Chapter Text
The important thing about balance is that things are meant to be - well - balanced . Maybe there is a reason Tom and Harry should have been born nearly sixty years apart. The world wasn’t meant to have four wizards with such power at their fingertips at the same time. Power is damning.
A Dark Lord must fall for a Dark Lord to rise. It’s all about balance, really .
The basilisk emerges from the stairs to the underground, erupting with the speed of a cobra despite her size. There is a shape in front of her - Harry is vindictively pleased to see Tom did as he threatened and used Pettigrew as bait. The rat-man lasts another three seconds, slowing now he’s made it to the station intact and that is, of course, when the basilisk strikes.
She is fury and fangs and a fierce harsh cold brittle fire that sends tiles and stones scattering to the side like water droplets pouring off Jormungandr’s scales. Pettigrew lets out a terrified scream as with an emerald green flash fangs tear through him like tissue paper, shaking his corpse like a dog before tossing it aside carelessly. The image is pleasing, and it’s easy for Harry to slip into his grim form as he throws himself out of the basilisk’s path. Around him the fighting is scattered in very distinct alarm at the sight of the king snake.
There is a moment Harry is vividly aware that there is a monster grim and world-sized serpent within close vicinity of each other and Tom Riddle like some kind of demon hellspawn in the middle with eyes burning red.
Grindelwald trembles. His hand is clearly shaking, but then he’s got the Elder Wand in hand and summons up a shield of stone.
Harry reaches the edge of the station, melting back to human. He’s near the barrier to the school platform, and the clock that had been hanging up is lying on the floor with mangled metal arms still pointing at the eleven which is slightly charred.
A roar as the Hebridean Black drops down like a meteor from the sky to crash into the basilisk. She lets out a shriek of pain at the flames, venom dripping off her as she tries to bite at her attacker. Realising her gaze is not petrifying, Grindelwald is growing bolder sending dark cutting curses that bounce off her armoured scales.
There’s a shimmer and the previously solid barrier next to Harry relaxes it’s mimicry of a solid wall long enough for Ron and Hermione to leap through. The acolyte following them is not so lucky, leaping just as the brickwork reforms. There is a strangled scream that gets cut off as the wall chooses to reform, regardless of it’s new addition, and rough brick slices right through him. The man stills and goes limp, cemented in place mid-jump. He’s dead, an instant kill, that much is obvious. Harry can see his throat still gulping as frayed nerves still try to signal disconnected pieces of body.
“Holy Circe ,” Ron leaps back from the corpse in horror, “Dobby, mate, keep doing what you’re doing, I’m naming my first born after you.”
“I was thinking of Rose,” Hermione says, chewing on her bottom lip, “But I suppose we could work it in as a middle name--”
“Everything okay?” Harry says, leaning heavily against the wall, trying to catch his breath. His blood still feels like a live wire and for a moment the pain cripples him, has him doubled over struggling to breath.
His friend’s worried faces swim into view but they keep their briefing short, “That guy managed to steal a portkey from Ginny’s group outside but got to us too late - the train is gone. The kids are out. Safe. Neville and Susan are-- is that the basilisk , holy Merlin , that thing is huge .” Hermione’s jaw drops open at the sight of the basilisk currently trying to choke the life out of the fiendfyre dragon.
“How the hell did you manage to get that thing to King’s Cross?” Ron looks paler than normal. “From Scotland ?”
“Metropolitan Line,” Tom deadpans, appearing next to them, one eye still fixed on his basilisk, fingering his wand like he’s seconds away from trying to shield her from the dragon she’s currently wrapped around.
Ron blanches, “Oh, okay. I am never riding the Underground again.”
Hermione hits him.
"Your friends are adorable," Tom croons to Harry. Across the station the basilisk drops away from the fiendfyre dragon. Her tail lashes like a whip, yellow eyes gleaming , mouth opening to rip and stare and kill. “Oh Merlin,” Tom says, and breaks out into a snarling hiss that has Hermione squeaking and almost leaping into Ron’s arms. “Pettigrew may have staved off her appetite, but she’s hungry.”
“As long as she doesn’t eat me, I’m skin and bone, I’d get stuck in her throat,” Ron says.
Tom’s dry look is withering, “I’ll be sure to tell her.”
“Uh oh,” Hermione says, as Grindelwald begins tracing runes in the air with his wand. Harry’s knowledge of runes is rudimentary, but both Hermione and Tom look worried. “I think he’s trying to kill your basilisk.”
“Get out of here,” Harry says, “Ron, check in with Bill and see how he’s holding the anti-muggle charms and illusions. Hermione, find Tonks, see if she’s heard from Neville yet.”
“But you need help,” Hermione insists.
“He’s got me,” Tom snaps, irritable and half-distracted by where he’s hissing instructions to the basilisk. There is a shriek across the atrium as the molten Hebridean lashes out cruelly, like a cat pushing glasses off the shelf just to watch them fall. Harry sees a lava fang catch Avery, sending him flying. Even Grindelwald’s men are not exempt, scattering like flies as the hellfire monster rages.
