Transcendence

"You must learn to forgive yourself, my lady," Tom told the young woman, carefully crafting his voice to reflect the perfect amount of sympathy and knowing.

"Forgive myself?" she demanded in a hard voice that was at least an octave higher than usual. "How could I forgive myself, after what has happened?"

Tom took a step closer and raised his hands as if he were going to hold hers. He paused within inches of touching her, of course, and under her sharp gaze he allowed his cheeks to color and a small, sad smile to pass over his handsome lips. When he spoke, his voice was full of longing and regret. "You mustn't conflate the two events. Yes, you were wrong to take what was not yours, but your desires were perfectly understandable. Your mother understood, and she forgave you. None of that makes your death your fault."

Her full lips quivered under her strong, long nose, and Tom wondered if ghosts could actually cry. She brought her spectral hands up to caress his, which were still hovering uselessly where he had tried to comfort her earlier, and he resisted the urge to shiver at the feeling, like he'd dunked his hands into the frozen lake outside.

At last, in a small voice, she asked, "Do you really think it was understandable?"

"It is to me, at least," he asserted at once. "Other people--people without natural talents like yours, my lady--would not understand. They would likely call it selfish, but that is only because their minds can't grasp the possibilities that motivated you."

"And you can," she said, a statement and not a question. She pulled her hands away, and for a dreadful moment Tom thought that he had gone too far. Then she smiled, just a small one that was still full of grief and regret, but all the same was the first one he had ever managed to coax out of her in the long weeks he'd been visiting her. "I always wondered why you wanted to find my mother's diadem. I have heard about you around the school, you know, and I know that you do not need the diadem to enhance your wisdom."

This time, the color rose unbidden to Tom's cheeks. He replied, "I can't lie to you and say that I am not curious about wearing it, but that is not why I wanted to find it. I want to bring all of the Founders' creations back together again, where they belong, and where they can benefit Hogwarts and everybody who passes through these halls. Forgive me, my lady, I know that it is painful for you, but surely you agree that they never should have been taken away from here?"

It was only a half-truth, of course. Tom did want to bring all of the Founders' objects back together again, but he wanted to do so for his own benefit and not to reunite them at Hogwarts.

"It is painful, yes, but perhaps you are right that I ought to learn to start forgiving myself," mused the ghost. "I think that having my mother's diadem returned to Hogwarts would be a good first step."

"Helena, maybe I was wrong to ask. You don't have to--" Tom began to protest, because he knew that she would respect him all the more if he did.

She interrupted him by placing her ice-cold hand on his cheek, although of course it mostly went through him and made his face feel frostbitten. "No, you were right to ask. My mother would have wanted her diadem returned to the school that she worked so hard to build."

She paused for a moment, floating a few paces away. Once she had gathered herself, Helena Ravenclaw looked at Tom Riddle with trust in her eyes and told him what he wanted to know.

"The place I fled, with the magical, untamed forests that you so enjoyed in my stories, was in southeastern Albania...."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tom pulled himself free of the memory with a deep inhalation of breath and rolled his neck until it cracked and released the tension held there. The locket Horcrux's mental faculties, including his memories, had been far too corrupted for Tom to have gotten more than some brief glimpses, but the ring Horcrux's mind had been more than well enough intact to fill in many of the blanks. He exhaled the breath and opened his eyes. The Horcrux was sprawled naked on top of their father's grave, where Tom had left him, and he was staring up at Tom in a mixture of horror and incredible anger.

"Ah, Tom," he addressed the other boy mockingly, allowing a cruel smirk to curl his lips, "I should have known that you would never have told me the whole truth."

The Horcrux glared up at him in hatred. "You risked your body just to get information out of me?"

"Of course not," Tom replied condescendingly. "I had to know whether you could possess my body, because if you could then Lord Voldemort certainly could. In that case it wouldn't have mattered whether you did it now or he did it later, so I had nothing to lose. Although I was confident that I'm the stronger between the two of us and could fight you off, even if it were possible in theory for you to possess me."

"So you've been planning this since the beginning." The Horcrux looked even more furious than before. Tom knew that he was not taking it very well that he had been played so perfectly.

Tom laughed, a true laugh from the center of his belly that echoed off all of the headstones in the dark graveyard.

