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Chapter Text

Tom woke up on All Saints Day cold, the late autumn chill creeping in from where he lay on the floor (why was Lord Voldemort sleeping on the floor, what in the name of all Salazar’s descendants—), water dripping onto his face from the—

—he cracked his eyes open, wincing at the sharp shafts of sunlight piercing through mostly-leafless trees. The same trees that were dripping that infernal tepid leftover rainwater onto him, because the floor he was lying on was in a room with no roof on the second story of some dilapidated hovel vastly unworthy of his…

…Memories of the night before began to come back to him. There had been Godric’s Hollow, yes, and this cottage, although it had seemed significantly more intact when he first arrived. His lips curved into a smile, at the thought that he’d done some damage to the place.

Because this was where his enemies lived. The infuriating Auror Potter and his far-too-clever wife, of course, who’d had the gall to face him in open battle three times and still draw breath; but more importantly, their son. His real target, his prophesied nemesis, who he had come to obliterate before he had the strength to so much as lift a finger against Tom—

—which he hadn’t, because the boy was a baby.

Tom’s mouth reversed its course, pressed into a frown of consternation. Why had he been trying to kill a baby? Yes, yes, there was the prophecy, he remembered that well enough, but also that it had been spoken by an unproven ‘Seer’ with a long record of attempted fraud. Yet his memories of the past few days—and weeks, and months, back to the turn of the year when Severus had brought him the damn thing—were consumed with thoughts of this prophecy and its awkward free-verse poetry, of the infant child and how he would wipe him from the face of the earth for the crime of considering himself equal to Lord Voldemort.

The rage, he can remember that too. Remember it, but no longer feel a shred of it; just uncomfortable chagrin, at being so worked up over such a load of twaddle. He had the vague, ominous sense that he’d been doing many other inadvisable, frankly undignified things too, and that he was in for an unpleasant few hours as the knowledge of them dripped steadily back into his conscious mind.

Dripped, like this Hades-damned water that was still persistently attacking his face—

Merlin, this was like a bad hangover in the Slytherin common room after an all night OWL celebration party.

Tom rolled over, bracing himself on his hands and knees before rising to his full height and surveying his surroundings more thoroughly. The crib was still there; empty now, so at least that task was done with, regardless of whether it had been a productive use of his time. The body of the foolish redheaded woman who’d thought to stand in his way was gone, but so was half the floor and most of the furniture, presumably blasted away along with the roof.

He nodded slowly. Things were beginning to make sense mechanically, if not logically. He had clearly come here last night, discharged a fairly ridiculous amount of magic in service of his dubious goal, and—ah, here came the embarrassment—passed out from the backlash, as he hadn’t done since the age of nine. Bizarre—and dangerous. Anyone could have found him here, and made the link between his near-anonymous Tom Riddle persona and the Dark Lord on the verge of conquering Britain.

Resolving to get some breakfast and get his head on straight before returning to his headquarters and checking in with his followers, Tom Apparated to Diagon, aiming for a little hidden gem of a diner that he’d been loyally patronizing since he was a fresh graduate working at Borgin’s. That was another similarity between this strange morning and his fifth-year exultations after scoring a full slate of O’s; a massive headache, and a burning desire for pancakes.

***********

Things were not right. They were not right at all.

Tom sat in a booth—not his regular booth, that one had been taken by some codger with a hearing trumpet, and an Avada Kedavra right now would blow his cover—at the Golden Snidget Cafe (it had been changed from its original name of the Greasy Grindylow, complete with a round, yellow winged mascot with a simpering smile and cartoonishly large eyes), his knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the table, the new, cheap material (was that Muggle plastic?) cracking under the force of his rage.

He stared down at his so-called ‘breakfast’—a pitiful stack of three wafer thin pancakes, half the circumference and twice the price of the ones he’d had on his last visit (to say nothing of his times here in the forties, the only period when the ratio of price to portion size had been anything near reasonable). At his reflection in his cup of (weak, tepid) black coffee, which currently displayed an expression of white-lipped fury on a face that was not even his own (as usual, he'd glamoured himself before appearing in public: from the peak specimen of wizardkind, physically no older than twenty-eight, that he’d carefully and perfectly preserved around the time he’d secured his immortality, to an unremarkable gentleman who was barely more than ‘conventionally handsome’). And most saliently, at the copy of the Prophet that the far-too-chipper waitress had offered him, and its inexplicable, impossible, undeniable headline:

NOVEMBER FIRST, 2001: TWENTY YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF YOU-KNOW-WHO’S DEFEAT!

No. No, this couldn’t be right, it made no sense—and yet, the evidence around him all pointed to the same, horrible conclusion.

The other patrons, who were all looking placidly at the same, apparently non-prank issue of the paper—and dressed in an appallingly casual mixture of magical and Muggle ‘fashions’.

The establishment itself, which had clearly—he shuddered—gentrified and, when he’d demanded to know when the change to the name and pancake recipe had occurred, Tom had only received a shrug and a “The original owner sold it sometime after the war ended.”

Diagon Alley, which was crowded with families (apparently this was some sort of holiday) and storefronts selling frivolous wares in the open street, rather than the boulevard of grim, shuttered buildings he’d observed last time he’d patrolled the area with his followers.

That last patrol had, it seemed, taken place twenty years ago. And the backlash from whatever happened in Godric’s Hollow had not knocked him out for a night, but flung him forward in time.

*************

Two hours later, Tom had moved—physically, from the “cafe” to a bench on the main stretch of Diagon with a good view of the passing shoppers, workers, and slow-moving families; but mentally and emotionally, he’d traveled a far greater distance, deep into the realm of existential crisis.

He was—there was no denying it now—indeed in the year 2001. An entirely new century.

He was not, as he had planned since Hogwarts and been on the cusp of achieving, the sole and unquestioned ruler of a newly-prospering wizarding Britain. His name was not spoken in awed and reverent whispers; if anything, people seemed to treat it as a taboo on par with the ugliest of slurs. His followers had all disbanded years ago—gone on to claim their seats in the Wizengamot, or pursue ordinary careers, or in some extreme cases, to prison.

It was all in the Prophet article, which he’d read through at least three times now. An eight-page special “retrospective” with clear section headers, a breezy and succinct briefing on the two decades he’d missed, all neatly packaged like the bloody Royal Red Box. As far as the public was concerned, he’d disappeared (Tom had had to read entirely too far to reach that correction to the cravenly misleading headline. He knew damn well that he had not been killed or “defeated”, because he was right here and still in possession of his perfect dueling record, thank you very much, and had been on the verge of shouting it for all to hear when the hack journalist had finally admitted, in a grudging aside, that the Dark Lord was merely ‘missing’ and presumed dead) without a trace in 1981, after an attack on the Potters that killed the happily married couple and—this was the true shock—left their son, Harry, unharmed but for a tiny scar, to be heralded as the Boy-Who-Lived.

Salazar, he really had tried to kill a baby—and hadn’t even managed it.

And that was among the least of the depredations recounted in the “You-Know-Who’s Decade of Terror” section. Bodies in the streets, mass murders of Muggles and their magical children, entire families burned alive in their houses. Snakes and skulls hanging ominously over homes and shops and public events, like a green banner announcing death for all who stood beneath—

Tom had snapped the paper shut momentarily, then, initially sure that this was slander, a twisting of he and his followers’ cause, a perfect example of history being written by the victors. Yes, he’d courted pureblood support in his quest to revolutionize the governing structure—because they’d had power and money, not out of any ignorant belief in blood superiority. He’d certainly killed people, he’d always known that would be a necessity, but they had been enemy combatants facing him in battle, not innocents sleeping in their beds…

But wait, a small voice hissed in his head—though it was far more disagreeable than any snake he’d spoken to. Didn’t you do those things, as the war dragged on? Search your memory, Riddle—what really happened, not what you had originally planned…

And with dawning horror, he realized that he did. He did commit war crimes, atrocities—personally, and those he’d ordered done on his behalf. He remembered; but it was the same sort of memory as the ones he’d had this morning, of his blinding rage and urge to murder an infant over a dubious prophecy. He could recall, with a bit of effort, carrying out the raids and murders, planning them beforehand—even the thoughts and feelings that he’d had, how convinced he’d been that each step was the natural, the necessary and correct course of action.

What he could not recall—or piece together, or begin to fathom in any way—was why and how he could have ever engaged in such a sloppy, irrational, and frankly imbecilic thought process. It was like looking at the Pensieve memories of someone else, someone foolish. Why on earth had he been murdering Muggleborns, when they were the very demographic that was least hidebound, most open to the radical change he wanted to enact? Children, when he always would have preferred to indoctrinate the youth as a professor—the Dark Lord persona being his second option, after he’d been stymied by bloody Dumbledore? Merlin, when had he changed his organization’s name from the noble Knights of Walpurgis to the Death Eaters—a public relations catastrophe if there ever was one?

…He remembered that too, actually. He had been in his mid-twenties, right around the time when—

When he had created his third and fourth Horcruxes in quick succession.

A creeping dread began to rise up from the pit of his stomach as he reassembled the timeline in his mind, matching up his compromises to his original ideals with each bit of his soul sealed in an object. Circe, even the decision to make more than one—two, perhaps, so the diary could be used to control the basilisk—was something he’d never have considered back at the beginning of all this. It wasn’t something he’d consider now, sitting here feeling fairly disturbed by a write-up of his own actions.

The evidence, now that he could see it for what it was, was once again all pointing to the same, unpleasant conclusion:

With each Horcrux he’d made, he’d lost a bit of his sanity, his intelligence, his mind.

And something—his trip through time, maybe, or the magical chain reaction that preceded it—had caused him to get it back. To regain his perspective.

But—the dread in his stomach rose like bile, and he almost wretched as his throat seized up in terror—for how long? He was thinking clearly now, yes, but he still had the five Horcruxes; could still feel, if he concentrated, the withered edges where he’d split his soul. What if whatever reprieve he’d been granted wore off, and he descended into madness again, once more seeing genocide and terrorism as sensible and justified?

No. No. He’d rather die—truly, though he never imagined he’d prefer death to anything—than lose his mind, his greatest asset, his weapon and armor both in a life that had been cruel and unforgiving. He’d end himself if he ever so much as felt it happening again.

Not that he was about to simply wait around for that terrible potentiality. No, along with his sanity he’d also regained his cleverness, his Slytherin cunning, his ability to see through a maze of options to the true route to achieve his ends.

Tom snapped the paper shut, for good this time, and sprang from the bench, striding purposefully toward the nearest Apparition point, pushing past several dawdling window-shoppers who made ineffectual noises of indignation. It wasn’t as if their mental capacity, if they even had any to begin with, was on a ticking clock.

He had Horcruxes to hunt down.

*****************

He had almost hoped that, when he re-absorbed the Gaunt ring, his theory would be proven wrong after all. That he’d feel worse, weaker, diminished somehow, and it would turn out that his lapse into insanity had a wholly different, unknown cause. It would have meant starting the investigation again from square one with no leads, yes; but it also would have saved him the humiliation of knowing that he’d almost lost himself completely, killed his mind if not his physical body, and it had been completely his own doing. A near-fatal unforced error.

No such luck. The moment the fragment of soul reattached itself, he felt more…not whole exactly, that would be rather trite, but more present in his body, and in his surroundings. More aware of the breath and blood moving through his veins, the hunger already gnawing at him after that pathetic and overpriced breakfast.

He’d once been eager to shed these all-too-human sensations, delighting in going days without food or realizing he’d been utterly still for a full hour, absorbed in a book or a planning session while the world around him faded to static. But now…despite the hunger and thirst, the fetid humidity and smell of the Gaunt shack—he hurried out the door and through the hopelessly overgrown garden, not bothering to reset the wards as there was nothing left worth taking—he could not deny that he felt more right than he had in years, maybe decades. Tom was not one to rely on such nebulous things as “gut feelings”, but every one of his instincts was telling him he’d just taken a step in the right direction. The first in a long while, possibly.

And speaking of right and wrong paths to go down, he also now felt even more distant from—and repelled by—some of the things he’d done during the war. Merlin, did he really order Rosier to Crucio the young children of the Head of International Cooperation in front of the man to secure his cooperation, and then resort to Imperius when that failed?

That was a rhetorical question. Yes, he had done it—and worst of all, the Department of International Magical Cooperation didn’t even play a key role in his original plans. His strongest memory of the incident was of re-watching the scene in Rosier’s mind afterwards—of enjoying it.

What. Of course, he had always relished punishing people—but only those who deserved it, even if his definition of “deserving” was significantly broader than that of more squeamish wixen. Case in point, he had worried he wouldn’t be able to reabsorb the ring at all, seeing as he felt not an ounce of remorse, now or ever, for the murder of his father and grandparents. In his view, they were the very first of his enemy combatants, abandoning him to die in the trenches of life before it even truly started, and their deaths still brought him nothing but pleasure. He’d eventually managed it by thinking of how unfortunate it was that he’d killed them without first establishing paternity, so that he could have gotten hold of the money and the manor that was currently sitting empty.

Pushing aside his jumbled thoughts and emotions, he concentrated on his current, literal path: the one back to the main road, away from the incessant hissed conversations of the snakes who had continued to live in the area. The creatures were nearly as inbred and deranged as the place’s former wizard residents, and listening to their prattle long enough might be enough to send him insane again all on its own.

His next Apparition would take him across the map—and the socioeconomic spectrum—to Wiltshire.

***************

Merlin, the Malfoys were awful.

He’d known this, of course, since his first night at Hogwarts, when Abraxas had immediately become convinced that Tom had access to some top-secret magical hair product that he was refusing to share (it’s called genetics, he wish he could’ve told the ignorant twat), and maintained a yearslong grudge over it. Even once he’d managed to win the spoiled pureblood to his side, his money and connections only barely compensated for his vain and narcissistic nature.

Lucius had been all of that and more, with the notable addition of a mile-wide cruel streak that Tom, by then several Horcruxes in, had put to use in his increasingly bloody campaign to win the Ministry. He’d married a witch from the Black family, of all things, as if tempting fate to create the most innately unpleasant human being possible.

And now. Draco.

Tom watched the young man from the shadows of a hedge, where he’d Disillusioned himself after the trivial work of slipping through their wards. It was still rather surreal, to see the child who, just yesterday by Tom’s count, had been a squalling baby, being presented by Narcissa for a special blessing from the Dark Lord; now a grown wizard in his early twenties, marching across the manor lawns and berating the servants as they rushed to set up for some sort of event.

“No, no, no, you weak-blooded incompetents!” He shouted, his voice a ghastly mixture of his mother’s nasal whine and his father’s arrogant drawl. “I told you to set up the chairs on the west side, under the wisteria trellis! Are you deaf or just stupid?”

Tom—who had distinctly heard him say, not ten minutes earlier, to place the chairs “in the east quadrant, to greet the sun”, ground his teeth and resisted the urge to hex the little ferret himself as he steadily crept along the hedge to the side entrance of the manor. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of empathy for the workers. And it was odd—hadn’t the Malfoys had a house-elf for this sort of thing?

“With all due respect, Heir Malfoy, sir,” one of the bolder servants ventured, eyes on the ground, “perhaps your lovely bride herself might be able to clear up the misunderstanding. Where is Miss Astoria today?”

“She’s unwell,” Draco snapped, “probably with grief that a bunch of useless layabouts are trying to ruin her wedding,” just as Tom thought to himself She’s probably faking it to avoid you. “Ow—what was that—something just grabbed my ankle—!”

The blonde kicked out viciously without bothering to look first, and sent the albino peacock that had been playfully nipping at his trouser leg sailing across the lawn like a Quaffle, feathers flying and screaming loud enough to wake the dead.

“Now look what you made me do!” Draco fumed, rounding again on the terrified servant, and Tom used the combined commotion to dash the final few steps into the house.

***************

Standard blackmail, Tom thought to himself, sifting through yet another piece of correspondence in Lucius Malfoy’s ostentatiously large desk in his personal study. Thinly veiled threats, an unseemly amount of bribes, the outline of a proposal to test incoming first years for creature blood before admitting them to Hogwarts. Several pages worth of petty complaints about his rivals in business and politics, and attempts to get them fired…

This, apparently, was what his former right-hand man had been getting up to in the two decades since Tom had come unstuck in time. Power and influence Tom would (and, admittedly, sometimes did) kill for, and he’d been using it to line his own pockets, settle grudges, and persecute anyone the slightest bit different than him. Tom had been insane from splitting his soul six literal ways to Sunday; what was Malfoy’s excuse?

The answer, obviously, was that he was malicious, entitled, and quite simply, awful. If anything served as proof that Tom had lost his way, it was that he put this man in charge of his political operation. The plan had always been to use people like this and then double-cross them so subtly they didn’t even feel the knife in their back, not become one of them.

Impatiently, he began rifling faster through the drawers, going through years’ worth of extremely questionable material that, much like the manor itself, wasn’t even warded properly. Arrogant too, and without the power to back it up—Salazar, this was why he hated purebloods. If it turned out the fool had lost the diary as well, Tom was going to lock that useless son of his on top of the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower and make him duel Dumbledore to the death for his entertainment—

Ah. Here it was. Tom felt something in his chest relax, and he smiled as he ran his fingers over the pebbled black cover, still so familiar after all these years, the first and youngest piece of his soul calling out to him from within the pages.

Myrtle was another that he didn’t regret killing—the girl had been practically asking for it, memorizing his schedule and following him around with big cow eyes, finally making the mistake of trying to ambush him by the Chamber entrance and—surprise, surprise!—consequences. But as he’d learned with the ring, remorse was a fungible concept when it came to reabsorbing Horcruxes.

He focused hard on how her death had inadvertently led to so much hardship for him—losing his already-slim chance of staying at Hogwarts over that terrible summer of war and rationing—and the poor basilisk, who’d had to go back into hibernation just when she had been really coming into her own again; and soon he felt the soul shard again reuniting with him, meeting slight resistance at first but then merging smoothly, like a marble pressed into room-temperature butter.

Tom gave a brief shudder, and looked around the room.

This time, he’d expected the heightened sensory input, the increase in smells and sounds and the brightness of colors—and was thankful that he was in a relatively tasteful study now, instead of a filthy hovel. But he did experience a new wave of disgust nonetheless—not for the physical trappings of Malfoy Manor, but what it represented. Obscene wealth, unearned privilege, power and potential left to stagnate like a pool of standing water…

Was this, perhaps, a shadow of the resentment, the hunger and drive to overcome his own impoverished beginnings, that he’d felt at sixteen, when he made the diary? Had he lost some of that fire, the fighting instincts of a born underdog, when he took the first step toward immortality? Perhaps the degradation to his personality, to what made him Tom, had begun even sooner than he’d thought.

He found himself feeling thankful, as he made his way unnoticed back through the halls (but not before making a few Geminio duplicates of Lucius’s more…interesting documents, because blackmail was a perfectly valid tactic when used for a worthy purpose), that he had discarded his first idea, of simply making discreet contact with the Malfoys and demanding the diary back, along with their help recovering the other Horcruxes. He was beginning to suspect that the associates he’d cultivated during his years of mental instability were no longer people he much wanted to associate with.

Just before he crossed the Anti-Apparition line and popped to the seaside, he caught one last glimpse of Draco, who was now pitching a fit over the alignment of hundreds of meters of flower garlands being strung around the garden. Wasn’t he around the same age as that other baby Tom had last seen before his twenty-year sojourn—Harry Potter?

He wondered, idly, what kind of man that boy had grown into—without parents, yes, but also without Tom hunting him as a fated nemesis. Someone at least halfway decent, he hoped; he certainly couldn’t be worse than Draco.

****************

The cave was empty.

The cave by the sea where he’d first taught some very deserving people exactly what happened when they crossed him was empty of anything of any importance, because the Horcrux was gone and all that was left was a cheap fake and a self-righteous note left by a spoilt nineteen year old with no idea what he was playing around with, who then went and died without even securing the boat back properly, and if Tom wasn’t on a tight schedule here he’d have gone through the entire lake with his bare hands just to find whichever Inferius used to be Regulus Black and kill him again, more painfully this time. Punishing turncoats was something he would never stint on, because you had nothing if you couldn’t trust your own subordinates. Yes, Tom himself was currently questioning the things he’d done in the war, when Regulus had committed his betrayal; but only he was allowed to do that, no one else. Certainly not some dilettante prettyboy who claimed to be Tom’s biggest admirer until he suddenly wasn’t anymore, who he only deigned to Mark because of the lingering camaraderie with Orion.

Tom let out a frustrated roar loud enough to dislodge several stalactites from the ceiling, and tore right through his own wards just to get out that much sooner.

***************

Here, then, was where things stood: his next two Horcruxes were both in the hands of the Blacks, and both highly inaccessible, though for opposite reasons.

The locket, because Regulus was dead and Grimmauld Place, the likeliest location, had been uninhabited since Walburga’s death in the early nineties—but was still in the legal possession of one Sirius Black, who had once been second only to James Potter in annoyance to Tom and had now, apparently, somehow both spent a dozen years in Azkaban and then escaped, been cleared, and rapidly risen through the ranks to become Head Auror in 1999 (Tom had been doing some heavy-duty research through various archives since calming down from the cave incident, but the exact sequence of events was still extremely murky).

Then there was the cup, which by all accounts was still in Bellatrix’s vault. She’d probably be happy to give it to him, too—if she were not still in Azkaban, along with her husband, for torturing the Longbottoms into insanity while their baby boy cried in the next room. Merlin and Morgana, even at his worst Tom had granted the Potters the mercy of a quick death, if only because Severus begged. His newly-restored soul and sanity did not feel up to dealing with the Malfoys, let alone Bella, who he could remember having a—he shuddered—fondness for back when they’d been equals in madness. Not to mention, she’d probably take one look at him and start shrieking to anyone who’d listen that the Dark Lord had returned, and it might arouse some suspicions even if no one took her seriously.

Which meant that he had two, equally unappealing tasks ahead of him now, his only choice which one to tackle first: breaking into the ancestral home of one of the Darkest, maddest, and most paranoid families in Britain, and breaking into Gringotts.

He was really beginning to wish that he’d never bothered with Hepzibah Smith and her wandering hands and excruciating attempts at flirtation, and had just taken the Junior Undersecretary position Slughorn had offered him after graduation.

Tom rented a room above the Leaky Cauldron, to serve as a base of operations while he gathered intelligence on his targets and planned the next steps. After a bit of deliberation, he’d also decided to go back to using his true face and name. All his sources indicated that Lord Voldemort’s human identity was never discovered (at least anonymity was one thing he’d still managed, even with his diminished capacity), everyone who’d known him in school was well into their seventies by now (while he was still gloriously in his physical prime), and Tom Riddle was a ridiculously common name. It was worth it to take this small risk, to avoid the bigger one of a glamour or transfiguration wearing off in public, or slipping up and failing to respond to a false name.

Besides, “pretty privilege” was an undeniably real phenomenon and it worked just as well as it always had to get him favors, discounts, and little bends and loopholes in the rules when he cocked his head just right and flashed his dimples. He felt no shame over using this advantage; it was the only sort of privilege he’d ever been born with, after all.

The one snag in the plan came when he signed in at the Leaky and discovered that the barman was also named Tom—and seemed to find the fact that two men shared one of the most popular names in the country to be an incredible coincidence, worthy of remarking upon endlessly.

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” the man had said, for approximately the dozenth time, when Tom came downstairs on his third morning there. “You know, I looked up ‘Tom’ once in this book of baby names—me and the missus bought it when we had our little one, see—and you’ll never guess what it means!”

Tom didn’t interpret that as a statement requiring a response, but inferior-Tom apparently felt differently, because he proceeded to blather as Tom considered ordering tea and toast, thought better of it, and grabbed a banana to go while trying to quickly navigate around the tables and out the door:

“‘A twin’! That’s what ‘Tom’ means. I’m not a twin myself—that’d be the fine gentlemen running the joke shop down the way—so my own mum and dad must not’ve had this book. Sure wish I were your twin, then I might be smiling for the camera in Witch Weekly instead of wiping down…oh, you’re leaving.”

When both of them were in the dining room at dinner, he also constantly repeated the ‘joke’ of saying “He’s over there” when patrons shouted “Can I get a refill, Tom?” and then explaining the “strange twist of fate” all over again. Tom quickly took to eating all his meals in his room or elsewhere in the Alley.

He spent his days at the Ministry, in the Prophet’s archives, and lingering on the street with eavesdropping charms in place, chasing down any leads at all related to the Black family, the specific wards in place at Gringotts, or any past burglaries of either, whether attempted or successful. This mostly turned up a large number of things that had been proven not to work, unless one were trying to get their limbs amputated or their face melted off, but on Saturday, while ambling slowly past the entrance to Knockturn, he struck gold.

“It is an outrage, oh yes, that Kreacher is forced to toil for the blood-traitor dog, keeping Mistress’s beautiful house spotless even as the unworthy heir refuses to open it to visitors, such a terrible waste…”

Tom went still. Kreacher? Could it be? He’d assumed Regulus’s house-elf was long dead, yet another casualty of the wanton sadism Tom had displayed in the latter years of the war. But then again…he’d never seen the body…

Ducking into a nearby gap between buildings, he hastily conjured a mirror and applied some simple glamours, knowing that if it was indeed the same elf he was sure to recognize the erstwhile Dark Lord. He then reversed course and pushed through the crowd until he spotted the diminutive creature again, grumbling and muttering to himself under a heavy burden of cleaning products from Knockturn.

It was definitely the same elf. Tom would recognize him anywhere, especially with—he winced—the nasty scar on his ear where he’d nearly ripped it off midway through drinking the Draught of Despair.

“Excuse me,” he called politely, then repeated it more loudly, then fairly screamed it, because Kreacher seemed to have gone entirely deaf and courtesy took a backseat to getting his attention before he popped away and slipped from Tom’s grasp permanently. “Did I hear you say your name was Kreacher?” he asked when the thing finally turned around, showing a face even more hideous than Tom had remembered. “Would you by any chance be the Black family elf?”

Kreacher stopped, but when he spoke he was not addressing Tom, or even looking at him; rather, he raised his head upward as if beseeching the heavens and began to—there was no other word for it—declaim, with a presence that would’ve made a West End Hamlet envious but was currently just annoying his fellow shoppers, who were scowling and giving him a wide berth.

“Kreacher belongs to the Black family, oh yes,” he moaned. “And what a proud position it once was! But oh, how low the Ancient and Most Noble House has fallen, with Kreacher’s dear Mistress and Master Regulus taken too soon, and Miss Bella cruelly locked away, and Miss Cissy never coming to visit! Who will help Kreacher now to restore the tarnished name, when the unworthy heir runs it through the dirt so, covering it in the stink of dog and half-breed and mudblood filth—“

“Oh, how fortuitous!” Tom cut him off, forcibly maintaining a bright, rictus smile as the people around began to give them extremely nasty looks and cover their children’s ears. “I actually happen to be an old schoolmate of”— he nearly said Walburga but then remembered he was supposed to be much too young for that—“of Regulus Black, and I’ve been searching for a way to contact him after being out of the country for some time now. Surely you can’t mean that he’s died!”

The elf abruptly jerked his head down, ears twitching, and looked Tom in the face for the first time, with a directness that was rare for a subservient creature. “You is being…you is knowing Master Regulus?” he asked, practically radiating cautious hope.

“Know him? Why, we were quite close. In fact,” Tom began to improvise on the spot; this elf might have a talent for drama but he’d always been better, and was twice as quick-witted, “I actually have something of his”—he fingered the horrid fake locket in his pocket—“and I’m sure he would have wanted me to give it to you. He talked about you often, you know.”

Hook, line, and sinker, he thought smugly, as Kreacher’s fragile hope turned to full-on awe and reverence with every sentence he spoke. He may not have been able to kill Regulus personally but manipulating his feebleminded servant would be a bit of poetic justice, and nothing he’d said was even technically a lie. “Please, allow me to escort you to someplace less crowded—I’m quite desperate to know what terrible fate befell dear old Reggie”—all right, maybe he was laying it on a bit thick—“and I’d love to share some fond memories with another of his best friends.”

