The Broken Victory

Chapter 16: Having An Heir-ful

My heart started thumping.

Everyone in the common room was now gathered around me. Nobody was making any intelligible noises anymore, just a few frightened squeaks and gasps. I pushed myself up and ran into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me, though no one seemed in a hurry to follow. I shakily raced to the mirror. What I saw made me grip the sink rim for support.

Etched all over my face were strange markings burned black, which glowed deep and hot against the white background. They were similar to the oozing sores given to me by Grindelwald, but these were completely unrecognizable to me. Perhaps it was merely magic gone wrong. I reached up with trembling fingers, tracing the indenting crevices the markings had left on my face. As I did so, I realized that the same markings lined my arms, and after a quick examination, saw they covered every inch of myself.

Pressing them tentatively, I waited for them to explode. They hissed when touched, but felt oddly cold. Fear gripped me; I had no idea what could have caused this. The spell I had been casting was supposed to do nothing more than make my image in the mirror turn green. Nothing in that spell could have caused this reaction... at least, nothing I was aware of.

I stared at my reflection harder, trying to see myself beneath the burns. My eyes also looked strange.... They were still a cloudy blue, but had a red dot where the pupil should have been. Leaning in so close that the sink rim pressed painfully into my stomach, I made out the shape of the red dot. It was the same strange symbol that appeared most frequently on me. I stared harder at it.... It seemed to be rotating slowly. Feeling a tickling sensation along with the cold, I saw all of the symbols on my flesh start moving slowly, gleaming like bright onyx and throwing a cool shadow around. I kept looking, becoming mesmerized with their lazy cycle... I was no longer afraid...

Until a knock sounded at the door. I spun around in fear, my heart in my throat as I heard Simon's voice shakily call, "Tom, are you all right? We can get Zwipp or Madame Drawt...Tom, answer us..." I heard a slight scuffle, and then to my horror the knob started to turn. I'd left my wand at the table, so all I could do was try to fling myself against the door. Unfortunately, I wasn't in time. Simon and some of the others crept into the room. I backed away, trying to cover myself, when I saw relief break out.

"It's going down... Merlin, Riddle, we thought you'd set yourself on fire!" a fourth year was remarking. I didn't pay any more attention to their ramblings, choosing to hurry back to the mirror. Indeed, the markings were fading slowly. I tried to memorize all of the shapes as they dissipated. The last one to leave was the flaming one in my pupils. A gnawing worry filled me. I didn't think I was possessed...the markings wouldn't have faded if I were. But something had happened to me, inside of me... and not knowing the answer scared me more than anything. There was nothing more terrifying for me than not being in control of my own self.

I vaguely heard voices still chattering behind me. Simon was inquiring if I wanted them to go with me to see Drawt. I shook my head, lying softly, "It was just a--a reaction to a Transfiguration spell. It's nothing, really." They seemed to accept that, and everyone slowly filed out of the bathroom, with only a few hesitant glances in my direction. Once they were all gone, I checked myself over, making sure all of the markings were indeed gone. I stared at myself in the mirror for quite awhile afterwards. My face had resumed its normal sickly appearance. I leaned in close, examining my eyes. They were rimmed with red, but it was the normal kind. My pupils were black again, and my eyes were a murky, liquid blue.

As I reached up to wipe the residual tears, my hand caught on my chain. In my attempt to untangle it, the cross itself fell onto my palm. It was still heavy, bearing the figure of Christ on the cross. The Muggles' God of peace and love. Black blood now ran from his lashes and the wounds on his hands, feet, and gashed sides. My mind flooded, then drained as the serenity in the dying man's face turned to unyielding hatred. Blood red eyes and a cruelly twisted mouth suited him more than loving acceptance, and as the viscous fluid seeped down over me, every part it dampened turned to stone.

~*~

I awoke sometime later in the hospital wing. Madame Drawt was fussing around me. When she saw me awake, she put on a face of playful irritation. "Mr. Riddle, are you going to make these little visits of yours an annual occasion?"

