Transcendence

Chicanery: noun, actions or statements that trick people into believing something that is not true; deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry. The use of such trickery to achieve a purpose. (Adapted from Merriam-Webster, Google definitions, and YourDictionary).

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The day after Draco left for Hogwarts, Lucius had dinner with the Minister of Magic and several other high-ranking men who liked to make deals and discuss political gossip over Firewhisky and magical cigars in the middle of the day. Even with her husband and son gone, Narcissa apparently still planned to serve a formal noontime meal as usual, as Tom received a ridiculously formal invitation from her personal house-elf. He declined (if cursing the house-elf out of the room and ignoring the invitation entirely could be called declining), as he had no need either to eat or to sit across a table from Narcissa Malfoy, and anyway he was ears-deep in a complicated treatise on ritualistic soul sacrifices.

Shortly after the ostentatious clock in Abraxas's study chimed one, the woman herself appeared in the doorway. Tom would have cursed her out of the room too, except that the flurry of thoughts flitting across her mind signified a determination that made him quite curious.

"My Lord," she began, as stiff as the lace at her collar, "I would like to offer you information in exchange for my son's freedom."

Tom could barely contain his amusement long enough to pin her with the severe glare she deserved.

"I am afraid that Draco is not for sale."

She froze from head to toe for long seconds, although he could see the tempest behind her eyes. Finally she gathered herself enough to say, "His safety, then. Your vow that you will not harm him, and that he will come out the other side of this mess alive and whole."

"I am also afraid that my vows are not for sale." Tom's amusement was quickly fading into indignation and anger that this bitch dared to think she could bargain with the Dark Lord. Before she could make another offer, he asked, "What makes you think that I won't simply rip the information from your mind and then harm Draco to spite you?"

"You like him," she replied immediately, desperately. She sunk into the nearest chair gracelessly, as if she would have collapsed onto the floor if she hadn't sat down. "You did not punish him for his mistake at the beginning of the summer, or like you said you would if the potion failed. You might punish me, but--"

But he could clearly see in her mind the images that she was so fiercely afraid of, the ones that made her so terribly ill that she had concocted this mad scheme to protect her son.

He nearly cackled in malevolent delight at such a perfect opportunity to hurt her.

"I like him enough that when I fuck him, I'll make sure he learns to enjoy it, to beg me for it--eventually."

Her blue eyes shot wide for a few seconds before she slammed them shut and bowed her head for good measure.

"Don't bother with that, you stupid woman," he continued in the same sadistic tone. "I can read your thoughts just as clearly whether I have eye contact or no. Except, curiously, for the information you claim you have to trade with me.... Ah, yes, I see. A secrecy charm, very cleverly applied."

Narcissa was visible trembling. "Please, My Lord--"

"You would make a great follower if you weren't so hung up on this idea of getting Draco away from me," he went on as if he hadn't heard her. "My dear woman, if and very probably when I decide to sodomize your son, there is nothing you or anybody else can do to stop me."

Dear Salazar, watching her face crumple in hopelessness and impotent rage was the most hilarious thing Tom had experienced in ages! Who had she thought she was dealing with? He wasn't even sure that he was managing to keep his expression of sadistic glee off his face. He discreetly checked his features in the shiny, reflective surface of Abraxas's desk.

"Now then, let's discuss the terms of this deal you want to make. You will tell me every last detail of whatever you know, or I will suddenly find myself so overcome with desire that I just won't be able to help myself the next time I see pretty Draco."

A shudder ran the length of Narcissa's body, but she looked up and met his eyes bravely. Her gaze was filled with such hatred that Tom almost thought it was cute.

"Regulus Arcturus Black," she said clearly, withdrawing a familiar locket from her pocket and setting it on the edge of the desk with very determined control. "R.A.B. I recognized his handwriting immediately when the house-elf you hit with this brought it to me."

Tom sat back in his enormous high-backed chair and considered her over the steeple of his long fingers. "Your cousin."

"Yes. You--He used my cousin's house-elf for some sort of secret purpose about two years before the end of the war, and Regulus disappeared a few days later. The family all assumed that you--He had killed him, except for my sister, who would never have believed ill of her lord."

He probed her mind viciously, but he could tell that it was still not entirely open to him.

"Crucio," he hissed, and her body immediately contorted as she screamed and flopped out of her chair and onto the floor. He counted to ten and released the curse. "You are still hiding something."

