It had been a while now since school began, and I'd settled into a nice routine here at Hogwarts. Daph and I had only gotten closer, and the most exciting thing to happen in a while was Professor Quirrel because of a troll on Halloween (the troll itself wasn't that interesting, as we saw neither hide nor hair of it), Potter becoming the Seeker, and Gryffindor losing 150 points in one go. No one really knew why that last one happened, except the Slytherins, as Draco told us what happened with the baby dragon. What did they think was going to happen?! Honestly, why are Gryffindors so irresponsible, so naive?!
Apart from this, Professor Quirrell, who I know has been possessed by Voldemort (that's a stupid name, it literally means 'flight from death' in French; how much more of a wimp could he be), kept giving me suspicious looks (warranted) and trying to hold me back after class (creepy if I didn't know the real reason behind it). I imagine it's because I keep 'slipping up' and calling him 'Tom'.
I knew exactly who he was. It was the reason I had accepted my Hogwarts admittance letter, to begin with. Nothing else would be worth the hell of going through school once again, not even the prospect of returning home (I could just take over the castle once I was physically an adult, anyway).
Returning to how I knew who Tom was, I had his first Horcrux (the diary) in my possession. You find that, after multiple lifetimes spent being a spy or some other covert, intelligence-gathering persona, one tends to get quite good at espionage and thievery.
Once I took the diary from Malfoy Manor just as Abraxas died (right before he passed it on to his son, Lucius), it took me the better part of two years to gain enough of Tom's trust to be able to persuade him that I was not trying to kill, or otherwise trap him.
I myself had gained enough confidence in him to let him know this wasn't my first life. A year later, here I was, trying to find an opportunity to bind the soul fragment possessing Quirrell to the part of Tom in the diary.
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I knew, from past experiences, that the smaller a soul fragment was, the less stable or even sane its embodiment was. Tom, being barely sixteen when he made his first Horcrux, had put too much power into the ritual, resulting in an entire half of his soul breaking off and entering the diary. From these his rationality went completely downhill, causing him to start what was essentially a cult of pureblood supremacists bowing down (unknowingly) to a half-blood.
Originally, when Tom was just a child, afraid to die, he had big plans to reform the Ministry and change the wizarding world so no other magical child had to suffer as he did, growing up at Wool's Orphanage. Tom did not despise muggle-borns, he merely wished to provide them the option of living in the wizarding world as a child, so they could get away from their less-than-pleasant, possibly abusive families, away from the people who could not accept their 'abnormality'.
Tom and his school friends had created the Knights of Walpurgis to bring in the new order. It was meant to be a purely political movement, and the moment diary-Tom found out just what all 'he' had done in recent years, he was visibly heartbroken and disgusted with himself. I could see the vulnerability shining through his eyes.
It was times like these that I realized Tom was not infallible. Despite his intellect being one of the highest I had ever witnessed or even heard of, Tom's emotional maturity was little more than that of a child, due to his upbringing. The boy only knew to lash out in anger, and so that is what he did to me when I broke the news to him, his expression one of the utmost denial.
Tom had no one for the majority of his life. I was going to make sure he had me for the rest, whether he let me in or not. I would accept him with open arms and no judgment, and give him the home he always wanted. This, I swore to myself.
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I don't think there's a single dialogue in this chapter. What can I say, I love descriptions. 🤷♀️
~Lila
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