"ꜰᴏʀᴛᴜɴᴇ ꜰᴀᴠᴏᴜʀꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏʟᴅ." — ʟᴀᴛɪɴ ᴘʀᴏᴠᴇʀʙ
Chapter Thirty-One: A Wedding for Myrtle (She's Marrying Death)
-January, 1943-
"You seem preoccupied, Tom."
"Mmm."
He supposed Minerva wasn't the worst person to go on patrols with. That being the male Ravenclaw prefect, whose name had been overwritten in Tom's memory as Insufferable Git.
If only she didn't have a habit of fluttering around other people's private business like an annoyingly attentive wasp.
If Tom didn't know better, he'd think that she had his timetable written out somewhere. Hopefully not with little hearts around it or anything like that.
Though, given her propensity for appearing in the right corridor at the right time, it might not be far from the truth.
He'd never seen her smile so much, either. It looked like she was wearing a bit of make-up, too. Something dark around her eyes, and she wore her hair loose more often.
"It's nothing," said Tom in response to Minerva's insistent stare, trying to make his voice light, which was a struggle when trepidation was weighing him down. "Just thinking about our Careers Meetings. You're probably more prepared than me."
"Yes, but Professor Slughorn is much better connected than Professor Dumbledore. I think we're about even. Ministry, too? Are you going for the apprenticeship?"
"There's only one position."
"I know," said Minerva, and unsurprisingly, there was something of a challenge in her quick grin.
Tom sighed.
"May the best wizard win — or witch, of course."
There was a lull in the conversation.
"Professor Dumbledore is mentoring me."
"Is he really?" Tom was sure he had won the trophy in that contest.
"Yes, really!" said Minerva, laughing. "He's helping me become an Animagus."
And yet, he seems to offer me only guidance of the common or garden variety, he thought ruefully.
"What's the point in that?" asked Tom out loud. "You don't get to choose what animal you'll turn into. And even if it is the one you want, what could it be useful for other than a party trick?"
"You're too sensible, Tom!" exclaimed Minerva, skipping (skipping!) ahead of him and turning around, her eyes dancing with stars and her face strangely flushed. "There's not a romantic bone in your body!"
"I didn't realise you were one for romance, either," he said dryly.
Minerva ignored his last comment.
"I'd be a crow. Like the Morrígan. Wouldn't it be fabulous to fly, Tom? Imagine flying!"
"You fly on your broom," he retorted. "You're a Scottish witch. Why would you want to be like an Irish goddess of war and death, anyway?"
Tom himself had no need to take another form to fly unassisted, something he was pleased to discover was unheard of.
"You won't be a crow," he added. "Or a rook or raven, for that matter."
"Why not?"
Minerva, in his mind, was of the mundane variety. Her true self had little to do with fate, death, or war, as far as Tom could tell.
"You'll be something absurdly normal," he said, with all the confidence of someone who believed he had all of human nature figured out. "Like a cat."
"A cat?"
She sounded displeased.
"A cat. It's somewhat useful. You could sneak around."
Just then, the broom cupboard behind them rattled.
In response, Minerva retrieved a Knut from her pocket.
"Heads or tails?"
Tom scowled. This was not the type of game he liked, but it had become somewhat of a custom on their patrols.
"Heads."
She flipped the coin in a fluid, practised movement, and caught it with the unerring skill that, according to Lestrange, was typical of a Seeker.
"Not your night tonight," she announced.
Great.
Tom marched up to the broom cupboard, sighed deeply, and wrenched the door open, looking everywhere but the tangle of bare limbs, reddened skin and rumpled clothing.
"Get your clothes and leave," he ordered, feeling utterly uncomfortable and wishing the steady flush creeping up his neck and the telltale itch of hives would go away. Now he had to look at their faces to identify their Houses so he could take points because their ties, like most of their clothing, was nowhere to be seen.
Unfortunately, one of them was not a stranger. Tom did the only thing he could; parroted the canned response the Heads had drilled into them.
"Fifty points from Hufflepuff and Slytherin each. Leave for your common rooms immediately. This is especially unsafe with the monster about."
After the pair left and the broom cupboard door was safely shut, Tom allowed himself a sigh of relief.
"I have terrible luck," he said. "Now I'll have to face Mulciber in the morning after that fiasco."
"Walburga was right about one thing."
"What?"
"You do look pretty when you're flustered."
He didn't know why, but the comment annoyed him even more than it usually would.
