Author's Note: This…isn't as polished as I would like but I am sick of staring at it and eager to get it to you. Tom and Maeve are back and two of the fortunate! It's been a while so hopefully everyone is still moderately in character. I'm setting up big stuff for future chapters so if this is a little discombobulated…sorry. R & R darlings, as it's what keeps fanfic writers writing (even if we go on hiatus for ten years).
"I was born for something greater than I was–and greater I would become." ~ Mary Shelley, The Last Man
"It's easier to alter items of power that already exist. Things with magic imbued in them by their creator. Obviously, in order to imbue anything with that much magic, it must first be owned by a witch or wizard and beloved by them."
Tom mulled over Tarquin's research as he worked, carefully examining a cursed necklace nestled in midnight velvet. Even behind glass, there was an air of malevolence about it that warned off anything more than a visual inspection. But it helped keep his mind off the lingering frustration he felt with Tarquin's knowledge being theoretical…and the sense the man wasn't telling him everything. Still, he'd entrusted him with his notes.
"This love for a thing, this sentimentality, can add to it's inherent ability to protect itself when threatened. Many of these such items become what modern parlance might dictate 'cursed'. As an accomplished layer of curses, I would argue that this definition is insufficient. Laying a curse atop this particular magic may strengthen its effect but the initial imbuement is not an inherently dark art. To treat it as such and refuse to engage further with these objects is indicative of a commitment to ignorance- "
The bell atop the door jangled discordantly and pulled him from his reverie. Borgin, looking around with customary ill humour on his round, porcine face, shouldered his way inside. He glowered, jowls quivering, at the sheaf of notes and the cursed necklace in it's glass casement.
"Move that, Riddle. How you spent so much time reading that incomprehensible rubbish and yet you ended up as a shop boy is beyond me." Borgin barked, heaving a sack onto the weathered countertop.
"Yes, sir." It rankled to pretend obedience and simper to such a deplorable man as Borgin but for now it was necessary. Tom carefully but swiftly relocated the necklace to the display behind him before a potential catastrophe could strike. A clumsy patron had just last week knocked into a mirror that set off the most unholy screeching that he'd been deafened for what felt like days. The necklace could do much worse should it escape confinement.
"Got a music box in here. No idea what it does, besides bite harder than a chomping cabbage. Been a rough morning." Every Monday morning for Borgin could be classified as 'rough'. The caustic aroma of a brewery wafting from his breath cut through the shop's typical scent of mildew and dust. "Your lunch hour is coming up, isn't it?"
"Yes," Tom held his breath and gathered up Tarquin's notes, noticing the avarice in Borgin's piggy eyes when he did so. Calling the reading 'incomprehensible rubbish' was Borgin's way of trying to get Riddle to leave the invaluable information lying around where it might be copied and squirrelled away.
Tom had to daily resist the urge to leave the research out and see just how much injury attempting to copy those notes might cause Borgin. Regrettably, he'd long ago come to the conclusion that it simply wasn't worth the headache. He was here to learn, to keep a low profile and to acquire items magically significant enough to ensure his horcruxes were enshrined in the appropriate level of shock and awe. Bide his time while he waited for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position to open up at time to torture Borgin could come later; when he could properly enjoy it. Tom gathered his meagre belongings and prepared to close up, giving the sack and music box a wide berth.
As if privy to these thoughts of petty revenge and far off freedom, Borgin glared at him.
"Oh, by the by: Your sweetheart's bloody barn owl is sitting on the sign again. Go see what it wants; I just had that repainted and I cant afford to have owl droppings all over the stoop." Dowser? Tom didn't have his own owl, had never really wanted something that so closely resembled a pet. But the rather standoffish owl of Maeve's had a tendency to almost anticipate his need to send letters; was the owl through which most of his infrequent mail was ferried to and fro.
"I'll take care of it, Sir." Tom shrugged into his patched coat and Borgin grunted in assent, carefully using a stick to open the mouth of the burlap sack with the music box.
"See that you do; can't have that thing flapping around and watching everything." Borgin muttered, glaring in the direction of the door. "Burke says I'm paranoid but can't be too careful when it comes to nosy aurors-"
"Aurors? It's an owl. If it were an animagus, the shop's protections would reveal-" Borgin waves him off, looking even more irritated.
"It's an owl that belongs to the sister of an auror. What do you think that sister of her's does at the ministry, boy? No one who wears that many bespelled fabrics actually pushes papers for a living." Borgin shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a flask, setting it on the counter. "Well? Off with you! Go ahead and take the day, Riddle. Paid. I'm closing up early."
Rafe pored over his notes, shaking his head and unable to focus as much as he might try. His wrist was itching. He wondered for a moment if it might be psychosomatic, that he might just have been thinking of Riddle so much lately that it was manifesting as a false call. His fingernails dug little crescents into his palm, darkening as they filled with blood.
"Lestrange? Rafe? Mate, are you listening to-" Rafe shoved aside his notes and jerked his head up so quickly he nearly smacked his forehead into Yax's blocky chin. Had the other man not moved just in the nick of time, Rafe would have further flattened his already blunted features.
