Chapter Text
Tom sat on the edge of the box seats, eyes watching the darkened stage. The crowd was alive with a hum of chatter before the performance began, unaware they were about to be stunned, be blessed—unaware that they were going to flee from death and win.
This was his dance.
This was his dance, and he would never dance it.
But Harry would.
The stage lit up, and Harry began to dance, the music soft and curious as Harry chased his brother around the stage, the music swelling as Harry stood before death.
The audience was held in a raptured silence as they watched him dance, watched him mourn brother after brother, watched him wrap himself in the cloak and run.
The music kept itself fleeting, sudden rushes of crescendo and lower octaves to a diminuendo into the higher notes, Harry dancing his way into his flight, undoing the cloak to hide the audience from death. And then—
And then—
The music swelled one final time as death found Harry, and he pirouetted away from him, still holding the barely visible gauze of the cloak up against the audience, gazing out onto them, and winked.
He wrapped the cloak around himself as the stage went dark.
Normally, this was when Tom would be looking at the audience, gauging their response; now, all he could do was sit, frozen, eyes fixed on the stage. He couldn’t find room to draw breath. He couldn’t think. His dance, his beautiful, perfect dance—but it wasn’t really his anymore. But it was beautiful. It was perfect. It was Harry’s.
And yet the audience also sat in enraptured silence.
The audience sat, spellbound.
The stage was dark, and the auditorium was silent.
And then:
Thunderous applause. It seemed to swell to fit the whole hall, and some part of it unlocked Tom and he jerked to his feet, and then ran for the dressing rooms. He had to find Harry—Harry, his Harry—
“Sir—” someone said, and he found himself shoving them like a brute, unsteady on his leg but sure in his conviction.
“Don’t you know who I am?”
“Ah—”
“Oh, just let him through,” the stage manager said with a sigh as she made her way past. Tom was already moving when she called out, “He’s in dressing room seven-B!”
As though Tom wouldn’t know where Harry was, his Harry, his perfect dancer and his perfect dance and he would never dance it. He skipped half the steps on the way down, ignoring the way pain jarred through the old wound as he landed, and then finally he stood outside Harry’s door.
And all of a sudden it was too much. As much as he wanted Harry right beside him, in his arms, in his studio, his, he couldn’t bear the thought of facing him. Harry, he thought, would be alight and nervous and desperately seeking his approval, wanting Tom to confirm what he already knew: he had been flawless. He had danced the dance the way Tom had wanted it danced. The problem was only that he wasn’t Tom.
Harry would know it. The second he saw Tom, he would know why Tom was upset. And the thought of that curled up in his chest and choked him.
He didn’t want Harry to see him like that.
The door opened. “I thought I heard someone—” Harry began, then froze. “Oh, I—Tom—”
And then Harry was on him, his arms flung about Tom’s shoulders. All Tom could do was stand there, rigid, utterly gobsmacked—
“I did it,” Harry said breathlessly. “I really did it. I don’t think I believed it possible until it happened. Thank you, thank you—”
“It was perfect,” Tom agreed, a little too bitter for it to be true praise. “It was unforgettable. No one will ever forget the way you danced it. It is the dance, the singular article.”
Harry laughed, delighted, tugging Tom by the hand into the dressing room, but all the humour in Tom had faded. He was just a bitter old man—not even old, just a has been—and here was the star. Standing just behind the spotlight. Who the hell was Tom Riddle to stand within it?
“It was just—” Harry said, still babbling. “When I was standing there, lights down, wrapped in the cloak, there was a moment of complete and total silence before the applause came in. It was like everyone was holding their breath. It felt—”
“Powerful,” Tom filled in. “You felt powerful.”
“It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before, not even in Swan Lake.”
“You were alone on the stage,” he said. “It was just yours, and no one else’s. People had waited years for that dance, and you still surpassed every expectation. Of course you felt powerful; you had so much power, and it’ll never truly die.”
Harry laughed again, and then he turned to face Tom fully. Tom was aware, on some level, that he ought to do something with his face, but as he tried to bend his lips to make a smile he could only make a grimace; like clockwork, Harry’s face fell.
It was almost a dance. One where Tom was the villain, and Harry the hero.
“What’s wrong?” Harry asked. “Was it not—was it not what you expected?”
