Mastermind

Saturday, 7 September 1996

{from half blood prince}

"It's five to eight, I'd better go, I'll be late for Dumbledore."

"Ooooh!" gasped Hermione, looking up at once. "Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!"

"Hope it goes okay," said Ron, and the pair of them watched Harry leave through the portrait hole.

-

Except Harry didn’t leave, his foot tripped on a little round table near the portrait, which had a clay vase on the top. He could have sworn he’d never seen it in five years, but Harry wasn’t really a reliable source of his surroundings, for the most part he was rather oblivious. He promptly reached it, and as soon as he put his hands on it Hermione and Ron witnessed with horror a blinding light coming through the vase, with that Harry immediately disappeared and the vase fell on the ground, shattering.

Saturday, 5 September 1942

19:00

“I really can’t believe we spent the whole Saturday operating on this. You need to be honest with me and admit that you know it won’t even function properly,” said Orion Black, grimly looking at the auburn clay vase and the countless books about ancient runes, arithmancy, and the neatly written astronomy and divination charts surrounding it.  

“I’m sorry, what exactly are you complaining about? That you spent the day scheming with your friends and at the same time avoided Walburga? First of all, you’re welcome.” Abraxas Malfoy replied grinning “Come on now, help me dip it.”

It was the first Saturday since they returned Hogwarts, and through the whole week Abraxas made his life mission to convince Orion join his majestic quest to save the world from Tom’s plan to conquest it in fire and blood. Fortunately enough, Orion’s sister Lucretia heard his pleading and sided along, taking with her a totally clueless Ignatius Prewett with a remarkable talent for potions -which they desperately needed-. Abraxas was very pleased with himself, it was indeed a sensational team.

What Abraxas didn’t know was that by the other side of the castle, down in the Slytherin common rooms, was a very calm Tom Riddle, completely aware and unbothered by the lack of his own wand.

See, Tom planted the idea in Abraxas’s head at the end of last year, “did you know,” he had said “that my wand is so special it has a twin?” He was choosing his words carefully.

“A twin? What do you mean?”

“When I acquired it, Ollivander said that the phoenix who gave the feather for its core gave just another one, for another wand, that means the wands are brothers.” He had glared at Abraxas expectantly.

“So what does it mean?” Sometimes Tom couldn’t believe this boy was born and raised in a pureblood household.

“It means the wands are tied. I wonder how much in common would me and whoever will own it have, characteristics, magical signature… a similar power, even,” Tom was thinking this related to the fact that this person could potentially be someone who wasn’t intimidated by his power. Someone who wouldn’t simply fall into compliance at the first sight of his abilities, but all that Abraxas got was the owner could put Tom in line and toss the murdering eyes out of him!

“The wand is still there, anyway, I check every year at mid winter,” added Tom faking nonchalance “so the possessor could even not be born yet.” He briefly glared at the other boy, just to confirm that the gears in his brain were working. Abraxas was smart, if there was someone who could figure out what to do it was him. 

Tom already thought of doing it of course, he was perfectly capable to create a way to connect and talk with a same age possessor of the twin wand whenever in the timeline, but it was a very long process and he was currently occupied by the research of the chamber of secrets. So he delegated in a way that made other people think they were smart, they would feel smart and pleased, but it was actually his plan all along.

Abraxas spent the summer thinking and researching, probably the wand would have been picked up by an eleven years old, but would be Tom interested in figuring out a kid? No, absolutely not. So it should be a person of the same age, same year at Hogwarts. That’s basically time travel, I’m never going to be able to do something like that.

Except that it wasn’t proper time travel, it was a kind of conjuring, he had to find a specific moment and grab this someone out of their timeline, he found a twin flame rune, it isn’t a twin wand but it could work out anyway, it wasn’t like there was a proper study behind… has anyone ever attempted to try something like that? With that thought he started questioning himself, what if it was too dangerous? What if- No, no, if he didn’t even try the world would undoubtedly end up burning in 30 years by Tom’s doing, if there was something he was sure of it was the other boy’s potential. It was better to shatter the timeline and endanger his life right now.

