Author's Note:

Canon purists and walking encyclopedias would note that I certainly fudged a certain someone's canon birth date and thus year of Hogwarts entrance (read: McGonagall). I consider this as necessary evil because I'd rather use an established character than create a completely unnecessary OC. Last chapter in this story, but far from the last in this series.

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Minnie

Enter stage left: One Formidable Hogwarts Headmistress

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"You killed my students."

The voice that said that had the precise tones of tightly controlled anger that he was a little too familiar with. Tom looked up and saw the tense face of one of his year mates, a young Minerva McGongall. She had the awkward elegance of a loose-limbed colt. The primness of her lips was as they should be for a Prefect and Head Girl, both positions easily discernible from afar first by her badge, and second by her straight-as-pin uniform.

"Why, yes I did. I was a dark lord, Minnie." he said dryly. "Were you expecting me to bake them cookies?"

She took another step closer, almost stabbing his throat outright with her wand. Tom raised an eyebrow, quite certain there was no way he'd end up any deader. Hmmm, this is nostalgic. She was usually a major inconvenience to his plans in Hogwarts; always highly suspicious of him as she faithfully followed her Head of House Dumbledore regarding him than popular opinion. Under any other circumstances, he would've immediately fired a spell towards her, but right now, he couldn't quite summon the interest to care.

She sighed, the wonderful fury that seemed to blaze her dark coppery hair brighter suddenly leaving her limbs. She removed her wand from threatening him.

"I always knew you were up to no good whenever you called me Minnie instead of McGonagall," she said, sitting on the other end of the bench. He didn't have to look down on his clothing to know that he was shorter than he had been and younger, or that was wearing his Hogwarts uniform again, matching hers.

"None of your housemates seem to figure it out, though," he said, his lips twitching at the corners.

"They're not stupid," she said defensively. "They're just not that observant when it comes to you."

She really made winning an argument with her too easy.

"I would've thought that they were very observant when it comes to me, considering that they actually know my preferences at breakfast… and lunch… and dinner… and my grades… and my underwear preference and—"

"I wasn't talking about your fangirls." She said, and then something in her seemed to have snapped after holding it all in all these years. Fire lit up her eyes again. "Goodness, I don't know why they seem to be everywhere in Hogwarts, I could barely study in peace! Some were even clumping together, giggling and breathless with gossip in the library!"

"Of course," he matched her seriousness in tone. "How dare they besmirch the library with their less-then-noble intentions. The cheek of them. The sacrilege!" He said in mock-horror.

That earned him a glare for his efforts. It didn't erase his smirk.

"It was your fault, I'm sure of it. I keep telling you to stop them from getting their hopes up too high but do you even listen? You pretended that you have no idea Nott was selling your pictures and do you know how bad the second years get it?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about." He said, all innocence.

McGonagall stared him down even harder, well-prepared to deliver another harsh telling-to towards him. It hit him just how absurd their argument was when neither was even still a student of Hogwarts that Tom couldn't help but laugh. McGonagall maintained her severe demeanour for three more seconds before failing completely to chuckles as well. It was a while before they came to themselves again.

McGonagall tried to hold back a shudder in recollection and failed, the curl of her lips ironic.

"Merlin, the fangirls. I forgot about the fangirls. I thought I could never learn enough variation of silencing charms during Fifth Year in order to be able to study and sleep in my dorms. I almost always had to keep casting them all the way until graduation. How did you ever bear it? How do you ever manage to lose them from tailing you?"

"Oh, you know, the usual," he said with a magnanimous wave of his hand. "Polyjuice potion. Clifford Parkinson. Tarquin Nott. Sometimes they volunteered at the same time, sometimes in turn. I had no problems losing fangirls with the two of them on the loose and in disguise."

Between the two of them, it didn't need to be mentioned that neither men were remotely close to handsome and was in fact not quite confident of their looks. One hand flew to her mouth.

"You didn't!"

"I certainly did. They did say they want to know how it feels to have a girlfriend so I offered them a Faustian bargain. The only rule I gave them was to keep evading and keep 'trying to run away'. If the girls did manage to cop some feel right then, that was acceptable. They were also to stay within pursuing distance until it faded away naturally so they'd know exactly who they're getting. I pretended not to know that they didn't exactly… mind getting groped."

