Disclaimer: Yes...not mine, none of it...

Warning: Here and thereafter I earn my M rating for sexual situations, sensitive issues and various degrees of evil. Please don't read if this may offend, but hey, it's a Voldemort story, so what can one expect! I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless.

Part Ten

The Happiest Birthday

Days went by, though, and Laura did not write. I thought once or twice of sending one of the school owls ,but immediately thought better of it when I pictured Aster Ames raging at her. Besides, I had no idea whether it would even get there. The Muggles were still fighting each other, and apparently France was badly affected.

I had brought with me from the Orphanage all my possessions, one of which was a Muggle wireless that I had bewitched to find any station, Muggle or Wizarding, no matter where you were in the world. I had taken it out of my trunk when I had hidden Abraxas' Firewhisky.

Sometimes, I would listen to the Muggle news to find out what was happening with the war. Now, I thought about putting some music on, or going to study in the Library like I usually did, but I found for he first time in my life that I had no enthusiasm for any of these things.

So I lay on my bed looking at the ceiling just thinking about her and what she might be doing and why she never wrote and it was in much the same way that I passed the next day too, listlessly wondering how I was going to make it until she came back for the new term on January 10th and realising that was a whole eleven days away, and that I was lonely, yes…….lonely, and tomorrow would be New Years Eve, my sixteenth birthday.

O O O O O

I received nothing, as I expected. It was so soon after Christmas, and nobody ever remembered that I had a birthday too. I didn't even have a card. I tried not to care, telling myself that I did not need such foolish tokens of love and acceptance.

As a little boy, I would invent stories about my mother. I would make myself a birthday card from some scrap paper and sign it "To Tom, our beloved son, with love from Mother and Father."

I would stay awake staring into the dark listening for the sounds of Big Ben inside the clock at Westminster, chiming the midnight hour.

Blowing out my guttering candle and making a wish.

Happy Birthday...

I had kept all the cards until the day I first found out the truth about my father. After that, I threw them on the fire, where they belonged.

I thought that Professor Slughorn at least would remember me, but I hadn't seen him since Boxing Day. And I thought about Laura, Laura who knew my Birthday was on New Years's Eve.

"It's supposed to be bad luck, you know." she had said, only half-joking, as she pored over her Astronomy homework one night in the library, when everyone else but the two of us had gone to bed. "It's meant to be a time of darkness, a time of death, before the coming of the new…that is, the New Year. It says so in this book I read."

"What book?" I questioned.

"Oh, over that way.." she gestured towards the Restricted Section.

"It was a lot of mumbo jumbo, mostly. Magick Moste Evile, I think it was called."

"What were you doing reading that?" I pressed

"I read everything." she grinned, and refused to discuss it for the rest of the evening.

That thought jogged my memory, though, and soon I was heading towards the empty library. I was entrusted to study there alone, and I headed straight for the restricted section. It took me quite a while to locate the book that Laura had mentioned, and I was just beginning to conclude that she must have made a mistake, when I spotted it, a squat, dark green volume at floor level.

Bending down, I slid it from the shelf. I turned to the contents page. There were a few strange symbols that I didn't understand, like hieroglyphics, and some Latin words that I roughly translated as:

"Evil is power. Power survives all."

I scanned the list of chapters, my eyes reading:

"1 …….To Punishe Thine Enemy"

"2.…….The Killing Curse"

"3.……..Rites of Blood"

"4.……..Secrets of the Necromancer"

"5.……..The Inferi."

"6.……..Omens and Portentes of Evile"

"7.……..In Search of Immortality"

and finally

"8.……Afterwords and Warninges"

Glancing around to ensure I was definitely alone, I turned the pages over and over.

I found Chapter Eight. Turning back, I found Chapter Six. But Chapter Seven wasn't there. A jagged edge and a gap in the binding told their own story. Someone had torn out the whole chapter . Any reference to the secrets of cheating death had been obliterated from the book-perhaps…and most likely, I knew, from the whole library.

O O O O O

I closed the book and replaced it on the shelf, heading back down to the dungeons.When I finally reached the portrait hole, and entered the long, dimly lit room, I sensed something was different. I walked slowly down the room to the stairs that led to the dorm. Pointing my wand, the door clicked open, and then I saw...

Dressed all in black, and sitting on my bed, hugging her knees as her dress hung over the side of the bed, was a small female figure.

"Hello." said Laura.

She stood up and I couldn't help grinning in spite of myself when she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me.

I swung her up into my arms - she only came up to my shoulder, and blurted out the first thing that came into my head.

"How in Hell did you get in here!"

"You and your Muggle expressions!" she laughed, not seeing the shadow pass across my face at her innocent remark.

"I got in through the door like you do, anyway. Don't sound too pleased to see me!" She pulled away a little, but I pulled her back.

"I am pleased, of course I am. But I thought you weren't back until..."

"January 10th, yes. Well, I was.Or should that be I wasn't? Anyway... let's say, Father barely tolerates me at the best of times, so I gave him a few more reasons not to want me around. Besides, he has a guest for New Year. So I came back. He couldn't wait to get rid of me. And Tom…..happy birthday! Now we can celebrate all by ourselves!"

"How did you open the portrait?" I pressed, curiosity getting the better of me.

