Chapter Text
The halls of Hogwarts were as familiar to Tom as the blood in his own veins, throbbing with magic and resonant with power. It had been many a year since he had walked these halls, and as impervious as he usually was to sentiment, even he could admit that there was a certain nostalgia in revisiting his childhood home.
This was no mere visit, however. It was a relocation. Tom would be living here from now on, until he eventually saw fit to launch his campaign for Minister.
Curling his lips in a smile that was several degrees less supercilious than he wanted it to be, Tom ascended the stairs to the headmaster’s office without any interference from the gargoyle that had once guarded them. The creature could only watch his ascent sullenly.
Slughorn had done away with the password system, referring to it as old-fashioned, and claiming that he would rather his students have immediate access to him in times of need, without any barriers to slow them down during an emergency.
Tom privately thought that Slughorn only wanted even more helpless visitors to regale with his rambling tales of who he knew and how. Despite Slughorn’s open-door policy, Tom was willing to bet that far fewer students approached him than had Dumbledore.
Dumbledore. That poor, infirm, elderly man, unable to perform his duties as headmaster. How humiliating it must have been for him to be forced into an early retirement by the school board—the very same board that Tom had been gradually seducing away from Dumbledore’s influence for decades.
Tom’s smile curled even higher. In the infernal chess game that he and Dumbledore had been playing since their first conversation in 1938, the black king had finally taken the white. It was a more bloodless coup than what Tom would have preferred, but still, a win was a win. It wasn’t his fault that Dumbledore was too plagued by a mysterious magical malady to fight back. It was entirely Dumbledore’s responsibility that he had fallen for Tom’s trap, had gone hunting for a nonexistent Horcrux, and had wound up with an obviously cursed hand.
Just in time for Slughorn to present himself as a viable, non-cursed replacement. Clever Horace. The sly old fox had likely noticed Tom’s subtle machinations against Dumbledore long ago, and, instead of interfering with them, had decided to use them for his own benefit. Just as Tom had known he would. And Slughorn, in unspoken thanks, had appointed Tom as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor—also as Tom had known he would. It was an example of Slytherin solidarity at its finest… and most self-serving.
“Horace,” he greeted the new headmaster, and Slughorn hopped up from behind his desk with all the speed of a frog Animagus.
“Tom!” Slughorn all but leapt at Tom, grabbing Tom’s hands in his own unpleasantly damp, pudgy paws. “Such a joy, such a marvel it is see you here, back at Hogwarts!”
“A marvel, indeed,” said Tom dryly, knowing full well that it was a painstakingly engineered event and not a miraculous happenstance. “Thank you for your kind words to the board on my behalf; I daresay it made all the difference in my application.”
Slughorn puffed up like Puffskein. “Why, I… Of course I’d speak up for you, Tom! Not only were you an exemplary Hogwarts student in your own right, but you then spent three decades travelling the world, learning how to defend against the Dark Arts and duelling Dark wizards, and another two decades teaching the subject at Durmstrang. The board would have been remiss in not hiring you.”
Tom assumed the slightly hangdog expression of the persecuted. “Headmaster Dumbledore would not have hired me.”
“Headmaster Dumbledore is enjoying a well-deserved retirement,” said Slughorn firmly, ushering Tom into a comfortable patchwork chair opposite his desk, and reclaiming his own towering, brass-studded leather armchair. Everything in the office was oversized, from the heavy mahogany desk to the grand, gold-threaded, floor-to-ceiling tapestries. Slughorn always was compensating for something, not that Tom cared to reflect on what it was. “He was, after all, an Omega, bless his heart. A powerful wizard, and a good man, but sometimes his judgement—”
“Not that the acuity of a person’s judgement has anything to do with whether they are an Alpha or an Omega,” Tom cut in, more coldly than he ordinarily did with Slughorn.
Slughorn tittered nervously. “Oh, yes, to imply otherwise would be… that would be rather politically incorrect of me, wouldn’t it?”
