Invictus [Tom Riddle / Tomione]

The Snake and the Swan

January 19th, 1947

Tom opened his eyes.

It took a moment for those black eyes, irises flecked with crimson, to adjust to the darkness of his flat. He'd had a similar dream for the tenth night in a row.

It was always the same, but always different.

Ten nights ago, he had created the Tempaestus and ripped open the fabric of time with an ancient ritual dating back to the Babylonian Magi. When the tear occurred, he saw lightning and shadow and flame, he felt the disturbance in the continuum and the terrifying gravity of ages past. He felt the ground beneath his feet groan and a terrible rumbling, and then... a voice .

A girl's laughter.

It was warm and high-pitched, but it held the promise of conflict. It mocked him.

What strange dimension had he touched on to create the instrument?

He had rooted himself in his time with a powerful grounding spell, and then sealed the tear inside the object itself with a rather difficult incantation. Performing that ritual was one of the few times he had feared he would royally fuck up .

But for all its difficulty, he seemed to have cast the spell correctly. The object glowed blue when he commanded the enchantment to reveal itself, and the gold insignia was revealed with a quick wandless casting of aparecium .

It was a dark, sacred thrill that few others would ever experience in life. He was pleased with himself for daring to push the boundaries of his magic so far.

Until he began to have these ominous dreams.

This night, his dream had been quite strange. He'd seen a beautiful white swan, floating on the swells of a wind-blown lake. Then, a green snake slithering across the top of the water toward the swan, poised to strike.

Then... that voice . Arresting laughter came from the mouth of the swan, and then it swallowed the snake whole.

He'd realized too late that he was the snake.

It alarmed him more than he cared to admit.

Every night, the dream was different.

Yet every night, the voice was the same. The tinkling laughter haunted him.

He closed his eyes as he laid his head back on his pillow, the teasing voice still ringing in his head torturously.

August 15, 1998

Hermione was tearing her hair out. She'd combed ten different tomes on divination. She'd exhausted her own barely touched books on Divination: Unfogging the Future, Xylomancy, The Predictions of Tycho Dodonus, Death Omens, and Broken Balls. She'd found nothing useful regarding the art of Tarot, soulmate magic, nor the specific reading she had gotten. She had also sent several owls to her french contacts inquiring about a Madame Violette, and unfortunately, no one had any knowledge or acquaintance with such a witch.

Quite frustrated at this point, she apparated to Diagon Alley and made her way to Flourish and Blotts. She missed this place terribly, and it reminded her that she would soon be shopping for supplies for her final year at Hogwarts, where she would finally be able to take her NEWTS. After a good hour of perusing the shelves, she left with an armful of books, including Divination for Dunces , Tarot Tips and Tricks , A Seers Guide to Second Sight , Perfecting Prophecy , and Wilmina Hargrove's Handbook for Psychics, Mediums, and Seers.

For the following week, she holed herself up in her parent's study, cross-referencing every book in her possession. By the end of the week, she had a tidy little bundle of notes, listing each card, it's every possible meaning and interpretation, and the potential relational symbolisms between the clusters of cards. She also learned, to her surprise, that the spread Madame Violette had employed to read her cards was an unknown pattern. There were no known spreads like it, which Hermione found frustrating.

Alright , she thought. No big deal. I already know that tarot readings are complete rubbish. No surprise there. Worst comes to worst, I appear to have a monumental crisis in my near future. Smashing. Then, some sort of competition or rivalry, whatever that means. Love. Confusion. Indecision. An enemy who becomes my soulmate, apparently. No big deal.

She thought of Ron. Madame Violette had said her supposed future lover was someone she'd known, but not been close to. An enemy , for Merlin's sake.

The only person she counted as a true enemy, besides dead-and-rotting-in-a-black-corner-of-hell Voldemort himself, was Draco Malfoy.

He did appear to be making efforts to change.

But did she really consider him an enemy? Well, she certainly had in the past. Certainly. He had tried to kill Albus Dumbledore...

He was also a former Death Eater. He still bore remnants of the Dark Mark.

But did she see Draco that way? No. Absolutely not. Her brows furrowed and she chewed her nails in thought. She had considered him somewhat handsome, despite her intense dislike of him as a person. But how much stock was she willing to put into these predictions? She had always professed herself to be a skeptic of divination.

But she was also characteristically an overthinker...

No. She would simply not entertain this dreary psychic prediction. If the witch did, in fact, possess any kind of real psychic gift, then the reading would happen on its own, without needing any help or analysis on her part.

She snapped her book shut, feeling much better about everything.

She spent the rest of the afternoon being decidedly productive. She checked in with her contact in Australia, who assured her that her parents were well. She'd decided that until each and every Death Eater sympathizer who'd disappeared into hiding were caught, she would leave her parents be. They'd been set up with their own practice (she hadn't been sure how long the war would last) and she knew they were happy and safe. Hopefully it wouldn't take the Department of Magical Law Enforcement long to round up the last offenders. By then, hopefully, she would be better acclimated to the new post-war reality. She may even have finished her NEWTS!