#once I'm back on my dragon agenda it's on

[cinnamon-flame]

Practice drawings of birds other than pigeons this time - I adore jackdaws so so much. I based this mostly on my own pictures (except the hooded crow, which was sent by a friend 🌺) I've had rough time with anatomy (especially the heads and the tail regions) but I guess it will come with practice eventually.

[fatesundress]

⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader

summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.

tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people

note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡

word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)

You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine. 

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones. 

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary. 

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly. 

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile? 

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up. 

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about? 

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers. 

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession. 

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary. 

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure? 

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning. 

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with. 

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge. 

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books. 

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls. 

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin. 

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated. 

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again. 

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now. 

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice. 

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all.  You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else. 

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them. 

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten. 

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.) 

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true. 

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer. 

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t. 

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid. 

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless. 

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately. 

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end. 

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight. 

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes. 

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand. 

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain,  a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him. 

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love. 

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock. 

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly. 

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it. 

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.) 

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish. 

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same. 

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much. 

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition. 

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal. 

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it. 

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —” 

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor. 

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident. 

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be. 

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop. 

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece. 

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that." 

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval. 

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will." 

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis. 

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain. 

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.” 

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back. 

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake." 

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster. 

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating. 

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself. 

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh. 

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes. 

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you. 

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

[ride-thedragon]

HOTD Costume Continuity.

This is my favourite inconsistency in the show. Nothing makes less sense and it's my favourite thing.

So this show is notorious for strange costuming. Whether that be mischaracterisations or tying character outfits to relationships rather than have it be a representation of the characters, it's frustrating as a fun having theorist but incredible as someone who loves costumes.

Typically in productions they'd have someone track the continuity of the costumes to ensure these inconsistencies don't occur but because house of the dragon is a money laundering scheme (a joke, don't sue me), they didn't have one or that person was really bad at their job.

Examples:

1. Alicent with 2 kids in 5 years.

This is one of the better examples because they keep the dress and the accessories, but they do change her hair. To signal the length of time, the first one is her marriage announcement. By the second one, Aegon and Helaena are already born.

2. Jace and Luke have a style.

This one is incredibly funny because they have two sets of actors for the same characters in the same outfit. They made the same outfit twice for younger and older variations of the characters. Also, I don't know why they had to be this matchy matchy. Joff could not care less about their agenda, my sweet prince.

3. Corlys,I'm sorry

They had this man in the same doublet and belt combination for 20 years. Daemon was still heir, and Rhaenyra was crowned Queen in the time they kept Corlys in this outfit. The richest man in Westeros.

4. Alicent again.

This one is less funny, They had her change her outfit to have dinner, then change her outfit to meet with the council and Rhaenys to change back into the same outfit to crown Aegon.

Changing course to the days at a time arguement.

1. Alicent 1.

That's her speaking to her father before he departs, speaking to Larys in the garden and confronting Rhaenyra in the garden after the day. The styling stays exactly the same, unfortunately.

2. Alicent 2.

They have her in this outfit for days. Even after the tourney.

3. Rhaenyra 1 and 2.

Now the 1st one is a 6 year time jump, and the second is 5, but my issue is why would Rhaenyra at 14 wear the same dress as Rhaenyra at 19. Also, the red dress happens back to back episode wise.

4. Rhaena and Helaena.

I'll say that Baela might be their favourite young girl because she never wears an outfit more than once a day. Rhaena and Helaena do, though.

So they do it a lot. These aren't all the examples, I just refuse to focus on men and think that this is funny.

[medschoolash]

My two cents on Daemon and Rhaenyra's Sexual encounter

I'm nobody but I have a lot of thoughts about what went down between daemon and rhaenyra and the motives on Daemon's end so I'm just gonna put it all down here because why not.

So I've come to the conclusion that Daemon's actions are not abusive (contrary to what the creators said), not about a quest for the throne, and not completely without malicious intent.

I think to truly understand it all and how it fits into the story you have to understand a few key things:

Daemon has psychogenic erectile dysfunction ( more on that later)

Daemon has an unending desire to upset Viscerys but he actually does love him

Daemon cares about Rhaenyra deeply and always has

Daemon is sexually attracted to Rhaenyra

Daemon is impulsive and manipulative but he's not a complete idiot

When you combine all of those character points for Daemon his behavior this episode makes a lot more sense to me.

(if you know me from other fandoms you know I'm long winded so proceed at your own discretion lol )

Let's go back to the very beginning of the episode. Daemon returns from the stepstones. He's now a war hero. He's known as the dragon that conquered the narrow sea and saved the realm a headache. This is the most praise and adoration he's gotten in a long time. He makes a show of giving up his crown to Viscerys and pledging fealty to him once again and he smugly looks at otto when he's embraced by his brother again.

To me this is important because I believe Daemon's actions here are genuine at that moment. The creators said in this scene Daemon seems like a changed man to the audience which I can see on casual viewing BUT is he truly a changed man? The narrative proved that to be a huge no and really that was the only conclusion when none of his actual gripes with Viscerys have been resolved. Plus what's so different about Daemon now? When has Daemon ever not supported Viscerys's claim as king? When has he ever publically done anything but swear loyalty to his brother since he was crowned (no comment on dead baby aegon, he got no love from daemon lol). Nothing about it truly screams Daemon is changed so why does he do it? My opinion is that it shows he didn't actually go there to be duplicitous. He didn't return pretending to be someone he's not to deceive everybody. That's important in the bigger picture.

So Daemon hasn't changed BUT something has in fact changed in King's Landing. Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra is happy he's back. She actually follows him in the throne room. She wants to see him. In the garden, she approaches him first with the giddy but tries to play it cool presence of someone with a huge crush. She is starry-eyed in his presence and is eager to engage with him. Daemon looks at her walk away in the garden. His eyes are on her in part because he's curious (he noticed her stiff interactions with her father) and because it's the first time he's seen her in years and she's a woman now but he doesn't follow her. I think they deliberately showed us that in most ways that matter before the sexual encounter Rhaenyra is the chaser, not Daemon. That matters. Later Rhaenyra finds him again and he's soaking in the air in KL, another indicator that Daemon is possibly relieved to be home and is not here to cause chaos. Rhaenyra even straight up asks him why he's there because she knows him, she knows he likes to play games with her father so there has to be an agenda but is there? He says the comfort of home. I personally don't think there is one on his mind at that moment. The key part is he acknowledges her maturation for the first time and he discusses it in the context of physical appeal. She's blossomed into a beautiful young woman entering the stage of courtship. He notices. She realizes he notices.

They've always had a bond. She's always had a special hold over him and she's always looked at him like he hangs the moon but it was never something with any real clarity for Rhaenyra and never something that Daemon would ever acknowledge or act on but that's changed it has been 4 years. She's at least 18 now. She's at the stage of life where romance and sexual curiosity makes a bit more sense now even if she's still unsure about how to navigate that as a woman in westeros. So yeah It's different between them. Rhaenyra has changed and most of all they are both curious about what this tension is between them and how far it can go.

Before I move on to my next point I want to make sure I'm not misinterpreted here. I'm not saying Daemon has been creeping on her this whole time just counting the days until she's of age. I don't think he's ever said to himself "when she's 18 I'm totally gonna have sex with her". I don't think he has the thought to go there sexually with her until the moment he actually sees her again after she's matured.