And factually incorrect, Tom stopped himself from saying. For all that he loathed Dumbledore, the man’s status as the world’s most magically gifted Omega had nothing to do with it. Anti-Omega prejudice was both irrational and distasteful. That Hogwarts now had a headmaster so openly sexist boded ill for its Omega students, and Tom swore to counteract any discrepancies in point-taking with his own point-giving—not out of any foolish, Gryffindor-ish belief in fairness, but because a playing field was so much more interesting when it was level. Just as his own playing field with Dumbledore had been level—strategy counteracting strategy in a deadly game of chess. Deadlier for Dumbledore, as it turned out.
“These are changing times,” Slughorn babbled on, because Tom’s face, when cold, was rather forbidding, and Tom knew it. “Why, just this month, I was brunching with the Secretary of Commerce, and she boasted that her Omega daughter wanted to follow in her footsteps!”
“Commendable,” Tom said shortly. “There is—or ought not to be—any reason an Omega cannot be Secretary of Commerce.”
Slughorn gawked at him. Then a shrewdness flickered across his face, as quickly as a fish darting in and out of sight in shallow water. “A progressive viewpoint,” Slughorn conceded. “That would be the official position one would expect to hear from a forward-looking Minister of Magic, in a few years.”
“A few years?” Tom chuckled. “You overestimate my ambition. A few decades, surely.”
“So you are seeking election!” Slughorn exclaimed triumphantly. “And I would never overestimate your ambition, which I am confident has no bounds. I had always predicted... You have such talent, Tom, and such charisma, that I had always anticipated you would rise to the highest of heights.”
“You flatter me, Headmaster,” Tom said, adding a flattering lilt of his own to the title he addressed Slughorn with.
Slughorn went pink. His scent—normally an unremarkable mixture of coffee grounds and dry hay—sharpened, and he pinkened even further, likely aware of Tom being able to smell him. Alphas were not supposed to smell like that in the presence of other Alphas. “Er, no, I… W-Will you… Will you be requiring staff quarters only for yourself, or for yourself and a mate?”
A pitiful question from a pitiful man. Tom answered it bluntly. “I haven’t been all that invested in marrying and siring cubs, Horace. There is too much to do of import; once it is even halfway done, I might consider a more long-term personal commitment.” Tom resisted the urge to smirk, recalling Slughorn’s own bitter disappointment when Tom had presented as an Alpha instead of an Omega in his fifth year. Had Tom been an Omega, he wouldn’t have escaped Slughorn’s seventh-year ‘private consultations’ without a formal declaration of courtship as per the Erastes Act.
“Perhaps,” Slughorn suggested, clearly remembering his own heartbreak but unwilling to admit it, “you might take on an Eromenos before you find your true mate. At least you will have companionship, that way.”
“Do you believe me lacking in companionship, Headmaster?” Tom asked, letting himself smirk at last.
“N-no!” Slughorn was now beet-red, and sweating, besides. “I wouldn’t—wouldn’t know—wouldn’t think, really, about you—your companionships, or how you may—” Slughorn cleared his throat “—conduct yourself,” he finished, miserably.
Disgusting old fogey. He’d lusted after Tom before Tom had even been of an age to present, so Slughorn deserved every bit of the mortification he was currently experiencing. Tom continued to smirk at him. Wordless. Ruthless.
Manfully dragging himself out of the quicksand of his own embarrassment, Slughorn said in as professorial a tone as he could manage, “An Eromenos would enhance your social standing, Tom, as a gentleman of consequence and as an Alpha of healthy appetite—an Alpha without a mate but not without… vitality.”
Virility, you mean. The public was, admittedly, stupidly obsessed with the sexual prowess of candidates for Minister of Magic, who were all invariably Alphas. The newspapers breathlessly reported on every Eromenos, every love affair, every mate, every wedding, every honeymoon, and every child. Tom also picked up on what Slughorn was hinting at with the phrase ‘of consequence’; only Pureblood Alphas were typically sought after as Erastes, and if Tom managed to become one despite being a halfblood, it would be a victory. Or, at minimum, an equalising factor in any political race against a Pureblood opponent.
