Author's Note: Your humble narrator is a cheater. This is Part 1 of the last chapter. What happened is, I started writing over my semester break and then came to the realization that I have a slew of loose ends to tie up and won't be able to do it quickly. Therefore, instead of making you wait, I decided to do this.

They should teach Latin at Hogwarts. Think about it. Then again I took a year of Latin and can't remember a damn thing. I'm better with Spanish and Japanese (probably because I have more than a year of experience with each).

Chapter 20 (Part 1)

Ruthless.Malevolent. Callous.

He took a long gulp of red wine and raised a nonexistent eyebrow, an action that tended to wrinkle his face and make him look like an older version of his serpent visage.

Thank you for your colorful description of me, Mr. Babolink, he thoughtHe chuckled inwardly and carefully folded the latest issue of The Daily Prophet with disinterest in continuing the article. He had already heard a beautifully macabre description of the torture from Dolohov after he had committed it and that was far more entertaining than a doctor's report or a terrified witness' teary recounting, of which Dolohov claims there were none to speak anyway.

"Master."

He heard the gentle sliding of Nagini moving along the thick, imported carpet up to his high-backed chair but did not turn around to acknowledge him.

"Yes?" he replied apathetically. Typically Nagini acted as a butler, alerting him to guests and trespassers and he just wasn't in the mood to have to deal with either. Although he had been experiencing a brush of success with his plans for extermination, his plans for recruiting the family he never quite had into his army were not nearly as triumphant. Magdalena had made it all too apparent to him just how much she did not want him around his son and how she really was not interested in seeing him again either even though he could not believe that for a second. Of course, she couldn't watch Aidan all the time, nor could she make his decisions for him. If his son wants to side with him, what choice could Magdalena possibly have?

"There is a strange boy walking across the yard towards the house." The snake hissed, curling gracefully into a spiral on the rug in front of the fireplace as if it had completed its job for the day and deserved the opportunity to relax in front of the smoldering fire.

He tried not to show his eagerness as he sauntered over to the window to see if his unannounced visitor was the one he was hoping for.

"Can I eat him?"

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Aidan made his way across the expansive lawn with his hands in his pant's pockets, eyes darting around the premises from the large graveyard to the gardener's house to the mansion, in awe that his father owned such expensive property. He had Apparated directly from just outside the school grounds and was still clad in his school uniform. After about a minute of scrutinizing the building in front of him, impressed by the century old architecture that must be holding many family secrets he had longed to hear all his life, he grasped the huge gold door knocker engraved with a Gothic R and slammed it down twice.

On his way through the graveyard Aidan had stopped to read the tombstones. When he had met his father on Christmas, he had not asked for his full name because something about asking his father for his last name sounded peculiar to him. In the graveyard he had quickly learned it though. This mansion had been in his family for years according to the dates etched on them.

Thomas Riddle.

Mary Riddle.

Tom Riddle.

How strange, he thought. My great-grandparents and grandfather died in the same year. That can't be a coincidence. And where's my grandmother? Still alive I guess. She must be where the Slytherin genes lie since these people seem like muggles.

Aidan Riddle.

Hm.

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"I'll be there in a minute," he shouted down as he quickly downed the last of his appearance-altering potion and stood in front of the nearest mirror to watch his transformation. "You can come in," he yelled, using a spell to unlock the door and allow it to swing open, welcoming Aidan into the house.

The room Aidan was met with lived up to expectations tenfold. The staircase in front of him was covered with a blood red carpet and had an intricately designed, gold railing he wondered if he would be able to slide down without breaking his neck by falling over it backwards. Gold candelabra, not unlike those in the meeting room, were strategically placed to give the room just the right amount of light. Above him hung a crystal chandelier coming down from a painted ceiling depicting a sky covered with angels, further emphasizing the muggle nature of the Riddle family. The angels were stationary as were the paintings lining the hallway that the grand staircase led to. Every patriarch easily looked like a relative of his; most of them even had his dark hair and eyes.

In spite of all the luxuries the house held, it looked a little under cared for. The marble floor was dirty and there appeared to be cobwebs on both the candelabra and the chandelier.

"Hello Aidan," a deep voice said, breaking him of his concentration on the paintings. He looked to his left, the man he had wanted to see walking towards him.

Aidan tugged uncomfortably on his blue and bronze tie that had found its way outside of his sweater, wondering what his Slytherin father would think. "Hello . . ." he said, the word trailing off in uncertainty of what to call the man in front of him.

After the longest three seconds of silence in history Aidan spoke again.

"I'm sorry for showing up here unannounced but can we just get this out in the open?" he asked, releasing his tie.

Tom raised a now existing, dark eyebrow at the question, sure he knew what Aidan was getting at but wanting to hear how he was going to phrase it.

