Notes: This chapter makes reference to a number of details from Pottermore. I don't personally consider Pottermore canon—only the seven books (minus "19 years later" :P)—but I'll freely use things from it that I like. I am also making the Cold War into a matter that affects wizards.

Pet Me Feed Me: Funny you should request that. I had planned for their second child to be quiet, bookish, studious, and a bit unsure of how to relate to his father and sister.


Chapter Seven: Failure at the Highest Level


1957.

"Is everything in order, Minister?" Tom Riddle, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, asked Wilhelmina Tuft.

The aging Minister smiled. "I think so. The international Portkeys have arrived, and Chancellor Dietzsch has confirmed the time and place of arrival for us. Your own preparations are in order, as well?"

"They are."

"Well, good," she said. "I can think of no one I would rather have as Acting Minister while I am away—other than my own son, of course, but I'm sure you understand." She glanced at Tom with some embarrassment.

Minister Tuft and her son, Ignatius, the Head of International Magical Cooperation, were going to Germany—West Germany, Tom amended in thought—to discuss political negotiations for the ongoing project to secure magical refugees from behind the Iron Curtain. The wizarding leaders there were unofficial and underground, not even informing the Muggle Premiers of their existence due to the proclaimed hostility of Communism toward anything "supernatural"—and the fear that, despite that, Communist states might secretly make use of magical persons for their own ends. For that reason there was a magical Iron Curtain too, a multinational ward to prevent Apparition across the borders. The allied Western governments assisted those who wanted out but did not have a magical means of transportation. Those who did not want to leave were questioned at great length under Veritaserum, and then subjected to Legilimency, to discern their loyalties—Tom's idea. Ignatius Tuft had seen that suggestion as an encroachment on his job responsibilities and an imposition on his familial relationship, but the Minister had adopted it.

While abroad, the Tufts were also going to pay a visit to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald was imprisoned. Tom smirked to himself at that thought, but he quickly transformed the expression into a smile before the Minister could notice. "Thank you, Minister. How is he, incidentally?"

"He is much more himself," Tuft said. "Much more alert. I think the symptoms must have been exhaustion."

"I'm glad to hear that he is better, and I hope both of you enjoy your trip."

Tom's everyday diction in public was usually perfectly civil and pleasant, but with this statement there was a faint hint of malice that he did not hide. He winced at once at the slip.

Minister Tuft caught it. She turned around with a deeply apologetic look on her face. "I'm sorry, Tom," she said. "I realize—seeing Grindelwald, especially—and the statements of that vicious Prophet muckraker Cuffe about 'snubbing' you—"

"It's really quite all right, Minister," Tom said at once.

"The press would have wondered if I had taken the Head of Law Enforcement instead of International Magical Cooperation on this trip," she said apologetically. "And Ignatius himself… well, he understands that a good idea is a good idea, but I think he wishes he'd come up with that one, since your domestic policies have been so popular and successful."

Tom smiled. "I understand, and I really have no hard feelings. Someone needs to hold down the fort here, too, after all."

The Minister smiled back and took her leave, departing Tom's office. Once she was gone, he cracked his knuckles and smirked in satisfaction.

Soon. Very soon.


Although he had only been in office for four years, Tom had accomplished a lot, and his domestic policies had been quite popular. His predecessor, Bob Ogden, had retired from the Ministry on a high note, pushing through a plan allowing non-magical families of magical children to be informed of the child's abilities shortly after birth, rather than at age eleven. Hermione had suggested it in her Daily Prophet interview after the "defeat" of Grindelwald. She had been a bit miffed when Tom was given credit for the idea in later Prophet articles, so he'd had to set the official record straight, but the Ministry wonks and journalists had merely responded with knowing smiles and winks when he did. Hermione had not been impressed with that patronizing either, though she hadn't blamed him for it.

It seemed to be working well, at least. The Ministry had a large office of personnel who were well-versed in Muggle relations and in child development, and they had been assisting the families.

