Embryo

XV

Time is not symmetrical.

The past does not mirror the future, and only the present exists in reality. Time is as an arrow, let loose from a string and shot through a never-reversing traversal through space. Toward randomness, to entropy.

The things of the past have ceased to be, and the things of the future have yet to spring up. The mysteries of the future remaineth so…

Even Saint Augustine pondered on the quandary more than fifteen centuries ago, and humanity is left to ponder it still. He cried For what is Time? Lord, tell me, what is time! But the cries preceded even Augustine, as early as the first century; no, even earlier, by the great thinkers of ancient Egypt two thousand years before Augustine drew his first breath.

And when from future it becometh present, doth it come out of some secret place? And when retiring from present, it becometh past? For where did they, who foretold things to come, see them, if as yet they be not? For that which is not, cannot be seen.

My soul is on fire to know this most intricate enigma.

What then is time? Immanuel Kant asks, another in a long line of truth seekers, he and Hegel, McTaggart and Mr. Bradley too. Is time itself an object or is it a measure of objects in relation to each other? Can it be touched? Tasted? Can it be stopped? Is time the force that creates change or is it change itself?

Is the universe without time eternal?

Is Tom?

The philosopher says time is memory, time is felt in consciousness, even that time may be unreal. But all agree that once it has passed, it is permanent. Action can only be taken—never the reverse. If a man walks twenty paces forward, then in the same manner walks those twenty paces backward, he has not walked zero paces. He has walked forty.

Nothing can be undone—even with Timeturners and all the magic in the world.

Right?

Perhaps the most symmetrical quality of time is that whether past, present, or future, humanity cannot resist the allure of ontology. They press on unknowability in vain, where one hopes truth will dawn.

Not so in thermodynamics. The principles that dictate microscopic behaviour are true both in the forward and reverse directions: what is done can be undone, what bonds formed, unformed. If the direction of time were reversed, these theories are sound and time-symmetric. But on the macroscopic scale, these truths are lost and it is apparent that all of reality flows in only one direction.

Only death can cease one’s motion through space—the millions of tiny deaths of the many systems that sustain one’s life, the force that changes one’s nature from ‘live’ to ‘once lived,’ and ‘exist’ to ‘once existed.’

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Yea, that one hour passeth away in flying particles and never returns.

This is the Asymmetry of Time.

—

They land with great force on the Quidditch pitch.

Tom lies on his back, staring up at the pale sky, breath utterly wrested. The groans of his Knights all around feel very far away. Smoke rises off of them, Prewett’s brand new Cleansweeps rendered to smouldering splinters.

“Did we all make it?” Nott rasps from somewhere beside Tom and devolves into a fit of coughing. He hasn’t even the strength to turn his head and look.

“I think I’ve Splinched,” Lestrange moans. “My stomach—I’m going to—”

The sound of his retching echoes across the deserted pitch.

“My Cleansweeps,” Prewett cries in agony.

“‘ang your Cleansweeps.” Rosier struggles to say through her shattered and swollen nose. “‘elp me.”

Breathe, Tom commands himself fruitlessly. Get up.

A gasp. His own? He can’t tell.

“Tom, your arm! It’s turning black. He’s lost a lot of blood. He needs Hospital!”

“Let’s get him on his feet, quick.”

Hands grab hold of him, there’s a flurry of motion, and the horizon tilts as he’s hoisted up from the ground. He can’t quite hold his head up.

“It’s fine,” he tries to say and thinks he manages. “Tis only a cut.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Someone slings his good arm over their shoulders, steadying him with a hand on his back. Black curls crowd his blurry vision.

“Harry,” he slurs. “I’ve figured it out. Time isn’t asymmetrical at all. If you look, really look, it’s perfectly symmetrical.”

“What is he on about?” Lestrange asks, supporting Tom’s other side.

“No idea. One foot in front of the other, Tom.”

“Oi!” someone shouts across the hazy pitch.

“Shite,” Prewett curses and the others echo around him like a chorus. “Of all the—it’s Willoby. That prat. What’s she doing up so early?”

Tom does his best to look up and, through swimming, blurry vision, he spies the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain marching toward them.

“What are you lot doing out here?” she demands. “It’s our turn for drills.”

She stops in her tracks when she gets close enough to see them. “Christ, what’s happened to you all?!”

Tom blinks furiously, for the Pitch is growing oddly dark and his eyes seem to be rolling in his skull. He knows she must have some explanation ready, must straighten himself and take control of this rapidly deteriorating situation. He just has to think. Think…

“Accidentally exploded a Bludger,” Lestrange blurts.

“Exploded a Bludger?!” she sputters incredulously. “Are you mad?”

“Incredibly,” Walburga wheezes.

Tom sags against Harry, incredulous. Of all the stupid tales. But he hasn’t the strength to do anything about it.

“We just wanted to try a few manoeuvres on our new brooms,” Prewett says. “It got out of hand.”

“Got out of—?!” Willoby squawks, then collects herself. “No, never mind. I don’t care. Just bugger off so we can get started with practice.”

“With pleasure,” Lestrange says with heavy sarcasm, and they hurry past her. Harry tugs Tom along, and Tom watches their shoes shuffle forward together one step at a time.

“Practise? Before five in the mornin’?” Rosier manages to whisper, for Willoby is still in ear shot. “Are they desperate for the Cup or wha’?”

“It’s criminal what you’ve done to your Cleansweeps!” Willowby shouts after them.

“On that, I wholeheartedly agree,” Prewett moans miserably.

