Chapter Twenty-one

By Friday, Tom's mood had returned to, more or less, normal. He'd written new letters to Tonks and Black, explaining the situation and apologizing for not responding if they'd already sent him a letter. He didn't actually expect either to reach the intended recipient, of course. To each letter, given to an unlucky school post owl to deliver, he attached the Curse of Ill Sleep. It was an unimpressively named curse with a slow-building effect, so few people knew of it, and even fewer used it. That, however, meant it was entirely possible that no one would realize a curse was the cause of the ailment. With that out of the way, Tom was able to focus on a more immediate problem.

True to her word, Ginny had been staying with him at night. Though he'd appreciated it at first, he was beginning to get the impression that she had an ulterior motive. He caught her watching him at all hours, and he kept finding her in the middle of heated whispered debates with Hermione, often with Luna sitting nearby, looking more like a spectator at a sporting event than a part of the conversation. Through the bond, he felt only an intense curiosity, which was no help whatsoever.

And so, Friday afternoon, between his last class and detention, Tom cornered Ginny while she was with Hermione and Luna. "You've been watching me. Why?" he snapped, annoyance at that night's detention bleeding over into his annoyance at her behavior. He could see Luna giving Ginny a slight shake of her head. The innocent expression Ginny had been forming fell apart and she shot Luna a scowl. That just made him even more irritated. Why did Luna know when he didn't?

"Oh, honestly," Hermione huffed. She managed to blush while looking exasperated. "Ginny's curious about what you, um, what sort of imagery you use in order to, well, facilitate collecting your sample," she said. Despite her initial bravado, she was staring at the floor by the end of the sentence. She peered up at him through her eyelashes. "For the study session tomorrow," she added, seeing his total lack of comprehension.

Tom blinked. He'd entirely forgotten about the study session the next day. Then he frowned and looked at Luna, who seemed far too amused. He pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed. "There's a spell for that," he said flatly. He glared at Luna. "And any family that still practices rituals should know it." The blonde didn't even have the good grace to look chastised.

Ginny deflated. "Oh." Hermione also looked vaguely disappointed.

Luna smiled at Tom. "They are teenagers, you know," she said cheerily.

"So are you, but you're not interested in my sex life," he retorted.

Luna's expression took on a mysteriously somber edge. "I don't wish to probe at wounds best left forgotten," she murmured.

Ignoring the ominous words, and with the mystery solved, Tom hurried to get at least some amount of dinner before detention. Since Hedwig, Tom had decided that no single torture would suffice to punish Umbridge, and no death could be drawn out long enough. To fix this issue, he spent his detentions designing a spell to keep her both alive and aware. Of course, he ran the risk of Hermione (or his curse on the DADA position) interfering, but the spell would be useful anyway. He doubted Umbridge would be the only person he would ever need to hurt. If anything, she was simply a good candidate for his first human trials.

Saturday dawned crisp and clear, perfect weather for spending time outside. Tom ignored that entirely and brought the study group to a version of the Room of Requirement configured to allow them to perform the necessary ritual.

"I've never seen this room here before," Davis probed.

Tom smiled brightly back at her and said nothing, making her give him an exaggerated pout. Beside her, Zabini chuckled.

Only two additional people had come, and both had been Silenced before arriving: Fred and George Weasley. Ginny'd given Tom a sort of helpless look when she arrived with them in tow, explaining quietly that they'd found out about the sessions from Ron and had insisted on attending. Ron looked embarrassed, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Once everyone had entered, and the door had shut, Tom stepped up before everyone. "Today we're going to be determining our magical affinities before the practical. I will be going first, to demonstrate how this is done."

Tom stepped to a circle drawn in chalk on the bare stone floor. Only seven runes occupied the circle, one in each cardinal direction and three forming a triangle within the circle. In the middle stood a single purple candle. Tom lit it and knelt, withdrawing three glass vials from within his robes and placing them, one at a time, on the ground.

It really was a simple ritual. Words weren't even necessary, though most families had some lines they traditionally recited. Tom softly clapped his hands once, then mixed the three vials together in the palm of his hand. After a moment, he turned his hand over above the fire and let the mixture dribble down into the flame.

The fire flickered brilliantly as it consumed the materials, then extinguished with a cloud of dark gray smoke. Tom clapped once more, stood, and exited the circle.

"Neutral, but nearly dark. Miss Greengrass, would you mind going next?" he asked.

Everything was the same until the flame went out. This time the smoke was nearly black, and within it the faint illusion of stars wavered for a moment before the smoke dissipated.

Longbottom went next, producing white smoke with a brightly glowing center. Each person who already knew their alignment went, and each time, the smoke related the alignment they'd said the week before.

Except Luna. Tom made her do the ritual twice, but there was no smoke at all either time. Tom sent her a suspicious look and moved on.

Then came Hermione. A lovely puff of pitch-black smoke like the night sky appeared, to both her and Greengrass's consternation. Tom took the opportunity to look exceedingly smug.

