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Magical matrimonial vows, commonly understood to be a formal attestation of deep affection between wizards and witches, are but one strand of an extraordinary and understudied branch of the magical arts: soul magic. If one favours an oath with sincere feeling and intent, then depending on the specific wording, he has made a permanently binding magical contract. As such, it cannot be so easily gainsaid, even if wizard and witch with mutual assent attempt a retraction with full sincerity of intent. A notice of annulment from the Ministry of Magic's Department of Administrative Registration may rescind a civil contract of marriage, but the binding of soul to soul remains, and one might discover that the same vow cannot be performed again with another. It is fair to say, then, that divorce within a wizarding society is infrequent, as should it be...
From the beginning of First Year, Tom had always been the first one up in the Slytherin boys' dormitory. Sleeping, he believed, was a waste of time when he could be making the best use of his scant few years at Hogwarts. He could sleep anywhere, but there was no magical library like Hogwarts'. And he'd been warned, over and over, that going out past the night time curfew was against the rules, but there was no rule against getting up extra early. The only instance where he ever slept in was during holidays at the Riddle House. His justification: it wasn't a waste of time, because regardless of what Hermione preferred to call it, it wasn't exactly sleeping.
It surprised him when, well before dawn, the other boys lit their night lamps, started stumbling bleary-eyed out of their four-poster beds, and began the chaotic morning symphony of toilet flushing and shower splashing.
Tom sighed and pulled open his green velvet bed curtains. With a flick of his fingers, he wandlessly Levitated the book he was in the middle of re-reading, Magical Matrimonials, in front of him. He planned to continue reading while gathering his clothing and readying himself for the day. It had been a substantial improvement to his quality of life when he'd finally gotten the hang of being able to read and turn pages in a book completely hands-free.
Nott, dressed in his long woollen underpants with his silk nightshirt unbuttoned to reveal a slice of bony bare chest, noticed Tom's reading material first.
"Not fully prepared for the duel, are you, Riddle? What last-minute spells are you brushing up on now?" Nott tried to grab the book floating in mid-air, but it wouldn't budge even when he put his entire body-weight behind it. "Magical Matrimonials? Why in Merlin's name are you reading that?"
"It's interesting," said Tom. He turned a page with the force of his thoughts. "Did you know that some marriage vows are considered within the category of 'Unbreakable'? If you make the formal, bonded vow of fidelity, then stray from your marriage, the vow kills you."
"Uh, yes, Riddle," said Nott. "That's what Unbreakable Vows do."
"Seems like a misnomer to me," remarked Tom. "Since you can break the vow, it's not technically unbreakable. The 'killing you' bit doesn't prevent you from breaking it, it punishes you after the deed is done. The penalty becomes inconsequential if breaking the vow is valuable enough."
"Well, this may be a revelation to you, but most people think being killed is consequential enough of a penalty to be worth keeping their vows," said Nott. "What's your interest in this subject?"
The other boys, mostly shirtless and in the case of Lestrange, fully trouserless, had been listening in to the conversation.
"Oooh," hooted Lestrange, a grin crawling across his face as his brain plodded its tedious way to the obvious conclusion. "Riddle wants a wedding!"
"Yes," said Tom coolly. "Have you got a problem with that, Lestrange?"
"Er..." Lestrange's grin grew slightly strained. "No. No problem at all. It's respectable and proper for an adult wizard to take a witch wife on which to father magical children. You haven't... um, fathered children, have you? That's dishonourable and low-mannered behaviour for unmarried wizards. Or so I've heard some people say. Heheh..."
"There are no children at present, to my best knowledge," said Tom. "You know me to be an honourable man in every way, of course."
Lestrange coughed. "Of course."
A silence fell as the boys busied themselves with getting dressed. Rosier quietly Summoned his duelling gauntlets from his trunk, while Lestrange fiddled with the straps of his shatterproof flying goggles. Avery plaited his hair back and tied it into a tight knot secured with a Sticking Charm. Nott counted vials of healing and pain reliever potions before shoving them into his bag. Travers wrangled with a heavy leather doublet covered in silver studs; it was a size too large for him, and he had to yank the laces to pull them tight.
"Congratulations, Riddle," spoke Travers into the awkward lull, fingers knotting at his laces. "Marriage announcements are glad tidings."
His words were echoed by the other boys.
"Felicitations, Riddle."
"Happy blessings."
And from Rosier: "Is it Granger? Is that who you've picked for the future Madam Riddle?"
Tom's gaze bore down on Rosier. The other boy's throat bobbed, but he stood his ground. "Who else would it be?"
Rosier broke into a cackle. "Ahahah! I told you so, didn't I tell you! Nott, you booby, you owe me fifteen Galleons!" To Tom, he turned and said, "I knew it couldn't have been anyone else; the crystals don't lie. So, Riddle, how did it go? How did you ask her? When did you ask her? I haven't seen her wearing a ring—or did you get a bracelet or necklace instead?"
Tom didn't answer.
"You did ask her, didn't you?" said Nott. "Booby or not, even I know you have to ask the witch and have her accept you, or it won't count."
"I did make my intentions known during our Christmas holidays of Sixth Year," Tom reluctantly admitted.
"Well... Did she say yes?"
"It's an operation in progress."
"Looks like you won't be getting your fifteen Galleons, Rosier," said Nott smugly.
"Shut your gob, Nott," snapped Lestrange. "Riddle doesn't need to explain himself to the likes of you." To Tom he said, "We'll help you, if you want. I know a man in Knockturn Alley who can get his hands on a full set of heirloom-quality bridal jewels, barely cursed, for a fair price. And my mother knows Malfoy's mother who knows Lucretia Black's mother who knows a famous party decorator from the girly magazines."
"Toady," muttered Nott under his breath.
"Why are you so invested in my future matrimonials?" Tom asked, peering into Lestrange's eyes.
"You always said loyalty was worth rewarding. Hasn't she been your oldest follower?" said Lestrange. "Six years—"
"Ten," said Tom softly. "She'll have been mine for ten years this coming December."
"Last time at dinner, Sluggy asked you, 'What would you like to be after Hogwarts?'. And you replied, 'I should be well-pleased if every household in Britain knew my name.' If that's not a declaration of your ambitions, I don't know what is, and I know that getting there doesn't come by dint of fortune. When anyone with that level of importance says he got there by good luck, what he really means is that he's got good connections." Lestrange drew in a slow breath as Tom finally turned his burning gaze away. "I have connections. And I can be loyal, too, Riddle. If you'll allow it."
"Slytherin ambition is surely only matched by its subtlety," Tom remarked in a dry tone. "If you want to help me in my suit—and that goes for all of you—then I implore you to put forth your best efforts in today's practical exercise. Your actions are a reflection on my leadership."
Preparing for the chill of pre-dawn, the Slytherins donned their black winter cloaks, and when Tom pulled his hood over his head, they copied him. Without speaking, Tom led them out of the boys' dormitories, dead silent this early on a Saturday morning, and they did not see another student until they'd reached the Common Room.
A girl in a velvet dressing gown over her nightshift sat in the choicest Chesterfield sofa by the fireplace, half a dozen pet cats piled in a furry lump in her lap. She was feeding them treats from a pouch, and they purred contentedly and in concert. Her dark hair was braided, her cheeks round and flushed; she couldn't have been more than a Fourth Year. When she spoke, her voice was high and childish, as if she not yet been forced into the mandatory transformation that most female Slytherins underwent when they drew near their majorities, the one which turned them into prim débutantes.
"I want to come with you," she demanded, standing up. The cats fell out of her lap with a yowl.
Tom, who had planned to ignore her, stopped in his tracks. He flipped back his hood so she could see his face. "How brave of you to assume the Head Boy can be commanded such. Who are you, anyway?"
"Rosier," said the girl. "Druella Rosier. Cygnus told me at dinner last night that you'd be sneaking out. I want to join."
"Cygnus Black has too little respect for the trust to which people feel he's worthy," said Tom. "And we're not sneaking out. We're going to practice Defence for the N.E.W.T. exam. When your own exams are months away, you'd be doing the same thing. Until then, go to bed, mind your elders, and be grateful I'm not taking House points for your impertinence."
"Cygnus tells me everything," Druella replied. "As he should. He'll be my husband one day, you know. Tell him, Sebastian. I know that's you, third man from the door. The rose crest on your gloves is showing."
Rosier groaned and threw back his own hood. "Listen to the Head Boy, Dru. Go to bed. What we're doing is hardly suitable for little girls."
