It was Saturday, a week before the end of August as Harry and Tom sat together in their front room, talking to each other calmly. The sky outside their small apartment was dark and dreary on this late summer day, and a storm was doubtlessly forming. Yet this bothered neither Tom nor Harry in the slightest. Barely anything had change for Harry since he had been offered the chance to become an Auror, yet he couldn't help but feel calm and content as he spent time alone with Tom.
Tom had been describing a few of the new witches and wizards he had to visit at work, as well as the eerie or interesting stories that followed them, when they heard a tapping on the window outside. Two owls stood on the window ledge, evidently keen to get away from the rain as soon as possible as they tapped on the glass impatiently. Before Harry could stand up to let them in, Tom withdrew his wand and opened the window from where he sat.
The owls shook their dark brown feathers to dry off some of the water upon them once they were inside. Both of them were holding letters, which were barely touched by the rain as a result of magic used to protect them. One of the owls looked up, his large yellow eyes resting on Harry for only a second before he flew towards him. Harry help up his arm, untying the letter from the owl's leg, and looking down at it with interest.
"The letters are from Hogwarts," Harry said to Tom, as the second owl landed by Tom's shoulder.
"They must be the NEWT results," Tom commented, opening his own letter.
Though the NEWT results didn't truly matter to either of them by this point, Harry was still very interested to know how he had done on these Wizarding tests. He honestly had no clue how great or terrible he might have been, and he was almost nervous when he quickly skimmed through the introduction letter to see his results.
• Transfiguration: Outstanding
• Charms: Exceeds Expectations
• Defence Against the Dark Arts: Outstanding
• Potions: Exceeds Expectations
• Herbology: Exceeds Expectations
Harry stared at the parchment, surprised. He had barely even expected one Outstanding, never mind two, and he would have never assumed that he would get three Exceeds Expectations… There weren't even any 'Acceptable' marks, which were one mark lower than EE. Harry smiled a little, satisfied, before looking up at Tom.
"How did you do?" he asked, as the two owls took flight out the window. Harry decided to close it again with a flick of his wand as rain continued to pour down.
"I received seven 'Outstanding' marks," Tom said. "For each of the classes I took."
Harry grinned. "That's brilliant. I got three 'Exceeds Expectation's and two 'Outstanding' marks."
"That's good," Tom remarked. "What classes did you get 'Outstanding' for?"
"Defence Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration."
"Neither of them are much of a surprise," Tom claimed, looking content as he examined Harry's results. He paused for a moment, thinking. "It seems a waste that these results might not be put to full use. We already have the jobs we currently desire…"
"This could still be useful," Harry said. "If we change jobs, or if Dippet decides to offer you another –"
From the now closed window came the sound of tapping again. Harry and Tom turned to see a Northern Hawk Owl waiting in the rain, and Harry recognised it at once as being one of the Death Eater's. Tom raised his wand to open the window, and the owl flew towards him at once, a thin letter attached to its leg.
"Who's that from?" Harry asked.
Tom opened the envelope and checked the name of the sender. The letter wasn't very long. "It's from Lestrange," Tom said. "He's asking me if I've made any further decisions on the reformation of our group, amongst other things."
Harry looked down at the letter in Tom's hands, reading some of what Lestrange had written. "There's nothing here about his own life, which doesn't surprise me," Harry said.
"Yet I'm quite surprised he asked me about this all so soon," Tom admitted. "It's unusual of him to ask anything from me without knowing whether I have decided upon an answer or not…"
"It's been more than two months," Harry pointed out. "He's probably just trying to remind you. I can't say I'm shocked that he was the first to speak, anyway."
"True," Tom said. "Very true…"
Tom read the letter through once more without speaking, which left Harry to his own thoughts. Tom had never really explained to Harry what he truly thought about the situation with the Death Eaters, and Harry wondered why now. He guessed, as the easiest option, that Tom himself was merely undecided. But Harry wanted to speak about it now, nevertheless. "So, what are your thoughts on our Dark Arts group?"
"I believe it is too early to reform," Tom replied simply. Harry found that he was somewhat relieved upon hearing these words. "I want a few years, at least, to expand my own knowledge of the Dark Arts before I even contemplate gathering my friends again."
"That seems like a long time," Harry stated. "Especially when most of the people who were in the group are so eager to join now…"
"They will remain eager at any mention of a reformation, I believe," Tom responded. "I have spent too many years working with and teaching them all for them to forget about it. They have seen too much, and are too addicted to the power it gives them all. I could wait a decade, or more, and they would all remain as loyal to me as they are today."
