tomarrymortmicrofics

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Stumble Prompt response @tomarrymortmicrofics. Inspired by this artwork.

There is a fawn in the woods, walking on unwieldy legs. 

It will only survive for a few hours without a mother. It will be, perhaps, only a handful of minutes until it stumbles across a predator. One that is more dangerous than he, that is. They can all smell its fear, the predators.

But, for now, it is alive. He watches it breathe under fur freckled with white, staring at him with dark, beseeching eyes.

The woods are lovely, shadowed corners under bright sun, and the depth of green that can only be aided by rainfall in spring.

It is a familiar story for Tom, so he approaches the animal with careful, slow movements, his hand outstretched. 

Harry whispers something urgently behind him, but he doesn’t hear. The flash of magic accompanying a Patronus does redirect his attention, briefly. He sees a stag of light, and Harry mouths "wolves."

Ah. Other predators.

There are many things in the woods that want to capture something free, such as this creature, but he alone can attract it.

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

@tomarrymortmicrofics | stumble | 272 words

Potter storms off, pushing past Voldemort with a childish huff and stalking out the front door. Something, perhaps whatever enchantment has ensnared him, compels Voldemort to follow after him.

Out in the garden, Potter stumbles. He falls forward, barely managing to land in an awkward crouch to avoid injury. He sits back on his heels, looks up at the clear blue sky, and lets out an animalistic cry.

When Voldemort looks down upon him, he sees that Potter is weeping.

“You are not Harry Potter,” Voldemort proclaims.

Potter looks up at Voldemort, brows furrowed. He laughs, a desperate little sound. “What are you on about now?”

“Harry Potter would never cower and weep as you do. He faced Lord Voldemort fiercely and courageously, as a worthy adversary ought to do.”

Potter snorts, wiping at his cheeks. “I'm not cowering, Vee. I woke up this morning to my husband attempting to kill me because he somehow has lost the last fifteen years of his memories. I'm fucking sad.”

Voldemort tilts his head, considering. Potter sighs and rises to his feet, brushing off his pajama trousers as he does so. For reasons unknown, Voldemort finds it difficult to look at him, so he stares out into the garden, taking in the variety of flora, the trimmed hedges that form a menagerie, and the large pond filled with glimmering koi fish.

“When I was a child, I dreamed of having a space just like this, all of my own,” Voldemort says quietly.

He looks back at Potter, who is smiling faintly. “Yeah, I know. Then you realized that some things are meant to be shared.”

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

this week's microfic prompt is: STUMBLE

post your microfics and tag this account to be reblogged! have fun!

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

@tomarrymortmicrofics | answer | 200 words

“What have you done now?” Pansy demands, glaring at Harry fiercely.

Harry blinks in confusion at his secretary, pausing in the process of hanging up his cloak. “I haven’t been at the office long enough to mess anything up too terribly, I'm pretty sure.”

Pansy doesn't return his smile. In fact, her frown deepens. “I'm not talking about work,” she says. At Harry’s look of confusion she sighs. “Just come with me.”

As they walk, Pansy rants. “Bloody owls all morning. Squawking and shitting all over the place. I cannot work in these conditions, Harry. You need to do something about this or I’ll quit. I swear I will.”

There are two owls in Harry’s office when he enters, both pecking at his file cabinets in search of treats. On his desk is a veritable mountain of envelopes. Harry picks one up and immediately rolls his eyes when he sees the wax seal: a snake in the shape on an S. It's from Tom. All of the letters are from Tom. There has to be at least fifty.

Harry rips one open, unfolding the parchment to reveal giant loopy letters in emerald green ink that simply reads: ANSWER ME IMMEDIATELY.

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Prompt: Answer | @tomarrymortmicrofics

It's a microfic if it has a dialogue, right? Right?

Sound on! Transcript under the cut (it has subtitles tho). I rarely animate, so I hope it's decent

Tom: Violence is never the answer. Violence is the question.

Harry: And the answer?

Tom: Is yesss

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

𖥔 answer

The iron door groaned open. Tom Riddle stepped into the dim cell, his crisp black robes trailing behind him in the raging white storm. The cell immediately returned to darkness as the door closed behind him, leaving only an illuminated circle where the round window’s light fell.

Grindelwald didn't rise to greet him.

“I wondered how long it would take,” he said.

He didn't look up until the young man stepped into the center of the room, the light from the small window crossing his face.

