Hogwarts, April-June 1940
In a cot in the Hospital Wing, tucked under a thick quilt that went all the way up to his pale little chin, Abraxas Malfoy appeared in equal parts a sleepy infant and a sickly animal. On the right side of his bed stood Antoine Rosier, whose girly head of brown hair accentuated the concern fraught on his tanned face, and on the left, Mary and Arcanius Fawley, who wore intensely strange and repressed expressions that Tom did not like at all. Ever since the pair—the three of them, Tom reminded himself, for Abraxas was among them—returned to Hogwarts two hours after the rest of the students, he had yet to have the opportunity to talk to his sister privately. She and Fawley were first called to the Headmaster's office, where they stayed for an hour, presumably reciting their account of the day's events to various important officials from the Ministry, after which they immediately went down to the Hospital Wing to check on Malfoy.
But it was not just circumstance that emancipated his sister from the obligation to talk to Tom; she, whenever he looked at her, would hide from him at once, not permitting their gazes to commune for any longer than two seconds. It was infuriating; were it not for the fact that Tom found the very notion of regret, remorse, repentance and all those grandiose re– words repulsive, he would have regretted orchestrating his sister's abduction of Abraxas' affection. It was as if he had cast a difficult, grievously important spell for a ritual, only to find that he had cast it with somebody else's wand.
It was unbecoming to wait for her, as she waited on the unconscious Abraxas. It would be unbecoming, also, to force words from her. While such a method would certainly elicit the truth from her, and as he knew from experience, it would also renew and enflame in her the resentment she already had against him—and thereby create more problems than it solves. He took one last look at his sister, whose face, in its sad, shameful serenity, looked more angelic than human. How was it that such a beautiful being could inflict on Tom such distress and mistrust? Let her come to me, he thought contemptuously, before turning on his heel and leaving the Hospital Wing.
On his way out, he beheld a scene.
Near the exit there stood Ezekiel Tansley, a bespectacled fourth-year dark-haired Ravenclaw boy whose thin, plain face always wore a dreary expression, cleaning a cauldron which, given that it could not be simply scourgified, must have been tainted by potent magical ingredients. Tansley was defined by two characteristics; intelligence, and a lack of friends. He had excelled so far in his ordinary classes that the Professors collectively permitted him to spend all day in the Hospital Wing, where he assisted and cohabited with the exigent Madam Milosz. What Tom had not known, however, was that Tansley was a—
"Mudblood!" sneered the swaggering Alexius Lestrange who, followed by Amos Nott and Thane Mulciber, came in through the doors by which Tom was about to leave. "Still scrubbing pots and pans like a doddering old squib?"
Tansley, who appeared accustomed to the abuse, made no response. Consequently, Lestrange shoved him on the floor, and swished his wand to splatter some foul-looking green substance all over the cauldron. As though none of this had happened, Tansley simply stood back up and continued cleaning his cauldron, while Lestrange and the other two older boys, both sneering, walked past. Tom clenched his fist; though he did not care about the 'justice' of the situation, and though he would always be more fond of his fellow Slytherins than those they picked on in other houses, he loathed the weakness of Tansley. There was only one moral imperative in life, and that was to fight back.
"Hello, Tom," came Thane's genial voice, bringing Tom from his thoughts.
"Thane," Tom nodded. "Alex, Amos—here to see Malfoy?"
"Indeed we are," said Thane. "I hope the little bloke's alright."
"He could be worse." Tom's tone was neutral. "I'll see you later."
"Hold on, Tom." Lestrange stopped Tom with a firm hand to his shoulder. "What was your pretty little sister doing all that time at the Fawley estate, with Arcanius Fawley?"
Tom shoved the fourth-year's arm off him. "None of your business, Alexius," he said calmly, "but not what you think it is."
With that, Tom left the Hospital Wing. He did not look back, for he resented Alexius' suspicions, whatever they were, not because they were false, but because they were the same suspicions that tormented him—suspicions which very likely possessed some degree of truth. Everything was within the realms of possibility. His heart felt heavy.
As he returned to the Slytherin Dungeon various students accosted Tom and dared, like the dolt Lestrange, to inquire of the affairs of Mary and Arcanius Fawley. He gave terse, perfunctory answers and kept walking, all the while suppressing the urge to challenge each idiot who asked him something to the effect of "d'you reckon Arcanius Fawley fancies your sister?" to a duel. By the time Tom returned to his dormitory, he found that his rage had subsided into a sort of weary irritation. He needed to rest, he needed to think.
"Leave," Tom told the inseparable pair that was Alphard Black and Oscar Montgomery, whose elegant robes further compounded his irritation. They quickly left.
"Leave," Tom told Bill Wilkes, who, lying on his bed, amused himself by abusing a half-melted chocolate frog in his chocolate-covered hands. Wilkes quickly left.
Tom, still in the black robe-jacket he had donned for the day, fell on his bed. He let a long sigh escape his mouth and tried not clench his fists, for he knew that physical and mental tension were causally mutual. He needed a clear head. He needed useful thoughts. Every fibre of his being wished for him to force Mary's pretty little face to tears, bittersweet tears to course down her soft, shapely cheeks, so that she would both tell him the truth, and give his handkerchief—or his tongue—something to swab. If nothing else, he was certain Arcanius Fawley had never tasted his sister's tears—that was a saveur which only Tom could know, love, and protect. For a moment a sense of gratifying ticklishness ran through his loins and made him forget the wrath that gnawed at his heart. But then he violently shook his head. Foolish, foolish thoughts!
One small consolation Tom had was that it was unlikely Mary intended to wind up at the Fawley estate for two hours. She, like most of the other students, had probably thought the portals were infallible. Tom knew they were not; portals, like ice, are susceptible to 'melting' under the pressure of heat—in this case, the thermal and magical heat of four hundred young in quick succession. He also knew that ice did not melt all at once; if a large block of it were placed over a boiling cauldron for a minute and then removed onto a cool surface, it would not entirely melt in that minute, but rather take several more, for the initial touch of the hot potion-vapour to materialise over time—so it was with portals. Undoubtedly, whoever arranged the trial-alarm had hoped for all the students to reach the portals within a short timeframe. Undoubtedly, Mary was unaware of this. Her plan, then, must have been to spend nothing more than a few inconspicuous minutes with Arcanius Fawley—not three very conspicuous hours. Perhaps, that was why she looked so upset. Or perhaps not; perhaps something else.
It was then that Tom realised that trying to divine the entire truth of the situation through sheer 'reasoning' was a fruitless exercise. Mary's original intention did not matter; all that did was what she had actually done at the Fawley estate. The spell proved the intention, not vice versa. It was then that Tom recalled Abraxas Malfoy had been there, with them, and would certainly have most useful information. While Mary had, under Tom's instruction, courted Abraxas' affection for days, Tom was certain that he would be able to steer whatever loyalty Abraxas felt toward Mary to his own favour.
He spent the rest of the afternoon simultaneously reading In Virtute Tenebrae with A History of Post-Statute Prometheanism. The substance of the books corresponded intimately; one told of the development of 'Dark' Magic over the centuries, the other elaborated on its application in the world. Yet it was tragic, too; again and again, the great spirits that were 'renegade sorcerers' or 'Dark Lords' or 'wayward warlocks' were always battered back to the ground from whence they came. None succeeded in turning the tide of History.
