Chapter 8: A Simple Get Together
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About three weeks later, Tom and Harry got together again. They met up in muggle London, because they didn't want anybody to really see that they were getting together. It wasn't that they were ashamed to be seen together. It was that they didn't want anybody to know what they were talking about. The Death Eaters didn't need to know this stuff, and Harry's followers were still up in arms that he was throwing in his lot with the Dark Lord. They had accepted it, but they didn't like it. They were more cordial to the fact that he was throwing in his lot with Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix.
The Order meetings went great. They were held once a week and were closing on to the fact that the senior Dark Lord was going to be coming back within a few months and they were searching for ways they were going to fight him. So far, they've come up with a few strategies, but nothing concrete. Mostly it was training. Dumbledore was still trying to get through Harry's mind that he didn't need to kill anybody except Tom Riddle the elder. Harry was still trying to dissuade him of that fact.
Harry felt that the Death Eaters that fought against him needed to die too. He didn't like anyone who raised arms against him or his. They all needed to be put down. Dumbledore disagreed, they could all be turned to the light, in his opinion.
"Well, Tom, how's things been going on your side?" asked Harry as they sat down in their favorite tea shop, enjoying teas and cakes. The spread was much the same as last time, they liked their sweets.
"Very well, actually. My Death Eaters have come up with many viable solutions to getting equal rights passed the Wizengamot," the junior Dark Lord said. "They've actually been doing all of my bidding and been very good minions." He took a bite out of his favorite chocolate cookie. He got over the fact that Harry was going to try and kill him by offering his favorite food with poison in it. Harry had been nothing but a model ally.
"Well, at least one of us has good minions. I have to deal with a bunch of greenhorns," Harry said, lamenting over the fact that his followers had been nothing but simpletons. Sure, some of them were fighters, but most of them were shopkeepers and farmers. Simple folks, who had never raised their wands in a fight.
"You still haven't whipped your followers in the shape? And I do mean that literally," the young Dark Lord asked, gently wiping his mouth with a napkin. He then placed the napkin on the table and picked up his tea and took a sip.
"Well, they aren't fighting for him, so there's that for them. But they just are so eager to go out and fight, but they're not listening to strategy," Harry whinged, slumping his shoulders over the fact that he just couldn't whip his army into shape. He really had to get them into some sort of order before the senior Dark Lord came onto the scene. Or he was going to be facing a field of dead bodies. He didn't need meat shields, he needed soldiers.
"That's why you have to beat it into them," said Tom as if that was the simplest thing in the world.
"Ah, we're still going to have to differ on that," said Harry, though it did get him to thinking about hiring some people from the streets to scare his followers into shape. There were some toughs he knew who could teach them some down and dirty fighting. That was something he would have to pay some more attention to. If they couldn't learn discipline, maybe they could learn how to scrap.
"What else have you gotten done in the last few weeks?" asked Tom, wanting to change the subject from followers. It was not something he really wanted to pay attention to. He had had his people in shape and that was all he cared about. Although it was fun seeing the other boy whing.
"Well, I got the horcrux out of my head. I've gotten to know my godfather, albeit via a painting. And I've gotten the spy in my midst, and he's feeding false information to the headmaster. Oh, by the way, the headmaster is planning on throwing us into Azkaban when we take out the Dark Lord, so we better be careful with that," the younger of the two teenagers warned the older one. It was the least he could do since they were allies. That and he kind of liked Tom. The boy was pragmatic, even if he was a little sadistic.
"I thought you got the blanket pardon that your mudblood asked for," Tom said with a questioning tone. He was planning on using that to get out of any trouble he might get into killing off his older self.
"Don't call her that, first of all. Second of all, yes, we've got the pardon, but it's not what we asked for, so we sent it back to the writers to get it written up correctly," Harry said, waving his hand in a frustrated manner. It had been a back-and-forth thing for a while now. They kept trying to trip him up using words that would trick them into committing themselves to prison.
"Oh? and what did they say this time that was incorrect?" Voldy Junior asked. He was quite interested in seeing what Dumbledore was trying to do to trip the other boy up.
"They tried to throw in some phrases that would make it so that we would trap ourselves. Words like 'justification' and 'impartiality'. Where somebody else could judge whether we were right or wrong. That is not a blanket pardon," Harry said, frustratingly shredding his napkin into little pieces. If it weren't for Hermione, then it probably would've worked. That girl was a genius when it came to legal jargon. That, and he took it to Waters after Hermione was done looking at it.
"Yes, I can see where that would be harmful to our cause. I did not know you were including me in this pardon," Tom said with the lifting of an eyebrow. He knew they were partners, but he didn't think they were that close allies. According to what Crabbe said, from the Order of the Phoenix meetings, Harry pretty much kept his name out of everything.
