The apple wasn't large. Tom finished it in a few bites.
It felt less like eating a piece of fruit and more like eating a very convincing apple-shaped jelly.
"What did it taste like?" Andros asked.
Tom thought about it. "No real flavor to speak of. But it was delicious. I genuinely enjoyed it and would like another one."
Andros stared at him.
What do you mean no flavor but delicious?! Pick one!
Tom hadn't meant it as a joke. The apple itself was tasteless in the conventional sense, but the moment it went down, every cell in his body lit up simultaneously, a wave of satisfaction deeper and more complete than anything his favorite food had ever produced.
Then the apple began to do what it had actually come here to do.
Tom turned gold. Countless points of light rose from his skin and drifted outward, the way fireflies lift off a summer field at dusk.
The runic serpents erupted from their burrow without warning, pouring out in a cascade and moving fast toward where Tom sat. The other magical creatures in the small world did the same. Every one of them stopped at a certain distance, though, and lowered itself to the ground, pressing flat, as though the ground were a place to pray.
Tom himself was somewhere else entirely. His soul was ascending. His body was remaking itself.
[Golden Apple: A wedding gift from Gaia, goddess of the Earth, to Hera. Upon consumption, grants endless lifespan, eternal youth, and awakening of divine power.]
Immortality required two things: a body that would not decay and a soul that would not diminish. Both were being addressed simultaneously. A wizard's magical strength was, in essence, the product of those two foundations combined, and as both foundations rose, the magic followed.
A thread of divine light appeared at the center of Tom's brow.
"Divinity," Ravenclaw murmured.
She had said once that no true deity had ever existed in their world because the only supernatural force available to everyone was magic. When everyone draws from the same well, no one can claim to be a god. You needed something different, something of a higher order.
What she was watching now was different.
The quality of power emerging from Tom was above magic in the same way that a river is above the individual streams that feed it. She reached toward it with her senses, trying to study it, but it was already fading. By the time she focused properly, it was gone, leaving behind only the faintest alteration in the texture of Tom's presence.
Grindelwald and Andros were not at Ravenclaw's level, but both were exquisitely sensitive to shifts in magical energy, and both noticed.
"We should test him with the talent later," Grindelwald muttered to Andros. This boy was going to become something genuinely unreasonable.
Ravenclaw said nothing. She was slightly irritated, which she kept to herself.
She had known for a long time that Tom possessed the possession talent, which allowed compatible individuals to temporarily share his body. Useful for instruction, useful in dangerous situations. And as Tom's own capabilities grew, the need for Grindelwald or Andros to bolster him had steadily decreased. Ravenclaw, though, would still be useful, she was sure of it.
But the compatibility requirements hadn't been met yet.
Their relationship had already surpassed the bond Tom had formed with any other founder, and still fell short of the threshold. Ravenclaw had examined the reason and arrived, with characteristic precision, at an uncomfortable answer: she was simply not built for closeness. Rational people rarely were. They could be pleasant with everyone, could give the impression of deep friendship, while a fundamental distance remained underneath, wide and cold and not easy to cross.
Time passed without her noticing it had.
Two and a half hours, as it turned out. Fortunately, Tom had no classes after Magical Creatures today, and no one came looking. By the time dinner approached, the golden apple had been fully absorbed and integrated.
Tom opened his eyes.
The look in them, for just an instant, had physical weight to it. The air seemed to press inward slightly, the space around him contracting and then settling. The sharpness pulled back almost immediately, but even restrained, the quality that remained was enough to make the room feel smaller.
"How do you feel?" Ravenclaw asked, abandoning patience entirely.
"Extraordinary."
Tom looked down at his own hand, watching his fingers move.
His skin had always been good, smooth enough that the girls in his circle had mentioned it with a mixture of envy and complaint. Daphne in particular seemed to use him as a piece of furniture she happened to find comfortable. Now, the word that applied wasn't merely smooth. It was something silk and fresh cream would have had to aspire to.
He moved one hand and a full-length mirror assembled itself from the floor. Tom and the others looked at his reflection.
The learning space went quiet.
The two women recovered more slowly than the men. Ariana's heartbeat, which Tom could not hear but which was visible in the flush that moved up her throat, accelerated noticeably. She had an impulse she decided not to examine too carefully.
Ravenclaw's eyes moved across the reflection with an expression she did not attempt to moderate.
What stood in the mirror was the most beautiful person she had seen in her life, or imagined in any life. Calling Tom a person felt like using the wrong category. An elf, perhaps. Or a very young deity who had not yet decided what form to settle into. Either way, it was more accurate than "a handsome young man."
Andros offered a compliment that was, in the context of ancient history, poorly considered. "Tom, you'd have been enormously popular in ancient Greece. Half of Olympus would have been competing to mentor you."
"I'd rather not think about that." Tom shook his head repeatedly. Tom looked at himself in the mirror for another moment, then sighed, apparently out of genuine feeling.
"You know, looking like this... doesn't it feel a little unfair on Daphne and the others? What kind of girl could actually be considered worthy of..."
...