McGonagall left eyelid was twitching at this point, "It doesn't bother you that those girls would still be misusing your body, even if it wasn't precisely the one you're wearing—oh, don't look at me like that! You know what I mean!"

She was half horrified but too curious to not ask, no matter how akin to a trainwreck the whole story was turning into. Not for the first time he wondered if she wouldn't be better served in Ravenclaw than Gryffindor—and perhaps that was the issue when she hatstalled. He moved on to something he had always thought he wanted to tell her, but kept forgetting about. At the very least, her reaction would be interesting.

"Did you know that Nott's first girlfriend actually agreed to be with him as long as he promised he could polyjuice into me while sleeping with her? He begged, grovelled and abased himself so desperately that I agreed in the end at a hefty price in galleons and several large favours that I could call in any time. I made a tidy profit selling polyjuice potion to him throughout that year. I'm not sure he ever realised how much, though I am certainly glad for the access to the Nott family's bank account. After his second girlfriend, he'd actually developed quite the reputation as my body double among girls. That is, if you're interested in that kind of role play."

She hit his shoulders with one disbelieving shriek. He had to hold back a grimace. He'd always known her to be powerful, even outside her spells. A damsel-in-distress, McGonagall was not.

"TOM! That was too much information! How did you… why did you… I don't even…"

The Head Girl was all sorts of flustered and awkward. He laughed. It felt strange, to be laughing so easily with someone else instead of the aloneness that came around from being surrounded by cowering minions. There was a power distance that was unbridgeable when one is alone at the top, but he hadn't realised how boring it was until he could actually talk to people he considered his peers; like Harry Potter, like McGonagall.

"Why did I sell my form out to Nott?" He said, wryly. "Why else does anyone whore anything out? The galleons, Minnie, the galleons… at the very least until I graduated. He was also a definite and predictable buyer of contraceptive potions too. Not all of us have a trust fund at our beck and call."

"Tom Marvolo Riddle!" He was almost certain it was impossible for her face to get any redder than it was now. It was still amusing to know, after all these years, though she was nowhere as embarassed as when she was younger. Now, the severe, no-nonsense look she cultivated in her time as a professor looked rather out-of-place in her teenage body. It was unfortunate that all good things must come to an end, he thought. This was especially true when she had called him by his full name. It was enough to fizzle out what good humour had alighted before.

He waved his wand in the air, letting his name float ahead of them before rearranging the letters into his dark lord name.

"I am Lord Voldemort," he said quietly. There. He had her attention now.

"I always hated the idiot whose contribution to my life was only siring me and giving me his name. And yes, I did kill your students, Minnie," he stated.

He was not going to lie to her nor would he pretend to be something he wasn't. That he was still the very good discussion partner that she remembered did not mean he had stopped being a mass-murderer. He acknowledged her intelligence enough to know it would be foolish to trick her, and he didn't want her to ever forget that the dichotomy between Tom-the-student and Voldemort-the-dark-lord never really existed.

He was both. He was always both.

Her eyes dimmed and for a split second she looked older than what was possible for a youthful face. The anger that was in her voice earlier wasn't there for some reason he couldn't understand.

"Yes. I suppose you did, didn't you?"

She wasn't even looking at him when she said that, eyes lost in some memory he didn't want to know about.

The great framed screen in front of them began to show the more unpleasant parts of his life. There goes the skirmishes and the raids. There goes the fights and there was the Battle of Hogwarts. Neither was really watching the scenes. Tom skipped it because he was bored stiff after watching the first twenty times or so that even the dullest dialogues was stuck in his mind, and Minnie avoided it because he suspected it would still hurt her to see those deaths again even if she'd seen them repeated more than he had.

"Were you here for your pound of flesh, then?" He asked her, idly.

"Did you regret taking their lives?" She asked back.

He debated between giving her the answer he knew she wanted to hear and the truth he was almost certain she wasn't ready to hear. His Internal Critic stopped him from saying anything in haste. Come on, let's not be a Gryffindork about this. Stop and think first and let's not say anything stupid or incriminating.

How on earth could anything be more incriminating than 'I am a dark lord', he asked incredulously.

