For Yule he got Tom copies of his personal journals, the ones he had made during his various mastery studies. Honestly, he just wasn't sure what a dark lord would want as a gift so he went with what he knew best. Tom seemed appreciative enough and thanked him with what looked to be an appreciative smile, so he nodded and opened his own gift.
Tom had gotten him cookbooks from around the world, which made him smile. Now he did not have to go to the trouble of exchanging gold for various currencies, plus all the trouble it would be to wander through various muggle book shops (possibly in various countries) in order to have recipes to test out and tinker with.
All in all it was a nice Yule.
He heard after the fact that the Yule Ball held at Hogwarts went well enough, though there was a bit of an upset when they discovered Morgan had not bothered to show up for it. It was just tradition, after all, not a requirement.
Ω
"Apparently," Tom said, not looking up from the letter he was reading, "they canvassed the Gryffindor seventh years looking for a volunteer. They were not told they would be your hostage, nor that they would be placed under the lake, nor were they told they would receive 10ʛ for doing it."
"They were retroactively bribed?" he asked in disbelief.
Tom shrugged. "I'm sure the average Gryffindor would have done it for no reason other than that it was dangerous. At any rate, your hostage is a seventh year boy by the name of Toby Lennox. Barty included a picture."
Morgan accepted the photograph and saw the face of a boy who would blend into the background of any gathering. Mousy brown hair, brown eyes, lightly tanned skin… He was probably of average height, average weight, and basically a complete nonentity. With luck the other hostages would be suitably distinctive.
Without knowing their preferences—and why would he want to know?—he could make no guesses as to the sex of their hostages. They simply needed to be not average, as he was unsure how much being under water would alter their looks and make things harder.
Morgan set the photograph on his chair's side table and took a sip from his wine.
"He also says the hostages will be at the approximate center of the lake, in the merpeople village, tied to a statue to keep them from floating off. The merpeople will also be singing, it seems, to help guide the champions to them, once they get close enough."
"So I can take a direction reading from the bank and keep following that. I already know there are grindylows in the lake, so I should avoid going too low, and there are selkies rather than warm-water versions. I suppose I could do an invisible fly-by ahead of time and drop a rune that would help to guide me."
"If you like I will teach you how to fly unsupported."
Morgan smiled at the offer. "I would appreciate that. Unfortunately, my snake form is not a winged one, and I am uncertain I could disillusion myself that way. I do well enough on a broom, but it would be one less thing to have to hide."
"Have you ever tried swimming in snake form?" Tom asked. "I had a thought that if you could, you might dive into the water, transform, then slither along just under the surface so that you would not be known as one. It is possible a Bubble-Head Charm would stick."
"I could run some tests," he said. "I'm not sure how fast I would be in that form. It might be better to add disillusionment as a charm, as I might miss a selkie spying, and they might let it be known I have a form, and then I would have to register, I imagine."
"And then switch back to human once you got close enough?" Tom nodded.
"If tests show it's not a viable plan, I'll stick to human form, spells to help propel me through the water, and homing in on the beacon I plan to drop. It's not as if I'm trying to win this competition, so a lack of showing off would be to my advantage."
"Do you even know what your scores were for the first task?"
Morgan shook his head. "I plan to ignore them this time, too. I didn't even try all that hard during the first task, so I expect they were low."
Tom stared at him for a long moment, seemingly in disbelief, then looked back down at the letter. "Barty reiterates that the task will begin the morning of the twenty-fourth, at 9.30, so you should probably arrive at the lake by 9.20, even though that would give Dumbledore additional time to attempt to talk at you."
"I can always arrive disillusioned and simply appear a minute before the stated time. I should probably work something up such that I would be mostly ignored in the lake. A repelling ward of some kind. So long as I wait until the last second to deactivate it, a sleeping hostage should not be affected. I'll start on that tomorrow after breakfast. Or possibly unsupported flight."
Tom nodded agreeably.
Ω
Morgan arrived in Hogsmeade, walked to the Shrieking Shack, and ducked behind it so he could disillusion himself to the point of true invisibility. He then used Tom's method of flight to rise up into the air and head over to the center of the lake, where he dropped a tiny stone with micro-engravings (muggle tools had come in very handy for that).
It hitting the water would slow it down enough that it should not rocket through a selkie's head and kill any of them, but it was also heavy enough to actually sink rather than be pushed off course by movement of the water. Once that was accomplished he checked to be sure he could sense the thing still, then retraced his flight pattern back to the Shrieking Shack, apparated to his flat, and dropped his disillusionment.
