Embryo

XIII

The body is meat made animate. It is the equilibrium of energy consumed and energy made, that perfect marriage of systems that allow the body to live. Is that not life? A series of systems that generate as much energy as they consume? Is death not the cessation of those systems?

It is a confluence of electric pulse and dancing chemical, a delicate language. It gives the body voice and mobility, sentiment and memory. We are the sum total of our experiences. Some have called this biology, some psychology, this untouchable, intricate confluence that beguiles an exact origin. Most often, it is called the mind.

Tom is no stranger to it; to the exploration of that strange thing called mind.

True, he has visited his Decartes, his Parmenides. Dualism and monism. He has visited his Charcot and Romberg, hysteria and hypnosis, his Smilanskii and the metaphysical illusion of free will, and even Dennett and his eliminative materialism. He has spent time studying Franz Mesmer’s Animal Magnetism and his theories on vital fluid and equilibrium. Yet, none have educated him half so well as that of his own experiences.

Magic is full of the mind.

Confundus, Obliviate, the Jelly Brain Jinx. Potions to give someone the affectation of love, truth, drowsiness, or giddiness. Amortentia, Veritaserum, Dizziness Draught.

Even nonverbal magic, like what they learn in Sixth Year Defence Against the Dark Arts and Charms, is a sort of mind magic.

I think, therefore I am. I think, therefore I am casting Wingardium Leviosa, or some such.

“Well done, Mr. Riddle!” Professor Flitwick gushes as Tom cuts off his spell with a wordless Finite. “I think five points to Slytherin will do the trick.”

“Thank you, Professor. Actually, I had a list of questions I wanted to run by you for Monsieur Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes at Yule. Related to metaphysical magic and matter reversal. Thadeus had a few questions too, but we didn’t want to take up too much of his time or ask anything too off topic.”

“Mr. Nott?” Flitwick asks, looking at Thadeus who looks quite on the spot.

Tom doubts Nott has ever even skimmed a journal on metaphysical magic. His choice recreational reading are Wuthering Heights, the Brontes and Emily Dickinson…

“Actually, I was wondering if you might spare another invitation for Thadeus too. He was interested in going himself, but was too shy to say.”

Nott opens his mouth, no doubt to complain, and Tom kicks him under their table.

“I’m sure I can,” Professor Flitwack says, considering Nott with affectionate pity. “It’s always more fun to attend these events with a friend.”

“Tom,” Nott whispers as Flitwick moves on to other students. “Isn’t it risky for people to see me at the Ministry that night?”

“Actually, it’s better that people do see you. You’ll be seen at my side all night, completely accounted for.”

“But how—?”

“Later. Practise your nonverbals. I won’t take you if you don’t perfect them,” Tom delivers this threat with a smile.

Nott scowls, but refocuses his attention on the class.

He of all should be sharpening his aptitude for mental magic. Should someone take a peek, Nott has the most to lose.

In the orphanage, Tom had learned the mind is simple and wanting. Scarcity makes it so. Conceiving the wants and fears and night-time whisper-thoughts of all of those around him, the matrons and children, was as instinctive as the roll of Parseltongue in his mouth. He could understand them, predict them. And if one can understand the mind, one holds the key to its body.

Understanding is the journey. Manipulating the mind is its natural destination.

And Tom is primed for both.

There are many ways to manipulate the mind, some mundane, some fantastical. Some benign, some more sinister. One can be convinced, compelled, or coerced. Before Tom knew what he was, only that he was special and singular, already he could will his way into reality. Eyes became informants, and the threads of thoughts became patterns and constructions.

Advancing and nurturing this skill was a matter of survival, unique from his peers, who are doted on, swathed in the comfort of high birth.

It became clear to him under the first weight of Albus Dumbledore’s scorn, like first snow. Biting, confronting. He’d been given a gift, yes, the most precious one, the knowing of magic. But it also came with a slow and sure realisation. With every brightly coloured shop window on that first trip to Diagon Alley, every beautifully dyed robe, and gold-minted book, and rich display of treats, Tom had looked down at his worn, dull shoes, laces frayed to bits and split sole flapping at the toe with every step, and knew that he would be given no one and nothing that he himself did not take with his own hands.

Dumbledore would call it stealing, and the matrons would warn the other children away. But they’d get tangled up in his web anyhow, and by the start of his first term at Hogwarts come September first, he had glossy, new shoes.

Every summer after that, Tom squeezed and squeezed Wool’s for everything it could give, feeling keenly the differences between his magical life at Hogwarts and the dearth that awaited him at the children’s home, and when it could give no more, Tom did not return.

He was fifteen the last time he ever set foot in Wool’s. It was that summer, in the Black family home that he read for the first time in a book from their library the word legilimency.

What a novelty! What he has done all his life has a name.

And what he had done intuitively, most Pureblood children were taught formally.