"It would appear so," I said dryly, trying to inconspicuously find my chain.

Drawt noticed my motion, though, and went quickly to a side table across the room. "Dear, are you looking for this?" She spun to me, dangling it from her fingertips. I broke out in a cold sweat as she approached... but she was examining it with no sign of fear. "It is rather pretty. Oh, excuse me, I mean rather handsome. We took it off when we found you unconscious. We didn't want it constricting your neck."

She then dropped it on my coverlets. I smiled weakly at her, forcing myself to look at it. Its worn edgings were once again silver, the figure normal. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. My mind was working quickly to find some plausible excuse. It had been a hallucination, a figment of my imagination. It had nothing to do with those markings...

"Tom?" Drawt's gentle voice drew my attention to her. She was smiling kindly. It was nice that she didn't have any pity or fear to direct at me. She was always saying how good a healer I would make, trying to influence me to become one. Now she was handing me a small glass filled with thick, purple liquid. I made a face as I recognized it. It was a sleeping potion. She thought I was scowling because of its taste and said in a patient tone, "Come now; it isn't that awful. You need to rest. Your body is too wound up, and it needs a break. This will calm you down."

I couldn't agree more. But the potion could trap me in my dreams, and if they were anything like my visions, or what happened tonight...

I hesitantly took it. Seeing no way out, I downed it, one hand still encircling the cross. Drawt patted me and said, "Good. Now lie back. You'll be asleep in a few minutes." Then she strode away, extinguishing the lights. That left me alone in the darkness, terrified and struggling in futility against the magic's work.

~*~

I did dream, my subconscious weaving and unfolding paths before me. I was standing in a dark room, with wet dew dripping down the sides of the walls. It was some sort of prison. I shivered slightly in the musky room, breathing in the stale air. The walls reached for the heavens, disappearing into blackness so that it was impossible to see if there was an opening above. The ground was hard and cracked, and the smells of old sweat and dried blood floated into my nostrils. My face curled instinctively into repulsion, and my eyes darted around the room. This was too real to be a mere dream. I felt eyes watching me, but I couldn't locate the source. I reached for my wand, but it wasn't at my side. Panicked, I began to breathe heavily when I heard a dark chuckle.

The laughter was cold and dry, not at all like the maniacal rasping of Grindelwald. I spun toward the sound and slowly saw a dark silhouette fading in from the far left corner of the room. My heart almost stopped beating, and part of me wanted to run screaming into the wall. But I couldn't move. I just stood, transfixed, studying as this figure slowly approached. As it did, I felt a frigid breeze sweep toward me from it, enveloping me and stinging my chest. There was hardly any light to illuminate what it was, so I squinted desperately. It blurred in and out of snapping focus, hideous once, carved into a man's form next. It moved closer and closer to me, and my eyes widened. In that strange moment, though the manner of it made no sense, recognition flooded me.

A pale hand with colorless fingernails reached out, pointing at his black and soulless eyes. They were sly, cunning, impenetrable as the cruel twist of his closed mouth. Dark brows hooded his shadowed eyes, and the long, black hair hung in scraggles around his midnight robe, but in the very center, I could see a small, red sign.

The sign spun, drawing me in. It was the same symbol I had seen on me before--a red ring of flames, almost a complete circle except for a small breakage in the band. That crack burned blue, flaming as bright and high as its counterpart, seeming angered by the circle's disjointed state. The flames crackled and hissed as the markings appeared on the man. Incomplete circles and spirals, strange letterings, first red and blue and then burning black. I looked down at my own hands, only to find the arcane tattoos creeping in again. The symbols moved faster, blurring into one another. The spirals blended, forming unfamiliar words...heres edis...

My eyes wide, I looked back. The man was now smiling at me as one does at a baby's first steps. A large python encircled his legs. I watched in fascination as it wound itself around his slim frame. The man low voice slid from his throat-- "You've come a long way, Mr. Marvolo." He reached out and touched my forehead, and the symbols vanished. But then his hand recoiled, as if burned.

