell over his face that made it appear that way. "Are you in love with him, Elias?" His voice sounded hoarse.

"With who-? Oh, with Abraxas, you mean?" Harry looked at the carpet, his cheeks burning. For a moment, he had forgotten about Abraxas. " I don't know. I don't think so... I liked kissing him more than kissing Araminta, but perhaps he was just better at it. He was trying to teach me how to kiss, you see..."

"He was trying to teach you how to kiss?" Tom's voice was a whisper now. "I dare say the flighty Mr. Malfoy may have some considerable experience, but that hardly makes him an expert on the subject of kissing. Your lip... it's bruised from the fierce attack of his mouth." A finger touched Harry's swollen lower lip lightly. "And that way he was pushing himself against you..." Tom's finger still lingered against his lips. "That's not what kissing is supposed to be like. It's supposed to be more like... like this..."

The next instant, soft trembling lips found Harry's mouth, and a name that wasn't his own was whispered against his lips: "Elias..."

For a moment, Harry had a strange sensation of falling from a great height, of being swept away by a great black and silver wind. Tom's lips caressed his mouth, his face... This can't be real. Voldemort... I must try to remember... But all his recollections of the Dark Lord were fading, vanishing like a dream under Tom's gentle kisses. Without thinking, he kissed Tom back.

Frantic kisses now, against his lips, his face, his hair... Harry couldn't breathe, couldn't think... All reality seemed to dissolve into the flame that spread through his flesh, through his mind, through his soul. A name, breathed against his skin. "Elias..."

"No, not Elias." Harry buried his lips against the warmth of Tom's throat. The words sprang from his mouth, unbidden. "My name is not Elias. I'm Harry."

"Harry?" Silver eyes regarded him with wonder. "Your name is Harry?" A slight smile: "Yes, I think that name suits you better." Tom accepted Harry's confession without hesitation, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "It seems almost familiar. Perhaps I used to dream of someone named Harry..."

Tom held him tight, and Harry could feel a heart beating furiously against his chest. It should have felt horribly wrong, his future enemy's embrace, but it didn't. Somehow, reality itself seemed to have gone astray, hopelessly lost now in some twisted tangle of time and memories. There is no future yet. There is no Voldemort. There is just this moment, and you, warm in my arms. They stood still, arms around each other, for what seemed like an eternity, clinging desperately to one another.

Tom whispered: "I seem to have fallen in love with you, Harry..."

The sound of his name, his real name, spoken by that silver voice sent a pleasurable shiver down Harry's spine. Tom...I wonder when I fell in love with you? A moment ago, when you kissed me? Two days ago when we walked together in the sun? Or perhaps it was in the beginning, when a splinter of your soul found its way into my heart? Perhaps it doesn't matter... Everything seems like a dream. Everything except you.

Tom stroked his cheek gently with a hand that trembled ever so slightly. "We have to be careful for now, but next year when you have graduated, perhaps we can..."

"Oh, don't speak about the future!" Harry's mouth found Tom's lips and kissed them, frantically.

Tom gave him a fiery kiss in return and whispered: "I'm sorry, Harry, that was presumptuous of me... I didn't mean..." He pulled back, hesitantly. Harry saw a sudden flicker of panic in the silver eyes. "When you kissed me back, I thought that maybe you felt the same way... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."

Harry flung is arms around Tom and held him tight. "Tom-? I... I love you..." He could hear his voice shaking. "I want to be with you right now, here in the present. I can't bear to think about the future..." His lips found Tom's, and he felt his heart thundering in his chest. He seemed to recall, vaguely, something about a shattered prophecy made of glass, and the silver glitter of a cup that whisked him away to a graveyard, but those recollections seemed mere shadows now, unreal, compared to the tearing of his shirt under Tom's frantic hands, and the silver of Tom's eyes.

They fell together in a tangled heap on the floor, whispering incoherently of love and wanting, tearing at the clothes that separated them from one another. Inexperienced hands and mouths searched, hesitant at first. Warm skin found warm skin. Lips parted, frenzied tongues explored. Trembling hands found deliciously rock-hard shafts. They rubbed against each other, frantically and deliriously, overcome with lust. Harry's eyes met Tom's silver gaze, and they shivered as they came all over one another and the carpet and their jumbled clothes.

They collapsed against each other, trembling and breathless. Harry rested his head against Tom's shoulder, breathing in the scent of his skin. Tom's unsteady fingers stroked Harry's hair, again and again. He brushed the hair away from Harry's forehead and pressed his lips against his scar.

"Who are you, Harry?"

Harry reached out and traced Tom's face with his hand.

"I don't know..."

...

They stayed together until morning, huddled up together in front of the fire. Tom wrapped a blanket over them both, and they lay together, skin against skin, and gazed into the dying embers of the fire as they whispered softly to each other. They talked through the night, their conversation interrupted every few hours by hands that began to stray over smooth skin, setting their bodies aflame again.

There were fevered attempts at penetration, but there was too much pain, and neither one really knew what they were doing, so they let their hands and mouths and tongues bring them to peaks of frantic pleasure instead. "I think there are spells that can make this easier..." breathed Tom against Harry's ear. "Being inside... I can always look them up if you want."

Harry smiled. "Always the scholar, professor Riddle..."

Tom flushed and groaned. "I could give you detention for your impertinence, Mr. Black."

"Excellent idea," whispered Harry. Their eyes met, and they both began laughing helplessly.