“Go,” Harry insists, to his friends. “I’ll be fine.”
“Harry, you look half-dead--”
“Do what I said,” he snaps, “Tom and I will deal with Grindelwald. Go!”
Ron looks like he wants to argue and that’s the moment the Hebridean Black takes to the wing again, crashing into the basilisk. Spellfire against the creatures scatters, deflected every which way by emerald scales and a raging inferno of dark magic given elemental form. Tom grabs Harry, shielding them both from erratic flying spells and when he looks up again, it’s to see his friends taking his words to heart and heading for the fire exit.
Tom takes several strides forwards, hissing out commands. The basilisk, locked in the coils of the fiendfyre dragon tilts her head. Her hearing is fine enough to pick out a mouse creeping along the floor of her chamber - of course she hears whatever Tom instructs, and with a sound like glass breaking she writhes her whole body sideways, taking the fiendfyre monster down with her.
The spells Grindelwald are constructing in the air are glowing now, and it’s with a near frantic energy that Tom snarls an instruction at the basilisk. Harry feels useless, his wand isn’t even drawn. He has better luck with the corpse his magic senses. He’s not touching it, which makes it harder, but he manages to wrap the electricity in his veins around it, sparking dead limbs to life.
Thankfully it’s not someone he knows. It’s the guy from earlier that Harry had hit with a Scouring Charm more commonly used for washing pots. His skin is flayed red, muscle visible and burns coating half the face from where Tom had let the fiendfyre rage. Like a puppeteer Harry feels his broken magic sink into the empty flesh, animating it to his wishes.
The man would look normal were it not for the horrendous burns and peeling, black skin flaps. He stands, and though his legs should not hold him, too broken, too burnt, he walks anyway.
There’s an empty hollow deadness to his eyes that even Harry can’t change. A blankness, glazed dryness already gathering there. He doesn’t waste the energy in healing it; the man’s dead, least he can do is distract Grindelwald from whatever runes he’s still tracing in the air--
The inferi never makes it there, a force slamming the body to one side. The side is, unfortunately, where the fiendfyre dragon had been thrown off by the basilisk. It’s head snaps around, as if intelligent, sightless fire eyes eyeing up the corpse before scooping it up in a taloned claw.
Dumbledore stands with his wand out, and he turns from where he had just rid Harry of his new toy. “ Harry ,” his old teacher says it like a remission and scolding, tone breaking half-way through into horror.
Harry shrugs, unapologetically. He had to try. His magic might be fucked, but it sings and demands to be used. He’s still brimming with stolen power - it had been a relief to channel it into something. Given right now he can’t use normal wand magic until he’s lost the stolen magic, he’s limited to resurrecting things.
Their attention is both diverted as the basilisk, free of her fiery attacker, makes another pass at Grindelwald. Tom’s eyes gleam because Grindelwald stands there undefended with a thousand year old basilisk bearing down on him, poison dripping off her silver sword teeth--
Grindelwald’s eyes widen in alarm, spellwork still hovering in the air, a spell humming on the end of the knobbled deathstick and no time to react--
The basilisk hits a mirrored shield, fangs snapping in the air half a metre from the Dark Wizard. Tom lets out a parsel hiss that is pure anger and frustration, mahogany-red eyes levelled at the refractive puddle-like shield emerging from Dumbledore’s wand.
“That’s enough ,” Albus says, “Gellert--”
“No,” Grindelwald sneers, “I’ve had enough of Riddle’s palty parlor tricks. Let’s see Slytherin’s famed monster hold up to this --” He twists the Elder Wand, runes glowing with a harsh hospital white light and spreading out. It heads straight for the basilisk’s chest and rips through the emerald scales without stopping. They splinter, shred themselves open like a bomb has gone off inside the serpent’s chest. The basilisk lets out a shriek .
At the edge of the station the Hebridean Black stalks like a cat, tail lashing as it leaps. There is the haziness of a heatwave as the molten form erupts into a brilliant blue fire. It’s mouth cracks open in a solar bright snarl as fiery fangs go straight for the basilisk’s neck, ripping out it’s throat in one clean tear.
The basilisk shudders.
She lets out a pained cry and Harry doesn’t need to speak parseltongue to know it’s her death cry. Her large serpentine body writhes, the heat cauterising some of the wounds instantly as she drops to the ground, shuddering…
She writhes, muscles growing weak and spasms fluttering like a fragile butterfly wings pinned to the ground. Another wave of Grindelwald’s wand and the violent slashing motion tears open the emerald scales. The Hebridean stands over it’s kill, fire erupting from its feet at it’s triumph. Blood pools at its feet as the thrashing finally stills. The basilisk lies, bone white ribs exposed, flesh charred and torn. Her chest lies open like a messy dissection in process that someone had given up doing half-way through.
She is univocably dead.
“Now that?” Gellert turns to where Tom looks furious at the death of the basilisk, “That is power.”
