Chapter 110:
Harry's hand flinched to his arm, feeling a familiar tug that almost yanked the ground out from beneath his feet in its abruptness.
He'd found, very quickly, that he did not like being restricted to not moving more than ten metres away from Tom.
Especially when it was the type of restriction in which it was only him tied - it wasn't as if they were joint by handcuffs, he couldn't walk away and force Tom to follow by simply moving like the other could; the Slytherin Heir was the one in control.
It was infuriating.
The only time Harry picked where they were going was when he physically dragged Tom with him, and hence, dragged the ten metre restriction too.
Tom's eyes had widened in shock when he first did that, before growing amused. Then he had dragged his heels in to make it as difficult for Harry as possible. Jerk.
Tom had temporarily released him for Quidditch Practise, after a long series of negotiations and bickering about it, with the promise/threat that he would put the restriction on again in an hour. Harry had gritted his teeth, but accepted it, and promptly decided to see what would happen if he wasn't back in an hour exactly.
Now he knew.
His arm was burning, literally tugging him across the field away from where he'd been stealing time talking to the Gryffindors after Quidditch Practise ended.
Thankfully, he spent enough time around Tom anyway that most people hadn't started questioning their sudden closeness - he'd explained the situation to an irate Hermione and Ron, but no one else. Now, however, it seemed that might become a problem as there was nothing visible to show why he was moving away…getting dragged away, because anyone could see quite clearly that he wasn't in control of the relentless movement.
Harry really wasn't looking forward to Monday, and the consequent meeting with Dumbledore…especially as he would probably have to resort to the aforementioned physical dragging to be able to even get there.
They were going to Little Hangleton later today, in about half an hour actually - which was definitely not the reason he was so adamant on testing the leash Tom had on him.
It actually kind of hurt, burning. He was way out past ten metres, and so whatever force Tom was using felt like it was tearing at his bones in effort to get him back within range.
He kind of felt like he was in a tornado.
The next second his head was spinning and he landed flat on the floor of the Slytherin Common Room, biting back a groan.
He opened his eyes again to see Tom looking down at him, with a semi-amused and semi-something else expression.
"What the hell was that?" Harry demanded. "I'm pretty certain you can't apparate within Hogwarts wards."
"Dumbledore can," Tom smirked, offering a hand. Harry didn't take it, getting to his feet himself, feeling uncomfortable with the way the Slytherins were staring. "You're late."
The smirk vanished.
"I'm not a child, you can't give me a curfew," Harry said irritably.
Tom simply raised his eyebrows his response, mockingly, before rising from his position on the sofa and heading for the door.
Harry followed, not wanting to get dragged again.
The first couple of times, he'd tried just staying on the spot, but he always ended up lurching forwards after ten metres.
Uneasiness settled in his stomach.
He really hated that Graveyard. Tom held out what looked to be the same pack of cards as last time, and Harry hesitated. The Slytherin Heir's eyes gleamed.
"Do you really want to see what happens if I portkey and you don't, while I hold a ten metre restriction on your movement?" The other asked.
"Do you think there's one in Little Hangleton? A…ring?" he questioned. "In the Riddle House or something?"
"Or something," Tom said softly, shaking the cards at him with a flick of impatience.
Harry sighed, taking hold, and then he was spinning, through blackness. He landed on the ground again for the second time in the space of ten minutes.
This time Tom didn't ask, merely hauling him to his feet with lips coloured by entertainment.
"Shut up," Harry growled.
"I didn't say anything, sweetheart," Tom drawled. "Touchy issue?"
Harry shoved him, not particularly hard, for want of response and in order to not analyse where they were.
Tom laughed, shaking his head, before sobering.
They stared around the graveyard in silence for a moment, and memories flashed before Harry's eyes, dizzyingly. He could feel Tom's gaze like a physical weight. Last time, Tom had been distracted by his own demons, now, he was taking the opportunity to analyse.
Harry ducked his head, pressing his hands into his pockets in white fists of tension.
"Riddle House?" he asked, not waiting for a reply before he was striding towards the handsome, derelict building with a background hum of panic.
His body came to a stop at the ten metre line, and he gritted his teeth as he fought for composure, before turning around.
"If you're planning on making me stand here-" he began, dangerously.
"-Memories can only hurt you if you let them," Tom stated, so softly. Harry swallowed.
