A/N: Well, this chapter took a while to get up. To be sure, I've had it sitting on my hard drive for at least a few weeks. But here it finally is! And with no religious commentaries—I think.
A/N: The plot is moving forward again…it may not seem like it, but it is, trust me. I'm the author. You can trust me…I think. And SEVERUS! GO AWAY! WAIT! YOU ARE AWAY IN THIS CHAPTER! GO AWAY ANYWAY! ARRRGGGHHH!!!!
Chapter Ten: 1941
"You're late again," said Tom Riddle in the Entrance Hall that night.
"Don't you get tired of that?" asked Minerva.
"Of what?"
"Of—telling me I'm late."
"Oh." He looked momentarily relieved, but then regained his composure. "No," he replied cheekily. She tutted.
"So are you going to take me?"
"Eh?" He was looking distinctly uncomfortable again.
"To this 'secret meeting spot'?" she amended, blushing slightly.
"Of course," he said, and offered her his arm gallantly. "Come along, my lady."
She looped her arm through his, fighting the utterly Gryff-girl urge to giggle, and they began walking swiftly toward the main staircase. They ascended one flight, then two, and now were about midway to the base of the towers.
"I'm not quite seeing the 'secret' part yet," Minerva said under her breath. This was the heavily trafficked part of the school and several people were following the conspicuous couple with their eyes. Minerva unlooped her arm from Tom's.
"Patience is a virtue," he muttered to her.
"So is promptness," she shot back.
"No it isn't."
"Do you care?"
"We're here," he said abruptly, and steered her off into the fourth floor corridor. "Just wait," he added, seeing one of her eyebrows rise in skeptical appraisal. Minerva followed him to a room door at the end of the hallway, where he paused, cast a furtive glance around for onlookers (there were none), and ushered her inside with an air of great hurry.
"Is it as secret as all that?"
He closed the door and locked it again, then looked up at her.
"Yes."
Minerva looked around this new room. It seemed to be a classroom, or to have been a classroom at some point, but it had obviously fallen into disrepair. Now it looked to be a repository for broken desks and chairs. A cracked and dirty mirror was fastened against one wall. On the whole, Minerva could see nothing very special about the place.
Tom let go her arm and set out for the mirror now, wearing a look that was halfway between a smirk and genuine pride. Upon reaching the mirror, he turned back to Minerva and grinned self-consciously.
"Well—this is it."
"This?" she asked, trying not to sound disappointed as she took in the ramshackle room. Tom just grinned wider.
"Come here."
Intrigued, Minerva obeyed, walking up to stand beside him. He whirled back around to face the mirror.
"Muerte muere," he intoned solemnly.
Nothing moved, as Minerva had half expected would happen, but the mirror did seem to shimmer; and then all of a sudden it became perfectly clear. Minerva could see herself and Tom Riddle reflected on its surface, and she blinked. Though she and Tom had been together for a few weeks now, this was the first time she'd actually seen a picture of both of them together. Side by side. She gazed on, the picture cozy yet somehow surreal. Him so tall, so lean and dark, even with fair white skin. And her: average height, hair in a half-collapsed bon, eyes hidden behind a massive pair of spectacles. Lips below them thin and white. The Tom-reflection opened his mouth.
"Er…"
She looked back at Tom.
"If you want to go on," he said, "Just step through."
"What?"
"Step through the mirror." He grinned mischievously. "Like this." He suddenly grabbed her by the arm and pulled her bodily into the glass.
Through the glass. Minerva gasped; the material of the reflective surface felt like liquid on her bare skin. They fell out into a dark space on the far side. Solid ground. Minerva clung to Tom's robes until she determined that she was in one piece, and then let go. She stepped back and raised her head, looking into the darkness.
The darkness. Was there such a thing as different, not colors, no, but densities of darkness? The darkness of a house during a thunderstorm: heavy with dread and anticipation. But this…though it was pitch black, it was a free sort of pitch black. She had the feeling that they were in a very large enclosed space—like a cavern, though what a cavern was doing in a castle she didn't know. Then again, Hogwarts had a large number of odd nooks and crannies that probably didn't belong in a castle. No echoes. None at all. But then that was magic for you. Still, this was…a light darkness. If that wasn't too much of an oxymoron. She shook her head.
