THE EXPERIMENT - Part 7

.


.

Death.

Not cold.

Not warm.

As the soul exists and can't cease to exist, Death brings it into another state of being. Another dimension.

Contrary to popular belief, Death doesn't kill what's contained in the shell that humans call 'body'; what happens is that It helps the soul to leave the shell and either return to the light or prepare for a new one.

Sometimes, though, oddities happen. Sometimes souls remain trapped between two states of being. Between the beyond and the down-here. These souls are the screams heard when the sun becomes colder and the trees are bare, when the distance between the here and the in-between thins. The distance is impossible to discern where two realities coexist.

In castles, ancient forests, the bottom of a dark lake: souls turn these places into their home. Death never reaches them there... when souls don't want to be found. When they don't want to leave.

Attachment is harmful to souls.

That's what life is about: learning.

Ghosts haven't learned yet. Humans walking on Earth haven't either.

But, once in a while, as whiles go in Death's perception, something really rare happens. Something beyond odd and utterly inexplicable, even in Death's omniscient mind.

Speechless, Death stares at the souls vacating their shells. He stares as they are led to an unknown dimension by an unknown force.

This force is severe, cold, punishing. Despite feeling it from a distance, It doesn't understand it.

When this happens, It tries to claim those souls for itself, but to no avail. Its hands can never touch them, its voice can never be heard in the mist cloaking them.

And the souls disappear behind a white candid fog.

Where do they go? To do what? Death always asks, but no one bothers to answer.

And now it's one of those moments.

"Hey boy!" Death yells to his back, but the soul is already walking away, pulled by that unknown and powerful force. A cloak of fog is draped over his shoulders and trails behind him, rising a curtain of familiar white dust. "No, boy, don't go. DON'T GO! You'll never-"

White. More white.

The fog closes behind the soul. Death's arms fall by its side.

"-come back," It finishes in a whisper to the silence.

.


.

Death.

Not cold.

Not warm.

It was perfect.

Tom opened his eyes and found candid fog surrounding him. But it didn't feel confining- he knew that whatever was behind it was space and blissful absence. To reach it he just had to... Yes, he had to move. Walk.

One soundless step. Another.

He knew this was the way.

He felt pleasantly light. If he hadn't known that broken souls couldn't go very far in the beyond, he might have believed himself in heaven.

Green lamps flecked with gold started dotting the empty space. With each step taken, more lamps popped from thin air, if of air Tom could speak. Or think. Even though doubts flashed into his mind, he felt no worry pressing down on his chest.

Why overthink and question what he was seeing? It was so simple. It had always been so damn simple. Everything was and nothing wasn't.

And in this moment, in this strange dimension, he was.

"I am and nothing can harm me," he said. His voice sounded clear and smooth. "I'm already dead anyway."

"You've always been smarter than the others."

A voice came from somewhere in front of him. The voice of a woman.

"Of course I'm smarter," Tom scoffed.

He stalked ahead and the fog dissipated.

Tables followed lamps, shelves followed books, a tiled floor followed rows of tall bookcases. From the front to the distant back, a library came into view.

Had he been able to breathe, air would have been stolen from his lungs for the sight was magnificent, heartening, intimidating.

He closed his eyes and breathed. He reopened them and gasped.

The sight stretching before him made him feel sad and happy and in awe. It brought back memories of evenings and entire nights spent in remote corners, sitting under a window with a pile of books by his side, his nose buried in a heavy tome, something difficult and inappropriate for any boy of his age but him.

"And modest too." Her Scottish accent was thick, her voice soft and knowing.

She was walking next to him, dressed in an elegant black gown, the hem of her long skirt touching the floor and making no sound. A cryptic smile was painted on her lips.

"You're wondering why I'm here," she said, her smile seeping in her melodious voice. "Why this old woman and not someone close to you. Like your mother. Or your ancestor."

She turned her head to raise an elegantly shaped eyebrow at him. "You are Salazar's heir, after all."

"You don't look old," was what Tom said.

She didn't look young, but her skin was porcelain-smooth and graced by thin lines that did nothing to lessen her beauty.

Giving no sign that she had heard him, she went one, "But I am here, Tom, and I'll tell you why. You may have never seen me, but I've followed you since your first step into my castle. I always look out for the students, especially the young, but you... I knew I had to keep both my vigilant eyes on you."

She stopped walking to lean against a bookshelf. Slightly lifting her chin, she looked at Tom in the eyes. "So shy and isolated... there was a darkness within you I hoped to never see unveiled."

