1944
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"'War is the sole art of rulers; there is no failure as despised as the failure of going unarmed'," Tom read, turning the page of the book he held in his lap.
For a number of years, Tom had amassed a collection of Muggle books. Military history, atlases, political and natural philosophy, guidebooks for various esoteric disciplines, and language primers. Many of them hadn't been opened since Tom got his Hogwarts letter; from the autumn of 1938, Tom had saved every shilling and knut for second-hand textbooks from Diagon Alley. That didn't mean that he threw away his Muggle books, or refused them when Dr. Granger or Mrs. Riddle gave him gifts for birthdays and Christmas.
No, he'd kept them all, despite his lack of time and inclination to read them. He'd added them to the growing library in the back of his orphanage wardrobe, and later, to the bedroom in the North Wing of the Riddle House, along with the rest of his worldly possessions.
He knew that he couldn't have borne parting with them.
Before the age of eleven years old, Tom's book collection was the most valuable thing he owned. The value wasn't just in monetary terms, but in what it represented: knowledge. It was a rope thrown to him from above, allowing him to crawl his way up the pecking order, until the taint of poverty and illegitimacy was left in the far distance, where it belonged. Where the other boys played games of make-believe in the orphanage yard—Cops and Robbers, Huns and Tommies (this was one of the many occasions in which Tom utterly despised his dead mother's last gift)—Tom stayed in his room and read his books, because he knew he was never going to enlist in any inbred king's army.
Tom wasn't fond of war. From what he'd overheard about the last Great War, war led to short-portions and austerity for anyone who wasn't forced to take up arms themselves. But Tom was no pacifist or shilly-shallying objector. He understood that it wasn't always possible to make a convincing argument on the basis of good-will and diplomacy; sometimes one had to use force, or at least a show of force, to get things done in a timely and efficient manner. It was thus, Tom had decided, that if force had to be used, then he would use that force.
But he wouldn't be the force. Not as a soldier, as an infantryman, as disposable matériel to be spent in an empire's feeble attempt at maintaining a colonial presence.
If he was obliged, by either fortune or necessity, to learn about the arts of war, then he would not do it as a peon in the trenches, but as a superior, a commander. As a prince.
.
"Debbe adunque un principe non avere altro oggeto nè altro pensiero, nè prendere cosa alcuna per sua arte fuori della guerra ed ordinin e disciplina di essa..."
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"'Therefore, a Prince should have no other thoughts but thoughts of war'," was the translation that Tom read aloud from the worn pages of his Muggle book. It seemed somewhat inflexible to Tom, who had seen the value of such alternatives as subterfuge, sabotage, and, yes, pranking when it came to subduing his adversaries. Then again, the life of a prince was hardly his life. He had no royal court and household guard; he had no vast treasury of gold, no city to rule over, nor sworn servants to serve his every whim.
That last property, however, might have changed from the first time he'd read the book.
"What are your thoughts on war, Spider?" Tom asked, turning to the Acromantula, perched on a rock, its pincers buried in an enlarged chicken's egg.
The howl of the wind was the only response to Tom's question, so bitingly cold that it numbed the tip of his nose and drew a blotchy flush to his winter-pale skin.
Tom drew his wand, pointed it at the rock, and cast a warming charm to it, adjusting the temperature until it let off a wave of comfortable heat, like a pan of embers that London street vendors used to roast chestnuts in the winter. Tom's skin tingled as his blood warmed; after a minute, he began to feel like he had a nose again.
"Foolish man," spoke the Acromantula, clicking its mandibles, dripping with viscous yellow strings of scrambled egg yolk, "war is an act of humans. Humans killing other humans—why should I have any thoughts on it but delight?"
"The books I read about your species," said Tom, "had it that an Acromantula patriarch or matriarch will order the annihilation of nearby colonies of Firetrail Snails or Lapian Dragonflies, down to the last egg and larval cell. That sounds very much like war to me."
"Human words mean nothing to our kind," said the Acromantula, letting out a combination of shrill whistles and short clicks to indicate its disparaging tone. "We defend our territory. We protect our webs against anything that might damage them. We ensure that our young are fed and survive to full growth."
"The word's just a word, of course," said Tom, "but where the circumstance and objectives may vary, isn't the intent one and the same? It's a physical demonstration of might."
"It is completely different," the Acromantula insisted, waving its egg-coated forelegs around irritably. Shards of broken eggshell were stuck to the wiry black hairs around its face.
"No, it's not," said Tom, leaning back to avoid the flying gobbets of egg albumen.
"Yes, it is."
"Look here," said Tom, waggling his book in the spider's eight-eyed face. "A conflict over disputed territory or a limited resource is what constitutes a—"
"Hssss!"
The Acromantula scuttled backwards, clutching its egg between its forelegs like a valuable treasure.
"The water has changed its course!" it shrilled in a frantic voice. "Get back—back—back!"
The Great Lake of Hogwarts had formed at the lowest point between two highland ridges, in a valley carved out by glaciers and filled with meltwater. The original tower of the Hogwarts castle, containing the Great Hall and smaller entrance hall, had been built on the highest ridge overlooking the valley, surrounded on three sides by black water, deeper than any protective moat in all the founders' memory and experience.
Three sides of the castle faced the water. The other side, the side that the founders had cared to protect with their enchanted gate and winged guardian boars, faced the road that led down to the village of Hogsmeade. If the castle and students were ever to be attacked, the founders had assumed that the threat would come from the landward side. The greatest threat in the days before the Statute of Secrecy, the founders knew, were Norman kings with their appointed court wizards, and Briton chieftains advised by their wise men and druids. Assisted by magic, but otherwise Muggle. With Muggle armies.
What threat would there ever be in the water?
The enchantments laid by the founders covered the castle and grounds, but only the grounds. No one paid attention to the Lake, considered the domain of the creatures that lived under it, the Merfolk, the Giant Squid, and various Kelpies and Selkies that came and went as they pleased. No one ventured out to the rocky shores of the valley, a meandering line of rough gravel beaches that narrowed to the width of a few feet in some places, and were inundated completely each year during the spring floods.
It was one of these gravel beaches, half a mile from the castle, that Tom had grounded his borrowed boat. It had seemed the perfect place for a quiet rendezvous, this sheltered bight protected from the wind—and visibility from the castle towers—by an outcropping of exposed rock. It had a good, deep bank of gravel that he could drive the boat into, without having to worry about tying it up, in case it washed away during changes in the water level. And it had enough space that he and the Acromantula could walk about without having to touch each other, but small enough that he could easily catch it if it tried to run away from him.
(Not that it would. Tom thought he had its training well in hand, after introducing the idea of food rewards that met its grudging standards of freshness.)
And there was enough room on the little beach to invite a third to their party.
With a hollow boom, one section of the frozen lake splintered into pieces, and a dark shape poked its way through. First a head, tossed from side to side to throw off a glittering spray of water, then a long and sinuous body that carved a channel through the lake's ice-coated surface, until it reached the thickest ice at the shore and propelled itself up, heaving its great bulk out of the water.
The Basilisk slithered up the beach, twisting in circles to scrape off the stray chunks of ice and clinging kelp leaves, before coiling up around the heated rock recently vacated by the frightened Acromantula.
