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Chapter Eleven—Errant

"Mr. Grayson, if you could meet one of my colleagues."

Harry turned around with a blink. He knew that Professor Slughorn had offered to introduce him to a few of his colleagues eventually, with an apprenticeship possibly in the offing if he did well enough, but Harry hadn't expected it nearly so soon.

"Yes, sir?"

"This is Everett Peverell," Slughorn said, and beamed all over as he waved the tall, cloaked man who had just walked into the classroom forwards. "He just got in contact with me recently to tell me that Dragonfire seeds are blooming again in a vale near his home. They've been thought extinct for more than ten years! Isn't that a marvel?"

"A marvel," Harry said, while he stared up at the intense, gleaming brown eyes of the man who could only be the Dark Lord. "Yes, sir."

"I have been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Grayson." "Peverell's" voice was deep and husky, a good cover for the coldness that he had when he spoke in his natural tone. "Horace has said all sorts of wonderful things about you."

"Thank you, sir. I think I've read about the deeds of a few your ancestors in some of the history books?"

"Yes. My family does have a remarkable history." The Dark Lord smiled at him. "As it is, I've been a recluse for years at this point. That's what happens when you take a curse in the process of searching for rare ingredients."

Slughorn clucked and flapped his hands. "Come, Everett, you'll give the boy a complex about how dangerous Potions are!"

"Oh, sir, your lectures have impressed on me how important it is to know everything about every potion you plan to brew."

Slughorn turned his smile on Harry and rambled on happily about precautions for fumes and the like, while Harry watched the Dark Lord. He nodded and added a few comments to Slughorn's, apparently following the conversation without difficulty.

Harry, meanwhile, had no difficulty in telling that the Dark Lord's attention remained on him.

The Dark Lord intervened when Slughorn said something about inviting "Peverell" back for a drink. "I did hope to talk to Mr. Grayson about some of the requirements for apprenticeships outside of Britain…?"

"You told me you were moving back, Everett!" Slughorn wagged his finger at the Dark Lord, and Harry couldn't prevent his jaw from dropping open a little. But the Dark Lord just raised his eyebrows in response. "Britain is where you belong, you know it!"

"I might find more temptations to bind me to Britain's soil than I had thought," the Dark Lord said, and his eyes strayed to Harry.

Harry wasn't stupid enough to think that he was really important enough to form a major temptation for the Dark Lord's stay. But the words gave a chance for Slughorn to start nattering on about British soil again, and for the Dark Lord to murmur, a moment later, "Do you think I might converse with young Mr. Grayson? I have a few questions to ask him about his capacity for experimentation."

Slughorn clapped his hands. "Of course! I have another class to get ready for." He smiled at Harry, a little anxiety in it. "And of course you'll go straight back to your common room after your conversation with Mr. Peverell."

"Of course, sir."

They left the classroom, and the Dark Lord at once raised a spell around them with a simple wave of his hand. Harry watched in admiration. The Dark Lord's power was far beyond Harry's reach, of course, but he could aspire to the man's skill with what he had.

"Tell me."

"Yes, sir," Harry said, and launched into an abbreviated version of what he knew about the Heir of Slytherin, touching only on the most important details. The Dark Lord did go back and make him repeat and expand on a few of them, namely what had happened to Finch-Fletchley. Then he let loose a long hiss of rage.

Harry remained quiet. He hoped the Dark Lord would at least walk him to the door of the common room, but if not, Harry intended to go outside and remain on the grounds in sight of a Care of Magical Creatures class until dinner.

"Slughorn thinks you may be a target?"

"Yes, sir."

"Because of your blood status?"

"Yes, sir."

"And yet you lingered to talk to me instead of asking me to walk you to the common room."

Harry blinked. "I know that you have more important things to do than that, sir. And I had a plan to go and make sure that I could walk in with some of the older students who have a class outside," he added, since the Dark Lord's eyes seemed to demand more of an answer.

"You are obedient, but you needlessly place your life low on the scale of importance. I need you as a spy. And I wanted to examine the dungeon corridors near the common room and see if they contain any clues."

"Yes, sir."

Harry knew full well that the Dark Lord would have discarded him if not for those things, but then again, if Harry hadn't been playing spy, the Dark Lord would have had little reason to walk with him in the first place.

"Why have you pursued the art of Potions? It is one that an impoverished Muggleborn might be expected to disregard, given the Galleons required for the ingredients and the importance, one would say, of Defensive charms and hexes to protect oneself from a blood purist's curses."