And with that, Tom and Kreacher were soon back on Knockturn, tucked into a booth at an actual little-known eatery behind one of his custom impenetrable privacy wards. The elf had sobbed when Tom offered to buy him a drink, wailed harder when he’d told a few juvenile stories of schoolboy antics he’d heard secondhand from Rosier and Crouch, and nearly flung himself onto the floor and begun rending his pillowcase garment when he pulled out the locket.

“But it cannot be!” he howled, subjecting Tom’s soundproofing and Notice-Me-Not charms to the greatest test they’d ever withstood. “This is being…this is being the same as the necklace that Master Regulus entrusted to Kreacher before he passed beyond the Veil, that he made him promise to destroy!” Tom felt a brief spike of alarm—destroy!?—but then the elf carried on, oblivious. “And Kreacher failed! He tried his best but he failed Master, and now Kreacher is a disgraced elf, oh yes, in service to a fallen House…”

Ah. Well, that explained rather a lot. When house-elves were given orders they found impossible to fulfill for some reason or another, they tended to go a bit…off until their master rescinded the command. How long had he been like this? Tom almost would’ve felt bad, if not for the fact that the situation aligned perfectly with his goals and was really entirely Regulus’s fault anyway.

“How awful,” he crooned, discreetly reapplying his Silencer and looking around to make sure there were no heads turned in their direction. “How horribly tragic. I thought I had suffered a blow today, learning of the untimely death of my friend—but you, my dear Kreacher, have endured far greater torment, and for far longer! I do believe—that is to say, perhaps, just maybe, the two of us could help each other…”

*********

In the end, it was all easier than Tom could have dreamed.

He’d assumed that Kreacher would be under strict, standard house-elf orders to not remove anything from the house or let anyone unapproved past the threshold, and that they’d have to work out some convoluted scheme to get the true locket into Tom’s possession without being disobedient. But as it turned out—

“Unworthy Master Sirius ordered Kreacher to ‘get rid of all this Dark crap’”—he screwed up his already-wrinkled face in distaste as he repeated the phrase verbatim—“when he unjustly inherited Mistress’s beautiful home,” he explained, grinning nastily. “Kreacher has been protecting the precious Black family heirlooms by storing them in the side garden and in his own nest, which are not technically ‘in the house’. But surely Master Sirius would not object to Kreacher giving the necklace away, so that he may be rid of it.”

Tom wondered just how disturbed he should be that the man running the Auror Department did not, by all accounts, have full control of his house-elf—or his house. What if it had been Bellatrix asking for ‘Black family heirlooms’—or Narcissa, on behalf of her slippery husband? Not that he would ever be tipping off Sirius bloody Black on security risks. He wound up compromising by graciously agreeing to Kreacher’s request (on literal bended knee, the elf really should’ve gone into theatre) that Tom “safekeep” several other of his good friend Reggie’s treasured things, until such a time as a worthy heir came to claim Grimmauld. Kreacher then made the trip to the townhouse and back with a snap of his bony fingers, and bestowed several eye-poppingly Dark artifacts and grimoires on Tom along with the genuine locket. Tom made impressed noises that he didn’t even have to fake, and vowed to take excellent care of them.

(And he would. For research purposes, and to keep them out of more nefarious hands.)

Kreacher walked away down the street with a spring in his step, still carrying his load of cleaning products (several of which, when Tom had gotten a closer look, appeared to be made with banned creature parts and toxic substances) and yet already appearing a hundred times lighter. Tom was very pleased with how today had gone. For all his subtle manipulations, he and the house-elf really had managed to help each other, and towards the same worthy end: regaining a piece of their sanity.

That night, in his room at the Leaky, Tom turned the locket over and over in his hands, thinking of his mother. He truly did regret that she’d had to sell her inheritance for a pittance, that she’d been taken advantage of in so many ways. He wished that he could have been there with her, instead of carried in her belly. He’d have told her she deserved better, and used his magic to make sure she wasn’t cold or hungry. Then he’d have hexed Burke into oblivion, for offering a measly ten Galleons for a Founder’s artifact.

By the time he absorbed the soul piece, he could say with relative honesty that he no longer hated Merope Gaunt.

****************

With his first seemingly impossible labor resolved, Tom was ‘free’, so to speak, to focus on his second: robbing Gringotts.

Unlike Grimmauld Place, which you’d be lucky to even get a glimpse of without a personal note from the current Secret-Keeper (not that that was an insurmountable obstacle, as he knew well enough), the bank—with its towering marble edifice and giant-sized bronze doors and threatening rhymed message that Tom had read as a challenge from his very first trip there at the age of eleven—taunted him constantly, due to the sheer fact that it was the tallest building in Diagon by a fair margin and thus readily visible from any outdoor location. Even his window at the Leaky looked directly out on it (he’d considered asking for a different room, but wasn’t keen on initiating an unnecessary conversation with barman-Tom).

In theory, this should have provided ample opportunities for reconnaissance, but Tom wasn’t stupid and he knew that Dark Lord or no, he’d have his head mounted on the wall of an underground cavern somewhere faster than he could say Quidditch if he loitered around the bank any longer than the time required to complete a transaction. His eventual, imperfect solution was to pass by at lunchtime and at the end of the workday, surreptitiously tailing the bank’s handful of non-goblin employees when they went to get food or an after-hours round of drinks. There were a handful of local bars and cafes they tended to frequent, and Tom spent the next week or so ingratiating himself at those establishments, subtly making it known that he was an independently wealthy wizard, newly back in the country and looking for a flat in the area—and an excellent tipper.

(He had money, plenty of it, even without access to his old followers’ vaults. Compromising material wasn’t quite the only thing he’d taken from Lucius Malfoy’s desk that first day; it wasn’t as if the man was going to miss his spare Galleons, or would have used them for anything good.)

Unfortunately, Gringotts’ human workers were a tight-knit and close-lipped bunch, going on working lunches where they mostly did paperwork, and spending their pub hours singing inane drinking songs in Gobbledygook. When they did discuss their work, they spoke in a dense jargon of lingo and inside knowledge that might as well have been the Enigma code, for all Tom could make sense of phrases like “the you-know-what in the Reversal of Fortune” and “taking the trolley past the falls”. He found himself with a lot of free time on his hands, though he didn’t necessarily lack for diverting pursuits. The objects Kreacher had ‘entrusted’ to him were already proving a fascinating topic of study, and Flourish and Blotts had a full twenty years’ worth of books Tim had never even heard of (forty years, really, he realized when he delved into the stacks. When, exactly, had his cracked mind stopped consuming anything but Dark magic books and manifestos on war tactics?). Though he tried to prioritize material relevant to his current objective, he told himself that it would be suspicious to buy nothing but books on goblins, curse-breaking, and great wizarding heists over the ages. And besides, he would need to catch up on the two decades of history he’d missed at some point.

What he learned, through the books but also from the Prophets delivered daily to his door, the conversations of the other patrons at the places he frequented, and just his natural talent for observation and deductive reasoning, was…interesting.

The wizarding world, it seemed, had changed in his absence. Was still changing even now, slowly but surely, one day at a time.

…For the better.

Oh, it was far from the utopia ruled by none other than himself that Tom had dreamed of as a teenager. And likely never would be, not at the glacial rate it was going. But things were more…progressive, now. To his great annoyance, more advances had been made in what the history texts ridiculously called “the postwar years” than in all the time he’d reigned as Lord Voldemort, working (admittedly haphazardly) toward that exact result.

Despite the best efforts of the Malfoys and their ilk, the Wizengamot, and the Ministry as a whole, was significantly more equitable. The current Minister, a man named Kingsley Shacklebolt, was a member of a Sacred Twenty-Eight family, true; but his cabinet was full of halfbloods and no-names that wouldn’t have had a prayer of getting those positions when Tom was in school, and his Junior Undersecretary and top protégé was a Muggleborn witch named Hermione Granger who everyone already spoke of as a Minister in the making as if it was a feat accompli, with nary a whisper about her blood status except from from the most retrenched of bigots, who were severely frowned upon.

Magical innovation, too, had experienced a boom in the eighties and nineties. A breakthrough based on the Pensieve enchantment now allowed wixen to record—and rewatch—not just memories but public events, informational segments, even staged dramas and comedies, whole families viewing at once, comfortably and cheaply. Aurors—and concerned civilians—now wore hats, cloaks and boots imbued with Shield Charms and basic poison-detecting spells as standard procedure, instead of needing to cast at a moment’s notice. The wealthier and more connected could frequently be seen carrying and speaking into small, glass balls about the size of a prophecy orb, full of green fire—which Tom quickly learned were called PalmFloos and allowed for instant, handheld and relatively private communication.

In short, one of his greatest fears—that wizards were too unaware of Muggle technology, and were in danger of being outpaced and eventually obliterated by it—was gradually being ameliorated. Their society was once again comfortably ahead of the slow march of mundane innovation, ironically thanks to the greater integration of wixen from nonmagical families.

“In the aftermath of the disappearance of the terrorist leader calling himself ‘Lord V———‘, as one rather dry scholarly article had put it, no one wanted to be seen espousing blood-purist ideology, as it was considered a slippery slope into wix Britain’s previous state of near civil war.

But it wasn’t just Muggle-inspired innovations that were becoming more accepted. Tom knew more about enchanting and spellcraft than nearly anyone, and he quickly deduced that most of the products and services prominently featured in shop windows and advertisements made use of magic that was classified as Dark or outright banned in his time. When he asked about this, at an apothecary selling personalized healing potions that activated upon the addition of the patient’s own blood, he got a puzzled look, followed by a smile of recognition, from the clerk.

“Oh, you must be that newcomer my sister told me about—she works weekdays down at the Knotted Knut,” she said, naming a pub that Tom had spent a night or two lurking in. “Been away for awhile, yeah? A lot of this type of stuff—non-harmful blood magic, rituals, even life force transfer in small amounts—got legalized after You-Know-Who kicked the bucket. Took a few years, but once the Death Eaters—those were his minions, see—weren’t using dark magic to wreak havoc all the time, people came around to the idea it could do a lot of good.” She shrugged, then looked closer at his face and flushed a bit. “Say, what d’you think of going and grabbing a drink with me—not the Knotted Knut, somewhere else—later this evening? I get off at six.”

Tom left the shop with the names of a few recent books on the topic—and the clerk with the vague and completely inaccurate impression that he found her much prettier than her sister and was absolutely, positively thinking about considering going on a date with her.

“Dark” creatures were noticeably more present in society as well—it wasn’t highly unusual to see people with some degree of visible Veela, Naga, Draken or other creature blood walking unharassed outside of Knockturn, and he’d spent a full thirty minutes interrogating a genuine day-walking vampire—who’d told him, in a rather bored voice, that “they have special sun cream for that, now. Makes it easier to work and have a decent social life. Like Wolfsbane, you know?”

…Yes, there was now a potion that rendered werewolves harmless to themselves and others on full moon nights. And according to the latest medical journals, Healers at St. Mungo’s were closing in on a full cure. There was a werewolf on the Wizengamot—as a proxy for one of the inherited seats, but still. He was frequently quoted, admiringly and at length, in the politics section of the Prophet.

By Saturday, Tom was sitting in his tavern room, staring pensively out the window at Gringotts’ mocking marble face, while his stew and pie slowly grew cold on the table in front of him. He’d been afforded, he mused, the unprecedented opportunity to peek into the future, and found what every wizard surely dreamed of: that he’d changed the world, made a positive impact on it—

—and he’d done it by disappearing from the face of the earth.

************

Tom’s second existential crisis in half as many weeks was, thankfully, interrupted by another serendipitous encounter, that night at a raucous pub called the Tipsy Troll.

He had just about given up on the group of Gringotts workers he was shadowing—who were busy adapting a goblin song meant for counting gems to keep track of how many rounds they’d had, but kept drunkenly forgetting the numbers—when William Weasley (Bill, to his friends) walked in. The man, a senior curse-breaker, was one of the few employees Tom had come to know by sight over the past few days, and not just because of his unmissable hair; the way he spoke and carried himself instantly marked him as highly competent and knowledgeable in his field. He was the type of wizard Tom would have loved to have as a student, back when he’d dreamed of the Defense post at Hogwarts.

(It was also, admittedly, difficult not to take notice of young William when his wife dropped by to share lunch with him or accompany him on the walk home from work, due to her crowds of drooling admirers if nothing else.)

Tonight, though, Bill hadn’t come in with his coworkers, and right now he was in the company of only one other man—undoubtedly a brother, cousin, or other close relation, with similar face and coloring but a stockier build.

Tom half-watched the pair from the corner of his eye as they sat down, ordered a pint, and promptly got into a heated argument.

“I just don’t know what you expect me to do about it, Charlie!” Bill was shouting when they finally grew loud enough to be heard over the singing, throwing his hands in the air.

“I expect that you’ll do what’s right—or at the very least speak up for it, like Dad always taught us!” The shorter man squared his jaw and shoulders, making himself appear even more like an impenetrable, immovable object. Tom wondered if he’d ever played Keeper.

“Sometimes it’s not so simple as all that! Goblin culture is different, Char, it’s hard to explain. In their view, creatures they’ve captured and subdued are their rightful property, to make use of until—“

“Until they die,” Charlie seethed, the red now creeping down from his hairline and up his neck. “Die an unnatural, premature death from being worked like house-elves in a cold, dark tunnel, instead of being free in their natural habitat. Doesn’t sound too complicated to me.”

Ah. So this was some tiresome creature-rights debate. Tom found himself quickly losing interest; he’d never had much patience for bleeding hearts. Though he had a healthy respect for powerful beasts like the basilisk, in the end he mostly agreed with the goblins; a creature was only worth as much as its usefulness to you, and if Gringotts wanted to use captive firecrabs for steam power or endangered Re’ems to haul their cargo, it was their prerogat—

“Charlie, come on. I’m not going to throw away a decade’s worth of career advancement to help you and your friends stage some kind of breakout—“

“It’s a rescue operation—“

“—or escape mission, whatever, for one Gringotts guard dragon that’s on its last legs anyway. And neither should you, it’d be suicide—“

…Dragon, did he say? In Gringotts?

“We have a plan,” Charlie insisted. “And the numbers to pull it off. We’ve been working on this a long time, but your insider knowledge would be invaluable—“

“No, Charlie, and if you weren’t my brother I’d go straight from here to my supervisor to report this mad scheme of yours! I have a family to take care of, a kid on the way, I know you might not get how that—“

“Fine!” Charlie slammed his pint glass down on the counter, sloshing beer everywhere and earning a reproachful look from the barkeep. “Pulling out that old argument again, are you? Charlie the bachelor, Charlie the flighty one, just wants to play with dragons—it’s not like he understands about real problems, right?”

“Hey now, that’s not what I—“

“This round’s on me. After all, you’ve got a family to support,” the younger redhead snapped, slapping a few Sickles down next to his drink and rising from his stool, already shouldering his way toward the door before his brother could stop him.

He left without a backward glance—not at Bill, nor at Tom, who rushed to settle his own tab and slipped into the Alley directly on his heels, unnoticed.

*************

A good ways further into the evening, Tom found himself sitting in the dilapidated basement of a different, seedier bar—the name escaped him, but they were all inane anyway—being repeatedly toasted by a group of muscular, rough looking wixen covered in scars, faded burns, and tattoos.

Following Charlie Weasley had led him through a zigzagging, roundabout maze of side streets to this place, where the redhead had ducked around the back and down a set of stairs to rendezvous with his fellow…well, apparently they called themselves the DND (Dragons Needing Defenders) League and this was their makeshift headquarters while they stayed in Britain.

When Tom had first revealed his presence, the group had been wary, hostile, and in some cases downright threatening. It had taken every ounce of willpower in his body to suppress his natural reflex to mass-hex them all and instead raise his hands in a nonthreatening manner, insist that he was a friend, and deliver one of his personal specialties: a semi-improvised monologue, custom tailored for the situation.

He was a Parselmouth, he explained, who’d been traveling for years to avoid the stigma surrounding his abilities in Britain. He naturally loved dragons too, because—as experts such as them were surely aware—they shared an ancestor with serpents and could also communicate with Speakers in a rudimentary way, although the majestic creatures considered it rather beneath them. And the hand of fate must be at work tonight indeed, because of all the brewpubs in all of London he’d wound up at the Tipsy Troll, where he’d heard Charlie speaking with Bill about the absolute outrage—the crime, really—of an aging dragon, who should by all rights be living out its golden years on its own protected patch of territory, being forced to toil for the goblins in the dark and damp.

But Charlie, he said, had also intimated that there was a group of brave people—and now that he was among them he could tell that they truly were the very best kind of wixen—who had a plan to put an end to this atrocity. All of which was to say—

—did they have room for one more on their expedition, a Defense expert who might also be able to secure the dragon’s cooperation?

(They did.)

“To Tom!” Charlie was shouting now, raising his glass and sloshing liquid all over the scarred wooden table, which had been spread, over the past few hours, with reams of parchment, intricate diagrams, and homemade devices that the Ministry definitely wouldn’t consider legal in any decade, as the DND members walked him through what they had in mind. It was really quite impressive, what this merry band had managed to put together, especially since Tom would bet his mortal life that every last one of them was in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.

“To Riddle,” said a tall witch with a half shaved head and only one remaining eyebrow (the missing one had been replaced by a dense collection of stud piercings). She winked slyly as she pronounced the name; he had heavily implied that it was an alias. “Parselmouth, freedom fighter, and our new partner in crime!”

“One thing though, Chuckie,” a man with a beard to rival Rubeus Hagrid’s put in, rubbing the lustrous hair on his chin. “Don’t we still need an insider to get us past the first ward set? Since your brother chickened out and all…”

“Don’t you worry about that.” Charlie’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Bill’s helping us whether he likes it or not—I only went and nicked his office key off him when I stormed out of the Troll!”

Tom gamely joined in with the cheer that went up around the table, and offered to buy the next round. This group was rather growing on him. They delighted in his stories of roaming the world in his youth, full of questions and impressed exclamations about his encounters with dragons, serpents and all manner of other creatures; they made for a far better audience than his pureblood Knights, most of whom couldn’t see the appeal in any trip that didn’t include a five-star resort with an attached spa.

“We ride at dawn!” a diminutive man in an eyepatch shouted at some point past midnight, jumping onto the table and knocking over the latest round of pints, which Tom had long lost count of. It might be interesting, he mused, to see how a real hangover compared with one induced by time travel and insanity.

**************

“Come on, Riddle!”

“One bloody second, Charles—“

Tom raced inside the cavernous Lestrange vault, practically having to shield his eyes from the blinding light off the gold stacked floor to ceiling. It served as a decent reminder of why he’d originally courted the family of madmen to his cause—nothing could be sweeter than having access to such obscene generational wealth, and then using it to destroy the very system that had made its accumulation possible.

He’d gotten a bit…sidetracked along the way, of course. He who fights monsters…But that was what he was here to fix.

Even stronger than the glare of torchlight on Galleons was the pull on his soul, calling out to him from—there—the two-handled golden goblet perched atop a pile of treasure fit for a pirate captain.

Or a dragon, he thought wryly, listening to the screams of goblin, human, and giant reptile alike that were growing ever louder outside the vault door.

The DND League’s mission had, to his pleasant surprise, gone off mostly without a hitch. That was largely thanks to his own involvement, of course; they’d have never passed the innermost ward barrier without Tom’s knowledge of esoteric Egyptian tomb protection magic. But he was man enough to admit that they’d also have been lost without the little devices Charlie kept pulling from his bag, fiendishly clever things that did everything from conceal to distract, pick locks and turn entire stretches of floor to peat bogs.

“You’d have to ask my brothers,” Weasley had shrugged, when Tom had inquired about the inventions during a relatively easy stretch of flat-out running in between lethal spike traps. “They made them all.”

Eventually it had been just him, Charlie, and the one-eyebrowed witch, the others having peeled off to duel the goblin hordes at the waterfall bridge (or, in the case of the more peaceable group members, up in the main hall causing a mass distraction by asking to convert thousands of Galleons worth of muggle pennies). Tom had managed to convince the old, blind dragon (the conditions it was being kept in were enough to offend even him—perhaps the creature-rights activists had a fair point after all) that they were here to help, and to let them climb onto its back.

And if he’d also instructed it to blast down the door of the Lestrange vault along the way…well, no one else in their little party spoke enough Parseltongue to know that.

Face-melting charms, it turned out, were a rather ineffective deterrent when the attempted bank robber was a fireproof dragon.

Now, as debris rained down from the ceiling, shaken loose by the stamping and roaring of the furious Ukrainian Ironbelly, Tom didn’t bother with a Summoner. He simply stretched out his arm and willed his wayward piece of self to come to him, come home…

It hit his palm with a satisfying smack—and then all hell broke loose, as the gold in the vault began rapidly multiplying and emitting the heat of a thousand furnaces.

“Fuck,” he muttered, pivoting on his heel and pounding in the other direction, shoving the Cup into the secure pouch he’d prepared beforehand. His ginger accomplice had better still be waiting.

Out the door and back into the hall, where Charlie was having an increasingly difficult time controlling the dragon (whose head had disappeared into the hole it had torn in the ceiling). A few words of Parseltongue to get the thing to lower its wing for him, a few dozen goblins blasted back with a shockwave spell…

And then Tom was sprinting up the dragon’s wing like it was the ramp of a muggle aeroplane, brushing off Charlie’s frantic “Where were you!?” and bellowing “GO!” in Parsel as he stood between its scaly shoulders, lifting off the ground and soaring—up through the hole and into the level above them, ahead of the rising tide of molten gold still boiling up from the Lestrange vault; through the tunnels and along minecart tracks, straight through the Thief’s Downfall (the stud-pierced witch gave a shout of relief, as her robes had been hit earlier with an unquenchable fire curse); higher still until they were gliding, aerodynamic, through the marble lobby, where the tellers seemed to be catching on to the currency conversion ruse, out the bronze doors with their stupid poem, and into the sky.

*************

When they were safely out of sight of London, the dragon winging its way north at a suggestion from Tom, Charlie and his colleague huddled together in some private discussion, he leaned back against one of the creature’s massive spine spikes and opened the pouch with the Cup.

Well, he had no more remorse for murdering Hepzibah Smith than the day he stepped over her cooling body, that was for certain. But he could muster plenty of regret for what she represented: long years working a job beneath his dignity, taking orders from a boss with a fraction of his magical power, lavishing flattery and false compliments on pathetic old widows too dim to even realize they were being conned. He should have just stolen the cup and locket the week after he graduated, and skipped straight to traveling the world. His brief time with the DND had reminded him how truly enjoyable those years of wandering had been…

He let out gasp as the soul piece merged with him, slipping between his ribs as sharply as one of the dragon’s spikes.

Charlie turned at the sound. “Alright there, Riddle? Did you—oh.” He looked knowingly at the golden goblet in Tom’s hands, and shot him a grin. “Don’t hide it on account of me, mate—I figured you had more than just humanitarian reasons to break into Gringotts. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the tax they pay for enslaving a sapient creature.”

Tom tipped his head in acknowledgment, even though the cup had already belonged to him—and there were far worse sins than robbery on his conscience.

“Any preference for where we drop you off?” the redhead switched topics easily. “Unless you want to tag along to the sanctuary in Romania, that is— they’d probably hire a Parselmouth on the spot.”

The offer was unexpectedly tempting, but Tom shook his head. He still had business in the United Kingdom—retrieving something he’d found on his last trip to the Balkans, ironically enough.

“Just get me within Apparating distance of Hogsmeade,” he replied, thinking of the diadem and that other well-guarded fortress where he’d hidden a Horcrux.

************

Tom had initially entertained the idea of leaving the diadem in its resting place at Hogwarts, and not just because getting back in would be a tricky matter. He wanted his sanity back, yes, but he also still wanted eternal life—even more so now, with all the years he’d lost to madness and unexplainable time travel. Surely it wouldn’t be wrong to keep just one Horcrux, arguably the most rare and valuable of them all, and in such an enviably secure location.

Unfortunately, he’d been forced to accept the nonviability of this plan halfway through his week in Diagon, when his investigations into the state of the wizarding world revealed one incontrovertible and very disturbing fact: the state of Defense education in the country had gone utterly to shit.

“Well, yes, of course we got the financial aid package,” he’d overheard one middle-aged witch saying to another, one day outside the Leaky. “But things will still be tight with all three at Hogwarts now, especially when you factor in private DADA tutoring.”

“And of course the old families have all the good tutors booked solid already,” her friend had tutted in commiseration.

Tom might have shrugged it off as one witch with particularly untalented children, but he kept hearing similar things again. And again. And—

“Can you wrap these up?” a man had asked the clerk at Flourish’s, levitating a towering stack of Defense books onto the counter. “They’re for my son—he’s finally thrown in the towel and admitted he’ll be self-studying for the OWL this year.”

The employee winced sympathetically. “He certainly wouldn’t be the first. I did it myself as a kid—for the NEWT in ‘92.”

The customer gave an almost visible shudder.

MINISTRY CONSIDERING RECRUITING FOREIGN AURORS, the Prophet blared one morning. ‘SIMPLY NOT ENOUGH QUALIFIED CANDIDATES FROM HOGWARTS’, ROBARDS SAYS.

That was when he did a little digging—into the records of Hogwarts staff at the Ministry archives, and also once again into his own memory. And it came rushing back: possibly the very worst thing he’d done while running amok as Lord Voldemort. Worse than murdering any particular person, or espousing the ideals of inbred twits, or giving Bellatrix Lestrange the idea that he reciprocated her interest.

He’d left something else at Hogwarts with the diadem—

Dumbledore and his insipid moralizing, his blue eyes with that faux-sorrowful twinkle.

Rage, torrents of it, as he detoured to the Room of Hidden Things before leaving.

His knuckles white as they gripped the crown of sapphires and goblin silver…

“If not me, then let them be taught by no one,” he hissed, his voice barely recognizable.

Once, Tom had wanted to teach. Instead, he’d cursed the children of his own country with a half-century of inadequate instruction in a fit of pique.

There was no question, then, that he had to recover the diadem. The problem was how.

“One turkey club, thank you,” he sighed wearily, when the perky young witch at the counter of the Three Broomsticks turned to take his order. Perhaps he’d plot more effectively on a full stomach. It seemed a more complete soul burned calories at an alarming rate.

“Hey, you’re a new face,” the waitress said as a dicta-quill scribbled his request on her pad. “You here on holiday?”

Tom suppressed a snort at the unintentional irony. He’d re-applied his glamours before entering the village, once again becoming a nondescript everywizard. If anyone was going to recognize his true appearance, it would be the staff at the school he’d called home for seven years.

“Business,” he corrected her. “Up at Hogwarts. For, ah, the Wizarding Examination Authority.” He figured that was dull-sounding enough to deter further questioning.

That assumption was correct in the waitress’s case, but his statement attracted the attention of an older gentleman who’d just sat down on Tom’s other side. “The WEA, you say?” he piped up in a thin, reedy voice. “You wouldn’t happen to be Thaddeus Quillcrest, would you? We’ve been waiting for you up at the castle for hours now!”

Tom thanked all the stars that he hadn’t given the waitress a fake name along with his order. “Why, yes,” he said, slipping effortlessly into the officious, slightly pompous manner shared by all midlevel bureaucrats. “I assume you work there?”

The man nodded so eagerly he left himself slightly short of breath. “Dedalus Diggle, at your service. Defense Professor—and proud Gryffindor alumnus—of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!”

He then proceeded to erupt in a spectacular coughing fit that had nearby patrons discreetly casting Bubblehead Charms. “Ah, do pardon me. It’s not contagious, my condition—hereditary, the Healers tell me, and quite unfortunately fatal in nearly all cases. It’s strange, how they never caught it before this year.” His cheek twitched slightly before breaking once more into a bright smile. “But enough gloomy talk, and enough about me! Once you’ve had your fill of this fine establishment’s rather excellent fare, I hope you’ll allow me to escort you onto the grounds. It can be quite a bother waiting for someone to let you in the wards—oh dear—“

Diggle produced a handkerchief from a pocket in his robes and started hacking again, leaving several spots of blood on the snow-white fabric.

**************

Professor Diggle (as he delighted in being called, since the job was apparently a lifelong dream of his—one that was, appropriately enough, now killing him) blithely led Tom up the path and through the gates onto Hogwarts grounds, chattering all the while—when he wasn’t coughing hard enough to split his own soul, that is. He wasn’t sure what was more horrifying: that his forty-year-old curse was literally stealing the breath from a man’s lungs right in front of him, or that standards had fallen so low that the current Defense professor didn’t even bother with a security question.