The dragon’s wings spread, heat uncomfortably warm against Harry’s cheeks. They lift the flaming monster into the sky, straight upwards towards the roof once more. The Hebridean Black slams into the ceiling, clawing fire talons down the spell layers. It rips through them, forcing it’s way through with it’s sheer overwhelming presence.
Grindelwald turns to Dumbledore, “We could have had this,” he is saying softly, “You and I, working together, we could have had this but you threw it away--”
Dumbledore is looking with sadness at the dead basilisk, “No,” he shakes his head, “No, our petty fighting destroyed that. I had to put this ancient beast out of its misery.”
Too old, too weak in the face of an uncontrollable fire, too mortal , Harry thinks, but that’s okay. He’s been as good as useless since he drained Carrow’s magic, but now he thinks he’s found something to channel it into.
How kind of Grindelwald, to give Harry a weapon.
He closes his eyes and reaches for the golden acid buried under his ribs.
*
Grindelwald is spinning the Elder Wand between long fingers. Tom stands on the edge of the pool of blood, murder in his veins. “The power that comes with leadership,” Grindelwald says, “Is truly great.” He turns to where Albus is staring sadly at the corpse of the giant serpent. “Thanks for the help.”
“So you choose your side,” Tom says, sneeringly, “Guess love really is your greatest weapon after all, old man. Though this is taking the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry a little far, don’t you think, Professor?”
Dumbledore manages to look torn, “It petrifies with a look , Tom… how you got it here from the castle without death--”
“She listened to my every command. Instructed not to open her eyes, to bite only those bearing his scent but you couldn’t help but interfere, and now a millennium old basilisk is dead. So much for the plan.”
Grindelwald looks smug, wand flickering. There is a horrible wrenching crack as he splits the basilisks’ ribs open. “The Vikings call this the blood eagle,” he says, tearing what must be the lungs out like bloodied wings spread across the concrete. His lips twist in a calm, relaxed manner, now satisfied the corpse is suitably mangled. It won’t be getting up and going anywhere.
Tom clicks his tongue, unaffected by the violence. He had done worse to cats at the orphanage, “Shame,” he says, seemingly uncaring, feeling more than seeing Harry step up behind him. In his peripheral he sees Harry reach out, clearly concentrating, sees Dumbledore startle and Grindelwald laugh --
“Good luck fixing this, baby necromancer,” he sneers, gesturing to the damage wrought to the corpse of the giant snake next to him.
Harry’s eyes snap open, blazing gold.
Grindelwald’s laugh strangles itself in the womb, and behind him there is the subtle, but very definite shiver of movement in dead muscle. He lurches away from where gold tendrils, like glittering stars burning white hot cold reach out with curious probing fingers to the corpse, and there is a grating crunch as bone reconnects.
“No,” Grindelwald curses. “ No ,” the Dark Wizard whirls, wand practically pouring with spells all aimed for where Harry stands.
Tom gets in the way, side-stepping with a heavy conjured bronze shield taking the brunt of the spellfire. “How long do you need?” he asks, teeth gritted with the strain of the high powered shield spell, especially as what he thinks are several Unforgivables hit it. He twists to look at Harry, the sight taking his breath away; normally killing curse green eyes blazing gold like a feral animal, hand outstretched towards where the basilisk corpse is still repairing itself. Scales reform over still exposed muscle, burns and melted flesh untwists and blurs back to whole, blood trickles backwards like a river flowing the wrong way towards the source.
Harry opens his mouth to respond but is distracted by a stunner Dumbledore sends his way. He drags himself and Tom out of the way, hand dropping from where he had been directing his power at the basilisk. Harry doesn’t go for his wand, magic still discordant to normal magic and so Tom maintains a shield charm bubbling around them.
“Harry, don’t do this,” Dumbledore doesn’t try to attack again, tone pleading, “Necromancy is a slippery slope. What would your parents think?”
“I wouldn’t know, you got them killed!” Harry shouts back. His attention flitters between Dumbledore and the basilisk before settling on the great snake caught up in reverse death throes. His teeth are gritted in concentration and discomfort and Tom watches his back, knocking aside the next stunner Dumbledore tries to cast.
Grindelwald, furious, turns upon the resurrecting basilisk with extreme violence, but his spells slide off it like gasoline. Not even the Elder Wand in his hand allows his magic to stop the slick oil slide of flesh reclaiming bone.
Harry is still distracted with resurrecting the basilisk so Tom maintains his position between Harry and Dumbledore.
The old man is no longer trying to knock Harry out, instead looks alarmed to be confronted by Tom and his fury. “Harry,” Dumbledore says, weakly, ignoring Tom for now, “Let it die. Sometimes dead things shouldn’t be brought back. Dead is dead.”
Tom is aware of Harry stumbling slightly at his back, and he twists to see Harry. There’s something almost ethereal about him, from the way his black hair is windswept with specks of blood and ash in it to the gold death magic that almost glows in his iris. The flare of magic feels like sandpaper and rose thorns and victory and in that moment the basilisk - still missing about four ribs, a chunk of scales and muscle and part of it’s jaw - rears up with a furious hissing spitting snarl and lunges.
