The Horror at Hogwarts

by emscribblings

In 1942, three students disappeared, their bodies never found. The handful of survivors refused to speak of what had occurred, and the truth remained buried and forgotten. In his final days, the reclusive Abraxas Malfoy wrote down the damning words of his tale. Of a time when he pursued immortality and power alongside Tom Riddle — one of the vanished.

I: The Beginning

It has been some time since I've written in a journal. Much of what I have done in the past years are not actions I would put down to page. The written word is evidence, and evidence of my deeds I dared not confess to.

But that hardly matters now. Perhaps this will serve as a warning instead: 'If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.' Nietzsche certainly had a way with words, and a wisdom that I wish I had possessed in my youth.

Before we delve into this story, I shall introduce myself. My name is Abraxas Malfoy. Those who concern themselves with such things might attach my status as a Lord of the Sacred Twenty-Eight to my person, or even my former esteemed Wizengamot membership, prior to my retirement. But the story in this journal precedes such lofty titles — and they mean little in the face of my tale. Here, I bare to you, dear reader, my past. I've done my best to bury it, but as I look upon my sleeping grandson, I find that I must put aside my shame and fear… if only in a faint hope that he will never know what I have seen, nor may he ever walk the cursed halls of Hogwarts.

I do not think the Founders knew what they had done by building Hogwarts on those Scottish hills; if they had, they would have fled, and never returned. They never realised the source of the lands' true power, thinking it a potent intersection of ley lines, brimming with power and potential.

And we have lived blindly since then. Generations of witches and wizards fostered on those cursed lands, like sheep making home at a dragon's den. Few living have glimpsed the horror that dwells in Hogwarts. Prior to that fateful year, I did not even suspect, nor did many wizards and witches before me, whose power have been greater than mine, and who saw more clearly than I. They, too, for all their wisdom and apparent worldliness, had not an inkling of what lay slumbering. I envy them.

Dear reader, if you value at all the gift of ignorance, I beg you to shut this journal and turn away. Rest easier, and heed my warning — never step foot in Hogwarts.

There is a reason that we do not know what manner of creatures walked this earth and beyond. What manner of creatures have slept here since many aeons ago, since the time before the first mountain thrust into the sky, before clouds had formed, before the sun was birthed. When darkness was all the land knew, and in the shadow and dust, things stirred that have long since passed.

But I digress. Let me tell this story from the beginning, when I first met Tom Riddle.

It was in my second year of Hogwarts that little Tom first arrived. He was, I recall, very thin, and his robes were second-hand, sagging on his frame. He stood out amongst the other first-years because of his beauty and the way he held himself. Not yet even Sorted, having only stepped into the Great Hall of Hogwarts for the first time, yet Tom walked as though the school belonged to him. He was like a little Lord, proud and comfortable in his superiority, despite his evident poverty. I recall that I did not like him in that instant I first laid my eyes upon him, thinking him arrogant, even before I learnt his name.

When he was Sorted into Slytherin, my House that I took pride in, I was gripped by anger. I confess that I was a very different person then. I was a cruel child, and at the time, I placed much stock in blood purity. Little Tom, whose last name was Riddle, who stared at the floating candles and the Sorting Hat with hidden awe, was no pureblood. Of that I was certain, and because of his blood, I thought myself better.

For the next year, I split my time between my studies and asserting my pureblood authority over Tom Riddle. He would amount to nothing, I knew, and it was better for him to submit to me, where I may be inclined to grant him some prestige out of my generosity, rather than fade into the obscurity his poor blood condemned him to.

I wonder now what Tom might have become if not for me. It was without doubt that I made him very miserable and very bitter. My actions nurtured the hatred within him, and fed the darkness that I did not yet know exist then.

In retrospect, I wonder how Tom endured it. He was not the most patient individual, as I learned eventually. His temper was short, and his restraint poor. At last, in my fourth year, he was spurred to correct my world of some of its lies. In particular, the idea that I was better than him because of my blood.

His teachings were painful. At the time, I thought it to be the worst pain known to man. I wept, begged and sobbed. I vomited, bled and soiled myself under his attentions. Eventually, he forgave me, and I, corrected of my arrogance, served him. For many years, Tom's role was one of equal parts blight and rapture in my life. He was a cruel leader, who took pleasure in toying with his followers, and punished us freely for imagined infractions. Yet he still held our loyalty in his iron grasp; there was a sort of charm to him, an allure. He was our dark god, and our love for him was twisted, deformed and obsessive.

I did many things under Tom's orders. Most were petty bullying, which I shamefully admit I was rather good at, and some were… worse. Rarely did our actions step into permanent bodily injury, though I have no doubt that only the strictures of school and the pair of watchful eyes upon him gave Tom some measure of restraint. Only twice, I killed for him, and twice, I wept in the night as guilt wracked my soul. I mourned for the lives I ended, for the monstrosity I'd committed. Tom thought me weak, yet I could not help but feel the remorse deep within me.

That remorse has faded. What remorse is there in giving mercy? My guilt is reserved for the suffering I have inflicted on those still living.

Tom could never understand that — I'm not sure if he could even fathom remorse. He feared death all the way to the end. I recall it clearly still, sitting in the woods with Tom's head in my lap. He was pale, cold and streaked in mud and indignity. His eyes were sightless, but even as the life was sapped from him, he raved and ranted with a fevered intensity. "I will not die. Death will never come for me," he said. "I will live — I will live."

In his final moments, I held him with my muddied hands as I stroked his hair from his face. I wiped away his tears, and told him the stories of my childhood, as though he was a babe in my hands. I do not think he heard; he spoke of his ambitions, the greatness he would achieve and his aspirations of immortality until the last breath left him. But I spoke to him anyway, and I looked into his eyes when the last of Tom faded. I cannot fathom, even now, how deep his desperation was for him to still shy from death after all he saw. Even what little I know, what little I experienced is too much. But Tom saw it all, and he wanted it all.

Perhaps it is simply a testament to the kind of creature he was. For all his apparent charm, Tom was ruthless and violent; a monster in the form of a human, and made all the more monstrous for that. For he seemed as human as any of us, yet I never knew a human to hold so little regard for anyone and anything but himself. The only attachment Tom ever formed, the only true affection he held, was to Hogwarts. I wonder now if he somehow perceived what lay hidden at Hogwarts, and felt some perverse kinship with it.

I miss him. I wonder if that makes me as perverse as he. In death, he still holds sway over us. Though, I suppose, death is only a kind of slumber. He is not truly gone—but for now, he is protected. One day I will join him, and for a while at least, I may yet be free from this suffering.

I grow weary. The sun is still up, but memories of Tom are often difficult. The fatigue weighs in me, but sleep is hard-won these days. Too often I see what I wish to forget; too often, the dreams feel more like reality. I hear the dark city's call, the voice that sounds from the deep.

Forgive my penmanship. I do not think I can write more for now. Perhaps I will read to Draco instead.

—

II: The Stirring

I first conceived the idea of this journal when I sent Lucius off to his first year at Beauxbatons. A Hogwarts graduate herself, my wife was most against the idea. She would not speak to me for a full month when I forced the issue, but my heart rests easier, knowing that Lucius has never been to Hogwarts.

I did not determine to write this journal, however, until Lucius was nearly grown. This burden grows heavier with age, and sleeplessness plagues my weaknesses and insecurities. The journal, at first a nebulous idea, a pitiful wish easily restrained, grew as the years passed. Eventually, it became clear that I must write this—I must tell the truth. Yet even after that became evident, I put it off for many years. This journal sat, blank and empty on my desk for a long time, and though I've opened it many times and imagined the words I would write, it is only recently that I have finally touched my quill to paper.

And what relief! Writing of Tom has offered me the only reprieve I've known in nearly forty years. My sleep last night was blessedly, wonderfully, finally dreamless. How long this escape will last, I do not know. But when I woke in the morning, I wept with joy; even if I return to the dark city tonight, I have at least known once more what it was like before.

My elation is only spoiled by the owl I received this afternoon. I had just put Draco down for his nap, and found the owl to be carrying a missive from an old friend, Ormond Lestrange. He went to school with me, and he served Tom alongside me. We are among the few remaining who still remember Tom as he truly was, and who still carry with us the stain of memories too dark to bear. Apart from us, there is only Thoros Nott who experienced it – but whether he remembers it… well, I've not spoken to him in too long to know. Yesterday, there was Darlene Rosier as well, but Ormond's letter informed me that Darlene died in her sleep last night.

Fortunate, indeed.

Thoros grows weaker, too. I saw him at St. Mungo's last Tuesday, and I hear he has been confined to his bed. The Healers expect him to pass within the month. Even as I write this, I feel such sickly envy within me. Many times I have longed for death, but have found no reprieve. This mercy is rarely granted to those who know. Both Darlene and Ormond found death an elusive thing, and they were not there; they chose not to enter. Only Thoros and I were, and only I bore it to Tom's end.

