1945
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Somewhat belatedly, it was through Albus Dumbledore, of all people, that Tom learned of the end of the war. He had not paid much attention to Muggle news, as there was nothing in it that pertained to his personal interests, unlike the breathless reports and avid dissections of the Prince of Charming that featured in the front pages of The Daily Prophet. "The Prince and the Professor", the headlines had blared, on the day after Dumbledore had "rescued" him and Nott from the Ministry courtroom. He had a vague impression that Hermione might have mentioned the newspaper headlines of Muggle London, but for the most part, when he spent time with Hermione, they weren't discussing Muggle current affairs.
It was still strange to be informed that the state of the world to which he had, quite grudgingly, come to accept as "normal" had shifted once more. And even stranger to understand that although the news might have gladdened him several years ago, he was now too much assimilated into a wizarding existence for it to have any greater an impact than that of a storm on a foreign shore. The world of his birth, with not much in the way of fanfare, had become foreign to him, and he did not know what to think of it. Perhaps it was better not to.
"Britain may have secured her victory on the Eighth of May, but that is on the other side of the Statute. Britons on this side, however, must not rest on our laurels—not until we have confronted our opponents to the last and taken their paroles of honour."
"Paroles of honour?" said Tom sceptically. He understood this to mean that once the day was won, the enemy would be made to promise not to do bad things anymore. "Isn't that a bit too optimistic to expect honour from people like that?"
"For all that they are our opponents now, do not forget that they are your fellow wizards, Tom," said Dumbledore. "If the Muggles can accept terms of surrender from a defeated nation, then wizards can surely conduct ourselves in a manner befitting a civilised society. War is not simply a war. It is a lesson in humanity and ethics, and one too harshly taught. Now," he nodded at Tom, and drew his wand. "Show me what you have learned."
Their training was one of the most hellish weeks of Tom's life. His Hogwarts classes were a child's game in comparison; in those, he read through the textbook, paid attention during the lesson, and completed his work so quickly that it was simply assumed he would sit with the slower students to help them escape the shackles of their own mediocrity. The classes were designed to shuffle as many students of Acceptable-quality through as possible, while Tom very humbly described his own level as "beyond Outstanding". During the last week of term, Dumbledore taught a different type of class. There was no resting on laurels to be had. Rest became a delightful memory of the past.
Every time Tom passed a challenge, Dumbledore would smile and immediately set him to a new one, demonstrating how it was done with infuriating ease, before standing back and having Tom take a go at it. Tom understood that this education was not given out of the good of the old man's scar-worn heart, but was a deliberate exchange. Dumbledore didn't want to subdue a close friend, Dark Lord or not, so the obvious alternative to the problem was sending a schoolboy in his stead.
Tom's education wasn't an act of generosity. It was a balm to soothe his conscience, because even with Professor Dumbledore's expedience, his tender little conscience quailed at the thought of sending an untrained boy to do a man's job. (Not that Tom was a "boy" or Dumbledore's errand boy, at that. But that was how Dumbledore thought of the situation, and if Tom was to receive Mastery-tier magical instruction out of Dumbledore's misplaced sentimentality, then there was no purpose in protesting too loudly.)
It was just too bad that the training had to be so painful. Tom was tossed about by cyclones and clay constructs and pelted with dirigible plums; he fought with a whip of fire and a shield of ice, and each time he walked through an inferno and drowned on dry land, he heaved himself to his feet and started again. When he reflected on it, immured in the pain-dulling detachment of Occlumency, he didn't care that the boys or Dumbledore—or even Hermione—saw him bloodied and bruised. They never saw him yield, not to Dumbledore or his personal discomfort, and that was of highest importance in establishing his status of a superior wizard.
In return for mending the greenhouses, Professor Beery had lent Dumbledore a handful of immature mandrakes, and Tom earned himself a migraine after Dumbledore instructed him to duel with the added complication of their screaming. An interesting lesson came out of that: the Transfiguration of magical living organisms. It was a subset of animate Transfigurations, more advanced than the N.E.W.T. student curriculum, and Tom had learned a great deal. Beery might have been saddened by the loss of a few specimens, but even immature mandrakes had their uses in potion brewing, so it wasn't too much of a sacrifice. Tom's education was more important. Through guided experimentation, Tom found a suitable technique for immobilising a creature that didn't want to be Transfigured to stone, attempted anything within its powers to evade that fate, and whose magical abilities granted it a certain level of natural resistance against it.
This had led him, on his last evening as a student, to a solution for transporting his Acromantula. Tom, having Disillusioned himself, entered the Acromantula's lair, the dungeon classroom he had stored it in for the past two-and-a-half years. From the size of a dog, the Acromantula had grown to the size of a pit pony, those small but sure-footed horses used by Muggle miners to haul coal wagons underground. It no longer fit inside the trunk, though Tom had expanded it once or twice, hampered by the poor quality craftsmanship even extensive mending charms could little improve.
He had wondered how to remove the Acromantula from Hogwarts, with Aurors on the prowl. He'd considered disposing of the thing for good, dismantling it for parts, and selling the evidence in Knockturn Alley. He had even thought about letting it go free into the Forest and washing his hands clean of the beast, but really, that was a waste of a valuable creature he'd raised with years of his sweat and labour. After much experimenting, he found he could stably Transfigure the creature without destroying its most valuable quality: its sentient mind. He made sure to be careful about it; magical creatures weren't that thick on the ground outside wizarding pet shops. Who knew when Tom could acquire another experimental specimen this well-trained into obedience. (Admittedly, the Basilisk did most of the work teaching the Acromantula about consequences, but that creature was also his!)
Now he had it, a brass disc engraved on both sides like a coin. Heads showed the prickly eight-eyed face with dripping mandibles, while the tails side depicted spinnerets weaving pearly strings of silken thread. Still alive in the same manner of the Draught of the Living Death, the fragile essence of its life captured in a cocoon of magical stasis. Tom tucked it into his pocket, cleaned up the classroom to the last black pellet of spider waste, blasting the web strings high up in each corner of the room with charmed flames. He Vanished the battered trunk, not deeming it worth taking back to London to sell third-hand, and left the classroom, whistling.
He returned to the more trafficked parts of the dungeons without being waylaid, students scurrying out of his path when they saw the glint of the enamel badge on his lapel. On the path back to the Slytherin dormitories, he came across Hermione at the open door of the classroom he had chosen for Homework Club weekly meetings. The torches inside the classroom blazed white and hot, sending a broad swathe of illumination onto the the damp flagstones of the typically gloomy dungeon corridors. Hermione's shadow casting a gap in the light caught Tom's attention at once; he saw that her robe sleeves were rolled back, in either hand she held a diary full of handwritten notes and a beeswax pencil, which she used to mark lines on the door frame. A length of knotted rope dangled around her neck, a tool for guiding inscription spacing in Ancient Runes.
"Interesting project to start on this late in the year. What enchantments are you using?" Tom approached her from behind. Hermione jumped when he rested his hands on her hips and bent over her shoulder to read her notes, written in the ancient Saxon runic alphabet and annotated in English. He spoke in a low voice, his chest pressed against her back, and the soft rumble of lungs and breath and diaphragm made her shiver. "Some manner of trap to keep away the busybodies when you're gone from the castle?"
Hermione didn't push him away, to his satisfaction. He'd come to a gradual acceptance of the fact that he liked touching her, holding her, soft and warm, in his arms. Nothing else, not even magic, quite compared.
