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batsutousaiTitle: The Soot Gremlin and the Bastard Prince
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Warnings: Alternate Universe, child abuse, beatings, homophobia, references to character death
Summary: Harry is forced to live as a servant to his unpleasant uncle and aunt, while Tom is a bastard who's only in line for the throne because there's no one else. When the king decides to throw a ball, can the two find their freedom in each other?
Prince Thomas Gaunt was angrier than he could remember ever being. He hadn't even been this angry when his no good, wretched excuse for a father had come begging favours. As if the man had had any right to Tom and what little power he held in his grandfather's court. It had been just about enough power to see his father hanged, and the decision had won him just a little bit more favour with his grandfather, which hadn't been his intention, but he'd been all too happy to accept, all the same.
Now, almost ten years after that fateful choice, he again strode into the throne room with rage simmering under his skin. This time, unlike the last, there were hundreds of guests filling the room, many of them dancing around the floor, while an orchestra played from one of the half-hidden balconies peeking in from the floor above. Tom should have been on that floor, smiling whilst he danced with faceless woman after faceless woman, each one looking only to claim his title and bear an heir that might, one day, inherit his grandfather's throne. (Never mind that, should his uncle marry and bear a child of his own, Tom and whatever family he might suffer would lose all claim to the throne. By Morfin's will, should he survive Marvolo.)
Marvolo's glare, as ever, was a hard one to bear. But Tom had suffered it plenty over the course of his eighteen years, and he had his rage to give him strength.
His rage, and the blood coating his hand.
"Where have you been?" Marvolo demanded as Tom reached him. And then, clearly catching sight of the blood on Tom's hand, his hard gaze softened, just the slightest; the only show of love Tom could ever expect from his cold-hearted grandfather. "Whose is this?"
"Harry Potter, the Earl of Gyffindor's," Tom said, keeping his voice low, and was rewarded with the slightest widening of his grandfather's eyes. "His guardians have been using him as a slave and beating him."
And, oh, the rage in Marvolo's eyes could have rivalled Tom's own; Harry couldn't have begun to comprehend exactly how much James Potter and his sacrifice had meant to the kingdom as a whole, and to Marvolo personally. Even Tom only knew the coldest of facts: Albus Dumbledore, the Earl of Gryffindor, had headed a coup meant to overthrow the Gaunt family, already weakened by Merope's disappearance. He had managed to assassinate Tom's grandmother, Mireille, and nearly killed Morfin, save for the timely intervention of the royal guard. Marvolo, grieving and nearly having lost everything, declared war on Dumbledore, a war which lasted nearly five years and devastated over half the kingdom.
James Potter's sacrifice had not only avenged Mireille's death, but he'd ended the long, terrible war before it could take any more lives or ruin the kingdom beyond all recovery. Gifting James' widow and child with the title and lands of the traitor he'd given his life to kill had seemed only fitting, and something Marvolo had done without hesitation. (That no other member of the nobility had argued the passing the the title, despite how closely they usually guarded such, spoke to how devastated the rest of the kingdom had been by the war, and how utterly grateful they were for his sacrifice.)
In truth, Tom hadn't ever given any further thought to Countess Potter and her young son, having assumed the child would be brought up as any noble, and their first meeting would be either full of clever sniping about his status as a bastard, or else full of far more scraping and bowing and looking about for favours than any sane person should be expected to stand.
Meeting Harry in the servant halls, being utterly enchanted by his quiet mannerisms and the lack of any hostility or attempts to gain favour, and then discovering that there was, in fact, one person in the whole of the country who didn't know him on sight, had been...mind-boggling. Never, in the whole of his life, had he ever been seen as just Tom. And to have that, as well as to be treated with the respect and kindness he'd never truly received because of his father? Harry could have asked anything of him, and Tom likely would have granted it.
Had Harry not been a member of the nobility, Tom still would have done his damnedest to see his horrid relatives punished, because there was such a good, pure heart behind those lonely eyes, and Tom may have been cruel at times, but even he would never have wished Harry's fate on a child. On his relatives, perhaps, and some certain other people Tom might think of in his darkest moments, but never on someone too young to have made their own poor choices. That Harry had wished only for his own freedom, instead of the punishment of those who had misused him, spoke volumes about him as a person, as if Tom had needed any further proof that Harry was far too good for him.