Once officially Head, Tom had managed to cut off a growing source of discontent at its knees while solving a long-standing problem at the same time. The ideologues in the two traditional political factions did not like his strategy, but the general, pragmatic population supported it, and that was more than enough.

Tom had expanded the rights of documented Squibs in Britain. There were not that many of them, but they had been getting organized to protest their legal status. Tom had pushed through laws creating an official record of Squibs and prohibiting the Ministry from modifying their memories or confiscating their magical property without the same due process given to witches and wizards. He had ordered the Leaky Cauldron to modify its ward to allow all documented Squibs entry to Diagon Alley. Finally, the law protected them from discrimination in housing and in employment at jobs where magical ability was not necessary to do the work. In exchange for wizarding-world protection, they were subject to the same laws wizards were concerning the Statute of Secrecy.

That was not met with much opposition from anyone except the most hardline blood purists. Orion Black, ever a thorn in Tom's side, had declared that Squibs wouldn't be a "problem" if the wizarding world were pureblooded, but Tom had destroyed that argument with the information—obtained by Vincent Rosier—that Orion himself had a great-uncle who was a Squib. Having too thinly diluted magical blood—or "incomplete magical genes," as Hermione would say—was one way to be a Squib, but it appeared that long-term inbreeding could produce genetic flaws, just as it did among Muggles and animals. In wizards, one such flaw could be weak or absent magic—or at least, that was what magical researchers were finding. So much for Black's assertion.

Tom's other domestic policies were a bit more controversial among fellow politicians, though not the general public. After establishing expanded rights for Squibs of well-documented wizarding ancestry, he then granted Squib status to the immediate families of Muggle-born witches and wizards. That had not been quite so popular. The blood-purity supporters had screamed that these people ought to have to prove they actually were the descendants of wizards, since there was the possibility that one of the two parents of a Muggle-born might in fact be just a Muggle, with no wizard ancestry at all.

"Researchers in the organization Advance and the Department of Mysteries, building on German research, have determined that it is almost impossible for wizarding offspring to result from a union of a true Muggle and a Squib who is third-generation or later," he had stated in a press conference. "It is very, very likely that both parents of these witches and wizards have some wizard ancestry, and since we haven't even kept records of Squibs until now—let alone before Seclusion—the demands of the Isolationist faction cannot be reasonably fulfilled."

Some of the Muggle-protective Reformists, including Septimus Weasley, had also voiced concerns over granting full wizarding-world rights to people who might already be established in the Muggle world. They were worried that they might tell their Muggle acquaintances and co-workers the secret. Tom had an answer for that too, and one that was rather not as polite.

"This criticism, from a group of people who have been telling 'Muggle' parents and siblings about their magical family members, but have not been taking any precautions whatsoever with them?" he had said mockingly. "My opponents have not instituted any provision for formal check-ups of these families, nor do they have a procedure for dealing with security breaches—other than Obliviation of the outside Muggles who were told. Under former policies, the families were in a legal no-man's land, technically not even entitled to know of their magical child or sibling's situation, not officially required to observe Seclusion, and protected only by custom and pro-family sentiment. Now, thanks to my laws, they have both the rights and, importantly, the responsibilities of other documented Squibs."

The argument had been designed to appeal to the Reformists' desire to "protect" non-magical people from witches and wizards. Most of the recalcitrant Reformists had been convinced by the logic of enveloping these people under a well-defined system of laws. Anyway, Tom had long suspected that Weasley in particular was resentful of Tom's ascent to the top of the Law Enforcement department and his own demotion after the war on Grindelwald had concluded and the Wartime Operations office Weasley had formerly headed was not needed.

Tom had another proposal he wanted to make into law, but he had decided it was not yet time for that. He had laid the groundwork for it, between Ogden's final law and his own system for Muggle-born families, but he didn't want to do too much at once. He also wanted other people to make the call for it themselves, and he was sure that the established policies had made that inevitable. He was going to remove restrictions on underage wizardry. It already was unenforceable in homes with an adult witch or wizard present, but others would soon be free as well. The Ministry already watched the neighborhoods of Muggle-raised children strictly enough to detect what spells were cast in the area; Tom planned to lift the precision and instead set up communications with the parents—now official Squibs, they were allowed to use the Floo—so they could rapidly inform the Ministry if a problem arose. It was a matter of time before the "loyal subjects" who benefited from his reforms clamored for such a system, and like a benevolent king, he would merely oblige.

