Embryo

VI

In the infancy of society, when men were just emerging out of barbarism, they invented chiefs and priests and nobility. They adopted enlightenment and introspection, created an aristocracy, of course, and the first forms of government. A recognition of self over others, of wealth and power. ‘To leave barbarism is to enter order,’ as they say. The ‘order’ being that some men are above others. Naturally.

When Tom leaves Harrison behind in the dorm rooms, he feels himself emerge out of a barbarism of sorts.

There is the world before their cataclysmic confluence, and the world of now. The world After. They part but are never parted.

Indeed, even as Tom pushes aside the velvety tapestries around Harrison’s bed and steps barefoot over the lush carpets and away, he feels an undertow at his knees, dragging him, begging him: go back.

He stands at the centre of a grand dormitory, presides over its finery. As Heir, he owns all of this, the silks, the satins, the tapestries. But before he was Heir, he was but a boy, a poor orphan with nothing to his common, plain name. And all of these wonders, their sumptuous textures that surround him are still a marvel to him. What a gift; cloth that does not scratch with its coarseness nor pillows that wither or fester with lice. He has been gifted pocket watches, dress robes, and grants. Given priceless books, tools, and ornaments. Silver, gold, and crystal. And now, it seems he has been presented with another gift, one singularly unique gift which may rival all the wealth accumulated under Slytherin’s name.

A Harrison.

There are rumours that Seers have secluded themselves from modern society, as they are so lustfully coveted for their talents, hated and adored in equal measure. Rowena Ravenclaw’s last descendent wrote at length about her travels along the countryside seeking the Voyantes and the little green creatures that roam the Wilds with them.

Harrison might be one of those Wild children. His airs are of another world, his mind a confused mire of agony and naivete, of formless impressions and memory. Visions. Could he really be a Seer?

Could he be anything else?

Perhaps Tom’s blood has not forsaken him, and Harrison is Salazar Slytherin’s gift to Tom, sent through the long stretch of time that separates him from his predecessor.

Or perhaps Tom’s encounter with the Nether has conjured Harrison from that roiling eternity, tied to him now through the bonds of radiant space.

Whatever his origin, Tom will coax every vision and thought from the boy until they spill into his hands in technicolour.

He just isn’t sure how he’ll do it, yet.

“If I should ever be Minister,” Raynaldus Lestrange says from his stance by the fireplace mantle in Slytherin Commons when Tom steps out of the curio cabinet. In one hand, Lestrange holds an alihotsy cigar, and a glass of his father’s brandy in the other, “I should first declare war with Spain. They are entirely too relaxed with their Muggles, and it would be advantageous for Wizarding Britain to have territory on the continent. What is the point of having control over all these colonies but not a one in Europe?”

Tom feels a smile chill the edges of his lips.

“‘What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremony.’ I would sooner abolish the position entirely than become the Minister.”

“You’re looking much refreshed, Riddle,” Prewett says. “Come to relieve us of Raynaldus’s dreadful international relations?”

Lestrange flushes, his illusion of dignified superiority broken. “You’ve read Wollstonecraft, Tom?”

“‘One must subvert the system if one wishes to be a virtuous member of society,’” Tom replies, the perfect picture of virtue.

“What an interpretation! Somehow, I can’t imagine you as particularly virtuous,” Walburga laughs. She takes Lestrange’s cigar for herself and settles on a plush sofa. “Are you an Anarchist, Riddle? Do you march for the Black Banner?”

“Riddle is a King Louis,” Nott says with irony. “An ordained revolutionary.”

“L'État, c'est moi,” Tom indulges them.

Walburga puffs a ring of smoke and leans back. The ring twirls into a long snake that dances through the air before dispersing in gentle sparks. “Revolutions by their very nature are treasonous, not ordained. The privilege of the rebel is to be criminal. Such is Wollstonecraft’s limitation. She is a writer, not a politician.”

“Is to be a woman not politic?” Abraxas asks, he too taking the cigar from Walburga’s sharp fingers and intending to get a rise from her.

“Simply to be? Silent and upon a pedestal? Man would prefer that.”

Walburga of course is correct, and the younger Slytherins cluster around them on the couches, waiting to catch their scraps of intellectual sustenance.

Below, Tom feels a stirring, an odd sort of itch. He shifts, circles around the settee and takes Lestrange’s place at the mantle. Deeper in the lake’s waters, down the steps in the dormitory, Harrison is waking from his two-day slumber.

“Just the one man?” Prewett laughs, but when he hears Nott laughing along with him, he sours and turns his back on his once dearest friend, arms crossed. “It takes more than one man for a revolution.”

Does it?

There is a whole sect of scholars who would disagree. That it is not the work of many that history is made, but that of One Man. The Lenin, the Éamon de Valera, the Sun Yat-sen. Without Him, would the world be shaped as it is today?

History depends upon the rise of Napoleonic men, Extraordinary Men.

Grindelwald would try—but aims far above his capacity.

For Tom, Grindelwald and all the others before him are mere stepping stones—cold on his bare feet.

No—Harrison’s feet—the shock of the glass stairs on his soles as he makes his way to the Common Room flickers in Tom’s mind and away again.

