Chapter Text
There was silver lingering beneath his skin.
Days now, since the raid on azkaban. Days since the patronus. Since the moment Harry had cast through him, blazing silver that burned away all hints of a dementor’s chill.
It was curious. That silver hadn’t been crafted from some great happiness, or at least it was dissimilar to all of Voldemort’s previous attempts to summon the feeling before casting a patronus. It wasn’t a stronger happiness than the satisfaction of recreating a lost magic. It wasn’t more intense delight than seeing pureblooded imbeciles grovel at his feet. It wasn’t triumph over an enemy, or basking in well-earned admiration.
The silver that Harry cast from was a quiet smile in greeting. A shared laugh over a bad joke. The thrill of duelling a skilled opponent for nothing more than the pleasure of the game. Green eyes planning some kind of mischief. Around it all, a silver-white basilisk, fangs bared and eager to strike, how dare these shadows threaten what’s mine—
Voldemort rolled the sensation across his tongue, shivering.
Of course it was Harry who was clever enough to defy all previous ideas about the patronus, transmuting a possessive fury into light and fire. His brilliant Harry, lashing out to protect—
Utter foolishness. Nothing in their deals suggested that they owed each other defence from physical threats. Potter only stood to gain from any injury or weakness Voldemort suffered. Another demonstration of Potter’s reckless disregard for his own wellbeing and abysmal impulse control. Voldemort was not one of his little school friends, he did not require—simply because there had been a threat present did not mean that—
Harry had felt that. Before all rational thought, Harry had felt that. A possessiveness centred on—a fury at the idea that Voldemort might—protectiveness over—
(silver flickering beneath his scales)
Voldemort turned his wand over in his hands, examining the pale, warm-toned yew wood, the delicate geometric carvings meant to evoke a phoenix in flight. To his eye, they had always more closely resembled scales. The wand hummed under his attention, eager to cast whatever Voldemort willed.
Or whatever Harry Potter willed.
In Voldemort’s youth, this wand had stung the hand of whoever dared to try and steal it, as reluctant to serve another as Voldemort was to lend it. Would it bite at Harry’s hand too? It had no objection to channeling Harry’s magic through Voldemort’s hand, at least when the purpose was to defend its true owner.
(silver dancing through his blood)
Would Harry’s holly wand be so obliging? Would it jump from his hand? Did it require that Voldemort aim at a shared enemy? That he cast some spell Harry found unobjectionable? If Voldemort wielded the holly wand and crucioed Umbridge, would that wand sing?
Questions that would never receive a real answer. They would not know each other in person long enough to explore such things. Not that Voldemort would ever allow Harry to wield his wand, regardless.
(and there would be no more silver, no Harry—)
Voldemort glared at his desk. Why was it that Harry insisted on demonstrating skill and talent and cleverness when Voldemort was unable to truly keep him?
“Professor? Can I talk with you?” Harry asked, hovering in the doorway. McGonagall looked up from her work, then gestured at the seat across from her desk. Harry grinned, slipping inside.
“Do you have a question regarding the assignment, Mr Potter?”
“Oh, no, my friend’s helping me with the theory part,” Harry said with a brief grin. “Actually, I was wondering… professor, you said I could come talk to you about other things, right?”
She nodded, her gaze growing sharper.
“It has been a difficult few months,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Uh, fine?”
“I had feared that distress over Mr Weasley’s attack may have exacerbated the concerns we spoke about last time—”
“Oh! Um. I’m better now. Which is to say, I did, ah. Find that distressing,” Harry said, wincing. “I am better now, though.”
“Let me be blunt. Do you still fear you may lose your life soon?”
“No,” Harry said, not quite stifling a snort. She raised an eyebrow. “No, professor, I’m fine. Back then I… Well, I’m not worried about that anymore.”
McGonagall looked unconvinced but didn’t push any further.
“What did you want to speak about today, then?”
“I was wondering if you had any history books actually. Stuff covering the last war,” Harry said.
“That is a grim topic.”
“These are grim times,” Harry said, shrugging. “I want to know more about it. What people went missing. Who died. How bad it got… with Voldemort back, it’s bound to get bad, right? I want to… manage my expectations, I suppose.”
What was Harry allowing to come back, by refusing to fight him? By saving him? How many people like Mr Weasley would die? How many would be tortured? How much would be destroyed? What would the new world look like?
