Chapter 10 - Prophecies

Written by Nemesis

The rest of the Christmas holidays were passed in the library. Tom knew that the anonymous note had something to do with the message in the common room, for the note had told him that the Dark Arts book had the answer. First thing, Tom researched the Opticus Charm, a charm which allowed one to make something look like something else to a certain person or group of people. He thought it had been silly of the sender to use such a simple charm, for any wizard who suspected it could use a Revealing Charm. Whoever had sent the parcel must not be very bright, he deduced, otherwise he or she did not really care if anyone saw it.

Once he was done with this, Tom moved back to his old habit of shuffling through books and looking for the words "circle" and "games." The letter, at least, had given him a hint. It was bound to be in something about Defense Against the Dark Arts. Or so he thought. After countless hours of reading, Tom could not find anything pertinent in any of the books he tried. He had taken to carrying around the dust jackets of his textbooks to hide the books he was really reading, so that if Professor Dumbledore saw him, he would just see that Tom was reading a Transfiguration book and ignore it.

Classes started up again, and, as Professor Xavier had promised, they researched grindylows right at the beginning. Tom began taking Transfiguration with Matthew's class, and he was pleased to see that though he remained the best in the class, he had to work to maintain this. Charms got gradually better as the Hufflepuffs got used to the Slytherins, and History of Magic, as usual, was fun. Even Herbology was tolerable. Tom started working with Lili whenever he had the chance, and he found that he actually worked better when she was there. After one more discussion, it did not take Tom long to figure out that Lili had been the one to send him the note the night he found out that Hannah died. He never mentioned it, however, because thinking about Hannah was still agonizing.

At the beginning of the Easter holidays, Tom signed up to stay at Hogwarts once more. The teachers had all given them a pile of homework, but Tom did it all in the first night so that he would have his own time during the rest of the holiday. More people chose to stay at Hogwarts, but Francis and Richard both went home. On the down side, so did Lili. Tom thought that perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. He would have more time to spend in the library without having to worry about his friend feeling neglected.

By the third day of the holidays, Tom realized it was no use. He had gone through the entire Defense Against the Dark Arts section of the library, but he still could not find what he was looking for. His only hope was to try out he Restricted Section. At first, Tom considered asking Professor Chapman for a permission form. He dismissed this idea quickly, for Chapman and Dumbledore were very close friends, and the Slytherin Head of House would probably tell Professor Dumbledore if Tom asked him. This left Tom with only one option: to enter the library at night. The Restricted Section was rather small, so Tom would only need about two nights to go through all the necessary books. The trick was getting in and not getting caught.

Tom chose the night before Easter to pay his first visit to the library. There would be an Easter's Eve feast, and after feasts, people usually fell asleep right away, exhausted by the meal. The chances that someone else would be prowling the school at night were very slim. Tom chose Easter night for his second endeavor for precisely the same reason. It seemed like the perfect plan. He could stay up all night searching until he found the right answer.

On the morning of Easter's Eve, Tom went down to breakfast to find a large screech owl waiting for him. There was a large parcel tied to its legs. Tom sat down and relieved the owl of its burden. It squawked appreciatively and fluttered out the window. At first, Tom was worried that it was another anonymous package, but he recognized Lili's handwriting on the envelope. The letter read as follows.

Tom--
I heard you talking about doing some research in the Restricted Section. This might help you not get caught. Don't do anything stupid, and have a good holiday.
Yours,
Lili Xeng Po

Intrigued, Tom pulled off the paper and looked inside the box. He saw a sliver of shimmering fabric in the light coming from the ceiling, and his heart leapt. If this was what he thought it was… Tom quickly shut the box as he heard Dumbledore coming toward him. He stuffed the letter in his pocket.

"Is this another one?" Professor Dumbledore asked. He looked uncharacteristically anxious.

"No, it's from Lili."

The professor sighed with relief, and Tom thought he saw his mustache twitch slightly. "All right," he said, his eyebrows raised. Philip Cedric snorted into his porridge.

It took Tom a few seconds to understand why they were amused, and when he did, his ears turned bright pink. "She's NOT my girlfriend!" he said truthfully. He had never even considered Lili in that way.

"Yeah. Okay," said Philip skeptically. His face suddenly went serious. "You stay away from her," he added. "She's a pure-blood, she doesn't need to mix with Mudbloods."

