Embryo

VIII

On occasion, when the bones are weary with the oncoming chill and the steady rise in homework, rather than traipse up to the Great Hall for breakfast, the Slytherin students will take brunch in the comfort of the Common Room. In their night robes and slippers, they sample ripe fruits and buttered bread, a gentle current of slow-waking activity.

A warbling recording of Ethel Waters tumbles softly out of the radio, Walburga humming along as she stirs her tea with a dainty silver spoon. Abraxas is reading a paper, not the Prophet but something in German. He’s using an engraved, ostentatious crystal monocle to read, and out of sight, Prewett mocks him for it, he and Alphard giggling quietly together. There are others around Tom of course, Mulciber, a fifth year, and her yearmate Avery. And of course there is Harry, who stands impatiently over Tom, arms crossed, knees vibrating with barely contained avidness.

“When are we going to Dumbledore?” he asks.

“Dumbledore?” Rosier asks, rounding the corner of the sofa and aiming for the spot beside Walburga. Diggory beats her to it. “If you want to see him, you’ll have to wait. He’s long gone, probably until Hallow’s Eve.”

“Ah,” Tom sighs, smiling innocently when Harry’s head whips around to glare at him accusingly. “The Moscow Conference. I completely forgot.”

“The Wizengamot is busy these days,” Abraxas says, flipping a page. “What with Italy in complete collapse.”

“Don’t be cross,” Tom says to Harry with saccharine sweetness. “Think of this as an opportunity to prepare yourself for what you want to say.”

“Are you that worried about your Transfiguration project?” Nott asks, as though Harry has ever been to a single class. “You’re better off seeking help from the Seventh years if you are. Professor Dumbledore has been very busy this term. The Ministry is constantly pressuring him. He leaves the school what feels like every week.”

Tom looks at Harry and leans back in his seat, arms spread across the back of the sofa.

You see? He is too busy to worry about the likes of you.

More quietly, he hisses, “I will even still help you with your memories while he is away. Out of the goodness of my heart.”

“What heart?” Harry mumbles.

“What else will you do until he returns?” Tom presses.

“What are you two whispering about?” Lestrange interrupts, pointedly squeezing himself between Tom and Harry before making himself comfortable on the sofa.

Harry, seemingly naturally repelled by Lestrange’s intense devotion to Tom, goes to leave their little circle, but Tom catches him by the hand.

Stay, he says clear as a bell down the current of their connection. My heart and any goodness therein depend on it.

Be good, he does not say, but it is what he means.

Harry seems to understand perfectly, his jaw clenching. He sits, not at Tom’s side like he expects, but on the floor, back turned to him, and grabs a scone from the overflowing serving platters. Tom does not mind being snubbed—Harry has unintentionally just sat at his feet.

It makes a very fetching sight.

“I am providing Harry with assistance in several matters,” Tom finally answers Lestrange, crossing one leg over another so that the toe of his shoe whispers through Harry’s hair. Harry freezes at the caress. “As he has been placed in my care, it is my pleasure to help him.”

Bright incredulity radiates from Harry.

“And what about Thadeus?” Lestrange asks Tom. “He’s saying you’re helping him with something important. ‘Something special’ to be exact. Are you giving private lessons to him now, too?”

“So what if he is,” Rosier mutters under her breath.

Tom raises a brow in question at Thadeus, who stares back unapologetically.

“Er ist so laut,” Abraxas mutters in German, never looking up from his paper.

“Was erwartest du?” replies Walburga, petting Diggory’s hair. Rosier watches with a seething look on her face.

Poor Rosier, poor Diggory. They do not understand the nature of a Black. Dante says it best. She is by nature so perverse and vicious, her craving belly is never satisfied, still hungering for food the more she eats. She mates with many creatures, and will go on mating with more until the greyhound comes and tracks her down to make her die in anguish.

“Ich kann dich verstehen!” Lestrange snaps, perfectly able to understand, as they both well know, then continues without shame. “Please, Tom, you can tell me…”

“What is this you’re reading?” Prewett asks, leaning over the back of Abraxas’s seat and snatching the paper away.

“Really!” Abraxas huffs.

“It’s about Grindelwald, of course,” Rosier says in a bored tone. “Someone came forward and gave an interview about him. Apparently he tried to lead a procession up the Brocken for Walpurgisnacht last spring, and he got chased out of the village Elend for his trouble.”

“This Johannes Präetorius is bold for putting his name and face in the paper,” Prewett says, eyes scanning the front page and tossing it back to Abraxas. He is not fluent in German. “Grindelwald’s agents will be knocking on his door by now. To thank him for this embarrassment.”

“Do Austrians even celebrate Walpurgisnacht?” Nott asks. “Who does he think he is trying to march up the Brocken as if he owns the place?”

“He isn’t the only Austrian marauding all over Europe and making a mess of things,” Alphard Black interjects. Harry tenses when he looks at him, but otherwise doesn’t say anything. Tom wonders if Harry is seeing the man with Alphard’s likeness, kneeling deep in the bowels of the Ministry and begging for his life.

“Did you just compare Gellert Grindelwald to a Muggle?” Rosier asks, scandalised.

“If the shoe fits.”