Druella folded her arms. "I don't see why not. Riddle's sweetheart gets to join you in whichever empty classroom you've found in the Dungeons."
"She's an adult witch, not a little girl. And she's Riddle's intended," corrected Lestrange. His hooded head turned to Tom, as if waiting for an indication of approval.
"Oh, is she?" said Druella. "Thou shouldst ever be true in life and love. Congratulations, Riddle. When you have your firstborn, I offer Sebastian for godfather. He's good with children, and so am I."
"I shall take that under advisement," said Tom. "Now go to bed and don't let me catch you spreading rumours. When you're an adult, we may have this discussion as equals, but until then, you have no authority over me."
Druella scowled. Rosier sighed and had a silent conversation of eyebrow wiggling and hand gestures with her over a chorus of insistent mewling. Druella's pink face reddened, and she glared at her brother, eventually stomping back to her dormitory trailed by a line of hungry cats.
When they left the Common Room, Avery murmured, "Cygnus Black is going to have his hands full in a few years. Wilful little chit, that one. Don't envy him in the least."
"Some wizards, unfortunately, have a taste for the mouthy ones," said Nott.
"Hah," said Avery with a snort, "like your father, you mean. Came up with the Sacred Twenty-Eight, then wed a witch who wasn't even on the list. He didn't marry Annis Gamp for blood or money, that's for sure."
"For your information, my mother may have half-blood cousins, but she herself is pure of blood. In fact, all of us have half-blood cousins, we just don't invite them over for Christmas parties," Nott replied icily. "And Father married Mother because Gamp women breed great scholars and artificers. Can't say that about your line, Avery, can you? The only winners your family breeds are Granian goers at the Bodmin Moor races."
Lestrange and Rosier chuckled at Avery's sputtering affront.
"Gentlemen," Tom cut in, "can we save this competitive spirit for the ring? For now, let's agree on this: if you have no preference for outspoken witches, then learn how to cast the Self-Deafening Hex."
They Disillusioned themselves once past the dungeons and into the corridors filled with sleeping portraits and drifting ghosts. At one point, they passed an Auror standing his patrol at the corner of the main staircase, and Silencing their footsteps with a non-verbal spell, they crept past him one by one. The place Hermione had arranged for them to meet was a flat patch of land by the edge of the Black Lake, within sight of the Herbology greenhouses. It was still dark when they arrived, the other boys cursing and stumbling as they tripped over the gravel and slab pathway that twisted its way down the sloping side of the hill on which the castle stood.
Matthias Mulciber and Orion Black had beaten them there, Mulciber holding his lit wand aloft to provide a source of illumination for Black and Hermione. Black was speaking softly to Hermione, whose cloak and robe were off, folded on the ground in a dark heap. Black stood unpleasantly close to her, pulling on the laces of a thick doublet of pebbled burgundy leather, while she held her arms out.
"Uncle Pollux gave it to Cygnus for Christmas, saying, 'You won't do well in the Hogwarts Duelling Club if you don't have a proper dragonhide vest.' Cygnus never told him he signed up for the Gobstones Club instead. It'd be a terrible shame if he brought it back for the summer without a single scuff." Black tied off the laces at Hermione's waist. "Good thing you're short and rather, uh, modest in the bust department, Granger. Otherwise you'd never be able to close the laces on a fourteen-year-old boy's duelling vest."
Hermione, hearing the scuffling feet of the Seventh Year Slytherins' arrival, glanced over her shoulder and saw Tom. "How does it look?" She turned around to show the laced doublet she wore over her white uniform shirt.
"You look... decent," said Tom, who liked the way Hermione looked with or without expensive clothing. "I'm very nearly intimidated."
"Thank you, Tom," Hermione replied. "I can see why witches across Britain would never doubt your sense of taste and discernment." To the boys, she turned and said, "We're nine people, so the teams will be unevenly split—"
"I'm on Riddle's team!" said Lestrange quickly.
"Me too!" Avery joined in.
"If you want to, I suppose we can start with six versus three," said Hermione. She waved her wand and Summoned two objects from the pile of her bundled robes. The boys lit their wands to take a closer look at the items in her hand, a necklace and a pair of spectacles. "These enchanted eyeglasses are the equivalent of a racing handicap, altered from joke glasses I borrowed from the student confiscation box. If you put them on, your vision will flip one-hundred-and-eighty degrees—meaning that you'll see the sky below you and the ground above. I thought about making the wearer totally blind, but that's too dangerous, and I didn't want to disable the wearer, just weaken him in a way that wasn't physically harmful. Don't worry, they aren't cursed to make you vomit, you'll only feel like you need to! The Auror I spoke to, Mr. Wilkes, said the weakest in any group are often taken first, and in training, I think the weakest should have some faculty to defend himself."
She handed the glasses to Tom, who unfolded them and inspected the tiny runework etchings inside the arms that looped over the wearer's ears.
"This necklace is linked to the glasses," she continued, holding out a gold chain with a glass bead pendant. "Once you put the glasses on, the only way you can take them off your face is by touching the lens with the pendant on this necklace; Summoning it off won't work. And that's the goal of this exercise. Tom will wear the glasses, and bear the handicap. Lestrange and Avery will defend him and try to get the necklace from the six of us on the other team—Black, Mulciber, Travers, Rosier, Nott, and me. If Tom's team of three gets his glasses off, they win. If my team of six takes Tom's glasses from him, then we win. So you can see the objective there: a team can't simply avoid the opposing team to wait out the hourglass. They must actively confront the other team to win. There's no sense in practising practical magic if we can't cast offensive spells. Any questions?"
"The sun rises at six, and it's barely a quarter-past five," said Travers. "How are we supposed to see?"
"Cast a Lumos," said Rosier. "If you want to let everyone know to aim their spells at you."
"You could perform a partial Transfiguration and turn your eyes into owl eyes," Hermione suggested. "Or your ears into bat ears. Transfigurations are duel legal, as I mentioned during our previous club meeting. I also recommended studying up for them, didn't I? Right. Now, who wants to wear the necklace? Travers, what about you? Rosier? No?" Hermione looked around; not one of her other five team members volunteered for the job. "Goodness, you lot, where's your initiative? Fine, I'll do it. And Tom, since you didn't attend the last meeting, the rule is that you can incapacitate with spells outside of the exhibition duelling list and use area spells to control your environment, but you can't cause permanent damage or cast spells that will result in expulsion. If your opponent yields, you must restrain yourself. Though I'm sure you're sensible enough that such a reminder is redundant information."
Hermione bent over and tapped something on the ground. A soft glow arose form the darkness in the shape of a ragged circle outlined by seven points. The dim marsh-light glow illuminated a muddy stretch of earth by the lakeside, covered with slippery rocks, dewy grass, and dense waist-high saw-sharp sedges that soughed in the chilly morning breeze. "This is a boundary ward. In seven minutes, the lights will go out and the practical exercise will start. Don't leave the ward! It ensures that a spell can't be traced to its caster if it was cast within the boundary, as it disperses the magical signatures. So we are ensured some, um, discretion there. But don't take this small measure of protection for granted; Priori Incantato on your wands will still work so if you do something very naughty, that's on you."
She glanced around at the line of pale faces under black hoods. "Ready? Good luck."
Hermione grabbed her robe and cloak, then stepped over the boundary. Five hooded figures tramped after her like a line of ugly but obedient ducklings. Tom stepped over the line, opened the arms of the enchanted eyeglasses, and placed them over his eyes.
His vision flipped instantly along the horizontal axis. His feet were flat on the ground. Avery and Lestrange were standing on either side of him, their drawn wands dangling at their sides. But the ground was up, and the sky was down, and when he took a step, the discord between what his mind knew and what his eyes saw overwhelmed him; he felt as dizzy with vertigo as if he'd been forced into a handstand, and every step he took gave him the impression that the next one would send him hurtling into the sky.
It was seamless enchanting on Hermione's part, and followed a sound line of logical thinking that was typical of the way she approached magic. Sensory impairment was the standard strategy to which wizards hindered an opponent in a confrontation. Take away the advantage of sound and voice, and you restricted the enemy to non-verbal casting. Take away sight and vision, and visualisation, a core component of spellcasting, was hindered. Transfigurations, physical manipulations, spells requiring directed aim such as Stunners, Disarmers, and the entire catalogue of jinxes and curses, including Unforgivables, became unreliable. In exhibition duelling, this was the basis of one strategy in which a wizard would try to get a legal but effective Conjunctivitis Curse in as quickly as possible, to create an opening for Disarming his competition.
