Chapter 105:
Sirius could feel his emotions rolling like a tempest-tossed ship in his mind and heart; great gales of confusion and anger - and a consuming helplessness he hadn't felt since the night of Halloween 1980.
He stared at the retreating figure, speechless, before stumbling into action, his legs like jelly. Pain wrapped around his gut.
He was there for Harry! He would help his Godson with whatever whenever Harry asked…but Harry didn't ask him. He asked Tom.
It was only because he couldn't let the emerald-eyed boy see the this that his shoulders didn't slump with the weight of dejection and despair.
He was free, wasn't he? But he wasn't free to do whatever he wanted. He was tied to keep his distance and stand aside whenever that bastard ordered it. He couldn't shake Harry free from the Slytherin Heir.
He was…powerless.
Harry looked between the two of them as they reached him; no doubt wondering what on earth they could possibly have to talk about. His Godson raised two demanding eyebrows when neither of them spoke.
"Your precious Godfather was just attempting to persuade me to remove your concessions and switch payment onto himself," Tom drawled, smoothly, not missing a beat. Harry's jaw tightened, and Riddle smiled lazily. "Relax hero, I refused."
Sirius could scarcely believe how fluidly the lies rolled off the teen's tongue, but Harry wasn't watching Tom now, he was watching Sirius, eyes dark.
"You're lying," Harry stated, with a note of fury, looking back at Riddle again.
The young Dark Lord shrugged, elegantly.
"So sue me, he actually sold me his soul on your behalf. Care to buy it back?" Riddle questioned, with a smirk. Harry's fists clenched, and he hissed something.
Sirius resisted the urge to recoil at so blatant a display of a traditionally dark talent: his Godson wasn't evil! R
iddle's smirk didn't change, except it did, somehow, in a manner he couldn't pinpoint as he hissed something back.
It was bizarre to think of himself as non-existent, as arrogant as it may sound he'd always commanded attention when he was in the vicinity, but for a moment it seemed as if that was exactly what he had become - non existent as the world narrowed down onto the two of them (Riddle and Harry) with an intensity that made any observer feeling like they were intruding.
Sirius swallowed, hard, before beaming brightly because today was such a happy day, wasn't it? He squeezed Harry's shoulder, pulling him into a hug.
"I best be letting you get to lessons. I'll write soon - and feel free to call me on the mirrors anytime," he said, meeting Harry's gaze, wondering if his desperation was visible.
Call me on the mirrors. Please, please call me on the mirrors. Let me be there for you.
Harry smiled back, a painful obliviousness infused with an ever more painful confused perceptiveness that spoke that his Godson had picked up on his emotions easily enough, but had no clue as to what he meant by them.
He met Riddle's stare for a moment, and was absently aware of what had been that change in smirk. With him, both eyes and all features including smiles were hard and cold…with Harry they were just a tiny bit softer. There was cruelty there, oh yes, Riddle was full to brim with a beguiling cruelty and charm, but there was also something with Harry that on anyone else may have been termed fondness, or something similar.
Fascination, certainly.
Obsession.
He repressed a shudder.
He needed to find a way to give Harry something or someone more healthy to depend on.
And talk to Alphard.
Harry would have thought he'd been used to Tom lying to him by now, or that Tom didn't do it quite so much…though he tried to keep it in mind that Tom's words had to be taken with a pinch of salt and a critical assessment.
This simply reminded of how flawlessly Tom could mix lies and truth, and how the Slytherin Heir had no qualms to using emotional manipulation or the like in getting away with it.
He hadn't been able to tell that Tom had been lying, not really, there was just an elusive feeling in his gut because he knew Tom rather well…the only reason he had been so certain of the untruth of the statement was because Sirius wasn't as adept in the art of lying.
Sure, Padfoot was good…he'd probably spent enough time avoiding Detentions to have practised the skill, but he wasn't as immaculate a liar as Harry was, and most definitely not as good as Tom. A psychopath.