So Slughorn was still useful for career advice. He wasn’t utterly worthless. “I shall consider it,” Tom replied grudgingly, uninterested in explaining his own apathy towards mating when there was knowledge to be gained, and when none of the people he had ever encountered had stirred his passions at all. He had never sought to copulate with anyone except when it was strategically advantageous, and he could not foresee that changing. “But not yet. I want my next five to ten years to be devoted solely to the craft of teaching.”
“Now that is a praiseworthy attitude!” Slughorn beamed, although his beam was more obsequious and less… twinkly… than Dumbledore’s. “Teaching at Hogwarts is among the most respected and sought-after occupations in wizarding Britain, and would make you an ideal ministerial candidate with an established record of public service. You have planned wisely, Tom.”
“Only because I was taught by the best.” Perhaps Tom was laying it on a bit thick, but he could not afford to leave his employer with a negative impression of this meeting. “I cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me.”
Slughorn was practically squirming with the gratification of having his ego—if not his nether regions—stroked. “Nonsense, Tom! You needn’t thank me. You would have excelled in any universe, with or without my support.”
“Now, that cannot possibly be true.” Tom reached into his most voluminous robe pocket and retrieved a gilt-edged, decorative box, which he opened as he placed it on Slughorn’s desk.
Slughorn sucked in a shuddering breath, as though Tom had presented him with an engagement ring instead of a box of candied pineapples. “Tom,” he whispered, overwhelmed.
Well. It was time for Tom to make an exit; the atmosphere in this office, rank with Slughorn’s repugnant scent, was swiftly becoming intolerable. “Horace,” he replied, injecting some approximation of affection into his voice. “I must now depart to conclude my last week of teaching at Durmstrang. I shall see you in September for the new school year.”
Before the still-overwhelmed Slughorn could even respond, Tom executed a flawless bow and beat a hasty retreat out of the office, sparing only one lingering glance for the empty frame amongst the previous headmasters’ portraits, where Dumbledore’s picture was yet to appear.
***
Karkaroff’s ostentatious farewell feast in honour of Tom’s departure notwithstanding, Tom still found Hogwarts’ opening feast more affecting. These were the students he had always dreamt of teaching. This was where Tom was destined to be—this, and the Ministry, the only two places worthy of him. While Durmstrang had a more pro-Dark curriculum, which Tom had thoroughly enjoyed teaching, the school itself had not endeared itself to him beyond that. He had never once thought of it as home.
Hogwarts, though… Despite himself, Tom clutched his fork tightly at the sight of the Slytherin banner, rippling gracefully in its beloved silver and green.
Home. He was home.
Slughorn had, in the traditional welcoming speech, waxed so lyrical about Tom’s appointment that there were multiple raised eyebrows at the staff table; Tom was already a clear favourite, and this did not sit well with some. Sinistra, Vector and Snape all had tense, flat mouths, while Flitwick and Sprout appeared to be mildly confused. McGonagall was indifferent, but then, she had never been one for jockeying for power; she had it already, as the nation’s foremost Transfiguration master. She was seated beside her mate, the absolutely unbearable Sybill Trelawney, who dared to call herself a seer. Hooch, the Quidditch coach, was missing from the table, and Hagrid, a lumbering half-giant whom Tom scarcely remembered from his own Hogwarts years, was too uncomplicated to notice the politicking already occurring at the staff table, the factions taking and breaking shape.
It was almost like being back in Slytherin. Tom smiled.
The Sorting of the first-years was already underway when Tom caught a faint, sweet whiff of sandalwood wafting from the direction of the Gryffindor table. He tilted his head, nostrils flaring, but could not identify the precise source of that sweetness from this distance. Strange. Perhaps it was the high number of Omegas at Hogwarts that was confusing his senses; he had become accustomed to Durmstrang, which was more conservative and which had a largely Alpha and Beta student body.
