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From the moment she walks into Borgin and Burkes, Tom knows she is different. He can feel the magic emanating from her very being. More than that though, he is entranced by her thin frame, the paleness of her skin, the tiny quirk of her lips when she notices him looking. His eyes follow her as she practically glides around the shop, stopping to admire a few of the items. When she stops in front of one of the glass displays, he moves from behind the counter to approach her.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
The woman’s eyes meet him through their reflections. Closer now, Tom realises she is older than he originally thought, but no less beautiful, no less enchanting.
“What does it do?”
Her voice sounds like a melody.
“A cursed object,” Tom replies. “It just arrived two days ago.”
She hums in response, bringing her hand up to touch her fingertips to the glass. He sees a ring on her middle finger, a flat oval shape that he knows to be of the family styles. The letter ‘D’ is etched into the stone; it’s all he can see before she drifts away from him.
“Can I help you find anything?”
He can’t stop himself from staring when she pauses at a long table displaying various trinkets at vials. She leans over to look at the items more closely and he notices the way her black robes tighten across her derriere. A stirring in his trousers surprises him. As though she senses his predicament, she looks over her shoulder at him, and blinks slowly, her lashes sweeping beneath her eyes.
“Perhaps.”
He learns that her name is Nagini, and he is even more intrigued when he learns of it. He knows the name to come from South Asian mythology or beliefs, depending on who is doing the explaining. The half-snake beings are revered in some cultures.
He is ready to lay himself at her feet.
Over a not-very-impressive dinner he’s managed to scrounge up from a local pub, as well as a bottle of elf wine he managed to barter, he finds out that she’s been wandering the British isles for over a year. There is a haunted look in her eyes, and when he asks if he’s said anything wrong, she gives him a sad smile.
“I lost someone over a year ago. I watched him wither away to nothing because of hatred and the errors of fools.”
It’s late one night when he learns of her connection to the Dumbledore family and he seethes in quiet anger until she runs a hand down the side of his face in a soothing gesture. Her eyes silently ask him what’s wrong.
After he admits his dislike of the great Albus Dumbledore, not the least of which is due to forcing him back to an orphanage during school breaks, he sees anger flash in her eyes. In the next second, her lips press against his forehead, and her hands stroke the cut of his cheekbones, the column of his neck. Their mouths meet and Tom believes he has found his reason to be immortal.
Nagini’s cries are a crescendo of the most beautiful and darkest song he’s ever heard. There is a mourning in her tone that he can’t quite place but he loses himself in the sound, in the creaminess of her thighs around his head, and in the slick tang upon his tongue. He doesn’t realise it at first, but he is hissing into the apex of her thighs, into the deepest part of her body that he can reach, and the sound makes her hips undulate for him, to him.
His experience with women is slim, but she teaches him how to please her, how to pay attention. The first time she slides him inside of her body, it’s when he’s on his back, and she is in control. His hands seek purchase on her waist and he groans at the way her body grips him, the way her hips twist, rise and fall, until he is saying her name in deep and breathy syllables that make sense only to the two of them.
Later, when they are sated and their limbs feel boneless, she asks about his ability to speak the tongue of serpents. His eyes grow round with uncertainty until she admits she is a Maledictus, that her name is more than what she is called. Tom buries his face into her neck, breathes in the earthy and floral scent he’s come to associate with her, and falls in love with her a bit more.
The first time she transforms for him, Tom is in awe. There is no fear as he reaches for Nagini in her snake form. He runs a palm over her scales, strokes the top of her head. As soon as her human body returns, he is upon her, his body more experienced, his form moulding into hers. When she comes, he whispers promises that he will always keep her safe.
It’s been almost five years and Nagini is the only person he trusts. Though he still works at Borgin and Burkes, it is a facade, a way to gather people who are like-minded. Nagini warns him to not make the same mistakes as Grindelwald and he listens to her. She has lived this before.
And so he tells her about his splintered soul.
“I have three so far,” Tom tells her. “I’d like to make at least one for you.”
