Work Text:
After the first three days, Nagini had stopped trying to speak to him. Tom’s familiar always had been a smart snake. Harry wasn’t surprised that she’d caught on so quickly that he could no longer speak back, and while she was fully capable of understanding English he wasn’t much in the mood for one sided conversation. Or any conversation, really.
Ron and Hermione had stopped trying to sit with him after the first week. And after the first week and a half, they’d stopped trying to drag him out for food or tea or any other such nonsense and had simply left him alone. Alone in that too-sterile, private hospital room with only the distant sounds of life in the Spell Damage Ward of St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries and the steady rhythm of Tom’s breathing.
A crush of people. Chaos all around him. The gems from the hour glasses which represented the House’s points scattered all about the floor. Voldemort, atop the dias where the Head Table stood. A flash of bright green light. Tom throwing himself between them, robes flaring out about his form like dark wings as he took the curse instead and fell, broken, to the stones. Harry clenched his teeth and shook his head like a dog might when trying to rid itself of fleas. That day, that moment, kept replaying itself behind his eyes. Over and over and over again. Filling him with the same grief and terror as it had when it had all first happened; churning his belly with bile until he felt certain he’d fall ill and yet never quite tipping him over. Leaving him to dangle there and suffer, unable to find relief. Grimacing, he shifted slightly forward on the edge of his chair and reached for Tom’s hand. Still limp. Still cold. But the pulse was strong against his wrist and Harry forced his mind to focus on the steady tapping of it rather than the folded copy of that morning's edition of The Daily Prophet and the loudly titled opinion piece they’d decided to slap across the front page.
‘A Public List of the Seven Greatest Reasons Young Voldemort Must Pay for His Crimes.’ Honestly, it would have struck Harry as an incredible shock that it hadn’t been written by Rita Skeeter had he not been so busy trying to smother his rage enough that his magic wouldn’t act out and destroy something in the room. Or risk accidentally harming Tom further, in his vulnerable state. ‘Young Voldemort’. That was what they called him. The only thing they’d called him ever since the fall of the Dark Lord. Not Tom. ‘Young Voldemort’. He understood their anger. Understood the desire for justice and, too no small degree, for vengeance after all the atrocities that had been committed in the Heir of Slytherin’s name. A not insubstantial part had carried resentment for Tom, too, at first. Even when he himself hadn’t yet truly done any of the actions that had caused him so much pain. But that didn’t make him any less incensed, any less furious, with the notion of it. Tom was innocent! Was just as much a hero as any of the rest of them! In the last months of the war, he’d hated himself for all that the perversion his ideals had become had damaged. And it was ultimately down to his last moment defense that Voldemort had even been brought down at all.
Sounds like just the sort of dragon shite that she would write! As Harry glared at the unfamiliar, rather masucline sounding name which had been assigned to the travesty of an article the image of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore swam in his vision. Maybe that’s a bloody pen name. Trying to avoid Hermione realizing it was her and ratting her out over it. Maybe I should, regardless of whether this was her work or not.
Much to his regret, the old turn of phrase ‘speak of the Devil and the Devil shall appear’ seemed to extend to thoughts of the Devil as well because the next thing he knew a all too familiar voice chirped “Ah, I thought I’d find you here” from the doorway. Harry had to take a long moment to consciously measure the worth of flinging a certain green unforgivable across the room before he turned, settling instead for shooting daggers from his eyes. The awful harpy leaned against the frame of the door, watching him from behind her rhinestone adorned spectacles with a look in her eyes that he absolutely didn’t like, her gag worthy magenta robes pooling on the floor at her feet in a way which struck him as rather disenchanting to look at. “The Boy Who Lived and his dearly beloved reformed Dark Lord In the Making. Have time for an interview?”
Curiously, and much to his marked suspicion, he didn’t see her acid green quick-quotes-quill anywhere. “Give me one reason why I should have a damned bloody thing to say to you when I know you’re just going to spin it into another one of these,” he snatched up the newspaper and threw it at her in disgust. The pile of thin, cheap, poor quality paper landing on the floor with a miserable flop far shy of meeting their mark, “tabloid shite rags?”
“Because you know better than that.”
“Because you’re an ‘ethical journalist’?” Harry snapped. “I’d sooner kiss Dolores Umbridge than believe a word of that! And by all means, Rita, quote me on that! Get out!”
