Tom bought them to the last patch and made them split up. The muggles hadn't noticed anything and it was still early in the morning so many were still sleeping. It was easier to kill more splitting up so that was why he'd done so.

He'd directed Pansy first.

"I don't really like getting my hands dirty but I suppose somethings are necessary..." she sighed and succeeded in killing about as many as Daphne.

"What's the problem? It's not like this breaks a nail," said Tom when she was done.

"It could. If in a duel," argued Pansy, "people might be shoving into each other and all of that in duels. This is like, one of the only times doing this my nails wouldn't get broken."

"Then you have no reason to complain," said Tom.

Pansy rolled her eyes in a good humoured way.

Tom worked with Blaise next.

"It's a big ask," Blaise said when Tom told him what he wanted him to do. "This is intense magic. You're asking us to get real deep for you," he said.

"You can still back out if you want," said Tom, "just that you might have to reconsider your loyalties to the group and whether you'll be allowed to continue on the journey with us."

"We can get kicked out of this?" asked Blaise.

"There are requirements to remain in the group yes," said Tom.

A vein jumped in Blaise's temple. "I don't care about staying in the group or not so much," he said, "it's just it's a big ask and I usually don't like doing more work than I have to. Alright, I'll 'prove myself'."

He then killed quite a lot of people, nearly as much as Theo. In fact, closer to Theo than any of the others.

Blaise was a skilled wizard, and he shot out his curses with a rapidfire accuracy. The air throbbed with this magic as he cast them, and soon he had succeeded in getting the job done in record time.

Tom felt momentarily happy as he viewed all of this. It looked like there were some powerful and useful witches and wizards the next generation could shape up to be. Pansy and Daphne had been reasonably talented as well, there was no reason to think they were magically retarded, but Tom could tell their talents lied elsewhere. It was no problem, there would be plenty of time for politics and people in all of this...

Once Blaise was done there weren't actually any people left for Tom to kill. This impressed him but also left a small bit of yearning in him. Like something scratching to get out. He had looked forward to killing a few people that evening, but he told himself it was better he conserve his magic for some of the other great things he had in store for all of them later on.

He congratulated Blaise warmly, and with that took the two of them back to camp.

They talked little, mostly stumbled and tried not to nap on the spot.

Once they arrived Blaise and Pansy pretty much went straight for a nap, Tom as well. Being up practically the entire night caught up to him now and he let the others continue with eating breakfast on the Monday of the sixth week as he slept for the majority of the day.

"What do you think of all of this?" asked Daphne. Draco, Theo, Astoria, Luna and Hermione sat in a circle around them. Blaise, Pansy and Tom were sleeping out of sight. The flames from the campfire flickered between them. They kept it on to cook breakfast and were taking their time through the meal. Today was a less rushed day than the other days had been and they had the sense there would be a bit of a break they would have before Lake Lethe.

"We got what we came for," was all Theo said, "there's been political tensions between the pureblood families and the rest of the families in magical Britain for some time. There is a call for a new politician of sorts. He came and promised to undertake a few activities which are in the pureblood families' agendas and lead to greatness; allowing us to take a part in it. Which we have done. We got what we came here for."

"If anyone wants to leave they still can," said Draco, "Tom is powerful. He's got good magic and skills and is a formidable wizard and he knows this. But he doesn't have full political power over us or anyone here. He is merely someone who has a view that aligns with us and offering us a chance to go on the journey together with him. We're mostly his comrades except for the fact that he's a touch more skilled than us. If any of us didn't like this or wanted to leave, we could leave right now, and he would have to accept whatever excuse we gave him. It is still light now."

"That's true," said Daphne, "in order to really change things the people in prominent positions in the ministry has to be on board with things. As well as the people who are bribing the ministry behind the scenes in order to pass the laws they want. These are the important people. As long as Tom doesn't touch those, he has no power in this world or society."

"Those people are kind of our parents, and other people our parents don't even want to do business with," added Astoria, "he's still quite a long way of from truly getting in touch with them. I think we're safe from any real influence he has now."

"He could get more influence, if he were to go through our parents, or the other prominent people in magical Britain," said Theo, "but currently I don't get the sense it's his goal, so we're safe."

"He'll probably try to influence your parents first, before anyone in the ministry," said Hermione.

"He is probably older than he looks and has had some sort of presence in politics before," said Theo, "so he may have mingled with our parents in a different time. It is possible they may have aligned forces at a point back then, but they would have to reagree to join forces now. So the continuity from the past isn't as strong."

"It's likely they still have similar views," said Draco, "but I'm not sure if he wants to go into politics and change laws. Perhaps he just wants to do magic around England for the cause? And he thinks laws will change themselves later."

