Chapter Text
mudlark • /ˈmʌdlɑːk/ • noun
a person who scavenges in river mud for objects of value.
When Tom is small and the orphanage’s meagre library has exhausted all its curiosities, he takes to walking the river.
The Thames is never beautiful. Its waters shift between pewter and tar, a skin of oil spills gathering the sun in fractured panes. The air is damp with the sourness of wet rope and horse piss sluicing from mews, and on windless days, the stench of the tanneries collects beneath the bridge, heavy enough to taste.
But it is changeable. For his purposes, this is enough.
Where others recoil from the rank wound it carves through the city, he prowls its banks. In time, he learns its tempers: the eddies that wash the bargemen’s spit, the tides that peel back each dawn to bare the foreshore.
Beneath the sucking mud, the river stores its hoard—centuries of discards half-swallowed and preserved. A brooch chipped to the enamel, a dog’s rotted femur, the rogue shoestrings off a pair of boots. Sometimes it coughs up farthings enough to tally a pound, though so scabbed with rust they are worth less than the powder it would take to clean them.
The dysfunctional things Tom keeps in a box beneath his bed, hidden from the greedy paws of children. He does not count himself among them, naturally. The orphans’ know only to bleat like creatures too weak to master themselves, of which he is far above. And the schoolboys who descend upon the Thames in summer—decked in clean clothes and secure in their parents’ affection—show no greater refinement. Tom sees it plainly when they tire of chasing the coins tossed by indulgent passers-by, turning instead to the buried prizes he considers his by right of labour. Scuffles on the mudflat are not uncommon.
He judges them all alike, the orphans and the schoolboys both. London breeds its children in soot no matter their standing, and all their gracelessness is only the echo of its own.
Smoke stacks choke the sky, mingling with petrol fumes as motorcars jostle along the streets. Rain pools in gutters choked with newspaper and vegetable peelings, passing boots sending the filth leaping up the legs of his too-short trousers. Shop windows buzz dimly under electric bulbs, fogged from the heat of bodies pressed close, while hawkers call and trams clang and a factory whistle skates the hours. Even the light, when it manages to break through the clouds, is a sullen grey that flattens buildings, compressing everything onto itself.
It is different for him. While the city grinds everyone to mediocrity, he alone remains clever, enterprising, shining, brilliant. London must see this—as ancient and stubborn as it is, it simply cannot ignore his worth, because instead of dragging him down to its poverty, it rises to meet Tom. The Thames carries its secret heart to his hands, like an artery of treasures that he alone is judged worthy to handle.
This is no small achievement, he knows. He makes sure each discovery has its own place in his box. But even those he parts with are special to him, serving as proof that he can bend the world’s small fortunes to his will. He sells what he can, and with the proceeds, Tom plays-pretends at an allowance granted by his austere but indulgent father, who has sent him to spend it as he pleases.
Adults, petty and bitter as ever, resent his genius. Though he imagines he could purchase the world with a handful of copper coins, they rarely trade for more than a stale loaf. Tom contents himself with this injustice by eating it in the streets, letting the crumbs fall where starving babies grope for scraps, delighting in the small, unspoken proof that he has made more of himself than they ever will.
He supposes he cannot be too upset at anyone for their cheapness. The scarcity whets his skill, magnifying the triumph when he uncovers something rare. Like on one temperate March afternoon, when—after hours of digging with half-numb fingers—Tom comes upon two thimbles and an intact serger needle. He knows their worth and plans carefully how to press it to extract more than usual. All it takes is the right sort of fool.
So he goes from door to door until, at length, he finds a harried mother, with whom he exchanges the lot for a single torn page from The Little Engine That Could.
That very evening, the younger boys’ dormitory dimmed to a soft shadow, Tom lies on his narrow cot and smooths the page against his knee. The paper is tender at the edges, worn thin by the hands that held it before his own. Yet the colours blaze against the uniform grey of his pyjamas—pink and blue and orange, all sorts of hues that do not exist in the real world.
His soot-stained nails trace the faces of the characters, the painted eyes that do not blink nor shy away. He mouths the words beneath them again and again, lingering on the margin where the story runs out, imagining what might come before and after. When Mrs. Cole calls for lights out, he tucks the page into the lining of his pillowcase, feeling that it is too precious for the box.
In truth, it is a foolish thing to value. But in the orphanage, where so little can ever belong to anyone, Tom resolves to claim whatever he can, entirely.
1948
The taxonomy of Borgin & Burkes’ clientele has not varied in the three years since Tom first started as an employee.
He might even be called an expert in their habits—if one were to recognise expertise in a profession whose most exacting art is the ability to say, Quite rare, yes, with convincing enough passion. This, he has perfected—not from any spirit of generosity, but for the pleasure of knowing he can be useful in ways others cannot. It affirms what has always been true: that his competence is singular, his judgement unchallenged, and that even in obscurity, he is the axis around which lesser minds turn.
The morning trade belongs, invariably, to widows. They come convinced they are doing the shop a kindness by sharing the detritus of their long-dead husbands. Tom knows exactly how to receive them: a tilt of the head, a boyish smile, a moment’s indulgence of their nostalgia. They sigh, remark upon his cheekbones—like a Greek statue, dear!—and in the end surrender their children’s inheritance for whatever sum happens to lie conveniently in the till.