But for now, this year, he had begun a wizarding fostering and adoption system, with volunteer couples investigated and registered as potential caretakers. He wished there had been such a system in place during his childhood. Anything would have been better than being raised in an orphanage full of unwanted, underbred, mostly illegitimate Muggle brats, but being raised by wizards would have been best. He considered it contemptible that his mother had not used magic to save her life even for his sake. Hermione had explained once that Dumbledore believed she was very tired and ill, and had not wanted to be a witch anymore, but he had been unmoved. He certainly wouldn't choose to die and leave his children without a parent if he could prevent it, and neither would Hermione—though she had not yet taken that to its logical conclusion. He was determined to give his own children the perfect ideal family he'd never known, but he could do something for any magical child.

The plan required the Hogwarts Quill, and Tom was initially concerned that the crooked-nosed old codger with custody of it would rebuff him out of personal dislike. He had, to his surprise, been mistaken. Dumbledore had supported the idea. When Headmaster Dippet died later in the year, Dumbledore had become Headmaster, and Slughorn Deputy Head.

Hermione had seemed surprised by that. He had questioned her, and apparently in her original timeline, old Sluggy had remained a mere professor. His promotion was probably in large part due to the fact that he was the mentor of two of the most influential young people in the wizarding world.

The foster system had been used so far only for a pair of four-year-old twins plucked from a Ukrainian state orphanage. It was an excellent photo op: the grandmotherly Minister Tuft, the dashing and photogenic Tom, the Ukrainian wizarding representative with the purposely blurred face, and the pretty little witches, saved from an oppressive Muggle government and brought to a free wizarding society to live in a magical family. Tom was pleased, both because magical children were saved from Muggles and because it helped him for his system to look good.

But before Tom could do much more, he would have to become Minister. As an eighteen-year-old, he had regarded the former Minister, Leonard Spencer-Moon, as a rival, but he realized now that he had played his hand against Spencer-Moon too soon. He had been an effective and popular war leader, but after the capture of Grindelwald—and, Tom had to acknowledge it, after Tom's own problems with Arcturus Black that year and his determination to dirty the Minister's integrity by association, Spencer-Moon had not remained in office more than four more years. Wilhelmina Tuft had ascended, which wouldn't have been a problem in and of itself, but her Merlin-cursed son Ignatius was far too willing to capitalize on her name, and he very clearly intended to take the post in a couple of years.

He was the biggest obstacle to Tom's ambition right now. Everyone knew that Tom wanted the top post; Tom had seen no value in hiding the fact. Even if he had, Slughorn's enormous network and gregarious boasting about his old favorites would have made it impossible to hide. Now that it was an open secret that Tom wanted to be the next Minister, if someone else got the job, it would be seen as a defeat. It would be a huge blow. And Tom was not going to let that happen.


It was a pleasant Saturday, and Tom was enjoying the weekend with Hermione and their two children, Madeline and Virgil. Madeline was his daughter in every way: powerful, intelligent, confident, a leader, and a little ruthless in her logic. There was no doubt in Tom's mind where she would be Sorted. She had also, somewhat to his bemusement, taken an interest in flying, of all things. For a seven-year-old, she wasn't half bad. Tom had not really considered it until recently, but he realized he might have a future Slytherin Chaser in his house.

Virgil was harder for him to understand, but he supposed that the three-and-a-half-year-old was like his mother, even despite being black-haired and a Parselmouth like the rest of the family. He didn't much care to speak to snakes and preferred to pet Hermione's now-senior black part-kneazle. He could not yet read, but he was close, and he really enjoyed his mother's storytime. He was quiet and imaginative, and Tom supposed that in his own way, he had leadership qualities, though a different sort. When the siblings played together, it was usually the boy who developed most of their imaginary world. Tom was not at all sure that Virgil would follow family tradition when he went to Hogwarts. That thought bothered him a lot less than he had ever supposed it would, though.