Ω
He arrived at the lakeside at 9.25, having had the sense to be invisible the whole time, and checking again to ensure he could sense the beacon he had dropped. He had a runic ward on hand which he would activate the moment he was under the water, which would repel any living and awake thing from him.
Diggory, Delacour, and Krum were all already there, and seemed to have been for at least ten minutes given the way two of them were shivering. If they had not the sense to use charms or some other method to ensure they remained warm, well… It did not bode well for their intelligence, basically.
At the water's edge was a gold-draped table, at which sat the judges for the Second Task. Maxime, Bagman, Karkaroff, Dumbledore, and—some red-haired young man rather than Crouch Sr. Given how Barty felt about his father, Morgan could not say he was surprised that Crouch Sr was indisposed for some reason.
Bagman got up and started positioning the champions ten feet apart at the lakeside, so Morgan phased into view ten feet to the side of Krum, who was wearing just swimming trunks and held his wand in one hand. Bagman noticed him there, blinked in surprise, then returned to the judges' table. A quick Amplifying Charm and he was saying, "Well, all our champions are ready for the Second Task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them—"
"Which begs the question of exactly what that is in my case," he said loudly enough to discomfit Bagman.
"—so on the count of three, then. One! …Two! …Three!"
He heard the Pheeee! of a whistle and used a Bubble-Head Charm, then waded in far enough that he could dive beneath the surface. Another Disillusionment Charm was employed, his ward was activated, and he set off toward the beacon he could sense, using his wand to propel him along rather than exerting so much effort on the act of swimming.
Testing had revealed that he could not maintain the charms in snake form.
He knew he was getting close when he heard a snatch of mersong.
"An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took…"
A few minutes later he arrived at the location of his beacon which, while not in precisely the right place, was close enough that he could see the expected village. Four hostages were tied to a selkie statue with what looked to be ropes fashioned from grasses or weeds. His hostage was second from the right, so he dropped his invisibility and propelled himself closer, grabbed a rock from the lake bed, transfigured it into a knife, and used it to cut the ropes.
He noticed in passing that the selkies stayed a decent distance from him.
The knife was allowed to revert to being a rock, and Morgan hauled his hostage off, reapplying the Disillusionment Charm along the way, to both of them, and headed back toward the shore, his heading derived from the angle he had approached the merpeople village.
He dropped his invisibility as soon as the water started to get too shallow, and deactivated the ward, then broke the surface. His hostage woke up very confused, but suffered to be dragged onto the shore, wherein he was dragged off by the school's matron to be wrapped tightly in a blanket and have Pepperup Potion forced down his throat.
The matron headed toward Morgan to do the same, but his steely look had her scowling and stomping back to her patient. Morgan reactivated his ward, plus one to make him uninteresting, and slipped off behind the judges' table to take a seat on a chair transfigured from a rock. That gave him plenty of time to dry off and be bored enough to cast his gaze over the area, looking for anything of interest.
Diggory was next to return, his hostage an Asian girl (and presumably his girlfriend if the way they acted meant anything). Following that was Krum, his hostage a younger girl. Delacour returned without anyone, but he assumed her hostage was the much too young girl down there with a cloud of silvery hair that rivaled Delacour's own.
"You haff a water beetle in your hair, Herm-own-ninny," said Krum.
The girl brushed away the beetle impatiently and looked around, though it struck Morgan as odd that any water beetle would be active during February. He quietly transfigured another rock into a small glass jar, another into a stopper with holes in it for air, and summoned the beetle to him, to be safely secured. That went into his pocket to be looked at later.
Off to the side, the judges were having a talk with a group of merpeople, but then Bagman used an Amplifying Charm again and boomed out, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached out decision. Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each champion, as follows…"
Morgan zoned out during that part, completely uninterested in the scores, but zoned back in to hear, "The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June. The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions."
Morgan stood, went invisible, and flew off toward Hogsmeade. He had a suspicious beetle to investigate.
Ω
Tom viewed the beetle and nodded. "Quite curious. As small as that is I would normally say it is not terribly suspicious. But to be right there at the Second Task and on a student…"
Morgan nodded. "Even beetles which are active in the winter are not often seen. They're far too interested in not freezing. I did not think it was possible to become something so small, but perhaps this is an animagus?"
Tom's eyes narrowed. "Unfortunately, I know of no spell that would reveal an animal to simply be an animagus form. We can attempt the reversal spell, but if that is an animagus, it needs to either have its memory wiped or be killed. If it's just a beetle…"
"It can still be killed, or one of the elves can drop it somewhere reasonably warm." Morgan thought for a moment, then said, "I have a room we can use, one I can ward so it cannot escape."