By afternoon, the Ministry men creep in, brief and absurdly discreet, as though anyone cared what they were doing. Tom knows no one in the Department for Magical Transportation would blink at the pawning of an illegal portkey—most have done the same themselves—but he does not mention it. They never take well to references of their crime. Instead, he listens gravely, points out the neat anonymity of his ledger, and savours how readily they rely on his silence.
And then there are the purebloods, untroubled by any surplus of shame, who come unabashed in the night, when Knockturn is at its busiest. Former classmates, prematurely careworn, greet him as though nothing of consequence has transpired since school. They comment on the dimness of the shop, or on the difficulties of procuring a house-elf unafraid of disciplining the children. Concerning the artefacts (of which they seek only to buy, never to sell), they speak with the same misplaced confidence they have always brought to conversations on Dark Magic: earnestly, and with very little comprehension.
In their way, they are admirably consistent, for their treatment of him has never once wavered. Not even after the revelation of his lineage, and so certainly not now. It is clear they believe his present circumstances represent some sad inevitability. That they are standing on the customer’s side of the counter, while he is behind it, seems to them rather conclusive.
He lets them prattle. Their ignorance is his opportunity.
“You really do look rather ill, Tom,” Alphard observes for what must be the fourth time. His idea, perhaps, of recompense for having dragged Tom through three unendurable hours in pursuit of a wedding gift for his sister.
Having just graduated Hogwarts, Orion Black is to be married without delay—a match arranged by their parents before either could learn to shit on their own, and celebrated by all as a most felicitous union, despite the very evident dislike in which each holds the other.
Tom might almost approve of the affair—there being a certain public benefit in Walburga’s permanent withdrawal from society—were it not for the task of procuring her gift. He neither knows nor cares what pleases women, so the business of discovering it proves tedious in the extreme. By the close of the third hour, illness seems the more desirable option.
“I’ll be sure to catch up on my supplements,” he assures, falling flat. Tom does not possess said supplements, nor the faintest notion where to even begin, there being far too much wrong with him for such an undertaking. Before Alphard can blunder further, he steers the conversation away. “In the meantime, I trust Walburga will be delighted with her hand mirror.”
The hand mirror in question is cursed to exaggerate every flaw subtly enough to pass for honest reflection. Tom rather hopes the horrid cunt will one day catch sight of a wrinkle not previously there, and find herself so undone by it that she kills herself. At least that would justify the day’s exertion.
Alphard, naturally, had seen nothing amiss when he peered into it, fool that he is. After all, only a fool would go trawling for a wedding gift in a shop that exists solely to ruin people.
“I doubt it,” he exhales through his nose, glancing at his wristwatch. Tom follows the gleam of pure silver, greedy as a magpie, catching on the ticking craftsmanship beneath its glass. The numbers are set in fine sapphire, the metal charmed to warm against the wrist when an appointment draws near. He has held it before. Just once, when the desire overcame him: Alphard sprawled insensible in his own sick from too much Ogden’s, the watch—his seventeenth birthday gift—abandoned on his nightstand. In Tom’s hands, grasping the most expensive thing he’d ever touched, it had seemed to glow.
Even now, it glows at him, taunting, and the want takes him with almost physical force. A low, whining heat that bloats in his gut and climbs, cramping and wet, to the back of his throat.
“I imagine there’s nothing more she would love now than to see Orion’s head on a pike.”
“How romantic,” Tom forces himself to look away, returning to his task of fastening a neat ribbon bow around the box. “Do pass along my warmest wishes.”
“Of course. And you—ah, you will take care of yourself, will you not?”
How ridiculous, Tom thinks. He has always taken care of himself. Indeed, it may be the only meaningful thing he has ever done.
“Good day, Mr. Black,” he replies with an inclination of the head, resting upon Alphard through lowered lashes, up until the door jingles closed.
Tom leaves the shop a quarter past ten, the floors swept and the anti-burglary wards resealed, as per routine.
His lodgings reside above a contraband potions shop; a cramped, squalid room with a single window facing a fouled alley. The air there is saturated with aconite and the syrupy sweetness of crushed belladonna—odours that once struck him in their illicitness, now clinging to the plaster with a cloying permanence. The stale perfume of a life that has failed to quicken, as integral a part of his existence as his magic. He wonders if he smells like it, too.
The flat itself offers little comfort. Tom’s nightly regimen reflects as much. Supper is a miserly portion of boiled tripe, seasoned with the last of the herbs he once stole. It tastes foul, but the gaminess forces him to chew longer, a silly trick against the hollowness of his stomach.
For company, he eats with the long shadows smeared onto the walls by candlelight. It is difficult not to think of Hogwarts then; to the heavy tables sagging under roasts and puddings, the goblets refilled without his asking. He swallows the terrible longing those memories wrench from him, reminding himself of the ceaseless din, the laughing children, the petty jostling of a world he had already outgrown, just to settle.
(Still, the hunger lingers, greater than any food could soothe.)
After, he scrubs himself quickly in the bath, ignoring how the water clouds into grey the longer he sits.
Some nights he will reach for a book from the stack beside his bed, but even reading betrays him now. The dim light burns his eyes; the more he reads, the more his head aches, until he drops it aside altogether, retreating instead into an airless sleep, heavier than he has ever known, lying face down into his pillow, naked beneath threadbare sheets.
Tonight, he does not bother at all. The pleasure has worn thin, and besides, he has been saving a different diversion.