"I'm altering the locking enchantment on the door," Hermione replied. "Black and Mulciber will be here when we're gone, so they ought to have the option of using this as a study room for their N.E.W.T.s. They can invite new students to use the room too, or they can remove all the enchantments at the end of next year. I like the idea of an inter-House study group, but it takes a lot of work to keep it running, so if they end things for good, the room will be available to anyone after that."
Tom read the translated lines written out in her notebook. "'Let the hosting hand bestow guest-right to this hold. Let each guest be known by heart-felt pledge of troth. Let iron and stone, inside and out, be braced by sturdiest cunning...'. I'm intrigued by the 'pledge of troth' part. It's a rare bit of magic, to pin the spell to the fickle tides of the heart, but a powerful enforcement when used well. Is it a sign you've decided to continue with your campaign of collecting minions?
"It's only a promise to take care of the room and clean up any messes," said Hermione. "No other enforcement stronger than that. If other people want to use our club meeting room, I should like them to be respectful about it."
"Oh, I agree that this is the most elegant solution to the problem," said Tom. "But I'm surprised you aren't concerned that it counts as a form of mental compulsion."
"There's no mental compulsion if people clean up after themselves of their own free will," huffed Hermione. "And the punishment is the retraction of guest-right. It barely counts!"
"I wasn't criticising you," said Tom. "I was going to compliment your logic, in finding the most efficient means to magically impose your will on others. An enchantment drawing upon the castle's ambient magic, using the non-specific 'hosting hand' to channel that magic, and relying on the state of the individual heart to judge any case of infringement. All based on your will and intent, but no one would even notice your involvement at all. It's very well done indeed."
"It's for a good purpose," said Hermione firmly. "That's what matters."
"Ah, so it is," said Tom, smiling. He squeezed her around the waist and rubbed his cheek against Hermione's fluffy curls of hair. "Will you be going into wizarding law when you receive your marks? You're quite a convincing arbiter of rule and precedent."
"I am, actually," said Hermione, turning around so she could face him. "I sent my application to the DMLE today. You're looking at a future Auror!"
Tom stiffened. "Oh. An Auror? Hmm."
"You don't sound pleased about it."
"I had expected you to apply for a Ministry position," said Tom. "Perhaps even for a position at the DMLE. But I hadn't expected you to go straight for the Auror programme. There are other occupations in wizarding law that don't involve fighting people and tossing them into cells if they try to resist."
"Do you not think I'm capable of doing that?" asked Hermione, her mouth turning down into a frown. "The week of training from Professor Dumbledore was given for exactly that purpose: fighting people."
Tom decided to choose his words carefully. "It's not that you're incapable. You're used to enforcing rules, but only Hogwarts rules. Students obey them because the threat of deducting House points is incentive enough to keep them in line. It isn't like that in the real world."
"I think I'm capable of surviving in the 'real world', as you call it," said Hermione coolly.
"And I agree," said Tom. "But I would not like to see you simply survive. I'd see you live well, and live happily. How can you be happy when you take a job that requires your deliberate exposure to the worst wizardkind has to offer? The people who end up in Azkaban are the worst of the worst."
"Oh, Tom," sighed Hermione, the light of indignation fading from her eyes. "Yes, I understand your worries, but I do have to make the most realistic decision given that the 'real world' will be the only world for me beyond Hogwarts. I don't think there is anything for me in the Muggle world, not anymore. With the war's end, the soldiers will soon return home, and all the jobs given to women during the wartime will be handed over to them. Who would refuse a position of employment to a hungry soldier? No one. I can already tell that the women who aren't replaced immediately will see little advancement in their careers, unless they have an education in telegraphy or electrics, and I have neither.
"But here, in this world," she continued, "I see a worthy future. I don't expect it to be pleasant, but I do expect to make a tangible difference. That is real enough for me."
"I'd assumed you would play to your strengths as an administrator," said Tom. "I do admit that your choice of... policing, well, surprised me. Bureaucrats are often overlooked, but completely indispensable to a working administrative service. It was my assumption that you would recognise that importance. Haven't you forgotten, Hermione, that you were to be the logistician to my dictator? The Eumenes to my Alexander."
"Eumenes was a general in his own right," said Hermione, with a rueful shake of her head. "But you do make a good point. Not about your fantastical dictatorship, but about my strengths. I know it's where I'm suited, but desk work lacks the prestige and advancement opportunities of the Auror Corps. And they don't have assigned partners. I may take a bureaucratic position later, but I think it's more important for me to start as an Auror first, to make the most of a Ministry career."
"If this is part of your minion recruitment plan," said Tom, "one need not go that far."
"No," said Hermione. "It's for me. For our future. The wizarding world is a lot smaller than Muggle Britain, which has both its advantages and its flaws. With such a small population, there are fewer layers to reach the top, where real change is affected. But a witch who reaches prominence has to be a known value, not an anonymous individual, no matter how important her work. It's the logic behind the Prince of Charming. He wrote to The Daily Prophet to reveal the author of his heroic deeds. He wasn't acting for the sake of conscience alone—he wanted to leverage his fame. Or infamy, rather."
"Do you know what reason he might have for doing so?" Tom asked.
"For legitimacy, of course," said Hermione. "The Prince of Charming is looking for the magical equivalent of a post-notarised Letter of Marque. It's the official stamp that restyles the questionable actions of a private citizen into an act of patriotism. He has the unofficial approval from the press and the populace, but the legal recognition makes him untouchable. With it, he can justify taking legal 'prizes'," said Hermione. "The papers wrote that the documents from the arrests at Tinworth referenced specific textbooks which weren't found among the confiscated materials. Powerful wizards hoard rare spellbooks. It's part of what makes them so powerful. And the Prince would know this."
Tom had taken possession of those "missing" books, not that Hermione knew. "Interesting. And are the DMLE not going to raise a fuss about rare, old books being unaccounted for?"
"They only mentioned they were going to respect 'the privacy of concerned citizens'," said Hermione. "They weren't specific on what that meant."
"You'll make a good detective one day, I imagine," remarked Tom. "Not as glamourous a job as duelling Dark wizards to a standstill, but then again, the current stable of Aurors have showed themselves to be not nearly as effective as the Prince. A collaboration, however... That has great potential by anyone's measure."
A twitch of his wand had Tom Banishing the notebook and pencil from Hermione's hands to the row of scuffed and many-times-repaired desks at the back of the classroom. With a hot palm at the back of her neck, he guided his mouth over Hermione's and placed a soft kiss to her pink petal lips. "Though I expect the greatest potential comes from the collaboration of you and me."
He kissed her again, longer and harder, and feeling the slump of her body adjusting from shock to pleased acceptance of his overtures, he held her tighter, his other hand drawing soothing circles over her clothed hip. Hermione's hand slipped under his robe, beneath his jumper, fingers tracing lightly over the row of mother-of-pearl buttons of his uniform shirt. One finger slipped through the gap between two buttons and touched the bare flesh of his belly. Tom hissed, and in reflex ground himself against Hermione, holding her tighter than ever; her touch created an epicentre of uncontrollable spasms that came over him and left him disoriented. He was a sailor tossed overboard in a cresting tide, clinging to the nearest remnant of stability in the churning waters of his ruptured sanity.