"Yeah? Is that why you supposedly chose to forget yours?" he returned, defensively.
"Harry."
Harry was quiet for a bit, not apologising, but not pushing further either.
"Can we just do what we came here for?" he asked, finally.
Tom studied him, before turning and walking in the opposite direction. Harry bit his lip, but hurried to catch up, warily.
"I don't believe I would hide anything in the old Riddle House," Tom explained. "It holds nothing of worth to me, and I hardly think I would give myself any further ties with my father."
Derision practically dripped off Tom's tongue at the last word. Harry's brow furrowed. He'd been so sure that was why they were in Little Hangleton, unless-of course.
"You think it's at the Gaunt House," he said. Tom inclined his head in acknowledgement. He glanced at the other, wondering.
"Do you still want to do it, in face of this?" he questioned. Tom looked at him, expression dark, and Harry quickly clarified. "I meant your father. Do you still want to…meet him?"
Tom's lip curled, thinly.
"Do I still want to kill him, you mean? Yes. If I could I would resurrect his body and soul right this second for the pleasure of torturing the life out of him again…does that bother you?"
Harry thought about it. Did it bother him?
"I don't much like torture, or killing, but I can understand why you might…want to," he replied, carefully, honestly.
They headed out the Graveyard, taking a path that curved down the hill and around the back of the Riddle House. He could, distantly, see something of a shack.
The…Gaunt House? It was perfectly possible. His throat suddenly felt tight. Was this Tom's first time visiting? Or had he gone there last time?
Harry wasn't sure, but he could easily see the significance in Tom having him to come along, and the significance in that the other was allowing this Horcrux chase at all, rather than going to all efforts to stop it.
"Have you genuinely never wanted to hurt someone?" Tom asked, his voice meticulously casual. "Make them feel the pain they wrought on you?"
"Of course, and I have. That doesn't mean I approve of my own actions."
Tom made a noise in the back of his throat, something like disbelief but not quite.
"You never cease to amaze me."
Harry turned his head at that, regarding Tom intently, genuinely surprised by the statement, in both content and the blunt confession of it. His eyebrows arched slightly in question.
"You're so…I'd say innocent, but it's not quite the word," Tom murmured. "Nor is pure, I doubt we'd get on so well if you were truly the Golden boy many claim you to be."
"Innocent?" Harry was sceptical. "I'm hardly innocent."
"No, you're not," Tom agreed. "Which is why I said it's not quite the right word."
"Tom Riddle, not effortlessly eloquent for once, this day should be marked in history," Harry said, dryly, mainly to try and ease the intensity in Tom's gaze.
It had no effect, but for a familiar smile-smirk being directed at him.
"Put it this way, most people can't live through what you have and identify with me while remaining so utterly…good. It's remarkable."
"You're going to make me blush," Harry drawled, flippantly, feeling uncomfortable with this uncharacteristic, open almost-flattery. "I thought you didn't believe in good, evil and all morality's in between?"
"I don't," Tom replied, shooting him another sideways glance, clashing their gazes together for a moment. "And I can never be sure if I want to crush that trait of yours or preserve it."
"Don't think too hard on it, you might hurt yourself in unknown territory," Harry said.
Tom's lips curled again. They were about halfway to the shack now; it was looming ahead of them to knot Harry's stomach.
He wondered if that was why Tom was so talkative too…neither of them wanted to be alone with their thoughts, not now and not here.
"Yeah, any characteristics you like in me then, genius?" Tom returned. "If these thoughts are so easy for you to express?" Harry nearly froze at the unexpectedness of the query, and the playfulness that blurred indistinguishably with a simultaneous danger in Tom's tone.
"Uh…" he licked his dry lips, suddenly awkward, afraid of what the other could take from his words, and scared he'd reveal too much.
"Ouch," Tom deadpanned, apparently taking his lack of immediate response as an insult.. "Now that hurts."
"You know well enough that you're brilliant, you hardly need me to inflate you ego," Harry muttered. Tom was a genius, powerful, talented, witty, charismatic…
Tom blinked, arching that questioning eyebrow right back, seeming to sense the change in emotion and curious at the cause behind it. Harry rolled his eyes.
"I thought you hated talking about feelings," he grumbled.
