Chapter Text
Tom Riddle did not visit his father often.
His attention was finite. Death was not. The war would not wait while he dawdled, picking at his scab of a father. He must spend his time judiciously, excise frivolities. Else doom the world to Gellert’s victory.
He will admit, when he had returned—not-twelve, not-fifty, but a bis given soul—it had been a tempering outlet. A way to focus his ire that would not affect his timeline so greatly as to make his knowledge of the future useless. At first, he'd planned to simply torture the man to death again, the justice for any prodigal father. But seeing his face so young, barely thirty, not a single scar, his hands as unworked as dawn-snow, Tom knew his plans must change. He would weave a more fitting fate for his father.
And Albus was still freshly wounded with the knowledge of his future death by his lover's hands, ripe for manipulation. Ready for a test of loyalty.
Tom had trundled Albus down to the manor—his own magic, not settled yet between coiled master and spring youth, had a penchant for combustion—and announced a new heir's occupation. They met an aggrieved resistance, but these were not the first muggles Albus had imperioed. He had been an extremist in his youth. If only he had the same passion for saving muggles as he’d had for enslaving them, Gellert’s war might have ended in victory after all.
Four Riddles resolved. One estate acquired. A good day's work and plenty of summer left to practice his old magic on bodies most willing. Voldemort had a war to win after all. And all war required soldiers.
But then later, with Gellert’s increasing insistence on enrapturing the attention of the entire Continent, Tom Riddle thought his overwrought scheming rather negligent. The man had reaped what he had sown. Voldemort was busy. No point in belaboring it, laughing maniacally over his fate like a self-satisfied child. That sparking hot adrenaline the first time he killed his father had been ashed over to cold, dispassioned dogma of punishing a man for his sins.
A pure justice.
Tom had turned his visits from weekly to monthly to whenever he could spare the time, and the man no doubt thanked him for it.
However, it just so happened the current black magic sealing Gellert’s latest shrapnel required familial viscera, and so he was able to visit his father twice in the last month. Rather indulgent if he was being honest. What a spoiled child he was, lavishing in his fathers suffering.
The rock in his pocket beat with his heart. A curdling warmth he thought to skip over the ocean. What need was there for it now.
The sun broke over the sea, dawning blood red clouds over shadowed waters, illuminating the mouth of a small cave between rocky cliffs. In Autumn and Spring, the light would last twenty minutes before the mouth would again be swallowed in shadows. For a few short minutes, he would not have to worry about casting a light to navigate the sharp jagged rocks. Veins of faceted crystals threw sunlight down the crevice to bathe a door in saturated, morning red. A thin rotting door, stolen from Wool’s. His first door, one that knew blood quite well, and Tom Riddle took out his handkerchief still stippled with nosebleed and painted it with even more red. Until it clicked and unlocked and he shuffled into the stagnant cavern.
Sand mixed with mud and rocks and crunching carapaces underfoot. An ideal home for slinking, skittering insects, louse and rats, beetles and bats, spiders here to feast on carrion. Necrophages and those that ate them. A little food chain of vermin. Better kept than his snake menagerie at the castle—he could not control everything that came in and out on those grounds. But here he could. And Voldemort was rather proud of his death eater terrarium by the sea. The small interior lake lay placid despite the crashing waves outside. The distinct, stagnant smell of putrid marsh waters soaked the morning air.
He flicked his forked tongue out, scenting familiar death, fresh decay, but no trespassers. Only him and the deadmen in the dark. They slept cold in the waters until someone warm came calling. A lifetime ago, he’d kept a sliver of his soul here. He still did, in a way, just a different one.
Tom Riddle stood on the shore and stuck two blood-copper fingers in his mouth and whistled. Loud and blaring as a London steam engine.
The waters undulated, disturbed by the hundreds of corpses suddenly remembering they needed to breathe. One by one heads popped out of the water, stealing choked gasps and wheezing gurgles and turned towards him, waiting for instructions. Inferi had all the mindfulness of worms. The black magic used to create them, only allowed for the hind-brain to function, sectioning off the rest to rot.
Tom Riddle whistled again. High then low then high again. Short and quick, over and over, like the pitter-patter of rain on soil to call the worms to the surface.
Heads sunk back below the flat black water, searching for the one heartbeat among them. Less than a minute passed—they were efficient hunters when they had numbers—and soon three Inferi dragged a waterlogged man, spluttering and vomiting, onto the shore.
Thomas Elliot Riddle was in a rather poor state.
His skin bloated obscenely, pruning until the wrinkles sagged and split, exposing fresh meat to necrosis and infection and whatever other rot lived in these waters. Paling to almost bluish, his flesh merely a wobbling bag of meat now. Left leg cut off at the knee, he was not able to right himself beyond a pathetic crawl. His eyes sunk into his head. His hair had fallen off. His clothes, once a respectable suit with shining brass buttons—that Tom had graciously prepared for him before ordering the Inferi to drag him to the bottom of the lake to drown in perpetuity—hung tattered on his thin frame like flotsam on a sunken ship.
The unicorn blood keeping him alive silvered his teeth, catching small glints of red dawn as he coughed up saltwater.
“Hello Father,” Tom Riddle said breezily as he squatted down beside him. Balanced on his heels, he folded his arms and rest his cheek on his hand, careful not to let mud ruin his pant legs. It was nice to see a man in worse shape than himself.
He met his father’s gaze respectfully. The Riddles did not have his dark eyes. Theirs were hazel.
“Dawn has just broken,” he continued casually, “The war is ongoing. Germany is reportedly flagging. Bryce has just cut new roses for the walk. I am still schooling in Scotland. Top of the class, of course. Your previous donation was put to good use. Though new circumstances have arrived to put me into another…rather encumbered state. How are you this morning?”
