"You're playing quidditch! Are you insane? I didn't know you could even fly! Why didn't you tell me!" You hissed this at him in the middle of herbology. With an air of nonchalance he responded in a steadier voice.
"I thought you weren't speaking to me."
You look flustered. "Well I am now! You don't do reckless things Tom! They get people hurt! If you want to play, fine, I can't stop you. Just...be careful."
He turned to face you. "Are you worried about me Ivetta?" He drew out the words, as mocking as he could muster.
"Shut up Tom." After a moment, "Of course I'm worried." He smiled, as you mumbled something he didn't understand.
"If you're so worried, come with me tonight while I practice."
"But I'm not talking to you, remember?" You looked just a tad too smug for his liking. He leaned closer, smirking.
"You still sat next to me everyday. We studied every night. Actions speak louder than words. Quidditch pitch. Seven o'clock." It was almost if he had planned it, the bell ringing exactly as he finished. He wiped the dirt off his hands and walked away, not looking back, but he knew you were staring as he walked away.
There was some truth to your words, it probably was reckless. But you had no concept of the things at play behind his decision. He didn't know if you would even show up, but he would make sure you were there one way or another. This would be his last chance to practice before the chance to replace the current seeker. It was cruel to kick someone of the team mid season, but the Slytherin team was known for winning, not kindness.
He, however, did not intend on practicing. His plan was to bring you with him to hogsmeade and figure out who was sending you letter. The very hard to come by bottle pressed against his leg would make these answers come much more quickly. You were lucky he was so focused on looking out for you he had broken into Slughorn's stores to get veritaserum. He would be doing you a favor, making sure this 'friend' was benign. The chances of that looked slim, seeing as you weren't sharing his identity in the first place.
Seven o'clock did not come quick enough. Much to his surprise, he saw your outline as he approached the pitch. Arms crossed and muttering in Russian, he could tell there had been a great internal battle on showing up. He walked quietly, but as soon as he was five feet away you wheeled around to face him.
"Where is your broom? Are thy so small now you can not see them? In Russia, they fly on uprooted trees, you know? Here, the amount of deaths would be so catastrophic it would lose the entertainment." He was suddenly very glad he was playing Quidditch at Hogwarts.
"I didn't bring it. We're going to Hogsmeade." Your brow furrowed.
"What do you mean? You said you were going to practice. I'm not going Hogsmeade Tom, I didn't even want to come here tonight!"
He let a small smile spread across his face. "Then why are you here?"
"Because I wanted to make sure you wouldn't die tomorrow when you try out! This is absurd, we aren't even allowed out of the castle, much less wandering the village!"
He laughed at this. "What happened in the past weeks that made you such a stickler for rules? I always thought you didn't care."
"I stopped hanging out with you, that's what happened."
"Oh come on, Ivetta. It'll be fun. I'll buy you a butter beer." And spike it with truth serum. You hesitated, for a minute.
"Fine. But I buy my own drink, and I still don't forgive you."
"I would never dream of it." This was a blatant lie, for he had, in fact, dreamed of forgiveness. He was annoyed he needed forgiveness, it was quite obvious he had spoken nothing but the truth.
But you had already started walking away, turning back to beckon him to follow. He hurried to catch up. They walked in silence for a few minutes. "I don't cling to people." He was sure there was no right response to that statement, so he stayed silent. Clearly you wanted an argument, for you slapped him on the arm. "I don't cling." He rubbed his arm.
"Of course not. You are fiercely independent and obnoxious. I misspoke." He did not misspeak, but you seemed to be somewhat appeased.
"I was never upset about it, you know, my parent's death. People die. And they certainly would never have won parent of the year." He was not surprised by this. Learning about his mother's death had never bothered him. Must have been something Constantine had done which created the clinginess.
"I don't know if my father is dead. He might have been so ashamed of getting a muggle pregnant he abandoned her. He might be dead. I know I'm at least a half-blood though." It was something he had not shared to anyone else, but he needed your trust back.
"Why are you so sure your father was magical."
"Because my mother died. If she was magic she could have saved herself." It seemed obvious to him, but you looked rather angry as they walked into the pub, and sat at a table in the corner.
"Well that's a terribly flawed, not to mention closed minded, reason!"
"What do you mean?" You huffed.
"How old was your mother when she died?" He had no clue where you were going with this.