That brings me to their one-on-one in the garden. This is an important part because I feel like Daemon's intentions after this conversation can make his actions somewhat within reason or absolutely horrible. Rhaenyra is very candid with him about her frustrations with having to marry. She feels like a broodmare with no sexual autonomy at all, just a pawn to be sold to the highest bidder for the use of her womb and her title. She feels like no one cares about what she wants, what she wants to do with her body. She's so averse to the idea that would prefer to live a life completely alone over having to marry and have all of her stripped away for duty. Daemon tries to assure her that all is not lost for her. Yes, it's a political contract but he basically tells her she does have power and autonomy within the confines of a marriage. She can do whatever she wants. She can control what does and doesn't happens to her. Having this power is clearly important to her. He also genuinely tries to alleviate her fears about having the same fate as her mother. He was there, he knows her grief and pain. She wants to take that trauma and become a recluse. He doesn't want her to fear a fate she can not truly control because it prevents her from ever experiencing the better parts of life. Solitude is lonely. He himself is married and he's still lonely. He doesn't want that for her. We can say it's familial affection or something even more but the key is I do not think that any part of this conversation, especially the last part, is a manipulative game to him. He's comforting her and trying to guide her in the right direction for her own good just as he's done several times before.

So this is the entire lead-up to their night out and sexual encounter. What part of this feels well planned? what part of this feels like a scheme or anything but a simmering curiosity and moment of honesty between two people who up to this point have only had a familial connection? The answer is none of it feels like a well-planned manipulation, not even in retrospect and it doesn't feel that way because in my opinion, it wasn't.

The first moment you can make a real argument that Daemon has done some plotting is when she arrives in her room and finds the clothing and the note. But even then the question becomes what exactly did he plan and why did he plan it? The more cynical perspectives floating around suggest that everything was daemon manipulating Rhaenyra to open her up to the night on the town, then he planted the clothes and the note to lure her away with the full intention of ruining her reputation for his own ploy for power. To me, this falls apart very quickly as an explanation despite what the creators implied (I'll get to that in a second).

As mentioned above hours ago they had a conversation where Daemon tries to tell Rhaenyra there is a lot more to the world she can enjoy versus resigning herself to solitude and misery. The truth of the matter is Rhaenyra is very green. She has been sheltered in the red keep her whole life. Her mother died at a crucial age. She has had no one to guide her through the confusing developmental aspects of adolescence. Daemon sees his role as a guide to help her reach a new level of understanding of the many forms of sexual expression and freedom that will ultimately liberate her from the confines of her gender and her station that she's been desperately fighting against this whole time. But why does he want to do this? Does he want to do it because her sexual awakening can be used as a tool to rise to power or does he do it because he actually cares about her and want her to actually feel empowered in this important way and he can conveniently also explore his sexual desire for her as well?

This is the most important question to ask in this entire analysis but this is also where the waters truly get murky making it difficult to answer the question. To me the most obvious answer is the latter but this is seemingly contradicted by the creators and by Daemon himself. I would like to argue that it actually wasn't.

Up until the point, he enters the brothel with her Daemon has been a comforting source of familiarity to Rhaenyra. He has shared vulnerable conversations with her. He tenderly held her hand at every moment and took her through the city watching her in amazement as she saw things she's never seen before. He has allowed all of this to go on while maintaining anonymity, which is crucial because it gives her freedom she otherwise would not have had. At no point did he ever come off as if he wanted to coerce her into something, he or was guiding her in a certain direction for a plan. It all seemed spontaneous and about exploration and most importantly they did as much as she wanted them to do. He is fascinated by her curiosity. He is enamored with her enthusiasm. Why behave like this if this was all a power play? if it was because he really really wanted to manipulate her then why would he stoop so low to hurt someone he clearly cares about for a throne he has never actually said he wants?

I've seen several takes that try to connect him taking her disguise off when his plan to expose her but even that falls apart quickly. He doesn't do it until they are deep into the brothel where they are less likely to be discovered. He also takes his own disguise off exposing himself. If he wanted to ruin her reputation all he needed to ensure was that she was seen in a brothel with someone. Making that someone actually him actually works against him in a long game. Even Viscerys points this out later with alicent. There was a small chance that daemon would be able to say "whoops I slept with her she's ruined not I have to be heir" or "whoops I slept with her and she's ruined not we have to marry" but remember my bullet points?Daemon is impulsive and manipulative but he's not a complete idiot. The much more likely outcome was enraging Viscerys who he has only been on solid footing with viscerys for a few hours, not even a whole day. Enraging viscerys would get him absolutely nothing. The only thing he gains is hurting Rhaenyra and Daemon cares deeply for Rhaenyra so it wouldn't be in character. Like I said even Viscerys acknowledges this and he's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

So if he gains nothing why is he doing this? How is this a power play for him and a power play he would be willing to engage in at the great expense of the only person he seems to actually care about? Maybe he just doesn't actually care about her that way. Maybe his care is not outweighed by his lack of morals and boundaries or maybe it's none of the above. Maybe there is a much simpler explanation for this entire ordeal.

I believe Daemon fully intended to push her sexual boundaries once they were in the brothel but I do not think his desire was to see her exposed while in that brothel to ruin her. I think he was just caught up in his own sexual desire for her and thrilled by the prospect of her liberation so he was callous about the entire thing and didn't care if she would be exposed because there is no real harm that can come. I don't even think he consciously thought about her being exposed in the moment but once presented with the issue it's never was a big deal to him. He even outright says this to viscerys. People whore, sure not women but Targaryens do. They are the blood of old valyria, they are dragon riders and rulers of the realm. They are above everyday conventions in society. They bed family members because they can. They whore because they can. They start wars because they can. The world is theirs for conquering and every aspect can be bent according to their will, including the truth and the truth is whatever viscerys says the truth is. Viscerys can decree his daughter is a maiden and whoever disputes it is treasonous and no one can defy him because well they have dragons. So no It was not calculated, it was just callous which fits into Daemon's personality perfectly and the difference between those two things is important when you're trying to put his actions into context. Also, if Daemon's plan was in fact to use Rhaenyra to gain power why did he even tell Viscerys he can just make it go away before the idea of a marriage even comes up? See the math isn't mathing.

This brings me to the most controversial part of their sexual encounter but the part that I think it the most fascinating. When Rhaenyra asks what is this place Daemon tells her it's where people come to take what they want. This is important for her because she's never seen sex as something that she can take for herself or as an act where she has power but Daemon takes her to a place where she can. Where they both can. This tells you that this experience is meant to be empowering for both of them but especially Rhaenyra. Being there empowers Daemon to cross a boundary he had not crossed before. He gets to take Rhaenyra. Being there for Rhaenyra empowers her to take control of her sexual expression and seek control, seek pleasure, seek passion, seek something that's purely about want and need and about nothing else. He outright tells her that this is what sex is for men AND women. This directly contradicts the idea that Daemon cares nothing about her awakening and it's a plot.

You could argue he says these things to manipulate her into an act but why chose a form of manipulation that plays into her gaining the most instead of him? A sexually empowered Rhaenyra can navigate her duty much more effectively than before. She can make smarter decisions and stop the tantrums that are holding her back. A sexually empowered Rhaenyra that is bold and unafraid and enlightened can form alliances that will strengthen her claim to the throne. We actually see this happen by the end of the episode when she agrees to marry Laenor without dispute and forces Viscerys to get rid of Otto as his hands. This Rhaenyra does not serve a Daemon who only wants to control her and use her for power, it does the exact opposite.

let's look at how the acts even take place for some ideas about his motives. He doesn't try to overwhelm her. He doesn't hungrily attack her even though he is hungry for her. He also doesn't dominate her completely. She's as into it as he is. She doesn't move a pace beyond where she is comfortable. He doesn't rush her and aggressively try to get into to submit to him. He doesn't overwhelm her with pleasure he gradually builds her up and lets her chase it. They passionately but tenderly kiss. He caresses her hair and her body. She pulls him close for more and doesn't shy away from her. Yes he's the one who turns her and moves towards the wall but she walks with him keeping up with her pace perfectly. Even when she is pushed against the wall she is excited and challenges him, she's not overpowered. He doesn't yank her clothing off he sensually exposures her. One of the best moments was when he takes her pants off. SHE ACTUALLY HELPS HIM DO IT. Her hands move to remove her own clothing and they actually do it together. He does not flinch when she initially changes position, it's AFTER that he pulls back. He's still into it when she turns and kisses him and nothing about the power dynamics in that kiss changed from their previous kisses.