The man started to pray. Laying in the muddy, sand-grit shore and spewing some garbled Hail Marys, he was ever the lost soldier. Closer to animal whimpering than human speech, God wouldn’t like his enunciation, a nun would give him thirty switches. Though now that Tom Riddle looked closer, a handful of the man’s teeth had fallen out. Pity.
The girl said her father was a dentist. Perhaps they should meet.
“Still in a pious mood, then? It is not even Sunday,” Tom sighed and scratched at his cheek. His father was always so stubborn. “That’s no matter. I came here for ingredients not interrogation. But who knows," He pulled out his wand. “Maybe God will ease the pain if you beg fervently enough.”
The man managed to right himself on his hands and knees.
“I will, of course, give you the chance. Answer me and I will let you free,” he lied. Hope was a particularly fine grit to sharpen the pain.
His father did not interrupt his prayers, but switched to Our Fathers.
“No need to worry, just the usual. If you do not answer, I will…” Tom pondered for a moment. His father babbled on. “I will take your tongue this time. Give the Lord a reprieve from hearing your incessant chatter.”
Strangely, this did not soothe the man. His father just slurred more emphatically. As if all that mattered was the thought not the practice. What kind of dreadful Catholic was he?
Tom ran his tongue over his teeth.
He was not one to lie to himself. He would enjoy this. The measured application of pain for no purpose other than the animal desire to exercise power over another. It had been reprieve during the blitz where he could stay in the cave and not worry the randomness of a German aeroplane would out maneuver his memory of the past. Meditating on the screams of the first man to betray him. He’d had less time for such indulgences lately, the war turning too hot to ignore after Numengard. Now he could only spare the time when a secondary objective was present.
And for some strange reason, there was a small, festering ache he could not dislodge. An… anxiety that he’s made a mistake somewhere. That he’d done something wrong. In his hands, in his chest, in his teeth, it stuck like hard candy.
Like a dead snake trapped in the wall, it rotted and refused to leave.
But this would fix it.
“What was your Amortentia?”
His father did not answer. He straightened slightly and prayed toward the ceiling, as if God lived in the dark.
His father never answered.
Sometimes he spat curses at his son. Called him a devil worshiping heathen or bastard son of a whore. Once he’d called him Tommy, sweetly, begging, as if he was a true father, and Voldemort had cut his cock off. It had been Christmas. A week before his thirteenth birthday.
“What soothed you?” Tom said quietly in the dark cavern, dripping with fetid salt. A secret lesson between father and son. “How did mother sway you? Was it the ocean? Grave dirt? The swell of a storm?” He leaned closer. His father’s eyes contracted in fear. “Tell me and be free of this place.”
Thomas Elliot Riddle did not answer. He prayed, mumbling in the cave at his son's feet, laying in the cold mud and tattered clothes. He wished to die; Tom knew this. He wished to end his eternal suffering. Tom wondered if he thought himself in Hell. To be tortured by the son he’d abandoned for all eternity. Maybe he was just proving his father right. He was the Devil.
How trite. Tom was delirious from so little sleep.
“Alright, father. Thank you for your time,” he sighed and straightened, pointing his wand at the man. He needed an arm. The bones of a relative. A quick slash at the elbow should do and then take his tongue. He could suffer the burn in his magic to get a clean cut. A small spell wouldn’t make him sick.
Then his father stopped. Stammered something under his breath that was not a Lord’s prayer.
“Oh?” Tom perked up. “What was that? Speak up father. Mumbling is unbecoming of a gentleman.”
“Y-you spoke of… Last time…” His words crumbled underneath him like the rotten boards of a house, barely about to discern and roughened with decay. “You told me…”
Tom Riddle cocked his head. He had been here ten days ago. He’d taken half of his leg and gagged him with enough unicorn blood so he couldn't die drowning. He hadn’t told him much of anything. Only some life updates as any good son did: the war, the estate, the school—
“A girl… giving you trouble.” The old man half-cracked a silver smile.
Tom stilled. His lips pressed together until his teeth nipped out and bit into sweet flesh.
“I only…” His father took a wheezing breath. “Worry for my son. Bryce… is doing well. You're making friends at school. You hadn’t spoken of… s-such troubles before.” He looked up rather pathetically at Tom. Bloated skin hung on a starving man, mouth used for nothing but prayer and still able to lie. “Women can be dangerous, son. Is she still giving you t-troubles? I am your father, Tom. I worry.”
“And you have chosen to accept that, here in your tomb?”
Voldemort did not understand what was happening to his body. There was a terrible sourness in his ears, a sense of disassociation, a keen awareness to the sound of water dripping into the cavern from hundreds of sweating stalactites. If James crawled out of the dirt to kill him, he would not be more unmoored.
His wand remained steady, of course, but it was strange nonetheless.
“Yes. God help me, I worry for you." His father spoke with such earnestness, for a moment Tom believed him.
Not that he truly cared for his son, no, that would be the height of absurdity. But that, perhaps, the years of torture had broken his mind to such a state of unreality. It was an achievement to evoke such pity in Voldemort. Maybe he would kill him after the war in truth. Something like justice.
And then the man turned his face toward his son, and it contorted crueler than the night Tom killed him.
“You are such a naïve, ungrateful, needy child." Spittle or saltwater sprayed out of his mouth. His words strengthened with more conviction than any Lord’s prayer. "I'm sure it was easy for her to take advantage of you. You are as pathetic as your mother. I can see it in your eyes. Your desperation. It's disgusting… Eschewing prudence for gluttony. Gorging on whoever will keep you. That pitiful fear that will have you hounding after any scraps of adoration. The rot in your mother that’s in you. There is an emptiness inside you, eating you from within, and you are terrified it will never be sated. And you are right, boy. I am not surprised you could be so quickly taken in by a wicked whore of a witch. Worshiping the devil together, sodomizing each other. What was her name? Her—”
“Avada Kedavra.”
