1944
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Amidst the maze of shelves, it was an easy task for Tom to slip away from Hermione and go his own way.
Tom had never seen libraries the same way as Hermione did. A library, to him, was a collection of information; a library possessed a certain breadth and convenience that wasn't offered by the Hogwarts professors, or at least the ones who'd posted a list of office hours and refused to answer their doors when students came calling outside of them. (Perhaps this was a good thing; most Friday evenings, Slughorn had himself a tipple with the weekly Club dinner, and any question asked of him was answered with a rambling anecdote, on subjects ranging from the latest Daily Prophet editorial to last summer's Ostrobothnian sweat lodge holiday tour.)
A person, an academic mind, a published work—they were merely tools, and he treated them like so. But Hermione, always an amusing contradiction, treated them with veneration.
Tom thought it rather strange; he considered few things on this Earth worthy of veneration, and a person least of all. Most people he'd met over the course of his life he could immediately class as inferior, and anyone that he didn't would inevitably be found disappointing. This had been a rule for him, with only one or two exceptions, and as he browsed through the archives, he happened across one source of fresh disappointment.
Someone, held in high esteem, was proven to be undeserving of it.
How delightful.
On his search for the archive section dedicated to the DMLE, Tom noticed the name Dumbledore affixed to the side of a niche. Looking into it, he'd expected to see nothing but copies of commendation certificates from the Department of Magical Education, congratulating a certain professor for his thirty years of tenure, or his Medal of Magical Merit. Banal, everyday paperwork, the sort of thing that could be framed for an office wall and declaimed as an accomplishment by an insipid character who believed in such madnesses as the inherent virtue of the human spirit, or paisley as the height of modern fashion.
Tom hadn't expected to discover information that thoroughly soiled his Transfiguration teacher's reputation of being a benign, if brilliant, old man. It appeared that Professor Dumbledore's eccentricities were hereditary, and far from harmless.
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Certificate of Death
Name of Deceased: Percival Dumbledore
Date: 18 November 1896
Place of Death: Azkaban Prison
Cause: Exposure, Infirmity
Sentence: Life
Prior Residence: Mould-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
Next of Kin: Kendra Dumbledore (Wife), Albus Dumbledore (Son)
Further observations: Dangerous inmate convicted for attacks on four Muggle children, resulting in grievous injuries and one death. Refused to explain motive during court interrogation. Family petitioned to visit after sentencing; Wizengamot jury ruled that inmate was unfit to appear in presence of children. Wife permitted supervised viewing sessions twice per annum.
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Oh, the nerve of the man!
Dumbledore could lecture at Tom—and he had done so for years—on the subject of his utopian fantasies, this fanciful idea of harmony between all things Muggle and Magical; he could—and had—advised Tom to love his Muggle guardians, be they government caretakers or paternal grandparents. Dumbledore could say that being a wizard did not preclude Tom from treating the Muggles as his equals, as family. As fellows, in blood and in spirit.
And then the man's own father had attacked and murdered Muggles!
The sheer delusion astounded him.
How could Dumbledore expect wizards and Muggles to get along when the separation of their respective worlds wasn't a matter of personal choice, but enforced by the magical government? Mr. Percival Dumbledore had been sentenced for assault, manslaughter, and breaching the Statute of Secrecy. His victims, according to the DMLE's paperwork, had been healed, their belongings repaired or replaced. They'd been Obliviated of their traumatic experiences—for their own good, of course. The dead boy's parents had quietly been made to forget they'd even had a son; the Ministry had paid out a handsome compensation in pounds sterling, disguised as a winning lottery draw.
If Tom knew that his neighbour had the power to re-write his memories, alter his entire identity at their whim, he'd never trust them. He could see no way that Muggles, understanding the full potential of magic, would ever treat a wizard as an equal. Doctor and Mrs. Granger, model examples of what Muggles ought to be, were nonetheless wary about magic, and set strict rules to its use in their home. (No magic in the front rooms that faced the street, wands away during dinner, all lights out after eleven o'clock. It was unfair! They would never have applied such restrictions to a visiting Roger Tindall!)
The next items he found were not quite as scandalous: an official caution issued a decade ago to Aberforth Dumbledore, on his use of experimental and "inappropriate" charms on goats, and an order from the DMLE to the Department of Magical Transportation to watch and log the use of a Floo Connection registered to Dumbledore's home in Godric's Hollow. And a copy of an internal memo from the DMLE ordering a rejection on any Portkey applications made by Albus Dumbledore. There was a listed cross-reference to a File #PK-42945 at the bottom of the parchment, which Tom tapped with his wand; it revealed a block of tiny print on the back of the form:
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Floo Connections qualifying for official surveillance:
— "Undesirables", as recognised by the office of the Minister for Magic.
— Persons under investigation of criminal activities by the DMLE. Persons convicted of, or formerly sentenced for, criminal activities.
— Persons under suspicion of collaboration with current interregnum regime in Europe.
— Persons of interest. Encompassing those of recent European extraction, with business associations to European firms, or those affiliated with, including alumni of, the Durmstrang Institute. (See File #DI-682 for further detail.)
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Tom found this interesting, as surveillance of Floo Connections was in many ways equivalent to the Muggle wartime government's enthusiastic interference of private communications. The British government openly censored wireless broadcasts and newspaper articles for subversive elements, or anything damaging to the national morale. And not so openly, they monitored private correspondence: post, telegrams, and telephone calls. During his stay at the Riddle House, Tom had seen a few Christmas letters passed around between the servants, and the envelopes had large stamps indicating that they'd been inspected by the Ministry of Information.
(Tom had been glad to be a wizard then. He had owls to deliver his mail; let the Ministry of Information try to catch one and censor his correspondence! If he'd been a Muggle, someone would be reading all his private letters, and the idea infuriated him. He hadn't liked the idea of the other orphans looking at his things while he was away at school; he liked even less the idea of a government official, some frumpy secretary in a department store twinset and boiled liver-coloured stockings that she was hoarding ration tickets to replace, looking at the thoughts he saw fit to share with Hermione.)
This was proof that the wizarding government was doing something about the European unrest, although Tom wasn't aware how effective surveillance was, especially when the Ministry's net was so large as to put a whole continent's worth of people under suspicion.
