I Despise, Chaotica
You want what's in my head
You wanna tap my well
You want the secret trick
Behind my magic spell
You want my knowledge base
Only without the sweat
You wanna borrow me
Except without the debt
You wanna reap rewards
From my blood and tears
Everything I gave to you
It saved you but it destroyed me
I despise takers and the apathetic
Cold-hearted, under-educated
And unsympathetic
I despise self-fulfilling egocentrics
Self-righteous, shallow-minded
Ignorant and phallocentric
On the morning of the twenty-first, he took himself, under the cloak, to the Forbidden Forest. He stopped a little way in to remove it, he hadn't been comfortable revealing his presence to the staff or the Death Eaters that patrolled the grounds and the school, instead, he spent most of his time invisible, watching them. Voldemort had left Hogwarts the same day he'd tried to eavesdrop, and Harry had heard nothing from anyone since. He'd arranged for Dobby to bring his meals to the Common Room to avoid the hall. He'd been rabbiting away from all thoughts of the too-real dreams. Tom, annoyingly, had not been avoiding it, purposefully -and, Harry thought, pointlessly- thinking about it as though showing it to Harry.
When he questioned it, he got nothing but amusement in response.
Cassiopeia would occasionally hover outside the Gryffindor tower, then apparently decide against coming inside. Which Harry was grateful for, he didn't feel much like talking to anyone.
'Least of all, you,' Harry added mentally.
In response, Tom smiled slowly and pointedly with Harry's mouth, "Liar."
Harry sat heavily on a tree root and frowned. He smoothed the leaf litter, creating a clear circle in the dirt while his jaw worked. He'd tried to feel guilty. He'd tried to summon shame and regret, but he only felt those things when he realised that he didn't, in a far smaller portion than would be appropriate. Even the fact that he had likely won the war for the Dark Lord singlehandedly didn't do much to summon the feelings he wanted to feel, the savage, howling vindication was blocking his view of the rest of it. Tom's righteous thrill at the thought that it happened; that they had done it; that Dumbledore was gone, and the school belonged -technically speaking- to him, would make him laugh without warning, a shock of a sound. Harry would walk around cackling then flinching.
"When you said that Cassiopeia… That she wouldn't be-" Harry was careful about broaching the subject of the vampire, though there was no anger from Tom at the question.
"She is an idealist. She believes in perfect equality. In unwavering fairness, even to those who are… Commonly deemed less deserving. When I first rose to power, I found myself in a position where I had to choose. The beliefs of my followers, something that I could not then change, or Cassiopeia. I- did not choose her."
"…And she said that he's changed… You said that she wouldn't be here unless…"
"She would not, could not, forsake her blood status. He must have changed his mind."
'Why… Why would he change his mind? It just doesn't… Make sense,' Harry asked in his head, but Tom didn't answer.
Harry thought about the Dark Lord's rapid consolidation of power, the sheer number of Death Eaters at his easy beck and call. The Ministry had fallen, the school was his. Almost certainly Harry's doing; a cataclysmic catalyst.
"What… Next?"
A bubble of desire formed in his stomach and vanished before he could examine it.
"We are not done, by a margin."
He had grown curious about the two names he didn't recognize but hadn't seen them in person around the castle. They bizarrely spent most of their time in the Slytherin Common Room, which Harry paced outside, debating. It was late, but he didn't want to sleep.
Curiosity had seldom won him prizes but he whispered the door open regardless, glad that it moved silently aside for him as he crept down the stairs to where he knew Eris Jager and Avalon Delacroix were sitting.
He held his breath as he listened, though they seemed to be discussing something innocuous. They were his age, roughly, in Slytherin uniform, although the girl, Avalon, only wore the tie on top of her plain robes, undone and draped over her shoulders. She had deep, dark skin, black dreadlocks heaped on her head, spilling over her shoulders, and a moderately thick French accent.
Eris, dirty blonde, shoulder length unruly hair, lightly tan, a barely there German accent, and a sullen look on his face.
"Cedrum did not say we would see the lake from underneath," she held her tie in both hands and slid it back and forth on her neck.
"Expecting transparency from dear father?" Eris sounded bored.
She laughed, melodic, "Maybe he is not so transparent with you because you are a fool."
Eris made a 'blah blah blah' motion with one hand, "Could be, maybe it is that he is the idiot."
"Bitter. I have been excited to see the British wizards. Je parie qu'ils sont beaux," she fanned herself then giggled.
"Until their smarmy little Dark Lord falls and we're fugitives again, Avalon."
She tsked, shook her head and stood up, "We will make bets in the morning. Sleep, brother."
She left Eris alone, and he sat stock still in the Common Room for longer than Harry stayed. He saw the boy on the map hours later, unmoved, while he himself continued to avoid sleep.
"Okay… Who is Cedrum?" Harry finally asked.
'Cedrum Widrich is a powerful true necromancer. It appears he has gained a few apprentices since last I saw him.'
