1945
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The long-awaited Denouement of Revelation arrived, but to Tom's disappointment, it resembled little of the lovely imaginings devised within his mind. He had dreamt of applause and acclaim; what he received was displeasure and silence.
Wizards scurried out of Albus Dumbledore's way. The man's expression was dark and forbidding, an intimidating presence despite today's eccentric robe design of Oriental lions with big goggling eyes. It was the angriest Tom had ever seen his professor. Dumbledore had his wand out, the tip sparking with an un-cast spell, and Tom shuddered at the palpable waves of power that rippled outward, thumping in his eardrums like his own heartbeat.
Riding the surge of magic like leaves in a typhoon were the two phoenixes, blue-white and red-gold, which swept through the bowl of the amphitheatre with the agile co-ordination of winter skaters on Regent's Canal. They spiralled high and plummeted low, each bird mirroring the other in speed and grace. The red bird trilled its song as it flew while the white bird remained silent, scouring through the arching height of the courtroom for potential enemies. But the Dementors had been corralled up to the top of the ceiling by the Aurors' Patronuses, and there were no enemies to attack, and slowly, the birds' searching spirals tightened and the red phoenix crooned in disappointment.
With one last despondent swirl, the white phoenix faded away, but the red phoenix cocked its head and dove for an old and familiar face.
"Get off me," Tom hissed at Dumbledore's pet phoenix, shrugging his shoulder to get those sharp claws from digging through his robes. The bird tumbled off, croaking irritably, and flew back to Dumbledore, who held out an arm as a landing perch.
"Should we run for it?" asked Nott, pressing his wand to his scarf-covered face and re-applying the Sticking Charm.
"He's got nothing on us," Tom replied, watching how the milling crowd reacted to Dumbledore's silent display of power, conversations stuttering into dead silence and mouths snapping shut. "We've one week left before we're gone for good. What's he going to do, put us in detention? We had a note; he can't pin us for leaving against school rules. Trying it will only make himself look bad, since he was the one who signed it."
Even with the bird gone from Tom's shoulder, Dumbledore recognised the two of them instantly. Tom and Nott wore Conjured gloves, black hooded cloaks, and concealed faces, the only skin visible being a narrow band between the brows and the cheekbones. But the pair of them were distinctive in that they were given a respectful bubble of space where they stood on the busy courtroom floor, and even the Aurors seemed hesitant to approach.
But not Dumbledore, of course.
Tom ventured no hint of remorse, though judging by his professor's mood, Dumbledore didn't expect any from Tom.
"This plan of yours was foolish from the start," said Dumbledore, who at least had the grace not to scream Tom's name out in front of the statesmen and women of Magical Britain. "But there is no one I am more disappointed in than myself."
"I saved the lives of good witches and wizards today," retorted Tom, looking around the room and gesturing with a hand at the Aurors rolling ex-Minister Hector Fawley onto a stretcher, a group of industrious house-elves setting up a cauldron of hot cocoa, and blanket-clad elders holding poultice-soaked gauze over their inflamed skin.
"Your intervention condemned them to this fate." Dumbledore stepped closer, speaking softly. "And what else have you condemned, with your unthinking recklessness? No one as young as you are should have to bear such a weight on the soul."
"It's too late for scoldings," said Tom. "The deed's been done."
"No," said Dumbledore, the last breath of anger fading from Tom's perception. His shoulders sagged. "It's not been done at all—and that is the heart of the problem. As the rash Pandora, you have irreversibly opened the vessel; you have done that task quite thoroughly indeed. But all the curses and troubles contained within are still escaped into the world."
"I did tell him it was a bad idea from the start," Nott added. "But you know the way he is. I was barely involved, by the way. Just someone to keep the time and mind the lunch basket, as it were."
"If we're to go on mythological tangents, then expecting a vessel to contain all the troubles of the world—forever—is the height of hubris," said Tom, with a fierce glare at Dumbledore. "Only an arrogant romantic could think it a feasible solution."
Dumbledore sighed. "Perhaps you are right."
"Yes, of course, I'm usually right—" Tom stopped short. "Hold on, you're agreeing with me!?"
"It's not the deed that I am particularly averse to," said Dumbledore. "I admire the courage to stand up for rectitude and integrity, even if it skews to the lee of lawful. But the execution raises questions... Ah, I may be an old man in your eyes, but I was a young man once upon a time. When I was your age, I felt too clearly the chill in my talent being squandered into a staid life of parchment and chalk dust, as everyone expected of a magical prodigy. That restlessness is the Gryffindor in me, and the Slytherin in you, I think. We were never Rowena's for a reason."
The reaction from Professor Dumbledore was nothing like Tom's imaginings at all. The fury seemed to have all but disappeared; only a tired resignation, a sombre acceptance, remained. He had expected... A hundred points off Slytherin's hourglass for him and Nott each. The fiery castigation of an unrepentant sinner under the holy pulpit. One of those double-ended formal rebukes which involved much smiling over a tea tray, presenting their best impressions of a harmless schoolmaster and a polite schoolboy, reciting lines off a script they'd rehearsed a dozen times over.
In a state of numb incomprehension, Tom, Dumbledore, and Nott left the courtroom and were barraged by the searing flare of photographers' bulbs in the corridor outside. The Minister scrambled forward to speak to Dumbledore, but Dumbledore ignored the man, sweeping past the breathless crowd with that remarkable aura of rippling power and grave dignity. Tom followed, squeezing the handle of his wand and letting his own power well up within him, as he did when he practised Legilimecy, drawing on the force and will without the targeted intent. Nott winced; the wizards and witches filling the corridor shuffled out of their way and slunk out of an open elevator, murmuring, "I'll take the next one, thanks."
In the Atrium, the Magical Law Enforcement patrol had set up velvet ropes in front of the Floo fireplaces, and everyone who wanted to leave was forced to stop and be searched for their identification documents and visitor passes. Tom and Nott handed off their Wizengamot tokens to one Hit Wizard with a gaping mouth, and Dumbledore, eyeing the long departure queue and the anxious wizards still undecided on whether to pat them down or let them go, took hold of the two students by their shoulders and Apparated them straight into his office in a roaring red ball of phoenix fire.
Stacks of unmarked exam papers cluttered the desk; Tom knocked against one pile and sent it swaying to the floor, and a silent Immobilisation Charm froze it in place before the papers could cascade all over the place. Another charm returned them, neat and squared away, to the corner of the desk, just as Dumbledore waved a hand and sent them flurrying to a shelf in the corner.
The phoenix fluttered to its perch, preening smugly.
Nott peeled the scarf off his face and said, "Well, I suppose we'll get out of your way now, Professor. See you at dinner—"
"Sit," Dumbledore said, lowering himself heavily into the large wingback chair behind the desk. "Please."
Tom glanced at Nott, who looked longingly at the office door. With an ominous click, the door's locking mechanisms activated, and runes inscribed in the panelling high up on the walls glowed with yellow light, bright but brief.
He sat in the chintzy armchair in front of the desk. Nott gingerly took another seat, fiddling with the sleeve of his robe.
"I didn't lie to you, sir," Tom began. "I'm a half-blood of no significant family—"
Nott wheezed. "Sorry. Throat's still raw from breathing in that smoke."