“What do you think of revolutionary determinism, Tom?” Walburga asks slyly through the Alihotsy haze.

“I am not a Marxist, so I think very little on it, if at all,” he says archly, reaching over the tea table to accept the cigar from her. There is a dark ring lip lacquer circling it.

Through the curio cabinet, Harrison emerges, none but Tom noticing. He shuffles over in a haze, as though he himself had been over-indulging in the Alihotsy. In his mind, Tom senses only a vague impression of what he sees, a dream-like smudge in his eye. He is deep in a stupor again, compelled forward only by the invisible magnetism that pulses between them. It seems he has no recollection of the lavatory, the girl Myrtle, or the Chamber of Secrets. Tom rests easy, relieved at the reprieve. All are oblivious and will remain so.

“The Ministry is in contract with us. If it violates the contract, we have no choice but to revolt,” Prewett says.

“A true Thomas Hobbes in our midst, the locus classicus of the Social Contract,” Tom says, stretching his arm across the mantle. Mocking. “Justice on the wicked! Liberty for all!”

“I did not say that,” Prewett huffs.

Lestrange pours Tom a glass of brandy.

“Then are we not obligated to revolt now?” Abraxas asks. “The Ministry has failed to protect us from the Muggle war, has failed to protect us from Grindelwald. He has infiltrated even our merchants. Rebellions happen; revolutions are made.”

Nott is visibly pricked by the insult—his father being demeaned to a mere merchant. Of course to a Malfoy, a man with a job is of low class. Does it matter that that job was to manage over half of Wizarding Britain’s manufacturing? No. Malfoys sit on boards, sponsor Quidditch leagues and attend to their Wizengamot seats. They do not work.

“Up until recently, the Wizengamot was still trying to claim the war was completely separate from us. They just voted to send delegates to the continent, but not to Germany—afraid to legitimise Grindelwald’s threat,” Rosier tells him. Then haughtily reminds him, “My mother is in the Cabinet of Foreign Affairs, you know.”

She leans forward and continues in a low, conspiratorial voice. “There’s a rumour they have appealed to Professor Dumbledore to approach Grindelwald for a duel; unofficially of course. But he declined. They were close in their youth apparently.”

“Dumbledore!” Lestrange crows. “Close with Grindelwald? What tosh.”

“Moreover,” Walburga says seriously, “of what could the Ministry believe him so capable as to issue a challenge to him? He hasn’t left the desk in decades.”

“Professor Dumbledore is the greatest wizard there is!” Harrison shouts from directly beside Tom.

They all jump—Lestrange startling so badly, his brandy sloshes out of his drink and all over his hand, Rosier slipping off the armrest of Walburga’s seat and into a heap on the floor, Nott dropping his own cigar, scattering ash and ember at his feet.

A silence settles over the Common Room entirely as all turn to watch Harrison. He, sensing the stares and shock, flushes a deep, humiliated red and shrinks back into Tom’s shadow. Prewett laughs, a disbelieving, nervous sound.

“You can’t be serious,” Lestrange says. “What are you, his devotee? Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

Harrison glares in silence. Tom can feel him clinging to his righteous indignation, a lighthouse in the empty dark. He has no other thought—cannot form any other thought in fact. What a strange way to live, to be. It seems the more of him is revealed, the more he appears as a non-being.

“The cards will fall according to how they are dropped,” Tom dismisses, intentionally softening the tense atmosphere. “It is counterfactual to assert any outcome over another, and unless you are a Marxist, the arrow of determination does not fly in only one direction.”

Unless, of course, you are the one stringing the bow. Tom thinks himself a rather fetching archer.

Especially if that arrow is aimed for Harrison’s soft, quivering belly…

Saint Sebastian, Walburga had called him. It is an evocative comparison.

“You mustn’t be cross with us, Harrison. We are only so hard on you to see your face grow pinched,” Walburga tells him conspiratorially. “The thing about rain forests is that their shades of green are made more exotic by the rain.”

“You imagine such wild things,” Tom tells her, though he smiles and stares long at Harrison’s frown.

“Will you go to Tomes and Scrolls this Hogsmeade visit, Miss Black?” a second year girl asks from her seat on the floor before the fire, taking advantage of Harrison’s speechlessness. Her midnight black hair falls in even sections around her face, Puritan straight.

“Of course, Eileen. I’ll be happy to take your list of texts along with me. I am familiar unfortunately with the deplorable state of the Prince library.”

The girl ducks her head and passes Walburga a wrinkled, folded piece of parchment with a few Galleons. Walburga glances at the list and scoffs.

“Ferdinand de Saussure, really Eileen. A Squib’s etymology on enchantments?”

“Beg pardon,” Eileen Prince stutters, reaching for her list. “I ought to wait until next year when I can go to Hogsmeade myself.”

Walburga holds the list aloft, studying it scrutinously.

“Nonsense. I’ll even read it before passing it to you. One never knows what surprises the nadir of society can bring forth with their… particular position in life. Besides which, I believe Mikhail Bakhtin has written a polemic to de Saussure in recent years, and I intend to read it. I may as well be familiar with the book Bakhtin has met with such opposition. Perhaps I’ll find myself falling somewhere in the middle.”