No matter. The two Omegas on the staff, Trelawney and Hagrid, were about as appealing to him as Blast-Ended Skrewts, and the students would doubtless be the same. Tom no longer hoped he would discover a mate somewhere, as he had when he was a child; now, he knew he was superior to all, and that he had no match. It was better that way. His powers of reason were never compromised, and he was never taken out of commission by inconveniently-timed ruts.
When the dinner owls arrived after the Sorting, flapping over to the various House tables with their mail, Tom saw an eagle owl following, almost exactly, the trajectory of the scent that had drawn Tom’s notice. Naturally, he turned to look at who the owl landed in front of.
What he saw was a head of deplorably untidy black hair, a delicate jaw that was angled away from him, and a rather lovely mouth pursed in displeasure. Then, as if sensing Tom’s attention, the owner of that mouth looked up, and Tom found himself fixed by a pair of brilliant, if sullen, green eyes. Eyes that seemed to demand, altogether too defiantly, What’re you looking at?
Tom blinked. That was not a reaction he was accustomed to getting. Most people smiled back at him, captivated by what Tom knew to be his continuing good looks, or wilted in front of him, intimidated by his personality. He had certainly never been subjected to recalcitrance. Let alone from a student.
A student who was currently unrolling the parchment delivered to him, as unwillingly as if it contained the date of his own execution.
Beside Tom, McGonagall sighed. “Ah. Another suitor for Potter.”
Tom did not straighten, nor did he act in any way surprised. Instead, he looked away from Potter’s disconcertingly direct gaze and resumed cutting his steak tartare into neat, blood-red bites.
So the boy was the Potter heir. Harry Potter. Tom had heard of him, as Tom had kept track of all the British Pureblood lines, as well as their descendants, during his time at Durmstrang. A future Minister of Magic could not afford to forget who was who.
Rumour had it that Potter, an indirect descendent of the Peverells, possessed one of the Deathly Hallows: the infamous Invisibility Cloak. It had been all over the news a few years ago, when Potter had been discovered using it at school. The news had caused quite the fuss, even at Durmstrang, although the fuss had been as much about Harry Potter being an orphaned, halfblood Omega as it had been about him potentially owning a Hallow. Such sacrilege it had been to the Alphas of Durmstrang, that a mere halfblood and an Omega might possess an item of such power!
Still. Halfblood or not, Potter would have a seat on the Wizengamot upon graduating from Hogwarts. The seat would, unfortunately, not be his to do anything with until he got married to an Alpha, at which point the Alpha would sit in the Wizengamot as Potter’s proxy, with Potter only holding the seat in name.
A pity. Given how rebellious those green eyes were, Potter would have no qualms about talking down to the patriarchs and matriarchs of the most ancient Pureblood dynasties. It would have been amusing to watch.
Trelawney, who was leaning into her mate with inappropriate intimacy, simpered breathily, “And not his last suitor, either.” Her watery eyes, magnified by the round lenses of her spectacles, drifted aimlessly over the Great Hall. “His choice will change the world.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” McGonagall replied with her characteristic solemnity. “Potter’s busy changing it already.”
That piqued Tom’s curiosity. A seventh-year Gryffindor halfblood Omega, changing the world? In what way could Potter conceivably change it? As a schoolboy, he lacked experience; as a Gryffindor, he lacked tactical acumen; as a halfblood, he lacked connections; and as an Omega, he lacked legitimacy. He had nothing to build on. Even Tom, as a halfblood orphan raised by despicable Muggles, had his Alpha status and his Slytherin wiles to ferry him through the choppy waters of life.
What on earth could Potter be doing, for a teacher as hard to impress as McGonagall to comment on it?
So Tom cast a wandless, non-verbal Subausculto, a Dark eavesdropping spell, in the general direction of the Gryffindor table. It reported to his ears what his intended targets were saying, and showed him, in his mind’s eye, what they were doing, without him having to look at them.
