Chapter Text
Harry blinked at the bright white light around him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust before he realized he was lacking the normal pressure of his glasses. Harry blinked again into the white surroundings, noticing he could see everything perfectly.
An agonized moan caught his attention, forcing him to finally move from the spot he had been rooted to. He approached a bench and knelt, seeing for the first time a bloodied, curled up figure in the shadow of the bench. Another agonized moan escaped their lips and Harry finally realized what he was looking at.
The horcrux.
He found himself backing away, leaving the horcrux in agony under the bench. Footsteps echoed around him. He turned, attempting to identify the source of the new noise only to lock eyes with Dumbledore.
He looked completely healthy, his hand healed and his eyes sparkling as they always had when he talked to Harry.
“Dumbledore.” Harry let out a breath and approached his headmaster.
Together they walked side by side in silence until they approached another bench, far away from the agonized horcrux.
“Where would you say we are, Harry?” Dumbledore asked, folding his hands in front of him and looking around them.
Harry studied his environment, noting the pillars and train tracks. “King’s Cross.” Harry paused. “Only cleaner.”
Dumbledore chuckled slightly and hummed. “I see.”
“Do you know?” Harry asked after a moment.
“Know?” Dumbledore asked and Harry could suddenly feel his sparkling blue eyes settled on his face.
“About Tom.” He turned to face the older man.
“Yes,” Dumbledore answered softly. “And I think, where I failed, you succeeded.” Harry opened his mouth to respond but the other continued. “It seems you and Tom where two sides of the same coin. He needed love and you wanted it. And it was something that I failed to see.” Dumbledore stroked his beard. “I cannot fault you for seeing the best in others, even those who consider themselves your enemy.”
Harry could see a haunted look in Dumbledore’s eye but it was gone as quickly as it came.
“A pair of thick, woolen socks,” He murmured, much to Harry’s confusion.
It took Harry a long moment before he finally remembered what Dumbledore had once said about the Mirror of Erised.
“You don’t see thick, woolen socks, do you?” Harry asked.
“No. I don’t.” Dumbledore confirmed before giving Harry a slight pat on his arm.
“What do I do now?” Harry asked, noticing Dumbledore’s sadness and quickly changing the conversation.
“Well,” Dumbledore hummed, returning to his normal self. “I suppose that is up to you. King’s Cross, you say?” Dumbledore looked around them. “If you so wish, you could board a train.”
“Where would it take me?” Harry asked, looking at the track in front of him.
“On.”
Harry thought for a second and somewhere behind him, the horcrux moaned.
“Tom.” He whispered. “I can’t. Even if-“ He cut himself off. “I can’t leave my friends. I can’t leave everyone I care about. I can’t leave everyone at the mercy of the rest of the Death Eaters.”
“No one would fault you for moving on. You have given enough.” Dumbledore’s eyes rested on him.
“I know.”
For a moment, the faces of those he had lost flashed before his eyes and eventually, he met Dumbledore’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Harry’s voice was near breaking. “I never meant-“
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Dumbledore rested a hand on his shoulder. “Remember, help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”
Tom sat across from Harry, studying the younger man. Harry’s wild hair flew in every possible direction and his emerald eyes were focused on the writing in front of him.
“Are you sure this will work?” Harry asked, lifting his emerald eyes to meet Tom’s.
Tom hummed and moved closer to the other. “Yes, I’m certain.”
He was close enough to Harry that he should have been able to feel the heat coming off the other’s body but he felt nothing. Internally, he frowned. Should everything work out the way he planned, this would be a non-issue. He would feel everything. The warmth, the cold, the feel of Harry Potter next to him.
“Explain it to me again,” Harry demanded, pinning him with his vibrant eyes. Tom let out an exasperated sigh that he didn’t mean but it was worth it to see the crease that formed on Harry’s forehead.
“He returned using a very specific spell. One we invented. Therefore the only one who can find a loophole in it is me. A piece of me already exists in a living form.” Harry nodded; his eyes intently focused on Tom in front of him. Tom suspected that if he could feel, he would be struck by the intensity of the wizard in front of him. “So, what you’re going to do is commandeer it. One of altering ingredients is your blood.”
Tom grabbed Harry’s hand, pulling it closer to himself and turning the other’s palm upward.
“He used your blood to avoid your mother’s protection but only ensured it’s longevity. And my own. Your blood will be the main ingredient in stealing his rebirth and giving it to me.” Tom pulled Harry’s hand to his mouth, kissing his palm gently. “All you need to do is give me a little of your blood. I will do the rest.”
“Can I trust you?” Harry asked, his eyes betraying every emotion flying through his mind.
“Yes,” Tom answered, folding Harry’s hand back onto itself as if he were clenching Tom’s kiss in his fist.
“I want to.”
“Then trust me, my love.”
Harry studied him and it was almost as if he could see the exact moment in which Harry had finally made up his mind about Tom. A hardness fell in place behind his eyes and he focused completely on Tom.
“I do.”