Rosier sniffs indignantly. By the first Hogsmeade visit, she’ll be deep in the Quidditch season and Prewett is a very demanding captain. There will be no romantic strolls to the village with her dear Walburga Black.

“Leave Squibs to their authorships, Walburga,” Prewett scolds her. “While they may be at a disadvantage to us, it is important that they also contribute to society in a constructive way. It is our duty to encourage them.”

Her lip curls, but she does not argue, perhaps out of consideration for Prewett’s sensitivity over Nott’s recently dead Squib sister.

Rosier clears her throat.

“I have just thought to remember, there are several novels I have been meaning to inquire after at Tomes and Scrolls, too. Really important reading. And I could help Walburga carry your books back, Eileen.” She looks to Prewett beseechingly. “Morale is just as important as drills, don’t you agree?”

“Nothing is as important as drills,” Prewett immediately denies. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover to make up for last year’s abysmal Quidditch season. Fucking Dawlish.”

There’s a round of grumbling and general spitting on Dawlish’s name, the Quidditch captain before Prewett.

“Quidditch?” Harrison asks, eyes bright.

A flicker in Tom’s mind, blue sky, rushing wind, gleaming Snitch in the distance, a spark of unadulterated, purest joy.

“The first Snitch was a bird, one of extraordinary physical capabilities. The snidget,” Tom tells Harrison, words leaving his mouth before he’s thought them through. “Its wings could rotate a full three hundred and sixty degrees. It was over-hunted to near extinction because of Quidditch.”

Harrison blinks, apparently not impressed with this bit of information.

“Who knew you were such an expert?” Prewett laughs. “Have you been feigning disinterest all these years?”

Tom sips his brandy, annoyed.

From the era of Stichstock to Aingingein, the evolution of the game is well known to Tom. There isn’t anything he doesn’t know.

The first Bludger was a stone, the first Quaffle was a sheep’s bladder.

“Do you like Quidditch, Harrison?” Nott asks.

“I love it,” Harrison answers without hesitation. “You have to be careful for Dementors though.”

They exchange looks of quiet confusion.

Lestrange’s lip curls in contempt.

In Harrison’s mind’s eye, Tom sees a scene from a nightmare—the sky blackening, swirling with dark clouds and cloaked skeletal figures. Tom blinks, and the memory is gone.

Snidgets, dementors, and Harrison—all these strange little animals flitting about.

There is very little scholars know of non-being, even less of non-beings. Laozi, writer of Tao Te Ching, has said when the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises. When it knows good as good, evil arises. So too, being and non-being arise out of one another.

Tom doubts Laozi ever encountered the amortal Non-Being, Dementor.

“Are you a Non-Being, Harrison?” Tom asks.

Harrison blinks, obvious in his physicality, his existence. He has received no acknowledgement from others, no roster for classes, no supplies, no clothes but for what he wears on his back, no shoes for they were lost in the corridors only the night before, yet here he stands pressing into the contours of Tom’s mind, real and actualized.

With cold feet.

He glances down at Harrison, his narrow shoulders, his thin robe, and his ankles that have so ensnared his attention as of late.

It seems Rosier and Walburga and little Eileen Prince will be buying books on their first expedition to Hogsmeade, and Tom will be buying socks.

“Is it true you’re starting a duelling club?” McNair, a fourth year student asks him. He is always hovering near Prewett, a Slytherin Quidditch team member, though truthfully, Tom cannot remember what position he plays.

Tom puts the Alihotsy cigar to his mouth and drags a burning breath into his chest.

“It is.”

There is a rousing murmur of interest that ripples across the Common Room.

“I took a duelling class once,” Harrison says, and Tom can see it.

The platform, the hazy image of a boy opposite, wand raised. The feeling of hesitation, then indignation, the wanting to prove oneself. The intrusive memory chafes.

But in the dark shadows and warped dream, Tom sees a serpent hissing at the rows of faces on either side of that duelling platform.

Tom is shouting at the serpent, pleading with it—no, Harrison is shouting at it.

“Leave them alone!” he says, with the relief and certainty that the serpent would listen, because—

Because Harrison had spoken to it, and the serpent had understood.

—

In the afternoon the following day, Tom and his fellow Sixth years trot over damp hills to their Herbology lessons. Rain chases them, a gentle, frosty haze. Greenhouse number six smells of it—fresh water and turned soil, the promise of grub and new sprouts.

Herbology is as old as the eukaryote, the cancer cell, or the coffin. It has long risen from medicinal ritual, a precise study in oils, curatives, balms and nettles.

Today, the Sixth years will be handling the herbs of Jupiter: Borage, a flower for magics of the mind, Hyssop for purification, Meadowsweet for passion, and Agrimony, once used to detect Wixen from Mundane, for protection and slumber. Herbs of Jupiter are said to expand the mind, to allow for a mental understanding of the inner workings of the universe, the laws of nature and that of humankind itself. Jupiter has been called by many names, the Greater Benefic, the Light of a Thousand Suns, the Elder King, Emperor of Chesed. Physically, science says that Jupiter is a gas giant. Potentially, it is a Sun, but a Sun that has never ignited. The magic of Jupiter in potentiality, expansion.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn says much about communing with herbs, indeed that it is as if one were communing with a person. When dealing with trees or leaves or flowers, they say, one must always remember that they too are living creatures, and therefore their feeling, their desires, must be carefully considered. A poorly harvested herb will resist.