He heard Hermione gasp, and she made to snatch away her devious exploring fingers. But Tom held her too tightly to escape; he pressed bodily against her, feeling as if his clothes were so tight around as to resemble the skin of a shedding snake, as if relief would only be granted to him once he was free of their constrictions. Hermione wriggled against him, and he felt every scrape of movement translated to his own skin. He remembered the Basilisk's words of advice; Tom at once wanted to hold Hermione, bite her, bare his throat for her bite, cage her against the cold stone wall and amuse himself with her feeble attempts at resistance, touch her through the gaps between her buttonholes to see if the flesh of her belly had those light little sun-freckles of her burning-hot cheeks, all accompanied by such a desperate, visceral sense of urgency as he had never felt before...
"Tom!" Hermione gasped.
"Hermione," Tom replied, though his voice was somewhat muffled.
"Someone could see us—the door over there is open!"
"I don't care."
"Well, I do!"
Tom sighed, and loosened his grip on her. "Alright. This time tomorrow, we'll be in London. No more Hogwarts, no more student rules. No supervision. It would be so very simple to hire a room in a first-rate Hyde Park hotel. The concierges of the Royal Aspen keep an open account for the North Riding Riddles."
"No," said Hermione, mouth tightening. Her indomitable conviction—he admired her determination as the counterpart to his own, but it was frustrating when it was turned against him, despite the ruffled curls and the wet shine of her lips speaking to an enthusiastic endorsement of Tom's argument. "I don't want it to be like that, Tom. We're sensible adults of reason and dignity. We ought not to undignify our attachment, as if it's a secret liaison, because that's what you imply by taking a room at the Aspen instead of staying the night at my house or the train to Yorkshire. Maybe it doesn't matter what our families think—because they will think it's odd when no one shows up at either doorstep tomorrow evening, and everyone has a telephone connection—but what I think does matter. And I think I've made it obvious what that is."
"That you should be honoured as a wife," said Tom, very smoothly. "I would happy to honour you, of course. If you insist it must be nowhere else but your own bedroom—well, ours—that should be put to its proper use, then I'll defer to your will."
"See?" said Hermione. "Isn't it so easy to be reasonable about things when we take the time to talk? Though I wish it was that easy for you to defer to my will every time."
"Well, you can have the first time, at least. In that instance, I shall defer to you quite willingly," Tom volunteered. "But second and third and fourth? Hmm, I think we can negotiate, as long as you promise to be reasonable."
"Tom!"
Tom laughed. "Surely it's of no surprise to you that the honour of the wife is equalled by the duty of the husband. And let me confess, Hermione, that I do wish to be a most dutiful husband. For tonight, let me demonstrate it by helping you finish enchanting this door. For the password dormancy, you need to establish the two conditions, then define them there and here, before you explicate the nature of the condition triggers, be it spoken word or magical signature. Each one has different security specifications; Greatrakes' Notitia has a set of tables for determining the strength of a magical password—I'm sure you've read it..."
For the next two hours, he and Hermione carved tiny runes in the iron banding of the door and along with the age-worn masonry on either side. They were light carvings, barely deeper than scratches, because Hermione didn't want them to be noticed by passersby. Those who knew they were there could adjust them, but no one else would think to look. It was nonetheless a pleasant passing of an evening, as they rarely collaborated on projects—as opposed to simply reading over each other's work and leaving commentary. Tom found mild amusement in Hermione's insistence on avoiding the more obscure denotations. It was better for consistent maintenance, she claimed.
"It's not a private grimoire; it's a public utility. It doesn't make sense for you or I to be the only ones who can read it!"
"It should only be comprehensible by those who are appropriately dedicated to their magical studies," Tom retorted. "You're using an O.W.L.-level syllabary. A child could decipher it!"
"Ease and clarity are virtues of public enchanting," said Hermione, sniffing. "If you didn't know this, then the average citizen would live an abysmal life in your imaginary dictatorship. You'd never get the trains to run on time!"
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The next morning, at eleven o'clock, the Hogwarts Express departed Hogsmeade Station. Tom inaugurated his final journey on the train with his Head Boy speech, which he was personally apathetic about; he didn't care if he never saw the faces of his schoolmates again in his life beyond Hogwarts. Tom noticed that he, unlike his Housemates, had not imbibed Firewhisky to the extent that the morning sunlight pained him too much to read his speech notes in the Heads' compartment. Black suffered the symptoms of a hangover, and despite his underage status, so was Gowdie, the Fifth Year Slytherin male Prefect; Tom was interested to see that the Gryffindor Prefects weren't faring any better.
When he and Hermione returned to the crowded compartment reserved for them by the Slytherin boys, Tom found them discussing plans for more drunken mischief, as if the previous night's overindulgence had not taught them any useful lessons on moderation. He slumped into his seat with a snort of disdain and with a firm arm around her shoulder, tugged Hermione into the spot next to him.
"We'll start at the Leaky in London—that's traditional—but why don't we stop at The Kelpie's Grave in Pembroke? The best taverns outside London are in the West Country, but it's not much of a challenge if we only hop fifty miles per turn," said Rosier, marking towns on a wizarding travellers' almanac on his lap.
"We don't all have to crowd into The Three Broomsticks, but there are other taverns known to have beer on tap instead of horse piss," replied Avery. "The laver draught they serve at The Kelpie is drunk for novelty, not for taste."
"It'll still put hair on your chest," Rosier said. "Come now, it doesn't count as a real national tour unless we savour the fruits of Britain, and not just one tiny corner of it. A man can drink only so many variants of plain old malted ale before he's bored of it."
"What's this?" asked Hermione. "Are you planning on a Grand Tour of Britain?"
"It's the Schooler's Seven, a so-called tradition for graduating wizards in Slytherin," explained Nott. "Not so much of a Grand Tour as a Drunken Lurch. The objective is to start one's journey on the evening of graduation by quaffing a pint in London, then Apparating or Flooing to the next tavern for another pint—or two ounces of spirits—then repeating the process until seven drinks have been drunk in seven different pubs. The first one to return to London conscious and under his own power is the winner."
"That sounds unpleasant," said Hermione. "Don't drinking and Apparition pose a serious safety risk? The instructors during our Apparition lessons last year warned us it was an unwise thing to do. You could get splinched!"
"Yes, that's the point," said Travers. "If you splinch yourself and can't put yourself together to visit the next leg in the tour or return to London, then you're disqualified."
"And people put themselves through this... for what, fun?"
"To win," Nott said. "Obviously."
"There's a good reason why it's a wizards' tradition," spoke Tom, addressing the look of outrage forming on Hermione's face. "Not because witches are banned from participating, but because witches don't understand it."
"And you, Tom?" asked Hermione. "Are you planning to participate?"
"Of course not," said Tom. "I've better things to do with my evening than wade through other people's vomit."
"Then you must agree with the witches that it's a completely baffling thing to do!" said Hermione triumphantly.
"No, I don't," said Tom. "I'm not confused by it. I fully comprehend why wizards are invested in such a tradition. I just think it's asinine."
"Riddle," said Lestrange, "you're invited to join us tonight. Half-past seven at The Leaky Cauldron, then The Siren's Shanty in Plymouth. The Sign of the Lion in Somerset, The Kelpie's Grave in Pembroke, The Coventry Cellar, The Golden Apples in Cumbria, and the Occamy's Roost in Newcastle. First one back to London gets to pick three favours from the others."
