A/N: Thank you all for the continued support! AvalonTheLadyKiller, your reviews continue to make me blush ;) We're coming up on the close of this story, but there's a sequel already in the works so you know what that means (no not cliffhangers, I wouldn't be that cruel)...


Chapter XXXIII

The Hard Bargain

[Knockturn Alley | October 1944]


Light tries to break through the dirt-crusted windows but to no avail. There is a thick quiet dimness in the one-room flat, the strongest light coming from the flame set beneath V's cauldron. She grasps the wooden spoon tightly between her fingers, stirring with a stiff arm and a careful eye, her breath held back behind her bitten lip. A wisp of hair dislodges itself from behind her ear but she let's it dangle, so consumed she is in the minute calculations, watching for the shift in color and consistency.

"Better not let it boil!" Tom calls, casually entering the room, banging the door shut behind him. She doesn't flinch.

"I'll kill you I swear." She says, stirring. "Sit down and shut up or get out."

"Right then. I'll leave you to it." He says, unusually chipper, swinging an empty canvas sack over his shoulder. "Dinner. What'll it be?"

"Oh I don't care. Just don't bring home a rat again. That wasn't funny." She says sharply, not looking at him.

"When you say you don't care…" He smiles wickedly.
"Get out!" She barks. He skips out the door, letting it slam, and takes the stairs two at a time, barely able to contain his excitement. Today's the day. The last day of brewing. The final addition. He's had to deal with her like this, all this ordering and bitching and so on, for weeks now. But all to good end. Finally, they'll have it. One more step toward immortality. If it works, that is…

Tom Riddle winds through the dark passageways that spider off of Knockturn Alley and comes across a butcher shop with a few scrawny chickens hanging in the window by their necks. He ducks in, and the bell on the door jingles brightly. A boy steps to the counter, bright eyes set in a face caked with soot.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"How much for that one there?" Tom points to the scrawniest chicken.

"Two knuts, sir." The boy says. Tom reaches into his pocket and pulls out two coins. He looks at them for a moment, briefly considering whether this was worth it, or if they could subsist on another meal of day-old bread crust and rotten vegetables. His stomach grumbles. He hands over the coins. The boy goes to the window, unhooks the chicken, and hands it to Tom. He puts it in the sack and steps back out on to the street. A chill wind is whipping up. He's just nearly to the building where he and V have been living when he slows his pace, noticing, out of the corner of his eyes, dark shadows flitting about him. A low voice booms behind him and he halts, drawing his wand.

"Your weapon is no use to you." The voice says. Tom swivels his head, trying to find the source of the sound, but he doesn't see anything. "Hand over the bag." The voice orders. Oh my god, really? He briefly contemplates running away, but he deems it unwise since he can't even see who he'd be running from.

"It's just a dead chicken. I've got no money on me." Tom says, and it's true. "Please let me go, I haven't had a proper meal in weeks." He feels a bit pathetic upon saying it, but hopefully it's effectively persuasive…

"We've been watching you." The voice says.

"You've been…what now?" Tom stammers. What the hell is going on here? "Show yourself! Go on!" He brandishes his wand and deepens his stance. And from the shadows steps not one man, but six. They approach Tom, surround him, their movement coordinated and graceful, all parts of one whole. Six broad-shouldered men in white robes, white like smoke, like the moon in a winter sky. "Who are you?" He stammers.

"I am the guard." The six voices speak in unison, the same voice issuing from every mouth. "And you are Tom Riddle."

"And you want…this?" He holds up the bag. The heads nod. He tosses the bag at them, and one of them catches it, but he's unable to tell which one before it disappears within the folds of their white robes.

"Take us to her." The guard booms.

"Who?"

"You know who."

"Who sent you?" Tom asks stupidly, already knowing the answer. They all raise their hands.

"Take us to her." They repeat. Tom's sweating, white-knuckling the wand in his right hand. There's only one way out. He takes a deep breath, and with a crack he disapparates.

When he appears seconds later in the middle of their room with a loud pop, his legs give out from under him and he collapses on the floor. V drops the spoon into the cauldron.

"Shit!" She plucks it out, begins stirring again, but the mixture's thickened a little too much. "I'm going to fucking murder you! What's wrong with the stairs, huh? Forgotten how to use your damn legs?" Her voice bristles with anger.

"Victoria…" He's breathing heavily.

"What?" She snaps. When he doesn't say anything, a pang of dread strikes in her heart. She rushes to him, forgetting about the potion that's probably already ruined. He's pale, sweaty, and breathing hard. "What happened?"

"I don't…I…they…" Tom tries to speak but can't. It's like his words are being censored, plucked from his lips by some nasty editor. "I'm…I think I…I made a mistake…" He heaves.

"What the hell are you talking about?" V blanches. She notices he doesn't have the bag anymore. "The bag. Tom, what happened to the bag?"

"They took it."

"Who took it?"

"They…" He can't say the word. They won't let him. But he doesn't need to, because, out of the shadows, six figures in white robes are closing in on them.

"No. No. Get out! Get out!" She screams, drawing her wand.

"Hello Victoria." The mouths greet her warmly.