Tom sent Nott a withering look, and continued, "—In this world. And you know that significant family in this world is what matters to its inhabitants. My wife is a Muggleborn with the same stain to her heritage, and the name of 'Mrs. Riddle' will grant her nothing noteworthy amongst the people who care about such things. When I acted as I did, I did so with an eye to the future."
"I know," said Dumbledore. "And that is why I'm not nearly as angry at you as I should be, as two students—for this last week of school, even without formal classes, you are my students—in the care of a teacher and a Deputy Headmaster."
"You might not be angry," said Tom, "but I can sense that you're not pleased about it either."
"Because you acted out of concern for one narrow facet of the future," Dumbledore said. "And now you have set everyone else's future into jeopardy. Mr. Nott, perhaps you can explain it better than I, for having a broader view than Tom's. A Patronus like yours signifies the vision and clarity of a bird's eye. And the pheasant, as I understand it, is more astute than most—even more than my dear old phoenix."
"Er..." Nott mumbled. "Sorry, Riddle, but no matter what noble reasons you have for calling yourself a Prince, anyone at the other side of your wand is going to see it as a casus belli. When you saved thousands of wizards from the death-trap of Montrose's stadium, you toppled a villainous plan a long time in the making. Villains don't like upstart heroes showing them up."
"I already knew that people wouldn't like me or what I was doing," said Tom. "That's why I got ahead of the game and made sure everyone knew that I was the hero of the story."
"Yes," said Dumbledore. "You did make very sure that everyone knew of your personal involvement. Was this part of your plan, Tom? To impress Gellert Grindelwald with the face of the British resistance? Because you have made yourself his next prime target."
"I did consider it a possibility, sir," said Tom.
Nott groaned and closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. "Did your considerations involve a plan to address this possibility, Riddle?"
"Yes..."
"So what is the secret plan you've been keeping under your cloak, then? A rune cannon, as suggested by Granger?"
"Well, I can't just tell you," said Tom. "It's a secret."
"Professor, Riddle doesn't have a plan," Nott complained. "I'm too young to die. The last time we were here, you said, 'Help at Hogwarts will always be given to those who ask for it'. Please, sir, I'm asking for your help. On Riddle's behalf, too, since he's got nothing."
"Tom," said Dumbledore, gazing at him over the rim of his spectacles, "I would like to hear it from your mouth. Do you believe you need assistance?"
"I..." Tom began reluctantly. "I, maybe, perhaps don't not need some assistance. Theoretically, of course. Professor Slughorn mentioned once that Grindelwald was a friend to you a long time ago. You must have speculated on what strategy could be used against him. If you could share some first-hand insight on how he duels, I should be much obliged."
"Oh, wonderful," Dumbledore said, beaming. "I would be pleased to help you, since you asked so nicely, Tom."
"That's good to hear," replied Tom. "So what do you know about Grindelwald?"
"We shall begin tomorrow morning, straight after breakfast," said Dumbledore, whom Tom had noticed had evaded the question. "We have tomorrow and the weekend, then the final week off class, before the Hogwarts Express leaves on Sunday morning of the twenty-fourth. You had that scenic little spot by the lake—how about we meet there at a quarter past eight?"
"Yes, it seems like a suitable place to me," said Tom. He made to stand up from his seat, but Dumbledore held his finger up as if a stray thought had suddenly occurred to him.
"I would usually spend the last week on marking exams and advising elective selections for Second and Fourth Year Gryffindors, but if I'm to dedicate the remaining days of the term to you two, Messrs. Riddle and Nott, you wouldn't see it as too much of a favour to help an old man out, would you?"
"No, sir..." said Tom hesitantly, put on edge by the word favour. In Slytherin House, it never meant anything enjoyable, at least when he wasn't the one collecting.
"Good, good!"
Dumbledore drew his wand and Conjured a pair of heavy wooden lap desks for Tom and Nott, pinning them to their armchairs. He Levitated an ink bottle—bright purple—and a pair of extravagant writing quills—red plumes with golden nibs—to each of them. This followed with a hefty stack of paper that thunked on their Conjured desks with the weight of an Atlean burden.
Tom gingerly lifted the top page from the stack to read its contents.
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Transfiguration is a magical discipline for altering the form of things, but sometimes you can use it to make things from nothing instead of changing things you already have. You can un-make things too, because apparently "a lack of form" counts as a form state you are changing things to and from, which is why it falls under Transfiguration. But when I say "a lack of homework" counts as a form of homework, the professor said it is not a valid excuse, for some reason...
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"First, Second, and Third Year Transfiguration term papers," said Dumbledore. "You're both N.E.W.T. Outstanding-level students, so it shouldn't be too difficult a job to mark them. Shall we see how many we can get through before dinner?"
"Sir," said Nott, "I'm not a Prefect. Traditionally, marking student work is a duty entrusted to Prefects only. Riddle should help, of course, being this year's Head Boy and all, but I'm just a regular student."
"Nonsense," Dumbledore said. "You're Britain's upstanding Green Knight; that outranks the Prefect badge by far. I believe you can be trusted to maintain a proper balance between fairness and charity. But as a rank of great importance, one doesn't earn it or deserve it through idleness, would you not agree, Mr. Nott?"
Nott glared at Tom, turning over the first leaf of paper on his desk and grinding his teeth at what was discovered therein.
Tom suppressed his feelings by slashing a line of purple ink through a Hufflepuff's fumbling explanation on the Theory of Affinity.
By the time the dinner hour approached, Tom's irritation with the tedious task of marking had somewhat abated. He had to concede the therapeutic benefits of venting his spleen on twelve-year-olds who made their lack of studying too obvious. These were wizards; they'd been invited to the premier magic school in the Isles, and their exam answers were written like notes passed under the desks in class. It was infuriating. No wonder the teachers loved him and Hermione from their first week of lessons. It made the teachers feel as if their hard-earned knowledge had entered some young minds over the course of the year, instead of being wasted on a hollow block of wood that, for all intents and purposes, passed as the typical Hogwarts student.
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The next morning, Tom was the first one out of bed. He was lacing on Travers' duelling vest over his uniform shirt and jumper when Nott peeled himself out of his blankets and stomped off to the bathroom. At the High Table, the lone staff member was the caretaker, Mr. Pringle; the Slytherin table was completely bare. This was the last day of the exam period, and since Seventh Years were given highest priority on the assessment rota, he'd finished every practical and written exam he needed for his eleven N.E.W.T.s, most of them by the end of the first week. (Including Muggle Studies, which Slughorn had signed him up for in exchange for a box of sugary pineapples and a few sly winks.)
Nott slouched into the seat opposite Tom's and said, "It's got to be duelling, Dumbledore's 'assistance'. There's no other reason why he would want to meet us outside instead of in his office, if he wasn't afraid of showing us something that would wreck his precious enchanted doodads."
"I suspected that," Tom replied, eating his porridge. It was in the plain Scottish style, oats cooked with water and salt. He topped his with a pat of butter. "Makes you wonder what kind of 'friendship' he had with Grindelwald, if he's thought up strategies to defeat the man."
"It's not like you haven't thought up a plan to subdue any one of us who shares the dormitory with you," remarked Nott, snagging toast from the rack and spreading on marmalade. "Pass the kippers, won't you? You can be on the same side as someone and still have private thoughts about how you might go about killing him. It's more common than you think, actually."
