There's nothing to be found. The Gaunts are like ghosts, vanished from the face of the earth, and with nothing but a name, all we are left with is the need of infinite patience.

Until the day my presumed ancestors finally reveal themselves to us, we tirelessly practice spells in the Room of Requirement. Maybe to compensate for all the theory of dusty books, and perhaps to make use of the heat of the moment.

Right when I smother my Fiendfyre, Harper's stopwatch clicks.

"No wand," she states, "no blunders, no loss of control – for almost seven minutes."

"That's all you have to say?" I ask. "All facts? No praise?"

"Would you like me to clap for you and your flames, Riddle?"

"Never mind," I retort, "your obvious admiration will do."

"Admiration?" She just shakes her head in amusement. "I almost died, and not just once, while you were working to get to this point. So if anyone deserves a round of applause, it's me."

"I'd clap for you any day," I boldly say. "Just not for these roses, they're honestly awful."

"I don't care." She proceeds to create tendrils out of nothing with skilled waves of her wand. And yet what strikes me most are the thorns …

"I should get going," I eventually say as I break away from the sight. "Plenty of things to do."

"And what would that be?" she asks, not taking her eyes off the roses.

"I need to have a chat with Nott, for instance."

"Nott?" Now she pauses in irritation. "But you never bother with him …"

"Lately, he's been trying to follow me. To this very room, among other places. Apparently he's interested in what I'm up to."

"I see," she sighs. "And when you say chatting, do you mean … chatting?"

"Sort of." Despite my half-smile I can tell – she's not comfortable with this side of me even after all this time.

She got to know me exactly like this, though – cold, arrogant, dismissive. Yet she's more determined than ever to tell herself I'm more than that.

Charming. Lovable. Good.
But on what basis?

The worst lies are the ones we keep telling ourselves. Those we want to believe.

"I'm sure you'll do what is right," she finally says as she lets her roses wilt, giving me a tired smile. "And I don't want to be preachy, but –"

"Don't be then."

"But," she persists, "Nott is as dangerous as a Squib … And I guess he can't sleep for weeks after chatting with you."

"Crime and Punishment," I say. "Now that I've read the beginning, Nott and I can devote even more time to those motives – but don't you burden yourself with it."

"You can be so dramatic …" She sighs and shakes her head. "Do I want to hear more about the specifics?"

"I don't think so."

"I basically know anyway," she claims, turning back to me. "We're talking about pain. Am I right?"

"A pretty big word while allowing for so much passivity. Don't you think?"

"No." She crosses her arms. As stoic as I came to know her. "And if we're really talking about a Cruciatus curse right now, it does require action on your part. Not passive at all." I remain silent, so she follows up, "Is that what happens to those who don't buy into your glorified model student facade? The reason some people are afraid of you?"

I slowly circle her without taking my eyes off that much too loose tie.

"You aren't afraid, obviously," I soon say while she keeps holding my gaze. "But you also know that my true self can in no way be glorified. So what is it with you?"

"It's not all black and white, or darkness and light, Tom." She takes in a deep breath and adds, "And you can't be reduced to one side either."

"You just refuse to see it", I claim. "But it could hardly be any clearer …"

"You think that." She won't back up. "But I don't. You said it yourself the other day – you're not a descendant of those dark creatures that found no refuge on the Ark."

"I never said that," I retort. "I merely said that you didn't believe me to be. You just won't stop looking for the good in me, will you?" I'd laugh if it weren't so sad. "You also believe I wouldn't take a life." Almost intrigued, I ask, "But why?"

"Didn't you listen to me back in the library because of all your megalomaniacal thoughts about Horcruxes?" She takes my hand as if to refuse to let me go. "You can't be darkness alone, Riddle. You're not cold-blooded. I repeat myself, but you never were to me. You're better than you think. You must be."

"I'm even worse," I correct her, "and you're just too good to see that."

She pulls her hand from mine, and it's as if her touch was the last thing that kept me grounded.

"Prove it. Teach it to me."

"What?" I ask, caught off guard, even when I have a feeling what she might be getting at.

"The Cruciatus," she confirms my suspicion. "Teach it to me. Show me what it's like and prove how you really are."

"Why would I?" I shake my head. "You'd never use it. What would be the point in being able to curse it?"

"I want to be able to not use it because I don't want to, not because I can't," she retorts, her look as blunt as provocative.

"Well, all right …" I soon nod and spread my arms. "Curse me then."

