PAPER CONFINES.
09. / All Things Housed In Her Silence
✶
Something was whispering. A litany. A poem. It wasn't her mother's voice now. Not her father's or her sisters' either. This was her own. God, how long had it been since anything was her own? In the fading light, the world resurfaced, and she was alone with herself. It was slow, slathering with foam, blood that might have been her own, the shore at the edge of the sea tinted tangerine. Her father's boat must have been swaying on the docks somewhere. But the light kept slipping, and Amoret stumbled. She was in the dark. There was the smell of salt and stationary and sky: a riddle with no answer, the words gone with the tide.
She opened her eyes.
Something about her was amiss, a shift in the marrow of her bones that was almost imperceptible. It was in the air. In everything. Amoret had studied molecules—and it was in that too; all of it a bit too thick, a bit too stifling.
When Amoret assessed her surroundings, she was in the lavatory still, only it was clean. Morning light glimmered on the circlet of sinks and twinkled atypically on the polished lip of the bathtub. There was no flood, no debris, no ghost wailing over her new corpse. Amoret wondered if she had dreamed it all, but there were red dashes on her arms, bruises on her cheek, slits in her dress where the cold air found her thighs.
She coughed and a single thread of blood spilled from her mouth onto the white tiles. Amoret spat, eyes wide, wobbling on her hands and knees to stand. The blood was bitter. Ballast in appearance like a narrow cable.
Whatever magic had been triggered when she and Tom touched that book had taken her strength and torn it away. It was as if there was a hole punctured in a great well of power. Her power. She couldn't stop it from teeming over. She couldn't collect it all.
She balanced herself on a pillar, took a deep breath, and was so relieved to find her wand intact on the floor that she nearly collapsed all over again.
Myrtle Warren was dead.
The grief was as oppressive as it could be for someone Amoret had only known in her periphery, dimmed perhaps by the fact that she was already so unmoored by Ruby's death it was hard to even find the ground of Myrtle's. The revelation of it being Tom all this time was so suffocating that if Amoret let the noose tighten any more it might have killed her too. She thought nonetheless of the way Myrtle's ghost had gone through her when her hands were in such tight fists they should have bruised, how desperately she had clawed for the comfort of a girl who had only ever been unkind to her.
Amoret clutched the pillar until her fingers hurt. This death was without a hospital bed to mourn in. Colette was not there to fix her pillow. Nadya was not squeezing her hand. Any grief, in this case, would have to wait.
But Amoret looked around to assess her surroundings and it wasn't just that the lavatory was suddenly clean; it was untouched. Pristine in places it should not have been, there was no sign that anyone had ever been here at all. The silhouette of dust she'd come to was the only difference.
She leaned down and swiped a finger through it. Muddy clouds tethered to her skin, and the dust did nothing at first, but then flickered into small spheres of light and fluttered overhead.
It was like no magic she'd seen before.
She reached to clasp them in her hand but they stopped, flickered like faulty lightbulbs, and dissipated into nothing. Into less than nothing. She felt their absence on her wet, wiry palms.
This was all wrong.
She inched for the door, intact despite her previous spells, and forced it open with all the strength she had left. It knocked her off her feet. She coughed, teetering back up where she caught a glimpse of herself in the gold-rimmed mirror. The sight of her reflection startled her more than she'd like to admit. Her hair was in damp, unbound curls, a particularly large gash in her shift exposed a stretch of red at her ribcage, and her skin looked like whittled jade under the morning creeping in through the windows. Her favourite white slippers seemed to have been swept up in the debris as well. Vanished with the rest of it. Amoret forced herself away.
She walked over the threshold and into the halls again.
Though the torches were lit, the corridor was dark. A cold wind hummed past her, whispers of a ghost or a snakelike boy. They called her name. A new voice now.
The air was thick as she wandered. Thick not just with the early morning fog and that stifling new sense but something sweet and syrupy too. It smelled how she always imagined Colette's family manor had in her stories, a strange juxtaposition to the eerie lamplight, the blue dawn outside, the gothic arches above her, somehow peering down like they had eyes—like they might have crumbled and crushed her at any given moment.