"Amazing, huh?" Tom moved up close to her and took her arm. "Come on—it's a tunnel." He tugged at her robes, and she followed him—all the while keeping a firm grip on his wrist lest she lose him to the darkness.
"Where are we going?" she asked him.
"To a place I found last year," he said. "It's not far."
'Not far' was a subjective appraisal. Minerva had developed a slight blister on one heel by the time Tom halted again. She tried to estimate the distance they'd walked, but found her sense of proportion all out of whack in the formless black.
"Here it gets tricky," said Tom.
"What does 'tricky' mean?"
"Well—'tricky' means finding a big hole in the ground and climbing down in the pitch darkness with only your wand light to guide you."
"Er."
"It's only about sixty feet," he offered.
"Er…Tom, do any teachers know about this place?"
She could almost see him grin in the pitch blackness. "Nope."
"So what happens if we get hurt?"
"Well…we get hurt, I suppose."
"And this doesn't bother you?"
"I won't get hurt. And neither will you; you can handle it."
"And this is the 'secret place,' I assume, whatever's on the other end of the tunnel?"
"Yes."
"Tom—you know this is an expulsion-worthy offence."
She could have sworn she saw a gleam of white toothy grin before he answered this time. "Oh, yes, Minerva—I know."
"I suppose you're fulfilling Slytherin's expectation of 'questioning the rules'?"
"I guess you could look at it that way. Now, are you coming?" She felt him take her hand in the darkness.
Looking back, Minerva could never quite say why she went with him. It was pretty stupid, and, as she'd pointed out, likely to get them expelled if anyone should ever find out. At the time, though, it seemed like less of a serious lapse in judgment and more of a great adventure, a grand exploration of the underbelly of the castle, or a dabbling in the art of rule-questioning. There was almost a moral obligation to explore this side of the Hogwarts life, now she'd caught a glimpse of it. In any event, she soon found herself at the base of the tunnel, blinking in the bright moonlight that was spilling in…somewhere.
There. She located the source as a small window carved into the rock wall of the room they now stood in.
"Welcome to my humble…er…hideout," said Tom, waving a hand grandiosely around the enclosed space. It was actually small, Minerva noted, about the size of the living room in a small country house she'd once lived in. To her amazement, there were two couches and a low table sitting back from the tunnel, closer to the wall with the window. The window had no glass and was open to the air. Minerva felt a faint breeze coming in, blown across the lake, which lent intricate watery shadows to the thick window sill.
"How far above the water are we?" Minerva asked, and wondered why of all things she had asked him this. Why not "where are we" or "how did you find this place" or "who put the furniture here in the first place"?
Tom smiled, and she could see him do it this time. "You can look if you want—the sill's wide enough to hold a person. We're inside the cliff rock, about thirty feet above the water line. We're almost directly below the Great Hall, too, in case you were wondering."
She nodded, fascinated, as she climbed into the window sill. It was indeed about four feet deep, and she reached the end—a precarious hole—quickly. She leaned over the edge, feeling a breeze on her cheeks, and looked down into the inky black water.
"Careful there," Tom cautioned. "We are here without anyone knowing."
"Who made this place?" asked Minerva, still leaned over the edge.
"Not sure," said Tom. "The tunnel continues past this room; I've followed it all the way to the outskirts of Hogsmeade. No one else knows about it, not even the caretaker. It looks like it might have been here since the time of the Founders."
Minerva leaned back in the window hole and came to sit next to Tom on one of the couches.
"I brought in the furniture," he added with a touch of pride.
"This is amazing," she murmured.
"Thank you," he said.
* * *
Tom let them use a wand light in the tunnel above the secret room while they left.
"I know this passage by heart," he'd said with more than a hint of shrugging pride. "But it'll probably take you a few weeks or so." Minerva wondered how often he was counting on them coming here.
They had stayed in the little room almost until curfew time, so there weren't any straying eyes to dodge in the halls on the way back.
"Tomorrow same time?" asked Tom.
"Er…fine. Meet you at the mirror?"
Tom laughed. "That's going to be our catchphrase; I can see it now. Tom and Minerva: 'meet you at the mirror.'"
"It will be good material for your career in stand-up comedy."
He frowned.
