Work Text:
Early August 1945
Tom heard the first whispers of the awful idea from Thaddeus Nott not even two months prior.
Nott had gotten into the habit of meeting Tom for lunch once or twice a week since they graduated from Hogwarts and Nott had went off to a position in the Ministry acquired for him by his father while Tom had taken up a position at Borgin and Burke’s along with the small flat above the shop acquired with no help but his own.
Burke was rarely around and Tom had never met Mr. Borgin which all suited him just fine. It gave him time to look through the shop’s stock for anything of value without drawing unwanted attention and the opportunity to acquire anything of value from people coming in with things to sell before Burke ever got the chance to lay eyes on the items. The lax supervision also meant there was no one around to care much if Nott stopped in every now and then and took Tom to one of the little hole in the wall restaurants tucked away in Knockturn Alley for an hour or so at a time, leaving the shop unmanned.
Nott complained about the food wherever they chose – “nothing is as good as what he have at home” was his frequent lament – but as much as it annoyed Tom it was a small price to pay for the news Nott brought him about both the goings on in the Ministry as well as other gossip about his fellow Knights of Walpurgis before they all met again and anything else he thought Tom might be interested in.
The day he told Tom about the bit of news that would inevitably change Tom’s life was not unlike any other.
It was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, and they’d opted to sit down for their lunch at a table outside rather than in the cramped little restaurant itself. Tom cast a spell against any potential eavesdroppers as was his habit while Nott stared down at his sandwich like it had personally failed him by not being made by his family’s house elves as was his.
Nott spent a time telling him about the ongoing changes the Ministry was going through in the wake of Grindelwald’s defeat, still a hot topic months after it had happened much to Tom’s chagrin as he was more than tired of hearing about Dumbledore’s great victory on behalf of the Wizarding World, before he finally got to the topic that at the time didn’t seem as monumental as it would turn out to be.
“You wouldn’t believe the kind of idiocy there is in the Ministry,” Nott complained. Tom didn’t react as this was as common a refrain as Nott’s complaints about the food and Tom could very well believe in the idiocy others were capable of as he’d been witness to it his entire life. “Even the Minister himself! You can’t expect much from a blood traitor, but some of the suggestions he’s bandying about are truly beyond the pale.”
“What suggestions?” Tom prompted.
He refrained from snapping at Nott to get on with it instead of dragging things out like this, though he sorely wanted to. There was no point in doing so, however. After knowing Nott for so many years, Tom was sure it would be easier to demand that he grow a few inches in height than it would be to tell him to drop the dramatics.
“The Minister,” Nott said in the same disgusted tone someone else might have said ‘the cockroach’, “thinks that we all need to make a show of acceptance for the mudbloods after this business with Grindelwald. He wants Purebloods and Half-bloods to start marrying them. Something about how too many of them went back to the muggle world because of Grindelwald and they need stronger ties here – as if the mudbloods fleeing like rats back to their nest is a bad thing! Can you believe it?”
Tom felt a twinge of revulsion at the thought.
“There’s hardly anything he can do to make anyone get married,” he remarked coolly and took a sip of his tea.
“The Wizengamot will never allow it,” Nott vehemently agreed. “Merlin knows it’s full of blood traitors, but word is that even Dumbledore is against the idea and he’s still the hero of the hour. The Minister will be up for re-election soon. It would be political suicide to have Dumbledore speak out against him.”
Tom was loath to give credit to Dumbledore for anything, but he supposed that even broken wands were useful on occasion.
“There’s nothing to be concerned about, then?” he asked.
Nott laughed and shook his head. “Only if hell freezes over.”
Tom would have liked for that to have been the last he ever heard of it, but as luck would not have it, it wasn’t.
Hell, as it would become readily apparent over the weeks following that meeting, seemed to be getting ready for a rather frigid winter even as summer in Britain was in full swing.
The articles in the Daily Prophet about the issue started out small and speculative, the tone of them tittering and treating Minister Spencer-Moon’s idea of having Purebloods and Half-bloods marry Muggle-borns with all the derisiveness Tom thought the suggestion deserved.
But gradually, that tone started to change.
The articles got longer, the writers more diverse. The subject itself went from being treated like one man’s silly little idea to a viable suggestion worthy of serious debate.
Many Purebloods were against the idea, of course, but far more than Tom would have expected were giving it serious consideration. Both Purebloods and Half-bloods alike wrote opinion pieces of the guilt of being associated with the ideals of blood purity Grindelwald held, their horror over the things Grindelwald had done, and the need to take a stand against all of it lest another Grindelwald be born from their own dedication to keeping things the way they’d always been. Some spoke of the fear that years of inbreeding between Pureblood families was leading to magic that became weaker with every generation and that marriages between Purebloods and Muggle-borns could only be a good thing. One particular article was published in the Prophet which suggested in a language that Tom found nearly hysterical that if something wasn’t done about the issue, the Wizarding World would be full of nothing but squibs in the next century which set off another round of fierce debate.
Dumbledore, as Nott had already informed Tom, was against the idea and had made his own public statement on the subject, making it clear that he objected not because of any desire to maintain blood purity but because he found it distasteful to force people into relationships they didn’t want to be in.
“It is not the Ministry’s place,” Dumbledore was quoted as saying, “to dictate who any witch or wizard should spend their life with.”
Tom thought of his own parentage and became quite nauseated at the idea of being forced to marry anyone himself – and then even more so for the fact that he was in agreement with Dumbledore of all people about anything.
To Tom’s surprise, however, Dumbledore’s public stance didn’t have as much of an impact as he and Nott had thought.
Everyone was perfectly respectful of Dumbledore considering he had been the one to put a stop to Grindelwald, of course, no one outright insulted him – but Dumbledore’s victory didn’t stop everyone from disagreeing with him or doing so publicly. Some even had the audacity to point out that Dumbledore himself being a Half-blood was proof of the need for Purebloods to marry outside of their own bloodlines: if the wizard who had defeated Grindelwald was of mixed blood, they argued, then surely there was merit to the idea that other Pureblood/Muggle-born unions would produce similarly powerful offspring?
Even for Purebloods who didn’t care a bit whether Muggle-borns had more permanent ties to the Wizarding World or not, power was power and it was clear that some of them were being swayed by the thought of their families gaining more. The thought of letting dirty blood water the roots of their family trees was antithetical to many Purebloods, but apparently the thought of their family line being reduced to a bunch of squibs was a more horrifying thought to some.
The dominoes kept falling, slowly at first but then becoming a more rapid cascade. Tom could see the tide turning as well as he could feel the dread steadily building in his stomach at the way things were going, as the Minister’s idea started to gain more support and take the shape of actual legislation.
He wasn’t the only one, either.
“My parents are taking me to France for the remainder of the year,” a pale faced Nott told him one day in mid July. They were standing in Borgin and Burke’s. Burke was nowhere in sight, as usual, and there were no customers. Nott had flipped the sign on the door from open to closed as soon as he came in. “They’re pushing forward my betrothal with Esther Crouch. We’re to be married before summer is over.”
The news added a drop to Tom’s dread, though he couldn’t bring himself to be surprised by it.
Nott wasn’t the first of his inner circle to tell him that he’d soon be getting married to the Pureblood spouse of his or his parents’ own choosing rather than have the Ministry saddle him with a random mudblood. The only thing that surprised Tom was that not all of his inner circle had wedding bells ringing in their very near future. These fellows had come to him much more abashed than Nott had, stumbling over their words as they told him that they planned to wait and see what happened as though Tom would kill them for deigning to let things come what may instead of rushing to avoid a Ministry designated marriage.