He knew that as a native Briton and a Hogwarts student who had reached his majority a few months ago, he himself was above suspicion. Not until he'd earned some level of notoriety. But that designation of "Undesirable", whatever that meant, was so loosely defined. How exactly did one earn it? How often did the Minister for Magic decide to stick someone with that label? Did it expire after some time, or did it last forever?
Albus Dumbledore, for some reason, had earned that title for himself. Tom couldn't imagine the man making himself complicit in criminal activities, even if the late Percival Dumbledore had indulged in Muggle mayhem. Albus Dumbledore had spoken of Muggle-Magical harmony, but after all the tea invitations Tom had accepted over the years, it had only been that—talk and nothing else. Dumbledore had spoken a lot (almost as much as Slughorn) about the state of affairs, both cultural and geopolitical, and about the numerous branches of magic that existed outside the Hogwarts curriculum, but he'd made no efforts to enact change. The most he'd ever done was gently steer Tom away from inquiring about the theoretical potentials of Occlumency, and back to the humdrum topic of N.E.W.T. level Transfiguration.
In a pensive mood, Tom rolled the parchment back up and made to return it to its niche, but hesitated for a moment. He doubted he'd have a chance to come back to the Ministry before the summer holidays, so it was best to make use of this opportunity while he had it.
"Geminio," he muttered, and a second parchment appeared by the first, identical to the last wrinkle and bit of splattered ink.
He slipped the duplicated parchment into the niche and tucked the original into his robe pocket.
Good, he thought, satisfied by his handiwork. They haven't jinxed the parchment to repel Duplication Charms; I hate it when they do that.
He wondered what else the archive administrators had done to make this a useful resource, instead of a dumping ground for centuries of bureaucratic refuse.
"Accio File D.I. Six-Eight-Two," said Tom, reciting the reference number written at the bottom of his scroll.
There was a rustling noise, like the hush of dirty straw being raked over a stable floor, and half a minute later, a tightly furled roll of parchment came flying out of the darkness and into Tom's waiting palm.
When he opened it, he saw the DMLE insignia over a long list of odd-sounding names, arranged by a sequence of dates.
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Sonia Zhitnaya (matric. 1919) — Applied for import license of Class B tradeable materials on 7 September, 1938; 9 January, 1939, 29 June, 1940.
Oleksiy Kharkovsky (matric. 1924) — Registered wizarding residence 22 November, 1939.
Pertti Lehtinen (matric. 1923) — Applied for apprenticeship position in Ministry Level 10 on 6 April, 1940.
Kazimierz Grozbiecki (matric. 1927) — Registered for N.E.W.T. examinations in Charms, Astronomy, Ancient Runes, and Divination on 14 April, 1940.
Sigismund Pacek (matric. 1926) — Applied for Portkeys to Ostend on 5 May, 1940. Utrecht on 19 June, 1941; 28 November, 1941; 7 March, 1942. Wiesbaden on 11 October, 1940; 3 April, 1943. Esztergom on 22 January, 1942.
Cornelis Vonk (matric. 1930) — Submitted formal complaint regarding Breach of Statute on 30 March, 1941.
Steffan Albers (matric. 1929) — Fined for possession of restricted materials on 29 July, 1941.
Salome Kopácsy-Marszalek (matric. 1935) — Registered marriage certificate on 8 February, 1942.
Edvin Lindstrom (matric. 1934) — Applied for Apparition license on 17 August, 1943.
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The list went on and on, down two feet of parchment and continuing on the other side.
Next to each name was a column of various dates, and in another column, a list of addresses. This must be their Floo Connections—what the DMLE was monitoring in the name of national security.
'Matric'.
Tom wasn't sure what that meant, but assumed it was short for 'matriculation', a student's date of enrollment. To Durmstrang, as Mr. Pacek's name was on the list, and the Durmstrang Institute had been his alma mater. Or one of his two alma maters; Mr. Pacek had done his apprenticeship in Prague, but when referencing his qualifications, he'd always used his date of certification, not matriculation.
This must be a collection of information on every European émigré who'd gone to Durmstrang and used Ministry of Magic services in the last few years. In contrast to what Tom thought they'd been doing (which was nothing) this was a decent effort put on by the Ministry. A decent effort, but he doubted it had produced much of a result. There were just too many names, with no further distinction to explain why these people were of particular interest. Perhaps there were one or two of them who were subversive elements involved in espionage, but Tom was sure that most of them were not.
Mr. Pacek had been on the list. Tom knew him as a man who had studied Grindelwald's writings—even heard his speeches in person, spoken in their original German—and had kept in contact with his old friends and classmates in Europe. But he was one so disinterested in the political climate of his home country that he'd chosen to leave rather than align himself with one side or the other. His political apathy was proof of a deplorable lack of resolve, but Tom could not fault the man for his interest in self-preservation.
He wondered if Mr. Pacek knew his name had been put on a list, or if he recognised any of the names. Most of them were Durmstrang graduates of the present century, and if the school had a seven year curriculum like Hogwarts, then a few of them would have been studying at the same time as he had. Even if they had not been close associates, there should be a familiar name or two.
Tapping his wand against the parchment, Tom made a copy and dropped it into his pocket.
He admitted to being somewhat disappointed that this was the Ministry's reaction to the Grindelwald issue. Grindelwald, unlike the Muggle armies of the Continent, had not attacked British shores, but he had deposed several ministers and imposed his own regime upon them. Surely it was only a matter of time before he would turn his eyes to Britain. Tom had not seen much for which to praise the British Ministry of Magic, but he didn't like the idea of a foreign interloper taking over, even if Grindelwald had come up with some halfway decent ideas about how the world should be run, and what ought to be done about the Muggles.
At the age of fourteen, Tom had admired the simplicity of a world without the Statute of Secrecy, as it meant no more Restriction Against Underage Sorcery, the bane of every child who spent their school holidays bumping elbows with Muggles, their wands locked away and out of sight. The world that Grindelwald had so persuasively illustrated in his pamphlets had been one of freedom and order: freedom to all wizards who chafed in hiding what they were, and a natural hierarchy for those with talent and power.
