Thank you for all the reviews! While this is the end of "Pride and Power," it will have another sequel at some point in the future.

Part Three

Morning came and was every bit as hellish as Harry had anticipated.

He felt Riddle moving next to him and tried to shift back, but only ended up tumbling to the side and almost falling out of bed. He needed Riddle's grip on his wrists to rescue him. Harry came up red-faced and wondering what the hell had gone through his head last night.

Except he knew. He'd decided sex with Riddle was better than being lonely. He might wonder now how he could be so weak, but he knew he'd made the decision.

"Do you intend to hide your face forever, Harry?"

Riddle's voice was thick and lazy and teasing, which was worse than the bitter mockery Harry had expected. He managed to sink his elbows into a firm place on the bed that wouldn't betray him at the first opportunity—he thought Riddle had made the bed both bigger and softer—and looked up.

Riddle was gazing back at him, his expression practically incandescent. He reached out and caressed Harry's face the way he had last night.

It felt as good as it had then. But Harry, well, if he was still stupid, he was stronger of will than he'd been. He took a deep breath and moved away as much as he could without falling off the bed again.

"Oh, you think it's going to be like that?" Riddle's voice lowered. He didn't sound angry. He sounded like a cat presented with the opportunity to hunt its favorite prey. "You really believe I would allow you to put distance between us again?"

"The last thing I heard, having sex with someone unwilling was called rape, Riddle."

"Sex was not first on my mind."

Harry stared at him again. Riddle reached out, giving Harry plenty of time to avoid the touch if he wanted, and smoothed his fingers up Harry's arm and then down again. They still left fire in their wake. Harry was more affected by the way Riddle watched him. Having sex with him hadn't eased the starvation Riddle was showing him.

Which made no sense at all. Riddle had looked at him with hunger because Harry was a virgin, or because he was stubborn and resisting Riddle. Why would he want to sleep with him now, when those weren't true?

"I want someone to stand at my side," Riddle said, his voice as soft as the plunk of shillings falling into a well. "True, for most of the time I've been alive, I believed I had no equal. But that makes me all the more likely to hold on to the one person who's proved to be that."

What tales did he tell the other Knights of Walpurgis? This is the way he has of seducing you to his cause. No matter how good it feels, you know that he did something exactly like it before. Hell, for all you know, he's slept with half his Knights, or all of them.

Harry licked his lips and kept his eyes on Riddle's as he said, "I don't think that can happen. I just don't think—you're capable of that. Maybe you once were. But after what happened in fifth year, you wouldn't be."

Riddle stared at him in silence. Harry got ready to reach for his wand. His magic was already thrumming under his skin. He was sure it could keep him safe if Riddle shot a curse at him. Well, fairly sure. This was Tom Riddle they were talking about.

"What do you mean?"

"You know, Riddle. Opening the Chamber. Releasing the basilisk. Killing Myrtle. Oh, sure, I wasn't at the school at the time, but it was easy to put together the clues later. It would have been easy for other people if they weren't blinded by your charm. And I know what else you must have done once you started looking into ways to live forever."

Silence. Blank staring. Part of Harry had honestly expected that, but he did wonder why it had lasted so long without someone lashing out.

"Are you a Legilimens?" Riddle whispered. "Have you been looking into my mind?"

Harry shook his head. "I've had people try to teach me Legilimency. They all said I was hopeless at it." Even the Albus of this dimension had tried, and then given up, telling Harry that his mind had the closest resemblance to a leaky sieve Albus had ever seen. Harry had tried to take that as a compliment.

"Then you must have seen into my soul." Riddle inched a little closer to him across the blankets. Harry brought the whirling magic beneath his skin closer to the surface, in response. "I did consider the way of immortality that I think you're talking about, yes. And the moment when the basilisk killed Myrtle was the moment when I could have made one."

"Could? Did, Riddle."

"You misunderstand me," Riddle said, almost whispering now. "Could is not did. I found the information about Horcuxes. I also found the information that I would lose my mind if I attempted to make them. I value my mind, my brilliance that sets me apart from others, more than I fear death."

