1945
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Sneaking out during Hogsmeade weekends became too fraught with complications after the Aurors had instituted a policy that students were to sign in and out in dormitory groups, and any member who wandered off would incur a collective punishment for the entire group. "Remind them to keep an eye on their friends," the Prefects were told—the implication being that students were expected to report each other for misbehaviour.
Tom heartily disliked it. It encouraged those of a supercilious, God-bothering temperament to accept their true callings as righteous scolds. From his First Year at Hogwarts, he had never liked other students who saw it as their responsibility to report their fellows to the teacher. He even less liked the ones who saw it as an unassailable moral duty. Hermione, had he not resolved their quarrel within their first few weeks of school, could have become that sort of person without his intervention. It was lucky she had him, then.
The next best thing to slipping away from Hogsmeade was leaving during a Quidditch match. They were held on the grounds, so the Prefects were not obliged to take the roll. Nor did everyone have an interest in Quidditch or attend every match, especially not the N.E.W.T. or O.W.L. students who weren't Quidditch players and weren't interested in pursuing professional sports as a future career.
Half an hour before dawn, he and Nott dressed in plain black cloaks, scarves, and duelling doublets within the confines of their four-poster curtains. Nott had borrowed Orion Black's dragonhide doublet, and Tom had talked his way into Travers' silver-studded vest. When he was done tying off the laces—which fit him better than the original owner—Tom slid out of his bed, Nott cautiously peeking his head out of his own curtains before stepping into his boots, which laced themselves up without a sound. Their caution was fruitless; before they could get to the dormitory door, they saw that Lestrange was already up and dressed in his Quidditch jumper and breeches, polishing his broomstick with unusual vigour.
(It was the literal definition of the phrase, to Tom's relief. There had been an incident last year when Travers had sleepily shuffled out of bed and woken everyone up with a piercing scream. The boy had stepped on a wet sock abandoned on the floor, and that sock had adhered itself to his bare foot. The adhesive, Tom had learned very much against his will, was another boy's emission. No one would confess as to whom the sock had belonged to, since they all of them wore plain black woollen socks from the uniform shop. Having no interest in delving through their minds to find the true transgressor, Tom had declared that any figurative "broomstick polishing" must occur in the bathroom, with the door locked, and the mess should be cleared out of the drain grate immediately afterwards with a Vanishing spell.)
Lestrange saw them too, and his polishing cloth slipped off his broom handle and left a greasy streak on his white breeches. "Where are you two going?" he asked.
"Out," said Tom.
"Nowhere," said Nott at the same time.
They exchanged a leery look with each other.
"I'm helping Riddle choose a ring for Granger," said Nott. "If he's going to use traditional vows, he might as well do everything properly." He shot a meaningful glance at Tom.
"Yes," said Tom. "It doesn't look well on me to simply say that I want to marry her and leave it at that. Nor does it do anything for her reputation. We're Head Boy and Head Girl; we don't just represent our respective Houses, we represent Hogwarts."
"Don't look for us at the Common Room party after the match," Nott added. "But we might as well congratulate you in advance. It's Hufflepuff versus Slytherin, and Rosier reported that their Seeker can't dive and one of the Beaters can't aim."
"Oh," said Lestrange. "Well, let me know if you need someone to say you were seen in the changing room wishing the team good luck. I'm Captain this year, so they'll agree with whatever I say."
"Good man," Tom said, Summoning his potion case from his nightstand drawer and turning to leave. "If you could foul the Seeker to stretch the match as long as you can, you'd have no complaints from me." He took out a jar of his Confusion Concoction and tossed it to Lestrange. "This paste is absorbed through the skin and leaves one, ah, easily distracted. If it was somehow spilled in the broomstick shed before the match... Well, even Slughorn should admit that no one on the Slytherin team has much of an aptitude for Potions."
"Understood, Riddle," Lestrange said with a wink.
Tom Disillusioned himself and left the Slytherin dormitory, Nott following at his heels and whispering, "That's the most blatant sycophancy I've ever seen. How can you stand it?"
"By knowing where he stands at all times," Tom replied. "I do Lestrange a favour; he does me one in return. It's a simple arrangement, and we both benefit. We don't have to waste time pretending we're friends. I'd rather that than the kind of inscrutable arrangement I've got going on with Dumbledore. Everything's a hidden test of character with the old man."
"I still don't know what that's about," said Nott. "Dumbledore calling you by your given name. The familiarity, ugh, it gives me the chills, and I'm not even the one he's talking to. Too uncanny for me. The only person who calls me by my given name is my mother."
"What, not even your father?"
"Especially not my father. He calls me 'boy'."
"Could be worse," said Tom with a shrug. "Mine addresses me as 'you' or 'him'."
Tom and Nott exchanged another look, of uncomfortable and unpleasant fellowship. Without any prompting, it was wordlessly agreed that they would never speak on the subject again.
They slipped out of the castle without incident, detouring past the boatshed, which had new wards placed on it that Tom wasn't interested in cracking and repairing after every use. The Aurors had gotten wind of what the Astronomy Tower was used for and placed it out of bounds after hours for non-class activities. The Hogwarts students, with the persistence and tenacity of cockroaches, had scattered to converge on another location: the boatshed. Tom was thus beholden on Nott's flying carpet to take them out of Hogwarts grounds.
That was the loophole he had found: the Lake. The protective enchantments of the Hogwarts grounds were anchored in earth and stone, and concentrated on the road to the village, being the most obvious entry point through which an invader might attack the castle. The front gates had the winged boar guardian protectors, but everyone—except possibly Salazar Slytherin—had overlooked the possibility of the castle being infiltrated from the water side. There were no enchantments once one stepped foot off the earth and entered the vast demesne of the Black Lake and the highland tributaries that fed it.
No protective enchantments—but there was the Giant Squid, the mermaids and grindylows, and one protective beast that Tom was glad to be on friendly terms with.
Speaker, I hear you speak too fitfully, said the Basilisk, forked tongue flicking out in a gesture of reproval. Have you been too busy with your mate to spare some time for me?
Tom, who was busy refreshing the warming charms on the Basilisk's basking rock, choked in the middle of his incantation. "How do you know about my mate?"
I smelled you, not to long ago, by the shores where men sow weeds under stone the colour of sky. Tom understood this to mean the Herbology greenhouses. How could a thousand-year-old animal, despite its sentience, know what a greenhouse was? She smelled of earth and herbs and powerful magic. She will bear you a healthy brood, I think. You have chosen well. The previous Speakers were not very well at choosing mates; they favoured the ones with a fine scale-pattern but a weakness of the humours. I have told them, though they scarce listened, that the weak ones never brood well. They only throw one good egg in the clutch, and the rest are thin-shelled and never hatch... I told them...
Tom stroked the Basilisk's snout, and its rambling trailed off into a happy low rumble, its head lowering so Tom could better access the rough scales over its nose pits. Tom scraped his fingers over the horned ridges, feeling the coiled muscle under the hide quiescent beneath his palm.
"This is my last year here. When the next frost comes, I'll be gone, and you must return to sleep," Tom ordered. "But until then, keep watch over the Lake. If you notice any adult wizards who aren't students wandering about here, you have my permission to Petrify them from under the waterline—don't reveal yourself!—and leave the bodies on the lake shore. Don't eat them!"
The Basilisk sighed with a thick, gusty breath that made Tom wrinkle his nose. As you will it, it shall be done, Speaker.
"Good," said Tom. "One last thing: can I have some more venom?"
Nott watched him pat the sinuous green loops of the Basilisk's body piled around up to the height of Tom's shoulder, remarking, "Did you know the language you speak is called Parseltongue? It's a very rare ability to have a natural language fluency like that."