While the Golden Dawn was practically dissolved in the early 1900s, many of their old Grimores hold true. They advocate harvesting from gardens only at certain times: when the saps in the plants are in optimal position, when the magnetic links between a sorcerer and a stem might be strongest, when the moon is high or low. In the later part of the last century, a number of pantheist experimenteurs of the Golden Dawn described astral contact with plants, in the hope that plants would be able to help them in their alchemical workings. The alchemist of old would in many ways try to communicate psychically with the elixir or metals during its course of transmutation. The same is applied in herbalism, an alignment of vibrational pitch.

There are three types of such vibrational communing: the formal, the casual, and the spontaneous. In Sixth year Herbology, they are well-versed in these conversations.

At their stations, they find neat pots of blooming Borage, Hyssop, Meadowsweet, and Agrimony.

They fashion their tabard aprons, pluck fresh petals of Borage from their starry blooms to rest on their tongues and steep in their mouths. It is said Borage is the nepenthe in Homer, mixed in the wine and inducing forgetfulness. In this case, it will enhance Tom’s concentration, sharpen his sensitivity to the astral plane of the mind.

Perhaps he ought to save a few pieces for Harrison.

“Bitter,” Nott complains with a wrinkle of his nose.

“I don’t see why I should hear a plant vibrate before I prepare it for brewing,” Lestrange mutters, reluctantly putting a violet-coloured petal on his tongue.

“It will resent you otherwise,” Rosier says, outright chewing on her petals. “That’s why your potions are so poor.”

“Oi!”

“Francis Bacon says Borage is an excellent spirit to repress the fuliginous vapour of dusky melancholie,” Nott says with a lisp, petal heavy on his tongue. “Very easy to establish spontaneous contact. You should be thankful we only suck on flowers and concentrate. But a hundred years ago, we’d have to say a prayer for every damned sprig we harvest, and it wasn’t a short prayer either.”

“I come in the Light of Wisdom, and the Light hath healing in its Wings. Yea come thou forth, I mightly conjure thy radiant perfection to compel All Spirits to be subject unto me,” Tom recites as he draws a small series of circles in white chalk on his work table.

Jupiter herbs are of the air element, and so prayers go to Raphael, the archangel. Today, they will be extracting oils from Hyssop, Meadowsweet, and Agrimony, so Tom places pots of each within his blessing circle.

“In the Kerubic Sign of Man, Raphael, I invite the King of Air, Spirit of Life, Spirit of Wisdom, whose breath giveth forth and withdraweth the form of All Things. Invoke Thee, Adore Thee, and every Spirit of the Ether, and of the Whirling Air to give Blessings and to help me in my purpose.”

Tom looks up to the quiet gaze of his peers, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Your recall is as impressive as ever,” Nott says.

“Yes,” Lestrange coughs, dazed. “Well said.”

“Need a moment alone, Lestrange?” Rosier snickers. “You, Riddle, and Riddle’s prayer?”

Tom returns to his task, carefully harvesting seeds and sorting them into a mortar and pestle. At this point, he is usually met with the gentle hum of the herb in his fingers, their vibrations resonating with his own. A meeting of the aura, the exchange of gentle, quiet thoughts. But the herbalist has been warned: there will be occasions when the herb at hand is not the one that answers the call.

“Is that an eighteenth century prayer, Tom?” Lestrange asks.

“Nineteenth,” Tom says absently, pauses, focuses on first the Hyssop, then the Meadowsweet, and finally the Agrimony, but they do not speak to him. They do not sing. The usual sight, not one that is seen by the naked eye, but one seen by the inner eye, does not manifest. Normally, a gossamer haze diffuses from the herbs, but Tom’s vision is clear.

He does feel a vibration, a painful one. But it does not emanate from the plants before him. It goes deep, penetrating into the well of his breath and seeping into his gut. It comes from within the castle, winding up and up the staircases, slinking through the halls, and ends at last on the jagged scar that rests upon Harrison’s brow. Even at this distance, their convergence holds steady. It seems no matter where they are, Tom can find him.

Tom steps back from his work, delighted, disconcerted.

“I cannot prepare this,” he says to no one.

“But... you have to,” Nott says haltingly. “It’s for the potions’ reserve. We’re to stock the closet for the First and Second year brewing materials.”

Tom resigns himself to condemning students to a future of less than optimal brewing. It seems his connection to Harrison is not one without consequence. The seeds resist him, expelling pulp as much as oil. He completes his tasks alongside his peers, turns his muddled vials of oil over to Professor Beery.

He removes the Borage from his tongue, the others following suit, disgust on them plain. The aftertaste lingers with the steady thrum of a connection. It runs along the path back up to the castle, a mycelium of pulses that grow in frequency and strength with every lurch. His steps have hastened before he realises.

Tom disagrees with his classmates.

It doesn’t taste bitter at all.