At the age of seventeen, Tom knew he had talent and power; he knew that he needed no foreign or external confirmation of his natural ability. Some tiny, insignificant part of him had also realised that the wealth and privilege that been bestowed upon him for being born a Riddle would mean nothing in Grindelwald's vision of utopia. If Tom had not met his grandmother and been informed of his ancestry, some militant revolutionary, a pointy-hatted German Robespierre, might have seen the house on the hill and wanted it for his own, and would have felt nothing about removing the Muggle inhabitants and taking it—the manor house, all the motors and horses, the conservatory and gardens, for himself.
It was what Grindelwald meant by wizards taking their rightful place in the world, instead of living in the shadows.
Tom wasn't sure that he agreed with that. Of course he knew that he was meant for greater things, a higher destiny than other people, but he wasn't fond of the idea of every wizard being afforded this status just for having magic. And being able to claim whatever piece they liked of the reformed wizarding world—that seemed wrong, for reasons he couldn't articulate; he felt that it was acceptable to reform the wizarding world in accordance to his own preferences, but he couldn't abide the thought of anyone else being obliged the same privilege.
(And he definitely felt no loyalty to his Muggle grandparents; they were a vehicle to granting him wealth and status, and that was the source of his appreciation towards them, nothing else.)
There, in the dusty stacks of the Ministry archives, Tom decided that his and Grindelwald's political visions were not aligned, even if they had more than a few things in common in terms of personal ideology. Tom saw more benefit in upholding the Statute of Secrecy than doing away with it for good: The British Ministry of Magic had enough on its hands trying to govern a population of ten thousand souls; he couldn't imagine what heights of incompetence a wizarding government would reach trying to administer fifty million Muggles in the British Isles, and five hundred million across the entire British Empire.
The British Muggle government had reformed itself for the war effort, and it was an immense logistical task to calculate ration allocations for each household in the nation, and not only that, but deliver the brown loaves, margarine, salt pork, and potatoes so that everyone got a fair portion—or enough that they could work an eight-hour shift at a munitions factory without fainting. Tom himself couldn't recall too many instances of true, aching hunger: he had never had as much food as he'd liked, or of the type he liked (barley, rye, and oats were cheaper than his favourite puffy white rolls, and he'd become, quite against his own expectations, a connoisseur of goat milk). If he had gone without food, it had been in the earliest years of his childhood when no one, in or outside of Wool's, had had much of anything.
The Muggle government had fed him, housed him, clothed him from birth, then sent him to primary school. The Magical government hadn't known he'd existed until he'd been eleven-and-a-half years old.
Tom wasn't one to indulge himself in excessive nostalgia, but the differences were stark. Muggles were common, ordinary. They bred like insects. They had no great destiny waiting for them; the extent of their ambitions amounted to nothing more than having enough money for a pie and a pint at the end of the week.
But... the Muggles did know how to get things done. They possessed a valuable sort of efficiency, one where Tom would never have to involve his own person in the laborious act of acquiring results. (It hadn't taken him long to tire of dull bureaucratic legalese after an hour of navigating the archive.)
Muggles, Tom had observed, were also more susceptible to mind-altering magics. His past experience had shown him that those who knew about magic had proven annoyingly resistant. His father, for instance, knew after too many shoddy Obliviations done by his dead mother. Nott, raised in a wizarding household, could defend himself when under attack by a mental probe.
For now, he concluded that the convenience of the Statute of Secrecy outweighed its limitations to his personal freedom. Anyway, enforcement was reliant on the discretion of the Ministry of Magic, and it wasn't as if Tom didn't know how to be discreet.
Over the next two hours, Tom rummaged through the archive, looking for any mention of Grindelwald or Dumbledore, and duplicating files whenever he saw one he wanted to read later. His pockets filled up; he sliced through the lining of his robe to create more space to store them, filling that up too until he rustled when he walked.
It was worth it.
It was gratifying to know that beneath Dumbledore's masquerade of academic eccentricity, his tasselled pointy slippers, spangled robes, and a penchant for the common sugary lozenges sold by the scoop at every corner chemist's, there was a known Undesirable with a record of suspicious behaviour stretching back twenty years and more. The evidence hadn't been solid enough to convict Dumbledore of anything (what a pity, Tom thought) but the Ministry had labelled him an agent provocateur. An instigator, an associate of the true subversive elements. Connections, present and former, with members of law enforcement who had participated in capturing Grindelwald in various overseas operations—and, most importantly, had allowed him to escape.
Much of the information he'd found were copies of copies of mission reports and official debriefings filed by workers who were told to keep some details off the public record. Tom could only assume the vagueness was an intentional choice; it was clear that a logbook entry along the lines of "September 1927: DMLE officials questioned A. Dumbledore on nature of his companionship with suspect G. Grindelwald" was more than it appeared on paper. It was disappointing that they only delivered the bare bones when Tom wanted the meat; he concluded that any information more recent, accurate, and substantial must be kept locked up in the Aurors' offices several levels up.
When he and Hermione left the archive an hour later, Tom was still thinking about Dumbledore.
The man had been officially acknowledged as a powerful wizard, one of the rare true warlocks whose ability made him an equal and contemporary of Gellert Grindelwald. And yet he had done nothing to aid the Aurors. Not then, twenty years ago, when Grindelwald was a rising demagogue with a handful of loyal followers. Not now, the modern day, when Grindelwald had toppled several legitimate Ministries and his followers were the citizenry of whole nations.
What was power when one did nothing with it?
What was potential for greatness when one squandered it?
Tom was disgusted by it, and he had always thought himself as possessing a strong stomach. He hadn't felt this way since he'd learned of his mother, a witch of inborn talent who had chased a pretty man, gotten a child by him, then died in obscurity. (She, he presumed, was the source of his gift in discerning truths and falsehoods, his intuitive grasp of mental magic. It certainly hadn't come from his useless, deranged Muggle father.)
Albus Dumbledore was like his late mother, in a sense: where she'd wasted her magic on love potions and bedding Muggle toffs, Dumbledore demonstrated party tricks to children and enchanted miniature gumball machines to decorate his office.
On their way back to the lift, Tom asked Hermione, "Did you find anything good?"
"Oh—" said Hermione, who appeared to be deep in thought, "Um. Yes, I did!"
"Can we use it?"
Hermione shot him an aggrieved look. "Isn't it possible to appreciate information for information's sake?"
"Perhaps for you," Tom replied. "But I've never seen the use of learning just to be learnèd. That way is the path to becoming another Albus Dumbledore."
