All things shall be subdued unto him

For the first time, the sight of the steaming red engine filled Tom with annoyance and dread. "I'll miss you," he told Sirius honestly. "School is going to be dreadful."

Sirius grinned and tried to ruffle Tom's hair, then pulled back his singed fingers. "You'll be fine, kid. Remember to write, et cetera, et cetera. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"I would have to refrain from doing any of my homework." The sneer was reflexive, but Tom didn't mean it. "Goodbye." He took his new trunk onto the train and offered Sirius a wave out the window before pulling out a potions text.

When Ron Weasley arrived in the compartment, Tom simply selected what he needed to say from the boy's shallow mind. "I won't stand for Snape to keep taking points from me."

"Mate, I doubt he'll ever give you a fair mark." Ron picked through his homemade lunch, scowling. "I hope Hermione'll be back soon, or we'll actually need to figure this stuff out for ourselves."

As if Tom needed a mudblood to think for him. "It'll work out." Then he passed Ron a portion of the meal Kreacher had packed, and returned to reading.

xoxox

Dumbledore's summons came directly after the feast. Tom spent his climb to the seventh floor silencing the idiotic voice inside his chest, the one that was wondering what he'd done wrong.

"Harry, my boy," the headmaster greeted, and Tom wanted to bite the hand extending a glass bowl towards him.

"I'm not hungry," he said. Dumbledore shrugged and popped a sweet while Tom refused to meet his sparkling eyes.

"I spent the summer working closely with the Department of Mysteries."

Tom loathed the way the man smiled, as if he'd been imparting some great favour instead of doing his thrice-damned job.

"You'll be pleased to know we worked out a ritual to summon Miss Granger and Professor Lupin back into our dimension. They've been out for a spot of adventure, but you may inform young Mister Weasley that it is only a matter of waiting for an alignment in the planes. It's—ah, but I see I'm boring you with details. You must forgive an old man, Harry. It isn't every day that a student goes on such a trip, and a muggleborn no less."

"Why does it matter that she's muggleborn?"

That old fart with his holier-than-thou attitude, carrying all the same prejudices under a thin layer of—

"It was quite difficult to explain to Mister and Doctor Granger, you see. In the muggle experience, children do not often disappear out of space-time the way they might here. I sent them a letter, of course. You mustn't worry, Harry."

His own unease splattered across Tom's chest like arterial spray. "Was that all you summoned me here for, Professor?"

"That's all—and Harry? How was your summer?"

"It was fine." At Dumbledore's expectant look, he scrambled for more. "Rather hot. I completed all my assignments easily."

"Mrs Weasley told me you stayed with your godfather for two weeks. How is Sirius? He was quite unwell when he left here, after your rather ingenious use of the Draught of Living Death. You've a fine young mind, Harry."

"He's doing well."

There was something peculiar in the way Dumbledore was staring. Tom felt like someone had stolen his clothes after a shower, like he'd have to walk to his dorm naked.

"Is there anything you want to tell me, Harry?"

Tom kept his eyes fixed on the bridge of the man's bent nose, wondering who'd had the pleasure of socking it. "No, sir."

"Thank you, my boy." The air had collapsed out of Dumbledore like the skin rotting off a corpse.

Tom's walk to the dungeons was automatic, and the walk to Gryffindor tower felt even longer.

On his first day at Hogwarts, Tom realised she no longer felt like home.

xoxox

Classes were tedious. The Gryffindors were ungovernable wretches. The library wasn't how Tom remembered it, with all the useful books missing. Tom stalked from one day to the next in a sour trance of homework and scheming.

When Ron told him Harry Potter had an owl, he wrestled a note for Sirius onto its leg, hoping that something might change.

xoxox

"Hermione will be returning soon," he told Weasley as the boy whined his way through doing his own schoolwork. "Dumbledore told me to tell you."

The holes in Tom's memory of that conversation were deeply unsettling, like a train churning headlong through mist.

He set the thought aside. They had potions on Fridays, and Tom was looking forward to seeing his Death Eater in his chosen role. By all accounts, Severus was an atrocious educator.

"Some of your summer assignments have proven, once again, that you are entirely incapable of thought," Severus sneered as soon as they were all at their seats.

Tom heartily agreed; he'd seen what Weasley thought constituted an essay.

"Potter!"

The week of classes still hadn't accustomed him to the name. "Yes, sir?" If only Severus knew who Tom really was, his face would pale so delightfully, like a waterlogged inferius.

But inside the thrumming castle the Mark's magic wouldn't conduit anything.

"Would you like to share your amusement, Mister Potter?"

No legilimency attack came. "Just the thought of you having to mark our work. Perhaps you might have anticipated that when you assigned it?"

The kick at Tom's shin was entirely unnecessary. Tom hissed. His glare didn't work on Weasley though, and he wasn't allowed to cast pain curses on Potter's stupid little friend.

"Detention, Mister Potter."

"Yes, sir." Tom would enjoy the chance for a good reconnaissance.

Tom had been expecting something…he wasn't sure precisely what, but not this. Besides a bit of looming and a general air of disdain, Severus' lesson was mundane. Like Slughorn, he assigned the potion and walked about correcting their methods. Like Slughorn, he picked out a few students and mostly ignored the rest. Like Slughorn, he used his classes as an excuse to redistribute points towards Slytherin.

"That was entirely disappointing," Tom announced to Ronald once they'd left the dungeons behind.

"Yeah, mate, detention already. You should've kept quiet, but at least it's not lost points."

Over the course of their budding acquaintance, Tom had realised that Ronald Weasley had the empathetic capacity of a teaspoon. The boy saw only what he wanted to, and Tom couldn't have dreamt up a better Gryffindor for himself to endure.

