[From Samhain to Solstice]: Powerful Men, gen, PG-13
Title: Powerful Men
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Gen
Content Notes: AU in Tom’s fifth year, angst, dimension travel, Harry as Master of Death, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4400
Summary: AU. Tom didn’t know whose idea it was that a mysterious man who had walked out of the Veil of Death should be the guest lecturer for Defense Against the Dark Arts while Professor Merrythought dealt with some kind of magical emergency, but he could thank them. And curse them. Henry Evans changes Tom’s life.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year.
Powerful Men
“He couldn’t really have walked out of the Veil of Death. I mean, not really.”
Tom says nothing, but listens to the bickering behind him as they walk to Defense Against the Dark Arts. In truth, he’s reserving judgment himself until he sees what the mysterious stranger can actually do.
But Abraxas, precisely because he’s a Malfoy and a pure-blood and the last name of this “guest lecturer” proclaims that he’s not a pure-blood, has already made up his mind. In a snotty tone, he’s discussing how there’s probably no such thing as the Veil of Death, that the Unspeakables would never release their secrets in such a way.
“Don’t think I don’t hear you snickering back there, Lestrange. I say they wouldn’t.”
“And I’m sure they always do exactly what Abraxas Malfoy tells them to,” Rex Lestrange says, making Tom’s lips tremble a little with a hint of a smile. Lestrange is too much of an upstart for his tastes, but he can be an amusing one.
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“That’s an admonition you could do with some obedience to yourself, Malfoy.”
The Slytherins come to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom that way, and enter it. Tom looks around without much interest. The new lecturer doesn’t appear to have made his mark on the classroom yet. It looks exactly the way it usually does when Professor Merrythought is teaching, with shrouded mirrors on the walls that can show them illusions of Dark creatures and landscapes where they’re found, and old maps that demonstrate the location of ancient battles.
Tom sits down in the front, and he hears the other Slytherins arrange themselves behind him. The Gryffindors walk through the door a few minutes later. Tom ignores them. There is only one really good duelist of note in that bunch, Charlus Potter, and he’s learned not to challenge Tom.
Tom is reliving the victory when the door opens again, and the most powerful man he’s ever seen strides in.
It’s not that the man wears his magic swirling around him like a cloak; some people do that, but it’s considered crass in pure-blood society. It’s not the way that the whole class falls silent at the sight of him. Tom could do that if he wanted to, and even the Gryffindors would obey him without being sure why.
It’s the way the man strides, his head up and his green eyes coolly surveying the far corners of the room. It’s the way that he turns around when he’s near the desk and folds his arms so that his muscles bunch against his sleeves. It’s the confidence he projects, so quiet and heady that even Abraxas doesn’t try to challenge him.
“Good morning,” the man says, his voice like distant thunder. “My name is Henry Evans, and your Defense professor has asked me to fill in for her while she deals with a human Transfiguration that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped. Yes, Mr. Malfoy?”
The man’s recognition of Abraxas’s last name appears to have given him confidence, and Abraxas drops his hand and sneers. “Why should we listen to you? I don’t recognize your last name. I don’t know where you trained. Professor Merrythought is at least an experienced teacher.”
Tom wants to shake his head. Abraxas is stupid for not having recognized what Tom has already. Well, either that, or he didn’t sense it at all.
Tom wouldn’t be surprised about either. Blood prejudice is a useful tool for him to wield, but he doesn’t subscribe to it.
Evans only raises his eyebrows a little. “Have you ever fought a basilisk, Mr. Malfoy?”
“What?” Abraxas turns pale, which, given his coloring, is quite an achievement. “Of course not!”
“Well, then, a dragon. Perhaps you’ve outflown a dragon on your broom?” Evans remains leaning back, an easy posture, as though he has the absolute right to ask these questions. Tom smiles slightly. He approves. “Or used a Patronus to repel dozens of Dementors? Or faced down a powerful Dark wizard and thrown off his Imperius Curse? Come, come, none of these achievements are at all strange to me.”
“Of course I haven’t! I’m only fifteen!”
“Then I’ll thank you not to judge me or ask about my schooling, Mr. Malfoy.” Evans stands up, a graceful, flowing motion that makes Tom ache a little, and looks around the room. “I have done all of those things and more. I did them young. I’ve done more of them since then.” He rolls his shoulders. “I’m still alive. There were times that I doubted I would be, but I made it past the danger.” He tilts his head. “That gives me an advantage over almost everyone here.”
“Almost everyone?” Tom decides to ask. Evans locks eyes with him, and Tom loses his breath at the dark knowledge that’s glinting there.
“There might be people here who have struggled against the kind of internal darkness that grants its own victory. The kind that tells them they can be nothing, do nothing, but have to surrender and do as other people command. The kind that fills their hearts with dreams of revenge until they eat their hearts. The kind that drives them to foolish displays of bravado and makes them tread paths of Dark magic too young.”
Evans’s voice is low and compelling. Tom can only say that he’s survived the first of those, but abruptly he longs to have passed the other tests, too. He longs to have seen the dangers that Evans mentioned.
He wants Evans to be proud of him.
That makes Tom lean back in his desk and try to put some distance between him and this dangerous man. Why is he thinking things like that? Since he realized he was better than the other children at the orphanage, he hasn’t allowed anyone to influence him. He’s taken his place as a leader, someone other people defer to. Even Dumbledore, who suspects him of dark designs, pays his own kind of deference to Tom’s intelligence, treating him more like an equal opponent than a student.