For weeks, there has been a rat scurrying in his walls. Tom has allowed it to live unmolested so far, letting it homemake and feed, fattening on his scraps. Patience makes the eventual harvest sweeter. He imagines it much like the farmers who spare their beasts from fear, knowing terror will sour the meat.
Now, at last, the time feels ripe.
He lies perfectly still until the wily creature mistakes him for asleep, venturing through the loose floorboard in search of food. Then—
“Ha!” Tom springs, seizing it bare-handed. The rat convulses in his grip. He tightens to feel the rapid thrum of its heart flutter against his palm. It excites him terribly. Blood rushes hotly to his cock.
Summoning bonds to fasten it to the floor, he jabs his wand to its belly.
“Filthy little thing,” he hisses. “Crucio.”
The curse spills sluggishly, dredged up from disuse, tearing loose some vital fibre with every second it burns. His vision prickles at the edges; Marvolo’s ring glints in the red light (for he still thinks of it as his uncle’s, despite the fragment of himself embedded within). Even so, he shivers with the righteous knowledge that cruelty still answers to him, however dearly it also makes him pay.
Under the curse, the rat contorts, spine snapping backwards. It turns upon itself, gnawing at its own tail in a gross mimicry of the ouroboros. Tom watches, sweating, a thin smile tugging at his mouth. How fitting, he thinks, that even the emblem of endless renewal should be so thoroughly corrupted in a place like this.
He goes to sleep feeling better about himself.
“Tom! Is that you?” Burke’s voice carries from the back when the bell above the door gives its joyless ring.
Tom does not answer. He steps past the counter, which has somehow managed to collect dust in the scant hours since he last cleaned it, and halts at the threshold to his office. There he stands, solemn and submissive, hands clasped behind his back.
Behind the desk, Caractacus Burke stoops over his prized ledger. At Tom’s arrival, he looks up, his beady eyes conducting a slow, sweeping survey from head to toe.
“I do not suppose,” he sniffs, “that you own a proper set of robes?”
Tom glances down at himself: pressed black trousers, a clean white shirt, and a waistcoat lying flat against his chest. A Muggle’s uniform, tailored enough to pass for neatness, but nothing more. Since leaving Hogwarts, he has had neither the means nor the excuse to purchase robes. Moreover, Muggle salesmen, unlike their wizarding counterparts, are far less vigilant about Confundus Charms, and therefore easier to rob.
“No, sir,” he replies.
“Ah.” Burke leans back in his chair, squinting. “That will have to do, then.”
“To do… sir?”
“I received an owl for a house call this morning.” Burke unlocks a drawer and extracts a folded slip of parchment. “For reasons that escape my comprehension, the newly appointed Lord Peverell has requested you for his estate’s appraisal.”
So far, Tom has never been so slow-witted as to mislay an object under active curse, nor gullible enough to fall for the so-called “practical jokes” of rival establishments—contrived to leave their victims quite dead. He has avoided the fate of that singularly ill-starred clerk who tried to haggle over a piece whose provenance lay with the buyer’s family, and he has never once been caught pilfering from the stockroom, nor bungled an exchange with a patron whose temper proved every bit as volatile as the wares they coveted.
It is on account of these small but notable triumphs that Tom has managed to hold his post at Borgin & Burkes longer than any clerk in recent history. Yet for all this, his work has never risen above the level of glorified errand-boy. House calls are generally entrusted to the senior staff, whose good sense and discretion may be counted upon when dealing with those bearing heirlooms by the cart-load.
Stranger still is the title of the sender. Lord Peverell.
Strange, yes. Tom has encountered the name before, though only in the pages of genealogical books, where its line is recorded as having ceded centuries ago. That it should now be claimed anew strikes him as most peculiar.
And that the claimant should know of Tom himself—
Well, it is not beyond possibility. His reputation at Hogwarts had been secure enough, and among certain circles (namely, older witches) word of Borgin & Burkes’ handsome young clerk travels freely. He allows himself the suspicion that his beauty—spoken of often enough—might have inspired curiosity. Or perhaps there is a vulgar motive; if so, at least he has the experience to meet it. It would not be the first time an overconfident customer mistook him for a cheap whore.
Most likely, this so-called Lord Peverell is merely a lonely, aging aristocrat who, having heard whispers of an obliging shop-boy in Knockturn Alley, fancies an easy indulgence.
Besides, there is a certain appeal in the prospect. A house call promises a rare escape from this squalor, and would afford Tom the even rarer satisfaction of departing with more than he arrived with.
He smiles.
Burke passes him the summons.
The Peverell Estate, Elderhurst Manor, Ashdown Forest, The County of East Sussex
Tom Apparates into a stretch of heathland that might have been stolen from the pages of a fairytale—though that is hardly a compliment in his mind.
Heather spreads in dense sweeps, its purples and roseate pinks brazen in their bloom. Tall Scots pines rear darkly above him, while between them a ribbon of pale, wet track threads into a shifting pall of mist. The air tastes sharp and mineral, clean in a way he hasn’t smelled since the Highlands, since Hogwarts.
His brogues sink into the softened earth with a squelch, leaving a breadcrumb trail should he wish to retrace his steps. Fog clings to his face and collar; his hair, subjected that morning to the barest ration of Sleekeazy’s, already curls rebelliously in the damp, fluffing over his ears and temple. It makes his jaw tense, and he spitefully resolves to extract more from Peverell’s hospitality than he might have claimed otherwise.