The two children were right now pretending that there were kingdoms of fairies and doxies in the garden back of the house, and that the two species were having to unite against the Red Caps that they imagined lived in the fountain—no, the bog, as Virgil would insist, Tom thought with some affection. "Affection," fancy that, he reflected.

He and Hermione were seated in wicker chairs, observing them and lightly reading, when he received word about the Tufts' foreign trip. A messenger bird dropped a letter atop the policy paper he was reading. It had a lime green envelope, which signified urgency without being a Howler.

Hermione looked up, concerned at the sight. "That can't be good," she said.

Tom slit the envelope and regarded the letter with a studied frown.

.

Mr. Riddle,

If this arrives in time, I request your presence at a secure Floo briefing at 1445. It is about a complication that has arisen on your colleagues' trip. I apologize sincerely if this has disrupted any activities you have planned this weekend.

Thank you,

Hildegarde Dietzsch

Chancellor of Magic, German Federal Republic

.

He suppressed the smirk that wanted to form on his face and looked up at Hermione. "I doubt it is," he said. "The German Chancellor wants me for a Floo briefing. I gather something has gone wrong." He checked his pocket watch, the same one that Hermione had given him for his eighteenth birthday. The letter had arrived in time, but without much to spare if he had been anywhere but his home. The appointed time was thirty minutes away.

Her face fell. "I hope everyone is all right and that the Muggle Communists haven't… discovered anything."

"So do I." It wasn't a lie, he supposed. He got up and kissed her. "I'd better get to the Ministry."


Dietzsch was a stern, no-nonsense middle-aged German witch. Having played for several years as a Beater for the German national Quidditch team, in the war against Grindelwald's forces she had defended a group of hapless pureblood functionaries from an attack on the equivalent of the Wizengamot. Grindelwald's opponents had romanticized the story as a tale of heroism and two sides coming together in a terrible war, since Dietzsch had saved the politicians' lives despite being a half-blood and having previously been vocally, publicly opposed to their blood-purity beliefs. She had gone on to fight as a soldier in the war and had received Dark Arts injuries that ended her Quidditch career. After that she had accepted one of the numerous offers of patronage in politics.

Her face stared out at Tom from the secure Floo connection in his private office, clearly seething—though not at him. Minister Tuft and Ignatius were next to her, looking extremely embarrassed and troubled.

"I had best explain this quickly and succinctly," she said in stilted tones, clearly not very comfortable with a second language. "The International Cooperation delegate"—she cast a glare of disgust at Ignatius Tuft, which was somehow amplified by the green fire—"was disarmed of his wand while in Nurmengard."

Ignatius broke in. "I swear to you, it wasn't my fault! I was under the Imperius Curse!"

"Ignatius!" Minister Tuft scolded. The witch turned to Dietzsch apologetically.

The German woman continued, her voice icy. "Grindelwald obtained his wand and used it to break the ward on his window. He leapt from the cell and Disapparated while falling."

"He escaped?" Tom exclaimed. He narrowed his eyebrows.

"This must mean to you the same thing that it means to me," Dietzsch snarled, with another glare of disdain for the Tufts. "It will mean that to anyone who fought his forces. What is worse, we cannot apprehend him now. By the time we retrieved the old map of his bases that we used in the war, the name of one of the bases had vanished from this map."

Tom breathed in deeply, his eyes widening.

"Yes," Dietzsch said grimly, "it is a base that we know was in the… Carpathian, in eastern Czechoslovakia, though we can no longer think of its name, and we now believe that he has hid himself away there under the Fidelius Charm. Your country's Minister was discussing the international Apparition ward with her son when the wand was taken, so Grindelwald learned of that too." She shot yet another venomous glare at them. "He must have Apparated to the very border and crossed it by other means, then Apparated to his mountain base."

