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By the time spring had arrived, the students of Fifth Year began marking the days before the exam on their calendars.
Tom counted the days before Hogwarts closed its gates for the summer. He didn't care about the O.W.L.s. Out of the entire Fifth Year cohort, it seemed as if he and Hermione were the only students who weren't stressing over the impending exams, at least not to the extent where they were vomiting in public or found weeping on the floor of the Common Room, surrounded by a stack of notes.
Whenever Tom opened his dormitory door and from the hallway saw Bronwyn Summers lying on a pile of parchment like she was making a snow angel, he closed it, took a deep breath, then cast a Disillusionment Charm before going about his day. This wasn't his responsibility, and neither was cleaning up a Second Year girl's bloodied bedsheets at five o'clock on a Saturday morning when she woke up, woke everyone up with her screaming, and made her dorm mates fetch the the nearest Prefect, preferably 'the nice one, you know, the dishy one with the good hair'.
Slytherin had two female Prefects and a Head Girl. Hogwarts had a Hospital Wing with a licensed Mediwitch. Why did they they wake him up to deal with it?
(He learned later that it was because Hipworth believed it to be unacceptable to be seen in her nightgown outside of her dormitory, and it took twenty minutes for her to make herself decent. For some reason, it didn't matter to her if people saw Tom in his nightshirt and pyjamas, which he personally thought rather unfair. As unfair as it was for other people to count his magical accomplishments secondary in favour of his hair.)
Tom's reputation had preceded him by the time he was invited to Slughorn's office for his highly unanticipated career advisory meeting.
He'd already known what to expect from the meeting, with Avery and Lestrange having gone before him. There would be tea, and a plate of biscuits, and Professor Slughorn recommending career options, their number and variety directly proportionate to how much potential Slughorn saw in the student sitting across from his desk.
Rosier and Travers, waiting in the Common Room with him for their appointment—they'd all been assigned time slots, ordered by their surnames—weren't worried about their futures.
"I've always wanted to be a Quidditch commentator," said Rosier, fingering the slip of paper that marked his appointment for half-past three on Saturday afternoon. "All you have to do is show up to the pitch and spout your opinions into a speaking trumpet. And free tickets for every match! What's not to like about it?"
Tom didn't mention that he already qualified for free Quidditch tickets, as a perk of having the Press Badge awarded to him last year. Rosier would probably be appalled by the fact that Tom had never written in to request a single ticket; if he knew, Rosier would have tried to talk Tom into using his Prefect privileges to sneak him out on a Hogsmeade weekend to attend a game. Tom didn't mind breaking school rules, for the right price, naturally—but there was something disgraceful about doing it for Quidditch.
"Your family wouldn't like it," Travers put in, fingers picking at the buttons on the leather chesterfield sofa. The Slytherin Common Room was littered with chesterfields and wingback armchairs in black leather and green velvet. At night, when the fires were lit and the Seventh Years commandeered the best seats for their weekly whisky social, the place more than not resembled an exclusive gentlemen's club. "Mine wouldn't; it's off to the Ministry after Hogwarts for me."
Quentin Travers was a sharp-featured young man whose temperament leaned towards dour on the best of days. His family were considered to be of good name and blood, but they hadn't the affluence of the Blacks, the Malfoys, or the Lestranges; instead, the Travers family had built their reputation on generations of civil service. Travers' father had been a former head of DMLE. He'd since retired, but remained on the Auror training standards commission, a sinecure position that let him in and out of the Minister's office on a weekly basis.
Rosier pulled a face. "Pater wouldn't approve, but commentator is better than player, in his eyes. I s'pose I could try out for the Department of Magical Games and Sports—you think I could get a myself a spot where I wouldn't have to sit behind a desk all day? I've done more than my share of it already."
"If your father rubs elbows with the Director, I don't see why not," said Travers, shrugging. "I've heard that M.G.-and-S. always have a few bludge spots open for the bucks. They're never meant to be long-term though—if you're not there to make a career of it, they expect you to resign for fresh meat as soon as you settle yourself with a witch."
"I'll never get myself a witch, then. Simple as that," Rosier spoke candidly. "Pater has already started talking about getting a husband for Dru. She's looked forward to having her own house for years. I say let her have it, and let her carry on the family legacy."
Travers grunted in concurrence. "What about you, Riddle?"
Tom lifted his eyes from the pages of Anatomica Arthropoda. "What about me?"
"Got any plans for when you leave Hogwarts?"
"A few."
"Oh, come on, Riddle," Rosier coaxed, leaning forward and looking expectantly at Tom. "Do tell. Do you want to join the Ministry and shuffle parchment with the best of us? Or be a professor? You're heaps better than Merrythought, the old bag, and Sluggy would love to have you at his side for every meal at the High Table."
"'Professor Riddle'," said Travers in a slow, thoughtful voice. "Doesn't sound terrible; it all but rolls off the tongue. And could you do any better than that? Not everyone has the wherewithal to do whatever they want, like Edmond's family."