At dinner, Tom sat far from Mary. It was not he who created this distance, but she; she sat herself among the fourth-year girls, all of whom Tom found remarkably deficient in charm and beauty, compared with her sister who exercised both with the fluidity of a glass jug pouring water, and all of whom inundated his sister with quips and questions, undoubtedly related to her and Arcanius Fawley. Mary made no acknowledgment of Tom who sat in their usual place; she was ignoring him. You can't ignore me forever, he thought. Abraxas Malfoy, of course, was not there.
Tom made a quick meal of lamb tripe stew (supposedly, tripe nourished one's magical faculties; Tom thought this a superstition, but indulged it nonetheless), and went to the Hospital Wing. It was eerily dark; it was late enough that it was almost entirely deprived of daylight, yet not so late that Madam Milosz thought the lamps and lanterns worth warranting. Thus Abraxas Malfoy looked rather lonely; but not entirely so, for there at his bedside, propped atop a tall stool like a praying mantis, was the muggleborn Ravenclaw savant, Ezekiel Tansley.
"Riddle."
Tansley spoke for the first time. His voice was neuter and feeble; had Tom heard the voice in the black of the night, he would not have known the age, nor the sex, of its speaker.
"Tansley," Tom returned. "I see you're not at dinner."
"I prefer to sup here." The Ravenclaw spoke very quickly, and very quietly. "It's quieter."
That was when Tom noticed the floating plate beside Tansley; on it were what appeared to be slices of toast—sandwiches—with fillings so thin that they were indiscernible in the dark.
"Malfoy's asleep," said Tansley, noticing Tom's eyes turn to the younger boy. "I had him imbibe three-and-a-half ounces of Elixir of Hypnos to facilitate his recovery"
What a strange manner of speech, Tom thought.
"Sleep is vital to healing—as much as nutrition and hydration," Tansley clarified uselessly. "But it won't cure Malfoy's sickness, only temporarily neutralise it. There may be a method by which Malfoy's sickness can be attacked at the causal level, but Madam Milosz won't permit it."
"And what might that be?"
"Legilimency." By now, Tansley's voice was brimming with fervour. His disinterest had, for whatever reason, transformed into utter passion within no more than a minute. He spoke as quickly as a student might write an essay at lunch, due for their afternoon class. "I am unsurprised that Longinus Malfoy—Abraxas' father—has not arranged for a magipsychotherapist—someone trained in therapeutic Legilimency—to check on him. British purebloods have never been nearly as attentive to the muggle world and its developments as their continental cousins—"
Tom interrupted to pose one of the many questions that the rambling Ravenclaw engendered in his mind. "What is legilimency?"
"So you are a muggleborn." Tansley's voice became affectionate. "A very clever one at that, just like me!"
It appeared that Legilimency was to wizards, what church and the London tramway were to muggles—notions so obvious and common that it was taken for granted everyone knew what they were—so of course it had been withheld from Tom.
"Perhaps," Tom confessed, suppressing the indignation in his voice. "I'm an orphan."
Tansley caught the meaning of his words at once. "Blood status, Riddle, is a social thing—not a biological one. You might have been the son of a Minister—but growing up in a muggle orphanage makes you a muggleborn."
Now, Tom was truly indignant. "Well, Ezekiel, if we take your definition, then I'm even less of a muggleborn. Lestrange called you a mudblood. He treats me like a friend."
"Lestrange is a single fourth-year boy at Hogwarts, he accepts you. The culture to which he belongs will not, Tom. But you're talented. Perhaps they'll accept your grandchildren—that's just how it works."
"You're doing well for yourself, are you not, Ezekiel?"
"Healing is by necessity a meritocratic discipline—intelligence and magic heals—being in possession of a grandiose surname doesn't."
"Can one not say the same for any discipline?" Tom retorted. "Take Aurors—intelligence and magic keeps you alive in a fight—being in possession of a grandiose surname doesn't."
"Wrong, wrong, wrong," Ezekiel said, wagging his fingers, stuffing his mouth with toast. "Aurors are the primary enforcers of the Ministry's power—it is important that their recruits come from trustable, respectable families. Of course, if you're a really good mudblood, the Ministry might just be generous enough to let you in …"
Their argument before the sedated body of Abraxas Malfoy went only for another few minutes. Where Ezekiel, the blubbering savant that he was, was completely honest, Tom operated on a false principle—he did not particularly care about muggleborns. He recalled the two groups of Gryffindors, both lead by socially cognisant muggleborns, who proudly sported English and Indian flags after the assassination of some colonial Lord—he felt as distant to them as he felt to the purebloods, if not more so. There was another crucial difference between Ezekiel and him; where the Ravenclaw Hospital-wing-attendant had a wandering, erratic mind, Tom never lost sight of his primary object. Their entire conversation was a tangent from the initial question of Legilimency, to which Tom then returned:
"You've still not told me what Legilimency is, Ezekiel."
"Mind-reading," Ezekiel said casually, stuffing his mouth with another 'honey sandwich' (Tom had learned that he subsisted almost entirely off slices of toast slathered with honey). "If applied onto Malfoy in a therapeutic context, it may enable him to confront the origin of his curse, and therefore undo its effects."
Mind reading! Tom's mind suddenly felt heavy; although he prided himself in the speed with which he processed new knowledge, the implications of mind-reading utterly overwhelmed him. He felt sick. Was that what Professor Dumbledore had done on him and Mary, to find out about the lamb, and humiliate them so? He would have to read about it; he would have to read…
But that was not the sole revelatory thing Ezekiel had said. Tom pressed on the other. "Hold on—Abraxas is cursed?"
"I spoke too quickly," Ezekiel observed of himself, as though he were not himself. "Yes, I read Madam Milosz' report on him, which she got from his father, who surely got it from St. Mungo's. His father's first wife tried to kill him, when he was five years old; his father's second wife, who is his mother, died saving him—now he's like this."
Tom rested his blank gaze on the dormant form of Abraxas. It appeared that the varied tales of his housemates, though all individually false through either fantastic exaggeration or fabrication, were on the whole true—Abraxas Malfoy had been cursed by a vengeful pseudo-stepmother. The notion of it was at once exhilarating and appalling; that a curse could do such lasting damage on a wizard disgusted Tom as much as it excited him. It excited him very much.
"Why?" asked Tom. "Why would Malfoy senior's first wife do that?"
"I don't know the finer points of the story," shrugged Ezekiel, "and it's hardly something I could ask Abraxas."
Partly owing to the fact Abraxas did not look like he was going to wake up anytime soon, and partly owing to the immense itch Tom felt to glean something—anything—about Legilimency, Tom soon left the Hospital Wing for the library. There, he borrowed four books on the topic, and hurried back to his dormitory to read them through the night.
He blew out his last candle a little past one o'clock in the morning. Although the events of the day had thoroughly exhausted him, Tom had no desire to sleep. Yet he closed his eyes and willed his own patience.
The next day, potions class in the morning. They were to brew Strengthening Solutions, a concoction which Slughorn aggrandised by alluding to its use by the heroic warrior-mages of antiquity, who, intoxicated, were rendered capable of handling the otherwise cumbersome metal weapons of their contemporary muggle footmen with such impossible dexterity and terrifying lethality that they became venerated as Gods walking on the Earth.
Everyone's excitement abated a little, when Slughorn clarified firstly that it was unlikely anyone would be able to brew a potion that could enable them to lift five-hundred pound rocks as easily as five-pound ones, and that secondly, the brewing process would span six lessons; three weeks.