"Maybe the ministry will change their minds about things when they know of what he's building and there'll be some debate to change a law in the ministry. Maybe that's the angle he's going for," said Luna.

"Which would be better if there was someone in politics on his side presenting what he's doing the right way," said Daphne, "that sounds like something Pansy and I'd rather do. It's less hands on and suits us better. I'd much rather chat with people in the ministry everyday than all this...work."

"We don't like doing all this work either," said Theo bluntly, "I don't particularly like all these units of work we've had to do in the past week. We might accept it better and complain less, but I'm not thrilled with it either."

"Aren't you two a bit young for that?" asked Hermione, "we're all about to start third year at Hogwarts."

"When we're older," said Daphne, "this could stretch on for years. Even if we wanted to quit this group, Tom could work more with our parents and he'd still be hearing about what he's up to through the grapevine. It's not like he'll stop once we stop working with him. He's got a goal."

"This is the sort of thing that takes years to do," said Luna, "Tom most likely wants to work on changing aspects of magical Britain for the next decade or so. We're about to enter periods of change."

"Will it disrupt school?" wondered Hermione, "so far it just sounds like he's trying to make society see things from the pureblood perspectives again."

"It depends on what issues between purebloods and other wizarding families he touches upon," said Luna, "some of it can get into riots, fighting, rebellions...some of it may be peaceful. I'd say anything can be possible at this current time."

"He most likely hopes the wizarding world will be better after all of this," said Astoria, "so the end makes the means worth it all."

"He's 16 chronologically but older than that," said Hermione, "something magical happened to him to force him to stop aging normally or something. When he broke free of whatever magical thing it was, he was in a 16 year old body, the time the magical thing happened to him. But mentally he's older than that. He mentioned it..."

"Of course," said Draco, "there's lots of different spells, enchantments, curses, alternate realities, and magical things that change someone's age, or the way they look. There's many people who get involved in dark arts and things like that that look a different age to their actual age. Quite normal if you truly study dark wizards, I'm not the most surprised to learn it."

"Many crooks and criminals in the magical world don't look their normal age," said Theo, "it's an idea we're sort of used to. So I'm not so surprised to learn he's not actually 16. Though there's too many possibilities about how old he actually is and what route he took to have his current appearance it is a waste of our time to speculate. We either know or don't."

"Is he dangerous then?" asked Hermione.

"He's a talented wizard with strong political views in topics that are a hotbed right now," said Theo, "that is all we know about him. No more no less. We don't know if he's dangerous to us, or he will turn out to be someone who brings up ideas that pose a real danger to us until time unravels a little. At the moment he is not dangerous however."

"I don't care about anyone else," said Daphne a little bit miserably, poking a stick into the fire to have something to do, agitation evident on her features, "I just care about myself and my family. If he acts in ways that benefits us, I'm happy, and he's a good person. If not I don't care. I only care about danger to me."

"Me as well," said Draco.

"It sounds so very selfish but it's so very true," said Astoria.

"That logic makes sense to me," said Luna.

"I guess..." said Hermione.

"Did he recruit you first?" asked Theo.

"I bumped into him on the last day of term," said Hermione. There had never been any reason she had for keeping her experience with him a secret. She'd enjoyed some of the moments they'd spent together, and she wouldn't tell this to anyone she didn't consider a friend, but she had never intended on keeping her experience of meeting him on the last day of term at Hogwarts, the way he introduced herself to her, and all of that a secret. Ever since the first day he made all these suggestions Hermione had accepted his offer to meet with her in the holidays, his offer to go on adventures for the summer, out of a mixture of curiosity, liking for him, and all the magic they could do together. She always felt like she had a route to step out, that she was never forced. But there had never been any motivation to keep any of it a secret. It wasn't like one of her reasons was because she wanted to join a secret society or anything and she was hellbent on not telling anyone who, where or why she'd met him.

"I had just woken up from being petrified on the last day of term. I'd just learned Ginny passed away in the Chamber of Secrets. I was in a bit of a mood..." she said. Five pairs of eyes stared at her curiously. She was the only one out of all of them who'd gotten petrified and it seemed word had spread around of the few unfortunate enough to be so there was a bit of curiosity about her experience. She could see it in their eyes.

"Since I was in the hospital wing I was on a different schedule than the rest of the school. I missed most people I guess, so I wondered about by myself and then found myself in the girl's bathroom where...I had a bit of a cry and everything..."

Draco snorted. Theo made an unimpressed grimace and Daphne rolled her eyes.

