Bitter Taste

Awfully Irresponsible

It was a question that's made Tom consider his own position, his own plans for his future regime. Sure, he could waltz around Hogwarts picking up every prejudice knucklehead he could find, build a wall of playground bullies around him to kickstart his plan to reinstate only the most powerful of Wizards by picking off the weaklings first, but why allow his ranks to be infiltrated by idiots? That was what the Ministry had done, enough so that a group of school children had been able to gain valuable information about their plans in the course of a single evening.

No. He knew he had them beaten on that front already, especially with his new marks that he'd been slowly testing over ever since the boys had received them. A muttered incantation here and there from him, and he would quickly find the their scurrying to him, asking what he needed at the sensation of the snake moving against their forearm.

He'd yet to test the slightly more exciting feature, the one that allowed him to inflict pain without even being in the same room as them, as he was yet to be given a reason to bye any of them. Not even Avery had made a joke too close to the bone yet, and required a reminder of exactly where he stood. It was a shame really, but just made the moment it would finally arrive all that more anticipated.

It was by no stretch of the imagination Tom's desire to go and seek out Grindelwald, defeat him himself and take all the glory, more to sit and observe, learn from this mistakes of the older wizard to make his own scheme that more water tight. He already knew headquarters for operations would have to be a secret, somewhere unassuming that no one would think to raid. Hosting a castle as a base was a stupid idea, and practically screamed to be attacked. It was the little things like that he was grateful to know.

Still, no reports ever filtered through of any more progress, leaving Tom feeling nothing but mildly bored. His knights were all still well within their time limits for their next tasks, and even schoolwork had yet to pose any real challenges, he'd read pretty much every text book cover to cover over the summer already.

Head Boy duties only filled so much of his time, the extra patrols he had to cover extending to one more night a week, his usual prefect duties having been handed off to a sixth year. Granted, he wasn't sure if he missed his patrols with Aurora, or likewise, but he was yet to find out she'd hexed her new partner so he hazarded a guess that it wasn't going too badly.

Regardless, he knew he enjoyed roaming the castle by himself, late at night when everyone else slept soundly. He was free to take as much time as he liked examining every crevice, every alcove and hidden room of the castle, building his ever growing mind map of the place he'd called home for so many years now.

It was bizarre. Being a orphan had meant he was never sentimental about belongings, growing up with the belief that everything he was given didn't really belong to him, but to the muggle government who were kind enough to donate the pittance they did to stop themselves looking bad, had anyone questioned why they allowed so many children to be homeless. Merlin, they hadn't even bothered to evacuate the orphanage when the blitz had come around, just built two rickety old bomb shelters at the bottom of the garden, and forced every child in to any available space when those god-forsaken sirens had begun to scream, like angels of death announcing their arrival.

One time, Tom had been no older than 14, when the blackout had been called ands the sirens had started to blare, he'd pointedly ignored the matrons order to leave the building, locking himself in a bathroom until the shouting had subsided. He knew the muggle war had been catastrophic, the orphanage had lost a chunk off the side of the building weeks before he'd arrived back. It'd been patched up with precariously cemented rubble and a tarpaulin, enough to pass basic living standards for a care home but not enough to keep out a draft at night.