Either way, it was his fault, all terribly his fault.

“…and here we are! Home sweet home for me, well, for the next term at least, my Healers have strongly advised—“ Diggle bent over in another coughing fit as he pushed open the great oak double doors into the Entrance Hall, giving Tom a chance to gaze around nostalgically at what would always be his own first home.

Unchanged, as if straight from a memory, from the night he’d first crossed this hall on his way to the Slytherin dungeons in September 1938. The candles glowing against the autumn afternoon gloom even gave the whole scene the hint of a sepia tone.

“Now, lunchtime ended a fair while ago, but I do hope you’ll stay for dinner if your business here takes you into the evening. Steak and kidney pie’s on the menu Mondays! Come along, I’ll escort you to the Headmistress’s office. Or do you already know where it is? I’m just teasing, you look like the sort who went seven years without a single detention!”

Tom trailed Diggle up the staircase at a languid pace, already planning for a way to give him the slip. Glamours or no, he had no intention of getting within a hundred meters of the Head’s office. Dippet was long gone, of course, and Dumbledore—in yet another sign of the nation’s slow but steady march to betterment—had, according to his sources, retired three years back (to Tom’s utter delight, there were persistent rumors that he had been forced out for “erratic behavior”). But his replacement was one Minerva McGonagall, a witch that Tom had overlapped with for a few years at Hogwarts. She’d had a formidable mind and a strong head on her shoulders (despite being the exact type of person who’d choose Gryffindor when the Hat offered Ravenclaw, honestly), and if anyone had a chance to see through his ruse and recognize him on mannerisms alone, it might be her.

He was pondering this, and listening with maybe half an ear to Diggle’s unsolicited explanation of the rota of sixth years he had recruited to teach his classes when his lung treatments left him bed-bound, when voices echoed from a turn in the corridor ahead.

“We’re sorry, Professor Snape, it was an accident—!”

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” a cold, silky, familiar voice interrupted the sputtering preteen, just as Tom and Diggle reached the intersection and came across three tiny Hufflepuffs cowering in the looming shadow of one Severus Snape.

Wait, did they say Professor Snape? How—

“…and I sorely hope there will be no accidents of a similar nature during your nightly detentions for the next three weeks, cleaning expired potion ingredients from my storeroom. Thirty points from Hufflepuff.”

“But—!”

“…Each.”

The girl on the left, in oversized robes and a badly-knotted yellow tie, looked on the verge of tears.

Diggle slowed his step and paused in his rambling as he followed Tom’s attention to the altercation. He winced. “Oh dear—“

Tom was unable to hide his disgust. Severus Snape was a miserable oil slick of a wizard, barely tolerable even as a subordinate. Who in their right mind would ever hire such a bitter and petty man for a position of power—over children, no less?

“I know, I know,” Diggle said apologetically, seeing the twisted expression on Tom’s face. “He’s really not so bad of a bloke, and an absolutely brilliant Potions master, but as you can see…well. Perhaps he isn’t quite suited to the profession…” He coughed, a fake polite one this time rather than a racking wheeze. “Dumbledore had a bit of a soft spot for him, you see—“

Oh, of fucking course, Tom thought furiously, the old fool gave him the benefit of the doubt and a tenured position—

“…gave him the job after the war ended. It was difficult for him to secure work elsewhere, due to the…” He patted his forearm and began tracing strange patterns on his sleeve, and it took Tom a beat to realize he was obliquely referring to a Dark Mark. “Albus insisted he’d been a double agent, though. And it’s understandable he’s bitter—they say You-Know-Who murdered the only woman he ever loved!” He gave a little squeak of terror, or possibly just thrill at the salacious gossip.

The corridor felt like it tilted a little, in that moment, as Tom reckoned with the realization that his actions under the influence of Horcruxes may have irrevocably fucked up two of the most essential subjects at his beloved Hogwarts, the institution founded by his own noble ancestor. Also, did he say Snape had been a double agent? Were all of Tom’s old followers either sociopaths or turncoats!?

“Do you mind if I intercede a bit here?” Diggle carried on, oblivious. “They’re only first years, it isn’t their fault they caught Severus so close to the anniversary of…well. You do know the way to the Head’s office, don’t you?”

“…Yes. Yes, that’s probably a good idea,” Tom said when the red began to bleed away from the edges of his vision. Mostly because if I stay here any longer, I’ll Crucio “Professor Snape” and blow my cover. “And yes, I do know the way”—oh, why the hell not—“I was a prefect, during my own time here.”

Diggle beamed. “Excellent! Oh, you’ll still have to get past the gargoyle—the password’s ’Ginger Newt’, our dear Minerva’s rather fond of them!” He spun around and set off down the hall without waiting for an answer, the sudden movement triggering another bout of coughing. “Severus—Severus! Surely something more lenient can be arranged…”

Tom walked away at a pace just slow enough to avoid suspicion and ducked into a secret passage to the seventh floor the moment he was out of sight, marveling at the fact that if he’d felt like it, he could have easily strolled into the Head’s office unimpeded and caused havoc limited only by his imagination.

Grimmauld, Gringotts, and now Hogwarts, all so easily breached; people in this soft, peaceful future were all trusting fools. Perhaps the one positive thing he’d done as Lord Voldemort, he thought sullenly, was to instill Wix Britain with a healthy sense of fear and self-preservation.

*************

The diadem was perhaps the easiest reabsorption to accomplish, in terms of feeling remorse—

I’m sorry for the curse, Tom thought to himself, surrounded by heaps of forgotten junk in the Room of Hidden Things. It was, perhaps, the only one I’ve cast that I would consider truly Unforgivable. I’m sorry that I subjected thousands of students, a few of whom may have been prodigies like me, to incompetent professors like Dedalus Diggle, and whoever taught in ‘92 that was so bad the articles won’t even mention him by name. I’m sorry for being too insane, by 1960, to earn the job myself like I’d wanted.

—and yet the most physically painful. It was like swallowing shards of glass, assimilating all the hate he’d left tangled up in Ravenclaw’s lost crown. But eventually the soul piece smoothed, settled, and the entire room—the entire castle, really, as he made his way back out under a Disillusionment Charm—felt warmer, brighter. Lighter in all senses of the word.

He slipped out the gate unnoticed, right past a tall man with a pencil mustache who was being brutally interrogated by the caretaker over his business here.

“How many times must I say it—my name is Thaddeus Quillcrest, and I am a registered representative of the WEA!” the man sputtered in Filch’s unimpressed face, as Tom crossed the ward line and silently Apparated away.

*************

Tom spent that night in a Muggle hotel in Cambridge, the desk clerk Confunded into believing he had a fully paid reservation for a room with all the accoutrements. He really didn’t care for spending time in the company of nonmagicals, but he felt it would be wise to let Diagon and Hogsmeade cool off some, after the Gringotts and Thaddeus Quillcrest incidents.

It was one of the best nights of sleep he’d had in a long time. Since he had the Head Boy suite to himself at Hogwarts, maybe. He likely had his newly-whole-again soul to thank for that, as well as for the vibrantly refreshed feeling he woke with the following morning. Yes, the burden of his misdeeds as Voldemort weighed heavier than ever, but what was past was past, even more so because the world had had twenty long years to recover. As for Tom, he felt almost…not new, he was still the same Tom Riddle that he knew so well (and he wouldn’t want to be anyone else, in spite of everything). But reset, maybe, to a time before his world had shrunk to his own life, his power, and the destruction of any person or thing that might threaten either. As if immortality had any meaning that way; living like an Ouroboros, made eternal only by constantly devouring itself.

It was, in some ways, as if he truly was once again the age he appeared to be on the outside: in his mid-twenties, the best years of his life still ahead, not yet burdened by bad decisions he could not take back.

What, then, to do with this fresh start—this second chance?

He could treat it as a literal do-over, he supposed. Apply for a Ministry job and work his way up, until he was in a position to enact his true, original vision upon the country. Despite the progress, society was still a far cry from what it could be, and it itched at Tom, seeing the government inefficiencies and missed opportunities obvious from even a cursory read of the Prophet. If he were Minister he was sure he could at least do a damn sight better than Shacklebolt, who he could already see was far too much of a traditionalist law-and-order type to truly let magical culture thrive.

But…hmm. No matter how great the divide between them now seemed, he had been Lord Voldemort. He’d been at the top, regardless of how poorly he’d worn the crown. Toiling as a cog in the machine, a lackey for yet another mediocre Ministry wix; the idea made him want to claw his skin off. How long until he reached the actual levers of power again—another twenty years? Thirty? He’d already wasted so much time!

And then there was the fact that Britain was full of ghosts for him, literal and figurative. Around every corner was a location weighted with memory, a reminder of all his misspent years. A face he might recognize—or far worse, one that might recognize him.

Travel again, then, like he’d done the first time around. Time and space to catch up on what he’d missed in more ways than one. Yet if he were truly honest, he had to admit that he no longer had the temperament of young Charlie Weasley and his ragtag band of comrades. He had been on this earth fifty-four years now, and there was a part of him that craved stability, a source of income, a secure home base he could always return to…

It was with these thoughts swirling through his mind, strolling through the wizarding section of the ancient university town—a place he’d once dreamed of attending as a child, back before he realized it was far more than his intellect that made him special—that he came upon a newsstand, a small box for the Quibbler set next to the regular stack of Prophets. Tom scanned the headlines; most wixen considered it fiction or rubbish, but during the war they’d had an eerie knack for predicting the movements of his Death Eaters.

What he saw made him stop, set a handful of Sickles on the counter before the bored attendant, and hurriedly unfold the paper to continue the story on the inside pages:

ILVERMORNY DEFENSE PROFESSOR FIRED AFTER STUDENT AFFAIR—HAS THE DADA CURSE CROSSED THE POND!?!?

Oh, this was quite interesting, Tom thought, as he devoured the details of a school engulfed by scandal, and a faculty scrambling to fill a key position in the middle of the term—and very serendipitous indeed. Almost like the hand of Lady Fate, reaching out to tap him on the shoulder—or give him a strong nudge in the right direction.

West.

Chapter Text

Harry James Potter liked to think—despite what certain reporters, starstruck schoolmates, and Hogwarts Headmasters had to say about it— that he was relatively normal, thanks very much.

For a wizard, anyway.

Well, for a wizard who became famous nationwide before he could even walk and talk properly, for something he didn’t remember or do on purpose. And who had all of that hidden from him for the first ten years of his life, by relatives who hated him and anything magical.

To start at the beginning…

His earliest memories (besides the hazy one that only came to him in dreams, of the green light and the maniacal laugh and the flying motorcycle), were of the house on Privet Drive. Cooking and cleaning for his aunt, running from Dudley, enduring the verbal abuse and occasional physical blows from Uncle Vernon. Sleeping in the cupboard, which they sometimes forgot to unlock for a long time. Days, even.

His first happy memories were of when Aunt Petunia deemed him old enough to go outside unsupervised and work in the garden. Finally, a chore that wasn’t a chore at all, that was basically just playing all day with the dirt and the plants and the songs and rustling of birds and small animals.

And then, he realized he could talk to snakes.

Harry had been thrilled, even though he never told another soul. For the first time in his short life he’d had friends, entirely removed from the humans who did nothing but mock and scorn him. He’d also hoped, for a while anyway, that this was just the beginning, that soon he’d learn to talk to dogs and cats and hedgehogs as well, so he could know what all his favorite animals were thinking. That never wound up happening, but he still loved all creatures big and small, scaled and feathered (except for Ripper). Sometimes the snakes would even do basic translation work, if he bribed them with mice or a heated rock—which he could readily provide even on cold, rainy days, because snake-talk wasn’t the only “freakish” thing he could do.

He’d spent his childhood like that: securing the Dursleys first place in the Garden Competition five years running, keeping the snakes’ eggs warm and safe. Liberating Dudley’s pet parakeet from his school locker and setting it free in the park, before his awful cousin could trade it for a BB gun.

Then came his eleventh birthday, and his fantastical rescue by a man who told him about his true origins—and who loved animals just as much as him.

Hogwarts had been a revelation, his first true home and the place where he’d learned that humans could be kind too. He’d craved the company of those kind people, asked the Hat to help him find them, and so he’d been sorted into Hufflepuff. He’d blossomed in the House of Badgers, like one of the flowers he’d so carefully tended all those years. Made friends with Justin and Susan and Hannah, and kids in other Houses too; Ron whose brother worked with dragons, Hermione who shared his desire to learn everything about this new world they’d found themselves in. Millicent Bulstrode or, more accurately, her big fluffy cat that she let him play with.

There was Professor Snape, who hated him for reasons he wouldn’t learn for a few years yet; and Professor Quirrell, who had been begged, bribed and blackmailed into teaching Defense alongside his regular Muggle Studies for the year. It showed, as the man mostly spent his DADA classes showing them muggle martial arts techniques.

He’d had his first Christmas in the kitchens with the other badgers staying over break, hot cocoa and wizarding carols and presents—including one with no return address and strange, looping handwriting that said Use it well.

And he had, in his opinion, put his father’s Cloak to very good use for the remainder of the year. But the day before the Leaving Feast he’d been called to the Headmaster’s office for the first time, and it seemed that Professor Dumbledore felt…differently.

“How are you liking your Invisibility Cloak, Harry?” he’d asked, after offering Harry a lemon drop.

Harry startled; he thought he’d done a good job of keeping it secret.

“Oh, don’t worry, my dear boy,” Dumbledore said with a benevolent twinkle. “I was actually the one who sent it to you—and I won’t tell a soul, if you used it to bend the school rules a time or two. Your father did the very same, when he was your age!”

Once Harry felt reasonably sure he wouldn’t get into trouble, he’d cracked a smile and admitted his most frequent use for the Cloak by far: sneaking into Care of Magical Creatures lessons and quietly observing, because in a terrible injustice, only third years and older were allowed to take the elective officially.

Dumbledore had looked…disappointed? “Is that all?” he said lightly.

“I visited the kitchens after curfew a few times? To get snacks for my friends,” Harry offered. Friendly old man or not, there was no way he was telling the headmaster about his actual biggest transgression: sneaking Norbert the dragon to the top of the Astronomy Tower with Ron, so Charlie and his friends could take him to safety. He wouldn’t snitch on Hagrid like that.

Dumbledore gave him a long, searching look. “Never thought to investigate the third-floor corridor?” he asked finally, after several seconds of silence.

“What? No! You told us not to at the Welcome Feast, you said we could die!” Was this

some sort of trick question?

There was another lengthy pause, and then the elderly wizard sighed heavily and turned away, stroking the feathers of his beautiful phoenix (the best feature of his office by far). “No one else showed up, either,” he muttered cryptically, adding at normal volume, “Indeed, I did say that, my boy. You may go—I’m sure you’d like to spend as much time as possible with your friends, before the holidays begin.”

In retrospect, that should have been Harry’s first clue that Dumbledore would be trouble.

**********

Second year brought Professor Lockhart and his useless dueling club, which accomplished absolutely nothing— except for letting the whole school know Harry could talk to snakes. Which was called Parseltongue, and for some reason people thought it was something bad?

There were a few weeks of nasty gossip, which people mostly forgot about by the time they returned from Christmas break. But not Dumbledore.

“My dear boy,” he’d said at their second meeting, in January of that year, blue eyes wide, “I do not wish to alarm you. But it is imperative that you know a very disturbing piece of information: Lord Voldemort was also a Parselmouth. The only other in Britain, in the last fifty years.”

“I know, sir. Some of the bullies taunted me about it for a while, but I think they’ve gotten bored now. Or, well, my friend Luna says they got the Wrackspurts clear of their systems.”

Once again, Dumbledore seemed to be looking for some specific reaction from him, and was perplexed to find not even a trace of it. “It must have been difficult for you, to learn that you share such a rare ability with the man who wronged you so greatly.”

Harry shrugged. “Not really. Er, maybe a little bit?” he tried, when the headmaster frowned at him.

“Parseltongue is a hereditary skill, a dominant trait passed directly down bloodlines. There is no record of any Potter with the ability, and your mother, as I’m sure you know, was Muggleborn.” This did give Harry brief cause for distress—was Dumbledore saying he was Voldemort’s son?—but then he added, voice somber as if delivering a terminal diagnosis, “It is my belief that Voldemort passed something to you—a fragment of his power, perhaps—the night he failed to kill you. Marked you with it, the same way he gave you your scar.”

“Oh!” Harry relaxed; he had been worried that the smiling James Potter from his photo album wasn’t really his dad, that he’d have to give his Cloak back. “Well, that’s alright then. I suppose it’s nice that I got something good out of that horrible night; I really enjoy talking to snakes.”

“Do you,” Dumbledore said faintly.

“Yeah, it’s cool.” He smiled. “Even though they mostly just want to hear how shiny their scales are, and that their color pattern is better than their nestmates’.”

He was dismissed not long after that. The only other thing of note that year was that Harry tried to knit a pair of socks for Draco Malfoy, as an apology for unintentionally slighting him on the Hogwarts Express (Hermione had been researching wizarding etiquette). The blonde boy had opened the gift in his bedroom at home and tossed the socks away in disgust. The family house-elf caught them in midair, and was instantly freed; the creature hadn’t been seen since. Draco had his new Nimbus 2001 taken away as punishment, and was confined to the manor for the rest of the summer.

***************

Third year was packed. It started explosively, with Harry’s screaming argument with Aunt Marge over his parents and the ethics of puppy mills and subsequent storm-out, and from there barreled on as relentlessly as the Knight Bus, with the Dementors and Sirius Black and the revelation that no, he hadn’t been told everything about his parents’ deaths in first year, not by a long shot.

But there were wonderful things to be had, too. Harry had waited for two years now to experience a real Care of Magical Creatures lesson, and he was overjoyed to have Hagrid as his teacher. Buckbeak the hippogriff had captured his heart from their first tentative bow to each other, and opened up an entirely new frontier for him in the sky.

Not even Malfoy’s best attempts to ruin it could bring him down. When the spoilt boy started his ludicrous malingering campaign, Harry and Hermione had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into Buckbeak’s legal defense, with the help of Susan Bones (enthusiastic) and Zacharias Smith (extremely grudging), who together had Ministry connections to rival Draco’s.

“Creature rights are an outrage in this country,” he’d whisper-shouted to Hermione one day in the library, uncaring of Madam Prince’s icy glare. “Everyone deserves a fair hearing, no matter what it is they’ve supposedly done. The Wizengamot’s a bunch of cowards.”

Hermione nodded fervently, but then hesitated. “Um, even…” She bit her lip.

“What?” Harry urged.

“Well…even Sirius Black? All the articles mention that he was thrown in Azkaban without a trial, like that’s proof of just how bad he was.”

He had to genuinely think long and hard about that. About what Black did to his parents, to him, Harry; the complete betrayal after a decade of friendship. The smiles and laughter in James and Lily’s wedding photo that had turned out to all be a lie.

“…Yeah,” he decided finally. “Yeah, why not? I mean, they’d just need to haul him in, remind everyone what he did, and then vote to convict. I’m okay with people like him getting a hearing, if it means justice for beings like Buckbeak too.”

Hermione almost seemed to sniffle a bit as she beamed and squeezed his hand.

The remainder of his erstwhile free time was taken up by his other new elective, Ancient Runes (he’d wanted to try his hand at a language that he didn’t just know automatically), and, after Christmas, private lessons on the Patronus Charm with Professor Lupin. At least his Defense workload was easier this year, thanks to having an actually competent teacher.

“I think Crookshanks might be part Kneazle,” he said during a rare hour of pure relaxation in the Hufflepuff common room, leading the ginger furball through a complicated maze with colored light from his wand. “He seems way smarter than Millie’s cat—don’t look at me like that, Millie, Argent’s really clever for a normal cat—and I could swear he understands full sentences.”

“Now if only he’d stop using his brains for evil,” Ron huffed, while Hermione cooed over her pet. “Poor Scabbers hasn’t slept in weeks, he’s been pulling his own fur out…”

The actual reason for “Scabbers’s” distress was revealed on a balmy evening in June, after a visit to Hagrid’s that stretched to after sundown. The chaos in the Shrieking Shack revealed that Hogwarts’s resident Grim was actually Sirius Black, its Defense Professor was a werewolf—and the mangy old rat was a stumpy, sniveling little man who’d destroyed the lives of his own best friends.

…One who, in all honesty, seemed to have been in his own sort of prison for the past thirteen years.

“You know what?” Peter Pettigrew had shouted, when Black and Lupin pointed their wands at him and forced him to transform back. “Hang all of this. Hang it! I can’t win no matter what I do, don’t you see? I spent seven years trailing in your shadows! Always James this and Sirius that, and perfect prefect Remus, the brains of the operation—and oh look, there’s Peter, isn’t it nice those brilliant boys let him tag along? I defected to You-Know-Who to get some damned recognition, but what happened then? He disappears without a trace, and nobody even knows it was me who helped him kill the Potters! I was the pathetic Marauder, the only Death Eater who didn’t get hated or feared or rich after the war—and then I go and spend over a decade as a rat, eating pellets from a houseful of awful teenage boys! Take me to the Aurors, I don’t care anymore!”

Sirius and Remus did as he asked, gladly, with two overpowered Incarcerous spells and a conjured cage for good measure. He confessed to everything without even needing veritaserum, and in the ensuing media circus he even got some of the infamy he’d craved so badly. Two weeks after his conviction and subsequent imprisonment in Azkaban, he’d been standing in the outer courtyard during a routine cell inspection only to be jumped and throttled to death by Bellatrix Lestrange, who had become convinced he was responsible for Voldemort’s disappearance. She’d been dragged off his body kicking and screaming, ranting that Pettigrew must have kidnapped Voldemort and have him locked up somewhere, otherwise surely her Lord would have come for her by now.

But before all that—the very morning after Wormtail was arrested, in fact—Sirius went with Harry to have a little chat with Dumbledore.

“This is just a formality, of course,” his godfather had said jovially, giving one of Dumbledore’s little silver trinkets a spin with his finger. “To get all the paperwork in order before Harry comes to live with me for the summer. His address on file, emergency contact, Hogsmeade permission slip—that kind of thing.”

“Sirius, my dear boy,” Dumbledore said (Harry found himself mildly relieved that the headmaster apparently called everyone that, not just him), “there are things at play here that you do not understand. Ancient wards and obscure magicks that demand Harry stay in the custody of those sharing his mother’s blood, the same blood she spilled selflessly in defense of—“

The smile vanished from Sirius’s face.

“No, Albus, I think there are things you don’t understand,” he’d interrupted, somehow looking both like more of a pureblood Lord than Lucius Malfoy and exactly like a Grim. “Things I’ve had a lot of time to think about in Azkaban. Like the scandal of a massive miscarriage of justice and child custody, perpetrated with the complicity of the Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump. And the depths of the Black vaults, which I’ve been informed now rightfully belong to me, and our family motto, because ‘Always Pure’ wasn’t always about our blood, that’s a corruption—it originally referred to our love, and our rage.” He paused for breath, his teeth showing again in anything but a smile as he leaned over Dumbledore’s desk. “Also, the contact information for one Rita Skeeter. Capisce?”

Harry sat quietly stroking Fawkes the entire time, trying to keep himself from grinning like a fool at the first adult who’d ever stood up for him, challenged authority and put themself on the line to protect his well-being.

He’d walked out of Dumbledore’s office with Sirius that day, only leaving his side to ride back to London with his friends on the Hogwarts Express—where his godfather was waiting again with open arms, to bustle him off to the Black property in the countryside where they’d be spending the summer. Things quickly spiraled into a massive impromptu “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” party for both Sirius and Buckbeak, with attendees including the Weasleys, all Harry’s school friends, several Hogwarts professors (most notably Lupin, who convinced Harry to show off his stag Patronus for the crowd), and a whole group of older people who had known his parents and couldn’t wait to tell him endless stories about them. The celebrations lasted for two days, some of the guests bunking in the manor house’s innumerable spare rooms.

Professor Lupin never left.

***************

The summer he turned fourteen was, without a doubt, the best holiday Harry had enjoyed in his life.

After finishing all his summer assignments (with occasional gentle-but-firm prodding from Remus), he spent the vast majority of his time in flight—both on Buckbeak, who had become a frequent visitor to Black Manor when he wasn’t with the Hogwarts herd; and with the brand new Firebolt Sirius gave him as an early birthday present, which might have been the most beautiful inanimate object Harry had ever seen (although when he’d been out for hours doing loops and dives and racing his own best times, staying in the air until the sun dipped below the horizon and his face was numb from the wind, he sometimes forgot that the broom was not, in fact, a living, sentient companion).

“You’re a natural,” Sirius cheered, watching Harry switch things up by flying alongside Buckbeak for a change, the hippogriff’s instinctual pride making him an ideal competitor. “James had the gift too but he wasn’t as fast—Merlin, I bet you could be a bird Animagus—“

“Sirius,” Remus said sternly.

It all culminated in the Quidditch World Cup in August, a final hurrah before heading back for his fourth year. Seeing Viktor Krum and the Irish Chasers had been a high that not even reports of Death Eater activity at the afterparties could dim.

And as it turned out, that wasn’t even the most prestigious event he’d get to see that year. The announcement of the Triwizard Tournament, the arrival of the foreign delegations, and finally the ascension of Cedric Diggory—pride of Hufflepuff and shining example that the house of badgers was not for the dull or the weak or the leftovers, but a place for wixen who were strong enough to achieve their dreams without compromising their integrity—as Hogwarts Champion. The combined Halloween party and fete for Cedric had consumed the common room, the kitchens, and half of Honeydukes too, thanks to the secret passage Sirius had told Harry about. Padfoot may or may not have also been responsible for much of the Firewhiskey that got smuggled in that night.

So hard-working was Cedric, in fact, that he continued to take his duties as Quidditch Captain seriously as well, despite the season being cancelled. With his graduation approaching, he’d begun the search for a Seeker to take his place—and Harry’s skills had caught his attention.

Long weekend evenings spent running drills and reviewing tactics turned into even more time together for the two boys in November, when Hagrid and Charlie Weasley let a hint slip about the first task. After some trial and error, they confirmed that a non-Parselmouth could theoretically learn a few words, and Harry spent a frantic few weeks making sure that Cedric could say friend, respect, and not harm eggs in an accent a dragon would find passable.

His effort was rewarded when the older boy took the highest score by negotiating with the dragon through sentence fragments and pantomime—showcasing not only creativity but the core Hufflepuff trait of cooperation. Harry was ecstatic.

Which was why he couldn’t understand—was extremely frustrated with himself, really—why he was so upset when the Yule Ball was announced and Cedric told him that Cho Chang said yes right away, even admitted she’d had a crush on him for a while now. Why wasn’t Harry happy again for his friend and housemate’s good fortune? He didn’t even care about the ball, couldn’t name a girl he’d want to dance with if you put a wand to his head.

He’d discussed all of this with Sirius over winter break at the Black country house, and by the time he’d returned in January, a great deal of things that had always confused him about himself finally made sense. He also got strong reassurance that the wizarding world was far more progressive about same-sex relationships than Muggles like the Dursleys—and confirmation that yes, Remus was not just living with Sirius to save money on rent.

He still felt a pang when he watched Cho kiss Cedric after he rescued her from the lake, but at least now he could look in the right place for his own special someone. And he’d led his yearmates in cheers when the third task ended with a Hogwarts victory, Cedric portkeying into the winner’s circle with the Cup. The whole school had stampeded up the lawn to the castle, ready for what was sure to be the most epic celebration of all.

And by all accounts, it was. Harry missed every minute of it, though, because Professor Moody—who up until that point had done nothing but continue Remus’s admirable record of being an engaging and effective teacher—grabbed hold of Harry’s arm and dragged him off the school grounds, his shouts for help drowned in the hubbub and cheers of victory. They’d Apparated to a graveyard somewhere, where ‘Moody’ had turned into a different person physically as well as in personality, and then—

He was only there maybe thirty minutes before an entire squad of Hit-Wizards swarmed in to rescue him, following the signal from the tracking amulet Sirius insisted he wear at all times. (Sirius himself had led the charge, snarling and half-mad like a rabid dog, blasting the fake Moody back so hard he cracked a marble statue). But he had to spend the whole night recounting it over and over and over.

