Author's note: Hello beautiful readers, hope all his well. Here is a new chapter. Thank you to those of you who have followed and favourited this story! Wish you a lovely weekend.
August 1944 - The Bond
The sun poured through the window, bathing the room in an incandescent light. The young man turned around and opened one eye to peek at the clock that stood on his bedside table.
It was early, shortly after sunrise, yet a normal hour for the young man's awakening. It was not that the Slytherin did not enjoy sleeping late, in fact, he wished quite often that he could indulge in a good lie-in, but breakfast at Wool's was always served until 7:30 and such a discipline had left permanent marks in the young man's sleeping habits.
Yet, it was not in that desolate place that Tom woke up that very morning but in a big and comfy bed.
It was about a week that he had landed at the Lestrange's manor, and he just started to get used to the stillness of the place. Even though he thought such quietude was delightful, Tom always found himself imagining noises, mistaking the creaking echo of a door for the crying of a child, or the gurgling of the garden's fountain with a broken faucet. Just like if the sounds of the orphanage never truly left him…
He stood up and put on clothes, simple shorts and a t-shirt before he headed out to the pool, enjoying the fresh smell of the air which was filled with the morning dew.
Exercising was soothing. There was something about putting his body to work that gave him an easy sense of accomplishment, even if he did no more than a few lengths.
The sun was higher in the sky when the young man left the water and crossed the verdurous patch of grass that separated the pool from the mansion. He entered through the French windows to find Alastair at the kitchen table. Tom grabbed the tin pot on the stove and poured himself a coffee, ignoring the house elf who just apparated in the room and protested to fix him some breakfast.
His eyes lingered on the letter covered in a spidery writing that the blond boy was holding, and in a feigned disinterest, he enquired about its author's well-being.
"How is your friend?"
He watched the young man fold back the parchment and place it back in the envelope. The latter stared into nothingness when he replied, his air suffused with sadness.
"She seems fine. She's busy packing"
"Packing? Is she going on a trip or something?"
Tom took a sip of coffee, to pretend that his query regarding Annabel served no other purpose than making small-talk.
He had searched for her on the day after he had dismissed her, willing to confront her about her startling request.
And about that kiss she had stolen him, a split second second of softness.
An infuriatingly brief kiss.
Yet, as if she had disappeared into thin air, he had found no trace of her in the Great Hall, nor in the Hogwarts Express, nor again in Kings' Cross.
Alastair shot him an incredulous look.
"A trip?"
"Why else would she be packing?" shrugged Tom while he composed an indifferent look on his face but the silence that followed his question bothered him.
"Didn't she tell you?" finally asked the young man with a raised eyebrow. "She was searching for you on the last day of school. At the party. I thought she was meaning to tell you"
"Tell me what?"
"That she's leaving"
A strange dizziness gripped him and he felt the sudden urge to hide. He turned around, pretending having to refill his cup and he slowly poured himself another coffee as he listened to Alastair's explanations.
He learned about Annabel's engagement, her unexpected departure, the new life that awaited her across the ocean. That Alastair himself had learned about the news only recently, from his own parents, and he had been chagrined that his childhood friend had not deemed important to share such crucial news with him.
Tom processed the information with an upset stomach and fidgety fingers. He put a great deal of efforts to control his trembling hand as he replaced the pot back on the stove and only when he knew he was in control of himself again, he chimed in.
"She did come to find me after the party" he started, unsure of how much of his exchange with the girl he wished to share.
"I've been rather… unfriendly"
Alastair was silent behind him and he wondered whether she had revealed part of their evening to him.
"She likes you, you know?"
Tom closed his eyes and held his breath.
"Did she tell you that?"
He peeked over his shoulder to dart Alastair a glance.
"No, but I know her since she's a child and I can tell you that she has never looked at anyone the way she looks at you"
"Well it's a bit late for that isn't it?" dropped Tom in a cutting tone as he turned around to look at his friend. The latter looked down, as if embarrassed by his own disclosure and Tom, who usually enjoyed Alastair's company, found himself upset by the presence of the blond boy.
He took a sip of his coffee and retreated into a resentful silence as he tried to make sense of the contradictory emotions that stirred inside him.
Suddenly, the door swung open and some of his friends entered the room but the group slowed down at the deathly hush that reigned inside the kitchen.
"Are we interrupting something?" asked Antonin Dolohov with caution but Tom kept staring at the garden, strangely irked by the good weather.
He brought a finger to his chin, but such a gesture reminded him of her. Of the way he had forced her to lift her face while he had verbally mistreated her, both pleased and disgusted with himself when he had found an ounce of fear in her eyes.