Thomas Elliot Riddle stiffened and collapsed in the dark.
Tom Marvolo Riddle curdled over and threw up on his corpse.
The taste of liquor and cigarettes and bile. His magic was not ready yet, nauseous and dizzy like a punch to the diaphragm. Damn him. His nose started bleeding. Thick salt and iron mixed with the vomit in his mouth.
Tom decided to sit back down. Just for a moment. In the quiet dark.
Mud and sand stained his pants. He would have to clean that later. Brittle magic, the elves would do it.
The Inferius stayed standing. His grandmother perhaps, or maybe step-mother. Some woman-thing, its rotting breasts hung out of a tattered dress. Tom closed his eyes and took shallow, quick breaths as his stomach roiled. Unfortunately, he would not be able to turn his father into an Inferius in his current state. He would rot before Tom would recover. A waste, he had planned to keep the Riddles together forever.
And now he would need to find another source of familial viscera. Else his castle would burn.
Tom Riddle got a headache.
Fuck.
Stupid idiot old man.
Damnit. Shit.
His stomach hurt.
Why had his father done that.
Did he really think Tom was so undisciplined that he would kill him over some obvious goading? His father was the one desperate to die, and the best he could do was some fallaciously equivocal insults. Some toward his mother no less. As if Tom cared about her in the slightest. He was the pitiful one, throwing words in the air to see which ones struck. Too frightened to beat his son with a fist, he tried and failed with a dull tongue. Hermio—
The girl had a sharper wit.
He pulled out the rock in his pocket and shoved it in his mouth.
It was too smooth to cut his tongue, make him bleed sweetly. But it was warm and steady and it settled the nausea anyway.
He relaxed slowly and splayed his legs out until his shoes soaked in flywater, socks wet. He lay down flat in the filth. A pleasant coolness on his fevered body. Something crawled up his neck, small and raising hairs, but Tom did not move to swat it. He was disciplined.
He did suppose his father achieved his goal. So it would be a lie to think he failed.
Tom ran his tongue over his teeth, clacking the rock harshly. He had the impulse to bite down, shatter teeth down to the jaw, chew with splintered bone and blood soaked gums. Maybe that would fix the ache.
He was not one to lie to himself. To win a war one must have a clear head.
Voldemort was prone to flights of rage. It was not surprising his father could engender one inside him. He had the first time he killed him. This was the same. Surely. Or maybe puberty was to blame again. His adult discipline, while studied, was not chemically available to him. He was offended by his fathers lack of respect, speaking to him so arrogantly, and that set him off.
Any explanation. It didn’t matter. They all suited a truth.
Tom Riddle turned his head and stared at his father. He could drag the body out of the cave, onto the boat, and row them both back to the cliff trail. He would not be able to explain it to the witch whose floo he’d used. She thought him a pleasant boy gone fishing. He would have to kill her without anything as neat as a spell; then show up to school covered in blood.
Or, he could leave his father here to rot in the disgusting waters. Alone and forgotten. For the fishes and deadmen to eat. He pulled the rock out of his mouth, whistled two quick tones, and said, “Left arm.”
An Inferius held the body down while two others leveraged to rip its arm off. It was an obnoxious sound. A shlorpping tear of butchered meat and a simple crack-crunch of bone or bread.
His stomach growled.
He ignored it. He was disciplined. He was craving cherries.
The arm was tossed over; he whistled the beat to send them under. The Inferi disappeared under the water, dutifully drowning, dragging his father’s corpse down with them. The unicorn blood in his pocket would go to waste.
Tom Riddle breathed slowly, there in the dark of the cavern and the quiet, cold waters.
"Will you kill me slow?" the girl asked, more curious than concerned. Low and breathless like she was asking Tom to fuck her on the windowsill. Out in the open and unashamed.
He looked away from the forest fire dooming him, back at her. Bright red eyes, a curious shade of magic he had pondered on far too often. Unusual for a mudblood. Plush-kissed lips still wet, made even redder by the firelight. Mused hair, sloppy dress with missing buttons, thoroughly debased with no sense of propriety to put herself back together again. As if she liked the state he had put her in. As if she liked the ways Voldemort molded her to his hand and had no desire to unmake his work.
How he wanted to push her, see the swell of her will before it broke.
Her black magic soaked his tongue, thick and sweet, cursed down to the bone, no cigarette could hide that. Fuck, he was still hard. Would she threaten to leave him again if he pulled out his cock and fucked his hand in front of her? Or would she sink to the floor, ruin her garters, lap up his come like the good little soldier she pretended to be.
"Quiet and cold?” he clarified. That was the way she liked things.
“Obviously.” The girl grinned, and the part of Tom that was sixteen and insatiable had an embarrassing, lurching emotion he did not examine further.
“I’ll drown you," he said with a wink to make it seem like a lie, "I promise."
Tom Riddle frowned in the dark. This was foolish. He refused to succumb to nostalgia. He had to get back to school now. Check on his brewing. An hour before breakfast. He had to keep up appearances, the dutiful prefect, not an agent of war. He had to prepare for Sunday. If the fire cracked the wards again, it would be then. It had begun to form a pattern. The weakest, most childish part of himself wanted to sleep.
He had meant it.
A disgusting part of him panged at the loss. Voldemort rarely made genuine promises. And it annoyed him to break one. That was the only reason of course. He should have not been so hasty. He could have taken his time, knocked her out and then drowned her properly. Not something so rash, so impulsive.
He was better than that.
Yes, of course, that was his mistake.
The strawberries were ripe, too sweet, and the wrong shade of red through the middle. He ate them whole, stems and all. They did not fill his stomach in a way that mattered. But they were straight from the kitchens, raw, untouched by magic. All they needed to be.
