"Why Muggle London?" Tom asked as they walked along the street. After his confession, everything still felt raw and too exposed. They couldn't touch in Muggle London, not the way they could in the Wizarding world. In a way, the forced boundary was nice. It meant he didn't have to set that for himself. And maybe Harry understood that.
"I like it." Harry smiled at him. "I never really got to do much as a kid. And Wizarding spaces are so loud. People stare, then and now."
Tom nodded in understand. "You're a face in the crowd here."
And then, Harry stopped in front of a bookstore. A beautiful, inviting bookstore.
Tom blinked. "And this is where you chose to spend the day?"
It didn't fit with the image of a Gryffindor he had in his head, when Harry revealed his history to him. But Harry had bought a stack of books in Borgin and Burkes, so maybe it was.
"As a kid, I wasn't allowed to read. My relatives hated it and I was only allowed in school. It's a way to keep people compliant, you know. Control their sources of information." He ran his fingers across a shelf almost reverently. "In school, I could only read when I was alone. Ron didn't like books and Hermione liked to be the smartest one in the room, and I crafted an image in order to fit in."
Tom knew what he was doing, and he found that he didn't mind this bit of manipulation. He had revealed a piece of himself to Harry that he had kept so tightly concealed from the world that no one would know. And now, Harry was doing the same.
"I love reading. Not really for reading sake, but because it was so forbidden for so long." He tilted his head. "And, of course, for the knowledge hidden there."
He grinned, his mouth spread wide with too many teeth, razor-sharp.
Tom cocked his head. The sentiment was familiar to him.
"Knowledge is power," he nodded.
He had never been banned from reading, but he had been greatly discouraged from reading things that weren't on Mrs. Cole's approved list. She would have fallen into hysterics over his Hogwarts' reading list, if she had ever discovered it.
Standing in front of the wall of books, Tom wished he could press Harry into it. What a clever move, teasing him like this, bringing him somewhere that he knew Tom would love and they couldn't touch.
"Do you want to look around?"
Tom nodded. He wandered into the depths of the store. Various titles stood out to him, and he very much would have liked to own them all. He wondered if Harry would buy them, at least a few. Harry could add them to the Peverell library.
Muggles had done a great many horrible things, but their literature was not among them.
"It is with the great sorrow that we make the following announcement," Tom heard a voice say. His eyes darted around the room until he found the source of the voice. The girl manning the counter had the wireless beside her. Her eyes were fixated on it, as if it she could actually see what was happening, rather than just hear it.
Tom stepped closer. Their eyes met, and she raised the volume.
"It was announced from Sandringham at 10:45 today, February the 6th, 1952, that the king, who retired to rest last night in his usual health, passed peacefully away in his sleep earlier this morning."
Tom blinked.
He remembered the night before he left for Hogwarts his second year. Everyone in the orphanage had crowded around the tiny, outdated wireless in the main room, the volume raised as high as it would go as King George announced that Britain was then at war. He had gone to King's Cross the next day with a knot in his stomach. The next summer though, Tom had nicked a radio and listened in secret every chance he got.
From his empty dorm room in Slytherin, he used to listened to the Christmas broadcast. For a short time, the familiar voice in the quiet of his room had made him feel not so alone. The Gryffindors that remained at Hogwarts during the break hated him because he was a Slytherin. The Ravenclaws kept to their own little world. And despite Hufflepuffs being all about inclusion, they never approached him.
Some part of him had been fascinated at the idea of someone as important as the king speaking on the radio to the masses, and that fascination had sparked the desire to do the same for the Wizarding World when he was minister. Now it felt like a childish fantasy.
Harry's hand touched his shoulder, ever so lightly.
"Did you want anything?"
Tom glanced back. A stack of books was tucked under Harry's arm. Tom tilted his head, trying to catch a better glance at some of the titles. After all, what books could Harry hope to find in a Muggle bookstore that he couldn't find in a Wizarding one?
Fiction was apparently the answer. Wizards did rather lack a taste in fiction books. It was considered very Muggle and Tom had hidden his stolen copy of The Hobbit inside his trunk when he discovered this fact.
He blinked. It was silly to be affected about a man he never even met, but for some reason, it felt like a door had closed that he could never reopen. He took a breath and filed it away. "I haven't even started looking."
Harry grinned. "Then go look."