Harry stared at him. It was true that Riddle acted saner here than the diary shade had. But the diary shade had already been a Horcrux. How was Harry supposed to know how the actual human Riddle had acted? And he had—he had every motive to lie now and fool Harry. If he thought Harry knew about his Horcrux, how to find it, how to destroy it, then he would do anything he could to protect it.

"You're lying." Harry's voice was a shaky whistle. He reached for his wand, ready to his hand. Riddle didn't draw his own; he lay silently in place, staring at Harry with a starvation that had only grown worse. "I know you made a Horcrux."

"Rather, you guessed, and you can't stand that your guess was wrong." Riddle was faintly smiling now, but it didn't lessen that longing in his eyes. "You wanted to know, a few days ago, why I am doing what I am doing, did you not? You couldn't figure it out."

"I know what you want! You want to rule over pure-bloods and punish people who thought you were a Muggleborn at first and live forever—'

"Living forever is a goal for the future," Riddle interrupted him softly. "I'm nineteen, just like you, Harry. I haven't even come into my full strength yet. Someday I will find a method that doesn't cost me my mind or my magic."

"There is nothing like that! All the paths to immortality are tainted!"

"I doubt you know them all, Harry. But for now, I have other goals. Yes, I want to punish the people who thought I was someone they could scorn. I have them crawling at my feet now, begging to kiss them. Yes, it's heady. But the deeper goal than that is the one you haven't guessed at, Harry. No one has, because all of them would think it was too plebian for me."

"And you're going to tell me? Really? The one who made a damaging guess about you, the one that you—"

"You're panicking. For a moment, I wondered why. Now I know. I'm about to change your perceptions of me, aren't I? I'm about to make you have to confront the ideas you had and change them. And if you alter them far enough, you'll be mine."

Harry let his lips draw back from his teeth. He would use magic before anything else to take on Riddle, of course, but the thought of biting him was so fucking satisfying. "You aren't going to corrupt me. You aren't going to taint me. You aren't going to mark me."

"You haven't heard what I'm working towards, yet."

"It's going to be tainted."

"Why?" Riddle traced a finger down Harry's bare leg again. Harry jumped and turned so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He knew it was useless to hide the fact that he was half-hard. Riddle's sidelong glance said that.

"Because I know what you're like," Harry snapped over his shoulder. "And even if I didn't have eyes, I have ears. I know that you slept with half the people in our year and most of the ones in the year below, at least if they could give you something. You're not—this isn't going to last."

"Do hear what my ultimate goal is, before you judge me and make yourself look stupid."

Harry hissed out a long breath through his nose, but said nothing. He knew that Albus himself had wondered whether Riddle's goal was just political domination; he seemed to be moving too slowly if that was the case, and have too small a group of followers. Harry had to listen, in case it was something valuable he could report on.

"That's better," Riddle said softly, when Harry didn't move again. "Now. I spent most of my childhood cold and lonely, hungry and bullied. My first years at Hogwarts weren't that much better. I knew I could become more powerful in my magic, but ultimately that wouldn't keep me safe. Someone could snap my wand or take it from me. Dumbledore was suspicious of me, and he blocked me from some paths I could have followed. So. What do you think I did?"

"I'm sure you're about to enlighten me."

"I decided that by the time I was an adult, I would be utterly safe and protected. I would build up my inner circle, and some outer circles too, and allies, and places that I felt safe, and my fortune, until no one could take them from me."

Harry stared at him. Now that he thought about it, that did make a lot of sense out of some of Riddle's motivations. They met in different houses because Riddle didn't want to stay too long in any one. His group of followers was small because he wouldn't have anyone near him that he didn't trust completely. He could afford to take his time to build up political connections because succeeding at politics was something that would keep him safer, not the overriding goal that it seemed it had been for the diary shade.

It wasn't the motivation Harry would have suspected from him at all. Then again, this was a different world, a different Tom Riddle.

I changed things by coming back in time. Did I change this, too?