Tom fades despite his best efforts to stay alert. He watches their shoes shuffle side by side as though in a dream, and cannot feel his legs anymore. There’s still so much left to do—evidence to erase, class to attend, that girl to deal with, her body lying in a heap at the bottom of the Chamber of Secrets. Most urgently, their appearance; battle-torn and bloody. Who’s to say they won’t cross paths with a less easily fooled student or professor?

What if Dumbledore finds them?

He simply cannot afford to succumb to superficial injuries—why isn’t his Horcrux giving him strength?

“Just keep moving,” Harry mutters.

“This is your fault,” he slurs. “I dropped my glory because of you.”

“It’s fine,” Harry tells him. “You can pick it back up.”

—

Tom comes to, lying in the Hospital Wing, heart lurching to the sound of Rosier’s scream as her nose is reset.

“—shouldn’tever combine dangerous spells with Quidditch of all things!” the Matron scolds them. A shadow passes over him. “Tom, dear, are you awake? Can you try to flex your fingers for me? I just want to make sure—”

Tom tries to open his eyes—hadn’t they been open just a moment ago?

It all comes rushing to him, and he tries to sit up. The body—

Hands press him back down onto a thin mattress, a blanket pulled tight up to his chin. Tom struggles to swallow around the constriction.

“—fainted. Just let him sleep; he’s weak to the sight of blood.”

Someone snickers.

Tom means to open his mouth to promptly disabuse everyone of such a ridiculous lie but finds himself sinking again.

Sleep, a familiar voice whispers somewhere deep where the ear cannot hear and the eye cannot see.

Tom jerks awake.

The light has changed with the passage of time—mid- to late-afternoon by the golden rays coming through the tall windows.

Hospital Wing, he recognises.

He hasn’t slept here since his second year… Not since a few Seventh Years pinned him down and pulled his teeth out one by one for ‘speaking impolitely to his betters.’ For his thick accent.

He’d had to climb all the way up from the Dungeons, bloody fist covering his mouth, and show his empty grin to the matron. She’d regrown all his teeth, an excruciating, fitful night.

Well, he has all his teeth, but what of his arm? Tom looks down and raises his hand off of the starch-stiff blanket tucked along his body, and almost expects it to be boneless. A Quidditch accident—but no, there was no accident, not really. He blinks and the image dissolves.

Tom curls and expands his fingers. The place where he was cut is pristine, no scar, not even an ache left behind. Just the bitter memory of what it’s cost him.

“Awake?” Rosier whispers from her bed. She’s on her side, looking much better than when Tom last saw her.

Tom sits up, sliding out of the covers, bare feet touching the cold stone below. He feels sluggish, a strange delay between mind and body. That detestable dualism rearing its head once again.

“Get up,” Tom tells her. There’s so much left to do, how dare she lie there resting? “We must go to class. Everything must be—” Tom pauses. “Normal.”

Rosier snorts.

“Bit late for that.” She flops onto her back, the Hospital cot squeaking underneath her. “But it’s all right. Everyone buys the stupid Quidditch story. You and I are the only ones not in class.”

She says this as though he has not just lost his perfect attendance record. Insult to injury. Tom is suddenly swallowed up in a foreign, detestable feeling. He is furious, so furious, because most of all, he is utterly sick with self-disappointment. Pride stung. Brought low, not just by a single hex, just one cutting hex, but by Grindlewald of all people. And at such a critical time!Why hadn’t Tom dodged in time? Why had Harry interfered?

“Tom?” Rosier asks. She must see on his face some of the self-pity torturing that tortures him so.

“The portraits. The staircase and halls,” Tom chokes through gritted teeth, thinking of the destruction the Basilisk wrought the night before. It had been dark, and they had been rushing. His failures in Iasi are not important right now. What if they missed something? What if they were seen? His mind races.

All it takes is one slip for it all to come spilling out. It’s bad enough he’s been negligent with his Prefect duties all week. All his nightly patrol reports are complete fantasy. In order to keep his usual rate of detentions so as not to have any unusual numbers, he’d given a snivelling Gryffindor detention for being out after curfew by just four minutes. If the other Heads of House notice…

“Walburga repaired everything before classes started.”

“And outside the castle?” Tom asks. The Basilisk had crashed into the walls so hard before flying her up and away, the night bright with the sound of breaking glass and crumbling stone.

“All fixed.”

“The drainage pipe—”

Tom tries to stand and the floor wobbles a bit.

“Harry put the grate back.”

Tom’s knees fold and he falls back onto his cot. For all his mistakes the night before, at least he hasn’t made the mistake of surrounding himself with halfwits. It’s a small relief.

Tom looks at her.

“The girl,” he whispers.

“Ah, that.” Rosier lets out a long breath and continues at a whisper. “That one, we’ve left to you. But if anyone was going to die, it’s good it was her. She’ll go days without speaking to anyone.”

Right. A student gone all night and half a day? It’ll be a miracle if no one has noticed.

Again, his face must show he is not convinced.

“Look, you can relax. Any traces we left in the lavatories, halls, or stair case have been erased. Mother will be discreet. When the news comes out of Iasi, there won’t be any mention of us; she’ll make sure of it.”

Certainly. Tom has no doubt Madame Rosier has enough work as it is; she won’t have any interest in inviting scrutiny over schoolchildren being present for a battle. Still… He feels so unlike himself.

“Tom, it’s fine. We did it. Really. We almost died, but we did it.”

Her eyes glitter with a mania.