But now, seeing the way that Evans has taken command of the classroom, Tom knows that he was fooling himself. He rules by fear and intimidation. Evans rules by words alone, and by the sheer and certain knowledge he’s projecting that he’s faced challenges everyone else in this classroom has never even seen.
Faced them, and mastered them.
Tom wants to rule like that. He wants to walk into a room and collect everyone’s eyes and have them respond to him. Abraxas is leaning forwards now, rapt. Rex Lestrange’s eyes are brilliant. The Gryffindors almost have their mouths hanging open.
Evans smiles a little and says, “I don’t expect you to have all faced those tests and passed them yet. But one thing I can do is ease the path, so that you pass them when you encounter them.” He turns and snaps his wand towards the board that Professor Merrythought uses for lecture notes. It turns opaque now, though, like the inside of a scrying globe in Divination, and blue clouds scroll across a silver sky.
“For example,” Evans murmurs, and Tom reaches instinctively for quill and parchment, “you may have heard that Dark Arts corrupt people and are so addictive that no one can use them for long and live. But theory is not the same as living experience. I have spells that can allow you to feel the corruption, without risking it yourselves…”
*
“Professor Evans, sir.”
“Yes, Mr. Riddle?” Evans glances up at Tom, utterly relaxed. Tom doesn’t know many professors like that. Dumbledore is suspicious of him, and the others are always radiating some kind of engagement, if only because Tom is one of the few students who speaks up in their classes of his own free will.
Tom studies the stance of the man for a minute-the slouch against the desk, the folded arms, the slight half-smile-and then decides that posture has little to do with it. He could do that all day and never command a tenth of the attention Evans does. He has other lessons to learn from him.
“I was wondering where you were before you walked out of the Veil of Death.”
Evans tilts his head. “Such a dramatic name. Do you know why they call it that?”
“No, sir.” Tom wants an answer to his question-a man like this cannot have sprung from nowhere-but he’s also curious to see what Evans might choose to ramble on to a student about.
“They believe that you can hear the voices of the dead through the Veil.” Evans’s eyes are bright with interest and amusement in a way that makes Tom lean closer. “They also believe it might be a portal to the land of the dead. So, Mr. Riddle. Where do you think I came from?”
Tom studies him hard for a long moment. Not that that gets him any closer to an answer. Evans’s features don’t correspond to those of any well-known pure-blood family, though that might be simply because they’re so stamped with himself. And Tom doesn’t ascribe power to blood status, in any case.
Tom finally shrugs and says, “I think you came from the experiences that you told us about. Outflying a dragon on your broom and defeating a basilisk.” He can’t help the reverence in his voice at that. “How did you do that?”
“With a sword, and an ally, and a lot of luck.” Evans has a deeper smile now, one that would make Tom preen if he wasn’t sure he would lose the man if he did that. “You’re exactly right, Mr. Riddle. The first one in a long time who has been. Where I came from isn’t a matter of blood or place. It’s the experiences that shaped me.”
Tom nods slowly. “But it still means that you had to start in another world, doesn’t it, sir? Since I would have heard of you if you were here.”
“Achievements can be kept more quiet than you think, Mr. Riddle.” For a moment, Evans’s eyes pierce him, and Tom flushes despite himself. He would have heard of Tom’s reputation, spread by rumors that now seem to Tom as crass a way of advertising his power as having his magic swirling around him.
“But I’m right?” Tom asks, when a few moments pass and Evans has stood there in silence.
“You are.” Evans takes his wand from his pocket and studies it as though it holds the answers. He doesn’t say anything else, though, and Tom has to press, although he wishes he didn’t have to. He should be able to make someone else desire to answer with casual gestures, the way Evans does.
It’s going to take changing himself, and he’s smart enough to realize that.
Tom takes a deep breath and focuses on Evans. “Why did you come here?”
“This isn’t the first world I’ve been in.” Evans keeps his eyes focused on the wand in his hand, frowning as though it’s the key to a puzzle. Tom takes a look, too, but other than a few random carvings of berries on the wand’s handle, he can’t say that it stands out to him.
Then Evans lifts his head, and Tom flails backwards to grip a desk behind him, even as he despises himself for his weakness. Evans’s eyes look as if they’ve turned into green glass over a deep and burning fire. Tom has never seen that happen before, and he can’t hold the gaze for long. He lowers his head and whispers, “Did you come to kill me?”
There’s a long silence that passes overhead like a wash of heated air, and then Evans shakes his head and says, gently, “No. To keep someone else from having to kill you in the future, perhaps.”
Tom swallows through a desiccated throat. It’s no surprise, none at all, that Evans probably knows about his plans for immortality. “Is that-is that what you had to do, once?”
Evans blinks at him, and his eyes have returned to human normal, or at least the normal, calm, powerful gaze that first made Tom want to imitate him. “Very good. You’re the first version of yourself who’s guessed that.”
“How many versions of me have you met?”
“I’ve lost count.”
Tom has to look away again, this time from the desperate emptiness in Evans’s face. “I-how many more do you have to meet before it’s done? Whatever task you’ve been set?”
“As many more Riddles as there are worlds.” Evans glances at him, and his eyes have gone empty and his face high and proud and remote again. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if a number would make any difference.” He shakes his head and tucks his wand into his pocket, and shrugs his shoulders. “Only death knows.”
