Chapter Text
Tom was always curious about death.
Some of his earliest memories were entwined with it, for even as a child, he saw it happen many times.
During his years at the orphanage, it was nearly always animals. They appeared seemingly out of nowhere - small, helpless, and dead. A stiff bird on the cobblestone pathway, a limp frog in a puddle by the drain, a mouse curled in the patchy grass. Tom had little fondness for animals - they were dumb - but still, in his eyes, they were preferable to most humans, who were just as dim, but far less aware of it.
While the other children shrieked and retched, Tom took it upon himself to tend to those miserable bodies. In a far corner of the yard, he dug a small cemetery for the creatures, marking each grave with a tiny cross made from twigs and bound with braided grass. It did earn him a few cruel nicknames, but more importantly, it gave him something to think about.
Was that all there was for these creatures, then?
The cold, wet, dark holes he had dug, now and for eternity?
Or was there something else? Something…more, perhaps?
When the orphanage’s nasty old cat, Mrs Figgins, died, Tom was chosen to lead the funeral - a small, if a bit awkward ceremony in the yard. A girl named Jane gave a speech and spoke of a “pet heaven.”
Tom was taken by surprise.
Did Mrs Figgins really go to pet heaven? Tom asked Reverend Burns during scripture class. The man frowned, and said no - animals did not go to heaven. That was a privilege reserved for humankind only.
“Because only people have souls,” the reverend explained.
Tom considered this.
He knew from the scripture that the soul was something he could not see or feel, but apparently he had one. So did the other children.
But Tom had something else, too - something the others lacked.
Tom had special powers.
If the soul was what set humans apart from beasts, and if it was invisible, then perhaps it was something like… magic?
This was a conclusion Tom arrived at later, when he was informed that his abilities were indeed magical rather than the result of demonic possession - the prevailing theory at the orphanage at the time, especially after he had exhumed old Mrs. Figgins’ body two weeks after her funeral to see whether she had truly gone to pet heaven.
He remembered it quite well - the scent, sweet, sour and putrid. The maggot-laced head, the sagging flesh, soft as a worn flannel - all of it was nothing like Mrs. Figgins had been in life, when she scratched and bit anyone who dared to come near.
Tom had not been repulsed by that sight.
It was the final state of Mrs Figgins' remains that revealed the truth to him: it only took death to render a creature docile - pliant, peaceful, and incapable of biting and scratching. Incapable of resisting.
Tom needed to know more. Unfortunately, the orphanage’s draughty reading room held only religious texts. Within them, the soul was mentioned but never detailed, never fully explained. Scripture told that when God created man, He breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul - and yet, it said nothing of why animals lacked it.
Still, Tom learned something: there was a difference between the breath of life and the soul. They both were needed for the body, but they were separate entities.
For a long time, Tom was left with his musings alone, because the knowledge from the scripture was awfully limited. Once he got to Hogwarts, he could finally continue his research. And it paid off. Hogwarts brought him the answer he had longed for. Within the realm of magical knowledge, he found the missing piece.
The holy duality of life and soul that had ruled his childhood beliefs was never complete. In fact, it had never been a duality. It was a trinity - completed by magic.
For it was not merely body and soul, nor the invisible breath of life, that comprised a human. For a few rare, truly divine beings, there existed a third essence - magic. Stronger and more powerful than either of the others.
But that realization opened a new array of questions.
Where did that magic go when people died?
Did it vanish into the air, entwined with the breath of life?
Or did it float elsewhere, feather-light, like the soul on its way to judgment?
Tom could hardly contain his glee when, digging deep into Hogwarts’ library, he finally unearthed and connected the other pieces. It took him years, but it was worth it.
By then, all reverence he felt for death had rotted away. Tom recognized that the flesh was nothing but flesh, and after death did its bidding, it was nothing but a useless carcass.
But, there were three things Tom had learned about the death that could prove to be useful.
First: the breath of life was a fleeting spark. Most humans squandered it in vain, so Tom saw no merit in helping anyone but himself to preserve what so easily flickered out.
Second: the soul remained elusive. Even the greatest magical scholars had failed to unravel all its secrets, much like the pious scribes of the church. But some dark wizards had gone further, prying into what religion would never even dare to conceive.
