Come Together

Chapter 11: Family

"I'm just saying it's funny!"

Bucky's grin did not waver under the deadpan glare of both Steve and Tom, and instead took another swig from the horn of firewhiskey. The Sergeant was holding two newspapers in his hands, one of which was the Daily Prophet, and the other of which was Daily Mirror. Both papers proclaimed the fall of Nurmengard (though only the Prophet named it as such), but the face and names of the one who brought it down were different.

"And what part of this, Bucky, is 'funny'?" Tom drawled out, taking out his lighter and lighting the tip of the cigarette wedged between his lips with a scowl on his face.

For the Mirror, it was a rather majestic picture of Steve posing in uniform, with the headlines "CAPTAIN AMERICA DOES IT AGAIN! ANOTHER ENEMY BASE DOWNED" printed above his head. It had only been a week and both the magical and muggle sides were all aflutter, and suddenly the icon of Captain America had somehow grown even more popular than he had been during the first few missions and the USO tours combined. Tom was introduced to a new word, 'franchising', as he gazed with horrified expression at the toys, posters, and other objects depicting caricatures of his Captain and friend.

"Is there reason they always have to make me out to be some sort of lone hero?" Steve muttered with a grimace before drinking from his tankard of butterbeer, "You guys were all there too..."

On the Prophet, however, a different story arises. There, on the front page, was Tom Riddle himself. Or, at least, that's who it was supposed to be. Dumbledore had thought it prudent, for some reason, for Tom to take a page from Steve's book and wear a mask to hide his identity so that when the wizards and witches were paraded into the Ministry with the 'man who saved them', no one could tell that it was just a boy barely in his adulthood.

"Yes but unlike you, we were not dressed in a gaudy red, white and blue uniform." Tom replied, releasing a puff of smoke into the air with a smirk, which turned into laughter when Steve shot him a grimacing pout, "Us Howling Commandos aren't the most colorful... well, unless you count our language. And I must say Captain, I've learned quite a few interesting words in more than just English."

Since there wasn't an overabundance of masks just laying around, nor time to make a proper mask like Steve's (which Tom wouldn't wear anyway, the dratted thing looked far too... American), a regular black gas mask (with the canister removed and the lenses tinted so that one couldn't see through them) was used instead.

"Says the guy who looks like some sort of harbinger of death." Bucky retorted, tapping the moving picture of the wizard marching alongside the freed prisoner, "Your 'Lord Voldemort' look still made the front page of the magical newspaper, despite Steve's colorful uniform. Apparently since you wizards dress in crazy colors anyway, a guy in all black wearing a gas mask in going to cause more of a stir."

Tom himself had argued that his old 'friends' would know immediately, it was the professor who then admitted to wiping that particular bit of information from the students' heads not soon after Tom himself had become a part of the Howling Commandos. The slightly guilty look on his face at stating this only prompted a raise of an eyebrow from Tom, who was doing his best not to show how much that action meant to him. It was rare for Dumbledore to show this much loyalty to someone outside of Gryffindor, so for him to do this for Tom was...

"Quite a stir is a bit of an understatement, really." Tom muttered with a scowl, "I've somehow gained the same popularity in the magical world as Steve has in the muggle world."

While it did the trick, the picture of a man clad entirely in black (including the hat he usually never wore) with a gas mask (something completely alien to the magical community), and the Shield of Slytherin our for all to see, and the words "NURMENGARD HAS FALLEN! WHO IS THIS 'LORD VOLDEMORT'?" made Tom look miles more sinister then your friendly muggle Captain America.