Disclaimer: this story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Play My Game
Chapter Four – School and Other Evil Stuff
The discussion with Hermione and Ron went surprisingly well. He had had a hard time thinking them by their first names, or adapting to their childish banter, but eventually he had made it. He thanked Salazar again for his ability to easily adjust to situations. Still, it had not been a particularly hard challenge. He merely had to pretend he was fatigued, while the muggle-born girl told him of the lessons he supposedly lost, Ron Weasley making idiotic comments in-between. After what seemed like, Madam Pomfrey came in saying the fifteen minutes were over;the mudblood girl who was constantly rambling about homework and sounding as if she had memorised what the Professors said ad literam (not to mention the notes she gave him, wich were probably thicker than the textbooks themselves) scrambled out hastily, pulling the read headed boy with her. In a way, she reminded him of himself when he had beenin Hogwarts, the obvious issues aside.
In his own school years he had used to hang out with either those intelligent enough to make sense of his brainstorms, or, later, with those naïve enough to let themselves be manipulated. Tomhad never– and Voldemort still didn't – see the use of friends; they were a constant bother, always nagging over you and a liability. He had not yet attempted to capture the two because they were not likely to know anything. Even though Potter was an unofficial member ofDumbledore's Order, his sidekicks wouldnot be that privileged.
Theboy had tried to guide him through the ordeal, butunfortunately it turned out thatthe blasted boy could not hear anything that was going on in the 'real world', on the other side of the link. Still, at least they found that they could shut the link partially; Potter settled for trying to decipher the impossible Latin script.Voldemort had read the book at least a dozen times, so he was not expecting him to find anything. Still, he deserved to try; the author had apparently never heard of rime, tact, or even the word 'suspense'.
Well, be as it may, the next morning came the next challenge. What few people knew was that Lord Voldemort never ate scrambled eggs or pumpkin juice; on the other hand, Potter always ate those. So what to do?
Extremely disgruntled, and refusing to tell a whining Harry Potter how to call one of the resident house-elves to bring him breakfast, he ate it. He wasn'tabout to give himself away over such a detail like food.
Then came the lessons.Voldemort was a master in almost everyschool of magic he had studied, foremost being the Dark Arts and Legilimency, and, consequently, Defence, Transfiguration, Charms, Arithmancy and Occlumency. He could brew complicated potions some masters of the field could not, and recognised very rare and dangerous plants, animals and their uses. He could speak and write fluently in Latin, Ancient and Modern Greek, AncientEgyptian, Arabic, as well as in Anglo-Saxon, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Romanian, not to mention, Parseltongue.
Therefore, one could imagine, it wasn't exactly easy to adapt to a sixth year Hogwarts curriculum. Turning objects into magical creatures may have been near impossible for the average student, but for him it was child's play. He almost blew his cover as he transfigured his puddle of water into a dragon almost the size of his desk. Luckily he minimized it in time, but the teacher, Minnie McGonagall, he remembered her from school, had looked at him suspiciously.
He was more careful in potions, which wasn't exactly hard since he was paired with the Longbottom boy (once more regretting he hadn't attacked him fifteen year ago; at least he would have been easier to kill then Potter: by simply placing him into a potion's laboratory) who was terrified of the teacher, and hadlittle to nosense of timing. How he had gotten into NEWT-Level potions was a mystery, as Severus didn't fail to remind them. He had to resist bursting out laughing at the act the man was putting up just to please him.
At herbology he had been so distracted when a Hufflepuff started on a tirade about 'how evil You-Know-Who is', that his plant almost ate him. At lunch, it was the same dilemma as at breakfast.Voldemort never ate pork chops. Harry Potter loved them.
In Care of Magical Creatures they were dealing with baby Chimaeras, and in Defence some old Auror shot spells at them, but the woman was so old she could barely move. Her spells lacked strengthwhile she was too senile to remember even the most simple of notions. This was proved as she actually shot a cooking spell at some Irish Gryffindor, managing merely to make his robes tasteof chicken-soup.
So what to do in your free time? Granger proposed to go into the library until near curfew and study and he wasn't about to object. The read-head protested, but they still sat with their noses buried in books. Eventually, Longbottom joined them, begging for some help in Potions. Later came young Ginny Weasley with a blonde who looked around wide-eyed as if seeing the place for the first time.
About half an hour later, with a vein threatening to burst in his temple,Voldemort put the transfiguration text as calmly as he could down. Hermione, predictably, frowned.
"Harry, you know we have an important test."
Ron ignored her, as he put his own book down. His stomach rumbled.
"I'm hungry," he stated.
"Dinner's in an hour, Ron." said Hermione, eyes still on the book.
"Let's go down to the kitchen and beg the house-elves for something," he proposed, ignoring her.
Voldemort never ever begged! And certainly not a house-elf!
"I'm not coming. Potions, y'know" said Neville.
"Me neither. Vector's being a git about those bloody magical progressions," muttered Ginny, furiously scribbling formulas on a torn piece of parchment.Voldemort tugged it from her, seeing about half of it wrong and the other half over-complicated.