A soul could be divided, and in that act, it was reborn as a Horcrux - a fragment of the self, tethered to the living world.
Clearly, Tom would have to do that.
The soul could also be taken away - not by mortal hands, nor by wand, but by the Dementors. They possessed the power to draw it from the body, to suck it out like air from lungs.
Of everything Tom had studied, this impressed him most.
To draw out a soul - by kiss, no less - was a staggering power. However, for Tom’s purposes such skill had little practical use. A soul was only useful if it was one’s own. Tom would never risk swallowing another person’s soul - that would taint him.
And another person’s breath of life?
Well. That would only be useful if he were dead, and then he could hardly administer it to himself.
In the end, all his questions circled back to the same, the most important third point: what happened to magic when people died?
The wizarding world feared death as fervently as the Muggles did. Tom could understand that fear, but he chose to treat it as a problem to be solved.
With magic.
At last, he found the book in the Restricted Section, so old its edges crumbled, the parchment falling apart.
In it, a wizard named Cassian Perennius had once written with his own hand: “We have strong evidence that, after the event of death, while most of the magic dissipates, the bodies of witches and wizards still retain a considerable residue of magic. This magic remains in the flesh until the flesh withers away.”
What a waste, Tom thought.
Magic - the most precious thing that existed left to seep into the soil, to wither with the maggots and bugs, while life and soul had already fled.
It seemed that Perennius had shared Tom’s opinion. From the fragmented accounts scattered across other books, Tom gathered that the man had been incarcerated for conducting immoral rituals on the dead - though the precise nature of those rituals was never mentioned.
He must have tried to extract the residual magic, Tom realised. It was logical. It was obvious.
But to Tom’s disappointment, no matter how hard he looked, there was nothing else on the residual magic and how to harvest it. No spells, no instructions, not even vague scribbles in the margins. It was as if, once wizards or witches died, no one wanted to touch the magic in them. They truly rested in peace - the purebloods in their mausoleums, the rest swallowed by the depths of soil, and that was it.
For Tom, it seemed inevitable that someone had to do something about the waste of magic. He wondered, with faint disdain, why none but Perennius had dared to try. Probably because most people were cowards, too afraid to offend death. But Tom wasn’t. For him, defiance of death was the main objective.
His plans shaped themselves restlessly. While he sat through the dull History of Magic lessons, or shivered in his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, cold and sleepless, his thoughts drifted to the darkest corners of the library, the only place where the next steps of his plan could be carved.
First, he would have to split his soul. That was a necessity, an insurance against ill fate.
Second, he had to find a way to harvest the residual magic. If no spell existed, he would not rest until he invented one.
Ideally, he would acquire Dementor-like skills - drawing magic from others, wandlessly, in close proximity. The Kiss might not suit the dead, but that hardly mattered. He wouldn’t limit himself to corpses; he would free magic from anyone unworthy of it and keep it for himself, growing stronger and stronger. Conquering bodies, desecrating them if he needed to. In time, conquering death itself.
Because Tom was certain: if he could take enough magic, if he could strip it from others and gather it in himself, then even the Grim One would have to yield. He would extract the magic like marrow from bones, steal it from the dead, and climb beyond death’s reach.
Tom knew he had to be careful. Under the watchful eyes of his Hogwarts teachers, he couldn’t reveal his designs. He already had made a mistake with Slughorn, asking him about Horcruxes, therefore on the matter of the dead, he kept his lips sealed.
What he needed most was time - time for experiments, for trial and error, and the freedom to work without teachers breathing down his neck.
Still, he slipped. As the realm of magic revealed its secrets to him, he couldn’t resist the temptation to seek other spoils. Upon discovering the power he could draw from a heritage he’d always deemed worthless, he couldn’t let such opportunities slip by. And so he opened the Chamber of Secrets.
But afterward came regret - not for the girl, but for his own limitations. For his failure to grasp the residue of magic that lingered in her, and for not having enough time with Myrtle’s body to experiment on.
It made him restless. What if the next chance came just as suddenly? What if it didn’t have to be a human body at all - maybe a magical creature was enough?