He and his sister reconciled over their usual workbench. Mary, albeit sleepy, tired, and no longer flourished in makeup as she was yesterday, no longer regarded him with either defiance or evasion; rather, she looked at him with a faint little smile, as though everything were normal. Her sleepiness gave her the effect of a little fox which had just come out of its hole in the morning.
"Long night?" Tom asked.
"I stayed up talking to Florence," she purred.
"Of yesterday's events?" he asked, wrinkling his nose as he unfurled a desiccated griffon claw, which was so soft that it almost felt alive.
"Of yesterday's events."
"And when do you intend on talking to me of them?" Tom pressed his wand to cleaver, and sharpened it twice with a honing charm.
Mary defanged her bouquet of baby fanged geraniums. "There's not much to say. I wanted to see Caney, if only for a few minutes—I didn't know we'd end up in his house all afternoon."
Tom smashed his cleaver down on the claw to carve off its thumb. As he pondered whether or not to tell Mary that he didn't believe her one bit, she continued.
"I'd never seen anywhere so nice, Tom!" she said in an envious huff. "It was right by the Thames in a nice quiet part of the country; the house was old but new, if that makes sense, and their garden was bigger than you could imagine—and full of magical plants. They'd dozens of house elves too! I hope we'll get a place like this when we grow up."
"Of course we will, Mary," Tom said at once, depositing a dozen chunks of chopped-up griffin claw into a mortar. "Ours will be better in every way."
"Good," his sister mischievously smiled. "So, I need your help. I stole some flowers from Arcanius' garden—I'd like to grow more of them—but they've not got seeds."
"Then how will you grow more of them?" asked Tom, who pressed his wand to his pestle, and strengthened it likewise with a honing charm.
"There's a potion which 'regresses' plants into their seeds," said Mary, "but I can't for the love of the devil find the recipe for it!"
"We'll find it," assured Tom, "but what's so special about your flowers anyway?"
"I'll show you after class."
Indeed after class, Mary took his hand (as though nothing had happened yesterday) and skipped merrily to the Slytherin dungeon. Tom was left in the Common Room to wait as she descended to her dormitory to retrieve her 'flowers'; she returned with them—moving, purple flowers—planted firmly in soil, in an enclosed glowing blue jar. She warily glanced left and right before daring to come to Tom.
"A preservatorium," said Mary, presumably introducing the jar, and not its contents. "It slows the uprooted flowers' otherwise natural decay. But we have to make the potion quick; I'm not sure how much longer the flowers will live."
With a tap of her wand, she vanished the thin metal lid of the jar and—
Music!
Tom, as far as he could remember, had always been at best indifferent to music, and at worst, deeply irritated by it. Yet the sound which emanated from the trembling flowers was pleasant—no—it was magnificent. It was not, strictly speaking, music at all, but rather an amalgamation of individually pleasant sounds—the wind against the leaves at Abney Park cemetery; droplets of gutter-water splashing against their windowsill at Wool's (when they were about seven or eight, they found it greatly amusing to evaporate and freeze these as they fell); the sound of Mary's laughs, giggles, and sighs; the rhythmical bubbling of cauldrons of properly brewed potions; and the distant thumps of scattered library books returning themselves to their proper positions on the shelves at the end of the day—interlayed into a beautiful, primitive harmony.
"Singing Saffron," Mary explained. "Well tell me will you, Tom? What do you hear?"
He gave her a terse answer of "London and Hogwarts", not revealing that she was the human voice around which everything else gyrated. She tapped her wand on the jar twice to materialise once more the thin metal lid, causing the music to stop.
"Five ounces of Thesmophorium would be enough to regress them into seeds," said Mary, "but I've searched the library thoroughly—nothing."
"Then it's surely in the restricted section."
"But we've no way of getting in there—"
"Ezekiel Tansley," Tom thought aloud. A fleeting look of distaste came over Mary at the mention of the name. "He has a pass. You'll get him to get the book for us."
"What do you mean I'll get him?"
"You have a way of getting boys to do what you want," Tom drawled.
Mary glared at him.
"Moreover, they're your flowers," he added.
"I wouldn't even know what to tell Tansley," she said, crossing her arms. "I hardly feel comfortable with him knowing that we'll brew Thesmophorium—what if he tells?"
"He won't tell," Tom assured. "But let's meet him in the Hospital Wing tonight. I'll tell you before then the name of the book you'll have him fetch."
Mary went off for lunch; Tom went to his dormitory, directly to take out something under his bed—the old suitcase he had brought from London. The right half of it was filled with neatly folded clothes; the left, with what anyone else would have thought of as garbage, but which was in reality the totality of things which Tom had owned from before coming to Hogwarts, that he thought would be useful for Hogwarts. From it, he took a magnifying glass—an ornate instrument with a silver frame and a sleek, decorative dark wood handle—which he had stolen from a traveller's briefcase in a Mayfair hotel.
He had thought of enchanting it for a while, but never got around to finding the time or necessity to do it; now, he had both.
It took longer than he expected; he missed the entirety of lunch and most of their afternoon class, which was thankfully History of Magic—Professor Binns was as much disturbed by his tardiness as he would have been by a particularly loud rustling of leaves—but by the time he got to the library in the evening, the lens of the magnifying glass was no longer mere glass, but a glowing sheet of green crystal. Tom first went to consult a general 'anthology' of potions—Thesmophorium, he learned, was one of the dozen 'sacred' potions used in the annual imperial rituals of the Roman Empire. With that in mind, he tiptoed along the Restricted Section, which appeared like a huge confession booth under its vaulted ceiling.
Tom pressed his magnifying glass to the windows (whose existence perplexed Tom) of the Section, and then his wand to his magnifying glass. If he tapped magnifying glass once, it would zoom in; if he tapped it twice, it would zoom out. Although the Section was utterly unilluminated, the magnifying glass rendered everything legible with a sheen of green light. He aligned his glass in every possible angle before every window to discern the titles of as many books as possible. Soon, he spied a certain Potions Herbologickal, Volume III; Renewall & Transformacione.
When they met that night in the Hospital Wing, there was a greater crowd than Tom had hoped. Rather than merely Ezekiel Tansley by Abraxas' bedside, there was what appeared to be the entirety of the Slytherin first-year cohort, in a show of sympathy. Nonetheless, Tom whispered the name of the Restricted book to his sister, who simply gave a nod.
"Tom," waved Lydia Cotterill. "Hello—I didn't expect to see—you—here!"
A pigtailed first-year blonde, her blushing smile revealed to Tom that she might be useful for him.
"Lydia Cotterill," he gave the girl a wide smile. "Professor Slughorn speaks highly of your potions."
"H-h-he speaks highly of you, too!" she blurted, before noticing Mary and adding, "and of your sister, of course!"
"Hm." Mary's eyes flickered between the first-year girl and Tom, while her mouth curved into a knowing smile. She left the pair alone to greet Tansley.
"Say, as two talented students," began Tom, stepping forward as to be so close to the little girl that their bodies were almost talking, "would you like to join me in one of my personal projects?"
"Sure," she said, trying to feign something resembling graceful approval—but Tom saw the utter delight that the halfhearted facade tried to conceal.
"Then you'll meet me tomorrow night at half-past seven outside the Common Room," he told her, "and you'll tell no one you're coming."
With that, Tom gave the girl a confidential smile, squeezed her hand, and walked past to watch the evolving interaction between his sister and Ezekiel Tansley. Tom knew for certain that Mary had no affection whatsoever for Tansley, which is why his brow furrowed deeply when he beheld her practically pressing Tansley into a wall, with a sultry smile on her lips and persuasive passion in her eyes, while Tansley simultaneously stammered and smiled and trembled and laughed. The sight, at first, made him perversely proud insofar as it was a natural display of the feminine force of character which his sister possessed, before it revolted him very much—if this was what she did with a boy who she didn't even like, what would she have done with a boy that she did?
