Perhaps it was simply that Tom had been unconsciously looking for him. In the Chamber of Secrets, in the hallways, in the room of requirement, he had caught himself looking for Azrael in all of these places as if he was a thing to be caught out of the corner of his eyes before he could be seen fully.
Things in Hogwarts settled, Minerva McGonagall was awarded for a special unnamed service rendered to the school, in her photograph she looked surprisingly ashen as she stared forward at the camera and her smile had been rather strained. There was no honor and glory in incarcerating and expelling a friendless student in your own house.
He suspected that she was one of the few who doubted Hagrid's guilt, she'd always been rather studious, and perhaps deep down somewhere in her head she remembered that acromantula killed but they did not petrify. There was no doubt that left unmolested that spider would have continued to grow to the point where it did devour the students and poison them but it would never have petrified them. In a way, Tom mused after the half-giant had been expelled, Tom had given him the gift of innocence by inadvertently framing him before the spider could act. Unfortunately for Minerva she was also highly logical and believed in Occam's Razor even if she didn't know the name, the acromantula was the simplest and certainly the most sound explanation, after all the Chamber of Secrets was a myth at the end of the day.
Dumbledore certainly doubted Hagrid's guilt, the man had pleaded with Dippet to allow the boy to be taken on as an apprentice to the grounds keeper, to not throw him to the streets as if he was a squib. Tom had expected that Dumbledore would turn his eyes to Tom, he had always suspected Tom and basilisks were snakes that petrified and Tom had once ignorantly told the man that the snakes sometimes talked to him, but strangely enough he didn't. Tom had been written off, Tom was no longer even suspicious to the man, no he instead would catch Dumbledore's eyes narrowing at the empty seat next to his and the person who simply wasn't there.
Dumbledore suspected Azrael.
Perhaps it was T.S. Eliot written on the walls in rooster's blood, perhaps it was the fact that the deaths seemed entirely random without cause or justification, perhaps it was the fact that they had continued until Dippet had said enough was enough and that some culprit, any culprit, must be found. Whatever it was Dumbledore seemed decided and had pinned the blame on the one person who had not even been present at the time.
He had always disliked Dumbledore, ever since that first meeting with his wardrobe on fire, but it was then that he found the man almost as despicable as Dippet in his own self-assured way. It seemed that Dumbledore was content to let things lie even when it began to be rumored that the missing Azrael was in fact the first victim whose body was lost somewhere in the bowels of the castle; Dumbledore would only stare at empty chairs and narrow his eyes at the sight of them.
It was around the time that Tom began taking his OWLs that glimpses of Azrael began to resurface in ways unrelated to his disappearance and the Chamber of Secrets. It was around that time, after all, that the stories of Grindlewald's sudden and seemingly impossible defeat began circulating through Europe.
They said that Grindlewald had been very close to crossing the channel, within weeks he expected to be in the English countryside headed towards London. France's magical community had been left in near ruins, hardly a muggleborn left and those who were had long since vanished underground and out of sight, as Hitler pushed through Europe Grindlewald was said to follow eagerly and closely behind. He never would make it to England though.
One morning, it was said, he woke up and there was no one left. All his men, his followers, his prisoners were simply gone and he was standing alone in a field of wheat with only the robes on his back and a thin wand in his grasp. He'd stumbled about for a bit, dazed in the sunlight, shouting frantic orders in German when he stopped and found someone staring back. There were few descriptions of the other man, they said that he dressed in black and was very pale, he seemed no older than a school boy and yet one would not look at him and think that he had apparated from Beauxbatons or some other wizarding school. The young man in black did not have a wand.
They stared across at each other for a few moments and then suddenly Grindlewald was the one without the wand staring in horror over the wheat fields and then, as they said it, he simply wasn't there at all.
The story had been told and retold, starting from a few eye witnesses until it finally reached Hogwarts. There was no doubt that pieces were missing, that things were distorted (one version said that Grindlewald met Death in Elysium and failed to pass a test of righteousness) but even so Tom could see his green eyes staring back.
He remembered a library and a small thin green eyed boy staring across at him with mild amusement.
"Looking for your wand, Azrael?"
"No, enough people are already looking for it. If I were to get involved things might derail very quickly."
The wizarding war had already ended before it even had time to reach England. There was shock, relief, disappointment, joy, and numbness that seeped through the castle. Slytherin fell silent, no words for Tom either, each heir of a noble house simply staring ahead into the bleak future. Some of the muggleborn students cried in public when they heard the news, unable to stop the tears or the relieved smiles on their faces. Dumbledore simply stared out the window, lost, still somewhere in France with the missing Grindlewald and the pale rider who killed him without a second glance.
And Tom, Tom was in Stalingrad, remembering a dream of Azrael's words, "There were things that needed to be done."