"You?" she asks, taken aback. "Why you? This is the Room of Requirement – it provides what is required!"

"What is required, yes," I confirm. "But it just so happens that I've always wanted to see what it feels like. The Room knows and accepts that."

"Just stop hindering it!" she demands. "Stop blocking the room from making a lifeless practice object appear!"

"You wanted to practise," I say, "so let's do just that."

She grits her teeth, clearly outraged. "Fine. You go first."

I look down in surprise.

"Practise on me," she says, nodding. "Go on, be as soulless as you claim."

I shake my head. "I'm not going to hurt you, Harper."

"I thought you were worse than I want to believe?" She tilts her head and eyes me. "Prove it."

I'm admittedly perplexed.

"See?" she says, coming so close that all she has to do is whisper. "You could indeed be all the things you say. But you don't want to be. Because you're better than you think, and now you're surprised at yourself." She crosses her arms and takes a step back. "But tell me – how could I hurt you after such a revelation?"

"Aren't you listening? I want to know how it feels."

"Oh, good," she says with a defiant smile. "Me, too. So curse me."

"You curse me."

"No, ladies first."

I briefly close my eyes and shake my head. "You haven't made me this angry ever since the salt shaker issue …"

"Then stop blocking the room," she orders. "I'm not practising on you. You're not practising on me. So with your approach, we're obviously not getting anywhere."

"Fine," I groan, relenting for mere progress.

Out of nowhere, a white, empty shell of a body appears behind us, similar to the typical wooden manikins that help artists draw.

"However, practising on that isn't the same," I inform her, eyeing the lifeless object. It looks just like those I've had in front of me initially. Several times. "No human features," I tell her, "no glances, no screams –"

"I'm all about the theory," she pushes back. "But if you're all about the mentioned horrors, I guess I do have to rethink my opinion of you."

"Harper," I moan, "just get it over with, shall we?" I gently but firmly lead her in front of the doll. "You know what needs to pass your lips."

She instantly gives me a perplexed look. "I just say the word?"

"Would be a decent start. The hand gesture is as intuitive as the curse is careless."

She nods despite rolling her eyes. Then she draws in a breath, pulls out her wand and concentrates.

"Crucio!"

The manikin twitches, but that's about it.

"Crucio!" she tries again, a third time, too, but even less happens.

She puffs out her cheeks in frustration, then, when she looks at me indecisively, she lets the air escape.

"Show me," she insists.

So I raise my wand. If she wants to stare into the abyss, so be it …

"Crucio!"

The puppet writhes and agonises under to my command, and although I have denied it human emotions and features, it comes remarkably close to real cursing, at least if you pay attention.

I just never have before. But with Harper by my side, I'm realising it all the more. And I notice how frozen she seems at once, but I'm not sure what affects her more. The agony of the manikin, or my indifference to the sight.

"Shocked, Sullivan?" I ask, fading the curse.

She bravely shakes her head, but she's clearly struggling for composure.

"You have to want it," I reveal to her, "to be able to do it. That's the magic behind it."

"Why do you want it?" She gulps, clearly worried about my answer.

"Harper, your hubris is irritating, do you know that? You hold on to an idealised version you wish me to be and still you're surprised whenever my true colours shine through."

She lets her gaze wander to the doll in silence, I do the same.
We both look at how it still hasn't fully recovered. Lying on the floor, it's slumped and hunched over, supposedly broken and thus at the same time not even entirely out of touch with reality.

"It's suffering," Harper quietly notes.

It would never have occurred to me like that, but now that she's voiced it, it makes sense.

Suffering.
In its purest form.

Yet it seems so foolish. Harper is worried – about a lifeless doll. But maybe she has to be. Worried about the doll, worried about the world. Otherwise, she could hardly be worried about me, too.

Who am I worried about?
My universe is truly small. All I want is that she's well, I couldn't care less about the rest of the world …

"Then I won't ever be able to cast this curse," she finally claims.

And yet I have to know how it feels.

"Harper," I say, my tone of voice as serious as it gets despite taking her hands in mine, "you can. You wanted me to teach it to you and I will."

"We can stop right here –"

"No, we'll finish what we've started."

"I've already tried it! If I have to want it, there's obviously no way."

"You just need a good reason," I correct her, "so do me a favour – try the curse on me because I really need to know what it feels like."

"No!" I already notice a spark of anger in her stare. "Can't you see the pain it's in?" She points to the doll and her lips quiver. "Why would I harm you like that?"

"It's not a suggestion, and you're clearly not harming me when I ask you to do it."