"We're partners," was the succinct answer.
"Are you including my Death Eaters?" came the next question. It was really too much to ask for, but he thought he'd ask anyway.
"Sorry Tom, I can't include them. I can't add in my followers either. I can only include you, me and Hermione," Harry said, tapping his fingers on the table. He had tried to get it for everybody, but he could only encompass the three of them. And he had to work to get Hermione involved in the first place. If it wasn't for the fact that she was his right-hand man, he wouldn't have been able to get it for her.
"So, we're the ones who are going to have to deal the killing blows, while everybody else is going to have to do maiming or incapacitating?" Tom asked, placing his napkin on his lap and paying full attention to Harry's face. He wanted to make sure that he got the wording correct so that he could tell his minions what they could and could not do in the final battle. What they did outside that battle was completely and entirely up to them. They were on their own. Well, that wasn't true. They did what they were told, but if they stepped outside his parameters, then that was their problem.
"That's correct. If your Death Eaters go around shooting off The Killing Curse, they're on their own. You're going to have to get that through their thick skulls right away," Harry said, voicing his thoughts. "I've already told mine that if they go for the killing blow to have a solicitor ready."
"That's straightforward. I'll throw around a few pain curses and they'll figure it out," Tom said, waving it away as if it was an easy thing.
"Ah, if life were only that simple," said Harry, once again lamenting over the hard headedness of his followers.
"It really is," said Tom, insistently. "You just have to embrace that part of your personality." The older teen knew that Harry had a dark side to his personality, and if he'd just embraced it, they could rule the world. He could see the boy was pragmatic, but he really wanted to see that devious side of him that would just take over. He could tell it would be beautiful.
"I have a question for you," said Harry. "Do you know what a gun is?" It had been a question that had been bugging him for a while and he really wanted to know the answer to it. He thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to get it from the horse's mouth.
"I grew up in the tail end of World War 2. Of course, I know what a gun is. I was there during the Blitz, you know," the junior Dark Lord said, giving him a dark look. That had been a horrible time in history to grow up in. The bombs flew almost every night and he wanted to be in Hogwarts during those times, but the headmaster at that time told him he could not stay there. It was one of the reasons he had turned into a Dark Lord.
"Of course, I apologize. Do you know what a modern gun is and what it does?" Harry said, feeling a bit contrite, that he had asked the question in the first place. But now he at least knew it was not the power that the Dark Lord knew not.
"No, I'm not accustomed with modern weaponry," Tom said, picking up a cookie and taking a bite out of it. "I was a Horcrux for fifty years, remember?" he said once his mouth was clear.
"I had forgotten," said Harry, a bit abashed. "Do you think that your senior self would be accustomed to it?" He had wondered about that, too. The younger version of Voldemort seemed to know all about the muggle world. In so much as to what it was like 50 years ago, but the older version might not know that much about it. Especially since he seemed to be playing pureblood.
"I doubt very seriously he kept up with muggle technology," Tom said, thinking along the same lines that Harry was. From what he had learned from the Death Eaters, senior Tom was very much against muggles. He seemed to have a hatred for them for some reason or another.
"I see," said Harry, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I've acquired myself a couple of weapons. Do you think you could predispose yourself into using one of them?" He would just love to see the look on Tom Senior's face when Junior pulled out a gun and shot him. That would be one for the record books.
"Huh," said Tom, thinking very carefully. "I will have to ponder upon this," he said to Harry. He too is thinking of his senior self's face, but his was not as funny as Harry was thinking. He was thinking more along the lines the anger the older man would be feeling.
"Well, let me know what you think, and I will show you how to use one. You can keep it with you and never use it. Or you can come to me, and I will show you how to fire one off and we can both use one against Voldy and his minions," Harry said, still going over the hysterical scene in his head.
"I would gladly kill anybody who betrays me," said Tom. His face took on a dark look and his tone got very deep. He was still trying to get over the fact that many of his Death Eaters would go over to Senior Tom when the man came on to the scene. He knew he would lose at least half of them. Which is one of the reasons why he was not telling them anything. Then again, Crabbe Senior might be telling them something about what was going on with the Order of the Phoenix. On the other hand, Crabbe Senior was a very loyal and devout follower of Tom Junior.
"Are you sure you're up to killing your older self?" came Harry's question out of the blue. There must have been a look on Tom's face that made Harry wonder.
"That man is no longer human after what he has done to his soul," Riddle Junior said. He had been thinking about this a lot. It kept him up late at night, the ponderings of what Riddle Senior had done to his soul. He knew he had done it one time, but to do it over and over again was just damnation.
"Are we sure that he's twisted his soul the way we think he has?" Harry asked.
