1945
.
An elderly witch examined Tom Riddle for his Transfiguration N.E.W.T., speaking in that slow, creaky way of ancient wizards that drove Tom near the brink of madness. At least Muggle elders had the dignity to drop off the twig at around sixty or seventy; these withered crones and codgers kept kicking past one-hundred and fifty. (Tom was convinced that when he reached such a ripe age, he would have much more grace about it.) They went about as if they had all the time in the world to spend at their leisure, when they had even less of it than Tom, and it made him want to toss their table over and scream at them. Being the conscientious Head Boy that he was, he kept the frantic screaming to the privacy of his own mind, and kept his gentle smile secured on the brittle carapace he presented to the world.
"Animate to animate, tick. And that's the last. Very well done, Mr. Riddle, very smooth; I can see why Professor Dumbledore recommended you for that job interview you'll be rushing off to attend after this. Did he tell you that I marked him for Charms and Transfiguration, N.E.W.T.s and O.W.L.s both? He did things with a wand I haven't seen until last week, when your cohort had the Charms exams," nattered Madam Marchbanks. "Oh, well, if you are too much of a rush, I suppose you won't have time for the extension demonstration..."
She gestured to a plate of dry-looking arrowroot biscuits by a tea set, placed on a side table. Tom assumed it was refreshments for the examiners, who were to be testing students for the entire day, and was surprised when Madam Marchbanks wandlessly Summoned a flimsy cloth napkin and a single biscuit. She handed it to Tom.
"The bonus task was meant to be the transformation of good food to better food, but if you're too busy, you might as well take it for the road." Madam Marchbanks' veiny hand patted his cheek fondly. "You're much too thin, young man. Studying night and day like you have is no good for the health. This time of year, I see more than a few Ravenclaws studying themselves straight into the Hospital Wing, but I'd expected more practical sense coming from a Slytherin."
"I can do it," said Tom, taking the biscuit. He twirled his wand and began the spell.
Gamp's Principal Exceptions informed him that it was impossible to create edible food from nothing, but it was possible to create food from other food. In the past few weeks, Tom had done a lot of reading on Transfiguration, at the insistence of Professor Dumbledore, who had developed a habit of slipping reading lists of obscure Transfiguration reference books in his returned homework. Sometimes those were rare tomes named on a Restricted Section permission slip, and Tom had no other choice but to use them; one couldn't simply turn down a visit to the Restricted Section! It was his combined reward-punishment for claiming to Dumbledore's face that Transfiguration was his "favourite".
He had learned that transformed food satisfied hunger and provided as much nutrition as the original food, unlike replicated existing food, where each created unit was just as nourishing as the original. One could take advantage of this property of transformation by turning basic, healthy foods into delicious sweets and not gain a pound. For the obligatory "Annual Trifle" issue, Tom had written about the peculiar phenomenon of edible Transfigurations for his article submission, but the editor had written him back saying it was too advanced a magical skill; if everyone could make trifle from turnips, everyone would be doing it, instead of using appetite suppressing potions to fit into their expensive dress robes.
These types of consumable Transfigurations required a wizard's understanding of the nature of change, his knowledge of a subject's path from beginning to end; once he had the full grasp of it, only then he could refashion it. Re-order fate. The flour in the biscuit could have traversed a different path in life and ended up in a sponge cake. The wheat of its origin extended itself from a tiny germ planted in the sustaining cradle of the earth, burgeoning under a hundred radiant sunrises. Could it not extend itself, grow into another form under the sustenance of Tom's magic and the trellis of his indomitable will?
The biscuit on a napkin became an elegant cut-crystal pudding bowl filled with multiple layers of a scrumptious summer trifle, matching the cover illustration from Witch Weekly's as yet unpublished 1945 summer entertaining special edition. Sponge fingers with a kiss of sherry, peeled white-fleshed peaches, rich egg custard with an artistic swirl of macerated blackberries, vanilla bean-infused whipped cream, topped with toasted almond slivers and firm, dewy blueberries. It was a good job; Tom hadn't even "cheated" in the typical ways, engorging the biscuit or duplicating the single biscuit into a stacked dozen before starting the Transfiguration.
"I know I did it correctly, so each component should have the proper flavour and texture," Tom said, shoving the bowl into Madam Marchbanks' arms. He Conjured a handful of long-stemmed dessert spoons with a wave of his wand and stuck them into the bowl, finishing it off with a Cooling Charm to keep the fruits fresh to the end of the day. "I'm off now; give Professor Dumbledore my best regards when you next see him. Have a good day, Madam."
He departed the exam room at a good clip, leaving Madam Marchbanks holding the pudding bowl. The old witch brought a spoonful of cream and custard to her lips, and what she tasted of Tom's trifle must have pleased her, for when the door closed, it was on her thoughtful smile.
Nott sat in the hallway, keeping guard over his and Tom's school bags. He stood when he saw Tom, tossing Tom his bag and saying, "That was faster going than mine. How was it?"
"The old hag thought I was brilliant and charming, as expected," said Tom. "Come on, we'll Apparate outside the gates. How about yours?"
"Dull but routine," Nott answered, breathing heavily while trying to keep up with Tom's long-legged stride. "You won't have noticed it since you lack a wizarding surname, but old biddy examiners like her always find some means to comment on how you weigh up compared to your parents' marks. Good thing she never examined my father; it would've taken twice as long to get through if she'd had to gossip about both my parents. That Ollivander fellow, on the other hand, is leagues worse. Who cares if the elm tree chose my father, I'm here for my wand!"
"Why wouldn't she have marked your father?" asked Tom. "I heard Marchbanks has been working the exam circuit for generations."
"Father would've been at Hogwarts around the same time as Old Grizzy Marchbanks," said Nott. "I don't think they overlapped, though. She would've left Hogwarts as a Ravenclaw Head Girl in the summer, and Father would've started First Year that autumn. By the time he graduated, she was a junior in the Department of Magical Education, with a job marking O.W.L. elective subject papers. N.E.W.T. practicals is a job they'd only trust to higher seniority—"
"Doesn't that mean your father is in his seventies?" That made him older than Tom's grandfather.
"Congratulations, Riddle," said Nott, "you can do arithmetic in your head. No wonder old witches think you're so brilliant."
"But your mother is young. At least I assume she is, under all that face powder," Tom remarked. He made a face, remembering that Christmas tea invitation where he'd unwittingly browsed through the records of Madam Annis Nott's mind. "Urgh. My own parents may have been loathsome individuals on their own merits, but they had the dual blessing of being unrelated to each other and born in the same generation."
"Wizards, understanding that divorce is a business of Muggles and commoners, are rightfully particular about whom they marry," said Nott pompously, following Tom through the quiet castle corridors and down the steps to the main path out of the grounds. "Especially if they've discerning tastes and don't want to settle for the first thing they can get. Father preferred a witch who was well-read, decent looking, magically talented, properly mannered, acceptably non-consanguinous—"
"I'll have you know that Hermione is all of those things!" Tom interrupted.
"—Tolerable of personality and pureblooded," finished Nott. "Which disqualifies Granger, unfortunately. The latter can't be helped, but the former is a choice. I'll have you know that her manners are poorer than you think. She struck me once—in the face!"
"Oh, that's nice," said a distracted Tom, digging through his bag to find Dumbledore's signed note. They were within sight of the pillared boar statues. "What did you do?"
"What did I do?! I was struck in the face!"