"What!? What is it, Yaxley?" No, he hadn't been listening. Yaxley rarely had anything to say that was worth listening to, and that was half the problem. "And why are you so close to me?"
"I was trying to make sure we aren't overheard-"
"How? By getting close enough to me to kiss me on the mouth?" He hissed angrily, glancing around to make sure the few people occupying the Ministry's library weren't looking their way. "I'm fucking busy, Everett. Some of us have to actually make a show of studying unforgivable curses so we don't draw attention."
"I-! I was trying to talk to you about something important, actually. You know, something about the great and fearless lord who abandoned us to become a shop boy at bloody Borgin's."
"I miss our school days when you had the good graces to be quiet about what an idiot you were. What about Tom?"
"Have you got any owls? Anything at all to indicate there might be a reason why I'm bowing and scraping to a bunch of muggleborns to get a position as an auror? I'm from one of the old families, I should have an aurorship because it's mine by blood." Yaxley had been struggling during their auror training, not necessarily from a lack of competency but from what anywhere else would have been called bullying.
Rafe had borne much the same resentful scrutiny that verged on hazing. But he was used to that, from within pureblood circles and without. Yaxley's pride couldn't take it and it was little wonder he'd taken this long to reach the end of his rope.
"Everett, you have to endure it. Don't snap at me when It's not my fault you're being shown up by the less pureblood contingent-"
"There is no such thing as 'less pureblood'. Only Peverell has the right to tell us off at all and yet I've got to bow my head when Williams struts around with his nose in the air like he's Merlin's gift. Mudbloods should thank their lucky stars they have any magic at all. They stole it from us. It's not fair-"
"Everett. Does this conversation have a point-" Yaxley's massive fist comes down so hard on the desk that he almost knocks over Rafe's goblet.
"It would if you would just listen to me! My family's house is missing an entire floor! I know you and your mother cant remember what it was like to have an ancestral home steeped in magic but this is intolerable. The Filch family just had another squib crop up in their bloodline. Wasting time here when I could have joined Grindelwald-" Grindelwald, the topic of the Daily Prophet for the last month. That is, until their former DADA professor had defeated him in a duel. Now, he was wandless and relegated to what amounted to house arrest in the distant reaches of some Alabanian stronghold. So much for a grand wizarding rebellion.
"Oh, and had the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor who used to criticise your shield spells blast you to smithereens in under a month? Grindelwald was just defeated and you're over here complaining because you didn't get to join the losing side-"
"It's been almost a year, Rafe. When is he going to call us?" Hearing Everett utter his own fears and drive them home is maddening. It had been so easy in their school days to picture how they would immediately embark on a crusade to embolden their houses, to revive the dying glory of their magical birthright. But now, life has become complicated. How were they supposed to effect any kind of change at all, to whom could they turn in Riddle's absence?
"Just…keep being patient. We're no good until we're aurors, Yax."
"That's not-"
"I'll talk to Maeve about it." That seems to halt Everett in his tracks and Rafe watches him swallow whatever else he was about to say.
"What, we have to talk to his girlfriend like she's-"
"Our equal, Everett. Our superior, honestly. Besides, they're…more than that to each other, and you know it." It had been a little over two years since the betrothal announcements now. He and Hathor had made strides in their relationship but hadn't wanted to rush things even having graduated. It was just beginning that budding reluctant friendship to love. "You can't expect Tom to have it all figured out already. But Maeve knows him best-"
Everett and Evangeline were already married and that had changed something about the temper of his fellow Deatheater. Yaxley seemed more driven than ever, than he had been when they were at Hogwarts.
"I know." He muttered, heaving a weary breath. "I know that. And I know Tom has a plan, that Maeve is smart and part of this and that we can trust her. I'm just…worried lately."
"Why? You never used to worry this much before-"
"Evangeline is pregnant."
"Wha…congratulations? That's good news! Why-"
"What if…what if the baby is a squib? Or what if some muggleborn decides I'm not cut out to be an auror? How am I supposed to endure that? Or what if something happens-" Rafe doesn't have any answers to that, to the deluge of anxiety and the way Yaxley looks perilously close to tears. Big, buff Everett Yaxley trembling like a leaf with his hands wrapped white knuckled around the edge of the desk so tightly that Rafe half expects the wood to crack in his grip.
Yaxley can tell Rafe a thousand times that he doesn't understand what it is to be that scared. He can tell Rafe that being the last of a failing bloodline means he's already lost too much to remember what it was to have something. But if that were true, Rafe wouldn't be capable of the compassion he feels, the urge to dredge up a bit of snark just to get the other man to settle down:
"Here I was thinking you were too dumb to be frightened of anything." Everett shot him an absolutely withering glare. There, that's better. Don't fall apart on me now, Everett.
"Don't be such a tit, Rafe. Just…let me know if you hear anything, yeah?"