But all of us were there when Tom first discovered the book. There were six of us that he called his friends, though we all knew we were not. Darlene, Ormond, Thoros and I made four. The remaining two, Katarina Mulciber and Antonin Dolohov, died in the making of events.

It was nearing Christmas, I think, in my fifth year. I had learned my place in Tom's circle quite a while ago, and was already settled along with the rest of Slytherin. Few stayed at Hogwarts for the holidays, and in Slytherin, only the six of us, Tom, and several other students remained. They were all asleep when Tom gathered us in the common room. I recall thinking that he looked strange. His eyes burned, though they were usually devoid of emotion. The carefully combed locks of hair were swept into a haphazard mess, and he was unnaturally dismissive of his disorganised appearance.

He told us that he had been in the Restricted Section, and that he had found a book of interest to him. He was animated that night — more so than I had ever seen him. His pace stalked up and down before the fireplace, and more than once, he repeated himself in a manner most unlike himself. He seemed half-mad with purpose, almost delirious as he spoke. He rambled, seemingly without much coherency, and he shifted from topic to topic with alarming regularity. I could not understand most of what he was saying, for he spoke so quickly and so disjointedly.

It was Katarina, I think, who at last asked him of the exact contents of the book he had found. She was always the most daring of us all, and thus, the most often cursed by Tom for her insolence. It cured her not — if anything, she grew more irreverent. But that night, his mood could not be spoiled. He was buoyed, exhilarated and euphoric, and when she asked her question, he turned with the most disconcerting smile. It was manic, not one of true joy but the sheer, overwhelming emotion in it took our breath away.

I can remember the exact words he said, for they still haunt me in the shadows: "Gods, Katarina—old, dead gods. This book has told me their weaknesses. There are ways in here to bind them, to pry from their hands power that belongs, rightfully, to us! We will take from them what they were too weak to hold, and we will rule, my friends."

Was it arrogance? Delusion? Or perhaps, simply, stupidity? A combination of all three, I think now. Perhaps if he showed us the book then, we might have warned him. Or perhaps we would have been so enamoured by his promises and his glory, that we might have believed it possible for him to do as he planned.

At the time, we certainly believed him. Death, then, was permanent and absolute, even for gods. We did not know what our words wrought—what stirred in the deep. When we talked late into the night, until dawn, of our plans to harvest the power of dead, past gods, we did not know the attention we drew. I felt it though, when I lay awake in bed, tired but too aroused by the thrill of our ambition to sleep. The feeling, crawling, aching, piercing—and a certainty, a hideous surety that something was wrong. When at last I did fall into a shallow, fitful slumber, I dreamt, for the first time, of the dark city. Since then I have visited that place again and again. I have tried, once, to capture its impression on paper. But its lines and angles defy me. Its image is of lopsided towers and jagged, teetering monoliths of misshapen stone and green shadows that slither and slide over those impossible structures. It refuses the shackles of reality, existing only in the mind. And even there, its very memory tears and rends; its existence is forced upon me, and it is agony to bear its impression.

Our folly was done that night. We could no longer turn away from the path we had set ourselves upon, for we would never have been allowed to. We had roused what should have been left to lie — and it would not let us go.

I have beaten my hands bloody many times for my youthful arrogance. I have wept as my wife tried to understand what I would not tell her. I have screamed in the night when no one could hear me. When Lucius was born, I vowed he would not share my foolishness — that he would not carry in him the same arrogance that condemned me.

And in this too, I have failed. Perhaps it is inevitable. We are such ignorant creatures. It is our gift. And those that see more are cursed with the knowledge as I am. I have tried to reason with Lucius. I have begged him, have told him all that I can short of the full truth, what danger awaits at Hogwarts.

He thinks me mad—that he knows better than I.

I would pray, but there is no god that will protect him. I recall that night, that first dream, and waking up with the voice reverberating in my head, relentless. It was a voice of drums, growls, roars, hisses and snarls—a sound that belonged to neither human nor beast. The words it spoke, again and again, that I have since managed to render, somewhat, into sounds for the human tongue, echoed with me for the rest of the day.

Cthulhu fhtagn.

I do not know what it means. I have wondered, over the years, if it is a name, if it even means anything. But I have learned it is better to let that thought go — I do not speak the words aloud, but its voice is inescapable. Worse yet, is that I know that voice that whispers in my dreams is not the same as the voice belonging to the one we woke at Hogwarts. There are more than one, the dead gods that lie in the deep, sleeping, dreaming, waiting.

I think we amused it, the one at Hogwarts. We did not anger it, for it would have taken us right then, as we sat in the common room, words of desire, arrogance and greed spilling forth from our ignorant lips.

But it found us entertaining, and because of that, we lived.

—

III: The Disturbance

Hogwarts was quiet for a while after that. We spent our time mired in research; we sought to find one of the graves of the dead gods. Tom often consulted his book, which he guarded jealously and refused to share with us. We would only hear from him an abridged account of the information he had gleaned from within, which only told him that the graves would be places of great power. Our clues were thus sparse and scattered. Our resolve waned though Tom's remained ever strong. It was his new obsession, and his drive was singular.

I did not doubt then our objective, even as my dreams worsened. I persuaded myself that it was but a disturbed fantasy woken by fear — that I was weak for allowing such imaginations to unsettle me. I thought I was alone in my recurring nightmare of dark, looming spires and warped angles, but I learned later that all six of us suffered from it. Tom dreamed of it too, I believe, though he did not tell us. It would have fuelled his mania; the dreams, to him, would have been a sign of his great destiny, and not a warning.

The first piece of information we found somewhat credible was obtained by Antonin. The article, clinical and detached, was written by John A. Falsmouth, a wizard from the Americas. Its copy I have since tracked down, and will transcribe an excerpt of it here:

The patient is a female, fifty-three-years-old. She submitted herself to St. Mungo's two years ago, complaining of headaches, restless sleep and paranoia. My colleagues examined her, and found no trace of any issue that might impact on her health in such a manner. She would have been summarily dismissed, had it not been for the fit that seized her soon after our cursory examination of her person.

The fit, according to my colleagues who handled this case previously, was of a violent and abrupt intensity. The patient was said to have thrashed and screamed for hours. Her words had no apparent meaning, and sounded like nonsense and gibberish. Attempts at restraint by Healers failed; stunning spells would not give her relief, nor did Dreamless Sleep, poured down her throat, have any effect. It was a curiosity — no condition ever recorded had included immunity to magic as a symptom. Eventually, a Healer with previous training as a No-Maj surgeon injected her with a non-magical drug. It was only then that the patient was subdued. Upon examining her injuries while she was unconscious, it was discovered that she had nearly bitten her tongue off. The Healers in charge of her case were forced to allow it to heal naturally, for magic still refused to work on her.

When she woke two days later, the patient was discovered to have apparently lost her magical abilities. She also seemed incapable of speaking or understanding English, though she conversed in it very well when she first arrived at the hospital. She showed no comprehension when asked questions by Healers, and replied in an unidentified language. Linguists requested from MACUSA and Gringotts have not been able to identify her speech either, aside from to confirm that she is, indeed, speaking a language. Attempts to decipher it have failed; the assigned goblin informed St. Mungo's that the patient is speaking in a language too foreign from any known human and magical language to translate. The patient has since remained in our custody, though her condition continues to be a mystery.

I received her case just last year, and I have since observed the patient closely. During the day, she is lucid and often friendly, though I can neither understand her nor she I. Attempts to re-teach her English, and to learn her strange language, have failed. There is some fundamental disconnect, it seems, and we can no more pronounce her words than she can pronounce ours, despite sharing the same vocal structure. Her behaviour is well-mannered and without abnormalities otherwise, and she exhibits no physical maladies like the fit she had when she was first committed to our ward, though magic still fails when used on her.

It is during the night that her behaviour proves more telling. I have observed her while she slept for six months, and have found two recurring peculiarities in her behaviour.

The first is a tendency to talk in her sleep. She speaks the same language, but two words stand out in the frequency with which she speaks them. Cthulhu and R'lyeh are the closest approximations of her pronunciation that I can transcribe in the Roman alphabet. However, when it was recorded and replayed to her to hear, she appeared confused. It was concluded that she did not recall any dreams that would warrant her somniloquy, nor did she associate any particular meaning with Cthulhu or R'lyeh.

The second tendency is more subtle. Her fingers move in her sleep, seemingly in random twitches, but upon closer examination, form a pattern. Her fingers will move approximately every three hours, and will trace out the same pattern in jerking motions, as though she is attempting to scratch words or a drawing out. We gave her soft clay to do this on, and the impression she carved out was of a strange creature. It is difficult to glean the creature's true appearance, for the patient's method of drawing distorted the picture. However, the image is still undoubtedly grotesque. The creature has five, blind heads, and a body made of tentacles. A great, glaring eye sits in the centre of the creature's bulbous mass. I have included a copy of the image in the appendix.

