To Kill You With a Kiss

Chapter 12

Harry flung his arms around Tom. "Don't. Just... don't."

Tom gave him a crooked smile. "Oh, don't worry. Dumbledore talked me into staying. He assured me that you would be back soon."

"Dumbledore knew I would be back?"

Tom nodded. "Yes. He said he knew that you had to come back because... What was it he said? The heart knows no reason. Yes, I think that's how he put it."

An image of Grindelwald, the broken dark wizard, imprisoned in his stark grey cell in Nurmengard, flashed into Harry's mind. Grindelwald, waiting behind the prison walls, longing for the man who had defeated him to come and see him... And Dumbledore would come, because his heart would not let him do otherwise. Of course Dumbledore understood that I had to come back.

"What happened, Harry? What is Merlin's name happened to you?"

Harry looked into Tom's silver eyes and swallowed. "It was an accident, Tom. I never meant to leave you. I went back to the Slytherin dormitory, and I lay awake thinking of you. I was going to come back the next day, but I was... transported... somewhere else, accidentally. And then I couldn't find my way back to you. I thought I was going to go mad, not being able to return to you."

"Where did you go, Harry?" Tom stroked his face with a trembling hand.

"Nowhere." Harry whispered. "I was at Hogwarts the whole time. Just not... not in this time. A different time."

Tom's silver eyes regarded him with wonder. "You traveled into the past? I've read stories about that, but I didn't know it could actually happen."

Harry buried his head against Tom's throat. "Not the past, Tom. The future."

"You traveled into the future?" Tom's voice was almost inaudible.

Harry nodded silently.

"How far... into the future?"

Harry kissed Tom softly on the lips. "Far... Fifty years into the future. To a time when Abraxas Malfoy's grandson attends Hogwarts. Tom, that's where... That's where I came from in the first place."

He felt Tom's body stiffen against him. "You are from the future?"

Harry's eyes met Tom's quicksilver gaze. "I know this is difficult to believe, Tom."

"Oh, I don't know." A slight smile now. "My miraculous Harry. It would have been much more difficult to believe that you were someone ordinary, I suppose. And it does explain why we couldn't ask you about your past. You didn't have one..." A slight pause followed. Then Tom whispered: "If you have seen the future, Harry, have you also seen the two of us in it? Are we still in love with each other fifty years from now? Oh, wait..." A look of panic crossed his face. "Oh, Merlin!"

"What? What's wrong, Tom?" Voldemort. Can he sense the truth about Voldemort?

"If you are from fifty years in the future, then I'm fifty years older than you. I must be an old man in your time... Merlin!" Tom buried his face in his hands.

Harry laughed out loud. "You think I mind that you are older than me?"

"You don't mind?" Tom looked at him, perplexed. "How can you not mind? Fifty years is half a century. In your time, I'm old, and you... you must still be seventeen."

Harry smiled. "Sixteen, actually."

Tom groaned.

"Seriously, Tom, that part is irrelevant. You... you age well... Oh, I don't want to talk about the future right now." Harry pushed Tom down on the carpet and covered his body with his own. "More importantly..." He traced the line of Tom's jaw with a series of kisses. "I'm here with you, and I'm not leaving again. And I found that spell we were talking about. My friend Hermione helped me. She's very good at finding obscure spells, you see."