Tom leaped to his feet, but he wasn’t fast enough to prevent the black serpent from wrapping around Harry’s throat. It was a weapon he had seen his mother use before, but not for years, and—

Never against someone he would have objected to losing. Which his mother ought to have known even if she didn’t know anything else.

Harry’s hand rose and grappled with the snake. It was already looped too tight for that to be an effective tactic, though. Tom hissed in alarm, “Let go!” but that cut across and clashed with his mother’s command to tighten.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tom demanded, spinning around to stare at his mother, and trying to ignore the choking sounds from next to him. The blue gem in Harry’s diadem was flaring. It would protect him. It had to. Tom knew going closer and touching the snake himself would only result in it turning into a collar of dead wood, which would strangle Harry even more effectively.

“I don’t believe that he’s who he says he is. Someone who wields Parseltongue can challenge us in dangerous ways, and will draw even more attention than you using it by yourself. I don’t permit danger to threaten you, Tom.”

“Except when it comes from our own family!”

He had the impression his mother would have answered, but at that point, there was a dry snapping sound from behind them. Tom turned with his hand already on his wand. His first thought was that either Marvolo or Morfin had found a way to make themselves a nuisance.

Instead, Harry was holding the dead, cracked body of the serpent in his hand. He had broken it in half, even given the wood it would have become when he touched it. He drew in a sharp, whistling breath, and looked back and forth between Tom and his mother for a moment. Then he threw the halves away.

Tom went to him at once, running his hands tenderly, lightly over Harry’s bruised throat, but regretting it when he winced. “Are you all right?” he breathed.

“I’ll be all right.” Harry hadn’t looked at him, which would have made Tom bristle, except that Harry was sensibly watching the greater threat, Tom’s mother. “Why did you do that, Miss Gaunt?”

Mother flinched, as if the form of address held some kind of hidden poison for her. Tom wouldn’t be surprised if Harry knew something about her from his former world that would do that, but at the moment, he was hardly against it. He wanted to take Harry in his arms and remove him from the house, and he would have, if not for the glowing diadem on Harry’s forehead and the fact that he would have resisted.

“You…” Mother licked her lips. “You are encouraging my son into the open. It is dangerous for the reasons I explained to you. And I have no desire to share Slytherin’s artifacts or the glory that is still be to found in being a Parselmouth with you.”

“The glory to be found in being a Parselmouth. I see.”

Harry looked around the shack as he said it, not directly at Mother, but that only made it all the more insulting. Mother drew herself up and became the strong woman that Tom saw mostly when Morfin and Marvolo weren’t around. “You do not understand,” she hissed. “The snake that hides in his burrow during the winter and emerges again later is the one who survives. It has been winter for our family for a long, long time, but it will someday be spring again.”

“Tom is doing his best to bring that springtime.” Harry finally turned to face Tom again, his face gentle. “Do you want me to explain what you’re doing by facing Dumbledore, or would you rather have that honor?”

Tom traced his finger in a gentle, tickling line up Harry’s arm. Harry didn’t flinch or back away from him. His expression remained loving.

No one else in Tom’s life had given him that, even if he had known enough love from his mother to be incapable of making a Horcrux.

“You explain it, and I’ll jump in when needed,” he hissed.

Harry nodded and faced Mother. He had moved to shield Tom. Tom didn’t have to fear that as he would have in the past few weeks, not now that Harry had control of his magic back, and he didn’t feel insulted. He felt protected.

“Tom knows that Dumbledore is going to pass laws and try to make Dark magic illegal and keep non-purebloods in their place,” Harry said simply. “I don’t doubt you when you say that Dumbledore is also a threat to someone from Salazar Slytherin’s line, but just hiding in your burrow isn’t going to work this time. Dumbledore wants to Obliviate the knowledge of certain Dark spells from people’s minds.”

“What is that to us?” Mother hissed. Her eyes had come to rest on Harry, as if she had blinded herself to Tom’s existence. That was something that had always hurt when she did it to him as a child, but Tom made himself ignore it for now. “So he will threaten others.”

“And you don’t care about losing the ability to perform certain spells?”

“I am not strong enough to manage the Unforgivables.”

That was another sign of her strength, in a way, Tom thought in exasperation. He knew it galled his mother like a Boils Jinx that she couldn’t muster enough magical strength to torture or kill someone with those spells. But she would expose her weakness without hesitation if it meant gaining another kind of advantage.

“You think he would stop there? Because I don’t. You think he wouldn’t pass laws that also made Dark magic other than the Unforgivables illegal? This is the beginning, not the end.”

“You may have all sorts of notions stemming from your birth in another world. What I know is that I will not risk Tom.”

