A/N : Eh, this chapter's a bit cheesy in my opinion, though it's key to his "traveling far and wide" that Dumbledore mentioned in book two…and, just so you know, I've never considered Melantha absolutely "sane", she is a bit – er – odd…^_~
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Chapter #8 – What Lies in Albania…
The trip to Albania was much shorter than the one they had taken from Denmark to Italy. In only a few short hours they arrived at the manor Cavius had given them great description of right before they left. He had been right, too. It did seem like an oasis in the middle of the dense green forest around it. He was sure, though, that it had to have dozens of Muggle repelling charms on it, as that it would certainly be noticeable by any passing Muggles, especially if they were in airplanes. As soon as he landed, he felt like he had entered the safest place in all the world.
When Tom met his new teacher, he was a little surprised by her. Melantha was a deeply tanned, slightly plump woman with stern brown eyes. Her face tended to remind Tom of a cat's face, as that her features were rather pointed so that she looked to have a muzzle, and her slightly squashed nose did not help the image much either. Her long black hair was always worn in a plait that she wore around her head like a circlet. She only ever wore fine robes of varying shades of purple, no matter what she was doing.
His new teacher only gave him the rest of the day after he arrived to get himself settled in his new surroundings before plunging into lessons. She even made Lena work, making the young witch go into the forest and collect wild herbs and tend to her gardens. Lena had told Melantha their first evening there that her father was a potion master and she was on her way to becoming one as well. Neither of the new arrivals complained about what they were doing, though, for they both loved the chores.
What Tom was learning from Melantha was exactly what he had set out to learn. It was the complete opposite of Defense against the Dark Arts. Instead of learning and practicing the counters for curses, he was learning and practicing the curses as well as counters for them, like he heard was the way they did things at Durmstrang when it came to the Dark Arts. He perfected his Cruciatus and Imperius curses while he was under her tutelage. But there were other spells and curses that he could never have thought of that she taught to him.
Melantha also instructed him the finer points of dueling. She said that this way he would not only be able to understand the way things worked in a real situation, but it was also good practice, for he was sure to end up in a duel sooner or later. Tom was fairly decent at it in the beginning, as was Lena, for Melantha insisted that she learn this as well. Within a few months of starting this training, both of them had improved greatly, though Tom was far better at it than Lena.
The only thing that Tom disliked about Melantha was that she had told Lena that it was simple to Apparate to the Nisi apo Hekate, the all-Wizarding island near Thira that was the location of the Grecian shopping complex, or back to the Aurorius Villa. Lena was gone sometimes all day, coming back with bags of items, but Melantha made sure she did not go shopping too often as that Lena did have chores to do around the manor.
Tom's headaches came back again full force while he was studying with Melantha. He had succeeded, somehow, at not getting any severe ones when he had been in Rome, except when he had been brewing some particular poisons, but Cavius had said the fumes from those often gave headaches. Melantha, though, absolutely refused to accept any excuses for his taking a break from studying, even his headaches. She whipped up a potion that even made Lena gawk in envy. The potion, though tasting like burnt beef, completely got rid of his headaches, even at their worst. Tom had a feeling, though, it was too good of a thing to last forever.
Once the Dark witch had decided that they had learned dueling well enough, she dropped those teaching sessions with them. While Lena took the time to look into making some ancient Greek potions she had gotten a book on, Tom started going through books in Melantha's library looking for information on legilimency and occlumency. Ever since he had first heard of it in Denmark from Soren's group, he had wanted to learn more about those obscure branches of magic. It luckily did not take him long to find the books he needed and he began his study on the subject, though Melantha's library had nearly as many volumes as the Hogwarts' library.
When Melantha discovered his private search, though, she pulled him out of the library and into the room she had set up for his training, giving him the practice she knew he needed in such a field of study. Though Tom appreciated this very much, the fact that her use of legilimency on him at first allowed her to delve into his mind and see things that he had let few others know about rather unnerved him. She never said anything when she saw these things, though she did sometimes giving him curious looks. But after a while, she began to call him Voldemort, for she had seen how much he hated his birth name and so she would not disrespect her student by calling him Tom.