Harry made no reply to this. He was a little startled with Tom's answer, and the confidence that came with it. Harry worried what Death Eaters might do in the time before Tom's reunion. If they were addicted to the power, and if they had seen too much to forget about the Dark Arts, was Tom suggesting that they were scarred for life? Perhaps to the extent of them all slowly loosing their sanity and moral senses?
"Unless you want them to come back sooner?" Tom suggested quietly.
Harry looked back up at Tom, having been gazing at the floor. He knew that Tom must have incorrectly guessed his thoughts from this silence. "No, I don't really… don't really mind when they return. I'm just surprised that you've planned so far ahead, and that you're so sure of what they'll do."
"I must own that a few of them will indeed need more convincing after they've made themselves their own families and so on," Tom said, "but in general, yes, I'm sure that I will lose no one within the next few years."
"What will we do until then?" Harry asked carefully, wanting to know Tom's current answer even if he knew the future vaguely.
Tom took a moment to contemplate an answer to this. "I'm not sure whether I have any set idea of how our lives themselves will go, but in the idea of researching the Dark Arts, et cetera, I have a rough sketch, which I am sure will bore you… To make things simple, we will have to merely see where life takes us."
"How will you know when you're ready to get the others back?"
"A sign will make itself known," Tom replied softly. "One always does."
Harry was about to ask more questions, before he decided that he didn't really need any more information past this. Tom did indeed seem somewhat indecisive, but Harry would know when things would start to change in their lives. He just didn't know what on earth would happen to them after a year or two…
"There's only one thing I worry about," Tom said more quietly than before, prolonging the topic. Tom's eyes were no longer meeting Harry's.
"What is it?" Harry asked, gazing up at Tom's handsome face.
"I'm still not quite sure how I will keep you so close to me with the others interrupting our lives so frequently. They could be even less distant than they were at Hogwarts…"
Harry paused for a moment. "I'm not a problem, I hope?"
"No, of course not," Tom said without hesitation. "My point is that they are the problem. They will be continuously wondering why I favour you above all others. Even if I am to teach you magic far beyond anything they know, they will still be curious about everything concerning you. When – and not 'if' – they discover that you're not who they previously thought you were… they would simply never drop the subject."
"I don't think it will be that much of a problem," Harry said honestly. "It's not as though I'll be anywhere besides with you, training in the Dark Arts, so I won't need a secret identity anymore. We could even tell them something near the truth, by then. They won't be a danger." Harry wondered why Tom was worrying about this in particular, when there were plenty of other thoughts that were more worrying, concerning the Death Eaters… for Harry, anyway.
"They are very valuable, you know… like my personal army," Tom mumbled quietly, speaking more to himself than to Harry, it seemed. "If they all left merely because they found out about us…"
Harry smiled a little, wondering why he found this humorous. "Are you trying to decide which one you would chose?" he asked. "Them or me?"
"No," Tom said quietly. "I'm trying to decide what we would do without them."
"Live happily in peace, maybe," Harry suggested. He thought about it for a moment, and tried to imagine Tom and himself attacking the world alone. He decided that it would probably make Voldemort even more powerful, considering how easily caught the Death Eaters were at times. Tom would merely lack his publicly threatening team. Though maybe he would make an army of Inferi do the Death Eater's work instead… "But they are quite vital, actually."
"Indeed… I don't know what I would do if they found out about us," Tom said again.
"Tom, we're probably the two best liars the others will ever meet," Harry reasoned. "The only reason you ever found out about me is because you were smart enough to see past my lies. Even if the others began wondering about me, they wouldn't think anything of us after we lie to them."
Tom took another moment to mull this over. "I merely wish we weren't so alone in the category of being homosexual. It makes it harder for people to accept it…"
"There are quite a few gay people," Harry said. "Like Dumbledore."
"Yes, Dumbledore, but we're not even sure whether Grindelwald was the same. That makes one wizard out of the hundreds we know."
"Grindelwald was probably gay too, if Dumbledore was," Harry said. "They were together for too long for Dumbledore not to have said nothing."
"So we have two wizards," Tom said. "If we ignore the possibility of unrequited love making Dumbledore the fool he is today."
Harry tried to find something to contradict the idea of them being alone. "It really can't be that rare, if we found each other."
"That was mere luck," Tom said, "and we're read the minds of so many different people, it would be idiotic to assume we missed many – if any – repressed secrets of the sort."
