[A/N: This is another long, 2-part chapter. Unfortunately, there was no really good place to split it, so it may seem a bit cliff-hanger-y at the end. Sorry.]
Chapter 14: Easter Special, Three Days Late
[In which there is a gratuitous amount of blood, possession, and ritual magic, and a horcrux escapes.]
Monday, 12 April – Tuesday, 13 April 1993 Chamber of Secrets
Mary and the twins followed the strange young Dark Lord around the base of the statue to a small, dark, wooden door, carved with snakes like the enormous one at the entrance. Open for a child of Slytherin, he said, and it swung inward with a small click.
"See, now, that's a much more reasonable password."
"Well, this is the original chamber," Riddle explained, as they walked into a comfortable, if dusty, sitting area. "The Parthenon out there was added a few centuries later by one of the Heirs. I just never bothered to change the password on the statue. In my defense, no one else did either."
"So there have been other Heirs?"
"Of course," Riddle shot his 'granddaughter' a 'stop being stupid' look. "It's been ten centuries, and he was a founder. Most of his descendants came here, at least pre-statute. Then most of them left the country, as far as I could tell." Mary just nodded. "Open that door," he added, pointing at a tapestry.
"Why can't you?"
"I'm not corporeal enough. Just open it."
Mary considered for a moment before deciding it was probably in their best interests to cooperate. She pulled the tapestry out of the way gingerly – the thing was probably priceless – and laid a hand on the wooden door behind it. There was a faint spark as a ward washed over her, recognizing her. It drew a drop of blood, but she didn't complain, since it did open, regardless of the fact that she was almost positive her mother was not Voldemort's daughter.
The Dark Lord in question swept past her, and froze. Mary walked through him before she could stop. It was a very static-y feeling, quite unlike the few times she'd had the misfortune to brush against a ghost.
"Sorry," she said, catching her balance, but he didn't seem to care. There was a look of abject horror on his face.
"What's up?" one of the Weasleys called from the sitting room.
"I'm going to kill him," Riddle mumbled, moving further into the new room. "I'm going to fucking kill him." Mary sincerely hoped he wasn't referring to the Weasley twin who had just spoken. "The basilisk could have been a mistake, but this?"
The ball of light doubled and split several times, the spheres flying to different corners of what she could now see was a library – a heavily-looted and largely destroyed library.
"Riddle?" Mary asked hesitantly, but the boy shook his head at her.
"Go. Just go. Wait outside while I see if there's anything in here that can be salvaged." He sounded… broken, as though his older self had betrayed him far more deeply by sacking their library than by becoming a (failed) Dark Lord.
Mary went.
She sat with the Weasley twins on the floor, whispering about the Heir of Slytherin in the weak light from beyond the tapestry. He was nothing like any of them had expected, and even the twins weren't sure what to make of him. None of them trusted him as far as they could throw him, despite his charming façade. The twins especially weren't willing to overlook what he'd been doing to Ginny all year, and Mary was wary of how quickly he seemed to change tactics when one personality wasn't working to get him what he wanted. None of them had any ideas about how to get out of the Chamber, especially without magic, or how to get rid of him. After at least an hour of Mary saying 'I told you so,' the boys finally admitted they should have gotten Professor Snape to help.
They sat quietly for a while, until one of the boys suggested that they simply ought to sneak away while Riddle was distracted. Unfortunately he apparently wasn't as distracted as all that, because his voice floated out of the library, then: "I can hear you, and that won't be happening."
The twin in question flushed, furious with himself for being overheard and ruining that chance, though Mary thought Riddle probably would have heard them opening the door of the little chamber, as well, and stopped them anyway. She sighed loudly, and began to convince the twins to just do whatever it was Riddle wanted, so they could all go home. It wasn't as though they really had any other choice, and it was their fault they were in this mess to begin with. After calling her a Slytherin for her pragmatism (which they really ought to know by now was no kind of insult, no matter what tone they used) and coming up with at least four other escape plans (none of which would have worked, even if the bastard hadn't been listening in), they eventually agreed.
Shortly after that, Ginny woke up. She was convinced at first that she was in one of her Tom-related nightmares, and didn't take it well when the twins explained that, actually, he was in the next room, and out of the book. From what Mary could make out, she remembered being questioned, and Tom taking over her body, but nothing after they reached Myrtle's bathroom. She reached the point of hysterics well before the boys could tell her what they were doing or where they were and why.
Mary left her older brothers to comfort her and went to see what Riddle was doing.
As it turned out, the answer was mostly reading, and a lot of levitation. He had re-ordered the library (or at least what was left of it) and had several heavy-looking books and an ancient-looking scroll hovering in front of him.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked quietly, just inside the door.