"Hmm," Tom said, as he Levitated the kippers across the table with a flick of his fingers. "I've never thought it that uncommon of a habit. Doesn't everyone do it?"
"Not Granger, I think." Nott paused. "Have you invented a list of ways to subdue Granger, then? Since you are 'friends'. Of a sort, anyway."
"Subdue? That depends on how you define the word." Tom smiled. "But conquer? Certainly."
"Urgh." Nott gagged. "I don't want to know about that."
"You did ask," said Tom. "I was only being honest. Isn't that what friendship is about?"
They arrived to the pre-arranged spot ten minutes early. In the north, the sun rose at five o'clock on summer mornings, and this far past dawn the light had cleared the treeline to reach the appropriate angle to strike Tom and Nott inconveniently in the eyes. It was a brisk morning, as usual in Scotland, clouds scudding overhead with the imminent threat of clumping together at any moment into a spontaneous burst of rain. Tom was grateful he'd finished his charmed cloak, which he wore over the dragonhide vest; it had enchantments to maintain a comfortable temperature and resist being flung open by the wind.
Dumbledore was already there to meet them, and gave them a brief nod of welcome, flourishing his wand through the air to dredge up lumps of mud from the lake bed, dripping with intact stalks of pond grass. It was near effortless, the way the professor brandished a wand like a conductor's baton, moulding the formless mud into the shape of human figures. A dozen clay men, each one a different flavour of soldier, craggy details carved out of the earth and lovingly fashioned into recognisable images he had only seen in his collection of military histories. Tom watched, wide-eyed, as a Roman legionary tore himself into a semblance of life, bearing a shield and spear; a crusader knelt in prayer before the benevolent Madonna cast into the crosspiece of his sword; a janissary's segmented armour clattered as he drew his long, curved sabre; a hussar levelled his lance while feathered fronds of pond weed draped over his shoulder in a pelt pelisse.
"One thing you must understand about Gellert Grindelwald," spoke Dumbledore quietly, his gaze lingering on the clay men whose limbs grew ever more proportional and realistic, to the extent that even their hands were traced by veins and wrinkles. "Is his belief that power is derived from those who follow his cause. His followers and foot-soldiers, his lieutenants and field marshals... his magical constructs. For this reason, he rarely shows his face on a battlefield, but for one unusual exception: when he sees a chance to recruit someone of great promise to his side. Even when it is an unlikely prospect to form an allegiance, that truly rare combination of uncommon power and intelligence captivates him."
Dumbledore's slow, misting breath was torn away by the morning breeze. "It always has. For it is as rare in this world as it is in the world we separated ourselves from, two hundred and fifty years ago. The legendary warrior-poet."
"The scholar-prince," said Tom. "That's how I've heard it referred to."
"It goes under a lot of names in history," Nott volunteered. "The polymath-mage. The mage-statesman. The rather droll 'warlock'."
"Quite so," said Dumbledore. "When you leave the protection of these halls of learning in little more than a week's time, you will be on your own. You'll be his target of interest... But that first time he seeks you out, it will not be to destroy you, but to assess you. That will be your one chance to speak with him, wizard to wizard. You can't let it go to waste. But to earn that chance, you need to prove your mettle. Shall we begin?"
Without a word of incantation, Dumbledore flicked his wand and the soldiers began marching forward, three ranks of four men, with the shields of the legionary, the crusader, a hoplite, and a Norse berserker locked together in the front to protect the back. Tom hissed as a pebble struck his cloak; the Shield Charms sewn into the lining flared white over the black wool cloth and diffused the force, but he still felt the passing pressure of the cloak's ripple, like an elbow to the gut. He eyed the mud-construct soldiers, spotting a flintlock pistol protruding over the rim of a shield, from a man in the second rank.
Tom cast a Shield Charm over Nott as another volley of pebbles flew out of the shielded mass. "They've ranged fire, polearms, and swords. Don't rely on them needing half a minute to reload. It's magic."
With a sweep of his own wand, Tom Banished a spray of pebbles back at the constructs, and saw with disappointment that they clattered off the shields and helmets; one lucky shot hit a soldier in the face, but as he was made of mud and clay, the pebble pushed itself out and his face re-formed with no sign of damage. Regeneration was cheating!
Nott cycled through the list of traditional duel opening moves: the Knockback Jinx, the Impediment Jinx, the Conjunctivitis Curse, the Disarmer, which slowed the constructs but didn't stop them in their tracks. It was a weak result and in some cases ineffectual, as if the spells had been cast on an inanimate statue. Which made sense; such a selection was meant for taking on human wizard opponents. The Disarming Spell, for instance, snatched the swords and pistols from the soldiers' clay hands, but even as Nott built a pile of them on his side of the battle field, the soldiers extruded clay from their hands that formed into fresh weapons, and went to war once again.
Tom reverted to more advanced offensive spells, blasting and cutting and peeling away at their clay flesh and armour; he froze their limbs with spell-ice and Conjured water, shattering them to bits, but again and again he was thwarted by their powerful regeneration. He tried a Confundus Charm and a spelled fog to coax the soldiers into attacking each other in the darkness, but when they continued marching toward him in step, he realised that it wouldn't work because they had no minds to subvert or compel.
The only mind was their creator's: Albus Dumbledore.
As the clay soldiers marched in their direction, Tom and Nott retreated and circled in an arc that gave Tom a gap at which to strike at Dumbledore. He Conjured a hail of stones and sent a volley at the soldiers, nudging Nott to keep it going, while Tom summoned a long finger of flame and lengthened it until it resembled a whip. Then he cast it at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore responded with a gout of chill wind, dispersing the whip into a pale, flickering sheet, like a candle flame guttering by a draughty window. Tom re-formed it and snapped it again at Dumbledore, whose eyebrows lifted in amusement at Tom's antics, and Summoned a globe of lake water that he fashioned into a hemispherical shield which he pushed against the whip, shortening its length and driving the end of it closer to Tom with each careful swish of his wand.
Tom dismissed his fire whip; it seemed Dumbledore knew to counter elemental magic with the opposing element.
He and Nott swerved from side to side, moving constantly and changing directions to force the soldiers to follow them, which they did a hint of independent thought. It took some time to re-arrange the shields and bring the spears about to face them, so each lull gave Tom a bit of reprieve to cast spells without having to account for aiming on the go. For the moment, Tom had given up on destroying the constructs, and concentrated on keeping out of range of their spears and Shielded from their pebble munitions. The central target was Dumbledore—the mind that moved the pawns.
Tom flung charms at Dumbledore. The custard brûlée sugar-crusting charm, the laundry wringing charm, the ironing charm on Dumbledore's robes and hat, hot-pressing and hair-rolling charms on his beard and exposed skin, scouring and cheese-grating and ice carving charms flurrying out with so much power that the jets of light blazed like tiny stars. The spells became a quivering distortion on Dumbledore's perfect layered Shield, and when three spells landed within a palm's breadth of each other and shattered the top shield, Dumbledore lost his genial smile at Tom's discovering the weakness and having the magical strength to exploit it.
The old man replaced his shield spell with the reliability of the physical water barrier. This time, when the burning stars and miniature fireballs landed, they sizzled and steamed but didn't plough through the water shield as fresh water rushed to fill in the gaps, steadily renewed from a Conjuration charm. Tom was sure it took an onerous mental effort to maintain at the same time as the dozen clay soldiers, but if it came down to Dumbledore's "well-organised mind" versus Tom's magical stamina, he wasn't certain the cleverest strategy was to pit them against each other in such a direct manner. It wasn't particularly strategic of a maneouvre.
