Last Chapter...
Athena primly sat herself on the window seat out of respect.
After all, misery loves company.
And the weather looked like it could compliment her inner suffering just perfectly.
Chapter 14
Mother Knows Best
"You see, Tom, it is unlikely that one who makes your acquaintance would be quick to forget it. You are rather memorable, unless perhaps, a nifty spell of forgetfulness were to plague your meeting." Dumbledore's light eyes sparkled with faint mirth. Tom looked generally unamused and drummed his fingers lightly on the desk. The old man's eyes seemed to light brighter if anything while his face alternatively seemed to gain age. With a quirk of his thin lips, he continued on. "Wool's Orphanage is one of the places that your lingering traces had not been particularly enjoyable for those still remaining..."
Tom withheld a shudder of disgust and other overwhelming emotions he wouldn't name. His anger had yet to even begin to fade after what his old Professor discussed with him. To think, the boy seemed so bright yet stayed in such a place of filth and darkness. Would this young boy truly be returning to such a dim and cruel place each summer holidays?
This halted Tom in his tracks. For it was simply unacceptable, as he remembered clear as day begging to stay the summer at Hogwarts. Dumbledore would never allow it, Veers was out of the question...
He decided he would set a plan of action to remove the boy from Wool's permenantly, from behind the scenes.
Which was of course a calm reaction, and not at all odd for Tom to do. He was a very kind and generous and thoughtful man after all.
God, he'd known he should've burnt that place to the ground.
Harry believed that the luncheon had gone rather swell, despite the little upsets. He was now established as a Gaunt descendant, which simultaneously clarified that the connection to Tom Riddle and their 'Lord' was not present. It also showed their Lord had not announced his status as the true Gaunt, just as Harry was so sure. Riddle wouldn't want any possibility of a recognition- he could not admit his identity, not even to his followers and their families. A man used to keeping his cards close to his chest.
Speaking of taking risks, Harry felt the weight of the files inside his robes. As he walked with James and Sirius to the dormitory he determined to put it out of his mind the rest of the day. He would examine them at night, and then re-look over his school books. Class would start tomorrow after all and he intended to wow. Unlike his mediocre performance in the nineties, a cute result of training by the Dursleyes not to outshine others, now he would unfairly use all his expertise to ace these classes.
Ha, he thought. Aren't I unfair?
"Hey freshmeat, what the hell was with that little get together at lunch, huh?" A sneering sixth year boy called out to Hadrian with a girl maybe a year or two younger than him hanging off his arm. "You all buddy-buddy with them snakes now?" James and Sirius stepped protectively in line with Harry. "Who exactly do you think you are? I think you need yourself a little lesson from us big boys." Now within the firelit, sunkissed common room, Harry has met some opposition. The boy very obviously motioned two monstrous students roughly the same age as him over. They menacingly stood over Hadrian and crew. The girl with her bouncy chestnut curls tittered at the scene, and gazed on at the boy with fondness.
"Get going Potter, Black. I ain't got no bone with you to be picking." Harry saw Sirius boldly thrust his chin up and stand straighter.
"I'm not going anywhere." James copied Sirius' movement with a resounding answer himself.
"I got a bone to pick with you. Hadrian is my friend, and I don't abandon my friends." Harry was truly touched by their display, and hoped they wouldn't be harmed for it.
Of course, he realistically knew he would never let anything happen to the two. He was already unhealthily attached.
The three burly boys snickered a bit in a truly ugly way, before crackling their knuckles and removing their wands from their robes. Harry couldn't stand for what was playing out and swiftly pulled out his own phoenix wand.
"Expelliarmus," he cast quietly, in such a faint whisper of exasperation it was nearly inaudible. Just as fast, the boys' wands were gone and laying in the loose grip of Harry's hand.
He was left-handed, and he still held out his wand in the elder boys' direction in case of physical attack. But none would come despite the menacing looks on their faces, because right that second Minerva McGonagall burst through from the corridor.
"What is going on in here?" she exclaimed, face severe. "Well? You think that the wards are not monitored in the privacy of your dorms? Hm?" The professor looked truly irate with her students. Harry never could remember any such occurences of the Head of Gryffindor entering the dorms except the two or three situation extremities, certainly not over petty disputes.
And wards on the dorms which would... what? Sense ill intent? He supposed that such an explanation could work. Expelliarmus was hardly a fighting spell.
She was looking now at Harry, and the expression on her face booked no room for argument.
"Professor, you see-" He began.
