Jonquils And Lightning

Ambition

Tom gave Arthur Potter a polite smile as he sipped at his tea. "Jonquil spoke of me while I was gone?"

"Yes, she seemed put out." Arthur's smile was kind, but the eyes that watched Tom across his glasses...Tom had seen eyes like them before, during most of his childhood when his uncle was still alive. "She said that she looked in several different places for you and couldn't find you."

"I was with Harry."

"Ah. Well, I'm sure she didn't think of that, since you appear to dislike each other."

Tom waited. He could feel questions coming, and the sooner they happened, the sooner he could be alone to contemplate the consequences of the duel and his next move. Arthur shuffled a few cups around on the table and cleared his throat. Then he said, "I feel like the worst of formal fathers asking this, but what are your intentions towards my daughter?"

"Not to seduce her and carry her off to my world unsupervised," Tom said lightly. It made Arthur chuckle, as he hoped it might. Then he shrugged a little. "I would be happy to teach her some more powerful magic, the way that she told me Harry was. Other than that, it would have to depend on her ambition and mine."

"Jonquil's always had powerful ambition. It's part of the reason why she was in Slytherin at Hogwarts. But she's never known what she wanted to do."

"She wants fame? Fortune? Power?"

"Even that, I don't think she knows completely. Although she did tell me last year that she'd like every wizard or witch in Britain to know her name."

An ambition easily gratified if she came back with me to my war, though it would be a different wizarding Britain. Tom no longer thought it likely that he would accept Jonquil Potter as his companion, though. Not when he knew a far more powerful one who had the ability to almost make Tom come with a touch.

"Then she should start working on her magic," Tom said firmly. "She could craft a powerful spell or a mighty invention. That would be one way to earn some of the attention she craves."

"Yes." Arthur sounded uncertain. "You think she could be famous and powerful? You aren't making this up?"

Tom leaned forwards and let all the charm and quiet intensity that had lured some pure-bloods to his side in spite of themselves manifest in his voice. "Anyone has the potential to be great. But she's going to have to focus. If she continues to sit around saying she wants to have achieved instead of achieving, then I don't think she'll ever be great."

"She has a hard time choosing between all the careers she's heard about."

Tom did know that problem. At one time, it had seemed that making an actual decision would foreclose boundless spaces that he had the power to roam in as long as he never made that decision. All things might be his if he did not choose one.

And then he had grown up, and realized that he did in fact want one thing more than any other: a wizarding world where he could thrive, and be damned if anyone else did.

"Tell her to focus," Tom said pleasantly. "It's what I did. I mean no harm to your daughter, Mr. Potter."

"Do call me Arthur." But Arthur was already nodding, apparently as satisfied as Tom could wish that he wouldn't get in Jonquil's way or hurt her on purpose. "If she does decide to go back to your world, you'll take her with you? You can visit?"

Tom blinked. "You have to realize, Mr.—Arthur, that the portal will close once I go back through it. The Oracle who opened it for me only did so so I could come here and seek out a Potter to help me in my quest."