A/N: Last chapter before the two finale chapters of Year One!
"ᴅᴇᴇᴘ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴀʀᴋɴᴇꜱꜱ ᴘᴇᴇʀɪɴɢ, ʟᴏɴɢ ɪ ꜱᴛᴏᴏᴅ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ, ᴡᴏɴᴅᴇʀɪɴɢ, ꜰᴇᴀʀɪɴɢ, ᴅᴏᴜʙᴛɪɴɢ, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍɪɴɢ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍꜱ ɴᴏ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴅᴀʀᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ʙᴇꜰᴏʀᴇ."
― ᴇᴅɢᴀʀ ᴀʟʟᴀɴ ᴘᴏᴇ, ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴀᴠᴇɴ
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Necessity of Evil
-April, 1943-
Tom looked up from his Herbology essay on the properties of aconite, squinted into the expanse of the empty fireplace and sighed.
"Sweet Salazar, Riddle! Do you ever stop studying? It's ceaseless, I swear!"
Sweet Salazar. He filed that one away for later use and turned towards Lestrange.
"Not all of us have Ministry apprenticeships, Icarus," he reminded the other boy. The apprenticeship that was mine, by all rights. "Some of us have twelve O.W.L.s to worry about and prefect duties to fulfil. So, I'm sorry about my ceaseless studying."
Lestrange merely whistled. "Almost makes me feel guilty."
Tom shrugged and glanced at the clock. "Did I mention that I've still got to tutor Mulciber?"
"Mulciber's really a nice chap, you know."
"Too bad he's virtually bone from the neck up," muttered Tom, scratching his wrist.
"What, Riddle?"
"Nothing. Everything's fine."
Lestrange looked a little off-put but wisely said nothing more about Mulciber.
Everything was fine, he supposed. Everything was going to be alright.
Everything but the war.
Aberdeen, not more than a hundred miles away from Hogwarts, had just been bombed, and amongst others, Minerva, who had a Muggle aunt who lived there, had been inconsolable.
He had been keeping a stockpile of notes and newspaper clippings that documented various catastrophes in his trunk. One hundred and seventy-three people died in a stampede on March 3 trying to get into an air-raid shelter. A royal navy escort carrier exploded off the west coast of Scotland. Thirty-five girls and a cook died in a fire in an Irish orphanage.
If I didn't have to go back there, I'd be fine.
Tom thought of dragging himself and all his things up to the mysterious room he'd discovered last year. It was undoubtedly tempting... maybe even plausible.
I could hide there, perhaps. No one would find me. I could sneak down to the kitchen to get food.
Mrs. Cole would be expecting him at Wool's. And furthermore, Tom was sure Dumbledore would know, just as he promised he would know when Tom returned the stolen trinkets.
And what about Timothy Browne, Recruitment Office?
But he wouldn't go back helpless if they forced him to return. At any sign of trouble, he needed to be able to take care of himself.
"Where are you going?" asked Lestrange, raising an eyebrow as Tom stood up.
"Library."
It was the one thing that never failed him.
The Trace, he muttered under his breath as he poked around the bookshelves. Of course, he wasn't expecting to find a manual on how to break it, but if he could understand how the spell was constructed, he might be able to backsolve for a counter-spell. He knew The Trace was simply a colloquial term for any charm used to detect a witch or wizard's unique magical signature, which only became identifiable when their magic became stable, usually sometime between the ages of ten and eleven.
Obviously, he couldn't suppress or change the nature of his own magic. The only loophole was that the Trace didn't work on over-seventeens.
But why, he couldn't understand, and that was incredibly frustrating.
"Busy, Tom?"
He turned around, his hand falling from the book whose spine he'd been tracing.
"Professor Dumbledore."
Dumbledore inclined his head in greeting, giving him the same suspicious look that he'd adopted over the past few months, but said nothing.
"Sir," Tom began, nervous that he might be getting himself into very hot water, "there was a question I'm trying to find the answer to, but I'm not having any luck."
"Ask away, Tom."
He took a deep breath and tugged on the sleeves of his uniform.
"Why does the Trace automatically stop working at seventeen? Isn't it just an arbitrary age?"