Harry shook his head. He couldn't know, and he wouldn't drive himself mad trying to figure it out. "So how do I fit into all this, then? I'm not someone who can give you a house or money or something like that."

"There was something else I promised myself," Riddle said. "But I knew it might not be achievable, not the way safety was. If I found someone capable of standing at my side, someone I wanted fiercely, then I would do my best to capture and hold their interest. And I would make sure that my allies and money and safehouses protected them, as well."

Harry shut his eyes. No, wait, Riddle is still the same as he was in my world. Because he's utterly insane.

"You've known me a month, Riddle," he said tiredly. "Hogwarts doesn't count, we never interacted then. And all you really know about me is that I'm a Hufflepuff and an illegitimate Potter and magically powerful. You're—what, willing to risk all you built on that?"

"I don't find the likes of you every day, Harry."

"You wanted a powerful follower. I could still be that. You don't really—"

Riddle's hand came to rest on his knee. It was warm and shocking enough that Harry's eyes shot open. Riddle was leaning towards him, the intense stare raking Harry as if to scrape the flesh off his bones. His other hand was hovering, but fell to the sheets as Harry watched.

"I'm willing to risk it because no one has made me feel a hundredth of what you do," Riddle said. "I had come to accept that I would never find someone to stand at my side, not because no one worthy existed, but because I looked at those who might have been worthy and felt nothing. And then you. You make me burn."

He practically hissed the last word, and Harry nearly hissed back, and then told himself not to, and then reminded himself that Riddle knew he was a Parselmouth now, there was no point in hiding. Harry switched to Parseltongue to reply, hoping against hope that it would convince Riddle. "You can't really think that your followers are going to accept you dating someone—"

"I will make them accept it. I have done harder things. I have made them bow at the feet of a half-blood, someone they tormented for being a Mudblood a few years ago. I have resisted the temptation to make a Horcrux. I want you. I will have you."

"I told you what sex with the unwilling is called."

"Not against your will, Harry," Riddle murmured, and took his hand off Harry's knee, although he trailed his fingers gently up the side again, making Harry clench his teeth on the wordless hiss. "I will spend years seducing you, if necessary. I know you have qualms. I will answer them. I will soothe them. I will give you whatever you want and need to stand at my side."

Harry just stared at him helplessly. It seemed like all his arguments kept dissolving into thin air, or spit, or something, the minute Riddle started answering them.

And—

It was strange. There was a squirming thought in the back of his mind, an oozing hope. What if this being a different world, and a different Tom Riddle, meant it was okay to give in and let him do whatever he wanted? Because he wasn't insane or making Horcruxes or maybe even looking to take over the world. He seemed, most of all, to want to be left alone and safe in his self-created castle of people.

But Harry immediately reprimanded himself. He couldn't think that way. That way lay surrender and a warm mouth at his throat and—

He cut off his thoughts again and yanked his hand free of Riddle's. "You can never be what I need. The chance that you could be died when you were younger."

Riddle only gave a small shrug, which would have looked agreeable if not for the grin tugging at his mouth and the continuous yearning in his eyes. "I thought that I would never find someone for me before I found you, Harry. I'm learning to be wary of pronouncements with the word never in them."

"This one is true."

"Like I said, we have years." Riddle stood and Summoned his clothes, then dressed in a leisurely way while looking at Harry. Harry thought of yanking the blankets up to cover his chest and legs, but honestly, at this point Riddle had seen everything anyway. He matched him stare for stare, instead.

"We have years," Riddle repeated softly as he finished doing up his shirt. "You can wait as long as you need to talk to me honestly about what you want. We can wait to have sex again. But I'm not going to allow you to pull back, Harry. We're going to be honest, the way we were this morning."

"You wish."

"I think I have already proven I am a master at provoking you."

Riddle smiled at him and swanned out of the room, saying only over his shoulder, "I enjoyed it."

Harry sat there with his head in his hands.