"I know you didn't give me your address and invite me to your . . . mansion because you are a lonely and lecherous queer trying to entice me into your bed," he said with a remarkably straight face.

Tom couldn't help but laugh his usual dry laugh. "Well, you've certainly got your mother's way with words," he commented.

"You have to admit the resemblance between us is uncanny," Aidan said, staring straight into the other man's dark eyes. He was looking at his future, a little taller and slightly older than himself, and Tom was looking into his past, dressed in a different uniform.

Tom smirked slightly and motioned to the door behind him.

"Would you like a drink . . . son?"

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Magdalena took one last look around her office before pulling out her wand and making all of her photos, books, and little decorative touches like the gold and purple wallpaper she had used to make the room less grim disappear. I will miss this room, she thought, rapidly realizing that without all her stuff in it, it no longer felt like hers anyway.

Her teaching job was over. Slughorn would be back tomorrow and she would be back in her lab at the Ministry with Liam trying to come up with the most clever way to inhibit and arrest her ex-boyfriend.

Teaching had been a nice break from thinking about the Dark Lord.

Then again, messing around with Tom had been too.

Why was I so careless, she asked herself. Why couldn't I have learned more? I've been behaving like a child lately.

Then again, did I not meet him as a child? It's as if my level of maturity drops to that of a sixteen year old when I am around him.

Dangerous. He may have seemed so harmless, so polite, and so respectable back then but now he is nothing but trouble and I know this. I just find it hard sometimes to remember.

She wandered down the nearly empty hall, trying to stop focusing on what she should have done and instead reflecting on the past three months, thinking about all the students she'll miss. All of them, as it turns out; even the ones who made the job harder than it should be.

Ahead of her in the hall with a lowly dipped head and a hunch in his shoulders, she suddenly noticed a familiar face.

"Hello Sev," she said with a smile at the greasy little eleven-year-old.

"Hello . . . Magdalena," he said, awkwardly, trying out her first name like he was asking a heated question. He had remembered her saying on the first day that she taught that she didn't mind if students called her by her first name but none of them had the guts to except for Sirius Black who particularly liked to shout it out in crowded hallways to make his fellow classmates wonder. "I guess I can officially call you that since you're not my professor anymore," he said, trying to justify himself.

Magdalena smiled. "Of course." They started to walk together down the hall, Magdalena now going back the direction she came.

"So are you leaving tonight?" Severus asked, hoping that she would stay at the castle a little longer so they could continue having talks. He still had so many questions about potions and . . . Lily.

"Yeah, after I say goodbye to Aidan," she said, a hint sadness peppering her voice. "I'm going to miss this job a lot. It's been fun."

"I'll miss you," Severus said, unembarrassed. "You were my favorite teacher."

Touched, Magdalena leaned down to give Severus a hug.

"Like I said, feel free to send me mail any time if you want to talk about your future or girls," she nudged him gently in the side, "or even if you just need a recommendation for a job or something."

Severus graced her with a rare smile.

"I will."

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The room they were in was some sort of library. Three of the walls in the room were covered with bookshelves that, upon further inspection, contained mostly muggle novels and anthologies that were covered in dust. However, there were a few bookshelves placed nearest to a red, high-backed chair that were devoted to old textbooks and other magic books that looked well-worn and used.

Nagini moved, Tom noted, looking at the empty rug in front of the fireplace. Hopefully he'll come back eventually so I can see if Aidan is a Parselmouth.

Aidan took a seat on a chair facing the red, high-backed one that he assumed his father usually sat in, since there was a small table next to it that had an open bottle of wine, a glass, and a book on it. He placidly watched Tom go over to a cabinet hidden amongst the bookshelves, take out another glass, and fill it with a generous dose of wine for him.

"Thank you," Aidan said, taking the glass from him and taking a tentative sip. He smiled slightly and muttered quietly, "Same taste in wine."

Tom gave him a look that almost showed a sense of pride in his son, and took a drink from his own glass, settling into his chair. "I take it you have some questions for me. That's why you came I'm sure."

Aidan looked down at his glass guiltily. "Well, yes." He thought about adding that he had wanted to see him again and get to know him also but he didn't want to sound too eager to please. Besides, when he had met him on Christmas, his father had asked him a lot more questions than he had asked his father so it was his turn. "Um, what exactly happened between you and my mum?" He asked, hoping that it wasn't a touchy subject. Of course, the only thing he had said to him at Christmas was that they knew each other from school but his mother had been just down the table from him so he couldn't have really asked anything more in depth.

Tom's eyes drifted to the fire as he tried to stifle a smirk, reflecting on their relationship. "Well, we dated for a while in school. It was a very secretive relationship. I'm sure if you asked everyone at the school about us, no one would have suspected anything."

