Chapter Text
Professor Slughorn is surveying his favourite students, with a proud look on his face. It’s the 3rd of September and he has invited the Slug Club for the first dinner of the term. There are about twenty students seated around the long dining table.
Most of them are Slytherins. All Tom’s roommates were invited right from the beginning, when they were just snotty 1st year students with rich parents and a name. Tom had to earn his place, but it did not take long.
“He’s probably assessing the worth of his collection,” Avery whispers, and is rewarded with a snort from Rosier’s direction.
“I suppose you have to collect people when you have no money to buy anything of actual value,” Malfoy answers, nose scrunched as it always is when he talks about poor people. Tom is an exception, of course.
But Tom collects people too. And people are more valuable than any ridiculous antique vase or heirloom silverware the Malfoy manor is filled with.
They call themselves his friends or house mates, but to him they are just small bits of power, small tally marks on the wall of his conquests. A collection. A starting point.
He understands the idea behind friendship, the importance of knowing, trusting and protecting people around you. Even for famously inhibited Slytherins. They are just children, most of them terribly lonely, born into the old pureblood families where having children was not about building a happy family.
Tom knows what it feels like, not being wanted. He had gotten over it a long time ago, in the orphanage, when he realized he didn’t need anyone. When he realized he could do things nobody else could. He was a god in the midst of insignificant ants. He didn’t need anyone; he was the one everyone else would need.
But even with magic, the other children around him, powerful pureblood heirs, still want to feel like they belong. They long for attention, acceptance, love. It gives Tom an easy way in, an easy flaw to exploit, an unguarded opening in almost everyone around him. He gives them what they crave. Kind words and praises. Smiles and friendly touches. Small, worthless pieces of information about himself. Companionship.
In return, he gets everything. He knows when to ask nicely, how to subtly suggest, where to plead. He is able to make them to do almost anything for him.
They adore him.
And it feels like worship. He thinks about the church near the orphanage, where the children were forced to spend their Sundays, groveling before an invisible being, sending prayers that went unanswered.
This is his church and he is the god. And one day he would answer to the prayers his followers would send.
Knights of Walpurgis is an unofficial, very exclusive, social club led by Tom. A way to keep his loyal followers, his collection, organized. Yet another thing he had copied from Slughorn: the man might be insufferable, but he’s an excellent Slytherin.
The Knights gather a few times a week in an old abandoned study hall located near Slytherin’s common room. When Tom had asked for a permission to use it, Slughorn had of course happily agreed, and even provided them with some new comfortable furniture.
Tom is lounging in a large, black, clawfoot armchair, his usual fake smile plastered on his face, participating in the conversation as little as he could without looking uninterested. Most club members have already retreated back to the common room. His roommates, Avery, Rosier, Malfoy and Lestrange sit in similar arm chairs around him, talking about their pointless teenager issues.
“Did you see Black’s tits? They are huge. I’m going to shag her this year, even if it’s the last thing I do,” Rosier sighs, his hands making groping gestures in front of his nonexistent breasts.
Pointless.
“It will be the last thing you do. Her father will have you killed when he finds out someone unworthy blew her flower away before marriage,” Malfoy scoffs.
“Unworthy! Fuck you, Abraxas,” Rosier yells and sends a stinging hex at Malfoy. Malfoy yelps, retaliates, and suddenly there is a ridiculous duel going on in the middle of elegant armchairs and glass coffee tables.
Avery and Lestrange decide to move away from the flying curses, but Tom stays in his chair. He observes the sub-par spell work and wonders how both of them managed to get almost perfect grades on their defense exams. Hogwarts’s standards are terrible. If he was a teacher, things would be so different. If he was in charge, things would be so much better.
When a flipendo, of all things, flies over his head, Tom pinches his nose. A fucking first year spell. This was his inner circle, the future leaders of the better world he was one day going to create. He would have to place his most loyal followers to the top.
“Are you quite done,” he asks flatly, staring at the blonde boy whose dueling arsenal apparently consisted of first year hexes and very weak dodging.
As soon as he opens his mouth, everything stops. Rosier swallows the last syllable of the hex he was firing and lowers his wand. Malfoy mirrors the gesture and sits down as elegantly as he’s able, smoothing his robes.
“Sorry, Tom,” Malfoy says. His voice is strong but there is a slight embarrassment in his eyes. Tom moves his gaze at the other offender, and Rosier quickly mutters his apology, reverting his eyes under Tom’s stare.
Tom basks in the intoxicating feeling the respect of his followers, his authority in action, gives him. In this room his word is the law.
“We will start practicing dueling on Thursdays,” Tom announces a few days later, while buttering his breakfast toast at the Slytherin table.
“But the Knights meet on Thursdays,” Rosier answers, mouth full of sausage.
“I am aware of that,” Tom says. “We will start practicing in the old study hall during our meetings.”
