A Lexicon of Serpents

Chapter 3: Trousers

Alastor Moody, October 18, 1943

Git! Snake-faced, two-timing, arrogant bastard, screwing our shots six ways to Sunday but oh no Mr. Fustusson sir, I didn't do anything wrong, stupid cheating and how did he juice that Shooting Star to do that, bloody slimy little grandstander, so full of himself he's bursting at the seams, wouldn't somebody like to...

Oh, yes. Half an hour after the game, the rush and shock wears off and all I want to do is punch the pretty little git's lights out. And, all right, maybe it's starting to wear off today, but yesterday was--god damn, had to sit across from the git all through the meeting, and tell Weasley with a straight face that yes he really should behave himself when I've been sitting on my hands to keep myself from bloodying my knuckles on the bloody walls because I can hardly...

"Al."

Mundungus Fletcher's hand falls on my shoulder, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

"Dung, what in hell do you think you're doing sneaking up on me--"

He spins me around, puts both hands on my shoulders, and sits me down on the window-seat of the alcove I'd been brooding in. Then sits down opposite from me and gives me a long, long look out of bottle-green eyes, his usual toothy grin missing entirely.

"You did this last spring."

I stare at him. What in... Oh.

I know what he's getting at. I just don't want to admit it. Dung leans back and shrugs, and the light from the sunset outside mixes with his hair--it's been purple since yesterday, when he let Terry Weasley play with it--and turns it a color so garish it hurts my eyes.

"Sod off," I say, not entirely pleasantly. Dung doesn't even blink.

"Stop being jealous of Riddle, Al."

I brush hair out of my eyes.

"Why?" I snap.

"Because you need to come downstairs and do your ruddy Transfiguration homework. Do I need to give you the same talk you apparently gave Weasley Micro?"

"No." I say defiantly, prickling at my own hypocrisy. "And I'm not jealous of him."

"Then why did you spend a week last spring muttering 'it was Hagrid, I should've seen it' every night when you thought I was asleep?"

I look away.

"Look, Al, the bloody reptile's too smart for anyone's good. Some of us just don't have fits about it."

"It'll wear off," I mumble.

"Good. Now get down to the common room and do your bloody homework."

Ah, friends. Who else can swear at you to make you feel better? I let Dung badger me down the stairs into the common room, which is mostly occupied by sixth and seventh years buried deep in homework. Minerva, aloof and lovely as always, lounges in state in one of the armchairs, little square glasses perched on her nose, large square book perched on her lap, while Rhiannon Beckett, the Irish beauty who shares the sixth-year prefecture with me, elaborately braids Minnie's long, thick auburn hair.

Minnie's hair, you see, is one of the great mysteries of Gryffindor Tower--along with where Dung got his invisibility cloak, how Sitinder Narayan can levitate herself without even using her wand, and why Nearly Headless Nick is still fixated on that bloody Headless Hunt. It was flaming red when I first met her, in her second year, and now it's a deep auburn--at the rate she's going, it's going to be black by the time she hits twenty. Dung says it's the result of too many transfiguration exercises.

The Weasleys have a table to themselves, with Arthur reading his elder brother's homework with puzzlement. I wink at him, and he grins back, face now devoid of purple stains. Terry ruffles his hair without even looking up from his book, and Rob pushes his glasses further up his nose and bends so low over a Divination chart that they promptly fall back down. Johnny Dobson and Ianestos Ajax are in a corner together poring over Quidditch Through the Ages, and Dung shoots them an envious look before plopping down in a chair; Walden Macnair sits alone in another corner, constantly stroking the spine of a great shaggy black book even as he reads from it, and Sitinder Narayan crosses her legs and eyes him, and another fifth-year girl leans to whisper something in her ear...

Oh, yes. Gryffindor common room. Home. I sit down next to Dung, who's at the same table as Mikey Stoffenson.

"What was the assignment again?"

Wordlessly, Mikey slides a sheet of parchment towards me. I read it over and groan.

"Sometimes I just hate the man..."

