Lightning and War

Going Home

Harry finally leaned back in his chair and gave Tom a look. They’d been at breakfast for half an hour, and an owl had flown in twenty minutes ago. Tom had sat there for those twenty minutes, holding the open letter and staring down at it. His breathing was shallow. He looked as if he might expire at any second.

“Tell me.”

Tom started and looked up at him. His mouth immediately became a flat, grim line. He tucked the letter into his pocket. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Harry. A note from someone who’s concerned about the progress of the war.”

Harry cast a silent spell. Tom tried to stand from his chair a second later, and found himself stuck there. He turned a quiet glare on Harry. Harry had already taken his wand, so he wasn’t concerned. Besides, now he that he control over his magic again, Tom wasn’t powerful enough with wandless spells to break his Sticking Charm.

“You wouldn’t have allowed me to get away with saying just that and nothing else. What makes you think that I would let you?”

“There are times I hate that diadem.”

Harry smiled. That wasn’t another refusal. But Tom did move his eyes from Harry’s face to the kitchen doorway. “Cast another spell so that we can make sure no one is listening in. This is—not knowledge that I’m trying to hide from my Knights, but something that I don’t want them interrupting.”

Harry closed his eyes and let the diadem whisper and pulse to him the way that it had in Diagon Alley when it was tracking the Order members. “No one’s right here. In fact, no one’s in this wing of the Manor.”

Tom nodded, but still spent a moment studying his fingers before he tried to keep his promise. When he finally looked up, Harry was a little stunned at how raw his expression was.

“It’s from my mother,” Tom whispered. “You told me that one of the differences between your world and mine is that my mother didn’t survive to raise me in yours. Well, here she did. And she sent me a letter warning me not to come into the open and cause conflict with Dumbledore.”

“Is she that afraid of him?” Harry asked quietly. He racked his mind for memories of Merope Gaunt. Except for what little he had seen in the Pensieve in his own world, there was truly nothing. She had been poor, nearly a Squib, a Parselmouth, in love with the handsome Tom Riddle, and the mother of Voldemort. He had no idea what she would be like here as a living woman, a—a loving mother? He thought so. Tom knew a lot more about love than Voldemort in his world had ever learned.

Tom curled his fingers around the edge of the table. “She has never agreed with my plans to step forwards and claim a high place.”

“Ah,” Harry offered, to be able to say something.

“She thinks that we have a place, we Gaunts, and that the purity of our blood speaks for itself.” Tom lifted the edge of his lip. “And she’s afraid of what will happen once people become widely conscious that there are still Parselmouths and descendants of Salazar Slytherin in the world.”

“She thinks people who favor Muggleborns will come after you?”

“Not so much that as people who want our supposedly mysterious magic.” Tom’s lip went back down, and he spoke, perfectly neutral, now. “They’ll want our artifacts—which is one locket and one ring, approximately—and our Parseltongue talent—which I didn’t believe, even as a child, they could take from us. My mother is proud of me, but I believe she also rather regrets marrying a Muggle.”

“Not a pure-blood?” was the only thing Harry could guess. Once again, he was working with no knowledge of this Merope. In fact, it was probable his knowledge was going to baffle him dangerously. He was already baffled at the idea that Merope had picked up Morfin’s and Marvolo’s beliefs.