"What's wrong with being like Professor Dumbledore?" Hermione folded her arms across her chest. "He's very well-respected, I'll have you know. He won the Barnabus Finkley Prize when he was just seventeen," she said, and her voice rose in a shrill crescendo. "I'm seventeen years old, and I've never done anything!"
"I found out that Dumbledore's been requested to work with the Aurors for decades, and each time, he's refused to co-operate," said Tom. "If he won a Finkley Prize, then he could have gotten an Order of Merlin; they're both awards for acts of exemplary magical performance. If he can earn one, he can earn the other—if only he wanted it." He sniffed in disdain. "His life is one of mediocrity, but I suppose that's his own choice. You and I, on the other hand, deserve better."
"I still think Dumbledore's got a lot of worthy accomplishments," said Hermione waspishly. "There's nothing wrong with aspiring to academic success."
"There's something wrong with letting Grindelwald run about unchecked," said Tom. "And that's exactly what Dumbledore's been doing for the last twenty years. Grindelwald isn't just a dark wizard—he's a dark lord. Is it bold of me to assume that the winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize would be a good prospect to take him on?"
Hermione sent him a doubtful look. "Sorry, are we still talking about Dumbledore?"
"I suppose never mentioning Dumbledore again is too much to ask," Tom sighed. "I'm certain that he wants to be as irrelevant as I want him to be—but that's the issue here, isn't it? The magical world's population is so small that institutions will bow to the individual, as long as he's skilled or powerful enough. Not even Minister Churchill or King George could influence affairs as much as a single wizard."
"If there's anyone you talk about more than Dumbledore, it's yourself."
"There is nothing that inspires me like greatness," said Tom, "no matter where it comes from. I can't help it if it happens to be my own."
It was Hermione's turn to sigh. "Have you ever heard of the concept of the 'hubris'?"
"All I need to know is that it's a morality lesson told by parents to scare their children into proper behaviour," said Tom, his tone dismissive. "I've no need of them; you must have noticed that I'm not a child, and I've never had any use for parents."
Hermione made a strange coughing noise but refrained from commenting further. Together, they returned to the Atrium, the row of fireplaces at the end of the hallway dark and cold on a Saturday afternoon.
Tom lit the fireplace with a silent Incendio, while Hermione took a handful of Floo powder from an urn on the side, made of glazed pottery on a wrought iron stand that matched the iron boot scraper on the opposite side. In contrast to the magical lighting and gold décor of the Ministry of Magic, the interior of The Hog's Head was dark and smokey. Tom's eyes took a minute or two to adjust; he scanned the bar and occupied tables for any sign of the bartender. He'd Obliviated the man two summers ago, the first time he'd ever used that spell on a human being. Although he trusted his own magical abilities—enough to risk his own reputation on them—Hermione didn't, and he didn't want to get Hermione into trouble.
Not because there was anything inherently wrong about breaking school rules, but because Hermione would never let him forget it if his carelessness landed her in detention. And she was afraid of detention, and not as a waste of two good hours before curfew. No, Hermione's fear lay in having any sort of stain on her academic record. Where Tom expected to be handed the Hogwarts Head Boy badge after sitting his way through two years of eight course Slug Club dinners, Hermione had got it into her head that she had to constantly prove herself worthy of such an accolade by being a model student. A ridiculous notion: almost all Head Boys and Girls were chosen from the current crop of Prefects, and even if the announcement was made in the summer before Seventh Year, one could predict who was most likely to be chosen years earlier.
He indulged Hermione's sensibilities, nevertheless. She was more disposed to listen to him when he presented himself as a Good Boy. And he did like it when she listened to him and went along with his ideas, especially if they involved sneaking around past curfew or into his bedroom at the Riddle House.
Circumstances were very different now, weren't they? Once, he'd loathed the thought of grubby, sticky-fingered orphans going through his possessions, and the desire for companionship had been an alien notion that Tom had associated with a deficiency of character. But he hadn't minded having Hermione around now, or having her in his bedroom this Christmas holiday. They'd studied, practised magic, and completed their homework assignments together. He could see himself enjoying her company for more than a few weeks a year—for more than this school year or the next—for the rest of his—
His thoughts were interrupted by a low, hissing voice from a few tables over.
"Let me go! Stop squeezing me, you lumbering boor!"
His head jerked to the left, where two figures were bent over a corner table, one of them wearing a heavy cloak with the hood on, not unusual for a pub regular. The other person was a large lump wearing the black robe of the Hogwarts student uniform, lined in red at the lapels and sleeves. Most students had their uniform robes fitted to them by the saleswitch, the ends hemmed anywhere between one to three inches above the top of the shoe. However, this student's frayed robe ended a good half-foot above his ankles.
There was only one person at Hogwarts of that size, and Tom was correct in his guess: Rubeus Hagrid, Fourth Year Gryffindor, a dependent on the Student Relief Fund, and absolutely pants at every single core subject on the curriculum. Tom had heard of Hagrid's aptitude at Care of Magical Creatures, which was an elective subject, not core—but that hardly counted for anything, did it? It was a subject, along with Divination and Muggle Studies, that required little wandwork, and there was nothing Tom hated as much as being told to take his quill out and put his wand away at the beginning of a lesson. To him, a class without wands might as well be Muggle day school.
So what was Hagrid doing in The Hog's Head? With a snake, no less?
He nudged Hermione, who had changed out of her coat and back into her school robes. "That fellow over there has a boomslang. Aren't they Ministry restricted magical creatures?"
Hermione's gaze darted over; her eyes narrowed. Then she appeared to make up her mind; she marched up to the corner table, squaring her shoulders and clearing his throat. "Underage students in Hogsmeade are expected to stay with their year group, under the supervision of their House Prefects. And not wandering around with dangerous animals!"
Tom watched Hagrid's back turn, his broad features scrunching up like failed soufflé. "He's harmless, he is! Look at him; he's just a little one—his teeth haven' even properly grown in—he won' bite, I swear it!"
To Tom's satisfaction, Hermione's stance refused to soften under the deluge of pathetic excuses.
"I'm sorry, but if you bring that snake into the castle, I'm afraid I'll have no choice but to report this to your Head of House! Those animals are restricted to licensed handlers for a reason. And you—I don't know your name—shame on you for showing a dangerous creature to a student! What's your license number, sir? I'm sure that Madam Gardiner at the Ministry of Magic would be interested to know if anyone's been violating the terms of their registration!"
