The wizards trailing in his wake didn't seem keen to experience Grog Night at the Guts for Garters. Crabbe and Avery were typical young pure-bloods, used to carousing in their fathers' gentlemen's establishments, not a Knockturn Alley pub. Tom Riddle stopped beneath the sign of a woman's leg covered in a black fishnet stocking with a rope of intestines tied around the thigh.
He said, "Both of you claim knowledge of Legilimency, but I demand more than skill. I require subtlety. Go into the pub and use Legilimency to manipulate a woman into inviting you home with her."
Crabbe and Avery gaped at him.
Tom frowned. "Was I unclear?"
"No, master," Crabbe said. He cringed as if expecting a blow while he asked, "D-do we have to . . . have knowledge of the woman?"
Tom drawled, "That is the aim of Legilimency."
Avery sneered at Crabbe. "I don't want to sail dirty waters with a pox ridden wench, either, but if that's what it takes, I'll do it."
"How piratical you sound," Tom said. "You're getting into the spirit of things."
Crabbe seemed ready to toss his sea biscuits.
Tom's amusement turned to disdain. "Sex with a pox ridden wench is optional. Stop wasting my time."
The men jostled each other to be the first to enter the pub.
Tom hummed a pirate tune. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. Drink and the devil had done for the rest. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. There. That was enough time for the men to settle and begin their work. He strolled into the Guts for Garters.
A momentary hush descended, and then rumble of conversation began again. Even at the orphanage, his entrance had stopped all conversation. Sheep always sensed when a wolf drew near. He sat at a table in the centre of the pub. A jumble of nautical equipment and reproductions of pirate wanted posters tacked to the walls made a stab at carrying out the pub's theme. He glanced around, meeting the gaze of anyone foolish enough to make eye contact.
The hag two tables over feared she'd never find a man. Tom called up the memory of dorm-mates laughing at the thought of someone asking her to the Yule Ball.
A warlock hunched over a tumbler of Firewhiskey worried that his young wife was cheating on him. Tom delved into the man's thoughts and brought his worst fear to the surface: the wife was in bed with his dragon keeper brother home on a visit from Wales.
Tom inhaled fear the way some wizards sucked in tobacco smoke from their pipes. Instead of making him mellow, the fears he breathed in gave him strength. He turned his gaze to the barmaid placing the half shell of a coconut on Crabbe's table. With her statuesque curves and long flaxen braids, the barmaid looked more like a Valkyrie than a pox ridden wench, although the off the shoulder blouse she wore encouraged males to fantasize about bodice ripping. Crabbe practically slavered as he molested her with his eyes.
The conversation between the two was easy to follow. Crabbe asked what was in the grog, and the Valkyrie listed the ingredients: rum, water, lime juice, and sugar. Crabbe angled his bulk toward her as she spoke. He was attempting Legilimency.
The Valkyrie picked up the Galleons Crabbe had placed on the scarred table top. As she turned away, her eyes fell on Tom.
He smiled.
She smirked.
A gagging sound drew Tom's attention to Crabbe, who dry-heaved as he stared into the coconut shell. "Blood. I drank unicorn blood!" He clapped a hand over his mouth and ran outside.
Tom admired the roll of the Valkyrie's hips as she made her way to Avery's table. Avery looked eager to sail his ship through her waters. As well he should. Compared to the hag crying into her grog and the other serving wench with missing teeth and saggy breasts, the Valkyrie was the Norse goddess of love.
Avery ordered the grog. His approach was more subtle than Crabbe's. He sipped the drink and nodded his approval, raising two fingers. The Valkyrie looked impressed and sashayed off to bring him two more coconut shells. Avery slipped a pouch of Galleons into her hand. Tom raised his eyebrows slightly. No one had ever combined Legilimency with an offer of payment before. Avery was decent looking. He wore elf-tailored robes. How would the Valkyrie respond?
She leaned down until she stared into Avery's eyes. Tom silently willed her to glance his way for the briefest moment. That was all he would need. She straightened and tucked the pouch of Galleons into a skirt pocket. Avery, with a dazed smile on his face, got up and left the pub.
The Valkyrie sauntered over to Tom. She conjured a cloth and bent to wipe his table, giving him an inspiring view of creamy skin. "What can I do you for?" she asked.
"Look at me."
Eyes blue as fjords lifted to his. Her Vald—Old Norse for the power of Legilimency and Occlumency—was strong, but Tom was stronger. He didn't force her to share her memories of Crabbe and Avery. He projected visions of his lips skimming across her cheekbones and brushing her closed mouth. "Open," he whispered.
