During Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, Hagrid had taken Harry into the Forbidden Forest one Saturday afternoon to meet his best friend, Aragog. Harry had been secretly a little terrified of Aragog, but since Hagrid clearly loved the giant spider, Harry had kept it together during their meeting.
Harry hadn’t kept it together, however, when after their meeting with the old spider, Aragog’s many offspring had decided to turn Harry into dinner. Apparently, Aragog’s kids had promised their daddy they wouldn’t ever eat Hagrid, but they had made no such promises about any guests Hagrid was stupid enough to bring into their lair.
To make a long story very short, Hagrid and Harry had barely made it out of there alive, and Harry had learned a very important lesson. No, two very important lessons.
One, that he despised acromantulas with a vengeance, and two, that not all magical creatures should be preserved at all costs.
Newt and Hagrid were the kind of men to see the good in any creature, even an enormous man-eating spider, and would never think to harm them.
Harry, on the other hand, had no problems killing the crap out of eight-legged beasts that bred like rabbits and had the potential to destroy entire ecosystems should they establish themselves somewhere they weren’t native. Hagrid had been unknowingly very lucky he’d released Aragog into a forest that housed centaurs who kept the acromantula population in check by hunting the beasts and using their silk and fangs for all manner of objects. If Aragog’s offspring hadn’t been kept in check there wouldn’t have been a single living animal found in the Forbidden Forest, magical or not, after a decade or so. Acromantulas were not picky eaters and killed anything they could find.
Harry portkeyed to Calcutta and flooed to Gosaba, on the edge of the Sundarbans. From there he took his broomstick while hiding under his invisibility cloak and took off across the largest mangrove forest in the world. The trees were thick and the ground soaked, if there was ground at all, because a lot of the forest was a crisscross of streams, rivers and tidal areas.
It was a stunning place, but not without any risks. Aside from the invasive acromantula population, the local tiger population was also a very real threat to people who visited the area, wizard or muggle. Because even for a wizard with magic, a tiger was a fierce opponent, especially because it was very difficult to see them coming in the shadowy undergrowth of a dense forest. Therefore, Harry stayed on his broom and kept above the treetops until he found the area where the acromantulas had their nest.
Before travelling south, Harry and Tom had discussed their plan, which was incredibly simple, so Harry knew he could get started on the attack right away.
While hovering on his broomstick above the colony, Harry got his suitcase out of his backpack and kept it ready in one hand, while with the other he steered his broom down at a high speed, bursting through the canopy and taking the many, many man-eating spiders completely by surprise.
“Now!” Harry yelled, dropping the suitcase to the floor and kicking it open with his foot. At once, Tom burst out the opening, yellow eyes blazing and all around them acromantulas started screaming, a noise so high pitched that it hurt Harry’s ears.
Well, that was something Harry had to write down in his journal as soon as he could, because before that moment Harry hadn’t known acromantulas could scream. Tom slithered around in a circle while all around them spiders that hadn’t yet met his killing gaze fled in all directions. Many, though, did meet their end and fell from the trees around them, legs curled inward as the hit the ground with dull thuds.
The chaos only lasted less than a minute and after that the quiet returned and Harry looked around in awe. There had to be at least thirty or so carcasses spread around them, in all sizes, from very young spiders the size of French bulldogs to full grown specimens the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
“Holy crap,” Harry said with an awed laugh before turning to Tom, eyes wide and slightly disbelieving. “We’re going to be so rich. I know at least six more acromantula colonies that are open to hunting. I say we visit them all. Their silk alone is worth a ton these days, not to mention their venom.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Tom agreed with a toothy smile, looking around in obvious satisfaction. “It hardly even feels like work.”
“Nah, the work comes now,” Harry said as he started breaking off branches from the trees around them. “First, we harvest the silk.”
“How?” Tom asked curiously as he slithered closely.
“With magic, surprisingly,” Harry said with a completely straight face, which earned him a loud snort from Tom. “Here, let me show you.”
Harry waved his wand around at the backend of the first dead spider, gently pulling a strand of silk out from between the spinnerets. He wound that strand of silk around the three foot long branch and then charmed the branch to stay upright and rotate slowly but surely, pulling all the silk out of the spider in one long strand while winding it up.
