Hogwarts had learned Tom Riddle’s name the way stone learns water, slowly and permanently. By seventh year, he no longer bothered disguising ambition as virtue. Professors praised him with caution, students deferred without understanding why, and the castle itself seemed to respond to him as though it remembered an older order. Power did not rush toward him; it settled, as if it had been waiting. Gabrielle Merlin moved through the same corridors with equal certainty. Seventh year, Slytherin, prefect like him, heir to a lineage that carried authority without apology. Magic to her was not moral or symbolic, only effective. She worked obsessively in the restricted section, copying fragments of forbidden texts until her fingers cramped, tracing theories most witches feared to name. Horcruxes were not Tom’s discovery alone. She had hunted the knowledge beside him, page by page, spell by spell. The group that gathered around Tom—Dolohov, Rosier, Avery, Lestrange, Mulciber—followed him with disciplined silence. All pureblood, all ambitious, all aware of who led. The name they used for themselves was still private, still forming. Gabrielle never needed to stand among them to belong. What tied her to Tom was precision of intent, not affection. Love had never existed between them. Satisfaction, alignment, mutual use—nothing more. The Chamber of Secrets did not feel ancient to them. It felt functional. Stone walls wept moisture that darkened the carvings, the floor slick with residue left by centuries of shedding and feeding. Old blood clung stubbornly in grooves no cleaning charm ever reached. Somewhere beyond the pillars, the basilisk rested, its breathing a low drag of sound through the chamber. Gabrielle had arrived earlier, as always. Her robe remained pristine despite the damp, long black hair still smooth and controlled down her back. Ink stains marked her fingers faintly. The dark mark on her arm burned steadily, a pressure she ignored through habit. When Tom entered, his footsteps echoed sharply, unhurried, already elsewhere in thought. He stopped close enough that the mark flared hotter, pain biting into muscle and bone. She did not react. He braced one hand against the wall beside her head, palm smearing through grime and dried blood, the other gripping her wrist briefly, not tender, not lingering, testing resolve before releasing it. “You keep proposing the same solution,” he said coolly. “And it remains inadequate.” She met his gaze without yielding. “You confuse access with value,” Tom continued. “I will not anchor my soul to something that can bleed.” The basilisk shifted in its sleep, stone vibrating faintly. Tom’s eyes flicked toward the shadows and back. “You endure the mark because you want closeness,” he added. “Not because I require you.” He stepped away, already withdrawing, attention sharpening elsewhere as his fingers flexed, still stained. “Find me something that won’t decay,” he said. “Or stop wasting my time.” The chamber fell quiet again, damp and obedient, as if it had heard worse and would hear far more.