At the mention of minds, Harry remembered something. "That wizard who works in my office, Emeric, is gay. I read his mind, and it was obvious."
Harry wished he hadn't said this the moment he had. Tom turned to look at him, surprised and inhumanly alert, and the atmosphere in the room change abruptly. There was a silence. "What?" Tom asked sharply.
Harry hesitated in repeating what he had just said. He was sure that Tom had heard him anyway, as they stared at each other for longer still. "You told me to read his mind," Harry reminded Tom, "and I did. That's what I found –"
"Why didn't you tell me?" Tom asked impatiently.
The truthful answer here would be that Harry had been far too distracted with the offer Moody had made him in becoming an Auror, but Harry wasn't sure whether this particular piece of information was wise to share now. He quite liked his job as a subeditor, and he didn't want Tom to take it away from him because of this. "I don't know, I just didn't think it was relevant."
Tom looked annoyed at this, before he began thinking. With thought, his expression turned blank, and this time somewhat sceptical. Harry waited for him to say something, hoping that he wouldn't overreact to this.
"There are only two ways you could have found out that he was gay," Tom said very quietly, his expression impassive as his eyes burned in reinstated annoyance. "Either he has a particularly lewd mind, perhaps mixed with the loneliness of having pushed everyone in his life away… or he his attracted to you personally, thus giving you access to the obvious hints that run free within his seemingly safe mind."
Tom took a moment to study Harry's reaction to his words, and Harry tried to remain unfazed as he wondered what Tom was feeling, and what he would suggest or explain the probability of next.
"If it were the first," Tom said in nothing above a low hiss, "I am well aware that you would have told me about it with no hesitation, perhaps as an example of the humorously blatant lines between all the people within this world. Yet you instead mentioned nothing. Which is what you would do only if it were the second…"
Harry disliked that Tom assumed only these two options as he attempted to remain unruffled, and he disliked that Tom was indeed correct in his guesswork. He could sense that Tom would twist his every explanation if he were to elaborate upon them… so he decided to skip an explanation altogether.
"Look," he began, "it's not as though Emeric has even spoken to me, never mind voiced his actual emotions. It doesn't even matter – he doesn't even allow himself to like me. He thinks I'm straight, and he's far too shy."
"Why didn't you tell me about him?" Tom asked again. "When did you find out?"
"I don't know, it just wasn't important," Harry said. "I found out about a month ago."
Tom appeared even more infuriated at this, but Harry understood that he was holding in most of his anger, as his expression remained almost completely composed. "You should have told me…" Tom said in a hiss. The room suddenly became colder, and Harry felt a wave of foreboding at Tom's voice.
"I meant to," Harry explained. "I would have told you if I thought it was a problem."
Tom made no reply to this, but he appeared angrier at every word. They stared at each other for a time, Harry's expression apprehensive as Tom's remained maddened. Harry knew Tom was thinking, plotting.
"Tom, please don't take this too seriously," Harry urged, hating the inkling that Tom was contemplating revenge, even more so than the glare Tom was giving him. "I don't even like him as anything more than some vague workmate. We don't even talk most days."
Tom was still mute, and Harry was starting to really worry. It wouldn't end well if a worker for the Daily Prophet mysteriously disappeared, or was found dead in his home, especially when he was part of the Crime Department, and when two or three of his workmates would be more than willing to look into the story more. Harry felt sick at the very idea of Emeric being murdered for this…
Harry reached his hand out to take one of Tom's, and at this Tom finally looked a little less tense and murderous. "I love you," Harry said firmly, gazing into Tom's dark grey eyes. "Please, just forget I said anything."
Tom stared at Harry for a long time, evidently trying to decide whether he should listen to him. He dropped his gaze, appearing less annoyed, perhaps. Harry dearly hoped that Tom would realise that this was nothing to get so angry about, and that so many terrible things could happen if he reacted disproportionately.
Tom looked up only to say, "I love you too, Harry."
~&~
Monday arrived, and Emeric did not show up at work. Harry sat as his desk for the entire morning, a sense of dread, despair and anger filling him with every fruitless hour that passed. He should have known that Emeric would not return when he saw the expression that Eileen had worn since her arrival in the office, but he had been hopeful that it was unrelated. She had not looked up from her desk once to search for Emeric, and she appeared unable to concentrate on her work as she stared into space for tens of minutes on end.