Well, nothing too incriminating…

He heard her exhale, and saw her taking her glasses off and rubbing the bridge of her nose. Her hawklike eyes were piercing. Most would've quailed under it—it was fortunate that he wasn't most people.

"You didn't, did you?" She asked, eerily calm.

It was worse to hear her voice without the blame in it. It would've been simpler if she just blamed him, marked him as utterly evil dark lord and stop there, thus forcing them to be at opposite ends when the battle lines were drawn. It was certainly simpler than listening to the disappointment in the voice of his best Transfiguration, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes partner, regardless of their arguments and philosophical differences in opinion. It was worse because he could hear the strain in her voice. She was trying to understand him and yet still failing at it, regardless of her own intellect and continuous effort.

It would have been easier if they were just out at each other's throat.

He didn't really feel anything for all those deaths he had caused, whether directly or indirectly—after all, what was the worth of all those common people, anyway? It's not as if all of them were destined to have created groundbreaking advancements in magic or any other field. As for those people who could've made something, now that he had the time and space to ponder about their deaths, he did have some regret killing them. Not that he was going to ever lose sleep over that, but still, wonder of wonders, he had some regrets after all. That was already a miracle on his books.

He was quite sure he didn't have any when he was still alive, or at the very least he never made much time to think over things to ever realise it.

But McGonagall wouldn't have noticed it.

She wouldn't see because she expected everyone to be like her; to have compassion and mercy and all other soft and squishy feelings and whatnot (Pffft. Useless). What she'd pay attention more was how meaningless their deaths had been and how it was still meaningless to him. It would hurt her to hear that, he knew, the same way that it would also hurt Dumbledore if he knew, or even Harry (but somehow he doubted that; that particular wizard had the oddest talent of being able to understand him for some reason, even on points he didn't agree with).

They were normal where he wasn't, and that was the end of it.

All things considered, he could, however, compromise. He'd certainly begun to learn something here, hadn't he? He also knew that deep down, she was wondering about how and why everything turned out the way it did instead of just her students.

She was clearly wondering about the war too.

"I regretted taking the wrong step out of Hogwarts," he finally admitted. From the way he dragged the words out of him, one would suspect it hurt more than getting malformed wisdom teeth removed. "Maybe I've been taking the wrong step even since I was in Hogwarts."

He had realised now that if he had been more patient and subtle in gaining power, he would have been much less of a troll in a china shop and the wizarding world would suffer from his tumults and ravages less. People would oppose him less. He would've left a more intact world as his legacy, a world that can actually progress forward to a new renaissance.

He wouldn't have left one that was doomed to crumble and fall in on itself after several generations.

She turned to him and stared at him, as if she had only really seen him for the first time. There was a brightness in her eyes that he had never seen before, a genuine regard that he found to be… baffling. It was something that he'd only seen when he'd corrected her in Transfiguration, and even then it wasn't this deep.

"You're… you're telling the truth, aren't you?"

He held back from rolling his eyes and instead gave her a long-suffering look. "When did I actually lie to you, McGonagall? Say, not even when we were at Hogwarts."

Actually, she was too intelligent for him to ever blatantly lie to, but he wasn't going to tell her as he did subtler forms of misdirection just fine. He had also lied to plenty lesser minds and he wouldn't think twice about doing so again. Who cares about them?

"Still, I'd never imagine I'd hear those words from you, Tom," she said. "You were always so… knowledgeable about many things compared to our classmates. Self-assured. Confident."

"Arrogant." Tom conceded after a while. Pride goes before the fall, he thought. "And unfortunately rather bad at learning from prior mistakes because of that."

She was still staring at him with that inexplicable, intense look, and it made him a little uncomfortable.

"Are you sure you don't want to take your pound of flesh?" He asked.

She shrugged, looking away. "I've met many of the dead students you've killed. They've begun to move on. I've begun to move on. Then I met Harry, who thought that I should meet you before going anywhere else. He gave me the directions to reach you, and voila, I'm here."

It certainly made talking with people easier, this whole death thing, he mused. Grudges don't last that long after a while, not when you could catch up with everyone else after everything was over. He had to wonder how long 'a while' was here, though. Several decades? A century? Harry had lived for well over a century, after all.

