The others had gone. The scent of old smoke and candle wax still lingered in the paneled room, caught in velvet drapes and the folds of cloaks recently drawn tight. The door shut behind Lestrange with a dull finality. Avery’s laughter echoed faintly down the corridor and then died altogether, leaving only the steady tick of the ornate grandfather clock to mark the silence.

Tom remained seated.

He never fidgeted. Stillness was his weapon. And yet, as he watched Abraxas Malfoy—dutiful, polished, golden as ever—gently drape the fur-lined coat over your shoulders, something moved inside him. Something unwelcome. The sight clawed at him, irrational and cold, like envy wearing someone else’s skin.

He rose then, slow and deliberate, the way a storm might uncoil above a flat horizon. “Abraxas,” he said.

The name cracked through the quiet.

Abraxas straightened at once, his hands still at your shoulders. Tom’s voice was not sharp—but it didn’t need to be, “Leave us.”

There was a pause, not of defiance but of instinct. Abraxas looked at you, hesitant, as though trying to determine what, precisely, he was being asked to leave behind. But then he nodded, the way all good soldiers do, and vanished with the scent of expensive cologne and familial duty.

Tom did not speak for a moment. The quiet thickened like mist between the floorboards. You stood near the carved hearth, your gloved hands poised to fasten the last button of your coat—but you didn’t.

He liked that. That you waited. That you knew.

He stepped forward, not fast. Not slow. Enough to erase the space that let people breathe wrong around him.

“You were extraordinary today,” he said, voice silken, effortless, almost kind—if one didn’t know him better.

His gaze lingered. The firelight played against your cheekbones, caught the fine curve of your mouth when you didn’t smile. He never liked smiles, not truly. Not unless he’d put them there.

“You always are. That isn’t what I stayed to tell you.”

His eyes flicked—lashes long, shadowed—then fixed on you again. Not possessive. Not yet. Just exacting.

“I stayed because I’ve decided something.” A pause. Precision mattered more than breath. “You belong at this table, more than half of them. But you knew that before I did, didn’t you?”

He stepped once more, his shadow almost touching yours now, but not quite.

“I’ve watched you,” he said, softly, like a confession. “Long before your brother ever brought you here. Watched how your mind cuts cleaner than theirs. How fire doesn’t frighten you. How loyalty, for you, isn’t weakness. It’s steel.”

Another step.

“And I’ve come to a… theory.”

He raised one hand, gloved still—always in control—and with one finger, traced the air beside your temple, not touching.

“That if there is to be power without end, if there is to be a kingdom built to outlast death itself… then it cannot be mine alone.”

A beat.

“It must be ours.”

His voice had dropped now—cold, hypnotic—reverent, even, “Do you understand what I’m offering you, little Malfoy?”

He took off his glove then, with slow precision. Laid it on the back of the nearest chair.

“In this world, there are names that will not be buried. I’ve carved mine in ways they cannot unwrite. But I don’t intend to walk eternity alone. That’s for fools and martyrs.”

He stepped into your space now, fully, his hand—bare, pale, deliberate—raising to curl a strand of your hair behind your ear, the touch as soft as a spell not yet spoken.

“You know what I’ve done. What I’m becoming.”

A pause, the flicker of heat beneath marble.

“I can show you how.” He let the words hang, then leaned closer—not enough to touch, but enough to drown. “To split the soul. Not for desperation, not for defense. But for sovereignty.”

A step closer now. Just one. Enough to make his presence felt in the bones.

“You see, little Malfoy, you are the only variable I did not account for. And I despise unaccounted variables.”

And then, quietly—almost gently, “Create one. A Horcrux. So I will not have to lose you. I want you to be my equal. I want you to be eternal.”