"Rare in Europe, but not elsewhere," said Tom. "According to the Ministry's Department of International Magical Trading, the Basilisk venom they import for Potions Masters is sold by Persian apothecaries. I looked it up—it's eighty Galleons per vial, with an additional ten Galleon fee for the Ministry's safety inspection of dangerous goods. Even though every vial is tamper-jinxed, and it should be obvious when the seal's been mishandled. It's pure theft. Disgusting."
"Do you think, perhaps, this means you're of Persian ancestry?" Nott asked with some hesitation.
Tom laughed. "Do you think I look it? Could I carry it off? If other English wizards might mistake me for a Persian, then I could be the one earning that eighty Galleons per vial. Tax-free, too. What the Ministry doesn't need to know won't hurt them."
Nott let out a nervous laugh. "You look too English to me, Riddle. Maybe if you wore a turban, people would be more inclined to believe it."
"A turban wouldn't favour me," said Tom. "I'm too tall, don't have enough of a beard, and I'm not partial to growing one in, regardless of how wizardly it's supposed to be. Now, do you have the address?"
Tom had commandeered detention supervision from the Fifth Year Slytherin Prefects. Instead of scrubbing cauldrons, which the little miscreants had expected to be their evening assignment, Tom had cleaned them himself by charming the dish brushes and made them write lines instead. He'd read aloud the Undesirable address list and instructed the students to copy his words down on a parchment. At the end of the session, he collected the parchments, noted which addresses had been registered as an indecipherable squiggle, and adjusted the students' memories so they remembered nothing more than writing dictations from a Potions textbook. The most pleasant part was the Prefects and the detention-goers having come away feeling like they owed Tom a favour.
Nott had done the research on locating the suspicious addresses and planning their travel itinerary. That was the task of an assistant, Tom had reminded him, and perfectly suitable for a minion like Nott. Nott wasn't pleased to be thought of as a minion, but Tom also reminded him it was just as easy for him not to think of the other boy at all.
Their plan was to Apparate in relays. From the lakeside gravel beach in Scotland, to Tom's bedroom in Yorkshire, then Side-Along with Nott to the standing stone outside the Avery family's farmhouse in Cornwall. Then their destination, the Tinworth Village Foundry, located in the Cornish township of Tinworth, which was a mixed-designation village insofar as it meant that the Muggle spouses of Squibs and wizards were legally permitted to buy and lease property within the protective wards.
The standing stone, carved with spidery Ogham runes, stood as a proud landmark on a bleak stretch of grassy moorland. Nott's hand drifted across the markings, carefully avoiding the dark brown streaks that stretched, stark and vertical, to the base of the stone. Beyond the stone, in the distance, Tom saw a broad circle of drystack fences, and in the centre, a well-to-do farmhouse of three storeys, connected to a number of newer-looking outbuildings. A puff of smoke drifted from a chimney, and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed black bat-like creatures perched on the roof, but when he turned his gaze directly to them, his vision blurred and they disappeared from view.
"That's Avery's house," said Nott, pointing to the farmhouse. "His family earns their gold from beast keeping. The stone here is their Apparition point, enchanted with a privacy ward to ensure the punters who come here to inspect the wares or bid for questionable merchandise can't be tracked or blocked by any other magic, including that of the Ministry's Beast Division officers. A fair number of West Country wizards who like to journey unmolested use this spot as a relay when travelling elsewhere—all the Averies ask in return is a gift of magical essence, human or beast, to maintain the strength of the wards."
"I didn't know Avery lived on a farm," said Tom. "I knew he was rich, but for all his family's money, the best they can do is a farmhouse?"
"From personal experience, it's grander on the inside," said Nott. "Not all prominent wizarding families live on sprawling estates. The Malfoys of Wiltshire are the exception, not the rule. Like Granger noted, royal titles are a Muggle affectation, and so are ostentatious residences. Why live in a palace when you can cast a Permanent Extension Charm and make a simple country cottage into any size you want? That's much more impressive. There's also an issue of safety when, before the Statute of Secrecy, we lived amongst Muggles who knew we were better than they were, and hated to be reminded of it. Anyway, if you don't want to make an offering, we ought to move on."
Tom fumbled out a vial each of Basilisk and Acromantula venom, tossing them over the standing stone. The stone hissed, and the weathered brown blood streaks on its surface blackened, leaving behind a residue of chalky soot markings; he felt a low hum rising from his feet and up to his throat, warm and heady magic that made his eardrums pop and his vision shimmer with its force. Then as soon as it had come, the vibration faded away, while the tall, flowering grass at the foot at the stone bowed into limp straggles of black sludge.
"That's powerful stuff," Tom breathed, clenching his hands as the last of the magic retreated to the earth.
"It's ancient magic," said Nott. "Some might call it primitive, since it's meant to be cast without wands or elaborate calculations. There's a good reason why Hogwarts' Ancient Runes class focuses on the Norse syllabary instead of the old Celtic rituals. A young child could perform a feat as formidable as a trained adult wizard, if he offered his own flesh and blood for it. The Board of Governors, three hundred years ago, thought it was best for children not to know about it."
"I'm pleasantly surprised you didn't use the term 'Dark Magic'," said Tom. "The people who do use it say it with such a tone of antipathy and hysteria that I can't help but find it tiresome. The Board of Governors: they do more to retard the spirit of academic inquiry at Hogwarts than they do to foster it. Has there been any group of wizards as incompetent at their jobs, excepting, of course, the Ministry of Magic? Whatever they're getting paid, it's far too much!"
"If I recall correctly," said Nott, "governorship is a strictly voluntary position. They aren't paid a salary."
"Well, then," said Tom, "at least they know their worth."
Nott sighed and took Tom's arm, then Side-Alonged him to the Apparition point in the centre of the village green, a circle of paved bricks embedded with coloured cobbles marking out the cardinal directions. Tinworth was a small seaside town of a dozen interconnected streets hemmed in with small limewashed cottages, their damp slate roofs limned in slick moss. The door lintels were uncomfortably low, and Tom supposed these were the type of houses a city man might consider charming until he had to live in one. At which point he was compelled to acknowledge the good fortune in being able to depart for good at the end of his seaside holiday, unlike the poor village locals.
From where Tom stood, he could hear the shush of waves crashing on a beach, a stiff salt breeze ruffling the hood of his cloak; he smelled the savoury scent of meat pasties cooling in the baker's window, which made his stomach rumble for leaving Hogwarts before breakfast; he heard the jingle and clatter of metal struck on metal—
Nott tugged on Tom's sleeve, before drawing his wand and Disillusioning himself. Tom cast his own spell.
"Where is it?" Tom asked in a low voice.
"At the end of the street," Nott replied, his voice equally low. "I looked up the address of particular interest in the Tinworth village directory, and it matches the one of the shop flat above the foundry. The second-floor flat is under Fidelius, but the first-floor workshop and shopfront are not. They're open to the public. The only entrance to the flat is through the shop. The workshop is in the garden plot, accesses through the side alley to the street. We'll have to be careful, if we don't want to make a public scene."
"Yes, I understand," said Tom. "Kick the customers out before we start blasting Unforgivables. But it's a good job that we left so early in the morning—who would be shopping for a new set of potions knives before breakfast?"
They stopped in front of a bay window, one of a matching pair, the merchandise displayed to its full glory on either side of the door. The left-side window had a set of professional-grade knives laid out on a soft cloth, from the tiniest pin-boning pen-blade to the heaviest cleaver that could crack the rigid shell of the Sopophorous bean with a single blow. The knife handles were embossed with the maker's mark, AS, which Tom learned was the shop owner's name, written on the plaque bolted to the door.
