PART 1
A poke had her turning her head from Lestrange.
"Yes, what is it Orion?" she demanded not unkindly.
They liked it when she called them by first name. It pleased them, to be shown such blatant proof that they were counted in her 'inner circle'.
It had been a hard fight to rise to the top among the purebloods, as a nobody with an unknown family name and somehow doubly so as a woman. Misogynistic idiots, the lot of them.
But she showed them. Now look at how they catered to her every whim.
"Regarding what you said last time, " he began quietly, but evenly, "I have the book."
She smiled and she could see the faintest of pink rise to his cheeks.
Again. Misogynistic, hypocritical, idiots.
In the end, they would still fall to their knees to a woman.
"Thank you. It's very much appreciated. I'll meet you in the common room then?"
"Yeah," he murmured -because a pureblood wouldn't mumble like a mudblood lout.
Mary had to admit though, he was endearing.
She felt a gaze burning the side of her head. Looking up, she was utterly unsurprised to meet a pair of blue eyes absent of its usual twinkle.
Reinforcing her occlumency -just in case (he was still one of the most powerful wizards)-, she almost rolled her eyes.
This man... honestly. You'd think she was out to enslave the world- oh, yeah, right.
Still, he could be a bit less obvious with his bias. But then again, seeing the mudblood lover Dumbledore obviously against her only fuelled her reputation amongst the pureblood supremacists. So she guessed everything was all good in the end.
The annual Hogwarts dinner ended as peacefully as ever.
_
Throwing herself back on her bed in the Slytherin dorms, Mary sighed. She was getting nowhere with this.
The soul. Yes, the soul was largely intangible but it still very much existed. Yes, it was the essence of a person's being. It didn't matter what race you were, as long as you had even the slightest sentience, you had a soul.
What she had problems searching for, was how to reach into it so she could manipulate it for her first horcrux.
She was missing something.
She herself didn't have the resources, but she did have the people with the resources. Only problem was, if this was discovered, all her hard work would shatter to tiny unmendable pieces. Even to the darkest of the darkest house, tampering with the soul was taboo.
Who would've thought?
She would've to search somewhere else.
_
Mary literally fell to her knees laughing when she finally managed to strangle a lead.
The muggle world. The Mafia, more specifically.
Of all the places, what she needed -the missing link- was in the muggle world.
There was something ironic there.
Basically, a mage's magic in itself was another armour to protect one's soul. Meaning, magic pretty much shoved down the soul to the deepest darkest corner of the person and cottoned it on all sides, like a bullet proof vest and a glass case combined if you would. That was why she was having a hell of a time reaching to her soul.
Mary, even among the celebrated wizards and witches, had one of the biggest capacity when it came to the magic she could produce.
So if she wanted to reach her soul, she'd have to dig pretty freakin' deep.
How the muggles stumbled upon this, she wasn't interested. What she was though, was how, exactly, they could utilize the soul the way they did.
Weapons. Almost like magic actually.
She herself hadn't thought of this when searching for her project. In fact, unconsciously, she'd regarded her soul as just something to tear apart as a means to an end -which was immortality, by the way.
The things these Soul Flames could do... well, she could do it with magic too, but not as specialized or concentrated.
After all, magic was, first and foremost, versatility. Jack of all trades and all that.
It could do things Soul Flames could only ever dream of, but it wouldn't be able to do what Soul Flames did do with as much efficiency and power. It was balance, as there was in all things.
And Mary, she was determined to get the best of both worlds.
_
You know about that whole 'Dumbledore is a sanctimonious manipulative For-the-Greater-Good fanatic'? Yeah, that. I don't buy it.
I mean, think about it. In the HP world, prophecies were a thing that comes true. I notice a lot of people are willing to discount it. If people could read minds, take their soul apart, talk to snakes, become a dog, a stag, a rat, rearrange memories, make a book dance the can-can, why couldn't prophecies be legit too? And Dumbledore knew that one way or another, Harry and Tom were bound to cross paths. And I think rather than being unsympathetic to his plight, Dumbledore was actually very much sympathetic. (If he wasn't, surely there's tons of ways out there to make a helpless, defenceless, boy your own saviour pet. Heck, amortentia him and bam, fuck all morals, its for the Greater Good anyways')
It's the same logic as in, 'better learn to do it now in a controlled environment where people can come to your aid and hold your hand rather than in the midst of when you really need it'.
'better learn how to wield a bloody sword to slay a giant Basilisk somewhere where I can send an all healing Phoenix to you rather than in the middle of a battlefield.' Or, 'better to learn to know your limits, what you can do and what you can't, rather than while locking wands with a mad but very much powerful and once a genius man fifty years your senior and experience'. Or, 'better you get desensitized to near death moments when the knight suits, gargoyles, and other spells casted in the castle to keep the students safe in a magical school that is one of the most fortified place in the whole Britain can swoop in and save you if you really need it, rather than in the middle of the battlefield where you could possibly freeze up in a crucial moment when you really need to move'.
Dumbledore was his mentor in more ways than one.
I believe that first and second year, Dumbledore had a hand in it. As in, he allowed the events to play. But third year and up was completely out of his control. Dumbledore is still human, still has a shitload of responsibilities being with all his title, there's a limit to how much he can do until he just wouldn't have the time for being all manipulative and control freak with Harry's life. Unless he used a time Turner for that. Or cloned himself. Or used a house elf to drink polyjuice potion (or not) to do his work while he plots.
...You know what, you're right.
Manipulative Dumbledore actually is possible with magic being a thing.