"The little bugger went and start up picking fights with me and mine! He's a right freak," the sixth year, that started this all, cut in. The other two boys nodded viciously in agreement and looked at Harry as if he were sludge under their shoes. Despite the stupidity and lack of viability to that comment, it... stung. Harry flinched at the word 'freak', for obvious, Dursleyish reasons. He felt pathetic for the effect only a word could hold, but he supposed it was normal.
Didn't mean he liked it.
"I don't believe I was enquiring after you, Mr. Sayre! I am asking Mr. Riddle for his explanation on what exactly has being going on here," McGonagall said sharply. When she turned to Harry, he expected some of that coldness from her tone to drift into her expression, but she looked blank. So, in a quick manner, he told her precisely what had happened. The frustrated Mr. Sayre managed to hold his tongue until Harry was done, but he couldn't hold back the sullen comment afterward.
"That's not true, it went nuthin' like that."
"For goodness sake!" McGonagall said. "You are of decently noble standing, and raised in all of the olde and proper ways. Why do you speak like that of a street child?" Mr. Sayre turned a sour plum red and huffed before violently seating himself on the armchair he had originally risen from.
"Professor," Harry said softly, "I am willing to provide memory proof or partake in any other method of determinaton."
"That won't be necessary, Mr. Riddle," Professor McGonagall sighed. "I believe you in this instance. Mr. Sayre will face disciplinary action for his behavior, and you will be required to check in with the nurse for any maladies or injuries done to your person. I am not accusing Mr. Sayre, but this is a school wide requirement." Harry once again had never heard of such a thing happening in Hogwarts. There were fights all the time, and there were never any checks done on the participants. It was rather clever to do so as well, for what if a spell had been cast to be slow-acting or delayed? It would have been a quite useful school system. "Not to mention, Mr. Riddle, you had escaped the nurse earlier on I had heard. Snuck out on the intern, Madam Pompfrey." She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Harry's bashful look.
"Sorry, Professor."
"Just make your way there now, why don't you? Not you two too, Mr. Potter and Mr. Black. No need to have you two veering him away from the boring hospital wing. Speaking of bad influences... I received the most curious letter from your father, Mr. Potter. I do not want any such foolishness in..." Harry walked out of the dorm to the embarrassed groan of James.
Lucius Malfoy was a proud, vain, and generally selfish child. But oddly enough, unlike most children of such a degree, he was aware of it. And, even more surprising, is that he did not wish to be any of those things.
He always had heard, for as long as he can remember anywho, how much he was like his father. Ah, the joys of father and son, a pair like no other!
But Abraxas Malfoy was nothing like his son, and Lucius wanted to be everything that his father was. His father was considerate, softspoken yet commanding, clever- with that glint in his eye that wasn't malvolent so much as compelling. He was philosophical and charitable! He pondered very existence of man and still was so involved in the right-here-right-now. He truly loved his wife and family, unlike so many of the arranged marriages.
Lucius didn't have the heart his father did, it seemed. Nor the love for life itself or even knowledge and he didn't care much for philosophy. His influence came from his family line, and had nothing to do with his own merits.
But slowly he was changing that. He must, he thought to himself. He had to prove he was clever and insightful and an asset in his insight.
That is where Hadrian Riddle comes in.
He was powerful beyond anything Lucius had ever felt, and knowing that that display at lunch was clearly not his full ability, was intoxicating in its own right. It made Lucius feel greedy with Hadrian Riddle, even as he saw the bonuses of sharing his abilities to others so to say "look what I found, you are welcome."
And perhaps, if he were brave enough one day he would bring this boy of raw potential to his father, who would undoubtlessly approve.
...and then perhaps his father would bring Hadrian to the mysterious Lord. He was sure if that happened he would be in favor with the man.
Which was a good thing, correct? Who wouldn't want to be in good favor with such an influential and powerful man as the Dark Lord Voldemort?
And in the process of Hadrian Riddle, Lucius Malfoy would gain a bit of his own merits to stand by.
And one day, perhaps if he were brave enough, he will be a lot more like his father in the end.
A little girl with hollow gold hair pulled into two braids was dodging the steps of a tall and slender woman. This woman was well known for her intimidating beauty.
"Mother," she said. "When is father coming home?" The woman imperceptibly sped up and so did the child behind her, with no response. "Mother," she cried, "Mother, I want father to come home now. Where is he? Are we going to get him?" By now the little girl was becoming very frustrated with her mummy, who seemed to be ignoring her. Each step was more tiring and heavy than the last.
In a voice usually melodious, but now raspy with exhaustion, the woman finally spoke.
