1944
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The final days of term slipped headfirst into a roaring blizzard that laid a thick coat of ice over the castle and grounds. Every morning, owls delivered mail so thickly encrusted with ice that they couldn't be opened without a good thaw. Students who had only worn their scarves and matching mittens for Quidditch games wore them to meals and indoor classes. In the short gaps between classes, the corridors became awash in a flood of primary colours—yellow and blue, red and green.
In the Slytherin boys' dormitory, Tom's dorm mates buried themselves in their textbooks in preparation for their term-end exams, covering the floor in loose parchment and sweet wrappers, with one narrow path cleared from the door to the bathroom. What they had been doing in the last three months, Tom didn't know, but he suspected it had involved late nights of Firewhisky, card games, and gambling. (And possibly collectible posters of the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch team straddling their brooms in mid-air.)
Tom hadn't ignored his own textbooks. In preparation for his visit to Nott's house, he'd verified and re-verified the date of the solstice from his Astronomy books, which fell on the twenty-second day of December. The indicated time, too, took further confirmation—solar azimuth (what the invitation meant with its symbol for 'noon') was dependent on geographical altitude; the measurements given in his schoolbooks used the directions for northern Scotland, not the English Midlands where Nott lived.
When Nott came upon Tom brushing up on his Astronomy, he remarked, "The difference is only around twelve minutes, give or take a few seconds. You don't have to bother calculating; if you hold onto the Portkey and wait, it'll take you where you were meant to go. That's what everyone else does."
"People who buy Portkeys know where they're going," said Tom. "This one was given to me. I think it would be advantageous to know where exactly it's taking me."
If he kept an eye on his watch and noted when the Portkey activated, he'd be able to determine the location of Nott's family property, within a range of a dozen or so miles. It was a rather dry way of obtaining information, but it could come in useful someday. Wizards didn't give away information like that—they exchanged mail or called on each other via Floo Network with informal names like 'The Black Residence' or 'Cherrytree Cottage'.
Nott's troubled expression indicated that he'd caught onto Tom's line of thinking. "Robbery is one of the rarest crimes in Wizarding Britain, if you must know, Riddle. No one keeps piles of gold lying about, and the most valuable magical artefacts are always associated with great lineages. It'd be impossible to sell them off without drawing attention to yourself."
"You told me last week that you used to nick things from the gardeners," replied Tom. "Doesn't that count as robbery?"
"They're not human, they're property. It's as if you asked whether or not trimming the leaves off a Mandrake counts as stealing," said Nott. "If you're going to study anything, I recommend etiquette. To put on a good showing, you mustn't appear surprised at how a proper wizarding household is run. During meal service, the servants never touch the food or tableware. The portraits will inquire about your family, and intrude on any conversation held in the hallways. The looking glasses can be ignored; you shouldn't feed scraps to the animals, regardless of how much they beg; the only acceptable Muggle-related discussion topics allowed at table are Muggle arts and history—anything else devolves into political bickering."
Nott paused for a moment, waiting for Tom to form a response. When Tom remained silent, Nott asked, "Aren't you going to write that down?"
"Why should I?"
"Granger would have—" Nott cut himself off, coughing. "Ah, it just seemed like something Granger might do."
"I'm sure I can remember without that," said Tom, shrugging. "And I'm sure you'll remind me if I forget anything. After all, any lapses on my part reflect poorly on you, as the one who invited me. A good incentive, isn't it?"
"Not particularly."
"Don't look so worried," Tom assured Nott. "We only have to mail a few envelopes. In and out; it'll be done before dinner."
"Are you saying that nothing will go wrong?"
"If anything does," said Tom, "I'll find a way to fix it. I've a talent with these things."
"Really," said Nott in a flat voice. "Fixing things is your talent."
"I didn't want to mention duelling, Defence, Charms, Legilimency, or leadership," Tom said. "That would be immodest of me."
"And modesty, I suppose, is another one of your many wonderful qualities," said Nott tersely. A vein on his temple pulsed; biting himself off from saying anything further, the boy pitched himself onto his bed and yanked the canopy curtains shut.
Tom ignored the snide tone of Nott's remark, returning to his studies. He jotted down a note to study Portkeys and their creation. Officially, their production and distribution was regulated by the Ministry of Magic, who contracted licensed creators to link various major wizarding settlements, as mass transport for sporting or entertainment events, tourism, or business. One could place an order with the Ministry for a custom single-use Portkey, but it meant having to give them the location and time of departure—not the best idea when one required privacy and discretion.
This was a more worthwhile field of study than... etiquette.
He'd read etiquette books as a child. A Complete Guide to Household Management; The Ladies' Manual of Politeness; Conversation, Comportment, and Conduct for the Genteel Modern Lady—books that had ended up in the orphanage reading room, and been overlooked by children who wanted to read exciting adventure stories about brave soldiers and dashing swashbucklers. Tom had perused them once or twice on a rainy day, ignoring the chapters about embracing Christian virtues like kindness and charity in one's life, and had seen what these books were really about: educating those of lesser station to ape their betters.
After Tom's social standing had been confirmed by the adoption by his grandparents, he had learned that etiquette was as much of a mass delusion as Christian virtues. For those of high station, it didn't matter that they never learned how to pen a proper missive or converse with grace, for they were, without question, granted leniency and forgiveness for their failings, both a privilege and a birthright. Tom's father had married poorly, scorned invitations, treated his parents with discourtesy, threw tantrums when he didn't get his way, and was still thought of as a gentleman dandy. A bit past his prime, admittedly, but he was nonetheless a handsome and landed widower. It made him eligible, a status which seemed to quell even the harshest of critical voices.
The way in which people treated others wasn't out of their desire to promote a society of civil and enlightened individuals. No, it was all to do with cultivating those of worth and value.
Tom would be appraised and treated on the basis of his usefulness, his potential—which was, all things considered, not unfair when he himself regarded everyone else in that same fashion. Thus, he didn't judge it worth the effort to impress a housewife, as wealthy or well-connected as she might be. He had his own money, and was capable of earning his own commendations.
Those letters, for instance, were a good place to start.
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The term drew to a close, and soon Tom bade a regretful farewell to the Basilisk and the Acromantula. And also to Hermione, who was spending Christmas with her parents in London, before boarding the train to Yorkshire for Tom's birthday party on New Year's Eve.
The Hogwarts Express journey was quiet, the occupants of Tom's train compartment showing very little enthusiasm about returning home to their families. The transfer to the York Flyer after it departed from King's Cross was even quieter, Tom sitting alone in his First Class compartment, casting charm after charm to waft away the tobacco stench from the other passengers in the carriage.
It was one of the many aspects of the Muggle world that Tom had to re-accustom himself every time he left Hogwarts. The fruits of industry were an unavoidable part of Muggle life: coal smoke, petroleum, kerosene, tobacco; it was the same for the accoutrements of a Muggle lifestyle: oily pomades on the men, heavily fragranced hair lacquers on the ladies' roller sets, and colognes used to cover up the stench of weary bodies that had put in twelve hours of labour and would be bathed only at the end of the week. After the magic-facilitated cleanliness of Hogwarts, the smell of Muggle London turned Tom's stomach. He found himself relieved to escape to the rural pastures of the Yorkshire countryside, where there were few palls of chemical smoke produced by motor vehicles and cigarettes—and fewer people who could afford such luxuries.
The Riddles' man-of-all-work, Bryce, met him at the Hangleton station, touching his hand to the brim of his flatcap.
"I reckon you've grown an inch since I saw you last, lad," said Bryce, loading Tom's luggage into the boot of the family Sunbeam motorcar. First Tom's trunk, then his book bag, and then Bryce's carved wooden walking stick going on top. "In a week's time, you won't be much of a lad anymore, eh? Tha will be a man grown, able to make your own way in the world. And you'll 'ave no one to stop you from goin' back to London, if that were what you'd fancied."
