The Fear in The Child

42

Anger still rushed through Tom, but watching Draco shiver on the floor in fear of him did much to calm it. He had to focus, and while he was angered that Draco would dare lie to him, it was not as though the boy knew he was lying. No, he truly believed that it was nothing to worry about. How badly had Lucius twisted this creature? How distant had Abraxas been to not notice the darkness in his own son's parenting. Draco must have gone to Abraxas at least once before, because he had said going to his grandfather would be useless since he lets Lucius handle all punishments. A sort of, apoplectic rage continued to thrash through him. Still, it would not matter. Lucius was getting reprimanded by his own father, about his son's punishments, and Tom still had control. 

So he took a deep breath to calm himself. He had much more important things to worry over than lies that pretty little blonde boys did not believe to be lies. Dumbledore. For instance, Dumbledore was something to worry over. 

It was not as though Tom did not know what the old coot was doing. No, he had figured it out through the courses of those pesky letters. He had read through them all, despite his longing to simply throw them into the fire. No, he had not done that, he was not so impulsive. The old man wanted him to forgive his wrongs. As if Tom was in the habit of forgiving the ones that wronged him. He would have thought that Dumbledore would have figured it out. Something was clearly up, with how absolutely frantic he was about it, but Tom really did not care. At the end of the day, this was something that he had brought upon himself. He should not have been such an asshole to Tom. Yet he had, within literal moments of meeting him and had proceeded to act unprofessional since. Really, Tom was not a forgiving person. Whatever it was that Dumbledore needed him to forgive for, he could throw it in the lake. Tom was never going to forgive him. 

Especially now that he definitely did not need to. He had Draco, they were betrothed. Draco's friends were his own loyal subjects, because Draco was, and Tom had managed to once more gather the control of the Malfoys, through their son. It was almost poetic, the way things happened in a circle. He had done the same with Abraxas, and it would seem the eldest Malfoy had not noticed, not even now. 

Sighing, he pulled Draco up, and pulled him into his embrace. He did not want to scare the boy off, after all, not that he would be scared so easily. The kid had spirit, and that was something that Tom rather enjoyed about him. His willingness to please, his desperation to be good. He would make a good partner, for certain, for someone like Tom, who enjoyed obedience more than anything else. No matter what Lucius had done, it had been taken by him in the end. A sort of pleasure rolled through his spine at that. 

-

Dumbledore was trembling in rage. Granted, he had not really tried that hard to gather the boy's forgiveness, and perhaps he should have realized it would not be as easy as he had hoped, but Dumbledore was the greatest of the age! Surely it should not have been too hard to get the boy to forgive him considering his influence. If there was something a kid like Tom had always held in high regard it was influence and power. He had miscalculated, though, because at some point the Malfoy boy had tucked him under his wing, and Tom had managed to haggle a betrothal out of them. 

The prophet ripped through his hand as a flash once more bathed him in light. Dumbledore, for the first time in a long time, felt dread flood his body. 

"You have failed...so your consequence awaits." The spirit stated once more. Dumbledore felt his throat seize, and the once ever so influential individual fell like nothing. Perhaps, perhaps he should not have been so horrifically focused on the greater good, that he allowed it to cloud his judgment. How many could have been spared if he had simply not set fire to a young eleven year old's wardrobe?