Lestrange and Avery were in the position of being able to choose their post-Hogwarts situations at their own leisure; of those choices, they were given the opportunity to do nothing at all. Respectable unemployment came part and parcel for those of their social standing. They had large family estates; the estates had land set aside for breeding magical creatures or cultivating magical plants which were then processed for sale and export by estate personnel. The members of the family didn't have to lift a single finger to keep sitting on their piles and piles of gold.
"You talk of sitting by Slughorn's right hand three times a day as if it's a good thing," Tom remarked. "Believe you me, if you were made to sit through dinner with him trying to push one last piece of pineapple on you, then take another one 'for the road', you'd realise how vastly overrated it is to be in the Slug Club. Slughorn's useful, but sometimes he makes himself more trouble than he's worth." Tom glanced at the clock, noting that the time was ten to two. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've an appointment to get to."
Tom closed his book and got to his feet, to the farewells and well-wishes of Travers and Rosier.
When he arrived to the door of Slughorn's office, it was closed, suggesting that whoever had their appointment before him hadn't yet finished. Tom had arrived early in any case, so he was content to wait in the hallway and think up reasonable ways to refuse Slughorn's career suggestions.
I can't be a Mediwizard, sir; I get frightfully sick at the sight of blood. Herbology's out for me, sorry. I'm allergic to compost and any kind of fertiliser that came out of an animal's rear end. I'm afraid I can't accept that trainee post at the Department of Administrative Registration; I once got my hand stuck in the library's card catalogue and now filing cabinets give me night terrors—remember that time I set that wardrobe on fire a few years ago? That was because it gave me flashbacks, terrible things. Sometimes I go nights without sleeping a wink, Professor...
Two o'clock came, and a few minutes past the hour, Slughorn's office door opened to reveal Nott's anaemic-looking face.
Nott's eyes widened; he took a half-step back upon seeing Tom standing at the threshold.
For a fraction of a second, their eyes met, and Tom got a sense of the churning emotions that Nott was attempting to suppress: anxiety, dread, concern on behalf of someone else, a person he strongly associated with powdered chalk and winter frost, then a sudden wash of mortification at feeling such concern—
Nott dropped his gaze to the floor and brushed past Tom, muttering "Riddle" in a desultory greeting as he walked away, shoulders hunched.
That was curious, thought Tom, watching Nott's retreating back. He knocked on the doorframe.
"Professor Slughorn, sir?"
"Ah, Tom! Right on time!" Slughorn waved him into the seat in front of the desk. "Sit down, sit down."
Similar to Dumbledore's office, Slughorn's office tended toward clutter over asceticism. While Dumbledore had his self-invented magical gadgets and enchanted doodads, Slughorn's collection consisted of memorabilia that he'd been given over the years by his former pupils and protégés: Quidditch player miniatures spinning about on animated broomsticks, small statuettes of carved whalebone and soapstone in the shapes of seals and Egyptian cats, a Polynesian tiki mask and an Oriental lacquered box containing what appeared to be brushes and thin black sticks of dried ink. Behind the Professor's desk was the shelf that took pride of place—Slughorn's real collection, row after row of framed photographs of his favourite students. Some of them were signed, and most of them contained images of young men and women waving and smiling at the camera.
Tom sat, adjusting the drape of his robes, bought for the first time with his own money and not the pouch of galleons given him through the Hogwarts Relief Fund.
(During the summer, he'd replaced his old clothes for all new things. He'd long since thrown away the threadbare grey pyjamas he'd brought with him from Wool's, and outgrown the clothing the Grangers had given him in the summer after Third Year. After receiving his badge in the mail, he'd decided that as a Prefect, he ought to make a proper showing of it, and he couldn't do it with his cuffs riding up and his trouser hems skimming high.)
"Have you put any thought into your future occupation, Tom?" asked Slughorn, shuffling parchments about his desk. "I hold that you'd make an excellent Potions Master; I can't recall marking your work for anything less than an O for all your years here. Top marks on the essays, perfect potion every time, never seen anything like it!" In a conspicuous false-whisper, he added, "Last year, I sent your Pepper-Ups to the Hospital Wing with my own batch, and no one was the wiser, hoho!"
And that's not irresponsible at all, thought Tom. "I'm always happy to help when I can, sir. Hogwarts is a second home to me."
"Helping, eh?" Slughorn stroked his moustache. "With your current marks, you'd be set to take N.E.W.T. level Potions next year. St. Mungo's is always in need of good brewers and apothecary assistants—they'd take you on as an apprentice if you've got a recommendation or two to your name. You'd only have to ask, my boy."
"I'll consider it," Tom replied politely. It was predictable for Slughorn to try and steer him into an occupation of the professor's preference; it might have even worked on a student who was more aimless than ambitious in their future aspirations. "But what about my other classes? I've done as well in them as I have in yours—that's not to say I don't like Potions, which I do—but I've been told that I'm doing quite well in both my core subjects and my electives."
