complicity [tom riddle]

iv.

2nd October 1944

It was the morning, five o'clock and Tom Riddle was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and slipping out of bed. He carefully folded and tucked in his bed sheets using a charm that was like muscle-memory, he did so quietly as not to wake his dear friends. He came face to face with a large landscape mirror that was detailed with grandeur silver and emerald embellishments all around the frame, a gift from the Malfoy's. After dealing with hygienic matters in the shared bathroom. He combed his hair back and dressed into his school attire. He polished his Prefect bag and shoes, then before he left he magically packed his bag and orchestrated a full body check.

The air of the first Slug-Club party of term loomed and Tom made sure that he would not be caught lacking, despite some challenging alerts his accolades had reported in the past few days. It appears that little Miss Battleaxe has found herself some friends. More importantly, his friends, his accolades, and his accomplices. Tom's nose scrunched in disgust at the mere idea of her. Her pathetic everyday demeanor when she could be so much more.

What a pitiful waste.

Albeit, his knights could be considered as a major contributing factor as to why the girl never held her head high and always seemed to be socially placed at the bottom of things, literally, she appeared to spend an awful lot of time on the floor, scrambling away like a fool. Or so Tom initially thought. It was no great secret either that she's quite a beauty, it wasn't to Tom, his friends, or to the rest of the student body. It was true, boys had been after her for a number of years, yet none of them dare pounced due to the Knights of Walpurgis and their great wrath. It wasn't protectiveness that they had over her, it was the great shame that they held - destroying a Slytherin like themselves for the plain concept of a ploy.

Terror ran through the veins of the Hogwarts building whenever they were seen together, united and even more when people knew only one percent of what they were capable of. The destroyers of "blood traitors" such as Heidi Battleaxe. Granted, Heidi would've been recruited much like Mary Mulciber however it was her harrowing background of a pure-blooded witch conceiving a child with a filthy Muggle man. It was Heidi's curse, or arguably her saviour. The only line that stopped her from entering Hogwart's darkest society, a secret society.

So why destroy her person? Reduce a prize of a woman and a talented witch to nothing?

In past years, she was the only threat to the boy.

Heidi was the girl that had access and slithered like a snake through Slytherin's quarters, Heidi's heart of which appeared so pure she would be inclined to stand up to what was socially considered as correct, Heidi who was so immensely gifted, and Heidi whom he sorely despised.

Just as Riddle believed he had got his Stygian acolytes the most heartless of them all, Judias Avery and Abraxas Malfoy to shame her into such contempt humiliation, for just living that she'd never dare slither out and meddle with his schemes. Heidi began to slide right into the place where she most ought not to be, with Mary and Tobias. The cunning pair who embodied the sin of sloth outwardly for whatever internal purposes they see fit would benefit them. Sin.

It was a given that Riddle was well aware of Heidi's affairs with Mulciber and Tobias. Not because they told him so, but because he told Heidi so. During one of the knights meeting Riddle was recognising his human inventory. Abraxas Malfoy, the right-hand; Judias Avery, the knave; Rhydian Lestrange, the soldier; Charles Rosier, the messenger; Mary Mulciber, the archivist; Tobias Nott, the jack; Tom Riddle, the king - the dark lord.

And Heidi Battleaxe, the snake?

He was an idiot for not seeing it before, supressing the one unit that was the slightest bit compatible with his intellectual speed. Heidi Battleaxe would be the perfect tool, the ideal object in his grand scheme of things. She had a heart of gold blistered in raw anger. Anger that he indirectly created, anger he realised he could use. She was no longer a threat to him but that did not deny how deliciously useful her placement would be in his ultimate vendetta. That's when the legilimens began, Tom's far too preoccupied with his own affairs to unlock the halls of her mind and discover her secrets, so all he did was simply drag nostalgic memories of what she believed was frienship with Mary Mulciber and Tobias Nott from the back of her mind to the forefront and that was all it took for her to approach them, his accolytes responding appropriately to her as per command.

The Dark Lord's plan had began moving in motion for the sardonic future that he pictured, a future with Heidi in it. Obviously, once she had played her part they'd dispose of her as if she'd never existed but that's what made the plan all the more tasteful, it was clean, no loose-ends, and certainly no true, filthy blood-traitors. She was a pawn playing with knights, an enjoyable charade for the short-term but sickeningly deathly for the pawn in the long. Just as he liked it.

Pure.

Heidi would put up a fight though, she would certainly be a challenge. It wouldn't be easy to coerce her onto his side but with the help of Mulciber and Nott's manipulation it certainly loosened up the bounds of what was likely with Battleaxe and what was unlikely. Additionally, she was also irritatingly close with the most powerful professors in the school, Albus Dumbledore and Roman DuLac. Tom planned on dealing with Professor DuLac very, very soon though. He just needed to pick his moment, his poison. Dumbledore would be far harder to take out.

That morning proceeded as usual for Tom, his getting ready for the day ritual, studying in the library, analysing and innovating further ideas for his plans just before the first bell went for breakfast and then class. Naturally, he was always the first to the first lesson of the day already giving him an advantage slightly countered with the fact that he'd already studied each class' course well before the school year has even taken place, he ought it best to be prepared just in case. He still paid as much attention as his racing, ambitious, and power-hungry mind allowed him in class. Much pleasure was taken from hearing the way teachers articulated the course he had already learned, it was his personal test on the Professor's perception.

Another advantage of being so far ahead of the class was that he could pay decadent attention to a certain young lady, Heidi Battleaxe.

That night Tom would have further opportunity to seize Heidi from the party and potentially play some coercive spells on her mind as to influence her into his group.

To tonight.