Embryo

Time is always with you; you carry it wherever you go, and it carries you. — Dark (2017)

I

What is a wand?

Wandlore alludes to it; that brotherhood which burns between wix and wand. The books would name it a tool, a means. Worse, a conduit. Never the incestuous truth of it.

To Tom Riddle, there is little so precious as a wand, his dear Yew heart. He knows it with every sense, with all his faculties; yes, by touch, and by taste too, the smoothness of its tip on his tongue, the grooves that fit on his teeth and white, come to life like the bright bone of his knuckles beneath his skin. They are one; one inside the other, the mating of wood and flesh and lifesblood.

Brotherhood? No.

Lovers.

And if the Wand is his lover, Tom thinks, then Hogwarts is their bed.

He sees her upon her velvet hill, peering over Scottish cliffs and through the windows of the Hogwarts Express, and Tom sits in cold-blooded, coiled anticipation, in the fading light of dusk flaring off her towers, a burning promise. It is a welcome comfort, the dragging lurch of the train along its vertebrae tracks, bringing him closer, closer… He breathes with her, those great, stone walls seemingly expanding out to meet him, a mother’s sigh, a chord low and vibrating that runs from his heels to the most delicate of membranes in his lungs, and he wonders–why did he ever leave in the first place?

True, his days ahead will be filled not only with languid afternoons indulging in theorem or philosophique, but with NEWT preparations, Prefect responsibilities, and the innumerable tasks that flock to him out of his excellence. But as the train pulls hard into Hogsmeade Station, brakes shrieking, momentum rippling compartment to compartment, Tom cannot help but to wish that spinal cord track would run all the way to the Great Hall itself.

They rattle within the train a few moments more, then with great force, it stops. Sighs.

Tom is home.

Hogwarts sits deeply entrenched in her earthian throne, and Tom once more savours the high vault of her windows, the huff of her chimney bones. Her steps rise up to meet him, draw him in to be overtaken by her open doors. Is this how an embrace feels, he wonders. He thinks it might be so. Better, even.

The day’s last light falls through the stained glass windows in iridescence, submerging his fellow students’ faces in strange carnival shades. It is the sheer splendour of the thing that Tom relishes; this effortless radiance of Magic over Mundane, this blood and power that pounds through him, through her. Like to like. Any one day at Hogwarts may be filled with thousands of these shared moments of simple wonder between them; heir and throne.

He's vowed to himself he'll never live otherwise.

Inside the Great Hall, his peers fall around him in the crowd, Walburga Black to his left and Raynaldus Lestrange to his right.

“Tom Riddle must be in love for a complexión so florid,” Walburga Black says, as though every word imparts a secret unveiled. Her dark, hooded eyes study him, searching him an discernable difference a summer away may bring. What does she find, Tom wonders, that she discovers love?

“I am,” he admits without reluctance, and Hogwarts' candle light croons on his skin, the sizzle of oil lamp kisses his ear lobe, and all the tapestries seem to shiver at his approach. He is at once eclipsed and unveiled, the dull chill of King’s Cross so far away now: banished by purest Magic. It hums as blood within him, his birthright, and is in that moment, Everything.

No more is he himself alone, but All; sated, lethargic. He breathes with every inhale of the castle's stonework, exhales and tastes rain and moss.

He seats himself when he can no longer neglect the goings on around him, lost as he is in the splendour of the castle, and like scales falling around him, his peers follow suit. The faces which surround him at Slytherin table are familiar and content, eager to meet with one another, share their news and learn accordingly. They will take issue with one another eventually, fight as people are wont to do, but for now, all is cordial marry-making.

“But who is so deserving of Riddle's love, we must ask?” Walburga continues.

She sits across from him, the collar of her robes flared like a King Cobra's throat, adorned in scales and emeralds, and drips like a slow syrup on the Slytherin table. Her presence is not to be denied, as she has known well since birth her own importance. From her dark-painted lips, she banishes the drum of a Welcome Feast by her voice alone, drawing the attention of all around her.

She is not beautiful like a Rowena or a Helga, a beauty which bids comfort and inspires envy. Rather, she is shaped in angles and burns with a visible danger. She drapes herself with careless arrogance across the table, coiled like a serpent that for all she appears placid and content. It is an illusion, that stillness; Walburga is always ready to strike, teeth first.

“Walburga, please,” Abraxas Malfoy complains, an Englishman when he finds something vulgar, and a Frenchman when something is to his taste. Love, particularly on a woman’s tongue, can only be vulgar.

“Tom Riddle could only tolerate love for someone identical to himself,” Ignatius Prewett quips. He is, to the top of his copper crown, obsequious; a handsome rogue. He laughs in gales and holds no regard for a Malfoy's reservations.

Thadeus Nott disagrees. “No one dislikes anyone more than himself. Riddle must be enamoured with a Gryffindor.”

