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Jonquils and Lightning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Tom Views: 4136 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Tests of Power
“Good morning, Tom. Did you sleep well?”
Jonquil Potter’s voice was soft, and she glanced at him from under one strip of straight black hair, before she went back to using spells to stir the porridge. Tom leaned on the wall near the door. He knew the strip of hair across her face was calculated, as was helping with the cooking. She’d shown no signs of doing it last night at dinner.
“I did,” he said, and then paused and sighed. “I just don’t like how I seem to have irritated some people on my first day here.”
“Don’t worry, Aunt Calliope’s always like that.”
“I was talking more about your cousin.”
“Cousin Harry?” Jonquil laughed softly as she stopped stirring the porridge and cast another spell that began to pour it into bowls. “You shouldn’t worry about him. Sometimes he has memories from the war that catch up with him. You probably reminded him of someone he met in his other world.”
“So you do know about the war and his other world?” Tom took a seat at one end of the table. Last night, Arthur, Jonquil’s father, had insisted that he sit there. “I was under the impression that he hadn’t told any of you about that.”
“Well, just a little.” Jonquil brought his bowl over to him, walking with a gliding stride that emphasized the swing of her hips and the way her hair framed her face. Tom had been utterly unsurprised, yesterday, to learn that she had been in Slytherin. She wouldn’t catch him, but it was an attempt. “He won’t tell me about it completely. He says the blood would frighten me. It’s ridiculous. I’m eighteen years old. I don’t need to be sheltered.”
And yet, you’re so young, Tom thought as he accepted the porridge and the containers of honey and milk Jonquil set next to him. Compared to him, anyone would be, of course.
He had come here, oddly enough, thinking he would find someone like Jonquil, someone who didn’t understand exactly what he was about. Most Potters wouldn’t have worked with him, they were so staunchly on the side of Light. So he would lie and misdirect, and ensure that he had what he needed to fulfill the Oracle’s prophecy.
Instead, he had found Harry, who knew exactly what he was about and who he could only drag to his side through persuasion. And yet, Tom thought as he drizzled honey over his porridge and accepted the scones and butter Jonquil brought him next, he hadn’t felt this satiated, contented feeling in the center of his chest for a long time.
“Good morning, Mr. Gaunt.”
Tom smiled at the large man standing in the doorway. He looked much more like the traditional Potters, with wild black hair and glasses that barely concealed golden-brown eyes. “Good morning, Mr. Potter.”
Jonquil’s father hesitated once, then lumbered over to sit down at the head of the table again. “Let’s put aside this formality nonsense and have you call me Arthur. I’ll call you Tom. I already heard my daughter being forward with a strange wizard.”
“Daddy!”
She sounds like a little girl, Tom thought as he swallowed and nodded. “Thank you, Arthur. And good morning, Mrs. Potter,” he added, as Jonquil’s mother followed her husband into the kitchen. “Or should I call you Celandine?”
“I would prefer Celandine, thank you.”
Celandine Potter—who had been a Burke before her marriage, apparently—was a small, thin woman with tumbling wavy brown hair and timid blue eyes. Tom watched as she took a seat next to her husband. He wondered idly if she and Arthur Potter had got together because of the attraction of opposites. She looked like a flower that a bear might tread on.
And you are paying too much attention to Potters who are not your target.
Tom let a few more minutes of cooking and eating go by, the better to leave what would feel like a natural segue, and then said, “Jonquil and I were just talking about her cousin Harry Potter, whom I met yesterday.”
“Harry doesn’t like Tom,” Jonquil said, rolling her eyes.
“Harry has had a hard life, I’m afraid,” said Arthur. “You mustn’t take his comments to heart, Tom.”
“Oh, I don’t. I was just wondering how well he fits into life around here. Do I need to worry about him if I’m staying with you? Or—well, I don’t want to disrupt your family life. Do I need to go?”
“Of course not!” Jonquil stood up and gave her parents an imperious look. “I’ll leave myself it you send him away.”
“Calm down, Jonquil, no one’s talking about sending Tom anywhere.”
“No, they’re not,” said Celandine in a colorless voice, glancing at Tom. “But you wouldn’t mind telling us what you and Harry argued about? Most of the time he’s so calm and quiet I forget he has a temper.”
“Of course,” Tom said calmly. “He doesn’t like the fact that I’m only a year older than your daughter, and that I look as if I’m trained for war. I think he’s afraid I’ll seduce Jonquil and carry her away.”
Jonquil’s eyes glowed, as if there was nothing she wished for more. “Cousin Harry can keep his nose out of my business.”
“That does sound like Harry. Sorry, Tom. I’m afraid he’s overprotective.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gaunt.”
Tom eyed Celandine. He realized that she had never actually agreed to call him by his first name the way the others had. Something else to keep an eye on, although she might simply be reserved and mean nothing by it.
“I’ll tell Cousin Harry to stay out of my business today. He doesn’t have any right imagining that you’re an errant seducer. He can keep away.”