Tom had seen enough. He returned to his dormitory.
At lunch the following day, Mary dragged him to an empty classroom and opened before him Potions Herbologickal to the page of the recipe of Thesmophorium. Tom was dismayed. The list of ingredients complicated everything. How did one, for instance, acquire Armadillo bile? What even was Moonstone? Mary hadn't the slightest clue, either. But it was her flowers that she wanted to 'regress' into seeds; so it was her who took the responsibility of obtaining the ingredients. Tom had other schemes to undertake, anyway.
At night, when he met the little Lydia Cotterill outside the Common Room, she wore an obscene amount of lipstick.
"Good evening, Lydia." He extended to her a hand and a smile.
They went to the abandoned second-floor classroom which Tom and Mary had played with fire a year and a half ago. Much to his surprise, the ashes of all the old furniture they had burned remained there, unsweeped, undisturbed.
"This place smells," Lydia observed, wrinkling her nose.
Tom did not object to her complaint. He drew his wand to transfigure two particularly large heaps of ash into somber, grey wooden chairs.
"Take a seat." He made a gesture of his arm.
"Have you heard of Occlumency, Lydia?" he asked gently.
The first-year, whose expression had been one of unabashed excitement until that moment, suddenly looked apprehensive. She gave a small nod.
"Perhaps, then, you know that practicing it requires a partner," Tom said. "Likewise with Legilimency."
Her small blue eyes widened as she realised what he was implying. Tom saw that she was about to say something in protest, so he deterred her with a soothing question—
"You trust me to keep your secrets, don't you?" he asked, raising her chin.
"Father said never-to-let-a-boy-cast-Legilimens-on-you!" she blurted.
Her teeth clattered; her chin trembled. It was only a matter of time before she leapt from her chair and ran away; Tom was in a dire situation.
So, naturally, he leaned it and planted a kiss on the slope of her cheek—not even half an inch from her lips. As he rose to observe her again, she was no longer quivering—rather, she sat frozen, her cheeks flushed with red and her face immobilised in a sort of ecstatic terror as though she had just been hit with a particularly pleasurable petrificus totalus.
"You see?" said Tom, raising his wand. "You're safe with me. Now—Legilimens!"
First, nothing. Then, Lydia broke into a fit of laughter. Tom gritted his teeth, albeit perhaps she wasn't laughing at him. Perhaps her laughter was, like steam from water, a sheer vaporous overflow of the intensity of the situation. Perhaps she did laugh at him, albeit not disparagingly, but to relieve the stress of both of them—he needed to know!
"Legilimens!"
Now, Tom plunged into a swirl of colours and feelings. One of Professor Slughorn's favourite activities was to excitedly warn students, before they were to brew any given potion, of the painful and bizarre fates due to those who imbibed wrongly brewed renditions of said potions. It was as though Tom drank one such potion. Though he could still feel himself seated on his transfigured chair, none of his other senses belonged to himself. He saw, as though through a huge curved window that encompassed his entire field of vision, a window cursed somehow so that everything on the other side was distorted or otherwise imperfected, Lydia Cotterill brushing her teeth in front of a mirror of the first-year Slytherin girls' dormitory's bathroom. He felt it too, in his (her) mouth, which was smaller than his real mouth, against her teeth (which still ached, as she (he) had only lost another one of her baby teeth last week).
A flurry of scenes. Her father, a potioneer-turned-politician. Her cousin Edmund, a third-year who at once teased her yet looked after her. Her quick little hand, chopping bundles of dittany during potions with a practised efficiency that boys admired and girls resented. She, with her fellow first-year girl and best friend, Hortense Rowle, comparing the gemstone butterflies which Mary had enchanted for them. She and the other first-year girls admiringly and enviously talking of Mary and herself. Then, of Tom. She was enamoured with Tom—Tom saw himself in another light. She stared at him all the time during mealtimes in the Great Hall, much more often even than he stared at Mary.
Yet, Tom had no control over what he saw, albeit this owed in part to the sheer disorder his mind was put in by what seemed to be the totality of Lydia's experiences, so that he could not even try to form a desire.
Then, all of a sudden, everything returned to normal—Tom was back in a bleak little room full of ashes, and everything was strikingly square and tidy. He saw his wand on the ground. He had not even noticed that he dropped it, although it appeared that the fall of it had severed his connection to Lydia's mind. The walls did not bend into curves; the windows did not transform into faces—the world of the material, Tom realised with some sense of gratitude, was one that abided by much stricter laws of physics than the world of the mind.
Tom noticed that the girl to whom the mind in question belonged looked deeply ashamed and embarrassed. Clearly, she had not expected him (nor had he expected himself) to unravel so much of her when she permitted him to enter his mind.
"We'll stop there for today," said Tom. He forced a smile onto his face and softness into his face. "You will help me again, won't you?"
"O-of course," she stammered, likewise squeezing a smile on her face.
Thus the two (or rather Tom, with Lydia's compliance) decided that they would improvisationally meet again, sometime within the week, as Tom thought a fixed schedule would not only be inconvenient, but possibly rouse suspicion. Then they parted ways.
Afternoon potions, Wednesday. "Everything for the potion will be ready within a week," Mary whispered to him, her warm breath tickling his ear, "not of Strengthening Solution, but of Thesmophorium."
Although Tom nodded approvingly, there was something suspicious in the confidence and quickness with which Mary executed this particular plan. "So soon? How?"
"I recruited the help of Tansley and Abraxas."
"You what?"
"Recruited the help of Tansley and Abraxas," she repeated sweetly. "They're my flowers anyway, like you said. Something wrong?"
"You've barely known Tansley for a few days," said Tom. "How can you trust him already?"
"I can just tell," she said with such petulance that Tom knew any further inquiry on his part would be fruitless.
It was in fact Ezekiel Tansley who approached his sister with the offer, as Tom was to learn. As the steward of the Hospital Wing, Tansley had his own private study which doubled as a brewing workshop. If Madam Milosz was in need of any potions, he would be sent on the very following weekend to Diagon Alley to buy all that she required. If any of the apothecaries did not have the potions Madam Milosz required, he would buy the ingredients and brew them himself. All his expenses were covered by Hogwarts. But Thesmophorium was particularly expensive, and not a medically justifiable expense. Thus came Abraxas, whose monthly allowance of four hundred galleons permitted the realisation of the project.
When all this became a reality, Tom partook in the brewing. Tansley's study, though a rather claustrophobic little space, had the advantage of possessing a huge window which allowed potion fumes to escape—otherwise it would have been uninhabitable. Much to his surprise, Abraxas, who was a week ago discharged from the Hospital Wing, returned to it, seemingly just to spend hours watching as Tansley, Tom, and Mary stirred the cauldron whose ingredients he had bought. Tom thought that Abraxas would have wanted to evade the Hospital Wing as much as he could, for surely it was, as a space, an oppressive reminder of his sickness and all that it entailed. But it was not the case.