“Because you’re well aware that I write for publicity, Harry dear. And adding in to the noise of the chaos going on now is how you get lost, drowned out. Not noticed.” Ignoring his demands for her to leave, and his bared teeth-as well as the hissing, puffed up snake wrapped around the head of the bed-she stepped further into the room. Her heels clacking against the too-bright tiles which paved the floor. “When you’re writing in a climate like this, you get noticed by going against the flood. They’re all writing about Young Voldemort. So I’m going to write about Tom Riddle. And the best source I have for information on that,” she drew her wand and summoned a sagging leather armchair which she promptly dropped into as if she belonged there in that room with them, “is you.”
“I don’t have interest in rekindling your career.”
“Perhaps not. But I think you do have an interest in making sure that Sleeping Beauty over there doesn’t spend the rest of his life locked in Azkaban when and if he ever wakes up.” Her lips were lacquered cherry red; thin, oversaturated and artificial. “That’s where they want to put him, you know. Or to just throw him through the veil down in the Department of Mysteries. There’s no reason for them to feel sympathy for him. They don’t know him like you do, Harry dear. But you can change that.” Setting the crocodile skin handbag she carried with her on the ground and unzipping it, she reached in with her scarlet taloned nails and drew out not that damned enchanted quill she’d all but become famous for but a notepad and a run of the mill eagle feather quill. Both of which she held up theatrically as she peered at him over the rims of her glasses. “How about we have the same rules as our last voluntary interview, hmm? Only the truth. Word for word. You give me three articles, to be published over a period of three months, and I give him a chance.”
The taste of iron rested heavy on his tongue, tinged with something almost burnt. He held his glare for a long moment, then sighed and looked over at Tom. His lax face and even breathing. The bandages still wrapped around the healing wounds in his arm. The way his dark curls splayed, listless and angelic, across the pillow under his head. “Fine.” He spat, fists clenching as he folded his arms over his chest. “I’ll talk. I’ll answer any question you want. But you ask them all today because you’re only getting one interview. And when you’re done, you leave.”
“Well then, Harry dear,” she leaned towards him in her chair, quill poised over too-white parchment, “shall we get started?”
***
Saving Tom Riddle - Part One of Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived’s, Tell All Interview About His Cross-Dimensional Endeavor to Save the Young Dark Lord From His Fate and Their Time Together on the Front Lines of the Second Wizarding War
By: Rita Skeeter
My dear readers, after a long absence through the most active days of the most recent chaos I come to you again with a real treat. With no small amount of effort on my part, and with only my own assuredness of your desire-lovely readers-to know the full truth from the horse’s-or, perhaps, the Stag’s-mouth I’ve at last managed to track down our beloved Boy Who Lived, Savior of the Wizarding World, Defeater of the Dark Lord, Harry James Potter in Room 6 of the Spell Damage War of our own St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries where he currently sits vigil at the bedside of his beloved. One Tom Marvolo Riddle or, perhaps more scandalously better known these days as ‘Young Voldemort’. Understandably rather unhappy to be disturbed, considering he’d fought in the bloody Battle of Hogwarts just a week before, he was willing after some convincing to give yours truly one in depth interview about the truth of Tom Riddle and how he came to be here, in our reality. The first part of which I bring to you know, unedited and fully in Harry’s own words.
Yours truly: Now, Harry dear, let’s get started. Shall we begin with the beginning?
Harry Potter: *Frowns, unamused with this report’s efforts at levity* The beginning is generally where most things start, yeah.
Yours truly: *Undeterred* I haven’t been able to get much information on the nature of Tom. Is he an aspect of He Who Must Not Be Named? A memory of him in his younger years somehow given life by advanced magics unknown to most of the wizarding public? The result of the blatant misuse of a time turner?
Harry Potter: So the unspeakables didn’t tell anyone that we got all of the time turners in Britain stuck in an infinite loop of falling?
Yours truly: *Bewildered, but nevertheless dedicated to keeping things moving* Let’s stay on topic, shall we?
Harry Potter: *Huffs* Alternate Timeline Traversal Theory.
Yours truly: *Stares at him* I’m sorry?
Harry Potter: I never really bothered to ask enough about it to understand all of what it meant; it was one of Dumbledore’s theories about the way that alternate timelines, alternate dimensions, were laid out next to each other. Like...like string. Or something. *At this point he makes a rather helpless looking gesture, then sneers* Never mind! He had a ring that acted like a portkey, except instead of sending me to a different place it sent me to a different timeline. A different Hogwarts, back in the 1940s. I had until Christmas to save Tom.
