Chapter 2: A Pair of Pretty Eyes

In order to achieve his dream of becoming quite literally a god on earth, Tom knew that obtaining the first of these objects he had uncovered and associated with the Founders wouldn't be the problem.

Simply getting back into the castle period would be the real issue.

Albus Dumbledore might not be the Headmaster (not yet, and even such a prospective future made Tom freeze with fear), but he was still an influential professor and financial backer of the school. Dumbledore's word carried a lot of weight, almost as much as that of Headmaster Dippet, and this Tom already knew: Dumbledore didn't trust him. If he did, he might have been accepted to the DADA post, which would have made returning to the castle after his time as a student so much easier.

Ah, well. At least now he wouldn't be required to keep up appearances while pursuing his real goals. Once inside Hogwarts itself, all that would be left to do would be to charm the knickers off the ghost of Ravenclaw House and keeper of all its secrets.

Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Ravenclaw House founder Rowena, was often referred to as the Grey Lady, not only for the greyish hue her apparition took, but also how she floated through afterlife under a cloud of depression and melancholy. Her death nearly a thousand years ago at the hands of an unrequited lover – the Bloody Baron, also a supernatural resident of the castle – had not been a happy one. According to legend, it was Helena who had stolen her mother's most prized possession, a kind of crown known as a diadem, and run away from home with it. Rumors had it the diadem was still lost somewhere in whatever land Helena had disposed of it.

This was the information that Riddle sought. Luckily, he knew just how to get it.

Tom Riddle had always been the champion flatterer during his time as a Hogwarts student. Nearly all of the population of Slytherin House had been infatuated with him at some point, and there were even some younger girls still there now who pined for him. He had blazed a trail through nearly half the girls in all of the Hogwarts Houses, though these flings had never meant anything to him. In his mind, sex was simply a vehicle for expending energy that couldn't be better spent somewhere else. A release, an urge – one he had tired of by graduation and no longer used very often, even to work out stress.

But that didn't mean he still didn't know how to flirt. Flattery was the key to a woman's heart, even the heart of a dead woman. If he wanted to extract from Helena the information he sought, this tactic would be his guide. He had every confidence it would work – he had flirted with Helena off and on during his days as a student, much to the bemusement of many of his classmates. Still, even in death, it could not be denied that Helena had been a very attractive witch.

To sneak back into the school, Tom took the secret passageway under the cellar of Honeyduke's, which allowed him to emerge from behind the statue of the humpbacked witch. This was only one of seven ways into the school from the outside that bypassed the wards, but it also happened to be the most convenient: Ravenclaw Tower was not far from here. Helena rarely ventured into parts of the castle that were far from her Common Room and its turret. Find Ravenclaw Tower, and he would find its ghostly guard.

Sure enough, down one corridor just around the corner from the Ravenclaw portrait hole, he found her, floating with a melancholy air and moaning quietly a little. Most Ravenclaw students said how Helena bemoaned her fate because by the time of her murder at the hands of the Bloody Baron, she had regretted her theft, but had been too late to try and recover the diadem before meeting her unjust end.

Here was the linchpin to Tom's whole scheme. As a ghost, Helena might not have a hope of getting the diadem back… but as someone of flesh-and-blood (and who intended to remain so long past the natural lifespan), he could.

Tom put on his most dazzling, smoldering grin and slipped out of the shadows into Helena's path, bowing obsequiously low in a show of deference.

"Good evening, madame. My most gracious Grey Lady, how lovely you look! Though when have you ever not?"

Helena's eyes immediately lit up with delighted surprise. "Tom?! What are you doing here?"

Tom beamed and playfully shushed her, like he didn't want to be found out… which he didn't, but he could play it off as some sort of daring game. "To see my fair Helena, of course, whom I love! After all, who will not change a raven for a dove?" He had read the line in some Mudblood play once, and though it had been written by Muggle-born filth, he had committed the line to memory later. It helped that this play happened to feature a character called Helena.

Helena turned into a giggling, stuttering mess, and Tom grinned. Marriage may not have ever been a goal of his, but sod it if he didn't know how to woo the lesser sex. He had her now.

"Ooooh, Master Riddle, you are too kind….!"

Tom beamed and took her hand, ignoring how his palm passed through hers awkwardly, for she was made of air. "Helena, my sweet, I feel as though in my studies, I neglected to fully understand the painful burden which you must carry. The regret at losing your mother's diadem must weigh heavily on you."

Helena moaned melodramatically, sighing. "Yes. 'Tis true. If only there was some way for me to get it back…."

"Have you not tasked your Ravenclaws with this dream? Could you not send your worthiest and brightest of the Intelligence House to get it back?"

Helena considered the question, and seemed to find it had merit. "I suppose…. But it would be terribly challenging, even for my genius charges! After all, there is not a person alive who's seen it!"

"Ah…" Tom's eyes twinkled. "But you've seen it, haven't you, Helena? You saw it not long before you died, for it was you who wisely hid it to keep it safe! I feel your regret and I feel your pain, and I know that you now believe the diadem would be even more safe if returned to the castle your esteemed mother helped build! I would think your charges would be overcome with eagerness to get it back!"