This is the entire reason I don't agree that Daemon ends their encounter because he no longer had control of the sex act which is what pretty much everybody thinks the creators mean when they speak on this part and why he ended it. Is he shocked that's shes so responsive? Yes but I don't think that shock has a negative impact on the moment because he never actually had complete control of the sex act and he wanted her to feel powerful. That was never the point to begin with. Rhaenyra is supposed to take control of her sexual encounter, she's supposed to be an equal participant. She's supposed to seek pleasure and take what she wants. She's supposed to give him as good as she gets. That's the lesson. That's the whole point of the awakening. This entire thing is about empowering them both, not just him. This empowerment is important for rhaenyra for all the reasons I mentioned above and Daemon knows this. He had an entire conversation with her about this. He comforted her about her lack of all these things earlier. We even hear Rhaenyra tell alicent that her hundreds of suitors don't actually want her, they want her name and her valyrian blood. Daemon is supposed to be the exception. He intentionally wants to make himself the exception. So having Daemon have a motive of wanting to dominate her sexual encounter and being unable to do so which makes him abruptly abandon then sell her out to ruin her for a title her would make this scenario even worse than it already is because it means he wanted to completely disempower her all so that he could have a shot at the iron throne that he was never going to get. It's literally making her worst fear, the source of all of her teen angst for the last 4 episodes come to life. This interpretation colors every single one of their interactions with darkness from the very moment he has a full conversation with her this episode and gives him a level of villainy that completely takes away his nuance as a character because this act with this motivation requires selfishness and callousness towards her that crosses a line. Ultimately I just don't think this characterization well supported by the narrative and It would also make it difficult to even sell a later romance between the two of them.

So the math ain't math'n so how can we make it all add up? That's what this entire analysis boils down to based on what I've already demonstrated:

Daemon didn't set out to manipulate rhaenyra and this was not a well-plotted plan to ruin her. He wanted to initiate her sexual awakening for her own good because he cares and for his own selfish desire to have her sexually

He loves viscerys but still has resentment towards him leading to an unending desire to upset him when the opportunity presents itself. He was well aware that his actions would potentially stick a knife in Viscerys's back if he found out about it and he relished it but it was not merely a ploy to piss him off.

He did not go out of his way to ensure viscerys found out about it. He just didn't care about the consequences if Viscerys or anyone else found out. He had no connection to the spy at all. The spy was Otto doing the whole time with the help of mysaria.

He actually enjoyed her having control during the encounter, it made him desire her even more because he has always been enticed by her moments of self-assuredness. It makes him crave her instead of wanting to reject her.

The only reason he could not complete the sex act with her is because Daemon has psychogenic erectile dysfunction for reasons that are yet to be revealed.

Daemon did not pre-plan asking for Rhaenyra's hand. It happened at the moment because for the same reasons he was unable to get an erection.

If you watch the scene just before he leaves the brothel Daemon is very much still into engaging with Rhaenyra when she turns around to kiss him. As I said before he was actually relishing her show of control, not shying away from it. The problem is at the point in the encounter where she turns around he has already kissed her, caressed her body and he has already stimulated her vaginally.

(You can see his hand move from her hip further down when he has her against the wall. It was clearly meant to stimulate digital stimulation but it was purposely obscured by shadows and angles to focus on Rhaenyra's pleasure versus the actual physicality of the act)

When she turns around the next escalation in their sexual encounter is actual penetration. She wants it. He wants it....only Daemon can not get an erection. That's why he pulls away and looks at her for so long. He is hoping her desire, her look of hunger, her hair, anything will get his penis to stand up but it doesn't. She pushes to continue but he can't to he pulls away every time. He even attempts to push through it but giving in to her again but he still can't perform. That's when he finally reaches peak frustration which is both embarrassing and inconvenient so he leaves her to nurse his wound on his own. That is why he see that he ended up passing our drunk somewhere and Mysaria has to retrieve him. The control the creators were speaking about wasn't control of the power dynamics of the act, it was about control of his ability to perform aka exert his power ultimate during the acts.

Daemon has psychogenic erectile dysfunction. He had this issue before Rhaenyra since we saw him in the middle of sex with Mysaria, someone he clearly enjoys but he was unable to maintain his erection and reach a climax. That's why they even showed us that scene. Daemon is not physically impotent, he has no vascular issues preventing erection, and he has no neurologic issue preventing erection. It's purely psychologic. When he retreats from Mysaria he is clearly preoccupied with several thoughts. He is chaotic as hell but he is extremely emotional. The emotions we see most often are just petulance, anger, and resentment. His encounter with Mysaria established that when Daemon has too many emotions and thoughts in his head it interferes with his ability to sexually perform. I don't when this started but that is exactly what happens with Rhaenyra.

Daemon sexually desired Rhaenyra but I think once he started the actual act of being with her sexually he completely lost control of his emotions and his thoughts NOT the power dynamics that that's what rattles him. Maybe a little bit of guilt for attempting to have sex with his young niece in the middle of a brothel kicked in, after all until this point he has only known her as family and despite the familial history of incest he himself has never actually engaged in it before (that I know of). Maybe he feels something because Rhaenyra completely trusts him and that trust is why he's about to take her maidenhead in the middle of a brothel even though that is not how her first time should actually be. Maybe he feels an overwhelming emotional connection to her at the moment that caught him off guard because this was supposed to be about sex. It's probably all of the above really but the idea is these thoughts come up and he can not control them and because he can not control them he can not get an erection to actually do the one thing he truly set out to do which is have sex with Rhaenyra. He also can not tell her this because she has no idea what erectile dysfunction is and he can not explain it to her without being humiliated. He is supposed to be the one giving her a sexual awakening not a lesson on men with broken penises. So he leaves her there when under any other circumstances he would never do that to her.

That knowledge makes the entire puzzle come together because it gives his reaction at that moment some context that fits with the lead-up and that makes his later actions make some sense.

When he is confronted by Viscerys he straight up lies to enrage Viscerys and to cover for his own humiliation. Those are literally the only real things he can gain from telling that lie. Unbeknownst to us all and Rhaenyra, Daemon also had an awakening with Rhaenyra and that's why when the opportunity presents itself he seizes the chance to take her hand in marriage. Through his humiliation, he discovered that he desires Rhaenyra in a way that is bigger than he realized. He doesn't just want her sexually he wants her fully and completely. He wants her laugh, her childish curiosity, her determination, her ability to see right through him, her bravery, her stubbornness, her petulance, her anger, her beauty, her valyrian blood, her claim, her everything. I mean he straight up tells Viscerys he will take Rhaenyra just as she is. That was about so much more than a reputation. It firmly makes Daemon the opposite of the men Rhaenyra hates which actually fits the narrative but makes it even more interesting because Rhaenyra is unaware of all of this so it gives them so much more to explore and play with for the characters and their relationships later.