—

“It is a science,” Abraxas says with relish, taking long strides down the large, echoing chamber. “Duelling, that venerable and ancient art, is a precision sport, it is—”

“It is a dance,” Walburga interrupts, lancing the air with her wand. “A glorious waltz. It is sex. A duet of death and heroism.”

“Perhaps for a donnaccia such as yourself.”

“Prig!” Walburga bites back.

“Malfoy’s supposed to be French, but he defaults to Italian when he’s feeling insecure,” Lestrange whispers. Rosier snorts indelicately.

Tom leads the rest of the Slytherin pupils into the dungeon chamber, made larger for their purpose. Roaring fire pots line the walls and chase away the chill from tender skin. For once, the dripping tiles of the belly of Hogwarts are dry and warm. His neck prickles with sweat and anticipation.

“Take guard, Abraxas, Walburga. I aim to put your wands to your word.”

Walburga is happy to oblige. She throws her outer robe aside, and Rosier and Diggory scramble to catch it, clutching the velvet and holding it to their hearts. Walburga heeds her fans no mind, rolls up her sleeves and stalks a circle around Abraxas.

“Scholar’s privilege, in the round. Lestrange is my Second.”

Abraxas smiles prettily. “I accept. Prewett is mine.”

“To first blood.”

“To first blood.”

“Getting started already, I see!” Professor Slughorn exclaims, striding into the chamber and clapping his hands together. “And a full house, too. Tom, I think you’ve managed to gather the whole lot. Splendid, splendid!”

Abraxas and Walburga lower their wands from anbinden position, eyeing one another in disappointment. The rising tension has abated now that they are to be supervised, and they disengage jointly.

“For those of you who are beginners, scholar’s privilege simply means no shots to the face,” Slughorn explains to the First Years. “In the round is a phrase that refers to the shape of the arena. In beginner’s competitive duelling, the arena is linear and you are permitted to move either backwards or forwards along the platform; however, for more advanced duelling, you may move along the platform a full 360 degrees; hence, the phrase. Ah, and Abraxas, please refrain from casting insults, however lovely they might sound en Italian.”

Abraxas bows his head, though he rolls his eyes when Slughorn isn’t looking, his face falling into a familiar routine of displeasure whenever Slughorn is in the vicinity. “Beg pardon, Professor.”

“We were just giving the lie, Professor, truly,” Walburga simpers, overly sweet and very sarcastic.

Slughorn is oblivious to it and so he is appeased.

Tom steps smoothly between Slughorn and the students all clumped together.

“If I may, Professor?”

“Hoh!” Slughorn exhales. “Of course, dear boy, I got away from myself. This is your crusade. I dare not ferry off with it. Students, I am here to observe and supply input only when it is requested. You are in most capable hands with Tom, as acting Master of Defense. And your Senior peers, not to be forgotten. Have at it, have at it!”

Tom clears his throat and holds his silence until Slughorn is submissively standing at the perimeter. He paces slow and withdraws his wand.

“La Destreza, the art of duelling is as old as the wand and older,” Tom begins. “And as Malfoy and Black have demonstrated, there are many styles, many forms, many postures. Its complexity allows an intimate and personal craft of the body that in every riposte, you share with your opponent, and they with you. Spanish, Italian, German; they all interpret the dance of battle transcribed in their choreography. It is said that even Salazar Slytherin himself could not resist the seductive pull of a duet of wands, and spent many years cultivating his own style.”

They are as cranes to him, mouths open and awaiting the rain he can bring.

“The details of Slytherin’s duelling research are among his anthologies preserved and protected by the Ministry in the ancestry vaults.”

As his heir, Tom has access to them and may intend to teach this style to the few who deserve it.

They titter excitedly.

“For now, we will endeavour to master the Western style. Let us pair inexperienced with experienced and demonstrate a series of veneys. We will review the eight directions of Cross Passage and the Four Governors; perception, distance, timing and technique.”

Tom watches them pair themselves, Walburga and Abraxas acutely disappointed as they part ways, their fun postponed for the evening. Orion, fresh-faced and eager, small and clever, darts forward to Walburga before Rosier can elbow her way through the crowd, delayed in the small fight she has with Diggory on who gets to claim Walburga’s robe.

“Back to back, now,” Tom calls over the rows. “The British standard is ten paces forward, then pivot to face your opponent. Wands in pronated or supinated positions, in line with your enemy.”

They do so as wind-up puppets. Eileen Prince drops her wand.

“Practise the motion until you aim your wand unerringly,” Tom directs.

“There is a tempo,” Walburga says to Orion as they spin to face one another.

“There is a formula,” Abraxas counters loudly to Alphard Black, steps precisely even and mechanical.

“It is a Waltz,” Walburga asserts, grabbing the much shorter Orion by his slim waist and guiding him through a rotation, fluid and slinking. Orion is made tractable by her hands. Perhaps there is hope for him and Walburga yet, if he stays so delicate and aligned with her tastes. “It is intimate. My, you make a fine Follow, cousin.”

Orion steps on her feet, face red.

“Dead hoofer!” Rosier shouts at him with venomous envy.