"I'm very sure," said Tom, tapping his finger on the table with a great deal of consideration. "After you and the diary, I am very sure that he is probably made at least five other Horcruxes."
"Do we have any idea of what they may be?" Harry asked.
Tom pulled out the list of seven items and handed them to Harry. On said list were three Founders items, the Deathly Hallows, and things of interest from when he was a child. "These are things that I treasured most that I would have used," he said, pointing to the top of the list first. "If you can find them, they would more likely be corrupted."
"I'll get this to the correct people and see if they can find them. I wouldn't know where to look. I've only been in this world for a month now," Harry said, explaining away why he would not be looking for them. He was speaking only the truth. He would have no idea where to even start.
"Places I would have hidden them? My childhood home, my father's home, the orphanage, and Hogwarts. Those are the only places I can think of," Tom said, listing them off on his fingers.
Harry took a pen out of his pocket and jotted that list down on the back of the list that Tom had given him. "Why don't you go after them yourself?" He asked, wondering why the Dark Lord didn't just have his minions go and find them.
"I think I would have a bad reaction to destroying my own soul, even though it's not a part of myself, per se," Tom explained, giving him a so-so gesture with his hand.
"I can see where it'd be some type of suicide," Harry said, getting a green look on his face. It kind of made him nauseous just to think about it.
"Yes. Exactly that."
"All right, I'll get this to the right people," Harry said, tucking it into his coat pocket. He was going to get it to Mad-Eye Moody and just bypass Dumbledore altogether. He and Mad-Eye had developed a relationship. It wasn't an amicable connection, but it was an interesting one. They bantered at one another in a pleasant way, but they weren't friends in any stretch of the imagination. They were just cordial to one another. Mad-Eye was a paranoid old sod, that didn't really trust Harry or his, but he liked the logic of Harry's reasonings in most of his arguments.
"Well, I must be going," said Tom. "I have to get back to my minions and make sure they haven't burned down my house." He didn't really mean that. His Death Eaters knew better than to mess with anything that would destroy his valuables.
"Yes, I must go and talk to my solicitor about getting my house back," said Harry, taking the last of the biscuits and shoving them into his pocket. He loved the baking's of this café. It's one of the reasons why he enjoyed meeting Tom here.
"How is that going for you, by the way?" asked Tom.
"Pretty well, actually. My solicitor, Mr. Waters, Esquire, says that he can get my house back by Christmas. Right pretty present for me, that's for sure. Sirius is hoping out for it," Harry said with a huge grin on his face because he had been working so hard to that end. It's been just countless hours with his solicitor to get reams of paperwork done. Tons of parchmentwork gone over, just to find loopholes that they had used to get the house into the Order of the Phoenix's name. They found those loopholes and now were exploiting them for all they were worth to get the house back in Harry's name.
"Oh? and how's he going to do that?" the junior Dark Lord asked, vaguely interested. It did one good to make sure that one's ally was happy.
"Finding Sirius's will helped. Well, it was in the records and in it everything was left for me except for a few monetary gifts that were left to Remus. And since that will left nothing material to Remus, only monetary, they had no right to the house whatsoever. Everything that was physical was left to me, hence my house," Harry explained with a flourish. He had been left a bunch of money too, but he wanted the house more than anything else. Sure, he could probably buy more houses with the money he was left, but it was the principle of the thing.
"I see," said Tom, getting up and shaking the crumbs from his lap. "Well, very well then, Harry Potter. I'm glad that that worked out for you."
"Yeah, it'll keep me off the streets at the very least. Even if it is a rundown old pit that looks like it's going to fall down with a good wind. At least I have the money to build it back up again," Harry said, also getting up and getting ready to leave the building.
"Did it at least come with the house elf? I hear all those old houses have one," the young man asked as the two of them walked out of the café.
"Yeah, Kreacher. He's a cantankerous old sod," Harry said with a chuckle as they walked down the sidewalk.
"Well, at least he can clean the house," Tom said with some sympathy. He knew all about cantankerous house elves. Some of his Death Eaters had a few of them, but at least they did what they were told.
"Not bloody likely, that. Kreacher is really something despicable," Harry explained with a full body shudder. That house elf was pretty disgusting. It looked like he hadn't cleaned himself up in over twelve years. Which was probably how long it had been since his mistress had died.
"Once you get the house, and it's yours, he'll listen to what you say. He will have no choice in the matter. You will be his owner," Tom explained patiently.
"I guess you're right. We'll see what happens then. There's a lot of dark stuff in that house. When it's free of Order people, you can come and see it and maybe find some things in there that you like," Harry offered, knowing that the man might like some of the weird things that were in that horrible House of horrors. There was some creepy stuff in there that he didn't even want to look at let alone touch. However, he was sure Tom would love them.
