Year Six: Chapter Thirteen
The year was going smoothly - too smoothly, Tom thought, though Ginny assured him he was merely being paranoid.
"You have to admit that something always happens on Halloween," he said stubbornly as he cast another Freshening Charm. He and Ginny were in the Chamber of Secrets, clearing out the worst of the filth so he could begin warding it into a proper prison.
"I have to do no such thing," Ginny said just as stubbornly. "You've had all of two Halloweens go poorly for you in what, a century?"
Rude. Tom shot her a glare. He wasn't that old. Not that that was the point right now. "And Potter has had something happen on Halloween every year that he's spent it in our world. A troll, the first petrification, Black's incursion into the castle, his name coming out of the goblet… and of course, when he was one, me." Tom leveled a disbelieving look at his pet. "You don't see a pattern there?"
Like any proper Gryffindor, Ginny didn't let little things like logic dissuade her. "For Harry, yes, but not you. All you've had is becoming a horcrux and needing to take the next step in the ritual. And I'm not sure I can really call the first terrible."
In other words, she thought the Halloween curse was tied to the soul rather than the body. Unlikely, but he'd be proven correct in time anyway, so he supposed he could be magnanimous now and let the argument slide. Tom sighed and surveyed their work. The Chamber wasn't a nice place to visit by any stretch of the imagination, but it no longer made him gag to inhale, the unstable or otherwise destroyed sections of rock had been reinforced, and the cold floor had been spelled cleaner and cleaner until eating off it would have been possible (if still not desirable). Despite what some people thought, a proper cell needed to be clean. Otherwise, the prisoner might become sick and escape via death.
Case in point: Azkaban. The life expectancy there was far too short, making little difference between a life sentence and a ten - or even six - year sentence. That was likely why wizards who committed crimes tended to either stay below a minimum threshold - nothing that might get them sent to prison for more than a few months - or escalated unnaturally quickly. It was part of why initiation into the Death Eaters required a murder.
Regardless, with his prison's physical space ready, only the wards remained. Ginny collapsed onto the floor, looking around curiously. The basilisk's corpse remained, but the decayed sections had been Vanished and the rest preserved with stasis charms. It was a magical enough creature that, had it died a natural death, it wouldn't have begun decomposition for another decade or two, but rot had set in through its wounds.
A shame. Very few uses currently existed for basilisk parts, but Tom expected that Severus and a few artisans within Knockturn Alley would have been capable of inventing uses if they had the supply necessary.
While Ginny rested, Tom carved the runes necessary to maintain the wards he wanted. Wards to keep people in, wards to keep people out, alarm wards, and all manner of things he included as a matter of basic safety. Presumably all these and more already existed in the Chamber, but Tom also assumed that the subject of rune-based wards had experienced at least some advancement in the past thousand years. So long as his wards didn't cross the original ones, no negative interactions should result.
Then it was time for the more specialized wards. Tom hummed to himself as he worked, smirking when he finished adding something to lower inhibitions. Call it a present to Bella. Whichever direction she pushed Neville into, she'd be pleased and he'd find himself attempting to rationalize his behavior.
He considered, just for a moment, if he should leave some manner of scrying ward so he could monitor Neville's progress. The idea was quickly dismissed. Tom didn't have the time or inclination to pay extra attention to anyone other than his bondmates and Potter.
"Let's go," he said, pulling Ginny to her feet and exiting through newly cleaned tunnels. He wanted to get out of the Chamber before the wards had a chance to fully charge. He could guess what Ginny would do with lowered inhibitions, and he wanted no part of it.
As planned, the next several meetings of The Gray spent part of the time focused on the Animagus transformation. Edgecombe attended the sessions religiously. She seemed to think he was sympathetic to her plight somehow, because when she wasn't serving Luna with the single-mindedness of a house elf, she was confiding in him. Apparently, Saint Mungo's had made attempts to locate the source of the curse, once their curse breakers had exhausted the limits of their knowledge, but the trail wouldn't take. "The others, well, the ones who're aware anyway, have just given up now. Auror's have been called in, but no one expects that to go anywhere." The girl's lips twisted with frustration. "If I had any real evidence…" She shook her head. "But I don't, and they don't, or they'd have said something already. I'm not going to just roll over and die though."