However, their fear in this instance was for nothing.
Tom didn’t care who any of the lot married so long as they continued to serve him loyally and be of use. The whole lot of them could go out to a swamp and marry toads for all that it mattered to him. The cause of blood purity had been a useful enough tool to gain their support, but it had always been the power that was the point for him and he wasn’t so attached to a tool that he was unwilling to discard it if it became blunted beyond use. Muggles were still vile, filthy creatures, of course, and Muggle-borns barely a step better but Tom had always known when and where it was beneficial to have such truths spoken – and when to keep them to himself.
He wasn’t stupid about other things, either.
Tom knew the articles in the Prophet had truth to them. He only needed to recall his own family to see that. Morfin Gaunt, a weak wizard, the branches of his family tree so entangled it had made him little more than a rabid animal. His own mother, so weak she couldn’t survive childbirth – and yet even the blood of Tom’s utterly useless father that held no magic of its own was enough to change the course of their bloodline, to make Tom who was more powerful than any Gaunt had been in centuries.
Besides, he was hardly in any place to judge. The marriage law that seemed more and more destined to become a reality would affect him as much as it would any of his followers, though it wasn’t like Tom didn’t have the option to avoid it as well.
“My friend,” Nott had said that day, his hesitation present in every aspect of his expression from the way his lips quivered to the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard enough to be heard. “I don’t mean to presume, but if you need me to, I’ll end the betrothal. I don’t care what my parents say. Esther is a good match, she’ll find someone else easily enough.”
Tom read between the lines of what Nott was suggesting easily enough and though Nott was the only one of his inner circle to make the offer, Tom was hardly surprised by it, either.
Nott was loyal. He always had been, before everyone else and above everyone else ever since the day they’d met and he’d heard Tom speaking in Parseltongue and knew what it must mean. That he was loyal enough to sacrifice a betrothal with a Pureblood witch he actually cared for, his parents’ approval, and any chance of having heirs of his own blood just for Tom’s sake only confirmed that his loyalty was still as strong as ever.
In return for that loyalty Tom considered what he was offering rather than cursing him for his presumption, for all that he said he didn’t mean it.
He didn’t have to think on it long: it was repulsive.
It wasn’t that Nott himself was uniquely objectionable to Tom, but the thought of marrying anyone at all was. Tom had never been with another person, never kissed anyone or touched them intimately. He’d never even shared a bed with anyone else, the sole orphan at Wool’s free from being forced to share the uncomfortable little cots they were given as none of the others trusted or liked him enough to sleep around him – a feeling that was entirely mutual, of course.
The idea of doing any of that, of giving anyone that much access to himself and particularly his body, made his skin crawl. Marriage was all that and more even if it was a sham of a marriage forced by the Ministry.
To expose himself in such a way to Nott of all people was unconscionable. The fact that Nott was another man hardly helped, either. Tom had never gotten used to the idea that relationships and even marriages between men were allowed in the Wizarding World, though they were hardly common especially among the heirs to Pureblood families who were expected to have heirs of their own blood which was far more difficultly done between two wizards. Tom had read up on the required ritual once purely out of academic curiosity and was as disgusted as he was fascinated about what magic could do.
Marrying a mudblood woman was distasteful to Tom, but marrying Nott somehow seemed far worse. At least with a mudblood witch, he’d have the upper hand. More control. It would be nothing to Imperius whoever he was forced to marry and simply keep her out of his way. A mudblood would be more cut off from her muggle family and less likely to have anyone notice that something was amiss. If after some time passed and the whole story stopped being such a hot topic in the Prophet, it would be easy enough to arrange for some accident to befall her. Perhaps she would be slain by robber while out in the muggle world when Tom was too far away to be suspected of having anything to do with it or maybe she’d trip and fall down some stairs. It would be nothing to figure something out, to give himself an alibi for it and have memory charms do the rest should any Auror see fit to investigate.
Tom had done it before, after all, to great success.
But all of that would be more difficult with Nott if not impossible, to say nothing of what a poor reward for his sacrifice and all the years of loyalty before it would be. Tom wasn’t one to be moved by such things but he still believed, to some degree, of repaying allegiance. He just didn’t believe in repaying it at the cost of himself and marrying Nott would surely be that.
“Your loyalty does you credit,” Tom told Nott after a long moment’s pause, “but I will not be accepting your offer. Go with your parents to France and marry Crouch. There’s no one the Ministry can foist on me that I won’t be able to handle.”
Nott looked at Tom like he wanted to object, but he knew better than to do so. He left Borgin and Burke’s that day in poor spirits, his shoulders drooping like he was a kicked dog making his already slight form look even smaller, while Tom went back to waiting for the stars to align as the Ministry saw fit.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The legislation was hammered out over the rest of July, the end result dictating that the majority of witches and wizards who had graduated from Hogwarts and were not yet married would receive an owl by the end of summer telling them who they were to be married to along with an appointment for when they were expected to come to the Ministry to be bound to their future spouse. Only a lucky few would be spared from the law by virtue or there being an uneven number of Purebloods and Half-bloods to Muggle-borns, but for those chosen there was no method of objecting and no loophole for getting out of it short of dying before your wedding day. Cohabitation between spouses was required and consummation of the marriage mandatory to cement the bonding spell. Witches and wizards who refused to comply with the law in any aspect were threatened with both fines and time in Azkaban.
There were deadlines to all of it, of course – you were expected to make your appointment to be bound on time with no option to reschedule outside of specific situations that might prevent you from appearing, to move in with your spouse within a week, and to consummate the marriage within a month. The only thing the law hadn’t put a timeline on was how quickly each couple was expected to produce a child, but that was only a small mercy if it could be counted as a mercy at all.
All the details were laid out in the Prophet in gruesome detail but despite the threats of poverty and imprisonment for noncompliance, they still tried to pretend the whole thing wasn’t being callously done. The Prophet had reported at length about how the Department of Mysteries had allegedly created a spell that would match those on the list of Muggle-borns to those on the list of Purebloods and Half-bloods who were most compatible with one another. It was claimed to be an adaptation of a spell used often before modern times by wizarding folk who wanted to find their soulmate, as if such rubbish was actually real.
Tom wasn’t convinced the entire thing wasn’t made up to try to sooth the sting for naysayers and appeal to those who cared about tradition while in reality some Unspeakables were just blindly drawing names from a pair of hats.
And while the Prophet claimed that the fast timetable for the marriages was to make the transition as quick as possible so that spouses could begin to enjoy their new lives together all the sooner, Tom thought it was more like they were treating the whole thing like a bandage needing to be ripped off. A little pain now was better than dragging it out and certainly it was less work for the Ministry to make sure everyone was bonded with no hope of getting out of the whole sordid predicament sooner than to give anyone more time to try to weasel their way out.
By the time the legislation passed the Wizengamot with a large – though not unanimous – margin of support, it was hardly a surprise and only more of a miserable inevitability finally come to fruition.
Tom waited for the owl carrying the name of his future spouse with an increasing sense of apprehension. He didn’t think himself lucky enough to be one of the few spared. There were so many plans for the future that this threatened to upend, to say nothing of the sheer inconvenience of it all. Tom’s flat above Borgin and Burke’s was just big enough for him. To have some random mudblood about would get in the way of his research into dark magic and his heritage, certainly, but somehow more pressing than that was the thought of sharing his space at all. Tom liked his privacy. He didn’t want to give it up for anyone.