Raynaldus Lestrange sighs from Tom's left, his patience not unlimited. “No more about love, enough!”

“Raynaldus has no time for our childish fancies—now that he returns from summer with a moustache—”

“Walburga,” Lestrange protests.

“But your facial hair is sparse still, and we are all friends here, is it not so? We know very well who you love,” she claims, lips sly as Lestrange's face appears to burn. The attention of the table turns to him as they await a rejoinder, but he has a keen instinct and averts his gaze. He would never cross a Miss Walburga Black. An accomplished dueller though he is, Walburga is, perhaps, the only student in Hogwarts who can more than out-duel him, even if her wand snapped in two.

Lestrange adopts a pinched expression and holds his tongue. Magnanimous, glutted on love, Tom deigns to save him.

“You are all wrong, and,” Tom smiles as a hush ripples over the tables Four, and a small crowd of soon-to-be-magicians stumbles into the chamber like a herd spooked, “You are all right.”

“Tom is in love with enigma,” Miss Black concludes in a conspiring whisper.

He concedes with an indulgent smile, and inclines his chin to the ceremony at hand.

Deputy Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, tall, hair pouring fire from his crown to his ocean robes, steps before the huddled First Years, equipped with a long scroll. It cascades down the stone steps from atop which he stands, a seemingly endless parade of parchment. He clears his throat and smiles reassuringly at the youngest of them.

“Welcome, welcome, students and teachers! Welcome, First years! We humbly invite you to our school, where all things are possible. Perhaps you’ll be a potioneer, or discover a love for charms. Perhaps one of you will be our future Prime Minister!”

Lestrange scoffs, evidently not as impressed with the potential of the children gathered at the front of the hall as Dumbledore.

“Whatever you may choose, we at Hogwarts are here to teach you. When you hear your name, please come forward to be sorted. Ackleby, Jonothan!”

The first child is swimming in his ill-tailored robes, but their over-large size is naught compared to his grin.

“And what enterprises did you take this season, Riddle?” Lestrange inquires, fingers self-consciously brushing his thin moustache. He looks at Tom with a face open and expecting, never for a moment doubting Tom’s genius and glory.

Tom is obliging. “I encountered mind magics.”

“The Imperius?” Prewett lurches toward him, half laying a hand in his pudding dish at his own urgency.

“Don't be so dull-minded, Ignatius,” Walburga laughs. “Legilimency.”

Prewett's rebuttal, no doubt one of fantastical, verbal brilliance, is lost in the swell of Dumbledore's voice as he calls another name. It is an apt summation of the man, as Professor Albus Dumbledore repeatedly brandishes the ability to out-speak his students while having simultaneously managed to say nothing at all.

“Barnabus, Julia!”

The girl bounces forward, nearly tripping.

“I was once that perfect image of hopeful youth,” Walburga wistfully curls her fingers in the air, perhaps imagining, perhaps, the feel of the little girl's hair between them.

“Your smile was never so sweet,” Malfoy mutters, looking away and acting on all accounts as though his own mouth weren't the insult’s origin.

The Sorting Hat booms, “Hufflepuff!”

Walburga offers Malfoy an acidic smile, one he’s well earned, and his buttery self-satisfaction curdles on his face.

The Sorting proceeds uninterrupted, and is at last concluded with the welcome speech.

Headmaster Armando Dippet is a composed, if dull, sort of man, well-meaning, harmless, and of some notable stature in Wizarding Britain. His credentials lie largely in diplomacy, and his infallible ability to address nothing of importance and everything of obvious mundanity.

“Another term begins!” Headmaster Dippet greets them. “How good it is to see you all. I know a wonderful term is ahead of us, one where we will strive to fulfil our potential and hone our talents, form friendships, and play lots of Quidditch too. I encourage you to embrace life here in the school, for in doing so, you will surely forge bonds that last beyond a lifetime!”

He continues ad nauseum, waxes poetic on the cherished history of inter-House relations, extolling a glorious House companionship that exists in no version of Hogwarts Tom has ever seen.

He predictably says nothing on the heightening division amongst students in direct correlation to the war with Germany, the influx of foreign immigrants into Magical Britain’s dwindling territory, or the resulting economic and infrastructural strains. To Tom, this is Dippet’s greatest misdeed, to avoid any concern not directly related to the school and worse, to never encourage discourse on worldly matters. Neutrality. Censorship. What could be more contemptuous than these?

“A reminder,” Headmaster Dippet says as he finishes his speech, “that curfew is at eight in the evenings, and all students are expected to be in their own Common Rooms or dorms by that time.”

“If only all of Grindelwald's men were tucked into bed by twilight, there’d be no need for war at all,” Walburga sighs.

“My mother was in Marburg,” Lestrange whispers, visibly strained and no longer capable of keeping such a morsel to himself. And as expected with this announcement, he secures the table’s attention and exults under their scrutiny. “There aren't five months left to my seventeenth birthday, but she still wouldn't permit me to accompany her. Imagine. seeing Grindelwald's elites, directly.”