Grindelwald and Dumbledore just scatter .
Harry’s victorious grin is pure cheek. “Sometimes dead things don’t always stay dead.”
Tom can’t help but tug him closer and kiss those accursed words from his lips, “Go get Grindelwald. I’ll keep Dumbledore busy--”
Harry limps off, wand in hand and magic no longer sparking ominously. He shifts straight into an ink shadow grim that darts around a killing curse flung his way from a fuming Grindelwald. Several hit the half-resurrected basilisk and have no effect. Tom understands the furious parseltongue, although there’s something new underlying it, as if she’s speaking into a long tunnel. Like a ghost given corporeal form, he remembers Harry describing his less successful resurrections, and that describes the basilisk perfectly. It's hollow, half-there but it's still got some level of consciousness even though it's acting like it's heavily concussed.
Tom turns to where Dumbledore is standing. “Tom, Harry,” Albus appears to be trying to appeal to their better natures. Tom doesn’t have one and Harry’s lost his years ago. He falters at encountering Tom Riddle with murder in his gaze.
Murder in his gaze and blanket permission from Harry. Albus Dumbledore is his and Tom is going to enjoy this . Holly is warm in his hand, the phoenix feather humming. Maybe it senses that Tom is going to use it to murder the man whose phoenix it once belonged to. He hopes so. He hopes Dumbledore knows what feather cores his wand. He hopes it burns him.
“I always hope that this will be the last time we meet like this, Tom,” Albus says, holding out his oak wand carefully, “As always, you never cease to exceed my expectations."
"Still playing word games," Tom sneers. He is not an eleven year old boy with all his worldly possessions in one measly wardrobe. Setting it on fire doesn't intimidate him anymore. “You brought this on yourself. Don’t bother trying to stall,” he shrugs, “Your Order can’t apparate in and I’ve got people keeping them busy. Nobody can dive in to save you.”
Despair and quiet acceptance are written onto his features. Guilt will not save him now and Albus Dumbledore knows this. One failure too many. “I’m so sorry,” he says anyway, like an apology of all things will make a difference, “I have failed you. Both of you--”
“You think too highly of yourself,” Tom snarls, “This was inevitable. You had nothing to do with it. Bombarda !”
“You killed something in him, Tom,” Dumbledore doesn’t even have the gall to be angry. He just looks unbelievably sad . “Harry used to be such a brave boy, so good--” and you ruined that, goes unsaid.
Tom is good at ruining people, but he thinks now, his soul mutilated and his mind plagued by the spectral grim that haunts him, that he and Harry are each other’s ruin.
“No,” Tom corrects him, “I made him. And Harry? Harry’s perfect . He’s not your saviour, he’s not your martyr, he’s mine .” Harry is his in every way that counts and more. His old school friends flock to him, look to him in joy. His professed crimes of necromancy run rampant rumours around the Ministry and still they turn up to fight, complacent in the delusion that Harry is doing this for all the right reasons and that he’s an intrinsically good person.
Tom has seen Harry’s darkness, teased it open with a hot slick tongue and blood coated blades between ribs. He’s torn Harry open with ribs splayed and wrapped his hand around Harry’s heart.
And they still think he’s their hero.
He’s not. Harry Potter will not save any of them in this lifetime, but that doesn't matter too much because he's already saved Tom Riddle and that is, somehow, more relevant in the long run.
“You said I wasn’t a threat,” Tom smirks, content in his power, “How about now?”
Dumbledore’s pale blue eyes widen with unbidden sadness and knowing , like he can already see his fate.
Then they’re duelling.
*
Harry twists away from where Tom is taking far too much glee in taunting Dumbledore, almost stepping straight into a killing curse. He shifts into a grim, skidding underneath it and stepping out of the shift, yew wand ready.
“Cute form,” Grindelwald says, even while looking slightly freaked out. He’s given up on killing the undead basilisk, and instead his fiendfyre dragon blazed blue fire as it drops from the roof onto the basilisk, seemingly infuriated by the life in it’s should-be-kill. “You know they like to call grims a devil’s sacrifice?”
“Appropriate,” Harry shoots back, along with several nasty curses, “I got it from a monstrous spirit wolf in Norway.” His smile is twisted by his scars into something rough and raw and unfettered. Fenrir unchained.
The Dark Wizard doesn’t appear to know if he’s joking or not. He also doesn’t appear to care, raining spells down on Harry. "You'll die like the rest of your kind, baby Necromancer," Grindelwald sneers, "Your magic cannibalises itself eventually."
"Death comes for everyone eventually, but don't worry," Harry doesn't care, "I'll take you with me first." A bombarda, depulso and diffindo trip off his wand. Grindelwald knocks them aside with ease, sends back curses Harry doesn’t even recognise .
Another attempt to disarm misses and Harry has to fling himself away from a spell that splits itself into about seven, each one piercing the wall he had stood in front of with glistening shards of metal.
