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He breathed deeply, dust and earth and the scent of the forest. Fingers brushed reverently against the mossed stones, decorated with lichen like starbursts. It was overgrown now, but he remembered, like catching notes of a tune, like a fleeting echo, the sound of feasting and eating and song in the hollows of the central hall. Time had passed all too quickly, devoured the meat of the space, and left only the bare bones of it all.
“Does it taste different to you?” the shadow at his shoulder asked. Death poked his hand, like a toddler to their parent. “All that death, and then none at all.”
He shrugged, stepping forward along the old, familiar steps. They were weathered with time and age, concave in their centres and smooth in places, mottled where the wind had battered them endlessly.
“It’s silent,” he said, noticing a glinting at his feet and crouching to observe it. “No one’s been here in years except animals and squatters.”
It was a coin, bronze and unremarkable. He picked it up, turning the aged metal between his fingers. To collectors it might have been worth hundreds or thousands, but to himself the only currency it possessed, ancient or otherwise, was bone-deep sadness.
“What is it?” Death asked, tilting Her head. “Human currency?”
He shook his head, standing. For a moment he hesitated, before finally slipping the coin into his pocket. It had been years since he’d seen one with his own head on it.
“Not money. A sign.”
millenia ago…
Harry skated the steep rocks, dark with water, and stepped onto the small, grey beach. He ripped his shoes off, letting the cold water lap his bare feet. Stepping forward, he traced the rock for the catch — a small snake carved into its weathered face — and whispered the words of a language only himself and Tom shared.
Like sand, the rock slipped away, leaving a small arch and a crag in the stone Harry could enter by. In that moment, Tom stood, hovering awkwardly by the small hearth that had been made in the space, light spilling from it, brighter still, as the rock behind Harry settled back into its usual space.
“You came,” Tom said. His words at first glance seemed self-assured, more fact than anything else, but Harry could feel the relief behind them.
Harry stepped further into the cavernous space, untying the leather pouch from his belt. He set his shoes on the ground.
“Said I would,” he replied, tossing the pouch to Tom who caught it easily. “It just took a while sneaking out. I probably don't have long.”
They spoke to each other in Parseltongue as always, rather than any other tongue. Parseltongue came more natural than Cornish, and it was far easier than Latin, which Harry despised and was forced to use with visiting nobles. There was something to be said about having a language of their own, one that twisted and slithered from their mouths, curled in their dark cave, was private from everyone but themselves.
“And the knife?” Tom asked. He had opened the pouched and tipped the grains into the hollowed stone he used for grinding already, and he was looking up at Harry with expectant eyes.
Harry pouted. “Whatever happened to ‘hello-how are you-what’s the weather like today?’”
“Hello,” Tom said flatly. He stepped close, fingers tangling with Harry’s as he closed the space between them. “How are you?”
Whatever answer that had bloomed on Harry’s lips was swallowed when Tom’s covered his. Their kiss was slow, a delicate soft thing that removed every thought from Harry’s mind and banished the tension he had not realised accumulating. Tom’s tongue licked at his own; each breath was shared and fleeting. Harry sighed against him
And then, just as Harry felt its hot and heavy nature intervene, Tom drew away, kissing his cheek as an apology. “And I’ve got a hole in my roof for my smoke,” Tom said dryly. “I know it’s a clear day.”
Tom had the knife in his hand now, the bastard. He’d clearly used the kiss to nick it from Harry’s belt, and although Harry didn’t really mind, it was the principle of it. Still he laughed and followed Tom to the furs and blankets beside the hearth that acted as a make-shift bed.
“Do you have everything for the ritual yet?” Harry asked, fingers finding home in Tom’s dark hair.
“No,” Tom replied, using the stolen knife to cut an apple. “Not yet.”
“Soon?”
Tom paused, lifting his gaze to Harry. His eyes were dark and flickered with golden light from the flames of the lit hearth.
“Yeah,” he said, swallowing. There was a flush growing on his cheeks, and Harry admired it. “Not long now, and we can be together, always.”