"Bottomless candy jar and all?" Dung says with a grin.

Well, yes. There are some advantages to having Dumbledore for your head of house.

~~~~~

Tuesday. Transfiguration, double with Slytherin, but only the smarter half of either house because it's the advanced unit. And I am ignoring Riddle, damn it, I am. And Professor Dumbledore is going on about a variation of Switching Spells, demonstrating by switching bits of a black and white pair of guinea pigs around until they're checkerboard inverts of each other, and I'm taking notes, until all of a sudden I feel rather cold from the waist down.

Then a toad hops off my chair.

Somebody screams.

I look down and realize my trousers are gone. Another moment, and I realize that my pants are gone as well, leaving me naked from shirttails to socks.

"Merlin's balls!" I yelp, then yank my robes closed over what's left of my uniform.

There's a moment more of stunned silence. Dumbledore looks up from the poor guinea pigs, and his eyebrows fly up to his hairline. The toad hops obliviously across the floor and attempts to eat a circling fly.

Then--led by the teacher, no less--the classroom breaks into uproar. People laughing, of course, and poking other people in the arms, and laughing some more. Goyle's desk shakes as she pounds on it, and Dumbledore's desk becomes a prop as the old man doubles over chuckling. I'm laughing too, of course, albeit slightly hysterically--desperately trying to keep my robes closed as I do so--because the joke's just too bloody well done not to. It takes a long while for us to calm down. Finally, as the last giggles die off, Dumbledore catches the toad and examines it.

"Your trousers are gone, Mr. Moody?"

"My trousers are gone, sir." I'm bright red. "My pants, too."

Another surge of laughter. Guess nobody noticed. Thank god for desks.

"Impressive," Dumbledore murmurs as the laughter dies a long and painful death. "Most impressive."

He strolls around the classroom, eyes twinkling, and deposits the toad on the desk of his target.

"Riddle."

I whip my head around and stare. Him?!

Riddle looks up at him slowly, the hint of a grin still tugging at his mouth.

"How did you know, sir?"

"Because nobody else in this class could have easily transfigured Mr. Moody's clothing into a perfectly functional toad. It's extremely difficult to integrate two objects into one animal, even if they are in contact at the time of the transfiguration."

"Well, sir, I was reading up on some of the references you gave us last week, and I realized that when it comes to full-fledged inanimate-to-animate transfigurations, it would almost be easier to work with two objects, using one, probably the smaller, for the élan of the target creature, and the other for the physical form."

Dumbledore raises his eyebrows.

"You turned my pants into the soul of a toad." It's out of my mouth before I can stop myself. Riddle looks over at me, and the grin has turned into a lazy smirk.

"Yes. Your pants are probably now engaged in a deep philosophical contemplation of the consumption of flies."

"Because we all know Al's pants are hungry," says Mundungus, still grinning from ear to ear. I gape indignantly at him, then go back to staring at Riddle.

"Brilliant!" Dumbledore declares lightly. "Quite brilliant! The solution's been arrived at before, but rarely, I dare say, by a sixteen-year-old, and more rarely still for such a comical purpose. I should award points to Slytherin." He lowers his eyebrows and stares at Riddle, suddenly quite serious. Riddle barely flinches. "On the other hand, I should take them away. So there's only one thing to do."

He twitches his wand.

A ferret scurries off Riddle's chair. Everybody gets a glimpse of a very long line of pale, strong leg before he snaps his robes shut, shocked.

"Professor!"

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Mr. Riddle," says Dumbledore, with his own peculiar mix of high amusement and stern command. "You'll serve a detention, of course. In the meantime, can anybody tell me what we should feed Mr. Riddle's trousers?"

He stoops to scoop up the squirming ferret. During the ensuing argument about what ferrets eat, Riddle stares at the little creature, then at the wall, obviously quite embarrassed. It's strange to see somebody that pale be that uncomfortable but without a hint of color. I don't think it's possible for Riddle to blush.

I sit through the rest of class vaguely confused and vaguely seething. No idea what the hell Riddle thinks he's doing. Absolutely none. Bastard's inscrutable. I draw my robes tighter around my legs--it's cold enough that they're getting goosebumps. Absolutely bloody inscrutable.

Dung nudges me.

"So he got a detention, eh?" he whispers. "Count yourself lucky--Dumbledore's the only one who bothers to discipline him anymore."

Dumbledore's the only one who dares.