"No," Tom shrugged, still appraising him. "I hate talking about my feelings and feelings generally, yours, I have no issue with."
"Lucky me."
"It's your own fault."
"How's it my fault?" Harry gaped. "Because I'm interesting or whatever it was?"
"Essentially, yes," Tom smirked at him.
"Careful with your pedestals. I dare say you'll get bored soon enough," Harry answered lightly.
"Is that what you think?" Tom's voice was still equally casual, but there was a hint of something other now too. "Tch. Don't make me take back my opinion on your intelligence with such stupid comments."
There was a silence. The Gaunt House suddenly seemed much closer.
"Why do you care so much about what people think of you?" Tom asked after a while, and Harry started.
"I don't," he frowned. "I'm a Gryffindor who hangs around with Slytherin's, come on-"
"-You can't stand the way everyone automatically simplifies us into a couple, based on sub textual evidence or whatever…" Tom cut in, musingly. "But when you don't feel comfortable you adhere to those same restrictions and rules that you claim to dislike," Tom looked at him. "Ergo, you do care about what people, society, thinks. Why? It doesn't really fit you to do so."
"Fit me to do so…?" Harry questioned.
"For such a champion of freedom, you're very fixated on limitations."
Harry searched for a good way to put it, but couldn't find one, and sighed.
"Freedom and bravery," he stated, as they approached a run down garden with a broken gate that hang in tatters.
"Excuse me?"
He didn't look at Tom, bizarrely now finding it easier to focus on the Gaunt House in front of them.
"Traits I…admire in you. Freedom and Bravery."
Unlike Tom, just because he believed in freedom and lack of limitations, to be able to do what he wanted and be who he was without care to anyone else's opinion or anything else, that didn't necessarily believe he was brave enough to shake off all that had been instilled him to do it.
He envied Tom so much for his…easiness with himself, even if that easiness came in the form of Psychopathic tendencies.
He could practically feel Tom trying to figure out of his thought process, as the both stared at the shack, not quite going in, hands resting on the gate as if to push it open.
In the end, Tom said nothing, and they entered.
Tom stepped into the house, deep in thought and glad to be so, because it was better than being here. It was…a wreck.
Godric's Hollow may have been falling to ruin, but that was due to something more noble, and the house itself had possessed redeemable qualities of wealth and homely elegance.
This shack had no redeemable qualities, and he couldn't see how his older self had found it special enough to want to hide his soul here, forever possibly.
He supposed it was the link to his mother and his Slytherin Ancestry, his family, but…he glanced at Harry, gauging his reaction.
This wasn't a place he wanted to be associated with, but he was, at the very least, confident that Harry wouldn't go blurting about the contents of this trip to anyone.
His jaw tightened.
He could sense his magic across this place, so while he couldn't see why he would have hidden the Horcrux here out all grand hiding places, he could tell that he had. He abruptly tightened the ten metre restriction on Harry, causing the other to stumble back a few steps and shoot him a glare.
He paid it no heed.
"Careful," he warned. "This place is bursting with Dark Magic. There will be traps." He looked down at the floor.
Harry looked marginally appeased that he wasn't just being yanked about for no reason.
"I know. I can feel it," Harry murmured, eyes scouring the hut.
There were linings of dust everywhere, and cracked pots and pans and an overturned armchair. His fists clenched slightly.
What a disappointment.
How dare they allow the aristocratic and ancient family of Perevell and Slytherin fall to such ruin and decay? It was pathetic. And embarrassing.
Maybe that was why it was hidden here; he had been sane-but-insane enough according to Harry's standards to pick somewhere where the Horcrux would most likely never be looked for, for the exact reasons he wouldn't have wanted to associate his soul with such a wretched place.
Dumbledore wouldn't automatically assume this place held significance.
Nonetheless, there was the insanity touch in the differences that this place had to hold some significance, otherwise he would never have contemplated putting it here regardless of safety.
On security alone, he could just bury the thing - and certainly not give a Horcrux to someone like Lucius Malfoy, as rumour had it. That must have been done later, even if he had passed the object down through Abraxas.
"Feel the magic or the Horcrux?" he asked Harry.
The other looked at him, startled, and Tom waited patiently. Harry swallowed, a sickness in his gaze that was still present upon the topic of the shards of his soul.
"Both," Harry replied, voice barely above a whisper. "A lot of it comes from the same place."