Shortly thereafter the beetle was inside a cubic, runic ward structure and a spell had been used to pop the cork on the jar so it could have the reversal spell cast on it without potentially dying from having the glass shattered. The beetle then attempted to escape, to no avail, and when it rested for a few seconds too long, a spell hit it.
A blonde woman was revealed, dressed in poisonous green, wearing a hideous set of glasses that looked as if they had come from an earlier time period.
Morgan and Tom exchanged a look, then Tom said, "That is Rita Skeeter, hack reporter for the Daily Prophet. She seems to think it's her sworn duty to pass lies off as truth and does her damnedest to drag people's reputations through the mud."
"We can do the same thing to her we've been planning to do to the others," Morgan said.
"Agreed."
Morgan nodded and brought up his wand, then proceeded to wipe her memories clean of pretty much everything. That way she wouldn't have the wit to object when her magic was bound and she was dropped off in Cardiff or some other large city to be found by the muggles and mistaken for a crazy, homeless person.
Ω
"So all that's left is the Third Task, and then we can see about quietly removing all the defective people from the Wizengamot."
"We should probably also include the Ministry itself," Tom said.
"Would that cause a collapse of the power structure?"
Tom shrugged. "All else failing, we gather up our gold and move to a different country until it settles down."
"Then return and see if any tweaks need to be made, I suppose," he said.
"You barely had any time at all in Japan," Tom pointed out. "One way or another, for whatever reason, we should probably go visit. I'm sure plenty of things have changed since 1947."
"You don't know the language, though."
"I can learn, and there are translation charms. They didn't have those back in the day. It would help me to get on while I'm learning the language properly. I have not properly lived in over a decade," Tom said. "I would like to do so. I would also like to take care of some issues here at home before that. You at least have some experience with Japan. It was not one of the countries I visited, as I knew of their policy when it came to the Dark Arts."
"Their definition of Dark Arts probably differs from the one here."
Tom shrugged again. "Then we can investigate that. Have a holiday, return, and see how things have settled down, assuming they have. If not we choose another country to investigate."
And because it was a version of Tom Riddle he didn't have a problem with that. That it was a Tom Riddle he did not have to protect and watch out for made it all the better. This one had close to fifty years on him, but a good chunk of that had been spent as a wraith, so it evened up the gap somewhat. They seemed to have a similar mindset, though he expected Tom was not unacquainted with the Unforgiveables given an earlier statement.
It was not that big of a deal to him, thought he thought their use was somewhat silly in the face of so many other ways to do the same. Though spells or potions to control people were not nearly as effective as the Imperius Curse, they did have the distinction of not being as easily shrugged off by someone of great mental strength.
If you were going to go so far as to kill someone, why not make a statement with it?
And was not wiping an entire lifetime of memories effectively death?
"What do you plan to do about the Third Task?"
Morgan set his tea aside and had a biscuit before saying, "I could just enter the maze and then get conveniently lost. One of the actual students should be the one to reach it first. All I must do is satisfy the requirements of the binding, which is to make at least a token effort at participating. I don't understand the scoring as it is anyway. It sounds like the first person to reach it wins, with previous scores dictating who goes in when. Why not a cup with a flesh memory like a snitch to see who arrived in what order and then decide the winner based on the aggregate score?"
"No one ever said wizards had common sense, Morgan, and logic is far too often lacking entirely."
"Will Barty be able to provide the details as to what will be in that maze?"
"He should be able to," Tom said. "You could plan the most torturous path to take, at walking speed, and simply wait until the cup is claimed. It would be exceedingly unlikely that you would still somehow manage to be the one to reach it first."
"Even if I did, I would simply disillusion myself and wait. Barty won't be interfering as he would have been in the original plan, so I'm sure one of them will manage it before I get anywhere near the cup."
"Right. We simply have to wait until Barty gets us the required information, then."
Ω
The quidditch pitch at Hogwarts had been transformed into a maze, the hedges twenty feet high along the outer edge. There was only one visible entrance, and the passage beyond looked dark and creepy. Having had the sense to check an almanac, Morgan knew that sunset was expected at 10.02 that evening, and dusk was the period of time after, so clearly Bagman was an idiot.
The fact that the evening meal was from six to eight o'clock and the champions sent down even before it was fully over meant that it was still quite light out. Morgan waited, with his keep-away and don't-notice-me wards active, and observed as the patrollers kept an eye on the champions. The patrollers, it seemed, were Hagrid, Moody, McGonagall, and Flitwick, and each wore large, red, luminous stars on their hats (except for Hagrid, who wore his on the back of his vest).
