The women clicked her teeth impatiently as the snake-faced man slid into the cushioned guest chair. "Are you ready to begin, sir?"
He frowned, quite a feat with no eyebrows. "I don't understand; where is Potter? I understood that he would be at this meeting."
"Change of plan; I'm here instead," Hermione told him. "Harry's still pretty depressed about Sirius; we were worried he'd try to kamikaze with a bomb. Lucky for you we decided he wasn't coming because we found nitroglycerin in his room yesterday. Goodness knows how he got it…"
Voldemort's lip curled but he said nothing. "Can we begin now? This ceasefire only lasts until midnight."
Hermione rolled her eyes and stood, directing his attention to the whiteboard behind her. "As you can see, I've divided the board up into different sections. First we'll be discussing your ideological motivations, then your goals in a hypothetical situation of government. Agreed?" The dark lord nodded tersely.
"May I say, Miss Granger, you've certainly got an air about you that I'm surprised to see in a fifteen-year-old. My spies tell me that you organised this whole thing yourself?"
He's baiting you, she told herself steadily. He just wants you to ask about the spies, put him in the position of power. "Yes, well," the brown-haired witch's lips twisted into a grim smile. "After Sirius died all that I could ask myself was 'why?' until it occurred to me that you would be the better person to ask."
He regarded her through cloudy red eyes, silently re-evaluating. Hermione refused to play his game, instead swiftly shuffling the papers in front of her. "So here it is: why do you want to rule Britain?"
"Power," he replied immediately and automatically.
"Alright," she said cautiously. "What will you do with it?"
He blinked his reptilian eyes, dumbfounded. "What do you mean?"
"Well, what do you intend to actually do with this power once you've got it? What difference will there be for Britain, what difference will there be for you?" Hermione asked exasperatedly.
The dark lord tapped a finger to his chin as he thought about the question. "You know, I never really considered anything past the attainment of power itself."
"No laws about killing muggleborns?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Voldemort scoffed. "That's purely to gain the support of the old families. Besides which, the wizarding population isn't sustainable without muggleborns; I conducted several studies in the sixties to no avail."
"Shocking, isn't it," noted Hermione, smiling wryly. "Nobody actually looks at the research. I found these really interesting reports on magical population sustainability which said that, because only one parent needs to be magical for the child to be magical, if breeding laws were put into place then every person in Britain would be magical within a century. Then we wouldn't need a statute of secrecy!"
He looked at her, bemused. "I'm aware of the hypothesis, my dear. I wrote those reports."
Hermione smirked at him. "Of course you did. What kind of a pseudonym is T.R. Middle for T.M. Riddle? I was just wondering why, if you wrote those muggle-friendly reports back then, you seem so anti-muggle now."
"At first, it was just for the financial and political support from the old pureblooded families," he sighed, resting his head against the back of his seat. "Then, it seemed to grow and that was all I was known for: the bigot, not the revolutionary thinker I used to be."
"So you really don't want to kill all muggles and muggleborns?" She asked, feeling the need to clarify.
"No, you silly girl. That would make no sense at all, as I'm a halfblood myself."
Hermione gritted her teeth slightly as she stared down at the paperwork in front of her. "But you killed your father, as well as his parents. You murdered the muggle side of your family."
Voldemort chuckled, a chilling sound that sent shivers down her spine. "Of course I did. He abandoned my mother the minute he knew she was pregnant, leaving me to grow up in an orphanage when my mother died giving birth. He deserved to die."
It was that moment that Hermione realised that, however friendly he had been, the man drinking tea before her was still the most famous killer in the wizarding world. "And your grandparents?" She asked frigidly.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "You mean the people that knew of my existence but chose to ignore it, leaving me in that hellhole? I wouldn't have gone out of my way to destroy them but they were at home and tried to stop me…" Voldemort trailed off. "It just seemed practical."
"Okay," said Hermione, more as a way to cement her anger. "But despite doing that, you never held any ill will towards muggleborns in general?"
"Oh, no," he chuckled. "Of course I hated them at school; less of them with the muggle war on, naturally, but there was this particular girl, Myrtle… She was always complaining about magic, always complaining about how drafty the castle was, always moaning about how terrible the school was. Stupid girl, she never seemed to understand that to be it was like heaven after the Inferno, a wonderful break of magic and knowledge after the dull and stupid orphanage. Once I asked her why she was at Hogwarts at all when she hated it so much; she slapped me and said that I was infringing on her rights."
"What did you do to her?" Hermione asked cautiously.
Voldemort smiled fondly at the memory. "I discovered the basilisk in the girls' bathroom, told it to kill her. It was fantastic, blissful silence for all of a month… And then the stupid girl came back as a ghost. Dumbledore wouldn't let me exorcise her, the bastard. Said it was 'for the greater good.'" He snarled and slammed his teacup back into its saucer. "Smug bastard never let me do anything interesting, always said that things were best the way they were."
"But… weren't they?"
"No," he snorted. "There was a war on, a terrible war that killed and mutilated masses of people that could have been saved with magic. By my fifth year I was preparing myself to assassinate Hitler but the bloody professor took away my wand and library privileges until the end of the year to make sure I didn't."