Aidan thought of his conversation with Professor Dippet. Apparently, someone had noticed them together but he did say he had only seen her with the anonymous Slytherin boy once. They must have been damn good at being surreptitious because Dippet was damn good at being seemingly ubiquitous.

"One day we got into an argument, a pretty heated one, and broke up. A bit hasty, I know. A few years later we were still thinking about each other and we had what you would call a one-night stand. We didn't start dating again afterwards because we starting fighting again and decided to just leave everything as it was before. She never told me that she got pregnant. I'm sure she didn't want to complicate things for me. Only recently did I find out about you among the usual gossip that goes around. It only reminded me of how much I missed your mother and so for the past few months, she and I have been casually seeing each other but after Christmas she stopped talking to me. She was pretty angry at me for showing up unannounced."

"That sounds like mum," Aidan said to try to make his father not feel so bad about getting snubbed by her, in case he didn't know she was usually like that.

Aidan was satisfied with the explanation. It sounded like they actually did care about each other albeit had difficultly agreeing on things. "Is there any chance that you and mum will . . . stay together?" he asked, visions of the normal family that he had always wished would come to be running through his head.

Tom tilted his head, similar thoughts developing in his mind. "I'm not sure yet. I have hope though." He said with an expression that both filled Aidan with happiness at his sneaky sense of confidence and unnerved him slightly.

Aidan smiled and took another drink. "How about your family? I noticed my grandfather's grave out back, along with his parents. They all died on the same day. How did that happen? And where's my grandmother?"

"My mother, who is the one who had Slytherin's genes, fell in love with the muggle, Tom Riddle, and they got married. Riddle left her, most likely while she was pregnant."

Aidan noticed the way in which his father talked about his grandfather. It was like rage was slowly building up inside of him as he rehashed everything he knew about his parents estranged relationship. The fact that he only referred to his father as "Riddle" or "the muggle" was not lost on him.

"She ended up giving birth to me in a muggle orphanage and dying right afterwards. She's not buried in the Riddle family graveyard because the pretentious muggles did not want to have anything to do with her. When I was fifteen I went to look for Marvolo Gaunt, my grandfather, but the only person I found was his son, my uncle, Morfin. He was a loony, living alone in a grimy, diminutive shack in the woods down the road from here. As it turns out he had killed Riddle and his parents. He was angry at Riddle because when his sister ran off with him she not only disgraced the family but she took all the valuables they had with her. Morfin Gaunt died a while ago in Azkaban which means that the last living descendents of Salazar are you and me."

Aidan grabbed his school tie for the second time that night. "Ironic," he deadpanned, referring to his placement.

"I should say so." Tom replied grimly. "You must take after your mother more than me."

"Well, supposedly I had the longest sorting in the history of Hogwarts. The hat had a hard time deciding between the two houses." Aidan said as if he was trying to defend himself. "I mean, I can talk to snakes."

Tom chuckled wryly. The boy clearly wanted acceptance from him which was definitely a trait that would work in his favor.

"Do we have an family heirlooms?" Aidan asked curiously. He had heard that every founder of Hogwarts had a lot of prestigious artifacts that they handed down to their relatives. "Or have they all been lost in time?" With his father's description of the house his uncle lived in and the fact that his grandmother had run off with all their precious possessions, he was pretty sure he'd never get to see any.

"Yes, we have some but they are all in Gringotts right now for protection. There's a black-stoned ring with the Peverell coat of arms on it which I got from my uncle before he was incarcerated and Slytherin's locket which I had to go to great lengths to get since my mother had sold it in desperation." Yes, great lengths like murder. "I'll show them to you someday."

Pleased, Aidan took another drink. "So have you ever wanted to do anything other than work at a shop?" Aidan asked. He hadn't expected his father to have such a ordinary job unless his father had turned out to be a rapist or something. "I mean, I saw that you were Head Boy and everything."

Tom opened his mouth to answer but both of their attentions were caught by a two meter long serpent entering the room. Aidan couldn't help but wince at the sight. Although he wasn't very afraid of snakes anymore, the sheer size of the creature shocked him.

"Nagini, say hello to my son, Aidan." Tom said, patting the thing on the head endearingly.

Nagini analyzed Aidan with a tilted head, making sure to avoid eye contact with him.

"You have a son?" Nagini hissed, the question coming out rhetorical. "Hello, Aidan."

"Hi," Aidan said hesitantly, the fact that he was making cordial small-talk with a snake, making him realize that there is still so much he doesn't know about his father and himself. Just a few months ago if someone had told him he would find himself sitting in his father's mansion chatting with a snake and talking about his relation to Salazar Slytherin, he would have told them to buy a new crystal ball and have their head examined.

