Chapter 01: The Veil
When the summer came and classes seemed to drag, Professor Riddle would ditch his robes, roll up his sleeves and do more hands-on lessons outdoors, instead of forcing his students to stay cooped up in the hot castle. It became the norm about the week before exams- they'd finished reviews the week before and he gave his students a well-needed mental break between those harsh study sessions.
"Miss Granger, why don't you pair off with Mr Malfoy- and I swear if I hear one snide comment, I will not hesitate to take points from my own house!" The Head of Slytherin scolded as he gestured for Harry to begin helping Seamus, switching up the pairs for the third time that class. Luckily Draco didn't dare argue and just gave a curt nod before showing Hermione the proper stance to start a duel in.
"Will there be anything on duelling in our final, Professor?" One of the Gryffindors asked and he shook his head in response before suggesting a few more appropriate spells.
"What about-?" He heard Blaise ask but lost whatever he'd been saying when a certain ginger boy was slammed straight into Tom, knocking the professor off his feet. Pushing himself back to his feet and dusting the grass and dirt from his pants he offered a hand out to Ron as he scrambled to his feet, blushing bright red.
"Did you just try to Accio your opponent?" He asked Millie dryly, earning a nervous glance to the side from the girl. Letting out a loud sigh, the professor gave up on keeping order, dismissing the class with a wave of a hand. "Oh, go on, get out of here the lot of you."
They knew him well enough to know that he wasn't angry, rather just exasperated and so each gave excited grins before darting over to one of the trees where they had all dumped their bags.
Ron gave him one more embarrassed smirk before joining the other Gryffindors. "Don't forget to review the study guides for the exam next week!" He called after his class before giving a chuckle and following his students back into the castle.
While the man was in his late sixties, he didn't quite look it, outside of the now obnoxiously prominent silver hairs on his head. Minerva claimed that his hair was still relatively black but that came from a woman who'd begun greying in her thirties, so he tended to take her opinion with a grain of salt. His bag strapped over his chest he smiled as he took the path down to the dungeons, pausing as he passed by one of the open doors and hearing Severus's familiar voice echoing from within. It had taken a few years to break him into actually teaching and not just snapping at students, but he was brilliant at his chosen subject, there was no doubt about that.
Albus had expressed to him that if Riddle was to retire he'd likely pick Severus to take over as the Head of Slytherin. Perhaps that was Albus's way of manipulating Tom into staying on for as long as possible, as he didn't understand handing the position over to a man who had an aversion to younger children. Not that Albus had to worry. He'd likely be on until he was as wizened as the Headmaster himself, wanting to be the one to teach his granddaughter and any others who came along.
Thinking about it like that almost made him feel old, something he tried to avoid as much as possible. It had been so long since he'd been taken on as the Defense against the Dark Arts professor and not shortly after that he'd taken over Horace's job as Head of Slytherin House when the old Potions professor had retired.
No, Albus had nothing to worry about. He didn't ever think he'd want to retire. Hogwarts was the first home he'd ever had, and he wouldn't leave it willingly. Of course, there had been the years after graduation when he'd travelled and hopped from job to job. It had been when Albus owled him to say that Professor Merryweather was finally retiring that he'd owled in his resume and anxiously awaited a reply. Albus, the closest person he'd ever had to a father, or perhaps a batty uncle, hired him almost instantly.
Peeking his head into the Slytherin, he checked in on his snakes to find a few groups working together on homework or reading by the fire. Yeah, Albus didn't have to worry. He couldn't dream of thinking of any other place as home.
It was the first summer probably since before the birth of his daughter where he'd felt truly idle. He'd never understood the idea of "empty nest syndrome", but it was finally hitting him hard that year. TJ had graduated and decided to follow in his father's footsteps and travel, and as a result both Tom and and Minerva were going a bit stir-crazy, not knowing quite what to do with themselves. His older daughter, Morgan, seemed to think was hysterical, but she was occupied with her own daughter.
