"My bodies seem to get decreasingly worse," Voldemort muttered as he stared at himself in the mirror. Well… not himself. And yet himself. It wasn't his original form, for that, while glorious, was far too weak. A stiff breeze could scatter his bits across the sky. He'd learned well from his battle with Merlin. It was why he had changed course, realizing that tossing away bodies after he consumed the souls within was just… wasteful. Find one, hollow it out, use it to give him some stability. A better version of the Keystone, as much as he loathed that damn thing-

He paused, eyes going wide with panic, and stretched out his senses… yes, it was still below Hogwarts. Still safe. Still sealed away in that room that only he and Harry knew about. It was safe. The bane of his existence was safe. Not complete, still missing pieces of itself, but the main whole was still there. Safe.

Voldemort too a breath, knowing that his body needed it.

'But is it truly MY body?' he thought to himself as he ran his fingers through the long white beard that hung from Albus Dumbledore's chin. 'I suppose… does the Dwebble claim its shell is its own? Is it a part of them or just property or something they have taken?' He let out a scoff; he was getting philosophical thanks to Dumbledore's influence. 'Focus, damn you… focus.'

He reached for a pair of scissors and brought them up to his beard but rather than cut it he found himself constantly tugging on the whiskers, trying to figure out just what to remove. A little? A lot? Clean shaven? A short beard? Mustache? So many choices… he tried to imagine them in his mind but he couldn't!

With a snarl he threw the scissors down and began to pace about Dumbledore's bedroom.

Throwing out his hand he allowed aura to swirl from it, tapping into the bit of Dumbledore he had forced himself not to consume in order to wield the power. That came with an annoying side effect but in this case, when Voldemort needed someone to talk to but did not trust a single one of his followers, it was worth it.

"Does that not say so much about you and why your plans fail that the only one you can talk to is a ghost?" the aura shade of Albus Dumbledore said as he appeared before Voldemort.

"Are you forgetting I am a ghost as well?" Voldemort told him, once more going for the scissors. "That isn't the insult you think it is, old man."

"I have always wondered if you truly are a ghost, though. Gengar… the very first known ghost type… is so full of life. Playful, a trickster… its kind is willing to learn so much about the world. Very anxious and excited to do so. You on the other hand-"

"I learn plenty about the world," Voldemort snapped.

"Facts. Not experiences."

"Yes… and you chased an experience didn't you. How did that turn out for you."

Dumbledore sighed, looking down at himself. "I will spend the rest of eternity regretting my moment of weakness. I am punished for it but it won't be enough for all the ill you do in my body."

"It is my body now," Voldemort said, deciding to shove the very debate he himself had been having aside and just make the declaration. "I won it through trial by combat. I consumed you and I claimed it as my own."

"And yet you have done such a wonderful job maintaining it." Dumbledore said, pacing around Voldemort. There was no worry about him escaping or even doing harm to Voldemort, for his form was aura and the Spiritomb controlled it completely. Dumbledore could only go where he allowed and do what he demanded. If he tried to even pick up a needle from the ground his fingers would just go around it like water vapor.

"I need to trim this," Voldemort stated.

"You brought me out to taunt me over you trimming my beard?" Dumbledore questioned. "I'm afraid I have more pressing concerns, honestly."

"Everything isn't about you, old man," Voldemort snapped, getting annoyed. Why had he thought this was a good idea again?

Dumbledore chuckled at that, clearly finding it humorous for… some reason… but didn't comment on that. "Then why?" He paused. "Do you need my advice?"

"No," Voldemort said.

Yes.

They both knew the answer was yes.

"And yet more proof that what you are doing is wrong."

"How is needing suggestions on how to maintain this horrid thing-" he tugged at the beard, "-evidence that I am not right in claiming all I desire and want?"

"Because you can't make it your own, despite what you think," Dumbledore said. "It is my body… it will always be my body. You can't see it as anything else but my body and as such you can't bring yourself to alter it… because doing so would make it no longer my body and you can't conceptualize that."

"You are saying many words that jumble up together to form… I suppose sentences…"

Dumbledore though shook his head. "Let us look at your hosts… you did say that your choice of bodies has gotten worse. Tom Riddle… that poor poor man that you first claimed. He was your first host."