"My--my sister!" she sobbed and did not get up. The front part of her hair had escaped its chignon to fall over her wet face in a blonde cascade. "She told me--years ago she told me, just weeks before she was arrested--that Sirius had never been a Death Eater, that it was his friend Peter Pettigrew who had been the spy!"

Tom, who had come around the desk to stand over her prone form, gave her a swift kick in the stomach that made her heave and sent her splayed out across the floor. He reached down to grab the silky locks of freed hair and used them to violently wrench her head up so that her terrorized eyes met his.

"How would she know that?" he hissed. He yanked her hair again when she didn't immediately reply, only to realize belatedly that he had asked in Parseltongue. He repeated the question in English, but not before giving her another shake for good measure.

Her hands frantically sought purchase on any surface she could reach. "Please! She was one of the Dark Lord's most favored followers; she said that she was one of the Death Eaters He sent to--to convince Pettigrew to become a spy!"

Tom released her and she collapsed face-first onto the priceless rug, as if all of her muscles had failed her.

"You would dare keep this from me even when I sent your husband specifically to ask you?" he asked, so filled with rage that he couldn't even tell whether he was speaking in Parseltongue or English. "You would dare keep anything from me? Crucio!"

He held the curse for interminable minutes as he rolled his neck in an attempt to relieve his tension and pondered what he would do about the new information. He would need to exhaustively examine all of the possibilities of the Regulus Black lead. After all, it was entirely possible--he hoped--that the man hadn't managed to destroy the Horcrux, or that he was still alive somewhere waiting to use it to his advantage. He had no idea what he would do about Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black, and at this point he couldn't bring Lucius in on it. He would never bring any of the older Malfoys in on anything ever again; for that matter, he was becoming quite iffy about even Draco.

Well, except that, even if he hadn't ever seriously given any thought to the issue before, now Tom was absolutely decided that he would take the boy to bed just to spite his lying, conniving mother, if for no other reason. Not immediately, of course, because although he had no moral qualms about shagging such a young boy (or any moral qualms at all, for that matter), he was not a pedophile. And he wanted to be able to rub it in her face that Draco had offered his body to Tom willingly, which would take some time.

He realized suddenly that she'd stopped screaming, and with a loud expletive he released her from the Cruciatus Curse. It wouldn't do to turn her into a vegetable before she could see the fruits of his labor.

Merlin, he would be severely annoyed with himself if he managed to accidentally break two playthings within a week.

A cursory examination showed him that she hadn't lost her mind yet, so he was satisfied to leave her as a whimpering mess on the rug for her husband to see when he returned home. He walked back around to the other side of the desk and retook his seat, picking up his quill and unconsciously sticking the end in his mouth as he further considered his plans.

His thoughts were interrupted by a house-elf carrying an official-looking letter. It stared frozenly at the heap that was its mistress, until Tom demanded, "Give it to me."

He had only intended to take the letter in order to use the most expedient way to make the house-elf go away, but then he noticed the handwriting on the outside and, uncaring of the Malfoys' privacy, opened it immediately.

Father,

I was attacked by a mad hippogriff in Care of Magical Creatures. What was Dumbledore thinking letting that oaf Hagrid be a professor? My arm was split open almost to the bone! The school matron assures me that she has healed it completely, but it still hurts and what does she know anyway? She's just a school nurse. What if it scars?!

They haven't let me see Snape, and those idiots McGonagall and Pomfrey assured me that there was no need for them to contact you for a "minor injury"! I had to get Pansy to sneak this up to the owlery!

Come soon.

Draco

Tom blinked for a few moments before he finally smiled. Clearly the boy wasn't severely injured at all if he found the wherewithal to be such a prissy git. "What if it scars," indeed. Nonetheless, Tom could see that this was the opportunity he and Lucius had been looking for.

He might not be willing to trust Lucius Malfoy with any sensitive assignments, but he knew that he could trust the man's political dealings on the issue of Hogwarts and Albus Dumbledore, as they were of the same mind there.

"Get up," he ordered Narcissa, casting several waking spells and nudging her rather harshly with the toe of his shoe. "Your son is coming home; you had better look in perfect order when he gets here and not give one tiny indication that anything is wrong."

There was no need to state the "or else."

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As it turned out, Lucius had several world-renowned Healers in his pocket due to the family's patronage of St. Mungo's. Although there was nothing technically wrong with the job Madam Pomfrey had done on Draco's arm, a specialist in cosmetic healing had been able to save him even the miniscule, barely noticeable scarring he would have had otherwise. More importantly, the Healers had been willing to sign off on reports stating that Draco's injuries had been extensive and that without proper medical attention he might have had impaired function in his arm.