Amoret kept her wand at the ready. She had read about creatures that lured in prey with tricks like this.
She traversed each hall and spiral staircase and hidden shortcut she knew. She looked for her friends. For anyone. But the castle was empty like she'd never seen it before, and she wandered as far as she could before she found herself in front of a tall black door. It was weaved with patterns of sparrows and snakes and thorn-branched roses. It looked like the passage to some ancient catacombs. Her own epigraphed tomb, perhaps.
Those voices called to her from beyond, hushed, choir-hums. They were the sort of voices she would've shuddered at in her father's folklore, voices that would prompt riddles for safe entry, would twist the words and snicker at whatever weak-minded fool tried to work them down. They hissed, and Amoret could feel the paper kiss of their tongues. It was not a pleasant sight. It was not a welcoming touch. But she knew well enough what stood before her.
The Room of Requirement. Strange, it was—different, somehow, like everything else in this mirrored analogue of her world.
Amoret, who knew everything, knew nothing here. She let the room take her like an old friend.
━━━━━
There was the taste of sulfur in the water that morning; like someone had misplaced the salt and spilled it in Nadya's cup, but with the way the Knights of Walpurgis were staring it might not have been a misplacement at all. Mulciber and Rosier's eyes pierced knives into her back, twins of wrought-iron and amber. There weren't any two people in this godforsaken school that Nadya hated more. Not even Dolohov. But she only stared back, raised her goblet in cheers and downed the rest like the finest wine she'd ever tasted.
If it was poison they'd snuck in her drink—courtesy of Nott's father, no doubt—and not some petty retribution for humiliating Dolohov, Nadya only hoped she wouldn't die before she could watch them being dragged by the ankles to Azkaban. But while Rosier's eyes narrowed at her chugging down her glass, Mulciber only laughed under his breath and knifed a slab of meat on his plate. Chewing, he caught Nadya's gaze and raised his goblet back, took a sip of his drink and winked.
Rosier turned his lunch to soot.
It was a lucky thing that Dippet paid them no mind.
Nadya was confident that if their family trees (which were most certainly tangled at every fork) didn't stretch as far back as they did, they would have been expelled by now.
Still, she knew why they were staring.
Without Colette and Banks, Nadya was vulnerable. It was the smallest reassurance that despite word travelling fast on their argument in the courtyard, Dolohov was still hospital-bound and Tom Riddle was nowhere to be found as the de facto centrepiece of their afternoon assembly.
Nadya could take Mulciber, and she'd have Rosier's eyes attached to the nails of her thumbs in less than a minute, given the chance. Avery and Malfoy liked blood, and knew how to spill it, but they were slow. They waited for instructions before they struck. Mulciber would opt for something stupid like Imperio and have Nadya make a fool of herself for a while, and then she'd wake up and put his head on a spike, or... something like that. It wasn't like she'd thought about it before. Certainly not in such vivid detail.
Now, If she weren't so damn proud, and remarkably friendless, Nadya wouldn't have sat at the Slytherin table at all. She took a few careful peeks at the Hufflepuffs and frowned.
Colette had her hair tucked behind her ears with glittering golden pins, laughing at something Alexander Zippel said. She was swirling a red crystal in her goblet. Nadya's instantaneous fear was more exhausting than anything—the Knights of Walpurgis always did know the best way of getting to either of them was by hurting the other.
She stood. She sauntered over to the Hufflepuff table with that cold, familiar glare sliding up her back, and tried to pay it no mind. Today's hidden utensil was a bejewelled butterknife left on the floor from breakfast that Nadya had tucked in her sock. Rosier and Mulciber could keep their hands to themselves unless they wanted a hole in the heart of their palms.
Nadya pulled into the bench beside Colette without greeting and pulled her goblet away.