"My best host," Voldemort said petulantly, though he'd never admit that the words came out in that tone even if pressed. Lord Voldemort wasn't 'petulant'. "I will live a thousand years… and a thousand times that more… and I will not find a better host than Tom Riddle."

"First loves are always treasured."

"It wasn't love," Voldemort told him coldly.

"Of course… you don't understand love. Have no room for it."

Voldemort ignored that comment, knowing that the old man was fishing for something but he honestly didn't care what it might be. "The perfect body. Strong. Young. Steeped in power. And his soul…" He licked his lips, a very human gesture he knew, but he couldn't help it. "My greatest regret is that in my hunger I ate it so quickly. I would have rather nibbled on it, savored each morsel like the treasure it was. I so do hope Harry's soul tastes as good so I might make it last." Dumbledore glowered at that and Voldemort smirked. "Oh… you don't like that, do you? Don't like the idea of the boy being harmed. Why? You were nothing to him. A face in the crowd and the doddering old fool who never helped him. His memories of his interactions with you… they are with me."

"I care because he is a living creature. Same as Tom Riddle. Same as all those you have consumed."

"If you knew some of the things Tom thought about you wouldn't be so quick to defend him."

"Tom was a young man with ambitions. I know that. He wasn't perfect… but he was not the monster you are. That you forced the world to remember him as." Dumbledore paused. "Though… how could he be so perfect for you when-"

"Don't," Voldemort said, raising a hand and causing it to go blue with aura. "I can always return you to your cell."

The subject of his final years as Tom Riddle were… touchy. Voldemort had never bonded with a human before, never taken their flesh for his own. Honestly he had been surprised when it had worked as he had only attempted it as a last ditch effort to free himself from the Keystone. When he'd found himself wearing Tom's body he had been delighted. And for a time he had settled well into that body. But… then the changes had happened.

Tom began to age.

Oh, everyone aged. Well… except for Voldemort. But for Tom it had been different. It had been like the years began to pass by in months. His hair had fallen out. His skin had begun to wrinkle. Vision blurred and aches filled his joints. He'd done all he could to repair the damage, to try and return Tom to what he had once been, but it hadn't worked. In fact all the radical methods he'd used to try and battle against the aging process had only resulted in him being further mutilated. By the time he had faced off against the vile Lily Potter his body had been a pale gray thing with skin yanked too tight along his skull, his hair completely gone, and his body filled with sharp spikes of agony. It was why he'd needed Harry… or Lily. Either would have worked well enough for him!

"It is the same reason you can't trim my beard," Dumbledore said. "You can't stand things changing and your mind doesn't allow you to even consider yourself changing. With Tom he got old and that drove you mad. With Quirrell the bond was hastily made and he began to fall apart." Voldemort reached up and idly rubbed his chest, remembering how that flesh had begun to scar. He had tried to only take part of Quirrell's soul with that bond, something different that he thought would allow him to gather his strength and also preserve the body but it had only damaged it further. After that he'd never attempted anything like that again... Dumbledore was the closest and he'd only done that for the aura. "Cho Chang… you didn't have that child for long but you must have sensed what was coming." Dumbledore chuckled. "You with menstrual cramps… that is something I would have loved to see."

Voldemort glowered at him. Yes… claiming the girl had been a mistake. Another desperate move. He had felt her already growing mere days after he'd eaten her soul and he'd hated it all. How humans could stand to transform like that… it was the same like with Pokemon that evolved. Bodies shifting, altering…

"Alastor… he was different. You did alter him."

"I merely brought him back to how he was. Repaired the damage to his body. He remembered how he had been."

"So you can't even claim you changed. You merely brought back a memory." Dumbledore was pacing again behind him. "And then there is me. You can't even snip off a part of my beard."

"I will!" Voldemort said, grabbing at the scissors and bringing it to the beard, but to his disgust and mortification he found his hand was trembling. "Perhaps… I will trim…"

"You need me to tell you how to cut it. What would look good on me. Because changing it through your opinion alone… you can't do it. Because you've never truly lived. You have no understanding of it. So you can't figure out how to do it."