Still sleepy Slytherins don’t seem to be excited about the extra work, but fortunately they keep their mouths shut. It’s one week into the term and they are already exhausted by the trivial amount of school work.
They don’t understand the important things in life, using all their spare time gossiping, playing games and drooling after girls like primitive cavemen. They all have their future wives already arranged, yet they use their free time chasing.
They have ambition, but it’s veiled behind their childish needs. They all have their own abilities, they have magical and political power, but they are too distracted to reach their full potential. Tom needs to show them the right path to greatness.
Most Slytherins are familiar with the dark arts. It’s a traditional part of the pureblood culture. It’s old, powerful magic, that used to be just one branch among the others. They know the spells, they know the cost, but they avoid using them, silently afraid of the consequences. Afraid of being branded as evil.
But Tom believes magic isn’t either good or evil. There’s only power, and those too weak to seek it.
He has to show them how. And maybe, in the secluded corner of their private study hall, he will be able to mold them into the powerful generals his army will one day need.
Two weeks into the term, Tom wakes up from a nightmare. A nightmare about his future. A nightmare, where he has no face.
It’s terrifying. He knows it’s just a dream, but it felt so real, almost prophetic, and it haunts him for the rest of the day. He’s feeling weirdly hesitant about everything he does, which is unheard of. Tom Riddle is never uncertain about anything.
But he is. He has such great plans. Surely that is not the way it will end? Faceless, soulless, husk of a human. He was supposed to be a god.
He doesn’t remember any details about the dream. He remembers feeling weak, trapped in his fragile, serpentine body. He remembers the raw obsession that clouded his thoughts. He remembers the empty, hollow gap where his soul should have been.
Tom has already split his soul once, but it doesn’t feel any different. He looks at the heirloom ring on his finger. He’d planned to do it again, but now he’s unsure about that too. He’s afraid of death, more than anything else, but maybe the price of immortality is destroying everything that makes him great.
He spills a bottle of salamander blood during the potions class. It pours all over his pants and he ruins his brew for the first time ever.
He lets his cockney accent, which he’s been able to hide for years now, slip during dinner, and gets a baffled look from Malfoy.
He calls his roommates by their surnames. He always does that in his head, but it’s important to call them by their first names out loud. That is what friends are supposed to do.
His whole carefully crafted, perfect identity is cracking because he’s unable to concentrate.
He asks Rosier to smuggle him a few vials of dreamless sleep, and takes a dose every night before going to sleep.
Tom is summoned to the headmaster’s office. He knows the password, of course, and uses it to get past the gargoyle guarding the entrance.
There’s a black-haired boy, sitting by the headmaster’s desk. Headmaster Dippet has a soft look on his face when welcomes Tom and gestures him to take the empty seat next to the occupied one.
Dippet introduces the boy, who looks about Tom’s age, maybe just a little bit younger. “This is Harry. He’s just been sorted to Slytherin.”
The boy, Harry, turns his head towards Tom but avoids eye contact. He nods, face unreadable, apparently as a greeting. It's such a plebeian gesture.
Because Tom, unlike this scrawny tight-lipped child, has manners, he extends his hand towards the boy. “Hello Harry, my name is Tom Riddle. I’m a Slytherin prefect.” He flashes his perfect smile, which doesn’t seem to be working like it usually does.
Harry hesitates, just for a second, and gives Tom the quickest handshake he’s ever gotten.
Dippet tells him the boy will join Tom’s year, and Tom offers his help with anything the new student might need. There are no more explanations. Transfer students are rare, but not unheard of, and he assumes the boy has transferred from another school.
Tom escorts him out, and starts leading him towards the dungeons. Harry is quiet, expressionless, and determined to reach his destination as quickly as possible. It almost looks like he knows where they are going.
Maybe the boy is traumatized by the events that led to his transfer. Tom doesn’t really care.
Harry’s trunk is already in the dorm room, in front of the sixth bed that’s suddenly appeared in the back of the room. The boy walks to his bed, turns around, and almost looks at Tom. “You can go now.”
He’s dismissing Tom. Like he’s a fucking servant.
“It’s my room,” Tom answers, holding his polite smile in place. It takes a bit more effort than usually.
“I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
Tom checks the time with a quick tempus. He was summoned during a charms class, which would be over in half an hour. He decides it’s pointless to go back, it’s not like he would learn anything new anyway.
“I’m a prefect. My most important job right now is to make sure you have everything you need.” He’s using his seductive voice, sarcastically, because he’s still annoyed.
Harry, who’s now rummaging around his trunk, bangs his head to the bed post, and blushes. “What,” he splutters.
Oh.
And so, he’s accidentally discovered the easiest exploitable flaw in any human. Tom has a pretty face and a tongue that can do all kinds of things. The blushing teen boy will be his by the end of the week, and he can’t wait to dismiss him like the weak servant he is.
This will be so easy.