"She probably had a good reason," said Tom. "And I'm sure you deserved it." He unrolled the scroll and stood at the foot of the gates, which stood shut in front of him. Nothing happened when he climbed up on the granite plinth and brandished the open scroll under the nose of the left-side boar statue.
Nott sighed. "Press the signature to the centre-seam. That's usually how these modern gate enchantments work, a magically imbued signature as a substitute for the traditional blood confirmation. Well, according to those books we borrowed after that Cornish fiasco. I saw an interesting theory from one of them: if you found a way to strip Dumbledore's magic from a robe he'd charmed and transferred it to a parchment, theoretically, it might be usable in place of his signature. Compared to a drop of willing blood used in a blood ward, it's not that hard to steal a robe from the laundry."
The gate opened silently, the near-indiscernible hum of the enchantments lifting the fine hair at the nape of his neck when he passed through the boundary and exited the grounds. Nott followed him, glaring up at the twin boars, who snuffled on their pedestals and bared their sharp tusks in his direction.
From the the wheel-rutted path to the village, they Apparated to Tom's bedroom at the Riddle House, and began their usual routine of shedding their school robes and neckties, swapping them out for plain black robes, black cloaks, and the black face-covering scarves that had become the most distinctive feature of the Prince and the Knight. It wasn't particularly impressive a disguise for a so-called Charms Master, when something like an animated Greek theatre mask would be more appropriate an indication of his skill. But the scarves were easily washed—an underestimated value in the Prince's line of work.
It suited the mystery of the Prince, the noble yet humble hero of the people. He looked plain, but that didn't matter as his actions and prowess spoke to the true nobility of his character.
.
.
When they arrived at the Ministry of Magic Atrium, it was to Aurors in their formal scarlet robes worn over duelling vests, pacing impatiently by the golden gates.
"You're late," said one Auror disapprovingly, putting away his pocket watch. "Twenty-five past the hour. The trial started at nine on the dot. We've been waiting almost an hour for you two."
"Have they called the witnesses yet?" asked Tom.
"Not yet," said the Auror. "They're still going over charges."
"Then my lateness only counts as fashionably late," said Tom. "Which is hardly late at all."
"Let's hurry it up before we go from hardly late to unfashionably late," said Nott in an impatient voice. "The courtrooms are at the lower levels, and these lifts are finicky."
They bypassed the wand weighing station without stopping to collect a visitor's badge, and entered the elevators, to which they were warned as the grille slid shut, "Hold on, or you'll go flying."
The lower levels put Tom in mind of the Slytherin dungeons: dark walls, stone floors, torches guttering on the walls, and a pervasive chill that settled over his bones, despite the bright summer of a June morning they'd left above. Outside Tom's window, the Riddle House grounds had been green with life, butterflies in the air and glossy horses grazing the lawns. Here, in the sunless darkness of Level Ten, Tom's flesh prickled and he sought the familiar warmth of his wand as the Aurors hurried him and Nott along to the weathered wooden door at the end of the corridor. Tom was passed a token on a string to wear about his neck, emblazoned with the Wizengamot seal, then the Aurors tapped the great crusty iron lock and the door swung open.
Courtroom Two was a deep terraced stone amphitheatre, seven layers of benches, seven high rows packed with a susurration of wizards and witches, who whispered and shifted their bums on the hard stone seats and crinkled sweet wrappers like a criminal trial was no more of a day's entertainment than a visit to the penny theatre. The bottom ring, closest to the pair of chained chairs, was occupied by a selection of Ministerial notables, including the Minister himself. The second and third rings contained the fifty-odd members of the full Wizengamot, a solid mass of plum robes amid the extravagant wizarding fashions worn by the serried ranks of sundry spectators, who had ostrich plumes tucked into their hatbands, shawls glittering with iridescent sequins, and thick, warm fox fur stoles with the animal's head still attached and charmed into animation.
Tom and Nott were escorted to the third ring, between a number of what Tom privately regarded as "crones and codgers", holding vellum scrolls and dusty reference books on their laps. Expert witnesses, he guessed. Presumably learned Enchanters who'd analysed the schematics Nott had retrieved from the shop flat above the Tinworth Village Foundry. As he passed them to find his reserved seat, stepping on the toes of anyone who didn't pull their feet in fast enough, he caught people staring at his covered face and realising who he was. There weren't many wizards who dressed in unembellished head-to-toe black and masked their faces with no fear of the Aurors who walked on either side.
The seat was freezing; Tom winced, even with his cloak and robe to muffle the chill, and cast a Warming Charm. Nott, settling in beside him with a wince of his own, flicked his gaze to the stone ceiling arching high above the heads of the seventh ring, his breath huffing out of his nostrils in white puffs of annoyance. "Proper show, isn't it. They even brought in Dementors for the final act resolution. Hmm. Has the Minister already decided what the conviction's going to be?"
In the darkness beyond the feeble reach of the wall torches was a darkness beyond dark: Dementors.
Tattered robes drifted by as if floating on water, black cloth much like Tom's own black clothing, but theirs was thin and eerily insubstantial, swirling in the still air with the heavy inevitability of an encroaching thunderhead. The cold emanated from them, and the longer Tom sat, listening to the reading of charges and the recording of pleas, the colder he grew, and even the Warming Charms he cast on his seat and body did little to counter the chill. It wasn't a natural, physical cold, but one that came from within—from his very soul. The cold that was in the nature of the beast, the so-called wizard-killers who technically didn't kill their prey, since the victims were left living in the end. Living, though less alive than Avery had been, when Tom had commandeered the boy's body.
The Dementors, he observed, were kept away from the audience by a vigilant circle of Patronus creatures, cast by an Auror patrol placed at strategic intervals in the seventh ring. A serval cat bounded past with glowing white eyes; an enormous polar bear paddled back and forth in the air; a falcon swept its rounds in irritable loops. A wolf pricked its ears and thrashed its tail; a firefly flashed its dazzling lantern-light in staccato bursts; a large lizard with a long silver tongue hovered atop one red-robed head. The Dementors huddled as a single black mass, with only an occasional glimpse of clawed, grasping hands to distinguish one from another.
At the first ring, in front of the chained criminals, another Patronus creature guarded the notables—a snarling Alsatian hound with its hackles up.
Nott's eyes caught the direction of Tom's gaze. "Torquil Travers' Patronus," he whispered to Tom, nodding at a stony-faced man with short, iron-grey hair and a stiff grimace. "That's him in the second row, with the rest of the Wizengamot. DMLE, retired. Next to him, Hector Fawley, ex-Minister. Eugene Slughorn, International Magical Co-operation, retired. Archer Evermonde, ex-Minister. Radalphus Lestrange, our Lestrange's grandfather, also an ex-Minister. Uriel Gamp, artificer grandmaster, my grandfather. Arcturus Black, Order of Merlin. Genevieve Dagworth, standing in for her father, potioneer grandmaster. Wigbert Stump, Quidditch Commissioner..."
Nott rattled off the names of the geriatric cadre that made up the Wizengamot, Wizarding Britain's legislative body, most of them nearing a hundred years old or succeeding that milestone by a comfortable distance. The youngest of the group was Arcturus Black, whom Tom had heard bought the award that gained him admission to the rank that most others had to earn through Ministry careerism or life scholarship.
