DISCLAIMER: The ideas are mine, the characters are not.
"Evil is a point of view."
Anne Rice
House of Cards
Some things never change.
Firewhiskey for instance, is roughly the same no matter where you drink it. Or when. It had been over a decade since I'd felt that wave of bitterness ripping apart my throat, on its way down, and yet it tasted exactly as I remembered it. Drops of alcohol like pins and needles, injuring the first layer of mucus membrane on my esophagus. Well – Not exactly mine.
No, it was not my throat. Nor were the long pale fingers coming out of the sleeve of that style-less cloak, the only portion of flesh visible in the darkness of the Hog's Head pub. I was just borrowing this body. A weak body. I couldn't occupy this one for longer than a few hours at a time. But I would not have wanted it any other way. I could feel it's owner's thoughts inside me. His doubts, his fears, his stuttering thoughts. It disgusted me. But part of achieving greatness meant concealing some of your inner emotions. And that young servant - too young, indeed to have been with me on the first war – remained ignorant of how low did I really think of him.
I drank some more of my whisky. Very few wizards could use occlumency to block out a mind that they themselves are occupying. For me this was a simple task. Yet, here I was, in this filthy pub, hiding in shadows, not dead nor alive. I was less than a spirit, less than the lowliest of ghosts. Transformed into some unnameable creature. Reduced to have a form only when I was sharing the bodies of those who were willing to have me in their hearts and minds. Or those too weak to keep me away. What an insignificant body I had on today! I was glad, very glad, for every sign that our arrangement was temporary. I was glad that when I spoke, a voice different from Quirrell's came out. A hoarse, deep, and, above all, steady voice.
"Another one."
I had ordered another whisky from the barkeep. I had never enjoyed alcohol. In the old days, I saw no pleasure in consuming a substance capable of clouding my judgement and blurring my skills. Effectively destroying a body I intended to keep for a very long time. Indefinite time. But this body was not mine, and I could use a shot or two.
The bar-keep smelled bad. He walked slowly away from the table. I remembered him. He was the bar-keep from almost four decades ago. He had been here when I had gathered with my followers, said goodbye and walked to Hogwarts to ask Dumbledore for a job, only to be refused without any further consideration. Albus Dumbledore. Champion of commoners, of mudbloods and muggles.
Liar.
He had information about my death eaters at the time, and when I pointed out how omniscient he was, he claimed to just be "friends with local barmen." Old liar. I doubted Dumbledore had ever talked to this stinky barkeep, let alone recruited him as his informer. This place disgusted me. The so-called 'owner' wouldn't even pick up his wand to clean his glasses. That grumpy-looking old man would rather wipe them out with a filthy rag. Perhaps he was a squib. Despicable crowd. When I rise to power, squids will be thrown out of cliffs, like the ancient wizards of the Mediterranean did. No, Dumbledore would never associate with such a man. But then again, I didn't really expect my old professor to tell me who his informers were.
I knew one of them, of course, I knew him very well. I knew him since he was seventeen years old and came to me pledging his loyalty, placing his life and his talents at my disposal. Oh, how talented he was. Talented enough for me to give him an assignment I would not give anybody else. Talented enough for me to turn him into a spy, infiltrated inthe enemy's lines. In a position where he could now pose an obstacle to my comeback, and in fact he was doing that rather diligently. Could you not see, Severus, that I trusted you?
I will return with vengeance. They will be sorry. All of them. All of those who had called themselves loyal, and then turned their backs on me. All of those who had renounced me in the name of their comfortable lives. Lord Voldemort knows all...
The old-fashioned bell over the door rang once more as somebody else opened it and awakened me from my musings. Rubeus Hagrid had just walked in lowering, not his head but his whole body, in order to be able to pass through the door.
I could have smiled. How could Dumbledore have been such a fool to trust this illiterate giant with the one thing between me and my old-self again? He felt guilty, I knew that. Guilty of destroying Rubeus' life fifty years ago, but still, the philosopher's stone seemed too much to pay for a heavy conscience. Dumbledore had always been a sentimental fool.
