1944
.
.
The sky was black and the wind laced with stinging shards of ice when Tom and Hermione were handed their coats by the maid. A basket of sandwiches was passed on by the cook, in preparation for their journey to the Great Hangleton train station, while Bryce, still yawning, took his own flask of hot beef tea, his tweed flatcap jammed low over his head to cover the tips of his cold-bitten ears.
The Riddles had bought them First Class seats on the York Flyer to London, and the trip was not as bad as it had been before Christmas, now that Tom could cast his own Warming Charms and shrink his luggage to the size of a lunch box to keep the Muggle porters from putting their hands on his things. It saved him a few pence in tips, which he spent on tea and biscuits in the train's dining car—something he found superior to the Hogwarts Express' snack trolley, where one was limited to a selection of disgusting sugary confections. (As much he enjoyed being a wizard, Tom had never learned to appreciate putting frogs, mice, and cockroaches charmed into animation, in his mouth. Whenever he was offered a chocolate frog by another student—never bothering to waste his own money on them—he checked the seals and let the charm wear off before he ate them.)
A minor note of awkwardness was Hermione's recent habit of fussing about him, asking if his leg ached, if he needed a place to sit while they transferred trains, when she went to fetch food or drinks from an attendant, or if he needed to hold onto her arm to go up and down the stairs that separated each platform from the station proper. Hermione had been attentive ever since they'd returned from St. Mungo's, and although he'd finished the potions the Healer had given him, his legs were still weak from staying off his feet for the last week and a half; he would not be winning any marathons soon... but he doubted he could have, even before what was spoken of, in whispered voices, as "The Accident".
The Accident.
To him, it was the sequence of events that led to his bleeding over Hermione's bed, being brought to St. Mungo's, and striking a deal with Nott when he was dizzy and muddled with pain potions.
To the rest of the Riddle House, The Accident was the death of the dog in his father's bedroom. According to the maids when they'd cleaned his room, all the staff had been given two bob extra that week to keep the affair quiet and out of the village gossip mill, until the doctor had sorted out the problem and the children were out of the house. Nevertheless, that didn't stop the servants from gossiping inside the house.
It was a factor that Tom saw fit to press to his own advantage.
"I thought there was something off about my father the first time I met him," Tom had said sadly, his eyes cast down to the pile of laundered shirts on his bed. "It was such a shock, that first breakfast..."
He trailed off with a deep and melancholy sigh.
Becky Murray, the second housemaid, who was folding his laundry and sorting them into a 'Winter' section to put away in a mothballed chest, and a 'Spring' selection to pack with his school things, gave him a consoling nod. "It brought out summat wicked in him. None of us knew he were like this, sir—Cook's the only one been on staff for more'n ten years. She'd known Mister Tom since he were a lad, and he did nowt of the like back then, she says."
"I've never had a father before," Tom said. "I suppose I couldn't have known that all fathers weren't like that. But now... he's gone beyond all definition of normal. It's such a terrible blow to everyone—to me, as well: I thought we'd all be having a quiet family Christmas for the first time ever." Tom shook his head solemnly. "If Grandmama is sending him away like I heard, then I'll never have a chance to know him."
The maid's eyes glistened; she dabbed at them with her apron and sniffled. "Oh, sendin' him away's for his own good, sir. He'll be in good hands, truly—there'll be people for him who can look after him proper, to make sure there'll be no more of that... that irregular behaviour."
"Does he really need looking after?" asked Tom. "Is he doing that poorly?"
"Night terrors, I hear," said Becky, her eyes darting to the open door to check that no one was passing through the hall. "Not for you to worry about, sir. Tha'd better get on with packin' your school things; Mrs. Riddle wants to see you wearin' the new shirts and trousers she got for Christmas."
"He's my father; of course I'd be worried," Tom said, his expression mournful. "You only ever get one. Please, Miss Murray, if Hermione asks for any news on his health, do you mind being delicate about your answers? She's sensitive, and her father is a doctor back in London—she's always hated to see people suffering. Just tell her that he's unwell, and has been so for some time. He deserves his dignity in these difficult times, you see; no matter who he is or what he's done, he's still family to us, isn't he?"
"O-oh, that's a very kind thought." The maid pressed her hand to her mouth. "S'not a bother, o' course, sir!"
"Thank you," said Tom, and his grateful smile brought a flustered red bloom to her cheeks.
Afterwards, he hadn't felt bad for how he'd dealt with the servant, steering her through a careful placement of words, glances, and smiles. It wasn't as if he'd lied to her—he despised being lied to, and made an effort to avoid lies in his own life; after all, those who relied on outright falsehood were those who lacked the vision to re-interpret reality, and the imagination to shape it into whatever form they wished it to be.
Tom didn't tell lies: he told selective truths. Lies might be convenient, but an inconvenient truth was the most efficient method of settling an argument for good—that is, if he'd wanted to argue, and on top of that, come out the victor. And unlike a convenient lie, a barbed truth was still truth, and couldn't be denied.
But this time he could sway the maid's feelings through guilt and pity, and it'd be manipulation, not lying. Tom's grandmother used guilt all the time on other people, and as far as he'd seen, she hadn't looked like she regretted it, or even like she was going to stop at it anytime soon. She was pragmatic; so was he, even though he had some exceptions, a personal standard of integrity, where Mrs. Riddle had none at all.
Hermione was one of his exceptions.
Tom was as honest as he could be around her, as Hermione was someone who didn't need to be cushioned and coddled from confronting the reality of her own existence, as his fellow Slytherins did. Their worlds would fall apart if they were told unequivocally that their names meant nothing and their magical ability was no different—or even inferior—to that of any other witch or wizard in the castle, yes, even including the Muggleborns. It was to Tom's great satisfaction that Hermione had accepted years ago that some people were better than others (or perhaps she'd just stopped trying to argue with him about it), in ways that had nothing to do with name or lineage, even though it was oftentimes necessary for the functioning of society to pretend otherwise, a convenient self-deception in the same category as believing one's local Member of Parliament actually cared about the public good, or that the funds put in the church collection plate were spent on community programmes, and not on the parson's personal comforts.