"I'm counting myself bloody half-naked, Dung," I hiss.

Because that's what it comes down to. He's a hero. The bloody bastard's a hero, god help us all.

I'm not going to pretend I wasn't here last year, after all, during the terror. Riddle saved us all--well, all except that Myrtle girl--saved Hogwarts from being closed, saved the terror from continuing through exams because goodness knows half of us would've failed. Saved the world before O.W.L.s without even mussing his hair. Does it matter that he's a smart-aleck, charm-your-pants-off bastard? Maybe it isn't supposed to.

Charm-your-pants-off literally. What in hell was he...he couldn't possibly be...

"Riddle, Moody, would you be able to stay after class for a few minutes?"

Oh, certainly. All that comes after this is lunch. We don't need to eat. The rest of the class clatters out; Riddle and I wait until the wind dies down before making our way carefully to the front of the classroom. He's clutching his robes just as I am, only I'm looking at the wall behind Dumbledore's head and he's looking out the corner of his eye at me with something I can only guess is satisfaction. Hell.

Dumbledore finishes notating the sheet of parchment for Riddle's detention, then looks at him sternly over the top of his glasses.

"I'm not even going to attempt to obtain an explanation for this, Mr. Riddle. Doubtless I don't want to know."

I feel myself flushing crimson again. Riddle merely arches an eyebrow. Bloody bastard's made of ice.

"Indeed, sir," he says calmly.

"I suspect, however, that Professor Coulter will."

"I am well aware of that, sir."

"Very well. Run along, now." Dumbledore waves his hand, and Riddle turns and leaves with as much dignity as an ice bastard can muster when he's got no trousers and Dumbledore's telling him to run along like a firstie. The door closes, and Dumbledore turns his gaze to me. It is a long while before he speaks. I shift uncomfortably.

"I worry, Alastor," he says at last, quite gravely. "There are many times when one has to live in the shadow of a man one reviles." He leans back in his chair with a sigh. "I do not think I have to tell you that it is rather unpopular to dislike Mr. Riddle, and I do not think I have to tell you that a mature person pays little attention to what is popular. And, quite frankly, I have no more idea than you as to what caused that odd behavior--perhaps less."

I shift my weight from one foot to the other.

"Me neither, sir."

"Well, then we are equals. It would seem that Mr. Riddle is more...impulsive than he would care to let us know." He pauses, turns his head slightly as if changing the angle at which he is studying a specimen. "Alastor, you're still getting top marks in Defense Against the Dark Arts, are you not?"

I feel my eyebrows crawling together. Dumbledore's in his enigmatic mood. Suppose it only suits to round off an utterly bizarre class.

"Yes, sir."

"You have a fine mind, and a fine awareness..." His voice trails off, as if he is deep in consideration of some massive problem. Then he shakes his head, his contemplative expression vanishing. "Carry on, Alastor, carry on." He reaches to shepherd the toad across his desk with one hand. "You do know how to reverse the spell, no?"

"Er... It doesn't look like a simple reversion would do the job, sir."

"Quite right--well deduced. Two objects into one object?"

I silently shuffle through my memories of spells.

"Double reversion," I say.

"And the modifiers concerning the animation and the élan?"

"Yes, sir!" I grin as I formulate the incantation. "Revertoduo a priori flexerus feravertus," I recite confidently. I can imagine it in my mind now, even without casting it, just as I can any Transfiguration I understand--can see the extraction of the two objects, the return to inanimacy, the loss of the peculiar sparkle of the élan. Dumbledore returns my smile, and my trousers settle in my hand with a cold plop of toadflesh.

"That should do quite nicely, Mr. Moody." He looks over to the side of his desk, where the bottomless candy jar--it really is bottomless, a bell jar with a little silver lid and a label that inexplicably reads Desert Sage Tea--sits on a scrap of brocade. "I would offer you a sherbet lemon except I fear it would meet its fate inside that and not inside you."

The ferret poses on a stack of books next to the candy jar and bares its needle teeth.

"It's all right, sir. I'm about to go to lunch anyway."

"Well, be on your way then, Alastor. I hear it's meat pie again. Run along. I have a few more parchments to attend to." He waves vaguely at his desk, and I turn with relief to scurry from the room, aiming for the boys' bathroom so that I can reconstruct my clothing in peace.

And to ponder what on earth Dumbledore meant by that. And Riddle, for that matter. My life's taken a sharp left into weird, and with that look on Riddle's face, I don't think it's over yet.