Indeed, they had almost died…

But Rosier does not know that it was her life alone in danger, hers and her fellow Knights. He thinks about his fight with Grindelwald. He thinks about that rapturous Killing Curse that was expelled from him with unstoppable, volcanic force, the spell that cut a deadly green ribbon through the battle arena, undiscerning of ally or enemy. Had Tom been pointing down to Hell, he has no doubt the spell could have carved its way to the earth’s very core. Even now, his palm stings with the fire of his wand and Harry’s hand clutching his.

If any of his Knights had been caught in that swathe, every single one, they’d have dropped dead as still and immovable as Myrtle Warren.

Time to leave.

Tom stands, this time successfully.

“Fortify yourself. We’re leaving.”

Rosier throws back her covers and hops up, practically bouncing on her feet.

“Oh, I’ve been fine for ages! I was only skiving. History of Magic is ghastly.”

—

Tom finds Professor Slughorn in his office bent over the morning paper. He steps lightly, drawing up behind the man and getting a good look at the headlines, heart pounding. World leaders meet for a conference—but it is only the one in Tehran. No mention of Romania as of yet.

“I hope lessons weren’t too exciting without me this morning,” says Tom.

Slughorn jumps nearly to the ceiling with a loud yelp.

He clutches his chest but cannot help beaming at Tom when his eyes uncross and he turns to see him.

“My boy!” he gasps. “Not to worry, not to worry. We only reviewed the last lesson and discussed the outcomes of our brews. Your Scintillation Solution was impeccable, as expected.”

“Good enough to excuse an unexpected absence?” Tom asks innocently.

Professor Slughorn looks at him archly over his paper.

“I do believe all can be forgiven,” he says thoughtfully. “If you help me extract Slugsap for my Fourth Year course tomorrow.”

Tom’s polite smile does not slip, even at the daunting threat of that vile, sticky sap that still haunts him four years later when he was a Second Year, covered in viscous slime that refused to wash out. He pushes back his sleeves.

“I would be honoured.”

Thirty minutes later, Tom has expressed a bucket’s worth of sap from the Slugstalks with minimal stickiness, Professor Slughorn working diligently alongside him.

“It was a bit of relief,” Slughorn says, and Tom looks at him. He has aged, Tom realises all of a sudden, in the six years he has known him. His hair has thinned and his once perfectly plump face has lines in it that Tom has never noticed. Time has scarred him.

“A relief?” Tom asks.

“When I heard you were involved in some Quidditch tomfoolery,” he answers. “You are brilliant, Tom, uniquely so. And very diligent when it comes to your schooling. But that brilliance can be very lonesome. Isolating. I admit, I’ve been worried you were missing out on a certain whimsy with your peers.”

Tom cannot help but laugh a little. To think he’d been so obsessed with everything being normal, perfect, but it is the very catastrophe that could undo everything that reassures Slughorn that all is well? Well, what could be more whimsical than discovering Salazar Slytherin’s fabled beast, then sneaking her away in the night?

“I’m very proud of you, Tom,” Professor Slughorn continues, an uncharacteristic fondness overtaking his expression. Slughorn has never held his regard for Tom back, but in that self-serving way that so suits their House. A greed to collect the very best. Tom respects that greed—Slughorn has a good eye for quality and singularity. They have maintained a comfortable relationship of mentor and mentee, but it has never been especially warm, per say. Like many, Slughorn is attracted to Tom’s brilliance, recognizes and wants it.

“I hope you’ll not forget your days at Hogwarts when they are over.”

A peculiar feeling creeps into Tom’s chest. He is reminded of Harry. Of his memories.

Dumbledore’s stinging, affectionate eyes.

He’d always thought Slughorn’s feelings for him were shallow, even lustful, like most adults Tom has known, but perhaps it is not so simple. Perhaps it is his own perception that has been shallow.

He means to brush Slughorn off, to be coquettish. It is a little late for Slughorn to be playing the father now, afterall.

“You’ve supported me when no other would…” he finds himself saying instead, thinking of his first few years at Hogwarts, nameless, powerless.

Slughorn’s hand cups his shoulder, and it does not irk so much as usual.

“Your last year here will be gone in a flash. And I know you’ll fly. I only ask you look down every once in a while. I’ll be looking up and waving.”

Professor Slughorn blinks rather rapidly and clears his throat, turning his face. He pulls his wand out and waves it, banishing any Slugsap spill, then checks his pocket watch.

“Now, off to dinner with you. You’re still pale; I heard you lost some blood.”

Slughorn pats him on the back and sends him out, refusing to look up from his stack of essays, eyes glistening suspiciously in the candlelight.

Tom leaves him, though not for dinner. The evening paper has arrived and is all abuzz with the attack in Iasi. Tom snatches the evening edition of the Prophet from the air just outside of the Great Hall from an owl and scours it for any hint of their presence.

But it is as Rosier promised—there is no mention of any students, and focus is solely on the health of and safety of the public officials who were present.

Satisfied, Tom drops the paper where he stands, marches out of the castle, and sends out the call.

—

Far down the hill, through the crunch of the ice-covered lawn, his Knights appear one by one, led by the tug in their wrists. They meet urgently, not in the secluded warmth of the Room of Requirement—the halls are far too populated at this time of the day for them to slip unnoticed behind the Room’s door—but convene instead in the creaking, shivering boathouse.

It is a long way from the castle and completely deserted this time of year even by the groundskeeper. It is already growing dark, the last bloom of afternoon light sinking slowly into the depths of the Black Lake. As the air grows more bitter with cold, as their breaths fill the boathouse with fog, they need not worry about any witnesses.

“It’s cold as death out here,” Prewett says, rubbing his gloved hands over his arms. “Couldn’t we have met in the Kitchens or something?”