Tom understood very clearly why he was the one who had been given the handicap. And he understood why Hermione didn't enchant the eyeglasses to blind the wearer completely, instead of granting the user a debilitating inconvenience. She'd wanted to force a reliance on one's companions without the bitterness of being allocated a complete millstone. It was meant to be fair.
What debilitated others, he decided, should be only an inconvenience to him.
(He had also decided that vomit-stained robes did his reputation no favours.)
"What do we do?" said Avery.
"What's the plan, Riddle?" Lestrange asked nervously. "When the lights go out, it will be pitch dark out there."
"Do you trust me?" asked Tom.
"Yes..." the two boys spoke with one evasive voice.
"Then prove it," said Tom.
"What do you want us to do?" Lestrange asked.
"Do you remember, last year in the dormitory, when I mentioned that I had been taking Legilimency lessons from Dumbledore?"
"You tried it on Nott, I remember," said Lestrange. "He fell down and started bleeding..."
"I've gotten better since then," said Tom. "These glasses weaken my physical faculties, but not my mind or my magic. They're just as strong as ever. I need you, Avery, to allow me into your head, so I can use your eyes."
"M-me?" croaked Avery. "Why not Lestrange?"
"Lestrange plays Quidditch and has good reflexes on and off the pitch; if I try to take him over, I'll need to fight against his muscle memory. He'll be better as a guard," Tom explained. "Your mind is better suited for taking a passenger." At Avery's continued reluctance, Tom added, "This practice isn't for scoring extension points from an exam officiant with a clipboard. There's a real Dark Lord out there. In a real battle, it doesn't matter if you look undignified or weak. Looking weak doesn't mean anything. What matters is being weak. Being too weak to value your own survival. There is nothing," said Tom with great conviction, "as weak as a weakness of spirit, and nothing as pathetic as an avoidable death."
All death is avoidable, he thought to himself.
"What must I do?" asked Avery.
"Do I have your permission?"
"Y-yes."
"Good," said Tom, giving him a reassuring smile. Avery did not appear reassured. "Bring to the forefront the most vivid memory or vision you have of feeling profoundly at peace, a quiet moment of thought and reflection reserved for the privacy of your own mind. A sanctuary within your recollections where, for the space of a few breaths, you might allow yourself to retreat, to gather yourself together before facing the clamour and fury of the outside world. There, have you got it? Excellent. Look at me."
Through the lenses of the glasses, Tom stared into Avery's upside-down eyes. Avery had light brown eyes, dull and bovine in character, without the frequent sparks of intelligence that stirred behind Hermione's starry doe-eyes. As he peered deeper, a curtain between them fell open, and the brisk air and darkness of the lakeside marsh lifted away to leave him in the close and muggy warmth of an occupied barn stall.
The wooden posts of the barn were carved with elaborate Celtic knotwork, the roof beams rising overhead incised with the sharp, slanting lines of the Ogham alphabet. Charmed lanterns containing balls of warm yellow light hung from hooks in the ceiling, and in the distance, horses whickered and snuffled. A sturdy-looking boy of twelve or thirteen knelt in the straw at the side of a grey horse with long, feathery hair over its hooves. Its sides were slick and heaving, and its dove-white wings beat weakly with each painful, snorting breath. The boy, Tom knew, resembled a young Avery from his own memories. Young Avery whispered soothing words to the horse, stroking its muzzle and wiping away foam from its flaring nostrils with a dirty handkerchief.
"There's something wrong with your horse," said Tom bluntly.
The boy, having noticed the man in a black cloak standing in the corner of the stall, said, "Riddle? Is that you? What are you doing here?"
"You invited me in," said Tom. "Is your horse broken?"
"She's dying," said Avery. "Father had her serviced when I was at school. I told him not to, it was too high a risk, but she was the only mare in the stable without a stud contract. Apollonian's owner was selling him to a Frenchman and the chance of getting a foal from him would be lost."
"Why don't you get a doctor to fix it? You have magic; your family has money. Surely you can use it to heal a horse."
"We Floo-called a Magizoologist and he said he could come by in six hours," said Avery. "That's too long. Any longer than one hour for a delivery means something's gone wrong. Father says I should stop worrying and let nature take its course. If she's strong, she'll live. If she's defective, then nature takes its due."
"How long has it been so far?"
"Almost three hours. Her foal's still in there and isn't coming out. I think it died."
"Is this your memory?"
Avery nodded.
"So it's already happened," said Tom. "If this is just in your head, you can change it. You can make this memory into anything you want it to be. Like with a dream, you can control it if your will is strong enough."
"I can't use magic outside of school," said Avery. "And I don't know much magic. Nothing at all about mind or healing magic."
Tom almost rolled his eyes. It was a years-old memory, not reality. There were no underage magic laws. No laws at all, if you didn't feel like having them.
"I can save her," said Tom, drawing his wand. "But you're not allowed to resist me. You have to stay in this stable with the horse, and you can't come out until I tell you I'm done. Do you understand?"
"Yes," whispered the boy, his expression torn between apprehension and calculation. He glanced at the horse, then up at Tom. "Do what you need to do."
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He had always known it was possible: bodily possession.
In his too-frequent-for-comfort teatime visits with Dumbledore, the old man had described the legal application of mental magics as a career path. Through this, Tom had learned of the curious intersection of the medical arts known as "Mind Healing". Dumbledore had danced his evasive way around the topic, lest Tom form too many pesky independent ideas, but had mentioned that a wizard might enter the domain of a willing consciousness and take on the suffering and torment of a past experience, soothing or exploring it through the quiet neutrality of an objective eye and mind. It was followed with a gentle warning that registered Mediwizards and Mediwitches who specialised in healing such mental damages must restrict themselves to the mental sphere only, as a requirement of their professional oaths. The implication being the existence of another sphere a visitor might explore.
Tom blinked. He could see nothing but blackness around him. He could feel a heavy, constricting weight pressing on him, from his head and shoulders and down to his limbs. For a few suffocating breaths, he struggled with the weight, trying and failing to lift it off, only to realise that this weight was the mass of his own body. Avery's body, thick with muscle where his own was lithe and rangy.
"Iain?" murmured Lestrange, blindly plucking at Tom's sleeve. "The lights went out and I can't see anything. Riddle's a stiff. What should we do? If I cast a wandlight, they'll know we're here."
"Lestrange," said Tom, in Avery's voice. It was an unfamiliar sound, used to rounded rhotic burrs, and his—Avery's—tongue stumbled over the brisk consonants of Tom's London accent. "What type of wand does Avery have?"
"R-Riddle? Is that you?"
"Yes," said Tom impatiently, "I met you at a shoe shop before Second Year; you told me you had to get your toenails removed and re-grown. Do you know what kind of wood and core Avery has for his wand?"
"Chestnut and dragon, I think," said Lestrange. "Are you going to use his wand?"
"I'd prefer to use my own, but I might have to," said Tom. "My magic is still in my body, forming the connection to Avery's body and his magic. Dragon is good; unicorn is more finicky with borrowers."
"Is he alright?" Lestrange asked. "Can he hear me?"
"He's... resting," said Tom. "He'll come back when I call for him. Now, seeing as you've been sitting blind in the dark this whole time, clearly you haven't the skill for what I'm going to do. I'll Transfigure my eyes, then I'll do yours, so we can see what we're doing out here. I'm in charge of taking the necklace to reverse the enchantment on the eyeglasses, and your job is to protect my body. My other body."
Raising Avery's wand to his temple, he twisted it slowly and performed a partial human Transfiguration, making his eyes that of a cat's. He had thought about using Hermione's suggestion of owl eyes, but as Miss Druella Rosier's interruption had reminded him, cats were crepuscular creatures, active at dawn and dusk. Dawn was arriving soon, and cat eyes would allow him to adjust from low light to sunlight. It was a complicated bit of work to make sure the optical nerve connected to the right places, and then he was done, and he could see the silvery moonlight reflecting off the slick rocks and whispering marsh grasses, and the far-off glow of candle-light in the tower windows. He quickly repeated the process on Lestrange, ordering him in Avery's gruff voice to, "Stay still and don't move or your eyes will burst out of your skull."
A series of spells followed that: a Feather-Light Charm on the meditating form of the original Tom's body, a Levitation and Cushioning Charm, then a Conjured rope to tie his belt to Lestrange's wrist. It was bizarre seeing Lestrange tug the bobbing, floating body of Tom Riddle along on a string like a hot air balloon, but Avery-Tom finished it with a Disillusionment Charm so it was very quickly hidden from sight.