They got new equipment for the Creature-Induced Injuries Ward and a newly endowed program for cosmetic healing; Tom got a Ministry investigation into the incident that had almost maimed Lucius Malfoy's son.

Mulciber had personally convinced the other members of the board of governors to report the incident to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, as they hadn't wanted any appearance of Lucius using his influence for his son's benefit. However, Lucius had stepped in behind the scenes to somehow ensure that his friends in the department--Death Eaters and Death Eaters' children, he told Tom--were assigned to the case.

Two days after the attack, it was the top story in the Daily Prophet, under the headline HOGWARTS THIRD YEAR MAIMED IN CARE OF MAGICAL CREATURES.

The lead Healer and the head of the Ministry inquiry both provided statements about the seriousness of Draco's injuries and the ongoing investigation, but what most pleased Tom was the statement Mulciber had made on behalf of the school board.

"It is utterly unacceptable that third-year students would have been exposed to such dangerous creatures as hippogriffs," he had said. "They are classified by the Ministry as an XXX magical creature, which means that competent wizards should be able to cope with them. I think we can all agree that students in their first year of class--their first day, in fact--cannot be considered competent wizards expected to be able to handle hippogriffs. Furthermore, as the board of governors expressed to Headmaster Dumbledore when he first appointed Rubeus Hagrid as professor of this dangerous subject, we are concerned that a gamekeeper who never completed Hogwarts cannot be considered a competent wizard himself. Rest assured that the board is thoroughly investigating this incident."

Lucius had added, after expressing sufficient concern for Draco and titillating readers with hints of a grueling and bloody recovery process, "I have no doubt that Mr. Hagrid, as a half-giant, is perfectly capable of taking care of himself in his own unique way. I doubt is his ability to teach our children how to properly deal with such creatures, and also, as my son's injuries illustrate, his ability to properly protect them while doing so. Furthermore, Mr. Hagrid did not complete his education because he was expelled from Hogwarts for harboring an Acromantula inside the school, which injured several students and killed one during the 1942 to 1943 school year. The Hogwarts by-laws currently state that the headmaster has full autonomy to make staffing decisions, but it is clearer than ever to me and to my colleagues on the board of governors and in the Ministry that it is too easy for the headmaster to abuse that power to appoint incompetent, unqualified, and even dangerous people to position at Hogwarts."

The three of them had spent half an hour in Tom's study constructing the statements so as to give the most damning information possible against Dumbledore. Even the fact that Hagrid was explicitly outed as a half-giant would fuel public outrage against the headmaster, although surely anyone who had ever gone to Hogwarts had to have at least suspected it before. Now Mulciber and Lucius would push for governor-controlled staffing decisions and, more immediately gratifying for Tom, the removal of the current headmaster.

Draco spent most of morning giggling over the article while making full use of his completely uninjured arm, until Tom directed him to his studies. After all, although they were planning to keep him home for a full week, he still had to keep up with his schoolwork.

It was a second article in the paper, on the third page and much smaller than the first, that had most piqued Tom's interest that morning. He left for the cottage almost as soon as he'd noticed it.

The Mudblood had chopped her hair off at her shoulders, no doubt because it had become such a rat's nest that she hadn't been able to salvage most of it. She kept reaching up to shove it back behind her ear every few seconds as it escaped to fall into her face. She was so engaged in the book she was bent over that she didn't seem to notice that she was doing it, and she hadn't even noticed him come in. It was quite pathetic, Tom thought, because when he had allowed himself through the wards and into the cottage the shift in magic alone should have alerted her to his presence. Either she was not at all powerful, or she was so disconnected from the magic around her that there was probably little hope of rectifying the situation.

Her constant battle with her disorderly hair annoyed him so much that he'd cast a spell at her head almost before he'd thought it all the way through. Her short curls immediately flew out of her face and behind her ear, and she squeaked in surprise as her hands flew up to her head.

If she was frightened to turn and find the Dark Lord pointing his wand at her head, she did a much better job of hiding it than she had in the past. Tom was pleased; he had made more progress with the Mudblood in the past few weeks than he could have hoped for.

He sneered. "With all that studying you did at Hogwarts, I'm surprised you never bothered to look up any practical spells so you wouldn't have to do things the Muggle way."