Tom kept the excitement off his face. "Was he able to free any other prisoners?"

"He was not, but what is our concern is that he will use this base to compete with our allied efforts to rescue our people from the Muggle Communists and create a new following among those he protects." Dietzsch seemed too angry to continue.

Minister Tuft spoke up, her voice low and defeated. "If he had chosen to hide somewhere in a Western nation, we could have engaged that country's wizarding government to put a wide perimeter around his hideout even if we could not bring him into custody, putting him under permanent house arrest, at least. But, as we all know, there are no official wizarding authorities in the Muggle Soviet bloc states anymore, just unofficial leaders who use pseudonyms and are concerned mainly with protecting their populations from Muggle authorities—and getting refugees safely to the West." She looked sadly at Tom.

"So… they won't have the resources to hunt down Gellert Grindelwald… and we certainly cannot ally with the Muggles in those countries to do it, considering what else we're trying to achieve," Tom finished, forcing his face into a glum expression.

"We cannot."

Ignatius was bursting to defend himself. "I was under Imperius. As soon as Grindelwald Disapparated, I felt different—"

"How could Grindelwald have put you under Imperius?" Minister Tuft exclaimed.

"I meant he might have lifted it. Someone else could have put me under it. I did feel different," the wizard insisted. "Like I'd been half-awake, and I suddenly woke up."

"Watching the greatest war criminal of our time escape would wake anyone up!" Dietzsch exploded.

"Chancellor Dietzsch, Ignatius was suffering from exhaustion for about a week before we arrived," the elderly witch said.

"Then he should not have come," Dietzsch said coldly.

Tom was impassively watching the Floo faces argue. He cleared his throat, and all three faces turned to him.

"Is there anything I might do?" he asked. "I suppose the press will have to know, unfortunately."

"I intend to inform them as soon as this meeting is over," said Tuft grimly. "I won't put that responsibility on you. It should be my own. For what it's worth—and I know that is not much—I apologize on behalf of my family, to you"—she inclined her head at Dietzsch's—"and to you as well, Tom."

There did not seem to be much else to say. They stiffly took their leave, and the Floo connection closed. Tom was alone again.

"Yes!" He pumped his fist in the air as he exulted. He was gripping his wand, so a shower of silver sparks glittered to the floor.


Three days later.

Tom gazed at the headlines.

"Grindelwald Escapes Nurmengard, Ministry Invokes State Secrets About Suspected Location!"

"Minister and Son Cause Humiliating International Incident, Enrage Allies!"

"EXCLUSIVE: Ignatius Tuft Ran a Ministry Department for a Week Before Claiming Imperius!"

"TICK-TOCK: Minister Tuft's Days Numbered?"

Tom smirked at that last headline, setting down the newspaper. Her days were numbered, all right. He was on the Wizengamot and was definitely keeping an ear open to what they were saying, and there was no doubt of it. Her son had already been forced to resign. With the perfect hindsight that so many people often found they had, wizards and witches throughout Britain were murmuring that he had always been ineffective as a Department Head, shamelessly trying to take credit for the efforts across the Iron Curtain when it had been their allies' idea—and the only children resettled in Britain were there due to the Law Enforcement Head's visionary policy. He had only obtained his post in the first place because of who his mum was, they asserted.

With the man's reputation now shredded, not many people believed he was actually under Imperius, and those who did admit it as a possibility held him in disdain for allowing it to happen—and his mother as well, for taking him on a sensitive international trip while there were questions about his mental fitness at the moment.

"Why didn't the Minister have a Healer see him—privately, of course?" one of Tom's own staff had carped in the office.

In the secrecy of the Wizengamot chamber, other damning facts had come out that the press did not know. Chancellor Dietzsch had informed the members that the Minister and her son had been chatting about the boundaries of the Apparition ward in Grindelwald's hearing. The Wizengamot had instantly come to the same alarmed conclusion that the dignitaries had.