Time to try another trick, Tom thought.
When he and Nott swung by a stand of marsh grass, he discreetly cut down a patch of stalks with a lawn-mowing charm and assembled them, with the aid of Transfiguration and animation charms, into five large green spiders, four feet across from side to side. The spiders had bodies of mud clumped together with root clusters, scuttling on braided legs of spiky, saw-edged sedge stalks. He Disillusioned them and sent them sneaking around to attack Dumbledore from behind, all the while maintaining his Shield Charm against flying projectiles and rotating through his list of offensive spells at the clay constructs. It was difficult work, keeping control of this many spells at once while having to physically move around; sweat yellowed on his collar and gathered down the line of his spine, under his heavy duelling vest. Nott, to his satisfaction, looked much worse off despite having done less work.
The spiders slipped nearer to Dumbledore, Tom keeping hold of them with his mind and his intent, once again slanting across the battlefield of smashed grass and churned mud to keep the construct soldiers changing directions. When the hussar, who had gotten his spurred riding boots trapped in the soft mud of the lake bank, jumbled the formation's turning on its implacable march, Tom snatched the opportunity.
He Switched the soldier with an equal volume of water from the lake, and the tall column of water, as soon as he completed the spell, collapsed with a great splash that further mired the remaining soldiers in the muddy ground. He did it with another, and a third, then Nott had picked up on Tom's trick and sent three soldiers into the lake in quick succession.
The loss of half of the little army distracted Dumbledore, and at that moment, the spiders leapt for the professor's back, unprotected by the rippling half-dome of the water shield.
They shivered and drove their sharp, pointed claws into Dumbledore's robes, tangling with his hair in trying to get their pincers around the man's throat. Dumbledore turned one into a large dandelion seed that wafted away in the wind; another shrivelled into a brief sparkle of falling ash. Yet another drowned as the water shield swung around, and the fourth was transformed into an octopus which fell limp to the ground, flailing around uselessly. The fifth and last, which had hidden in the grass, sprung out at Dumbledore's wand hand—
The pile of disarmed, discarded weapons, which had returned to their original form of earthen clumps, propelled itself straight into Tom's face. Freezing cold clods of wet mud smacked into his eyes and open mouth. Heavy mud drove into his shoulders, chest, and stomach, each strike feeling like a tap of a stevedore's fist. With the dense mask moulded over his face, he couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't hear; his ears were clogged and he lost his sense of balance, tumbling backwards to the ground, his limbs too thick to lift, pinned together by the sticky, clinging mud that slipped under his protective cloak and dragonhide vest both. He couldn't catch his breath, his nostrils and mouth were choked with the bitter, mineral taste of rotted verdure and grainy silt. His last thought was of destruction; if he couldn't win, then no one else deserved to.
Flames blossomed and expanded in a wide ring, enveloping Tom with a heat so potent he felt the gloriously vibrant warmth through the foot-thick wet mud blanket that pressed him to the ground. The mud crackled and popped around him, and he no longer felt the cold anymore. It was such an effective insulator of warmth that he felt his skin blister; he was baking in his shell, crisping like a wrapped potato buried in the embers of a hearth fire.
His last thought was of his pet rat, Peanut, who had been set alight on the Black Lake years ago. Funny that they should go out the same way, at Hogwarts, the place that they were glad to have called home...
.
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"Hey, Riddle," said Nott, poking him on the cheek. "Wake up. How much does it hurt?"
Tom opened his eyes. He lay on a blanket, surrounded by gently waving blades of marsh grass. The sun shone above him in a flawless summer day, over a sky brushed with frothy mare's tail clouds. Dumbledore and Nott knelt on either side of him, watching him with concerned expressions. Dumbledore's phoenix sat on Tom's chest, and a shimmering tear dripped off its beak to land on Tom's chin.
"Diffindo," whispered Tom.
The spark shot out of Tom's hand. Dumbledore reared back in alarm, but he was caught by surprise and the spell sheared off a strip of the man's greying auburn beard, catching an inch of his cheek with a shallow cut that welled with blood.
"I believe I deserved some of that," said Dumbledore. He turned his head, lifting his hair to show Tom his throat. It bore numerous thin, striped lines of swelling scratches. "You almost had me with the last Transfigured spider you kept in reserve—anatomically accurate to a juvenile Malayan Acromantula, if you wanted to know. Fifteen points to Slytherin. That was well done, Tom."
"I think I was well done," Tom muttered. "What do you think, Nott? Was I more of a medium well, or perhaps a medium rare?"
"What," said Nott, furrowing his brow. "Are you talking about beefsteaks? Oh! Huh. That was meant to be witty."
"Yes, thank you," said Tom. "If you can appreciate wit, you're good for one thing, at least. Can't say the same about your martial capabilities, unfortunately."
"I'm good at three things, I'll have you know," retorted Nott. "Appreciating wit, recognising subtlety, and valuing self-preservation. That last one is in dire deficit in certain people. I won't say who, though, because I am subtle."
Tom ignored him. "Sir, whom would you say won? I can't have lost, can I? I was that close to beating you!"
"When you fell unconscious, you lost direct control over your spider construct," said Dumbledore. "I shouldn't have buried you in the mud; that was a little overzealous of me. Let's call it a draw, shall we?"
"You don't have to pity me," said Tom. "I'm not a sore loser. Let's try it again, from the start."
"Are you sure, Tom? It may be best to take the rest of the day to convalesce, then resume tomorrow morning."
"No," said Tom. "I see the lessons you're trying to impart with this challenge, sir: Don't accept weakness. Never surrender. Find another way to defeat your enemy, because if you can't think of one, you're not trying hard enough. I want to learn more. I want to... No, I need to become more powerful."
Dumbledore frowned. "Tom, this is not the lesson I'm trying to teach you."
"Sir," said Tom firmly. "You're teaching me how to become a better wizard. As a professor, I understand that you can't go around admitting to having favourites. But that's the truth, isn't it? You're helping me with individual instruction instead of teaching the whole class how to get better." He pushed himself upright, dislodging the phoenix squatting on his chest with a squawk of dissatisfaction. "Because you recognised my potential. Well, I'm not going to lay down and squander it. That, Professor, is the Slytherin in me and the Gryffindor in you."
They returned to the lakeside, which had been reshaped from how he remembered it. There was a large bowl-shaped depression, thirty feet wide, completely bare of grass and rocks and any distinguishing terrain feature. The dry, powdery earth sloped gently, a smooth pane of a surface that shattered beneath his weight like sugar-glass. In the centre lay a cracked brown chrysalis, baked to the hardness of pottery, and Tom approached it with a queer discomfort in his stomach. He flipped a shard of it over with the toe of his boot and saw an imprint of his own face on the other side, every pore of his skin impressed with the perfect detail of a Roman wax death mask. He Vanished it out of pique.
"It was a non-verbal Confringo, if I had to guess," said Nott, coming up to stand beside him. "Fawkes had to fly through the fire and Apparate you out of it."
"Who's Fawkes?"
"That's the name Dumbledore gave his phoenix."
