The thing that Tom liked about the Hogwarts uniform was its button-down shirts. When the wearer turned, the shirt would turn in time too -- only the slightest, infinitesimal second late, enough for the fabric to stretch tight across flat torso and then ripple to the side. It was like skipping stones, skipping stones in fabric and the breathless second that comes with throwing the stone across the water -- will it skim off or not?

Tom liked the shirts very much. In his spare time he wore them; he wore them to sleep (and although they made fun of it and said he hadn’t enough clothes to sleep in), he knew the other boys liked them too. He saw it in their eyes. Even those who had the clearest light in them darkened slightly when Tom entered their line of sight; Tom liked to think that his presence could subtly alter the physical climate of a room.

Your mental state affects your physical landscape, he’d read somewhere. And Tom was always dark -- dark-haired, dark-eyed, fine-boned to the point where they glinted sharply off his cheeks like sheer diamonds.

Tom liked to read. He liked to read books that told him things, that whispered secrets to him through dusty pages, in spidery handwriting so small he had to squint to see them. Their lines curved to the side, off the page, and into his brain. Later on, he realized that his handwriting was exactly like it.

Most of all he likes the books in the Restricted Section. They were innocuously shelved like slightly brooding, malevolent pretty maids in rows, bearing baskets of forbidden fruit. Some of them scream when opened, some of them gasp and shudder in his hands like the boys Tom takes in his arms at night; one very memorably leapt for his neck and snapped itself on it, the corners of the pages pricking at his arteries and jugular, searching for blood.

When Tom finally wrenched it off him, it screeched and tried to shuffle away on the floor on its pages, like a hardcover cockroach. Tom caught it, sliced one of its pages in half and watched as quivering antennae started to sprout from where the page was diced. It was a book about insects.

Tom becomes vastly interested in the book called How to Make Your Own Human by a certain Ernesto P. Eugenido. The book ended by saying:

Although my methods have always proven effective, there is always a slight chance that an amateur’s first attempts may not go as planned. I am confident that with the easy-to-follow instructions, one can be assured of first-class results! However, failing this, one can always utilize the short-cut, easier method of finding an actual human to do your bidding, but

Then there were very large, obscene splatters of blood. Tom was not sure if this was to increase the sales of the book or not, but as he touched the pools they blurred and rippled around his fingers, which came out stained with dried blood that smelled a century old.

Never one to take the easy way out, Tom set about Making his Own Human.

Rose petals were easy to find, unguents from private places were easy enough if one remembered to scrape the semen mixed with spit into a sealed container and kept one’s head above the general excitement. Bones, though, were another story altogether.

In Transfiguration class, Tom came up with a plan and generally ignored the lesson altogether. Doddering Dumbledore subtracted points from Slytherin for it, and reluctantly dished out twice the amount when Tom answered a question that had the Ravenclaws baffled. Tom doodled lazily in his black diary and wrote a list:

1. Kill Dumbledore.
2. Kill a Hufflepuff.
3. Kill a Prefect.
4. Kill a girl.

Before remembering that the instructions called for a human bone and not an entire anatomically-correct skeleton. He neatly crossed out the list and wrote another in its place:

1. Chop off someone’s leg.
2. Chop off someone’s arm.
3. Chop off someone’s foot.
4. Chop off someone’s ear.


Before it occurred to him that a random student hobbling around Hogwarts, minus the necessary limb or body part, would be very noticeable and would certainly draw the attention of Daft Dumbledore, if nobody else.

Joseph Wyndham, despite the posh upper-crust surname, was in actual fact a poor, Mudblood queer. He smoked Muggle cigarettes and read paperback novellas heavy on the irony. Records would later show him to graduate a year before Tom Riddle, and in the yearbook photo he is hunched over, eyes heavily lidded in the manner of one praying to god, but is really be one on an illegal stash of cheap wine.

One of the remarkable things about him was that he had openly discussed (and quite often ranted) about his homosexuality in the 1950s.

“We don’t need your fucking God, or your fucking platitudes about the heterosexual lifestyle!” he screamed at a bully who had called him, offhandedly, a poof. It was the volatile temper about him that kept most insults away, coupled with the suspicion that one way or the other, he was a second or two close to hysterics.

Tom had watched the entire debacle with some amusement, lurking at the fringes of the crowd. A punch was summarily launched by the bully who seemed to feel that it was his duty to reciprocate with physical aggression. Joseph had taken the hit, staggered back and flailed out with spidery limbs and bunched-up fists at the bully’s approximate direction. If Tom had cared at the time, he would have thought that Wyndham had plenty of force and enthusiasm but no direction to put it in.