When I get my own Order of Merlin, I'll be the youngest, thought Tom. Holding on to that pleasant daydream chased the chill away from his limbs until long past the ten o'clock hour mark. The legalese droned on, the cameras flashed, Head Auror Evelyn McClure clutched his wand in white-knuckled hands, while his salamander Patronus draped itself languidly over his knee. Then Tom's red-robed Auror tapped him on the shoulder to walk him down to the amphitheatre stage, and answer questions about his interaction with foreign Undesirables.
The bottom of the bowl was a long way down. The Minister, his aides, and various department seniors were seated high above Tom's eye-level, and he had to crane his neck to meet their eyes. The stage contained two chairs at its centre, bolted to the floor, with clinking chains to securely contain Ansgar Schmitz and Václav Janošík, looking rather worse for wear since the last time he'd seen them. Schmitz's blond beard had grown out scruffy, while his formerly muscular physique had shrunken in on itself within the loose tunic of the prison uniform; Janošík's dark hair hung ragged over his blood-red eyes, and his skin had gone from an aristocratic milk-like paleness to an unhealthy ashen grey. When Tom's shoes tapped on the stone flagstones, white fists clenched on the arms of a chained chair. The vampire's right wrist was adorned with a rough, ropy circular scar where his hand had been re-attached.
Tom's Auror escort motioned him to stand in front of the lectern, within the bounds of a worn runic inscription carved in the shape of a heptagon. Tom had only a few seconds to analyse its meaning—truth, clarity, memory, justice, and most worryingly, mastery and containment—before an old wizard, white-haired and with a walking stick, was toddled to the speaker's lectern, supported under the elbow by a younger man wearing a Wizengamot token around his neck. The wizard cleared his throat, announced his name as Mr. Claudius Prince, and that "This should not take long so long as you speak honestly and to the best of your current knowledge". Then Tom found the attention of the courtroom fixed entirely on him.
"Are you the individual known as 'The Prince of Charming'?" asked the wizard, Mr. Prince, leaning heavily on the lectern and staring at Tom. The man's face was lined with age, his back hunched, his brittle hair the yellow-white of antique ivory and tied back with a ribbon. But his eyes were keen and bright with energy, black irises that settled on Tom and seized him forcefully with a painless albeit unyielding grip that whispered of long experience. It felt like the slide of a hook into the back of his skull, the grip of a terrier's jaws around the neck of a rat, ready to shake it to death at the kennelmaster's whistle.
"Yes," said Tom, gritting his teeth at the sense of another mind looming ominous over his own. He expected that a regular wizard would only notice a spontaneous itch on the neck, a chill that might be attributed to the Dementors and nothing else; to a trained Occlumens, it was like a shadow over the doorstep or a creak on the stairs below the bedroom.
"What is your name?"
Tom glared at his interrogator, throwing out his own explorative tendrils to form a scaffold against the weight dragging upon his mind and body. "Not relevant."
"Very well," conceded Mr. Prince. "Next question—"
"No, no, Prince—ah, Claudius, that is—don't move on so quickly," the Minister interrupted. "Ask him again. With emphasis. This is a rare opportunity, don't waste it!"
"What is your name?" asked Mr. Prince again. The wizard took a deep breath and Tom felt the pressure again, a leaden blanket weighing him down and making him feel as if the air was being crushed out of his lungs, and the only escape was to fall onto his knees before the other man.
His answer was a retreat to his quiet sky, the black velvet night devoid of stars, in a restful silence where intrusions—the distracting rustle of robes, the Minister murmuring to his secretary, the clatter of prisoners' chains—were swiftly immured in soap bubbles that floated away, leaving him alone in the tranquility of his own mind.
"Prince," said Tom, watching how Mr. Prince stiffened at the word. "Prince Charming."
"Your mother named you 'Prince Charming'?" asked the Minister incredulously.
"Of course she didn't," said Tom. "I named myself."
"Is that allowed?" the Minister asked. He turned to his secretary, hissing in a low voice. "Well, is it? Go look it up! No, I don't mean right this moment, write it down and check during lunch. Yes, I know I told you to put in the lunch order for the peppercorn veal terrine en croute earlier... Can't you do both?"
"Just a normal day at the office, isn't it, Mr. Prince," Tom remarked. "Shall we get on with it, then?"
"Yes, let's," said Mr. Prince, sounding rather weary. "Describe the events that led to your first encounter with Mr. Janošík."
"My companion and I, my loyal Knight, set out on an adventure that morning," said Tom, choosing his words carefully. "He suggested that we might find what we were looking for at the Tinworth Village Foundry. I happened to be in urgent need of a small token of my affections to present to my lovely Maiden Fair. Such is the life of a Prince, you see." He laughed, noticing how the witches in the audience nodded with approval at his words. Mr. Prince stared grimly down at him.
"When we arrived to the shop, within minutes we had been physically accosted by Mr. Janošík with little provocation, and we had no choice but to defend ourselves," continued Tom. "It is ingrained within my character to seek truth and prevent injustice, so naturally I questioned Mr. Janošík as to the nature of his motivations. I learned that he thought us petty thieves—perhaps because we had covered our faces—and also discovered, upon further questioning him, he supported the principles of the Dark Lord. He admitted to it, and we knew we had to bring it to the attention of the legal authorities."
"What did Mr. Janošík admit to?"
"His dissatisfaction with the state of the Statute of Secrecy. He confessed that the enforcement of separation prevented him from 'quietening the thirst' cursed upon him, and that he anticipated a day when there were no more Muggle protections."
"How were you introduced to Mr. Schmitz?"
"He entered the shop and took offence to my questioning of Mr. Janošík. He claimed that I had no reasonable justification for my actions toward his apprentice, because he had committed no crimes. This was the source of our conflict, because of course I knew he was lying."
Mr. Prince paused. His assistant, placing notecards on the lectern to prompt the interrogator's line of questioning, coughed pointedly. "How did you know he was lying?"
"The same way you'd know if I was lying," said Tom. "Magic."
And as he spoke that last word, he stared into Mr. Prince's eyes and projected another: Legilimency.
"I accept this explanation," said Mr. Prince, while to Tom's mind, he whispered, Where did you learn such an art?
"Hold on, now," said the Minister. "That's not a satisfactory answer!"
It wasn't learned. I was born with it, Tom replied.
"By my authority, I say it is satisfactory," Mr. Prince spoke coldly. "Who is the interrogator—you or I? Continue, Prince." His gaze didn't waver from Tom's. Who is your family? Who is your father?
No one you'd know, replied Tom, guarding his thoughts for any stray hint of leaking emotion.
My son is thirty-nine this year; you are of an age to be his, Mr. Prince sent to him. You resemble my family's looks: dark eyes, pale skin, and dark hair, judging by what I can see of your eyebrows. He has only one daughter, nine years old, who shows little natural aptitude for the Mind Arts. I could claim you, young Prince; good wizarding blood as runs in your veins should not be let go to waste.
My blood is mine to do with as I wish, retorted Tom, understanding in an instant that Mr. Prince wished to use him as a stud. He hoped that such designs didn't involve the man's granddaughter, but with traditionalist wizarding families so proprietorial of their social status derived from inheritances in gold and blood, who knew? But he knew with certainty that Mr. Prince would consider Tom's marriage to Hermione a "waste" of good blood, which rendered the man's opinion worthless, as far as Tom was concerned.