And there was Harry: hopeful and afraid and so desperate not to let Tom down. If Tom were a cruel man—which he was, frequently—he would tell Harry that yes, he’d failed him, and that this dance was how everyone would remember the Vol de Mort and it would be wrong and no one would ever escape this monumental failure.
But he could also imagine Harry’s face in his mind’s eye: the crushed look, the tiny oh, the apology, the way he’d fall apart. All that joy and life snuffed out.
Tom could remember the first time he saw Harry. He had not believed in himself—Harry had since fed him tiny pieces of information about what his family thought of his dancing—and had not been stage ready until he began to dance. Harry now was bright and brilliant. Harry now was beautiful.
What an unfathomable thing, to crush the spirit back out of him.
“It was perfect,” Tom murmured. “It was—everything I ever dreamed of. It was the flight of death, the Vol de Mort, it was glorious.”
And Harry, his beautiful Harry, saw him and understood.
“It just wasn’t yours,” Harry filled in. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it can’t—”
“No,” he said. “No. I’m glad it’s you. I’m glad it was danced. I’m glad it could be everything I ever dreamed of.” His eyes slipped shut. Defeat. Regret. “Even if—even if it wasn’t me.” It felt like a condemnation. It felt like giving up.
“Tom—”
“Don’t try and comfort me,” he said. “And don’t you dare pity me. I couldn’t stand that.”
“How could I not?” Harry asked.
“Because you have lost nothing and gained the world!” Tom snapped, rounding on him, some small, awful part of him relishing in the way Harry stepped back. “You are forever famous, forever beautiful. What the hell have you got to complain about?”
“You’re upset! I wouldn’t have any of this without you, I care about you, so, yeah, I’m worried!”
“You don’t get to be!” he snarled. “Why the hell do you get to care about me?”
“Why are you so angry with me for daring to be worried about you, Tom Riddle? What is wrong with you that you think I could be so stone hearted—”
And instead of saying anything reasonable—if there was anything reasonable to say—Tom grabbed Harry’s chin and then closed the distance between him, Harry rigid and Tom furious, and then Tom kissed him. It was awful. Teeth clashed, and for a second Tom was half-certain he’d split his lip, and Harry just stood there stunned and—
Appalled, probably. It was terrible conduct.
God, he’d fucking—like a fool, he’d kissed his boy. Across oceans and mountains of things he should never have done, he’d kissed his boy. And there was Harry, frozen, and—
He let go.
“I’m sorry,” he said, acutely aware of the way Harry tasted and the fact that he could no longer taste him. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me.”
He was backing away, he realised. His feet were moving without conscious thought, putting distance between them. The Vol de Mort had been danced, and there was Tom’s life, Tom’s career, in someone else’s hands. He had to let it go. He had to—
“Don’t you dare apologise,” Harry said, and then kissed him again, and properly. His hands had fallen to Tom’s shoulders and Tom realised that Harry was holding him in place—he was making sure Tom wouldn’t bolt. He tried to muster up some kind of offence, but—
It was this: Harry was kissing him.
It was this: Harry was kissing him because Harry wanted to.
It was this: Harry’s lips were soft and warm.
It was this: Tom was kissing back.
When Harry let go—well, once Tom had found himself capable of processing that Harry had let go—he stood opposite Tom with something almost shy once more creeping over his face. An utter crime; Harry’s confidence had been earnt, and it was beautiful.
“Was I actually any good?” Harry said. If Harry had doubted than even for a second, then Tom was more of a jealous fool than he’d thought.
“Of course you were,” Tom said. “I would not have picked you if you weren’t going to be good.”
“But really. Was I good?”
Tom swallowed, then; Harry was looking at him like the answer mattered more than anything else in the world. To deny it, Tom could crush the boy completely. In doing so, he would become both monster and liar. “You danced it,” he said instead, “the way I would’ve done it.”
“Did I really?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Tom said, and then for the second time that day Harry flung his arms around Tom, a wide grin on his face and the sheer joy of it—of Tom’s confirmation—leading to Tom finding himself suddenly airborne. “Harry—Harry, put me down.”
“Sorry,” Harry said sheepishly. Then: “It was good.”
“Better than good,” Tom said. “Do not undersell yourself. It was perfect.”
“It was perfect,” Harry said again, giddily. “I was perfect.”
“Of course you were.”
*
It was afterwards that the awkwardness kept in. What was an undefined relationship? What was a kiss to a date, or a dance teacher to a lifetime?
It turned out he needn’t have worried about any of that.