He wonders whether this summons may itself be an act of malice. Perhaps, in some imperceptible sliver of their unseen history, Tom has offended the man, and this is his notion of vengeance: to have him trudge through the bracken in a state of disarray.
If that is the intention, it is a pitiful one. He recalls Abraxas, languid upon the pillows beside him, remarking that Tom wears such a state exceedingly well.
The path widens at last, revealing the adder stone landmark mentioned in the letter. He pauses before it and speaks the watchword:
“Tria capita.”
At once, the fog stirs and recedes, the pine-dark world unpeeling to admit a brighter one. From the vacancy ahead, shapes start to emerge slowly: the pitch of a gable, the ascending angles of chimneys, an unkempt lawn tangled with wildflowers, a balustrade carved in white stone, windows catching the sun’s reflection.
Then, finally, a wrought-iron gate, which swings inward of its own accord.
Even the sky within the premises seems altered—the blue deeper, more vivid, and the damp forest scent thinning to nothing.
Tom advances forward, footfalls soft on the path, and raps upon the front door three times. The sound echoes oddly in the stillness, lingering longer than it ought. Usually, a house-elf would answer in a heartbeat.
Silence continues to stretch. Unoccupied, he glances down at his attire once more. A proper robe certainly would have compelled a measure of respect. For a fleeting moment, he considers transfiguring his waistcoat.
But respect is not what he needs today, he decides. Better to be taken for less than he is. A man underestimated walks freer, with pockets far heavier when he departs.
Suddenly, there is the patter of footsteps.
The door swings open to reveal not the expected figure of a house-elf, but a man.
A rather dishevelled looking man at that, rough-hewn and untamed, hair jutting at unruly angles like storm-tossed brambles, shirt hanging loose over sturdy shoulders. There is a rawness in his gaze, beyond the bloodshot haze clouding their whites. Tom cannot tell whether they borrow their hue from the verdure around them, or whether the green is their own by right.
There is simply too much to process at once. Tom hurriedly maps the open fall of his collar, down to his hands, then back to the eyes set upon him. A current of cold has settled beneath his skin, leaving him naked to it, unarmed against a nature both alien and innate as it seeps past the edges of comprehension.
He sucks in a deep breath.
This cannot be the Lord Peverell. There is not a hint of the commanding air Tom has learned to recognize from men of their sort—those whose presence bears the weight of title, as he has often felt beneath Lord Septimus Malfoy’s scrutiny.
“Good morning, Sir...” Tom ventures.
The man blinks, before naming himself quietly: “Harry.”
“Harry,” he repeats. How common. “I’m Tom Riddle.”
“Of course you are,” comes the reply, vague enough to mean very little and everything at once. Tom pauses, expecting him to continue. He does not.
“I have come at the behest of Lord Peverell to conduct an appraisal on his estate, as arranged through Borgin & Burkes.”
“Right. Yes. Er, come in,” Harry steps aside, motioning him inward awkwardly. “That was me.”
The interior is handsome, as expected—foyer caving to a hall swathed in heavy damask. Yet the grandeur is a grandeur in abeyance. Unlike the pureblood estates Tom has been to in the past, there are no portraits glaring down at him from the walls. The long history of the house appears suspended, its former glory subdued beneath the long absence of its masters. Most of the furniture lies entombed in white shrouds.
Still, the bones of the house are impeccable. The arches, the proportions, the sweep of the stairs and gallery… His mind turns instinctively to what might be accomplished were it in worthier hands—his own, naturally.
It stirs in him a savagery so primal it verges on loathing. To see such a place languishing in neglect, its capacity squandered, is nearly a personal affront. That Peverell can move daily through these chambers without feeling the full reach of their potential is proof enough of his unfitness to possess them.
Tom turns to the imbecile.
“In your letter, you mentioned an intention of parting with several antiques to Borgin & Burkes. If you would be so good as to retrieve these, I would be most happy to examine them.”
Peverell hesitates. “It’s… a little more complicated than that. There’s a lot I don’t want.”
Perfect. The more he wishes to part with, the less likely he is to recall the particulars. A handful of well-chosen objects would be risky to pilfer, but a great quantity could be arranged to conceal any number of omissions.
“That is quite alright,” Tom smiles. “If you are willing to take me on a tour of the premises, we might proceed room by room.”
“Yeah. Sure. It’s a big house though, so it might be a long while.”
“I assure you, Mr. Burke has been most explicit. Your affairs are my chief priority, even should they require several days to resolve, Lord Peverell.”
“Right…”
Peverell scratches the back of his neck. He appears ten years Tom’s senior, the skin around his eyes bearing the thin creases of age. Yet, in his manner, he retains a youth Tom has never possessed. His movements are loose—careless, even. The unruliness of his hair especially, though flecked with white, grants him a boyish quality that time cannot altogether dispel.
“You sure you don’t have anything else to do?” He asks. “Anything planned after this? You must have engagements. Friends, or… hobbies.”
Tom presses his teeth together—imperceptibly, he hopes. No, he has no engagements. His life is presently grim, dismal, void of occupation, and not in any romantic sense of the word. And he resents, acutely, that this Peverell fellow should continue to force the matter into his consciousness.
“No, sir,” he replies, bowing his head to get his servility across, since words do not seem to do the trick. “Please, it is my pleasure.”