“Germany?” Ignatius Prewett inquires.

“Is there another Marburg of note?” Cordillia Rosier sniffs. She is a willowy girl with straw-like blonde hair, a Sixth year.

Thadeus Nott shifts in his seat, uncomfortable.

Tom recalls the early summer months wherein, perusing the Daily Prophet, Nott’s family portrait had graced the front page. Now that the tide has turned and the German front is scattering with every blow, the names of Grindelwald’s saboteurs, spies, and co-conspirators are leaking like a sieve, Nott’s father included. Though Nott, Sr.’s guilt in that matter is yet to be decided, it is not the treason that has Thadeus looking so ill.

“Steady on, Nott,” Rosier sneers. “It's scarcely any fault of Grindelwald's that your father’s invited scrutiny on himself.”

Over Prewett's furious exclamations in Nott’s defence and Malfoy's delicate laughter, Tom watches the approach of a familiar hefty figure squeezing himself between the aisles of the long dining tables, much to the chagrin of the students seated there. With beady eyes and a mottled countenance that is no doubt due to the excessive consumption of brandy, Professor Horace Slughorn smiles as he sees Tom and makes his way towards him.

“We mustn’t dwell in the past,” Tom hastens to say to the table at large. Let them put away their musings on Germany, Grindelwald, or any other dangerous topics for the remainder of dinner. “We must instead turn our attention to the Term ahead. I'm sure we all completed our summer reading.”

“Of course,” Abraxas replies, eager to play along, an always arrogant but good dog. “Edward Tatum's journals on the magical qualities found in bread bacteria were… oh, so stimulating.”

Lestrange snorts a laugh, and Tom marvels at their small-mindedness.

Tatum has illuminated what was previously dark, shining a light on molecular and gene behaviour. The possibilities alone in Tatum's One Gene-One Enzyme discovery, not only in Potions but in the nature of Transfiguration and spell crafting itself are unending; the minor, but all-important, nuances of change an object can undergo, before it fundamentally is no longer that object, and whether or not that change happens visually first or last… Can they not envision the implications of such findings before simple bread?

Ah, but that is why Tom is the shepherd, and they, the flock.

“It is a pity,” Malfoy continues, relishing his own short-sightedness. “All of our neighbours in Europe are undergoing scholastic revolution, and meanwhile we read about bread. I have never been so reduced.”

“Reduced? You? The only minority you can claim, Malfoy, is that of the uncommonly wealthy,” Lestrange scoffs. “We can see it has been treating you ill.”

Perhaps the greatest offence Headmaster Dippet’s reduced scholarly conditions have ever inflicted upon Malfoy is his stringent campus regulations on enchanted items. In this case, the injury is to Malfoy's prized wand sheath, an ebony cane with a white silver cobra's head as a capping, its eyes encrusted emerald; banned from campus. It is an injury Malfoy never fails to invoke. He is instead forced, along with the menial horde, to carry his wand within the pockets of his robes.

None in poor Malfoy's acquaintanceship have confessed, but they must silently admit gratitude to Dippet's policies. The staff is unforgivably tacky.

Malfoy smiles charmingly at Lestrange, a politician's gleaming smile, as their Head of House finally manages to reach them.

“Who wouldn’t be excited by moulding bread?” Prewett mutters sarcastically.

“Indeed, indeed!” Horace Slughorn interjects loudly, a mottled stain of red high on his cheeks and nose. Several heads turn towards him upon this disturbance before returning their attention back to Dippet's continued droning. “We must give thanks to that moulded bread, for with it we have the foundations of transformative magic, all of which we will thoroughly discuss in our class. But to the matter at heart!”

“Please, Professor, we are all too eager to hear,” Walburga says silkily, and there are a series of patronising smiles, each at their professor’s expense, which become smothered secretly behind hands.

“Tom, my boy,” Professor Slughorn says, clapping a heavy hand down on Tom’s shoulder, affording himself liberties he has not earned. It is noted, filed away in an encyclopaedia of slights that Tom will one day bring to account. As it is, Tom simply smiles for now, an ingratiating, indulgent smile, as though Slughorn were one of Tom’s many admirers. “I've a start of term task for you, young man; an exciting one at that!”

“Yes?”

“We beg you, Professor, we are all in suspense,” Prewett goads, instigating another round of hidden smirks.

“I present to you, with pleasure, Hogwarts’ very first transfer student! Mr… er—Henderson, no, Harold? Blast—Harri…”

Slughorn pulls a slip of parchment out of the inner pockets of his robes.

“Harrison!”

“Hello.”

They startle, even Professor Slughorn, who, despite having just introduced this Mr. Harrison, seems as though in between those short seconds, he’d forgotten—

For beside Professor Slughorn, as though he’d been standing there the entire time, there is a boy.