“You’re looking much restored, Tom,” Walburga says, and there’s a chorus of agreement.

“What about me?” Rosier asks cheekily, glancing hopefully at Walburga.

“As ugly as usual,” Lestrange retorts.

“Oi! You’re one to talk.”

In truth, Tom and Rosier are the fairest of them. The day has not been an easy burden. While he slept, the others have attended class, socialised, studied, eaten all as usual, gone through every motion, and therefore have not slept for well over thirty hours. They are weary and wane, heavy in the eyes and pale in the mouth. They make a grim picture sequestered so in the dark.

“So how was it?” Prewett bursts, apparently unable to contain himself any longer. “Fighting Grindelwald? That last spell you cast… It was enormous! I’ve never seen magic at that scale before! Not from one mage.”

A flash in Tom’s mind, bright and real: Harry’s hand crashing down on his own, tightening Tom’s losing hold on his wand. His hard breath at his ear. Cast!

One mage, was it?

Tom looks to Harry, who stands leaned beside the boathouse door, silent and watching.

“Too short,” Tom answers. “No time to truly duel since we were beholden to the Portkey. I do hope a rematch is in our future.”

“You were amazing!” Lestrange exclaims.

Nott agrees with a shiver.

“The way you got us through it all…”

He seems unable to continue, shaken still. Of all Tom’s Knights, Nott is the softest, the most tremulous. Though Tom can scarcely conceive of it, what comes most naturally to him, does not for others. Not everyone was made for the rend and revel of flesh under teeth.

Tom will change that, given time.

“You have all done well,” he praises them. “While I could not stand, you have protected us and ensured our safety. Not only have we secured Slytherin’s legacy by safely transporting the Basilisk out of her prison and into a place she can thrive, we have faced an enemy head on where others have cowered. Ministers, presidents, enclaves; they all fled from the fire, yet we stood firm and mighty. Raynaldus,” Tom beckons.

Lestrange lifts his head.

“You fought with valour and ferocity. Tell me, was that the first time you took life?”

Lestrange swallows audibly.

“In truth, it was.”

“And you, Abraxas? Was that the first time you took human life?”

Tom specifies because God only knows how many House Elves a Malfoy goes through a year.

Abraxas seems reticent, unwilling to answer, but they all wait for him.

“Yes, it was.”

“And you Walburga?”

He turns to her.

She nods.

“And how did you find it?” he asks them.

They stand in silence, swaying with the slow rub of wind on the boathouse and the tinkling and creak of crystal ice on weathered wood.

“I’ve been told taking a life is one of the hardest and heaviest things you can do,” Lestrange says at last. “But in the moment, it wasn’t hard at all. It was easy. And… unsettlingly light.”

“Your life was in danger,” Tom condedes. “If you had not killed them, they would have killed you. Philosophy dissolves in the face of such simplicity. When facing death, no moral or psalm or principle will step in front of you and die in your stead.”

Tom twists his ring around and around on his finger.

“What did you think, Walburga?” he asks, turning to her.

“That I wanted to live,” she says plainly.

Tom smiles.

“And so you did. It wasn’t a hard choice, was it? The difficulty lies not in the moment a life is taken. Thadeus, were the milliseconds watching your sister fall arduous? No, it was no work at all. Death happens with ease, without preamble. The moment passes as effortlessly as any other.”

Nott does not look altogether in agreement but he’s smart enough not to say so.

“The difficulty starts in the after,” Tom continues. “The circumstances of death are much stickier than the death itself. Who died and how? Who killed them? Why? These ripples grow like waves and can destroy cities.”

Tom hangs them in the dark to consider these words.

“We must decide how to deal with the body,” Tom declares.

Harry’s fists clench, a sharp stab of pain radiating through them.

I was supposed to change this, he is thinking, has not stopped thinking.

“What if we just get rid of it? Vanish or incinerate it,” Rosier is the first to suggest.

The others look to one another carefully, testing. Are we really doing this, their eyes seem to say?

Yes, Tom would implicate them all. He would entangle them together tightly. Could he obliviate them? Certainly. Handle the body himself? Of course. But this will bind them to him more deeply, more severely.

“Students do go missing occasionally,” Walburga admits after a pause. “If they get stuck in a hidden passage or fall through the trick steps. She’s already been missing the entire day, though I suppose it isn’t so alarming yet or we’d have heard about it.”

“Incineration leaves residue,” Abraxas says. “Even if it’s done somewhere hidden, like the Chamber of Secrets, someone could always discover it later and tie it back to us.”

“A missing student would invite investigation,” Nott says. “And this one in particular had… known assailants.”

They all look at Rosier.

She scoffs in great offence.

“You bully one Mudblood a little, and suddenly you’re a suspect for murder?” She looks at them in disbelief. “Besides, it was mostly Olive. She’s obsessed. I actually think she’s going to be a bit heartbroken when she hears the news.”

“Regardless, Thadeus is right,” Tom agrees. “We shouldn’t encourage scrutiny or mystery. It would be better if she were discovered and the entire situation put to rest.”

“But where? Should we plant her near the Ravenclaw dorms?” Prewett asks, looking ill at the thought of having to touch the body again.

Tom considers.

If they can sneak an entire Basilisk through the school, they can certainly manage one dead girl.

“What would explain the cause of death?” Abraxas asks.

“Suicide?” Nott says.

“Hang on, if I’m implicated by her going missing, I’ll definitely be implicated when she’s found!” Rosier shouts, and they all viciously hush her. They may be at the very bottom of the Hogwarts grounds, but it would be foolish to tempt their privacy.