Tinworth Village Foundry
Established 1497
Proprietor Ansgar Schmitz
Master of Magical Metallurgy, 1922
Brukspatronkollegiet, Göteborg.
The right-side window contained a magical portrait of a coal-black stallion with glossy crow's wings, rearing in challenge. The inscription on the portrait frame read:
Bodmin Moor National Stakes 1944 Champion
Mithras
Owner: Mr. Taran Avery
And below that, laid out on a swathe of velvet cloth was a set of four horseshoes, stamped with the AS maker's mark.
"Odd," Tom remarked. "Why does a flying horse need shoes? It flies!"
"They don't fly all the time," whispered Nott. "They sleep and feed on the ground. In the wild, they rarely leave the ground—only to get away from predators. Most people, if they need to fly, prefer broomsticks for being less temperamental."
"I think I prefer Apparition," said Tom. He cocked his head, listening to the clank of metal coming around from the back of the shop. He peered in through the window, in between the gap made by the window-frame and the painted horse. "The owner must be in the workshop. The shop is empty of customers. Let's go in and take a look around."
Without waiting for Nott, Tom pushed open the door and entered the shop.
A metal bell jingled over the door; Tom whipped out his wand and cast a non-verbal Silencing Charm, but the spell caught the tail end of the peal, and Nott let out an annoyed grumble.
"Wait a moment, please, I shall be right out!" called a voice from behind the empty counter.
Nott pulled at his sleeve; Tom ignored it, taking a few seconds to inspect the arrangement of the shop, which had been placed under an Expansion Charm to fit more merchandise than could be seen from the outside. To his complete lack of astonishment, it was a shop that sold enchanted metalware of all manner of description, a more exotic range of wares than he'd seen in the cauldron and cookware shops of Diagon Alley. From the ceiling beams hung cages and traps for keeping pets or snaring vermin; sturdy racks sported small knife blades for brewing, medium sickle blades for harvesting, and large hunting blades for butchery; tamper-proofed locks and hooks and latches; propped against the walls were Muggle-repelling garden gates of lacy fretwork that glowed a dangerous vivid blue from inscribed runic phrases.
Tom stopped at a display of "Instant Heat, Rustler Deterrent" livestock branding irons dangling around a large Floo fireplace. The display bore a sign advertising designs to-order, imbued with a personalised magical signature. "Your Cows Will Come Home!"
What would happen if you pressed that on human skin? Tom wondered.
"Hello, sorry, sorry to keep you waiting!" A slim, dark-haired young man entered from the door behind the counter marked Staff Only. He had finely-drawn features and milky-translucent skin, and wore a shirt of crisp linen with bloused sleeves under a damask waistcoat and ascot, looking very much like the dapper frontispiece portrait of Hermione's beloved Mr. Darcy. Or, thought Tom, observing the man's paleness, his soft white hands, and his first-class tailoring out-of-place in a farmer's emporium, he resembled the title character of the book he'd once found in the Hogwarts library, The Mysterious Mister Maximillian. When Tom had researched the Chamber of Secrets, he'd ended up in the wizarding fiction section, and had discovered that female students, and witches in general, had a certain inexplicable fascination for...
Vampires.
Nott tugged even more urgently at his sleeve.
"Hello? Where did you go? The bell only rang once..." said the vampire, looking around the cluttered—though empty—shop floor. Tom and Nott had Disillusioned themselves, but the vampire wasn't certain they had left. He pushed through the swinging saloon door that separated the counter from the shop floor, peeking around the aisles formed by shelves of metal products, stopping here and there to neaten a rack of fireplace pokers, brush the dust off a faded Price Upon Request sign. The vampire's nostrils flared. "Please, sirs, do not be shy. I have been informed of the laws of this country, and by these laws, I have been officially certified of my humanity, partial as it may be."
Tom felt Nott slithering behind him, backing toward the door; he snatched the boy's wrist and felt it shivering.
"It can smell our blood," breathed Nott.
The vampire's pale, angular face turned to them with an almost audible snap, a glint of red in his eyes. Nott jerked at his arm in Tom's grip. A hip flask of polished steel fell off a display table and hit the flagged floor with a loud clatter.
The vampire leaped at them.
Tom's wand was already in his hand.
The cages hooked from the ceiling fell down and were arrested in mid-air, the bars unwinding and unfurling like a lotus in bloom. Strips of braided metal latched onto the vampire's wrists, dragging them back as sharp fingers clawed for Tom's face. They collared the creature round the throat, and tangled in a sailor's knot around his legs, pinning them together ankle to ankle. Tom felt the cool breath from the vampire's mouth against his cheek, smelled the iron tang and saw the ruby-wet tongue behind distended fangs. Behind him, Nott yelped, drew his wand and with a limp flourish, locked the door and floated up the velvet display cloths to cover the windows.
Tom walked forward, Levitating the bound vampire in front of him at the point of his yew wand, until they'd reached the wooden counter. Then Tom placed the vampire, crooked ascot and all, face-up on the counter's surface and drove the ends of the metal cuffs deep into the wood. Vampires were magical creatures. Like most magical creatures, their inherent magical nature meant a certain level of resistance to external magic, and often had a magic of their own of a different variety to human wizards. Tom remembered when he'd been knocked down and bled by a mermaid he'd caught in the Black Lake. He'd cast a Stunner on it, but the spell had lasted less than ten minutes. It was better to rely on physical restraints.
"This is a grave misunderstanding," said the vampire, tugging at the metal bands on his wrists. He was strong; the wood creaked with his pulling. "I assumed you were thieves come to the plunder. If you unhand me, I shall agree to put this indignity behind us and allow us to part as strangers into the rosy blush of morn."
Tom cast a Sticking Charm on the cuffs, performed a bit of complicated Transfiguration to merge the metal to the wood, the wooden counter to the stone floor, and completed his wand movements with a Bodybind to prevent the vampire from shuffling about.
"At least un-Disillusion yourself," the vampire complained. "I know there are two wizards in here. Yes, wizards. A witch would not treat me so unjustly. They, the sweet nymphets born under the tender auspices of Venus, know better than to think me a foul creature of the night. I," he crooned, "am a maestro of the human body. Every touch of mine brings bliss, every kiss is ecstasy—"
"—Until you suck them dry, you filthy lamprey," snapped Nott, reversing his Disillusionment. "You like witches in the same way I like trifle: without it trying to run away screaming in horror. Ugh, the thing is drooling. Hurry up and question it before the smith knows something's wrong."
Tom terminated his Disillusionment, wand raised for another spell. Imperio.
The vampire's eyes bulged, and his will resisted Tom's, more powerful than any human he'd ever tested himself against. Save Dumbledore, perhaps, but Tom had never gone mind against mind with the old man. Only whispered on the edges of the Professor's consciousness like a darting butterfly, to retreat when Dumbledore called an end to the demonstration of applied Occlumency performed by a master of the art. Vampires were forbidden wands, so could not cast wizard spells; they had a natural Legilimentic talent instead, much like Tom's. They possessed the ability to sense and mesmerise prey into a complacent stupor. A simple trick, a powerful but blunt-edged instrument, without the precision and honed acuity of Tom's mental magic.
Instead of forcing himself through like he'd done with Vajkard Kozel, the wizard behind the Montrose sabotage, Tom wended a circuitous path, diffusing his focus into one, then two, and finally three probing branches that stole through the vampire's surface resistance. The vampire's mind tried to block him at one point of entry, and the probe retreated in response, but the other two tunnelled deeper, dragging the glittering chartreuse strands of the Imperius Curse's spell boundary through the rills and runnels of the creature's memory.