Grindelwald is winning. For as good as Harry had been at Defence, their experience is not balanced. Harry's blind side is a weak spot, easily exploited and another spell clips him. He hangs on through the same sheer dumb luck that likes to follow him around and the single determined fact that Harry is less than ten feet from the last Hallow.
He can feel it’s magic. The thestral tail hair and elder wood radiate the same disharmonic magic that radiates through Harry’s veins.
It’s his already, the rest is just details.
There is the sound of metal buckling. It startles Grindelwald and his next killing curse goes flying. Behind them the fiendfyre dragon throws itself into a set of stairs in an effort to rid itself of the king serpent. The dead basilisk has locked it’s coils around the Hebridean Black. With a ferocious hiss it’s head snaps forwards, argent fangs burying in the throat of the dragon. A second that lasts forever as the fire alights within the basilisk’s throat, illuminating skull and empty eye sockets with lit hellfire. It sparks like gunpowder cracking in its throat, poison leaking through once gleaming emerald scales now charred black.
WIth an unholy screech the life goes out of fiendfyre dragon as with a twist of it’s head, the basilisk brings the creature thudding down to the cold hard tiled floor. It sparks like flint and tinder, body curling into ash and embers. Black coals gleaming blue, then green and back to yellow as the fire dies.
The king snake thrashes for a moment, still burning out from the inside. It’s eyes burn and not just a gleaming yellow. It’s coils twist and as the dragon’s shape finally dissolves into ash on the wind, she rises up triumphant. The burns and fire damage look horrible, look like it’s still burning except in reverse as skin knits back together, gold eating away at the damage. It’s vocal cords are so ruined it’s triumphant hiss is more of a vibration that settles in Harry’s bones.
Grindelwald stumbles in alarm at seeing his fiendfyre choked out of existence and that is when Harry’s disarming charm slips through the transfigurations and the flames and the ice and rips the Elder Wand neatly out of Gellert's grip.
*
Dumbledore puts up a good fight. Tom will give him that. He barely has time to think of what spell to cast, let alone form the incantation and wand movement. There is a period he’s just breathing in the magic. He is nothing but a conduit.
To one side the undead basilisk; the best of his and Harry’s powers given physical form, bears the fiendfyre dragon to ash. The burns that had once hampered her are half-healed war wounds and it’s sightless yellow gaze is licked with leaf gold magic that Harry had sent pulsing through her form. Her shriek is unworldly; thunderbolt splitting the celestial river that burns inside her.
“Scared yet?” Tom asks Albus, just as with a red flash, Harry’s outrageously high powered disarming charm sends Grindelwald to his knees.
The Elder Wand lands neatly in Harry’s seeker-deft fingers, and there’s a certain finality to it. Maybe it’s in the way Harry’s eyes twist gold, just as Tom’s own are burning crimson, or maybe it’s symbol that bleeds hazily into Harry’s footsteps as he stalks towards the Dark Lord. Harry looks surprised, like he hadn’t expected the disarming charm to even hit, but then against Harry always had had a tendency to force too much power into them.
“Did you really think this would all end peacefully? You clearly haven't been playing very close attention, these are the seeds you've sown, Dumbledore,” he laughs in delight.
“No,” Albus sees it too; Grindelwald on his knees and Harry Potter, Hallows combined. The realisation of how this has played out; Harry and Tom against Albus and Gellert, Albus and Gellert fighting side by side hits him and his next shield is slow to form. The confringo leaves burns in his horrible taste in robes, firewhip wrapping into flesh before Dumbledore knocks the spell away.
It doesn’t matter. It’s too late, the damage is done.
Tom pauses in his casting. Dumbledore stands, all the fight seemingly drained out of him. His gaze is fixed on where Grindelwald kneels, seemingly in a state of shock. The Dark Wizard’s hand opens and closes over empty air, as if in disbelief that he’d lost the Elder Wand.
To a disarming charm of all things, Tom thinks fondly, only Harry .
“This,” Harry says, stalking forwards, “This was a long time coming, you know that, right? There was a prophecy, remember? Stupid thing, prophecies, yet you murdered my parents over this. Guess you kind of brought this on yourself, really.”
“Don’t,” Dumbledore begs from where he stands, wand help limply in his hand, “Not like this--”
“ Expelliarmus ,” Tom tries out the disarming charm for himself, sending the oak wand clattering off into the bowels of the station. A shifting in the shadows reveals the basilisk, circling them like a giant pet dog. If any of either Grindelwald’s acolytes or Tom’s Knights remain in the station itself after the fiendfyre dragon had finished its first rampage, the death eyes of the basilisk have forced the rest away. The DA are busy maintaining oddly specific wards at various cruxes and the Order are probably still outside with any aurors on the scene.
They’ve got plenty of time, Tom thinks, content, holding Albus Dumbledore at wand point.
“Harry,” Dumbledore barely appears to notice the loss of his wand, “I was wrong. This isn’t you…”
“Isn’t it?” Harry laughs. It sounds like resignation or maybe acceptance beaten half to death. “I thought you said this is what I was destined to do. Wasn’t it you who said it was fate-written? Prophecy bound? Don’t you want me to fulfill my destiny?”