He supposed he could always Imperius the witch and keep her locked in a cupboard rather than share his bed with her or have her sleeping on the floor right next to it for him to trip over in the mornings, but it grated on him that he might even have to do that much. The thought of moving from the flat to wherever the mudblood lived was too disagreeable to consider unless he somehow ended up with a wife of enough wealth that she could afford a larger place in the Wizarding world that she didn’t share with family – possible, of course, but unlikely.
Tom refused to think about the fact that he would be required to consummate the marriage. It sickened him when he did, to imagine being intimate with some faceless woman he didn’t want. He didn’t imagine actually knowing what she looked like would help much, though, and trying to console himself that being intimate with Nott would surely have been worse than any witch didn’t help much, either.
What did console Tom was that this needn’t be permanent.
He’d spent much of the time waiting for the owl to arrive researching the bonding spell that would be used for the marriage and nothing in his research suggested that he’d be affected if anything horrible befell his spouse so long as he didn’t do anything directly violent to her by magical means. Infidelity was impossible as was using his magic to harm the witch he would be bonded to, but the definition of harm wasn’t finite.
There was nothing to stop him from using the Imperius on her to keep her complacent and unobtrusive. There was nothing to stop him from having one of his followers from doing away with her in his stead or to do so himself using non-magical means, either. The bond would make shooting an Avada Kedavra at his spouse impossible, but it would do nothing to stop him from smothering the witch to death with a pillow while she slept or bashing her over the head with a kettle.
That muggle methods of murder were a way around an ostensibly pro Muggle-born law was darkly ironic to Tom. It was the only shred of amusement in the situation he found before at last the owl arrived in the first week of August.
It came to him early in the morning when the sun had barely risen, landing at the window across from his bed. Tom awoke to the sound of the owl’s low hooting and turned his face in its direction. All the sleepiness that still clung to him washed away quickly when he caught sight of Ministry seal on the envelope and he all but lunged out of his bed to get to the window to retrieve the letter. The owl flew off without waiting for response and Tom brought the letter back to his bed where he sat and took a steadying breath before opening it.
He didn’t even try to read it from the beginning. His eyes were already skimming the parchment to look for one thing in particular – a name. Tom didn’t expect to recognize the name as he’d hardly paid much attention to the mudbloods he’d gone to school with, but still he looked and was therefore struck by shock when his eyes immediately caught onto a name he did recognize.
Tom stared at it in disbelief and then he kept staring, his heart starting to pound up into a rapid drum beat that he soon began to feel as a throbbing pain behind his eyes. The parchment was shaking in his hand and it took Tom a moment to realize that it wasn’t the parchment alone, but the whole room around him. As though underwater he heard the muffled sound of something falling to the floor, glass breaking, furniture thumping as it moved. Tom had just enough wherewithal to shut his eyes and take a deep breath to stop his magic from lashing out and destroying the whole building, silently berating himself as he breathed for displaying a lack of control the likes of which he hadn’t since he was a child.
After a few seconds, the shaking stopped. Tom opened his eyes again, hoping he had misread the letter, but the name was still on the paper. He hadn’t misread it. His mind hadn’t been playing some sick trick on him. It wasn’t a stranger’s name, nor the name of a witch of any blood status. It had to be a joke, surely. It must have been a joke.
There was no way in hell the Ministry was demanding that Tom come in to marry Albus Dumbledore of all people that very day.
Dumbledore wasn’t a mudblood, he was a Half-blood just like Tom, it didn’t even make sense –
Except that it did.
Tom’s stomach sank. He had read that spouses would be chosen by blood status and foolishly – Merlin, how had he been so foolish – not considered it more than that, too occupied with other aspects of the law. If he had, Tom would have realized that he wasn’t seen as a Half-blood by any official means.
His mother had only lived long enough to give him his mudblood father’s name, her own Pureblood name of Gaunt not written down anywhere in connection to him. He had gone to school under that muggle name, been listed in the Prophet’s annual list of Hogwarts’ graduates by it, opened up his Gringott’s vault that Mr. Burke transferred his pay into with it. Tom had never used the name Gaunt or any name other than Riddle except in the privacy of his meetings with his friends and the Ministry would hardly be aware of Lord Voldemort, would they?
As far as the Ministry was concerned, Tom wasn’t a Half-blood being matched with a mudblood spouse at all but a mudblood being foisted off on some Half-blood or Pureblood instead.
The indignation of it burned at him, but it was nothing compared to the bleak reality rapidly spiraling towards Tom that Dumbledore was who the Ministry had matched him with.
Dumbledore who hated Tom as much as Tom hated him, who at least suspected some of what Tom had done, who had just defeated Grindelwald not even months before and was now seen as the savior of the Wizarding World.
There was a nearly hysterical edge to Tom’s darkening thoughts as he realized that any plans he had of putting his unwanted spouse under the Imperius to keep her busy before eventually having her killed was as good as ashes thrown out the window and blown away in the wind.
Tom was a powerful wizard, but he wasn’t deluded enough to think he was so powerful as to be able to compel Dumbledore, much less to do so and have it go unnoticed for long. The thought of any of his Knights being able to kill Dumbledore and have it quietly hushed up as an accident was so ludicrous that he could laugh. Even if they were successful – and oh, what a large if that was – there would be nothing short of a literal witch hunt if Dumbledore suddenly died and foul play was suspected. It wouldn’t be a case of using memory charms on one Auror investigating the death, Tom would have to wipe the minds of the entire bloody Ministry and the rest of the Wizarding World to make them not care and not look into it further.
Perhaps if he had more time, he could formulate a way out of this but Tom could read the date of when he was expected at the Ministry as well as he could Dumbledore’s name. There were only a few hours until then.
Fleeing the country seemed the obvious option, but Tom had read enough about what the penalties were for trying to circumvent the marriage law to cast aside any thought of it. Fines he couldn’t afford and an Azkaban sentence that wouldn’t end until he either complied with the marriage or died in prison, except that Tom would never die in Azkaban no matter how long he was there. It might take decades of imprisonment but it was only a matter of time before someone thought to ask why he was still alive and they discovered the two horcruxes he had made. Merlin only knew what they would do with him, then.
Tom would never be able to come back to Britain again if he ran, a wrenching thought on its own, but the thought of running itself – and running from Dumbledore in particular – grated at him. He was no Gryffindor, but the cowardice of it was still disgusting. The thought of Dumbledore going to the Ministry as required and knowing that Tom had chosen to flee like a rat rather than face him was even more abominable. Tom could only imagine what the Prophet would report when word inevitably got out that the wizard Dumbledore was to marry had essentially left him at the altar. Considering how beloved Dumbledore was at the moment, Tom couldn’t imagine there was anywhere he could go where he could escape the stain that left on his reputation.
Tom struggled to think of any alternative besides running that didn’t involve going through with it. He hadn’t been ignorant of the legislation that was passed. He’d followed the story closely as it developed. There were no loopholes he could exploit and the possibility of marrying someone else to avoid Dumbledore was no longer an option now that the letter had been sent and Tom had opened it. He couldn’t just find the closest lackey he had and demand they marry him. The Ministry was unlikely to allow it and he couldn’t just claim that he’d never received their summons. They would know he had the moment he opened the letter.
Tom shut his eyes tightly and crumpled the parchment in his fist. His mind raced, all of his thoughts totally on Dumbledore. Marriage to Dumbledore, of all things. What a ridiculous notion. Tom laughed loudly in the empty room and hated the unhinged edge to the sound as much as he did the abrupt silence that followed it.
It struck him that soon enough it might be the last bit of silence he was allowed.
Cohabitation was required by the law, after all. Tom would be waking up to Dumbledore in the mornings, going to bed with him at night, perhaps taking meals with him instead of alone or with Nott.
