Hermione Granger had settled into a somewhat comfortable sense of, if not trust in, then at least familiarity with Tom Riddle. She also knew that this was, if not entirely stupid, then at least staggeringly optimistic on her part. The fact that he hadn't killed her or her parents yet—hadn't even tortured them since those early days, in fact—didn't mean that he wouldn't upon even the slightest provocation. It was highly probable that at some point she would cross an invisible line, and Riddle would abandon his plan to convert her to the Dark side and kill her in some horrifically creative way.

He was very creative. Brilliant, too, although she was sure that he was toying with her and really he was even more brilliant than he had even let on, which rankled her. She'd never not been the smartest person in the room before (excepting Headmaster Dumbledore, whom she didn't count, because he was Albus Dumbledore).

Riddle's gorgeous face and that look he gave her when he smiled certainly helped her to forget her ire, but she also knew how idiotic that was. She'd once read something about hostages who formed bonds with their captors and was determined that she would never do that, hormones or no. If she was willing to soften her feelings toward Tom Riddle because he smiled at her, then she might as well think that a shark wouldn't eat her because it showed her its pretty teeth.

All of these thoughts Tom plucked out of her mind with relative ease. The Mudblood was none the wiser.

He flipped a page of the book in his lap, and she flinched at the movement. He pretended not to notice as he skimmed a few paragraphs on the properties of wand cores. It was only several minutes later, when he slammed his book closed with a huff, that she jumped and reared back in her chair violently enough that he couldn't possibly pretend not to have noticed.

He turned a hard stare on her. "What is wrong with you?"

"What is wrong with me?" she echoed, her eyebrows rising dramatically up her forehead. She seemed to lose her confidence almost immediately and lowered her eyes from his. "I, I don't…. I don't understand why you're here!"

"Do I need a reason to be here?" he asked coolly. "Should I have sent around my card and waited for an invitation to tea?"

Granger pursed her lips together unattractively, and Tom didn't need to be the second most talented Legilimens in the United Kingdom (after only Voldemort) to know that she was desperately trying to gauge how far she could push him. After perhaps five seconds of contemplation, her face smoothed and she raised her brown eyes to meet his.

"Of course you came here for the books. I just don't understand why you stayed here to read them. You never stay."

He met her eyes without blinking, until a blush crept up her cheeks.

"It's, it's just that I can't imagine why you would want to stay here."

The "with me" was left unsaid, but Tom filled in the blank easily enough. He could have smiled at how well things were going, but he opted to slightly soften his expression and turn his eyes toward the small stack of books next to him on the loveseat.

"Have I given you the impression that I loathe your company?" he asked, keeping his voice unyielding. Then, after pausing for just long enough to feel her traitorous emotions swell up in reluctant delight, he added, "At least, not since you learned your place."

He picked up the book on the top of the stack and calmly ran a finger down the handwritten table of contents that the Mudblood had provided. He flipped to the appropriate page as she seethed in silence.

This book didn't seem to have any useful information either, just more of the same vague description as every other source he'd checked over the past few weeks. The wand chooses the wizard. What a load of useless tripe. Tom had never picked up a wand he wasn't able to use. He could still feel the sickly feeling that Morfin's wand had given him, although it had seemed to leap at the chance to perform the magic he was asking of it. He hadn't found that surprising, given that he was, frankly, a bit impressed that Morfin had ever managed to do anything besides produce sparks. What wand wouldn't be delighted to get away from that and into Tom's hands?

On the other hand, Potter's wand felt somehow right in his grip, familiar and almost as if it were his own wand, but despite the way it felt it seemed terribly reluctant to perform for him. It did perform for him, of course. It had never failed to do anything he asked of it, including the Killing Curse he'd shot at Potter, but it took more power than his own wand ever had.

Voldemort insisted that his experience had been the same—that some wands were easier to use than others, but ultimately he could perform any spell he wanted with any wand.

Still, the entire point of kidnapping the best wand maker in the world was to have him create wands that matched Voldemort and Tom as perfectly as possible. Voldemort had managed to find a wand in Ollivander's shop that more or less met his requirements, but Tom hadn't found anything that suited him better than Potter's wand. None of the spare cores that had been lying around the wand maker's workshop had felt right to him either.

That wasn't entirely unexpected, but the problem was that Ollivander's advice had been less than helpful and Tom couldn't find any meaningful information about wand making in any of the books he and Voldemort had thought to look in.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the Mudblood asking, "What are you researching?"

Tom blinked.

That… was an idea.

He raised his hand abruptly and, before Granger could react, levitated the book he had been reading across the postage stamp of a sitting room and dumped it into her lap.

"Wandlore," he announced with a smile, as she grunted at the heavy weight and scrambled to keep the book from tumbling to the floor. "Congratulations. It's your new favorite subject."

"Wandlore?"

The way she echoed his words back at him was an irritating habit, but Tom was feeling magnanimous and did not point this out with his magic.

"Yes, Granger," he said instead, only a trace of impatience creeping into his voice. "My wand is apparently lost to me. Your little friend's wand is not up to my standards, and neither are any of the other thousands of wands in Ollivander's shop. It appears that I will have to have a new one made."

She curled her upper lip into her mouth for a moment before she caught herself, and Tom honestly was not sure how long he was going to be able to keep up being nice to her, no matter how sweet his victory would be when she finally fell into his trap.

"Mr. Ollivander said that the wand chooses the wizard," she ventured uncertainly, "not the other way around."

Tom huffed. "Yes, he said the same to me when I purchased my first wand when I was eleven, and again when I persuaded him to make me a new one. But there has to be more to it than that."

It was clear that the girl desperately wanted to ask what he meant when he said that he had persuaded Ollivander to help him but also desperately did not want to know the answer.

Tom Apparated back to Malfoy Manor several hours later, when the sun was nearer to rising than setting, only to find that there was no house-elf to greet him. This mystery was solved almost immediately when a very irritated snake made her presence known.

:You're back! At last! Master needs you!:

Tom dropped the unconscious Muggle he was holding upright onto the nearest sofa rather more gently than he usually would have. Voldemort had been complaining recently about Tom beating up his vessels, and it was easier to play nicely than to deal with an annoyed Dark Lord.

Nagini circled behind him and slithered around his feet as if she could herd him out of the room. :Come now!: she insisted. :Master cannot wait!:

:Okay, I'm coming,: he replied, not bothering to mask his bemusement.

He'd almost made it to the door when Nagini called him back.

:Wait! Bring the human!:

Tom turned back toward her in surprise, which was apparently enough for Nagini to accept that he would do as she said. She darted out the door in the next second, much more quickly than her enormous mass would have led anyone to suspect she could. Tom seriously considered ignoring the order just on principle, but only for a few seconds. He did, however, mutter curses and complaints to himself as he levitated the body up the grand staircase and down the corridor toward the wing he and Voldemort shared.

The most powerful and terrifying Dark wizard of all time was slumped in an armchair in front of a fire that had clearly died some hours ago. He was so still that Tom might have thought that Voldemort had abandoned the vessel if not for the shallow rise and fall of its chest, which was accompanied by rattling breaths that reminded Tom of the cold, damp winters in the orphanage when his coats had been so threadbare and patched that the matrons might as well have not bothered wasting their meager funds buying them.

Nagini had reached the room long before Tom and had curled protectively around the back of Voldemort's chair.

:Look, Master, the young one is here!:

Voldemort cracked open his eyes and wearily looked Tom over, seeming to brighten just a bit when he saw the Muggle floating limply next to his Horcrux. He didn't even wait for Tom to set the vessel down. One moment he was wheezing out a wet breath in his old vessel, and the next his black soul was floating across the room. Tom just had time to lower the body onto the plush carpet before Voldemort reached them.

It was always a rather disgusting process. Tom was never able to look away as a vessel popped and squelched to make room for its new inhabitant.

Normally Voldemort was just fine for at least a day after acquiring a new vessel, sometimes longer, but this time he groaned as soon as he had control of the body and reached out wordlessly. Tom complied with the silent request, kneeling down next to the Dark Lord's head and using a Dark cutting curse on his own wrist as he brought it up to Voldemort's mouth. He healed almost as soon as Voldemort started sucking, of course, despite the fact that it was the Darkest spell they had been able to find. Tom had to pull his arm away to cast another one. Voldemort lurched upwards and met him halfway, jerking Tom's gushing wrist to his mouth with trembling arms.