In the end, he didn't tell Albus. The shame that crowded his throat when he thought about it made him want to vomit. He could bear a lot of things, but not the eyes of the one person in this time who knew the truth about him becoming cold and disappointed.

He did tell him what Riddle had said about wanting to build a circle of safety for himself, and Albus considered it in silence before shaking his head.

"That is part of it, something I didn't consider before." Albus sipped from his tea again and put his cup down. He'd tried to make his visits less frequent since Harry told him about Riddle believing Harry had a lover. They communicated by Patronus most of the time now.

Another thing Riddle took from me, Harry thought, and tried not to grind his hand into his knee.

"But it can't be the whole thing," Albus continued. "If he didn't wish to build his edifice on blood prejudice, he would reach out to talented Muggleborns and members of Houses other than his. Instead, he sought pure-bloods and Slytherins out deliberately. He does have political ambitions. It makes sense that he wouldn't share them with you yet, though."

Harry stared at his lightly buttered scones. He wanted to say, He did seek out a talented Muggleborn—me. Or that's what he thought I was, anyway. And I saw at least two Knights who were from Ravenclaw. And he sought out the Slytherin pure-bloods because they're the ones who have the power and money he wants, and he wanted to see them cringing to him, too.

In the end, though, he didn't voice his suspicions. Because they were justifications of the kind that Riddle might have spewed.

In the end, after Albus had left and Harry was left to stare out the window of his small bedroom and think how lonely he was, now more than before, all he could think was that Riddle had managed to taint him after all.

"Come here, Keller. Got some people I want you to meet."

Harry concealed a sigh as he followed Nott through a door in the back of the main Auror classroom. The man hadn't taken no for an answer no matter how hard Harry tried to deflect. He had slipped out early a few times and been taught by another Auror a few times, but now he was caught.

They stepped into what looked like a small room the Aurors might use for interrogation or training—bare stone walls, plain but polished wooden furniture. There was a large table in the middle of the room, though, and six chairs around it, filled with people. Harry stared at them warily. There was a tall man with white hair whom he didn't recognize, but who looked as if he was related to Nott somehow. He had the bastard's intense stare at Harry, anyway.

The other people, though…

Harry nearly choked on his breath as he recognized messy hair and hazel eyes and other traits from the Mirror of Erised. The man who was rising to his feet as he stared at Harry had his same knobbly knees, and looked a lot like his dad, but didn't wear glasses. The woman who stood next to him, her hands clasped over her mouth, her eyes filled with tears, had sleek dark hair and dark eyes Harry hadn't inherited, but he knew she was his grandmother.

Fuck, Harry thought numbly as he glanced at the other people. A woman who had unmistakable Black features, and a man with floppy black hair and a rueful smile, and a man with Potter hair and a ferocious scowl.

"I think there's been a mistake?" Harry's voice was high and squeaked. He cleared his throat and tried again, as best he could. "I don't know why I'm here. Who are you?" He blinked and looked at his family, trying his best to make it seem as if he had never seen any of them before.

"No mistake." Nott had moved so that he was lounging against the door behind Harry, and, of course, blocking the way out again. "We know that your name isn't really Keller, it's Potter. The resemblance is unmistakable when we looked at it the right way."

"Why do you care?" Harry demanded. Soft words or pretending not to know what was going on wouldn't get him out of this situation. "You're not—"

"My wife is a cousin of the Potters," said Nott calmly. "So, yes, I do care about the discovery of new family. And for whatever reason you hid your heritage, you don't need to do it now."

"Yes, why did you?" whispered the woman Harry knew was Euphemia Potter, James's mother. His grandmother. This is mental. "We have had so much trouble having children, my Fleamont and I. Charlus and Dorea—" she nodded at the other older man and woman "—had only the one son. And—you are Tristan's."

"I don't want him," the scowling man broke in.

So that's Tristan. Harry was grateful to the bloke for giving him his path out of this, as little as he approved of anyone who abandoned a child. "That's right. I know there was a scandal, and I never intended to bring about a scandal for your family. So that's why I hid. And that's why we don't need to have any contact."