Plates and spice shakers and cutlery clattered, and the students seated stared at the Slytherin intruder with such distaste she may as well have stood on the table and stomped her feet in their kidney pies.
"Hi," she said.
Colette's spoon froze at her mouth, her eyes fixed on her stolen goblet. "Hello."
"Can we talk?"
"Talk about...?"
Nadya huffed. "You know what."
"I would rather not."
"Just—" Her perfume was suffocating, some little bottle of Schiaparelli's that she'd worn for years, with enough lemon and vanilla to nearly overpower the scent of the soap Nadya had bought her ages ago. She imagined there were worse things to suffocate in, but they'd at least be less distracting. "Look, I am five minutes away from banging my head on the nearest brick wall, Colette. Banks has been avoiding me all day and you've been God-knows-where since the weekend. I've resorted to making nice with Pyotr Balakin." Nadya went sour at his name like it had a bad aftertaste. "And he just nods his head to everything I say because he thinks I'll cut it off if he doesn't. Which, in fairness, might be my doing, but I've been in his house for over six years and if I wanted to do something to him I would've done it already."
Colette sipped a spoonful of soup from her bowl with impressive stiffness. "Okay."
"I—Okay?"
"Anything you have to say to me, you can say here."
Nadya tossed a bitter glance to Zippel, seated across from them looking as out of place as he always did. "Seriously?"
"Yes."
She clenched her teeth. Rosier and Mulciber were watching from the Slytherin table. "I think you'll find we have unwanted guests."
"I think you are an unwanted guest."
"What do you—how much longer do you need to be angry at me? It was just a stupid prank, I didn't—"
"But you did," she whispered, sharp as a whip. "And I should ask you the same."
"What?"
"How much longer do you need to be angry, Nadya? Why are you allowed and I am not?"
"I... then be angry at them too! What did I do?"
"What did you do?" Colette looked at her in disbelief. "I am tired of being used as an excuse for this hatred you have for them."
Colette, an excuse? The word didn't even sound right with her name. Nadya scoffed at the accusation, but her eyes wandered to the many still watching her. "Just let me talk to you. Elsewhere. Colette—"
"Just go, please."
Alex looked as if he wanted to say something, but one more glare from Nadya and the words died on his lips.
She didn't budge.
Colette dropped her spoon into her bowl.
Hot droplets of broth smacked Nadya's cheek.
"Fine," she spat, pushing out of the Hufflepuff table with a loud heave. A first year boy a few spaces over jolted in his seat, spilling the carafe of pumpkin juice in his hand with a high yelp. His plate was left drowning in an orange puddle and his cheeks went pink. One of his friends giggled, but looked at Nadya's expression and shut his mouth like his life depended on it.
Colette cursed, a jumble of aggrieved French, and stood from the table too.
"Nadya! Nadya, you cannot just—"
"Cannot what?"
Colette laughed monotonously, and Nadya didn't like how much the coldness of it reminded her of herself. "You cannot make everyone afraid of you. You cannot control everything. You... you hate them and yet you learn to be them."
Nadya opened her mouth to argue, but nothing seemed to come out. Colette face faltered, eyebrows posed in question, waiting, daring her to say something.
She wished she could. She wished she knew the right words, wished she could wipe the look from Colette's face and... and there was no use for all of the impossible things that Nadya wanted.
"I'm nothing like them," she managed, "I'm nothing like any of you."
Whatever it was Colette was thinking, she chose to keep to herself. And Nadya thought, against her better judgment, say it. Be brave like I'm not.
Colette shook her head and sat at the table again.
"Don't drink from that cup," Nadya muttered before walking away.
The scent of perfume and her gifted soap still lingered, sweet and lovely.