Paranoid, obsessed with the perpetuation of genes and protection of their secrets, many heirs are taught the foundations of Occlumency and Legilimency in order to secure the old ways.

He and Walburga had practised together all summer, had seen parts of one another, the vulnerable, soft flesh beneath the carapace. He had never experienced such nakedness with another…

Until Harry.

Well today, Tom continues their education.

—

“Some say the master Legilimens is a master of astral magic,” Tom tells his Knights. “He reaches with his metaphysical arm into the window of the eye and becomes a sculptor. He arranges and moulds the thoughts there to his fancy.”

The Room of Requirement is hazy with incense, heavy with the scent of camphor. They breathe deeply, meditating, opening their Eye to the Unseen.

“With legilimency, one may press their ear to the glass and listen to a person’s innermost salient feelings. A talented Legilimens can even whisper back.”

It is different from Divination, from Astrology, from Harry’s visions of the future. It is not wizard communing with cosmos, but wizard communing with wizard.

“Imperio,” Tom casts on Abraxas’s turned back.

The others gasp.

Abraxas goes stiff as a board then melts, white eyelashes fluttering. He stands in a slumped daze. Tom’s power, still raging from the power of the Samhain ritual, rolls over him, consumes him. It is absolute.

“Stop!” Harry gasps, rushing between them and pulling at Tom’s wand. “What are you doing?!”

“Do you think we can get Slytherin’s monster all the way to Romania without using every tool at our disposal? The Imperius Curse is different from legilimency,” Tom says, throwing Harry off. “It does not let you simply listen to a man’s thoughts; it allows you to control them.”

Tom walks a circle around Abraxas now, his pale eyes and face slackened.

“Euphoria provides that complete control.”

It’s the defining characteristic of the Imperius curse, that feeling of lush pleasure. It consumes them both, the one who casts and the one who folds, the ultimate reward for the complete exchange of power.

“We can use other ways,” Harry insists. “Polyjuice potion, confundus, anything! If you’re half as great as you say you are, you should be able to do it without resorting to Dark Magic. It’s Unforgivable.”

Forgiveness… It is an inherently religious concept.

It comes out of penance for sin. The sinner must present their sin and the one who forgives must release it. Humility, prostration, begging… What use are these to Tom?

But much of British Wizarding law is codified as though these Christian concepts are measurable.

“Do you believe in God, Harry? What is a God to a Wizard when magic can achieve that which makes a God so? There is no need to limit yourself by these arbitrary trappings.”

Harry fumes.

“It isn’t arbitrary! I don’t care if it’s because of God or the law, hurting people is wrong!”

Harry’s heart is so… pure.

Another way, then.

“How long does it take to brew Polyjuice Potion, Harry?”

A flash of a young girl with thick, frizzy hair leaning over a simmering cauldron, stating in a small, matter-of-fact voice, it must stew for a whole month!

“Would you risk her roaming the school that long? Would you risk me changing my mind?”

Harry clenches his fists.

Tom smiles and returns his attention to the matter at hand.

“Abraxas, cut your hair.”

The flood of euphoria rushes at Tom like a knee-deep undertow, dragging at him, a foamy wake that means to pull him under with Abraxas. He doesn’t hesitate, wand in hand, mirroring just as he had done the first night of Samhain, severs the long silvery blond plait at his neck and allows it to drop at his feet.

The Knights watch, rapt.

“But the control is not perfect. Abraxas, snap your wand.”

“Tom—!” Prewett chokes, horrified.

They gape, faces twisted into horrified masks, and watch as Abraxas’ arms move as treacle, slow and shaking. When he has his wand gripped in both hands, eyes watering, wand bending, Tom relieves him.

“Stop. Finite.”

Abraxas drops his wand as though it were on fire, eyes wide and lips a chalky colour.

“As you can see, it is much easier to command someone to do something that isn’t in direct contradiction with their values. He might have cut his hair on his own, and it can be restored with a regrowth potion. Snapping his own wand, on the other hand…”

Tom walks to Abraxas at the centre of the room, who has slunk down onto his knees, wand clutched to his chest, breathing hard. Tom looks down at him, then extends a hand. Abraxas takes it, shivers as Tom’s fingers brush over the mark the Knights on his inner wrist. It pulses in acknowledgement.

“Ignatius, for example,” Tom gestures. “One may order you to fly on a broom as high as you can, until the broom stops working or you lose consciousness from lack of air. You love the sport of Quidditch, and you love flying. Even the threat of death would not keep you from obeying this order. But to find something so antithesis to your core… If you were commanded to kill Thadeus Nott for example—”

“Merlin, Tom!” Prewett sputters, sickened at the mere idea of it. His eyes dart between Nott and Tom’s wand, knees jerking with the instinct to move between them.

“Calm yourself,” Tom says, holding his hands up with a benign smile. “It was only an example.”

