Tempus | Tom Riddle

NINE

The small house elf that had greeted the Moltenore family at the station scuttled into a modest, secluded home. The dwindling light filtered through leafless branches and cast patterns on the ground, though their tranquil beauty was disrupted as Mercy, Ambrose, Dantes, and Tom's shadows cut through them. 

Tom was unimpressed. He had been expecting a large manor, like the Malfoy's, or perhaps something even more grand given their supposed supremacy. This house, however, lay hidden in a forest with no real indication that anyone of prominence lived there; it was two stories and made of brick, with thick tendrils of ivy climbing up the sides, a curved porch, and a tall, gabled roof to match. 

As Tom took in his surroundings, the three siblings exchanged amused glances, with Mercy looking the most gleeful of them all as she watched his curious expression change to one of disappointment and judgement. She unlocked the door and stepped through the threshold, announcing "Ego temporis custos" before taking another step into the house. I am the keeper of time. The others did the same, and Dantes, who was the last member of the family through, muttered "peregrinus per haec atria ambulat" - a stranger walks through these halls - before he allowed Tom to follow them.  

Once Tom's feet landed onto the creaky, wooden floors, his brows knit together with confusion at his change in location, for only a moment ago he was observing the house from afar. He had no recollection of the phrases used to enter the home, nor did he remember how he got into the house in the first place, but this was exactly what the house intended. As he trailed after Mercy, Ambrose, and Dantes he stared at the passing walls intently, which were littered with portraits of what he assumed to be other members of the family. So far he noticed nothing out of the ordinary aside from an eerie, oppressive silence, with the only discernable sounds being their steady footsteps.

They eventually reached a dead end, to which Mercy grasped the large jewel that she wore around her neck and pressed it against something in the wall. Before Tom could catch a glimpse of what it was, the wall disappeared entirely and the floor dropped into a stone stairwell.

Mercy waited off to the side and allowed Ambrose and Dantes to pass her so that she could stand next to Tom, a daring spark in her eye as she searched his intrigued expression. Two torches flared with each step they descended, and after what seemed like ages they finally reached another blank wall. Ambrose, who was now at the front of the line, pulled a necklace from beneath his shirt, which resembled Mercy's. 

When the stone wall was no more, golden light poured from the room beyond. Noise - which had been completely absent from the house thus far - flooded Tom's ears. The first thing he saw as they walked into the new space was a ginormous hourglass - nearly five stories high - that had small stones slowly filtering through the constricted center. As they neared closer Tom realized that the stones the hourglass contained were also the ones that Mercy, Ambrose, and (he assumed) Dantes wore. 

They looked almost alien: a deep green spackled with vibrant red. Dantes spotted Tom inspecting them and he fell to the older boy's side, the corners of his mouth turned upward. "Bloodstone."

Tom glanced down at him, eyebrows raised. 

"It's the gemstone of our family; apparently it has powers to purify and detoxify blood, but I think it's just a rock."

"It's symbolic, you twat," Ambrose rolled his eyes. "Obviously it doesn't have any real power."

"Don't be mean," Mercy snapped, defending her youngest brother from Ambrose's mocking tone. 

The two erupted into hushed bickering, leaving Tom to return to the onslaught of sensory overload that his new surroundings provided. Above the looming hourglass was a domed ceiling made of what appeared to be gears, and if Tom squinted hard enough he could see them turning mechanically, toothed-crown to toothed-crown. Scrolls and letters and quills and books flew through the air down one, two, three, four, five, six, seven (seven!?) corridors, Tom counted, that branched out from the circular room they stood in.