So no he didn't plot to marry her, it isn't until Viscerys himself presents him with the opportunity that he decides that's what he wants to do. It solves the problem of her reputation and gets him what he wants which is Rhaenyra and the restoration of his house to a level of glory and admiration that he feels Viscerys has sullied with his weakness. That's why I think it's important to acknowledge that Daemon was being truthful about his motivations when he says he can restore his house to glory. That is definitely a part of it. Sure it makes his intentions less pure but it makes them authentic and that's what matters the most. If this wasn't spontaneous he would have tried to end his own marriage before he even brought it up to make it more likely to happen. Instead, he never asks to end his marriage, he only suggests taking a second wife because at that brief moment where viscerys has him at knifepoint it's the only reasonable way forward. He didn't have time to actually think about a more seamless way to have her hand in marriage.

Finally, Daemon actually does accomplish his goal. Rhaenyra leaves their encounter and she feels fully empowered so much so she feels comfortable propositioning Criston for sex AND she takes the dominant position placing her own pleasure above all. Her view on sex and relationships and her own power have completely changed thanks to Daemon. This is further solidified by the fact that when her father tells her she's marrying Laenor she doesn't fight him. She will actually do her duty now because she gets what it fully means and no longer feels like she will be a prisoner in a marriage. She even feels so empowered she challenges Viscerys to get rid of Otto, a man he has been loyal to for decades AND it actually happens. Rhaenyra can now effectively navigate her future because of one intense experience with Daemon that shifts her perspective and I think that's pretty awesome for Rhaenyra and for Rhaenyra and Daemon as a pairing.

So in summary: Daemon Targaryen is a chaotic man with chaotic feelings but he is sprung on rhaenyra targaryen and he is not a cold-hearted master manipulator. Rhaenyra is now a boss bitch. Thanks, Daemon. The end lol

[running-with-the-feels]

Do please write that dragon fic (smut or not smut)!

I'm about a third of the way done, but here's an excerpt of what I've got so far:

Given the unsatisfactory end to their last fight, the adrenaline still flooding Hanzo’s system, and the nameless tension crackling between them, he sees little reason not to indulge them both before trying to get answers.

Perhaps it is reckless, but Hanzo never claimed to be a cautious man.

“If I run, are you going to chase me?” Hanzo asks, his voice breathy and rasping even to his own ears.

Wordlessly, Kuai Liang nods, his grin widening as Hanzo takes another, more deliberate step back. The sharp fangs poking out from under Kuai Liang’s lips shine in the rising sunlight and Hanzo shudders once more as he is struck with the sudden and all consuming urge to feel them buried in his neck.

He doesn’t even care that they’d probably break skin and leave a scar.

On the contrary, the thought of it is far more enticing than it really should be.

“Good,” Hanzo rumbles with a grin of his own, anticipation settling under his skin at the way Kuai Liang’s eyes light up.

Without another word, Hanzo is off, turning and running through the woods as fast as he can.

I'm planning on spreading my bottom and monsterfucker Hanzo agenda with this one

[razzithold]

Totk spoilers and speculation ramblings as I've just completed a main quest and am emotionally wrecked from it.

Zelda after her mom died when she was so young and her father Rhoam crushed her under the weight of his expectations and responsibilities finally found a mother and father figure who loved and cared about her and wanted the best for her. Sonia and Rauru did what Rhoam never could, they supported Zelda in what she wanted. And when Zelda gushed about Link, that look in Sonia's eyes and both her and Rauru's faces conveyed the intrigue and concern and doting love of two parents hearing about their daughter's clear crush on her best friend. Sonia saw Zelda as her own daughter and held so much love and warmth for her.

And then it was all too soon snatched away from them when Sonia was murdered by Ganondorf (what the fuck was that face he made tho like seriously wtf body horror alert). Zelda and Rauru had to bury the first queen of Hyrule and the first mother figure Zelda really had after the Calamity a century prior (because I absolutely think Urbosa also was a mother figure to Zelda too). The amount of grief and strife and trauma Zelda continuously goes through, the number of times she bonds with someone and they're killed or otherwise taken away from her, poor girl is Not Okay.

And Link, seeing these memories of Zelda and discovering her Fate in the distant past and having to hold that information close. He so far hasn't told anyone the truth of where Zelda went - who the fuck is going to believe him if he tells them the princess turned into a Dragon? Sure most people are willing to believe some wild claims coming from Link knowing who he is and what he deals with - Paya is quick to believe the claim that the Zelda seen across Hyrule giving strange orders is a demon king imposter. But the princess being a dragon feels like it may be a bit too far fetched even from Link.

The emotional pain Link must endure every time there's a lead on Zelda to find it's for naught, or worse, that it was a trap to try and kill him via the Yiga. The Yiga having the audacity to impersonate Zelda to get at Link must be so incredibly nerve-wracking for Link because all he wants is to find Zelda and bring her to safety and these bastards are using it against him. I wouldn't blame Link for turning evil in the way of not caring if the world burns if it means he can get Zelda back. I know the game implies the Yiga don't die and always poof away without actually dying but I know in my heart Link would kill the Yiga without mercy especially if they made the decision to impersonate Zelda or use her as bait. The Yiga are people, choosing to sew destruction, and the reformed Sheikah man in Kakariko is proof they have the capacity to be reformed, but I doubt that's at all on Link's agenda when he sees a Yiga blade master poof out of a disguise as Zelda and laughs at Link.

Master Kohga and the Yiga clan may largely be comic relief but their actions are so dark when you look beyond the slapstick and banana jokes.

And throughout it all, the real Zelda is robbed of her agency for the sake of her responsibility once again. She's so selfless that she literally gave up her sense of self and identity to save the world she knew. I'm sobbing. So is she, perpetually crying dragon.

[capsiicle]

[ Rook's Horny Shenanigans, FT. The Third Years ] : Vil Schoenheit

Contains: Vil Schoenheit/Rook Hunt, top AMAB Vil Schoenheit, bottom AFAB Rook Hunt, lots of smooches, lipstick stains, vil being the perfectionist he is, handjobs, brief blowjob, cum swallowing, making out, hickeys, brief implied asphyxiation

Note: this was kinda rushed i'm ngl. anyways, i am spreading the "rook is afab, a whore and has slept with half the school" agenda and you will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.i also have like other 5 drafts, but i also have no brain cells to continue them as of right now. repetative, like everything else i write.

Rook hummed as he watched Vil scold dorm members, biting his lip with a smile. He walked up to him, clapping his hands together with a smile. He ushered him away from the dorm members, tutting.

"Roi du Poison, do you need some stress relief?" He purred out, batting his eyelashes at the dorm head. He got a short glare before Vil grabbed his wrist and pulled him along back to his room. Rook smiled, licking his lips.

"It's always so easy to entice you, dearest. Do you like me that much?" He whispered teasingly as Vil pushed him against the wall once they got into his room. Rook opened his mouth to speak again, but was quickly interrupted by lips pressing against his own and a hand sliding up his shirt.

Rook moved his hands gently into Vil's hair, doing his best not to pull on it. As much as he wanted to pull it, wanted to ruin Vil's perfect look so he would ruin him in return, the school day wasn't over yet and the dorm head would not be happy with him.

"How's your jaw?" Vil whispered as he moved his lips to his jaw, kissing it softly as Rook's hands moved to Vil's pants, tugging on the belt with a soft moan. Rook grinded his hips slightly against the other, whining when Vil stopped his movements with a harsh grip on his hips.