"We'll have a new war on our hands thanks to this!" one excitable wizard had burst out.

"Not if we're prudent," a gruff, greying Crawford Rosier had said pointedly, looking at Tom.

"There is that," agreed a plump, cheerful-looking witch. "And we'd be getting two great minds for the price of one, as it were!" She grinned across the chamber at Hermione.

It was quite unlikely that they would have a new war, Tom thought, folding the newspaper. He took a sip of coffee. He had definitely done his best to ensure that Grindelwald wouldn't pose a threat to him personally. He couldn't expose Tom's past espionage; Hermione held that Secret, and the wizard may not have known who engineered his escape. Even if he did suspect it was Tom, he was prevented from ever saying why he did. Tom's communication with Grindelwald prior to the escape had, naturally, been very limited—there was a traitorous guard in the prison who believed he was passing a message from an old lieutenant, since Tom knew the old hierarchy and secret phrases of the "Leader"—but it had told the Dark wizard what to do when Ignatius Tuft made his appearance.

His options after that were actually fairly circumscribed. In his defeat, Grindelwald had expressed contrition for his violent methods and blamed the Elder Wand in part. Tom's hope was that the man would assist in protecting magical residents of the Soviet bloc, because there were many who did not want to leave their homes and Tom was legitimately concerned that the Muggle Communists would get hold of them, turn them, and use them as spies. Grindelwald had always been less selfish than Tom himself was, more devoted to a cause. There was a slight risk that he could raise a new army in Eastern Europe, with the same rallying cry as before—"the Muggles are a danger to us"—but there was not a real Muggle war going on, and it seemed that most of these people just wanted to live in peace. Tom hoped Grindelwald could turn into some sort of underground leader for them—probably under a new name, though.

If he chose instead to threaten the person who had arranged for his freedom, then Tom would do what Hermione had stopped him from doing in 1945. And he would not hesitate this time.


"Tom, I need to know something," Hermione said.

It was the day of the Wizengamot vote to choose a new Minister, and Tom was very confident of the outcome even though he and Hermione were prohibited from voting with his name in the pool. He sighed as he slipped on his robe. Of course she had figured out what he had done. She was too clever not to.

He fastened the clasp and raised a waiting eyebrow at her.

She stared back at him. "The theory that Tuft was under Imperius… and the fact that Grindelwald escaped… I need to know if you, well…."

"Do you really want to know that?" he replied quietly.

She looked away, closing her eyes at the implicit confirmation. "Oh, Tom."

"You told me yourself that Tuft would become Minister after his mum, and would be a disaster."

"That was in a timeline in which you were… not a productive leader."

"He's still an unqualified fool. He was aiming for it, and he might have succeeded. And you can't say that he would be a better Minister than I will. He's no visionary."

"You have done good things for the wizarding world," Hermione conceded. "But Tom, what if Grindelwald turns on you? He tried to take over the world once."

"Then I'll take care of the problem," he said darkly, "but I don't think he will. I've already written a message that I'll send to the boundaries of his Carpathian base, once I'm Minister. It says that I will leave him be if he doesn't make war on magical governments again, and it suggests that he alter his appearance, adopt a new name, and help protect wizards in Eastern Europe instead."

Hermione sighed. It might work. She certainly hoped so.


"Witches and wizards, the Minister for Magic."

Tom's mouth was set in an expression that was half smirk and half genuine smile as he ascended the stage, hand raised in acknowledgment of the applause the crowd was giving him. He walked behind the podium that was emblazoned with the large letter M and the raised, casting wand, the emblem of the Ministry of Magic. Hermione walked closely behind him, a partially forced smile on her face. Behind her trailed their two children, holding their mother's hands and looking wide-eyed. The crowd declared its adoration with loud coos and "aww"s.

Positioned behind the podium, Tom enveloped Hermione in his arms and kissed her full on the mouth. The group of journalists and Ministry folk went wild at that, delighted to see such a manifestly happy marriage and perfect family.

The new Minister flashed a dazzling smile and began to speak.