“We need not fear the dangers of magic, for even the unkind, unpleasant parts of it are sometimes needed. All magic is dangerous by its nature. But even the Imperius Curse has its limitations. There is a type of command you cannot force with it: that which is impossible to do. You cannot order someone to speak Parseltongue, for instance. Or sprout wings and fly.”

“What happens when you do?” Nott asks.

“They go insane.”

He shivers.

“Vague or abstract orders will also cause problems,” Tom continues. “Simply casting it is only the first step. A true master gives clear command, remains undetected, and avoids inducing any strange, suspicious behaviour in their thrall. The best of you will accompany me to Hogsmeade when we meet with the dragon handlers. You have the embosser, Raynaldus?”

Lestrange struts forward and proudly hands off a solid gold Ministry department letterhead stamp to him.

“Had our House Elf duplicate it, but don’t worry. This is the original. Father won’t notice for a while.”

Tom inspects it with some incredulity. Why is it the ones with the most always have the least in terms of taste? He tucks it away.

“Well done. You may go first as your reward.”

Lestrange grins and looks over his fellow Knights. Who will he take control of? Brieflyhis eyes slide over Tom as if considering, a flush on his ears, but he wouldn’t dare.

Abraxas, who surely deserves some more humbling? Rosier, who he always enjoys teasing? Walburga, seemingly as impenetrable?

Lestrange’s eyes fall on Harry and a look of glee overtakes his face. He raises his wand.

“Imperio.”

Harry goes still. His angry face smooths out, his eyes empty. Tom recalls the early days of the term, when Harry had first appeared seemingly as a ghost, with no thoughts or memories of his own. Had he been so small then, so aimless? How quickly Tom has grown accustomed to Harry’s life, his vigour.

“We’ll start easy,” Lestrange says, breathless with pleasure. “Jump up and down.”

Harry’s knees jerk. A fleeting look of confusion flashes on his face through the thrall.

“Jump up and down!” Lestrange repeats, impatient.

Again, Harry’s legs lurch in place, but he does not jump. His eyes are screwed very tightly shut, hands clenched, a hard grimace on his face. Tom watches, mystified.

He can feel through the open channel between them that Harry is confused, contrary, and suspicious. Jump up and down, a sweet voice whispers. It will be fun…

Why? comes immediately after.

“You must be bad at it,” Rosier laughs, and pushes Lestrange to the side. She levels her wand on Harry. “Let me try. Imperio!”

Harry relaxes into the spell again, listing side to side as though drunk.

“I’m not bad at it!” Lestrange insists, offended.

“What do we think? Something fun. Stab your eye out with your wand,” Rosier orders.

“Cordillia!” Nott scolds.

“What? We can regrow him a new one or get him a nice eye-patch. He’ll be fine.”

But Harry has not moved. He has resumed his look of deep discomfort, face screwed up, hands clenched tightly. A light tremour settles in his body. Confusion stirs with the euphoria.

Do it. Come on, what’s the harm? the spell promises in a sweet voice once more.

Pain as Harry hesitates.

Do it!

I don’t want to!

Tom watches this with fascination, with wonder.

What is Harry so suspicious of? And so strongly that he can simply resist the Imperius Curse?

The fundamental part of why the Unforgivables are so classed is exactly that. They cannot be blocked by shield or resisted!

Rosier looks down at her wand and shakes it a little, like one might shake a radio that’s been disconnected.

Prewett elbows Rosier aside.

“Let me try since neither of you can do it. Imperio!”

Harry has gone very pale now, eyes clouded over with the thick miasma of an ill-begotten high. Tom feels the crawl of something sickly at the base of his own spine and can only imagine Harry is experiencing it threefold. Personally, Tom feels positively buoyant.

“Ugh,” Rosier groans, hand holding her head as she crashes from her own high.

Prewett clears his throat.

“Harry, renounce Albus Dumbledore. Say he’s the weakest, most spineless, self-flagellating ponce!”

“Albus Dumbledore is a—” Harry starts in a detached voice, then stops abruptly. A small sound escapes his tightly pressed lips, but he says no more.

“What the hell?” Nott asks, voicing what everyone is wondering.

They all look to one another, each witness as Harry’s countenance turns darker, redder, as he holds his breath and does not utter another word. Their question is clear on their faces.

How can this be?

Tom isn’t the only one benefitting from the ritual—all of their powers have been brought to their prime, at least until the Winter Solstice. The Imperius under normal circumstances is notoriously impossible to resist, but especially so now when it is they, blessed by Samhain, who cast it…

The back of Tom’s neck prickles in an odd way, a feeling he hasn’t felt since he was very, very young.

It seems as usual, Harry is a marvel but an inconvenient one. His Knights are meant to learn this curse well today, and they do not need any doubt as to who holds the power here.

“Enough,” Tom says, “Finite.”

Harry sags to the floor, head clutched in his hands. Tom wonders absently if he’ll be sick. Imperius Sickness usually arises only after being under the curse over the course of months.