I sensed your presence, it rumbled, resting its head on the top of the spell-warmed rock and flickering its forked tongue in Tom's direction. Its eyes were closed, as Tom had ordered, but it could still smell things—or taste, rather—with its tongue, and on a cold day in early December, Tom was the warmest living being in the vicinity.
The Basilisk's tongue, as thick around as Tom's wrist, poked in and out of its mouth. Tom smacked it away when it got too close to him, but it curled around his fingers and dragged him closer to the Basilisk's face like a frog with a snared fly.
"You recognise my presence?" asked Tom. "How?"
What has been known, it replied, shall be remembered.
The way in which the creature spoke the word 'known' was not in English, but conveyed a number of meanings that Tom understood implicitly. Nevertheless, he struggled to recount its meaning in conventional terms. 'To know', as snakes spoke of it, was to recognise an object as producing a particular frequency of sound, emitting a distinct musk or scent, and following a predictable pattern of movement. Snakes knew through natural instinct and experience, recognising prey, rivals, threats, and mates.
This Basilisk knew Tom not only as a wandering biped that could speak its language, a curiosity that was neither food nor foe. It had, for some reason or another, attached a certain significance to Tom's presence.
Tom was a little unsettled by it. This wasn't in the nature of a snake. Snakes—reptiles in general—were solitary beasts. Even when they mated, it was for the length of one breeding season, and then sire and dam went on their own separate ways, until the next season arrived, whereupon each snake took a new, different mate than the last time. Snakes weren't like owls, the most common animal used for pets and familiars by wizards. Pet owls lived their lives in a single household, showed affection and loyalty to their owners, to the extent that, once owned, an owl couldn't be given away or sold second-hand. A snake wouldn't care or understand the concept of home or ownership, so long as it was regularly fed and acceptably accommodated.
Perhaps magical creatures are different, he considered. Captive dragons were known to live in herds, though whether that was out of choice or necessity on the part of the reserve management he couldn't tell.
When you hatch an egg, the Basilisk continued, then I shall know it too.
"I have no clue what egg you're speaking of," said Tom.
After your mate lays it. You must have a mate to lay eggs. The Basilisk drew its head close to Tom's midsection. I perceive that you are unfit to lay them yourself.
"What's all this talk about eggs?"
It is how the line continues when you are gone, said the Basilisk. The speaker comes to me, as he has come to me six times before. Then he goes, and he never returns. If I am awoken, who will feed me when you are gone?
"When I am gone?" Tom said. "I don't intend to go."
You will die, spoke the Basilisk with a gust of foul breath. And I will endure. I was created, not to mate and propagate as other creatures are born to do, but to endure. This is my task. You have your own task, little speaker. The tip of its snout bumped into Tom's chest; he staggered backwards. It is good that you are in season.
Tom coughed. "How would you know that?"
I smelled it. When you washed yourself in the water room.
"I told you not to follow me in there!"
You told me not to speak to you while you were there, said the Basilisk. So I did not speak to you.
"You were there the entire time," said Tom, rather disturbed. In hindsight, he knew the voice that had whispered to him for weeks was the voice of the Basilisk. He'd heard it in the shower, and after he'd actually met the Basilisk and given it some orders, the strange voices were no more. He'd assumed that the Basilisk's absence was due to it going off and doing what it usually did—crawling around the Chamber, swimming in the Lake, or exploring the tunnels beneath the castle. Not following him around while he was in the dormitory bathroom taking care of business... and other things.
Unimportant things. Not worth mentioning, of course.
Not worth thinking about, even. Just some very personal and unavoidable business—and Tom would know, as he'd tried and failed to avoid it and had eventually given up in the interest of keeping his trousers presentable. It was business best managed in the limited privacy afforded to a student, where every other room he occupied, waking and sleeping, was shared with his classmates.
I have nothing to do but sleep and hunt, and you have forbidden hunting.
If a giant snake could look reproachful with its eyes closed, then this was the Basilisk's expression, conveyed through the tilt of its head and the lazy twitch of its tongue.
I am... unfruitful. You are not. It is your duty. You must remember that.
"I will decide what is and what isn't my duty," said Tom, still unnerved about being described as 'in season'. It was another term that was more appropriately applied to snakes than human beings, indicating a period where steady food, higher temperatures, and longer hours of daylight had invoked a certain desire to—to... well, know others in a very specific way.
At weeks from eighteen years old, Tom knew he was bodily capable—if mentally unwilling—of sowing and begetting. It wasn't a common thing in a Britain that had sent millions of its young men off to the trenches, but it wasn't exactly an unheard of thing either, for someone his age to, ah, disperse the essence of his loins. Tom had been told that his mother died young; she wasn't even twenty years old when she'd stumbled into Wool's on a winter's eve. Her youth hadn't been the most shocking part; plenty of women had started families of their own at that age. Plenty of women these days started families to avoid being sent to work on a farm in the name of National Service.
No, the shock had been in Merope's lack of escort or chaperone, the lack of a ring on her finger, and not a mention of a husband, only the delivery of a firstborn son who had no knowledge of his absentee father.
An animal's mind didn't understand willing or unwilling when one was perfectly capable in a physical sense. When an animal reached that stage of maturity, they did what instinct drove them to do, with none of a sentient human's forethought and circumspection. Tom called this instinctual drive, which at times affected weaker humans, 'base urges'. But he had no way of explaining this to a snake, a creature with no comprehension of propriety, vice, or the fires of Temptation.
(At this point, Tom found himself wondering if Eve of Eden had had his magical ability to commune with snakes. And if she, too, had struggled in articulating the significance of The Rules to a wild animal.)
"No," said Tom, clearing his throat. Speaking in Snake always made him thirsty afterwards. "I've made no promises in that regard. But I did promise to feed you."
Tom Summoned his bag into his hand. It contained a pasteboard carton bought from the grocer in Hogsmeade. Within was a dozen speckled brown eggs, packed in straw along with a Cushioning Charm that was close to wearing off; when he shook the carton, Tom heard the rustle of shifting straw from the eggs rolling around inside.
The books that Tom had read on magical husbandry had instructed him on the particulars of keeping carnivores, which were much the same for pet snakes (Boomslang and Ashwinder) as they were for large raptors (eagle owls and gyrfalcons). Fresh meat was their meal of choice.
But the species of magical animal he owned were nowhere to be found in the pet care guides. His pets were more interesting than anything that could be had from a Diagon Alley menagerie or hobbyist breeder.
His ownership of interesting pets, however, left him with difficulties that couldn't be solved with a simple guidebook. This was due to the fact that the most interesting animals were the heads of their respective trophic chains. Acromantulas in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo, their natural habitat, ate giant magical land snails, or non-magical monkeys and birds caught in their webs. Basilisks were rather indiscriminate, and subsisted on anything from fish to Sirens to unsuspecting wizards.
Tom knew he could have wheedled his way into acquiring a live goat in Hogsmeade, or done as Hagrid had, and set snares in the Forest for small game—muskrat, fox, and rabbit, perhaps a Jarvey if he was lucky. He could have bought raw meat, a slab of pork belly or a side of beef, and warmed it with a charm or two until it took on a vague resemblance, in the heat-based perception of a snake, to the body of a living animal.
He didn't, because there was a simpler solution: eggs.
A carton of eggs was easy to buy without uncomfortable questions ("Sir, I was meaning to practice my Hover Charm—did you know that the N.E.W.T. examiners give extra points for precision?"), easy to carry in his bag, and appealing to an Acromantula who liked its food liquid, and a Basilisk who favoured food it could fit in its mouth and swallow in one bite. And unlike butcher-bought meat, they couldn't turn their noses up at it for its lack of freshness.
