Chapter 123: (haha)
Distracted momentarily, when Hermione next looked around, both Harry and Tom had disappeared into the mania of panicked students, and were nowhere to be seen.
Her blood rushed about her ears with a horrible sense of forbidding, and a little bit of hurt. Before, Harry had always come to her and Ron about these things, and now, he dismissed them without effort and ran off with the Slytherin Heir.
And what was this about a prophecy?
Another secret, another something that Harry had kept from. Her stomach churned uneasily. She just didn't know what do anymore; she knew that people drifted apart, that their friendship had done just that, but it still stung to be left behind for something better.
Sometimes, she wished the whole last year would simply rewind, before Harry met Tom, and everything imploded. Maybe she was selfish…she liked hanging out with Ron and Neville, she really did. But she missed Harry, and on some level she hoped he missed them too.
He didn't seem to, he seemed too busy and caught up in his new life to care about theirs, or mourn the absence and splintering of "the golden trio."
She wanted him to be happy though, and if she thought Tom made him happy she'd let him go without question…and he was happy, but then, he was sad too.
It only took a small moment of consideration to see how messed up Tom and Harry's…friendship was; they fought nearly all the time, and lashed out and struggled and….sometimes it seemed the whole thing just made Harry miserable, just as much as it made him happy.
Somewhere in her heart, she knew that to be completely true…but she also knew, perhaps instinctually, that Harry would never be fully satisfied with being their Harry again.
Without Tom.
It was perfectly evident to her that they needed each other - they didn't want to be around each all the time - but they certainly needed each other, and didn't function so well under separation. Harry at Grimmauld with Tom and without Tom were like two different people, and the latter was just a shadow…and Tom, well, she didn't know what it was yet, but he needed Harry too, and clung back just as fiercely, so possessively that her and Ron were slipping down into the cracks to childhood categories.
Harry and Tom were messed up, so very messed up that many viewed their dynamic to be unhealthy or toxic, but for whatever reason they fulfilled some quota for each other that no one else came close to touching.
She sighed.
Harry was happy, despite the severity of the situation, both had sort of shone brighter than before with challenge and whatever else once they got into each other's vicinity.
That was why she didn't chase them down.
Harry and Tom ducked behind a large pillar, pressing flat against it, breathing heavily.
The Ministry Atrium had been over run, by Death Eaters and ministry members alike - the Aurors were all at St Mungo's thankfully, but other ministry members remained.
They duelled a little, Harry trying to not to seriously wound any well-mea
ning bureaucrat who duelled him, however much he disliked the Ministry, whereas Tom didn't bother with any refrain. He fully suspected Tom had enjoyed himself even.
There was an adrenaline rush to it, he supposed, but Harry preferred to avoid hurting people when he could.
"Do you know where there are any black marble corridors?" Tom hissed, apparently trying to figure out where, here, the prophecy would be.
"Department of Mysteries," he replied. Tom shot him a curious look. "I went there for my trial - right, I never told you about that. Never mind. Anyway."
Harry shook his head as if to dismiss the question, cautiously peering down the side of the column and into the corridor that had been swarming a few minutes ago.
Every ministry member was heading to the Atrium to defend against the Death Eaters - idiots. Didn't they realise that just left the rest of the ministry unprotected?
It was disconcerting seeing Tom with a Death Eater mask on, and his own reflection made him twitch and want to curse himself too. Distractions.
"You know," he remarked, offhandedly, "you should really remodel these things. They limit vision too much."
"You're seriously going to discuss that - now?" Tom demanded, incredulously, before grabbing his wrist when he moved to pull the offending item off his face. "Stop it. There's no point having a disguise if you're just going to remove it. You're being childish."
"And your intentions on forcing me to wear it in the first place, over another disguise, was completely honourable and mature, of course," he drawled sarcastically. "Coast's clear, come on."
He used the Slytherin Heir's grip on his wrist to tug him forward, creeping forward quickly, senses alert for any sign of someone coming around.
They settled into a relatively comfortable silence, relatively because there was nothing comfortable about breaking into the Ministry after a mass murdering Dark Lord who was trying to kill you…
"What happens if Voldemort already has it?" Harry questioned, as they slid into a lift. Tom glanced at him.