"What is it?" I asked anxiously. He looked at me in disgust for a minute.

"Bad blood," he hissed, as the snake also shuddered. "That will have to be rectified." He looked at the snake, which simpered at him. "Yes, Nagini, we can overcome the foolish girl's mistake. Ours is stronger." He saw me standing still, unmoved. He smiled unpleasantly. "Good, there is nothing for you to fear. Do you recognize me?"

"Salazar Slytherin. You're the head of my House at Hogwarts," I replied. He snorted mockingly at me, so I added defensively, "And my mother wrote to you... or a follower of yours of the same name... but I think she might have prayed to you."

"Ah yes, Salome. You don't know much about her, do you?" Salazar said flippantly, but I felt a rush of emotion spread through me. I almost felt tears come. I desperately wanted this to be true... that I could know my mother's name. It saddened and angered me how desperately I wanted to grasp anything about her. That word, just her name, meant as much to me as any curse I'd learned to date.

"You knew my mother?" I asked, hoping it wasn't too anxious-sounding. He could answer so many questions of mine, regarding her and myself...and my father.

But Salazar answered dispassionately, "Not personally. But one can hardly forget the person who destroyed the future of magic." He saw my face slowly burn in anger and laughed at me. "Not on purpose, of course. She would have been a great aid to our kind, if she hadn't made one dreadful mistake. No, she was a real Slytherin."

"My mother went to school here?" I asked. I found it somewhat hard to believe, but then, there weren't any yearbooks lying around to have checked.

Salazar's eyes narrowed. "Dumbledore has done well, keeping you down. Making you feel inferior enough not to question what you might possibly be. But are you really that thick, boy?"

"I sincerely doubt it," I answered coldly.

My reply was met with a hostile yet amused smile. "You began to think it through yourself, not long ago, before Grindelwald shook you up. Now revenge and pride are on your side, but they have narrowed your focus. Must be the bad blood in you."

I seethed at him. "I can't really retort, since nothing is known of your bloodlines. You might be from a bunch of Squibs." He lifted an eyebrow and with one word sent me flying across the room. I landed painfully against the wall, and as I gasped for breath, he commented, "Temper, temper. I had hoped that wouldn't be a problem, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong about the whole thing."

I sat up and spat back at him, "Then why don't you give me back my wand, if you think so little of me?"

Salazar smiled, and suddenly my wand appeared in my hand. I raised it to him, only to find it pulling away from me. I was about to pocket it when it flew from my hand and floated in midair halfway between both of us. I was confused, only managing to get out angrily, "I thought you were going to give it back to me!"

Salazar laughed, but there was tenseness to it. "I wasn't holding it. It has been there all along, I merely made it black to hide it in the shadows. I have no more control over it than you do." He raised his thick eyebrow, saying, "It seems torn between us."

"That's not possible!" I said loudly. "There is only one wand to each wizard! Mr. Ollivander said so--"

Salazar interrupted me. "But there was more than one that wanted you, wasn't there?" He grinned at my shocked expression. "Bertold told me all about it. He keeps a close watch on you...as much for himself as for me. We visionaries have a close connection, you see, one that can transcend death if one is clever enough. So how can you explain, little Marvolo, how you tricked that wand?"

I stood up and squared off with him. "Power. So you are as powerful as I. I never really doubted that. But this wand was strong enough to pick me. The only way it could be drawn to you was if it saw the same thing in you as it did in me."

Salazar touched his long, white finger to his nose. He seemed a much more relaxed version of the whimsical, cold personality Grindelwald had tried to achieve. "Exactly. Now, don't get me wrong; it is not the wand for me. But it doesn't want you to use it against me. Its magical essence knows what I can bring you." He waved at me to come closer. I did hesitantly, and as my fear and anger subsided into curiosity, the wand flew back into my hand. Salazar looked thoughtfully at me, his mouth still twisted in chilling contortions. "So I was right...this time," he said softly. His eyes shone black.

