Serpentine

The first week is not filled with rigorous training, nor techniques to aid him in the event of a duel. Instead, Balam sets down ground rules. Boundaries. Conditions for Tom to abide by if he wishes to stay under his tutelage. Most make sense: stay out of jail. Mind his manners. Respect Balam's experience. Others are stranger and given with no context: The biggest one is to not ever wander into the forest without him. He gives no reason for this, no warnings of fae or creatures or hostile witches beyond his territory.

"But what of my disobedience?" Tom teased, testing the waters.

"You can always do as you wish, but you'll be putting your own life on the line."

It's enough to get him to listen. To say the least.

The area surrounding Balam's home is uninteresting enough. There's a clearing of trees before the jungle closes in on itself again, and within that clearing is the house (obviously), the back allotments and patio behind the house, and a garden in the front of the house with smooth, flat stones lined up in a path up towards the door. If Tom were still a child, he might believe that the house belonged to a warlock (and, well, it does).

He had expected to be taken out and shown around the forest. Shown why it was so dangerous. But no. Balam tells him to get used to the house, to have the house get used to him. Spend time in the rooms he was allowed in, look through the books in the library if he pleases. Sit in his room and go over his homework.

Somehow, he does not mind this menial order. Though it is undeniable that he's itching to get his hands-on training and growth, he's rarely been in a space that welcomes him so readily. A space he doesn't have to share with many others. There's no pressure on him to do anything. No expectation. No preconceived notions. Oh he's not a fool, though, he knows that Balam is studying him. Tom's guard is never fully down. But to simply sit and enjoy his own company is a pleasure he will always take.

-

The buzz of this country was overwhelming (overstimulating) at first, and even after some hours here, he has still not grown used to it. He thinks he never will. That he'll never truly get over the sudden onslaught of allergies that being in Mexico has brought him. It’s so green here. So warm. A land that feels untouched by frost. On his first morning, he woke up with a red nose and itchy eyes. Balam chuckled at him and gave him soothing salve to apply under his nose and eyes. Disgusting. To be rendered so weak just because of nature.

But what enraptures him most about his stay (aside from the magic) is the food.

Balam can cook. This doesn't surprise him, because his teacher is (apparently) unwed and lives alone for most of the year, but it does make him raise a brow. Goes to show just how much time he's spending around Purebloods. Their ideals are starting to rub off on him. Influence him. Can't allow himself to be controlled and molded like that.

But! Back to the food, Balam can really cook. The first meal he makes for Tom is something he calls pollo en mole rojo, and according to him, it took three days to make the brown sauce he used to coat the chicken in.

"You have to smoke the chiles for three days, otherwise it's shit."

It's the first time he hears his teacher curse, and he finds it amusing.

"That's what that smell was when I walked out into the back garden?" It had been a lovely, sharp, strange smell. An interesting accompaniment to the sight of the allotment in the garden: an open, floral pathway of vegetation and growth leading out into the deep forest of tropical trees. Behind the house is a small sitting area shaded from the sun by a canopy of trees where one might want to have a spot of tea or eat breakfast on a warm morning. A little ways from the area is a smoking furnace made from an oil drum, on top of which was the source of the smoke and smell.

"It's a good smell, isn't it?" Balam smiles, nostalgic, "It was one of my favorite scents growing up. It meant my mother was home and that I was going to eat."

Tom can't relate. "What are these vegetables on the side?"

"Nopalitos. Cactus."

He blinks. "Cactus?"

"Don't turn your little British nose up at it, I know that posh accent is acquired."

Tom resists the urge to sneer. He worked hard to get rid of his cockney. "I'm merely curious, is all." Food is food. And something about having an entire meal prepared for him is making him feel...a way. This food is for him. Made for him. No one else. It's on an entirely different level than the Hogwarts meals, and that bothers him.

He thanks his teacher and tries to eat without making a fuss. Like his hosts this past week, Balam makes conversation. But only after a solid five minutes of silence. The man refers to it as properly enjoying the food.

"It's slimy." Tom refers to the nopalitos, "I'm not used to this texture." Especially when he bites into it: it crunches like a cucumber.