“A dark lord is supposed to lead the marches of revelry.”

“Well, Elend made it clear Grindelwald is not their Lord. They are very protective of their goddess in the Brocken. I should know,” Walburga says of her namesake.

Celebrated on the eve of April thirtieth near Beltane, Walpurgisnacht is a night of revelry and celebration of the arcane arts. The name is derived from a prehistoric Germanic coven dedicated to the goddess Walburg. She is said to be hermaphroditic and is associated with phallic symbols, springtime fertility rituals, rituals that often depict illicit intimacies between Witch and beast.

In the eighteenth century, barren witches would sculpt sacred implements to enhance their fertility, usually in the form of a well-polished wooden phallus, a practice much loved today—though this is admittedly done less for treating infertility and more for enjoying the ritual itself. Witches build sites for sacrifices, hang sprigs of foliage from houses and barns, and leave offerings of ankenschnitt, bread with butter and honey, for the phantom hounds that rove the mountains near Beltane. The centre of this celebration, where it is most fervent, most lavish, is at their highest peak, the Brocken, a wall of sleek, sharp granite and protected fiercely by a mysterious, perpetual fog, the Brocken spectre, the Will-’o-the-Wisp. There, all manner of creatures, natural and supernatural, human and animal, feast with song and dance around the Walpurg alters. They light bonfires that burn so tall, they can be seen from atop the Harz mountains for miles.

Historically, to the surrounding Muggle villages, the mountains are a denizen for those who have abandoned themselves to devils and demons dedicated to committing enormous and horrid offences to mankind.

The Pope himself, Innocent VIII of the fifteenth century, condemned the entire mountain range:

‘Whosoever partakes of this last stronghold of heathenism Walpurgis Night, they so blasphemously renounce the faith and the Sacrament of Baptism, and at the instigation of the Enemy of Mankind, they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest abominations and filthiest excesses. This they do to the deadly peril of their own souls, whereby they outrage the Divine Majesty and are a cause of scandal and danger to all.’

Tom thinks this is rather an overestimation of the power of a single night of ritual, wherein the majority of sacrifices take the form of herbs and livestock, and not in cannibalised infants. Not anymore at least.

Nevertheless, Grindelwald is very bold for attempting to breach the fog and climb to the top of the summit without the cooperation of the witches who preside over the mountains. The summit of the Brocken is unattainable without a guide, impossible to arrive by portkey or apparition, as has been the tradition for centuries. The Wisp inspires mad-light, Irrlicht, to unwelcome visitors and has sent many an unwelcome traveller off the mountain paths to plummet to their deaths.

“How could Grindelwald hope to find a place there on the Brocken? It is a communion of Self and Other, woman and beast. Grindelwald is appreciative of neither,” Walburga declares to the displeasure of some. “It is a night of marriage.”

“Why, I had no idea Walpurgisnacht was so romantic,” Diggory says, simpering at Walburga and having her nose flicked for her shamelessness.

“The base of the mountain is soaked in blood, my dear. What is more romantic as that?”

Indeed the infantry of many have attempted to wind through the mists to cleanse it, Popes, kings, even Charlemagne, and all have been turned away. And now poor, disaffected Grindelwald must count himself among them, they who were so rejected.

He thinks himself above the mores of those mountains, indeed, above all of Europe. He arranges war between disparate creatures, throws hordes of Muggles at one another, sheds blood before their eyes, and is left in the end with himself, his reflection, and the empty boast that it is.

“Tom, if you’re giving Thadeus Nott special lessons, I asked you first at the beginning of the year.”

“Raynaldus, you are frothing at the mouth over nothing,” Abraxas snaps. “Riddle could be giving private lessons to the Queen of England, and still, it would have nothing to do with you.”

“You—!”

“Perhaps I could offer you something. Offer you all something,” Tom says, meeting Harry’s eyes. “I haven’t the time to see to you all individually, but I do have a responsibility to my noble blood.”

Lestrange’s eyes light up.

Tom thinks of Walpurgisnacht, secret societies, and those arcane rituals.

“Yes, I’m sure I can arrange something to your liking.”

—

What are the Dark Arts?

When one looks to history, one will find that truthfully, all magic has been deemed dark by one power or another. No manner of magic escaped unscathed—every occult science one by one has been so abused as to be put in that fantastical classification ‘Black Magic.’ Astrology, medicine, alchemy… All have been made enemies of God at some point.

While harmful, forbidden magics have always existed—they are as part of magic as any other classification, the concept of ‘Black Magic’ in particular, or indeed the need to segregate magical practices on the basis of morality at all, arose largely alongside Christianity and Catholicism.

If certain powers are the domain of God—omniscience, omnipresence, immortality—then it is against God to trespass on those powers. And being against God is to forfeit one’s soul and one’s life.

Therefore ceremonies, sciences, and rituals which sought the powers of transportation, eternal life, and especially Divination were all condemned by Canon Law as dark magic, the artes prohibitae.

Out of this binary there also came the concept of holy good and unholy evil intent.

Magic that communed with good spirits for a good reason was acceptable. Magic that communed with evil spirits for evil reasons was not. This intent-based methodology is what is used in today’s British Wizarding law.

However, this form of law—reactionary rather than exploratory, ethics-forward rather than enterprising—ugh! Tom’s eternal enemy, ethics—falls apart in practicality. What sort of magic is it if one were to commune with evil spirits for good reasons? Or commune with good spirits for evil reasons?

Magic that is practised for selfish, harmful, or evil reasons is considered Dark.

What of selfish, harmful, or evil magic that is practised for good reasons?

What is evil and what is good? Most magic is practised neither for entirely good nor evil reasons at all, rather for frivolous, foolish, or mundane every-day goings-on that have nothing to do with morality. All of magic is a tool and a blessing.

Fingers may help or harm, caress or maim, but one does not label the harming ringer finger nor its hand nor even its whole person ‘Dark.’ While a hitting sort of man may be called a cad, the palm is not made illegal!

Still, much as Tom resents this arbitrary and unscientific classification, he appreciates Defense Against the Dark Arts. The class has its purpose. While Professor Merrythought does not provide a comprehensive education on Dark magic herself, she often provides Tom with inspiration for research and self-study later. Cursed objects, dark creatures, any number of hexes and forbidden tomes—the Ministry-approved curriculum may only ever cover how to detect and destroy these things, but they are an index nonetheless.

Currently, he has plans to study Inferi with Lestrange’s father come Christmas Holiday due to her lecture on them last year.

This year, she has so far instructed them on Dementors and nonverbal spells.

“Pair up!” Professor Merrythought tells them. “We’ll continue the practical part of the lesson from last class. I expect to see—but not hear!—spells from all of you.”

“We get to use our wands?” Harry blurts out.

“If you can cast a nonverbal spell without a wand, I’ll be very impressed indeed!” Professor Merrythought laughs, and Harry flushes with embarrassment. But inside, he feels relieved, elated. There’s a bitter memory of being told a different answer to that question drifting just below the surface of that black quagmire in Harry’s mind. Very bitter indeed.

“Ready when you are, Tom!” Lestrange says, tossing his robe to the side with his bag of books and warming up his wand shoulder. Poor thing—he has no idea the significance of today. To him, it is any other day, where he and Tom will be partners as usual. He is the most accomplished practical student aside from Tom and so it is obvious they should pair!

Unfortunately for Lestrange, this is not a day like usual. This is the first time Harry has attended a class.

“Harry will be my partner for today,” Tom tells him, hands closing down on Harry’s shoulders when it seems like he’ll wander away.

“What? Him?” Lestrange asks. “Who am I supposed to practise with, then? Rosier?”

He says this with disbelief and equal disgust.

“Oi!” she snaps.

“If you are in so much need of a challenge, have Nott and Rosier combine their efforts against you,” Tom tells him with a smile, steering Harry to a clear spot in the classroom.

“Do you know how to cast or protect yourself from any nonverbal spells?” he asks Harry.

“Maybe. Are you going to make me blow up a wall again?”

“Make you?” Tom gasps and puts a hand to his chest. “We accomplished that together.”

Harry is not impressed with Tom’s performance.

“How do I cast a nonverbal spell?” he asks, wand in hand.

“You must move your mouth,” Tom says.

“Move my—?”

“Like a kiss. Like a ventriloquist. From here,” Tom taps his fingertip to his own lips then takes it down his shoulder, down the length of his wand arm, and all the way to the very tip of his yew wand. “To here. You must throw your voice. Your wand is your mouth now, and your wand movement is how you speak. There is no special secret to it—it is merely another language… Like Parseltongue.”

Harry’s eyes snap up, recognizing the sound of Tom’s hissing.

Enough theory.

“Like so.”

Tom aims his wand and casts a nonverbal Langlock. Harry dives to the floor, quick as a mouse. He dodges the first, the second, but not the third volley.

Harry sits up and opens his mouth, no doubt ready to berate Tom but can only grunt when he finds that his tongue is quite stuck.

Tom offers him a slow smile.

“I thought having no choice might expedite your learning curve. Now you must speak with your wand.”

Tom raises his wand over his head without delay and with large sweeping motions of his arms, he does just as he shared with Harry and forfeits the mouth under his nose for the one in his hand.

Evocare spectrum… dementor.

A shadow gathers where Tom points his wand, a chill creeping between he and Harry.

The spectre of a Demotor appears out of that shadow, a ghastly cloaked figure with skeletal hands. It glides across the floor to Harry. Harry, whose eyes are wide with horror, a cold stone sinking into his gut, holding him in place.

He cries out in stunted mumbles, tongue incapacitated, clearly trying to shout ‘Expecto Patronum!’ shouting louder and louder, wand flying in a frenzy as the Dementor advances. Tom watches in fascination. It is only an illusion, a very good one, that he had learned in this very class only a few weeks prior, but it is clear Harry believes this Dementor is very much real.

He is dreadfully pale, throwing his wand arm hard and wide, desperate for his wand to react.

The Dementor’s icy hands close in on him, and Harry stumbles, collapses to the ground.

Tom hears a distant scream, sees a flash of acidic light.

Will Harry faint?

Tom doesn’t want that—if Harry is to suffer, he should suffer wholly and without premature interruption.

So he presses for more, harder.

Will you die here, Harry? He says in a whisper. Will you let this single Dementor take everything from you?

Harry breathes hard and quick on the floor, gritting his teeth.

You felt me cast a spell without a word; you know how it’s done. I can do it.

Why can’t you?

Tom considers summoning a second Dementor, lingers on the feeling of it. Look, he tells Harry. Feels his teeth gnash in his wand, his tongue curl with every rotation of his wrist, anticipates the exhalation of his breath with the spell—

Light bursts from Harry’s wand. It erupts in waves, a shimmering silver stag manifesting between Harry and the illusion, and the false Dementor is banished within moments.

“Excellently done!” Professor Merrythought exclaims. “A nonverbal fully formed, corporeal Patronus. How marvellous. Five points to, er—what House are you…?”

She sees the crest on Harry’s chest which heaves for breath.

“Oh, Slytherin! Of course,” she laughs lightly. “Five points to Slytherin!”

“I make a fine teacher, do I not?” Tom asks, holding his hand down to Harry to take.

Harry glares, still catching his breath. He slaps Tom's hand away. His cheeks are spotted with lurid red, hair tousled, white teeth wet and gleaming within a pink grimace.

Pretty, Tom thinks; Harry’s mouth.

—

Man meets the dark uranian with poetry. What can man feel when gazing from dim woods into the velvet dark of night but the outpouring of poetry? Fire-folk sitting in the air, that expanse of diamond delves and airy abeles set on a flare…

The first observatories were assembled and ideas on the nature of the Universe percolated—in Sumer, in Babylon, in innumerable kingdoms—and their observations inspired. They saw these many moving dark and bright shapes, and man inserted himself into their mystery. The solar system, the verse; the orbit, the rhyme.

Somewhere in space hangs my heart, shaking in the void, they say. 

But of the poets, Tom thinks Gustave Flaubert says it best:

How vast is creation! I see the planets rise and the stars hurry by, carried along with their light! What, then, is this hand which propels them? The sky broadens the more I ascend.

Worlds revolve around me. And I am the centre of this restless creation.

Planets frolic about me—comets pass by casting forth their fiery tails, and centuries hence they will return, still running like horses on the field of space.

How I am soothed by this immensity!

How I devour it with ease.

Tom himself has tasted from the fountain of the universe, devoured its essence as it devoured him. He has walked the steps of the stars’ spiralling dance.

Yes, this is indeed made for him; the infinite surrounds him on all sides. He, like Flaubert, devours it easily.

He sups on this celestial feast as he and Harry ascend the Astronomy Tower, the purpling sky, the black lines of the Forbidden Forest stretching below, the bright twinkling of Hogsmeade in the distance, the darkling stars winking on the Black Lake’s rippling surface.

The night is come, but not too soon.

At the top of the tower, their peers await, huddled against the breeze-whipped battlements in clusters, wrapped in heavy quilts and anti-chill charms. Only the tops of their heads and tips of their fingers can be seen peeking out of the swaddle. Lanterns, telescopes and star charts litter the stone ground where they work, discarded sextants, inkwells and quills rolling with the wind.

“Already charting these celestial delights?” Tom shouts over the wind before settling on the floor beside his Housemates.

“Delight, sure,” Rosier scoffs, shivering in her blankets with great resentment. “How lucky we are to be up here where it is utterly inhospitable.”

Lucky, indeed!

It is said astronomy is the most beautiful monument of the human mind; the noblest record of its intelligence.

In the words of Pierre Simon, man is seduced by the illusions of his senses, and of self-love. He considers himself as the centre of the motion of these celestial bodies, and his pride is justly punished by the fain terrors they inspire. It is through the labour of many ages that has at length withdrawn the veil which once covered the system. Man is not at the centre, but appears upon a small planet, imperceptible in the vast extent of the solar system, itself equally imperceptible in the immensity of space. Disillusionment is sublime.

Before me nothing but eternal things are made, and I shall last eternally.

Tom himself feels no chill, his ring pulsing with warmth. His body has changed in the last year. The worst of the bite of winter glances off of him, his flesh made aloof. And thus, he may appreciate the art for what it is, may insert himself in the cosmos where others fall short.

Well, he feels no chill normally.

Tom glances at Harry, at his threadbare robe and naked feet. The bite of the wind and unfeeling stone cuts deep in Tom’s senses. He feels every one of Harry’s shivers. Something really must be done about this…

“Here,” Nott says, passing a bundle of enchanted quilts.

Harry dives into them with relief while leisurely, methodically, Tom sets out his charts and tools.

“Why do I have to be here?” Harry grumbles, teeth chattering.

“It’s class!” Nott exclaims. He does not notice that Harry has no supplies and before today has never attended a class before. It seems that while the forgetful effects of Harry’s presence have ebbed, there is still a… smoothing nature to him. “Where else would you be?”

“Away from us,” Lestrange mutters under his breath, but not quietly enough.

“Somewhere warm,” Harry replies. He watches, bored, as Tom charts the stars.

He follows them down Camelopardalis, Auriga, Gemini. Kings with serpent legs honoured by gods for their power, brothers who walk the earth and heavens together, their separation an omen of doom. Trully, is that who he and Harry are? Did Tom step into the ether and pull Harry from the sky so that they could walk together again? How else does Harry sometimes know him so wholly?

They have known one another all along.

When Tom finishes Gemini, he moves through Canis Minor and Monoceros, and begins Canis Major.

A spark in his mind.

“That’s Sirius!” Harry declares loudly, finger thrusting into Tom’s star chart and smearing where Tom has just added a very bold point on the eastern side.

Some of their fellow students look their way at the disruption of their soft whispers and whistling wind.

“Sirius, again? Is he so important to you?” Nott asks.

What does Harry know of Sirius, Tom wonders. He is the—

“He’s the brightest star in the sky,” Harry says.

This is said wistfully, steeped in affection, yearning, loss. Though Tom knows if he were to ask Harry why he feels this way for the Great Dog of Orion, Harry would not be able to answer.

Instead, Tom sets his telescope to Canis Major, adjusts the aperture and finderscope, and centres it on that bright spot in the sky. Harry looks into the telescope eagerly, a twinge of pain pinching his chest. Tom tells him more while he gazes through the eyepiece, Rosier, Nott, and Lestrange watching silently. Tom sees them exchanging looks.

“The name Sirius is the same given to him by Homer in the Odyssey. It is derived from the Greek word Seirios, meaning scorching. And you are right,” Tom says softly, watching Harry’s profile as he stares into the telescope lens, hair tossing here and there, mouth parted. “He is the brightest star in our sky. Even as its natural path takes it further away from us into the cosmos, Sirius will continue to be the brightest for the next two hundred thousand years.”

Their heart throbs again with an unnamed ache, but it is softer now.

Tom can imagine himself watching it grow dim as the years slide by, never touching him. He is as far as Sirius in this way. Earth, his peers, his future legion may all fall away, but he will continue to burn eternally, the brightest star in the sky wherever he goes.

As with many stars over time and culture, Sirius has been believed to be both the harbinger of blight and the herald of prosperity, a star that brings fertility and famine alike. Once, Sirius flooded the Nile.

It is no wonder the Black family has honoured themselves with his name.

“The Ancient Romans celebrated the peak of Sirius’ heliacal rising by sacrificing a dog,” Lestrange says. “To Robigo, deity of crop disease, to ward off wheat rust.”

“What?” Harry demands, looking away from the eyepiece. “That’s awful!”

“It’s rare and powerful magic that we should be thankful exists,” Rosier snaps. “Today’s witches are too frightened to invoke the names of deities or old stars in their spellwork. So much of the truly powerful magical ways are lost. It’s sad, really.”

“There are still Roman witches building shrines to Robigo—at least there were when I was on Holiday before the war. No telling what’s happening now,” Lestrange laments.

“You’re talking about killing animals,” Harry snaps. “It’s wrong!”

“Who are you to decide what’s wrong!” Rosier shouts.

Tom tuts at them.

“Many practices require animal sacrifice,” he tells Harry—gently, so gently. “We use them every day in Potions class. We harvest what we need and offer it for its effects. That is what an offering is. A boar’s tooth for a giggling tonic. A salamander tail for an anti-itch elixir. A bat’s ear for a Sleeping Draught. Do you see, Harry?”

“That’s different!”

“It isn’t. Can you eat your dinner without killing the pig or cutting the fruit from its vine? Can you live without something being sacrificed to give you the strength to survive? You can’t.”

They hang on his every word.

A gale of wind sweeps hard over them, battering the tower and snuffing their lanterns with a smokey hiss. Tom looks out at the bright, starry waves over their heads, the castle, the forest, and the hills. The wind howls like a bell toll, like a fairytale spell, and Harry had been right. It is true, Tom concedes. It is different—in the dark.

“Magic, power, all of life is an exchange. It is a beast that needs to be fed. And it will not be denied.”

—

As though the chill at the top of the Astronomy Tower the night before were a premonition, the morning is blanketed in a thin layer of crystalline snow, and it harolds the term’s first trip to Hogsmeade.

The children cradled within Hogwarts bundle themselves in their winter robes, furlined and charmed for warmth. They don their bonnets and gloves, scarves and thick-soled boots. This involves seizing Harry by the shoulders and forcing him into a pair of boots duplicated and transfigured from a pair of Tom’s own, if only so that he will stop annoying Tom with his cold feet.

When they burst outside, Hogwarts’ lawn is already speckled with fresh footprints, disturbed by the quick and excited steps the students make on the trek to Hogsmeade Village, content, if a little chilly.

“First snow on the very last week of October!” Rosier shouts, teeth chattering. A few flurries drift downward on them. “Mutinous!”

She takes a handful of it to the face, Alphard and Prewett scampering away up the hill, laughing. With a cry, she makes chase.

“Don’t forget Tomes and Scrolls later, Cordillia dear,” Walburga calls. “Shall we go for a firewhiskey, Malfoy? You look in need of a warm drink.”

Abraxas is as scandalised as he would be had Walburga asked he gamble and play cards with her too.

“Firewhiskey? It’s not ten in the morning!” he objects.

“Later, then,” she sighs.

“I need to stop by Dervish & Banges,” Lestrange says. “That idiot Diggory rammed into my broom during practise. Completely splintered the front.”

Thadeus Nott trails beside Tom and Harry sullenly, finding little pleasure to be had in snow or in Hogsmeade; or, lo, in existence namely. He has made a perfectly pale blue of a soul lately, eyes following after Prewett pathetically. Perhaps Tom should do a bit more than a tea reading.

“I suppose I’ll head to The Three Broomsticks,” he sighs. “Grab a pudding.”

They reach High Street, and splinter away for their own lackadaisical whims.

The village itself remains a lovely sanctuary, one of the only remaining Wizarding villages left in the United Kingdom. Dating back to the mediaeval era, Hogsmeade was erected by Hengist of Woodcroft. It stood isolated from Muggle influence, as Woodcroft sought shelter from persecution, and so it stands today. The architecture of the original buildings reflects its birthdate, quaint, snow-capped cabins nestled close together.

These beautified and storybook storefronts have seen many Wizarding events, including the Goblin uprisings in the seventeenth century and the centaur war of the eighteenth. Hogsmeade bears none of these historical scars today, refurbished to perfect peacefulness.

Tom has his own errands in mind. He snatches at Harry’s collar when the boy seems to be drifting off in another direction. But for Prewett’s loaned jumper and Tom’s scarf, he wears nothing but that shabby robe still.

“Let go!” Harry fights, pulling at his arm even as his lips tint blue from the cold. “I don’t need shopping. What’s wrong with these boots?”

“The spell is only temporary. Be practical. You can’t run about barefoot in the winter.”

“I don’t want anything from you!”

“If you had any money, perhaps I’d agree. Besides, you represent Slytherin House, you’ll look like it,” Tom hisses, dragging the boy on the slippery road through Hogsmeade Village. His ring pulses and his arms pull with an unnatural strength that cannot be escaped.

“I’m not a Slytherin!” Harry shouts, clawing at the door frame and digging in his heels as he is dragged into Gladrags, attracting the attention of all passersby. “I’m a Gryffindor!”

They emerge many hours later, morning surrendered to the afternoon, Harry fuming, Tom several Sickles lighter, and run into the others on their way out.

“Did you get new robes, Harrison?” Prewett asks. “And new boots too! You’re looking like finery itself, chap.”

“It’s Harry,” Harry corrects, face flushing. He reaches into the bag he carries and passes Prewett’s jumper to him. “Here.”

Prewett takes it back, a dimple in his cheek.

“If only you’d replace those horrid spectacles,” Walburga laments, laden with her own bags from Tomes and Scrolls.

“You look nice, Harry,” Nott says softly. He’s standing beside the inexorable Prewett and being ignored for his efforts.

“We could go to Madam Puddifoot’s?” Rosier offers, glancing at Walburga from the peripheral of her eye.

“You are too funny, Cordillia,” she says flatly. “Hogshead?”

They all agree, Rosier belatedly and disappointedly.

They slip into the moving crowd on High Street, winding away from the shops, west of the Station.

As they walk under the Hogsmeade clocktower, Rosier spots Diggory and Alphard and calls them over. Their faces and hair glisten with a recent snow fight, their cheeks red from laughing and cold. The large hands reach noon, and a charming melody of bells plays, sweeping across the village.

“Have you seen Orion and Cygnus? They’re going wild in Honeydukes!” Diggory laughs at the expense of the Third Years. “You’d better watch out, Miss Black. Your Orion is a frivolous spender.”

“His wealth is his own, as mine is mine,” Walburga says unfeelingly.

Diggory makes an unflattering face. She then looks at Harry slyly next. “Though I spied our transfer student looking much the same in Gladrags, and our dear Prefect was happy to buy anything he so much as glanced at.”

“Are you in the market for a benefactor, Diggory?” Tom asks. “Since you’re taking notes with such... scrutiny.”

She colours, mouth open to retort, but her words never escape her.

She should look elsewhere anyhow; all of Tom’s money comes from his own beneficial arrangements.

A bludger flies by, just short of smashing her nose in.

“Oi!” she shrieks.

Lestrange laughs from the top of the hill beyond the village fence, Beater’s bat in his hand.

“How about a game?” he calls. “We’ve brought our gear!”

Prewett and Diggory whoop, hopping the short wooden fence to race over to Lestrange.

“Come on Thadeus, catch up!” Prewett calls. “We need our Seeker!”

Nott glows, nearly tripping on himself in joy to follow.

“Who will we play against, though?”

Harry’s head whips to Tom, his hand falling hard and heavy on Tom’s arm.

“I stood through—through hours of socks and jumpers, and, and pants fittings! You’re taking me to get a broom!”

“How quickly you have spoiled him, Tom!” Walburga laughs. “Darling, don’t you know that when you ask your Maecenas for something, you should do so sweetly?”

“My what?” Harry asks.

Tom reaches into his cloak and withdraws his purse, full of coin courtesy of Walburga’s own mother.

“Pick whatever you like,” he tells Harry.

The pouch has no sooner fallen into Harry’s hands than he is running back down High Street for the sporting shops.

“Don’t let them start without me!” he shouts over his shoulder.

They play a very informal game of Quidditch there in the field, one filled with fouls and dirty tricks. There are no hoops for the Quaffle, so the game devolves more into a chase for which team can juggle it the longest or who takes the fewest Bludger hits.

Tom sits on the top rung of the fence with Walburga and watches them play, the official Slytherin team versus the other Slytherins who joined in—and Harry.

Nott and Harry face one another on the ground, Avery between them.

“Ready? Set—” He holds a contraband Snitch up in his hand and releases. “Go!”

Harry takes off like a shot, a blur on the white sky.

“Merlin!” Avery gapes, clutching his hat to his head to keep it from being blown off by the force of Harry’s wind.

A feeling rushes over Tom, a giddiness. He feels a rush—the cold air, certainly, but also the flood of a joy he’s never felt before. He cannot take his eyes off of Harry, how he twists and flies over the hills.

“A lovely sport,” Walburga comments, her delicate opera binoculars following her many paramours on the team, in particular Rosier. “Though I believe this is the most invested I’ve ever seen you, Riddle.”

“All magic interests me,” Tom tells her.

Now Walburga looks at him through her binoculars.

“Indeed.”

Perhaps she is right, Tom thinks, watching Harry avoid a Bludger. Perhaps he has a new appreciation for the game. Harry plays it with such passion, such… love. It radiates from him like the sun; how can Tom not be so affected by it?

They play three rounds, and Harry catches the Snitch every time.

“You’re amazing!” Nott gushes when they’re on the ground again. “Where did you learn to play like that? You have to show me how you did that manoeuvre when Yaxley was aiming for you!”

Harry meets Tom’s eyes, bright and watering from the wind, the only green grove for miles in this white, winter scene.

He has learned much about Harry in these last few days. Harry has pride in spades. And even more capacity for purest joy. He’s not a Lestrange, secure in his worship but a worshipper, still. Not a Prewett, utterly carefree. Not Malfoy, arrogant and superior, nor Nott, hesitant when he needs to be headstrong. Not like any of the others, interchangeable and relevant only for their uses. And Harry is not Tom. He isn’t like anyone he knows.

What is it that makes a Harry?

Is it what he knows? Impossible things he shouldn’t know at all?

Or perhaps it’s this capacity for simple, bright love, in spite of all he knows.

The nature of beauty is such that the most noble and hardest of metals, which, the more it’s polished, the more beautifully it shines. Independent, selfish, even proud, a bit strange, wretchedly, but wisely.

Everything passes, but love remains after everything.

But Dante also spoke of love in the Inferno, love that does not always go gently. Love that curses. The Hell of love.

Love excuses no one loved from loving. Love led us straight to sudden death together.

—

They retreat in the evening back to the castle, wet with snow and in want of a hardy supper. Walburga and Abraxas transfigure the Seventh Year boy’s dorm into a lounge for privacy, summoning House Elves to bring them their feast. Tom presides over them as they dine, their scarves and socks resting on the airer by the fire to dry.

Surrounded by tapestries and scattered scrolls of unfinished assignments, plates of rich food, they are in a world entirely of their own making, Tom and his little dolls.

They talk about the Quidditch game, about their expeditions into the various shops. Now, in warm, dry lounging robes, the biting cold they’ve endured all day seems like a distant stranger.

Noel Gay plays softly on the radio.

They dine, play cards, make merry and indulge in Alihotsy. Even Harry endures it, seemingly softened to his peers after their Quidditch game, until he gives into his fatigue and falls sweetly asleep beside Tom on the settee.

Abraxas stands to change the radio when Noel Gay fades out into a crackle, searching for another frequency.

“The Fourth Panzer Army occupation of Kiev has faltered under constant pressure of Red Army forces.”

“They’re reporting on the Kievian warfront,” Abraxas says, turning it up.

“...First and Second Ukrainian Fronts have inched their way back into the territory with relentless harassment. With the liberation of Smolensk and the Northern Caucasus of Russia mere weeks ago, it seems the end of the Kievan occupation is inevitable.

Grindelwald’s soldiers, seen sporadically across the region throughout the conflict, have all but disappeared following the recapture of Kiev’s north and south bridgeheads. One wonders what his next move will be now that his biggest ally is crumbling and his centralised power is collapsing.”

“Run, run, while you can,” Walburga says, twirling her wand in her fingers.

“Forget Russia,” Rosier sniffs. “I would have kept pressure on France. Make base there.”

“They haven’t the infrastructure for an entire occupying army,” Ignatius tells her. “It’s why they folded so easily in the first place. Russia has the factories.”

“What does Grindelwald need with factories? He’s a wizard!” Rosier snorts.

“Waging a war on Muggles,” Ignatius persists. “Take their factories, take their fire power. France is full of nothing but bayonets and bureaucrats. Isn’t that right, Abraxas? How is your family faring over there, anyhow?”

Abraxas scowls, having not had French soil relatives for many generations.

Prewett and Rosier snicker behind their hands.

Tom rises from his seat, carrying the book that had been in his lap with him. He turns through the pages as they settle down around him. Nott turns the radio volume low.

“Grindelwald has failed on several accounts,” Tom begins. “Consider Machiavelli: If an injury must be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

“Rather than wiping out the Muggles, he’s enticing them into conflict,” Lestrange says. “He could have orchestrated their eradication, but instead he plays with them like toy soldiers and wastes time and resources on their supplication.”

“Correct,” Tom replies and reaches into his robe and passes him a small, blank card of smooth stock. Lestrange turns it over curiously in his hands, but Tom offers no further explanation. He turns to another page and reads.

“A question arises: whether it is better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? Perhaps one should wish to be both, but, being difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared. The nature of man is that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous. For love is preserved by the link of obligation and is broken by opportunity. But fear preserves you, and man will offer you their blood, property, life, and children by the dread of punishment which never fails.”

“But Grindelwald is feared,” Ignatius says. “Otherwise, someone would have challenged him by now, detained him, or even killed him.”

“True,” Tom concedes, and hands Ignatius an identical blank card. “Power and might inspires it, after all. But that is not Grindelwald’s fatal folly. If a prince chooses to go by way of fear rather than love, he must avoid hatred. This is obtained so long as he abstains from the seizure of property of his citizens, from the indiscriminate and unjustified murder of his subjects.”

“For a Lord of Wizards, he is rather liberal about killing other wizards,” Rosier cannot deny. “None but his most faithful follow him now truthfully.”

“And here we arrive at another flaw: Grindelwald’s army,” Tom says, passing Rosier too, a card. He turns yet more pages. “The choice of servants is of no little importance. When they are capable and faithful, he may always be considered wise, because he knows how to recognise them. But when he is unwise?

There is one test which never fails; when you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him. He who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince.”

One day, Tom’s followers will think of nothing but him.

“My father,” Thadeus Nott says. “He followed Grindelwald, but used part of the wealth he was given by the movement to invest and increase his own profit. That’s how he was caught. There must be dozens like him.”

“There are,” Toms says and rewards Nott with a blank card of his own. “It is what has weakened him in Europe and sent him to Russia. Now, he flees from there as well.”

He reads on.

“There are many with the opinion that the affairs of the world are governed by fortune and by God. That men with their wisdom cannot direct them; and because of this, would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in worldly affairs, but to let chance govern them.”

“Indeed, Grindelwald is entrenched in worldly affairs,” Walburga says, “out of his Muggle paranoia, that their destruction of magic is inevitable unless he alone can save us all. That we will be immortal if he does.”

“In this way, he is a true Machiavellan,” Tom says, and hands her a card. He turns yet another page. “He holds it true that Fortune is the arbiter of our fates, but only in half. The rest lies in ourselves. Compare Fortune to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where none have prepared to resist her, and thither, everything flies before it; all yield to its violence… Grindelwald yields.”

“It is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under you, it is necessary to beat and ill-use her. She is, therefore, always, woman-like: a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her,” Abraxas finishes.

“What?” Rosier squawks. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“It is word for word Machiavelli!” Abraxas defends himself. “Read it for yourself. Well, Riddle, I’ve spoken up. Do I not receive a card like the rest?”

Tom smiles.

“Do you want one?”

“Any gift from you is a gift well-received,” Lestrange interrupts.

“Doesn’t Machiavelli also write a chapter on how to avoid flatterers?” Walburga asks, eyes sly.

“A card, if you please,” Abraxas says with an outstretched hand.

A Malfoy is arrogant, prideful. He is a misogynist despite being bred from the best women society has to offer. A blood purist who guards the traditions as if they were always under fire. Tom will make good use of his wealth, will wring him for his social leverage, will bend him and his future progeny low. He will treat Malfoy as Machiavelli’s woman: command, beat and ill-use him with violence and audacity.

Tom gives him a smile and a card.

Abraxas turns it over in his hand, brow furrowing at each blank side. It is plain, cream, with no indication as to what it could be. They look at one another for an answer, each examining their card.

“What is it?” Abraxas asks, withdrawing his wand and tapping on it once, seemingly hoping to make it reveal something.

Tom smiles.

He takes Abraxas’ hand in his own, palm—and card—up, and brings the tip of his wand to the centre of the blank space there.

“Walpurgis Knight,” he says with a single tap.

Shining, emerald text bleeds into the card, unspooling. Abraxas holds it up and reads aloud:

By Invitation of the Heir:

The Secret and Most Noble Order

of the

Knights of Walpurgis

Lestrange rushes from his seat to take Abraxas’ card, eyes hungrily devouring the words. He turns it over.

“There’s more! Night of First Anointment, Samhain in the Forbidden Forest. Tom!”

Lestrange is breathless, looking up at Tom with wide, shining eyes.

“Walpurgis Night… No, Walpurgis Knight?” Walburga laughs, taking the revealed card in her hand. “Riddle, I wonder at you.”

“A duelling club will take us only so far,” Tom says. “I have the tools, the knowledge to take you further. I aim much higher than Hogwarts, than the Ministry, than even Grindelwald. Do you?”

They stare at him, considering this declaration which has been in the making for many, many years. There have been no illusions about Tom’s starvation for greatness. Now, he offers to share it with them.

Lestrange steps forward.

“Let us start, for both our wills, joined now, are one. You are my guide, you are my lord and teacher. I will be there in the Inferno.”

It is a start.