Tom kept silent, even if he had never known, never imagined it.

"But what could I have done? I did nothing when you were a child, trusting you would grow strong against the seduction of darkness. Almost all of us had faith you would see reason and become immune to it, as Salazar once did. But... we were mistaken."

Sighing, the woman sat down at the table and Tom followed her lead, claiming the chair next to her.

She clasped her hands in front of her. "Godric did warn us against doing nothing when you were a child, but- you were just that, a child. I understood our mistake the day you discovered your bloodline. And when you killed Myrtle, it was too late. We could do nothing. I could do nothing. I'm not alive and not a ghost. You have to understand, from where we are, what we can do is reach out a hand and save you from peril, offer you a little help... But you weren't looking for saving, Tom."

He lowered his head, unblinking eyes staring at the wooden surface of the table. It was so surreal. Being dead, or whatever he was at this point, sitting at a table with one of the Founders, talking about all the wrong choices he had made.

"But it changed, didn't it?" Rowena asked. She cupped his cheeks and gently lifted his head. Her eyes were dark and never straying from him. "When you started hurting, it changed. You wanted salvation and I gave it to you."

Tom's eyes widened and, for the first time since he had come in here, he felt uncomfortable. It started with a lump in his throat. "What did you give me?"

Rowena inclined her head, the corners of her lips curling upwards – and she looked younger and alive.

"The meeting of two souls."

Because it had been the only way for Rowena to help him. The only way for him to see beyond the madness and the thirst for power.

On a rainy afternoon, the Founders had joined their magic to guide two broken hearts together, in the hope that the light of one could heal the darkness of the other.

"Why help me?" Tom asked after minutes, or the equivalent of a short period of time spent in silence, thinking about the past, remembering the day he had first met Hermione, the day he had first killed another human, the day he had killed two. "You knew I asked Helena about your diadem. You knew what I wanted to do with it. And you still helped me. Why?"

"Because you were an orphan and I pitied you."

He didn't know what to answer. She had felt pity for him. No one liked to be pitied. Especially him. Especially by strangers.

"I pity many people, Tom," Rowena said as if she had heard his thoughts.

"How could you forgive her?"

Rowena lowered her gaze, the note of a nameless feeling entering her eyes. "You will understand when you are a father. There's nothing you can't forgive a son or a daughter. Nothing. Not even their hatred for you. Not even their knife in your guts. She could have betrayed me a hundred times and I still would have forgiven her. I will always forgive her. Always."

Such love, such goodness- how could it exist? Indeed Tom couldn't understand it. Because he was on the side of the child, of the thief, of the murderer, not of the parent.

"Helena never regretted stealing the diadem. In another life, in another scenario, she would do it again, only because she thinks she's entitled to the universe's knowledge still. And unlike William, who drags his sins by heavy chains, Helena... feels no remorse over my death or even hers. What she feels now is pain for her soul. She's trapped on Earth, trapped between the home I helped build and the damned place where her life was taken- until the day she will see that her dark heart is what is keeping her here. When that day will come, if it will... the deity of the tree will release their souls from the curse."

"So, the Bloody Baron..." Tom didn't hesitate but purposefully let the words hang in the air. He had always thought the Bloody Baron evil, or mad, but this-

"Had his ghost not been bound to Helena's, yes. He would be free. They forgave him a long time ago. He has shown and felt pure, uncontaminated guilt. But his curse involves Helena and she's not ready."

And never will be, Rowena seemed to fear.

Was this the Higher law? Was it just to let a man suffer because a woman couldn't see past the outline of her skin, past her pain and greed? Was it just that a soul had to live as a ghost without knowing that he could be free, that there was a light, that the Gods had forgiven him a long time ago?

"Do you pity him, Tom?" Rowena asked, dropping the question mark in that way that only old and wise people could do.

Tom immediately shook his head, "No. He killed your daughter."

"As you killed a mother."

"He's a murderer and he was forgiven."

"As you can be."

"No one can forgive a murder." He was astonished by the conviction held in his own words.

Rowena cocked her head, "Who are you to judge what can be forgiven and what not?"

"You forget I'm the murderer here. I'm the judged."

"I forget nothing, Tom Marvolo Riddle. Not your sins, not your pleas for forgiveness."

Tom let out a loud, sarcastic laughter and raised his bare wrists, shaking them in front of her face. "I have no chains, I don't flagellate my back, and I can assure you I don't keep a cilice under my clothes in penance. How can I be forgiven?"