"We call it baboso—Or drooling. Full of spit."

Balam laughs when he sees the look of disgust on Tom's face.

"That's language. Always filled with strange uses like that." Well yes, but that doesn't make Tom feel any less disgusted. "You'll learn more Spanish as you go. Soon you'll be able to tweak your own translations spells based on what you know."

He goes on for a little bit, touching on linguistics and the subtleties of different translation charms. It's a subject that does capture Tom's interest, but something else has been on his mind for a while, and when he sees the opportunity to bring it up he takes it: Tom asks about the knife. The one Balam used in their duel.

"A Juju knife[3]. Required for casting in many parts of Africa." He wipes his mouth with a napkin, "The practice was brought over here by enslaved Africans in Veracruz." And, of course, other slave ports.

Balam's knife is made from genuine ivory with an obsidian blade. He received it while training with an old friend of his mother's ('All of the village old ladies still think I'm his son.'), stating that it had chosen him after he had picked it up in the attic of the man's home.

"Like how a wand chooses the wizard?" He can't forget the distant eyes of the wandmaker Olivander, how they bore into him, yet looked right past him.

"Sort of." Balam shrugs, "It cut my finger. That's how I knew."

Tom asks if he would be able to obtain one and Balam shakes his head, stating that it's not a type of magic for him to use. The only reason Balam could use the knife was because his ancestry allowed it.

"It's my preferred method of dueling, but I can use a wand too. Nothing to worry about." As if him not being able to teach him new wand techniques is what's bothering him. Being barred by magic that is not his to use isn't anything new, but that doesn't make him accept it any more. He wants it. To know all the secrets, all the methods. But so be it.

Tom continues his line of injury regardless of whether he'll be able to use that information to his advantage or not. The more Balam tells him, the less faith he has in magical Britain as a whole.

"Plastic?" Tom squints, "But you can't make wands out of man-refined materials[4]."

"I'm not talking about wands, I'm talking about juju knives." Balam drinks his floral tea, which he called agua de jamaica, and clears his throat, "It's quite simple, really...Africa is the cradle of humanity and the cradle of magic… They would know how to mix the two well, I expect."

He's almost dumbfounded, but past conversations on similar topics keep him from shutting down the information given to him, "I expect they're not very set on tradition in Africa, then?"

"Well," Balam exhales, trying to figure out where to start, "tradition means different things to different people...And the effects of colonization on them are substantial. If you think Muggles are destructive…" He trails off, then shakes his head, "They are a resilient people. Like phoenixes."

His teacher gathers the dishes and washes them in the sink himself, without the aid of magic or any sort of servant. Tom wipes the dishes dry and sets them in the cabinet, not wanting to owe the man anything. Not wanting to come off as useless or spoiled, like other purebloods.

He sleeps in his own bed. Not a guest room. Not a dormitory surrounded by other boys in identical beds. Not a crapped little room with a cot and a moth-eaten blanket probably infected with smallpox. This room was made for him. The style and colors are to his liking. The items inside the room are his to do what he wishes. He can cherish them and preserve them for decades to come. Or destroy them with his hands, with his magic. It's all his. His alone.

-

Balam moves in a gramophone radio in Tom's room for him to constantly listen to music and get used to hearing the rhythm. He also uses it to practice his translation spells, because it's good practice, and Tom wishes to fine-tune it to the dialect spoken within this region of Mexico. It's a bother because he prefers to work in silence, but Tom is nothing if not adaptive. By the third day, he works well with it tittering away in the background of his reading or studying. Mostly instrumental pieces (Balam seems fond of the Romantic period), with the occasional hit album surging across Latin America. He learns who Xavier Cugat[1] and Agustín Lara[2] are, and hears many songs he's used to hearing in the passing shops of London and humming out of the mouths of the Muggleborn students.

