Justin found himself glancing at Harry throughout their potions lesson. He, like the rest of the school, found the boy extremely confusing, for instance when he first arrived three years ago. The boy had regularly denied the truth of the various 'boy-who-lived' stories and yet as a first year knew more magic than most fourth years.
But despite this when Justin had approached the boy Harry seemed friendly enough, but whenever Justin invited Harry anywhere the boy always turned him down. Sensing the boy was something of a loner Justin backed off but tried to keep on friendly terms with the boy.
Harry Potter had the odd ability to scare his year mates, but Justin didn't think it was deliberate, indeed he didn't think Harry knew he was doing it. Ever since he had first arrived Harry was scarily confident, but it wasn't the smug arrogance of Malfoy. Harry had the air of somebody who knew they could do anything they wanted.
When that troll broke in and killed his friend, the other students recovered within a few weeks, the girl only hung out with Harry so he was the only one he noticed her absence. Justin didn't know the girl well either, but he felt he understood Harry and noticed the lack of confidence for several months after.
As the year passed Justin was disappointed when rather than open up more, Harry somehow managed to somehow to close himself off even more. It wasn't hard to work out Harry had taken a classroom for his own, Justin and his friends in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had taken a disused classroom for themselves.
He had tried to follow Harry to his room one day, but had remembered he had agreed to meet with Ernie and forgot about following Harry. The next day he tried again but once more he remembered another pressing matter, the day after that he focused on Harry as hard as he could. Eventually he reached a dusty corridor and had hoped to follow Harry's footprints.
Unfortunately Justin looked down when he realised there were no footprints, he quickly found some sort of sticking charm had been applied to the dust to stop it moving. When he looked back up Harry had completely vanished, he looked in each room but there was no sign anybody had been on the floor for years.
After following Harry one final time, he gave up discovering where Harry went when the boy seemed to vanish after reaching a blank wall. No matter what Justin did he couldn't get the secret passageway to open, fed up and slightly humiliated he gave it up as a bad job.
With the new school year it started out perfectly normal, until the attacks started and Justin ended up petrified for most of the year. It was a surprise when he learned Harry had tried to save him from being petrified and had even fought some sort of beast to stop the attacks continuing.
He was disappointed in how his House acted when they thought Harry was the heir of Slytherin, he wanted to talk to Harry but as the boy had unofficially moved out of their dormitory he hadn't gotten the chance. With their third year he had hoped to talk to Harry again but the boy never moved back.
This meant Justin had to build up the confidence to talk to Harry privately, which proved harder than he expected. It didn't help that the blonde second year girl followed him around everywhere, during lessons Justin couldn't shake his own friends. From what he could gather his friends had been extremely rude to Harry while he was petrified.
Tom Riddle looked up from the final backlogged Daily Prophet. Despite the fact he had been born almost 70 years ago, from his point of view he finished the ritual to make his first horcrux and 'woke up' as a book in the future.
Luckily for him, Ginevra Weasley was very detailed in her first few diary entries, even giving him the date unprompted. Once he got over his shock at traveling 50 years into the future he started nudging Ginevra into revealing what had happened in recent history and worked backwards.
He was thrilled to learn his plan of adopting the persona of 'Lord Voldemort' had been a huge success, young Ginny seemed to accept the fact somebody with the name Voldemort had just attended Hogwarts. Regrettably his past… or was it future self had had not followed through with the second part of his plan.
While at night he would masquerade as the fearsome Lord Voldemort, at day he had planned to appear as simple Thomas Riddle, a half-blood ministry worker. As his reign of terror grew, Thomas would rise through the ministry. Any that opposed him would become the victim of yet another attack until the path to minister would be open.
As minister he would show the wizarding public he was the best choice by stopping many of Lord Voldemort's plans while slyly passing pro-muggleborn laws. Should Voldemort's forces prove to be the greater force, then Thomas Riddle would fall from the public eye and disappear. Should Thomas put a stop to Voldemort's forces then Voldemort would throw his forces away in a last gamble before fleeing the country, never to return.
No matter who won, the victors would see himself as their natural leader, who would then lead his forces against first the other magical ministries and then take over and rule the muggle world.
The pure-bloods were rich and quick to anger, while the muggle borns were radical and open to change, Tom cared little for either side and merely saw them all as a tool to set himself Lord of the world. This left Tom rather confused when Ginny said she didn't know anyone named Tomas Riddle.
At first he implied to Ginny that he was nothing more than an enchanted diary and used to belong to Thomas when he was at school, he didn't want to ruin his other self's plan by drawing a link between a dark object and Thomas. After finding out that Thomas Riddle never existed in the magical world and that Voldemort was thought to be dead, he realised he could talk semi freely to the Weasley girl without worrying about messing up his other self.
Obviously he knew Voldemort wasn't dead, Tom knew he was a horcrux and as he was clearly alive so too Voldemort lived. As his energy grew he started getting Ginny to reveal more about the world until eventually he was able to temporarily take over Ginny's mind.