"Mr. Cedric, that will be twenty points from Gryffindor," Dumbledore replied immediately, his eyes flashing. "I will not tolerate that kind of language in this school." Tom considered thanking him, but decided against it. He finished his breakfast and headed back up to the dormitory, his parcel in tow. He heard Philip cat-calling behind him, and smiled as Dumbledore took another five points from Gryffindor.

Tom brushed past Daphne Gatefield as he hurried up to his room, eager to see if Lili had truly sent him what he thought she had. He opened the box once more, and a silvery cloak fell onto his bedspread. He allowed himself a grin, and he threw the cape around his shoulders, taking off his pointed hat and flipping the hood over his head. Tom stepped in front of the wheezy old mirror, and though he knew very well that he was there, he could see nothing at all.

"Lili, you've outdone yourself," he murmured, the Invisibility Cloak swishing around him. "This could be exactly what I've been looking for."

********************

Tom crept along the corridors in his stocking-feet, shivering. The hallway was drafty, and though the cloak he was wearing was well and good for keeping one from being seen, it was so thin it was useless for warmth. He held a candle in his hands, ready to extinguish it if someone came out of a classroom. Most of the Slytherins were completely wiped out from the feast, and had fallen asleep already. It was midnight, Tom's favorite hour, and to his further delight, a thunderstorm seemed to be brewing. He heard rain lashing on the roof in torrents, and distant thunder rolled through the clouds to his ears.

Finally reaching the library, Tom took out his wand. "Alohomora," he whispered, and the door creaked open. Closing it and locking it, Tom quickly performed a clever charm that would set off an alarm only he could hear if anyone was approaching the library. With that finished, Tom looked around. The Hogwarts library was easily larger than any other library Tom had ever seen, with hundreds of bookshelves under a vaulted cedar ceiling that Tom liked very much. Tom's sharp eyes quickly picked out the shelf known as the Restricted Section. It was not particularly large, and he could eliminate the Potions half of it automatically.

"Wingardium Leviosa," Tom said, and his candle flew up so that it hovered in the middle of the aisle. He glared at it, and it suddenly burned far brighter. That done with, Tom climbed the ladder up to the top shelves, the cloak still concealing him from the outside world. He wrinkled his nose at some of the books. One of them appeared to be splattered with blood ("The Bloody Baron's blood?" Tom wondered vaguely), while another looked horribly like it was made of human skin. At a glance, Tom knew exactly why this section was restricted. Oh well, he thought, he was only here for one thing.

He seized a volume at random, sat down on one of the rungs of the ladder, and read the index carefully. Nothing. He went for the next dusty manuscript, but there was nothing there, either. He kept checking his watch. At two o'clock in the morning, he had still found nothing, though he had gone through nearly a quarter of the books he needed to. At four o'clock, he was starting to grow frustrated. Furiously, he grabbed a book from the shelf. The Circle of Darkness: A Study of Black Magic. When Tom realized what he had found, he was thrilled. Could this be it? He tucked it into his dressing-gown pocket under the Invisibility Cloak, extinguished and disposed of his candle, and hurried back to the common room.

It was a quarter past four. Tom remembered that he sometimes woke up this early, but he did not care. Making sure his drapes were tightly closed, Tom took out his wand. "Pyrio Frigido," he said, and a small ball of cool blue fire blossomed out of the end of his wand and hovered over his pillow, lighting his reading area. He had purple bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, but all that mattered to him now was finding out what that message in the common room had meant. Fervently, he flipped to the very back, skimmed the index, and found the right page. His heart was going like mad.

The Circle of Darkness (c.f. Circle of Light, pg. 203) is the name of a ring of Dark witches and wizards. In 1220, the first Dark wizard to cause significant damage to the wizarding community set up a prophecy. He said that there would be many great Dark wizards in the future. He warned the wizarding world that from 1220 on, there would be twelve Dark witches and wizards whose powers exceeded those of all the others in their generation combined. This list of witches and wizards includes the prophesier himself, the Dark wizard Amelbius. The prophecy went on to say that the last addition to the Circle would be the greatest, with powers beyond any the world had yet seen. Grindelwald, the current greatest Dark wizard, claims to be the eleventh member of the Circle, and that the last and greatest member will be soon in his or her coming.

