Last time, Harry and Tom have a macabre encounter, the result of Harry murdering undercover Death Eater, Barty Crouch Jr.
Lord Voldemort was hardly a man Death esteems, if it were so inclined to be honest or voice opinions out loud. Arrogant beyond belief, unnatural to a degree few were able to grasp. Worshipped as a God and feared as a monster –a brand of charisma rare to find and hard to resist. Death would not be fooled though; such trivialities were only useful in mere men. As Tom Riddle sits in his study, there is mirth in Death at his confusion.
The Dark Lord's stronghold study is an essential setting to our story, his story. The floors are made of dark wood, and the walls are lined in bookshelves. The stone of the fireplace is stony black but seems to hold whispers of silver, and it reminds Death of the night sky of the dawn of time. The fire lies dormant, the room illuminated by floor to ceiling windows opposite of the fireplace; there seems to be no door. The room is opulent yet highly practical. It has an imposing desk, filled with writing utensils, books, parchment, not a single quill out of place.
An ivory cabinet is closed and laboriously spelled, and a sitting room with a leather couch and two adjacent armchairs. In one of those armchairs relaxes the Dark Lord. A single cup of steaming tea, wisps of smoke climbing up into the air, leaves traces of the magic that keeps it warm. The Dark Lord's eyes can't follow the trail of stardust the way Death itself can. The tea has been all but forgotten in the face of the mystery in the Dark Lord's hands, Death couldn't blame him. Hadrian does have that effect on people.
These days, the Dark Lord passes as people pretty well. Once, he'd been a slow-aging man, fit for his age. Then, he'd been a sacrifice to the blackest magics. Death has never met a visage as tragic and wrong in his existence, but Lord Voldemort's destiny had always been to defy reason. Death knows that. Alas now, he looks like a man who could've still been riding the coattails of adolescence. His quest for immortality hadn't been glorious, but he'd gone where no one else had dared tread. Errors in judgment were expected to a degree, but Lord Voldemort is old now. Even though the man who wears the title isn't. His soul pieces are still merging, but his follower's foolish and amateurish attempts at bringing him back to life had worked, exemplifying the idea of beginner's luck beautifully.
In the end, it was that ambition that landed Tom Riddle in Slytherin, his intellect and his sheer hate and drive that allowed him to pull himself out of corruption, of madness, and of… Death; for now, that is. Death's aware Voldemort considers his journey foretold, a blessing. Yet, it is hardly immortality holding his thoughts tonight, but something much more mundane and yet, all the more surprising because of it.
In his hand, Lord Voldemort holds a letter. Death knows very well who that letter belongs to. It's unnecessary to peer over the wizard's shoulder, Death had been there when the letter had first been written. It is that curiosity that has dragged him to this room to see the results of several attempts at writing it. It isn't every day that Death is privy to a frustrated Hadrian. The message is direct and says more by what it doesn't say than what it does, much like Hadrian Potter himself.
Lord Voldemort,
Do you actually like people calling you that? I had to ask.
We do not know each other.
Yet, I assure you, we have much in common, Thomas Marvolo Riddle.
So much, in fact, that I'm gambling my entire life on this letter. In itself, it is a calculated risk, and I hope you, out of all people, appreciate the sentiment.
I am a quiet insignificant player in this cold war. By lineage, I can be considered opposition; but at heart, your cause and my own align splendidly. You have wealth, power, followers, and many other assets, but you've been cursed by bloodline and bounded by prophecy. Don't deny it, my source is paramount. After all, the blood that weakens you runs through my veins.
I am willing to offer a range of skills and services available due to my somewhat unique standing for only 3 conditions. Presumptuous, I am aware. The requirements are as followed:
1. I will handle Charlus Potter.
2. There will be a non-fatal ban on a concise list of people.
3. Albus Dumbledore must die.
If these terms are not entirely disagreeable to you, I would like to begin a correspondence so that we might negotiate. If they are too unpleasant, just forget it ever happened.