"I hope I haven't offended you, Tom," said Minerva earnestly.
"Not at all."
Since when did Minerva McGonagall care about offending him?
Anyhow, she left for her common room and left Tom alone with his thoughts as he continued towards his.
Of course, his thoughts were drawn to the Horcrux.
The unpleasant thing about murder was that it required a victim. Target, that sounded nicer.
Whereas picking someone for the occasional Petrification was mostly done as was convenient, based on the number of reflective surfaces and the number of people around to witness the incident, this had to be planned meticulously.
One. The murder could not lead back to him. That was paramount; he must be absolutely clean — blameless — obviously innocent. It had to be a horrible accident that he, poor, brilliant orphan, Prefect Tom Riddle with his own dirty Muggle blood to worry about, couldn't possibly be connected to.
And what complicated matters, as usual, was Dumbledore's nosiness, and he had become highly suspicious of Tom.
If he could go back and undo anything, he would have told his eleven-year-old self not to open his big mouth and tell Dumbledore about his ability to speak Parseltongue. But, of course, he hadn't known at the time that it was such a rare gift.
And besides, who said the culprit was a serpent? No one else but possibly Dumbledore had come to that conclusion, the closest guess Tom had heard being a cockatrice of all things, and that had been laughed off as improbable.
Even so, Tom had to be as sneaky as possible.
Two. As a direct result of the above, the basilisk also could not be connected to the incident. That meant no 'rip… kill…', and God knows the damned serpent was getting more and more restless with each passing day he forced it to stare instead of devour.
Three. Combining points one and two, the incident had to occur as close as possible to the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets to facilitate the return of the basilisk to its hiding place as quickly as possible.
So, a place had been set for the incident— the second-floor girls' bathroom — but not a target.
The thought was beginning to repulse Tom more than he wanted to admit.
As he passed by the second-floor girls' toilet, toying with the idea of making one of his clandestine visits to the Chamber of Secrets to consult Salazar's wisdom, Tom saw a spectacled girl rushing inside, sobbing as if her heart would break, which annoyed him immensely, because he despised crying.
He suspected that one of her little friends would come to retrieve her within fifteen minutes, and he could go on his way to open the Chamber.
Tick-tock, tick-tock. Tom waited. And waited. And waited.
He was getting pretty fed-up, actually. He'd wasted nearly an hour-and-a-half waiting for the stupid girl, and it was getting ridiculously late.
Close to midnight, just as Tom resolved to make his way back down to his dormitory to sleep, he saw the crying girl emerge from the bathroom, alone, and sprint up the stairs with surprising speed.
Odd. He'd always known girls to come in packs of at least two or three.
Tom made a mental note to keep an eye on her. He supposed he should have taken points for wandering around during curfew, but he didn't want her to know his face if he was going to—
Good God, he was considering this girl as a murder victim — he didn't care, it didn't matter, how else was he going to escape the thing he most feared?
Swallowing the last drop of stinging, uncomfortable empathy, Tom continued on his way to the dungeons below, wondering if there was some spell or potion that could quell human weakness.
Besides, his Charms homework was yet unfinished and due tomorrow.
The common room, to Tom's chagrin, was not quiet. While he attempted to study, the self-aggrandising pricks in his year did anything but.
"Women are like an expensive wine," said Eustace Mulciber, grinning from ear to ear. Tom was certain that he was drunk. "A delicacy meant to be sampled at every opportunity."
"And yet, my interest wanes," Tom muttered, pulling his books and his notes further into his lap. "It's past one. Shut up."
"You're sixteen now, you pathetic oaf," said Mulciber, lolloping towards Tom and draping his long arms around his neck — now, Tom could smell his definitely-drunk breath.
He drew on the full extent of his willpower and restrained the urge to hex Mulciber so severely that it would make Abraxas's fate look merciful.
If only he wasn't pureblood; Tom would very much like to sic the basilisk on him and have him paralysed, and most importantly, quiet for the next few months.
"You've had a few too many, Mulciber."
"Never kissed a girl," Mulciber crooned, and Tom wrinkled his nose as the scent of firewhiskey-breath assaulted him again. "Bloody golden boy of Hogwarts, prefect—" Here, he fingered the badge on Tom's chest, and Tom thought he heard a hint of jealousy in his voice "—can't move for admirers, yet sits here studying like a blushing maid in her tower."
"I'm not a blushing maid!" Tom snapped, tossing his books away and wrenching Mulciber's arms off of him. "I'm trying to concentrate. Now, get — the fuck — off!"