She had to blink at that. "You were going to assassinate Hitler… and Dumbledore stopped you?"
Voldemort nodded, adding softly, "Dumbledore has never been interested in anything that wasn't good for Dumbledore."
"How was the war good for Dumbledore?" Hermione frowned.
"The bombing killed so many of the Wizengamot by mistake that he was able to gain control of it, becoming Head Wizard. After that, he used the confusion to push through laws that allowed the Aurors to obliviate any muggles that saw magic; before that, obliviation was an unforgivable spell. Now it's used practically every day and it's directly influencing the intellect of the muggle population; did you read Erasing the future of the muggle brain: a study on the effects of obliviation? I wrote it quite a while back, maybe they removed it from the school library. Anyway, other countries started doing it too and now with the internet, muggles can find stuff out much faster than before; more muggles are being obliviated today than ever before."
"Really? Dumbledore did that?" She bit her lip in thought. "It is true about the Wizengamot being decimated and him gaining power around the second world war… Have you got a copy of that report? I'd very much like to read it."
Voldemort nodded pleasantly and raised his wand. Hermione reacted swiftly in response, but he instantly created a shield and the disarming spell bounced harmlessly off. "Calm down, Miss Granger, I'm simply making a patronus to send to Bella. She can fetch the report for you."
"Oh. Sorry," Hermione said, watching in fascination as the dark lord created a pearly snake. "I thought you couldn't make a corporeal patronus, what with you corrupting your soul killing people and all."
He finished instructing it and sent it off, turning back to face the young witch behind the desk. "You really think that killing people would stop me from doing that? How would Aurors cast it then?"
"Oh. I hadn't thought of that."
"Indeed."
There was a slightly awkward silence as Hermione felt silly and Voldemort reached for a biscuit.
"I'm fairly certain that you have laced my drink with a potion, Miss Granger."
"What? Of course I didn't!"
"You are a very bad liar, Miss Granger," Voldemort observed mildly. "It would not be harmful or you would have been stripped of your magic, so I'm rather inclined to think that it was a mix of truth serum, calming potion and a draught to invite warm conversation. I'm not usually this chatty."
Hermione giggled, she couldn't help it. "I wouldn't think so, either. Or do you practice the art of conversation with your followers as you crucio them?" she teased lightly.
"Now I can't imagine where you got that idea," Voldemort told her sternly. "What on earth makes you think that I crucio my followers?"
She stopped giggling, startled. "But Harry says that he gets visions of you torturing them for bringing bad information."
"Oh, no, not at all. What kind of a leader would I be if I tortured my followers for bad news? How would I ensure that they stay loyal? How would I ensure that I receive necessary information if they're afraid to bring it? And most importantly, how do I project an image of a strong leader if I'm forever flying off the handle and rashly torturing people?"
"Oh."
"Yes, oh," he continued, clearly exasperated with the girl. "Do you not think beyond what you are told, Miss Granger? I mean, we do torture Severus, but he's a damned traitor and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy punishing traitors."
"Professor Snape is on our side?" Hermione asked, bewildered.
Voldemort snorted. "Professor Snape is on Professor Snape's side. That's why he and Dumbledore get on so well; they are in it for themselves."
"But so are you," Hermione pointed out.
"Yes, but I'm honest about it, aren't it?"
Hermione started giggling again.
"Oh, come now, how are we supposed to have a proper conversation if you're always giggling? Actually, what was that you were saying about Potter having visions?"
Her giggles subsided slightly, then returned in full force. "Sorry, I just can't get over the 'honesty' comment."
Voldemort seemed lost in thought. "Visions of me torturing my followers… Hmmm… Oh, he must be tapping into my daydreams. I always picture crucio-ing Lucius when he's being particularly snotty, just to ruin that perfect hair of his."
Hermione finally managed to control herself. "But what about all those muggleborns you rape?"
"Me?" he asked, clearly offended.
Hermione vaguely waved her hand at him. "Not you, you. You, deatheaters. What about those?"
"Oh. You mean the muggle prostitutes we hire when we have a party?"
She frowned. "But Professor Snape said that you kidnap young girls…"
"Yes, and they just happen to come with stripper clothes and poles, which we obviously force them to set up and wear, as well as muggle pop music, which we force them to dance to as we shove money in their clothes," he replied sarcastically.
Hermione blushed heavily at that. "Well, if you put it like that…"
"Apart from those nights, we have the occasional boys' night out and we usually have it at the Pink Pussycat Club. The closest Death Eaters get to rape is forcing Lucius to go up on stage on Ladies' night."
She started giggling again.
"Oh, honestly, must you keep doing that?"
She just laughed harder.
"Whatever," he said in resignation, reaching for a ginger biscuit.
After a few moments of Hermione gasping for breath amid chuckles of "Lucius… stripping… pink pussycat… oh my god… tell Draco… look on his face…" the girl got her composure back.
"If you're quite ready to proceed, Miss Granger? We have matters of policy to discuss," Voldemort told her in exaggeratedly patient tones.
She took a few deep breaths and then dissolved into giggles again.
"Bloody hell," muttered Voldemort. "This again?"