"Yes, of course," he said when he'd finished. "I realized right away that you had no sense of the outside world, of what I was doing or of time or of anything else, and so I used it to my advantage and all the while allowed you to think that you were the one playing me."

The Horcrux exhaled sharply. "So there was never any attack, with the basilisk venom?"

"No. I was just experimenting on you."

They stared at one another, Tom's grin stretching further across his face and the anger in the Horcrux's eyes attempting to burn its way through him.

"The only thing left to decide now," Tom informed the Horcrux when he'd tired of the staring contest, "is whether I want to keep you for myself or give you to Voldemort."

The Horcrux leapt to his feet, and Tom admired his body even as the Horcrux stalked towards him. It was the height of vanity, he knew, but he couldn't get over how well the Horcrux looked. Besides, there was absolutely nothing threatening about a naked man with his bits dangling in the air. Or at least there was nothing threatening about it to him, although he well remembered Lucius Malfoy licking the floor at his feet when he'd been standing completely nude in his room at Malfoy Manor.

The Horcrux stopped directly in front of Tom, trying to use his barely-there height advantage to be more intimidating. "You said that you wanted to find the Horcruxes so that you could hide them from Voldemort. Was that a lie, too?"

"No, that wasn't a lie," replied Tom, quite easily, "but I never said I wanted to hide them, necessarily. And the more I've learned about my own reaction to other Horcruxes, the more I think that I ought to just wear you all on my person when I go to meet him. That way he can't destroy me without destroying all of his Horcruxes at once."

Tom thought the way that the Horcrux's jaw clenched just the slightest amount was very attractive. Perhaps he ought to stand in front of a mirror and practice looking at his own facial expressions, as he'd done when he was a boy and trying desperately to copy the emotions that were so important to interacting with adults.

"What do you mean? What have you learned?"

Tom smiled cruelly. "Only that Voldemort lost more of his sanity and even more of his appearance the more Horcruxes he made. I feel better--clearer, stronger--when I have you and now the locket with me, so hopefully Voldemort's mind will return to him at least partially due to being in close proximity with me and the rest of you, and I can convince him that he ought not make any more Horcruxes."

"You wouldn't honestly give one of us to him," the Horcrux declared, tilting his head to consider Tom as if he were trying to work out a complex problem. "It wouldn't be much of an insurance policy if you just handed one of us over."

Tom shrugged carelessly and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "I might hand over one, if it helped him regain some of his sanity. I had thought I'd hand over one of the later ones so that I could keep you for myself, since you're such better company, but I'm not sure about that anymore."

"Surely they're better company, since they can offer you more information than I can." The Horcrux sneered in displeasure. "You've already taken everything you can from me."

"Interestingly enough his Horcruxes are a reflection of his decay. Take you, for example." He paused long enough to see that the Horcrux's nostrils were flaring, despite the fact that he didn't actually need to breathe. "You are almost entirely normal in regards to your intelligence and, Merlin knows, your looks. But your magic and your mental control just isn't at all there. I never told you that when I was inside the diary, I could control my environment with great precision. I wasn't stuck in the Chamber of Secrets at all, despite having been created there, unlike how you are stuck in this filthy graveyard."

"You're lying" insisted the Horcrux, though Tom could tell that he didn't really think so.

"No, not at all," he answered calmly. "Take the locket for another example. I didn't even have to let him invade my mind before I was able to break through his mental shields and take everything I wanted from him. Unfortunately he was quite insane and his memories weren't as clear as yours. So yes, you're better company."

The Horcrux's sneer deepened, and Tom made a mental note, for future reference, that his face really did not look either attractive or intimidating when he did that. "So you didn't have to let him fuck you either?"

"I guess that means you don't want to continue our relationship. That's too bad; since we're going to be stuck with each other anyway, you really ought to get over this little incident and learn to take some pleasure in your situation, Tommy."

The Horcrux's angry voice was still ringing in his head when Tom collapsed back against his bed in Malfoy Manor, laughing so hard that he nearly brought himself to tears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The hearing of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to determine the status of the hippogriff was nothing more than a formality by the time it rolled around. Lucius had worked his magic so well that he had actually managed to have the case heard directly by the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, so their decision to dispose of the hippogriff was really just an exercise in rubberstamping a foregone conclusion.

Still, Lucius reported that Hagrid had been a blubbering mess throughout the proceedings, and the committee had been so hostile towards Dumbledore that the man had actually appeared a bit taken aback.

