A/N: This chapter contains allusions to sexual abuse.

Hogwarts, January-March 1940

Tom had received numerous gifts for the combined occasion of the Christmas of '39 and his thirteenth birthday. His favourite amongst these was a rather nondescript black book, the size of a Bible, whose title was imprinted in a faint silver font to spell,

IN VIRTUTE TENEBRAE

It had been concealed in a perfectly smooth, silk-like black wrapping, without ribbons or any adornments otherwise to suggest that it was a gift. When Tom tapped it with his wand, the wrapping furiously evaporated, like trapped mist from a boiling cauldron whose lid had just been taken off, into strange strands of viscous, inklike fog, disclosing the title of the book, and a little piece of parchment within.

"Riddle. I know we see the world in the same way. Merry Christmas—Thane Mulciber."

Two months later, this previously obscure fifth-year boy became one of Tom's closest 'friends'. Thin, long-limbed and hunchbacked, Tom privately likened him to a leafless crabapple tree. His skeletally thin face, which contained a pair of large, mockingly always-amused green eyes, was topped by a mushroom-like tuft of blonde hair that went to his cheeks. Indeed; Mulciber, in all his deformity, was to Tom a memorable and oddly agreeable figure. His sister, of course, disagreed.

"Everyone sees Mulciber as a freak," she once furtively whispered to him, as they sat together on a couch in the common room late one night, before the heat and smoke of a dim fireplace. "He hangs about you and your mates more than he does with his fellow fifth-years …"

"You'll remember, dear sister, that in London everyone saw us as freaks too," said Tom, tracing a finger down her soft cheek. "Popularity is good to possess, but the want of it means nothing."

She swatted his hand off her face. "If you wanted to make friends in the upper years, dear brother, you could've, with Caney."

"What merits does Caney have over Mulciber?" Tom asked. "His father's no longer minister. He's no longer special. All he is now, is a fifth-year Prefect. Nothing."

"He's handsome," Mary murmured with irritating sweetness, "and he's well-connected. Neither of which can be said of Mulciber."

Tom failed to understand why his sister was so infuriating, sometimes—was it not abundantly obvious that sheer Magical Power came before connections? The point was not even worth contending. Instead he took another avenue of attack, invoking a particular discipline which had taken his interest of late.

"Have you ever looked in the section of the library dedicated to genealogy?" Tom asked. "I have. It's very curious. Wizarding Britain's so small that the histories of the ancestors of all our peers can be freely found in what is in essence a school library."

"Then you'll have looked for our father?" Mary asked hopefully.

"There was nothing on the Riddles."

The two of them paused for a moment; both awaited something from the other. Tom broke the uncomfortable silence.

"I found that the Fawleys were a flock of peacocks," he said, curling his lips. "Diplomats, bankers, socialites, and inventors of extravagant but useless spells or potions—they are, in a word, those who Grindelwald calls 'the living undeserving of life.' Then you've the Mulcibers. The Fawleys are public and respectable—few, if any, of the Mulcibers are."

"Undeserving of life," Mary repeated in a mocking tone. "Yet they're respectable—you know that it's the respectable who decide who deserves what."

Tom ignored her. "The earliest known Mulciber, Thyrsus Mulcerentur, was perhaps the man who killed William the Conqueror. Indeed, he was originally a court-mage to Anchetil de Greye, one of William's underling lords. But Mulcerentur, as a wizard, decided he was more fit to rule than his muggle 'lord'. So he killed de Greye and took his fief for himself; but very quickly William sent an army to put him down. He escaped to Europe, and later fought in the Battle of Mantes in 1087, where William was thrown from his horse, which caused his death just a few weeks later. They call him the first English Dark Lord, though he hardly ruled for more than a few weeks, I imagine."

"Dark Lords. They've no longer any of those," Mary mused, raising her legs onto the sofa to curl into a ball. "The last English one was Hereward the Horrid, who died in the seventeenth century."

"It makes one wonder," came Tom, as his hand slowly found his sister's thighs, though through the heavy fabric of her robe, "why haven't they given this honorific to Grindelwald?"

