Tom Riddle

He was exhausted.

While he was initially quite enthusiastic about overthrowing the Ministry and bringing change to the world, it turned out that achieving that was not as easy as he had originally expected.

As unimpressive as it sounded, Tom spent the first few months of his new life simply traveling around Britain, learning as much as he could about the wizarding world and slowly laying the groundwork for his future endeavours.

After setting up a temporary base of operations (a shady, abandoned house near the Leaky Cauldron) and acquiring the necessary tools and supplies (such as a wand bought at one of the less than savory establishments on Knockturn Alley), Tom spent the entire march buried in books, doing his best to make up for all the fifty years of information he had missed.

Getting information on new spells or discoveries was fairly easy, as they were mostly easily accessible. The problems began when he tried to get information about the original Tom and his fate. Every piece of information he was able to find suggested that his older self was some sort of evil incarnate, a being so frightening that people were still afraid to even say his name, a decade after his supposed death.

It was all so convincing that if not for Michael's seer abilities, he would have believed the official story himself. Fortunately, the visions he experienced, as well as the suspicious activities of the Ministry and Dumbledore that Michael warned him about, told Tom a different story, one far more likely than the official one.

The stories about Voldemort had to be fabricated, because it was simply impossible for the "most dangerous dark wizard in history" to be defeated by a literal infant. How could wizards simultaneously fear Voldemort as an unstoppable monster and believe that he was defeated by a defenceless two-year-old? It made no sense at all.

The worst part was that no one even knew nor cared how it happened, with the entire population simply happy that Voldemort was dead. Just as Michael said, it seemed like some bizarre cover-up, created by the Ministry to hide the truth.

Still, even if he knew all this, he couldn't prove it, as it would require finding supposed Voldemort supporters to question them, breaking into the Ministry to find hard evidence, or questioning someone important enough to know the truth. All of these options were extremely risky, if not downright suicidal, so Tom unfortunately had to postpone learning the truth about the original Tom until the opportunity arose, instead focusing on other matters.

Such as using his newly acquired subordinates, the Heirs of Slytherin, to spread his chess pieces around the board, slowly accumulating power. As the school year ended and his carefully groomed followers finally entered the adult world, Tom began sending them to the various factions of wizarding Britain. Most of them were mere "pawns," becoming easily accessible plants that he could freely use to gain information about his opposition, but for two of them he had bigger plans. They were his "bishops," so to speak.

His first bishop was Thomas Williams, the Gryffindor boy who led the Muggleborn protests in February. Noticing the lack of a centralized Muggle faction capable of opposing the existing pureblood alliances, Tom decided to take advantage of the boy's relative popularity, gained through Creevey's articles, and his natural charisma. Thomas, not long ago an ordinary student, became the leader of an entirely new and easily manipulated radical muggleborn faction called "bloodletters".

Well, as it had only been a month since Thomas began his political career, so far the faction consisted mainly of Thomas and whatever people he managed to convince during the daily agitations conducted in the Diagon Alley. Still, it was supposed to be a long-term operation, so Tom was not worried, especially since the faction had been growing steadily so far.

His second bishop was Anastasia Selwyn, a Slytherin girl who led the pureblood protests and Thomas' girlfriend. Her task was quite a bit different from Thomas', as instead of creating a new faction, she was tasked with taking over an existing one. Tom sent her to work in the ministry's department of finance, which was a department composed almost exclusively of purebloods, where she was supposed to socialize with other nobles and gain the necessary connections that would allow her to gradually rise through the political ranks and slowly take over the noble faction from within. As with Thomas, it was expected to take several years, so for now there was not much for Tom to do in this regard.