Tom stares. Evans has resumed the cloak of true power that he carries around with him at all times as if he never took it off. He gives Tom an absent smile and gathers up the stack of essays that were due today, and wanders off.
He can make idle gestures like that, and wander off, because he has the strength that Tom knows he has glimpsed only the tail of.
It makes Tom burn, for the first time he can remember, with something other than bitterness or anger or envy or desire. It’s not until he goes back to the bathroom in the Slytherin dorms and stares at his face in the mirror that he recognizes it.
Wonder.
*
“Ah, Mr. Riddle, I wondered if I could speak to you after class?”
Tom smiles up at Dumbledore, putting less force behind it than he usually does. He’s accepted, since Professor Evans began lecturing for Merrythought, that he won’t ever get Dumbledore to like him, and that doesn’t matter so much. “Of course, sir.”
Dumbledore gives him a calculating stare before he sweeps away. Once that stare would have unnerved Tom. Now he just accepts, with a faint shrug, that he can’t charm everyone, and turns to check on the progress of his Transfiguration. Yes, the pigeon has turned into a plaster duck.
“What do you think old Albus wants?” Abraxas whispers. He’s only ever this disrespectful when Dumbledore can’t hear him. Funny, but that’s something Tom never noticed before Evans, either. Then, he had only gloried in the thought that he could inspire one of the best students to be disrespectful to the old fool.
“I suppose I’ll find out,” Tom says, and then taps his wand against the pigeon’s wing and adds a few ripples in the plaster.
Dumbledore is smiling when Tom comes up to his desk at the end of class, but then, he almost always is. Tom waits, his hands folded patiently in front of him. It’s not a gesture that he adopted from Evans, but the attitude is. Before, he always harbored secret impatience while he tried to look the picture of innocence, because all he could think was that Dumbledore despised him no matter what he did and he wouldn’t come out of this conversation any better, either.
Now, he knows it doesn’t matter if Dumbledore despises him, any more than it does to Evans if some of the pure-blood students still despise him because of his last name. They have what they want, what they need, without that.
“I noticed that you had been behaving more-efficiently lately, Mr. Riddle.”
Tom has no idea what that means, and the familiar irritation tries to stir in him. But he thinks of the way that Evans has traveled to more than a hundred worlds, to countless worlds, and met different versions of Tom. There must be versions of Dumbledore there, too, he thinks.
Dumbledore has no idea that that vast span of worlds exists. If he did, he wouldn’t be cornering Tom about something this small and petty.
“I think that Professor Evans has had a positive impact on me, sir,” Tom offers, because, small and petty or not, he’s not above trying to get more respect for Evans if he can.
Dumbledore’s gaze sharpens at once. “I wonder, Tom, if Mr. Evans is aware of your extracurricular activities?”
“If you mean the small Defense group that I’ve started, sir, then yes. He was the one who suggested it.”
“Teaching in the classroom has always sufficed for Defense, Tom. After all, Professor Merrythought is an excellent teacher.”
“She is,” Tom agrees, “but one person can only teach us so much, sir. And Professor Merrythought isn’t set to come back until after the Christmas holidays. I wanted to be sure that my friends and I didn’t fall behind.”
“I noticed that you don’t count Gryffindors among your friends, Tom.”
“Well, I thought you had told them I wasn’t to be trusted, sir. It doesn’t surprise me that none of them have asked to join my club.”
Dumbledore looks stunned. Tom has difficulty keeping his face still. Naming hidden things out in the open like this and actually confronting the professor’s dislike of him is wonderful. He can’t remember now why he thought sneaking around and sneering and confining everything to little hints was the best way to do it.
Well, because those traits had seemed more Slytherin. But if Evans has taught him anything, it’s that appearances don’t matter as much as realities, and he should only use techniques and tactics that work. If bluntness and courage do, then it doesn’t matter which House they’re associated with.
“Now,” Dumbledore says, and clears his throat. “I never said such words, Tom.”
“Oh, professor, you might not have said it in those exact words, but I know you dislike and distrust me,” Tom murmurs. “And I haven’t gone out of my way to discourage you from thinking like that. It was important to me to act like the perfect Slytherin, given whose blood I carry.”
It’s the first time that has ever been acknowledged between them since Tom told the man that he could speak to snakes in the orphanage. He gets a long glance full of the same kind of wonder that Tom saw in the mirror after his first real talk with Evans.
“I would not have to distrust and dislike you if you would admit that you are using disgraceful tactics,” Dumbledore says.
Tom feels the flickers of a grin playing around the edges of his mouth. He shakes his head a little. “That’s also not true, Professor. You would dislike me because of my House, or because I’m not as moral as you thought someone reared by Muggles in an orphanage should be.” He shrugs. “But I’m not interested in taking over the world the way you thought I was. Not anymore.”
“I find it hard to believe that you have changed your mind.”
“It is hard to believe,” Tom agrees. “Can I go, sir?”
Despite a few more sentences that are evidently meant to try and crack the mask Dumbledore no doubt believes Tom to be wearing, in the end he gets a dismissal. Tom walks away from the confrontation with a bounce in his step that has never been there after he was done speaking to Dumbledore.
He won. And all he had to do was alter his tactics and speak the truth.
Tom can’t believe how much Evans has changed his life.
*
“Are you saying that we should admit Mudbloods to our ranks, my lord?”