So Tom didn't lie to her, even if he massaged the truth now and again. But if the maid lied to Hermione, then that was nothing to do with him, was it? He hadn't ordered Becky Murray to do anything but be sensitive. To be tactful.
The real truth was that Tom preferred to keep his participation in The Accident as private as possible. He couldn't say that he felt guilty or remorseful for what he'd done to his father (that would be a lie) but he knew that other people would prefer him to be, or better yet, prefer him not to have been involved at all. Hermione was one person in particular who was better off blissfully ignorant; he knew that she would disapprove, and would never consider any justification for his actions as valid or sensible. He didn't want to argue with her about it (out of the many things they had in common, one was their ability to settle arguments by not arguing at all—it was better than a compromise, as compromising more often than not left both parties dissatisfied) and he knew that Hermione was so soft-hearted that she'd never change her stance if she ever found out about the death of his father's dog.
That had been an accident, of course, but she'd call it murder and make a big deal out of it, her big brown eyes swimming with unshed tears for an animal whose existence she hadn't even known about until it was already dead.
(He had once pointed out, years ago, that her meals had been made from the carcasses of dead animals, and her reaction had not been to acknowledge and embrace his logic. He'd learned then how often her reasoning was tainted by sentimentality and emotion, which he couldn't understand himself, but had come to accept as one of her many charming eccentricities.)
Tom didn't like it when Hermione's eyes looked like that, though he found it difficult to explain why. He knew that it was better when she was smiling than when she was moody, and when she agreed with him instead of trying to draw him into a debate that would inevitably slip into personal criticism when things became too heated. When they weren't rowing, she was more amenable to inviting him to study with her in the Riddle House's library, sitting next to him at dinner, and of course—the most important part—inviting herself into his room to listen to the wireless, where, like clockwork, her eyes would droop at half-past eleven and her head would begin to sag onto his shoulder.
His Christmas had been dreadful, what with putting on the double pretense of being a harmless Muggle and a Good Boy, and suffering all the family experiences his grandmother could fit in, as she'd been under the impression that she had to make up for seventeen years of deprivation with seventeen sets of gifts for his birthday and Christmas Day. Spending time with Hermione had been the redeeming feature of the entire holiday, and the best part—the most noteworthy part that he could not imagine himself forgetting anytime soon—was the first time he'd felt her sleeping form at his side. His mind had been clouded and his body benumbed from taking a vial of pain potion, but somehow he'd been conscious the whole time of her soft skin and her sweet-scented hair, every single breath and shift in position.
Yes, it was preferable that Hermione not be distracted by a bout of sympathetic indignation—as if his father deserved anyone's pity—from learning the finer details of The Accident. He might be able to hold his ground in an argument as long as she could, but it would ultimately be counter-productive to the goal he'd established for himself a week and a half ago: that Hermione would be convinced to share with him all his future family Christmases, now and after Hogwarts.
The end of their time at Hogwarts was fast approaching, and Tom could not see his way to lowering himself to the kind of humdrum institutional career path to which Hermione aspired. She'd suggested he join her in applying for positions, either in a Muggle office or the halls of the Ministry, once they'd gotten their N.E.W.T. results. He'd refused to participate in this, but nonetheless, he couldn't see—couldn't dare to imagine—he and Hermione parting ways after graduation. They had grown up together, studied together, lived together; it was only logical (by both his clear-sighted rational thinking, and Hermione's girlishly sentimental thinking) that they be joined in other ways. It would make up for taking their leave of each other during the working week; it would be a clear refutation to anyone who might mistake an ambitious witch climbing her way through the rank-and-file for anything but a proper, respectable young lady.
And it would grant him the opportunity to stop by and bring her a homemade lunch, hang up one of Mary Riddle's many framed photographs of himself in her office, touch her and hug her and hold her while any witnesses cooed over how sweet it was, rather than how unseemly. For some strange reason, these worthless labels mattered to people. Simple words and titles and symbols changed the way society viewed things; Tom found it puzzling how an official document made it an imprisonable offense for wizards to bait Muggles with magic, but it only took another one to endorse the wizard who Obliviated Muggles into drooling vegetables.
(He'd come up with another good quote for his diary, after giving it some thought: "There is no good or evil, only legitimacy and those who lack the foresight to seek it.")
By the time he and Hermione had transferred to King's Cross Station and boarded the Hogwarts Express, it was still on his mind: maintaining his reputation in the eyes of the Hogwarts student population was useful, whether it was as an exacting taskmaster to his group of followers, or the polite and helpful Slytherin Prefect to everyone else. In Hermione's case, her good regard was not just useful: cultivating it was essential to his goals.
Hermione must have shared his sentiments to some degree; in the interest of maintaining a convivial atmosphere for the rest of the holiday, she'd never mentioned Nott after they'd left St. Mungo's. He'd wondered about that, but kept his thoughts to himself until he had the chance to discern the truth on his own. Until then, he revisited his thoughts and impressions on the boy, gathered over the last few years of sharing a dormitory.
Nott, he'd observed, had never shown anything but disdain for those who could count Muggles anywhere in their family tree—or those suspected to have some trace of Muggle ancestry of any kind. Hermione, on the other hand, had the idea that good company didn't involve having to stop the conversation every few minutes to explain such basic concepts as significant digits or dependent variables. This ruled out most purebloods, whose private tutoring informed them only on the aspects of natural philosophy which fell in between Aristotle and Plato, to Descartes and Newton.
Tom couldn't see any real reason why they would tolerate each other's presence. Hermione didn't like it when she was made to feel as if she was anyone's inferior—and for all that Tom was willing to refute her arguments, he'd never denied that she, as an individual, was anything less than Special. Nott, like most of their classmates, would have found Hermione insufferable, which was magnified by her being a witch and not a wizard. Magical Britain was progressive in certain aspects, but in others it was no different from the Muggle world: witches of good breeding (or the witches of lesser family who set their life goals on being chosen to incubate someone's heir) were placed under a similar ideal: a proper woman was domestic and demure, gracious and obliging. Hermione, though she tried to be a Good Girl with a self-imposed standard of moral rectitude, made no attempt to be a Proper Woman. Thus, Tom could see nothing in common between Nott and Hermione but a vigorous and mutual condescension.