"Mr. Schmitz attempted to proselytise to me on the benefits of his ideology," said Tom. Only a few seconds had passed since Mr. Prince had commanded him to continue; no one had noticed that he and and the interrogator had engaged in a private conversation between minds. "He offered a new world away from the feeble whispers of the Ministry of Magic. A new social order divorced from the feudalistic superstitions of the past, which included the value placed on old names and pedigrees. He said I would find worth and recognition in such a world, if I was willing to sacrifice my pretentious pretender title. I took it as an affront to my dignity, so we inevitably came to blows. And that was when the Aurors arrived to settle our disagreement."
Foolish boy. You bear your pretender's title and cover your face, when you could openly bear the signet of a true Prince, scoffed Mr. Prince. "Did Mr. Schmitz cast the Imperius Curse on you?"
I'm no fool, Tom sent. I am a born Legilimens, with or without a title. Your judgement of my worth came through nothing but the strength of my magic. Even with my false title and covered face and ringless hand, you recognised power.
"Yes, he tried to force me to disarm myself using the Imperius," said Tom. "I refused him. Then I disarmed him."
Hearing Tom's admission, quiet murmurs broke out amongst the plum-robed audience in the second and third tiers of the amphitheatre. Mr. Prince turned around and called for silence, but was ignored. A red-robed Auror shuffled across a long row of venerable knees to deposit a slip of parchment on the lectern. Mr. Prince and his assistant conferred for a minute or two, while the whispers continued, then the assistant popped a sparkler from his wand over the heads of the crowd and they settled back down, somewhat grumpily.
"The next series of questions comes at the behest of Mr. Rawlins, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement," intoned Mr. Prince. "The Auror Office has established that the Imperius Curse was cast from Mr. Schmitz's wand, but the only evidence that you were its target is your word. The current laws specify that the maximum sentence may only be given for the intentional and unauthorised use of the Imperius on an unconsenting human wizard; if Mr. Schmitz had cast the curse on Mr. Janošík, the only other sentient being in that room at the time, then he would not qualify for that sentence. Therefore, I must ask you to describe the experience of being under the curse."
"It felt like a parasitic spider crawling around the inside of my head, digging into every nook and cranny of my brain for the slightest weakness of will, to infect me with its foulness," said Tom. "According to Gamp's Principal Exceptions, magic can't create information from nothing. The Imperius Curse can't induce a personalised replication of happiness and pleasure from nothing, in the same fashion that a boggart can't create fear from nothing, or Amortentia can't replicate desire from nothing. Their power is in drawing on what already exists, and twisting it to manipulate the minds of the subject.
"The Curse cast on me sought for echoes of past impressions of joy and delight, but I refused to give it an inch of leeway. Being a spell that connects the mind of the subject to the intent of the caster, the caster would have been alerted of my resistance. He turned to brute force to try and break my will, causing a rather messy nosebleed. I continued to resist, which bought me time to analyse the compulsion placed on me and subvert its intention. I was ordered to remain in place—silent and still, that is—and drop my wand; I broke through the compulsion by allowing it the temporary illusion of success. By dropping my wand, then silently Summoning back to my hand."
Auror McClure stood up. His salamander Patronus fell off his knee, and instead of hitting the floor, it floated into the air, thrashing its tail at its wizard disapprovingly. "That's wandless and non-verbal magic!"
"Thank you, Mr. McClure, for speaking in turn," said Mr. Prince. "I propose that a quick demonstration should be appropriate."
Tom sighed internally, drawing his wand. It was just his luck to go from performing magic tricks for the amusement of coffin-dodgers in his N.E.W.T. exam to... performing magic tricks for the whole coffin-dodging Greek chorus. "Will you Silence me or do you trust me not to whisper the incantation under my breath?"
"Mr. McClure?" prompted Mr. Prince. "I shall leave it up to you."
Auror McClure, Patronus floating over his head, drew his own wand and pointed it at Tom. Tom felt the tingle of the Silencing Charm, then McClure moved into the stroke-and-twist of the wand movement, calling, "Expelliarmus!" for the benefit of the audience.
Tom, who knew the spell was coming, loosened his grip on his wand and let it fly out of his hand. But before McClure could grasp it, his hand open to receive the yew wand like a Seeker on the dive, Tom silently cast a Levitation Charm. He poured raw power into the spell to compensate for the lack of fine control his wand afforded him, the same technique he used to float books in mid-air while reading in the boys' dormitory.
The wand jerked to a stop halfway to its destination, McClure's outstretched fingers closing impotently on air. With a flash of pique, Tom snorted and flicked his fingers, tossing the weak blue burst of a Stinging Jinx at McClure's face. It was slower and wobblier than what he could cast with a wand, but he was pleased his repetitive use of the spell had paid off. Spotting the spell-flare, McClure instinctively cast a Shield Charm, while Tom Summoned his wand back with a silent Accio.
He ended the Silencing Charm and said, "Is that enough of a demonstration for you, Mr. Prince?"
Mr. Prince glanced over to the Auror, who nodded. "It seems that the Prince of Charming is indeed a prodigious hand at Charms."
"Of course I am," said Tom. "If I was no good at magic, I wouldn't be here today. I'd be sitting at home being the Plebeian of Mediocrity."
"Thank you, Prince. You are dismissed," said Mr. Prince.
The ominous lurking presence retreated from Tom's senses, but before it dissipated, it spoke in a soft whisper, The Princes reside in Bretby, Derbyshire. You have eight years before my son's legitimate daughter is recognised as heir.
Tom was shown back to his seat, Mr. Prince following him with those canny black eyes, until he'd reached the place where Nott had placed his bag to keep the wizard in the next seat from stealing Tom's spot for the extra leg-room. Nott had taken his wand out, fiddling with it in a nervous habit, while his gaze kept slipping up to the whirling dark void on the ceiling. If one paid close attention, the slow, rattling breaths of the Dementors were audible. With even closer attention, one could notice when their breaths grew shorter, more animated when one of their number, enlivened by the mood of the audience, drifted too close to the worst seats in the house, the seventh ring up, and was driven upwards again by a vigilant Patronus creature.
Nott shuddered. "Unnatural creatures, aren't they. Antithetical to the natural laws of man and magic, though the Ministry thinks its own authority can compel them. It'd be a cheaper and cleaner job to execute criminals, like we do for rogue beasts and rabid half-breeds. But no, because the Ministry decided it's immoral to end a human life, the superior alternative is feeding those abominations on human souls."
"Isn't the result of Dementors and execution the same thing?" asked Tom. "An end to recidivism. Different means, same ends."
"Different means and different ends," Nott replied. "The real result of using Dementors is a Dementor with an indiscriminate penchant for wizard souls. No one sees the hyposcrisy of it all: for any other magical creature, if it ever tasted human flesh, it would be put down at once for the suspicion that one taste is never enough. But flesh is flesh; a soul is a wizard's magic, consciousness, and sentience rolled into one. Moral arguments aside, the safety aspect is overlooked; there's been more than one occasion when some poor bystander got his soul sucked out of him purely by accident—"
"Shush!" said the wizard to Nott's left. "I'm trying to listen!"
They had summoned the Auror witnesses down to speak, and to Tom's disgust, weren't made to stand in the enchanted line right under the lectern, forced to twist to their necks to catch a glimpse of the speaker's hairy nostrils. First it was Auror McClure, then a deputy who had taken custody of Ansgar Schmitz's wand and investigated its most recent spells—he cast Prior Incantato to display the floating image of a skull and manacles, the visual representation of the Imperius Curse. Then another Auror who had bagged the bodies. Then afterwards came a group of Unspeakables in nondescript grey robes, who described the results of their investigation on the deaths of the six "flunkeys" who met their end through a sudden and very lethal injection of Basilisk venom.