Tom smiles at Lestrange. Not even he has as much power to annoy Tom as he used to, speaking up with that incredulous tone in his voice in the middle of one of their “informal” meetings. “No, Lestrange. It wouldn’t make much sense for the Knights of Walpurgis to have them.”
Lestrange smiles, relief rising from him like steam. “Then you think-”
“I think that we need more support than merely the Knights of Walpurgis,” Tom counters smoothly. “After all, when I am elected Minister, I will need more than the votes of the most prestigious families, as important as those are.”
Lestrange stares hard at Tom. They are the last of the Knights, lingering in the darkened room where the meeting was held. “You intend to go a purely political route, my lord?”
“Not only political,” Tom says, and shrugs. One thing he has learned from observing Evans is how to make self-deprecating movements look elegant and revealing. “There are secrets in the Ministry that only the Minister has access to, however.”
“The Department of Mysteries.” Lestrange looks stunned. Tom would have felt impatient with the boy for never thinking of that only a few weeks ago, but now, he experiences the pleasure of leading someone else to a conclusion.
“Exactly. I can learn esoteric secrets there that I can get nowhere else. How to bend minds, entice souls, and establish my authority-and of course the authority of those who follow me-forever.”
Lestrange is watching him with worshipful eyes now. Tom continues to smile, but he does feel a tingle of weariness. It’s so easy to enslave those who would rather follow him than think for themselves.
It makes him look forward to seeing Professor Evans tomorrow, whom at least no one will ever dismiss as a follower.
*
“This will be the last class that I teach for you.”
Tom’s head snaps up the minute Evans says that. He’s standing near the front of the classroom with a calm expression on his face, but his eyes are deep and burning, so like the clear green he confronted Tom with that Tom is surprised no one else sees it.
Then again, he never thought much of the intelligence of his yearmates.
“Professor Merrythought recovered from the human Transfiguration faster than she was expected to,” Evans continues, as if it’s an ordinary day and not the last one. “St. Mungo’s brought in a special Healer for her. So she can return next week.”
Tom tries to swallow through a dry throat. A month ago, when Evans first came, he would have rejoiced at the announcement. Better to have a professor that he knew he could bend around his little finger during his OWL year than a risky stranger.
But right now, all he can think of is how he would rather that Evans-stay.
*
“You’re leaving?”
Evans smiles at him, flicking his fingers back and forth as he walks a Galleon across his hand. It was a trick he showed them today. Tom wonders how many of the others realized that Evans was using sleight of hand and not wandless magic, as he told them he was. It’s another lesson in the importance of observation and battle-readiness.
Tom desperately doesn’t want it to be the last one, but Evans nods and says, “Yes, I am,” and then snaps the Galleon into the air with two of his fingers. He catches it as it falls and presents it to Tom. “For you.”
Tom takes it absently, still struggling to say what he wants without looking weak. “I thought-I thought you would stay longer. That was what you said.”
“It’s actually because of you that I’m leaving early.”
Tom flinches, but Evans shakes his head, and it’s somehow impossible to disbelieve him with the softness of the smile on his face. “Nothing like that, Tom. I mean that you’ve come to the realizations that I needed you to come to so that the future will be a better one. I expected it to take much longer. It has, in some worlds. But you’re smarter than some of your counterparts.”
Tom feels himself simultaneously bask in the praise and ache in the hollowness of loss. It’s an odd feeling. He whispers, “You were here only for that?”
“Yes. I have other worlds that need me.” Evans touches the center of his chest. “I can feel it yanking me on. I’ll go back through the Veil and on to somewhere else, another place where I can prevent war.”
“Will you-do you receive any reward for what you do?”
“That of knowing that other worlds won’t suffer the way mine did.” Evans hesitates. “And for every world that I manage to rescue, I get to spend an hour in the Veil in the presence of my dead.”
Tom says nothing. For a moment, he saw longing so naked in Evans’s eyes that it makes him look away. Had anyone else said that to him, Tom would have smiled nicely while thinking how pathetic it was to mourn people. But he is incapable of thinking Evans weak.
“Will it end someday?” Tom asks.
“I don’t know.” Evans has an expression too complex for weariness in his eyes. “Perhaps.”
“Will I-will I ever see you again?”
“I doubt it very much, Tom.” Evans’s voice is gentle, but he nods to the Galleon he handed Tom. Tom turns it over and stares when he sees Grindelwald’s symbol etched into the coin.
No, wait, that’s also the symbol of the Deathly Hallows. Tom remembers that from a book he read last year.
“If I ever come back through the Veil,” Evans says, “that coin will heat up. I’d like to see you again.”
He moves towards the door, and Tom is utterly certain that when he walks through it, that will be it. “Sir?” he calls.
Evans glances over his shoulder. He has his odd wand, the one carved with berries, in his hand.
“Thank you.”
Evans smiles at him and flicks a kind of odd salute with three fingers. Then he glides through the door and is gone.
Tom stands there thoughtfully studying the Galleon. Becoming Minister for Magic and securing the Department of Mysteries is important for the reasons he told Lestrange. The Minister will have access to the latest research done by the Unspeakables, which might include means of immortality that won’t damage Tom’s mind and soul as he now realizes that Horcruxes would.
But it also means that he will have access to the research on the Veil of Death.