Dumbledore merely smiled.
"Well, I am sure you can figure that out for yourself. I remember you began taking Arithmancy in first year, and as such, you will remember that seven..."
"Is the highest single-digit prime number, and thus the most powerfully magical number. Yes. But Professor, I still don't understand why that makes the Trace break and not other enchantments."
"Agreed. It is a most difficult conundrum at first. However, I suspect you can figure it out yourself."
Then, he walked off.
Typical Dumbledore, thought Tom, as he walked back to his table. He knows, and he's pointed me more or less in the right direction. He could tell me, but he won't.
"Hullo, Tom!"
He looked up. It was the Gryffindor bint.
"Hello," said Tom. "Why don't you sit down?"
He let George fly for a while during the tutoring session so he could think about the Trace but was rewarded with nothing but more unanswerable questions and a tension headache that persisted through his session with Mulciber and even long after he left.
"Tom? Are you alright?"
Standing behind him was Poppy Pomfrey, looking concerned.
"You hadn't turned up for patrols, and you're always on time... I thought something might have happened to you, especially since the attacks have really picked up... Tom, you look ill," she added as he turned towards her.
"Nothing," said Tom, his voice scratchy with sleep. There was an acidic taste in his mouth; he wondered how long he'd been sleeping since Mulciber left. "I'm fine."
"Perhaps you should drop one of your O.W.L.s―"
"I won't!" he snapped, shouldering his bag and striding off in the direction of the exit, Poppy running to catch him up with her short legs, huffing and puffing as her yellow-and-black tie fluttered from side to side.
Damn it all, he would be excellent; he was the Heir of Slytherin for Salazar's sake, or... or, well, nothing.
"Think of your health, Tom!"
"My health, Poppy? What are you? The school nurse?"
Tom relented, regaining temporary control of his fury and turning around. Poppy was bending over, her hands on her knees, red-faced, and gasping for breath.
"Sorry," he said. "That was inconsiderate of me."
Murder is inconsiderate, thought Tom.
"You must be irritable from your lack of sleep," Poppy assured him.
"Yes. You're probably right." Tom paused and composed himself. She was right. This sort of behaviour was unacceptable and would only get him in trouble. "I'm sorry. You're right. I haven't been sleeping."
It's not a lie, he thought. It's only not the complete truth.
After completing his perfect duties, the thing Tom wanted to do most was sleep, but today was Thursday, tomorrow was Walpurgis Night, and as such, he was unlikely to get any work done this weekend.
Of course, the Horcrux was a priority, and he felt confident enough that no one was going to be wandering the abandoned corridors of the dungeons to call the basilisk to keep him company while he worked.
Silently, they traversed the corridor shoulder to shoulder. With the queen of serpents at his side, he should have felt like the highest of kings, but some small part of him still felt like a pretender.
At least it distracted him from the insistent feeling of his skin crawling with uncertainty and disgust, though he was so drugged-up on Calming Draught that it was hard to feel anything but disinterest.
Right now, his task was to de-sanguinate no less than thirteen live snakes.
He hated how trusting they were as he charmed them into his grasp and how he could understand their pathetic, plaintive cries for mercy as he drained the life out of them while their kin watched helplessly, struggling hopelessly against Tom's command to stay back.
The basilisk, heartless and bloodthirsty as she was, ignored them even as they cried out for the Great One's aid, regarding Tom with mild approval and a single amber eye.
They cursed him as he decided, but it mattered not, for snakes were liars, and their words were never binding.
It was just as Salazar had said.
When someone is at the other end of your wand and on their knees, they will beg mercy if they are cowards and curse you if they are spiteful.
The blood would then be dried, its essence stripped and preserved, and the residual 'chalk' used to draw the ritual circle.
The ritual circle where I will tear my soul in two, he thought. I can hardly believe I'm doing this.
After it was done, and the dried-up bodies of the snakes lay around him, he felt a little... less.
After all, part of the reason the preparation was so extreme was to desensitize the caster to needless violence and suffering so that committing a cold-blooded murder was easier.
Perhaps it was working. The Horcrux ritual was massively complicated and not something he could have ever hoped to understand if not for Salazar's seemingly unlimited knowledge.