Peverell’s lips tighten and his brows draw together, head cocked just long enough to unsettle. Tom has not been subject to this particular regard since last he stood before Dumbledore, and the resemblance is clear enough to name it for what it is—suspicion. He knows that look far too well.
What he has done to warrant it, he cannot imagine. But the scrutiny is entirely unwelcome. How is he to be discreet in the removal of a few choice valuables under this degree of observation? In Tom’s experience, his clients like to remark only upon the wastefulness of such a perfect face, and otherwise ignore his existence entirely—an arrangement he’s discovering he vastly prefers.
Eventually, Peverell sighs and reluctantly shuffles down the corridor, coming to a stop before a closed door.
“We can start here. This is the library, I think.”
He thinks.
Were it not for the promise of a sales commission significant enough to keep him housed for the coming year, Tom would make short work of this man.
The door swings open, revealing walls swallowed by shelves, packed floor to ceiling with heavy tomes, their bindings ancient, reminiscent of the thickest volumes housed in Hogwarts’ most restricted sections. Like everything else in this place, it is marred by a suffocating layer of dust. A wave of nausea stirs within him. It is not because of the stale air.
Peverell fumbles at his waistband. Tom’s eyes narrow, wary.
But he only draws forth his wand, muttering Sorry about that, as he waves it once. Immediately, the dust dissolves, lingering briefly as drifting motes in the shafts of light. In its absence, the room seems to come alive, deadened space newly suffused with magic. The sensation draws Tom sharply back to Hogwarts—a fist closing over his heart—except…
Except here stands a trove he would have dared to dream of as a boy, one he would have moved heaven and earth to claim. He still would, even now. Yet the opportunity is not his. It lies neglected, all while Peverell readily admits that he has scarcely set foot within.
He casts a sidelong glance, only to find green eyes already fixed upon him.
“You like reading?” Peverell inquires, a hint of unease softening the lines of his expression, as if finally conscious of the splendour surrounding them. Perhaps he has divined the bitterness lurking beneath Tom’s composure.
“Yes,” Tom clips. Courtesy is difficult when he is this upset. He scrambles for any anchor that will keep him within its bounds.
His sights set upon the jagged scar etched across Peverell’s brow, a violent slash like a lightning bolt that couldn’t have been left by any ordinary quarrel. A curse scar.
Here, then, stands a man of valor. Reckless, he judges, a rogue the world has left unbridled. Tom understands these types well enough. They flourish upon the nourishment of their own egos, sated by the recognition of their triumphs and transgressions alike.
He allows a subtle warmth to inflect his tone, leaning into the observation. “Though I grant it is not for every man. Some perceive the world by other, more exceptional means, as you yourself, no doubt.”
It doesn’t work.
“Reading’s safe,” Peverell shrugs, dismissing the flattery. “Though apparently not always, as I’ve found out.” He gestures towards the crowded shelves. “That’s the trouble with these. Come here—I’ll show you.”
He withdraws a volume at random. Tom catches Gaelic lettering on the cover just as Peverell cracks it open. Instantly, the pages spring to life, latching onto his forearm and exuding a viscous, paste-like substance. Without flinching, a pulse of wandless magic snaps the binding loose, and he laughs, rubbing the residue from his skin.
“It gets worse,” he explains. “I would read more if my books weren’t trying to devour me, but as it is, I’m keen to have them gone.”
Tom sweeps the several hundred that fill the room.
“All of them?” he breathes, lightheaded. Thrill blooms as a plan forms itself.
Price the collection slightly below its true worth, and Burke will believe he has purchased fewer books than in truth he has—allowing Tom to abscond with the surplus without truly stealing at all!
This man, this Peverell, in his candour and remarkable neglect, has unwittingly made Tom’s enterprise far too easy. Indeed, were he any more accommodating, Tom might well contemplate carrying off the entire house itself.
“Well,” Peverell concedes with a wry smile, “the ones that don’t bite, at least.”
As it transpires, a large portion of the collection does bite.
Tom’s method of appraisal alters little from the one he employs in the shop. He begins by requesting provenance, a scrap of documentation at the very least, to confirm the object’s value. Predictably, he receives the most impoverished reply imaginable: “I don’t know. It just came with the house.”
With no paperwork to guide him, he has to examine each piece himself—turning them over, inspecting marks of manufacture, gauging weight and composition. For books, this means charting origin by font, language, or subject, all while diagnosing whatever curse has been grafted to the material.
Not wanting his brain to boil out through his nose (a very real possibility might he touch the wrong thing) he charms the volumes open with his wand in all his assessments. Peverell, by contrast, handles each one with bare hands, a sloppiness Tom can hardly credit. One book fires a volley of needles; another grows steadily hotter the longer it is held, burning skin clean from the palms. It is a miracle the man has survived this long. Tom says nothing, harbouring the hope that should Peverell finally perish, he will be present to enjoy it.
Every detail Tom logs meticulously, calculating just how much he can undersell without raising suspicion. The private list of volumes he wishes to abscond with grows steadily. He cannot resist. This library embodies the glory an ancient Wizarding estate ought to possess: shelves crammed with treatises on forbidden magic, manuals on vicious curses, works of occult scholarship. It is regrettable that most are centuries behind the newer editions Abraxas once smuggled him from Malfoy Manor, but that is neither here nor there.
As he works, Peverell seems constitutionally incapable of silence. Tom doubts he realises his presence is entirely unnecessary for this part of the job.
Or worse, he knows, and chooses to linger anyway—whether from boredom or surviving suspicion, not yet put to rest.