Harry showed up, often, and frequently. Tom found it difficult to get work done with him around but found he didn’t mind it. He let Harry sit in the room as Tom readjusted the composition of a piece, and it was sitting like this that Harry said it.
“You can still dance,” Harry said, his tone unexpectedly thoughtful.
Tom turned to him, eyebrow raised. “Not perfectly.”
“No, I mean, you’re perfect provided you don’t stretch that leg.”
Tom had always made sure to avoid dancing the parts on that leg when teaching. If he needed to use his left leg for dancing, he would just critique the dancers relentlessly. Harry, with those bright perceptive eyes, had noticed.
“You make every dance you perform.”
“What are you suggesting, Harry?”
“If you make a duet—if we do this right—we can dance a duet that you can be perfect in again—we can be—”
“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Tom cut in, remembering a duet he’d never quite finished. “You won’t give up on my love of performing; Orpheus doesn’t give up on Eurydice as she dies. I can—I can make a dance around my leg. We can be perfect.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, a smile so wide Tom was certain it would fall off the edges of his face. “Both of us.”
*
Orpheus, Tom thought, played the lyre. He’d have to incorporate that. Classical music pieces, too: the piano was always a good instrument. Perhaps a violin to accompany the lyre—was that too much?
Preparing anything was difficult with Harry watching. It was much more important to do it well, to do it perfectly; Harry’s untrained musical ears tended to think well of whatever Tom did anyway, but it mattered to him.
The other reason it was difficult was that Harry kept kissing him. It was hard to sit at a piano bench and track his way through a song when Harry would sidle up and drop a kiss to his cheek, his neck, his mouth; Harry made it difficult to focus on anything else, so it was with amusement that he kicked Harry out.
“Go away,” he said, smiling. “Shoo, foul beast, or we’ll be dancing in silence.”
“You’re so mean to me.”
“Go and bring Eileen a pastry.”
“I’m not a dog!”
“Be quick now and I’ll give you another kiss.”
*
“How much do you know about Orpheus and Eurydice?”
“Just the basics.”
Tom smiled. “Orpheus was the best musician. He had helped with the mission to find the golden fleece then met a nymph called Eurydice—who died of a snake bite on their wedding day. Distraught, Orpheus charmed his way through the Underworld, charming Cerberus and Charon and even Hades and Persephone. He charmed them successfully but was told that he couldn’t look at her or call to her as he left, and, as he left the cave leading to the Underworld, in his joy, he forgot that they both had to be free of the cave and turned to embrace Eurydice, thereby dooming her. He played a mournful tune for the rest of his life, enchanting the Maenads, who then killed him because they could not have him.”
“Depressing,” Harry said, drily. “Seems like a lot of characters for a duet.”
“Eurydice isn’t in it too much. I can multi-role. The important thing are the headline characters.”
“You don’t want to be Orpheus?”
“I’d rather let the character that doesn’t leave stage often use his left leg,” Tom said, amused. “Besides, I think I make for a charming Eurydice.”
“As long as I don’t look back and you’re gone.”
“You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid,” he said. “Forever.”
“Oh, good.”
*
“I’ve seen you do a lift and spin hundreds of times.”
“I don’t want to drop you,” Harry said. “It’s just—”
“You didn’t drop anyone else,” Tom pointed out. “Why on earth are you afraid of dropping me?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Well, I should hope you didn’t want to hurt any of the girls either.”
“No, but—it’s different,” Harry said. “I like you. I love you,” and wasn’t that a revelation, wasn’t that a hell of a word, and before he could process any of that Harry said: “If I drop you now, it’s like—a betrayal. It’s like Orpheus looking back.”
Tom kissed him instead of saying anything else, partially because he could. He could kiss his Harry any time he pleased because his Harry was his Harry and he loved him. God, what a world, to have found a perfect dancer and keep him all to himself forever.
“You,” he said, “are an idiot. I’ve been dropped by people hundreds of times. You rarely drop someone because you actually know what you’re doing.”
“What if—”
“To be dropped by you would be an honour.”
Harry’s cheeks pinked. “Are you sure?”
“Orpheus,” Tom said, with a small smile, “looked back because he loved her.”
*
The first try of the costumes was amusing, if only because Harry had one and Tom had more than ten.
“I’m feeling like a loose end, here,” Harry said, amused. “Do you want me to hold your next costume up for you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom said. “Come here, you’re wearing it wrong. Then you can help me with mine.”
