Draco Malfoy & Tom Riddle
Draco Malfoy will not go on record saying that he does not like what Tom has become. He will not go on record saying it… but sometimes people say things they do not mean and don’t say things they do.
Draco Malfoy is afraid. He is dubious, wary, and because his fellow Knights are not, he pretends not to be. Saying the right thing and, more importantly, not saying the wrong thing, is considered smart. And one thing is for sure; Draco Malfoy is not an idiot.
But he is afraid. Of where their wayward captain will steer them. Of what others see through like a ghost. Of Harry Potter.
And of Tom Riddle. He is not alone in this; the Knights are controlled and founded on a basis of fear, of tranquility and subsequent chaos, of pain. The Knights love and fear him. With that, Draco Malfoy is alone. He has no love left in his heart for him. He is just afraid. He is just terrified. He is just in too deep to ever back out now.
Tom Riddle approaches him nearing the end of November. He has a look in his eyes Draco cannot place and a smile, meant to soothe but only unnerves. He sits beside him in the library. Draco tries to hide his tenseness. He does not succeed.
“You’re a member of the Church of Merlin, yes?” asks Tom.
Draco swallows. You want something from me. “As I have been for my entire life.” But you know that already. Hence why you’re here. Why is every conversation with you a dance?
“I’m sure, then, that you’re familiar with its controversies.” And there is a threat there, hardly hidden, hardly fucking veiled. It says if he isn’t, there will be consequences.
Of course there will be. That's what it’s like working with Tom Riddle. There is only take.
“I am,” says Draco. He is lucky it is not a lie, but did he have a choice, really, in his answer? To say no is to be crucioed on a later date. It is important you say the right thing even when the right thing is wrong. It is smart.
“Tell me,” says Tom Riddle, and it is a demand, “about the times sectors of the Church have been acquitted for crimes via the laws surrounding religious freedom.”
“For the record, most of the cases are not subject to public knowledge, though that’s not to say that the Merlin Church was wrong to act as they did in any given situation, public knowledge or not --”
“I am aware of that,” says Tom, thinking adamantly, Your sycophancy is sickening toward anyone else. “But I am also aware that that cannot encompass all of them.”
“Okay,” says Draco. Yeah. Ok. Roll with the punches and survive. That is the way of a Knight. “There was a case in… uh, 1987, I believe, in which a sector of Merliners murdered a group of Squibs on cause of ‘Merlin would have wanted it.’ There was another in 1956, where a Seer was murdered because she didn’t agree to give her prophecies to them, and in 186--”
Tom shakes his head. Draco thinks that he is upset that whatever he is looking for, whatever he wants, will not be found in the Merlin Church murders. “Tell me about their crimes separate from slaughter,” he requests.
And who is Draco to deny him, to even pretend he can? Freedom will not put food on the table. Resistance will leave him only with broken bones. “They’ve raided seventeen -- maybe twenty -- Muggle villages in the past 30? Forty years? And -- oh! Yeah, there’s Sarah Veitho--”
“Okay.” Tom has run out of patience that Draco will wander upon the answer on his own. He will have to reveal his motivations. And who better, really, to do so to than someone who can’t repeat them? “Would you like to hear a secret?”
“Would you like that answered honestly or how you’d like to hear it?”
“I don’t know, Malfoy,” says Tom sweetly. “You tell me.”
Draco sighs deeply and says, tiredly, “Sure, Tom. Tell me your secret.”
“Blaise Zabini told me something really interesting lately,” told me so much lately, Draco, you’d never believe, “about how Harry Potter is not the most reliable narrator.”
“I can pretend to act surprised if you want me to.”
Tom holds up his hand. “You can shut your mouth, actually. That’s what I want. Okay? Okay. Blaise Zabini told me that one of the most relevant, most vital entries in Harry Potter’s journal is not trustworthy. Or not entirely trustworthy.”
You’re obsessed with him, thinks Draco. He says nothing.
Blaise had confessed, upon losing the duel, that Harry Potter’s account of the events leading up to the murder of his mother and father is not complete. Before the first howler there was a letter from Professor Trelawney. It was a short and sweet letter, meant obviously to be taken as a warning.
I have sent the letter to the Church of Merlin. Please consider this at your own discretion.
That’s it. No elaboration needed nor given for James and Lily to understand this is not a threat from her but a warning from them; You will be killed. But James, the funny fella, had been in denial for a long time before this. What is a little longer?
Only when the howlers start coming in does he take the situation more seriously. By then, it is already too late and he knows it.
The information is fascinating -- also infuriating, the kind of answer that gives you only more questions. “Why wouldn’t this be in his book if he knew the information well enough to talk about it later?” Tom has asked.
“It’s, ah,” Blaise shuffled awkwardly, looking at their bloodied hand rather than at him, “probably because it wasn’t Harry who knew. I don’t think Harry even read the letter.”
Tom’s breath caught in his throat and he said, before he got ahead of himself, “So who did, then? If it was Harry who told you.”
“Someone,” and he said the magic word here, the magic fucking word, “close.”
“You know.” And this time he did not hold himself back. This time it is an accusation.
Blaise played dumb. “About what?”
