His Darkest Devotion

Chapter 41: Versions

"You're ready for the ritual?"

Harry nodded, hearing the things that Tom wouldn't voice underneath his light tone. They were sitting in Tom's bedroom, both of them in bed, Tom naked under the covers and Harry in a light set of robes he could tuck easily aside to sleep or wank or piss or...do other things.

"No one's performed it in years. Decades, perhaps." The bond between them thrummed and turned the blue color of ice.

Harry reached out and put his hand over Tom's. "If you're that nervous about it, then I won't perform it."

Tom stilled. His eyes darted to Harry's face, then away. There was a long pause that was silent and still only in the physical bedroom, not in the bond between their minds, which bounded and swayed like an iced rope in a high wind.

"You would give up political clout with Madam Moonwell, and a promise to your friend Luna, to—"

"You're my soulmate, and you come first."

Tom bowed his head until his chin was resting against their joined hands. Harry waited, reaching up to gently trace the curve of Tom's cheek. Sometimes he felt as if Tom was the stronger one between the two of them. He was the one who had never given up his longing for his soulmate, his certainty that his soulmate was out there, while Harry had in some senses given up as soon as he understood what the name on his wrist meant.

But now and then, Harry thought that his years of longing and waiting and struggle and self-sacrifice had tempered him in a way that Tom had never been, and he was their strength as he floated now in the silence of the bond with Tom.

"No," Tom said at last. "I'm confident that you can perform the ritual properly."

"Then why try to talk me out of it?" Harry asked as gently as he could.

Tom stood up, his movements restless, and walked away from Harry towards the window. He stood looking out almost blindly at the enchanted view, which currently showed a night sky dotted with stars. Harry waited on the bed, and was rewarded by the bond calming and thrumming now with a gentle vibration as Tom obviously fed thought and self-control into it.

"I don't know why that worry came to me so suddenly," Tom said at last. "I know that the ritual hasn't been performed in decades, but if that was a major concern of mine, I would have voiced it before now." He turned around, his back resting against the windowsill, and stared at Harry. "And you would have if you'd felt afraid of it."

Harry nodded. "Does it feel like a mental attack? Someone like Dumbledore trying to make you doubt what we should do?"

"No." Tom closed his eyes and tilted his head. The bond shook a little as he spooled magic out of their combined puddle and towards some distant goal. Harry waited.

Tom finally opened his eyes and breathed, "No. If anything, I think I was thinking of this in terms of a warning, as something that wanted to prevent us from doing the ritual for excellent reasons."

"A warning from whom?"

Tom was about to answer that when a blossom of fire and light abruptly unfolded in the middle of the room.

Harry flung himself off the bed, rolling, his own portion of their magic coming up around him in defensive walls tight to his skin that moved with him. He made it to his feet to see that Tom had his hand raised, rather than his wand, and a shape of brilliant black and green was coiled around his arm, a summoned viper.

But the fire turned out not to be the first attack from an enemy after all, or at least Harry didn't think it was. He found himself staring in astonishment at a very familiar bird who had perched on the back of the chair near the desk.