Grindelwald laughs from where he’s kneeling, pushing himself back to his feet, “You’re soft , boy, death magic or not. You don’t have it in you to cast the killing curse.” He’s good, convincing but Tom doesn’t worry about Harry wavering.
“You say that like I don’t know my own abilities,” Harry rolls his eyes, “You’re right, I can’t cast a killing curse. But I’m perfectly capable of any other spell,” his sigh is dramatically put-upon, “Wizards, no sense of imagination,” and the Elder Wand flashes out.
Dumbledore’s face crumples, “NO!” he shouts in horror.
“ Accio ,” Harry says, simply and watches as Grindelwald’s chest cracks open. Ribs open like some twisted flower as he summons the man’s heart right out of his body. There are pieces of lung tissue still stuck to the pulmonary vessels, and the aorta gets severed on a piece of cracked sternum. It pulses in his grip, the electrical signals still conducting and for a moment it continues to beat in Harry’s grip as if still alive.
Grindelwald’s body crashes to the ground, dead.
“Your early birthday present,” Harry gestures with the heart, glancing at Tom, lips kicking up, and then falls, “Ugh, I always forget how disgusting this is.” He brightens, eyes a shade too-gold, too-cracked but Tom doesn’t care, his own burning as red as the blood and viscera clinging to Harry’s skin, “Professor, I think you might finally have won Gellert’s heart,” Harry tilts his head, almost cruel.
Dumbledore chokes.
Losing interest, Harry tilts the heart to roll out of his hand and land next to the pale blonde hair.
Harry can’t hide the blood on his hands now.
“I hope you enjoyed the show,” Tom says, softly to Dumbledore, “It’s curtain close now, you up for one last bow, old man?”
He isn’t. He falls to Avada Kedavra just as easily an anyone else. Tom is almost disappointed. He tilts his head to the side and looks down at where the man lies, so much less than he was in life.
*
The air smells like smoke and soot and something somebody’s left cooking for far too long. The basilisk’ hisses are like the rumble of approaching thunder circling. Tom hisses something back and Harry feels the ripple in his magic. It’s not dead, not entirely, he’d managed to save some shreds of it’s spirit and it obeys Tom sulkily, still obedient to Slytherin’s blood.
Grindelwald lies dead at Harry’s feet. There is no sense of victory, just a weary resignation and soft sort of triumph that steals over him slowly as he examines the wand in his grasp. But there is time to examine his prize later, and so he secretes it away on his person. It hums, warm and content in his pocket.
Pulling out yew wood he mumbles a whispered Expecto Patronum . It fails, and he tries to summon up images of warmth and happiness. The second time he whispers it with his parent’s faces pressed between pages of memory the stag appears. His patronus is the colour of unicorn blood spilling against the charred black walls of the station. It’s thin, deathly so, and something almost akin to feathers ripple across it as it bounds away to let his people know it’s over. Harry watches it go with a terrible sort of fondness .
He turns to Tom, stumbling slightly as wounds he had not been aware of in the heat of battle make themselves apparent. He’s aware of the Order appearing, late as usual, with the DA and Knights milling in the background, as well organised as ever. Dumbledore’s body lies behind the Dark Lord Ascendant; Harry must have missed his death between ripping out Grindelwald’s heart and the new thrum of power under his sternum from uniting the Hallows.
It doesn’t matter. Right now none of it matters; he can only look at where Tom stands, his eyes blazing with a horrible delight.
Harry can’t help but reach forward, cupping the other’s chin as he presses forward for a searing kiss. Teeth click together and it’s messy and bloody, Harry’s hand is still covered in viscera from Grindelwald’s heart but Tom just presses forwards fiercely, hands raking through Harry’s hair. Parseltongue falls off his lips and sends shivers down his spine.
“You know I can’t understand you, right?” he says breathlessly, pulling away slightly from kiss bitten lips. For a moment the desire in Tom’s eyes overwhelms him. The brown mahogany iris is almost eclipsed by dark pupils. Riddle looks barely human with blood streaked over half his face and the overwhelming emotion written onto his handsome features.
“It’s okay,” Tom says, touch almost gentle as he trails hot fingers down Harry’s neck and collar bone, “It’s not important.” He holds Harry like he’s precious and fragile, even as nails curl possessively and cruelly across soft skin. “You’re so vulnerable like this,” he croons, “You should kill more often, it’s a delight to see you unmade, my Harry.”
Harry feels the horcrux against his chest. It’s hoarfrost against the warmth of his heart beating against his ribs. It’s stars against a frostless sky. The pair of them are almost poetic, Harry thinks, monsters of each other’s making. “You forget,” he breathes, “You’re mine too.”
Tom’s fingers trace patterns through the blood drying sticky on Harry’s hands, before twisting suddenly to pluck the yew wand from Harry’s fingers almost tauntingly and Harry lets him, too exhausted to complain. “Can I have this back?” he teases, “Now you’ve got yourself a brand shiny new wand?”