"I would very much like to do that. Thank you, Harry," The junior Dark Lord said as they were coming towards the end of the street.
"Not a problem, Tom. I'd just be happy to have it out of my house. If you don't want it, I'm just going to throw it away," Harry said, as they stopped at the end of the street.
"Very well. Give me a time and a day and I will come to look at what you have," Tom said, turning to face the younger boy.
"Sure thing, Tom. I'll let you know."
And with that, the two men went their separate ways.
Hphphp
Harry went back to Hogwarts and went up to the Room of Requirements, pulled out his picture of Sirius to talk about what they were going to do at the house once he got it back for Christmas.
"Are you going to kick the Order out?" the dogman asked. He seemed almost eager to see the Order kicked out of the house. He hadn't seen Remus since Harry took him out of the house, and he was wondering if the other man even knew he was gone. Harry hadn't said anything about Remus asking about him. There had been at least three Order meetings since he had been in Harry's pocket.
"You know, I think I'm going to let them hang out there for a while," Harry said, rubbing the back of his head. He had been giving it a lot of thought. He thought it would be a good idea just to let them have the false sense of security for a while.
"Why the bloody hell would you do that?" Sirius asked, not understanding what was going through the boy's head. To him, kicking the Order out would be his first priority.
"Just to keep an eye on them. Don't you know that Dumbledore is planning on 'containing' me? He wants to get me locked up in Azkaban if he thinks I've 'stepped out of line'. He and Snape are constantly up in his office making plans on how to 'keep me in line'," It just made good sense to him to make sure that the Order was kept where he could keep an eye on them. That way they couldn't trap or sneak attack him.
"Oh, and how do you know all this?" his godfather asked, giving him a weird look. He wondered about how Harry got all his information.
"I've got a listening charm on Dumbledore's desk," Harry said with a shrug of his shoulders as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
"And he hasn't found it yet?" the other man inquired. They had tried to do that as the Marauders, but they had never gotten away with it. Dumbledore always found the Listening Charms that were in his office.
"It's not the normal Listening Charm that you would find here in the wizarding world. It's one that I invented before I even came to this godforsaken place," Harry said with a shit-eating grin. "I learned loads of magic before I ever came here. I showed you some of it. Don't you remember?" The painting's memory was spotty at best. He seemed to forget the simplest things, sometimes even the most extravagant things, which was worrisome, in and of itself.
"Really? Well, bully for you," Sirius said, giving him a brilliant smile. "I always knew you were a smart kid. Even before I met you again. You were a smart baby. I used to dream about you and wonder how you grew up. Now I'm looking at you, and you grew up much better than I thought you would," the man said, giving him a proud look.
"Thanks, godfather of mine," Harry said, beaming at the painting.
"Anytime, godson of mine," Sirius said, giving him a dopey grin.
Then the two of them spent some time on how they were going to spy on the Order when they got the house back. Harry thought he could tie the Listening Charm to Sirius's painting so the man could always listen to it. That way Harry would never miss anything. However, Sirius's memory was still not the best, so that might not be sufficient. Still, they thought it might be better than Harry missing out on the hours he had to spend studying and in class. So that's what they did.
"Can you take notes in there?" Harry asked Sirius, seeing a desk in the background.
"Yeah, I can do that," the dogman said, going to the desk and taking up a quill and jotting down a quick note.
"How much ink is in that bottle?" the boy asked, looking at the desk and not seeing all the much there.
"Harry, it's a magical painting. It will never run out," the other man stated, going over to the front of the portrait and explaining it to the teen.
"Oh, that's great, but how will you store what you write?" he asked, looking around the portrait and not seeing any place to store notes.
"That is a problem, once I reach the end of the parchment, I will have to start over," Sirius said, scratching his head. "However, there are at least six pieces here," he stated, looking at what was available.
"That might be an issue," Harry said, wondering if he could paint more into the picture. Then remembered he didn't know how.
"Don't worry, I'll remember, and keep my notes concise," Sirius said, jotting a note to do just that.
"Okay," Harry said, giving the man an encouraging smile.
"We'll get through this, Harry. I've got your back," the crazy man said with a wild look in his eyes. He just wanted to be helpful. There would be Listening Charms in Dumbledore's office, and two rooms at Grimmauld Place. That way they could always keep an ear open.
"I know, Sirius. I trust you," Harry said, going to the portrait to shrink it down so they could leave. He'd been out of the public eye for hours now. He needed to be seen, or people would talk about him as if he were up to no good. "I'm going to shrink you now. See you later," he told the man.
"Okay, Harry," Sirius said. He didn't mind. He could still hear everything in Harry's pocket.
With that, Harry went to find Hermione.