"Tempting, but I'm not interested," answered Tom indifferently. "I have plans for Hermione this evening."
"Tom, don't you mean plans with me?" corrected Hermione.
"No," said Tom. "I mean to continue quite an important conversation that was sadly abandoned before its natural conclusion."
"Can't you finish your conversation on the train, then come with us to The Leaky Cauldron afterwards?" asked Avery.
"It's not that sort of conversation," said Nott in a snide tone.
Avery looked confused. "What do you mean—are there other sorts of conversations?"
"There are," said Nott, "and that one in particular is a closed-door conversation."
"Well, I'm sure we can find them an empty compartment, or kick some lower-years out if we have to..."
"Ugh," Nott groaned. "Let me put it to you as plainly as one can in mixed company: Riddle has become impassioned. With the old meaning of the word 'passion', an experience of terrible suffering. As with a bitch in the springtime, you don't give men like that an empty train compartment for appeasement's sake. You lash him to the train roof until he's ready to return to polite society."
Travers made a face. "People would do that sort of business on the train? Pets have to be kept in baskets or cages on the Express, but students let their owls and cats sit on the seats anyway. I once saw someone's cat throw up half of a mouse mixed in a pool of melted chocolate, right on the upholstery. Turns out that cats like chasing chocolate frogs, but eating them is a different matter."
"Responsible adults like me or Tom wouldn't even consider the idea," said Hermione primly. "I don't know why you keep making such unworthy insinuations, Nott, and I don't like it."
"I'm not the one making insinuations here," complained Nott. "I'm telling you loud and clear how I feel about the situation."
Tom decided to ignore the conversation to finish reading a Transfiguration textbook he'd been lent by Dumbledore, which he'd been advised he could return by owl mail when he was finished with it. The miles raced past the window, curtains lowered so as not to let the harsh sunlight interrupt the inebriation recovery process, green furlongs winding down the slopes and valleys of the Scottish highlands. Hairy red cows grazed at pasture, silver lochs glistened like mirrors to the sky, accompanied by an ambient chorus of Hermione verbally squabbling with the rest of the boys on the value of the Schooler's Seven.
"Why must you rely on such carousing as a means to reaffirm your friendships? Can't you find a nice salon and have tea and, oh, I don't know, complete a jigsaw puzzle?"
"Don't tell me that all you and Riddle do is drink tea and assemble jigsaw puzzles!"
"Well, no, but—"
"I thought not!"
"We read books and talk about magic! It's nearly the same thing."
"It's not the same thing; you two like reading!"
Tom sighed.
The time whiled away, until they were two hours out of Hogsmeade, and the card-shuffling and loud chewing was interrupted by the metallic screech of the brakes. The train slowed; Hermione slid forward in her seat and almost to the floor before Tom dragged her up by the elbow. On the luggage rack, the trunks shifted, and a hand valise squeezed over the edge of the railing and was inches from hitting Rosier on the head before Tom swished his wand and arrested its fall. He stood from his seat and flicked the curtains open; the view beyond was of lush rolling hills laced with the purple fronds of native thistle. A ridgeline stood stark in the distance, spanned by the stone arches of a viaduct. They had not yet left Scotland.
Travers slid the compartment door open and peered into the aisle, which was filled with other peeking heads and the chatter of murmuring voices. The voices fell silent when the train juddered and resumed movement; Travers returned to his seat, and remarked, "Sometimes a flock of sheep gets on the tracks, and there are too many to run them over—"
The first indication of something being off was the playing cards flurrying to the floor in a rain of white laminated paper, followed by Travers' Daily Prophet, and the book Tom had left where he'd been sitting. Then the trunks on the overhead rack shifted again, the heavy brass latches scraping against the inside of the train wall, and suddenly everyone was squeezed against the walls, plastered flat against the cushioned seats by a heavy weight that made it a labour to lift hand and wand, to turn one's head to the window, where the hills smeared together into a kaleidoscope of indistinguishable colour, hills and sky a whirling blur of grey noise.
Tom was squashed against Hermione, and Hermione was squashed into the corner seat, clinging to his robes with white knuckles. Her breath was hot against his throat; he held her close and with his wand turned to himself, he silently cast a Levitation Charm on his robes. It lightened the weight that pressed so heavily against him that his eardrums popped and his joints ached; the spell was completed just in time, for as soon as the spinning had ceased, the weight lifted, and everyone who had been smashed against the walls was suddenly flung to floor, followed by the trunks. Tom and Hermione, whom he had also lightened with the charm, bobbed in the air, the toes of their shoes barely grazing the compartment floor.
In the adjoining compartments, bags and cages clattered as they struck floor and passenger alike; he heard the screech of an owl, the cries from students hit by their own luggage. Hermione had sent her owl home that morning, and slipped the empty cage, shrunken small, into her trunk. The Slytherin boys, having also picked an owl as the most useful of approved pets, had done the same thing, so there were no pets loose in their compartment. Tom stepped over to door, his shoe grinding into the face of the Knave of Hearts—who shook an illustrated fist at him for the offence—opened the compartment door.
The aisles were awash with chaos.
Open trunks lay in the corridor from students who had left their compartment doors for the journey, spilling pyjamas and textbooks and the parchment detritus from a year's worth of homework over the floor. A pillow leaked down feathers from one open door, and a bleary-eyed student in Hufflepuff robes blinked at Tom from the doorway of her compartment, her peaceful sleep interrupted by the jerk and rattle of the halting carriage. All around Tom, questions arose with growing shrill edge, first directed at seat-mates and friends, then at whomever seemed to be in charge. And given the lack of Hogwarts professors, it was Tom Riddle they turned to.
"Riddle, has the Express broken down?"
"Father always said no proper wizard should put his trust in rickety Muggle contraptions!"
"Are you going to send someone to speak with the driver?"
"We'll be late getting back to London if we don't start moving again..."
Orion Black popped his head out of his compartment, full of Sixth and Fifth Year boys over whom he held court. "You're going to investigate this, Riddle? I'm coming with you."
"Did you take your Apparition exam?" asked Tom. "I'm going outside to see what's happened. If the train starts up while we're out, anyone who can't Apparate will be left stranded in the countryside."
"Yes, of course," said Black. Turning to the boys in his compartment, all Slytherins, he gave the order. "You lot, stay here and make sure the lemmings don't panic."
With Black at his heels, Tom unlocked the carriage door with a tap of his wand and jumped the four feet down to the grass. Without the height of a train station platform, it was a steep drop, but the grass below was thick and lush—untouched by grazing beasts and the machinery of Muggle civilisation. Black came down after him with an "oof" and a thud, turning around in circles to take in the scenery: a summery valley on a sunny day, high ridgelines all around them capped with snow on the lee sides, far too grand a view for a train hours into its descent from the Scottish highlands. Though the sun shone bright and harsh, the air was cooler than he expected, and the brisk breeze cut through the summer-weight woollen jumper he wore under his unclasped uniform robe.
"The sun's in the wrong direction," called Nott's voice. He had popped his head out through the open window of their compartment. "Heading south for London, it should be setting on the right-hand side." Then his head went back in, and Tom heard muttering, "Rosier, does your Divination textbook have an up-to-date solstice calendar? The summer solstice was only a week past; let me borrow it, I need to check the figures..."
"We should go and speak to the driver," said Black, and together, he and Tom strode over the long grass up to the locomotive, whose boiler had gone quiet and the steam emitting from the chimney nothing but a faint smudge of white.