"There's nothing in London for me," said Tom, as Bryce held open the door to the passenger bench. "I sometimes wonder if it was ever my home at all."
(Wool's Orphanage had once been Tom's official residence, yes, but it was never his home.)
"Mr. and Mrs. Riddle are tickled to see you make your home here," Bryce replied. "They've been doin' everythin' in their power to convince you of that, let me tell you. They even put up a stone to your mother, in the family plot down the graveyard yonder, may she rest in peace. En't much, but 'tis more'n anyone else in the village would've given to one of her lot."
"'Her lot'?" said Tom. "Did you know them?"
"Not well, sir," Bryce said. "Went off to York for work at sixteen, after gettin' my school certificate, and didn't come back, see, until my leg were done in. But I did hear tell. Not much to say about them, and of that, nowt good. They were, and I'm beggin' your pardon, sir, bone-idle and as godless as they come. Drunkards and thieves, of the worst sort. Never worked a hand's turn. Never stepped a foot in church. And never would've been missed by us in the village if we weren't to lay eyes on them again—if it hadn't been for your mum turnin' Mister Tom's head one day and takin' off with him down south."
Tom considered the groundskeeper's words. "Am I maligned for her connection to me? My name is 'Riddle', but half of my blood is hers."
"The maids speak well of you, sir. Mr. and Mrs. Riddle've been more... friendly to the rest o' the folks in the village, since you come to live with them. If you're an honest man, livin' an honest life, then it don't matter who you are—there'll not be a word spoken against you."
This advice was carefully reflected upon for the rest of the drive back to the Riddle House. The Muggles of Little Hangleton—including his grandparents—knew nothing of the real reason behind his father's suddenly taking up with a village tramp, almost twenty years ago. That village tramp was Tom's mother, a witch, but not one in possession of ambition, power, sense, or education. Hogwarts coddled its students, but any student who had graduated from the seven-year curriculum would have been able to cast spells—Transfiguration, Charms, and Defence—to protect themselves and provide for their most basic needs. From what he'd overheard from the matrons at Wool's, his mother had arrived to their doorstep starving and shivering, penniless and clothed in rags. It was not how a proper witch should have entered a Muggle abode.
Tom concluded that his magical heritage, if that was where he'd gotten it, was nothing to be proud of. Being the son of a witch—that witch in particular—was no better than being thought the son of a tramp.
It was better to be acknowledged as the son of a gentleman.
A gentleman, by the very definition of the title, was a member of the gentry, in possession of land and money. Land was land, and money was easily exchanged into gold galleons by the Gringotts currency teller. In the wizarding world, there existed a hierarchy of power. Magic was might, but wealth and land were influence and status.
Tom had the first; the second and third were his future inheritance.
The first week of the Christmas holidays passed in days of heavy snowfall, the drifts outside the windows growing higher each night, revealed each morning when the drapes were drawn aside and the fires lit for the business of the day. Tom fell into a bored tedium of waking, eating, writing, and sleeping. He hadn't bought a subscription to The Daily Prophet, so there was no wizarding news to read at breakfast; he cared little for The Yorkshire Post's Christmas appeal for the soldiers posted overseas, or the morale-boosting stories about civilians saving their ration tickets to provide a Christmas dinner to their évacuee foster-children.
Tom, having no owl of his own, received letters from Hermione only once every two days; it took that long for Gilles to make the round-trip journey to London and back when the weather was this poor. No other students wrote to him; his dorm mates had already handed over his Christmas gifts on the train ride, and Tom, not caring to observe Christmas tradition, had unwrapped them all later that evening. (It was the standard complement of books, stationery, sweets, and gift vouchers that Tom sold to other students for less than their face value.)
Alone in the Riddle House, without his pets, without Hermione to proofread his homework essays over his shoulder, Tom grew listless with his solitary routine. He was at once idle, having finished his homework by the second day of the holidays, and yet at the same time caught in a restive state, tense with anticipation for The Project approaching its date of realisation. His grandparents and their servants, with whom Tom shared the house, noticed something of his restlessness. During mealtimes, Tom put great effort into limiting the conversation to nothing but meaningless courtesies, and with no reason to form suspicions, the Riddles ascribed Tom's dark mood to the upcoming birthday party preparations.
The party.
Its looming presence couldn't be avoided.
Like Christmas of the previous year, the Riddle House had been decked for the season: a Christmas tree in the front foyer, twelve-feet of fresh-cut fir, and two smaller trees in the parlour and drawing room; tinsel hung from the hallway clocks; ribbons twined around the banisters, the woodwork polished to a rich gleam by beeswax, lemon oil, and the maids' exertions. But this year, there were other decorations than the Christmas baubles and garlands. With Tom's birthday falling less than a week after Christmas Day, the decorations for his unasked-for party had begun to make their way across the house. Banners bearing a large 18 began cropping up in the corners of rooms, and vases of winter blooms appeared on every fireplace mantel, the number 18 sprouting out of the arrangement, paper die-cuts held up on little wooden sticks.
Tom's grandmother flitted around the house, inspecting the chandeliers and ordering the runner carpets on the staircases swept, vacuumed, and re-tacked. Tom's grandfather took the mounting list of household improvements in good humour; at meals, he bore the news of this change or that renovation stoically, listening to Mrs. Riddle natter on about the fabric swatches soon to be made into new drapes and table linens, or her impossible decision in selecting one colour of guest towel from the catalogue of options for use in the downstairs washroom.
None of that interested Tom, who pushed his buttered carrots around his plate in silence, whilst his left hand fiddled with his wand under the table. The tooth gouges left by his father's dog, that night last December, had not smoothed out, even after hours of working at it with a tin of lac resin and a soft cloth. He hadn't noticed the gouges until the next day, when he'd tried to wash the blood off and found that it had gathered in the newly carved hollows and crannies...
Thomas Riddle, trying to engage Tom in luncheon discourse, asked, "And what'll you have for your birthday, Tom, my boy? Your father asked for a horse, a spirited warmblood filly shipped up from the Cotswalds; we had to buy out a stock car on the Flyer to get her here on the day."
"I've never ridden a horse before," said Tom.
"Oh, I should think you'd take it up most smartly," Thomas Riddle assured him. "We Riddles are excellent riders; born to the saddle, as they call it. You have the makings of a fine horseman, Tommy; you carry yourself well. A firm hand, a good seat—it's all one needs in taking that first step off the mounting block. Come summer, once the snow's gone, I'll show you the creek trail. Best spot for picnicking on the property, as Mary would tell you."
"I don't like horses," Tom spoke in a cool voice. They were dull creatures, brighter than cattle, but nowhere near as shrewd as goats. He recognised the usefulness of a wizard-bred owl, a trained rat, or the convenience of animals like a Basilisk or Acromantula, who had the basic intelligence to know when to and when not to void themselves. But a horse...
In the days of his youth, Tom had seen his fair share of horses in harness on the London streets: rag-pickers' nags, draught horses on their delivery rounds with casks of beer or milk, the Metropolitan mounted constabulary on patrol. Their animals defecated right on the road, and motorcars would drive over the waste, smearing it around in great brown streaks, rendering the daily commute a frightful experience to those who had no alternative to their own two feet.
No, he didn't want a horse. And there was no benefit of riding to someone who could Apparate, and found no amusement in sitting on a witless lump of flesh that spooked at passing pigeons and discarded handbills.
Thomas Riddle frowned at hearing Tom's words. It was an easy task of interpreting the man's puzzled expression. A Riddle who didn't like horses? How was such a thing even possible?