Yours truly: And Dumbledore sent you back there to save him?
Harry Potter: And to get him to help. Voldemort *at this point I couldn’t quite contain a rather violent cringe, provoking him to roll his eyes in disgust, but he didn’t comment on it and kept talking* had made these things called Horcruxes to split his soul into pieces and make it so he couldn’t die. So we wanted Tom to help us figure out what those things might have been. And how many he’d made. It ended up being seven, which was why he became so crackers, not that Tom’s entirely there either but at least he’s functionally insane. *It sounded like he muttered ‘most of the time’ under his breath here but I really couldn’t tell.* He must have done some other magic on the ring as well because Dippet, the Headmaster at the time, was convinced I was a transfer student. I got myself resorted, asked the hat to put me in Slytherin and, well...Tom noticed me pretty quickly.
Yours truly: What happened then, Harry?
Harry Potter: *Appearing to fight either a smirk or a look of mild disgust.* He tried to recruit me to the Knights of Walpurgis, the baby Death Eaters, by tricking me into thinking that he fell in love with me. But method acting has its dangers and the idiot caught feelings for real. *Here, his expression softens and he looks over to the unconscious Wizard on the bed. Tenderly intertwining their fingers and lightly squeezing. There’s no response.* He was horrified when I snuck him into the Headmaster’s office and used the pensive to show him my memories. We started making plans to go back to this reality and fight Voldemort.
Yours truly: But it wasn’t that easy?
Harry Potter: *Laughs bitterly* Is it ever? No. One of his mini Death Eaters overheard us talking at Slughorn’s christmas party. They waited for everyone to leave for christmas break and ambushed us, but we managed to make it to the headmaster’s office and activate the ring. Dumbledore was waiting for us with a couple of members of the Order of the Phoenix-the secret society of mostly civilians that he put together during the First War to fight Voldemort; my parents were a part of it. We took out the bowl of gummy dark marks on our way in and Tom’s first words in our reality were ‘you’re joking’.
Yours truly: He has a sense of humor, then?”
Harry Potter: *A small, jerky nod* Most people would probably call it a cruel one, and very black, but yes. He does.
Yours truly: What happened after that?
Harry Potter: They escorted us to the Burrow and we spent Christmas break there under the guise of him being a distant relative of Voldemort’s who’d been taken from the country by his mother as a young boy to keep him safe. We snuck out on Christmas eve, though. Tom showed me the orphanage where he was raised, and mistreated, by Muggles. And let me see his memories. Said it was only fair, since he’d seen mine.
Yours truly: Any chance you’ll share? *His glare is cutting. I took that as a no.* Is that the only place you went that night?
Harry Potter: *Starting to look a little bit uncomfortable. Looks over at Tom again, as if hoping he’ll suddenly wake up and save him. Clears his throat nervously.* We got a room at the Leaky Cauldron.
Yours truly: And?
Harry Potter: *Red as the banner of his House* Who put their what where and when is beyond the scope of this interview! We went back to the Burrow in the early hours of the morning so no one would notice we were gone and when we got back to school Tom got resorted and landed himself in Gryffindor. A fact which he was a little bit distressed over. School went well enough, until Draco-the bloody git-let a bunch of Death Eaters into the school using a tunnel made out of a pair of vanishing cabinets. Dumbledore had taken me out to search for one of the Horcruxes-which ended up being a fake-at the time and there would have been a hell of a lot more damage-and probably more death-if Tom hadn’t been there to lead the students in fending them off.
Yours truly: That was that night that Dumbledore died?
Harry Potter: *Nodding* Yeah. His voice is thick. There’s a heavy pause before he speaks again.* Can we move on?
Yours truly: *I do my best to sound sympathetic* Of course, Harry dear. *I turn the page in my notes to make room for a new topic* Why don’t you tell me about the months between the fall of the Ministry and the Battle for Hogwarts. You were hunting the rest of them then, weren’t you? The things you called Horcruxes?
Harry Potter:*Another nod* Yeah. Yeah, we were.
For the rest of this watershed interview, dear readers, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until next week’s premier issue and the second part of the trilogy: Chasing Shadows. This has been Rita Skeeter, reporting faithfully from The Daily Prophet.
