Acts Infernal

The moon? It is a griffin egg,
Hatching tomorrow night.
And how the little boys will watch
With shouting and delight.
Vachel Lindsay

"There's something very wrong with the Lower Way," Tom said, when they'd resumed walking. He turned his head, slightly, to see Sirius examining the makeshift bandages on his hands. "I think it must be the Arch the mortal men built."

"Its very existence upsets the balance between the living and the dead," Sirius said, with a nod.

"And three living souls in Hades upsets it even more." Tom scratched his cheek, then chewed on the edge of his glove, thoughtfully. "I wonder, when I go Aboveway, if I'll upset the balance too. But I guess I never really lived. Probably I won't."

"What will you do when we reach the Aboveway?"

"Find the Arch. Destroy it. Maybe find my other half. Sometimes..." Tom folded his wings tight against his body, a nervous habit when he was upset, "Sometimes I yearn for...that evil. I want to do desperate, hateful things. It's the feeling of missing my other half."

"All of Voldemort's goodness, in you," Sirius said, surprising him.

"And all the memories of his childhood. Of the orphanage. I overheard someone saying I was a kicked puppy, once," Tom said, nodding. "We're almost on the main road."

"There's no path -- how do you know?"

"Oh..." Tom said, with a grin. "You'll know when we reach it."

He pointed to a slightly raised ridge not too far away, and heard Sirius draw his breath. Atop the ridge, there was a long, broad road, filled with muddy, indistinct figures, mostly grey, but also glowing somehow.

"There must be hundreds of thousands of them," Sirius breathed, when they were close enough to see clearly. "Where are they going?"

Tom kept walking, until he was standing on the edge of the road. He let his hand drift out, and it passed right through one of the souls, leaving little smoky wisps behind it.

"They've been judged by Anubis. They were found worthy of a choice -- Nir or Valhalla. They chose Valhalla."

He turned to Harry and Draco, who were both wide-eyed and wary. "Sometimes, those going to...to bad places...can choose Valhalla over Cocytus."

"What happens to them?" Harry whispered. Tom tried to look nonchalant.

"They, they become servants," he replied. "Best walk on, then. They won't hurt you."

He stepped into the greyish, moving mass, as though he were wading into a stream. He heard the others shiver with cold when they joined him.

"How long is the road?" Harry asked, rising head-and-shoulders above those around him.

"A ways," Tom replied indistinctly.

"What kind of a measurement is that?"

"This is the afterlife, Harry, we're a bit short on the metric system here," Tom said irritably. "If you really want to know, look."

He turned in the direction the grey ones were going, and began to walk towards a large, fortified barricade in the distance, alight with red and yellow. He felt Sirius and Harry fall into step on his left, Draco on his right.

Valhalla wasn't far, not on this main road, but it was so tiring to walk amongst the souls of the dead -- they were cold, and they clung, in a way, so that they walked much slower than they otherwise might have. It seemed to take forever for them to reach the gates, and when they did, Tom herded them slowly away from the giant doors, into the wild unmown weeds beyond the tree-lined entrywalk.

The feasting-hall was huge, a sort of fortified monstrosity of wood and steel, somehow forbidding but warm at the same time. There were battlements, twenty feet up the rough-hewn log walls, but nobody manned them; there were small servant-doors outside the main gate, and it was next to these that Draco slumped against the wall, closing his eyes and letting his body slide to the ground. Harry and Sirius crouched near him, and after a moment to take in his surroundings, Tom joined them.

"My bones hurt," Harry said, toppling from his crouch to lie spread-eagled in the weeds.

"It's the souls. It's hard going when they pass through you, eh?" Tom replied, shredding a dandelion leaf, idly.

"Have you been down here often?" Sirius asked. Tom worried his lip with his teeth, thinking.

"A few times. It's nice to spend an evening with people who aren't experiencing eternal bliss, you know. But I've never been past it. We should try to rest before we keep on."

"But Hades -- " Harry said, weakly.

"We'd know, I tell you," Tom soothed. "We're safe for now. If Hades does get wind, there's a good long run between him and us."

All three men jumped as the servant-door opened, and a woman peered out, before walking into the weeds and closing the door behind her. She wore a long white skirt, a red bodice and tight-wristed white sleeves. Her glossy, dark-brown hair was done up in a bun, covered by a small white cap. She looked shy, but friendly.

"Was ist hier los?" she asked. Tom smiled at Sirius and Harry's confused looks.

"Bist Du die Bedienung?" he replied. She didn't look like a servant, but she didn't look like she belonged to the feasting, either. The woman laughed, heartily.