He signed the order to expel Rubeus as a witness even though he knew Hagrid was innocent. He knew that clumsy, unskilled fool who struggled to achieve acceptable grades and ran into the forbidden forest to engage in fist fights with the trolls couldn't possibly have opened the Chamber of Secrets! It had taken me five years only to find the door! How could he? And Dumbledore was the only one to pinpoint that fact. But he did nothing. He signed the expelling order and watched as they broke his wand.
Of course the Ministry officials broke his wand. They were glad. Wizards hate giants, and they have no trouble admitting to that ever since those creatures were banished to the far mountains of the north. It's understandable. Incredible that such tall beings could be the lowest creatures ever to walk this earth. The giants consider themselves clever because their language is so simple. They never realized that those grunts are so simple that they are not enough to say what is on one's mind. For centuries the giants never had the words that were essential to express what they wanted to say, that was until they adapted their thinking process to their language, not their language to their thoughts like any reasonable species would do. They became the stupidest group of beasts ever to protagonize a world-changing war. Stupidest and drunkest, for no other people – except perhaps the dwarfs – share their fondness for beer.
Rubeus had already finished his second mug of mulled mead when I called him over and bought him another jug. I showed him the cards heaped over the table top, and said it might be interesting. He shrugged. Anything for a man who's willing to pay you another jug. Right, giant? Pathetic.
"What do you do?" I asked, shuffling the cards, as if I didn't know already.
"I am the keeper of keys an' grounds at Hogwarts, aren' I?"
That was right, I remembered. Back when I was at Hogwarts, the gamekeeper was Ogg, a crippled hunchbacked man, whose steps could be heard a mile away on account of his cane. When Rubeus was expelled, he was sent to live with Ogg, to "learn his art". It's was Dumbledore's arrangement, I believe. He never would have gone through such lengths for me. He never liked me.
Year after year, I applied to spend the summer break in Hogwarts. And year after year, I was denied my request. I would have stayed, even if it meant living with crippled Ogg. I would do anything not to get back to that dingy orphanage I'd been burred in from birth. Rubeus should have been sent to a place like that as well. That or the giant colony his mother belonged to. I would have had a laugh either way. He belonged nowhere. To big for one place, to small for the other, an outcast amongst the outcasts.
I asked the waiter to bring another jug.
"You must care for all sorts of creatures..."
"All sorts!" He poured the third jug down his throat all at once. "All the creatures tha' are livin' in the forest, yeh know? Som' real nasty like trolls an' graphorns, but also trestals an' unicorns an'-"
"Unicorns, you say?" I asked, folding that table in spite of the two aces in my hand and picking up the cards to shuffle again. I had not given much thought to Unicorns prior to that but it had just occurred to me- It was ancient magic, embedded in their blood- "I hear they don't like wizards nearby."
"Nah, they don' have no problem with meself. All creatures in the for'st know me."
"You know, I have something you may enjoy."
"Wha'?" He inquired.
I placed the egg over the table. It was a large black egg, not as large as it would come to be, but still big enough to draw Rubeus' interest.
"Is tha' a-?" he seemed curious.
"It is." I confirmed his unspoken suspicions "It's a Norwegian Ridgeback. Extremely rare."
The half-giant picked up the egg in his gauntlets.
"Yeh musta read me mind." He seemed hypnotized. "I always wanted summat lik' this. A dragon egg."
I could have read his mind of course, but I didn't have to. I knew Rubeus. I was the only person who would talk to him when he first came to Hogwarts nearly fifty years ago. He told me everything in that irritating western accent.
I was two years ahead of him, and on the day of his sorting ceremony I knew he had to be part giant, unlike some of my less enlightened classmates who assumed he had gotten on the way of an engorgement charm or something like that. But his questionable heritage meant nothing. His ability to get his hands in valuable and dangerous creatures, not to mention his ability to control them, meant a great deal. It was the reason I approached him in the first place.