He needed to be ready for any chance he could get. He read everything he could find in the library - how poison was drawn from wounds, how scent was pulled from flowers, speculations on how Dementors extracted souls. Anything that taught the secrets of taking.
And, over time, he honed his skill in extraction. All the while, he planned.
The easiest way to gain access to bodies wasn’t to become a grave robber. That had been Perennius’ dire mistake.
No. Tom would go through the front door. He would make himself part of St Mungo’s personnel. There wasn’t a proper post for what he was about to do yet, but that hardly mattered. A position could always be created.
After Hogwarts, to everyone’s surprise, Tom entered Healer’s training, despite never showing any interest in tending the sick or the practice of healing magic. Some of the professors tried to dissuade him, but he always managed to convince them with a well-placed word or a charming smile.
The Healer’s training, however, proved to be arduous. Determined to complete it in five years rather than the usual six or seven, Tom spared himself no effort. He applied himself with ruthless discipline, resting only a few hours each night. And when the hospital internship began, it filled the remaining hours with the most demeaning duties: scrubbing bedpans, changing sheets. Tasks designed to strip him of his dignity.
Still, he persevered. He had a higher purpose.
The years passed in a relentless blur of work and hunger, since he scarcely had time to stand in the ration queues. Instead, he skimmed the morsels brought to St Mungo’s by patients’ relatives - sweets, cheese, even tea and coffee - despite the rules forbidding them. In his mind, he was upholding hospital policy by sparing the patients such indulgences, and somehow, he was never caught.
The worst part wasn’t the cold hospital corridors, where water froze in buckets overnight, nor the hunger, nor the exhaustion. It was watching his social life fade away, and his research into magical residue grind to a halt. There was simply no time for such things. And those were the truths he found the hardest to bear. Yes, he told himself he’d catch up on his research eventually, that he’d rebuild his connections - but sometimes the aching solitude gnawed so deeply at him that he began to question the entire endeavour.
But there was no turning back.
After he completed his Healer’s training, he chose to specialise in magical palliative care and thanatology. For a short time, he made something of a name for himself in those fields, before shifting attention to what he had wanted all along: post-mortem care.
The hospital morgue had been little more than a disgrace for decades - a damp basement with ancient stasis vaults where bodies were unceremoniously deposited, left to wait until the undertakers came to collect them.
It was Tom’s innovation to introduce post-mortem examinations. No one had to know that he had harboured the idea for half a decade.
Officially, the practice was meant to confirm the cause of death, and to lay to rest the faint hope of revival by magic that relatives so often clung to. A ridiculous justification - but it had satisfied the Director of St Mungos.
What Tom did not mention was that the basement, in time, would become his laboratory. A place where the corpses would serve as subjects for his experiments.
And serve they did. For years.
At first, for what felt like an eternity, Tom fumbled. Failed. Felt powerless - for all his knowledge, all his determination, proved feeble in the dominion of death.
But Tom did not relent. He was certain that, with sufficient effort, the path would reveal itself. It was a matter of persistence, not luck.
He crafted spell after spell, testing them on small magical creatures - killing them, trying to extract the weak traces of magic, recording every attempt with meticulous care, every spell, every failure.
More than anything, he haunted the library in Diagon Alley, riffling through volumes thick and thin until his fingertips were raw and eyes sore from the parchment dust that had gathered on the shelves for decades. He couldn’t leave a single page unturned - there was no telling which page might hold the key sentence, or even a word that would unlock the secrets he so desperately longed to unravel.
At one point - more than a year into his new role - hope began to rot.
He had spent a restless weekend in his cramped Diagon flat. The single room he occupied was stripped of all comfort. Cleanliness was the only luxury he could afford on his meagre salary, and warmth was a rare guest. Cold had long been his companion; his body barely acknowledged the benefits of heat. He didn’t even feel the exhaustion - when he was in the grip of spell invention, he ignored the body’s petty needs, such as rest or food.
Experimenting with creatures, he had left traces of blood, fur, even feathers across the desk and the uneven, creaky floorboards. In his mind, he wove spells, arranging and rearranging them, pacing ceaselessly through the room. His stomach growled, empty save for oversteeped tea, with no prospect of food. Food only dulled Tom’s mind, so he starved on purpose. Hunger sharpened his thoughts. Hunger fed his obsession.