Someday, Tom vows to himself, no matter how many years it takes him to become Minister, he will see Henry Evans again.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/1072786.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Gen
Content Notes: AU in Tom’s fifth year, angst, dimension travel, Harry as Master of Death, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4400
Summary: AU. Tom didn’t know whose idea it was that a mysterious man who had walked out of the Veil of Death should be the guest lecturer for Defense Against the Dark Arts while Professor Merrythought dealt with some kind of magical emergency, but he could thank them. And curse them. Henry Evans changes Tom’s life.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year.
Powerful Men
“He couldn’t really have walked out of the Veil of Death. I mean, not really.”
Tom says nothing, but listens to the bickering behind him as they walk to Defense Against the Dark Arts. In truth, he’s reserving judgment himself until he sees what the mysterious stranger can actually do.
But Abraxas, precisely because he’s a Malfoy and a pure-blood and the last name of this “guest lecturer” proclaims that he’s not a pure-blood, has already made up his mind. In a snotty tone, he’s discussing how there’s probably no such thing as the Veil of Death, that the Unspeakables would never release their secrets in such a way.
“Don’t think I don’t hear you snickering back there, Lestrange. I say they wouldn’t.”
“And I’m sure they always do exactly what Abraxas Malfoy tells them to,” Rex Lestrange says, making Tom’s lips tremble a little with a hint of a smile. Lestrange is too much of an upstart for his tastes, but he can be an amusing one.
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“That’s an admonition you could do with some obedience to yourself, Malfoy.”
The Slytherins come to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom that way, and enter it. Tom looks around without much interest. The new lecturer doesn’t appear to have made his mark on the classroom yet. It looks exactly the way it usually does when Professor Merrythought is teaching, with shrouded mirrors on the walls that can show them illusions of Dark creatures and landscapes where they’re found, and old maps that demonstrate the location of ancient battles.
Tom sits down in the front, and he hears the other Slytherins arrange themselves behind him. The Gryffindors walk through the door a few minutes later. Tom ignores them. There is only one really good duelist of note in that bunch, Charlus Potter, and he’s learned not to challenge Tom.
Tom is reliving the victory when the door opens again, and the most powerful man he’s ever seen strides in.
It’s not that the man wears his magic swirling around him like a cloak; some people do that, but it’s considered crass in pure-blood society. It’s not the way that the whole class falls silent at the sight of him. Tom could do that if he wanted to, and even the Gryffindors would obey him without being sure why.
It’s the way the man strides, his head up and his green eyes coolly surveying the far corners of the room. It’s the way that he turns around when he’s near the desk and folds his arms so that his muscles bunch against his sleeves. It’s the confidence he projects, so quiet and heady that even Abraxas doesn’t try to challenge him.
“Good morning,” the man says, his voice like distant thunder. “My name is Henry Evans, and your Defense professor has asked me to fill in for her while she deals with a human Transfiguration that didn’t go as well as she’d hoped. Yes, Mr. Malfoy?”
The man’s recognition of Abraxas’s last name appears to have given him confidence, and Abraxas drops his hand and sneers. “Why should we listen to you? I don’t recognize your last name. I don’t know where you trained. Professor Merrythought is at least an experienced teacher.”
Tom wants to shake his head. Abraxas is stupid for not having recognized what Tom has already. Well, either that, or he didn’t sense it at all.
Tom wouldn’t be surprised about either. Blood prejudice is a useful tool for him to wield, but he doesn’t subscribe to it.
Evans only raises his eyebrows a little. “Have you ever fought a basilisk, Mr. Malfoy?”
“What?” Abraxas turns pale, which, given his coloring, is quite an achievement. “Of course not!”
“Well, then, a dragon. Perhaps you’ve outflown a dragon on your broom?” Evans remains leaning back, an easy posture, as though he has the absolute right to ask these questions. Tom smiles slightly. He approves. “Or used a Patronus to repel dozens of Dementors? Or faced down a powerful Dark wizard and thrown off his Imperius Curse? Come, come, none of these achievements are at all strange to me.”
“Of course I haven’t! I’m only fifteen!”
“Then I’ll thank you not to judge me or ask about my schooling, Mr. Malfoy.” Evans stands up, a graceful, flowing motion that makes Tom ache a little, and looks around the room. “I have done all of those things and more. I did them young. I’ve done more of them since then.” He rolls his shoulders. “I’m still alive. There were times that I doubted I would be, but I made it past the danger.” He tilts his head. “That gives me an advantage over almost everyone here.”
“Almost everyone?” Tom decides to ask. Evans locks eyes with him, and Tom loses his breath at the dark knowledge that’s glinting there.
“There might be people here who have struggled against the kind of internal darkness that grants its own victory. The kind that tells them they can be nothing, do nothing, but have to surrender and do as other people command. The kind that fills their hearts with dreams of revenge until they eat their hearts. The kind that drives them to foolish displays of bravado and makes them tread paths of Dark magic too young.”
Evans’s voice is low and compelling. Tom can only say that he’s survived the first of those, but abruptly he longs to have passed the other tests, too. He longs to have seen the dangers that Evans mentioned.
He wants Evans to be proud of him.
That makes Tom lean back in his desk and try to put some distance between him and this dangerous man. Why is he thinking things like that? Since he realized he was better than the other children at the orphanage, he hasn’t allowed anyone to influence him. He’s taken his place as a leader, someone other people defer to. Even Dumbledore, who suspects him of dark designs, pays his own kind of deference to Tom’s intelligence, treating him more like an equal opponent than a student.