"The floor," Tom stated. Harry nodded. He paced forwards, wand in hand, keeping Harry close.
"There," Harry said, quietly, unnecessarily…but he also knew Harry wasn't dumb enough to think he had to verbally point this out like he might have had to with anyone else…less connected.
So, he was speaking to fill the silence, and, therefore, must have been uneasy.
Was it because of the Dark Magic? Harry might be affected by that, it was nearly Black in its shade, and Harry still had some lightness in him to create that unique greyness that he'd never truly seen on anyone else.
Most people had an affinity to either Dark or Light, it was rare to have an affinity in both - let alone a strong one. He presumed Harry got the strong light capabilities from his parentage, and the hunger and talent for the Dark from Tom himself. A smirk curled his lips at the thought, briefly.
That was a pleasant distraction to contemplate, but he couldn't afford to be distracted right now, so he banished the thought for later smugness and scrutiny.
They both crouched down, though he grimaced at the filth while Harry seemed largely unbothered by it. They studied what had to be a loose floorboard for a moment.
"I'm guessing we can't just prise it up and take the thing…it's a ring, isn't it?"
Indeed it was, though he was curious as to how Harry would know that, and what exactly he knew about the ring in question.
"It belonged to the Perevell brothers," he said, watching Harry to see if he knew any significance to a ring that had belonged to the Perevell brothers.
There was none.
There wouldn't be unless Harry had read the original fairytales, before they were warped by translation and the desire for family suitability.
Harry was here for the Horcrux, he knew that, but Tom himself was here for so much more than that…the Horcrux was so much more than that.
Voldemort must have forgotten that along with everything else - which, could he say, was a total waste of all that he had learned and researched while he was here in the future.
Harry assumed that he was all play right now, revelling in his last year and unconcerned with anything resembling work…but that wasn't quite true.
He'd had some projects of his own, and an ongoing plan of which those projects fitted. Harry was project number one, and, perhaps, in a way, always would be now.
Golden Boy was a constant work in progress, for Tom still couldn't claim complete understanding, and the other surprised him still, fairly often, a year or so in.
Get bored? Highly unlikely. What a ridiculous thing to say.
They studied the floor for a while further, and he tentatively reached out with his magic, and was correct in assuming that the protections didn't attack him.
He was thankful that Harry hadn't searched out at the protections yet, too deeply, for he had the feeling that the other wouldn't possess the same immunity.
"Don't touch the magic," he said quietly, knowing Harry was liable to recklessly do just that.
"I wasn't going to, I can feel it spitting at me just for coming this close…but you," Harry looked at him.
"Aren't you glad I came. You'd have to do this the hard way otherwise," he said dryly, reaching out with his magic.
The protections recognised it, and the floor slid away. For a moment, they just stared at the ring.
The stone. The Resurrection stone.
He'd stumbled upon the tale by complete accident, but…it had got him thinking.
The Resurrection Stone brought back the soul of the dead, the Inferi spell the body and the Horcrux secured the soul in the world…so if he combined the three of the things on Harry, he might just be able to keep Harry's soul and body like it was, but in the past.
Sure, the other may not have been happy about leaving his friends to disappear into an oblivion of non-existence, and the magic involved would be complex and probably not to Harry's taste if his reaction to Horcruxes alone was so dire.
But…he'd get over it, surely?
He'd got used to being in the past before.
It was perfect if he could get it to work, much better than Harry's plan which at best, or so it seemed, would free him and destroy Harry…he could do what he wanted and have Harry.
Harry would probably put up a fuss if he knew about the plan, growing for a while now and edited as it went, so he just wouldn't tell him.
He was sure he'd be able to push Harry into the necessary murder…of Voldemort if it had to be.
By the end of the year, everything would be in place.
"How are we getting it out then?" Harry asked.
A/N: Well, enjoy. I hope. =) What do you think of Tom's plan?
Christmas Challenge: Anyone feel like writing a Fate's Favourite oneshot? Winner gets on Destiny's Darling (if they want, you can post it yourself) and a request, though I suppose that's not that special. It's just that most of the stories I'm reading aren't being updated, sadly, so I'm feeling slightly at loss. And yeah. It's Christmas, so…presents? Haha. Anyway. Whatever.
And wow, some of my chapters are getting long…