The girl behind the counter sniffed, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Tom eyed her, before he moved past Harry and scanned the titles on the shelves. Why would she cry over someone she never knew? It wasn't like the king had been her father or uncle. Tom didn't think that most of the Purebloods even knew how to cry.
Tom took another breath.
From the other side of the room, Harry spoke in soft tones to the girl. He was good at talking to people, comforting them. Tom could do it too, when he felt like spending time thinking about it. It took a lot of energy to do that though and most of the time, he couldn't be bothered pretending with people who weren't going to help him in some way. His face hurt from the false smiles during the time in Borgin and Burkes.
He set a stack of books on the counter, and Harry grinned at the titles.
"Alexander wrote."
Harry looked up, as Tom entered the room.
"He's invited us to dinner tomorrow."
Admittedly, he was probably doing a fair amount of avoiding the Nott Manor that Alexander felt the need to write. He hadn't been a very good friend recently, to Alexander or Nagini. That needed to change.
Being happy with Harry was good, but he wasn't made for being happy with just long walks and lazy days spent between sheets. He spent afternoons plotting politics and reading newspapers and studying the world they lived in. For seven years spent at Hogwarts and another seven in the Wizarding world since graduation, he knew surprisingly little about it. He intended to change that before he made his proper debut into their world.
Harry's brow furrowed. "Both of us?"
The thought slipped before Harry's occlumency shields before he could do anything about it. He's told people about us?
The knot was back, twisting in his stomach. Don't just dismiss the emotion, he told himself. Instead, it was better to acknowledge it for what it was. Guilt, in this case. Guilt, because there was hurt in Harry's thoughts. Tom hadn't told anyone. He had let Harry believe he was some dirty secret, and he had treated him a bit like that as well.
"I told him that we had been discussing your bill, and he probably read through the lines."
Hurt flashed through Harry's eyes, almost too quickly for him to identify. It was the wrong thing to say.
"I didn't know what to say," Tom admitted. "And I was annoyed at him at the time."
Harry shuffled through his letters, but didn't look back up. "You don't have to explain."
The knot didn't loosen. Tom stepped forward. He gently plucked the envelopes from Harry's hands and set them on the desk before he tilted his chin back. Harry's eyes stayed stubbornly on Tom's cheek, not that he could blame him.
"What is this?"
Harry's brow furrowed.
"Do I say you're my prophesied enemy, come from the future to stop it from ever happening?" He let his thumb wander. "My lover? Keeper of my soul?"
Harry scoffed. "Please don't make a Horcrux sound romantic."
Tom tilted his head. "They can be."
He let go of Harry's chin. It was an easy enough decision to slip the Gaunt ring from his finger. With anyone else, he never would have considered it, but something about this felt right. Without breaking eye contact, he took Harry's hand in his and slipped the ring on his finger.
"Tom—"
He kissed Harry quickly, before he could protest too much. He wondered if Harry already knew that he had given him a piece of his soul.
"We're bound together." His fingers traced the silvery scar on Harry's forehead, savoring the way Harry shuddered. "Whether you carry my soul here"— He dropped his hand, bringing Harry's fingers up. He pressed his lips to the ring, to the skin around it. —"or here, we've been irrevocably tied together."
"Does that mean you're mine?"
Tom smiled. "I've always been yours. From the moment we first met, until the end of time. And you, Harry Potter, are mine." He pressed himself closer, breathing softly against Harry's cheek so he could savor the way Harry trembled against him, the way his magic swirled and pulled him closer still. Tom whispered in his ear, "No matter what name you bear."
Harry nodded, desperately, his breath coming in almost frantic pants as his fingers curled tighter. "I know."
"I don't think you do. You've known you're mine to kill, but you're also mine to cherish. To protect. To drive me to be something better, something greater."
"We're stronger together than we ever were fighting," Harry murmured. "Together, we can be great."
It felt like the world had shifted at his words. From the way Harry's eyes fluttered shut, from the way he gripped the collar of Tom's shirt, he thought he felt it too. Everything seemed more somehow.
He smiled, wrapping his hand around the back of Harry's neck. He wanted to pull him closer, to feel them merge into one body. Their souls were already entangled irreversibly. Their hearts beat in tune.
"Do you see why I had trouble putting a name to what we are?"
Harry yanked him forward, closing what little distance remained between them. With that, the knot dissipated fully and it felt like he could finally breathe.