"Yeah," slurred Mulciber. "That's something you've never—"
Tom pointed his wand at the boy behind him, performed a nonverbal Silencing Charm, and revelled in the quiet that followed.
"He's not wrong, love," said Rosier, kicking his feet up on the couch beside Tom. "You are a right prude."
Tom rolled his eyes, and made a fresh attempt to concentrate on his Charms homework.
"It's not just you, Milady. Althie, darling, please be a dear—" drawled Nott.
"Piss off, all of you!" snapped Tom, leaping to his feet. "Or else, I swear to Salazar Slytherin himself that I'll hex your balls off!"
The room was silent. Tom's threat carried enormous weight, especially with his wand clutched in a hand trembling with fury.
"Thank you," he said, sitting back down and savouring the silence as he continued writing his homework. Now, if only they could leave so that he might go back to sorting out this Horcrux business…
And by some miracle, they did, filing out of the common room and leaving him alone with his thoughts.
He shouldn't have lost his temper. But he was on edge and running so low on Calming Draught that he had to start rationing it just to make sure that he slept through the night.
With a furtive glance behind him, Tom retrieved Secrets of the Darkest Art with trembling hands. He put out the fire and waited for the common room to go dark, cold, and still, with only wandlight to keep him company.
Can I do this?
To have your soul in more pieces than one. It will make you better, make you stronger, Salazar had said. It might even make you a god, little heir. Lord of Death. You'd like that, wouldn't you? To be a creature not wholly of this world?
Death will tell you how to kill, little heir when he comes to meet you while he comes mistakenly to collect your soul. It need not be so painful if you do it but once.
There seemed to be no organisation whatsoever to the book. An incredibly Dark ritual concerning Obscurials directly preceded the section on Horcruxes, and most of it appeared to be handwritten.
A very, very cursory reading of the process told him that the runes in the circle of power were of all different languages; the incantation in Arabic and the style of ritual Ancient Greek.
Yes, Tom had done much more than dipped his toes into Dark magic. But this disturbed him like nothing else; it was ugly and unnatural.
The (perhaps more logical) half of him wanted to shut the book and Obliviate himself of this knowledge entirely. It felt as if his mind had been sullied; he'd like to extract his brain and clean it out with soap and water.
But the other half of him was still very much afraid about what would happen if he did not.
He would be asked to face a Boggart during his O.W.L.s, certainly.
It had to be done before them.
He was exhausted.
Overwhelmed.
He just wanted the black curtain to go away.
Tom had never been convinced that he possessed anything like an immortal soul, believing that it was possible that by some mistake, he'd been born wholly without one. And furthermore, he was supposed to believe that it was some sort of tangible thing, something you could rip or tear?
It was a nightmare in and of itself. A torn soul, now that was some kind of eldritch horror, certainly.
It was then that Tom discovered that the book whispered in the dark.
You will be asked, brave one, to embrace the unnatural... To live forevermore is to willingly, if not annihilate, at least wound oneself in spirit and psyche. Not an ounce of remorse or regret can be felt if all is to go as predicted, so it is recommended to perform the necessary preparations beforehand and split the soul immediately following the murder.
To embrace evil, perhaps?
He drew his knees up to his chest as he considered it.
It made his skin crawl, perhaps less than it should.
There need be no more anguish. No more fear, no more pain. Not once you embrace the abyss.
He must survive, regardless if some metaphysical bit of him had to be left behind in the process.
Lord Death cannot be a filthy half-blood, he thought, shoving his sleeve up to his elbow, lighting his wand, and forcing himself to stare at the scars. Lord Death isn't quite human.
He must devote every inch of his being to this effort.
Morality is muddy, he thought. Maybe there is good and evil, but I'm not evil.
Am I?
And again, Waffling's First Law came back to mock him.
"Tamper with the deepest mysteries — the source of life, the essence of self — only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind."
I can't go back from this, he realised. This is it. Now or never.
"Eternal damnation," he said to the empty room as if waiting for some kind of reassurance. "Well, I don't intend to die."
"Might as well make it worth my while."
And, supposing he did go through with this, what would be worthy of becoming a container for a part of his very soul?
The ring, he thought, retrieving the silver ouroboros and holding up so that it sparkled in the light of the charmed fire. It had monetary and sentimental value, and it might have been perfect, except for one thing.