After that he seemed to be everywhere, hidden in news articles, in the corner of picture frames, staring out into the camera with bright too green eyes. The trick wasn't looking in the Prophet which was as useless as ever focusing on the miraculous defeat of Grindlewald and searching for the mysterious young wizard who did it, no, the trick was to look for the muggles.
Disarmament, disarmament, everywhere disarmament the guns suddenly jammed or disappeared altogether, the tanks broken down, the bombs rendered hollow and the vision of a pale man in black whose unbearded face was that of a schoolboy.
The war stopped until all they had left to fight each other with was their own fists and the rocks they could pick up from the street.
The distorted news coming out of Germany spoke of labor camps in flames, of men who disappeared in the way that Grindlewald had simply vanished in a golden field, of a country altered and halted and simply stopped overnight.
Again and again he saw these stories of Deus Ex Machina, of God descended and ending a world war with little more than a snap of his fingers, and in every one of them Azrael's eyes glittered. Once, in the Room of Requirement, Azrael had broken Gamp's law for a cake to celebrate something as meaningless as Tom's induction into the Slug Club. What were his possibilities if he was motivated beyond something as shallow as that?
He seemed to be everywhere, often two places at once, but Tom could not shake the conviction that it was him and only him out there. Somewhere out there in the muggle ether amid the sounds of gun fire and the shouting of men he was standing dressed in black and looking at the red eye of Mars as if the very sight of it meant war.
Tom didn't know how he felt, he wasn't sure he felt anything at all.
In between OWLs as the clock ticked closer to the day he would board the train and leave he wondered what Azrael would make of it, of his fifth year, of everything as he waded in blood. There was no room to talk, he knew that now, and possibly Azrael had never felt the need to but now he knew that there was no justification necessary. Tom had taken a school, Azrael had taken the world.
What was Voldemort in comparison to that?
It had always been a shallow and childish dream, he had realized that with Azrael's disappearance from Hogwarts, it had been built on false promises offered by a world that glittered but lacked any true gold. Voldemort had been his escape, fantasy that he would have despised as weak in any other person but for himself it was vision, how could it be escapism when he would make it reality?
But for what, for what would he bother to breathe life into Voldemort for? Voldemort was the basilisk, a thing of terror that creeped silently through the hall inspiring fear and death in the populace, dead and dissected and put to better use packed away in the bottom of his trunk to be sold in Knockturn Alley for the best price.
He'd killed Voldemort with that last green light, down in the dungeons of the school, where no one else could see or grieve. There had been no grieving though, only emptiness, as if it had been dead in his mind for quite some time.
"He can have the world." Tom found himself saying to the ceiling of his dorm room, "He can have the mudbloods, the muggles, the wizards, the blind and bumbling dogs. I am done with it."
It was time to close the doors on that golden vision in his head it had served its purpose and it was time for something new to take its place.
We are all our possibilities, Azrael had once said, and it was time to look beyond just the one terribly vivid could have been that he had imagined for himself.
For the first time he did not return to the orphanage in shame. Greeted by the grey exterior and the pale children inside he felt nothing, it was simply a place that he resided in, if only for a little while. In that way it was no different than London, Hogwarts, or any other place he might be. For the first time he understood how Azrael must have felt about Britain.
Two more summers and he would be free of the place. He had always assumed that was when Voldemort would begin but now it was only the moment where he could leave trunk in hand and never look back. He intended that final image all the same.
He had intended, in the beginning of the year, when he had found out about his blood and his ancestry (no longer mudblood, no longer orphan) to search for his relatives. That image of his father, so ingrained into his imagination, had been brought to life again and he had ached for it in a way he couldn't describe. Now though he did not even have to look, his father would be human, wizard or muggle, and in the end that was unacceptable.
He knew it was irrational and no doubt untrue but some part of him wished he had been born from nothingness, simply that he existed one day, and that he was tied to nothing and no one in this realm of existence. That seemed less shameful, in a way, less terribly human.
It seemed he walked to his room without realizing it, passing through the gray halls, past the terrified children who remembered and the ones who had been warned if they didn't, past all those faceless orphans who meant nothing in the scheme of things, passing it all until there he was standing in the undecorated place with the gray cot in the corner looking out the window at the city of London stretching in the distance.
It had once held such promise. How disappointing things were at the end of things, death, terror, glory, they were only words written by a very clever playwright convincing the audience as if all these things were reality when in truth they were only words.
He didn't know how long he stared out that window, at the setting sun reflecting against the glass until it was almost blinding, but it was long enough so that when he turned back to the cot there was a grinning shadow that hadn't been there before and the sound of dry desperate chuckling.
A young man, taller than Tom remembered, with a thin pale face and dark curling hair and eyes the color of painless instant death. "I am so very tired, Tom, but then you look very tired as well."
"Azrael."
Author's Note: He's back everybody, that's really all I have to say about things at this point. Thank you to readers and reviewers, you guys are awesome, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter