Flight of the Stars

Chapter Sixteen

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter; that right belongs to J.K. Rowling. She just lets me play with her characters. :)

Note: For this chapter, I'd recommend Darkside by Alan Walker and Warriors by Imagine Dragons.

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Tom fingered his ring absentmindedly as he gazed at the blank parchment on which he was supposed to be writing an essay. That completely pointless essay on theory of human transfiguration that Dumbledore had assigned. Dumbledore's a fool, he scoffed to himself. As powerful as he is, and he chooses to teach, of all things...

That was what disgusted him the most about Dumbledore, even more than the man's holier-than-thou mindset. He was the most powerful man alive - he had defeated Grindelwald, the Darkest wizard in at least a century and the leader of the global wizarding war - and yet he chose to teach Transfiguration to a group of imbeciles.

His lip twisted as he dipped his quill carefully in the ink jar and began to write. Others had called his handwriting elegant; it was actually what had impressed the professors most at their first meeting - at least, until they heard the poor orphan speak, saw how respectful he was, and so devoted to learning magic... All this with Dumbledore scrutinizing him over those absurd half-moon spectacles.

Salazar, he hated the man. That had not faded even a little since his first visit with him at that Merlin-forsaken orphanage. Tom was quite sure Dumbledore saw right through his model student act. He had all of the professors wrapped around his finger, yet the Transfiguration professor might be the one to unravel all of his carefully constructed plans. It was completely maddening!

Well, at least there was Hermione. For some reason, intent as she was on taking down the Ministry, she hadn't had to pretend a model student act at all. It was strange. She read Dark Arts books (at his suggestion), she was currently becoming an unregistered Animagus, and yet she was determined to prove her worth to the professors, prove that she was just as intelligent as him, even though it would not matter even a little. Yes, very strange.

Tom's mind wandered to Slughorn's party, and he smiled. She really needed to work on blocking their soul bond. Otherwise he could simply read her thoughts, something he had done on quite a few occasions that night. He wondered if perhaps that was only a problem that night because she had been uncomfortable; it had never presented an issue before. At any rate, her failure to block their connection had allowed him to get a read on how she felt about him, and hopefully he had thrown her off with the strawberry comment enough to make her even more malleable than before.

The worst thing, he thought disgustedly, was that it had not even been a lie. He really had smelled strawberries in the Amortentia. What that meant, he did not even want to consider.

His mind went there anyway.

Yes, one smelled in the Amortentia what attracted one the most. He had smelled strawberries. Of course, perhaps he simply liked the scent of strawberries themselves, and it had nothing to do with her perfume or her shampoo or whatever it was. He seriously doubted it. He stared into the fire, his essay forgotten.

They had only half of a school year left, as they would be leaving on the Hogwarts Express in a few days for Christmas break, and in that half of a school year, they needed to plan how they would retrieve the Deathly Hallows, create a foolproof strategy to take down the Ministry, and come up with a plan for a better government than the one that currently existed, one that would give the two of them absolute power while still keeping the people happy. They did not have time for... whatever this was. It needed to stop, and soon.

He narrowed his eyes in thought. The Death Ea - no, the Knights; he had to agree with her that "Knights" was much less conspicuous - the Knights had come up with some rather ingenious ideas. They could be intelligent, when they put their minds to it. They just didn't usually, mainly out of laziness. Macnair and Dolohov were finally behaving and had accepted their place in the hierarchy, albeit grudgingly. Altogether, everything was flowing smoothly. Except...