The article, from this point onwards, does not offer much else. Falsmouth continues to speculate on the unnamed patient's case, but it's clear that he simply thought her very disturbed. We attempted to track him and his patient down—but we learned that the patient had vanished shortly after the article's publication in 1899, and Falsmouth had also died suddenly. There was no apparent indication of anything untoward; the Healer had passed quietly in his sleep, despite being only forty-six years of age.

I understood later, that it was surely the mention of Cthulhu that had struck Antonin, as surely as that was what grasped my attention instantly upon reading it. But at the time, Antonin did not divulge this, and nor did any of us divulge that we had heard the phrase before. I wonder, if we did not keep those secrets from each other, if we might have known we were delving into something that ought to be left alone. I wonder if we would have stopped, even if we had known. In truth, I do not think so; we were full of faith in Tom, and full of arrogance in ourselves. Dead gods were not things to fear, and neither were strange dreams of empty cities and dark skies.

The image drawn by the patient is not something I can copy onto the page. Nor would I want to, if I could. The Healer's description, though clear, does not quite do it justice. He was no poet nor great writer, and does not manage to capture the true quality of the picture—I do not think even the best of writers can truly capture the dread depiction: five heads gouged out in jagged angles and sharp ferocity, shaped like long beaks. Its neck is one, fat and stout, and sits jammed atop the creature's body, which tapers out into sleek, tangling tentacles—the patient had drawn at least twenty, and had hinted at more where a shaded mass fans out behind in a curling, dreadful grace, a perversion of a flower's bloom. And in the centre, that hideous eye—there are no pupils, no irises, and yet it stares. It can almost be mistaken to be closed, but I could feel that it is not so. Its gaze is relentless—it is awake; it sees. Even today, that rough, haphazard picture drawn in unskilled hands surfaces in my nightmares. I cannot help but fear, that simply by thinking on it too often, I will call upon more unknowable things.

I will not write on it any longer. No, that is enough for today. I can feel its gaze again. It will not release me until I am dead, and even then, I will face it again one day. I hope I will not remember this knowledge when that time comes—but hope is so elusive now. I say it often, I express it often. Each time I do, it is a lie.

There is no hope. Only brief relief, before more terror to come.

—

IV: The Effigy

I think, throughout it all, it steered us. I cannot think of any other explanation save that, for we found uncommon luck in our investigation. First, the article by Falsmouth, found as we were losing hope in our avenue of choice. Then a sprinkling series of hints, enough to tantalise, not enough to dissuade—rumours of people driven mad abroad, hearsay of cults that worshipped heathen gods. We did not think much on it, except to find in those tales affirmation that the treasure we sought was real. We found reassurance in their consistencies, the terrified whisper of Cthulhu that we traced through half-forgotten folktales.

What did wizards and witches like us fear? We, who were in the prime of our lives, who served at the feet of one who wielded prodigious power with ease? We were untouchable, invincible—and soon, we thought, immortal.

But despite all we had found, all we had learned, we were still no closer to our purpose. All we had were scattered pieces of a puzzle; we managed to fill in the border and perhaps one tiny patch of the whole image. Though the veil that obscured the truth did not lift until much later—and even then, only to offer a glimpse. Still, we managed to piece together enough to obtain some idea of what we were seeking; the old gods, it became clear, were apathetic beings, and belonged to a time long before the first human set foot on the earth. And by nature of their alien time, they were not meant to be known by us, though the perverse worshipped them, and defiled themselves with rituals so vile that even the Darkest of the magical arts could not compare.

I did not voice my thoughts, but I felt, even then, that it was fortunate we would not have to face one of the old gods as they are depicted in the stories, alive and power boundless. I think we all shared that feeling, deep within us. Tom, though, was entranced. He was fearless in this venture, and I think he very much hoped to find one of the old gods that still drew breath. It is likely that he wanted to test himself against them; he did not think he would fail.

It seems a very foolish thing now, that Tom would have such confidence in his own skills, and that we, in turn, could hold such fanatic faith in him. But it was not so absurd then, for he was indeed a powerful wizard—the likes of which I had never seen before. His closest equal was perhaps Albus Dumbledore, who went on to defeat the Dark Lord Grindelwald in battle, and is now hailed as the most powerful wizard to walk the earth, the second, more potent coming of Merlin. But I am sure, even now, that Tom would have triumphed over Dumbledore had he been so inclined. He was extraordinarily gifted in magic and mind. It is difficult to describe the feeling Tom inspired; at one point, I thought that he could reach into the sky if he wanted, and pluck the stars as easily as though he was picking berries. With him leading us, I did not think we could know failure.

Perhaps I am biased—in fact, it is quite likely. I wrote before that his role in my life was equal parts blight and rapture; indeed, I loved him despite the pain he relished in inflicting. My feelings for him were not sexual in nature, and I believe they were made all the more passionate for that. He was my Lord, simple and true, and I revered him with every fibre of my being. I think of him often, and wonder where he is, drifting alone in the dark sea beyond. Would that I could go to him in a heartbeat.

I wonder if my memory of him has warped over the years. There are some things that remain concrete, however, that I am sure is tarred by neither time nor emotion — his singular phobia of death foremost. He would have tried to avoid the course he'd set us upon had he known its end, for his own survival, if nothing else. He would not have succeeded, of course; our fates were sealed — and the final key we needed for our quest came upon us on a spring morning in my seventh year, and Tom's sixth.

There are few days I remember with such crisp clarity. It was a Saturday, and I woke before dawn, restless. Insomnia had sunken its merciless grip into me since Tom spoke of his book, and often, I found myself incapable of sleeping more than a few hours in the night. I woke, that morning, to a vague impression of green ooze and the feeling of being smothered. I required fresh air, and thus dressed quickly. I left the dormitories, climbing the stairs in suffocated desperation. The dungeon air reminded me of the ooze, and in my sleep-fogged mind, I could scarcely remember what it was like to breathe freely.

My relief upon exiting the castle was forceful. I breathed in a lungful of cool, moist air, and felt the burn in my chest lessen. I did not want to return to the castle just yet, so I walked around the grounds. I paced along the edges of the Forbidden Forest, circled around the Black Lake and sat at the base of the towers and turrets of Hogwarts as I savoured the open air. I fell asleep, for perhaps half an hour or so, against Hogwarts's stone walls. When I woke, the sun had risen fully, and I rose to head into the Great Hall for breakfast.

I was still reluctant to enter the castle, and so I took my time. I lingered around corners, examined carefully things I had not noticed before. The brick that was a mismatched colour, the earth that rose higher than the rest, the tree that twisted in a curious angle. Inane things that I inspected with focus I had previously only lent to my studies and tasks designated to me by Tom.

I walked deliberately along the Black Lake, the entire length of it, following its curves and dithering for time. It was there that I found it, right in the shallows. Clear water lapped over it gently, and its visage was half-buried in dark mud and pale stones. But the half of its face that I could see, wavering in the water, drew my attention. I retrieved it tenderly, held it beneath the surface and let the water sweep away the lingering dirt. It was not large, only as tall as my hand. I did not yet see it clearly, but wondered at the strange stone it was made of. At first, I thought the green sheen of it to be moss, but feeling it, I knew it was not so. It was of smooth, cold stone all over, clean with crisp edges.

I withdrew it from the water at last, and turned it in my hand to see it properly in the light, without distortion. But upon my observation, I saw that it was not the curious trinket I thought it to be—it was an effigy, one that roused in me a sharp, acute horror. My first instinct was to let it fall back into the water, and I even felt a scream bubble up in my throat. Yet it held me—it wrapped my fingers tightly around its deformed body, and refused to let them go. My fingers felt foreign; they would not obey my command, nor would my eyes look away from the thing it depicted in the shape of a woman. One side of it was smooth and perfect, a beauty with a dimpled smile and doe eyes. She was unclothed, but her body was smooth and unformed, as though its sculptor had not cared to put such detail in.

It was on the other side that the true horror lay. There was no woman shown, save for in the shapely silhouette. Within its body, worms writhed and squirmed, their sides feathered with long, shining spines; rust-red paint stained its insides, and provided it a repulsive appearance of gore. There was no single eye, but many, half hidden behind the carved worms that glided inside the woman's skin. The only relief was that they were closed; they did not stare like the patient's drawing. They slept still, their attentions away.

It felt like I stared, frozen, at that bizarre thing for hours, but it was surely only seconds—for once I'd gathered myself and pressed the effigy into my pocket, I managed to head in for breakfast, which had only just begun. I do not remember what I ate that morning. It all tasted like ash and bile, and all I could think of were those awful worms, that gruesome rot that twisted within.

I gave it to Tom after breakfast. I was torn, for I could not bear to carry it with me any longer, yet I knew his reaction would not be as mine was. I feared his response, and rightfully so, for upon seeing that repulsive, faceless mass that crawled in a woman's guise, Tom's smile was terrible to behold. It was not repellent to him—he thought it beautiful, alluring; it was the last piece that now presented itself so readily to us, and Tom was ravenous.