Honestly, Tom wondered how this girl had managed to avoid Slytherin. Even if her only ambition was to simply survive (and really, was his all that different?), her willingness to do anything to achieve her goal was admirable.
When Tom finally had enough Mandrake leaves and crystal phials and ridiculous potion ingredients for everyone who'd expressed a serious desire to make the attempt, he announced that they'd begin the ritual to become Animagi. And so, at the end of the last full meeting before Halloween, Tom stood at the head of a line of students waiting for their Mandrake leaf.
"Like this," he said, waving his wand in a small twirl and jab, "'ou can mayk shur it shtaysh put." As indicated, the leaf remained stuck under his tongue even as he made sure the rest of the students could see. He scowled and worked his jaw for a moment. "That's not so different from a regular sticking charm, but this version makes it easier to talk normally. It's better if we don't suddenly have a group of students who all can't talk properly for a month. Most of our teachers aren't entirely oblivious."
One by one, the students took their leaf from him, cast the spell under his supervision, then left. Once the room was empty except for the last person in line, Luna, Tom groaned and fell back into a helpfully waiting chair. "Here," he mumbled, waving a hand. The last leaf spun out from his hand and drifted over to Luna with a lazy gust of magic.
The blonde took it with a wry smile. "You can't be tired," she commented. She cocked her head to the side as she felt at her newly acquired tongue decoration. "You know, I've heard that Mandrake leaf tastes terrible, but I suppose I heard wrong."
"No, it does," Tom confirmed. "I gave Ginny and Hermione theirs last night, and after about three hours they started feeling nauseous. By this morning, they had no appetite because 'it makes everything taste like death,' they said."
Luna considered that with a frown. "My pudding…." She shook herself. "Well, but I wanted to ask what's wrong." She sat down next to him and leaned against him.
Tom bore it stoically. If he could tolerate Ginny and Hermione, he could certainly tolerate Luna. In some ways, she was far preferable really. He swallowed and threw that thought to the side. Whatever prompted it felt like something he didn't want to think on. "What makes you think something's wrong?" he asked instead.
It surprised him how unimpressed Luna could look when she wanted.
He sighed and grimaced. "I suppose I may as well ask you. It's about… There's a spell that Ginny and Hermione have been using lately. I'm… uncomfortable with it. Or more specifically when they're using it."
The first time he'd noticed the strange burst of guiltexcitementanxietyanticipationpleasure from Ginny, he'd been moments away from sleep and had thought nothing of it. When it next happened, he'd been in bed but awake. He'd looked down at her, but she was laid still. Almost unnaturally so, but he could feel the soft puffs of her breath on his chest, proving she was still alive.
It kept happening. After the fifth time, he cast a diagnosis spell on her, much to Hermione's confusion, but he could find no foreign magic on her. Perhaps she was having particularly vivid dreams?
A couple days later, he overheard a hissed conversation between Hermione and Ginny.
"-can you do that?"
"Simple. Just use this spell."
The spell he'd overheard had taken him time to compute. Not because it was particularly complex or poorly formed or in a language he didn't know, but because he couldn't understand why someone would want to combine the forced stillness of Petrificus Totalis with a - a -
Luna laughed lightly. "A masturbation charm?"
Tom grit his teeth and nodded shortly. "I realize the reasoning, of course. But now Hermione is using it too. Why? And more importantly, why when they're in bed with me? Especially with the bond, they have to realize that I'd eventually figure it out. They can't possibly think I'm that unaware." Or maybe they did. He'd certainly like to be, in this instance.
"Tom," Luna said with a smile. "You have three teenaged girls who want to spend the rest of their lives with you and bear your heirs, and all three accept that the other two exist, that you'll likely never be interested in them the way they're interested in you, and that your feelings about sex are remarkably similar to most people's feelings about, well, you." She shrugged. "It's alright for me, of course. I've got my own bed, so I can close the curtains and disappear for twenty minutes or so if I want with no one the wiser. Ginny and Hermione both have stuck themselves in the same bed with you though, so things are a bit more difficult for them."
