Transcendence

Author's Notes: There is violence and non-consensual sexual activity in this chapter. Tom is an evil, sadistic little blighter. The higher rated version is available at AO3 or Adult Fanfiction (links on my profile page).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"My Lord, the risk of Lestrange going into Diagon Alley as himself is far too high! He will be arrested on sight if any Auror or Hit Wizard recognizes him!"

"It's a risk that I have to take, My Lord! The goblins will never allow me to access my vault if I'm under the influence of any sort of potion or spell to conceal my identity!"

They had been discussing the subject of Lestrange safely accessing his Gringotts vault for the better part of an evening, and at this point the argument had gone around in circles. Tom had been lounging sideways across an overstuffed armchair, half of his attention on the ring he was idly weighing in his hand and the rest on his followers' disagreement. It was always interesting to watch people on two sides of a debate bellow ineffectively at each other without realizing any common ground, and for Tom it was a nice opportunity to gauge the interactions between the four. It seemed that Lestrange had a special dislike of the Malfoys, and Mulciber was attempting to hedge his bets with both of them.

Finally, the noise became too grating on his nerves. Tom waved his hand lazily in the air, and the silence was immediate.

"Lestrange, you will travel to Gringotts under Polyjuice Potion. Your willingness to put yourself at risk for my benefit is admirable, but sacrificing yourself to Azkaban would not do either of us any good." He turned his eyes to the Malfoys, who were looking quite smug that he had agreed with them. "In fact, he will go as one of you, and the other will accompany him. I expect that you will be in contact with the goblins beforehand to smooth the way."

It was not an impossible task, especially when vaults the size of the Malfoys' and Lestranges' were involved, but dealing with the goblins was never easy. Abraxas and Lucius shared a glance full of trepidation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The month it took Polyjuice Potion to simmer seemed interminable to Tom. Lucius had strongly favored the idea of simply obtaining the premade potion from his usual dealer, but under no circumstances would Tom leave such an important mission up to the reliability of a potion maker he didn't know (and hadn't threatened into compliance himself). No, for something as important as the retrieval of a Horcrux, he had to brew the potion himself.

The only problem was that it was boring. Certainly he didn't mind the exact science of cutting and measuring and stirring, but thinking about keeping an eye on the potion as it simmered for hours and days at a time made even him who didn't need sleep want to doze off from sheer boredom.

Unfortunately, Lestrange had always been absolutely dreadful at potions, and his remaining followers all had other things to work on, both for Tom and in their professional lives, and could not dedicate their full time to watching a cauldron simmer. However, Lucius had been quite happy to put forward his son, much to Abraxas's anxiety and Tom's amusement.

"You want me to accept a second-year student as suitable for this task?" he had asked, equal parts critical and curious.

"Third year!" Draco had butted in. Then he'd shrunk back against his father in horror and added, "My Lord."

Tom had rewarded him with a baleful glare. "Third year, then."

Lucius had flushed in embarrassment, but persuaded Tom quite admirably. "My son is particularly gifted in Potions, My Lord, and he does not have any other assignments or concerns to take his attention off of the potion, as the rest of us do. I am certain that he is more than capable of keeping an eye on it and ensuring that you stay on the brewing schedule."

"There is merit in the idea," Tom had allowed.

"I will take full responsibility for my son, My Lord. Although I am confident that it will be unnecessary."

Tom had given them both a genuine smile filled with the full measure of his sadistic amusement. "Lucius, if your son fails, I will hold you both equally and fully responsible and make you each watch the other's punishment. "

On the one hand Tom was pleased that the boy seemed particularly competent for the job after all, because it meant that they would successfully brew it with no mishaps. After the first awkward encounter, Draco had grown more confident in ordering Tom to the potions lab to perform some task or other. In turn, after critically evaluating Draco's work the first few times, Tom had grown more confident in allowing him to do some of the menial slicing and dicing. They had forged a relatively smooth working relationship that was marred only by Draco's lingering terror that he and his father would be tortured at the slightest mistake, which was, of course, completely true.

On the other hand, Tom was disappointed, because he had gotten his hopes up a bit that he'd get to act out all of the fantasies he'd been nursing about torturing father and son together. No doubt his other self would have invented a reason to act on his thoughts, if he even bothered with a pretext at all, but Tom was unfortunately not quite that mad yet.