His control over Ginny was more akin to the muggle hypnosis and subconscious suggestion compared to something like a confundus or the complete control of the Imperius. As such he could get Ginny to move around like a puppet but if he pushed her too hard or got her to do something she abhorred, such as killing another human, then she would break free.
Tom doubted he would be able to get Ginny back into a suggestable state if she broke free forcibly while in book form. If Tom hadn't been forced to learn extreme patience within the orphanage he knew he would've pushed Ginny too much too fast and ruined everything.
It took forever to get Ginny under his control enough that killing chickens and writing with their blood didn't seem so repulsive. Once he knew the girl was ready he got her to awaken the basilisk and sent it after the only victim he could, a week before the attack on Mrs Norris the cat had scratched Ginny when she tried to pet her.
Tom flamed the girl's anger and shock into a deep and irrational hatred, so when he ordered Ginny to tell the basilisk to kill the cat and return to the chamber the girl barely resisted. Every time Tom wanted to launch another attack he had to stoke up the girl's own fear or hatred first, he made the girl jealous of how close Justin Finch-Fletchley was to the Potter boy and made the girl want to get him out of the way.
The girl's mental state started deteriorating rapidly but this only made it easier for Tom to assert his own authority onto the girl. He made her distrust her old friends and family so that she would only go to him for advice, then when he showed his 'ugly' side she tried to avoid him, but inevitably she returned.
So the dance continued until the girl's spirit had been firmly crushed and he could take over her mind for as long as he wanted. In a rush of arrogance he tried to take out the Potter boy in an unplanned attack on his commandeered class room, Tom found it humorous how the boy's private room was only a few doors down from his own secret hideout.
Of course his hideout was under much heavier privacy wards, he foolishly assumed the boy's hideout would have little to no protections judging on how quickly he had gotten through the notice-nots. When the door stood firm to his first explosive curse he assumed it was a weakness in the girl's magic so fired a much darker withering curse.
The curse should've turned the door to dust, instead the spell only rotted part of the door before stopping. Now that he knew it was the door and not his magic he sent a wave of explosive curses, the door was strong but he could see he was starting to make a hole.
Then the spear had flown straight through the hole and went right through his stomach, pooling his magic to the girl's stomach he took refuge in the edge of the protections from his own hideout and started applying what few healing charms he knew.
If it wasn't for the fact the girl had become a temporary horcrux container, which allowed the girl's body to shrug off damage that would otherwise be deadly, both Tom and the girl would've died long before help arrived. Now that he knew he lacked the strength to take on the Potter boy alone he pushed forward his plan to resurrect himself.
He waited until his host and the Lovegood girl were being escorted by Lockhart and tried to subdue the professor quickly, yet again he was surprised when the professor proved he was more capable than Tom had believed. However, it took more than just capability to fight Tom, knowing he needed to move quickly he put the professor out of the fight with a dark spell to his wand arm and took the stunned Luna Lovegood into the chamber.
His plan was to drain his host of all her magic and use that magic to rebuild his body in physical form, he would then sacrifice the virgin Lovegood to fuel a ritual that would give his body the range of magic he was used to. His plan was foiled by Potter not only showed up much quicker than he had expected, the boy also brought the host's brother.
Both boys showed a surprising amount of resilience, he had hoped the basilisk would kill the pair but they managed to keep the snake at bay. When the Potter boy started to create a sympathetic statue, Tom was forced to step in and make his body form quickly at the cost of magical potential.
He relied on his greater knowledge of spells to keep the Potter boy on the defensive which gave him the time he needed to draw the last of his old host's magic. But when Tom switched from holding him at bay to out-right killing him the Potter boy proved annoyingly hard to hit.
When the boy summoned that infernal spear Tom knew he needed to change his plan. When his spells just ricocheted off the silver spear he started planning his escape while simultaneously trying to stop the boy killing him… again, when the spear flew towards him he jumped out of the way only to be sent flying by a blasting curse.
Tom couldn't help grinning when both boys ignored him and focused back on the basilisk, it gave him enough time to begin the self destruct sequence embedded in the chambers ward scheme. He couldn't help taunting the boys before disillusioning himself and escaping down a pipe, he knew from prior trips the pipe led all the way to Hogsmeade.
It had been tough the first few days and he had resorted to stealing trinkets and selling them at shady pawn brokers, once he had a bit of money he converted them into galleons and booked a bed at a cheap magical inn.
Having established a place to sleep he was then forced to find a job in Diagon Alley, in his past he had worked in Borgin and Burkes and knew the job provided plenty of opportunities, such as finding rich purebloods who were at the very least sympathetic to the dark.
But Mr. Borgin would likely recognise him and start asking awkward questions, as such Tom had been forced to look in a less suspicious place. As he needed to find out what happened since he made the horcrux he applied for a small position at the Daily Prophet.