***
“Well,” Harry raised his head high enough to glare at her with heavy eyes; once again, Rita stood in the doorway of Tom’s hospital room as if she felt that she belonged there, though this time absent the crocodile skin handbag, “what did you think?”
“I think I told you not to come back here.” He grumbled.
“For another interview. Not to make sure that my work was to your satisfaction. This is a mutually beneficial agreement after all.”
“You certainly kept your word about including everything .” Harry would really there rather hadn’t been the part about ‘who’s what going where’ but he supposed it was a small price to pay for truth. “I’m satisfied enough. Now leave! The next time you come here, I’m going to hex you!”
“Pleasure to hear, Harry dear. Have a good day.” And without a care in the world for his threat, waving a hand over her shoulder at him, the harpy woman turned and saw herself out. He heard the clicking of her heels echoing off the walls long after she’d disappeared from sight.
***
Chasing Shadows - Part Two of Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived’s, Tell All Interview About His Cross-Dimensional Endeavor to Save the Young Dark Lord From His Fate and Their Time Together on the Front Lines of the Second Wizarding War
By Rita Skeeter
As promised, dear readers, the second installment of my watershed interview with Harry Potter regarding the truth of who Tom Riddle, better known to most today as ‘Young Voldemort’ really is and what his contributions to the war were. For those just tuning in, in part one we discussed how it was that Harry had come to use a interdimensional time traveling device of some sort devised by Albus Dumbledore in order to save Tom Riddle from his own mechaniations and recruit his aid in locating the mechanisms of the immortality of He Who Must Not Be Named. This time, we’ll be going more into depth of the months between the fall of Scrimgeor’s Ministry of Magic and the Battle for Hogwarts, during which time Harry and Tom were out in the wilds of Britain hiding from the Death Eater’s forces and trying desperately to survive with only each other to lean on for aid.
Yours truly: *I do my best to sound sympathetic* Of course, Harry dear. *I turn the page in my notes to make room for a new topic* Why don’t you tell me about the months between the fall of the Ministry and the Battle for Hogwarts. You were hunting the rest of them then, weren’t you? The things you called Horcruxes?
Harry Potter:*Another nod* Yeah. Yeah, we were.
Yours Truly: It’s my understanding that you were set on the run near about immediately after the death of the Minister. Is that true?
Harry Potter: We were at Bill-Ron’s older brother-and Fleur’s wedding at the time. Kingsley managed to get a Patronus out to warn us, but it only gave us a couple of seconds before the Death Eaters and supporters started apparating in and flinging spells around. Tom was quicker about reacting than I was; dragged me down behind a table for shelter. We went after Hermione and Ron once we got our barings, and once we found them we went to Grimmauld Place. Where it was safe. Kreacher, the House Elf, wasn’t terribly happy to see us at first but it was under strong protections so it was our best chance.
Yours Truly: And that was where you were for most of the war?
Harry Potter: *Shakes his head* Would have been a lot less bloody miserable and dangerous if it had been. We figured out that one of the Horcruxes was at the Ministry and broke in the get it; interrupted the proceedings of the Muggleborn Registration Commission’s hearings while we were there. On the way out, one of the Death Eaters managed to grab us while we apparated and got past the wards. Hermione acted quickly enough to apparate us away again but we got separated. I ended up with Ron in a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere and it was only because of Nagini that we managed to find them again.
Yours Truly: Nagini is the snake, right?
Harry Potter: Tom’s familiar. He found her on the edge of the Forbidden Forest during one of his earlier years at Hogwarts. I’m not sure what kind of snake she is, but she’s venomous and definitely magical; would have to be for Voldemort’s version to have lived so long.
Yours Truly: And she was able to find him?
Harry Potter: Yeah. He was pretty sick at the time; they’d wound up on the sea cliffs beside a little Muggle village that Tom had visited as a young boy and he ended up getting pretty soaked. It was while we were separated that Hermione had learned who he really was.
Yours Truly: And how did that go?
Harry Potter: *Very dry* He said he woke up from being splinched and losing half his blood volume to find himself trussed up like wild game only to be informed that she didn’t make a habit of ‘negotiating with terrorists with racist tendencies’. He was, uh, wary of her for a good while after that incident.
Yours Truly: Was that the only point of stress during your time out in the wilderness?