“He didn’t hurt me anywhere else,” he’d assured his frantic godfather, as the cut on his arm was disinfected and healed. “He just wanted my blood. For the…” he swallowed hard, and gestured at the half-melted cauldron on the grass, where his kidnapper had tried unsuccessfully to brew some sort of potion.

“No, I didn’t duel him,” he corrected the Aurors who questioned him later at the Ministry, Sirius and his top-rated solicitor flanking him like bodyguards. “He cut off his own hand for the ritual. ‘Flesh of the servant’—there was more, too—yeah, I can write it down…”

“He was alone,” he told the more senior Aurors who came one by one, right up to Rufus Scrimgeour himself. “But he was talking to himself—about how he was the last faithful one left, the only one worthy to resurrect the Dark Lord. He was delirious at the end—from, er, the blood loss, but also because he couldn’t believe the ritual didn’t work. He sort of lost it, when the potion exploded on him. You all showed up not too long after that.”

When they finally gave him a rest from talking, he’d still had to dwell on the events, so they could extract a fresh memory for evidence. And then, to top it all off, Dumbledore himself had shown up, Cornelius Fudge on his heels.

“He is trying to return,” Dumbledore said gravely, his face ashen, once Harry had told the whole story again. “It was always only a matter of time, of course. Lord Voldemort is on the move—he will no doubt soon be summoning his remaining followers, activating the network of Dark Marks…”

“What? No, You-Know-Who wasn’t there. It was just that one Death Eater—Barty Crouch, Scrimgeour called him. He talked about reviving his master, but all he did was mix the ingredients and chant for a while. Then he shot a Dark Mark into the sky, right before the ritual failed and the cauldron melted down. I mean”—he wasn’t sure if he was speaking out of turn here—“it didn’t even seem like a proper potion, to me. There wasn’t any catalyst.”

No one except Sirius was listening, though, because Fudge had started yelling the moment he heard Dumbledore utter the name “Voldemort”.

“Now see here, Albus! He can’t be coming back, it’s just not possible. We don’t even know for sure that was Crouch Jr., as he was also declared dead over a decade ago—“

“I think it’s time we get you home, pup, and into bed,” Sirius said quietly, his jaw tensing as he watched the two powerful men shout over each other. “If neither of you has any objections? No? Good, come on Harry, there’s a private Floo down the hall…”

It was near dawn when they returned to the manor, Harry soundly ignored as he protested that he was fine and wanted to go back to Hogwarts for the last few days of term. He didn’t get to attend the Leaving Feast that year, or to take the Hogwarts express with everyone else. Worst of all, he never had the chance to congratulate Cedric, whose big moment got lost when all the headlines were about the botched kidnapping of the Boy-Who-Lived.

The Wizengamot called him to testify one last time before Crouch Jr. was given the Kiss. Harry couldn’t decide if it was justice done, too harsh, or simply a mercy. The man had been completely unhinged at the end, and undeniably dangerous—but there was also his veritaserum testimony, about his father and his “escape” from prison. Harry knew better than most what it was like to be locked up for a decade by someone who was supposed to care for you. To cling to the hope of someone, anyone, that would come to the rescue.

***************

Sirius and Remus were a bit like a pair of overprotective guard dogs for the first two weeks of summer, and his tracking amulet was soon upgraded with a voice-activated Portkey that could get Harry through nearly any wards. But once the DMLE had investigated the matter thoroughly (with Sirius spending plenty of time around his old stomping grounds, breathing down their necks), and confirmed that Crouch Jr. was acting alone, and that his plan never had a chance of working (Harry’s hunch had been correct; the potion could not resurrect so much as a flobberworm without anything to base the body on), they’d relaxed and allowed him to continue flying, visiting friends, and going to public places in both the wizarding and muggle worlds, much as he’d done the previous year.

After his well-earned year of rest and relaxation, the excitement of the DMLE operation (and the weaknesses he saw in the latest crop of Aurors) had inspired Sirius to pick up his career on the force where he left off, and the work had reinvigorated him; he looked truly vital again for the first time since Azkaban, and he came home each night full of stories and ideas for how to bring what he called “Marauder style” to the Auror office.

“Of course,” he said one evening as they were finishing dinner, with the air of a man pretending to have only just thought of something, “my new workload will make it impossible for me to give my duties in the Wizengamot as Lord Black the full attention they deserve. I’ll need to appoint a proxy—someone smart, with a mind for boring details, who can keep their cool in a room full of people who often act like children. Well-spoken both in public and in private. And I’d need to trust them implicitly, of course.”

He had not taken his eyes from Remus the entire time he was speaking.

“What? Oh, no, Padfoot,” he groaned, when he looked up from his blackberry tart. “With what I am? They’d tear me to shreds—“

“Not if you tore them first,” Harry chimed in, and met his reproachful look unrepentantly.

“Come on, Moons,” Sirius wheedled, putting on the puppy-dog eyes. “You always said it was your dream job, and your talents are going to waste just sitting around the house! Just imagine the look on Lucius Malfoy’s face…”

“It’s a terrible idea,” Remus insisted, but his own face looked like he was imagining Lord Malfoy’s reaction—and liking the image very much.

Moony managed to hold out for exactly two days before he conceded that serving as the Black proxy was an unmissable opportunity to advance werewolf rights and a progressive agenda in general, and that it was not just the right thing but his duty to accept Sirius’s offer. By mid-August, he was thriving in his new role almost as much as Sirius; his intellect stimulated by the dense legalities, while his Marauder side delighted in thumbing his nose at the purebloods. None of them had the guts to insult his blood status or lycanthropy (not to his face, anyway) when he sat in the Black seat and wore their crest on his robes.

At one of the last sessions before the new Hogwarts term, Remus invited Harry to tag along, as a sort of “bonus lesson” on wizarding government. He quickly agreed, eager to see Remus—and Susan’s legendary Aunt Amelia—in action. Plus Hermione would kill him if he didn’t report everything back to her.

He’d then watched, transfixed, as what was supposed to be a routine hearing on budget increases for the Floo Network became a confrontation between Fudge and Dumbledore that would go down in history.

“Enough, Albus!” Fudge had roared, forty-five minutes into Dumbledore’s determined filibuster (his legal right as Chief Warlock) on how the budget for not just transportation but also defense, diplomacy, intelligence and community outreach needed to be increased tenfold, as part of a shift to “war footing” for the inevitable return of Lord Voldemort. “You-Know-Who is dead, and has been since 1981! He is gone, defeated, deceased, and I will hear no more of this deliberate rabble-rousing and stirring of unrest—“

”He is not gone any more than you or I, Cornelius!” Dumbledore thundered, and for the first time Harry saw not the meddlesome headmaster, but the master sorcerer who had defeated Grindelwald. “In fourteen years, have any of the dedicated searchers found a single trace of a body—or any remains at all, for that matter? He disappeared, no more than that, and the time is coming when Lord Voldemort will re-appear, likely greater and more terrible than ever before—“

”STOP SAYING THE NAME!”

By the end of the four-hour overtime session, Harry was thanking his lucky stars that he was well clear of this fight—which, Remus explained to him over fish and chips afterward, was also a proxy struggle for power between the two men.

”So wait, does Dumbledore really believe Voldemort’s coming back or not?” Harry asked, confused.

”Oh, he believes it.” Remus sighed. “He’s made that…quite clear, in private meetings with us and the other former Order members. But he also believed that your aunt and uncle’s house was the best place for you, and that it wasn’t necessary to give Sirius a trial, and that Snape can be trusted. A lot of us are starting to believe he’s losing his…perspective.”

Remus looked so sad saying that, so disillusioned by the fallibility of a man he’d considered a personal hero, that Harry quickly changed the subject to something lighter.

Sirius, for his part, had only snorted when the news hit the Prophet the next day. “If he’s so worried about security, maybe he ought to start in his own backyard,” he said dryly. “Had a half-mad Death Eater in his school for the better part of a year, impersonating one of his own oldest friends—and he’s lecturing us about being caught unawares by the Dark?”

Unfortunately, it turned out that Harry—and all of his friends—were not quite as clear of the political blast zone as he’d thought. Come September, the new Defense teacher was revealed to be many things—a Ministry stooge, the owner of a disturbing cruel streak, an insult to the perfectly decent color pink—but the real issue, at the heart of it all, was that she didn’t actually teach. Sitting at a desk and reading a worthless book on nonviolence, wands away and “safely” holstered, was not going to get anybody past their OWLs.

”It’s a disgrace,” Hermione said after the first week, looking somehow more bloodthirsty than when she’d learned about the treatment of house-elves.

Harry, Susan, and Ron agreed, calling it “torture”, “borderline illegal”, and “complete bollocks” respectively—and from that conversation and the many that followed after, the Defense Association was born.

Defense wasn’t Harry’s absolute favorite subject—that would be Care of Magical Creatures, of course, even if Hagrid wasn’t here this year because Dumbledore had sent him on some half-cocked mission to the giants. But he was on decent terms with nearly everyone in the school, thanks to his status as a Hufflepuff and a prefect. Remus Lupin—the only Defense professor in the past decade anyone had actually liked—was his honorary godfather, and perfectly happy to exchange daily owls with curriculum suggestions. And he was the only person with a reliable record of being able to rein in Hermione.

So in his fifth year Harry wound up leading the effort to circumvent Dolores Umbridge’s pernicious influence on the school—and to his surprise, he enjoyed it. He liked reading ahead to learn the material ahead of time, and working with Remus and Hermione to plan the best order to introduce and connect different topics. He liked seeing a younger year discover a natural aptitude; and yet, he also enjoyed the puzzle of figuring out why another kid was struggling, and watching them eventually master a spell when he tried a different teaching approach. He’d always assumed that he’d do something with creatures when he graduated; a magizoologist maybe, like Newt Scamander. But that year, he began to think that once he got a little older and more experienced, and felt like settling down a bit—well, he might want to teach.

By spring, with exams looming over them and Umbridge overtaking Snape as the most despised teacher (the greasy git would always keep his Slytherins’ loyalty, but Umbridge had no defenders; her classes were like Binns’s but without the free naps), nearly the entire school was attending DA meetings at least some of the time. The other professors, tired of issuing extra house points to balance her deductions and voting down her endless ridiculous proposals at staff meetings, had started actively rooting for the “Defense curse” to take her out early.

“So it’s a real thing then, the curse?” Harry asked his godfathers, as they sat at the dining table decorating eggs over the Easter holidays. “I thought we’d just had a run of really bad luck.”

“Oh, it’s real all right,” Sirius said. “It had been going on over a decade already when we were in first year. We’re lucky Moony here is still with us, after he went into the line of fire like that.” He nudged his partner affectionately under the table.

“We werewolves are tough to kill, Pads.” Remus poked his tongue between his teeth as he added swirls of indigo and violet to his egg—a panoramic scene of a moonless night under accurate constellations. “This Umbridge woman does seem uniquely awful, though—you should see the things she’s said about creature rights. And Harry, did she really make you all read Slinkhard’s entire bibliography?”

It was pretty unfair, Harry thought, that Fudge had hired her specifically to piss off Dumbledore, and yet, the eccentric headmaster wasn’t even here most of the time. Instead, his activities could be followed through articles in the Prophet. Increasingly hyperbolic speeches to the Wizengamot and ICW about the imminent return of Voldemort, mostly, and—after he was removed from his leadership positions in both—direct appeals to the public along the same lines.

“Should he really have had three jobs in the first place?” Hermione had asked, dubiously, when she saw that particular headline.

But at the end of the year—after Harry had sat his OWLs with full confidence in scoring well, and Umbridge had mysteriously disappeared after one too many ‘disagreements’ with the centaurs—Dumbledore apparently had enough spare time on his hands to call Harry to his office yet again. The old wizard looked drawn, tired, and, for the first time, every single one of his over a hundred years.

“Harry,” he said without preamble, or even the offer of a lemon drop. “My dear boy. Tell me, have you been having any…peculiar dreams lately?”

He was staring rather fixedly at Harry’s scar.

“Er.” Alarmed, Harry darted his eyes around the room, seeking Fawkes’s familiar presence, but the phoenix was apparently off somewhere else. “What?”

“Dreams, my boy,” he repeated, his blue eyes unblinking and almost feverish. “Disturbing ones—nightmares, even. Specifically, about Lord Voldemort or his remaining devotees.”

He asked the question twice more, slightly rephrased, before Harry managed to make a flimsy excuse and leave.

“He asked you what!?” Sirius exclaimed when he heard, sounding significantly more upset than Harry had been. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. That is…that is not okay. Merlin, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this…We’re going to need to have another talk with him, Moony.”

Remus gave Sirius a significant look, compassionate but stern. “Sirius…I think maybe we should have a talk with Harry, first. It’s time he knew the truth.”

Sirius looked torn, but Harry interjected before he could get a word out. “Wait, what truth?” He turned between his guardians’ pained, guilty expressions. “What haven’t you been telling me?”

They sat him down, then, and for the next hour explained about the real reason Voldemort had attacked Lily and James Potter like that night. Why he’d hunted them like a bloodhound for over a year, so much that they’d needed the Fidelius Charm that also failed them in the end.

“There’s a prophecy about me? That I’m some kind of…of chosen one who’ll kill Voldemort!?” The very idea was ridiculous. He was just Harry—loyal friend, lover of animals, and soon-to-be lead Seeker on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.

“Well…” Remus gave Sirius another Look. “Technically, yes.”

“What is that supposed to mean? Either there’s a prophecy or there isn’t!” He was beginning to feel mildly panicked.

Sirius scrunched up his face. “The prediction in question was made by Sybil Trelawney.”

Relief, cool and sharp, washed over Harry. “Oh. Oh,” he said, the word coming out almost as a laugh. “Well, that’s alright, then. I mean, if anyone can be safely ignored…”

“Exactly.” Remus looked proud. “That’s what we all thought, too, even your mum and dad. It was only ever dangerous because Voldemort believed it—and now it might be a problem again, because Dumbledore does.”

“Now that he’s convinced the Dark Lord’s coming back, he’s also got it in his head you’re going to have to defeat him eventually.” Sirius grimaced. “He’s brought it up a few times already. He’s as cryptic as always, but the gist of it is he thinks you’re connected somehow through your curse scar—that you might even be able to spy on him…”

Harry felt slightly alarmed again. “I haven’t ever felt anything like that! I would tell you if I did!”

“We know, Harry,” Remus soothed. “It’s like Siri said, we’ll have to tell him again—firmly this time—that even if You-Know-Who were to return—“

“—and the DMLE, the Order’s old intelligence network, and my own investigations have turned up no evidence of that happening,” Sirius added, before Harry could ask.

“—then you, and anyone underage, has no business fighting in a war at all, let alone being the lynchpin of a plan for victory,” Remus finished. “We just wanted you to know all the facts, so you can be on alert around the headmaster. We should have told you sooner, really.”

“Okay.” Harry took a breath. This wasn’t really such terrible news—it explained a lot, actually. And if Dumbledore continued to be as much of an absentee headmaster as he’d been last year, it shouldn’t interfere with him graduating and sitting his NEWTs. “Well…I suppose now might be a good time to mention that he also asked me to take a ‘short trip’ with him this summer.”

“What!?” This time it was Remus who nearly jumped out of his skin.

“He said he wanted to introduce me to an old friend of his—someone named Slughorn?”

Sirius’s face became stony again, an echo of his first day of exoneration when he’d told Dumbledore Harry would not be returning to the Dursleys. “Did he. Well, it’s rather unfortunate for him that I’ve made plans for us to spend the holidays at the Black chalet in the Swiss Alps. Remote place, virtually incommunicado. My great-grandparents had it built to destress and unwind.”

Harry grinned. That sounded exciting, even if he was fairly sure that Sirius had made these “plans” sometime in the last ten seconds. From what Hermione had told him, skiing was a pretty good Muggle approximation of broomstick flight…

***************

Between whatever his godfathers said in their “talk” with Dumbledore and their summer of radio silence in Switzerland (Harry couldn’t believe he’d gone his entire life without seeing a mountain, and nearly had to be physically dragged off the Alps in late August), the old headmaster seemed to have gotten the message. He spent even less time at the castle than the year before, always off on mysterious “errands”, which were a subject of some public speculation since he didn’t exactly have political duties anymore. Harry, meanwhile, spent his sixth year mastering nonverbal casting, playing Quidditch, and—now that Cedric had graduated and wasn’t occupying the entirety of his amorous energy—going on very nice Hogsmeade dates (and even nicer walks to the far side of the lake) with a variety of interested boys. None of his relationships lasted more than the span of six weeks or so, but Harry was fine with that; he wasn’t looking for something serious. More and more, he’d begun to feel that his destined partner in life was waiting for him much further afield than the Hogwarts grounds.

He never did wind up meeting the mysterious Horace Slughorn—though, from what Sirius and Remus told him, that was a good thing. He didn’t even want to think about how a man like that would behave in the presence of the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’. Hagrid was back to teach the NEWT-level Care classes, and the Defense teacher was a vampire named Sanguini (it seemed Dumbledore had gotten the idea that someone technically already dead might be able to dodge the curse. This theory was proven wrong in early June, when Sanguini mistakenly walked in on the Fat Friar’s weekly communal Mass for the Catholic students, and was hit with a wayward splash of holy water).

His peace couldn’t last, unfortunately.

At the end of June, Harry was at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, racing the sun back to the castle before curfew. He’d just been visiting the Thestral herd with Luna, slipping them a last few tasty slabs of raw meat before he left for summer hols. It was there, after the spritelike girl had slipped away to whatever hidden route she used to navigate the world, that he was found by Dumbledore.

“Ah, Harry my boy!” the headmaster said, and what was Harry supposed to do, run in the other direction? (Maybe, he’d occasionally think later, but then things might’ve turned out worse for Dumbledore.) “Just the young man I’d hoped to find. I’ve just received confirmation on the location of an important object, one I’ve been seeking for quite some time, and I believe it would be…beneficial for you to accompany me for its retrieval.” He spoke as if he were picking up a rare antique from a shop in Hogsmeade, but he was dressed for a rough journey—traveling cloak, dragonhide gloves and boots, a bag of supplies over one shoulder—and had a manic gleam in his eyes.

Harry found himself wishing that Luna was still here—or anyone, really. “Er, I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Professor. It’s getting dark, and I promised Professor Sprout that I’d—“

“I really must insist,” Dumbledore said, and then proceeded to grip Harry’s lower arm and—he hadn’t known this was possible—Apparate them both directly off Hogwarts grounds.

(“Being me has its privileges,” he would tell Harry later, finally having the decency to look chagrined.)

Harry had not wanted to go with him. Not to the windblown cliff or the wet, rocky shoreline, and most assuredly not into the eerie cave with the secret door that needed blood smeared on it to open. But Dumbledore had been utterly determined, and he’d worried that if he used Sirius’s Portkey to escape that the old man might go alone and get seriously hurt. He decided to watch and wait, keeping the Portkey as a failsafe in case things got really bad.

“I know you have doubts, Harry,” Dumbledore said, sensing his obvious reticence as they crossed the threshold into a room lit by an extremely ominous green glow. “But I swear to you—there are things you don’t yet understand, things I cannot tell you until the time is right. What you must know now is that Lord Voldemort will return, and I hope what you will see tonight will impress upon you the severity, the gravity of the situation…”

The ensuing events were certainly severe, all right.

After the relative calm of the boat ride (although Harry wasn’t blind, he could see pale, bloated body parts beneath the water’s surface), he’d nearly panicked when Dumbledore insisted on drinking the potion, and then promptly collapsed to the ground in delirium, babbling incoherently in between hideous sobs of pain—and continuing to drink the whole while, scrabbling to his knees to refill his conjured goblet again and again. Even once Harry had collected himself, it took a shocking amount of physical strength to pry the half-empty cup from his professor’s fingers, wrestle him back into the boat, and propel it to the safety of shore while keeping all their limbs inside the vehicle.

And that was before the Inferi woke up.

“Incendio!” he shouted over and over, figuring that the undead wouldn’t notice if he called out his spells aloud. “No, Professor, stay in the boat—INCENDIO MAXIMA—Fuck—!”

As it turned out, the “nearly any wards” that his Portkey could overcome did not include whatever the hell Voldemort had cast over the cave, as Harry found out when he grabbed the amulet and shouted the activation phrase in vain. He was nearly magically exhausted by the time he got the both of them back through the entrance (he’d had to use a Mobilicorpus on Dumbledore) and felt the wards fall away like a set of shackles, then used the last of his strength to hold tightly to the elderly wizard (turnabout is fair play, he thought grimly) and teleport them both to safety, only barely dodging a particularly fast Inferius that tried to come along for the ride.

The next morning, as they both recovered in the Hogwarts hospital wing (Sirius had wanted to drop Dumbledore in the lobby of St. Mungo’s and be done with it, but Remus had persuaded him that keeping it out of the papers would be “the kind thing to do”), Harry had gotten a brief opportunity to speak with Dumbledore.

“I am truly sorry for what you had to witness last night, Harry,” he said, and Harry felt the sincerity in his words; he figured it took a lot for a man of his standing to apologize. “It was…conduct unbecoming for a teacher, and a wizard worthy of his magic.”

“It’s alright, sir.” He knew plenty of people would say it was far too Hufflepuff of him, but he really did forgive Dumbledore—mostly, anyway. “Er, no harm no foul, I suppose?” After all, Harry had just needed a few Restorative Draughts and had only been kept overnight out of an abundance of (Madame Pomfrey’s) caution; it was the headmaster who’d suffered through a full battery of cleansing spells and potions to scrub the Draught of Despair from his system.

Dumbledore smiled, the faint glimmer of a twinkle returning to his eyes. “I suppose so. Ah, by the by, dear boy—I didn’t happen to say anything…upsetting while I was under the influence of Voldemort’s concoction, would I? I would hate to think that I had done anything to cause you even further distress.”

Harry shook his head. “No, sir. Nothing at all.” The lie rolled easily off his tongue. Dumbledore had, indeed, babbled a great deal about “Ariana”, “Gellert”, and “so, so sorry” while he was delirious—before he’d been drowned out by the roar of fire and moans of Inferi, anyway. But Harry didn’t understand what most of it meant, so it wasn’t really more disturbing than anything else. If anyone had been upset, it’d been Dumbledore, and he seemed to have mercifully forgotten it now.

Harry decided to let him stay that way.

***************

The next September, the entire Great Hall went into an uproar when Dumbledore announced that this year he would be teaching Defense himself.

Raising his wand for silence, he explained further:

“For anyone concerned about my well-being or survival past the end of the term”—there was a flurry of muttering at this first public acknowledgment of the DADA “curse” in nearly four decades—“I assure you that I have consulted with experts, and they are confident that my commitment to resign from not just the Defense post, but Hogwarts as a whole—and my having signed a magically binding contract to that effect—should be enough to prevent any serious damage to my person. In the meantime, Professor McGonagall will be sharing my Head duties, in preparation to take over the school’s leadership when I commence my retirement in July. I look forward to ending my career in education as I started it: as a simple teacher, attempting to forge a meaningful connection between my individual students, the subject matter, and myself. Thank you.

Now, tuck in!”

The discussion and debate in the hall grew, if anything, more loud and chaotic, but Harry was sanguine through it all. He’d been one of the first to hear of Dumbledore’s decision, when he’d signed the contract back in August. After all, the whole thing had been organized and negotiated by Sirius, in concert with—Padfoot was still annoyed about it—Lucius Malfoy. For the first time in their collective years on the planet, the two men had found themselves in full agreement on something: namely, that it was time for Dumbledore to go. They’d spent the summer hammering out and gathering support for an arrangement that removed his influence from the school, allowed him to maintain his dignity, and kicked the DADA can yet another year down the road, all in one fell swoop.

“He really is one of the greatest duelists of this or any century, and the most creative too,” Remus had said. “I think you have the chance to learn a lot from him this year, Harry—as long as he sticks to teaching, that is…”

And—in a most wonderful development—he actually did. And Harry did learn, probably more than he had from the past six Defense teachers combined.

He, and most of his yearmates judging by their equally impressed reactions, had never considered the possibilities of using Transfiguration in a fight alongside curses, hexes and basic Charms. That you didn’t need to remember tricky countercurses when you could simply turn your opponent’s flaming projectiles into harmless snowflakes, and that their own Protego wouldn’t help them if the ground beneath their feet turned to quicksand—or ice. That conjuring an even half-decent aggressive animal was essentially giving yourself a free numbers advantage.

Dumbledore also taught them to draw out and amplify their magic, to make the most of their magical cores no matter what their innate power level. By the end of the year even Neville Longbottom was casting fearsome Confringos, and Harry could make an Aguamenti with the strength of a firehose if he focused. Two classes per month were dedicated to a sort of informal dueling club—an improvement on Lockhart’s version by an order of magnitude—and the rankings, grouped by year and House, quickly became a source of fervent competition.

At their final pre-NEWT practical exam, there was a last round of mock duels for extra credit, and Harry, the best of the seventh-year Hufflepuffs, was given the chance to match wands with Dumbledore himself at the end.

He fully expected to lose graciously after holding his own for a respectable amount of time, even with Dumbledore obviously going easy on him— but something curious happened around the fifteen-minute mark. Outside the window, the clouds—on what had been a heavily overcast day—parted just a crack, letting through a spear of sunlight on Dumbledore’s side of the dueling circle. Thinking quickly, Harry used a charm they’d learned recently to Transfigure tiny dust motes in the air into reflective crystals, briefly trapping his opponent in a blinding cage of light…

“Ah!” Dumbledore exclaimed, slapping his free hand to his eyes for a split second.

Harry acted on reflex alone. “Expelliarmus!”

The elderly wizard’s wand sailed out of his loosened grip and into Harry’s in a broad arc—just as the crystals faded from existence and the sun ducked back behind a bank of clouds.

There was a brief moment of silence. Dumbledore looked genuinely stunned, his wide eyes and raised brows giving him a surprisingly youthful look, and Harry was pretty sure his own mouth actually dropped open. Then his fellow Hufflepuffs absolutely erupted in applause and cheers, while he tried to protest that it had only been a stroke of luck.

Dumbledore casually requested that he stay behind after class that day, so when everyone else filed out he approached the professor’s desk—with his right hand on his wand and his left on the Portkey amulet under his robes, because he wasn’t an idiot.

But his teacher only gazed pensively out the window, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Congratulations on your excellent performance, Harry,” he said with a smile. “It has been a pleasure, watching you improve so much this year.”

“Erm, thank you, sir,” Harry said honestly. “I learned a lot. I wish you could’ve taught Defense all seven years.” Instead of running around like a headless phoenix, harassing me, and trying to fight a war against a dead Dark Lord, he thought silently.

When Dumbledore turned, Harry got the feeling he knew exactly what he’d left unspoken, but the man didn’t look offended. “I do not know whether you are aware of this, my boy, but I owe you a life debt for your actions a year ago. Without your level head and quick thinking, I very well might have died alone in that cave on the coast.”

“I only did what anyone would’ve—“

“I still believe that Lord Voldemort will return someday,” Dumbledore continued rather bluntly, “and that when he does, you and he are destined to face each other again in some capacity.” Harry’s eyebrows shot to his hairline, and he felt his foot move involuntarily toward the door. The professor seemed to notice, and added, “And after giving it a great deal of thought, I determined that the best way to prepare you for that inevitable encounter, and honor my debt, was to act simply as your teacher. To give you the skills to protect yourself, and what you hold dear. After watching you today…I’d like to think I’ve succeeded to some extent.”

“I think so too, Professor,” Harry said, thinking of how useful his new dueling skills would be if he decided to join the international magical anti-poaching task force. “And I’m really grateful to you.” Grateful you didn’t try to kidnap me again, or force me to spy psychically on Voldemort…He held his tongue again, and tried to clear his mind as well. “But, erm…I was hoping I might ask you something, sir.”

“You may ask whatever you like, Harry, although I make no promises that I will answer.”