(When Tom had asked the Basilisk what it liked to eat, it had replied, The swimming ones are the best. They slide right down. I do not enjoy the walking ones as much.
"You've eaten wizards?" Tom had inquired of it.
It has been forbidden to me, said the Basilisk. Unless you will have it otherwise. I speak of the six-limbed ones. Two pairs of earth limbs, and one pair of air limbs. They live amongst the trees, far from the shore.
Tom took a moment to consider this statement. Three pairs of limbs? What manner of creature was that—an insect?
They take hours to swallow, continued the Basilisk. Its tongue flicked out, once, twice—an indication of impatience. It is their pelts. Too much hair. They catch from the inside for days after; even more when they have brought with them their sharpened throwing sticks.
"Centaurs," said Tom, understanding at once. "Are they... do they taste pleasant, at least?"
If you wish to try it, speaker, I recommend tearing them into pieces first.)
Tom had no fondness for centaurs—he'd never spoken to one—but the textbook told him that despite their animalistic appearance, they were creatures of reason and thus fiendishly difficult to snare, and impossible to domesticate. That meant, of course, it would be an impossible task for the average wizard; the book had said that Acromantulas couldn't be tamed either, but hadn't Tom managed that at the age of sixteen?
It was all very well to take strategic advice from a book, but not all situations could be addressed by a set of written instructions. In the end, one had to defer to their own judgement.
Tom removed three eggs from the carton and placed them at his feet, drawing his wand and kneeling on the gravel.
"Engorgio," Tom incanted over them, his brow furrowing in concentration as he cast the spell on three subjects simultaneously, wand moving in the pattern of a demi-circle between two vertical strokes. The Enlargement Charm was taught in Second-Year, but students had only practised it on quills and small trinkets in class.
In class, they had been told it was dangerous for amateurs to use this spell on living creatures. The correct way to do it was to ensure all parts of the subject grew at the same rate, but that required a depth of concentration that most twelve year old wizards were incapable of—especially when they were busy thinking about the Slytherin-Gryffindor Quidditch match on Saturday, or how many chocolate frogs it would cost to copy someone's Astronomy charts.
Precision and accuracy didn't matter that much if a teacup was Enlarged in a slapdash job, so that the bowl came out oval-shaped and the handle was big enough to dangle around a wrist; it could be easily fixed by further Enlarging and Shrinking in the right places. But if it had been an animal, a mouse or a rabbit, then a slapdash job at spellcasting would have killed it: a head made too big for the skeleton to support it, and death by a broken neck; the organs expanded too fast for the rest of the body, and death by an internal rupture. If there were any hard rules about magic—and Tom was reluctant to accept any, for that was the dark path to embracing ineptitude and defeat—then the hardest of all rules to defy was the impossibility of undoing death.
The eggs grew, thickening evenly all around. Tom paused to catch his breath, moving the eggs apart so they had more space between them, then continued with his charmwork. The dimensions of the eggshell had to match the volume of the liquid within, and the thickness of the shell had to match its size, or else it couldn't keep its shape, and would crumple at the lightest touch.
From the size of a chicken egg, a duck egg, then past an Occamy's egg, and from there to a dragon's egg, they grew and grew and grew, and finally the eggs were more than half Tom's height, large enough that he could wrap his arms around them and the tips of his fingers would only just brush together. They were larger than the bespelled eggs he had given the Acromantula as a reward for good behaviour, but a Basilisk had a greater appetite to satisfy.
And a better reason to keep it satisfied, he thought, sliding his wand back into his pocket and wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his robe.
The Basilisk nosed one egg, toppling it over in the gravel.
I know this smell, it said. It smells familiar.
"It's food," said Tom. "Of course it's familiar."
The Basilisk thrashed its tail, with a crunch of grinding stone and shattering pebbles—and without it having to speak, Tom could sense its agitation. But hunger seemed to win out. The great fanged jaws opened, letting out a pungent gust of breath, and the Basilisk bent its head over the first egg.
Its tongue licked at the shell, gauging its size, before the egg was scooped up and held in the bed of the Basilisk's lower jaw. Viewing the jaw from the inside, Tom noticed that there appeared to be a limit to how wide the Basilisk could open its mouth. Its jaw must not be hinged like that of most snakes; it was no wonder it preferred to have its meals served in bite-sized portions. With this fact revealed to him, Tom began to suspect that the Basilisk's species was some sort of hybrid of magical lizard. Hadn't the Basilisk mentioned it had been created?
Tom had never seen a snake with eyelids, either. Lizards had them, and so did crocodiles, but snakes had a clear scale cap over their eyes that only showed as a semi-translucent, milky white film when they shed their skins.
Tossing its head back, the egg tumbled down and disappeared into the depths of the Basilisk's throat. Tom could see the muscles convulsing as a visible lump moved from the base of its jaw and down its neck—if snakes even had a neck, and weren't, as some might assume, all neck. In that moment, Tom wished Hermione was there to see it. He knew that a snake's interior consisted of a series of tubes, various elongated sacs for digesting and passing food through from front to back. (It had been a leisurely pursuit in Tom's orphanage days to poke at the bodies of vermin caught in traps and strays squashed by motorcars.) Hermione, though lacking in the bedside manner of a medical professional, would have been able to give each part its proper anatomical name.
When the lump had travelled several feet down the Basilisk's sinuous body, it let out a breathy sigh of satisfaction and lowered its horned head to the ground. The movement of its body had scraped out a shallow cavity in the gravel, and now, using its snout, it nudged the other two eggs into the centre of the hollow.
"Aren't you going to finish them?" asked Tom.
In a moment, the Basilisk answered.
It wriggled around in the gravel, enlarging its nesting hole, the heavy coils of its body piling around on top of one another. Tom was about to make mention of the effort he'd put into charming the eggs, but his half-formed complaint was silenced by a strange noise.
Pop!
Crack!
They seemed to emanate from inside the Basilisk's body.
Ahh, the Basilisk sighed, rolling around on its back. The horned protrusions on the top of its head rasped against stone. That was swifter than usual. Sometimes the breaking takes me days. You must bring more of these.
"Are you satiated?"
For now. The Basilisk lay still for a few seconds, and then ventured, But I would like it if you warmed more stones. This one—it bumped against the rock that Tom had charmed for the Acromantula—is too small.
Tom drew his wand and, with some exasperation, began attending to the Basilisk's rather finicky list of demands.
The Basilisk was a powerful magical creature, and this specimen was an equal by mass to one of the larger breeds of dragons. It was almost a thousand years old, and there were few creatures that lived as long as that. The longest-lived creature, Tom recalled, was the Phoenix, which was immortal. The Vampire, also immortal, was legally recognised as a Being, not a creature. And the Dementor, Poltergeist, and Inferius were not so much immortal as amortal, unable to die because they were not truly alive to begin with.
For a creature this old, Tom found it somehow... artless and simple-minded. It had the approximation of a personality, but one that even the most charitable of souls could not describe as agreeable or engaging. It had needs and desires. It could communicate these, and other things, to Tom.
But Tom still found it dull.