It had taken him so long to discover the Chamber of Secrets; nearly all of his Hogwarts career led up to that very moment. Even just three years were not enough to serve Salazar Slytherin's wishes.
No. Tom was determined to leave a legacy, just as the founders had. To lead another in Salazar's noble work.
So why not leave something behind? A little piece of yourself to guide the future of Hogwarts.
He liked that. He liked it very much.
If I say so myself, thought Tom, somewhat absentmindedly, I've always been able to charm the people I needed to.
It should be something personal. No ordinary book, but a diary, within which he would preserve his sixteen-year-old self.
His diary; filled with all his hopes, dreams, and thoughts. But this wasn't time for sentiment, and besides, Tom Riddle would soon no longer exist.
He would be Lord Voldemort.
Tom forced down his lingering reluctance and Vanished the ink.
Then he thought about the girl.
Maybe it was best not to think about the girl, really, except for disdain.
Mudblood, he thought absently, but there wasn't much venom behind it.
It wasn't until he was leaving Potions behind Mulciber, who took his time to gather his things as usual, that he noticed her enter the room, trailing behind a group of Ravenclaw girls.
Tom looked down quickly, trying not to meet her gaze.
Was this how the wolf felt before the deer was felled?
It was an old-lady name that the other girls called her, something absurdly Muggle like his name — Agnes — Eloise — Sibyl, maybe?
Maybe it was best not to know.
After all, he didn't want to get attached. In some alternate universe, he might have even felt sorry for her. And the ringleader — if she wasn't a pureblood, Tom would have liked to put her in the Hospital Wing along with the ten others so far.
The others didn't like her, that was for certain.
"Common room, Tom?" asked Mulciber.
Tom shook his head, then went off as if he intended to go outside.
Once he was sure that he had lost Mulciber, he circled back. He could have used the Disillusionment Charm, but as the spell could have spectacularly horrific effects if performed incorrectly, he'd rather wait for Dumbledore to teach it than have to explain to Madam Gale why he had tried the spell.
Better safe than sorry.
As it were, he was proficient at stealth without the use of the Disillusionment Charm. With a simple spell to muffle his footsteps, he returned to the Potions classroom, lying in wait in a nearby alcove and following the girl silently once she left the classroom.
Tom took care to stay far behind as he followed her up to Ravenclaw Tower, then removed his tie and Prefect badge so he could remain reasonably anonymous, then ran his fingers through his hair a few times to make it look messy and transfigured it to to a mousy brown.
It was a far cry from a good disguise, but at the very least, he looked unremarkable enough to move around undisturbed.
Finally, he walked up to the door of the common room and waited for the eagle-shaped brass knocker to speak.
"What word in the English language does the following: the first two letters signify a male, the first three letters signify a female, the first four letters signify a great, while the entire word signifies a great woman."
Vaguely, Tom wondered if the eagle's cool, female voice was that of Rowena Ravenclaw herself.
It only took him a few seconds to come up with the answer.
"The first two letters are he, the first three are her, the first four are hero, and the entire word is heroine."
"Well-reasoned," said the eagle, and the door swung open.
Well, thought Tom, that's a terrible security method. Surprised more people don't try to sneak in.
Either way, he went inside. It was a nice room, but different from the Slytherin common room as night and day. It was a circular, airy room with large sunlit windows, a blue ceiling dotted with the constellations, lined with bookshelves, and students were sitting around several round tables and deep in discussion.
Tom drifted closer to the bookshelves, trying to blend in with his surroundings.
The atmosphere was much tenser than that of the Slytherin common room. Tom hadn't thought of that; the Muggle-born population of Slytherin House was zero compared to about a quarter of Ravenclaw House.
He heard snatches of conversation speculating on who the 'Heir of Slytherin' was: unsurprisingly, his name was not among them. In fact, the most popular candidate was Icarus Lestrange, to his half-amusement, half-annoyance.
But that wasn't what he was here to do.
He shrugged his cloak off, folded it over a chair, selected a book at random, and pretended to read, keeping his face down to avoid being recognised.
Every so often, he cast a glance towards the weepy girl sitting all alone at the far end of her table.
Weeping Sibyl, he thought darkly.
By the end of the evening, Tom had managed to peek at her class schedule and copy it onto a sheet of paper.
Now he knew where to find her at all times.
I'm really doing this, he thought, as he left the Ravenclaw common room with an hour to spare before patrols. I'm really going to... kill someone.
"Tom! Tom!"
He looked up, turning towards the person who was shouting his name.