It took quite some time for all the spectators to make their way to the pitch and take seats in the various viewing stands, and by then it was nine o'clock. Bagman had begun to peer around looking for the missing champion, so Morgan deactivated his don't-notice-me ward and allowed himself to be … noticed.
"We are going to be patrolling the outside of the maze," McGonagall said to the champions. "If you get into difficulty and require rescue, send red sparks into the air. One of us will come get you, do you understand?"
The three champions nodded.
"Off you go, then!" Bagman said brightly to the four patrollers, who then left to station themselves outside the maze. An Amplifying Charm was employed before Bagman said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament is about to begin! Let me remind you how the points currently stand! In first place, with ninety points, Mr Harry Potter!"
There was a smattering of applause. Morgan assumed most people had no real clue how to react.
"In second place, with eighty-five points, Mr Cedric Diggory of Hogwarts School!"
The cheers and applause sent birds from the Forbidden Forest fluttering into the darkening sky.
"In third place, with eighty points, Mr Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang Institute!"
Yet more applause was heard, though with the numbers advantage on Diggory's side, it was closer to polite than enthused.
"And in fourth place, Miss Fleur Delacour, of Beauxbatons Academy!"
The applause was no better than that for Krum, and even more polite.
"So … on my whistle, Mr Potter! …Three! …Two! …One!" Bagman said, followed quickly by another Pheeee! of a whistle being blown.
Morgan nodded and sauntered in with maddening casualness. He had not yet reached the fork in sight up ahead when he heard the whistle blow again and Diggory was sent in. The boy blew past him with a look of confusion and headed off to the left at the fork up ahead. Morgan headed right, still treating it all as an evening walk, and a third whistle blow was heard.
Krum scurried past him a short time later, also shooting him a look of confusion. For Delacour, he had no idea, for Morgan had continued on his planned route. She must have either gone left at the initial fork, or taken a different path off the right one.
His path was calculated both by Barty's information and the invisible flight he had taken over it, mostly so he could use a memory of the viewing to sketch out the various paths, all so he could waste as much time as possible taking precisely the worst route and have to keep backtracking, all while paying lip service to actively participating so as not to invoke sanctions by the Goblet of Fire.
His reactivation at that point of his wards ensured that none of the living obstacles bothered with him, so he simply bypassed them at a slow walk or, in the case of one, used his wand to create a large-enough tunnel going underneath the obstacle that he could bypass it anyway without getting dirty.
Without warning all the hedges slammed down, which meant someone had made it to the Triwizard Cup. Morgan immediately went invisible and launched himself into the air. He just needed to stick around until the winner was officially announced, as then he would be released from the contract's binding.
Krum was the one portkeyed to the winner's podium, and therefore the winner. Delacour and Diggory were revealed on the pitch, and looked to be incredibly disappointed. Those two started to walk toward the podium, rather dragging their feet, but once they arrived Bagman used another Amplifying Charm to announce what everyone already knew.
Minister Fudge—an idiot if Morgan had ever seen one—said a few pompous words and handed over a sack of galleons to go with the Triwizard Cup, and officially closed the whole thing.
Morgan flew off to the Shrieking Shack (which had a different name entirely in his original world), dropped down behind it, and disapparated to Diagon Alley, walked to his flat, then disapparated to his house in Yorkshire.
"Well, that's over," he said as he took a seat in the library where Tom was reading.
"While disagreeable that you had to be involved, I cannot be regretful that you were and that I caused you to be brought here."
Morgan smiled briefly. "Aside from having to leave Tom behind, I can't say that I mind. You and I are on a more equal footing for one. Despite having left Britain behind, it remains true that I, in a sense, owned Tom Riddle, and there could be no true equality between us, no matter how much we might have desired it. Even the most basic of contracts ensured that. With me gone he is truly free to make his own life, and I am free to make mine."
"And given enough time, people will forget you were even called Harry James Potter for the duration of the tournament."
"I sincerely hope so. Reading up on that night was one thing. Reading about how people reacted over time was something else. Had that poor boy lived he would have been a commodity, not a person, and I expect Dumbledore would have been the one holding the leash. I don't dare try to enter Dumbledore's mind due to what I expect to be formidable shields, but the way he tried to take control gives me plenty for the basis of speculation."
"And he wouldn't be susceptible to the Imperius Curse, I expect," Tom said. "He is an obstacle, however, one we should consider removing."