It is at Hogwarts, we knew then. What lies sleeping in the deep, breathing power into those lands. The hideous god whose power we sought all along, whose grave lies just below the castle.

There we stood, on the precipice of knowing and unknowing. Our feet rested on the edge over the endless fall into the abyss, teetering perilously. Tom, our cruel, beloved, fearless leader leapt first, and in our zealous devotion, we, one by one, leapt after him.

—

V: The Door

I have sent Draco home to his parents—it feels as though even to write this when his presence is near is to condemn him. I fear the gaze will return to rest upon me, and its attention may yet be caught. Draco cannot stay in this house. Not tonight. I am certain, at least, that Narcissa will be relieved. A wiser woman I have never met, for she has never liked this Manor.

Tonight, I write of the door. It still lies in the bowels of Hogwarts, of this I am certain. It has been there since before Hogwarts was built, and will remain there for aeons after the castle is naught but dust. I hear the boom that sounds from behind when I dream, still calling for me. I see it from the corner of my eye when my mind wanders, that towering, arching doorway, made for giants while humans are but ants at its base. Light seeps from the slit that runs between the foreign stone and the floor, its colour the same as the green ooze, the dull tinge that pulses within the effigy. Sometimes, I feel it when my hand rests upon a door. Countless times I've felt fine wood crumble away, only to reshape into cold stone.

I open doors with my left hand now. My right hand remembers too well the bumps and depresses in the door, and it feels them even when it touches nothing but air; it is imprinted in my palm, every carved line, every gouged imperfection.

We found the door in the dungeons. A part of the castle that had not been used for many years, I suspect from the inch-thick dust that coated the floor. We left footprints in the grey darkness, seven sets in all. Only five would return. The expedition was carried out at night, when we were certain we could go and return without Dumbledore's watchful eyes prying into our activities. Tom, of course, led the way, his wand lighting the disused path. The dust was our first indication—things lay in that corridor that ought not to be disturbed.

We complained of it as we walked. We mocked the elves for not completing their task. Never once did we think that the elves might know something we did not. That they might sense that foulness that lurks, that they might perceive its abomination. They do not clean the corridor; they avoid it, they do not look at it, nor do they speak of it.

Laughter and banter were still traded as we wandered in the darkness, searching for something, though we did not yet know what exactly — we were sure, however, we would know upon seeing it. And we did. The corridor turned, and there was another, but in this hallway we saw it — a bas-relief that stretches along the wall. The world dances and swirls, and to look upon it for longer than mere seconds is to court the limits of sanity. Every detail is etched with agonising clarity in my mind yet at the same time, they slide about like water, formless and vague, impossible to hold onto. The woman is etched into the dark shimmering stone, looking off to the side. Her dimpled smile still curves, her long hair still flows. But her back is flayed open, and from within, the rot is unfurled. Those worming tendrils stretch and lash, those long spines now jagged blades that carve through all. They reach out and wrap around strange spheres of varying size, consuming and devouring. In the background, dark jewels glimmer, an infinity of stars. The eyes are all open — looking upon them then, I felt my insides writhe. There is terrible hunger in the eyes, and something deep inside me perceived that.

The shift came as we stared upon that relief. Those glaring eyes, the darkness we stood in, the coldness of the air, and the wrongness — the echoing, overwhelming sensation of it. Instinct rose and was, for the first time, heard. We knew then, the six of us, that we should not have come. What gaiety, what anticipation we had carried as we had explored those corridors earlier, vanished in an instant, swallowed by the darkness that was suddenly too oppressive, that crept, whispered and crawled.

I am not sure which of us said it first — Darlene, perhaps? — but words of fear, of hesitance were eventually uttered. All of us concurred — the terrible certainty gripped us. We did not want to continue forwards. We would have fled to the security of our dormitories, of warm, bright firelight, had Tom's presence not censured us.

"Do not fear, my friends," I recall Tom said. He carried his mysterious book with him, though he did not open it. It was the first time any of us had ever seen it, and I thought it to be a strangely unassuming tome. Its cover is plain black, worn and frayed. The pages are yellowed and spotted with age. That it held such secrets and power over the old gods, I could not believe. "It is dead — the dead are powerless."

"Look," said Ormond, and I felt my dread stir despite Tom's confidence. Ormond gawked at something behind me, and I dared not turn. I felt the shadows around us grow; the same instinct that warned me of our foolishness in coming here tonight roared. Flee, it said, but my feet were frozen by loyalty and terror.

When at last I scraped together my shattered courage, I looked. The door was there, looming, waiting, shut. The creature's massive human face emblazoned the stone slabs, its smile no longer sweet but darkened by a festering malevolence that saturated the corridor. Darlene grasped my hand, and I grasped hers as well, as tightly as I could. Tom saw our weakness. He disapproved. I was made to go first.

I let go of Darlene's hand; she clung to me, but sweat slicked our palms and my hand slid easily from hers. My tremors were of such intensity I am surprised now to think that I managed to walk, though I stumbled thrice. I approached slowly, warily. Every step taken was to rebel against my baser instincts, but inevitably, I stood before it. First, I tipped my ear closer to the door, and listened. All I heard was silence, but it did not reassure. It was the silence of held breath, the silence of waiting. I laid my right hand upon the surface.

From behind the doors, it echoed—the rasping, the gurgling. The sound slid through the cracks and sliced into my ears, burrowed deep into me where it gave fresh, terrible life to my fear. The hairs along my arm, all the way down to the fuzz on my fingers, raised, and I felt the vibration of the sound, a drum in my belly. I fled back to Tom's side, clutching my ears. So struck I was by that horrible noise; I knew then what it was, and it petrified me.

It breathes.

Even Tom was pale, but he remained steadfast in his mad purpose. I begged him to leave, to turn back. There was something awful and evil lurking here, I told him, I sensed it with such clarity, such certainty. Of course, he did not listen. My pleas fell on deaf ears, and when finally he tired of it, he said to me, "Leave then—go on. Run, and when I catch you, I will unleash the wrath of this dead god upon you, and you will know an existence of only agony." He said the same to the others, for he could tell that they too had their misgivings, that I was not the only one who wished to abandon the cursed mission.

I very nearly left. Darlene and Ormond did leave. Our fear of what lay behind the door far outstripped any fear we held towards Tom. But my love outstripped my fear, and because of that, I stayed. I lingered behind him as he stood before the door, his breath shallow with excitement, quickening with the rolling echo of that monstrous breathing. I bit my lips raw when he laid his hand on the door, and it opened as though inviting us in. And when behind it, we saw nothing but absolute, unnatural black, I pursued Tom into the darkness.

It was a stumbling pace we kept, blind as we were. The door shut behind us after we entered, and I smelled the sour fear rising, palpable in all of us. We were left in the blackness then, which no spell, no fire could illuminate; so solid was the darkness that when I waved my fingers close enough to my face that they grazed the tip of eyelashes, I could not see even a hint of movement. My mind conjured horrors of what was obscured by the dark. The eyes, perhaps, hiding from us, but fixated on our pitiful forms that shuffled awkwardly in our blindness. I felt a prickling sensation more than once, weighty and chilling—I know it watched us in the dark, where we could not see it. Its breathing seemed to grow louder—I imagined the creature's face, gigantic and false, turned towards us, observing us as it inhaled and exhaled. Was it right in front of us but we simply could not see it? Were we forging senselessly, stubbornly onwards, walking ourselves straight into its gaping mouth? Was it its breath that we felt, moving the air, warm on our face?

The way sloped up, then slanted downwards again. It was a long walk, with only each other for courage, but I drew upon very little from my friends. We were all guarding our bravery jealously for there was so little of it left. I was sure that I would die that night. My warped imagination tortured me with every step I took; the next would be the last, I thought. The fear that gripped me was such that I wept and whimpered… I remember the tears I tasted on my lips, the snot that bubbled at my nose. The fear was hideous, crippling, and I cared not for appearances or any's opinion, save for Tom's. Yet as I cried quietly into my sleeves, there were no words of mocking even from him.

We walked for hours, I think — or was it a day? Two days? Time passes strangely in that place. We eventually found light. A pair of colossal braziers flanks massive steps that led up to a towering archway, made for something far larger than humans. Glowing embers lit up our faces, and I looked carefully at each one of us — would this be the last time I saw them? — and saw pure, maddening fear — save for Tom's. He was never afraid. Only nervous, excited, exhilarated, eager. I drew strength from his fool's courage, and felt it burn away at my turmoil. He was warm and bright, our light in the dark.

We began the climb, and at the top, we found our prize.

—

VI: The School

The tomb is

It lay

There was another

—

Few are as accomplished as Albus Dumbledore at the art of lying. My dealings with him since Hogwarts are sparse and perfunctory, but each time I see him, I remember the night a little more clearly. When he speaks, I hear the dread slither that crept through the darkness, the cacophony of screams, disjointed, disharmony. I hear our frantic footsteps, blind, stumbling and clumsy. I hear the voices fading in ghostly echoes, their owners consumed by the shadows giving playful, toying chase.