“You’re rather good at this,” he observes, lounging against a shelf. “Has this always been your dream job—antiques? Or are you just at Borgin & Burkes for now?”
His questions are plainly intrusive, and their careless manner does nothing to dampen this truth. A snappy reprimand hurtles to the tip of his tongue, but Tom forces it back. He refuses to expend any genuine attention on this scum, keeping his eyes forward as he speaks.
“Nowhere else would I be afforded proximity to the particular strains of history one finds in the shop. That has always appealed to me, sir.”
What he does not address is whether the post is temporary. Obviously, it is; though in recent years the honed edge of that conviction has worn down. The clerk’s desk has a way of breeding inertia, transaction settling more dust upon his ambitions. He guesses the Horcrux constantly fitted about his finger does little to counteract this also.
“What exactly is so fascinating about it?” Peverell asks, and the laugh that follows is hoarse, a little disbelieving. “I can’t imagine spending my time poking and prodding at these little terrors all day.”
He lifts the cover of a volume Tom had placed among those marked for purchase. Immediately, the paper edges become blades and carve a clean line down his palm. Peverell quirks a brow, studies the injury, then wipes the blood on his trousers, looking at Tom as if to say, See?
“It is not solely the artefacts themselves,” Tom blinks, though the words come too fast, spilling before he quite knows what he intends. He sends an early German cosmology to the ‘no’ pile with an unnecessary flick of his wand, buying a moment, vaguely flustered all of a sudden.
“The people, then?” Peverell ventures, stepping closer.
Tom hates this sense of being herded into corners he did not choose. The truth is that the customers bore him, their patterns so tediously predictable he could map their thoughts before they are spoken. Peverell, however, unsettles that order. He wanders from expectation, pressing in ways Tom has never been pressed. Unwelcome though it is, that deviation forces him to think.
This present interview has been the first breach in monotony for three years. Maybe if he says as much—if Peverell feels unparalleled—he may take the bait and preen, rather than persist with questions Tom has no intention of answering.
“Take it this way. I can say that you are, without doubt, the most interesting of them all,” Tom concludes, glancing up from his work just long enough for the words to take root.
This seems to have the desired effect. Peverell’s shoulders ease, scrutiny slackening into amusement. Of course, it is precisely the sort of praise men find irresistible. Tom allows himself the smallest satisfaction; in dealings such as these, the true artefact of value is control. Now it is safely in his possession.
Then Peverell speaks again, and the illusion shatters.
“They bore you, is that it? You enjoy the intellectual superiority of being an expert in the very services they seek?”
Tom reels. The gap he opens is immediately claimed by the man.
It is not the answer he would give, if anyone succeeded in prising the truth from him. He does not endure the banality of Borgin & Burkes for any paltry pleasure in condescension. He remains because it is the likeliest place for fortune to deliver what he seeks. Fragments of a soul as sensational as his cannot be lodged in cheap baubles. His vessels must be objects touched by legend, rare enough to match the singularity of their master. And what could hold greater value than the relics of Hogwarts’ founders, the castle being the only home that was ever worthy enough for him?
The Grey Lady confessed to having hidden her mother’s diadem within an Albanian tree hollow. For such a treasure to be abandoned in foreign dirt only confirmed what Tom has always known: the greatest prizes emerge from the most unassuming of places. He learnt it combing the Thames as a boy, and he embodies it himself: a marvel raised in an orphanage, overlooked until he could no longer be denied.
Borgin & Burkes, with its steady influx of the forgotten, offers the best chance of uncovering the rest.
Yet—
Yet.
Peverell’s claim is not without its sting of truth.
“Of course not,” comes out thinner than he intends, warbled by the diminishing space between them. Peverell is close. Too close—the toe of his oddly-fashioned shoe meeting Tom’s own. It's the breadth of that chest hemming him in, warmth spilling across the narrow divide, which sets his nerves alight in ways he refuses to name.
He clears his throat, draping his oldest mask across the fracture. “I do not imagine myself above others, Lord Peverell, and certainly not above our clientele. You are correct—it is the people. I enjoy hearing their stories. They grant me glimpses into lives I might never otherwise live.”
The performance is neat enough. He had wielded it often with Slughorn, who drank up the tale of the poor, gifted orphan, forever cheated of the comforts handed freely to his peers. It always begot concessions and special favors. Tom wagers it might work again here, to deflect the man’s scrutiny by inviting his pity.
And indeed, Peverell takes a step back. Relief sluices through him, though it comes threaded with another, less welcome tide—the loss of that proximity, the retreat of heat and solidity he had only just begun to register.
“As I said,” Peverell muses, unreadable, “you’re rather good at your job, Tom.”
The sound of it—of Tom—sends a jolt down his spine. Peverell says it as though it were his to possess, and how strange it is that so commonplace a name should acquire significance when shaped by his voice.
“It’s okay if you admit that.”
“I never denied it, sir.”
“Good. I prefer honesty.” Peverell smiles, cleaving a dimple in his left cheek, emphasised by the coarse shadow of a stubble. “Would you like anything to drink? Tea?”
“Tea would be perfect, thank you,” Tom blurts, hurriedly bending over his ledger. The sooner Peverell leaves, the sooner the air will be its own again.
Maybe then his stomach will cease to feel so tight.
The books occupy the better part of the day.