"You can't take me!" She conjures a ring of flame around her and Tom, forcing the guard to retreat. Below them a loud bang sounds, accompanied by the shuffling of many heavy feet. The guard fades back into the corners of the room just as the door bangs open and a fleet of Magical Law Enforcement officers pour inside.

"Stay where you are! Don't move! Drop your weapon!" A familiar voice orders, quickly extinguishing the flames, which leave a deep circular groove in the wood floor. V drops her wand, and Auror Abernathy Hardscrabble collects it. Another Auror, Gillian Wrexby, rushes up and helps Tom up off the ground. "Are you Victoria Spketor?"

"Unfortunately." V frowns deeply, heaves a frustrated sigh.

"You are under arrest for the murder of Septimus and Lucinda Spektor." Hardscrabble says as magical ropes bind her hands behind her back. V looks over her shoulder at Tom, who's being propped up by the muscly Wrexby, a dark and stern man with long dreadlocks. Tom doesn't meet her eyes.

"Does it make any difference if I say I'm innocent?" V says halfheartedly.

"I wouldn't think so." Hardscrabble says. "How do you know this man?" The he asks, pointing to Tom.

"Never met him before in my life." V says. Hardscrabble nods, jotting the note down in his book. "Your name, son." He demands, turning to face Tom.

"O'Connor." Tom says. "Edward O'Connor."

"Right, then, Wrexby, see that Mr. O'Connor is taken to St. Mungo's and evaluated for any injuries he may have sustained at Ms. Spektor's hand." Hardscrabble orders. "I think we're done here." Wrexby nods and escorts Tom through the door and down the stairs. "Gave us quite the puzzle, Ms. Spektor. Well done." Hardscrabble smiles. "I think you'll quite like it in Azkaban. Three square meals a day and all that." He pushes her towards the door. She glances nervously back at the table, the potion bubbling over, the small brown jar labeled with a crossed-through circle. This is how it ends, she thinks. All that trouble, that time, the careful planning. She killed a man for the contents of the bottle, and now it was going to get thrown in some trash heap. What a fucking waste. That's how it happens, though. She was too optimistic, she let herself dream that she could outrun them. All of them. But she wasn't quick enough. Or was it Tom that slowed her down? No. Don't even go there. He loves her. He'll find a way to get her out, she's sure of it. She just needs to be patient. She just needs to wait.

The two exit the room, leaving the door open wide behind them. The sun breaks through a chink in the dirt-coated windows. From the shadows the guard emerge once more, circling the table where the potion still bubbles away, the spoon bobbing up and down in the inky liquid. They extinguish the flame with a collective blow, and confiscate all the objects on the table, along with anything left inside the small room, all of V and Tom's belongings. They fade as quickly as they appeared, leaving the room in quiet, dusty emptiness. Just a table, a bed, and charred circle on the floor.


"We lost him, sir." Wrexby says, standing with folded arms in the door frame of Hardscrabble's office.

"What do you mean you lost him?" Hardscrabble says distractedly, not fully processing the significance of the statement.

"We lost him. O'Connor. He just vanished. But that's not the strange thing." Wrexby enters, but remains standing before Hardscrabble's desk. Hardscrabble looks up from behind the mound of parchment and squints at Wrexby through a pair of bent wire glasses.

"Strange thing?"

"After he vanished we tried to trace him. And of course we found him. But it's not him. Its not O'Connor. That is, the man who was with Miss Spektor was not O'Connor. This is the real Edward O'Connor." Wrexby produces a photograph of Edward O'Connor clipped from a newspaper, flying in a local Quidditch match as a chaser. Hardscrabble squints at the picture and nods.

"Yes, that's a different person."

"This photograph was taken the day we arrested Miss Spektor." Wrexby says.

"What about any evidence at the flat? Did our mystery man leave behind anything? An article of clothing perhaps?" Hardscrabble sets the photograph down.

"That's just it, sir. We went back to check the flat and it was completely cleaned out. Nothing left. Not even the furniture. Either it was looted, or someone doesn't want to be found." Wrexby says. Hardscrabble's face falls into a deep, troubled frown.

"No matter. We've got Miss Spektor. This guy's probably just nervous his little rendezvous with Miss Spektor will damage his reputation." Hardscrabble speculates, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest.

"I did find this, though, sir." Wrexby produces another photograph, one he himself had taken. Hardscrabble squints at it, holding it so close he leaves a grease mark on the shiny paper with his nose. The image is of the circle burned into the floor. Both Wrexby and Hardscrabble remember, upon leaving the flat, that there was nothing inside the circle, just smooth unmarked wood. However, in this photograph Wrexby took after returning to the flat, there's a symbol carved into the center of the circle: a reversed pentacle, inscribed within a snake biting its own tail. "What do you think it is, sir? I've never seen anything like it."

"Neither have I. Perhaps the folks down in the Department of Mysteries might know something. Take this down there, would you?" Hardscrabble says, his voice wavering slightly. The sight of the thing makes him nervous, but he can't say why. He doesn't want anything to do with it. Wrexby nods, takes the photo, and slips it into his pocket.