Not wanting two of his heads of houses to go completely off the handle, Albus had been passing projects off to both him and Minerva- mostly research in regards to things in their own respective fields. Minnie was helping with a book a former student was writing and he had dove head first into some project a contact in the ministry had roped Albus into. There was a recent push for the restoration of ancient magical artefacts and with the push for the merger of more and more muggle technology into wizarding culture, there was a revival of sorts to bring back some of the more ancient magic and rituals to intermingle it. It was fascinating watching the ancient families hosting more pagan rituals to renew magick with the land while also trying to key the electronics in with the wards so they didn't all go haywire- though wizards quietly working in technological companies were making them more resistant overall.
The project that Albus had dragged him in on reminded him almost of Stonehenge for the type of magick it gave off- pulsing at random intervals with no real pattern. Currently housed in one of the sections off from the Department of Mysteries, allowing for outside contractors, as he was officially labelled since he was not an Unspeakable, was an archway of some ancient origin. The stones formed a haphazard archway and had been excavated from the very spot it stood upon, a well-trod path through the archway and a series of runes and notches in between were the only things that distinguished it from any other old castle's remains, along with the pulses of magic and old records from the Department saying that occasionally a portal would appear.
Most of the runes appeared to be from the Nordic runic alphabet, but a few were currently being debated upon the origin since there were a few other cultures they could originate from, but none that made sense in the context of the corresponding runes. Tom had even tried to convince the Head of the Unspeakable to let him take a piece of the stone to have it radiometrically dated to give them a better idea of the timetable they were looking at since many of the diagnostic spells were largely useless, but the Unspeakable refused to budge.
Tom came once a week to run diagnostics, or attempt it, and see if he could find a way to trigger or find a link between the magical pulses, or trigger a way for the portal to open. Even his oldest Grimoires in the Slytherin Gringotts Vault didn't seem to have anything that connected any of it and despite it being a good mystery, Tom was very close to giving up on it entirely and asked them to please move him to something that he could actually be of use with.
And if they didn't he'd quit and go find out what exactly his teenage son was doing in God Knows Where and harass him instead.
Albus was off discussing a potential student exchange program with Beaubatons and Ilvermorny, so that particular day he was alone in the cavernous room. He had his own little badge and everything that said he was allowed to be there, though most of the Unspeakables had been his students once upon a time so all knew him by site, and any who were his age or older knew him by reputation if nothing else.
Morgan had offhandedly quipped to him, "Thank the Phonecians," and that had led him to spiral into learning as much about the parent systems of the runic alphabet, which both Minnie and Morgan had demanded he stop talking about pretty much immediately with Morgan loudly trying to insist to him it was just a joke.
Piece of chalk in hand he drew in different runes into the blank spots- He'd found as much as he could on ancient Phonecian spells, which had him also pulling Greek and Egyptian. It gave him something to work on, but the only issue was that because the Nordic Runes were placed helter-skelter, with no real rhyme or reason, it gave him no clue on where he needed to place whatever was missing, even if he did figure it out. The unidentifiable runes didn't line up with the Phonecian alphabet, but some looked similar enough that he and another Unspeakable had gotten into an hour-long discussion on it if was simply due to a stylistic choice from whoever carved the runes.
The Unspeakables indicated that on only a handful of dates had the arch ever showed a reaction to any sort of probing. Four dates, so be specific. Even then it had only been on chance that someone had been around to record it, so there might have been more than that. The dates and times were written in the file, but they didn't correlate to anything he or Albus recognized and therefore he abandoned these numbers as being erratic, or due to some force he had no information on.
Albus had suggested it could be in reaction to some more muggle-like science, and it was certainly possible but he wasn't exactly the person to deal with it, if that was the case. So instead he took this wild goose chase as far as he could.
He spent hours carefully writing in different runes and alphabets and sigils and attempting to run the diagnostics again but had nothing to show for it. At some point, his stomach had begun complaining and he knew he'd need to pack it up. Cleaning up and gathering the few items he'd strewn about while working in the warehouse, he picked over the small stack of books he'd hauled in, debating if he should leave some instead of dragging them back and forth, but also wondered if he'd need to reference any of them. Ultimately he shrugged and shrunk them all and shoved them back into the bag.