The thought of killing Weeping Sibyl seemed reasonable now. Matter of fact. Any revulsion he once had fizzled away. It was simply something, like his O.W.L.s, that he had to do.
"You should feed me," said the basilisk. She yawned, displaying all of her impressive fangs. "I tire of eating multitudes of small vermin. I long to hunt, to kill."
"You know why I cannot feed you schoolchildren," said Tom irritably, sifting the crimson powder to get rid of any wet lumps.
"Why? They would not miss the girl if I swallowed her whole."
"They would. She has..." Tom struggled to think of a replacement for 'parents,' which wasn't much of a concept in Parseltongue, seeing as snake parents didn't tend to stick around for long, not unlike his.
"She has people who care for her."
"Caring for others is foolish," said the basilisk judiciously.
"Indeed." Tom wasn't altogether taken with the notion either. He poured the now-alabaster-coloured powder into a small flask and corked it, holding his breath until it solidified, then, in a daze of utter concentration, drew the symbols he'd practised for months, imbuing each stroke with magic until his head pounded from the focus and arms ached.
Now, his perfect circle could dry over the weekend, absorbing excess magic from the environment in order to strengthen it.
Now, he turned his attention to the diary. He had managed to separate the process into three: preparing the item to be a soul receptacle, protective charms to keep it impervious to ordinary methods of harming it, and the ability to interact with the soul fragment in order to have conservations with the student who received it decades later.
He turned his attention to the first step and relaxed slightly; yes, he'd been advised against it several times, but it wasn't that unsavoury, he supposed.
And at least, it could be done relatively quickly, so he could get some sleep tonight.
So, determined, he got to work.
He felt terrible in the morning; because he usually did after a mere three hours of sleep, his late-night Horcrux-related activities and because of Walpurgis Night.
"Morning, Riddle!" chortled one of his less-affected roommates, probably Rosier.
"Fuck off," he muttered into his pillow.
He hated Walpurgis Night with a burning passion, specifically because it caused havoc with his magic, made him prone to break out in hives and generally irritable.
Tom decided it wasn't worth risking Calming Draught. With his luck, he'd manage to overdose himself and end up in the Hospital Wing.
"Oh, cheer up, Tom!" shouted Mulciber as he departed, looking and acting enviably more well-rested than him. "Nobody's died!"
He slammed the door, and the sound went right through Tom's skull.
"But they will," he said in Parseltongue, too quietly for anyone to hear. Then he glared at the ceiling and wondered how angry Salazar would be if he offered a pureblood student to satisfy the basilisk's hunger.
After approximately five more minutes of moping, he reluctantly removed himself from the bed, got dressed, and drifted down to breakfast, wondering if the Horcrux ritual itself had anything to do with his constantly low mood. The effects of long-term exposure to Dark magic, perhaps? Unfortunately, Secrets of the Darkest Art was sparse on that sort of thing, and Salazar's crypticness certainly didn't help matters.
The sooner he got it over with, the better.
The boys' conversation over breakfast was not at all conducive to sulking in peace, which was what Tom intended to do all day. With dismay, he found that he didn't have much of an appetite, which was bizarre because he was also starving.
He was probably too exhausted to eat.
Walpurgis Night must be to blame.
"What d'you think of Leonora Greengrass?" asked Mulciber, draping an unwelcome arm over Tom's shoulders while he half-heartedly tried to eat.
"Hot totty," said Rosier with an approving snigger, followed by a grin from Nott. "Excellent taste, my friend."
"Fantastic breasts," agreed Avery, leering at the aforementioned sixth-year over his piece of toast. "You've been awfully quiet, Tom."
Tom couldn't be less interested in their incessant chatter about girls and parties and the size of girls' breasts, or worse yet, the disgusting thoughts they had about girls that he, unfortunately, stumbled upon when testing his Legillimency skills on them.
In fact, he was more intrigued by the consistency of the clotted cream that he was presently attempting to spread smoothly over a scone. He was more interested in discovering the exact length of Dumbledore's beard or the basilisk's favourite blood type.