"Eighteen, nineteen?"
"Merlin Tom! You're supposed to be smart! Imagine you're eighteen. If she was the witch, our father was probably a muggle. If she was pure blood she would have been kicked out of her house, either for the muggle or the pregnancy. The man who knocked her up abandoned her, so she was heartbroken and alone. You can't magically create food, and the chances of her having a magical education are slim, the chance of her having enough education to transform something into food would be even smaller."
"Why would she not have had education if she was a pure blood?" You were looking at him as if he was the stupidest person to exist.
"Do you think Walburga's mother went to school? Zara's? They were taught at home by their own mother's and a governess how to take care of a home and a husband, and maybe a few housecleaning charms. Witches still don't get a magical education in plenty of places. Even some families in the States choose to keep the girls home. Now it's a bit different, Pure blood girls are blessed with an education and then married off!"
He had never considered this. "Okay, so if she was a witch she was a waste of magical blood. I wouldn't want her as a mother." You gaped at him, and he sensed he might have said something wrong.
"So since she was born a woman in a time when society only accepted men, she's the waste of blood? What about her family, that denied her the right to an education, so she could become powerful?"
No, that didn't make sense. "You can't blame the system." Now he had really said the wrong thing.
"I'm going to the bathroom, and when I come back, if you still have this viewpoint, I swear to Salazar I will brutally murder you."
You left, ad he shook his head. He was so much better than most men, who wouldn't have bothered to even listen to you. He reached across the table and poured the veritaserum into her drink. He picked his own drink up and acted nonchalant. You were so lucky you had him looking out.
You came back in two minutes, plopped into the chair with an unholy amount of gracefulness, and ruined it by taking a swig of butter beer. He wasn't sure how long it would take to work, but something seemed to glaze over your eyes, so he decided to test it. "Where do you go to school?"
"Hogwarts."
"Full name?"
"Ivetta Cosette Alexandrov."
"Blood status?"
"Complicated." That was an odd answer, but if you believed it was complicated, that was the truth.
"Who writes to you?" He could see you fighting a little, but you would not be able to fight the potion.
"Felix Hofer." He had ever heard of a Hofer family. A muggle?
"Who is he?"
"Grindelwald." He sat there, shocked. What? Surely he had heard wrong.
"Who is Felix Hofer?" He was now sitting at the end of his seat, his heart beating with excitement.
"Gellert Grindelwald. The Dark Lord." He took a sip of his own drink. Why were you speaking with the Dark Lord?
"Why does he write to you?" He was not sure what he was expecting your answer to be. He wasn't sure if he was thrilled or jealous.
"Protégé. He wants a student. A seer, he doesn't care I don't want to be married. He wants to teach me." She was a seer! How had he not known? It made sense. what he didn't understand was why Grindelwald wanted a protégé. And why you seemed so reserved. But the potion would wear off soon, and he needed to ask more.
"Tell me about your uncle."
"He hates me. But sometimes he loves me too much. I want him dead." Why must you speak in riddles?
"And your parents?"
"My father was a monster and my mother was a fraud. Good riddance." Mother a fraud? A fraud how? In her work, that would add up, seers tended to be a group of frauds. Her father being a monster worked, most were. Now what else did he want to know?
"Do you hate me?"
"No." Good. That was good.
"Why did you lie?"
"Protecting you. You're scary sometimes, you would have done something bad." He smiled at that. He was scary, wasn't he?
"Why did your uncle break off your betrothal?"
"He hates me. I don't know." He was running out of time, he could tell.
"That night in the library, you said Gaunt, why?" He needed to know.
"It popped into my head. I don't know why!"
"What does Gaunt mean?" He wasn't sure if you even knew, but he had to try.
"Its an old wizarding family. I looked it up. And the family name, is Marvolo." His blood chilled. Could this be what he was looking for. He couldn't ask, for now the glaze in your eye was gone, replaced with confusion. Thank god he had mixed in the memory potion, or else you would be furious.
"That was odd. I feel like I-nevermind, what were you saying?"
"Just that I wish we had something stronger to drink. I can't wait till we're seventeen." This was not entirely true, he had never had true alcohol before, but he wouldn't be against it.
"Who says we have to wait?" He was going to say the law, but you were already walking away, toward the bar. He could have sworn he saw your hair turn blonde, so he blinked, and much to his surprise, it was a gorgeous pale yellow.