"Maybe. What do you know about Dark Arts?"
"I'm a muggle-raised second-year."
"So, nothing?"
"Well, I've felt the Dark Powers on the major Sabbats, but as far as actual dark magic goes, yeah. Nothing."
Tom snorted. "You're doing a little better than I was at your age, then. Here," he conjured a quill and a fresh scroll of parchment in front of her, pointing to the table. "Take notes."
Mary sat and did as she was told.
"This," the boy said, waving a book over to her, "is the ritual I used to make the diary. It's called a horcrux. It's created using a soul magic ritual invoking the Destructive and Binding Powers. I know from things he wrote later that he changed it, after the first time, but this is exactly what's between me and him. Copy out the diagrams and major points for the steps in the breaking, binding and reanimation sections, and everything in the next chapter about breaking it."
And with that, the boy went back to his reading. Mary skimmed through the major steps, fingertips barely touching the heavy pages. She wasn't sure she wanted to know anything about soul magic, which she recalled Lilian and Snape talking about the year before, or anything invoking the Destructive Power, which was, she thought, Black Arts by default.
"This says you needed a human sacrifice, made in cold blood," she said, trying not to sound too accusatory.
"Yes. It also says it has to be performed at the dark of the moon, and if you bollox up the circle, the Power might very well take your soul instead of breaking it neatly in half." Mary shivered, and Tom grinned at her discomfort. "I'd say it's perfectly safe if you're careful, but it's not. Dark Arts is a dangerous subject. Let me know when you're done."
Mary wasn't done, with her notes or her question. "Who'd you murder?"
"Myrtle Phelps. Ravenclaw, a couple years below me. Why?"
"That's horrible."
"You only say that because you never met her," the boy answered absently. "The world's better off without her. Wretched, whiney thing."
"I have. She's a ghost, now. She haunts the loo at the top of the passageway."
"Really? I had no idea. I just banished her every time."
"Really."
"Strange. Well, then, I expect you understand, anyway. Death doesn't change their personalities, you know. Whatever she's like now, she was always like that."
"But you… you just killed her?"
"No, that's what's strange. I got the basilisk to petrify her, and brought her down here to cast the circle. Killing Curse to the heart, finished the ritual, and returned her body back to the bathroom. I imagine she doesn't even remember anything after being petrified. None of the others did. No idea how she managed to become a ghost, since they normally have to be conscious at the moment of death… I'll look into it later." He waved a hand to turn the page.
"Didn't it bother you, just… cold-blooded murdering her?"
"No. Why would it?" Tom turned to look at her for the first time since she'd asked who he killed, a vaguely curious expression on his face.
Mary gaped at him. He wasn't even defensive about it. "It just… it just should. I don't know why. Because it's another human life! Killing is wrong. Evil." She shoved the book away across the table.
The Heir of Slytherin rolled his eyes. "There's no such thing as good and evil. Only power, and those too weak to seek it."
"So we should all go around killing people we don't like, then?"
"I imagine it's a far sight better than killing people you do like." The boy's cheeky grin reminded Mary of Lilian, and made him look much younger.
"To-om…" Mary drew out his name in exasperation, not noticing as she slipped to the more familiar address.
He smirked at her. "Ma-ry. I'll make this as clear as I possibly can for you: I am not a nice person. I was not a nice person when I was actually sixteen, and I'm not a nice person now, after being trapped in a bleeding diary for fifty years. For the most part, I do not like people or really understand them, or consider myself one of them. I will not hesitate to kill if it furthers my own goals." Mary was leaning away from him, now. His smirk broadened into an easy smile. "That said, I'm not insane, and I don't like the person I grew up to become – I mean, aside from everything else, he's clearly an idiot. Have you met the average wizard? It shouldn't take six months to take over Britain, let alone ten years. But I digress. I make rational choices, and I'm fully capable of playing the part society expects of me, no matter how tedious I may find it. I'm not going to run off and start killing people for fun."
"What was the point of attacking students all year, then?"
"To get Dumbledore fired."
"All that, just to get the Headmaster fired?" Mary raised a skeptical eyebrow at the phantom.
"We have a history, and he might have been able to stop me getting a body if he were still here." Mary was still giving him an incredulous look. "Oh, come off it, it's not like I sent the basilisk into the Great Hall! No one died. I didn't even sabotage the damn mandrakes. They'll be able to restore the ones who were petrified by the end of the year, just like they did back in the forties."
"So it's not about attacking muggleborns?"
