No spoilers, gen. First fic in three years and it feels damn weird.
Apologies for the space separators, FFN appears to have something against the enter key.
NB: Recently edited to fix some fuck ups. Thanks to the people who pointed them out.
the fire omens
-a-
All the candles burn down. Tom, who has returned from the Forest in pieces, does not sleep. He reads, but the words wash over him in waves of neat black print. He is cold, but not overpoweringly so. Every so often he feels the stirrings of a migraine but it never amounts to anything but a faint pulse behind his eyes. He entertains the vague idea of writing in the diary – which lies beside him on the common room couch – but every time he touches it is like a wound splitting open, raw and hot and bloody. It might fade with time or it might not. He doesn't know.
Silence. It winds loosely around him, seeps through his skin and into his blood. He hangs there, suspended in the quiet, for seconds or minutes or hours. It doesn't matter.
But eventually, outside, the sky lightens and sunlight creeps over the castle, inch by cautious inch. The shift is tangible to Tom, even in the windowless common room and, as the minutes slip by, the hazy apathy which had stolen over him in the aftermath of the ritual gradually gives way into something else, something right. It is as though the void created by the absence of death has sharpened to a fine point, icy and exhilarating and above all real. He can feel the fizz of magic, the scalpel like edge of it in every cell of his being and with each breath he takes he is created again, anew, on this – the first morning of the rest of his life.
-a-
1: mirrors
When Salazar Slytherin abandoned Hogwarts he first went north-west, to the jagged headlands and the briny islands beyond them, where ancient power runes were daubed in blood on the cliff faces long before the dark Roman days, before wands and Latinate roots, when all incantations were prayers. When one summoned fire with an upward glance, a cut to the hand and the word aotscera, which is part supplication and part provocation and might loosely translate to my life or this. These long-dead northerners, they wove a magic vicious in its simplicity, holding sway over the natural elements, until one night (or day, perhaps, no one knows) the sea broke through its runic bindings and washed the entire tribe clean from history.
History is made of this: long lulls and sudden crescendos, omissions, erasures and silences. So in the space of a single second, Salazar clasps Godric's calloused hand and says a promise, then; he whispers welcomein Parseltongue as an egg cracks open; a woman burns at the stake and a season changes; he points to four boys and one girl and they step forward, eyes shining. But when he tells the Basilisk, you must pass this message to my Heir; when Helena and Rowena stare at each other and then at Godric and then finally, uncertainly, back at him; when he stands on the black cliffs, eyes narrowed against the sea spray, and commits the runes to memory, well … these are the moments that linger centuries too long.
These runes, they held the sea in check for countless years, but whatever meaning Salazar read in them has been lost. He went north, to the blood-cliffs, says the Basilisk, and Tom is there, on a mild summer morning, staring down at the long drop with his feet half off the edge. The runes are nothing but faded stains now, and they tell Tom only one thing: lose control and you die.
Gulls wheel overhead, screaming, and the new scars under Tom's sleeves begin to itch. He does not know what Salazar saw in this place.
Three days later he strides purposefully through Little Hangleton, towards another shard of his past, another disappointment.
-a-
Tom doesn't believe in fate, only opportunity, but it's almost perfect the way he went looking for his mother's family and found his Muggle father too.
And it's almost perfect, the resemblance between them. The eyes and the angles. The same querying expression as the man opens the door.
It's already dark. Tom stands just out of the light cast from the hallway, face obscured by shadow.
His father says, What do you want? Even their voices are alike. He's all of Tom's taint and impurity made flesh and he's standing there, right there, frowning at Tom's outline in the darkness.
Well? his father demands. Whoever you are, you're interrupting dinner.He goes to slam the door but Tom steps forward into the light and forces it open again with one hand.
Don't worry, he says coldly,I won't take up too much of your time.
-a-
The orphanage again. Mrs Cole mutters about a recent bout of fever. Every surface smells of soap and disinfectant.
That silly girl, Myrtle something, that was one thing. To witness the precise moment when his father's heart stopped, to watch him collapse and stand there, after, in the absolute silence – that was quite another. It's like his skin is splitting, like all the magic is searing through. The orphanage can't hold it. He leaves his trunk in the fourth-floor dormitory and descends the stairs, disappearing out into London once again.
-a-
2: the long road to nowhere
Six seconds, seven, before Tom's heart stutters into rhythm again; ten before he becomes aware of the dungeon's cold stone floor against his back. He has died a dozen tiny deaths and each one brings him back to this: short sharp gasps and the slow unclenching of sweat-slicked hands. The poison gradually dissipates into his blood, where it lingers silently with the Muggle taint: reminder and promise; what is and what will be.
But he will not use poison again. The icy slide of it through his veins is too familiar now and that perfect, jagged rush of panic has dulled to a flicker. It is no longer enough to measure out death and resurrection and balance the two in a strict, exact ratio, so Tom will press on, climbing higher and higher until the air is sucked from his lungs and he reaches the summit, where men either waft insubstantially into the ether or descend, godlike, to the earth once more.