Tom proceeded to eat his steak tartare, but saw, in his inner vision, a bushy-haired girl frowning at Potter worriedly as a scowling, redheaded boy snatched the letter from Potter’s hands and dangled it over the nearest candle until the thick, creamy, expensive parchment was reduced to ashes.
“Ron!” scolded the girl. “You know that won’t accomplish anything. She’ll just send more letters.”
“Like the four others she’s sent before,” Potter said glumly, stabbing at his own plate of roast chicken and mashed peas. Even his glumness was truculent; it was charming, because truculence was as far as it was possible to get from stereotypical Omega behaviour. Omegas were meant to be perpetually sighing, swooning, tearful, timid or submissive, none of which Potter appeared to be.
“Oh, shove off, Hermione,” the boy named Ron replied. “At least it’ll buy him time.”
Ron. Hermione. Tom mentally flipped through the Hogwarts student roster, which he had memorised with the aid of a Memento charm, and came up with the last names Weasley and Granger, the only surnames in Gryffindor that matched those given names. A Pureblood and a Muggleborn; a truly diverse choice in friends, which spoke volumes about Potter’s politics.
“What time?” Potter groused. “I’ve only got ten months left before my annual heat, and I can’t use suppressants anymore, now that I’m seventeen. So either I throw myself upon the collective penises of Britain’s Alpha population—”
“Harry!” gasped Granger, scandalised.
“—or I accept an Erastes who’ll be entitled to bugger me into the mattress for my own good.” Potter’s hostile food-stabbing continued in rhythm with his words, effectively expressing his opinion of Alphas. Perhaps he was imagining stabbing their genitals.
“Look, Harry, you’re lucky you have a choice,” Weasley reasoned. “Most Omegas just have to go out there and try to survive until they find their mates, putting up with absolute fucking knotheads just to get through their heats. It’ll be much nicer to have some posh older Alpha look after you, innit? Just one, proven, safe Alpha instead of a string of iffy strangers? And it’ll be somebody who can introduce you to important folks, too, who can help you get a job.”
“You sound like Percy,” Potter retorted, like it was an accusation, and Weasley reacted as though it was.
“I’m not! I’m just—Harry, this Selwyn lady sounds like a right nutter, she does, but she’s rich, and she’s not too bad to look at.”
Both Potter and Granger gaped at Weasley incredulously.
“She has a mole on her chin the size of a Knut,” Potter enunciated slowly, disbelievingly. “And she’s ninety-three.”
“But she only looks about seventy! And the Alphas of that generation believed in, er, breeding Omegas face-down, so you’d never even have to look at her. Or her mole.”
“You’re disgusting, Ron,” Granger said primly, patting Harry on the back consolingly. “Don’t imagine any of that, Harry.”
“Too late.” Potter looked vaguely ill. “Thanks, Ron, you’re a real friend.”
“Just your friendly neighbourhood Beta, at your service!” Weasley grinned encouragingly, piling more food onto Potter’s plate like a mother hen force-feeding a skinny chick. Potter was uncommonly skinny. “Come on, Harry. What about that Miller bloke who owled you before the holidays? His company makes the equipment used in manufacturing Every Flavour Beans! I read up on him for you. He’s legit.”
“If only you’d also read up on your schoolwork,” Granger chastised, “you might even pass without having to plagiarise your assignments.”
“As if you’ve been reading up on your schoolwork, lately,” Weasley shot back. “All you’ve been doing is reading and rereading that letter from Hooch.”
Granger flushed. “I’m—I’m not—” She huffed in frustration. “I’m just considering the offer rationally!”
“Yep,” Potter muttered out of the corner of his mouth, around a spoonful of mashed peas. “Rationally, in your dormitory bed, with the curtains closed and your hands up your nightie.”
“You’re both disgusting.” Granger flipped her hair. “Even if… if Madam Hooch is the most Alpha of Alphas—”
“She totally is,” Potter confirmed.