He supposed it must be because the Basilisk had spent most of its thousand years asleep in the Chamber. The few times it had been awoken by other wizards were for no longer than a stretch of months, and so it had only spent a few years of its life actually living. Tom, at seventeen, possessed more life experience than it did; he, by now, had formed strong positions on a number of subjects—statecraft, theology, ethics, literature, and magical theory. The Basilisk had none of this. The one subject that it could discuss, with any semblance of authority, was food, and the acquisition and consumption of food.
This had confirmed Tom's long-held belief that snakes were boring. The Acromantula was the more interesting of his two pets. Its vulnerabilities and relative size had allowed Tom to use it for interesting experiments, which Tom would not dare to use on the Basilisk. For the fact of the matter was this: the Basilisk was immensely powerful, and even though Tom ignored much of the advice given him by the textbooks, he acknowledged that, yes, a Basilisk was capable of killing a wizard. Without question.
The two things that kept it from killing Tom was his ability to speak to it, and its obedience to his will. On every other occasion, with any other creature or person, Tom would have laid open its mind and sought out any trace of deception and falseness hidden in its thoughts.
He couldn't do that to the Basilisk without looking into its eyes, and he couldn't look into its eyes without dying. And he refused to do that.
Tom pondered the possibility of Death by Basilisk—not his death, obviously. He knew of this ability from the textbooks, the distinctive trait that earned the species its five-star danger rating, but were the textbooks always right? They got things wrong all the time. Then again, it was all the textbooks that wrote of the Basilisk's lethal gaze... Could it be that all the authors were wrong?
His thoughts had meandered into the logistics of testing the so-called Lethal Gaze, but they were interrupted by the sound of the Basilisk's body thrashing over shifting gravel, the crunch of stone, and the cry of a familiar voice.
"Riddle!"
Tom looked up, his hand going to his wand.
Thirty feet up in the air, buffetted by the icy wind, was a dark rectangle, tasselled in the corners. A face peeked over the side, pale and stricken, and Nott's voice called out to him.
"Call it off, Riddle!"
Over the howl of the wind, the Basilisk roared, its head following the sound of Nott's voice; it lunged into the air, throwing its heavy body up, up, up into the air, its jaw opened to its fullest extent. The mouth was pink, and the flaps of skin on either side of its scaley jaw a stark white, and inside, the yellowed fangs were extended, the tip of each tooth stained a violent, acid green.
The flying carpet abruptly jerked to one side, and Tom saw a pair of legs dangling off the edge, before Nott pulled them back in and regained control of the steering.
With a thump! that shook the earth beneath Tom's feet, the front half of the Basilisk's body fell to the ground.
An intruder, it hissed, throwing several green-scaled coils around Tom; he was encircled within its body and had to stand on his toes to look over the side. I will destroy it. You must hide yourself now, speaker, then I will go—
The Basilisk lowered its head, sealing Tom off from his view of the sky, where the carpet had climbed several dozen feet higher.
"No," said Tom, pushing at the Basilisk's face. "It's not a threat."
There is very little that could threaten me.
"No," said Tom again, imbuing his voice with a measure of his will. "Not much to either of us. He is a... a servant."
In the language of snakes, there was no exact word for servant, so Tom had to rely on a figurative description. The chirping birds pecking scraps of sinew from the teeth of a greater being as it basked in the sun; the darting minnows nibbling at mites infesting the horned ridges above the great shuttered eyes, which no amount of dust bathing could reach. Lesser creatures, all of them: they were weak, short-lived, and insignificant. Not even worth the effort of eating. But they had a purpose. They knew their place. They could be tolerated.
The Basilisk hesitated.
"Let me out," said Tom. He pushed at the Basilisk's snout, which budged not an inch. "I'll show you."
The coils loosened; the Basilisk's head drew back, a gap appeared, and the light returned.
Tom, who had drawn his wand, clamped the handle between his teeth and crawled his way up the Basilisk's side, grabbing onto the ridged spines on its back to haul himself across and over. He spat his wand into his hand, then turned back to the Basilisk.
"Stay here," he murmured. "And whatever happens, don't open your eyes. This is my command."
As you wish it, said the Basilisk sullenly.
"Nott," Tom spoke, pressing the tip of his wand to his throat. "You can come down now."
"Have you got that thing under control?" yelled Nott from twenty feet away, his voice amplified by a spell.
"Careful," said Tom. "You don't want to hurt its feelings."
The gravel crunched as the Basilisk shifted restlessly. What are you saying to it?
Nott alighted on the ground, tucking his carpet under one arm, while the other held his wand up, the point wavering from Tom to the Basilisk and back; Tom noticed that Nott's feet were positioned in a duelling stance, and he had taken his green-and-silver necktie from off his collar. It was wrapped around his brows, with the ends dangling behind his ear.
"If I wanted you dead, you would be. I thought you'd have learned that lesson two years ago," said Tom, striding forward. "Is that supposed to be a blindfold? It looks ridiculous."
"I'd rather not be dead," Nott replied. "It's in my nature. I thought you'd have figured that out long ago."
What is it saying? the Basilisk rumbled. I cannot understand it...
Nott paused, glancing over Tom's shoulder. Abruptly, he ducked his head and drew his necktie over his eyes. His wand, held aloft from the moment he'd stepped foot on solid earth, traced out the circular movement of the Shield Charm.
"It's coming over here! Aren't you going to do anything, Riddle? It's looking in this direction—"
"If it were looking at you, I'm quite certain you'd know it," said Tom.
Who is it? the Basilisk asked, creeping closer. Is it your mate?
"It's coming closer!"
It has the same water room smell as you do, said the Basilisk.
"Riddle? Are you even listening to me?"
Oh, the Basilisk continued, sounding crestfallen. It has the wrong parts for you to mate with. Unless your kind can change its parts at will.
Tom cleared his throat; it was a challenge to listen and pay attention to two simultaneous conversations in two different languages, but he saw no challenge as impossible to overcome. "There's no need for alarm. It's harmless."
"Harmless? It's fifty feet long! If it rolled over, it'd crush you!"
"I have it well in hand. It's very much like training a... a pet, you see."
"Well, no, I don't," said Nott, hesitantly lifting a section of necktie up from one eye—as if a one-eyed peek would save him from being killed by the Basilisk's gaze. "Merlin's knobbled staff, it's right behind you!"
Have you tried changing your parts?
Something bumped gently against the back of Tom's robes. Tom took a lurching step forward, then righted himself.
Or will you make the other one change its parts?
Tom twisted to the side and swatted away a scaley snout before it made contact with the seat of his trousers.
Nott observed the scene with a wry expression on his face. "A pet, you say."
Speaker? Why do you not attend my words?
"A new pet," Tom clarified. "But one shouldn't expect too much from a feral."
"One shouldn't expect too much from a pet, either," said Nott. "I've a dog at home, and all the training in the world won't stop her from wanting to sniff my backside."
.
.
It took a half dozen enlarged eggs to persuade the Basilisk to leave them alone, at least for the length of a conversation.
Whilst the Basilisk was occupied, Tom turned to Nott and demanded, "Well, did you bring it here?"
"I got it to work in the dorm; I don't know why you wanted me to come all the way—"
"You told me it worked," said Tom. "We're here so you and I can see it working. With the real thing."
"You're testing it here?"
"I promised you that I'd find something to test it on."
Nott swallowed. "I'd very much like to hear that I'm not the test subject."