Harry was immediately nervous, he hadn't thought that the Dark Lord would bring the necromancer he and Cassiopeia discussed into the school, "Is he here because of Ginny?"
"Yes. Obviously."
He had been sitting in the Common Room a few days later, staring into the dormant fireplace while his thoughts chased themselves in a circle when Cassiopeia finally came through the portrait hole.
"Ah," she said when she saw him, hesitating in the frame before she resolutely sat down, "I half expected you to be dead in here, what with all the hiding."
Tom scoffed but they said nothing.
"How are you doing champ?" Her tone was an attempt at light, but it was made strange by her vampire face in the warm and cheerful Gryffindor Common Room.
"Excellent," Harry said with no inflection.
"Fantastic," Tom said genuinely, one eyebrow raised.
"Well, you've surpassed my expectations," she smirked.
"No doubt," Tom said, "Is there something you wanted?"
"Oh, just to look at you. Confirm life. Is there something you wanted?"
"...No," Tom said, then thought, 'I think we are quite content,' there was teasing in it, because it was largely, strangely, true.
'Fuck off,' Harry thought anyway, uncomfortable.
"You'll let me know if there are… Any problems?" She said, already standing.
Tom gave her a sharp nod and she left them alone.
'Fuck off?'
'Yeah. Fuck off.'
"Distasteful," Tom said in Parseltongue as he stood up.
Harry knew Tom didn't like it when he swore -or when anyone did- even though he was prone to dropping one when he was furious. So, Harry had begun to use it as a tool to repel him from engaging, something he seemed more and more interested in doing, the longer they were left alone.
"Let's go then," he hissed, collecting the cloak and map, ignoring Harry's silent questioning as he ducked out of the portrait hole.
"Where… Hey. Where are we going?" He tried less silent questioning.
'I want to show you something.'
Harry was immediately wary but got no further information as Tom carried them to the dungeons, then into the Slytherin Common Room, empty of the two new students. Tom made his way to the far wall, in between the two grand fireplaces, and ran his hand over the top of a small, engraved snake; then pricked a thumb on its fangs and let the blood bloom on the head of the serpent.
"Open," he whispered, and the copper wall panel shifted, clunking mechanically as it revealed a spiral staircase descending into the darkness. He took them down without hesitation, two at a time as though they were the stairs to his childhood home. They emerged in a narrow, rounded tunnel, one that was familiar immediately.
"The… Chamber? I've seen the Basilisk; I'm sure the skeleton is…"
"Have you ever shut up?" Tom took them confidently through the winding tunnels until he stopped them at a broken statue, shattered from the waist up, serpents winding around the legs, missing their heads somewhere in the rubble at their feet.
He squeezed them behind it, through a narrow gap Harry hadn't seen.
Tom let out a breath neither knew they'd been holding when they broke through the crevice from behind another statue, this one intact, and took in the vast room before them. A ceiling so high Harry couldn't find it, blackness bleeding down the cut stone walls so that it looked infinite, like an empty night sky. Three tall bookshelves stood like pillars, the tops of them disappeared into the dark above. columns wound with serpents rose on either side of the cavern, also vanishing at a height. He could hear water running, and soft music, as though a harp played somewhere. The room was not cold, nor was it damp. There was no source of light, but it was lit in a familiar dull green glow.
'The books are protected from the elements here,' Tom told him, finally moving them toward the shelves, their heart pounding with his excitement, 'They cannot be removed- I have tried.'
'Of course, you did,' Harry flicked his gaze around the room while Tom tried to look at the books.
There was a harp playing, next to a set of black chaise lounges, a desk with a high-backed wooden chair, and a small, round stone table he hadn't seen from his angle at the entrance. There was another door at the far side of the room, tall, narrow, and rusted, decorated with thin intertwining snakes and runes he didn't recognize. Tom grabbed the book he'd been looking for and sat them down on one of the couches, though Harry wouldn't let him read it, his eyes still darting about the room. They landed on the stone table in front of them, and he leaned forward to get a better look at what was carved into it.
Corvinus Gaunt, then underneath, smaller, neater: Tom Riddle.
Harry inspected what Tom was feeling as he tried to return their attention to the thick book in his hands.
"This place was a- solace. Slytherin's Scriptorium. I thought the castle would be… But it quickly became…" A dozen thoughts bubbled at once, then were reigned in, "I thought I would fit. Somewhere. Here… At Hogwarts. When I did not…" He shook their head while Harry stayed quiet.
"The school was more like home- than… but I was shunned here, too. When I asked Dumbledore whether it was normal, to talk to snakes, whether I was- normal… He did not take the opportunity to warn me. He looked at me and decided-" He took a long, uneven breath, "I had few points of reference, for what was… Regular, expected, for a child; or a wizard; and so, I came to Hogwarts as myself…"
"How old were you, when you first found this place?" Harry asked, barely whispering as he locked his eyes on the name carved into the stone.
"Thirteen."
Harry was quiet as he considered this, wondered if things would have been the same for him, if he had revealed himself as a Parseltongue sooner.