“I can’t accept her.” Granger drooped. “Because I actually have a brain, too, not just hormones, and I can’t see what sort of career guidance she could ever give me. I mean, I’m aiming to be a lawmaker in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and Hooch is a Quidditch coach. I’m hopeless at Quidditch! It doesn’t make any sense, and it won’t fulfill the terms of an Erastes contract. I don’t even understand why she asked me, of all people. She must have Omegas tripping over themselves to warm her bed.”
“But what if nobody else offers?” Weasley asked.
“Thank you for your vote of confidence, Ron.” Granger rolled her eyes. “Of course I’ll get other offers. I don’t have Harry’s famous last name or a Deathly Hallow or a future seat on the Wizengamot—not until I become head of my department, that is—but I do have the highest grades in all my subjects. I’m hoping somebody at the Ministry will express an interest.”
“They will,” Potter assured her. “You’re the brightest witch of our age. Dumbledore said so.”
Granger smiled, a small, tremulous smile. “I miss him.”
Potter looked down. “Me, too.”
And Tom burned. Burned at the injustice of Dumbledore nurturing these snotty Gryffindor brats when he’d only ever put Tom down, and burned at his disappointment in Potter, whom Tom had genuinely thought was different, falling for Dumbledore’s false benevolence like everybody else. Just another pawn destined for the chessboard, then. Nothing special.
Tom cancelled the Subausculto, but not before hearing Granger say: “Ron’s right, Harry. You should allow them to court you, even if you don’t accept them in the end. Because while you’re being formally courted by an Erastes, the Alphas at school will have to stop bothering you.”
“Oh, they don’t bother me.” Potter’s eyes flashed. “They’re not even worth my time.”
***
Tom wasn’t sure why he was so disgruntled. Potter was remarkable only for his arrogance, and there definitely hadn’t been any talk of changing the world, except for Granger’s middling aspirations. Perhaps McGonagall was only impressed by Potter because she wrongly held Omegas to lower standards, as she clearly did her wife. Tom had never held Omegas to lower standards; he expected just as much from his Omega students, allies and enemies as he did from Alphas.
Tomorrow, classes would commence, and Tom would be able to put into action the penultimate stage of his plan to become Minister of Magic—the deliberate and systematic harvesting and conversion of this generation’s wizards and witches to his cause. These were the voters of tomorrow, the voters who would, in the next election, determine who won. Most wizarding adults were already firmly ensconced in some ideological camp, but the youth were the independent vote, and could be swayed.
Tom was very good at swaying people to his way of thinking—to his unique combination of political conservatism and social liberalism, which had something for everyone. Tom, as a politician, would appear to be the perfect centrist, while harbouring agendas that were extreme if taken on their own.
Tom would reintroduce Dark magic into the curriculum incrementally, beginning as a logical extension of Defence Against the Dark Arts; he would argue that one could not fight fire without comprehending how it worked, and there were times when fire could only be fought with fire. Tom would mandate the registration and monitoring of Muggleborn households, to ensure that the magical children raised therein were not being abused. He would open compulsory ‘finishing schools’ for eight- to ten-year-old Muggleborns that they would have to attend prior to attending Hogwarts, so that they were adequately prepared for and tolerant of wizarding traditions, and were not at a disadvantage, in terms of magical knowledge, compared to their Pureblood and halfblood peers. Tom would gently usher wizarding society away from its foolish, growing fondness for Muggles. He would enable Omegas to sit on the Wizengamot, to run for elections, and to inherit assets that would remain their own instead of being handed over to whichever Alpha they happened to marry. He would strike the Heat Clause from the Omega Protection Act, so that Omegas were not held responsible for assaults upon them by allegedly ‘heat-addled’ Alphas. He would send every rapist to Azkaban. No exceptions.
Yes, Tom Riddle was planning to change the world. Even if Harry Potter wasn’t.