The bright side was that his relationship with the youngest Malfoy continued to grow, and Tom was fairly certain that he would be able to turn Draco's loyalty to himself in due time. Since spending more time in Draco's presence, he had witnessed enough tiffs between Lucius and his son to allow him to conclude that Draco's hero worship of his father was that of a child who had never had any occasion to think that his father might be fallible or that there might be someone smarter or stronger. Now that the boy was thirteen, the time seemed ripe for Tom to disabuse him of that notion.

Thus, whereas he usually all but completely tuned out the familial interactions of his hosts, on one morning near the end of the Polyjuice's brewing cycle, Tom paid attention to the disagreement between Lucius and Draco at the breakfast table.

"But I'm thirteen years old! I think I'm old enough to handle it!" cried Draco with the attitude of a boy who had not yet realized that if he had to repeat his age as proof of his maturity, then it was not really proof of his maturity at all.

"I said no, Draco. Your continued entreaties will not change my decision."

Draco glowered at his father. "Do you expect me to go back to school with nothing more than Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed under my belt? When do you expect that I'll be old enough to crack open a useful book?"

"When I say so," drawled Lucius from behind his newspaper, completely unbothered, "and not a moment before."

That afternoon in the library, his son was still visibly sullen, though it had hardly affected his work earlier in the potions lab. After all, he was undoubtedly too terrified of Tom to allow their potion to suffer.

Finally, after several hours of putting up with it, Tom finished adding information from his current book to his already mountainous stack of notes and turned his attention to Draco.

"Which book has caused all of this trouble?"

Draco started in surprise, as he usually did when Tom unexpectedly broke the silence between them, and looked up at him with wide eyes.

"A Theory of Modern Dark Arts," he answered, a little scowl on his lips.

Hardly modern anymore. It was already twenty years old when I read it. Still, thought Tom, picturing the pages in his mind, it has its uses.

Lucius was not wrong that his son was too young for it, although Tom was sure that simply explaining why to Draco could have avoided all of this intolerable sulking. The title was appealing for anyone who was looking for a place to begin an in-depth study of the Dark Arts, but in reality following the text required quite a thorough knowledge of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. Tom had bullied one of the older Slytherins into getting it for him out of the restricted section during his first year, before any of the professors had begun agreeing to write him passes of his own, and barely thirty seconds after he'd opened it he'd been demanding that his fellow Slytherin let him borrow his Arithmancy and Ancient Runes textbooks as well.

Although Tom had taught himself the basics of those two subjects during his first term at Hogwarts, he doubted that Draco would be able to appreciate A Theory of the Modern Dark Arts before at least the end of the upcoming school year.

He Summoned it from one of the upper shelves of the Malfoy library and sent it flying towards Draco, who stared in surprise between Tom and the book hovering in front of him. Then he hesitantly reached for it and, when a few seconds passed without Tom punishing him (or his father popping out of the woodwork to berate him), he opened to the first page.

It took less time than Tom had predicted before Draco, a look of mild disgust passing over his features, said, "Honestly! 'This book will attempt to explain how the complex relationship between the runic bases of the oldest Dark magic and the modern Latin usage can be simplified using the new and exciting breakthroughs in our understanding of arithmantical principles in order to seamlessly bring the most ancient of the Dark Arts into a new era,' really?"

"Abrams isn't the most concise of authors," allowed Tom, although he knew that wasn't what Draco meant.

"Not that!" cried Draco, apparently forgetting to be absolutely petrified of Tom. "Why didn't Father just tell me that this is what the book is about?"

Tom shrugged carelessly. "I do not pretend to understand why adults feel the need to assert their own dominance as if it's actually an answer to anything, rather than simply explain things to children."

Draco laughed. Tom magically took the heavy book from Draco's lap and sent it back to its place.

"Abrams' argument is incorrect, in any case," Tom explained as he shuffled through his many notes. "However, it has been accepted as true by the majority of practitioners, and that is why so many Dark wizards have trouble learning even the basics, much less creating anything new."

He thought privately to himself that this was probably how the elder Avery had managed to kill himself in a magical accident. Avery had always been brilliantly creative but without the requisite skill in Arithmancy to safely conduct the experiments he dreamed up.

"Perhaps if you can ever work out for yourself what Abrams got wrong," he continued, "then I will think about sharing some of what I know with you. No cheating, mind you; I'll know immediately if you've asked your father or grandfather to help you."

Malfoy's eyes lit up in pride and pleasure. "Oh, thank you, My Lord! I'll figure it out, I promise! Arithmancy and Ancient Runes might be boring subjects, but I'll put all of my effort into learning them if you will be my reward!"