Tom's first glimpse of him, as he takes leave of his seat, as Slughorn takes a clumsy step to the side, the last moments of sun passing beneath the windows, is plain. There is sellotape wrapped around the bridge of circular spectacles, which rest slightly crooked upon the boy’s face, perhaps due to a once-shattered vomer or the misfortune of being born with asymmetrical features. Non-Neoplatonism.

Though he tries, he cannot make out the details of the boy’s face in the low candlelight of the Great Hall, only the peak of a soft, white ear amidst black—wholy black— curls, and as Tom takes a step forward, a strange and urgent compulsion driving him, the boy stumbles back.

Transfer student?

“Hello,” Tom says dryly. What had Professor Slughorn said his name was? Tom is struggling to recall.

“This is Tom Riddle,” Professor Slughorn continues with enthusiasm. “One of our brightest stars here at Hogwarts, top of his class and Prefect of Slytherin House. Great things lie ahead for him, and there’s no one better to show you the ropes. Tom, Mr. Harold—Harper—I mean, Harrison will be joining yourself and the other Sixth year Slytherins. You will guide him through the term, yes?”

“Tom…” the boy tries, slow and thoughtful, then says no more.

“It would be our pleasure,” Walburga interrupts, her sharp eyes on this new curio. “We welcome any lost lamb to the flock.”

If the flock were wolves, perhaps, Tom laughs to himself, but he too nods his acquiescence to their professor.

“Capital, capital!” Professor Slughorn says happily. “Then I leave you all to become better acquainted.”

He beams at them one last time before turning back and making his retreat between the students and back to the professor’s table.

Tom watches him go then looks at the boy, half-expecting him to have vanished. There is a peculiar absence of—Personhood. A soul not firmly tethered in the body. Even his voice, which has an odd, discordant sound to it, seems otherworldly. Layered. In appearance, the transfer student bears a resemblance to the kind of war-stricken, neglected orphans Tom is accustomed to seeing in London; blue-mottled about the lips, rail-thin and too-large eyes. Not quite old enough to be drafted and pass for eighteen, not like Tom.

The robe he wears is thin, plain, utilitarian, but the Slytherin crest nevertheless rests proud on his breast, the only tell which can signal some kind of belonging to this world.

They are suspended together in the noise of the Great Hall, waist-deep in twilight, and Tom doubts, if he presses the apex of his thumbs to the green crawling veins in a bared wrist, to the soft geometry of this young boy's teeth, he'd encounter anything real. It seems so effortless—to slip into the strange non-presence of the boy, to be away with him, though Tom does not know where that is, only that it is not Here. Elsewhere.

“It is customary to begin an acquaintanceship with the meeting of hands,” Walburga suggests, wielding her laugh as a knife. Impatient. “Will you be standing there together very long?”

Tom draws himself, finds his fellow Slytherins peering curiously at them. The welcome feast has appeared, piles of rich meats and cheese, breads and jams spread before them untouched, waiting for Tom.

“Raynaldus,” he says at long last, “please move along the bench farther so that our new guest may join us.”

Lestrange predictably obeys, though he is not thrilled to be parted from his precious seat at Tom’s side. All around them are well aware how he covets Tom’s attention. But he is a good boy, the kind who will obey Tom’s order even if it directly contradicts with that of his own desires.

He slides down the bench seat to the left at once, a purse to his lips, and gestures with a hand the now empty space.

“Well?” Lestrange demands of the transfer student when he merely stares blankly. “Aren’t you going to sit?”

The boy sits without a word, and Tom settles back into his own seat.

“Hogwarts’ first and only transfer student,” Prewett marvels.

“What a mighty history you have made,” Walburga says with a cat-like smile that says she would like to play.

“And from where have you transferred, exactly?” Nott asks.

Silence falls. The boy only stares, as though he has not heard them at all.

While Tom observes them, some offended and annoyed, Walburga appears not at all bothered by his reticence.

“What was your name again?” Roiser asks abruptly. “Henry?”

“...Harrison.”

Transfer Student Mr. Harrison states this as though it were a question, and the others at the table exchange a look over the table. Finally Prewett, the least patient among them, extends a hand over the table, his sleeve a hair’s breadth from falling into the platter of sliced ham. Lestrange, fork extended with the clear intention of serving himself from the very same platter, curls his lip and abandons the effort.

“Nice to meet you, chap. I'm Ignatius Prewett, a Seventh year and captain of Slytherin's Quidditch Team—”

“The culmination of Prewett's entire existence put succinctly in a single sentence,” Lestrange mutters, promptly deflating the proud roundness of Prewett's chest. They scowl at one another.

“And that twit hissing dejectedly into his empty plate is Raynaldus Lestrange, and that's the whole of all you need to know about him.”

“Hello.”