Kind regards,
Hadrian James Potter
Lord Voldemort is not amused, which the letter hopefully intended. He is bordering steadily on annoyed and indignant, but he is curious. The message indeed also counted on that. It lacked subtlety, but Death doesn't think Hadrian is going for subtle. In the end, he watches as Lord Voldemort waves his hand in the direction of the fireplace and calls for one of his subordinates. Hadrian has succeeded. He had wanted the Dark Lord's interest, and now, he has it.
Lord Voldemort has a series of fundamental questions. The eldest Potter child has slipped his radar for the last couple of years –which in hindsight, the Dark Lord realizes, is odd in the first place. In his mind, he sees vivid green eyes. The letter has one glaring mistake. Lord Voldemort and Hadrian Potter had met; the night the Dark Lord slaughtered his grandparents like pigs.
What prompted a teenager to deal with the devil, Voldemort wonders, but then again, the letter does say, doesn't it?
Albus Dumbledore must die.
As the Death Eater answers his Master's call, Death will keep an eye out on those two. Now that Hadrian is older, things are getting interesting. Although where Hadrian Potter is concerned, they are never dull.
Arcturus tries not to stare at Hadrian's dark mark when he has the opportunity to catch a glimpse at it. His cousin has had it for years, but it never gets any less jarring, and as of lately, Artie knows that it's a matter of time before his own arm is equally decorated. It's a sore subject for him; he understands the Black Family's stance, he does. The Black Heir is immensely proud of the blood that flows through his veins and is emboldened by generations of Blacks' achievements before him. It's just, he also knows that the Blacks were notorious centuries before ever serving the Dark Lord, and as his cousin is more and more absent as their years at Hogwarts come to an end, the more Arcturus wishes they could've stuck to that.
He loves his father, but in his mother's lovely words, he had bloody well fucked them up.
It's not a thought he has shared with Hadrian. Hadrian has always been a little off, Arcturus know, but ever since 4th-year, things had changed for the worse. Not only did Hadrian seemed to drift into a place Arcturus could not follow, but when he'd gotten the Dark Mark before the summer of the fifth year, Arcturus' own father seems to fall into the same dance. If it were for those two, the Black Heir would be in the dark about the going-ons of the Dark Lord's stronghold. Thankfully, his other cousin has all the information and none of the wisened maturity.
"Did something happen with the Dark Lord last week?" Draco, munching an apple while resting against one of the many trees surrounding the lake, chokes on the bite he's chewing. He has much too decorum to make a mess, but Arcturus finds the occasion funny regardless. As the fourth year composes himself, he processes the question and seems to go a little green at the gills.
"Argh," he voices in disgusts, features twisting in profound disturbance, "trust me on this, Artie, you don't wanna know."
"Don't be a baby, Draco," Arcturus presses, familiar with all of Draco's bottoms. The younger boy hesitates, and it must be bad if Draco doesn't want to tell him, but the gossiper in him wins out in the end.
"Dobby thinks the Dark Lord popped out Harry's eye," Draco murmurs, looking down at his half-eaten fruit, "for fun."
Someone plucked out my eye and put it back in... it itches.
Bloody hell.
Hadrian had meant it.
It takes all of his 17 years of etiquette training to keep the bile rising up in Arcturus' throat down. This is exactly why Arcturus wants nothing to do with Death Eaters. His mind flashes to Harry's ever-increasingly empty bed, to the rumors about him and the things he's done, about his father's lengthy conversations with him, his mother's insistent concerns. What Arcturus cannot figure out is why Hadrian would get involved with the Dark Lord in the first place?
(He tries to not think that the answer is revenge.)
"Do you think they're actually banging?" Draco asks out of the blue.
"Bloody hell, Draco!" Arcturus exclaims, turning away from the still waters of the lake to glare flabbergasted at his cousin's crass question.
