What he built on hallowed ground (Interlude)
“You don’t have to enjoy it so much.” He said coldly as she laid out the stones at the edge of the circle. To the east and to the west.
He stood high and regal as she stooped in her dark corseted robe with shredded arms and skirt.
“The don’t come to see you, darling boy.” She rose and swayed toward him, drawing her finger and long nail beneath his jaw.
He neither stiffened or moved forward, but his eyes tracked her every movement, and she smiled slowly at him, lighting incense with a wave of her hand, her eyes locked.
“Are you ready to call them?”
Tom nodded, not breaking eye contact. She had said his emotions must be pure when they summoned. He filled his mind with the ecstasy and thrill of the dark, his mastery, and consuming desire for power. But something was missing. The usual sureness of himself that he knew the most in the room, impossible with her as his guide. He detested the weakness in himself. But all in due time, he thought.
They stood in the middle of the room and all else was cast in shadow. The green pale light from their wands, touched at the tip emanated enough to illuminate their faces, but the same spell had produced a thick black smoke that had filled the rest of the room with an impenetrable darkness.
Tom stared at the light. From it was emanating screams and sounds. Figures started to appear around, emerging from the darkness. It was The Horde. Tom straightened, glancing about.
Nagini’s face was light with joy and she was calling to them sensuously. “Come, all you who dwell in darkness. You will now worship me.”
Tom held his gaze on the light, he could feel the figures stir and inch closer. Sounds started as a whisper and grew into screams. The visions would come soon and he held on to his shaking wand, face a mask of determination.
Nagini started swaying. Her skin-tight robes were torn by shadowed hands, exposing her bit by bit. Tom looked impassively, feeling his back tingle with a desire to turn and start blasting.
Nagini’s eyes caught his as she was finally fully disrobed and a loud voice rushed up.
‘Time. You must go back in time.’
The one who spoke was a shadowy figure of a man Tom recognized. He almost jumped in startled recognition and wonder.
Here was the thread of the answer he was seeking. They needed to follow this on, to focus deeper, to ask more questions.
“Why?” He said, loudly, over the rushing sounds, “Travel to when?”
Nagini wasn’t paying attention. Since she had not gone to Hogwarts, she would not know this man with his foreboding stare and fiercely pointed beard. But Tom would recognize him anywhere. His hero and namesake: Slytherin.
The man’s form did a strange lap facing the center of the circle, rotated around them with a perfect indifference of gaze. But instead of responding to Tom’s pleading questions, he was fading out.
Nagini was not watching or paying attention to anything going on outside of her body, Tom broke his eyes away from the form of Slytherin. He felt a creeping sense at these premonitions.
Nagini was right at home with these shadowy hands all over her, bringing her to raptures. And Tom felt cold and numb and angry at it all.
He was trying to get more information and she was throwing off the magic.
”When do I travel to reach the aims I seek?” He shouted over all the movements.
Other worldly sounds answered him, but they were incoherent. They echoed around the room in a deep bass, throbbing and hollow sounding. Gnawing and high pitched. The circling bald and bearded man had vanished and in his stead were vaunted and tall creatures of man, shouting.
Tom felt rage spike in his stomach.
“Enough!” He shouted through the chaos, ripping back his wand.
The apparitions didn’t disappear. The fog didn’t let up. The sounds grew louder and hands reached out to try to grab him, to pull him down to the floor.
Nagini looked around, bewildered as the sensations had left her body, and grew angry when she saw Riddle stumble, starting to cast spells, eyes darting around as if to attempt to run from the circle. The fool!
She never thought to tell him it would be dangerous to break out of the circle because she never thought he would make such a foolish attempt.
Riddle looked at her with a fleeting panic as he was unable to resist any longer.
“Recompense and all is one. Hallowed ground your work is done.” She intoned, layering her voice through multiple octaves.
The dark forms abated and the dark walnut walls lit with lamps and ambient light.
Tom lay face down on the earthen floor, breathing heavily, stirring the dirt with his breathe and drawing some into his lungs. He exhaled hard, his eyes burning and a rage once again rushing over him.
“You,” he said, looking up, feeling blood drip below his lip and run onto his chin.
Nagini stood, impassable, challenging. Her chin haughty, daring him to challenge her.
He knew what she thought. That he was on the floor and breathing heavy, she would easily win.
But how foolish she was. He shot up from the ground, black smoke billowing behind him, and she blasted a wall of rock at him, turning on the spot to dodge whatever he had for her next, he shot fire around the rock and blasted through it in two moments of impulse. The rock around him clattered on his shield and fell to the floor.
Nagini had sent water to deluge the fire and it had soaked through his robes.
“You foolish wench!” He shouted. “I grow tired of your childish ways.”
She cackled loudly, still naked, her clothing in tatters. She sent a shower of sparks at him.
“Dance little Tommy boy,” She shouted gleefully.
She wasn’t artful. She wasn’t athletic. Her naked body was an uninteresting shape to him. Sure, she still looked young, but Tom could see the decades she was his senior in the lines around her eyes. Tom detested her complete adequacy in every fashion. In his anger, he wanted to play with her, force her to sweat. And she still had no idea of his real power. She was useful.
With no plausibility remaining for escalating his attack on her, he subsided, sending one last blast of smoke to obscure his departure from the room. He needed time away from this foolish woman, but charming her would not allow that.
Perhaps he could find another summoner, but he had already spent two years to finding Nagini.
She had opened the door to follow him into the bedroom, her footsteps lighter. He mastered every reserve he had to pull the veil of indifference down to shroud his mind.
”Shall we rest, my serpent king?”