They startle once more.

Tom finds himself tilting an ear to better listen, the boy's voice having a reverberation to it, splitting the air and settling on their eardrums with no small amount of discomfort. It has prompted a more obvious hesitation from the table, and Tom watches as Walburga abandons her fork with careful deliberation, peering now at this boy, whose fingers twitch arrhythmically on the deep-lined wood of Slytherin's polished dining table.

“Have you ever attended a magical school before? Or were you privately tutored?”

Harrison only shrugs.

“Headmaster Dippet must have sorted you prior to the ceremony today?” Malfoy tries where Walburga has failed.

Visually, he is Walburga Black's negative, silvery pigment and harbouring very little pleasure. The lines of his plaited, ecru braid is governess-tight, placed delicately over a broad shoulder, east side so as to boldly display his badge on the left, unobstructed. He sits rigid in his self-inclined restrictions, whereas Walburga deigns to none.

Harrison shrugs again, hands fiddling with the cutlery on either side of his empty plate.

“Speaks less than a mute, this one,” Rosier mutters.

“Feeling shy?” Walburga coos, her hand coming down hard across the table and caging one of the boy’s hands with her own long fingers. “Rest assured, we will take care of you here.”

Harrison does not look at all affected by this declaration. Instead, despite his slight shoulders brushing against Tom’s own, he is as a ghost, the evening, the conversation, and seemingly every other matter in the Great Hall passing through him, entirely beyond their reach.

“You’re going to be a terrible mother,” Prewett says plainly, and Rosier inhales pumpkin juice on a laugh.

The Slytherins resume their supper as though uninterrupted, granting sustenance to their bodies and conversation to their minds. They talk of their summer exploits, beg Tom for the delicious details of his own, and mention no more upon the strange and silent transfer student who sits among them in alien Absence. Tom as well does not attempt to further engage their new housemate, though on occasion he does find the boy staring, silent and without feeling.

When the emptied platters and bowls are banished from the long tables, the soul of Hogwarts made lethargic by the satiated glut of its students, Professor Slughorn makes a winding path to each Slytherin, giving them each a time card for their classes and a rosy-cheeked smile.

“Professor, this schedule isn't mine,” a Third year calls in distress, her friends laughing. “I can't take NEWT level Defense!”

“A shame,” Abraxas Malfoy murmurs quietly as they herd themselves contentedly through drowsy corridors, the castle filled to its mortar brim with the promise and power of a new Term. “The papers have been saying for some time there will be displaced children. I'm surprised this is the first we've seen of them.”

Prewett makes a small hum in surprise, glancing behind them at the boy trailing dazedly after. “You think the transfer student is...”

Tom follows his gaze, looking over his shoulder and taking in the flow of students all around them as they leave the Great Hall for the dorms. There is the boy, plain and small, shuffling after them in the current of bodies. Tom glances at the boy’s feet and—he does indeed cast a shadow. He is real.

Tom reflects on Malfoy's hypothesis, and thinks there may be some merit to it. It is to be expected that war should result in a few scattered children, newly orphaned and marooned. It is not inconceivable that this own, who on all accounts is flustered and lost, may be one of them; rescued and rehabilitating.

“Ah, but his eyes,” Walburga grins.

“His eyes?” Tom echoes, looking again over his shoulder, for he finds that he cannot recall any one of the boy’s features in detail.

The boy looks back, gazing through the scuffed lenses of his spectacles at Tom directly, and Tom thinks tectonic shifting, nuclear fission.

“Endless pastures, Riddle,” she sighs.

Abraxas scoffs, for he does not understand why any pastures should draw from Walburga such tender breath, contemptuous as he is of poetry and the Romances.

But Tom must disagree with both of them; poetry is well and good, but when Tom thinks of the eyes staring at his back as they make their way to the Slytherin dorms, he does not think of rolling fields of immature barley, bright new leaves, or the pastures Walburga invokes.

Instead, he thinks of a darkened Manor on a hill, a dead man with Tom's face, and the throbbing, living weight of a black-stoned ring on his finger.

Avada Kedavra.

⸻

The Slytherin dorms are as welcome a sight as Hogwarts Castle had been just a few hours previous.

As its cool blue air rushes over him, Tom has to wonder. Have the dorms always been so whimsically Italian?

He exits the glissading canal into a long, darkened chamber, the Common Room, the others following behind. The lanterns hang without strings, glow soothing pastels, and the newly-minted First Years edge into the room, piqued and prying. Their necks crane around their shoulders as they take in the ovular nest of the Commons. It is an arrangement of intricate delicacy and garish delight. Sofa chaises in buttery leather and House Emerald velvet, tall, dark bookshelves, and rich tapestries, all of it cast in an ethereal watery green that falls from the vaulted ceiling, lined with translucent glass windows that look out into the Black Lake. And in the murky distance, Salazar Slytherin looks back, a presiding, impassive stone statue set into the bottom of the lake.