Well, if that wasn’t a classic Dumbledore statement…”I was just curious,” he began carefully, “about, well, why you believe so strongly that Voldemort will come back.” He really had been wondering about this, on and off, especially since the end of his fourth year. Dumbledore had sacrificed his career, his influence in society, and a good deal of his sterling reputation, warning about a nonexistent “danger” to a nation that had moved on. Surely he was basing all this on more than one failed kidnapping attempt by a deeply unwell man, and a few hooligans at the World Cup? Harry had already asked Remus and Sirius, but they had no more than speculation either.

The old man was quiet for a moment, and then gave an oddly casual shrug. “I suppose it cannot hurt anything to tell you,” he said. “In 1991–not too long before you arrived here at Hogwarts for the first time—I received another prophecy. One that said Lord Voldemort would reappear sometime in the next decade, stronger than ever before.”

For a moment, Harry was certain he must be joking. Another bloody prophecy? Maybe Dumbledore would have been happiest teaching Divination, instead of Transfiguration or Defense. “Oh. Er.” He cast around for something to say, and decided he might as well ask what he was most curious about. “That second prophecy…wouldn’t also happen to have been from Sybil Trelawney, would it?”

Dumbledore threw back his head and laughed. “No, it was not. Our dear Professor Trelawney, I am afraid, is what the Muggles call a ‘one-hit wonder’. The prediction of Voldemort’s return came from a…more reliable source.” He smiled almost wistfully, and turned again to stare out at the clouded sky.

Just when Harry thought that was all the answer he’d get, the professor added, in a voice so quiet he may not have even meant to say it aloud—

“Although it would surely aggravate Gellert to no end, to be mistaken for such a lesser Seer…”

Harry frowned a bit. He felt almost like he was intruding all of a sudden, like Dumbledore had somehow forgotten he was there. He took another step back and prepared to say his goodbyes, when he felt something poke his leg from the pocket of his robes.

“Oh! I almost forgot, sir…I need to give back your wand before I go!” He withdrew the long, knobbly stick and laid it on the desk, politely holding it handle-out. “I’m sorry—I just put it in my pocket, after I disarmed you.” He mentally scolded himself for the oversight.

That seemed to snap Dumbledore back to the present. “Ah, so you did,” he said, looking between Harry and the wand with a contemplative expression. “But worry not. The wand you took from me today is not the one that chose me over a century ago, but merely a spare—a backup, if you will. I’d like you to keep it. Consider it a memento of passing your exam with flying colors.”

Harry put his hands in the air. “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly…” Dumbledore may have been acting more or less like an ordinary teacher this year, but he wasn’t about to accept a mysterious magical object from the meddlesome old man.

The wand twitched on the desktop and rolled over in Harry’s direction, despite the air around it being utterly still.

“I do believe you’ve been outvoted, my dear boy.”

He took the strange wand just to avoid an argument and gingerly carried it straight to his dorm, where he laid it in a triple-warded box and stuffed it in his school trunk. When he rode home on the Express three weeks later, he immediately brought the box to Sirius, who checked it exhaustively for curses, compulsions, enchantments and any other magical residue. He found nothing but the wand’s innate (and rather powerful) magic, but Harry still didn’t want anything to do with it and preferred his holly anyway. He left it in a secure case in the artifact storage room in the Black manor, where as far as he knew it remained to this day.

***************

And so Harry’s last year at Hogwarts—and, as he would soon realize, as a full-time resident of the British Isles—came to an end.

He sat his NEWTs, which were as Nasty and Exhausting as the acronym promised but left him feeling confident overall, and graduated with honors. He celebrated with his friends and family, and then flopped down in his room at the Black country house and slept for what felt like a week. He sent out job applications.

He served as the joint best man (he refused to play favorites with his godfathers) in Sirius and Remus’s bonding ceremony, and watched Hermione drunkenly kiss Ron at the reception, and wondered again what it might be like to have an other half of his own.

And then he began to understand just what he’d been shielded from for the past seventeen years—first in his time of anonymous drudgery at the Dursleys’, and then behind the protection of the Hogwarts wards and Black family name.

Everyone wanted to know what was next for the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ now that he had, as a Witch Weekly staff writer put it, BECOME A MAN!

(The mortifying headline was accompanied by a four-page spread of photos, all taken without his consent with a long-distance lens, of him shopping in Diagon, having drinks at a pub, and worst of all, goofing around in swimming trunks on a trip to the seaside.)

The reporters approached him first, of course, and when they were summarily shut down by his own overpowered shield charm, Sirius’s remarkable impression of the ‘Black madness’, or Remus’s cool “Ask one more question not related to the new werewolf-rights legislation and I’ll eat you. Yes, you can quote me on that,” they did even worse—they started harassing his friends.

They ambushed Ron and Susan during an Auror training field exercise, causing them to completely fail the Stealth test.

They found Hermione at a diplomatic event—her first big assignment as Junior Undersecretary—and shouted at her in front of a crowd of bemused international press.

They followed Justin Finch-Fletchley all the way to the Muggle university he’d decided to attend after Hogwarts, and the resulting incident had nearly required Obliviator involvement.

Always, in person and in print, they asked the same questions, the answers to which were apparently of urgent public interest:

What is the Savior of Wix Britain like in person?

What career do you think he’ll pursue? Will he continue to prove a prodigy, do you think, or burn out spectacularly?

And over and over, to seemingly everyone who’d ever come in contact with him, regardless of age or gender:

Are you dating him? Did you ever in the past? What kind of lover is he?

Well then, who is he with? Such a handsome young bachelor can’t possibly be single!

“It’ll pass,” Remus told him sensibly, as Harry lowered his head to the table in despair over the latest lurid rumor in the Prophet’s “society” section. “The public has the collective attention span of a goldfish. Focus on your own next steps, and they’ll get bored soon enough.”

Harry knew Moony was right, and tried to take his advice—which was when he ran into the second, and much more serious, unforeseen problem with having a famous name.

All of the applications he’d sent off had come back with enthusiastic job offers. Prestigious jobs, far above entry level, with starting salaries that could comfortably support a family of four. And they came written in bizarre, thinly-veiled language like We look forward to working with such an illustrious personage and We’re excited about the opportunities sure to come from taking you on.

In other words, his potential employers didn’t want him for his passion or his knowledge or his bold ideas about magical creature study and conservation. Like seemingly everyone else he’d met since graduation, they wanted him for his fame.

This time, his godfathers were not so quick to reassure him.

“It’s pretty much par for the course, when you’re from a well-known family,” Sirius admitted. “It even happened for me when I was eighteen—I guess people figured my parents would reinstate their precious heir eventually—and again when I had my big exoneration. That’s one of the reasons I chose the Aurors; they were one of the few places that weren’t falling all over themselves to cozy up to a Black.” He laughed, but Harry knew well that earning the trust of his DMLE colleagues, despite being an (innocent!) ex-convict from a Dark family, was one of his proudest accomplishments.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think the ‘Savior of Wix Britain’ can really expect nonpreferential treatment from the Auror office—or anyone else, really,” Harry said dryly. “So what should I do?”

“Do what you love regardless of the money or brownnosing, and figure out over time who’s really got your back.” His godfather gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, pup. I wish you didn’t have to deal with all this bollocks.”

Harry spent the next week thinking long and hard about Sirius’s words—and all the sycophantic ones in the job offers and the tabloids. He thought about the kind of life he wanted, and the kind he was likely to have as Harry James Potter, boy savior, in magical Britain.

In the end, the decision was surprisingly easy.

With the help of the Gringotts goblins (the Ministry was too slow and full of loose tongues besides), Harry filed the paperwork to get himself a new identity. He became Henry James, a young man with two Muggle parents (lovers of classic literature, obviously, who’d unfortunately died in a car crash when he was a baby). “Henry” had Harry’s Hogwarts record and NEWT scores and passion for magizoology, but he wasn’t the least bit famous—so much so that if anyone were to ask around, they’d find nary a soul who remembered him existing before August 16, 1998 (which Harry also adopted as his new fake birthday. July 31st was another well-known component of the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ legend).

He chose the name for its sheer generic nature, to honor his dad, and because he figured it’d be fairly easy to respond to, given its similarity to his real one.

And then, because a new name wasn’t worth much when everyone in the country knew your face, he sent out a fresh round of job applications—this time much further afield. The replies were incredibly heartening. Creature sanctuaries, research expeditions, prestigious Mastery programs and well-known wixen looking for apprentices, from all around the world; many (but not all) of them were perfectly willing to give ‘Henry James’ a chance—at a starting position, where he’d have to prove himself like anyone else. Harry hadn’t known until now how much he’d needed this, this proof that he was worthy on nothing but his own merits.

“I’m proud of you, kid,” Sirius told him with uncommon sincerity, as the summer drew to a close and Harry packed up his room. “Not a lot of wizards I know would choose to take the hard way when they had such an easy shortcut.”

“Well, I’m not most wizards,” Harry said, hunting under the bed for the match to his lucky Quidditch sock.

In September, as Hogwarts filled with a new class of first years who he’d never walk alongside in the halls, Harry—Henry, he reminded himself—gave his private owl address to his closest friends, hugged Remus and Sirius one last time, and walked into the Department of Magical Transportation to catch an international Portkey to his first stop: South Asia, where no one had heard of the Boy-Who-Lived and even Parselmouths were too common to bat an eye at.

Harry Potter took a leaf out of Lord Voldemort’s book and—as far as his homeland knew, anyway—disappeared into thin air.

**********

Now, three years later, Harry knelt on the plush rug in front of fireplace in his little cottage in western Massachusetts, laughing as Sirius’s floating head caught him up on the eventful past few months—time Harry had spent studying antivenoms in the Amazonian jungle, beyond the reach of owl or Floo. He’d only arrived back a few days ago.

“So wait, how has Bill not killed Charlie yet?” he asked at the end of his godfather’s latest wild story. “He stole his Gringotts key, nearly caused a new goblin rebellion, and got him fired—he must be furious!”

“A couple reasons.” Sirius ticked them off on his fingers. “First, Molly wouldn’t allow it—she’s already devastated that Charlie can’t come home for the holidays for the next twenty years, to avoid goblin justice.” He grinned. “Second, old Bill’s landed on his feet…as the new DADA professor.”

Harry’s laughter died in his throat. “What!? He’ll get himself killed! What about Fleur and the new baby?”

“Well, that’s the other interesting thing that’s happened recently. They’re saying that someone broke the legendary curse…or transferred it, maybe. Right after you left, Diggle made a miraculous recovery from his treatment-resistant tuberculosis.”

He gaped. “But in October they said he’d be lucky to survive the winter!”

“And that’s not all.” Sirius leaned forward so far his entire upper body was practically in Harry’s living room. “In the same week—it was the first half of November—they also found Umbridge finally. She’d been living wild in the Forbidden Forest these last five years.”

Harry crossed his arms. “Pull the other one, Padfoot, it’s got bells on—“

“Also,” he went on, and if this was some Marauder prank he was doing an unprecedented job of keeping a straight face, “Lockhart’s finally speaking in full sentences again in the Janus Thickey Ward, after the whole Obliviation mess in ‘92…”

“Good Godric,” Harry muttered. Could it really be true?

“All this happened just as it was hitting the headlines that Ilvermorny lost its Defense teacher to a huge sex scandal, and had to find a midyear replacement,” Sirius finished smugly. “So what do you think—regretting your little defection across the pond yet?”

He only laughed at his godfather’s half-serious grudge.

After leaving the UK, Harry had spent the next couple years circling the world more than once, never staying in the same job or city for more than a few months at a time. There’d just been so much to do, to see—magical flora and fauna was an inexhaustibly fascinating field of study, and it felt downright wrong to limit himself when he was still so young. But he had eventually come to crave a home base of sorts—somewhere to return to when he wasn’t on a job or in the field. A place to write down and make sense of his research, to receive his ever-growing amount of official mail and collaboration requests.

When he’d taken an assignment here in the Appalachians and fallen in love with the area, it had felt like fate—especially when he found the cottage on the market, a steal right within his price range. And so just under a year ago, “Henry James” had become the newest semi-permanent resident of Greylock, the all-wizarding settlement nestled at the feet of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A sort of American Hogsmeade, almost.

(The locals, of course—displaying that uniquely American brand of self-centeredness—referred to Hogsmeade as the “British Greylock”.)

The cottage was Harry’s own little haven, a cozy Shaker-style retreat at the end of a lane with a back garden spacious enough to house plenty of small creatures, a fantastic view of the mountains, and a collection of kindly neighbors who found his accent “charming”. He had the wilderness—and some excellent skiing—at his doorstep, and New York was just at the outer edge of his Apparition range if he craved more excitement. He’d visited a few times already, and been equally enthralled by the muggle and magical sides.

He’d not been recognized as the ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ once. Part of it was probably that American tunnel vision again, but during his travels he’d also glamoured his scar, grown out his hair a bit, acquired a year-round tan and a collection of freckles, and—reluctantly, after losing his fourth pair of glasses to the elements—started taking a twice-yearly potion to correct his vision. He looked, and felt, like his own person: an independent young wizard with a successful and fulfilling career. Life was good.

Sirius had felt mildly betrayed at his relocation so far away.

“You could have all of that in France!” he’d protested, when Harry had sung the praises of his new home. “Only better. Charming countryside, the Alps, Paris—and we’d be able to visit you without faffing about with the International Portkey Office!”

Harry did feel the tiniest bit guilty about settling on a whole separate continent, but it was a difficult thing to explain. Greylock was more than the sum of its parts; something about the place just felt right in some ineffable way, like his magic was telling him this was exactly where he needed to be right now. He’d sensed it the moment he’d come here, and again when he returned from his recent trip.

“It’ll take a lot more than that to give me second thoughts,” he jibed back at Sirius now. “Ask me again when Ilvermorny hasn’t had a decent teacher in almost half a century—yeah, I know we had Moony in ‘93, you know what I mean!” he added quickly, seeing Sirius open his mouth to protest.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Anyway, I’ll let you go now; I can see your living room and I can tell you still haven’t unpacked fully.” Harry pouted at being caught out. “I’ll tell Moony you said hi, he’ll be upset he missed you—and Kreacher too. I forgot to mention that—the mad old thing’s been like a new elf lately, being halfway civil and cooking actual edible meals when I dropped by Grimmauld. I even overheard him singing once, it was ghastly.”

“Really?” This news, if it was true, was probably more incredible than the faltering DADA curse and Charlie’s Gringotts break-in put together. “What changed, do you think?”

Sirius shrugged. “Search me. He finally threw out all the Dark rubbish in the boiler room he thought I didn’t know about, but I’m not sure if that’s a cause or an effect of him acting tolerable.”

“Huh.” It seemed that this recent new year was already bringing a fresher start than most. “Well, tell him that I’m…thinking of him too, I suppose.”

They ended the call not long after, Harry getting to his feet and staring out the window at the front lawn covered in late-January snow. It wouldn’t be long now before his neighbors realized he was back and started dropping by, probably eager to discuss the faculty shake-up at the school. He wondered what the new professor was like; the Ilvermorny staff often came into Greylock for drinks or shopping on the weekends, and most of them also had summer homes in town.

Two rooms away, he heard the front door swing open, accompanied by a blast of cold air from outside.

“Harry! You will not believe what I found at the antiques shop…”

His lips curled into a grin. That was not the voice of some random neighbor. That was his closest friend, occasional traveling partner (and, as she would put it, ‘perpetual partner in crime’), and housemate, a vivacious witch he’d met when he’d gotten lost in Paris a couple years back. She had been suffering under an awful curse at the time—one that, with his combination of Parselmagic abilities and access to the Black library, Harry had been uniquely equipped to help her with. The two of them had been inseparable ever since.

“Hello? Earth to Harry Potter? You’d better not have run off to another jungle in the middle of nowhere already, I have news…”

Harry headed to the foyer, grinning at the familiar sight of his best friend, looking sleek and stylish as ever even under about seven layers of coats (complaining about the cold was one of her many favorite hobbies). Her small feet made an almost unbelievably loud racket as she stamped the snow off her dragonhide boots (was that another new pair?), and almond-shaped eyes sparkled with delight above her cashmere scarf.

“I’m right here. Which you would have known if you’d bothered to walk five feet into the house first,” he said fondly. “And will you please stop yelling my real name when the door’s wide open?” He’d long ago let her know his true identity; she would have found out eventually anyway, and he knew plenty of her secrets too.

She rolled her eyes. “No one’s listening, Henry, it’s colder than the Veil of Death out there.”

“For someone so cold-blooded, maybe,” he teased, earning a glare worthy of a basilisk. “C’mon, Nagini, close the door and show me your latest haul…”

****************

Nagini’s big find from the shop, as it turned out, was not an artifact at all. It was—as she pronounced dramatically, her mouth stretching into a wide smile that reminded Harry of when she’d still sported fangs—“A man.”

“He’s gorgeous,” she gushed. “Just moved in last month. And single.”

“Okay, I see how it is,” he said dryly, mentally readying himself for a new entry in Nagini’s long line of infatuated conquests. Her many wealthy ‘benefactors’ showered her with more than enough gifts to pay for her half of the mortgage—and her magically expanded shoe closet (“I have feet again for the first time in decades,” she’d replied to Harry’s baffled queries, “and lucky me, they’re Fashion Week sample size. I am not about to let this opportunity pass me by.”). “Happy hunting, but I’d prefer you spare me the details—“

She cut him off with a sharp hand motion, looking uncharacteristically serious. “This man is not for me to make a meal of, Harry. He is a gem, a catch, a keeper.” She coughed. “Besides, I can still smell pheromones quite reliably, and he’s definitely not interested in women.”

“Then why—“ he blanched. “Oh no.” He’d correctly identified Nagini’s predatory look, but her new mystery man wasn’t the prey—Harry was. Or maybe he was the keeper of some carnivorous pet, who had just presented him with a bloody carcass and expected him to be ecstatic. “I am not going to hook up with some random hot wizard you met in a shop, Nagini, we’ve been over this—“

“Will you listen!” she shouted, loudly enough that he was tempted to say Can’t, I’m deaf now. “Thomas M. Gaunt is not some random wizard—he is the new professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts at Ilvermorny. British, like you. And a Parselmouth”—she slipped into the language of snakes herself as she pronounced the word—“who seemed very interested in a collaborator with, quote, ‘real expertise’ to help him study the school’s Horned Serpent population.”

That shut Harry up—fast—and he went very still.

If he was being honest with himself, the protected colony of horned serpents was another of the big reasons he’d settled in Greylock. Hunted to extinction in Europe, the species was said to be highly intelligent, incredibly long-lived, and capable of extreme feats of devotion to their mates and hatchlings. Getting to see them in their natural habitat would be a dream come true, but the school was famously protective of their endangered mascot, refusing to even divulge their location to any but approved faculty. Harry had tried unsuccessfully to get an exception. Many times.

“Okay,” he said, drawing out the word to mask his quickened breathing. “That’s actually pretty tempting—on an intellectual level, of course. I suppose it might be interesting to talk with him. He’s probably really busy though, being a new professor and all—“

Nagini shrugged. “He apparently isn’t busy next Tuesday at eleven,” she said blithely. “That’s when I scheduled your first date for.”

“NAGINI!”

Chapter Text

Tom was almost insulted by how easily he secured the position at Ilvermorny. He’d gone to some effort to forge impeccable documents that identified him as Thomas Marvolo Gaunt—a distant cousin of the main family line whose name anagrammed into absolutely nothing interesting—but at the job interview, the weary-looking headmistress hadn’t even spared his paperwork a second glance, and had asked only “Have you ever been charged with impropriety of any kind?” and then “How soon can you start?”

She’d been ecstatic when he told her he had no commitments keeping him in Britain for the holidays, and by the new year—and his birthday—he’d been moving his possessions into a rather well-appointed suite of rooms on the castle’s fifth floor, overlooking a valley with a winding river that disappeared between two shorter mountain peaks.

Maybe if they’d been this appreciative of his talents back at Hogwarts, he wouldn’t have made five Horcruxes and waged a pointless war. But he was trying hard not to waste more time on recriminations. Here, now…it felt right.

Teaching was…There was no sense in mincing words. It was everything he’d dreamed of.

He loved meticulously planning out his lessons, and he loved it even more when he was inevitably forced to deviate from the script and answer students’ questions, extemporize on a tangentially related topic, or switch gears entirely to retain a class’s flagging interest. He loved the students—the superstars with obvious bright futures ahead, and the class clowns whose antics hid clever and creative minds, and the sleeper threats who just needed that little bit of extra attention to thrive. Admittedly, he also relished delivering a well deserved wake-up call to the teens who’d clearly been coasting on their popularity or family names, and were shocked to receive their first P or D grade.

He adored sitting at the head table at mealtimes, and being called ‘Professor Gaunt’. Merlin, he even enjoyed the weekly staff meetings somewhat.

His new colleagues were a well-qualified group of experts at the top of their fields (there were no egregious hires on the level of Severus Snape or Dedalus Diggle), who provided a more than satisfactory level of intellectual stimulation. Unfortunately, unlike Tom, they also bore the telltale signs of wixen who had dedicated their entire lives to academia; namely, advanced age, a pedantic speaking style, and interests rather narrowly limited to their specific area of expertise (and sometimes, for spice, whatever ailment was troubling them lately). They were, on the whole, utterly unsuitable as companions for the newly-reinvigorated Tom. Honestly, he sometimes preferred the colony of gorgeous horned serpents who lived in the magical lake just a few miles into the forest (that was another great positive about Ilvermorny—despite lacking a Parselmouth founder, they clearly harbored a healthy respect for the most noble of creatures).

Naturally, it wasn’t long before he ventured down the mountain in search of more promising social opportunities.

The scene in Greylock initially appeared just as bleak as the town’s name. If the castle’s adult population consisted mostly of ‘absent-minded professor, aged fifty and upward’, the village seemed to skew heavily toward ‘retiree, grandparent, and potential owner of an unprofitable small business, aged sixty and upward’. Many of the self-consciously “charming” eateries on Main Street made the “Golden Snidget cafe” seem like a ruggedly authentic establishment. The local antiques dealer had lured Tom in with promises of a “priceless Slytherin artifact”, only to present him with an old journal, written in truly atrocious and misspelled Parselscript, detailing the debauched sexual escapades of an eighteenth-century Speaker who made dear Uncle Morfin seem like a man of culture.

It was that last traumatic misadventure, however, that led to him meeting an unlikely kindred spirit in the sleepy New England hamlet. Nagini was a marvelous breath of fresh air: A fellow Parselmouth and European transplant, who shared his appreciation for aesthetics and love for the finer things in life. She had led him straight to one of the village’s tucked-away restaurants serving actual cuisine, where they’d shared lunch and quickly begun planning a spring tour of New York’s magical museums.

And then, sweetening the deal even further, she’d told him of her best friend and housemate, Henry—a man who, Tom decided after a brief and highly intriguing description, he needed to meet at the earliest possible opportunity.

**************

The following Tuesday, Tom found himself sitting in the corner of a classy cafe in town, paying only occasional attention to the large brunch spread on the table—and his full, undivided attention to one Henry James, who, as it turned out, was not highly intriguing after all.

He was fascinating.

“Are you sure we haven’t met somewhere before?” Henry asked, taking a break from the story he was telling to pop a raspberry Danish in his mouth. It was the second time he’d asked a variation on this question, but Tom honestly didn’t hold it against him. If not for the fact that he’d been trapped in a temporal abyss since his new companion was only a year old, he probably also would be convinced he knew this man already. He’d felt it from the moment Henry walked into the shop, green eyes sparkling with curiosity over cheeks flushed rosy from the cold. The sheer amount of energy and presence packed into his small body had drawn Tom’s notice immediately, making him stand out even with a stunning witch like Nagini at his side.

“Hey!” the young man had called, his eyes finding Tom just as quickly in the crowd. “Are you Professor Thomas Gaunt?”

“Henry James, I presume,” Tom had replied, standing and extending his hand; and the next hour and a half practically flew by, their initial greetings expanding into a wide-ranging conversation, flowing easily from topic to topic like an old muggle zoetrope. They compared their time at Hogwarts (Henry ridiculously insisted upon calling Hufflepuff and Slytherin ‘brothers of the underground’) and experiences traveling; they'd both loved Scandinavia, Tom for Durmstrang’s citadel of knowledge, Henry for its massive herds of magical reindeer. The ensuing digression on bizarre muggle Christmas mythmaking led to the discovery that they’d both been originally raised by nonmagicals, with all the shared experiences that entailed…

At some point (they probably had Nagini to thank, as three young waiters stopped what they were doing and swarmed their table the moment she sat down), the table had become covered with pastries, fresh fruit, and a dizzying variety of “blends” of the Americans’ beloved coffee.

“I can’t possibly have run into you before, more’s the pity,” Tom answered Henry’s question, taking a sip from one of the cups at random and frowning at its unexpected sweetness. “I would have remembered at least one of your stories. Do continue; what did the Ashwinder smugglers do once they realized you had switched the bags?”

Henry grinned, tiny crinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes as he resumed his tale. “Well, they wanted to do a lot of things, all of which they yelled at me from the other side of the river. But there wasn’t much they could do, because that was when the eggs hatched and melted the ice bridge—ah!” He nearly spilled his hot cocoa as he spun around to face Nagini, who was standing up again for some reason and had laid a finely-manicured hand on Henry’s shoulder. “What the hell, Nagini! How did you get there!?”

The slim witch plopped into the seat on Henry’s other side, one eyebrow raised. “I’m back,” she said, her tone implying that they were missing something obvious. When both of them continued to give her identical blank expressions, she gave an affronted huff that turned into a cackle halfway through. “Oh Merlin, you two idiots didn’t even realize I was gone!”

Tom searched his memory—usually a highly reliable thing, but it was currently front-loaded with Henry’s most amusing facial expressions from the past hour—and eventually came up with a vague, blurry recollection of Nagini loudly announcing, over the two wizards’ discussion of the most useful features in magical tents, that she was “going to a hair appointment”. How long ago had that been? She had definitely been with them when the food first arrived—she’d been utterly shameless about stealing from both their plates…

“I did know you were gone!” Henry was insisting now, cheeks pinking. “You went to…er…” He stared obliviously past Nagini’s freshly-blown-out hair, “to get mousetrap bait, right? You mentioned that the other day—“

Tom tried to rescue him by subtly touching his own hair, but he was oblivious—about what you’d expect from someone who, from the looks of it, had never seen the inside of a salon.

(Why did Tom find that detail—usually a sign of laziness and lack of ambition—charming in the messy-haired magizoologist?)

“Circe’s tits, Henry, it’s fine,” she chuckled, waving a hand airily. “Anyway, did you at least get around to asking the professor here if he’d show you the Horned Serpents?”

In the rush of the past hour, Tom had entirely forgotten to bring up his nascent idea for a collaboration. Truly, Nagini was a gem of a witch; he and Henry clearly also shared the same excellent taste in friends. “Oh yes, that reminds me—“

But Henry only shot her a glare, and then hurriedly turned back to Tom. “That’s something she brought up,” he insisted rather defensively. “I know the access to them is really restricted; I was already turned down through the official channels. I’d never expect you to just let me into—“

Ah, Tom realized, as Henry continued to babble. He fears I’ll think he’s only using me, to advance his career. An absurd idea—Henry wore his heart on his sleeve, and had one of the most expressive faces Tom had ever seen. He doubted the Hufflepuff would even be capable of faking a genuine connection with someone.

“The access to the potions storage at Ilvermorny is also restricted,” he said dryly, “but that certainly doesn’t stop the school groundskeeper from helping himself to the hangover cures and virility enhancers every weekend.” Just because he hadn’t grown close with any of his new coworkers didn’t mean he hadn’t been observing them. “I’m sure he’d be willing to…look the other way while I brought in a personal guest.” Encouraged by Henry’s intrigued expression, he pushed on: “The students have a free day in town Thursday after next—the grounds would be nearly empty, ideal for our purposes.”

Henry looked at Tom with a complicated mixture of excitement, suspicion, and indecision. As if he were witnessing all his dreams come true—and yet couldn’t be sure it wasn’t some trick. It was…the look he’d sometimes seen on the faces of the other orphans, when they were told a couple was interested in adopting. He made note of that, in the back of his mind: This man does not expect kindness as the default. He hasn’t always been treated well. How strange—who could possibly want to treat Henry James poorly? Tom rather thought that even the mad Lord Voldemort might’ve had a soft spot for him.