Classes were over; curfew was down. Irbis’ ghost had made him miss dinner. He had to run prefect rounds, and then floo out to Paris to trap a spy named Barrows leaking information to Gellert. He hoped he’d be allowed to kill her, but the French Ministry was fickle with these things.
Probably why they’d lost the war.
He’d taken a handful of fruit to eat on his rounds, shoes echoing loud in the dungeons to give sneaking students plenty of time to scatter. He did not need to catch anyone tonight. He needed a willing test subject. He hadn't the time for festivities.
For once he did not shy away from the pang of missing the girl. This is what the little spy would have been good for.
Though if she were not dead, he would not have thought to try this in the first place.
Voldemort opened the wall to the House commons and spoke a quick, “Malfoy.” It was not so late; the commons were full of chattering students. If he were a different person, in different circumstances, his voice would not have carried over the bedlam. As it was, heads turned toward him at the door and Edward Teller, a fourth-year failing muggle studies, ran toward the side study door to pull the boy.
Voldemort couldn't do this with Avery obviously. If it succeeded, the boy’s crush would present complications. If it failed, he would be dead. And so would Voldemort's hand in Wizengamot.
If Malfoy died, Tom would simply lose money.
Abraxas was trained well. He came out quick, with a smile and ready to work. His hair had grown back out—due to excessive use of some magical hair product from the Potters—but still only cuffed the jaw. He was a loyal soldier. More than that, he was an incurious one. He didn’t ask where they were going or what they were doing. He understood that Tom Riddle knew best.
He led them deeper into the dungeons.
Abraxas had been his first recruit, made before he had even returned. Little eleven-year-old Tom had noticed the influence the boy held over his peers. Even over the older boys. Even over the teachers. And then Tom knew how naïve he was to think that escaping London could escape his breeding. Names were power. Especially here, especially to wizards. He was still the starving gutter orphan. Only now sat next to bluebloods, the contrast made even more stark. One could not unlearn a decade of vicious survival in a night.
It was good he didn’t have to.
It was shamefully easy. He did not even have to learn a spell. He simply told a young adder to bite every boy in his dorm in their sleep. Necrotizing ankles, bloody vomit, and sending twenty first years to the infirmary every morning for a week. Himself included of course, though it was a mild venom, it was still unpleasant.
All except for Abraxas.
The others turned on him quickly. Tom knew how petty and cruel children could be. Especially here, especially wizards. Abraxas had no idea why the snake spared him, why he was so isolated suddenly, why his parents could not scold his friends. And it was easy to pick him up then. Even nameless, Tom was clever, got good marks. He positioned himself as loyal.
And when the fifth-years shut Avery and Rosier and Nott into the Black’s cabinet, forcing Malfoy to make a deal for some ridiculous sum of his father’s money, Tom had simply asked that same adder to open the cabinet door. The boys spilled out. The day was saved.
And Abraxas owed him a favor.
Then when he had careened back into his body—a fresh chance at shifting the world—he had shown the boy how interesting life would be as a loyalist. Voldemort took him to the Chamber, proven his inheritance as the heir of Slytherin. Kept him entertained with ambitious new magic, talk of war, promises of victory. Promises of a radical life not beholden to what his parents had set out before him. The boy's eyes had gleamed at the chaos. He was starving for someone to see him as more than a family name, and Voldemort was a very good liar.
Though Gellert had made Tom kill him once, fresh off victory. They had both been eighteen. Tom Riddle couldn't help but be curious. What possible threat could this posh little brat pose?
So far, nothing. He was simply obscenely wealthy. Even more now with his parents deceased.
They passed Flint doing her prefect rounds. Neither looked at her.
Voldemort led them deep into the dungeons, until the air turned damp and the walls started to sweat. Passed the dorms and the classrooms and Slughorn’s office, and the genuine cells Hogwarts insisted on maintaining, remodeling be damned. He took Abraxas to a blank wall at the end of a hallway, pulled out a knife—good boy did not even flinch—and cut his palm. He placed it on the wall and very firmly told his home to make a stairwell down to the Chamber.
His blood melted into the bricks, recognizing him instantly as kin. As blood of the old wards. Keeper of this sacred demesne. The black bricks moved and revealed a spiral staircase into the deep dark that had not been there an hour ago and would not be there an hour from now. He snapped his fingers for a Lumos—the smallest jab under his ribs—and led them down.
Abraxas swallowed behind him. Tom hoped he'd had a light dinner.
Voldemort allowed his knights down to Salazar’s Chamber regularly. As much as torture and bribes and promises of future glory begot loyalty, it paled in comparison to the divine providence of taming a thousand-year-old serpent. A serpent owned by the great Sorcerer-King Salazar himself. A leviathan capable of killing every wizard in the school.
But Liltheshak’hesthia was not a tool, a blade to be wielded and carved through the Continent. She was his friend. As close to an equal as he might encounter. A fellow immortal, stuck in this castle. He must be so careful with everyone else. He could not allow his pieces to wobble and fall when his failure met more than the end of Europe's oldest magical bloodline. It meant the end of the world. It seemed fitting that he was responsible for such importance, chosen by fate to save the world. No one else could accomplish such a task.
“Relax,” he told the door. There was no true word for ‘open’ in parseltongue. There was ‘relax’: to uncurl, unfold, be vulnerable. Or ‘bite’.
He stepped past the scraping stone doors into Salazar’s study. The room warmed to his presence, small spells of light activated and flicked around the room. Dozens of snakes greeted him, their voices slipping seamlessly into the sounds of hissing, with, “Master,” or, “Father,” or “Heir.” They spooled out of nested cubbies, folded carpets, behind books, leaving further messes. The disarray was not his preferred method of obfuscation, but it prevented Albus from ever finding something useful. A purpose served.
“Relax,” he spoke again, “Return to your place. There is no danger. Rest.”