"Even Amos Diggory was visibly angry about the situation," Lucius informed him excitedly. He was quite a bit more animated than Tom had seen him in recent months. "If even Diggory is this upset, then Dumbledore's image is more tarnished than even I had dared to hope!"

Tom eyed him with slight annoyance. "Who is this Diggory?"

Lucius sat down heavily in his customary wingback chair across from Tom's. "I apologize, My Lord. Diggory is a Light wizard who is fairly high in the department. I believe that he will be the next head, and he would need to be replaced if we were ever to take over the Ministry."

Tom let it slide that the nature of his comment had been in the hypothetical, instead of saying when they took over the Ministry, but only because the news Lucius had brought was so good and Mulciber chose that moment to join them in the library. The older wizard had a wide grin on his face that made him look somehow closer to the teenager Tom remembered instead of the wizard in his sixties that he truly was. He was wearing emerald green robes instead of his customary black, with a vibrant silver waistcoat underneath that shimmered whenever it caught the sun pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows alongside the far wall of the Malfoy library.

"I hoped to find you both here," he said jovially as soon as he was close enough that he didn't have to shout. "I've just come from lunch with several members of the school board, and I thought it was time to celebrate."

He produced a bottle of Blishen's Firewhisky from thin air and presented it to Lucius, who only spent a few seconds inspecting the label before he nodded in approval and conjured three tumblers.

"None for our lord, Lucius!" exclaimed Mulciber, and although it was perfectly true that Tom had never enjoyed alcohol, he wasn't entirely sure whether he ought to appreciate Mulciber's interference or be insulted by it. Then Mulciber produced a glass bottle with a cork and no label. Tom could see the condensation forming on the outside of the glass, indicating that the contents were being kept cold. Mulciber bowed to him completely properly, although he still had a smile covering his face. "I know you always hated how the other boys would tease you about it, but I hope you take this gift in the spirit I intend it, My Lord. It's just as you like: only one teaspoon of syrup for every cup of soda, no ice and only slightly chilled."

Tom took the bottle with delicate fingers and stared at it in shocked silence for only a few seconds, but certainly long enough that his lack of reaction was making Mulciber uncomfortable.

"You went to the Three Broomsticks for this?" he asked softly.

Mulciber looked at him hopefully. "Of course, My Lord. Rastaban was planning to give you some to celebrate his success at Gringotts. Since he, er... couldn't fulfil that desire, I thought that I would do it now."

"Thank you, Mulciber," Tom finally replied, although he made sure to keep his voice harsh and immediately followed it up with an order. "Pour it for me."

He reflected that there were some definite benefits to working with men who had known him when he had still been the schoolboy Tom Riddle who had a not-so-secret addiction to the Three Broomsticks' cherry soda. Men like Lestrange and Mulciber remembered what had made him great before his other self had eroded his mind and body beyond recognition, and he knew that they were excited for another chance to wipe the slate clean and begin anew from the beginning. (Well, at least that's how Rastaban had felt before he'd been carted off to Azkaban. Hopefully he would still feel the same when Tom managed to free him.)

Mulciber's thoughts were so optimistic, in fact, that Tom thought he was probably more confident than Tom was himself in his ability to work together with Lord Voldemort and forge something new and even stronger than before.

Tom sipped his slightly chilled cherry soda as he watched Richard and Lucius toast to a job well done.

"What did the other governors have to say?" he asked once his followers had sat back to enjoy their whisky.

Mulciber grinned again. "Those who were already on our side have become even surer in their belief that Dumbledore must be removed from the school, but it is our success with those members who had previously been Dumbledore apologists that we really ought to celebrate. Hagrid's incompetent testimony and Dumbledore's weak non-justifications of his half-giant have been enough to convince them that they've been defending a headmaster who doesn't deserve it."

"I will officially file the personal injury lawsuit first thing tomorrow morning," Lucius informed them, a pleased smirk covering his face. "I will work closely with my barrister to ensure that we can bring all of Dumbledore's sins out into the open during the testimony. We must be careful, of course, that he isn't able to do anything to finger me for last year's events."

"I have been thinking that it would look bad for us if he were to round up all of the former board members to testify that you'd blackmailed them, Malfoy," pointed out Mulciber as he poured himself another glassful of whisky.