Riddle shook his head. "It never was. My own wellbeing is my highest priority. Everything else is optional. Accepting the whole blood purity dogma was supposed to be just a political move to get Malfoy and Black and that jackass Lestrange off my back. I don't know why the Idiot never moved on after school. It's obviously a flawed paradigm."
"It's still not right, what you've been doing."
"I'm not going to argue ethics with a twelve-year-old."
"That's the sort of thing people say when they know they're going to lose."
"No, O impertinent one, that's the sort of thing people say when they want to get a body and get out of here, which is not going to happen unless I can get through this chapter." He gave her a pointed look. "If you're not going to be helpful, you can go back out and sit with the gingers."
"Why do you even need notes on that ritual anyway?" Mary grumbled.
"Because, as soon as I have a body, I'm planning on breaking the ties between my life-spark, which is currently somewhere out in the world being an enormous idiot, and the part of my soul that this consciousness is tied to, which means that unless I want to actually die, I need to tie myself to another life-spark at the same time. The Idiot took all the literature on vampires with him, so the next-best option is to adapt the horcrux ritual, and to do that, we start with a copy that's stripped down to bare bones. You can either copy it, thereby saving me the trouble of doing it all in my head, or you can get out and stop distracting me."
The book slid back in front of Mary, and Tom turned back to his own reading again.
"Fine, but just so you know, no one down here is going to want to have you tied to their life, and none of us is going to be your human sacrifice."
"Like you could stop me? I'm the only one who can do magic at the moment, if you recall? But the purpose of the sacrifice is as a gift of power to the Powers you're invoking. Any source of metaphysical energy or potential would do. We're practically drowning in magic at the moment – we won't need another sacrifice."
"You'd better not," Mary said, finally returning to work.
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A surprisingly comfortable silence settled in, broken only by the scratching of Mary's quill and the turning of pages. Even the Weasleys were quiet outside. After a short time, she announced that she was done. Tom came over and looked at her work, comparing it to the process and diagrams outlined in the book. He ordered her to cross out several lines entirely, and had her circle several sections of the diagrams, which he said would need to be re-defined to bind soul to body to life-spark, rather than to an inanimate vessel like the diary.
"All right, then," Tom announced. "This is what I'm thinking. We'll make a blood-golem for the body. It's based on a relatively straightforward piece of bio-alchemy, but since we haven't got half the materials here, we'll need to ritualize it and call on the Constructive Power to manage it. They usually only last seven years, but since we're housing my soul and a good bit of my magic in it, and I'm planning on integrating part of all of this lovely stuff floating around as well, it should be able to be sustained indefinitely. It probably won't really age beyond the seven years, though I don't know that anyone's ever really considered eternal youth a problem, per se.
"Then, we'll draw two circles, one inside the other. The inner circle is the breaking part of the horcrux ritual, so the Destructive Power, but aimed at my current life-spark/soul bond. This will effectively negate the use of the diary or my new body as a horcrux for the original life-spark, but fuck that idiot. He's had ten years to come back if he wanted to use it. I'm getting a do-over. When it's served its purpose, that circle will burn out and dissipate.
"The outer circle will contain the blood-golem and my untethered magic, soul, and associated consciousness. Basically I'll be a demonic entity until the second circle activates and binds the golem, life-spark, and metaphysical pieces. That will involve the Binding, Cooperative, and Constructive Powers. We'll call on the Chaotic Power in the aspect of the Lady to govern the whole process, since it involves both light and dark powers, and it's basically ad-hoc. Sounds reasonable?"
Mary had, in all honesty, only followed about half of that. Possibly less. "I guess so. Aren't there supposed to be more… I don't know… rules? To rituals, and invoking the Powers? I didn't think you could just cut and paste them together like this."
Tom smirked. "Rule number one: if you've got enough power, you can hang the rules. Most of magic is just intention and will. The rules are tradition, and strong in their way, but not inviolable. The Powers can be touchy, yes, but that's why we're invoking the Lady to govern the others. The Chaotic Power likes to break the others' rules, and if the Lady smiles on us, it will go off without a hitch. If not, of course, we'll be on our own, but I've never failed before."
"Halloween, 1981?"
"He's not dead, is he? And anyway, that's not me."
Mary let that one go. "Whose life-spark are you going to use?"
"Well, I could use one of the twins' – from what I've seen and Ginny's told me, they sound like they're entwined enough that they could get by with one between the two of them – but that would be another breaking and binding circle. I actually thought we'd use the basilisk's. She was a sapient creature once upon a time, so it will be compatible. I have no idea how the Idiot managed to break her mind so thoroughly. She wasn't even sentient by the time I got here. But her life-spark should linger for a few days before it dissipates, and since she's dead, it's currently not bound to anything."