Where the Strengthening Solution took two weeks to brew, Thesmaphorium would take a month and a half—just in time for the end of semester. To Tom's pride and relief, the bulk of the brewing was done by his sister, who applied herself to the cauldron with a frenzied intensity that he had not seen her channel in their actual lessons since the first few months of their first year. This enabled them to enact a division of labour. Tom, whose own study notes were otherwise highly idiosyncratic and illegible to others, now prepared them with a special diligence so that his sister could easily read them—he often did this on a small desk in Tansley's study, while his sister and Tansley himself worked at the cauldron. They achieved 'Outstanding' for everything except for Herbology in their first year; Tom intended that they would achieve for everything, including Herbology, this year.
He continued to meet Lydia and practice Legilimency on her. "You must try and expel me from your mind," Tom commanded her. She thought he meant it for her sake; he meant it for his own. He wanted to become competent at invading minds; that she might become competent at defending her own was only a happy little incidental of his project. Unfortunately, where Tom rapidly became more competent at navigating her mind and uncovering all its little nooks and crannies, she hardly became better at defending it—not so much from incompetence, as from the pleasure she derived by his invasive presence.
May came. Tom was no closer to learning what his sister and Arcanius Fawley had done at the latter's home; his initial plan of wheedling information from Abraxas had been all but fruitless; where Antoine Rosier was charmed by Tom's capacity as a courtyard and common room duellist (like any healthy eleven-year wizard would have been), Abraxas, inexplicably, preferred talking of potion ingredients and pureblood gossip with Mary than of hexes and hexers with Tom. As a matter of fact, Tom was certain that Abraxas disliked him. He had no proof of it, but he somehow knew, with complete certainty, that Abraxas quietly raged whenever Tom drew Mary's attention away from him, or whenever Tom spoke harshly to her.
Then, Grindelwald invaded France.
It was a spectacle a hundred times more exciting than the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup. Although Professor Dippet insisted that copies of The Daily Prophet were only to be imported every Sunday, older students began smuggling prints—not just of The Daily Prophet, but various more audacious and theatrical publications, including one of France's own most eminent ones, L'appel du Clarion, whose correct rendering was argued over by its quarrelsome translators (various Hogwarts students) every breakfast—on a daily basis.
As though Poland had been a training ground for journalists and correspondents, the Battle of France was transcribed, described, and photographed so painstakingly that it unfolded in real time through Hogwarts castle. Boys devoured the reports of the skirmishes between the Freimagier and the combined forces of the French Ministry; some of the less judicious among them sought to learn and use the curses detailed within them for hallway duels—the Hospital Wing quickly became busier than ever, and the great hourglasses at the front of the Great Hall were subject to greater deductions than ever. Girls showed each other newspaper cut-outs of particularly handsome French Aurors or even Freimagier magetroops, and everyone waxed lyrical about the suffering of muggles.
Abraxas Malfoy's heart was more invested in the Battle of France than anyone else's. Bizarrely, every wizarding skirmish or muggle battle that the Germans won was received by him like the notice of the death of a relative. When news came that the Headquarters of the French Auror Office had fallen, Abraxas collapsed at the breakfast table, and was relegated to a cot in the Hospital Wing for the third time in the year.
"Why does it bother him so much?" Tom asked Tansley one night. "Is he really so scared that if Grindelwald defeats France, he'll attack us?"
"That's not an implausible eventuality, though," said Tansley, "but no. Abraxas is bothered because his mother was French—he considers, in his traumatised child-mind, every attack on France as an attack on her memory. You understand, don't you?"
Tom wanted to say that he did not understand, because he never knew his mother. But he held his tongue. In truth, albeit he venerated Grindelwald as the greatest living wizard, Tom was afraid of the Freimagier. They were ruthless and cruel; if they attacked Britain, he would have no means to preserve Mary from them. He was, by necessity, bound to his country—he was knowledgeable enough to decide his allegiances in theory, but not powerful enough to decide them in practice. Oh weakness mine, Tom thought to himself in the poetical voice of Sir Hervouet, how I despiseth thee! How I despiseth thee!
But he did not sulk. We've nothing, Tom. Yet we've everything. Isn't it beautiful? His sister's words rang in his head like the music of her singing flowers. It was true. All he had was his prodigious ability to learn–it was all he had—but it was enough to make him superior to all the world. It was only a question of time, of which Tom felt simultaneously impoverished of and profoundly supplied with. He knew he was young, but the war on the continent was a vortex which seemed to suck time out of air.
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat," said the newly inaugurated Winston Churchill to the British Empire. As rhetoric, Tom found it unmoving. However as an object of contemplation, Tom found it most useful. In The Principles of Change, Mòzǐ alleges that everything in the world exists in a state of cyclicality; history was not exempt from this. Where the wand movements of spells of the Latinate and Germanic physikalisches were often intense and rapid—suited for combat—those of the Chinese were long and leisurely; they drew letters in the air, and these letters would remain anywhere between a few minutes and years, if not decades—but they would always eventually cease. Even a spell had its lifespan. Tom observed this; after a week of studying the linguistics of the enigmatic language, Tom managed to draw a water charm with his wand:
水
Three inches long and three wide, blue and diaphanous like a crystal but shimmering like water under the sun, a small stream of water steadily flowed from it to form a small puddle on the floor of his dormitory. For a few minutes, he sat on his bed, mesmerised as it grew brighter and brighter, powerfuller and powerfuller, as though its light gave it power—it became so bright that it was no longer blue, but radiantly white like the sun, so that water amply poured from it as though it were the other side of a whirlpool—before it began to diminish, diminish and diminish until it was dark and almost completely barren, dribbling only little droplets every now and then. Thus 'blood, toil, tears, and sweat' was but a developmental stage in the lifespan of history. Yet history was eternal; thus it was but a developmental stage in the lifespan of a historical period. Yet was it the youth of one period, or the senility of another? The muggles to whom it was addressed would have thought it the former; Tom knew it was the latter.
Every small cycle was partial to some greater cycle. The moon revolves around the Earth, which revolves around the sun. In Virtute Tenebrae alleged that the Empires of recent millennia were so 'short-lived' (citing 300 years on average—a decently long time, Tom reckoned), because they were by and large governed by and for muggles. The great Mage-Emperors of yore (whose earliest domain was Arcadia, and whose latest, Egypt) maintained stability for tens of thousands of years, albeit 'modern' magical historians, whose historiography was infected too much by muggle intellectualism, contend that they never existed at all. In either case, Tom knew for certain the existence of two concurrent cycles—modern 'muggle' history, and the detestable, malignant magical epoque in which he was currently situated, that freer wizards in the future would remember as the age of the 'Statute'. Thus 'blood, toil, tears, and sweat' was but the natural consequence of muggle self-governance—the more Tom reflected on it, the more he considered Churchill tautological. The entirety of muggle reality, separated from magic, was but blood, toil, tears, and sweat—not worth living.
Yin and Yang. The eternal interplay of chaos and justice, according to Mòzǐ, happened slowly. Yet just as a stream would always flow no matter how mild it might be, so did this eternal dance never cease its movement. So could the development of every modern phenomenon, malaise or marvel, be retracted through the study of history. In a sense, there was no disrupting the justice of mother nature. It considered the rampant development of muggle industrialism an untenable development; as the machines grew ever larger and ever more complex, so did muggles, motivated by the inextricable self-awareness of their frailty, seize the opportunity to breed like rabbits. Inevitably, muggle civilization, like an overgrown wasp of hives, would no longer be able to sustain itself and thus cannibalise itself. The water surrounding the 水 would eventually engulf and extinguish it, thereby extinguishing itself. As most muggle localities—Diagon Alley among them—were located in the epicentres of great muggle cities, the Statute's untenability would inevitably be unravelled.