Tom takes the tea and incrementally vanishes it each time he brings the cup to his lips. Yet even this is hard to get away with. Peverell’s gaze—keen, unblinking, and yes, as green as it had appeared in the daylight—pins him in place until he finds himself enduring the most intolerable of conditions: to be studied without cause.
At least Dumbledore had always made plain the grounds of his suspicion. Here, Tom moves without anchor, unsure of the script expected, and he despises this improvisation foisted upon him. Despises that it is even necessary, most of all. He should be able to murder anyone who makes him feel this way.
By dusk, he has composed two distinct harvests: a stack for the shop to purchase, and another list of books he intends for himself. Burke’s custom in these matters is to postpone payment until the cataloguing is complete and the objects extracted. Tom relays this arrangement.
“Great, yeah, sure, whatever,” Peverell murmurs distractedly. His attention veers instead toward Tom’s meticulous notes. He tilts his head to inspect the columns, interest fixed—not on the artfully depressed totals (arranged to excuse the theft of six books, which was a bitter compromise, though the most he could likely get away with)—but on a far less conspicuous detail.
“Why’d you underline certain titles?”
A hot prickle of irritation flares in him. Even if the cause for Tom’s underlining is, in all fairness, highly suspicious, it ought not to be presumed so—least of all by the likes of Peverell, who so eminently deserves to be robbed!
“They are valuable editions,” Tom grinds his teeth, “which may command a higher price than I have marked. A reminder to consult Mr. Burke when I return this evening.”
An outright lie, of course. They are the volumes he means to keep.
Peverell hums, still looking at the parchment. One blunt finger hovers near a particular entry: De Regimine Animarum et Ultima Transitus. Involuntarily, Tom takes measure of that hand; big, scarred, masculine. Against the image of his own, narrower one which once rested where the page now lies, he finds himself conducting a rapid and most unwholesome calculation as to how greatly the disparity in size might be, were their hands to meet.
From there, it unspools itself, grotesquely enticing. How wide would it span across his wrist? How far around his neck? His thoughts slide into an unbroken chain of vulgar corollaries. That hand clamping his arms overhead, pinning him to a wall, while the other roves lower, dragging over his chest, tugging at his nipples until they sting. It would slide to his waist, callouses kneading the thin stretch of flesh, testing its give, painting bruises across pale skin. And then lower still, dragging between his thighs, parting him, forcing Tom open on the full stretch of those fingers.
His cock stirs in his slacks.
Then, abruptly, Peverell withdraws. He plucks a volume from the pile and thrusts it before Tom. The Latin lettering swims before his eyes. To his astonishment, it is the very book Peverell had been pointing at.
“For your good work today, Tom,” he says, grinning as he extends it forward. “Have this one for yourself.”
Tom, who fancies himself an expert in all things, discovers in that instant how utterly inept he is at responding to gratitude. A low snarl whips loose as he steps back, desperate to deny both Peverell and himself the suggestion that he might be won over so easily.
It must be a trap. His gaze darts to his notes; that same volume had released a storm of shadows the moment he charmed it open. Tom had only escaped their onslaught by the remarkability of his trained reflexes.
“Oh, right. Of course,” Peverell laughs, coming to the same conclusion. He draws his wand and flips the cover. Black masses shriek out, surging through the air, only to be ripped away in a single act of nonverbal magic that slams them against the far wall. It collapses to dust under their impact. “I’ll fix that later,” he shrugs, then presses the volume into Tom’s unwilling arms. “There you go. Not so scary now.”
The sudden weight staggers him. His knees buckle, and he hurries to straighten himself upright, expelling a short, affronted breath to lay all blame for his indignity upon Peverell. Not his own strength—and certainly not his acquiescence to generosity that might be a move against him.
“Thank you… Sir.” Tom grits, for he is not convinced that this isn’t some cunning trick.
Even if it weren’t, the condescension of the gesture does not escape him. As if Tom were incapable of seizing the book for his own, had he been given the time!
“Reading’s safe,” Peverell repeats.
Utterly unilluminating.
Upon returning home, Tom resolves to disregard the gift. On principle.
He rams the volume beneath his bed, sealing it away from sight, and then tears the suffocating clothes from his body. His skin burns, his loins throb, his nerves riot ungovernably, and there is nothing (nothing at all!) he needs more urgently than the shock of freezing water to temper his body and impose order upon his mind. A mind that, to his infinite outrage, has not been rid of Peverell since the instant he left Elderhurst.
Peverell—with his unruly hair and his big hands and his insufferably green eyes.
Tom twists the faucet savagely, water screaming into the tub.
Peverell—with his sprawling estate and his dust-laden library and his cursed books.
He lowers himself into the ice, breath shattering into rapid huffs.
Peverell—with his endless suspicion and his puzzles and his intolerable manner of being. Bastard. Smug, prying cunt. Dogged, insufferable fucking oaf.
And still Tom cannot wrench him loose. Peverell, everywhere at once: beneath his skin, in his cock, in the pulpy wrinkles of his brain where he least permits intrusion.
Damn him. Damn him.
Seated in the bath, his thoughts marinating alongside him, Tom hacks the day apart, cracking it open with the zeal of a bludger on a child’s soft skull. Chief among his torments: Peverell’s gift. De Regimine Animarum. Why that volume and not one of the others he had marked? A trap? A hint? A smug display of foresight, as if he had already sniffed out Tom’s plan to rob him and sought to neuter it before the attempt?