-a-
He dreams, or he doesn't. He sleeps, but mainly he doesn't. Something lurks – nameless and heavy and dark like obsidian – and whether it lies within him or behind him or around him or everywhere all at once, he doesn't know.
The pub is a tiny, dingy room tucked in between a barbershop which doubles as an abortionist's and the charred remnants of what once might have been a butcher's. Tom's lips curve with elegant disinterest as the barman slams a flagon of something or other down in front of him and goes back to his unintelligible conversation with a one-eyed woman whose long and ragged fingernails tap out some aimless beat –one-two three four– on the bar.
A door slams. Tom traces patterns in the dusty wood – spirals and whorls which double back and over each other – and very deliberately ignores the presence of the whippet-thin hunchback until he's standing right beside Tom at the bar.
What do you want?rasps the stooping man in Czech, abandoning any introduction. He stinks of sweat and rancid water and bitter Czechoslovak cigarettes. His jacket is too short in the arm, displaying sallow, bony wrists and the edge of something terrible tattooed on his skin in faded black ink.
I was looking for the magician of Prague.Tom replies in German, not Czech, noting with amusement the way the man starts horribly and the other two break off their rapid fire muttering to shoot Tom matching filthy glares. Three years after the war and the blood may have dried on the streets but all the hate remains, sticky and fresh. But now I think I've found him.
Why have you come here? the man – the magician – grates out, his German accented with Romany and some Czech and a smouldering resentment at speaking this language at all. I've forgotten that life.
And I want you to remember it again.
Their eyes meet and the magician reels back at what he finds there, but it is over and done with in a heartbeat and in less than two minutes Tom will smile and whisper obliviate, driving all recollection of it from his head. For now, though, the magician summons all the strength of his former life and says, I can't help you, but I know someone who can. One name, and that is enough for Tom, who is already slipping his wand from his sleeve and saying thank you,in English now, before –
-a-
Czechoslovakia and the Black Forest. Albania and Sofia and Silesia and the ruined, sleet-soaked streets of Warsaw. A cascade of foreign tongues and foreign magic and the bitter taste of half-dead autumn air. In Tirana they talk of a geyser in Finland, way to the north, where the rising steam can be condensed into greasy, thick water which, when mixed with crushed dragon bone and azalea seeds, will bring about one hour of prophetic hallucinations. Tom considers this but decides instead on Irkutsk and from there the flat Mongolian plains and then down, down, down to Nagpur, on the banks of the serpent-river, deep in the heart of India.
Seven years bleed away before Tom (who is not Tom, not anymore) emerges from the water one last time. He blinks and India melts around him like a mirage, giving way to crisp, dark Europe once again. Europe of contradictions; Europe, with its languorous August heat, its soil steeped in blood. The air tastes of iron and smoke; he breathes in and stares up for a long, silent moment at the fire-streaked twilight sky.
-a-
3: let there be light
Incendio is the first incantation that Tom ever learns, there, in the cluttered bookstore with the afternoon sun lancing through the mullioned windows and some disinterested clerk idly dusting a straining shelf. He mouths the word, practicing the strange shape of it, lingering on the sibilant second syllable and biting off the last – Incendio, a struck flint in crackling, expectant air. Eyes closed, he whispers it this time; behind his eyelids a wardrobe blazes and he can feel the remembered heat of it prickling along his skin.
But the book is for third years and Tom, who has only the strange money given to him by Albus Dumbledore, cannot afford it. So he closes it carefully and slides it back into place on the narrow shelf, unable to resist running one last wistful finger down its spine. Then he wanders through silent rows of history, potion-making, biographies and then atlases, where all the world is scarred with ley lines and the imprint of magic now faded, nearly forgotten. The clerk chases dust in endless circles, around and around and around; Tom ignores him and begins the quest for his own books, which are each examined thoroughly – cover to cover – so that by the time he emerges from the store the sun has almost set and he is very nearly too late to buy his wand from Mr Ollivander.
Tom sends gold sparks flying on his twenty-first try, long after sundown; he knows this because Ollivander keeps count in a thin, reedy murmur, supplementing the tally with oddities like this hippogriff was, as I recall, legendary – Marcus the Magnanimous defeated Zhao Tsu on its back.Tom, for his part, cares for nothing but the dull ache winding between the muscle and sinew and bone of his left arm as the first twenty wands yield no more than a limp twist of green smoke and a loud crack which blasts Ollivander's desk into splinters.
-a-
There is a yew in the churchyard where his mother rots and in others all across the land; they spring up wherever there is death in the ground. On Samhain, the story goes, spirits reawaken inside their useless flesh, repulsed by what they have become. Driven mad by the dark and the silence and the stench, they flee their coffins and begin the long battle through six feet of wet earth, up towards the stars. They are just corporeal enough, however, to be snagged in the web of spindly yew-roots which have crept out through the churchyard and between the coffins over all those quiet centuries; it is here, consumed by the yew, that the soul's journey comes to its final end. This is why the sap and leaves are poisonous; this is why the yew can live for more than two thousand years, immortal on a diet of human souls.