Rowena sighed. "Who's the one forgetting things now? Don't you remember what you've just done? Why you are here?"

"Because I wanted to die," Tom said tightly. "I killed myself."

"No," Rowena snapped. She reached across the corner of table separating them and seized his hand with unexpected force. "It's because you wanted to live. But you couldn't do it with a damaged soul. You are here because you wanted to mend your soul and have an opportunity to go beyond; because more than Death, you're scared of remaining trapped in a dimension you've never read about in your books as a soulless creature that doesn't belong anywhere- because you are scared of the unknown, because you wanted to remain on the safe side rather than becoming nothing-"

Tom opened his mouth to deny it, but Rowena silenced him with a glare and finished, "but most importantly, it's because you wanted to save the people you love from yourself."

Tom closed his eyes.

Once, he had believed Hermione was his light, the beacon directing him when he found himself surrounded by the darkness of his choices. He had believed he could use her goodness, suck it from her again and again, giving for granted her presence, giving for granted that his thirst for power and his love for her could coexist. They couldn't.

Yes, he had been scared of what he could become with a damaged soul; yes, he had been scared of what he never read about in the books: no one knew what happened to a split soul if, somehow, all the containers were destroyed. No one knew where what remained of the soul went.

But he had wanted to save Hermione. And Feodor. And Evelyn. And their unborn daughter. And Remus.

Save them from himself. Die so they could live. Die so he could cease to be a threat for them and everyone else. Die... and cease to be.

He may have been scared of the unknown, but the truth was that once it had happened, once his damaged soul had left his shell, he stopped caring. He didn't care if the spell had worked, mending his soul, and, surprisingly, in case it hadn't, he didn't care if what remained of him was going somewhere with no exit door. Because it had been worth it.

It was worth it.

"But you know where you are."

He was in a library. He was in a temple of almost infinite knowledge.

And he was feeling whole.

"This doesn't look like hell," he demurred, leaning back in the chair.

"That's because you aren't in hell, you stubborn child," Rowena said, pushing back her chair to rise. She was a small woman but, standing, she seemed to tower over him. She made him feel like a meaningless creature, undeserving of her attention and worries. Undeserving even of her pity.

Tom shifted his gaze from her face to the library extending behind her. Floor and bookcases were now soaked in red and purples, a blazing sunset slanting through the tall windows while the light of the lamps subtly intensified. Soon the wooden surfaces would be set aglow and the room would appear like an edgeless dark city. Dark like the nights he had spent here as a child, dark as the thoughts and dreams he had recalled while sitting at his remote favourite table. The dark library had been his favourite home.

Now his home was a pair of dark eyes and a mass of unruly curls and nothing else.

"I'm not-" Tom dragged his gaze back to Rowena's. He cleared his throat. "I'm not dead. Not really."

Rowena bent slightly, hands on knees, and squinted at him through a smile, like a parent with a child. "You have the chance to make amends with those you've wronged with your foolish attempts at power. But there's always a choice."

Her words were harsh, but there was no condemnation in her voice, only warmth and an invitation.

He wanted to go back. With all his being he wanted to go back to his lover, his friends, to keep his promise to Feodor and see his god-daughter grow up. But at the same time he was a coward. He didn't want to face his crimes again. To let them go was one thing, but to be forced to remember and repent for them for the rest of his life was another.

By some kind of miracle his soul may be whole, but his conscience, his hands... they were stained with the deaths of many people- so many.

"And so are the hands that saved you."

"What?" Tom shot up so fast the chair fell back. "What are you saying?"

Rowena straightened her spine and looked up at him with a sad smile.

"I-I thought I saved myself," he stuttered, his eyes frantically searching hers. "The spell- it mended my soul. I'm whole, I-"

"Oh, my boy." Rowena took his face in her hands, her thumbs rubbing his cheeks. Her skin was warm. He was starting to feel cold.

"No." Her voice was a hoarse whisper. Twin tears trickled down her cheeks. "Your soul was in too much pain. The spell mended, but your soul- was still bleeding, it was- cracked-"

Was. No.

No No No

"No, you are mistaken-" Tom tried to turn his head and shake Rowena's hands off of him, but she held on.

He couldn't- didn't believe it. She wouldn't- No.

Tom tried to shake his head again and this time Rowena forcibly made him look at her.

"It was a sacrifice that healed your soul, Tom," she said, tears spilling from her eyes. "Tonight, she followed you. To save you."