~~~~~~~~~

Tom Marvolo Riddle, October 19, 1943

Damn Dumbledore.

It's one thing to know you've sent somebody stumbling out from class half-naked under his robes, high color in his sharp cheeks, clutching the loose black fabric around himself as he hurries to lunch. It's quite another to be in the situation yourself. Much less enjoyable.

Not that I'm blushing, of course. I don't. The tables in the Great Hall are solid wood. I can appear normal until I have time to slip away for fifteen minutes and conjure myself clothing.

"What is wrong with you, Tom?"

It's Symus, of course. He knows me too well, knows that I don't normally sit like this. I give him a hint of a glare.

"Professor Dumbledore stole my pants."

His mouth falls open. On my other side, I can hear a first year spluttering into his pumpkin juice. The Tiger reaches over and smacks him hard on his skinny back.

"If you choke on my watch, Malfoy, I'll have to exsanguinate you," she says genially.

Martinet Malfoy recovers, reaches for a napkin to wipe his pale, pointy little face, and blurts out an apology, the glassy stare of his wall-eye fixed on me all the while. I ignore him and turn back to Avery.

"It's not quite as bad as it sounds, Symus. I transfigured Moody's pants and trousers into a toad, so Dumbledore gave me a detention and turned mine into a ferret."

Avery stares for a moment, then breaks up laughing, and I let my mischievous grin break upon my face. We turn to look at the Gryffindor table, where Moody seems to have told the same tale to those who weren't in class with him, because they're all staring back at us, hands over mouths, snickering uncontrollably. McGonagall brushes them off and reaches for pumpkin juice. Malfoy smirks at them. Fletcher makes an obscene gesture. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I want to catch Moody between classes, slam him against the wall, and throw his robes open, just because I can. Not that I will. But I can.

A pity he wasn't the only one humiliated by the whole affair. But I turned in Hagrid. I have more status than Moody can imagine. It will be all too easy to make people forget. I am Slytherin, after all. The entire house is entitled and expected to mess with the Gryffindors. Some of us just do it properly.