The odd thing was, even as guilt curled in Harry’s gut, he found it impossible to regret his actions.
The mention of his name had drawn Voldemort’s attention. Harry flicked a curtain shut between them before he could cross the bridge. Voldemort rolled his eyes, and returned to his dark lording. Harry fought a smile.
“You understand, of course, that the last wizarding war is completely unrelated to transfiguration, and so I am forbidden to speak of it?” McGonagall said, sardonic.
“I dunno, professor. I’m sure at least one person back then used transfiguration.”
“Excellent point, Mr Potter,” she said. With a swish, she summoned a large, unmarked book from the shelf, passing it across. “My own record.”
Harry hesitated a moment before daring to open the covers.
Inside, the pages were covered in newspaper clippings and moving photos, careful notes scrawled beside. The headlines spoke of raids, destroyed buildings, missing people, deaths. Some were seemingly inane, reports of budget cuts and new legislation, friendly duels over property, muggleborn businesses closing down. The photos were mostly portraits. McGonagall’s neat hand noted their names, and their death dates.
It was hard to meet their eyes. Harry forced himself to memorise each face.
“It started in 1970, right?” Harry asked. McGonagall nodded.
“There had been whispers for years beforehand, rumour of some leader uniting those wizards inclined towards the dark. After Grindelwald fell, talk of blood supremacy and magical might retreated back behind closed doors, but those attitudes had been build on centuries’ worth of discontent. It took very little to draw them forth once more, and You-Know-Who… he could be good at talking, when he chose to be.”
A smile tugged at Harry’s lips.
“He does like to hear himself talk.”
“And where talking fails to suffice, raw power is often enough to gain allegiance,” McGonagall sighed. “One of the great flaws among wizardkind is we are far too impressed by magical strength and skill.”
“That’s what Hermione says, too. I think she’s plotting out how to duel her way into becoming Minister just so she can rewrite the laws about how to become Minister.”
“She certainly possesses the tenacity for such a challenge,” McGonagall said, smiling briefly. “May I?”
Harry passed back the book, and McGonagall found one early clipping depicting flames coiling in the shape of a basilisk, its massive jaws split in an eerie grin. A distant figure was barely visible in the background, tall and draped in dark robes. Had he still had Tom’s face back then?
“I witnessed this attack in person,” she said. “You-Know-Who led a raid on the wizarding village of Hawkesbury, his Death Eaters breaking into every home and dragging people out to the street. The Order was active by then—we arrived in time to defend people, but then he summoned fiendfyre. By dawn, not a single building was left standing.”
Harry frowned, staring at the note scrawled beside the photo. That couldn’t be right…
“No deaths?” Harry read out, looking up. A wane smile crossed McGonagall’s face.
“Of little comfort to those with their whole lives destroyed, but no. There was not a single death in the Hawkesbury Raid, nor any injury so severe that it couldn’t be treated with Wiggenweld.”
“That’s incredibly fortunate,” Harry said.
“That’s deliberate,” she clarified. “I cannot claim to understand what machinations twist within the mind of that monster, but it was clear to anyone with sense that the purpose of those early raids was to inspire terror, not to slaughter.”
Harry was privy to the machinations of Voldemort’s twisted mind, and he had to agree. If Voldemort had a plan that required killing, he wasn’t the type to flinch or hesitate. He also wasn’t the type to care about collateral damage on the way to achieving his goals, or like, the wellbeing of other people in general.
“He was showing off,” Harry said. “Proving how powerful he was, so people would just give up and fall in line.”
“It seems likely,” McGonagall said, nodding. “Dozens of dark wizards under his command already, and he could wield them as precisely as he did fiendfyre.”
Harry shivered, and pretended as best he could that it was from fear.
“You-Know-Who’s raids during those early years cast a harsh light on the MInistry’s incompetence,” McGonagall continued. “More than once, Aurors arrived too late to prevent the destruction, or ended up causing significant injury to civilians in their attempts to fight the Death Eaters. It was a humiliation, aimed to shatter trust in the Ministry.”
“I mean… can’t say I blame anyone who distrusts the Ministry,” Harry said. McGonagall offered a wry smile.