Antonin's voice left us first. He was in front of me, but he fell as we were running. I heard his cries for help. I ran past him, heedless. The thought of stopping to help him did not once occur to me. I heard his voice fade to a whisper, yet it was as loud as a scream in my ears. I heard his terror, building, rising to a crescendo, peaking. His whisper died away, and the black knowledge yawned in my heart, grasping and tightening at the core of my soul.

The tears of sorrow came later, when I was alone, sequestered away safely behind the barred doors and darkened windows of one of our family homes in India, far from Hogwarts. But not then. In the haze of terror and panic, I spared not a moment of grief for my lost friend. I only had one all-encompassing thought that drove me. It seized my mind, a relentless, stringing chant of not me.

In retrospect, I was not driven by a desire to escape. Not really. Escape was so nebulous in that tomb. The mere hope of it was a dream that felt like it was already slipping through my fingers. Instead, I chased after the darkness. I wanted away from this light, from looking back to seeing gleaming eyes that glowed with unholy brightness, from seeing shadowy tendrils of rot lash out like writhing tentacles, gouging holes into the concrete as she lunged after us. And I wanted away from that face. That beautiful, dimpled face, smiling in bliss as we pleaded for mercy that would never come.

I wanted the blackness that no light could ever relieve. Where all that existed was blindness, and I could die without staring into the face of what would take me. It had been my torture as I'd walked up to the doorway what felt like years ago, but now I craved it.

When Antonin died, Katarina screamed. Tom had run ahead first, and he led the group. Katarina snapped at his heels, and after her trailed Thoros and I. We understood that the plan was to find the archway guarded by the braziers, that Tom intended to find a better position in which he could strike her down. He wanted to funnel her out, to limit her might with the constraints of the archway, where she might not be so fearsome as in the cavernous ruin of the tomb. But when Antonin died, Katarina's fury and grief was relentless.

"Bastard," she called him. "Murderer! Coward! Turn back! You left him to die, you left him!" She screamed at him other obscenities, but it was ultimately this cry that forced Tom to a halt: "You filthy half-blood! We trusted you, but you flee like a rat! You are fit for nothing but shame!"

We were nearly to the door then, where the embers had grown into twin fires, blazing and roaring so fiercely they licked the carved ceiling. Ahead of me, I saw Tom stop. I saw Katarina, and it is her expression that remains with me to this day, sharp with fierce, unforgiving clarity, when other memories of her have dulled with time. It was one of fury, pain and grief. Her golden hair fell in crazed curls around her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, bright, mad. She had her chin jutted outwards in stubborn determination, in defiance of Tom, but her lips trembled. She was faced towards me, towards the coming shadows. Her wand was raised uselessly in her hand. She knew it was hopeless, I'm certain, but still her shoulders were set.

There was a moment where her blue eyes, grey in the dim light, met mine. They did not plead me to stay with her, nor did they beseech me for help. They simply stared, and in them, terror and grief made for righteous fury. She looked, in that moment that spanned a twitch of the eye, a skipping of a heartbeat, like a fallen goddess, despairing and vulnerable, yet proud nonetheless.

Then she turned her gaze away and stood her ground.

"Katarina," Tom roared. It was a command that she did not obey—she stood apart from us then, and I understood that she had renounced any loyalty to Tom. "He is dead, you fool!" She did not give an indication that she had heard him.

I sped past Katarina, and I heard the whistle of her wand lashing through the air, the indistinct scream of incantations and spells as she cast them to no effect.

"Pull her back," cried Tom. "Pull her back, Abraxas!" When I did not, he cursed and turned, continuing towards the archway.

It was the first time since I had pledged myself to Tom that I disobeyed him. I recognised what Tom did not realise, let alone understand. In the final, endless look I shared with Katarina, I knew that she would not turn back. She would die — knowingly, fearfully and willingly — because her love had already been taken. I do not know for certain whether the feeling had been mutual on Antonin's part. If it was, they kept their relationship very private, and gave no hint of it to us — but I reason that they were indeed lovers. I do not think that an unrequited love could have inspired such blind, devastating boldness in a person, even one as hot-headed and tempestuous as Katarina. Whether Tom knew of their relationship is irrelevant. He would not have understood Katarina's choice even if he had — weakness, he would have called it.

I felt her last breath like a cool kiss against my skin. I felt the shiver that curdled my insides, and from the depths of the tomb, her silent screams echoed. I did not stop. I did not look back. But when I closed my eyes in the years to come, I saw her dying expression imprinted behind my eyelids. That grief-stricken rage contorts into pain, perhaps even regret. Her veins bulge and her eyes widen until they seem mere millimetres from popping clean out of their sockets. Then her face is consumed in spidery shadows, and she disappears through massive, rotted lips.

Thoros reached the door first, but he did not stop. He did not stop even when Tom called him back. He was deaf with terror, and so mindless of it he was not even aware of abandoning us. In an instant, he had vanished into the darkness, the sound of his fleeing steps swallowed by the roar of the flames. I recall the fury on Tom's face that promised retribution. Traitorously, I thought it to be a pale threat compared to what we had awoken. For a moment, I even thought to abandon the cause and follow after Thoros. And again, the thought of Tom froze my will — I could not leave him here alone to face her.

The wait was long and torturous. Two is a very lonely number when there were five at the beginning. I heard her approach, louder and louder, a dread slither that haunts me still. In my dreams of shadowed halls gilded gold, carved with words from a language that I cannot understand, the sound is always in the walls. It creeps around me, its volume rising… rising — wet, repulsive squelches permeate, the discharge from black worms writhing together. It slides across the floors, crawls over the walls, drawing ever closer; and the stench, that acrid, bitter scent that fills my nostrils. It seeps in me — the rot is within me. Black, cold, hideous. It stinks of terror, it twists and gnaws and tears. That rot that never leaves me, and lingers always in soul and mind.

In my memory of the tomb, Tom stood before me, small and wilful as he waited at the mouth. The book was open in his hands, and that weathered instrument seemed frail in his clawed hold. He was but an ant, stubborn and defiant at the feet of a giant. It was useless; no matter how poisonous the bite, an ant's sting can only penetrate the outermost layer of a giant's skin. It was folly from the first to last.

Of course, he did not know it then. Tom's faith in his magic was unshakeable. And why should it not have been? None had challenged the supremacy of his magic before.

The hissing slither crept closer and slowed. She watched from within—I felt eyes on my skin, pricking like a thousand needles. They sank into me with cold, clean precision. The icy edges of a thin blade dragged gently against the skin, pressed hard enough to threaten, but teased away by an expert hand from a true cut. I whimpered. She breathed. It felt like acid on my skin.

"No more," I pleaded. Tom was pale-faced but determined. He ignored me, and began his chant. I fell to my knees, the sound of that foreign language spilling from Tom's lips felt like my insides were being wrenched out my throat. It pounded against my ears; it was unnatural, monstrous. No human ought to speak those words, and certainly not with such power fuelling it.

Yet the alien words spilled from Tom's lips with ease; it fit him. His form was silhouetted in the darkness. The braziers' blue light wreathed the ceilings of the room, and beneath that glow he seemed pale, small and fragile. Yet when he spoke, the very air around him was charged and changed, and those shadows that lashed out at us shied away.

Tom's voice rose in volume, and I began to scream. My eyes were affixed beyond the archway, where I saw the gleam of eyes loom from the darkness. There were many — I counted three, fourteen, sixty, a hundred — and all held within them a terrible, old anger. I felt it in the air, in my bones and in my blood. I tasted it upon my lips, and felt its chill burrow into my skin. I screamed louder, until it was all I knew. My own voice, hoarse and desperate, and that rage that bore into my senses and set upon my mind like a werewolf in the throes of moon madness.

I remember only vague flashes of what occurred next. I recall how the shadows moved, and coalesced. They grew thicker, stronger and more opaque. Whatever spell Tom was weaving, it was failing. I recall the rage turn to satisfaction. I recall the frantic rustle of pages being turned as Tom searched for something, anything, to subdue the awful creature.

At last, however, it proved to be impossible even for Tom. He spat out a final, garbled string of words, and I saw a flare of light that pushed the shadows back. Tom's face drained of blood in the same instant, and he swayed on the spot. He turned, and looked at me. He said nothing. He fled. It took a moment, but I gave chase after him. We did not run very quickly—he was weak with exhaustion, and my legs still felt cold and boneless from my fear. Dimly, I noticed the way the fabric of my pants clung wetly to my legs. It was a clinical, distant sort of observation, one I only noticed because it hindered my ability to run. I was numb. I had spent my terror, and mentally, I was utterly drained. I did not even have the energy to feel betrayal towards Tom, who had chosen to leave me as fodder for her, in hopes that I might slow her down.

Perhaps I still was aware of it though, on some level. For I must have pulled ahead of Tom at some point, but I did not see nor did I hear. Sometimes, I think this is a choice of self-preservation that my body made for me — to shut it all out, and simply run. The world faded around me, and there was only myself. Tom existed no longer, and I ran until I burst through the doors into the light.

