Lightning and War

Drained

“The others want to know if Tom will be able to lead us.”

Harry nodded quietly to Shara. “Of course he will. Although we both faced Dumbledore, and Dumbledore cursed him, he lived. And we’ll make sure that the old man pays for the curse.” He settled back behind the breakfast table and started eating again, ignoring the way that Shara stared at him and ignored the bacon and eggs. He’d already invited her to eat, and she had decided not to.

“But what did the curse do?” Shara was staring at the red weals on his face, too, Harry saw.

He wasn’t about to admit that Tom’s Parseltongue was gone or that the wild magic had failed them, not when the people who followed them would probably lose their confidence and never get it back after hearing that. He shrugged a little and munched on a particularly toothsome piece of bacon. “He got hurt. But he recovered after a bit of rest.”

As far as Harry was concerned, that was even the truth. Tom had slept in his arms and then opened his eyes with less of an obsessed look, and he had asked Harry to speak Parseltongue to him and then listened intently to it and shaken his head. At least he wasn’t the silent, hollow shell he had been right after Dumbledore’s curse.

“Did he curse you, too?”

Harry snorted. “No. These came from magic, but something else.”

Shara nibbled her lip for a second, and then nodded. She walked over and sat on the chair across from him. “I’m just—starting to be afraid that we’ll lose this war, Mr. Potter.”

“Why is that?” Tom’s voice asked coldly from behind her. “Are the other Knights of Walpurgis starting to doubt their lord?”

Shara whirled around and dropped into a full kneeling position that Harry had never seen her take before. He shuddered a little and continued eating his eggs. He was grateful that the Knights treated him with less deference than Tom, if that was how they were going to show their bloody deference.

“No,” Shara breathed out, and it at least sounded sincere to Harry, although one of Tom’s eyebrows rose as he paced in a slow circle around Shara. “Never, my lord. But—you have to know that word of our defeat in the Black library has spread, and then the Malfoys removed you from their house, and then you were cursed by Dumbledore. None of us were even certain that you had survived that.”

“Ah. Then it is about appearances.” Tom sat down in the chair next to Harry and stole a piece of bacon from his hand. Harry reached out and touched his arm briefly. Tom nodded and continued eating the bacon as if it tasted better because it was stolen. “I can make an appearance that ought to satisfy them.”

“Pardon me, my lord, who? The Knights, or Dumbledore, or the Order of the Phoenix, or the wider public?” At least Shara’s brain hadn’t stopped working just because she was cowering on the floor, Harry thought.

“Everyone,” Tom said, with the kind of bite to his voice that Harry knew well. He held back a sigh as Tom turned towards him.

“Harry.”

“Yes, Thomas?” Tom narrowed his eyes but ignored the alteration of his name, only bending his head a little.

“I know you can do things with the power of the diadem that you haven’t yet, and that you can do magic with Parseltongue that you haven’t explored.” Tom reached out and slid his hand gently up Harry’s arm, towards his shoulder. Harry found himself shivering relentlessly, and from the way Tom smiled, he enjoyed that. “Shall we?”

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, he could understand why Tom was doing it this way. The diadem was an impressive Potter legacy, and by having Harry wield it and Parseltongue, no one had to know about their failure with the wild magic. Or that Tom would only be able to stand by smiling and not understand as Harry spoke in the language of serpents.