Still, Henry’s moment of inner conflict passed in less than the blink of an eye as his excitement took over, his knee bumping into Tom’s as he practically wriggled in his seat. “Really? That would be brilliant! Oh—are we allowed to talk to them? I have a theory that I’ve always wanted to—“

Tom smirked, pleased with himself. “I have indeed already established contact with a few of them, including the rarer bejeweled variety—“

Nagini nibbled daintily on a croissant. “Yes, yes, I can tell you boys are very excited—You’re already warming up for the big meeting.” At Henry and Tom’s matching confused looks, she smiled like the cat with the cream and said, “Oh, you didn’t notice? The both of you have been speaking to each other in Parsel since I sat back down.”

Tom blanched. “We’re speaking English, don’t be absurd,” he started, only to find that he was hissing the words, and seemingly had been for quite some time now. He could see Henry coming to a similar realization across the table, silently mouthing syllables to himself.

He hadn’t mixed up English and Parsel since the age of five, when he’d been beaten for the mistake. “How—?”

“It must have been when we were talking about the Occamies in India,” Henry reasoned, brow furrowed. “You were imitating their weird dialect. I guess that got me Speaking too, and then we just…never switched back?”

Tom nodded. He did remember that—Henry had laughed himself breathless at Tom’s impression of the winged snakes’ bird-call-inflected speech. Well, no harm, no foul; they had privacy wards up and wouldn’t have disturbed anyone. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense. But to return to the topic of next Thursday…”

“It seems my work here is done,” Nagini said contentedly, taking a long sip from a cup with more whipped cream than liquid. “Perhaps I ought to squeeze in a pedicure as well and meet you back at the cottage, Henry…”

————————

Harry made his way up to Ilvermorny castle late on Thursday morning, passing a multitude of teenagers giggling, holding hands, and occasionally straight-up snogging as they travelled in the opposite direction.

“Have fun on your date,” Nagini had said as he left, as she put the finishing touches on a five-page letter to the Muggle businessman she was in the process of romance-scamming.

“It isn’t a date! We have shared interests and are thinking of writing a research paper together!” he’d shouted, probably far too loudly and quickly. She hadn’t stopped teasing him all week, after he and Thomas got on so well at brunch.

“Uh-huh.” She blew gently on her flowery cursive in emerald green ink. “He talked about nothing but you when we got drinks in Boston on Saturday, you know. If this hadn’t been my plan from the start, I’d be irritated with you for stealing the wizard I found.”

He refused to dignify that with a response, but something inside him was secretly gratified that Thomas had apparently spent as much time thinking about Harry as the other way around. He couldn’t seem to get the professor off his mind the past ten days: his interesting ideas, his wealth of life experiences that was extraordinary for someone only twenty-eight…his brown eyes, rich and sharp like dark chocolate. The man was highly charismatic, almost magnetic; Harry was sure he made for an excellent teacher. The students of Ilvermorny were lucky indeed, not “cursed” in the slightest, no matter what Sirius said.

Thomas was waiting at the iron front gate as they’d agreed, and his face broke into a smile when he spotted Harry. “There you are, Henry. Allow me to welcome you to Ilvermorny Castle.” He swept his arm dramatically at the towering granite fortress.

They swiftly fell into easy conversation, and into step beside each other, following a path alongside a river as it flowed into a forested valley, the trees growing thicker over the next hour or so as they hiked into progressively more rugged territory. At one point, Thomas stopped, his hand on Harry’s elbow, and murmured that they should speak only in Parsel from this point further, so as not to disturb the serpents’ keen ears.

Harry grinned. “Makes sense. But this time let’s remember to switch back before we run into any other humans.”

Not long afterwards, they rounded a final bend in the river, and his eyes widened as it opened up into a midsized lake, nestled within the trees like a sapphire dropped in tall grass. The azure surface was still and clear of ice, despite the snow on the ground and branches, and the pebbly shore was lined with larger rocks that Harry could already tell would make excellent nesting locations for the semiaquatic snakes.

They set up a small “camp” on the shoreline, casting warming charms and transfiguring a blanket out of pine needles, while Thomas explained the underground leyline that provided the serpents with a year-round source of warmth and magic. Not long after, the sun reached its peak, and the lake began to ripple in multiple places as the colony emerged for their daily dose of sunshine. Their scales sparkled in all shades of blue and green and violet, a few even a striking onyx black. Horns of varying sizes and lengths—Harry wondered if there was some sort of hierarchy—adorned their heads like crowns, some of them cradling large gems that matched each individual’s coloring. They dipped in and out of the water like Muggle drawings of sea snakes, slithered out onto the rocks to sunbathe, and called to each other in low, melodic tones reminiscent of whale song.

“Wow,” he breathed, taking in the sensory feast—even the sharp scents of pine and mineral water seemed heightened—as if trying to drink in the entire lake. “That song—they’re communicating, aren’t they? They don’t just use Parseltongue, like other snakes. That’s one of my theories, that they’re a naturally bilingual species—“

Thomas smirked and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, directing his gaze toward a nearby patch of shoreline where an amethyst-colored serpent was stretching her nearly four-meter body along the smooth stones. “Why don’t you ask? I know that one—she’s a female called Iridescence-Of-Stars-Reflected-On-Water, though she graciously permits me to call her Iris.”

Almost giddy with anticipation, Harry followed Thomas up to the purple sea snake, and bowed his head respectfully as the professor introduced the two of them.

“Greetings, noble serpent,” he said, setting his wand down on a rock in a display of trust and nonaggression. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

Iris peered at him with yellow eyes that shone with fierce intelligence and ancient wisdom. Then she looked back at Thomas—Harry could’ve sworn she raised an eyebrow, even on her smooth face—before replying.

“You may speak colloquially, human,” she said benevolently, inclining her head. “Worded language itself is already a mere shadow of the glorious music that comprises true speech, which can only find its full expression in the resonant underwater chambers inaccessible to your kind. It makes no difference whether you polish a clod of dirt.”

Harry’s own eyebrows flew up; Thomas started laughing. “Oh, I think she likes you, Henry—it took her two weeks to warm up to me that much.”

“Only because you vouched for him.” Iris flicked Thomas’s shoulder with her massive tail.

But Harry’s surprise was actually due more to the other thing she had said. “Glorious music? Iris, does that mean your kind do have a discrete musical language?”

“Pfft.” She rose up on her massive coils and readjusted herself against a massive boulder. “As I said, music is the only truly pure language. But you have the right idea, hatchling…”

Harry wound up spending the rest of the afternoon sitting on a midsized boulder of his own, listening raptly as Iris—with the occasional nudge of encouragement and flattery—gave him a basic overview of her species’ complex language of melody, tone and harmony, even giving a demonstration or two, although she repeatedly insisted that an above-water atmosphere stripped it of all ‘nuance’. A separate group of curious younger serpents swam over to see what they were doing, and were soon engaged with Thomas in what sounded like a gossip session about his fellow Ilvermorny professors.

As the sun grazed the top of the western trees and the colony prepared to return to the thermal depths of the lake, Harry hummed his very best attempt at the language’s standard farewell, a simple four-note sequence. Iris regarded him over her shoulder with what appeared to be a mixture of amusement and pity.

“Inadequate,” she said bluntly. “Next time, bring one of your strange human constructs for shaping the air.” It took him a second to realize she meant a musical instrument.

And with that, she sang her own version of the goodbye—it really did put Harry’s to shame—and melted back into the water with her fellows.

He felt a warm presence as Thomas came up beside him again. “Well?” the other wizard hissed softly, voice warm and amused. “What is your professional opinion?”

Harry promptly spun around and, needing somewhere to direct all his energy, flung his arms around Thomas’s shoulders.

“That. Was. Amazing!” He pulled back a little, embarrassed, but the taller man seemed pleased, if a bit surprised. “She said ‘next time’, did you hear? Do you think it’d be possible to bring me back? We could get an entire research paper just about their language, I’m sure of it…”

Thomas flashed a smile. “That shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. The caretaker shows no signs of taking up the sober life any time soon.”

They stayed warm on the trek back despite the low winter sun, both flushed with excitement as they bounced around ideas for future trips and further study.

“I’ve got something at home that might do a better job of replicating the sound,” Harry said, thinking of the flute Hagrid gave him when he was eleven. “I just wish I could record it somehow before I forget…”

“I learned musical notation as part of my studies in Arithmancy,” Thomas jumped in. “I could perhaps assist you in scoring it…“

The miles back to the more manicured part of the grounds seemed to pass in a blink, and soon Harry was treated to the sight of the castle’s western-facing wall of windows, all lit up by the setting sun.

Thomas followed his gaze. “You know, I can actually see this exact spot where we’re standing, from my bedroom at the school,” he said thoughtfully.

“Really?” He scanned the windows again, as if one of them would display some unmissable sign of being Thomas’s. “You’ll have to show me sometime! I mean—“ All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his face as he realized what he’d just said. “Oh Merlin, no, it’s like I want to go into your bedroom or something, I just meant—“

For a moment, Thomas actually seemed a bit flummoxed—a look Harry had yet to see on him before. “Ah, well, of course,” he muttered, coughing lightly. “I mean—that is to say, my office and sitting room also have windows—“

There was a crunch of a heavier, booted footstep on the snow in front of them.

“Thomas—fancy seeing you here! And who’s this fine young man? I don’t recognize him from among my seventh years!”

Harry and Thomas abruptly sprang apart at the interruption, breaking what had been rather intense eye contact.

“Er—“

Thomas immediately recomposed his face into a polite mask. “Ah—good afternoon, Walden. Allow me to introduce Henry James, my guest here on the grounds today. Henry, this is Walden Thistlewaite, the Creature Care professor here at Ilvermorny and a dedicated conservationist.”

“Not a student here,” Harry couldn’t help but point out, always a little sensitive about his below-average height. “I actually graduated three years back—from Hogwarts.”

Thomas hid his smirk behind a cough. “And Henry, this is Walden Thistlewaite—the Creature Care professor here at Ilvermorny, and an ardent conservationist.” He touched Harry’s upper arm and glanced at him for no more than a split second, but the message couldn’t have been more clear: unlike the larcenous caretaker Thomas had probably blackmailed, Professor Thistlewaite was unlikely to look the other way from an unauthorized visitor to the horned serpents.

“The pleasure is all mine! And what might the two of you be doing at the edge of the grounds so close to dinnertime, if you don’t mind my asking? Not that there are curfews on school employees, of course—not even ones still within their three-month probationary period, eh Thomas?”

“Umm,” Harry said stupidly, looking anxiously at Thomas—who, to his concern, appeared to be considering drastic measures, which may or may not involve Obliviation, to escape their predicament. “Well, you see—“

“Walden—“ Thomas began, his voice dropping an octave.

The old professor’s eyes widened as something seemed to dawn on him, and a sly expression crept onto his face. “Oh, now I see—“

Harry was sure they were done for, he was going to get his new friend fired on just their second non-date—

“The two of you slipped away while the students were in town, to have a little Valentine’s Day fun of your own!” Thistlewaite crowed. “I should have guessed from the start. I knew things would get more interesting around here when the headmistress brought you on, Thomas. Ah, to be young again!”

And he walked away whistling a tune, seemingly oblivious to their twin reactions of mute shock.

“Oh Godric,” Harry muttered, wishing he could melt into the ground and feeling almost hot enough to actually do it. How did he not notice the bloody date on the calendar, or how many of those snogging students on the path had been dressed in pink and red? “He thinks—and it’s—fuck—“

“Well…” Thomas shifted from one foot to the other; Harry could tell, because he was staring at their shoes. “Perhaps the good Professor Thistlewaite has actually just given us an excellent St. Valentine’s Day gift.”

He snapped his head back up in surprise to see Thomas wearing a sly expression of his own, and found himself intrigued. “Yeah? How d’you mean?”

“We will need a plausible excuse to be seen together on the grounds, if we are to make a study of the serpents,” the professor elaborated. “If word were to get around that we were, ah, involved in an entirely different way…”

“Then no one would think twice if I visited you here—and they’d give us privacy.” Harry felt a grin spreading across his face at the elegant solution; this was why Slytherins were such good brothers of the underground! “I like it.”

Thomas’s answering smirk was smug and self-satisfied. “Then I look forward to working with you, Henry.”

“If we’re supposed to be involved, you should call me Harry,” he said lightly, boldness making him cheeky. “All my friends do.”

The other man frowned for just a fraction of a second. “Harry? Like the—“

“The Muggle prince, yeah,” Harry dodged, steering the conversation firmly away from dangerous Boy-Who-Lived territory. “You wouldn’t believe how much I get that, here in the States. So many Anglophiles.”

Tom’s face cleared. “Hmm, yes, the effect my accent had on my first day teaching here was rather concerning...In that case, I would ask that you call me Tom.”

As his new partner and faux-paramour, Tom insisted on walking him back down the mountain in the gathering dark. As their beams of wandlight chased each other through the gloom, they discussed the details of the ruse, and concluded that they would need to go on at least three fake public “dates” per week to be properly convincing.

———————————

The next weeks passed quickly. Harry’s schedule was newly filled with visits to the castle and lake, time in his study collating his notes or practicing on the flute, and regular outings to Greylock or New York with Tom, Nagini, or, if he was prepared for some true chaos, both of them.

He and Tom continued visiting Iris at least once a week, and she was steadily warming up to them, especially once she understood that there would perhaps be, as she called it, a ‘collection of paper’ written on her species’ sophisticated language. In their fieldwork and research, the two Parselmouths were also learning a great deal about horned serpent culture as a whole, and were already expanding the scope of their proposed paper.

(They’d offered Nagini the chance to be their third Speaker collaborator, but she’d stonily told them that she’d “spent enough time over the past fifty years crawling on my belly over wet, freezing rocks and leaves, thank you.”)

Harry had also risen significantly in the serpents’ esteem as his musical skills improved, something he owed almost entirely to Tom’s help. He’d been no better at the flute in the beginning than a Muggle primary schooler blowing into a free recorder, but his friend was as good a teacher as he’d suspected, showing him breathing techniques and gently repositioning his fingers over the holes. He was even getting a basic grasp on the notation, finding the process not entirely dissimilar to learning Runes; and he sometimes unwound before bed by sight-reading his way through Tom’s elegantly transcribed music sheets.

With all the work they were doing together, it was a lucky thing that their performative “dates” turned out not to be a hardship at all, but rather a pleasant chance to relax and recharge their energy. Sometimes they’d go straight from a writing and brainstorming session to a public appearance at a restaurant or local event, resulting in several full days spent entirely in each other’s company, and yet they rarely seemed to grow tired or aggravated with each other.

“This is…er…” Harry muttered to Tom, one night as they watched an amateur production of “Babbity Rabbity and the Talking Stump”, performed by the local children too young to attend Ilvermorny.

“Terrible,” Tom gritted out through the corner of his perfectly-maintained rictus smile. “It is abominable, Harry—we are both men of science, do not be afraid to call a thing what it is. But a great number of my colleagues are here to support their untalented grandchildren—including the headmistress, who is looking in our direction as we speak. Smile!”

Harry snorted, and struggled to suppress a full on giggling fit—luckily, at the exact moment the stage play’s buffoonish Muggle king made a particular fool of himself.

Their efforts paid off, though. Between their time spent together and Professor Thistlewaite’s loose tongue, everyone in the town and castle knew by the end of February that Henry James and Thomas Gaunt were an “item”. It had become almost too easy for Harry to stroll right up to the gates, meet Tom on the path, and head off into the forest, receiving nothing but indulgent smiles from whoever else was around; the other professors had even let him in themselves a time or two. He was considering adding a chapter to the paper about how the serpents desperately needed more rigorous protection.

Perhaps naturally, it wasn’t long before he also took Tom up on his offer to come inside the castle and get a look at his private quarters (Harry did not go into the bedroom, but he did glimpse a finely-carved hardwood sleigh bed through a crack in the door). The view from the large fifth-floor window truly was impressive, but Harry found himself more interested in what was on the inside.

“A piano!” he cried, upon seeing the stately instrument tucked into the corner of the office. “You’ve been holding out on me—and here you said you only knew about music from Arithmancy!”

“It belonged to the previous resident,” Tom demurred, but when Harry cocked an eyebrow and looked pointedly at the piano’s obvious signs of recent use—music sheets scribbled with Tom’s handwriting, his jacket and a mug of his preferred tea set casually on the bench—he huffed and admitted, “Although I have…dabbled in the past. And again in recent weeks, I suppose.”

From then on, they nearly always did their review of the serpents’ musical sequences at Tom’s place, Harry simply tucking his flute into his pocket before heading up the mountain. Together they figured out how to make the piano magically play on its own, and it made a perfect backdrop as they talked and read.

It wasn’t uncommon for Harry to stay long enough into the evenings that it only made sense for him to accompany Tom to the dining hall for a meal. None of the other professors or students batted an eye at this. Even some of the house-elves knew his name and favorite foods.

“Gee, sounds delightful,” Nagini said dryly, when Harry enthused about how smooth and productive their relationship had become. “One might even think that you’re, I don’t know, actually dating.”

“Don’t be stupid. We don’t kiss or hold hands or anything!” Harry wasn’t counting all the times he and Tom had steadied each other when they picked their way over lakeside rocks or rotted logs in the woods.

“Neither did engaged and courting couples, back in my day,” she replied with a wicked grin. “They saved all that pent-up energy for the wedding night.”

“I am not taking advice on romance from a crazy witch who is technically almost a century old!”

She gazed at him with that unnerving, unblinking stare, a remnant of her time trapped as a snake. “Did you forget that I can smell pheromones? You both come back from your ‘fieldwork’ drenched in love juice.”

He scoffed. “That’s just from Iris. She actually introduced us to her mate a few weeks back.”

Indeed, since the time of the Spring Equinox, Iris had been almost perpetually accompanied by a pure-black serpent even larger than her, with horns that almost touched his back and an onyx jewel the size of a Bludger on his head. His name was The-Darkness-That-Remains-When-The-Sun’s-Light-Is-Quenched, but he would also respond to “Jet”. He and Iris were absolutely mad for each other, twining their bodies together in intricate patterns like Celtic knots as they swam or chatted on the shore with Harry and Tom. It was more than enough to make anyone within a hundred meters smell of ‘love juice’.

“They mate only once, and for life,” Harry had said Tom, as they recorded Iris and Jet crooning a long and complex series of notes to each other across the lake. “It’s kind of romantic.”

Tom was quiet for a while, twirling his quill between his long fingers. “I suppose I can understand them somewhat,” he mused. “A heart is arguably one’s most precious possession, next to the soul and life itself. It is wise to wait and choose a…highly worthy recipient.”

Iris may have waited to choose a mate, but she certainly wasn’t wasting any time now that she’d found him. In early May, she met them by her favorite cluster of rocks, glowing with self-importance, while Jet loomed protectively in the background.

“I will soon be commencing my nesting and period of confinement,” she announced proudly, slipping just a bit into the formal tone she always insisted was unnecessary. “My mate and I are to be blessed with an egg, and it will require uninterrupted care and attention while it incubates. I have instructed the younger adolescents to answer your questions in my stead, so that you may continue work on your paper-collection.”

“That’s wonderful news, Iris!” Harry gushed. He knew that horned serpent eggs were extremely rare and precious—both to their devoted parents, and to the despicable poachers who slipped into nests and harvested them for potions ingredients. “Congratulations.” After a moment’s deliberation, he took out his flute and carefully played a twelve-note sequence that was used by the serpents to commemorate an auspicious occasion.

Iris looked at him like an indulgent mother being presented with her toddler’s sloppy art project. “That was…a valiant effort.” Behind her, Jet gave a not-very-subtle wince.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he huffed, spotting Tom’s lips curving upwards behind his hand. “You’d be making just as much of a fool of yourself, if you could drag your bloody piano all the way down here.”

By the next weekend, the mated pair had shifted several of the boulders into a large, reinforced sort of cave on the shoreline. The entrance was hidden underwater; Iris and Jet would spend the next couple “moons” trading off incubation duties, taking turns warming the egg while the other ate, slept and recovered below the surface.

Harry and Tom spent that afternoon making a detailed sketch of the nest from all angles, making sure everything was accurate and to scale. It was almost unprecedented, for a human to have such close access to this part of the serpent life cycle. At one point, Harry looked up from his parchment and noticed that Tom, an enviably quick artist with his long nimble fingers, had already finished sketching the back and was now working on a separate, more deliberate drawing.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” he called. “Have you gotten the leeward side yet?”

Tom looked up, startled, as if he’d been caught misbehaving, and gave him a strange, piercing stare.

“I was merely recording…other things of interest,” he murmured, sounding almost dazed, and then got up and moved to a different position.

——————————

On a late-spring night in New York City, Tom stood on the rooftop of some overly trendy Muggle hotel, sipping a drink and mentally cataloguing a list of Muggle technologies that were not worthy of consideration or adaptation by magical society, chief among them “low-rise pants” and “music consisting almost entirely of bass”. Worse, the insufferable twentysomething No-Majes (he’d been in the States long enough now that occasionally slipped and used the unwieldy local term) in attendance insisted on giving him judgemental looks and double takes, as if he was the one who’d done wrong by wearing his good suit to an event clearly described as an “upscale party”.

Honestly, the things he did for his newfound friendship.

Tonight was a celebration of (apparently; the details were byzantine and unclear) an enormous photograph of Nagini’s face being mounted on a Muggle billboard in Times Square, for the purpose of selling skincare products. This “gig”, she’d proudly told him and Harry, had been secured through her connection with a wealthy businessman and, to quote, “several decades of literally shedding every month, so of course my skin’s like a newborn baby’s!” Tom had been fully prepared to turn her down outright, because while he and the charming Maledictus’s shared many interests, they did not include the nightlife of a metropolis with twice the humidity and half the class of London.

But then dear Harry, loyal friend that he was, had agreed, though every line of his face clearly screamed that he dreaded this even more than Tom. And Tom could not leave his friend and partner to face this alone—so he had accepted as well. Nagini had squealed with joy and hugged both of them over their shared mezzo platter. Someone as manipulative as her would’ve sorted Slytherin in an instant.

Now he was stood here at a time when he could’ve been doing something productive (such as marking spelling mistakes in first-year essays), eating terrible canapés and watching Nagini show off dance moves that, at the very least, certainly explained why she’d once been the top draw of the Circus Arcanus.

And yet…Harry was by his side, his fellow little wallflower (roof-flower? This entire concept was absurd), flinching whenever the music reached a certain decibel level. Providing Harry with moral support, Tom reminded himself, was also productive. The cheerful, whip-smart young Parselmouth had, over the past months, inexplicably become one of his favorite things about Mount Greylock. From his unabashed passion for everything he did, to his admirable habit of taking “impossible” as merely the universe’s opening offer (and he’d needed both those things in his successful campaign to sway Tom on the importance of creature rights), to his frankly stunning level of magical power and skill at Defense (Tom had discovered this last fact when they’d been ambushed by a Wendigo on a late-night trip down the mountain), Harry was likely the closest thing to a true peer, an equal, that Tom had ever found in this world.

He had even inspired Tom to pick up the piano again; the younger man’s creativity and broad imagination seemed to bring out his own dormant artistic side. He’d barely touched a keyboard since he made his first Horcrux, and yet he’d written multiple original compositions in the past months, completely independent from their work with the serpents. Not to mention his sketchpad full of drawings, a good proportion of which featured Harry’s face or hands or storm cloud of hair.

And on top of all that, their show “romance” did an excellent job of warding off Tom’s overeager and hormonal seventh years, who seemed hellbent on causing yet another student-teacher sex scandal.

“For what it’s worth,” Harry was saying now, as yet another ignorant child snickered at Tom’s formalwear, “I think you look great. Classic, like.” The neon strobe lights made his cheeks look pink.

“And you as well.” He looked his companion up and down with approval. Harry was dressed simply and cleanly in a fitted jumper and those peculiar denim trousers that did a surprisingly fine job of accentuating one’s shape. He had certainly done a better job of “dressing Muggle” than Nagini’s book-club friends from Greylock, a gaggle of middle-aged witches who had arrived wearing, it appeared, a collection of things purchased from car boots on their way into the city.

(And yet the young people here were fawning over them as ‘quirky fashion grannies’. Sometimes this new decade still utterly baffled Tom.)

“Um, look…” Harry glanced around, as if anyone could even hear him over the ‘music’ (he’d love to get Iris’s opinion on this racket, but she’d probably maul him first). “D’you want to, er, get out of here? I mean, I only came to support Nagini, and she…doesn’t exactly seem like she needs me right now.” He eyed their mutual friend across the roof, where she was simultaneously courting three dance partners and a Statute of Secrecy violation with her gravity-defying spins.

“Sweet Salazar, I thought you’d never ask.” Tom promptly tossed his tasteless appetizer over the edge of the roof, where it was snapped up by a passing owl before he could even Vanish it properly. “Where shall we go? The Guggenheim’s magical side is open all night on weekends, if I recall…”

“Actually…” Harry grinned in that way of his that, Tom knew by now, presaged something either brilliant or mad—or both. “It’s pretty warm tonight—there’s a place I’ve wanted to check out for a while now, if you’re up for a walk.”

Tom swept his arm graciously in front of him. “Lead the way, darling.”

And they made for the elevator—just in time, as the owl from before had just swooped down and delivered a letter to one of the book-club witches, causing a panicked commotion among the Muggle guests.

*************

They dashed across the grass at Central Park, Tom surreptitiously using his favorite unaided-flight spell to help him keep pace with Harry in his more comfortable clothes and shoes. They’d walked side by side for several blocks to get here, but the minute they were through the gates, the younger man’s eyes had lit up like the Killing Curse and he’d been off like a shot, yelling “Catch me if you can!”

And Tom had…actually followed. Perhaps they’d both had more to drink tonight than they realized—either that, or Muggle alcohol had a higher proof.

So intent did he become on the chase that when he saw Harry slowing in front of him, he leapt forward and triumphantly grabbed him by the collar—and very nearly pitched them both into the park’s lake, which he’d completely overlooked in the darkness. Harry nimbly rebalanced himself on solid ground, laughing, but Tom would have been soaked if not for the flight spell still lingering on his shoes. He huffed, stepping back from the edge, and tried to regain his dignity after what must have been another temporary lapse of his sanity.

“Is this what you walked fifteen blocks to do tonight, then? Attempt to dunk me in a pond?”

Harry just kept on giggling unrepentantly. “No, silly, although that would be a fun activity for a warm night.” He gave a final snort. “But I actually wanted to see this place, in particular.”

Tom squinted out into the darkness. It was, by all accounts, an ordinary Muggle body of water, rather pitiful compared to the magical lake where they regularly visited the serpents. He couldn’t imagine there being much more interesting about it even in better lighting. “Whatever for?”

“This,” his friend announced, stepping back up beside Tom and spreading his arms dramatically, “is the spot where, just over seventy-five years ago, Newt Scamander danced with an Erumpent on the frozen surface of this very pond.”

Once again, Tom was certain Harry was having him on. “What on earth are you talking about? There’s nothing about such a thing in any of his memoirs or biographies.”

“But not all the best stories make it into books!” Harry rose up on his tiptoes, seizing Tom by his lapels and looking very intense for a moment, before laughing again and relaxing. “I heard it straight from the source, anyhow. Scamander’s my friend Luna’s granddad-in-law, and I got to meet him once when I went with her and Rolf to look for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in Sweden.”

Tom blinked. Were the muggles still spiking their drinks with lysergic acid, as he’d heard was popular in the seventies?

…But no, this was just the inimitable Harry James on a slightly-above-average Saturday night.

“He showed me, too, even though he was over a hundred by then,” he went on, dragging Tom over onto a more level patch of grass. “See—“

And Harry began to dance.

It could not be more different than the intricately-choreographed mating rituals of the horned serpents. There was no music, for one thing—unless one counted the alarming, raspy screams that he let out at regular intervals, the first of which nearly made Tom fall over in shock—and the movements were shambolic, lurching, all hunched-over hops and foot shuffles and, at one point, an inelegant flop to the ground followed by a full roll. But in all the pureblood balls and cotillions he’d attended in his lifetime, Tom didn’t think he’d seen anyone move with more conviction and confidence.