The cloaked wizard at the table gave a muffled response, some crude observation or other about the particulars of Merlin's below-the-belt physiology, before he slid off his stool and stumped away, stuffing a green-scaled juvenile boomslang into an interior pocket. Its complaining was drowned out by Hagrid's own whining, and Tom was unnerved to see such a large lump of a boy act in so infantile a manner.
"He wouldn't hurt no one—if I didn' take him, the man was going ter sell him to the apothecary—I couldn' let tha' happen to the poor thing!"
"If you want to ensure magical creatures are fairly treated, you ought to petition the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures," Hermione told him. "Or ask your Care of Magical Creature professor to procure one for lessons—he's got a license for handling restricted animals. Anything is better than endangering other students! What were you going to do, keep that snake under your bed?"
"My trunk—"
"An adult magical boomslang can grow over six feet long!"
"I've got a big trunk—"
"Oh yes, I expect that'll serve you very well when they make you pack your things if the snake gets out and someone sees it! You'd be expelled for that, you know!"
Tom found it entertaining to watch someone else bear the brunt of Hermione's officious attitude. He thought that she wore the mantle of authority well, for all that it was second-hand, bestowed upon her by the likes of Professor Beery, Headmaster Dippet, and the long arm of the Ministry of Magic's administrative auditors. The supreme assuredness in her tone and bearing—that came of someone who believed that they were entirely in the right. It wasn't quite the same as innate charisma, that rare variety of gravitas which came from within. But conviction, though it came from an external source of authority, had one thing in common with charisma in its highest form: it could never be counterfeited.
Hermione had that fierce, unmoderated conviction. And beyond that, she had facts and rules and logic on her side.
She, however, still had no charisma.
If Tom had been anyone else, and if the subject of reproval had been anyone but Rubeus Hagrid, he might have felt sorry for the boy. In the end, he decided to slide himself into the conversation; it was better that he and Hermione make themselves scarce before the bartender came over to see what all the fuss was about.
"There's no harm done, is there?" said Tom. "No venomous snake in the castle, and no expulsions. I recommend that you keep it that way, Hagrid. We won't report you or deduct points this time around, but if you're caught later on, there won't be anything we can do." He gave Hagrid a meaningful look. "It would be in your best interest to leave The Hog's Head and pretend you were never here today."
"Oh," Hagrid said gruffly, shuffling his enormous feet. Each foot was the size of a bread loaf—not the bland, grey patriotic bread promoted by His Majesty's wartime government, but one of Mrs. Willrow's yeasty white loaf sliced up for the Riddle family's breakfast toast. "Er, o' course. I'll thank you lot fer not telling Professor Dumbledore abou' this; he's done me one good turn after another, an' we wouldn' want to bother him with the small things, eh?"
"Of course not," said Tom. "Enjoy the rest of your Hogsmeade weekend, but do remember that if you're caught again, whoever catches you won't be as lenient as we were."
After Hagrid had stumbled his way out of the tavern, Tom made a face and turned to Hermione. "Someone in the Slytherin Common Room said he's half troll."
Hermione's expression was disapproving. "No one ever chooses their parentage. And whatever he is, he's still a wizard, and shouldn't that be the only thing that matters?"
"I see your point," said Tom, nodding. "At least he's not a Muggle."
"Tom!"
Tom laughed and reached for Hermione's hand. "We've missed lunch and dinner's not until seven. Do you want to go to the Broomsticks?"
Hermione pursed her lips. "The Broomsticks is always crowded on weekends. Is the food here any good?"
"No," said Tom. "People only come here for the drinks."
"Are they good, then?"
"Not particularly." Tom paused for thought. "The only decent thing on the menu is the freshly-squeezed goat's milk."
Hermione ended up ordering a jug of iced goat milk to share, while Tom loitered in the corner avoiding Old Ab. He did want to question Aberforth about the death of Percival Dumbledore, but that was best postponed to a time when he was alone with the old man and had a chance to Stun him with his back turned. To strike a man from behind was considered cowardly by most, but formal Rules of Engagement were expected and enforced in public exhibition duels; outside of the public eye, Tom bowed to no expectations but his own.
And possibly Hermione's, he conceded.
He thought she looked rather silly with a milky moustache on her upper lip, but then again, so did he.
But it was perfectly acceptable because no one saw them.
.
.
In the final month of the school year, Tom was granted an opportunity to interrogate Professor Slughorn. Every Friday night over the course of the year, Slughorn invited students to his dinner parties. It was a rotating selection of his favourites: those whom he thought had the potential to go somewhere after Hogwarts due to their academic brilliance, exceptional talent, or advantageous connections. The parties were always overcrowded in September and October (Tom remembered the picnic lunches in a cramped train compartment with clear distaste), but by May, dinner attendance had whittled itself down to no more than a dozen people.
Tom had personally judged the attendees as those who had the most to gain from ingratiating themselves to Professor Slughorn, and those who didn't care about their exam marks. The exams were weeks away, and the Ravenclaw members of the Slug Club—including Hermione—had decided that they'd get more benefit from high marks than from Slughorn's network of associates.
Which left only Slytherins to join Slughorn for dinner that evening: Tom, who knew he'd score Outstandings whether or not he studied; Lestrange and Avery, who weren't going to work for a living even if they did manage to score Outstandings; Abraxas Malfoy, the Slytherin Quidditch team captain who wasn't fond of Tom but had learned to hold his tongue after being tossed off the duelling platform a few times; Lucretia Black, the current Head Girl and fiancée to a Slug Club alumnus who'd graduated ten years ago; and finally, Orion Black, who preferred Slughorn's spreads over the offerings fed to the rest of the student population in the Great Hall. (Mutton and potatoes were pedestrian compared to the imported Fire Crab croquettes and freshwater plimpies in chilled lemon aspic served at old Sluggy's table.)
Tom waited until the platter of dried figs and sliced cheese had been passed around before he posed his questions to Slughorn. By then, Slughorn had chugged his way through his first bottle of red wine and was well on his way to finishing his second.
"Sir, I wanted to ask you something," said Tom, widening his eyes and lifting his eyebrows ever so slightly. He was seventeen, shaved his whiskers every other day, and was fully aware that his Good Boy guise had only a few years before it reached the end of its lifespan. Sycophancy, on the other hand, had no age limit.