“Ingenious,” Tom commented as Harry got to work on the second spider. It really wasn’t very difficult work. The real fun started when Harry was done with the silk, storing it all away in an enlarged trunk inside the suitcase, and got his dragonhide gloves out plus a whole tray of glass mason jars.
“Now we get the venom.” Harry placed a mason jar under a fang and pressed the venom gland on the side of the spider’s face to fill it up. He repeated the process with every fang on every dead spider until he had over sixty jars full of yellow venom. He very carefully stored those away inside the suitcase, because that was worth a small fortune.
“How about the rest of them?” Tom asked, looking between Harry and the spiders. “Are any other parts worth money, too?”
“Oh yes,” Harry said with a grin. “The eyes go for a nice amount, for potions, as do the fangs, which are used both in wand making in some countries and in jewellery. The rest of the bodies aren’t worth as much, but thirty spiders like this will still make quite a nice amount of Galleons. By myself I usually only manage to catch one or two spiders, and when broken down they pay the bills for up to four months or so.”
“We’re definitely hunting more of them, then,” Tom said, getting out of the way as Harry levitated all the carcasses into the suitcase. He’d put them under preservation charms and harvest the eyes and fangs later, to keep everything fresh. Tom followed him inside the suitcase and stayed there while Harry got back on his broom and flew them out of the Sundarbans. Since it was getting dark quickly, Harry put up some simple wards to keep muggles away on a stretch of grass with a smattering of trees on the outskirts of Gosaba, placed his suitcase on the ground and climbed inside.
“I’m pooped,” Harry said, stretching his arms over his head. Tom came slithering out of the temperate habitat, where he’d been swimming again by the looks of his wet, shiny scales. “And I need a bath, too.”
“You do reek like dead spiders,” Tom said with an obvious tongue flick aimed at Harry, who, in a move that was not at all childish, stuck his tongue out back at Tom before quickly disappearing into his private quarters.
Harry took a quick shower in the small bathroom and got dressed in fresh pyjamas, dumping his dirty clothes in the overflowing hamper. He really needed to do laundry once they got back home.
And thoughts of returning home reminded Harry there were still things to discuss with Tom. Important things. They’d left Britain in a hurry to relocate Aisa, since that took priority over anything else, but that didn’t mean that Harry was going to forget that Tom had split his soul and committed murder.
For dinner, Harry boiled some pasta on the stove and heated up a can of chunky pasta sauce with meat and veggies. He ate it on the couch while Tom poked his head through the doorway inside the living quarters, watching quietly while Harry finished his meal.
“We have a conversation to finish,” Harry said, putting his empty plate on the coffee table and leaning back in the couch while gazing at Tom steadily.
“A conversation?” Tom asked, seeming genuinely confused for a moment before his eyes widened for a second. “Ah, yes, that conversation.”
Harry sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. He didn’t like this part much, either, but he needed to know what Tom had been up to when he was still a human if he was going to help him become human once more. “Yeah, you were telling me about how you’d let Aisa kill a student. Wait, was that student that annoying ghost that hangs out in the girl’s bathroom?”
“What ghost?” Tom asked, giving Harry a befuddled look.
“Moaning Myrtle. I briefly met her when sneaking into the Chamber and Hermione used to complain about her all the time.”
“Ah, yes, the student’s name was Myrtle Warren.” Tom nodded solemnly. “I was able to frame another student who was keeping an acromantula as a pet for Warren’s death. The acromantula got away, unfortunately, but the student got expelled.”
Very slowly, Harry closed his eyes and leaned forward to press his face into his hands. Every fucking time Tom opened his mouth, worse things came out. “Tom,” Harry asked very softly. “Did you get Hagrid expelled?”
“Ah, yes, that was his name. Hagrid.” Tom seemed to warm up to the subject and started talking a little louder in his enthusiasm. “Hagrid had already received numerous warnings for keeping dangerous animals inside the castle, even inside his dormitory. I’d caught him with his acromantula, since I was a Prefect, and reprimanded him thoroughly because keeping a man-eating a spider in a castle full of children is madness, and Hagrid had promised to get rid of it but then didn’t, so I was planning to turn him over to the authorities when Aisa killed Warren and I realized I could see Hagrid punished for the acromantula while taking the blame for Aisa’s accident. I thought it was quite the elegant solution, all things considered.”