But surviving lunch is the least of my worries. Coulter will have heard.

~~~~~

Humiliatingly enough, he pulls me aside after class. Charms is the last class before dinner, and Coulter often luxuriates in the relative freedom afforded him to have long discussions with his favored students; I have waited here many times before, but never due to misbehavior. Now I listen to Coulter and the Tiger discuss advanced variants of Summoning Charms, and shift uncomfortably in my seat--hastily conjured trousers tend to pinch. I'll have to go over them more carefully this evening, for I have only two proper pairs to my name, and one is monkeying about on Dumbledore's desk. A few of the sheets of parchment we'd spent an hour layering with multiple charms detach themselves from the high-arched ceiling and start drifting slowly through the air, trailing sparks of a dozen colors. Another changes abruptly into a small pewter tiger and falls with a loud clatter to the bare stone floor. Coulter's eyes flick to it; so do the Tiger's, and a fierce smile curls her mouth. The clepsydra on Coulter's desk, made of clearest glass and hammered metal etched with twining serpents, splashes on.

"Very well, Miss Goyle. A most interesting line of thought indeed. You may go."

She nods, turns with a swirl of robes around her tall, solid frame, cocks an eyebrow at me, and leaves.

"Mr. Riddle." The change in his silk-over-steel voice is barely perceptible, but an unmistakable and harsh summoning. I rise and step before his desk, deliberately calm, hands clasped behind my back with near military precision.

"Professor."

Janosus Coulter, Charms teacher, Head of Slytherin. I do not fear him as I do Dumbledore--there is only one man who poses that kind of threat to me--but neither, even as one of his favored students, is it safe to ignore him. Coulter, like Fustusson, like Dippet, would not choose to destroy me; but Coulter I respect, because, unlike Fustusson or Dippet, he is dangerous, a skilled player of the game that is Slytherin House. Coulter has his flaws, flaws I've long been aware of, but he is not a man to bait or disobey, not even for me. Not yet.

His nod of greeting is almost imperceptible; I can distinguish it only by the way the reflected torchlight shifts on his immaculately hairless scalp. He reaches for a sheet of parchment, flicking the sleeve of his green robes out of the way with casual grace.

"Mr. Riddle. It would seem that you are to serve detention with me tomorrow night."

Silently cursing Dumbledore six ways to Sunday, I nod calmly.

"I was unaware it was to be with you, sir." I am wrenched with disappointment, though I do not show it--I would never show it. Tomorrow night is Quidditch practice. We play Hufflepuff the Saturday after next, and it would not do to miss a practice--not with the wild stories I've heard about their new Seeker.

"I, naturally," Coulter says quietly, "have the authority to postpone the appointment." He shifts his head slightly, and his gaze acquires a sudden weight. "We have a match to win, Mr. Riddle."

Those who say that Quidditch is but a game, that it carries no weight and responsibility, are fools. Coulter will likely let Gryffindor-baiting pass with little fuss, but losing the House Cup because I failed as the Seeker would be another matter. I do not think Coulter cares much for the game per se, but he has his own status to consider.

"Of course, sir."

"Be at my office at seven sharp. Thursday."

It continues to amaze me how Coulter constantly makes such a small, foppish gesture--the slight readjustment of the heavy silver clasps of his robes--so elegant and oddly menacing. Perhaps it is the deliberate flick of his hand, gloved in black leather with cunning and perfect fit, with which he makes it seem as if he were girding himself for battle.

"Yes, sir."

He does not need to tell me that we will talk then. It is implicit. He drops the parchment dismissively to one side of his desk--using his right hand, always his right hand. His wand hand is his left, and rarely further than a handspan from the pocket where he keeps his wand--unless, of course, that choice as well is deliberate.

"You may go."

I nod and turn, just as the Tiger did, and leave, my footsteps echoing on the bare stone floor.

~~~~~

Symus catches me as soon as I come through the wall into the Slytherin common room--he had, I suppose, left dinner early, and I could guess at the reason from the large encyclopedia of potions ingredients under his arm. The common room is occupied primarily with a cluster of third-years; they will not disturb me or mine, and neither will Elladora Black sulking in one corner, nor young Crouch in the other with his book.

"Tom. About the trousers..."

I look at him icily; he does not flinch.

"And you wonder if I am going to leave off?" I glance briefly around my common room: the familiar leather couches, wrought-iron candelabras, the silver and green serpents that twist over the hearth. "Dumbledore has meddled with me before, yet not done lasting damage. This time will be no different."

"And what about Coulter?" he says softly.

I smile sharply at him.

"He will not stop me from bothering Gryffindors. Oh, he may interrogate me about it. But he will not stop me."

"Or Moody?"

"Heh." I look at him calmly. "Do you think he could hurt me?"

Symus laughs quietly, turns, and sets his book down.

"I certainly will not be able to deter you. Chess, Tom?"

"Perhaps tomorrow. Or the evening after. Soothes the soul after detention." I sit in one of the deeply comfortable leather couches, letting my back relax into it as it never can into the hard wooden benches of Hogwarts classrooms. "I've got it day after tomorrow, you see, at seven, with Coulter. Was to be tomorrow, but he postponed for Quidditch. You should be pleased, Captain."

