There was a potion - dreadfully easy to make and an essential inclusion in any decent wizard's personal stores - that, when imbibed, instantly removed the lingering negative effects of any sort of inebriation.
But Tom did not have any of this potion. Because he had never needed it before. Because hangovers had never been a problem before. And even if he wanted to brew it, he couldn't, because at that moment there was not a single fucking thing on this earthly plane of existence that could convince him to actually stand up and walk anywhere.
He had made it back to his flat after the party, amazingly, and had collapsed on or somewhere near the bed. He then proceeded not to move for, quite possibly, days.
At least that was what it felt like.
He had a wand... somewhere. Maybe he could conjure something. But what? A glass of water? A cold compress? A hole in space-time so that he could go back to his younger self and curse him to oblivion for ever agreeing to go to that stupid, horrible excuse for a social event?
As if the universe was answering him, or laughing at him, there was a loud tapping noise at the window.
The owls, he had realized a while ago, had launched a fully-fledged conspiracy against him, and were determined to make his life hell. They knew. They knew now was the perfect time. Perhaps they were omniscient.
The tapping continued, and he was fully aware that it would never stop, not even for the Apocalypse, which would have been nice to have at that moment. So he found his wand and managed to open the window from the bed.
The owl flew in and landed on the duvet, all two pounds of feathers and pomposity hopping up to his face and sticking out its leg. He took the tiny scroll it offered, and then it hopped back toward the window, leaving a nice mess on the bed sheet before flying out.
Still not bothering to sit up, he unfurled the tiny paper.
Need more time. Unexpected issues. Going dark for a while.
-The Killbliviator
He regretted ever allowing Lestrange to choose his own operative name.
Hogwarts had been teaching young witches and wizards for almost a thousand years. It had an impressive graduation record. What was even more impressive was its survival rate, especially compared to other magical schools.
Mahoutokoro, for example, suffered through a long period in the eighteenth century where roughly a third of the student body routinely disappeared without a trace, and it took authorities three years to finally figure out that the new giant birds they used to carry the primary students to and from school had been poorly trained, and were dropping children willy-nilly into the Philippine Sea.
An acceptable survival rate for magical educational institutions was about seventy-five percent. For centuries, Hogwarts' survival rate was ninety-five percent. Within the past decade, however, it had dropped to around 91.2 percent, which was still considered commendable. Thus when students went missing, the staff did not tend to fret right away (which was also likely the reason they were not at one hundred percent).
Tom was not aware of this. So when several first-year Ravenclaws did not show up for class one morning, and none of the other students had any idea where they were, he was the only one to really make a fuss about it, despite technically being the single person responsible for the school's recent 3.8 percent drop.
It wasn't that he cared so much as he didn't want to be held liable in any way.
The three missing Ravenclaws weren't the last. On Thursday, a normally studious and vocal first-year Slytherin was conspicuously absent from his afternoon lesson, and upon being asked where he was, the other Slytherins responded with shrugs and "I haven't seen him since Sunday."
And Tyre mentioned in passing in the staff room on Friday that he noticed one of his first years had missed that morning's class.
"Probably a few spells gone wrong, or a virus going 'round," he had said after Tom questioned him.
"Is no one looking for them?"
"They'll turn up eventually, son. They always do. No need to fret."
When he was a student Tom had found Hogwarts to be a fascinating, whimsical place full of mystery and wonder. As an employee he found it frustrating, dangerous, and very poorly managed. The staff seemed to take a hands-off approach to almost everything outside of blatant disciplinary issues, until something was either burning down or blowing up. Or melting.
Had he paid a bit more attention when he was a student he probably would have noticed, but he'd been too busy benefiting from the teachers' hands-off approach to care.
On the next Monday, a little over a week before the Ministry was due to arrive for their inspection, someone finally brought the issue to Dippet's attention. Together the teachers searched the castle and grounds, motivated mostly by the threat of the inevitable failing grade they would receive if the Ministry were to show up amid a regional missing-child search.
By Wednesday they'd managed to find three of the first years - or, to be more specific, two and two-thirds. One had somehow merged himself at the molecular level into a wall behind a tapestry while trying to hide from bullies, and had to be extricated carefully using advanced separation charms. Another had attempted to make herself taller, but overshot her goal by about ten feet, and had been hiding in the Forbidden Forest, where she blended in perfectly as a tall, thin, hormonal tree with self-esteem issues.