Harry had sat down in his lessons, fingers twitching to read his books on Time instead of repeating stuff that he'd done in the past.
There were, of course, differences in the subject matter, theories disproved and discovered, but…school mattered little in consequence to time.
Fate and Luck. He suppressed a sigh.
He hoped Fate suffered eternal torment and stayed away.
He needed to fix Ginny too.
He was dreading it already.
He pulled Ron and Hermione aside at Lunch time before they could enter the Great Hall, ignoring the way any Slytherins that walked past shot him an odd or nervous look.
He didn't know why, but taking an educated guess it was something to do with Tom. It normally was when the atmosphere and undercurrents of power shifted in Slytherin.
He just didn't know why they were giving him odd looks - he'd asked Pansy.
"I've worked out how to stop Ginny acting so weird," he said, quietly. Hermione's eyes widened, and Ron's features seemed to regain a shine of life that he hadn't realised had gone missing.
"How?" the redhead demanded. "What do we have to do? It won't hurt her will it? Can we do it now-?"
"How did you find out?" Hermione asked.
"One of my many sources," Harry offered, with a smile. Hermione's lips thinned.
"You didn't do anything dangerous, did you Harry?"
"Who cares how he found out!" Ron exclaimed. "We can fix Ginny."
His best friend looked at him expectantly.
"Well, you know we theorised that it was affecting her because of emotional dependency on me…?"
"Yeah."
"We have to break that dependency," he said flatly. Ron nodded, but Hermione's brow furrowed.
"What do you mean by break that dependency?"
"…we have to make her truly hate me and no longer expect me to do anything to help or save her, and kind of make it seem like I never particularly cared about her fate in the chamber either, for good measure."
There was a moment of utter, heavy silence, broken only by the clatter of cutlery and swell of voices in the Great Hall behind them.
"How do we do that?" Hermione questioned, voice suddenly a tad croaky and small.
"Leave it to me," Harry replied. "I just thought I'd give you head's up warning on why I would suddenly start treating her…differently."
He sighed. It shouldn't be too difficult; he'd spent enough time around Tom, and Slytherin, to know how to cut his 'opponents' into shreds with words alone. He just normally refrained. He supposed the 'cruel streak' he apparently had would come in useful here.
"We can tell her you didn't mean it, after, right?" Ron asked, worry creeping into his tone.
"No," Harry said softly. "That would imply that I was only acting horrible to save her, which could reverse the process and then we'd be stuck and she'd die." He swallowed. "She can never know for so long as I'm…like I am."
Ron and Hermione had both turned as pale as ghosts.
Alphard looked up at the man in front of him.
His Nephew.
Sirius Black.
A Gryffindor.
An Ex Convict.
Harry's Godfather.
Time travel was such a mind screw; it's why he normally avoided thinking about this situation too seriously.
It was easier to treat it like some strange game or experiment, and not seek out his future or make attachments.
They were all dead in this time anyway - or they would not be able to be here due to paradox. Tom seemed a little different in that regard, and he wasn't sure why.
"You shouldn't be contacting me," he said, quietly.
"I wanted to thank-"
"No!" he said, abruptly. "Don't thank me something I haven't done yet. I don't want to be influenced." He softened his tone slightly at the haggard looking man, studying him. "You look like me…but you have Orion's eyes."
"Well, you look like Walburga, but less feminine," Sirius said, with a weak grin that attempted brightness. A laugh startled out of him.
"I should hope I don't look like a girl….I'll leave that to you, huh?"
"I don't look like a girl!" his Nephew exclaimed, voice indignant and marginally hostile, but eyes glittering with good humour.
He simply arched his brows in response, smirking, before the smirk vanished.
"It was nice meeting you," he said, honestly. "But I shouldn't be talking to you."
"What, did Riddle forbid or something?" Sirius said in a joking, albeit dark tone. He paused on the spot, and the joke faded. "He did forbid you from talking to me…" his Nephew sounded incredulous, furious.