Instinctively perhaps, all the other students avoided him, so in spite of his wild looks, he was a big crying baby. I was rather annoyed when he found me on the corridors: "Oh, Tom, nobody wanted to partner up with me in potions today, Tom, what did I ever do to them? Oh, Tom! I'm so glad I have you to talk to!", "I've heard Ogg talking to Pringle, saying that there may be a dragon in the woods. A dragon, Tom! It would be awesome to have a dragon egg, I could raise it under my bed for I while, I've heard they like it dark,... there's nothing I want more than a dragon Tom." , "… she says she's going to fail me if I can't nail that charm,..." "Transfiguration is so difficult, I thought I might ask for your help, you're so good in everything, Tom."
Pathetic. Boring. But I was rewarded when he came to tell me there was an Acromantula in the castle. And again when I took him to the headmaster, guilty of opening the chamber of secrets.
"Will yeh wager it?" He asked, covetous, interrupting my train of thought once more. I merely dealt the cards. "Against-?"
"Against that beautiful jacket of yours, perhaps." I suggested, pointing at that hideous piece of clothing. He was quick to agree.
"Of course," I said, using unspoken magic to control the cards as I placed them, faced down over the table. "I can't just let you have it. I have to know you can care for it."
"Oh, I can!" He said, eagerly, finishing what must have been his eighth or ninth jug of mead. "Lemme tell yeh, I've cared for bigger creatures. After Fluffy, anythin' would be a piece o' cake."
"Fluffy?" At last. The giant laughed.
"Tha's how I called him! He is a cerberus, a three-headed dog. Big dog, yeh see, big as a dragon!" He said, describing the creature Quirinus had described me. "Tha-tha-that's it m-m-m-my mast-te-te-master."his stuttering thoughts echoed inside the mind we shared.
"It must be extremely hard to control such a creature." I said, turning the fourth card of the table, a ten of hearts. There was also a jack of hearts on the table, and I knew Rubeus had an Ace and a King. If he told me what I wanted to know, the next card I would turn over would be a queen.
"Nah, the secret with any animal is to know how to calm hi' down. Fluffy, for instance,-" He said, lowering his voice and getting closer, "play hi' a bit o' music and he'll sleep like a baby."
I turned the queen of hearts up. He didn't even wait another second to throw his royal straight flush on the table. Picking up the egg.
"Beats me," I said, leaving my cards on the table. I had gotten exactly what I needed.
"Ah, I might betta stop, for now." He said, sounding invariably drunk and sneaking the egg into the pocket of his jacket. "I rather like this coat, yeh know?"
"It's fortunate that you did not lose it, then." I said. "Obviously, this has to be dealt with discretion."I added, making myself sound more like a dragon dealer than I ever had that night.
"O' course." The giant answered, standing up and knocking his mug down. "I won' tell nobody, yeh can trust meself."
I nodded, and watched him walking away. If Dumbledore was still as omniscient as he used to be, and I was sure of that, he would know of that egg before Rubeus could reach the gates of the school.
Quirinus is running a slight fever. I have shared his mind for too long. For now.
A/N: This piece has been Beta-Read by the potter family. Any mistakes left are my responsibility.
The game they play is poker, by the way. I'm a great fan. And the cards Voldemort delt grant Rubeus a royal straight flush, the best possible game. Wizards, even wizards like Voldemort, have things in common with muggles like: all of them use books, write letters, drink alcohol... I thought poker might be another of these things they share. I don't think it necessarily makes him OOC.
This story is my first take on Voldemort's POV. The second one just came out, a much shorter one-shot featuring The Dark Lord and Rodolphus. This is also my first story featuring Hagrid, (and writing his accent). I can only hope both of them are on character. I think Voldemort is. I got inside his mind with relative ease, which is kind of disturbing when you stop to think about it...
The beauty about this piece is that there are bits of information from each of the first six books. The scene is PS, the fact that Voldemort calls Hagrid by his first name is CS (I think this is the reason Hagrid doesn't say people can call him Rubeus in the books), Hagrid's drink (mulled mead) is from PA, The names of Ogg and Pringle come from GF, the descriptions of Alberforth are from OotP, and the memories of Voldemort's encounter with Dumbledore are HBP. That's just to name a few... All in all, it was an interesting piece to write.
LLAP