In that sense, Grindelwald's For The Greater Good was not an euphemism—as The Daily Prophet alleged it was—but rather a call for universal human salvation. Perhaps the ancient Mage-Emperors existed, perhaps they didn't; in either case Grindelwald wished to become one himself, as much out of historical necessity as personal vanity or ambition. The International Confederation of Wizards was in that way myopic; to preserve the Statute was nothing but saving less lives today at the cost of many more lives tomorrow. In retrospect, all of this seemed exceedingly obvious to Tom—they existed in a state of emergency—how was it not exceedingly obvious to everyone?
It was in fact, as Tom learned, obvious well over a century ago. The Daily Prophet often accused Grindelwald of 'Bonstregonism'. At first, Tom thought this sounded like a method of cooking. Later he learned it referred to the ideology of a great French wizard of the early nineteenth century—Claude Bonstrégon. In two years of classes of 'History of Magic', Tom had never once heard of this man; his name was only ever invoked, unfavourably, to condemn Grindelwald for lack of originality. A year ago Tom would have taken the opinions of self-certain older students for his own; now, he knew they were stupid. He desired to learn who Bonstrégon was himself and, fortunately, Hogwarts library accommodated this desire just well.
His father was Hadès-Blangis Bonstrégon, the patriarch of an old Lombard pureblood family who made an illicit fortune amidst the chaos of the French revolution, a revolution which had profoundly overturned the institutions and lives of not only French muggles, but also French mages—and it was during this revolution that Claude was born. His mother was a young muggle woman who was a nonentity. For her, no author thought it necessary to present anything more than a trifecta of facts: that she was young and beautiful; that she was either coerced or 'seduced' to sleep with Bonstrégon the father, who was ninety years old; and that she died shortly after the birth of her only son.
A half-blood bastard, Claude Bonstrégon's childhood was a complex one. His father pulled strings in the Reformed French Ministry to have his son allowed at Beauxbatons, which only permitted purebloods at the time. Claude, however, was anything but grateful. He was known to have said, 'I may be a bastard under the law, but my father is a bastard under God'. Yet despite this invocation of God, Claude was not a particularly virtuous fellow—he got expelled from Beauxbatons at the tender age of fifteen, which proved to be a very fortuitous event for him—for he had already inspired such devotion in his peers that many of them 'dropped out' with him in protest, and followed him to enlist in Napoleon's muggle army to fight all over Europe.
Within a year, he had broken every edict of the International Statute of Secrecy. Within two years, he was the preeminent target for the Reformed French Ministry's Auror forces. Within five years, he had persuaded the bulk of said Aurors to join forces with him; together they overthrew the 'Reformed' French Ministry to make the 'Imperial' French Ministry which, rather than passively monitoring Napoleon, actively aided him. Bonstrégon avidly sought to emulate the Roman Empire, which he considered the height of both muggle and magical civilisation, especially in his capacity as a military man. For where the Auror came into being during the early medieval era as bodyguards and stewards of petty muggle Lords, the Roman Magicio were co-commanders of legions alongside centurions; Bonstrégon, now for all intents and purposes the French Minister for Magic, abolished the former to reinstate the latter and, in doing so, induced all sorts of wizards—including many muggleborns and halfbloods—to support the Napoleonic cause.
But in the notorious campaign for Russia, the traditional Auror—and not just Russian ones, for the International Confederation of Wizards had declared both Napoleon and Bonstrégon paramount enemies of the Statute—prevailed against the revived Magicio. At last, Bonstrégon was captured and condemned to the Dementor's Kiss by the International Confederation.
Tom related all of this and more to Abraxas and Ezekiel Tansley, who proved to be fervent enthusiasts of history. A boon. At last, there was something with which Tom could gain Abraxas' favour. Incidentally, it aided Tom's understanding of himself. What was it that made the trifecta of them so abnormally enchanted by history? Especially (as opposed to the muggle world, where all learning was abstract) when there was magic itself to learn? The flattering answer was 'intelligence'. No, it couldn't be, thought Tom. For while this answer made sense if they were posed against someone like William Wilkes, it failed to account for why Alexius Lestrange—who was intelligent and well-bred, but affected a brusque stupidity—was averse to history, or why someone like Walburga Black—who was a dunce, but affected sophistication—took pride in knowing all its facts.
It was, Tom realised at last, profoundly emotionally driven. Tom was not without self-awareness. All three of them—Abraxas, Tansley, and himself—were in some way severely deprived. Which juxtaposed perfectly to the simultaneous deep pride that they all felt. Abraxas was proud of his heritage; his father was the richest man in Europe, and one of the most powerful in the magical world—yet he was still the sufferer of a debilitating, inextricable curse. Tansley was proud of his intellect—but it was this same intellect which rendered him so eccentric and which, compounded by his status as a muggleborn, and certainly other sources of distress in his personal life (Tom was somehow sure this was the case), impeded him from consorting with his fellow students as an ordinary fourth-year would. Tom was proud of everything; his power, his intellect, the handsome shape of his face—but there was such a wide gulf between the little sapling that he was, and the great tree that he hoped to be. It was these gulfs, these wide departures between where the enthusiast of history found themselves and where they thought they deserved to be, that made them cast their sight beyond the mere present, to the past, which would in turn give them a sense (or the illusion) of power over all time—past, present, and future—through understanding.
"Grindelwald's smarter than Bonstrégon," Tansley had declared one day, as the three of them conversed in the library. "Albeit this is unsurprising. But I've a caveat on what we call 'smartness', you see, the silver lining to the Statute is that the progression of all magical phenomena—spellcraft, pureblood politics, magi-architecture—is that now each successive great wizard, much like muggle scientists and philosophers, builds off their predecessors—"
"Focus, Ezekiel," came Tom, who had by now acquired a habit of compelling the older Ravenclaw to collect himself. "Focus."
"Right–alright," said Tansley. "We were talking about the armies. Yes, that's right. Grindelwald's not going to have the Freimagier act as Magicio; that would be senseless. It was already senseless by Bonstrégon's time—it's only obvious that it's senseless now, thanks to Bonstrégon."
Privately, Tom had developed a sentimental reverence for the Magicio. They were, for him, the incarnation of magical superiority—what would demonstrate muggle inferiority and magical superiority more clearly than a wizard leading muggles in battle, even if alongside their muggle commander? Yet he knew history cared not for neither his sentimentalities, nor for those of anyone else.
"There's a common misunderstanding," said Tom, "that it was the sheer magical superiority of the coalition Aurors that gave them the decisive edge over the Magicio. There's no denying that they were magically superior—but this is utterly irrelevant, in face of the Magicio's strategic operandi."
"The Magicio were weighed down by the muggles," offered Abraxas, whose distaste for 'the muggles' was naked in his voice.
"Indeed they were, Abraxas," Tom said indulgently. "Although I would add that they were above all encumbered by the fact that they were isolated from one another. One Magicio per muggle brigade, while Coalition Aurors fought in cells of three or four, designed just to hunt them. You already know which side got the upper hand."
"The Freimagier fight just as Aurors," Abraxas said glumly. "Grindelwald's going to be harder to deal with than Bonstrégon, isn't he?"
"It goes both ways," assured Tom. "Recall that until the Russian campaign, Bonstrégon's Magicio were unstoppable in Europe. The French are tough; they could mount a mighty defense—and even if they're defeated, Grindelwald won't brutalise the inheritors of Bonstrégon, if only out of respect."
Tom privately wondered the extent to which his words of assurance were true; he did not care if they were or were not. If Grindelwald destroyed France, France deserved to be destroyed.