"Don't be absurd," said Tom. "I'm testing it on the snake. If anything's immune to the venom, it's the creature that made it."
The parchment Nott gave him was the result of weeks of work, a task assigned to him the day Tom had met the Basilisk in the middle of the Lake. Inspecting it, Tom saw that the parchment was an even beige colour, with no sign of spots or puckers—an indication that it was sourced from an ill or injured animal. The heft, thickness, and soft velvet finish of the surface proved it to be premium grade material. This wasn't parchment, but the level above it. Vellum.
Nott had put his own galleons into this venture, then. At the stationery shop, the good parchment had been cut on request, while the vellum was kept in a locked cabinet behind the till. And if this was the tester, it couldn't be the only one.
The interior of the envelope contained no letter, pamphlet, or handbill—but the vellum itself was far from empty. Long strings of densely packed runes were inscribed in a spiral pattern that radiated from a central point. Each symbol was written in a glossy black ink, the stroke-widths consistent, spacing precise, uninterrupted by odd splotches or marks. Tom hadn't the temperament for enchanting, but he was aware that mistakes were unacceptable. A misspelled phrase—a misattributed designation—and the intent of the composer was altered, and although one could always scrape away their mistakes with a blade and write over them to save a sheet of expensive parchment, the magic still left traces. Good enough for a student project, perhaps, but not for a future heirloom or masterwork.
All in all, there was a certain grace to Nott's project, shared by all forms of well-cast magic, and Tom had to admit that it was finely done. He had seen Hermione's work in Study of Ancient Runes. She suffered from an over-reliance on Self-Inking Quills, which weren't recommended for enchanting projects, as the presence of an existing enchantment could permute the function of an enchantment in the delicate process of creation. When Hermione used her plain quills, she aimed for effectiveness first, and neatness second, but there was no third, fourth, or even fifth for beauty.
From his bag, Tom Summoned a potion vial, filled with a bright green liquid. It was a moment's work to slice away the layer of wax that kept the cork stopper secured and watertight, and another moment to pour it into the envelope, as Nott had instructed him. Twelve hours, he had been told, it would last for water and juice. Then the ink, despite being Archivist's Superior Indelible, would begin to feather and disintegrate. It wouldn't wash away, but it was unavoidable fact that a degraded enchantment could no longer function as well as it was meant to do.
Nott hadn't told him how long it would last with venom. "I painted it with two layers of naphtha wax. Anything of organic origin would dissolve on exposure. It won't last forever, though; it's too thin. A few hours, maybe. But I'm not going to test it."
If he wouldn't, then Tom would.
Nott lingered by the shore, a safe distance way, pacing back and forth in a jerky gait that suggested he was on the verge of throwing down his carpet and flying away at a moment's notice.
Tom, the thick parchment envelope held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger, approached the Basilisk as it rearranged eggs within its crater-like hollow, taking its time in deciding which one to eat first.
"You should eat that one first," said Tom, pointing to an egg that was a slightly darker shade of brown to the rest. With a few jabs of his wand, he cast a light Warming Charm on the top of the egg and stuck the envelope to it. Snakes couldn't see in colour, but they could sense heat. The envelope would be invisible from a purely visual sense, but the radiating heat should inform the Basilisk that something about this particular egg was different from the rest.
Tom slipped away when the Basilisk slithered around to inspect the egg.
Nott had pulled out a pair of opera glasses to watch him.
"This reminds of a trick we used to play as children," he said, sending a cautious glance in Tom's direction. "—By that, I mean those of us whose mothers sent us to lessons while they went for a rack of vins pétillants and a few hands of whist. We'd sneak a few brooms out of the shed, take the gardeners' tools when their backs were turned, then hide them on the roof. You had to wait for the right moment before nicking a spade or a pair of a shears. Obviously," Nott added, "nothing would've happened to us had we been caught. But this is different. Should we not make ourselves scarce?"
"You can hide behind that rock over there," Tom replied. "I'm staying."
"Well, don't mind if I do, then."
"But," Tom said, reaching over and tugging the handle of Nott's opera glasses right out of the other boy's hands, "I'll have these, thanks."
Nott opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to change his mind. He scurried away, pulling his necktie lower over his brow, and ducked behind a rocky outcrop by the boat Tom had commandeered from the Hogwarts boatshed.
And thus, The Project, the obsession of the last few months, was put into operation for the first time.
Tom narrowed his eyes, hands tightening around the opera glasses. These were wizard-made; they had to have special features—there! He found a knob on the side, plated brass with little notches that tick-tick-ticked as he turned it, and then he could observe the Basilisk, in all its magnified glory: every green scale on its belly, every ridge of horn on its head, and every fearsome tooth glinting from the perimeter of its pink-and-white maw.
A dozen yards away, the Basilisk's tongue tasted the air around the charmed egg, then slowly, warily slipped out. It crept forward; the tip touched the enchanted envelope where it had been adhered to the side of the egg.
Tom held his breath in anticipation.
Nothing happened.
The questing tongue extended; it swiped against the envelope, curiously warm on this frozen December day—
Then, with a weak and unimpressive pop!, like the sound of a bicycle tyre puncturing on the other side of the street, the envelope burst into a small cloud of confetti, and from out of the rain of disintegrating paper came an expanding blossom of green smoke.
In quiet discussions held in the dormitory when the rest of the boys had fallen asleep, Tom had pressed Nott on his progress. And Nott had admitted to a few counts of 'appropriation', mentioning that he'd copied things here and there from other sources, including Gobstones and Exploding Snap, two things that topped Tom's list of the dullest wizarding recreational activities.
(This list included bowls, Professor Dumbledore's favourite sport—the old man had a trophy in his office from the Bodmin Bowling Club, next to his Transfiguration Today forty year career achievement award. Also on the list was the The Daily Prophet's mind-numbing runic crossword puzzle, Hermione's favourite, and chocolate frog card collecting, a hobby in which his fellow students spent tens of galleons buying and opening packs of frogs just for that one rare card. They didn't do anything with the chocolate, nor with their cards! They owned them just to say they owned them, so it was natural for Tom to judge it a silly, infantile pursuit.)
Plagiarism was a matter of little concern to Tom, who had profited from the wretched allure of academic malfeasance as an eleven year old. Hadn't European black powder cannons originally been co-opted from firecrackers, a novelty entertainment for the Chinese? No one had cared then. There was no reason for anyone to care now.
With these expectations set for him, Tom hadn't expected anything too grand from Nott. Something that worked, surely—he wouldn't have recruited Nott for The Project if he hadn't thought the boy to possess some semblance of competence. But despite these expectations—and his personal standards—Tom found himself impressed by the smoothness of the enchantment, and the capability in which Nott had executed his part of The Project.
Tom had seen Gobstones played in the Slytherin Common Room. They shot out a solid stream of liquid when someone lost the match, and could be dodged with ease if one was familiar with sets displayed in the front window of Wiseacre's of Diagon. This was a fine mist, and Tom appreciated the thoughtful detail—the surface area was greater, so the effect became visible immediately upon contact.
Adjusting the knob of the opera glasses, Tom revelled in the sight, slowed to a quarter speed: the cloud of green smoke, droplets of venom dispersed into a fine mist, settling on the speckled brown shell of an enlarged chicken's egg. The egg bubbled and hissed with the sound of frying fat on a stove, white blisters forming and popping and foaming, pinholes on the egg's surface widening into buttonholes within the space of half a minute, revealing the sagging translucent membrane that contained the liquid albumen.
