Year Six: Chapter Eight

Two important tasks remained before his meeting with the Headmaster. One was to spend the hour prior meditating, stuffing away as much Tom Riddle as he could while drawing out as much Harry Potter as he could manage. He doubted the false persona would last for very long, but an hour or two at a time should be doable and potentially life-saving.

The other was to find Hermione.

It took the map to find her. It turned out she was in the girls' dorm, which was annoying but not insurmountable. Unlike in Slytherin, he couldn't simply walk in, so he had to contact her indirectly. He folded a small note into a paper airplane and sent it flitting through the Common Room and up to the room containing Hermione. It slipped under the door, then rose again and glided the rest of the way to the girl.

Several minutes later, Hermione came out, carrying her trunk. Tom raised an eyebrow upon seeing it. Hermione sniffed. "If you're not asking me out here to apologize and invite me back, then we have nothing to say to each other."

Tom huffed a sigh and inclined his head. "I would like you to return, Hermione. I had a personal matter I needed to deal with, and I needed to be alone to do so."

"You had Ginny with you," Hermione pointed out, but a resigned understanding flowed through the bond.

Tom smirked. "You let Crookshanks stay when you want to be alone."

Amusement flowed through the bond even as she struggled to keep her expression disapproving. "You really shouldn't treat her like some kind of pet," Hermione complained, but it was said without much heat. After a breath she rolled her eyes and continued. "I kind of thought that might be it though, after thinking about it some. So I suppose I should be flattered that I at least qualify as a person."

"How did Severus's detention go?" he asked, leading her up into the boys' dorm. To his surprise, Hermione blushed. His eyes narrowed. "What happened?" Something hot clawed at his chest at the idea that something – anything – might have happened.

Hermione licked her lips and shook her head. "Nothing bad. We just… talked. He was… I think he was actually worried about you, in a way." She wrinkled her nose. "Now that I think about it, I think I sort of got the shovel talk. That's…" She shook her head violently. "Anyway, he wrote his lines, and I think I got his approval?"

Tom wondered what the shovel talk was, but it didn't seem terribly important if she wasn't even sure it had happened. What was important was that Severus hadn't… Tom struggled to think what, precisely, he'd been worried his servant might have done but came up with nothing. "Well done," he said rather than pursue the topic. He sent a sideways glance toward her as they climbed the stairs to the sixth year boys' dorm. Away from the bright lights and public space of the Common Room, his heart rate was speeding up, and he felt a cold sweat breaking out. He forced his breathing to remain steady and Occluded his nerves away as best he could.

It didn't work. "Are you alright?" Hermione asked as they entered the dorm. "You feel… kind of scared?"

Tom smiled tightly. "I have a meeting with Dumbledore this evening." He'd rather she think he was afraid of Dumbledore than let her realize what had happened to him. She was the exact last person he wanted to find out about it. Even Dumbledore would be preferable.

"Oh, for the meetings about, well, you, right?"

He nodded. "Presumably."

Hermione sighed and took his hand in hers and squeezed. "It'll be fine. I know it."

Tom's smile froze in place, and he contemplated whether the sudden desire to cut off his hand meant he needed to spend more time talking to Ron. Hopefully not. It was surely a perfectly normal urge.

Thankfully, he was able to extricate himself with the excuse of needing to go center himself before the meeting. And, because he knew Hermione would bring it up if she realized he'd done anything else, he went to the Room of Requirement and spent the remaining time meditating. Extra time couldn't hurt after all.

Upon reaching Dumbledore's office that evening, Tom took several deep breaths. 'I am Harry Potter, I am Harry Potter, I am Harry Potter,' he told himself, then raised his fist and knocked on the door, even though he was sure Dumbledore knew he was there already.

"Come in," came the disgustingly cheerful voice from behind the door.

Tom entered and waited patiently as Dumbledore finished placing a memory within a Pensieve. "What kind of memory will we be watching?" he asked curiously.

Dumbledore smiled, eyes twinkling. "Well, let's go in and see, shall we?"

No matter how little Tom wanted to, he simply tried to look excited and entered the memory with the man.

They found themselves near Little Hangleton. Tom frowned and followed a ministry official he vaguely recognized as being a prior head of the DMLE. Ogden possibly. They followed him until they reached the hovel his mother'd grown up in. "Sir?" Tom asked, tensing as they entered after Ogden and spotted Merope.

Dumbledore gestured toward Marvolo, who was showing off his ring. Tom studied it, eyes narrowed. It was the same as his horcrux, of course. Dumbledore sighed. "He felt a fierce affection for both the ring and his son. For his daughter, he felt decidedly less."

Tom fought to keep himself relaxed, because it was painful standing here, watching the pitiful creature his mother had been. He'd already known. He'd taken the memories from both his uncle and father before killing the one and framing the other. So he knew just how great a failure his mother was. That didn't make it any easier to be reminded of it though.