Joseph Wyndham also a hand which had something Tom wanted.

Later that day, Tom waited in the bathroom on the Gryffindor floor, where Wyndham often went to smoke the occasional illegal cigarette. Most of the Prefects tolerated the habit as long as it was carried out far away from them; and anyway Wyndham seemed intent on cultivating an intense, woe-ridden gay martyr image of himself.

“Smoking is against the rules, you know,” said Tom, flushing very obviously and walked out of the stall. He had been hiding, legs up on the porcelain, on top of the lavatory, waiting for the click of Wyndham’s wand lighting up a cigarette.

“So?” asked Wyndham. His tapering fingers put the cigarette to his lips.

“Ten points from Gryffindor for impudence,” said Tom carelessly. He inclined his head to one side and smiled. “I’ve never had a cigarette before.”

“Go get your bloody own, then,” snarled Wyndham. Tom turned to face Wyndham square in the eye, feeling his white shirt swivel and stretch tight across his skin and pretended to disregard Wyndham’s breathing starting to get irregular, the puffing on the white tube harder.

Tom moved forward. Wyndham raised an eyebrow; Tom’s shoe scuffed the toe of Wyndham’s, forcing the boy to move back until he was up against the tiled wall.

“So you’re a fucking homo as well, then?” asked Wyndham nervously.

“No,” said Tom. “I just want something from you.”

“Like what?” laughed Wyndham. “A regular, tell-your-grandchildren sex encounter?”

“Don’t want marriage,” Tom confessed, shuffling his feet slightly, knowing the ego-soothing effect it had on people.

“You and me both,” said Wyndham, relaxing. He offered a cautionary smile, brief and flashing, drew a cigarette from the packet and proffered it to Tom.

Wyndham’s eyes darkened by several shades, a dangerous tilt to his head.

Tom bent his head down to take the cigarette in between his lips, let it pause there for a breathless second and then made it drop from his mouth with a muted sound. Wyndham’s hand didn’t move, still didn’t move as Tom gently kissed the tip of Wyndham’s cigarette-stained thumb.

Tom licked and kissed down the length of it, teasing the thin webbing of skin between fingers between his teeth, bit his way up the second finger. Wyndham’s entire arm began trembling by the time Tom reached the fourth finger, slid his tongue down it and fastened his mouth, red with saliva and exertion, over the littlest one.

And bit down.

Wyndham screamed, tried to yank his hand away, but Tom’s teeth held fast. Serration, Tom thought clearly, through the haze of Wyndham’s horror and pain, is a wonderful thing.

He ground his teeth against the skin and felt it gave way, releasing a pulsating rush of metallic blood into Tom’s mouth. Wyndham was moaning now, more in pain than anything else, his free arm pushing weakly against Tom’s shoulder. Tom licked at the tendons of flesh still hanging onto the hand, chewed hard and reached bone.

By then, Wyndham was making gasping noises, great gulping gasps for air. Tom couldn’t see his face, but he was quite sure that Wyndham’s heavy-lidded eyes were as large as saucers. Tom paused for a moment, swallowing the blood and strands of chewed flesh and crunchy fingernail.

As Tom bit down again, harder than ever, feeling the bone click against his teeth and finally sever and thankfully not fragment, otherwise he’d have to do the bloody thing all over again, Wyndham made a high keening noise, hand gaining enough strength to shove Tom away (whose mouth was clamped shut and locking his precious ingredient in), and slumped into a heaving heap by the floor.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” said Wyndham, shaking. Tears were pouring down his face. He held up his hand and stared at the bloody, messy stump that once had a perfectly healthy last finger growing out of it.

Tom spat out the finger, smiling to himself as the hints of jagged bone cut through the flesh. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

“Let’s go to the Infirmary,” offered Tom quietly. Wyndham could only nod feebly. Tom carried him like a baby all the way. While the nurse bustled around Wyndham, listening and sighing at Tom’s excuse that Wyndham had a nasty incident with a Potions experiment. Tom stroked his donor’s hair and made soothing noises.

A few days later, Tom Made his Own Human. It was tall, long-limbed and had long tapering hands that it refused to use. Prominently, it had no last finger. It smelled of rose petals and cigarettes, and disintegrated to desiccated flowers and ash within two days.

Tom wasn’t upset. There were always new books in the library and new projects to embark on.

End.