The locomotive had a long, tube-like snout in a smart red and black livery, the small windowed driver's compartment behind it, and after that, a coal tender which had been converted for student luggage. As Tom approached, the driver climbed down the cast iron steps to the ground, drawing his wand as he peered up at the silent chimney and then down the row of carriages with curious students pressing sticky paws and grubby noses against the windows. Six carriages and a locomotive—for a seven part whole.
"This isn't a prank, is it?" said the driver, flipping open his watch face to look at the time, and what he saw didn't please him, for his face went a mottled shade of magenta. "It's not funny! When the Ministry gets wind of this, the last thing whoever did this should be worried about is several hundreds of Galleons in fines."
"You there, you two, get back inside," spoke the voice of Tom's least favourite Auror. Probert and his partner, whose name Tom had learned was Kneller, stalked up to him and Black from the first carriage, robes flapping and badges aglitter. "You haven't any professor to speak for you here. When you're outside of Hogwarts, the Ministry is in charge."
"Oh, but which Ministry?" Nott interjected, panting a little as he stumbled up to their little rendezvous, followed by Hermione and Rosier and the other Slytherin boys. "Your authority starts and ends on British soil. I daresay we aren't in Britain any longer."
"How do you know that?" Probert asked sharply. "Are you responsible for this?"
"I know how to use a sextant," said Nott, and from Rosier's hands, he snatched a textbook and shoved it under the Auror's nose. "Here, these are the noontime calculations for a Scottish late June. It's a quarter past one o'clock now, so you sum this, subtract here, then account for the coordinates here—Hogwarts is Unplottable, but we use the rough measure. And it doesn't add up. We ought to be in the same latitude as Montrose Village or Loch Laggan this many hours in, but the latitude's higher than when we started."
"Lend me your instrument," the train driver said, taking the device, of fine polished brass marked with Roman numbers along its lower curve. "Yes, I see what you're talking about," he murmured after gazing through the sights and shuffling around to get a good view of the sun. "How curious."
"What's more curious is that the train tracks stop a few yards in front of the train," said Hermione. "And there's no ballast under the sleepers. The sleepers are laid directly on the grass. That's not the proper way to grade a railway, especially one that goes down a hillside. It's just begging for an accident!"
"So what do we do?" asked Rosier, taking his textbook back from Nott and smoothing the creases off the page. "Some of us have plans in London for this evening!"
"You wait in the train while we solve the problem," said Probert. "I'm going to Apparate to the Ministry and have them send the Department of Magical Maintenance to look into the issue."
Raising his wand, the Auror turned neatly on his heel... and stumbled.
Tom coughed, exchanging a look with Nott, who smirked in return.
The Auror tried again, but again he could not produce the clap of Apparition, no matter how many circles he turned. Auror Kneller tried, but met the same results. Then the driver attempted to Apparate, and they found out that no one could Apparate from where they stood. Even when Tom tried it, pushing as much force into it as he could, he produced no more than a weak little puff and a jolt, with not even a grass blade crumpled out of place from where he started.
"Apparition ward," pronounced Nott. "That's a sign of foul play, if anything."
An owl was commandeered from a Second Year student who hadn't managed the cage-shrinking charm, and in trying to deliver a message to the Ministry, it flew out and got only so far past the nose of the locomotive before it was made to turn around. Tom watched the bird make circle after confused circle around the train, heading southwards, and after reaching some arbitary limit, curled back around in a wide swoop to turn south again. He judged the size of whatever ward enclosed them to be less than a half-mile in diameter, and looking more and more like a planned interruption rather than a fortuitous misadventure. A log might, by chance, halt a train by falling over the tracks, but Anti-Apparition wards didn't enchant themselves into existence.
The other Aurors piled out of the train, to a total of eight, and with the driver and the trolley witch, made ten adult staff to approximately four hundred students. Who were growing unhappier by the minute from the unexpected delay, with no explanation forthcoming from the adults ostensibly in charge. Tom didn't envy them; if they wanted to swing their authority about, then they had the responsibility to go with it. While the Aurors were distracted in maintaining order, Nott gestured at Tom to meet at the front of the locomotive, out of sight of staff and passengers.
"The tracks were cut cleanly and enchanted," whispered Nott, kneeling by the grass and lighting his wand to illuminate the sides of the metal rails. "Do you remember when I warned you about pressure alarms that day we visited... ah, a 'friend' in Montrose? Stay off the doorstep, because you never know if someone put that enchantment to deter callers. Well, this is a runic sequence based on that logic—stillness and interrupted movement, measurement of force, capture and constraint. So. A prepared spell to catch the train and halt it on its journey, followed by a second layer of spellwork: a Portkey to transport anything in contact with the rail when the trigger is activated."
"Why not a single layer of enchantment for the Portkey?" asked Tom. "I suppose they had to put it on the rails rather than the train itself because the Express is either at Hogsmeade or London. Hardly the best place to fix enchantments without being bothered by prying onlookers."
"Perhaps whoever did it was afraid that only half the train would be taken in between the Portkey trigger and the actual translocation. That could be messy. You might end up with the Portkey equivalent of splinching, if you're trying to transport a passenger touching the train that is touching the rails, while simultaneously moving away from it," mused Nott. "Enchanting follows an orderly sequence of steps—when it's properly done, of course. It's effective and powerful, but not as intuitive and fast as wand spells. There can be a bit of delay in complex enchantments. A tiny delay, but when working with great masses and velocities, it amplifies the effects of some very interesting anomalies. Good Mastery project right there, honestly."
"Back to 'whoever did it'," said Tom, "do you think this level of workmanship is the province of professional enchanters, or can anyone with a reasonable intelligence copy it off a textbook?" He bent down and lit his own wand to inspect the fine, scraped lines scrawled on the inside of the rails, invisible to anyone walking along the tracks or sitting at the height of the carriage seats. They were straight and consistently placed, resembling Persian cuneiform in their neatness, from the use of expensive magical inscribing tools that cut through steel as if it was soap. Far neater than the wobbly examples on Muggle henges illustrated in Tom's Ancient Runes textbooks.
"Oh, it has to be professionals, no doubt. It takes real artistry to imbue poesy into enchantments, instead of writing out the commands in plain language. There's power in melding art and magic; throughout recorded history and other cultures to the present day, wizards cast spells through chants and rituals. And even with wanded magic, there's a reason why our spell incantations tend to follow a certain iambic rhythm," Nott replied, his eyes scanning the runic stanzas and translating them as he read:
"'Seize by this bidding a huge-weighing burden;
Wrought under bellows from mountain's scathed bosom;
Now pluck this great burden by orders be given;
Far goes thy roving, stayed once then be hastened.'
"I'm certain that we can both deduce who's responsible for this," Nott continued. "The real question is why. What have the innocent students of Hogwarts ever done to deserve this treatment? As far as anyone knows, we've never done anything wrong!"
"As far as anyone knows," muttered Tom. "Do you think... Would Dumbledore have gone and told—"
"Would Dumbledore what?" Hermione's question interrupted their conversation, her trampling over the knee-high grass. Travers wandered over in her wake, looking apologetic at having stepped into what was clearly a private conference. "Oh, hello, Tom. Fancy seeing you here. What are you two doing?"