━━━━━
The Room of Requirement was a meadow. The grass was dull and muddy, like it had seen nothing but rain for months. Lilted snowdrops bloomed underfoot, flanking a stone pathway to a steep glen of woods. Within them, acres of tall, mangled oak trees stood, a dark residing in the gaps between the branches that felt alive even from a distance. To Amoret's left, water glimmered under the sickle moon, smaller than the Black Lake but the same greenish-blue. Dark, silvery, shrouded in fog, like a brewing cauldron. It stirred. Waves pulled strong and steadfast to the mossy shore. Amoret could imagine the taste of salt and the current below, men on their rowboats praying to God as the merrows began to sing.
There was the home in the water. Home in the violence of it.
Alongside it, perhaps the most peculiar thing, was an oak tree looming far taller than the rest. Icicles lined the spider-legged branches like the sweet crystals Colette liked to dip in her tea, varying shades of greyish blues. But snow fell from the boughs and did not sheet the ground. Ice coated the wood and did not slick the lake. Winter seemed to exist only in this small, still place.
It looked how Amoret imagined someone might paint the world if they had never seen it before.
Dead sprouts grew in the moss-ridden crevices of the path, but if Amoret twisted her feet in the grass, they coughed up the same dusty light she'd seen in the lavatory. Like her touch disrupted the very nature of them.
Behind her was the door, untethered from any wall but otherwise plain, wooden and chipped at the hinges like her bedroom in Lower Slaughter. She peered around it and found nothing but the same starless sky on the other side.
In the hush of wind, Amoret found that the voices had disappeared. That velvety hiss in her ear was now an invisible patter of rain: the silent cries of men lost at sea. They'd led her where they wanted her. Merrow's bait. But even then, with the big oak baring rows of icicle teeth, Amoret felt... warm. Soft. The air was that of a kinder year's spring.
She'd pinched herself so many times now she was sure this was real, but what was it? Where was it? In the corridors, the gentle dew of sunlight had begun to creep into the castle. The first inkling of morning, she had assumed, but here the moon hung high and the meadow was dark.
She'd never witnessed the Room of Requirement shift into something like this; not even in Tom's impossible library, not even on her worst nights when she'd begged at the empty wall on her hands and knees.
She walked the footpath.
The jagged stone pressed into her bare heels and she found herself tiptoeing to the wooded valley like a child in the middle of the night, wary of the creaky floorboards. She wanted Reid's fingers wrapped around hers. She wanted Sybil's gentle hum.
The trees met in spindly ardors over her head as she crossed the threshold, and Amoret wondered morosely if they might swallow her whole. The wind was colder here. It blew goosebumps up her thighs. She shuddered, wishing she were in her uniform or her mother's tweed coat. Without the church choir whisper of voices guiding her, she felt like she was following a ghost. The spectre of a feeling. A living, beating thing. It was in the trees and in the dirt, the sickle moon and the starless sky. It was the thrum of something lost but purposeful. Looking for her. She knew it was against her better judgement to trust it blindly, but where else was there to go?
At the very least, she had her wand in hand, and—she muttered Lumos under her breath—magic still worked.
Amoret noted that in the depths of the woods, no avian flutter swooped above, no chirping, no animal language that should have belonged to a forest like this. It was unnerving. She dared to wonder if she was the only creature lurking here, and then, what that meant: whether aloneness might be her ruination or reprieve.
In the Slaughters, it wouldn't have been a question; every step in a silent forest was a step the wrong way. Her mother's warning would have chimed like Bibi's dinner bell: get to bed, or the merrows will swim up the river and get you. Amoret had sworn the water was deeper than it seemed, but the street pump had run dry and she needed to clean her coppers before washing day. Reid and Sybil had made her a promise: if she didn't make it home before they could run twice around Upper Slaughter, they'd come looking, wands drawn, no matter how many times Mum made them swear not to. It did little to reassure her. Amoret had sunk the coppers in the river and rinsed and rinsed and choked on her nerves. If some pale, vernal hand reached up and pulled her in, would her cries be heard in the village? If she was swept into the undercurrent, would she have any chance at all? She could fight, could spit the salt from between her teeth and claw for solid ground, but her body would prune and grey eventually, and the water would never tire.
The footpath dispersed into aimless trails of dirt.