He should have read it. Tom should have torn it open at once, bled it dry of every secret. Perhaps its contents would’ve granted him some insight.
His teeth chatter with the cold, body subdued, mind flaring brighter for it. Impossible to erase is the image of Peverell dispatching the curse with revolting ease. Tom had assumed he was a simpleton, too timid to abide dark magic within his walls; he had even invited him to think so! Lies. Every bit of it. In the end he drew the shadows out like it was nothing, cracked them like twigs, hurled them away, and then dared to offer the book as a gift—harmless now, by his own design.
He wanted Tom to underestimate him.
The arrogance of it! The gall! That charlatan—that two-bit conjuring fraud, that bloody poof, that jumped-up wretch—what game is he playing at? Why feign distress if he possesses such power? Why summon Tom at all? And why, most maddening of all questions, sell the books when he can so handily subdue them!
He did not appear interested in the price they would fetch him—and why would he be? Wealth has clearly been his inheritance and he has done nothing with it. In fact, Peverell’s habits are nearer those of a pauper than any pureblood lord Tom has yet encountered. If he did not know better, he would think the man had never been one at all; but then, by what claim did he attach himself to the long-extinct line?
Tom cannot shake the suspicion that the title itself is of little consequence to him. Not when his very first exertion of authority was seeking Tom’s services out. Thus the matter reduces itself, once again, to its most intolerable point—Peverell’s impertinent interest in him.
He plunges underwater and stays there until his lungs protest. When at last he surfaces, breath cleaving from him, his hair slashes across his eyes in a heavy, wet mass. He needs a haircut. He needs, too, to write to Abraxas.
But Abraxas won’t write back, so he condescends to address Alphard instead.
The choice is not made lightly. Their last encounter had cast Tom in an unflattering role, bowing before Mister Black across the counter. And while he will not call the episode humiliating, he cannot ignore the shame of now appearing needy where he had made no effort to maintain their acquaintanceship since school. A sudden letter would betray far too much.
Thus, with admirable ingenuity—or so he tells himself—he presents the whole affair as a mere matter of professional correspondence.
He writes it immediately upon emerging from the bath, half-naked over his desk, skin still damp, hair dripping onto his forearms, towel slipping precariously at his hips. A charmed candle sputters its light across the page:
Mr. Black,
I trust this finds you in good health, and that the wedding preparations are coming along with that refinement for which your house is so justly esteemed. On behalf of Borgin & Burkes, I am writing to enquire whether the hand mirror you procured for your sister has proved satisfactory. Our establishment takes pride in the quality of its acquisitions, and it would be gratifying indeed to learn that Mrs. Black’s tastes have been properly met.
Since I write, and in the spirit of thorough service, I beg a small indulgence. The appearance of a Lord Harry Peverell upon the scene has occasioned no small amount of speculation amongst our clients. Rumour, as you will appreciate, circulates cheaply in Knockturn Alley, and is seldom to be relied upon. However, your family is most advantageously situated to discern fact from invention, possessing as it does a seat within the Wizengamot, and might perhaps supply some clarity as to the foundation of his claim, as well as the reception which his sudden appearance has received.
You will forgive this presumption, and consider it in the nature of professional diligence. Our clientele have a keen interest in the standing of old houses, particularly those risen from the dead. It is the business of Borgin & Burkes to be properly informed.
I remain,
Tom M. Riddle
The reply arrives sooner than expected. One of the innumerable Black eagle-owls comes battering at his window at such an indecent hour that, upon casting a quick tempus, he finds it to be two o’clock. Tom rises, his bedcovers gathered about his shoulders against the night air, and unlatches the pane to admit it in.
The creature coos ingratiatingly as he detaches the letter from its leg, transparently angling for a scrap of food. If it had reached London so quickly, then the journey home would hardly tax it; let the Blacks trouble to feed their own spoiled brute. Tom shoos it towards the sill.
It shrieks in such a way it reminds him of Walburga. He snaps—“Piss off, you bestial thing!”—lifting a hand. The owl takes flight before he can strike, but not without beating its monstrous wings directly in his face, ruffling the hair he only just washed.
Damn it. Damn it to hell.
Tom races over the letter, every word stoking his anger until sleep escapes him completely:
Tom,
Your letter took me by surprise, though it is always a pleasure to hear from you. Allow me to reassure you on one point at once: the mirror proved most unsatisfactory. That wicked bitch smashed it the very instant she caught sight of her own reflection. She then threatened to slaughter me most graphically with the shards, which you must not take too personally. It is impossible to satisfy her under any circumstance.
As for this talk of a Lord Peverell, I confess myself at a loss. I asked both father and Uncle Arcturus—no such gentleman has presented himself before the Wizengamot, nor have I heard the name in any respectable quarter. I suspect that your position in Knockturn Alley renders you too susceptible to the vapours of gossip—quite literally, perhaps, for the air there cannot be good for one’s constitution. You truly did look ill the last time I saw you. Have you been taking care of yourself, as I said? Watch what you let in, won’t you? It would be quite the tragedy if a mind as fine as yours went and wore itself out on speculation.
At any rate, we must plan to meet soon. Perhaps a drink, somewhere more respectable than The Leaky Cauldron. We might still find some of the old conviviality between us, if you can spare the time. It will be different, with Abraxas no longer around, but you should not let it discourage you.
Yours in friendship,
Alphard
And damn those rotten Blacks, too.