Slughorn smacked his lips, setting his goblet down on the table, a few drops splattering onto the tablecloth. "Ask away, then, m'boy."
"Sir," Tom ventured, "I wondered, what do professors do during the summer holidays?"
"Planning to apply for a summer apprenticeship, Tom?" said Slughorn.
"Not exactly, sir. I was told that there was no supervision at Hogwarts in the summer, and students aren't allowed to stay at school for that reason. If that's true, then where do the staff go? Does everyone have a house they live in for ten weeks a year?"
"Well, many of us do," said Slughorn slowly, stroking the rim of his wineglass. "I do enjoy spending my holidays with good friends of mine—can't see 'em for most of the year, better get the most of my days off when I have 'em, you see. But some have their own houses, and others let out a cottage down in Hogsmeade."
"I heard that Professor Dumbledore's brother lived in Hogsmeade," Tom said. "Are the Dumbledores Hogsmeade natives? It'd be strange to consider The Hog's Head tavern a family business... It's not exactly family friendly, is it?"
"Far from it, Tom! They have an excellent dragon's blood firewhisky, reserved orders only, but you didn't hear that from me," Slughorn chortled, leaning forward and giving Tom a conspiratorial wink. "Albus actually lives in Godric's Hollow—one of those mixed villages, down in the West Country. He's on neighbourly terms with batty old Bathilda; did you know? Before Cuthbert came in for the History seat, she was dear old Professor Bagshot. Retired now, but she deserves the rest; she must have taught here for over half a century! She taught me, Albus, and half the staff here. That was late last century, goodness me, how time flies..."
"Really?" said Tom. "You don't look a day past forty."
Slughorn beamed in delight, his wine-flushed complexion growing a shade more ruddy.
"I'm sure you must have some good stories to tell about your old professors. Professor Binns is, well, not the most engaging when it comes to teaching History. Nothing like your stories—I think we here can all agree that they're the best part of every Potions lesson."
Tom's gaze flicked over to Avery and Lestrange; on cue, they murmured their assent. To his disgust, they appeared to be engaged in a competition to see who could stack up the most layers in a cheese and cracker sandwich.
"Oho, you flatter me, Tom, you rascal," Slughorn said, sighing deeply. "Professor Bathilda was a great teacher. Knew the material back and front, wrote the textbooks you're using today. No, the most irregular thing about Old Batty was her sister." He lowered his voice and continued, "It's not commonly known, but she went and married a German fellow, moved to Europe, and that side of the family later got itself involved with a bad crowd." He shook his head, jowls quivering. "I heard tell that Albus struck up a close friendship with Professor Batty's European nephew. That was before my time, of course, but it's a tricky business, very tricky indeed... Albus still refuses every call to action the Ministry sends him, you see, and some have started to wonder..."
"Oh?" said Tom. "Wonder about what exactly, sir?"
"Well, it's all just speculation," Slughorn admitted, glancing around the table. Lestrange and Avery were steadily demolishing the contents of the cheese platter, but every other Slytherin at the table was listening with avid attention. "But one could begin to understand a certain smidgen of reluctance... the last place any man should like to see a good friend of his is on the opposite side of a battlefield."
"I, for one, am shocked at how many well-known British personages have queer connections," Malfoy remarked, his thin-lipped face twisted into an expression of disdain. "My father said that the Rosiers were German sympathisers. Everyone knows they aren't properly British like the rest of us."
Lucretia Black snickered. "'The rest of us', Malfoy?"
"My family have been here for centuries!"
"If there are any secret German sympathisers out there, why haven't the Aurors arrested them?" Tom asked.
"It's never an easy job to get proof of these things. Rumours go around, but with important names being tossed around—respected wizards, proper families, most of 'em—they have to be surer than sure about anyone they take in." Slughorn shifted uncomfortably. "But on to a more important subject, Tom—have you considered taking up that trainee position at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?"
The dinner lasted until half-past nine, when the last cracker crumbs had been licked off the platters, and the last grain of sand had fallen into the bottom bulb of Slughorn's hourglass. Tom considered this dinner less of a waste of time than ones he'd suffered through in the past; instead of being a mix of the four Houses, the attendees had been Slytherins to the last, so there was no need to keep up the pretense that any of them enjoyed one another's company.
Lucretia Black couldn't stand Abraxas Malfoy; Malfoy, Avery, and Lestrange weren't fond of pureblood witches with personal opinions as "progressive" as Lucretia's—she supported the fair treatment of Muggleborns and half-bloods in the context of professional employment, as opposed to the counter-argument that one's cousins shouldn't need to apply for work, if they were in need of finding work at all. Orion rolled his eyes at the ridiculous posturing done by teenage boys trying to impersonate their fathers, while Slughorn sipped his nightcap, obliviously congratulating himself on what a fine crop of youngsters he'd gathered here tonight. Tom himself had mentally divided the group into puppets who regurgitated someone else's opinions, or indifferent toadies who had no opinions at all until their comfortable lifestyles were put under threat.
Tom wanted to tell Hermione what he'd learned about Dumbledore. She'd bought into the meddling old man's act, that of the harmless old scholar, and Tom was eager to inform her that she was wrong. Not for the same reason that Hermione liked correcting people (which was pure pedantry) but because nothing thrilled Tom's heart quite like watching other people's pre-conceptions shatter into tiny pieces. They could try to put themselves back together, but the cracks were permanent, and so was their heightened level of cynicism.
(The dark satisfaction, he recalled with great fondness, was the same as what he felt when he was six years old and had just told Jimmy at the orphanage that his uncle wasn't actually his uncle, and his mother—despite all her tearful promises—was never coming back for him. And the best part about it was no one being able to point their fingers at him and say that he'd broken any rules or committed any acts of mortal sin.)
On the walk back to the Slytherin dormitories, Tom asked Lucretia, "Did you or Bledisloe assign a patrol to Granger tonight?"
If Hermione had a Prefect patrol, Tom could catch up to her before bed. He knew he could always visit her after hours by going through the Ravenclaw Common Room door-knocker puzzle, but Ravenclaws always liked knowing they were the cleverest students, and it wouldn't earn him much goodwill if a Slytherin proved he could sneak in at night. Cultivating goodwill mattered; even if he borrowed books from the Common Room library during the day, the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory was still off-limits to him and sending Hermione a message required the assistance of one of her dorm mates.