It is a grand place to call home.

As Prefect and Heir, Tom presides over it all.

“Salazar Slytherin,” he says to the gathered First years, “father to the greatest of the Houses four. Here in his domain, you will find peers of unparalleled excellence and determination, sorcerers who aim to distinguish themselves in the highest regard and make for themselves a name like no other. This is the House you have entered. It is with no small honour you bear the weight of Slytherin's insignia upon your breast.”

He pauses then, allows these words to rest, an equal parts warning and welcome.

The First years shiver in tandem, enveloped fully by the sloping shapes of Slytherin house.

“I am your guide and aide; Prefect Tom Riddle. The demands of your House are high, and so our Head of House, Professor Slughorn, myself, and your seniors will support you. You will observe that within the contents of your class schedules, there is a space allocated every Monday for an hour. This indicates a House-wide communion hour here, in the Common Room, wherein any number of scholarly pursuits, tutoring, readings, or games may be pursued. We encourage all Slytherins to participate, to build our fraternal bonds and continuously improve ourselves and one another.”

“The Common Room is always open for use, and any important announcements, club activities, dinner schedule, Quidditch match schedule, and campus map may be found on the notice board behind you. First years are barred from trying out for the Quidditch team and curfew begins at eight in the evening. Should you need to inquire further upon the details of daily life at Hogwarts, I am always at your disposal.”

Tom dismisses them, and they disperse leisurely, scattering and coming together again in smaller social groups to whisper among themselves.

Prewett, the Quidditch captain for the second year in a row, is already at the centre of young, aspiring athletes' intentions, Second years pleased to finally claim ownership to brooms of their own, vying to make good impressions before the season’s try-outs.

Walburga is burdened with admirers, whom she lazily indulges, trailing her fingers across rosy girls' cheeks, reacquainting with those she did not deign to contact over the summer. They beg to know her latest skills, social connections, and graduation plans, and soon, her corner is filled with the light of novel spells which throw purple shadows on their eager faces.

Tom watches them, from Lestrange and Rosier leading a discussion on Germany's most recent movements to Malfoy and Nott reading with several Fifth years, translating Ancient Greek. He thinks with satisfaction, breathing the clean, earthy air of the dungeons, that he has cultivated his solar system well.

But there is one oddity he has not accounted for.

In the corner away from them all, there stands a boy looking much younger than the Sixth year he is alleged to be. None seem to have noticed him, alone and quiet. He is looking up at the vaulted ceilings, through the small windows at the dark waters above. Vulnerable, Tom thinks with a thrill. He approaches, steps deliberate and light.

They meet as two celestial bodies do, drawn by the other and not touching.

What was his name again, Tom finds himself asking. And how curious that is, when Tom is rarely ever so forgetful.

“Tired?” Tom asks, and the boy jumps, whipping toward him and taking a step back. “Allow me to show you to the dorms.”

The transfer student—Harrison, Tom recalls with some effort—stares at him, mouth slightly open and revealing the barest hint of teeth. His eyes, caught between the glare of ill-buffed spectacles and a dim light, are unfocused, drifting freely with a heavy blink.

“...I know you,” Harrison says with a furrowed brow. That glazed look in his eyes brings to mind images of Tom’s long-abandoned childhood in Wool’s, that expression children and matrons alike would adopt just after Tom compelled them to do something. It pricks at his veins, raises his blood, a buried association with winning, that sweet ichor of having his demands met.

“Not yet,” Tom assures him. “But you will.”

He motions them toward the entrance of the boy’s dorm across the Common Room, a black enamel cabinet filled with any number of artefacts of a suspect nature, objects imbibed with unsavoury histories, cursed Egyptian novelty items brought to civilization by way of petty larceny, Englishmen hoping to commercialise Egyptian witches for their exotic ways of life and paying dearly for their hubris; and so on.

Tom opens the cabinet doors, the shelves of delicate, rusting antiques vanishing and revealing a dark corridor in their place. He feels Harrison follow close behind, hears him gasp once his feet find the landing. The stairwell is lit, narrow and leading upwards in two opposite directions, the left being the girls’ Sixth year dorms and right being the boys’. But what Tom knows Harrison is most startled by is that the stairs upon which they climb are transparent as any well-polished glass, revealing dark water, behind them within which even darker shapes coil and swim.

“The majority of Slytherin Dungeons are underground, the dorm branching out largely in the lake. We are deep below the surface,” Tom says as they ascend, his voice echoing wetly. He gains no small amount of pleasure watching the boy step nervously up the stairs, jumping at the slightest hint of life on the other side of the glass. He is so partial to the skittish ones…

The dorm room is a mirror of Tom's dorm in fifth year, circular, with rich tapestries splitting from the centre to divide the room into equal fourths; four beds, four wardrobes. Entrenched in the domed top is one coiling skylight—a serpent, appropriately. It casts the entire room in the refraction of moonlight and water, the smoky reflections shining pearlescent on Harrison's pale face. Perhaps he is feeling more keenly that there are fewer places to run now.