She wilts under their collective withering glare.

“We could blame someone else,” Lestrange says.

“That’s not a bad idea!” Rosier says eagerly. “I bet it would be easy to pin it on some other Mudblood. Two birds, one very big Basilisk stone.”

Walburga taps a finger on her dark lips.

“What about an undesirable? Someone the Ministry will be pleased to expel from the school given the opportunity. Like the Giant Halfbreed.”

“NO!” Harry shouts.

They all startle.

“Harry!” Nott chastises, clutching his chest in fright.

“Merlin, we’re right here,” Lestrange says, rubbing his ear. “No need to shout.”

Harry pays them no mind. He is consumed.

Panic, desperation, righteous anger.

“You can’t blame someone else. You’ll ruin his life! He’s innocent!”

“If the alternative is my life being ruined, I very well can!” Rosier snarls. “It’s not like it’s my fault she died either!”

This statement seems to hit Harry like a ton, because he is thinking Rosier is right; it isn’t her fault Myrtle died—it’s his.

“Enough,” Tom says.

He thinks.

He knows little about Rubeus Hagrid. A Third Year, thirteen and already well over seven feet tall and fully bearded. He has an interest in magical beasts, perhaps out of a sense of kinship, and Tom himself has assigned multiple detentions to him for keeping various prohibited creatures in his oversized pockets. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to implicate him.

But Harry seems moments from combustion at the very thought, and Tom cannot afford to give him more power in front of his Knights. It is better to avoid a public argument at all, even if Tom eventually wins it.

For now, they must return to the castle.

“While it is a very limited amount, we have some time,” he says. “Tomorrow is a Hogsmeade weekend. Myrtle Warren was an isolated, friendless individual even amongst her peers. With any luck, they’ll hardly notice her absence, and we’ll have an opportunity to move her tomorrow. For now, we’ll go to dinner as normal.”

“Dinner? Do we have to?” Prewett whines, following Nott and Walburga out of the boathouse. “Can’t we just go to bed?”

Their boots crunch in the icy snow as they file out.

Harry waits for them all to go, then catches Tom by the arm just as he’s about to take his own leave of the boathouse, his hand clamping down on the place Grindelwald’s slicing hex had caught him.

“Tom—”

Tom grabs him before he can finish, for his patience has long since died. He is fatigued, needled ceaselessly by Harry’s worries, and he will humour him no longer.

He slams the door to the boathouse closed and seizes Harry by the collar and with both hands, pushes him back. Deeper into the darkness of the boathouse where the warm light from the castle does not reach. Harry’s heels drag on every plank down the dock to its very end.

“Why shouldn’t I?!” Tom shouts, gnashing his teeth and shaking Harry.

“What,” Harry gasps, breathless. He clutches at Tom’s fists for purchase as he hangs over the frigid waters of the lake. His eyes dart down to look where his heels are slipping on the ice covered ledge then over his shoulder at the black depths.

Their reflection struggles on the lake’s icy surface.

“You want to tell me not to use that Halfbreed, yes? Well?” Tom demands. “Why shouldn’t I?”

Harry glares at him in disbelief.

“What’s wrong with you?!” Harry beats on Tom’s immovable arm. “Hagrid has nothing to do with any of this. I just want to stop people from getting hurt! I want to stop people from dying! What’s—” Harry’s eyes squeeze shut as his voice cracks. Tom holds him fast, hasn’t let go, but Harry is in a freefall of anguish nonetheless, for a girl he never even knew, recalling that awful sight of her collapsing in a heap on a cold floor over and over. God, my fault, my fault.

Tom’s stomach churns. Perhaps he should never have opened Harry’s mind. Perhaps he would have done better to have never bothered with him at all. He is constantly imposing himself upon Tom, a curse of psychosis; a river never dammed.

Harry continues through gritted teeth. “What’s so wrong with that? Why is that so bad?”

Why is that so bad?

It isn’t.

Truly, it isn’t.

But why does that matter, what is good or what is bad? All Tom needs to know is what is useful.

But with Harry standing in front of him, he knows with certainty: Harry is good.

Can good be useful?

They breathe together.

The boats stored high above their heads creak with every gentle sway.

Tom pulls Harry back from the edge of the dock, wood groaning beneath their feet.

“I was supposed to keep all of this from happening. Otherwise, why am I even here…”

It’s the same mantra. Why did this happen? It’s all my fault. I tried to change things, but I made it worse. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

“Then why is it so hard? Why are you failing?” Tom asks.

Why resist?

Why suffer so earnestly and endlessly for a lost thing that was so intent on being lost?

This is the Hour of Lead, Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—

First— Chill— then Stupor— then the letting go—

There is a second where Harry slumps into Tom’s hands and truly, deeply feels sorry for himself.

Is this the moment? Tom wonders. When at last Harry will no longer bend under the pressure but break, as he sinks and sinks into a well of despair. His bones have gone soft, the roar of his blood tamed to a weak river. Is he ready to yield?

But Harry isn’t drowning in a well at all—he is the well. The depths are his own, despair and love alike. All that he feels, he feels brightly.

He firms his resolve and wipes his eyes. Not much of a crier, is he?

He shoves Tom’s hand away from his collar and glares up at him.

“You can’t use Hagrid. I won’t let you. I couldn’t save—” His breath hitches. “I couldn’t save Myrtle, but I will save Hagrid.”

Tom sees Hagrid’s face, but he is much older. He is beaming down at Harry through his beard, cheeks rounded and red. He is holding a squashed birthday cake and drinking butterbeer, and he is the first friend Harry ever had. Another of Harry’s loves, one of many.

