Why did Dumbledore have the wills sealed? This may explain why.
Disclaimer: Don't own none of it.
Lord Voldemort strode down the narrow alleyway, his glamour charms hiding his newly acquired features. He was a happy dark Lord, his normally threatening demeanour being somewhat defused by the enormous grin adorning his new body's face. Oh yes, he was a happy man-thing, happy indeed.
Fifteen years, that's how long he'd spent as a wraith in Albania, mastering the art of possession like none before him. Though his spirit could live without a body, the pain and feeling of ultimate nakedness went a long way towards convincing him that possession was the wisest path for him to take while he waited for his followers to find him. Except that he didn't tell his followers about a few key details, such as the fact that they were needed for the resurrection ritual, what the ritual required and just why ANY seemingly useless trinket given to them by him, their Lord and Master for all eternity, should be guarded with all the thoroughness and paranoia that a mysterious, seemingly ordinary but old item truly deserves.
So he spent fourteen years wandering Europe as a wraith, six of which were spent travelling around and catching the great sites of Eastern Europe's Dark Magical history while waiting for his loyal followers to catch up with him. Then, he spent eight years in Albania, wondering just why he'd been abandoned. Even for someone as formidable as Lord Voldemort, thinking without a brain proved to be extremely difficult.
And then, just yesterday, one of his more convoluted and unlikely plots came to fruition. At the exact moment of the traditional start for the druidic Haeda festival (a Dark, and therefore forgotten, day of ritual 'sacrifices', orgy and revel for the more blood-thirsty tribes), the one he'd singled out as his nemesis was kidnapped by portkey and deposited in a graveyard. Sad day for the Diggory boy, but you cannot make an omelet without eviscerating a chicken or two. Indeed, Lord Voldemort would have liked having the boy as one of his slav-followers, but he was getting in the way at the time and so he had to go.
After Diggory died, Harry Potter was the only one left for the ritual. And how fitting was it that Harry Potter, Dumbledore's pet weapon, would be the one to bring back his greatest enemy? Very fitting, that's for sure. Still, he did get away instead of dying like he was supposed to, but Lord Voldemort did not become Lord Voldemort by being impatient. He would soon have his confrontation with the boy, one that would be decided on the strength of information. A confrontation Voldemort knew he would win.
After all, Albus didn't even tell the boy the prophecy! Voldemort had tried ransacking the boy's mind, only to get disturbing images of Mudbloods in periwinkle blue dresses and Blood Traitor whores being possessed by his diary. Severus would have to find a way around the boy's shields next year, since Lord Voldemort could not overcome the emotions the boy's Occlumentic walls generated.
The Dark Lord smiled to himself. If the boy didn't even know the prophecy, then it was highly unlikely that whatever training he got from Dumbledore would be enough to defeat him. Knowing that a Dark Lord is oddly fascinated with you is one thing. Finding out why he is obsessed with you and why you have to kill him is quite another. But Dumbledore never did suscribe to the idea that fear was the ultimate motivator, more's the pity. Voldemort hated going so long without a challenge, and his world was currently empty of them.
The Dark Lord breathed in, revelling in the feeling that being able to breathe, smell the air and taste the pollution brought to him. He'd waited fourteen years for the chance to have a functional pulmonary and cardiovascular system all of his own and he'd be damned if he let something as trivial as the stench of polluted London air brought to his extremely sensitive nose and tongue get to him. Even if he professed hating muggles, Lord Voldemort did grow up amongst them and even finagled himself through a degree in the late forties, using his understanding of magic to pursue studies in physics and chemistry at Cambridge. They'd taught him a lot about life, teachings he'd taken to heart when he started to take over the wizarding world back in the sixties. And one of those teachings was not to sweat the little things. Once he tore down the statute of secrecy, Pollution would be a thing of the past in the UK. So would things like freedom and human rights, but hey, what do they expect out of him? So until that day, he'd gladly to put up with the stench of rotten chemicals and dessicated toxins swimming around the City. So today he welcomed the disgusting smell, seeing as it confirmed that he was alive again, that he had a body again and that his victory would soon be complete.
The alley widened, the narrow cobblestone pavement giving way to a marble-tiled boulevard lined with posh-looking shops. Jewellery shops showcasing gaudy and far too expensive necklaces competed for attention with 'designer' clothing the muggles came up with when Albus was still a student, the Victorian-era ensemble labelled as being the height of fashion and costing about as much as you would need for a wardrobe full of designer wear from Harrod's. Voldemort shook his head.