"Would Dumbledore know where we are? Considering that I am his favourite student, and out of all the staff members at Hogwarts, he's the one most qualified to do something about our current situation," said Tom smoothly. "It's not as if Dippet's liable to do anything more than wring his hands at the Governors and complain that it wasn't his fault."
"We were inspecting the enchantments," said Nott. He pointed to the metal rails. "What do you think of it?"
"Travers and I were talking to the Aurors just now," Hermione replied. "We're trapped within an enchanted barrier. No Apparition, no owls. Lestrange got his Comet 180 un-Shrunk and tried to fly out, but smashed against the wall. He tried to fly as high as he could to hop over the barrier, but it looks like the enchanters thought about that loophole—he would fall unconscious from the atmospheric conditions before he found the barrier border." She dropped to her knees and peeked under rails, casting a silent Severing Charm to crop the grass. Hermione's lips pursed. "I can see that from the inscriptions here that the barrier enchantment isn't anchored on the rails. These are meant to stop the train, then move everyone here... Wherever here is."
"We're above the sixtieth parallel, Madam Trombley says," reported Travers. "Still in the Northern Hemisphere, but most likely not Britain—the only place in the Isles that far north are the Orkneys or the Shetlands, and if this was the Shetlands, Lestrange would've been able to spot the sea from his broomstick."
"I think we're somewhere in Scandinavia," Hermione added. "There's only so far you can move a weight the size of the Hogwarts Express, even with the amplification effect of the summer solstice. Hogwarts, A History had that the locomotive weighs seventy-five tons! And that's not even counting the six passenger cars. That's some truly impressive magic, isn't it! A Masterwork-level of skill and verve—it would have been so easy to have mis-calculated the load balance and dropped the entire Hogwarts student population into the middle of the North Sea." At Nott's frown, Hermione let out a little cough. "Oh, well, you're probably not interested in the details. But it does mean that getting everyone back to Britain may mean having to leave the Express behind. Students take priority."
"Yes, that'd be a shame. The Express has a hundred years of Hogwarts tradition behind it," said Travers. "But the good news is that we're so far north, and so close to the solstice, that sundown won't be until almost eleven o'clock. Then the sun rises again at half-past three in the morning. No one will freeze to death!"
"Delightful," said Tom. "Speaking of death, have you thought about how to get back to Britain before that happens? We have, what, four hundred students and enough food to fit in a trolley. That is, if you count Cockroach Clusters as food. I certainly don't."
"The food situation is concerning," said Hermione. "We ought to do something about it. What if we run out of food?!"
"We won't," Tom assured her. "Not you and I, at least. We can't run out with four hundred bodies. I'd say that I'm fairly decent at making edible Transfigurations that taste good."
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. "Of course, magic! If you use Tranfiguration to duplicate the food, we'll have enough for all four hundred of us."
"Hmm," said Tom. "Yes, that's what I meant."
Hermione shepherded Tom back over to the mass of Aurors and Prefects, who had ventured out of the train to take instructions. To his eternal satisfaction, the Prefects looked to the Head Boy and Girl as the first voice of authority. The Aurors boasted their badges and official training, but they weren't Hogwarts staff members, and couldn't write recommendations to next year's Heads list based on demonstrating exceptional leadership qualities. Through a hushed conference, it was decided that the sweets trolley would not take its usual sales route, but be commandeered as mutual property for the rest of their Scandinavian adventure.
For it was in Scandinavia that the Hogwarts Express had found itself, Tom learned while tasked to duplicating pumpkin pasties by the half-dozen—they were the most nutritious food sold on the train. There was a broad admission that no one else in any year or House was as good as Tom Riddle at food Transfigurations, a flattering compliment to Tom's sense of self-esteem, but then it remained to Tom to take on the task. Instead of contributing to organisational decisions, he was stuck as the glorified trolley witch, forced to reassure the more charitably-minded lower-year students who had come forward with their lunch sandwiches and apples stolen from the breakfast table. In the aid of diversifying the dining offerings, in a manner of speaking.
One Hufflepuff Fourth Year came to Tom with a basket of donated foods for magical duplication, obtained by turning out all the pockets in Hufflepuff House. She hummed to herself, waiting for Tom to acknowledge her presence, which Tom refrained from doing
for as long as he could.
"Isn't it a shame that Britain will never see Northern Lapwings flock as thick as they do in Norway?" remarked the girl. She wore a straw hat with charm-preserved flowers tucked into the band, vivid blooms and raw green stems winding about her head like a nymph's crown. "The freshwater tributaries in England have been quite taken over by mills and manufactories over the past decades, reducing the Lapwings' nesting habitats. They migrate here instead." She pointed at the sky, and raised a pair of opera glasses from a lanyard around her neck. "The males have such a distinctive iridescence to their feathers. Wow!"
"Norway?" said Tom. "Are you sure we're in Norway?"
"According to The Birders' Field Manual of Northern Europe, this must be north-central Norway," said the girl. "The gannets, plovers, loons, and lapwings fledge here and leave by October. If we were past the Arctic Circle, then there would be auks, but I haven't spotted any. If we were in Sweden or Finland, there'd be more marsh and wood birds—ducks and snipes and harriers—than diving birds. And there's too much ground cover for this to be Iceland."
Tom sorted through the items in the donation basket, clucking his tongue at the squashed muffins and butty sandwiches sodden with cold bacon fat. A quick Transfiguration fixed the aesthetic flaws. Inwardly, he sighed. He supposed it was possible to survive off a diet of mostly bread and water for several weeks in the wilderness, but it wasn't going to be a pleasant time of it. If this international holiday extended for too long, it looked like the British people would be unwillingly re-introduced to scurvy.
"Does it not bother you that Norway is not on the Hogwarts Express' typical travel route?" he asked. "The Express in the name implies that the train limits its stops between both ends."
"My Mum and Dad said that if you work hard and do the right thing, everything will turn out well," the Hufflepuff girl answered with the confidence of a child. "You're the Head Boy, so you work hard. And you're making sure everyone has food to eat. That's doing good things. Don't worry, Riddle, we'll be rescued before long. They'll know something has gone wrong when there's no train at King's Cross by seven o'clock. Magical children are society's most precious treasures."
She wandered off, humming to herself, opera glasses glued to her face. The hat flowers bobbed away into the distance, leaving behind the gentle fragrance of dewy leaves and honeysuckle.
Tom organised the food, Conjured cartons to hold it all, and cast Stasis Charms with a grim dedication, finding that the circumstances of his current predicament pleased him less and less the more he thought about it. No one but Dumbledore knew Tom was the Prince of Charming, but everyone in Britain knew Dumbledore. And in the past week, they had found out that the Prince of Charming was an associate of Dumbledore, close enough that the old man would shed his timeworn cloak of neutral non-interventionism. For which the Ministry had, for setting his sympathies in the wrong places, had previously confirmed Dumbledore to the status of Undesirable.
He wondered if the Ministry would endanger the children of its voting constituency, from the youngest and barely weaned Firsties to the adult heirs of Sacred family names, to force Dumbledore into "doing the right thing". But after a few seconds of consideration, he dismissed the notion. If the Ministry could collaboratively produce such powerful enchantments as the ones on the train rails and the warded prison that kept them trapped in this lonely Norwegian valley, they wouldn't need to rely on wizards of singular talent and ability, like himself. That was the difference between the magical and Muggle worlds, wasn't it? A self-reliant and sufficiently-motivated individual posed a serious challenge to the might of legitimate governance. In the Muggle world, outlaws like Ned Kelly were hanged by the state. In the wizarding world, outlaws were rescued from their executioners... and went on their merry old way to kidnap schoolchildren.