"He sent me a letter yesterday," Eileen told Harry at lunch, her tone distant to shield her sorrow as they stood, neither eating nor truly wishing to engage in heavy conversation. "He decided to resign… I know he always disliked being a subeditor, and I know he was sort of forced into it all, but… it seems rather sudden…"
Harry found that he could not force himself to give her much consolation at this, as his mind froze, and terror filled him. He returned to his work after a few short words, and attempted to overcome his worry. He didn't want to think about where Emeric might be at this moment, dead or alive. He didn't want to think about whether Tom had forced Emeric to write that letter to Eileen, or whether he, Tom, had done it himself in perfect imitation. He didn't want to think about when Tom had managed it, and how.
He both dreaded and longed for the day to end as he worked. He wondered whether Eileen was blaming him for Emeric's sudden resignation, knowing that he had joined an office already too full, but he didn't dare to look her in the eyes again to check. He felt sick. He wondered what would happen when he was to return to Tom tonight.
He went home without delaying his departure, despite his anxiety, and found Tom waiting for him in their flat. When Harry closed the door behind him, he looked at Tom sitting on his armchair, reading. He was so calm, so unfazed… Harry might have believed that Tom had done nothing wrong if he were less intelligent, or less used to Tom's act.
"Hello," Tom said when Harry walked further into the room, closing the door and removing his travelling cloak. He looked at Harry as though he couldn't read his blatant expression. "How was work?"
"What did you do to him?" Harry asked coldly, standing far from where Tom sat.
Tom's only mistake here was answering without as much curiosity as he might have had if he were innocent. "What did I do to whom?"
"Don't bullshit me, Tom. I'm not an idiot. What did you do to Emeric?"
"Nothing," Tom lied. "Why would I do anything to dear Emeric?"
Tom said the word 'dear' with so much hatred that Harry was almost shocked. He hadn't expected Tom to mess up his act so soon, so he guessed that Tom was particularly angry about everything to do with Emeric… Harry knew after this that he needn't do much more than wait for Tom to crack, and he found that he was right. Tom stood up.
"Did you expect me to let him stay near you?" Tom asked, his entire tone suddenly irked and annoyed. "Did you expect me to forget everything merely because he might be too cowardly to act upon his attraction towards you?"
"I didn't expect you to do anything!" Harry said. "Except maybe listen to me and trust me when I tell you that he wouldn't have done anything to –"
"How could I trust your claim that he would do nothing to see whether you care about him, that nothing would happen between you, when it took so very long for you to tell me about him to begin with?" Tom inquired. "You should know by now that I am not so careless as to miss such details, Harry, not so blind as to escape those secrets, those lies."
"I didn't lie!" Harry exclaimed, perhaps a little more affected by this word than he might have been had he actually been born in the forties, and not the nineties. "I didn't keep a secret, either. Do you really think that I would keep this information away from you if I thought it mattered? I only forgot to tell you about it because it wasn't important!"
"In what way wasn't it important?" Tom demanded. "Are you suggesting that it wouldn't be relevant, no matter what happened? That it wouldn't be important to mention it if he got closer to you, for example?"
"I didn't mean it like that," Harry said, annoyed by Tom's twist of words again. "There was no chance of me and him getting close – we were just friends! Barely friends, even. I just want to know what you did to him, Tom."
"What does it matter what I did to him?" Tom asked. "His body could be cold and rotting in his abandoned apartment, or–"
"Don't," Harry interrupted. He felt sick again, but tried to appear stronger than that as he looked at Tom. "Don't tell me how you murdered him… Just tell me if you did."
Tom gave a cold laugh, his lips spreading to bare his teeth rather than to smile. "If you are merely friends, or less than, then why do you care about what I did to him?"
"I care about what you did to him because I don't want you to murder people just for thinking about things!" Harry exclaimed. "It's absolutely insane! He didn't even do anything to you! He didn't even do anything at all!"
"He was inconvenient and dangerous," Tom stated. "What else was I to do besides get rid of him?"
"I don't know, talk to me about it, maybe?" Harry suggested. "You can't just kill people whenever you have a problem with them! It's inhumane! It's…"
Harry suddenly began to realise just how horrible the idea of Tom murdering over this was. He felt sicker than ever.
"It's wrong…"
"What he did, and intended to do, was wrong," Tom replied, still infuriated, "in the sense that he was making a mistake that I would never forgive. I could never have allowed that danger the room to grow–"
"He wasn't a danger," Harry said, trying to stop his voice from sounding fearful. This resulted in his anger leaving, and his tone becoming quiet and perhaps sorrowful. Tom noticed this, and waited for him to continue talking. "What's a danger is the fact that you're so willing to kill people even over this… you're scaring me with this, Tom."