Tom was interested to learn that the Unspeakables hadn't discovered how he'd done it. They'd tested the bodies of the dead wizards and found no lingering traces of Dark Magic, or any evidence of magical residue from spells cast directly on the body. It was concluded that Tom hadn't performed any Dark curses, no Unforgivables, only a few basic charms and Transfigurations, perhaps combined with imbued magic from an unknown potion. Potions, one Unspeakable droned on in his intentionally nondescript monotone voice, incorporated the organic magic of plants and creatures, which for the most part went undetected by spells targeted for inimical wizard magic. This included Dark Detectors, Sneakoscopes, the underage magic Trace, and generalist wards, household and commercial.
The explanation went on for a good long while. Tom, who knew the secret, paid rapt attention to the closest wizarding equivalent to Muggle scientists. Really, if he wasn't fundamentally opposed to placing himself under the thumb of a bureaucratic hierarchy, he might have seen the value of pursuing a career as an Unspeakable. The disadvantage, he recognised, was assignments determined by nothing more than political expedience, instead of his own choice and interest. And no freedom to share his research under his own name and prerogative—Ministry funding meant Ministry ownership.
Oh, and the worst part of Ministry drudgery: a strict schedule of working hours.
Not only would someone who called himself "the management" decide what a hypothetical Unspeakable Riddle might study, he could also command when Tom could eat lunch, visit the men's room, or return to his home and wife. This couldn't be tolerated. In that instant, Tom's idle fancy of exploring the Department of Mysteries shrivelled into nothing.
Around him, wizards and witches wilted in their seats, their eyes glazing over with the same empty look he was familiar with from Professor Binns' History of Magic classes. He found the technical discussion fascinating, and observing the slumped shoulders, the fidgeting with crinkly sweet wrappers, and the vacant yawning, he suddenly understood how Hermione felt when she was the only student who'd noticed that the teacher had just written something on the blackboard.
.
.
The hands on Tom's wristwatch crept to noon, then passed it without fanfare.
The excitement of a rare public trial—whose tickets had been allocated by a raffle system due to the outrageous demand—began to lose its shine. The audience members who had rushed in for the chance of witnessing what might be a public Dementor feeding had started to realise that this wasn't going to be a replacement for the thrill of the cancelled Quidditch League Cup. The Ministry was bent on ensuring its i's were dotted and t's crossed, as it would be infinitely embarrassing to convict wrong and be too late to repair the damage. Mr. Prince's cross-examinations were thorough to the point of fastidious, which made Tom grateful that his own time under the lectern had been relatively short. They must have already been certain they could stick Schmitz for the Imperius, so there was no point in spending too much time on it.
At a quarter to one o'clock, a recess was called. The crotchety plum-robed Wizengamot, despite their status as desiccated antiquities, managed to elbow their way out the door before the rest of the crowd, eager to get to the bathroom without waiting in a miles-long queue. Costermongers waited outside the courtroom doors, filling the corridor with the scent of hot roasted peanuts, sausage rolls, and savoury pies. One entrepreneurial vendor, who wore a menu board looped around his neck, had an Expanded box of pies and was doing good business with the hungry lunchtime crowd, which included more than a few Ministry officials. According to the menu, the pies were offered in two varieties: meat (14 Knuts) and named meat (18 Knuts).
(Tom thought it was odd at first, then realised he was no longer in Scotland—he was in London. The Street Rules of London, which he'd learned from childhood, stated that if a "meat" pie was cheap, filling, and tasty, one knew better than to ask questions.)
In anticipation of a change in shifts, the Auror guards on the seventh ring recalled their Patronuses from where they floated high above the amphitheatre stage. A few—the firefly, the serval cat, and the polar bear—were dismissed entirely.
Nott eyed them attentively, and after looking around to make sure no one nearby was listening, asked, "Do you know what form your Patronus takes?"
"No," Tom replied curtly.
"So..." said Nott, "you didn't it cast it for the... ah, demonstration?"
"No."
"Heheh." Nott looked very pleased with himself at hearing that. Tom flipped a Stinging Jinx at his ankle. "Hsss! That was unnecessary. I didn't say anything!"
"You were thinking it."
"Not fair," said Nott. "I kept my mouth shut, that has to count for something!"
"Your thoughts were too loud, and that's what counts."
Nott groaned. "How is it that I never see you reprimanding your 'lovely Maiden Fair'? Since you spend as much time with her as you do, you must have noticed that she doesn't think endless pleasant thoughts about you."
"The way she does it is endearing. The way you do it is annoying," said Tom.
"Endearing? Her?" said Nott, aghast. "You don't find her the least bit shrill?"
"No, that's what I think of you," said Tom. "But you're still an adequate minion, all things considered. Just goes to show there's no accounting for taste, is there?"
"Right," said Nott, rolling his eyes. "Let's see if you change your mind about the value of 'endearing' five years from now."
"I won't."
"And you're so sure about it that you'd stake your life on it?"
"When you know, you know," Tom replied breezily.
"Yes, I can see why the housewives love you," Nott said with disgust. "And it's not because of the trifle."
Recess drew to its close, and the tide of humanity that had ebbed out of the door in a disorderly trickle came roaring back with re-energised fury. There were arguments over stolen seats, commentary on the limited range of "intermission" offerings, and the low-rated accommodations of the Ministry bathrooms.
"I'm not looking for the hot hand towel elf service that the W.A.D.A theatre has in the Carkitt district," said one elderly witch. "But one surely expects better of the place that Britain's best and brightest choose for employment. What are they spending all our money on? Last year, they went and fined me ten Galleons for each crup of mine whose tail I hadn't docked. Everyone knows you can't dock show crups—the whole point of showing them is for their breed conformation! Ten Galleons per head, they said, and ten Galleons next year if they came around and saw I hadn't fixed them. 'Twas nothing but a bout of legalised extortion—oh!"
The witch had been knocked over by an over-eager jostling elbow, and Tom snickered. The wizard in front of her had his goblet of hot butterbeer spilled over the back of the man in front of him. That man shrieked at the burning drink dripping down the back of his robes, and trampling on the hem of the young lady beside him, sent her crashing to the floor. The courtroom door choked to a standstill as the chaos spread, from a small knot to a whole chunk of the crowd milling around the entryway and stairs ascending the concentric rings of benches.
Aurors scattered throughout the seating ranks descended to ground-level, trying to restore order. Once they had joined the crowd, however, they couldn't get through the crush of bodies, and went unheard in the loud shouted demands to make room and turn back around against the surging current. Tom craned his head to look, noticing sparks of light from enterprising wizards trying to forcefully prod their way out of the crush. It did nothing to improve the situation, only serving to fuel the bedlam and drive it to greater heights.
Glass shattered in the crowd, the shouting rose to a higher pitch, drawing Nott's attention away from scrutinising the circling pool of Dementors above their heads.
"What are they doing?" Nott said, scowling. More shouting arose from the heaving crowd, and instead of the squawking of inconvenience, the voices Tom heard echoed with the strident tones of true panic. Glass tinkled on the stone floor. Nott stood up to peer at the goings-on below. "Do you smell that? Did someone down there drop a cauldron of potion or something? It stinks of rot."
