Chapter Text
Harry woke up alone.
He stared blearily at the empty space of green sheets beside him, and his head throbbed angrily as consciousness evaded him much like a vivid dream when one tried to focus on it too clearly. The tired wizard rubbed roughly at his face and then searched through the bedding blindly for something that felt missing.
When he came up empty he rolled onto his back with a soft groan, the sheets cold on exposed skin and his body feeling a little uncomfortable in expected places. He looked up at the tent’s soft ceiling and patted the wooden nightstand at his side blindly still with an open palm. His hand froze.
It was gone.
Harry shot up and looked around the space, suddenly wide awake and remembering what it was he’d been searching for. The locket. And two notable things were missing at that moment.
Tom and the locket.
Harry scrambled for his wand, which he found in the tangled sheets, and an exhale whooshed from his lips as he held the extension of himself in his hands. He tried to take a few calming breaths even as his mind shouted at him to act, and his body tensed for the inevitable, ignoring the discomfort in his chest completely. His heart was racing, and he had to blink a few times as his entire being seemed to be in conflict, his unfamiliar surroundings not helping either.
He’d gone to the cave with Tom after leaving Hogwart’s. He’d been wearing the cursed locket and had been drifting in and out of consciousness, and he’d felt very bad… towards everything, towards Tom, his mind playing tricks on him. It was all so blurry in his memory but the unease it left with him was sharp and left a bad taste in his mouth and a foreboding feeling that went deep down into his very core.
“Harry. I see you’re awake.”
Harry settled back down on the bed slowly. He rested on his heels as he sat, relief flooding him prematurely. He tried to keep his guard up until he knew the whereabouts of the horcrux.
“Yeah, I,” Harry cleared his throat when it came out hoarsely, and he tried again, succeeding only mildly, “is everything, uh—is everything all right?”
The tall wizard smiled at the completely benign question but only faintly, the flaps to the tent falling shut behind him and enclosing the two wizards in the tent together. He lifted his chin slightly as he studied Harry with a low-lidded gaze that hid the sentiment in his eyes. “How odd… for I was about to ask you the same. You seem rattled, Harry…”
Harry swallowed around a small forming knot. He felt like a balloon was slowly but stubbornly trying to fill itself in his lungs as he discreetly peered down at the nightstand again and then the stone floor around it, hoping more than anything he’d just missed the locket, but no. It was definitely gone.
He held back a string of curses as he turned his gaze back up, and he met dark glinting grey eyes straight on.
He nodded slowly even as his chest clenched, agreeing absentmindedly, while his brain scrambled as to the next step. He needed to be very careful, because if Tom had indeed taken the locket—and he really couldn’t think of an alternative explanation for its loss—the next few moments could be very important. Harry knew personally just how much the cursed item could mess with the mind and emotions of its carrier, and he felt a sharp pang that resounded deeply in his chest when he imagined Tom having to bear any portion of that burden even as his knuckles turned white on the hand gripping his wand, and he clenched his jaw. He felt a surge of anger at just the thought.
“You weren’t here when I woke. I was worried,” Harry said, his words coming out tight even as he kept his expression open to the worry he was feeling at that moment. One side of his face flinched up into an unintentional grimace when he exhaled but he caught himself almost immediately and smoothed the expression. Perhaps Tom had a buffer, like he’d had at first, and he was being overly concerned. Perhaps he was still reachable, perhaps his worry was—
“Unfounded though it was, as you can clearly see… but how very kind of you, Harry.” Tom spoke the words easily enough, but they lacked any true emotion. The tall wizard sniffed lightly and brushed away an invisible speck on the cuff of his sleeve. “You always are though, aren’t you Harry? Kind…”
Harry hadn’t realized just how much emotion Tom usually conveyed in his words up until that very moment. It had been subtle yes, but there, always there, except for the few times he’d shut down completely, which Harry attributed to feeling too much negative emotion.
Harry drew in a shaky breath silently, and he struggled still to form a plan, one where no one got hurt, one where he was clever, where—
Then he saw it. The faintest glint under the charmed green floating lights—the chain of the locket—and it was around Tom’s neck. He froze.
Tom smiled slowly as he watched Harry, and for just a second he looked the spitting image of the Tom that revealed itself in Harry’s nightmares. “Something wrong, Harry? …Kneazle got your tongue?” he asked, goading.
Harry wet suddenly dry lips. This was bad. Very bad. He resisted lifting his wand as Tom began to approach but just barely, his forearm tensing over and over as he refused to raise it against the wizard.
“What is it that is bothering you, Harry…? It’s not like you—to be so quiet,” Tom insisted in a soft cadence that was probably meant to be soothing, but the words had almost taken on a hissing quality to them. His steps were slow and predatory. He stopped just within arm’s reach of Harry, standing at the edge of the bed they’d shared just hours before. His lips curled more as his sharp gaze flicked first to Harry’s gaze locked on the chain around his neck and then down to Harry’s wand and then back up. “Not the best sharer, are we now?”