“I don’t want to risk him, either,” Harry said softly, and reached behind his back to quickly brush his folded knuckles against Tom’s stomach. “But things won’t get better if you just ignore them.”

“They will leave us alone as they always have.”

“How do you know that, though? Dumbledore might have ignored you so far, but once he figures out that his main goal is accomplished, he can turn his attention to other things. Like, oh, say, searching out the last true descendants of Salazar Slytherin, and figuring out if Tom’s Parseltongue talent is the real thing.”

That argument made an impression on his mother; Tom could see the uneasy way her eyes flickered back and forth from him to Harry for a moment. Then she straightened her shoulders. “So you say.”

Harry shrugged back. “I’m not saying for certain. I don’t know that any more than you do. But I think it’s possible. And Tom wants to stand up and fight back now to end Dumbledore’s power before there can be any question of danger. He chose that. I choose to stand at his side.”

Tom felt his fingers curl with the desire to do something more than simply stand next to Harry. But that would wait until they were away from the Gaunts.

Mother continued to glare at Harry as if she assumed he would become Dumbledore any second when the Polyjuice wore off. Then she turned on her heel with a sharp snort and shake of her tangled hair. “Get out.”

“Mother?” Tom asked softly. “I came here in response to your letter. Didn’t you have something that you wanted to say to me?”

“I’ve said everything. And it’s obvious enough what side you’re on.” His mother’s eyes moved to his, restless as the hands that were plucking at her robes and sides. Tom tensed. He knew those signs. “You’ll turn your back on your blood family. Just like a half-blood. Never should have married your father.”

“Stop it.”

The words hit the room with a sharp pulse of light from the blue gem on Harry’s forehead. Tom froze in surprise. The words were in Parseltongue, not an actual blast of magic, and he shouldn’t have been so caught off-guard by them. But he couldn’t move.

From the way his mother’s eyes widened, neither could she. Marvolo and Morfin had been grumbling something in hisses that Tom hadn’t bothered to pay attention to, but they’d shut up now.

“How dare you say something like that to your son.”

Harry was moving forwards, his hands curled at his sides. He didn’t hold his wand, but he didn’t need it, not when that gem was sending sharp blasts of blue light out to reflect off the walls, and not when he sounded like the most maddened viper Tom had ever heard.

“I thought you were a loving mother in this world, that Tom was evidence of your love. But instead you’re as mad and poisoned by blood prejudice as the Gaunt family in my world.”

Tom managed to stir a hand, and reached out and put it on Harry’s back. Harry stopped moving. He was trembling, a little, and when he didn’t stop that, Tom stepped around to the side so that he could see his face.

Harry’s eyes were feral. Tom caught his breath. He had sometimes wanted to see what would happen if Harry lost control, especially in the Potters’ world where he seemed to have a tight grip on his emotions at all times.

At the moment, he knew: it was like being close to a volcano that was going to target him personally.

Except all this anger, this flowing power, had been summoned for him. Trying to keep down his swelling pride, Tom reached out and gently closed his hands on Harry’s shoulders. That overwhelming gaze swung to him, but Tom was ready for it.

“Please don’t kill my mother. She’s the only parent I have.”

“I never intended to.” Harry pulled himself back from an internal brink as Tom watched, shaking his head slightly. The gem on his brow dimmed at the same moment. “I simply wanted to know how she could have given birth to you and raised you and loved you and then still say shit like that.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know that you’re afraid of so much that you hide in the shadows and call your son names when he tries to get out of them,” Harry answered shortly. “I don’t really need to know more than that,” he finished in English.

Tom could see the exact moment his mother decided that arguing with Harry was useless. That gave her anger another direction, towards Tom, instead. She turned to face him and stared at him with those depthless black eyes that had sometimes reminded him of a crocodile’s.

“Have you considered that you might doom me by bringing me to Dumbledore’s attention?”

“You’re not the one he’ll be paying attention to when he fights me, Mother.”

“But you still don’t know when he might decide that digging into your background is productive. He’ll want to do that anyway to convince his followers that you’re the true Heir of Slytherin. He’ll find me. Have you considered that I have no defense, that I’m a Squib without a wand?”

“That snake you threw at me felt like a defense to me,” Harry muttered.

Tom held up a hand, and Harry understood and fell silent. It wasn’t that Tom agreed with his mother’s argument. It was that he needed to handle it on his own since she was talking directly to him.

“Yes, he might dig into my background.” Tom kept to English deliberately, didn’t move deliberately, held his mother’s gaze deliberately. “He could also try to attack me through some of the pure-bloods who follow me and the disapproval of their parents, or he could attempt to find one of those ancient poisons supposedly brewed for Parselmouths. What I’m interested in is taking him down before he has time to do that, Mother.”