Lightly goes it. Control without damage. Remember how you took Avery. Not to destroy his mind, but to make it yours, he reminded himself.
Tom breathed slowly, composing himself and quietening the thunder of his heartbeat. He could feel his control settling over the alien consciousness. And it was that: utterly alien. Beneath the organised thought and memory, typical of a sentient being of higher intelligence, lay the mind of a beast in hibernation. It was unsettling for Tom to explore a human-shaped beast from the inside, without the distracting welter of purely animal sensory instincts as he'd found in the Acromantula's mind. Tom had always considered the "base urges" he occasionally felt to be a weakness of lesser men to be repressed whenever he liked. The vampire saw its own urges not as an enemy, but as inseparable from itself. It and the beast were one, and together they were the physical manifestation of bloodlust.
Their eyes opened.
"What is your name?" he asked the vampire, whose hungry eyes shone like sundae cherries.
"Václav Janošík."
"The Secret Keeper was a vampire. That explains a lot," said Nott. "Wandless, but capable of physical feats and intelligent thought. Resistant to magical and Legilimency attacks. Well, most Legilimency."
"What's upstairs?" Tom continued.
"My masterwork project," said the vampire. "For I am but a humble journeyman."
"What," said Tom, drawing the strands of his will tighter around the vampire's mind, "exactly is your project?"
"A portway."
"Elaborate."
"A magical port of ingress, fabricated of enchanted metal in the Schlossgarten baroque style."
"You mean... a gate."
"If you must call it that," sighed the vampire. "You Englishmen have no taste."
"Why do you support the Dark Lord?"
"I do not support the man. He thinks with too much of a mortal's near-sightedness—too impatient, always rushing when he should be biding. But I support his principles. One, after all, must have some taste."
"But why?" asked Nott. "What does he have that you want?"
"Since you are so insistent about it, I suppose I have no choice but to answer," said the vampire in a resigned voice. "It is forbidden by the International Statute of Secrecy to ravish the female Muggles, no matter how eagerly they ask for it. It would upset the Muggles severely, and set them on a witch hunt that would cause even more upset amongst wizards. So, I must turn to the witches, but they are not so easily led astray, and again and again, invite me in for their satisfaction. Until it comes to my own, to which they spurn me as keenly as Eros' arrow pierces my breast." He sighed despondently. "It is beyond degrading. The husbands, however, are none too sympathetic about my wretched plight.
"But if one day there were no more International Statute, there would be no more Muggle protections... On that day, I could finally slake this eternal curse laid upon me, quieten the thirst that rises in me whenever I hear the churning valves that churn within you. Oh, how loud it roars in my ears, how terrible the temptation to my poor bedamned soul. But know that I hold no grievance against you and your kind, wizardling. This is the truth, and you know it to be true."
"Can't you 'lead astray' a wizard?" asked Tom. "Why are you so obsessed with witches?"
"Would you be partial to licking a wizard's bearded throat? To feeling his proclamation of rapture spurt hot against your thigh? No? I thought not."
Nott made a retching noise. Tom ignored him. "How do I get upstairs?"
"You must know the Secret, which somehow, you already do. And..."
"Yes?"
"The enchanted trigger-lock on the staff door, modelled from the goblin-smiths' masterworks."
"What's the trigger?"
The vampire bit his lip. Tom pushed harder, but Nott interrupted him, saying, "Touch. It's a touch, isn't it? A finger brush around the seal is what cracks open my family's high-security vault."
"Yes," said the vampire reluctantly. "A handprint. If you unbind me, I will open the lock for you. You already know the Secret, what harm would it do? I shall promise to keep my seductions to myself. As a simple burgher of civilised mien, I am quite open to negotiation."
Despite the vampire's promise against seduction, he lay languidly on the wooden shop counter as if he'd been pinned for a spot of exotic bedsport rather than an interrogation. He licked his pale lips, his fangs still extended, and traced the line of a milk-white, glistening tooth with the tip of his wet tongue. Tom glanced at the thing's hands, then at the door, then back to the restrained vampire. He kept his wand raised and ready.
"Does this shop sell rings?"
"Many sorts," said the vampire. "Barrel rings for coopers' casks. Ear and nose tags for stock identification. Lid rings for apothecary jars. Cauldron hooks—"
"Wedding rings."
"Under the counter, third drawer from the bottom. Tap your wand to the handle and speak the password, 'Nibelungen'."
"Thank you," said Tom.
"You are most welcome."
"Having been most co-operative so far, I almost feel sorry about doing this," said Tom. He cast a Silencing Charm over the vampire's face, and with a flick of his wand, sliced open a pearl-buttoned linen cuff, peeling back the shirtsleeve to reveal a slender white wrist. He squared his shoulders and, pointing his wandtip to the creature's hand, began sawing it off at the wrist, feeling his way through to the bone. Black blood, thick as tar, beaded on the flagstones.
"Fuck," Nott muttered to no one in particular. He cringed at the rubbery snap of ulnal ligaments.
Tom gestured with his wand, tightening the metal cuffs to clamp over the wrist-stump and stem the flow of blood, a makeshift tourniquet. It was more than the vampire needed. Since he was an unliving creature, there was no chance of death from Tom's amateur surgical skills. Not from bloodloss at least.
Then he floated the severed hand to the back door, pressing it to a carved panel under the Staff Only plaque. Glistening blood dribbled down the iron-bound wood. A latch on the other side clicked. Silently, the door slid open. Tom made to go through, but Nott's voice stopped him.
"Aren't you going to clean up outside before you go in?" Nott pointed to the covered window. The clank of struck metal was audible within the shop.
"I would rather not fight a Master Metallurge if I don't have to," said Tom. "Since 'careful' is my middle name, however..."
He piled merchandise around the door to block the way in, upending display tables and Banishing knives through the wood so the points punched through to face the entrance. It made a precarious mess; anyone who managed to push open the door by force would have to deal with a towering stack of sharp-edged metal. As a finishing touch, he detached a number of spring-jawed traps from the ceiling beams and laid them in a half-circle around the barricade.
"What sort of traps are these?" Tom asked curiously, flicking his wand to spread the jaws open. The traps were well-designed gadgets, able to be manipulated from a distance. A useful safety feature. "The brown bear is extinct in Britain."
"They're wolf traps," said Nott. "Anyone with a wand can get them to open up. It won't immobilise a wizard for long."
"But the jaws still hurt when they snap shut on his leg, won't they?"
"Er... yes."
"Good enough."
Satisfied with his work, Tom turned to the back door. Nott, giving a rueful look to the manacled vampire, hurried after Tom, hesitating for a moment to Summon a branding iron from the rack near the fireplace, shoving it into the door jamb to keep it from swinging shut after them. It wouldn't close; Tom had ensured it. He'd adhered the vampire hand to the opening sequence with a very firm Sticking Charm.
The staff door led to a rickety wooden staircase, the banisters on each side crowded with a flat, dis-assembled delivery cartons of various sizes. It led up to the second storey, the shop flat, whose plain wooden door unlocked with an Alohomora.
I suppose the Germanics are famous organisers for good reason, Tom thought to himself, when he took in the state of the upstairs flat. The last two houses he'd rummaged through were much the same: the covered windows, the maps on the walls, the shelves full of scrolls containing the dastardly plans. This flat had a scarred wooden carpenter's trestle, on which sat the components of a complicated metalworking project, along with a series of tiny miniatures. Tom could see what the final design was meant to be: a baroque gate with a curlicued overthrow. It looked harmless at first glance. Harmful to the account ledgers, possibly, but innocent in every other way.