Harry Potter: Living in a magically enlarged tent in the middle of the bloody British winter with no regular access to food tends to create a lot of ‘points of stress’. Ron and I blew up on each other and he ran out for a while, but came back late. Destroyed one of the Horcruxes after it tried to drown me in a lake. Tom wasn’t too pleased with him for his little leaving stunt but Hermione was royally pissed and he had nothing on her.
Yours Truly: And after he returned you went to Hogwarts to fight?
Harry Potter: *Looking very much, suddenly, like a stag in a wand sight* Uh, no. We still had to get another Horcrux, so we...er...broke into Gringotts. And then broke out. On a dragon. After Tom convinced it to carry us to Hogwarts. *Once more under his breath, he says something like ‘we still have to bloody pay for that’.*
Yours truly: Convinced it?
Harry Potter: Tom’s the Heir of Slytherin. He’s a Parselmouth.
Yours Truly: *At this point I’m unable to conceal my surprise* You can use the serpent tongue to speak with Dragons?
Harry Potter: Speak at, not with. Of course Tom didn’t tell us that until we were already on its back. The damned thing was blind from so long being stuck underground and when it descended I was sure it was gonna smash into the ground. It took out the gate at the far end of Hogsmead, blasted the Death Eaters staffing the town to hell, set off the alarm charms and nearly threw Tom off its neck. We ended up having to jump off onto the roof of the castle when the dementors attacked us.
Yours Truly: And how did you make it inside?
Harry Potter: *Matter of factly, as if the matter is something anyone could do* Tom can fly. He carried us to the 7th floor window. We found everyone who was willing to fight hold up in the Room of Requirement and from there we reached out to the remainder of the Order, pushed out the Death Eater professors and locked the Slytherins in the dungeons to keep them from getting in the way. And then we did what we could to fortify the castle.
Yours Truly: And then He Who Must Not Be Named came?
Harry Potter: *Nodding grimly* And then Voldemort came.
And that, my dear readers, is where we shall be leaving this this week. I know I’m being cruel with this, but alas I must retain some substance for my final piece which will be coming to you, as promised, the same time next week. And in which we shall be learning of what really happened when Harry went to confront He Who Must Not Be Named alone in the Forbidden Forest, and exactly what went through our Savior’s head in the moment he saw his lover take the Killing Curse which had been meant for him.
***
This time, when he saw her in the doorway out of the corner of his eye, he spoke first. Grip white knuckled around the hilt of his wand, and Nagini hissing from where she’d coiled about his shoulders for warmth, but not making good on his threat from the week before. “I’m not a fan of the last few lines.”
“I hadn’t expected you to be, if I’m to be entirely honest Harry dear.” She waved her hand dismissively. The ridiculous pink feathers lining the cuffs of his acid green two piece suit drunkenly wobbling in the sterilized air. “But I’m not here to make you happy. I’m here to do what I promise; get him,” he struggled not to let his hackles rise when Rita pointed so carelessly at Tom’s still form with one of her long lacquered nails, “to be seen in a sympathetic, relatable, tragic light. The public loves that kind of story. They’ll eat it up. And they’ll forget all about the ‘Young Dark Lord’ image everyone else has been trying so hard to spin. Just trust me. This is, after all, what I do best.”
Trust her? Not in a million bloody years. At least, not with anything else. “Fine.” Harry turned away from her again. The dismissal starkly clear. “I won’t bother telling you not to come back. You don’t bloody listen to me anyway.”
“Do you think I’d be nearly as successful at what I do if I listened to everyone who told me to go away?”
No, the little raven supposed, she wouldn’t be.
***
A Strike of Tragedy! - Part Three of Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived’s, Tell All Interview About His Cross-Dimensional Endeavor to Save the Young Dark Lord From His Fate and Their Time Together on the Front Lines of the Second Wizarding War
By: Rita Skeeter
At long last, dear readers, we come to the final act of our grand tale! After rescuing Tom from his own nature and bringing him here to fight at his side and spending months fleeing for their lives from the Dark while hunting down the weaknesses of He Who Must Not Be Named in order to be able to vanquish him once and for all, our intrepid lovers returned to Hogwarts to make their final stand. And though, as we know, our Savior emerged victorious it was not without first making a terrible sacrifice!
Yours Truly: And then He Who Must Not Be Named came?
Harry Potter: *Nodding grimly* And then Voldemort came.