The ghost of a smile flitted across Tom's lips at Draco's innocence in proclaiming Tom as his reward. Undoubtedly the boy had no idea at the sexual suggestion in his words and had only meant that his reward would be his lord's time and knowledge.

"It's boring to learn them at first, that's true. It's rote memorization, just like when you were memorizing your multiplication tables. However," he added, the tone of his voice taking on an excitement that had Draco leaning forward in his chair, "once you have learned the basics, an entire world of magical knowledge is at your fingertips. You can understand how and why spells work and potions ingredients interact in certain ways. It's like how after you learn multiplication, suddenly the world of division and algebra and more advanced mathematics is open to you."

Draco looked so enraptured by what he was saying that he had the rashest idea he'd had in a while. He carefully put his notes back in order after he'd removed the bit of parchment he needed. Then he glanced up and allowed his eyes to meet Draco's.

"Come here and I will give you a demonstration."

The boy came without hesitation, as if he fully trusted Tom. Even though that was what Tom wanted, he still found himself disapproving of the willingness to trust that Draco, like most children with loving and protecting parents, tended to display so easily. For all he knew, Tom was planning on experimenting on him!

Draco came to a stop in front of his chair, and Tom motioned for him to stand at his side instead. With Draco looking over his shoulder, he levitated the Gaunt ring in front of himself and spread his notes out across his lap and the arms of the chair. He waved his wand at the ring until a black shadow was visible swirling around and through it, like ink slowly seeping into parchment and spreading its stain across the page.

"It's cursed, you see?" he asked, and he sensed rather than saw Draco's affirmation. "I could analyze the effects of the curse using various methods learned across the fields of Defense, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy."

Draco's arm appeared suddenly in front of him, and he felt the boy lean close against his back in order to reach over his shoulder and point at the uppermost corner of his notes.

"That's what you've written here?"

Tom found, to his own great amusement, that he didn't much mind the littlest Malfoy being so presumptuous with his person. Or at least he didn't mind enough to curse him for it. He had been encouraging the familiarity, had he not?

"Yes." He ran a long finger down the parchment, pointing out the various runic notations one by one. "This one is for death. This one wilting. Strength. Proliferation. Preservation. Pain...." He pointed to the next section of his notes. "Then I could translate the runes into their arithmantical equivalencies."

The body behind him was almost bouncing up and down in excitement, and Draco's voice was hardly any more measured. "Oh, and then you could use the Arithmancy formulas to figure out how it would all work together!"

Tom's calculations went on for almost a full eighteen inches of his small, spidery script. It had been vastly complex, and most of his efforts over the past month had been in teaching himself various advanced topics in Arithmancy that he had never learned before going into the diary.

It had been made even more complicated by the fact that his other self had apparently figured out a way to modify the usual magic using Parseltongue, and Tom had found himself having to isolate the changes and use them to try to reconstruct the Parseltongue runic alphabet that Voldemort had apparently created.

Really, he was exceptionally good, but if he'd had a smaller sample size and hadn't happened to more or less share a mind with the creator, he would never have been able to suss out even half it. Even another Parseltongue wouldn't have been able to recreate Voldemort's work, and someone who couldn't speak the language had absolutely no chance of countering the curse.

It was absolutely brilliant, and he wanted to kick himself for not having thought of casting spells in Parseltongue before.

He allowed his finger to skim over the rest of his calculations and onto his second piece of parchment. "Indeed. The next step is to use the same process, only backwards, to figure out how to produce a counter-curse, much like how one would produce an antidote in Potions. I was planning to try it now, if you would back up."

Draco leapt backwards immediately, and Tom didn't need to look over his shoulder to know that the boy's face was probably mottled with a mixture of embarrassment and terror. He spared a small smirk of sadistic pleasure, but his focus almost immediately turned to the task at hand.

It would be horrifically embarrassing if his attempt failed in front of Draco.

He raised Potter's wand and squared his shoulders, then hissed out the incantation in the serpents' language.

The effect was immediate, like a clap of thunder rolling through Tom and Draco's bodies and rattling the bookcases and all the ancient portraits hanging on the walls. The ring clattered to the floor, but the malevolent magic of the curse hovered in the air for a few seconds even after it had gone. Then it darted towards them with a seemingly sentient purpose.