The Basilisk had caught a snoutful of venom, but the affect was far less dramatic. Its tongue retracted into its mouth, tasting the strange substance; it must have recognised the venom as its own, for it made no move to attack the source of the disturbance. Instead, it scrubbed its face against the ground, then resumed its meal. The head lowered, the great jaws opened, bent down to scoop up the egg...
The egg, shedding dribbles of white froth, burst when the weakest part of its shell bumped against the tip of one of the Basilisk's teeth.
Yolk splattered the ground, the other eggs in the Basilisk's little hoard, and the Basilisk's face. The Basilisk reared back, tossing its head from side to side, and a trail of sticky liquid egg splattered over the ground.
It had worked.
Tom resisted the urge to inspect the egg up close—it probably wasn't safe to approach the Basilisk until a layer of oiled sand had been tamped down in its hollow.
With a bounce to his step, he joined Nott at the rocky outcrop.
"A few more tests, I think," said Tom, handing back the borrowed opera glasses, "and it should be fit for a Christmas delivery."
"How are you going to send them off, anyway?" Nott asked. "Hand delivery?"
"Owl mail," said Tom. "I can't use one of the school owls, and they'll recognise me if I visit the post office during a Hogsmeade weekend, so I'll have to go to one of the public offices in Diagon during the holidays."
"You're using a public owl?" said Nott incredulously.
"I don't have my own," Tom said. "And a public owl carries a dozen letters a day. No one will know who sent it."
"Yes, they will," Nott said. "Or they can find out—quite easily. Every public owl trained to carry coin pouches has it clipped to a band around their leg. That band lists its hatchery and its home roost, and if an owl takes injury or loses its delivery, the recipient can file a complaint to the owl office via the band number. Owls that lose too many letters are sent back to the hatchery to be re-trained or destroyed. It's how they keep track of these things." Nott shrugged, giving Tom a sideways glance. "Not surprising that you don't know these things, if you've never lived in a home with a family owl or two."
"I suppose you have an alternative to recommend?"
"Give me the name of the recipient, and I'll mail them with my father's owls," said Nott. "They're trained to deliver overnight, and won't loiter around begging for scraps like half the owls I see at breakfast."
"Excellent suggestion," said Tom. "You'll lend me one of your owls, then."
Nott shuffled his feet awkwardly. "I need the names, Riddle. Father's owls won't fly for anyone but a member of the household."
This was frustrating, but Tom could see the reasoning: a family owl, unlike public owls that delivered newspapers, magazines, and Chocolate Sampler of the Month subscriptions, did not like handling by outsiders. An owl's attachment was formed within the first few months of its being bought; this was a desirable trait to wizards who didn't want anyone else tampering with their mail. Tom's prior experience with family owls was through the Grangers' pet, Gilles, whom Hermione had used to send him snacks and interesting books on a daily basis from the moment she'd brought it home from Diagon Alley. Tom had fed Gilles on his windowsill, given it some special magical training, and Gilles, to this day, would deliver his mail. This was unusual for a family owl, but Tom hadn't thought much of it—why shouldn't Hermione's owl answer to him?
"I'll give you the information—and the object of delivery—on the day they're to be mailed," Tom said.
"The owls'll be sent off from home," said Nott, "so how are you going to do that?"
"I'm leaving that up to you."
"What?"
"You'll invite me to your home," said Tom. "Everyone else in Slytherin invites each other for Christmas parties and such every year. This year, you'll invite me."
"Everyone else's family knows each other," Nott pointed out. "But your family are Muggles. Father would never allow you past the wards if he thought you were Muggleborn."
"My grandparents are Muggles," said Tom. "My mother was a witch."
Nott, who had been about to say something, choked. "How... how do you know that?"
"My father," Tom's lip curled in distaste, upon uttering those words. Regardless of the context, those two short words sounded terrible on his tongue, articulated in his voice. "I learned it from him, last year. For some reason, he didn't think much of my mother's abilities—I understood that he was rather grateful to be left a widower at twenty-two."
"So," said Nott. "You're a half-blood, and you're only just telling me this now?"
"Does it matter?" Tom asked, shrugging. "From what I've seen, what really matters isn't blood, or honour, or cleverness. It's authority, and how to wield it well."
When he was younger, Tom would have said power was the only thing that mattered. But Dumbledore had power—and cleverness and aptitude, too. But all that hardly meant anything when the man frittered his life away minding children who had trouble remembering how to hold their wands the right way around. Authority was different. It was power with the mantle of legitimacy; it was the gulf between a rabble-rouser and a regime, or an aspiring Prince to an Emperor regnant.
"And," continued Tom, meeting Nott's eyes without blinking, "how much merit can be placed on the value of blood, when the son of a wizard finds himself deferring to the wisdom of the son of a Muggle?"
"'Wisdom'?" repeated Nott in a tone of disbelief.
"If you don't understand, you have the good luck in being taken under the wing of someone who does," said Tom. "Write to your family, Nott. This is an opportunity for the both of us."
"I... see," said Nott, turning away from Tom's burning gaze to cough into his hand and scratch an itch on his nose.
The sun had begun its descent behind the snow-capped ridgeline when they returned to the castle.
Four o'clock, or thereabouts, by Tom's reckoning. Living at Hogwarts where each school day was divided into four class sessions, two before lunch and two after, Tom had developed a good sense of time without having to rely on his watch. He'd noticed that wizards were a punctual lot; they paid more attention to the aspect of the sun, the turning seasons, and the orbits of heavenly bodies than Muggles did. Unlike Muggles, the average wizard lived outside the bounds of major cities, but resided within small rural holdings unaffected by the coal smoke clouds that had become a fixture of London life.
Tom had also noticed that the animals had a good sense of time, too: when the sun set and the temperature fell, the Basilisk became more lethargic, speaking less and drowsing more. The Acromantula, on the other hand, became more active, and it was unnerving how well it camouflaged itself in the scrubby rocks by the lakeshore, out of sight to both the humans and the fearsome Basilisk that had curled itself up, after consuming its dinner, in a gouged-out crater warmed by charmed rocks.
"I've warmed that pile of rocks over there," Tom spoke to a shivering stand of marshweed. "If you try to leave this inlet, you'll freeze to death overnight. And in the event you run away and survive the night, I'll have the Basilisk take care of you in the morning."
"You're leaving me here?" said the Acromantula in its breathy voice.
"Don't worry, you won't be alone," said Tom, glancing over his shoulder at the sleeping Basilisk. "You said you wanted to see the sky. Am I not giving you what you asked for?"
Tom made his way back to the boat, where Nott awaited him, his flying carpet spread over his knees like a blanket.
"You could have waited until we got back to the castle to do your business," Nott remarked.
"When nature calls, one can't refuse," Tom replied dismissively. He tapped his wand to the boat's rudder, and the boat juddered forward, slipping into the water without a splash. In the growing dark, the boat navigated its way back to the boatshed, a function of its limited enchantments. Above them, torches flickered on in the castle windows, starting from the base of each tower and rising upwards; the final dregs of orange light glinted on the arms of the orrery fixture on the topmost floor of the Astronomy Tower.
"It'll be a queer thing not to see this every day," said Nott, gazing at the castle. "Strange to think there's only a term left before we're due to leave all this behind."