Harry being a noble, especially a noble in his grandfather's limited good graces, made punishing his horrid relatives so much easier; whether Harry would appreciate it or not, his aunt and uncle would feel the wrath of their king. And Tom would stand back and delight in their agony, though he doubted it would ever truly make up for the way Harry had sobbed when he'd called himself a slave. Nor would it make up for the wounds on Harry's back, which the palace doctor had almost looked worried to see, and the scarring from old wounds barely visible beneath the newer ones.
"Are they here, those relatives?" Marvolo hissed, such violence in his voice.
While Tom had never got confirmation one way or the other, he doubted Harry would have been able to leave – fairy godparents or no – if his relatives hadn't gone ahead to the ball themselves. So he nodded and said, "Vernon and Petunia Dursley."
Marvolo may have been furious, but he was no fool. And, just as Tom had resisted the urge to announce the reason for his arrival to the entire gathering, his grandfather sent his people to collect the Dursleys in as unobtrusive a manner as possible.
The human scum were brought to Marvolo's personal office, where Tom had suffered any number of dressing downs, as well as the few words of praise his grandfather had been willing to spare for a bastard. Tom, himself, was standing just behind his grandfather's chair, his hands freshly washed of Harry's blood, while his grandfather was settled comfortably in the chair, the dented pocket watch with the Gryffindor crest on the desk in front of him.
"Your Majesty," the Dursleys said, both bowing or curtseying a little too low, though it wasn't like they were really expected to know the different levels of prostration before their monarch.
Neither, unsurprisingly, acknowledged Tom, though he was due, at the least, a murmured 'Your Grace'; he might be a bastard, but he was still of royal blood and held a title.
"Do you know what this is?" Marvolo demanded, picking up the chain of the pocket watch and holding it up so the watch swung just over the top of the desk.
Vernon turned an interesting sort of purplish puce shade, while Petunia went nearly as white as her husband's shirt. "I, I'm afraid I don't, Your Majesty," Vernon said, so very obviously a lie.
"Indeed? And yet, the young man carrying it claims you two as his relatives."
"Young man?" Petunia tried, clearly thinking fast. "The only young man in our care is our son, Dudley."
"And should the young man in question, who is not your son, point you out in a crowd?"
"H-he'd be lying, Y-Your Majesty?" Petunia said, sounding like she wasn't completely certain that was the correct answer.
"Take care how you refer to the Earl of Gryffindor, Mrs Dursley," Marvolo warned, his voice low and cold.
Tom forced back a vicious grin; it wasn't often he got to observe his grandfather's fury from the sidelines, and this was one event he was quite glad to be watching.
"And, moreover, take care that you do not lie to me."
Petunia looked down and away, her mannerisms distressingly like Harry's, and Tom clenched his fists against the urge to stride across the office and beat on her like some common thug, until she stopped reminding him of the boy whose blood had been on his hands far too recently.
Vernon was clearly not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, for he snarled, "That ungrateful little wretch is no earl. He's a strain on our resources and a thief. We took him in out of the goodness of our hearts–"
"There is no goodness in your heart, Dursley," Marvolo interrupted, and Tom couldn't say if it was because his grandfather was sick of listening to the man, or he'd realised that Tom was about to lose his temper. "Take them down to the dungeon," he ordered the guards who had brought the Dursleys.
"Your Majesty, please!" Petunia cried.
Marvolo stood, then, and the guards stopped dragging Vernon and Petunia from the room. When he spoke, there was naught but ice in the king's voice, and Tom couldn't quite hold back a shiver: "James Potter gave his life for the rights and freedom of every person in this kingdom. To treat his son as you have is beyond criminal. You had best hope there is kindness left in him, for it is he who will decide your fates. Take them away."
The whimpering and pleading of the Dursleys followed them out the door and down the hallway, until they were far enough away that the stones of the palace no longer echoed their voices back into the office.
Marvolo sat with a heavy sigh.
Tom swallowed, then stepped around his grandfather's desk, refusing to flinch when his angry eyes landed on him. "Harry– Earl Potter isn't going to want to be harsh, Your Majesty. He'll want to let them go free."
Marvolo's mouth thinned into a hard line. "They will never again taste freedom, not if even half of what you've told me is the truth."
Tom refused to look away. "I know better than to lie, Your Majesty."
"Yes, I dare say you've learnt that lesson already." Marvolo leant back in his chair, his eyes narrowing. "Now, Thomas, where have you been for the past three hours? Surely you have not spent the entirety of the night conversing with a bleeding boy dressed in rags."