This gave him access to the store of previous papers, he skipped the last ten years and then went backwards from there. The court records were extremely unhelpful as they only told Tom that those that may support him were all in Azkaban.
The general consensus in the office was that some Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy had bribed their way out of punishment, but Tom couldn't go to him for help as if they were wrong Lucius would hand him in. Even if Lucius had been a willing Death Eater, the man may decide to hand Tom in anyway just to prove he had changed.
As far as Tom was concerned he was completely alone and would need to start from the ground up. But this time Dumbledore knew of his alias of Voldemort and while the ministry didn't officially recognise him as having returned, that wouldn't stop Dumbledore taking matters into his own hands if Tom got a desk job at the ministry.
There was also another issue Tom had to worry about, the trace. It could be that the trace wore off for the original Tom and hadn't been reapplied to him, or the trace was applied to his physical body and would be removed when his body reached 17.
Or… the third option which Tom thought was most likely and also the worst. If the trace worked upon magical signature then Tom was practically doomed throughout the next several school years. As he never finished his ritual his magic had Ginevra Weasley's magical signature.
Which meant he needed to wait at least five years for her magic to mature, until then any major rituals could potentially do more damage than good. He hoped it was this weakness in his magic which had allowed the Potter boy to stand up to him.
The trace meant Tom was trapped within the wizarding world as he refused to step into the muggle world defenceless, even within Diagon while his magic would be masked he needed to spend his magic sparingly. Should a single instance of under aged magic reach the ministry during the school year they would send somebody to investigate.
Even if he gave them a fake name they would assume he was muggle born and bring him to Hogwarts, where Dumbledore would control him again. Luckily Tom knew ways to get around the trace, any magic that didn't require a wand such as runes or potions went under the ministry's radar.
So until he could move freely he would keep his head down and quietly work towards his plans.
Having finished the latest addition of the Quibbler Luna curiously looked up from her couch and tried to figure out what Bathsheda and Harry were working on. She didn't understand how Harry made his mithril but she was fine with that, Harry never kept his projects secret from her but she generally preferred to just watch him work.
Currently they had several mithril spheres each about half a foot in diameter, Harry would form the spheres while Bathsheda etched runes onto another. When Bathsheda finished the runes the sphere would be placed in a tray with slots which held and powered the spheres, each sphere would then have a tiny ward covering it.
Each tray held three rows of five, when all fifteen slots had been filled Harry would put the tray into a slot in the ward generator. Whenever a tray was added the slot would fuse shut and the wards would layer themselves over the generator, a rune on the outside then determined how big the ward would become.
As there were six slots either side of the generator this new and improved mithril ward could have 90 wards layered on top of each other. As Harry and Bathsheda were only testing the new generator design they filled and loaded one tray then tested the resulting ward.
The new design had several benefits, such as making it very easy to add or remove wards without rewriting the entire array. It also fixed the problem with the old design where the runes would cancel each other out, the downside was each ward was individually powered so the power consummation had skyrocketed.
Hopefully the mix of ley lines and the mithril generator would prove powerful enough to keep the wards at full strength, but in case they weren't Harry had decided to add the feedback ward he had implemented on his shield. It would simply draw the power out of any spell that struck the ward and feed it back into the wards.
If anyone tried to take out the wards by force then no matter how much magic they threw at the wards they would only ever make the ward harder to break. Bathsheda had warned this wouldn't make the ward impenetrable as there were a thousand ways to break a ward and very few of those methods employed a 'hit it till it dies' strategy.
As they wouldn't know if the mithril ward worked until they actually warded a property, Harry, Bathsheda and Dumbledore would be going home over the Christmas holiday to ward Dumbledore's home and then Bathsheda and Harry would try to break through the wards.
This chapter was tough to write honestly. Next week there may not be a chapter as I'm going to finish Time Heist.
I also recently got into a theatre group called 'Starkids' who do really great plays, I strongly suggest watching 'The guy who doesn't like musicals', it's a comedy-horror on youtube for free and it's one of my new favourite shows.
For Tom Riddle he will be a different character to Voldemort,. While Voldemort is stronger than Dumbledore, Tom only has the power of Ginny Weasley and as he isn't under the protection of Hogwarts he can't exercise his magic like Harry does. With the trace Tom doesn't know if it is tracking him or not and as he can't test it he assumes the worst-case scenario.
I will also note that Tom knows he made horcruxes as he himself is one but he doesn't know how many he managed to make, I'm going to say he made the diary with the murder of his father as I said Frank Pryce thought Tom was 16 when he saw him and diary Tom is also 16.
As such Tom knows about his heritage and the gaunt ring and probably knew he was planning to turn the ring into a horcrux but he wouldn't find the cup or locket until he left Hogwarts and the diadem he found much later. Also my thoughts are as a living horcrux he is practically immortal to anything that doesn't instantly kill him or can't be naturally healed, but once killed he is permanently dead.