When A Slaughterhouse Becomes A Home (selfcest/tomarry)

two

Harry Potter knows that if you trust a weight isn't heavy, you will sink to the bottom of the ocean with it in hand.

This is why he doesn't tell Ron and Hermione of Tom's reappearance. It's why he doesn't tell a lot of things, why his body is a home of secrets, big and small. He does not trust. He cannot afford to.

But he also knows that a man alone will die that way; people need people; a heart beats only in time with someone else's. He needs people (needs Tom, needs Ron and Hermione) like his lungs needs air. He will do anything to keep his friends by his side. Lie to them. Lie for them. With Tom, he does both.

He talks with Tom nightly, pulling the curtains around his bed, and letting Tom spill out of the diary and onto his covers. They talk. They touch. Tom's hugs feel, best put, vague, but his other friends don't touch him, so he will take what he can get.

(He needs contact like air, too; he just hadn't realized until someone gave it to him.)

Harry dreams nightly of a man, very much like him, traveling Europe on Threaselback. He is on his way to Hogwarts. He is looking for Harry.

He tells Tom about the dream and Tom stares at him, a blank expression on his face. Harry continues, hesitantly, "You don't think it's... him , do you?"

Tom pauses, looks away, and says, "I'd hope not," and the conversation dies there.

And that... Voldemort... they do not talk about. The fact that Voldemort is back and Tom should be on his side but supposedly isn't. They do not talk about it. Sometimes Harry will confide about a nightmare he had with Cedric in the graveyard and he will be forced, through his sorrow, to use vague terms to refer to Voldemort as. He thinks Tom has gotten an unclear picture (but a picture nonetheless) of Voldemort's attempts on Harry's life since he's been gone and about his resurrection.

Harry has gotten multiple genuine apologies for trying to murder him and Ginny in the Chamber -- like he thinks he cannot apologize enough. He was desperate, he says. So desperate. He wanted to live, and he hated to have died. Is that so wrong? And Harry wants to say yes, yes it is so wrong, you should be ashamed of yourself, but instead Harry asks him honestly if he's gotten contact with Voldemort since he's been back, and Tom says no. Harry has no choice but to believe him. (Even if his heart is filled with doubt, doubt, doubt. He cannot trust. Never.)

His dreams become even more vivid. The man, the man searching for him, speaks to him one day. Harry finally gets a clear picture of him, and it is like looking in a funhouse mirror.

He is taller than Harry and has graying hairs here and there. He has slight wrinkles, but, all in all, doesn't look a day over forty. He wears a suit instead of robes, styled in a very similar way that Harry does when he wears a suit. He is handsome in a rugged sort of way and though he shares Harry's eyes, he does not wear glasses.

"Harry," coos the older man, and Harry talks an involuntary step back. He chuckles. "There's no reason to fret. I'm Harry Potter."

"There's... there's no way," says Harry weakly. This is just a dream, he reminds himself. It isn't comforting. " I'm Harry."

"Of course," coos the second (impostor?) Harry. "Of course you're Harry. But I'm Harry Potter , and this name is my own. You can call me Potter, if that works for you."

"Okay," says Harry, still weary. "You're looking for me," he states.

Potter shrugs and begins a slow circle around Harry. Harry studies his surroundings, noting only a plain looking Muggle graveyard. Potter kicks at dirt here and there, getting it all over his dragonhide boots. "I am," he admits, casually, like it is not a declaration. "I'll be there soon. It seems to you have company, is that right?"

Tom. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"He chuckles again, the sound smooth and healthy. "But you do, and that's alright. That's okay. Me and Tom, Tom and I... we share the same goal. We're friends, really. Tell him that, next time you see him. He'd like to hear it."

Harry tenses up as Potter circles around his back. "What are you?" He thinks about asking who are you? but doesn't think the question rings right.

"How rude," says Potter with mock offense. "I'm you. Isn't that evident?" He approaches Harry, slinging an arm around his shoulder and speaking close to him, in his ear. "And I'm better than him. Tom, that is. Not that it's a competition. But with me, we can talk about anything, about everything. There's no secrets between us."

But Harry does not trust easy, so he flings Potter off of him, screaming, "Let me go."

Potter stumbles forward, then turns around to stare at him with the most intense look Harry has ever seen. Harry shivers.

"We'll stay in touch," says Potter, darkly. "I look forward to meeting you very, very, soon."

And when Harry awakes, he is crying. Tom wraps his arms around him, barely felt, and asks him with all the sincerity of a lover if he is alright, what happened, what's wrong.

Harry shuts his eyes and imagines the face of his other self. We'll stay in touch. And he knows that Potter is just as unavoidable as Voldemort is. "Someone's after me," says Harry, choking in the words.

"Voldemort?" Tom asks. He seems confused as to why Voldemort (of all people!) would be after him.

"No," says Harry. "It's -- it's someone else."

Tom says, "I can protect you."

"Oh, Tom," bemoans Harry, pressing his hands to the side of Tom's face, forgiving and resentful and loyal to no one and everything. "When have you ever been good at doing anything but hurt me?"

Tom says nothing.