"Shut… up!" Voldemort snarled.

"Its why I think you like taking souls so much. They let you live the lives you are afraid to experience for yourself. You command armies, you decide who lives and dies… but you have no control over yourself, Voldemort. You never have… and never will."

"I said shut up!" Voldemort roared, raising his hand and clenching it into a fist. Two things happened in that moment: the first was that the aura that was Dumbledore's shade dissipated as the fragment of the man's soul was recalled to him. Voldemort had been a fool thinking that talking with the man would allow him to work out how to cut the damn beard! It was just a beard!

The second… was the blinding pain that ripped through that hand.

He rushed to the sink and plunged his hand under the cold water but it was too late. Voldemort had allowed too much of his own ghostly energy to seep through his body and when he'd used the aura, if only to rid himself of the shade he himself had created, it had rejected him.

Voldemort, when he finally was able to focus, pulling his hand from the water and stared at it with horror. The flesh was black, crackling in spots and oozing puss. The fingers were curling into a claw-like shape and even trying to flex them hurt. He struggled to make a fist and it nearly brought him to his knees. The old wrinkled skin was replaced by mutilated flesh and he honestly didn't know if he'd ever be able to repair it fully.

A change.

He would have laughed if he didn't hate it so.

"Headmaster?" someone called out from outside the door and he hurriedly look about, eyes constantly going to the blackened skin that now covered his hand.

"A moment!" he snapped before shutting his eyes and taking a calming breath. "Just a moment, my boy," he said, adopting Dumbledore's more gentle and grandfatherly tones. Voldemort had long became a master at acting like his hosts; if he didn't people would figure out something was wrong. When he'd first bonded with Tom he'd been forced to kill many people that had been close to the man because he couldn't properly pretend to be him. Thomas Riddle Sr. and his entire family had been the first ones to realize that the young man they had known was different; Riddle Sr. had never been a good father to his son, having never even realized that he had a child until Tom had found him two years before Voldemort had taken over him. And when he had found out it had been little more than a few meetings, giving up family medical history. Tom had been bitterly disappointed by that but had hoped that perhaps his father would come around.

'I wonder if he would have been pleased that his father at least realized I wasn't him,' Voldemort thought as he looked himself in the mirror, making sure that there was nothing that made him appear to be anything but Albus Dumbledore, the kind and slightly confused headmaster who wandered about like the kindly old man at the park that loved to feed the Duckletts. The long white beard that took so long to comb and always got in his mouth. The even longer white coat that was far too warm during the rare heat of Avalon yet also too thin to offer much comfort during the chilly nights of the Avalon winter. The wild Alolan shirt that was basically vomited flowers. Simple slacks that were so cheaply made he kept waiting for a hobo to come and demand them back. Moon-rim glasses that to Voldemort's annoyance always slid down his nose and he'd been unable to get used to even after all these months.

As Tom he had first worn fine suits and then moved onto robes that reminded him of the better times, when he had ruled over Avalon as a true terror. Now he was stuck dressing like a clown because of his choice in hosts.

'Harry must be found, sooner rather than later!' he thought to himself as he plastered a smile on his face and opened the door to find the ministry representative standing there, waiting for his commands. "Ah, Wooddrew, good to see you!"

With so much of the staff of Hogwarts missing and presumed dead by the Ministry he had been able to convince the temporary Prime Minster that he needed a support staff to help him manage things. Being the only survivor still in Avalon of the attack Voldemort had seen Dumbledore's star rise and thus he had been given what he wanted. Hogwarts was now filled with carefully vetted aides and assistants that saw to his needs and helped him keep the castle running.