"They are, you know," Draco says, looking away as he apparently answers his own question, "everybody says so." His instinctive reaction is, who's everybody? But that's childish. He knows precisely who everybody is: the dark pureblood circles they have been mingling with more and more. He also knows, from late-night Common Room whispers, that Draco is more than likely right.
"You are way too young to know these things," he snaps out instead, but he has wondered. Arcturus hates himself for querying, but there's no helping it. He's never dared ask Hadrian himself, how could he? What answer would he give? What response does Arcturus want to hear? No? Then what does Hadrian do in all the missing nights? Yes? Then how the hell does his barely legal cousin become the Dark Lord's concubine... and why? Is he forced into it? It's hard to think of Hadrian as been forced into anything, but this is the Dark Lord they were talking about.
...How can Arcturus' family follow a man like that?
The morbid curiosity to know what exactly Hadrian is playing at has been building within Arcturus since the night of Charlie Potter's sorting. He's thought about it repeatedly, and he has no doubt: things started getting out of control when Charlie arrived at school. Arcturus doesn't consciously blame him, but the youngest Potter child is in the middle of it all. Unsurprisingly, considering he's the Boy-Who-Lived.
"You're just unhappy that I play enough to hear these things while most socialites are terrified of your temper, don't think anyone's forgotten what you did at my Christmas Party." Draco drawls, but Arcturus doesn't rise to the bait. He breathes in deeply. Where Draco referring to any other social faux pas of his (not that there are many), Arcturus might've brushed it off, but this one still makes his blood boil.
"Flint deserved it," is all he says on the matter.
I worry about the whore climbing into my bed, you know?
"He did," the Malfoy agrees, "but I had thought of ten better ways of paying him back for his idiocy that did not involve exposing myself as the culprit."
"Didn't you curse Pansy in the middle of the common room last week?" The best part of being an older cousin, Arcturus thinks as Draco huffs, is watching the youngsters blush. "Careful, hypocrisy isn't a good look on you."
"Artie," Draco asks, once again looking away. Arcturus wonders if he's finally going to open his trap about whatever caused him to drag the seventh year out to the chilly November afternoon. He hopes that it wasn't Hadrian's creepy sex life. "Do you think that Hadrian is on the Dark Lord's side?"
Things would be so much simpler if I could believe that.
"I think he's on his own side," his cousin is too much of a Slytherin for Arcturus to honestly believe he's offered complete loyalty to anyone.
"...My dad worries about that, too."
"Mine doesn't say anything about it, but whenever Hadrian visits, they lock themselves up in the study for hours." Arcturus used to be bitter about it, but he knows better know.
Do not envy other's misfortunes, Arcturus Regulus Black. I have raised you better,
"Oh please, mine still thinks I don't know he's a Death Eater," Draco rolls his eyes. "Everything I hear is through Dobby, the poor guy comes back traumatized."
"I can believe that Hadrian convinced you to befriend your house-elf, he's always had a thing about them..." Arcturus murmurs, thinking of Kreacher's love for the adopted Black, "what I cannot believe is how bloody useful it's been through the years."
"Well, I've been known to take good advice when given some."
"Sure," Arcturus laughs lightly, "if, by that, you mean that your hero-worship of Hadrian could motivate you to ride a Hippogriff if Hadrian told you to." In a moment of cleverness, Draco agrees with him instead of blustering through a denial.
"So would you."
It's something I have to do, Artie. You can say... I was born for it, really.
"...Yeah."
"Speaking of Dobby. Artie, there's something else... I think we're going to have to choose a side soon."
"Draco, you're much too young..."
"I don't mean between the Dark and the Light, cousin." Uncharacteristic of his manners, Draco interrupts, and so, Arcturus falls quiet. "I mean between Hadrian and the Dark Lord." Grey eyes pin on him, and for all his decorum, Draco's unsure eyes make him look more like a child than ever. "The reason the Dark Lord took out his eye... it's because Harry killed one of his Death Eater's."
It's slow going, I know, but here is the new chapter :D