"Bedienung! Ich koche hier, vielen Dank auch," she said, amused.

"What're you saying?" Sirius asked.

"I asked if she was a servant. She said she was a cook."

Just then another woman emerged, smiling more warmly; she wore a dress similar to the first's, but in different colours, green and brown. "Guten tag, Tom Riddle!" she cried.

"Auch dir einen guten Tag, Köchin," Tom replied amiably. "This is Mi," he said, to the others. "She's a friend of mine."

"Das ist Yap," Mi added helpfully, indicating the other woman. "Benötigt ihr etwas zu Essen?"

Harry and Sirius looked on inquiringly. "What are they saying?" Harry asked Sirius.

"You think I know?" the older man replied.

"Ja, Essen wäre schön," Tom said evenly. Mi and Yap vanished back through the doorway, while Tom turned beaming to his companions. "They're fetching food for us," he explained. "Our good luck, really. They're cooks for the revelers. That means they're not here for punishment. They're the souls of gourmets who chose to spend all their eternity cooking." He saw Harry's disbelieving look, and grinned. "Most cooks end up at Valhalla, either in the kitchen or the feasting hall."

"Well, that's fine, I'm famished," Harry said finally.

"Most people this close to Valhalla are. You can eat and eat, you know. Nobody's ever too full." He glanced at Draco, who was sleeping, and pulled a little closer into the huddle that now consisted of him, and a cross-legged Sirius, and Harry propped on one elbow. "Now it's time to tell stories, I think. I don't think you'll enjoy them, though," he added, with a sigh.

***

Sirius watched as Tom made himself comfortable. He wasn't too happy to be stopping here, but it gave him a chance to re-bandage his hands, and they all needed a rest -- he doubted Harry had been still for more than ten minutes together, since arriving at the gates of Hades.

"We know how you came to be here, Harry," Tom said. "How much time has passed in the Aboveway since Sirius left it?"

"A little over a year," Harry murmured. "You..." he glanced at Sirius. "You left at the end of fifth year...it's almost Seventh year now."

Sirius, for the first time, felt the cold comprehension of what had happened; the magnitude of Harry's quest, the fact that in the Aboveway, he was dead and long since laid to rest. And he had missed yet one more year of Harry growing up.

"How..." he began, than shook his head. "Have you been all right?"

Harry nodded. "I get by."

"And the Order? How are your friends?"

"We're fine. All of us are all right, I guess. For now."

Harry met his eyes then, and saw the unasked questions in them. "Lupin's all right," he said, helpfully. "He almost came with me."

Sirius, whose throat felt as though it were closing up, managed a cough. "But he didn't," he murmured.

"He thought he couldn't," Harry said quickly. "Me, I read about some myths...people who went to hell and came back. Orpheus did it. And I thought, if they could do it, I could do it. So I did. And here I am."

He got no further than that; Yap and Mi had emerged from the door again, carrying two enormous baskets and a flat wooden box.

"Esst und trinkt," said Yap, with a smile. "Alles Gute kommt vom Essen."

"Wir haben euch auch ein Spiel mitgebracht," Mi added. Harry and Sirius looked expectantly at Tom, as Mi gave him the wooden box, smiling. Tom shook it.

"They say there's food for us in the baskets," he translated. "And they brought us a board game to play."

Harry was already spreading one of the cloths covering the blankets, and Sirius snapped the other one open; there were candles to light, so that they could see to eat, and soon the food was strewn across the cloths, as Harry and Sirius ate ravenously, and Tom poured cups of milk for them.

"How about you?" Harry asked, around a mouthful of food. "What happened in Dis?"

Tom shrugged. "Draco tried to steal my dagger. So I beat him. Not too hard, don't worry, just hard enough to get my pride back. We were scuffling, and then..." he shook his head, the still-slightly-bent wing fluttering gently. "All hell broke loose. Someone grabbed me. I did the best I could, but I had to look after that one, too."

He took out his knife, stuck it in the ground. "I had to cut some people. That never ends well. They're probably serving here, now," he added. "Or in Cocytus. And then we came to you, and the rest you know."

He turned to Sirius, who was drinking the milk with hungry relish. "It's your turn, you know."

Sirius, slowly, put down his cup, and nodded.

"I fell," he said simply. "I died. Only I didn't die. And that's all."

***

"Your move."

"This is the stupidest game ever."

"If you think this is dumb, you should try Cribbage."

Harry glanced up at Tom, and grinned over the edge of the backgammon board. Nearby, Sirius stood, watching the figures pass by on the road.

"I mean, for pure lack of entertainment value, you can't beat Cribbage," Tom continued.