"I found a few people who could source ingredients for me in exchange for favors, sir. And this has the best prospects of making me rich in the future."

"And the need to defend yourself?"

"I'm on the Quidditch team as Seeker, sir. Most of Slytherin at least wants to protect me so that I can win games for them."

"A good method of guaranteeing yourself safety, but not one that can last forever."

"Yes, sir. Hence the long-term plan with potions."

The Dark Lord considered Harry for long enough that he thought he might have passed the line of cheek with his last words. But he kept quietly walking, and the Dark Lord kept quietly walking beside him, considering that the spells he occasionally cast at the walls and floor were wordless.

"You have chosen a different path than the one I once chose," the Dark Lord said at last. "But I suppose you do not have the magical power that I wield. I find it makes a difference."

Harry's head spun a little at the thought that the Dark Lord was comparing himself to Harry, and the implication that the Dark Lord had once been helpless in Slytherin the way Harry had been.

The comparison was flattering, even though, of course, the conclusion was inevitable. "I don't have anywhere near your power, sir," he said, lowering his gaze to the floor. "I appreciate your taking even as much of an interest in me as you have." There, that left a neat exit for the Dark Lord if he was regretting the comparison.

But contrary to the cold and haughty withdrawal Harry had thought the Dark Lord might enact, he turned to Harry and put a hand on his shoulder. "Continue to be a good servant, and you shall achieve heights you have not dreamed of currently," he said, and then slipped a small bag to Harry.

Harry opened it, and gasped a little. There was a small mound of glittering Galleons in it, but more to the point, there was a scattering of vials containing ingredients. Fairy dust, what Harry thought might be Demiguise brain fluid, and a phoenix feather.

"Thank you, my lord," he said, after a quick glance around to make sure that no one was around who might make it unwise to use the other title. "I will continue to be your devoted servant as long as my lord will have me."

"I rather thought you would."

It didn't matter that the Dark Lord was smiling at him in the superior sort of way that purebloods often did. Unlike some of the purebloods in Slytherin, the Dark Lord offered fair reward for fair reward.

Harry wondered for a moment how many other Muggleborns had made a deal with the Dark Lord like this to serve him, and then dismissed the thought. Maybe it was a lot, maybe only a few, but they didn't have to have an impact on Harry. He would continue doing his best, and the Dark Lord would repay him with the same thing.

Or they would end the relationship, and each go his own way. Harry would just make sure to do it, if he had to, without offending the Dark Lord.

A few of the other Slytherins glanced his way when Harry walked into the common room. He reckoned that he might have a confidence in his stride or an expression on his face that was unusual.

But it didn't matter, not really. Harry was living in a world of his own, one that had already grown beyond the bounds of his House, and happy to be so.

"Have you noticed that something's off with Grayson?"

Draco leaned around Theo so that he could watch Harry walking across the common room. Harry did seem to walk a little more confidently than normal, but then again, Professor Slughorn had asked him to stay after class to meet a colleague. Perhaps this colleague, whoever they were, had offered Harry an apprenticeship.

The notion irritated Draco a bit. Harry should be depending on what he could get from Theo and Draco—and Flint, Draco supposed—and not some other random person. It wasn't even a guarantee that an apprenticeship would work out if offered to a student so young. It was more likely to be a polite offer made for Slughorn's sake that the person who had made it would forget about as soon as they spoke it.

But…

"If we try and ruin his plans, or say something to him, then he's likely to think that we're just trying to interfere so we can keep him as our own personal pet."

Theo grimaced and nodded. "And we don't know that someone wouldn't offer him an apprenticeship. He's talented."

"So we need to find out what happened without making it look like jealousy."

That was simple enough, in the end, now that they had a better connection with Grayson because of not using Mudblood all the time. Draco just caught Harry's eye, and he smiled a little and walked over to them, sitting down in a chair nearby.

"Who was the colleague Slughorn wanted you to meet?"

"Oh. His name's Everett Peverell."

Theo blinked. Draco was still trying to remember where he knew the name "Peverell" from when Theo blurted, "Like the family from the Tale of the Three Brothers?"

"I don't know. I've never read it."

