Christmas in Amber

It was almost midnight. Most students had long since retired to their common rooms, or bed. Those still in the library at this hour were almost all fifth-years and seventh-years, studying for their OWLs and NEWTs.

The lone exception was a fourth-year boy who sat alone at a table, with piles of books stacked all about him, more books than any other student in the library. But he was not studying for any test.

He had coal-black hair, pale skin that took on an almost alabaster sheen in the circle of light cast by a single lamp behind him, and eyes that radiated a dark, brooding intelligence as he pored over the volumes of magical lore in front of him. He was handsome, very handsome. He drew appreciative glances even from the older girls (and, much more furtively, from one or two of the boys as well). They could not help it; he was just shy of sixteen, and was often mistaken for an older student, but even without his precocious maturity and good looks, his mere presence filled a room.

He was paying no attention to anyone else, though, and no one bothered him. Even the few classmates whom he called 'friends' wouldn't dare to to disturb him while he had that forbidding gleam in his eyes.

As the lamps grew dim, and candles guttered out, the other students yawned, closed their books, and retired to their dorms, in ones and twos and threes. Finally, the last Ravenclaw abandoned the library, rubbing her eyes as she stumbled off to her Tower.

Tom Riddle was alone at last.

Only then did he take something out of the pocket of his cloak: a small sphere of amber, polished and enchanted, night after night, until its surface was like yellow glass. The charms upon it, though invisible, had been laid with equal care and patience.

He held it up to inspect the small black shape encased within. The amber was slightly cloudy, so he'd never been able to make out for certain what it was – an ant or wasp or spider. It was irrelevant for his purposes, but the presence of the small pitiful creature, trapped in amber aeons ago and preserved until it would become a part of his great work, was a suitably poetic embellishment, Tom thought.

He whispered charms that no one at Hogwarts should know, let alone a mere fourth-year. Some of the words came from books in the Restricted Section – he wasn't supposed to have access to them, but his earnest pleading and his most charming smile had softened the librarian's heart, and he was careful to always bring back the books she knew he was borrowing – some of Salazar Slytherin's untranslated writings, and a few ancient wizarding genealogies – in perfect condition. The more dangerous books that she didn't know he was also slipping in and out of the Restricted Section were camouflaged by his apparently innocuous interest in his House's founder, and the forgotten history of prominent wizarding families.

Principia Tempus Arcana was forbidden to anyone – even professors – without special authorization from the Department of Mysteries. Likewise, no student should have been able to get past the curses guarding the Latin translation of Abd Al-Raheeb's mad alchemical theories. Yet Tom had acquired both.

Whispering and muttering, he would have looked quite mad himself, if anyone were watching him. But he was alone in the library. When he was done laying on his most recent set of enchantments, he fogged up the amber with his breath, and polished it, and then stretched and yawned. It was time to go to bed, at last.

Avery and Lestrange left that morning, going home on the Hogwarts Express. They knew by now not to express pity for their roommate, who would stay behind over the Christmas holidays as he did every year. After four years, they still knew little about Tom Riddle's home life; only that he only ever went home during the summer, and he didn't talk about it.

But Avery noted that Tom seemed a little more cheerful this year than in the past.

“Got anything special planned over the holidays, Tom?” he asked.

Headmaster Dippet, Professor Slughorn, and Mr. Pringle would be nearly the only adults left in the castle. Avery couldn't imagine that Tom would be socializing with the handful of other students with no family to go home to – Selwyn, Deacon, that Gryffindor oaf Hagrid, and some homely Ravenclaw girl whom nobody liked – so he was puzzled at Tom's uncharacteristic cheerfulness.

“I do,” Tom replied softly. He gave Avery one of his knowing smiles, the kind that sent shivers of anticipation and dread through his fellow Slytherins. “Perhaps I'll tell you about it when you come back.” He slid his hands into his pockets, and shrugged. “Or perhaps not.”

Avery nodded uncertainly, and left Tom standing in the Entrance Hall, with that bemused smile on his too-handsome countenance.

Only after the exodus was complete, and Hogwarts Castle stood almost empty, did Tom begin wandering its halls and dungeons in earnest. He passed days and nights in blissful near-isolation, never seeing a soul except when he ate in the Great Hall. With Dumbledore gone – exhorting the Wizengamot to do something about the situation in Europe, Slughorn had told him – there was no one around who threatened to interfere with him. Dippet would speak to him at mealtimes, but didn't have Dumbledore's... inquisitiveness as to his activities. Slughorn rarely left the comfort of his office, and Pringle was new to Hogwarts, and didn't yet know the ins and outs of the castle. He was easy enough to evade.

And so Tom spent the next week, finishing the enchantments on his ball of amber in his room, and walking up and down the stairs and corridors of Hogwarts, straining his ears for the source of those sibilant whispers that he heard, every so often, echoing from somewhere deep within the castle.