Ever since they had spoken in Merrythought's class, Rubeus Hagrid had started to follow Tom around the castle like an enormous shadow.
"Evening, Rubeus," he said and waited for the other boy to elaborate.
"Yeh've got ter come see!" said Rubeus in an excited whisper.
"Come see what?"
If it were anyone else, Tom would have expected a trap, but Rubeus was far too guileless for that sort of thing, so he followed him into the dungeons and into a small room with a large cupboard, from which emanated a suspicious scratching sound.
Instantly wary, Tom took his wand out and pointed it at the cupboard.
"Relax, Tom," said Rubeus, going to the cupboard and kneeling down. "Aragog wouldn't hurt yeh."
"You named it?" asked Tom weakly. By now, he was well accustomed to Rubeus's predilection for dangerous magical creatures; Fire-Breathing Salamanders, scorpions, and Blast-Ended Skrewts, to name a few. But none yet had warranted a name, which meant this particular beastie must be Rubeus's pride and joy. The piece de resistance. The crown jewel of his collection.
He had a very bad feeling about this.
Out of the cupboard came a spider the size of a large dog, covered in downy black hair and making a horrible clicking sound that reminded him of a baby's babbling.
"O' course," Rubeus was saying as he petted it, "he's only a baby, but once he grows—"
"Rubeus," said Tom, with a short laugh. "Rubeus, are you mad? That's an Acromantula, an XXXXX known wizard killer, impossible to train or domesticate! It'll probably be the size of a small horse before June!"
Yet, he was fully aware of the irony that he was also in possession of an XXXXX known wizard killer. Fortunately, it was under his control, and he had no plans to name the basilisk.
Everyone thought the reason Tom bothered keeping Rubeus around was out of sympathy. And while the rumour suited his purposes immensely, that was far from the truth.
He makes for a good shield, thought Tom as he regarded the naïve, innocent boy coo over his pet monster. In more ways than one.
Tom's Careers Advice meeting took place at half-past three, right in the middle of his History of Magic lesson.
Without disturbing the class, he left early enough to make a quick detour to ensure that not a single hair was out of place (I need a haircut, he thought as he did his best to avoid his father's face in the mirror). His uniform looked... well, secondhand, but that couldn't be helped.
"Good afternoon, Professor Slughorn," he said as he went in, making sure to rap on the side of the open doorway.
"Come in, come in, m'boy!" cried Slughorn, and he obeyed, sitting in the chair Slughorn offered him and shaking hands with all the wizards seated in the cramped office.
"Tom Riddell?" asked the leftmost one, a man in his forties with a long sharp nose, keen eyes, and bottle-green robes, using a similarly exaggerated pronunciation as Lestrange had on the first day at Hogwarts. It was clear that he was the most senior official in the room. "Is that correct?"
"Riddle, sir," he corrected. There was no point in lying. "I'm a bit of a mystery, it seems."
A few of them laughed politely. Tom smiled in response.
Slughorn turned to the keen-eyed wizard. "Tom, this is the Right Honourable Tarquin Travers. Recently taken over from his father as the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."
Smells like nepotism to me, thought Tom.
"Mr. Travers, this is the student I was telling you about."
"Is that so," said Travers, his voice low and somehow chilly. "Tom Riddle from the Muggle orphanage, in London. I remember."
Tom barely stifled his gasp of surprise. Traver's frosty gaze met his, and he could not help but remember standing atop the ruins of Wool's Orphanage as this man forbade Tom from saving himself.
And he knew Travers remembered the letter, too.
"Charmed," he said. If there was sarcasm lingering in his voice, no one seemed to notice.
"Professor Slughorn talks highly of you."
Travers's tone was almost accusatory. The other men were writing things down.
"I am grateful for his support and guidance, sir."
The muscle under Travers's eye twitched. Tom's face heated with embarrassment; he tried to reign in his accent, but it was too late.
Thankfully, Slughorn saved him.
"Tom is a man of ambition, you see; aren't you, m'boy?"
"Mmmm," said Travers, his cold gaze making an efficient circuit. Secondhand uniform to prefect badge to his filthy Muggle father's face. "What kind of ambition?"
"I want to work for you, sir," said Tom quickly and earnestly, his eyes fixed on Travers.
"You do, do you? Would that satisfy you, Riddle?"
"Mr. Travers—" Slughorn began, but he stopped short because Tom had sat up straight.
