Chapter Text
August 31st, 1944
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Everything was silent til a wolf’s gloomy howl pierced the woods beyond the garden–or, at least, Tom imagined they were woods. The vast garden had no entrance or exit, just comprised of tall vine-ridden hedges that formed a heptagonal border around the unnaturally lazuli-hued space and blocked the view of everything outside barring the swirling twilight sky. Tom had been unnerved by the blueness of the garden the first time he’d arrived, until far stranger things had been presented to confuse him further.
Tom now knew to associate the howl with her arrival, and waited quietly to see where she’d reveal herself from this time, straightening his shoulders and standing to his full height.
His eye caught on a series of bubbles forming on the surface of the small, sickle-silver pond ten feet ahead of the orange tree to his left. She emerged from the pond seamlessly and stepped out of its shimmering waters onto the soft blue moss, dark eyes meeting his own as she stood in place.
After a few seconds he forced himself to break eye contact and raked his gaze down her body to see that she was clothed in artfully placed garlands of vervain. Better than nothing. His breath hitched as she stalked towards him through the flowers and trees, eyes glittering. His strains to glimpse her face beyond just her eyes were thwarted by the shadows as usual.
Instead of making her way close to him as she sometimes did, she stopped five feet away and sank onto a nearby stone bench formed by two marble swans, stretching out her legs and holding his gaze. Tom huffed, started to walk towards her, and waited for the fairies to come.
As he stood in front of her seated figure the first one, an ugly little bug-faced creature struggling to carry the thin brown tome, fluttered in from some unknown direction and dropped the object into her lap before zooming away. She stroked the spine of the diary as one would a cat and used one thumb to flip through the empty pages, and he clenched his teeth and fists as he watched her fingers trace the thinly lettered T. M. R. engraved on the diary’s bottom right corner.
Another golden-haired fairy soon flew around Tom’s ear and dropped its prize into her open hand; She turned the ring so its jewel caught in the moonlight before slipping it onto her fourth finger, and he could’ve slapped her right then and there, his fury bubbling further as a third greyish fairy swooped around her neck and fastened the locket in the blink of an eye. He glared as she thumbed at the ornate S staring at him from between her breasts and felt his own chest rise and fall rapidly.
Next, a larger ginger fairy came and went bearing a gift he especially dreaded to see–she loved to torture him with it. Though her facial features were still maddeningly shrouded by the shadows, he watched as she raised the ruby-encrusted cup to her lips and drank, drank, drank, paying no mind to the liquid streaming down her neck and over her heaving chest. He’d yet to decide whether the cup contained blood or wine, and hated her all the more when she finished drinking and angled the empty goblet towards his view as if to say oh, none left for you.
The final fairy, a little blue thing that blended into the hues of the garden, perched the glowing diadem on her head and moved her hair behind her shoulders. She stood, gracefully grasping the diary and goblet, and faced him. His face grew dangerously hot.
Tom stared down into her shining, almost teasing eyes and down further to the locket adorning her body and he exploded, lurching forward, hands aching to find a vice-like grip around her neck, wanting nothing more than to throttle her to death. But his hopes to touch her lasted mere seconds before he felt a winding around his leg, up his back, around his neck; the snake coiled its tail tightly and Tom stumbled, coughing, hands moving to claw at the creature choking him…
The snake, body shrouded in shadow as her face was, suddenly stretched towards her and wrapped around her waist before nuzzling its serpentine head against her collarbone, joining its place with the other Horcruxes adorning her body. His body flooded with profound hatred for her, and with what he knew was deep and irrevocable envy, but above all he felt sick at the yearning, hungry want overwhelming his senses…
“I will ruin you, you stupid bint,” he hissed, realizing he’d spoken in parseltongue as his vision began to blur, and as he descended back into waves of blackness, body trying to expel the dream and return to reality, he was left to memorize the fading image of his Horcruxes decorating her form and amidst them her gleaming eyes, laughing at him.
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Tom jolted awake. He was breathing quite heavily, and reached a hand up to feel his hair sticking to his forehead. Throwing the ratty beige sheets off of himself, he sat up with a grunt and pulled the t-shirt he’d donned to sleep over his head, flinging it across the room into the hamper near his wardrobe. Sweat had perspired all over his skin and his throat itched furiously. Proper bastard, Morpheus is, he thought.
A glance over his left shoulder through the tiny window on the wall behind his bed showed the darkest and earliest phase of dawn beginning to emerge. Astronomical twilight, he recalled from a rare morning lecture led under the stars by Professor Alcyone last year.
Tom shifted in his bed, which previously, like everything else in this room, was far too small and uncomfortable for him–he’d been growing nonstop in all aspects since the end of last year–but without the Statute limiting him as a now legal wizard he’d obviously spelled it to be larger and adequately comfortable at the start of this last summer at Wool’s.