Maeve dips her quill in emerald ink, taps it against the edge of the bottle to shake off the excess before applying the nib to the well loved page. She's at her desk, the private Head Girl dormitory she occupies, a welcome respite from her seventh year responsibilities. The journal isn't her's, not really. But rather, it has been entrusted to her. Now, writing to it has become something of a guilty pleasure.
"You're giving me…a journal? With your initials on it?" The buttery, dark dyed cover was embossed with is name. Gold leaf gleamed in the sunlight filtering through the windows behind her.
"A selfish gift, at first glance. However, I won't always have time to write as much as I would like. I am entrusting this to you, so that whenever you have need of me and I cannot be there in person, you can write to this." Maeve had restrained herself, only barely, from giving him a look. He had watched her in that steady way he always did when he was leading her to something, gauging her cleverness. She opened the blank journal…no, not blank. If it's his journal and he's written in it.
"It's enchanted to speak back to me? You want me to imbue it?"
"Merely strengthen the enchantment, it's already imbued but…it could use someone to talk to. Besides, is it not the dream of every woman to know her lover's mind intimately?"
"You're not worried about what I'll find?" A joke, a tease that holds too much truth to really be anything but the heartfelt question it is. You trust me with this? The arrogant tilt of his head in her memory, the back of his fingers lightly caressing the hollow of her cheek is a ghost of a touch she can still feel. He had leaned in close, his breath warm against the sensitive shell of her ear.
"Maeve, that's not the real question, is it? After all, a journal about my exploits after a certain point is one of yours' as well. So, the real question is not whether I'm worried about what you'll find out about me, but what you'll discover about yourself." A soft, sibilant whisper against her neck before pulling away quickly, leaving her still leaning into his touch so she almost fell off the settee.
She'd laughed at that and his slow, wicked smile had been her only real answer. She knew why he was giving it to her to keep safe, giving it to her to imbue. She'd read the notes her father had sent before passing them to Tom. Part of her wondered at what Tom might attempt, what kinds of things a horcrux might be capable of. It was all theory…but maybe, with enough invested; this journal truly could be the reliquary of his soul.
To never die…a dream of every mortal thing that wished for more.
But this pursuit of substantial immortality that wasn't just a child's fable about Hallows wasn't the only thing about their studies that thrilled her. It was the avenues of magic yet unexplored, things she'd learned from the Aerie's library combined with the knowledge she and Tom would seek together. Magic that Hogwarts wouldn't allow them but that with Grindelwald's rise had drawn fresh scrutiny, renewed interest. Tom was right, magic that was called 'dark' magic was simply magic that had not yet been explored fully. Together, they could unravel it and usher in a new age of power that was unshackled by the laws of the ministry, challenging the nature of death itself.
That was usually what the journal liked to wax lyrical about in their exchanges, that desire and pursuit of knowledge. She had, at first and probably due to her loneliness while the real Tom was unreachable to her, been quite taken in. But she'd wearied of the behaviour quickly. The journal was so like Tom…but it was limited. Manipulative but transparent about it. She'd mentioned the shortcoming in the enchantment to Tom during one of his infrequent visits.
"It's not very clever."
"Careful, it's a direct transcription of my school years. I might take offence." He'd graced her with a cool, contemplative look that verged on boredom. A look that might have made the deatheaters quail but that she soldiered on despite.
"You know what I mean. It's incredibly intelligent, just not socially. I catch it trying to get more information out of me than it gives in return. It's not very subtle."
"You don't like the journal because it's not charming enough?"
"Tom. It's incredibly charming." So charming once that she'd had to slam it shut when someone snuck up on her reading it's rather salacious responses to her questioning in the library. Tom raised a single, dark and perfect brow at her with a knowing look. Maeve rolled her eyes and cleared her throat pointedly, tapping the cover of the journal for emphasis.
"That's not the point I'm trying to make. I assume this is going to be…" They carefully avoided saying the word aloud, just in case someone might be listening. Besides, the kind of magic that brought someone back from the dead was sure to have a price, a sort of equivalent exchange. It didn't take being a Ravenclaw to understand how that price might be extracted. "That this journal will have a use in the future. It needs to be charming and subtle enough that someone doesn't simply catch on and hand it off to a cursebreaker or throw it in the lake."
"Have you considered that you're simply too intelligent for it to fool?" He reached up, tucking a few loose strands of honey blonde hair behind her ear, warm fingers lingering as they traced the curve of her jaw.
"I…" His touch made it very hard for her to think and he knew it, damn him. She shook her head and heaved a sigh. "Tom, stop it. I'm trying to come up with solutions and you're mocking me."
"I am not mocking you, Maeve. I am tasking you with teaching it the guile I've always admired in you. A Ravenclaw's wit and a Slytherin's ambition united together in common purpose could charm anyone."
Together. What an intoxicating thought.
She had, before Tom, felt alone for so long. Maeve never really considered companionship to be so vital, had always felt it was a thing that she would always be on the outside of. A waste of time to yearn for something she simply would never have. But now that she did? With a ravenous and ceaseless possessiveness that was almost beyond reason in it's intensity, she knew she'd die before she ever gave this up. And if necessary? She'd kill to keep it.