Perhaps Tom should tell this boy that the restroom facilities are up the spiral staircase across the room or that any laundry he might wish for the elves to tend to should be placed in the basin by the baths. Perhaps he should tell him that the tapestries are enchanted for privacy or that Lestrange in particular is not a forgiving dorm mate.

Instead, he circles this curiosity, driving him to the centre of the room, so that Tom may observe him from all angles.

“Tell me where you come from,” he says, voice light but irresistible.

“Nowhere,” Harrison answers, looking down at Tom’s feet where he is slowly advancing.

His eyes fall on the scene woven into the sumptuous rug that covers the stone floor, and Tom follows his gaze. It features one-sixth of a seven part saga, inspired by Iain Frangan Caimbeul’s Celtic Battle of the Birds, the climax before the impending victory. A seven-headed snake, necks reared, and muscles tensing in magical animation, poised to strike at—Harrison leaps back, startled, from the viper's fangs. A menaced, giant wren lies tangled in the rope of the snake's body, mangled and defeathered wings fighting for life.

Harrison gasps at the sight of it, audible over the muffled sounds of water, dripping, flowing; rubbing its great weight into the body of the castle's foundation. The noise of the other Sixth year boys trails up the stairwell, dispelling the illusion of their solitude, but the boy makes no sign of noticing. His eyes are captured by the gruesome sight of the rug, face twisted with unease.

Tom walks to his own bed, the one beside Harrison's, and pulls at the thick silver rope holding the tapestries back. They fall, a thick wall of velvet cutting them off from the other half of the dorm. He hears the distant sound of Lestrange and Nott entering, collapsing upon their respective beds in contentment. Their voices are magically dampened, conversation intelligible.

He turns back to Harrison who remains stricken by the depiction of violence at his feet.

“Would you have the Serpent starve?” Tom asks lightly, curious.

“Isn’t it…” he struggles. “Devilish?”

Tom sighs gently, with unexpected pleasure, as he pulls the final tapestry between them. A veil separates them, soft and deceitful in its solidity. Tom breathes, and the velvet barrier bows, shivers, as Harrison surely is.

“Even the Devil must have his dinner.”

⸻

“You had to become your own master,” Tom recites before the bent, knobby necks below, each swayed by his rhythmic recitation. Slytherin Children lounge dreamily, bones pliant upon silken perches, wands their torches, ensconced in Hogwarts’ Library. Tom paces linear equations, cuffed sleeve and delicate wrist. The book shelves create an alcove around them, tall and craning out of sight above into the darkened ceilings of the library. Their own private kingdom in a dense castle built of dusty tomes; no distant footfalls to be heard, nor outside voices. Life beyond these shelves need not exist for all they care.

“And also the master of your virtues,” Tom continues. “You had to learn that all estimations have a perspective.To learn the displacement,” Tom tells them and turns a page. “Distortion.”

The very first spell recorded in European history is most often attributed to Alohamora.

A woman, the all-giving, is gifted a featureless pithos, indescribable and void, seeming to banish the light that never touches upon its surface, handed to her for safe-keeping. She is told by No One that what is within this box is ubiquitous and desirable, that all the realm's power lies within.

She is told by No One to never open it.

The woman is adept, her fingers deft, but there is no crack for which to pry open the box.

She aches for the box to open, spends sunrise and sunset curled over its hard corners, crooning and carving the grandparent alphabet, Elder Futhark so small and concise. Ansuz, Othila, Hagalaz, Raido.

Rune, raunen; to whisper.

“You had to see clearly the problems of hierarchy, and how power and justice and breadth of perspective grow upward.”

Alohamora. The box opens, and her thirst fulfilled, her might solidified, and every living creature whispers her name, a curse.

“Together.”

Pandora.

“Nietzsche,” Walburga Black intones dully, sparing no look to Tom from her Transfiguration of Organic Matter and Process of Cellular Transformation. “How can you stand that drivel, Riddle?”

“Perhaps I enjoy the torment,” Tom says with a coy smile.

“Of others? Certainly,” she laughs.

“When a subject is transfigured,” Nott interrupts, quill to his mouth, and striving to grasp the finer points of chemical transfiguration, “organic to inorganic; human to object. Is the soul retained?”

Tom considers.

“What is the soul?” he asks.

Lestrange snaps his Potions book away, leans his elbow to the table, ready to argue. “It depends entirely on the branch. Incomplete Transfiguration changes only that which is visible. It is an illusion. The chemical structures undergo no change; the soul is left untouched. Complete Transfiguration breaks and rebuild the chemical structures; the soul is rearranged.

“But not destroyed?” Nott asks.