The bloodstain on the carpet had been cleaned. The only evidence the girl had died here. The place where he’d cut her arm off for fear of fearing her curse to Hestia. Something set his teeth on edge as he walked past it. That mistake he'd made. The rotten snake stuck in his teeth.
No, killing complications was never a mistake. He only should have done it better.
Voldemort walked over to his potion table, motioning Malfoy to come inside. The boy was worried about Hestia slithering out and petrifying him. He shouldn’t be. She was out hunting whales with the little troublemaker. Ashezha hadn’t died with the girl for some reason.
A problem he would deal with after the war.
“Sit.” Tom took off his robes and jacket and pulled out a stool near the table for Malfoy.
“Everything alright, sir?” Malfoy sat.
“Fine.” Tom removed the cauldron from the heat. “Be quiet.” It had been simmering for six hours. The potion was a thick black syrup that glittered with red in the light.
He took a deep breath—
Accio Mórrígan’s jewelry box.
—and let it out slow. The smallest twinge in his stomach. He was hungry again. Cherries and cinnamon and hard black licorice.
“It's just that—” Malfoy started
“Do I need to repeat myself?” Voldemort turned his head slightly towards the boy. Malfoy swallowed.
From the top of the chamber, hidden in a nest of snakes, came a small emerald encrusted box the size of a brick. He caught it and placed it on the table. A platinum snake coiled around the lid. Its emerald gemstone eyes blinking between Malfoy and him. Created by Salazar's wife, If anyone not of Slytherin’s blood tried to open it, the snake would bite, injecting them with a thousand-year-old cursed venom.
“Relax,” said Voldemort.
The snake uncoiled from the lid of the box, but remained poised at the bottom. He opened the box and shoved his arm inside, fumbled around looking for something soft, velvet, heavy, and pulled out a long object wrapped in black cloth.
The cloth was charmed. Created by him to preserve perishables that might spoil when stuck without access to fresh food. It served its purpose here. Voldemort delicately unwrapped the girl’s arm. Peeling the velvet from her body tenderly enough to disturb neither—
“Sir?!” Malfoy spoke, his voice high and strangled. Annoying and fearful.
“Hush,” snapped Voldemort, valiantly keeping his patience.
The girl's arm was inflicted with the strangest curse Voldemort had encountered in his fifty-eight years of life. Her skin split, gaped with rows and rows of teeth. Mouths sprang unfettered from biology, teeth grown out of bone, lips shaped with scars. All dead and inert now, of course. What he would give to hear them speak. He wondered if they could scream. He had been studying it for days. He would probably study it for weeks more. Gellert had probably given it to her, a nice leash to keep the girl humble, starving, desperate, but that did not lessen his curiosity. He certainly hadn't cursed Tom with this. Just with the wife.
He did not think of kissing her strange teeth.
He had dreamt of it though.
Voldemort leveraged her arm and pulled out a tooth, a front rabbit one on the wrist. He had dissected many humans before. Unfortunately, Malfoy had not and there was some obnoxious heaving behind him. Voldemort ignored him.
He tossed the tooth into the potion, stirred twice. The black shining red shifted brown then… strangely green in the light. A deep black-green as if ink spilled in absinthe. He was tempted to scent it, but his forked tongue frightened his knights and he needed Malfoy stable for now.
“What is that?” Malfoy asked, slightly choked from trying to hold his dinner.
“Don't vomit on my carpet,'' Tom said. Malfoy obeyed. “Its an experiment.” He ladled out a dose into a vial. The green was so dark. Faceted like malachite, veined with darker swirls, nearly black.
Malfoy frowned.
Tom held out the vial. “Drink.”
Malfoy frowned harder but took it. "Sir?"
Voldemort sat down in the cushioned chair by his potions desk and crossed his ankle over one knee, expectant. The boy would do it. He knew what would happen if he was forced to order twice.
Abraxas handled the potion with fearful eyes and sweating palms, but the boy was his most loyal. He would never question a direct order. Surely this was important work if Mr. Riddle asked it of him.
The boy thumbed the stopper and took the whole vial in one breath. He hacked at the end. "Tastes like death," he coughed and grimaced and gave him back the glass.
Well, that was disappointing.
Tom started a timer.
The screaming started immediately.
Voldemort would give it to the boy. They weren't the high shrieks of a wild animal like his father. They were the strained masculine grunts of a boy desperately trying to control himself. Like there was purpose to this. As if it was a test. He collapsed to the floor and seized into a ball of limbs, ever the animal.
Tom observed and took notes. As any dedicated alchemist should. This was a modified polyjuice, altered for quicker brew times. No one had a month to spend on a single potion during the war. He'd replaced the lacewings with phoenix ash and leeches with extract of Philosopher's Stone. He hypothesized It would be a more volatile transformation, but it cut brew time to a little over a day.
Abraxas’ hair darkened and curled. The muscles from quidditch sloughed off and softened. Then melted further, just before bone. His legs shrank, fingers lengthened. His face doughed and reformed sharp as a raven.
All the while endlessly screaming and coughing and holding his breath to contain the sobs.
Tom wrote down a note. Transformation seems to be more painful than traditional polyjuice. Perhaps the lacewings are used as an anesthetic as well as a catalyst.
The timer flashed. They passed a minute. The standard transformation usually lasted between ten and thirty seconds. Tom made another note. This would not be able to be used in the field. He would have to prepare and drink beforehand at a secure, soundproof location.
Abraxas curled further into himself, seizing, holding his torso together as if his bones would slip out.
If things truly went wrong. Tom could take him to the infirmary. Blame it on poor potions study. It would be wasteful to take the Malfoy hair off the board so soon. He was still quite valuable. It would be foolish to toss him away for fear of detention.
Though his plans had already careened off course. What did another dead student matter? Obviously the girl was much less valuable to him than Malfoy. They weren't comparable—
With a great hacking cough, followed by some whining panting, Abraxas lifted his head and finished transforming. It took four minutes. Quadruple the length. Triple the pain. But made in one thirtieth the time. It seemed a fair trade. An entirely usable alternative.