He inspected the living quarters. Compared to the quarters he'd seen previously, the vampire's was different in that it had a coffin in the corner instead of a bed. The lid was off, the coffin's interior lined with luxurious red velvet. It even had dolly of a bat, sewn with soft brown chamois wings, sitting on the pillow.
Nott headed directly for the scrolls, which he unrolled with an emphatic exhalation after each one. "The gate is not just a gate. It never is that simple with these people, is it? A masterwork that isn't an original invention will be a work that improves upon an existing idea. The lamprey pinned to the table downstairs was designing a modern security gate using existing runic enchantment structures instead of a more politically contentious blood confirmation. The Ministry granted him a research pass to documents detailing the construction of Britain's most prominent public portways. Which includes the golden gate behind the wand-weighing station at the Ministry of Magic's Atrium, and Hogwarts' boar gate.
"It's unconventional for a British government to grant Mastery status to non-wizard partial-humans, and a non-British citizen to boot," Nott continued. "The Master-supervisor, Ansgar Schmitz, negotiated on behalf of his journeyman, Mr. Václav Janošík, that on the masterwork's completion and assessment by a panel of Master Enchanters, the designs and patent for technical improvement would be surrendered to the Ministry of Magic. The panel would not be obligated to grant Mr. Janošík Master status; they just had to give him one fair assessment. Either way, Master certification or not, the Ministry would come out the owner of the patent, able to use it themselves or lease it for royalties from local artificers."
"Devious," said Tom. "Do you think the Ministry would really have recognised a vampire as a Master of any magical discipline, obscure or otherwise? I can't see a way for them to make it look good. The Ministry can deny sentient non-humans the use of a wand, but even wandless, one has the intelligence and competence to prove his mastery of an art that the majority of regular wizards could scarcely comprehend. How many students are in our N.E.W.T. Ancient Runes class? Eight. How many of them will become Masters of Enchanting? None. Most of them enrolled because Runes is prestigious for how demanding a subject it is. They'll graduate with a 'Top Ten cohort ranking' with no effort at all due to the size of the class. A vampire proving he's better than the best that Hogwarts has to offer... It flies in the face of proper wizarding pride."
Nott shook his head, a contemplative frown on his face. "Spencer-Moon is more liberal than previous Ministers, but his sympathy leans more toward Muggle welfare than creature rights. The agreement between Master Schmitz and the Department of Magical Education grants Mr. Janošík fair evaluation, but there's no clause saying that the assessors must be randomly chosen from an anonymous pool. If the Department stacks the panel with notoriously harsh assessors, from the old families in particular, it would mean no chance of a successful certification."
"I don't think he'd care," said Tom, "if a Mastery isn't his goal. Academic qualification doesn't motivate him. He's not human. What's the purpose of an official government certificate to an immortal being? He's seen governments come and go. He knows they're cheap and petty and preoccupied by shallow pursuits like budgets and profit."
"How do you know that?" asked Nott. "Did you get it from his mind?"
"No," said Tom. "I didn't need to. It's obvious to me. It's how I'd think if I were immortal. It's also obvious to me that the vampire and the Ministry were playing each other. The Ministry, useless and greedy as they are, wanted a patent, because how often does a competent Master come along in Britain willing to give a good one away for free? The families who own the broomstick manufactories have been rolling in gold from sitting on good patents for centuries. So they took the Trojan Horse and thought themselves all the cleverer for it."
"Will you turn him in, then, like you did the last time? If it's a Ministry fumble that started it, they're going to like admitting it even less."
"It would be the better choice," Tom admitted. "As with last time, neither of us are professional wardmasters or cursebreakers, and if the plan is to crack the Hogwarts gates, you and I will be personally affected by it. It would be easier to stomach the incompetence if it wasn't framed entirely as a 'Ministry oversight' issue. Frame it as the fault of one Department, Magical Education, and let the inter-Departmental politics from the DMLE and Minister's office devour them. The Minister's office is already unstable from Montrose. Spencer-Moon and his cronies will keep their fingers pointed as far away from themselves as they can. It's the one thing protecting the Minister from being called up in front of the Wizengamot to tender a resignation."
"As much as you must revel in chaos," said Nott, "I hope you realise that destabilising the government doesn't do the people of Britain any favours."
"I do realise that, actually," Tom replied.
"And?"
"And what?" said Tom. "I've nothing further to add to my statement."
"I see," said Nott. "Well, without your handiness with wandwork, I'd wonder whether or not the 'Charming' portion of your title was as fictional as the 'Prince' part."
"The criticism is unwarranted," Tom said. He nodded at Nott's black hooded cloak and the black woollen scarf covering his face. "You're the Green Knight who dresses head-to-toe in black."
"Yes, but if you're going to be a Prince, out of symbolism if not legal recognition," Nott insisted, "it has to be symbolic of something. If the British people aren't your subjects, then what are they?"
"My coinpurses," said Tom.
They were in the middle of collecting papers and books to take from the room—bickering all the while—when they heard a clash of falling metal from downstairs. Nott paused in the task of shoving scrolls into this bag to twitch a curtain open and snatch a peek of the street below.
"The smith is at the front door, trying to push it open. He knows he's been locked out," Nott reported. "He must have gotten the door unlocked, but realised that it's been blocked by the rubbish you stacked on the inside."
Crack! Crack! Crack!
"Looks like he called for reinforcements," Nott narrated. "Can't tell how many Apparated in; at least three, more if they've got Side-Along passengers—"
The whine and thunderclap of metal jaws snapping shut was soon followed by loud bellows.
"Oh, that's got to hurt," said Nott with a wince. "That'll be the wolf traps. You'd better have a plan for us to fight our way out. They'll be coming upstairs soon enough."
"Schau dir die Hand an! Die Hand an der Tür!"
"I don't speak German, but I can guess when Franz and Heinrich are shouting about 'die Hand', it means they know what you did to the vampire..."
Tom had stopped paying attention. With a furious scowl, he began tearing posters off the wall and slicing the covers off runic syllabaries he'd taken from a shelf. Paper, paper, he needed paper shredded into as large a pile as he could gather. He didn't harbour any fondness for defacing books, but the ones left to put away were only common references, and easily replaceable. One thing mattered above the preservation of precious knowledge: the preservation of Tom's precious life.
He Transfigured the shredded paper into glass. Clear shards of sparkling lead crystal, transparent as spring water, edges so sharp they could cut with nothing more than a look. When the mass Transfiguration was complete, Tom drew out a vial of Basilisk venom and drizzled it over the glass pile, then gave the requisite swish-and-flick to Levitate the whole clinking jumble into the air.
"Are you going to help me or stand there with your mouth open?" snapped Tom, too focused to care for nicety. He remembered when he'd washed dishes in the Hog's Head the summer before Fifth Year. This was more of the same sort of simple charmwork... except messier.
"What do you need?" asked Nott, drawing his wand.
"Kneel on the side of the door, where they can't see you from the stairs. I'll be on the opposite side. As soon as I Levitate the glass past the door, you need to cast a Shield Charm and hold it. Hold it firm, don't let it go. No matter what cries for mercy you hear from outside."
Gingerly, Tom guided the glass pile, like a glittering crystal cloud, up into the air to ceiling height. It couldn't be allowed to waver, else the Basilisk venom would drip down, and the sound of chiming glass would draw notice. This would be most effective if it came without warning; forewarning would ruin the surprise. In complete silence, the glass drifted out the door and into the dark shadows of the roof beams above the rickety staircase.
The wizards had gotten the wolf traps off, and he heard them questioning the familiar voice of the vampire.
"Wer hat dir das angetan, Vašek?"
"Zwei Herren, mächtige Herren... Ich glaube es ist der Prinz aus der Zeitung..."
The first of the wizards began to climb up the stairs to the second level.