"You won't stick around to play hero, that's for certain," all humour had disappeared once more, replaced by a steel undertone of command. Harry disregarded it without regret.
"I'm not leaving you to deal with him, if that's what you're suggesting," he replied stubbornly. "Playing the hero doesn't suit you much either, Tom. You make a far better villain."
A cool voice announced that they were arriving at the Department of Mysteries.
"And yet you won't join me?" Tom raised his brows. Harry felt his lips tug, just slightly.
"Well, everyone knows the villain never wins," he replied, something of a joke in his voice, and then something else, darker, more painful.
The doors slid open, and they stepped out, only to come face to face with the one person they hadn't particularly wanted to run into.
His heart stopped.
Voldemort.
Tom stepped forward immediately, anticipating that Harry would do the same and grabbing his arm to prevent that. He didn't anticipate that Harry knew well enough what he'd planned, and had stepped to the side first, out of his reach.
His eyes flashed dangerously, and he resisted the urge glare at the younger boy, figuring now would not be a good time to automatically focus his attention on Harry, as opposed to his elder counterpart.
"Fancy meeting you here," he greeted lightly, trying to gauge if the other knew the full extent of the Prophecy yet or not.
Voldemort wasn't looking at him, which was frankly insulting as it implied he wasn't the greatest threat in the room, but had his own gaze fixed on Harry.
The Prophecy Child. The Boy who Lived. The Chosen One.
Okay. That didn't bode well. Harry surveyed the other, probably coming to the same conclusion as him.
Voldemort knew.
"If you attack him, I will end you out of spite," he warned quietly, without threat, just a ring of promise and fact.
"I gathered," Voldemort still hadn't looked at him, and neither had Harry for that matter…now he really was offended. "Otherwise I would have his head removed from his shoulders by now."
Harry's grip on his wand tightened, shifting.
"If you dare I will find a way to destroy you, even if I have to come back as a Poltergeist!" Harry hissed, venomously, every inch the snake with none of the lion - except perhaps in the bravery of defying who he was defying.
It was clear enough that Harry wasn't speaking in Parseltongue for subterfuge anymore; he'd slipped. Tom was starting to feel like he'd missed something, especially as Voldemort was still favouring Harry with an odd, unreadable, challenging gaze.
Voldemort smiled thinly, stuffed with malice.
"If he dares what?" Tom questioned, sharply. There was no answer.
He narrowed his eyes, studying them both for clues.
Harry had said "if you dare," suggesting Voldemort had given some sort of threat, though it wasn't spoken. It could have been mental, through the link, but he doubted Harry would open his mind to that in anything less than an emergency or pure desperation.
Therefore, it could have been Harry second-guessing Voldemort's actions by some nuance of emotion, or a conversation they'd had before. Harry had known that the time paradox threatened his existence too, as did free choices, after his last conversation with the older Dark Lord.
They had talked about Tom. The threat could have been made then.
Harry had seemed worried about him being Obliviated, he'd…oh.
Voldemort wasn't going to harm him or kill him, both would result in consequences neither of them desired, but he could still wipe his memory…and then Tom would leave, become Voldemort presumably, and then he/they would kill Harry right here, right now, with no threat of Tom destroying them after, out of spite.
He blinked for a moment at the complexity of time travel, before shaking himself from falling into a tangent of scholarly thought.
"Considering by your own admission the villain never wins," he said quietly, "one could argue that your incessant desire to save me is rather pointless."
He was gratified to find that, this time, Harry's attention automatically snapped to him, before back to the enemy. Okay, so maybe it wasn't a good idea to distract him from defending himself against people who were trying to kill him, but it was utterly infuriating to be ignored.
Still, he couldn't help but feel a slight smugness, and he knew that even if Harry was oblivious to it, Voldemort most certainly wasn't.
Jealous.
He quirked his lips into an arrogant smirk, watching those features harden.
Harry looked incredibly uncomfortable, though Tom wasn't altogether sure whether or not it was because he was picking up in this silent communication, or because of his last remark.
