The last bits of magic within me, and in cold fury I waste them on Black and those present, confronting them with a Fiendfyre of a calibre that most of them will only see once in their lifetime.
"Flames!" Black shouts, backing away from the orange storm that not only blocks his path, but all too soon chases him through the Room of Requirement and past astonished and horrified spectators.
I can literally feel how the spell is sucking magic out of my bones, controlling the fire costs me ridiculous amounts of strength. Yet my impulse control is so overridden by all the darkness welling up inside me that I simply don't care.
A snake would have scared Harper, but also the shape of Cerberus – the three-headed hellhound of Greek mythology that she only mentioned today – doesn't exactly seem to make her happy.
"Tom!" she screams through the blaze of the flames. "Stop it!"
"He wished for complicated magic!" I retort, turning the fire in his direction so Black has to flee elsewhere yet again. "There it is."
"Enough!" Harper yells, butthatis not hers to decide.
Maybe it's about time everyone learnt that, including her.
Despite the nagging ache in my body and how tired I am, the glow of fire transforms at my very thoughts. And in a split second, the three-headed Cerberus becomes a furious basilisk worthy of Echidna, causing even Harper to recoil in shock.
Black, on the other hand, has to run to me – my flames urge him to, guiding him ever so gently until he is finally forced to come and look right at me.
"Was that supposed to be a threat?" I ask as the glowing body of my Fiendfyre wraps around us, cutting us off from the others.
Black seems so desperately exhausted from the many attempts to avoid his demise that he can barely answer me.
"I can't hear you, Orion. Were you implying that I'm incapable of cursing out of this world?"
"No," he meekly shrieks, then he becomes louder. "No!"
"No? Are you sure?"
I let the fire float past him again by a hair's breadth until he shouts, "Yes!"
Then the flames go out – and through the implosion I let my magic cause, each and every glass window high above us is being shattered.
The splinters that fall down clatter on cold stone and cause everyone in the room to flinch and look for cover. But no cut on my skin could make my condition any worse. I see no reason to move, or hide, I just keep an eye on Orion, and I couldn't care less about the shocked glances from the others.
"Is there anything else you wish to say?" I ask Black. No one in the room would ever know how dizzy I feel.
Orion just shakes his head. So hastily that it makes me smile.
"Was that a … Fiendfyre?" Leonora whispers.
Rouvenia nods, not venturing an audible reply.
"Ell," Leonora whispers, "did you know he could do that?"
"I had no idea," he mumbles while staring at me.
"Good heavens," I hear Hagrid whisper in awe, Eric only comments with an appreciative whistle.
"That was scary," Rouvenia finally finds.
"That wasdangerous, not to mention the utter lack of self-control!" Harper growls. "A giant snake? Glass? Really, Tom? Have you gone completely insane?"
"You of all souls in the world," I almost whisper, looking down on her, "know better than anyone that Ihave. You just hate to admit it."
And with that, I turn my back on them, all of them. With a final wave of my wand I send the pieces of glass back into place, glittering and sparkling, as I leave the Room of Requirement without another word.
But that cost me, I feel like dying. My head is spinning and I'm beside myself as my brisk footsteps echo through the corridors.
But do my footsteps really sound like that? Are my senses so numb? Reality and fever dreams are becoming increasingly blurred.
But – no. Those are heels echoing.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind and makes me turn around, a curse flies at me. I barely manage to fend it off.
This evidence of her personal resentment doesn't surprise me, but it came a little suddenly.
Harper rushes towards me in a mad fury, much faster than Elliott, Leonora and Rouvenia could ever keep up, and continues to curse me out, forcing me to defend myself.
"Is that what you want?" she shouts. "That we both lose our minds?"
Some spells are dangerous, others just seem it, but above all this unconventional duel literally drains what is left of my sanity.
"What were you thinking?" she calls out without stopping. "Huh? Say something!"
She keeps throwing curses my way, yet none of them are meant to truly hit me. She keeps me in check, but nothing gets through my defense – and she knows it …
"Harper, come on, if you do it, do it right!" I sigh in weary coquetry just when the others finally reach us out of breath. "Is that it? I know you can do much better than that!"
More curses come my way, but noCruciatusfor the life of her – apparently she still can't hate me enough.
My hand, however, will no longer wait for my mind's approval – I soon send silent curses her way, too, and despite them bouncing off her because she's good, they still trigger fierce indignation in our watchers, especially from Leonora.
Harper, though, isn't done yet. "Youstop restraining yourself!" she demands. "As thoughyoucouldn't do more than that!"
"No, just stop it!" Leonora yells, holding Harper back by the arm. "The both of you!"
"I know exactly what I'm doing," Harper claims, breaking away from her friend, but Leonora already tries to get between us. Elliott quickly prevents that and also Rouvenia tries to hold her back – as if they suddenly mistrust me. As they should …
Only Harper herself is sure as hell that she has nothing to fear from me. She's never been more determined to save my soul with her indignant nonchalance, she's never looked more beautiful while trying it – despite, or perhaps even because, of her raging anger.
"Since when do you do the bad reputation of your house such justice?" she asks, directly facing me. "What was that?"
"Lack of patience – as I warned him," I retort.
"Fiendfyre?" she snaps. "For that tiny bit of provocation?"
I take a deep breath and look past her – but Elliott and Rouvenia only look at me like I was a stranger. As if this form of dark magic had finally scared them today, despite their Slytherin nature.