Tom motioned Nott to get into position, and the boy obeyed, mouthing the incantation for the Shield Charm and directing the half-dome to cover the open entryway of the door. Tom's forehead wrinkled; it took firm concentration to keep the mass of glass shards suspended in the air without rattling. From the view of the wizards on the first floor, they should see only an open doorway, no moving figures visible within, and no sounds of movement. He and Nott were hunched on either side of the door, out of sight.
Nott, listening intently to the creak and groan of footsteps on the stairs, signalled with his fingers. One, two, three. Up to six fingers, before he stopped counting. Six wizards, then.
Modulating his breathing to remain quiet and calm, Tom heard the creaking louden, the whispers in guttural German, the murmur of a spell, Homenum Revelio.
One of the wizards cried out in pain, "Etwas hat mich gebissen!"
There came a scuffling from the stairs, then a shout, "Schau hinauf!"
Tom terminated the Levitation spell, jabbing his wand in the movement for Oppugno. The glass shards fell from above like silent rain.
Thus began an orchestral interlude of pure chaos. Nott was correct for pointing out that Tom revelled in it, although truthfully, Tom revelled more in seeing his plans come to fruition. Chaos for the sake of chaos was not his usual penchant. For his part, Nott, whey-faced and huddled as close to the floor as possible, doggedly held the Shield Charm, deflecting sparks of light that the panicked wizards shot in all directions.
Tom had always wondered what the difference was between being bitten by a Basilisk on a limb, the typical injection site, versus having the venom shot straight into the brain. He supposed it came down to the nature of magical snake venom, about which the Care of Magical Creatures textbooks gave very little information. Different breeds of snakes had different types of venom, each with its own physical mechanics. Some venoms attacked the heart, others the nerves, still others degraded the organic matter it was exposed to. He supposed the Basilisk's venom was of the last category; it needed to be able to digest the prey Petrified by its lethal gaze.
Eventually the sparks stopped, and the groaning of the stairs fell silent. Tom stood up and brushed off his robes.
"The stairs are made of wood. They'll be weakened; I wouldn't trust our weight on them. We'll have to Levitate ourselves down, and cast a Cushioning Charm at the bottom," he said.
At the bottom of the stairs, Tom Levitated the body of a German wizard, face blackened into recognisability, in front of him as a puppet. He floated it out through the open door leading to the shop floor, pointedly ignoring the vampire hand still stuck on the rune lock, and made it waggle a limp arm. Nothing happened. No answer of spellfire that he'd been expecting.
He entered the shop, the wizard still held in front of him, robes dragging damp streaks on the flagstones, and examined the wreck of the once-neat product displays. There was a good reason, then, why it was recommended to Apparate via established Apparition points, instead of straight into a building. You never knew if someone had re-arranged the furniture since your last visit.
The vampire, Václav Janošík, had been released of his arm restraints. A large wizard, intent on reverse Transfiguring the metal band on one ankle, bent over the counter with wand in hand. The wizard was an older man, a broad-shouldered greying blond with hairy bare arms scarred shiny from layers of healed burns. He wore a traditional-style smocked shirt with wide sleeves and a laced throat, the lacings undone to show the blond pelt of his chest, and over that was an apron in slick red leather patterned with oval scales. Dragonhide, Tom guessed, like Travers' dragonhide duelling vest he'd borrowed to wear under his black robes.
"Will you surrender or fight?" said Tom coldly. He heard Nott following him in, but didn't see the other boy. Tom assumed he'd Disllusioned himself after recognising the value of a good surprise. "You can come quietly, or you can come... messily. It's unusual for my quarry to be offered such a choice, so you should be honoured by the privilege. When you go to trial, I promise to say at least one thing nice about you at the stand. The Ministry of Magic would not be so lenient towards you."
"Surrender for what?" retorted the blond wizard, the Master Metallurge Ansgar Schmitz. "I have committed no crime. But you? You trespass on my property. You mutilate my apprentice. You keep your face covered like you are too frightened to be seen."
"'I have committed no crime'," Tom repeated in a bland voice. "Half-truth at best. Try again."
"You may call yourself Prinz, but you have the easy, untested arrogance of a second-born Junker," said Schmitz, pronouncing the last word as 'Yoon-ker'. He waved his wand and the steel band securing the vampire's left ankle darkened from shiny metal to dull pig iron and then to rusty raw ore. The vampire tugged at his trapped limb, and the band crumbled into dusty fragments of rock. "What say you, Vašek?"
"He is an Englishman, devoid of taste and culture. The English are not known as a people of poets and thinkers," said the vampire. "This kleiner Prinzling has no idea of what you speak. Junker, jung Herr. A young lord with nothing to his name but an empty title and his lofty pretensions, eager to advance himself through endeavours most dubious. I know it well; I was one once. And look at where it took me—" The vampire laughed hollowly, waving his stump of an arm for morbid emphasis. "Half the man I once was."
Out of the corner of Tom's eye, he saw movement by the fireplace. The lid on the Floo powder urn lifted under an invisible hand. Silver powder glittered on the floor; a small green fire flickered into noiseless existence. A footprint smudged the powder-dusted flagstones.
Tom cleared his throat, giving the Levitating wizard a jiggle. A hank of sludge, formerly hair, dripped off the melting skull and spattered to the floor. "Ahem. I may be English, but I'm of Anglo-Saxon stock, which means I'm almost as German as you are. I don't know why you can go around mocking me for my English-ness. I, personally, don't think less of you for being Germans. I have German friends, in fact." This was an over-generous fact re-interpretation, since his single not-actually-German "friend" was closer to Hermione and her family than Tom. But everything of Hermione's was Tom's by right, as her wizard husband, and that fact was true so everything else followed. Q.E.D., quod erat demonstrandum, as the Arithmancers wrote it.
The vampire and the blacksmith exchanged a glance, then chuckled.
"We do not care that you are English or German by blood," said Schmitz.
"They taste practically the same," the vampire added. "Except in October. All the beer and mustard gives the blood a certain fizz. Take my word on it, it is quite unpleasant."
"We hold you in contempt for your noble affectations," continued Schmitz. "Let us speak with candour. If I am an agent of the Revolution, as you suspect I am, why do you think that is?"
"The Ministry says it's because you want to go around killing people. Muggles, preferably," said Tom. "But I don't believe it."
"Whyever not?"
"It would only make sense as a motivation for the lowest of the low. You two seem like intelligent chaps. If you'd wanted to get away with killing people willy-nilly, you wouldn't have to join a Revolution to make it happen," said Tom. "Thus the only reasonable explanation for why you'd bother is the moral fig leaf it gives you. You want righteousness on your side, because you're ideologues. Or worse—Socialists."
"What," said the vampire, "is a Socialist?"
"A devotee of Socialism, the re-distributist form of government where private ownership is abolished," said Tom, remembering the pamphlets he'd found tossed like refuse on the streets of London. "It exists as a counterweight to systems like mercantilism or feudalism, which promote the amassing of personal or hereditary fortunes, estates, and aristocracy."
"Oh, yes," the vampire nodded. "I found it rather unfair when my title was stripped from me after my star-crossed reawakening... Ah, these bygone memories scorch me as the sun's wrath." He fingered his crooked ascot. "But I see now how it was nothing but an encumbrance. The system divides us beyond sense and reason; it serves precious few, and not even well at that. You should sip from this Well of Mímir one day, little Prince, for its waters run nearer and sweeter than you think. You can never close your eyes once you have seen with truesight."
"You could achieve your heart's desire if you turned away from the feeble whispers of your Ministry," said Schmitz. "In this new world to be ushered forth, there are no titles, no princes, no patronage, no blood status, no pedigrees. Your worth will be recognised from the fruits of your own labour and scholarship. From magic. Magic and might. And you, I declare, are not lacking in either."