It was this which he kept in mind, observing Nott in the train compartment on the way to Hogwarts, during the dinner put on for the returning students, and on the walk from the Great Hall down to the Slytherin dormitories in the dungeons.
Nott hadn't made himself a figure of suspicion. His hair was combed, his uniform as neat but unremarkable as usual. Living in Scotland for most of the year, few of Tom's classmates had anything other than pale British complexions, but Nott in particular seemed to have an aversion to venturing outdoors, dropping Herbology as a class subject right after O.W.L.s, even though it was generally considered an easy way to score an Acceptable N.E.W.T. or higher with Professor Beery's lenient teaching style.
Nott's milk-white skin had a faint blue-ish pallor, with prominent shadowed crescents under his eyes and veining down his temples. He twitched whenever he was directly addressed; when he wasn't, he kept to himself and his books, and trained his eyes on the floor. He spoke to no one unless spoken to. He drew no attention to himself—he tried to, at least, but it didn't take long for their Slytherin dorm mates to pick up that something was off when they saw Tom Riddle staring at one of their number for much too long for comfort.
The opportunity came after everyone had finished exchanging their obligatory greetings in the Common Room, thanking so-and-so's mother for their thoughtful Yule gifts on behalf of their own mothers, swapping homework assignments before they were to be handed in during next morning's class, and comparing who had gotten the best Christmas haul. Curfew came and went; First through Fourth Years were made to go back to the dormitories, the Fifth and Sixth Years began peeling off to their own rooms, and a few Seventh Years commandeered the best sofas and broke out the firewhisky to commemorate the beginning of their last school term.
As the resident Prefect, Tom had to chivvy the stubbornest of the younger stragglers back to their dorms, so he was the last to get back to his own. That was a convenience: the other boys were already inside and half-dressed, unpacking their pyjamas and hanging up their cloaks when Tom entered. With a silent wave of his hand, the doors locked behind him.
"Good evening, gentlemen," said Tom, smiling in what he thought was a benign fashion.
Lestrange coughed. Rosier whirled around, almost dropping his armful of novelty Quidditch socks.
"I hope everyone had a pleasant Christmas holiday," Tom continued, looking at each of his subjects in turn. "I myself had a rather interesting one, but I won't hesitate to confess my eagerness to return to Hogwarts. Back to studying, classes, and of course, all of your familiar faces."
He studied their faces: Lopsided Lestrange, his first acquisition, an excellent second in the Duelling Club, ready to do whatever was necessary to buy an opening for Tom whenever they participated in doubles duels. Rosier, a sporting fellow with a competitive streak, whose wandwork technique Tom had beaten into shape after two years of training. Avery, an unimaginative lump of a boy, a predictable spell répertoire which Tom had taken pains to expand, easily led once the right idea had been put into his head. Travers, gloomy of disposition, lacking the confidence to put full force behind his spellwork, but one who toughened up with a careful application of backhanded praise.
And finally, Nott. Taciturn, a solitary temperament, the keenest mind with a surprising range to his duelling, though it was limited by his conservatism and caution; he, out of the whole group, was the most resistant to Tom's brand of personal instruction.
His gaze lingered on the last boy. "Nott. I'd like to speak to you. In private."
Nott, buttoning up his pyjama shirt, glared at the floor. "If you can say it in front of me, you can say it in front of everyone else."
"Hmm," said Tom. "You're being very unco-operative, Nott. I thought we had a... an understanding."
"We do," Nott replied, his brow crinkling. "You can't hurt me. That was part of the agreement."
"You know," said Tom musingly, "you ought to look a man in the eye when you speak to him. Look at me."
Flinching, his shoulders trembling with the effort, Nott's chin lifted up by degrees. His eyes, under lowered lids, met Tom's.
Nott spat between clenched teeth, "You can't hurt me—you promised! We had a truce!"
"I can't act against you with the intent to hurt you," Tom corrected him. "Believe me, I don't want to hurt you. But it can't be helped if you try to resist." His eyes locked on the other boy's, reaching into his robes for his wand. He didn't draw it; instead, he focused his will on a single command: Stay still. Don't move.
He doubled the force of his will when he noticed Nott's hand jerking toward his bed, on which had been laid his folded uniform robes, discarded after changing into his nightshirt. His wand sat atop the pile, made of a light brown wood with wavy ripples along its length from being cut along the grain; it had leafy sprigs carved on the handle—a whimsical touch shared with the design of Hermione's wand, which was patterned with curling vines.
The surface impressions were the first things he sensed of Nott's mind: hot spikes of anxiety, the prickle of fear-sweat gathering moist and clammy in the lines of each palm, the itch of standing hairs at the back of the neck, the light-headedness that came of lungs frozen in mid-breath. Nott shuddered as Tom peered closer, a soft wheeze squeezing out from between his bloodless lips.
"Don't worry, this will be over quickly if you co-operate with me," Tom said, allowing him to breathe, before he plunged into the boy's mind—
"—His name is Riddle; he's a Mudblood—"
A rain of dry white powder, white on black wool, like sieved confectioner's sugar on bittersweet chocolate birthday cake icing. It tickled his nostrils; he felt an oncoming sneeze.
"—Does anyone else see it? Has everyone but me gone completely mental? Am I the only one?!"
A geometric arrangement of shapes, runes, on the crusty surface of hard-packed snow. Lichen on stone that dripped with icicles, the low eaves of a thatched roof heavy with snow and ice, a path in the snow marked out with a double line of tyre ruts, a few stalks of rotting grey flowers held in a gloved hand.
"—That's a remarkable claim to make..."
Nott moaned, and the succession of images and sounds began to recede, fading into black obscurity. A pinprick of migraine blossomed into existence in the back of Tom's own head, gaining in size and magnitude like an avalanche bearing down to the timberline, drawing more and more material unto itself as it tumbled into a downhill freefall.
For an instant, he saw himself sitting inside a train compartment, levitating an unhappy snake.