"Keep in mind, Abraxas, that there is also a nontrivial quantity of Bonstregonists who are partial to Grindelwald—the French Aurors are as embroiled with them as much as they are with the Germans," added Tansley, much less conscientious of Abraxas' feelings than Tom. "On that, I've got to go—weekly apothecary run."
Tansley left. Tom stared at the cauldron from which the simmering emerald-green thesmaphorium made delicate little splashing sounds, like the gentle pitter-patter of rain against leaves. It was almost entirely Mary's work; and although Tom felt pride for it, he also felt an odd impulse to knock it over and ruin it—it would be so easy to do so—but he stayed his hand.
"I wonder what Arcanius Fawley would do, if he knew about this," said Tom, his eyes intent on the cauldron, but his mind set on Abraxas.
"Wouldn't vex him too much, I believe," came Abraxas. "He knows Mary quite well. He's used to her whims."
What's that supposed to mean? Tom wanted to snap. He had, for the past month, taken every opportunity to subtly allude to Arcanius Fawley, with the hope that Abraxas would reveal something of what had taken place between him and Mary on April the eleventh. He never did—it was as though he was aware of the game that Tom played—until now.
And if Abraxas was aware of the game that Tom played, ought Tom not let him know that he was aware of his awareness?
"You have seen my sister act whimsically then?" asked Tom. "With Arcanius?"
For a long moment, Abraxas said nothing; and this was how Tom knew that whatever he would next say, was a lie.
"She acts rather whimsically around everyone." Abraxas shrugged. "I find it charming."
On the second of June, the Freimagier overran the Place de Furstemberg in Paris—the headquarters of the French Ministry. Two weeks later, the Nazi muggles occupied the city completely. On a memorable Saturday morning, the Slytherin table buzzed over a particularly bold piece of writing.
GRINDELWALD'S RAVISHING OF FRANCE: THE GREATEST CAMPAIGN OF SUBTERFUGE IN HISTORY
It came, of course, from the rag that was The Daily Prophet. Nonetheless for all its faults, Tom knew that truth could be gleaned from magical Britain's most circulated newspaper, just as one could drink water from a dysfunctional tap by applying one's mouth to a hole in its piping. At any rate, the article was writing by Fabuloso Lockhart, a notorious but sought-after sensationalist, who firstly pointed out that which everyone already knew; that Grindelwald had spies within the ranks of French pureblood society, and that he employed said spies to sow division between preexisting segments of it. He then disclosed a plot whereby a clique of 'high-ranking Bonstregonists' had 'neutralised swathes of the French Auror Forces' through 'deft and devilish application of the Imperius Curse'. This plot in itself was, at least to Tom who had read of Bonstrégon's own exploits, utterly unsurprising—war was unforgiving; of course unforgivables were liberally used. But the second-half of the article was nothing but absurd conjecture; it not only revealed the names of all the supposed conspirators of said plot, but also gave extensive portraits of each conspirator's personality, and lyrical descriptions of how particular female conspirators seduced senior members of the Cour d'Eternité, the French Wizengamot, with the aid of 'Persian love-curses' that Tom doubted even existed.
"Fascinating," murmured Thane, whose protruding green eyes nearly pressed against the paper which he held absurdly close to his face.
Tom watched him with incredulity. "You don't believe any of that nonsense, do you?"
"Some of it's got to be true," said Thane, shrugging. "Lockhart rubs shoulders with many important wizards. He knows more than we do."
"He knows less than he purports to know," Tom said. "But what of importance have you gathered from him?"
"The French are fleeing here. Remember the evacuated troops from Dunkirk? Now both the French muggle and magical Ministry will be here. They'll join efforts with ours—they'll do a total mobilisation together."
"Is that really so important?"
"A total mobilisation, Tom!" Thane exclaimed. "Just like Grindelwald's government—every Department of the Ministry geared for war. Even the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes …"
Tom's eyes expanded in shock. The older boy alluded to a great possibility, but one which was perhaps too fantastical. "What have you in mind, Thane?"
"They won't bother anymore, with minor little magical accidents," smirked Thane. "Not when there'll be so many major ones in the war. We'll be able to do magic in summer—something in the muggle parts of this country, something fun—"
"What about The Trace?"
"I doubt they'll even bother with it—but just in case, we can acquire wands without The Trace."
Yet Tom did not particularly want to spend his summer with Thane, even if the latter appeared to want nothing short of practicing curses on muggles with impunity—for the simple reason that he could do the same with Mary. Just the two of them, to make a playground of the city once more.
A little to his embarrassment, Tom discovered himself excited to converse with Tansley later that day, on what truth might be gleaned from Lockhart's ridiculous exposé. And what he learned would be invaluable indeed, albeit their conversation commenced, as always, with him redressing the older boy's tendency to prattle.
"—Grindelwald's war is still in its first phase, developmentally. The magical and muggle fronts have not converged; the Freimagier and Wehrmacht took Paris two weeks apart, though it's only a matter of time, I estimate, before some syncretic strategy is devised—"
"Focus, Ezekiel."
"Right-alright," said the Ravenclaw, who hastily gobbled down a slice of honey toast. "It is interesting though that despite it all, the Statute is still retained. Purebloods are often very uncompromising and naive when they think of the Statute, which is ironic, for their ancestors were the ones who devised it. It's not about ensuring that no muggle ever sees a dragon, but rather that if one does, other muggles think of him as crazy—and so is the case increasingly so, despite the general increase of what they call 'incidents—'
"Focus, Ezekiel."
"Right-alright. What I meant to say is that the genius of the Statute is in the fact it only gets stronger with time—and this war testifies to it. Where the Great War was devoid of magical involvement, this war is magical involvement—nine months of it hitherto—and the Statute's stronger than ever. In fact, wars often lead to the International Confederation of Magic looking for more ways to consolidate the Statute. It was in the Napoleonic Wars—a little over a hundred years ago—that they made their first effort to repossess magical artefacts from the muggle world. But it's also wars that lead to magical artefacts falling in muggle hands in the first place."
"Muggle hands," Tom repeated in disgust. "How could purebloods relinquish their 'artefacts' so easily?"
"Typically the pattern for these artefacts is that they originate before the Statute, and get somehow displaced after them. Consider … let me think … India! Yes—India! We stole a great many things from that country. In our last war against the Mysores we sacked the great city itself, and its palace—and took, without being conscious of it, caches of enchanted jewellery and weaponry back to Britain with us. The result? Much of said enchanted goods also had protective curses against thieves; often, their muggle proprietors mysteriously died. But so did the protective curses—yes, recall Mòzǐ, Tom—curses faded more quickly when displaced from their location, and especially when, well, no one cares about the objects upon which they were placed anymore."
"If their curses and charms fade, can they really be said to be magical artefacts anymore?"
"But enchanted objects comprise only a small portion of what the Confederation considers 'magical artefacts'—and some enchantments, when worked in tandem with other substances, are permanent. Consider the poisonous sabers of the Mohammedian Knights of Aurangzeb—they were forged with basilisk venom—which never goes away. The Mohammedian stewards of Mysore undoubtedly inherited some of these—and they are now undoubtedly in the possession of unwitting British muggles."
Tom made no response. The Ravenclaw engendered in his mind a scheme to enact over the summer; one which, of course, could not be shared back to him. It went, instead, first to the library, where Tom sought resources on basilisks, on poison-infused weapons, and on the Mysore Wars. It did not take him long to find a conclusion, which took the shape of a proposal to Thane Mulciber, the next day as the pair of them practised spells along the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
"I know what we ought to do for summer."