“I had no questions worth asking,” Riddle said. Grindelwald wondered if that was true, or if the boy had been circling Europe all along, waiting for a reason to step through Nurmengard’s gates.

“But you seek answers now?”

“Only one.”

Ah.

“Tell me, Grindelwald, how does a man endure knowing he will never kill the only opponent who could have made his victory complete?”

He watched Riddle carefully, saw the faint twitch of interest, and chuckled as he felt a cool, deliberate pressure prying into his mind.

“Albus never used Legilimency on me,” Grindelwald added. “He didn’t need to.”

The younger man said nothing, but the thought was there as Riddle withdrew, neither do I.

“You think he won because he was soft,” Grindelwald murmured. “You’d be wrong. He won because he saw the shape of the end long before I did. Even when we were boys, in his house of denial.”

A flicker of irritation crossed the young man’s face.

Grindelwald tilted his head. “The Potter boy. He’s the shape of your end, isn’t he?”

Riddle’s gaze sharpened, but he did not answer at once. His fingers brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve with slow precision, as if dismissing the thought. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.

“He’s not ready.”

“Neither was I.” Grindelwald’s gaze drifted.

History is cruel, he thought. The way it looped. One dies the right way, another loves the wrong way.

“You’re here,” he said, “to see if I regret it, or if you should.”

Riddle said nothing. He turned to leave, cloak sweeping against the stone. The iron door opened and the same white storm seeped in once again, curling through the dark like it knew the way.

Grindelwald leaned back into shadow.

“Let me know,” he called after him, “if he hesitates.”

The door shut.

Alone again, Grindelwald almost laughed.

In the end, Albus hadn’t hesitated, he remembered.

When the time comes, Potter wouldn’t either.

Regret — Albus & Harry here @tomarrymortmicrofics ⋮ ⌗080825┆rose's microfics

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

this week's microfic prompt is: ANSWER

post your microfics and tag this account to be reblogged! have fun!

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

@tomarrymortmicrofics | gift | 310 words

After growing up with relatives who did not acknowledge Harry’s birthday, never mind giving him actual gifts, Harry always does his best to appreciate any presents he receives, even if they aren't to his personal taste.

This, however, cannot go without being remarked upon.

Harry looks up hesitantly at Voldemort, who is staring at him inquisitively.

“Are you displeased?” Voldemort asks.

There's no mockery in his tone, no mirth dancing in his eyes. He seems genuinely confused, which makes all of this worse.

“Vee,” Harry sighs, scrubbing at his face. “It's a severed head.”

Voldemort tilts his head.

“Most people would rather not receive a severed head as a birthday gift,” Harry informs him gently.

“It is not just any severed head,” Voldemort argues. “It is the severed head of one of your enemies. Dolores Umbridge tormented you and tortured you with a blood quill. I believed proof of her demise would please you.”

Harry is tempted to point out that Voldemort has also tortured him, not to mention all the attempted murders. However, he knows better than to bring up their tumultuous past. It never leads anywhere productive.

“I would have been happy with something simple,” Harry says. “Like tickets to the Magpie match.”

“Check under the bow,” Voldemort tells him, looking smug.

Harry grimaces when he looks back down at Umbridge’s head, taking in her swollen features and ghoulish pallor. A giant pink bow sits atop her head, which Harry lifts to find VIP passes to the next Quidditch World Cup. Harry smiles fondly despite himself.

“Thanks, love,” he says.

He’ll have to find a way to discreetly rid himself of the head before Voldemort does something insane like mounting it and using it to decorate their sitting room. For now, he puts the lid back on the box and leans over to give Voldemort a grateful kiss.

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

@tomarrymortmicrofics

Theme: Gift

Word: 400

Disclaimer: Tom Riddle Discovers Hormones.

Warning: Tom Riddle

Tom's world gets upended as his eyes is met by a pair of alien green eyes. He barely registers the name that escapes the chapped rosebud lips "Harry". But his subconscious, now alert with greed, captures it like a starved, salivating predator.

Harry. Such a pedestrian name and yet...

Tom's mind registers it as the sweetest symphony in the existence. The woefully plebian name makes his tarnished heart come out of its languorous hibernation and soar.

As his heart jumped into action, shaking off years of decay and disuse, instead of feeling enlivened, Tom was besieged by a sensation that was woefully similar to being punched mercilessly in the solar plexus, his gut protesting as it was rearranged by one painful blow after the other.