Tristan straightened up a little. "You're not here to demand money of me?"

"Of course not!" Harry shook his head, even as he was thinking a little wistfully of the vault of gold in Gringotts. He could have used thicker blankets and warmer clothes and bigger meals—but that didn't matter, not compared to the trouble he was going to run headlong into if he accepted any form of contact from the Potters. "I think we should just go our separate ways, and I can be known publically as a Muggleborn, and—"

"Of course that can't happen." Dorea Black apparently had a cold, calm voice when she wanted to use it, and it froze absolutely everyone in the room. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him, and Harry got a glimpse of what he supposed Mrs. Weasley would look like if she had black hair. "You're a relative of ours. Children are precious, especially for families like the Potters that have had so much trouble producing a recent generation."

"I'm illegitimate, though!"

"Why does that matter?"

"It would bring about a scandal, I told you." Harry tried to adopt a condescending tone. Maybe he could get them to dislike him and leave him alone that way. "So we should just go back to our lives."

"No," said Fleamont, this time. "My boy—our boy. You might be Tristan's son, Charlus and Dorea's grandson, and not ours—"

Oh, Merlin. This is so mental.

"But you belong to our whole family. Dorea said children are precious. But she is both right and wrong. You are precious. If you only knew what we wished to give you."

Fuck. Fleamont's words reached right into the center of Harry's soul where his loneliness still dwelled, the place that Tom Riddle had accessed so effortlessly. Harry swallowed roughly and looked away. He knew they would see the expression on his face, and, with his luck, judge it accurately.

"You can't tell me that you enjoy the status of a Muggleborn outcast everyone is going to look down on?" Tristan demanded. "No son of mine would enjoy that."

Apparently I'm his son when it's convenient, Harry thought, and did let them see him rolling his eyes. "Yeah, well, I'm not really your son, am I? Because you abandoned me."

"We packed him off to the Continent because he was getting so wild," Charlus said at once. "We never knew he'd had a son. Please, Harry, please give us a chance. Forgive us for our ignorance. We want to take you home tonight and talk to you over dinner and get to know you."

Harry resisted the urge to giggle madly with an effort. Fuck, fuck, fuck. There went all his plans of lying low and pretending to be an ordinary Muggleborn. First Riddle's Knights of Walpurgis changing their minds about him, and now this.

He knew, rationally, that all he had to do was start swearing and acting ungrateful enough, and they would let him go. It had to be able to happen that way. He was stubborn enough to get his way.

But he couldn't make himself open his mouth and act like that. The ache in his chest wouldn't let him. He was incapable of rejecting his family.

"Um," he said weakly, aware that he'd been silent and they were all staring at him. "I reckon we could try?"

Dorea swept forwards to hug him, her arms tight, possessive, and right behind her was Charlus, and then came Fleamont and Euphemia. And Tristan managed to shake his hand. And the other tall man, who introduced himself as Everard Nott, Auror Nott's brother, said that he was happy to see families reunited, and he worked for Gringotts, and he was also happy to arrange the transfer of a Potter vault into Harry's name.

Fuck, Harry thought as he got hugged yet again, and this time Dorea didn't show any sign of letting him go. I really hope that the world isn't about to be doomed by love, instead of saved by it.

"Did you intend to have your name come out as Harry Potter, my dear boy?"

Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair, watching Albus carefully. He hated that he had to be this careful with the man who was still the only one who knew he'd traveled back in time.

He hated it, but not as much as he would have a few days ago. He had the Potter family, sulky as his "father" might be, surrounding him, insisting that he visit when he was done with Auror training in the evenings, dragging him around to shop after shop, and trying to talk him out of working for Ophelia. Harry had told them he would stay until she found another shop assistant. That wasn't enough to satisfy Dorea, but at least the rest had backed off.

And he had—Riddle.