Furthermore, the only thing that he could recall about Greengrass was that she was ludicrously terrible at Charms, so much so that she had to repeat her Charms O.W.L., and thus she was in their class.
"What do you want?" he snapped, flinging down the knife, which clattered loudly against the table, causing several people to stare at them. "Greengrass's tits, yes, lovely, carry on."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Greengrass turn quite red. Tom glared at her, then went back to focusing on his scone.
The other four stared at him for a second (Lestrange was mysteriously missing), collectively decided that he was in a mood, then thankfully left him in peace to brood.
Tom noticed Dumbledore's dull gaze on him and looked down. However, it wouldn't do to have him get even a glimmer of Tom's thoughts.
Could today get any worse?
He upset an inkwell in Transfiguration, tripped over his robes in Defence, flubbed an easy question in History of Magic, and singed his hands and face in Potions.
Oh, and the back of his neck had come up in hives.
The day was, without a doubt, cursed.
Tom decided he needed a pick-me-up, and because Petrifying other children and generally spreading alarm was apparently his drug of choice, he called the basilisk to him, making quick, exhilarating work of a third-year Gryffindor.
He felt calmer once the student was lying face-down and helpless. Tom let out a shuddery breath, glancing behind him and sliding his slippery, sweaty hands down his cloak to dry them.
No one was here. But this was a busy hallway. Someone could have caught him, anyone. Even Dumbledore.
The thought made his heart race faster, and it wasn't altogether unpleasant, either.
It was when he was returning to the Chamber from Gryffindor Tower that he spied Minerva around the corner, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
Perhaps she had just found the Petrified student in the next corridor.
Tom reassured himself that all she had seen was him walking in the general area, and the evidence was far from incriminating; she was too far away to hear the Parseltongue or realize the basilisk was in the walls.
But even a tenuous link to the Heir of Slytherin was something. The last thing he needed was her and Dumbledore comparing notes.
Tom had to make sure he got Minerva off the scent, but that was not the priority.
With a furtive glance behind him, he slipped into the empty second-floor girls' toilet, still chasing the giddy, bubbly feeling of getting away with something reprehensible.
Well, perhaps it wasn't quite empty because Weeping Sibyl was already inside and sobbing inside one of the stalls.
Somehow, it calmed him even further to know that at least someone else was having a remarkably awful day, but that sounded dangerously like empathy for the girl, so he went back to being irritable.
So this was where the murder would occur.
He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, walked around the cluster of sinks, and stared out the diamond-paned windows, one of which was open to let the soft, sweet-smelling spring breeze through. There was a small bouquet of wilted yellow poppies on the windowsill.
There were worse places to die, he supposed. Tom pushed the closest window open, dangled his upper body outside, and lit a cigarette. The grey smoke drifted high above the grass-green ground so far below; he inhaled, not sure if he was trying to enhance or get rid of the giddy feeling that he'd been unable to shake all day, and put his head back inside.
Without warning, Weeping Sibyl's door creaked open, and Tom backed into the stall behind him, holding the door slightly open.
She walked past, rubbing her eyes, and Tom's heart nearly stopped beating as she stopped inches in front of him.
He caught his first close-up glance at her; she was short, had her brown hair tied into two stubby pigtails, wore owlish, round glasses, and had quite a few pimples on her face, many of which looked rather red and irritated.
She was nobody, Tom decided, that anyone would miss terribly. On the contrary, they might even rejoice to see Weeping Sibyl gone.
If she'd turned her head at the right time, they would have locked eyes.
He only allowed himself to breathe once she had left.
That was the second close call today.
Perhaps he should just go to Walpurgis Night and get whatever this was out of his system.
By the time Tom convinced himself to just go, it was nearing twilight, meaning everyone was already there, including Minerva, who he was avoiding, and the other Slytherins, who didn't really want him there at all.
He resolved to sit at the very edge and wait until he felt better, then leave.
Eventually, the group of fifth-year Slytherin boys dispersed as the twilight turned to evening, and Tom found himself all of a sudden between Mulciber and Poppy Pomfrey, the former of whom was continually making passes at the latter but was repeatedly rejected.
"Oh, don't drink that, Eustace!" said Poppy. "You don't know what's in it!"