He pulled Harry closer and kissed him, wishing not for the first time that he could feel Harry against him.
As Harry fell asleep on him that night, Tom ran a hand through his wild, black hair. Harry slept on Tom’s chest while he held him, guarding him against anything that would threaten to harm him in the night.
Severus walked around the room as his students focused on each other. Their faces would almost be comical if any of them could actually complete the task at hand. They had been set to finally use their various defensive spells non-verbally and it was proving a horrible failure. For most.
As he expected, Hermione Granger mastered the task first. His heart ached at seeing a Muggleborn surpass her pure-blood peers. Her eyes lit up with joy as she sent Ron Weasley flying across the room without a sound. His only compliment was to tell the youngest Weasley boy to stop his grumbling and to block the oncoming attack.
He pretended to ignore the muttering behind him.
No, the surprise did not come with who first mastered non-verbal magic. The first surprise came when neither Harry Potter nor Draco Malfoy attempted to kill each other the moment they were paired together. The second came when Harry Potter was the second the master the non-verbal spells.
He expected his godson to start bickering the moment he hit the ground, but instead, he groaned on the impact, picked himself up, and focused his wand back on Potter.
Eventually, Draco’s frustration got the better of him and he spoke his spell aloud and was easily blocked by the other boy.
“Cheater!”
Severus expected blood. None came.
Draco just shrugged and grinned before the two of them readied themselves again.
He was certain he was dreaming.
Harry and Tom walked side by side in King’s Cross Station. Ron and Hermione were elsewhere, likely glued together but Harry couldn’t bring himself to care. After the events at Malfoy Manor and the inquisition that had followed, Harry had finally, subtly, pushed Hermione and Ron together.
Harry knew that quite a few people were still skeptical about the story he and Tom had spun about Tom’s existence. The lie was simplistic enough. They claimed that Tom was the son of Bellatrix and Voldemort. It was enough to explain why Tom looked so much like a young Voldemort. Tom explained that it was he who had fed Harry information after he had learned of what his father had done during Harry’s fifth year. They explained that they had grown close over the summer between Harry’s fifth and sixth year and when the time had come, Tom had helped in the ultimate takedown of his megalomaniac father.
The story satisfied a few but left most skeptical. Remus and Moody never took their eyes off Tom, and Hermione and Ron seemed determined to pry the truth from him when they were alone. Harry hated the lie. It was just one more thing he wasn’t telling his friends. He never told him about the horcruxes or that he was one, and now he wasn’t telling them the truth about Tom.
Yet every time he convinced himself he should, a part of him talked himself down. As far as everyone knew, Voldemort was dead. The rest of the Death Eaters had either surrendered or were imprisoned, and support for Voldemort died quickly. If there was even a whisper that Voldemort, in any form, was still alive, the consequences would be far-reaching.
Now, however, he didn’t focus on that. For once, life seemed better. Hermione and Ron were happy. Ginny and Dean worked out their differences and eventually parted amicably. Ginny didn’t seem too upset and eventually started growing closer to more classmates, including Luna.
As he and Tom walked through King’s Cross, their hands brushed together. Tom reached out and grabbed him, their hands clasping together. In the distance, he could see the Dursleys in their car, not even bothering to get out to greet him.
Harry stopped the sigh that threatened to escape his lips. As he looked at them, Tom stopped, jerking Harry to a stop next to him by their linked hands.
Tom was also looking at the Dursleys ahead of them, disgust plain on his face. He eventually shifted his dark eyes from them and to Harry’s face.
“Come with me.” Tom’s voice was soft but determined. “Harry, come with me. You don’t have to go back there. You’re no longer in danger. You don’t need your mother’s protection anymore.” Tom pulled him closer until their chests were nearly touching. People pushed past them and voices echoed around them but Harry could hardly bring himself to care.
Harry turned to look at the Dursleys car again, seeing his uncle look at him with disgust and his cousin’s face turn downright sinister at the view before them.
“Give me a moment.”
Harry left his trunk and Hedwig next to Tom as he turned toward the car which held his aunt, uncle, and cousin. He let out a breath and walked over slowly before rounding the car and knocking on the window where his aunt sat. She glared at him as he gestured for her to stand from the car. Eventually, she obliged though she seemed ready to start screaming the moment she did.
Harry shut the door, cutting them off from Vernon and Dudley Dursley.
“I just wanted to say goodbye, Aunt Petunia.”
His aunt spluttered for a moment.
“It’s all right.” He said quietly, looking her over. “Just go home. And so will I.”
He turned to leave, feeling for the first time that a terrible weight was lifted off his shoulders when a voice drifted to his ears.
“Goodbye, Harry Potter.” His aunt’s voice was quiet and held a soft note that she had never offered him before.
They parted ways, Petunia going back to her life with Vernon and Dudley and Harry walking through the station toward Tom.
“Harry?” Hermione asked, stopping him as she walked to her parents. “Where are you going?”
Harry looked over Hermione’s shoulder to where Tom was waiting.
“Home.”