That didn't of course mean that he wasn't busy. While supporting Thomas and Anastasia in their official endeavors was quite doable, it turned out that the most difficult part of Tom's plan was manipulating events in a way that would allow the couple to meet regularly in secret and nurture their... love. Not only did it require a lot of planning and maneuvering on Tom's part, but he also wasn't thrilled about spending two or three nights a week watching a pair of naive teenagers flirt or worse. Sadly, it was a necessary part of his larger plan, so he couldn't just stop supporting them. Tom was eventually going to go public and form his own faction, consisting of both muggles and purebloods, and nothing would increase his popularity like reconciling the star-crossed lovers and bringing them together under his flag. Still, the public display of attention was... tiresome.

This, and other tasks such as gathering information and staging Lockhart's sightings, meant that Tom was growing increasingly exhausted, unable to handle all his schemes on his own. The Heirs of Slytherin, while undoubtedly loyal and useful, were always meant to be used as pawns, reliable but inflexible. He needed a real subordinate, someone who could act largely independently, easing some of Tom's burden.

He knew one person who would fit that description, but unfortunately he was now eleven years old and attending Hogwarts, so he couldn't ask him to do it...

...But that didn't mean he wouldn't know someone else capable enough to help Tom. He was going to visit his friend comrade anyway, so he would just have to ask him about possible candidates during the visit. That way Michael would feel useful, and Tom would potentially gain a competent subordinate.

Yes, it was quite a good idea. After making sure Michael's house was not being watched by the ministry's magic he would...

A loud, agonizing scream brought Tom back to reality. When he looked toward the source of the noise, he saw a man, who incidentally was a captive kidnapped by him a few hours earlier, fall to his knees, his entire face contorted in a painful grimace.

The man clutched his right hand in agony, unable to do anything but watch in horror as his limb was slowly rotting before his eyes. The inconspicuous-looking ring on one of his fingers glowed slightly, as the man's skin and flesh gradually darkened with each passing second. It was clear that the man would soon die, unable to withstand the curse placed on the ring he was currently wearing.

The man in question, Cassian Flint, was a relatively influential scion of the Flint branch family who rose to prominence in the last decade. He was still quite young, less than thirty years old, but had already attained a fairly high position in the Department of Finance. In fact, he was Anastasia's direct superior, which was one of the reasons why he was currently dying on the floor of some abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

Cassian was actually a rather awful person, as he was quite vocal about his utter disdain for "inferior" wizards and witches. There were even rumors that he had been involved in several murders of muggleborns in the past, which Tom had already confirmed through legilimency. But while that was certainly enough for Cassian to deserve death, it wasn't the main reason for his current situation. No, he was there because the man was foolish enough to reveal his plans to get rid of "that troublesome worm Thomas Williams" to Anastasia, his new and enthusiastic subordinate.

Since Tom couldn't really let the man kill Thomas, for obvious reasons, the best option available would have been to simply kill Cassian and dump his butchered body in some corner of Knockturn Alley to stop any further assassination attempts, but there was a reason he didn't do just that.

It was because of Gaunt's ring, which was currently on the man's finger. Following Michael's advice given to him in the Chamber of Secrets, Tom visited his ancestral home and retrieved the horcrux hidden there. Warned of the deadly curse placed on it, Tom wisely did not wear it, instead deciding to place it on someone else's hand and see if that would make the curse disappear, allowing Tom to speak to a splinter of Tom's original soul stored in the ring.

Unfortunately, as he watched the light disappear from Cassian's eyes, he knew it didn't work. The curse of the ring remained as strong as ever, preventing Tom from talking to his other self. He would have to find a way to get rid of the curse permanently, though it would certainly require a lot of time, given that the curse had been created by a more experienced and knowledgeable version of Tom.

The fact that he now had yet another task ahead of him made Tom disheartened. Then he looked at the man on the floor, now dead and completely necrotic, and realized that he would have to clean up the mess himself.

He sighed deeply. He really wished he had a subordinate to help him with his work.

Tom is not a villain, guys! He has been reformed, really! Why don't you believe me?!

But seriously, Tom may have been "reformed", but he is still Tom. Give him some time.