"Oh, I agree. True, he was not quite the same in my world, but he was still not someone I would have trusted. And with his example, I shudder to think how ineffectual the teaching staff at the school must be."
Tom chuckled darkly. "That reminds me. We should remove Severus Snape. He is, after all, mostly responsible for the lowered amount of Potioneers, Aurors, and Healers in Britain over the past decade and a half. I may not have been able to directly affect much, but I was more than able to keep and eye on things. I could be mistaken, but I do believe he is both supremely confident in his status of youngest Potions Master ever—in Britain, anyway—and the utter idiocy of everyone around him. He does not teach, he terrorizes. And I doubt he has ever gotten over how he was treated during his school years. He has become the very thing he was so contemptuous of: a bully."
"Abuse of power, then, huh? Lovely. So we can check Wizengamot, the Ministry, and Hogwarts for people who need to be removed."
"For the Greater Good," Tom said smirking.
Morgan laughed. "Somehow I don't think Dumbledore will see it that way."
"Probably not," Tom said agreeably. "On another note, have you ever kissed someone?"
Morgan blinked at the abrupt change of subject. "No, never."
"Neither have I. Would you like to try it?"
He pondered that for some time. He had never been much interested in sex, because he had always seen it on display as a method of power, of control over another. The very idea of it being a mutual desire was somewhat foreign. Then again, it was not as if he had ever spied on Uncle Fleamont and Aunt Euphemia in their bedroom, or anyone, really, who was in a relationship rather than dealing with a Sponsored.
He knew of a fair few Sponsors who continued to use their Sponsored well after they had been married off to the Sponsor's choice of spouse, either for their own sexual needs, or at parties, for entertainment purposes. And the Sponsored were so brainwashed into compliance that they were happy to be of service. The whole thing made him sick.
But two people, both adults, with no Sponsorship program in the way … someone he got along well with, found attractive?
"All right." He got up from his chair and sat on a loveseat instead, where Tom joined him. "I don't think I've ever witnessed anyone kissing in the magical world, nothing beyond a kiss on the cheek or forehead."
"I have. Will you let me lead?"
"Yes."
Tom rested his left hand alongside Morgan's face, the leaned in to touch lips. He pulled back briefly, looking at him with one brow quirked, then leaned back in for another.
Ω
Snape made the mistake of leaving Hogwarts for a shopping trip in Diagon Alley. He also made the mistake of being there late, when it was darker. The sun started to set almost an hour earlier that much farther south. No one noticed the portkey that was banished at the man just as he stepped into an area normally used for apparation.
Morgan retreated to his flat and disapparated from there, to where the man had been sent. Tom was waiting, looking pleased, and Snape was out cold due to the ward around his landing point. With the Potions Master out cold, and with another Potions Master in the room, it was easy to use potions to make the man compliant enough to be able to search through his mind with Legilimency.
Morgan sat back in disgust once they were done. "He really was a bastard."
"I imagine his abusive father was no help, nor his spineless mother, but even so… Dumbledore did him no favors."
"I have no qualms about disappearing him," he said. "He's just that vile. We can wipe his entire life, do a bit of permanent transfiguration, and dump him somewhere. What happens to him then is out of our hands, even if it is likely he'll die fairly quickly."
"And it made for a good test case. The question remains how to trick Dumbledore into the same position. Some of the others in power will be quite wily, but some will be far too sure of their standing to think themselves targets."
"I would suggest a sherbet lemon convention, but somehow I do not see Dumbledore falling for that. There is also the issue of whether his phoenix would become a complication." He frowned. "He is more difficult of a case. Perhaps there is a way to induce a fatal heart attack? It is more direct in terms of death, but I cannot get too squeamish considering we've already consigned one to a likely death, and are about to the same to this one here."
"There is also the Board of Governors to consider," Tom pointed out, "though I am unsure what exactly they do. They supposedly oversee the running of the school, but I have never investigated in depth. Without knowing if Dumbledore does more than talk people around to his way of thinking…"
"Perhaps we can get a copy of meeting minutes for the past decade or so?" he suggested. "We might consider handling that last, for if the hardcore pure-blood supremacists are still in the Wizengamot and Ministry, they might take Dumbledore's death as a clear sign to start passing even more ridiculous laws."
Tom hummed, then nodded. "In the meantime, we can still attempt to get those documents. But before that, how would you feel about more kissing? Or perhaps a bit more than that?"
He smiled. "Yes, I think that would be lovely. I have become quite curious. How about my bedroom?"
"Let us go."
— fin —