"Not you specifically, but our futures. The less we know the better," he explained.
"And yet Riddle himself pays these rules no regard? Whatever happened to leading by example?"
"Tom is Tom. You'd do well not to speak ill of him around me, it will do you know good and I won't allow it," he said, sharply again. His loyalty was, and always would be, to the Slytherin Heir.
"I'm glad you are free," he continued, more mildly again. "Azkaban does no good for our family, though I can't help but notice how many of us found residence amongst the Dementors." His Nephew's skin whitened at the very name, and his heart twisted. "I hope we meet in the future…the past…in more agreeable circumstances," he said. "I heard you're quite the Prankster. Good day."
He spun on his heel.
"Wait!" A hand grabbed his arm, and he almost jolted at the touch, half fearing he would disappear in a puff or paradox or some timey-wimey thing.. "I need to-"
He knew he wouldn't be able to avoid this conversation. Damn it.
"You want to talk to me about Tom and Harry," he finished, voice forced into uncharacteristic neutrality.
Pranks and humour aside, his parents had instilled Pureblood inheritances and etiquette in well. He knew how to hold a mask to silence thoughts he'd rather not share.
"What do you…think of them? Is Harry going to, please, I can't watch him get hurt," Sirius stared at him, intently, almost pleadingly.
"It's not my place to comment," Alphard said, warily, disentangling himself from the grip, feeling a burning sense of hypocrisy in the back of his mind - he'd commented on it plenty of times.
His Nephew stepped doggedly into his way again.
"From one Black to another," Sirius insisted.
Alphard pressed his lips together anxiously. Tom wouldn't want him to talk about this, but…it wouldn't do that much harm would it? A few, carefully chosen words to reassure the man?
"I think they care about each other, and I that it would do more harm than good to try and forcibly separate them - for them and for the person attempting to split them." He met Sirius' gaze unyieldingly. "Don't get into Tom's way. He will cut you down, and I don't particularly want to see that happen to you, you seem like a good man."
"More harm than good? You mean their…dependency?" His nephew sounded incredibly freaked out, hurt even.
"Picked up on that, have you. Dependency is an odd word for it, because both of them are extremely independent people who are not used to relying on anyone but themselves, and they certainly don't crawl to each for help all the time…but, in a manner of speaking it's an accurate word too. Don't get me wrong, they don't tell each other all their secrets like best friends, it's not that type of dependency, it's-"
"Toxic," the man offered sullenly, helplessly. "Unhealthy. Obsessive."
He glared slightly, but said nothing, recognising there was some level of truth in the word.
"If it eases you at all, whatever they have is utterly mutual. Tom won't discard him…but Harry will never turn Tom away either. I'd take your chips where they fall and be glad Harry is making an effort, however small, to have you in his life. The world narrows on them when they're together, everything else is relegated to secondary and periphery until they are apart again, and that's from only seeing the smallest part of their interactions."
"So you think I should abandon Harry to whatever Riddle's planning," Sirius spat.
Alphard's eyes darkened at the thought of that plan.
"Didn't I just say it was mutual? Tom's not jerking Harry around unwillingly. Nor is your Godson's helpless, he's fully capable of defending himself again Tom, and does so with more skill and success than any other I've ever seen Tom even consider playing with."
"I don't understand…" Sirius near moaned, wild eyed. Alphard sighed.
"It takes two to tango, and their game is not played by Tom alone despite most people's assumptions."
He tipped an imaginary hat, striding away before his Nephew could ask him anything else.
"Harry," a voice called. Tom. Harry came to a stop, and signalled for Ron and Hermione to go ahead into the Great Hall.
"Hey," he greeted, feeling marginally awkward. His knee throbbed in memory.
Tom's eyes flicked to the Locket around his neck, before away again with a taut jaw-line, before easing.
"Come on, let's go to the Kitchens. I'm craving sugar and you're already too skinny to skip meals, even if it is to talk to me." Harry raised an eyebrow, but followed nonetheless.
