Chapter Text
“Where are you going?” His panicked voice was quivering, much to his distaste. “Come back! Wait… stop!” Why did it sound like he was begging? He didn’t beg anyone. In fact, it was usually quite the opposite, people begging him. To stop, to be merciful, to let them live. They should know by now that he wasn’t merciful in the least.
“Don’t leave me here! Please!” His voice again, grating against his own ears at the desperate tone, the watery sound of tears evident. He never cried. What in Merlin’s name was going on?
“Tom, you know I can’t stay here. I have to leave and you have to stay.” That voice… he’d heard it before. It made his blackened heart flutter at just the cadence of it, even as the words were shattering everything in him. He didn’t understand. He cared for no one and nothing in this world, save for his ambition to become the greatest sorcerer in the world, even above the power of that miserable old codger Albus Dumbledore.
He felt wetness on his cheeks, water falling from the sky perhaps? Who had summoned a raincloud in the middle of the hall?
“You cannot leave me, I demand you stay!” He sounded like a petulant child, stamping his foot for more treats instead of… whatever this was.
A mirthless laugh escaped the other person, and finally he could see the form of whom it had come from. The one who had made him result to begging. She was average looking, with a pert nose and brown eyes, and the bushiest mop of hair he had ever seen. She was standing some distance from him, her hands braced on her hips, her mouth downturned and her eyes were shining. It seemed as if she was holding back tears.
What was going on?
“I can’t stay, Tom! We’ve been over this! It will never work.”
“We can make it work!” He crossed the hall to her in three long strides, taking her shoulders roughly in his hands to hold her in place. Her hands left her hips and came to rest on his chest. She didn’t push him away, merely kept her hands there. The tears in her eyes fell now, cascading from the corners freely. “Please. Just please. I ca-”, he heard his voice crack, more wetness on his own cheeks. “I won’t do this without you. Don’t ask me to.”
She raised a hand to his face, gently wiping his cheeks. Only then did he realize he had been crying. He never cried, not even at Wool’s. What the bloody fuck was going on?
He leaned his cheek into her palm, closing his eyes in affection.
She spoke softly, almost whispering to him. “Tom, it won’t be forever. It never is. You’ll find me again, you always do.” She stepped closer to him now, her hand on his cheek angling his face down to hers. Their lips barely brushed when she continued, “maybe you’ll find me when you least expect it.” She pressed her lips to his.
A groan left him at the feel of her lips. It was like coming home after years of never having one. Like discovering magic was real. It was everything good in existence, all for him wrapped in a pair of silken lips pressed to his. He’d never felt anything like this.
She pulled back almost as soon as she began. With one last look in his eyes, she stepped back out of his reach and turned, leaving down the dark hall.
He wanted to follow, to demand again that she not leave, but his feet were stuck to the floor. His arm lifted, outstretched in hope that she would return to him.
“Stop!”
* * * * * * *
Waking with a soft gasp, his body coated in a sheen of cold sweat, Tom rolled over. His head was pounding, his temples throbbed. He breathed slowly, in through his nose and out through his mouth. Sitting up slowly, he looked around, his gaze meeting nothing but the curtains of his bed pulled tight. He reached his arm back and pulled his wand from under his pillow, casting a silent Lumos. The green silk of the curtains shown brightly in the light from the tip of his wand.
“Tom, are you awake in there? It’s time for breakfast,” came a deep voice from outside the curtains. Abraxas Malfoy, the one classmate that Tom didn’t want to disembowel on a daily basis, though it was still a frequent enough thought, must be up and dressed already.
Tom canceled Lumos and pushed the curtains back on his four-poster bed, swinging his legs to the side to stand and get ready for the day. His head continued to pound as he got to his trunk and grabbed his things.
“Are you okay? You don’t look so good.” Abraxas stood before the mirror, making sure his hair was perfect and there wasn’t a speck of lint on his robes. Tom looked up and caught Abraxas’ eye in the mirror just before he caught sight of himself.
His hair was disheveled, as if he had been tearing at it throughout the night, his bedshirt hanging haggardly off his frame. What was most peculiar, however, were his eyes. They were the same dark shade of brown, almost black in the light of the dungeons, but that wasn’t what made him move closer to the mirror and Abraxas to observe his reflection. It was… were those tears?
Tom lifted his hand to gather the moisture on his fingertips. What was this? Surely it wasn’t tears, it had to be some other explanation.
“Tom? Tom, are you okay?” A hand on his shoulder roused him from his distress. He met the other’s eyes, his brow furrowed in concern. “Say something. What’s going on? Should I get Avery or Flint?”
He felt his throat closing, a mild panic taking root. He never cried, he must have been cursed. But who would dare? Was that the cause of that strange dream? He shook his head, clearing his mind of the thought. No, he hadn’t been cursed, but something else was happening. He just wasn’t sure what it was yet.