Harry counted to ten, and then to twenty, so he wouldn’t curse the stuffing out of Tom, even though he really wanted to. “Hagrid is my friend.”
Tom recoiled a little, ducking his head while staring at Harry. “Oh. I hadn’t realized.”
“So that’s another life you’ve ruined,” Harry whispered.
“In my defence, Hagrid would have been expelled sooner rather than later, or did you miss the part about him keeping a man-eating spider in a school full of children?”
“I’m well aware of Hagrid’s short-sightedness when it comes to dangerous beasts, especially enormous spiders,” Harry said through gritted teeth while a shiver ran down his spine as he remembered that ill-faithed trip into the Forbidden Forest during his second year. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve hurt a friend of mine.”
“He would have been expelled anyway the moment I reported the acromantula to the authorities,” Tom said, sounding just a tad desperate. “What difference does it make in the end why he got expelled, Harry?”
Harry released another sigh, leaning back to stare up at the ceiling. Tom actually made a good point, even though a large part of Harry was still silently fuming over the injustice done to Hagrid. Except, as Tom told it, there hadn’t been much injustice, because Hagrid had kept a man-eating spider in a school full of children. Harry knew this, because Hagrid happily told that tale to all who would listen.
Fucking hell. Tom really did have a point there.
“All right,” Harry finally said, anger slowly draining away. “I’ll give you that one. Hagrid probably would have been expelled over the acromantula anyway. Case closed. Please continue your story.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Tom moved a little closer to Harry again, massive head tilted slightly as though asking for permission. Harry didn’t object and that seemed enough for Tom to move a little closer still. “Anyway, after Warren’s death I basically created a horcrux in an act of desperation, since I had to return to London that summer again and I genuinely feared for my life. I just didn’t have all the information about horcruxes yet, how they will drive you insane eventually. I used my muggle diary since I didn’t even have a suitable object prepared.”
“Okay, that’s one horcrux, but you said you made multiple,” Harry said, dreading the rest of Tom’s story.
“Yes, I did that the following summer,” Tom said, and it looked as though he was squaring his shoulders, the way he rearranged his body. “I tracked down my useless father and grandparents, killed them and framed my muggle-hating uncle, who was more of a squib than a wizard. The Gaunt family, of which my mother was a member, were known for marrying not just their own cousins, but their siblings as well.”
“Ah, yeah,” Harry said with a shake of his head. “That kind of family. Most of them eventually go extinct because they lose their magic through inbreeding. My mom did a study into this phenomenon when she just became a healer.”
“Yes, exactly.” Tom seemed a little bashful all of a sudden, massive head swinging to the side. “It took me many years to realize that I should probably be grateful that my mother chose a muggle as the father of her child. If she’d followed tradition and fucked her own brother, I would have been a squib.”
“Yeah, almost certainly.”
“For many years I resented the fact that my father was a muggle. I no longer feel like that. I will, however, never forgive him or my grandparents that they left me to rot in an orphanage while they lived a life of wealth and privilege. So I don’t regret killing them and I never will. I used those deaths to create my second horcruxes and I used an old family heirloom, my uncle’s ring, for it.”
“So that’s two,” Harry said, just to keep track. So far Harry was glad no new murders he wasn’t already aware of were being recounted. “Any more than that?”
“No,” Tom said with a sigh, though Harry wasn’t sure if it sounded relieved or exhausted. “I had planned to create more, and I was even eying up some ancient artifacts some old witch was hoarding to use as the new containers, but before I thought up a plan to get my hands on those I came across a vague reference to the ritual of longevity and decided to pursue that, since by that time I’d read up on horcruxes some more and had come across some references that they might cause insanity.”
“And that’s why you travelled to India and met the sorceress?” Harry guessed.
“Yes. I took a vacation from my job at Borgin and Burke’s and used some of my savings to travel to India, where I met the sorceress who gave me the details of the ritual, which I performed right there and then and well, the rest as they say is history.”
“And they say Gryffindors are impulsive,” Harry said with an amused grin. “But by the sound of it you had some serious impulse control issues as well, Mr Slytherin.”