After the feast was over, Tom concluded the inevitable rounds of small-talk with his fellow teachers and glided out of the hall. He passed the now-empty Gryffindor table on his way, and was caught again by that damnable scent—the rich softness of sandalwood combined with the tart sharpness of bergamot and the sweeter, purer undertones of jasmine, glimmering beneath the surface. A befuddling scent, too complex for easy categorisation. Much like Tom’s own scent, which Tom knew to be an overpowering combination of vetiver, coal and an earthen, rosy musk that a former admirer had once described as a ‘dark rose’. An overly lyrical description, in Tom’s view, and irrelevant, besides.
Potter was not as complex as his scent had promised. And what a shame that was.
No sooner had Tom reached the door of the Great Hall than a voice as smooth as molasses said from behind him, “Tom. A word, if I may?”
“Severus.” Tom turned and inclined his head respectfully; Snape was, after all, the Head of Slytherin, and he had the most flawlessly Occluded mind Tom had ever seen. It had no chinks in it whatsoever, like a fortress built of iron. Featureless, impenetrable iron. “How may I be of assistance?”
Snape’s eyes were endless tunnels, black as pitch and just as absent of light. “We spoke only briefly at the table, where I was unable to request your cooperation in a matter of significant urgency. I suspect there is an enemy of Hogwarts present within these very walls.”
Tom quirked a brow, acutely conscious of the wandless, wordless shield that Snape had just erected around them—a new, unheard-of privacy spell that prevented them from being listened in on, and Tom liked to think he had heard of every spell there was. “Indeed?”
“Indeed. Why, just now, I noted the presence of Dark magic within the Great Hall.” Snape’s features, ugly and feral as they were, were nonetheless completely blank. Impossible to decipher. “Did you happen to detect it, yourself?”
“I’m afraid not,” Tom replied calmly, as Snape climbed another few notches in his estimation. It was no easy feat to threaten someone so subtly, but Snape had just threatened Tom as surely as if he’d held a knife to Tom’s throat. “If I do, I’ll inform you immediately.”
“Excellent. That is all I can ask.” Snape lifted the privacy spell he had cast.
“Out of academic interest, may I ask what that spell you just used was?”
“Muffliato.” There was a spark in Snape’s eyes at last. “A spell of my own invention.”
“Very impressive.” The compliment was, to Tom’s own surprise, sincere. “So you’re a spell-maker, Severus.”
“As are you, Tom,” Snape replied, placing a menacing, ever-so-slight emphasis on Tom’s name. “Headmaster Dumbledore told me as much.”
“That was not all he told you about me, I wager.”
“No,” agreed Snape serenely. “It was not.”
They regarded each other with equal parts equanimity and enmity, a peculiar combination of emotions that only Slytherins were capable of. Snape’s Alpha scent, as coppery as blood and as shadowy as ink, rose between them like a hooded serpent and announced Snape’s hostility towards Tom more eloquently than words ever could—even Snape’s words, and Snape, Tom was starting to learn, was very eloquent.
Finally, with a nod of mutual respect, they parted ways and retired to their respective chambers.
Tom shrugged off his robes, toed off his boots, and sank into his bed with tomorrow’s lesson plans, revising them as he contemplated the events of the day. Meditation was the best means of preparing the mind for a restful sleep… or for a night of active Occlusion.
So Snape was Dumbledore’s man. Dumbledore’s spy.
How fascinating it was that Snape had declared war openly, instead of opting for subterfuge, as his Slytherin instincts must have bade him to. It had to have been Dumbledore himself who had ordered Snape to confront Tom, to warn Tom against using Dark magic on Hogwarts premises.
Tom’s pulse quickened at the thought of Dumbledore still being in the game. The old wizard had been checkmated, but he was not yet defeated. That shouldn’t have pleased Tom, but it did; he had always despised boredom, be it at the orphanage, where there were never enough books to read, or in the Slytherin common room, where Tom had been given no option but to endure hours of inane Pureblood chatter about blood supremacy.
If Tom’s pulse had also quickened earlier, at a whiff of sandalwood, he disregarded it. It was meaningless. He had more pressing concerns, and mediocre young Gryffindors were not among them.