"Silence yourself foolish child, he lies among these bodies I am sure of it." The woman's bluntness did nothing for the stubbornness of a small child, who had yet to understand the weight of death.
"Father will come home! Father must!" The little girl stumbles along. "Mother- won't you please listen! You are being s-silly! " It was so hard to keep walking.
But her father never did come home, and that woman walked on through the quiet field of strewn men. The air was frigid and the snow burning in its coldness, but they did not yet feel it... and that little girl followed her mother through the reminants of the Stalingrad offensive.
The striking woman had wandered around in near silence for far too long searching for her husband's body, her daughter trailing faithfully behind, and soon the warming charms wore down and the little girl began to shiver. The lady walked on, and on, until her daughter simply couldn't go any further and sat to rest her feet. They ached so.
In a few hours she would be found by soldiers and brought in somewhere warm, but her mother wasn't found until much later. They would say she died of weather and sorrow, a waste of a remarkably bea
Her father did indeed die somewhere upon that wasteland, and many years later she would find his medallion in the wet grass of late Russian spring. She slowly began to heal for many years after that- and changed.
Sometimes she forgot, forgot to be better. You see until that moment with the medallion (which brought her great personal peace on the subject), the little girl grew a bitterness for weakness and did everything to fight it. Anything. That little girl was angry and nervous and had made a lot of bad choices.
Had wanted to be terrible.
That little girl that sat in an interrogation room in Moscow in the year of 1942, would never know weakness because she cried it so.
And that is where Athena's story began, and eventually it led her to meet Harry's.
Harry glumly eyed the opposite wall.
It was white, like everything else in the hospital wing. Intern Poppy Pompfrey fluttered around him, and proceeded to check him off as free to go.
"Oh no you don't!" She snapped before he could sneak out the door. Pompfrey bustled over and shoved two vials into his hands. "The blue is an edited version of pain relief potion if the Diffindo wound ever bothers you. The other one is a minor healing potion meant to increase the strength of the area in which you were hit." She eyeballed him intensely. "I expect you to take them when it is needed."
"I will," he promised. Although it was unlikely, he could act like he would.
"You better," she threatened. Harry put up his hands in a placating gesture with the vials and began backing out. Pompfrey snorted before turning back to her hospital wing, or what would be her hospital wing one day, and Harry made his exit.
In the mostly empty hallway, Harry was yet again approached by Lucius Malfoy.
"Mr. Riddle, the Professor Slughorn has deemed the beginning of the union of our houses worthy of serious celebration. There will be a little get-together of about fourty students or so, to celebrate this fine day." Harry nearly groaned in frustration. why must wizard society be so... societal, sometimes? But this was good for him. Maybe. He had barely socialized in over a year, and was going to have to keep adjusting in this timeline.
So he courteously took the envelope invitation into his head and parted ways with the Malfoy heir. Once he had made his way back into his dorms, he saw it lacked the three angry boys and clinging girl from earlier. Perhaps they found other children to corner. Besides from a cursory glance he avoided eye contact with anyone else before heading to his bed by the window.
His patience was not nearly as strong as he had thought, and he carefully warded his bed and crawled behind the curtains once noticing a fair lack of James and Sirius. With a quick fourish his whipped up the thick files encased in his robes. Warily he checked for any spells, curses, warding, or hexes on the pages but none were found. Harry was afraid he was missing something, but the innocuous folder sat there in innocence, a bold Hadrian splashed over the cover. He eagerly flipped over the first page to find-
Nothing. White, blank paper.
He flipped through the entirety of the pages to find them in the same condition. He sighed in a most put upon way, and drummed his fingers on the stack of apparently blank but not negatively charmed papers.
Why would Macnair want blank papers? And if this was a mission commissioned by the Dark Lord, why had Riddle been there and even questioned after the papers? And if Macnair was doing this for reasons that involved Hadrian Riddle and was not telling Tom Riddle, then what was the sacred importance of these papers that he would risk himself so? And how did Macnair know of him if Tom Riddle didn't seem to think he had a son? What was Harry missing? Was he really- Voldemort's?
He was seriously becoming invested in the backstory for Hadrian Riddle, the boy who's life he'd stole.
A sudden breeze drifted through the curtains and a couple of the papers drifted away. Harry snatched them from the air, but on the cover page he cut his thumb on the sharp, crisp edge of paper.
Hissing in frustration he placed the paper back on top of the pile before pulling out his wand to be rid of the red stain. Before he did, something caught his eye. An elegant script with beautiful looping letters faded into being.
Mother Knows Best