For a moment, Tom was briefly transported to a dreary summer of 1933, when Billy Stubbs, the meathead, proud from his growth spurt, decided to pummell him to the ground. He had felt dizzy and dazed then, all the breath knocked out of him.

He felt similarly breathless now and lightheaded.

He felt as if he was not seeing a tall, dainty-faced boy quietly perusing their peridot-hued Common Room with an unfathomably resigned expression on his pretty face, but a ray of incandescent light determinedly infiltrating the cobbled webs and dank corners of Tom's heart, rusty from disuse, and illuminating each corner.

Tom felt naked under that verdant gaze. Unravelled. Pathetically human.

Those eyes should be illegal, Tom thought wildly.

What a pair of eyes they were! Tom was sure these were one of a kind, and he would never find another were he to raze the four corners of the earth. Even God himself would struggle to recreate these masterpieces.

Alien green they were and alight with barely concealed hostility. Green like the Avada Kedavra curse, the greatest Unforgivable Curse to ever exist, green like the hue of envy he was besieged with when he watched his peers callously tearing open one of their innumerable gifts on birthdays, Christmas.

Green was the colour of death in their world. But wasn't it also the colour of life? That was the shade of the trees that flourished in the Forbidden Forest. That was the hue of the mosses that persevered against all odds on weathered rocks. That was also the exact shade of the parasitic algae that blossomed with dogged determination on the ponds, leaving them a dull and ugly ochre green.

Green was the colour that heralded the triumph of life over death. Didn't this make it, Tom thought wildly, the shade of immortality?

Tom was dumbstruck as he stared into their terrible, magnificent, poisonous green depths, suddenly overcome with a pang of covetousness.

Gluttony would be his undoing, Father Brian had once cautioned. Tom was born greedy, a "devouring demon," as Mrs. Cole once called him when the bottle of sherry was half empty.

He wanted to reach out and tenderly carve out those delightfully diabolical green eyes from their sockets and hoard them as a gift to himself. Those were priceless and would be right at home in Tom's collection of treasures. Tom would take such good care of them.

That way, those eyes would never look at another with affection, never bestow tender gazes, or stare ardently at another.

The cavernous ruin deep inside him howled, appalled that Tom was satisfied with so little.

The ravenous abyss in him wanted to devour the boy whole, absorb that source of radiance so that he would never bless another with his luminosity.

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Prompt response @tomarrymortmicrofics

Gift

"I don't want this," Harry said, and Tom watched the brief flash of unease in his expression. He felt the spike in Harry's heart rate, thrumming in quickened stuttered beats, a metronome awry under Tom's fingers.

For a moment, he allowed it to stand, but only for a moment.

"Liar, he said then, gathering Harry closer.

He caught the break of it, Harry's expression warring with itself, the twitch of his lips upward before he pressed them together in a last bid to control his expression. He then pressed his body closer still to Tom, hands curling around his back, threading under his shirt.

"Sorry," Harry said, in between the peels of laughter that broke through, huffed out against his neck. The sound drew something soft up in Tom, something he was quite sure at one time that he'd ever be able to feel again.

Much of what Tom did these days was for Harry, but he was frequently given his gifts back twofold. It was all Harry had ever known what to do with the things given to him, Tom suspected.

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

in honor of Harry's birthday, this week's microfic prompt is: GIFT

post your microfics and tag this account to be reblogged. have fun!

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

@tomarrymortmicrofics | return | 308 words

It's a simple desire shared by most people: a home to return to at the end of each day and someone there waiting for you.

Harry always had a difficult time imagining having something like that for himself. He certainly never thought it would end up like this but nonetheless, he is happy.

Harry smiles to himself as he tosses floo powder into the giant fireplace in the Ministry lobby. He’s excited to see Tom, have dinner, and discuss their days.

In another life, Tom was a Dark Lord and Harry’s greatest enemy. Through a series of impossible events, Tom is both reformed and is now Harry’s husband. It's funny how things turn out.

“I'm home!” Harry calls out cheerfully as he steps into his living room. Oddly, there's no answering greeting; the house is eeriely silent.

“Tom?” Harry calls again. He sets down his briefcase and looks around, a strange sense of foreboding creeping in.

“In the kitchen!”