Of course, myths are just myths, except when they are not. But Tom does not yet know of Inferi. Instead he curls young fingers around the dark wood with its bright phoenix core and in one smooth sweep that cloying pain is wiped away and a sudden rush of gold rains down, as bright as the gleam in Tom's eyes. Curious, most curious,Ollivander mutters, followed by something else, quieter this time, that Tom is too distracted to discern. He passes the man five gold coins, slips his new wand into his jacket pocket instead of taking the box and leaves the shop dazedly, vanishing into the dark.
Ollivander's grey owl flies from the store later that night, bearing a letter which begins: Albus, Fawkes' yew wand has chosen a young man this evening …
-a-
4:
The rabbit hangs stiffly from the beam, swinging ever so slightly in the draught from the open window. Its grey fur is matted and stained with dried blood. Tom picks up his book and his jacket and goes outside to read.
-a-
5: all directions, all at once
He finds the man he's looking for mending nets with magic outside a rotting cottage on the Albanian coastline, perhaps thirty miles south of Durrës. The wars, both of them, they've cracked the foundations of continental wizardry right down the centre. This man, Hidajet Ziberja, once a respected authority on magical transubstantiation, he survived the Italian occupation and bore Grindelwald's terror with stubborn disinterest, only to flee Tirana's wizarding enclave when its leaders struck a treaty with the communists. These njerjojike, they bring death,he tells Tom in English and Tom nods his agreement, remembering the shriek of the air raid siren on summer nights in the orphanage.
Ziberja's cottage, his clothes, and even his books smell of salt water and fish. He is unwilling, at first, to answer any questions, but his reluctance is hollow and Tom knows it. The anonymity of exile does not suit one used, as Ziberja is, to elite academia. Those residual sparks of intellectual vanity are easily fanned and in the end Ziberja is barely more of a challenge than Slughorn was. Hocruxes are not explicitly mentioned anywhere in his research (I am not a dark wizard, Ziberja declares just a little too forcefully, and Tom laughs but does not press the point) but the principles can be adapted with little trouble. Ziberja traces diagrams in the sand and explains that the soul is volatile and ephemeral but that it, at least theoretically, can be anchored at certain points to stable foundations so that any number of Horcruxes would be a feasible possibility. It is all theory with Ziberja, all maybeand possiblyand if. He never asks what Tom wants with the knowledge, what could be so important as to lead him to the wastelands, into the shadows cast by Moscow and Tom, for his part, allows the pretence, playing the part of the scrupulous student with practised ease.
Every morning, before sunrise, Ziberja goes wandering up on the rocks and Tom takes the opportunity to spread open Ziberja's scrolls and cast revealing spells and clarity charms all over them, scouring the research for anything the old man might be withholding. Ziberja is no fool – all the drawers and cupboard doors are warded with magical tripwires which will alert him to any intrusion. Theoretically, at least. In practice, Tom disarms them all methodically before so much as touching the desk and recasts them again before seven o'clock, when Ziberja returns. He's only hiding bits and pieces – some of the more exact prescriptions, a few cautionary warnings, evidence of prior experimentation – but certainly enough to cause Tom very nasty death. If I could still die, Tom thinks, smirking as he rolls the scrolls up one by one.
No, Tom can't die, but Ziberja can, all too easily. After three months, he's extracted all he needs to know. I'm thinking of returning to Tirana, says the old man as they cook fish over an open fire. You've reawoken the academic instinct in me.
Embers skitter on the breeze, wafting this way and that before finally falling to the sand. The days are growing shorter and shorter.
Tom stands. He says, I'm sure you'll go far.
-a-
The wind picks up. The fish lie on the fire's cold remains, uneaten. November comes and goes.
Tom chooses the fourth sacrifice at random – some Muggle tramp in Tirana – and puts the theory to the test, reaching further and further into the void just to feel it recoil from him.
-a-
6:
What are you doing? Avery asks one Monday evening. The common room is ringing with the sound of eleven year olds playing Exploding Snap. Tom considers the parchment, with its meaningless jumble of letters. He's not sure what he's looking for but it's there, somewhere. Waiting.
I don't know yet, he says,but you'll find out when I do.
-a-
7: teratogenesis
The doctor peers over his thick, round glasses and says, Do you suffer from headaches? Sleep disturbances?
Tom doesn't blink. No, he lies.
Eyes darting towards Mrs Cole, the doctor rakes his fingers distractedly through his lank hair. Do you ever have bad dreams?he asks, a bored note creeping into his voice.
Tom's young face could be carved from stone. No, he repeats. And then, forestalling any further questions from the doctor, he continues, I don't have dreams.
Barely five minutes later, the doctor hurries away to more pressing commitments and Mrs Cole fixes Tom with one last piercing stare before sending him out into the yard with the other children.
-a-
On his last night in London, Tom sets all the useless remnants of his past alight with a murmured Incendioand watches as they shrivel into ash. A wardrobe burns and a girl screams. He traces a shaking finger over a bathroom tap. His heart stops, then starts again. Tom hauls himself up off the dungeon floor as his father collapses in his opulent dining room. All the photographs and the books and the transcripts and the letters – they burn.
Feedback welcome.