“He is too powerful for you to fight directly. I do not know why he has not already come after you and dueled you or your—man.”

“We have a grace period right now. He will come back, yes, but not right away. And he will be somewhat busy countering the truths I spread about him being the lover of Gellert Grindelwald.”

Morfin laughed from the side, his mouth open and his tongue heavy with foam. “So it’s true, then? Dumbledore lived to be fucked just like you do?”

Harry turned with a hiss. Tom clamped his hand on Harry’s arm and stopped him. Nothing irritated his uncle more than being ignored, a tactic Tom was minded to try right now.

“He really did have a relationship with Grindelwald,” Tom said, his gaze locked on his mother. “They planned to take over the wizarding world together and dominate the Muggle one. They believed it would be for the ‘greater good.’”

His mother’s eyelashes flickered downwards once at that. She had heard Dumbledore’s political motto just like everyone else in their world.

“He will put that threat down quickly,” hissed Marvolo.

"Will he have the chance, when we are the ones fighting right now and spreading the rumors? And his Order did more harm than good by attacking us in Diagon Alley with members of the public watching them."

"There will be some way for them to pass this off as your fault." Mother seemed to have recovered from her minor attack of listening, her hands on her hips and her eyes as direct as Tom had ever seen them. "You cannot succeed. Dumbledore is too powerful and has too much support in the Wizengamot. Better to hide, to coil and strike at his heel like any viper, than expose your hiding place."

Tom shook his head. "I'd already made myself too irritating to him just by existing and trying to introduce myself to him at political functions. Then I fought him in the world that the oracle sent me to. The time of hiding is over. Will you join me?"

Marvolo and Morfin turned their backs with loud scoffs, but Tom ignored them. His eyes were on his mother, who had shown courage and training of a sort by flinging that blackthorn snake at Harry.

Mother, who watched him with clenched hands and hissed in a single loud word Tom thought he could have understood even if he hadn't spoken Parseltongue, "No."

Tom blinked once, then inclined his head and replied, "Very well." He took Harry's wrist as he switched back to English. "Let's go, Harry. There's nothing else for us here."

"Wait a minute, boy. You said that you'd made yourself an irritant to Dumbledore." Morfin stepped into his path, his hand clenched as if he thought he could actually punch Tom hard enough through a Shield Charm to hurt. "How are you planning to protect us when he starts tracing your heritage backwards?"

Tom smiled a little. "You've made it clear that you don't want to be involved with me. Therefore, I don't want to be involved with you. You can protect yourself however you want. Run away and hide somewhere even I can't find you. I'm done."

*

It wasn't the kind of vengeance Harry would have preferred for their abuse of Tom, but he suspected it was the one that would suit the Gaunts best. If they were that terrified of Dumbledore, then they would want Tom's help in hiding from him--and they were a family of Squibs when it came to wands, for the most part, despite what Merope had done to him. Exposed, they would suffer far more from fear than pain.

"What? You put us in this danger, boy!"

"No." Tom continued to use English, and didn't look away from his uncle's face, even though Marvolo was coming up behind him. Harry was the one who looked at Marvolo, making sure his field of vision encompassed Merope at the same time, and shook his head. Marvolo shied back from him. "You did it by hiding away from the world that would have welcomed you at one time. You could have had allies and followers and people who admired you for continuing to have Salazar Slytherin's gift. You can live with the consequences of your choices. I made different ones, and I've been told that I should bear them on my own."

"You'll fail," Merope said abruptly. "Did you ever consider that I'm simply trying to keep my only son safe?"

"No," Tom said.

Merope fell back a step. Harry wondered if Tom had always couched it in gentler language before, doing what he could to soothe her fears.

Or maybe, Harry thought, as he watched Merope's dark eyes wander over Tom's features, this is the first time she's listening.

"I was. I was trying to keep you safe."

"You didn't do a very good job of it. Let's go, Harry."

"You can't leave us here."

"Oh, Mother." Tom sounded as if he was smiling, although he kept his head turned away and even Harry couldn't be sure. "You've been leaving me all my life. I've had a lot of examples."

They stepped outside the shack, and Harry kept his wand braced in case an attack came from behind. But nothing was cast at them. The Gaunts needed time to absorb what had happened in the shack, perhaps.

For that matter, Harry thought he might need that, himself. He reached out and gently took Tom's hand, turning it over so he could see it, and moving so that he could see Tom's face at the same time. "Hey. Are you all right?"

Tom glanced at him. His expression was complex, lingering, a painful smile. "In the future. I will be."