And yet she had lingered in his room, despite his coarse threats and nasty words.
He wondered, sometimes, if she would have stayed would he have not dismissed her and such a possibility made him feel uneasy. Tom liked his girls obedient in bed but Annabel's deference verged on slavery… He chased away the memory of her, upset by the thought that soon enough she would be gone, good to nothing but to carry a bunch of snotty-nosed kids.
He repressed an exasperated sigh and his eyes wandered on the room.
Walburga was inspecting the envelope that stood on the table, turning it around with the tips of her fingers. She announced that she had seen the Selwyns a week ago, at a ball thrown by the Crouchs.
"I heard the girl is engaged" she pursued before she added with a certain foulness that she had heard her betrothed was not even a pure-blood.
Such news hovered over the group like a dark cloud, and as if her remark left the door open for some good old collective grievance, the Slytherins began to mourn the time when decent boys like them were the ones favourited by other pure-blood families.
"What a waste" regretted Avery.
"Another family that strayed" added Nott.
"Seriously, one of us should marry her" muttered Lestrange with a dejected look. "To preserve the gene pool…"
The group snorted at the last suggestion.
"Come on, even Cillian would be considered a peasant by the Selwyns' standards" joked Avery before Nott interjected:
"I still remember the only time I met Amsden Selwyn, I was at the Ministry with my father. Apparently the man has his own entrance to access the building so he does not have to stand in line with the other clerks"
"Clearly none of us would stand a chance..."
"Tom would"
All at once, the many pairs of eyes turned towards Alastair. Tom's glance locked to the young man's and the latter held his gaze.
"Tom would stand a chance if he wanted to marry her"
Heads bent deferentially and multiple "of courses" echoed from the Slytherins around him, embarrassed now that they had forgotten about Tom's formidable heredity.
"Rosier is right" interjected Dolohov with a firm nod.
"Tom would certainly stand a chance. Besides, he is the prime example of the self-made boy who had been roughed up enough by life to please such a leftist family"
The words stung, but Tom knew he was right. Just like Annabel had said it herself, her parents loved to act liberal but they were just as conservative and hung-up as any other pure-blood family...
Antonin took a step towards him and wrapped a brotherly arm around his shoulders, leading him out of the kitchen.
"Marrying such a girl would definitely prove useful, if you ever consider it. Can you imagine the assets she could provide? I'm not even talking about her money, but her fame, Tom, her respectability! Would you ever enter the Selwyn family, we would become untouchable"
And Tom followed Dolohov in the dining room, his breath strangely difficult, his hand a fist.
—
"Will you consider it? What Rosier and Dolohov discussed this morning"
Tom was staring at the shadow of the crystal chandelier, his arms behind his head. A cool breeze was rustling through the flimsy curtains, conferring the room a quiet atmosphere, yet he was seized by an agitation since that very morning that he did not quite manage to tame.
He felt the girl wiggle next to him and she propped herself on an elbow to probe him with her dark eyes.
"They were only joking" he replied as he pushed her face back against his chest, unwilling to deal with the girl's worry. He saw her sulk from the corner of his eyes but soon enough, her warm cheek was pressed against his skin and she took up tracing invisible circles on his breast again.
"I don't think they were. I think Alastair was very serious even"
"He just does not want her to leave"
"And you?"
He stiffened and Walburga was about to lift herself up once more but he firmly held her there before he grazed her nape absentmindedly, deep in thought.
He liked to imagine Annabel's skin under his digits, something he did often when he spent time with other girls.
Somehow, he had imagined that she would be the one lying there one day, sharing his bed, her forehead damp with sweat, deliciously sore and exhausted from the many times he would have made love to her.
He knew she was meant to get married but such prospect seemed so far away, so distant, that he had never given it much thought. Besides, what was marriage if not a capitalist construct, and Tom had assumed that he would be able to distract her from her marital duties, steal her away from her husband and offsprings at times, and keep her jealously by his side for a few hours, to make her moan and beg, because in his fantasy, he was the only one who would own her so entirely.
Which, however, could only ever happen if she would not move thousands of miles away from him…
The girl next to him moved at the sound of the grandfather clock that rang in the corridor and soon enough his hand was only in contact with the bedsheets.
"I should better head back, he's gonna be home any time soon" whispered Walburga, hinting at her far away cousin she had married that summer on her family's demand.
Tom pensively watched the girl stand up and gather her belongings.
"I'll resent you if you marry her, you know" she dropped with a sideways glance as she stood in front of his bedroom door, dressed at last.