She hesitates, then slowly shakes her head. But I can be very persuasive …

"Darling, don't be coy, I don't want to use a curse without ever having experienced its effects myself."

"You're not supposed to use it anyway!"

"No fundamental debates now. Harper, what the books describe as its effect is something I've felt all my life. Emptiness, fury, faintness. Day after day. That can't possibly be all there is to it. I'm dying to know, and trust me, you're the only person I wouldn't kill afterwards." I give her a winning smile. "So don't treat me with kid gloves. Put your feelings aside for a moment, concentrate and do it."

"It's cruel of you to ask that," she protests.

"Haven't you noticed by now?" I ask. "Cruelty is in my nature. So – witty raven – for once, put your compassion for a biting snake aside …"

"Tom, this conversation," she growls, "this exercise – I'm done with it!" She hastily turns around, already about to head towards the exit, but I think just have to make her angry enough to get what I want.

I concentrate again, then I raise my hands and block her path with impudent fire.

"How dare you!" she yells. "Stop it right now!"

"Or what?"

"Confringo!" she curses, aiming her blast right at my feet.

I adjust the Fiendfyre, then I can't help but grin. "Now we're playing."

"Tom, I'm not –"

"Defodio!" I shout, and instantly a boulder erupts from the ceiling above her.

It's perfectly clear to me that it won't hit her. She's too fast for that. And doesn't the end justify the means?

"Immobulus!" she stops the grey rocks, as expected.

Afterwards, however, she lashes out in a silent counter-attack. I hadn't seen that coming, but I suspect Locomotor Mortis from the movement of her wand.

And I'm right. A swift Protego deflects the curse.

In angry surprise she shouts, "How the hell did you know –"

"You can't win against me, Harper," I talk over her. "That's why you won't ever do anything to me that I don't want you to. Got it?"

"Everte Statum!" she shouts, but I'm dissolving into darkness faster than she can curse.

"How did you do that?" Her eyes grow even wider as I fly through and around the Room of Requirement, my form being nothing more than black smoke. "Tom, stop it! What's that? This is in no textbook!"

I spin around her in circles, like volatilised broken down matter and in furious pace, regardless of gravity.

Until she finally closes her eyes as though she can hardly bear it any longer. I come to a halt in front of her – and by the time she's realised it, I'm already holding her wand.

"Magic can't be limited to textbooks," I say under my breath, my smirk annoying her like never before. "And by now a little creativity and ambition substitute for brooms and the like, contrary to every known theory."

"Unexplored black magic once again," she grumbles.

"Black just suits me well – what can I do?"

As I give her the wand back, my utter lack of humility results in the coldest disgust I've ever seen her display.
That's exactly what I need.

My glance is challenging her as I take a few steps back. "So shall we now?"

I know she's ready. Without any inhibition.

"Likely there's not much to hurt a lunatic with anyway …"

Madness is what I need. Consternation and stilted timidity get me nowhere, fury fuels the world. Stone and the ashes of my fire lie between us, but my will be done – we are closer than ever.

And when she finally casts the curse, the surging wave of immense pressure in my core even spreading into my fingertips hits me harder than I thought, but more forgiving than I expected.

That's it? That's the Cruciatus curse?

"You're letting go!" I soon complain, despite the obvious struggle to voice it. "Make an effort!"

And she does, she's soon forcing me on my knees.
Yes – it burns. It pierces, it stings. It cuts off air – but I don't feel any closer to death.

There is no fear in me. Nothing different. It's a Perpetuum mobile. It inflicts just enough pain on me to make neither life nor death possible. The longer, the more violently, but it's no comparison to the black emptiness I've carried inside me ever since my first conscious thought.

And oddly enough, the most pain I feel stems from Harper's – I notice how much this exercise torments her when I look up into her face, forbidding myself to make a sound only with utmost difficulty.

It breaks my heart how much she hates to do what I asked of her, and how it makes tears run down her pale cheeks by now.

She trembles as she releases the curse, holding her hand over her mouth to keep from crying as I, still breathing heavily, gather myself on the floor for a moment.

She's ashamed to cry around me. I know that. And yet it doesn't strike me as a weakness, suddenly much rather an outlet for healthy life leaving the body.

"Tom?" she asks, quietly and more concerned than anyone ever has. She soon leans over me, biting her lip.

"Don't look at me like that," I vex her, more exhausted than I'd suspected, and force myself to stand up straight again.

Her gaze wants to apologise for something I never had to forgive her for in the first place.