Tom laid back and ran his hands through his hair, stretching out his abdomen and biceps with a groan. He wondered when, if ever, the dream would cease–if she would cease to appear to him.
He’d started to dream of the girl in the blue garden on the same night he’d murdered Myrtle, on the thirteenth of June in the prior year. Back then he had only a rough idea of which items he’d choose to harbor his soul, and so the first time she had appeared she’d emerged from behind a tree and simply pulled his diary from the silver pond, leaving him bemused and anxious after waking up in the Slytherin boys’ dormitory.
But as he continued to plan, and after he’d killed his father and created his second horcrux before beginning sixth year, the dreams had grown more frequent and far more vivid. Now, usually at the end of a cycle of other dreams, he found himself in the blue garden nightly. The buzzing fairies had only manifested a few weeks into this summer.
Sometimes, she’d pull his dear horcruxes from various spots in the garden and flee from him, always outrunning his efforts to catch and subdue her as she, unlike him, seemed to be capable of passing through the garden’s hedged perimeter. Other times, after receiving the pieces of his soul, she’d raise an arm and the snake–he hadn’t picked a specific creature yet but knew he wanted to explore placing his soul in some living being–would slither and careen towards him, jaws wide as if to strike, and he’d wake in a sweat.
He’d managed to cast the Cruciatus on her aggravating body twice or thrice, but found that she made no noise to signal pain or discomfort, and as he’d never seen her face he was always left unsatisfied.
Once, a few weeks ago, the fairies had brought her the first six horcruxes, and then she’d laid down in the lazuli beds of grass, objects splayed around her with the locket and ring adorning her neck and finger. She’d appeared fully naked to him for the first time.
He’d found it particularly hard to breathe, that time, which had only worsened after the snake had made its way toward her, perversely slipping its way up between her legs and over her cunt, its slimy body then curling over her stomach and around her bare, ample breasts. He’d woken up practically choking on his own saliva, harder than he’d ever been in his life, and stroked his cock rapidly, gripping himself like a vice before spilling all over himself in shame.
Most of the time, though, like in this past dream, she just stared at him as she held the present and future vessels for his soul, and he awoke feeling either uncomfortable or furious, always sweating profusely. Luckily, dreams fled from the psyche without much effort until they manifested again, so through his days he didn’t think too hard about the girl or the garden or what it all could mean. He’d chalked it all out a while ago to stemming from the unavoidable guilt of murdering and embuing his soul into objects using dark magic; these processes might take somewhat of a toll on him, but if these dreams were the brunt of that toll, they were worth the power he’d gain every time he preserved himself.
He really was parched, and thought he heard familiar sobs coming from down the hall, so he swung himself out of bed, put a clean (too small) shirt on, and headed out of his room, ducking to avoid hitting his head above the door.
Definitely Thandiwe. She cried more frequently than the other children, especially since the mean ones were far meaner to her. With the food rations scarcer than ever, the disgustingly prejudiced Sister Pippa had likely again fed her a smaller portion than the other sleeping brats and she’d awoken to hunger pangs. Tom walked down the hall, honestly wondering why he hadn’t killed Pippa yet.
Myrtle had been somewhat of a spur of the moment decision–her loud wails had been even more annoying than usual, that day in the bathroom , apparently affecting the sensitive serpentine ears of his birthright; his creature had hissed a beg to Let me kill the mudblood, Masssster, and he’d obliged her with the thought that he’d ought to get on with the splitting of his soul sooner rather than later, to solidify his power enough before graduating and moving onto bigger and better things.
Now, with his final start of Hogwarts term just over twenty-four hours away and his diary and ring hidden in his suitcase below the pouch containing his Head Boy badge, he felt satisfied.
He’d considered murdering Sister Pippa to store the second piece of his soul after acquiring Marvolo’s ring, but had decided otherwise. Patricide had honestly done wonders to dispel the feelings of abandonment Tom had suffered through his life, quieting his thoughts of inadequacy just months before his seventeenth birthday the year prior.
He still recalled the blood rushing to his head and the rapid thrum of his heartbeat as he watched his father, his unfortunate namesake , grovel and whimper beneath his feet, still recalled the adrenaline and uninhibited power rushing through his veins as he ripped away his father’s last breath and turned to face his grandparents…
That wasn’t to say he didn’t harbor hatred for Mrs. Cole, Sister Pippa, and some of the other abusive matrons, but he did know that their countless beatings of him as a child and now their mistreatment of other children like Thandiwe had served to solidify his utter disdain for muggle filth who feared any sort of uniqueness–like his filthy father who’d presumably abandoned his mother upon learning of her witchiness–therefore instilling much of his hunger and drive to make a name for himself in the wizarding world and ensure his immortality through whatever means necessary; small rewards to compensate for what he’d been deprived of as an unknowing heir to greatness, he thought.