"You favour motors, then?" Tom's grandfather asked. "I'm convinced that nothing's as sporting as running a hunt course downhill through a bramble hedge, but motoring's not without its merits. An engine's got twenty-four horses under the bonnet, or so I'm told. One must wonder how the good chaps at the factory got them all to fit in there."
He chortled at his own joke. Tom pasted on a polite smile. Internally, he contemplated the practicality of Stunning and Obliviating everyone in the dining room, then taking his leave.
No, that wouldn't work, would it?
With no memory of their conversation, his grandfather would find some way to use that same joke again.
When the pudding, a buttery tart of stewed winter apples and reconstituted sultanas, made its ponderous route around the table, Tom took a small serving and finished it in a few bites, excusing himself from the table.
Tom had once overheard the orphanage minders say that there was no job as taxing as caring for children, and they deserved proper appreciation for their hours of daily service. He disagreed; it was an exhausting task on his part, having to suffer the smothering concern of parents and guardians. He already knew how to bank his own fires, dress for the weather, and walk down to the village without losing his way—and yet, if he was delayed by half-a-minute in getting himself downstairs for breakfast, his grandmother would dash over and press her liver-spotted hands to his forehead and cheeks, worried that his face looked too drawn, his colouring too pale.
(It was his natural skin colour! For some reason, the residents of the Riddle House assumed that Tom's natural shade of pale was abnormal, because no one had skin that white. This was incorrect. The truth was that, this far out in the agrarian wilderness, people who spurned a country lifestyle were rare, and people who chose to spend all their hours indoors were nonexistent.)
Quitting the dining room after lunch, Tom debated between the few activities available to him—pacing his bedroom and avoiding his grandmother. An owl from Hermione was not set to arrive for another day, so there was no use in sitting by the window to receive mail when it came. His Grandmother had an uncanny knack of finding him wherever he went in the house, so if he remained in his room, Mrs. Riddle would request his presence in the kitchen to pick menu items for his birthday canapés. She had decided, without any word from Tom's side, that the party wouldn't include just the traditional cake and candles, but a meal and a selection of hors d'oeuvres paired with wine and champagne.
It was best to make himself scarce, then.
He hadn't visited the Little Hangleton village cemetery since summer, and he was curious about the gravestone dedicated to his mother. When he'd proposed the idea to Bryce, it had been a deflection to keep him and the rest of the servants from inquiring into the reason for Tom, Hermione, and Nott's loitering in the mausoleum. His words had been repeated, brought further up the line to his grandparents' ears, and Tom hadn't refuted it when those same words had appeared during dinner. No, he'd reaffirmed his view, and then—to Hermione's disgust—he had been praised for his compassion. That night, he'd concluded that there was no cause to gainsay that praise, even if it was based on deliberate misinformation.
Tom had also found that he liked to observe his grandparents' reactions to casual allusions to his mother or father. Truthfully, he didn't like them either, but he'd never known either of them, so his disdain was remote and abstract, the same sentiments he held for all those who embraced a life of weakness and profligacy. It was likened to the conceptual aversion that the average Briton held toward the 'Yellow Peril' or the 'Hunnic Brute'. No one in Tom's personal experience had ever met them (not that he'd asked), but people still harboured ill-will toward them anyway. Somehow, it was an acceptable thing to do, even though a good Christian, Tom had been informed, was expected to love their neighbours as they loved themselves.
(Hearing this at church one Sunday morning, a young six-year-old Tom was convinced that there was nothing as nonsensical as aspiring to be either "good" or a "Christian".)
The metalled driveway from the Riddle House down to the village was ankle-deep in snow; on either side of the path, the snow banks had been packed up past waist-height, thawed, re-frozen, and set every noon and night until they'd become walls as solid as mortared brick. Powder-white snow collected on the tops, blowing into Tom's face whenever the wind changed, tiny particles of stinging ice that needled at his flushed cheeks and coated his eyelashes.
Tom flicked his wand. A circular motion, a murmured Protego, and the wind was silenced, the flying snowflakes suspended in the air a foot before his nose, the Shield Charm producing a brief blue spark with each impact.
The graveyard was silent, the shade trees leafless, bare branches varnished with a layer of glistening ice. On the villagers' side, most of the modest gravestones were buried under snow, but a few taller stones burst through, mossy square lumps adorned with a cap of white, like Cornish cream on a tea cake. On the opposite side—the "family" side—withered, frost-bitten stems drooped at the base of a few mausoleums, the leeward eaves having sheltered them from the wind.
Tom inspected the headstone epitaphs as he passed, using a Hot-Air Charm to blast the crusts of snow from each stony face.
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Charles Thomas Riddle, born Sept. 7, 1857. Died April 12, 1859. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Mrs. Margaret Louise Sargent Riddle. Jan. 18, 1834 — Oct. 2, 1898. Wife to Thomas Henry Edgar Riddle.
Elizabeth Victoria Riddle. 1822 — 1831. Beloved daughter. Without fault before the throne of God.
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It was strange to think that beneath the granite slabs and plump carved cherubs were the decayed corpses of Tom's great-great grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles. He hadn't seen anyone who'd lived more than a few years past eighty, and a good portion of the graves had been dedicated to children. Muggles were so fragile; they died of the most insignificant causes—foul water, common sniffles, effusion of the lung, wasting diseases, minor infections. In Wizarding Britain, few wizards and witches lost children to illness, and accidents, even severe ones, were rarely fatal. Lestrange had once dropped thirty feet off a broomstick, a fall which would have laid a Muggle out for weeks, and that had only resulted in a two-minute pause during a Quidditch match.
Wizards were the superior breed, he concluded. There was no doubt about it.
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Merope Gaunt Riddle. Wife and Mother. 1907 — 1926.
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The last grave at the end of the row, nearest the spiked iron fence that marked the boundaries of the cemetery, stopped him short.
It was set at a fair distance to the rest of the graves, of simple construction: a chunk of slate with a square bronze plaque, missing the gold paint or carved flowers that he had seen on all the women's gravestones he'd passed. And the name had been cast with Merope Gaunt in larger letters at the top, and Riddle down below, as if it was intended to be a negligible footnote. There was no prefixed Mrs., or explanation of her relation to the family, as all the other Riddle wives had been given.
This was his mother's gravestone.
Not her grave. There was no body interred under the frozen soil, no empty casket. Not unless his grandparents had had the paupers' graves in London searched and exhumed for a set of bones that had long been jumbled with the bones of a dozen nameless others, stacked layer on layer over the passing years, like brined mackerels in a tin.
For a moment, Tom stood there, staring unblinkingly at the letters, reminded of the morning two years ago when he'd taken the shoebox out from under his bed, lifted the lid, and had been greeted with the stiff body of Peanut the Third.
His mother had died at nineteen years of age.
How had the Riddles even known?
It must be the registrar's office, Tom thought. Without a christening or school enrollment, her name wouldn't have entered the official census record like Tom's had, as a child born into the tender bosom of institutional charity. But his mother had been married in York, in a Muggle civil ceremony, and they must have taken a record of her particulars there.
Tom cleared his throat. His disliked the feeling that had quietly stolen over him while he stood in front of the stone marker; it wasn't sorrow or melancholy, or any combination of the appropriate emotions one ought to feel when standing at the grave of a parent. It was that distant realisation of the What-Could-Have-Been brushing against the solid and unyielding face of his What-Is-Now, separated by an impenetrable span of time and possibility.
If...
If Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle the Elder had not eloped to York and escaped to London. If Tom had been born in this village, just as his parents had. If he had been raised in the house on the hill, overlooking the village and the cemetery, sans one snow-capped slate gravestone.
He sniffed. A ridiculous notion.