He noticed that the Transfigurations were smooth and the magic came eagerly from Avery's wand, but there was a peculiar resistance to casting charms, requiring him to be more explicit and forceful with his intent, where his white yew wand could have anticipated his desires at the first glimmerings of a visualisation.
Better to be done with this quickly, he thought. Imagine if I were trapped in Avery's body forever.
By the time he was finished, a misty white cloud had begun creeping steadily over the sedges, around eight feet high and as thick as a London pea souper; it clung to the ground and beyond head-height, melted into the pre-dawn air. Not a natural fog in any way. Tom wasn't sure whether to be proud or annoyed that the members of Hermione's team had, in concert, cast his variant of Thomas Bertram's Super Steamer Spell—the Vaporatus. An average spellcaster could conceal a duelling stage, but to have created such a thick stretch of it required a minimum of four wizards. Or one Tom Riddle, of course.
And like an eerie shadow, the white fog was accompanied by a silent flock of moon-faced barn owls, swooping above them in an organised grid-shaped search pattern.
Hermione, thought Tom. Bird conjurations were such a distinctively... Ravenclaw affectation. When the Ravenclaw Quidditch team won a match, the stands would, quite inevitably, be filled with a raucous convocation of Conjured eagles. It was so loud he and Hermione could hear it from the library windows when they went for a spot of quiet study. He preferred the Slytherin tradition of applauding after each daring performance of bravura, in the manner of opera attendees; at least they didn't leave feathers and droppings laying about for as long as the magic lasted.
(It was another Ravenclaw affectation to pursue perfect technical wandwork, meaning that the Conjured animal must be true to life in every respect, internally and externally. The Ravenclaws didn't realise how irritating this was to the other Houses, because shouldn't everyone delight in well-cast magic when they saw it?)
"They're looking for us," said Lestrange, stating the obvious. He blinked at Tom with his yellow cat eyes.
The fog enclosed them with the soft swoosh of a shower door, with the wet and breathless warmth of the Herbology greenhouses during an afternoon class. Then a gap in the white mist opened up in front of them, as if beckoning them to walk inside.
"You didn't think they'd stand down and let us take them, did you?" said Tom, glancing up. The fog above his head was thinner than in front of him, and he could see the flicker of moving shadows as owls swept back and forth across the star-strewn sky. "Cast a Disillusionment Charm on yourself. We're going in."
One owl, swooping close above them, caught their movements and began hooting; other owls soon joined them in making a racket.
"I can't hold a Disillusionment for more than ten minutes at a time," Lestrange said sheepishly. "And not if I have to duel."
Tom sighed and tapped Lestrange on the head with Avery's wand. "There. Stay close to me, but don't get underfoot. And above all, don't let anything touch my body, do you hear? Cast a Shield Charm if you need to. If you can't, then use your own body to block spells."
Ventus, Tom incanted, blasting his own tunnel through the fog. His cloak flapped in the wind, he could hear Lestrange's heavy footsteps crunching on the grass behind him, but no longer did the hooting owls announce their location to the others. The fog had fallen over them like a veil from the outside world, and for a brief passing moment, he wanted to marvel in the power of his own creation. It was the subject of one of his first successful modified wand movement diagrams, and this casting of it was made even more powerful from bearing the peaty, brackish scent of lake water.
The first pair of wizards he encountered consisted of Mulciber and Rosier, arguing with each other about which owl out of the half-dozen circling in the air above should be followed. He caught a glimpse of them in the fog with the edge of his Wind Charm, and having noticed him, abruptly ended their row and drew their wands.
"Expelliarmus!" Mulciber incanted.
Rosier tossed a silent Stunner at him.
Both of them bounced off Tom's non-verbal Shield Charm, and then it was Tom's turn to answer.
Ordinarily, he would have relied on his extensive library of charms for a non-lethal duel, as they didn't have straightforward counters like every duelling spell in the Defence curriculum. You could instantly reverse a pimple jinx; there was no textbook counterspell to being smashed in the face by a hovering watermelon. But he didn't like how Avery's dragon-cored wand resisted him with charmwork, needing a fraction more detail for every visualised intent, the slightest extension of every wandstroke in each movement. Transfigurations were fine, however. It wasn't his favourite discipline, requiring less imagination and greater memorisation of phase states and material properties, but he was competent.
(And he hated it when genial Professor Dumbledore wandered over to Tom's desk during Transfiguration lessons to correct his casting. Better to be perfect on the first try so he would be left alone in peace. Tom's motivation for the achievement of perfect technique was why he did not make a good Ravenclaw.)
Avery's wand twirled in an intricate pattern, and amorphous curls of white mist peeled away from the greater mass to spiral around the tip of his wand, becoming thicker and more solid the closer they got. From soft and languorous tendrils, they condensed into gauzy lengths of chiffon silk, as white and delicate as the bridal veils featured in his latest article. It wasn't much of a physical barrier in a Muggle brawl, but for a magical duel? They had substance enough to absorb a single burst of spellfire, which shrivelled them into grey ashes and then back to hissing steam.
He concentrated on keeping them aloft and floating around his body, while Transfiguring more silken swathes from the mist, hardly paying attention to the quiet footsteps of the Disillusioned Lestrange slipping around him.
Rosier's eyes narrowed, and tracking the pattern of undulating stretches of fabric, flicked his wand and incanted, "Incendio—"
"Stupefy," muttered Lestrange, and Rosier dropped to the ground, Stunned. The orange flame at his wandpoint extinguished itself.
Mulciber's head jerked as he noticed his duelling partner fall, and in that moment of distraction, both he and Lestrange cast their spells.
"Stupefy!"
Mulciber also collapsed, the back of his cloak squelching into the mud. His attention faltering for an instant, Tom's Transfigured veils began fluttering to the ground. He jerked his wrist; they swirled back into the air.
"That was neatly done," Tom said to Lestrange. "Mulciber and Rosier were surprised by the technique of using Transfigured physical obstructions instead of the standard Shield Charm. Rosier figured out how to counter it; good job that you got him first."
"They were surprised because Avery wouldn't have thought of it," Lestrange replied. "You look like Avery, but you stand like Riddle. You walk like Riddle. You even hold Avery's wand the way Riddle holds his. Or the way you hold yours—Merlin's pants, this is strange, having two Riddles side-by-side." He gestured with his left hand, to which was tied the Conjured rope and the floating body of the original Tom.
"Take advantage of their surprise if you can, then," said Tom. "Let's finish this."
The next pair they met were Travers and Black, conveniently heading toward them, following the surveyor owls attracted to the sparkling spellfire of the duel between Tom, Mulciber, and Rosier. Travers and Black both wore duelling vests, and any Stunner or Disarmer cast at their centre of mass was absorbed by the thick dragonhide with nothing but a wince at the heat burst of a dissipating spell. Travers used only legal spells; Black had a handful of moderately questionable dark curses that soared by in flashes of noxious green and pulsing violet.
Tom had to concentrate on Transfiguring as many silk cloths as he could, as even a slight edge graze by one of Black's curses set the whole length of chiffon afire. The longer he kept at it, the thinner the misty walls got, until they were duelling in a broad clearing that was gradually taking on the copper glow of the dawning day.
Lestrange, having tapped Avery's shoulder to indicate his presence, sneaked around once again, and from outside the cyclone of whispering veils, cast a Tripping Jinx on Black. Orion Black's Nerve-Render Curse sputtered out mid-incantation, and Tom used the opportunity to entangle him in long white ropes of silk, right before Lestrange cast a Stunner to the boy's unprotected face.
Travers saw Black fall, and without an instant of hesitation, aborted his own half-traced wand movement and switched to a Shield Charm. Holding the glittering half-dome to his back, Travers picked up the hem of his cloak with his free hand and dashed into the fading mist, the splash of his feet on wet ground echoing into the distance.
Lestrange glanced at Tom. "The last pair is Nott and Granger. They'll be ready for us, thanks to Travers. I assume you don't want any marks on her?"
"No," said Tom. "But I'm not going to go easy. I like to see her take on a challenge."
None of them remarked on the fact that Travers had run away when he'd become aware of the presence of a lurking, invisible Lestrange, and that Black's defeat left him outnumbered, two to one. Retreat to a stronger position, seek reinforcements, and don't waste energy on a foregone resolution: they were qualities of Slytherin pragmatism that all members of their House thoroughly understood. Travers was more uptight about acceding to the written letter of the rules rather than the spirit of the rules' intentions, relative to the other boys in their group, but when it came down to it, he was a Slytherin where it mattered.