Slughorn deflated a bit, his moustache drooping down like the whiskers of a dejected terrier. "Well, Albus has always kept a keen eye on you, asking me how you were doing and so on. If you like Transfiguration or have an interest in Alchemy, I suppose some arrangement can be made..."
Obviously, Tom couldn't tell Professor Slughorn up-front that none of the options appealed to him. And he certainly couldn't say, "This is a waste of time, I've got better things to do", and walk out of the office. He had a job already. It wasn't a conventional desk job with appearance guidelines, an office with an owling address, and a Gringotts vault transfer that arrived on the same day every month. But it paid him good money, and all he had to do was submit a minimum of one article a month to be credited as a regular contributor. One article, and then he could spend the rest of the month on the kind of magic he wanted to study.
During the holidays, he'd begun thinning out the meat of his articles and padding it with filler content, answering the questions readers sent him in their fan mail. His responses came in the form of handy housework tips on how to de-crust an oven, renew lighting charms on Christmas baubles, or layer an Impervius over a heating charm on Wellington boots so that one spell didn't end up nullifying the other.
(No one, either readership or editorial staff, seemed to care how low-effort his submissions were; in fact, it only reinforced the impression of his being caring and sympathetic to the point that Witch Weekly had created an official Mr. Bertram Advice Column, complete with a header graphic of a wand superimposed over a crossed spatula and dish brush.)
Tom just had to sit there and pretend, just like he pretended to be worried about the O.W.L.s, or that he cared about the feelings of twelve-year-old girls who filled their diaries with detailed accounts of that time Tom the Prefect asked them to pass the salt cellar at dinner.
"I'm rather partial to Defence, sir."
"Oh, yes," said Slughorn, failing to hide his disappointment in Tom's ambivalence towards a Potions career. He rifled through the parchments on his desk. "I see you've gotten first place in the practical exams every year. The Auror Training Program would have you if you applied—they want five N.E.W.T.s of Exceeds Expectations or higher, which I can't see you not getting, not with your ten O.W.L. subjects this year."
"The Aurors?" Tom inclined his head. "Sir, what's the difference between Aurors and hit wizards? I see them mentioned all the time in The Prophet, involved in various inquiries for the Ministry, but I wasn't aware of the distinction. Is one better than the other?"
"Hit wizards are our everyday law enforcement," Slughorn explained. "Burglaries, Muggle baiting, lost Kneazles, and so on—hardworking fellows they are, my boy, but you could do to set your sights higher. Aurors are the élite: they deal specifically with dark wizards, and with the Dark Lord on the Continent, it would be a coup on their part to recruit a young man of your potential, Tom—not that I want to see you in such a dangerous job, of course, but it's a worthy service. Very respectable, a good start for someone wanting to climb the ladder, as one might see it."
"Dangerous, sir?" Tom's expression morphed into one of concern. "What does that mean?"
Slughorn dithered for a moment or so. "My dear boy, dark wizards aren't the most friendly of characters. I know that Defence Against the Dark Arts does its best in teaching students how to prepare themselves for everyday life, but what you learn in class is far, far removed to chasing after and hunting down violent criminals."
"I see," said Tom solemnly, looking down at his lap and then at the professor. "Is it possible to learn more about what the job entails? I don't think it would be a good look to set my sights on the Training Program and then resign the first week for it not being what I expected. I'd still have all my N.E.W.T.s, but I can't see the Ministry being happy about someone so new sending in a request for an inter-departmental transfer."
"It's always well-advised for students to think carefully about their futures," Slughorn said sagely, nodding his head. "I should hate to see any of my Slytherins squander their talent. The Ministry can be ungenerous at times—unless you happen to know the right people—and it would be my greatest shame to see you wasted in Magical Maintenance or, Merlin forbid it, the mail-sorting office."
Slughorn's head gave a rueful shake, jowls quivering in imagined indignation. Then he fumbled in his desk, drawing out a library slip, on which he jotted down a few titles and signed his name at the bottom. "There are a few Auror training manuals in the Restricted Section. For the ordinary student, I would refrain from recommending such serious reading material until after the O.W.L.s. But your records, Tom, are beyond exemplary—I trust that you'd never let your marks slip."
Tom ducked his head bashfully. "Thank you, sir."
"Do come to me if you have any other questions, Tom," Slughorn said, folding the library slip in half and holding it out to Tom. Just before it dropped into Tom's waiting hand, Slughorn asked, "I'll see you at the next dinner evening, won't I?"
"Of course, sir."
"And do give our dear Miss Granger my regards." Slughorn tipped him a huge wink, and continued, "I hope you'll bring her with you next time; she's a lovely girl. I only wish she could be one of my Slytherins, but if you've already spoken for her, then I daresay that's good enough for me, oho!"
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Tom visited the spider as often as his patrol schedule allowed.
'The Spider', as he called it, had been given another name by Hagrid, a peculiar and troll-ish sounding name that he'd discovered late one night while tearing through the creature's memories.