"What is this? What is this!" it hissed, and then—
"What's this, Mr. Riddle? What in Merlin's name have you done to yourself?" said the green-robed Healer, bending over him with a shining silver knife, charmed to repel blood as it sliced open his pyjama trousers at the hip. She inspected his wound, then pronounced, "We'll have to perform an extraction before we go any further with sealing this up. Gordon, fetch the forceps—looks like there's something strange stuck in here, lodged in the bone. Right there, the upper ilium—"
And then he was off the operating table and sitting upright in a chair. He was a boy, a young one—there was a dog, a whiskered wolfhound with a golden rune collar, its great shaggy head resting on its paws—they were in a library full of tall shelves and dusty grimoires, and on his lap was a book of wandlore, open to one thick vellum page titled with illuminated golden letters: Snakewood and Horne of Serpente.
The images blurred and congealed, and it became impossible to discern where he was, who he was, in the whirling tumult of colour and noise. He was tall, and then he was short; he was young, and then was even younger, and then he was the same as he was now; the view he saw went up and down, dark and dingy one second, then blindingly overexposed in the next. His fingers throbbed where he'd been rapped with a wooden spoon for taking more than his share in the dining hall lunch queue; the pain radiated from the red lines pressed into the whorls of his fingertips where he'd been plucking the metal harp strings for the last two hours—Mother said the callus would come in and then it wouldn't hurt as much; this small suffering on his part was worth it to preserve a historic artform—
He was Tom Riddle, and at the same time, he wasn't Tom Riddle. Time distorted; the years stretched like taffy, drawn in between two disparate lives connected mind to mind, the resilience of two melded consciousnesses searching for parallels to counter the force pulling them between diametric poles.
With the slightest of shifts, the throbbing in his hand morphed into the humming vibrato of a baroque string quartet played over a crackling wireless—the strings of a zither strummed in a harmonic duet with Celtic harp, a dog howling along to a lively folk ditty played for the solstice feast—musicians in white tuxedos warming up on a bandstand, the air hazed with tobacco smoke and the chatter of a hundred guests, while a girl smiled up at him, one hand reaching for his, the other settling onto his shoulder...
More and more familiar images appeared and were soon swept away, replaced by others, linked by a tangential association of sensory context or emotional resonance. They were his memories, and when they weren't, he saw only blackness: garbled syllables of sound without image, or blurry moving figures divorced of atmosphere and identity. He tried to look closer, but they fled like shadows under a moving beam of light, and when he followed, he found himself pressed against a peculiar wall of resistance, pliant to an extent—but somehow, utterly impassable.
No matter how he pushed, how he grappled and sought for leverage against it, the wall didn't budge; he willed it to move, imagining a spear point gouging into the black wall, like a ballista brought to siege...
"Riddle?"
A distant voice broke his concentration. His mental visualisation stuttered and softened at the edges.
"What's going on?" said another voice. "Riddle? Nott?"
With one disorienting heave, Tom was ejected from the stream of images and back into the physical world, back to the Slytherin dormitory, to the corner of the room where his and Nott's four-poster beds stood closest to the green glass windows. His vision swam like he was looking through the glass, as if he was wearing thick spectacles with each lens ground to a different prescription.
When his vision came back into focus, he saw that Nott had fallen to the floor before him. The boy's silk tussar pyjamas were wrinkled, the lapel on the right side spotted with vivid drops of scarlet blood, the same blood that was smeared across his lips and chin and the back of his hand, where he'd wiped it away with a careless hand.
"What was that?" asked Rosier, bending over to help Nott off the floor and sit up on his bed. "Do you need a potion? I have some hangover potions in my trunk left over from Christmas."
"What'd you do to him?" Lestrange asked, glancing from Nott to Tom, his eyes alight with hungry curiosity. "You didn't even draw your wand! How'd you do that? That was incredible!"
Travers cut in, his voice breathless and awed. "It's Legilimency—it's got to be."
"Isn't that a Dark Art?" said Avery, ambling over and eyeing Nott's rather rumpled form with a look of contempt.
"No," Travers said, shaking his head. "It's restricted magic, though. The only ones who openly use and study it are the Wizengamot courtroom interrogator and his apprentice. And they would never let anyone catch them doing it unauthorised, no matter how much your family offers to pay them for off-the-books tutoring."
"Shame about that," said Avery. "It sounds dead useful."
"I'm righd here, you know," Nott interrupted, his voice nasally from where he'd pinched the bridge of his nose to stem the flow of blood. By now, he'd retrieved his wand and had started siphoning the blood from his face.
"It is," Travers agreed. "Wonder who taught Riddle."
At that, all eyes in the room turned to Tom.
"Dumbledore's giving me private lessons," said Tom, with a casual shrug of his shoulders. It was true.
"Dubbledore?" Nott sounded incredulous, although it was hard to tell with his consonants slurred together. "B-bud—you're a Slydderin!"
"I must be special, then," Tom said. "You should be sure to remember that, if we're to get along."
"You're nod making id easy!" Nott grumbled.
"Well, I can't deny having a vested interest in seeing you fail," Tom admitted.
Rosier sucked in a slow breath. "What did you do? You didn't make a wager, did you?"
"Id's nudding I can't handle!" Nott said insistently, glaring at Rosier. "Keep oud of id!"
"We've got to hear this now," said Lestrange. "Come on, Nott—what did you bet on? The winner of this year's Quidditch Cup? The top spot in the Duelling Club? Or who can get up Granger's skirt first?"
"Excuse me," Tom spoke in a cold voice, "what does Granger have to do with this?"
Lestrange gave a derisive snort. "Nott has been tailing her like a little sneak—"
Nott cut him off before he could finish his sentence. "We bed that I could find the Chamber of Secreds by our last day of Hogwards!"
A sudden silence fell in the dormitory, and then all the boys began speaking at once.
"It doesn't exist—"
"—It's just a legend—"
"—Someone would've found it by now—"
"—Twenty galleons on Riddle—"
"Quiet," said Tom.
Silence resumed once more.
"Nott thinks it's real enough to stake a wager on it," he said. "We should respect his decision, and his intention to make good on it, no matter how unlikely the outcome. And fortune, as they say, favours the bold. A little too Gryffindor-ish for my taste, but perhaps one needs some good fortune to track down Slytherin's long-lost chamber. And a touch of Hufflepuff persistence, too—they say that Hufflepuffs make the best finders."
