To Live is the Rarest Thing

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Harry broke.

Shaking from head to toe, Harry bowed his head and desperately tried to keep his mind together enough to figure out what had gone wrong.

This didn’t make sense. He’d accounted for everything, even the horcrux still attached to him. That little sliver of soul shouldn’t make a difference since they were connected through their shared souls. They were literally soulmates and had been for thousands and thousands of years. Harry had done the arithmancy and the ritual should have worked.

Harry’s head swam and his heart pounded and his vision turned dark around the edges, and then there were strong hands raising his head up and lips pressing against his and Tom whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I played a prank.”

“He did what now?” Sirius called from the other side of the room.

Tom’s lips tasted tangy and bitter, a distinct flavour left over from the necromancy used in the ritual. “I realize now that my timing was wrong. I’m sorry, my darling, but I have this strange memory of you trolling me as a teenager about soulmate butt-wiping and I thought to troll you right back, but after our previous lives I was wrong to do so. Do forgive me, sweetheart.” And all the while Tom kept pressing fluttering kisses to Harry’s lips, cradling Harry’s face in his hands.

“Fuck you,” Harry whispered around the tightness in his throat, his eyes watering to the point tears rolled down his cheeks. “Fuck you with a rusty spoon, Tom Marvolo Riddle. I killed them all.”

Tom smiled against Harry’s lips. “Did you now? I wondered as I was bleeding out if you’d do something Gryffindorish to get revenge.”

“Guilty as charged,” Harry said with a wet chuckle. “San Quentin was pretty deprecated by that point and during the decade I was there I’d thought up at least a dozen ways to escape, so it wasn’t very hard. Ed covered for me, and as a manhunt got organized to search for me, I got in touch with Limpy Pete, who’d been out for a year or two at that point, to get me some weapons. And then I broke into their compound, and I killed every single motherfucking man or woman I found there, except for three or so kids under ten. Everyone else was fair game, and I got that fucker Pablo as well and I made him suffer. He died the slowest of the lot. I counted 47 of them and I killed them all. After that I treated myself to a nice steak dinner and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, because let me tell you, prison food is absolute shit, and then I dropped a note in the mailbox of your precinct for your colleagues explaining what I’d done, and sat in my stolen car across the street and slit my wrists.” Harry leaned his forehead against Tom’s bare shoulder, suddenly as exhausted as he’d been when they’d climbed Mt Everest. “And then I woke up here as Harry Potter, ten years old, because my little shit of a cousin had drowned me. And I hate having my memories back by myself.”

“Given that your dogfathers are here, I’m assuming you at least told them part of the truth?” Tom whispered against Harry’s hair as he nuzzled the top of Harry’s ear, his arms slipping around Harry’s body to hold him close.

“What did he just call us?” Sirius demanded loudly.

“Yeah, I put them under a secrecy contract and I told them everything. It’s been good to just be myself at least around some people,” Harry said, slowly pulling away to look up at Tom’s handsome face. Even with Harry wearing his adult body, Tom was still almost a head taller. “It’s been… weird, being Harry Potter again.”