After what seemed like endless, torturous hours, he returned to work on Monday with three new spells and a faint hope. Tom hated to rely on hope. Ever since his childhood, it had proved to be the tactic of the weak - but now it was all he had.
And yet again, hope let him down. None of the three spells yielded the result he aimed for. The body before him remained stubborn and silent, dead to his desperation.
Anger flared. He stabbed the scalpel into the flesh with wrath, as if he could cut the magic out by force. Only when a dismembered, carved carcass lay before him did he grasp the extent of his temporary lunacy.
Three days, countless painstaking flesh-sewing charms later, the body was whole again. And he had learned a hard lesson: what he wanted, what he craved, could not be forced. Not yet.
But then, incredibly, for once, his library efforts bore fruit.
One night, just before closing, he lingered in the Diagon library, being the last visitor as was usual. As he returned the books to the shelves, he noticed that the binding of one tome was coming apart. That would not do - Tom was reverent toward books.
He took the book, determined to mend it with a few careful spells, when a small strip of parchment slipped free from beneath the leather cover.
It was just a scrap, small and brittle, yet Tom recognized the handwriting instantly.
Cassian Perennius.
“The object is, then, to compel the magic to free itself from the confines, rather than to extract it. Magic will follow, for such is its nature: it always desires to live.”
A single, unremarkable sentence. No one else in the wizarding world would have understood what it meant.
But Tom did.
The book’s record confirmed it had once been lent to Azkaban many decades ago for a single night.
Had that been Perennius’ last wish - to leave the instruction in the book for someone to find? If so, it had found its true - and only - heir at last.
Soon after, Tom finally succeeded. He would never forget the first time it happened.
It had been a corpse of an old man, frail and scholarly, but the traces of magic had been strong. Pneumonia had ended his life - an easily curable affliction, had he only come to St. Mungo’s sooner.
Tom had opened his notebook to the newest spell, a variation drafted the night before - slightly altered words for incantation, a different flick of the wrist.
He approached the pale, wax-skinned body and cast the spell carefully.
At first there was nothing. No sound, no movement in the gray-tiled room, just the dripping of the tap that was too stubborn for plumbing spells. The single lamp overhead flickered, as it always did, almost mocking him. Disappointment began its slow, familiar creep up his spine-
And then.
A flicker, but not of the lamp. A faint, barely-there shimmer within the body, like light pressing beneath a closed door, straining at the threshold between the living and the dead.
Slowly, agonizingly, the body began to glow. For one fleeting moment, it almost blazed, and then exhaled a small, glimmering cloud. Immediately Tom touched it with his wand, and watched as the glow was assimilated - from wand to hand, hand to arm, arm to chest - until it sank wholly into him.
That was it. He had done it. He had harvested magic from the dead.
It didn’t feel like much. There was a shift in his magic, but it wasn’t overwhelming. The newly claimed magic seemed to settle within him easily, obedient.
Only later did he notice the difference. His spells began to move with more grace, his will meeting less resistance. Charms he had known for years answered him faster, sharper. And then came flares of unknown spells - ghostly echoes of the dead man’s spell repertoire stirring through his magic.
In time, the echoes faded, fully absorbed into him.
Tom continued his grim harvest and became better at it.
He was meticulous, unrelenting. Every corpse that arrived at the Post-Mortem Ward was treated with the same precise care. He peeled back the sheet that covered the body as a groom might unveil a bride at the altar - a strange parody of intimacy, born not of affection, but of lust for power.
He performed the mortuary-wizard duties briskly, but never carelessly: stasis charms, verification spells to confirm the cause of death. If doubts lingered, he was authorised to go further - to cut, to sink the scalpel into the pallid flesh, to saw through the bones and expose the organs that had betrayed their owner.
But before he took the scalpel to the skin, Tom performed his own ritual. He knew it was irrational, even foolish, to hurry - the magic would not trickle out like blood from a wound, and still he did it. He stood next to the head of the corpse, leaned close, and cast the spell. The moments after were always the most mesmerising: watching as the sleeping magic stirred and rose from the fleshy husk, seeking a new vessel. And the vessel was right there. Once the magic found him, it nestled into his core, and Tom ceased the ritual. His magic flared up, a pyre freshly fed with fuel.