"How do you do that, then?" Mary asked, ignoring the seeming impossibility of making him part-basilisk.
"It'll be a Necro element, so the sacrifice section here," he pointed at a section of the original diagram, "Will need to be everted. We'll need to include her blood in the golem, as well as some of the runes in the circles, those sections I marked out in the binding part of the horcrux ritual. Between that and the fact that it's going to be powered by and integrate a lot of the ambient magic that was, until very recently, tied to that life-spark, should be enough to draw it in. The golem has a pseudo-spark, which will be replaced, giving it a "seat" in the construct, and the spells to maintain that pseudo-spark should keep the basilisk's life-spark from dissipating, even if it doesn't want to integrate properly. But there's no reason it shouldn't."
"Okay… And the golem?"
"It's kind of like a spell to make a twin, or a really good physical simulacrum."
"Like a clone?"
Tom shrugged. "You use blood as the basis for a magical construct, kind of like a semi-permanent human transfiguration, but without all the maths. How close it is to a real human body depends less on how well you know your human anatomy and more on the blood used. Drawbacks are that while it mimics life, it's not truly alive; it doesn't have a soul or consciousness of its own, so it must be consciously controlled by the doll-maker; and the ritual expires after seven years, allowing the magic holding it together to dissipate. We're fixing the first problem by pulling in the basilisk's spark, the second by tying in my consciousness and soul, and the third by integrating my magic, along with a good part of the basilisk's magic that's just free-floating at the moment. Practical problems include that I don't actually have blood at the moment. We'll use yours."
"Why mine? Won't that make the golem my clone?"
"Because you're most likely my granddaughter, and if not, then somehow my magical heir, since the library did let you in. You have to be a valid, living, willing heir of Slytherin to open the door. No one can force you to give up the family's secrets. And yes, but we're going to alter it by, well, basically mixing your blood with a little bit of basilisk blood, and exposing it to my magical signature, which sounds a bit hazy, I know, but basically means that I'll be imbuing it with my magical presence so that I can actively control the formation process. So it actually will depend quite a lot on my knowledge of human anatomy, like a complex permanent transfiguration, but since that's basically what I was going to use Ginny to power anyway, I'm not terribly worried." He waved away this concern. "The other practical problem is actually drawing the circles. If you don't mind, it will be far easier if I possess you to draw out the altered diagrams, and then the twins will have to actually lay out and empower them for the ritual. Neither you nor Ginny will have the reserves to power that many runes, and I can't very well draw anything in this state. My levitation spells are good, but not that good, at least without a wand."
"Erm…"
"Oh, honestly, it's not like I wouldn't give your body back. I don't want to be a twelve-year-old girl! If I did, I could have kept Ginny!"
Mary giggled despite herself. The idea of Tom trapped as a girl her age forever was somehow inherently funny. "It's not that." It was, actually, a little that. She didn't want to end up possessed like Ginny or Quirrell if the body ritual didn't work out. "It's just… I don't know if you can possess me. Your older self tried last year, and it… didn't go well."
"How so?"
"Well, I heard him inside my head saying 'what the hell are you?' in Parsel, and then we were both in incredible pain, and he had to retreat."
Tom's eyes widened. "That. Is. Fascinating. And possibly incredibly problematic. Now I really need to try this."
"Ah… Okay," Mary agreed hesitantly, and Tom's eyes locked onto hers.
"Try to relax, if you can. This is going to feel really weird," he said, and then she felt a foreign presence inside her mind, as though her skull was suddenly far too full.
Can you hear me?
"Yes," Mary said aloud.
So far so good, then. There is something here. It's almost like… a fragment of my life-spark, maybe?
"What does that mean?"
Well, there's definitely a draw, indicating some kind of connection between us, and it suggests you're my magical heir through a soul-magic accident, and not actually my granddaughter. Pity. I liked that theory. This thing probably resonated badly with his spark when he tried to come into your head. Dark Powers, he really fucked up. The life-spark is supposed to be indivisible. Anyway, it shouldn't be a problem. Watch.
"See? Now I have control of your body," Tom said. It was almost exactly like being on Veritaserum, feeling her mouth move of its own accord, but stranger, because she had no idea what Tom was going to say before he said it.
He picked up her abandoned quill and conjured a new scroll, quickly outlining three different ritual circles. That was even stranger. She didn't care much for it at all.
Neither did Ginny. Tom thought at her.
…You can hear what I'm thinking?