Her breath hitches at his words. Naked and warm beneath the covers, she turns so that she faces him. He looks at her like she is a goddess in her own right, as though she is the one keeping him alive, not Horcruxes.
But her next words shatter his heart. “Tom, nothing will stop the curse, not even that. And I don’t want to taint my soul.”
It isn’t the second part that hurts; he knows he will never be the same with the Dark Magic he’s performed, the inky blackness that flows through his veins. No, it’s the first part, the admission that one day, he will be without her.
“I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to do this without you.”
She curls into him, her movements similar to her cursed snake even in human form, but stays silent. There is nothing she can say that will comfort him.
“I will find a way to keep you with me, Nagini. I need you always.”
After a night of wine-tinged slow kisses and deep thrusts that make her body ache in the most sensuous of ways, Nagini falls asleep. At her side, Tom brushes her hair back, kisses the space in front of her ear, high up on her cheekbone where her blush always appears, and whispers his love for her.
In the hours that move the calendar from one day to the next, in the time when the sky is darkest, her body relaxes unknowingly into her serpentine form, and never changes back.
Tom opens his eyes to a bright morning and an otherwise empty bed. He stands and then stares at the coiled snake in front of the fireplace filled with soot and ash. Slowly, he drops to his knees, hands out as though to grab her, but they instead go to the floor, where he smacks the wood with open palms. The tears come unbidden when Nagini hisses at him, words that only he can understand, words that he hates.
It is done, my love. I am sorry.
She moves, slithers against the floor to wind her way around his body, even as he falls completely to the floor. Her scales are slightly warm from the previously-lit fireplace, but it’s not the comfort of the woman who has breathed new life into him.
Life.
She is alive but in an entirely new way that means they can never be together again. Sadness gives way to anger. He stands, an all-consuming hatred curling its way through his body, and he wants to hurt something, some one , but he doesn’t know who. He doesn’t think it matters.
Though Nagini whispers in Parseltongue, begs him not to leave her, Tom dresses in simple black robes, grabs the amber-filled locket of his ancestor, and disappears.
He is weak, the Dark Magic taking more than he was ready to give. He thinks of the girl - some twenty-odd woman who tried to proposition him in an alleyway - who is no longer alive, and coughs erratically, trying to get air into his lungs. Another piece of his soul gone, this time in a rage from the cruelty of the world he now lives in.
Their little cottage comes into view, but it is not how he left it. Men and women - Ministry-sanctioned workers, if their robes are to be believed - are swarming the lawn. The doors and windows are all open and Tom can hear the crashing and the voices carry to him on the wind.
“There is a Maledictus here. The Creatures department said an alarm went off and it gave them this plot. So find it!”
Nagini.
His first instinct is to run to the house, their sacred haven, and begin shooting spells. Then a tug on his mind makes him pause. It’s not as though she is a tiny garden snake who can camouflage herself easily. If they can’t find her, it means she is hidden, most likely away from their home. And so, in his weakened state, he draws into the shadows of the trees that surround the cottage, and waits for them to leave.
The bark of a tree is rough on his back, the ground damp and cold in the fading daylight. A heavy weight drapes over his legs, and Tom’s eyes fly open when he feels the tickle of a forked tongue against his cheek.
“Nagini,” he whispers her name in a longing tone. She settles her face into the crook of his neck while he runs a hand down the length of her body. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”
She hisses, warning him that the solitude they’ve found is only temporary, that the wizards and witches who ransacked their home will return when dawn arrives.
“They won’t take you from me,” he promises. His magic is not at its fullest, but he is better than before, and he will do anything to keep Nagini safe, especially now that she can no longer fend for herself.
Where? She asks him and if he listens closely enough, he swears he can hear the tremble in her voice, the one that always reminded him of her trust in him.
“Albania.” There are things to learn in the old country, magic long forgotten.
Tom stands unsteadily, more from Nagini wrapped around his body than anything else, but he refuses to let her slither back down to the ground. Not yet. He removes his wand from a hidden sheath inside his robes. Pointing it toward the sky, he grips the snake as tightly as he can, feels her coil around his body as well.
Keep me safe, she begs of him.
“Always. You will be with me always.”