บท 17: Cause
Cause
Riddle left the classroom that had been commandeered by some older students with a faint smile on his face and triumph singing in his eyes: the fool purebloods that were part of the Duelling Club had dared to mock him at Slughorn's party, they had doubted his worth, his skill, his might. They no longer will.
Elegant word-play and subtle, but deep, understanding of magic weren't enough to place the poor orphan Riddle where he deserved to be, not when those that by right of age and birth somewhat 'ruled' House Slytherin, those respected scions of ancient families that could barely distinguish one end of the wand from the other. So Tom had simply led those brutes -their enjoyment of the Duelling Club and inflated sense of worth made them easy to manipulate- into accepting a 'friendly' spar.
The memory of the fools being battered around with no hope of victory made Riddle briefly touch his wand, feeling the triumphant exultance that thrummed through him, warming up his blood and making him luxuriate in the certainty of his ever-growing power.
He strode purposefully across the hallways and the corridors, exchanging perfectly nice smiles and well-practiced 'Hellos' while he slowly brought his heart to a manageable rate. The wild triumph that he felt could hardly be expressed publicly after all: he had never participated in the Duelling Club as he had no need nor wish to advertise his skills for the whole school to see, but that almost made it too easy to trick those fools at Slughorn's party to fall for a challenge that he had never actually voiced. And those idiots that so strongly believed in the might of their wands, those that thought themselves atop the laughable food-chain of Hogwarts, would now need to reevaluate their principles.
And Tom had made sure to place himself as the only one capable of showing them a way to remain at the top, using spells that few of those fools had ever heard of to magnificent effects. I sowed, now I simply have to wait for the harvest.
The people he had elegantly humiliated had already been thinking about retaliation, he knew that much, even if it had been easy to show just how of their reach Riddle actually was: wielding their beliefs about pureblood-dogma against them had been even easier. The cognitive dissonance that he could taste of the hot-headed duellists had been a delight, and the implicit insinuation that he was above them because of his blood, secret as it was, had been a mere bonus. A part of Tom was already tasting the next steps: how would they try to reclaim their broken ego? Would they ambush him? No, not after his display.
They'll likely try their hand against someone they despise and that they don't fear. With a shrug, he left behind the well-lit corridors and started to wade through the slightly damp dungeons, walking areas of the castle that had been ignored in many a generation, until he reached the now-familiar access to the Chamber of Secrets.
With a couple of silent charms to ensure he wasn't being followed, he slid away from the glum corridor and entered the Chamber that he had discovered, that he had gained access to by blood and by might. Soon he reached the main room, and without stopping he walked up to Salazar's face and above the black pitch that was the -now empty- resting place of the Basilisk. With a certainty to his step that he was careful to conceal in any other environment, he almost prowled to the series of studies and private chambers that were secured beyond the reach of anyone but the Heir of Slytherin, and he sat to a desk that he had claimed as his favourite, books that he had left ready opening for him at the desired pages after a twitch of his pale wand.
A self-satisfied smile blossomed on his features and his dark eyes widened in the eagerness to devour every slip of knowledge available to him, he started to wade through the pages of impossible squiggly lines that were not a direct phonetic translation of Parseltongue. Differently from what he'd have suspected if he had to imagine writing in the Noble Tongue, the alphabet used wasn't phonetic, as the English one, but each small line of ink carried with it a separate significance, only to form shapes with a precise, and oftentimes complex, meaning.
By reading those out loud however, Riddle had discovered that his tongue moved almost knowingly, lips and throat accommodated the unnatural sounds with the ease that a fish had in swimming, and that his mind, once he heard what he said, understood exactly what his ancestor had written.
Tom had never stopped to think about the difficulty inherent in reading thousand years old books when he had discovered the private collection of his ancestor, but learning that Parseltongue almost acted like a key to unlock the knowledge in those tomes had made him ecstatic: and everything in Parseltongue to him sounded like common English. Truly, it was a marvel of magic with uncountable applications once he managed to figure out the reasoning and symbol behind it.