But in between the furious flares of desire and pleasure, Tom talked. He talked to Harry, softly, of all manner of things. He talked of his life in the orphanage, of loneliness and hunger and beatings, of school days and of dreams. He talked of his father, although he always stopped short when he came to the part about arriving at Little Hangleton as a sixteen year old boy, seeking out his father at last. Harry listened hungrily, committed every one of Tom's secrets to memory, tucked them away in his mind as if they were mysterious treasures. They laughed together at the story of Tom's first clumsy kiss - with a dark-haired Ravenclaw girl called Acacia in his fifth year - and at Harry's memories of his awkward date with Cho. Harry did not mention where he had met her, or that the tea shop they had gone to on that dreadful Valentine's Day was Madam Puddifoot's.

Harry made Tom describe everything; the names and faces of the other children at the orphanage, his emotions on the day when Dumbledore had arrived to invite him to Hogwarts, his first trip to the wondrous Diagon Alley, his first glimpse of Hogwarts, his classes, the lonely summers back at the orphanage, his wooing of Walburga...

Finally, Tom stopped all his questions with a kiss. "Enough, Harry! It's too easy to talk to you. I have never talked to anyone like this. There is dangerous magic in those green eyes of yours; when you look at me like that, there is nothing I wouldn't tell you..."

Harry kissed him back until Tom began to moan under his lips. "Tell me of your father, then." He drew back from Tom and waited.

"My father?" How white Tom's face was now! "Why do you ask me about him, Harry? Merlin, what kind of wizard are you?"

Harry rested his hand against the pale cheek. "I want to know, Tom. I want you to tell me how it happened."

Tom was silent for a long time. Then finally, he whispered: "I had wondered what he was like. Ever since I was a small child, I had wondered about him, the man who had abandoned my mother and me so heartlessly. When I was very young, I used to dream that he would come for me one day, that he would stand at the door of the orphanage, handsome and smiling, and say: "I have come for my son." But the years passed, and he never came... And then one day, I went to find him. How terribly strange it was, to stand outside the grand, imposing house and think: My father lives in there, and my grandparents as well... I rang the bell, and when my father opened, I recognized him at once. He looked like me, you see. Except that he was dressed so elegantly, like a refined gentleman of means, and I was wearing thin, second-hand clothes I had been given at the orphanage. We stared at each other for a moment. Perhaps things would have been different if he had smiled at me. Perhaps I could have forgiven him for the years of abuse and neglect I had suffered in the orphanage, if only he had smiled at me. But he didn't. He merely looked at me, his eyes cold, and said: "I suppose you want money. You had better come in, then." And he led me into a splendid sitting room, where an old lady and gentleman were sitting and drinking tea, and he said to them: "The witch's son is here. We had better pay him off, handsomely, so he does not return. Mother, will you write a cheque-?" And the white-haired lady looked at me with an expression of great distaste and said: "Yes, of course, Tom. How much do you think we need to pay him? Five thousand pounds, or ten?""

Tom swallowed. "And then I pulled my wand out, and I spoke the ancient curse. I killed my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather. And then I left them there, as they had fallen, crumpled on the floor in that beautiful sitting room. I left, without anyone seeing me. I didn't cry until I came back to the orphanage." He turned his glance away from Harry's.

Harry kissed him gently, and color flooded over the pale face.

"What are you doing-? You are kissing me? Doesn't it bother you that I am a murderer?"

"Of course it does. But I have always known it in my heart, Tom, ever since I first saw you. I have always known that you killed your father. What... What I didn't know was that you cried."

Tom buried his head against Harry's chest. "Can you still love me? Even after knowing what I am?"

Harry stroked the soft dark curls gently. "I don't think I could ever stop loving you..."

Tom looked at him with silver eyes and whispered: "Who are you, Harry? What strange and wonderful magic has brought you into my life? Where have you come from?"

Harry shook his head. "I can't tell you, Tom. Not yet. There are so many things I don't understand myself."

Tom got up and reached for his rumpled clothes. "It's almost morning, Harry. See, it's beginning to grow light out. You should go back to your dormitory; it won't do for everyone to know you spent the night here. But promise me you will come back, tonight and the next night and the next..."

Harry smiled and found his own clothes. They were in no better state than Tom's. "I promise, Tom."

Tom, dressed now, but looking far from decent with his mussed-up curls and disheveled clothes, rummaged through his desk. "Here, Harry. Before you go - I have a gift for you."

He held out something silver and put it into Harry's hand. It felt heavy and smooth and cold in his fingers. It was a silver locket, emblazoned with a jeweled serpent in the shape of an "S".

"Oh." Harry gazed at the locket, heart pounding.

"Do you... do you know what this is, Harry?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, I know, Tom. It is... your soul..."

...

Everyone was still sleeping when Harry came back to the Slytherin dormitory, even Abraxas. There were no windows down here in the dungeons to let the early morning sunlight in, so most of the boys slept until the bell rang. Harry stumbled into his bed, his heart and his mind racing. His bed. Tom's bed. He rested his head against the cool pillow, but no sleep came. He turned the silver locket over and over in his hand, trying to think. A horcrux. The real one, this time. I was supposed to find a horcrux, wasn't I?

All at once, he noticed that something felt slightly different about the crumpled shirt he was wearing. He glanced down at it, and realized that it wasn't his shirt at all; it was Tom's. He smiled to himself and rested his burning face against the cool metal of the silver locket.

I hope I will never wake up from this dream...