Tom felt like he was greeting an old friend, but even as the magic crashed into him like a great wave he still had enough presence of mind to quickly erect a Shield Charm in front of Draco.

Then he was lost in the feeling.

Great Merlin, the power. The sheer power. It was beautiful.

He felt like he had cast some sort of sex spell on himself, and he felt his eyes roll back into his head as the waves of pleasure and glorious pain rolled through his entire body

When he came to, he found that he had managed to leave his chair and end up sprawled on the library floor surrounded by parchment. He had an almost painful erection.

Draco was leaning over him with eyes the size of Galleons and a mouth that had dropped open almost as wide. He reached out as if he thought to offer some kind of aid to his master, but then he hesitated and left his hands hovering in midair between them.

"You were..." He trailed off and swallowed uncomfortably, his gaze darting down to Tom's lap and then up to his half-closed eyes, then back down to the tented fabric at the front of his trousers and finally away to anything that wasn't Tom. "You were, erm... screaming."

A nearly hysterical laugh escaped Tom's throat. "Was I?"

The library doors crashed open and hit the walls on either side with a bang, and Tom turned his head in time to see all three of the older Malfoys pushing past each other trying to be the first through the opening. With a strength he hadn't known she possessed, Narcissa Malfoy shoved her much larger husband out of her way and nearly sprinted across the enormous room to gather her son up into her arms.

"Oh, my baby! You're all right!" she cried, dragging his head against her breast as if he were an infant who needed his mother's comfort. "I was so worried! There was that awful banging and the screaming...!"

Draco Malfoy apparently respected his mother's supposed feminine delicacy far too much to shove her away from him, no matter how much he appeared to want to. No doubt this was a result of his father treating his mother as if she were a priceless porcelain doll.

Lucius wrapped his arms around his wife and son, seemingly having no desire whatsoever to offer Draco any assistance in the matter.

"I'm fine," he insisted irritably. "It wasn't even me who was screaming, anyway. Ask the Dark Lord, he'll tell you."

"My Lord?" asked Abraxas, who had come to stand beside his family and place a supportive hand on his son's shoulder. His voice was as full of confusion as Lucius's expression.

Tom levered himself up onto his elbows and shifted to try to conceal his erection, although there was hardly any chance of that.

"Just a bit of curse breaking gone, uh... wrong." He reached for the ring, which had landed on the floor just beside him. "I'm curious, though. Exactly what was your plan when you came crashing in here, if I had been torturing the boy?"

None of the Malfoys looked like they were prepared to answer, although Narcissa shuddered and clutched her son even tighter to her breast, which produced an indignant sound from him, muffled though it was by her robes.

"I see," said Tom, although he supposed that it wasn't nearly as threatening as it ought to have been what with his voice still full of sex and a despicable dreaminess. The ring was practically vibrating with excitement in his hand, and he offered it a dreamy "Hello to you, too!" before slipping it onto his finger at long last.

Abraxas and Lucius were staring at him as if he had lost his mind. He probably had, of course.

He grinned and clambered to his feet, holding out his hand until his wand flew from wherever he'd lost it and connected with his palm. It sparked violently when he closed his fingers around it.

He had so much energy, so much power, flowing through him.

He wanted--no, needed--to kill something. And then to come. Not necessarily in that order. He wasn't feeling particularly picky.

Tom wordlessly left the Malfoys standing together in the library staring after him as he headed towards the front drawing room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tom appeared... Well, he wasn't entirely sure where he'd appeared. His mind was flitting between various thought so rapidly that he was lucky he hadn't splinched himself.

He snorted; as if Tom Riddle had or ever would splinch himself!

He appeared to be in a Muggle neighborhood in the city. It was dusk, and the street was nearly deserted, although lights were on in most of the buildings on either side of the street. He could see Muggles engaged in various activities within, and he wondered that they didn't feel like they were part of a zoo exhibit, being on display like that to anyone who looked into the windows.

He reached down absently to adjust his still half-hard member into a more comfortable position and started off towards the street corner. He nearly missed a step when he saw the signs proclaiming the name of the two intersecting streets, then spun around to face the direction from which he'd come.

The building at the end of the street appeared to be an office building with, from what he could make out of the signs from so far away, a dentist's office and various other businesses.

There was no orphanage.

Why had he been thinking of this place, of all the places in the world?

Tom gave himself a firm shake, not that it did much to clear the foggy quality of his thoughts. The ring was vibrating around his finger, and the power of the curse was still flowing through his veins. Oh well, he thought, and with a shrug he set off again down the street to see if the park where the orphans used to play was still there. It turned out that although nearly everything else had changed, the park was where it had always been, although its landscape had been altered over the years.