"You're craving sugar?"
That was new.
"It happens occasionally, though I'm not all that used to having it. Rations and all that."
Harry blinked, once again hit by the strangeness and the horrified sadness that Tom lived through and in the London Blitz and World War.
He'd never imagined Tom with a sweet tooth, but in an odd way it made perfect sense. Those who had little had more appreciation for the small pleasures of life and it would be very easy to term Tom as having a strong hedonistic side when he wanted to.
They arrived at the kitchens, Dobby serving them as always, babbling about socks and all manner of things, and then paused in their near kitchens abandoned classroom.
Tom was studying several delicate looking chocolates that looked far too expensive to eat, before he popped on in his mouth with a small smile.
Harry took a listless bite out of his duck sandwich. He didn't really have an appetite anymore.
"How's the leg? You fixed it okay?" Tom questioned.
Harry looked up, startled, because there was something in those words that was almost like an apology.
Tom didn't want to argue with him.
"It's fine," he replied, even if it still ached slightly despite how he had healed it. He studied the other, their last proper conversation ringing in his head. "Marvolo told me how to fix Ginny. I just have to talk to him a bit in return, let him out the Locket to stretch his legs or the soul equivalent."
"And you're not suspicious of his reasoning behind that?"
"I think he's lonely," Harry replied, softly.
"You can't save him." Tom's voice was flat, hard, and Harry's gaze locked onto violet immediately.
Harry couldn't help but wonder how much of this conversation was really about Marvolo.
"I can make sure he never exists like that to be lonely…I can give him life again, even if I take it away when Voldemort dies."
"You can do none of those things," Tom said, equally quiet. "He and you would spontaneously combust into non-existence or you would simply fade away like your own soul had been shredded past attempt and all that's left is a broken husk of the boy you used to be."
Harry swallowed.
"And if I'm breaking already?" he questioned. "I won't watch you become him. I can't. Don't make me. Plea-"
"Don't," Tom snapped, harshly, a venomous hiss. Harry flicked his gaze up again. "Don't…plead with me to let you die."
"But you expect me to do just that with you," he returned, no frustration in his voice, nothing. "Voldemort is only you in the loosest of definitions. He's not you in any way that matters. If you're going to become him so this can continue, than it's pointless, because it can't! I hate Voldemort, and I would never forgive you for becoming him, nor myself for standing aside and allowing it."
"Which, again, is why this isn't a fairytale with happy endings," Tom said, bitterly, so very bitterly.
"Then why are you here?" Harry asked, wondering if he was going to get an answer this time. "Might as well face your Fate. Forget me. Take a clean break and don't drag this out."
"Forget you…" Tom murmured. "Why would I forget you? That's what I don't understand."
"Excuse me?" Harry questioned, blinking. Tom glanced at him.
"Voldemort should remember this, and he doesn't appear to, and no one knows how to get past the defences I have against mental tampering and obliviation except for myself. So, I must have chosen to forget. Which makes no sense," Tom explained.
"Alternate Universe," Harry offered promptly. "Which means your safe to not become Voldemort."
"No, that's not it," Tom frowned. "It's something else."
"You can't be certain-"
"-That Alternate Universes don't exist? Read your books Harry, there is only one timeline, and hence, no Alternate Universes."
"You can't know that for sure," Harry insisted, angrily.
"The best minds in the field have decreed it. That's why it's so dangerous to play with time. It can't be re-written, only scratched out completely for a new idea."
"Well, once upon a time the best minds in the field believed that no one could survive the killing curse too."
He'd just had an idea.
A/N: That may be one of the longest chapters I've ever written. I hope you appreciate it…and oh, I only have about 50ish chapters left of this story. At the most. Possibly. Approximately. By the end of 2012, Fate's Favourite will have had it's last chapter. Quite possibly before then. With an ending that I have yet to reveal but already know =P Thanks for all the reviews, they are fabulous!