Harry looks up at him miserably, and Tom is hit with a pleasure not unlike the kind that accompanies the very curse they are practising. He feels curious. Can he compound Harry’s misery?

A decent sort of man would come across the grounded baby bird and feel an impulse to help it. Tom’s first impulse is to step on it.

“Imperio,” he says.

The sick feeling radiating between them recedes like the tide. It’s not a gentle plummet into euphoria, but it is a deep one. The others have not practised as much as Tom has, after all.

“Come to me, Harry,” he commands.

Go to Tom?Tom Riddle… Tom hears as a whisper through Harry’s mind. That would be good, wouldn’t it? It makes sense; what else has Harry done these past months except for that? He needs to be close to change Tom, doesn’t he? Yes, he should go.

Harry stands on weak knees and comes.

Tom smiles.

Is that what happens in Harry’s mind when he resists? He does not succumb to the curse, but rather reasons with it? And Harry had agreed with this order. He wants to come to you, a voice whispers. He, like so many others, basks in the light that radiates off of you, warms himself in the sun of you.

“Kneel,” Tom orders, listening closely.

Harry’s knees jerk, not dissimilar to how they had previously when under Nott’s curse.

Kneel, a voice whispers, Why?

It will feel good. Don’t you want to kneel?

But why?

Suspicion. Harry rarely feels good.

Tom witnesses this circular internal battle as a voyeur, fascinated.

The Knights watch, eyes on Harry’s back as he resists the Imperius, resists Tom’s wand. Has any such case been documented before? To fight the curse, to resist until the last moment when euphoria wins, certainly, but not to turn from euphoria altogether. Harry is constantly surprising him…

And still he will not kneel.

Tom can appreciate the novelty of Harry’s resistance, but not in front of the Knights. His command of them is too new.

“Kneel,” Tom repeats and will not do so a third time. He flicks his wand, just enough, just barely visible, and pulls an invisible lasso tight around Harry’s knees. A tripping jinx.

Harry drops hard onto the stone at Tom’s feet. The impact shatters Tom’s concentration and the power of the Imperius, and Harry looks up, eyes bright and clear, and knowing as Tom knows that he had not knelt.

—

Three days after Tom writes a letter to Harvey Ridgebit and stamps it with Lestrange Sr’s embosser, Tom issues the edict to his Knights.

From this moment on, they must do their utmost to avoid suspicion.

No odd behaviour, no allusions or asides, no toying with or hinting at grandeur with their fellow Slytherins.

They must attend class, study, work on their transfiguration projects, socialise, be active members of the duelling club in the evening, go to Slughorn’s dinners and laugh when they must laugh, gasp when they must gasp. Dance, flatter, argue—whatever it is, do it all as usual.

They must even be mindful of their unaware Housemates, ensuring none of them are stirring up too much attention or trouble-making. Tom has that overdue conversation with Olive Hornby about decorum and time and place—her voice ringing out sharply in the Great Hall one too many times, loudly complaining about this or that Mudblood, or the half-breed Giant.

“A Giant in the school! Can it even read?!” she crows, heads turning all around them at the other tables, eyes narrowing in disapproval. “I heard he keeps a monster for a pet! Or maybe they’re related?”

Whether the half-breed can read or not is immaterial—never has there been a less opportune time to bring attention to traditional Slytherin values.

They must be a clear, crystalline pool; no ripples, no waves on the shore. Only still, and beautiful to behold.

And most importantly, never let on that there is a monster in the castle.

It is such that after this meticulous and painstaking preparation, that on a fine Wednesday afternoon, while the whole of the school crowds into the stands at the Quidditch Pitch, Gryffindor against Hufflepuff, Tom takes this opportunity to lead Lestrange and Nott to Hogsmeade.

Or rather, Harry leads them.

Through the castle, across the Second Floor viaduct, the cheers and shouts from the Quidditch Pitch scattering across the hills and reaching them even this far, no witnesses to their march, except perhaps a ghost should they come across one. Tom has his wand at the ready just in case.

Harry shows them up the stairs to the Third Floor corridor and comes to a stop in front of a statue, the One-Eyed Witch, Gunhilda de Gorsemoor.

She is a revered Healer, one of the most renowned in history, remembered by Muggles and Wizards alike as she lived and worked well before the Statute of Secrecy. She was a master Potioneer and used her skills to treat many ailments, most notably crafting the cure for Dragon Pox. By actually incorporating the Pox infection in her brew, she created a counter-treatment that not only alleviated those suffering from the disease, but prevented them from contracting it in the future. Yes, she is one of the earliest documented examples of modern inoculation.

“Ugly old bat. Kind of resembles Rosier, doesn’t she?” Lestrange comments, and Nott snorts.

Of course, for all her historic deeds, she is a childless and ugly and old woman first, the worst thing a woman can be.

“She’s an honoured historical figure!” Nott scolds him, but he’s still laughing so it holds no sting.