Lucretia yawned, covering her mouth with a prim hand. "Granger asked for Friday off when I assigned the schedule last Sunday. I assumed she was planning to join us at the Slug Club tonight, but then I came across her in the Prefects' Bathroom before dinner. With a Slytherin boy..."
She inclined her head toward him. "You know, I do like seeing inter-House friendships; they're few and far between for members of Slytherin House. To go without is so self-limiting. We're often obliged to associate with family regardless of our own preferences, but one ought to be more discerning when it comes to choosing their friends."
"You disapprove of inter-Slytherin friendships?" said Tom.
"'Friendships'!" said Lucretia, her mouth tilting up at the corners. "What bosh! Only a half-wit would mistake Avery and Lestrange for friends. Trust me, Riddle, once you get your step next year, those two will be strutting about the Common Room as if they'd earned the badge themselves."
"You needn't be concerned," said Tom. "By the time I've made it to Head Boy, I'd have had six years to train them properly. They'll bark, fetch, and heel if and when I want them to."
"Perhaps I should be concerned on their behalf, then." There was a thoughtful pause, before she went on, "I should be, but I'm not. Oh well. Have a good night, Riddle."
She spoke the password at the blank section of wall that concealed the Common Room, and stepped through the gap that opened up. Tom stood still, analysing their conversation for a minute, before he abruptly turned around and strode out of the dungeons.
The Prefects' Bathroom was on the Fifth Floor, behind a nondescript door hidden between a tapestry and a statue of a man putting his robes on backwards. It opened to the password, "Birch bristles".
He'd been here once before, at the beginning of his Fifth Year, just to see why everyone had been so interested in it on the train. It had been an impressive sight at first glance: a high ceiling and floor laid with slabs of gleaming white marble, as grand as a Greek monument. Gold gilt, crystal chandeliers, and stained glass: Rococo magnificence fit for anyone with a royal taste for opulence. The lavish architecture had appealed to him as much as the theatre had, when he'd watched Madame Butterfly with the Grangers.
But then his sense of practicality had set in.
Why a private bathroom just for Prefects?
A bathroom.
He'd much prefer a private study or Prefects' common room, which had more uses than just bathing. And using it didn't necessitate having to take one's clothes off.
(Not that he was afraid of dis-robing or anything, unlike many of the girls who were mortified at the prospect of changing their clothes in a train compartment, though it was empty of other people and the doors were locked. As if anyone cared about the colour of their garter belts. Tom just liked wearing his school uniform; he liked dressing as wizards did, performing feats of magic in robes with flowing sleeves and cloaks that swept the floor.)
The door of the bathroom swung open, and a bank of scented steam roiled out, thick and white and smelling of potioneer's pantry. Tom waved it away, drawing his wand.
Ventus.
The steam shredded, wisping away to reveal a strange tableau.
Hermione and Nott, wading around the bottom of the Prefects' swimming pool, the water ankle-deep and filled with bubbles. They had their shoes and robes off, draped over a stack of towels in a corner of the room, their white uniform shirts half-transparent from the moisture. Hermione had removed her stockings, and dried flower petals were stuck to her bare legs. The tails of Nott's uniform shirt dangled over his long woollen underwear, the hems rolled up to his knee, darkened here and there where water had splashed over them.
"I read that Muggle London had wooden plumbing in the sixteen-hundreds, but metal hydraulic valves are relatively recent," spoke Hermione in her lecturing voice. "Even if the founders built this as a communal bath house in the beginning, the tub and taps have to be new. I presume that this was given to the Prefects after they installed new bathrooms for each dormitory..."
"Yes, but do any of these new taps do anything?" asked Nott impatiently, picking up a handful of bubbles, inspecting them, then tossing them aside. "The best place to hide something is in plain sight, but there are fifty of these things here."
"Well, we'll just have to keep trying them one by one, won't we," Hermione snapped.
"You were the one who suggested we look here, Granger; no need to tie yourself in a knot about it."
"Why don't you help me instead of whinging, then? Curfew's in half an hour!"
"What curfew? You're a Prefect!"
"I can't just pick and choose what rules to follow!"
"But you let me into the Prefects' Bathroom—are guests even allowed in here?"
"T-that's different!"
"So you tell yourself," snorted Nott.
"Having a pleasant evening, you two?" said Tom, stepping out of the swirling cloud of steam.
There was a splashing sound, someone yelled, "Fuck!" very loudly, then someone else said, "Language!"
A few seconds later, Hermione's head popped out from the side of the pool. She dragged herself up a golden ladder, looking somewhat bedraggled—the back of her hair had puffed out in the humid steam, and the front was damp and plastered to her forehead and cheeks.
"Yes, Riddle, we were having the time of our lives," Nott said snidely, following her up the ladder. It seemed that, as usual, he was physically incapable of being pleasant.
"Doing what, exactly?" Tom asked.
"Washing our feet," said Nott, a scowl on his face. "What does it look like?"
"Was that really necessary?" Hermione said to Nott.
"It's Riddle; I can't help myself," he replied with a shrug.
"You should be grateful that I can help myself." Tom tapped his wand against his thigh in impatience. "Now," he said, staring fixedly at Nott, "need I repeat myself?"
"Do you need to do anything?" Nott muttered under his breath, his scowl deepening. In a louder voice, he said, "We're looking for the Chamber, of course."
"In the Prefects' Bathroom?"
"The plumbing leads down into the Hogwarts foundations, and empties into the Lake," said Nott. "In terms of classical affinities, Hufflepuff was associated with the element of Earth, and Slytherin with Water—and that's why their Common Rooms were built in the lower levels of the castle."
Hermione added helpfully, "The Slytherin dormitories are built under the Lake."
"Looks like someone's been sharing House secrets," Nott remarked, before he continued, "If there are any hidden rooms or chambers in the castle, Slytherin would've hidden them under the castle or the Lake, having built them at the same time as the House dorms and the dungeons. The other founders banished him before the castle's construction was completed, and they'd have noticed if Slytherin had asked to work on one of the towers.