They never could figure out exactly what the third child had done to remove his legs below the knees, but at least he'd been found.
There were still two children missing, but Dippet had marked it down as a success ("three out of five isn't bad!") and the searches ceased. Focus now turned toward the inspection and other end-of-term issues, one of which would become an unbearable nightmare for Tom.
Despite a few false starts, he had made considerable progress incorporating the Dark Arts into his lessons, and he was proud to say that almost all of the students in the fifth year and above could probably do a considerable amount of damage in the outside world, had they wanted to.
And his classes were very enthusiastic about learning and practicing what they were careful to call "advanced methods of personal defense."
The only problem was that, in addition to absorbing the material, the students also had to be tested on it.
In a mid-term exam.
A mid-term exam that had to be approved by the Headmaster before it was given.
So, while not having done anything to prepare for the mid-terms before November (in other words, making them), he had also dug his own grave by not teaching much of anything that could pass as acceptable on an exam. Or anywhere, for that matter.
He felt like he should have been warned about this.
Or maybe he had been.
The walk to Minerva's office, while necessary, was also slightly annoying. He still had not properly apologized, so he didn't expect her to be too keen on helping him, but he was desperate. Not desperate enough to outright beg for help, but desperate enough to perform some well-timed Legilimency, should the need arise.
Maybe there was a neat, organized little file inside her head somewhere titled "How to Make a Mid-term Exam."
The door was open and she was sitting at her desk, which appeared considerably less chaotic than the last time he'd seen it, though it did include an odd array of cups with wiggling tails and limbs, as if someone had molded a bunch of animals together and stuck them in a kiln. He knocked on the door frame to get her attention.
"Hi, Minerva. Do you have a moment?"
She looked at him briefly, her face blank. Then she shrugged. "Sure. Come in."
He sat down across from her and, by force of habit, almost attempted another charming smile. But it seemed out of place. Desperation was the way to go. Please help me, I'm so lost.
"I see you survived Slughorn's party," she said.
"Lucky, I suppose."
"Did you have a good time?" She sounded like she was holding back a laugh.
"Yes, it was lovely."
She folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "How much of it do you remember?"
"Not enough to have any reason to think it was not lovely," he muttered.
"I see. Well, what do you want?"
What was the polite way to say "I've been teaching my students nothing but the Dark Arts for weeks just to spite Dumbledore and now I have no idea what to test them on without being discovered?"
"I may have," he began, hoping he sounded worried and pathetic enough, "a slight problem with my mid-term exams."
She blinked at him. "You haven't made them yet, have you?"
"No."
She did not look at all surprised, which made him feel relieved and offended at the same time and it was quite off-putting.
"It's not that difficult," she said, retrieving a folder from her desk - good lord, she really did have one - and sifting through the contents. "I have a template I like to use. Normally, you fill it out as the weeks go by, so that it's accurate, but that won't be an option, obviously." She handed him a large piece of parchment with an intricate, detailed, disturbingly intimidating grid on it.
"This looks very... thorough," he said with uncertainty.
"All you have to do is look at your exam plan from the beginning of the year, compare it to your lesson plan, then choose the topics that you actually covered and that have the most relevance to the closest standardized test."
"Brilliant." He had some kind of lesson plan; he'd started writing things down once he was unable to remember what levels of gruesome violence each year's topics had reached. But that didn't help the fact that nothing he'd taught could be used. "If there is something I still want to teach... you know, before the exams-"
"You'll want to do it now, and make sure it's already included once you fill that thing out."
He sighed. "I see. Mind if I borrow this?"
"Sure- wait."
"What?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'll let you borrow that on one condition. I'm still not happy about our last conversation, you know."
So close. "And that condition is…?"
"The first Quidditch match of the season is next Saturday," she said. "Gryffindor versus Slytherin."
"And?"
"And," she continued, right as the horrible realization of what she was about to say had hit him, "you're going to come with me."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
Anything but that. He would steal the damn template if he had to. Scrap the idea of mid-terms altogether and give the students the memory that they'd taken them. Use the Confundus Charm on Dippet to get his approval. Anything.
"I'm sorry, but I honestly have no desire to watch a bunch of children fly poorly and throw balls into holes."
Minerva shook her head grimly. "Blasphemy. Please tell me you went to at least one Quidditch match while you were at school?"
"Yes," he lied.
She did not believe him at all. "Really? Do you know how it's played?"
"Of course I do. Everyone knows how it's played. I just don't care for it."