"When we leave, you'll have better things to do than think about terms and exams," said Tom. "I can promise you that."
Nott fell silent, considering Tom's statement—or calculating how much of it was idle boast.
Personally, Tom didn't think much of school these days. There were other things on his mind: goals in common, plans in fruition, and strategies to develop. He thought of the book in his bag, far removed from the N.E.W.T.-student approved reading list.
.
"La prima coniettura che si fa di un signore e del cervel suo, è vedere gli uomini che lui ha d'intorno; e quando sono sufficienti e fedeli, sempre si può riputarlo savio, perchè ha saputo conoscerli suffienti e mantenerseli fedeli."
The first impression one forms of a leader is founded on the servants by which he surrounds himself; when they are competent and loyal, then he may be considered wise, for this is a leader who knows to recognise competence and ensure loyalty.
.
.
One morning, on the last week of term before Christmas holidays, Tom's breakfast was interrupted by Hermione, who had crossed the Great Hall to the Slytherin table, waving a colourful bit of paper in his face.
This was unusual—Hermione normally ate breakfast with the Ravenclaws, while reading the Muggle newspaper sent from London. The other Ravenclaws ate with books on their laps or propped on a jug of pumpkin juice, so no one paid attention to anyone else's reading material. At the Slytherin table, when someone got mail, everyone surreptitiously leaned in to catch a glimpse of the sender's name or the contents of their letter. This practice had led to a dramatic denouement when Lucretia Black's letters had been delivered to the girls of Slytherin, inviting a lucky few to join the bridal retinue of her upcoming wedding.
(Many tears had been shed, but not out of sympathetic well-wishing.)
"Tom, Tom," said Hermione in a frantic voice, "can I speak with you?"
"What is it?"
"I-it's about the holidays," Hermione stammered.
"Oh, we were talking about it just now," said Tom. "Would you like to join us?"
He patted the side of the bench on his right, jerking his head at Lestrange as a cue to slide down and make room.
"Is this allowed?" asked Hermione, and then she shook her head and muttered to herself, "No, no, I'm Head Girl—if I should decide to allow it..."
Tom waited patiently for Hermione to make her decision, and when she—finally—arrived to the inevitable conclusion, he threw an arm around her and murmured in her ear, "You're invited to Christmas with me, as usual. I told my grandmother the day before we left for Scotland; she can't have forgotten—"
"She hasn't," said Hermione. She showed him the contents of this morning's mail: an envelope with a Royal Mail stamp affixed to it, and a square of cardstock in the bright titanium white of factory-produced paper. (Wizarding paper always came in some shade of yellow or brown.) The corners of the card were embossed with silver gilt, and featured an elegant watercolour illustration of the Riddle House's front façade.
"See? 'Tom turns 18! To mark this momentous occasion, we cordially invite you to celebrate with us at our home...'" Hermione shoved the card under his nose. "Mrs. Riddle is hosting a birthday party in your name. Mum and Dad said they both got invitations, and Mr. Pacek got one, too. Mrs. Riddle's invited the Tindalls—at least, the Major and Mrs. Blanche—"
Hermione paused for the briefest fraction of a second, cheeks flaring pink; Tom found it suspect, but she forged ahead quickly and Tom's half-baked speculation dissolved before it had reached its full form.
"And look! She's written here that I'm to pass along an invitation to Nott." She pressed a slip of paper in his hand, which he absently slipped into his pocket. "There's no possibility of it being an intimate family celebration if she's invited this many people. Mum says she's making it a social début!"
"How enthralling."
"Are you not concerned?"
"I've no reason to be," said Tom, giving her a reassuring pat on the hand. "Unless my father's there."
"Well, I haven't heard anything about him..."
"Then there's nothing to worry about, is there?" said Tom brightly. "The more people there, the more presents I'll get. And," he drew Hermione closer to his side, her hair tickling his cheek, "the social début won't mean anything. Local notables, eligible flowers of Yorkshire, supplicants at our altar of generational wealth—I'm not looking to be introduced to any of these people, whoever they may be. I don't care what my grandmother thinks, either—there's nothing they can offer that's as good as what I've already got."
"You have such a way with words, Tom," Hermione sighed.
"I know," Tom replied, breathing deeply of Hermione's scent. Soap, fresh laundry, herbal tea. If there was one good thing about the N.E.W.T.s, it was that their subjects were no longer separated by House, and he could be Hermione's desk partner for every lesson. "If I'm asked to give a speech, there'll be no difficulty in coming up with something to say. And of course it's good that your parents have been invited, Hermione. It'll be the perfect opportunity for us to tell them they shouldn't expect you at King's Cross this summer."
"Sorry?" said Hermione. "You're saying that I can't go back to London next year?"
"I'm saying that there's no reason for you to," said Tom, choosing his words to sound reasonable. Irrefutably logical. "You're an adult now, in both worlds. You'll be a fully qualified witch in June. You've been attending Slughorn's dinners these last few months—without my having to remind you about them—and actually talking to people about wizarding careers. What manner of career opportunities does London have? Unless you have your parents squeak out some references explaining why you were withdrawn from Donwell back in Thirty-Eight, then you've nothing to look forward to but conscripted volunteer-work until you're fortunate enough—or unfortunate, in this case—to have yourself put in the pudding club."
It was a constant struggle in his life, waiting for people to catch up to his line of thinking; where he perceived grand visions of the What-Will-Be, others merely contemplated the possibility of having a roast for dinner, or last night's leftovers. Hermione was an odd contradiction, in that she was perfectly capable of grasping Tom's abstract plans once she'd asked a few relevant questions, but unless she was led onto the right track, she would, more often than not, fixate on the small, irrelevant things—like instrumental value, moral principle, and Things Thou Shalt Not Do.
"'Pudding club,'" said Hermione in a weak voice, "I would never!"
"Not until you're married, no," said Tom. "I can't imagine my grandfather being much pleased about having a bastard in the house."
"I'm not getting married, either," Hermione said firmly. "You're right, I do want a career, but I want it on my own merits. At least, I want to try earning it myself before having to resort to—to desperate measures."
"There's no call for you to insult every married woman with a vocation," said Tom in a reproachful tone.
Hermione ducked her head and turned away, chastened. "I didn't mean it like that!"
"I know you didn't," said Tom. "But other people wouldn't. You know, Hermione, you could take advantage of this social début business that Grandmama is arranging. Respectable society, plenty of introductions—it'll be a good chance to practise mingling without any lasting consequences if you happen to fumble something. After all, you won't be seeing most of these people again."
"You certainly have a strange way of presenting an argument," said Hermione.
"I aim to be as honest as I can," said Tom. "Do you think I'd lie to you in the name of protecting your feelings?"
Hermione just shook her head and pressed her lips together into a line. Tom, upon looking around, noticed that the Slytherins around him, ostensibly immersed in their breakfast tea and toast, quiet exchanges, and private correspondence, had been observing his and Hermione's conversation with affected non-interest. It was unusual, he realised, for a young man and a young woman to indulge in this much familiarity in a public setting. The most he'd ever seen between beaus and fiancées was discreet hand-holding under the table, offering an arm and an escort to class, and chaste kisses on the cheek to mark a farewell.
Here, Hermione was tucked under Tom's arm, her shoulder pressed close against his side, in the small space that had been made by forcing everyone on the right side of the bench to squeeze up and slide down.