Doing so had given him a headache, as the spider's mind, having some semblance of organisation due to its sentience, didn't have anything that resembled human senses. Its memories weren't based on images like his own, but a succession of feelings and impressions: the movement of air currents, or the lack of them, within its egg, then the quiet stillness of the trunk in which it had been hatched; the texture and temperature of the half-frozen rabbits Hagrid snared in the Forest; the thermal variation of the room that Tom had locked it in, cold near the floors, but with bright points of heat on the far walls where the magical fires burned in their sconces day and night.
Tom checked in regularly to maintain the spells that kept the room clean and warm, as the Hogwarts dungeons were well known to be freezing in the winter. And he ensured that the locking charms on the door remained secure, so that what he had done to Hagrid could not be done to him.
He didn't like the spider, and from probing into its mind, saw that it didn't like him. It saw him as a threat, a danger, an unknown entity. Nothing Tom did—not that he did much—changed its view on him, since he always kept it at wandpoint in order to "train" it to keep its distance from him. He had also told it firmly from the start that Hagrid was never coming back, which made the spider chitter in agitation before Tom got tired of it and shoved it back in the trunk.
A few minor memory charms had faded those memories of Hagrid, but it turned out that Acromantulas had some form of imprint memory that never went away, a fact that hadn't been mentioned in the bestiaries.
It meant that Tom never turned his back on the spider, and the spider always kept alert when Tom drew his wand; several visits after the day its ownership had been 'transferred', the spider had come to understand that the white stick of wood meant bodily paralysis and darkness.
It was also getting to be quite irritating as the spider grew larger and its mind developed the capacity to think beyond its sleeping arrangements and the delivery of its next meal. Tom was therefore glad to have found some books that offered a solution to his problems.
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Chapter One: An Introduction to Dark Wizardry
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Practitioners of the Dark Arts have been many and varied over history, but they share one thing in common—the use of spells, potions, magical items, and dark creatures to perform illegal acts with malicious intent. To the modern Auror, the most indisputable exercise of Dark Magic is in the casting of the three Unforgivable Curses, whose use on a human being invokes the strictest of all penalties for magical crimes: a life sentence to an island in the North Sea known as Azkaban Prison...
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"Huh," said Tom, putting the book down and marking his place with a quill. "There are only three so-called 'Unforgivable' curses. I'd have thought there'd be more, knowing how much havoc one competent wizard can create with the right motivation. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; competence among wizards is like finding a diamond in the muck, and you're proof of what I'm talking about, aren't you?"
The spider didn't reply. In the passing months, it had grown to the size of a dog, only fitting inside the trunk if its legs were folded in and squished down. The fangs had elongated and were now capable of producing a weak venom on top of its digestive fluid—an acid that was currently dribbling into a bowl of cold chicken, liquefying the meat before it could be sucked up through the spidery mouthparts.
Tom didn't stare too long at it. He'd packed his charmed lunchbox with a chicken sandwich of his own, carved from the same roasted bird that the spider was eating, and it would only put him off his own food to wonder what liquid chicken tasted like.
When he'd finished his sandwich, he returned to the book, skimming over the first chapter to move on to the next, which contained a summary of the Unforgivable Curses.
He spread out a clean roll of parchment on the floor of the abandoned classroom, set the tip of his Dictation Quill to the top corner, then began making notes as he read.
"The Killing Curse," said Tom, setting his shoulders back and clasping his hands behind his back. "Spell colour: green. Six syllable incantation, banned in competitive duelling, not recommended for combat duelling. Leaves no marks, an obvious sign of foul play by a dark wizard. Conclusion: obscure or fast-metabolising lethal poison is just as effective, and cause of death will not automatically be associated with dark magic.
"The Cruciatus Curse. Spell colour: red. Three syllable incantation, banned in competitive duelling. Potentially useful for combat duelling due to its short incantation, relatively direct intent, and shield-piercing ability. Commonly believed to leave no marks, but may cause potential nervous and neural damage from extended use. Aurors look for signs of broken fingernails, bloodied tongues, residual jitters, and heart palpitations. Conclusion: useful within limits. Can be substituted with a less detectable spell, such as the localised vascular constriction spell, or a hair-growth charm altered to produce ingrowths.
"The Imperius Curse," Tom dictated in a clear voice, slowing down as he waited for the quill to copy down his words. "Spell colour: yellow-green. Four syllables, not recommended for duelling, commonly believed to leave no marks. Aurors look for signs of unfocused gaze, milky eyes, inexplicable personality shifts, unusual behaviour, and an inability to answer standard security questions. Conclusion: extremely promising, but requires thorough preparation."
The quill scribbled the last word down and went still, poised over the bottom of the parchment. Tom picked it up, read it over, then dried the ink with a swish of his wand.
These were the spells he'd chased after from First Year. And now that he had them in his grasp, he couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed at how very underwhelming they were.