The turn of his thoughts disgusted him for a moment before they gave him pause.
Tom would have to live with Dumbledore, but surely Dumbledore wouldn’t consent to living in Tom’s small flat above Borgin and Burke’s. He probably wouldn’t be caught dead in Knockturn Alley much less want to reside there. It meant that Tom would be the one to move after all and Dumbledore resided at Hogwarts for at least most of the year. Naturally that meant that Tom would be allowed to reside at Hogwarts as well and wasn’t that always Tom’s dream? To have the castle his ancestor built for his own? To live there permanently?
To have to marry Dumbledore to get it was a heavy price to pay, but Tom wasn’t unused to such things. Most dark magic required a price, some sort of sacrifice. The horcruxes had required the price of a murder for each. Winning the Slytherins to his side had required him to pay the price of catering to their delusions of grandeur while sacrificing everything about his past that had marked him as a mudblood, from his atrocious accent to any possibility of truly being open with any of them – not that any of that was exactly a chore. It was rare that Tom didn’t consider the price worth paying for getting what he wanted in the end and if he couldn’t get out of this marriage then it was only right to think of what he could get out of it, period.
The longer Tom thought about it, the more obvious it seemed that the answer to what he could get was plenty. If the thought of getting it because of Dumbledore left a bitter taste lingering in his mouth then Tom could at least console himself with the knowledge that however miserable he was about the situation, surely Dumbledore was just as miserable if not even more so.
Thinking of Dumbledore’s reaction to getting his own letter and seeing Tom’s name on it was nearly enough to make Tom smile, but only nearly.
*
Tom flooed to the Ministry twenty minutes before his appointment time, preferring to be prompt if only for the sake of being able to enjoy the moment Dumbledore arrived and found Tom already waiting. Burke didn’t like it when anyone used the shop’s floo, paranoid as he was that the merchandise would somehow catch fire or end up covered in ashes and ruined, but Burke wasn’t around to complain and so Tom took the shortest route he had available.
At the Ministry, he checked his wand in though he was loath to give it up and explained to the witch who took it why he was there when asked – to get married because of the new law, he told her, though he certainly didn’t say to who. She smiled and congratulated him which Tom took with a polite smile in return even though all he wanted to do was grimace at her enthusiasm. He was directed to get into the lift, state aloud his name and that he wanted to be taken to the Department of Marital Services, and he would automatically be taken to the office of whomever was assigned to perform the bonding.
Tom thanked her for her assistance and did as directed. It was less than a minute later that the lift let him out into a large office decorated in sunny shades of yellow and small accents of black that left Tom with little doubt of what Hogwarts house the person who the office belonged to had been in.
To Tom’s consternation, the office wasn’t empty when he stepped into it.
Dumbledore was already there, even earlier than Tom was. He sat in one of the two plush looking armchairs across from the desk and didn’t look anything close to comfortable in it. His body was tense, back rigid and straight, his jaw clenched. Displeasure was written in every line of his body, kept under a tight control but still obvious in spite of it for anyone who had spent enough time studying him which Tom certainly had.
Tom couldn’t remember ever seeing Dumbledore so agitated before. Not after he opened the Chamber of Secrets and Dumbledore made it obvious that he suspected him without ever outright accusing him of it. Not even after Tom had murdered his worthless father and grandparents and Dumbledore had been there staring into Tom like he wanted to dissect him when Headmaster Dippet had called him to his office to inform him of the deaths of a family he thought Tom was totally unaware that he had.
Dumbledore looked much the same as he had the last Tom had seen him in person beyond his obvious stress – his red beard a little thicker, his hair long enough now to curl some at the top, and a few more lines around his eyes – but his vexation was clear.
Tom felt a certain bit of satisfaction at knowing he was the cause of it.
Dumbledore’s eyes went to Tom the moment he entered the room and the coiled form of him went impossibly still for a split second before he relaxed and slowly stood from his seat.
“Mr. Riddle,” Dumbledore greeted him evenly, not a hint of displeasure to be heard in his voice. “I see leaving Hogwarts hasn’t changed your dedication to punctuality.”
“Professor.” Tom gave Dumbledore his most pleasant smile. “I’d think it would be poor form to be late to my own marriage. Certainly this is a more auspicious occasion than any Transfiguration class. After all, most wizards only get married once.”
Dumbledore didn’t react to the bait, not that Tom had really expected that he would.
“Though it seems that we are alone in our promptness,” Tom went on. He glanced pointedly towards the unoccupied desk, taking in name Elwin Bay written across the golden plaque in the center of it only long enough to note that he didn’t recognize it, before glancing back to Dumbledore. “I suppose Mr. Bay will be along shortly.”
“The Ministry runs on its own schedule,” Dumbledore remarked, a note of dryness creeping into his tone. “Bureaucracy is not known for its speed.”
He stood there staring at Tom for a moment longer before he slowly sat back down in his seat and gestured for Tom to take the chair across from him. Tom inclined his head, the perfect picture of respect, and took the invitation.
Dumbledore’s eyes didn’t leave him once they were sitting. The look he was giving Tom was one Tom was quite used to, like he was a puzzle box that held some kind of hidden secret inside. If only Dumbledore knew all the secrets Tom contained, Tom doubted he would look so perfectly calm. The ones he suspected Tom of holding weren’t even the half of it.
“The Ministry was swift about getting us here,” Tom said once he sat. “Bureaucracy may not be known for its speed, but it can work quickly enough when it wants to.”
“When it’s working in spite of the wants of everyone else,” Dumbledore corrected. Tom found that he couldn’t disagree. “And what about yourself? Promptness aside, I can’t imagine that you want to be here very much yourself.”
“Do you think yourself so poor a catch, Professor?” Tom asked pleasantly.
Dumbledore didn’t deign that question with a response, but the ticking of his jaw showed Tom that he wasn’t as unaffected as he was trying to make it seem.
It was a small, petty sort of satisfaction Tom garnered from seeing it.
“I want to not end up in Azkaban, sir,” Tom answered. “I’ve studied the legislation quite thoroughly. It was well drafted. No loopholes or escape hatches. I have no doubt that you came to the same conclusion I have that there’s no way out of this short of spending the rest of your life as a fugitive, a fate I believe the both of us would like to avoid.”
“I wish I could say that you’re wrong, but I can’t. I have studied the legislation as well and spoke to the Minister about the matter several times, including this morning.”
“I gather his response was not to your satisfaction.”
“The Minister has made it clear to me on every occasion that he believes in the merit of this endeavor and as misguided as I may personally find it, he has no intention of not seeing it through. When I received the owl this morning, I attempted again to persuade him, this time on your behalf. Unfortunately while the Minister seemed to agree with my assertion of how inappropriate it is to force a boy I was teaching not even a few months ago into a marriage with me, it would be quite impossible at this point to undo any one match without undoing them all and reformulating the spell used to make the matches itself. While he sympathizes with our circumstances, they are apparently not so dire as to justify all that.”
Tom wasn’t surprised by any of it. Not that Dumbledore had attempted to get out of a marriage with him specifically, that he was trying to pass it off as having been for Tom’s sake and not because of the enmity they felt for one another, or even that the Minister had – in what Tom was sure were the most placating of terms, of course – told Dumbledore to piss off and deal with the situation like everyone else.
Judging by the resigned expression on Dumbledore’s face, Tom didn’t think Dumbledore was particularly surprised by how things had gone, either.
“It appears that means we’re stuck together then,” Tom remarked lightly.