"Tempting," said Tom, watching the flicker and dart of the blacksmith's gaze. "Very tempting. But there is no amount of Socialism that could ever grant me my heart's desire."
"I was afraid you might say that," said Schmitz, and flicked his wand. The last manacle holding the vampire to the wooden counter snapped like taffy under the monstrous strength.
The vampire flung himself at Tom, fangs bared, its one whole hand ready to clasp him by the throat in a not-so-tender caress. Tom cast a Knockback Jinx, shoving the vampire back a few skidded paces. His spell was forceful, but the vampire was stronger than a human wizard, and its unliving body was resistant to magic cast directly upon it.
Tom had guessed this would happen. They had been playing for time, and Tom couldn't blame them, for he'd done just the same thing. With a silent spell, the floating, bloated corpse of the dead wizard was Switched with the upended table by the front door, the one with potion-preparation blades shoved from beneath the splintered top.
The table shot through the air and smashed into the vampire as its legs tensed for another leap at Tom. With a feline yowl, the vampire slammed into the wall behind the counter, Never-Dull knives spearing through its body and into the mortared stone below. It was fixed into place with the precision of a specimen butterfly, sad shreds of its fine shirt dangling to the floor in white ribbons slowly consumed by the creeping stain of tar-black blood.
His momentary distraction with the most pressing threat lent the Master Metallurge an opening. Schmitz blasted him back into a display rack of sickle blades, and he felt the unpleasant sensation of the sharp points scoring deep lines into Travers' borrowed duelling vest, bruising the flesh below. The blades didn't puncture the silver-studded hide—dragonhide was resilient against physical damage as well as magical—but his breath was driven out of him, and he was dazed at the force of the blow—
Schmitz pointed his wand at Tom's forehead. "Imperio. Remain as you are. Drop your wand."
If Dumbledore's Legilimency was the soft brush of a fly's wings against his mind, Schmitz's force of will thrust at his consciousness with the grace and subtlety of a sledgehammer. It was supposed to feel good; this curse was meant to make its victim amenable to persuasion by seizing on impressions of warmth and solace and familiarity. It skittered through Tom's mind trying to latch onto those feelings and memories that were his alone, but it couldn't find them, couldn't close its scrabbling yellow pincers on anything but slippery shadow. Tom weathered the pain, feeling his awareness falter and stumble through a field of hazy images interspersed with the black flicker of celluloid frames, and he could little discern if they came from his eyes, a memory his eyes had once seen, or someone else's borrowed recollections...
The scarf over his face grew warm and close as the knitted wool soaked with the blood from his nose and the tears from his eyes; he had not cried, not in over a decade, yet his eyes shed tears without his permission, and he could do nothing about it. Couldn't control his own body—
Except for his hand.
His wand pulsed with heat under his stiffened fingers.
Let it go, repeated the voice in his mind, battering him with its insistence. No more persuasion, only a single harsh demand that ripped through his echoing skull.
Tom opened his fingers.
The wand dropped.
Half a foot before it clattered to the floor, he Summoned it back and unleashed the suppressed torrent of his fury into a single silent spell.
Expelliarmus!
Master Metallurge Ansgar Schmitz was hurled backwards, just like he'd done to Tom, straight into the arms of a squad of Aurors exiting the fireplace.
The Aurors at the front yelped as they were hit by two hundred and fifty pounds of angry blacksmith, but the ones in the back, still disembarking from the Floo connection, pushed them forward and onto their feet, wordless Immobilisation charms readied at the tips of their drawn wands.
Nott came last, ducking his head around both masoned side panels of the fireplace's frame, before reluctantly getting out. His eyes widened when he took in the mess of the shop floor: the steel-bladed sickles shining on the flagstones, the dripping, disintegrating wizard leaving a bloody puddle by the front door, and finally, the vampire spiked to the wall like the dartboard of a rowdy bar room.
"That's the Secret Keeper you've been looking for the past few weeks," said Nott when he'd got around to gathering up his scattered wits, pointing to the vampire on the wall behind the counter. "The one involved in the Montrose affair. He's Secret Keeper to the room upstairs, where I found the papers I showed you."
After Schmitz was bound and Disarmed, it was natural for the Aurors to turn their eyes to Tom.
One Auror, badge of gold shining on his robes, stared at Tom in his torn black robes and sodden black scarf over his face. It was to his good fortune that blood didn't show too well on black; it would have been a miserable first impression otherwise.
With some hesitation, the Auror approached Tom and offered his hand. Tom took it; the man shook it with a firm grip. "Evelyn McClure, Head Auror. You must be the infamous Prince of Charming. Your Knight companion reported six bodies upstairs—" He glanced around at the Auror underlings rolling the body by the door into a black bag. "Or five. That's two hundred Galleons' bounty per head for the flunkeys, five hundred for the collaborator, and one thousand for the prime Undesirable, Mr. Václav Janošík. Total of two thousand seven hundred Galleons. To which account should we make out the reward, sir? Or is it 'Your Highness'?"
"I'm not doing this for money, if that's what you think. I'm not a mercenary," said Tom harshly, sensing some of the intention behind the Head Auror's words. "Hold the funds in trust. Is this not an insignificant favour for Britain's own hero to ask? When the war is over, I'll dedicate it to the re-building committee. I'm not sorry about the Atrium, but public works are the duty of a Prince. I aim to be magnanimous."
Auror McClure's lips thinned, and his eyes swept over Tom's form, his ragged robes and the tip of the white wand hanging out of his sleeve. Drawn but not brandished. "You speak like a young man. How old are you, exactly? I'd be more fair-minded to your hostility if it was explained as youthful fervour."
"Old enough to know that I shouldn't have to do your job for you," Tom replied.
"And young enough not to know that your dragonhide doublet is standard Auror issue," said McClure, pushing aside a fold of Tom's cloak to reveal his vest beneath. "Or was. Discontinued thirty years ago, and the surplus was never released to the commercial market. Did it belong to your father? Was he killed by the Dark Lord? And is that why you've taken up wands against him? Vengeance, and I warn you from personal experience, is a dangerous and consuming path to walk—"
"Sir," interrupted an Auror, proffering Ansgar Schmitz's wand. "We tested it. Imperius was its last spell, properly cast with strong intent. We have reasonable suspicion enough to send him straight to Azkaban to await trial."
McClure studied Tom, the slickened wool over his nose. "Your nose is bleeding, but your eyes are clear. You broke the Imperius. And you've resisted the Cruciatus before. Who are you? You can't be a concerned private citizen; I refuse to believe it."
"Princeps civitatis," said Tom. "The first amongst citizens. I'm not a citizen, I'm the most concerned citizen."
"Then I should be grateful to request your citizen's testimony when the trial is held," said McClure. "How may I write you, Prince?"
"Place an announcement in The Daily Prophet," Tom answered. "That is, if you're not too abashed to admit in public that, once again, this citizen performed a citizen's arrest that should have been yours. If your Aurors would escort me through the Atrium, bypassing the wand identification desk, I'd find some time in my busy schedule to attend."
Auror McClure was soon called over in a discussion on how to peel the complaining vampire off the wall, and how to reattach his hand, if it should be done at all. While they were distracted, Tom popped open the drawer under the counter to browse the selection of wedding rings arranged inside a ridged velvet tray. Most of them were silver, a handful were gold, and all were simple bands with little ornament or gemwork.
He heard Nott's presence before he saw it; no one could say so much with a quiet sniff like he could.
"What do you want?"