"It's fine, Roi du Poison, Roi du Dragons, hng, isn't as rough as you are." Rook teased, throwing his head back with a moan as Vil bit down on his shoulder. He chuckled at the possessive streak of the dorm head, knowing he only got like this during their sessions, and it was fun to tease him about it.

"But, if you're really worried, I wouldn't mind giving you a handjob... As long as you keep leaving lipstick stains on my neck, oui?" Rook purred, slipping his hand into Vil's pants and palming his boner slowly, watching in delight as the other shivered against him. A whine escaped him as nails dragged over the scars on his chest, a sharp bite on his neck as he grabbed the outline of Vil's cock.

"Just, hurry up." Rook let out a chuckle. He loved hearing Vil grow impatient, it was so rare after all. He was usually composed and calm, to an extent, and seeing him fall apart with a few touches brought undescribable joy to the vice housewarden.

Recieving another bite, Rook pulled Vil's pants and underwear down to his thighs, wrapping his hand around the hard cock. He slowly moved his hand, using the other to gently tilt Vil's face up, kissing him again. The housewarden wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him closer, while Rook moved the hand on his jaw to his hair, tugging on it gently.

"Mhn, you should, hah, fuck me when school is over, Vil~" Rook purred as he moved his hand faster, rolling his thumb over the head. The housewarden rolled his eyes as he kissed him again, his lipstick smearing on both of them as he continued playing with Rook's chest.

"I can't, Epel has vocal lessons." Vil muttered as he littered bites and kisses along his collar. Rook shuddered as Vil thrusted into his hand, licking his lips as he nudged him gently with his shoulder. Vil grunted, and Rook laughed in his mind at how people would react to this side of him, and let the other get down on his knees.

Wrapping his hands around Vil's thigh, he opened his mouth wide and took his cock into his mouth, looking up at him through his eyelashes, purring as the other started thrusting roughly into his mouth, grabbing his hair and holding it tightly. Rook's eyes rolled back, putting his hand between his thighs and grinding down against his own palm as his housewarden fucked his throat.

Vil held him against his pelvis, Rook's body shaking as cum filled his mouth, moaning as he bobbed his head slowly, swallowing around the other. Vil pulled his head off, Rook panting heavily as he looked up at him.

"Gosh, you're so messy..." Vil cooed, wiping some cum off his chin and put his thumb in Rook's mouth. He sucked it off his finger, licking his lips before getting up, placing a kiss on Vil's lips. The man made a face and shook his head, a fond look in his eyes as he fixed his pants.

"Alright, get out, I need to fix my makeup." Rook nod his head and hummed happily as he walked out of the room. "Don't forget to clean up!"

Rook pretended not to notice the new first years staring at the state of his neck.

[lilbittymonster]

Your choice: listening to the other’s heartbeat

Aymeric lay shivering in the bed, tangled in the bed linens and Estinien's legs, with his ear pressed over his partner's chest. The slow steady drumbeat of Estinien's pulse was the only sound in the room to him. The only sound that mattered, anyway. He fervently wished his ragged breathing wasn't audible as he felt it was.

Unfortunately for him, Estinien had always been a light sleeper, and Aymeric must have made a sound or a motion that was enough to jostle him awake. After a brief confused pause, Estinien smoothed a hand up his spine.

"What's the matter?" he asked hoarsely.

Aymeric scrambled to think of an answer that did not require him to try to put a name to this nebulous terror trapped behind his ribs.

"What if I had missed that day?" he said. The warble in his voice was no affect.

"If you had missed what day?"

"The day we met. What if I had missed, what if my shot had not flown true?"

Estinien made a dismissive noise. "You didn't miss, 'Meric. It doesn't bear thinking about."

"But-"

Estinien curled around him to press a solid kiss to the crown of his head. "If you had missed then I likely would have died a noble death fighting a dragon, as Halone intends. But you didn't miss, and we are both here and alive. So it doesn't bear thinking about."

His use of the present tense was not lost on Aymeric, and did nothing to soothe the knot of worry between his shoulder blades.

"Now, what's this really about?" Estinien continued.

Aymeric winced. "Am I truly so easy to read?" he asked softly.

"Sometimes."

Sighing in defeat, Aymeric shut his eyes and buried his face closer to Estinien's chest. The storm of nerves swirled once more under his skin. Dozens of words that he wanted to say rose to the back of his throat like bile, but he couldn't make himself utter any of them.

"I don't want you to leave," was all he managed.

Estinien's chest rose and fell in a short sigh.

"I know it's selfish of me, but I don't care," Aymeric continued quickly.

"The tour is but a few moons," Estinien reminded him. "Have you so little faith in me? In our fellow knights?"

Aymeric finally looked up and met Estinien's gaze. As much as he could in the dim light of the moon. "I have plenty of faith in you, it's your comrades that concern me. None of them are as good a shot as myself."

Estinien's expression softened. "No, they aren't. Though I'm sure the quantity will make up for the lack in quality."

Estinien continued the soothing motions up and down Aymeric's spine, gently massaging the knot at his shoulder before moving back down again. He tried to relax into the touch as much as possible. Knowing he would be bereft of this simple comfort made him all the more eager to savour it while he could.

"Would that you were leaving with us," Estinien said, sleep beginning to creep back into his voice. "With your arrows and my lance, victory would be as good as ours."

The knowledge that he would be missed did soothe some of his worries. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly Aymeric burrowed closer into Estinien's embrace.

"You should sleep. I'll try not to keep you awake," he said apologetically.

Estinien responded with a soft grunt that Aymeric had come to know as "don't worry about it" and wrapped himself more securely around Aymeric before his breathing shallowed again. Surrounded by the weight and warmth of him, Aymeric himself slowly drifted back into sleep's fitful grasp.

Thank you for the prompt @raynshyu I will take any excuse for my estimeric agenda lol

[backjustforberena]

Do you have any opinions on Rhaenys’s mannerisms throughout the show? (Checking her nails, smirking in the background?)

Oooh, okay, this is a good one. I'd love it if you gave me some specific examples because the ones you have chosen are the ones that the fandom at large (love or loathe Rhaenys) has latched onto. I think that's partially because Rhaenys is pretty statuesque, pretty hard to read. She doesn't gesticulate or snap or have any particular habits or ticks that other characters do. That makes her difficult to contest with, in comparison to the other more volatile characters. And so we put a lot of importance on the bigger movements which we believe to be more easily defined as a character trait.

You've picked a great one as an example of this: the nail-checking. Correct me if I'm wrong (honestly, please do) but Rhaenys does this once in the show. It's amazing, adorable, and in her first two minutes of screen time but we never actually see it again. But the fandom latches onto it because of those things. Myself included. For me, it's a very keen insight into her feelings surrounding the tourney, her feelings about court and about her life as it is at the point in time that we meet her in the series.

She's at a tourney, celebrating her cousin's heir about to be born. She isn't wowed or excited by the bloodshed, as the young girls are. She's not swooning at knights or even really gossiping, other than to tell her husband how distasteful it all is and how predictable. She's not entertained particularly, not like Viserys, or Beesbury making bets behind them. She's more on a level with Corlys; they have their back-and-forth and it introduces their dynamic - the honesty between them and their positions as outsiders. Honestly, she's drinking wine and getting through it. She's got bugger-all else to do. No agenda. No pandering. No goal. I think there was an interview with Eve where she said that, at the start of the series, when we meet her, Rhaenys is probably a little bit bored and a little bit frustrated because she's roleless in court but no less visible. That comes across here. All that is required of her is to sit.

And the smiling. Lordy did her smiles get vilified or overblown and exaggerated in some people's commentary. At least in my mind. Please feel free to disagree. Again, I don't know which example you are thinking of specifically as she smiles in the background of a few scenes. They're usually for vastly different reasons as well; sometimes they are false and sometimes they are true but most of the time they are tiny.