Her thoughts were a stranger mixture between disappointment that he was disappointed in her (which almost made him smile) and anger at that specific accusation.

Finally, she seemed to settle on stubborn anger. She raised her little nose in the air and, as though she were a famous lecturer addressing an audience, informed him, "There is nothing wrong with doing things the Muggle way. There is no need to be dependent on magic for every little thing."

"Are you a witch or are you a Muggle?" retorted Tom, his sneer deepening and his voice filling with derision.

"I'm a witch!" she exclaimed, clearly before she had thought it through.

It cost Tom no more than a tilt of his head to make her eyes go wide as she realized the tone she'd taken with him. He remained silent for a few moments longer to allow her to worry. Then, adopting a mocking version of her imperious tone, he declared, "Then you ought to fully embrace being a witch. You will gain no points from anyone by clinging to inefficient Muggle habits. Do you think that anyone important in our world would respect someone who stands out so obviously as a filthy Mudblood?"

Granger's lip began to tremble as soon as he used that word and her eyes watered, but she did not cry.

Tom held her expressive, hurt gaze with his own cold, fathomless eyes. "If you are so determined to live with one foot still in the Muggle world, then there is no excuse for you not to have figured out how I replicated money."

That clearly confused her, and she opened her mouth as if to demand that he explain, although she thought better of it before the words actually came out.

"What is it about Galleons and Knuts that keeps wizards from copying them, Granger?" he pressed, although he had no intention of waiting around for her to answer. His patience would not last anywhere near long enough for that, he knew. Therefore, he answered himself, "There are a number of enchantments the goblins place on their coins that make it nearly impossible to duplicate them or to create authentic-seeming counterfeits. But of course the magical world, goblin and wizard alike, is so wrapped up in itself that it overlooks one important thing: Muggles."

Her face lit up suddenly with the glow of comprehension. "You copied Muggle money and then you--you exchanged it for wizard money!"

"Of course not, Granger; I am not as sloppy as that. I copied Muggle currency and then exchanged my counterfeits in the Muggle world for another form of Muggle currency in order to ensure its legitimacy, and then I exchanged that for wizard currency."

The Mudblood studied his face closely, as if she might be able to glean the answers to her questions in the contours of his nose or the angle of his jaw.

Finally, although it clearly pained her to do so, she admitted, "I don't understand what that has to do with whether the exception to Gamp's Law is accurate."

"It is a matter of creative problem solving, Granger. The main goal of duplicating money is to have more money. Most wizards and witches realize that they cannot successfully copy the Galleons in their pockets and conclude that it is an impossible goal. But it is not an impossible goal at all if one is willing to look outside the wizarding world's limited box in order to solve the problem. As with most so-called rules in the magical world, they only apply to the accepted parameters wizards have built for themselves and not to anything outside of that."

"And you don't think it's a bit hyp--" She paused for a few seconds and considered him thoroughly, as if she were debating whether to risk saying it, then marched on bravely as if she'd never paused at all. "--hypocritical to say that I shouldn't keep any Muggle habits, even though you use Muggles to get your own way?"

He smiled and allowed a laugh to escape, genuinely amused at her question. (Although he acknowledged that she was just as likely to have caught him in a mood where he would have eviscerated her for saying it, and therefore it was incredibly stupid of her). Her sharp intake of breath drew his attention back to her, only for him to find that she was studying his face with a peculiar furrow in her brow that he had never seen on her before. He unabashedly dipped into her thoughts.

"--a grip, Hermione. You know that he's a devil, even if he smiles like an angel."

Another laugh escaped his throat. He realized that it must have been the first time he had ever genuinely smiled in her presence, as opposed to the mocking, cold smiles he sometimes gave people he wanted to intimidate.

"Just think what he's done to your--" She abruptly derailed her entire train of thought and tore her attention away from his lips to meet his gaze in wide-eyed horror. "Oh God! He caught me looking! Oh God, he's laughing! Does he know what I'm thinking? How could he know?"

Tom did not laugh again, but it was a near thing. Instead he allowed his full lips to curve even further over his straight teeth.

"It's called Legilimency, Mudblood. It is an obscure branch of magic, very difficult to master and mostly illegal to use, so I am not surprised you have never read about it in your Hogwarts-approved textbooks."

Her face was red with mortification and not a little righteous indignation at his intrusion on her privacy, but she managed to ask, "Is that how you would... do those things you said?"

"Yes," he replied immediately, knowing that she was referring to his threats to make her live out her worst nightmares or to strip her of her intelligence.