“You know, Abraxas hasn’t taken the cure for Dragon Pox,” Lestrange tells them.

“What? But we all do—when we’re kids! With the rest of our tonics,” Nott says, a hand to his chest, deeply incredulous.

“He says it’s a bunch of modernist tosh and real Wizards fight off illness the old-fashioned way.”

“Yes, the pervasive modernity of the oh, so recent fifteen-hundreds…,” Tom scoffs. Personally, he’d not had the benefit of these early childhood cures like the rest of his peers. All Muggle-raised children receive their first doses at Hogwarts Hospital Wing the first week of school upon arrival, the side-effect making them all look slightly green-tinted in the face for a few days. An instant and unforgiving tell that one does not belong

Tom still recalls how he’d been ostracised by the very same boys then who stand beside him now, as Knights.

“That’s absurd,” Nott continues. “And it’s definitely going to bite him in the arse one day.”

“Are you all finished?” Harry asks, and Lestrange and Nott jump. “Or do you want to keep wasting time talking about Dragon Pox?”

In the short moment they’d been standing there, they’ve predictably already forgotten Harry is the one who led them here.

Harry looks up and down the corridor and points his wand at the statue of poor, old Gunhilda.

“Dissendium,” he says clearly with a flourish.

The statue groans. Its hunched back trembles, and after a moment of stoney hesitation, the hump swings out. A little door.

A gust of damp, dank air rushes at their faces, plumes of dust floating upward, exposed spiders scurrying back into their crevices with the echoing sound of mice chittering.

“What the…” Lestrange gasps. “How long has this been here?”

“I am not going in there,” Nott says with finality, pale and horrified at the prospect of stepping even a single toe into the dark, grimy hole before them. “I refuse!”

Harry rolls his eyes and hops into the opening. “Stay then, for all I care.”

In his mind, he is clearly asking why Tom elected to bring them along at all, but he already knows. They were selected because out of all of Tom’s Knights, they have the strongest aptitude for the Imperius Curse. And Tom could hardly drag along everyone through Hogsmeade unnoticed, could he?

No, it is better for Prewett to attend the Quidditch game with Rosier, for Walburga and Abraxas to be seen about the castle all day. Better to avoid notice.

Harry huffs and pushes himself off the sides of the statue and disappears down into the dark with a dusty woosh.

Tom raises his eyebrows at Nott pointedly.

“Do you want help with your father or no?”

Nott moans pitifully but crawls into the hole and follows Harry into the pitch.

At Tom’s behest, Lestrange jumps in quickly afterNott, and then, with one last lingering look up and down the corridor, Tom follows suit, swings the back of the statue shut behind them and descends down the slide and into the dark.

Cool, earthy air rushes over him as he falls, and just when he is asking himself if he’ll fall forever, his feet land in soft, deep silt with a muffled thump.

“Lumos,” Harry’s voice whispers like a phantom through the shadows from somewhere in front, and a very narrow, long tunnel comes into view.

“Oh, Merlin,” Nott shudders. He’s hunched, clinging to Harry’s shoulder and nervously looking up and down the shaft. “Are we going very far?”

With the statue now sealed behind them, the flow of the air has changed course, seemingly beckoning them deeper, the shroud of cobwebs and tendrils of vines blowing in the breeze and tickling the backs of their necks.

“Cor,” Lestrange pleads. “You’re sure this takes us to Hog’s Head?”

“More or less,” Harry hedges.

He forges ahead, and they have no choice but to follow.

The soft silt slows their progress, sand pouring into their shoes, and the further they get on, the more narrow the tunnel becomes, until it presses on their shoulders and heads, damp and streaking them with mossy dirt. There is no hint of an end ahead.

“Don’t ever pick me again, Tom,” Nott whines.

Lestrange sniffs.

“Lavender boy,” he mutters under his breath, then turns to look over his shoulder at Tom. “What exactly did you say to the dragon handler?”

Tom considers.

“That the Ministry is interested in meeting to discuss a partnership. And that we would pay for their stay at the Hog’s Head Inn and donate thirty Galleons as a gesture of good will.”

“Thirty Galleons,” Nott chokes, nearly tripping over his own feet.

Tom grins, his purse heavy under his hand and jingling on his waist belt.

“Courtesy of the Malfoys.”

Though Abraxas was admittedly not very happy to cough up such an absurd sum. Still, no expense is too lavish for Slytherin’s monster.

“Good for something, I guess,” Harry mutters.

They labour through the small passage, half bent and making their way steadily, until the loamy, soft ground finally gives way to firm stone and the tunnel opens up again.

“Thank Merlin,” Nott groans, thoroughly damp and filthy.

“Shh,” Harry whispers, creeping up a shallow set of wooden stairs and pressing his ear to the closed trap door at the top. “The sound carries.”

But to where? Are they still inching down? Will they come out in a great underground cave? Perhaps they’ve arrived at some long-forgotten cellars that will lead up to Hogsmeade? They may very well crawl right out of the Minister of Magic’s private lavatory, for all Tom knows.

