Chapter 3
“Malfoy,” the Dark Lord called out after potions. Severus was going out to harvest potions ingredients after dark that night. At least, that’s what he told the old man. Instead, he would be spending a couple of hours retrieving the Peverell ring and the locket. The apparition coordinates were written on a slip of parchment tucked into a watch pocket on the Potions Master’s vest, secured with a zippered closure. They had talked during the teen’s week spent with Severus, and both came to the consensus that Riddle needed to find another place to stay during the summers. He’d shared some of Potter’s memories with the physically older man, and both beings had come out of the experience enraged; Tom more so, having seen them before.
“What to you want, Potter?” the blond sneered as he turned to face the brunet, wand out and pointing unerringly at the other boy’s heart.
“We need to talk,” Voldemort ground out through gritted teeth. He was rather put out that this wouldn’t be as easy as he’d thought, considering the desperate way that the Malfoy brat had tried to obtain Potter’s friendship.
“What’s the matter, Potty? Finally realized that I was right about the mudblood and the blood traitor? Come to beg my forgiveness for rejecting me in first year?” Draco crowed loudly, which was attracting a lot of unwelcome attention. Riddle let a bit of crimson flare in his eyes, and the blond’s mouth fell open in shock.
“Privately,” You Know Who growled angrily as he gripped the other boy’s arm above the elbow and dragged him to a nearby abandoned classroom. With parsel wards up, the slightly younger teen turned to the other thirteen year old and smiled viciously, inordinately pleased at the way that Malfoy the younger paled drastically as he saw the threat of death in those ruby-tinged emerald eyes.
“Who...who do you think you are to be manhandling me?” Draco barked weakly, trying for intimidating but coming off as cowardly as he flinched back from the look in the other boy’s eyes.
“Come now, Malfoy,” Harry drawled, the monster behind the Savior’s eyes enjoying himself immensely. “Surely even your limited intellect should have cottoned on to what’s happened by this point.” Giving in to his absolute terror, the blond fell to his knees and bowed his head, hands clenched in his lap.
“How my I help you, my Lord?” he whispered, too terrified to speak any louder for fear of offending the other teen even more.
“That’s much better,” the Boy Who Lived drawled with immense satisfaction. “Now, I need for you to contact your father and encourage him to offer me a place in your home for the summers. I would also like him to somehow wrest custody of this body from the muggles in order to prevent Dumbledore from interfering with my placement with your family. You will also instruct him that he needs to send me the diary that I’d given over to him for safekeeping.” At the sudden, sharp tensing of the blond’s shoulders, emerald eyes narrowed and darkened to the color of dried blood. “What happened to my diary?” he hissed through clenched teeth.
“I...I beg you, my Lord, to have mercy,” the other teen started babbling frantically. “F-Father put it in the cauldron of the Weaslette just before my second year, while we were out shopping for supplies. Weasley senior was pushing Dumbledore’s muggle-loving bill through the Ministry, and Father saw the diary as a way to tarnish the blood traitor’s reputation enough to keep the bill stalled in the Wizengamot. As well, Weasel’s father was conducting surprise raids on Malfoy Manor, and Father was afraid that they’d find the diary, as well as other Dark artifacts, so he decided to clean house.” By the end of the recitation, Draco’s voice had dropped to a faint whisper, knowing how bad it all sounded.
Riddle breathed through his nose for several long moments to try and contain his rage, realizing that if he killed Malfoy now, suspicion would automatically fall on his shoulders for the other teen’s disappearance, since there were too many witnesses who saw them enter the classroom together. Murdering the little shite would also end Severus’ cooperation, since the potions professor loved the little brat for some unknown reason, and he needed the other man to help him with things that he couldn’t do himself at the moment.
“So what happened to my diary?” Tom finally asked, when he realized that he still didn’t know.
“P-Potter destroyed it when Weaslette opened the Chamber of Secrets and got lost down there,” was the unexpected answer. Closing his eyes, Voldemort accessed the child’s memories, watching with no small amount of pride at the way that his vessel handled himself against a sixty foot, one thousand year old basilisk, all on his own. I really must sit down at the earliest opportunity and completely absorb these memories. I won’t be able to keep the disguise up for long if I have no idea about what his friends babble when they’re reminiscing.
“Get up,” the Dark Lord said tiredly, questioning once again the logic of returning to the wizarding world this way. Once the blond was on his feet, and with his head bowed in submission, Tom studied the Malfoy heir with a critical eye. “You have control of Slytherin by virtue of your name, correct?”
“Yes, my Lord,” the blond murmured, heart beating triple time in worry for his family, and fear for himself.
“How far outside the realm of possibility would it be for us to maintain a friendship out in the school?” was the next unexpected question. “With whom would we be most likely to have problems?”
“I...I,” Draco stammered for a couple of seconds. The impatient sigh from Riddle knocked the blond out of his stammering and he continued. “It wouldn’t be hard, per se, but the mudblood and blood traitor would have enormous problems with it. When Potter rejected my offer of friendship, it offended me. He was trained to understand pureblood power dynamics, and he completely ignored them to hang out with the lowest of the low.” Tom could see that Draco was gearing up for a rant, and he opened his mouth to halt it, but the blond continued on, oblivious to the rising temper of his Lord.