Her lips parted and her mind opened. He teased memories to the surface. Crabbe feared death, but he also feared living as a wraith if he was somehow given the choice between death and drinking unicorn blood. How pathetic. Tom would have ripped the unicorn's throat out with his teeth to keep himself alive. A wraith could be reborn. The dead only returned as Inferi. He dismissed Crabbe and turned his attention to his other follower. Avery had been harder to block, harder to manipulate. He might do well working as a spy within the Ministry.
Abruptly, the pictures in his mind of Avery standing on his front door step waiting for the Valkyrie to join him became an image of Tom sitting in a field of daisies, casting a spell to weave flowers together into a crown while his lover unbraided her hair and ran her fingers through the blonde waves. Not content with using her Vald to create images in his followers' minds, she was trying to toy with him.
Two could play that game. Tom changed the vision of daisies into a field of corpses. The corpses of his enemies, as far as the eye could see. The Valkyrie stood before him naked, covered in blood.
The blood became a long, flowing gown. The Valkyrie stood by the railing on a moonlit balcony. She looked down and saw him gazing upward, holding a rose.
Cheeky witch. He took control of the the vision and tossed the rose into the air. It burst into flames.
The Valkyrie closed her eyes. "You always win."
Of course he did. She would have died weeks ago, otherwise. "I'll take a Firewhiskey. Ogden's Finest."
When she returned with his drink, he said, "I might kill Crabbe."
"If you allow him to keep breathing, he can donate Galleons to your cause."
"I knew you'd say that." She always found some excuse to spare life.
She said almost sadly, "That is the aim of Legilimency."
Tom forgot his annoyance. She'd snuck a memory out of him, the clever witch. He threw back his drink and stood. She didn't ask him to pay for his drink or invite him to return once the pub closed. He never paid, and when he returned, she'd be waiting.
.
Usually they had sex first and then chatted until he got bored and left, but that night she looked at him like she was trying to imprint the memory of his dark good looks into her mind one last time, and it ruined the mood. He took off his robes and flung them down on a table. "You didn't ask my permission to return to Norway."
"I'll never forget you." She went to the bar and poured him a glass of Firewhiskey.
He drank from the bottle. "I can't say the same about you."
"I know. You'll meet someone more powerful—"
"More beautiful." His Valkyrie was sensitive about her height, although he'd enjoyed being able to take her thoughts as he took her body.
"You don't care about appearances."
"Not mine," he said, "but I prefer certain . . . tools . . . to be decorative as well as functional." His gaze flickered around the room that smelled of tobacco smoke and stale beer. "I'll have to switch pubs. Pox-ridden followers are of no use to me."
"Try The Disturbed Spirit."
He nodded. "Any last words you'd like to say?"
His Valkyrie swallowed hard. She was smart. She knew what was coming. Tom experienced a jolt of surprised interest when she hopped up to sit on a table and pulled up her skirts. He'd never strangled a woman while in the act.
He drew his wand when he saw the knife sheath strapped to the inside of her thigh.
She held up her hands. They trembled. She said, "If you bind me with sex magic, I won't even be able to say your name."
Tom gazed into her eyes; saw her purchase an ancient book of Dark spells from Borgin and Burkes. The spell she'd found was irrevocable. A Secret Keeper could betray, but he would be a secret impossible to put into words. Tom Riddle would become He Who Must Not Be Named.
He wouldn't have to kill her.
"The spell involves blood," she said.
He'd never performed sex magic before. Any brute could strangle a woman. He recreated the scene from earlier in their minds. Field of corpses, his Valkyrie naked, and since she desired it, he was naked too. He cleared his throat to remind her that she was supposed to be cutting her flesh and smearing the blood on their bodies, not holding the knife and gawking.
She asked, "May I imagine the field of daisies instead?"
It was their last night together. He could be generous. After all, she'd never be able to tell anyone. "Very well. You envision what you want, and I'll envision what I want."
His Valkyrie chanted a spell and lowered the knife to her forearm.
"But the daisies have to be splattered with blood." He couldn't get aroused otherwise. "And since this is the last time I'll hear you cry out my name, remember to use my proper title."
She pierced her skin with the tip of the knife. "Yes, Lord Voldemort."
.
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Chatting back and forth with Tom Riddle aficionado Nagini Riddle about what we thought it would take to make a Tom Riddle/OC romance believable inspired this story. It's a bit of a departure from my Rose and Scorpius romances, although there's sexiness and humour, and I want to thank any readers of the current fic The Green Knight Rises for giving this one a lookey-loo. I promise I haven't been slacking on my WIP. The next chapter posts Friday as usual. :)
Fifteen men on a dead man's chest is a shanty from Treasure Island. I re-purposed facts about Death Eaters, Voldemort's ability not only to interpret what he sees through Legilimency, but also create visions in victims' minds, his fear of death, various names and his surviving on unicorn blood and the names of the pubs I've used in other stories. I hope all the pieces of the story added together made readers smile, and maybe hum Gaga's Bad Romance.