It was no wonder that his followers, rich, intelligent, privileged enough to know better, should stoop so low as to believe themselves capable of killing all muggles on the planet if this is what stage they think muggles to be at. Still, they were his to command, which is exactly what he will do after winning the coming war. They should not even be targeting muggles anyway, not that he would be recruiting any more followers if he enforced that rule. He needed muggles to not figure out what was happening, which meant that he needed Mudbloods alive, safe, well and as far away from his empire as he could throw them. Merlin forbid, one of them would try using machine guns against his Death Eaters. There are lines even a Dark Lord won't cross, but that someone as oblivious as a teenager with access to modern weaponry would hop, skip and somersault across without even realising that there was a line in the first place.
Voldemort frowned mightily as he looked at a display of gold-plated hinkypunk homunculi ("make your new familiar a golden one!"), the salesman giving an odd look at what he believed to be another magical construct rights activist.
Yes, trying to explain to Mudbloods about war in the wizarding world, a highly ritualised tradition where each side waits for the other to make their move before they make their own, had not been fun as a prefect and history/DADA tutor. Especially when it came to the 'no wanton killing and/or acts of violence' rule, a rule that left most of the muggleborn rolling around on the floor, laughing their Mudblood faces off.
Of course he understood why they laughed. Did he not spend his summer months digging graves for the sundry victims of aerial raids, starvation and covert acts of murder? Did he not read the reports in the muggle newspapers about Dunkirk, the North African campaign and the absolute hell that was Eastern Europe during the clash between the Nazis and the Soviet Union? For a muggle-raised wizard or witch growing up in the thirties and forties to even comprehend War as being anything but total, final and with the defeated nation being enslaved , humiliated and murdered with great prejudice was asking a bit too much.
But he also knew that, in order to be recognised by the wizarding world as a Dark Lord of purest descent, and wasn't that ironic, that he would have to respect their traditions when it came to conflict and warfare, no matter how inclined he was to show them just what war was like as practised in the muggle world since the Romans.
And those traditions dictated that there be a dance between the factions, with the winner being determined by their influence over their target at the end of the battles, thereby avoiding the extreme murderous violence and insanity that would characterise a Muggle civil war. Still, there was not a day that'd gone by prior to his disembodiment that he prayed to whatever Dark entity his victims' screams sated that, no matter what else, no muggleborn fighters came back to the wizarding world after a stint in the muggle military, for there wouldn't be anything left to fight over after a week if that happened.
Yes, reigning in his followers' excesses in the muggle world was definitely on the cards this time. He did not need to go up against an elite squad of SAS just because one of his followers wanted to 'test himself' against a muggle army outfit and attracted MI-M's attention. That one time in the late sixties had almost resulted in the annihilation of every single one of his Death Eater followers, purely because some inbred prat had failed to realise that that muggle trinket he stole contained twenty pounds of plastic explosives. Whatever else MI-M was, subtle wasn't it and messing with the magical divisions of the United Kingdom was something MI-M frowned upon. You only ever got two warnings, the first one being a friendly warning and the second one being the unfriendly one that killed roughly 90 percent of Dark wizards & witches that didn't work for the division. He'd had his warning and, even if he was immortal, Lord Voldemort was definitely not stupid enough to think that they couldn't just find a way to imprison him and inflict truly astounding amounts of pain on him instead, so he endeavoured not to warrant a second warning until he was sure he could take them on.
One of the hinkypunks lifted a tiny gilded arm and waved at him, probably recognising a fellow construct. He looked up, glared at the salesman giving him the Eye and moved towards Gringott's. He had business to conduct. The salesman could be skinned alive, drawn and quartered at a later date.
"Next!"
The queue had been a long one, especially for one used to getting his way rather quickly. Lord Voldemort moved up to the counter, ignoring the gimlet eye seemingly dissecting him from behind a tower of files and a wall made up of stationery appliances. The goblin was clearly not a happy bunny, his demeanor indicating that he would rather be disembowelling than serving the line of surly witches and wizards in the endless waiting line reaching to the front door. Voldemort agreed with the sentiment, having not only waited in line for hours but also being forced to endure the inane prattling of the mindless crowd around him. Already, he'd heard three different 'theories' about what happened yesterday, what with the wizarding world's darling saviour winning the triwizard tournament at the expense of Hogwarts' champion, Cedric Diggory. All agreed on one thing, though; Harry Potter was responsible for Diggory's death. Well, Lord Voldemort thought happily, every cloud has a silver lining. And if I have anything to say about it, some green trim too. He smiled at the scowling creature who was getting more and more impatient with this upstart human wasting his time.