His forehead creased. "Whatever for?"

'Why would you want to meet me?' Was the question he couldn't bring himself to ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear her answer.

"At first? To beat some sense into you. I'm still the Head Girl to your Head Boy." She took a deep calming breath, as if to stop herself from flying into a fit, and he couldn't help but wonder why. Her next words gave the answer.

"It was always so frustrating to see you go taking unnecessary risks in studying questionable forms of magic precisely because I know you're far from stupid, Tom. I know you could be more." she said primly.

His lips twitched at the edges to form the beginnings of a smile. It was always amusing to see the extremes that McGonagall could fluidly shift through; the cerebral student and the hot-headed prefect. The suspicious rival to the trusting friend. It was enough to give most people a whiplash; he'd stopped bothering to figure out at which point she was currently at a long time ago.

"You know," she said, her voice casual. "We would've been much better friends if you could've been this honest with me back then and less of that smooth, fake perfect student. I can't help but wonder a little of what might've been—"

"They're over and done with, McGonagall." He cut in, harsh.

"Mmmm," she murmured, but didn't actually agree or disagree with him and neither was she offended; when they were in Hogwarts, he knew she would've been in righteous anger. He chalked her maturity down to her actual age. "They are, aren't they? But don't you wonder?"

As she said that, the pictures in front of him changed, shifted, and Tom leaned forward in curiosity. He could see a twelve year old him again, looking painfully young to his eyes, in the Hogwarts library. He remembered the first time he personally met McGonagall; they had been trying to check out the same book, Hogwarts: a History. Tom shook his head.

"I still can't imagine how that happened. Of all the books in Hogwarts, how on earth do they have only one copy of the most well-known primer on Hogwarts?"

A small smile grew on her face. "You don't remember? It was the edition that counted. The latest one at that time actually had a lot of excisions, as was the one before it. To keep it brief, I think, but it loses many details in the process as the editing wasn't that stellar. I remember reading it and feeling dissatisfied. The one we fought over was much more comprehensive."

He shook his head. "I didn't even remember why I'd even want that book."

He'd probably relegated it to the dusty dungeons of his memory, along with all other 'unimportant' information as he ascended to power. Now he wondered whether all of the memories he had conveniently not recall was as unimportant as they seem.

The young Tom Riddle in the picture in front of him didn't distract the young Minerva and made off with the book, like he had remembered it to be, cementing their rivalry from that day on. The young boy blew an exasperated huff but acknowledged some of her claim on it.

Fine. I'll borrow it, because I saw it first, but you can ask me for it anytime you want to read it. I'll always be in the library on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Little Minerva didn't fold her arms in front of her chest, but she had an impressive disapproving glare even at that age.

How do I know that you mean it?

You don't, he said drolly. You'll just have to trust me.

"Hmmm, I don't recall ever giving anyone my schedule out on first year," Tom mused, curious. As far as he'd remembered, he was on the defensive most of the time.

The McGonagall that was sitting beside him sat utterly still and silent at the scene playing out in front of them. "Tom, I'm quite sure it didn't go that way."

He smirked. "It does that sometimes, yes. I am told that it can show not just scenes from the past, but also of what could've been. Harry said something about other possible futures."

But it's not fair. I don't see you being forced to trust me. Young Minerva pointed out. An exasperated Tom rolled his eyes and rummaged through his book bag, pulled a slim, dog-eared volume out to shove into her hands. It was such an unassuming and worn book too.

Oh, whatever. Keep that for the time being, then. Consider it as my bond for the book. You can return it everytime you borrow this book from me, for as long as I borrow it from the library.

How could this be worth that? But even as she said that, she was peering curiously into the title.

Twelve-year old Tom scoffed. Are you kidding me? It's worth that and more. I don't think even Hogwarts has a copy. Do not lose it. I'll borrow Hogwarts: A History forever to make sure you'll never read it if you do.

She looked horrified at that, but also impressed at his creativity. You don't mean that!

I do. Stop fretting. It's easy enough to do, isn't it? Don't lose it.

This time, when Tom walked away to check the book out, Minerva's attention was already completely taken by the book in her hands.

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. She started opening the pages.

