HEADMASTER RIDDLE

Summary : AU. Dumbledore gave Tom Riddle the job Professor when he applied. When Harry enrolls in Hogwarts, Magical Britain has been embroiled in decades of clandestine conflict and he soon finds himself in the centre of the nebulous struggle for power. M for lang.

PROLOGUE

As I was carefully escorted down the shadowy corridor – I had always despised the Ministry's penchant for theatrics, I could already hear the commotion emanating from behind the grand door at the end of the corridor and were those cheers I head? I shook my head as irritation at the ignorant idiots behind the doors began to grow within me. My guards jumped at my sudden motion and sharply raised their wands towards my head, "just give us a reason Potter," the one to my left spat.

Why did they always assign the greenest of aurors to escort duty? I didn't bother to hide my malice as I inclined my head towards him and – an icy grip fell upon my shoulder, stopping me from antagonising the rookie any further and served as ample reminder of my dementor escort.

The doors swung open and the magnitude of the cacophony inside assaulted my highly receptive ears – they say that the loss of one sense can magnify the others. I felt no little pleasure as the hubbub ground to an abrupt halt as they saw me. Another being's fear was like an expensive silken robe – beautiful, comfortable and coveted.

After the aurors roughly pushed me into my seat and activated the inbuilt magical cuffs I gazed upon my audience – the entire body of the Wizengamot, sitting in the same room for the first time since Grindelwald's trial, a respect that I felt was the least thing I was owed. I saw former friends, erstwhile political allies and even old comrades-in-arms and yet not one friendly face, such was the way of life: to the victor the spoils, to the loser, for his toils – a wand up his bloody arse. Not to say that I was completely faultless in the matter, I'd burnt more bridges that most people could in several lifetimes. The irony that the torching of my last friendship had landed me in this mess was not lost on me.

The chairman stood and let his gaze wander around the room before finally resting on me and I saw profound... well to be honest, I saw absolutely nothing staring back at me – he had apparently severed our last conjoining cord. Fury would have once welled up inside me at the slight but after so long I couldn't even bring myself to care, the sanctimonious bastard would get what was coming to him soon enough, even if not by my hand.

"Harry James Potter, you stand before the fully assembled Wizengamot accused of murder..."

I tuned the old man's voice out as he continued on his diatribe. I don't know why he bothered; it wasn't as if the Wizengamot needed any convincing. I was the injured centaur amongst the herd of starving acromantulae – there was only ever going to be one outcome.

"... do you plead?" My attention slowly reverted back to the chairman. The silence stretched several moments before he snapped "Harry James Potter, how do you plead?" irritation apparent on his face. I would've snorted if I could as I sharply jerked my head upwards, allowing the shadow to fall off my face. The Wizengamot gasped as one as they saw the extent of my wound for the first time – any respect I had for them was forever lost, I truly despised the weak and if there was one thing I would miss it would be feeding off of them.

This at least, pulled some reaction out of the man but yet did nothing towards compensating for my terrible loss. My lips had been stitched shut with pure magic for long enough that natural flesh and sinew had grown along with it, replacing it and sealing my mouth forever more. Had that not been enough, I'd had my throat ripped open – a sick joke by one of my many enemies when I refused to submit under their torture. I'd forced them to laugh long and hard before I repaid the favour when I finally caught up with them. In retrospect it was this indignity that had eventually tipped my hand and led inexorably to my current predicament. The bastard hadn't been content to take my voice it seemed, no, apparently he'd wanted my soul too.

"...your head," apparently he'd pulled himself together sufficiently to continue with my farcical trial. This time it was not my silence but my stillness that got to him, it seemed that my emotional detachment was serving its purpose. As my immobility stretched from a few seconds to a few minutes, his eyebrows angled together and his face tightened with barely restrained anger – another indication of the man's increasing fallibility. I still remembered the time when he was impervious to that which occurred around him, the prolonged conflict had not treated him well, but then who had it? As his emotionless facade broke down, I saw his condemnation for me shining through his eyes and that, where everything else had failed, got to me.

How dare he condemn me? How dare he condemn me after everything I'd done for him, after everything he'd done to me? He who knew me better than any still alive. He who alone knew the reasons behind all my actions. And here he stood... condemning me! I had thought his dispassion towards me was bad but this... this was the ultimate betrayal.