The added distance between himself and his friends, not to mention his busy schedule with his teacher, seemed to cut down on the amount of correspondence he received and sent – but most of his friends were settling down and having families and did have as much time either. His letters from Nathan and some of his other friends had stopped completely. Crinis and Rex were still sending a letter a month typically. Darcy had only been writing his periodically, as that he had recently gotten married. Tom was actually thankful, though, that the letters from Mr. Westbrook had finally ended. However, Lena was still writing to her father weekly about things. He had absolutely no idea what she could have so much to tell her father, though.
The summer months drifted away rather slowly it seemed, with Tom being worked into exhaustion nearly every day. But between his normal lessons, the examinations Melantha gave him every other day about his learning, the duels she was having with him, and the legilimency and occlumency lessons, it was no wonder he was being worn out. It was all well-worth it, though. The best thing about it was how complete he was beginning to feel. He knew he was well on his way to fulfilling is dream, his plan.
Autumn passed in a flurry of visitors. It did not seem like a day passed without some associate of Melantha's dropping by. Words in languages Tom and Lena did not understand drifted through the house. But even with all these guests, Melantha did not let up with her teaching Tom at a constant pace, often showing off her student and his abilities to her guests, which rather embarrassed him.
Soon autumn too was gone and a mild winter settled over them. Melantha quickly switched what she was teaching Tom to potions, though she was nowhere near finished with teaching him curses. She simply changed the lessons because she wanted to break the slight monotony that was occurring. They were doing potions like those he had seen in one of the books in the Restricted Section of the library at Hogwarts, Moste Potente Potions. Lena always joined in on his lessons, at least the ones in which Melantha was telling him about a potion she had not already concocted herself.
On the day after Yuletide, when Tom was headed out to go get rainwater for the potion he was about to start, he found all the water barrels smelled as though they had something rotting in them. Next thing he knew, the chickens Melantha kept were surrounding him, each with a tiny, deformed, nude elf on its back, shouting curses at him and their multicolored, elaborately decorated headgear catching the sunlight. His teacher suddenly burst from the house, a large sachet in one hand and a shoe in the other.
"Don't make me do it," she yelled, brandishing the shoe at them.
All the elves dismounted the chickens they were on and hurried off, but did not disappear from sight. Melantha poured some dried flower petals into the water barrels around her house, muttering swear words in several languages. Once she had finished, she explained that the elves, Callicantzaroi, which were native to the area, liked to bother her every winter. The only way to get rid of them was to burn a shoe and toss hyssop in the water and chicken coup. She yelled at the lingering elves she saw as she returned into the house, threatening them with the shoe again, and they finally disappeared.
Tom was too stunned by it all to say anything, or to even move. It took him nearly a full ten minutes to finally remember why he was even outside. By the time he had returned to the house with his water, Melantha had returned to the yard, shoe in hand, to get rid of the little elves when they started running back across the yard to cause some chaos. She lit the shoe aflame with her wand and tossed it at the group. They scattered and did not return the remainder of the winter.
The rest of the winter passed with little other incident. Some of Melantha's Greek colleagues would come and stay a few days. To Tom many of them seemed to be a lot "darker" than Melantha with the way they looked, dressed, and carried themselves. But he noticed they all respected his teacher greatly. He knew that appearances did not matter, though, for there were many wizards that looked like very respectable citizens that were not that way at all.
As the spring approached, Tom looked back over the past months and could not believe how much he had learned in so little time. He had gained a much wider view of the Dark Arts in the previous six years since he had left Hogwarts, but it did not seem like so much time had passed. He could brew just about any potion Lena could, but his skill at it was still not anywhere near hers. He was still better in a duel than Lena, though. He had learned many good curses that he knew would one day come in handy. He knew more about Dark devices than he had ever thought there could be. He had even become decent at legilimency and occlumency, though Melantha had told him that it would take years to become fully skilled at those arts.
Tom had slowly started to become more interested in magics from other countries, ones that had developed separately from those of the Mediterranean region (Hermetic magic). Melantha obliged his desire to learn these magics, but did so with a little reluctance for some reason. Tom did not know why she was acting with hesitance when she was teaching him these things and it bothered him some. It was as though she did not think he was capable of learning spells from other nations, other systems of magic. He tried his best at all the spells she taught him, though, and hoped that he would show her that he could do these as well as any other spell from Hermetic magic.