“Potter had the opportunity to lift his father’s name out of the cesspit into which it had fallen when he married that mudblood, but he refused to even consider it. To turn his back on all of that important magical education...” The blond’s mouth continued to move for a few seconds more before he realized that Riddle had cast a silencing charm on him. Blushing brightly in embarrassment, Draco ducked his head, silver eyes on his toes as he stopped his lips from flapping with effort.
“Potter never had that training,” Voldemort explained flatly. “What part of ‘get me away from the muggles’ did you not understand, Malfoy? How was he supposed to get that alleged training? Where was he supposed to receive it? Who was to teach him anything about magic, when he lived in the muggle world? That would have violated the Statute of Secrecy in a most unfortunate way.” The blond stared at his lord with wide eyes, arms crossed defensively as all of his illusions of Harry Potter were shattered. “Are you going to be helpful now?” Nodding frantically, the Dark Lord removed the spell and smirked as the other teen sighed gustily in relief.
“I apologize, my Lord,” the Malfoy heir mumbled, restlessly scuffing his toe against the floor. “We’ll definitely have a bit of trouble from the old man and Potter’s head of house,” the teen continued pragmatically. “Professor Snape mentioned something about Potter being offered Slytherin but rejecting it. Considering some of the things he’s done, and the way that he’s sneaked around the castle, I can see that. Perhaps you should request a re-sort once my parents have custody of you.”
“That’s an idea, but how much trouble do you think that would cause for me?” Tom queried, finally seeing the intellect and cunning that had put the boy in Salazar’s house. Thank Merlin it wasn’t just the name.
“If you need to work in the shadows to get things moving along, it would be a disaster,” Malfoy agreed with a frown. “Putting the Chosen One in my house would make everyone pay even more attention to him than they already do. What we could do,” he murmured after a few moments of thought, “is work to gather as many allies as we can for you, and we could meet in the Chamber of Secrets every now and then, just to get caught up on what’s going on and to touch base with you.”
“That’s a very good idea, Draco, and one that I had been entertaining,” the Dark Lord praised, smirking slightly as the teen’s pale skin turned rosy and his shoulders went back as he stood proudly before his Lord. “I would like you to be my eyes and ears in the castle. You’ll be able to go places I cannot, and you’ll have access to people that wouldn’t give me the time of day in this body. I am making you my right hand man in the school, and your father will remain so with the minions.”
“Thank you, my Lord,” Draco breathed, barely containing his happiness at such a prestigious honor. “About that,” he continued on a few seconds later. “How are you going to convince your forces that it would be incredibly stupid to go against you in this form? After all, they’re bound to be a bit salty at the fact that their Lord’s nemesis has an honored position with the Malfoy family.”
“That’s a fair point, but you must know that my magic hasn’t diminished in this form,” Riddle explained with a grin. That it was slightly bloodthirsty wasn’t something Draco was willing to point out. “In fact, it’s so much stronger since the last time I had a physical body. This young man has untapped potential, and I can only speculate that Dumbledore put quite a few blocks on the boy’s magic, which explains his poor showing in classes. The only time he showed his true power was when he was in a battle for his life, as evidenced by the death of Salazar’s basilisk, and his defeat of me in his first year.”
“That...that was all true?” Malfoy gasped incredulously. At Riddle’s nod, the blond continued, a scowl on his face. “Weasel was bragging about the ‘adventures’ on which they’d gone in first and second year. We just thought it was a way for the old man to talk up his savior, but if Potter actually went against a professor possessed by you and a basilisk… Merlin, I wish he would have taken my hand.”
“Well, he can take your hand now, and you will help me as much as possible in school. It’s been quite a few years since I graduated, and things have changed so much that I might be caught flat-footed on occasion. That’s what I’ll need you for the most; to run interference if I make an egregious mistake.”
“You can count on me.”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” the Dark Lord stated with a fond smile before he dropped the wards. As soon as the door was opened, two wands were thrust in the blond’s face, nearly taking out an eye. Draco jerked back, avoiding permanent injury as he scowled at the other two members of the Golden Trio.
“What were you doing in here with Malfoy, Harry?” Hermione demanded angrily. “Did he hurt you? Cast an imperius curse on you?”
“Really, Mudblood,” the blond drawled, a sneer of epic proportions crawling across his face. “There are wards in place to alert the headmaster if the unforgivables are used. You did read Hogwarts: A History, correct?”
“Sod off, Malfoy,” came the standard response from the redhead as his face rivaled his hair in color. “We know that Harry would never voluntarily go with you anywhere, so you had to have coerced him somehow.”
“Did you bother to talk to any of the other students who witnessed me dragging Draco in here?” Harry remarked scathingly. “No? Maybe that should have been your first thought; to talk to someone else before jumping to the wrong conclusions, as usual. I am trying to establish contacts in the other houses so I might be able to learn something useful, for once. Or did you forget that I’ve been charged by prophecy to defeat the Big Bad. Did you think I’d be able to do it by myself?”