My senses returned to me. I became aware first of the warmth. It was in the air, the stones, seeping beneath my skin and filling my veins. I had not realised how cold I had become until that moment, when the icy emptiness began to recede.

I was aware next of Darlene and Ormond. They watched me with wide, frightened eyes. I met their gaze. They said words I did not hear. Thoros was on his knees before them, a puddle of vomit splashed on the floors.

I remembered Tom. Yet even for him, I could not bring myself to turn around, to look upon that doors again. I heard, however, its resounding boom as they swung shut, and in the utter silence, I knew that Tom had not emerged. The thought followed me into a deep, disturbed unconsciousness.

—

VII: The Deception

When I came to, I was in the Hospital Wing. It had been a full two weeks after our venture into the tomb, and a week since I had been conscious — conscious here a relative term. I was told that I had neither eaten nor drunk anything; that Darlene, Thoros and Ormond had visited me daily; that Dumbledore had attempted Legilimency on me, and found my psyche so buried beneath my catatonia that even his considerable skill could not retrieve me. They feared that I would never come to.

The Matron was there when I woke truly. It was dawn, and the Hospital Wing was just beginning to brighten with the sunlight. I rasped for water, which was offered quickly to me. I drank with a dying man's thirst. Food was served to me while the Matron rushed to find Headmaster Dippet. He arrived mere minutes later, out of breath and looking greatly relieved.

"Excellent, excellent!" he said, clasping my hands as though I had done him some great service by waking up. "Thank Merlin you're alright — the entire faculty has been very worried — your father, especially, will be glad to hear of your full recovery —"

Full recovery. I dwelled on that phrase for years to come. Certainly, I maintained the basics of my mental faculties. I spoke, I wrote, I had my memory intact. My logical and mathematical reasonings were not impaired, nor was my ability to navigate the shark-infested social circles of politics and high society. On all aspects, I had indeed survived with my skills and abilities intact. I was whole—at least, whole enough in my father's eyes.

Still, I'd been changed. I was aware of that much at least, even as I lay in my hospital bed, mind sluggish and nerves strung higher and higher with each word that Dippet squealed in his nasal voice. I did not understand how much then. I was, hilariously I think now, relieved to have survived.

I was kept isolated, and only allowed one visitor after that; Dumbledore. I was given several hours' rest before he arrived. I worried, distantly, of divulging the truth, which was both too fantastical and too dangerous to be revealed. There are no laws regarding the harvesting of godly power, for who would believe such fancies? But it is hardly the sort of thing one does with good intentions.

Dumbledore allowed me to sit in silence and collect my thoughts first at least. His presence made me wary, but where once there had been a tinge of fear and awe, now there was only suspicion. I remember picking at my bedclothes as I sat, thinking how very itchy the hospital gown was. I remember noting Dumbledore's uncharacteristically drab robes, which were a sombre, simple blue.

"Tom," I said after we sat in silence for a solid half hour. "You have not found him?"

"No, Mr Malfoy," said Dumbledore. He paused. "You do not ask of Miss Mulciber and Mr Dolohov?"

"They're dead," I said tonelessly. "Didn't Thoros tell you?"

Dumbledore bowed his head in sorrow. "He had said Mr Dolohov had passed. He spoke nothing of Miss Mulciber."

"She died after him," I said. I am not sure why that mattered to say. But it did. "He slipped, you see." I thought of Tom, lost in the shadows, wandering. I had not seen his last moments. "I expect Tom is gone too." Blinking, I felt unexpected tears wet the rims of my eyes. My relief of survival ebbed, enough to allow the sharp twist of grief to pierce through the fog.

Dumbledore did not offer words of sympathy. It was just as well — all of us knew how he felt about Tom. I think he must have been relieved at the news of Tom's death. Certainly, if he had attempted to offer his condolences, I would have lashed out at him. It would have been insincere — a farce. Nor would Tom have liked any sort of courtesy extended to him by Dumbledore.

"What do they say happened?" I asked.

I did not expect an honest answer, but I received it anyway, even if I did not know it at the time. "Miss Rosier and Mr Lestrange have been rather reticent. They only informed me of their late night excursion of the castle, but would not divulge where. Mr Nott has been more helpful; he told of a book that young Mr Riddle procured, one on ancient magics. He told me that you and your friends went to conduct a ritual, but that it went terribly wrong." I felt Dumbledore's gaze, piercing, in the side of my face. "I do not think he was telling the full truth, however. Will you, Mr Malfoy? I cannot help you when all I know are half-truths."

The itch of my bedclothes grew. My fingers dug into my skin. Scratch, scratch, scratch. I chewed on my bottom lip as I considered my options. They were quite limited. The Aurors had gotten involved. Tom was no longer here to guide us. I was alone, scrutinised on all sides, lost and afraid. I felt very young then, and had yet to truly comprehend that my friends were dead. Only two weeks prior, we had spoken of immortality, and were convinced that it was well within our grasp. I wanted someone to take me by the hand and tell me what to say. I wanted someone to distort the truth for me, to tell me how to lie so that I might be afforded the best outcome for I did not know how to do so. But Tom was gone, and I was alone.

"Tom never shared the book with us," I confided quietly. "I do not know its contents. I do not know the exact details of the ritual he wished to conduct."

"And do you know the location of this book now? Its title?"

I shook my head. "It has no title." Beyond that, I could not articulate. The book was surely still in the tomb, but the words lodged in my throat. I tried to shape the words. Always, they died in my mouth, formless and soundless.

"Perhaps," said Dumbledore, with gentleness I had not expected him to offer me, "if you started at the beginning?"

"I — Yes," I murmured. "The beginning…" I considered what to say. I still had not decided if I ought to tell him the full truth, and I was beginning to suspect that did not matter. I myself did not comprehend yet what the truth was—how could I, then, divulge it to another? It was not a matter of will, but a simple matter of being incapable. I scratched again at my body, and attempted: "It began when Tom found the book. I'm not sure from where — the Restricted Section? He brought it to us… nearly two years ago now, I think. He guarded the book very jealously. He would not let us touch it nor look upon it, let alone read it. But he told us that he'd found secrets within… secrets that would —" I broke off.

Dumbledore's voice was soft. "Do not fear. Speak freely, young Malfoy. I will do my best to ensure your safety, regardless of what actions you may have committed."

Hesitantly, I spoke. "He — He promised us power. And — immortality." I did not need to look at Dumbledore to know he had gone still. "I did not know how he planned to fulfil that promise until that night," I said. Through a remnant of self-preservation, I gathered my wits to lie. "A ritual was involved, of course, but its ingredients, its requirements… I knew nothing of those."

"I see," said Dumbledore gravely. I was not sure if he believed me, but now I think he must have. He has never since given any indication that he thought me privy to more knowledge than I had suggested. "It took two years to prepare it all?"

"Not exactly," I admitted. "It was… We lacked a proper location to conduct our ritual. Tom told us it required a very specific location—a place of both ancient darkness and power."

"And you found it? Where?"

I licked my lips nervously, and nodded. "At Hogwarts," I said quietly. "It was at Hogwarts. In the dungeons."

"Where, precisely, in the dungeons?" asked Dumbledore. He leaned forwards, intent. I avoided his gaze anxiously.

"There is a disused section of the castle. In the south wing." I was struck with a sudden surety as I spoke. A nudge that I knew to be true in every fibre of my being. "You won't find it. The door is closed now… It will open when she wants it to."

"She?"

I shut my eyes, shaking my head. I had begun to rock back and forth. "She sleeps now," I mumbled. "She has returned into the tomb."

"Who is she?" Dumbledore's voice was urgent. "A student?" He thought that we had brought someone in there with us; most likely, he thought we had attempted to make Horcruxes. I did not know of Horcruxes then, but I understood that he thought us kidnappers or worse, murderers.

"She sleeps there," I said. "It is her tomb. We did not bring her there — we sought her out. Do you understand?"

He did not. He asked me more questions after that, but I no longer heard the words. His voice had faded to a warble, a buzzing, drowning beneath Antonin's screams and Katarina's voice shrieking useless spells. My eyes were open and my body was still, but beneath that placid, dull exterior, the tomb had returned to haunt me. I stared into a corner of the Hospital Wing, so pristinely white, and saw darkness and grasping worms sliding across the walls. In the prison of my mind, I screamed.

Distantly, I felt the touch of his mind against mine. Just as quickly, he shied away. He did not attempt to do so again.

I was told later that the Matron had to heal my skin, for I had scratched so continuously and aggressively that I had gouged strips of my own flesh out. When I was released a week later, I learned the rumours that had spawned in my absence. Most students seemed to believe that Katarina, Antonin and Tom had died in an ill-fated spell-crafting experiment. A laughably pathetic excuse; I was offended, almost, to think that so many would have believed Tom to be so careless. But a larger part of me found relief in having a tidy story to fall back upon, as did my remaining friends. We upheld the narrative, fed it and nurtured it until it was more irreproachable. Until we could, almost, believe in it ourselves.

