Chapter Forty-five:

Unexplainable Obsession

Albus Dumbledore smirked as he hid in the shadows of the deep, dark cave. He had been watching his two captives with a curiosity bordering on obsession. Neither of them were aware of his presence—he'd made certain of that—and so he assumed their current behavior must be natural.

"Come on, Abraxas, you're not stupid," Tom grumbled as he held the pot they were using to practice making some potion or other. "We need to get this part of the potion right if we hope to move on to the next. Now put in the right ingredients this time."

"Sorry, Tom, I just can't seem to concentrate," Abraxas excused himself. "Every time I get near you, this bloody Horcrux goes mad. It's almost like it's trying to leap out of me and into you or something."

"Yes, I understand that," Tom said. "My Horcrux seems to have the same unexplainable reaction to you. But we cannot let that distract us. Dumbledore wants results, and we're expected to deliver them. He won't care that we're finding it difficult to—adjust to our new inhabitants. If I don't discover how to keep a bloody Horcrux alive outside its host, he's probably going to resort to something much worse."

"Worse than starving us for three weeks?" Abraxas scoffed. "I'd kill for a loaf of bread right about now."

"All these distractions can be overcome," Tom insisted. "They must be overcome. I'm just glad the old man hasn't got Hermione in his clutches any longer."

"Unless he's found her again somehow," Abraxas added worriedly. "The blokes may be working for you, but that doesn't mean they're a smart lot. You know that it was usually me who kept them on task when you were not about."

"There is that," Tom agreed. "Do you know which of them is protecting her?"

"You know that I can't tell you anything, Tom," Abraxas insisted. "It's hard enough keeping it locked inside my head away from him. I don't know if he would be able to access your thoughts through Gellert's Horcrux once you knew. We can't take that chance."

"You're right, of course," said Tom with a heavy sigh. "But I just wish I knew if she was all right. And you say she wasn't showing? I would have thought she'd be big as a house by now."

"Riddle? Is that a tear in your eye?" Abraxas asked, somewhat surprised.

"Just a trick of the light," Tom said stubbornly. "Now get back to this potion. It's not going to make itself, and you need to know how to make it without my help."

"I will get it right this time," Abraxas insisted. "No bloody potion is going to get the better of me."

Albus chose this point to step out into the dim light. "Good afternoon, gentlemen," he said as he perused the pot Tom still held. He sniffed the contents. "Ah, I see you are teaching Malfoy how to extract Horcruxes, Tom. I hope the two of you don't intend to try to extract the ones I've placed inside you. I fear that would be a grave mistake."

"How so?" Tom inquired in as neutral a tone as he possibly could.

"Well, as it happens, since Hermione Granger is not in my possession, I found it necessary to find another hostage," he explained. "Someone I was certain that both of you would not wish to see dead."

"You've already killed my Mum, and you wouldn't dare touch my father," Abraxas pointed out. "Not even you are that stupid. Besides, Tom here could care less about him."

"Oh, no, gentlemen, you're way off," he chuckled.

"Then who the bloody hell is it?" Tom snapped.

"I've taken Horace Slughorn," Albus smirked.

Both boys grimaced.

"Wouldn't it be a shame if I had to snuff out such a brilliant mind in its prime?" Dumbledore smirked.

"You can't snuff Sluggy, he's part of the future," Tom reminded him. "He's one of Hermione's professors, and you're trying to preserve her timeline, aren't you?"

"Not a significant part," Dumbledore pointed out. "Most of her potions skills were learned under a man called Severus Snape. A half-blood, just like you, Tom."

Tom scowled. "Is there some point to bringing that up?"

"Not precisely, Tom. I just know how much you dislike it," he smirked. "But there is something I wanted to tell both of you."

"Then do get to the point, sir," Tom grumbled.

"The reason for your unexplainable obsession with one another is simple," said Albus. "You both contain a piece of Gellert Grindelwald inside you."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Abraxas said. "You're the one who killed my Mum."

"I had to do the killing to get the piece out of me," he explained. "And now that we have both, I wish to run some experiments on the two of you. Eventually I will want to put the pieces together again, but I'm not certain which of you to put them into."

"What do you mean?" Tom asked.

"Well, Tom, I had thought that if I combined the pieces into you before that they must have created the foul monster that Hermione Granger remembers. But then again, Miss Granger never got a look at the final result, so how can we be certain the Lord Voldemort she fought against and you are one and the same?"

"But Abraxas marries, and has a son, Lucius," Tom pointed out. "He can't have become Lord Voldemort."

"Yes, but that only tells me that I allowed Abraxas out of this cave, and that he went back to a semblance of a normal life," he pointed out. "Perhaps he is the one who contained both halves, and you were merely a pawn."

"Lord Voldemort is no pawn," Tom huffed indignantly. "I wanted to make a change, to create a better world, but I refuse to make the changes that you are hoping for. I won't become a monster bent on destroying the world."

"We shall see, dear boy," he crooned. "We shall see."