She sighed in sleepy pleasure. "Because he dresses too well. But go on, Tom—the Mulcibers."

"After the 'Dark Lord' there were many, albeit mental, very worthy wizards. A dragon hunter who ate the hearts of his quarry, believing it would immunise him against fire; a mad duellist who, in a tournament frenzy, killed his opponent and then many members of the audience; and a merchant-mage addicted to invigoration draught, who dealt in muggle goods from slaves to opium, only to squander all his fortune in one night of hapless gambling."

Mary made a petulant look. "What a miserable bunch!"

"They met tragic ends, yes," Tom granted. "But don't you see? They did what they wanted. Took what was theirs."

"That they did, but so did the Fawleys," said Mary. "The Fawleys even managed it without becoming criminals."

Tom, irritated, squeezed his sister's thigh with all the force he could muster. She yelped.

"You don't understand," he simply explained.

She gently laughed. "Well, you're not explaining it terribly well."

"The events speak for themselves," said Tom in an ardent tone. "Don't you see?"

"I don't see."

"Then you're a fool."

He at once regretted the insult; his sister was mislead, not stupid—he ought not abuse her. But she took no offense.

"A fool who's going to sleep." She yawned. "Have you any more flattering words for your dear Mulciber and his ancestors?"

"I don't. The events—"

"—speak for themselves. Goodnight, Tom."

But she sat still; she waited, her sleepy eyes blinking sweetly and expectantly, for him to reciprocate the farewell. Tom turned his head, quickly darting his eyes about the dimly lit common room, to see if any of the few remaining older students watched them. Of course they didn't, why would they? He returned to his sister, and swooped to fiercely kiss her three times on the neck.

His voice was hoarse. "Goodnight, Mary."

She returned his affection with an uncertain kiss to his cheek cheek. Her eyes, unphased but otherwise mysterious, gazed at him up and down. Then, she rubbed her neck where he kissed, as though to rub it clean, before suddenly getting up and scuttling away to her dormitory.

Tom watched her disappear into the stairwell. As he turned back to face the fireplace, he discovered that he was not sleepy whatsoever. He drew his wand and wordlessly rekindled its flames. Why does she not understand? He mulled the question. Pigeons beget pigeons; seagulls beget seagulls. There was no denying that Arcanius Fawley was handsome, charming, and impeccably well-mannered, but the mad glimmer that shone in Thane Mulciber's green eyes, whenever Tom saw him win some hallway duel, was a testament to power. Power that Fawley could never attain, no matter what. Tom found it congenial, even—Mary's dark eyes dilated in the same way, as though they were ready to escape their sockets, whenever she performed some great work of Magic; his own did as well.

From where, then, did he and Mary inherit their twitching eye? From where did they inherit their prodigious magical power? Tom was unsure, but whatever the source, it exceeded both that of Fawley and Mulciber. But still he respected the latter boy, who in fact, he fruitfully conversed with the following day, while the whole gang of them—him, Tom, Tom's dorm-mates Wilkes and Avery, and the fourth years Lestrange and Nott—strolled by the border of the Forbidden Forest.

"Are you still working on inventing … What did you call it? Ah, yes, your serpenform range of spells?" Mulciber asked, thoughtfully stroking his chin.

"I've already developed some," Tom said, "but they're useless as of yet. Serpens capulusia!"

Like a frog's tongue shooting out of its mouth, a long, black snake shot out of Tom's wand, to grab a small fallen branch from the soil, and retract itself so that it was within grabbing distance of Tom's hands.

"But that's brilliant, Riddle!" came Bill Wilkes. "D'you reckon you could use it to choke someone?"

"The snake's too weak," Tom pointed out as a matter of fact. "I've yet to figure out how to make it stronger, without ejecting it entirely from my wand. At present, it's nothing more than a theatrical accio."

"You're quite the prodigy, Riddle," came the brusque, curly-haired Alexius Lestrange. "But they say you shouldn't invent spells till you know thousands of spells yourself. You don't. Why not wait?"