I stared down at the defeated, wearied eyes of my mentor as he lay at my feet, his broken wand laying several arm lengths away. Now was the moment to gloat and torment the man who had been such an integral part of my corruption and yet, infuriatingly, it was because of him that I was unable to do so.

His blue eyes begged for his life even if he was too proud to ask for it; his long, white hair damp and sticking to his head with the sweat born of pure unadulterated fear.

The fight had been brief and one sided, exactly as I had planned. I was a very capable wizard, quite possible the best of my generation – some, myself chief amongst them, even called me a prodigy, but I would never fool myself into believing that I could beat the man who had taught me magic from its very basics in a fair fight. So I had done as I always had, as he had taught me: I twisted the circumstances until they were so heavily stacked in my favour that any bloody squib could have seen it through to the finish. I hadn't even broken a sweat.

I been burned enough to know that gloating never ended well, so I raised my wand to end him and after a brief internal struggle dropped it after its light flashed across the darkened room. It was the hardest thing I had ever had to do... he had been the only light in my life for as far as I could remember it but in my heart of hearts I knew that I had done what was right, what was truly right for the first time in my life.

I sneered at the emotion rushing through my body before clamping down on it. Mine was not a life that could afford much emotion. As I stood I heard a clap echo across the room.

"I always knew you had it in you, Harry," a voice called out. A voice I knew all too well. A voice I hated. The voice that belonged to the man who had set the chain of events that led to my mentor's death in motion. And yet, the voice of the man who had promised me salvation.

"You have done as I had asked what no one else could. For that, I apologise." With that his arm soared upwards and flung me off my feet with a bang. As I struggled to get up, I heard several pairs of onrushing feet and knew that I'd been royally fucked. But if Albus expected me to go down easy then he was out of his senile mind - the sickly green light of death lurched out of wand just as the first auror arrived on the scene. I wondered if he'd apologise to them too.

I would be a fool to say that I did not understand his actions; I would have done the same if I were in his shoes. Hell, I'd probably have tortured the old bastard on principle. I'd always known the man was willing to sacrifice anything to get his way and would probably have tried to find a way around our agreement. But to actually condemn me, to truly believe that he and I were so different, that was something that I believed even him incapable of.

The muttering in the room was starting to get louder and was fast approaching commotion levels. Apparently my silence was creating quite a stir. I finally allowed my eyes to meet Albus' again as he asked once again, "Harry James Potter, how do you plead? Answer now or forfeit your claim and accept your guilt."

The logical thing to do would be to fight for myself or at the very least to try and destroy as many as I could, like the day I'd been captured. Hell, I had enough dirt on half the people here to get them sentenced to life in Azkaban, Albus not least amongst them. But that was then and this was now. All the adrenaline of the battle had drained from my system and with my death, in all practical forms at least, imminent a cold calm had fallen over me and I had become almost philosophical.

The world had been feeding on me since the moment I was born, delighting in immersing me in battles that should never have been mine. It had done its utmost to leech me dry and had finally succeeded. I owed the world nothing and by now despised it enough to actively try and harm it. The conflict had mutilated the majority of the population until they were mere shadows of what they used to be, what they used to represent. Sure, I could bring them down and make them feel the pain I felt but by leaving them free I was allowing them to spread the pain to a far larger group. I had no doubt that they would eventually slip and fall on their own swords, such was the degree of their fall, but till then they would burn the world.

So I choose to do the stupid thing. To do the dignified thing and accept that no matter what I did, there was nothing I could do to save myself, and short of doing that I might as well cause as much suffering as I could. With a small mental exertion on my part, the flaming letters, "GUILTY" appeared above my head, startling the Wizengamot – apparently I would be allowed this last, small victory. Wandless magic was as rare these days as it had ever been, useful only for parlour tricks but useful in this case as it couldn't be blocked.

A victorious smile appeared on Albus's face as he said, "Then as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, I hereby sentence the harshest sentence available on you for your most heinous of crimes – the Dementor's Kiss." There was hardly a murmur at the proclamation, the outcome had been pre-decided after all.

As the dementor behind me swept around the chair and approached me, I felt a strange defiance building up inside. As its skeleton hands grasped the sides of face and drew me closer, I felt true fear for the first time. But I would not allow myself to die a common death so as it pulled it closer, once an exhibitionist always an exhibitionist, I stared black death in the face and spat pure fire right back at it.