"Two, three, four, and...I win," Harry said, triumphantly. Tom glanced down, surprised.

"What?"

"That's the way, Harry," Sirius called. "Now close it up. I think we should be going."

Harry began to put the gamepieces away, while Tom leaned over to shake Draco awake. "Time to be moving on with things, silver boy," he said gently. Harry tossed Draco an apple, as he sat up.

"You should eat," Harry said. Draco stuffed the apple into a pocket in his cloak. Harry and Tom shrugged at each other, and left the basket and cloth, the nearly-burnt-out candles and the playing board, near the doorway. They passed across the road, shivering as they walked through the souls.

"I've never been past the feast hall, before," Tom said, as they followed the wall, and a small dirt path circling around the outside of the hall. "Most of what I know from now on is rumour -- nobody really comes back from Cocytus except Hades. It was supposed to be the ninth level of hell, wasn't it?"

"That's what they say," Harry replied, shooting a sidelong glance at Draco.

"Well, it's only the third level, here. Course there ARE only three levels," Tom mused. He ticked them off on his fingers. "Nir Dis for the Unconscious; Valhalla for the Conscious; and Cocytus for the Unforgivables. Cocytus is the only one where everyone suffers. Properly it's Hell, and not even a part of Hades at all."

"Please stop now," Sirius said.

"I guess Dante got a little overzealous," Harry observed.

"Had to meet his publisher's minimum word-count," Tom said, with a laugh.

" 'The Third and Final Circle of Hell' really doesn't sound that impressive," Sirius mused.

"Harry, when we reach the marshlands," Tom said, one hand trailing along Valhalla's wall, "You've got to go first. It's like the stories. If you look back, you'll lose them."

"Them?" Harry asked. "What about you?"

"Well, best not to risk it, don't you think?" Tom replied lightly. They left the walls of Valhalla behind, climbing a low hill towards a dark, empty cavernous space beyond. Tom held up a hand, stopping them as they reached the top; it sloped, low and gentle, slowly going from green to brown, and then to the dead, sterile frostbitten soil of a wasteland. Beyond that, there were sheets of greenish-black ice, out of which dead, rotting trees occasionally grew.

"This is cheerful," Sirius sighed. Draco, standing next to Sirius, drew a breath.

"In Dante, Satan lives in Cocytus, buried up to his breastbone in ice. He has three faces, and he chews the heads of three traitors," he said. He pointed to a silhouette in the distance. The other three stared at him.

"He had the pop-up book," Harry explained. Draco continued, listlessly.

"Dante and Virgil climbed down his side to escape. He was too distraught to notice them," he droned. "The three traitors were Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. I don't know who Judas is."

Tom nodded. "Judeo-christian mythology doesn't figure very high in the Wizarding world. Or didn't, when I was Aboveway."

"He'll want me to stay in Cocytus," Draco whispered. Harry drew his eyebrows together.

"Well...you're not a traitor, really," he temporised. "I mean, you've always been very honest about being the spawn of evil."

Draco gave him a slight smile. "You've no idea what you're talking about. We should go."

Harry nodded and stepped forward --

And the world was illuminated, and the ground began to shake. There was a roar of rage.

"Oh," Tom said, surprised. "Dear. I think that's Hades."

Sirius turned to look over his shoulder. "I thought you said Hades would have to chase us!" he shouted, over the rumbling. "You said we'd know when he found we were gone!"

A look of abstract worry crossed Tom's face.

"He may have...waited to start shouting until he was close," he said, guiltily.

"If we survive this, I'm going to yell at you a lot," Sirius growled.

"You can yell at me even if we don't," Tom grinned. Behind them, the silhouette of Hades reared up, towering and red in the unnatural illumination.

"Harry, I'd go now if I were you," Tom said. "I'd run. And don't look back!" he cried, as Harry took off towards the shape of Satan, as frightening as huge as Hades behind them

"Mustn't look back," Harry breathed, as he ran. "Mustn't look back. They're running right behind me. Even if they fall behind..."

If they're not fast enough, I might lose them.

But if I look back, I really will.

***

Sirius, as soon as Harry had begun to run, gestured to Draco, and pulled him onto his shoulders. He nodded at Tom, and they both followed where Harry had gone, pelting over the frozen ground and leaning forward, almost falling under their own momentum when they hit the ice.

Sirius, chest heaving, leapt over a low, rotting black branch, but Tom, almost frantic with fear now, didn't see it; he stumbled and slid across the ice, moaning in pain. He fetched up against a tree trunk, with a wet thud, and found himself staring backwards, at Hades, who was fast on their heels.

"SIRIUS!" Tom screamed.

***