"Discredit the ones you can now, ahead of time," ordered Tom easily. "Kill the rest."

Lucius ran his finger along the lip of his glass. "That will be our only option, I fear. We must act before Dumbledore is able to gather any of their testimony or list any of them as witnesses. Belby ought to be easy enough to control; it would just take the slightest slip of the tongue for the Ministry to realize that he doesn't always deal potions and regulated ingredients strictly within the law."

Mulciber offered a hard smile to show his approval of that suggestion. "Indeed," he assented. "And I'm sure Bertie Higgs would be shattered if his good friend Rufus Scrimgeour were forced to arrest his father after finding out that Healer Higgs performs illegal abortions."

"Really?" asked Lucius, turning fully in his chair to face the older wizard. "How do you know that?"

Mulciber shrugged. "I had an indiscretion with an unmarried witch once, before I got so old. I don't know if he still performs them, but sixty years ago he was more than happy to take my Galleons and get rid of the problem. Even if we couldn't prove it, the damage to his reputation alone would ruin the family, so I'm sure his son can be convinced not to testify on Dumbledore's behalf."

Lucius blinked a few times as if trying to take that in. Tom was amused that he didn't blink at all when being asked to torture or even murder someone, but he was apparently scandalized at the idea of illegal abortions.

"We will kill the rest and make it look like accidents," he decided. "The others will surely know what's going on and will likely decide on their own not to testify, but if not they can also be dealt with. I will handle it personally."

He was looking forward to it, in fact. Malfoy and Mulciber had been such good little servants lately that he hadn't had an opportunity to torture or kill anyone as often as he'd have liked. The last person he'd tortured had been Narcissa Malfoy, but even she had begun acting well enough around him that he couldn't strictly justify torturing her. His wand hand tingled in anticipation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Draco had only been back to school for a couple of weeks when his personal house-elf returned from Hogwarts to deliver his first missive to Tom. They had decided that it was safer to correspond through the house-elf rather than through owl, because there was currently not any way for Hogwarts to intercept Draco's house-elf, or even to know about it.

My Lord,

The past few weeks have probably been the best I've ever had at this wretched school. Potter has been moping around and not even trying in classes, and I'm surprised every morning he shows up to breakfast that he hasn't just gotten it all over with and tossed himself off Gryffindor Tower the night before. Wouldn't that be grand? It isn't as if he ever eats anyway, so I don't know why he bothers coming. I think that Longbottom has tried to be his friend, but Potter isn't very responsive from what I can tell.

Today in Potions, Professor Snape yelled at him for not paying attention in class and melting his cauldron so badly that we had to evacuate the classroom. Longbottom, who was sitting next to him, actually passed out from the fumes and had to be dragged out of the room by those other two Gryffindor idiots, whatever their names are. I don't know why they couldn't have just levitated him--honestly, Mudbloods! Professor Snape had barely given him a detention and told him that he had to start paying attention before Potter started screaming at him like a raving lunatic.

I think maybe he is a raving lunatic. It'd be great except that it isn't any fun to rile him up anymore. Come to think of it, the only thing I miss about Weasel and the Mudblood is how easy it was to rile them up.

The last time the Dementors got close to him, he fainted dead away. I think I forgot to tell you about that after the hippogriff incident. Father told me that it's going to be executed and that I'm to come home soon to meet with the attorney about a personal lawsuit. That oaf Hagrid has been inconsolable; he's barely even teaching his classes anymore, not that he was ever competent at teaching them in the first place. I hope that you and Father get him sacked sooner rather than later. I don't need an Owl in Care of Magical Creatures, but it would be quite embarrassing if I weren't able to get one.

With the Mudblood gone, I'm the top in all of my classes now. I just wish that I'd been able to prove that I'm better than her instead of her just disappearing. Anybody can repeat what they've read in a book, but I am certain than she would have started to fall behind now that we're older an expected to do more practical spell work. I can already do basic non-verbal magic! What could that stupid Mudblood do besides recite lines?

I have to go to detention now, because Professor McGonagall caught me making fun of Potter for not being able to complete his homework without his Mudblood's help. Stupid bitch. I hope you remove her just like you're going to remove Dumbledore.