He watched in disbelief as you walked up to the bartender, and returned five minutes later, hair back to red, with a bottle of fire whiskey. "How did you do that? And how did you pay, you didn't have your money with you?"
"Well that kind man gave it too me, on the house. It's not every day you meet a beautiful French girl in a pub." She poured some of the amber liquid into her glass, than his.
"You aren't French." He felt rather stupid making this proclamation. Your hair turned back to that blonde color.
"But Cosette is. Just graduated Beuaxbatons." The words fell from your mouth in a flawless French accent. You downed the fire whiskey, and went to pour some more. He did the same, refraining from gagging as the liquid burned his throat.
"You flirted for a bottle of fire whiskey?" You hummed.
"To me it looks like a bartender gave an underage witch a bottle of potent alcohol in the hopes she would be too drunk to leave, you see, girls get drunk faster than men. But that could just be me blaming the system."
He growled. If only the potion had erased that conversation as well. "It isn't as crowded as I expected."
"Yeah, well people aren't going out as much anymore. With the talk of war, in our world and the current muggle one." He needed for you to tell him about Grindelwald on your own now.
"What are your views on Grindelwald's politics?" It was a question that would have set you on edge if you were completely sober. Luckily you were on your third glass of fire whiskey.
"He's right! Muggles are below us so why should everything we do be controlled by thinking of them! I mean, we fight against each other before we would fight them, It's ridiculous! He's going about it the wrong way. His whole greater good thing, it sets people on edge. He's likeable, but not followable. People rally behind ideas, not people, and as soon as they realise people have his same ideas with a different way of achieving them, he's gone. It's why he fell in the twenties."
You were so smart, one thing he loved about you. But he was so much smarter. "Did you tell him this?"
"Yeah I-" It was the only slip up he needed. "Shite. Tom, look, I can explain." He sat back in his chair.
"Please do."
"He approached me, at Christmas, and told me to write him. He's made promises, under his government, he won't care if you're a woman or even half creature, as long as you're powerful. That's the thing, he cares about power! That's all you need, not a family or a husband, power. And I'm going to get it, and it's all because you showed it to me."
That was true, he had done a number on you. Unleashed potential. Potential he planned to use for himself, not hand out to Grindelwald of all people. "What does he get out of this agreement?" He already knew, but one has to keep up appearances.
"I, well, he wants someone to teach, and someone to recruit more students. And someone who is a seer. And, I'm sure someone like me, who have things that make them easier targets for recruiting." By things, he heard clingy orphan, but he didn't say it.
You poured yet another glass full of fire whiskey, and he debated taking away the bottle, having stopped drinking himself after the second glass. "Will you join him in the summer?"
"I'm running away. But you can't tell. He'll kill me if I leave again." It took him a moment to figure out you were speaking of your uncle. As good decisions went, running off to join a dark wizard while fifteen was not high on the list.
It was at that moment that the bartender walked over. He seemed to be in his early twenties, and completely aware that you were no longer the blonde French girl. "Get out of my pub! Hogwarts' kids ain't ya! Out! Out!" Tom glared at him, he was in the middle of an interrogation. It took you two tries to get up from your seat, grabbing the bottle of whiskey, that the bartender quickly snatched back. "Don't come back here! Until your of age, that is, sweetheart."
You gave him an elegant wink and courtsey, which was impressive seeing how much you had consumed. He grabbed your arm, and pulled you with him out of the pub. "He was very friendly, wasn't he?"
"No, he was not. And you are very drunk."
"Your fault. You wanted to grill me for information, so I got drunk. Easy to help out a friend." He rolled his eyes, not that you could see.
The walk back to the castle took much longer than the walk to Hogsmeade, and it was past midnight by the time they reached the common room. He watched as somehow you made it up the stairs to your dorm. As soon as you were out of sight he darted for the library.
He entered the hall of family records, and for once did not look for the name Riddle. Instead, he headed for the Sacred Twenty Eights. He pulled out the book labeled House of Gaunt, which he had always skipped over. The bottom line read:
Merope Gaunt
(April 13, 1907 – December 31, 1926)
A chill went up his back. He had found his mother. He searched the rest of the line. At the very top he saw, in beautiful large script,
Salazar Slytherin.