It wasn't as if they were bad spells. They weren't.
They were tried and true magical classics, a dark wizard's bread-and-butter for the last few hundred years. The spells had a whole section in the Auror's handbook dedicated to identifying and resisting them. They were infamous to the extent that speaking of them in company was apparently considered poor form, which explained how none of the Hogwarts teachers had ever mentioned them in class, not even by glancing reference, despite how advantageous it would be for the general public to know the symptoms of their use. In criminal trials, the court adjudicates refrained, whenever possible, from referring to the Curses by name, preferring blanket euphemisms such as illicit magics or grievous magical assault.
Therein lay a problem: these Curses—this dark magic—might perhaps be useful, but they were analogous to trademarked tools passed from hand to hand. A blacksmith's hammer and anvil, handed on to his journeyman to carry the noble craft into the next generation.
Like a hammer, these Unforgivable Curses were blunt.
Like an anvil, when all your works were built on it, everyone knew you to be a blacksmith. Or in this case, a dark wizard.
It was hardly inconspicuous for a wizard who wanted to go about his business without the Aurors blasting his door down. And these days, the Aurors were on high alert with the number of dark wizards gallivanting about Europe, most of whom were the agents of the darkest of dark wizards, Lord Grindelwald. The Aurors were willing to arrest on the barest suspicion; in these chaotic times, public confidence mattered more than reasonable doubt. And thus it made the use of textbook dark magic more of a liability than an advantage.
Some part of Tom, the part of him that was repulsed by conformity, at the notion of being ordinary, was loath to use those spells, despite—or rather, because of how traditional they were.
Tradition.
In Tom's eyes, that was another word for 'unimaginative' and 'uninspired'.
But he decided it was worthwhile to study them anyway, because the other parts of him were realistic and practical; they recognised that something couldn't ascend to the status of a tradition unless it was effective.
(He recalled a dinner table conversation from years ago, on the subject of crystal balls and human sacrifice. Dark wizards wouldn't be throwing around Unforgivable Curses if there was a kinder, non-dark alternative that worked just as quickly and effectively. A spell intended purely for human torture—and wasn't dark—seemed a bit of a stretch, but had anyone even tried their hand at inventing it?)
Tom took a deep breath and drew his wand, pointing it at the spider.
One of the spider's eight eyes caught the movement. The disgusting clicking and slurping of liquid chicken stopped. It lifted up its front two forelegs, hooked claws poised for action.
"The Aurors say this won't leave a mark," Tom spoke softly, staring down at the dog-sized Acromantula. "Let's see if they were right."
The spider leaped at him.
"Imperio!"
A beam of yellow-green flashed from the tip of Tom's wand.
In the middle of its jump, the spider's limbs curled up around its abdomen, and when it hit Tom's Shield Charm, only its back made contact with the shield, before it bounced off and rolled onto the floor in a compact ball.
Tom kept his wand trained on the beast as its legs unfolded and it backed away from him, forelegs gathered under its thorax, hooks pressed to the floor. The black marbles of its eyes had lost their shine.
So, thought Tom, holding his wand steady and concentrating on maintaining the spell, A successful casting of the Imperius is nothing but a contest of my will against another's.
All he had to do was wish for the spider not to hurt him, but as it had already jumped when the order came, its compliance was limited by both inertia and its own physical strength.
That was a weakness there: the Imperius Curse wasn't infallible. Its effectiveness directly corresponded to the limitations of the spell's subject. The spider would bite people if he commanded it to, but it couldn't sneak into the Restricted Section at night to transcribe books with a Dictation Quill, because it couldn't read. (And Tom was not interested in teaching it; he'd had enough of this with the members of his homework club, who'd shown him that devising magical methods of self-lobotomy could be a more constructive use of his time.)
"I wonder what else the book got right," Tom mused, mentally ordering the Acromantula to remain still. He lowered himself to his knees and peered into the eight milky eyes, wand held at the ready. "Show me."
For an instant, there were two Toms in the classroom, one Tom Riddle looking down at the floor, and the other looking up into the familiar dark eyes and pale features of his own face. His perception was split between ten different eyes pointed in six different directions, his senses expanding in a disorienting manner to encompass the entirety of the room, from the cold draught slipping through from under the door, to the wafting warmth of the lit torches on the walls, and the smallest scrape of shoe soles on the stone floor; it was not just the sound of it he heard, but he felt it, too—through the lightest of brushes against his skin, every tiny movement translated into a sequence of vibrations that he could just barely separate into its individual elements; it was like having a cup of sand poured from a height into his palm, then discerning the journey of a single grain.
A blink—a flicker—a forceful press of will—
Then Tom moved from the exterior senses, piercing into the spider's inner mind; he felt what it felt, and what it felt was...
Comfort.
It was pure sensation that swept through him—it—them, of being secure and sheltered, darkness curving around them on all sides in the egg, then the firm and gentle hands of Rubeus Hagrid peeling back the shell to reveal the shape and colour of the world.