"Worried about me, birdie? Knew you'd fall for me eventually, Pomfrey."
Poppy huffed and crossed her arms, looking furious.
"I'm not interested! How many times must I tell you? Honestly, what Minnie says really is right about you!"
Mulciber simply grinned.
"Which is?"
Tom didn't think he'd ever seen Poppy turn such a glorious shade of tomato-red.
"Which is, you're, well, more than a few Knuts short of a Galleon!"
"Then why are you still here, birdie?"
"Do you know what?" asked Poppy, standing up and brushing the grass off her clothes. "I'm going to find Minerva. Goodbye, Tom."
"Bye," he muttered.
Mulciber took the opportunity to offer some of his choicest insults as Poppy flounced off.
"Eh, no better time to get plastered," he said and downed the entirety of the contents of his glass (filled with something suspicious-looking and pink-ish).
After a minute or so, Mulciber spoke again.
"Pomfrey does fancy me, doesn't she?"
"Yes," said Tom tightly, as he considered whether he should feed Mulciber head-first or feet-first to the basilisk.
He decided feet-first was best. Mulciber was annoying enough to deserve a slow death.
"Brilliant, brilliant. Modern women, eh? Never know what's good for them. "
"Of course not."
"Do you think she's, you know, up for it?"
"I don't know, Mulciber," said Tom, teetering on the edge of tearing his hair out at the sheer stupidity. "I don't know, is someone who told you to piss off and leave her alone up for it?"
"Uh..."
Clearly, that was too much for him to process, which resulted in two minutes of silence followed by an abrupt change in the conversation.
"Can't wait for the hols," said Mulciber.
Tom sniffed.
"People are still dying."
"So, some Muggles are dying in their holes. Who cares?"
Tom was about to say, Maybe I do, but realised that he only really cared about himself.
"I don't understand something," he said quietly. "Grindelwald, or at least a lot of people who support him do, they want to kill Muggles. Why? Grindelwald says we need them."
And Grindelwald is a very smart man. Like Dumbledore.
"Why?" asked Mulciber, scandalised. He shook his head, gesticulating as if that was supposed to help him comprehend the implications of Tom's questions. "Well, tell me, Riddle: when you see a cockroach in your home, what do you do?"
"Kill it," said Tom. "But Muggles aren't... they're not exactly like cockroaches, are they? Cockroaches come in your house. But Muggles don't even know the wizarding world exists."
"Yes, and they've got the population, more than two billion of them, filling up their stinking, noisy cities with their anabaricity or electricusicity or whatever it's called, and their gaseous lamps and ovens and factories and docks and buildings and giant metal passenger birds and automatic carriages and war machines that go bang all the time. It's disgusting, Riddle, simply disgusting. Why should I have to share an earth with those people? What could I or any other witch or wizard possibly need those filthy Muggles for? We have magic, for Salazar's bloody sake!"
Personally, Tom thought the world would be a nice place with no other person but him in it. Just the ashes of cities and an eternity of quiet. The world was wide enough for infinite lifetimes.
"You don't condone it, Riddle, do you?"
"Of course not," he said. "So killing them is the solution? But how do you intend to kill two billion people?"
Mulciber's eyes grew strangely greedy.
"Oh, don't let Rosier know because he'll trot straight to Grindelwald with it, but there's a weapon being built, a glorious weapon that can wipe out countries at a time. Something that only Muggles are susceptible to."
"And you know this how?"
Mulciber only laughed, with the confidence only a teenage boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth could have.
"Oh, Riddle. I'm a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. My father sits on the Wizengamot and the Hogwarts Board, and one day I will too. I know things."
I know things too, thought Tom. Different things.
Bad things.
Powerful things.
"And who is this that's got the weapon? Another Dark Lord?" asked Tom, making sure to keep his voice light and stare ahead at the fire.
Even Mulciber, unfortunately, wasn't stupid enough to answer.
"They used to burn witches at the stake. Wizards, too. Look, don't feel sorry for them; it's all their fault. Look ― just look at the Salem Witch Trials in America, just look at that, Riddle! They're savages!"
"But they weren't burned to death. Nineteen were hanged, and one was crushed to―"
Seeing Mulciber glaring, Tom shut his mouth.