There was a moment of silence as Tom looked at Harry, appearing far less annoyed than before, and far more cautious.
"I don't care about Emeric," Harry said firmly, his quieter voice telling more than shouts in this now silent room, "but please, please tell me that you didn't actually kill him."
Tom appeared expressionless as he gazed at Harry, and Harry was glad to know that this meant he wasn't angry, at the very least. There was another silence of thought, before Tom spoke again.
"I didn't murder him," he said quietly. "He was an inconvenience, not something that will haunt you or me for very long… I went to where he lives and told him that he was getting too involved in some of the Crime Department's work. With what you told me about his theories on the attacks on Muggles, Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers, and by extent Grindelwald, it was simple to make him scared enough to leave the Daily Prophet."
Harry was hesitant to choose a reaction to these words. Relief might have been an easy or obvious choice, had it not been for the fact that Tom had given no inclination what so ever that Emeric was alive earlier on in conversation. He hadn't even hinted towards it before Harry explained why he cared… Before Harry made it obvious how much it would affect him. Tom could be lying, easily. It would simplify dealing with Harry, at any rate.
"Do you have proof?" Harry asked, trying to hide his concern.
"Don't you trust me?" Tom asked.
Harry hesitated, and Tom noticed. They stared at each other for a moment, both impassive and unable to read the other.
"There's proof," Tom assured him slowly, understanding that Harry wasn't going to trust him easily. "I could even take you to see him, in secret, if you wanted to. But you will find that his family is not panicking, to begin, that he left work completely only today by sending the Daily Prophet a letter, and that he will soon be applying for a new job, and getting a new home. If you still do not believe me after this, let us wait a week, and watch when no one reports him missing or as a runaway."
Harry nodded, and attempted to say something else, but nothing came out. His mind was empty of ideas. Tom was perfectly capable of faking all of the proof he needed to convince Harry of his sincerity, and it would seem curious to Tom if Harry told him that letters and family appearance wasn't enough. Even seeing Emeric alive with his own eyes again could be faked… but was Harry pushing it too far by thinking this? Was he being too paranoid of what Tom could be, perhaps to the extent of being unable to trust him at all?
"Why don't you trust me?" Tom asked.
There was no true emotion behind his voice.
Had Harry imagined any sorrowful note he might have heard in the past? He feared as though he might have, as he stood now, worrying and mistrusting. "I… I do trust you," Harry said in a low voice, unsure of his words, but knowing that he wanted Tom to be all right if he actually felt worry towards Harry's current state. "I just…"
Tom didn't interrupt as Harry attempted to fight the right words. Harry decided to voice some of his true concern, to fight his fear of lies.
"Why didn't you just tell me that he was alive?" he asked. "Why did you… why were you so angry about it if you didn't do anything more than scare him away?"
"I was merely angry because I had only scared him away," Tom answered quietly, watching Harry from across the room with an unreadable countenance. "Sometimes… I cannot always find an easy solution to relinquishing anger… It is rather rare when I refrain from seeking full revenge upon someone, and I cannot simply walk away from such an event without suffering the consequences…"
Harry stood for a moment, hoping that Tom was being completely honest as he felt himself becoming more relieved with every word. If Tom was being sincere, then he had conveyed some of his true thoughts and feelings to Harry, and he had conveyed them fittingly to his personality and the situation. It would mean that he took Harry's fear from before the meeting with Emeric into consideration, and that he had taken the consequences of murder into consideration too…
"In short, I wished for you to share my annoyance," Tom stated. "Yet I see now that you do not approve of this fact… I wished for you to worry only so I could understand and let you understand what might have happened. Perhaps I was being foolish, or adolescent… and I understand if still you do not trust me."
"No, I trust you," Harry said, deciding that this was indeed a plausible idea. "Just promise me that you won't do that again, please. Not with anything this serious."
"I promise, I won't," Tom said. He took a few steps forwards, nearing Harry for the first time all evening. Harry felt Tom's long fingers closer around his own, and he looked up at Tom, convinced almost completely now that he hadn't killed Emeric, and that he did indeed care about how he, Harry, felt. Harry ignored the idea of psychopathy as he stood, daring to trust Tom, and daring to believe that he was as sincere as Harry could hope.
Harry felt Tom's lips press against his own, and he felt almost happy again for the first time in hours.