“When you are steady in your turn, you may cast,” Tom allows. “In offensive position, the wrist should be in pronation, palm downward. Cast the Stinging Jinx at the very end of your arm’s cutting motion, arrebatar, for maximum spell strength. Senior partners, be at the ready with a shielding charm.”

The room lights up with white flares and fills with the sounds of shouted spells as his pupils cast obsequiously. Tom walks up and down the shifting pairs, the spinning rows. He deflects stray spells and steadies a First Year when she stumbles out of her posture.

He spies Harrison shrivelled in the corner, watching the students practise.

“You do not wish to dance?” Tom asks when he reaches that pitiful figure.

“I’ve done this before…”

“Then it will be easy.”

Tom offers his hand, and Harrison stares at it, uncomprehending. Impatience flares hot at Tom’s neck.

“Take my hand,” he says with compulsion. Not a single person, not one in this hall would deny him, would even think to deny him, not Slughorn, not prideful Malfoy, not bleeding Salazar Slytherin himself, for he too would bow to Tom, has bowed to Tom: in death, in dying, brought low where Tom will never follow.

“Take my hand,” he hisses in Parseltongue once more, with force.

Harrison’s hand crashes into his, and the mercurial rage recedes. His skin sings when they touch, fission in body and mind.

“Good,” Tom breathes, and he is right, having seen it and felt it in his own mouth. Harrison understands Parseltongue.

For the first time, Tom wonders in earnest if they might be brothers. Could Merope Gaunt have had another son? Bot no. Even if Harrison had been hidden, he would have been revealed in the blood scrying Tom had done. He has no brother—at least not by blood.

Harrison blinks rapidly up at him then down at their joined hands in consternation. He does not give the boy a chance to retreat.

He grasps Harrison firmly by the arm and manipulates him until they stand not opposite of one another as duelling opponents, but side to side.

“First, wand perpendicular with the ground, tucked to the chest,” he instructs, and Harrison mimics silently. “This is to anticipate and deflect any treachery on your opponent’s part. Showing your back to them is an act of good faith, a social contract that you agree to the mores of a duel and will abide by them until the end. Trust but be ready to verify.”

Harrison takes a shaking breath.

“Ten even, smooth steps away,” Tom says and counts each of them out with Harrison caught with him along the way, step for step. “On the tenth, we do a volte, a side-step in anticipation of the spin, then a heel-and-toe pivot.”

Tom does so, and Harrison flounders, feet lost in the sequence.

“Unless you’d rather surrender to your opponent?” Tom hisses in Serpent’s Tongue, just so see what Harrison will do.

“Never,” Harrison mutters angrily.

Tom breathes harshly.

He steps behind Harrison to grab hold of his wand arm and his hip. “The volte, now, Harrison, and the twist.” Their hips tilt accordingly, slowly. “A riverso of the arm, left to right, as you rotate.”

Harrison’s wrist is very thin, Tom notices, and his nape dusted with fine, dark hairs. They are raised.

They finish the one-eighty turn, Tom holding Harrison’s arm straight in the High Outside, sixte, angle.

“And then you cast with all the force of your kinetic fire.”

At some point the whole of the room has stopped their exercises and is watching them, silent.

“Don’t you have someone else to do this to?” Harrison mutters, eyes darting around, ill at ease with the attention. Tom pulls him tighter.

“I think Riddle prefers my way of a fight,” Walburga laughs, cutting through the quiet. “How sore you must be, Abraxas.”

“Again!” Tom says to calls to the whole room, shaking them from their daze, then to Harrison alone, he says, “and this time, we will cast. Draw your wand.”

Harrison looks as though he is moments from bolting, but Tom holds him fast. His robe really is a slip of a thing, the bones and sinews of his body easily felt. It is… toothsome.

“Again,” he prompts softly when Harrison doesn’t move to obey.

Harrison takes a deep breath, back expanding along Tom’s front, and he draws his wand. It is a warm brown, hawthorn or holly perhaps, and Tom covers Harrison’s hand on the handle with his own. A bright burning current rushes through his arm, and Tom looks at it in wonder, holds their joined hands up before his eyes to study the wand.

It seems things continue to grow stranger and stranger…

What is he to make of it all? The mystery, Nicholas Flamel, the Chamber of Secrets, an unknown Parselmouth, and now this, a compatible wand. How do they fit together, with he, himself at the centre?

“Now,” Tom says.

They walk ten steady steps together, then spin. It is like apparition, how fast they turn together, almost merging, Harrison’s arm snapping out viper-quick under Tom’s direction, the heat of magic bursting through their skin, and from the tip of the wand explodes a rippling wave of violent red.

The Slytherins scream, taking to the ground as the monsoon tears over their heads a scarlet veil. It careens all-consuming down the length of the chamber where it meets a rapturous end against the stone wall. The stone shatters, and frigid water from the lake comes pouring through the gaping cracks.

“What,” Harrison pants.

My Kastor, Tom thinks, on the far side of arduous, looking from the destroyed wall and down to their hands.

“My goodness!” Professor Slughorn gasps in the vacuum afterwards.

Harrison falls out of form, and trips away from Tom, end-first into the cold water. He looks at his own wand as though it is a stranger.

“I,” he stutters. “I’m sorry, I don’t—don’t—”

“No matter, my boy,” Slughorn says, rushing over to the wall and raising his wand. The rubble picks itself from its own disarray and finds its rightful place again. The water flow is stemmed, though everyone is wet up to their ankles.

“Merlin, what sort of spell was that!” Ignatius Prewett exclaims excitedly.

“It was just,” Harrison stutters, “Expelliarmus.”

Tom cannot help but laugh—how can he not? This strange creature, this strange bug! His mouth fills with the piquant flavour of magic, and he hungers.

“Impossible,” Lestrange gapes. “I want to try, Tom! Cast a spell with me.”

The chamber fills with the echo of similar requests, students clamouring for him.

“This is enough for one night,” Tom says with finality, and they calm. His right arm, the arm that had touched Harrison’s wand, burns like a nerve on fire.

“I believe you are right,” Professor Slughorn agrees. He motions to the water at their feet. “Would any of you fellows like to help me be rid of this water?”

Duelling partners break up, and students begin testing a variety of vanishing and drying spells on the puddled water.

Tom turns to Harrison. Once more, he offers his hand but is denied. He ignores him and clambers to his feet, soaked to the bone, gingerly pulling at the sides of his robes which cling to his skinny legs.

Tom thinks in pairs. The Gemini twins in matching might and strength; Equals. Kastor and Pollux are at times both mortal, at times both Divine. Only the Pollux, the Tom, is consistently immortal. Is this what Harrison means to be here? Were he and Tom brothers in another time, meant to be brothers now? If Harry is the Kastor, and Tom the Polydeuces, are they to be shapers of humankind, patrons of adventurers? Does Harrison intend to make Tom a demiurge?

But when Tom looks upon Harrison, he does not see brother or equal.

He sees himself pushing Harrison back down to the water and pinning him there with his teeth, trembling and wet and warm.

When the water is cleared and the chamber repaired, Tom dismisses his House, and Slughorn retires to bed.

“So are you giving that kid one-on-one tutoring or what?” Lestrange asks as they make their way through the dark tunnels, shoving Harrison aside with his shoulder so that he may walk alongside Tom.

“Alas, Riddle, you are a genius, and therefore common property,” Walburga says.

“Should not the duty of a true genius be to remain unrecognised?” Malfoy replies, just for the sake of arguing with her.

“Practise your contratempo, Abraxas. You were lagging,” Lestrange sniffs.

Abraxas scowls.

“What do you think, Harrison?” Tom asks, as though he expects the boy practically floating aimlessly down the hall to answer. “Shall I give you private lessons? Tete-a-tete?”

“Wait, really?” Lestrange demands. “But I asked you first! Last year!”

“Oi, Lestrange, there’s such a thing as too devoted you know,” Alphard Black digs.

Lestrange whips around at him, wand raised. A sickly yellowish-green spell spews out of the tip and shoots towards Alphard.

It happens very suddenly.

Alphard barely has time to yelp, but before he can even try to cast the shielding charm he’d been trying to master all evening, he’s bowled over. Not by the spell, but by—Harrison.

Harrison, who moments before had been walking just beside Tom.

“NO!” Harrison shouts as he and Alphard slam hard onto the stone ground.

“What the—”

“He’ll kill you!” Harrison shouts.

“Kill—? It was only a boils hex!” Lestrange exclaims.

“Get him off me!” Alphard grunts, twisting under Harrison’s weight.

“You can’t go to the Ministry, serious; it’s a trap!”

“Serious?” Walburga repeats, then elaborates, “Great Uncle Sirius?”

Sirius?

Walburga laughs.

“I’m afraid you won’t be saving him, dear. No one can, on account he’s been dead nearly a hundred years.”

“What the bloody hell is he on about?” Lestrange asks.

“Get off!”

Alphard finally manages to shove Harrison away.

“You can’t go to the Ministry; it’s a trap.”

“What?” Alphard asks, bewildered. “Why would I go to the Ministry?”

“You can’t!”

“I won’t!”

Tom watches this unfold with curiosity. Harrison appears to be lucid, but there is a feverish light in his eyes and that acrid taste of familiar ozone in the air. It lingers around him.

“Riddle, Sister, please,” Alphard appeals. “Get him off me! Harrison, I’ll avoid the Ministry for as long as I shall live if you stop pulling on my sleeves like that. Poor Father, it’ll be such a disappointment when I don’t fight you for the Wizengamot seats, Walburga. I suppose I’ll make due with professional Quidditch.”

Tom strides forward and grasps Harrison by the neck of his robes and pries him away. Harrison kicks and screams, fully committed to making the scene. When their skin brushes, Tom is swept by the deluge. He sees, at first, a corridor. It is long and dark and ends in a heavy looking door. He sees a chamber, a vault filled to the brim with shelves full of strange glowing artefacts. Between the towering isles, knelt on his knees, he sees a man.

The man looks very much like an older, more haggard Alphard Black.

Tom sees an archway, the sight of it provoking an icy chill to crawl up his back and rest with uneasy awareness at the base of his neck. There is a black, gauzy veil draped upon this archway, and though it is only a vision, the veil beckons him with a cold clamour of whispers and an eerie breeze.