Only the really coherent thoughts. I'm not actually concentrating much on reading you right now. It would be easy enough to turn inward and legilimize you, but we have things to do. He summoned a book off a shelf with a wave of his hand. This is Akkadian. I've only ever seen it used in Soul Magic, but it tends to crop up there a lot. It's worth learning if you're going to specialize and become a Soul Mage, but otherwise, that's what reference books are for.
And the others? It seemed Tom liked to teach.
I considered being a teacher when I graduated, the boy said. Hieratic, which is fairly common, and Proto-Arabic, which isn't uncommon, but not common either, and especially not in most European-origin rituals he thought, pointing to each of the other two languages. There are a few Greek symbols as well, but mostly for their arithmantic implications. Alphabets aren't conceptual enough to make good runes. You need at least a syllabary to anchor your meanings, or you might as well write out what you want longhand. Now hush.
Mary sat quietly in the back of her own mind, thinking how very odd the whole situation was as she watched her hand trace out symbols and arrange them in some arcane pattern according to knowledge she wasn't privy to. It looked to her like he was changing a lot more than the little sections he had marked out originally. She hoped he knew what he was doing.
Aww, you care about me? Tom thought sarcastically inside her own head.
Well, I like you more than I think I should, but I mostly just don't want you to blow us all up.
Tom laughed. A valid concern. I've changed the actual symbols of those sections to re-define the targets, but they all have to be re-arranged to accommodate the new information. And for the binding, it needs to encompass three elements instead of two, so instead of an ellipse-based shape, we need a trefoil, with the one leaf everted, or turned-inside-out, for the necromantic bits – we want to draw in the basilisk's life-spark, not contain a sacrifice… The proper sacrifice part is up here – I take all the power I'm keeping, and the rest is split between the Powers we're invoking at the beginning, before anything else. And that leads to all these other changes.
He was silent for a few more minutes before he added, Oh, forgot about that bit. Marking the vessel. I'll need to possess you again after the golem is made to mark it with the appropriate runes.
Finally he was done, and turned control back over to Mary, who suddenly felt much more tired than she had while Tom was in control.
She blinked heavily at him, and he smirked at her in return. "Go have a kip. I'll get the twins to mark out the circles while you do."
Tom followed Mary back into the sitting room, the latest scroll and one of his little lanterns accompanying them. The light woke the Weasleys, and the sight of Tom sent Ginny into hysterics again.
Mary was left to deal with her as Tom dragged her brothers out into the giant hall, filling them in on exactly what he needed them to do. She was too tired to be nice, and ended up resorting to the method she and Lilian had perfected for Hermione during their first exam season: smacking her sharply across the face.
Normally, in Mary's experience, this had a sobering effect on the person so treated. In Ginny's case, it did not. Mary received in return a hard punch to the ribs, and one to the jaw before the younger girl calmed down.
"Why'd you hit me?"
"You smacked me first!"
"Merlin and Morgan! Only to make you stop freaking out about Riddle!"
"He's fucking insane! He was going to kill me!"
"Yeah, well, now he's not. I don't know what the twins have told you, but we're trapped somewhere under the school and there's so much magic in the air that our wands aren't working. No one knows where we are, and the only way we're likely to get out before we starve to death is if we help him get what he wants."
"You don't understand! He's awful! He's been torturing me all year!"
Mary gave the other girl a long look before she said, very quietly, "That doesn't matter. He's the only one down here who can do magic, so we have to do what he wants until we get out."
Ginny curled up in an old armchair, facing away from Mary. "You're just like him," she accused, and then refused to say anything else to the Slytherin.
Mary, exhausted, decided that ignoring this comment was probably the best course of action, but she worried as she drifted off that the younger girl might be right, and even more disturbingly, that she didn't know if she minded. After all, if it was her own survival and freedom on the line, there was a very good chance she would choose herself over a virtual stranger as well. But she did like to think that killing anyone, even someone as irritating as Moaning Myrtle, and especially an innocent like Ginny, would bother her.
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Several hours later, or at least Mary suspected it was several hours later, given that she couldn't even do a tempus charm, and had never owned a watch, she woke to an argument about facilities.
"Well excuse me, Mr. Diary Ghost, but some of us have bodily needs!" Ginny shrieked from somewhere in the giant hall. Her voice was shrill, even with a door between them. Clearly she had gotten past her hysterics at the sight of Tom and was now determined to make his life as miserable as she could.
Now that she mentioned bodily needs, though, Mary was very thirsty. She looked around curiously, wondering if Tom had somehow brought in water. A half-eaten loaf of bread, several apples, and, yes, a pitcher of water with a few glasses left in it, sat on the sidetable – the Weasleys must have already eaten.