"Right about what?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. "What are you?"

Salazar seemed anxious to answer that. "Not alive, if that is what you are asking. No, you called on me, finally. Brought me out in a manifestation on you. You looked in that mirror, saw the horror that was there, of what you might do to yourself, and yet you pushed on. For pride, for knowledge, and for ambition. Do not deny it. It's been coming for a long time...what you did to Randy, your thirst for answers...so you reached into yourself, as you are doing now, to find answers no one would ever risk so much for. And you did it consciously, whether you know that now or not. You created a vision, Mr. Marvolo. Now all you must do is complete it."

My head was beginning to pain me, as much from his cryptic Dumbledore-esque speech as from the smoke. "I really don't think you are making sense. So I 'envisioned' you to help me in some way? I really doubt that. You haven't done anything yet besides give me a splitting headache."

"Well, I can't expect too much from you yet. Merlin knows you still have... things... to overcome." He began circling me, speaking slowly. "Tell me, Marvolo, do you wish to know the truth about your family? Your mother's disgrace is a large part of it. As is your father, the lecherous Muggle." He saw my flinch and rounded on me sharply. "Do you hold love for your Muggle part, Marvolo? Do you love the man who destroyed you and your mother without a second glance?"

I lifted my eyes to him and replied in honest simplicity, "I have never felt love for anything, I think. I've never known it. I don't know what it is." As an afterthought, I added, "I almost wish I did. I think my mother did for me."

"Oh, I doubt it," Salazar said airily. My heart broke at this, but he didn't seem to have done it out of spite. It was said as all of his words were...as plain and unmoved as time. He resumed strolling the parameters, hands clasped loosely behind his back. "It is possible, I suppose. She was always a bit of a stubborn loon. Talented, though. Quite intelligent as well. Like you." He stopped and turned to me. His face was wearing a smile that seemed genuine and unfitting on him. "But she wasn't quite enough. That was evident." He came up to me again, breathing cold air in my face. "Not like us."

I stepped back, replying as loftily as he, "You mean not like me." I smiled at him, a mirror of his image. "You don't exist anymore."

I thoroughly expected to be thrown across the room again, but instead, Salazar had the oddest twinkle about him. He ran one hand over my face, the other over his. With his eyes closed, he said, "Oh, you are perfect for me. Just perfect."

I jerked convulsively away from his grip and fiercely corrected him, "I'm nothing for you."

I backed up, my hand placed on my wand which had begun to quiver again. Merely watching me, Salazar replied, "Do you fear me, Marvolo?"

I thought about this. "No," I finally decided. "I respect you. At least, your abilities. And some of the things you believe. Like the importance of ambition and the necessary lack of fear that it entails." My back touched wet dew; I had reached the wall. Salazar chuckled at this, still standing solid in the center of the dungeon. An inane question ran through my thoughts just then. Why had my mind picked a dungeon for this vision anyway?

Standing tall, Salazar continued to question me. "You say you never knew love, Marvolo. I think it best to be able to know it and then deny it. Many say the only way to know hate is to know love. You don't really hate anyone, do you?"

I took a long pause. Salazar was becoming less and less a real person to me and more a concrete object voicing the many questions which had been ramming themselves around in my brain all my life. "I know hatred. I've encountered it all my life. I hate those who are weak, who can't stand up for themselves. Who are too scared to accept anything outside of what their morals or principles will allow their narrow minds to grasp. Those who didn't accept me and made me feel less than human every minute I breathed, no matter how much I accomplished." Images of the Blunts, and Dumbledore, Malfoy and Damien floated upward. Then came the picture of my father. I paused and then added, "And I would say my father, but...I don't know. A part of me does, and the other part needs to know more. I don't like anyone. However, I do think that, at least, Wizards are a more useful lot than Muggles." I eyed him, before steadily adding, "Like you thought."