“Does it even still work for you?”
“Morsmordre ,” Tom whispers. His mark erupts into the sky, a writhing misty green snake. “I think that’s a yes.”
Harry considers it for a moment before wrapping his fingers around Tom’s wand hand. His hands touch heated wood and amber and he doesn’t murmur a spell as much as send his magic up the cracked yew wood.
Another symbol joins Tom’s serpent hovering in the station. He doubts Tom would appreciate a grim eating the snake, or a lightning bolt cut across it - they just don’t suit his Dark Lord’s tastes, so he settles for the most universal symbol of death there is.
The snake twists until it’s wrapped around the skull, weaving through one of the eye sockets and emerging from the mouth like some kind of twisted gruesome tongue. Tom laughs in delight at the sight, “Oh, sweetheart,” he says, “Remind me to show you my Chamber some time.”
*
They tell the Ministry that the Dark Lord killed Albus Dumbledore, and Harry Potter killed Grindelwald. Harry is lorded their saviour and in true Ministry fashion they pretend they know nothing about his more dubious magical interests. Tom slides right back into partying political favours and behind the scenes criminal dealings with a charming smile and the power behind him to back him up.
Nobody picks up the phrasing. That’s the thing about prophecies, they’re just so vague ...
Harry isn't lying.
The Dark Lord murdered Dumbledore.
Just not the one they're all thinking of.
“What are you going to do? You’re their hero,” Hermione says, sitting in Grimmauld Place later that day after the chaos.
After. A preposition that doesn’t even begin to encompass the full scope of everything.
After the Ministry finally turned up. After wounds get seen to and the bodies are taken away and Tom secretes their new undead basilisk back into the abandoned London Underground tunnels. After fending of questions and aurors and the full realisation creeps over the Wizarding World of Great Britain that the war is over. Questions can wait, they decide, and certainly those rumours about Harry Potter’s new magical specialty. The Ministry party is loud and joyous and spills over into Diagon Alley before long. A very inebriated Draco Malfoy makes the foolish claim to the quality of the spirits and beverages within his manor, and it’s still not clear how that resulted in all the younger Knights and DA members in Harry's house looking for Sirius's various alcohol caches. Ron’s winning with his unusual knack for finding the stuff, but it’s Tonks of all people, unable to actually drink at the moment, who has found the most interesting stash of tequila in the troll’s leg umbrella stand.
Hermione steals away from it with Ron and Harry for a moment of peace and to clear her fuzzy mind. Ron’s gone to get her some water, she’s totally expecting him to return with whiskey and Harry’s already pulling out some nice crystal tumblers in clear preparation.
Loud joyous sounds of the DA and the Knights’ victory party is in full swing downstairs, and she had last seen Tom Riddle being forced to do shots of all things by a heavily bandaged Avery. She wrings her hands, nervously, “You’re their hero and Riddle’s the new D--” she stops. She can’t say it.
“Come on, Hermione,” Harry’s grin is like lightning in a storm, as he sets a glass down on the table in front of her, “You know every hero needs a villain to make it a proper story, right?”
She stares, lips pressed tightly together because things are stable at the moment and she’s loathe to change that. At this rate if she works hard enough she could even hit the Minister position before Riddle gets there, do damage control beforehand because she has no doubt he will get there, and Harry will be at his side.
Tom and Harry are always destined to break each other, but their destruction will be glorious.
She doesn’t ask into the deaths of Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Plausible deniability. She doesn’t want to know. Something inside her withers and dies, and another part of her becomes steely with resolve. No casualties, she reminds herself, none, compared to the decades this war had spanned already.
Hermione is, after all, the girl who had kept a reporter-turned-beetle in a jar for a month.
This war was always doomed to end in Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s deaths, and she suspects that her old Headmaster had known that.
"And what will Tom do,” she asks instead, “Now you've essentially banned him from taking over the Ministry?"
Harry's eyes gleam, "I hear there's an opening for Defence Against the Dark Arts professor that they're struggling to fill.” His tone turns slightly joking, “He put a curse on the position - it will kick out anyone else other than him after a year, him teaching for a few years should break it. He’ll get bored sooner or later but this will entertain him for now. Kingsley wants me in the aurors again, but I asked for some time to finish my research. It will be a few years still until either Tom or I work in the Ministry.”
“You think Hogwarts will survive Tom Riddle teaching Defence?” she asks, dubiously. She worries about what influence Riddle could have on impressionable minds.
“Hermione, do you remember us at eleven? I’m sure when it comes down to Tom Riddle versus a bunch of eleven year-old children, Tom won’t be the one to emerge victorious.”
She does find the image rather amusing. She remembers their adventures in smuggling a dragon and is inclined to agree with Harry. It’s a good plan, she must admit; the Defence post is a perfect fit - Riddle is still young, charming with honeyed superficial charm and glib words to give off a fantastic impression, and it aligns with his interests enough to keep him busy for now.