“So it does.” There was a heavy pause between them for a long moment before Dumbledore shifted in his seat and went on, “It would be prudent to discuss this while we have the time. I’m sure you know that cohabitation is a requirement of the law.”
“I am, though somehow I doubt you’ll want to move in wit me to my flat in Knockturn Alley.”
“I am required to reside at Hogwarts for the duration of the school term,” Dumbledore said by way of answer. A clear no on living together above Borgin and Burke’s, then, not that Tom had expected anything less. “I usually remain over the summer, as well, but if you would prefer other accommodations I’m open to discussing our options.”
“I have no objections to living at Hogwarts year round, Professor. I may have graduated but it’s still more home to me than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.”
Something in Dumbledore’s face softened at that, just enough for Tom to catch it. A bit of the ice in his eyes melting.
It made Tom regret his honesty. The last thing he wanted was Dumbledore’s pity.
“That’s settled, then,” Dumbledore said. He hesitated for a split second, his jaw ticking, before moving on, “as for the other requirement –“
“We have a month,” Tom interrupted quickly – too quickly, he realized a second too late. He forced his expression to remain the same, but in his chest he could feel his heartbeat pick up while something uncomfortable clenched in his stomach. His tone was nothing but cool when a moment later he asked, “There’s no rush to discuss that now, is there?”
Dumbledore didn’t immediately say anything, only gave Tom a level look that held enough knowing empathy that it chafed Tom just to see it and made him aware that his attempt at nonchalance had not been successful. That look made him feel weak and pathetic, two things Tom hadn’t felt in years.
After a few breaths’ worth of silence had passed, Dumbledore spoke again.
“I understand that this isn’t something either of us want,” he said at length as he steadily held Tom’s gaze, “but I will not make it worse than it already is by being discourteous to you. We can hold off from discussing this for as long as you like. As you say, there’s no rush. You only need to know now that you have no reason to fear that I will force the issue.”
Tom felt a flash of visceral relief that he buried immediately, along with the voice in his head that cursed himself for how weak he was being. The anger he felt at feeling gratitude towards Dumbledore over anything was much harder to deny.
“I’m not prone to being afraid, Professor,” Tom replied tightly.
Especially not of you, he didn’t add, but he was sure that Dumbledore heard it anyway.
The look Dumbledore gave Tom in return was familiar and no less vexing for its familiarity. It was the same look he’d had the first day they’d met and he’d admonished Tom for stealing, the same expression he’d held every time over Tom’s years at Hogwarts when he lectured Tom in that gentling way of his about something he thought Tom already ought to know.
It was the look that always made Tom fantasize about using a gouging curse to rip out Dumbledore’s eyes.
“Everyone is prone to fear,” Dumbledore told him. “It’s one of the most natural and inescapable parts of life. No one would think any less of you for feeling afraid in these circumstances. I dare say there isn’t a single person in our shoes – Pureblood, Muggle-born, or Half-blood – who isn’t feeling at least a little trepidation about what their future now holds.”
It was such a Gryffindor sentiment, Tom could barely hold back his grimace – and an untrue one at that. Perhaps Dumbledore wouldn’t hold it against Tom if he were afraid, but Tom would certainly hold it against himself. He already was.
“Are you afraid, sir?” Tom asked in a tone much more light than the heaviness in his chest.
He’d meant it to be a mockery, an insult.
Dumbledore took it as neither.
“The prospect of marriage frightens even the most courageous of men who are entering into it of their own volition with a partner they already love. I would be a fool not to be afraid.”
“And here I thought Gryffindors prized bravery above all else.”
“There is no bravery in denying your own emotions. Lying to others may be the cunning thing to do, Tom, but lying to yourself is one of the most cowardly acts you can commit.”
Anger coursed through Tom at the words, at the tone of them as though Dumbledore was imparting wisdom rather than giving insult. It was so visceral that Tom imagined cursing Dumbledore with something painful and humiliating. Something far worse than the eye gouging curse. His fingers itched with the need to have his wand in hand and he once again regretted giving it up, though he knew it had been necessary. Idiotic Ministry policy as that was. He could still feel the muscle memory of the movements to cast the Cruciatius like a cramp in his wrist, the word to the curse on the tip of his tongue. Tom could cast it wandless, of course, but as incompetent as the Ministry was he still had to assume they were proactive enough to be monitoring any magic used within their own walls.
It pained Tom then more than ever that being bound to Dumbledore would mean he’d never be able to see him writhing in agony at the end of his magic, wand or no.
Tom took a slow breath and made himself smile as he released it. When he replied his voice was nothing more than cordial, “You sound as though you’re speaking from experience, Professor. Perhaps someday you’ll tell me about it. We’ll certainly have plenty of time for it, won’t we? Til death do we part and all.”
Dumbledore’s gaze sharpened and some of the ice returned to his eyes, but if he had anything to say in return it was interrupted by the sound of the lift opening and footsteps entering the room.
The man those footsteps belonged to was older than the both of them, short and round with a long grey mustache. Both Tom and Dumbledore stood at his arrival and the man blinked up at them, seeming somewhat surprised that they were there at all for a moment before the expression cleared and he smiled, chuckling.
“Well, aren’t you gentlemen a pair of early birds!” the man exclaimed. He gave them a sly, amused look. “Eager to get past the nuptials and get straight to the honeymoon, are we?”
Tom felt a visceral stab of disgust pierce through him at the implication.
“Considering the harsh penalties the Ministry has attached to missing this appointment, arriving early seemed only prudent,” Dumbledore spoke. His tone was perfectly bland, but there was a degree of gentle censure in it that Tom had previously only heard directed at himself.
The man must have heard it, too, because his smile dimmed a few watts and his expression took on the look of a child who had been scolded.
Tom refused to acknowledge how gratified he was to see it even as he once again felt annoyed by his own thankfulness towards Dumbledore.
“Well – ahem, of course, Professor Dumbledore, the Ministry would not want to keep a wizard as esteemed as yourself waiting! Elwin Bay, at your service – and at yours as well. Mr. Riddle, yes? I must say, this is the marriage I’ve looked forward to performing all day!”
“A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure,” Tom returned, keeping his own tone as flat as Dumbledore’s.
Bay’s smile dimmed another shade and he cleared his throat quite loudly. “Yes, a pleasure, certainly...well, I’m sure you’ve both waited long enough. If there’s nothing else, perhaps we should just get started?”
When neither Dumbledore or Tom objected, Bay nodded.
He went on in the voice of someone reciting something they’d said many times before, “Right, well – the binding spell itself is not very time consuming. I’ll ask you, Professor Dumbledore, to place the bottom of your right wrist over the top of Mr. Riddle’s wrist on the same hand and you’ll hold them there while I perform the spell. As the spell binds your magic to one another, you’ll feel it taking effect. The sensation of it can be jarring, but it’s important that you not fight the spell as you’ll be in violation of the law and the magical backlash can be...unpleasant, to say the least. Had a fellow just the other day who tried that and – well, you don’t need to know the gory details.”
Bay laughed, the sound cutting off short when neither of them laughed with him. When he started speaking again, he went about it a little faster.
Tom imagined that whatever Mr. Bay had been looking forward to before, he was now as eager to get them out of his office as they were to leave.
“Ahem. Over the next month and going forward, the bond will strengthen with both cohabitation and consummation as you spend more time with one another and your magic has the time to marry itself together more tightly. The bonding is permanent, of course, and comes with certain clauses. No infidelity, no using your magic against one another in violence. All the usual expectations a marital bond comes with, nothing too drastic. And – well, that’s about it. Any questions before we start, gentlemen? No? Well, then – Mr. Riddle, if you would –“
Bay gestured to Tom’s hand and Tom spared a moment – just a small sliver of a second – to idly consider doing something rash like killing Bay with his bare hands and fleeing the country after all.