The music in Spanish takes some getting used to. Voices are grating to him unless they are well trained (let his tolerance for Frank Sinatra not be known), so once he finds singers he enjoys, he sticks to them. Taps his foot gently on the floor in his room as he reads through his Eostre homework. He still doesn't see why music is important, but it helps fill the space when silence is too much. It's an entirely different silence than the one found in the common room when he has the space to himself. He's not alone in the house. Sound doesn't echo. Every once in a while, he hears the footsteps of Balam walking past his door. The pitter of paws as Churro swats underneath his door at some invisible insect. The forest outside his window is so close, that he hears all manner of sounds and animals at any given time.

He thinks Ximena would enjoy this kind of silence.

The letter he pens her from Mexico is the first one (the first of many, he thinks), written from his desk in his room with a pen that he did not steal. It is not a quill (Balam explained that his mother had banned them for 'fear of offending the birds'), but a Muggle fountain pen made from dark, polished wood with a gold nib. His teacher had gifted it to him upon seeing his quill in his hands.

"You and I both know these are much better, anyways."

True. But the statement makes him wonder just how much Dumbledore has told Balam about his past. His time at the orphanage. Among Muggles.

"You can purchase one more to your tastes later."

That was one thing he liked about Balam. He didn't coddle him. Didn't expect Tom to be grateful or mongreling for taking him on as an apprentice. Not like Dumbledore would.

But, returning to the letter:

There's a smug sort of satisfaction of knowing that he made it here first. To Latin America. Before Ximena could. He largely wants to (subtly) brag about it in the first paragraph, letting her know that perhaps maybe if she had let the bracelet incident go, she might be closer to coming as well. But no, he must resist. He knows from spending too much of his time around highbloods that all bragging does is make the other person want to strangle them (and he has, magically speaking, done so to the likes of Katux and the rest). He's only seen Ximena full of emotion a handful of times, and while he doubts she could ever bring herself to strangle anyone, he would not like to test that.

Her hands don't belong around his neck.

Within his letter, there are light little hints at the existence of The Room of Requirement (or Come-And-Go-Room as his ancestor called it) sprinkled in every so often. If Ximena already knows about it, he doesn't want it to seem like Tom is late to the party. But if she doesn't, then he'd like to discover all of its potential uses for himself before sharing.

His own discovery of the room was a triumph. One thing Cornivus Gaunt (his ancestor, it still blows his mind) had been obsessed with was locating something. Most every other entry that was in English discussed his tireless search for a hidden heirloom of sorts, one he would not divulge, save for (presumably) within his Parselscript. Entries containing 'was not here' and 'searching proved fruitless' pique his curiosity. Then finally, in January of his third year, Cornivus Gaunt had located it: The Come-And-Go Room.

Cornivus had kept the discovery of the room to himself, naturally, and within the pages of his diary, he had outlined plans to use the room as a place of recruitment for some kind of group or organization. It was in these entries that the mix of the unknown language and English became most prominently entangled, and while it's very annoying to go from English to this staggered and looped language, it helps identify common words and phrases. Things of note, even if he doesn't know what it says yet.

Tom wishes to share it with Yami, whose polyglot abilities are well known to him, but the thought of someone else understanding the entries before him angers him. It's his birthright and his ancestor, why should another be allowed to decipher the words first? Is he not smart? Is he not capable? He's already identified the origin of the script as Southwest Asian, and while there's a frustrating amount of languages within that pocket, it's something. More than he had when he found the diary.

For very brief, very repeated, moments, he thinks about sharing it with Ximena. He knows it would capture her attention. Keep her close. Have her conversing with him on theories, or sharing her knowledge. An indulgent thought. But he's kept his search for his ancestry so close to his chest, how could he possibly share it with anyone? Even spilling his belief to her that his mother was a Muggle and his father was a wizard (what a distant delusion that was!) was too much for him. Too soon. He felt foolish sharing it, and he feels foolish now. Stupid idiot younger self. Of course he didn't know any better, he was an idiot.

Still, he fishes information out of her if he can. Uses the books she shares with him as bait. None of their conversations have gone as in-depth as before the duel with Ian, but it doesn't mean he's not trying. Since her...little declaration that he was just a boy, she's been passively kind to him. As if she regretted the action and perhaps felt guilt over it: a thought he enjoys immensely.