Even the bags under Tom's eyes paled. He had heard an awful lot about Grindelwald at Hogwarts, and from the sound of it, he was a dangerous madman who killed women and children for fun. If the world was in for someone ten times worse… He shuddered at the thought.

So, he mused, it had probably been Grindelwald to send up the message in the common room. It was understandable that the Dark wizard would want to tell the world if the Circle were indeed complete. Being the sick man he was, he probably thought it was reason to celebrate. "It must be rather like the second coming to those people," Tom thought. Tom had a sudden, strange vision of Francis Malfoy and his parents wearing party hats and dancing around like maniacs, but he did not have time to laugh at this.

If the message had had to do with the Circle of Darkness, then whoever had sent Tom the package at Christmas wanted him to know about it. A Dark wizard, most likely, possibly even Grindelwald himself. Whoever it was, one question remained. Why him? Why would he want Tom, of all people, to learn about the Circle of Darkness? A sudden thought hit him, and he felt very ill. Perhaps the sender had been trying to snare him into reading the book, the whole thing and not just the part about the Circle. The Dark side was trying to get him as a follower.

Hoping for some clarification, Tom turned to page two hundred three to read about the Circle of Light.

The Circle of Light was set up as a defense by the wizarding world when Amelbius created the Circle of Darkness. The Circle of Light will also eventually consist of twelve people. There are only ten people on the list now. The Circle of Light consists of the witches and wizards who brought downfall to the members of the Circle of Darkness in their generations. Like a member of the Circle of Darkness, a member of the Circle of Light will be exceptional at all forms of magic, particularly transfiguration and dueling, and will be very intelligent. It is the duty of the Dark wizard community to try to detect future members of the Circle of Light and trick them into practicing the Dark Arts, so as to ensure that the individual will not attempt the downfall of the current Circle of Darkness member.

"Mother of God," Tom whispered. "Nepenthe, could you come here for a moment?"

The silver cobra slithered around the bedpost and scrambled inside. "Yesss, Massster?" he asked.

"Nepenthe--remind me--am I 'exceptional at all forms of magic, particularly transfiguration and dueling'?"

Nepenthe laughed his snake laugh. "Of coursssssse you are, Masssster."

"But--I'm not 'very intelligent', am I?"

"Yesss, you are."

Tom's face was stricken, his eyes wide, his hands quaking. "Nepenthe…do you think it's possible that I could be a member of the Circle of Light?"

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At five-thirty in the morning, Tom returned the book to the library and managed to grab three hours of sleep. He went down to breakfast positively exhausted, and he was so tired that at first he even managed to ignore Philip, who was calling him names under his breath all through the meal. Professor Dumbledore was slightly harder to ignore. He kept shooting Tom suspicious looks, as though he knew that Tom had finally interpreted the message.

"How late were you up last night?" he asked sharply, watching Tom yawn for the umpteenth time.

"Wha…? Oh, right. I couldn't sleep." Tom yawned again and set to work on his egg. Professor Dumbledore nodded and left the room, having finished his breakfast last of all the teachers.

"Pun," Philip asked, "I have to ask you something. Why is it that you almost always eat like a horse?" He sniggered. "Do they starve you at home or something?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Tom replied softly, his eyes flaming. "The smallest meal I get at Hogwarts is larger than a whole week's worth of food back at home."

Something flickered across Philip's face. Was it pity? Whatever it was, it vanished quickly. "No wonder you're so thin," he sneered. "Your mother and father must really hate you to treat you like that."

There was a loud bang. Tom had slammed his goblet down on the table. Furiously, he leapt to his feet, pulling out his wand. There was definitely something amiss in his eyes. They were shining so brightly they looked almost red instead of turquoise. He saw his peers shrink back at the sight of him, terrified that they might get in the way. "Don't you dare insult my Mum," he whispered, eyes looking redder than ever. "Go ahead and insult me all you want, but never--NEVER--insult my Mum."

Philip laughed. "You must have a serious Oedipus Complex or something," he remarked. "Well, if your mother's so great, why does she starve you?"

"She's dead, you imbecile!" Tom roared. "Dead! And my idiot Muggle father is to blame for it, so I would prefer if you did not mention him, either!" There was no question about the redness in his eyes now. Every trace of blue-green had vanished. Philip looked scared out of his wits, image forgotten. "If you ever insult her again, I'll--" Tom stopped, aghast. His wand had emitted a jet of yellow sparks without his asking it to, and the sparks had hit Philip in the chest. He doubled up, gasping for air, his hands on his throat. The redness in Tom's eyes flickered and died, replaced by pure horror.