“So demanding.”
“You were the one complaining about feeling like a loose end.”
Harry looked resplendent, as always; the outfit had been done up to look Grecian, and once Tom got his makeup on him he’d see about a laurel crown. It would suit him.
Tom’s first costume was a wedding dress, still made to look Grecian but affording for modern sensibilities. He made Harry do up the back if only because it amused him; Harry’s touches when doing up costumes were always terribly lightly and terribly appreciated.
“I’ve never seen you in costume before.”
“I know you’ve watched my dances,” Tom said, amused. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“Yeah, but not like—” Harry gestured at him. “Not like this. You’re here in front of me and you’re—beautiful.”
Tom smiled. “I know. So are you.”
“Am I supposed to say it back? I know I’m beautiful?”
“Don’t you?”
“You say it often enough that I’d be surprised if I didn’t,” Harry said, and he looked so beautiful that Tom kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until he started to laugh.
*
The poster on the screen beside them in the interview was gorgeous, as Tom knew it would be; Tom’s back was to the camera, forever dressed for a wedding, and Harry was looking back at him. It was lovely. Tom wished he’d come up with something that had his face in it.
“It’s a striking poster,” the interviewer said. “It captures the eye tremendously. But what we all want to know, Mr. Riddle: why are you dancing again?”
“I found,” Tom said, “after years, what I was looking for in a dancer.”
“And what would that be?”
“Someone that I could teach to dance as well as I danced.” He smiled at Harry, who smiled back like the sun. “It’s exhilarating to be back on the stage. I wouldn’t want it to be with anyone else.”
“And what if Mr. Potter outshines you?”
Tom smiled again, slightly strained at the edges, because he did expect that. He expected that Harry, the latest star, with much more recent dance practise than he had had himself, would outshine him.
Harry just laughed. “If anything, people will forget about me with Tom Riddle back on stage. I’m good, but he’s the best.”
“Mr. Riddle?”
“Then,” he said, “we will know that I have been a very good teacher.”
*
Tom was practicing a piece of footwork he wasn’t satisfied with in the mirror when Harry came in. It had been a risky thing to set—it wasn’t impossible for his leg, but it sent a sharp stab of pain through him. That was fine. Ballet was pain. He had always known that.
“You know,” Harry said, “Ginny’s been absolutely hounding me, lately. She’s delighted you’re dancing again.”
“And you took all the credit, I assume.”
“What? Of course not.”
“Whyever not?” Tom glanced over at Harry in the mirror, then swiftly ran the footwork again. He had to be better than this. “It was your idea. Without it, I don’t think I would’ve danced again.”
“You still chose to,” Harry said. “You taught me everything I know.”
“That’s sweet of you to say.” There—his leg twitched slightly as he landed on it. He’d have to take painkillers before the production—he’d send Eileen over to France to get their double strength paracetamol. “You’re still the reason this dance is going ahead. My teaching doesn’t make magic. You still did the dance.”
“Hey,” Harry said, as he went to run the sequence again. “You’ve been working on the same bit of footwork for five and a half hours. Did you have lunch?”
“Once I’m done,” he said, distracted.
“It’s three o’clock.”
“You know what this means to me.”
“Of course I do,” Harry said. Tom’s first dance since the accident. He never danced his Vol de Mort, but he was dancing this.
“Then you know I can’t afford to fuck it up.”
“And you’re not going to. Come on,” Harry said, taking Tom’s hands. “Dance with me, then we’ll go have lunch.”
“Let me record it first.”
*
Later, Harry was half-asleep in Tom’s lap on his sofa as Tom watched the video. “You turned the wrong way,” he said.
“Mm,” Harry said. “I thought I had.”
“I didn’t land right there.”
“We have time.”
“Time we can’t afford to be imperfect in.”
“Then we’ll just have to fix our mistakes, won’t we?” Harry poked Tom’s shoulder. “No point losing sleep over it.”
Tom laughed, something lifted from his shoulders. “We will, my love,” he said, and pressed a kissed to Harry’s hand.
*
It was as Tom always found: the time rushed by. In a flurry of music and costumes and dance, dance, dance, and, ultimately, Harry, they found themselves backstage of the first run of Orpheus and Eurydice.
“Are you going to be okay with all these costumes?” Harry said. “You’re not going to get dressed in the wrong one, or something?”