I can hazard a guess though and say you are talking about the look that Rhaenys gives Rhaenyra and Daemon as she exits the Painted Table room, before Rhaenyra and Daemon have their little showdown? That seems to be the one that people have a bit of a hard time with in addition to the way Rhaenys acts in general during that episode, in regards to Rhaenyra (not bowing, not wishing to remain, not declaring herself as soon as she arrives on Dragonstone, the way she delivers Viserys's death etc etc).

Rhaenys's job, and the groundwork of her relationship with Rhaenyra, has always been to watch. Rhaenys probably knows by this point that she's staying on Dragonstone. She knows her grandkids are going nowhere and by that scene, we've had Otto come and declare his terms.

I think that smirk is a comment on Rhaenyra and Daemon's dynamic. In the first Painted Table scene, when Rhaenyra is first crowned, Rhaenyra is unsure and unsteady and a bit overwhelmed. Daemon takes charge. He has plans he has already been executing. Daemon doesn't really listen to Rhaenyra and commits their dragons to war (including Rhaenys's) if needs be. He's done things that Rhaenyra doesn't like, but ultimately she doesn't fight it or assert herself. Whereas Rhaenys, when faced with that behaviour from Daemon ("To declare for his Queen") tactfully tells him to simmer the f*** down and stop counting his chickens before they hatch.

But now Rhaenys is seeing Rhaenyra actually consider peace terms and, when Daemon oversteps, Rhaenyra takes charge and asks everyone to clear out. Rhaenys is proud. Rhaenys is seeing that maybe, just maybe, she has what it takes. Considering that the most Rhaenys has known of Rhaenyra is her mainly relying on her father to get her out of scrapes and not really having that much political instinct as well as not listening to good advice when it's given, it's a bit of a change. There's little in "Lord of the Tides", for example, that would give Rhaenys confidence in Rhaenyra's ruling ability.

Would she have liked to have stayed and watched? Yes. Who wouldn't? But that shot is a reminder that whilst they've all been plotting and planning and declaring, Rhaenys has been watching and waiting and looking for a Queen.

Thank you for sending this ask in x

[thecreaturecodex]

Housekeeping, late April 23

After a long journey, the Creature Codex World Tour is coming to a close. So here's what the agenda is going to look like going into May.

I still intend to post three new monsters a week. I am going to alternate between Pathfinder 2e retroconversions and commissions. I will probably take off at least one full week during the summer, and during the summer I will also be reducing the output of new monsters to once or twice a week. I still have the writing bug, but my somewhat frenzied production pace is evening out. I have a lot of projects I am excited to do this summer, including some of them in the "real world". Reruns will be moving into the dragon creature type.

One of the back pocket projects I'm working on with the Codex is to have a more permanent backup. I'm saving entries in Google Docs so there's a cloud version to go with all of the disorganized Word files on my computer. This will take a while, but I will be sharing those Docs to views/comments once the whole kit is finished.

[markantonys]

Hi :) I recently found your tumblr and love all the excited and positive nerding over the show. There is something I have been wondering about since the end of s2. We see that the Forsaken have plans for the ta’veren, which require them being alive. Ishamael could have decimated everyone on top of that tower, and seems like chose not to. Then I re-watched e1s1 as a reminder of how the whole story started, and brutality of the trollock attack was a stark contrast. Seems like if the trollocks succeeded in their initial pursuit, all our heroes would just be dead.

The in-story explanations given back then seemed to make sense - but not any more. Do you know if that is something that’s ever addressed in the books or fan theories? I have not read the books but I am comfortable with spoilers. I often searched the WOT lore to clarify confusing aspects of the show, which makes spoilers inevitable.

hello! i'm so glad you've been enjoying my blog! this is a great question. so, one thing i noticed during the 1x01 trolloc attack is that the trollocs were killing everyone on sight...........except nynaeve, whom they grabbed and dragged away from the fighting. i'm guessing they may have been given identifying information on the 5 ta'veren and had orders to kidnap them rather than harm or kill them, but anyone else in the village is fair game.

though of course, given trollocs' instincts to kill and eat everything, this was definitely a risky plan! so maybe it was just that ishamael didn't have much power since he was still sealed, so sending trollocs to attack the village and snatch the kids in the chaos may have been the best he could come up with at that time, and in season 2 once he was free and had more options, he started doing some more careful approaches.

there's also the possibility that ishamael wasn't the one responsible for the trolloc attack (i think he probably was since he was the only high-ranking shadow-server who was "active" during s1 as far as i know, but i genuinely don't remember if it's ever officially confirmed whether padan fain's/the trollocs'/the fades' orders came from ishamael). in the 2x08 scene between moghedien and lanfear, moghedien says that the other forsaken don't care about lews therin like lanfear and ishamael do (and she calls caring about him a "failing" on their part). in season 2 we've started to see that everyone who works for the shadow has their own agenda and their own ideas about what should be done with the dragon and the other ta'veren. some want to keep them alive and bring them to the dark side, but others might think it's simpler to just kill them!

[litcityblues]

The Mandalorian Season 3: Do We Need A Movie?

(Yes, I know I'm late getting around to this. No, I haven't watched Ahsoka yet. I'm getting there, all right?)

I don't think Star Wars has quite the problems that the MCU does. We're not being drowned in a firehose of content that merely by the sheer amount of it degrades the quality of it-- no, Star Wars has a slightly different problem: it's in a galaxy far, far, away and can't stop showing us the same characters and/or planets.

Thankfully, Star Wars at least seems to be somewhat aware that it has this problem as a franchise and while they might not be taking too many concrete actual steps towards fixing the problem, shows like Andor and The Mandalorian at least suggest that they're trying to remedy that a little. They're trying to acknowledge that not every story needs to end on Tatooine and involve a member of the Skywalker Clan- they've got a whole galaxy to work with and they're at least thinking about how to do that. It's refreshing.

But, having watched Season 3 of The Mandalorian and heard the news that Season 4 is apparently going to be released as a movie, I'm left tilting my head slightly to the left, screwing up my eyebrows, and thinking: Do we need a movie?

Don't get me wrong: Season 3 of The Mandalorian has a lot going for it. First of all, the return to Mandalore itself was a really interesting choice for this show to make. There was really no other place for it to go, as Djarin needed to be redeemed for removing his helmet in violation of the creed of the Mandalore-- but returning to the ruins, him diving into the waters of Mandalore and then bringing back Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) to show her that surface was still habitable after all this time was a great choice.

If I have a weakness, it's probably for side characters that are far more interesting than the story intends them to be. (In House of the Dragon, for instance, you can keep Daemon, Rhaenyra, Otto Hightower, and Alicent-- Rhaenys (Eve Best) is the most interesting character in the show.) Here, that title is shared by Bo-Katan and to some degree by Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee.)

Bo-Katan is interesting because she's got an agenda. Whether she admits it or not, she wants Darksaber back so she can set about reclaiming her rightful place on the throne of Mandalore, restart the Great Forge, and reunite her people. The fact that Djarin just randomly ends up with the Darksaber (I mean, he does earn it by defeating Moff Gideon), makes her character a little... twitchy, in a way. She's kind of giving Djarin some side-eye, trying to figure out if she can take back the Darksaber and how and when he's pulled under in the waters of Mandalore, she does go and save him, but she also thinks about it for just a second. This was an aspect of this character that the show could have played with more-- there's a conflict within her over power and honor and she's reluctant to help Djarin, not believing that Mandalore is habitable again, but once she sees that it is-- it's game on. She also has to deal with her past (and the fact that surrendered to try and save her people when the Empire took them down) and that's another interesting thing we don't get to see. What happened on the Night of A Thousand Tears.