It was the contentment of being held, the tender caress of a kindred spirit, reassurance by way of a powerful, irresistible connection that was not merely physical, but something greater and more profound. They were made glad by the warmth of this feeling, and they wanted this feeling to continue; they wanted nothing more than that. There existed nothing else in the world that mattered more—
Tom pulled his mind back and broke eye contact, immensely disturbed by what had transpired.
So this was how the Imperius Curse worked.
No wonder people used it all the time. He himself had almost been drawn into it, tempted by the false sensations it offered. And it was false—extremely so. It was artificial to the point of offensiveness, a pale forgery of what he knew the real thing felt like.
Tom was torn between a mix of disgust and discomfort. He felt as if the spell had infringed upon something personal, taken something private and... and special, then produced a distorted imitation of it, which was then tossed in his face—the same way the boggart in Merrythought's wardrobe had dredged up his deepest fears in the middle of the classroom.
He cleared his throat, adjusted his wand grip to keep his hand from shaking, and said, "Well, that was one down. On to the next, then."
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Tom bumped into Hermione after lunch that Sunday, when he was returning the Auror handbook to the library. Hermione had her own armload of books and was waiting impatiently for the librarian to finish stamping the return date slips in the back cover of each book.
"Tom!" said Hermione, waving at him.
"Shhh!" said the librarian.
Hermione hand flew to her mouth. "Sorry," she whispered.
The librarian's only response was to purse her lips and continue stamping books at a glacial pace. Stamp the slip, dab the stamp into the inkpad, open the next book, repeat ad finitum. For all the practice she'd put in over the years, Tom thought she was terribly slow at her job. One would think that at some point the Board of Governors would have stepped in and replaced her with an enchanted stamp.
Tom waited for Hermione to collect her books. When she had trouble fitting all of them into her bag and had to dump everything and re-organise the contents to make room, Tom grabbed the books and motioned to the door. They left the library together.
"That was a book on Aurors you returned," Hermione remarked, once they'd removed themselves from the librarian's jurisdiction. "Is that what you want to do after Hogwarts?"
"Not particularly," said Tom. "I just needed an excuse to keep Slughorn off my back, otherwise he'd keep thinking I want to be the next Potioneer Grandmaster. And I remember you saying how Slughorn's career advice would be better than Beery's—a book turned out to be more useful than he was. How was your career advisory session, by the way?"
"Ugh." Hermione grimaced. "Professor Beery gave me a pocketful of leaflets. One to an amateur production of The Lake of Shining Waters, and a few W.A.D.A. pamphlets."
"'W.A.D.A'? Never heard of it."
"The Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts," said Hermione. "He said it was very exclusive, but when I asked what the N.E.W.T. requirements were, they have didn't have any!"
"What an outrage," Tom agreed.
By this time, they'd reached the door of the classroom that served as the homework club's headquarters. Tom had charmed the lock so that only he could open the door. It wasn't his intention to prevent other members from using the room for practice sessions during the week, when he wasn't around—he simply didn't trust them to clean up after themselves. He liked the floor clear of blood and the furniture intact, thanks. He didn't want to sit down on a chair and have it fall to bits right under him; there wasn't an ounce of dignity in his being forced to prise splinters out of the seat of his pants.
It was half an hour before the other boys were scheduled to arrive, so for now, he and Hermione could discuss topics unrelated to school assignments or the upcoming exams. Muggle news and Britain's contributions in the war, for instance, were things that he didn't speak of in the presence of other Slytherins.
"Have you made plans for the summer?" Hermione asked, taking her newly borrowed books out of his arms and laying them on a nearby desk. "I can't imagine that you'd want to go back to Wool's. The rationing's gotten even stricter these days; they're no longer giving out civilian petrol tickets, so Dad has to save his for work emergencies—no more driving me to Diagon Alley every week like last summer."
"I'm not going back to Muggle London," said Tom. "I'll find a wizarding place to stay. If it's not the same one as last time, I'll give you an address or a post box to write to."
He wasn't sure about risking another summer at The Hog's Head, as he'd almost been caught out last time and had only just fixed the problem with his own quick thinking. Had he been out for any longer—gone to The Broomsticks for a breakfast fry-up, or the Hogsmeade grocer to pick up the day's bread—and had Old Ab been more of a Slytherin instead of confronting him head-on in typical Gryffindor fashion, things would have been much worse for Tom.
As it was, he'd avoided Ab every time he went near or into The Hog's Head. From then on, as everyone else did who frequented the place, he went in with the hood of his cloak on and ordered the house slop without complaining about its strange taste, Vanishing it wordlessly from under the table. (He wasn't sure if everyone else did that too, but if they didn't, they should definitely start.) He knew that if he hadn't made an effort to pass as a regular when hawking vials of Acromantula venom, the other patrons would have formed suspicions of his being a plainclothes Auror on the hunt for smugglers.
"I was wondering," Hermione began nervously, her hands fidgeting over the stack of books; she'd been sorting them by size in order to fit them into her bag, "about the summer..."