A flame that would never stop burning. In time, he believed, even death itself would not be able to quench it.
Alas, his careful work did not go unnoticed. The Director of St. Mungo praised him at length every time they met, until Tom felt nauseous with unease. What he did required secrecy. Praise drew light, and light invited unwelcome scrutiny.
And the scrutiny came.
Three years into his tenure at St. Mungo’s, and one year since he had perfected the art of extracting the residual magic, the Head Auror appeared, waiting in the hospital’s reception. Tom’s first reaction was a surge of cold panic. Had he been discovered? Had someone - from the hospital staff or the undertakers - noticed anything unusual about the bodies?
He stood frozen as the man approached, every step reverberated by Tom’s thundering pulse.
But the Auror’s visit had another purpose. The Auror Office wanted to recruit him as a Magical Pathologist - a role unheard of before, as Aurors had long relied on a handful of error prone charms and hasty observations to determine the causes of death.
Thanks to the Director’s loose tongue, Tom’s reputation had spread. His precision had been noted, as had the number of times he had proved that the traditional diagnostic charms were of little use for more complex cases.
It was an opportunity, but also a risk. More bodies, yes, and a quicker path to his plans. But also more eyes.
Luckily, Tom could dictate his terms. He would work alone. No assistants, no Aurors breathing down his neck. He demanded a chamber in the Ministry’s lowest basement, fitted with stasis vaults, a set of newly-forged silver instruments and other equipment for the laboratory work. He specified lights that could hover and shift at his command, so he could draw them close when cutting, or push them aside when what he did was more suited for…shadows.
The Aurors granted everything. And so, beneath the Ministry’s stone foundations, Tom secured another sanctum where corpses arrived to reveal their secrets, where death itself was interrogated and dissected.
His work at the Ministry turned out better than he expected. Thanks to his initial demands, he was quickly labelled eccentric, and thus left alone to his vices. No superiors visited his workspace, no summons to the Auror department’s dull weekly meetings. He only participated in meetings he couldn’t avoid, high-profile cases, and those weren’t many.
There were other perks, too. Invitations to Ministry functions offered him the chance to mend a social circle that had frayed over the years. Most of his pure-blood contemporaries gravitated toward the Ministry in one capacity or another, and Tom was pleased to reestablish ties.
He did not fail to notice the judgment, the half-smirks, the barbed remarks about his chosen occupation. He feigned indifference, yet each word was catalogued and carved into his memory.
One day he would return to them.
One day, he would walk into a room and the room would fall silent. He would tower over those who had mocked him, tilt their faces up in false benediction, and hover his mouth over theirs - not to kiss, but to draw. He would drink them hollow, sip their magic until nothing of it remained, leave them as empty shells, squibs fit only for pity and disgust.
The work itself was more rewarding than he had expected. Unlike the hospital, where corpses were ordinary, the Aurors brought him bodies enveloped in strange, potent traces - magic sharpened by combat, darkened by curses, poisoned by desperation. It was as if he had been sipping diluted tea for years and someone had finally placed a cup of strong, black coffee in his hands.
Most intoxicating of all were the victims of the Killing Curse. Their magical cores held remnants unlike any other. The first time Tom harvested one, he had been startled: the usually white cloud emerged tinged with green. When it fused into him, he could taste it. Bitter, syrupy, thrilling, nauseating. It lingered on his tongue.
The Killing Curse tasted of absinthe. The green fairy of death.
Tom knew the flavour well. He had once received a bottle from the St. Mungo’s staff for his birthday. He had opened it almost a year later, for its caloric value, when there was nothing else at home. The spirit had been foul, yet it had warmed him. Now he sipped it occasionally, when the damp crept into his flat and he longed for a flicker of heat from within, enough to drift into sleep, if only for a few fragile hours.