Silently, Tom drew his wand and got to his feet. The entryway had become a congested morass of writhing bodies, frightened pale faces, and grappling hands. Sparklers of spell-fire flickered in the crowd, lost in an eddying darkness that drifted from the level of trampling feet, to waist-height, and finally to the level of frantic eyes and faces. The shouts were replaced by gasps, hoarse rasping sighs, and the rattle of phlegm-thickened coughs, issuing from a dozen throats at once, too closely resembling the patients on the floor of a condemned plague ward.
He smelled it too, the stench of fumes from an over-boiled cauldron. Sour, stinging vinegar bite overlaying an oily cloying putrescence, it burned in his nostrils like a winter's chill, burned all the way down to his lungs and kept burning with the heat of feverish inflammation, unlike any Scottish blizzard he'd ever known. It stung at his eyes too, which watered with irritation, and blurred the seething crowd below into an amorphous shadow of dark robes and darker smoke.
Enbublio, he incanted, and covered his face with the Bubble-Head Charm. The air cleared. He breathed deep and the heat in his lungs receded, although he noticed a tenderness in his throat still remained. With a sidelong glance, he cast the charm on Nott's face for good measure.
"Something's gone wrong," said Tom.
"Is this your intuition speaking?" asked Nott, drawing his own wand from his breast pocket.
"Common sense, actually," Tom replied, observing the smoke billow from the ground-level of the amphitheatre bowl and up to the first ring of seats. Mr. Prince at the lectern was gesticulating with agitation to his assistant, but the stairway between the lower-level seats and the door was impassable, choked with milling bodies and the dense black fog issuing from shattered bottles skittering over the floor, knocked about from the wildly kicking feet of smoke-blinded wizards. "I wonder why they're fighting to get up the stairs, rather than down and through the door and out."
A wizard heaved himself up to their row of seats through pure upper-body strength, his wand clamped between his teeth, a sensible choice given the crowd fighting in two directions on the stairs. The skin on his hands was a hot, chafed red, weeping from dozens of tiny blisters, and along each patch of exposed flesh, he bore the same odd sunburnt look—on his forehead and cheeks where it wasn't protected by his beard, the sides of his throat above his collar.
"Oh," said Tom. "I see why. It is a potion. Hard to guess what it is, though. There aren't many ingredients that are so caustic and volatile at room temperature. Typically, ingredients are stable until you have them on high heat, then mixing them with other reactive ingredients in the wrong order sets them off. If I had to wager, I'd say... hmm, perhaps essence of Ashwinder. Likely not Fire Crab; it's volatile, but lacks that hint of corrosiveness you'd find in a venomous beast."
"Well, I'd say that fellow has plenty of thoughts about 'corrosiveness'," said Nott. "Do you think we should stay here, or go higher? It won't be too long before that smoke starts climbing up to our level."
"I suppose we should." Tom gazed down at a clump of people clambering over each other's hands and shoulders to boost themselves up to the next level. Then up at the seventh ring, four levels above his head. "Why aren't they using magic to Conjure a ladder? Or even Vanish the smoke? They do have magic, don't they?"
"They breathed it in," said Nott thoughtfully. "If their vocal cords are physically damaged as an effect, then they're limited to casting non-verbal spells only. And judging by the reaction to your little wandwork demonstration, most wizards haven't kept up with non-verbal spellcasting practise past their school years. For simple household tasks, yes, but complex Transfigurations like Conjuration or the silent Vanishment of a non-solid? Impossible for the type who hasn't opened a textbook since the age of eighteen."
"If you can Vanish matter in liquid state, you can do it for a vapour," said Tom with exasperation. "It's not that much of a difference."
He pointed his wand at a rising patch of the corrosive smoke in the seating level below him, tracing out the jagged lines of the proper movement. "Evanesco."
The smoke doubled in thickness, from a wispy cloud to a dense floating smudge as dark as coal soot.
"Oh." Tom lowered his wand. "Well. I suppose it's good to see that some wizards out there are competent. Shame it's not the ones in here, though. Well, let's get up, then." He flicked the Levitation Charm at his robes and felt his feet bob off the floor.
Nott cast the Levitation Charm on his own clothes, and his lack of fine control relative to Tom's resulted in an unpleasant time maintaining his orientation. The spell rotated him on his back and then spun him in gentle circles, like a spitted goose cooking over a hearth fire.
They had reached the sixth level when the wall torches guttered and went out, plunging the entire amphitheatre into pitch darkness. Muffled shrieks echoed from the bottom of the bowl-shaped courtroom, rebounding off the excellent acoustic design of the stone walls and through the insulation of Tom's Bubble-Head Charm. Tom ended the Levitation, his feet thumping back to the floor two feet down with a grunt, and cast a light off the end of his wand. Nott, who had been dropped on his stomach with a pained moan, joined him a second later with his own bulb of light, its blue-white glow reflecting eerily off the glassy, transparent dome of his own Bubbled face. Below them, flashes burst forth from dozens of wands, though the glare of what should have been a powerful torch was muted in the churning eddies of poisonous black smoke.
"Battlefield control," Tom murmured. "Forced silence. Minimal visibility. Fog of war. This isn't an accident—it's strategic."
"What else could it be," said Nott. "To extinguish all the lights at once, instead of one at a time, requires a blanket nullification of the courtroom's enchantments." He fell silent, and his eyes darted to the inky blackness of the ceiling above, beyond the bounds of the soft glow from their wandlights. The ceiling was a deep abyss of nothingness without the wall-mounted torches to illuminate its upper dimensions. When Nott spoke next, he shivered from cold, and the inside of his face bubble clouded with steam. Up at the top, far from the courtroom floor, the cold was truly worthy of a Hibernian winter. "A wardbreaker. That's what the fog was a distraction for. Someone to crack the wards, all of them at once, if they got the lights as well."
Tom reached the blindingly obvious conclusion: "The prisoners!"
"Yes," agreed Nott. "I'd be surprised, when this mess is over, to see them sitting in their chains, as neat as you please. Likely they've already been spirited out of here."
The time and effort spent on delivering the prisoners into the welcoming arms of the Ministry, gone to waste. It was infuriating, the futile rage that stole over him thinking about the repercussions of the events occurring down below. The equivalent of working on his Potions N.E.W.T., and fifty minutes into the allocated hour, some careless classmate had wandered past and turned Tom's burner all the way up, walking off with a sheepish grin and an, "Apologies, I thought that was mine!" when the cauldron exploded. The cheerful negligence of those who treated Tom's time as gratuitous galled him like nothing else could.
But what else could he do? Sit in the distant heights of the top seats to watch the unfolding chaos, as removed from the action as the spectator in the Quidditch stands, or plunge into the maelstrom of skin-searing fog and jabbing elbows and indiscriminate spellcasting by panicked wizards who didn't let their clouded sight stop them from "doing something"?
Io giudico ben questo, che sia meglio essere impetuoso che rispettivo...
The advice for a Prince: It was better to be impetuous than cautious. Fortune favoured the bold.
"We ought to do something," said Tom. "Do you remember a few weeks ago, when Her... my Maiden Fair, I mean, had a lovely conversation on the potential of a Lavatory Freshening Spell? She looked into the Arithmancy calculations for non-solid matter displacement using a mechanism of tri-part successive Switching." It had gotten colder, his voice growing rougher as he spoke, and Tom felt the undignified drip of something leaking from his nostrils—luckily into the scarf he'd charmed to stick over his face. "It may well work on the smoke down there, if existing spells have been accounted for and made ineffectual. I think it's worth the attempt, at least..."
Nott mumbled something in response, and his voice had gone hoarse as well. "'Specto... Expect..."