Dumbledore has questioned me many times since. Each time yields him no more answers than the last. The worry he had held that we had brought another with us into the tomb had died when it had become evident that no student was unaccounted for. Now when he looks at me, I see fear and pity stir in his eyes. He saw very little when he entered my mind that once, but I think he saw enough to glimpse the vastness of the demon that has made my mind his palace. Albus Dumbledore's pity has a bitter taste but it did well to ensure that no hint of the truth ever escaped. He spun our lies for us, and I observed for the first time how deftly he succeeded at twisting truth into fantasy.

In the month after my escape from the tomb, I lived on in numbness. I returned to my daily routine, attending classes and taking notes dutifully. I suffered the occasional relapse, but I drifted back into my comfortable fog easily, allowing myself to sink into it and seep into my mind. I would not have minded to live out my days that way. It was easy. It was but a mockery of contentment, but nevertheless, I clung to it with a boy's foolish desperation.

Then I found Tom.

—

VIII: Resurrection

We loved our strings. No longer puppets of Tom's will, yet we yearned desperately for him. We filled the void in different ways — I with routine, Darlene and Ormond with sex, sometimes with each other, more often not, and Thoros with violence. Of the four of us, Thoros's change was most explosive, most dangerous and most evident. He had never been kind, but the Thoros that stalked Hogwarts's halls in the months following was brooding and prone to fits of rage. Many learned to give him wide berth, and even I avoided him when I saw his darkened visage.

No longer was he content to petty bullying, to stealing sweets and whispering 'mudblood' in the hallways. He often vanished for hours on end, only to reappear from some darkened corner or another, with the faintest scent of blood on him. Tom used to do the same, but he was a dabber hand at Obliviation.

Inevitably, the rumours had begun to swirl, and the teachers kept gimlet eyes on him. Evidence was scarce, but it was growing. Thoros was called to Dippet's office nearly every week. Each time he got away without a punishment, his stories grew more ragged and worn, reflecting the boy himself. Darlene and I begged him to keep his head down. He tired of our pleas eventually, and turned his wand upon us. He cast the Cruciactus on Darlene. It hurt her, but the damage was more psychological than physical, I think. It broke their bond irreversibly — what little was left of it anyway.

We were not fool enough to be surprised when his inevitable expulsion came. Selwyn was only a small third-year then. He hobbled into the Common Room one evening, trousers torn and bloodied around his calves. He could scarcely walk, for his muscles were lacerated, the wounds dripping in foul magicks. He had only the barbed, jagged cuts running down his legs, and shattered pieces of half-retrieved memories. But they were enough to serve as the foundation for his damning accusation. The surprise for us was that the boy was a pureblood — I suppose Thoros's darkness had grown so impenetrable as to smother the burn of his own ideologies.

On the day of Thoros's expulsion, I was the only one to accompany him to Hogwarts' gates for the final time. Darlene had not a kind word left for him – the greatest courtesy she could offer him was her absence, and with it, the absence of her resentment. And Ormond… well, in those days, Ormond scarcely noticed anything outside of what was between Darlene's legs.

"You will write to me, I trust," I remember saying to Thoros.

"I doubt it," Thoros said.

I let it be. We both knew that my words were mere courtesy, as though to pay respects to the shadows of our past, and the bonds we once shared with Tom. "Farewell, then."

Thoros turned toward the gates. I saw him from his profile, that strong jaw, and his crooked nose. I thought in that moment, that I saw something of the old Thoros re-emerge. He smiled very faintly, scarcely more than a narrowing of the eyes. He looked at me again. The violence that held him in its tight, merciless grasp loosened, and, for the first time, I saw that there had been a strange glimmer in his eyes, almost a pearlescent sheen. I only recognised its presence when it grew absent. "Stay sane, my old friend," Thoros said, and he was past the Hogwarts wards. The black smoke of Disapparition seized him, and he vanished.

Though I knew that Thoros had only departed on a journey, likely returning to his estate, it felt strangely as though our numbers had dwindled permanently yet again. Indeed, they had, for all intents and purposes. I saw Thoros several times after graduating from Hogwarts, including at St. Mungo's, but it was always in passing. We never spoke to each other. His eyes passed over me as though he had not the slightest of who I was, let alone that I had been his friend and companion for six years of our schooling. And I cannot quite shake the disquieting feeling that he does not know who I am at all.

The trek back up to the castle was long, but only because I chose the longer route. My thoughts were many and unrelenting. The dark silence at the edges of the Forbidden Forest soothed them, and it took me further away from the Black Lake, which sandy banks now posed more threat to me than the rumours of werewolves and vampires that roamed the woods. Twilight soaked into the lines of the forest, dyeing it in shades of purple and blue.

It was then that I glimpsed something hidden beneath a copse of trees, shrouded in fallen leaves and snapped twigs. It was bone-white, starkly so in the shadows. It protruded from the earth like a broken bone jutting through flesh and skin, exposed. When I drew closer, I saw that it was a nose, tall and straight. I parted the dirt, and laid it bare. It was the planes of his face, cupped in a perfect oval.

I rushed to pull him from the earth, peeling away the layers of dead things and prying up chunks of hardened, flaking dirt. It felt like spidersilk, stretching and adhesive. It clung to my skin as desperately as it clung to his.

"Tom," I breathed, patting his face in a desperate attempt to wake him. "It's Abraxas. You're safe now. I have you, Tom."

He looked dead. Bloodless and cold, with nary a breath stirring in his chest. But I did not let myself linger on those details. I had found Tom — whole, it seemed, and as perfectly beautiful as ever. I would have thanked the gods, if the gods hadn't been the one to take him from us in the first.

I dug until my fingernails were worn away and turned to bloody stubs. His body came reluctantly. I paid no heed to the curious way that the wet mud sloughed off him, nor the filmy, waxen texture to his skin. I laid him in my lap, sobbing in disbelief and terror. "Please wake," I begged him.

And he did.

—

IX: Cradle

"Abraxas," was the first word that Tom said. I flinched, for I heard in it a tenderness I had never known in him before. Not for me — never for me, or any other. This tenderness was born of fear, when everything else had been stripped away; vulnerability.

"Merlin," I breathed. "I thought you dead."

His expression closed again, and he seemed something like the Tom I was familiar with again. But he did not push me away. If anything, he leaned into my touch, in a way that warmed me from head to toe. "What happened?" he said, authority forging his voice into iron. "I remember…" He faltered, then steadied himself. "I remember the spells."

I told him all of it, without the varnish of deceit or mercy. I was honest with him of how I fled. I expected punishment.

But he did nothing of the sort. "Where is the book?" Tom demanded. His eyes grew in vigour. "Where is it?"

"If you do not have it, then it is lost," I said plainly. And good riddance, I did not say.

He lurched away from me. "You've taken it. Where is it? Tell me now!" His voice echoed with power, but when he stood, his legs shook as a fawn's. His brown eyes darted about wildly, pupils blown wide.

"I didn't take it," I said. "After what we saw…" I shuddered. "I do not want to see it again."

"Do not lie to me," Tom hissed. His eyes darkened. There was something unbalanced in them — intoxicated and drunk. On fear or power or greed, I did not know. "Lord Voldemort sees into your mind, and your deceit and greed is clear."

I stared. "I am not lying. I don't want that book, Tom — all I have ever wanted was for you to return, safe and whole."

He smiled, and it was a mocking, chilling thing. "Do I look whole to you, my friend?" he crooned. He leaned in close to me, almost as though to kiss me. But he stopped just a hair's breadth from my lips. He raised his hand, and stroked along my jaw. I shuddered. His fingers felt stiff and ice-cold. It felt like a corpse touching my face. For the first time, I noticed that his eyes were not true brown, but had a wine-like tinge of red. "Sweet Abraxas — so loyal, yet so fearful. Lord Voldemort is thankful for the former, but I smell your cowardice. It stinks like the way you pissed yourself as you left me to die."

I was so, so afraid. Yet I was also confused. Who is Lord Voldemort? I wanted to ask. But he did not seem in the mood to suffer questions. Instead I sank to his feet, pressed my forehead into the mud, and pled for his forgiveness.

He put his bare foot on my head, and ground into my cheek with his heel. He laughed, and it was a terrible thing. I heard in it once more the gentle drag of hissing shadows, creeping in the walls. "Even mongrels have their uses, I suppose," Tom mused. But no, I realised with a sickening wrench. It was not Tom who spoke anymore in this high, inhuman voice; but it was this… Lord Voldemort.

"Mercy, my Lord," I whispered. I tasted bile and mud, swirled together on my tongue.

"Lord Voldemort knows no mercy," the creature hissed. "Where is the book, mongrel?"

"I do not know," I said again. "Truly, I do not know."

