Serpentine [T.M. Riddle]

Emergence (Part I)

Birds flocking together, above his head, fluttering like shadowed butterflies. As if the flapping of their wings caused the breeze in his hair. He stares at them for a long time. He walks down the path.

He knows his path. He's been here before. The flesh trees and the natural trees. The rock in his shoe. His ex-housemate at the end of the path...

Much is the same, this time around. Ximena lies asleep: something red and pulpy in her hand. Half-eaten. A fruit or a flower or a small animal--A bird? He still cannot tell but he still wants it. Desperately. He's upset that she didn't stay awake for him. Did not share with him.

Much is different, though, this time around: there are bells, loud and clanging church bells in the distance. There's lights out in the mountains (there are mountains!), and shadows of dancing devils being cast upon the cliffs. It is a holy night, of all nights.

Another thing that is different: much more noticeable, perhaps more alarming: Ximena is small. Yes. Much more than before. How could he not have noticed? She is small, a toddler, in the lap of Balam. His teacher. Where did he come from? He lies asleep too. Until he is no longer grown either: he is suddenly a child in a baptismal dress holding Ximena. He is in the lap of his mother: Inés. Or Señora Rivera. Asleep. Soon, she too is small. A little bit older than her son. A little bit older than her granddaughter. A woman he does not know is holding her. They are all asleep.

It continues like this, a strange chain of Mother cradling child, with only Balam as the sole male. The oldest woman looks it: deep wrinkles cutting into her skin, age spots dabbled over her body, snow white hair braided down her shoulder. She would be Ximena's great-great grandmother. She looks half-dead. Clinging to life.

The youngest is Ximena, looking like a child born too early. Small in the chubby hands of her father: barely more than a baby himself.

It makes him uneasy. Angry. Looking at the display of age, at the woman at death's doorstep. At his own friend looking so small. So weak. Fragile. In the hands of her father (father to be?), she looks about to fall. Die on the ground.

And then a skeleton is in the chair. Embracing them all.

He wakes up with a light sheen of sweat on his brow.

In the morning, Tom receives a reply from Balam via his barn owl. He reads it with Ambrose at his side, feeding him a steady supply of treats. The man is all too similar to his daughter, he should have known. But at least Tom knows that there's a willingness to answer his questions. It's a start.

Here at Hogwarts, there aren't many he can trust with his dark curiosities. Slughorn, maybe, if it came down to it. But trying to cater to the man's light sensibilities is exhausting. Especially since the trial and the subsequent investigations into how he runs Slytherin house. One would think the man was allergic to the mere mention of Dark Magic.

And isn't that a shame? Isn't the tradition of Dark Magic interwoven into Slytherin house? The diary of Corvinus Gaunt praises his (their) ancestor's use of the practice. Why is it so shunned if it was used by a Founder?

He could (should), of course, inquire Ximena about it. But the sudden interest in Salazar Slytherin... Would it be suspicious? Something to note? He's not... ready yet. To share his finding. His Parselmouth. He wants it to stay his secret. He wants the whole world to know it.

His indecisiveness is pathetic.

-

When he had first stumbled upon the Room of Requirement, it had been a complete accident, though he had been looking for months prior. Truthfully he had been searching for Evan rather fruitlessly: the boy's usual salt-like magic missing from the usual spaces. Tom had walked past the same corridor twice, whence upon the third time, a door had appeared to him. Inside was a cramped room, the size of a closet, with only a single note on the ground, He's in the kitchens.