They repeated the process thrice more before Voldemort let out a sigh, part relief and part frustration, and let his body fall back, his head coming to rest haphazardly against Tom's thigh.

:I hate this: he hissed. :I hate this!:

"I know," replied Tom in English.

Voldemort huffed. "I'm sure that you don't know."

"I do," Tom insisted. "I had to leech off somebody else's soul to form my own body. In fact, you have it positively great compared to me, since you don't have to listen to the lovesick babbling of an eleven-year-old girl."

"No, just to your inane babbling."

That startled a laugh out of Tom, which elicited the tiniest of smiles from Voldemort.

"Look on the bright side," Tom told him. "At least you still have your full power. Sure, it means you burn through vessels at a frankly annoying rate, but it's better than the alternative."

Voldemort sat up and promptly winced. Whatever he had been going to say in response was apparently forgotten, and he turned narrowed eyes on Tom.

"Did you…" He seemed reluctant to continue, almost bashful, which was among the more amusing things that Tom had ever witnessed from Lord Voldemort. "Did you have intercourse with this vessel before you brought it to me?"

"Intercourse." Tom scoffed. "There's no need to maintain this cultured façade with me. I do know where you came from. You can say fuck."

"Fine!" spat Voldemort. Deliberately as if each individual syllable caused him pain, he asked, "Did you fuck my vessel?"

Tom offered an unrepentant smirk. "I did."

The muscles of the Dark Lord's jaw visibly clenched as he gritted his teeth. It made the vessel's face look remarkably similar to how the Muggle had looked when Tom had slid inside him.

In a far too calm tone, Voldemort said, "You were late coming home—you left me in that state—because you were fucking my vessel."

"Well, if you want to put it that way," admitted Tom. "By the time I was done with Stewart there, it was too late to collect a different Muggle for you unless I went for another homeless man."

He could tell that Voldemort found no humor in the situation whatsoever.

The Dark Lord took a deep breath that made his nostril's flare alarmingly. "I think I would rather a homeless Muggle than some slag you fucked."

"Well, I wouldn't. I was giving you that trash to annoy you, but I have realized that I was punishing myself more than you. After all, I'm the one who has to look at your vessels all the time."

He wouldn't have had time to dodge the wordless, wandless Cruciatus Curse that the Dark Lord zapped him with even if he had seen it coming.

It only lasted for a few moments, of course, and then Tom grinned. "Don't be that way. Don't you want to be pretty?"

Before Voldemort could reply, Nagini slithered across both of their laps, pausing only long enough to flick her tongue across Voldemort's cheek and declare, :Master, since you have a new vessel, I am going to hunt now:

She didn't wait for an answer before continuing out the still-open door. Voldemort looked up at the ceiling for a moment as if in silent prayer to a god that Tom knew he didn't believe in, then he rolled onto his feet with another wince and stalked towards the fireplace. Tom followed him to his feet, waving his wand vaguely toward the door until it snapped shut behind the Dark Lord's familiar.

"You lied about the snake," he accused matter-of-factly. "She is not just some snake you found."

"No, she found me," replied Voldemort as he settled himself back into his chair, sitting upright this time.

Tom was hard pressed not to resort himself to praying to a non-existent deity to spare him from tight-lipped Dark Lords.

"And what is she?"

Voldemort tilted his head slightly to the right. "What makes you think she is more than just a snake?"

"She knows too much and has a better vocabulary than any snake I've ever met," Tom answered with a roll of his eyes. He tapped his fingers impatiently against the arm of his chair. "The basilisk was the most intelligent snake I had ever met, but it was still just a snake. All :rip, tear, kill: and not much else."

For a moment Tom thought that Voldemort was not going to answer him, but then he abruptly said, "She is a Maledictus."

Tom stared at him blankly. "A what?"

Voldemort offered a thin smile, which looked rather attractive on the handsome Muggle's face.

"I had not heard of it either, before Nagini found me. A Maledictus is a woman who is born with a blood curse that will eventually force her to transform permanently into an animal. It's no surprise that hardly anything is written about them and they are never spoken of openly—I imagine that people are superstitious enough to believe that speaking of it will somehow increase their own chances of becoming one, as if that is how it works."

"Nagini was once human?" asked Tom, not even embarrassed at the slight tone of awe that had crept into his voice.

"Yes, although she does not like discussing her past, for obvious reasons." Voldemort used his stolen wand to start a new fire. "I am not sure exactly how long she has been stuck in her serpent form—I'm not sure that even she knows—but at some point during her travels she heard rumors from other snakes about a speaker who was inhabiting their kind in a certain dark corner of the forest. She thought that perhaps they were describing another Maledictus in the only way that true snakes would know how, so she sought me out."

"And she stayed with you."

"She did. When I explained what I really was, we bonded over our somewhat shared experience and, frankly, the fact that she had not had a human to talk to for years and years. I encouraged her affections as much as I could and began making plans." The Dark Lord did not smile or otherwise indicate any affection on his part for his unfortunate companion. "When Quirrell fell into my hands, I promised that I would come back for her and she promised that she would do anything she could to help me return to my human body."

Tom hummed in understanding. "You came up with something involving her venom."

The Dark Lord stared at him.

"Voldemort," said Tom, his voice caressing the name like silk, "I thought that we were past this unfounded suspicion of my motives."

A humorless laugh made its way out of the older man's mouth. "I would trust you, Tom, except that I know myself."

Tom shrugged. "We are not the same. Not anymore."

That was true enough. They had been separated for more than fifty years and had experienced wildly different existences during that time. Still, in fundamentals they remained unchanged, although Tom still did not think that Voldemort had any basis for distrusting him. After all, Tom wasn't the madman who had already shown that he was perfectly willing to make additional Horcruxes out of his pet snakes-that-were-really-women, of all things.

The older man only offered a flat stare. "Be that as it may."

Tom narrowed his blood red eyes and graced the Dark Lord with a stare that would have sent anyone else running in the opposite direction, but Voldemort, being himself, only allowed a slight quirk to form at the corner of his mouth, which may have been a frown or a smirk.

"The venom of my Horcrux, yes, and also unicorn blood and, unfortunately, the flesh of our father, part of which I would have had to consume and part of which would have been an ingredient in the potion," he explained with a grimace. How much his distaste was for having given in to Tom's request and how much was at the idea of eating their father's flesh was unclear. "I must admit that I much prefer your blood as an alternative—you are a pure piece of my soul and have a much larger piece of it than Nagini would have had, so I can dispense with my old plan."

They sat in surprisingly companionable silence for several minutes, Voldemort watching the flames flicker in the grate and Tom watching the sun rise in purples and oranges through the window behind Voldemort's chair. Tom was still not entirely comfortable around his older self, this master soul who had gone on to do unspeakably terrible things that Tom himself had never dreamt up before being stuck in his diary, and who had treated his Horcruxes so casually that it made Tom almost ache with horror that he'd find himself in a glow of Fiendfyre at any moment.

However, with this latest information he at least felt some level of confidence that Voldemort preferred using him to having to go through some convoluted, disgusting process using another Horcrux that didn't naturally produce blood (or whatever he had) that the Dark Lord could suck directly from the source or, Tom imagined, collect for use in a ritual.

Eventually, Voldemort was the one to break the silence. "How did things go with Granger?"

Tom pulled his gaze back to the vessel's face and offered an amused smirk. "Great, actually. She admires me and craves my approval even though she desperately wants to hate me. I don't think I will have any problems making myself out to be a sympathetic figure in her eyes, when the time is right."

"Soon," Voldemort promised, his voice filled with determination and longing. "I will have my body back soon."

Nobody was happier about Lord Voldemort's return than Richard Mulciber. Tom was sure that Lestrange would have been delighted if he had been aware of it rather than being in Azkaban, of course. However, things being as they were, Mulciber didn't have any other sycophants to compete against for his master's attention. He was so happy that the Dark Lord was back, in fact, that he was only slightly annoyed that Malfoy had known before he had and almost immediately put it out of his mind as he fell to his knees.

"My Lord!" he exclaimed, raising earnest eyes to look upon the Muggle vessel Voldemort was inhabiting. "My Lord, you have no idea how glad I am that this day has finally come. When My…" Here he trailed off and looked uncertainly over at Tom, who was definitely-not-sulking in one of the chairs in front of Abraxas's desk, clearly unsure what to call the younger incarnation now that the older was back. "Well, when your… he… Well, I almost didn't believe that we would be able to pull it off, that's all."