Indeed, a muffled noise has begun to filter into the tunnel. Footsteps, voices, the occasional ring of a bell.

“This would be so much easier with my cloak,” Harry mutters to himself. “Help me get this open—slowly.”

Lestrange and Nott crowd around Harry and press up on the trap door until just a sliver of light pours through. Harry peers through.

“Looks clear.”

They push the door open the rest of the way and ascend the stairs into a small storeroom, some sort of dimly lit storage.

Tom spies the inventory packed onto the shelves.

“Honeydukes,” he breathes.

“Hey, you’re right!” Lestrange whispers excitedly.

“Come on,” Harry says, hand on the door that no doubt leads to the rest of the shop. “We can slip into the crowd without anyone noticing.”

“Wait,” Tom says sharply, and they all stop their advance and turn to him.

Tom smiles.

“Going somewhere? Like that?”

He gestures at them, and Nott and Lestrange look at one another. They flush in mortification.

“Eugh,” Lestrange complains while Nott points and laughs at him.

Harry hisses at them again to be quiet.

They are smudged head to toe with dirt and dust, hair wet and matted with grime.

Tom taps the top of his own head and each of his shoulders, the dirt evaporating and his robes smoothing out, falling back in their proper places. With another tap, his Slytherin crest and green lining melt away, revealing standard black wizard's robes. He won’t be taken for a student sneaking out of the castle now, but a recent graduate here for some simple shopping.

Tom approaches Harry while the others sort themselves out.

He’s tense and surly, has been for days now. A hissing, agitated cat, one covered in soot, all approach unwelcome.

Tom very slowly, deliberately taps each of Harry’s shoulders, watches closely as the grey patina lifts from his skin down to the last particle, watches his black hair curl and grow as it dries, its texture calling for the cradle of his palm. He takes Harry’s glasses from the perch of his nose instead and cleans the lenses with his sleeve, the Mundane way. Without the barrier of the glass between them, Tom takes in Harry’s bare face. He hasn’t seen it this close since they were in the bath together, water clinging to every curve of the chin, lip, ear.

The bite under Harry’s eye is still raised, coloured with the yellow and green of a healing bruise. It irks.

When Tom lifts the glasses to slip them back on again, Harry stops him, hand tight on his wrist. He means to take the glasses back himself, but Tom takes the opportunity to inspect that hand, dirt disappearing from under his nails, knuckles left spell-scoured and pinkened. The glimpse of a familiar scar, I must not tell lies, and a glimmer on his inner wrist.

Tom turns Harry’s wrist upward, exposing it to the light.

The sheen of silky soft scales, pearly and translucent over the web of Harry’s delicate veins.

Tom thinks he knows every story behind Harry’s scars, can at the very least conjure up a foggy memory of them. But these…?

“I’m not sure,” Harry breathes before Tom can ask, his next exhale stuttering when Tom’s thumb brushes over the tender whisper of scales. “I don’t think I had them before.”

Before what?

Who were you once that now through many wounds breathes a grieving sermon with your blood?

Someone clears their throat, rather loudly.

Ah.

Harry jerks his hand away, angrily setting his glasses back on his face.

All at once, Tom returns to the present, Lestrange uncomfortably stretching his neck, Nott blushing up to his ears. Honeydukes. Ridgebit. Dwindling time.

Tom shakes himself, his mind, and grounds himself in the task at hand. He peers out of the storeroom door into the shopfront. There are a few visitors browsing the shelves, the shopkeeper engaged with a client, his back turned to them.

“Let’s go,” he says, and slips through the door soundlessly, the others following close behind.

In seconds, they’re through the shop and spilling out into the stream of foot traffic on High Street.

“We did it!” Nott exclaims, though quietly, eyes wide. Without their school robes and with a reasonable amount of confidence, they shouldn’t have any trouble from this point on. It is afternoon still, and all the shops are open and full of patrons going about their business. Anyone passing by would assume they belong as much as anybody.

Still, they dart down the cobbled street, not so quick as to be suspicious, but not dallying either.

When they reach the Hog’s Head Inn, unlike the shops around it, it is in a lull. With no attractive wares worth selling and a rather unsavoury reputation compared to the rest of the village, there’s little reason for shoppers to gather here for anything other than necessity.

The dining area of the Inn is small, smoky, and much darker than the happy streets outside. Only a few patrons sit quietly at their tables, and the three very conspicuous Dragonologists situated at a dark booth nursing half-empty tankards of bright red currant rum stare at them as they enter.

Harvey Ridgebit is a pale man with black hair and a long black beard, and visible burn scars across his face and hands. At the booth, two women sit with him, one beside and one across, older and greying. They wear not typical wizards robes, but protective leather gear, clearly their dragon-handling togs.