“Hence You-Know-Who’s rapid rise to prominence. Was a Dark Lord truly so much worse than the Ministry? There was money and favours in siding with him, power to be had for those weak in magic. Indulgences available that the Ministry frowned upon… Of course, the muggleborns were suffering—their homes and businesses were among those most often targeted by the Death Eaters—but even there, opinion was split. Auror teams were always slower to respond for those raids, so many muggleborns found it more expedient to make connections within the dark to avoid further attack.”
Harry grimaced, staring down at the pages.
“Things changed though…”
“Professor Dumbledore had been urging caution for years about the threat the Death Eaters and You-Know-Who presented, and sure enough, soon the conflicts turned bloody,” McGonagall said. “People began to go missing. Muggleborns and their defenders were killed. The Ministry was already compromised, the Aurors stretched thin and ineffective. The only organised resistance was the Order, a credit to Professor Dumbledore’s foresight.”
Harry bit back a remark about just where Dumbledore could shove his foresight, turning his gaze back on the book.
“Professor Dumbledore was already Supreme Mugwump by then, right?”
“Yes, he was chosen for the position in ‘58, a few years before he became headmaster. The Order business was kept behind closed doors; there was no need to antagonise the Minister, or have him fear Professor Dumbledore had designs on his position.”
“Of course,” Harry murmured.
Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and the best he could do was urge caution? And failing that, set up a covert society so he didn’t upset the Minister too badly when he was saving lives?
Why not pass legislation to protect muggleborns better? Make sure aurors who refused to help muggleborns were disciplined? Fix the broken parts of the Ministry before some new dark lord came along to take advantage? There were dozens of powerful purebloods with connections high in the ministry, why not trade favours or pressure them into sponsoring and uplifting muggleborns? Manipulate the systems that already existed. It’s what Voldemort had done.
Harry sighed. He was probably being at least a little unfair—what did he know about wizarding law anyway? Maybe if Dumbledore had proposed anything too radical he would have been sacked immediately.
But then again, Hermione wasn’t afraid to make a racket and offend people for a good cause. Why should Dumbledore be any different? He was the one who defeated Grindelwald, for Merlin’s sake! People would take what he said seriously, even if he lost the position of Supreme Mugwump.
Harry stared at the book, and the photos of the dead smiled back at him. Names he half-knew from Sirius’ less lucid moments, and whispers between Order members as they filed in and out of Grimmauld Place. Killed in this raid or the other, at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange, or Avery, or Mulciber, or Voldemort, or Greyback. Death by Avada. By Conflagro. By Lacerare. Mass trauma from werewolf bites. Kissed by dementors.
People killed by Voldemort directly only ever listed Avada.
“Is this everyone who died?” Harry asked, voice soft.
“As far as I was able to discern, yes. I am certain there were more deaths among the muggles, but during much of the time You-Know-Who was active, a muggle organisation was attacking and killing other muggles in Britain. Many of their attacks shared a superficial similarity with a Death Eater raid, so I was unable to tell definitively which deaths and disappearances had magical assistance, and which were mundane.”
Harry nodded, glancing back at the photos, and the death dates that almost all fell within the last two years of the war.
“What was it like near the end?”
“In a word, horrific,” McGonagall sighed. “We are not a large community, Mr Potter. I don’t feel it is inaccurate to say that every wizarding family lost a member, or a dear friend. Hogwarts remained a safe haven—the Founders built it to be a fortress to defend against magical or muggle attack, and a fortress it remains—but even here, the atmosphere of terror began to take hold. People would disappear on visits to Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley. Children learned of their parents’ deaths through the Daily Prophet. The Ministry was arresting muggleborns who defended their homes from attack. And then overnight, You-Know-Who was gone. Without his cruelty to keep the Death Eaters in line, their organisation dissolved within weeks. It was over.”
Harry closed the book.
“Voldemort couldn’t honour the favours he offered Ministry officials anymore, so they used lower rank Death Eaters as scapegoats for their crimes,” Harry said. McGonagall nodded, and Harry let out a sigh.
“Professor Dumbledore had a large role in routing out the corruption,” she added.
“I wouldn’t expect any less from the Supreme Mugwump,” Harry said.
Something in his tone made her frown, but she didn’t comment on it. Harry forced on a smile.
“Thanks for talking with me, Professor. Do you mind if I keep this for now?” he said, lifting the book. “I want to read through it in more detail.”
