Chapter 5 – Incantations and Deceptions

"… so what actually happened?"

"About Dumbledore's memories?"

"No, I mean…"

"…"

William Jr. finally blurted out, "What happened on my fifth birthday party?"

William smiled guiltily. "We went on a picnic with the Tillens. It was a sunny afternoon, we had sandwiches and lemonade, followed by a big blue cake and presents."

His son pondered that for a bit. And then changed the conversation back. "You… about the story, how you were turning into Lord Voldemort…"

"Not turning into," William quickly interrupted. "I was pretending to be him."

"Well, but… pretending… I mean, he was evil, that he cast all sorts of bad spells. Did… did you cast spells like that?"

"No, not like that," William replied, smiling. "Would you like to see a trick?"

What a silly question. Of course his son wanted to see a trick.

"Okay, now, you need to try to figure out how I do the trick. If you can, I'll tell you the next part of the story."

William Jr. nodded intently.

William Sr. waved his wand with a small flick, and with a clear voice called out "Lumos." Immediately, a ball of light seemed to be glued to his wand, illuminating the room quite comfortably.

"That's just the light spell," his son complained.

"Just keep watching." He dispelled the magic, plunging the room back into dim lighting. "Now… how about… Terigularimae!"

Once again, an orb of light appeared, only to be dispelled several seconds later.

William Jr.'s mouth pursed and he didn't say anything. He couldn't see any difference between the spells.

"What about…Malargulanum!"

For a third time, the room was magically lit; each spell appeared identical to the others.

William Jr. frowned, eventually asking, "Were… were those different languages?"

His father reacted with surprise. "I'd never thought about that. I've never actually done a spell that wasn't in Latin."

"Okay, so it wasn't a different language. What did you do, then?"

"You have to figure it out." William smiled. "Maybe this will help… Williamus Excellentium!" Defying all logic, the wand lit up a fourth time.

The 8 year old boy was getting a bit peeved. "That makes no sense!" he complained. "Saying that you're 'Excellent' in fake latin is not a spell!"

"One last time," William said, trying not to snort with laughter. "If you can't figure it out after that, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to hear the rest of the story."

His son sullenly nodded. William waved his wand one last time… and this time said nothing. Yet his wand lit up.

"Well, that's simple," his son said slowly, "you just did it without an incan… wait a minute… you… those were just gibberish earlier… but…"

William grinned in full. "I think it's time to talk about my OWLs…"

He was so close. So close to a perfect on his Charms OWL.

Nobody got a perfect on an OWL. It just didn't happen. Legend had it that the only person that had ever managed a perfect in even a single subject was Dumbledore himself.

And yet… Tom was almost there. If he were doing the test honestly, he'd probably get an Outstanding on it… but Tom wasn't exactly limited to 'honestly' doing anything.

Silent Mobilis? Of course I can do that spell sir… if you don't mind me secretly doing a Leviosa spell instead and purposely doing it off-balance so the object skews off to the side.

A Scorpion-Repelling Charm? Absolutely not a problem… as long as you don't inspect my ward to see that it's not 'repelling' the scorpions so much as shocking them if they get close.

The Patronus Charm? Oh wait, you forgot to ask me to even do that one, given that I temporarily altered your instruction form while you were watching those Scorpions.

However, it looked like his run was at an end. The final question, the final test… and he had no way of knowing what to do.

It was ridiculous! What 5th year could conjure a half-meter block of silver? Oh, sure, 5th years would surely have a chance of conjuring 2,000 freaking pounds of metal.

He wanted to complain. He wanted to say it was impossible. He wanted to accuse the proctor of cheating… which would be ironic, considering he'd been doing that quite a bit himself.

Instead, he asked in a bored voice, "Would you repeat the instruction?" Stall. Buy some more time.

"I said," the proctor drawled in a disinterested voice, "that I want you to conjure a cubical block of silver, at least a quarter meter in length."

This is stupid. Who needs a block of temporary silver that big? What, am I going to drop it on a Giant/Werewolf hybrid's head? Well, if that incredibly unlikely scenario ever rears its ugly head, I wouldn't be stupid and try to Conjure the blasted thing, I'd just use Transfiguration – heck, I could just transmute the air itself into it. Why should I use a blasted Cha…"

His breath caught. He was on to something. He could do this. The problem was it wasn't with the right spell. This was the Charms OWL; he was instructed to use Conjuring, not an entirely different branch of magic. Maybe if the proctor had been female, Tom might have managed to flat-out sweet-talk the woman into accepting a Transfiguration solution for full marks. This guy, though? No way.

Now that he thought about it… not only could he do this, but he was pretty sure he could do it without even using an incantation. After all, it was just a block of a single plain substance and in a very simple shape – there was no need to worry about patterns, curves, conjoined materials, or any of the usual transfiguration obstacles.

He was extremely tempted to try just that… to do the 'wrong' spell but without an incantation. Problem was, the proctor would no doubt figure out what happened. Heck, Tom wouldn't be surprised if a lot of students didn't try to do that cop-out.

Tom could only see one option. He'd never heard of anyone even trying this before.

He waved his wand.

He softly said, "Conjurus."

And he mentally screamed the incantation for the transfiguration spell.

A large block of silver appeared. The examiner squawked in amazement. Well, William was a bit surprised as well – though of course he acted like the end result was never in doubt. He had a persona to maintain, after all.

So it came to pass that Tom Riddle became the second student ever to achieve a perfect score on an OWL.

And, ironically, Tom cared a lot less about the test result than what he found out during that last question.

It changed… well, it changed everything. The moral chasm between William and Voldemort had started stretching uncomfortably wide. At a few dozen points now, situations had come up where what Voldemort should do was something that William was not comfortable with. Sometimes Voldemort would win out and he'd cast a spell that cost William some sleep – nothing overtly evil, but still not something that a good person would enjoy having on their conscience. And sometimes William would win out, with Voldemort doing something that seemed a bit out of character… because despite appearances, William had a pretty reasonable conscience.

Now, though? Now he could do anything.

Oh, sure, there were limitations. The spell he pretended to cast and the spell he actually cast had to look the same. He couldn't cast a bloodred "Hilarulum" or a bright-white "Stupefy" – the fact that the color was off would give away that he wasn't casting the right spell; He couldn't cast a "Mutus" that made fireworks appear, because everyone knew that's not what Mutus did. And, of course, the spells he did had to be simple enough that he could do them without an incantation.

Still, these were solvable problems. And although it made that summer the busiest of William's life, he solved them.

With 6th year approaching, Hogwarts had no idea what was coming…

Please Review

AN: Few bits of news. First, this story is finished in its Rough Draft form. So you can expect a new chapter every 4 days or so, because all I have to do is revise and edit them. There will probably be 5 remaining chapters after this one. Second, I've begun work on this story's sequel, and I am Excited. I thought this story was fun, but it's nothing compared go getting both father and son involved in the action...