And she wants me to be an errant seducer, Tom thought, while he smiled vaguely at Jonquil and went back to eating. He hadn’t learned that much about Harry, but the temper comment was worth something.
Time to get back to the seduction that mattered, after breakfast.
*
“You think she’ll be okay, Mr. Potter?”
“I think so.” Harry eyed the calf in front of him for a moment before nodding. She nudged at him with her wet nose and reached out to snatch at the small bottle of milk that Leland Jerryns was carrying. “As long as you add those spells I taught you to the bottle, since she doesn’t have her actual mother’s milk to drink.”
“Yes, I will. And thank you.”
Harry gave him another smile. Leland Jerryns was one of the few Muggleborn wizards in the village, and most of his concern went to his cows and his sheep. “It’s not a bad thing to try and raise her because her mother died, you know? She just needs more vitamins in her milk than most baby animals would.”
“Now I know.” Jerryns knelt down in front of the calf, who he had said was called Harriet—to Harry’s intense embarrassment—and offered her the bottle. She began to suck at once, her brown-and-white sides heaving.
Harry laughed to himself and left the barn, picking straw off the hems of his robe as he went. He whistled tunelessly as he made his way up the path to Charus and Dorea’s house. He had another appointment after lunch, this one some distance away, to examine a pregnant ewe who seemed to be starving herself.
He relished making a difference, helping the helpless, both the animals and their owners.
Of course, right then the new bane of his life had to make an appearance.
“Hello, Harry.”
Harry eyed Gaunt sideways and said nothing. Charlus and Dorea’s house was only a few meters away, and their back door was open, spreading out a thick, delicious scent of baking bread. Harry would eat. He would leave. He would—
Gaunt’s magic swirled out to touch his.
Harry immediately snapped his own power back inside his skin, out of reach, and lengthened his stride.
“That’s impressive,” Gaunt said, his voice neutral. “Where did you learn to do that? I could sense how strong you were yesterday. Now you feel like an ordinary wizard I might have walked right past.”
And don’t we all wish that was true? Well, Jonquil probably didn’t. Harry had to admit that the more he thought about it, the more taking over another world or being in a position of power there was probably perfect for her.
“It’s rude to ignore your guests, Harry.”
Harry only shrugged and walked into the house. Gaunt followed him. Dorea would probably insist on talking to him and spoiling to him the way she did almost everyone who stepped into her kitchen, but Harry didn’t care. He only wanted to avoid Gaunt taking an interest in him.
“Harry? Why are you ignoring Mr. Gaunt?”
Harry gritted his teeth and smiled at his could-have-been great-aunt. “He was asking questions that I didn’t think needed an answer,” he said, and used his wand to cut a thick slice off the steaming new loaf on the counter. Then he looked around for the cheese. He would take this and escape to his Apparition point.
“Oh, no, you don’t, young man. I understand that your next appointment isn’t until two in the afternoon. That leaves you two hours to sit and eat and make up for your rudeness.”
Harry felt his face freeze, but honestly, he didn’t care if Dorea saw it at the moment. “I don’t want to. Not with him.”
Most of the time, Dorea was quick enough to take a hint, especially when Harry talked about his first world without actually mentioning it. She only studied him with blank dark eyes, and then nodded at the chair at the foot of the table.
Harry took it, bristling a little. But he didn’t want to upset her, and this was the house he had to come back in and sleep in at night. And he’d heard Dorea speak of Hospitality Curses before, which did things like transform any food an unwelcome guest took out of the house into poison.
Gaunt sat down next to him and smiled at him. His eyes were perhaps a slightly different, deeper blue than those of the diary shade. “I was only asking where you’d learned to conceal your magic like that, Harry.”
“In the war I was in.” Maybe he had to answer, but he could still be as unwelcoming as possible. Dorea placed plates of cut fruit and nuts and the cheese Harry had been looking for on the table. Harry cut a thick slice and stuffed it into the bread, imagining he was cramming it into Gaunt’s mouth.
Gaunt. This would be much easier if he could think of him as Riddle. Then he wouldn’t feel the compulsion to play nice.
“It must have been hard for you.” Gaunt’s voice was soft in a way that made Dorea cast him an approving glance as she placed delicate wedges of bread and cheese on her own plate. “Have you sought out a Mind-Healer to deal with it?”
Harry shook his head and said, “I don’t want to try and explain what happened to a Mind-Healer not of my first world.” Give him casual answers, if Dorea wouldn’t let him get away with curt ones. Harry cut off a small piece of bread and swallowed it so he wouldn’t get glared at for gulping.
“I have some experience in Legilimency and Occlumency. I could help.”
“No, thanks. I also knew some people in the war who tried to probe into my mind. I don’t want that kind of help.”
“You know that Mind-Healers would only use it for your own good, Harry.”
“Oh, perhaps they would,” Harry said, and shrugged. He could still feel Gaunt’s fascinated gaze, but he didn’t need to look up to confront it, so he didn’t. “But someone who’s not trained as a Mind-Healer poking around in there…it feels like violence.”
He kept his magic tightly leashed, and smiled at Gaunt. Let the bastard choke on my politeness, if he can.