Yours Truly: And you fought him? You, Tom, and the misfit assembly of students, professors and Order members? *
Harry Potter: *Another nod. He doesn’t look like he considers this an accomplishment. His fists clench and his lips twist downward into an unplacable expression* He retreated, but not for long. He demanded that I turn myself over, and promised to spare Hogwarts if he did. It was during the hour that he gave us to decide that I learned a devastating truth that Dumbledore had kept from me and that Voldemort didn’t know. On the night when he attacked my family in Godric’s Hollow and the Killing Curse rebounded, a part of his soul splintered off and attached itself to my scar. Effectively turning me into an accidental Horcrux.
Yours Truly: *Leaning forward, eyes wider than they’ve ever been before. Truly, this is the height of drama and something of a caliber I’ve never before had the honor of being able to put to pen* Meaning as long as you lived, he couldn’t-.
Harry Potter: *Cutting in* Die. Yeah. I knew I had to go. But when he threw the Killing Curse at me, it destroyed the Horcrux instead.
Yours Truly: So that was how you lived a second time.
Harry Potter: Yeah.
Yours Truly: But you wouldn’t have survived a third. *I look at Tom, now. He remains as motionless as he’s always been during my time there. His face lax, but not peaceful. He’s almost angelic, with long lashes and thick curling hair. Not frightening in the least. And it’s immediately obvious why our darling Savior would find him so attractive.* And he knew that. *Harry just nods. Swallowing thickly. Too captured by grief that his beloved would have so selflessly thrown his own life away to save him to speak.* How did he live? Do you know?
Harry Potter: *After a long moment to compose himself, he sits forward and clasps his hands in his lap.* Back while we were still in his time, I asked him about the unforgivables. Specifically about whether or not it was possible to commit suicide with the Killing Curse. It isn’t; a person’s magic will act to keep them alive, and instead of killing them they spell will instead send them into a coma. *Briefly, haunted green eyes flick to the form on the bed.* He never said anything about whether or not they ever woke up. But I’ll wait here for as long as it takes, even if that means waiting forever. Because I know he’d do the same for me. *He reaches out, hand shaking. Hesitates a moment. And then runs his fingers through the other man’s dark curls. Not wanting to leave me would probably be the only thing stopping him from burning the world down, though, if that were the case. He’s told me before that I’m the only thing that makes him different from Voldemort. What he feels for me. He’d do anything for me.
Yours Truly: Are you saying that, because their magical signature was the same, or at least close enough to the same, it registered as an attempt at suicide instead of murder. Suicide by giving his life for another.
He simply nodded at that point, dear readers, and continued to stroke his lover’s hair. He didn’t look at me again, seeming to forget that I was there, and before too long Yours Truly retreated from the room. I’d gotten my interview and no longer had a need to intrude upon the private grief of the Boy Who Lived.
I feel that if I am to come away from this with an opinion on the matter of any sort, my dear readers, it would be that Tom Marvolo Riddle-or, at least, the version of him lying comatose in St. Mungos as you read these words, just barely clinging to a life he’d been so selflessly willing to give-and He Who Must Not Be Named are very different in all the ways that might ever come to matter. And that he does not deserve to suffer any further than he already has for his counterpart’s crimes. Instead of focusing on our pain, let us celebrate the long awaited end to one Dark Wizard’s reign of terror and send what support we can to the young, distraught and mourning Harry Potter who once more stands to lose the one who matters most to him: simply another casualty of war.
***
“The last one was good. At least so far as tugging on the heartstrings goes.” Harry had finally given up on finding a way to make the chair provided to him by the hospital into something comfortable and had simply transfigured it into something better. Rita found him curled up in a summoned chaise patterned in red and gold, the brilliantly green snake coiled around his shoulders. Its massive diamond shaped head resting against his chest.
“My best work.” Rita resumed what had by now become her usual position, leaned against the wooden frame of the door. “At least if I do say so myself.”
Harry made a small humming sound in the back of his throat, not taking his eyes off his partner’s motionless face. One hand resting on his chest, as if to reassure himself that the even motion of his breathing was still there. “You’re two days late if you’ve come to comment about your last article. So I’m going to hazard a guess that you’ve come here for something else.”
Rita stepped forwards, heels clicking against the floor, and dropped that day’s copy of The Daily Prophet over the prior day’s one which still sat folded at the foot of Tom’s bed. Covering up the title Ministry of Magic Declares ‘Young Voldemort’ Innocent of Dark Lord’s Crimes with Tom Marvolo Riddle Awarded Order of Merlin First Class for Acts of Extraordinary Bravery During the War. “You didn’t come. To the ceremony.” She said. “Minister Shacklebolt was rather surprised.”