Ginny was light-leaning neutral, Ron was light, Fred was dark, and George was light. The twins gave each other disgruntled looks.

That was everyone. Tom had half-hoped Bones would bring along her muggleborn friend, Fletcher or whatever, but he supposed it didn't matter in the end. Greengrass didn't strike him as someone who would pretend she'd never received information she didn't like, but rather would hunt down more data and change her mind accordingly. There was one thing he found curious though.

"Miss Greengrass, don't you have a younger sister in Ravenclaw?"

The blonde was instantly on guard, already stoic expression going completely blank. "What about her?"

Tom sighed. Slytherin, but still so young. That reaction didn't hide so much as it advertised that there was something to hide. "Why didn't you bring her? I assume she'd benefit from lessons as much as any other." He considered the blonde, keeping half an eye on the other three Slytherins.

Greengrass shrugged stiffly. "We don't get along," she claimed. Tom brushed up against weak Occlumency shields and retreated. He glanced at the other three, but none of them were looking directly at him.

"That's a shame," Tom said. "My apologies for prying." He could find answers another way, another time.

Unaware of his continued interest, Greengrass relaxed minutely. "So," she said abruptly, "now we all know our alignments. What next?"

Tom grinned cruelly. "Visceribus punctura." Daphne screamed and broke out into an impressive string of curses. And so began their second dodging session.

At last, everyone lay on the ground, exhausted. The Weasley twins were the worst off, having attempted to curse Tom back. It had failed, and he'd directed his next several stinging hexes at the same place each time, causing more pain than a single hex could manage on its own.

Tom sighed with pleasure and crossed the room to pick up a bag he'd left there earlier. From within, he pulled three notebooks. "To end this study session, I'd like you each to go through the book labeled with your affinity and pick between three and seven spells that you want to learn."

Predictably, Hermione leaped at the book labeled Dark, though she cast a longing glance at the books labeled Light and Neutral, and Tom was sure she'd demand he let her read them later. His expression softened as he watched her. He absently gave Zabini Light, and Bones Neutral. "You're welcome to look at the other books and learn those spells as well. Later though."

That done, Tom crossed the room and started cleaning up ritual runes with a cloth. The Room could have removed them for him, but it was always best to unmake circles by hand to disperse any remaining magic safely. As he worked, he kept an eye on the other teens. Longbottom and the two light-aligned Weasleys were eyeing Zabini, who was flipping through the book so slowly he had to be taunting them. Hermione wasn't purposely monopolizing her book, but she also seemed to be, reasonably, wary of Fred, and Bulstrode and Greengrass were wary of the both of them.

On the other hand, Ginny had easily grabbed Davis and pulled her over to Bones, and the three girls were examining Neutral together. They were the only group making progress together. Tom sighed. You worked with who you needed to work with. It might make him sick to his stomach to work with Dumbledore, but he still did it when (absolutely) necessary. But they were still just teenagers, he reminded himself.

"Which spells do you think I should learn?" Luna asked, appearing next to him suddenly.

Tom stifled his initial startled flinch and considered the question. "Which classes do you find easiest, and which classes are the most difficult, magically?" he asked.

Luna sat down next to him on the ground and pressed a finger to her lips in thought. "I suppose the Cheering Charm was the easiest spell for me to learn," she said. "Transfiguration is, in general, more difficult for me than Charms, but… hmmm… oh, the Boggart-repelling charm was quite simple as well."

Tom turned that over in his mind. What did Cheering Charms and the Boggart-repelling Charm have in common? He turned their equations over in his mind, seeking out the commonalities and comparing them to the typical base Transfiguration equation to eliminate anything that appeared there as well. Both spells had sequences of three and nine with dependent variables within them, a general feature of spells affecting the mind. If that was the case… "Could you try casting the Imperius Curse on me?" he asked.

Luna blinked once, the only sign of her surprise, then nodded. "Imperio," she said firmly.

A warm fuzz blanketed his mind, along with a whisper of a command he couldn't quite make out. It was an impressive showing for what was, presumably, her first attempt at an Unforgivable. Tom shook it off. "Well?"

Luna grimaced, the expression so foreign on her face that Tom had trouble identifying it for a moment. "It was easy, but… it felt wrong. I didn't like the feel of it at all."

"That's fine," Tom said, waving off her concern. "I don't want to be teaching any of you to cast illegal spells instinctively anyway. You'd be no good to me in prison." He paused, considering that thought. "Actually…" He paused again, then shook his head. "No. Better not. But if I could convince one of them… maybe Rookwood…"

"You're showing your evil," Luna supplied helpfully.

Tom scowled at her and grabbed another notebook. "I'll work on a list of spells for you."

"Thank you," Luna said, then rose and scampered over to Longbottom and dragged him closer to Zabini.

It didn't take long before he heard his name. Tom looked up and, upon realizing Ron was the one who called him, headed over to where he stood with Longbottom and George. Zabini was sitting on the ground, letting them look over his exceedingly tense shoulders. Tom supposed it was only natural for a Slytherin to be uncomfortable having three Gryffindors around them. Luna had already moved on to Hermione's group. "Yes?" he asked when he'd reached them.