"My what?" hissed Voldemort, very nearly slipping into Parseltongue.

Mulciber stuttered and gasped, but Tom knew immediately when he thought the word Horcrux, and not even because he was reading the man's mind. No, it was because he was nearly knocked out of his chair by a wild flare of Dark magic. Or rather, the chair was nearly knocked sideways across the room, stopped only by Tom's own incredible magic (and the fact that Tom's incredible ass was firmly planted in the seat). Malfoy was not as lucky, and he and his chair went careening into the wall behind them.

"Goddamnit, Tom," Voldemort growled, his emotions running high enough that he didn't seem to notice his slip back into Muggle phrasing or his use of that hated name. The vessel's eyes bled red and Mulciber was left cowering on the floor from the oppressive magic blanketing the room.

"What?" demanded Tom. "You'd rather still be a bit of spirit floating around Albania or wherever-the-fuck, making friends with women who got turned into snakes and planning a spot of cannibalism?"

"I would rather the world at large not know about my Horcruxes!"

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you hid them in the stupidest places you could dream up," Tom informed him.

"You dare?" growled Voldemort.

In his fury, his magic had begun leaking out of him as if his vessel were a dam that was about to fail. Mulciber groaned in distress and shifted his body closer to Abraxas's desk, as if that would keep him out of the Dark Lord's line of fire. Tom, however, was unimpressed.

He crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. "I only possibly let the Malfoys, Mulciber, and Lestrange in on the secret, and Lucius had already mostly worked it out anyway, because you gave me to him."

A whimper from behind him indicated that Lucius did not want any part of this argument, but they both ignored him.

It wasn't that Tom expected Voldemort to openly admit that he had happily skipped right over the edge of sanity before his body had been destroyed, or that he could possibly have been irrational, stupid, or otherwise wrong in any way in choosing what to do with his Horcruxes. Or in creating so many in the first place. The resulting silence was more than enough to satisfy Tom's need to make his older self admit his mistakes.

"Obliviate," was the first word Voldemort uttered. Then, when Mulciber looked up at him with wide, confused eyes, Voldemort caught the man's gaze and delved into his mind.

When Voldemort drew back, Mulciber stared up at him without comprehension for several seconds. Then his body jerked and he seemed to come to as if the entire previous two minutes had never happened.

"My Lord!" he exclaimed, gazing in adoration at the Dark Lord's vessel as if he were seeing it for the first time. "My Lord, I have been waiting for this day, for your return, for a decade! When your son came to us with his plan to facilitate your return, I hoped that it would work, but I was so afraid that my hope would be in vain!"

Tom managed to stay silent purely because if Voldemort had to Obliviate the man again so soon after the first time, it would likely turn his brain into mush. Good sycophants were so hard to come by these days. Not that the Dark Lord wouldn't fully deserve to have a brain dead pile of flesh and bone as a follower.

"Lord Voldemort believes you," Voldemort told the man. His lips twisted in wry amusement. "Wait outside, son and I have things we must discuss."

Mulciber was clearly reluctant to leave his master's presence so soon after having met him again, and he drug his feet as much as he could on his way out of the office, also pausing briefly in confusion at the sight of Malfoy's bright blond hair sticking out of a pile of wood and upholstery. He didn't acknowledge or even look at Tom once, which was deeply annoying to Tom after having had so many months of praise and worship and occasionally unmitigated terror aimed in his direction.

"Your son," Tom said flatly as soon as the door had closed behind the man.

Voldemort looked completely unruffled by the situation.

"Yes. We have been over this. What other explanation could we possibly give?"

"None," conceded Tom, "but that doesn't mean that I have to be happy about it. Are you going to tell me who my mother is or can I choose her myself?"

"I have been thinking since my return that my Horcruxes must be better protected," continued the Dark Lord, appearing not to have heard Tom at all. "I want to use the Fidelius Charm to hide each of the Horcruxes individually and to hide the fact that I have Horcruxes at all."

Tom had briefly read about the Fidelius Charm years ago, when he had made a point of researching the heights to which each subject taught at Hogwarts could take him. By his second year at school, the novelty of learning magic had completely worn off and he had been left less than impressed at spending hours each day unlocking doors, levitating objects, and other things he had been able to do instinctively without a wand or incantation since before he had ever known Hogwarts existed. Unfortunately, nobody had ever been allowed to skip any years at Hogwarts (He had approached Headmaster Dippet about it once, but Dumbledore had shut the idea down with such a fantastic protest that Tom had never dared bring it up again.), so Tom had resorted to self study.