He coughed, ridding his throat of the uncomfortable dryness. “I’m fine. Go find Avery and Flint both. Something has happened.”
Abraxas lifted a brow in question, but strode from the room without a word or backwards glance. He had been sent to do bidding, and bidding he would do.
Tom got ready and dressed quickly, grabbing his satchel and placing his morning class’s texts in it before striding from the room. Before he left, he turned back to look at his bed. Remnants from his dream were whispering in his consciousness.
“You’ll find me again, you always do.”
Gritting his teeth, he left the dorm and shut the door, warding it from all except the four that slept there. He made his way to the Great Hall for breakfast.
“Maybe you’ll find me when you least expect it.”
* * * * * * *
He stood before his Knights, his inner circle. He had gathered them to get updated on the small missions he had sent them on over the last week. They were seated in an abandoned classroom hidden in the dungeons, warded with several concealment charms to keep others away. Tom was seated at the head of the table, his gaze sitting squarely on the most incompetent of the group.
“Nott, tell me you have something better for me than you did the last time we gathered.”
Nott, a gangly boy with coiffed hair and an air of worthlessness about him, sat three seats down to Tom’s left, his eyes not leaving the table.
“Nott.” The boy jumped as the malicious tone in Tom’s voice. “Look at me and tell me you have something better.” Nott’s eyes finally lifted from the table and met his Lord’s. The barest of nods left him.
“I do have better news, but you aren’t going to like it, my Lord.” His voice was small, mouse-like. It made Tom’s jaw click as he ground his molars.
“Exactly which part am I not going to like?” Tom folded his hands together in front of him, the picture of civility and graciousness, whereas he was anything but on the inside. Inside, he was raging. He had had the same dream every night for two weeks now. He had sent his followers to find anything they could about dreams and what they might mean. He didn’t tell anyone, save Abraxas, the entirety of his dream, though he did leave out his own begging and pleading.
Nott cleared his throat, sitting up straight in his seat and taking a fortifying breath before speaking. “My, uh, my mother is a Seer.” At this, Tom lifted a brow. Nott very rarely spoke of his mother in Tom’s presence. “I owled her earlier this week about Christmas hols, and just received word back this morning.”
Tom’s irritation flared. “I do not care about the holidays, Nott. What does this have to do with your mission?”
The others seated around the table watched their Lord as he grew more and more restless.
Nott shook his head, trying to placate his master. “It’s just that, my Lord. I only asked her about the hols, and she evaded my inquiry and instead wrote something rather… Strange is the only word I can think of. Her letter said ‘The key is nearing and will arrive on the eve of a new beginning. The key is nearing and a whole will be made.’ Whole, like complete, not like a hole in the ground,” he finished lamely, a shrug of one shoulder. “I have no clue what she’s talking about, but I haven’t mentioned anything other than grades and course work, and the occasional Hogsmeade weekend to her since the start of term. I assume she’s talking about you, my Lord.”
Tom’s ears were ringing from how hard he was grinding his teeth. His temples were starting to throb.
“A key?” asked a voice on his right. It was Abraxas, seated next to Tom, who had his own brows millimeters away from meeting his hairline. “What does a key have to do with Tom’s dream? We’re looking for a girl, not a key.”
Avery, seated to Abraxas’ right, snickered before trying to cover it with a cough. “Perhaps the girl is the key? Seers usually tend to have a limited vocabulary.”
Nott eyed Avery with a glare. “Oi, you troll’s arse, that’s my mother you’re talking about!”
Avery raised his hands in a placating gesture. “No offense to your mum, I’m sure she’s a lovely lady. One must have other attributes aside from brains.”
Nott stood so quickly, his chair toppled over behind him and his wand was pointed at Avery. Before Nott could cast a hex, Tom’s own wand was out and he had petrified Nott. Rolling his eyes, he returned his wand to his sleeve. “If you gentlemen are done squabbling like school yard children, may we return to the matter at hand?”
Everyone seated turned their eyes back to Tom, aside from Nott who lay on the floor. “‘The key will arrive on the eve of a new beginning.’ One can only assume that means the New Year, which is two weeks away.”
Flint, who sat to Tom’s left, was lightly stroking his chin in thought. “But what about the next part? ‘The key is nearing and a whole will be made.’”
Tom sat back in his seat, perplexed himself about the wording. It couldn’t be his Horcruxes, could it? The other pieces of his soul were neatly tucked away in his diary, at the bottom of his trunk in a heavily warded box that would only open to his magical signature, and inside the Gaunt family ring on his left hand. He had plans for those bits of himself, should anything happen to him in his present body.
“You’ll find me again, you always do.”