On Saturday morning he rose from the breakfast table while Weasley was busy stuffing himself with black pudding.

"I'm going to the library," he declared. "See you later."

"Sure, can we play another chess game? Dunno what you did over summer, you've gotten much better. I'll beat you next time though, you'll see."

Tom turned away, nodding, and went in search for the girls' bathroom. He had a story to corroborate.

xoxox

"Open," he hissed at the snake he'd carved into the tap.

"Hi Harry," a voice intoned from directly above his shoulder. Tom spun and cursed faster than he could think.

The blood boiling charm passed through where Myrtle Warren's heart would have been, had Tom not murdered her half a century ago. His spell ricochet off the tiles on the far end of the room. In his recounting, Weasley had failed to mention the ghost.

"Myrtle." Tom nodded at her. "You startled me."

That was how she'd ended up dead, back then. Warren had opened the door to her loo stall when he'd been directing Ssnh towards the next petrification.

Ssnh was dead too. At some point since Weasley had told him of it, Tom's feelings had shifted to a deep sense of loss; she'd been a good Basilisk.

"What are you doing? Is someone else dying? Are you going back down there, Harry?"

Why else would he be opening the tunnel, it not to go? Tom turned back towards it and shot off a few cleaning spells.

"Can I come with?" Warren's giggle had become even more irritating in death.

"I should obliviate you." Tom raised his wand and slipped into her mind to guide the spell.

Cold.

There was ice on his spine and a Dementor looming before him. Tom's teeth started chattering.

He blinked at the soft lights echoed on the tiled ceiling.

A face floated over him, hair dangling like little nooses. "Harry? Are you alright? Wait, I'll—"

There was a great splash. Tom blinked again, a few times, just so his eyes wouldn't dry out.

Dumbledore's face loomed, his beard thrown over his shoulder. Tom shrank back, and over the sound of his teeth he heard a keening noise, like the air being crushed out of a mouse.

"Harry, are you alright?"

Tom blinked again, shoving at the ice blanketing his mind, and then he was in the infirmary with somebody holding his hand.

"You scared the shit out of me," Sirius was saying. "I thought I told you not to do anything I wouldn't do?"

It was the oddest sensation, a human hand clutching at his own. He could feel the callouses on Sirius' palm. He could feel the headache pounding away in his temples. It was like the time Bella and Barty had gotten a bag of bones, banging them about in his ballroom.

"Ngh," Tom said. He remembered how all the new recruits had been terrified by Bella's sweet, mad laughter.

"Here."

The potion helped with the pain. Tom didn't release the man's hand. "What happened?"

"Myrtle called Albus, and Albus called me. It's only been a day." Sirius' report was mediocre, but Tom couldn't cruciate him without a wand. Besides, he had a soft spot for Blacks.

"Did she say anything else?" Because Tom's memory of the moments before were clear as ever. On Magic herself, he wouldn't be casting legilimency on a ghost ever again.

"Should she have?"

Tom stopped shaking his head when pain stabbed through him.

"Harry, my dear boy." Dumbledore appeared at the curtain like a bad smell; Tom appreciated the scowl Sirius swept off his own face.

"Is Myrtle alright?" It was the thing Harry Potter would have said, and it made Dumbledore smile.

"I assure you Miss Warren is made of sterner stuff, metaphorically speaking." The following wink was an abomination. "She said you were talking, and then you collapsed. Did you see anyone that might have bespelled you, Harry? This is important."

"No, sir. I'm glad she's unhurt. I want to talk to her." Either he'd obliviated her by accident, or he was being outslytherined by a Ravenclaw—Gryffindor or no, Tom wouldn't stand for it.

"Is that why you were in a girl's toilet? To talk to Moaning Myrtle ?"

"Why else would I be there?" Tom said, looking Sirius in the eye and instructing him, firmly, to shut up.

Dumbledore drifted away when Pomfrey came to administer a dreamless sleep potion. Tom's last thought was that the weight at the base of his bed—the radiating warmth of a shaggy black dog—it was oddly comforting.

xoxox

"Mate, you could have told me you were going to visit Myrtle."

Tom stared at Weasley. He'd been dismissed to breakfast deemed totally healed, but the sight of the ginger made him feel nauseous. "I didn't want you to come with me. It's private."

"Potter, off to see your girlfriend already?" Malfoy crowed, walking past despite his table being across the room. He was making kissing faces, like a dying fish.

Something in Tom's look made the boy flinch and scuttle away. His fellow Slytherins were holding quiet conversations, all order and intrigue. What Tom wouldn't give to be sitting alongside them, weaving a web around them until he had them all begging at his feet.

"D'you need the hospital wing? Harry?"

"I'm perfectly alright." Shouldering his bookbag, Tom stood and let the flow of students bring him to his transfiguration class.

xoxox

The first proper lesson with Alastor Moody had Tom huddling at the back of the room with the Hufflepuffs, hoping to avoid the man's steely blue gaze. It didn't work, with Moody directing every other questions directly at him, but when they moved on to practical work Tom could focus his attention on the girl quivering before him.

Sally-Anne Perks was not surprised that Harry Potter didn't remember her name, and she was perfectly content to let him stand with his back to the wall while they practiced blocking each other's Expelliarmus .

When they were dismissed Moody held Tom behind, swigging from his flask, tongue darting out to lick his lips like a frog. "You'd make a fine professor yourself," the man barked.

Tom wasn't sure if he should take that as a compliment. He could name a thousand things he'd rather be doing than sitting in a classroom all day, surrounded by imbeciles.

Day 16 of an update a day this December. There's more of this on ao3 already if you're the type to binge-read. Thank you for stopping by.