Tom shook his head and seemed downright embarrassed for a moment. “I am aware I may have acted a little impulsively at some critical moments in my life, thank you.”
“How much do you remember of the ritual?”
“Everything.”
“Good.” Harry reached for his wand and summoned his journal out of his bedroom, together with a self-inking quill. “Tell me every detail, because I know a guy who does have access to the Black Family Library and he’s willing to look into it.”
Tom spoke carefully, going over everything he remembered from the ritual and how he’d performed it, and Harry dutifully wrote it all down, making sure he got every little detail right.
“Thanks,” Harry said when Tom was finally finished. “Once we’re back in Britain, I’ll owl Barty this. Where are your horcruxes now? Did you keep them in your Gringotts vault, because your friends emptied that out when they had you declared dead.”
“No, I never stored them there.” Tom looked puzzled for a moment, eyes narrowed while looking down. “I’m not sure if I still have horcruxes, to be honest, because ever since I performed the ritual of longevity, I’ve felt more…whole and complete.”
“That’s interesting,” Harry said, because that would make things a lot easier. Tom with a complete soul was likely less prone to violence and killing than a Tom whose soul was still in tatters. “We could collect the items and check them, I assume?”
“Yes, we could do that,” Tom agreed easily. “I hid the ring in the Gaunt shack under some quite terrifying curses.”
“And the other one?”
“I gave the diary to Abraxas Malfoy for safekeeping,” Tom said and gave Harry a questioning look. “Is Abraxas still alive?”
“No,” Harry said with a groan. “But his son, Lucius is. And Lucius and his wife Narcissa hate my guts, so I think we’re better off with the terrifying curses for now.”
“I can tell you exactly how to break the wards and get around those curses,” Tom quickly said, looking just a bit worried. “Does this mean you are going to help me become human again?”
Harry blinked and realized that apparently he had been working towards that, even if he hadn’t yet made up his mind officially. But here was the thing…Harry liked Tom as he was now. The man was a giant snake, which was fascinating to a zoologist, but what Harry truly liked about Tom was his personality. Tom was clever and funny and just a bit haughty with a side of arrogance, yet at the same time possessed a very real talent for seeing through his own bullshit, at least he did now.
So, the question Harry now had to answer for himself was, did Tom deserve a second chance as a human? As Blaise had pointed out, Tom had basically spent the last sixty years imprisoned in solitary confinement, so he had been punished for all the wrongs he’d done in his younger years. He’d done the crime, but he most certainly also had done the time, as the saying went. And he seemed remorseful, at least about certain things, and he also seemed to no longer aspire to become a Dark Lord.
“What would you do once you’re human again?” Harry asked, because that was something Tom hadn’t elaborated on yet.
“Honestly? Really boring, silly, human stuff.” Tom smiled until his fangs were showing. “Take a hot bath, drink tea, sleep in a soft bed, eat something other than live, whole animals, read books…Merlin, yes, read lots and lots of books.”
Chuckling, Harry got up to wash his dirty plate and make himself a cup of tea. Tom’s suggestion had made Harry crave some tea of his own. “And in the long run?”
“I honestly don’t know yet,” Tom said with a bit of a shrug. “I’ve been stuck like this for so long that I’d genuinely given up hope of ever returning to my human form. I suppose now that I’m earning money, I could live the rest of my life in a nice cottage somewhere, just enjoy being human again, and if I get bored perhaps involve myself in some academics.”
“Wait, the rest of your life?” Harry turned to stare at Tom in confusion.
“I’m well over eighty years old, Harry, or have you forgotten?” Tom’s smile looked rather sad yet resigned. “And with my inbred genetics, I doubt I’ll live as long as some healthy wizards might. I’d just be happy to have a few healthy years as a human before my time is up.”
Harry suddenly felt as if the wind got knocked out of him and he had to inhale a few deep breaths to chase away the sudden light-headedness he felt. He’d forgotten Tom was that old and in his mind, whenever he imaged Tom becoming human again he saw him as a man in his twenties, the age Tom had been when he’d performed the ritual. But now Harry realized that Tom might very well be right and should they reverse the ritual, Tom would be an old man.
“I’ll help you,” Harry said, blinking rapidly a few times before he looked at Tom. “I do believe you deserve a second chance, so I’ll help you become human again.”