INTERLUDE VII
Autumn 1941
Tom should have known that blackmail and violence wouldn't give him control forever.
Joshua Briggs had found his diary and showed it around to his friends. Tom had walked into the Slytherin Common Room after class, only to hear the Sixth Year reading aloud excerpts of his most private thoughts:
Thoughts about his parents.
Tom was a Fourth Year, confident in his own duelling ability, but he would be powerless against the crowd of rowdy Sixth Year boys so, swallowing his pride, he slunk back to his dormitory with the sounds of their laughter echoing in his ears.
It had been a difficult term for Tom, as his brother had been away for the Triwizard Tournament. The Fifth Great Wizarding War had not escalated to the point where the Magister felt it necessary to call off the prestigious event.
Even if Matthew had been present in the school during one of his short breaks away from the Tournament, Tom would not have wanted to bother him with this issue, as his brother had been looking forward to this event for years. Not when he knew how to deal with this issue himself.
Especially not when he knew his brother would disapprove over his methods.
While his violent scheme against Briggs had worked for a time, the older boy had eventually found his nerve, continually pushing back against Tom's control as though testing his boundaries. One way or another, Tom had immediately punished him for his transgressions, but the older boy just kept coming back.
Tom knew that he would only keep escalating his punishments upon Briggs until he found a permanent solution, so why not skip straight to the most permanent solution of all?
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Tom had found the Chamber of Secrets in his Third Year.
As an Auror Cadet, he had access to the evidence lockup, so after his first case was wrapping up and his Squad Captain was teaching he and his teammates how to log and store evidence, Tom had seen a familiar ring in storage. One his mother had favoured.
After badgering the Commander for weeks, he finally relented, giving Tom permission to take ownership of his family's belongings. Over the coming weeks he had gone over what little remained of his parent's possessions, which included his mother's treasured pearl necklace, which he kept with him, and a family tapestry that traced its heritage back for over fifteen hundred years. A heritage that included Salazar Slytherin.
THE GAUNT FAMILY
His mother's family.
Hungry for more power, for weapons of defence, Tom had spent months searching every inch of the school, before he was shown the way by the portrait of his very own ancestor. Deep in the school's dungeons, in an elaborate meeting room intended for the most elite of Slytherin House, there was a portrait of Salazar Slytherin.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four."
The portrait, so ordinary before, shimmered as the canvas melded into the stone wall behind it as its frame turned into a door. Far too familiar with the process to be impressed, Tom opened the door and made his way into the Chamber of Secrets.
"Why have you awoken me?" The Basilisk demanded, still sour that he had prevented it from fulfilling the purpose that it had been bred for.
"Are you not hungry?" Tom asked, coolly.
The Basilisk froze as though it had sensed its prey, and Tom could hear its hunger in its next word. "Mudbloods?"
Tom smiled cruelly. "No."
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The next day Joshua Briggs vanished, never to be seen or heard from again.
An event like this would have been enough to close the school for at least the ensuing investigation, but due to the war Hogwarts was forced to remain open. The majority of the parents who had sent their offspring to Hogwarts this year were the ones who had faith in the protections the school provided. More faith than they had in their own homes' defences anyway. Besides, it was only one attack.
Or so it seemed at first.
While Tom knew he should not push his luck, he didn't hesitate in using his Basilisk to get revenge on his enemies, or to manipulate things in his favour. However, too many deaths would get the school shutdown regardless of the political climate, so he manufactured events so that his victims would become petrified instead. That was the price for crossing him; a few months in the Hospital Wing while Slughorn and the school matron impatiently waited for mature Mandrakes to be sent to them from abroad.
For some reason, someone had destroyed all the Mandrakes that the school greenhouses contained.
Tom had learned, from his position as a Cadet, that the only clue that investigating Aurors had to go on was the report that Slytherin's portrait had stopped moving the same night Briggs went missing. The Aurors looked into it, but despite their best efforts, they found nothing. The portrait was an old one, and an Ingenieur consultant that they had brought in deemed that it was simply so ancient that the enchantment behind it stagnated. It was so readily believed because it was not unheard of.
Tom thought it was very amusing that the protections Slytherin had put around his secret chamber had worked against him now. The Aurors and the Ingenieur could not see the portrait for what it really was because they were not Slytherin's heirs nor were they invited in by one.
Tom wouldn't have bothered eradicating Slytherin's manufactured consciousness from the painting if he had simply kept his mouth shut. But no, he had instead chosen to lambast Tom's decision to attack a "pureblood brother."
No, Tom only had one brother, and their bond had nothing to do with blood.
Besides, it had been foolish for Slytherin to presume that his heirs would always agree with his perspective. He may be Tom's ancestor, but that did not mean they had the same enemies.
As Tom watched the school's inhabitants live in fear of the next attack, he learned something that would remain with him until his dying day.
Nothing gave a man more control than harnessing the fear of the unknown.