“Go ahead. Though, I would appreciate it if you could keep it from Umbridge’s grasp,” she said, dryly. Harry grinned. “It is a work of several meticulous years, and I wish to keep it intact.”
“I’ll do my best, Professor.”
“See that you do.”
You’re seeking to negotiate with me. For your life alone?
My friends’ safety as well.
Not the wizarding world’s safety?
No. Just me and mine. Everyone else can make their own deals.
Harry wasn’t sure how well he could have stuck to that deal, had Voldemort agreed to let Harry live. As much as he hated how everyone treated him like it was his job to save them, he was pretty sure he’d never just stand by and let someone who didn’t deserve it get tortured or killed. It wasn’t fair. And even if Harry couldn’t realistically stop Voldemort, he could distract a Death Eater so their victim could get away. He could cast a patronus and save someone from being Kissed. He could train all his friends so they had the skills to defend themselves.
Harry could help. He liked helping.
But it was clear that the problems with the Wizarding World were bigger than just Voldemort, and Dumbledore hadn’t done shit to fix any of it either.
People called Dumbledore good, as if a reputation for favouring muggleborns and offering the occasional job to someone like Remus or Hagrid was the same as making real change for the better. Was it just because he’d defeated Grindelwald? Because he refused to “corrupt” himself by becoming Minister?
Dumbledore hadn’t lifted a finger to help Tom Riddle, a supposed muggleborn who had been sorted to Slytherin in a time of rising blood supremacist sentiment. He hadn’t used the time after Grindelwald’s fall to bring in actual laws that would help muggleborns, or werewolves, or half-creatures. As far as Harry could see, Dumbledore only ever used his connections to help people he liked, same as any powerful pureblood, right down to expecting the occasional favour in return out of gratitude.
Was gently disagreeing with the Ministry all that was needed to be considered a good man?
Voldemort, by contrast, was definitely evil. At least, Harry thought it would be hard to find anyone who’d argue that filling a lake with corpses was something a good person would do. The frequent and vicious torture also didn’t scream Good Person. But like, Harry certainly understood the desire to see your enemies bowing reverant at your feet. It might be fun seeing Malfoy do that, for about two seconds before it became weird.
Voldemort expected obedience and strictly enforced it, but he also rewarded loyalty and achievement with favours and resources. The moment he had been resurrected, he began organising a rescue mission to Azkaban! Selfishly motivated or not, that was ten people no longer living under the constant influence of dementors.
Nearly five years of the war had gone by without a single magical fatality; even by the end, most of the deaths recorded in McGonagall’s books were Order members and their families. That wasn’t what a war to exterminate muggleborns would look like in Harry’s opinion—or, if it was, it was the least efficient war ever.
Voldemort had kept a bunch of violent and angry blood supremacists from killing or seriously harming anyone for nearly five years! Who gave a fuck if it had all been a display of his power? The result was no deaths, which was apparently better than the Ministry could manage, and a huge deal considering that Voldemort himself didn’t give a single fuck about any person beyond how he could use them.
The Avadas too. A painless, instant, Wizard’s death, the same he’d decided Harry would get. Harry would be first in line to argue that killing people painlessly did not make it any better that they were dead, but it was clearly Voldemort’s attempt to be merciful. If Harry got absolute power over Umbridge or Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and would face no real consequences for whatever he chose to do, he wasn’t sure he’d have been as kind.
Voldemort had said he didn’t want to be Minister, and Harry believed that. Having pureblood idiots grovel at his feet wasn’t really anything like being in charge of the whole wizarding world. Really, Voldemort would be ill-suited to the role. He didn’t care about changing things to make them better, or worse, or really anything related to other people as long as they treated him with terrified reverence.
Honestly, Voldemort had seemed more excited while reading through some dense textbook on advanced magical theory than Harry had ever seen him get while dealing with the Death Eaters. Harry had once listened to him ramble on for more than twenty minutes about the importance of purified chalk in high level arithmantic circles, because the flaws in low quality chalk could leave the linework slightly fuzzy in a way that disrupted the intended effect of the ritual. He was even more of a nerd than Hermione.
If it turned out that the lake full of corpses was some kind of evil magical experiment, Harry would not be even slightly surprised.
Harry should probably be more bothered by the idea than he was. Each of those bodies had been someone, a person, with a life and a family, hobbies and interests and fears and loves. Cedric’s death alone had been upsetting, so why wasn’t this?