He paused as something shifted in the room- it felt almost humid, like a storm rolling in, but that was impossible, given he was in the middle of the Ministry of Magic and then felt his skin pimple with goosebumps, all the hair on his arms and neck standing on end. He turned and stared, his eyes going wide as he could see the runes on the arch glow ever so slightly.
Quickly tying his hair up, he pulled his notebook from his bag and hurried back over to the arch, quickly scratching down the date and time and pulling his wand out to start the diagnostics again when he spotted something he hadn't noticed before. The previously blank spots on the arch were filled in with more unrecognizable runes and he hurried to start copying them into his notes.
His chest had a sort of heaviness, like a stone weighing him down or like a thunderstorm crowding in on his space with too much energy. He was so enraptured with the details of the runs that glowed he didn't notice something wispy forming in the archway until it nearly touched him and he spied it out of the corner of his eyes.
The gossamer fabric is shimmery in a way that looks like there are either dew drops or something metallic in the thin fabric, catching the light as it flutters gently in a room where should be no wind-
All at once Tom realizes that he can taste it- the static of a thunderstorm and the wet of the rain- the muggle had a word for it but it was escaping him, the runes and the odd weather appearing in an interior location taking up the forefront of his mind.
He paused, his magic reaching out hesitantly around him as he tried to assess what it was he was feeling, and even as the veil fluttered again, not dew then as the fabric was dry and soft like worn threadbare cotton, and as the fabric lingered its touch on his hand he swore he could hear voices- whispers in and around him, not just in the veil, though there is a moment he wondered if they're just echoing through the hall.
A quick look over his shoulder confirmed he was still alone- but he also realized the dim conjured balls of light in the room were not the only light source anymore- the veil was emitting a soft glow, softer than the runes, almost moonlit.
He released the ethereal fabric, took a step back and was immediately hit with a harsh gust of wind, the veil rising and smacking him in the face. The knotted and uneven ground did nothing to aid him and he stumbled back and then overcorrected himself, thrashing forward, trying to regain his composure.
With the veil in his face he doesn't realize he's stepped into the archway and he reaches for something, anything, the veil, the stone arch itself to steady him and then the ground goes out from underneath his feet and he feels like he is falling, though up for down he is not sure, the breath caught in his throat as sure as it would had he been dropped in the deepest part of the ocean.
It was so dark and bright- two things he'd never thought could be conflated but here he was, suspended. Then time moved and he was slammed to the ground.
A/N: Hi y'all I'm back with a vengeance and I'm here to make it everyone else's problem. As you can see we had a slight name change, and while I will leave the original Empathetic up for viewing, Empathy will be the rewrite for it and receive all of the updates. As I fleshed this version of Tom out more and established his canon some minor details about him changed from the original version of Empathetic, the most notable and obvious is I renamed his daughter from Lilith to Morgan because I picked Lilith because of the biblical and magical connotations and then realized that Lilith and Lily were way too fucking close and Oh My God Why the FuCK Did I Do That? I was not super attached to it as a name and Morgan has more magical connotation so that's done. You'll see a reference to Tommy in here which was not included in the original because I was trying to be clever and make it a plot point that gets brought up later and it just Does Not Make Sense to do it that way. It was stupidly convoluted so that's gone as well. From there, any other changes I will leave up to speculation as it's mostly plot relevant at that point and you'll have to read to figure it out. Idk how quickly I will get any of these chapters out outside of the first four or five, as I'm still working on my own original writing, which takes priority, but also Compassion as well.
As I've mentioned in other updates on Compassion, I have 2-year-old twin sons and I still work full time in addition to being their primary caregiver, but have re-written the first five chapters of Empathy which will be posted weekly and then after than may be sporadic, but these are not abandoned and should I decide to, I will post the final notes for how I planned out the remainder of the series because why not.
Until next week, mugglefuckers.