Billows of fog clouded Amoret's vision. All she had now was that inkling of instinct to what she hoped was the right direction. It lead her further down the glen, thorns scratching at her already bruised arms, into a clearing of grass misted by dewdrops and ivy suspended overhead.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Before her was a body, small and trembling, kneeling in the grass with their head in their hands. A bedsheet hung over them like a child dressed for Halloween. Amoret swallowed, teeth chattering.
When had it gotten so cold? She was trembling too.
"Hello?" she called, cursing the tremor in her voice.
The figure stumbled back, coming abruptly to their feet. Amoret's brows furrowed. The figure was skinny at the ankles, a small glimpse of pale skin peering out from the gap between their socks and slacks. They wore polished shoes. Little things. Children's shoes. Good supper Oxfords.
The child cleared their throat, and a hand went up, the imprint of a wand poking against the bedsheet.
"Don't come any closer," they said.
It, Amoret reminded herself. It could be anything.
But it had the voice of a young boy, steady and polished. Likely well-off. Nothing like her own: whatever strange amalgamation of her mother's schooled English, her father's rough Scottish and the murmur of West Country she'd adopted in her adolescence. But she swore, distant as it was, that she knew it from somewhere.
Amoret stepped an inch forward. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm lost, just like you, right?"
The thing didn't answer, but took no backstep. Amoret went on, raising her hands in surrender. On approach, she canted to meet its height. "You're hurt, aren't you?"
"I'm fine," it spat. A lie. It was still trembling.
"I can help you."
The thing shrunk at the words, but it remained defiant. "I can hurt you."
Not a thing, then. Faeries didn't threaten, they just did. They certainly didn't stutter.
"I know. You've got magic, don't you?" She was only a few steps away now. "Me too."
And it—he—shrunk even smaller.
"I can help you, if you'll let me."
She reached steadily for the bedsheet, looking between the slots cut out for eyes to see the boy underneath. It was too dark.
In one swift motion, Amoret yanked the sheet away. It flew into the wind, but without a glimpse above his polished shoes, the boy faded into that recurring cloud of light. Lost under her fingertips. She blinked, dazed, staring at her hands like they were stained with blood.
"There you are," said a voice from behind.
Amoret jumped, fumbled over her own legs and nearly screamed.
Her wand moved in tune with his, and Tom Riddle slanted his head, silver in his eyes.
They stood aligned, paralleling each other. The energy coming from him was strong, nearly explosive at the column of her neck. She almost expected a prickle of sparks just at the contact. It made sense, she supposed; the wand pressing against her throat was still gleaming with death. That sort of magic was powerful. By the way Tom flinched at the pressure under his chin, she wondered if she felt that way to him. Maybe she was gleaming with something else. But then there was that barely-smile on his face, and Amoret noticed that he was untouched from their fight in the lavatory. His robes were spotless, skin unmarred, hair still in that perfect swoop of black. It was impossible. Everything about this was impossible.
"Finally," he said, "I almost thought you weren't going to show."
"I almost thought you were dead."
"Did you wish for it?"
"I wished for worse."
"Unfortunately, that might be."
Reality seized her. She straightened her arm to his jugular. "Tell me why I shouldn't immobilize you and drag you to the Ministry right now."
"Though I would love to see you try, you won't be doing that."
"You have no idea what I might do."
"No, but I'm almost positive I know what you can do," he said wearily, "or can't, I suppose. Dragging my corpse to our dear Minister isn't currently an option. You could parade me around an empty castle, if you wish, but I'm not sure it would be as gratifying as you might think."
"You're a murderer," she spat, "I have no reservations on what should be done to people like you."
Tom looked intrigued. "Even killing me yourself?"
She blinked. It wasn't like the idea hadn't crossed her mind, but it had flickered by the way that any sane person contemplated a thing like that. A life for a life, a fleeting whisper, two wrongs making a right. But standing here, soft wind on her skin, eye-to-eye with him where he was flesh and midnight iris and fingers at her throat...