"Right. How is it played?"
Shit. He did not know a bloody thing about Quidditch and until that moment he had been fiercely proud of that fact. "I'm not going to explain how it's played."
She glared at him. Like a Christian glaring at an atheist.
"There… are… six-"
"Seven."
"Seven players and three-"
"Four."
"Four balls- fine, I don't know anything."
Minerva snorted. "An attempt was made, I suppose. Well, you'll get to see how it works on Saturday."
"I am not going to a Quidditch match."
She sighed. "Normally I wouldn't ask, but my... friends won't come with me anymore after last year."
"What happened last year?"
"Nothing," she said suspiciously quickly. "I suppose they just found it taxing."
How the bloody hell was that supposed to convince him to go? "I don't think-"
"See you on Saturday, then?"
Someday, hopefully in the near future, he would find at least one damn thing in this job that he could successfully control.
"Fine," he muttered.
He had been waiting for the right moment to retaliate against Gryffindor, and the upcoming match seemed to be the perfect time to do it.
No, he should not have been holding a grudge against a bunch of school children that he was responsible for teaching.
And no, he probably should not have planned petty revenge against them for something as trivial as a painted flat.
But he was going to do it anyway.
Everyone, even the teachers, knew that Gryffindors liked to party. And from what Minerva had told him, they usually did so both before and after every match, regardless of the outcome.
So, after a little espionage and gentle manipulation of the female bartender in Hogsmeade (and being painfully reminded that he used to conduct espionage and manipulation for actual, important endeavors, like taking over wizarding Britain), Tom made sure that all of the alcohol the students had stolen into the Gryffindor common room that Friday night included a special ingredient. And it would be very, very obvious the next day whether he had succeeded.
He had.
The Great Hall was filled with whispers and chatter during breakfast Saturday morning, and when Gryffindors started to trickle in, the reason became evident. Every single one of them was wearing a face of absolute misery, because every single one of them was completely green from head to toe.
What made it worse was that everything they touched turned green, too. So every child that had drunk even a drop of alcohol the night before suddenly found everything from their robes to their books to be distinctively and irrevocably green.
And finally, when the Gryffindor Quidditch team entered the Great Hall together, wearing matching Gryffindor uniforms of a deep forest green, Tom found it very hard not to laugh. The Slytherins, already in pain from laughing so hard, cheered the opposing team on for the remainder of breakfast.
"I will kill whatever pompous idiot Slytherin rich boy did this," Minerva threatened from the seat beside him. "No offense," she added. "I know that was your House."
"I am completely indifferent to Houses," he said.
Half an hour later they were making their way down to the Quidditch pitch, Minerva ranting on about misplaced Slytherin pride and Tom wondering if he could subtly catch the entire pitch on fire before too many people had entered the stands and what the acceptable amount of casualties was.
But no, the Ministry was coming. Sadly, it wasn't an option.
"-just because their daddies can afford to bail them out of jail when they're older," Minerva raged. "We never pulled such nasty stunts when I was Captain."
"You were a Captain?"
"Two years in a row," she stated with pride. "Won the Cup both years."
There were probably quite a few brilliant witches and wizards out there who could have accomplished so much for the magical world had they not wasted their time on such a useless and all-consuming hobby.
They climbed into the stands, which were disgusting and smelly and slick with moisture from the horrible, freezing rain they were about to sit in, and Minerva had to practically drag him into the Gryffindor section because she refused to sit anywhere else.
And so he sat, surrounded by surly green Gryffindors, trying to remember what this price was being paid for. Oh, yes. Exams. Hardly worth it.
Dee Carson walked out into the middle of the field and the teams gathered around her. Some words were said and she blew a whistle.
They kicked off the ground and rose into the air, then started zooming in all directions and tossing balls around and...
It was exactly what he thought it would be. Only colder. And with rain.
He had a vague idea of what was happening, but was focusing more on casting increasingly powerful warming charms. Minerva had left her seat the second the whistle blew and it only took about five minutes to figure out why her friends had no longer wanted to join her at Quidditch matches. She had begun screaming a barrage of increasingly vulgar taunts and criticisms that did not stop until at least half an hour in, at which point she sat back down and began to explain every detail of the game to him.
"…and no matter what, if the Snitch is caught, it's game over."
"Noted. How long do these things usually last?"
She shrugged. "A couple of hours. I think the longest game at Hogwarts was four days."