"What about it?"
"My Mum volunteered me into going to a veterans' fundraiser event. It sounded like a good idea when she introduced it to me—I've always wanted to do something to help with the war, since Mum's church group evacuated out of London and we can't visit children's homes and orphanages anymore—but then I found out yesterday it wasn't just a fundraiser," said Hermione, the words pouring out of her in a breathless rush.
"And?"
"It's a—a charity gala!" she squeaked. "A ball!"
"How exciting," said Tom. "Although I'm not sure of its relevance to me."
"I wanted to invite you as my, um, guest," Hermione said, the pink in her cheeks accentuating her freckles. "I saw the guest list—they're old army contacts, Dad's classmates, their wives and children too, and I just know that they'll be asking me why I didn't go to Donwell Prep. I haven't been to a Muggle party since before Hogwarts, and I'm no good with making up stories, and, and—"
"And I am?" Tom raised his eyebrow in question.
"You have a gift for... interpreting facts," Hermione confessed. "I'm not saying that you have free rein to lie to them. Just make it seem like I'm getting a proper education, so it won't be strange if I ask them later on for a reference to enroll in a Muggle university."
"'Muggle university'?" Tom frowned. "What's this—you're going Muggle after Hogwarts?"
"I'm keeping my options open," said Hermione. "I'm not going to W.A.D.A., but I understand Professor Beery's reasons for offering it as an option: it's because most of the top offices in the Ministry are buttoned up by a handful of closely connected people whose families have held positions there for generations. Anyone who doesn't have those connections has to start from the bottom and work their way up, knowing that promotions will be few and far between. I don't have 'friends' like yours to help me out, Tom. So I'll have to rely on 'friends' I can find on my own."
"I can't say I'm fond of Beery's recruitment technique, but he's got a point about the Ministry," said Tom, who had been reading in bed while Rosier drafted letters to his father on the subject of inviting the director of the Magical Games and Sports Department to dinner during the summer. The other residents of the dormitory had found scrunched-up wads of paper inside their shoes for days. He let out a slow breath. "I'll go with you to your charity ball... but I want something in return."
Hermione regarded him with scepticism for a brief moment, before she appeared to have made up her mind. "What do you want?"
"You'll go with me to Slughorn's dinners for the rest of year. No excuses, no Prefect patrols—ask Mandicott to assign someone else to oversee detentions if you have to," said Tom. "He'll give in if you tell him it's for the Slug Club."
Tom was unlucky that one of the Heads this year was Hortensia Selwyn, a Slytherin. As a favour to Professor Slughorn, who'd given the recommendation to Headmaster Dippet that she be made Head Girl, Selwyn made sure the Slytherin Prefects had some or all of their Friday evenings free of official duties. This meant that the Prefects of other Houses took up the slack, but most of them didn't care about Slughorn's social club as much as the Slytherins did.
Hermione's nose wrinkled. "But there's eight weekends 'til the end of the year! Eight for one, that's unfair!"
Tom gave an indifferent shrug. "When have I ever cared about fairness?"
"Fine," Hermione sighed in resignation. "But you'll pretend you wanted to come to the ball, instead of moaning about talking to Muggles or having to wear a bowtie—and yes, you'll need a tie and tails! You'll smile for the photographer, shake hands with people even if you saw them lick crumbs off their fingers after eating the canapés, and be a Good Boy for Mum and Dad..."
"And pedal a unicycle backwards?"
"No, dance at least once."
"Even worse."
"It's five minutes at the most—what could go wrong?"
"I could tell you right before the music started that no one taught me how to dance."
Hermione choked. "Are you playing a joke on me, Tom? If you are, it's not funny!"
Tom gazed at her impassively. "Does it look like I'm joking you? Where would I have learned? Wool's didn't have a wireless set, and the only place I might have done is at a Muggle music hall—if they'd have let me in at my age. I haven't exactly spent much time in Muggle London since Second Year."
"I'll teach you," said Hermione quickly. "It wouldn't be music hall dancing, anyway—not in an event meant for selling tickets to rich people. All you have to do is count the time and keep off my feet. Here—"
She held out her hands, glanced down at them, wiped her palms on her skirt, and held them up to Tom again. Her eyes were bright and expectant.
Tom looked at her hands as if they were the last crushed beetle at the bottom of the student ingredient cupboard's communal jar.
"We made a deal," Hermione reminded him. "Please?"
Tom was very rarely confronted by the proof of his own ignorance. In class, he knew most of the subject material months or even years before they started. It wasn't hard when Flourish and Blott's kept a book list for years First through Seventh at the front counter, for all the students who'd forgotten their lists at home when they arrived to Diagon Alley to shop for their school supplies. When he learned something he didn't know, it was usually some small and irrelevant detail that wasn't written in the textbook, like the fact that Tentaculas were more docile when handled in low-light conditions.