"No. Harry. Think. He knew I - you- we- were a Horcrux, possibly from the start. He was never going to shun you, only raise you for cooperative slaughter. You were a tool, a problem to be solved, destined to join -or, he hoped, destroy- the darkest wizard of our time. He was always going to manoeuvre you. I was an orphan who happened to descend from Slytherin, who had already begun… Returning lashes. There was no reason to hide his distaste."
Harry started at that, and realised at once that it must be true. He'd known that the headmaster knew the prophecy and that knowledge would have impacted how he treated Harry, in his efforts to corral him in the right direction… But the way he'd kept him weak, put him in front of the Dark Lord repeatedly, carefully, likely in hopes that Voldemort would destroy his soul fragment in the process… The way he was always looking for it in his head, not alarmed by all the strange links between him and Voldemort…
'But… He didn't know about the Horcruxes until we got the memory from Slughorn?'
"Knowing for certain and assuming for sport are different but functionally the same."
When Harry closed his eyes, he could see the look on the headmaster's face as he raised him off the ground and…
"…I fear we shall never come to an accord. I cannot persuade even one of them to listen to reason. I had dared hope that Godric's thoughts aligned with my own; that he understood why the calibre of students needed to be exceptional. But he has fallen prey to the ridiculous notion that Muggle-borns are somehow as capable as pure-bloods…" Tom read aloud from the book in his lap; at first from memory and then by sight when Harry opened his eyes, handwritten on archaic paper.
"Godric and Salazar were close. From childhood, you know," he added in English.
"Is that like… Slytherin's diary?"
"Astute as usual."
"Do you still believe that… Muggle-borns are… Not as capable?"
"If I am truthful Harry, I never considered it to be the case."
"So, why…"
"There was a gap to bridge. Between what I wanted and how I would get it. As a descendant of Slytherin, a Parseltongue, with my history… It was set in stone."
"And what do you want? …Really? What's the goal?"
"Power; Never to feel powerless again. To keep it safe, once it is mine."
Not all the adrenaline was Tom's, though Harry couldn't understand why he was suddenly sweating. He swallowed repeatedly, unsure which one of them was nervous or why.
"…If we had of used the main entrance to the Scriptorium, we would have died," Tom said it conversationally, but Harry's heartbeat was giving both away. He still couldn't understand where the nerves were coming from.
"I- what?" Harry said when he finally registered what he'd said. He knew he was being distracted, but it was working.
"It requires two people. One to cast the Cruciatus and one to receive it. Otherwise, you are locked in, just outside that far door. As far as I know, Noctua Gaunt's body is still there."
"…What," there was a long pause.
"…I want to- I have been…" Tom stumbled over his words, bringing Harry's attention away from the apparent skeleton on the other side of the barbaric door, "I want to- to thank you. I know that you did not… Do what- do what you did… for me, -that you did not return to the school for me- but I am here because-"
"We both needed it," Harry interrupted his clear discomfort.
"Ugh, always with the Inferius and never wanting to discuss the beauty of a plain one," Avalon poured herself juice while Harry watched them in the Great Hall from under his cloak.
It was the first time he'd returned to it since he'd… He inhaled sharply and pushed the thoughts away. Too wild and large and insane to hold in his hands or head. He refocused instead on the strange pair across from him at the Slytherin table.
"Inferi are efficient, Av. One thousand inferi or two puppet corpses, I know what I pick every time."
"Yegh, but they are gross, and they have no finer control. Stinky, stumbling, indirect, foul, affreux, et horrible," she shook her head and glanced at the staff while she sipped her juice.
Harry followed her gaze there, though he already knew that Snape and Rosier were the only ones present at the early hour.
"Squeamish and boring," Eris said.
"Ah! What is fun about a horde of barely controllable ghouls? There is art in the fresh ones. Skill."
"If you insist," he said, but he didn't seem to agree as he dunked his toast in his tea, which made Harry frown harder than their subject matter.
'This… Cedrum… And the Dark Lord's- interest in Ginny- What do you know about the necromancer?' Harry wondered in his head.
Harry could feel Tom searching for specificity in his question, so he added, 'Is he- awful? Will she be okay if- if she were taught by him… Is necromancy- I mean…'
'Necromancy is considered a dark art. So, if you are asking me if it is wise for her to get entrenched in it… Of course, you know I would say yes. She is gifted, I do not think she should deny it. Would she be shunned and suffer as a result if her family and friends knew? Yes, Harry, obviously. Will she be in danger if she joins the Dark Lord? Yes. Is she already in danger? Yes. We made sure that she would have a choice, no matter how grim. Cedrum and his apprentices will be useful to me regardless of Ginny's decision. Cedrum is… Unique, but he is not overly cruel.'
'Useful… To… You?'
'…To Lord Voldemort.'
'…Right.'
(AN: Me looking at Eris looking at you looking at Eris looking at me looking at you ;) (Why did he dip his toast in tea I was baffled.))