It had taken Tom some time to gain the respect of Lestrange; but this older boy, whose very essence was haughty irreverence, reflexively challenged everyone at every turn—even Professors and seventh-years, even Tom.

"He's no need to do that." Thane came to Tom's defense. "That's what the Department of Magical Education would have you do. Can't have the students doing real magic. You ought always do the opposite of what the Department says."

"Let's ignore the Department," Lestrange snapped. "Practically every spell in every magic language—"

"Every physikalische," Amos Nott corrected tonelessly.

"Thank you for the illumination, Nott," Lestrange jeered. "Every spell in every physi-owl-shit was invented by an adult. That's what's important. Most were made by a small bunch of the very enlightened, whose names we now find on chocolate frogs. Perhaps Tom will be on a chocolate frog someday, but for now he's only a kid. You can't brew a potion if you've not got the ingredients."

"Spellcrafting is different," said Tom, who barely suppressed the anger that threatened to seep into his tone. "Here we discover new ingredients in the act of brewing. On that, I want all of you to leave—I will talk to Mulciber in private."

Though this was not the first time that Tom had abruptly commanded his gang to do something, they did not obey straight away. They all looked at Lestrange; would the strongest among them submit? Slytherin House had never been equal; but there had always been the unspoken rule that they were peers inasmuch as they were equally the scions of renowned families, and equally students. Tom flouted both these criteria; he was not the scion of a renowned family, and he, as a second-year, unambiguously exceeded most fourth-years academically. Yet he was indeed in a way 'only a kid'—they only respected him out of the power they estimated he would have in a few years; not out of his current, limited capabilities. So it was a thin tightrope to straddle, and not one on which he walked without support.

"They listen to you, Tom," murmured Mulciber, whose frenetic green eyes shone at him. "You command their respect—what'll you do with it?"

"It's you who they respect," corrected Tom. He thought of a concept he read in Tenebrae. "You know that. You're the locus of our pack. I draw my power from you."

"That's what you think." The older boy's voice was twisting and ironic. "Perhaps what they think, too. But I don't want to lead. Never wanted to. May the best wizard win—that's my code."

The two of them, instead of persisting at the periphery of the forest, walked into it. The overhead canopy's sudden darkness oddly reminded Tom of his house's common room.

"Don't flatter yourself, Mulciber. Everyone wants to lead. Recall Tenebrae—even earthworms are motivated by will-to-power. Though perhaps, you don't want to lead us, us being such a piteous lot."

"Thane. Call me Thane," the older boy intoned his name like 'king'. "A piteous lot? How so?"

"We're outcasts," said Tom. "Yes, even me, after my sister stole Ilaria Greengrass' necklace. Consider Bill Wilkes and Avery—their names aren't worth a damn, compared to Black and Montgomery.

"Your other dorm-mates?"

"Yes. Lumos," Tom drew his wand. Though he could still discern the sun in the forest, it had become perilous to walk without a more proximate light. "But it's Bill and Avery, rather than Black and Montgomery, who're with us. Bill wants nothing more from Magic than to hurt animals and force girls to 'snog' him, though frankly, he's not good for much else."

Thane snorted. "Those are desires I have as well."

"But you desire more than that, I assume," Tom resumed. "Avery's as mute as a rock. I suppose he's smarter than a rock, but not by much. And the fourth years? Nott's a swot. He's more Ravenclaw than Slytherin, more tree than human. I'd like to shove him into the common room's big fireplace one day. Then at last we've Alexius Lestrange. The most illustrious of us outcasts. Were it not for his temper and his undeserved arrogance, he would have better friends than us in this house."

"You're too critical, Tom," teased the smiling Thane, whose wand tip now also shone with Lumos. "You easily see people's weaknesses. I suppose you learned to do so growing up in your dreadful muggle weaning pen."

"It's called an orphanage," Tom clarified.

"But consider—to advantageously use your friends, would you not need to know and, dare I say it, appreciate their strengths?"

"But what strengths have they got?"