"It is real," said Nott.
"You have no proof," Tom replied, who'd dug around in Nott's head and hadn't found anything but snippets of dialogue and brief glimpses of childhood memories.
"We'll see."
"Oh, will we?"
"I... I think I have a lead."
Tom lifted his wand.
"I-it's not here right now," said Nott hastily. "But I know where it is. I just need to get it."
"Well," said Tom, giving him an unimpressed look, "go and get it, then."
Nott glared at him, but Tom ignored it, unpacking his own trunk and pyjamas. He changed in the bathroom and returned to his four-poster, which was just as he remembered: thick, green enchanted drapes that retained the heat through the coldest nights of winter, embroidered bedcovers and pillowcases, a carved wooden headboard and posts with a fetching snake motif. Except... the bed felt smaller tonight than he was used to, and when he rolled around on his back, then on his side, he couldn't find a comfortable enough position to fall asleep.
As midnight approached, the other boys finished their homework and dimmed their lamps and wand lights. On the other side of Tom's curtains, he could see that Nott's light was still lit.
.
.
January passed in a string of cold and sunless days.
Students wore their House scarves to class and meals, instead of reserving them for the outdoors and weekend Quidditch games. They huddled together in the mornings, walking to the Great Hall for breakfast, white clouds of steam puffing out between their chattering teeth. The older students cast Warming Charms on the younger students, and on the owls when they arrived to deliver the morning paper, shedding flakes of ice over the food. Astronomy, taking place on the rare nights clear of heavy stormclouds, had quickly become everyone's least favourite subject.
February came, and with it was the first of the Hogwarts Apparition lessons, taught by a witch with a Ministry badge and a superior air. She held her wand in one hand and a steel ruler in the other, one metre long and marked with lines and numbers; the last foot was lettered in red and said 'ACCEPTABLE EXAMINABLE DEVIATION'.
Tom found Apparition an interesting magical exercise. It being a standard rite of passage for wizarding adulthood, next to one's first drink of firewhisky, information about the theory of magical teleportation hadn't been hard to find in the Hogwarts library. It wasn't even necessary to ask for a note to the Restricted Section to pick out a good selection of reading materials.
(Not that Slughorn would have put much effort into turning him down or re-directing him to more safer subjects of study. He'd signed Tom's Statutory Declaration without reading the text when Tom had brought it to him after one Friday night Slug Club dinner. Tom had expected to have to do weeks more buttering up to have the Riddle House entered in the Ministry's records; now he had to wait until summer to have the Floo installed, as he couldn't see the maids letting in anyone dressed as wizards usually did, with bathing costumes worn over a cassock, their underwear on the outside, or displaying the greatest moral transgression of all: cross-dressing.)
Apparition was more like Transfiguration than any other magical discipline. In particular, the Switching Spells they'd been tested on in last year's O.W.L.s. Only this was more advanced, as it was not just a switch of two discrete objects—they'd practised in class with two inanimate objects and moved on to small animals—but one living object and a mass of empty air, which caused the distinctive popping sound when it was suddenly displaced.
And, of course, it counted as a human Transfiguration, which meant any mistakes were more serious than when some incompetent student accidentally Switched half their mouse and left the other half on the opposite side of the classroom. With those, one could just Vanish the mess and move on, but here, the whole class was put on hold, and Tom forced to spend several long minutes listening to one of his classmates scream while the instructor and the Hospital Wing's Mediwitch came over to re-attach the splinched limbs and count how many fingers were still presumed missing.
The textbooks, from Tom's professional opinion, were a more time efficient method for learning to Apparate than the official instruction: the core tenets of the discipline were 'Destination, Determination, and Deliberation', which was not much different from what he'd learned in First Year Charms, and still applied to his present classes—Incantation, Visualisation, and Gesticulation. By the end of his first lesson, he'd come to the conclusion that the textbooks had the same information as the Ministry instructor, and the only practical benefit of attending the class was the ability to practice in a convenient location, without having to walk a whole mile out to Hogsmeade, which lay outside the Hogwarts grounds' Anti-Apparition wards.
He treated it as a mental exercise, and after the fourth lesson, had proven himself able to Apparate in and out of the practice hoop at will. The professors had been impressed, Slughorn awarding him twenty-five points for being the first to get it without splinching himself, and even the instructor had come over and asked him to repeat his success just to confirm it hadn't been a fluke.
The trick wasn't just to visualise the destination, the bit of floor within the bounds of a wooden hoop, but to instead visualise the journey. He imagined his body, all of it, every particle, hair, organ, and limb, entering an in-between place where things Vanished after being hit with an Evanesco, and then, once he'd felt the eerie squeezing sensation of his mass being pulled apart and re-distributed, he focused his mind on the hoop, drawing out every single detail in his imagination: every crack and join of the stone floor, the flickering shadows cast by the wall torches, the smooth, polished finish of the hoop, the pattern of wood fibres on its varnished surface.
Crack!
Tom appeared inside the hoop, a little unsteady, but still on his feet. The first time, the sound of the displacing air had been alarming—it too closely resembled the noise of a discharging firearm, and nothing about it bore any pleasant memories to him. He'd gotten used to it, refused to let it weaken him, and from experience he'd figured out that clearer focus in Disapparition resulted in cleaner Apparitions; the result displaced less air and made less noise.
"Very precise. Commendable effort," said the Ministry instructor, using her metal ruler to measure the distance between his hoop and the two hoops of the students on either side of him, to check whether or not he'd cheated on accuracy by moving the goalhoops. "We offer student group examinations in April and in August, depending on the month of their birth, and their skill level during scheduled sessions. You've so far showed great aptitude—though I wouldn't have expected anything less for one of dear old Horace's hand-picked Prefects. Will you be registering for the April examination, Mister—"
"Riddle," said Tom, smiling pleasantly at her.
The instructor frowned, and her eyes darted to the Slytherin crest on his robes. "A Muggleborn then, are you?"