"You could have hurt someone!" Harper continues to preach. "And you hurt yourself – look at you, you can barely keep yourself on your feet!"
As if I didn't know that!
For some reason, she's making me hopping mad right now – I simply can't contain myself.
"I'll tell you what's hurting me! Your omnipresence in every move I make, your unruly preoccupation and your bloody dogmatism!" She stands before me so fearlessly, so foolishly, and even now, she doesn't back down. "Spare me your uncalled-for concern, Harper, you're not my mother – I've been alone all my life and I'd love to be just that again!"
"Who are you lying to?" she snorts. "I know you crave the very affection your mother couldn't give you, yet you hate feeling loved solely for her mistakes!"
"You know nothing –"
"Two more memories of your mother, Tom – I know more than you do because you simply were too impertinent and stubborn to look at what she has left you!"
I pause for a moment, incredulous by the idea of it. "You saw my mother's memories?"
"I'd do anything to reach you and your clouded mind! You're so lost in your opaque parallel world that you're barely recognisable!"
"The memories of my dead mother –"
"What good does piety do me if you end up dead, too!"
For a moment there, I can't say anything – because I don't know whether I want to kiss her or curse her for her unbreakable will.
But then, in an effort to save me, she goes so far as to look deep into my eyes and whisper the word that I, weakened by the Fiendfyre and defending myself, can no longer counter.
Unlike the other day in the Slug Club …
"Legilimens!" she hisses, and the world stands still.
Maybe it's just a blink of an eye in reality, but it feels as though she gets to look for answers in my head for an eternity.
She sees a lot. Far too much.
A London morning, and bright rays of sun that make my Deathly Hallow sparkle in deep red – at that very moment I realised what I was holding in my hands.
She sees Nagini and Vivian and finally Queenie as well as two huge Rottweilers – but nothing more.
I banish her from my thoughts and just when we stare at each other for a moment, very briefly so, lost and found, I don't know whether I'm shocked or furious.
"What did you do?" Harper asks in utmost urgency, and for the first time ever since I've known her, more than just concern for me clouds her features. Panic … "What was that about?"
"How dare you," I all but whisper. "Listen and remember. Stay away from me! I'll never repeat myself again, Harper. Echidna is just waiting for someone like you to come near her –"
"Someone like me," she quietly repeats, stunned.
"Stay. Away." I look past her, at Elliott in particular. "All of you. You have no idea what you're getting yourselves into."
Rouvenia, Elliott and Leonora also have no idea what the hell this is all about, but everyone glares at me like I'm cruelty personified.
And that's exactly what I must be as I turn around and leave Harper standing out in the pouring rain once again – for her own good.
The waning crescent moon, with its light straying through the pipework into the Chamber of Secrets two gloomy days later, is my witness for the fourth time. Alongside Echidna, and whatever is still within me.
I have nothing left to lose, and yet it feels so miserable.
"Animus magis magisque discinditur," I hear myself whisper, again and again, because I can no longer say it out loud. I can barely stand, nor can I think – only mourn my diminished magic.
I have never been so powerless. So completely unfocussed and inefficient.
Every step, every movement, it's all so incredibly exhausting. Every conversation, all my thoughts, the good and the bad – the game of hide and seek.
The charade in front of Harper.
In front of everyone else …
Since I almost smothered Black with my Fiendfyre, everyone's been quite wary of me.
It's an advantage, actually.
And yet I realise how I now get to lose myself in the extremes of the underworld all alone. Easily drawn in by the abyss, alienated from the rest of the world.
"Animus magis magisque discinditur," I gasp on battered knees that can no longer support me.
Thanks to Echidna, I don't hit the cold stone floor. She supports me as so often lately, and so I hold on to her mighty scales as if she were a lifebuoy thrown to me in a restless ocean.
My world upside down, as above, so below – fully drenched in the depths of occultism for which I've opened the door. I've invited this hell in …
And for the fourth time, my soul cracks. I banish its light into Harper's diary just to swallow even more darkness, like a drowning man hoping for salt water to save him.
There is no more sense of accomplishment once I'm done. I feel nothing but death in my aching core.
When the eternal candles go out as if to confirm the unheard-of deal between heaven and hell, as if by a violent gust of wind, I crave a deep breath and can only cough.
But blood?
Blood on my hands now? Is that all in my imagination?
"Son of Slytherin, you're dying …"
So I'm not imagining the blood. I'm not that lucky …
How can a fifth ritual even be possible? What's more to give to close that deal when there's hardly any life left in me?
"New moon, Echidna," I mumble, "in four days … it'll all be over. One way or another."
"New moon is the mudblood's birthday," Echidna hisses. "You often said that in your sleep when you were here."
"What?"
"The girl," she whispers, "you said in your sleep that it was her birthday on the last day of the ritual …"
Harper.
She turns 17.
May 22, 1944.
Her birthday will be at the new moon.
Why hasn't this made it into my immediate consciousness yet?
And why do I still care in my misery? Half alive, bent over a basilisk in the tomb for the living and still I already feel guilty for sullying a day like this to split my soul? How can there be so much scruple left in me after all the agony down here? When the hell does that complete and utter indifference of my opaque soul set in to make me numb?
"Sleep, son of Slytherin," Echidna whispers, "you must rest."
She's absolutely right. But I can't – or so I think, before I collapse into a faint.