Maybe because he hadn’t witnessed their deaths.
Maybe because there were so many dead.
If the vision of the lake in that dream had been accurate, then there were far more dead bodies there than were listed in McGonagall’s book. Most of those people had been returned to their families too, so the dead bodies weren’t missing. And while dreams were certainly prone to distorting reality, Harry was certain Voldemort had never felt anywhere near enough guilt over killing people for those dead to manifest as some giant lake of his past crimes.
Which meant they had to be muggles, right? No one would notice dead muggles—no one magical would care, and a muggle investigation could be easily misled, if Voldemort had cared at all what they thought.
There was some piece of magic flickering just beyond reach of Harry’s thoughts, some concept from Voldemort’s mind. Dark magic involving corpses…
It wasn’t horcruxes. Harry hadn’t found any other clue as to what horcruxes even were, but Tom Riddle had been bragging to Slughorn about making one, and even as a prodigious student Harry was fairly certain Tom Riddle couldn’t have gotten away with murdering over a hundred muggles and stashing them in a cave—
Could Voldemort? No one cared to investigate missing muggles but dark magic? The Ministry had to investigate that. If he’d used the Avada… was there a trace on dark magic too? What were the limitations? What alarm did it set off? How many aurors would it take to investigate one dark curse? What about a dozen curses?
…had the Death Eater raids been a decoy?
Harry realised he was gaping, and closed his mouth with a snap.
Fuck. It made sense though, with everything Harry knew of him…
So, yeah. Voldemort was evil. And Harry was maybe a little fucked up too, because the idea that Voldemort had been using pureblooded bigots as sacrificial decoys so he could commit unethical magical experiments without being bothered was absolutely hilarious.
It was also a great opportunity for Harry to do as Voldemort requested and approach situations with more cunning.
Harry grinned.
Voldemort was walking to his study when a sudden, sharp pain stabbed his side.
Gasping, he caught himself against a wall, before spinning, wand drawn to aim at the enemy—
But the hall was empty.
A brief surveillance spell confirmed it. The only other wizards nearby were all on the lower floors. None had cast anything in his direction. No one had offered a potion, or anything else to ingest. No unfamiliar house elf was nearby. No venomous creature excepting Nagini.
Why did it feel like he’d been run through with a sword?
Harry was watching him from across the bridge. Voldemort hissed at him, which did nothing to discourage the boy from approaching.
“Leave!” Voldemort spat, while the pain only grew more intense. He clawed at the wall, knees weak.
“Are you in danger?” Harry asked, coiling through his mind.
“No. Fuck off!”
Harry raised an eyebrow, but after a final scan of the surroundings through Voldemort’s senses, he did retreat, and with him, the pain. Only a minute later it was as if it had never happened.
Voldemort frowned, absently sending a brief chime to Harry, confirming he was now well. Harry sent back concern, and relief, and a rather intense curiosity. Examining his own hand, Voldemort couldn’t help but agree.
What the fuck had that been?
Occlumency lessons weren’t so bad now.
Which wasn’t to say they were enjoyable. Harry never escaped Snape’s office without a migraine. But it had been enough lessons now that it wasn’t unrealistic for Harry to have developed some resistance and skill, which Harry delighted in using to attack the intruder. Occasionally he even managed to shove Snape out of his head entirely.
Snape responded by digging in harder, mental weaponry as sharp as blades and just as precise, skillfully evading Harry’s shields and attacks.
This led Harry to the horrifying realisation that their first agonising session had, in fact, been snape going easy on him.
“Can I hammer iron spikes into his head too?” Harry groaned, leaning back into Tom’s touch. Tom laughed, his fingers dancing over Harry’s skull and leaving silver wisps.
“Find me a potionsmaster of his ingenuity, and I’ll hand you the iron spikes myself,” Tom said.
“I’m sure Slughorn could be of some further use to you,” Harry grinned.
Tom snorted.
“I said of equal ingenuity, potter. Slughorn’s main talent is in cultivating connections, not brewing. You’ll just have to endure Severus a little longer.”
Harry made a show of grumbling, and felt Tom hide another laugh.
All around them, the world was a blurry green, like a half-forgotten memory of a garden in summer, the sky above beckoning flight. Harry closed his eyes, letting the silver wash through him.