"I've been informed that the souls of wizards are immortal," spoke Tom into the wintry silence. The banks of piled snow muffled his voice; the only response was the rising shriek of the wind. "The reliability of this information is questionable. But if, by the magical properties of your immortal soul, you are experiencing the Next Great Adventure, then I hope you're enjoying it—every minute of it, for the rest of eternity.
"Alone, of course," Tom added. "Because that's what you get for marrying a Muggle. And everyone knows that Muggles go to Purgatory."
Tom returned to the house, drying his shoes and slipping in through the servants' entrance with a quick Unlocking Charm; going in the through the front would have left mud on the doormat and rung a bell that alerted the staff. As he passed through the kitchen—and Mrs. Willrow's turned back—he seized a handful of sugar-dusted sponge fingers meant for this evening's pudding, and then headed up to his bedroom, munching them in great pleasure. On the staircase landing halfway up, Tom encountered his grandmother, who very sternly chastised him for disappearing from his bedroom without leaving word, right when she urgently needed to discuss the seating arrangements of his upcoming birthday meal.
The routine of Tom's life resumed its natural course.
His straight-backed grandfather nodded to him when Tom came down for dinner, lapels brushed and collar starched; his doting grandmother fussed over his delightful presentation and fresh-combed hair; at the flick of Mrs. Riddle's fingers, the servants scampered off to fetch the camera from her sitting room, and presently, preserve Tom's image for posterity. And as for his much-treasured Foil: her letter arrived in the early hours of the next morning, borne by an owl that tapped its beak against the iced-over window, hooting at him to throw on a dressing gown and lift the sash.
Life could be better, undoubtedly. But this was far from the worst it could be.
.
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On the morning of Christmas Eve, Tom laid his best robes out on his bed, the same set he'd worn to visit the Ministry last spring. Robes, a plain white wizard-made shirt, and trousers that, unlike those of Muggle make, were not held up by braces. The outer layer was his winter cloak, fastened with a silver pin he'd been given several years ago as a Christmas gift.
The minutes counted down, each minute passing slower than the one previous. Tom paced the rug at the foot of his bed, glancing from his wristwatch to the mantel clock. A watch like this was as accurate as its mechanical gears, and it lost a handful of seconds a day; if he hadn't been rigorous about adjusting the hands whenever the opportunity presented itself, it would have been off by a few minutes every month. But he'd set the hands from the station clock at King's Cross a few days ago, and yesterday, he'd confirmed the time with the station operator in York, who was eager to indulge a customer's whims after Tom had placed a booking on a First Class compartment from London.
He knew that Mrs. Granger would have insisted on getting the tickets herself, and in Second Class, no doubt. That wouldn't do. Second Class didn't have private compartments; they had to share an open carriage with the other passengers—the canaille, as Mrs. Riddle called them—and Tom had not liked the idea of meeting Hermione after so long (only a week, she'd argue) and, upon embracing her, find that her wonderful fluffy hair did not smell of sweet blossoms, but cigarette smoke.
Tom wandered over to the window, flicking the net curtain away from the glass. His room was on the second floor, the house built on the highest hill in the village. Though the sun was obscured by a veil of cloud, he could discern a single bright spot, a few fingers above the treeline.
Tick, tick, tick.
Tom cleared his throat and ensured his cloak was pinned fast. He scrubbed his sleeve against the jet bead eyes of his silver snake cloak pin, wiping off the fingerprints, then cleared this throat.
Three, two, one.
Apparition was a curious experience, one that conferred the sensation of being compressed and shoved along a narrow tunnel. It could be described as fitting oneself into a dumbwaiter box at the top floor of a grand house, then sent hurtling down into the cellar, with no rope or pulley to curb the speed of descent. It was dark and unpleasant and vertigo inducing, but it had the advantage of convenience. As long as one had the stomach for it, a man could go places very quickly, without making a fuss or drawing undue notice.
Portkey travel was not the same at all.
It felt like taking a dive into deep water. There was a sense of weightlessness; his bedroom and his oriental carpet had disappeared, and Tom found no solid footing beneath him. He felt as if he'd stepped off the edge of the shelf that separated the wading shallows from the bottomless ocean, before a powerful force took hold of his body, dragging him along with the force of a rip current; he tried to resist its pull as it jerked him and tumbled him in bewildering somersaults that made him lose his grasp on what was up and what was down—Tom kicked and struggled, and his wand dropped out of his sleeve and into his hand—
Thump!
The ground beneath Tom's cheek was cold and wet.
Wet leaves peeled off his chin as he lifted his head, his knees and the palms of his hands throbbing from having broken his fall. The sky above him was dark and sunless; the surface cushioning his body was soft and damp.
Tom got to his feet and lit his wand.
The pressed flower Portkey was crushed into powdery stalk and crumbling petals; he threw it to the ground, then took in his surroundings.
A forest rose above his head, the canopy thick with leaves, an unusual sight in the middle of winter. The rotting leaves on the forest floor weren't pine or fir, of the class of tree that kept their greenery throughout the year. These were oak. The air was warmer than he remembered Yorkshire being, but the Midlands were less than a hundred miles south, as the owl flew. And there was no snow on the ground. Only water that dripped from the trees, onto his hair and down the nape of his neck and into his collar.
A trail was cleared between the trees, a meandering line where the undergrowth had been sheared away. Every few metres, a standing stone marked the side of the trail, carved with a knotted spiral that glowed with a warm yellow light when Tom pointed his wand at it.
Tom followed the path, wand drawn.
The trees grew thinner. The path broadened; his shoes no longer squished on damp leaf matter, but tapped on thick blocks of solid paving stone.
The trees abruptly gave way into a clearing. Without warning, the standing stones glowed and flashed and flickered out. In the gloom, Tom cast a ball of light into the sky, and for the first time, saw a wizard's manor house: it was a crumbling, ivy-covered structure with gaping windows and a stoved-in roof. His eyes picked out the details—a tall central spire, a roofline of headless gargoyles with broken wings, shattered buttresses, and chunks of masonry scattered all over the ground, jagged grey stalagmites half-hidden in an overgrown field of wild grass and encroaching bramble.
This was a wizard's house?
Old Ab's grotty establishment was better kept than this wreck.
The Grangers' suburban home was holiday villa in comparison. And the Riddle House was a palace.
"Not much to look at, eh?" spoke a voice.
Tom's immediate reaction was to cast a spell. A roaring ball of fire shot out from the end of his wand, which promptly sputtered out as it met a strange wall of resistance that flickered into being an arm's length away...
Almost as if it had been blocked by a powerful Shield Charm.
"Good try," said the voice. "Would you like to go again?"
Tom's view of the ruins twisted, the light wobbling and bending in the same pattern of a shoddy Disillusionment Charm, and then he found himself standing in front of a vine-covered gate, held between two towers of mossy stone.
One half of the gate swung aside, and there stood Nott in the gap, hands in his pockets. "Come on then, hurry up."
"You live in this wreck?" Tom remarked, passing through the gate and feeling the itch in his scalp of strong magic. It wasn't like Hogwarts, where each time he'd entered the grounds under the view of the stone boar guardians, he'd felt a certain sense of... connection. Welcome. This didn't feel warm; it felt like walking into a Piccadilly Street department store in his threadbare orphanage rags.
"Oh, the first impression isn't everything," said Nott, turning up the path. "I, for one, think it's quite cosy."
The view had changed.
Where the ruins had been was now a grand cathedral, built in the Gothic style with trefoil windows, stained glass, pointed arches, and a tall steeple complete with a belltower. Tom had toured London with a school group; he'd seen St. Paul's and Westminster, and this was nowhere near their equal in either size or grandeur. But for a second—for the briefest instant—it had looked uncomfortably close, until Tom bit his lip and shook his head and took a firm hold on his emotions. There was nothing that warranted his envy. Gothic architecture, with its gargoyles and spikes and wall-to-wall religious motives, was so passé. The classical style was superior; it had a geometrical symmetry that soothed his eyes and never sought to remind him at every turn that, Yes, this structure was God's House, and you are only here by His sufferance.