Tom pared the apple now, peeling the skin from its slices. He offered it silently and Harry ate the slice from his hand, lips brushing Tom’s fingers.
Tom looked away. Something twisted in Harry’s gut.
“Promise you won’t try the ritual without me,” Harry said suddenly. “Promise you won’t do anything stupid.”
Tom’s gaze snapped back to Harry. “What?”
“Promise. Promise you won’t do it without me, or do something else equally stupid.”
Tom blinked, lips parting slightly.
“Promise,” Harry repeated, voice pleading. “Promise, Tom.”
“Alright, alright,” Tom agreed hastily, “Sure, I won’t try something stupid.”
Harry breathed out. “Good.”
Harry let his body relax against the furs and blankets, interlocking his fingers behind his head as he laid back. He watched through half-closed eyes, Tom. He was beautiful in the soft glow — he was always beautiful, really — but something about him silhouetted and highlighted golden in the firelight made him otherworldly, exceptional.
“You look like a prince,” Harry said quietly. “I wish I could make you one when I’m king. You deserve a crown and to be waited on hand and foot. You look like you should command legions.”
Tom ducked his head, lowering it as if embarrassed, but Harry could see the small smile playing on his lips, shy and self-pleased. It made Tom all the more enchanting. He told Tom this.
“If I’m so enchanting, you should kiss me again,” Tom said, setting his deep brown eyes on Harry. The smile was more whole now.
Harry laughed and tangled his hands into Tom’s tunic, dragging him down, down. All would be okay; he knew this.
Harry drew the ritual circle in the dirt; a quartered circle with an element in each quadrant. It was practised and simple, like breathing. Harry let it come to him, closed his eyes and felt the dirt under his nails, the cool and damp in the creases of his hand.
In the shadow of a tree, Death stood, playing games with a hapless bird. She let it die and rot and then She brought it back to life in a snap. Harry could feel it — the buzz of electricity in the air, the moment before a storm.
“Would you quit that?” he snapped. “It’s setting me on edge.”
Death sighed, but let the bird be and settled on a weathered stone that was likely part of the ruins, tumbled down half a hillside. She watched Harry carefully like a mollified child.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparing. I told you this already.”
Harry sunk his hand into the earth again, creating a small ditch by the drag of earth in his palm. It was soft, dark; worms tried to sink below the surface again as Harry’s trenches brought them up, up into the burning and dappled light of the forest.
“Will it work?”
“I don’t know, will it?” Harry mocked.
Death was annoying but a necessary evil if Harry wanted Tom — his Tom — to return. Because Tom hadn’t listened to Harry the first time round. Hadn’t waited, and he’d messed up the ritual and instead of living for a thousand years, he’d disappeared for them.
Harry kneeled at the edge of the circle and, feeling a sudden need for reassurance, looked back. Death stared blankly at him, tilting Her head when he opened his mouth.
But Harry snapped it shut again after a moment and looked away. He focused on the way the dirt felt against his knees (damp, cool as they soaked the fabric) and the way his arm felt as he sunk the blade of a glinting knife into his skin (painful, numb as blood spilt from it and stained the earth).
Harry let out a shuddering breath. His eyes snapped closed, and he drew the old ring from his finger.
“Bledh an kerens, sen a-nans. An discof. Tom Marvolo Riddle, an discof.”
The forest was still, quiet. Death moved forward, resting Her cool hand against Harry’s shoulder. And She coursed through Harry like fire, like the Peverell blood demanded and with all the power that had granted Harry longlife a millenia ago.
He did not come quickly. He did not come from the circle Harry had dug into the dirt. But he came. In the end, he came.
From the weathered steps of the ruined, mossed castle, Tom emerged. Harry saw him first, no different from the day in the cave but naked, bare skin singing in the dark comfort of the Forest.
They said no words but all they were flowed between them like a river's current, and they drew to each other, magnets of lost souls.
Harry’s hands, dirtied and bloodied, settled against Tom’s bare skin. Tom tugged Harry close, pressed their foreheads together. He whispered something, secret words in their private language, and then he pressed his lips, warm and real, against Harry’s for the first time in a thousand years.