He discarded the idea as soon as he had it. It was a mad plan that would never work, not the least which because Dumbledore would certainly stop him from killing Bay even though he obviously wanted to go through with this about as much as Tom did.
A beat passed and Tom held out his right hand. His gaze met Dumbledore’s almost in challenge and Dumbledore held the stare, his blue eyes as impossible to read as ever as he reached his own hand out and placed the bottom of his wrist over the top of Tom’s. His skin was warm against Tom’s own, the touch sending a frisson up Tom’s spine that had him tensing before he could stop himself. He had to resist the urge to jerk away, the feeling at once uncomfortable as it was unfamiliar.
Tom suddenly realized he couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him. None of his friends would dare, not even Nott, and Burke liked to keep to his own personal space as much as Tom did. Maybe it had been Slughorn, Tom thought, grasping him on the shoulder before he took his NEWTs to wish him luck. Slughorn was always tactile like that with his favorite students and while Tom had never liked it, he’d put up with it because Slughorn was useful and it wouldn’t do to snap at him and fall out of his favor.
That hadn’t been like this, though. Not skin to skin. Not pressed together for so long.
“Now, just stay like that,” Bay said, at once pulling Tom’s focus away from the feeling of Dumbledore’s skin on his, “and we’ll have you gentlemen married in no time.”
Then Bay took a steadying breath, pulled out his wand, and began the spell.
To Tom’s surprise, Bay said no incantation. His lips remained closed, his casting silent. Despite himself, Tom was curious at the wordless magic. He watched the wand movements, committing them to memory for later research, and so saw as a soft golden glow began emanating from the tip of the wand and then slowly started to leave it in a string slithering lazily outward. Tom’s eyes followed the cord of light as it made its way to he and Dumbledore, encircling first Dumbledore’s wrist and then Tom’s own, wrapping around them again and again until it looked as though the both of them were wearing matching golden bracelets made of pure sunlight that had somehow been welded together. The light was so bright it almost hurt to look at, but Tom ignored the discomfort and made himself keep watching.
The feeling of it was not unpleasant. There was a warmth like that which came from drinking firewhiskey washing over Tom and a vibrating like the wings of a hummingbird accompanying it. The sensation started at his wrist and as he saw Bay continue to wave his wand in slow, complex figures out of the corner of his eye he could feel it in his very veins. That buzzing warmth traveled up his arm to the crook of his elbow and it wasn’t long before he felt it spreading up his shoulder and out across his chest, down his torso and through his limbs until his whole body felt awash in it – a second heartbeat laid over his own, another magic mingling with his.
Dumbledore’s magic, Tom thought, because what else could it be?
It seeped into the deepest parts of him, filling in the jagged gaps inside of Tom that the horcruxes had made when he’d carved parts of his soul out in their creation. Tom had long learned to stop noticing the missing places in his soul, to ignore those two spots of gaping emptiness that throbbed like ice when he held his horcruxes in his hands, but oh how he could feel them now. They weren’t cold anymore. They didn’t hurt. The sensation of those empty places being filled after so long was like a light suddenly being cast inside a pit of darkness, a fire being lit inside a crevice in the snow. It made Tom’s breathing become heavy and heat creep up the back of his neck. Some feeling clenched low in his gut that he had no name for, some spark of pleasure that he had never once experienced before in his life.
Suddenly something compelled Tom to look away from their hands to meet Dumbledore’s eyes only to find Dumbledore already watching him.
The glowing magic at their wrists cast Dumbledore’s face in a golden light. It made the red of his hair and beard almost look like they were sparking with fire where the light glinted off of them. His expression was more relaxed than it had been since Tom had come into this office, his eyes widened slightly as though he was surprised by something. Tom wondered if he looked the same to Dumbledore, if Dumbledore felt as he did in that moment or if it was different for him.
If what Tom was feeling was Dumbledore’s magic, then what did Tom’s magic feel like washing over him? Was it as warm? Was it as pleasurable? Did Dumbledore feel Tom’s magic inside of him as surely as Tom felt his?
The moment stretched out until it was broken by the glowing light beginning to fade before it finally dissipated entirely. The buzzing Tom had felt faded with the glow, but the warmth was still there even when the light was gone, lingering like the heat that lingered on your skin after a long, hot bath. While it was still pleasant enough, Tom felt out of sorts about it in a way he hadn’t before. Like he was waking up from a long sleep in a room different from the one he’d went to bed in or like he’d taken a calming drought that had worn off hours before it should have. Suddenly he was all too aware of how closely he and Dumbledore were standing together. He was too aware that they were still touching.
Dumbledore must have noticed it, too, or saw some tension come to Tom’s face because his own expression lost the relaxed slackness it had while the spell was being performed and his lips turned down just so at one corner in something near enough to a frown.
“That’s it, then!” Mr. Bay cheerily announced, completely ignorant to the changing mood between them or at least willfully ignoring it. “Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve now been joined together in matrimony – feel free to lower your arms, the spell is done.”
Tom jerked his wrist away from Dumbledore’s like it burned him and took a step back as smoothly as he could without it looking like he was fleeing. Dumbledore’s frown deepened. Tom watched him warily as he looked down and touched his own wrist, rubbing at it thoughtfully.
Bay, on the other hand, was humming happily as he moved away from them and made his way to his desk.
“There’s just some paperwork that needs to be done,” Bay was saying. “We’ll need a signature from both of you for the marriage certificate and the forms stating you’ve been in compliance with the law which I’ll notarize, then you can be off. I suppose the both of you are planning to keep your own surnames, yes?”
It took a moment for Tom to process the question.
“Yes,” he said quickly once he did. Merlin knew he had no love for the name Riddle, but the thought of taking Dumbledore’s name was abominable.
“I’m rather attached to my own surname myself,” Dumbledore said himself a beat later, glancing at Tom before approaching Bay’s desk.
Tom followed suit, making sure to keep a bit of distance between them.
“Well, then those particular forms aren’t necessary,” Bay muttered as he rifled through the papers on his desk, pushing some off to the side until he was left with only two pieces which he placed on the desk facing the opposite direction from him.
One was a rather small bit of rectangular parchment with the words ‘Certificate of Marriage’ written in black calligraphy at the top and basic information about the both of them already written below it while the other was a longer piece with a giant wall of print on its face that Tom had to squint to read. The most legible part of the latter was the mostly empty space at the bottom of it which held two lines on either side and the word ‘signature’ under each of them.
When Tom looked back up, Bay was smiling at him and holding out a quill which Tom reluctantly took.
“Just sign your full name there and there,” Bay gently instructed, pointing where like Tom was too foolish to figure it out for himself.
And just as reluctantly as he’d taken the quill, Tom followed this instruction, too, signing his name first on the marriage certificate and then on the form listing out the ways in which he was signing his life away to the marriage in question. Seeing the name he so hated there in black ink after he was done made Tom’s throat ache with how tight it felt. It made him want to pick those pieces of parchment up and tear them to shreds, to destroy the room, to scream until his voice was hoarse.
Instead, he held the quill out to Dumbledore without looking at him.
Dumbledore gently took it from his hand and signed twice without any further hesitation. Tom didn’t take his speed as a desire for what those pages represented but as an acknowledgment that at this point there was hardly anything he could do to get out of it.