"You live in a Muggle church," said Tom in a flat voice.
"It's called an abbey for a reason," said Nott, leading him around to the side of the house. "Or it was, before my ancestors took it from the Muggles."
"Before the Statute?" Tom asked. "I can't imagine the Ministry being pleased by that, no matter how many connections your family can throw around."
"Naturally," Nott replied. "You see, there was this Muggle king a few hundred years ago, a great fat lecher of a monarch. He liked women more than he liked prayer and piety, and in some petty Muggle squabble, he relieved a number of priests of their lands and homes."
Henry the Eighth, Tom recalled. The first Anglican king of England.
"That was in the fifteen-hundreds," Tom said.
"Fifteen hundred and forty-one," Nott said proudly. "The house is older than that, but it's the year my distant grandfather persuaded the Chancellor of the Exchequer to sell it for a bargain price. My family have kept all the original furnishings and most of the interiors since then."
"Does it not concern you that Muggles once lived here?"
"No," said Nott, carelessly. "My grandfather was very thorough in running off the Muggle residents before bringing in the family. There used to be a village not far from here, and they were moved a mile or two west after their wells were found to be tainted. No Muggles have stepped foot on this earth in four hundred years."
"Effective," said Tom.
"It had to be done," Nott said. "There were still witch hunters roaming about back then."
They rounded a corner, past a row of flying buttresses, a wall of clerestory windows, and a low gallery bordering a grassy cloister, from which issued the nicker of horses. At the rear of the house, the size of the forest clearing was self-evident. A circle with a diameter of no more than three hundred metres wide, an approximate seven hectares by land area. Large by wizarding standards, perhaps, but tiny by the standards of a Muggle gentleman, whose rank was awarded upon the ownership of two hundred hectares or more. And for a gentleman who had laid stakes in the colonies of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, their estates might be measured in millions of hectares.
Tom's inheritance of the Riddle House and lands, including the village, outlying farms, and colliery enterprises (current production appropriated for the war effort notwithstanding) totalled a bit more than a thousand hectares.
Tom followed Nott to the line of trees at edge of the clearing. He was struck by the size of them—large trees were a rare sight in most of England, and non-existent in Metropolitan London. Before the ubiquity of coal furnaces, wood had been the fuel of choice, for steam boilers and mills and household stoves. Even before that, the tallest trees had always been treasured by shipwrights and builders. The trees on this estate were giants; the hollows in between the spreading roots were so deep that Tom could walk inside them on a rainy day and not get a drop of water on his robes.
A staircase of planks suspended on ropes circled the base of one tree, and ascending several dozen feet up the trunk, Tom and Nott reached a swaying platform built between the branches. In the centre of the platform was the tree trunk; further up the trunk was a second, smaller platform that served as a roof. Above his head, Tom heard the calls of birds, the scratch of their talons on wood, and the incessant beating of their wings. Sheltered square cubbies circled the trunk, suspended on a lattice of ropes, each box filled with sleeping birds. To his left was a carved stone drinking bowl with a broad rim, to his right a high-walled tin trough of heated sand. A hook-beaked bird occupied the trough, squawking and flapping and throwing arcs of sand into the air.
Tom coughed. "What a din."
"Yes," Nott agreed, striding purposefully toward the sleeping birds. "Anyone with more than two or three birds quickly learns to keep them outside. They make such a racket when they go out to hunt each night. They also have a nasty habit of covering the window panes with droppings, and the sills with feathers. Hogwarts has an owlery tower for good reason—no one would be able to sleep with owls going in and out all evening."
Nott cast a Cushioning Charm on his sleeve, then reached into a cubby and pulled out an owl. It hooted, blinked mournfully at Nott, then swivelled its head around and went back to sleep.
"Wake up, you silly thing," Nott muttered, standing the owl up on his arm. "I've got a job for you."
"Here," said Tom, reaching into his bag and pulling out an envelope and a corked vial. "Tell it to deliver this letter to a Mr. Kazimierz Grozbiecki of Shelton Street, Coventry."
A pop of the cork, a sizzle of green liquid, a quick press of his wand against the flap to seal it closed, and the envelope was ready for its recipient.
"Oh, and tell the owl that the contents are fragile," Tom added, handing the envelope over to Nott, who took it gingerly, his expression sour. "Try not to shake it about."
"Who's this—this Kazimierz fellow, then?" Nott asked, tying the letter to the owl's leg. "It's not a name I recognise from school. Not from the trophy room, or the O.W.L. records. Sounds... foreign."
"You don't know him," said Tom, "so you won't be mourning him when he's gone."
"I know that," said Nott impatiently, walking to the edge of the platform and nudging the owl off his arm. "I'm more concerned about us. About the possible repercussions."
"No one will know we did it." Tom gave an unconcerned shrug. "How would they? We aren't stupid enough to leave a return address, and nothing about the envelope will trigger a Dark Detector. If someone does happen to peg it as a premeditated act of violence rather than an unfortunate accident, they'd hardly suspect two schoolboys of the crime."
"You don't deny that it's a crime."
"It's just a word," said Tom. "Words have only as much significance as you give them. I suppose that one might consider it a crime, but if he did, then by all rights he mustn't ignore the fact that all individuals involved count as culpable."
"That's a relief to hear," said Nott, shooting Tom a sidelong glance. "Well, this one's off. Should we go down?"
"Not yet," said Tom. "I have three left."
"Three?" Nott repeated. "I think you're stretching the definition of 'unfortunate accident' here."
"If this is our one and only shot before the holidays are over, then we shouldn't squander the opportunity," said Tom, drawing another set of vials out of his bag. "These go to Pertti Lehtinen of Stirling, Tadejs Eglitis of Swansea, and Hermann Gerdt of Hanley."
"I hope you know what you're doing," said Nott, waking up two owls and a falcon. "Stirling's in Scotland. Three hundred miles. I'll have to send it with the fastest bird to have it delivered before the enchantment fails." Nott stroked the birds' feathers and murmured softly to them. "It'll be dark by the time you arrive. Deliver the letters, and don't wait for a reply. Don't let yourself be seen, and don't stop to hunt. Fly back before morning and I'll see to it that each of you will get a fresh hare for breakfast."
The birds took a few bites of dried meat and a last gulp of water, then launched themselves out into the air, stirring the leaves in their wake. Drops of water splattered onto the wooden planking at Tom's feet, which was followed, a second later, by the plop of runny white excrement.
Nott gave him a furtive look. "Perhaps I ought to have warned you about that."
.
.
Their task complete, Tom and Nott returned to the front of the house, Nott leading the way, while Tom followed a few paces behind, surreptitiously studying the workings of the estate. The lawn was a carpet of thick green grass, nothing like the sparse yellowed turf that his grandfather's horses dug for in the fields at the foot of the Riddles' hill. Here and there, Tom spotted rune-carved stones half-hidden under privet bushes and topiary arrangements. The inscriptions had to be some combination of weather, sun, vitality, and growth—the kind of composite enchantment which had no equivalent in terms of a conventional spell incantation.
It was somewhat gratifying to recall that an enchantment this complex could not be anything other than the work of a master enchanter, not Nott's family, who frittered away their extended lives on frivolous leisures—recording wizarding genealogies, a task which Tom thought of as no more consequential or worthwhile than archiving the pedigrees of stock animals. If a stone malfunctioned or was otherwise damaged, they would be incapable of repairing it on their own; they would be helpless and useless, unlike Tom, who was quite certain he could get it—with the right books and some occasional advice from Hermione, of course.