The only downside was the need to read out loud, because for some quirky need of the magic involved, his mind was not able to directly understand the symbols on the pages. He understood snakes because he could hear parseltongue, and he could speak to them because he was a parselmouth. Slowly, producing sounds that could have sounded like skittering glass over bare bones to the ears of anyone else, he began to read: "To exchange and object with another is to 'swap' their nature, and while that can be accomplished easily with things similar in nature, a wizard that knows deeply every element of what his magic attempts to influence, can push the limits of..."
Hours later, the immense basilisk slithered into the Chamber from one of the many tunnels that led to the pipes running into the castle, its thick scales almost grinding on the wet tiles under its immeasurable weight, and Tom closed the book he had been perusing with a self-satisfied quirk of his lips, a twitch of his yew wand enough to bound the notes he had been putting together as he rose from his seated position.
Since he had managed to access the true secrets of the room, by Parseltongue, Magic, and Will, Riddle had found what had to be the private rooms of his fabled ancestor, and while the sleeping arrangements would require much work to become viable -Tom was hardly interested in menial work- he had been in awe at the collection of knowledge now available to him.
Images and instincts were blurred together in the written form of Parseltongue, and the talent that Riddle had been born with was the only key capable of unlocking that trove of knowledge.
Riddle walked out of one of the private rooms of his ancestor with a slight swagger to his pace: it was hard to contain the pride he felt. He had proved himself worthy of the Chamber by being able to open it, and the Basilisk recognized Tom as her master, as it was right.
-Master- The hiss had the underling, rumbling tone of an uninterested wind, but Tom could hardly take offense: snakes didn't have a human's perception of hierarchy, there was no possible brownnosing, no uncertainty. The Basilisk was King of all Snakes, and the line of Slytherin, who had hatched the female specimen that now was roughly a thousand years old, was its rightful master.
The salutations that the wizard exchanged with the ancient creature were more recognition of each other's presence than an excuse to establish and confirm their places on the command ladder. Much easier than the small-time politicking implicit in the 'Hellos' I have to exchange with the others, if nothing else.
Now that he thought about it, that mechanic was remarkably similar to how Hagrid held himself around others: even with the professors, the pretense of obedience was paper-thin. Not that he'd ignore their instructions, but it was clear to Riddle that the option of doing as he pleased was always present in Rubeus' mind, he choose to pretend to be just another student, and the teachers were too blind to notice, too used to the image they were offered by all the students, nevermind that his unnaturally tall companion was blatantly different.
Oh, Dumbledore probably knew, but he had divined enough of Rubeus' character to not poke at the incongruence, and Slughorn earned too much by letting Hagrid act with such a long leash.
Almost mirroring his younger 'friend', Riddle often twisted the surface of his behavior to cater to the expectations of so many of his schoolmates: he had learned early that not fitting the boxes that others instinctively put you in only brought pain in some form or another, and while he would have certainly delighted in picking apart the ever-pretentious purebloods that lorded their birth above him like it was an accomplishment worthy of his praise, he would have loved tricking those fools into betraying everything they stood for merely for the delicious irony that that picture would represent.
But since Dumbledore's visit to the orphanage, Tom had realized that his usual and effective methods that showcased his vast superiority -built on the tears of the lesser beings that dared intrude upon him- couldn't be used. And as he often had to, Riddle had adapted in order to be in charge without making it obvious to any observer, he had acted so that he'd be the one the other students would turn to, pureblood or not.
Of course, his natural brilliance with magic had helped where his official status as a mudblood had hindered him. Oh, if only they knew.
"Greetings." the somewhat unnatural sound left Tom's lips by virtue of the magic in his blood, and the Basilisk's poisonous yellow eyes flashed innocently -and harmlessly- in his direction before the creature started to curl on itself, "Did you hunt well?"
The following hiss sounded almost amused, carrying with it undertones that briefly escaped the human's understanding: but it could be summed up as a disdainful sniff. After all, the Basilisk was the most dangerous creature on the planet, never mind the Forbidden Forest that the King of Snakes could reach through the Black Lake and a river that ran deep under the boughs.