When they see Tom and his accompanying Knights, they’re dismissed quickly; Ridgebit and his handlers are waiting for Ministry officials after all, and while Tom and his friends could pass for recent Hogwarts graduates, Lestrange’s sparse, blonde moustache that he has lovingly grown for months is not at all convincing enough.

Tom strides forward and slides into the booth, Lestrange and Nott attempting to squeeze in beside him but Harry beating them to it.

“Not about to let you go off the rails,” he snaps at Tom.

“Excuse you—” Ridgebit starts in a heavy accent.

“Imperio,” Tom says without delay, wand pointed straight ahead under the table, and before Ridgebit’s company can react, Lestrange and Nott each have them under as well, wands just peeking out of the robes.

The rush of it is nothing compared to their practice. This is real, this is power. Why doesn’t he do this all the time?

The handlers all melt in their seats and Lestrange and Nott squeeze themselves into the booth. To the servers, the barkeep, the other patrons, they are simply a group of acquaintances having a pleasant meeting.

“Don’t do anything unnecessary,” Harry warns, voice low.

Tom does the sound thing and ignores him.

“When you look at me, you will see this man,” Tom says, sliding a photograph of Rodderick Featherby, head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, across the table.

“Yes,” Ridgebit sighs, lost in the sea of the curse.

“When you look at my companions, you will see only faceless Ministry interns.”

“Yes,” he intones listlessly again.

“I have called you here today to arrange an extraction and long-term plan for a particular creature. It is large, impervious to most magic, and will require… specialised care.”

Tom slides another file across the table, this time a thick envelope of care instructions, atop which rests a blank rectangle of cardstock.

“On brooms with a dragon immobility harness, we will fly the creature from the extraction point an hour’s flight away to the international point of Beast side-along transport on the island of Longa, where we will safely activate our Dragon Portkey to your sanctuary.”

Tom taps the cardstock.

“When the time comes, this will reveal the time and location of extraction.”

“You will tell no one. You will believe nothing is out of the ordinary about today. This is a normal business arrangement, and you are honoured to be involved in this incredible responsibility. If anyone asks you about who you met today or what was discussed you will say only that it is a matter of client confidentiality and British national security.”

Tom stares long into Ridgebit’s face.

“Do you understand?”

Ridgebit of course says ‘Yes.’

“I understand.”

“Good,” Tom says.

He isn’t ready to stop—Ridgebit is in the palm of his hand. Tom could order him to do anything and he’d do it—

Harry kicks Tom’s shin under the table, hard.

Tom fights not to grimace through his smile.

“Right, that will be all.” He rises from his seat and takes the photograph of a happily waving Featherby from the table, tucking it back into his robes. He drops a sack of galleons on the table. “Half now, and half when everything is finished. Enjoy your stay in Hogsmeade.”

“Wow,” Lestrange breathes when they step outside. “That was incredible.”

“I can’t believe we actually pulled it off!” Nott laughs. “Ignatius is going to be so jealous.”

“He’ll get enough later,” Tom says.

It’s going to take every one of them to haul the Basilisk out of the castle, after all.

“Should we take the chance to shop a bit?” Nott chirps, practically floating as they trot down the street. “We have to pass back through Honeydukes anyway. How did you know about that passage, Harry?”

“Came to me in a dream,” Harry lies blandly.

“Fascinating.”

Lestrange scoffs.

Tom looks out over the hills surrounding Hogsmeade as they make their slow return to Honeydukes. Lestrange and Nott chatter on, just noise along with the rest of the village din. They are content, giddy still from the Imperius, and Tom thought truthfully he’d be giddy with them. However, his mind needles.

Harry has learned much from these ‘dreams’ of his. The Chamber of Secrets, the Room of Requirement, this secret passage. Somehow, he knows more about Hogwarts than Tom does.

A sour feeling steeps through Tom. A doubt.

Harry knows all sorts of things, especially so now with his memory emerging out of the abyss. And power with it, an inscrutable power. He recalls Harry’s wand, the way magic raged out of their joined hands, he recalls the Imperius rolling off of him like fog off a mountain.

That typhoon with an unshakable core.

That sour feeling is settling, tainting their connection.

It is resentment. Danger. Threat.

Tom is the master of his own destiny, he’s always been certain of that.

But now here Harry is, Harry who believes he can change Tom, control him.

No one can control me, Tom assures himself.

They reach the top of High Street, and Tom’s steps falter.

He stares out at the field below.

“Where is the Shrieking Shack?” he asks.

“The what?” Lestrange asks, following his gaze over the frosty field.

“The Shack…”

Tom trails off, blinking. It’s supposed to be there, isn’t it…? He can see it perfectly in his mind, the decaying shack that wails in the wind.

Harry looks, the image shining identically in his own memory, in the same spot. Then he looks to Tom.

“It hasn’t been built yet.”

—

Night falls.

She descends without wrath, quiet and familiar.

But this night is not like other nights.

She is greeted by the agents of the Secret Order of Walpurgis, sneaking out of their beds when all else slumbers.