"That's not right," he said without thinking,pointing to the second row. "You can't replace the variable with a difference of 'k'. It would be like mixing ... wild magic with potions." he concluded, squinting at her tiny script. Potter really was blind as a bat. "And here – if you write it that way, you complicate it too much. You'd need twelve different incantations and a power booster to use the potential spell. If you do it like" he crossed out the next three lines and rewrote it using a completely different type of simplification "this, you get the same result, only simpler and easier to use. The whole point in Arithmancy is to write down the composition of a spell, with the intent of examining, changing it, or to create a whole new spell entirely – and this as simply and as fast as possible." He handed her parchment with the corrections back.
Ginny, Ron and Neville gaped at him. Luna just looked at him. Hermione took the parchment herself. Examining it, her eyes widened ridiculously.
"Harry, this ... this is ... absolutely brilliant!" she cried shrilly, and Madam Pince shot them a glare. Yep, he knew her. Irma Pince had begun working here while he had been in his third year. "How did you figure this out? You aren't even in Arithmancy, for Merlin's sake!"
He froze. Potter hadn't told him that! However, a quick glance at his schedule, which was on the table, confirmed it. "I read about it in the summer" he lied smoothly, trying to cover his mistake up. He would have loved to obliviate them, but Dumbledore was too good of a Legilimens not to notice something like that. Moreover, the advanced version of the Obliviate, the Memory Erasure Curse required a highly complicated potion, which he couldn't acquire or make here; he had to remedy that.
"Was it in one of those books Dumbledore sent you, mate?" asked Ron, glancing at Ginny, Neville, and Luna, obviously questioning their fidelity. Idiot. If you are not sure of someone's trustworthiness, you do not go blurting obvious secrets. Well, he did not complain. But the tidbit of information was interesting.
"Exactly" he said.
Hermione did not look convinced, though. "Are you sure? We had this exercise on the OWL exams as extra credit."
Tom pretended to look startled. "This exercise was explained in detail in the book"
"Wich book was that? I'd like to check it out." She was intelligent, a pity that she was a mudblood.
"I don't remember the title. Du- Moody sent it and said it was something new and not yet in the school library." He said Moody instead of Dumbledore because it would have been just too easy to check with the Headmaster. Of course, they could owl the old, retired Auror but the man would check with Harry Potter first.
"Moody sent you Arithmancy books? He really didn't seem the type," said Ginny.
"He didn't," agreed Hermione, watching him with narrowed eyes.
"Could we go eat something!" whined Ron from his right. Five pairs of eyes turned to stare at him.
Hermione commenced to reprimand him for not studying.Voldemort sighed inwardly in relief at her dropping the subject. Potter's brain was going to get him killed.
Some time later, as they made to leave, Luna pulled him aside.
"You really are a riddle, aren't you? Death flies a lot around here..." she trailed off dreamily, playing with a strand of her blond hair.Voldemort whirled shocked around, but she just smiled enigmatically and left, leaving him gaping like a goldfish in the middle of the library. A few stray students threw him odd looks.
"Harry, are you coming?"
Harry Potter, currently inhabiting the body of Voldemort, closed 'Poetry of Dark Curses of Soul and Blood' with a resounding thud. Trust the Dark Wanker to choose the driest book for him to read! After dozing off three times and looking up hundreds of misspelled Latin words (wich the charm couldn't translate for obvious reasons) he finally had enough. His stomach grumbled, but the stupid git didn't want to tell him how to call a house-elf, if he even had one. For all he knew, Voldemort could be keeping muggles as his slaves. It would certainly fit him.
Better not dwell on that.
Harry stood up, hearing a satisfying crack from Voldemort's neck. Oh, how he would love to break it! Catching sight of the mirror (and asking himself for the umpteenth time why he was keeping a life-sized mirror in his bedroom), he saw that he was still in the dirty robes from yesterday. Deciding he didn't want to know how Voldemort smelled without a shower, he went to the bathroom. Of course, it had to be made of black marble, giving it a rather cold appearance. Grinning slightly, he took out the Dark Lord's wand from his pocket turning the black into a warm red and gold. Much more comfortable.
Resolutely not looking into the (what else?) life-sized mirror beside him (just how vain was Voldemort?), he disrobed, blushing vaguely at the fact that He-Who-Is-A-Vain-Idiot wore no underwear and hopped into the shower. He half expected the water to be ice-cold, but it was luke warm.
Half an hour and several sorting-through-shampoos (he had five different conditioners, seven different shampoos and several hair-fertilizers!) later, he was as clean as he could get, and with a convenient spell made his hair smell of roses, just out of spite. Out of the immense wardrobe, he chose a pair of plain black robes, wich he transfigured into red and gold ones. Ha.
Now it was time to interrogate Voldemort about the meeting he had to have with the Death Eaters – weird name for a troop who of insane criminals who wanted to cause destruction, death and general mayhem. Well, just showed what kind of master they had.
A/N: Well, since nothing is interesting in the former A/N I deleted it and I'll just say this chapter had far fewer inconsistencies the the former ones wipes sweat off forehead
EDITED 26.07.2005