The boy's words sounded muted, as if spoken into a blanket from yards away, and not right beside him. And it wasn't just sound that had grown dim and soft and weak, but the light from Tom's wand tip had faded too, and Nott's wand-light was but a pale silvery wisp; even the Bubble-Head Charm that Tom had cast to cover his entire face had retreated, with the slow march of a glacier, to cover only the small area of his lower nose and mouth, leaving the rest of his skin exposed. And that skin smarted with an Arctic frost that had descended over him, heavier than the pressure of Claudius Prince's mind, which hadn't prickled against his own mind the way he felt it now, wriggling inside him like a maggot crawling through the dimpled stem-pit of a ripe apple. The calm detachment that his Occlumency granted him began to falter...
White fog surrounded him, and his wand-light dimmed further, its brief circle of illumination sinking down to waist-level, then knee-height, as the strength of his limbs waned. He felt more tired than he had ever been in his life, even more than the time he'd found himself bleeding in Hermione's arms, and had a pain-reliever forced down his throat that sank him into a muddle of narcotic stupor. Pain, no matter how brutal, was endurable. That state of mindless oblivion? Intolerable.
Quiet breaths rattled out behind him, and a thin, withered hand laid itself on Tom's shoulder. Tom turned around, and came face-to-face with a empty, toothless mouth under a lowering hood.
"Expecto Patronum," whispered Nott, and the skeletal grey hand jerked away from him at a nebulous silver-blue shield that sheared through the icy fog.
But where that one Dementor withdrew, another came, and yet another. The two of them, cloaked and hooded, were soon surrounded by black hooded figures, pressing closer, hungrily, all breathing in a slow, measured manner punctuated with an unnatural pneumonic rasp that set Tom's teeth on edge.
"Expecto... Expecto Patronum," Nott repeated. The shield pulsed bright; the Dementors hissed and retreated a few steps, but then they came on again, undeterred.
"Incendio!" cried Tom, and a whip of flame burst from his wand, fire and heat and light and rage rising around him and, for a few precious instants, they pushed away the cold fog that had numbed his mind and settled like an impossible ballast upon his heart and soul. In the scarlet fury of his spell, he thought he saw a phoenix dying in the wavering pyre of magic, and thought he heard the musical chirp of fledglings luring him into a memory of summer, Elysian gardens of butterflies and tender grass and glossy grazing horses...
"Expecto Patronum," Nott incanted, this time with renewed confidence.
A ghostly bird flew before Nott, a beautiful silver creature the size and shape of a duck, with flamboyant tail plumes of striated icy-blue on white. It fluttered its dazzling wings, pecking and harrying the Dementors with the fervour of an angry chicken. It should have looked ungainly, a bird flapping wildly within the confines of a closed room, as if it had the clipped wings of a hobby aviarist's pet. But it was magic, and it possessed the ethereal grace of spell-flesh, the soul-deep lightness of radiant joy that warmed him from within even as Tom's charmed flame burned without, a fierce red barricade of fire pressing outward from his outstretched wand hand, while the ghost bird darted and danced at his back.
Then the Dementors were gone, and the bird returned to perch on Nott's shoulder and tap him on the nose with its beak, before fading away into a glimmering mist.
"The wards," Nott said finally, when the two of them lowered their wands. "When the wards dropped, the Dementors were let out. The Aurors at the top row weren't there to keep the Dementors in, they were for reducing the fog effect of too many Dementors confined in a small space. After all, can't give the public a good show with a big white fog in the way. With no Aurors and no wards, they escaped. This trial, I knew it! I called it weeks ago. It was—is—a total farce."
"Your Patronus is a pheasant," Tom replied.
"It represents self-preservation, a defining characteristic of Slytherin House," said Nott primly. "My pheasant preserved your ungrateful self, so be thankful for it!"
"I didn't say anything," said Tom.
"You were thinking it!"
At that, Tom let out a genuine laugh, and Nott followed soon after. Not out of humour, but for a release in tension. For the sheer, sweet relief of looking into the face of one's Eternal Departure and seeing it surrender under the combined force of will and magic. He had seen into the great sucking black pit of a Dementor's mouth, seen the scabbed patches of flesh over its empty eye-sockets, had it place its decayed claw on his shoulder, and turned it away. As the cold retreated, his mood rose and with it came the warm elation of successful action.
The Ministry had, yet again, proved its incompetence. The Prince was in the perfect position to demonstrate what competence looked like, to a not-yet-adoring audience. Even if he only managed to be halfway successful, he would have done something to help. And that was better than the absolute nothing that was going on at the ground floor of mayhem.
"Come on, Knight," said Tom, raising his wand to Conjure a pair of gloves to cover the exposed skin of his hands. He summoned the rearing whip of flame once more. "We have damsels to rescue. If we've chased the Dementors away, they'll go after easier prey. You said it yourself: best not to let these mindless beasts earn themselves a taste for wizard souls."
"If I call my Patronus, you'll have to Levitate me down," said Nott. "I haven't got the hang of holding more than one mentally-demanding spells at once, not when one of them is a Patronus. You'll have to clear the smoke on your own."
"Not a problem," said Tom. "It'll be the Atrium all over again. Ah, good memories."
"Ugh. Don't remind me," said Nott, lifting his wand. "Expecto Patronum!"
The silver pheasant erupted into joyful existence, plumes swirling as it winged a jaunty loop above them before alighting soundlessly on the top of Nott's hooded head. When Nott turned around to look for it, the pheasant swayed with the movement and flicked its feathered tail teasingly at Nott's scarf-covered nose.
"Hmm," said Tom. "Even your Patronus is annoying. No wonder they call these things 'manifestations of the inner self'."
"Anything's better than 'endearing'," said Nott. "I'm glad that I'll never be named as 'my lovely Maiden Fair' on an official Wizengamot transcript—wahh!"
Tom had Levitated Nott by his robes and dropped him to the bottom of the amphitheatre, yanking him up just before the boy hit the floor. The pheasant Patronus flapped down after its owner. Tom followed with his own Levitation a moment later, stepping elegantly from the grip of the spell with a tasteful flutter of his robes. He assured himself of the strength of their Bubble-Head Charms before casting several lighting charms, sending a dozen floating bulbs of light to hover about the rounded perimeter of the courtroom, bright enough to pierce through the dreary grey shroud that had risen to the third tier of seats.
The smoke lay thick, drifting in patches on the courtroom floor; he had to wade through it like the frigid, slushing shallows of the Black Lake in early spring—something the Care of Magical Creatures class did to observe grindylows spawning in their natural habitat. Tom couldn't see more than two yards through it. A hand gripped tightly to his shoulder, and he went to shake it off until he heard Nott's voice hiss, "It's me, you ninny!"
"Stay close. Best keep your bird from wandering off," Tom ordered Nott, observing the marsh-light twinkle of the Patronus pheasant wheel around them at head-height. He raised his wand and began performing a complicated series of movements, zigzagging lines based on the original Vanishing charm, but rotated around a central axis and embellished with additional flicks along the turns. Switch a designated mass of dispersed particles with a vacuum, then Switch that vacuum with the same clean and breathable air that was Conjured into existence in a Bubble-Head Charm. Performed in a tight succession, there was no time to create the rush of air that gave Apparition its distinctive sound; it was only the separation of an infinitesimal instant between the states of being, non-being, and being again.
"Respiresco," Tom incanted, and his spell cleared a globe of smoke, the size of a pumpkin, from the courtroom. This was going to take a while.