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Headmaster," Wooddrew said. He was a short man with limp dark hair that looked like a frightened animal trying to press itself to his scalp. He was dressed in a suit that Voldemort was pretty sure his mother had bought for him and moved about with all the eagerness of a Growlithe pup chasing after his 'new daddy' in order to get some bacon bits. The man was eager to please, would obey any demand, and would rush into a field of swords. And be cut to utter ribbons if asked to do so. He was no fighter, even among the Avalonians who had grown soft and plump during his stay in the Keystone, buried deep within Hogwarts itself. That was one of the few things he gave a grudging respect to when it came to Harry's choice of mentors: he'd chosen warriors. Oh, they were cowards through and through for refusing to actually wield the power they were given when it came to domination and rule… but they were warriors all the same and that was highly important. Too many in Avalon were soft and weak. Like Wooddrew. The man wouldn't survive a fist fight, let alone a true battle.

Even his Pokemon were weak. None were at their final evolutionary stage, even though the man was in his twenties, and they lacked the training and talent to truly do anything meaningful in a battle.

'Once even the weakest farm hand knew how to tear out a man's throat with his teeth. Now this one would cringe if I raised my voice and he has a position of power.' He wanted to shake his head at the foolishness of it all. 'That was once my greatest strength, that so much of Avalon was weak. Now their weakness is my own.'

He didn't say any of that aloud, of course. Never considered it. Instead he smiled and patted the man on the shoulder. "It is quite fine, my boy. When one is an old man they find that the greatest irony in life is the one with the least amount of time left is the one that takes the longest to do anything of worth."

"You still have many years to go, Headmaster," Wooddrew said quickly.

"Perhaps… perhaps," Voldemort said, mentally adding that no, he did not. At least this body didn't. If all happened as he hoped soon Dumbledore would be dead to the known world and he would be in the body of Harry.

Harry.

Everything now hung on him.

"Do you wish to check on the prisoners, headmaster?" Wooddrew asked, unable to shake the slight twinge of fear in his voice.

'He would never have made it amongst the likes of Bellatrix,' he thought to himself. It would have been too obvious for him to bring in people that were part of his original Team. He had already begun planning for when he took Harry as his host, knowing there was simply no possible way that the boy would work with the people that had supported the death of his parents. He was too foolish and sentimental for that. And though much of Avalon was filled with the utterly brainless there were enough that would put two and two together and realize that Harry suddenly aligning himself with the likes of Lucius Malfoy wasn't right and begin poking about his business.

No… no, it was far better to start over again. To build a new Team, though he would be very careful not to call them such. One that could believably be allied with Harry and whom Harry would turn to in his time of need. Heavily into the light side of society, as was often seen as those that opposed him, and would never be mistaken for Nocturne. Voldemort did rue the fact that he was going to have to kill so many people… because it was a waste of time and effort he'd spent training them. Almost as much as he hated change Voldemort hated waste.

'At the very least I can consume them,' he thought to himself. 'But they were bred and built to be warriors, not meals.' Everything was a meal to him, of course, but some beings were meant to be savored and eaten and others were meant to do a job until the very end. It was much like how a farmer would have some animals that were for beef and others that were for pulling plows; you could eat the beast of burden but it wasn't the best use of one's time. But these animals needed to be put down at some point so better to get something even if it were out of nothing.

He made a big show out of thinking about Wooddrew's question before shaking his head. "No… I trust all of you to keep them in line. They haven't made any move to escape, have they not?"

"No, headmaster," Wooddrew told him. "They claim that they are going to get revenge, that we must release them before Voldemort comes to free them, but according to the men that you've stationed to watch them they haven't made any real attempts to escape."

"Which is worrisome as it means they might be plotting something. But we must also consider that they might finally be seeing the light and realizing that siding with Voldemort was a foolish choice."

"Just as you said they would eventually come to see," Wooddrew said with a smile.

"Indeed, my boy, indeed," Voldemort said with a twinkle in his eye. "People always mistake loyalty with desperation… and the reverse. When you have a force of will pressing down on you is it any wonder that you might do things you wish not to do out of a desire to live? Remove the threat and the good people they were reassert themselves. Why… I wouldn't be surprised if we soon heard wailing and sobbing. We must be ready for that, to offer them our help." He shook his head. "My worst fear is that they will decide that they only way for them to make up for their crimes is to pay the final price."