Tom made a face. "If the mighty basilisk is the emperor of beasts, then the noble phoenix is the empress. But he named his after a Muggle and a Catholic. Oh, and a criminal rabble-rouser on top. You can fault my taste, but that man has worse. He certainly likes his rabble-rousers, doesn't he."
"The thing saved your life," said Nott.
Tom opened his cloak to show Nott the rows of heptagonal metal charms sewn into the lining. "I wouldn't have died. I enchanted my cloak to protect against heat." He pointed to a section of the cloak's interior, where three of the disc-like metal charms were tarnished and blackened. "If they didn't work, they wouldn't have corroded like that."
"They're corroded because you overpowered the array," Nott replied.
"Ah," said Tom. "But I accounted for that. The rest of the charms would've taken up the load, due to the linked redundancy arrangement. All twenty-one must be consumed before the cloak itself can be damaged."
"Alright, perhaps you wouldn't have died," admitted Nott. "But your face would've melted off at the least. You'd have a dickens of a time sitting for your wedding portrait after that, hah."
"Hmmm," was Tom's response. "We'll never know."
The clay soldiers were re-created by Dumbledore, and Tom watched the process with his eyes narrowed in calculation. In Transfiguration lessons, they worked with various trinkets and household items at their tables, and many of his classmates had to tap their wands to the objects—or animals—they Transfigured. This led to some amusing anecdotes of ravens flying out of students' hands and up to the roofbeams, which could have been solved by an Immobilising Charm and a weak Knockback Jinx.
Or, as Tom reckoned, observing Dumbledore's fluid wand movements, one didn't need to catch the raven to turn it into a writing desk. It was possible to Transfigure at a distance. He wouldn't have been able to send large swathes of the potion-laced smoke into non-being, back in the Ministry of Magic courtroom, if it was necessary to maintain contact between his wand and each molecule of matter.
"Here's the new strategy," said Tom to Nott. "I discovered the secret lesson Dumbledore's trying to teach us. It's so obvious in retrospect: Transfiguration."
"Secret lesson?" Nott scoffed. "How is that a secret? He's the Transfiguration teacher. Transfiguration is the most un-secret lesson he's ever taught."
"The lesson is about how you approach defence. Don't waste your time with Defence Against the Dark Arts hexes and jinxes, because someone like Dumbledore can't be brought down with a Jelly-Legs or a Boil Jinx. Not even by a Torsion Hex, though the books make it sound as bad as a localised Cruciatus. Transfiguration—that's the key."
Tom pointed to the ranks of clay constructs. "To deal with those, you don't need to fight them. You need to contain them and render them useless, so that the caster himself will declare it a misuse of energy and abandon them. Containment, like the wolf traps from our earlier adventures, but more permanent. Softening Charm on the top surface of the ground, and a pit trap underneath. Peat bog, tar pool, quicksand." Tom pointed his wand to the ground and began Transfiguring a pit trap two yards wide, extending it in a half-circle around him and Nott. "The trick is to treat it like a partial Transfiguration, because you want the result to be double-layered, each with its own physical properties."
Nott picked up the idea. "They'll walk into it and we won't have to run about and have them chase us. But what about when Dumbledore abandons them? Are you going to set spiders on him again?"
"I don't think he's the sort of wizard who will let the same trick work twice on him. Once he's learned his lesson, he's not falling again," Tom mused. "I suppose I'll have to take care of him myself. You take care of the constructs. Transfigure yourself a physical shield if you need it; that way you won't have to devote your attention to maintaining a Shield Charm. In a true battle, it'd be a good idea, since they block Unforgivables." Tom's words rushed out at a frenzied pace. "That's it. That was the trick all along. If wizards can alter the properties of matter, they can alter the substance of reality. The most powerful of magical spells are manipulations of state, substance, energy, and essence."
Tom let out a high, unconstrained laugh, buoyed up from the wild joy of reaching that final point of resolution. Triumphant satisfaction burned in him, reminiscent of the finality of completing an Arithmancy calculation, the last stir of a simmering cauldron; despite hundreds of wizards deriving the same function or brewing the same potion, it was the individual revelation that held significance.
Nott looked askance at him. "It's not a secret or a trick, Riddle. Wizards have known for hundreds of years that Alchemy, true transmutation, is the most powerful of magical disciplines. Through it lies the rare exceptions to Gamp's rules of magic."
"That may be so," said Tom, refusing to give up an inch. "But what I'll show you now, you've never seen before."
When Dumbledore called to start, Tom was ready.
He left Nott to deal with the constructs. That was the reason one kept minions in the first place—for the care and management of other minions. Tom himself went for the main event, siphoning water from the lake in long glistening swathes and freezing them in the air. They made undulating waves of ice, refracting rainbow prisms, the brilliance of the northern aurora unfurled in the mid-morning sun. He summoned an icy white fog too, the magic pouring easily from his wand, which shivered in acknowledgement at the familiar guiding intent of spells he'd cast time and time again, anticipating his will so he was left to concentrate on steadily funneling his power. Tom's wand was more responsive than usual, humming with the same resonance that pulsed at the boiling headwater inside him whence came his magic, as if this was the type of spell it was meant to perform for him, the push-and-pull settling of true affinity he had noticed most distinctly with Avery's dragon heartstring wand.
The temperature dropped by degrees. Hoarfrost coated the grass; snow dusted the parched earth and collected in drifts on his cloaked shoulders. Dumbledore was but a dim shadow through the mist.
With a pulse of power, the ice sheets shattered; Tom moulded the falling pieces into the shapes of animals: squirrel, beaver, vole, marmot. Quail, pheasant, grouse, and partridge. Ordinarily, he would have relied on spiders and rats, the animals whose anatomy with which he was beyond familiar, but he knew that most found them unappealing, and would have no hesitation with blasting them. But sweet woodland creatures? People didn't think of them as vermin, and they were suitable companions for charming princes who wooed fair maidens in the woods. Better to devote his knowledge on rodent and avian physiology to a different group of animals. He had certainly carved enough game fowl at the Riddles' table to replicate their delicate skeletons, encased in the transparent ice-flesh of a spell construct. (Tom had to wonder how many dissections Dumbledore must have attended to create human-shaped constructs with such efficiency.)
The ravening howl of a charmed wind, drumming hail, and knife-like spears of ice accompanied his animal constructs in their attack on Dumbledore. The little creatures were of clear ice, invisible in the white fog of war, flowing in a tide over the snowy ground, borne on a polar gale, until they crashed into a dazzling flare of fire—
Dumbledore had Conjured fire, the natural elemental counter.
Tom continued to bombard the man from all directions, his spells almost entirely based on conversions of matter and energy. The destroyed animals melted into a floor of ice beneath Dumbledore's feet, a slick hazard to walk on with the soft tasselled slippers that matched the man's velvet robes. Beneath the ice crust, Tom performed a Transfiguration to transmute dirt to water, chilling it so it wouldn't disturb the frozen layer above. He sent a spiralling galaxy of snowballs to orbit Dumbledore, darting in and flying away at the flare of the professor's fire shield, melting and re-freezing so many times in the heat and wind to become as dense as miniature icebergs.
He and Dumbledore kept testing each other's defences for five minutes, ten minutes, until they had run the clock out to twenty minutes, and perspiration had dripped from Tom's nose in tickling icicles. He herded Dumbledore, not that the man could tell with the fog obscuring sight and landmarks, into a square of land no wider than ten feet, and expanded the aquifer he'd grown steadily under the ice crust.