It was Draco's turn to blink. Harry was missing a lot of context and history other than just children's stories, but it was still a little startling to meet someone who didn't know it. "It's a story in a collection called The Tales of Beedle the Bard," he said slowly. "Death gave three gifts to the Peverell brothers. An unbeatable wand, a cloak that could hide the bearer from even Death's gaze, and a stone that could summon the spirits of the dead."

"Oh. Well, this particular Peverell didn't say anything about that. He did say that he'd been a recluse for a time because of the effect a curse had on him."

"It's not as though he would tell anyone if he still had the Deathly Hallows," Theo scoffed.

"Of course. I'm sorry."

Draco relaxed. "Did Peverell promise you a Potions apprenticeship?"

"He said that he would talk to me a little about the requirements of an apprenticeship outside Britain. Slughorn was trying to convince him to stay in the country."

"But he didn't promise you one?"

"No."

That didn't really explain the way Harry had looked when he walked into the common room, then, Draco thought. But maybe having someone who was apparently a famous Potions brewer—not that Draco had heard of him—offer him some attention was enough to make Harry perk up.

It did mean that Draco and Theo would probably have to increase the attention they offered Harry, of course.

Draco had not invested all this effort only to have another competitor enter the game.

His spells had revealed that the basilisk had moved through pipes near the Slytherin common room, but not often enough, and not with enough of a lingering presence, for it to be someone in Slytherin whom the diary had possessed. So Lord Voldemort had followed the elusive, lingering trail of his own magic, his own soul, up through the school, and higher and higher.

It was supposed to be impossible to feel one's own magic, immersed as one was in the flow of it. But he was no ordinary spellcrafter. He was Lord Voldemort.

He felt a bit of amusement at ending up near the portrait that covered the front of Gryffindor Tower, but that was buried in his rage. There was a chance that Albus would have investigated if a Gryffindor had come to harm—a pureblood or the Boy-Who-Lived, at least. Whoever had done this did not deserve to have his soul.

No one did. He would have to consider another resting place for it, given that Lucius had proven untrustworthy.

Lord Voldemort waited in the shadows with a snake's patience as children came and went from the common room. At last a small, red-haired girl appeared, walking alone. Lord Voldemort cast a detection spell and felt not only his own soul about her, but the diminishment of her own.

This was the target Lucius had chosen, the daughter of the man he had a rivalry with, Arthur Weasley.

In truth, Lord Voldemort should not be surprised that she had the diary, but he had had to consider the possibility that it would be passed to someone else. And given that the victims so far had been Muggleborns, a Slytherin had been the likeliest guess. Weasley would not be able to control the basilisk enough to choose its victims.

Then again, one of them had been a cat, and another a ghost.

Lord Voldemort grimaced and immobilized the girl with a simple charm. Then he searched her, took the diary, and cast another spell that would allow him to see exactly how much her soul had diminished with the possession.

His eyes narrowed. Her soul was a low-guttering flame, linked to Lord Voldemort's errant Horcrux with a glimmering bond thick enough to trac a hand over, were it physical.

There was the chance that someone could follow that bond and find where it led, or notice the damage to her soul. Lord Voldemort had planned simply to Obliviate her, but her soul would need time to recover no matter what her mind said.

So. Lord Voldemort nodded slowly. In truth, this might provide a needed jolt of confusion to cover the Heir of Slytherin's tracks. No one would know what to make of the death of a pureblood girl in the wake of the Muggleborn Petrifications.

Lord Voldemort touched his wand to the immobilized girl's temple. There was a spell he had used to kill a few of his yearmates in the months immediately following their seventh year—ones who had grown too suspicious and who might have kept an eye on him as he worked at Borgin and Burke's.

He had not cast it in years because, frankly, the Killing Curse was more dramatic and served his purposes better. But he still remembered it."

"Mentem obscuro."

The spell spread softly through the girl's brain, darkening it. She would appear to have died not only from an aneurysm, but one that had lurked in her brain for years. There would be no reason to look beyond a tragic accident.

At least, not for most people. The ones who knew what had been happening in Hogwarts would think it was connected to the Heir of Slytherin somehow, but they would not be able to prove it, sowing confusion. Sowing fear.

And if Albus or the Weasley parents tried to have the mysterious death investigated by Aurors, then they would be stymied by the fact that none of the Heir's activities had been reported in the Prophet.

Lord Voldemort shook his head as he strode out of Hogwarts. He would be speaking with Lucius very soon, and then he would be hunting down and collecting his other Horcruxes.

Truly, no one but their creator could be trusted with them.