"Anyway Aidan, to answer your question, I did have other career aspirations. Professor Slughorn had tried to set me up in the Ministry of Magic but I wanted to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. I was initially declined a position directly out of school because of my lack of life experience so I decided to just do something I'd enjoy where I could learn a lot. I tried getting a job again years ago but I was denied again. Dumbledore was in charge of hiring professors and he never liked me much."

Aidan looked off towards the fireplace for a second, eyeing Nagini curled up in front of it like a dog or any other less unique pet. He respected Dumbledore greatly and although Dumbledore had seemed apprehensive to get to know him at first, for a reason he still had not determined, he had come to like him too. But he didn't want to share this with his father.

"I like Defense Against the Dark Arts a lot but I've never had the same professor two years in a row. It's strange. Maybe if you had been hired, you would have been able to stay longer than a year." he said with a laugh, starting to feel more comfortable around him.

"That would be my goal, yes." Tom answered, with a smile. He stood up from his chair, setting his wineglass down on the side table next to him. "I have some books that might interest you. I remember you mentioning that you also like potions."

"And Astronomy." Aidan added, standing up and approaching the bookshelf he was motioning to.

"Like your mother." Tom pointed out, extracting a very old and torn red leather bound book. There was no title on the cover, nor any sort of design to indicate what it was about. "I don't know if you know this but she has been wearing those earrings of hers since she was fifteen."

"Wow." Aidan said aware that her earrings were old but not that old, now leaning over the book. "I kind of wish I inherited her skill in Divination though. I'm not very good at it."

"A useful trait I'm sure," Tom said, flipping through the book to find the most intriguing potions to show Aidan. "One that I don't possess either." He turned to share a smile with his son and then pointed to the page he had landed on.

"'Some complicated acts of magic can alter one's appearance, sometimes so slightly that they occur without the wizard or witch knowing that it has happened.'" Aidan read out-loud. " 'These changes can be as minor as a bruise that will disappear in days and as drastic as a total and complete change to the point where the wizard or witch no longer looks human. This potion serves to correct any changes made as if the wizard or witch has never been altered by magic. Vultus Verus will last three hours unless more is consumed before the three hours is up.' I didn't even know a potion like this existed!" Aidan said, excited. "Where did you find this book?" He asked, searching for other strange potions.

"It was just something I found buried in a bookstore once. Many of the potions are for very specific needs so they are not used very often." Tom said, glad he had struck his son's interest. He had found it in a bookstore on Knockturn Alley when he used to work at Borgin and Burkes. It had caught his attention with the first potion, a potion that would fill the drinker with an overwhelming desire to travel to the place where it had been brewed. Archaic, yes, perhaps but still stimulating enough to continue reading.

"Would you like to see what other things I have lying around here?"

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As Magdalena walked into the Ravenclaw common room, she was filled with memories from when she was in school. Unnervingly enough, the furniture was the same but she was sure there was some extensive magic cleaning involved. She remembered having a study session with her Ravenclaw friends, Jacqueline and Calum, that ended in the three of them falling asleep on the couch, languidly draped in a pile of sleeping bodies. Luckily, someone had woken them up the next day or else they would have missed the exam.

That same couch was occupied by a few third year boys who all looked up from their textbooks in surprise. Magdalena waved at them remembering them from class and continued walking towards where she remembered the seventh year boys dorms to be. The seventh years always got the best rooms, a treat for seniority and suffering through all seven years.

On every door she passed were pieces of parchment that had the names of the occupants. "Brody Craighton," "Bradley Gallagher," "Aidan Lumairo," and "Patrick O'Keefe." This is the room.

Shortly after knocking the door swung open and she was met with Bradley's smiling face.

"Hello, Professor Lumairo!" he said in his usual gregarious fashion.

"Hi," she replied, looking into the room to see only Kate Clary who she knew Bradley was dating. The others probably left to give them privacy. "So I see my son isn't here. Hi Kate."

"Nice to see you, Professor Lumairo," she said, waving.

"Do you know where he is?" she asked Bradley, who instantly got a grave look on his face.

"I haven't seen him since Charms class, which is the last class we have together." he said, tapping his fingers on the door frame. "I saw him leave and meet up with Chad and Bianca. He's been gone for the past six hours. I didn't even see him at dinner." He looked down guiltily. "When Kate and I were walking to my room we saw Chad and Bianca and Aidan wasn't with them. I should have asked them where he went but we aren't on good terms. There's something wrong with those kids."

Magdalena looked down nervously. "Yes, I don't like them either." she said softly, trying to mentally list all of the places Aidan could possibly be. Astronomy Tower. Library. "Thank you anyway." Courtyard. "Hopefully, I will see you sometime again, Bradley. You're always welcome to come visit Aidan when he's at home."

Hogsmeade, if he snuck off.

The bathroom.

Anywhere.