Seeing his father was worse. Tom had to fight to keep his expression politely curious. He'd killed the man, full of the self-righteous feeling that he'd never have abandoned his child and furious at the life the clearly wealthy man had refused him. Now, though, he knew. Bile rose in his throat at the idea that he was in any way lesser than this man. No. His father simply was too weak to even defend himself, let alone attack Merope Gaunt. Had he the chance, Tom was sure the man would have done far worse than simply kill her. At least Tom hadn't caused any suffering. Thankfully, the memory ended soon after, and they were ejected from the Pensieve.

Once they were both sitting, Dumbledore brought out the ring from a drawer in his desk. The same one from the memory, and the same one that should have been safely hidden within the Gaunt shack, acting as his horcrux. Tom stiffened. "That's -" he started, only to remember where he was and who he was speaking to. "That's the ring from the memory, right?"

Dumbledore smiled and placed the ring down on the desk between them. "Yes, it is. Over the summer, I went on a small adventure to retrieve it. If you'll recall, I told you that Voldemort created horcruxes. This was one of them."

"How?" Tom demanded before abruptly realizing that he'd broken character. He forced all the Griffindorishness he could manage into his expression, trying to make it awed and curious rather than alarmed and frustrated and stressed. "I only managed to kill the diary by using a basilisk. Surely the ring would have had some defenses on it too."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled as he sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his lap. "It most certainly was, my dear boy. But although Voldemort has lived for quite some time now and is both powerful and brilliant, I've been around even longer, and I'm told I'm fairly powerful and brilliant myself. The ring had an obscure necrotic curse on it, along with an unusually strong compulsion to put the ring on, thus activating the curse. However, I'm afraid Tom has always overestimated his own abilities. I am more than capable of resisting the compulsion and removing the curse. After that, it merely required judicious application of the Sword of Gryffindor, fortuitously infused with basilisk venom in the process of battling against Tom's first horcrux."

Tom grit his teeth against the insult and smiled. "I'm glad you're alright, sir," he said. He actually meant it. If Dumbledore had died off alone in Little Hangleton, it would have deprived him of most of the pleasure of the man's death.

"Indeed. It would have been most unfortunate had I succumbed to the curse there," Dumbledore agreed. "And now, as it is quite late, I believe I shall call an end to this first meeting."

Tom opened his mouth to protest – how many meetings did they have to have? – but decided against it. He doubted it would change anything, and his role as a Gryffindor required a certain amount of blind loyalty to the man. … Just thinking about it made him ill. Who knew what might have happened if he'd actually been Sorted into Gryffindor.

When he left, he found Luna waiting for him with Severus. Tom raised an eyebrow at the pair. "Yes?"

Severus sneered at him quite impressively. "Move aside, Potter. I must speak with the Headmaster."

Tom rolled his eyes, but obeyed, then turned to Luna. "Did you need me?" he asked.

She nodded. "I…" She held out a torn photo and a broken necklace. Both looked old and worn but well-loved, and Tom took them after a gentle prompt from her. Then Luna gave him a sheet of parchment folded up into a flower. "I've decided." She looked for a moment like she might say more, but then she simply shook her head and slipped away.

Tom examined the photo as he strolled back to Gryffindor. It showed a much younger Luna with a woman who could only be her mother. The magic that had once animated it was gone, and it was impossible to restore that movement without the negatives. Tom narrowed his eyes and turned his attention to the origami flower, assuming the necklace was something similarly sentimental and similarly ruined. Once unfolded, the flower showed the arithmetic equation for some manner of spell. Tom studied it, eyebrows raising as he fit together the variables to get a rough picture of the resulting curse. His lips curled upward, his mood much improved.

Ginny noticed as he climbed into bed, not even pausing upon seeing Hermione there, reading and pretending she wasn't paying attention. "You seem like you're in a good mood," she said with a look that clearly said finally.

Tom didn't care. He handed Ginny the photo and necklace. "Do you recognize these?" he asked, settling back against his headboard to learn this new curse. It had been ages since he'd had something worth his attention academically. Luna's mother must have designed it, because it was like nothing he'd ever seen before. He pursed his lips. Voldemort really should have tried to recruit her. It seemed like she was far more interesting than he'd believed at the time.

"What's that?" Hermione asked curiously, looking first at what he'd given Ginny, then at what he was studying.

"These belong to Luna," Ginny said with a frown. "This is one of the only pictures she has of her mom, and this necklace belonged to Mrs. Lovegood." She looked up, and Tom felt anger beginning to burn through the bond. "Who did this?"

"Most likely her dormmates, but I plan to target every Ravenclaw that doesn't already belong to me," Tom told her. "This seems to be a curse Luna's mother created." He hummed to himself as he worked through the equation, noting and correcting parts that were inefficient or unbalanced and admiring the spell's unique design. His arithmancy was more precise than hers, but she was so much more creative with it than he'd ever have thought to be. So caught up in his newest project, he hardly noticed the two girls with him, leaving their interactions to whatever bits of his mind could spare a moment for them.