He offered another smile, this one a cruel mockery of the one she had so admired, and she looked down at her lap, her cheeks flaming.

"As for your question, it is not hypocritical at all. I despise Mudbloods who hold onto the most useless parts of their prior lives while flailing around the magical world without any true connection to magic itself. I equally despise those who are raised in the magical world and never question anything around them, holding on so single-mindedly to the notion that nothing exists outside of the narrow box they've built for themselves. Each side ought to embrace every part of the magic and knowledge available to us--and, of course, use every advantage we have--and dispose of the useless habits and ideas that hold us back."

He could see that she was mulling over his words just as intensely as he had hoped. He was glad; he did not care about her immediate reactions but rather wanted her to seriously consider what he had said. Tom was sure that it would only bring her further into his web. Hermione Granger might like to think of herself as a Gryffindor Goody Two-Shoes, but he had forced enough tales of broken rules and illegal potions (and stolen ingredients) out of her to know that her mind and morals bent just as far as she was able to justify things to herself.

And she would bend to his will, or else he would send her frizzy head to Potter via owl post.

With a smirk that he knew she could not see with her head bowed so low, he said, "However, none of that is why I came here today. Were you aware that today is September fifth?"

She looked up with enormous brown eyes and a chin quivering with the knowledge that she had been his prisoner for the entire summer and was now missing school. "Oh."

"Indeed," replied Tom. "They have noticed you are missing."

He could see the light of fierce determination and hope come on again in her eyes. He hadn't seen the likes of that since her first few weeks as his prisoner. He smiled, a cruel and mocking smile this time instead of the genuine one that apparently made him look like an angel.

"I knew you would think that they'll come for you," he told her in a pleasant tone that was completely at odds with the promise of pain in his expression. "That's why I wanted to share the article in the Daily Prophet with you."

It was a short article that took up less than one-sixth of a page of the newspaper and was wedged between an article about parchment thickness and an advertisement for Sleakeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment.

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore has reported to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that a third-year student, Hermione Granger, is missing. Miss Granger, a Muggle-born Gryffindor and reportedly the best friend of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, neither returned to Hogwarts on September first nor withdrew from the school. The headmaster has urged the Ministry to investigate her apparent disappearance.

In response to the headmaster's concerns, Gerald Savage, a senior officer in the Auror's Investigation Department, explained to this reporter that, "Truancy is not a concern of the DMLE. If you ask me, either Miss Granger decided that she was happier with her own kind in the Muggle world, or there was some sort of Muggle accident over the summer, maybe one of those dangerous airplanes or guns. Either way, it isn't our concern."

An airplane is a long metal tube Muggles stuff themselves inside to try to fly without magic. A gun is a kind of metal wand that Muggles use to kill each other.

When she read the article, Hermione, who had not cried at all up to that point, finally allowed a few tears to leak from her eyes. Tom was inordinately pleased with this result.

"You see how much the wizarding world cares about Mudbloods," he told her quite casually, as if he were discussing the merits of the article on parchment thickness. "There's no mention of your accomplishments, or of anything about you except that you're a Muggle and were friends with the Boy Who Lived. The Ministry doesn't care that you and your parents have been missing for months, and neither does anybody else judging by the size and placement of the article. Although you'll notice that a pure-blood student's injury takes up almost the entire front page...."

A sob escaped her throat at that point, and she brought her hands up to cover her eyes.

"Please stop," she begged.

"Perhaps you ought to put some of that original thinking we've been talking about to use and consider why you care so much about protecting a bunch of narrow-minded fools who don't know anything about magic beyond what the Ministry tells them they can know and who don't even care about protecting you in return," he told her seriously.

Then, with a cruel smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, he gracefully swept out of the cottage and sealed the wards behind him. He had no illusions that the article would make her convert to his way of thinking, but he was quite pleased to be laying the various pieces of groundwork that he hoped would lead to the results he wanted in a few months. Now he only needed his other self to return and play his part in the production, and he was sure that Hermione Granger would eventually fall at his feet.

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Citation: The line about what a gun is was taken from the article about Sirius that Stan Shunpike shows Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter Three, "The Knight Bus."

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Author's Notes: We're finally getting into how Tom's presence and the things he's done are changing the events and plots of canon. I'm very excited to get to this stage of the story.

Thank you for any reviews, favorites, and follows. I particularly appreciate the reviews, and if you have favorited and followed then I would love to know why.