"Excuse me, madam!" Hermione interrupted, from where she'd been listening (and fidgeting in consternation) as the instructor had gone down the row to talk to several Slytherin students and heap praise on Tom, all the while ignoring her. "What does his blood status have to do with anything? I don't suppose that question's on the examination, is it!"
The instructor, a thin woman in severe, high-collared robes with a Ministry brooch pinned to her breast, turned to Hermione. "You might find, Miss, that examinations—important as they may be—are not the sole determination of one's ability... or one's future. Decorum is one where many are judged and—" she gave Hermione a sharp top-to-toe inspection, followed by a sniff, "—found wanting. Proper wizarding pride is another. How are civil servants, representatives and functionaries of a wizarding nation, meant to perform their duties if they lack an understanding of their constituents' best interests?"
"Well," huffed Hermione, "that sounds very discriminatory to me! I've never heard 'wizarding pride' used in any other way but to mean wizarding conservatism."
"Pardon me, madam," said Tom, "but if one has, as you call it, proper wizarding pride—and proper decorum, naturally—does it really matter if one is a Muggleborn or a half-blooded wizard?"
The instructor's expression softened as Tom put on his Good Boy face and straightened his shoulders—enough to show his good posture and fine conformation to best advantage, but not enough to tower over the woman in an intimidating or aggressive manner. There was a balance to it, just as there was in widening his eyes so he looked guileless, but not naïve.
"Officially, it is not in the Ministry's practice to inquire on the parentage of prospective employees and contractees," said the woman, "but unofficially, good impressions and favourable character references count for a great deal. And that is not strictly limited to the Ministry."
She glanced in Hermione's direction and gave a sniff of displeasure.
"As a hypothetical question, and just a small matter of personal curiosity," said Tom. "I've wondered: is it possible to be both a proponent of wizarding pride and social reform? I've nothing against tradition, you see, but... well, I don't know how to put it any better than this: I'm a Slytherin."
Tom gave her a bashful smile and lifted one hand to sheepishly brush against the lapel of his uniform robe, where his Prefect badge was pinned right above his Slytherin crest. "I'm also given to understand that most modern traditions have had to start somewhere, and being a Slytherin—as I presume that you might have been not very long ago, Madam—ambition on the grand scale would hardly be a deterrent to us, would it?"
The instructor (Tom hadn't bothered to learn her name) let off a light laugh and covered her mouth, while Hermione folded her arms and scowled at him; she could tell that he was playing the boyish charm up so much that it bordered on being a parody of himself. He couldn't comprehend why she was upset about it: this flattery, obsequious or not, had in the past gotten Slughorn to unlock the bookcase in the back of his office after one extended dinner, and from that, Tom and Hermione had had the chance to look at some of the antique potion books in Sluggy's private collection. Old and faded things they were, and locked up for good reason—the recipes were very dark, and as the professor had turned the pages to show off the moving illustrations, Tom had seen one or two ingredient lists that called for human body parts. It was more exciting reading material than could be found in the library's Restricted Section, and Slughorn was quick to claim that he only owned them for their historical value.
"Those who venture into the world of wizarding politics choose their words carefully," the instructor said. "And they learn which ones their audience considers vulgar. The word 'reform', Mr. Riddle, to many ears, is synonymous with radicalism... and revolution."
"I see," said Tom, nodding politely. "It may well work for the rest of Europe, but I suppose Britain prefers to remain above all the upheaval."
"Our Ministry is the pillar of certainty in the midst of chaos and disorder," replied the instructor, her narrow chest swelling with pride.
After a few more minutes of casual exchange about the Ministry and what kind of job opportunities were available for someone enrolled for ten N.E.W.T. subjects, he had the woman well buttered up, and she'd made no more reference or enquiry on the nature of Tom's blood status. Instead, she praised his dedication and ability, saying that it couldn't be clearer proof that he was a 'proper wizard'. Tom had a business card pressed on him, embossed with the seal of the Department of Magical Transportation. Reading the directions listed on the back, he learned that the instructor's name was Madam Elodia Netherfield of the Apparition Licensing and Examinations Office, and her Floo connection call number was M.O.M. Level 6/39C.
"Can I make a copy of it?" Hermione asked, when the instructor had gone to berate a group of Gryffindors who had started playing a game of stick-and-hoop with their wands, having gotten bored with Apparition practice. (It was foolish of them; the Hogwarts lessons were free, and those who failed were expected to come back next year, or pay for further lessons and arrange their own exams during the summer.)
"Why would you want her card?" said Tom, handing it over, whereupon Hermione cast a quick Geminio to duplicate it. "She's a stuffed shirt who wouldn't recognise innovation unless it whacked her off at the neck."
"Tom! Shhh!" said Hermione, looking both ways to ensure the instructor was still busy brandishing her long ruler at the Gryffindors. Dumbledore, the Gryffindor Head of House, just looked bemused by their antics and hadn't subtracted any points. "I've always been interested in working at this particular department, I'll have you know. Maybe less, now that I've seen what sort of people work there, but I can also see the need for fresh ideas. Goodness, a 'pillar of certainty'? I don't advocate for revolution, not the kind of bloody one that Grindelwald espouses, but surely they must see how easy it is to slip into stagnation with that kind of thinking."
"And you think you can fix it?"
"If they let me!" said Hermione. "Though I should at some point like to confirm how entrenched this 'wizarding pride' nonsense goes. It did seem very important to Madam Netherfield, even if the Ministry won't acknowledge it on paper."
Tom shrugged. "It only matters if you give her opinion any weight. Which I don't."
"Well, of course you don't care, it's not like you're a—"
A pink flush stained Hermione's cheeks before she cut herself off abruptly.
"I'm not a—what?"
"A... a witch," Hermione finished half-heartedly. "Men can be career-minded and aggressive about it, you see, and everyone will praise them for how assertive and ambitious they are. But women in the workplace—when we're allowed to take the same positions—will be judged as screeching harpies for behaving in a similar fashion. It's not very fair at all."
"No, it isn't," agreed Tom; for most of his life, he hadn't put much thought into what was fair or unfair unless it applied to himself. But the idea of Hermione, his Hermione, being treated poorly by stupid, parchment-shuffling bureaucrats was, for some reason, personally offensive. "You've more patience for it than I. I don't believe that politics, especially day-to-day office politics, would ever suit me."