Symus' eyebrow twitches at that.

"Well enough, then. And who gave you to Coulter?"

"Dumbledore, of course."

Symus' eyebrow twitches higher.

"I'm surprised he didn't force you to serve it with him."

I shrug.

"I'm surprised as well, and thankful." I allow myself a hint of a smile. "I suppose the optimistic interpretation is that he fears me." Then I pause, watching Symus' faintly bemused expression with distant delight. "Of course, optimists are fools."

"What rules are you playing by this time, Tom?"

I laugh softly.

"Why, Symus, the ones I make up as I go along."

"It is his move, I would say."

I lean my head back on the couch.

"Why, yes, yes it is."

~~~~~

Later that evening, after an extensive bit of reconjuring on my new trousers, I settle on my bed and frown at the post-owl hooting at me from the top of my dresser. It is a school owl, small and brown, with a note tied to its leg with bright red ribbon. How it found its way to my private room--a luxury that only Slytherin and Ravenclaw bestow upon prefects--I can only guess; although, ever since my research into the Chamber, I have begun to suspect that there are more little passages through Hogwarts than anyone might ever record or even imagine. Owl-sized passages, perhaps? For the only ones I mapped were the basilisk-sized ones.

I untie the note and run the Gryffindor-red ribbon through my fingers. As I unroll it, I find Moody's name, scribbled in an unruly, heavily slanted hand, in the lower corner. Then a hard little object falls from it, bouncing against my knee and plopping to the bedspread. On instinct, I freeze, with one hand inches from my wand; but there is only stillness. After a few moments, I set down the note and cautiously pick the thing up: a plain, brownish-red stone, flat on one side, curving outwards on the other, making me think of nothing more than an uncarved cameo. Bewildered, I look to the note, and the first line catches my eye.

"Jinxing with a prefect, Riddle? I could get you caned for that."

I cannot stop a soft laugh, which fades quickly. He's right. He could. Not that it's been done for years. Between sheer ennui and Dumbledore's self-righteous discouragement, the old Hogwarts traditions of physical punishment--using, cruelly enough to those proud of their blood and heritage, thoroughly Muggle methods--are in high decline. I don't think Alastor Moody has gotten a switch across his backside in the six years he's been here; I certainly haven't. But all the rules still stand. Moody could have me beaten bare-arsed over Osthryd Peeves' desk, or even do it himself in some corridor. The prospect is humiliating beyond belief--but his fire is exhilarating.

Could. Only could, he says. Only a threat. I eye the stone sitting dark and cool in the palm of my hand. Then what does this threaten?

"And I don't know what you're playing at with this thing, but I'll be damned if I'm keeping it."

I look back to the stone. Don't know what I'm playing at? That, Alastor Moody, makes two of us. I hold the note in one hand, stone in the other, and consider.

By all logic, he found it after Transfiguration--after all, by all nepotism, Dumbledore would have returned the toad. And, had Alastor had this thing before, he would not have suspected me of plotting to leave some dangerous object in his possession.

Unless, of course, he is doing it to me.

But no. I am beginning to suspect this thing's nature, and it is not a dangerous one. I shall have to confirm my suspicions, of course, before I even begin formulating a plan of action. I shall have to look it up. And I shall have to research a rather obscure clutch of school rules as well--could I, as a prefect, be exempt from the punishment he threatens? Although Moody is an intelligent enough boy; he might have looked it up already.

Though if prefects are not exempt... Moody may threaten this step, but I could play it just as well. He gets in enough trouble. I imagine that tightly curling hair of his would swing into his eyes if he bowed his head. One, two, three strands, stuck in curlicues to his forehead by the thin haze of sweat from stress and pain. The owl flutters down to my bed and shifts from leg to leg on the mattress.

I wave it away. No reply, much as I'd love to write a witty comeback to those few rough words, charm the ribbon to Slytherin green, and send the owl back posthaste through whatever wormhole it came by. Not yet. I do not know enough. And he has made his move. It is my turn now, and I shall not waste it on a note.