Of course, there were downsides for his job at the Ministry as well. He had to endure working near Aurors, and worse, at times accompany them into the field. The excuses were always the same - lack of time, impossibility of moving the corpse. In truth, the Aurors were merely incompetent, but Tom had no interest in educating them on the intricacies of advanced levitation spells. He moved the remains himself.
And the bodies themselves. At St. Mungo’s, the dead had been mostly fresh, barely touched by decay. In the field he met the full splendour of gore: mutilation, ruptured torsos, torn limbs; knives or splintered wands lodged deep in flesh; once, even an axe buried in a skull. There were flies, maggots, corpse beetles - a whole army of aides to the work of decomposition.
None of this deterred him, quite the opposite. From a particularly gangrenous, crawling carcass he had extracted the strongest residue of dark magic yet. Decay, he discovered, was not an end at all, but another source of power, waiting to be harvested.
After one year in the new position, he was quite satisfied. His strength had grown to the point where most everyday spells no longer required a wand. For his ritual, he still used one - out of habit, mostly --but he knew the day would come when he could drain the dead barehanded, like a Dementor extracting souls.
One particularly wretched morning in his flat, when he discovered that mice had gnawed through the last piece of soap at night, an owl tapped at his window.
He opened the window and took the message, shooing the owl away as he didn’t have any treats.
To: The Magical Pathologist Tom Riddle
Mr Riddle,
The first part of the novice Auror training has been completed this year. However, I strongly suggest for you to hold a special session with them. We believe that improved accuracy in their handling of bodies and their preservation will aid your work as well. Please try to find the time to conduct the training.
Head Auror Thaddeus Blackwood
Tom frowned. Training a batch of inept, clumsy rookies was hardly what he wished to waste his day on. He had planned instead to conclude his duties at the Ministry swiftly and spend the remainder of the afternoon in the Diagon Alley library.
But the note had been signed by the Head Auror himself. It wouldn’t be wise to just ignore it.
So Tom skipped breakfast and headed to the Ministry, using the messaging system to send back a terse agreement. He proposed a time that would give him ample opportunity to prepare for the unwelcome visitors.
When the time came, he had already arranged the laboratory - every surface had been scrubbed and sterilised; his instruments gleamed in neat rows on the steel table. In the centre of the room lay the latest cadaver, delivered the day before.
This one was well into its putrescent decay. Found in the forest, its exposure to the elements had hastened the infestation of crawling life forms. As the cadaver was under Stasis, the infestation had been stopped. But it wasn’t removed.
Good. Ideal for the purposes of training. The rookies needed to see the worst, to test the strength of their stomachs.
He covered the body with a sheet, not to distract the recruits from the start. It was impressive enough to deem a slow reveal.
Tom felt wards stir in the corridor - the subtle guardians of his sanctum, warning him that someone was approaching. Moments later came a knock.
“Enter,” Tom called, flicking his wrist. The lock clicked, and Tom flinched. He’d done it wandlessly. He reminded himself to be careful now. These people must never suspect the power he was quietly amassing.
The door swung open. A company of trainees marched in, led by a tall, broad-shouldered man bearing the insignia of a senior Auror.
Edwin Hobbs. A man Tom despised.
Hobbs was of mixed-blood stock - not stupid, for he would never have become the youngest senior Auror in history if he were. Nor was he unattractive; indeed, he was widely regarded as one of the Ministry’s most eligible and handsome bachelors.
No, Tom’s contempt stemmed from Hobbs’ lack of refinement. His methods, as little as Tom had had the misfortune to witness or read about, were more impulsive than calculating. His triumphs came from brute force and sheer luck, not strategy.
One day, Tom thought, that insufferable bravado will collide with a wall. Or a well placed trap. And I intend to be there to watch it.
The trainees shuffled in behind Hobbs, a nervous flock fresh out of Hogwarts, though a few looked slightly older. All of them wore the same expression of profound unease and repulsion.
“So. This is where we drop the dead,” Hobbs remarked, his ice-blue eyes glinting. The glint shifted as he turned to Tom, something uncomfortable flickering there.
“And this is our Magical Pathologist, Mister - ”
“I shall introduce myself, Auror Hobbs,” Tom cut in crisply. “I am Tom Riddle, Magical Pathologist of the Auror Department, and Head of the Post-Mortem Ward at St Mungo’s.”
The group did not exactly look inspired by the introduction. A few nodded stiffly, but most simply stared at Tom, or cast nervous glances toward the table with its gleaming instruments, their discomfort growing by the second.
A sudden banging on the door made several of them jump.
This time, Tom reached for his wand and flicked it, the lock unlatching with a sharp click.
The door opened to admit another trainee. Unlike the rest, this one looked as though he had sprinted the whole way - sweaty, flushed, his uniform slightly askew. He lingered in the doorway, catching his breath.
“Mister Potter,” Hobbs spoke up, his tone shifting, lighter, almost amused. “I was wondering when you’d join us. Thought you’d abandoned us already.”
Mister Potter flushed, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, I… got pulled aside by Auror Townsend. He gave me some details on the victims in the Baker Street case. But afterwards…I ran as fast as I could.”
“Good lad,” Hobbs said, and his smile lingered a moment too long. “Always knew you wouldn’t want to miss this.”
“Do come closer,” Tom interrupted. His gaze pointed toward the body on the table. “As much as I enjoy my adjustable lamps, you will see very little from the doorway.”
Potter stepped forward, weaving into the group. Tom was about to turn back to the cadaver when their eyes met. Just for a second, less than a beat of heart.
But it was enough.
Green eyes. Green as absinthe. Green as the Killing Curse.
Not that it mattered. Tom shook himself out of the stupor, stepped toward the body and removed the sheet, lifting the Stasis charm with a flick of the wand. The stench filled the lab instantly.
Gasps and gagging noises erupted at once. Tom turned, watching most of the Aurors pinch their noses shut or even clamp their eyes closed.
Predictable. Pathetic.
Only one of them hadn’t reacted like an imbecile - it was Potter. Surprised, yes, but not repulsed. Instead, he edged closer, eyes fixed on the body, undeterred.
Even Hobbs looked dubious. “Did you really have to show them that?” he asked.
Tom pressed down his irritation. “No, I did not. But make no mistake - I did it for their own good. According to my records, every tenth body arrives in advanced decomposition. Pray tell - what good is an Auror who can handle nine corpses, but becomes inept at the sight of the tenth, just because it crawls with a bit of grave fauna?”
As Hobbs’ eyes flashed annoyance, someone else in the room chuckled.
Tom’s gaze cut instantly to the source. At least one person appreciated the humor. Again - Potter. He allowed himself the briefest flicker of approval before continuing, addressing the group once more.
“I would like to clarify that your fear of maggots is irrational. Primal, yes, but over time you will learn to subdue it - as with every other fear in your line of work. More importantly, you will learn to use these creatures. So try to make an educated guess- what can maggots tell us about a dead body?”
Dead silence. His gaze swept over the more polished, pure-blood-looking recruits - surely at least one of them could make a guess?
But once again, it was the most disheveled of the lot who spoke - the one Tom was trying not to notice too closely.
“Um - two things we can see straight away,” Potter said, quick but sure. “First, the larvae’s stage - whether they’ve just hatched, are midway through feeding, or pupating - gives us a timeline for how long the body’s been exposed. Second, the species themselves. If the insects don’t match the environment - say, forest beetles on a body found in London - you know the corpse was moved. Or, vice versa. Like, lack of...grave fauna on a seemingly old body in a forest.”
“Very well,” Tom said. He caught a faint blush on Potter’s cheeks as he stepped back, as if regretting the display of knowledge.
So maybe not all of this batch of Aurors would be hopeless, Tom thought, as he launched into a long lecture on the peculiarities of bodies in advanced decomposition. Why and where the usual diagnostic spells failed. How even a little knowledge of human anatomy and plain observation could yield more precise results. The difference between wounds caused by weapons and spell damage. The correct way to approach a body, how to prepare it for levitation, and how to transport it safely to his ward.
“Obviously,” he said at last, when the session reached its third hour and most of the group were shifting on their feet, restless from the stale air, the long stand, and sheer boredom. Tom had noticed their minds had wandered an hour ago. “I am not going into details today. If I did, it would require an entire seminar. And ultimately, that is what you have me for. Your task is to ensure your superficial analysis is not wrong. I will provide you with the gruesome details.”