Tom feels his teeth grind. He’d been the naive one, thinking Harry would give in now of all times.

But Tom won’t give in either.

“I’ll leave the Halfbreed be.” Tom reaches for Harry again, smooths over his crumpled collar, sliding his palms down Harry’s chest and around his waist. Harry immediately starts to squirm and slap at his hands. “If you do another ritual with me in the bath.”

Harry’s eyes snap up to him.

“Why?”

Because Tom has a new theory, an inkling. An impossible, exciting feeling. And he wants to confirm.

“Do you think once is enough? Your memories are still blurred, and you should accept while I’m offering. I think you’re going to be in need of a warm bath very soon anyhow.”

Harry’s dark brows furrow. Tom watches the way it pulls on his scar.

“What?”

Tom smiles.

He places both hands on Harry’s chest and pushes him off the dock.

Harry gasps, the thin layer of ice on the water’s surface splitting and singing like shrieking bells, the rest of Harry’s surprised shout swallowed up by the crash of ice and water closing in on him.

Tom breathes but suffocates, seizing up as he feels the hungry cold consume Harry. It erases all memory of warmth, and Tom watches him struggle, his hands trying to find purchase on the slippery, fragile ice surface only to break it more.

The wind groans against the soggy boathouse, but Tom does not hear it. The ice, the distant sounds of students, the winter songbirds—it all pales. Tom hears only the synchrony, the symphony of Harry’s existence in perfect contradiction with his own. That is time-symmetry.

Tom kneels on one knee and extends his hand.

When Harry sees it through his sputtering, he scowls. His fingers and lips are turning blue.

“You p-p-promise?” he asks through chattering teeth.

Tom gives him his sweetest smile.

“Cross my heart. Do we have a deal?”

Harry takes his hand. That spot in the centre of Tom’s palm where they’d joined hands over his wand has been burning. Under Harry’s touch again, it’s perfectly cool now.

“Deal,” Harry says with a boyish smile.

He yanks Tom’s arm hard, and before he can blink, Tom falls face-first into the icy depths alongside him.

—

“Do we really have to go to Hogsmeade today?” Nott whinges as he trudges through the Great Hall, following the rest of his peers as they make their way out of the castle. “I wanted to sleep in.”

“When have you ever missed a trip to Hogsmeade, hm?” Tom asks brightly, moving along at a steady clip. It was important that they all be seen out and about, going on as usual before they dealt with the rather unfortunate business of Myrtle Warren’s body. Tom has roughly put together an idea for how to handle it, but really it would be so much easier if he could just blame Rubeus Hagrid.

The things he does for Harry…

“Chin up,” Prewett says, still chewing a napkin-full of breakfast sausage that he’d decided to carry away with him. “You’ll be changing your tune once you get to see the new Seeker gloves they’re selling at Spintwitches’.”

Nott grunts, only marginally assuaged.

“—om! Tom!” a voice calls from behind him. “Riddle!”

They all turn to look back at the Castle Entrance some short distance away.

“Is that Professor Flitwick? Running?” Abraxas asks in disbelief.

“I saw him run once,” Rosier says absently as Flitwick indeed dashes through the snow with nimble feet. He is known for a rather lush, leisurely life filled with all manner of comforts and is not one to overly exert himself. “It was to keep Lestrange from blowing up his own head.”

“Anyone can mess up the Bubble-Head Charm!” Lestrange defends himself.

“Tom, my boy,” Professor Flitwick calls again, this time slightly out of breath and sending snow furries all about.

Tom and his entourage slow their march along the path to the village so the man can catch up.

“You called for me, Professor? Do you need assistance with something?”

“Not at all, but I was hoping to speak with you,” Flitwick says, wiping his temples with a kerchief. “Do you recall Mr. Tiberius Rankle? He was a guest at one of Horace’s dinner parties some weeks back; you spoke to him at length about an eleventh century Persian poet, Omar….Omar Something.”

“Omar Khayyam,” Tom finishes for him. “Mr. Rankle is the proprietor for Obscurus Books in Diagon Alley, yes?”

He is a collector of many rare and obscure tomes, going on expeditions into all corners of the world procuring odd texts and then selling them at great price to the likes of Lord and Lady Malfoy. He’s only been in business for ten years or so and has done well making a name for himself. Tom recalls their conversation. Rankle is a dull if enterprising sort of fellow. But what could he have to do with Professor Flitwick chasing him down?

“Right you are! Well, he’s a good friend of mine and he’s written to me. He’s very keen to meet with you one on one, is all. He speaks highly of you and was very impressed by your knowledge and interest in the more esoteric literature. He hinted strongly that if you were otherwise not engaged, he intended to offer you an apprenticeship after you graduate.”

Flitwick then extends a letter to him, presumably about this apprenticeship.

“Is that so…” Tom answers, carefully neutral. A glance around at his peers tells him all he need know: Curled lips, disdainful looks.

Why, even Tom laughs at the idea of it. He, working as a shoppe boy? How quaint, how… small.

Mr. Rankle has mistaken Tom’s interest in reading for interest in service work.

“I thank you for passing his interest along, Professor,” Tom says diplomatically, taking the proffered letter. He opens it and just as Flitwick has said, it is an invitation to tea to discuss Tom’s future. Rankle’s business card is folded inside. “You should know that I do have arrangements elsewhere. Still, it is lovely of Mr. Rankle to offer.”

He’ll be up to his neck in research, deep in the Lestrange estate.

He pockets the card and letter without reading further.

Flitwick nods.