Weeks ago he'd almost been her rival. Then a confidant. A friend. Someone who understood what no one else could—how stupid she'd been to want it so badly he barely had to weave his way in. The door was always wide open.
And yet, she didn't think she had it in her.
Tom knew that.
"Not to worry, Amoret, you have plenty of time to tune your moral compass."
She said nothing, tonguing the back of her teeth.
"And you could try to kill me, but who knows what that might do to you?"
She pushed further, all the power in her wand realized at once as it dug into the soft skin beneath his jaw. That new surge of power might have been his doing, but it was her mercy that drew the line between his life and death. "What are you talking about?"
"Where do you think you are?" he prompted, craning his neck. As if it were a question in an exam.
"In the woods, standing in front of a psychopath."
Patronage glinted in his eyes. "Where are you, Amoret?"
Amoret glanced skyward. The boy's bedsheet still fluttered in the breeze, caught between the branches of a tree. "I'm in the Room of Requirement."
"Go on."
"You've done something to it. Bridged it to your mind, expanded it—some perversion of Fidellius. Dark magic."
"Quite creative. I admit, it took me a while to figure it out myself, but this was not my doing. Not entirely."
"Why don't you just answer the question, since you know so much?"
"Because I thought you might enjoy piecing the puzzle together yourself."
"I have no interest in games."
"Pity. You've always been a better player than the rest of them."
Amoret hissed, "Just tell me."
"So impatient," he muttered. "Everything was set last night; the body, the book, the spell. Myrtle's ghost was an unexpected annoyance—dreadfully loud—but nothing I couldn't handle. I was ready, it all fell so neatly into place."
He clenched his jaw. "Except for you, Amoret. No, I hadn't prepared for you."
"You killed her. You killed Ruby."
"Myrtle Warren was an acceptable loss and a worthy sacrifice and anyone who ever uttered a kind word about her can disagree with me if they'd like, but we both know that list isn't long, and you certainly aren't on it."
Amoret wanted to knock the truth in those words out with a few of his teeth. Guilt itched at her conscience knowing the last thing spoken about Myrtle while she was alive may well have been a snide jeer at her expense. It might have been Amoret's in Transfiguration. She had to remind herself that the only reason she had a guilty conscience was because she had a conscience at all, and Tom Riddle would not worm his wanton way into it.
"And Ruby?" she forced.
Tom's face revealed nothing. "A sacrifice for all that I intended for you, if you hadn't poked your head where it didn't belong. Don't look at me like that. I might thank them one day. I might erect statues for the poor muggle-born saints a few hundred years from now, when I've got time to spare. By then, you'll either be at my side, or your body will be dust alongside theirs. That choice remains with you."
There was too much information to process at once. Tom wasn't muggle-born, the Chamber was real, and Nadya was right.
Somehow this epiphany was worse.
Amoret searched his eyes, the guiltless, settled creed, and her wand at his throat faltered. "The sacrifice. The book, you... Oh my God."
She should have known it in the lavatory. She should have put the pieces together at once. She should have never touched the book. She was so foolish—she should have known.
"You were going to make a horcrux."
Tom looked something between proud and like he was trying to make certain he heard her right. And it wasn't disbelief—he looked less like he was surprised she knew the word and more like he was surprised she'd confess it to him.
"Yes." Appraising. Intrigued. "But it wasn't my interference with Myrtle's soul that brought us here; it was yours."
Amoret's vision melded around the figure of him. "What are you talking about?"
"When you grabbed my diary, the sacrifice was unfinished. You hindered the cost in the demand. Whatever intentions you had, its consequences are unprecedented.
"You opened something, Amoret. What you see around you isn't merely a projection of the Room of Requirement." He took a deep breath, and the dewdrops turned to that dusty light, storm clouds formed, thunder boomed with his exhale. "It's a piece of my soul."
[ . . . ] thor crossover / word count. 4851
© Crierayla ✶ 2020