Gulping in air that didn't exist, he squeezed his eyes closed, trying to hold back the tears. He opened his mouth, intending to speak calmly, but after various attempts, all he managed to ask was a broken, "Why?"

Rowena waited for him to open his eyes and look at her. She gently grasped his hand and held it between them.

"Because," she breathed, "love draws the best and the worst out of us for it does not know right and wrong."

"I have to go back."

"Only if you want to."

"And if I don't?"

"You can go on." She paused. "But in due time you'll be asked to go back again in a new shell. You may repent and be forgiven, but your soul still carries the sins of this life. And there are debts to be paid. It's what happens to those who haven't learned yet."

"Learned what?"

Rowena let go of his hand and smiled. "That's not for me to say."

Tom blinked when his sight started to blur. Rowena was becoming a confused figure, near and distant. He blinked again.

"Rowena-" he called, but his voice sounded far away.

"I will watch over you, Tom."

.


.

When Tom came back, cold welcomed his body. It took him a while to get reacquainted with the sensation of real air on his skin, an uncertain amount of time to adjust to the feeling of the snow beneath and around him. Snow?

Tom begrudgingly let consciousness take over in his fogged mind. Other sensations rushed in. The snow began to feel colder, his clothes were wet, under his head was a pillow, in his nostrils the smell of blood.

His eyes fluttered open.

He wasn't in the castle.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the snow was red. On the other side too.

Someone was crying next to him. He became aware of their sobs and wondered why he hadn't heard them sooner. They were loud and so close to his ear. A hand was on his chest, concealed by his robes. It felt wet. He could see the tip of their fingers. They were red. Blood was crusted under the fingernails.

"Hermione?"

His voice came out as a hoarse croak.

The hand on his chest and the body sitting next to him stilled. A sharp intake of breath resonated in his ears.

"T-Tom?"

With a grunt, he tried to push himself to sit up, but his limbs didn't want to collaborate. After several seconds of failures, Hermione shook herself from her daze and helped him.

He was in the forest. It was morning.

Her hands limp on her lap, her damp coat askew on her shoulders, Hermione was peering into his face, waiting for him to speak, but his eyes were staring blankly at what lay past her shoulder.

At the foot of an old white tree was the silhouette of a body.

Red blood stained the snow.

"What have you done?" Tom murmured.

Black blood flooded from the trunk of the tree.

Hermione sobbed but didn't answer.

He knew what she had done.

Tom forced himself to look at Hermione. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her lips chapped and bitten. Her hair fell on her chest in weak curls.

Love draws the best and the worst out of us for it does not know right and wrong.

Tom sat on his knees and silently pulled Hermione in his arms. He buried his nose in her neck, his fingers in her hair. He inhaled her scent. This was home.

"You," Hermione sniffed, burrowing against his chest, "you stupid liar."

Tom's arms tightened around her shaking frame. He whispered in her ear, sweet nothings to soothe her, while his eyes darted between the body lying feet away from them, the fragile back he was holding on to, and the white, dying, damned tree.

He resolved it didn't matter any more.

Hermione's arms slipped around his back. She poured all her despair and pleas for all the things he couldn't give her in their hug. His heart constricted at her sorrow, but he could do nothing.

With a gust of wind, a black bird landed on the snow.

A single tear rolled off Tom's cheek. It didn't matter any more.

Tom held Hermione as close as possible, cradling her against him with the only promises he could make. He kissed the top of her head.

"I love you," he said. "I love you, Hermione."

.


.

A/N: This is the end.

But it seems that everyone agrees on having an epilogue, so of course I can't disappoint you. I'll post the epilogue tomorrow (I wanted to post it now but changed my mind in case someone reads it before this seventh part).

I'm heartened by your reviews for part 6 and I'm so glad you liked it! I admit I was a bit scared to share my take on the ritual to create a Horcrux considering that not even Rowling has revealed it yet. What is known is that it's something so terrible and evil that hearing it described will stimulate your gag reflex. I won't lie, Tom eating human flesh was the first image conjured by my mind, but then I decided against it. But I believe blood is equally disgusting.

Anyway, again, I can't thank you enough for all the positive reviews! I send virtual hugs to you all!

And I won't say anything about this chapter. I'll only ask: reaction to this finale?

EDIT: I've decided to post the Epilogue on Thursday instead of this evening because I realised that people are still reading this chapter and probably will read tomorrow as well, so sending notifications now for part 8 might be confusing. I apologise for this sudden change of plans! To make it up to you I've added an extra paragraph to the epilogue (: