Embryo

IX

Samhain, sweet An tSamhain.

The point between Equinox and Solstice, the lighter and darker halves of the year, a liminal time of year when the veil between human and spirit is thin, when sidhe come calling and dead kin return home. It is the ephemeral space between birth and death, end and beginning, when one must settle one’s affairs and debts, when justice is meted out.

It is the time for the inauguration of new kings.

All across Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Wix prepare for the barrier between Here and There to be lifted. It is a period of celebration as much as trial, the onset of the darkest season. Weak things die, and the hearty endure.

First mentioned in early Irish literature in the ninth century, Samhain festivals have varied greatly over time and culture, but one tradition endures today:

The festival starts with the embrace of darkness.

The hearth is put out.

They wake before dawn that first morning of Samhain.

“You’ll be our guide, won’t you?” Lestrange asks in the quiet.

Raynaldus has rung in Beltane with his parents but he has never dared to usher in the darkest parts of the season—never alone. As well he shouldn’t. But dear Raynaldus is not alone, now.

“Of course,” Tom says.

As though he would allow any other the role of Shepherd! The centre of the ritual, the one who stands to gain the most, the one who determines the nature and tone of the blessings. Tom would seize such a potent position for himself. But he need not seize it, for his disciples offer it to him willingly.

I am the way into the doleful city, I am the way into eternal grief.

And so, with them all standing around the Slytherin hearth, Lestrange douses the flames and plunges them into the black. The hearth is not to be relit again until late in the night. The students and House Elves alike have all been warned off: to leave the dark hearth be until they return with the ritual fire.

“You have the Cat Eye?” Tom asks Nott, and Nott passes the Cryptantha petals down the circle they’ve formed.

“What do I do with this?” Harry asks, fumbling in the dark and nearly dropping the priceless flower.

Tom grasps his hand in his own and takes the delicate white petal from him.

“Close your eyes.”

Harry hesitates, squinting through the dim Common Room at Tom. Still so mistrustful.

He does so.

“Open your mouth.”

“Why?” Harry demands, flustered.

“Just do it,” Rosier snaps, impatient but smirking. “You have to eat it.”

Harry opens his mouth, head tilted back, and Tom looks into the pink, plush dark of him, a Priest.

With his thumb, he takes the petal and presses it into the searing hot mortar of Harry’s tongue, presses harder than necessary so that his thumb is engulfed in wet, welcoming velvet and the Cryptantha is crushed into a pulp.

Tom lingers, but withdraws his thumb. Harry’s spit turns cold in the open air on his skin.

“Swallow, then open your eyes.”

He watches Harry’s throat flex.

Harry blinks.

“Your eyes are glowing!” Harry says, looking around at them. “I can see!”

“Cat Eye,” Not explains. “It will last through Sunrise so we can start our preparations without the firelight.”

“Cool. You could have just told me I needed to eat it though.”

“We didn’t want to spoil Riddle’s fun,” Walburga says, using her wand to clear away the tea tables and foot rests to make space for their work.

“Who should we dedicate our sacrament to?” Rosier asks. “Robigo, like we talked about?”

Robigo, neither man nor woman, and both. All. Named for the wheat rust, Wizarding towns are painted red in her name. Rubig, ruber, red. Robigo’s touch is everywhere, their lurid shade influencing all aspects of the ritual—in the choice of the dog, a red dog, and in the colour of the disease itself painting crimson blight along the crop fields.

Many rituals in their name and on the Soltice’s axis contradict one another. The horrific and the beautiful. The violent and the sweet.

“Robigo is a noble patron, and while Wizarding crops are always on my mind—their soils and rains suffer Muggle pollution year after year—Robigo is the arbiter of the harvest season, not the herald of the darker part of the year,” Tom says. “And our ritual is delicate. We must choose wisely.”

There are many stars, many gods who preside over the dark, any one of them suitable for a Samhain ritual. Kore, Minerva, Belili, or Osiris.

“What sort of ritual is this again, exactly?” Harry asks.

“What’s Samhain? What sort of Wizard are you?” Lestrange starts, but Tom cuts him off with a sharp glance.

Harry is young, impressionable. He understands basic magical theory and is demonstrably powerful. He is fruit on a vine, not yet ripe, but Tom will make him so.

“It is an honouring of the new season,” Tom explains, patient, easy. “The Veil that separates our world from other worlds is thin and presents an opportunity to commune with the spirits on the other side, to ask for their good fortune and powers through the winter.”

“The Veil…” Harry murmurs, and in his mind’s eye there appears a black, smokey veil. It undulates in slow, sinister ripples, ghostly whispers murmuring just on the other side, their shapes drifting close to the fabric and away again. Dread unspools within.

Harry shakes his head and the fleeting impression is gone.

“It will clarify and centre your mind. Think of it as a meditation exercise,” Tom tells him. “But less boring.”

“Sounds like Dark Magic.”

Stubborn boy.

“What is Dark Magic, Harry? We have been over this before. In all the time you have spent here among us, what Dark Magic have you seen?”

“I know some of the spells you use in the duelling club are curses; I’m not stupid!”

Tom sighs.

“Tonight, Harry, we honour Samhain the why it has been honoured for centuries. We fast, we light a fire, say a prayer, and we feast all night long.”

“What about the dog?”

The dog?

“The animal sacrifice!” Harry explains.

“Ah,” Tom replies. The others titter. “Well, there will be chickens for the feast and usually a pig. Those, we eat.”

“There is the lamb, Riddle, don’t forget,” Rosier says, and she and the others burst into giggles.

“We’re sacrificing a lamb?!” Harry asks, horrified.

“Only symbolically,” Tom soothes him. He steps forward, and Harry steps back. It is a delicate dance.

Tom places his hands on Harry’s skittish shoulders. Really, all this fuss.

“There will be no actual lamb, I assure you. It is in name only. And all of this is under the sanction of Professor Slughorn. He approved everything.”

And was delighted to do so.

“I got up to quite a bit of revelry in my day too!” he’d blustered when Tom had visited him the night before in his office with a bottle of malted Scotch, courtesy of the Lestrange collection. “Just tell me anything you need, anything at all!”

Tom had smiled, poured the man another drink, and slipped the list across the desk. Arm extended fully, their faces close. There’s a small seed of fear in Slughorn, born from their conversation last year, but his desire, Tom’s allure, often overpowers it.

“Much obliged, Professor.”

“...You won’t get into any trouble, will you, my boy?”

“You have absolutely nothing to worry about,” Tom had lied. “I promise.”

But before they can truly begin Samhain, a certain matter must be settled.

“Nott,” Tom beckons. “Prewett.”

They nervously glance at one another and step forward.

“I will be plain: You cannot participate in this ritual, or indeed any future ritual with this coven, until you have fully and completely settled your grievances. Have you?”

Nott looks down, shame-faced, and Prewett shifts guiltily.

The others chuckle under their breath at their expense.

“Then you will do so, now.”

“Now?!” Prewett repeats.

“You may settle this in the traditional way, the wizard’s way, and duel, or any other way, but whatever you do, be sure to put it firmly to rest.”

“A duel…?” Nott mutters, looking at Prewett. It is clear he cannot stomach even the thought of raising his wand on his dear friend, and despite Prewett’s bullheadedness, he is much the same.

“Could we—? Do we have to do this here?”

Tom crosses his arms, and Nott accepts defeat.

“Will you talk with me, Ignatius? Please?”

Abraxas and Lestrange grunt in disappointment that there will be no justice by combat.

“Say whatever you want,” Prewett answers. “It won’t change anything.”

“I’m sorry. I know I should have done more. I completely gave in to my mother… I’m ashamed…”

“You should be. Five years? That’s nothing. He’ll be out before the war is even over!”

“...I’m going to fix it and do what I should have done.”

Prewett scoffs.

“How? It’s not like his sentence can be appealed.”

Not judiciously, at least. Nott looks beseechingly at Tom.

“I’ll tell you all about it after the ritual, I promise. Tom will explain everything.”

“Tom?”

Now Prewett looks, but Tom gives nothing away.

Nott tentatively reaches for Prewett’s hand.

“Ignatius. Do you trust me?”

“Good grief,” Rosier complains.

“I used to.”

Nott cringes, but pushes forward. He is more obedient than Tom gives him credit for.

“Will you trust me, this once then? Please.”

Prewett heaves a long sigh. He rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Come on, we’re burning both ends of the candle here,” Lestrange moans under his breath.

“If all else perished, and you remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and you were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it,” Nott says.

“All right!” Prewett snaps, rubbing his neck in embarrassment. “Fine. Wuthering Heights? Merlin…”

Nott slams into Prewett, hugging him tight around the waist. “You won’t regret it, I swear!”

“What about us?” Harry asks Tom. “We’ve definitely got grievances.”

As if Harry can remember them. But Tom is oh, so patient. He will humour him.

“Your role tonight is different from theirs. We will be fine.”

“Can we make our masks now, Tom?” Lestrange asks, keen to move on from Nott and Prewett’s touching display.

“You may.”

They set to work disguising themselves, taking the bird skulls Walburga has provided and transfiguring them. As they work, a few Slytherin housemates trickle out of bed, the dawn light slow to penetrate through the Black Lake and light the Common Room.

Some join them at the table, making their own masks before going to breakfast.

Walburga holds her crow mask up to the ambient light of the room and carefully paints it a lurid red. Beside her, Abraxas fastens the tail feathers of an albino peacock to his own mask, and is met with mockery.

“The peacock is a regal and noble bird!” he defends himself.

“Very regal,” Walburga coos.

“Very noble,” Prewett echoes.

“Not going to breakfast?” Diggory asks, watching them each disguise themselves.

“We fast until the evening, dear,” Walburga says, now a crimson crow.

“We’re fasting?” Harry asks. Tom can already feel the hunger gnawing at his belly. It seems Harry is always hungering, never having his fill.

“You may have bread and honey.”

To sweeten him, make him more succulent.

“Are you doing a ritual?” Diggory asks them excitedly. “You must be! Where are you doing it? How are you getting out of lessons?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Prewett laughs, fashioning his red rooster mask in place. “We’re all seriously ill.”

“I’ll say,” Nott sniggers.

“Professor Slughorn recommended bedrest,” Roiser says, touching the back of her hand to her temple and feigning a swoon, batting her eyelashes. “But take good notes for me in Charms!”

Diggory leaves them for the Great Hall, deflated and deeply offended that she has not been invited to the revelry. There is time yet to bring her into the fold, but for now, Tom is not satisfied with her promise and will leave her be.

Others come and go. A few join them in mask-making, running to breakfast late, shrouded behind the face of a fox, falcon or peregrine.

Rosier gets a hawk, in blood red, Nott a dove in pearly white. Lestrange, a white vulture.

Tom finishes his own and fastsens it in place. He looks through the bird’s eyes, reflecting white, red, and fiery gold. His Knights look at him, proud, covetous, with avarice.

A magpie.

The only one left is Harry.

“I don’t get one?” he asks, watching them transform into creatures of ritual and revelry.

The flock cackles.

Tom stands, advances on him as a phoenix, and it truly feels as though a fire streams behind him. He cups his hands on Harry’s cheeks before the boy can back away.

“After,” he says.

—

A person is a microcosm; within him is the mechanism of the flesh and the spirit.

The flesh is the vessel—the yearnings, the hunger pangs, and the feral in them—and it is the flesh that ages. While the spirit is the essence—the invisible, the immutable.

They are born together in the animal of man, soul meeting body, immortality meeting mortality. This twin birth allows man to know sorrow, longing, ecstasy. He needs to know them to fully taste the fruit of the earth, to know the good and evil within him, for neither heaven nor hell are found outside oneself. They mingle there within—intimately.

It is the same for power.

One must understand the world not by the shell, but by the yolk.

Or so Skovoroda says.

Tonight, Harry’s yolk will drop from the ether into his shell and at last be made one again.

For now, they traipse out of the Slytherin Common Room adorned in their disguises and march down to the kitchens. They give the House Elves their list for their midnight Samhain feast, Professor Slughorn’s signature scrawled at the bottom.

“We’re to get everything we need, understood?” Walburga says to them, glaring down at their bulbous eyes and large, wrinkled ears. They cower under her menacing mask. “One of you come with me. We’re selecting our own boar. Don’t forget the port.”

From there, they slip out the back and follow the cobbled stone path down the hill to the livestock houses, a House Elf in tow.

They observe the pigs rooting around in their pen.

“Which is the healthiest?” Lestrange asks.

“They alls be very healthy, Young Master!” the House Elf ensures.

Walburga kicks the creature with the point of her boot, and it squawks, startling the pigs.

“Hey!” Harry shouts angrily.

“Yes, I’m sure. Tell us which one is the most healthy. Robust. Vigour,” Walburga speaks slowly. “Understand?”

“Forgive Toppy, Young Mistress,” it weeps, smacking itself in the head. It points to one of the pigs. “This one here is being most strong of them, Toppy swears it!”

“Take that one, then. Be gone.”

“Dreadful creatures,” Abraxas sniffs.

“It’s not right to hurt them,” Harry snaps.

They look at him with incredulity.

“You don’t need to worry about them. They’re like animals. Lower than animals, really,” Rosier laughs.

“They’re not animals. No more than you are.”

“But Harry, we are animals. Especially Abraxas if what the girls in Ravenclaw are saying is true.”

“What?” Abraxas worries. “What are they saying?”

“We need to get the hens,” Lestrange says, grimacing as he steps out of the pig house, watching where he puts his shoes and eager to be away from the stench.

“I’m just saying—it’s not right to go around kicking them and being rude for no reason,” Harry says as they continue down the path now to the chicken coups.

“Merlin,” Prewett laughs. “The heart on this one.”

Indeed, Harry’s heart wrenches for even House Elves it seems. He needn’t waste the pity, but Tom doubts Harry would care for Tom to say so.

“It isn’t a bad philosophy,” Nott speaks up. “Slaves last longer and do better work when they’re treated well enough.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all!”

They laugh at Harry, a group of trilling birds as they hop down the hills.

At the coop, Lestrange shows the House Elf there the note from Slughorn allowing them three birds.

“That one looks nice,” Rosier says, pointing to a black pullet.

“It’s got scaly leg mites,” Lestrange says. “I’m the one doing the divination, so I’ll pick them if you please.”

Rosier raises her arms in surrender.

He quickly selects three hens and accepts them from the House Elf after it dispassionately breaks each of their necks. Harry cringes at the sound.

Lestrange holds the hens up for Tom to inspect.

“Very fine,” he approves.

Immediate needs secured, they walk along the exterior of the castle and make their way down to the lakeshore. There is ice creeping along its edges, another liminal space. Perfect for hepatomancy.

They settle there, and Lestrange and Walburga arrange the hen carcasses.

Prewett and Nott branch off to collect large stones from the shore, one for each Knight, to take with them into the forest. Harry trails behind them, not quite with them, not quite separate. He is still smarting over the House Elf of all things. It is good for the Samhain ritual anyhow, for Harry to hold himself apart and pure.

Abraxas sets up more tea to ease their mid-day hunger. There is a chill in the air, kept at bay by the warm dregs of Puuer. With it, Abraxas makes their fasting hors d'oeuvre, the only thing they are allowed to eat before the Samhain feast: Tetrapharmakos.

Abraxas mixes the emulsion in a mortar, grinding it to a paste. Wax, tallow, pitch and pine resin, the Tetrapharmakos is said to be a remedy for the soul, to cleanse and to heal. It is the basis for the four chief doctrines of the Epicureans:

Do not fear god; Do not fear death; What is good is easy to get; What is terrible is easy to endure.

What better companions to a festival than to have no fear and to have what is good and easy? Being the substance that it is, it will also take hours to chew and longer to muster up the will to swallow; the ideal companion to a fast.

“Yegh!” Rosier squeals as Lestrange, his vulture mask fastened on firmly, slices the gut of one of his three chickens open. He punctures its organ sac and viscera spills out onto the rocky ground.

“Go walk with the others around the bank if you’re going to be so loud, Cordillia, I need to concentrate,” Lestrange scolds her.

Rosier wipes the toe of her bloodied boot in the sand with a grimace.

“Excuse me,” she sniffs and picks across the tableau of entrails to Walburga and Tom, settled under a sparsely-leafed tree, enjoying the dappled sunlight. “Do you think we’re all right doing this here? With Dumbledore back at the castle, I mean.”

Tom looks up at that castle, its warm windows and gleaming stone. Is Dumbledore looking down on them now, he wonders?

“We are fine,” Tom assures her.

They watch Lestrange work from a distance as he takes the liver of each sacrificial chicken, slices it in pieces and inspects it. The practice is older than the Romans, older than the Babylonian, this hepatomancy. A rich, healthy liver foretells a good sacrifice and sound ritual. The darker and redder the meat, the more potent an offering. Lestrange’s ancestry has a gift for reading blood and bone, and his studied eye will catch any weakness long before the first dusk of Samhain.

The journey through the Veil is an arduous one, and many of the aes sídhe will be pinched with hunger and thirst. It would be an insult to present them with anything less than perfect.

Tom’s eyes cut to the far west side of the lake where a distant figure kicks at the rocky shore. Yes, Lestrange has done well picking the hens, and so too has Tom, picking Harry. Brave, heartful Harry.

When the sidhe come and meet Harry’s undisguised face, will they take him for the liver and devour him for their feast? Will they sink their teeth into the juice of his sweet heart? What futures would Lestrange find there if he were to poke at Harry’s remains? It’s almost worth cutting him open.

Or will the sidhe recognize like to like, and whisk Harry through the veil and back to the Otherworld at dawn?

Tom will know soon.

Abraxas finishes the Tetrapharmakos and offers it to Walburga.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe in Epicurus theory,” she laughs, waving him off. “I’d rather go without than chew that bile.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Abraxas answers proudly. “The atom vibrates. We see proof of it everyday. It wears down the ring from being worn, the statue from being kissed, stones from the steady drip of water. Everything outside of the atom is void, and both the atom and the void are infinite. At what point is that a matter of debate?”

“A compound for fasting, I can forgive. But atomic swerve?” Walburga insists. “You believe in that?”

“Humanity has free will in an otherwise determined world. The Laws of Nature decide the path of the atom until the magician alters it. It is the very definition of atomic swerve!”

“If we are so free as you say, why then are we not able to conjure food? Why is permanent organic transfiguration impossible?” she replies, voice raising. Her temper has been badly affected by the fasting, apparently—unlike Tom, unlike Harry, she is not used to going hungry.

“Why do you want so badly to be a slave to destiny?” Abraxas sniffs.

Lestrange sighs, long and heavy from his spot beside Tom.

“Too good for Aristotle?” Walburga asks him with a grin.

“That wasn’t Aristotle,” Lestrange says.

“It was as good as. Some things happen out of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. There, pure Aristotle. Are you pleased, Raynaldus?”

“Chuffed,” he sniffs. ”Not perenklisis or atomic swerve. The atom is eternal; it splits and spins and collides where necessary; when the wizard makes it.”

Abraxas smiles smugly at Lestange.

Tom interrupts.

“But it is not just the atom, what one can see, that the Wizard commands. There is also the void, what cannot be seen. Otherwise nothing can arise from nothing, and the senses are fooled, beguiled. To be fooled by the atom and the void is to be Muggle. It takes a keen Wizard and a steady hand to deliver unto others this clarity, truth, and power.”

“Stop, stop!” Prewett laughs, returning from the shore heavily laden with stones. “I beg of you, I’ve too little in my stomach to even try to grasp whatever it is you lot are talking about. Have mercy on us simple fools.”

Abraxas passes the Tetrapharmakos as a peace offering, and Prewett takes a large amount and eats it, grimacing with every flex of his jaw.

He drops the load of stones with a resounding crack and Rosier snorts awake, having evidently fallen asleep. Tom cannot blame her—Epicurus is unbearably dull.

Tom will give any philosopher time to make their point, but on this account, Tom must refuse. For Epicurus believes that the root of all human neurosis is the denial of death.

For all of his ataraxia and aponia, his seeking peace and painlessness, Epicurus, who believes the very structure of the universe down to the smallest unit swerves for the will of mankind, believes also that mankind should march steadily into death.

Acustom thyself, he says, to believe that death is nothing to us. For good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience and, therefore, what would seem to be the most awful of evils is made nothing to us. When we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.

Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo. I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care.

An epitaph engraved on many a headstone of Epicurus’ disciples, but one that will never be engraved on Tom’s. For he shall never die.

Lestrange takes the rest of the afternoon to finish with the carcasses. The entrails of the hens dry as he carefully separates feather, flesh, and clean, white bone for the bone fire.

He presents them to Tom and offers him from the pile keel, beak, and talon.

“Our Haruspex has blessed our offerings and divined our good fortunes,” he imparts, and hands each of his Knights a bone.

“I don’t get anything again?” Harry asks again when Tom passes him over, the only one of them bare-faced, without a mask.

Tom smiles behind his mask, and from his bag pulls out a jar of honey and a heel of bread.

“Eat.”

Harry takes it and looks around the others. They look back, a flock.

“No one else is eating?”

“Don’t worry,” Tom says. “We will.”

—

When the sun is beyond its highest point, casting a pink pall on the world around them and the entrails of three hens have dried, Tom shepherds his flock around him at the tree. One by one, they raise their hoods and take Tom’s hand in their own, raise it to the sky then to their chest in one smooth motion.

Harry watches.

Tom takes the first step into the forest, mask in place.

A shiver of delight and friction trembles over his skin the moment he steps into the trees: a Welcome.

His knights follow close behind.

Dark closes in around them, that of the dense tree canopy covering the sky and the sun slinking, slipping, tilting under the horizon. Twilight is upon them.

They walk, the branches of the trees bending down toward them, brushing their shoulders and covered cheeks. Sound disappears all around them, the song of the forest stayed by the draw of a witching hour come closer and closer. No hush of a wing or whisper of a leaf. Even their steps grow quieter as tendrils of wind drag them deeper into the dark mouth of the Forbidden Forest, guided by Tom and the soft glow of his wand.

Further they march steadily over mossy earth, until the lights of Hogwarts’ warm windows are but a distant memory, until the scarlet blood of sunset has drained into a pale blue.

Only when it is dark, truly dark, do they arrive at their ritual ground.

A spacious mossy clearing has been prepared for them, an inert, stone fire pit settled into the centre.

They circle around it, evenly spaced, cloaked and masked, with only their excited grins showing. Only Harry, stood across the pit from Tom, looks upon it all with an open, bare face.

Tom steps forward and places a flagstone at his feet on the rim of the firepit and like a ripple, the Knights follow suit until the pit is lined with a flagstone at the feet of each of them. On an altar behind them, Lestrange places the largest flagstone, laden with their offal offerings.

Tom brandishes his wand. They are watching him, waiting. He is the nexus of their universe, standing upon the bottomless well of their power, and he alone can unleash it!

It begins.

“Approach!” Tom calls. “O ye Long Night. Make dark the hearth of last harvest.”

Shadows gather out of their dens, creeping along the ground with an audible whisper. Each of Tom’s knights disappear one by one into the dark, Harry’s pale, glowing face the last. They are entombed in unnatural, velvety black.

“Approach, ye Winter!” Tom calls, and a chill seeps into the air. “Bless us Your bone-cold clutch.”

With his free hand, Tom reaches into his cloak and casts a handful of fine hen bone onto the dark pit below. The chime of bones striking stone rings through the air as the others cast their own bones as well.

“Arrive, Aillen’s fire!” Tom calls, and with a crack, the logs on the pit split open with heat and searing light. The Knights cheer. “Aillen the arson’ and amour’ist.”

The fire roars, bones popping and sparks dancing. A fire that rages hot enough to burn palaces.

“Arrive, sidhe! Bless us your Otherworldly touch.”

The air giggles. A cold finger drags down the back of their necks.

“Come, now; Come down, from ye burial mound.”

Tom calls upon Slievenamon, the mountain where unfading dusk abides.

He calls upon Cruachan, where Neolithic hosts of the Otherworld reside.

“Anoint this, the First Night of An t-Samhain. We mark the feast with birth: an alliance, a society, an oath. We mark the feast with death. With flesh, blood and breath.”

“I, Walpurgis Knight,” Walburga speaks, holding her palm upwards over the fire, “present to thee, the Wounding.”

She slices down her palm vertically with the tip of her wand and dark blood drips into the flames, sizzling and smoking on the bones. Tom can taste it in the air, breathes it across his tongue.

The fire glows brighter.

“I, Walpurgis Knight,” Abraxas continues, “present to thee, the Burning.”

He cuts his wand across the end of his blond, plaited hair and tosses the pale tresses to the fire. It eats it up as brightly as Walburga’s blood.

“Now I, Walpurgis Knight,” Cordellia says, “present to thee, the Drowning.”

She lifts a goblet to her lips and drinks deeply, but the fire does not flare in recognition just yet. She passes the drink then to Raynalus, and he to Tom, the head, his eyes alight with ritual madness.

Tom drinks.

He passes it to Walburga.

“What is that?” Harry whispers to Thadeus, shivering in the dark, face red from the flames. The goblet is passed to Ignatius and then to Thadeus.

“Geimhreadh Miodh.”

“Geim-what?” Harry chokes.

Thadeus takes his fill of the Miodh and passes it to Harry, the last.

“Just drink,” Thadeus whispers, urging Harry to take the cup. “And I, Walpurgis Knight, present to thee…”

Harry looks down at the goblet with a presage, foreboding expression.

He drinks.

“The Lamb.”

The fire erupts, and Harry clutches at his throat, struggling for breath.

The struggle is in vain; his chest has been sealed by the Miodh and will not release. He falls to his knees, his eyes wide upon Tom, beseeching. It is a delightful sight, one which makes Tom breathe hard and fast for wanting. Harry’s eyes flutter. His face is all the more red now that he cannot breathe, a dark, blood-red foam bubbling on his open lips.

He collapses in a paroxysm.

The fire flashes pure white, the flames reaching out as hands, grasping into Tom’s chest and settling inside. It is pure heat, power. It tastes of meat and life and violence. His ribs creak as it yawns into him, expands his senses. And when it rages so hot and huge in his skin, he allows it to flow, a portion gifted to each of his Knights.

He looks upon those who would follow him, obey him, as they look back.

Their eyes glow.

It is done.

—

“The antidote,” Tom commands of Cordillia, crouching by the now cheerfully crackling fire, looking into Harry’s still face. Unshed tears rest upon his eyelashes, his lips a sorrowful blue. He has not disappeared into the Otherworld. Tom feels a gentle relief.

Geimhreadh Miodh, Winter Mead, is a poisonous concoction traditional in Pureblood circles. It is necessary to drink it from a young age to build immunity, and is social proof of good breeding. Tom had spent the majority of Third Year ill from it, an aggressive regimen that allows him to drink it freely today.

Rosier passes him a corked emerald vial, and Tom empties its contents into Harry’s lax mouth. His teeth glitter in the fire-light, the back of his throat and tongue dark in shadows. Tom has the strangest urge to crawl inside, to follow after the tonic and grope at Harry’s soft viscera, eat his way out of him.

Harry coughs wetly, stirring. His hazy eyes dart over Tom’s masked face hovering above him.

The others laugh at the poor boy’s expense, breaking from their circle to flutter about the clearing.

“Tom,” Harry chokes. “Voldemort.”

Did he see Donn, god of death?

“For you,” Tom says and offers Harry a bright white mask with gold and red feathers.

A phoenix.

“What did you do to me?” he rasps, pushing at Tom’s hands and sitting up from the forest floor. He looks dazed. Tom tries to get a sense for his thoughts, but there is a strange static between them. “You—you sacrificed me!”

“You made a very good one, too,” Tom smiles. He pulls Harry to his feet, holds him as he sways.

“Here, here!” Prewett shouts, and the rest are laughing again, a cackling flock.

“We’re in the Forbidden Forest,” Harry mutters, looking around. “But I was just—I was at the Ministry.”

Tom feels himself frown. Had he been wrong? Had the ritualistic death scattered Harry’s mind rather than focus it?

“Harry,” Tom says, and those green eyes snap to him.

Alert. Good.

The clearing has transformed, lit with hovering lights and decorated with chimes that build a song with the wind. There is a long table, piled high with spirits, meats, and apples and hazelnuts. Rosier has grabbed a handful and placed them on the stones of the fire, watching them jump and reading their movements for future loves.

“What do our stones say?” Nott asks, peering at them for signs of good fortune or terrible omens. He exclaims upon looking. “Harry, your stone has been knocked over!”

“What does it mean?” Harry asks, kicking at it.

“Don’t! It means you won’t live out the year!” Thadeus gasps.

Harry huffs, as though a threat to his life is a mere inconvenience. “I’ve heard that one before.”

“Please, Harry is our phoenix,” Prewett says, beckoning Harry to the table and pulling up his chair. “He’ll be reborn. Saluti to the Lamb! Have a drink. Chin up, it’s only butterbeer this time, I swear it!”

Harry takes the carafe hesitantly, and everyone cheers.

“Saluti, to the Knights of Walpurgis!” they shout.

“Saluti, to Tom Riddle!”

Their coven has been made.

The merrymaking lasts long into the night, drinking port and firewhiskey, gorging themselves on the feast. In a while, they will walk a torch lit by the bone fire back to the castle to relight the hearth, but for now they are content to partake in the breads spread upon the table, biting into surprises that tell their tidings for the coming season. Rosier bites into a loaf with a coin, for wealth. In his cake, Nott discovers a large, iridescent mermaid scale, for luck. He will surely need it come December.

Harry bites into an apple and pulls out of his mouth a ring.

For marriage.

Power thrums under their feet, beats in their chests. They will camp here until the small hours of the morning and trek to the Slytherin Commons with their Samhain torch to light the hearth once more. But that is some hours yet, and the mead is sweet.

Tom presides over it, their exalting and dancing around the fire, their euphoria, their Samhain flight. Skovoroda again comes to mind:

Return your gaze to me. It will give wings to me.

Higher than the elements, higher than mountains.

It will adorn me with feathers.

And Tom presides over it all.

He is king.