That startled Harry out of his stupor and he rose up onto his knees, his jaw flexing hard, but he kept his wand down still. All of his senses were on high alert.
“Not with that, no. So how about you take the locket off now and give it back to me, Tom?”
Tom pursed his lips slightly, obviously displeased, and all pretenses fell away from the wizard as his gaze began to darken. “I think not, Harry. I saw what it did to you… and you wanted nothing to do with me, even the slightest touch was met with complete and utter disgust. You think I’d ever let you wear this again?”
Harry blinked a few times, surprised, but he responded quickly. “That’s not true.” He paused then. Or was it?
He grimaced, just thinking back to the time he’d worn the cursed locket caused a sharp pain to shoot up the side of his head. He rubbed at the phantom pain and then said, “Listen Tom, you need to take it off, just trust me on this, please. How about neither of us wear it?”
“Why.”
Harry frowned, unsure. “I’m sorry?”
Tom leaned down towards him ever so slowly, his jaw clenching over and over before he gritted out, “Do you not think me capable, Harry? Is that it? Do you think I cannot carry this burden? Do you think me weak?”
Tom seethed openly, his shoulders heaving more with each breath, his hands planting on either side of Harry as he glared at him point blank. His words grew coarser then, and Harry realized he had started to speak in Parseltongue. “I made this, Harry. It is of my magic. If anyone should be able to withstand its curse, it is me, and no one else!”
Harry stared back, unmoving. He wanted to move closer instinctively. Maybe to remove the chain himself, maybe just to comfort him, he wasn’t quite sure but he resisted all the same. “You’re not him,” he said instead.
Tom hesitated at that, and Harry noticed that even though his eyes had taken on an unhinged quality there was still a spark of the wizard he recognized, struggling.
Harry shook his head ever so slightly, and he swallowed, his throat uncomfortably tight before he spoke. “You’re not him, Tom. You’re not… Voldemort, I don’t think that, you know? And I don’t believe you do either. It’s just the locket.”
Tom pressed his lips so hard together his dimple showed. Then he sneered at Harry, contempt dripping from his words. “You are so naïve, Harry.”
“How so…?” Harry asked, his throat dry. He didn’t want to fight Tom, but he would if it meant saving him. If it meant saving everyone else. The wizard steeled himself when he felt his resolve falter at the latter thought. He couldn’t put his feelings before the well-being of others, he wouldn’t.
“It was the first thing you looked for. Admit it.”
Harry shook his head, his shoulders squaring stubbornly.
“Admit it.” Tom pulled out the locket from under his collar then and held it in his line of vision, his grey eyes like ice. “This is what you looked for, not me. All you care about is destroying me, killing me bit by bit, until I’m weak and exposed and unprotected. Admit it, you loathe everything to do with me, it’s why you’re here.”
Harry raised his hands in an appeasing gesture. He let his wand slip from his grip and land on the bed. A soft rush of air escaped his lips as disappointment rushed through him at his own rash decision. But he wasn’t giving up on Tom yet, he was still fighting it, the effects of the locket, he knew it. He believed in him. “Tom.” He looked into unnervingly close dark grey orbs. “Tom, I’m only trying to save you. I promise.
“I need you.”
Tom’s eyes clenched shut, and the wizard fisted the sheets as he appeared to struggle. He leaned forward and pressed his face against Harry’s, his breathing sharp and ragged. “You do not. You, Harry Potter, need me as much as someone needs a disease.”
Harry shook his head slightly and turned into Tom’s face, even though his touch hadn’t been affectionate. He couldn’t help but bump his nose softly against his and breathe in his familiar scent, the air in his chest caught as he ghosted his lips over Tom’s cheek. He was enamored with the wizard, and he had no idea how. Maybe he really just couldn’t help but want to save everyone, but it didn’t feel like that. There was more. He was drawn to him, his good side, his ugly side, all of him, and he couldn’t fight it no matter how dangerous or misguided it might be. There was no help for him, not if he couldn’t save the wizard before him. Not anymore. “No. Tom, I don’t want anything bad to ever happen to you, if it comes down to it I will protect you with my own life, you must know that, because I love you. More than anything.”
Tom jerked back at that like he’d been cursed, standing upright. He stared down at Harry, his eyes wide, and the oddest expression crossed his face. It looked like fear.
The tall wizard raised a shaking hand to the locket and pulled it up and over his head in one quick motion with a hiss like it pained him terribly to do so. He tossed it on the bed beside Harry, and his breathing grew unsteady. He clenched his teeth together, a slight sheen to his skin, and he looked paler than usual. His lips twitched in agitation as he said, “this is getting too hard for me, Harry. You must leave.”
Harry shook his head, obstinate, his mouth parted as he tried to think of an argument. “No, I won’t, you and I we’ll—“
But he couldn’t finish, because Tom had whipped up into a cloud of black smoke and left him instead.