There is a figure standing before the veil, Tom notices, his back to him. He is unnaturally tall, commanding. Inhumanly serpentine; it strikes Tom with alien beauty.

“It’s a trap,” Harrison grunts, fighting Tom’s grip on his robes.

Set by who?

Who is it standing at the top of the dais before that terrible veil?

Who makes Harrison scream with such fervour?

“Who would want to kill me, anyway?” Alphard asks, getting his feet under himself and brushing his robes off indignantly.

Harrison replies, says the name as though he has said it a thousand times. As though it should be obvious.

“Voldemort.”

There falls a deadly silence.

It stretches on and on in Tom’s mind, that familiar infinity that expands between one second and the next, never allowing time to pass.

“Who?” Lestrange asks the same time Alphard asks, “What?”

Tom’s hand clamps down into the bone of Harrison’s shoulder. The boy yelps, but unseen to the others, hidden at the small of Harrison’s back, Tom casts a Confundus. The boy goes slack, pliant.

“It seems Harrison is experiencing… an episode.” Tom says this with great effort through the crush of his tight jaws. “I will take him to the Hospital Wing.”

No one dares to argue.

He drags Harrison down the corridor without delay.

But when they reach the first floor, Tom does not turn down the corridor that will lead them to the Hospital Wing. There is only one place to take Harrison now, and it is not the Hospital Wing. Instead, he grips Harrison harder, the bones creaking under his palm, and leads him up the swinging staircases, up and up, past the Tapestries Hall, second floor landing, third, forth, All the way up to the seventh floor.

They meet no one in this late hour on their way, though Tom’s heart pounds with every step. The halls are dark and quiet.

Voldemort, Harrison had said.

How? How?

None of the others understood its significance—how could they in their ignorance? But Tom is sure his face had given something away, had twisted in the Dungeon’s shadows into something bestial. They may not recognise the name, but they are sure to recognise it holds importance.

But Harrison knew.

Harrison knows.

“Are we going to bed?” Harrison asks, listing toward the right—towards Gryffindor tower, Tom realises. “But I don’t know the password…”

Tom pulls him left.

He paces in front of the seemingly blank wall.

Show me the Hidden Room, he thinks.

The ornate door melts out of the stone.

“Open,” Tom commands, and the intricate locks on the door hiss with air as they begin to slide open.

“The Room of Req—?” Harrison starts, but Tom throws him to the floor, fortifying himself.

Perhaps the first time had been a fluke, perhaps if he centres himself, Occludes his mind, it will not be as it was before. The rage, the storm, the compulsion to know, to find out wars with his better judgement.

The storm wins. He points his wand.

“Legilimens.”

Where did you hear that name? Tom whispers mind to mind.

“What—” Harrison chokes.

Myname!

Tom draws them up like a violent dream, a tempestuous ocean rising over land. The memories spill out with a crushing force.

A large man with deep, dark eyes and a wiry beard— “Don’t make me say it again, ‘Arry—”

No one ever lived after he decided to kill someone, Harry, no one except you.

A pale young man in a headscarf—“He is with me wherever I go—”

Dumbledore, grey and weary, “Call him Voldemort, Harry.”

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

His own voice, “Lord Voldemort got you in the end, Harry, as you knew he must.”

I've met him, and I'm calling him by his name!

Tom shouts with the effort it takes to separate himself from the head-splitting pain of Harrison’s flood.

The ceiling spins above his head and his entire body throbs with a ravaging dizziness—when had he fallen to the floor? The memories—Tom grasps for them, but they slide away into the velvety black, taken from him.

“No!”

He levels his wand on Harrison again, more animal than wizard now, wounded, rabid.

“What is this?” he demands, futilely.

The images disappear into the sea, and so too does Tom, a fierce tide battering him with icy waves and a scalding mist. He sees the promise of memories, of hidden knowledge, in the ravaging wake, tossed asunder by their violence. He sees dragons, he sees a labyrinth, a graveyard. He sees more, so much more, but it’s drowned in the rush and gone again.

“What are you?!” he screams, but Harrison does not answer—perhaps cannot answer. He shakes with convulsions on the floor, matted with sweat and a slow bleeding from his scar. “Answer me! Crucio!”

They scream.

Their body burns. It consumes, ravages, it does not stop. They twist and crawl, but there is no escaping—

The curse stops when Tom drops his wand.

They are separate bodies again.

The room rings with the roaring sound of their heaving breaths.

Tom drags himself to Harrison where he lay, sprawled and barely conscious. He shakes his shoulder roughly.

“Wake up, Harrison,” he grits out, throat scalded by his screaming. “I am not done with you yet. No, not even near done…”

In this Hidden Room, he can keep Harrison here as long as he likes, pick him apart and open him up, cut into him layer by layer for all eternity. After all, who could stop him?

Harrison coughs, blindly pushes Tom away and rolls onto his hands and knees. He rasps, voice rough.

“It’s Harry.”

“...What?”

Harrison looks at him.

Eyes open. Bright. Awake. And so very angry.

“My name. It’s Harry.”