"Well?" the goblin growled impatiently "are you going to state your business or do I have to have you sodomised by a troll for wasting my time, wizard?" The invective at the end clearly indicated which would be the Goblin's first choice, but thankfully for Gringott's customers, their service charter indicated that Troll sodomy could only be called for after the customary five minute waiting period. Lord Voldemort looked down at the grumpy thing, wondering if they sold tickets to such a rare and exquisitely painful event.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle, here to collect a statement of accounts on my vaults." He said, extending a chain full of keys to the Goblin. The creature frowned as he opened the ledger and counted out the keys, scribbling something on the gigantic book in front of him. His eyebrows rose as he continued reading and checking something in other parts of the book, his earlier scowl slowly turning into a pleasant-looking smile.
"Ah yes, Mister Riddle" he said, the sugary sweet voice sounding foreign on a creature that normally sported more teeth than manners. "We at Gringott's would like to welcome you back and congratulate you on your, ah, recovery. Your vaults shall be reactivated shortly, but first there are a number of outstanding issues to adress." The Goblin's smile turned into a grin at the Dark Lord's scowl. "Nothing detrimental to you mind, just a couple of things that need to be adressed before we can continue with the business at hand. Griphook!"
Another surly-looking subhuman entered Lord Voldemort's visual range. "Yes, Master Slipknot?"
"Take this human to the inheritance department. He is to meet with Manager Flagbearer, who you are to call to meeting room 56B after you have shown Mister Riddle where said room is. Then, return to me. I still have work for you and cannot afford you wasting my time."
"Yes, Master Slipknot. Thank you, Master Slipknot. Follow me, wizard. I don't have all day."
Morgana help me, Lord Voldemort mused, I think I like these creatures.
It seemed that Morgana had, in fact, answered his plea in her typically sadistic and understated style. Lord Voldemort was cured of any positive feelings towards his fellow non-humans through the power of paperwork.
It was not incidental that every single raid he went on was preceded by the crushing burden of administrative duties. There was no better way, in Voldemort's opinion, to prepare for a raid than to catch up with whatever bureaucratic details that needed to be finalised. He swore that such activities were what supercharged his Unforgiveables, hence why he dispensed of them himself instead of Imperio'ing a batallion of accountants to handle it while he ran his Dark fiefdom.
Thinking about how much greener his Kadavras would be at the end of this and how much more painful his Crucios would be for his wayward followers, Voldemort daydreamed as he half-read through Inheritance Document 221B, appendix 74XF before appending his signature at the bottom of the page. He remembered catching the man who wrote this document in the early days of the first war, now regretting the fact that he hadn't made the Blood Traitor suffer a more deserved Death. Immolation is too good for someone capable of writing this abomination of a document.
Finally, after the last piece of paper filled with gibberish was read and dutifully signed, the entire stack of paperwork popping out of existence to presumably be filed away wherever it is that Goblins keep their records.
"Mister Riddle?" An elderly Goblin in a pinstripe suit appeared behind the desk he'd been working on, comfortably sitting in a high-backed Executive-style chair. "I am Flagbearer, your current accounts manager. You have been named as the sole beneficiary to a number of estates, hence the earlier need for you to complete the paperwork. Now, while almost all of the bequests have been transferred to your more, ah, public vaults as per the bequests, there is still one outstanding will that has to be read before it can be activated."
Voldemort, clearly fed up with the way in which he'd spent most of his first day with a new body, made a shooing motion towards the Goblin, bidding him to continue. The creature made a show of shuffling the papers in front of him before pushing a file towards the Dark Lord earning him a glare that had caused more than one target to die of a heart attack rather than the myriad curses Voldemort was about to shower upon them.
"Very well. " Shuffle, shuffle, get on with it. "Now, before we start, know that once the will is read you cannot back out of it. Since you already agreed with executing the estate and fulfilling the terms of the will fourteen years ago, that means that you cannot in any way refuse, change or challenge the will without losing your magic."
Voldemort sat up straighter, racking his brains for any instance in which he'd agreed to executing a will. True, he'd been witness to a number of Death Eater wills and was a beneficiary to a number of sympathisers' wills, but nobody he knew of would have named him the executor of their estate. He also knew that the Goblins, always looking out for a profit to be made and for friends in high places to be placed even higher, refused to countersign any will whose terms were harmful to any of their customers.