“You have got to practise quick changes,” Tom said. “Unlike you, I am actually capable and familiar with changing costumes during a dance.”
Harry laughed, leaning in to press a light kiss to the tip of Tom’s nose. “I was going to say break a leg, but I thought it might be insensitive.”
“You are terrible,” Tom said. “And you missed.”
Harry kissed him again, lips on lips, chaste. “Good luck, Tom.”
“Good luck, Harry.”
*
The lights lit the stage and there was Tom as Eurydice, beautiful and young and ready to get married, and he reached out and him and Harry danced their wedding dance, eyes on one another and smiling. It was easy to smile when looking at Harry.
Then came in the minor chords—and there came the jump away from the snake. Tom ran because Eurydice ran from the snake; Harry as Orpheus attempted to grab it, and there the note as Tom snatched back his injured leg as though he’d been bitten. He swooned into Harry’s arms and with a spin and a lift Harry had taken him offstage.
Then the quick change: a simplistic costume for Charon, then the rowing dance as Tom was charmed by the swell of the lyre. Again a quick change: this time with added puppetry for Cerberus, the music becoming tripartite as Harry as Orpheus attempted to soothe each head to sleep. One quick change after another, Tom became the Underworld. He became every member that stood between Harry and Hades. He was what stood between Harry and himself.
Now he was Hades, the final challenge before Harry would once more lay eyes upon Eurydice. Bold clothing, dark clothing, dancing circles around poor Orpheus as he tried once more to convince him to release his wife. Again, and again. The same dance four times—and finally, as the music touched Hades, Harry grasped Tom.
A major chord. The penultimate quick change. He was Eurydice again one last time: this costume was half a wedding dress and half a funeral gown, layered over with white tulle. He was a ghost.
Eurydice danced onto stage to Harry’s turned back. They began to dance, Orpheus always leading, Eurydice always following. Tom swept through the rehearsed fall and rose again; the lyre in the orchestra had stopped, as had Harry. Neither started again until Tom was on his feet.
Again, then again. Orpheus landed a grand jeté in the spotlight, smiling—
And in one fell swoop, Orpheus looked back.
Tom met Harry’s gaze and all the music faded to a single lyre. Harry was frozen. The orchestra had frozen.
Eurydice stood barely a few centimetres from the light.
It was Tom’s moment. Eurydice danced from the blue light towards Orpheus and his spotlight, then pirouetted away before he could touch her. Again, less close. And again. And finally, when he stood on the very edge of the stage, back to the audience, the music fell to silence, and Orpheus lunged towards his wife.
Tom met Harry’s eyes, smiled, and fell backwards into the pit.
The orchestra started once again, but the lyre did not.
The final quick change was simple. The Maenad’s costume was plain, his hair deliberately wild.
The Maenad was mad to the point of losing humanity, and as Tom half-crawled across the floor to the sound of the lyre, Orpheus dancing Eurydice’s half of the wedding dance, alone. A frenzied thrum, and Tom swept in and grasped one of Harry’s arms, and Orpheus continued the dance with one arm folded up against his chest. Another thrum, and Tom seized his other arm. Orpheus, doing footwork alone, continued to dance his wife’s half of the wedding dance.
The instruments had fallen away to just the lyre, and Tom, with one graceful swoop, ran his hands along Harry’s leg, and pirouetted away.
Harry entered the jump sequence on one leg alone.
The lyre, alone, played in an increasingly manic frenzy until Orpheus made it to the centre of the stage—
And with one long note, Harry fell.
The lights dimmed.
Tom slid offstage to let someone smooth back his hair, and when the lights came again, Harry and Tom stepped back onstage to raucous applause. People were standing.
The orchestra began to play the wedding dance again.
And Harry and Tom danced once again as Orpheus and Eurydice on their wedding night, but no tragedy struck. Tom met Harry’s eyes. Harry met Tom’s eyes. Tom found, to his surprise, that he was grinning like a loon.
Harry was, too.
The music held strong, and instead of a bite, Tom spun Harry into an embrace.
Tom, as Eurydice, clasped Harry, as Orpheus, in his arms, and as Eurydice gazed into Orpheus’ eyes and held her husband once more, Tom held Harry to the sound of applause, unable to control his smile—Harry had gotten him to dance again, Harry had gotten him to perform, Harry had made him perfect once more—as the lights glowed on their faces.
Then Tom kissed Harry, and Harry kissed Tom.