Draco

After Tom sorted through the nonsense to get to the meat of what Draco was telling him, he was very pleased with the report. So Potter wasn't eating, wasn't doing his work, and wasn't speaking to his fellow Gryffindors? He was happy to hear that the boy was handling things so poorly. He sounded quite depressed, which is of course just what Tom would want to for him, if he had to be alive. He did hope that Potter didn't throw himself from any towers, though, if only because Tom wanted to kill him personally.

He would have to instruct Lucius to investigate Draco's claims that Hagrid was doing his job even more poorly than before. If they could have the oaf removed for cause even before the upcoming trial, then that would make Dumbledore's decision to hire him in the first place, and not to decide himself to remove him from his teaching post, look even worse for the old goat.

Tom would have really loved to have told the Granger girl all about Draco's letter, but he was too far along in his plan for her to do something like that now. It would only turn her away from him.

Today she was hunched over the kitchen table scribbling notes about a book that was undoubtedly thicker than her own arm. Tom was sure to make enough noise when he entered the cabin that she took note of his presence, since she still hadn't shown any greater talent at magic than before. She looked towards the door, as if anybody else would have been entering the cabin she had to check, and blushed when she caught sight of him and turned quickly back to her work.

"Working hard, I see," he said levelly, neither raising his voice nor speaking too softly. "I hope that this time you will try to report what you read without inserting your own commentary. I have no need of your opinion."

"Of course." She didn't turn to look at him, but she had stopped writing. "I'm sorry."

Tom didn't grace her with another comment but instead left the kitchen through the small door leading towards the bedroom area. The bed was unmade, and he was somewhat surprised that Granger wasn't a habitual bed maker, but not enough to think on it for more than a fleeting second has he passed through the bedroom and towards the walk-in closet that still housed her filthy Muggle parents.

She crashed through the doorway after him, her growing curls flying around her face and partially obscuring her panicked brown eyes. "What are you doing?"

Tom paused and cocked his head to consider her, arranging his face into a quizzical mask. "Did I not promise that I would allow your parents out of their little closet if you proved that you could perform your task to my satisfaction? If you have changed your mind--"

"NO!" she cried at once, and when he lowered his hand from the doorknob and frowned in disapproval at her interruption, she sucked in a breath and tried again. "I mean, no, please, My... My L--lord."

Tom allowed the pleased smirk to wind its way onto his lips.

"Good girl," he said as if speaking to a particularly troublesome dog. "You would make a wonderful follower, Granger, if you could learn to embrace the things I can teach you instead of fighting them."

He could read in her thoughts that it was on the tip of her tongue to say that she would never follow him even if her life depended on it, but the words never passed her lips as she eyed his proximity to the closet door and realized that it wasn't her life that depended on it but her parents' lives. Instead she boldly looked him in the eyes and said, quite respectfully compared to her racing thoughts, "I'm a Muggle-born."

"Really?" he asked wryly, his mouth curving into the grin that he knew she liked so much.

She swallowed and studiously looked at his eyes and not his mouth. "I mean that I thought you only let pure-bloods join you."

"Oh, that's not true at all," he informed her matter-of-factly. "Half-bloods are welcome to join me, particularly those who have been raised in the magical world and know how to appreciate it. I can make exceptions for particularly exceptional Mudbloods. Take Potter's mother, for example, or you."

He could see that she was caught somewhere between shock at his revelation and pride that he thought her exceptional, even though she was still quite disgusted at the idea of becoming a Death Eater. Tom knew that she likely wanted to sit him down in a chair somewhere and interrogate him about his rules, his cause, and what he had meant by referencing Lily Potter, but he thought that it would do her some good to stew in her questions for a while.

Accordingly, before she could get another word in edgewise, he pointed one long finger at her and said, "If the Muggles interfere with the quality or quantity of your work, I will lock them right back up and you will have no guarantee that I'll ever let them back out again."

She nodded once to show that she understood, but he stood silently staring at her and made no move towards the door. Finally, after so long that Tom thought maybe she was stupid after all, she finally realized what he wanted.

In a small, defeated voice, she said, "Yes, My Lord."

He turned back towards the door and opened it wandlessly, because he knew how fascinated she was by his control of wandless magic, which she had read in one of her useless Hogwarts textbooks was impossible to control. Tom thought that if he continued to play his cards right, he might yet be able to steal her away from Potter completely and irrevocably.