There was an imperceptible shift in the air as Salazar once again held his own presence before me. Triumph rang throughout him, rushing through me with its chilled air. Then his face was again impenetrable, his voice silkily low and dark. "You carry the flaw in your blood, Marvolo, but better blood might overcome it. Now let us see if you are up to the challenge as you claim. I'll leave you with this, and know that there is so much more...your mother was indeed Salome, and her father's name was Marvolo. Farewell, my heres edis."

~*~

A voice was heard over me. My eyelids fluttered and blinked, as the hazy images of reality overcame me once again. Natural light was filling the room, and I was grateful for this. It hurt my tender eyes less than the harshly bright candles Drawt illuminated at night. I lay there passively, trying to quell the dreamlike aftermath.

Drawt and Dumbledore were standing over me. I groaned and tried to fake being asleep again, but Drawt drew the cover off my face. In the same patient tone she used for all her patients, even the faculty, she said, "Now, now, Tom. You need to take this medicine, and then Albus would like a word with you."

I glared over the covers to see her holding a liquid similar to the Pepperup potion. "What is it?" I asked warily.

Drawt sighed in exasperation. "It's an anti-nausea potion." She pointed at Dumbledore with her free hand. "He thought you might need it, for some reason. I told him you didn't have the flu, but-"

I smiled. Once again, Dumbledore was proving his cleverness. I pushed the vial away. I'd had no vision forced upon me by Grindelwald. Looking directly at him, I said, "No, it wasn't the flu he was worried about. He thought I had another vision of some sort. Right, sir?" I didn't wait for him to answer. I remembered what Salazar had said, about him holding me back, and my anger built again. Of the little mind games he played. If I didn't feel hate for him, it was getting pretty damn close. "Well, don't worry, Professor. I didn't see a thing that would matter."

Drawt clasped the vial in her hand and gave a triumphant, "Ha!" to Dumbledore. On her way out, I could hear her grumbling, "He thinks he knows everything. This is my hospital. I've treated his hide more than once..." as she disappeared into the other room.

When she was gone, I turned back to face Dumbledore, feeling how impassive my face was. Dumbledore gave it right back to me. Sitting down beside my bed, he asked me directly, "Did you try any spell last night, after I specifically told you not to?"

I responded promptly. "No, sir." I stared at him innocently, adding, "Why would you think such a thing?"

Dumbledore scrunched his eyes in skepticism. Not answering my question, he said instead, "Your housemates came to me this morning. Quite upset, in fact. Damien and Randy...they said you had markings on your face and your eyes looked red. They said they were concerned about you, because it looked like a spell gone awry." His eyes locked onto mine as my heart beat faster. "They implied that it was something...less than acceptable which seemed to have caused this."

His dancing around the point was a game I had mastered and grown tired of years ago. I bluntly said, "You mean Dark Arts?" I actually got a surprised look from him at that. I waved away his concern with a flip of my hand, making my voice easily amused. "Those kids. They let their imaginations run away with them. They're a bit jealous, I am afraid, because they cannot keep up in class." I made my face sad. "They hate me." Melodramatic indeed, but it worked.

Dumbledore's face crumpled for a minute. Placing a hand gently on my shoulder, he said softly, "Oh, Tom, I'm sure they don't hate you. Those allegations are quite serious, though." I looked up at him with childish, tearful, terrified eyes and heard him say, "Though, unfounded...I am sure." He gave me an encouraging smile. "Where would you find the time to do any of that stuff anyway, right?"

"Oh, nowhere, sir," I answered earnestly. I gave a wavering smile. Dumbledore really did snap when presented with the image of a helpless child. Sure, my pride wouldn't allow the use of this trick often, but every now and then it worked like a charm. I mean, his hand was brushing my hair out of my eyes! And...it was feeling my forehead for a fever. The other one had wrapped itself around my hand, warm and secure.