Of course, it is just a thought, and if it is (indeed) the reality, then Ximena's guilt does not function the same way as others' guilt does. Tom doesn't know how to manipulate it. At least, not yet.

Maybe when he does, he'll share the room with her.

It had taken a ridiculous amount of effort, on his part, to locate it. Cornivus' cryptic directions within his diary were infuriating. Didn't he know just how many corridors were on the seventh floor? The description of the tapestry displayed before the entrance would have helped Tom out, but it appears that whoever was in charge of decorating the castle in his time decided to move the vaguely described 'serpentine tapestry' to another location, replacing it with one of a wizard named Barnabas.

The number of times he must have passed the wrong landmark waiting for the entrance to appear makes him feel like a fool. Granted, no one had questioned him beyond a few nosy prefects, but it wouldn't have done him any good to be remembered as someone suspicious. Especially if any of those prefects gave word back to Dumbledore (who Tom bets absolutely knows the location of the room...).

He had finally gotten the location down when it was mentioned in passing by Balam before Eostre holiday. Tom had blinked in surprise.

"...You didn't go to Hogwarts, did you?"

"Your Hogwarts?" Balam had yawned, tucking away the fourth book lent to Tom, "No, not at all."

Naturally, he explained nothing about why he knew the location. Tom wondered if all wizards grew to be naturally cryptid on their own.

-

Tom tells no one about his new apprenticeship. Once Hogwarts starts back up, he pretends that he spent the last week of holiday at the orphanage, and answers a few concerned questions from his fellow housemates. Sniveling pests looking to get into his good favor. Tom smiles and soothes their concerns over him. All as usual.

Then of course there are the ones that still hold his unknown blood status against him. Walburga Black is not someone he knows well, but by the way she seethes at her cousin and brother to keep away from him, Tom can venture a guess as to how she feels about him. Unfortunate. He can't exactly corner her alone and teach her a lesson (a Black, after all, is different from a Lestrange or a Mulcifer). He can only hope that Lucretia and Cygnus sort her out soon. Isn't that their duty as the older children?

After his visit to the Acwellan residence, several others come in line to extend their invitation to him as they did before. This time around, Tom has no paranoia that the reasons behind their invites include pity. He knows they also want to show how useful they can be to him. It's quite nice. No one quite knows that he actually enjoyed the excursion with Hedwig and Nemesis. The former, while frustrating, is one of the only people he can count on to be honest with him, and the later, while irritating, is one of the only people he can rely on to have his best interests at heart.

That's not to say he trusts them. No, never trust. That is a stretch. That is too much. Too soon. If the left hand doesn't know what the other is doing, then neither can know what the main body does either.

Alongside his overseas studies, he has his schedule full and busy. With only about two weeks worth of Muggle London. Delightful.

He gets his chance to show off his first official week under Balam's mentorship during Dueling Club: Tom counts out the steps his opponent makes in a given amount of time and slips in a jinx while he's open. Technique over instinct, as even without the insight, he would have struck similarly, but at least now he knows why he's so good. He can see Willow's eyes gleam with satisfaction: she still wishes to court him for the school team. Maybe he'll let her. He'd look rather dashing in the uniform if he does say so himself...He could be captain, he's certain. Already, he's becoming the leader in so many things, it just makes sense. People love following behind him. Obeying him. Bending to his will…

It's intoxicating, how so many believe in him. Trust him. Fear him. A part of it is his grades, no doubt, there's hardly anyone ahead of him in most classes. It helps encase his identity as the smart wizard and not the orphan wizard as he was during the first few weeks of school. His ability to stand up for himself, that don't fuck with me spirit that keeps others like Katux and Dion under his heel aids as well. The spells he's not afraid to use are secondary.

Well almost. Following Ximena into the age-restricted sections of the library and now learning from the books lent to him by Balam have expanded his mind to just how much pain the human body can tolerate. There were no mentions of unforgivables save for a few allusions that could have been related to either of them, but despite his teacher’s laid back personality, he highly doubts he would outright give him something that instructs him on how to cast them. Unfortunate. Though it’s not exactly a barrier that he’s new to.