But now, seeing the way that Evans has taken command of the classroom, Tom knows that he was fooling himself. He rules by fear and intimidation. Evans rules by words alone, and by the sheer and certain knowledge he’s projecting that he’s faced challenges everyone else in this classroom has never even seen.
Faced them, and mastered them.
Tom wants to rule like that. He wants to walk into a room and collect everyone’s eyes and have them respond to him. Abraxas is leaning forwards now, rapt. Rex Lestrange’s eyes are brilliant. The Gryffindors almost have their mouths hanging open.
Evans smiles a little and says, “I don’t expect you to have all faced those tests and passed them yet. But one thing I can do is ease the path, so that you pass them when you encounter them.” He turns and snaps his wand towards the board that Professor Merrythought uses for lecture notes. It turns opaque now, though, like the inside of a scrying globe in Divination, and blue clouds scroll across a silver sky.
“For example,” Evans murmurs, and Tom reaches instinctively for quill and parchment, “you may have heard that Dark Arts corrupt people and are so addictive that no one can use them for long and live. But theory is not the same as living experience. I have spells that can allow you to feel the corruption, without risking it yourselves…”
*
“Professor Evans, sir.”
“Yes, Mr. Riddle?” Evans glances up at Tom, utterly relaxed. Tom doesn’t know many professors like that. Dumbledore is suspicious of him, and the others are always radiating some kind of engagement, if only because Tom is one of the few students who speaks up in their classes of his own free will.
Tom studies the stance of the man for a minute-the slouch against the desk, the folded arms, the slight half-smile-and then decides that posture has little to do with it. He could do that all day and never command a tenth of the attention Evans does. He has other lessons to learn from him.
“I was wondering where you were before you walked out of the Veil of Death.”
Evans tilts his head. “Such a dramatic name. Do you know why they call it that?”
“No, sir.” Tom wants an answer to his question-a man like this cannot have sprung from nowhere-but he’s also curious to see what Evans might choose to ramble on to a student about.
“They believe that you can hear the voices of the dead through the Veil.” Evans’s eyes are bright with interest and amusement in a way that makes Tom lean closer. “They also believe it might be a portal to the land of the dead. So, Mr. Riddle. Where do you think I came from?”
Tom studies him hard for a long moment. Not that that gets him any closer to an answer. Evans’s features don’t correspond to those of any well-known pure-blood family, though that might be simply because they’re so stamped with himself. And Tom doesn’t ascribe power to blood status, in any case.
Tom finally shrugs and says, “I think you came from the experiences that you told us about. Outflying a dragon on your broom and defeating a basilisk.” He can’t help the reverence in his voice at that. “How did you do that?”
“With a sword, and an ally, and a lot of luck.” Evans has a deeper smile now, one that would make Tom preen if he wasn’t sure he would lose the man if he did that. “You’re exactly right, Mr. Riddle. The first one in a long time who has been. Where I came from isn’t a matter of blood or place. It’s the experiences that shaped me.”
Tom nods slowly. “But it still means that you had to start in another world, doesn’t it, sir? Since I would have heard of you if you were here.”
“Achievements can be kept more quiet than you think, Mr. Riddle.” For a moment, Evans’s eyes pierce him, and Tom flushes despite himself. He would have heard of Tom’s reputation, spread by rumors that now seem to Tom as crass a way of advertising his power as having his magic swirling around him.
“But I’m right?” Tom asks, when a few moments pass and Evans has stood there in silence.
“You are.” Evans takes his wand from his pocket and studies it as though it holds the answers. He doesn’t say anything else, though, and Tom has to press, although he wishes he didn’t have to. He should be able to make someone else desire to answer with casual gestures, the way Evans does.
It’s going to take changing himself, and he’s smart enough to realize that.
Tom takes a deep breath and focuses on Evans. “Why did you come here?”
“This isn’t the first world I’ve been in.” Evans keeps his eyes focused on the wand in his hand, frowning as though it’s the key to a puzzle. Tom takes a look, too, but other than a few random carvings of berries on the wand’s handle, he can’t say that it stands out to him.
Then Evans lifts his head, and Tom flails backwards to grip a desk behind him, even as he despises himself for his weakness. Evans’s eyes look as if they’ve turned into green glass over a deep and burning fire. Tom has never seen that happen before, and he can’t hold the gaze for long. He lowers his head and whispers, “Did you come to kill me?”
There’s a long silence that passes overhead like a wash of heated air, and then Evans shakes his head and says, gently, “No. To keep someone else from having to kill you in the future, perhaps.”
Tom swallows through a desiccated throat. It’s no surprise, none at all, that Evans probably knows about his plans for immortality. “Is that-is that what you had to do, once?”
Evans blinks at him, and his eyes have returned to human normal, or at least the normal, calm, powerful gaze that first made Tom want to imitate him. “Very good. You’re the first version of yourself who’s guessed that.”
“How many versions of me have you met?”
“I’ve lost count.”
Tom has to look away again, this time from the desperate emptiness in Evans’s face. “I-how many more do you have to meet before it’s done? Whatever task you’ve been set?”
“As many more Riddles as there are worlds.” Evans glances at him, and his eyes have gone empty and his face high and proud and remote again. “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if a number would make any difference.” He shakes his head and tucks his wand into his pocket, and shrugs his shoulders. “Only death knows.”