Wooddrew nodded at that rapidly, clearly already planning on what he could do to help protect the Nocturne Agents. Not that it would matter… Voldmeort would see them all disappear. He couldn't kill them all at once, as that would be too suspicious… but he could eliminate those that knew he was wearing Dumbledore's body as his own, to ensure his secret remained just that. Then, as time went on, a few accidents would happen, transfers to prisons, convincing the noble white knight guards to develop a taste for brutality…

"Then what do you believe we should focus on today, headmaster?" Wooddrew asked. "Rebuilding Hogwarts?"

"Yes," Voldemort said, looking over the hallway carefully. "We can't remain crammed tight in this small wing for much longer. Hogwarts must be shown to be strong. That we are working to recover from what the Sons of Johto and Nocturne did when they decided their blood feuds should be settled here, at what should be the save haven for Avalon's children."

"Of course, Headmaster," Wooddrew said. "You know… I applied to attend Hogwarts."

"Mmm," Voldemort said as they continued to walk down the hall; they were coming up to a spot that had been bridged with some planks of wood; so long as one didn't think about the fact that if the boards slipped even slightly they would take a 20 foot plunge it was a perfectly acceptable repair job.

"I was denied, though. Ended up going to Blazetuff."

"That was the school founded by Godric Gryffindor's… second son, wasn't it?"

"Third son, actually," Wooddrew said. "Though people often make that mistake because his second son died when he was four so people don't remember him much." Once more Voldemort merely nodded his head, making a murmur that let the man know he was listening. "A good school… I learned a lot there. But not as much as I imagine you teach at Hogwarts."

"That we used to, which is why it is so very important we repair the damage," Voldemort said as they fully crossed the gap. He let the silence linger for just a bit more, just enough that it was uncomfortable, for Wooddrew, before finally saying, "We get so many applications for Hogwarts. We turn away so many bright and talented minds. Often I wish the school was three times the size it was, just so I could bring in more students."

"I thought as much," Wooddrew said, puffing up a bit at that.

"Still, your work so far is a credit to Blazetuff. They must be rather proud to have you amongst their alumni."

"Thank you, Headmaster."

"Think nothing of it, my boy," he said.

That had been the second requirement he'd put upon himself when he'd begun requesting people to come to Hogwarts from the Ministry and assist him: no former students. He'd never admitted that and when a few had been suggested that HAD attended the school he'd found reasons to keep them away. Not wanting them to see Hogwarts in its damaged state, needing people he trusted at the ministry, them being too important when it came to their current tasks to drop everything to assist him. But the true reason was that he needed people that had had very little interaction with him. A former student who had spent time with him might notice that he didn't quite behave as they expected him too. It had been a large enough risk taking on Dubmeldore's life with the staff but thankfully he'd been able to use his disappointment in Harry and the need to clean up after the attack in the graveyard as excuses for his changes in attitude and action. Later he'd ensured that those closest to him were killed leaving only the staff that saw him as a boss and not a lifelong friend.

For the next hour they toured parts of the school, Voldemort suggesting repairs that could be made. Walls that needed to be rebuilt. Floors torn out so that they might be reinstalled with proper bracing and supports to keep them from further collapsing. Security that he'd like to have added because 'one never knows when Nocturne and Voldemort might attack again'. Wooddrew calmly took notes, never interjecting his opinions on what they could or couldn't do; he'd made that mistake once and Voldemort had used Dumbledore's disappointed grandfather voice to explain why Wooddrew was quite wrong and that had seen the end of those notions of having say.

Finally leaving so he might put Voldemort's commands into action, Wooddrew hurried off and allowed Voldemort to be alone once more.

'The school is shaping up well,' he thought to himself. 'These repairs will turn this into a proper fortress. A base of operations where I might extend my feelers and find where Harry has gone.

That… worried him. Though he'd never admit to actually feeling worry as that was an emotion for the weak. No it… annoyed him. Yes, that was better. It annoyed him that he had no idea where Harry was. The boy had disappeared, gone completely off the grid. It was annoyed but he was sure that he would find Harry soon enough.

'And then,' he thought to himself, 'all will be put right once more. Everything will be as it should be. All according to plan.'

He moved to open a door only to hiss when he used his burnt hand, staring at the offending appendage before placing it in the pocket of his lab coat.

All… according to plan…