"I'd still like to tour the Ministry offices," Hermione mused. "I don't have a family friend who works at the Ministry and has visitor passes to throw around. It's a shame that Hogwarts doesn't do school tours like Muggle schools do—when I was in primary, we visited a steel foundry, although that was more for educational purposes than a vocational introduction." She looked up at him, her eyes alight with sudden inspiration. "Tom, don't you have a Press Badge?"
"Yes," said Tom, who kept it with his bags of galleons in the bottom of his trunk, beneath his collection of spellcrafting textbooks. Not that anyone in his dorm ever went through his trunk to borrow a pair of clean socks; he'd trained them all too well for that.
"Would you consider lending it?" said Hermione. "Doesn't it let you interview Ministry workers?"
"Presumably. But I haven't ever tried it."
Tom's limited experience with "journalism" didn't involve reporting news, interviewing important personages, or discussing the personal lives of politicians or the few celebrities that existed in the wizarding world, which was limited to professional Quidditch players, their spouses and managers, stage actors, and the spokeswitches for various garment and cosmetic brands. He'd made it a solitary job, his only point of contact with another person being his editor, who asked for more or less content depending on how many pages they needed to fill for the next issue, and forwarded his fan mail when it began to overflow his London post box.
"Well... do you mind if I borrow it sometime—if you're not using it yourself?"
"I suppose I wouldn't mind..." said Tom.
"Thank you, Tom, you're the best," Hermione said, and then she rushed up and threw her arms around his middle.
"Of course I am," said Tom, resting his chin on top of Hermione's fluffy hair. "You should tell me when you want to visit, in advance. That way we can arrange a time to go together."
He enjoyed the feeling of having Hermione so close, which he had missed in the weeks since their Christmas holidays. Their brief moments together were nice, but it always felt like a shadow of the real article, the way a Conjured object was a transient imitation of something grown out of the earth and worked by human hands. The inadequacies could be overlooked for the first minute or so, but the more time one spent scrutinising and comparing the two articles, the greater and more irrevocable the differences seemed to be.
A few seconds later, Hermione's arms dropped from his sides and she made to step away, but couldn't, because Tom was still holding on.
"Tom?"
"Hermione."
She let out a heavy sigh. "You do this every time."
"And you know that I'll keep doing it."
"But we're supposed to be practising Apparition!"
"We can practise Apparition like this," said Tom. "Just stay still."
"What are you—"
Tom's arms tightened around Hermione, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the hoop a few feet away. He'd Apparated without splinching, and that was due to having a clear visualisation of himself, before imagining the transition to nothingness and then out the other side. It was a bit tricky to add Hermione's mass to his visualisation, but he was beyond passing familiar with her size and shape.
Pop!
The sensation, as usual, hadn't got any more tolerable the more times he'd Disapparated. If he had to describe the feeling, it was like passing through a turnstile gate while someone else was trying to get through from the other direction at the same time, pressing the bars down on him with more and more force to barge their way past, while another set of bars at his back dug into him like the springs of his orphanage mattress. It was uncomfortable, but when he considered it, it wasn't as disorienting as living in two bodies simultaneously, or returning to his own body after accustoming himself to having eight segmented limbs.
This pain—no, not even pain; he'd learned what true pain was over the Christmas holidays, and this was simply a mild discomfort—was short-lived and worth suffering, for the speed and convenience it gave to magical transportation.
Hermione staggered and tripped on the edge of the hoop—which wasn't meant to fit more than one person—but Tom caught her until she'd found her feet.
"Tom!" Hermione cried, looking slightly green, and to his pleasure, she'd resumed her hold around his waist.
"As you said, I am the best," said Tom.
It seemed that Slughorn agreed with him, for Tom was soon awarded another twenty-five points for a successful Side-Along Apparition. It wasn't tested on the examination, but it was a fair indication that one had mastered Apparition. For his demonstration, Madam Netherfield gave Tom an approving nod and wrote him a note that excused him from the rest of the student practice sessions up to the group exam date set for late April.
At the end of the lesson, both Hermione and Nott had managed to Apparate without splinching, which won ten points each for Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
The textbooks said that prior experience with Side-Along Apparition made independent Apparition easier for the student trainee; passengers felt the squeeze of the transition just as strongly as the navigator, and learning to grasp that peculiar phase of "non-being" as required was the whole purpose of their Ministry-overseen lessons. Tom was pleased to note that his own practical experimentation had culminated in Hermione's own success—though he kept the information to himself, not wanting to dim the delighted grin that had spread over her face once she'd landed in her own hoop for the first time.
Nott, he assumed, had prior experience Apparating with his house elf servant, that wrinkly little thing he'd seen in the hospital foyer that resembled a hairless ladies' lapdog, only overgrown and walking around on two legs. It even had a dog's collar, which matched the one he'd seen in Nott's memories, golden and imprinted with runes, sealed around the throat of the grey hound with a longer coat and sturdier build than the one his father owned.
Had owned, rather.
The memories that he'd gotten from the boy were still confusing, even weeks after their... confrontation. It was unlike the times he'd delved through the Acromantula's mind, or even his father's; afterwards, he'd gone back to the room in the dungeons where the spider had been locked up over Christmas, and tested his skill on it, and he'd found that, no, it hadn't deteriorated over the break, and he could rummage through the monotonous internal routines of sleeping in a wooden box and eating melted chicken, just as he'd done months ago.
Nott was the anomaly: he'd resisted Tom's power. Not entirely—Tom had seen him, seen his mind, been him, in that short time he'd had access to the boy's mind. But it hadn't been free access, had it? Half the images he'd seen were from his own memories, and the ones that weren't, the threads of colour and sound that he'd tried to catch and follow to their source, had been barred from his reach. He'd been told that mind magic was a rare and restricted art; Dumbledore had lectured him during their teatime conversations, giving a stern warning on the value of discretion and prudence when it came to exercising his talents outside of the professor's office. If he hadn't been told, Tom would have suspected Nott of performing basic Occlumency.