The older boy started at once. "Take William Wilkes, for instance. He's thirteen—you shouldn't expect him to care about much more than 'hurting animals' and 'snogging girls'—not everyone can be so precocious like you. Yet Wilkes' already got a sharp mind for hexes, one that's rare in thirteen-year-old wizards—and he's uninhibited."

"Uninhibited," Tom repeated. It sounded like an alternate way of saying undisciplined. "I don't understand."

"There's much that you don't understand, Tom," Thane said half-sadly, half-mockingly. "You, too, are uninhibited—and you take it for granted that everyone else is as well. You don't care about rules, but neither does William Wilkes. It's a rare strength."

"But I do mind the rules. I've never gotten detention."

"You don't flout the rules, no." Thane laughed. "But I don't mean that kind of rule. I mean one's interior rules. Conscience, morality, the inner voice—whatever you call it—you and Wilkes have seen through it. Not everyone has; most don't see through it all their lives."

"Bill's strength … is being unconcerned with the good?"

"In a sense, yes." Thane made a crooked smile. "But let's stop talking about this—I'm sure you didn't want to talk just to gossip over the other boys."

"Indeed I did not," said Tom. "I wanted to talk to you about something in Tenebrae. The wound of apotheosis."

Thane stopped in his tracks. His head turned to Tom and presented him with a grotesquely avid smile.

"You've already read up to apotheosis?"

"I've finished the book."

"It's not a book one 'finishes'—"

"I know that," Tom dismissed. "What I meant to say was, I've already read it cover-to-cover. I will continue to consult it, of course."

"Good," said Thane, oddly relieved. "Then you'll know that apotheosis is about difference, contrast."

"Pain and pleasure, affirmation and guilt," said Tom. "Extremity condenses time. I wonder if you've made a wound of apotheosis?"

"Only last year, in fact. I did it, if you'll believe it or not, for accio—now when I cast it, it drags even wizards towards me, violently—like they get grabbed by a giant, invisible claw. But what would you like to know?"

"The ritual is simple enough," said Tom. "What's unclear is what form of pleasure would be most apt for the ascension. The book gives no suggestions."

Most unexpectedly, Thane broke into hysterical laughter. "Shagging. Without a doubt, shagging some pretty bint. You would've known that if you were a little older. You could use the girl for both descension and ascension, if you force her."

"Is that what you did? Force her?"

"No—I made love with mine. However I've heard rumours that there's a unit of the Freimagier who have such an initiation ritual; the initiate carves his wound, before going to a muggle city to find a young, pretty girl to shag and torture—then torture and kill, with the spell he wants to bind—afterwards he'd feel guilty and sick, so the other Freimagier pour buckets of boiling hot faeces over him to deepen his descension—before at last giving him an array of pleasure potions and aphrodisiacs so he could shag the now-dead girl in a second ascension. A double apotheosis—not necessary at all—if you ask me they're simply too fond of little muggle girls."

For a few moments Tom said nothing. He felt sick to his stomach. Thank Salazar that the Freimagier marauded only through Europe; if they had been active in Britain even two years ago, Mary very well could have qualified for 'young, pretty girl in a muggle city'. Furthermore, while Tom did not mind pain, disgust-as-descension—the very thought of hot faeces revolted him. He thought of the damp odour of the boys' toilets at Wool's.

"Who did you shag?" he managed to ask.

"Beatrice," Thane intoned her name with a strange sort of reverence. "You could borrow her, if you'd like. You're still a virgin, she knows how to—"

"No!" Tom yelled, startling himself with the force of his voice.

"Then who do you have in mind? Or do you have another means of ascension?"

Mary, he thought immediately. The ascension had to be as smooth as silk and as sweet as honey; he could think of no other girl who he would enjoy touching nearly as much. Yet, it would hardly be appropriate to tell this to Thane.

"I've yet to even decide which spell to bind," said Tom. His mind flickered through a variety of options; each seemed as useful as the next. "May I see your wound?"

"Of course," Thane obliged him.