The pieces are in place: Professor Dumbledore, deputy headmaster, and Headmaster Dippet are off of school grounds for the evening, for a board of educators semi-annual meeting. The dragon handlers are standing by. A way through the pipes and halls has been plotted. Walburga has ensured there are no portraits hanging in their path. The staircase that runs from the second to fourth floor has been carefully measured.

“A tight fit based on the dimensions you gave me, but a fit nonetheless,” Rosier tells him, then leans in with a hand to her mouth to whisper. “Is Slytherin’s monster really that big?”

“You’ll see,” Tom smiles.

They quickly pass through the Dungeons and creep up the staircases to the Second Floor, steps light so as not to wake any of the slumbering portraits. Only the yellow-lighted sconces dot the halls with light, and they step lightly in the quiet, reluctant to disturb it. When they reach the Second Floor, they split apart, Walburga, Nott, Rosier and Abraxas to the Fourth Floor to keep watch and prepare the way.

The Basilisk will soon be making her journey through the school.

This is to be the most dangerous moment, the one Harry fears most:

When she emerges from the pipes and sets eyes on freedom, when she tastes prey on the air, and Tom’s control of her is tested.

They must guide her—out of the lavatory, up two flights through narrow, winding staircase that lies behind the tapestry of the 1636 Duel of Women, into the girls’ Fourth Floor lavatory and back into the pipes again through a large hole Abraxas is making at this very moment, and at last out of the castle through the large drainage over the Black Lake.

“It was night the last time I saw Hogwarts,” Harry says as they ascend up the stairs. “My Hogwarts, I mean.”

He is thinking about the Forest, how he rose above the treeline, and the sprawl of Hogwarts castle revealed itself to him, how it grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Tom sees it like a half-remembered dream.

“Is she all that different in the dark?” Tom asks, eyeing where the shadows cling to her walls and vaults bleed into the night sky and disappear. How is it, to be surrounded by the familiar that does not in turn recognize you? To know but be unknown?

“Especially in the dark,” Harry says, ill at ease. “...What if she eats someone?”

Tom imagines it. How comely Harry would look pierced on the Basilisk’s fangs like Saint Sebastien and turning blue from her poison. The image is so strong, it could pass for a memory.

“She won’t.”

Harry is not comforted, not at all.

“This is going to work,” he tells himself, chesting aching. With hope… and dread. “It will.”

It’s going to be all right.

I’m doing the right thing.

His thoughts are louder than his voice.

Tom does not comfort him, and leads them all quickly down the corridor, beyond the hanging map of Argyllshire and Professor Dumbledore’s dark, empty office, and into the girl’s lavatory.

“Wait, what are we doing?” Lestrange whispers, halting just at the entrance.

“Quickly,” Tom orders, motioning him in.

“Are we hiding or something?” Prewett asks.

Tom approaches the sinks, scarf in hand.

“Close your eyes and turn away. Do not open your eyes until I say so,” he tells them, and when they comply, he concentrates on the serpentine insignia moulded into the porcelain. “Open.”

With a gentle, vibrating groan, the basin drops into the floor. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets opens.

“Come,” he calls, the whisper of his command slithering down the pipes. “Come to me. Follow me to your freedom.”

Tom can hear the scrape of scales from down the chasm, can feel the wind of her great breath as she approaches. He sees her eyes first, the glowing yellow eyes hovering in the dark nearer and nearer. Her head rises out of the floor, and she hisses when she sees them all gathered there, fangs dripping with venom.

She is a Revelation, exquisite and terrible.

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of it, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon her horns ten crowns, and upon her heads the name of blasphemy.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and her feet were as the feet of a bear, and her mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave her his power, and his seat, and great authority.

And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with her?

“Who’s there?!” a girl’s voice calls.

Tom whirls around, turning his back on Slytherin’s creation, a snarl on his mouth.

A young girl, that third year Mudblood, Myrtle something!

She stands there, clutching her wand and a bag, looking at them with wide, mistrustful eyes.

“No,” Harry gasps, but it is already too late.

“What are you doing in here?” Lestrange demands in the same moment, the one nearest to the corridor.

“Me? What are you doing here?! This is the GIRL’S room!” she shouts.

“Myrtle,” Harry chokes, but she pays him no mind. She has made her own fate, as they must all.

“One of your lot stole my potion kit and hid it in one of the toilets. I’ve been looking in every bathroom since dinner—”

Her face freezes, eyes gazing up over Tom’s shoulder at his beastly shadow, her mouth open and arms slack at her side.

“What, what, what—?” she gapes, but she never finishes. She never will.

She looks into the beast and the beast looks back, eyes blasphemous and yellow.

The wand in her hand falls to the cold tile with a loud clatter, and—well, she is gone.

She drops like her strings were cut, her arm and head bouncing once on impact with the hard tile, and then she falls deathly, eternally still.