When he was ready, the snowballs, several dozen of them, came rushing in at once from every side, followed by what remained of his birds and beasts, and Dumbledore responded just as Tom had predicted he would.
A booming heat-wave, a dry blast of heat the likes of which had never naturally occurred in damp green Britain. Tom felt the pure magic of it in the goose-flesh on the nape of his neck, the bright seltzer-y effervescence on the back of his tongue, the visualisation Dumbledore used so precise in detail that it was more than simply energy; it impressed upon all his physical senses. It was a moment in time captured and released in an instant: fragrant incense in casks of Levantine cedar, silk shawls and Turkmen rugs, tea and spice carried on caravan trains through the great yellow waste of an endless desert...
Every scrap of ice in the air melted instantly. The air grew thick and heavy with vapour.
Tom cast his final Transfiguration, and the cloud of water vapour became coal dust. He followed it with a few minor spells: the Self-Deafening Hex, a layered Shield, and a sparkler charm to set off his trap.
Tom's explosion was several orders of magnitude greater than Dumbledore's, a combination of heat, light, force, and sound so potent his cheeks rippled and and his hair blew backwards, overwhelming the neat Hair-Setting Charm he'd applied as his usual morning routine. His cloak tightened around his body, protecting him from the blastwave, and the metal tokens sewn within burned against his dragonhide vest as the enchantments were overcome and, one by one, failed.
The fragile ice crust under Dumbledore's slippers melted, dumping the old man into the deep sinkhole with a splash and a swiftly muffled cry of surprise. It wasn't meant to be a lethal duel, so Tom didn't want to kill him—just scare him a bit. Or a lot; Tom wasn't too fussy with the particulars. The water should protect him from serious damage, and wasn't that an equivalent consideration to what Dumbledore had offered when rescuing Tom from the mud suffocation trick?
The coal dust explosion disintegrated the marsh grass in a circle twenty feet beyond the edges of the crater that Tom had produced earlier. The sound wave rippled outward and shattered the glass in Herbology Greenhouse Seven; Tom observed, rather distantly, the glass falling into trays of ripe Bouncing Bulbs, and the big purple roots, stabbed with sharp glass, jumped out of their pots and began smashing around the inside of the greenhouse, disturbing the other plants. Orange dirigible plums, severed from their trees, floated out through the open greenhouse ceiling.
With a flash of flame, Dumbledore appeared a yard away from Tom. He stumbled to his feet, dripping wet and clutching his phoenix's tail plumes. The old man's velvet robes clung to his body, outlining knobbly-looking knees and a glimpse of one hairy ankle. His half-moon spectacles were missing.
"So, sir," said Tom casually, casting a non-verbal Hot-Air Charm to dry Dumbledore off, "is this how a warlock duels?"
"Yes, Tom. Now you see what magic is capable of in the hands of a wizard who knows how wield it," said Dumbledore in a tired voice, rubbing blearily at his eyes. "This is why we are so rare, and those of us with sense reject it, to turn our lives to more productive pursuits. There are few things as destructive as a duel between masters of martial magic. I think now is the perfect time to end our lessons for today. We had best have the greenhouses repaired by the start of dinner, or I shall never hear the end of it from Professor Beery this evening."
"Riddle!" shouted Nott, from some distance away. "Warn a fellow when you're going to level the Earth! Fratricide is not an acceptable duelling stratagem! Even if it works!"
.
.
Over the next few days, Tom was given the magical equivalent of a military syllabus. He was comforted by the thought he wasn't alone in his suffering; he was certain the Muggle boys he'd lived amongst at Wool's were at this moment being forced to enjoy life as a conscript too. And there was no private comfort as powerful as the knowledge that he was a wizard. Even if he found wizarding to be a tiring business, when with all his unimaginable power, he was unavoidably obliged to listen to someone else's instructions.
Dumbledore tasked him to Transfigure more animate creatures. Multiple in one spell, moving to animals Conjured wholesale instead of transmuted from a starting material, then animals Conjured true to life, without the "cheat" of using ice or clay spell-flesh; such a technique made allowances for shoddy anatomy in a manner that couldn't be replicated in successful flesh and blood creations. Nott, meanwhile, joined him in outdoor Transfiguration practise and had difficulty Transfiguring animals larger than a market-weight hog, around four hundred pounds. Nott couldn't Conjure one of that size at all, while Dumbledore expected Tom to Transfigure larger animals, and more than one at a time.
"You limit yourself to small constructs if you can't animate greater masses," said Dumbledore, demonstrating how he turned a lump of mud to a squirming piglet and then to an adult male boar. For an additional taste of whimsy, Dumbledore added a pair of golden wings, brass points over the tusks, and a collar to which he affixed a Hogwarts crest pendant. "A common technique for workaday spellcasting—Mr. Nott, I do hope you are paying attention to this—is to apply a sequential Transfiguration, using affinities and associations to retain that marvellous metaphysical essence of being shared by creations of magic. Pincushions to hedgehogs in Fourth Year is a practical example of the fundamentals. With this technique, a N.E.W.T. graduate can perform adequately. But Transfiguration masters hold ourselves to a higher level."
He waved his wand and Conjured a female boar from nothing, this time with leathery dragon wings and a Gryffindor scarf tied in a bow around its neck. He Vanished both boars at once, and said, "Functionally, the process and results are identical. The difference is in efficiency. When you meet another for a traditional wizard's duel—distinct from the stylistic version promoted by the International Duelling Confederation—the resource of greatest limitation will not be men, weapons, or power. It's time."
"Father says it's creativity," Nott interjected. "A creative mind is the most valuable trait of a duellist."
"Ah," said Dumbledore with a lift of his brows. "Only for a specific type of duellist. One who performs in thirty duels over the course of the competition season, and is watched by an audience of thousands. That type of wizard must always mind his stances, footwork, wand movements, and spell flash for any hint of a predictable pattern that his opponent might use against him. And he works under the artificial limitation of protocol and stage boundaries. In a true wizard's duel, there are no such rules. It becomes a battle of might against might, and at that level, we don't use standard Shield Charms. Hence no need to devise the perfect angle to ricochet a Piercing Hex to shatter a Shield at its weakest point."
"You can still be well-prepared," said Tom, peeling open his enchanted cloak to reveal the tarnished charms inside. "But total reliance on preparations narrows one to holding a defensive position against an assault of pure power. Personally, I should prefer to return what I receive. It's only polite."
"In the highest levels of duelling, a powerful wizard is also a creative one," said Dumbledore. "And a technically proficient one, too. You do have to improve on that front, Tom. You do have plenty of power to spare—I've known since that unfortunate incident with that wardrobe in Third Year—but you should look to refining your casting." He gestured to the hundred feet of flattened ground, a bare patch in what would otherwise have been a grassy slope down rolling hillside. "You are far too destructive for someone who is known as one of a pair." He nodded at Nott. "And you have the Aurors on your side, for now. Learn to restrain yourself for their sake, even if you find that it restricts your preferred style."
Another exercise that Dumbledore taught them was the "Switching Game", which involved two dozen Conjured barrels divided on either side of a line drawn in the earth. One dozen was marked by red lids, and the other by green lids. Tom and Nott had to Switch the red barrels on Dumbledore's side with the green ones on theirs, and whoever had all twelve barrels of the reverse colour on their side won the game. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that the barrels, uniform in size, were of a different weight and had different contents, which Tom could hear rattling or sloshing inside them. Dumbledore wouldn't let them open the lids, reminding them that it was part of the challenge.