Tom knew better than to mention fairy godparents to his grandfather – Marvolo may have been willing to keep such books among the history tomes of his library, but he hadn't believed them since his own childhood – so he readied himself for punishment and offered up the real reason he'd hidden in the servant's halls: "I see no reason to find some greedy woman to marry, when anyone with sense knows I'll never sit the throne."
Marvolo stared at him, gaze hard and unbending, until Tom had to look away. "You will dance with at least five of those 'greedy' women, or you'll spend the night in the dungeons."
Knowing his grandfather, he'd end up in the cell next to the Dursleys. Which would only be amusing until he ran out of ways to torture them with words. "Yes, Your Majesty," he said as he bowed exactly as low as was expected.
"Where is Earl Potter?"
Tom swallowed. "My rooms. They were the first place I thought of," he said, probably a little too quickly. In truth, it was as much a wish to stay as close to Harry as possible, as the certainty that there was a comfortable bed he could lay him on, that had led to him carrying Harry to his own rooms.
"I'll have a room made up for him," Marvolo decided.
"Your Majesty, please," Tom said, wasn't certain that he cared how close he was coming to begging, "with his wounds, wouldn't it be best to just leave him? I've a couch I can sleep on."
Marvolo's stare was piercing, and Tom tried not to shake under it; he'd never come quite so close to admitting to a weakness before. But, then, he'd never really had a weakness; if he had to develop feelings for someone, at least it was one of the few people his grandfather would never dare to punish just to hurt him. Marvolo might attempt to turn Harry against him, but Tom very much doubted such would stick; his kindness surviving ten years under the cruel thumbs of the Dursleys spoke well to the strength of his will.
"Until the doctor takes him off bedrest, he may remain in your rooms," Marvolo agreed. "But you will let him rest, Thomas."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Tom agreed, and bowed again before turning and leaving the office.
He grimaced a bit as he headed back towards the ball; he truly had no interest in dancing with women enough to please his grandfather, but he knew better than to disobey.
Besides, he had the memory of his dance with Harry to get him through it, and the promise of many more yet to come.
Morfin did indeed find a woman to marry during the ball, and while Marvolo didn't quite approve – she was a member of the middle class, as Tom's father had been, and a widow, besides – he allowed it, likely as aware as Tom and Morfin that he didn't have a great number of options left, if he wanted a second legitimate heir.
Their marriage was a bit of a rushed affair, but Tom had never seen his uncle look so happy, and his new wife had a kind enough smile that Tom, for once, didn't feel like an interloper in his own home. (Though, in truth, much of that could have been due to Harry.) Their first child, a daughter, would be born almost nine months exactly after the wedding, and their second child, a son, would follow the year after, leaving Marvolo with plenty of legitimate heirs.
In the case of the Dursleys, Harry did eventually settle on hanging, though Tom did his best to talk him into something more painful. Harry refused to attend the execution, and Tom politely never attempted to describe it for him after the fact.
Dudley, Harry's useless lump of a cousin, inherited his father's businesses and nearly ran them to the ground over the course of the first year. His wife, a woman he'd met with at the ball, was quite a bit more clever than him – which wasn't saying much – and managed to keep him from ruining them completely. She also managed to arrange a meeting between Harry and Dudley, which ended almost as soon as it started, when Dudley greeted Harry as 'Sootlin', and Harry responded by punching him in the face.
(Their second meeting, almost four years later, and again arranged by Dudley's wife, though with the cover of Harry getting the chance to meet their children, went much better. Though Harry and Dudley would never be friends, they were eventually able to put their terrible past behind them enough to be amenable acquaintances.)
As for Harry and Tom? They did indeed retire to the estate that was Harry's right, as soon as Tom's first cousin was born. Tom did his best to condense a lifetime of learning social graces and the rules and rights of the nobility into a few years, and while some of it stuck, Harry would always be one of the oddest of the kingdom's nobles, and Tom would always find him working in the kitchen or cleaning the manor house with the servants. Especially a man named Remus, who Tom eventually got the full story of their acquaintance out of via a little more bribing than he should like to admit to, and came to be nearly as fond of as Harry was.
Neither Harry nor Tom would ever marry, and it was one of the worst kept secrets in the kingdom that the Earl of Gryffindor and the Bastard Prince shared a bed. Not that either of them were given to care what the rest of the kingdom thought, not once they'd gained the freedom and happiness they'd suffered and hoped so very long for.
And they, at least, lived happily ever after.
.