"I'm fine, Harper."

I feel a bit dizzy, though – who'd have thought? And she clearly feels guilty. Her features are a silent witness to it until I take her by the shoulders and say, "Thank you."

"Thank you?" Repeating it, she shakes her head in disbelief, then her concern snaps right back into anger. She pushes me away and shouts, "How could you ask me to do that, Riddle?" Then she comes after me, like a walking paradox, only to shoo me away from her again with small, angry fists. A weak attempt at a physical impact that quickly dissolves into silent tears once again when I pull her into my arms.

It takes a bit, but at one point eventually peeking up into my face, completely and utterly lost, she whispers, "Who did you do that to already?"

"Told you – don't burden yourself with it. There's more than one way to demand respect …"

"Don't lose yourself in them," she says, her jaw clenching. "Otherwise you'll force me to go down with you."

"You could just let go."

"I could," she agrees. "But I don't want to." Nevertheless her gaze is full of regret when it wanders to our manikin again. It still seems scarred with pain.

Pointing at the doll I ask, "Do you want to deliver it?"

"Yes, but … I can't today … Maybe the room will dissolve it into nothingness?"

I shake my head. "It's three curses it requires us to practise."

She likely needs me to understand normal human emotion just this once, yet I urge her, "An Imperius won't harm it if you don't intend to. Try it."

She twists around in my arm as if I'm the one holding her, then, still in my embrace and with a heavy heart, she eventually whispers, "Imperio!"

The doll rises the very next moment, dancing ballet as light as a feather. Gone the pain, gone its sorrow, oblivious of the past.

"I always wanted to be able to do that," Harper says lost in thought, almost too quiet for me to hear her.

"Pliés and pirouettes?"

"Yes." She sounds so numb it even hurts me. "But it's a lot more straining than the dancers make it look. And the curse hurt you more than you show. I hurt you more than –"

"Harper, stop it," I mumble in her ear, her warm pulse so close to my skin. "You didn't. Come on, smile for me."

She lets go off her Imperius and squares her shoulders in disappointment as the manikin that seemed so merry for a moment falls back into its apathetic state due to my prior torture.

"It's suffering again …"

"You know the words for its salvation," I say.

She hesitates, but eventually she's turning around in my arms again, radiating naive hope. "Why doesn't it just evaporate back into the Room?"

"All good and bad things are three," I reply, "it's required for balance. This room is available to everyone, whether we come with good or bad intentions. That's what you taught me. This room doesn't judge. And if you start practicing an Unforgivable, you have to practise them all."

"How do you know that?" She gulps. "You have done this before, haven't you?"

"Why does that shock you more than me trying to control a raging fire that could burn down the whole castle including you?"

She shrugs, then takes a look at the doll again. "I can't do it. Not today …"

"You can."

"I don't want to," she snaps. "Call it weakness –"

"No, it's not weakness. It's basically your greatest strength."

In silence I send my hopes out that her soul will never stop rebelling against what has long since corrupted mine, then I finish our practice for her.

"Avada Kedavra!"

The greenish, wailing flash seems like an ironic promise of mysticism and wonder, yet it brings only death.

Harper winces, almost motionless as the manikin gradually dissipates into white smoke, high up into the ceilings of the Room of Requirement.

These minutes with me made her feel worse than she'd ever admit, and that, actually, is worse for me than I would have imagined.

"It's cold here," she mumbles, staring into blank space. "Tell me – what's your salvation?"

I think about it, for quite some time even. And as bad as it is for her, all I can come up with is, "You."

"Likely so," she soon shrugs, the scent of cinnamon and honey clouding my mind again. "Because I don't believe it."

"What?"

"That you're darkness. Darkness couldn't keep me this warm."

"My hands are freezing –"

"I'm talking about this," she interrupts me, placing her hand on my chest. She gives me a tired smile, and underneath her touch I feel my own heartbeat.

We keep looking at each other for what feels like eternity, and as much as it makes me forget this world – her skin on mine grounds me once again. In a sobering and yet so elating way.

We don't need to say it, I'm aware that without her I'd have nothing in the world to hold me down. To get me up, to sustain me, to keep me sane.
Nothing to keep me together …

And whether she's aware of it or not, her embrace seems like the answer to all the piercing questions of my life.

Likely that's why I lift her chin and kiss her. Because anyway, no word of appreciation could ever be sufficient, and because I have no choice but to reverently acknowledge that what I feel for her lacks all logic – and is yet true.