They were engaged in this exercise, with the occasional pause to Conjure a fresh barrel when a lack of accounting for disparate mass left them Switching half of a barrel instead of the whole. One broken barrel spilled a mountain of salt over the ground, and Dumbledore called a recess, to Nott's relief. But then he assigned them to remove every single bit of salt before they were allowed to return to the game.
"I will know if you've left a grain," said Dumbledore, "by casting a Summoning Charm and seeing how much you've left. But I don't advise you to try that charm yourself, unless you are entirely confident in defining your spell subject. It's a pleasant sunny day, and I'm told it's an uncomfortable process to separate salt from sweat while still on the skin, even with magic."
"At times like this, I'd prefer marking First Year exams over Vanishing salt grains," Nott grumbled, clearing a patch of ground to sit on. He tapped his wand into a mound of salt and slowly, it began to disappear. "At least I'd be indoors and sitting on a proper chair."
Nott shot a sideways look at Dumbledore, who had Conjured an armchair, a beach umbrella, and a punkah fan that hovered in the air and bathed him in a cool, charmed breeze. The professor had pulled a bag of sweets and a Transfiguration journal out of his robe pocket, perusing it with an irritatingly serene smile. Every now and again, he glanced up from his reading and twinkled at them.
"There must be a more efficient way to do this," Tom remarked, glaring at his own salt pile, which he'd reduced to a white sprinkle on the ground. "In the solid state, we're manipulating piles of salt grains as a grouping of objects. But in a different state, the group becomes one object. Aguamenti."
Water flooded from his wand, causing Nott to yelp as his trousers were soaked. The boy jumped to his feet, holding his robes out of the puddle Tom had created.
"Tergeo," said Tom. "I can't believe it was this simple. Salt water, a suspension of however many thousands of grains of salt, counts as one spill to a simple cleaning charm. 'Defining your spell subject'. The old man thinks his hints are clever."
Nott dried off his trousers with a spell of his own. "That old man is teaching you his old tricks. Though I'd recommend you do be careful with how you apply them in the future, Riddle. A catalogue of tricks characterises each wizard's unique spellcasting style. Yours, or the Prince's, leans toward elemental charmwork. Dumbledore relies on Transfiguration and animation. If you borrow too much of his style, anyone familiar with it will see it reflected in yours."
"Is that such a terrible thing?" asked Tom. "Dumbledore's never been beaten. His style is powerful."
"Only if you don't mind being thought of as Dumbledore's successor in spirit," Nott remarked. "Like Rembrandt to Titian."
"I didn't think wizards knew about Muggle artists."
"Before the Statute, we didn't just know Muggle artists, we hired them," said Nott. "It was a short-lived fashion in the seventeenth century. Static portraits were used to decorate private studies and bedrooms and such, if you didn't want charmed portraits spying on sensitive matters. Better to have a quaint fixed portrait, because you can't have your walls left bare. People might think you were poor!"
"I'm beginning to think that your so-called 'pureblood cultural customs' are nothing more than the affectations of the leisure class preserved from several centuries ago," Tom observed.
"You wouldn't be wrong about it," replied Nott. "That's why I don't mind your Muggles as much as I ought to, despite their being Muggles. They espouse the correct values—blood, breeding, tradition, heredity, propriety, and hierarchy—and we simply disagree on the finer details. I have more in common with them than I'll ever share with someone like, oh, what's his name? That Hagrid fellow." Nott shuddered.
Shortly afterwards, they resumed the Switching Game, in which Dumbledore participated with a relaxed ease, to Tom's annoyance. He would wait until they had ten of his barrels, and it looked as if they were one move away from winning, and then the professor would flick his wand almost casually, following no standard wand movement for any spell, and all of a sudden, it was Dumbledore who was one move away from the finish. Tom struggled to discern what the trick was; Dumbledore always had a trick hidden up his gaudy, sequinned sleeve. Then a barrel broke, and barley grains scattered over their feet, causing Nott to groan very loudly and throw his arms in the air and shout at the top of his lungs.
"Noooooo! Damn it, Riddle! Not again!"
It was Nott's shouting and the geese that Tom Conjured to eat the barley, then the dogs he Conjured to round the geese up so he Vanish them back into non-being, and the hawks he Conjured to catch the geese that flew away from the dogs, which attracted the attention of Hermione and the Slytherin boys. They had not seen Tom over the whole weekend, and without his certitude and approval, wrung their hands over the planning for the Slytherin Common Room leaving party, unable to agree on anything except for a liberal provision of strong drink. In Hermione's case, she wanted his help rehearsing her Heads' speech in the Prefect compartment on the Hogwarts Express.
Quite at a loss for words, the group stumbled into the flat bowl of denuded earth, seventy feet across, swarming with an assortment of small animals, honking and barking in a raucous din. Tom and Nott waded through the mess, Vanishing animals left and right, while Dumbledore watched from the comfortable distance of his armchair, Transfigured into a reclining lounge, as if he was completely immune to second-hand embarrassment.
"Tom!" cried Hermione. "Where have you been? I didn't see you at the Transfiguration practical exam on Thursday. You've been skipping breakfast and lunch. And I when I checked the library, you weren't there, not in that section, reading those books!"
"I've been busy. As you can likely tell," said Tom, kicking away a goose that had waddled too close. The goose fluttered into the air, honking in affront, and when it turned around to peck him in the shin, Tom Vanished it. Good riddance.
"Doing what, exactly?" Hermione asked.
"Extra training," Nott said pompously. "If Britain descends into madness, I'm going to do my best to keep my own head afloat."
"Well," said Hermione, putting her hands on her hips. "I don't think it's very fair at all that you two get extra instruction when the rest of us don't."
"I think it's plenty fair," Avery offered. "I don't mind being left out."
Tom brushed feathers off his robes and applied a cleaning and freshening charm before approaching Hermione. "I only want to ensure that you and other people are kept safe. Do you not trust that I can properly protect you?" He leaned in close and whispered, "I've read that it's a wizard's duty to defend his household, but in this, know that I don't feel motivated by duty and obligation. When it comes to anything to do with you, Hermione, rest assured that I do things because I want to."
Hermione shivered when Tom pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. Hermione's fist scrunched at the folds of his cloak, but then her hand flattened and pushed him back a step, and she drew in a deep breath.
"Tom, you're being evasive," she said.
Tom sighed. "We're playing a bit of a game. Dumbledore calls it the 'Switching Game'. We Switch barrels across a line to practice Transfiguration with the Transfiguration professor—hardly noteworthy news. It's all practical magic, nothing you can't find described in a textbook."
"Show me how this game works," Hermione demanded, drawing her wand and turning to face the crooked line of green barrels on Tom's side of the line.
Tom Switched a green barrel for one of Dumbledore's red barrels to demonstrate. The red barrel was significantly heavier than the green one, and Switching threw off the balance of its contents; when the red barrel arrived on his side of the line, it wobbled around a bit but, thankfully, didn't tip over and spill whatever was inside it. Hermione strode over to the barrel, pushing it this way and that to listen for a swish of sand or the clatter of stones coming from the inside.