Hermione and Nott had chosen to make a stand outside the wall of charmed mist. When Tom first saw her defences, he was puzzled at its sheer incongruity, on the grounds of Hogwarts of all places. But once he recognised what she'd done, he had to let out a wild burst of laughter at her unparalleled audacity.
It was one of his rare genuine laughs, sounding much like himself even from Avery's mouth. The surrealness of it must have disturbed Lestrange, who by now had nulled his Disillusionment Charm. The other boy cringed at Tom's audible amusement.
Instead of obscuring their presence with the steam spell, Hermione had decided on a physical deterrent. Long coils of Transfigured barbed wire hung from Transfigured fence posts made from sedge stalks; they were hastily done, sturdy rectangular posts green and plump with water instead of resembling properly sawn wood. There were several layers of fences, and between each line of fencing and the next, Tom saw a deep trench filled with silted water, brown with disturbed muck. Visually, it was ugly as sin, but the magic itself was beautiful, a creative application of Switching spells that used her environment to its best potential. Dirt and mud to an equal mass of lake water, requiring a careful assessment of cubic density for the most efficient casting. And done in darkness, at that.
In the centre of the barbed wire barricade lay a muddy foxhole covered in sandbags. There was a narrow gap between the low, sandbagged roof and the dirt wall holding it up, and he saw three pale faces peeking out at him: Travers, Hermione, and Nott. Their heads craned around, and he realised they must have been looking for Tom Riddle. The only two visible figures outside the No Wizard's Land were himself, in Avery's body, and Lestrange.
"What now?" asked Lestrange. "There are four rows of fences. If we try to cross them, they'll have plenty of time to block us or trap us in the water pits. If we try to throw Reductos or Bombardas from out here, they can take turns Shielding each other. If we catch them in between swapping shifts in the Shield relay, anything other than a direct hit through the window would only break the bags and cover them with sand. It won't knock them out or anything. We'd tire out before they did."
"That is exactly what Hermione expected you and Avery to do."
Hermione had a logical mind. She liked being prepared. She'd also read a lot of Muggle military history, the same as he did... but there was a difference between the two of them. Tom thought of himself as a wizard. Waking, scheming, sleeping, studying, dreaming, he was a wizard first. He breathed magic like he couldn't live without it; his wand had been kept within arm's reach since the very minute it had chosen him. Prince, scholar, gentleman, Head Boy, Slytherin: they were merely secondary and tertiary categories of description.
Hermione, on the other hand, thought of herself as an individual who happened, quite incidentally, to be a witch. Magic was simply a tool, like electricity or bureaucracy, to be wielded on the way to solving a greater problem. Hermione had prepared for a textbook attrition front, from Muggle textbooks. The way to best her was with a purely magical strategy.
Accio sandbag!
Tom began the process of Summoning sandbags off the roof of the foxhole, abruptly interrupting the spell before the bags reached him—an easy enough proposition for a beginner wizard learning how to maintain his intent, but arduous for the proficient wizard to compromise his own spellcasting on purpose. The sandbags plopped into the trenches, crushed the coils of wire flat to the ground, and built a pathway to where he and Lestrange stood outside the siege line. Siege fortifications were pregnable in that way, weren't they? They protected the people inside from an external intrusion, a perfectly logical defence planned out by a logical mind. But sieges had few protections against things from the inside coming out.
Once the foxhole roof was denuded of sandbags, Tom took them from the walls, and once the walls were bare, he broke apart the roof boards and gouged chunks from the rammed earth interior walls. He could feel resistance on the other end of his Summoning spells, as if someone else was trying to Summon a sandbag in the opposite direction, but his will was stronger, and the other caster was quickly overpowered. He also noticed his Summonings being terminated before he had planned to let them go, and assuming that this person was casting Finite to end his spell, he increased his range of focus and began picking up four or five objects in one go, re-casting the spell the instant he was forced to drop it. When they switched to casting Sticking Charms on the sandbags, Tom Summoned away whole piles at once.
For years, Tom had been interested in mastering the ability to cast on multiple subjects concurrently. In the summer before Third Year, he'd dreamt of being crushed under a tonne of rubble from a collapsing building, during the period of German airstrikes in London. He saw the visual evidence of failure, weakness, and incompetence in the boggart story that he'd relayed to Dumbledore over tea that Christmas, and since then he'd worked hard to refine his control. Although he didn't like to admit it, Dumbledore's advice on organising his mind through meditation had helped him achieve the highest levels of precision of which he'd been praised for in The Daily Prophet's coverage of the Prince of Charming.
There were few others, he presumed, who could perform magic to this level with a borrowed wand.
When the foxhole roof was gone and the path of sandbags completed, he climbed over the outermost layer of crushed concertina wire, with Lestrange following hesitantly at his heels, wand readied for the first stroke of a Shield Charm. From the open pit in which the opposing team members were crouching, Avery's Transfigured cat eyes could perceive the widening of Nott's eyes, and his sideways glance to Travers and Hermione, who were intent on Transfiguring mud into sand and casting Duplication Charms on empty sacks for the repairing of their cover.
Nott flicked his wand; light flashed from its tip, and Hermione and Travers fell Stunned to the floor of the foxhole, cushioned by a pile of leaking sacks in the midst of their fabrication. Nott's hand rummaged under Hermione's cloak and tore out a golden chain with a sparkling glass bead dangling from it.
Standing up and hoisting himself out of the hole, Nott said, "Here, Riddle. Catch."
Lestrange dived and snatched up the enchanted necklace before it could hit the dirt. Tom, with a half-hearted twist of his wand, cancelled the Disillusionment Charm over his original floating body, and caught Nott's sharp intake of breath.
"Morgana's garter! Riddle, what did you do!? Granger and I took our eyes off you for an hour, and you went and nicked Avery's body, because of course that was the most reasonable way to get around having upside-down eyesight. I thought you'd Polyjuiced yourself and made Avery take the handicap! But no, of course not, that's the actual flesh-and-blood Avery, isn't it!" Nott began tearing at his hair. "How are we going to cover up Avery having his brain mangled? The fellow's as dull as they come, but surely his father's going to notice when he's more of a vegetable than usual!"
Nott turned on Lestrange, wand raised and ranting, "You, Lestrange, you dolt! Why didn't you try to stop Riddle?!"
"Stop Riddle? Never occurred to me," said Lestrange, shrugging. "Besides, if it wasn't Avery, then Riddle would have tried it on me. Thanks, but I'd rather not."
Nott's only response was to groan and clap a hand over his eyes. There was no countering so astute an argument.
"I didn't break him, stop fretting," said Tom. "Avery let me in."
"Yes, but if he changed his mind at any time, then a conflict of wills could cause permanent internal damage... As you well know, from personal experience. A human body isn't meant to have more than one human consciousness at the helm at any one time."
"I know," said Tom. "That's why Avery and I made a deal. I've been in charge the whole time. Look at me—er, him. No nosebleeds, sclera clear as glass. Not a broken blood vessel in sight."
Nott pinched his nosebridge and took a deep, steadying breath. "Can you get back to your regular self, at least?"
"It shouldn't be a problem... theoretically," said Tom. "Here, lay out my other body on top of this sandbag. I'll be meditating, so don't disturb me. If Travers or Hermione wake up before I'm done, you know what to do. It's better for everyone that they remain ignorant to these new developments."
Tom, in Avery's body, leaned against a stack of sandbags and closed his eyes. Delving into the meditative frame of mind, he vaguely overheard Nott arguing with Lestrange, but he had stopped paying much attention to their squabbling.
"Have some sense and self-respect, man. You can't let Riddle do whatever he wants!"
"Why not?"
"Because most of the ideas he comes up with are truly awful!"
"But he's so clever, and all the teachers love him. Dumbledore himself taught him Legilimency. How can his ideas be that bad..."
.
.
It took some time to build a mental construct that copied an existing one to the finest detail. The setting, the atmosphere, and ambience, everything had to be integrated seamlessly within the greater internal chronology of Avery's memory for it to be accepted and absorbed. The alternative was Avery's mind rejecting the implanted false memory as a preternatural pantomime of stiff, waxy automatons. With his limited experience of manipulating his Acromantula's memories of its former owner, Rubeus Hagrid, Tom couldn't create anything too extravagant, so he confined himself to a memory within the scope of a single stable stall, placed right next to the existing one. Once he'd finished with the requisite window dressing, he turned his focus to the pièce de résistance: the horse and foal.