Still, Riddle felt an echoing pride ring inside of himself: he'd have to keep this secret, of course, the Basilisk had to be kept under wraps as it was meant to defend the castle, and gods knew what Hagrid would try to do with access to the creature, nevermind the entirety of the Wizarding World. No, very much like Riddle had decided to keep the Rùnda only for himself, Minerva, and Rubeus, he'd now hold the creature's existence only for himself.
Revealing himself as the last of Salazar's line would make even those purebloods that still resisted his charm and skills fall to their knees in a matter of seconds, but that would mean giving undeniable proof of his might, not only as a Parselmouth, but also as Slytherin's Heir. He even had some form of plan murmuring in the back of his head, after all, the Basilisk could easily be directed towards a single student if Tom framed them as a threat to Hogwarts, and arguably mudbloods threatened constantly the Statute.
A part of Tom even reflected upon the merits of having the Basilisk kill Hagrid.
It wasn't that the younger Slytherin student was no longer useful, far from that: simply, his apparently neverending winning streak when it came to anything that wasn't perfectly framed in schoolwork somewhat irked at Tom's sense of worth. Wasn't he the best student in the school? Wasn't he the Heir of Slytherin? How could Rubeus dare to shine so brightly?
A memory of wooden doors being turned in a single uninterrupted chain of transfigurations that defied belief stopped that particular sequence of thoughts, and Tom forced himself to take a deep breath. While he had known about Minerva's skill in Transfiguration before Rubeus's intervention back in his first year, that she had proved herself capable of so much was just... unreasonable. How did Hagrid know that she'd be so... worthy?
For all of Tom's disregard for the mediocre and the pampered, there was no denying that bringing the lackluster -in his opinion at least- Minerva in the group that had created the Rùnda had been an extraordinarily lucky guess. She took a while to prove herself, and she could hardly keep up in the many different fields that Riddle and Hagrid sparred across, but she entered their little game of the Black King with a magnificent first move.
That too, irked at Riddle's sense of worth, if only minutely.
He hadn't dared to bring up Minerva's worth with Hagrid, not after his uncommon display at Slughorn's afterparty. A part of the unnaturally tall Slytherin would have attempted to milk her 'introduction' to Tom for all of its worth, while the rest of him would have simply crooned about his -still unproved- ability to discern those that were truly cut from a different cloth. McGonagall had hardly been someone that could catch Riddle's attention when thinking about magic, and the past years had hardly challenged that suspicion: yet, out of nowhere, she turned wooden double doors in an artwork that defied expectation, nevermind understanding.
All that Tom knew of transfiguration told him that the bespelled doors should be so unstable that each change was an instant away from cascading into the next.
All that Tom knew about potions implied the need for magical ingredients to obtain anything that couldn't be explained by a muggle.
Riddle itched to let go of the pretenses, to unleash the Basilisk, and to be done with the doubts that some people still nurtured about his position in the world.
One last hiss left Tom's lips as he moved out of the Chamber, knowing that the Basilisk would heed his commands of not revealing herself to humans: he felt almost giddy at having her in his service, but he wouldn't put his position at risk by ordering her to attack, not when there was no reason to. Not yet.
I slowly stretched back in the suitably enlarged armchair that I had placed next to a lit fireplace, feeling the strain in the muscles of my back as I took a deep breath.
After a moment, my hands started to organize the stack of papers that I had filled with notes and observations, scattering them over a nearby desk in a parody of order that nevertheless allowed me to keep an eye on the few realizations I had at the same time: it was not unlike having more than one monitor open next to another, showing similar but distinct topics.
In particular, the main focus of those notes was intertwined research on Divination and Arithmancy: I chose those two subjects both because I knew that actual prophecy was a thing and because I already received proof that some numbers could be important, and I wasn't referring only to my metaknowledge.
The three books Secrets of the Darkest Arts, Magic Most Evile, and The Theory of Rituals: The Magick of Sacrifice that I had stolen from the Restricted Section during my first year and that had led me to the ritual that actually sacrificed a human being -I swallowed a familiar lump of guilt and disgust at the memory of roots sprouting from the skin of my 'father'- had more or less confirmed, along with my instinctive understanding of potions, that some numbers had an effect, and an important one at that.