He almost chuckled to himself, his eyes drifting - unintentionally, yet inevitably - to the corner where a certain green-eyed man stood. With no small satisfaction, Tom caught the twitch of lips there too.
“Thank you, Mr. Riddle. This was truly… informative,” Hobbs said. His statement rippled through the group, vaguely echoed by murmurs of agreement. With the prospect of leaving, the trainees suddenly found energy, like worms stirred from a stasis charm.
Tom moved to the door and held it open. As much as he had enjoyed hearing himself speak, he was tired. He wanted to finish with the body on the table, then go home, eat something decent for once, and rest. Everything else could wait.
One person still lingered in the room.
Potter had drifted to the table, his eyes scanning the corpse with a frown, as if considering some private theory.
Tom approached. “Any questions?”
“It’s not… bloated,” Potter frowned.
“Indeed. Bloating occurs only in the first days after death. Its severity depends on the body type, the environment, and the season. In this case, all those factors minimized it.”
Potter nodded, biting at his well-shaped lip.
Tom couldn’t resist. “You seem to know a little about pathology.”
Potter turned to him, gaze steady. “Yes, well - I want to do well in my job. To be honest,” his voice dropped, almost conspiratorial, “not all of the topics I’m interested in were properly covered in Auror training.”
What an appealing intrigue this man was. “Such as?” Tom asked.
“Crime scene forensics, for one. And pathology, though you’ve covered that here. But still, I felt - as you said - that not every clue can be uncovered by magic alone. So I found… other ways to learn.”
“What ways?” Tom asked, his voice low.
Potter glanced around. “Nothing illegal. I went to Muggle libraries. They have an astonishingly inventive range of investigative methods.”
Tom was struck, impressed despite himself. He had never considered that. He relied on wizarding techniques and ones he’d honed over years. They were solid. But perhaps… there was still room for refinement.
“Which libraries?” Tom asked, stepping closer to the young Auror.
Potter gave a small laugh. “Oh…actually just one. The British Library. Very original.”
The sound of that laugh warmed Tom more than he liked to admit.
For a moment, the room was filled with silence. Despite himself, Tom found he was desperately trying to think of something to say - anything to keep the conversation going. But just as he was about to ask something trivial about the library, he felt Potter’s magic.
It had started happening recently - the more power he acquired, the more finely tuned he became to the pulse of others’ magic. He didn’t sense it with everyone, but occasionally it struck him. Usually, it was unpleasant; most people’s magic was weak, lukewarm, with a faintly salty tang to it, like sweat or tears, fluids Tom despised.
Potter’s magic, however, was nothing like anything he’d ever felt. It was strong, warm, and carried a spicy richness. He felt his own magic stir in response, and worse - his body too, heat pooling low, where he didn’t dare to acknowledge.
Potter had turned to him now, eyes bright and expectant, leaning slightly as if daring Tom to speak, and Tom was about to do so -
“Mr. Potter!” Hobbs’ voice cracked across the room. He stood in the doorway. “Trying to recruit yourself as Mr. Riddle’s assistant? I’m afraid we’ll need you for fieldwork.” He strode toward them.
Potter flinched. “No, I… I just had some questions and -”
“And I answered them,” Tom finished, lifting his chin, voice cool.
“Good.” Hobbs’ eyes lingered on Potter. “Now, Harry, come on. We’ve got evidence from this morning’s case to review.”
“Oh. Right.” Potter hesitated, glancing once more at Tom. His eyes traced over Tom’s face slowly. “Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Riddle.”
So his name is Harry.
“You are very welcome,” Tom replied, letting the corners of his mouth tip just slightly upward.
For a quick, breathless moment, they looked at each other, until Hobbs’ hand pressed at Harry’s shoulder, urging him toward the door.
As they left, Tom caught the brief, warning look Hobbs shot at him - laced with contempt, razor-sharp - and he did not miss how Hobbs’ eyes slid, unashamedly, down Harry’s back as they went.
When the door closed, Tom snapped the lock with a sharp flick of his fingers, the sound echoing in the empty room. He stood in the silence, breathing slowly, trying to make sense of what had just occurred.