Work Text:
Harry shook his head as minutely as he could, watching as his servant’s eyes widened in fear. The hooded figure, shrouded in darkness as a proper servant of the Master of Death, closed its mouth immediately.
Tom Riddle, the wizard who kidnapped Harry and thought he was a mere researcher of Death and nothing more, stood and approached Harry’s servant, his every step menacing. Just like last time, Tom cast crucio, and just like last time, Harry reached out to his powers and sapped the spell of its magic once more.
“I don’t understand!” exploded Tom, and he turned, flinging his nth vase of the month against the wall, shattering it immediately. “Why do they always fall quiet as soon as they’re going to tell me where the Master of Death is?” He directed the question to Harry, and Harry scrambled to correct his expression to one fitting of a mere mortal researcher.
“Maybe he’s listening,” he said, and tried his best not to laugh. Because well, he was listening and that was precisely the reason his servant decided to stay quiet.
“It’s hard enough to even find his servants,” muttered Tom, darkly, ignoring Harry’s very reasonable explanation. “I need to find darker spells to torture them.”
“I don’t think that’s -” Harry started, and was immediately cut off by a glare.
“Take him away,” he said, waving at Harry’s servant.
Harry bowed, and wondered when Tom would finally catch on that he was the reason every servant of Death miraculously disappeared.
As soon as Tom was out of earshot, he snapped and the manacles holding his servant disappeared.
Immediately, the servant dropped to its knees, bowing down enough that the darkness around him started to flow onto the ground and to Harry’s feet.
Harry shivered at the cold touch, and then benevolently reached out to touch the top of his servant’s head.
“Rise,” he said, and the hooded figure did. “You are free to go now.”
The hooded figure did as he was told, and then hesitated before dissipating back to their dimension. “Uh, my lord?” he said, meekly, and Harry nodded. “Are you staying here?”
“For now,” he said, and the servant stared at him in obvious shock.
“Should we call off the rescue attempts then?”
“No,” he said, because it was keeping Tom on his toes to fight off his horsemen every now and then and it was amusing to see how Tom outwitted them. He was a mortal wizard, and yet, the strength and ingenuity Tom possessed was simply breathtaking.
Plus, he got to see his horsemen at the same time, and only Death knew what they would get up to unsupervised.
The servant looked like it wanted to ask more but knew better than to risk his wrath. So it bowed and dissipated.
Harry watched until his servant was gone and then headed back to find Tom. His mortal wizard would have worked himself into a right fit and Harry found it endlessly amusing to watch Tom blow off steam.
Kidnapping Harry was the best decision he ever made.
Harry knew so much about the different methods to attain immortality, and he had the evidence to back it up, too. He could rattle book titles by memory if Tom thought to ask it, and he was more than open to research late into the night if Tom needed information urgently. It was as if Harry didn’t need sleep, or if he did, he forsake it just to help Tom.
Sometimes, Tom felt guilty about keeping Harry in his Tower with him. Harry didn’t seem to hold a grudge against him for the imprisonment, but still, Tom knew he would probably be happier back where Tom had found him. It had been a fluke, finding Harry in one of the pyramids in Egypt, and even more of one when Harry started to tell him about the Master of Death. Stunning him and taking him back to the Tower had been instinct then, and Harry hadn’t even complained when he had woken up.
Harry didn’t complain about much, either. Even when Tom had forbidden him from leaving the Tower, Harry hadn’t seemed bothered. Harry had even started cooking their meals for them, telling Tom it reminded him of simpler times.
Tom couldn’t imagine life in the Tower without Harry now.
“The Red Horse is coming next,” Harry was saying, and he opened the book in front of him, pointing at the picture on the page.
“Are we close?” he asked. “Is that why the Master of Death keeps sending his horsemen after us?”
“Er,” said Harry. There was a moment of silence as Harry thought about it, and then he nodded. “Most likely. We’ll have to be careful, the Red Horse is the most violent. It represents War.”
“How do we defeat it?”
Harry was about to answer when the candle they were using flickered ominously.
The shroud that Tom had started to associate with Death started to flow in, and chills started to go down his back. Just as he turned to face Harry, the candle went out.
Honestly, War was so dramatic.
Harry could still see in the dark, courtesy of being the Master of Death, and watched as War and Tom started an intricate dance. Tom dodged by the mere ability of being able to hear her, and he watched as War got more and more infuriated.
Harry understood; he, too, had been briefly stumped on how talented Tom was. Stunning him and dragging him back here shouldn’t have been possible, but well, that was Tom in a nutshell. Tom did the impossible on the daily, and that was why Harry hadn’t broken free and had stayed, shirking his duties. Though, it wasn’t as if anyone could reprimand him, so Harry didn’t feel too guilty about letting his desires run his life.
War was a hothead, and Harry really should have predicted her next move.
She backed off, her hair rising along with her temper, and she stamped her feet in anger. “Why are you keeping Master imprisoned?”
Harry froze in shock. None of the other horsemen had deigned to talk to Tom since he was a mortal, and here War was, ruining everything.
He knew Tom was already piecing things together by the way his back had stiffened, and he flinched when he saw Tom turning to face him.
He saw the words forming on Tom’s mouth and he braced himself for it.
Only for nothing to come out.
War took advantage of the brief opportunity her words had given her and killed Tom.
His wizard. His mortal. His Tom.
War was cleaning off her sword, a triumphant smile on her face as she beamed up at Harry.
“All’s fair in love and war, right?” she asked him, cheekily, and Harry saw red.
“I should’ve known,” said Tom, and Harry reached out to rearrange the golden chains attached to the collar he had locked around Tom’s neck. He looked enchantingly handsome in the getup Harry had designed for him, and Harry didn’t regret for a single second abusing his powers to bring Tom back to life.
“Yes,” he conceded to Tom, and then brushed a stray strand of hair back into the perfect hairstyle. “But I did grant you immortality.”
“After serving you for a lifetime,” Tom retorted, and Harry grinned, glad that Tom’s personality hadn’t taken a single hit from the brief time he spent dead. He was as fiery as ever, and Harry adored him.
“As my Consort,” Harry corrected him, and Tom’s eyes widened. “Why else would I dress you in such finery?”
Tom’s cheeks were a fetchingly pink at his words, and Harry found he was no longer mad at War. Sure, life in the Tower was comfortable, but life in his dimension was going to be even more so.
And Tom no longer had to search for immortality, because Harry wasn’t going to let Death touch him ever again.