Tom stares. Evans has resumed the cloak of true power that he carries around with him at all times as if he never took it off. He gives Tom an absent smile and gathers up the stack of essays that were due today, and wanders off.
He can make idle gestures like that, and wander off, because he has the strength that Tom knows he has glimpsed only the tail of.
It makes Tom burn, for the first time he can remember, with something other than bitterness or anger or envy or desire. It’s not until he goes back to the bathroom in the Slytherin dorms and stares at his face in the mirror that he recognizes it.
Wonder.
*
“Ah, Mr. Riddle, I wondered if I could speak to you after class?”
Tom smiles up at Dumbledore, putting less force behind it than he usually does. He’s accepted, since Professor Evans began lecturing for Merrythought, that he won’t ever get Dumbledore to like him, and that doesn’t matter so much. “Of course, sir.”
Dumbledore gives him a calculating stare before he sweeps away. Once that stare would have unnerved Tom. Now he just accepts, with a faint shrug, that he can’t charm everyone, and turns to check on the progress of his Transfiguration. Yes, the pigeon has turned into a plaster duck.
“What do you think old Albus wants?” Abraxas whispers. He’s only ever this disrespectful when Dumbledore can’t hear him. Funny, but that’s something Tom never noticed before Evans, either. Then, he had only gloried in the thought that he could inspire one of the best students to be disrespectful to the old fool.
“I suppose I’ll find out,” Tom says, and then taps his wand against the pigeon’s wing and adds a few ripples in the plaster.
Dumbledore is smiling when Tom comes up to his desk at the end of class, but then, he almost always is. Tom waits, his hands folded patiently in front of him. It’s not a gesture that he adopted from Evans, but the attitude is. Before, he always harbored secret impatience while he tried to look the picture of innocence, because all he could think was that Dumbledore despised him no matter what he did and he wouldn’t come out of this conversation any better, either.
Now, he knows it doesn’t matter if Dumbledore despises him, any more than it does to Evans if some of the pure-blood students still despise him because of his last name. They have what they want, what they need, without that.
“I noticed that you had been behaving more-efficiently lately, Mr. Riddle.”
Tom has no idea what that means, and the familiar irritation tries to stir in him. But he thinks of the way that Evans has traveled to more than a hundred worlds, to countless worlds, and met different versions of Tom. There must be versions of Dumbledore there, too, he thinks.
Dumbledore has no idea that that vast span of worlds exists. If he did, he wouldn’t be cornering Tom about something this small and petty.
“I think that Professor Evans has had a positive impact on me, sir,” Tom offers, because, small and petty or not, he’s not above trying to get more respect for Evans if he can.
Dumbledore’s gaze sharpens at once. “I wonder, Tom, if Mr. Evans is aware of your extracurricular activities?”
“If you mean the small Defense group that I’ve started, sir, then yes. He was the one who suggested it.”
“Teaching in the classroom has always sufficed for Defense, Tom. After all, Professor Merrythought is an excellent teacher.”
“She is,” Tom agrees, “but one person can only teach us so much, sir. And Professor Merrythought isn’t set to come back until after the Christmas holidays. I wanted to be sure that my friends and I didn’t fall behind.”
“I noticed that you don’t count Gryffindors among your friends, Tom.”
“Well, I thought you had told them I wasn’t to be trusted, sir. It doesn’t surprise me that none of them have asked to join my club.”
Dumbledore looks stunned. Tom has difficulty keeping his face still. Naming hidden things out in the open like this and actually confronting the professor’s dislike of him is wonderful. He can’t remember now why he thought sneaking around and sneering and confining everything to little hints was the best way to do it.
Well, because those traits had seemed more Slytherin. But if Evans has taught him anything, it’s that appearances don’t matter as much as realities, and he should only use techniques and tactics that work. If bluntness and courage do, then it doesn’t matter which House they’re associated with.
“Now,” Dumbledore says, and clears his throat. “I never said such words, Tom.”
“Oh, professor, you might not have said it in those exact words, but I know you dislike and distrust me,” Tom murmurs. “And I haven’t gone out of my way to discourage you from thinking like that. It was important to me to act like the perfect Slytherin, given whose blood I carry.”
It’s the first time that has ever been acknowledged between them since Tom told the man that he could speak to snakes in the orphanage. He gets a long glance full of the same kind of wonder that Tom saw in the mirror after his first real talk with Evans.
“I would not have to distrust and dislike you if you would admit that you are using disgraceful tactics,” Dumbledore says.
Tom feels the flickers of a grin playing around the edges of his mouth. He shakes his head a little. “That’s also not true, Professor. You would dislike me because of my House, or because I’m not as moral as you thought someone reared by Muggles in an orphanage should be.” He shrugs. “But I’m not interested in taking over the world the way you thought I was. Not anymore.”
“I find it hard to believe that you have changed your mind.”
“It is hard to believe,” Tom agrees. “Can I go, sir?”
Despite a few more sentences that are evidently meant to try and crack the mask Dumbledore no doubt believes Tom to be wearing, in the end he gets a dismissal. Tom walks away from the confrontation with a bounce in his step that has never been there after he was done speaking to Dumbledore.
He won. And all he had to do was alter his tactics and speak the truth.
Tom can’t believe how much Evans has changed his life.
*
“Are you saying that we should admit Mudbloods to our ranks, my lord?”