The first lessons in Arithmancy had been dedicated to the importance of some numbers, without actually giving a context that explained why those numbers were relevant. Three for stability, Seven for power, Thirteen for focus (as it was a direct sum between 6 and 7, providing the stability of two threes and the might of one seven), and so on.
Slowly, I rose from my seat and distractedly touched my holly and phoenix wand, enjoying the reassuring warmth that rushed along my arm while my eyes kept scanning the result of my reasonings and mad scrambles for the set of rules that defined a particular branch of magic.
Giving a glance to the syllabus told me that there would be formulae and calculations in the second half of the academic year: basically, I was going to learn a wholly skewed mathematical system, and I had no idea about the why.
The best I could say with certainty at the moment was that in the same way the Golden Ration appeared everywhere in nature, some numbers were significant in a magical context. Of course, I hadn't needed to understand the true importance of the number Three back when I had performed that successful ritual.
And that was what made Arithmancy so extraordinary: in potions, the meaning of each ingredient was enhanced by the understanding of the brewer, I had proved that to great effect with both my experiments and the outrageous quality of my standard brews. But the numbers had a power that was inherent, and that lent itself to everything that had them present.
"Maybe it's better to see Arythmancy as a whole as Applied Numerology." I muttered to myself as I scratched my cheek, "The meaning of numbers, which is inherent, can be leveraged in different ways."
Shifting my eyes to the other set of papers, I started to follow the colored ink that attempted to draw parallels between the Arithmancy section and the Divination-whatever: while the first was at its core simple (in the same way the basis of calculus could be simple), the latter was... hazy.
The entire syllabus of Divination was separated into sub-branches: oneiromancy, tarots, reading of tea leaves, and whatnot. All of those were attempts, more or less successful from user to user, to get a glimpse of the future. Arithmancy made an appearance from time to time, when using cards to 'read the future' for example, the different kinds of dealings had different chances to be successful based on a multitude of factors, that ranged from the object, or topic you wanted to divine, to the celestial configuration at the time of the reading.
Instead of having the bastard child of math and semiotics, Divination was more akin to painting, and each sub-branch was a different brush. From my incomplete understanding of the subject, I couldn't guess of a single reason why oneiromancy, tarots, and reading of tea leaves couldn't be used to aim at a single object, each 'brush' refining the details that would escape another.
"Then again, the efficiency of each method..." I frowned, adding a note on another piece of parchment: "If they are brushes, the precision of all but one of those might be meaningless."
After all, if something so obvious wasn't already an accepted practice, it was more than likely that there was a good reason for it: metaknowledge or not, I was hardly the first person with a working brain to ever study magic.
With a sigh, I dared a look at my quote of what Tom had said at Slughorn's afterparty, which deserved a parchment of its own: The mind exerts Will, the body has Strength, magic holds Power, and the soul is a reflection of them all.
Glancing at the clock, I shook my head and turned my back on my notes: I had the first session with Orion Black, and given the obscene amount of resources that he could make available to me, as Slughorn had pointed out, I could put in the effort of giving him a helping hand now that he needed one. Tom's words made sense to me in a way that few things outside of potion-making did.
I left the safe confines of the Rùnda with a last awed glance at the double doors that Minerva had realized, and I added them to the endless list of research topics that kept growing despite my steadfast and almost hungry approach when it came to learning magic. For now, lycanthropy remained my priority, and given my last experiment, or at least its implications, I had a couple of ideas on how to proceed.
The cloudy sky prevented the sun from shining into the hallways and corridors of Hogwarts, and the incoming winter had recently made itself known even inside the castle: we were far from having snow, but there was a chill in the air that made everyone wish for an armchair in front of a fireplace, and hot tea.
I ignored the slight discomfort caused by the cold while my wand found itself in my hand: as easily as I breathed, the picture of a single tongue of golden flame blossomed into my mind, the wavering of hot air and the relaxing of muscles that accompanied a warm bath surrounded that image immediately, and with a twirl of my length of holly, the air touching my skin lost its bite.