Thane took off his robe and unbuttoned his shirt. There, running down the right side of his pale breast, was a great purple-red gash that, albeit more faded and mild than Tom had expected—it must have healed over time—was so inordinately long, that it appeared a natural feature of his body, like a calm, ancient river through some countryside scenery. It was a smile; it protruded to the very side of his waist, just like his smiles cut a line through his cheeks.

For the weeks to come, Tom privately debated night and day on which spell to bind for apotheosis. It was futile and tiring; every spell was promising, and the possibilities were infinite—but nothing was certain. One never knew how apotheosis would affect their spell; just that it would make it more powerful. For instance if he chose Aguamenti, an idea that originally struck him as ridiculous but grew tempting over time, it was equally possible that he would henceforth be able to produce obscene amounts of water (bathtubs full, with a snap of his finger, he imagined with a smile) as to improvise curses of scorching vapour and freezing ribbons of ice.

As the weeks went by and no answer to the question came, Tom mentally relegated to make way for more practical concerns. For one, there was much he had to learn about the human body. Where could he carve his wound for it to hurt, without vitally impairing his physical functioning? Thane's wound was on his chest—Tom's had to be somewhere else, he refused to imitate the older boy. Moreover, how did one shag? His understanding of 'sex' was a haphazard set of intuitions and premonitions. It was one of the most pleasurable things in the world. It was why Molls, or muggle women who flagrantly adorned themselves to entice men, went out at night to make money 'selling' it in London. It was the promise that motivated a great many men to various feats small and great, even if they would not admit it. It was something one could achieve by force.

He borrowed and rigorously devoured books on anatomy and physiology from the library. One Saturday, as he sat in the library in the afternoon perusing such a book, across Mary who intently worked on something with her wand, he realised something which he should have realised long ago, something obvious—so obvious that it was not stated even in Tenebrae:

"You can make more than one!"

"What?" Mary's attention was caught at once. "One what, Tom?"

"More than one wound …" repeated Tom in quiet reverence. "The body can sustain several, and with time, the same wound could serve for multiple apotheoses!"

His sister remained quiet; she returned to carefully decorating with her wand a huge, unmoving butterfly she had transfigured out of firewood.

"Mary." He demanded her attention. "Stop ignoring me when I speak of apotheosis. Does the idea of pain really frighten you so much?"

"So what if it does?" she asked, half pleadingly, half defiantly—a mode of her voice increasingly familiar to him.

"You don't have to make your own wound," Tom assured. "Although, after you see the power mine will give me, you'll want one for yourself—we'll make more together."

"No!" she yelled, causing a nearby book to eject itself from its shelf. "It's utterly unnatural! You've got to stab yourself, then play with my nude body as you bleed—"

"Quiet," he hissed.

"—and in the end," she continued in a waspish whisper, "you don't even know what'll happen!"

She took a deep breath, stroked her hair, and went to return the fallen book to its shelf.

"There is one certainty—my power will increase," Tom affirmed. "Will you help me or not?"

As she sat back down, she evaded his gaze and straightened her robe. For a moment fury flared in Tom—he thought she was pretending to not hear him again—but then she spoke:

"Perhaps, let me think about it."

Her tone was uninspiring. Tom furrowed his brow. He thought back to the cryptic complaints she made during Christmas. At the time, he knew that she told the truth—that there was a rift which was sown between them on their very first night at Hogwarts, and that this rift had since then, barring intermittent moments of shared affection and humour, only grown and grown like a cobweb in a rusting cauldron at the bottom of a creaky old cupboard, to encroach more and more of the time they had together which had once been a seamless, infinite thread of togetherness. Then he had refused her Arcanius Fawley, and now she refused him his best prospective vessel of apotheosis—herself.

But just as Tom began to brood on this, Mary raised the big beautiful butterfly in her hand, with such patient steadiness in her arm and focus in her dark eyes that it was as though she were trying to lift a spiderweb without breaking it. Then, she blew on it—and it came to life! It flew towards Tom, who reflexively extended his hands to allow it to land.