Tom shook his head. "Right. I can't imagine I just gave away that book. It's probably one of the few interesting ones I have then. But I suppose that's the point, isn't it? The things I didn't even consider."

McGonagall was paying the scenes in front of them uncommon attention. She didn't seem to even hear him yet.

Even now when she was relaxed, her back stayed perfectly straight. He wondered how that could be comfortable, until he surmised that she might be half-dead on her feet and she'd still keep that perfect poise. He'd seen it at the Battle of Hogwarts, hadn't he? And he remembered that she developed it back when they were still at school. Her cool head and sharp tongue was a weapon, wielded often to cut down any purebloods making the mistake of underestimating her for being a half-blood. Huh, she is a half-blood, isn't she? How did he forget that little thing they had in common?

The young Tom Riddle on screen had just found those commonalities out instead of remembering them. And for all her suspicion of the Slytherin who was hogging Hogwarts: a History, young Minerva defended him when some of her housemates thought him easy picking.

What did you just call him Rafferty? Would you dare say exactly the same thing to my face?

Tom thought he heard a wistful sigh from her just then.

"What now, McGonagall? Still need to beat some sense into me?" He asked.

He made his tone a touch prideful on purpose, challenging. It had never failed to cause her to grind her teeth in annoyance or flash a warning glare to him before she either managed to hold herself with her usual grace or get baited into a lively argument. It didn't seem to happen this time, and he had to remind himself that for all the forms they currently took, she wasn't that teenager anymore. He wasn't that Slytherin Prefect driven to consolidate as much power as he could either.

"Not exactly." She replied.

He was… To be honest, he didn't know who he was right now. The Head Girl had a strangely gentle smile on her face instead.

"I came to say goodbye—and wish you good luck in your next try, Thomas."

Acceptance. It caught him off-guard; her expression, her words, everything. It was with some effort that he maintained his outward calm.

"Thomas?" He asked.

She shrugged. "You said you didn't like Tom. Why not get used to a different name?"

Then, McGonagall smiled brilliantly, with so much trust and belief in it that it seemed unreal. It couldn't have been directed at him, could it? Didn't she have issues still with the children she had raised and sent to a war of his making? Children he'd decimated? But no. The smile was still there, as warm and bright as a hundred suns, regardless of his disbelief. She hugged him all the same, like an old friend than an old enemy, prompting him to stiffen up before slowly trying to figure out how on earth he was supposed to return it and awkwardly hugged her back. For about five seconds. She had fortunately let him go just before he was getting uneasy with all this touchy-feely normal people emotional display (and before he had the strong urge to shove her away).

"Better luck next time, Thomas," she said. She kissed his cheek before walking away. He stared at her retreating form, still not quite believing what had happened.

"What next time?" He asked. She waved at him, a cool smile on her lips, but didn't answer his question. He reined in his annoyance. She was enjoying this, he just knew. And why had all the people that he'd met again around here are his former enemies, anyway?

Of course, it's not as if you had actual friends, is it? His sarcastic inner voice provided him with the answer.

"Does this have anything to do with what Harry said?" His voice was stern and demanding, but it didn't work on her. McGonagall had always had a spine of steel and had known him for far too long.

He gave up when she didn't look back again, watching the scenes of his life run back from the orphanage, the bloody orphanage again, with a confident young Tom that was blissfully ignorant of all the notoriety he was gaining for himself and the wariness Dumbledore had of him. Tom looked away. If he kept watching he was going to snap unflattering words at the young idiot currently killing a pet rabbit on the screen and thinking it was the height of power. It just gets all the wrong attention.

"Why does everyone seem to know about what's going on but me?"

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Author's Note:

I wrote this something like two years ago or so. Before it dies an agonising death through over-editing, I thought I might as well just bite the bullet and publish it in all its flawed glory.

Why I wrote this: Believe it or not, I actually feel for well-written sociopathic characters, and I don't consider it an impossibility for them to still be sociopathic and yet a passably functional member of society (I'll refrain from regurgitating some rants on their psyche here). Alas, that last fine balance is not often found in fiction. This work is the first step of my contribution in that direction.

Any comments would be much appreciated. (By 'any comments', I really mean 'anything even tangentially related to the story' - because I enjoy an interesting conversation that much).

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