Lightning and War

Potters United

“Uh, really? You’d want that?”

Tom raised an interested eyebrow as he buttered his toast. Harry had taken a full minute to recover from the declaration that Tom wanted to take the Potter name, and these were his first words. Tom chewed through a portion of the toast wondering if Harry thought that this wasn’t a good idea for some reason.

“Yes,” Tom said, finally managing to swallow. “Do you have an objection?”

“I never thought that you would,” Harry said softly, and reached out to cover Tom’s hand with his own. “Of course I don’t object. And I think it’s horrible that your family disowned you. I just—didn’t think you would want to take on the name Potter.”

“Will this have a justification?” Tom showed his teeth in a bright smile as he buttered the next piece of toast. By now he could recognize the signs of a self-deprecating snit coming on. “One that will please me?”

Harry took a deep breath. “I know you said once that a lot of people were predisposed to listen to you because you had the last name Gaunt. It’s Sacred Twenty-Eight. Potter isn’t. Do you think that’s going to be a problem?”

A more salient political objection than I thought you would raise. Tom turned his hand and clenched Harry’s fingers with his own, ignoring the way that Harry winced. “It might make some things harder,” he admitted. “But given that I’ve attracted as many pure-blood members from the Sacred Twenty-Eight as I’m probably ever going to attract, and many of my followers are half-blood or even Muggleborn—”

Harry choked. Tom waited patiently for him to get over it, suppressing his annoyance. Yes, he knew he had similarities to the Tom Riddle figure that had made Harry’s childhood a nightmare, but really.

“I don’t think that taking another name will make much difference,” Tom finished, with a shrug. “And Potter is going to become a much more famous and respected name than it was in its last centuries.”

“It is?” Harry sounded blank.

“Because you can’t help but shine,” Tom explained as he uncurled his fingers and released his hold on Harry’s hand. “Unless you intend to retreat back into a shell again just as we’ve begun opposing Dumbledore’s Order.”

Harry took a deep breath and finished his tea before he responded. “Of course not,” he said. “But it wouldn’t have occurred to me to promote my last name. I thought—I’d be at your side, you know. Or behind you as necessary.”

Tom leaned forwards. There was the kind of stupidity he had anticipated and was already poised to counter. “So you’re saying that you would have done your best to remain in my shadow, even after we did in the Alley.”

“It’s your struggle,” Harry said, his voice lowering and his eyes flashing once. The light of the diadem on his head didn’t brighten, which was one comfort. “I didn’t want to take the focus away from you.”

“It’s our struggle. After what Dumbledore did to you back in your second world, and what he’ll probably try to do once he comes back here? It’s ours.”

Harry conceded that with a quick nod. “Fine. But that still doesn’t mean that you have to adopt the Potter name. For some of your Knights, that will probably make you seem as if you’re making yourself subservient to me.”

“Anyone foolish enough to believe that can come and talk to me.”

A faint smile lifted the corner of Harry’s mouth before it ever moved. “Fine. It makes me wonder about—” He broke off and frowned down at the teapot, turning it around as if he hadn’t already seen the pattern of fine clouds that was scattered around the fine, rose-colored porcelain.