INTERLUDE III
If this were a trap, it was one that so well done that he could not be blamed for falling into it.
The boy had been easy to recruit and tonight he had proven himself a joy to teach. He was inquisitive, had a fierce desire for self-improvement and he could absorb knowledge like a sponge. He had only seen one duel in person, and he already applied what little he had witnessed into his skillset. Of course, none of this would have mattered to him in the slightest if the child had proven himself a failure, but tonight he had triumphed over certain death.
Tom smiled. The child's first triumph had felt like his own, as if his hands and the boy's had been one and the same.
Worry. Pride. Satisfaction.
Was this how his own master had felt? No wonder he had always ignored the warning signs. If he had acknowledged the path Tom was taking, he would have been forced to fight him, destroy him even. To kill one's own student would be like burning an oil painting after months of painstaking, detailed work. Once you have created a masterpiece, a part of you lives on inside it, and one must have an extraordinarily strong resolve in order to destroy a part of themselves.
The boy had, unknowingly, played his part to perfection. The detour with the Mirror of Erised was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Young Potter's mind was a focused one, and so afraid of his own emotions, that he kept them under a tight rein. As such it was more difficult for him to peruse the child's thoughts than he would like, without being noticed at least. Images, sounds, scents, tastes and physical sensations the child had experienced were easy to come by, but his emotions were buried deep, and his thoughts lay far beyond his reach.
As such, any information he could gather about his fledgling apprentice was to be appreciated, especially when they were presented by situations he had not even engineered. His family being his heart's desire could prove to be a problem for a multitude of reasons, but the fragile bond he had formed with the Corner boy was to be cherished, along with his friendships with Boot and Goldstein, he would ensure it. The more people young Harry cared for, the more tools of manipulation and motivation Tom had in his arsenal against him. Even his heroic instinct, the way he had saved the other boy before himself, could prove useful one day.
Harry's performance against the troll was infinitely better than his flight from Myrose and Fredrick. He had been afraid then, that his first test had proved the boy a coward, but no. It was better than he could have hoped, because the boy simply knew when there was a fight he could not win. Courage was necessary for what came next, but discernment, even more so. It was something that was hard taught in his experience, and he did not relish the thought of having to guide another through the process. He was glad that life had already taught the boy its most important lesson, as it had once taught him.
His brutal method in dealing with the Troll was exactly what Tom had been hoping for. Despite what Flitwick might claim, a Troll was sapient, at least enough that its death left a mark on the one who had killed it. The boy's initial reaction to his first kill was not concerning enough to warrant a new method either. When he had poked his head into the Small Hall, he saw that he had bounced back with almost alarming resiliency, laughing and mimicking the skeleton trope's dance movements with his friends.
His apprentice had passed the second test with flying colours. Now it was time to begin the next phase, and if the boy should balk at what was asked of him, well… history would not repeat itself.
After all, it was the student's responsibility to learn from their teacher's mistakes and he would not repeat his master's failure.