He'd received long, thoughtful letters from him each day since he'd "found" his family, discussing some of the political maneuvers that Riddle might perform to let the pure-bloods believe he was on their side while also promoting the rights of Muggleborns and half-bloods. He'd woken up to a delivery of white roses, intertwined with lilies. And Riddle had sent him a single piece of parchment that honestly didn't make sense: an image of two golden snakes with their heads dangling down to the sides, their bodies looped and coiled and intertwined.

Harry would have to ask him what the hell that meant the next time he saw him.

"I didn't intend it," Harry finally answered. "But Auror Nott wouldn't take no for an answer, and I don't think Fleamont or Euphemia or any of the Potters would have, either, once they found out about me. I did try to convince them that maybe the resemblance was a coincidence."

"How?"

"I said that my mother had never been very clear about who she slept with. I said I'd had my suspicions after I saw some old pictures of Fleamont in the papers, but that I never would have approached them based on that."

"What was the result?"

Harry sighed. "Dorea promptly cast a spell that confirmed I have their blood." Harry was lucky that either spells hadn't advanced beyond that point yet or his family didn't know any of them, because having his true parents' and grandparents' names show up on a family tree or something would have been incredibly upsetting.

At least Dorea, as someone who had broken with her family to marry a blood traitor, wasn't welcome back in Grimmauld Place and wouldn't see that there was no name beneath Tristan's on that tapestry.

"I see," Albus murmured. "Well. What do they have to say of your association with Riddle?"

"They don't know about it," Harry said flatly. "And they won't." Until Riddle forces the issue. Dorea had already teased Harry about the snake image, which had come while he was staying overnight with his "grandparents."

"It may be hard to hide."

"We'll see," Harry said. Now that he knew—or thought he knew—that Riddle didn't want immediate political prominence, he thought it entirely possible that his membership in the Knights of Walpurgis might remain masked for a long time. Riddle's followers wouldn't betray him. Riddle might introduce Harry in other contexts, though…

Harry felt his face heat up. Stop it. You know that he's lying about being able to love you. It's a convincing act, but all an act.

"If you have to choose," Albus said, his eyes wide and earnest, "between protecting the future and protecting your newfound family, what will you choose?"

Harry's hands tightened almost enough to crack the teacup.

"You won't ask me to make that choice," Harry said. "Or I would walk away."

Albus nodded, looking suddenly old. "I know. But once I—thought I had the choice between my family and a grand future for myself. I sacrificed the wrong thing, and broke both of them. Simply a warning, my dear boy. I know your family loves you. But can you keep them as they are? Stay in this timeline and leave the future to burn?"

Harry closed his eyes. "You're saying that the choice is between my family's future and my own, like yours."

"Yes."

"But still different, because their future has to include the way things were, or they won't survive. Or maybe my father will never be born, I'll never be born. And my future, in this case, would be the one where I stay with them and decide that this timeline is my own and I don't care about what's to come."

"Yes."

"I thought you said time was resilient," Harry muttered, grasping at every straw he could. "That the timeline wouldn't break, but would pop back into place."

"Certain things are. But what would happen if Fleamont and Euphemia never have a child, because they are satisfied knowing you? Or if they become desperate to have one and use fertility potions or other means earlier, and the child who is born is not your father?"

Harry put his hand to his head and the old faded traces of his lightning bolt scar. "I don't know what to do."

"Simply do not fall too far," Albus said softly. "Keep an eye on them, an eye on Tom. Know that even if they intend the best for you—and I cannot believe that Tom does—they cannot do the best, because they do not know everything."

And I don't want my father never to be born. Or never to marry my mum. I want them to—have better lives, not no lives.

Harry went to bed that night as lonely as he had been when he arrived in this time.

Riddle opened the door of his flat and walked right in, as usual.

"Go away, Riddle," Harry snarled from the middle of the bed. He hadn't risen for the last few days except to attend Auror training and eat. He'd ignored the invitations, and when he saw Dorea waiting for him at one entrance of the Ministry, he'd turned and walked the other way.

He had to put them behind him. He had to accept that he might have made a mistake by getting to know them at all, as hard as it would have been to avoid them when Nott shoved him into the interrogation room.