Besides, Wool’s was so run down that killing Pippa would likely be meaningless, as the war-exhausted state governments would make little effort to refill her position and ensure that Thandiwe and the other children were at least fed and sheltered in her absence.
Tom saw near-identical traits in the blood supremacists of his world, of course. He was no imbecile. There were good, intelligent, valuable muggles in this depraved world, and the same could be said for muggleborns. But in his world, like in many parts of this one, those who harbored such discriminatory sentiments to those they deemed lesser held most of the power, and so Tom began to “befriend” and manipulate his wealthy, pure housemates the second they allowed him to upon learning of his more noble ancestry.
Shaking away his thoughts as he reached the worn door to one of the many rooms housing dozens of younger children, Tom pushed it open and crept inside. As expected, most of the two to seven-year-olds in the dark room room were fast asleep, with the exception of Thandiwe. The dark-skinned two-year-old tossed and turned as she wailed quietly, sitting up as she saw Tom and reaching her little arms out for him.
Tom reached her and bent down, picking her up in his arms and trying to rock her a bit.
“Hungry?” He whispered, and she seemed to understand, nodding with tear-filled eyes. Tom carried the sniffling girl out of the room, tiptoeing down to the kitchens.
He placed her in a high-chair and wandlessly conjured himself a glass of water, then summoned a packet of biscuits from the top shelf of the nearly empty pantry (the toddler wouldn’t be blamed for a theft from such an unreachable spot), saving one for himself and handing four to Thandiwe, who eagerly gobbled them down.
She seemed satiated but was still sniffling, so he waved a hand to pour her a glass of milk which tipped itself towards her to be drunk, carefully taking just enough to put the child to sleep without alerting Cole or Pippa to the loss. If she’d taken any notice of his use of magic she hadn’t signaled so and of course wouldn’t be able to recount anything.
After she finished she reached up for Tom again and he picked her up once more, this time letting her fall asleep on his shoulder before carrying her back to her room and gently putting her down onto her cot.
After a second of deliberation–today was his last day at Wool’s, after all– he summoned his wand to the room from his own desk drawer and cast a subtle spell on the sleeping girl, one he’d created in second year to ward off the older Mulciber’s attempts to shove him down the stairs; anyone who tried to physically harm Thandiwe would find themselves inexplicably and unbearably nauseated, unable to continue.
He felt an unusual pang of sympathy for her as he realized he couldn’t ensure she’d be fed any better. But after Stalingrad and with the whispers of new improvements in the Allied forces he knew that the war might come to an end within the next year, so with luck the situation would improve. Tom considered disillusioning himself to use some cruel curse on Sister Pippa. Best to leave things as they are, in case someone comes poking ‘round my roots once I’ve become the greatest wizard of all time, he thought.
After arriving back in his room Tom decided he might as well stay awake, and resigned himself to a few hours of going through and accounting for his packed belongings and school supplies. He hung his muggle outfit to wear to King’s Cross on the knob of his wardrobe, packing his Slytherin robes and Head Boy pin at the topmost layer of his suitcase before settling into his bed with one of Godelot’s lesser known publications, underlining as he read.
The day passed by quickly. Tom was so enraptured by Godelot’s implications about blood magic and bodily changes that he stayed up past two in the morning, dozing off at half-past.
He dreamt first of what was to come the following day. He shook hands with professors who congratulated him on his position as head boy, only to turn to Dumbledore and be met with that stupid all-knowing stare.
Why have your eyes gone red, Tom?
...What? I-I’m not sure what you mean, Professor.
Tom’s heartbeat spiked as dream-Hogwarts swirled first into nothingness, and then suddenly…
Everything was silent til a wolf’s gloomy howl pierced the woods beyond the garden. A staunch gust of wind caused piles of shimmering blue leaves to gather and circle angrily, and as they ceased and parted in a flutter they revealed her eyes and body, covered in residual leaves. She stood there and stared at him. The fairies came and went, leaving her with the horcruxes.
Tom’s gaze caught on an object to his right, one he’d never seen appear in the garden before. It seemed to be a large, clay wheel, at least five feet in diameter, reminding him of a simple Mandala; it contained four ornate spokes, and it began to spin, starting slowly and rapidly gaining speed. He ripped his eyes away from the unnerving wheel and felt his stomach swoop as he saw she had disappeared from in front of him.
Suddenly she was behind him, breathing on his neck. He panicked, tensing.
She’s never been this close before.
She pressed a cool hand to his throat and gently pulled him back towards her.
She’s never touched me before.
Mouth meeting his ear, he felt her lips part and shuddered.
In the gentlest of whispers, she uttered one word:
Repent.
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