He kicked my head away and pulled me upwards with a tightening of his magic. I recalled dimly that he was not in possession of a wand, and the realisation struck further horror in me. He tilted his head as he examined me, his cold eyes reptilian. As I watched, he seemed to be turning paler, his skin developing a strange, waxen sheen. His lips were so bloodless that they seemed to blend into his skin.

"I don't know," I managed again. A wave of pain, not unlike the twisting cruelty of the Cruciactus, writhed in me. "Please, my Lord. I am your faithful servant."

Lord Voldemort sneered. "Very well," he said reluctantly, and released his hold on me. I collapsed to the dirt, coughing and shaking and twitching. "I will retrieve the book myself — it must still be in that wretched tomb."

"You can't mean to go back there?" I asked in horror.

"Why should I not?" Lord Voldemort said. His eyes had brightened to crimson. "Lord Voldemort fea—" He broke off, his expression twisting. The red of his eyes faded. Tom emerged, and fell forwards, gasping and trembling.

"My Lord?" I whispered.

His hands clutched my robes in a vice grip. "Abraxas," Tom gasped. "It's consuming me. I feel her, within me. Abraxas. Abraxas."

I clutched him closer. The pain of his torture still wracked through my body, but I could not leave him. My fervent desire for him burned stronger, and his weakness only stoked the terror in me — for him. "Fight her, Tom," I whispered. "You can do it. Fight her."

He twitched, his entire spine arching so sharply that it seemed he was about to break himself into half. I watched in horror, unable to do anything to help. My wand lay, forgotten at my side. I knew no healing spells, and even if I did, none would have worked on him. There was only one thing I could have done for him, but he would never have accepted it. "I will not die," Tom told me, as though he knew exactly what treacherous thought had slipped into my mind. His brown eyes affixed on me. "I will not."

"Then fight her," I said. "If anyone can win, it is you."

I believed my words then. I believe it still now. But no mortal could have won.

Instead, I watched as Tom descended further into her grasp, and her hold on him grew stronger, firmer. It was as though I was watching him die, again, his soul slipping away slowly, yet inexorably.

"I will not die," he vowed. "I refuse to. I am beyond death."

"Yes, Tom," I sobbed.

I held him as his skin paled again, and he grew bloodless and cold in my arms. I held him as his eyes darkened to red, then brightened to crimson, and brightened further still. His vows to survive turned to hissed vows for his beloved book. Spit frothed at his mouth from the fervour of his words. And when at last, I could find no trace of Tom in his eyes, but only the husk of a creature that he had become, I wept as I slipped a Transfigured blade between his ribs.

"Fight her," I said again, as his eyes dimmed, and I pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Please, Tom."

I buried him back into the earth, and ignored the way he had not bled at all.

Dead things cannot die twice. That mantra was my comfort, and eventually, a reminder of my curse.

—

X: Lord Voldemort

(Blank.)

—

(End of Abraxas Malfoy's journal.)

—

An excerpt from the Daily Prophet:

On the morning of August 14th, 1995, Abraxas Malfoy, 70, was discovered dead in his study. Aurors have found no evidence of unnatural causes. They have declared the cause of death to have been a particularly virulent strain of Dragon Pox.

For many years, Mr Malfoy was rumoured to be ill of health. Yet according to an anonymous source in St. Mungo's, the late Mr Malfoy has not been to see a Healer there in many years. Another source suggests that Mr Malfoy's own pureblood ancestry is responsible for this tragedy. "Malfoy's mum and dad were first cousins, and his grandparents first cousins as well. His great-great-grandparents were even half-siblings," the source explained. "What purebloods don't understand is that incest has very real consequences. It was probably excessive inbreeding that shortened his lifespan. Malfoy broke tradition and married a half-blood entirely unrelated to him, but even that didn't really undo the damage to the bloodline. His son is proof enough. Pity, really, that Lucius Malfoy."

Lucius Malfoy, a Beauxbatons graduate, survives his father. However, a mysterious ailment has confined him to St. Mungo's for many years. The nature of his condition has been unknown until now. Through careful, laborious research, this reporter has discovered that Lucius Malfoy is currently confined in a high-security section of the Janus-Thickey Ward. For those unaware, the Janus-Thickey Ward is reserved for long-term patients whose mental faculties are so permanently damaged that they are incapable of functioning in daily life. Most patients in the ward require assistance for simple tasks, such as brushing their teeth and changing their clothes. This writer wishes Mr Malfoy a full recovery, nevertheless.

Abraxas Malfoy is also survived by his daughter-in-law, Narcissa Malfoy, and his grandson, Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy is currently in his fifth year of Hogwarts, and is the sole heir to his grandfather's estate…

—

It is winter, and Malfoy Manor stands in a white, desolate landscape, its windows dark and empty. A great tree hangs over the garden with barren branches that cut across the sky in sharp, severe lines.

Narcissa arrives in a swirling crack of Apparition outside the iron gates that guard the garden. They creak open, a high, shrill sound that is both unpleasant and ominous, recognising her as the new lady of the house. She steps into the estate, and shudders. There is a grimness over Malfoy Manor, made all the more chilling by the breath of winter that has settled over the land. There is a strange feeling in the air, one that makes her insides cold as ice and her fingers tremble. An old feeling, one that has haunted the grounds since the very first time Narcissa visited.

She does not wish to linger here long. She has never liked Malfoy Manor — always felt something malevolent stirred here. She is only here to put the last of her late father-in-law's affairs in order.

She thinks of Abraxas now. When she knew him, he was always a most gentle man. He never gave her reason to distrust him, and in fact, had always been unfailingly kind and doting. But Narcissa never felt at ease around him. She is not sure if it was because of the Manor, which he refused to leave, and so she had always had to visit him in this foul place. Or if it was because of the man himself, and how disquietingly… hollow, he had seemed. Or if it was the way he knew things, such as when she was two weeks pregnant and Abraxas had congratulated her on her son.

Narcissa shudders, and shakes away the memories. Even now, the vague impression of past conversations and moments feel cloying. If she thinks on them too long, especially where she is, she has a suspicion that she will never be free of them.

She enters the manor. The air within is musty, as though none had lived here for years. Dust cakes the floors, and cobwebs cling to mouldy ceilings. She makes her way to Abraxas's study. Even here, she sees no sign that Abraxas had ever been. Her mind wavers and her footsteps grow more reluctant still. Turn back, some half-forgotten instinct screams within her. It is the baser instinct of humans, one that civilisation and the comfort of luxury have smothered through the centuries.

In his will, Abraxas stated that the manor was to go to Draco. Narcissa thinks she would rather burn the entire place down with Fiendfyre than allow Draco to step foot in here again. When she was younger, and more innocent, she hoped to please her father-in-law and appease Lucius by allowing Draco to spend a night or two at Malfoy Manor, where he could be doted on by his grandfather.

As Draco grew older, so did Narcissa grow wiser. The visits dwindled to nothing, and when Lucius grew ill, his protestations grew feebler still.

And Abraxas never protested her decision at all.

She wonders how much the old man knew of the darkness that stained Malfoy Manor. Lucius never seemed to notice it. Perhaps because he had grown soaked in its stench, he never realised the acrid, sour edge of the rotten magic that had sunken deep into the estate. But she noticed it the first time that Lucius had taken her home to introduce her to his father. And after they had married, Narcissa had planted her feet in the earth and refused to move into the cursed place.

Abraxas, again, seemed more approving than not.

Narcissa goes to the large, mahogany desk that sits beside a cold, ashen fireplace. In his will, Abraxas said that there is a token in here. For her eyes only. She hesitates. The chill running down her spine intensifies.

She opens the drawer, half-expecting it to be sealed shut, but it gives way easily. There is a book inside, with worn, leather covers and yellow-spotted pages.

Her curiosity surges forward, and for an instant, her caution is displaced.

She opens the book to the first page.

The words draw her in instantly. She reads, a distant horror building in her. She sees the way Abraxas's writing grows more fevered, more haphazard. The contents of the journal slosh like bile in her belly.

As she reads, she is convinced, further and further, that she is not alone. Some prickling awareness breaks through the haze of her focus.

She looks up. In the very edges of her vision, half-shrouded in shadow, she sees a flash of crimson.

---

(A/N): This story has been sitting, incomplete, in my computer for... a little over 3 years? And in a burst of motivation, I finally finished it. The ending is a bit more abrupt than I'd like it to be, but honestly, I just really wanted to get this over and done with, because it's been rattling about in my brain for so long.

I hope you enjoyed this read. I'm not quite sure if it's really 'Horror', even though I marked it so. I don't think I really hit that tone, but it was a fun adventure, nevertheless. And I guess I did get a bit creeped out when I wrote this at night.

I half-debated marking this as Romance as well, because clearly, Abraxas is deeply in the closet and 100% gay for Tom.

I joke (like, maybe 40%).

Do let me know what you think! I always love reading reviews, even if I suck terribly at replying to them. But I read every single one and they leave me feeling happy and floaty all day.

Love, Em.