It was curious, especially as the first time he'd really used his powers to delve into a human mind, it had been Nott's mind, in the dormitory bathroom over a year ago. Nott had tried to resist then, and their connection had snapped after he'd broken off eye contact. It bore further study, as the most interesting things he'd seen this time around were scenes of Nott's childhood. They were as interesting as watching Hermione's owl, Gilles, devour garden voles on his bedroom windowsill—educational, surely, and entertaining if there weren't any orphans in dire need of disciplinary reinforcement, but in the end they hadn't provided him with the answers he'd been seeking.
They hadn't given Tom anything incriminating.
What, for instance, was the nature of Nott's peculiar relationship with Hermione Granger? There was no trace of her in his memory. Why would Nott risk his life on what Tom had assumed was a bluff? Was it even a bluff?
He was absolutely certain that Nott was guilty of something—it was just a matter of finding out what it was.
The truce they'd made wouldn't stop him from looking for an ulterior motive. It would be foolish not to look deeper, because people didn't chase wild geese for no reason. They did it because they believed that those geese were real, and were capable of laying golden eggs.
No one sought the Fountain of Fair Fortune unless they had a magical wish for which they'd risk the journey. To his detriment, he knew the story that Nott had mentioned, as it had been a stage play put on a few years ago by Professor Beery and a dozen students who'd stayed at the castle for Christmas holiday. Tom had also looked up the Hallows in the library card catalogue and had been directed to a tatty old children's book in the wizarding literature section, a shelf that contained many romance novels with titles like The Landgrave of Castle Cöpenick or The Mysterious Mister Maximilian, adorned with lurid frontispieces of pale-faced young men with severe widow's peaks, frothy lace cravats, and extravagant frock coats. (He assumed that this was the type of literature that was written for an audience of young witches, the same way Le Jardin Parfumé was prized by young wizards.)
Those who hunted the Hallows were the same sort of people, who, in the Muggle world, would have been after Excalibur, the Holy Grail, or bits of the True Cross. These people were under the mistaken impression that uniting these historical relics would make them the Rightful King of England, or the next Pope, or grant them divine powers—and that last one was ridiculous to Tom, who knew that divine powers were a question of birth, not bequest. Collecting magical sticks wouldn't make Muggles magical, even if they'd once been owned by the likes of Jesus Christ or Garrick Ollivander.
Nott wanted to find the Chamber of Secrets.
This was a topic not so easily found in the Hogwarts library, falling as it did in the murky area between wizarding history and magical folklore. Tom knew, as every junior Slytherin did, about the history of their House's founder, Salazar Slytherin. It had been a story the Prefects had told by the Common Room fireplace back in First Year, and it was taught more as a moral lesson than an objective recounting of historical fact. Slytherin had been a great wizard; he'd quarrelled with his co-founders; he left the castle but was remembered to this very day by his proud successors, which included this year's intake of Firsties, yes indeed...
Tom, listening to the Prefects, had taken it as an origin story, and like most origin stories—especially ones imparted to young children—had soon relegated it in his mind as blatant propaganda at worst, and inconsequential trivia at best.
Who cared about Salazar Slytherin? Hogwarts was the man's greatest work, and he had been so unwise as to argue with his colleagues three against one, instead of cornering them one-by-one and persuading them to his side in slow increments, starting with Rowena Ravenclaw. (She seemed like the most sensible and pragmatic of the three.) That was the real lesson there, that sometimes one had to compromise, or at least pander to the audience, to get what one wanted from them.
(The most sensible decision, as Tom had deduced after hearing the tale, had been for Slytherin to outwardly agree with the other founders, while keeping his personal experiments and ideals a secret. Tom had read in The Times about the concept of the 'Fifth Column', an infiltrator who undermined a group from the inside, and thought Slytherin could have made a good Fourth Column had he been more inclined toward subtlety.)
The weeks passed toward April, and Nott set about uncovering more information on the Chamber, while Tom maintained his distance, indifferent to the prospect of contributing to the quest. There were other things to distract him: Apparition lessons were no longer on his agenda, but the end of Sixth Year was drawing close, and with it came Hermione's stressing about the N.E.W.T.s, looking into career opportunities after school, and her ever-present anxiety about the state of the war. London and the Home Counties were still being raided by the Germans, and on the Continent, it didn't look as if the volunteer resistance against Grand Minister Grindelwald was making much headway.
The Muggles had made some efforts into liberating Southern Europe, but on the magical side, Grindelwald still had a strong core of support in occupied Scandinavia and central Europe. Wizards on the Continent didn't pay much attention to modern political borders, but language and social class were a uniting factor, and members of the monied classes of each magical nation—those who were both influential and well-placed—had in recent months become targets of conversion... or destruction.
Hermione had been upset about this, reading the newspapers forwarded to her from the underground press in Leiden. She compared them to the headlines of The Daily Prophets she'd borrowed from Clarence Fitzpatrick, which relayed the usual procession of Quidditch scores, human-interest stories, and gaudy moving photographs of the latest society birthday or engagement announcement.
"We ought to pay a visit to the Ministry before the holidays," she said. "You're a journalist, Tom! If anyone could find out what the Ministry of Magic is suppressing, it's you."
"I'd never be able to publish anything classified," Tom pointed out. He doubted his readership, who had minimal patience for things that couldn't improve the quality of their daily lives, would find anything of interest in international news.
"No," said Hermione slowly, "but it'll be worth it to know if the Ministry is even doing anything about the war. And if they're not..." She trailed off, her lips pursing and her expression twisted into one of conflicted apprehension. "Well, we're both adults by wizarding standards now, so I can't stop you from thinking about an Order of Merlin, since I know you well enough to suspect that not bringing it up in conversation all the time doesn't mean you've forgotten about it..."
"I haven't," Tom confirmed. "But I'm surprised that you aren't trying to dissuade me."
"To be truthful," said Hermione, "I don't think I could. But I know that if I told you to be careful and think through your decisions—instead of being impatient and greedy—you'd listen to me."
"The fact that you don't believe it when I say that we were meant for each other," said Tom, looking so intently at Hermione that she looked away and down at her hands, "astounds me."