She laughed again and picked up her cloak, waving it under my nose. Somehow, she had removed the Ravenclaw badge and in its place was an emblem of darkest green, two serpents entwined on the face, like the badge upon my own cloak.

"I'm an honourary serpent." she grinned again, showing the chipped tooth on the right side of her front teeth.

"You could be. Where did you find that badge?" I questioned, with undisguised admiration at her cunning.

"Sluggy's office. I …ah…borrowed it.." she said, darkly.

"I had to give him a message when I got back and ..well, he was busy, anyway. And I heard you say the password the other night. So I thought I'd visit."

She poked the badge with her wand and at once it unstitched itself. She put it into the pocket of her cloak, and produced her Ravenclaw badge, re-stitching it, no doubt, with the same charm she'd used for the bogus one.

"I appreciate it." I said , as I watched her.

" And….. Laura?"

"Mhmm?" she answered, still looking at the cloak.

"That's a pretty dress."

She looked up then, surprised, and a little flushed.

"Thank you." she said. I could see her eyes sparkle in the dim light. Perhaps this would be a good birthday, after all.

I moved her back over to the bed with me, taking a closer look at the dress she had on. I hadn't seen her wear anything like it before, it was low cut and long and it fitted in all the right places, from the curves of her breast to the slight swell of her hip, and sitting down on the edge of the four poster, I turned her to face me.

She kissed me again and her fingers trailed through my hair and over the nape of my neck. I could feel a growing knot in the pit of my stomach and I snaked my fingers under the long silk skirt, both hands touching her legs, right up to the thigh, inside. They were soft and warm and smooth. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to be closer. Needed.

"Come here," I muttered.

O O O O O

The sheets were cool and clean, but I was burning up.

My back hit them naked, my shirt on the floor, braces unbuttoned and thrown after it, next to a puddle of liquid black silk. I bit my lip as her teeth grazed my throat and I heard myself make an odd noise at the sensation…it wasn't pleasure……. but it didn't hurt.

I never touched that Firewhisky Abraxas sent, but I was drunk. Drunk on lust and love and desire, and happy. She wanted me. She wanted me…. . I wished I could shout that from the bloody rooftops. I wouldn't have though. It's my secret. Mine to keep. Like her.

Laura held onto me and I turned over. She sat across my hips, she was warm and I knew now there wasn't any going back from there, not from that point. I knew that she must have been able to feel me too, and quite suddenly, I could not look at her.

"Are you sure?" she whispered, close to my ear. She must have noticed me tense, then, but I nodded.

"You're not shy are you?" I heard the smile in her voice.

"I don't think so.' I whispered

She laid down next to me and I turned to face her at last.

"I'm sort of scared, too, you know." she mumbled, very fast.

"I'm never scared." I said.

O O O O O

It was not the slightest bit how I had imagined it. Not like Mrs Cole's cheap love stories, or any made up feverish schoolboy fantasy.

It was hot and it was sweaty and the sheets were bunched up somewhere near the head board. We rolled this way and that, kissing with tongues, and fingers, hands touching wherever, until I ended up on top, and she lay underneath me, hair over the pillow, dark satin. I reached out, pushed it away from her face, and at the same time I pushed with my hips and at last… it was done.

She made a low cry of pain, tensed up in an instant and I stopped abruptly, still inside. But her hand, on the small of my back, pressed insistently.

"Don't stop..." I heard her say, faintly, against my throat.

Something soft was in the way, but as I moved, it parted. There was a wet rush that I suspected would be dark and bloody, and then I was deep inside.

I held my breath, and I pushed again, harder this time, just a little, pulled back and moved some more, careful and uncertain and slow. She made a small noise in the back of her throat and wrapped her leg up across my waist, pulling me in. I bit my lip hard and tasted blood on my tongue as I continued to move, concentration but an afterthought. I knew I wasn't going to last long. Oh God.

I let go- finally, just before she did too, giving a faint cry into my shoulder….scratching my back with her fingernails so hard that I thought there must surely be pain, but I never felt it come, just the strange squirming throbbing in my stomach, the full-body sensation that made my arms buckle and my breath stick in my lungs.

I collapsed onto her, catching her lips in one last kiss before we both slept.

She's mine now, she must have known this. We couldn't go back now.

O O O O O

Later and I knew it would be dark outside. We must have missed dinner, but nobody came looking, so we just laid there in each others arms, not really thinking or talking. It was getting cold, and I pulled up the blankets because I thought Laura must be asleep.

I reached down and found my wand where it lay amongst various discarded clothing on the floor, and pointed it at the skylight, which opened at my command. I rummaged in the top drawer of my bedside table and pulled out the cigarettes I had hidden there, my shameful Muggle habit.

Abraxas Malfoy's bed was directly under the skylight, so I sat there, ignited the Muggle cigarette with my wizard's wand and puffed blue smoke towards the black sky outside.

Happy Birthday, I said to myself, quietly, and Laura turned over in her sleep.

"Happy Birthday Tom," she murmured, and smiled with her eyes closed.

O O O O O

A/N: Laura was sixteen on October 3rd, 1942, so she's actually slightly older than Tom. The legal age of consent in Britain, in 1942 was 16 for girls. No age of consent existed for boys at that time.

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