"He bumped into me there, said he was holding a funeral for Ginny and that he knew her somehow. Asked if I wanted to come. So I did, and then he said he didn't really have much plans for the summer and that he could practically relocate about anywhere. He wanted to live near me because he ... said he liked my company. He's kind of bookish alright! He has to be, with all the magic he knows. He most likely read a lot of it from books and we get along a bit okay? I said yes and-"

"You like his company too," said Daphne with a bored drawling voice as if this was old news to her, like it was obvious.

"Then what happened?" pressed Luna.

"and a few days later he showed up at my house. He confounded my parents and presented himself as a tenant. It worked out quite nicely. Then he got bored, wanted to start going on adventures and asked me to come with him. I said yes. We talked a little in between but I don't think it was all that much," finished Hermione.

"I've always dreamed about confounding my parents to go on wild magical adventures sometimes," said Draco, "but it wouldn't work because my parents are magical."

"Yep," said Daphne.

"I dream about putting a memory charm on my parents to go on adventures sometimes," admitted Hermione.

"I think all wizarding children do. Just that it's only the muggle-borns or halfbloods that can kind of get away with it," said Luna, "if you've grown up around magic all your life you're bound to look to it to solve some problems. Including ways of getting out of the house unquestioned and things like that."

"So he carried out a common wizard child's daydream on your parents, what did you do in the week before he recruited all of us?" asked Theo.

"We lived through the live reenactment we're going to make better," said Hermione.

"You went through a muggle tourist attraction?" said Daphne, "I mean. It sounds expensive, so there's that. But I just thought it'll be more fun..."

"Every adventure has to start somewhere," said Hermione, "besides, getting to camp out in the woods was a bit nice, learning all these new spells and stuff..."

"I think things are getting more eventful now," said Daphne, "the beginning of your adventure with him sounds boring. What were the muggles even like?"

"Old fashioned, prejudiced against witches and wizards still," said Hermione truthfully.

"See, boring," said Daphne.

"We didn't miss out on much," said Draco.

"Is he...associated with Voldemort?" Hermione asked. To her surprise none of the Slytherins or Luna flinched at his name. They even looked surprised to learn she didn't flinch when saying it.

"Look, just so we're all on the same page," said Theo, "you may have heard things about our parents through the grapevine. What is done is done. We can't control what people say about us, a large amount of which is untrue. So none of us are very interested in wasting our breath arguing against the many stupid or false versions of our families going around or our family history. We are above and beyond that. Though we are aware there are some things going around. We won't deny there's many stories spreading around about us, but we don't see a need to discuss it. We aren't interested in starting all of the rumours and stories again, and we're not interested in talking about it, making a big deal out of it now. So whatever you've heard about us and Voldemort, we're not saying anything more on it okay? We have zero interest in doing so."

"We mostly want to move on with life," echoed Draco.

"My family didn't really have all that much to do with Voldemort in the first wizarding war," said Daphne truthfully, "but there are more ways for purebloods to be involved in politics during that time than just being on Voldemort's side or not. For all you know, Draco and Theo's parents could've had some involvement with Tom during the first wizarding war, that didn't relate to Lord Voldemort at all. Completely different political matters or ideas."

"I never thought of it like that," said Hermione.

"They're all the same to you aren't they?" said Draco suddenly, "Lord Voldemort and pureblood politics. Pureblood politics and Lord Voldemort. What about just seeing Lord Voldemort as a member of a political party. One of the many our parents could've been involved with. It's possible for us to still be involved in politics now, in this generation, with Tom, and not care about Lord Voldemort or anything. I mean, out of this entire week, has he mentioned anything about that old political figure? Has he tried to start anything about him? No. Then it seems like he didn't bring politics about that political figure into it so there's no need to start now."

"Alright," said Hermione, "no need to get angry at me. I just...Lord Voldemort never seemed like much of a politician to me. Always some sort of tyrant or criminal..."

"He was a politician and his role in wizarding society after his graduation from Hogwarts mirrored that of a politician, albeit one pulling the strings behind the scenes," explained Theo, "just that he was involved in more magical madness than most politicians sometimes his political background is a little overlooked and most people focus on his magical crimes or criminal activities. He was more than just a criminal however."

"I suppose," said Hermione, "so all his magical crimes are just a part of it..."

"Yep. Part of the political landscape of England. Magical politics just got more complicated didn't it?" said Draco.

Daphne sniggered.

"I guess," said Hermione, "yeah, there's different political parties. Different political viewpoints. Pureblood families might join different ones, have different views. Lord Voldemort overlapped with some of them politically, but not all. He was mostly a politician of sorts, but he was also someone who was very powerful with magic and got involved in some magical acts that were illegal and things, whilst being a politician on the side. And of course, he was defeated by Harry Potter but not actually defeated..."

"Does Harry know how he vanquished Lord Voldemort?" asked Draco curiously.

Hermione shook her head, "no one knows. Not even him."