Mary took advantage of their absence to drink straight from the pitcher, then quickly scarfed down a chunk of bread, and took an apple with her to go see what the others had accomplished while she slept.
"It's almost ready," Tom said, as soon as she came around the statue.
The smooth flagstone floor, which filled the space between the columns, had been covered in broad lines of black and white paint, with hand-sized runes in the opposite color painted at intervals of about a foot within each line – chains and chains of them. The diagrams Tom had used Mary's hands to draw had been recreated on a much larger scale. The basic patterns were simple enough – a circle sat enclosed in one 'leaf' of a trefoil pattern, in which Tom would be separated from Voldemort. The second leaf was flipped inside out, so that from above, it would have looked somewhat like a heart attached to a circle or teardrop. The small circle was large enough for Tom to lie down in. There was a second circle, slightly larger than that, separated from the others by perhaps ten meters, in which the golem would be created. Then, even further down the hall, another circle had been sketched out and apparently abandoned. All of the small circles, even the one that looked abandoned, were complex knots of interwoven lines. The trefoil was simply a doubled black-and-white line, which helped show the direction of the leaves, though Mary was certain that was not its official purpose and the reason for its apparent simplicity.
One of the twins was empowering some of the runes, leaving them glowing different colors. Tom was supervising closely. When she approached, she heard him murmuring the names and functions of each symbol. She was curious why they were skipping some of them, but was reluctant to interrupt. The other Weasley twin came up behind Mary.
"Kind of amazing, isn't it? I don't think he's referenced any of them yet," he said quietly.
"He looked up a bunch of Akkadian earlier," Mary volunteered.
"Just had to ruin my fun, didn't you?" Tom asked, looking up from the diagram. "I had them just about convinced that I was omniscient."
"So sorry. He didn't bother looking up any of the diagrams or the hieratic or the Arabic," she directed at the twins. "Better?" she asked the phantom.
"It wasn't that I didn't bother. I didn't need to."
"She's a second-year," the Weasley who was activating runes pointed out. "She hasn't taken Runes. She has no idea how impressive any of this is. What's next?"
"Good point, Fred," his brother said, while Tom looked back at the diagram.
"Skip the next two, and then the next one is another ki, and then ush." George made a note on a scrap of paper Mary hadn't noticed.
"Referencing the previous two and linking to the next, which binds them together," Fred said with a nod. Tom nodded back, and Fred closed his eyes, hand hovering over the rune, which began to glow purple.
"Why did you skip two?"
"One needs the basilisk's blood added to it, and the other needs your blood."
Ginny returned from the darkness just then, poor mood obviously not improved by having to make due with a latrine indoors. "Blood? We can't do a blood ritual!" she objected.
"You can and you will, unless you really want to die down here," Tom replied mildly. "And your brothers and Miss Potter along with you, since none of you are leaving until I've got what I want."
"Erm…" Mary began to speak, but hesitated. Perhaps she shouldn't rib Ginny.
"What were you going to say?" George asked.
Mary's flush was evident in the pale light of Tom's lamps. "Just, well, Miss Weasley, what did you think was going on here?"
"She has a point," Tom smirked. "I don't do White Arts."
Ginny cringed before the Slytherins, then turned and stomped away. Mary immediately felt bad. She knew she shouldn't have said anything.
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"What do I need to do?" Mary asked as she watched Ginny disappear behind a pillar, hoping to change the subject.
"First you need to find your symbol," Tom said. "I'm assuming you don't know it, since you haven't gotten to divination yet, and it's OWL level in Runes. Then we're going to find out how good you are at channeling magic."
"Um, okay. Why?"
"Because I need to draw and activate all the runes in that circle," he pointed down the hall, "to draw some of the ambient power into my being. If you remember the reanimation section of the horcrux ritual, you'll recall I don't have anything like the magic I should. So we're going to fix that. Your symbol is needed for the binding ritual, to differentiate between your blood in your body and your blood in the golem. You'll have to empower that, too, so mind you pay attention when I'm doing it."
"So how do I find my symbol?"
Tom sighed. "You need to reach a meditative state and turn inward. When you think you've found your center, breathe onto a mirror so that it catches some condensation. It should clear into your symbol. It's probably going to take ages, unless you've actually learned to meditate already." He didn't even sound hopeful.
"What exactly is meditating?"
"Come sit," he said, walking back toward the chamber proper. "This is going to take a while. Weasleys," he called to the Twins as he walked away, "That phrase is repeated six more times in that diagram. You can activate them as well."
"Aye-aye," George called, throwing a mocking salute at the older boy's back.
"Kids today," Riddle grumbled, throwing himself into an approximation of lounging in an armchair. It didn't really look right, given that he wasn't really solid and had no weight. "Right. The easiest way to describe meditation is the practice of quieting your conscious mind in order to access the unconscious or to become more receptive to the universe. The easiest way to do it, at least the first time, is to concentrate on one aspect of your body, usually the heartbeat or breathing, to the exclusion of all else. Narrow your focus to just that one thing, and lose yourself in the regularity of it. The next step is to center yourself – become aware that that one thing is just part of a larger body, and allow your awareness to expand to every nerve and cell in your body. From there, you need to focus on the flow of magic throughout your body, and follow it back to your core, the place from which it seems to flow.
"If magic were blood, your core would be like your heart. You'll know when you're there because you'll recognize the feeling of magic. It's about a hundred times stronger in your core than anywhere else, and you will probably get thrown out of your trance when you find it, because it will startle you. Find it again, maintain contact with it, and then breathe on the mirror, all without losing that same sense of awareness of your magic. Your breath should condense into a single symbol, which you use to represent yourself in any runework or rituals you do. Got it?"
Most of it sounded like zoning out, a practice she had perfected over the course of many long years of being trapped in a cupboard for hours on end. She did have one question, though. "What does magic feel like?"
Tom rolled his eyes. "This should be one of the first things they teach you, but of course it's not. Why would young witches and wizards need to know what it feels like to use their magic? Like this." He hovered one of his hands over one of Mary's and she suddenly felt it engulfed in the same static-y sensation she had felt on walking through him. "Most people keep their magic very close to their bodies. If they're angry or upset, it may broaden and lash out, but for the most part, it hovers right around the skin. That's what the 'aura' is – your magic made visible. Remember when I said earlier that you can reach out and touch the magic of the world, even without a wand?" Mary nodded. "That's basically extending your magic outside the confines of your body, but with a purpose. You can sense foreign magic by touching it with your own magic, which is what we're doing now. To me it feels like dipping my fingers into cool water. To you it will almost certainly feel different."
"Like static. Electricity."
Tom nodded. "When you're meditating, you separate your mind from your magic, to a degree, but you're still using your magic to sense yourself as though you were an outsider, so your magic should feel similar to mine. There are nuances to it that can help you distinguish between different peoples' magic, but that's far more advanced than you need to know for the moment."
"What do you mean I'm still using my magic to sense my magic? Isn't that like trying to see your own eyeball?"
"No, it's more like poking yourself in the arm. You don't normally just feel the texture of your own skin, do you?"
"Ah, no?"
"So you're not focusing on what the touch feels like for your fingers, normally, if you're touching your own arm. But you do when you're touching someone else's arm, because you're only getting information from your fingers, not their arm. To feel the texture of your own magic, that static-y feeling, you have to concentrate on the finger, more than on the arm. Metaphorically."
Mary, who had been poking herself in the arm literally, nodded. "So I have to zone out, and then find my magic within my body, and trace it back to the place where it seems like it's coming from?"
Tom hesitated, obviously trying to figure out if "zone out" was the same thing as meditation, but eventually said, "Yes." He summoned a mirror from somewhere in the room. It was heavy and silver-backed, and nearly completely tarnished, but still reflective.
"Okay. I should probably, erm… relieve myself, first," she said, unable to think of a more graceful way to excuse herself to go squat in a corner.
Much to her surprise, Tom began to snigger. "The WC is behind that door," he said, pointing at another tapestry.
"I thought you made Ginny go in the cave!"
"Ginny was being a brat," he said simply.
Mary decided that there was little to be gained in pointing out that that had been very mean of him, especially considering that Ginny had every right to be irritable about the fact that he had nearly killed her. She helped herself to the antiquated but entirely adequate vanishing toilet, and when she returned, Tom had gone back to directing the twins.
Mary settled herself in an armchair and began to let her mind drift.
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An indeterminate amount of time later, Tom came back. "How is it going?" he asked.
Surprise was briefly visible on his face when she explained that she had managed to find her core, she was almost positive, but hadn't managed to keep in contact with it while finding the mirror and breathing on it. She thought it was because the instant she had any intention to do anything, the trance state shattered.
"Better than I expected," he admitted.
Mary just shrugged.
"The twins have done all they can for the moment, so it's time for us to do the power-tapping ritual."
"Okay," Mary nodded. Meditating was surprisingly tiring. "What time is it?" she asked as her stomach growled.
Tom snapped his fingers and the glowing red numbers of a tempus charm flared. "Almost nine."
"Almost nine? As in Tuesday morning?"
"No, as in Tuesday evening."
"Crap. They're going to know we're gone."
"I suspect it is safe to say your absence will not have gone unnoted. Still, we should be done with all this by tomorrow, and you can go back, safe and sound, just in time for classes to resume."
Mary groaned. "Alright, I'm ready. What do I need to do?"
Tom grinned and caught her eye. "Just relax."
And then Mary's limbs, which were no longer her own, carried her out of the sitting room to the furthest circle. Unlike the other circles, this one had no runes drawn in, and their lines were much thinner, just charcoal lines sketched onto the grey stone – no paint.
The paint was just water and eggwhites with the chalk and charcoal, Tom thought at her.
Where did you get eggs?
The same place I got bread and apples – stolen from the kitchens.
How…?
Aparicium. It's kind of like apparating an object to you. NEWT level Charms, and it only works if you know where the thing is that you want to move. Thankfully the kitchens haven't been reorganized in the past fifty years. Inanimate objects only, and you can't pull things across most barrier wards, but the ones on the chamber are one-way, so I can bring things in. Nothing gets out, which is why all this magic is still here.
He approached a bowl of chalk-and-water paste that was sitting near the circle and transfigured a simple knife from a rock. It was strange to watch him work magic from inside her own head. She could almost see him reaching out with his power and twisting the world to suit him.
That's how wandless magic really works. Don't let anyone ever tell you differently, he thought at her. There was something like a smile behind it, though her face didn't move.
Without warning, Tom slit Mary's right wrist over the bowl.
Ouch! she thought, taken by surprise.
Don't be a baby. It's just a little cut.
I know, but it still hurts.
Tom said nothing in response, but when he had all the blood he apparently needed, he healed the cut, and the pain was gone as though it had never been there. The knife became a paintbrush, and he mixed the blood into the chalk to make a thick paint, which was then used to place runes along the charcoal lines. Mary ignored the strange sensations of his moving her muscles, focusing on her meditation in the back of her mind. When he was done, he vanished the charcoal, leaving only the brownish runes and stepped into the circle.
This isn't a proper ritual, per se, he explained as he double checked the symbols and folded her body into a seated position. It's more of a runic magnet and funnel for ambient magic – an adaptation of an enchanting element. This thorn rune that we're sitting on is my symbol, and I'll have to keep in contact with it through my magic so that the power will be funneled into me. We'll be activating all the runes at once using one of my own spells. I'll need to use your magic to do that, because it's your blood in the runes. Since we're sitting on top of the thorn rune, you need to focus on rejecting the very idea of getting burned. Aside from that, just stay quiet and let me work.
Okay, she responded. She really didn't want to mess up whatever he was doing, especially since it sounded difficult and dangerous, and her body would be sitting right in the middle of it. There is no possible way I'm going to get burned.
Tom grinned, taking hold of Mary's magic and directing it outward to touch the runes. She could feel her blood in each one, calling to her magic. When he was certain that they had made contact with every rune, he whispered aloud, "Adustulare!" The runes began to burn, the magic carving and activating them all at once. Mary concentrated very hard on the fact that this strange fire would not hurt her.
The power around them, so thick in the air, began to turn and focus, as though running into a drainpipe. Mary had a moment of extreme panic as she realized that all of this power was going to run through her to get to Tom, but it was fleeting, because as soon as the power struck, it blanked out every thought in her head. It was not unlike the power channeled at her very first Yule ritual, but instead of settling on her from the outside, it was invading her, pulled through her body and mind, stripping all that she was down to nothing. She was fairly certain that she fainted, or would have, if she was the only consciousness in her body.
The next thing she knew, Tom was leaning over her, actually glowing. She blinked. "It worked, then?"
"Oh, yes. I feel great. You?" he actually giggled. That, along with the fact that he had actually asked after her wellbeing, was so foreign to what she knew of him that she did a double take.
Now that he mentioned it, she actually felt fairly energized herself, but… "Are you high?" she had to ask.
"Hmmm… I'm going to go with yes. A little. It will pass, I'm sure." He snapped his fingers again for his time spell. "Only three. Damn. I told the twins I'd let them have at least eight hours. Right. Well. You should go back to seeking your symbol. Oh. But before you do, I need blood from you for the golem circle."
Mary held out her left arm without a word. The boy, still more excited than she had yet seen him, vanished the contents of his bowl and, completely eschewing a knife, traced a finger over her wrist. A cut opened in the wake of the static sensation of his magic, deeper than the first. The bowl filled quickly, and he healed her again, magic tingling outward from the deepest point of the cut to the surface, leaving no trace of a scar. He floated away, not even pretending to walk, and Mary returned to the sitting room.