“He shouldn’t have been. I owled.” Harry said. “I don’t want to leave Tom’s side for longer than a few minutes at a time. And only if I don’t have another choice. I don’t want him to wake up while I’m gone.”
Whether or not Rita believed that Tom waking up was even possible, let alone likely, she didn’t comment on the matter. Reaching into her handbag and pulling out a framed metal. The green ribbon on it caught the overhead light as she handed it over. “Good thing I brought it for you, then.”
Harry took the medal with a grumbled word of thanks. Looking down at the engraving in the metal. Tom Marvolo Riddle, Order of Merlin First Class. Awarded for Extraordinary Bravery was written in curling script. “If you’re hoping for another interview, you’ll be disappointed.”
“No, not another interview. I think that trilogy could see me to retirement if I wanted it to.” Of course, he highly doubted that she did. Rita seemed to enjoy the spotlight too much for that. “Gotten any fan mail yet?” Harry indicated the pile of letters lying nearby on a small table. “They’re publishing a book, you know? A children’s book. The Fox and the Stag. I’ll send you a copy; it’s been expedited, so I should have it in the post by the end of the week.” Her cold eyes, framed by her glittering glasses, landed on Tom smugly. “He’s a hero, now. No one’s touching him unless they’re looking to destroy their public image. You’re welcome.”
“Yeah.” He said softly. “I’ll tell Hermione to forget about it. The bugging, I mean.”
“Neither one of us are dumb enough to believe that Granger’s going to ‘forget’ anything about me, Harry.” Rita said. “Though I do appreciate the sentiment. I’ll send that book along as soon as it gets in.” The door of the room swung firmly shut behind her.
***
Harry had been told on a handful of occasions that children’s books had been written about him during the first few years which had followed his vanquishing of the Dark Lord in 1981 but he’d never been interested enough in them to try and get his hands on one. But he figured that they’d probably look something like the little hard cover, twenty page and fully illustrated book which Rita had brought him five minutes prior in what she’d claimed would be her final visit. The Fox and the Stag had been written in silver ink across the front cover, depicting an image of what might have been meant to be an artistic rendition of the two of them anthropomorphized into their patroni. Needless to say, as the little raven flipped through it he was more than a little bit confused and just who had considered that to be a good decision.
The soft rustle of the turning pages was enough to drown out the gentle shift of the shits from just in front of him. So when a quiet, dry-from-disuse, painfully familiar voice croaked “fan mail, Precious?” his head snapped up. The book dropped from his hands and hit the floor with a thunk.
“Tom?”
The dark brunet was sitting up against the pillows, his brown curls terribly mussed atop his head and his eyes drooping as he pawed at them with one hand. “Tom? No. I’m obviously Ron Weasley.” He snorted at the look the little raven sent him, then grinned. “How long have I been out?”
“Almost a month.” Tom shifted aside as best he could, with bed-weak limbs, to allow Harry up beside him as he clambered in beside him. Wrapping his arms around his shoulders. “Don’t you ever jump in front of a Killing Curse for me again, Tom Riddle!”
“I’m not making that promise. We’ve been over this before, Harry.” He said softly, dark eyes flicking to the stack of newspapers on the bedside table. “So I don’t need to worry about being carted off to Azkaban?”
“No.” Harry said, somewhat tartly as he dropped his head against the dark brunet’s shoulder. “We found an unlikely hero in Rita Skeeter.”
“And the Order of Merlin First Class that’s sitting there belongs to…?”
“You.” He said. “You could probably still go for that political career you wanted as well. You’re considered a war hero now, after all.”
Another chuff of laughter, Tom’s grip around him tightened as he tucked his head into the crook of Harry’s shoulder. “Hero status. Fame and rewards. Any career that I might wish to choose. Still sounds like there’s one thing missing to truly make this a textbook ‘happy ending’.”
“Oh?” Harry tilted his head, trying not to smirk at the brunet’s near playful tone. Still buoyed by the surging relief that Tom was, at long last, awake. “And what would that be?”
“A ring to propose to you with, of course.” Tom drew back enough to look at him. Gently taking his chin in his hands and tilting his gaze up to lock with his. Blue eyes overflowing with emotion and a smile tugging on his lips. “Marry me, Harry.”