Jonquils And Lightning

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."