They reached a set of stone-flagged steps, then ascended to the iron-studded front door, where Nott tugged at a bronze ring, cast in the shape of an oak wreath. The bronze acorns clacked on the door, which swung open without a sound.
The interior was cool and dark, the vast dimensions of a cathedral nave without the clutter of pews, dusty candelabras, or an elaborate altar at the back that, this close to Christmas, would have been occupied with the requisite Nativity tableau: sandal-shod pilgrims with thick beards, camels and lambs, tinsel stars, and a blue-eyed baby doll in a wooden crate. In the fading daylight, a series of stained-glass windows was illuminated in jewel-like colour, each window a scene imbued with charms for recursive animation. A unicorn and an eight-pronged hart chased each other around and around the foot of a mighty oak; Merlin, staff in hand, laid a golden circlet over the brow of a young man bent on one knee; a wizard thrust the point of a glittering lance into the breast of a rearing dragon, while a goblin cackled and rubbed its hands in the background; a witch in a golden kirtle strummed a lyre beneath the spreading branches of a tree, as blue-skinned pixies fluttered around her head.
"Most wizards have a taste for romanticism," Nott explained, jerking his head at the windows. "The style never goes out of fashion. Wizards go mad for anything that hearkens back to those grand old days when rare plants bloomed in every kitchen garden, you could fly a hundred miles on a branch of living pine, and a man could make a fine trade of slaying wild beasts for bounties, instead of counting knuts behind a till."
"They aren't historically accurate, I take it," remarked Tom.
"It's art," said Nott. "When has it ever been?"
He was about to say something else, but out from the wings of the nave hurtled a large wolfhound with a shaggy grey coat and a collar that appeared to have been fashioned from solid gold. Its mouth opened, tongue dripping with slaver, tail wagging back and forth, but other than the click-clicking of its nails on the stone floor, it was perfectly—unnaturally—silent.
Nott dropped to his knees and threw his arms around the dog, scratching its floppy ears. "Hallo, old girl. Have you had your tea yet? No? I suppose we'll have to do something about that. Oh, by the by, that's Riddle. He's a guest, so you're not allowed to bite him, but if you do notice him touching anything valuable, I give you full leave to run him down and sit on him."
To Tom, he said, "Tea's in the solarium, round the back."
Looking around the front hall, Tom observed, "It's rather desolate, isn't it? All this space but it's barely used."
"That's the idea," Nott answered, leading him along to the back of the nave. "The sound resonates wonderfully when the organ's in use." He gestured to the far wall, where a set of golden pipes, thirty feet high, gleamed dully in the half-light of the late afternoon. "But you're not here to look at my organ, and I'm not vulgar enough to show it off."
Down a dark corridor they went, lit with glass lanterns; they passed gilt-framed portraits of sober men in black doublets and whey-faced women in gauzy wimples, who addressed Nott in strident voices: "What ho there, Theodore!", and "Prithee, who is this young man? Who is his father, who is his mother?", or "Hast thou a suitor come to call?".
Nott ignored them, walking down a set of steps, turning past a gallery that overlooked the cloisters, finally stopping at an arched wooden double door, mounted with an intricate filigree tree in worked golden wire, a grille of leaves and branches sealing the two sides shut. The dog, having followed them all the way down, licked its chops and planted its bottom on the flagstones, looking at Nott expectantly.
"There's a password," said Nott. "Not a tricky one at all, but Mother finds it amusing."
He cleared his throat, pursed his lips, then, tapping his thigh to keep the time, whistled out a merry little tune, a jaunty nautical ditty of no more than fifteen seconds' duration.
When he finished, the branches untangled themselves and drew apart with a soft, metallic chime, revealing a pair of golden door handles.
"The medium doesn't matter—you could play it on a wineglass if you liked—but the articulation has to be just so," Nott said, turning the handles and opening the door. "Mother! I've brought a guest!"
The solarium had no resemblance to the functional rectangular boxes of the Hogwarts greenhouses, or the Riddle House's conservatory, where every inch of space had been put to use growing crops destined for the Riddles' table. Exotic fruits and vegetables, out-of-season berries and herbs, summer-blooming flowers—necessary thrift in these times of war, but incongruous to the standard fare of the standard British family's victory garden. This solarium was constructed in the shape of a pudding mould, rounded tiers piled together and capped off with a crystal dome, a glass rotunda that captured the light from dawn to twilight, and as a consequence, was as warm as a bathhouse.
Broad-leafed plants, ferns and palms and Indian lilies, fought for space around a selection of animated statues—a whimsical centaur playing panpipes, a kelpie fountain spitting water into a seashell-shaped bowl, a bizarre creature that had the head and upper-body of a lion attached to a fish's tail, and a giant bowtruckle, twice a man's height from gnarled twig toes to leafy head. Between the plants darted colourful birds, vivid blue and radiant gold, twittering and chirping and swooping around a figure reclining on a divan, a magazine open on her lap showing a glossy spread with moving illustrations.
The woman glanced up, face pale as if in great shock.
It took Tom a moment to realise that the paleness was merely cosmetic. She had powdered her face white, her fair eyebrows made nearly invisible; her cheeks had been rouged in two round spots, and if she had been wearing a wimple and starched ruff, she would have fit right in with the portraits they'd passed in the corridor. The effect, combined with her feathery blonde hair and pale blue eyes, gave an impression of unearthliness—as if she were sickly or insubstantial, half-woman and half-ghost.
"The Christmas edition is as worthless as usual," she said. Tom had expected her voice to sound high and breathy—Nott had a tendency to whine, and his screams were shriller than Hermione's—but he was surprised to hear that her voice was an assertive one, not particularly loud, but so precise and well-modulated that each word was clear despite the noise of splashing water and chattering birdcall.
She threw the magazine onto a low table, then swung her legs off the divan. "How to stretch a meal for twelve, how to prepare a chicken and present it as goose, how to use dinner leavings for lunch. Madam Wimbourne has been losing her touch over the last few years; each holiday issue has proven itself a sorrier showing than the last."
"Perhaps Madam Wimbourne understands that the lowest common denominator fields the greatest number of patrons," said Tom, taken aback but nonetheless unwilling to allow himself to be insulted. He'd worked hard on that sage-braised chicken recipe. (Or Mrs. Willrow had, in the name of perfecting Tom's birthday dinner menu.)
"Introduce me, Theodore," said the woman, turning to Nott.
"Ah," said Nott, wincing, "Riddle, this is my mother, the honourable Madam Annis Nott, formerly Gamp, of Wales. Mother, this is Tom Riddle, this year's Head Boy."
"Tom Marvolo Riddle," said Tom, forcing himself to dip into a shallow bow. He didn't lower his head or follow it with a flourish. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"A deferred acquaintance," Madam Annis said, rising to her feet and giving Tom a careful inspection. She was only an inch or two above five feet tall, shorter than his grandmother and Hermione both, but somehow she possessed an indefinable presence that extended beyond her physical attributes. "Due to that name, obviously. 'Riddle' is so ordinary—a Muggle name, without a doubt."
"My mother was—"
"Hush!"
She paced in a circle around Tom, tutting to herself. Tom glanced at Nott, who shrugged and threw himself onto a sofa, wheezing as the dog bounded on top of him and began licking his face.
"So, Horace picked the dark horse this year. He prides himself for having a nose for talent, but he's not blind. He knows good stock when he sees it."
She took Tom by surprise, seizing his jaw in her long-nailed fingers, dragging his head down to her eye-level and turning it this and way and that to catch the last rays of winter sunlight.
"Phrenology is an obscure science, often derided as 'scarcely a science' at all, but there is truth to be read from the shape and conformation of the human body... For those with the knack of reading it," she said, and Tom discovered that he was too intrigued by her words to tear himself out of her grasp.
