The World Won't Conquer Itself
Author: McJunker
Fandom: Harry Potter
Claim: Voldemort
I take stock of the situation. 400 Death Eaters on my side; 40 or 50 of the defenders on his. Potter wants to meet. Maybe he wants to take me one on one. I have no real reason to, as the odds are firmly on my side. But I can save some of my followers' lives by zapping the little punk personally. Then again, the vast majority of my servants were mouth breathing idiots. Maybe I ought to thin them out a little anyways.
I go out to talk anyways. Why not? He had proved a slippery victim in the past. With one heart to heart conversation, I might instill a little uncertainty and fear in his little heart. I am a believer in stacking the deck in my favor.
The boy is overwhelmingly confident as he strode out to meet me on the Quidditch pitch. Probably because he has a friend with a sniper rifle hidden 400 meters away, in a hunting blind at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
I know this because he knows this, and he doesn't know that I know. This is why you master Occulmancy before fighting the greatest Legilimens who ever lived. Most fights go like this, actually. I read what they're planning and beat them, and they mostly die without ever finding out what went wrong. It's like playing chess with a vastly dumber version of yourself.
"Ah, Moldymort," he says expansively, grinning with the confidence of the class clown. His black hair hung casually about his shoulders. His scar throbbed a little, spiritually speaking.
I feel my eyebrows tighten in anger. It wasn't that he was insulting me. It was that he was insulting me so childlishly. I have been mocked by a higher class of wizard than he could ever be.
"Potter," I spit. "I can only assume you've decided to stop using your friends as shields and finally face me."
"Yes, in a way." he says airily. "You're a fool, Tommy boy. You don't know who you're messing with." His eyes flicker towards the Forest and back to me.
I feel a tension behind my eyes as a headache comes on. Even if I hadn't already known he had a Muggle firearm backing him up, I'd still know he was planning something underhanded, just based off of his face and comments. This is why people who weren't placed in Slytherin shouldn't plot.
"I am...messing... with an idiot child with delusions of grandeur," I say silkily. "You're just like your father. Courage before reason, now isn't that right?"
He glares. Watching a skinny, self-righteous teenager getting huffy is one of the funniest sights in the world.
"Your reign ends tonight, Voldy," he declared coldly. "Right here." Potter waves his hand behind him, indicating the castle of Hogwarts. "We've beaten you, and you don't even know it."
I spread my arms wide and high, mockingly. "Then strike me down, if you can, Potter!" I cackle. "Show me who it is that I'm messing with!" If this doesn't count as the cue line to shoot me, I don't know what would. There are times that it pays to play the mad sorcerer card.
Potter smirks. He's even cockier than his dad. He raises his hand in the hair, fist clenched. The signal.
I cast a small Charm just before the sniper takes his shot. The bullet passes two inches from my left ear, and I don't even flinch. Seconds later, a second one flies two inches off of my right.
I smile nastily as Potter turns paler than I am.
"I say! Whatever can that noise be?" I ask. "Sounds like a gun."
A third bullet churns up a patch of ground two inches from my heel.
"Isn't it amazing? How someone who grew up in a Muggle orphanage through the Second World War would know about guns?"
Potter goes even paler somehow. A fourth bullet whizzes over my head.
I half turn, locate the sniper's position through Potter's memory, take careful aim, and say, "Avada Kedavra."
No more bullets are fired. Potter starts backing up, shakily I might add. I cast a minor Charm that puts an invisible wall against his back and he almost loses his footing when he runs into it.
"Who was that?" I ask. "The Mudblood girl, Granger?" A reasonable guess- a Muggleborn know it all would logically be the one to suggest using a rifle. And yet, incorrect, based off of Potter's memory. "No, I see not. Ah, of course. I should have known it without slipping into your mind... the Weasley child. Like father, like son, apparently. There is a reason why wizards don't fight with Muggle weapons, Potter. Do you have any other brilliant plans to uncork on me before we meet the inevitable?"
Potter calms himself. He straightens his spine, raises his wand, and adopts a dueling stance.
"Oh," I say. "So, no then."
"You murdered my parents," Potter snarls. "You murdered Sirius, and Ron, and Remus and Tonks. Hogwarts is littered with the bodies of your victims. If you want me to roll over and let you take over, you got another thing coming."
"Expeliarmus," I say. He tries for the counterspell but I disrupt it. In my day they taught the finer points of dueling at Hogwarts. I can only assume that ever since I laid my curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts job position 50 years ago, the standards of learning self-defense have slipped dramatically. Amazing how one fit of pique done on the spur of the moment could benefit me through the years.
Potter's wand sails gracefully into my left hand.
"Listen to me, boy. I am about to make you an offer you would do well to consider, and so help me if you even think about interrupting me I'll jinx your eyes out."
I sigh on the inside. Gryffindors. So quick to take the courageous last stand, without thinking it through first.
"You and I have had a legitimate conflict of interest. I admit it. I have caused the death your parents, your godfather, your friends. I'm not entirely clear why this compels you to try to die next, but I suppose it takes all sorts. But I hope you can look past that and see reality as it truly is.
"I rule. For now and ever. The Ministry is mine. The towns are mine. The people are mine. I own Magical Britain, whether you stand against me or not. So why not lower your goals and carve a niche for yourself in my new empire? I do not wish to slay all of your surviving friends if I do not have to. Throw your lot in with me. I'll need wizards of your caliber when I go back to the mainland and expand my kingdom."
A blatant lie. Potter's power is, at a word, laughable. But he commands the loyalty of the fighters behind him. There's some decent warriors with pure blood in their veins in their ranks. Can't have an army without manpower, and this battle has bled my Death Eaters badly. Leaving Potter alive is worth it if I can enlist them.
"Never," Potter breathes. His face twists into an expression of bitter hatred. "I would rather-"
"Avada Kedavra," I interrupt.
Potter slumps flat on his face. I walk over and zap him with with a quick Cruciatus curse. No response. I nod thoughtfully.
"I think he's really dead this time," I say aloud to myself. I walk over to his corpse and kick it. No response. Ignoring the screams and cries from the defenders, I kneel down and put my ear up against his lips.
No breathing. I listen for a very long time with ears that are sharper than any human's. Nothing. Potter's not faking. He had finally ran out of freak accidents tosave his skin. I was torn between contempt and genuine respect. Contempt because Potter was an arrogant, foolish, impulsive, immature little moron whose specialty was allowing bystanders to die in his stead. Respect because he had survived 17 years after I made the decision to kill him. Only Dumbledore himself had lasted longer.
I shake myself from my musings. I have my work cut out for me. I still need to try and recruit the defenders; remake Hogwarts in my image; root out all sedition still remaining within my new order; shift Magical Britain to a war time economy while tearing the goblins' grubby little paws off of our coin; and organize a credible invasion force to invade neighboring magical countries.
The world won't conquer itself, you know.