Ron looked annoyed. "Why's it say for Neville to talk to you about these two?"

Tom didn't care to guess why the boy was annoyed. "Because I wanted him to talk to me about them," he said drily. Zabini and George both snickered, then shot suspicious glares at each other. "Did you already read their descriptions, Neville?"

Longbottom nodded, so Tom pulled him away from the others. "I wanted to let you know that those two are, arithmetically, very similar to a certain dark spell," he told the boy quietly. "The Cruciatus." He didn't miss the way the teen shuddered but pressed on regardless. "They're two spells that were developed in response to it, using its equation as their base. I don't know whether that means you want to learn them or avoid them, but I thought you should know at least."

Specifically, the first spell had been developed by a well-meaning individual to counter the Cruciatus. One basic method of creating a counter to a curse was to begin with its equation, then inverse all operations that still allowed for a stable equation, and that was what she'd done. Unfortunately, it ended up being lethal. Cast with enough power, the result was almost indistinguishable from the end result of the Killing Curse. Cast with insufficient power, however, it became a slow, creeping death as the nervous system began to progressively fail, starting at the victim's peripherals and working its way inward. The speed it worked was entirely dependent on the amount of magic put into it, so it could be used in a variety of interesting ways so long as your end goal was the target's death.

The second spell was one he'd commissioned himself from Rookwood. He'd realized that light-aligned wizards had a worse reaction to the Cruciatus. What most of his followers could shake off within a few days, light-aligned wizards might never recover from. With that in mind, he'd asked Rookwood to create a light version of the Cruciatus. Instead… Both spells operated on the principle of overwhelming one's nervous system with stimulation, but where the brain interpreted the signals from the Cruciatus as pain, it interpreted those from Rookwood's spell as pleasure. Voldemort had had little use for the spell after realizing how easily it caused insanity, but it became one of Rookwood's favorite spells.

Longbottom seemed to have finished considering the information. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and set his jaw. "Thank you, Harry," he said. "I… what would you do, if it was you?" He only sounded curious, rather than like someone who was asking for an opinion because he was unable to decide on his own.

Tom hesitated. Depending on how Longbottom felt… "I'd learn them. Voldemort's still out there, and the Le- they're still out there too, even if they're in prison. It's not impossible that I'd end up fighting them one day and, well..." He gave Longbottom a dark smile. "I would enjoy the irony." He hoped he'd read the other boy correctly or this could become awkward.

Thankfully, Longbottom's response to that was a shaky, relieved laugh. "Yeah. I... That's how I feel too," he said. "I was worried what you'd think though. If you'd think that made me…" He shook his head.

"As bad as them?" Tom asked. He started leading Longbottom back to the others. "They did what they did because they're evil followers of an evil man. Unless you're planning to break into Azkaban for the chance to use these spells against them, you'd just be a teenage boy using anything in his arsenal to defend himself and others."

Well, in all honesty, it wasn't quite that simple. Bella wasn't evil. She'd only joined because her family had forced her into his service. It wasn't until later that she'd gone insane, and that was mostly because he'd driven her there while experimenting with these very spells. The LeStrange brothers, on the other hand, were certainly the sort to stuff kittens in a bag and throw it into a pond, but they were also cowards who would never attack anyone with the slightest chance of fighting back without someone egging them on. Penchant for soliciting underage girls aside, Barty hadn't even been a particularly good Death Eater while Tom had known him, so Tom could only assume the man had gotten dragged along to the Longbottom's estate.

Still, it wasn't like any of those details made any practical difference, so Tom saw no point in telling Longbottom.

The study session ended with Tom making copies of the spells each person chose and asking them to practice the wand motions and incantations before the next session, to be held on the following Sunday now that Quidditch season was getting closer and all three Weasleys had to spend more time on the Pitch.

The moment everyone else had left, Hermione dove into the other two books hungrily.

"I'm a bit surprised," Ginny commented, coming to stand next to him.

"Hm?"

The red-head shrugged. "Almost none of those spells are lethal. I thought you'd want us to put any enemies down quickly and permanently."

Tom shook his head, acutely aware that Hermione was listening now too. "Any of those spells can potentially kill or permanently disable an opponent, depending on the circumstances, but not everyone in this group would be willing to fight to kill in the first place. It's more important to me at the moment that you be able to survive. These study sessions are, after all, for Defense Against the Dark Arts, remember." By the look on Ginny's face, she actually had forgotten that. "Still, if necessary, any of you will have a spell chain you could also use to kill your opponent, so you're not entirely wrong."

With a sigh, Tom sat down on the couch and called up a table. "Now quiet. I have a week's worth of homework to complete, since there's no way Umbridge is going to give me time for it later."

AN: Yay pseudo-magical-mathematics. Combining two areas I know very little about to make a third, completely bs'ed area.