Tom worked at dispersing the smoke, pouring raw power into the spell with whole-arm wand movements. Meanwhile, Nott's wand directed his Patronus into ensuring that any Dementors in their path were herded away from posing a potential distraction to Tom. He and Nott walked in an ever-widening circle, and came across a red-robed Auror standing guard over a huddled pile of creaky elders, holding a flickering silver Patronus shield over their group, the best effort one could do when casting such a difficult spell non-verbally—for they had breathed in the potion-laced smoke, and it had ravaged the internal tissues of their throat and lungs.
Nott tapped at Tom's shoulder, the boy delving into his bag for several vials of all-purpose pain-reliever and one brown glass bottle of Premium Dittany Essence, With Natural Stem Pulp. Nott waited for the Auror to nullify his Bubble-Head Charm before handing him the bottle, then snatched it away after a single sip.
"This is the expensive stuff," said Nott. "And I only have the one bottle. You don't need to be healed all the way, just good enough to protect yourself and get everyone to St. Mungo's for a proper check later on."
"What about the others?" the Auror asked in a weak, crackling voice. "Mr. Ponders is a deputy department head!"
"Can he cast a corporeal Patronus?" asked Nott.
He and the Auror glanced at an old wizard, Mr. Ponders, with rumpled robes and wet sores on his face. The wizard shook his head. His eyes were closed, eyelids swollen and bruised, and the wrinkles on his cheeks were runnelled with tears.
"Can any one of you cast a corporeal Patronus?" Nott asked the others under the Auror's protection, three wizards and two witches, hats askew and hair fallen out of their roller curls. "No? Sorry, but the medicine has to be saved for those who can. You're lucky to get pain-relievers. I don't even have enough of those for everybody."
As their circular walk took them near the courtroom door, the bodies underfoot increased. Nott stopped more and more often, passing out pain-reliever potions, ensuring the best duellists were healed and revived, and when the potions ran out, he was reduced to pulling bandage rolls from his healing kit and soaking them in Conjured water and cooling charms to ease the pain. The pheasant Patronus lingered on the arms and shoulders of bedraggled-looking Aurors, heartening them with the warmth of its inner light, until their eyes and throats were healed and their resolve fortified to call forth their own Patronus creatures. Thus it was for the owners of the firefly Patronus, the wolf, and the falcon, whose immediate response to being called into existence was to swipe aggressively at Nott's pheasant, which went to ground under the boy's cloak.
Not long afterwards, the two of them had a most peculiar introduction with Mr. Torquil Travers, who had performed and held his corporeal Patronus non-verbally, though his hands shook with effort by the time Tom found him crouched in the first ring of seats. The Alsatian hound hunched with flattened ears over the unconscious body of Hector Fawley, the former Minister, and came to heel at Mr. Travers' whistle—so that was how the man had done it. Fawley had fallen from the fog created by the escaped Dementors, and his fingers were blue with chilblains.
"Don't bother wasting your time searching for Spencer-Moon," Mr. Travers told Tom. "They will have gotten him out at the first sign of trouble, and damn the rest of us. They locked the doors, did you know that? Locked us all in, once they noticed the poison getting into the corridor outside."
"Perhaps the Minister worried the fog might spread into the rest of London, built atop the Ministry," said Tom reasonably. "Since it wouldn't respond to standard Vanishing spells, they assumed it was purposefully designed as a weapon. Better that a hundred people caught the effects than the whole city."
"If that were so, then I should be proud to have died for my Minister." Mr. Travers let out a rattling laugh. "But he is not that sort of wizard, nor does he have that sort of forethought. Certainly not the sort of acuity to solve his problems with an original counter-spell." He gave a shallow bow to Tom. "Go, Prince. I shall help you ward off the Dementors. Clear this poison from the air and be assured that the Committee for Experimental Charms will not be demanding your registration papers."
Patronus animals, working together, herded the Dementors back up to the ceiling; Nott was no longer required to take the job alone. But without the wards keeping them locked in, the Dementors were liable to come creeping out as soon as any one Patronus wavered in its form or its wizard owner was distracted. As more wizards were healed and revived, they took up the job of maintaining rudimentary Patronus shields to disperse the chilly fog, leaving the ones who could summon corporeal Patronuses to devote their energies to rounding up the Dementors.
A veritable menagerie of spirit creatures swam near the ceiling, illuminated by the glowing balls that Tom had cast around the perimeter. The majestic glide of a sea turtle, the acrobatic fluidity of a mongoose, the stately tread of a stalking heron, the spectacular brutality of a lunging shark, which tumbled a flock of Dementors onto their robed backsides. He watched the Patronus animals co-operate, and on the courtroom floor, wizards Conjured bandages and cups of water and rummaged in pockets for loose sweets and leftover biscuits to chase away the harsh cold of the Dementors' presence, everyone doing his best to aid someone else, with no care about blood status or politics or bureaucratic titles...
It left an odd impression in Tom's mind.
Was this what people like Gellert Grindelwald and Hermione Granger had envisioned with their romantic notions of a Society of Magic? A community of wizards and witches who were guided by a purpose greater than self and selfish legacy? A shared legacy for all, a communal purpose, the advancement toward a magical Renaissance.
Tom cleared the fog, proving without a doubt that the prisoner chairs were empty, the golden chains molten slag on the stone floor, and the prisoners nowhere to be seen. By the time the last drift, hidden in the shadows under the lectern, was expunged from existence, the wizards had gotten into some semblance of organisation. Nott had used the last drop of his bottle of Dittany, and out of bandages as well, joined a group Transfiguring blankets from pocket handkerchiefs for those badly affected by Dementor exposure. There were three or four white shrouds covering bodies; those wizards couldn't be saved, but the rest could be assessed by severity of injury—
The locked door shattered into a wave of thin wooden shavings. Those closest to the door coughed and sneezed, as the shavings whispered down into a mound of powdery sawdust.
Through the shadow of wood dust strode the tall and imposing figure of a furious Albus Dumbledore, a phoenix soaring into the room at either side of him: the silent gleaming moonsilver of a Patronus phoenix on his left, and the blazing scarlet of his phoenix familiar on the right, screeching in triumph as it swept past awed faces and craning necks...
...And spotting Tom Riddle in the hubbub, squawked happily and dove straight for him.
Nott meandered over to Tom's side. "Well, then. I suppose that's us copped."
Tom cringed.
He knew what was coming next. Another codger, another examination. His one consolation lay in having truth on his side, because Tom had confessed the identity of his secret alter ego to Dumbledore. If he had used a different one today, that was an understandable mistake to make when one had multiple names.
Dumbledore should understand it, since the man had three middle names himself.
.
.
Note:
Tom can't cast a Patronus. His happy memories are tainted by other emotions—vengeance, self-satisfaction, schadenfreude, domination, entitlement. However, he isn't affected by Dementor depression like Harry, who passes out with flashbacks. Because Tom doesn't get depressed, he gets angry. I imagine that's how Lord Voldemort is immune to Dementors in canon.
Nott figured out his Patronus! The pheasant is one of 150 possible results in the Pottermore quiz, but after looking up different explanations, here is the list of traits I'm using.
Pheasant: Self-preservation, adaptation, social awareness, opportunism. Pride, discernment, creative thinking. Appreciation for beauty and refinement.
The first time Nott sees his Patronus animal, he thinks it's lame and uncool. But eventually he comes around to it, because he's a pragmatist and it could've been a gerbil or a dung beetle.