It was the European saboteurs; it had to be. He knew the day would come where they would confront him on their terms, not his, but he had expected to have several months of preparation. This was sooner than he'd predicted, and if he was honest, sooner than he wanted. But there was another aspect to consider: the lack of preparation was as much of an encumbrance to him as it was to the other side. The loyal armies to which Grindelwald boasted could not be summoned in the blink of an eye, and not in less than a fortnight either, with or without magic. Such an army, his revolutionary militia, was Grindelwald's greatest advantage on the field.
As Tom worked on preparing food, other students in Sixth and Seventh Year contributed their enchanting skills to the creation of a drinking fountain, and all the while, birds chirped in the sun-drenched valley and the tall summer grasses rustled in a fresh breeze. The trees here were wild scraggly things, firs with twisted trunks and evergreen needles, and silver birches whose long pale branches would glow like ghosts when the night descended, their black markings rising out of the gloom like staring eyes. Rocky outcrops jutted out of patches where the grass was thinnest, ridden with a thick spongy moss that sank under his feet. He had never travelled outside the British Isles before now, and even when he'd ventured into the wilder places of Britain, they were not untouched by the hand of civilisation. The Forbidden Forest of the Hogwarts grounds was a cultivated wandwood grove, a thousand years old, but nonetheless tamed by human hands into a magical resource for wizards of the proper canniness.
He breathed in a crisp lungful of mountain air, different to the wet highland "dreich" of Scotland, the everpresent damp which grew a creeping layer of mould on any surfaces left unattended for more than a day. It would be a fine thing to come again to Norway one day, he thought. By his own power, and on his own terms. This was a land of skalds and sagas, of seafaring reiver kings whose rule over England's northern counties had lent the villagers of Yorkshire their charming rural dialect. Tom had grown fond of it in the passing years; there was something quaint and honest in the Yorkshireman's language, which never itched him behind the eyes as happened when he overhead a falsehood. He favoured it more than the thieves' cant he'd learned in London, which was associated with the lowest class of ne'er-do-wells.
Hermione wandered back around by the Tom had finished casting vermin-repelling charms on the dozen or so boxes of duplicated pasties and sandwiches. "We've put together a group of N.E.W.T.-level Ancient Runes students to decipher the enchantment on the rails. And to search for the anchor stone for the barrier ward. For any enchantment whose spell-effect is contained within a discrete boundary area, there must be a boundary marker of some sort. It's only a matter of finding it!"
Then she took a pasty from the top of the stack and bit into it. "That's odd. I didn't know the Hogwarts Express had blueberry pasties."
"They don't," said Tom. "It's Transfigured. I may have accepted magic and wizardliness, but I think it shall be a long while yet before I might accept the notion of having pumpkin for every meal. Do they never get sick of it?"
"I thought the same thing about eating food that's still moving, but no, it doesn't look like wizards will ever be tired of Ice Mice and jumping frogs either," Hermione replied. She took his hand and drew him away from the food supply. "Come and join us in looking for the anchor stone. The more eyes we have, the faster it'll go."
"You don't seem terribly distraught about being dragged out of Britain at short notice," remarked Tom.
"I was very distraught. I still am, if you want to know the truth," admitted Hermione. "But then I realised that the people who are looking to us as their leaders would be very discouraged if they knew how I felt. I really would like to be a good leader, and I don't suppose there is anything to test the character of one's leadership quite like a trial by fire." She sighed, turning to him with her soft starry eyes. "And you, Tom—how have you been getting on? Someone once told me that men don't like to talk about their feelings with other men, but you've no need to hold that stiff upper lip around me."
Tom gave her a dubious look. "No need to use minion management strategies around me, Hermione. I was swimming in these waters before you were born."
"Excuse me!" said Hermione in a voice of mock outrage. "I'm your senior by date of birth!"
"And my junior in handling the peons," Tom announced. "It's in my blood, you see. A skill some are born with and some aren't, in the nature of princes and royalty, really—"
"Wuff! Wuff!" cried a pack of dogs, lunging from their leashes.
Nott yanked the dogs back, three small terriers under knee-height, while other dogs and dog-like abominations, with four eyes and five legs attached backwards, bayed around them. "Come to join the fun then, Riddle? We're Transfiguring rocks into dogs to look for recently turned earth. Only it looks like a lot of people barely know what a dog is, let alone what breeds are best for what tasks." He jabbed a thumb at an upper-year Ravenclaw student coaxing a vague four-legged shape out of a clod of soil and grass. "Ratting terriers are the best for earthworks. But you'd never know that if you stay inside all day. Bah! Townsfolk." Nott sniffed. "Did you know, before I came to Hogwarts, I'd never met a wizard who hadn't gone on a hunt? But I've got a dozen in a day so far, that must be a record!"
"Yes, and you're a top sportsman in comparison," said Tom. "Your family flies falcons. You send them out and they bring you rabbits while you stand around and watch, but I'm sure that makes you a real hunter."
"I said 'gone on a hunt'," Nott retorted. "The wording was intentional! And it still counts!"
"Tom, you always pick fights with Nott, and it's very unbecoming," said Hermione. "Can we argue about this later? We have a mystery to solve."
"Yes, I really want to get back to London," said Tom. He raised his wand to Conjure his own dog, and not having much experience with dog breeding, envisioned the first one that came to mind. His dog plopped at his feet on elegant limbs, white with brown spots and an intelligent pointed muzzle. It gazed up at Tom with large, pleading eyes, and when it caught sight of his wand, licked its chops with a slobbery pink tongue.
"A whippet," said Nott, brows lifting in mild interest. "A coursing dog? Hm. Well, they have been trained as sighthounds, so I wouldn't dare question your judgement. Come on, then, we'll take the left circuit while the other Ravenclaws finish their debate on how exactly a magically-constructed brain receives physical sensory cues." He clicked his tongue at his string of three little terriers, and glancing around surreptitiously, cast a spell. "Imperio. Find me earth furrowed by the hand or wand of a wizard, within the last two weeks."
"Nott!" Hermione said in a low voice. "Really, did you have to use that spell?"
"It's not a human, it's an animal. And it's not even a real animal. I'm perfectly in the right, in terms of legality—by British law, might I add. Enforcement's a bit more lax in the Continent, anyway—one of the benefits of Dark Lords, surprisingly enough."
The dogs, heads low to the ground, led them to the perimeter of the circle that bounded them to this grassy stretch of hillside. As the hours passed, clouds came scudding in from the north and across the bowl of the sky with the speed of a racing river. Though the sun still shone brightly, it heralded the unreliable weather common to the nations of Northern Europe, where a season passed in the course of a day. Meanwhile, Tom wondered how they would return to Britain. He knew the distance between Scotland and Norway was around the same distance between Hogsmeade and London, feasible for a prepared Portkey, but too far for Apparition. He'd always relayed when travelling that distance himself.
He also knew that a Portkey could make a direct transfer of the five-hundred miles between Hogsmeade and London, because Dumbledore had given him one for that very purpose, several years ago. The wooden button on a string, leading to the doorstep of the Hog's Head Tavern, lay buried under Tom's extra-curricular reading at the bottom of his school trunk. If they could remove the barrier ward, then Tom could get home, alert Dumbledore, and the two of them together could present the Ministry with the glorious repercussions of their own incompetence.