“If you are a Newtonian,” Malfoy interjects, sprawled across a sette and gazing up at the ornate tiled ceiling far above them, head tilted dramatically upon an armrest.“Nothing is destroyed.”

“Or an Animist,” Prewett says with a shrug.

“Review your definitions, both of you,” Walburga scolds. “Incomplete Transfiguration is not an illusion that exploits the refraction of light, it is dimensional magic: spells that allow the surface of a subject to rest over and supercede the same space as another. It’s why chambers are often bigger on the inside than outside–or have you never looked 'round even your own bedroom before?”

“Forget Incomplete Transfiguration—forget Animists and Newtonians!” Nott says, exasperated. “When the body is recovered following Complete Transfiguration, forthwith, has the soul exited the host and re-entered?”

“What is a soul?” Tom interjects once more, with force.

They quieten.

“Our minds,” Thadeus is the first to try. “Our memories.”

“Perhaps. But is a memoryless man soulless?”

“Our magic,” Lestrange says next.

“If you are right, then anything with magical properties has a soul,” Tom says.

“It’s whatever dementors eat,” Prewett says with little appreciation or patience for their philosophical quandary. “Your question, Nott, is the same as asking where the body goes when it’s turned into a teacup. It hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s transformed. The soul is the body, and the body is the soul. Can we please play Exploding Snap, now?”

“But the soul can be separated,” Nott insists. “Like any other piece of the body, it can be removed. So when the body is a teacup, what makes the soul stay?”

“Loyalty.”

Tom pauses mid-step, surprised. Attention shifts silkily, like loose papers caught in a breeze and spilling from their place on an orderly table, to the dark spaces below. They look upon the one who has spoken, a gangly boy in round spectacles, and ah—the transfer student. Tom has almost forgotten he’d had the boy follow them to the library. How strange that whenever Tom’s attention is not on him, he seems to disappear from reality completely.

He peeks at them over his book— Quidditch Through the Ages—though it does not appear he has actually begun reading it. His ears pinken the longer they stare.

“Loyalty?” Lestrange asks, incredulous.

“It’s—it’s your soul,” Harrison says, as though that explains everything.

Walburga laughs long and throaty. The dark of Harrison's robes makes the scarlet of his neck all the more stark. He pivots until his shoulders are hunched toward shelves again, level with his satine earlobes.

“Why are we responsible for him again?” Lestrange half-whispers rhetorically.

Malfoy makes a suddenly thoughtful noise. “Is transfiguration possible on a microscopic level? Could I hypothetically transfigure a single hydrogen atom into helium?”

“Thusly creating a renewable source of energy—infinitely,” Walburga interjects, piqued. “Until the spell runs its course. A shame really, that true, permanent transfiguration is beyond the grasp of our current understanding...”

Prewett lets his misery known once more, slamming his books on the table. “Will you please hear yourselves? Perhaps it's slipped your notice! It's Saturday, the very first of Term, in fact. We don't even begin classes until Monday.”

He stands, brushes the wrinkles from his robes with a rough palm, and announces his departure. “I'm returning to the Common Room so I might while away a few hours actually playing cards instead of competing for the next Order of Merlin with you lot. Thadeus, are you coming?”

Nott shakes his head, gesturing to his reading, and so Prewett makes his retreat, a parting, affectionate caress to Nott's shoulder before he goes.

Tom considers Malfoy’s question.

It wouldn’t be wholly improbable, simply nearly impossible.

Using magic is largely determined by will.

Nuclear fusion in spell-work is commonplace enough of a concept, as it is the fundamental science of combustion spells. The crafting of such magic requires forcibly and violently inducing the collision of atoms to create the force behind impact. Confringo, bombarda, deprimo, to name a few.

However, he circles, keeping to himself his ruminations, the precision required to do so infinitesimally small an exercise on the atomic level, and not result in conflagration, is improbable. To focus one’s magical energy on a single atom would require an impossible small fraction of one’s normal magical output; to the hendekillionth decimal.

Any person might somehow blow a wall down with enough time and spells. Those same persons are not guaranteed to be capable of threading a needle, and an infinitesimally small one at that.

At rest, a Magician, and so an atom, is not just a host of magic, but a conduit. Energy is released via thermomagnetic waves and within molecular bonds; in the compounds within sweat, saliva, and blood, in the vibrations of vocalisation wires, in the very breath. Even this fractional amount, would overwhelm the single atom in question.

Hogwarts School curriculum, while interesting and oftentimes whimsical, is not equipped to handle these evening musings. Still, Tom feeds their ravenous nature, their intellectual hunger. And presents himself to be the most delicious and most desirable answer to it all.

His eyes cut to a boy who is aimlessly circling the books, the aisles seemingly with no goal in mind. No, not aimlessly. The boy circles, yes, drifting round and round, eyes in a fog.

And Tom is at the centre.