Spoon your bullshit to someone who’ll eat it. “About Harry’s mother,” said Tom. “About their body sharing.”
Blaise flicked his blood to the ground, stuffing his other hand in his pockets. He still wouldn’t look at him. “I do.”
“Then it was Lily who told you? About the letter?”
“It was.”
“So,” said Tom, laughing a little, “you’re keeping quite a lot from him, huh?” The fact that Trelawnry knows something about his parent's death and the fact that he is never alone.
“It is a difficult situation.” Blaise paused. “A lot of them.” It is also a pink situation, but that’s a bit weird to think and even weirder to say, so he doesn’t. “It is not like you are any better,” he tried.
“Of course,” said Tom. “That is expected. But from you, Blaise… It’s hard to believe that someone so kind hearted, who cared for Harry so deeply, would ever--”
“I don’t think it’s reversible,” said Blaise shortly. “For the record.”
We’ll see about that. “Like that makes it any better.”
Blaise cringed. “I plan on trying to talk to her again,” he said, defensive. “To try and come to some sort of an agreement.”
And it is shut down in just one word: “Again?”
Regardless of Blaise’s reasons for withholding it, the information Tom gained was perhaps invaluable. What he focuses on is mainly the word ‘the.’ Not a letter to the Merlin Church, but the letter. James and Lily knew beforehand what might be in this letter, if it were ever to be sent, and what would happen because of it.
The letter to the Church of Merlin, Tom infers, gives reason for them to kill the Potters. The most important piece of the puzzle here is what that reason was, what was in that letter.
Hence Draco Malfoy, unwitting employee. “Because of Harry’s unreliability, I recently became aware of a connection,” says Tom, “between the Potters, Trelawney, and the Church of Merlin. Tell me about it.” If you can’t, you will wish with all your heart that you could.
“Oh,” says Draco, like this is easy, like he is relieved. “You mean the Neutrality Scandal of 1980?”
“The what?”
“The greatest Seer of her time, Trelawney--”
“The greatest Seer of her time?” Quite frankly, Tom would believe her a hack if he didn’t know what Blaise had told him.
“A minute to explain, please?” Tom waves his hand, a signal to proceed. “Trelawney was popping out some great prophecies. Problem was, a bulk of them depicted things that showed that the New Order--”
“The New Order?”
“The Age where the new god would rise to power after the signal via Merlin’s death,” explains Draco. “There’s some people that don’t want the New Order to come -- some, you see, get quite attached to Merlin, which is a direct violation of the Code of Merli--”
“Don’t care.”
“Right. Sorry. So there were a lot of these people in the Ministry, but there were a lot of regular Merliners, too. They came to an agreement; Trelawney may keep her Seer status and be allowed to produce and hand out prophecies under a few conditions. One; that they would be private record, in which only she and whomever she chooses are allowed to see it. Two; she could no longer be a full-time Seer, or use her celebrity status to perpetuate that. And three; she must take the vaguely described position of True Neutrality.”
“Interesting,” says Tom. “That’s why she’s a teacher, then.”
“Exactly. That’s why my parents signed me up for here, actually. It is an honor to work under such an inspiring, previous Merlin-focused Seer--”
“Don’t care,” says Tom again.
“Right,” says Draco, voice defeated. “Er -- anyway. If she has any connection to the Potters and the Church of Merlin, it is because she has a connection to everyone.”
That letter, though… What is not said says so much. “These private records…” says Tom, “She can give them out at will, yes? Show them to whomever she pleases?”
Ask nothing more of me. Please. I do not know you. I do not love you. I only fear you. What is it worth, Tom? Is he? I hope enough. I really do. “Yeah,” says Draco. His mouth feels barren. He knows what is coming.
“Then I need you to get a prophecy for me.”
Of course. That’s what I get for working under Tom Riddle: fucked in the ass. In more ways than one. “Yes, Tom.”
“Ask for the Potter-Merlin one, if you would. She’ll know which one you’re referring to.”
“Yes, Tom.”
Tom stands to rise, but before he does he says, “Oh, and Draco?”
“Hm?” I have given all I have left to give. What else do you want from me?
The answer is hard to define. “If she won’t give it,” says Tom, “take it.”
Draco swallows and he wants to say no. He wants to say that he has been friends with him since their first year and he has watched him not slowly descend but catapult into madness. He wants to say that he killed for him because they were young and confused but they were wrong. He wants to say that it was not Harry who ruined him but that he’s been ruined since the day he was fucking born. Why? Why has he stuck around for so long with someone who is so obviously callous to the people around him?
It is part choice and part manipulation.
It is wholly a mistake.
He wants to say that they are over -- not because he is not the Pureblood supremacist, Merlin lover Tom Riddle is no longer, but because at least then, their motivations were focused. Shared. Reasonable, calculated.
But now? What part of this insanity is reasonable? What part of it is calculated?
Draco doesn’t know. Maybe he is wrong to act so morally superior to Tom. Because, really.
His satisfaction with Tom’s deranged-ness has little to do with morals.
He says none of that. He has little choice not to. That’s what it’s like working with Tom Riddle; fucking awful.
“Sure, Riddle. Will do.”