Harry lets out a relieved sigh at the sound of Tom’s voice. Tom isn't much of a cook but occasionally he attempts to whip something up in the kitchen, with varying results.

Harry walks to the kitchen and stills at the sight in front of him.

Tom is kneeling on the floor, vigorously scrubbing the tile with a wet cloth.

“Hello, darling,” Tom says, looking up at Harry. “I've had a beast of a day. Do you mind ordering takeout?”

Harry forces his eyes away from the pool of blood Tom is kneeling in, and tries not to think about where (or more specifically whom) it came from. “Sure, any requests?”

“Veg Thali?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Harry squeaks, backing out of the room.

So, perhaps Tom isn't completely reformed. It's not as if Harry expects his husband to be perfect. At least he's good at cleaning up his messes.

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Return to Sender - HM.. UH HUH.

Oops, I tried to keep this loose and quick, but it got out of hand U__U)/

@tomarrymortmicrofics - RETURN

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Return.

Prompt response @tomarrymortmicrofics

Continuation of Regret and Flame. Trigger warnings: imagined suicide. Harry stood at the precipice looking over the edge of the rocky overhang where a steep drop awaited, and beyond, a pit of seemingly unending darkness.

“There is no way to leave,” Tom said, watching Harry stare over the side of the mountain. “I have tried.” Harry gaze's traced the sharp peaks of rock, and he imagined falling and being speared upon them, the basalt black spires shiny with blood.

“You didn’t…” he said, glancing back at Tom, still sitting beside the dying campfire. 

Harry watched his eyes narrow. “Of course I did. I tried everything I could.”

“What happened?” Harry’s gaze traced over Tom’s form as though he might be able to spot some physical evidence of it or some deformity the man was hiding. “After losing consciousness, one always returns back to the mountain, whole.” He hesitated a moment before continuing, his gaze faraway, and his voice softer. "Or, nearly so. You do lose something, don't you, when you come back too many times?" Harry could imagine that Tom had spent quite a bit of time talking to himself, and perhaps it was a difficult habit to break now. Without the manic glee of drowning his prophesied enemy, Tom just looked tired, shoulders lax and blueish circles under his eyes that Harry hadn’t noticed before. It was strange to see. Even in death, Voldemort had never looked this defeated.

“What is your plan to escape then?" Harry demanded. "I know you’re working on one.”

Tom looked up with a startled expression, fully meeting his gaze for the first time in hours, but the expression fell away quickly, and he looked back away. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he thought, saying nothing for a long moment.

“To escape hell,” he said finally, shaking his head. “Even I—” “Says the guy who spent every waking moment of his life trying to escape death,” Harry laughed. “There’s no way—” “Careful, Harry, of what you speak so freely about in places like these.”

Harry glanced around, but saw only the encroaching dark sky and the jagged spires of rock that surrounded them. “One never knows what listens in.”

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

this week's microfic prompt is: RETURN

post your microfics and tag this account to be reposted! have fun!

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Hi I was looking forward to this week’s prompt, so I hope everything’s okay! If there’s going to be a change in formattinf or direction then I’m still all for it ❤️ looking forward to reading tomarrymort submissions. It’s been a bit of a highlight seeing new microfics daily, and every week

Hi! I got distracted this week. So instead of posting the prompt late and shifting the schedule, I decided to just post the next prompt on Tuesday as usual (and put more prompts in the queue so that doesn't happen again). Sorry about the wait!

[tomarrymortmicrofics]

Regret burned up in Flames

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Harry waited with bated breath, frozen as he was underneath his cloak, while Dumbledore tried to dissuade Draco from killing him. ‘Little does the old man know’, Harry thought to himself, unable to fight the grin spreading across his face. Just as he tired from Dumbledore’s words, Snape showed up, not even glancing in the direction of the headmaster, who’d taken to plead with him.

No, instead Snape’s wand flicked into the direction behind the man and de-froze Harry. “Much better,” Harry sighed as he pulled his cloak away, rolling his shoulders and neck. “Harry, my boy, what–“ Dumbledore started, but Harry had had enough of listening to the old goat for a night. Nah, for a lifetime, really. So he silenced the man and disarmed him in one swift motion.

Harry hadn’t truly thought he could disarm the man – despite being the best dueller within the student body – but apparently even Dumbledore let his guard down when in shock. All the better for Harry. He ached to see for himself what the fabled elder wand was all about. Now he just had to convince Voldemort to let him keep the ring that seemed to burn a hole into Harry’s pocket already.