"These are rings for village hedge witches and working wives. If you want a proper heirloom ring, you need to find a jeweller."
"But they are proper rings." Tom held one ring up to inspect the paper tag tied on with string. "'Enchantments: size-to-fit; durability; neverlost.' Look, the maker's mark. A Master made this." He put the ring down, spotting another one, silver with a leafy design raised in relief around the band. "I want this one. Sixteen Galleons. I only have twelve and eight Sickles. Spot me the rest, won't you."
"No one would notice if you took it without paying. The Aurors would happily turn a blind eye for the honour of helping the Prince," Nott remarked. "And it's the least the Schmitz fellow could do, to compensate for cursing you. Weregild—it's still legal. Technically."
"It's for my wife," Tom insisted. "It has to be proper."
Nott sighed and dug in his robes for a coinpurse. He tossed four Galleons into Tom's lap, and Tom poured the coins into the drawer, taking the leafy ring and shutting the cabinet drawer.
"You do know that her wand is vinewood, don't you?" Nott pointed out. "That's laurel."
"Laurel would look just as good on her."
Nott sighed again, scratching his belly under Orion Black's dragon vest. "I'm too hungry to argue with you. Let's get pasties."
.
.
When they returned to Hogwarts, the Quidditch match between Slytherin and Hufflepuff was still ongoing.
The Slytherin boys were in the stands, watching the Slytherin Chasers weave intricate circles around the dazed Hufflepuff team. It had been going on for the whole morning and into the afternoon, and even Quaffle-brained individuals like Rosier had to let their arms down from the pennant-waving. They made room when they saw Nott and Tom enter the seating section, and Tom sat down gratefully, feeling the ache in his back from the exertions of his earlier duel.
"Where have you been all morning?" asked Travers. "We missed you at breakfast."
"What's the score?" Nott said, ignoring him. He took the big carton of pasties out of his bag. The smell of lamb and gravy filled the stands. Avery reached over Tom's lap to snatch one up, but Nott slapped his hand away. "Riddle, you should pick first. If you let these savages have their way, you'll be left with nothing but crumbs."
Tom took a pasty. It was warm, and when he broke it open, the filling of turnip cubes and stewed mutton rose with curls of steam.
"The score's 470 to 60," said Rosier. "Lestrange has been rotating in the reserves to allow the team a rest. Quidditch rules allow substitutions for food and sleep, but not injury—that's the only way to keep a match going on through an entire week. Though I expect Lestrange will end it when the dinner bell rings, as Slytherin is already guaranteed this year's Quidditch Cup. House Cup, too. Oh, thank you, don't mind if I do."
The next few minutes were occupied with loud chewing.
"Lestrange said you left early this morning, looking for something," said Avery, wiping buttery shortcrust flecks off his lips. "He didn't say what it was. Did you find it? Or was it these pasties? Really good stuff. They taste exactly like the ones from the village bakery near my house."
"Yes," said Tom. "I bought a wedding ring."
The boys offered their sincere congratulations, even Nott, who did it half-heartedly.
Slytherin won the match, 640 to 70. The Gryffindors declaimed to the referee, most passionately, that the game must have been fixed; there was no way that such a score disparity could be legitimate. There must have been cheating involved.
But no proof could be found, and the Slytherin team was cleared as winner. The party in the Common Room carried on past midnight. Tom went to bed early, despite Captain Lestrange's urging him to give a rousing speech and toast the enthusiastic crowd with a goblet of whisky. He tossed Travers' battered vest on the boy's bed and flopped onto his own, turning the silver ring over and over between his fingers.
He could fabricate a Head Boy's speech on the spot, every sentence a performance of creative dissembling, with nary a glimmer of effort. Why, then, was a speech about his true sentiments so difficult to vocalise? Why was it so easy to chatter on about the dearest desires of his heart with a pair of prison-bound ruffians, but an exhausting task do it in the presence of someone whose opinion on the subject held significant weight? He had no fear in the face of the Cruciatus, but he dreaded the prospect of articulating his desires to the cold and uncomprehending outside world.
Some of his desires were agreeable enough, but the more honest he was in the privacy of his thoughts, the more his ideas appeared, in charitable terms, mad.
1.) I want to travel the world, see the palm huts of Tonga and be the uncommon Englishman in Hong Kong, sleeping in travellers' inns and collecting souvenirs in every street market, knowing that my journey ends with a well-kept home and an empty space in the bed beside my wife.
2.) I want Hermione to know that, just like I knew I was different—Special—compared to other children from the very start, I knew she was just like me. She recognised it too, the first time we met. That special quality we have and others lack wasn't a choice. It never was.
3.) Our being together for perpetuity isn't a choice either.
4.) I want her to fully appreciate what it means for us to be together.
5.) I haven't forgotten that strange urge I had to push Hermione into the dirt to watch her squirm and flush and blink at me with her big shiny eyes. I want her to ask me in her prim little First-Row-In-Front-Of-The-Blackboard voice, "Tom, what is the meaning of all this?", as if she had no clue whatsoever why Tom Riddle would laugh his head off at having Hermione Granger pinned down and helpless under him.
It sounded quite mad, didn't it? It wasn't mad, because Tom judged himself to be a pillar of rational forethought, but other people, lesser thinkers, might get the wrong idea...
Nevertheless, he decided, Hermione, as the subject of such desires, ought to know about them. He also decided that he didn't need to say such words. Anyone could say words like, "Oh, my dear one, my darling, the sun rises in your eyes and sets in my heart". Poets and vampires earned their way through the world by using these empty words, hollow admissions within meaningless relationships. No resemblance whatsoever to his own, of course. He was different; his connection to Hermione was different. Words could not hope to describe the depth of their connection.
There was no need for pithy speeches, not when it was better to show Hermione what he meant.
When she finally saw and understood, there would be no choice for her but to agree with it. Hermione was an intelligent witch. She knew better than to deny a most self-evident and natural truth.
.
.
Translations:
"Schau dir die Hand an! Die Hand an der Tür!" = Look at the hand, the hand on the door!
"Wer hat dir das angetan, Vašek?" = What have they done to you, Vašek? ["Vašek" is an informal nickname.]
"Zwei Herren, mächtige Herren... Ich glaube es ist der Prinz aus der Zeitung..." = Two men, powerful men. I think it's the Prince from the newspaper.
"Etwas hat mich gebissen!" = Something bit me! [Tom kept the glass from rattling, but a drop of venom fell off too early. Oopsies.]
"Schau hinauf!" = Look above!
Note:
In this story, Grindelwald's motivation isn't just "KILL THE MUGGLES". That would defeat the purpose of building him up as a writer and orator that 14-year-old BoaF Tom wanted to emulate at one point. Grindelwald isn't a hardliner blood purist either, or else he would never have seen young half-blood Albus Dumbledore as an equal worthy of confiding his Hallows quest with or being boyfriend material.
Grindelwald's policy is "Magic First". All wizards are superior to Muggles. Wizards who contribute their magic to wizarding society should be respected, and leisure class layabouts with no day job like Canon Lucius Malfoy are lessers, with a social hierarchy based on contribution and effort and not on blood status. Grindelwald's original followers were regular commoner working wizards, many ethnic Slavs, with greater exposure to the Muggle world and the rise of independence movements. They don't like how wizarding politics in Czech, Slovene, Polish, Hungarian, etc territories is ruled by Pro-Status Quo German elitists who maintain "old boy networks" based on pre-Statute Holy Roman Empire aristocracy.
Hence Grindelwald's solution: violent revolution for the greater good.
At age 14, Tom might have been sympathetic to the struggle of workers against nobles. But he's rich now, so he hates the idea of re-distribution. Inheritance = instant cure for communism.