It was a good thing he'd spent time scrabbling about in the minds of Thomas Riddle's horses. He didn't think an Orphanage Tom, who'd known very little outside of London, could do this clean of a job, even with the age and experience of eighteen years on this Earth.
When he'd finished setting up the lovely shortbread tin scene of mother mare nursing her infant foal, he left the constructed memory and closed the stall door behind him. Ensuring his mind was calm and well-organised, he entered the next stall over, and saw young Avery was where he'd left the boy. Cradling the head of his horse on his lap, one hand twined in its feathery white mane, another blotting off salt tracks dried in white lines from its eyes down to its jowls.
Avery glanced around when the stall door opened. "Oh. Riddle. You're back."
"I am," said Tom.
"Did you finish what you wanted to do?"
"Yes. We won the game."
"That's good."
After a momentary silence, Tom nodded his head at the horse. "What happened to it? You know... afterwards."
"She died with the foal inside her," said young Avery, gazing down at the trembling horse half-buried in the straw. "A young Granian with an intact pedigreed foal is worth at least a thousand Galleons on the potions market. Father and I hauled her up in the courtyard and portioned the body out for the apothecary factors. Wings for the potion of Dreamless Sleep, flesh for bruise pastes and scar lotions, tail and mane for clothing enchantments, blood for enchanting ink, bones and hide for bookbinder's glue. When I was done with the messy business, our estate's thestral pair found me and licked her blood from my hands. It was the first time I'd ever seen them."
Tom frowned. "Your pet's death—how is that a peaceful memory? I asked for one of peace and restful thoughts."
"I think," said Avery, "it's the day I accepted that some are born strong, some are born weak, and others are born not at all. That's just how this cycle of the wheel turns. When it next turns, maybe I'll be strong enough to find her again."
"I find fatalism to be so tediously trite," remarked Tom blandly. At Avery's blank look, Tom sniffed and said, "Come, boy. Follow me."
When Avery saw the new memory with his horse, hale and living, he rushed over and threw his arms around its neck. "You did it!"
"You doubted my abilities?"
"I didn't know if it was possible for anyone," admitted Avery. "How does it work? I have two sets of memories. I can remember both of them happening, but only one is true..."
"You can choose which one to revisit. Both, if you prefer," said Tom. "But the new memory only exists in this space. If you leave the stall, the memory version of yourself or anyone else won't have any knowledge of this." He gestured at the little white foal happily butting at its mother's teats, damp wings splayed wide to dry off in the warm stable. "I do wonder, however, if this constructed memory is substantial enough to extract for Pensieve viewing. If so, there's more potential to be explored..." He cleared his throat. "I'll be leaving now."
"W-wait, Riddle," said Avery. "How do I find my way back?"
"With a magically imbued visualisation," Tom replied. "You have to picture yourself waking up from a vivid dream. Pay attention to your physical senses; they're entwined with your physical self. Can you feel the cloth of your robes on your skin, hear the lap of wavelets on the lake shore, or the tickle of your hair falling over your brows? Every minute sensation you take for granted in the waking world must be grasped with readiness. Seize the feelings, and don't let them leave you."
.
.
When Tom opened his eyes, he was grateful to see his vision returned to normal.
He was surprised to see Hermione sleeping against his chest, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder, her curly hair pressed against his cheek. Nott and Lestrange were standing over him, still squabbling with each other, wands jabbing the air wildly in their exuberance.
"So what if he's stuck in Avery's body? Riddle'll figure something out, you have to trust him."
"That's the thing, you twit. I don't trust Riddle."
"But that's your problem, Nott, not his. If you trusted him, you wouldn't be worried."
"As if it was that easy to just... just put my faith in Tom-bloody-Riddle!"
"It's not even that difficult to get there. Stop thinking too hard, that does the trick for me."
Nott groaned. Lestrange guffawed at the other boy's obvious exasperation.
"Can someone tell me," said Tom, "why Hermione is on top of me like this?"
Nott's ranting halted mid-word. His gaze darted first to Tom, to Avery's sleeping body next to him, then Travers lying face-down a few feet further on, then back to Tom. "I... I, uh, thought it would be good to have a physical sensory anchor to guide you back from the internal sphere. You have, to put it delicately, the oddest obsession with Granger and her hair. Don't pretend you weren't playing with her hairclip before bed the other night. No pureblood girl in our House uses plain steel clips like that."
"It worked," Tom conceded. That was the only acknowledgement of gratitude Nott was going to get. "Mulciber, Rosier, and Black are still somewhere out there. After they were Stunned, the fog started lifting. You and Lestrange should go and fetch them." He reached for his wand, which had been tucked down his sleeve. "Rennervate. Here, take Travers with you."
"And Avery?" asked Lestrange.
"He'll be down with a splitting headache when he wakes, I imagine," said Tom. "Let him rest."
"What about Granger?" said Nott. "Aren't you going to wake her up?"
"Let's go, Nott," said Lestrange. "Riddle needs a moment of privacy."
"For what?"
Lestrange dropped a huge wink. "Oh, you know..."
"No, Lestrange, I do not, in fact, know."
"I'll tell you on the way," said Lestrange. He hefted the confused and now awake Travers by the scruff of his cloak and set the boy on his feet. In a whispered voice, he continued, "Come now, haven't you noticed that Riddle is always in a better mood after he's done with Granger?"
"Oh," said Nott with a grimace. "Oh. Eurgh. Yes, yes, I see what you mean. We'll just... leave them to it, then."
When they'd left, Tom spent a few minutes reclining against a pile of sandbags, holding Hermione in his arms and stroking her hair. Her robes were caked in mud and sand, and there was a smudge of dirt on her nose. He wiped it off with his sleeve.
He was back in his own body. After being inside Avery's mind and directing his body around like puppeteer, Tom was glad to return to his normal self, if such a phrase as "Tom Riddle's normal self" could exist without the universe imploding from its sheer impossibility. His limbs were the correct length, his flesh no longer hung heavy on his frame like an overlarge coat, and his hands were back to their elegant shape, and not crude, thick sausages rough with callus. He dragged his fingers through Hermione's hair, pulling gently at one curl. It bounced back the moment he let go. The tip of his finger descended from her hair to the back of her neck, lightly dragging over the vertebral ridge of her spine.
Bodes were so weak, so fragile. It was obvious to him now: the potential of being able to swap to a fresh body for every occasion, like having a suit for dinner, dances, calling, and funerals. Still, there was nothing as bespoke as having his own body, the Earthly vessel that was made for him, to contain his magic, his and his alone...
Not just mine alone, the idle thought came to him as he held Hermione in his arms. The same way Hermione's body isn't for her and her alone.
She's mine.
One of the many things he'd hated about inhabiting Avery's body was the look of indifference Hermione gave it.
Rennervate, he incanted. Hermione nestled closer to him, as if instinctively seeking his warmth, her hands scrunching at his lapels. He chuckled, and her eyes fluttered open.
"Tom?"
"Good morning, Hermione."
"What happened?" She craned her head around the sandbags, saw the wreck of her entrenchments, the battlefield of crushed concertina wire and leaking sandbags, and winced. "Where is everyone?"
"Avery's out." Tom indicated where the unconscious Avery lay propped on a sandbag a yard away. "Lestrange went to revive the others from where we'd Stunned them."
"Oh. So your team won."
"Naturally."
She sighed. "We couldn't even beat you, six against three."
More like six against two.
"Perhaps next time you'll make it eight against one," said Tom casually.
Hermione groaned and pressed her forehead against his chest. Idly, he kept stroking her hair. "This entire time at our meetings for the past three years, you must have been holding yourself back."
"Yes," said Tom. "Does that surprise you?"
"No, not really. I just..." She blew out an irritated breath. "I wish we'd been working on applied practical Defence tactics years earlier. Instead, we're trying to start new, building our practical and teamwork skills from the ground up, when we should be up to the stage of tempering them with real experience."
"If it helps, I can hold myself back... a little bit less," Tom offered.
"I'd like that," said Hermione, looking up at him.
"Really?" Tom asked. "Is that what you want?"
With her hair frizzy from a natural morning mist that rose with the sun, her shirt collar open and askew from where Nott had torn away the necklace around her throat, and a red flush on her cheeks from exertion, Hermione's dishevelment should have repulsed him. It should have. Three years ago, her untidiness would have bothered him, and he'd have cast a few cleaning and pressing charms and sent her on her merry way without a second thought. But now? He was still bothered, extremely bothered, in a completely different manner than before. This incomprehensible state of botherment made him want to push Hermione down into the dirt and dishevel her further. Make it so when she was finally allowed to pick herself back up, weak-kneed and wobbling, her appearance could not be mistaken as having been the result of an accident, but recognised as an intentional state of disorder.