I rolled my shoulders as I left the area of the fourth floor that Minerva and Tom had helped me steal away from the common students in my first year, a self-satisfied smile appearing on my features as I abandoned the forma-mentis needed to perform what had been not a mere non-verbal spell, but incantation-less magic.
Wizardkind needed symbols to do magic in a controlled manner: they acted as a bridge between meaning and a tangible result. But all of that took place inside the head of the caster, incantations and wand movements were mere confirmations for the body that the wizard or witch in question was actually trying to cast something.
As Riddle had revealed, a mind exercised Will, a body had strength, and magic held power: but will was nothing else than the hazy element that linked together what already existed with what we wanted to make real. Our body has strength, obviously enough: but what it actually meant was that it rooted us in the reality that already was, instead of what was going to be once magic happened. Finally, magic had the power to rewrite everything else: both our mind and our bodies.
Mind, Body, Magic: the elements that Riddle had quoted were in relation to each other, it was undeniable.
Hadn't the mere possibility of doing magic brought me to decide to sacrifice Hagrid's father? That was proof that the power of magic could turn your own mind into something different than what it was. Potions and spells clearly could affect the body too, and I didn't need to look any further than Minerva for the most obvious confirmation.
Through our bodies, we experienced the world around us, which of course influenced our thoughts, and didn't my innate magical resistance prove that our bodies could work with or against magic? Any random magical creature could prove the same.
Finally, the mind shaped our every action, and directed our body.
It was as if Mind, Body, and Magic sat at the points of a triangle, and each side was a two-way road between those three elements. And the soul sits in the center of the triangle, perfectly reflecting each side and point.
I had tried to sidestep the more or less non-sensical incantations and wand movements since day one at Hogwarts, since I knew they weren't truly necessary, and I had maintained a good success in all of my subjects since then: was it because I was half-giant, and so my body was better suited to perform magic with no need for a precise frame of reference? Was it because I was an adult in mind and soul? I had no idea: the only way to test it was to attempt to teach how I understood magic to a group of eleven years old. children, but at that age, kids simply aren't mentally equipped to deal with abstracted concepts. Another group of control would need to be composed by half-breeds.
Lost in my musings, I crossed the four floors that separated me from the dungeons and one of the empty classrooms in which I was to meet Orion Black, and it was likely because of those thoughts that I didn't realize the ambush until I was in the exact middle of it.
An older student leisurely walked out from an alcove placed a few steps ahead of me, the Griffindor colors of his tie and nasty grin telling me all I needed to know while I glanced over my shoulder to spot another two goons that were already holding their wands at the ready. Should I call myself lucky that I managed to avoid trouble inside the castle up until now?
When the one in front of me started to open his mouth, a taunt of some sort already on his lips, I prevented him by casting the first spell.
Really, bantering with what I could see only as children really wasn't something I wanted to waste my time on.
AN
The first part is mostly used to address the lack of rampaging Basilisk in the halls, not gonna lie, but I felt the need to deepen a bit Riddle's position and opinion about other people, the MC in particular.
And I didn't want to make Tom suddenly emotional and human by having a Herry-Hedwig relationship with the Basilisk. I mentioned the instinctive thoughts and feelings about Parseltongue that only Tom can clarify, and just as I'll exploit the unique condition of Hagrid, the same will be done for Riddle: and that shit is something I never saw done anywhere else.
A bit of Lore on Arithmancy and Divination for Hagrid (I finally got around to draw the lines for those two subjets), and a more or less revamp of non-verbal/incantation-less magic: I had the MC ignore the standard spells taught in Hogwarts because having him start like everyone else and then work through a completely different 'mindset' would have cost me a lot of story-time that I can instead bypass by having our Hagrid immediately take apart his first lessons down to the most simple (and powerful) principles.
By now I hope that I made obvious the parallelism that I'm trying to build between Riddle and Hagrid, and that while similar I managed to keep their two characters well defined and separated.
This chapter feels a bit static, I know, but I really wanted it to focus on the inner-character decisions and magical development, respectively for Riddle and Hagrid.
Of course, the title of the next chapter will be 'Effect'.
As always, opinions? Hopes?
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