"If you talk to the portraits or the ghosts, they can give you a list of Hogwarts' architectural features, and the century that they were installed. Of the few features that date back to the founding, the dungeon network is the only one that makes sense. And the Hogwarts dungeons include the Slytherin quarters, the Potions classrooms and storage rooms, and everything under the Lake. The plumbing system goes under the Lake!"
"It's the only thing large enough to hide a monster for a thousand years," said Hermione, who had been nodding along to Nott's explanation, looking ready to pounce on any logical inconsistencies. "I think Professor Slughorn would have noticed if someone hid a dragon egg in the back of his store cupboard. I don't know about the Slytherin quarters, but I'm quite sure Salazar Slytherin was clever enough not to put a bewitched manticore where a hundred students sleep every night."
"Salazar Slytherin didn't care much for children," Nott put in, "but he did care about blood."
Tom rubbed his chin, his brows drawn together for a brief moment before they smoothed over. "And this is why you've decided to examine all the bathrooms?"
"This is why we've been looking," Hermione corrected him. "It'll go much faster with another pair of eyes."
Tom lifted an eyebrow. "Why should I help?"
"Because... because you chose to set that awful, completely unnecessary time limit!"
"Hmm. I'm still not convinced."
"If we don't find anything tonight, at least we'll know what all these taps do?" Hermione tried again. "This is top-notch enchanting, even if it post-dates the founders."
"You've never used this bathroom before?" asked Tom.
"No," admitted Hermione. "It seemed like such a waste to spend fifteen minutes filling up the tub for a single person..."
"I've never used it either," said Tom. "Never saw the point. Until now, I suppose."
He reached for his tie and began to loosen the knot.
"What are you doing?" said Nott uncertainly.
"Joining in," said Tom, slipping off his robe and folding it. "What does it look like?"
In the end, they found no evidence of the Chamber of Secrets being hidden in the Prefect's Bathroom, but they did see what all the taps did. Colourful bubbles, dried flowers and herbs, scented oil, mounds of foam, perfumed steam, and different temperatures of water, from a frozen slush to a tea steeping boil.
The hot water was relaxing to Tom, who enjoyed the experience of bathing. Back in the orphanage, the pipes froze every winter, and bathing was a chore to suffer through once or twice a week, and involved buckets of snow and kettles of boiling water poured into a tin laundry tub of icy suds. And then he'd come to Hogwarts, where he had his own towel, clean and fresh every day, and not a cake of hard yellow soap in sight. The only disadvantage of the Slytherin dormitory bathroom was the one bathtub shared between the six boys in his year group. (The disadvantage was mostly Lestrange, who soaked his muscles after Quidditch practice, leaving a ring of mud like a high-tide mark on the porcelain, which lasted until the tub was magically cleaned overnight. Tom had opted for the showers instead.)
As relaxing as it was for Tom, he noticed that the beneficial effects didn't extend to Hermione or Nott. Hermione was pink-faced the whole time, her complexion flushing darker when Tom reached past her for the stack of towels on the other end of the pool, letting out the most peculiar-sounding squeak when their bare knees brushed together under the water.
Nott, however, nervously averted his eyes whenever Tom gazed in his direction, choosing to tread water alone on one side of the pool.
It was strange, as there was no reason at all to be nervous: none of them had taken their undergarments off—and they weren't even visible, with the heavy layer of foam floating on the surface of the water.
Tom had no other choice but to attribute their response to shyness.
That must be it, wasn't it?
They were both single children of their families. They'd always had their own showers and bathtub—living at the Grangers' house in the summer after Second Year, Tom had seen how Hermione had had an entire bathroom to herself. Going to Hogwarts must have been the first instance in their lives that they'd had shared accommodations. And even then, the sharing was limited: their dormitory bathrooms had individual shower stalls, their beds had canopies for privacy, each resident had their own trunk, bureau, and nightstand. Their sheltered lives were nothing like the grim communalism of Wool's Orphanage, where the orphans were expected to write their names on the inside collars of their shirts, and oftentimes had to cross out several other names, the former owners who'd outgrown their assigned 'Broadcloth Uniform Smock, Size Four, Grey'.
He remembered, a year ago, contemplating the column of vertebrae, the procession of little nubs that traced their way from the nape of Hermione's neck and down the curve of her spine. He still thought of it now and again when Hermione wore her hair in a plait, and it was a disappointment to him that she felt, in the here and now, that it was necessary to preserve her modesty behind a wall of bubbles.
Had she not touched his bare leg, his knees, his skin slick with blood, just a few months ago? She had seen him then, pyjamas stained and torn, delirious with pain, falling unconscious on the floor of St. Mungo's. Had she not slept in his bed, so close to his side that he could feel the ridge of her spine as it disappeared into her bloodied nightgown—his own blood—so close that he'd had to peel her hair out of his mouth in the morning?
After that, what sense was there in maintaining an illusion of innocence?
Hermione had presented minimal opposition when he'd asked her to stay; she had partaken, and her present reluctance was exasperating. Yes, Nott was in the room, but he was irrelevant. Tom had ensured that Nott's reputation, fortunes—his life—was tied to his own. He wouldn't speak a word to their fellow students of anything even tangentially related to his quest for the Chamber of Secrets.
It was a puzzle as to why Hermione was so resistant. They'd known each other for half their lives. They'd broken rules together from the very beginning, been accessories to one another's crimes: he'd done his classmates' homework for money and favours; Hermione had hired a wizard to ward a Muggle house; they'd both performed underage magic long before the age of seventeen. Of course there were plenty of things he hadn't told her, and didn't plan on doing so, but out of all the people in their respective circles of social acquaintance, they had no one else but each other who shared—who could share—so great and extraordinary a connection.
Hermione's delusions of modesty were absurd.
Tom ultimately decided that they were a minor inconvenience, and that he would never deem any obstacle permanent or irreversible. Indeed, over the years, he had trained owls and spiders and rats; he knew that adaptability was a matter of conditioning.
He'd invite Hermione to his home this summer; he would think of reasons for her to visit him as often as she could. Eventually, she'd come to enjoy his company—all aspects of it, without the artificial limitations imposed by some internal sense of morality or propriety.
To him, these limitations were arbitrary. To Hermione, they were conditional.
They had a year left of Hogwarts.
Looking at the stiff expressions of his fellow bathroom occupants, Tom supposed he wasn't the only one keeping an eye on the time.