He began gently stroking my stomach over the covers, as if with a paternal desire to ease my belly's tenseness, saying, "This is what my mother used to do when I was feeling bad. It helps, right?"

Mother. I wondered if he knew about my mother and just didn't tell me. If he was holding anything else from me, out of fear or dislike. The first thing he had approached me with was an accusation. One he surely would have said was for my good. An alarm sounded in me, making me livid and sad at the same time. Was he just doing all of this fatherly stuff to get me to relax, so he could pounce on me? I certainly wouldn't put it past him.

I brushed his hands away, making my voice as civil as possible. "I have to go to class now, sir." Dumbledore seemed surprised at the sudden shift in me, his eyes glazing over again in caution and worry. That only made me more disgusted. Did he think he was going to get the chance to play the big, wonderful Gryffindor helping the less fortunate?

I began to struggle to get up, but my look of cold determination must have stopped him from touching me again. He only asked me one more question quietly. Looking at the floor, I heard, "Mr. Riddle, did you really not have any vision?"

I turned to face him. "No, sir. Would I lie?" And with that, I left the room without a backward glance.

I was too late for any of my morning classes, and I didn't feel like walking in during the middle of Potions. I wasn't ready to face Damien, Randy, or the others just yet. I would have to think of some way to deal with that situation, but for now I had more important things to think about.

Acadima greeted me enthusiastically when she saw me return. She didn't ask where I had been or why I wasn't in class. She just hurriedly gave me control of the library till she got back from a lunch break. There wasn't anyone in there, so I wandered around, leaving the front desk empty. No one came to the desk for help anyway. The library was, to most, a social gathering place ideal for quick gossip between classes. Only Simon, the Ravenclaws, and I really spent time here, and we had the whole thing practically memorized by heart.

I started by thinking of the odd symbols that had formed the words heres edis. It had been drawn upon me in the past, by something Grindelwald seemed to be lording over me. Frowning, I tried to reason it out. It wasn't a spell, for it hadn't done anything.

I wandered over to the language section of the library. It was quite large, filled with books on Troll, Elf, Pixie, and a dozen other languages. I bit my lip in concentration. If Salazar had said it, he might have thought I knew it. He certainly would have used a language humans use or had used. He was a purist, not valuing other species that much. It would have been beneath him. And it wasn't Parseltongue, because I didn't understand it.

I went to the human language section. One pile was devoted to something called "Magic's Vocal Origins."

Intrigued, I picked it up and flipped it open. I wandered back to the front desk, managing not to bump into too many things on my way there. My attention was already absorbed by the book's contents.

"Magic, the magical, or magus a, has many of its roots in the Latin language. During the Roman Empire, persons of magical origin were so badly persecuted that even mentioning the word itself was forbidden. Usage of the term only resumed when the newly founded states and countries began to practice magic again, using then the common language of Latin. As the language became more proper, less vernacular, it was still considered proper and traditional to use Latin for spell formation. Indeed, any artifact found in old tongues was translated into Latin, so that very few non-Latin spells existed. Now, as time has passed, the spells have been modified, but the main ones retain these common roots. In the time of the Founders, the upper class magicians often used Latin in a spoken form in order to communicate. In recent times, it is considered a dead language to Muggles and Wizards alike, but it is important to honor our heritage and give tribute where it is due."

Importance of heritage, upper class wizards and witches... the phrases in this book reeked of Salazar. I was grinning now; I felt free, given a riddle whose solution I could perceive. It was better than Salazar handing to me the answer...or my vision of Salazar, whatever that thing had been. It was certainly better than that stupid Creature Codebox.

I went again to the shelf that held the language section. Scanning, I finally found a Latin to English dictionary. Holding my breath, I flipped toward the H section. Once finding it, I ran with trembling fingers down the page until I came to:

Heres Edis c. - Heir

My hand dropped, and everything around me dimmed. I heard it whispered over and over again by that vision of Salazar. The words finally came to my lips. "Slytherin has an heir."