“C’mon, dance with me!” Harry commanded repeatedly, and though Tom never did—he had limits, even for a man as special and unique as Harry—he did watch every moment of the mesmerizing spectacle. And when Harry finally collapsed, breathless, on his back, Tom sat down beside him (his own limbs neatly folded, of course) and joined him in staring up at the stars glittering over the water.

————————-

On a sultry night in June, Harry was awakened by an aggressive tapping at his bedroom window.

He rolled out of bed and managed to push the pane open just in time, as the large barn owl on the other side—he recognized it as one of the Ilvermorny school birds—seemed ready to peck straight through the glass to get to him. The moment the way was clear, it swooped into the room, dropped a large red envelope on his bed, then turned sharply and shot back into the night without pausing for so much as a scratch on the head.

“Good evening to you too,” Harry mumbled sleepily. Then he noticed that the envelope was smoking, and quickly found himself wide awake.

He had only just gotten a silencing ward up to keep from rousing the whole neighborhood when the Howler burst open and Tom’s amplified voice came pouring out:

“Harry! Fuck—I’m sorry about this but couldn’t think of anything else—listen, Iris and Jet are in trouble and they need you. Come now and meet me at the gates as usual”—his voice switched to Parseltongue and dropped slightly, as if his head had turned in the other direction—“yes, he’ll be able to understand my “ugly mammal language”, we are both actually humans, you know—hurry, Harry!”

Fully alert now, he hit the envelope with a freezing charm before it went up in flames. He didn’t begrudge Tom in the slightest for choosing this method of communication; he hadn’t quite mastered the Patronus yet (a little odd for a professor of Defense, but the spell obviously depended on a lot of very personal factors), and time was of the essence if their serpent friends needed help.

Hence, his easy decision to simply throw on a set of outer robes over his pajamas, leave a note for Nagini, and fly straight up Mount Greylock on his Firebolt.

Tom looked only briefly surprised when he spotted Harry approaching him at top speed. “Good thinking,” he said, nodding in approval. “I’ll join you on the flight the rest of the way.”

“Okay.” Harry slowed down just enough to keep pace with his friend speed-walking alongside him. “Should we ride double, or have you got your own broom?”

He seemed oddly caught off guard by this question, as if he hadn’t been considering either option. What was he planning on doing, leaping into the air and gliding along like a bat? Finally, with an extremely grudging expression, he drew his wand and Summoned an old Nimbus from the broom shed, all the way across the grounds.

Damn, his power levels are impressive.

Tom was clearly not at home on a broomstick, but what he lacked in agility he made up for by magically blasting obstacles out of his path as they zoomed through the forest to the lake.

“How did they even contact you?” Harry called over the whipping of wind and pine needles past his ears.

“I woke up with one of the younger serpents on my chest, hissing hysterically.” Tom snorted. “Apparently they’ve always been able to get into the castle through the plumbing, they just usually find us too boring to bother.”

Harry chuckled in spite of his urgency and worry. Everything they learned about the serpents just further proved his original theory that they were as smart and ingenious as any human.

They were greeted on the lakeshore by Jet, who was floating just outside the entrance to the nest-cave, swimming in frantic circles like the aquatic version of pacing.

“You are here,” he said the moment they dismounted. “Our egg is in danger; its heartbeat has been weakening by the hour. Ordinarily, a human entering a serpent nest is a disrespect punishable by death, but we are desperate.” His luminescent eyes swept over them, sending the clear message that the standard punishment could be quickly reinstated if they overstepped their boundaries.

Harry turned to Tom, and neither of them needed to hesitate in the slightest. They nodded in silent agreement, then quickly cast Bubblehead and Impervious Charms on themselves, preparing to dive for the underwater entrance.

The cave seemed more spacious on the inside, warm and damp, with water trickling through cracks in the rocks and moss crawling over the walls and ceiling. Iris was curled in the far corner, her thick coils wrapped around a multicolored egg with an almost metallic shine, like chrome.

“Iris, it’s us—Harry and Tom,” Harry hissed softly, stepping toward her with his hands raised nonthreateningly—only to watch in horror as she lashed out with the speed of a whip, fangs bared and spitting venom. It was so shocking from the normally languid, aloof serpent that he took a split second too long to dodge and would have been bitten or thrown into the wall if not for Tom, who moved with near-animal speed of his own to pull Harry behind him and throw up a Protego.

Iris drew back but continued to sway back and forth dangerously, the horns and spikes on her head raising in an obvious threat display.

Tom rounded on Jet, looking outraged. “What is the meaning of—“

“Tom, no!” Harry put a hand on his wrist before he could do something that would make them both snake chow. “She can’t help her protective instincts around her egg.”

Jet inclined his own massive head. “Just so. She has been half-mad with fear and worry since late this afternoon, and barely even allows me to approach.” He turned to give Tom an assessing look. “Although I respect your desire to defend your own mate, Professor Gaunt.”

Harry opened his mouth to dispute this point, and saw Tom clearly ready to do the same; but at the last moment, they caught each other’s eye and seemed to reach the mutual conclusion that now was not the time to quibble with a nonhuman creature over his word choice. Tom shot him a quick smirk, then spoke quietly:

“You’re the expert here. What should we do?”

Harry bit his lip. “There’s a technique that some other magizoologists have used to calm a horned serpent,” he said, remembering all the books he’d read about them back at Hogwarts. “You can mirror their movements, and sometimes it soothes them, makes them more comfortable with you. I’ve never needed to try it with the colony since I’m a Parselmouth, but if she’s not listening to words right now…”

Tom frowned. “What do you mean, it ‘sometimes’ soothes them?”

He grinned shakily. “Well, other times they take it as a challenge and attack.”

The other man sighed and ran his hand through his dark curls. “Of course they do.”

Jet, who had been listening to their conversation with his head tilted, slithered up beside them. “I would be willing to sing,” he offered regally, “to help calm her, while you attempt this…tactic.”

Harry quietly cast a spell to sharpen his ears. “I can hear the heartbeat getting weaker,” he whispered, his own heart sinking in dismay. He didn’t need to explain to either of his companions what that meant; horned serpents were, if possible, even more devoted to their eggs and hatchlings than to their mates, and were known to stop eating and die of grief if they lost one. “We need to get closer to have any chance of saving it. We have to try.”

Tom nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. “Together, then.”

They stepped forward as one, Tom re-holstering his wand only after a pointed look from Harry. Jet twisted his thick black body into a complicated coil shape, almost like a horn or trumpet, and began to emit low, crooning noises; Harry recognized many of the notes from his study of the serpents’ language. It was a melody and tone that spoke of calm waves lapping against the lakeshore, of peace and quiet on a windless day. The acoustics of the cave made it feel like the song was vibrating right inside Harry’s own chest.

Iris extended her body to the left, stretching herself to defend her territory. Taking a deep breath, Harry did the same, stepping to the side and leaning as far as he could, his arm extended. To his right, he felt Tom copying him in turn; it occurred to him that they probably looked a little like dancers warming up at the barre, and he suppressed a smile.

The great violet serpent stared at him for a long moment, and Harry was reminded of the nesting mother dragons that had attacked Krum and Delacour at the Triwizard Tournament. He didn’t dare blink. Slowly, she shifted again, this time rising up on her coils until her horns nearly brushed the ceiling. He matched her pace, rising onto the balls of his feet and inhaling deeply, making himself look bigger.

They continued like that—Iris, Harry, and Tom moving together, Jet singing like a dance master keeping time—for what felt like hours, but in reality was probably closer to five minutes, his enhanced hearing catching the egg’s fading heartbeat the whole time, moving just the slightest bit closer with each shift in pose. Tom did a remarkable job of staying in sync with him, their bodies aligned but never bumping each other, even their breath making a single, combined rhythm. He wasn’t as quick or flexible as Harry, but he more than made up for it with a fluid grace that seemed to come naturally.

No wonder he’s a good musician.

At last, they closed the last few inches of space separating them from Iris, and she settled back into a relaxed position, loosened her tail’s grip on the egg, and—thank Merlin—nudged it toward him with just the gentlest bump of her nose.

Harry sank to his knees beside the egg, Tom following him mere moments afterward. He drew his wand and ran it over the shimmering shell, murmuring diagnostic charms. It didn’t take him long to find the problem: a small puncture in the amniotic sac, an issue he’d seen before in isolated colonies of magical birds.

Tom caught his eye when he explained this, and he could tell the other wizard knew what he’d left unspoken: this wasn’t something that would have healed on its own, and left untreated it was invariably fatal.

But that didn’t matter, because they were here now, and they could fix it.

Locking into professional mode, he gave simple instructions to Tom on how to keep the embryo warm and stabilized, while Harry handled the more specialized reparative magic to knit the amniotic sac back together. It was delicate work, especially without a proper view to the inside of the eggshell; but Harry had experience, and Tom—as always—picked up new magic swiftly. It was almost like another, more compressed dance, the two of them weaving spells while Jet continued to hum softly in the background. Not for the first time, he noticed that their wands seemed highly compatible.

Finally, finally, the last diagnostic glowed a soft green indicating no problems, and the heartbeat strengthened and evened out into a steady bah-dup-bah.

“You succeeded.” It was Iris’s voice, speaking for the first time since they’d come here tonight. “You have saved the life of my child.” She sounded like herself again, if utterly exhausted and very relieved.

“He or she will be just fine,” Harry confirmed. “This is part of my job—magizoologists do more than just making collections of paper.” Tom was quiet, but out of the corner of his eye, he could see him looking pensive and deeply affected. He smiled to himself; it was often a profound moment for a wix, saving a life in a way that didn’t involve dueling or fighting.

“Perhaps human magic is equal to ours after all.” Jet finally ceased his song and moved swiftly across the cave floor to his mate, wrapping himself around her and the egg in what was definitely the snakey version of cuddles. “Thank you.”

They said their goodbyes not long after that, not wanting to linger where humans weren’t meant to be. The broom ride back to the castle proceeded at a far more relaxed pace, Harry and Tom talking to release the tension of the last hour.

“We were almost too late,” Tom said, gazing up through the trees. “If they hadn’t trusted us enough…or if you hadn’t brought your broom…”

“But we weren’t,” Harry said firmly. “That little hatchling is as good as new, I triple-checked.”

Tom blew out a breath. “I need to work harder to master the Patronus.”

Both of them were still fairly keyed-up when they reached the castle, so instead of parting ways they climbed to Tom’s fifth-floor quarters to debrief over a cuppa. Washing up in the bathroom while his friend put the kettle on, Harry noticed that the bathtub drain had been broken wide open, the porcelain cracked in a wide radius around it.

“That’s where the messenger serpent came through,” Tom smirked, passing by the doorway and seeing the direction of his gaze. “I was in too much of a rush to repair it.”

Harry grinned. “Too busy sending me a Howler, yeah?”

They drank and chatted until the early hours of the morning, working on and off to sound out Jet’s calming song on the piano.

“So now I know what it takes to get you to dance with me,” Harry teased, thinking of that night in Central Park when Merlin-knows-what had gotten into him. “One of our friends in mortal peril. You’ve got awfully high standards.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Tom wandlessly levitated the teapot for yet another refill. “Whatever you were doing that night in New York, it most certainly was not dancing.”

——————————

With Ilvermorny emptied for the summer holidays and the happy serpent couple even more secluded with their egg than before, Harry and Tom made few visits to the lake in July and August. There were only so many times he could claim he and his “beau” needed access to the grounds to “reference something in the library”.

Because, yes, they had chucked him out for the season as well. Technically faculty were allowed to stay in their quarters over break if they had absolutely nowhere else to go, but it just wasn’t done and would be an especially bad look on a new hire.

By the time he realized this, all the acceptable homes in Greylock had been rented by tourists and wealthy purebloods. Meaning if Tom wanted to stay near Harry (so that they could make use of this time to prepare their findings for publishing, of course), he had slim options; namely, rehabbing a decrepit ruin, or bunking up with Fiona Featherstone, the moon-eyed Charms professor, who’d offered him her “cozy guest room” no less than three times.

Fortunately for him, an opportunity fell directly into his lap when Harry arrived at their dinner “date” on an evening near the end of term with glad tidings: the awful old witch who lived down the road from him and Nagini—and who he’d complained to Tom about often, due to her constant attempts to set him up with her grandniece—had moved out abruptly, leaving her fully-furnished cottage on the market for a song.

(And if the old harridan had in truth been chased out by dozens of aggressive snakes, which had inexplicably migrated from their habitat in the local park to infest every corner of her home overnight? Well, what Harry didn’t know wasn’t hurting him. In fact, he seemed overjoyed. Sometimes, if you wanted an opportunity to fall into your lap, you had to shake the trees a bit.)

And so they spent an idyllic summer as neighbors, moving between Harry’s house and Tom’s as easily as going from the kitchen to the parlor, their books and papers and instruments scattered over the surfaces of both places, stealing naps on each other’s sofas and leftovers from each other’s cold-boxes. Nagini treated the move as a simple doubling of her own available territory, and could frequently be found at either address, sitting in a sunbeam with a romance novel and a pitcher of lemonade, when she wasn’t out looking for trouble in the city.

Of course, the two of them needed the occasional time off just as much as the students, and Tom didn’t require a shared work project—or a public appearance to maintain their deception—to have a lovely time with Harry. Hence, this trip to Maine on a weekend in mid-August to go blueberry picking, of all things.

“The Pukwudgies told me about this place,” Harry told him excitedly, as they set up their four-room wizarding tent (fully equipped with all of both of their must-have features) in a picturesque meadow. “There’s something magical in the air or the soil, and the berries grow bigger and juicier than anywhere else. They made it Unplottable with their own special magic, and they’ve only told a handful of wixen the coordinates over the years.” He paused. “Well, and also a little Muggle girl who got separated from her mum once. She brought some of the berries back home with her, and the Muggles loved them so much they wrote a picture book about it.”

Tom smiled at his enthusiasm. He was unsurprised that the outgoing Harry had befriended far more of the local creatures than just horned serpents.

When they reached the location marked on Harry’s hand-drawn map and the smaller man had murmured a secret pass-phrase entrusted to him by the Pukwudgies, Tom felt a wave of magic pass over his body not unlike stepping through a ward, only rougher, wilder, more akin to the elf magic protections he’d encountered in pureblood manors. The landscape before them—which had previously appeared to be a broad swath of empty grass, slightly browned from the summer heat—burst into life and color: fluffy, shin-high bushes stretching as far as the eye could see, dotted liberally with deep-blue fruits as perfectly round as a child’s drawing. Jewel-colored hummingbirds and bumblebees, far too large and vibrant to be of any mundane species, fluttered and drifted on the breeze.

Harry raised his arms skyward like an ancient harvest priest welcoming the midsummer solstice. “Paradise!”

If you’d told the ten-year-old Tom Riddle in Wool’s Orphanage that one day he'd be halfway across the world, happily following a laughing Hufflepuff wizard through a sunlit field, plucking enchanted blueberries the size of grapes and stowing them in an Infinitely Expanded basket, he would have said you were a fine candidate for the asylum.

If you’d said the same to the man who called himself Lord Voldemort in 1975, he’d have tortured you into a gibbering wreck.

Even the time-displaced Tom who’d been busy piecing his soul and sanity back together a little under a year ago would’ve likely considered the prediction extremely far-fetched.

But. Well. The course of a life—especially a magically extended one such as his—never did run smooth, or straight for that matter. It could be as winding and changeable as the tail of a serpent. And on this particular day, it had led him here: sitting beside Harry on a ridge overlooking their campsite, his fingers stained indigo (complete immunity to Scourgify seemed to be yet another of the berries’ magical properties), listening to his younger friend discuss the possible uses for their “haul”, from potions and magical dyes to end-of-summer pies. He could not seem to take his eyes away from Harry’s mouth; it was likely because he’d been eating most of his own pickings all afternoon, and his lips and tongue made Tom’s fingers look spotlessly clean.

Something had changed, he felt, since that night in the cave with Iris and Jet and their precious egg. It wasn’t just that he and Harry were more comfortable than ever with each other, after racing through the woods on brooms (ugh) and moving in perfect synchronization, and then staying up till dawn drinking three pots of tea. It was something within himself as well. When he’d assisted Harry (although really, the professional magizoologist had done all the most difficult work) with healing the egg, something inside him had slotted and clicked into place, like a softer, quieter version of sensation when he’d reabsorbed each Horcrux.

“What’re you thinking about?” Harry asked suddenly, in the middle of outlining a rambling, half-baked plan to try his hand at making jam.

Tom raised an eyebrow at him, feeling the corner of his mouth simultaneously curl upward. Where in the world were those green eyes so familiar from? A past life, maybe?

“I was merely wondering whether you would have enough berries left to enact any of your mad schemes, with the rate you’re currently going through them.”

Harry smiled at him widely, showing all his blue-speckled teeth.

“Probably not—not from my own basket, at least. Why do you think I invited you along?”

———————————

It was strange, when September rolled around, and Tom left the cottage down the street to return to Ilvermorny Castle. Harry had gotten used to popping in on him at any time of the day or night, to share an idea or work through a problem or just talk about nothing in particular over a game of chess and a bowl of pasta; it felt downright restrictive, to only meet up at the lake or in town on evenings and weekends.

“It’s truly a shame,” Nagini agreed, when he moaned to her about it. “Too bad there’s absolutely no way for you to stay close to each other all year round.”

“I know!” Harry blew out a frustrated breath. “I get that school security is important, but they don’t let anyone live within two miles of the grounds except for students, teachers and a couple faculty spouses!”

She shook her head and went back to sorting through the many offers she’d gotten to model and—Merlin help them all—act in Muggle movies and television since her debut in May. “I don’t know why I even bother,” she muttered. “And he’s even more hopeless than you…a pair of brick walls, Circe’s pigs and donkeys…”

Harry left her to her nonsense. He could at least take comfort in the fact that Tom had at last found his Patronus—a horned serpent, in the most unsurprising development ever—and used it to send him long messages at least three times a day.

Still, it was a memorable occasion when the silvery-blue snake drifted through the window just after the autumn equinox and told Harry—in about as excited a tone as Tom’s deep, smooth voice ever achieved—that Iris and Jet had invited them to their new hatchling’s traditional song-blessing.

“From what I gathered, it’s similar to a wixen naming ceremony,” he explained, once they had met up in person. “Only more noteworthy, since successful matings are so rare.”

“I wonder why they never mentioned something like this in our interviews.”

“Because we never intended to let any human witness the ceremony,” Iris said importantly, when he asked her the same question. “After much discussion, we have decided to make an exception for you, without whom we would have no hatchling at all.” A shudder ran down the length of her body. “But you must never speak of what you see today to another, nor write it down on any paper or buck.”

“…You mean ‘book’,” Tom corrected, after a brief pause.

“Tom! Don’t be rude!”

“Quite right, Harry,” she sniffed. “After all, I remain silent when you make far more egregious mispronunciations in my language. For that matter, I still believe ‘buck’ to be a more appropriate term for an object bound in animal skin.”

The song-blessing would also serve as a farewell, of sorts, for the season; afterwards, Iris and Jet would take young Irrepressible-Growing-Life-In-Hidden-Places (or ‘Jade’, for their stiffer human tongues) south along the network of lakes and rivers, so he could spend his first winter growing strong in a more temperate climate. It would be held underwater, so Harry and Tom opted for Gillyweed instead of simple Bubblehead Charms. Tom, he thought as they watched their fingers grow webbing and delicate gills open along their throats, would have made a natural merperson, with his graceful movements, pale skin and sharp features.

The colony’s communal gathering place was a bowl-shaped depression at the deepest point of the lake, a sort of natural amphitheater with boulders placed around in a way that was definitively intentional. There were more serpents here than he’d ever seen before at one time; about two dozen in total, likely the entire colony, wrapped around rocks or half-buried in sand on the bottom, and in one case coiled up inside the remains of a sunken boat. Harry let Tom lead him by the hand to a nicely-shaped rock covered in soft moss, and they cast nonverbal spells to anchor themselves in place.

Down here, there were no more words. There was no need. It was as Iris had told them the very first day: underwater, her species’ musical calls echoed and resonated and amplified, revealing complexities that were entirely lost when they sang in open air or spoke Parsel. Just the sound of the various serpents greeting each other was like a full symphony. Iris and Jet truly had been patient and indulgent with their inadequate attempts to replicate the music, he understood now. They were going to make wonderful parents.

He turned to Tom, eyes wide, and he didn’t need speech either to see his own awe reflected in his friend’s face.

Jet joined Iris in the center of the circle. Cruising along in his wake was Jade: a small (for their kind, anyway; he was about the length and thickness of Harry’s leg) eight-week-old juvenile, smooth young scales the same green as the lake moss or the pine trees on the surface. The parents sang a brief duet, harmonizing perfectly. And then, as if on some cue too subtle for human ears, the entire colony began singing as one. Together, they were like an orchestra, with each individual serpent as an instrument; Harry could hear tones reminiscent of Tom’s piano and his own flute and a dozen others, strings and brass and even, somehow, a deep percussion keeping the beat. But he could tell, instinctually, that these musicians were not playing from a score, or even a piece from memory; this was a song being created in real time, for this very moment, this specific little snakelet that they were welcoming to their number. There was magic in it, too, the wilder, older kind that was shaped by pure will and intent, channeled through the water infused with the power of the leyline. Even if he hadn’t spent months studying the serpents’ music, he would have been able to feel the meaning in his core: Protection. Longevity. Love.

He wouldn’t have wanted to write about this for a study or book, even if Iris gave her permission. There was no way he could ever do it justice.

Needing a place to channel the emotions welling up in him, he squeezed Tom’s hand at his side, and felt a rush of gratification when he felt just as strong of pressure in return.

The music and magic swelled and surrounded Iris, Jet and their new youngling in the middle of the circle, settling down over them like a gentle rain or warm blanket. Harry imagined it might be a little like how he felt under his invisibility cloak, safe and shielded from harm.

And then, slowly but surely, it began to fade, the notes of the song growing fainter while at the same time changing subtly in tone and meaning, now carrying an unmistakable undercurrent of farewell.

Harry drifted backwards a bit in the water, and was pleasantly surprised when he was caught by Tom’s chest and arm, wrapping around him and supporting him. He turned to see the other man looking near-reverent, eyes shining, and felt deeply happy all of a sudden, almost blissful, that they’d shared this experience together.

Finally, Iris came to escort them back to the surface, the timing perfect as the Gillyweed was just starting to wear off. The magic of the music lingered longer, though, and they were still riding the high by the time they reached the shoreline, pulling their robes back on and thanking Iris over and over for her incredible gift. Tom kept running his hands up and down Harry’s arms; whether to warm him or just to confirm his presence, it wasn’t clear. It felt quite lovely anyhow.

“I suppose we won’t see you again for several months now,” the older man said, bowing his head respectfully. “We could not have asked for a more magnificent goodbye, Iris.”

“It was rather generous to allow you to participate, wasn’t it?” Iris said, drawing herself up in the water proudly. “I daresay you are once again in our debt. But do not worry—in return, I ask only that you invite us, the next time you host a similar celebration of your own.”

Harry hummed. He couldn’t imagine that any event he could host would ever be even a tenth as significant as the serpents’ blessing, but he’d be happy to have Iris there if he ever got his Mastery, or received an Order of Merlin, or reached his hundredth birthday. “Yeah, of course.”

“Your presence would be an honor,” Tom agreed.

Harry could have sworn she had a kind of snakey, knowing smirk on her lipless mouth as she turned away and dove back to her home and family, although he couldn’t think of what for.

And then he and Tom were alone again, and they practically burst with their shared excitement and all the words they’d been unable to speak underwater.

Tom’s eyes were alight. “Merlin, that was…“

Harry shook out his arms as if he could lift straight into the air. “I’ve never seen—well, heard—anything so…“

They walked—practically danced, honestly—back through the forest in an elated haze, laughing and talking over each other as they relived every minute of the ceremony, comparing their favorite moments. They went seamlessly from dissecting the song’s musical, grammatical, and magical structure to rhapsodizing—occasionally slipping back into Parseltongue for better precision—about how it made them feel. They probably would’ve looked completely mental, if someone were to randomly come upon them.

But the night was coming fast, and even their strongest warming charms struggled to fight the chill of spending an hour underwater and emerging to a shaded mountain forest in autumn. There was no question of whether they would once again head up to Tom’s quarters to share tea and conversation and the heat of the enchanted fireplace.

They both knew there was no point in even trying to capture what they’d just heard in human musical notation. They left the flute and piano untouched in the sitting room and went straight to Tom’s office, where they took turns carefully extracting their memories of the day in long silvery ribbons, then stored them in matching crystal vials in a warded cabinet with the professor’s Pensieve.

It didn’t feel right, to be physically separate after such an intense moment of connection—and so they didn’t. After Tom set the tea and fireplace both heating with a flare of wandless magic, they curled up on the sofa, unintentionally mirroring their earlier position on the rock beneath the lake. Harry found himself leaning back against Tom’s chest again, letting out a happy sigh…

…and shivered, still.

Tom frowned. “Your robes are still cold and damp,” he muttered, rubbing Harry’s shoulders. “I can’t have you catching your death in my own parlor. Wait one moment—I’ll get you something of mine to wear.”

He dashed into the bedroom, and Harry stood up and shrugged off his outer robe, jumper, and undershirt. Tom was right; he felt warmer already, with the heat of the room against his bare skin. He took a step toward the flames, and closed his eyes.

Behind him, there was the sound of a caught breath.

He turned to see Tom, stripped to the waist himself, a bundle of fresh robes and a throw blanket in his arms. The man was—there was no denying it—openly staring at Harry’s chest and arms and stomach, mouth half open and eyes half-lidded in appreciation.

Which was only fair, really, because Harry’s own gaze was all over Tom’s body like a magnet, he couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to, and he vaguely remembered being cold a minute ago but that wasn’t possible because he was hot, so hot—

And Tom was so—

“Harry...” He’d never heard that tone in Tom’s voice before, and it was somehow even more wonderful than the serpent’s song. “May I—“ he coughed, and was that a flush spreading across his perfect chest? “May I come over there and…warm you up?”

There was no doubt in what he meant by those words—nor in what Harry’s answer would be.

He was burning up now, true, but he wanted nothing more than to get even warmer.

“Please,” he breathed, and Tom moved so fast he might have been a striking serpent himself. The bundle of robes fell to the floor, but that was fine—they wouldn’t be needing them for heat anymore. Because now Harry had his best friend’s warm lips and hands all over him, their skin pressed together in so many delicious places. He felt the backs of his knees bump the coffee table as he stepped back, but Tom didn’t let him fall; he just slid one hand around to gently cup his bum, pushing up just slightly, and Harry didn’t need any more encouragement than that to lift one leg and wrap it around Tom’s waist to pull himself even closer. After that it was a matter of seconds before he had both feet fully off the ground, clinging to Tom like a lifeline and feeling fully supported, cradled even, in return. They broke apart for just a single, desperate breath—dammit, where was a set of gills when you actually needed them?—and then Tom’s tongue was in his mouth again…

Somewhere in the next room, the kettle shrieked, before being abruptly cut off with a swift hand motion from Tom.

Harry tugged at the other man’s hair and arms, trying to steer him towards the sofa, wanting to feel his weight on top of him; but Tom gave a minute shake of his head and—slowly, telegraphing his intentions and giving Harry plenty of opportunity to decline—stepped them in the direction of the bedroom instead.

“Merlin, yes,” he groaned, not wanting Tom to feel a moment’s hesitation, because Harry sure as hell didn’t.

What happened next—beneath the blankets and between the sheets of that dark hardwood sleigh bed, in the very bedroom whose window overlooked the little path through the mountains where they’d spent countless hours walking and talking and planning—was a level of connection that couldn’t be achieved through friendship, or a close working partnership, or even the magical song of an entire colony of serpents. Only through two people who felt a very, very certain way about each other. It was a level Harry hadn’t gone to, before this.

