Lightning and War

Claims Of Blood

“I have information that can help you. But I require some guarantees.”

Tom opened his mouth to tell Dorea where she could put her guarantees, despite the fact that such words didn’t really fit the darkened atmosphere of the ancient Potter library with old, spell-preserved tomes on the shelves. But before he could do that, Harry leaned forwards and did it for him.

“You can’t do this, Dorea.” Harry’s voice was low, but the blue light of the diadem still filled the room with steady light. It lit up the sharp curl of Dorea’s fingers around the handle of her teacup, and the lines in Harry’s face as he leaned forwards like an eagle from his chair next to Tom. “You don’t belong in this world, and you led us into what turned out to be a trap. You don’t get to ask for safety of some kind when you can just go back through the portal to your world and be ultimately safe. You don’t get to ask for anything for Jonquil. That’s not how it works.”

Tom stared at Harry, amazed. Harry reached out without turning to him—he seemed to think Dorea might turn into someone else if he looked away from her—and squeezed Tom’s fingers silently. Tom did understand, then. The loss of Tom’s Parseltongue had rattled Harry, badly, and at the moment, he wasn’t in the mood to put up with the kind of bollocks that Dorea might otherwise have tried to feed them.

Tom smiled.

“It wasn’t a trap.” Dorea set her teacup down hard enough to make the little table rattle. Tom cast her a look of scorn, but kept quiet. Harry wanted to resolve this in his own way, and Tom would let him.

“It sure felt and looked like one.” Harry leaned back in his chair. “And I notice that you tried to save the books in the Black library instead of coming with Tom, me, and Shara when we escaped.”

“Those books are priceless,” Dorea said.

“But this isn’t your world. Why do you care if one version of them burns?” Harry shook his head slowly. “I’ll cherish the memory of those days that I lived in your world, but I can’t trust you. And I already told you what kind of limits there are on the guarantees you can ask for.”

Dorea picked up her teacup again and took what Tom thought was meant to be a fortifying sip. Then she put it down, and said, “It’s actually about the books in the Black library that I’ve come.”

“Oh?”

Tom regretted the fact that they weren’t alone. He would have liked to take Harry to bed right now, while he was looking and talking like that. He settled for scratching the side of Harry’s wrist with his nails, out of sight from Dorea. Harry half-smiled, but didn’t turn away from the woman who thought she had some kind of claim to him.

“I—I want you to promise that that will never happen again. What you almost did. The burning.”

“We’re hardly likely to be invited back.”

“But it would extend to other Black properties and so on,” Dorea persisted. “And if Arcturus—the Arcturus of this world—is fighting beside Dumbledore, then I don’t want you to kill him.”

Harry gave the ghost of a shrug. “We can’t promise that. If Arcturus tried to attack me and Tom, I would strike back without hesitation. I think even Shara probably would.” Tom wasn’t as sure of that, but he didn’t want to undermine Harry right now, so he kept silent.

“You—you don’t want to hear the information I have on Dumbledore?”

“I’m telling you that your price for it is too high.” Harry’s eyes were utterly clear and so calm that Tom could have got lost in them. “There’s no way that I’m going to hold back and let Arcturus wound or kill someone who’s fighting with us if we come face to face.”