On the last Hogsmeade trip of the year, flowers are beginning to spring forth from the dead ground. New litters of animals can be seen frolicking around the Forbidden Forest, as well as within the school owlery (Tom has already been nipped at twice for getting too close to a nest with chicks). He finds himself sniffling at the pollen in the air (the dust in the castle) and blaming his sudden allergies on his new apprenticeship. He had never been this bad before, even in herbology class. Surely some outside force had caused this weakening of his body. This betrayal of his senses…

Hedwig shares her special stinging nettle honey[5] with him. It helps alleviate his closing throat enough for him to (rather begrudgingly) thank her. He would have to learn to obtain some on his own, or perhaps visit some of the smaller magical ghettos within London he's heard so much about. Balam had offered to accompany him, but he wishes to experience them on his own for the first time around. Not like when he first step foot inside Diagon Alley with Dumbledore. What a hideous memory. Tainted.

He can see the carriage Ximena is in from where he is sitting in his, as they are uncovered for the spring. A bother, as it allows more pollen and wind to get in his face, but at least he can cut short the usual time spent looking for her. The other students in her car are chatting animatedly, and while her body language doesn't face away from them, it's not exactly engaging either. He wonders if she's bored. Or thinking of something else. Someone else?

Tom never found out why it was that Mali didn't return to Hogwarts, though he suspects Ximena keeps correspondence with her. How could she not? With how close they were that last Halloween, one might assume they've become as close as sisters. Not that he knows anything about that. The assumption is merely based on the siblings he's seen back at Wool's, most of which were annoyingly loyal to one another. Without even really earning it! Just because they came from the same mother, they've tied themselves to one another? Preposterous.

What did Mali do to win Ximena's loyalty?

Maybe it's a gendered thing. When left to her own devices, it looks as if Ximena prefers the company of other girls. While they might not be as whiny as boys, they're certainly their own brand of annoying. Girls feel safer together than with boys, right? That’s what the padre had told them during the special talk. The one that occurred whilst he was hiding under the sofa[6]. Always walk with other girls. Don’t look at boys. As if making eye contact would impregnate them. Ridiculous. Some kind of contact had to happen with procreation, otherwise the older boys wouldn’t make such obscene gestures regarding the act.

Don’t touch him don’t touch him don’t touch him.

He runs his hand over the side of his head, where his hair has grown back evenly after Ian attacked him. Scars remain, though the length of his hair covers up those sections easily enough. It wouldn’t do if his image was marred, not at all. People trust a pretty face like his. A soft and beautiful one.

When the carriages arrive at the small village, he leaves behind Katux and Dion, speeding up his pace to catch up with Ximena, who walks too damn fast despite her low energy.

Her overcoat is old fashioned, looking just modern enough by wizard standards for him to know that it is used and definitely donated: a cape draped over her shoulders with holes for her arms to reach out of[7]. It might have been something used by a servant in Queen Victoria's home. Her shoes, however, are new: this he knows because they are clearly made from fish skin. Not leather. He’s seen other girls at the orphanage wear them.

At her side, he tries not to let their ridiculous height difference bother him.

"...Did you get my last letter?" Being direct is such a chore.

A moment for her to realize someone is talking to her, "...Yes."

That means she didn't bother to reply to it. "Just checking." He wanted her to feel bad about it. To bring it up and ask him questions about what he wrote. Naturally, she does no such thing. So he continues, "Did you have any books on Asian languages?"

She hums, looking out into the horizon, "No." Her footsteps crunch softly under her weight, "I would ask Yami for that."

They're on a first-name basis...So much has happened in the past couple of months… "I'm...not sure I want to share it with her." And that's true enough. "It's personal."

Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he can see her blink in bemusement. Got her. "Why do you want to share it with me then?"

His head moves to the side, ear pressing gently on his shoulder, in an unsure movement. As if he were overtaken with sudden bashfulness. Or revealed something he hadn't meant to. He presses his lips together, tries to time his hesitation just right, "I trust you."

Ximena lets him walk next to her for the rest of the trip.

-

When Tom walks out of Platform 9¾, the Muggle side of the train station is in ruins.