"What's going on here?" a raspy voice demanded. Tom spun around to see Headmaster Dippet, who had just arrived late for breakfast.

The Gryffindors immediately pointed at Tom, gabbling and accusing. The Hufflepuffs were watching, transfixed with shock, and the Ravenclaws were all trying out various counter-curses on the blond boy. The Slytherins were too repulsed to be amused by their enemy's fate. Dippet tapped his wand on Philip's neck, and the Gryffindor was finally able to breathe, taking deep, shuddering breaths and sobbing.

"What happened, Mr. Riddle?" Dippet asked.

Tom explained truthfully, and Dippet nodded. "So you never actually said the curse?" he asked.

"No," Tom replied. "I don't even know which curse that is."

"Hmm. Well, for your information, Mr. Riddle, that curse is called the Pertussis Curse, and it is considered Dark magic by Ministry law." Tom blanched, his jaw dropping. "Let's see… for a provoked and apparently accidental attack on another student, let's make it twenty-five points from Slytherin and a detention. Mr. Cedric, for provoking him, fifteen points from Gryffindor and a detention. You will receive slips for your detentions tomorrow at breakfast." Dippet sat down heavily and started on his already cold meal. Tom and Philip exchanged hostile looks, and the former stormed out of the room, his heart beating rapidly.

How had he been able to perform Dark magic when he had never learned it? Tom had certainly never heard of the Pertussis Curse, and he had not considered performing anything life-threatening on Philip. Nonetheless, there was something horrible about the idea of being able to perform Dark magic…something horrible but strangely satisfying. The crueler half of Tom's brain thought how easy it would be to get back at enemies with Dark magic. Tom squashed the thought immediately, furious with himself.

"Think of it logically," the familiar, nasty voice said. "Dark magic has everything. You gain the respect of your peers, you get back at the people you want to. You could be so powerful that the world would be at your beck and call."

"Shut up!" Tom thought, hands balling up into fists. "Just shut up!" This was just perfect. If he really was a member of the Circle of Light, the Circle of Darkness would want to turn him to the Dark side, to stop him from opposing them. He would be making their job a lot easier if he started up with Dark magic on his own. Yet, if he kept performing curses he had never heard of, what choice did he have?

"Think of Philip and Francis," the nasty voice continued. "Think of your father."

Tom stopped dead in his tracks.

"Wouldn't you like to try out a little Dark magic on that two-timing Muggle scumbag?" the voice said slyly. "You yourself once thought that the Cruciatus Curse might have a purifying effect on him… why not try something a little more lethal? Something a little darker?"

For half a second, Tom thought he saw a little reason in what the voice was saying. Then he realized what was going on in his brain, and he put all his energy into shoving the ideas to the back of his mind. "You're wrong," he said softly, rushing through the corridors to the common room. "You're wrong."

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Tom was running top-speed through a forest. It might have been the Forbidden Forest; Tom would not know, having never been in there before. All he could think about was getting away. From what, Tom was unaware. He heard his robes whipping around behind him, and his hat had long since been knocked off his head. Again, his hand was clenched around his wand.

Not noticing where he was going, Tom collided with something tall and cold. He looked up and saw the mirror standing before him, the mirror he had been dreaming about for several months. His reflection was, as usual, pale and terrified-looking, though his robes looked like some finer fabric, silk, probably. It took only an instant for the reflection to transform this time.

"Tom," the reflection said in its high-pitched voice. There was a demented smile on the face of the specter. "Come and see… come and see what I have done."

"What?"

The specter held out a white hand and grabbed Tom around the wrist, diving back into the mirror. Tom broke its grasp just as he was starting to go into the mirror, and he ran as quickly as he could in the opposite direction, though his feet seemed to be made of lead.

"Massster?" Tom felt something tickle his face, and he woke up looking into Nepenthe's golden eyes. "Massster, are you all right? You cried out in your ssssleep."

"Nepenthe… the dream… I had the dream again…"

"All is well, Massster. Go back to ssssleep."

"All right, Nepenthe." Tom dropped off almost immediately. Nepenthe continued to stare at his Master, quite worried. It was a very long time before the loyal pet slithered off the bed and into the shadows.

Chapter 11...

Story Index