He let out a small chuckle and ran a hand into his dark hair.
"It's quite ironic coming from a freshly married woman don't you think?"
The girl pressed her lips together.
"It's not like I had a choice" she grumbled before she disappeared behind the door, and Tom thought those words could have been Annabel's too.
—
The moon was high in the sky now, round and shiny against the pitch-black sky. Tom had retreated into his room after dinner to catch up on some readings, a well-deserved treat he had not been able to indulge in far too long.
The young man exited the adjacent bathroom where the sound of running water echoed against the marble walls. He undressed near the bergère, leaving his clothes on the stuffed seat before his eyes wandered on the pile of books that stood next to his bed.
He casted a spell and A Tormented Wizard: Life and Death of Salazar Slytherin flew towards him, the very one that had informed him about his extraordinary ancestry. He doubted such work could teach him anything else he did not know by now, but the very thought of leaving a book unfinished drove him mad.
He entered the warm water and lied inside the tub, the book raised before his eyes.
He quickly found where he had last stopped, after Salazar Slytherin's heir, the only survivor of some incident he had no memory having read about. Tom recalled how he had skipped through most of the work only to access the part that had interested him, and he opened the book on the first page, opting for a fresh start.
His eyes quickly skimmed through the usual words of introduction and the first chapter started immediately with Salazar's childhood years, which he had spent in Sussex, in company of his parents but also, quite unexpectedly, of someone else.
"For a long time, it was assumed that Salazar Slytherin was an only child but recent studies conducted by Mops et al. (1941) suggested that he had at least one sibling, potentially a sister, whose first name remains unknown but who is believed having married under the name of Selwyn"
Tom's eyes stopped.
He sat down in the water, tilted the book to the side to better illuminate the page.
He read the sentence again, out loud this time, to make sure he had not misread it.
Awe contorted his features as he pursued.
He learned that the current name of Selwyn came from the latin name Salvin - the Forest God - shared, among others, by Simone Salvin, the Great Enchantress. That all of the witch's female successors were meant to carry at least one name that started with the letter S, in order to honour the foremother who used to sign her letters with her initials.
S.S.
S.S. for Simone Salvin or Simone Selwyn.
Like Annabel Sybil Selwyn.
Or S.S. like Salazar Slytherin.
Married Simone Salvin whose maiden name was Slytherin...
Tom's heart skipped a beat.
The recent discovery of a correspondence between Salazar Slytherin and a woman who signed her letters by the same initials hinted at the possibility of a connection between the enchantress and the school's founder. Such an intricate relationship was clearly corroborated by the intimate topics they discussed, but also by the special "bond" that united them, a specificity of the House of Slytherin, a magical link that protected all its children, that ran inside the veins of each of its member. Which forbade any Slytherin to magically harm one another and protected the blood from the inside.
A bond designed to stand the test of time and be passed on to future generations, meant to also serve as a token of recognition between two unbeknownst members, and which would feel like a tingle when two successors would meet.
Like a tingle.
Tom's trembling fingers turned the page that contained some photographs: the initials of Simone Salvin - or Simone Slytherin - at the end of a couple of letters; the seal that showed a snake, symbol of the House of Slytherin, found in the enchantress' study room in Normandy; a tapestry, that showed a few Slytherins' family members, including two children, one boy with very dark hair and a young girl…
… with eyes the colour of a cloud-covered sky.
Tom ran a hand through his hair, pulled on his locks nervously. He re-read the pages countless times, stared at the photograph of that tapestry.
It made sense…
It all made sense.
Annabel's second name, her silvery eyes, her excellent intellect. Her natural ability at reading people's emotions just like he could read people's minds but also, why her powers had not worked when his uncle had attacked her, why he could not have hexed her during the duel. Why he had felt that tingle the very first time he had touched her, why he always knew where she was, like if he could spot her in any room. Why she was always on his mind.
His breath became shallow and he struggled for air.
Annabel was a Slytherin.
What did that make her, his far away cousin?
Who was now being promised to some filthy bastard, close to commit the same mistake his mother had once made and jeopardise the greatness of her blood.
Of his blood.
Tom stood up, his heart racing in his chest as he jumped out of the tub and threw the book on his bed. He wrapped a towel around his waist, rushed out of his apartments.
He ran towards Alastair's room, leaving small puddles of water on the wooden floor with each hasty step. And when he slammed the door open, not bothering to knock because his rescue mission could not wait, he stated between two breaths:
"I'll do it. What you said this morning. I'll marry her"