Arithmancy put the thing on another whole level, much better than divination, but he didn’t discharge it, he wanted to keep all the possibilities open. By the time he returned to Hogwarts and started recruiting he had added a bunch of other runes, astronomy charts for the next hundred years, and some helpful potions. The moment Ignatius joined the team Abraxas made him brew a few of the fast ones.

That infamous Saturday was the first meeting that the sub-branch of the Knights of Walpurgis was helding, little did they know that it would have been their last.

Abraxas went through every detail of his plan and his research exhaustively, Orion and Lucretia never interrupted him, but Ignatius repeatedly did and he was getting on his nerves. After another hour of explaining, Prewett frowned his eyebrows for the tenth time and asked “I’m sorry are you implying this thing will make somebody time travel?” Abraxas didn’t bother answering him, he was busy developing a visible eye twitch. Lucretia giggled again.

They had spent the day searching for every little detail that would have been helpful and that the leader of the group didn’t notice in the last months, eventually they did find some adjustments but they weren’t that big of an obstacle for the big scheme, mostly they mashed up Abraxas notes.

Practically, they created this one clay vase by transfiguring a time turner, they put runes on it to indicate a twin flame, soul bind -that one was a little far fetched-, and some other with controversial interpretations.

At this time Orion and Abraxas were soaking the vase in Ignatius’ brews, waiting for Tom’s wand that Lucretia and her unnerving friend were fetching. When the pair returned with the wand, Abraxas didn’t cast any spell with it, he was too afraid to mess the magical signature, maybe Tom should have done it himself… but he would have never agreed, right? So Abraxas told Lucretia to cast with her own wand incantations to bond the core of the momentarily stolen wand to the vase, while Orion was chanting the divination-astronomy-arithmancy notes mashup, the magical signature of Tom started impregnating the surface of the object.

Then everything ended and nothing happened.

“Huh, maybe we should put the notes inside the vase and bind them with it?” Asked the only girl there, so her brother went on with her suggestion. Still, nothing happened.

“Well,” snorted the red haired Prewett “this thing was a flop, and we missed dinner for that. Who is going to sneak in the kitchen?” Abraxas’ eye twitch worsened, he breathed really heavily and repeated to himself that he should not cast an unforgivable on someone just because he’s being annoying. That’s Tom’s doing, and they were here to soften that kind of behaviour. He would not be an hypocrite.

“Please, this was the first attempt. It will take time, after all we are experimenting,” Abraxas took the vase and held it to Prewett “now take this to your common room, we can’t risk Tom seeing it. I’ll bring back his wand before he notices it’s missing.”

So Abraxas went to his dormitory while Orion and Lucretia went by the great hall to fetch a quick dinner, it wasn’t eight pm yet.

Ignatius Prewett however stopped by the Gryffindor common room before attempting to have dinner in the hall, he looked at the clay vase and decided to put it on a little table right by the portrait’s hole, I’m not going now to take this all up the stairs. Dinner. Gotta do it later he had no idea that the spells and incantation they casted were meant to make it hidden until the right moment.

Tom Riddle didn’t understand just why they took his wand so early, there was no way Abraxas could have done all the job already, even considering that he asked for the Black siblings’ help it should have been months before attempting on doing the connecting ritual for the first time, so either they were trying for a long shot -completely wrong behaviour- or they didn’t know what they were doing at all. He was cross legged over the bedspread, brooding over his peers doing, while with a sudden beam of blinding light a boy materialized on the floor next to him.

Tom looked at him startled, what… but he didn’t have time to finish the sentence in his head because the boy glared at him with very green eyes: bewilderement, fear, loathing, hatred and a weird look of longing mixed together in a swirl of vengeful intent, the boy suddenly stood up, took out of his robes the very holly wand that Tom recognized from Ollivander’s shop, and the first thing that he attempted to do was… to try and throw him a stupefy?

Tom was delighted. Also very disconcerted about the evening's events.