"How are you feeling, Abraxas?" Tom said respectfully. The children liked it when he valued their names more than their families.
"I… I-I don't know." Malfoy looked at him with a running nose and tear-stained eyes. Light brown, hazel eyes.
The wrong eyes.
Her eyes were supposed to be red. Violent red. Enough to make his stomach churn and look away, bite his cheek not to blush. Enough he had to stare and stare and stare at her because he had beaten and bled and blacked out his fears and he could not help his throat pinching, finger twitching, spine stiffening animal fear that flushed through his heart at the sight of her. God dammit he was better than her, and still? She had the gall to make him flinch, make him imperfect, make him crack and creak. Undisciplined and entirely weak.
He does not understand fear or lust or the difference between them.
Tom made a note. The experiment was a failure after all.
“Sir?" Abraxas said, voice not high enough to be hers nor low enough to be his. Stuck somewhere and set wrong, like a poorly healed bone. He tried to right himself to sitting but wobbled lifting his head. "I feel… strange."
"I imagine so."
The body was mostly correct. If Tom Riddle had never met the girl, his head would not turn if he passed her on the street. There were no obvious deformities from using a cursed piece of flesh as a reagent. Deep brown curls, slight shoulders, cheekbones made sharp and lips made full. Her eyes were wrong but that could be fixed with an illusion. The voice would be more difficult.
"Lift up your sleeves." Tom said, "Let me see your arms."
"I'm hungry," Abraxas mumbled but did as he was told. He managed to sit up, if not straight, and show his arms. His uniform swamped the girl's body, hanging off in great heaps of fabric. A few buttons had snapped under his convulsions. The collar fell half way down her chest, exposing the tops of her breasts, an indecent amount of collarbone.
Tom flicked his eyes away, down to the arms. They were clean. No sign of teeth. whomever knew of her curse would know it for polyjuice. There was no way to fake that black of magic.
Until he discovered how to bestow the curse himself.
Gellert would not be able to be fooled, but his guards? His researchers? Chavira? Absolutely. Carrell? Perhaps not. This didn't need to be another assassination attempt. He only needed to find the current location of the Vault. The girl needed to report, and during that time she could ask questions. Gellert would move on Halloween. when magic was close and the veil was thin and he had to be ready to strike.
"Sir?" Malfoy started again. Apparently he had lost his incuriousness sometime in the last day. "I don't understand." He pulled at the dark, curly hair to examine more closely, felt his chest and stared at his fingers. "Was that polyjuice? Did you turn me into… that mudblood girl? …Granger?"
"Yes."
Tom swallowed. He was disciplined. He would not kill the boy, destroy his experiment, ruin all his hard work. "She was a spy," he explained, voice collared and controlled. "I told you. It may become useful to take her mien."
"...You told us she left for the Continent," Abraxas protested, voice crawling higher. Still not hers, wrong tenor. "—to report back to Grindelwald… Why do you have her arm…sir?"
Tom Riddle did not twitch. He was slightly proud of the boy for being so quick. Like a father finding his son after he'd stuck out of the house. Furious, but impressed he'd slipped out of the wards undetected.
"I did say that, didn't I?" he hummed. Voldemort breathed deeply, choosing his lie like one might choose a suit. The fit was most important. "That was a lie, Abraxas." he said soft as a parent telling his child Santa was not real. "I discovered she was a spy and she attacked me. The basilisk killed her. You know how protective she is. I kept her arm because it was cursed, and I didn't want it to spread to the snake. Can you imagine a basilisk with a dozen more maws."
Abraxas frowned, wrinkling his brow. He so wanted to believe Tom Riddle but required encouragement like so many children do…
"Do you know why I'm telling you the truth now, Abraxas?" Tom set both feet on the carpet and leaned forward to better commiserate with the boy. Smiled gently, without teeth, earnest as if were imparting a great wisdom. "Because I trust you. You… more than any other man. You understand the pain of war. What can be lost. What measures must be taken."
The boy blinked heavy-slow and scratched at his hair. Not used to her curls it seemed.
"Come here," Tom invited with an open hand.
Voldemort knew the boy wanted to believe him. He wanted to trust him. Trust was a choice and Abraxas sighed, scratched his face resigned.
Abraxas tried to stand, knees wobbling, off balance in a body he did not know. His uniform now much too large, dripping off him in great sloughs. His leg caught and tripped on the trousers, flopping him back to the floor like a puppy that had hit his growth spurt. The girl's body looked strange out of skirts and hose. Tom missed her ankles. Sweet bone much too thin and weak and small. How had this girl given him trouble? She was so, so fragile.
Had she been that fragile? Or did Abraxas just wear her wrong.
"It is alright," Voldemort offered, "You may crawl."
Abraxas huffed, blushed, but obeyed. Mind too molasses thick to protest. He crawled heavily over the carpets, arms barely able to hold himself up, and sat at Tom's feet. Clothes pooling around him, his shirt slid off her shoulder. Far too much skin exposed. The dip of her clavicle, the curve of her shoulder, the arch of her neck...
Tom crackled a knuckle with his thumb.
Something inside him relaxed. That twinge of mistake fell loose and dissolved into water. For a moment Voldemort let himself give into satisfaction, long curdled though it was. He had waited so long for that girl to be weakened to such a state. On her knees, supplicant at his feet.
"How long will it last?" Abraxas mumbled looking up at him with the wrong eyes, wrong voice.
Tom leaned forward, slow to rest his elbows on his knees. He would not carve out the boy's eyes nor rip out his throat. "Not sure."
Abraxas smiled, curled lips and showing her teeth and fuck. That was close enough to how she smiled, incisors sharp and much too satisfied, "Oh? Mr. Riddle does not know the answer. Call the papers—"
"Hush," he said and ran his fingers tenderly through her hair.