But, when the end of March was approaching, Melantha stopped in the middle of a lesson and left him alone in the library looking bewildered. She had locked herself in her room and would not come out when Tom, Lena, or any of the house elves asked her to. She reappeared, though, at dinner. The look on her face told Tom immediately that there was something wrong.
"Melan…"
"No, let me speak first." She smiled at him with the caring smile she often showed him. "You are a wonderful student, so do not doubt that. I do not think that you are incapable of anything. But…I think it would be best if you would leave my home and seek study elsewhere for now."
"Why?"
"It is hard to explain." She looked a bit uncomfortable, as she had been doing for about a month, since they had started his most recent studies. "You just need to learn how magic really works. It is not as you think it is, I'm sure. Some of the questions you've asked me lately about things, they all point to it. And I am afraid that this is just something that I want you to find out for yourself and not have me teach you. It will be more fulfilling, more exciting for you to learn it this way."
"What do you…"
"You will learn soon enough, Voldemort." Her smile returned, broader than before. "And when you become the great Dark Lord I know you will be in the future, I will be happy in knowing that it was I that set you on the path to discover the greatest knowledge about magic there is. A truth that most wizards do not realize exists because they have too narrow of a mindset and worldview. Find that truth and make me proud."
And with that, Melantha turned and left him. Tom looked to Lena, but she was just as puzzled about what the Dark witch had said and meant. They decided with only a glance to each other to go ahead and pack up their things after dinner and leave the next day, but Tom was agreeing to this all reluctantly. He had enjoyed being Melantha's student for the past eight months. She was a great teacher. But he would do as she had requested of him and leave her home…but where he could go to discover this "truth" confounded him.
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To my reviewers –
Lady Mandara Snake – by the time I get rid of Lena it'll be nearly the end of this whole story…you can have master in your little world, but while your visiting mine, Lena and Voldemort are together…and the closeness that develops between them would be hard to replace…though I hope your not getting Voldemort doesn't make you hate me or the story…
(insert name here) – yes, you will live it down, eventually…though I'll try not to bring it up again…Dumbledore's sole purpose isn't Grindelwald, it's just what he wants the most, to be face to face with him (to duel him, etc.)…and you may have a point with your saying "Some trait that one can only have by *being* the Dark Lord?"…keep that in mind till later in the actual story…and of course Tom would reflect on what's going on in his life after that, it just makes him more human (and he is still human at that point, remember?)…and when you say "preaches to Harry about the power of one's choices to effect the future", why can't Dumbledore still believe that then? He's made a choice about letting Tom do as he wishes, giving him freewill…Dumbledore's just choosing to use Tom and whatever he chooses to do…did that make sense? It was the best I could describe it at the moment, so sorry if I confused you…^_^;; Yes, Tom is becoming more controlling of Lena, though not too much yet…and, yes, it is because of both the things you said, his study of the Dark Arts and his lack of "discipline", though he's not really seeking out anyone that would make him "act nice", as it were…
Liv – yes, more forceful with Lena…though she's not really around enough to annoy him (though her shopping annoys him enough)…and you had the right idea about Albania…I did think that there would be some reason he chose Albania to run off to after the "Potter Incident" (and there's going to be a very good reason he didn't run to Lena for help)…Dark devices are fun…^_^
lord archimonde – I LOVE SNOW!!! Too bad it's nearly the end of winter…*sigh* And Melantha wasn't his *real* teacher, just one of his most important and most certainly his favorite one…Tom won't be getting rid of Lena, sorry…don't really mean for her to be annoying or do I? Hmm… Anyway, she plays a significant role later in the story…there's a reason I have her around other than Tom's lust interest (can't say "love interest" because he doesn't love her)…
RivanKnight – yes, more teachers…his third one is come and gone, there are three more to go…^_^ Though I'm nowhere near the middle of his travels yet…yes, Lena is addicted, but, no, nothing stands in the way of her shopping (though making potions are slowly starting to look more and more appealing to her than shopping)…*munches brownie*…
RiddleLight – short chapter? This one better? And don't say "sub" around me, I hear about them enough as is…*sigh* *wipes of "ducky" charms* Gee, thanks…