"When I was a girl, we read the lines of our futures written in the palms of our hands. Love and happiness, wealth and security—a single ordained path amongst a thousand untrodden potentials. The reality of one's present circumstances is disclosed by the face. What nature of truth lurks beneath the innocent exchange? What trouble disturbs a night of peaceful rest? How do the body's vital humours wax and wane? Reading the past, however, is all through the eyes, boy. The eyes.
"You have dark hair and eyes, rare in this part of England. It speaks of foreign blood or mixed breeding—Greek, Moorish, Celt, or Levantine. And yet the conformation of your skull suggests the blood of Saxons and Danes—see, the occipital rounding here, the dip behind the ear, the firm brow, high forehead, and pronounced nasal bridge," announced Madam Annis. "Both of your parents were dark of hair, and neither showed indications of vision impairment. Your father was a Mudblood and had the purer English lineage. He was right-handed in writing and wandwork, but was equally capable with his left hand for other tasks; he had a dimple in his chin, and was more inclined toward physical pursuits than you clearly are."
She hummed under her breath, then continued, "Your mother was an odd one. I think I would have liked to read her palm—she would have had great potential under Fate, I'm sure—though a deficient Life line follows hand-in-hand. That palate structure is from her, of course. You speak with an unusual lisp. Not quite a true speech defect, but there's the slightest aberration in the higher ranges of your overall vocal register... A certain tonal character that I suspect only the well-trained ear might perceive. Have you tried learning Mermish? You might find it an easier study than most—but if Horace did judge you worthy of your badge, you'd be a quick study in most everything else; I have never known him to suffer the company of the dull or simple-minded."
Her eyes searched Tom's, and between the powdered white lashes, Tom saw reflected in her irises his own image.
She rattled on and on. His mother was also right-handed, swarthier of complexion, had a disproportionate ratio of nose to philtrum, had a round Celtic head with wide socket spacing, and a pelvic frame so narrow that it would make any midwife within viewing distance fan herself in agitation...
The words poured out without pause, a monologue with a curiously melodic rhythm, lulling him like a back-row attendee in a church sermon or class revision session. Tom's eyelids drooped; his eyes watered with the effort of not blinking, and finally, with some effort, he allowed himself to blink...
Two hazy images swam into view, superimposed one on top of the other: Tom stood at the grave of his mother, reading the name carved into the stone; Tom knelt at the roots of an ancient, weathered tree, the stiff body of a tiny golden bird cupped in his hand—
"Mother," came the pleading voice of Tom's father, "if you love me, send him away!" A vein pulsed on the man's forehead as he stood at the foot of the dining table, spittle and toast crumbs spraying out over the crisp linens; Tom's father, a portly man with muttonchop whiskers, flung a ribbon-bound scroll onto the inlaid cabinet of the heirloom harpsichord. He spoke, jowls aquiver, "The dower trust has been pledged in your name. You will see the astrologist on Monday, and she will determine when the most auspicious alignments fall for your two houses..."
The taste of her breakfast was sweet on his lips, exhilaration burning a line of fire through his veins, as he escaped the corridor outside the Muggle Studies classroom. That sweetness became an indelible memory, kept tucked away for brief moments of leisure and privacy, lingering long in his thoughts and dreams and half-restrained aspirations. And then, another memory: this time he felt the slide of a metal band against his cheek, accompanied by a brief glimpse of rheumy, knotted knuckles resting on his shoulder. A man, with greying hair and flinty grey eyes, bent down to brush his dry, papery lips against Tom's. He had expected to feel nothing; he felt nothing; in that instant, however, he also felt like nothing—as if his mind had made its escape to a separate plane from his physical existence, and nothing he did or wanted mattered at all—
"Lower your wand, boy."
Tom's hand trembled; he clenched his fist and glared at Madam Annis. His arm lowered, wand dropping back into his sleeve. Behind him, Nott relaxed visibly and took his hand out of his pocket.
"You bewitched me," said Tom accusingly.
"I cast no spell," retorted Madam Annis. "When emotions rise to the surface, they can be read. Not as words or runes on a page, but as footprints are—'he passed this way, this long ago, in this direction'. Needless to say, you know of this already, if you've been initiated to the art of the Bifurcated Focus. Who taught you this technique, may I ask?"
"I taught myself."
"Oh, keep your secrets as you please, lest their dissemination set the world aflame," she said, drawing her wand and sketching in the air the hazy image of a silver bell, which appeared floating handle-down, an illusory shape that gained definition and sharpness, before it dropped into her waiting palm. She rang it, the sound echoing for some time; it was answered by a chime in the distance. "In the meantime, we shall have tea."
Tea consisted of black tea in a pot and the usual condiments of lemon rounds, cream, and a chunk of loafed sugar. It was paired with a selection of potted meats and sliced soda bread; on the side of the tray was a paste of quince and a block of sharp cheese speckled with capers. For the dog, there was a glass dish of steamed skinless chicken and boiled barley grains, which Nott set on the floor behind the divan, wrinkling his nose as the dog began devouring its meal with a series of enthusiastic smacking sounds.
Their teatime conversation descended into a stilted succession of bland questions. How was dear old Horace? How were dear old Horace's dear old dinner parties—was the guest rotation just as delightful as she remembered? (Tom and Nott exchanged a dubious look and hid their sneers behind bits of pâté-smeared toast.) Had they been informed that Lucretia Black was due to wed in the summer of next year? How were their N.E.W.T. studies progressing? Had they made good progress in securing the vital connections that would last them the rest of their lives? (Nott coughed into his tea, while Tom held his breath to keep a snort of amusement from slipping out.)
Madam Annis regarded them with stern disapproval. "You may find it a stodgy routine now, but cultivating the right connections will have its uses. Why, I've heard that Madam Wimbourne put forward her pet favourite for this year's Pressman's Merit Award. As her nominee was too much of a recluse to attend the event, the award as usual will go to some war correspondent or other. It's a shame the other candidates will get nothing for their trouble, isn't it?" She gave Tom a meaningful look.
"Well, there's always next year," said Tom, as amiably as he could. "The Society of Journalists' annual dinner is an annual affair."
"A select affair, too," Madam Annis specified. "Invitations are very limited—not even I could get one this year."
"There are other affairs, and other awards," said Tom. "But I can't fathom why the career trajectory of some unknown journalist is of such concern to you. No one's ever met him, have they?"
"Madam Melania has considered hiring him for the wedding," said Nott. Noticing Tom's impassive face, he added, "Lucretia and Orion's mother. She wants a modern wedding for the papers, something new and novel that will have everyone else copying along for the next ten years. Mother disagrees, of course."
"I had a traditional wedding," said Madam Annis, studying Tom for any hint of a reaction. "It's the way things should be done in a civilised society. We would sooner abandon our traditions than snap our wands in half and toss the pieces aside for kindling. I should like to imagine that your young lady would agree."
"Mother," said Nott uncertainly, "I don't recall telling you that Riddle had a... a young lady."
"You didn't need to," Madam Annis assured him. "Women can tell—it's intuition. Tell me, what's her name?"
"Hermione," said Tom, putting down his square of half-eaten toast and pushing his plate away.
He didn't want to talk about Hermione; he didn't want to think about how he felt about Hermione here, of all places. Tom recognised that Madam Annis was, in some form or another, a minor practitioner of Legilimency. Not a skilled one, more of an empath honed by instinct than the professional trespasser that was Professor Dumbledore. (The slippery old man was capable of intruding into Tom's consciousness with the efficacy and stealth of a parasitic worm. Neither could speak in anything but various shades of truth, and as such, their teatime visits were made an endless game of attrition and subterfuge.) Madam Annis was someone who could read and interpret surface emotions of a complacent, unprepared subject, a skill—if he had to find an adequate comparison—similar to his own capabilities at the age of fourteen years old, dipping through Avery's fears during a lazy Hogsmeade weekend.