And since one Tom Marvolo Riddle was one of their most valued customers, whose wizarding account managers included the legendary Malfoy funds management agency as well as a large section of the Wizengamot, the Goblins would be extra vigilant to ensure that nobody could harm Lord Voldemort through any means involving Gringott's. "All right" he sighed, weary of just what surprises, even if they seemed benevolent, would be lurking in the unknown will but trusting the Goblins to do the right thing on pain of genocide. "go ahead."
"Very well." Flagbearer unrolled a thick wad of parchment and began reading. "We, James Charlus Potter and Lily Marie Evans, being sound of mind and body, do hereby decree that-" Lord Voldemort fell backwards off his chair.
"This... This is..." It was not everyday, the Goblin mused, that one witnessed a Dark Lord lost for words. "Genius." Voldemort was truly impressed. The Blood Traitor and the Mudblood Potters had pulled one over him. He finally understood why, fourteen years ago, he had been unable to kill that little twerp. Lily did indeed sacrifice herself for her son, yes. And she did leave him with blood protections that had already stopped Voldemort from killing the boy a second time. But the first time... When he killed the Potters, he had inadvertently triggered the will. In that will, he was named as Harry Potter's muggle and magical guardian for the duration of his adolescence and mentor into adulthood. Though that sounded like a spectacularly stupid idea by even his standards, in Harry Potter's case it was a stroke of genius even Merlin would have been hard pressed to come up with.
By naming Voldemort the boy's guardian and having Voldemort's murder of the Potters declared the trigger that stated that he accepted the arrangement, he had been trapped by the will the second Lily Potter's soul left her mortal coil. As a result, Voldemort could not, under any circumstances, whether directly or indirectly, by action or inaction, allow harm to knowingly befall the boy. And since Voldemort was, in fact, a Dark Lord as recognised by magic itself, the same extended to any current or prospective vassals of said Dark Lord, the vassal's families and the vassal's vassals. In other words, Lord Voldemort, his Death Eaters, their offspring or indeed anyone looking to join said Death Eaters were obligated, legally and magically, to make sure that one Harry Potter had a happy and fulfilling childhood. They could not touch him, his friends or his family without his consent.
"Why wasn't I informed of this?" He asked, shuddering at the consequences that last nights' little resurrection could still have on him and his followers. If he'd known, he would have done everything in his power to avoid touching the boy. Hell, he would have done everything in his power to start his bid for conquest anywhere but in Britain. Since he was such a popular boy in the wizarding world, he and his Death Eaters now run a very real risk of running afoul of the will whenever they decided to resume their activities. Even the Mudbloods (in fact, especially the Mudbloods) were a very, very risky target now as harming any of Potter's acquaintances would result in the loss of magic for the few Death Eaters he had left. If that had become general knowledge, then none of his Death Eaters would have done anything as stupid as, say, attack the Quidditch World Cup while Harry was in attendance. They would have lost their magic, followed shortly by their life, had they managed to harm the boy or any of his friends.
The Goblin smiled an evil smile. "Well, you can thank one Albus Dumbledore for that milord. He had the wills sealed on November the first 1981, preventing access to the Potter wills to anyone but the Chief Warlock himself. The only reason you have been able to hear the will was because you are the principal executor, whose assent to having the will read supersedes Wizengamot rulings regarding Family and Inheritance Guidelines. Goblin Law, you know. The Gold must flow regardless."
"I see." He nodded to himself. "So, given that I am the guardian and long-term mentor for the boy, when do I take custody of him?"
"Why, you are his legal guardian. As soon as he leaves Hogwarts, you are the one held responsible for his well-being and continued survival, so you will have to choose wisely. If he comes to harm whilst residing wherever you say he should... you wouldn't like the consequences. Also, as his long-term mentor, not only are you prohibited from allowing the boy to knowingly come to harm as an adult, but you are also in charge of his education outside of Hogwarts. This is a stated condition in the will."
Voldemort grinned. "So he has to learn what I teach him, then?" Oh yes, this has possibilities...
"Indeed, Wizard. We suggest that you dispense these duties to your full ability, as you will be released from your mentoring role once you have taught him all you know."
The Dark Lord nodded and stood up. "I thank thee, master Flagbearer, for your time and diligence on this matter. I am afraid that I must now take my leave, as I still have business to attend to. May your enemies scream your name in agony and ill-wishers die in vain."
"May your endeavours yield much profit and many victims, Lord Voldemort."
A/N: So there you have it! Moderately sane and polite Voldemort, I know, but hey, I always thought that he needed more brains in canon anyway. What do you think?