When he had first heard the whispers, in his second year, he thought the castle itself might be speaking to him. Now, he knew it was something else – a secret chamber, with something powerful and mysterious concealed within it. And the fact that only he heard the sounds that emanated from it meant that he was meant to find it and open it!

That he could never quite make out what that rustling, hissing voice was saying frustrated and tantalized him. It was as if he were catching the whispered mutterings of some great beast as it slept.

On Christmas Eve, he ate dinner with the others, listening with a polite smile as Headmaster Dippet enticed the Hogwarts ghosts into singing a few Christmas carols. He went to greet his Head of House afterwards, and presented Professor Slughorn with a neatly gift-wrapped package.

“Why Tom, you shouldn't have!” Slughorn exclaimed delightedly. “Really, my boy...” he lowered his voice. “I know your allowance doesn't leave you a lot of spending money.”

Tom smiled. “I've found others here at Hogwarts to be very generous also, Professor. And I wanted to express how much I appreciate what I've learned here. Especially in your Potions class.”

“You're too kind, my boy,” Slughorn beamed, as he tucked the package into his voluminous green silk robes. “And it's my privilege to teach such a gifted student as yourself – and believe me, I do not say that lightly! Why, next year I daresay your OWLs will be a mere formality.”

“No sir, it is you who are too kind.”

Tom Riddle and Horace Slughorn continued their effusive displays of mutual admiration. On another night, Tom might have drawn the Head of Slytherin into a lengthy discussion about some of the more hazardous and stringently controlled alchemical formulations that had piqued his interest – things Slughorn wouldn't teach in his regular classes. But tonight, he was merely going through the motions to satisfy social requirements.

He took his leave as soon as he politely could, and descended back into the dungeons with eagerness in his step.

The box of crystallized pineapple from Honeydukes and the book of quotations by famous Slytherins from Toome's had indeed cost Tom virtually all that remained of the meager allowance Dumbledore had allotted to him – but if he really wanted something, mere lack of funds would not stop him. And he knew that next year, what he wanted was to remain the rising star shining most brightly in Professor Slughorn's eyes.

What he wanted now, however, was to find that secret chamber.

His hand trembled with eagerness as he raised the piece of amber to his eye and peered through it. He thought he had satisfied all the Principle Refinements prescribed in Principia Tempus Arcana. Trying to improvise a solution in amber from Abd al-Raheeb's rambling, sometimes badly-translated formulas was a bit more dodgy – the mad Arab was partial to bronze and wax in most of his works of this nature, and only mentioned amber briefly, for a wholly different purpose. But Tom couldn't see why this wouldn't work... in theory.

If it didn't, he'd just have to try again. Or find an untranslated copy of Abd al-Raheeb's book, and learn Arabic.

The torches in the dungeon flared orange-yellow, as Tom gazed at them through his enchanted lens, and the refracted light made the sphere of amber seem to blaze. Tom's mouth dropped open, and then he showed teeth in a triumphant grin, as through the glass, ghostly figures appeared.

They were not ghosts, though. Not really. They had died centuries ago, yes, but the figures Tom was spying on now, he was seeing as they had lived.

He spent hours following robed wizards around the dungeons, watching them converse with each other (a bit frustrated that the amber gave him no power to hear them, but then, he probably wouldn't have understood the language anyway) and occasionally cast spells. Sometimes he was balked when attempting to follow one of the shadows from the past, as the long-dead wizard would walk through a wall, as if he were a real ghost. Not all of the walls and corridors in the dungeon were arranged exactly the same as they had been in the past, Tom realized. This only made him more eager to peer further back, to the beginnings of Hogwarts and the laying of the castle's foundations.

By Christmas morning, however, frustration was beginning to gnaw at him. Watching images from the past was only a clever diversion if it didn't prove useful, and so far his ability to cast his sight back to a specific time seemed limited.

He returned to the Slytherin quarters, meaning to check one of the incantations in Principia Tempus Arcana – it wouldn't do to get it wrong, when trying to bend the edges of time. He paused before the portrait of Salazar Slytherin hanging in the common room. It wasn't an animated portrait – there were no known portraits of the Founders that had been enchanted in that manner. This one had been painted centuries after Slytherin's death, by some nameless artist, and it was questionable how much it even resembled the real Salazar Slytherin. But Tom had always felt drawn to that pale, icy countenance, the brooding forehead, the cold eyes glittering beneath heavy, arched brows.

I am not a dirty Muggle cast-off, he thought. I am an heir of Slytherin.

On an impulse, he raised the amber to his eye again, to peer at Slytherin's portrait through it – and gasped in surprise, as he saw that the portrait was glowing with magic that was only visible through his amber lens. He almost dropped the piece of amber, and waved his wand over the portrait, muttering spells to reveal hidden charms and enchantments, but there was nothing there. Yet when he examined Slytherin's portrait through the amber, the spellwork was plainly visible.

Slytherin's portrait had once had a spell on it, then. Perhaps the magic had been imbued in the paint, and over time it had faded.