"I just don't understand how real, adult witches and wizards could have been caught and executed by Muggles," he said.
Mulciber spluttered to come up with an answer.
Maybe it never happened, thought Tom. What if, what if a witch or wizard Imperiused the Muggles into believing that some of their number were witches? What if they wanted the Statute to happen, and that was a necessary evil?
Whatever was in the glass had made Mulciber suddenly fall asleep.
Good.
Tom stepped over his body, making his way closer to the bonfire. Yes, he didn't want to be spotted, but the pull was nearly hypnotic now. He couldn't have stopped his limbs from obeying even if he wanted to. His feet pulled him ever closer to the fire, and when he stopped barely three inches away from the boldest of the flames, his skin prickling with warmth, Tom allowed himself a small sigh of contentment.
But it was not to last.
And in the sputtering flames, he saw the black curtain separating this world and the next thin and flutter. Unable to look away, he crept even closer, and the Reaper stared down at him, scythe in hand. He pushed back the hood of his cloak, and Tom finally saw his eyes, after all this time. Green and terrible.
Everything else around them was gone. It was only him and the Reaper.
"I'll kill you," whispered Tom, more out of defeat than a real threat. "I'll kill you. I swear."
"I know what you're capable of," said the Reaper. He laughed, hollow and low, like someone who had seen far too much of the world far too young. But all Tom could see were his terrible eyes, floating in the shadows that were his face. "Don't worry. You'll get what you wish for. But they say you should be careful, you know? About wishes?"
"You don't care."
"Of course I do. I'm your greatest fear, aren't I, Lord Voldemort?" The Reaper sniffed. "Shame you'll make such a mess of it, your soul, I mean. Such a pain to have to go around picking up all the pieces."
"You'll never take me!"
The Reaper shrugged. "Surety brings ruin. We'll meet Tom Riddle. Again, and again, and again, and again. It gets boring, actually."
Tom blinked at him, frozen.
"And on which of these occasions do you supposedly collect my soul?"
"We die a little bit with every breath, but you'll see me next when you ask to learn how to kill. When you tear your soul, I'll visit you," said the Reaper. "The shadows, they shiver with dread. The black blood drips from the highest rooftops. They have seen the necessity of evil. Get out, get out of my sanctum and drown your spirit in woe."
And with that last cryptic statement, the Reaper was gone.
After the Reaper disappeared, he left the sounds of revelling far behind and retreated into the dark, comforting depths of Slytherin Dungeon.
The dormitory was empty. But he was not alone; he could hear the basilisk whispering in the walls.
"Lumos!"
The room filled with a familiar, eerie blue light; he made his way to the bed, knelt under it, and retrieved a small cardboard box stowed inside a mouse-hole.
The weight of a single shilling rested ominously in his hand.
Heads I do, tails I don't.
It seemed absurd to decide whether or not to take a life on the falling of a coin.
My survival hinges on chance, too.
It was chance that made the student visit the hospital. It was chance that he survived the Blitz. He must trade chance for certainty by taking Fate's scissors from her hand.
Fate was a cruel mistress, and he would cut himself from her chains, whatever it took.
Heads she dies, tails she lives; perhaps I choose someone else.
It was fair. The fairest game there was. A fair shot. If the coin landed tails, she would live.
Tom breathed in. He breathed out.
The shilling ascended, and the air sang as it spun. Time seemed to slow down.
And equally slowly, the shilling fell back into his hand with a surprising weight. His fingers closed around the cool silver.
Tom thought desperately of going to sleep and trying again the next day. Not having to make the decision. To forget about it and sleep blissfully. To never see what rested in his hand.
But the decision had been made for him; he'd left it up to fate. Whatever lay there, he was not culpable. It was Fate that moved his hand towards destiny.
Tom held his breath and uncurled his fingers.
The outline of King George's silhouette glinted in the wandlight.
He stared at it awhile, then placed the shilling back in the cardboard box and replaced it under the bed.
"Nox."
Historical/Cultural notes:
"we'll let George fly for a while" is a reference to autopilot, supposedly RAF pilots coined the term during WWII.