This particular situation put him in mind of First Year, to his first broomstick riding lesson in Flying Class. It had shown him that there was only so much that a textbook could prepare one for. That he couldn't be an undisputed expert at every subject straight from the start. And that there were certain things that couldn't be learned through reading a textbook—at least not as well, and not as thoroughly, as being taught in person.
The person teaching him now was Hermione Granger.
Why shouldn't her knowledge be made his knowledge, too? There was no reason why it shouldn't. Hermione had never felt resentment about sharing information when they were younger, when all the books that he'd kept in his wardrobe at Wool's were books that had once belonged to her. And he had not resented her, at least, not after the first year or so when seeing her name on the interior bookplates had filled him with bitterness—but he'd quickly gotten over it after she'd initiated their friendship arrangement.
He begrudged her no longer. There was no reason why he should refuse her now.
He took her hands, and some detached part of his mind observed how slight they were compared to his own, and how every time he saw her, there was a different ink stain on her fingers. He remembered the first time when her hand had reached for his—he had wanted to slap it away. He couldn't recall why. Seeing her, having her close enough to touch, brought him to the verdict that nothing about it repelled him; instead he was drawn closer and closer, his gaze lingering on the delicate blue tracery of veins that ran from her soft palm down her wrist and into her sleeve.
"Eight for one," said Tom, tearing his gaze away. "The deal goes both ways."
She clasped his hands tightly. "Just do your part, and I'll do mine. Here," she nodded toward their feet, "watch and copy what I do."
She took a step to the side, and Tom followed. Then a step back, another step to the side in the opposite direction, then forwards.
"Just think of it as ornamental walking in the shape of a zigzag within a rectangle, repeated over and over," Hermione explained. "The point isn't to go anywhere, but to stay in one place until the music stops."
"I can't see why anyone bothers," Tom remarked.
"Socialisation, I suppose," said Hermione. "It was the only way young men and women in the old days could talk to each other privately. People cared about supervision back then, to an almost excessive degree."
"Hm," said Tom, who had picked up the steps and was now attempting to walk in reverse, so that he took the lead instead of Hermione. "What do you think they were talking about, if they needed the privacy for it?"
Hermione snorted. "Probably asking if they could address each other by their Christian names instead of Mister This and Mademoiselle That. Things were rather mild in those days." She glanced up at him, noting the lift of his brow and the glint in his eyes. "Why, what did you think they'd be saying?"
"Oh," said Tom, a smile curling up the corners of his mouth, "I don't think I should say it; we haven't any supervision, after all."
"Well, I'm not sure if I want to know anymore," said Hermione, her steps faltering. She looked at him somewhat dubiously, brows furrowed in consternation. "When you say mysterious things and act intentionally vague like that, it's never a good sign."
Tom's grip on her hand tightened; he leaned in close and said, "To everyone else but you, Hermione."
A second later, the doorknob rattled and turned. The door was flung open, to admit the members of the homework club, laughing and chattering amongst themselves. Avery was burdened by a number of class textbooks, Rosier a stack of colourful magazines. Lestrange was crunching on an apple, while Mulciber was working on a thick wedge of Bakewell tart wrapped in a cloth napkin.
Upon their entering the classroom, the laughter withered away.
Hermione tugged her hands free and stepped away from Tom, her cheeks reddening in quiet mortification.
"Are we practising footwork today, then?" asked Black, his question echoing in the sudden and uncomfortable silence. "I've never seen anything like that on the duelling platform."
"They weren't duelling, you idiot," someone hissed from the back. It sounded like Nott.
"Yeah, I know," Black replied over his shoulder, "but someone had to say something. Riddle has his killing face on."
"This happens to be my regular face," Tom interjected, exuding charm through a placid smile fixed on his face, in plain contradiction to the tense atmosphere of the room. His gaze traversed the length of the classroom, regarding each member of the club with a second or two of eye contact. Nott glanced away immediately, his scrawny frame ducking behind Avery's much larger one.
"Er," said Black. "Same difference?"
He could sense their discomfort, the prickle of it feeling as if the hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck were being tugged with a gentle pressure. Concentrating more, delving further, he sensed in them a mix of embarrassment, nervous regret, and then, for one brief moment, a flash of curiosity intertwined with sordid appreciation.
"If there's anything you'd like to say," he continued, gesturing at the door with an open hand. It swung shut without having to draw his wand or speak an incantation. "You have my permission to speak. As members of this group, I value all of your opinions." He paused, but aside from a few shuffling feet, chewing sounds, and the rustle of paper, no one made a peep.
"No?" said Tom. "Very well, then. The topic of today's meeting is Inanimate Object Conjuration and Vanishing. Granger will help me demonstrate."
The session that followed was the most productive they'd had the whole year. No one asked to go to the bathroom or fetch something from their dormitory—a five minute task that some members had in the past stretched to near half an hour. No fires were set, nothing exploded, and by the end of the lesson, even the Fourth Years could reliably Conjure and Vanish a functional chalk duster.