"Perhaps some would," Helena mused. "Only it would be terribly dangerous a mission, and require much cunning!"

Tom grinned confidently. "Danger and cunning are mere trifles to me! If your Ravenclaws don't love their benefactor enough to even attempt to free her of her suffering, then I shall! I will get your mother's lost diadem back for you! The journey is only but half the battle. But the other half shall be complete if only you tell me where you buried it."

"Would you get it back for me?" Helena gazed at him, enraptured. "Would you really?"

Tom beamed, trying not to make it too wolfish, as opposed to loving and besotted. He took her hand. "I would do anything for you, my dear Helena."

Even though she was a translucent being, Helena still managed to blush down to her chest, smiling shyly, gratefully. There was a slight pause in which she fanned herself a little, tried to regain some composure. At last, she admitted:

"I didn't bury it. I hid it – in a hollow tree, in the woods of Albania. Have you a bit of parchment?"

Tom readily supplied one.

"Hold out your wand and I will teach you the spell to create a map that will chart out the directions I dictate to you."

Riddle nodded eagerly, trying not to tremble with excitement. He had her now.

"You'll find the diadem in a hollow tree bordering a small spring, in the forest known as the Qafe-Shtame." Helena described the area as best she could from her recollections at the end of her earthly life, warning Tom that some elements of the landscape had no doubt changed in the past millennia. This didn't bother Tom. He had what he needed, and even if some of the landscape had indeed changed, he would figure it out from this map provided to him.

Beaming, Tom made a show of kissing Helena's hand. "Thank you, my dear. I shall return with your family heirloom within a fortnight! Hogwarts will rejoice!"

His coveted information in hand, he swept from the corridor and sneaked back into the passageway leading to Honeyduke's, the smirk on his face wicked.

It was deep night as Tom consulted the map Helena had drawn for him. He was pretty sure he had found the correct clearing and spring as it had been described to him. But the hollow tree…. where is it?!

The open knot in the trunk wasn't very prominent. It was so subtle, in fact, that Tom realized he had passed over this tree several times before he realized this knothole had been overlooked. Yet here it was! This tree did fit the description and Helena's crude drawing.

Heart pounding, Tom reached into the knothole of the hollow tree, feeling around for something jeweled and jagged. Something in the shape of a crown. He was a little surprised to feel his hand groping around other objects, and he groaned at the thought that a priceless wizarding artifact might be buried under junk little children had no doubt hidden in here over decades.

He hissed when he felt something sharp suddenly pierce his palm, and he let his fingers close around it. He had to manipulate his arm quite a bit to dislodge the object from under the pile of all the other trinkets and back out through the knothole, but holding the quarry up to the lighted tip of his wand, Tom stared. Then he started to laugh. Here it was! Ravenclaw's lost diadem….

"Oi! You can't be rummaging around in there! That's where I keep my stuff!"

Tom wheeled around. A dirty Albanian man – probably some hobo who lived in these trees – had come upon him unawares. So it was this bloke's buried treasure he had needed to rifle through! Tom wondered whether this vagabond even knew the diadem had been in here. Judging from the way the filthy wretch's eyes gleamed with surprised wonder upon catching sight of the crown, he had to surmise not.

Tom wasn't sure whether this hobo would fight him for the prized crown, perhaps to go into some town and sell it for booze. He wasn't about to take that chance.

Fortunately, he had the advantage.

"Avada Kedavra!"

He waved his wand lazily, and a flash of green light sparked out and hit the hobo square in the chest. Bastard was dead and keeling into the leaves before he'd even realized what hit him.

Back to being undisturbed, Tom turned back to the diadem, his slits for eyes gleaming with the promise of power. Not the power the diadem already wielded, but the power with which he was about to endow it.

Pointing his wand at the center of the crown, Tom performed a complex incantation. A sharp, glorious pain now cut into and spread out from the very depths of his being, but he didn't stop grinding out the sacred words, even as he gritted his teeth in sheer agony.

Then again, splitting one's soul wasn't meant to be comfortable.

"…. break these earthly chains, and set the spirit free!" Tom growled out, pushing himself to the end of the incantation of ancient magic.

He felt something split from himself almost atomically and he let out a yell of pain which then eased into a perverse pleasure, more powerful than any hit of dopamine. The diadem grew white-hot in his hand, and then began to hum in his palm. Tremble, vibrate almost with a kind of awareness.

As if the inanimate object was somehow now…. alive.

Riddle grinned with wicked victory. It had worked! So long as this crown was in his hands, so long as it was safe, he could never die! He had done what no man or wizard had thought possible. By this feat alone, he was the greatest wizard of all time – shame he couldn't crow about it, even as a way to prove it could be accomplished.

In the end, it didn't matter. Those fools would learn soon enough how he had tempted Fate, even if they never heard it from his own mouth. In the meantime, that was one down… and five more to go.