Her curls were just as soft as before. Long and well cared for. More thanks to Abraxas than the girl. She had never been deft with her appearance. Tom was suddenly achingly sixteen and possessed with the wild thought to pull her closer, press his lips to a curl. Taste if she was wrong too. He could make another basilisk with his teeth.
He did not. There were enough problems in his castle.
Abraxas squeaked a startled noise but knew better than to flinch away. He looked toward the floor and stilled and let Tom do whatever he wanted like the good little soldier he was.
"Close your eyes," said Voldemort.
Abraxas flushed deeply—even in the dimmed chamber he could see it—but obeyed. He would not have to stare at wrong eyes anymore, be tempted to rip them out. Let her cry blood over her lips until he kissed it away.
Voldemort twisted her curls between his fingers and pulled her body close. Head back until her throat strained. A noise slipped out of Abraxas. It was almost correct. High and needy but not nearly enough fear to make him tremble.
He relaxed his shoulders, let his head bow to her neck, flicked out his forked tongue to scent the air at her throat. Damn nearly perfect. Close enough to make his cock swell. He closed his eyes, breathed deep. The polyjuice bottled her salt and ocean air, drops of coppered blood, something sweet he could not name. It had missed the dark current of magic running through her, welling to the surface watering his tongue.
A biting regret came over him. That he had never tasted her blood when it was fresh. He could never know if it was wrong.
Abraxas twitched, then trembled in earnest. Clothes falling off him, thin as the girl, he must be chilled to the bone. "Sir?" and his voice roughened further, nearly there, the taught line of a swinging noose. Perhaps if Tom Riddle frightened the boy enough, he could mimic her voice.
Or not fear. The distinction between revulsion and desire cleaved thin. And often, for Tom Riddle, they entwined with grace.
"Abraxas?" he asked speculatively, leaning back to look at him better.
"Yes, my lord?" His eyes stayed closed, head tilted lazily, shirt sloped open, exposing a terrible amount of skin.
Her lips were wet. As if he'd been licking them.
Voldemort didn't think about it long. He needed to know if her skin was the same. What was the point of experimentation if not to be an accurate consummation.
And the dissolved mistake in his heart craved the feeling of annihilation.
Tom leaned down and kissed him quick, then opened his mouth and kissed him slow. He took his time with his tongue and her teeth. Experimentation must be thorough. Abraxas rasped a whimper pulled from the bottom of her lungs and that did fucking sound perfect—
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Her skin was supposed to consume him. Warp his fingers. Laze his mind. Sweaten his skin with the toll of death. Shoot his heart past fear into delirium. Gellert had strapped him down for the Kiss over and over and over again. Pulling out his soul and putting it back better, he said. A creature like him needed a short leash. Until Voldemort could steel his mind to that fear of Death, that cowardice, he would never be a good soldier. What did it matter when death came for you. Don't tell me you are a religious man, Thomas. Do you fear the wrath of God?
How Hermione felt the same. As if she was pulling the soul out of him and there was nothing to do but to lay still and feel it. Overwhelm his senses, rip out his flesh to the virgin nerves of bone marrow, he could only exist against it. A masochistic high from which he had long ago withdrawn that by some strange circumstance he had come to encounter.
He had half a mind to kill Abraxas.
For the promise of something he could not know or possibly deliver.
But his father was mistaken. He was disciplined, and he could control his rage, and if it was a poor kiss, at least Tom kept his head.
He pulled back annoyed. Abraxas followed after his lips, panting wet tongued. Flushed skin and eyes dilated in their wrongness. He was prettier when he was himself. Tom Riddle had fucked Abraxas often in their last year of schooling. In a future that didn't exist. In the future that Tom killed him. He wore lust better in his own skin than the girls.
"My l-lord," Abraxas spoke again, low and thick with a need that perfectly mimicked the girl's tenor. Something clicked in Voldemort's head he would have to think on later."I can—Let me, please. I don't care. I want—"
Abraxas reached for his legs, fingers shaking up his thighs. Her skin may feel wrong, but Tom's cock was sixteen and didn't really care. He was as hot and hard as the last time he'd touched her.
When he'd shoved a curse down her throat.
About thirty feet away from where he sat. The bloodstain cleaned but he remembered the form of her body, remembered how heavy she felt, limp in his arms. The shock of it. She had been so paper thin and yet he strained to hold her close.
Voldemort snapped his teeth, hard enough to bite the inside of his cheek, mining for deep copper veins. He stared at the place where he'd killed her and very much did not want to kill Abraxas wearing her skin. The idea infuriated him, he could barely stop himself from slitting the boys throat, spilling her blood to coat him. Malfoy had served so well for so long. He had so much money. That would immediately go to his cousins upon death. Gellert had seen him as a threat to his power, the old families held too much sway with their names. He would not kill the boy over cancerous emotions he could not conquer.
He refused. He was disciplined.
Abraxas pulled at Tom's buttons and Voldemort grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off swiftly. She choked, tried to grab at his fingers. Sharp uncut nails whitened his pale flesh in ribbons. He barely felt it. Wrong eyes no longer dilated with lust but fear, or both tangling together.
"Calm down, Abraxas," said Tom Riddle.
He needed more leverage to cut off her breath. If he dug his nails in with enough force to restrict her windpipe, it would cut skin, tear her jugular artery. Shower him with wrong blood and make another stain. He only pressed hard enough to quiet, enough to cut off her pulse and starve blood from her brain.
Abraxas did not.
He kicked and dug her nails into Tom's hand, and he held her until they cut, slicing ragged red beads of blood over his wrist down his arm. It felt good in a way. Better than the wrongness of her body. At least it was something.
He knocked Abraxas out before the boy suffocated.