Once Dumbledore had signed, he put the quill down on the desk and Bay snatched up the papers and tucked them away in a drawer like he was afraid they might disappear if he didn’t.
“Well, gentlemen,” Bay said, still smiling that smile that Tom dearly wanted to wipe off his face. “You’ll be sent copies of both of those, of course. Should be arriving by owl within the week. You’ll not hear from us beyond that as long as you stick to the terms of the law, so – congratulations on your marriage and may it be a long and happy one!”
‘As though we have a choice,’ Tom nearly snapped at him before he bit his tongue at the last second so hard that he could taste blood.
Tom took a deep breath to calm himself, to cool the wave of hot rage that had washed over him into something less scalding.
It mostly worked. In the time it took for Tom’s chest to fill with air and for him to exhale it, he had committed Elwin Bay’s face to memory and committed himself to the notion that one day he would surely murder the man before at last Tom turned on his heel and headed to the lift without another word.
*
Dumbledore caught up with Tom just after Tom got his wand back and was headed towards the floo to return to Borgin and Burke’s, a notion in his head driving him almost mechanically on that he’d need to pack up his things in preparation for leaving his little flat above the shop.
Dumbledore fell into step with Tom seamlessly, as though they’d been side by side all along. He said nothing to Tom at first and while once Tom would have been happy for the silence, he found now that it only grated on him.
“You didn’t stop to get your wand back,” Tom commented idly, because out of any other opening to conversation he could pick, that seemed the one least likely to come out as a snarl.
Dumbledore picked up the thread easily and without pause to which Tom was grateful for, though his own gratitude was making him exhausted as much as was making him annoyed at this point. Tom had felt that way towards Dumbledore more this morning than he had in all the seven years he’d went to Hogwarts put together and he’d had more than enough of it already.
“I never checked it in to begin with,” Dumbledore admitted. “Truthfully, I’ve always thought it poor form to take a wizard’s wand when he was just coming in to register as an animagus or file a permit or something of the sort. At a trial, I can understand the policy, but outside of that…”
“So you just skirt the rule?” Tom asked as they came to a stop a few feet away from the floo. He turned to Dumbledore then, a brow raised and lips just slightly turned up at one end. “How nearly Slytherin of you, Professor.”
“If my years of teaching have taught me anything in turn, it’s that Slytherins hardly have a monopoly on not doing what they’re told.” Dumbledore’s eyes flicked away from Tom for a second, glancing towards the floo. “Back to work, I assume?”
“I thought I might close the shop early today and take the time to pack up my flat. No reason to delay the inevitable, is there?”
“Then in the interest of not furthering any delay, would you like some company? We can go to Hogwarts together after if you’d like.”
The suggestion gave Tom pause. He blinked at it, actually surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to be anywhere near Knockturn Alley.”
Dumbledore’s lips quirked up then into the closest thing to a genuine smile Tom had seen on him since he walked into Elwin Bay’s office. “Despite its reputation, it is only a street. As it happens, I’m rather fond of The White Wyvern in particular. If there’s a better bowl of lamb stew to be found in London than what the proprietress serves there, I’ve yet to taste it.”
“Well,” Tom drew out the word, choosing to ignore Dumbledore’s eating habits to instead let his mind rapidly picking over how his flat last looked when he left it to recall if anything incriminating had been laying about and determining that there had not been and just as quickly weighing whether having Dumbledore in his flat for a little while was a worthy price to pay in exchange for being back at Hogwarts today and determining that it was. “After me, then.”
He broke eye contact with Dumbledore and went over to the floo, taking some powder out of the bowl there and throwing it in before saying Borgin and Burke’s and stepping into the fire.
A moment later he was back in the shop, just as he’d left it.
A few moments after that, the fire crackled and Dumbledore stepped out behind him.
Dumbledore gave a cursory glance around, his eyes lingering on the shelf full of books directly across from the fireplace. Tom, who knew the contents of the shop as well as he knew the back of his own hand, didn’t need to look to know the titles were things that Dumbledore was unlikely to approve of – Dark Arts Through the 16th Century, Harvesting Man: A Thousand and One Uses For Human Skin, and Aemilia’s Book of Poisons among them. Tom had read them all during the less busy hours during the day of which most of his hours at work were and found the majority of them lacking. The ones he’d found actually worth the parchment they were printed on and worth a reread on top of it were all tucked away on his shelves upstairs, secreted there while Burke was none the wiser to the thefts.
It was no concern of his for Dumbledore to see any of them, however. The last time Tom had checked neither owning books or reading them – no matter what their content – was a crime. The Ministry hadn’t fallen so far into insanity as to outlaw simply knowing things yet.
Still, Tom couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Interested in making a purchase, Professor?”
Dumbledore looked away from the shelves to meet Tom’s eyes again. Tom thought he saw a hint of censure in Dumbledore’s expression, but it could have just been a trick of the dim lighting.
“Perhaps another time.”
It was nothing less than Tom had expected. “Of course. We are on a schedule, after all.”
Tom gave a pleasant smile before turning to head up the stairs. Dumbledore followed behind him, but once they got up to Tom’s flat, he didn’t come in. Instead, he paused in the doorway and a glance showed his intention to stay there. He leaned his shoulder against the jam, hands in his pockets, and looked about the room as curiously as he’d been reading the titles of the books downstairs.
Despite the fact that it was his flat, somehow Tom was the one who felt out of place with Dumbledore standing there.
Tom had no reason to be self-conscious, he knew. The flat was in a good shape despite the state of the rest of Knockturn Alley in the streets beneath its sole window and Tom kept it neat besides, always preferring cleanliness and minimalism to dirt and clutter. Tom had what he needed and little else and he didn’t mind that. He knew this place wasn’t where he would spend the rest of his days but a temporary stop, no different from a room at an inn. There was no reason to personalize it. He had no desire to dress it up like a home when he knew well it was not one.
It didn’t hurt that it made packing a simple affair, either.
Not pausing as Dumbledore had done, Tom entered the flat and made a beeline for the bed where he pulled his trunk out from under it, set it atop the mattress and opened it. He went to the dresser drawers first to get his clothes, intending to pack those first and his books second. Tom didn’t have much to pack to begin with, so it would hardly be a time consuming ordeal, but he knew it would have been faster with magic – a few waves of a his wand and it would be done.
But Tom didn’t touch his wand.
He’d never used magic when he was packing or unpacking his trunk at Hogwarts, either, even after he knew the right spells. There was something about doing it by hand that he preferred, a ritual to holding his things in his hands and moving them from one place to another. At Hogwarts, he’d hated the thought of just waving his wand and having all of his things sent directly to his trunk when he knew that it would be back to Wool’s from there. There was something visceral and wounding about the knowledge that his entire life at Hogwarts could so easily be packed away and carted off when Tom knew deep in his bones that it was at Hogwarts where he belonged. Then when he returned every year, unpacking was still better done by hand. It always made Tom feel like he was making his dormitory his again, one article of clothing and one book at a time, his own hands opening the drawers, slotting his books on to his shelves and running his fingers across the glossy wood of them.
It was a ritual, in a way, even if it wasn’t a magical one. Unpacking with a wand would never have felt as triumphant.
In the months since graduating, Tom still hadn’t unlearned the habit. It was one of the few things he preferred doing the Muggle way instead of with magic.
Dumbledore watched him at it and Tom wondered what he was thinking. Possibly that Tom was stalling for time. Possibly that Tom was doing this without magic just for the sake of making Dumbledore wait on him just a little longer.
Or maybe Dumbledore was looking at him and knew exactly why just as he’d once looked at Tom and knew without being told that Tom’s wardrobe was stuffed full of stolen goods.