Did he love them? Then he had to give them up, try to pull back and not disturb the timeline more than absolutely necessary.

And he'd avoided Riddle.

Riddle sat down on the bed next to him, staring at him with narrowed eyes. "I know that you're trying to act as if you're not related to the Potters," he said. "As if we never slept together. Did no one ever tell you that you can't change the past?"

Harry gave a laugh that he knew was ugly. And then it kept going, so he knew he was also hysterical. He put an arm over his eyes and rolled away from Riddle, almost choking on the laughter, wrestling it to death.

Merlin, how is this my life?

Riddle's hand slipped onto his shoulder, and tightened. Then he leaned in and pressed his other hand to the middle of Harry's back. The touch was almost as grounding as an embrace. Harry gasped and caught control of himself again.

He tried to shrug off Riddle's touch. Riddle didn't move.

"Maybe part of you wishes it hadn't happened this way," Riddle continued in a quiet, heavy voice. "Maybe part of you wishes that you weren't getting to know your family as a suddenly exposed illegitimate half-blood, and maybe part of you wishes that you had found some nameless, happy Hufflepuff to love. But it's happened. You have to live with it. You have to make the best of it."

"I don't love you!"

"But you could," Riddle whispered, and his breath was a long, quick sigh over Harry's ear, making him squirm. "Listen to me, Harry. You have the chance to have so much. Why refuse it? Why turn your back on it?"

"You don't understand."

"Yes, I don't. And I know you won't explain. But I know one thing. I am never going to let go of someone I think I could love."

Harry breathed out, staring at the wall. He had the impression that the Potters of this time wouldn't, either. He could avoid them for a few days, but sooner or later, one of them would barge in here the way Tom had and demand an explanation. Or Euphemia would cry, and he didn't think he could stand to see that, either.

Tom's hand smoothed slowly over his shoulder.

"Why did you send me that image of two snakes?" Harry whispered. It was the only question drifting at the forefront of his mind right now.

"Because that is the kind of mark that we could share together," Tom answered. "Someday, when you're not opposed to the idea. Two snakes entwined together. Different than the mark my Knights bear, but a mark all the same. I would carry it with you."

Harry shut his eyes hard. "You don't love me, either."

"I know that. But as I said, you taught me what it might feel like to do so. I am not going to yield that. I am not going to yield you."

Tom said it as a fact, hard and definite. And part of Harry, small and miserable, rejoiced in that he was held dear by someone, and not for the blood that did run in his veins, backwards in time.

He still doesn't know the truth. He would reject you if he knew.

"We can continue to sit like this for the rest of the night, Harry, if you would rather. Or you can sit up, get dressed and washed, and come with me. There is a meal in Abraxas's manor that is being saved for you."

Harry shivered. He didn't know if he could have told the truth at the moment even under Veritaserum. Was he yielding because he hoped he could change the future for the better, tame Tom Riddle, prevent the war from happening, and still encourage Euphemia and Fleamont to have his father on time? Or was he yielding because the loneliness was still a gaping wound inside him, and he was too weak to resist?

Tom Riddle didn't love him. On the other hand, he didn't want him because of his fame or the Horcrux or the money Harry might stand to inherit from his family someday. Just for—who he was. What Harry made him feel.

Harry rolled slowly back over. Tom was staring at him, that endless hunger in his eyes. Harry raised a hand and laid it cautiously against Tom's cheek. He got fluttering eyes in response and a deep sigh that seemed to rise up from Tom's toes.

"I don't know if I can give you everything that you're missing," Tom whispered. "Let me try."

I don't know if I can believe you. Harry took a deep breath. Let me try.

"Yes," he said. "All right." And he got up and cast some Cleaning Charms on himself and donned some fresh robes, and walked through his door next to Tom Riddle.

He didn't know of any way to go back to his own time. He didn't know of any way to be the perfect spy in the Knights of Walpurgis and the perfect Auror trainee with no attachment to anything beyond his mission.

He would have to move forwards, and do what he could.

The End.