Tom had to have been bragging about the diary, right? All those years ago in Slughorn’s office? The memory (soul piece?) within it had looked around the same age as the Tom from that dream memory, and it was certainly a complex piece of magic worth bragging about… alchemically alive, Voldemort had called it. In possession of salt, sulphur, and mercury.
Harry had never noticed any sulphur or mercury while handling the diary, but he figured there had been some transfiguration at play. The philosopher’s stone was supposed to be an aid to transmutation, after all, and it was supposedly the ultimate alchemical tool.
Salt. Sulphur. Mercury.
Come to think of it, there was at least one other thing that by Harry’s reckoning, was alchemically alive…
“Tom… is blood mercury, sulphur, or salt?”
“It’s mercury,” Voldemort murmured without hesitation, searching out another wound in Harry’s skull. The world around them turned darker, gravestones looming out from the shadows.
“So, that would make bones the salt?”
“Yes. Flesh too,” Voldemort said, before his hands stilled.
“Tom?”
With a little flourish, the silver salve enveloped the last wound, and then Voldemort’s hand closed on Harry’s shoulder. It looked white and scaled, his nails a little closer to claws than a human’s should be. Harry could feel those sharp points pressing light but firm through the fabric of his shirt.
Harry tilted his head back to catch sight of his companion’s face. Tom from the diary and ivory-scaled Voldemort were overlapping like a mirage. He was watching Harry, scarlet-umber eyes searching for some trick.
“Don’t you want to tell me how clever you were?” Harry asked, smirking. An answering smirk tugged at Voldemort’s lips. His hand covered Harry’s throat loosely, claws tapping against his pulse.
“It should have been impossible, transmuting a stable living body,” Voldemort said softly. “The homunculus had neither blood nor organs, a mere puppet made of clay and snake venom and an intricate web of runes. This body of mine… it has a beating heart, lungs that breathe… no other in history has achieved such a feat!”
There was a manic delight within scarlet eyes, his voice, his grin, it slid down Harry’s spine and stole Harry’s breath. One careless claw pierced the skin at the hinge of Harry’s jaw. Hot blood trickled down his neck.
“My father’s bones as the salt, your stolen blood the mercury… the past, the future. Myself the sulphur, always my own present. Wormtail’s hand, the sacrifice upon the altar, willingly given no matter if that loyalty was coerced—his hand instead of your heart, did you know that? So that I may keep you alive long enough to stand before you victorious, and watch the hope fade from your eyes…” Voldemort’s voice had dropped low, nearly purring as his hands cradled Harry’s face, tracing featherlight across his cheekbones. “I had to destroy you with these two hands. A triumph over fate, over death itself…”
“How’s that working out for you?” Harry managed to ask, grinning, heart racing.
Twisting the dream, Harry slipped from his grasp. Voldemort immediately gave chase, shifting to the form of a hawk to Harry’s crow. They spiralled through the sky, claws and feathers and near misses, until Harry dived beneath the surface of the lake and emerged in a forest.
Tom was there moments later, eyes bright and wand in hand, a flush to his cheeks as he stalked between the trees.
“There’s no point in hiding, Harry,” he purred. “I always find you.”
“How can you chase if I don’t run?” Harry laughed, peeking out from behind a tree. Voldemort spun to face him, curse ready—
Harry deflected it with a block of earth, running again down a stone hallway—
A spell splashed against the wall as Harry lunged for the moving staircase—
Yellow stone stairs descending to a village square bathed in sun and salty air, Harry leapt to a rooftop, sending a curse over his shoulder as he rounded the corner—
Another row of books, stretching out ahead, no place to hide or turn off, Tom’s fingers catching Harry’s wrist—
Suddenly there was a wall to Harry’s back, and Tom against his front, and Tom’s lips covered his—
Harry arched into him, dragging Tom closer, and Tom immediately deepened the kiss, one hand teasing through Harry’s hair while the other was still clasped tightly around Harry’s wrist, like he thought Harry might try to slip away again. Harry nearly laughed. Run from this? Not likely.
“You are one of the most thoroughly irritating people I’ve ever known,” Tom murmured against Harry’s lips.
“Is that why you keep kissing me?” Harry grinned.
“It is a highly effective way to incapacitate you,” Tom said, before kissing Harry again until Harry felt dizzy.
Harry couldn’t argue there. Unless he wanted to be kissed again.
Well. Tom did call him a contentious brat.