Carson Teva is back as the X-Wing pilot who is trying like heck to get the New Republic to actually do something for once. There's a whole-ass show centered around not just this character, but the New Republic of it all. How does the Rebellion go from rag-tag Rebel Alliance to an actual government? How come they're so effective at rehabilitating former Imperials but can't seem to protect systems from pirates? How come the New Republic still exists at the start of The Force Awakens, but there's also The Resistance as well? Like... how does it all work, post-Death Star?

(Also: what's up with The Armorer? Mysterious character. Suddenly is down with Helmets being removed? I'm... curious.)

There are a couple of standout moments for this season: the first is a delightfully unexpected detour to the planet Plazir-15 (Episode 6, 'Chapter 22: Guns For Hire') where Bo-Katan, Djarin, and Grogu go to get Bo-Katan's now mercenary army, the Axe Wolves back to go and retake Mandalore. They are currently in the employ of Captain Bombardier, the Duchess (played by Jack Black and Lizzo respectively), and the head of Planetary Security, Commissioner Helgait (Christopher Lloyd.) Three people I would never have expected to see in an episode of this show and it works. It's just delightful. It's fun. It's great.

The second moment comes courtesy of a vision Grogu has in Episode 4 ('Chapter 20: The Foundling') where he recalls his rescue from the burning Jedi Temple by sympathetic members of the Naboo Armed Forces and Jedi Master Kelleran Beq, who is played by Ahmed Best. Best, of course, is known for playing Jar-Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy and he has gotten an incredible amount of abuse and stick for it over the years. Whether this was a deliberate choice by the showrunners or just a happy accident, I don't know- and it definitely floated around my TikTok feed a lot when this first aired, but seeing this moment and seeing this actor get a shot at, if not redemption, then certainly a chance to be seen as someone else in the Star Wars franchise was fabulous. A+ work.

Here's where I'm at with this show: the ending is perfect. Gideon is defeated, and his Force-Sensitive clones are destroyed. While you can quibble about Djarin just giving the Darksaber to Bo-Katan, he does and she gets to restart the Great Forge and the Mandalorians get to be back on Mandalore. Djarin formally adopts Grogu, they take up Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) on his offer of a bit of land on the outskirts of Nevarro's capital and Djarin goes to Carson Teva looking for some more honest work while he raises Grogu.

So, let me ask the question again: Do we need a movie?

I mean, there are some aspects of the story we can still explore. Bo-Katan and getting Mandalore going, Imperial Shenanigans and whispers of Grand Admiral Thrawn, Carson Teva, and the struggles of the New Republic. I'm not disagreeing with the notion that there's more story here, I'm just saying- in terms of Djarin and Grogu: do we need a movie? This is perfect. You couldn't ask for a better ending to their story. That doesn't mean they can't show up again at some point, but man, this felt like the perfect bow to tie on top of this show.

I'm probably going to watch Season 4/The Movie or whatever it winds up being, never fear-- but sometimes it's okay for things to just end, you know. And I almost wish they'd just put this down and walk away for a bit.

Overall: It's great. The action scenes work. They don't get stuck on Tatooine or some other planet we've seen before- in fact, we get to go back to Mandalore! That's rad. It's got awesome moments for all the characters, a trio of excellent guest stars, and a nice moment for Ahmed Best tucked away in here. If it's got a fault, it's that it doesn't go as far as it could with some characters (I think Bo-Katan could have faced far more of a struggle over Djarin having the Darksaber, for instance) but I can't complain about the ending either. My Grade: *** out of ****

[thephantomcasebook]

the fact that no one really knows how many seasons HOTD will be is so unserious to me, they are "let's just see where this goes" 😅

First of all ... Congrats on being my 150th ask piled up in my mailbag.

Around 50 I realized that I'm never gonna be able to answer all of these, and 100 asks later, you're the one who reached the milestone of my lazy and procrastinating nature that is very inconducive to this format.

And respect for not going anonymous - out of 150 asks, 145 of them are anonymous.

As for the question.

"Let's just see how it goes" is studio talk for "Fuck dude, I don't have a good feeling about this, but they're telling me down at production they've got it handled.'

I think Warner knows at this point - and so do we after set leaks - that Season 2 is a shit show both production and writing wise. But they also know that the "Game of Thrones" franchise, along with "Lord of the Rings" and "The Wizarding World" are part of their top tier money making franchises. And with the studio hemorrhaging and in real danger, they've got to make it back fast, and ASoIaF still remains a very lucrative and marketable franchise.

I think they'll give it three seasons and then cut it off. They'll greenlight "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" because, it'll be cheap to shoot, there won't be any need for CGI or Volume, they won't need to shoot King's Landing or render Dragons. And the stories are all complex morality tales set mostly in the countryside of Westeros. I think that Condal will probably do a lot better in a smaller and more intimate setting. I think he outran his feet trying to tell this big and sweeping epic story without proving that he could do it first.

Plus, "House of the Dragon" is tainted by bad producers, bad directors, and - with some stand outs - a generally bad cast of mercenary and immature actors and actresses. It is suffering from Sapochnik's short comings and egotistical agenda driven tripe. It also has become too unruly and expensive to manage for a studio where every penny now counts.

I think the contradiction that most people are seeing, is that they're undecided about "House of the Dragon's" fate. But they're going forward with more ASoIaF universe projects like "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms".

Two things can be true at once.

[arabian-bloodstream]

I’m worried about daemon’s portrayal of being a father. I was very optimistic because the leaks were saying he was a good dad and could do no wrong but unfortunately that’s not entirely true. It broke my heart when one of them said he ignores her. Do you think the show runners are making daemon extremely unlikeable intentionally or is this accurate to his character? It would be extremely shitty if he’s a good father to rhaenrya’s kids but not his own. Because so far if they make him a deadbeat father and plus him “killing laenor” next episode I fear EVERYONE is going to hate him 😭

Oh, I don't think we have to worry at all about this. I read some takes that I thought really laid it out quite clearly what is going on. This was the best one, in my opinion. The money quotes:

He has a closer connection with Baela, but in my opinion it is not because of the dragon but because she remembers both him and Rhaenyra - similarities from when she was younger. The fact is Daemon is not Daemon. He is lost, displaced and without his essence, which makes him. He pretends. He dwells on books and books, can barely look at Laena and shows himself to be an absent father. Which proves that he lies when he says he doesn’t miss Westeros. For the only ones he truly loved are Viserys and Rhaenyra. [...] That’s why they cut his scene with his daughters, in my opinion. It wouldn’t make sense for him to have a sudden change in behavior with them if he still doesn’t feel himself. He tried, he still tries. But you can’t go back to what it was if what makes you feel complete is so far away

I agree with this. I think it makes perfect sense. Especially the bolded part. Once Daemon returns to King's Landing, returns to Rhaenrya (and even Viserys). Once he returns to Dragonstone, and, thus to HIMSELF, to Daemon Targaryen, we will see a Daemon who embraces the Targaryens that are all of his family, including not only Baela Targaryen, but also Raena Targaryen.

In episode 06, Daemon just couldn't connect to Raena because the only part of her that connected to him was her Targaryen self, and Daemon could not connect to that part of himself because to do so caused him too much pain. It was wrong of him; it was selfish and wrong, wrong, wrong. But Daemon is not the best of men, we already know this.