‘Soon’, he soothed the stone in his mind. He had stuff to do right now. Holding his own wand against him, Harry stopped in front of Dumbledore, grinning. “You know, for a meddler and manipulator as old as you, one would think you learned to see beneath the surface,” Harry mocked, “Or where you so assured of your little pawn? Sorry to disappoint in that case.”

Without turning – he wanted to further relish in the regret playing over Dumbledore’s face – Harry addressed Draco, “Your job here is done, Draco. Good work.” He didn’t need to look to know the blond bowed to him and then marched right off of the tower. Probably back to his dorm. The other Death Eaters stayed where they were. Their job wasn’t done, yet.

All of them had their wands trained on Dumbledore as if they dared him to try something. Harry didn’t take chances and froze him, just like he had Harry earlier. Frozen completely but for his eyes. He could’ve stupefied him, but Harry had learned being dramatic from the best and so he wanted the man to see who his pawn had become.

Taking that as her cue, Bella cackled, “Itty, bitty Potter! Catch!” It goes without saying that Harry did catch the bundle she threw and found himself holding clothes, all black and finer than anything he’d ever worn at Hogwarts. Right on top lay a gleaming, bone white mask with a finely carved emerald serpent on it. With a snap of his fingers, Harry changed the dirty clothes he wore with the one’s Bella gave him and burned the others. He wouldn’t need them any more.

He motioned for a couple of the present Death Eaters to move forward with their mission and they left silently. Now dressed appropriately, Harry stood before Dumbledore with two strides. He tilted the man’s face up with the elder wand and couldn’t help the malicious smirk on his face to show.

“Maybe,” Harry whispered close to Dumbledore’s face, “you shouldn’t have left me to rot with the worst kind of muggles on this planet, old man.” Harry took a step back, looking down his nose at his old headmaster, the man who was responsible for so much more of Harry’s pain than Voldemort could ever hope to be. Not that the man wanted that any longer, anyway.

“Maybe you should’ve looked a little closer at how your saviour was doing. Especially after you knew Voldemort took my blood to resurrect himself. Blood wards to keep me safe? Don’t make me laugh! If those actually ever took, then they were useless the second he took my blood, Dumbledore.” Harry laughed a shockingly high, mocking laugh.

“It was easier to have me out of the way, though, wasn’t it? Thank Salazar Voldemort thought differently.” Harry observed every little movement of Dumbledore’s eyes and then decided he wanted to let the man respond. Dumbledore grimaced briefly before inhaling. “My boy, whatever Tom has promised you, I promise you it is a lie! Your parents–“ His words were cut of by a swish of Harry’s wand.

“Now, don’t start about my parents,” Harry continued as if hadn’t just silenced the man again, “They were important, of course, and I am grateful they protected me and died for me. Blood is important to me, you know?” When Dumbledore narrowed his eyes and Harry couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

“You never truly understood Voldemort’s motto, did you?” Harry asked, full well knowing the answer. “You heard ‘Blood and Water’ and assumed it meant wixen are better than muggles because of their blood.” Bellatrix snorted in the back. “Right you are, Bella!” Harry called out to her before focusing back on the man before him. “You’re wrong, though, Dumbledore. That’s not what ‘Blood and Water’ means, like, at all.”

Harry lifted an eyebrow. “The origin of the saying is muggle in origin, funnily enough and goes like this,” he recited the saying with a hand over his heart, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” His gaze turned feral, but the didn’t care. “So, while I’m grateful towards my parents, may they rest in peace, I have chosen my covenant.” Harry looked at the Death Eaters surrounding them, then dropped his gaze back towards Dumbledore. “And it is not with your lot.”

With a grin full of teeth, Harry looked up in time to see Voldemort emerge onto the platform and lifted his wand to the sky. It was with relish that he cast, “Morsmorde!” into the night sky, revealing his very own Dark Mark to Dumbledore as his sleeve slid down a little. And the Mark lightened up the sky in green flames just as another green light ended the life of Albus too many names Dumbledore.

“Come, my own, let us herald the beginning of a new age,” Voldemort held out his hand and Harry took it. Confidence in his stride. Pride in their eyes. And love in their hearts. Or, as much as two monsters could love, anyway. Blood is thicker than water, after all, and they shared so much more than blood.