Hermione's eyes widened, and he saw himself reflected in them, haloed by the golden sunrise.
"Do you want me to hold back?" said Tom.
"N-no."
He grinned. "Good."
Tom's first kiss—his first real one outside other people's memories—was a tentative and cautious nudge of his lips on hers. A perfunctory motion deliberately calculated not to frighten Hermione away, while also convincing her that it was a genuine demonstration to the strength of his sentiments toward her. He pulled back to observe her reaction, and saw that she was pink all over, down to her exposed throat where her pulse flitted like pixie wings.
His second kiss was slow and exploratory and greedy, taking his time to learn the contours of her mouth and lips; he could feel the curve of her shy, giddy smile against his own mouth, and the brush of her eyelashes against his cheekbones. Her hair fell down like a curtain around them both, and his fingers tangled in the soft, fluffy curls to keep her from pulling away further than what was needed for a gasping breath of air. Certainly not to leave him alone and abandoned on the ground, hungry and thirsty and wanting.
The third kiss he conceded to her. He submitted patiently for his inspection and hoped he presented to advantage. Hermione's little hands patted on his shoulders and traced along the bristled line of his jaw—he hadn't shaved since yesterday morning, and the shadow of his whiskers was showing through—then rumpled his hair in the way that he knew the legion of admiring Third Years had always aspired to do. He felt her quiet titter of laughter as much as he heard it, and tightened his arms around her.
When Hermione was done with her rather meticulous investigation, which included the "sticking a hand up the jumper" exercise that they'd briefly discussed in September of last year, Tom had but a moment to gather his senses from where he'd abandoned them in favour of physical distraction. He spoke the first words that came to his mind.
"As it's my inclination to continue with this quite often in the near future—"
"What does that—"
"—It appears that the obvious course of action should be our marital arrangements."
"T-Tom!" Hermione gaped. "You're being impulsive and thoughtless. You need to think things through—"
"Hermione," said Tom urgently, holding a finger over her reddened mouth. "You know that I've thought it through. It was years ago when I once said that a marriage between us should be a transactional arrangement of rationality, convenience, and practicality. That was hardly a fleeting notion from a reckless mind back then, and it's not now. And I've... evolved my opinions since. Even if it was irrational, inconvenient, and impractical to have you as my wife, I'd still want it. I'd still want you."
"I don't know how you've convinced yourself to change your mind, but I suppose if anyone can do it, it's you yourself. It's obvious to me that something has done it." Hermione drew in a slow breath and rested her head against his shoulder. "So. How does this not change everything between us, Tom?"
"I don't see why it should," said Tom. "You know as well as I do that there's no one in this world quite like us. Whatever we want or don't want, we'll find a way to make it so. And," he continued, his voice quiet but firm with conviction, "there is no one like you in this world for me. You, with your gentle soul and incurable altruism, could find yourself a Muggle Roger or a hapless Clarence loitering around in any bookshop or college library in England. For me, Hermione, there is no one else. I would have no one else... Only you."
"Tom," whispered Hermione. Her starry eyes dimmed and clouded, dripping hot tears on his cheek.
Tom scrubbed the tears off his skin and held Hermione close, letting her tears soak into his collar and disappear from sight. He hated to see her cry; he would have despised the sight and sound of it from anyone, but it was worse, somehow, when the tears came from his own Hermione. He wouldn't mind the tears as much if it meant he could find the person responsible, and bring that person's belated apologies to Hermione at the point of his wand. But it was never that simple. Sometimes there was no responsible party against which to wage a war, no Carthage to be obliterated to the last brick, and the only thing he could do was grant her the paltry, impotent excuses of a spoken consolation.
"You're thinking in circles, Hermione. I can feel it," said Tom, bewildered by her reaction. Why did saying he would have her or no one make her sad? It was the truth. It had always been the truth. Years ago, when she'd proposed running away in a tent to dodge a Muggle conscription, he'd told her, promised her, that he would not run away with anyone else. Without her, he'd go alone. At the midnight chime of thirteen years old, he had known it without a flicker of doubt.
"Tell me honestly," he asked. "Do you want me?"
"I... I do care for you, Tom. And maybe enough t-to, um, want you. But what I want is far from the only consideration to be made about such decisions."
"No, that's all there is to it," Tom said forcefully. "It's the rule of magic: if you want it strongly enough, then it becomes real. This," he said, kissing her and tasting the salt of her tears, "is real. You know it's real. With you, it's always real. No one else is as real to me as you are."
He didn't understand why these words made her so sad, which he felt in the same way he sensed truth from lie. He was determined to keep holding her tightly and kissing her flushed cheeks, her sniffling nose, her wet eyelids, her quivering mouth until those melancholy feelings were driven away and replaced by something better.
They were only just withdrawing from the fifth kiss when Tom heard footsteps squishing on muddy grass.
"Nott, when we get back to the dormitory, you had better cough up those fifteen Galleons you owe me," came Rosier's voice.
"That doesn't mean anything!" Nott whined. "They do this sort of thing all the time!"
"What's this about?" asked Mulciber, scratching his head. "I thought everyone knew that Riddle had paired up with Granger. She sits at our House table next to him. Fiancées of other Houses are allowed to eat with Slytherin House, that's the rule."
"We are paired up," said Tom, pushing himself to his feet. He held up a hand for Hermione, and was relieved to see that she took it with no more than a brief note of hesitation. "Hermione will be making a respectable man of me. Not that I wasn't one already. But you know me; I'm not one to turn away a second helping of respect if it's offered."
"We'll talk about this later, Tom," Hermione said quietly, brushing off her muddy robe and swiping at her damp cheeks. She cleared her throat and switched to her academic lecturer's mode of address, though her voice came soft and warbling, and her eyes were swollen and pink. The boys shot sharp looks at her, then at Tom, and did not look at her again, pointedly pretending not to notice that she had been crying and they weren't curious about what he'd done to her to summon those tears.
"Now that we're all here, our next collaborative task is to reverse the Transfigurations of the battle theatre I created," said Hermione, "I did most of the work to cast them originally, so I think everyone should take this opportunity to practise with large-scale Transfigurations. It mightn't be a classroom exercise, but you can see with your own eyes how powerful and useful Transfiguration is in a real situation."
She drew her wand and flicked it at the nearest fencepost, which returned to its bendy, sedge bush shape. The concertina wire, freed of its anchor, collapsed inwards with its sharp edges bouncing dangerously. Hermione snapped up a fast non-verbal Shield Charm. "Oof! Watch for the wire; if you get cut, come to me for the vial of Dittany."
The next hour and a half was spent cleaning up the mess they had—well, "Avery" had—made of Hermione's battlefield. Black and Mulciber were tasked with Vanishing sandbags. Hermione demonstrated how she'd performed a sequential Transfiguration for turning grass into flaxen thread, and then the thread into barbed wire. Nott was relatively fast at reversing the spell; he had been a contributor to building them in the first place.
"You've probably never seen anything like this," Hermione explained, showing the boys a length of her razor spiked wire. "But I chose it specifically because I knew I needed an anti-personnel defensive strategy. If the other team had come on broomsticks, the fences and trenches would be next to useless. It would've been more effective a strategy to build a rune cannon to shoot them out of the sky, then—ah, non-lethally, of course! A cannon is a metal tube that propels a projectile—"
"We know what cannons are, Granger," put in Rosier. "There's a Quidditch team named after them."
"How d'you shoot someone out of the sky without killing him?" Lestrange asked. "A wizard won't die if he splats at less than fifty feet, but if he stays higher than that on a broomstick, he could always drop a dungbomb on you from above and escape without facing penalty."
Hermione gave him a weak smile at being invited into a discussion on hypothetical magical battle tactics, and soon engaged the Slytherins in a lively debate on what exactly it meant to take "non-lethal" precautions. Wizards had a loose definition of the term; a wizard's idea of "non-lethal" was farther from "harmless" than someone like Hermione assumed it was.
Avery was revived and given a pain reliever potion, and set to performing Switching spells to fill the trenches in. Tom accompanied him, giving him a few bits of advice with a chary glance or two. It wasn't easy to tell for certain, but it didn't appear that Avery's brain had been permanently damaged by the possession.
"I won't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about, Riddle," said Avery in a low voice, glancing back at Tom.