He was going to guess the latter, because he knew he'd never highlighted that specific aspect of Harry's hero-complex so openly. Normally, he mocked Harry's saving other people, never himself.
"It's the hero-complex," Harry deadpanned, voice even in a way that Tom knew meant he was trying very hard to sustain the casual neutrality with which he was speaking.
"He's a sucker for lost causes," Voldemort added snidely, apparently unable to stand watching them 'banter' before him. "He's the saviour of the light, you can hardly find a cause more lost than that."
"And yet Dumbledore didn't spend thirteen years as a weird ghost thing," Harry returned cuttingly. "That was just you."
Scarlet eyes darkened.
"No, Dumbledore just wants you to go ahead and kill yourself, loving leader that he is…and for the first time, I find I must agree with him. Why don't you go and die, Potter? Then at least your friends wouldn't die for you."
Harry immediately went rigid, while Tom's jaw clenched.
He and Harry argued an awful lot, and didn't generally have all that many boundaries, but there were limits and lines that neither crossed - and that comment batted the line aside completely and trampled it.
Besides, Harry was his to wound or comfort as he wished - no one else had a right.
And then he realised the game, at the exact the same time that Harry spoke.
"Leave, Tom," he ordered, curtly.
Threat full circle; Harry would never let anything happen to anyone he even remotely cared about after such a statement, and so he would happily ensure Tom was safe even it left him with no barriers between him and a man the other knew to still be immortal.
Bloody martyr.
The worst part was that he knew Harry had figured out the bait just as well as he had, but he was defiantly grabbing onto the fishhook anyway.
A lot of people may claim that Harry had no self worth, but Tom knew enough about subtleties to know that wasn't true…Harry was too independent, too untamed and alive to have no self-worth…he didn't think himself worthless, he just viewed himself as worth less than his friends.
Tom refused to cater to such crap.
He shifted to a more offensive duelling stance, hoping to make his position perfectly evident.
"What have I said about you and heroism?" he questioned, a menacing edge to his tone.
"Numerous things, none of them flattering," Harry replied, in a careless manner. "I think I must have forgotten them along with the time I agreed to taking orders from you…oh…wait…that never happened!"
He studied the other, coldly, fully aware that on Harry's 'mental stability' scale he was rapidly sliding towards the 10 end on the spectrum.
For once, it would have been fabulous if Harry did do just that. Take an order. Normally, he - perhaps grudgingly - admired the younger's iron will and lack of submission, but in times like these he loathed it with equal measure. It was only fools who thought you couldn't deeply love and hate something or someone at the same time.
Love wasn't the opposite of Hate, they were siblings, for they both involved strong emotion. The opposing reaction was apathy, indifference.
He saw Voldemort's gaze dart to him with sheer alarm as he analysed his options at lightning speed, with all the ferocity of a trapped snake.
Then he acted.
Harry let out an involuntarily yelp as a force abruptly tugged him backwards, a savage grip yanking him roughly into the lift behind them just as the doors slammed shut again.
Tom's hold on his arm was relentless, violent, intended to be painful and punishing.
The lift gave a weird judder, and they ducked the curse that exploded just above their heads as, with a scream of unadulterated rage from Voldemort, they were whizzing away.
"When the lift stops, I do not care if children are getting murdered in front of your eyes, you are going to bloody well run and we are going to leave. Is that clear?" Tom hissed, shaking him. "And I swear if you don't I will find and slaughter a village just to spite you."
"Excuse me for not wanting to watch you get caught in a crossfire you should never have gotten involved in!"
"And you can add that remark to the long list of things I will be dealing with when we get back to Hogwarts," Tom replied, dangerously, shoving him out the lift.
Death Eaters.
Lots of Death Eaters.
Death Eaters that all looked very much like they had orders if the fact that they all rounded on the two of them was any indication. Dark marks burned jet black against white masks.
He could sense Voldemort growing closer, far too fast.
There was no where to run to, not now.
"Aww, look, what do we have here Rodolphus…ickle students out of bed?"
A/N: Hope it's not disappointing. Thank you for the reviews!
I have up to chapter 3 posted of my original novel, thank you so so much to everyone who gave me feedback on it - this chapter is dedicated to you :)
Now, I should be sleeping...