I've never been kissed on the cheek, Tom realised. Except by my grandmother.
This was not a thought that crossed his mind often, but in recent weeks, he had been thinking about it more and more.
He'd visited the Basilisk every few days, bringing it food and informing it that he would be away during the holidays, and the each time, the Basilisk had inquired on Tom's progress in securing himself a mate. It was irritating, but Tom held no high expectations when it came to dealing with animals, particularly one who felt no indignity in commenting on his bathroom habits. He wasn't fond of dwelling on those habits; Tom attributed them to the changes, unwanted and unwelcome, that manifested themselves at the age of fourteen and had not disappeared once he'd reached adulthood. They hadn't been limited to physical changes either: to his consternation, there was the occasional vulgar fancy that slipped into his thoughts at the slightest encouragement.
If this is but a phase, then everyone else will have suffered it too. Hermione included. Tom consoled himself with the knowledge that Hermione, almost certainly, hadn't been kissed on the cheek by anyone but her parents.
When the clocktower marked the quarter-hour, the mass of students began to migrate from the dining tables, leaving behind mounds of grimy porcelain and sticky silverware. Tom offered Hermione his arm and walked with her up several floors to the Muggle Studies classroom. It was the one N.E.W.T. subject that she'd signed up for, but Tom hadn't. He'd got an Outstanding on the O.W.L. just by reading the textbook—and using his own knowledge on the 'Social Customs of the Common British Muggle'. He saw it as a waste of five lesson hours a week, but bore Hermione's defences of the subject stoically. (In spite of his iron self-control, Tom couldn't maintain his silence when Hermione had suggested they write to the Board of Governors to recommend the class be made compulsory.)
They arrived to the classroom, located in a far-flung corridor shared by the other relatively unpopular elective subjects, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.
On impulse, a flight of fancy that Tom definitely had not been mulling over since breakfast, he leaned forward and down, and brushed his mouth against Hermione's cheek.
Or rather, he had intended to brush against her cheek, but she'd turned to him to ask a question about their term-end exams, and he, to the surprise of them both, caught the corner of her mouth.
The first impression he got was of soft skin, smoothness with no trace of the coarse prickle of his own skin, where he shaved his whiskers but could still feel the hard grains of hair follicle beneath the flesh. His second impression was of the flavour, an uncomplicated lolly-sweetness, from the iced bun she'd eaten with her morning tea. The third and fourth arrived all at once: the scent of her skin and hair, and the warmth of her cheek as the red suffused her face, the heat radiating so thickly that he felt it on his own face, until a muscle by his eye twitched and made him conscious that this feeling of—shyness—embarrassment—confusion—thrill—was not his own, but a projection of Hermione's emotions.
He turned his face away, and the connection, exquisitely intimate, evaporated at once.
"Tom," Hermione said tentatively, a hand pressed to her mouth.
"You should get to class. You always hate being the last one in," said Tom. "Will you join me for lunch at the Slytherin table?"
"Y-yes," said Hermione. "Of course."
Tom stopped in the bathroom—the boys' bathroom, not the girls' bathroom with the hidden entrance to the Chamber of Secrets—to refresh himself. And to examine the jumble of feelings he was presently experiencing, Hermione's reaction to him, and the meaning of the... the kiss. For it was a kiss. There was nothing else he could call it.
He'd... enjoyed it.
There was no other way to accurately describe it.
Was there a meaning behind it? He supposed he could explain it away as an experiment of sorts, a means to determine if it was as disgusting as it looked, as disgusting as he had for many years thought it would be. He'd caught his fair share of curfew dodgers in the halls after-hours, and to see them, tongues lolling, mouths pressed wetly together, had put in his mind an image of Old Ab's goats, lipping at the last chunk of apple at the bottom of the feed trough.
This, on the other hand, had felt like a more profound iteration of the First Hug. He had been confused about that, too, but after many years and many hugs, he had grown to appreciate them as a demonstration of comfort and affection.
There was nothing wrong with that.
In fact, his book even seemed to approve of it.
.
"Quelli che si obbligano, e non sieno rapaci, si debbono onorare ed amare—perchè nelle prosperità te ne onori, e nelle avversità non hai da temere."
Those committed to you, without motivations of greed, should be honoured and loved—because those who are honoured in times of prosperity you shall never fear in times of adversity.
.
Onorare ed amare.
The translation had puzzled him at first. He'd studied Latin cases and conjugation for long enough to recognise the root word, which had filtered down through Latin's various derivative languages. What, exactly, was the meaning of this advice? How would it be best adapted to his own circumstances?
Tom wasn't aware of the twenty minutes that had passed in meditative contemplation until Nott barged into the bathroom, robes flapping.
"Riddle! There you are—I've been looking all over for you! I tried to catch your attention at breakfast, but you were too busy making eyes at Granger."
The reflection in the mirror stiffened. Tom blinked, his thoughts derailed, and glanced over his shoulder.
"Don't you have class to attend?"
"I've got a free," said Nott. "Runes and Arithmancy are my only electives, and we're in the same class."
"Why are you here, then? Can't you see that I'm busy?"
"Doing what? Talking to the looking glass?"
"Practising Legilimency," said Tom.
"Oh," said Nott, deflating somewhat. "Should I come back later?"
"Just tell me what you came here to say," Tom said.
Nott rifled in his bag and held out an envelope of yellow parchment with a green wax seal, broken in half. "My mother wrote and said that I could invite a guest for tea on Christmas Eve. Father will be out attending a gala for writers and publishers, so charge of the wards will fall to Mother for the day."
"Couldn't you have asked your father?" said Tom.
"He'd have refused, since he's never met your parents," said Nott. "Mother's more lenient about these things, and she's always been more inclined to indulge me."
"Alright," said Tom, taking the letter and opening it. There was one sheet of parchment inside; unfolding it, he saw the time and date, approximately an hour past noon, two days past the date of the hibernal solstice, written in astrological symbols denoting planetary alignment and point of perigee. There was a pressed flower tucked into the crease of the parchment, and when Tom touched it, he felt an odd tingle on the tips of his fingers, as if he'd just pressed them against the window of a moving motorcar.
"It's a Portkey," Nott explained. "Valid for one day only. It'll take you right outside the house, since you can't Apparate directly if you've never been there before."
"Well, as there's no better time for this, I have something for you," said Tom, fishing in his pocket for the invitation that Hermione had given him at breakfast. "Don't worry about the part that says 'gifts are unnecessary'; every other guest will be bringing one anyway."
"A Muggle birthday party, eh?" said Nott, scanning the contents of the invitation.
"Why not?" said Tom. "We'll have something to celebrate."
.
.
.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
— The Prince is a handbook of political philosophy first published in 1532, and is frequently referenced by fictional bad guys and dark-lords-in-training. It seemed like a thing edgelord Tom would admire at age 17, thinking he's soooo smart and cultured. The quotes used here are from the original Italian version, re-printed in 1891 with English footnotes. I was tempted to title this chapter "The Half-Blood Prince", but it was way too on-the-nose.
— Basilisks are a mutant species created by hatching a chicken egg under a toad, probably with some extra magical ritual mumbo-jumbo. In this story, Basilisks are infertile because they are not a naturally occurring species, and must rely on wizards to perpetuate their species' life cycle.
— We're nearing the end of 1944. What an interesting year for Tom.