Invictus [Tom Riddle / Tomione]

Deal with the Devil

Tom Riddle's shoes crunched on the gravel of a rocky shore. The sky was dark, though it was only midday. He supposed the sky always looked like this here... dark and thunderous gray, backlit by an eerie, colorless glow, with no sun or stars to speak of. He wondered if it was merely an illusion of the mind or if it really existed this way all of the time.

The turbulent sea crashed about him. Tom had only visited Azkaban prison once before, and the ocean had been like this then, as well. Tempestuous and unrestrained. Restless. As if the very spirit of the water was troubled by the air here. He wondered if he were to dip his toes in, would they be encircled by thick tentacles and dragged below the dark surface, thousands of leagues beyond hope?

Hope. It was absent here. It had not survived amongst the crashing waves and the cold, unforgiving stone. Tom looked ahead at the structure that loomed before him. It rose from the landscape as if it were simply a part of the jagged rock upon which he stood. As if it were carved from the sharp knife of fear that hung in the air here like a poisonous vapor. It tried to wrap its tendrils around Tom and pierce his heart, but Tom did not shake it away. He let it greet him as an equal, loosening its grip and resting there upon him like a symbiont.

As a boy, Tom had gotten his hands on a muggle book called The Count of Monte Cristo . Azkaban had always reminded him of the prison in which Edmund Dantes spent fourteen years trapped, before he was dumped in the ocean in a body bag, with a millstone tied 'round his ankles. That would've been a better fate than Azkaban prison.

Tom's eyes blinked to the sky, observing the swirling vortex of hungry dementors as they encircled the prison. They were already aware of his presence, he knew. Dementors had never affected Tom as they had others. They almost seemed repulsed by him, as if his soul were a meal they would rather not stomach. Tom supposed he had very few happy memories for them to feed on, so the despair of this island never governed Tom in any kind of influential way. He supposed that was an advantage; perhaps the dementors could be a sort of alliance. A rather unintelligent, single-minded, mutinous alliance, but still an alliance all the same. One simply had to know how to motivate. All that power truly consisted of was the ability to motivate all different types of people.

Tom was not able to cast a corporeal Patronus. It was alright, he supposed, because he had never needed it. He had been able to cast it once. Right after he had murdered his father; it had been the single most satisfying moment of his life. It felt like a release of something, a rope that had been strangling him. Following that encounter, he had cast a powerful serpent patronus. He felt rather smug about it; until the elation had eventually faded, and he was left with only a bitterness that set in like an infection... like the spread of gangrene. Then, he never was able to produce the charm again. He was consoled at least by the fact that his inadequacy wasn't a magical one, but an emotional one. That would prove to be Tom's weakness throughout his life, unfortunately.

He wondered if Hermione felt the same bitterness toward her father. But no, that couldn't be; Albus had seemingly not known of her existence. She had not been brutally dismissed from his life like an irritating gnat that one could bat aside.

Tom wondered if she could cast a patronus, and if so, what memory would she use, and what form hers would take?

Again, his thoughts drifted to her like they were swept up in an inescapable current, threatening to drown him. He had thought often of slitting her throat the past two weeks since Ostara, but the urge was less and less potent as the days wore on. Now, he only thought of nicking her a bit. Just enough to see the bloom of her blood seeping through the cut.

He had strange thoughts about her. He imagined every place Abraxas had touched her and felt the irrational urge to strike a match and burn his touch away from her skin. He supposed he wanted to hear her gasp and scream, but there were much better ways to elicit those kinds of sounds from her pretty lips. Of course, he would never act on these odd thoughts. He could recognize when his mind was acting up. Perhaps, it was that seed of darkness planted in him from the dark arts, as Hermione had written about in her column. He imagined a garden of black, poisonous roses, thorns as sharp as talons, blooming within his severed soul. He saw Hermione walking through that garden, garbed in a white cloak, attempting to heal the noxious overgrowth with her touch.