“Not at all a surprise! Whatever you do, you’ll do brilliantly, I’ve no doubt. Still, write back. It doesn’t hurt to keep an option open. And if you change your mind, he’ll also be attending Bertrand’s Yule party. He’s a fan.”

“Thank you, Professor. I admit with our NEWTs and Graduation looming so near, I find myself thinking how much I’ll miss your counsel,” Tom lies.

Flitwick actually blushes, beaming ear to ear.

“Good grief,” Walburga murmurs.

“Will you be going into the village today?” Tom asks him, ignoring her.

“Oh, not today, I think,” the Professor says regrettably. “I’ve too much to do this close to Holiday. I don’t think I’ll be frequenting the village until Christmas.”

“A shame,” Tom commiserates. “I hope you won’t work too hard.”

“Never!” Flitwick laughs. “Enjoy the fresh air, you lot!”

They wave him off and watch him return to the castle before continuing their way to Hogsmeade.

“Can you imagine?” Rosier laughs. “Tom, a little shoppe boy!”

Prewett nudges Tom in the ribs with his elbow, a sly smile on his face.

“Maybe one of the markets here in the village is hiring. Should we enquire?”

They all laugh at his expense, but Tom allows it, for they laugh at how ill menial work suits him.

“Where would we spend our wealth if there were no shoppe boys to take it?” Abraxas asks, a glint in his eye. “Tom, I’m sure we would empty our pockets for you, even if you worked at a quill shoppe.”

As if Lord Lestrange could tolerate Tom working elsewhere, giving his time and attention to innumerable, faceless patrons other than himself. And if Lord Lestrange is possessive, the Lady is worse.

They have their fun all the way up the path to the village, trading ideas on what wares would suit Tom best. All but Harry, who walks ahead of them in sullen silence, doing his best to ignore their cackling. Tired as they are, sapped of their Samhain blessings and deprived of rest, they carry a mania with them. The giddiness, the psychosis of battle clings to them still. Spilling blood comes with a zeal.

They are no longer the pretentious academics Harry suffered in those early days, bored to tears listening to them recite their Rousseau and Neitzche like good little school children. They have set aside their theorem and killed with their own hands.

And now their casual delight disturbs him.

“I’m sure all I need do is ask, and Misseur Malfoy would be happy to buy me any shoppe I desire—tomes, quills or otherwise,” Tom says with utmost innocence, and Abraxas scowls. He knows it is true.

“Cordillia!” Alphard calls from Honeydukes, running to her with a shy Diggory in tow. She has been rather submissive since Samhain. They are pinkened from the cold, dishevelled from a recent snow fight. “Some of the Fourth and Fifth years are getting together at the Three Broomsticks to trade Chocolate Frog cards. You were looking for a Ptolemy, weren’t you? Want to come?”

Rosier groans sadly.

“I didn’t bring my collection with me. But if you see one, trade it! I’ll pay you back, promise.”

“Um, are you enjoying your time in the village, Walburga?” Diggory asks nervously.

“I am,” Walburga answers, glancing at Tom. He inclines his head. Diggory has paid penance enough the last few weeks after her indiscretion. “I’m sure we’ll find ourselves at the Three Broomsticks for drinks later if you’d like to join us.”

Diggory blossoms, clutching Alphard’s arm and nodding hard enough to worry for her neck.

“See you there, then!” she says and scurries away hastily before she can reoffend.

Tom strolls leisurely, moving with the flow of other shoppers winding their way through the village. He has the post office to visit—he must check for news from the Dragon handlers—and he needs new book binding on several of his tomes and other such small trifles…

He does not look up the hill where a certain decrepit shack is very conspicuously not resting.

A gust of cold wind blows through the street, scattering snow and the hats of witches and wizards who have not secured them. Any day now, and the storefronts will be decorated with baubles and tinsel for Christmas.

Something flutters against Tom’s chest. He glances down, and it is Harry’s scarf—or rather, Tom’s scarf that he gave to Harry those months ago. It has unwound and come loose from the wind, billowing behind Harry who walks ahead without looking back.

Tom huffs, a small, private laugh.

He takes both ends of the scarf in his hands and tugs—just gently so, just enough for Harry to feel the constriction and stop.

“Those aren’t reins, you know,” he says, turning to Tom.

“I was thinking a leash,” Tom replies just to see Harry grow angry.

He ties a stylish knot under Harry’s chin, slowly, methodically, and tucks the ends of the scarf into his winter robes. Perhaps it is less a leash and more of a collar now.

“There.”

Harry grimaces and loosens the knot immediately.

“You two have grown rather close,” Prewett comments.

Tom looks away from the sliver of Harry’s exposed neck, from the visible drum of his pulse.

They have an audience it seems.

“You make quite the doting husband,” Walburga agrees.

“Very funny,” Harry snaps, pushing Tom away. His ears have gone red.

“It’s only natural,” Tom says. The lie comes easy. “We are half-kin after all. He’s the son of my mother, by another man.”

“What’s with that?” Nott laughs. “You said he was your uncle’s son only yesterday!”

Tom pauses and looks at them, caught in his carelessness.

Had he really said that?

Yes, in the tunnels, at the start of that long, long night… How could he forget?

They hide their expressions coyly behind their hands and titter.

“You’re awfully affectionate for cousins,” Rosier snickers. “I guess it isn’t just the Blacks.”

“Brothers, you mean,” Abraxas corrects her.

“We aren’t affectionate!” Harry denies hotly. “It’s harassment!”

“Personally, I don’t see the resemblance,” Lestrange sniffs.