Similar, but not quite.
Madam Annis was inferior to him in skill and experience; she had no aptitude for Occlumency. When she'd opened her mind to touch his, he'd viewed the contents of hers, and become witness to a sequence of linked threads, mirrored memories. And then he'd been forced to live those memories. It was more information than she had gotten from him in exchange, but that was more than enough; when he returned home this evening, he could already tell that the touch of elderly, wrinkled hands on his skin—Nott's father; Tom wanted to vomit once he'd come to that deduction—would not be so easily purged from his recollection.
"A charming name. Greek, if I'm not mistaken," said Madam Annis. "She's a special one, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"You care greatly for her," she continued, idly stirring her tea. "I suppose it must be both a blessing and a curse that you bear your father's muddied name. For that, you have no distinguished lineage to safeguard."
"I've no need for lineages when I can earn my own distinctions. And it's quite possible for someone without a name to possess an unexpected talent or useful ability," said Tom, looking pointedly across the table. "Wouldn't you agree, Madam?"
Madam Annis tittered. "Possibly."
"Riddle," Nott interjected, "what are you up to?"
Tom gave him a blank look. "Ask your mother."
"Mother?"
"It's nothing, my dear. Finish your tea."
"Whatever it is, I don't like it," Nott huffed, his brow furrowing in ire. His put-out expression did not alter until the dog had eaten its meal, whereupon it crawled onto Nott's lap, bumping the top of its head against Nott's hand and thumping its tail against the velvet cushions.
The conversation resumed, less tense and formal than before, but somehow always returning to the unresolved questions—Tom's unexplained talent, Tom's mysterious young lady, and Tom's perplexing interest in Madam Wimbourne's magical housekeeping magazine. The tea was drunk, the toast nibbled, and the potted meat disappeared—much of it down the gullet of the family dog. All through the meal, it had not made a peep, not a single whine or woof as one would expect of a housepet begging for scraps; instead, it had laid its hairy forepaws over Nott's thigh, tilting its head and lowering its ears in a woeful manner. An extremely intelligent creature, it seemed—or else Nott was an extremely indulgent owner.
The sunlight succumbed to the plums and purples of the early evening, and outside the glass pudding dome, lamps flickered on in the distant treeline, bright spots scattered at many different heights. Inside the solarium, the chittering birds settled in their roosts, nestled among the stone branches of the bowtruckle's leafy head.
When the tea tray was empty, Tom siphoned the crumbs off his robes and Vanished them away. He stood, bowed to Madam Annis, and offered his farewells.
"Thank you for tea," he said to Madam Annis. To her son, "And thank you for inviting me. You have a beautiful home; I'm glad to have seen it."
"It was a pleasure to host," replied Madam Annis gracefully. "I hope you found whatever it was that you came here for. Show him out, Theodore."
They returned to the house proper, the gilded branches on the solarium door chiming as it sealed itself shut. Passing once more the rows of inquisitive portraits and glass lanterns, Nott walked at a fast stride, brooding away in silence.
"Do you think she knew something?" asked Nott, when they'd crossed half the cathedral nave. "The face-reading is a party trick of Mother's, but she's caught a few people out over the years. You know, the standard crimes—adultery, secret annulments, the destitute putting on a false show of wealth. She says it's not so much magic as it is in being able to read minute shifts of facial expression."
"Does everyone with a mother trust them without question?"
"Do you have to be such a pest about giving straight answers?"
"I exist to confound your expectations," said Tom. "And no, she doesn't know anything."
"Good," Nott said. "We've been sneaking around the teachers for weeks. Now today, the law. I'd like not having to keep watch over my shoulder for my own damn mother."
"Mummy's boy, aren't you?"
"Respecting one's parents," said Nott in a haughty voice, "is a sign of good breeding."
Nott escorted Tom to the front gate, opening the latch and ushering Tom out.
"The Apparition point is down there," he said, pointing into the darkening forest. An owl hooted; branches rustled ominously. "The path will light your way."
Tom heard the snick of the gate's latch falling closed. "If your family gets The Prophet, keep an eye on the headlines."
"You expect our activities to make the front page?"
"I expect to draw some form of official attention," Tom replied. "I'll see you next Sunday."
The standing stones on the path began glowing with a soft yellow light, and when Tom glanced over his shoulder, the gate was gone, and so was the cathedral. The mossy ruins had taken their place, empty windows filled with dark shadows, the holes in the disintegrating roof looking like great black pits.
The real cathedral was still there, beneath the illusion, its appearance preserved to its original sixteenth century state, untarnished by the passage of years and the steady march of Progress and Modernity. The dressed stones of its exterior weren't blackened by coal soot like the grand edifices of central London, nor were the carvings pitted by acid rain as he'd seen on the Victorian frontages in York. But it was more than a pretty pile of masonry: in more than a few aspects, it resembled Hogwarts, rendered in miniature: a distinct magical ecosystem concentrated within a handful of acres, rich in history and heritage, a material demonstration of wizarding might. Those little gold birds in the solarium were proof—they were Golden Snidgets, a species that had once been hunted to near-extinction, and although protected by law today, were still counted as rare and immensely valuable.
And yet somehow, at some point, Tom's covetousness had completely evaporated; there was no more envy of Nott, of the other boy's magical lifestyle, his conspicious displays of magical wealth.
Tom Apparated to the Little Hangleton graveyard, too far from both the house and the village for anyone to take notice of the sound, contemplating the significance of this reversal of opinion. He slipped into his room, unpinning his cloak and robes and locking them into his trunk, still trying to draw a firm conclusion. There had to be one; Tom didn't believe in mysteries.
This was his conclusion:
Wealth and material possessions were not remarkable. They were resources that set those who had them above those who didn't, but they didn't confer any innate properties to their owners. Mary Riddle's money didn't make her a noteworthy individual, and neither was Annis Nott special because she lived in a fairy castle filled with magical songbirds, most likely poached from a creature reserve.
The requirements for being Special were much more stringent.
The connection that Tom shared with Hermione qualified as Special, but that was only to be expected of two Special people. Tom found Hermione appealing in all the most fundamental respects, and it had been confirmed that Hermione felt the same way about him, or his kiss on the cheek would have put the lid on that particular line of inquiry.
The events of the afternoon had provided Tom with a clear example of what a kiss between other people was like, and that had been... lacking in substance, empty, and hollow. From his father's memories, Tom had been shown the spectacle of his mother's one-sided "love"; it was a persuasive argument to the notion that her death had been in both Tom and his father's best interests. In comparison, Tom's regard for Hermione was meaningful, founded on more significant things than social obligation or sordid appetites.
He had studied the advice from the book, turning the words 'Onorare ed amare' over and over in his head, trying to determine their exact meaning. From what he'd learned today, it was a theoretical ideal few people ever reached; it was in stark contrast to Annis Nott's loveless honour and Merope Gaunt's dishonest love.
Well, as the present generations learned from the past, so did children surpass their parents.
It was good thing, then, that Hermione had years ago warned him of the dangers of experimenting alone.
.
.
.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
...So Tom's first proper kiss was worse than he expected.
.
Relevant historical information:
— King Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 to found the Church of England, so he could divorce and marry a new wife. Existing church properties were confiscated by the Crown and sold off for cash, and in this universe, one was "bought" by wizards.
— Phrenology is a pseudoscience based on assessing people's personalities by their skull structure. It fell out of fashion in the 20th century after association with racial stereotyping and eugenics. In this version of the wizarding world, it is viewed as an obscure form of Divination.