"Oh? Do tell."
Thus Tom recalled to the fifth-year Slytherin all that the fourth-year Ravenclaw (who aforesaid fifth-year had an unhelpful aversion toward) said. In doing so, he observed that Thane, unlike himself and the pair of boys he convened with often in Tansley's office in the Hospital Wing, was utterly disinterested in history when it bore no immediately obvious connection to the present—disappointing—but fortunate for him, because the notion of a basilisk poison infused saber very much intrigued Thane.
"I hope you don't intend on bringing your mudblood friend," said Thane. "Though he may be helpful …"
"No—we ought to keep the number of us to a minimum," Tom agreed. "Bring Lestrange."
"Surly old Alex?" Thane raised his eyebrows. "If you say so. Then what about your sister?"
Tom could not account for why, but the notion of having his sister in constant proximity to Alexius Lestrange for two continuous months was an unsettling one. Yet Mary needed to come. So Tom thought quickly; she would come, and Lestrange wouldn't—but he would not reveal this reasoning to Thane—it would be much less complicated if Thane thought that it was Mary, and not Tom, who was so protective of her own integrity.
"I'll ask her," said Tom. "I imagine she'll come."
But at dinner, Mary was not there. Then Tom recalled the Thesmaphorium which they had been brewing for the greater part of two months; it would be ready tomorrow! As the brewing went on he became increasingly inattentive to it, as she had become increasingly attentive to it. In fact, she was undoubtedly attending to it at the very moment—he supposed he would see her tomorrow.
Thus on the morning of the next day, an hour even before breakfast (for Tom knew that his sister, who liked to call him obsessive, was obsessive herself), he rushed to the Hospital Wing, to Tansley's study. She had already left—and in fact the cauldron, which had been on a constant boil since April, was finally flat—all of the green liquid inside had been scrupulously extracted by her.
"Good morning, Tom."
"Abraxas," greeted Tom, spinning on his heel. "You're not with Mary?"
"She left a while ago," he murmured in a strange voice. "She'll finally have her flowers."
"Indeed," said Tom. "Shall we see her?"
"I think you should see her yourself, Tom," the younger boy all but whispered. "You should convince her to destroy the flowers."
"What!?" Tom asked with such force that Abraxas winced.
"The flowers don't just make music—they—they're suggestive—"
"What on Earth do you mean?"
"They change one's behaviour—"
"You're telling me this now?!" Tom grabbed Abraxas by the shoulders. "Plain English—what do you mean?!"
"When I was at Fawley's, he got his little sister to take me to a guest-room to rest, but instead we secretly followed him and Mary through the garden—they got to an arbour of the music flowers, and … Mary—well—she kissed Fawley! On the lips!"
Tom felt as though a cold knife had just been plunged into his chest. He clutched his bosom, and gnashed his teeth groaning, before once again grabbing Abraxas by his weak little shoulders, and slamming him back against a wall. A terrified, aggrieved look came across the younger boy's face—such a young, fearful, and delicate little face—and in a brief moment of lucidity Tom realised that he had forever broken Abraxas' trust in him, before his rage resumed like a furious tide overcoming the shore of his being.
"Are you telling me the absolute truth? Look me in the eye!"
Abraxas obeyed; his pair of grey, almost doe-like eyes which wanted to look at anything but Tom's dark passionate gaze, looked just at them.
"The absolute truth," he managed in a whisper.
And Tom knew it was, for he had in that moment achieved a great feat in Legilimency—he did it to Abraxas with neither incantation nor wand, albeit for a fleeting moment—and knew that Abraxas had said what he meant to say.
Without a further word, he left the Hospital Wing, and marched to the clearing in the forest. Mary, who looked infuriatingly pretty cast under the dim orange light of the rising Scottish sun, had already finished planting the regressed seeds of the saffron. When she turned to face Tom, Tom lunged to grab her by the shoulders and slam her against a tree, pinning himself against her.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked. "What is wrong with you?!" he pleaded.
Like Abraxas, there appeared on Mary's face a genuine terror for a moment—before it quickly quelled and formed into a defiant, indignant look itself. The rational part of Tom's mind, which had been confined to a seat purely to observe the decrees that its zealous, demonic usurpers pronounced on its throne, observed that there was a possibility his sister's accidental magic would in any moment send him flying into the air.
But it did not. It seemed that she let Tom's anger keep her as an object, so that he would make a fool of himself.
"Why do you care who I kiss?" she asked, in a tone more mocking than angry.
"You lied to me!" Tom yelled in her face. "You said the two of you did nothing at his posh little country house! Why, Mary, why?! Why lie?! Why?"
He knew at once that he made a mistake of letting his anger subside into desperation.
"Now you know how it feels, Tom," she said, in a tone as mocking as it was gentle. "You took Caney from me and set Ilaria—and by extension, almost every girl in our house—against me, without giving me the slightest clue or warning."
That she was so composed and sound, despite his furious claws on her shoulders, which he felt were tensed more like the talons of a buzzard than the hands of a human, was utterly bizarre. Then, he realised; she had expected this. She had rehearsed what to say. She had told Abraxas to tell him the truth—Abraxas, whose affection for her was engendered entirely by Tom.
"But you liked it, didn't you?" Tom found himself automatically asking. "You liked kissing him. Him—Fawley—life undeserving of life."
"I desire him very much," she said with sinister calmness. "It's your fault. I told you our tenderness was disgusting—you didn't listen. You took him from me so you could have me yourself. It's your fault! Your-fault-your-fault-your-fault! Don't you see?"
Although his fury would not abate, Tom forced himself to sneer. "Has your mind regressed alongside your saffrons? A necklace is not a kiss—"
"You're right, a necklace is worth much more. You give me kisses aplenty; and you've taken only one necklace from me."
Tom said nothing; he only glared at her and let his hand tighten around the handle of his wand—he wanted to blow up the entire clearing, incinerate all the bluebells and the regressed seeds.
"Tom," murmured Mary, whose voice had theatrically changed again—now to one of solemnity. "We're even now, don't you see? No more fighting—isn't it all so tiresome?"
She was completely serious; he could not tolerate this. He could not tolerate the humiliation that she offered.
"I agree, wholeheartedly," said Tom, clenching all the muscles in his jaw. "But you have insulted me, gravely—only distance will make amends for that."
"'Distance'? How do you mean, 'distance'?"
"We won't spend summer together," said Tom.
"What?! What do you mean? But where—"
I have arrangements with Thane," said Tom.
Now, it was Mary's turn to grab him by the shoulders with imploring hurt and anger. It was as though the vengeful spirit which possessed him for the past few minutes had suddenly exited his body, to enter his sister's. He felt no sense of victoriousness, none at all—only the numbness of necessity.
"But you can't leave me! All alone in London—I-I'll hurt myself! I'll hurt myself if you do!"
"You won't," Tom said, "but I don't care if you do."
A/N: I've been informed that those who use the FFN mobile app might get notifications whenever I do any retrospective editing. If this is the case, I'm sorry to those who have surely been spammed by notifications, and would like to inform you that there is no need to read 'revised' versions of earlier chapters (though if you'd like to, I would be flattered), as all the edits I make are purely syntactical—I correct typos, make awkward sentences less awkwarder, and render dialogue more natural. I never have and never will retrospectively change any significant plot points, even if the temptation to do so may arise. Also, I have no idea how this chapter ended up being 12k words long.