It was ironic, really, that if Dumbledore had done anything to protect Tom Riddle from the terrors he had experienced in the Muggle world or to stimulate his mind and encourage the use of his incredible power, rather than attempting to stifle and limit him out of fear of what he would become, then Tom may never have let his fear and hatred fester or have had the freedom to delve wholeheartedly into the Dark Arts...

In any case, Tom had heard of the Fidelius Charm and a few other highly advanced charms and had decided that Charms was a subject worth pursuing, but he had been too enamored of his discovery of Dark rituals and Horcruxes and other such things to have gotten around to studying advanced Charms in depth.

"Can you make those things secret without making me disappear to everybody?" he asked Voldemort, letting his suspicion clearly inflect his voice.

"That is tempting," replied Voldemort, "except that if I were the only person who could see you, you'd pester me more than you already do."

Tom pulled a face at him.

If he wasn't entirely mistaken, there was hut the smallest, barest hint of an upturn at one corner of Voldemort's mouth in response.

"That is my plan for the other Horcruxes," he continued. "Theoretically, even if I wear the diadem on my head in public, nobody will be able to see it unless they are in on the secret, and even if they were in on the secret that the diadem exists they still wouldn't recognize it as a Horcrux. For you we will have to be careful that they register your presence but have no idea what you are, even if they know about my Horcruxes."

Tom pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. "What about people who already know that I'm a Horcrux? Surely the Fidelius Charm can't be used to wipe knowledge from somebody's brain who already has it. Otherwise, we could just make everybody forget the concept of Horcruxes altogether or that Ravenclaw ever made a diadem. Or, you know, that Dumbledore ever defeated Grindelwald or even that he exists..."

That unmistakably drew not only a smile from Voldemort but an outright laugh.

"That would be brilliant, but unfortunately anybody who already has information will still know it. It's just that they can't pass it on to anybody else and they can't do anything with it. For example, I had minions who knew that the Potters lived in Godric's Hollow and even a few who knew which cottage was theirs, but none of then were able to divulge that information to me. Even if they had led me to the correct house, none of us could have found the Potters inside. At least not until Pettigrew told me himself where they were. If they had made the house itself the secret, rather than making the secret merely that they were located inside the house, then no one would have been able to see the house at all, not even those who knew it was there prior to the charm."

"So we could make it so that everybody knows Dumbledore exists but they can't see or hear him? Or so that everybody who already knows he defeated Grindelwald remembers but is unable to teach that bit of trivia to anybody who doesn't already know?"

"Well..." began Voldemort, trailing off momentarily in thought. "For the first, we would have to actually capture Dumbledore, I think, as we would have to cast the spell on his person in order to hide his person. As to the second, I don't see why not—it's just a fact, not an object, so we wouldn't need to cast it on anything. I think that the ability to perform a Fidelius Charm of that magnitude would be limited only by the caster's power."

It went unspoken that Voldemort did not think his (or their) power would be a limiting factor.

The Dark Lord sat back in his chair and gave Tom a searching look. "What I am more curious about at the moment is the effect of having split my soul. Do we all collectively count as one soul for the purpose of the charm, or are we separate souls? And if we are separate souls, can the secret be hidden inside you or one of the other Horcruxes?"

Tom conjured a quill and a few scraps of parchment out of thin air and scooted to the edge of his seat so that he could use the edge of the desk to scribble a few words on one of them. He slid the other across the desk to his counterpart.

"Show me how to do the spell."

It was an intensely complex charm, unsurprisingly. Tom imagined that most witches and wizards with a hundred years of experience would be unable to perform it. However, it had about four fewer steps than making a Horcrux, and it didn't even involve brewing a potion or continuing an uninterrupted incantation despite feeling your soul rip apart, so Tom was able to pick it up after watching Voldemort perform it once.

Voldemort flicked his fingers and his parchment flitted back across the desk into Tom's hand. Tom glanced down at Voldemort's precise handwriting.

"It has the incantation for the Fidelius Charm," Tom told him.

"Interesting," said Voldemort. "It seems that we are the same after all."