He didn't want to know that. She did not need to tell him that.
The game dragged on, because of course it did, and every time it looked like someone was going to get enough points or grab the Snitch or some other appropriately game-ending event, something else happened. It reminded him a bit of the senseless futility of life and the cold cruelty of an indifferent universe. Or torture. It was very much like torture.
Then finally, after an hour and a half of repetitive flying and throwing and screaming, it looked like the two Seekers had seen the Snitch (yes, he knew those words now, unfortunately) and were barreling toward it at full speed.
And then they weren't.
Out of nowhere, to the horror of the crowd, a small child appeared about ten feet in the air, and both Seekers had to swerve away to keep from hitting her before she fell to the ground.
It appeared they had found another one of the first years.
Four out of five wasn't bad.
Minerva's exam template was an ink- and paper-based torture device, crafted by the gods of the underworld purely for the purpose of filling the human experience with mild bureaucratic misery. Like the study hall schedule, but far worse, and not nearly as weaponizable.
He trashed it after the third attempt.
The only thing he could think of was to create tests that accurately reflected what he had taught, without anyone noticing that what he had taught was, quite frankly, a frightening mix of dangerous offensive magic and legally questionable and morally reprehensible theories.
Once he was ready, he headed to Dippet's office, noticing along the way, with satisfaction, that several bannisters, portrait frames, and tapestries had very recently taken on green hues.
"Ah, exams," said Dippet. "A great time to reflect on the progress one has made in disseminating knowledge."
"Sure."
"I will look these over and respond with an answer when-"
"Actually, Headmaster, I was rather hoping to get an answer now. I am very eager to begin drafting the tests themselves, and I don't want you to have to worry about such a trifle while the Ministry is here."
Dippet thought for a moment. "Fair enough," he said. "I don't doubt you've done an excellent job, anyway. From what I hear, the students are quite fond of you."
The students would have been fond of any teacher that taught them illegal magic, he was just the first.
The moment Dippet opened the folder, Tom raised his wand.
"I see here you've included basic physical attacks for the first years, well done."
"Thank you."
"Ah, object sentience in fifth year. Very clever. And I see the sixth years are learning how to cast augmented curses with larger areas of effect for maximum damage. Excellent."
He put the papers back into a pile and signed the top page. "Well, done, Professor. Good luck."
"Thank you, sir."
"Professor Riddle, may I speak to you for a moment?"
They were in the staff room, waiting for Dippet to arrive for the pre-inspection meeting of doom, and Dumbledore had appeared out of nowhere and cornered Tom by the counter.
"Yes, sir?"
"I am assuming you've noticed the problem Gryffindor House is currently having?"
"Oh, yes. The green thing."
"'The green thing.' Indeed. Well, Madame Sable can't seem to find any way to remove it, and Professor Slughorn has suggested that whoever brewed that potion must have highly advanced skills."
"Is that so?"
Tom knew what Dumbledore was saying. And Dumbledore knew that Tom knew what he was saying. But they were going to play the thing out properly, because that was what they did.
"Yes, and, oddly enough, I distinctly remember you having an unpleasant experience with Gryffindors altering the state of your quarters."
"That did happen, yes."
"Might there perhaps be some correlation between your recent feud with Gryffindor House and their unfortunate pigment-related state of affairs?"
Before he could answer, Dippet entered the room looking distinctly disheveled. Dumbledore gave Tom one last knowing look before joining Dippet in front of the fireplace.
"As you all know," said the Headmaster, "the Ministry's 'Educational Task Force' will arrive at nine o'clock on Wednesday morning. They will complete their survey of the grounds and castle first, and then begin teacher reviews on Thursday."
He sighed, then glanced at Dumbledore before continuing. "This year, I am told, the Ministry has decided to base Hogwarts' facility and overhead funding upon the quality of our performance."
Quite a few teachers groaned at this.
"That is not fair at all," said Fogg.
"How does that even make sense?" Peggy demanded. "We're not up to standards, so they want to take away our ability to function properly? That'll make it even harder!"
It made perfect sense to Tom. It was clear that the Ministry sought to exert more control over the inner workings of Hogwarts, and they wanted to use failed inspections as an excuse to do so.
Dippet raised his hands to quiet the room. "I understand the frustration. Regardless, it is of paramount importance that the inspections go well this year. We can't afford to have even a single-"
The faint sound of an explosion could be heard somewhere out on the grounds.
Dippet sighed.