Tom smiles at Lestrange. Not even he has as much power to annoy Tom as he used to, speaking up with that incredulous tone in his voice in the middle of one of their “informal” meetings. “No, Lestrange. It wouldn’t make much sense for the Knights of Walpurgis to have them.”
Lestrange smiles, relief rising from him like steam. “Then you think-”
“I think that we need more support than merely the Knights of Walpurgis,” Tom counters smoothly. “After all, when I am elected Minister, I will need more than the votes of the most prestigious families, as important as those are.”
Lestrange stares hard at Tom. They are the last of the Knights, lingering in the darkened room where the meeting was held. “You intend to go a purely political route, my lord?”
“Not only political,” Tom says, and shrugs. One thing he has learned from observing Evans is how to make self-deprecating movements look elegant and revealing. “There are secrets in the Ministry that only the Minister has access to, however.”
“The Department of Mysteries.” Lestrange looks stunned. Tom would have felt impatient with the boy for never thinking of that only a few weeks ago, but now, he experiences the pleasure of leading someone else to a conclusion.
“Exactly. I can learn esoteric secrets there that I can get nowhere else. How to bend minds, entice souls, and establish my authority-and of course the authority of those who follow me-forever.”
Lestrange is watching him with worshipful eyes now. Tom continues to smile, but he does feel a tingle of weariness. It’s so easy to enslave those who would rather follow him than think for themselves.
It makes him look forward to seeing Professor Evans tomorrow, whom at least no one will ever dismiss as a follower.
*
“This will be the last class that I teach for you.”
Tom’s head snaps up the minute Evans says that. He’s standing near the front of the classroom with a calm expression on his face, but his eyes are deep and burning, so like the clear green he confronted Tom with that Tom is surprised no one else sees it.
Then again, he never thought much of the intelligence of his yearmates.
“Professor Merrythought recovered from the human Transfiguration faster than she was expected to,” Evans continues, as if it’s an ordinary day and not the last one. “St. Mungo’s brought in a special Healer for her. So she can return next week.”
Tom tries to swallow through a dry throat. A month ago, when Evans first came, he would have rejoiced at the announcement. Better to have a professor that he knew he could bend around his little finger during his OWL year than a risky stranger.
But right now, all he can think of is how he would rather that Evans-stay.
*
“You’re leaving?”
Evans smiles at him, flicking his fingers back and forth as he walks a Galleon across his hand. It was a trick he showed them today. Tom wonders how many of the others realized that Evans was using sleight of hand and not wandless magic, as he told them he was. It’s another lesson in the importance of observation and battle-readiness.
Tom desperately doesn’t want it to be the last one, but Evans nods and says, “Yes, I am,” and then snaps the Galleon into the air with two of his fingers. He catches it as it falls and presents it to Tom. “For you.”
Tom takes it absently, still struggling to say what he wants without looking weak. “I thought-I thought you would stay longer. That was what you said.”
“It’s actually because of you that I’m leaving early.”
Tom flinches, but Evans shakes his head, and it’s somehow impossible to disbelieve him with the softness of the smile on his face. “Nothing like that, Tom. I mean that you’ve come to the realizations that I needed you to come to so that the future will be a better one. I expected it to take much longer. It has, in some worlds. But you’re smarter than some of your counterparts.”
Tom feels himself simultaneously bask in the praise and ache in the hollowness of loss. It’s an odd feeling. He whispers, “You were here only for that?”
“Yes. I have other worlds that need me.” Evans touches the center of his chest. “I can feel it yanking me on. I’ll go back through the Veil and on to somewhere else, another place where I can prevent war.”
“Will you-do you receive any reward for what you do?”
“That of knowing that other worlds won’t suffer the way mine did.” Evans hesitates. “And for every world that I manage to rescue, I get to spend an hour in the Veil in the presence of my dead.”
Tom says nothing. For a moment, he saw longing so naked in Evans’s eyes that it makes him look away. Had anyone else said that to him, Tom would have smiled nicely while thinking how pathetic it was to mourn people. But he is incapable of thinking Evans weak.
“Will it end someday?” Tom asks.
“I don’t know.” Evans has an expression too complex for weariness in his eyes. “Perhaps.”
“Will I-will I ever see you again?”
“I doubt it very much, Tom.” Evans’s voice is gentle, but he nods to the Galleon he handed Tom. Tom turns it over and stares when he sees Grindelwald’s symbol etched into the coin.
No, wait, that’s also the symbol of the Deathly Hallows. Tom remembers that from a book he read last year.
“If I ever come back through the Veil,” Evans says, “that coin will heat up. I’d like to see you again.”
He moves towards the door, and Tom is utterly certain that when he walks through it, that will be it. “Sir?” he calls.
Evans glances over his shoulder. He has his odd wand, the one carved with berries, in his hand.
“Thank you.”
Evans smiles at him and flicks a kind of odd salute with three fingers. Then he glides through the door and is gone.
Tom stands there thoughtfully studying the Galleon. Becoming Minister for Magic and securing the Department of Mysteries is important for the reasons he told Lestrange. The Minister will have access to the latest research done by the Unspeakables, which might include means of immortality that won’t damage Tom’s mind and soul as he now realizes that Horcruxes would.
But it also means that he will have access to the research on the Veil of Death.
Someday, Tom vows to himself, no matter how many years it takes him to become Minister, he will see Henry Evans again.
The End.
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