“Well, ask him again tomorrow and they may be something else,” Walburga laughs. “Father and son? Husband and wife? Who can say?”

“Shut up,” Harry hisses.

They’ve reached the village square, and the clocktower chimes with the hour, a melodious song of bells that mixes with their uproarious laughter. The sun has risen over the village houses, lighting up the snow caps on their chimneys and making the flurries gleam and sparkle. And Harry looks at him, annoyed and flushing. It’s a mundane vista, an even more mundane task at hand, to laugh and shop and perform as normal students, but Tom feels something warm and foreign in his chest. For the first time, he feels contentment in this mundanity.

Perhaps he too is still battle-giddy, finding sweetness in such a simple, unimportant moment.

They pass under the clocktower as it sings its final happy note of the hour, and Tom considers again the irreversibility of time. Its arrow flies with such oblivious and unknown purpose, but Tom has to admit he does not always mind its surprises.

“Come on—I want to stop by Spintwitches first,” Lestrange says. “You don’t mind, do you Tom?”

The performance dictates that he should roll his eyes and complain lightheartedly. Everyone knows Tom is not the sporting sort of wizard, and so such a reply is expected; funny to some, even. And Tom intends to perform; it has never been more important to do so. And he would have—

If the Hogsmeade clocktower had not exploded at that very moment.

There is red, fire, then pure, scalding white.

It devours them.

—

Tom falls and opens his eyes under the dark ice of the Black Lake. He cannot see the dock of the boathouse, nor can he see Harry, not like when they were in the Prefect bath together, those soothing herbal waters. But even through the shock of cold, he can feel him. They are still tethered by their hands, after all, from Harry pulling him in.

There is no gentle warmth, no cradle of silky ceramic tile, nor meditative oils, only the drop of the lake’s bottom disappearing into the depths, Slytherin’s submerged statue surely reaching for them with his stone fingers. But they find each other anyway, their minds connecting as though they were only waiting for this opportunity all along.

Harry is thinking of preciousness.

Of a delicate, fragile hope that he holds tenderly in his hands.

There are so many he wants to protect, so many he could save.

Why, Tom has to wonder? Who are they to him, and why are their fates his responsibility?

Enough, if something from our hands have power To live and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.

In the core of Harry, there is an absence, one that aches, waxes and wanes, but never really leaves him. A loss of something he did not know he had until he was told he had lost it.

Their faces take shape in Harry’s heart.

A man with thick-rimmed glasses and messy black hair. A woman with hair the colour of smouldering coals, orange and burning, and eyes like spinning emeralds. Harry’s eyes.

She reaches for Harry through a silver mirror, cradles him through sepia tones. She is telling Harry she is proud. She is smiling. She is screaming.

Tom commits her face to memory, burns her likeness into his mind so that he should never forget.

He must be the Omar Khayyam, to forge memory with mathematics and poetry, to not just calculate the conic curve of the sun but marvel at its light.

Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn: And Lip to Lip it murmur'd—"While you live, "Drink!—for, once dead, you never shall return."

They break the water’s surface, their gasps echoing inside the boathouse.

“Was that your mother?” Tom whispers, clutching Harry’s arms. His heart pounds. “She was, wasn’t she?”

Harry’s grim face tells all. He remembers her, and he remembers never knowing her. Because she was taken from him. Because of Voldemort.

“You’re not a seer,” Tom says, not feeling the cold anymore at all. “You’re not a lost heir or cursed child.”

Not a phantom or some inexplicable miracle sprung out of the ether just for Tom’s delight.

Harry shakes his head, staring hard.

“I’m just Harry,” says he.

Tom laughs his ugly, manic laugh, grins his ugly grin.

Water splashes at their ears, numbs their fingers and beckons them deeper, but still Tom does not let go, no. He’ll keep their fingers laced even if it drowns them.

Just Harry, indeed.

“You’re not having visions of the future.”

It is the only explanation left. The only truth that fits. All that’s left is to find out how.

“You’re from the future.”

Symmetry.

He grabs Harry through the water and kisses him on his blue rose lips.

“Are you my son?” he breathes against Harry’s skin, tongue touching the plushness there.

“NO!” Harry shouts, turning his face away. “We’re not anything—”

It would explain the parseltongue, how Harry knows so much about him, how personal it all is. Who else could defy all the laws of magic if not Tom’s own child?

There are no cousins or kin left alive who could produce Harry other than Tom. He has never considered having children truthfully—as an immortal, he carries his own legacy. Passing it on genetically is redundant. But with Harry in his hands? Knowing Harry, his mysteries and delights? Tom could be convinced, if it were to create him.

“My grandson?” he presses.

He goes for another kiss, and Harry shoves him away.

“Stop! Let go!”

But Tom will never let go. Not now, not through the far reaches of time. He had been right—Harry is special, a gift, not from Salazar Slytherin, who lies dead and irrelevant, but from he, himself. Lord Voldemort! And now that Tom knows what is possible, now that the foundations of magical reality can be so completely broken, no manner of physics, presentism, or poetry will keep them apart.

Augustine comes to mind.

We have been severed amid times, whose order I know not; and my thoughts, even the inmost bowels of my soul, are rent and mangled with tumultuous varieties, until I flow together into Thee, purified and molten by the fire of Thy love.

—

In Hogsmeade, Tom comes to with a gasp, ears ringing. Harry, face covered in soot, lies on top of him, blinking a daze away. Ash and snow rain down upon them, like a whisper or a lover’s caress. Above their heads, the Hogsmeade clocktower is gone, broken open and reduced to rubble, and the Square burns all around them.

And they are holding hands.