It was an object of transfiguration and not a real organism; this was especially made apparent by not only its impossible size, but by its impossible beauty. It was completely translucent, though it had no organs, and it contained every colour in the rainbow—it looked like it was made out of coloured glass, like the window of a cathedral, but alive. On its wings streaked two long beams of ruby-red, reminiscent of the scar on Thane's chest.

"It's yours," she said, smiling with a strangely sudden tranquility. "The biggest one I've made yet."

When winter had melted into spring, the air of the Slytherin common room changed; during the cold season several fireplaces burned around the clock, every day. When the flowers came back to bloom and when the trees saw nascent leaves reemerge on their defrosting branches, most fireplaces in the common room fell into disuse; even the big one was only used at night. The result was that there was, in the extended wardrobe by the big fireplace, a great surplus of firewood.

It was the boys who first made use of this store of wood. A group of third and fourth years, among whom Amos Nott was a chief architect, made a crossbow the size of a table that they called a 'ballista', something both dragon hunters of yore and muggle soldiers defending or besieging a city would use. They successfully lodged several projectiles through trees along the border of the Forbidden Forest. Arcanius Fawley, extraordinarily, collaborated with his fifth-year Prefect peer in Gryffindor, Gustavus Goodwin, to entertain the younger boys of both houses—they built and equipped small wooden boats with their respective house colours painted in their sails, before enchanting them and letting them disembark into the Black Lake as the 'Slytherin' and 'Gryffindor' fleets to fight naval battles—three such battles occurred, and Slytherin ultimately won 2-1.

Mary was the first and only girl to take interest in the wood. Given that their transfiguration classes were still taught by a rotation of half-hearted seventh-years, she entertained herself during them by transfiguring wood into animals. She found that she had a talent for making particularly beautiful butterflies; word spread, and first- and second-year girls of all houses came to her asking if she could make them pet butterflies. She obliged these girls, and more than transfigure, she also enchanted them with obscure embellishing spells, so that they looked like they were made of coloured glass.

"Thank you, Mary," he told her. "What should I do with it? Have you made one for yourself?"

"Do whatever you want," she shrugged. "They'll live so long as I live. I've made a dozen for myself—I keep them around my bed."

"And you'll live very long," said Tom. He imagined her death; it was so terrible a thought that he did not dwell on it for more than five seconds.

He caressed the butterfly's wings; they were pleasantly warm, like the surface of a temperate cup of hot chocolate. Then, he noticed that it smelled sweet—a sweetness distinct from Mary's perfume—a little bit like soap.

"An aroma charm," Tom observed. "Very scrupulous."

"Thank you—and it's warm now because your hands are cold. If your hands were uncomfortably warm, that would invert."

Yet despite her scrupulousness and Magical acumen, there was no denying that she was frivolous. But Tom could not condemn his sister's frivolity. The butterfly that rested in his hands, which was so complex and beautiful, was useless. Then again, so what? Flowers had short lifespans; but to Tom it seemed that their animating principle was to be beautiful. Mary was both abundant in magical power and creativity, but rather than read Tenebrae or practice curses or even practical spells, she spent her time enchanting her uniform so that the edge of her robe and skirt would ripple ever so slightly as she walked, as though it had the texture of the water on the surface of a lake. Boys and girls alike took notice of this little flourish; there were seventh-year girls who could cast much more complex cosmetic charms, but few who could execute a simple one so perfectly, so gracefully. Tom could not do that. It was for naught, it was useless; but it proved her power.

He was brought out of his revelry by an older girl's grating voice.

"Tom, Mary—Professor Slughorn wants to see you tonight, after dinner."

Out of nowhere, the dour, sarky fifth-year brunette prefectess that was Beatrice Sommerfield appeared before them.

"For what?" he asked. He exchanged a look with Mary; her eyes told him that she did not know what was going on either.

"I don't know," Beatrice said with unwarranted impatience. "But you're not in trouble, I could tell by the sound of his voice. Seems to me he just wants to see his two darling second-year prodigies."