What enchantment had been placed on it? Tom's lips peeled back in a grimace, as he searched his mind for a spell that might restore it.

“Tempus excorio!” he intoned, pointing his wand. “Arcanarestito! Aks ramad azzaman!” He cast one spell after another at the painting, not really expecting a result, but suddenly the network of lines Tom had seen before only through the amber glass glowed visibly before him, and then he found himself staggering away from the portrait in a flash of light. He blinked several times, with small pinpoints of light still blinding him. He noticed the smell before his vision cleared.

It was even colder than it had been before, and the smell was overpowering: mold, mildew, raw effluvium from a latrine or worse, blood, animals, burnt straw and wood, and unwashed bodies. The Slytherin common room was no longer a plush, carpeted lounge with soft furniture and bright green lamps. It was a cold stone dungeon, with filthy matted straw on the floor, a couple of hard wooden benches, and pallets of hay on which wooden platters sat, caked with mouldering food remnants. There was a pair of torches set in brackets on the wall, and the glass window in the ceiling through which one could view the lake was gone, replaced by a dripping stone ceiling.

Tom turned slowly about. He was alone in the room, but he heard arguing in the hallway. Two grown men were yelling at each other – or rather, one was yelling, while the other was responding in a cold, measured tone that was nonetheless oozing with contempt and suppressed anger.

Unhesitatingly, Tom walked to the heavy wooden door and pulled it open, with his wand held at the ready.

What he saw, in the dripping corridor outside, was two wizards: one tall and brawny, with a wild mane of red hair, matted and knotted, and an equally red face, twisted in fury. He was wearing thick, creaking leather over his woolen underclothes, and he smelled – strongly – of horses and sweat. Right now, his hand was on the hilt of a sword hanging on his belt, as he bellowed at the second wizard loudly enough to send flecks of spittle into the smaller man's face.

The second wizard, Tom realized, looked completely unlike his portrait in the Slytherin common room, and yet the portrait had captured his essence accurately enough to leave no doubt as to his identity. Salazar Slytherin, a thin, pale man with receding greasy black hair and dark bushy eyebrows, wearing plain black robes, regarded the first man balefully and spat something back at him. He was holding his wand, though he had not pointed it at the red-haired man – yet.

Both wizards stopped their argument abruptly when Tom opened the door. They stared at him a moment, and then the red-haired man turned angrily back to Slytherin, and snarled some sort of question or demand.

The words were not English, though there was a vaguely familiar sound to them: “Hwaet is...?” something, and “scola.”

Slytherin responded in a dismissive tone, but his eyes glimmered as he regarded Tom; curiosity was evident on his face for a moment, and then it vanished, as he turned back to his interlocutor. Whatever he said, the other man didn't like. Puffing up his chest, the red-haired warrior growled something as a parting shot, and then turned to storm away.

Slytherin turned back to Tom, and the two eyed one another for a long moment, both of them taking in the strange, unfamiliar sight of the other.

“My name is Tom Riddle,” said Tom. He kept his voice calm and even, though he was almost trembling with excitement. He was speaking to Salazar Slytherin! Right now, the question of how he'd arrived here – or how he'd get back – was a distant thought in his mind.

“Hwider cum bu, Tom Riddle?” Slytherin asked softly.

Tom frowned. He guessed the Founders would have spoken Old English, if not Gaelic or some other medieval tongue, but the best he could manage was a few words of Latin.

“Ego sum disciplus. Ego sum ex posterus,” he tried.

Slytherin's bare forehead wrinkled. He said something disparaging about Tom's Latin, sniffed, and then asked him a question. Tom shook his head.

Slytherin tried several more languages, and then hissed in frustration. “What a foolish boy! He slithers into my castle, ignorant... blind... mute!”

“I am not,” Tom hissed back.

Both of them blinked at one another in surprise.

“Parseltongue!” Slytherin hissed.

“Yes....” Tom replied slowly, letting the word escape through his teeth. He wanted to laugh. Why had he not made that connection before?

“How came you here?”

“Through magic.” Tom's eyes gleamed. “I am here for a purpose.”

“What purpose?” Slytherin, like Tom, was more curious about this strange set of circumstances than he was suspicious or disbelieving, but Tom noticed the Slytherin Founder still held his wand and remained alert.

“What you have hidden, I shall open.”

Salazar Slytherin studied Tom Riddle, wondering whether the younger wizard's statement was an offer, a demand, or a threat. He scratched his chin, and picked his nose unselfconsciously, then nodded. “Come with me, Tom Riddle, if you are not afraid, and I shall show you something.” His smile became sharp, predatory. “I will show you how to open what I have hidden.”

He would show the Chamber to this strange boy who claimed to be from the future, and then he would seal him inside it. Perhaps this “Tom Riddle” really was a magical traveler through time, and he really did have some purpose in the future. What better test, than to put him in the very Chamber Slytherin had constructed to weed out the unfit? If the precocious, arrogant boy survived, Slytherin would tell him about his great work, and then help him return to his own time.