It wasn't until around two in the morning that Tom realized how long he'd been focused on the curse in front of him. He'd only even stopped then because he'd reached a critical error in the arithmancy. The rest of the flaws (few that there were) would only affect the spell's operation, making it, at worst, simply fail to cast. This one though… After creating a spell, one had to test it, but testing this as it was would cause an explosion. The caster would certainly have died.

Considering Luna's personality and the items ruined, Tom wouldn't be surprised if this was the very spell her mother had been working on when she'd died.

He set the curse aside. He wanted to look at it when he was more rested. If this really was the spell that had killed Luna, she must have expected him to fix it to some extent. That wasn't enough though. For Luna, and his own pride, he would perfect it.

He closed his eyes, then stiffened as he took stock of his body. He could feel Hermione's wild hair tickling his arm and remembered she was there. He didn't need to look to know what he'd see if he opened his eyes: Ginny curled in his lap, the fingers of one hand tangled in her hair and the other hand under her cheek (thankfully, because she drooled), and Hermione beside him, her breathing soft and steady, and her body relaxed and still. He swallowed and forced himself to keep breathing normally, timing each breath to what seemed like a reasonable length even as his diaphragm spasmed, wanting to speed up his breath to go along with his racing heart. He could do this.

A feeling of warm comfort washed over him from seemingly nowhere. It took him a moment to trace it. Luna. Tom realized his emotions had been leaking through the bond enough for her to have noticed, though obviously not so much as to affect Ginny and Hermione's sleep. Had she stayed up, expecting that he'd need her assistance? He grit his teeth and tried to dampen the feeling of shame that he'd reached the point that a girl barely out of puberty felt he needed her aid.

"I'll be fine," he told her, even though she couldn't possibly hear him. The feeling didn't lessen, so Tom gave in. He leaned against that warmth in his mind, using it to shield him from his memories. In time, between that soft comfort and his own exhaustion, he fell asleep.

Morning brought the return of the anxiety, but it also allowed him to leave the cause of it behind, so he hurried to the Great Hall rather than stay in bed reading as he might otherwise have done.

"Good morning, Potter," he heard and turned to look quizzically at Astoria Greengrass.

She smiled and held up a thin rainbow-colored book with a heart-shaped lock on it, the sort of thing aimed at young girls only just beginning to explore the idea of privacy. A diary. Tom shut his eyes and grimaced. Of course she would keep a diary.

"I spoke to you yesterday, and you Obliviated me after. Was it helpful?" she asked pleasantly.

This was why he vastly preferred murder to Obliviation. Without knowing her much better, there was no way he could eliminate her memories of every part of investigating and planning prior to their conversation, and he certainly couldn't erase anything she'd written prior to speaking with him. Killing her wasn't an option, and he supposed pulling a Gilderoy Lockheart on her wasn't acceptable either. So he nodded curtly and entered the Hall, heading to Gryffindor table without comment.

Astoria followed him, smiling. "Good. You feel like you're feeling better. Not, you know, by much, so I wasn't sure if that was wishful thinking on my part. I'm glad there was actual improvement. Did you erase Weasley's memories too? Or were you reasonable about things?" She shrugged at his glare. "I figured you'd probably Obliviate me, but I wasn't sure what kind of mood you'd be in after, so I couldn't predict if you'd let Weasley keep his memory or not."

"He still remembers," Tom bit out. He sat and was irritated but not surprised when she slid onto the bench next to him.

Astoria beamed at him and sat back, hands behind her to keep her from falling off the bench. "That's good to know." She showed him her diary again, then slid it into her bag. "I have more than one method of finding out if I've been Oblivivated, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't try again."

Tom frowned at her. "Why?" No teenage girl should be so concerned about her memory being erased.

The blonde shrugged. "After her second year, Daphne told me she'd heard a rumor that her teacher - that Lockhart guy - had Obliviated some people. Some of the older Slytherin girls had been talking about it, and it made Daphne nervous, since I mean, how many times do you naturally forget things, so how could you be sure if you hadn't had something removed? In the end, he left, so she got over it." Astoria shrugged again and stole a piece of toast. "Anyway, it made me nervous too, but unlike Daphne, I prefer to be proactive. Now, while I might not be able to stop someone from Obliviating me, I can make sure they don't get away with it."

Tom wondered at the fact that none of the Gryffindors had, in Potter's memories anyway, so much as considered the possibility that Lockhart had been using his skill while acting as their teacher. "For the best," he said after a moment. "I'm not completely convinced that Barty didn't do something similar while pretending to be Moody."

Astoria gave him a disgusted look. "Thanks for ruining my appetite. Ugh." She pushed away from the table and swung her legs over the bench. "Well, anyway, I don't remember it, obviously, but I know what I already knew, so if you want to talk about things with a girl, I'm available, and don't do it again because it won't work. Think that covers everything, so I'll see you later."

Tom watched her go and, because he was very conscious of the public venue, managed to resist the urge to scream. Absolutely nothing was going well this year.

AN: To cheese12345: Yes. Harry will come back. I've always intended for him to; in fact, the scene in which he comes back is already written, even though it won't happen for quite some time yet. (Spoiler: Tom and Harry don't get along XD)