It appeared to be deserted this late in the evening, except, as Tom had half expected, for a pair of Muggle teenagers who were snogging quite vigorously on a picnic table.

The ring thrummed so hard that Tom's arm vibrated, and he reached down with his other hand to adjust it on his finger.

"My thoughts exactly."

The girl noticed him first, and she reared back from her partner with a little gasp of surprise. She was quite pretty, and even though Tom's interests didn't primarily lay with girls, even he had to admit that the lacy pink contraption encasing her large breasts looked very alluring. The girls he'd been with fifty years ago hadn't worn anything like that.

Her boyfriend spun around to face him, and Tom was quite pleased that he was also a very nice specimen. If it had to be Muggles, at least it was attractive ones. And it really did have to be Muggles, unfortunately, given that he wasn't at Hogwarts anymore and couldn't exactly go around doing this in wizarding villages without drawing attention to himself. Oh well, he could make do.

"Who're you?" demanded the boy angrily. "What do you think you're doing? Can't you see that we're busy?"

Tom allowed his gaze to travel over the pair. "I can see that, yes."

In the next second, the boy had collapsed on the ground in agony, his screams echoing off the trees and making lovely music in Tom's ears and bringing his erection back in full force.

"WHAT DID YOU DO!" screeched the girl. "STOP IT! MAKE IT STOP!"

"But he screams so prettily," declared Tom. "You, on the other hand, do not."

It was even easier than usual for him to cast another spell while maintaining the power on his first one. The girl stopped screeching and began undressing herself under the effects of the Imperius Curse even as her boyfriend continued to writhe and scream in the grass. She had small, dusky nipples, a trim waist, and a neat patch of dark hair at the junction between her shapely thighs. Tom took it all in as she walked calmly over to him and knelt on the ground before him. He undid his trousers, and his ring seemed to be dancing on his finger.

He released the male but immediately petrified him instead, using his magic to forcefully turn the boy's head so that he had to watch through his unblinking eyes.

Then he released the girl from the curse.

She gasped and would have flung herself backwards away from him if Tom hadn't violently curled his hand--the one with the ring--into her long brown hair. She couldn't even turn her face away from his erection.

"I want you to suck it," he informed her just as casually as if he were talking about the weather. "And if you use your teeth, I will remove them from your pretty mouth one by one. Do you understand?"

She attempted to nod in the affirmative and winced in pain as the movement ripped at the hair he was gripping. Satisfied, he released his hold. She hesitated and allowed her eyes to dart over to her unmoving boyfriend, but when Tom's hand came back up towards her head, she flinched and quickly closed the distance between them.

It felt good, of course, but she wasn't putting any effort into it at all. Tom sighed in exasperation.

"You had better make this enjoyable or else there are other things I could do to you."

Her eyes were wild and frightened, but she seemed to make the right decision. The great sobs that were wrenching her body just made it all the more pleasant for him.

Eventually, he finished with a groan.

As soon as he released her, she threw herself to the side and got sick into the grass.

"Disgusting," sneered Tom. "You do know how to ruin a moment. Avada Kedavra."

Her body fell forward into her own vomit. He stepped around her gingerly, as if his shoes might become contaminated just from getting too close, and headed towards the boy. He was obviously still where Tom had left him, but there were tears streaming out of his open eyes and down his frozen cheek onto the ground below him.

"I was going to let her live, you know, so that you could watch each other with me," he explained calmly, infusing his voice with pity he didn't really feel. "However, it's probably for the best that I didn't. I imagine that you would have continued to put up a fight on her behalf if you knew she still lived. Hopefully after what you've witnessed you'll be smarter than to keep resisting me."

Eyes glared up at him in defiant hatred, although the Muggle wasn't able to move a muscle.

Tom laughed, high and cold. "I see that I'm mistaken! No matter. It will make it all that much sweeter for me to have to break your spirit through more physical means."

He levitated his prisoner up so that he could grab onto one of his beefy arms, then Disapparated them away from the park and into the Malfoys' front drawing room.

Abraxas and Lucius were apparently waiting for him. They sat together on one of the green velvet sofas, staring in various degrees of surprise at the spectacle he made with his disheveled clothing and floating victim.

"Oh, don't mind me," Tom told them jovially. "I just picked myself up a little present."