Her hands ran over the painted lid, but before she could lift it, Tom told her, "You aren't allowed to open it."
"Hmm," she responded. "I see. That's the challenge aspect of it. And why you're outside, instead of in the Transfiguration classroom. If you're applying Transfigurations blind, this could get messy rather quickly." Hermione called out over her shoulder, "Avery, could you please come here?"
Avery looked tentatively in Tom's direction. Tom returned his look, his face expressionless. Avery did as he was told.
"Oh, good," said Hermione, when Avery had come to stand before her. "Can you try and lift this barrel? It's too heavy for me, and if I tried to Levitate it, I wouldn't be able to gauge the weight beyond a very rough estimate."
Avery shoved the barrel, which rocked slightly, but returned to its position. He bent down and slipped his fingers under the bottom rim of the barrel, and attempted to pick it up, and with a grunt, hefted it up about a foot before dropping it back to the ground. "It's over a hundred pounds. Not more than a hundred and fifty," Avery pronounced.
Hermione asked Avery to test the weight of the other barrels; after the eighth, the boy was sweating and had shed his robe. When he went to lift the ninth, Hermione waved him off and instructed him to stand back, saying, "They're all different weights because the contents are each something different. That's part of the puzzle, isn't it, Professor?" She glanced over at Professor Dumbledore, who had observed the goings-on with friendly curiosity. "This isn't a Transfiguration practical exercise so much as it is a magical puzzle."
She flicked her wand and Switched the first pair of barrels, green for red. The green was 150 pounds, the red around 70 pounds, according to Avery. Hermione spent some time running through the mental calculations to account for the uneven mass, though it nevertheless resulted in an uneven transfer, the red barrel swaying dangerously before Hermione hit it with an Immobilisation Charm. "That's the result of a conventional Switch. What happens if I try it a different way..."
The next handful of Switches were instantaneous, green flipping to red without the usual rocking barrels and the dangerous creak of wood under great pressure, until Hermione had a full line of red barrels on her side of the line. "Professor, I think I've solved it!"
"Have you, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore set aside his magazine and got to his feet, idly brushing off a few fragments of goose down from his robes. "Would you like to test your theory?"
When Hermione faced down Dumbledore in the Switching Game, they arrived at a stiff draw, twelve flickering barrels on either side of the line. Hermione flourished her wand, furiously Switching, her hair puffed up into frizzy curls and sweat trickling down her cheek. But she held her own against Dumbledore, who was looking as calm as you please while twirling his own wand in silent casting. It wasn't much of a spectacle, consisting as it was of a witch and a wizard staring intently at a line of barrels, but Tom could feel the hum of magic, and the slightest shadow of blurred edges when he studied the barrels closely.
"Congratulations," Dumbledore said, lowering his wand. "It seems you have found the trick of it. Ten points to Ravenclaw!"
"I suspected it," said Hermione happily, bouncing over to Tom's side. "Now it's confirmed. You've been going about it the wrong way this entire time, Tom."
"So what's the solution, then?" asked Tom.
"It's a logic puzzle," Hermione replied. "You have to solve it for yourself! It's like the Ravenclaw door knocker question. Even if you know the answer, you have to allow people a chance to come up with their own answer, else they'll never learn anything from it."
"But Hermione," said Tom, sliding a hand into her robes to rest on her waist. "Don't you see that I'm not an ordinary student who needs incentives to venture into the dark and unexplored wilderness of independent thinking? This situation of mine is completely different. And don't forget that I can be very persuasive when the situation demands it."
"When the situation demands it," said Hermione, "I can be very stubborn."
"I find a contest between you and me to be more compelling than any challenge concocted by Dumbledore," Tom murmured. "You can be very competitive when you want to be, Hermione. It must gall you that in the game of... persuasion... I'm the superior." His nose brushed against the sticky, flushed curve of her cheek, sliding downwards to let out a hot breath puff against her throat, before drawing back with a mischievous smile. To his disappointment, Hermione didn't look properly enticed by his efforts.
"You may be superior in some forms of persuasion," said Hermione. "But not all of them."
This time, she took charge and dragged her lips against his neck. Her teeth pinched his flesh; he felt the brief but exquisite sting of a shallow bite, and then she placed a soft kiss right on the pulsing red point of contact. When she turned away, he hadn't a choice but to chase her retreating mouth, wanting more from her, demanding to further the exchange, but she laughed and patted him affectionately on the shoulder.
"You're being unfair," Tom complained. "This treatment is cruel and uncalled for, Hermione."
"I'm as honest as you are," said Hermione. "If you tell me why Professor Dumbledore is giving you special training, then perhaps I might decide that you deserve to be rewarded."
"Rewarding me isn't an elective, it's an essential. It's never a matter of if I should receive appreciation, but when and how much." Tom scowled. "That's why Dumbledore has been helping me. Because I'm special, and he knows it."
"Not good enough, Tom," Hermione said, poking his shoulder. "I need more."
"He found out about my future goals," said Tom quietly. "My journalistic aspirations... among others. Do you remember when I told you about the Order of Merlin?"
"Too vividly for comfort, to my dismay."
"When I'm out of here next week, he has no authority over me, and he is very aware of it," said Tom. "But he thinks acts of patriotic duty are dangerous enough that I shouldn't jump into it blindly. That's what the training is for. To polish up on subjects one can't learn from book theory."
Hermione pursed her lips. "And he's right. Thank you for being forthcoming. For someone who hates liars, you've made such a habit of being evasive yourself."
Tom's hand, lingering on her waist, squeezed tightly. "And what of my reward?"
When he returned to the Switching Game, Tom's cheeks were warm, his mouth reddened from the glistening indents of Hermione's front teeth. He thought it would bother him that other people saw him in that state, but when he considered it, he judged their opinions irrelevant. If they drew any assumptions from the scene, it would be, "Tom Riddle favours Hermione Granger", which was not information Tom found especially deserving of secrecy and discretion. Wizards are the superior race; Hermione Granger is the wife to a superior wizard; Tom Riddle is a superior wizard. These were not idle teatime speculations, but indisputable facts of life.
Dumbledore arched an eyebrow at Tom's state of disarrangement but tossed back his voluminous sleeves and began Switching the barrels again without saying a word. Tom managed to hold back the row of red lids without spilling a barrel, and Nott, drawing up beside him, eyed Tom's fluid spellcasting with a question in his gaze.
"What's the trick in it, then?"
"Switching the containers, not the contents," said Tom. "The barrels are identical in size, volume, and weight, so no need to account for the mass discrepancy if you consider the barrel and its insides as two distinct spell subjects. This isn't a test of power, but a test of casting with precision and speed."
"I'm sure you worked that out without any help," Nott said snidely.
"I applied my natural strengths to secure the solution," said Tom. "I can't help it; it's the Slytherin in me."
.
Note: Glossary of references
"This plan of yours was foolish..." = Order of the Phoenix reference remixed for this timeline. Original line was: "It was foolish to come here tonight, Tom," said Dumbledore calmly. "The Aurors are on their way..."
said Dumbledore calmly, lol. Book Dumbledore is different from DIDJA PUT YA NAME IN DA GOBLET A FAYAH, HARRY! movie version of Dumbledore.
"Height of hubris" = reference to Icarus' flight.
"Casus belli" = justification for the start of a war.
"Fratricide" = historical term for friendly fire.