He *could* connect to Baela because Baela was a dragonrider, and that was something--the only thing--that Daemon had still retained of his Targaryen self. And so he could connect with Baela on that level. Once he returns to Westeros, to Dragonstone, to Viserys, to Rhaenrya, to his Targaryen self, he will connect with the Targaryen in Raena.

At least that is what I think. And that is why I think we didn't get that connection in episode 06. I could be wrong. I don't know because I haven't seen episode 07 yet. I tend to try and *not* pre-judge (and certainly not be negative or even overtly positive about) an episode I haven't seen yet. Leaks, spoilers, etc. do NOT tell the full story. The episode itself does.

And certainly, Fire & Blood is NOT telling the story. It is subjective. It is based on biased accounts from misogynistic after the fact peeps who had their own agenda, and collated a century later from another biased account who edited it from ALL OF THOSE many accounts. It is not an objective telling of facts. Period. End of.

Finally, we don't know that Daemon "kills" Laenor. He may; he may not. And if he does… :shrugs: We'll come to that bridge when we cross it. Again, I'm not going to pre-judge Daemon based on something I haven't seen. I don't know what is going to happen, if it's going to happen, and if it does what, how, why, the circumstances of it.

Daemon is not being written as "the evil bad guy." Daemon is being written as a grey, sometimes dark grey, character. He is complex, conflicted, and he loves deeply. He is our amoral anti-hero. But he is certainly not someone that viewers are supposed to hate. He gets the big, bad-ass battle scenes (see, end of episode 03). He gets the quips. He gets the bad-ass entrances. He is half of the OTP of the show (Daemon/Rhaenrya). He gets sweet soft moments (with Viserys, with Rhaenrya, with -- yes, he did -- Laena).

Daemon is NOT the character that viewers are supposed to hate.

Now, I can only hazard my guess on what will come, and I generally don't like to go too far into the guessing because I have not seen the episode and speculation often leads to disappointment. I like to let the episodes speak for themselves. I can say that based on what we've seen so far, I have faith that it will be good. That it will work with the story we've been given thus far. That Daemon will be awesome. And that I am freaking stoked!

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 Good morning and happy Tuesday to all my bookish bats, dragons, and babes! I hope today is filled with amazing new stories, releases, and BIG book hauls!

❓ #QOTD What book release are you most looking forward to at the moment? ❓

💜 I've gushed about you wonderful book bats before, and I'll do it again without hesitation: the booklr/bookstagram community is AMAZING. I've spoken to so many passionate readers about beloved series, auto-buy authors, and OF COURSE black cats since starting this account. Though my growth is small, the support and heart here are HUGE.

⚖️ One of my all-time fave accounts—an account I can NEVER get enough of on my feed—is @thatbookishlawyer on Insta (Mani)! The moment you visit her feed, you're surrounded by stunning book photos, great recommendations, and above all else, a passion for books. Mani is best known for her relatable reels, which ALWAYS manage to make me smirk or laugh (a real feat) at the least opportune times (with all the spicy-sweet books we read, there's really a time and place for Booksta). Regardless of what she has going on, Mani is sweet, inviting, and engaging.

🐈‍⬛ Thank you so much for sending me a copy of The Henna Wars by award-winning author Adiba Jaigirdar (@dibs_j on Insta). This book feels like the perfect post-Ramadan/Eid read. Growing up, I never saw queer Muslims like myself in literature or on-screen. Nominated for the Goodreads Best Young Adult Fiction in 2020, The Henna Wars is exactly what I searched for on shelves growing up. I'm delighted, inspired, and above all else grateful. Thank you Adiba Jaigirdar for penning this story and Mani for sending it my way! #CleoCatra and I have a lot of reading to do!

💜 Sending love to all the readers who have made this corner of social media feel like home. I hope you have an amazing day!

📖 The Henna Wars: When Dimple Met Rishi meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this rom-com about two teen girls with rival henna businesses. When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life. Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat’s culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.

[werebird]

werebird, i just finished winter lamb and im so in awe of your talent of dialogue writing, your on-point characterisation of hannigram but also the supporting chars.

i notice you're still active on ao3 but havent written hannibal fics for a while, and im just curious: how long did it take for you to plot out the story of winter lamb? there were so many moving pieces, that id love to know more about the planning process for the story. i'm also curious if you've ever thought of coming back to phantom spring as i'm eager to know how you planned to continue the story.

lastly, i'm dying to know what your thoughts are on how a potential season 4 would've gone given the hints bryan has told about cuba, murder husbands v murder wives, etc. your clever and natural plolines in winter lamb have me curious how you'd anticipate season 4 panning out.

Okay, first of all, sorry for taking forever to answer this but also thank youu so much for all the love 😭❤️

I'm gonna ramble a little bit so i'll put the answers under a read more..

Soo.. plotting the fic didn't actually take that long. At the time I was just rewatching the show and had the time and patience to pay attention to all the characters individually. I had some ideas of who I thought would make interesting allies and I wanted everyone to shine on their own and have their own agenda. I really loved all the characters individually, still do.

I didn't want the time skip to be as long as it was in the show and I wanted to skip the dragon storyline. Obviously I wanted Will and Hannibal to get together eventually and this turned out to be the most difficult thing. Will as a character is just so stubborn. He would rather die than give into his dark side. I spent so much time with the show back then that it was difficult to just pretend he would easily be convinced. He needed to believe he was sacrificing himself once more. I also knew he would have to cut all ties, feel betrayed and isolated, and feel like there was no way back. And so in the end, the fic came together piece by piece but somewhat naturally. I was just following along with where the characters wanted or needed to go.

I was also actually experimenting a bit with the unreliable narrator and with how much happened off-screen. It's not really something I'm usually comfortable with writing so this was what I struggled with as well.

I do wanna finish Phantom Spring!!! It's haunting me actually. I HAVE to finish it, the band needs to get back together!! I've plotted it and everything, but in order for me to do it right™, i would need more time and a better headspace to get back into the show (especially for the dialogue), to do more research, etc. and I would need to let go of what I consider my '''style''' these days.

Back then, I was really into screenwriting which relies heavily on dialogue (of course) but since then my interest has drifted away from it. Now I prefer a clear, singular pov in reading as well as writing. In order for me to include all the characters, there would need to be multiple perspectives. I started the fic and then I got scared that couldn't pull it off and then I stopped, hoping to continue once I would feel more confident. Your message is already helping me with that ❤️ so i hope i can get back into it soon.

Ahh the infamous forth season.... I would have been curious too about how bryan would have written it. Will wanted to die rather than be like (be with?) Hannibal. I think it's really really hard to have him come around and make it believable. Personally, I cannot see Hannibal (of the show not the books) be tamed (or become a vigilante) and i can't see Will go dark without him going through serious self loathing/more suicidal behavior. it would have been a painful season in order to pull it off. iirc they wanted to take on the Clarice character as well which i feel would have felt a little rushed too. Bryan is an incredible writer (i love him so much) but sometimes his choices confuse me (not necessarily in a bad way). I was always a little worried that a fourth season would move away from Will in order to avoid the difficult corner his character has moved itself into. I was also worried that the characters we all love would have no other choice but destroy each other and become unlikable. I don't know if I would have loved the show the same if I actually had to see Will and Hannibal eat Bedelia for example. I wouldn't have wanted to see Hannibal try and kill Jack again (and maybe succeed). Those are difficult choices. I do like conflict, but I don't like hopeless conflict too much :/

I still hope we might get to see it a continuation though. And with how much time has passed, there would now need to be a big time skip anyway so a lot of my issues could be explained away by time passed and people changed.

I hope these answers give you a little more insight, I would love to hear your thoughts too!! ❤️