Then, and afterward—as he lay in Tom’s arms, their breath syncing just like when they’d danced in the cave; as the sweat cooled on their skin, and Tom sat up and announced, “You’re cold. I will not allow you to be cold,” and carried him bridal-style to the bathroom, where they shared a long, hot bath in the tub that had been repaired since the night of the serpent’s intrusion; as they moved back to the bedroom again and ate pasties Summoned straight from the kitchen, not bothering to make an appearance in the dining hall for supper; and then as he drifted off to sleep, lulled by Tom’s heartbeat and the memory of the song-blessing—

Harry felt that he finally understood something. Why he’d felt right when he first came to Mount Greylock, why he knew immediately that he had to put down roots—and a good chunk of his savings—in a town an ocean away from his family, where the locals made tea from a powder and added unnecessary zeds to all their words. It wasn’t for six states’ worth of hiking and skiing and wilderness filled with creatures, or the endless, sleepless entertainment of New York City. It wasn’t even for the horned serpents, incredible as they were.

No, when he’d first laid eyes on this place, what had resonated so perfectly with his soul hadn’t even been here quite yet. But something in his heart, and magic, had already known, with more certainty than any prophecy.

He’d needed to be here for this. For Tom.

——————————

Tom was not ashamed to admit that everything after that fateful day was, more or less, a foregone conclusion.

He and Harry talked and kissed and…well, cuddled and took long walks and ate meals together, many of them candlelit. They went on dates (which no longer required scare quotes) in Greylock and Boston and New York, and weekend excursions to museums and creature reserves and cinemas. They essentially spent every spare minute, when one or the other wasn’t working, in each other’s company.

(It was, perhaps, a rather telling thing that, other than the very welcome new…physical side to their relationship, this was really not much too of a change from the way they’d been acting for months now. The townsfolk and professors didn’t seem to notice any shift at all; and when they broke their news Nagini, she’d merely asked “And this is different from the week you first met how?”, repeating the question every time they offered another example—until it became very clear the utter menace was fishing for details on their sex life, and they both threatened to hex her back into a snake.)

They made good use of Iris, Jet, and Jade’s time away (“Florida, I think,” Harry said. “I hope they visit Disney World,” and hadn’t that sparked a fascinating conversation about Muggle vacation traditions), putting the finishing touches on a book-length exploration of the language and culture of horned serpents that already had several publishers interested. Together they celebrated Samhain; Harry spent the bulk of October helping the Herbology lower years plant a corn maze, which he and Tom then proceeded to get “lost” in for hours. Privately, in the early hours of the next morning, Tom marked the first anniversary of his rebirth of sorts last year.

Then came Yule and New Year’s. Tom was somehow convinced to spend his actual birthday in Times’ Square, surrounded by drunken Muggles cheering for a giant glowing orb that wasn’t even magical to drop; but he was more than compensated by a glorious holiday break back at his cottage in town, where Harry all but moved in for the fortnight and the long winter nights blended into one continuous montage of snowfall and lovemaking and the endless stream of novelty enchanted board games they brought home from a local shop.

It was ridiculous. It was terribly cliched. It was bliss.

Now it was mid-January, and Tom was standing at the castle gates, wistfully watching Harry as he disappeared around a curve in the path down to the village, the sun just beginning to peek over the mountains to the east. They had just spent another not-quite-authorized night together in Tom’s private quarters.

“Let me walk you home, darling, it’s freezing,” he’d cajoled.

“No.” Harry pressed his icy nose into the crook of Tom’s neck. “It’s for your own good, you know. If you come back to my place you’ll spend another hour warming me up, and then you’ll miss your morning classes.”

Tom harrumphed. Just because someone was correct did not necessarily make them right. He turned away from the last place where Harry’s lithe silhouette had been, readying himself to sow fertile young minds with seeds of knowledge at the aforementioned morning classes—

“Honestly, Thomas, don’t you think it’s time you made it official?”

—and jumped nearly a foot in the air at the sight of Walden Thistlewaite, out on his “predawn constitutional”.

He swiftly composed himself, adjusting his scarf. “Care to elaborate on your meaning, Walden?”

The elderly man actually dared to level Tom with a don’t-bullshit-me stare, as if he were a student and not a colleague with far superior credentials. “I mean to say that it’s high time you made an honest man out of our dear Harry James—and yourself, as well.”

“I—excuse me?”

Thistlewaite chuckled. “Take some advice from a man over twice your age, son,”—oh, the irony in that—“and set a date before that one gets away. You and your beau put my lovesick seventh years—and every mated pair of creatures I’ve had the privilege of observing over the course of my career—to shame with how hopelessly gone on each other you are. I admittedly didn’t know either of you well before you became entangled, but I’d bet my last Galleon that neither of you has ever been happier in your life. It's the talk of the staff room how you even let young Mr. Pickett re-take a failed exam last week.”

Tom searched his mind palace for logical and factual rebuttals to any of this, and came up alarmingly empty. He opted instead to argue on firmer ground. “Pickett’s owl had been ill. I could hardly expect him to study to the best of his ability.” Among all the other benefits of his relationship with Harry, he’d finally gained true insight and understanding of the depths of the bonds between wixen and their companion animals. It was not only serpents and Parselmouths who could transcend the boundaries of language and species.

“Furthermore,” Thistlewaite continued as if Tom hadn’t spoken at all, “married faculty enjoy the right to house their spouse in the castle with them, and to bring them to mealtimes and school events. Don’t think I haven’t noticed Harry sneaking out of your rooms practically every morning, or getting breakfast in the kitchens before he leaves—even if the house-elves love him too much to ever tattle on him.” He smiled serenely. “They also are allowed the discretion to share certain protected secrets of the castle with their life partner.”

Every nerve in Tom’s body went on high alert. “I have no idea what you’re—“

This time, Thistlewaite outright guffawed. “I’m a magizoologist, son. Do you realize that the entire field has been buzzing for weeks over rumors of an upcoming book about an unspecified colony of horned serpents, co-written by two anonymous authors with an incredible level of close access to their subjects? It would surely be a fine thing if those two wixen were able to be honest and legitimate, and have their names celebrated as they deserve.” He shrugged with one shoulder and shot Tom an infuriatingly toothy grin. “Also, the groundskeeper gets chatty when he’s drunk.”

Not for the first (or even the third) time,Tom began to rapidly weigh the risks and benefits of a quick-fire nonverbal Obliviate on Walden Thistlewaite, but the old man was already moving out of range with surprising agility for his age. “But it’s getting late. I’ll leave you to your classes—and hopefully to some study of your own. Oho!”

And he turned and began stamping his way through the snow to the creature pens behind the greenhouses, leaving Tom without the last word for the first time in his life—and with barely enough time to beat the swotty fifth-years from House Thunderbird to his classroom.

**************

Despite his reluctance to take advice from a man who bathed in Graphorn musk to “raise his immunity”, Tom spent the next week or so in deep contemplation. About Harry, and how very badly he would like to have his darling officially keyed into the wards at Ilvermorny, so that they would no longer have to be separated by a mountainside and a locked gate. His name alongside Tom’s on a groundbreaking book, garnering the adulation and respect they both so richly deserved. About himself, and whether he was…well, the marrying kind. Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort certainly hadn’t been.

But…perhaps Professor Thomas Gaunt was?

And so, near the end of January, he did two things he would’ve previously sworn an Unbreakable Vow would never come to pass.

First, he retrieved the Gaunt ring—once the carrier of a piece of his soul, still an immensely powerful magical artifact and symbol of his heritage—from his vault in the Wizarding Bank of New York.

Then he steeled himself, and announced to Harry that he was finally ready to accede to his lover’s constant heartfelt pleading (occasionally edging into “badgering” territory, which Harry maintained was his right as a Hufflepuff): they would go to Vermont for the anniversary of their first meeting, and Tom would make a genuine attempt to learn to ski.

The activity itself was every bit as awful as he’d anticipated; perhaps worse. A “sport” with no winning condition, that combined the recklessness of Quidditch with the most absurd and overcomplicated equipment that Muggles could dream up, undertaken in wet, freezing and precarious conditions—in other words, hell.

True to his word, Tom flung himself down the groomed mountainside again and again, making an honest effort to incorporate Harry’s mystifying instructions about pointing his feet and using the two awkward sticks to “balance” (how?) Again and again he rode up the creaking and unstable “lift” that was both tortuously slow and far too fast (because Harry liked to spend the ride “encouraging” him with kisses and cuddles).

When, after hours of this frigid purgatory, he still found himself with a smile on his face from the joy of a full day in Harry’s presence, he knew that bringing the ring along had been the correct decision.

“Tom!” Harry glided effortlessly down to the site of his latest spectacular crash, his skis carving the snow like he was a Renaissance sculptor. “Are you okay!?”

Tom windmilled his arms and legs in a completely futile attempt to extricate himself from the mound of powder he’d landed face-up in. “One moment, darling—“

But then Harry’s face broke into a beaming smile, and he tossed his poles to the ground. “You know, I think you’ve got the right idea—this weather is better for making snow angels anyway. Here, I’ll join you!” And he flopped down right next to Tom starfish-style, laughing. “I haven’t done this since I was a kid!”

Tom had never done it at all. It turned out to be…rather enjoyable.

They stayed there quite a while, not least because getting to their feet again proved unexpectedly tricky.

****

That night, after a long and gratifying soak in their suite’s large jacuzzi, Tom waited until Harry was drying his hair to order two parfait glasses of the ski lodge’s signature “frozen hot chocolate” (which, bafflingly, was neither frozen nor hot) and set up a small, cozy sitting area on the balcony, with blankets, warming charms and a few candles for ambience. Harry jumped with delight when he saw the surprise, and they were soon cocooned together under an entire galaxy of stars.

“Happy anniversary, love,” Tom murmured teasingly in his ear.

“It was brilliant.” Then a small crease appeared between Harry’s brows. “For me, anyway. I know you kind of hated it—we’ll do something that’s fun for you next year—“

Next year. Tom was very pleased by this confirmation that Harry was thinking similarly long-term. “Nonsense. I had a wonderful time.”

His lover smiled sheepishly and used his spoon to collect the last remnants of his chocolatey treat—only to startle when it made a loud clinking sound.

Ah, he’d finally discovered the secret ingredient Tom had slipped into his milkshake.

He glanced down, his eyes growing three sizes when he saw the ring at the bottom of the glass. And by the time he looked back up, Tom had naturally made sure to be down on one knee.

Harry gasped. He looked happy—hopefully? Oh, Merlin—but there was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes that made Tom’s heart seize with panic, and he immediately launched into his half-prepared emergency convincing speech.

“I know it’s fast,” he said, placing a hand on Harry’s thigh, “but I simply adore you—and if you’ll think of the many benefits to our being bonded—“

Harry shook his head vigorously, taking Tom’s hand in both of his own. “No, no, Tom—of course I want to marry you! I love you. And I really don’t think this is fast at all—I mean, Merlin, don’t tell Nagini I said this, but in hindsight I kinda feel like we’ve been together since that first day in the cafe last year, even if it took us awhile to…” He blushed. “It’s just that—I’m not—I mean, I…haven’t been completely honest with you.”

Tom’s mind immediately began racing with possibilities—of what sorts of secrets a kind and open person like Harry James could be keeping, and if any of them would be even the slightest obstacle in the face of his own indomitable will. Burdensome debts he’d happily pay, traditionalist family members could be charmed and won over, unpleasant ex-lovers made to quietly disappear off the face of the planet…

“My name isn’t really Henry James!” Harry burst out, clutching at Tom’s fingers almost painfully. “Harry is actually my given name—Harry James Potter. I didn’t just leave England to travel and explore, Tom—I left to escape, to become anonymous. I’m…I’m the bloody Boy-Who-Lived.”

***********

Tom spent the next half hour in stunned silence, holding Harry close and listening as he told his story—one that was familiar in some respects, but now from an entirely different perspective. Of loving parents taken too soon by a cruel madman, and ten lonely years with uncaring Muggles, and the impossible expectations of a starstruck public. Of finding eventual home and family with a fiercely loyal dog and his werewolf husband, who were both only tame until you crossed them.

(Sweet Salazar, Sirius Black. When Tom had worried about difficult relatives, he hadn’t expected a DMLE official he’d recently robbed.)

When the smaller man had finished, subtly wiping his damp eyes on the shoulder of Tom’s jumper, he said the only thing he could say:

“My darling, I am so, so very sorry.”

Harry sniffed. “For what? You didn’t do anything.”

His heart clenched painfully. “I’m sorry that you suffered so much,” he said, being as honest as he possibly could under the circumstances. “I wish I had known sooner. Or that I could have been there with you, made it easier somehow. Or—no, I wish that I could go back in time and prevent it, save your parents and give you a happy childhood. Even if it meant that the two of us never met, if I had a chance I’d still—“

“Tom.” Harry pressed his hands to Tom’s lips. “I don’t need you to reverse the laws of reality or fight a Dark Lord. It’s enough that you’re here now, that you know, and—I think—you’re not angry at me for lying?” His voice lifted questioningly on the last word.

Tom shook his head fiercely, laying kisses on Harry’s cold fingers. “No, no, never. You didn’t lie, you did what was necessary to protect yourself and live the life you chose for yourself. You did nothing wrong—it’s me who is the liar—“

“Wait, what do you mean by that?”

He took a deep breath. This would be the tricky part. He could not tell Harry that he was once Voldemort—it would destroy everything, not just their relationship but this new life he had built for himself, this second chance—but wanted his desired partner in life to know who he truly was as a person, to go forward with eyes as open as possible.

“I’ve…done things, Harry. Terrible things, things I’m not proud of. I’ve gone to dark places, in magic and in my own mind. I didn’t leave Britain just for my career either; I went because there were people there who wanted me dead—and had every right to, because I’d wronged them horribly. I’m”—his voice cracked a bit—“not a good person, Harry. Not like you.”

He held his breath, awaiting his judgement, and willing to accept whatever it might be. He owed Harry—Harry Potter, Merlin’s bloody staff and stars—that much, at the very least.

Harry pulled back a bit, and looked into Tom’s eyes, narrowing his own green ones in consideration. “That’s not true, Tom.”

Tom opened his mouth again as if to, absurdly, make the case for his own inner darkness, but Harry barreled on without waiting.

“I’ve seen who you are,” he insisted, firm conviction in his voice. “And not just with me, either. Your students and colleagues love you, the people in Greylock treat you like one of their own already. You’re an amazing friend to Nagini—d’you know how few people she’s actually told she’s a Maledictus? And then there’s Iris and Jet. Creatures can sense magic and intent better than any wix, Tom, and they’d never let a bad person around their young. Trust me, I’ve seen people get ripped to shreds over it more than once.” He smiled—actually smiled. “And these things you say you did…you wouldn’t do them again now, if you had the choice.” He said it like a statement, an incontrovertible fact, rather than a question, but Tom rushed to answer him nonetheless.

“No. I regretted my actions immediately, once I had finally”—he nearly slipped and said restored my soul—“once I was thinking clearly again. I realized that I’d been pursuing my ambitions in all the wrong ways—and that some of them were never worth pursuing in the first place. Much of that time feels…lost to me, now. As if I was a different person entirely.”

“Exactly.” Harry nodded, looking pleased. “Just like I’m a different person from the perfect ‘Savior’ the British tabloids want.”

This comparison stirred an odd sense of outrage in Tom—on Harry’s behalf. “What? No! You were never that person, Harry, you had all of it forced upon you. The things I did, I did willingly, whether I was in my right mind or not. I chose—“

“And now you’re choosing to be different,” he said serenely, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “And I can choose for myself, too. I choose to love who you are now. Who you’ve become.” He inhaled deeply, his voice slightly hoarse from his earlier tears. “So…yes. If you don’t care that I’m famous and a potential target for actual evil wizards, that I have…this,” he passed his hand over his forehead, releasing a flicker of wandless magic, and Tom’s knees nearly buckled at the sight of the scar, Merlin, he’d scarred his precious Harry—“then I don’t care if you’ve made mistakes in the past. I want to spend my life with you.”

He could feel his mouth gaping open and shut, like some kind of bloody imbecile. Or a fish. And through his haze, he vaguely realized that in this moment, he was facing another choice.

Tom knew that a braver wizard, a more honest one, with values and integrity and a strong moral compass, would tell nothing less than the full truth. Admit that, whatever the state of his soul or the name he’d gone by, it had been him who had killed Harry’s parents, who had forced all those terrible burdens upon him. But he had never been that kind of wizard.

Dark Lord or not, five Horcruxes or none at all, he was a Slytherin both in his blood and down to the bone: willing to do whatever it took to claim what he wanted. And right now, more than anything else, he wanted Harry. In his arms and by his side, forever.

He’d truly meant every word he said—if it were possible to reverse his journey through time, to go back to that night and walk right past the Potters’ cottage without stopping, he would do it in a heartbeat. That wasn’t an option—but might it be the next best thing, the sincerest atonement for his crimes, to keep Harry with him instead, to give him back everything he’d taken and more besides? Love and devotion, safety and protection, happiness and comfort for the rest of his days; Tom could, and would, happily lay the very world at his feet.

Perhaps it was selfish, but he’d never claimed to be otherwise.

And so, he reached out and seized the opportunity, the forgiveness being offered to him—seized Harry—with both hands. Quite literally; he wrapped his arms around the younger man more tightly than ever, gently cupping his head and the small of his back, leaning in and covering his face with kisses.

“Harry,” he sighed, caught somewhere between wanting to sob and to laugh with incredulous joy. “My darling Harry. What a treasure you are.”

Harry huffed a laugh, his warm breath tickling Tom’s face. “Well, I do try. But, er, speaking of treasure…” He grinned mischievously. “You’ve still got that ring, right?”

********

Harry wasn’t a fool. He knew that Tom was different from him; sharper, colder, more shadowed. The December to his own warm July. When he said he’d done bad things, hurt people…Well, Harry didn’t have trouble believing it. Even his powerful magic was vast and wild and tempestuous, capable of feats both terrible and great.

But it wasn’t evil. He’d felt evil before, in the Dementors and in Barty Crouch’s twisted graveyard ritual, and most strongly of all when Dumbledore dragged him to that horrible cave by the sea. Tom felt nothing like that; Harry had never, not once, felt anything but safe and happy in his presence.

And the parts of his lover that had once birthed those dark impulses were also the source of some of Harry’s favorite things about him. His brilliant mind, his fierce curiosity that never accepted easy answers, his wicked sense of humor; they’d flourished in Tom’s shadows too, and those things had remained even after he’d burned away his darker past.

He’d meant every word he said about the Tom he knew having changed, chosen, for the better. He believed—or maybe trusted was a better word—his Tom when he told him of his remorse, and he trusted his own heart and instincts.

Maybe this was all colored by his own desires; to be with Tom, to keep this wonderful thing they had, that had made this past year one of the happiest of his life. To embrace everything he was offering Harry, and build a life together. Maybe—probably, even—love had made Harry a little selfish.

But after everything he’d been through…well, hadn’t he earned a little selfishness?

When Tom slid the ring, thick and gold with an ink-black stone, onto his finger, Harry felt it again—that sensation of rightness, of a final piece slotting into place. Like he was complete somehow, infinitely greater than he’d been just moments before.

He knew, in his heart and soul, that it belonged there, the same way he and Tom belonged together, here in this big country where they’d both come to start over. That he’d made the right choice.

———————————-

Hours later that night, with Harry snuggled in his arms after a bout of celebratory lovemaking, Tom lay awake, marveling at the strange and circuitous paths taken by fate.

Sybil Trelawney’s highly dubious prophecy had come true after all—in a self-fulfilling manner, as all the great ones did. Harry Potter had vanquished the Dark Lord not once but twice—first, when he’d flung Tom forward twenty years and forcibly jolted his fractured mind and soul back to sanity; and now once again, tonight. Because with his love to light the way, it was impossible for Tom to fall back into darkness—for Lord Voldemort to rise again.

He rubbed his thumb over the faded Sowilo-shaped mark on Harry’s forehead, and smiled when his fiancé let out a little hum of pleasure in his sleep. Curious. He wondered…

Had he given the baby Harry more than just a scar that night?

Did he still, in fact, have one final Horcrux remaining—one that, now that he’d found it again, had at last fully restored his soul?

Well. If that were true, then Tom wouldn’t want it any other way.

It would ensure that he lived every bit as long as Harry did—and not a single moment longer. They would pass beyond the Veil together, never to be apart again.

He hadn’t been lost or trapped or suspended in time for the last two decades at all, he realized with a deep sense of satisfaction; he had been waiting. Waiting for this—for Harry.

Chapter Text

The wedding was held in late June, on the Ilvermorny grounds by the river. It was perfect timing, really: plenty warm enough for Iris, Jet and Jade (and Nagini, who refused to stand as best man, woman, or anything else in a ceremony where she’d have to cover her figure in bulky layers); after final exams, but before the end of term, so that all the professors and students who wished to could conveniently attend. Tom had become impressively popular in his year and a half of teaching, and Harry was by now a beloved fixture of the school as well.

It was the event of the season for the cake alone, a ten-tier masterpiece made by the elves of the castle (and one older, grumpier one who’d been invited from Grimmauld Place), with filling made from the last of Harry’s preserved blueberries. And then there were the guests and wedding party: three horned serpents lounging on the riverbank, the British Ministry’s Head Auror and his husband (in a bit of clever misdirection, they’d claimed that Sirius was an old family friend from Tom’s side), a witch who’d recently starred in a hit Muggle thriller series (and who shamelessly treated the wedding aisle like a red carpet, exercising her privileges as “Best Matchmaker”), and a handful of Pukwudgies peering out from between the trees.

At the reception, Tom was introduced to Harry’s Hogwarts friends he hadn’t yet met, and made his usual charming first impression. Halfway through the long line of Weasleys, however, he encountered an unexpectedly familiar face.

“Merlin’s bloody ballsa—“ stammered Charlie Weasley, when he saw that one of the grooms was none other than the old dragon-heisting accomplice he’d known as “Riddle”.

Tom smirked and pressed a finger to his lips. Harry, who’d already heard that particular story from his new husband, snorted in amusement. It had been his idea not to warn Charlie beforehand.

“Harry!” Bill strode forward, greeted his brother with a fair bit more strained cordiality, and introduced the newlyweds to little Victoire, before turning to talk shop with Tom.

“Here’s to us both teaching Defense for a good long while, yeah?” he said, cheerfully clinking together their flutes of champagne.

*******

The book, The Serpent’s Song: Hidden Rhythms of a Secluded Community, was published later that year, to great acclaim—and it was only the first of many. Harry continued to grow in demand as a member, and eventual leader, of expeditions to every corner of the globe, and made “Henry James” famous in his own right with travelogues, scientific studies, and treatises on the inherent dignity and rights of all creatures. Tom traveled alongside his husband whenever his teaching schedule allowed, and was pleased to find that there were plenty of obscure magicks, both brand new and previously overlooked, to discover even in the places he’d visited before. He wrote several books on his findings—and then, eventually, a definitive textbook on Defense and Dark Arts (he was a fervent advocate for a change in the subject’s name) that was soon added to the syllabus of magical schools the world over.

Later in his life, Harry would find himself tempted by generous offers to teach Creature Care at many of those same schools. When Mahoutokoro dangled a tenure package that was too good to turn down, Tom marched straight into the Headmistress’s office at Ilvermorny and told her point blank that if the school didn’t offer his husband a position of equal or greater value, the both of them would be packing their things and leaving for Japan before the year was out. It was a brazen bluff (Harry would never dream of leaving Greylock, where Iris and Jet and the serpent colony lived, as well as all his other friends human and otherwise), but an effective one: the next year, Henry James-Gaunt replaced the retiring Walden Thistlewaite teaching Creature Care, finally becoming an official professor alongside his husband at the school where they'd resided for years.

(They never sold either of their cottages down in the village. Rather, they’d transferred ownership directly to Nagini, who used both houses on and off as residences, lucrative rental properties, and studios for her personal film and fashion projects.)

*********

At some indeterminate time in the intervening years, Albus Dumbledore stood outside a cell in the highest tower of an ostentatiously gothic castle in Austria, frowning at a very old friend.

“Was it all a lie, Gellert?” he asked the hunched old man on the other side of the bars, who was resolutely pretending to ignore him in favor of a week-old newspaper. “Your prophecy to me, in 1991. Was it merely a ruse, to make a fool of me before the Wizengamot, the Confederation, and the world?”

“You wound me, Albus.” The defeated Dark Lord idly flicked a page with hands that remained elegant even after all these years. “I value what we shared in our youth far too much to ever tell you an outright falsehood—least of all regarding my sacred gift of Sight.”

Albus gave him a reproachful look, as if he were a student blatantly lying about his missing homework. “You foretold that Lord Voldemort would return, stronger than ever before, and within the next decade at that. That timeframe is long past, and yet the world is at peace, untroubled by him or any other significant Dark wix.”

“My, my, Albus—from your tone of voice, one might almost infer that you were disappointed. I thought that there was no greater advocate than you for peace, love and goodwill among men?”

Albus regarded his former lover in silence for several long minutes, during which Gellert only continued to peruse the paper and hum “O du lieber Augustin” under his breath. “It was foolish of me to come here tonight,” he muttered finally, turning to leave. “As always, you take far too much childish pleasure in baiting me.”

“Would you mind terribly returning this to the gate guard on your way out?” Gellert slid the newspaper through the bars. “I’ve finished with it already. Although it was, admittedly, a rather diverting edition.”

He snatched the paper without looking back, idly scanning the headline as he made for the door—

—and stopped in his tracks for a fraction of a second, his breath freezing in his lungs.

ILVERMORNY’S BELOVED POWER COUPLE SELLS OUT ANOTHER JOINT SPEAKING TOUR—JAMES AND GAUNT TO APPEAR IN VIENNA THIS FRIDAY!

Beneath the bold print was a moving photo of two smiling, handsome, impossibly young-looking wizards—both changed in the time since Albus had last seen them, but unmistakably familiar all the same.

Do not engage, he told himself, willing his feet to move forward as if nothing was wrong, promising himself that he’d sink onto a bench somewhere, and possibly go into cardiac arrest, the moment he was out of Gellert’s sight. He wants you to be shocked, don’t give him the satisfaction…

“By the way, Albus,” Gellert called after him cheerfully, not needing Sight of any kind to imagine the look on his face right now. “If you don’t mind my asking, where in the world did you misplace my old wand?”

*********

The years, and eventually, decades, passed. Harry kept Tom’s family ring with him always, either on his finger or—when he was dealing with Nifflers and their like—on a simple chain around his neck, charmed unbreakable. He continued to use his invisibility cloak much as he had since he was eleven: to watch creatures (and occasionally, his students, to see how they behaved when they thought no one was looking) unobtrusively, and to move quickly through the halls of the castle where he lived without being disturbed, such as when he craved a snack late at night or between meals.

He never touched the creepy wand Dumbledore had given him again—not even on his regular visits to Sirius and Remus back in England, though it would always twitch ominously and roll in his direction if he came within five meters of it.

And eventually, Tom began to notice something…peculiar about his husband: he didn’t appear to be aging. Neither of them did. No matter how much time went by, he and Harry remained as they were on—if he had to pinpoint an exact date—the day of their engagement in early 2003. Not a single new gray hair or wrinkle, or ache in their joints.

Even Nagini had begun regularly interrogating them about their skincare routines. Harry mostly laughed it off, but Tom could tell he was curious too.

Despite his research into the subject over the years, like a puzzle he returned to to keep his mind active between more pressing tasks, he had found precious little in the way of solid conclusions. Immortality and life extension was an arcane branch of magic in general—consisting, for the most part, of fairy tales, Flamel, and those thrice-damned Horcruxes—and his and Harry’s circumstances were unique even in that field. A man who’d split and reassembled his soul an unprecedented number of times; another, his magically bonded husband, who very likely carried a piece of that soul. Add in Tom’s unexplained time travel, Harry’s survival of the Killing Curse, and the rumored rejuvenating properties of horned serpents’ song, and the chain of causation and intersecting effects became almost impossible to parse.

Regardless of the cause, Tom couldn’t help but find it rather fitting. He’d lost decades to insanity, and in his madness, he’d robbed Harry of a proper childhood; they’d each suffered for years under beastly Muggles and Dumbledore’s demented schemes. Between them, they had lifetimes’ worth of debts with a capricious universe—both to claim, and to repay. And the world, in turn, could only benefit from their continued work and partnership.

If anyone had ever deserved a little extra time, it was the two of them.