“What did you think,” Tom asked suddenly, “when you opened your letter from the Ministry this morning and saw my name in it?”
Tom didn’t know what compelled him to ask. He grimaced a second after the question came out which was a second too late to take it back. Dumbledore didn’t see the expression, Tom’s back was to him as he pulled several books off the shelf. By the time Tom turned back around, he’d schooled his features into something no more than politely interested at the answer.
If Tom’s throat was tight, if his pulse beat a bit too fast – none of it was visible behind his mask.
Dumbledore himself looked thoughtful. He was peering at Tom in that way again, like Tom was a puzzle he wanted to solve.
A long stretch of silence passed until at last Dumbledore spoke.
“I thought that the Ministry was making a mistake,” Dumbledore said, so very gently that it felt like a razor sliding the wrong way over Tom’s skin, “as I have thought so for every second that has passed since the Minister first broached the idea of this marriage law to the Wizengamot. I thought it was inappropriate to have a student forced to marry his former teacher. I thought that it was not only deeply unfair, but abjectly cruel to force a young man whose life has only just begun into a lifelong commitment that under any normal circumstance I knew he would never agree to take part in. And then I thought for quite a long while about the weather in France this time of year, how terribly easy it is to create an illegal international portkey, and the likelihood of the Headmistress of Beauxbatons being in the market for a Transfiguration professor and what in Merlin’s name I’d do for a living if she weren’t.”
The last part almost made Tom smile, despite himself, but only almost.
“Yet you’re not in France,” Tom said.
“Yet I’m not in France,” Dumbledore repeated. Then unlike Tom, he did smile. The expression was tight. It was not particularly happy. “Dare I ask what you thought when you saw my name in your letter, Tom?”
The deja vu that hit Tom then was enough to make his breath catch in his throat.
For a moment, he felt like he was back at Hogwarts again. Back to being a fifth year student standing on the staircase, Dumbledore looking down at him with those same eyes that saw far more than Tom ever wanted them to see and asking if there was anything Tom wanted to tell him. Tom had wanted, inexplicably and against all sense of self-preservation, to tell Dumbledore everything then. The impulse in him to let it all come spilling out about how opening the Chamber had backfired, about how he hadn’t meant for Myrtle Warren to die or the school to be closed, about how he had a blank diary waiting for him back in his dormitory and he knew just how to make it into something worthwhile, to take Myrtle’s death and turn it into something that wasn’t so utterly pointless.
For a moment then, Tom had wanted to tell Dumbledore everything as he had the sudden impulse to do so now.
But back then the moment passed. It passed now, too.
“You should save the question for our anniversary,” Tom said lightly before turning away from Dumbledore again to get the remaining books from the shelf. He swallowed hard only once his back was to Dumbledore and there was no chance of it or the sudden quiver of his lips and the second it took for Tom to get control of it being seen. “I’ve heard it said that it doesn’t do any good to spoil all the mystery at the beginning of a marriage. The traditional gift for the first year is paper, isn’t it? Perhaps I’ll write it all down for you then.”
Dumbledore replied without skipping a beat, “I’m sure I’ll look forward to it.”
When Tom turned back around, putting the last of his books into his trunk, Dumbledore’s false smile was gone and his face was no more readable than ever. Something almost like regret twinged through Tom then, surprising him, but it was easy enough to shove the feeling down.
Tom closed his trunk and locked it. With all of his belongings packed away, the flat looked the same as it had the day Tom moved into it. It was far less dusty, but otherwise little different now than it had been before.
“In that case, unless you’ve changed your mind about purchasing a copy of Beatty’s Prophecies that’s been cursed to putrefy the hands of any wizard who opens it, I don’t see any reason to linger here.”
“As I can’t imagine even a putrefaction curse being more painful than subjecting myself to Beatty’s purple prose for a second time, I believe I’ll pass,” Dumbledore said, showing no offense at the offer. “Now if I recall correctly, you passed your Apparation classes without issue. I assume you maintained your license after graduating?”
“I did, but as I recall it isn’t possible to apparate into Hogwarts.”
“Not into the castle itself or onto the grounds, no,” Dumbledore agreed, “but the spell ends outside the gates. Normally the floo would be faster, but Hogwarts’ network only allows for firecalls if a member of the staff is in the room to give permission for someone to step through. Considering that for the moment only myself and Mr. Pringle are at hand until we get closer to the school year starting…”
“Apparation it is,” Tom finished the sentence. He then raised a brow. “Do none of the other professors live at Hogwarts full time, then?”
“Only myself, Headmaster Dippet and Professor Beery – and, of course, Professor Binns for a certain variation of the term living. The Headmaster likes to spend the summers traveling with his wife and I believe Professor Beery and her wife have plans to visit the Amazon Rain Forest to search for certain rare magical plants.”
“And are congratulations in order for any of the rest?”
“Besides myself, only Professor Slughorn was unmarried before the marriage law went into effect and the last I spoke to him he was quite relieved at being able to remain that way. There being more Purebloods and Half-bloods than Muggle-borns, naturally some would be exempt.”
“Naturally,” Tom repeated as he violently pushed down on the swirl of feelings the news had rearing up in him.
Tom was bitter that Slughorn of all people was an exemption to the law and not him, certainly, but behind the bitterness was slight amusement at the thought of anyone having to marry Slughorn and how more than just the professor had dodged a curse by Slughorn having gone mercifully unchosen. The amusement didn’t last long, though, as Tom hadn’t considered until that moment that the Ministry thinking he was a Muggle-born meant that the person who could have ended up married to Slughorn might have very well been Tom himself.
If having Dumbledore as a husband was unthinkable, it was far less so than that alternative which made Tom disgusted to even consider had been a possibility at all.
“Shall we, then?” Dumbledore asked, his voice sending all thoughts of what it would be like to marry Slughorn blessedly out of Tom’s mind.
“After you,” Tom said.
Dumbledore inclined his head at Tom in acknowledgment and a second later, he was gone with the loud crack of apparition.
Tom stood still for a moment once he was alone, letting his shoulders drop and his eyes clench shut as a weight that he’d carried all the while in Dumbledore’s presence finally left him. Tom knew this was just a temporary reprieve from it. He would have to get used to carrying that weight again – the weight of pretense. This would be the last moment he had alone in a living space he could call no one else’s but his own for quite some time and he would have to get used to being around Dumbledore for far longer than just a few minutes here and there. The thought made Tom’s heart pound harder for a beat in his chest and something rise up inside of him, making his throat go tight. It was another unwelcome emotion that Tom forced down with prejudice. It was hardly the first time Tom had felt such a thing, he considered. Ever since the bonding ceremony, those little flashes of surprising feeling hadn’t left him alone and the warmth that poured through him then hadn’t left the two places inside of him where he’d carved out pieces of his soul either.
Tom didn’t like it. He didn’t like how weak those flashes made him feel or how foreign that warmth was. More than that, for all the research he’d done on the ceremony he didn’t know what to make of any of it and he hated not knowing things.
Still, now wasn’t the time to ponder on it.
Dumbledore was expecting him and if he was all Tom had waiting then he’d be happy to let Dumbledore stew, but then there was Hogwarts too. Tom had been away for long enough. To wait a moment longer now that returning was right within his reach – it was unbearable.
Tom opened his eyes and steeled himself. He took a deep breath, made sure he had a tight grip on his trunk, and gave a last glance around him. He felt nothing at the sight of the empty flat except for relief. The feeling buoyed him as he apparated out, leaving it behind.
Finally, he was going home.