*
Harry Potter was fascinating.
Sitting next to him now, Tom might easily have thought him a Muggle. He was sensitive to magic, a talent which had made his mother look at him sometimes with pride and sometimes with panic. She always feared Tom would encounter a stronger wizard who would drive him mad.
But the only stronger wizard Tom had met was Minister Dumbledore, who always let only a small trickle of power escape, exactly enough to reassure those around him that he knew what he was doing and he knew best.
And now, Harry.
The lunch continued, and Tom tried canny new methods of interrogation, asking about Potter family history, Harry’s first world, magical theory, the Potters’ connection with the Blacks, the history of Godric’s Hollow, and other attacks both subtle and direct. Dorea often answered him. Harry hunched over his lunch and ate as if he couldn’t wait to get back to healing sick livestock.
What a waste of his talent. If Harry really wanted to be an animal healer, he could have treated dangerous magical beasts like dragons and earned renown and wealth. But he was content to live out his life in a backwater and ensure lambs were born and foals didn’t lose their mothers?
It offended Tom on behalf of common sense.
Harry finally stood from the table and smiled at Dorea. “It’s as delicious as always, Aunt. Thank you.” He kissed her cheek and strode towards the door, throwing over his shoulder, “Enjoy your stay here today, Mr. Gaunt.”
Tom watched thoughtfully as Harry disappeared. He wasn’t foolish enough to follow, but only for now.
“What did the alternate version of you do to him?”
Tom turned to Dorea. She had shed the guise of the kind hostess, and he could see a Black matriarch sitting in front of him. She had her hand on her wand, and she was ready to use it.
“I don’t know all the details,” Tom said. “But I know that that version of me hurt him and took away his family.”
“That would—explain much.” Dorea’s dark eyes slid shut for a second, and then focused on him again. Tom watched her in the serene knowledge that he was stronger than she was. “And you have come here to do it again? How many victims have you planned on?” Her wand rose and pointed at Tom, a gleaming one made of polished ash.
“I don’t want to kill anyone here,” Tom said truthfully. He might hurt them, but that was a different matter. “I actually want to talk to Harry about the differences between that version and myself.” He made a guess, which was an educated one. “I doubt that version of me had his parents. I had my mother. It made a difference.”
Dorea’s wand lowered slowly. “It does. Harry said something once about—well, those details are his to tell you.”
Tom nodded. He would prefer to get them from Harry, to hear the tales drip out from him one by one like blood from a hanging corpse. “I can promise that I didn’t come here to kill your family, Madam Black. It was actually an oracle who told me that a Potter is necessary to help me in all my goals.”
“It’s Mrs. Potter.” But Dorea studied him with more than disgust, now. “I think you might actually be telling the truth.”
Tom shrugged. Deception was more trouble than it was worth, unless he needed to cover up something that would get him in more trouble than the lie. “I risked a lot to come here, Mrs. Potter. Blood and walking in the shadows to find the Oracle. Time and magic and the chance that traveling through a portal between worlds would rip me apart. I have no reason to lie. I know Potters don’t tolerate it, anyway.”
“Neither do Potters by marriage.” Dorea gave him a sweet smile that would have made her look like a stereotypical grandmother if not for the hint of temper far back in her eyes. “Why don’t you go and join Harry?”
“I don’t know where he Apparated.”
“I would have been able to hear if he’d Apparated. He makes as much noise as a rooster choking to death.”
Tom chuckled politely and stepped vigorously out of the house, then cast one of his own spells, one that needed only a person’s real name to tug him towards them. In seconds he was leaving the gate and stepping across the grass on a shorter route than the paths permitted, to join Harry as he walked along a trail.
Harry’s shoulder’s stiffened, and he turned with his magic lashing about him. “What did I tell you, Gaunt?”
“Not to seduce your cousin. Not to use Legilimency on your family members. Not to hurt or threaten them. I fail to see which of them I’m doing as I stand here.”
Harry coiled his magic close about his shoulders again. Then he said, “Who told you where I was?”
“Your great-aunt thought you needed company.”
Harry stared at him, but perhaps he knew how to detect the telltales of a lie, because he sneered and looked away. “Fine, Gaunt. But I expect you to stay out of the way when we get to the farm, all right? If something goes wrong with this ewe because you’re there, I won’t forgive you.”
The words were a simple, heavy threat, one that needed no elaboration. Tom nodded and fell into step beside Harry. He couldn’t resist saying, though, “Did you ever think that you could do more with your life than heal animals?”
“I could damage you. I’ve had lots of practice at it.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
Harry faced him for a single second with his eyes on fire. Then he seemed to remember what Dorea might say if he harmed Tom, and began walking to the Apparition point again, his shoulders hunched.
Tom chuckled and followed. It seemed Harry thought threatening him was the way to get him to back off.
No, I’m different than the monster in his world. And thank Merlin for that.
*
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Moodysavage: Riddle-Gaunt is more practical than evil. He will sacrifice people and do whatever he needs to, but he won't do that unless it's actually the best method.
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Jonquils and Lightning