"They have their own beds in their dorms still," Tom stated flatly.
"Of course they do. And if it were me, I'd either tell you what I was doing or be sensible and go back to my own bed. But then, I'm a Ravenclaw, not a Gryffindor. I imagine they're getting a certain amount of enjoyment out of the risk itself."
Tom processed that as far as he was willing, then gave it up as a lost cause. "What am I meant to do about it then?" he asked instead.
Luna raised an eyebrow. "I expect you already know the answer. Either call them out on it or do your best to ignore it."
"But which should I do?" Tom ground out. "I'm already bound to them." He wished his past self had put more thought into this ritual, but he supposed he couldn't really expect himself to have known just how ridiculous teenage girls could become.
Luna shook her head and sighed. "No one can answer that for you, Tom. Someone will be hurt no matter what you do. In fact, it's quite likely that all three of you will get hurt no matter what you do. It's really quite an ill-considered idea on their part, because the only happy ending I can think of would require that you be a different sort of person altogether."
Tom had already come to much the same conclusion and felt both smug and infuriated that Luna could do no better. "Astoria is reasonable at least," he muttered.
Luna nodded. "For a given value of reasonable. I personally don't understand why she would be interested in Draco of all people, but I suppose someone has to be, and it may as well be her." She tapped her lip thoughtfully. "Do you think that will have any effect on the bond later?"
Tom had no idea and said as much. But then, he rather thought Bellatrix would be the greater issue regardless. For now, he would simply have to wait and see. He supposed that was the better decision with the other issue as well. After all, one couldn't uncast a spell.
The week continued normally. Tom avoided calling too much attention to himself in Potions and excelled at DADA and scored well but not too well in the rest of his subjects. He chatted with his followers, taking care to remember their names and likes and dislikes and petty troubles so they felt like he cared about them as individuals, and he spent time with his bonded (save Bella), studying and plotting and trying not to let Astoria annoy him too much.
Then came Halloween. And at the end of the day, Tom was able to inform Ginny that he'd been right and enjoy her sullen look of impotent aggravation. It was the only means he had to salvage an otherwise horrible day.
AN: Yes, I sat here and stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth and tried to talk so I could properly spell how the words would sound for that one brief sentence.
Thank you for the reviews, both positive and…. less so! I would like to address the note about the curse on the Ravenclaws being kinda not as effective as it might be.
The individuality of each person makes the curse quite different for each of them. It makes them experience their worst nightmares as reality, but one person's worst fear isn't necessarily the same level of fear as another's. It also doesn't control their reactions to that fear. Cho is, in this story at least, quite brittle. (Because she comes off that way in canon to me.) Marietta, on the other hand, is a survivor. She'd probably reach the point Cho's at eventually, but in the meantime, she's going to beg and plead and debase herself in any way necessary to end it rather than try to die to escape.
And, well, some people are quite good at adapting to things.
As for the Ginny and Hermione thing… like… I don't know about other teenage girls, but the ones I knew would have started that like day 2, so having had them hold off for all of 5th year was already stretching it a bit for me. But then, I went to the high school known as "the std school" so my experience might have been a bit skewed….
Also, Stardew Valley. Sorry. Daughter started playing it and suddenly I wanted to again… and then Genshin Impact has this Golden Apple Archipelago thing going on that's fun but so so time consuming, plus I'd really like to roll Kazuha (especially since I got Mona instead of Xiao two banners ago, and that just wasn't what I was looking for) so I've been spending time getting all the primogens, and you know? I think Sumeru will be out next month, so that'll be super exciting if inconvenient timing because next month is also the next set of raids in FFXIV, and I'd like to at least have all my tanks and healers up to 90 by then. Melee DPS would be nice too, to finish out the lot, but I'm not expecting miracles. And of course I'm trying to draw a picture for a friend and sell pictures to not friends and… Well, in short I have a lot of reasons I haven't updated lately, and none of them are good ones.