The same, terrible, sickening energy that had burned behind his eyes when he'd shouted at Dumbledore in Room 27 was here now. He was almost frightened of speaking, afraid that Parseltongue might come out.
"No, it would not," he said hotly.
"Then what?"
Travers was mocking him. No one should mock him. No one could. Him. The Heir of Slytherin.
You're special, whispered the cruel little voice.
"The highest office, to be honest, sir. I want to work in politics, perhaps as Undersecretary to the Minister," he said, and now he was calm once more.
"How can you?" said Travers, and it was as if his voice was coming through metres of seawater.
"I have the marks, sir! I'm a prefect, and I'm the top of the year. Please. Just give me a chance!"
"How can you, Riddle, when you are not even one of us?"
Not once had Travers's fingers strayed to his wand. Tom was holding onto his under the desk as if it were the only thing stopping him from drowning.
"Mr. Travers, Tom deserves a chance," said Slughorn once more, and Tom felt the closest thing he had ever felt to affection leap in his throat.
"We are the Ministry of Magic, not a home for charity cases, Horace. Good day, Mr. Riddle. We will all take our leave now."
The Ministry officials filed out, leaving the office cold and empty. Tom wanted to curl up inside himself. Like a snail or a hermit crab.
He felt like crying.
Both he and Slughorn were silent for a while.
"I s'pose I won't be getting an apprenticeship," he said to fill the uncomfortable quietness, and it felt like the understatement of the century.
Slughorn nodded and puttered about the office, taking two glasses of something amber-coloured and handing one to Tom. Out of politeness, he took a sip; it was too astringent for his taste, so he pushed it away and watched Slughorn nurse his while he sulked.
"Abilities like yours…" said Slughorn, regarding Tom, somewhat sadly. "Couldn't be clearer you come from good Wizarding stock, that's what I've always said." He took a sip of mead. "Shame people will always talk…"
Tom lifted his head. "Talk about what, sir?" he asked, though he suspected the response.
Slughorn's smile drooped.
"Not pleasant, is it?" He muttered something under his breath, taking in Tom's insistent stare. "Oh well, if you insist… There's never been a Muggle-born Minister of Magic. Mind, not saying you are, Tom… but surely you've heard—"
Tom bit his tongue to swallow the bile rising in his throat. "That I am of inferior blood, sir?"
Slughorn's face fell further. He did not seem to want to agree out loud.
"You're right, Professor Slughorn," he said. "Everyone thinks I'm Muggle-born. I grew up in an orphanage, so everyone thinks I'm a bastard. I'm poor. You're right. Not with my background," Tom finished bitterly.
But what was new here? Nothing. If he wanted power, he had to take it by coercion, if not by force.
Tom stood.
"This was… educational, sir."
Slughorn nodded at him. "Always glad to help."
"Thank you, sir."
The door closed behind him, and Tom headed down towards one of the abandoned corridors of the dungeons; he was no stranger to them, having explored the lower levels of the castle during his second and third years, and by now he knew most of the secret passages and shortcuts off by heart.
There was nothing left, now, but the plan.
The plan. Tom rehearsed it in his head, over and over, until his own preparation became a sort of magic ritual in and of itself. He noted how long it took the basilisk to come when it was called. How quickly he could get from the courtyard to the second-floor girls' toilet and from there to the Slytherin common room. How long he could spend holed up in the dungeons without anyone noticing (a very long time, he discovered).
Still, the timing of the Horcrux ritual presented a final problem. Or, perhaps it didn't.
No one ever came to look for the girl. Sometimes, she would disappear into the toilet for hours on end.
As long as he prepared everything first, it shouldn't take long.
Right now, he was spending every spare minute painstakingly copying each rune in chalk, symbols of life and death that made his hands tremble — but no, this had to be perfect.
He couldn't sleep without the aid of potions, anyway, so he kept the nightmares at bay by working long into the night and suppressed his growing rage with steadily increasing amounts of Calming Draught, memorising the shapes of each word of the incantation so much so that he was afraid of saying it when he did sleep in the dormitory (Tom was more than capable of giving the illusion of being in two places at once), and more importantly, forcing down the quiet, insistent voice of his conscience that clung to him always, saying Tom, this is not right.
So should I remain afraid? Vulnerable? Tormented? Shall I suffer forever, then? he asked of it as he cleaned the chalk off his hands and allowed his tired eyes to rest.
Like everything else but this terrible act he'd devoted himself to, his conscience did not have a solution.
Salazar would agree.