"I wasn't worried," said Tom in a pleasant voice. "If you tried to accuse me of anything, I'd simply deny it."
"If you don't tell anyone about what you saw in there, then we're even."
"It was a pleasure doing business with you, then." With not a flicker of his expression to indicate the intensity of his concentration, Tom Levitated a large, murky globe of water out of Avery's trench and tossed it back into the lake.
They finished their Transfigurations, Hermione picking up the last enchanted stake marking the boundary of their practical exercise. The boys were eager to get to breakfast. Although Tom had gone around casting Scouring Charms with a generous hand on their robes and faces, waterless spells still left their clothes feeling oddly crusty. (He noted that he was the most presentable of the group, his body having been kept safe and away from the action.) Tom predicted a mad rush to the showers after breakfast, and a pile of smelly clothing left on the dorm room floor. He sighed. When he was out of Hogwarts and living with Hermione, he'd only have to share his bathroom with her, and her pink-cheeked sweatiness amused him more than anything. She certainly didn't smell like a boy during the times he'd witnessed it.
They started on the path back to the castle, but to their bad luck, they had almost reached the Entrance Hall courtyard when their journey was rudely interrupted by an Auror. It was the same one who'd managed the queue at Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, and he was accompanied by his partner.
"Students caught wandering outside their living quarters!" he exclaimed. "We saw you throwing up sparklers at the break of dawn. How can you, the Head Boy, set a good example for student safety when you saunter about the grounds at your own leisure? This is poor conduct; have your teachers not taught you any better? And I see you've been allowing your fellow students to stray, too!" He took in the Slytherin boys on the path behind Tom and Hermione, in dragonhide doublets, duelling gauntlets, and black cloaks looking the worse for wear from catching bursts of spellfire.
"Pardon me, sir," said Hermione, grabbing Tom's hand and giving it a squeeze, a tacit reminder to prevent him from speaking his mind as he'd done back in January. "But there is no explicit rule in the Hogwarts Prefect Handbook that bans students from being outside their dormitories before breakfast. Astronomy would not be offered as a class subject if that were the case."
"Hogwarts rules are different from Ministry rules," said the Auror. "There are extenuating circumstances right now, Miss, and ought to be taken seriously."
"Well, we have extenuating necessities," argued Hermione, "which we take with the utmost gravity: our upcoming exams. Surely you can see we've broken no rules and done no wrong. We cast a few spells safely out of doors, out of consideration for others who share our dormitories, and set everything to rights when we were finished..."
"It's the principle of the thing. Student safety matters, or it doesn't," the Auror replied. "We'll have to make an example of you. Dangerous student duels without proper supervision; this should scarcely be tolerated, let alone put up as a matter of open debate!"
"Probert," said the other Auror, tapping his partner on the shoulder. "Trombley and Wilkes have brought the teachers."
Dumbledore and Slughorn, belly wobbling as he made it down the stepped slab path, were being escorted by two more Aurors, a witch and a wizard. The same ones who'd greeted Travers on the train, Tom realised; the witch gave a small salute to Travers and winked.
"Professor Slughorn," said Auror Probert, nodding his head. His gaze grew a notch colder when he got to Dumbledore. "Deputy Headmaster. These students were out of bed and casting spells at each other. Wands at dawn, obviously. Your cherished Head Boy, Horace, was participating in honour duels!"
"I wasn't," said Tom, unable to bite his tongue. "You can check my wand, if it pleases you. We were practising for the Transfiguration N.E.W.T. Look at Lestrange's eyes, look at Avery's!"
"Tom," said Professor Dumbledore, gazing at him solemnly, "is this true?"
"Yes, sir," said Tom, meeting Dumbledore's eyes without a shred of reservation. "I haven't cast a single curse. Here, sir."
And Tom offered his yew wand to Dumbledore, who took it in careful hands and cast the incantation, Prior Incantato.
Out from the tip of Tom's wand came a series of glowing symbols: an opalescent soap bubble, a drifting feather, the wavering image of a weighing scale tipping from side to side.
"Scouring Charm, Levitation Charm, Switching spells—and quite a number of them, I might add," Dumbledore observed. "I should very much like to see an honour duel performed with such a creative repository of spells. I think it would be wonderfully educational."
"Check my wand, too, sir!" said Avery, offering his wand to Slughorn, his yellow cat eyes blinking guilelessly at the professor.
Avery's wand was inspected: Switching and Summoning spells, and then an endless line of Transfigurations of water to cloth. Slughorn chortled at the glowing silk handkerchiefs, knotted together in a row, indicating the successful application of an abbreviated conjoined casting.
"Five points to Slytherin, Mr. Avery," said Slughorn. "I'd award you more, but we do want to stay on happy terms with Mr. Probert, don't we? But were it any other day, oho!"
Hermione offered her wand to the witch, Trombley, and Travers to Wilkes, the wizard who'd brought the teachers. Again, a string of harmless charms and N.E.W.T.-level Transfigurations appeared from the tip of their wands. As the wands were checked, the Auror Probert's expression grew darker and darker.
"You're the Transfiguration teacher here, aren't you, Deputy Headmaster?" said Probert accusingly.
Dumbledore nodded. "These students are enrolled in my Sixth and Seventh Year N.E.W.T.-level Transfiguration classes."
"Then, Mr. Dumbledore, did you put them up to this? Did you give them permission to traipse about the grounds as they like?"
"Would anything come of it if I had, Mr. Probert?" said Dumbledore amiably. "If the Hogwarts grounds are not for the enjoyment of Hogwarts students, what purpose do they serve? Besides, I have been given no reason to distrust Mr. Riddle's judgement. Tom has always been an exceptionally motivated student, and I'm glad to have been of use as his mentor since his first year at Hogwarts."
"Thank you, sir," said Tom, with a bashful duck of his head. "I'll always be grateful for what Professor Dumbledore has taught me about magic, from the day he delivered my letter. And of course, I can't forget Professor Slughorn; he's put an equal investment in helping me achieve my potential."
Slughorn and Dumbledore walked them back to the castle, Slughorn chattering to the boys in his usual convivial manner. Dumbledore, to Tom's annoyance, kept at his side, hands tucked in his pockets while ambling along without a care.
"Prior Incantato reveals more information about a wand's usage than what spell was cast," Dumbledore remarked. "The precision, control, and power with which you perform a spell affects the clarity of the magical iconogram produced for each spell symbol. What were you Levitating that required such a combination of power and accuracy?"
"A globe of water, sir," said Tom. "The textbooks said that Levitation can be applied to any physical mass, not just solids. I'd wondered how it could be done. If I can lift two hundred and fifty pounds of solid matter, then I should be able to Levitate thirty gallons of liquid matter. But if I was wrong, Professor, better that I had spilled the water outside in the grass than in my four-poster bed."
"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "But is that not a Charms experiment? If I'm not mistaken, you told Mr. Probert that you were studying for the Transfiguration N.E.W.T."
"It's true, Professor," said Tom in his friendliest Good Boy voice. "I was studying for Transfiguration, because I don't need to study for the Charms exam. I'd get an Outstanding mark either way; the extra-curricular experimentation was for nothing more than my... personal satisfaction. But while Charms may be my best subject at Hogwarts, I don't think I could say it was my favourite."
Dumbledore's response to the flattery was to pat him on the shoulder and send him off to the Slytherin House breakfast table. The other boys had already found their seats and begun their meals, and he hadn't even had to order them to move down the bench to make space for Hermione. When they returned to their dormitories, Tom made Nott pay out the fifteen Galleons he owed to Rosier.
If the Ministry of Magic was in dire shortage of proper justice, the least Tom could do was to ensure that there was some speck of it left in the world.
.
.
Notes:
— Tom gets his fighting spirit from his father, and his obsessiveness from his mother. Merope saw Tom Sr. riding his horse one time and decided this man was going to be her husband and baby daddy. Tom Jr. has one proper kiss and decides, "Welp, that's it, looks like we have to start sending out wedding invitations!".
— I always liked it when random off-hand details come back like a boomerang.
Callback to Chapter 6 - Tom and Hermione talk about "foils".
"...But labels of this sort don't apply to real life. Real people are more complex than that."
"I wouldn't know," Tom said. "You're the only other real person I know."
Another callback to Chapter 6: Avery's family is in the animal breeding business.
"Tom, this is your future! You have to be careful, you have more to lose than him! Even if Avery fails his N.E.W.T.s the second go around, he'll be fine when his father finds him a place breeding mail owls on the family estate..."