“And you go to research your magic with the Unspeakables for the next few years,” she concludes, head tilting, “Did they work? The Hallows? Did they help?” she barely dares ask, “The problem with your magic, the necromancy… did they fix it?”
Harry’s smile is broken glass, “Time will tell,” he says in an answer that is no answer at all.
*
Downstairs the party shows no signs of stopping. The last time Harry had passed through he’d encountered the younger Knights of Walpurgis - Bellatrix (who was unfortunately not dead), Rabastan, Avery and Crouch - in the middle of a drinking game with some members of the DA - Susan, Fred, Ginny and Terry. It seemed to involve a very dubious looking stack of firewhiskey bottles and levitation spells and he had seen Kreacher cast a despairing look at the mess.
Luna was dancing through the hallway, and Ron and Hermione had vanished towards one of the bedrooms about half an hour ago. Neville was ranting about the medical properties of some plant or other to Tonks who was staring wistfully at the alcohol, decidedly sober with the pregnancy. Remus was exchanging stories with George and Lee Jordan, and various people who had played Quidditch at one point or other were drunkenly trying to make a broomstick out of a mop and had only succeeded in lighting it on fire.
There’s business to do, matters to sort, funerals to attend, but they’d done their part, slipping away as the Ministry swarmed over the station. All stories corroborated, enough of the Ministry were currently drunk in Harry’s house to delay work for now.
Tom’s warm against him, and his lips taste of firewhiskey. “Still don’t want to reconsider letting me have an unbeatable wand?” he murmurs against Harry’s skin.
“Hmmm, no, you promised eternity, didn’t you? Forever is boring by yourself, surely--” his words get cut off, breath rushing out of him as his back hits a wall. His hands scramble for purchase, knocking over a pile of books as his fingers eventually find a hold in Tom’s hair.
“Keep it down!” someone shouts and Tom’s fingers wave lazily, wandless silencing charms muffling the sounds of the party downstairs. Without the warmth of the noise the shadows and darkness of Grimmauld Place feel cold and empty. Harry’s too dead and Tom’s forgotten how to be human, a piece of his soul still wrapped around Harry’s neck. Apart they’re nothing but together--
“You said eternality was fleeting.”
Without Tom, Harry is nothing. Empty. He presses closer until he can feel Tom’s heart beating through him, “I hate you,” he says, fingers trembling, “I hate what you did to me. I hate that you left , and yet I still couldn’t get you out of my system.”
He feels Tom’s smile against his neck,”Didn’t anyone ever tell you there is a fine line between love and hate, sweetheart?”
For someone who understands emotions as nothing more than tools of manipulation, Tom remains oddly fascinated by this quandary. Harry wonders if it’s not Harry’s own emotions he’s trying to divine but Tom’s own, as unrecognizable as they are as human emotions, so far soul shattered that they’re barely a thing.
Or maybe it’s just his last step in breaking Harry down completely. In binding them together until they can no longer tell which part of them came from themselves or the other, too entangled in each other to notice or care. The thought lights a monstrous, famined hunger Harry has no means of containing and no interesting in repressing.
“I want to rip you apart,” he breathes, “I want to turn you inside out. I want to ruin you, break you and watch you lie bleeding out onto the stones. I want to watch you burn, I want to see your horcruxes scattered and shattered and your soul mutilated but only…” he pauses to seek out Tom’s lips and claim them, trying to convey all that he cannot say, “Only if I’m the one to do it,” he breathes against him.
Harry doesn’t love Tom Riddle. Not in the way he loves Hermione and Ron as friends trusted to watch his back. Not in the way he loves Ginny with a quiet, soft and sweet caring companionship. He loves Tom like a forest fire; wild and all-consuming, he wants to devour Tom, to claim him, to mark him, break him .
“I don’t love,” Tom says, “You know that. But I want you. To own, bend and break. You’re mine. My necromancer, my Harry, mine to kill. Promise me--”
“I won’t let anyone kill me but you,” Harry says, like it’s their own twisted form of a love confession. Harry wonders if Albus and Gellert ever had this or if they never got past the fighting. He doesn’t care, Albus and Gellert are dead. They never had this; the world at their fingertips, the future clear and bright and theirs to make with what they will free of prophecy or prediction.
“Only I can kill you,” Tom whispers back, “And you are the only one who can kill me. My soul is yours.”
Fingers curl in the chain, tightening it until Harry can feel it digging into the scars, feel it twisting around his trachea. His fingers claw bloody scratches into Tom’s back, black pulsing his vision in time with the horcrux.
“Your soul is mine to break,” Harry tugs back, gasping in the air to breath, pupils blown. Tom drops the horcrux in favour of tracing fingers down bloody wounds from earlier that have opened up, tracing patterns of blood into Harry’s skin. “And I’m yours to kill,” Harry finishes their twisted vow, like some twisted reflection of their oath as school children, squabbling over a dead girl and a giant snake.
They have ruined each other, Harry thinks, and it would be almost tragic if it didn’t feel so right.