Stupefy.
A red crackle struck his body and Abraxas went limp. Voldemort released him to slide down to the floor and sat back in his chair. The very young part of him was proud he'd not killed the boy; He could not afford to waste men. The very old part of him was annoyed it had even come to this. He should have killed the girl sooner, before she became a complication and rooted in his thoughts.
Of course it didn't really matter how any part of him felt.
He would document how long this experimental polyjuice lasted. The Philosopher's Stone elixir should extend it for hours. But the phoenix ash could prove unstable. In the morning, Abraxas could wake with no organs.
He did not need the sleep anyway.
He pulled out a cigarette, lit it off his fingers with Incendollum, and relaxed into his chair. He spared the ache to vanish the smoke as soon as it left his mouth. The snakes hated it. He should write as he watched her. He needed Avery to post his mother about the ministry theft. He needed to prepare for France. He needed to call back Hestia and her troublemaker.
Instead he sat and smoked and watched her.
Eyes closed, breathing slow, the limp body did look every bit like the girl's the night she stole his bed. When she had slept in his room, under his snakes and in his sheets, smelling of him. He flicked out his tongue. All he scented was tobacco and his blood drying the creases of his sleeve.
His cock was still hard.
Tom sighed and set his cigarette on the table and leaned his head on the high back of the chair. The insatiable, boyish meat of him demanded so much attention at times. He pulled up his shirt and finished unbuttoning his trousers. Then fished the rock out of his jacket and shoved it in his mouth. Tongued it between the dog teeth until it nicked. Bit down hard. Until he tasted cherries.
Alcohol and cherries and the rightness of the girl's magic, the slick taste of lighting and death and something deep and whispering dark. Thick and humming so sweet in his mouth. His tongue welled, too much saliva. He stuck his fingers deep in his mouth until he coated his palm wetly. This would be quick.
The girl stretched long on the ground, hair haloed around her. Her shirt unbuttoned and edged high enough to hide her breasts. Tom stepped on the hem of it, dragged it down lower, exposing soft pink nipples and the divots of her ribs. She was so fragile, a beast of gentle flesh and consuming wants. He could lean down, tongue under her breast, bite at her nipple, her skin had been so soft at times. It would take the same force to bite a peach as to pierce the skin and sup her blood.
And then he would kill Abraxas the same. Too revulsed with her wrongness to keep his head.
He pulled out his cock from his trousers, took himself firmly, stroked quickly. Letting his breath hitch ragged and his eyes unfocus. Letting his body not be so disciplined in this. He was sixteen; he could indulge.
And there was so much of her to look at.
Her hair was riotous, deep tangled as the roots of wild magic. Lips shined wet. Skin fallen sallow, too thin and hungry. Greedy. Oh how desperate she had been, always wanting, insatiable to the end. Died hungry for him.
He pressed his dull fingernails up the underside of his cock, just crude enough to mistake for her teeth.
The warmth of her mouth, her snow soft thighs. He ground down hard on the rock, sharp cherry black magic, until he felt tooth grit. She was needy and flushed and panting, pulling him by his hair, hard enough to clack their teeth. She was so desperate to lure him. He could have fucked her that first night. Pulled her to his rooms, fed her some sumptuous lies. Terrible spy, she would have done anything for information. Gotten on her knees, swallowed him whole, sucked him down her smart mouth after dinner. He remembered how cruel Gellert had been, she would not have liked softness. He fucks her tied to the bed, not letting her come until she cries.
She is a biter, leaving imprints on his skin. He gags her with a belt. Teaches her to control that tongue. She needs to be disciplined.
Tom bit his lip hard, used the cut of pain to calm a moan. This needn't be gauche.
He let his hips jerk, eager to fuck his hand. The mortal animal of his body desperate to sate something inside him. His hand curled up, over his eyes, messed the front of his hair. If he unfocused, looked through the split of his fingers, at her body sleeping, he could almost pretend.
Her hair knotted in his fist. Please, her voice breathless, choked, near broken with tears. She bites him hard in his shoulder, deep and hungry for the wet flesh of him. That's a kind of immortality. To last forever inside another—
Tom Riddle came with a hitching exhale over the girl’s breasts and clothes and sternum. Abraxas didn't wake. Not even to shiver in wetness. He let himself relax, pant loudly, enjoying the biochemical high. She should wear his come more often. He should do this in his bed, on his sheets next, perfect the image to hold forever.
For a terrific second, he wanted to touch her skin so badly he was sick with it.
A ferocious gnawing clawed between his ribs. Scratching his insides like the bars of a cage. A rapacious want of a starving, mad animal taken with rabies, already dead just waiting for his heart to catch up. He ached with it.
He took the cigarette off the table and replaced his dumb rock. He dragged long, lay his head back, closed his eyes.
Dammit. He should not have killed her until he knew what black magic had cursed her, how to replicate it, how to control it. Yes. That was it. He only needed to remember that when killing Gellert. He wanted the curse to give to another, kiss and fuck and kill them instead.
No, he needed to be more disciplined. What did it matter, those gnawing cravings. Slit their throats and dump the bodies in the well to poison the ground water. He did not need this.
He needed to get ready for France.
He would not waste his finite hours staring at a dead girl.
Tom stuffed his cock back in his trousers, buttoned up, vanished his come off Abraxas and threw a blanket over him for good measure. With a few drops of his blood, Slytherin's Keystone would alert Hestia to return, protect the Chamber, watch the boy. He shoved his rock back into his pocket. Slightly lighter with magic. It wasn't a waste, he rationalized, he was more focused now.
He ignored the fact it would run out of her magic one day. He ignored the fact that it would bother him.
It would not be the first time Abraxas had slept here under the care of the old snake. Tom straightened his uniform and brushed his hair and created a new staircase to ascend back to the heart of his castle.
He needed to eat again before Paris.