Then the Prince of Charming would rise, once more, to the challenge...
Dog barks spoiled Tom's pleasant daydreams. The Conjured leashes jingled, while Tom's magical construct of a dog sniffed along the ground and did a remarkably realistic facsimile of a piddle. It lifted its hind leg and everything. Goodness, he truly had improved in his Transfiguration skills under Dumbledore's week of tutelage. Nott's dogs, however, had found something of interest on the ground, some distance away from the train, which lay draped like a wet towel down the side of a gently sloping hillock. Nott unclasped the leash hooks and let the dogs have their way, yipping to each other and pawing at the dirt, then digging in with their tails furiously wagging.
It looked like yet another large mossy rock that was scattered around like giants' gobstones, but the dogs dug around it and Nott got on his knees, heedless of the big damp patches of mud soaking into his iron-pressed uniform trousers. The boy Conjured a pair of trowels, tossed the spare to Hermione, and the two of them began digging into the wet soil with the eagerness of seaside holiday-makers.
"Oh, look!" cried Hermione. "The lichen has been disturbed. See how it's scraped off on this side, and the gap hasn't filled in? This was recent."
"The clay undersoil is odd," observed Nott, rubbing a lump of dirt between his fingers; it stained his skin a dark rusty red. "Ferrous soils aren't usual in glacial plains."
"It's not ferrous soil," said Hermione, "it's blood!" She threw aside her trowel and raised her wand to Levitate the rock. Like an iceberg, it had a lot of bulk hiding under the surface level, and the near one-ton weight did not rise to Hermione's bidding even as sweat gathered on her brow. Hermione let out a huff of breath, and her fringe stuck to her forehead in sticky straggles. "Tom, can you help? We need all of us together to lift it!"
With a put-upon sigh, Tom dismissed his Conjured dog and swished his wand in a silent spell. Nott contributed his own Levitation Charm, and the three of them wobbled the muddy boulder out the socket in the earth in which it was buried. With a flick, Tom turned it to its side, then they lowered it to the ground and ran a stream of water over it. Hermione Transfigured her trowel into a large dish brush to scrub away the chunks of dirt held together by root clusters and clotted blood. The water pooled over the grass, streaked with brownish-red.
Eyes bright and expectant, Hermione crouched by the upturned boulder to read the inscription written on its base, carved into an unnaturally even stretch of smooth stone. That flat foundation had been hidden face-down in the earth, out of sight, with the weathered boulder-top left in the open to give no indication that it been worked by sentient hands. The runes were clean and deeply carved, and as Hermione ran her fingers over the lines, she shared her commentary on its meaning:
"This is what the textbooks call a 'repudiative ward'. It specifically names objects that aren't allowed to cross the border, instead of applying a blanket enchantment against 'all life' or 'all matter'," she said.
"Which would require too much power for the size of the ward boundary they used, and even then, it appears they had to draw on the magic of physical essence, a sacrifice of magical blood," Nott remarked. "Hogwarts' ward configuration is not even that general; the four Founders working together weren't powerful enough for that."
"Let's see... Looks like a specific prohibition against messengers. See here, this line is commonly used for things like Howlers, but they've reversed its meaning here—"
Nott nudged Hermione out of the way and squinted at the runes himself. "You're reading it wrong. It's a prohibition against message-bearers. There is a difference. If the Aurors had sent an owl without a letter, it would theoretically be able to leave the boundary. But only if the intent of the sender was not to alarm the recipient with a delivery owl arriving empty-handed. Empty-clawed, taloned, or whatever." He coughed. "A wizard's intent is a magical force, be it conscious or otherwise. An owl hunting, that's fine. An owl seeking another wizard is acting as a bearer of knowledge."
"No, you're wrong, actually," said Hermione. "Read that second line here—it's a logical procession of the first. 'Beasts of burden and tamed hearth-beasts'. That's commonly translated as owned creatures and magical familiars. So a wild owl could pass through, but not a pet owl."
"And not a house-elf," muttered Nott. He snapped his fingers. "Amity, I require your assistance. Attend to me."
Nothing happened.
Nott scowled. "It was a faint hope to expect a successful Apparition across five-hundred miles of open ocean, but it was worth a try. At least we're assured our captors have staged their wicked plans with some level of care. If they plan to hurt us, it won't be through misadventure or incompetence. I don't think I could bear it if I was killed through incompetence."
"The next line is the most important," said Hermione, ignoring Nott's morbid commentary. "Humans can enter the barrier, but they can't leave."
"Oh, Granger, but you're wrong, actually," said Nott. "The word isn't 'human'. It translates literally to 'man'."
"But I can't pass through the barrier, and I'm not a man," Hermione replied.
"The effect encompasses 'human' as a group, but a proper translator should appreciate both the artistry and the technicality," said Nott peevishly. "I find that you always veer too close to a modern reading of the text. Not only is it odious, it's woefully anachronistic. I bet you read Chaucer without the thorn and yogh, too. Eurgh, I could never."
"Enough," snapped Tom. "From what I understand so far, the enchantment prevents certain categories of beings and creatures from traversing the spell-boundary. To make efficient use of power, the enchantment has focused on clearly defining which beings and what creatures can cross. That leaves loopholes open for anyone creative enough to weave through them." He paused, as a thought struck him. "Physical crossings are limited, but what about magical crossings? Nott, cast your Patronus and make it fly over to the ridge over there. A Patronus is neither man nor beast, neither slave nor servant."
"Because it's magic and soul," breathed Hermione. "It's not a message-bearer, because the magical intent, at its core, is the manifestation of a benign protector. 'I await the protector'. Expecto Patronum!"
Her otter flowed out of her wand and up above Hermione's head, launched aloft by silvery spout of a phantasmic geyser, before it leaped forward and away from them. A ghostly pheasant joined it, blue-white wings spreading open for a joyous flight into the blue-and-white sky, and with a brief fizzle, both passed through the barrier that circumscribed the stolen Hogwarts Express. They hovered briefly for a few moments, then darted away, side by side, in a westerly direction.
Ten minutes later, three Patronus creatures returned: the silver otter, the blue-white pheasant, and a glorious phoenix whose train and plumage burned with searing light. The otter went to drape itself about Hermione's shoulders, the pheasant fluttered to Nott's feet, and the phoenix alighted on Tom's right hand, where his yew wand was held in a relaxed duellist's grip. It gazed at him with its beady bird eyes, an opalescent sheen swirling through its colourless irises, cocking its head in an unsettling yet knowing way.
"That's that, then," said Hermione, letting out a sigh of relief. "Professor Dumbledore knows about the problem."
"And now the only thing left to do is to go about solving it," said Tom. "A simple business, without a doubt."
.
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NOTE:
— "Eumenes to my Alexander": General, loyal friend, and secretary to Alexander. Quote about Eumenes from a rival general: "He had borne the shield and spear of that monarch, while Eumenes had only followed with his stylus and tablet." — Plutarch, Life of Eumenes
— "Schooler's Seven": Not canon, but based on real world graduation "traditions".
— "Thorn and yogh": þ and ȝ. Letters in Middle English for syllables influenced by Anglo-Saxon language and rune alphabet. Phased out after the rise of the printing press and standardised spelling. Thorn represents the sound "th", while yogh represents the "ch" sound, which still exists in Scottish dialects.