"Thought so," said Draco, "it was in the history books. No one knows how Harry did it. A complete mystery and incorrect credit to him if you ask me."

"It was probably more of an accident than anything," said Luna, "and the real reasons behind that series of events won't be so easily known to us."

"Do you think one day we'll find out?" asked Hermione.

"It'll certainly comfort Harry to know how he was mixed up in all of this, I hope so for his sake," said Luna.

"Some things might remain a mystery forever," said Astoria, "a lot of things in magical history are. We might have to get used to never knowing..."

They had some light conversation about other things, mostly the escape of Sirius Black which was a well known thing among magical folk by now (it was written about everywhere on the newspapers), and the fact that at the moment they couldn't tell if it related to Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort or anything. It seemed the Slytherins still believed Lord Voldemort the politician, was out there somewhere in a form, and there was likely to be more problems between him and Harry Potter, but the showdown hadn't occurred yet. And some news from the daily prophet was filtered to see if it fit the expectation for that.

Sirius Black as far as Hermione was concerned, was merely a criminal from a pureblood family who was a very skilled wizard, a little mad, and blew up thirteen muggles in a street which was a straight ticket to Azkaban. (Because he was caught.)

Many purebloods families were a bit mad because of some of the inbreeding that had been going on, and there was no direct link from Sirius Black to Lord Voldemort, he wasn't sentenced to prison for being a deatheater or anything, so Hermione couldn't tell of his escape had something to do with Lord Voldemort or not. He was a member of the pureblood family but not all of them were in the same political circles as Lord Voldemort...

"Our grey marks look a bit like the dark mark," said Hermione, "the one I'd read about that deatheaters have."

"It looks like many common tattoos that witches and wizards wear," said Theo, "lots of gang signs and symbols are based of those. Very common. If you wanted to start a gang of any sort you'd pick a tattoo looking idea you like. We can't say this has anything to do with him."

"Lots of magical organisations have some sort of identifying thing. It's hardly uncommon," added Draco.

"Could just be coincidence," said Astoria.

"Do you think we'd be put in Azkaban if we were found to be the ones behind this," said Hermione, "I've been so swept up thinking about it as some revolutionary political thing that should've been done ages ago, I didn't even think about the legalities of it all!"

"The laws are a bit different for the creation of historical magical places," said Draco, "and there isn't enough cases of this happening throughout history to have a straight answer. There is some time for a trial, hiring of lawyers, and all of that before any verdict can be reached, or there's nothing left to argue for."

"There would also be fear," said Nott, "this is a huge thing. Dark piece of magic. Actually quite revolutionary and cutting edge magic too. The ministry might not even want to face whoever created it. It's possible the ministry will give a paper warning, something that looks bad on paper, but be interested in knowing who built this, how they built it, and be interested in trying to get records of the exact sort of magic that went into it. That sort of thing."

"It's a more complicated road to Azkaban, and there is distance between us and Azkaban," said Draco.

"Yeah, I wouldn't have agreed to it if I thought it would be a straight ticket to Azkaban," said Daphne.

"Wizarding laws really aren't so stringent aren't they," said Hermione all of a sudden, "if you can build something like this and not go to jail immediately for it!"

"As many pureblood families have said," soothed Astoria, "there are many problems in contemporary wizarding society and have been for some time. It's not a perfect world, but we can make it better."

"France has better laws," said Luna.

"France has better everything," said Draco, "it's like an epicentre of magic. Lord Voldemort actually sounds like 'flight of death' in french. Ever since I first heard that name I had a suspicion the wizard had a bit of a soft spot for France."

"It's a bit glorified in our schoolbooks even," said Daphne, "when it's written how so many things come from France, or are better practiced in France and so on..."

They then got on discussions about France and it was a cozy majority of the day until Blaise, Pansy and Tom woke up around the afternoon. To woke up the latest, Blaise and Pansy were filled in on the conversation they had since, and then after they all had lunch Tom looked up at them all and simply said, "Lathe Lethe."

Hermione felt her blood run cold. This was it. One of the bigger parts of their adventure was finally coming together. It was time.

Author's Note: Lethe Lake is based of the myths around Lethe River by the way, but that's in America and I got the impression intercontinental appariation was dangerous and risky from canon so I didn't want to make the characters side-appariate that much for his story. It seemed too unrealistic so I made up Lethe Lake in England. The water from both lakes and rivers is found in a number of spots around the world in this story, but Lethe River is the most famous.

Also, I was wondering if all the characters seemed like they had their own personality, way of talking and essence to you? It was what I was aiming for but I'm not sure if it comes across as such to readers...

What do you think of Tom's character in this so far? How is he coming of to you?

Please review if you enjoyed as always.