"—which is apparently beginning now."
He rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me to keep my day job, Minerva. But here's this: I challenge you to find a joke that's funny enough to make me laugh."
Minerva blinked.
"Goodnight," he called and disappeared in the shadows down to the Slytherin dungeons. Minerva's head was considerably airy by the time she arrived at the Fat Lady's portrait and tossed out an "arête" and climbed inside. A joke. A joke. She had to make him laugh, and hard, and she wouldn't laugh at his of course. But of course she would, just not at first. A joke.
"Nice of you to drop in, Minerva."
She had to stifle a scream, at which she gave herself a mental forty lashes. In the low firelight she made out two shapes on the large, plush couch before the fireplace—and one of them was cradling a large, open book.
"Adriana," Minerva breathed, and quickly darted her eyes around for eavesdroppers. "Adriana, if you're found here…"
"After curfew, yes, I know," said Adriana idly, flipping a page.
"You'll be given a week's worth of detentions!"
"So will I, actually, for having her," Paul added helpfully, hanging his head backwards over the back of the couch so that he was looking at her upside-down. "So what's new in your life, Minerva?"
"Er…" She tried to detach her mind from the startling burst of rule-breaking her friends had indulged in. "Well, not much really. Say, is anyone else up?"
"Just one kid. But he's keeping our secret, don't worry. Claims to be an old friend of yours."
"Is that so?" She really had no "old friends" in Gryffindor. Except for Paul, of course. Was this just a clever word trick?
"Speaking of rule-breaking, what are you doing out after curfew?" Paul asked, fixing her with an upside-down piercing look.
"It's after curfew?"
"Well after."
"How much?"
"Thirty minutes."
"No!"
"Yes." Quirky smile.
"I hadn't realized…we were just—"
"Oh, we were just? Who is this 'we'?"
"Er…"
"No one in particular" was pretty much out of the question, as were "no one" and "Tom Riddle from Slytherin." But wait…
"Tom Riddle," said Minerva breezily, and watched with amusement as Paul's eyebrows shot downwards in his upside-down face. Then his face cleared and his eyes narrowed.
"Very funny, Minerva. Now who is it really?"
Minerva laughed. "Tom Riddle from Slytherin, silly! Don't you believe me?"
"No."
"Good."
Adriana shifted her weight on the couch, leaning herself, whether advertently or no, closer to Paul.
"Well, I suppose we can forgive your little slip in discipline," Paul said.
"I suppose I can forgive yours. By the way, who's the kid who's keeping your secret?"
"Second-year named Rubeus." I should have known. Bicorn Kid. "You really an old friend of his?"
"In a manner of speaking." Minerva shifted her weight. "Look, I'm kind of, er, tired. Will you guys be OK down here alone?"
"OK?" Paul's eyes became shifty. "Oh, I'm sure we can find…things to do."
"Now, now, dear," said Adriana, laying a hand on Paul's shoulder. But Minerva could see the firelight reflected off her smiling lips even in profile. She raised her voice. "And Minerva, would you please go tell Rubeus to stop watching us from the stairs?"
"I wasn' watchin' you," called a low voice from the general direction of the stairway. "I was…er…restin'."
Minerva smiled. "I think it's time for…most…of Gryffindor House to be in bed," she said, and started in that general direction.
"I think it's time for all," she heard Paul say as she ducked into the stairwell, and listened for the accompanying "ouch!" as Adriana meted out the appropriate punishment.
It never came.
"Well, Rubeus," Minerva began in a whisper, trying to listen into the silence from the common room despite herself, "I guess we should…you know…get to our dormitories."
"Er—yeah."
"Can you find yours in the dark?"
"Yeah. An' by th' way—"
Minerva turned back toward him.
"Don' worry about you an' Tom. I won't tell no one."
Minerva blinked and blushed in the darkness.
"Er…thank you, Rubeus."
"Sure thing," he said. "All these rules about who you can and can't like. Codswallop."
She laughed, bid him goodnight, and slipped into the fourth-year girls' dormitory.
The air fell silent as Minerva slipped into her bed. Silent, but charged; so unlike the cavern's silence. The darkness tonight was electric with the knowledge of its concealing powers.
Darkness, for Minerva at least, would never be the same.
* * *